Timeline 2006 July-September
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2006 Jul 1, New Jersey failed to approve a budget and Gov. Jon S. Corzine began closing the state government amid a bitter dispute with fellow Democrats in the Assembly over his plan to increase the sales tax, threatening to shutter beaches, parks and possibly casinos in the coming days.
(AP, 7/1/06)(WSJ, 7/3/06, p.A1)(Econ, 7/8/06, p.27)
2006 Jul 1, An estimated 5,000 bikers rode into Hollister, Ca., for the annual 4th of July motorcycle rally, even though it was officially cancelled last year by the City Council.
(SSFC, 7/2/06, p.B1)
2006 Jul 1, Thunderstorms forced NASA to call off the launch of Discovery, delaying the first space shuttle flight in a year. Discovery was launched three days later, on July 4.
(AP, 7/1/07)
2006 Jul 1, Phillip Rieff (83), sociologist and a severe critic of contemporary academic culture, died. He was best known for his 1966 book “The Triumph of the Therapeutic: Uses of Faith After Freud." His final work: “Charisma: The Gift of Grace, and How It Has Been Taken Away from Us," was published in 2007.
(WSJ, 2/17/07, p.P12)(http://tinyurl.com/lphph)
2006 Jul 1, In southern Afghanistan 2 rockets fired by insurgents slammed into the main coalition military base. The wounded included five American and two Canadian soldiers, as well as three foreign contract workers. 2 British soldiers and an Afghan interpreter were killed when their base in Sangin district in Helmand province came under attack. Afghan forces killed 11 militants in a separate attack in the same area. A total of five British troops have been killed since the start of Operation Mountain Thrust.
(AP, 7/1/06)(AP, 7/2/06)
2006 Jul 1, China’s new $4.2 billion, 710-mile-long railway from Golmud to Lhasa, Tibet, began operations. Canada’s Bombardier manufactured high-tech cars for the Sky Train with regulated oxygen levels to cope with 16,500-foot passes. Two years later the line was extended from Lhasa to Shigatse.
(SFC, 6/30/06, p.A18)(Reuters, 7/1/06)(Econ, 5/21/16, p.37)c7
2006 Jul 1, It was reported that Chinese consumers had begun ganging up on retailers by arriving en masse at pre-arranged times, arranged online, to push for bargain prices.
(Econ, 7/1/06, p.59)
2006 Jul 1, China reported a new outbreak of bird flu near Zhongwei in the Ningxia region.
(WSJ, 7/3/06, p.A6)
2006 Jul 1, Sources said East Timor's outgoing foreign minister Jose Ramos-Horta will head the government until a new premier is appointed in coming days.
(AFP, 7/1/06)
2006 Jul 1, About 100 Ethiopian troops entered the Somali border town of Beled-Hawo in eight military vehicles, the latest sign that Ethiopia might try to bolster this country's weak interim government as an Islamic militia gains increasing power.
(AP, 7/1/06)
2006 Jul 1, Finland began its 6-month rotating presidency of the EU.
(www.government.fi/eu/suomi-ja-eu/2006/en.jsp)
2006 Jul 1, Thousands of people marched through Paris to protest plans to tighten restrictions on immigration and step up deportations of immigrant families with children who are in the country illegally.
(AP, 7/2/06)
2006 Jul 1, The 3-week Tour de France began. 4 favorites, including Ivan Basso and Jan Ullrich, were barred with 5 others from the cycling competition after their names popped up in a Spanish probe of a network that allegedly supplied riders and other athletes with banned drugs and doping know-how.
(AP, 6/30/06)(SFC, 7/1/06, p.D1)
2006 Jul 1, In Gambia a summit of more than 50 African leaders opened with the aim of pursuing regional integration, but conflicts in Darfur and Somalia are inevitably topping the agenda. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez called on Africa to forge closer ties with Latin America to combat what he called a threat of U.S. hegemony.
(AFP, 7/1/06)(Reuters, 7/1/06)
2006 Jul 1, Thousands chanted slogans and marched through Hong Kong's streets in a pro-democracy protest, while a pro-Beijing parade also drew a big crowd to mark the ninth anniversary of the former British colony's return to Chinese rule.
(AP, 7/1/06)
2006 Jul 1, India's PM Manmohan Singh announced an 835-million-dollar relief package to aid farmers in the country's main cotton belt where crippling debts and falling prices have led to thousands of suicides. A court convicted three men of involvement in a 2002 terrorist attack on a Hindu shrine in western India that killed 33 people, and it sentenced them to death.
(AP, 7/1/06)(AFP, 7/1/06)
2006 Jul 1, Ryutaro Hashimoto (68), former Japanese PM (1996-1998), died. He had stood up to the US in trade negotiations and helped diffuse tensions over US military bases in Japan.
(AP, 7/1/06)
2006 Jul 1, A parked car bomb exploded at a popular outdoor market in a Shiite slum in Baghdad, killing at least 66 people and wounding dozens. It was the bloodiest attack to hit Iraq since the death of terror leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Gunmen in Baghdad kidnapped a Sunni female legislator along with seven of her bodyguards. Iraqi and US authorities freed 495 prisoners from US facilities, completing a mass release announced by the prime minister last month as part of his national reconciliation efforts.
(AP, 7/1/06)
2006 Jul 1, Palestinian militants holding an Israeli soldier issued a new set of demands, calling for the release of 1,000 prisoners and a halt to Israel's military offensive in Gaza. But Israel rejected them.
(AP, 7/1/06)
2006 Jul 1, A new law, combined with a series of bureaucratic bungles, forced some 30% of Russian liquor stores to close indefinitely because they will have nothing to sell. The law, which aimed to block counterfeit wine sales, requires distributors to place new, government-issued excise labels on all wine and liquor. But a series of delays and misunderstandings has meant few properly labeled imports will be ready in time.
(AP, 7/1/06)
2006 Jul 1, In Geneva developing countries emerged from a failed World Trade Organization meeting more united than ever and warned rich countries not to undermine the development thrust of the Doha Round of global trade talks.
(AFP, 7/1/06)
2006 Jul 2, US researchers reported that astemizol, an allergy drug pulled off the market in 1999, could work to treat malaria. It was marketed under the brand name Hismanal by Janssen Pharmaceutica, a unit of Johnson & Johnson, and can kill the Plasmodium falciparum parasite that causes malaria.
(AP, 7/2/06)
2006 Jul 2, Jan Murray (born as Murray Janofsky in 1916), comedian and film and TV actor, died in Beverly Hills. He hosted the TV game show “Treasure Hunt" (1956-1959).
(SFC, 7/3/06, p.A2)
2006 Jul 2, In Afghanistan up to 30 extremists, firing guns and mortars, attacked a coalition patrol that had just found a weapons cache in Sangin. About 20 militants were killed. Afghan police killed seven insurgents that attacked a police checkpoint in Nawzad district in southern Helmand province.
(AP, 7/3/06)
2006 Jul 2, Africa's leaders meeting in Gambia agreed to send troops to Somalia to support regional efforts at calming the chaotic east African state.
(Reuters, 7/2/06)
2006 Jul 2, In Bangladesh 2 people were killed and nearly 200 injured in clashes as opposition parties enforced a countrywide transport shutdown.
(Reuters, 7/2/06)
2006 Jul 2, Bolivians voted for a national assembly that will rewrite the constitution. They voted "yes" or "no" on a ballot question on whether to offer the country's nine states greater autonomy in political and financial affairs. President Morales' supporters failed to win control of an assembly that will rewrite Bolivia's constitution, leaving him no choice but to compromise over his ambitious plans to empower the indigenous majority and boost state control over the economy. Morales allies won 132 seats in the 255-person body. Voters in four of Bolivia's nine states overwhelmingly chose greater political and economic autonomy for their states.
(AP, 6/29/06)(AP, 7/3/06)
2006 Jul 2, EADS's French co-chief executive Noel Forgeard and Airbus's German head Gustav Humbert tendered their resignations over delays to deliveries of the A380 superjumbo that has wiped billions of euros (dollars) off EADS's share price. Louis Gallois became the new EADS co-CEO; Christian Strieff was named the new president and CEO of Airbus.
(AFP, 7/2/06)(WSJ, 7/3/06, p.A2)
2006 Jul 2, Pirates in the Strait of Malacca off Indonesia's coast boarded two UN-chartered ships carrying construction material for the reconstruction of the tsunami-hit Aceh. They stole and damaged equipment on the first ship and robbed the crew of cash and personal belongings on the other.
(AP, 7/4/06)
2006 Jul 2, Israeli aircraft sent missiles tearing through the office of Palestinian PM Ismail Haniyeh in an unmistakable message to his ruling Hamas group to free an Israeli soldier.
(AP, 7/2/06)
2006 Jul 2, Iraq’s largest Sunni Arab bloc in parliament said it was suspending its participation in the legislature until a kidnapped colleague was released, dealing a blow to efforts to involve the disaffected minority in the political process. A roadside bomb in Baghdad killed Col. Muthanna Faeq Abdul-Razzaq, the assistant commander of the Iraqi army's 7th Division, and wounded his driver. 2 policemen were killed and six were wounded in a shootout between gunmen and Iraqi police. A bomb struck a house in Baqouba, killing two people and wounding four. Clashes between insurgents and Iraqi police southwest of Kirkuk left one policeman and two insurgents dead.
(AP, 7/2/06)
2006 Jul 2, Liechtenstein remained on the list of uncooperative tax havens because, unlike 33 other jurisdictions, it had not made a commitment to the OECD to improve transparency and to establish effective exchange of information for tax purposes with OECD countries. The population stood at some 34,600.
(AP, 7/2/06)
2006 Jul 2, Mexico held presidential elections. Felipe Calderon (43) calling himself “the candidate of jobs," faced Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador: “For everyone’s good, the poor first." Lopez Villanueva, head of the Francisco Villa Popular Front, arranged to have 10,000 members as poll watchers for Lopez Obrador. A tight race delayed the results to July 5. The per capita GDP was $10,000. Oil production was 3.35 million barrels per day. On July 6 Calderon was named the winner by 234,000 votes. The final outcome rested with the electoral court, Trife, and its decision was due by September 6.
(Econ, 6/10/06, p.36)(WSJ, 6/28/06, p.A1)(Econ, 7/15/06, p.35)(AP, 7/7/07)
2006 Jul 2, In Nicaragua Herty Lewites (b.1939), former mayor of Managua (2000-2004) and recent presidential candidate, died of a heart attack. He broke with the leftist Sandinista party to run against its leader Daniel Ortega.
(http://tinyurl.com/omz5w)(AP, 7/3/06)(Econ, 11/4/06, p.45)
2006 Jul 2, A Peruvian rescue team found the bodies of 3 American mountaineers killed during an icy climb high in the Andes. They located Kristen Yoder (21), her brother Dustin Yoder (23) and Brennan Larson (24) in a 100-foot-deep crevasse on the Artesonraju peak.
(AP, 7/3/06)
2006 Jul 2, Senegal's President Abdoulaye Wade said his country would try Chad's former leader Hissene Habre, wanted by Belgium for trial on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
(AFP, 7/2/06)
2006 Jul 2, Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tigers, claiming they have just trained 6,000 civilians in armed combat, accused the UN of exaggerating the number of child fighters in the rebels' ranks. Police said Sampath Lakmal, a freelance Sri Lankan journalist, has been gunned down near the capital Colombo.
(AFP, 7/2/06)(AP, 7/2/06)
2006 Jul 3, Former Private Steven D. Green was charged in federal court in Charlotte, N.C., with raping a 14-year-old Iraqi girl (Abeer Qassim al-Janabi) and killing her (March 11), her parents and sister. Four members of Green's unit were charged as well; one later pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 100 years in prison.
(AP, 7/3/07)
2006 Jul 3, A US federal judge issued a temporary retraining order barring the Navy from using a type of high-intensity sonar that could harm marine animals during war games that began last week in the Pacific Ocean. On July 7 the US Navy and environmental groups agreed on a settlement which prevented the Navy from using the sonar within 25 miles of the newly established Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Marine National Monument during the exercises.
(SFC, 7/3/06, p.A3)(SFC, 7/8/06, p.A4)
2006 Jul 3, Benjamin Hendrickson (55), an Emmy Award-winning actor on the "As the World Turns" soap opera, was found dead of suicide with a gunshot to the head in his Long Island home.
(AP, 7/7/06)
2006 Jul 3, Jack Smith (b.1913), singer and TV host for “You Asked for It," died at his home in southern California. In 1958 he replaced Art Baker, who created the show in 1950.
(SFC, 7/11/06, p.B4)
2006 Jul 3, A US general said the United States is giving $2 billion worth of military weapons and vehicles to modernize Afghanistan's national army.
(AP, 7/3/06)
2006 Jul 3, Judges and prosecutors from Cambodia and abroad were sworn in to begin the UN-backed judicial process to try former Khmer Rouge leaders for genocide and crimes against humanity.
(AP, 7/3/06)
2006 Jul 3, China's new train from Beijing to Tibet arrived in the ancient capital of Lhasa, ending its maiden journey after climbing to elevations so high that ballpoint pens and packaged foods burst.
(AP, 7/3/06)
2006 Jul 3, It was reported that 579 Cubans had entered the US over the last 9 months by landing on Puerto Rico’s Mona Island, 40 miles from the coast of the Dominican Rep.
(SFC, 7/3/06, p.A8)
2006 Jul 3, Iraq’s parliament convened despite a boycott by Sunni Arab legislators protesting a colleague's abduction. Bombs struck markets north and south of Baghdad, with nationwide attacks killing at least 10 people and wounding dozens.
(AP, 7/3/06)
2006 Jul 3, Nissan Motor Co. approved opening talks with General Motors Corp. over a possible alliance.
(AP, 7/3/06)
2006 Jul 3, In India's Jammu-Kashmir state clashes between Indian government forces and suspected Islamic separatist militants killed 13 people.
(AP, 7/3/06)
2006 Jul 3, Two bitter rivals declared themselves Mexico's next president, sparking fears of violence. Electoral officials said they wouldn't name a winner until a vote-by-vote hand count.
(AP, 7/3/06)
2006 Jul 3, In northwestern Pakistan an explosion hit a bus carrying paramilitary troops, killing at least 6 soldiers and wounding 5 others.
(AP, 7/3/06)
2006 Jul 3, Palestinian militants holding an Israeli soldier gave Israel less than 24 hours to start releasing 1,500 Palestinian prisoners and implied that he would be killed if it did not comply, but Israel said it would not negotiate.
(AP, 7/3/06)
2006 Jul 3, A subway train derailed in the eastern Spanish city of Valencia, killing 43 people. "Initial investigations show it was an accident," said Vicente Rambla, spokesman for the Valencia regional government.
(AP, 7/3/07)
2006 Jul 3, At least seven people were killed and dozens wounded in three Claymore mine attacks carried out by Tamil Tiger rebels in Sri Lanka's northern and eastern regions.
(AFP, 7/3/06)
2006 Jul 3, Sudan's foreign minister rejected calls by the top UN envoy in the country to make additions to a peace deal for Darfur after widespread rejection of the accord. A group of Sudanese rebels in more than 50 cars attacked the town of Hamarat Sheikh in the Kordofan region of Darfur. At least a dozen people were killed. In southern Sudan at least six people were killed and 11 wounded when gunmen ambushed a German aid agency vehicle. Witnesses said the attackers, some of whom were uniformed, were rebel fighters with the LRA.
(Reuters, 7/3/06)(AP, 7/5/06)(AFP, 7/5/06)
2006 Jul 4, The US space shuttle Discovery took off at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, with 7 astronauts. Up to six pieces of debris that could be foam insulation fell off Discovery's troublesome external fuel tank minutes after liftoff. News arrived that North Korea had launched test missiles [see July 5].
(AFP, 7/5/06)(SFC, 7/5/06, p.A3)
2006 Jul 4, In Gustine, Ca., Trevor Branscum (38) killed his 4 young children with a hunting rifle and then turned the weapon on himself.
(SFC, 7/5/06, p.B3)
2006 Jul 4, A bomb exploded in downtown Kabul, wounding at least 10 people. In eastern Afghanistan 5 laborers were ambushed and fatally shot on their way to a US military base. US-led coalition forces killed 35 suspected militants during a raid late in the village of Gujdar in Helmand province.
(AP, 7/4/06)(AP, 7/5/06)
2006 Jul 4, Two former currency dealers for Australia's biggest bank were jailed for their part in a 260 million US dollar rogue trading scandal. Vince Ficarra (27) and David Bullen (34) made a raft of fictitious trades for the National Australia Bank (NAB) between September 2003 and January 2004 to mask massive losses. Bullen was sentenced to 44 months in prison and Ficarra to 28 months.
(AFP, 7/4/06)
2006 Jul 4, A bomb exploded in downtown Kabul, wounding at least 10 people. In eastern Afghanistan 5 laborers were ambushed and fatally shot on their way to a US military base.
(AP, 7/4/06)
2006 Jul 4, Gunmen attacked a Russian military convoy in the Chechnya region, killing at least five troops and wounding as many as 25 others, officials said. Pro-rebel Web sites claimed more than 20 Russian soldiers were killed.
(AP, 7/4/06)
2006 Jul 4, A French court convicted respected wine exporter Georges Duboeuf Wines of fraud after one of its wineries mixed a variety of grapes in its Beaujolais.
(AP, 7/4/06)
2006 Jul 4, Iraq’s justice minister demanded that the UN Security Council ensure that a group of US troops are punished in the March 11 rape and murder of a young Iraqi and the killing of her family. In eastern Baghdad gunmen in camouflaged uniforms kidnapped Iraq's deputy electricity minister along with 11 of his bodyguards. The minister was released after several hours.
(AP, 7/4/06)
2006 Jul 4, PM Ehud Olmert ignored a deadline to begin releasing Palestinian prisoners and instead issued a veiled threat against Syria, vowing to strike "those who sponsor" the militants in the Gaza Strip who seized a young Israeli soldier.
(AP, 7/4/06)
2006 Jul 4, Japan initiated new rules that tightened 89 existing laws covering the financial industry. It doubled the maximum jail sentence for fraud to 10 years and gave extra power and broader authority to the Financial Services Agency (FSA).
(Econ, 7/8/06, p.67)
2006 Jul 4, The parties of Kazakhstan's leader and his eldest daughter announced a merger, a move that tightens President Nursultan Nazarbayev's grip on power.
(AP, 7/4/06)
2006 Jul 4, Lopez Obrador, Mexico’s leftist presidential candidate, called for a recount of election results that showed him trailing his conservative rival by 1 percentage point.
(AP, 7/4/06)
2006 Jul 4, Lars Korvald (90), the first Christian Democrat to serve as prime minister of Norway (1972-1973), died.
(AP, 7/4/06)
2006 Jul 4, Palestinian militants hit an Israeli city with a rocket from Gaza for the first time, causing no casualties but drawing a pledge of harsh retaliation from Israel while it was already in the midst of a military offensive.
(AP, 7/4/06)
2006 Jul 4, Radical Islamic militia fighters in Somalia shot and killed two people who were watching a World Cup soccer broadcast. The Islamic group that controls Somalia's capital soon arrested two of its own militiamen for killing two people who were watching the soccer match.
(AP, 7/5/06)(AP, 7/6/06)
2006 Jul 4, President Hugo Chavez marked Venezuela's entry into the South American trade bloc Mercosur with a six-nation summit, an alliance that he says should be a common front against US free trade deals.
(AP, 7/4/06)
2006 Jul 5, Pres. Bush met with Pres. Saakashvili and backed Georgia’s bid to join NATO.
(WSJ, 7/6/06, p.A1)
2006 Jul 5, Japan, the United States and Britain readied a UN Security Council resolution demanding that nations withhold all funds, goods and technology that could be used for North Korea's missile program.
(AP, 7/5/06)
2006 Jul 5, New Jersey's casinos ushered the last of the gamblers away from slot machines and tables, and janitors locked the doors behind them as a state government shutdown claimed its latest victims.
(AP, 7/5/06)
2006 Jul 5, Greg Anderson, weight trainer for Barry Bonds, was sent to federal prison fro refusing to testify before a grand jury investigating Bonds and steroid use.
(SFC, 7/6/06, p.A1)
2006 Jul 5, Crude oil for August delivery jumped to a record close of $75.19 per barrel. The previous high was $75.15. The DJIA closed down 76 to 11,151.
(SFC, 7/6/06, p.C1)
2006 Jul 5, Researchers reported that carbon dioxide, the major greenhouse gas, from industrial emissions was raising the acidity of the world’s oceans and threatening organisms that form the base of the entire marine food web.
(SFC, 7/6/06, p.A4)
2006 Jul 5, Kenneth Lay (b.1942). Enron Corp. founder and chief executive, died of a heart attack at his vacation home in Colorado. He was convicted in May for his role in the in the Houston-based company's downfall.
(Reuters, 7/5/06)(Econ, 7/8/06, p.81)
2006 Jul 5, Prince Tu'ipelehake (56), a Tongan prince known for promoting political reform in his South Pacific island nation, died in a car crash along with his wife, Princess Kaimana (46) and driver Vinisia Hefa when a teenage driver, Edith Delgado (18), slammed into them on Highway 101 in Menlo Park, Ca. In 2007 Delgado was sentenced to 2 years in jail and 3 years probation.
(AP, 7/7/06)(SFC, 7/7/06, p.B3)(SFC, 11/6/08, p.B2)
2006 Jul 5, In Afghanistan 3 bombs targeting government workers and security forces exploded in Kabul, killing one bystander and wounding at least 47 other people. A coalition soldier and eight rebels were killed in new clashes in Paktika province. A British soldier and six more militants were killed and six captured in two separate incidents southern Zabul province. The family of Abdul Khaliq, a legislator from Uruzgan province, was fired upon killing Khaliq’s brother-in-law. Khaliq put the blame on American and Australian troops.
(AP, 7/5/06)(AFP, 7/6/06)(SFC, 7/8/06, p.A3)
2006 Jul 5, Afghan President Hamid Karzai met Japanese Emperor Akihito in Tokyo and said he wanted to build peace in the war-torn nation so he could some day invite the emperor and empress. Tokyo has provided about $1 billion in assistance for security and development, and in January pledged another $450 million.
(AP, 7/6/06)
2006 Jul 5, In El Salvador violence broke out after police fired tear gas to disperse students protesting against a hike in electricity rates and public transportation fees. Two officers were killed and 10 others were wounded by gunshots. The next day police arrested Luis Antonio Herrador Funes (37), who allegedly was captured on tape shielding a man who was shooting an M-16 rifle. Police were still looking for the shooter.
(AP, 7/6/06)
2006 Jul 5, A France court convicted 38 people in a vast party financing scandal centered on Paris City Hall from 1987 to 1993, when Jacques Chirac was mayor.
(AP, 7/5/06)
2006 Jul 5, France beat Portugal 1-0 and will play Italy for Soccer’s World Cup on July 9.
(WSJ, 7/6/06, p.A1)
2006 Jul 5, Germany's Cabinet approved a 2007 budget that foresees trimming the deficit to comply with EU rules, and the finance minister said Berlin likely would hit the target this year.
(AP, 7/5/06)
2006 Jul 5, In India heavy rains kept schools and colleges shut for a third day and meteorologists forecast more downpours in Bombay, as the nationwide death toll rose to more than 250 since the monsoon began in June.
(AP, 7/5/06)
2006 Jul 5, An Iraqi vice president said kidnappers of a Sunni legislator have demanded the release of all detainees, a timetable for the withdrawal of foreign troops and an end to attacks on Shiite mosques in exchange for her freedom.
(AP, 7/5/06)
2006 Jul 5, Israeli leaders authorized troops to move into residential areas of the Gaza Strip as they increase pressure on militants holding an Israeli soldier and look to create a security zone to prevent Palestinians from firing rockets into Israel.
(AP, 7/5/06)
2006 Jul 5, Italian prosecutors said they had arrested two Italian intelligence officers and were seeking four more Americans as part of an investigation into the alleged CIA kidnapping of an Egyptian cleric in Milan in 2003.
(AP, 7/5/06)
2006 Jul 5, Macedonia held parliamentary elections. President Branko Crvenkovski urged a free and fair vote in a country struggling to ease tensions between majority Macedonian Slavs and the ethnic Albanian minority, which makes up about a quarter of the nation's population.
(AP, 7/6/06)
2006 Jul 5, Mexico’s recount of election results put Lopez Obrador ahead of Louis Calderon with 83% of the votes tallied.
(WSJ, 7/6/06, p.A1)
2006 Jul 5, North Korea test-fired a long-range missile that may be capable of reaching America, but it failed seconds after launch. North Korea also tested shorter range missiles in an exercise the White House termed "a provocation" but not an immediate threat. The early morning tests came as the US celebrated the Fourth of July and just minutes ahead of the US launch of the space shuttle Discovery.
(AP, 7/4/06)(AP, 7/5/06)(SFC, 7/5/06, p.A1)
2006 Jul 5, In southwestern Pakistan security forces backed by helicopter gunships targeted hideouts of tribal militants accused of blowing up gas pipelines and attacking officials, killing 25 suspects in a 2-day operation.
(AP, 7/5/06)
2006 Jul 5, Venezuela marked its Independence Day showcasing recent arms deals that have alarmed Washington. Pres. Chavez proposed that Mercosur members: Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, Uruguay and Paraguay, should one day join their militaries to guarantee the region's security.
(AP, 7/5/06)
2006 Jul 6, A US federal rule was published designating some 36,750 square miles in the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska as critical habitat for right whales. The rule takes effect Aug. 7.
(AP, 7/7/06)
2006 Jul 6, New Jersey’s governor and lawmakers reached a deal on a new state budget. The deal included an increase in sales tax from 6 to 7%, half of which would be used to lower property taxes, which were among the highest in the US.
(SFC, 7/7/06, p.A7)
2006 Jul 6, New York's highest court ruled that gay marriage is not allowed under state law, rejecting arguments by same-sex couples who said the law violates their constitutional rights.
(AP, 7/6/06)
2006 Jul 6, Emmanuel "Toto" Constant (49), an elusive former strongman from Haiti, accused of sanctioning rape to silence dissent there in the early 1990s, was arrested in a mortgage fraud scheme on Long Island, NY.
(AP, 7/7/06)
2006 Jul 6, Alan Newton (44) of NYC was released from prison after DNA evidence cleared him of a 1985 rape conviction. He had served 20 years of a 40 year sentence.
(SFC, 7/7/06, p.A6)
2006 Jul 6, The Amalgamated Santas gathered in Branson, Missouri, for their first annual convention. In 2007 the group started to splinter following internal squabbles.
(WSJ, 7/10/08, p.A1)(http://tinyurl.com/5mw4kv)
2006 Jul 6, The space shuttle Discovery docked with the international space station, bringing with it European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Reiter, who began a six-month stay aboard the station.
(AP, 7/6/07)
2006 Jul 6, Ralph Ginzburg (b.1929), journalist, magazine publisher and photographer, died in NYC. His magazine included Eros (1962), Avant Garde (1968) and Fact (1964). In 1962 he wrote “100 Years of Lynchings," a chronicle of racist hangings in the South. He was at the center of two First Amendment battles in the 1960s and served 8 months in federal prison for obscenity.
(AP, 7/6/07)(SFC, 7/7/06, p.B9)
2006 Jul 6, Kasey Rogers (80), film and TV actress, died in Los Angeles. Her films included “Strangers on a Train" (1951).
(SFC, 7/15/06, p.B6)
2006 Jul 6, In southern Afghanistan a US-led coalition soldier and five militants were killed in a clash in the Baghran Valley in Helmand province.
(AP, 7/7/06)
2006 Jul 6, An Australian consortium led by Macquarie Bank said it has agreed to a friendly 1.59 billion US dollar takeover of US utility Duquesne Light Holdings.
(AP, 7/6/06)
2006 Jul 6, Brazilian police broke up an international drug ring and arrested Luciano Geraldo Daniel, a man suspected of being the country's top cocaine trafficker.
(AP, 7/6/06)
2006 Jul 6, China’s state media said torrential rains and a tornado killed at least 30 people as storms battered eastern China this week, with millions more affected by flooding and other storm damage.
(AP, 7/6/06)
2006 Jul 6, China and India reopened the 14,000-foot Nathu La pass, an ancient Silk Road pass high in the Himalayas, more than 40 years after it was shut by war.
(AP, 7/6/06)
2006 Jul 6, The European Central Bank held its key interest rate steady at 2.75% as was widely anticipated but pledged to exercise "strong vigilance" on inflation.
(AP, 7/6/06)
2006 Jul 6, Four former officers in Georgia's Interior Ministry were convicted of causing bodily harm leading to death in the case of a banker, Sandro Girgvliani (28), whose beating and stabbing death became a political scandal in this former Soviet republic.
(AP, 7/6/06)
2006 Jul 6, In Iraq a suicide car bomb tore through buses carrying Iranian pilgrims near a Shiite shrine on the outskirts of Kufa, killing 14 people and wounding 38.
(AP, 7/7/06)(SFC, 7/7/06, p.A10)
2006 Jul 6, Israeli forces took over the remains of three abandoned Jewish settlements in the northern Gaza Strip and entered a nearby Palestinian town, creating a temporary buffer zone to prevent Palestinian militants from firing rockets at Israel. At least 21 Palestinians and one Israeli soldier were killed in the fighting.
(AP, 7/6/06)(SFC, 7/7/06, p.A3)
2006 Jul 6, Israel signed a contract with Germany for 2 new Dolphin submarines capable of carrying nuclear warheads.
(AP, 8/25/06)
2006 Jul 6, It was reported that African scholars have launched the continent's first bible commentary which tackles issues like female circumcision, HIV/AIDS and ethnic violence to make the scriptures more relevant for Africans. The African Bible Commentary was launched this week in Kenya and is meant to interpret the bible for Africans by using local proverbs and tradition and by applying Christian teaching to contemporary problems on the poorest continent.
(Reuters, 7/6/06)
2006 Jul 6, PM Vlado Buckovski conceded defeat to the nationalist opposition in Macedonia's parliamentary elections, a vote considered crucial for the tiny Balkan nation's aspirations to join the EU and NATO. Nikola Gruevski led the winning VMRO-DPMNE party.
(AP, 7/6/06)
2006 Jul 6, Felipe Calderon won the official count in Mexico's disputed presidential race, a come-from-behind victory for the stiff technocrat. But his leftist rival refused to concede and said he'd fight the results in court. Calderon won 35.9% of the vote against Obrador’s 35.3%.
(AP, 7/7/06)(Econ, 11/18/06, Survey p.4)
2006 Jul 6, In Moldova an explosion ripped apart a small bus in Tiraspol, capital of the separatist region of Trans-Dniester, killing eight people and injuring 46. The blast was caused by a bomb carried onboard by a passenger. Transdniestrian politicians blamed Moldovan provocateurs.
(AP, 7/8/06)(Econ, 8/5/06, p.48)
2006 Jul 6, A general strike in Niger demanding lower prices for basic goods paralyzed the capital of one of the world's poorest nations, following a similar attempt last month that was met with inaction from the government.
(AP, 7/6/06)
2006 Jul 6, In Nigeria a Dutch oil worker was kidnapped by armed men from a Royal Dutch Shell gas plant. He was released July 10.
(AP, 7/6/06)(AP, 7/10/06)
2006 Jul 6, A defiant North Korea threatened to test-fire more missiles and warned of even stronger action if opponents of the tests put pressure on the country.
(AP, 7/6/06)
2006 Jul 6, Members of the radical Islamic group that controls Somalia's capital met African, Arab and European officials and repeated their opposition to the deployment of peacekeepers to stabilize the lawless country.
(AP, 7/6/06)
2006 Jul 6, A delegate from Spain's ruling party met with the leader of an outlawed Basque separatist group in historic talks hailed by both sides as a possible step toward peace.
(AP, 7/6/06)
2006 Jul 6, Ukraine's pro-Russian opposition ended a 10-day parliament blockade and lawmakers elected a speaker. The pro-Western coalition was sent into a tailspin by a ballot that in a surprise move saw its smallest faction, the Socialists, join with pro-Russian parties to elect its leader Olexander Moroz as speaker.
(AP, 7/6/06)
2006 Jul 6, A UAE freighter sank in strong winds in the Indian Ocean off the Horn of Africa, killing seven crew members. The ship was owned by al-Hufuf Maritime Co., based in the United Arab Emirates, but it sailed under the flag of Panama.
(AP, 7/6/06)
2006 Jul 7, The Arkansas state board barred Dr. Randeep Mann from prescribing narcotics after officials said 10 of his patients died from a lethal mix of drugs or an overdose of prescription medicines.
(AP, 7/7/06)
2006 Jul 7, Louisiana joined 21 other states in banning Internet hunting, the practice of using a mouse click to kill animals on a distant game farm.
(www.livescience.com/othernews/060707_internet_hunting.html)
2006 Jul 7, Oil hit a fresh record high of $75.78 a barrel, boosted by strong demand in the US and global tension ranging from Iran's nuclear work to North Korea's missile tests.
(Reuters, 7/7/06)
2006 Jul 7, Fighting in southern Afghanistan killed a US-led coalition soldier and at least eight suspected Taliban militants.
(AP, 7/8/06)
2006 Jul 7, Syd Barrett (60), a founding member of the rock group Pink Floyd, died at his home in Cambridge, England. The band’s first album was “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn."
(Reuters, 7/11/06)(SFC, 7/12/06, p.B7)(Econ, 7/22/06, p.83)
2006 Jul 7, In Canada 2 Mounties were wounded near the Saskatchewan community of Spiritwood as they investigated what appeared to be a family dispute. Constables Robin Cameron (29) and Marc Bourdages (26) died from their wounds on July 15 and 16.
(AP, 7/17/06)
2006 Jul 7, In northern China a fire ignited explosives at a home in Dongzhai, a village in the coal-mining province of Shanxi, killing at least 47 people, many of them neighbors who had rushed to the scene to battle the flames. A seven-story apartment building collapsed in the major city of Zhengzhou in central China, killing at least two people and burying an unknown number of others.
(AP, 7/7/06)
2006 Jul 7, UN peacekeepers in Haiti found the bodies of 16 people believed killed in a surge of gang violence.
(AP, 7/8/06)
2006 Jul 7, Iraqi forces backed by US aircraft battled militants in a Shiite stronghold of eastern Baghdad, killing or wounding more than 30 fighters and capturing an extremist leader who was the target of the raid. Residents claimed up to 11 civilians died. A series of bombs and a mortar round targeting the main Islamic weekly service struck four Sunni mosques in the Baghdad area and a Shiite mosque in northern Iraq, killing 17 people and wounding more than 50.
(AP, 7/7/06)(AP, 7/8/06)
2006 Jul 7, Israel launched an airstrike in the northern Gaza Strip. Witnesses said three Palestinians were killed. The Israeli military said the attack on the town of Beit Lahiya targeted a group of militants. Palestinians said 32 people had died in days of Gaza fighting.
(AP, 7/7/06)(WSJ, 7/8/06, p.A1)
2006 Jul 7, Former Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi was ordered to stand trial following an investigation into the sale of television rights at Mediaset SpA.
(AP, 7/7/06)
2006 Jul 7, The first batch of Japanese troops began pulling out of Iraq.
(AP, 7/7/06)
2006 Jul 7, North Korea announced a scientific breakthrough. State-run media boasted that researchers developed a new cosmetic agent to make skin supple.
(AP, 7/7/06)
2006 Jul 7, Pakistan's president amended a controversial Islamic law so that women facing charges for adultery and other minor crimes can be released on bail. The much-awaited amendment by President Gen. Pervez Musharraf to the Hadood Ordinance will initially affect 1,300 female prisoners.
(AP, 7/7/06)
2006 Jul 7, In the Philippines 6 fugitive military officers linked to a failed 2003 mutiny against President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo were arrested.
(AP, 7/7/06)
2006 Jul 7, Officials said Russian authorities have dramatically curtailed the number of stations broadcasting Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Voice of America news programs, sending an unsettling signal about the state of press freedoms in Russia.
(AP, 7/8/06)
2006 Jul 7, A Spanish judge charged two former Guatemalan dictators with genocide and issued international warrants for their arrest. National Court Judge Santiago Pedraz issued warrants on charges of genocide, torture, terrorism and illegal detention against Gen. Efrain Rios Montt, Gen. Oscar Humberto Mejia Victores and six other men.
(AP, 7/7/06)
2006 Jul 7, Spain’s Agriculture Ministry said it has recorded its first case of H5N1 bird flu. The deadly strain was found in a water fowl in a marsh area outside the northern city of Vitoria.
(AP, 7/7/06)
2006 Jul 7, The UN General Assembly unanimously approved a series of reforms that were welcomed by the US as a long overdue step toward greater efficiency and accountability. A two-week UN conference reviewing efforts to fight the illegal weapons trade ended in failure, with nations too divided on too many contentious issues to agree on the best way to combat a scourge that fuels conflict worldwide. Japan introduced a draft UN Security Council resolution to sanction North Korea for test-launching a series of missiles. The Council unanimously adopted a compromise resolution on July 15.
(AP, 7/8/06)(AP, 7/7/07)
2006 Jul 8, The US military charged 4 more US soldiers with rape and murder and a fifth with dereliction of duty in the alleged rape-slaying of a young Iraqi woman and the March killings of her relatives in Mahmoudiya.
(AP, 7/9/07)
2006 Jul 8, New Jersey Gov. Jon S. Corzine issued an executive order that ended a weeklong state government shutdown, bringing slot machine bells noisily to life as Atlantic City casinos reopened.
(AP, 7/8/06)
2006 Jul 8, Georgia police found the decomposed body of Carlnell Walker (23), a Morehouse student from Richmond, Ca., in the trunk of his car in Riverdale. On July 21, 2006, 3 men were arrested for his murder. In 2007 4 men were indicted for the murder.
(SFC, 7/12/06, p.B1)(SFC, 7/22/06, p.A1)(SFC, 3/23/07, p.A2)
2006 Jul 8, Discovery astronauts Piers Sellers and Michael Fossum went on a 7 1/2-hour spacewalk to test a repair technique for space shuttles.
(AP, 7/8/07)
2006 Jul 8, June Allyson (b.1917), chorus girl and film star, died in Ojai, Ca. her films included “The Glenn Miller Story" (1953).
(SFC, 7/11/06, p.B5)
2006 Jul 8, The Guggenheim Foundation announced it had commissioned American architect Frank Gehry to build a new branch of the Guggenheim modern and contemporary art museum in Abu Dhabi.
(AP, 7/8/06)
2006 Jul 8, Afghan and coalition forces pounded a Taliban stronghold in southern Afghanistan, killing five rebels and leaving an Afghan and three foreign soldiers wounded. An explosion attributed to a land mine in western Afghanistan killed a Peruvian solder and slightly wounded four Spanish troops.
(AFP, 7/8/06)(AP, 7/9/06)
2006 Jul 8, China launched a Web site, www.linese.com, offering free Chinese lessons and materials to promote the study and use of the language abroad.
(Reuters, 7/8/06)
2006 Jul 8, In central China a landslide at a construction site buried migrant workers sleeping in a tent, killing 11 of them.
(AP, 7/8/06)
2006 Jul 8, In Kinshasa, Congo, gunmen killed Mwamba Bapuwa (64), an independent journalist, a day after foreign donors called on the government to guarantee press freedoms ahead of historic elections this month. Bapuwa had recently criticized the government and survived a previous attack several months ago.
(Reuters, 7/8/06)
2006 Jul 8, Jose Ramos-Horta, Nobel peace laureate, was named East Timor's new prime minister.
(AP, 7/8/06)
2006 Jul 8, In Hungary several thousand labor union members demonstrated in Budapest against a government austerity package they say requires a disproportionate sacrifice from workers.
(AFP, 7/8/06)
2006 Jul 8, In northern India 15 people were killed and eight injured when the bus they were traveling in plunged into a gorge and fell into Bhagirathi river.
(AFP, 7/8/06)
2006 Jul 8, In Iraq 3 American soldiers were killed in fighting in the western province of Anbar. Gunmen in two cars stopped a vehicle in Baghdad's Dora neighborhood, forced the two passengers to get out and killed them in front of horrified bystanders. Gunmen killed three people working in an ice cream shop in the mostly Shiite Baghdad neighborhood of Nahrawan. Police also reported finding two bodies in separate locations in eastern Baghdad. At least 17 others died in a wave of bombings and mortar attacks against mostly Sunni mosques in the Baghdad area and northern Iraq. Iraqi and US authorities released 368 prisoners as they continue to whittle down the number of inmates.
(AP, 7/8/06)
2006 Jul 8, In Indian Kashmir a politician and four civilians died and at least 45 others were injured when suspected Islamic rebels hurled a grenade outside a Muslim shrine.
(AFP, 7/8/06)
2006 Jul 8, Leftist presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador urged his supporters to take to the streets, claiming the governing party stole his victory in Mexico's extremely narrow elections. Obrador called on a huge crowd of supporters to keep peacefully protesting as he goes to court to challenge what he called his fraudulent electoral defeat.
(AP, 7/8/06)(AP, 7/9/06)
2006 Jul 8, A Mexican federal judge threw out genocide charges against former President Luis Echeverria, ruling that a 30-year statute of limitations had run out.
(AP, 7/9/06)
2006 Jul 8, In western Mexico 4 children, who won an airplane ride for good grades at school, were killed along with the pilot when the small aircraft crashed near Tepic.
(AP, 7/12/06)
2006 Jul 8, The Hamas-led Palestinian government called for a cease-fire in its violent two-week standoff with Israel but stopped short of offering to release an Israeli soldier held by Hamas militants. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert rejected the proposal by Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh. Olmert will not agree to a truce until Hamas releases the soldier. Israeli tanks and troops clashed with militants in eastern Gaza.
(AP, 7/8/06)
2006 Jul 8, Poland's governing party accepted the resignation of PM Marcinkiewicz and recommended party chairman Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the president's twin brother, to replace him. A group with roots in Poland's anti-communist Solidarity trade union movement signed an unprecedented accord to join forces with the country's two main post-communist parties.
(AP, 7/8/06)
2006 Jul 8, Saudi officials said 7 suspected terrorists had escaped from a prison in Riyadh a few days earlier.
(AP, 7/8/06)
2006 Jul 8, The Islamic militiamen controlling the Somali capital broke up a wedding celebration because a band, the Mogadishu Stars, was playing and women and men were socializing together. Band members were flogged with electric cables.
(AP, 7/8/06)(Econ, 7/15/06, p.47)
2006 Jul 8, Pope Benedict XVI stressed family values during a visit to Spain, where church influence has waned and the government has angered the Vatican with its liberal take on issues including gay marriage.
(AP, 7/8/06)
2006 Jul 8, A Yemeni court acquitted 19 alleged al-Qaida members of charges they plotted to blow up a hotel frequented by Americans, citing a lack of evidence. The state prosecutor appealed the collective acquittal, and the defendants were returned to their cells at the intelligence services' jail where they have been held for more than two years. 14 Yemenis and 5 Saudis had been caught with guns and fake Iraqi passports.
(AP, 7/8/06)(WSJ, 8/14/06, p.A1)
2006 Jul 9, Freescale Semiconductor, a former division of Motorola, announced the commercial availability of a chip called Magnetoresistive random-access memory (MRAM), which is fast to read and write and can keep data without power. In September the Blackstone Group offered $17.6 billion for Freescale.
(SFC, 7/10/06, p.A3)(Econ, 9/23/06, p.73)
2006 Jul 9, In Washington DC Alan Senitt (27), a British volunteer for the potential presidential campaign of former Virginia Gov. Mark R. Warner, was killed in the Georgetown neighborhood by robbers who slashed his throat and tried to rape his female companion. Within three hours of the attack, police arrested and charged two men, and two other suspects surrendered a few hours later. On May 21, 2007, Christopher Piper and Jeffery Rice pleaded guilty to robbing and killing Alan, and committing other robberies in the city. They were sentenced August 24, 2007, to 37 and 52 years respectively in prison.
(AP, 7/10/06)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Senitt)
2006 Jul 9, In Missouri 5 youths (10-17) including 4 siblings drowned in the Meramtec River during a church outing at Castlewood State Park. One had become caught in an undertow and the others jumped in to help.
(SFC, 7/11/06, p.A3)
2006 Jul 9, In southern Afghanistan a Canadian coalition officer died of wounds suffered in fighting near an opium-rich insurgent stronghold. At least 15 militants were killed. A coalition patrol found the bodies of 10 militants killed in an airstrike in Panjwayi.
(AP, 7/9/06)(SFC, 7/10/06, p.A4)
2006 Jul 9, Roger Federer ended a five-match losing streak to Rafael Nadal, winning 6-0, 7-6 (5), 6-7 (2), 6-3 to earn his fourth straight Wimbledon title.
(AP, 7/9/07)
2006 Jul 9, India test-fired its nuclear-capable Agni III missile for the first time. The missile plunged into the Bay of Bengal short of its target. 14 more people were reported to have died in rain-related incidents in northern India, taking the nationwide death toll since the beginning of the monsoon season in May to 286. Supporters of Shiv Sena, a Hindu fundamentalist party, went on a rampage in Mumbai protesting the defacing of a statue of Meenatai, the wife of the movement’s founder, Balasaheb Thackeray.
(AFP, 7/9/06)(AP, 7/10/06)(Econ, 7/15/06, p.39)
2006 Jul 9, Masked Shiite gunmen stopped cars in western Baghdad and grabbed people off the streets, singling out the Sunni Arabs among them and killing at least 42. Gunmen killed an Iraqi intelligence officer in the Shiite city of Karbala, one of several deadly shootings targeting security forces. Iraqi troops launched a pre-dawn raid on Kadhimiya, a mainly Shi'ite district next to Shula, killing nine militants and capturing seven.
(Reuters, 7/9/06)(AP, 7/9/06)
2006 Jul 9, Top officials said Israel will push forward with its offensive in the Gaza Strip until Palestinian militants release a captured Israeli soldier and halt their rocket attacks.
(AP, 7/9/06)
2006 Jul 9, Italy beat France 5-3 in a shootout following a 1-1 tie in the World Cup final. Zinedine Zidane, captain of the French team, was sent off for head-butting an Italian player.
(SFC, 7/10/06, p.A1)(Econ, 7/15/06, p.49)
2006 Jul 9, A Russian Airbus 310 passenger plane skidded off a rain-slicked Siberian runway and plowed through a concrete barrier, bursting into flames. At least 125 of 203 people on board were killed.
(AP, 7/9/06)(AP, 7/9/07)
2006 Jul 9, In Somalia 20 people were killed in bloody fighting as Islamic fighters fought supporters of Abdi Awale Qaybdiid, who refused to disarm.
(AP, 7/10/06)
2006 Jul 10, A US presidential commission urged Washington to spend $80 million to help nongovernmental groups hasten change in Cuba, but some dissidents here said the move would do them more harm than good.
(AP, 7/10/06)
2006 Jul 10, Colorado Gov. Bill Owens cut a deal with Democratic leaders on a package of bills to deny some state services to illegal immigrants and to punish employers who hire them.
(SFC, 7/12/06, p.A8)
2006 Jul 10, In Berkeley, Ca., Cody’s flagship bookstore on Telegraph Ave. opened and closed for the last time, one day after celebrating its 50th anniversary. Its last store on Shattuck Ave. closed in 2008.
(SFC, 7/10/06, p.B1)(SFC, 6/23/08, p.A7)
2006 Jul 10, In NYC a four-story townhouse collapsed and burned in an apparent gas explosion after what witnesses described as a thunderous explosion that rocked the neighborhood just off Madison Avenue. Dr. Nicholas Bartha (66), owner of the building, was pulled alive from the rubble. He had recently lost a $4 million judgement in a divorce case. Bartha died from his wounds on July 15.
(AP, 7/10/06)(SFC, 7/11/06, p.A4)(AP, 7/16/06)
2006 Jul 10, Falling concrete slabs crushed a car inside one of Boston's troubled Big Dig tunnels, killing Milena Delvalle (38) and tying up traffic with another shutdown in the massive building project that has become a central route through the city. In 2007 the family of Delvalle reached a $6 million settlement with the epoxy supplier blamed for the accident. In 2008 the family settled a wrongful death suit for over $28 million.
(AP, 7/11/06)(SFC, 7/12/06, p.A5)(SFC, 12/26/07, p.A4)(SFC, 10/1/08, p.C5)
2006 Jul 10, Kraft Foods Inc., the No. 1 US food company, said it will pay about $1.07 billion to acquire the Spanish and Portuguese units of United Biscuits and reclaim the rights to Nabisco trademarks in the European Union, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
(AP, 7/10/06)
2006 Jul 10, Afghan and US-led coalition forces killed more than 40 suspected Taliban militants as a warplane dropped 500-pound bombs on a militant compound in Uruzgan province. Britain announced it would send 900 more soldiers to southern Helmand province.
(AP, 7/10/06)(SFC, 7/11/06, p.A6)
2006 Jul 10, Fred Wander (b.1917), writer and Holocaust survivor, died in Vienna. His 1970 novel, “The Seventh Well," describes his survival. The German edition was translated to English in 2007.
(SFC, 12/11/07, p.D2)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Wander)
2006 Jul 10, Bolivia's education minister called for an end to religious education in the country's schools, drawing criticism from the Roman Catholic Church which could see its schools affected by the proposed change.
(AP, 7/10/06)
2006 Jul 10, Britain unveiled a $6 million program to replace Belfast's towering paramilitary wall murals in the most hard-line Protestant areas with more positive, less threatening art works.
(AP, 7/10/06)
2006 Jul 10, Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev (41) was killed in Ingushetia. He had claimed responsibility for modern Russia's worst terrorist attacks including Beslan in 2004. He was killed along with 4 other militant while accompanying a truck filled with 220 pounds of dynamite that blew up in the Ingush village of Ekazhevo. Shortly before his death he was appointed vice-president of Ichkeria, the rebel’s name for their non-existent state.
(AP, 7/10/06)(Econ, 7/15/06, p.84)
2006 Jul 10, The government of Colombia announced that it was nominating Ernesto Samper as ambassador to France. This sparked outrage among many Colombians and allies in Washington in the war on drugs. In a statement, Pres. Uribe said Samper had declined the France ambassadorship so as not to harm Colombia's national interests.
(AP, 7/12/06)
2006 Jul 10, Nobel laureate Jose Ramos-Horta was sworn in as PM of East Timor in a move aimed at ending months of political uncertainty and street violence.
(AP, 7/10/06)
2006 Jul 10, In Honduras a bus with failing brakes slammed into the back of another bus on the outskirts of Tegucigalpa, killing 15 people and injuring more than 24.
(AP, 7/11/06)
2006 Jul 10, In Iraq 2 car bombs struck a Shiite district in Baghdad, killing at least eight people and wounding dozens. Gunmen also ambushed a bus in the predominantly Sunni neighborhood of Amariyah in western Baghdad, killing six passengers, including a woman, and the driver. A bomb exploded in the Shurja market in central Baghdad, killing 3 people and wounding 18. In Kirkuk a suicide truck bomber struck an office of one of the main Kurdish political parties in Iraq, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, killing five people and wounding 12. A member of the provincial council in Diyala, Adnan Iskandar al-Mahdawi, was killed and two of his guards were wounded in a drive-by shooting. A former high-ranking officer from Saddam Hussein's army, ex-staff Maj. Gen. Salih Mohammed Salih, was killed in a shootout in the southern city of Basra.
(AP, 7/10/06)
2006 Jul 10, Israeli aircraft fired missiles at a car in southern Gaza, killing two Islamic Jihad militants. Israeli PM Olmert rebuffed criticism of Gaza tactics as 8 Palestinians died.
(AP, 7/10/06)(WSJ, 7/11/06, p.A1)
2006 Jul 10, In Morocco ministers from 57 European and African countries gathered in Rabat to seek ways to combat illegal immigration to Europe "with dignity but firmness", from tightening border controls to stimulating African development.
(AFP, 7/10/06)
2006 Jul 10, In eastern Pakistan a Fokker F-27 twin-engine aircraft operated by Pakistan International Airlines slammed into a wheat field and burst into flames minutes after takeoff. All 45 people on board were killed.
(AP, 7/10/06)(AP, 7/28/10)
2006 Jul 10, In the Philippines a fire destroyed more than 200 shanties in a squatter colony north of Manila, killing one resident, injuring 6 others and leaving about 5,000 people homeless.
(AP, 7/10/06)
2006 Jul 10, Somalia's Islamic militia battled a pocket of resistance, pounding Mogadishu with machine-gun fire and rocket-propelled grenades and at least 7 people were killed.
(AP, 7/10/06)
2006 Jul 10, South African writer Mary Watson was named the 7th winner of the Caine Prize for African writing her 2004 book “Moss," a collection interlinked stories. The prize was created in honor of the late Sir Michael Caine, a British businessman with a deep interest in Africa who for almost 25 years chaired the management committee of what is today known the Man Booker Prize.
(AP, 7/12/06)(Econ, 7/15/06, p.83)
2006 Jul 10, In Taiwan the son-in-law of President Chen Shui-bian was indicted on insider trading charges, one of several high-profile corruption cases involving Chen's family and inner circle.
(AP, 7/10/06)
2006 Jul 11, The American League edged the National League 3-2 in the All-Star Game in Pittsburgh.
(AP, 7/11/07)
2006 Jul 11, The Bush administration pledged that detainees at Guantanamo will be accorded basic human rights protections under the Geneva Conventions.
(SFC, 7/12/06, p.A1)
2006 Jul 11, In Chicago, a Blue Line train derailed and started a fire during the evening rush hour, filling a subway tunnel with smoke and forcing dozens of soot-covered commuters to evacuate.
(AP, 7/11/07)
2006 Jul 11, It was reported that Nielsen Media Research will begin formal ratings for TV commercial breaks.
(WSJ, 7/11/06, p.A1)
2006 Jul 11, Kathy Augustine (50), Nevada state controller, died suddenly. Her husband, Chaz Higgs, said it was a heart attack and chalked it up to the stress of an uphill election battle for state treasurer. But just days after her death, Higgs tried to kill himself by slitting his wrists. On Sep 29 Police arrested Higgs in Hampton, Va., after toxicology tests found a drug in his wife’s system that would have paralyzed her. Higgs was convicted on June 29, 2007, of killing Augustine by injecting her with succinylcholine, a paralyzing drug. He was sentenced to life with a possibility of parole after serving 20 years.
(AP, 7/21/06)(SFC, 9/30/06, p.A3)(www.krnv.com/Global/story.asp?S=6762551)
2006 Jul 11, Barnard Hughes (b.1915), film and theater actor, died in New York.
(AP, 7/11/07)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnard_Hughes)
2006 Jul 11, Coalition and Afghan forces hunting a Taliban commander killed an estimated 30 extremists in a raid on a hide-out in southern Afghanistan.
(AP, 7/11/06)
2006 Jul 11, In northern Bangladesh a train plowed through a bus at an unmanned railway crossing, killing at least 33 people and injuring about 15 others.
(AP, 7/11/06)
2006 Jul 11, The Bank of Canada held its key overnight interest rate steady, as expected, and gave no sign it was considering further hikes.
(Reuters, 7/11/06)
2006 Jul 11, Central American presidents agreed on a plan to ease border controls and install a common customs system on the way to negotiating an eventual free-trade agreement with the EU. The agreement signed by Panama, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras and Belize would allow residents to cross borders without passports or visas.
(AP, 7/11/06)
2006 Jul 11, EU finance ministers made Slovenia the 13th member of the euro zone. This gave Slovenia 5 months to print and mint euro notes to replace the tolar on January 1.
(WSJ, 7/12/06, p.A10)
2006 Jul 11, A survey, sponsored by the German development agency GTZ, reported that breast ironing, the use of hard or heated objects or other substances to try to stunt breast growth in girls, is widespread in Cameroon. The age-old practice was said to be traditional in West and Central Africa, including Chad, Togo, Benin, Guinea-Conakry, just to name a few.
(Reuters, 7/11/06)
2006 Jul 11, China's president issued an unusual public appeal to a visiting North Korean official to avoid aggravating tensions with its missile test program, as the US and Japan urged Beijing to press its ally Pyongyang for concessions.
(AP, 7/11/06)
2006 Jul 11, Andres Pastrana, Colombia's ambassador to the United States, resigned in anger over President Alvaro Uribe's selection of Ernesto Samper, a disgraced former Colombian leader (1994-1998) as ambassador to France.
(AP, 7/12/06)
2006 Jul 11, Police in Kinshasa, Congo, fired tear gas to break up stone-throwing demonstrators who were alleging electoral irregularities ahead of the country's first presidential vote in four decades.
(AP, 7/12/06)
2006 Jul 11, In India 8 explosions hit Mumbai's commuter rail network during the evening rush hour, killing over 200 people and wounding over 500. Police said Lashkar-e-Taiba was responsible.
(Econ, 7/29/06, p.39)(AP, 7/11/07)(WSJ, 12/8/08, p.A6)
2006 Jul 11, Indonesia passed a law granting tsunami-ravaged Aceh province greater autonomy and paving the way for elections, cementing the terms of a landmark 2005 peace accord with separatist rebels. The law allowed local political parties and for the Acehnese to keep 70% of the revenues from their oil and gas reserves.
(AP, 7/11/06)(Econ, 7/15/06, p.42)
2006 Jul 11, Sunni Arab representatives said they will end their boycott of Iraq's parliament following promises that a kidnapped colleague will be released and a call for reconciliation by a radical Shiite cleric. Gunmen in Baghdad intercepted a minivan carrying a coffin to the Shiite city of Najaf, killing all 10 people on board. Another five people were killed in a double bombing at a restaurant near the Green Zone. Bombings and shootings killed at least 50 people Baghdad. An al-Qaida-linked group posted a Web video purporting to show the mutilated bodies of two US soldiers, claiming it killed them in revenge for the rape-slaying of a young Iraqi woman by American troops from the same unit. The Mujahedeen Shura Council had previously claimed responsibility for killing the two soldiers, who were seized in a June 16 attack near the town of Youssifiyah. The bodies were found on June 20. Gunmen kidnapped Wissam Jabr al-Awadi, an Iraqi diplomat who specializes in relations with Iran, as he was driving near his home in Baghdad.
(AP, 7/11/06)(SFC, 7/12/06, p.A1)
2006 Jul 11, Israeli leaders ordered new incursions into the Gaza Strip after the Hamas leader said he would not free an Israeli soldier captured by Palestinian militants.
(AP, 7/11/06)
2006 Jul 11, In Italy Piaggio & C. SpA, the maker of the iconic Vespa scooter, defied weak market conditions that have derailed other planned public offerings recently to see its shares surge above the IPO price in their debut in Milan.
(AP, 7/11/06)
2006 Jul 11, In Kashmir a series of grenade attacks killed eight people and wounded more than two dozen in the Srinagar.
(AP, 7/11/06)
2006 Jul 11, An officials said Kyrgyzstan's Foreign Ministry has decided to expel two US diplomats for "inappropriate" contacts with nongovernment organizations.
(AP, 7/11/06)
2006 Jul 11, State Department official Paula Dobriansky held talks with Libyan PM Baghdadi Mahmudi and announced that the US has lifted sanctions on Libyan air transport.
(AFP, 7/12/06)
2006 Jul 11, In Mexico a man was shot to death in front of Acapulco's City Hall and a naval officer was abducted, the latest violence in this resort city hit by a wave of drug-related crime. The 2 men slain were later identified as military officers responsible for the mayor's security.
(AP, 7/11/06)(AP, 7/13/06)
2006 Jul 11, With the release of hundreds of prisoners, wrestling matches and hordes of warriors on horseback, Mongolia began a once-in-800-year party in honor of its famed emperor Genghis Khan.
(AFP, 7/11/06)
2006 Jul 11, Nepal's Maoists revealed for the first time how many soldiers they have, 36,000, in published remarks.
(AP, 7/11/06)
2006 Jul 11, In northwestern Pakistan torrential rains triggered flooding that washed away homes in a village, killing 13 people and injuring about 300.
(AP, 7/11/06)
2006 Jul 11, President Mahmoud Abbas' office said it had received $50 million from the Arab League, the most international aid Palestinians have gotten since the Islamic militant group Hamas won legislative elections.
(AP, 7/11/06)
2006 Jul 11, Hundreds of fighters who were battling Somalia's Islamic militia in Mogadishu surrendered after a surge of violence that killed more than 70 people and wounded 150.
(AP, 7/11/06)
2006 Jul 11, In South Korea more than 10,000 workers and activists rallied in the 2nd day of demonstrations aimed at blocking a free-trade agreement under discussion with the US.
(AP, 7/11/06)
2006 Jul 11, Four Tamil Tiger rebels were killed when Sri Lanka's navy retaliated against an attacking rebel boat in the sea off Northern Jaffna peninsula.
(AP, 7/11/06)
2006 Jul 11, Ukraine's newly created pro-Russian governing coalition proposed Viktor Yanukovych, a bitter rival of President Viktor Yushchenko, as the next prime minister, an appointment that would mark a humiliating defeat for the president.
(AP, 7/11/06)
2006 Jul 11, The tiny nation of Vanuatu, one of the "happy isles of Oceania," has topped a new index, the UK-based New Economics Foundation (NEF), that measures quality of life against environmental impact, with industrial countries, perhaps unsurprisingly, faring badly.
(Reuters, 7/11/06)
2006 Jul 12, The US government announced a five-year, 547-million-dollar aid package to Ghana to help the African nation develop agriculture and alleviate poverty.
(AFP, 7/12/06)
2006 Jul 12, A spokesman said computer break-ins at the US State Department that caused broad disruptions in recent weeks apparently originated in the East Asia-Pacific region.
(AP, 7/12/06)
2006 Jul 12, The US FDA approved Atripla, a single pill, 3-drug combination, to fight AIDS. 2 of the drugs were made by Gilead Sciences and the 3rd by Myers Squibb.
(SFC, 7/13/06, p.A2)
2006 Jul 12, An experimental spacecraft bankrolled by real estate magnate Robert Bigelow successfully inflated in orbit, testing a technology that could be used to fulfill his dream of building a commercial space station. Genesis I flew aboard a converted Cold War ballistic missile from Russia's southern Ural Mountains at 6:53 p.m. Moscow time.
(AP, 7/12/06)
2006 Jul 12, The Afghan defense minister said it would take at least 150,000 troops to secure his country, more than 5 times what he commanded. In eastern Afghanistan a suicide attack on a US military convoy killed a boy playing nearby, while a market bombing in a southern border town left two people dead. British and Afghan forces repelled a brazen insurgent attack on a police headquarters in the southern town of Nawzad, killing at least 19 militants. In Musa Qala district insurgents fired rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns at coalition troops, who returned fire and killed local Taliban commander Mullah Saeef. In southern Zabul province, three Afghan border guards were killed in a clash with armed tribesmen crossing from Pakistan.
(AP, 7/12/06)(AP, 7/13/06)(WSJ, 7/13/06, p.A1)
2006 Jul 12, Tony Blair's top fundraiser, Lord Levy, was arrested in an investigation into whether Labour Party leaders improperly nominated their financial backers for seats in the House of Lords.
(AP, 7/12/06)
2006 Jul 12, In central Chile flooding and landslides triggered by heavy rain left at least 11 people dead and forced 30,000 to flee their inundated homes.
(AP, 7/13/06)
2006 Jul 12, The EU fined Microsoft Corp. $357 million and threatened new penalties of $3.82 million a day beginning July 31 because it says the software maker failed to obey a 2004 antitrust order to share program code with rivals.
(AP, 7/12/06)
2006 Jul 12, The EU joined the US in warning Iran it faced UN Security Council action if no solution could be found to a stand-off over its nuclear program. World powers agreed to send Iran back to the UN Security Council for possible punishment, saying the clerical regime has given no sign it means to negotiate seriously over its disputed nuclear program.
(AP, 7/12/06)
2006 Jul 12, Hong Kong's supreme court struck down a ruling that allowed police to carry out controversial government wiretaps, a move activists hailed as a victory for freedoms in the Chinese city.
(AFP, 7/12/06)
2006 Jul 12, The Iraqi Accordance Front, the largest Sunni bloc in parliament, lifted its legislative boycott. It thanked the parliament for its help in seeking the release of kidnapped legislator Tayseer al-Mashhadani and called for a new spirit of cooperation. Gunmen stormed a bus station in Muqdadiya, seizing over 24 people and killing 22 of them. A suicide bomber blew himself up in a restaurant in the southeastern mixed Sunni-Shiite neighborhood of New Baghdad, killing eight people and wounding 30. Gunmen on a motorcycles killed a former member of the ousted Baath Party and a taxi driver in separate attacks in Kut. The US military said Saddam Hussein and three of his co-defendants have been on a hunger strike for nearly a week to protest what the defense says is a lack of security for their attorneys. At least 45 people were killed across Iraq.
(AP, 7/12/06)(SFC, 7/13/06, p.A10)
2006 Jul 12, Hezbollah militants captured two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid. 3 Israeli soldiers were killed in the raid along with one Hezbollah militant. Dozens of Israeli troops crossed the Lebanese frontier with warplanes, tanks and gunboats to hunt for the captives. 5 more Israelis were killed in a tank that hit a mine. Two Lebanese civilians were killed in an Israeli air strike on a coastal bridge at Qasmiyeh.
(AP, 7/12/06)(Econ, 7/15/06, p.45)
2006 Jul 12, Israel killed 18 Palestinians in Gaza including nine members of one family in an air strike that destroyed a residential building where the army said top Hamas commanders were meeting.
(Reuters, 7/12/06)
2006 Jul 12, Tens of thousands of supporters of leftist presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador headed to Mexico City, leaving mountain towns and sprawling industrial cities to demand a ballot-by-ballot recount.
(AP, 7/12/06)
2006 Jul 12, In Nigeria 2 explosions hit oil installations belonging to an Italian oil company along two Agip pipelines in Baleysa state.
(AP, 7/13/06)
2006 Jul 12, Protestants will share power with the Catholics of Sinn Fein "over our dead bodies," Ian Paisley thundered as tens of thousands of Protestant marchers celebrated the most divisive day on Northern Ireland's calendar.
(AP, 7/13/06)
2006 Jul 12, Acting on behalf of Arab nations, Qatar circulated a revised draft UN Security Council resolution demanding Israel end its offensive in the Gaza Strip and release the Palestinian officials it has arrested.
(AP, 7/12/06)
2006 Jul 12, President Vladimir Putin signed into law a bill cutting the length of military service in Russia, but also canceling many deferments from the draft. The legislation reduced the current two-year conscription term to 1½ years beginning next year, then to one year in 2008.
(AP, 7/12/06)
2006 Jul 12, In South Korea some 70,000 people, including 13,000 farmers, rallied in a plaza in downtown Seoul on the third straight day of anti-FTA demonstrations.
(AFP, 7/12/06)
2006 Jul 12, A UN official said rebels in Darfur are fighting each other with the Sudanese military apparently supporting one faction, sometimes with aircraft disguised as relief planes.
(AP, 7/12/06)
2006 Jul 12, UNESCO, meeting in Vilnius, Lithuania, added 8 sites added to its World Heritage list including a panda refuge in China and an agave producing region in Mexico.
(AP, 7/12/06)
2006 Jul 13, President Bush met with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Stralsund, Germany, while on his way to the G8 summit in Russia.
(AP, 7/13/06)
2006 Jul 13, Former CIA officer Valerie Plame sued Vice President Dick Cheney, presidential adviser Karl Rove and other White House officials, saying they orchestrated a "whispering campaign" to destroy her career.
(AP, 7/13/07)
2006 Jul 13, Tongsun Park (71), a South Korean businessman accused of being an Iraqi agent and trying to influence the oil-for-food program, was convicted of conspiracy in New York federal court. Park, arrested last year, was the first person tried in the scandal. He will be sentenced in October and could face more than a dozen years in prison for his role in the decade-long conspiracy.
(AP, 7/25/06)
2006 Jul 13, The Massachusetts Turnpike authority said it found as many as 240 potential defects in ceiling bolts on Boston’s Big Dig tunnel. Gov. Mitt Romney filed emergency legislation and called for the resignation of the head of the Turnpike Authority in the wake of falling concrete slabs that killed a woman on July 10.
(SFC, 7/14/06, p.A4)
2006 Jul 13, Hazleton, Pa., passed Mayor Louis Barletta’s Illegal Immigration Relief Act in an effort to get rid of undocumented immigrants. In August federal lawsuits were filed against Hazleton and other local governments for attempting to regulate immigration. A 1976 US Supreme Court decision said regulation of immigration is exclusively a federal power. In 2007 a federal judge struck down the Hazleton anti-illegal immigration law.
(SFC, 8/16/06, p.A5)(SFC, 7/27/07, p.A13)
2006 Jul 13, The Dow Jones fell 166 to 10846 and Nasdaq closed down 36 to 2,054. Crude oil for August delivery closed at a record $76.70.
(SFC, 7/14/06, p.D1)
2006 Jul 13, The Sawtooth Complex fire in southern California grew to 40,000 acres and remained out of control. It looked to soon merge with the 2,500-acre Millard fire.
(SFC, 7/14/06, p.A1)
2006 Jul 13, Red Buttons (87), comic film and TV star, died at his home in Century City, Ca. His over 30 films included “Hatari" and “The Poseidon Adventure." Buttons was born as Aaron Chwatt in NYC on Feb. 5, 1919.
(SFC, 7/14/06, p.B9)
2006 Jul 13, A collaborative effort to study malaria went public via the Web site [email protected] Project leaders planned to use spare computing capacity to study malaria. By July 19 it reached the stable level of some 5000 computers needed at this stage for MalariaControl.net.
(Econ, 7/15/06, p.79)(http://africa-at-home.web.cern.ch/africa%2Dat%2Dhome/index.htm)
2006 Jul 13, British and Afghan forces battled Taliban holdouts after repelling a brazen insurgent attack on a police headquarters a day earlier. Afghan and US-led coalition forces killed nine militants after suspected Taliban fighters attacked two army checkpoints in the latest fighting to rock southern Afghanistan. More than 30 enemy extremists were killed in an operation in Uruzgan province.
(AP, 7/13/06)(AP, 7/14/06)(AFP, 7/15/06)
2006 Jul 13, In Belarus Alexander Kozulin (50), an opposition leader, was convicted of organizing an unauthorized rally against the disputed election of Pres. Lukashenko and sentenced to 5 1/2 years in jail.
(AP, 7/13/06)
2006 Jul 13, In Brazil gangs torched buses and attacked banks and police stations across Sao Paulo, deepening crime fears as a wave of rampant violence entered its third day.
(AP, 7/13/06)
2006 Jul 13, The NatWest British bankers David Bermingham, Gary Mulgrew and Giles Darby were extradited to the US for a $20 million fraud linked to the collapsed Enron Corp. Many viewed the March, 2003, US and British extradition treaty as imbalanced and favoring US interests.
(Econ, 7/15/06, p.12, 56)
2006 Jul 13, The Guardian newspaper said PM Tony Blair wants China, India, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa to join the G8 to secure multilateral deals on trade, climate change and Iran.
(AP, 7/13/06)
2006 Jul 13, Three Canadian military personnel were killed and four others injured on after their helicopter crashed into the Atlantic Ocean during a search and rescue training exercise off Canada's east coast.
(Reuters, 7/13/06)
2006 Jul 13, Canada confirmed its second case of mad cow disease in as many weeks, and the 7th since 2003.
(AP, 7/13/06)
2006 Jul 13, A Chinese reporter who posted essays on foreign Web sites criticizing the ruling Communist Party was sentenced to two years in prison on subversion charges.
(AP, 7/13/06)
2006 Jul 13, The EU criticized Israel for using "disproportionate" force in its attacks on Lebanon following the cross-border raid by Hezbollah guerillas who captured 2 Israeli soldiers.
(AP, 7/13/06)
2006 Jul 13, Indian police detained about 350 people for questioning in the Bombay train bombings amid suspicion that Kashmiri militants could be linked to the attacks that killed at least 200 people. Officials said they believe the bombings were the work of Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, a Pakistan-based Islamic militant group.
(AP, 7/13/06)(SFC, 7/14/06, p.A17)
2006 Jul 13, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad shrugged off a decision by world powers to refer Iran to the U.N. Security Council over its atomic program, saying Tehran would never abandon its "right to exploit peaceful nuclear technology."
(AP, 7/13/06)
2006 Jul 13, British and Australian forces handed over security duties for a relatively peaceful southern province to Iraqis in the first such transfer of an entire province. Gunmen killed the coach of Iraq's national wrestling team in a botched abduction attempt but a player escaped. A suicide car bomber struck a police patrol in the northern city of Mosul, killing five people and wounding five. At least 19 people were killed in attacks nationwide.
(AP, 7/13/06)
2006 Jul 13, An Israeli warplane bombed the Palestinian Foreign Ministry, collapsing part of the structure and causing widespread damage in the area.
(AP, 7/13/06)
2006 Jul 13, Israel unleashed a furious military campaign on Lebanon's main airport, highways, military bases and other targets, retaliating for scores of Hezbollah guerrilla rockets that rained down on Israel and reached as far as Haifa, its third-largest city, for the first time. The death toll in two days of fighting rose to 57 people. Lebanese guerrillas fired three rockets at the northern Israeli town of Safed, wounding seven people. Israel imposed a sea and air blockade on Lebanon to cut off supply routes to Lebanese militants. Israel hit hundreds of targets in Lebanon as part of its effort to force the release of two soldiers captured by Hezbollah guerrillas. Hezbollah’s Al-Manar Television broadcast pictures of the Iranian supplied 333mm Raad-1 rocket used in an attack on the Israeli army base near Safed.
(AP, 7/13/06)(SFC, 7/14/06, p.A14)
2006 Jul 13, In the northern Philippines a powerful Asian storm strengthen to a typhoon after killing at least nine people.
(AP, 7/13/06)
2006 Jul 13, In Thailand a top court decided to accept a case that accuses PM Thaksin Shinawatra's ruling party and its main rival of electoral fraud.
(AP, 7/13/06)
2006 Jul 13, The presidents of Turkey, Azerbaijan and Georgia formally opened a pipeline designed to bypass Russia and bring Caspian oil to Europe, a route that President Bush said would bolster global energy security.
(AP, 7/13/06)
2006 Jul 14, A US federal appeals court reversed a ruling that struck down Nebraska's same-sex marriage ban, which was approved by voters in 2000.
(AP, 7/14/06)
2006 Jul 14, The US Court of International Law slapped an injunction on the United States government preventing it from handing over any more duties from Canadian softwood lumber imports to US industry competitors.
(Reuters, 7/17/06)
2006 Jul 14, US Gen. Bantz Craddock, head of the US Southern Command, was announced as the next chief of NATO.
(WSJ, 7/15/06, p.A1)
2006 Jul 14, The Dow Jones fell 106 to 10,739 and Nasdaq closed down 16 to 2,037. Crude oil for August delivery closed at a record $77.03. Spurred by Mideast fighting, oil prices rose to an intraday record $78.40 a barrel.
(SFC, 7/14/06, p.D1)(AP, 7/14/07)
2006 Jul 14, The Sawtooth Complex fire in southern California merged with the Millard fire creating a 69,000-acre blaze. Some 1,800 firefighters battled the fire which so far had destroyed 45 homes.
(SFC, 7/15/06, p.A1)
2006 Jul 14, Actress Carrie Nye (b.1936) died in New York at age 69.
(AP, 7/14/07)(www.imdb.com/name/nm0638559/bio)
2006 Jul 14, A suicide bomber was the sole victim in a failed attack on an Afghan police convoy in the Gurbuz district of southeastern Khost province, bordering Pakistan. Skirmishes between coalition and Taliban militants raged throughout the southern Uruzgan province. An estimated 31 enemy extremists were killed during engagements in Chora, Kala Kala, and Khorma villages. Afghan and coalition soldiers also killed two male "foreigners" wearing burkas, the body-shrouding veil worn by women, and detained five Taliban in Uruzgan's Dihrawud district. The Afghan army killed eight rebels in Sangin.
(AP, 7/14/06)(AFP, 7/15/06)
2006 Jul 14, The World Bank said it and Chad had resolved a dispute over oil revenues that will result in significant increases in government spending on projects that benefit the poor.
(AP, 7/14/06)
2006 Jul 14, In China Qiu Xinhua (47) killed the abbot of the Tiewadian temple in the northern city of Ankang, five staff members and four pilgrims. He reportedly believed the abbot had flirted with his wife. Xinhua was executed on Dec 28.
(AP, 12/28/06)
2006 Jul 14, East Timor's President Xanana Gusmao swore in a new government as his tiny nation looked for a return to political order after several weeks of unrest.
(AFP, 7/14/06)
2006 Jul 14, Militants forced open a border gate between Egypt and Gaza, wounding an Egyptian officer and letting hundreds of Palestinians who had been trapped on the Egyptian side of the border to get into Gaza.
(AP, 7/14/06)
2006 Jul 14, India's PM Singh said the Bombay train bombers were "supported by elements across the border" and that Pakistan must rein in terrorists before a peace process can move ahead.
(AP, 7/14/06)
2006 Jul 14, A bomb struck a Sunni mosque in Baghdad, killing seven people and wounding five, while mortars barraged a Shiite mosque north of the capital, leaving five wounded. At least 26 people were killed across Iraq, including 13 Iraqi soldiers in an attack on their checkpoint near the northern oil hub of Kirkuk.
(AFP, 7/14/06)
2006 Jul 14, Israel tightened its seal on Lebanon, blasting its air and road links to the outside world and bringing its offensive to the capital for the first time to punish Hezbollah and with it, the country for the capture of 2 Israeli soldiers. Israel destroyed the home and office of Hezbollah's leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah. Lebanese guerrillas fired a barrage of at least 60 Katyusha rockets throughout the day, hitting more than a dozen communities across northern Israel. Israeli warplanes destroyed the building housing the headquarters of Hezbollah guerrillas in southern Beirut. Hezbollah guerrillas attacked an Israeli warship that had been firing missiles into southern Beirut. A senior Israeli intelligence official said Iranian troops helped Hezbollah fire a missile that damaged the warship off the Lebanese coast. He also said about 100 Iranian soldiers are in Lebanon and helped fire the Iranian-made, radar-guided C-802 at the ship that killed 4 sailors. Deaths in 3 days of fighting rose to 61 people in Lebanon and 10 in Israel.
(AP, 7/14/06)(AP, 7/14/07)(Econ, 11/30/13, p.58)
2006 Jul 14, Japan’s central bank raised a key interest rate for the first time in six years, ending an unorthodox experiment meant to jump-start the country after a decade of economic doldrums. The rate increased from zero to .25%.
(AP, 7/14/06)(Econ, 7/22/06, p.65)
2006 Jul 14, In Kazakhstan police under Mayor Imangali Tasmagambetov moved in to destroy the illegal Shanyrak settlement on the outskirts of Almaty. 30-40 people on each side were injured. A policeman died after being doused with petrol and set on fire.
(Econ, 8/5/06, p.39)
2006 Jul 14, Kyrgyzstan and the US resolved a payment dispute that had threatened the future of the US military base near Bishkek.
(AP, 7/14/06)
2006 Jul 14, In Karachi, Pakistan, a suicide bomber killed a prominent Shiite Muslim cleric and two other people in an attack that was likely to heighten sectarian tensions. About 80% of Pakistan's 150 million people are Sunni; most of the rest are Shiite.
(AP, 7/14/06)
2006 Jul 14, Malaysia's government declassified documents on negotiations with Singapore over an aborted bridge in a bid to counter criticism from defiant ex-premier Mahathir Mohamad.
(AFP, 7/14/06)
2006 Jul 14, Poland's Pres. Lech Kaczynski (57) swore in his identical twin brother, Jaroslaw, as prime minister, along with a socially conservative Cabinet made up largely of the same ministers who resigned in a shake-up days earlier.
(AP, 7/14/06)
2006 Jul 14, In St. Petersburg, Russia, authorities detained more than 200 anti-globalization activists hoping to protest the G-8 summit, as protest organizers vowed to hold a march despite a ban on demonstrations.
(AP, 7/14/06)
2006 Jul 14, In Serbia criminal charges were filed against 9 people accused of helping UN war crimes suspect Ratko Mladic evade justice. The 9 were indicted for "hiding and helping hide Mladic although they knew that he was charged" with war crimes.
(AP, 7/14/06)
2006 Jul 14, Somalia's nearly powerless interim government said it would boycott weekend peace talks with the Islamic militia that has seized control of nearly all the nation's south, accusing the group of civilian massacres and ties to foreign terrorists.
(AP, 7/14/06)
2006 Jul 14, Sri Lankan government troops clashed with Tamil Tiger rebels in the worst fighting since a cease-fire halted the civil war in 2002, leaving as many as 16 dead. The military said 13 soldiers were missing.
(AP, 7/14/06)
2006 Jul 14, In Trinidad a high-court judge convened a special hearing that stayed an arrest order against Satnarine Sharma, the chief justice of Trinidad, who was charged with attempting to pervert the course of justice by helping former PM Basdeo Panday.
(Econ, 7/22/06, p.40)
2006 Jul 15, In a chilly prelude to a Group of Eight (G8) summit in St. Petersburg, President Bush blocked Russia's entry into the World Trade Organization. Russia and the US failed to strike a bilateral deal allowing Russia to join the WTO but agreed to set a deadline to wrap up talks within three months.
(AP, 7/15/07)(Reuters, 7/15/06)
2006 Jul 15, US authorities extradited Jean Succar Kuri, a Mexican businessman with alleged ties to associates of a powerful state governor, to face charges in Mexico of child pornography, statutory rape and corruption of minors.
(AP, 7/16/06)
2006 Jul 15, Robert Wilson (64), theater and opera director, opened his $12 million Watermill Center on Long Island, NY. The arts center was setup to host conferences, student workshops and serve as an intercultural exchange.
(Econ, 7/22/06, p.82)
2006 Jul 15, Phoenix, Ariz., residents were reported to be in fear of 2 serial killers, who have struck in recent months. Six killings were being attributed to the "Baseline Killer," whose name refers to the street where he is believed to have committed his first crimes. The 2nd suspected predator, dubbed the "Serial Shooter," has been definitively linked to the Dec. 29 wounding of one man and authorities believe he could be responsible for a total of five shooting deaths.
(AP, 7/15/06)
2006 Jul 15, The space shuttle Discovery undocked from the international space station.
(AP, 7/15/07)
2006 Jul 15, More than 40 insurgents were killed as hundreds of coalition troops, many dropped by helicopter, wrested a desert town from the Taliban and U.S. forces battled militants across southern Afghanistan.
(AP, 7/16/06)
2006 Jul 15, Arab foreign ministers held an emergency summit in Cairo over Israel's expanding assault on Lebanon, the worst Israeli attack on its neighbor in 24 years.
(AP, 7/15/06)
2006 Jul 15, A gas explosion in a coal mine in Shanxi province killed at least 50 miners in the Linjiazhuang Coal Mine in Jinzhong. In Hunan province 14 coal miners were killed after rains burst a dam, flooding the pit and collapsing buildings above ground at the Shenjiawan Colliery.
(AP, 7/17/06)
2006 Jul 15, Thousands of Ecuadorian villagers fled their homes on the slopes of the Tungurahua volcano since it began erupting lava and toxic gases.
(AP, 7/16/06)
2006 Jul 15, GDP for the Falkland Islands was estimated at $25,000 per head. Fishing licenses around the Falkland Islands generated some $40 million a year. Seismic studies indicated a possible 500,000 barrels of oil in the surrounding waters. Britain insisted that it would not discuss sovereignty of the islands unless its 3,000 citizens there requested it.
(Econ, 7/15/06, p.38)
2006 Jul 15, In Haiti thousands of demonstrators demanding the return of ousted president Jean-Bertrand Aristide marched to the National Palace, pushing past riot police in a dramatic show of support for the exiled former leader.
(AP, 7/16/06)
2006 Jul 15, A Honduras newspaper quoted a senior military official that the United States is helping Honduras establish a new military base to combat international drug trafficking in the northeastern province of Gracias a Dios.
(AP, 7/15/06)
2006 Jul 15, Police investigating Bombay's deadly train bombings swept through several neighborhoods, rounding up more than 300 people for questioning.
(AP, 7/15/06)
2006 Jul 15, Heavy clashes between Iraqi soldiers and gunmen in downtown Baghdad left 11 people wounded. Provincial police in Ramadi confirmed that gunmen had killed a member of the Iraqi Islamic Party. Gunmen kidnapped Ahmed al-Sammarai, the head of Iraq's Olympic committee, and more than a dozen employees storming a sports conference in Baghdad. The kidnappers wore camouflage Iraqi police uniforms and security guards outside the meeting said they did not interfere because they thought the gunmen were legitimate law enforcement.
(AP, 7/15/06)(AP, 8/22/08)
2006 Jul 15, Israeli warplanes pounded Hezbollah's south Beirut stronghold and roads around the country killing at least 33 people. At least 12 Lebanese villagers, including women and children, were killed in what appeared to be an Israeli airstrike on a convoy of vehicles fleeing a village near the border with Israel in southern Lebanon. Hezbollah expanded its rocket fire, hitting another of Israel's main cities, and Israel warned that the guerrillas could strike Tel Aviv. At least 88 people have died in Lebanon, most of them civilians, in the four-day Israeli offensive, sparked by Hezbollah's capture of two Israeli soldiers. On the Israeli side, at least 15 have been killed, four civilians and 11 soldiers.
(AP, 7/15/06)(SSFC, 7/16/06, p.A1)
2006 Jul 15, Israeli aircraft fired at least one missile at a house in Gaza City. Palestinian rescue workers said two Palestinians were killed and many others wounded. Since the offensive began in Gaza, 86 Palestinians have been killed, many of them gunmen.
(AP, 7/15/06)
2006 Jul 15, US Middle East envoy David Welch flew into Tripoli for talks with Libyan officials on strengthening economic and financial ties between the two countries.
(AFP, 7/16/06)
2006 Jul 15, A landslide triggered by monsoon rains swept through a village in northwest Nepal before dawn, killing at least 17 people as they slept.
(AP, 7/15/06)
2006 Jul 15, In Karachi, Pakistan, hundreds of youths set fire to a Pizza Hut, two gas stations and a dozen vehicles after a funeral for an Islamic Shiite cleric killed in a suicide attack.
(AP, 7/15/06)
2006 Jul 15, In St. Petersburg, Russia, world leaders tore up a carefully prepared G8 summit agenda and turned their attention to a growing crisis in the Middle East, hoping to reach common ground on ways to stop the fighting. About 150 protesters faced off with police as they tried to exercise their right of assembly.
(AP, 7/15/06)
2006 Jul 15, The UN Security Council unanimously passed resolution 1718 condemning North Korea's multiple missile launches on July 5 and imposed limited sanctions; a defiant North said it would launch more missiles.
(AP, 7/16/07)(Econ, 2/28/09, p.63)
2006 Jul 16, President Bush and other Group of Eight world leaders meeting in St. Petersburg, Russia, urged Israel to show "utmost restraint" and blamed Hezbollah and Hamas for escalating violence in the Middle East. G8 leaders adopted statements on the summit's three priority areas of energy security, education and the fight against infectious diseases.
(AP, 7/16/06)(AP, 7/16/07)
2006 Jul 16, US federal officials arrested David Carruthers in Texas, the British boss of BetonSports, as he changed planes enroute from London to Costa Rica. He was charged the next day, along with 10 others, with conspiracy and fraud related to online gambling.
(Econ, 7/22/06, p.61)
2006 Jul 16, Robert Brooks (b.1937), chairman of Hooters of America, died in South Carolina. He made a fortune selling chicken wings served by scantily clad waitresses.
(www.cnn.com/2006/US/07/16/obit.hooters.ap/index.html)(Econ, 7/29/06, p.78)
2006 Jul 16, In Afghanistan Amir Gul Hassanyar was arrested in northern Kunduz province. He allegedly carried out numerous roadside bombings and trafficked in weapons and drugs.
(AP, 7/22/06)
2006 Jul 16, A British soldier was killed and 3 others wounded in two different attacks near Iraq's main southern city of Basra. 17 people were killed in rebel violence across Iraq. Six of 29 people seized at an Iraqi Olympic Committee meeting were released in Baghdad.
(AFP, 7/16/06)
2006 Jul 16, Seven Canadians from the same Montreal family, including four young children, were killed in Lebanon when Israeli aircraft bombed a house in the south of the country.
(AP, 7/17/06)
2006 Jul 16, Hundreds of exhausted evacuees flew into Cyprus as Western countries moved their citizens from the Middle East amid continued Israeli bombardment of Lebanon.
(AP, 7/16/06)
2006 Jul 16, A small German tourist plane crashed on takeoff from the Italian island of Elba, killing four people aboard and seriously injuring one.
(AP, 7/16/06)
2006 Jul 16, Iran said that Western incentives to halt its nuclear program were an "acceptable basis" for talks, and it is ready for detailed negotiations.
(AP, 7/16/06)
2006 Jul 16, A suicide bomber detonated explosives inside a cafe packed with Shiites in Tuz Khormato, a mostly Turkomen city 130 miles north of Baghdad. 26 people were killed and 22 injured. In the south, a British soldier was killed and another wounded during a raid against a "terrorist suspect" in Basra.
(AP, 7/17/06)
2006 Jul 16, Lebanese guerrillas fired a relentless barrage of rockets into the northern Israeli city of Haifa, killing eight people at a railway depot and wounding seven in a dramatic escalation of a five-day-old conflict that has shattered hopes for Mideast peace. Israeli airstrikes reduced entire apartment buildings to rubble and knocked out electricity in swaths of Beirut.
(AP, 7/16/06)
2006 Jul 16, In Mexico City Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador led hundreds of thousands of marchers demanding a full recount of in the disputed election.
(SFC, 7/17/06, p.A3)
2006 Jul 16, North Korea rejected a UN Security Council resolution sanctioning the communist nation for recent missile tests and warned the measure was a prelude to a renewed Korean War.
(AP, 7/16/06)
2006 Jul 16, Turkish PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan signaled that his government was planning a tough response to mounting violence by Kurdish rebels after 13 members of the security forces were killed in the southeast over the past week.
(AFP, 7/16/06)
2006 Jul 16, Ugandan negotiators at talks to end one of Africa's longest wars demanded on that Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels disarm and hand over all their weapons in order to receive amnesty.
(Reuters, 7/16/06)
2006 Jul 17, US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said President George W. Bush blocked a Justice Department probe into a secret program to tap international phone calls and electronic communications of US citizens.
(AFP, 7/18/06)
2006 Jul 17, Louisiana Attorney General Charles Foti alleged that a doctor and two nurses decided to administer lethal doses of morphine and a sedative to at least four trapped and desperately ill patients during Hurricane Katrina.
(AP, 7/18/06)
2006 Jul 17, Space shuttle Discovery and its crew of 6 returned to Earth through thick clouds, ending an impressive mission that put NASA's space program back on a solid, safer course.
(AP, 7/17/06)
2006 Jul 17, Mickey Spillane (b.1918), American mystery writer, died in South Carolina. His 13 Mike Hammer novels began with “I, the Jury" (1946). A number of his books were made into films including “The Girl Hunters" (1963) in which he played the starring role.
(SFC, 7/18/06, p.B5)(Econ, 7/29/06, p.78)
2006 Jul 17, In southeastern Afghanistan coalition forces killed four al-Qaida suspects and captured three others. Separate attacks killed three Afghan soldiers and three government employees in the south.
(AP, 7/17/06)
2006 Jul 17, In China tropical storm Bilis left at least 612 people dead as it pounded the southeast over the weekend, toppling houses and forcing the evacuation of a prison and thousands of villages.
(AP, 7/18/06)(AP, 7/24/06)
2006 Jul 17, Congo officials said Peter Karim, a warlord accused of kidnapping seven UN peacekeepers, has agreed to disband his militia and become a colonel in Congo's army. Gunmen opened fire on an election rally and killed several people in Congo's volatile east, the latest outburst of violence as the nation prepares for its first free legislative and presidential balloting in 46 years.
(AP, 7/17/06)(AP, 7/19/06)
2006 Jul 17, Europe’s Airbus, reeling from a management shakeup that followed delays in its flagship superjumbo jet program, unveiled a long-awaited revamp of its mid-sized A350 at the Farnborough Air Show in England.
(AP, 7/17/06)(WSJ, 7/17/06, p.A3)
2006 Jul 17, In India some 500 suspected communist rebels attacked a government-run relief camp and two police stations in eastern Chattisgarh state, killing at least 26 villagers. Four rebels also died.
(AP, 7/17/06)
2006 Jul 17, In Indonesia a magnitude 7.7 earthquake sent a 6-foot-high tsunami crashing into Pangandaran on Java island, killing at least 659 people with some 330 missing.
(AP, 7/19/06)(AP, 7/22/06)
2006 Jul 17, Iraq and the US signed a commercial cooperation agreement. In Mahmoudiya dozens of heavily armed attackers raided an open air market, killing at least 41 people and wounding about 90. Police said they found 12 bodies in different parts Mahmoudiya, possible victims of reprisal killings. A bomb killed two people and wounded nine in east Baghdad. 3 American soldiers were killed in separate attacks, two in the Baghdad area and one in Anbar province west of the capital.
(AP, 7/17/06)(AP, 7/18/06)
2006 Jul 17, Israeli warplanes pummeled Lebanese infrastructure, killing at least 17 people. Hezbollah patron Iran said a cease-fire and a prisoner swap were possible, and the international community signaled willingness to send peacekeepers to back a diplomatic solution. 3 rounds of rockets fired by Hezbollah guerrillas struck Haifa, with one destroying a three-story building and wounding three people. Hezbollah fired a total of 50 rockets in to Israel. Total deaths in Lebanon reached 210 and 24 in Israel.
(AP, 7/17/06)(WSJ, 7/18/06, p.A1,7)
2006 Jul 17, Israel bombed the Palestinian Foreign Ministry building in Gaza City, pushing ahead with its 3-week offensive in Gaza.
(AP, 7/17/06)
2006 Jul 17, British PM Tony Blair and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan called for the deployment of international forces to stop Hezbollah from bombing Israel, a proposal that Israel quickly rejected.
(AP, 7/17/06)
2006 Jul 17, One of two young twin brothers who led a small band of ethnic rebels calling themselves "God's Army" surrendered to Myanmar's military government. Johnny Htoo (18) and 8 fellow members of the group surrendered with weapons in two separate groups on July 17 and 19 at the coastal region military command in southeastern Myanmar.
(AP, 7/25/06)
2006 Jul 17, Nigeria signed a deal with the Clinton Foundation to make cheap AIDS drugs available to fight the disease.
(AFP, 7/17/06)
2006 Jul 17, G8 leaders called on North Korea to stop its missile tests and to abandon its nuclear weapons program.
(AP, 7/17/06)
2006 Jul 17, The presidents of Russia and Kazakhstan agreed at the G8 summit to create a joint venture to process natural gas from Kazakhstan's Karachaganak gas field.
(AP, 7/17/06)
2006 Jul 17, In Moscow full trading began in the shares of Rosneft Oil Co. The company raised $10.4 billion with shares at $7.55. The next day a London court dismissed a blocking plea by Yukos and full trading began in London.
(Econ, 7/22/06, p.71)
2006 Jul 17, A Serbian court issued an international arrest warrant for the widow of former President Slobodan Milosevic, who now lives in Moscow.
(AP, 7/17/06)
2006 Jul 17, In western Venezuela a fire broke out at the Amuay oil refinery. Officials said it was soon extinguished without reported injuries or loss of deliveries.
(AP, 7/17/06)
2006 Jul 18, The US Senate voted after two days of emotional debate to expand federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, sending the measure to President George Bush for a promised veto.
(AP, 7/18/07)
2006 Jul 18, A doctor and two nurses who labored at a flooded-out New Orleans hospital in Hurricane Katrina's chaotic aftermath were arrested and accused of killing four trapped and desperately ill patients with injections of morphine and sedatives.
(AP, 7/18/07)
2006 Jul 18, The Club Deluxe on Haight Street in SF celebrated the 1st anniversary of its open mike poetry and jazz. It was initiated by New York poets Jennifer Barone and Ingrid Keir and jazz musician Dan Heffez.
(SFC, 7/22/06, p.E1)
2006 Jul 18, The Seattle SuperSonics basketball team said a group of Oklahoma businessmen had purchased the club for $350 million. The new ownership group said it plans to keep the team in Seattle, if it can work out a deal for a new arena in the next 12 months. Officials in Seattle said they planned to hold the Sonics to their lease, which expires in 2010.
(Econ, 7/29/06, p.33)(http://tinyurl.com/qga3e)
2006 Jul 18, A heat wave in the US left at least 7 people dead including 5 in Oklahoma and 2 in Pennsylvania.
(SFC, 7/19/06, p.A2)
2006 Jul 18, US researchers reported that men and boys with autism have fewer neurons in the amygdala, a part of the brain involved in emotion and memory.
(AP, 7/18/06)
2006 Jul 18, The Afghan government announced plans to re-establish a Vice and Virtues Ministry, but it assured the public the office would not resemble the Taliban version that became a symbol of the brutal regime toppled by US forces in 2001. One coalition soldier was killed in fighting in Uruzgan province.
(AP, 7/18/06)(SFC, 7/20/06, p.A13)
2006 Jul 18, China reported its fastest economic growth in a decade and warned that booming construction and bank loans could fuel inflation, raising expectations that Beijing might nudge up interest rates and possibly the value of its currency.
(AP, 7/18/06)
2006 Jul 18, The UN said fighting between the army and leftist guerrillas in western Colombia has forced hundreds of civilians from their homes and trapped others in their villages.
(AP, 7/19/06)
2006 Jul 18, Egypt and Israel reopened the Rafah border crossing for the first time in three weeks, triggering a rush to the border by thousands of Palestinians who had been waiting in Egypt.
(AP, 7/18/06)
2006 Jul 18, In India Lashkar-e-Qahhar (Army of Terror), a little-known Islamic militant group that claimed responsibility for the Bombay train bombings, warned that it was planning attacks against government and historic sites in India in an e-mail to an Indian television station. Indian police called the e-mail a hoax.
(AP, 7/18/06)(AP, 7/19/06)
2006 Jul 18, In India several telecom operators confirmed that they had blocked a number of Web sites on orders from India’s Dept. of Telecommunications.
(WSJ, 7/19/06, p.A8)
2006 Jul 18, In southern Iraq a suicide car bomber detonated explosives in a crowd of laborers gathered across the street from a major Shiite shrine in Kufa, killing 59 people and wounding 105. National Security Adviser Mouwafak al-Rubaie said Diyar Ismail Mahmoud (known as Abu al-Afghani), a Jordanian who killed two U.S. soldiers last month, was fatally wounded in a clash with security forces. The country's largest Sunni Arab party called for a conference of all religious and political leaders to end sectarian killing and save the country from sliding into civil war.
(AP, 7/18/06)(WSJ, 7/19/06, p.A1)
2006 Jul 18, The UN reported that nearly 6,000 civilians were slain across Iraq in May and June, a spike that coincided with rising sectarian attacks. The report said 2,669 civilians died in May and 3,149 in June, the first full month of the al-Maliki government.
(AP, 7/19/06)
2006 Jul 18, Israel struck a Lebanese army base outside Beirut and flattened a house near the border, killing 31 people in a new wave of bombings. Hezbollah fired more rockets at northern Israel, killing one Israeli and wounding several others. Israel said its offensive in Lebanon could last several more weeks and involve large numbers of ground forces.
(AP, 7/18/06)(WSJ, 7/19/06, p.A1)
2006 Jul 18, Authorities freed about 100 Poles forced into virtual slavery as Italian and Polish police arrested 25 people involved in a human trafficking ring that brought farm workers to Italy.
(AP, 7/19/06)
2006 Jul 18, Kyrgyz police in Osh arrested six men suspected of taking part in an uprising in neighboring Uzbekistan last year and seized 14 ounces of TNT from them.
(AP, 7/19/06)
2006 Jul 18, Pakistan welcomed a move by Britain to ban one of the major rebel groups, the Baluchistan Liberation Army. Islamabad outlawed the group in April. In eastern Pakistan 3 men convicted of gang-raping a woman during a robbery in 2000 were hanged after President Musharraf rejected their plea for mercy.
(AP, 7/18/06)(AFP, 7/21/06)
2006 Jul 18, In the southern Philippines Armando Pace (56), who often attacked corruption among politicians and the illegal drug trade in Digos city, was gunned down as he was riding home on a motorcycle. He was the ninth journalist killed in the country this year and the 82nd since 1986, based on a count by the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines.
(AP, 7/18/06)
2006 Jul 18, In Somalia Islamic militiamen who rule Mogadishu arrested about 60 people for watching videos in several overnight raids.
(AP, 7/19/06)
2006 Jul 18, South Korea's disaster agency said a fifth straight day of monsoon rains have left 19 people dead and 31 missing.
(AP, 7/18/06)
2006 Jul 18, In northern Sri Lanka a roadside bomb killed one person and wounded six others, including four government soldiers.
(AP, 7/18/06)
2006 Jul 18, Nearly 300 striking doctors in Zimbabwe ignored government demands for them to return to hospital wards. The junior doctors walked out on July 13 after authorities extended their seven-year attachment to state hospitals by another year, to be spent working at rural facilities.
(AP, 7/19/06)
2006 Jul 19, President Bush used his first veto to underscore his politically risky stand against federal funding for the embryonic stem cell research that most Americans support.
(Reuters, 7/20/06)
2006 Jul 19, Chicago prosecutors reported that local police tortured scores of black suspects from the 1970s to the 1980s to extract confessions, but that the cases were too old or too weak to prosecute.
(SFC, 7/20/06, p.A4)
2006 Jul 19, The Dow Jones rose 212.19 to 11,011 and Nasdaq closed up 37.49 to 2,080 following remarks by Ben Bernanke that inflation seems to be under control.
(SFC, 7/19/06, p.C1)
2006 Jul 19, Alain Rappaport premiered the web site www.medstory.com, a consumer search product for information on health and medicine. As of February 2007, Medstory, Inc. was acquired by Microsoft Corporation. Medstory, Inc. develops Web search technology for health information for biotechnology and healthcare sectors.
(SFC, 7/19/06, p.C1)(http://tinyurl.com/yylb6rjs)
2006 Jul 19, Jack Warden (b.1920), an Emmy-winning and Academy Award-nominated actor, died in NYC. He played gruff cops, coaches and soldiers in a career that spanned five decades and included almost 100 feature films.
(AP, 7/22/06)(SFC, 7/22/06, p.B6)
2006 Jul 19, In southern Afghanistan coalition forces retook Garmser and killed 2 Taliban.
(SFC, 7/20/06, p.A13)
2006 Jul 19, Britain faced the hottest day ever recorded in July as a heat wave swept much of Europe. Temperatures hit 96.6 degrees south of London.
(AP, 7/19/06)
2006 Jul 19, In Canada teamsters railway workers said they initiated a strike against Canadian National Railway in an effort to resolve a long-standing contract dispute.
(AP, 7/19/06)
2006 Jul 19, Doku Umarov, the leader of the Chechen rebels, dismissed a Russian amnesty offer, saying attacks outside his home region would be his rebels' answer to Moscow.
(AP, 7/19/06)
2006 Jul 19, It was reported that factories and cities in China dump some 40-60 billion tons of waste-water and sewage into lakes and rivers each year.
(WSJ, 7/19/06, p.A1)
2006 Jul 19, Director Gerard Oury (87), a cultural icon of France whose decades-old comedies remain hits today, died at his Riviera home. His top hits include the 1973 movie "Les Aventures de Rabbi Jacob" (The Mad Adventures of Rabbi Jacob).
(AP, 7/20/06)
2006 Jul 19, In Iraq gunmen kidnapped 20 employees of a government agency that cares for Sunni mosques and shrines nationwide, and the organization suspended its work until further notice. At least 49 people were killed in a string of bombings and shootings, mostly in Baghdad. Sixteen other bodies were found in widely separate parts of the country, apparent victims of sectarian death squads. An explosion in a cafe killed 5 people in Kirkuk. In Basra assailants slit the throats of a mother and her 3 children and killed the mother’s sister. The family had fled there to escape threats that they had cooperated with Americans.
(AP, 7/19/06)(SFC, 7/20/06, p.A3)
2006 Jul 19, A government report said Ireland's population has surged this year to a modern high of more than 4.2 million people largely because of immigrants from the newest EU nations.
(AP, 7/19/06)
2006 Jul 19, Israeli troops clashed with Hezbollah guerrillas on the Lebanese side of the border, while warplanes flattened buildings and killed at least 56 people overnight as fighting entered its second week with the US signaling it will not push Israel toward a fast cease-fire. Lebanon's PM Fuad Saniora called for a cease-fire and said that 300 people have been killed, 1,000 have been wounded and a half-million displaced in Israel's eight-day-old onslaught on Lebanon. Hezbollah rockets slammed into the Arab-Israeli town of Nazareth killing two young brothers as they played outside and wounding 18 other people.
(AP, 7/19/06)(Reuters, 7/19/06)(SFC, 7/20/06, p.A10)
2006 Jul 19, Israeli forces killed six Palestinians after tanks moved into a refugee camp in central Gaza under cover of machine gun fire.
(AP, 7/19/06)
2006 Jul 19, In Nigeria a 4-story apartment building collapsed overnight in Lagos. Red Cross officials confirmed that at least 24 people were killed.
(AFP, 7/20/06)
2006 Jul 19, Pakistani police mounted more raids to catch suspected Taliban fighters living in Baluchistan province. Police said more than 200 Afghans have been arrested in the last 3 days.
(AP, 7/19/06)
2006 Jul 19, South Korea's president condemned North Korea for potentially sparking an arms race with its recent missile launches, while the North said it was ending reunions between relatives separated by the Korean Peninsula divide. An aid group in North Korea said floods and landslides have left more than 100 people dead or missing.
(AP, 7/19/06)
2006 Jul 19, Sweden launched a fresh effort to salvage Sri Lanka's troubled truce as ceasefire monitors reported at least 900 people killed in a surge of ethnic violence since December.
(AP, 7/19/06)
2006 Jul 19, Taiwan’s largest air carrier launched the 1st direct cargo flight between the island and China since 1949.
(WSJ, 7/20/06, p.A6)
2006 Jul 20, President Bush delivered his first address to the 97th annual NAACP convention after having declining invitations for five years in a row. He received mixed support. Bush said he knew racism existed in America and that many black voters distrusted his Republican Party; Bush promised to improve the GOP's rocky relations with blacks.
(AP, 7/20/06)(SFC, 7/21/06, p.A4)(AP, 7/20/07)
2006 Jul 20, The US Senate voted 98-0 to renew the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act for another quarter-century.
(AP, 7/20/07)
2006 Jul 20, The US released new postage stamps featuring Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Supergirl and a half dozen other superheroes.
(AP, 7/20/06)
2006 Jul 20, The SEC filed criminal and civil charges against executives at Brocade Communications in San Jose, Ca., for back-dating stock options. Estimates had it that some 29% of 7,774 US companies may have backdated option grants from 1996-2002.
(SFC, 7/22/06, p.C3)
2006 Jul 20, California’s Gov. Schwarzenegger authorized $150 million in loans to the state’s stem cell agency. A day earlier Pres. Bush vetoed legislation that would have expanded federal funding for stem cell research.
(SFC, 7/21/06, p.B1)
2006 Jul 20, In Afghanistan coalition forces killed 6 Taliban in the district of Garmser in Helmand province.
(AP, 7/22/06)
2006 Jul 20, The UN food agency said China became the world's third-largest food aid donor in 2005, the same year it stopped receiving assistance from the World Food Program, while the US and the EU remained the top two contributors.
(AP, 7/20/06)
2006 Jul 20, German and US scientists began a 2-year project to decipher the genetic code of the Neanderthal.
(SFC, 7/21/06, p.A6)
2006 Jul 20, India arrested three men in connection with last week's Mumbai bombings that killed more than 180 men.
(Reuters, 7/21/06)
2006 Jul 20, Iraq's top Shiite cleric urged his followers to refrain from reprisal violence against Sunnis, his strongest call yet for an end to increasing sectarian bloodshed that threatens to erupt into full-scale civil war. Car bombs in Baghdad killed 9 police officers and 6 civilians. A roadside bomb in eastern Baghdad killed 2. Police in Baghdad found 38 bodies, most of whom were shot in the head. A car bomb exploded at a village gas station in Tikrit, killing 13 people who had gathered around the vehicle after discovering a corpse inside. An explosion in Kirkuk killed 7 people. Gunmen assassinated a former official of Saddam's Baath party in Karbala.
(AP, 7/20/06)(SFC, 7/21/06, p.A3)
2006 Jul 20, Israeli troops met fierce resistance from Hezbollah guerrillas as they crossed into Lebanon to seek tunnels and weapons for a second straight day, and Israel hinted at a full-scale invasion.
(AP, 7/20/06)
2006 Jul 20, Israeli forces killed 3 people and wounded six in the Gaza Strip. The army dropped leaflets on towns and villages warning that homes hiding weapons would be attacked.
(AP, 7/20/06)
2006 Jul 20, In southwest Pakistan 300 tribal militants surrendered to authorities, where President Pervez Musharraf says an insurgency is dying down. In a search near the former rebel stronghold of Dera Bugti, troops seized 10 surface-to-air missiles, 195 anti-personnel and anti-tank mines, 270 hand grenades, 205 rockets and 201 mortar shells.
(AFP, 7/21/06)
2006 Jul 20, Residents of central Somalia said that hundreds of Ethiopian troops were patrolling the town of Baidoa in armored vehicles, less than a day after Islamic militants moved near the base of the weak, UN-backed government.
(AP, 7/20/06)
2006 Jul 20, Bio Fuel Systems, a Spanish company, claimed to have developed a method of breeding plankton and turning the marine plants into oil, providing a potentially inexhaustible source of clean fuel.
(Reuters, 7/20/06)
2006 Jul 20, Luis Jefferson Lira Rodriguez (20), a Venezuela soldier, massacred 8 people at Ranch Adi, but said he acted on orders from at least one other lieutenant who claimed there was a Colombian rebel camp nearby. Officials later said rape was the motive and that the soldier acted alone.
(AP, 8/17/06)
2006 Jul 21, In NYC residents of Queens suffered through a 5th day of power blackouts. ConEdison said power blackouts in Queens had affected some 25,000 customers.
(SFC, 7/22/06, p.A3)
2006 Jul 21, The California Dept. of Education said an estimated 5% of high school seniors (40,173 of 436, 374) did not qualify for graduation because they failed exit exam.
(SFC, 7/22/06, p.B1)
2006 Jul 21, Mako (b.1933 as Makoto Iwamatsu), Japanese-born film and TV actor, died at his home in Ventura Ct., Ca. His films included “The Sand Pebbles" (1966). In 1965 he co-founded the East West Players, the 1st Asian-American theater company.
(SFC, 7/24/06, p.B8)
2006 Jul 21, The Netherlands’ military chief said Dutch commandos had killed 18 enemy fighters who set up positions in rugged hills overlooking a Dutch camp in southern Afghanistan.
(AP, 7/21/06)
2006 Jul 21, In Cambodia Ta Mok (80), known as "The Butcher" for his brutality as military chief of the communist Khmer Rouge, died.
(AP, 7/21/06)(Econ, 8/5/06, p.77)
2006 Jul 21, India urged Pakistan to hand over a top Kashmiri militant as a gesture of its determination to fight terrorism.
(Reuters, 7/21/06)
2006 Jul 21, In Iraq US troops raided a neighborhood northeast of Baghdad, killing 5 people, including two women and a child, after gunmen fired from the rooftops of buildings. Bombs killed two worshippers at mosques in Iraq during prayers and the authorities extended a daytime curfew on Baghdad after one of the bloodiest weeks this year.
(AP, 7/21/06)(Reuters, 7/21/06)
2006 Jul 21, Israel called up reserve troops and warned civilians to flee Hezbollah-controlled southern Lebanon, as it prepared for a likely ground invasion to set up a deep buffer zone. Hezbollah guerrillas fired two volleys of rockets at Haifa, wounding five people and damaging shops and office buildings. At least 335 people have been killed in Lebanon in the Israeli campaign. 34 Israelis also have been killed, including 19 soldiers.
(AP, 7/21/06)
2006 Jul 21, A Hamas activist and three relatives were killed in an explosion at his home in Gaza City, hospital officials said. Palestinians said the house was hit by an Israeli tank shell.
(AP, 7/21/06)
2006 Jul 21, An Islamic militia leader called for a holy war against Ethiopian troops protecting Somalia's weak UN-backed government.
(AP, 7/21/06)
2006 Jul 21, In Oaxaca, Mexico, protests initiated by striking teachers continued. Protest leaders said their fight is not with the tourists but with Gov. Ulises Ruiz, whom they accuse of rigging the state election in 2004 and using force to repress dissent.
(AP, 7/21/06)
2006 Jul 21, It was reported that Saudi Arabia has ordered 76 artillery howitzers from the French armaments manufacturer Giat Industries as defense minister Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz completed a two-day visit.
(AFP, 7/21/06)
2006 Jul 21, The UN refugee agency said international aid operations in refugee camps in the Zalinge area of Sudan's Darfur region have been suspended after three water workers were killed by a mob.
(Reuters, 7/21/06)
2006 Jul 21, Turkey killed 4 Kurdish rebels after a soldier died in an attack.
(WSJ, 7/22/06, p.A1)
2006 Jul 21, Venezuela formally entered Mercosur, increasing the South American trade bloc's economic might and vowing to transform the policy organization into a force for profound social change. Cuba’s Fidel Castro signed a modest trade at the 2-day Mercosur meeting in Cordoba, Argentina.
(AP, 7/21/06)(Econ, 7/29/06, p.36)
2006 Jul 22, President Bush in Texas conferred with PM Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey about how to help the Lebanese people caught up in the conflict between Israel and Hizbollah.
(AP, 7/22/06)
2006 Jul 22, Some 3,000 people gathered at the Stardust Hotel in Las Vegas for the annual Lifestyles conference, a five-day, $700-per-couple event that offers a mix of seminars, socializing and sex.
(Reuters, 7/22/06)
2006 Jul 22, Former Spokane, Wa., Mayor James E. West (55), ousted by a sex scandal in 2005, died of complications from recent cancer surgery.
(SSFC, 7/23/06, p.B6)
2006 Jul 22, Tamika Mack Norton (31), the wife of Quincy Norton Sr. (32), was stabbed to death at her home in Daly City, Ca. Norton was arrested a month later and charged with her murder. In 2008 he was convicted of murder after his sons testified against him, but the conviction was overturned on the grounds that his defense attorney was incompetent. In 2009 a new trial date was set. In 2010 Norton was again convicted of 1st degree murder and faced 26 years to life in prison.
(SFC, 4/22/08, p.B2)(SFC, 5/16/08, p.B5)(SFC, 9/23/09, p.D2)(SFC, 10/8/10, p.C5)
2006 Jul 22, In Afghanistan coalition forces killed 13 Taliban over the last 48 hours in the district of Garmser in Helmand province. 2 suicide blasts struck in Kandahar. A suicide car bomb ripped into a Canadian patrol and killed two soldiers and wounded eight others. Ten Afghans were wounded. About an hour later an attacker blew himself up among a crowd of people who had assembled about 100 meters (yards) from the site of the first explosion. Four Afghan passers-by were killed.
(AP, 7/22/06)(AFP, 7/23/06)
2006 Jul 22, In Preston, England, Shezan Umarji (20), a bank worker and business student, was stabbed in the brawl between around 50 white and South Asian youths. Days later 3 men, one aged 17 and two aged 19, were "jointly charged with murder and violent disorder."
(AFP, 7/25/06)
2006 Jul 22, A magnitude-5.1 earthquake hit southwestern China, killing at least 19 people.
(AFP, 7/22/06)
2006 Jul 22, East Timor's newly installed PM Jose Ramos-Horta offered a weapons amnesty to prevent a repeat of communal clashes which left 21 dead two months ago.
(AFP, 7/22/06)
2006 Jul 22, Ethiopian troops sent to bolster Somalia's weak government against a powerful Islamic militia moved into a second Somali town and seized a strategic airport.
(AP, 7/22/06)
2006 Jul 22, In Haiti a new rash of kidnappings has raised fears that well-armed, politically aligned street gangs are seeking to destabilize the new government, threatening UN-led efforts to restore security 2 1/2 years after a crippling revolt. At least 30 people have been kidnapped so far in July, about the same number for all of June.
(AP, 7/22/06)
2006 Jul 22, Iraq's parliament speaker Mahmud Mashhadani bitterly criticized US forces in Iraq, accusing them of "butchery" and demanded that they pull out of the country. 7 Shiite workers were gunned down in a religiously mixed area of west Baghdad, and explosions in the heart of the capital shattered a one-day calm after a ban on private vehicles expired. 3 people were killed and 5 injured in a bombing and shooting in the market in Baqouba. At least 6 more people died in attacks elsewhere across Iraq. US and Iraqi troops battled Mahdi fighters in Musayyib, 40 miles south of Baghdad in a three-hour gunbattle that killed 15 extremists and one Iraqi soldier. 2 US soldiers were killed in Baghdad, one from a roadside bomb, the other from small arms fire.
(AP, 7/22/06)(AP, 7/23/06)(SSFC, 7/23/06, p.A8)
2006 Jul 22, Israeli tanks and hundreds of troops moved in and out of Lebanon, taking over Maroun al-Ras village, entering a UN observation post and engaging Hezbollah militants by land, sea and air. Israeli warplanes blasted communications and television transmission towers in central and northern Lebanese mountains. Over 130 rockets struck northern Israeli, hitting Karmiel, Kiriyat Shemona, Nahariya and smaller communities such as Bet Hilel, Mayan Baruch and Mashov Am. Five Israelis were wounded. The Lebanese health ministry reported 362 deaths in Lebanon so far in the onslaught. 34 Israelis also have been killed.
(AP, 7/22/06)(SSFC, 7/23/06, p.A1)
2006 Jul 22, Japan's death toll from floods and mudslides triggered by this week's torrential rain rose to 19 as an evacuation warning was issued in the country's southwest. Heavy rains caused mudslides and flooding killed four people in southern Japan. About 100,000 people were urged to flee their homes.
(AFP, 7/22/06)(AP, 7/23/06)
2006 Jul 22, Police said Mudassir, a top Kashmiri militant commander blamed for dozens of attacks and tourist killings, has been arrested in the Indian portion of Kashmir. He was believed to be the chief planner of Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, a Pakistan-based Islamic militant group linked to "25 incidents of grenade attacks and other violent incidents.
(AP, 7/22/06)
2006 Jul 23, US cyclist Floyd Landis (31) won the 3-week, 2,267-mile Tour de France 57 seconds ahead of Oscar Pereiro of Spain. Reports on July 27 Landis said had tested positive for the male sex hormone testosterone. In 2007 arbitrators upheld results that showed he had used synthetic testosterone and that he must forfeit his title.
(SFC, 7/24/06, p.D1)(Reuters, 7/27/06)(WSJ, 9/21/07, p.A1)
2006 Jul 23, Tiger Woods won his 2nd consecutive British Open golf title.
(WSJ, 7/24/06, p.A1)
2006 Jul 23, In southern Indiana 2 sets of sniper attacks within hours of each other left one man dead, another wounded and four vehicles peppered with bullet holes. On July 25 police said a Gaston youth (18) confessed to weekend sniping.
(AP, 7/24/06)(WSJ, 7/26/06, p.A1)
2006 Jul 23, In Afghanistan 19 Taliban were killed and 17 fighters, including two Pakistani nationals, arrested in a raid by Afghan forces in southern Helmand province. Police said three policemen were killed and three others kidnapped in a Taliban attack on a police checkpoint in southeastern Ghazni province. Attackers hurled grenades into the home of a village postman in eastern Khost province, killing three of his daughters.
(AFP, 7/23/06)(AFP, 7/24/06)
2006 Jul 23, The 654-foot Singapore-flagged Cougar Ace, a cargo ship carrying 4,813 cars from Japan to Canada, began tilting to its port side late at night hundreds of miles off Alaska's Aleutian Islands. 23 crew members were rescued the next day. The ship was owned by Tokyo-based Mitsui O.S.K. Lines and listed on its side for several weeks before being righted. 4,703 of the cars were new Mazdas valued at about $100 million. After a year of planning Mazda scheduled all the cars for complete reduction to scrap in Portland, Ore.
(AP, 7/25/06)(SFC, 7/25/06, p.A2)(WSJ, 4/29/08, p.A9)
2006 Jul 23, In England a gust of wind blew an inflatable art exhibit from its moorings at a park in Durham, killing two people and injuring 12. Up to 30 people were on the "Dreamspace", an inflatable network of multicolored tunnels, when wind blew it 30 feet in the air.
(AP, 7/23/06)
2006 Jul 23, Police in India raided a forest hideout for communist rebels in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh state, killing Burra Chinnaiah, a guerrilla chief, and at least 7 other people.
(AP, 7/23/06)
2006 Jul 23, PM Al-Maliki left for Washington for talks on reversing the country's slide toward civil war. A suicide bomber detonated an explosives-laden minibus amid a crowd of day laborers seeking work in a crowded market in Baghdad's mainly Shiite district of Sadr City, killing at least 34 people. This was followed by a bomb attack in front of the area's town hall, which killed eight. Three hours later a one-ton car bomb exploded outside a courthouse in the mixed northern city of Kirkuk, leaving at least 22 dead and 100 injured.
(AFP, 7/23/06)
2006 Jul 23, Israeli warplanes struck a minibus carrying people fleeing the fighting in southern Lebanon, killing three people, Lebanese security officials said, and Israel said it would accept a NATO-led international force to keep the peace along the border. Hezbollah rockets killed two civilians in northern Israel. Layal Nejim (23), a photographer working for a Lebanese magazine, was killed when an Israeli missile exploded near her taxi.
(AP, 7/23/06)
2006 Jul 23, In Indian Kashmir 4 people were killed in three separate incidents.
(AFP, 7/23/06)
2006 Jul 23, Palestinian militants in Gaza fired three rockets at Israel, despite reports that they had agreed to halt such attacks.
(AP, 7/23/06)
2006 Jul 23, Zuleyka Rivera Mendoza (18) of Puerto Rico was crowned as Miss Universe 2006. She hoped to someday star in US and Latin American films.
(AP, 7/24/06)
2006 Jul 23, In Somalia a local rights group said gunmen have killed 682 civilians, including a foreign journalist, in executions over the past year.
(AP, 7/23/06)
2006 Jul 23, Syria, one of Hezbollah's main backers, said it will press for a cease-fire to end the fighting between Israel and the Islamic militant group but only in the framework of a broader Middle East peace initiative.
(AP, 7/23/06)
2006 Jul 24, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made a surprise visit to Lebanon to launch diplomatic efforts aimed at ending 13 days of warfare.
(AP, 7/24/06)
2006 Jul 24, Amnesty Int’l. issued a report saying security agents in Jordan were torturing terrorism suspects on behalf of the US.
(WSJ, 7/24/06, p.A1)
2006 Jul 24, The US FDA approved Anthelios SX, a sunscreen that protects against a type of ultra-violet radiation linked to skin cancer.
(SFC, 7/25/06, p.A4)
2006 Jul 24, Rescuers from the US Coast Guard and Alaska Air National Guard saved 23 crew members from a cargo ship taking on water south of the Aleutian Islands.
(AP, 7/24/07)
2006 Jul 24, Police officers in Salt Lake City found the body of missing 5-year-old Destiny Norton in the basement of a home in her neighborhood and arrested Craig R. Gregerson (20) who lived there. Destiny disappeared from outside her house on July 16.
(AP, 7/25/06)
2006 Jul 24, SF City Attorney Dennis Herrera announced that his office had obtained a civil injunction and $20,000 in penalties against Carlos Romero for his graffiti. This marked the 1st time SF has filed a civil suit against a graffiti tagger.
(SFC, 7/25/06, p.A4)
2006 Jul 24, HCA Inc., the largest US for-profit hospital operator, has agreed to be purchased by a group of investors for about $21.3 billion plus the assumption of $11.7 billion in debt. Shareholders of the Nashville-based company, which was founded by the family of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, will receive $51 in cash for each share of common stock.
(AP, 7/24/06)
2006 Jul 24, Power companies worked to restore electricity to thousands of customers throughout California as a scorching heat wave threatened to push the state into a power emergency with the potential for more blackouts. Storm problems cut power to areas of New York and Missouri.
(AP, 7/24/06)(WSJ, 7/25/06, p.A1)
2006 Jul 24, It was reported that Jeff Bezos (42), founder of Amazon.com, planned to develop a private spaceport at his private ranch in West Texas. A draft environmental review was filed with the FAA and a timetable set commercial flights to begin in 2010.
(SFC, 7/24/06, p.A2)
2006 Jul 24, In southwestern Afghanistan hundreds of Taliban fighters firing rocket-propelled grenades attacked a district headquarters overnight in Farah, killing 3 police and wounding 7. Four suspected suicide attackers riding two motorcycles died in a confrontation with Afghan police. In the west, gunmen killed two Afghans working for international aid agency World Vision who had been delivering medicine. Fighting in Kunar province left a US soldier dead. 7 suspected Taliban were killed in Paktika province.
(AP, 7/25/06)(WSJ, 7/25/06, p.A1)
2006 Jul 24, In Belarus leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez exchanged declarations of solidarity with the authoritarian leader of isolated Belarus, who shares his anti-US views. During the talks with Lukashenko, the two sides signed seven agreements on military-technical cooperation, economic and other ties as well as a declaration pledging a strategic partnership. Bilateral trade was just under $16 million in 2005.
(AP, 7/24/06)
2006 Jul 24, In Colombia 13 doctors were abducted by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. They were on a 10-day mission to remote communities and Indian tribes in Putumayo province.
(AP, 7/25/06)
2006 Jul 24, A UNICEF report said more than 600 children die every day in war-ravaged Congo and even more are displaced, sexually abused or swept into the camps of combatant groups.
(AP, 7/24/06)
2006 Jul 24, Costa Rica relaxed visa requirements for visitors from 102 nations, in the Central American country's most sweeping migration reform in decades.
(AP, 7/24/06)
2006 Jul 24, Hungary’s central bank raised its core interest rate half a percentage point to 6.75% in an aggressive move to stabilize its currency. This followed a quarter point raise in June. Inflation stood at 2.8%.
(WSJ, 7/25/06, p.A8)(Econ, 8/5/06, p.64)
2006 Jul 24, A UN report on the economic impact of HIV/AIDS in India estimated infections there, currently over 5 million, could increase to 20-25 million by 2010.
(WSJ, 7/24/06, p.A6)
2006 Jul 24, Hezbollah's representative in Iran struck a defiant tone, warning that his Islamic militant group plans to widen its attacks on Israel until "no place" is safe for Israelis.
(AP, 7/24/06)
2006 Jul 24, Iraqi PM Nuri al-Maliki condemned Israel's bombing of Lebanon's civilian infrastructure and vowed to push for a ceasefire during talks with his British PM Tony Blair. Gunmen ambushed an Iraqi police unit in central Baghdad, triggering a gunbattle in which six officers were killed and 30 were wounded. Mahmoud Ali Hussein al-Nida, the head of Saddam Hussein's Baijat tribe, was killed when gunmen attacked a meeting in the office of a prominent sheik in Tikrit. The gunmen also killed a lawyer and wounded sheik Mizahim al-Mustafa. Two other civilians caught in the crossfire also were killed.
(AFP, 7/24/06)(AFP, 7/25/06)(AP, 7/25/06)
2006 Jul 24, Israeli ground forces pushed deeper into Lebanon in heavy fighting with Hezbollah guerrillas. An Israeli Apache helicopter crashed near the Lebanese border while attempting an emergency landing, and there were two casualties.
(AP, 7/24/06)
2006 Jul 24, Israeli artillery shelled a town in the Gaza Strip used by Palestinian militants to fire rockets, and hospital officials said three Palestinians were killed and eight were wounded.
(AP, 7/24/06)
2006 Jul 24, Kosovo formally made its pitch for independence in Vienna, Austria, face-to-face with Serbia at their 1st top-level talks since NATO bombs drove Serb forces from the province in 1999.
(AP, 7/24/06)
2006 Jul 24, Liberia began training the first soldiers of a post-war army that officials hope will grow into a small but effective force to take over peacekeeping from UN troops.
(AP, 7/24/06)
2006 Jul 24, A Malaysian princess was stabbed to death by her son as she tried to stop him from attacking her husband (74). The son (21) later died of an apparent drug overdose. Tengku Puteri Kamariah, whose brother is Sultan Ahmad Shah, ruler of the eastern state of Pahang, died at her home in Pekan town, Pahang.
(AP, 7/25/06)
2006 Jul 24, Gunmen raided a pharmaceutical laboratory in Mexico City, killing four guards and stealing about a ton of ephedrine, a key ingredient in making methamphetamine.
(AP, 7/24/06)
2006 Jul 24, In Sudan’s South Darfur's vast Kalma camp, 17 women were raped by armed militiamen as they went out to collect firewood.
(Reuters, 7/29/06)
2006 Jul 24, WTO members in Geneva called a halt to more than five years of commerce liberalization talks (the Doha talks) as differences over farm aid proved unbridgeable. The 25-nation EU criticized US intransigence over agricultural subsidies for the breakdown, while the US blamed Brazil and India for being inflexible on cutting barriers to industrial imports and the EU for refusing to make deeper cuts in its farm import tariffs.
(AP, 7/24/06)
2006 Jul 25, President Bush was visited at the White House by Iraqi PM Nouri al-Maliki, who said he and Bush agreed that training and better arming Iraqi forces as quickly as possible was central to efforts to stabilizing his country. A Darfur rebel leader was in Washington to meet President Bush, who is trying to convince Khartoum to accept UN peacekeepers to quell the increasing violence in Sudan's remote west. President Bush pressed Darfur rebel leader Minni Arcua Minnawi to help implement a deal aimed at ending the violence in western Sudan.
(AP, 7/25/06)(Reuters, 7/25/06)(AP, 7/25/07)
2006 Jul 25, In NYC 14 athletes competed in the 10th annual Self-Transcendence 3,100 Mile Race in Jamaica, Queens. The 51-day event was sponsored by followers of meditation master Sri Chinmoy.
(Reuters, 7/25/06)
2006 Jul 25, SF Supervisors gave final approval to a plan to provide health care coverage to the city’s estimated 82,000 uninsured residents.
(SFC, 7/26/06, p.B1)
2006 Jul 25, Hewlett-Packard signed a $4.5 billion agreement to buy Mercury Interactive Corp., a maker of software for information technology networks.
(SFC, 7/26/06, p.C1)
2006 Jul 25, The Afghan government, together with the UN, appealed for $76 million to head off an "imminent food crisis" due to drought. A roadside bomb exploded in Kabul, killing two Afghans riding in a taxi. US-led coalition troops killed seven suspected Taliban militants in southern Afghanistan. In Musa Qala district 10 militants were killed and 15 wounded by coalition and Afghan forces backed by airstrikes.
(AP, 7/25/06)(AP, 7/26/06)
2006 Jul 25, Canada said it planned to pay a total of C$1.1 billion ($965 million) to around 5,500 people who had contracted hepatitis C from transfusions.
(Reuters, 7/25/06)
2006 Jul 25, Greek protesters toppled a statue of President Truman and clashed with police during demonstrations against the fighting in Lebanon.
(AP, 7/25/06)
2006 Jul 25, The first edition of a newspaper owned by the Iranian version of Hezbollah appeared on newsstands with messages of support for its Lebanese cousins in their fight against Israel.
(AP, 7/25/06)
2006 Jul 25, In Iraq police in Diyala province said five bodies were found on the streets in Muqdadiyah. Gunmen killed a police officer in front of his office in Mosul. 2 roadside bombs exploded in Baghdad, killing two civilians and wounding two bystanders and a policeman. 4 other civilians were shot dead around the capital. Two members of a Shiite family were killed and one was wounded when their removal van was sprayed with bullets. US and Iraqi soldiers captured six members of an alleged "death squad" in Baghdad, hoping to quell the rampant sectarian violence dividing the capital. Attacks elsewhere in Iraq left at least 34 people dead, including an American soldier.
(AP, 7/25/06)(AFP, 7/25/06)
2006 Jul 25, Israeli troops sealed off the town of Bint Jbail, a Hezbollah stronghold in fierce fighting in south Lebanon. Warplanes struck Nabatiyeh and destroyed a house killing seven people, four from the same family. Guerrillas fired rockets at northern Israel, killing a girl. An Israeli airstrike killed 4 UN observers at a UNIFIL post in southern Lebanon. The observers were from Austria, Canada, China and Finland. Irish observers had warned that airstrikes were too close. UNIFIL was created in 1978 after Israel's first major invasion of southern Lebanon and has been there ever since.
(AP, 7/25/06)(Reuters, 7/25/06)(WSJ, 7/27/06, p.A1)
2006 Jul 25, Italian carmaker Fiat Group and India's Tata Motors Ltd. announced they have signed an agreement for a joint-venture in India to make passenger vehicles, engines and transmissions for Indian and overseas markets.
(AP, 7/25/06)
2006 Jul 25, The Slovak central bank raised key interest rates by 50 basis points.
(Econ, 8/12/06, p.43)(www.slovakspectator.sk/clanok.asp?cl=24271)
2006 Jul 25, Sri Lanka, which at 80,000 has the largest contingent of expatriate workers in Lebanon, wants those trapped in the conflict to stay put and those who have fled the bombings to return, a minister said.
(AFP, 7/25/06)
2006 Jul 25, Officials and news reports said the Swedish government knew in 2000 that Saddam Hussein's government demanded kickbacks from companies participating in the UN Oil-for-Food Program.
(AP, 7/25/06)
2006 Jul 25, Thailand's three election commissioners, seen as close allies of embattled PM Thaksin Shinawatra, were convicted of allowing unqualified candidates to run in parliamentary elections and sentenced to four years in prison.
(AP, 7/25/06)
2006 Jul 26, Iraq’s PM Nouri al-Maliki addressed US Congress and asked for more US reconstruction aid. He did not talk of sectarian violence in Iraq and did not mention Hezbollah.
(SFC, 7/27/06, p.A12)
2006 Jul 26, The Washington state Supreme Court upheld a ban on gay marriage, saying lawmakers have the power to restrict marriage to unions between a man and woman.
(AP, 7/26/06)
2006 Jul 26, Chicago’s City Council voted by a veto-proof margin to require big-box stores like Wal-Mart to pay employees at least $10 per hour plus benefits.
(WSJ, 7/27/06, p.A1)
2006 Jul 26, In a dramatic turnaround from her first murder trial, a jury in Houston found Andrea Yates not guilty by reason of insanity in the drowning of her children in the bathtub; she was committed to a state mental hospital.
(AP, 7/26/07)
2006 Jul 26, SF police officer Nick-Tomasito Birco (39) was killed when a Dodge van carrying 4 robbery suspects broadsided his patrol car at Cambridge and Felton. Steven Wayne Petrilli (19) was charged the next day with murder, manslaughter, evading police and robbery. In 2010 Petrilli was convicted of 1st degree murder. In 2011 Carl Lather (25) and Nicholas smith (26) pleaded guilty to manslaughter and robbery charges.
(SFC, 7/27/06, p.A1)(SFC, 7/28/06, p.B1)(SFC, 9/24/10, p.C3)(SFC, 2/5/11, p.C2)
2006 Jul 26, In southern Zabul province, gunmen ambushed and killed one Afghan worker and wounded three others as they drove to work on a road being built between the town of Qalat to a new US air base just outside town. 5 militants were killed and 11 were wounded when they battled 200 Afghan police in Garmser. All 16 people including two Dutch soldiers and at least 2 American civilians were killed when their helicopter crashed in southeast Afghanistan. The Russian-made helicopter was operated by a logistics company ferrying supplies and fuel from Kabul to the Khost airport.
(AP, 7/26/06)(AFP, 7/27/06)
2006 Jul 26, China's PM Wen Jiabao called for urgent steps to prevent economic overheating, as the government forecast more double-digit growth in the next quarter.
(AP, 7/27/06)
2006 Jul 26, Xinhua News said heavy rain from Tropical Storm Kaemi caused a levee in southern China to collapse, threatening to inundate an area that's home to 20,000 villagers.
(AP, 7/26/06)
2006 Jul 26, An unhappy China said that Canada's decision to bestow honorary citizenship on the Dalai Lama could hurt commercial relations between the two countries.
(Reuters, 7/26/06)
2006 Jul 26, Jessica Gilbert (19), a British chess prodigy, fell from an eighth-floor hotel room window in the Czech Republic where she was competing in an international chess tournament. Her death took place days before the trial of her father, whom she had accused of rape, was to begin. In December Ian Gilbert (48), a director of the Royal Bank of Scotland, was acquitted of 5 counts of raping Jessica, while she was still a child, and 6 sexual offenses against other people.
(AP, 12/15/06)
2006 Jul 26, Georgian authorities reported sporadic fighting in a mountainous region where police are trying to subdue a defiant militia leader, the latest confrontation in a volatile former Soviet republic plagued by separatist movements.
(AP, 7/26/06)
2006 Jul 26, Germany, Israel and the US signed an agreement opening to researchers an archive of millions of Nazi files describing how the Holocaust was carried out.
(AP, 7/26/06)
2006 Jul 26, Israel suffered its bloodiest day in Lebanon in its offensive against Hezbollah, with militants killing at least nine soldiers in a battle for the strategic town of Bint Jbail.
(AP, 7/26/06)
2006 Jul 26, Israeli strikes killed 23 people in the Gaza Strip, including 16 militants and a mother and her two young daughters, in the deadliest day of fighting since Israel withdrew from the coastal strip last year.
(AP, 7/26/06)
2006 Jul 26, In Indian Kashmir 5 people were killed and 12 wounded, including nine in a tourist area, in 4 different gun battles.
(AFP, 7/26/06)
2006 Jul 26, Pro-government militia fighters in western Ivory Coast began laying down arms, the first step of a delayed nationwide disarmament program.
(AP, 7/27/06)
2006 Jul 26, Power was restored to parts of Liberia's dilapidated capital Monrovia for the first time in 15 years, another step in the country's emergence from more than a decade of civil war.
(AP, 7/26/06)
2006 Jul 26, A UN report said the death toll from floods and landslides in North Korea this month has risen to at least 154 people, with 127 others missing.
(AP, 7/27/06)
2006 Jul 26, Somalia's virtually powerless government said a cargo plane landed at the capital's airport and was carrying weapons for Islamic militants who have seized control of much of southern Somalia. A spokesman for the country's official government, based 150 miles northwest of Mogadishu, said the plane was carrying land mines, bombs and long-range guns from Eritrea for a militia loyal to the Supreme Islamic Courts Council.
(AP, 7/26/06)
2006 Jul 26, Sri Lanka's military carried out air attacks against suspected Tamil Tiger positions in northeast Sri Lanka after the rebels allegedly blocked an irrigation canal.
(AP, 7/26/06)
2006 Jul 27, Pres. Bush signed the Adam Walsh Act of 2006. It required convicted child molesters to be listed on a national Internet database and face a felony charge for failing to update their whereabouts.
(SFC, 7/28/06, p.A1)(www.fd.org/odstb_AdamWalsh.htm)(Econ, 8/8/09, p.9)
2006 Jul 27, Floyd Landis' stunning Tour de France victory just four days earlier was thrown into question when he tested positive for high levels of testosterone during the race. Landis denied cheating.
(AP, 7/27/07)
2006 Jul 27, An Arkansas judge approved a $90 million settlement between Google Inc. and advertisers who claimed improper billing for fraudulent clicks on ads.
(SFC, 7/28/06, p.D3)
2006 Jul 27, In California as many as 126 people were reported dead over the last 12 days from a heat wave. The heat also killed an estimated 16,000 livestock in the Central Valley as well as some 1 million poultry. By the end of the month the heat wave left 164 dead in California and moved east.
(SSFC, 7/30/06, p.A12)(WSJ, 8/2/06, p.A1)(SFC, 8/3/06, p.C2)
2006 Jul 27, In Richmond, California, police and federal agents arrested Jose Santos Bonilla (33), a suspected leader of the local MS-13 street gang. The gang was in a street war with Richmond Sureno Trece (RST).
(SFC, 7/28/06, p.B5)
2006 Jul 27, Sharman Networks Ltd., the company behind Kazaa file-sharing software, said it will redesign its software and pay over $115 million in penalties to leading music and movie companies.
(SFC, 7/28/06, p.D3)
2006 Jul 27, Robert Charles Browne, serving a life sentence in Colorado for murdering a teenage girl, claimed responsibility for as many as 48 slayings across the country dating back from 1970 until his arrest in 1995. The other claims include 17 murders in Louisiana, nine in Colorado, seven in Texas, five in Arkansas, three in Mississippi, two each in California, New Mexico and Oklahoma, and one in Washington state.
(AP, 7/28/06)
2006 Jul 27, In California the Trust for Public Land donated 6,845 acres of coastline property north of Santa Cruz to the state for public use. The Coast Dairies property was initially settled by the Moretti and Respini families in 1866.
(SFC, 7/28/06, p.A1)
2006 Jul 27, Matthew Amorello, chairman of the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority, resigned in the wake of problems with Boston’s Big Dig tunnels.
(SFC, 7/28/06, p.A10)
2006 Jul 27, Intel introduced a new line of microprocessors called Core 2 Duos. New features included higher performance and lower power consumption.
(SFC, 7/28/06, p.D1)
2006 Jul 27, Ayman al-Zawahri, Al-Qaida's No. 2 leader, issued a worldwide call for Muslims to rise up in a holy war against Israel and join the fighting in Lebanon and Gaza until Islam reigns from "Spain to Iraq."
(AP, 7/27/06)
2006 Jul 27, A fire raged through a rain forest along Brazil's eastern coastline, burning up to 25,000 acres of trees.
(AP, 7/27/06)
2006 Jul 27, Canadian police said they had busted two cross-country drug smuggling schemes, seizing 110 kilograms (243 pounds) of cocaine worth C$8.8 million ($7.8 million) and charging six people.
(Reuters, 7/27/06)
2006 Jul 27, China’s government introduced new taxes on real estate to discourage speculation. State media said flooding and landslides caused by Tropical Storm Kaemi have killed at least 25 people in southern China, including six who died when a torrent of water washed away a military barracks.
(AP, 7/27/06)(SFC, 7/28/06, p.D1)
2006 Jul 27, In Kinshasa, Congo, 3 policemen and a civilian were killed in clashes outside a stadium where 40,000 supporters greeted Vice-President Jean-Pierre Bemba, a rebel leader turned presidential candidate.
(AFP, 7/27/06)
2006 Jul 27, The European Court of Human Rights found Russia guilty of violating the "right to life" of a young Chechen who disappeared after a Russian general ordered him shot. Khadzimurat Yandiyev (25) was last seen in the hands of Russian troops in February 2000.
(AP, 7/27/06)
2006 Jul 27, French health officials said 64 people have died in a heat wave that has gripped the country for nearly two weeks.
(AP, 7/27/06)
2006 Jul 27, Georgia’s Pres. Saakashvili said his troops had established control over the Kodori Gorge area after Emzar Kvitsiani, a former presidential envoy, said he was reactivating a local militia.
(SFC, 7/28/06, p.A3)
2006 Jul 27, Greek authorities said 5 schoolchildren have been charged with killing an 11-year-old boy who disappeared five months ago. Alex Mechisvili dropped from sight in the northern town of Veroia. His body has not been found.
(AP, 7/27/06)
2006 Jul 27, Former Haitian PM Yvon Neptune was released from jail, more than two years after his arrest on charges of orchestrating the killing of political opponents at the start of a rebellion that engulfed the country.
(AP, 7/27/06)
2006 Jul 27, In India police arrested two more men in connection with Bombay's deadly train blasts, bringing to eight the number of people detained by investigators since the explosions killed more than 200 people earlier this month.
(AP, 7/28/06)
2006 Jul 27, In Iraq a rocket and mortar barrage followed by a car bomb blasted an upscale, mostly Shiite district of Baghdad, killing 32 people and wounding 153. 4 US Marines died in action in western Anbar province. A Salvadoran soldier was killed in Iraq, the 2nd soldier from El Salvador to be killed in the conflict in 8 days. Armed men in Iraqi army uniforms and driving Iraqi army vehicles stole $1.35 million in Iraqi currency in West Baghdad. Gunmen killed 3 men working for a foreign security company in Baghdad’s Mansour neighborhood. The bodies of at least 19 men, shot in the head and bearing signs of torture, were found in various parts of Baghdad.
(AP, 7/27/06)(AP, 7/28/06)(SFC, 7/28/06, p.A3)(Reuters, 7/29/06)
2006 Jul 27, Top Israeli Cabinet ministers decided not to expand the country's Lebanon offensive but ordered the call up of thousands of additional reserve soldiers to boost the campaign. The decision came as Israeli jets pounded across Lebanon, extending their air campaign.
(AP, 7/27/06)
2006 Jul 27, The Israeli air force fired missiles at a target in eastern Gaza City, wounding 15 people, at least one of them critically. 5 Palestinians were killed including a woman (75) and a child. A Palestinian was shot and killed in Jerusalem after he attacked a police patrol. The severely burned body of man, thought to be Israeli, was found in the West Bank.
(AP, 7/27/06)(SFC, 7/28/06, p.A14)
2006 Jul 27, Japan said it will allow US beef imports, suspended for the past six months, to restart from all but one of 35 US beef processing plants authorized by the US government as suppliers to Japan.
(AP, 7/27/06)
2006 Jul 27, Malawi's former President Bakili Muluzi was arrested on corruption charges related to millions of dollars in donor funds that allegedly ended up in his personal account. He was released on bail after being questioned. Muluzi faced 42 counts of theft, corruption and breach of trust.
(AP, 7/28/06)
2006 Jul 27, President-elect Alan Garcia made good on a pledge to draw talent from across the political spectrum in his 16-member Cabinet by appointing six women, including Peru's first female justice and interior ministers.
(AP, 7/27/06)
2006 Jul 27, The head of Russia's state arms-trading agency said that Russia has signed contracts with Venezuela for 24 military planes and 53 helicopters.
(AP, 7/27/06)
2006 Jul 27, A Russian rocket that was to put 18 satellites in orbit crashed shortly after liftoff. The Dnepr rocket crashed about 15 miles south of the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The rocket was carrying a Russian satellite and 17 from other countries, including the United States and Italy.
(AP, 7/27/06)
2006 Jul 27, At least 20 members of Somalia's parliament resigned, accusing the country's virtually powerless government of failing to bring peace. The parliament is supposed to have 275 member but 16 members have defected to the Islamic militia and other seats remain unfilled after members' deaths.
(AP, 7/27/06)
2006 Jul 27, Police found the bodies of four Africans on a boat packed with 26 other would-be immigrants that was intercepted off Spain's Canary Islands.
(AP, 7/28/06)
2006 Jul 27, Zambian opposition leaders were scrambling after President Levy Mwanawasa called elections for Sept. 28 and dissolved the parliament and Cabinet.
(AP, 7/27/06)
2006 Jul 28, Actor-director Mel Gibson launched an anti-Semitic tirade as he was arrested on the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu, Calif., for driving drunk; Gibson later apologized and was sentenced to probation and alcohol treatment.
(AP, 7/28/07)
2006 Jul 28, Clark McLeod, who had been chairman and chief executive of McLeodUSA, agreed to turn over $4.4 million in profits he was accused of receiving from the so-called act of "spinning." The former executive was accused by NY Attorney General Eliot Spitzer of directing more than $77 million of McLeodUSA's investment banking business to Salomon Smith Barney. In exchange, the company "secretly" gave McLeod shares of 34 stocks before its initial public offering, which resulted in a windfall of $4.8 million on the first day of public trading of the stock.
(AP, 7/30/06)
2006 Jul 28, The Pfizer Board of Directors named Jeffrey B. Kindler Pfizer's chief executive officer. He succeeds Hank McKinnell, who will remain Pfizer's chairman of the board until his retirement in February, 2007. McKinnell vacated Pfizer’s CEO spot 19 months before he was scheduled to step down, under pressure from investors angered about his retirement package and a drop of as much as 40% in the company's stock price during his five years in charge. The company later disclosed in a filing with the SEC that the package totaled more than $180 million. It includes an estimated $82.3 million in pension benefits, $77.9 million in deferred compensation, and cash and stock totaling more than $20.7 million.
(http://mediaroom.pfizer.com/index.php?s=press_releases&item=83)(AP, 12/21/06)
2006 Jul 28, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said it is ending its loss-generating business in Germany just two months after leaving South Korea in what analysts welcomed as a move to focus resources on expanding in more profitable international markets like China and Latin America. Wal-Mart sold its 85 German stores to Metro, the local market leader.
(AP, 7/28/06)(Econ, 8/5/06, p.54)
2006 Jul 28, In Seattle, Wash., gunman Naveed Afzal Haq (30) killed Pam Waechter (58) of Seattle and wounded five others at the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle. Haq said he was "angry at Israel." On June 4, 2008, a jury found him not guilty on one count of attempted murder (for victim Carol Goldman); on the remaining counts, the jury declared itself to be hung. The judge declared a mistrial. In 2009 a jury found Haq guilty of 8 counts, including aggravated first-degree murder. The murder verdict carried an automatic life sentence.
(AFP, 7/29/06)(AP, 7/30/06)(http://tinyurl.com/6myx9k)(SFC, 12/15/09, p.A9)
2006 Jul 28, In New Orleans 4 men, 3 brothers and a friend, were killed in the Treme neighborhood as they sat on the porch of an abandoned house. The dead included 16-year-old twins, their brother (21) and a friend (39). Another shooting the next day put the year to date homicide number in New Orleans at 77.
(SSFC, 7/30/06, p.A15)
2006 Jul 28, Fourteen Taliban fighters were killed in a "clearance operation" in southern Helmand province's Garmser district. In the northeastern province of Kapisa, police killed four Taliban militants including a "famous commander" while also losing one of their own men. 2 policemen guarding an archaeological site in northern Balkh province were killed and another was wounded when unknown assailants attacked them overnight.
(AFP, 7/29/06)
2006 Jul 28, A US airman convicted of raping three teenage British girls was sentenced to 12 years in prison. Prosecutors said Staff Sgt. James Gardner took advantage of vulnerable girls who lived in a children's home near the US base at Menwith Hill in northern England.
(AP, 7/28/06)
2006 Jul 28, David Gemmell (b.1948), British writer of fantasy novels, died. He wrote over 30 novels.
(WSJ, 1/23/08, p.D8)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Gemmell)
2006 Jul 28, In eastern China an explosion at a chemical plant killed at least 22 people and prompted the evacuation of 7,000 others. 28 people were missing.
(AP, 7/29/06)
2006 Jul 28, In Haiti hundreds of people fled their homes in a hillside slum of Port-au-Prince to escape fierce fighting between gangs that has killed at least 30 people in the past 2 months.
(AP, 7/29/06)
2006 Jul 28, A bomb planted between a Sunni mosque and a youth center exploded during prayers, killing four people and wounding another nine. gunmen in Tikrit killed two civilians who were employed by US troops.
(AP, 7/28/06)
2006 Jul 28, Israeli warplanes and artillery intensified strikes, hitting Hezbollah positions and crushing houses and roads in towns in southern Lebanon, killing as many as 12 people. Hezbollah announced it had fired a new rocket, called the Khaibar-1, striking near the northern Israeli town of Afula. Beirut said 600 people have been killed in Lebanon, with confirmed fatalities at 445, since fighting broke out, most of them Lebanese civilians. 33 Israeli soldiers have died in the fighting and 19 civilians were killed in Hezbollah's unyielding rocket attacks on Israel's northern towns.
(AP, 7/28/06)(WSJ, 7/28/06, p.A1)
2006 Jul 28, Hezbollah politicians, while expressing reservations, joined their critics in the government in agreeing to a peace package that includes strengthening an international force in south Lebanon and disarming the guerrillas.
(AP, 7/28/06)
2006 Jul 28, The UN decided to remove 50 unarmed observers (UNTSO and UNIFIL) from posts along the Israeli-Lebanese border and relocate them with lightly armed UN peacekeepers.
(AP, 7/28/06)
2006 Jul 28, Israeli troops withdrew from northern Gaza after a bloody two-day sweep that killed 29 Palestinians.
(AP, 7/28/06)
2006 Jul 28, The Laos government and UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said an outbreak of the H5N1 strain of bird flu has killed more than 2,000 chicken on a poultry farm. The Xaythani district farm found 155 dead chickens on July 14, and about 2,000 dead birds the following day.
(AFP, 7/28/06)
2006 Jul 28, In Nepal Communist rebels and the government have extended a cease-fire for another three months to allow talks aimed at ending a decade-long conflict to continue.
(AP, 7/28/06)
2006 Jul 28, Dutch retail giant Ahold has announced that its 1.1 billion-dollar (941,000-euro) settlement with US and Dutch investors over the company's accounting scandal that broke in 2003 and sent share prices plummeting, is now final.
(AFP, 7/29/06)
2006 Jul 28, In Quetta, Pakistan, a bomb believed rigged to a motorcycle exploded outside a bank and wounded 21 people, one critically.
(AP, 7/28/06)
2006 Jul 28, Alan Garcia returned to the presidency of Peru, pledging to battle poverty 16 years after ending his first term.
(AP, 7/28/06)
2006 Jul 28, Poland's conservative President Lech Kaczynski vowed to campaign for a return of the death penalty in the European Union.
(AP, 7/28/06)
2006 Jul 28, In Russia Pres. Putin signed a law making slander of a public official a crime.
(WSJ, 7/29/06, p.A1)
2006 Jul 28, Hundreds of people rioted near the headquarters of Somalia's virtually powerless government after a Cabinet minister was fatally shot outside a mosque.
(AP, 7/28/06)
2006 Jul 28, South Korea sent a satellite into orbit primarily for making geographical surveys but also possibly for tracking military movements in North Korea, which raised regional security concerns by launching missiles on July 5.
(Reuters, 8/1/06)
2006 Jul 28, The Spanish government approved a divisive bill allowing reparations for victims of the Spanish Civil War and the ensuing dictatorship of Gen. Francisco Franco.
(AP, 7/29/06)
2006 Jul 28, Sudanese government forces and allied militias attacked bases of a new rebel alliance in Darfur despite a ceasefire in the violent west.
(Reuters, 7/29/06)
2006 Jul 28, Taiwanese prosecutors indicted a man for murder, alleging he helped his brother stage a train derailment that ultimately led to the death of his brother's wife, and said they will seek the death penalty. The wife of Lee Suan-chuan, a train-ticket seller, was injured when the train she was traveling on derailed and tumbled into a deep valley on March 27 in southern Taiwan's Pingtung region.
(AP, 7/28/06)
2006 Jul 28, The five permanent members of the UN Security Council reached a deal on a resolution that would give Iran until the end of August to suspend uranium enrichment or face the threat of economic and diplomatic sanctions.
(AP, 7/28/06)
2006 Jul 28, Danilo Astori, Uruguay’s Finance Minister, said Uruguay will make an early debt payment of $900 million to the IMF due in 2007. The move will save about $40 million in interest payments. This would cancel about half its entire debt to the IMF.
(WSJ, 7/31/06, p.A6)
2006 Jul 29, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice flew back to the Middle East for diplomatic discussions aimed at ending the violence there.
(AP, 7/29/06)
2006 Jul 29, Actor-director Mel Gibson issued a lengthy statement apologizing for his drunken-driving arrest and for what he called his "despicable" statements toward the deputies who arrested him in Malibu, Calif.
(AP, 7/29/07)
2006 Jul 29, Nebraska climatologist Mark Svoboda said more than 60% of the US has abnormally dry or drought conditions, stretching from Georgia to Arizona and across the north through the Dakotas, Minnesota, Montana and Wisconsin.
(AP, 7/29/06)
2006 Jul 29, In Brazil about $200,000 was found in a house in Natal, about 1,400 miles northeast of Sao Paulo. Police were convinced the money was part of the $70 million stolen from the Central Bank in Fortaleza in Aug 2005. By this time only $8 million was recovered.
(AP, 8/4/06)
2006 Jul 29, The Middle East crisis dominated the first full day of PM Tony Blair's tour of California, forcing his promotion of British business interests here to take a back seat. Blair's former foreign secretary, Jack Straw, condemned Israeli action against Lebanon as "disproportionate" in the first such comment by a senior British government minister. PM Blair said an international agreement, leading to a cease-fire in the Israel-Hezbollah conflict, is possible sometime in the next few days.
(AFP, 7/30/06)(AP, 7/29/06)
2006 Jul 29, Daniel Lev (72), a leading Indonesia scholar and longtime University of Washington professor, died following a battle with lung cancer.
(AP, 8/2/06)
2006 Jul 29, US-led coalition forces detained 4 suspected al-Qaida operatives in eastern Afghanistan. In southern Afghanistan US-led coalition forces and Afghan police killed 20 suspected Taliban who had attempted an ambush in Uruzgan province. In Kandahar province 3 militants blew themselves up as they laid an explosive on a road.
(AP, 7/29/06)(AP, 7/30/06)
2006 Jul 29, In Bangladesh more than 20,000 activists marched in Dhaka, defying driving rains, in the fifth day of protests to press for electoral reforms ahead of January polls.
(AFP, 7/29/06)
2006 Jul 29, Workers at Wal-Mart stores in China formed their 1st trade union.
(SFC, 7/31/06, p.A3)(Econ, 9/23/06, p.43)
2006 Jul 29, Iran state radio said the government would reject a proposed UN resolution to suspend uranium enrichment by Aug. 31 or face the threat of international sanctions. State media also reported that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has ordered government and cultural bodies to use modified Persian words to replace foreign words that have crept into the language, such as "pizzas" which will now be known as "elastic loaves."
(AP, 7/29/06)
2006 Jul 29, In Tehran the presidents of Iran and Venezuela pledged to support one another in disputes with Washington, with the Iranian calling Hugo Chavez "a brother and trench mate."
(AP, 7/29/06)
2006 Jul 29, A car packed with explosives blew up in a residential district of Kirkuk, killing four people and injuring 13. A Sunni cleric from a tribe opposed to al-Qaida in Iraq was killed while driving in Samarra. 4 unidentified bodies riddled with bullets were found, two behind a school in western Baghdad and two by the Tigris river. Gunmen fired on a taxi in Baghdad carrying a father and son, killing the boy. The US command announced that it was sending 3,700 troops to Baghdad to try to quell the sectarian violence sweeping the capital, and a US official said more American soldiers would follow as the military gears up to take the streets from gunmen. The tours of 4,000 US soldiers in Iraq were extended for up to 4 months. 4 US Marines were killed in combat in Anbar province.
(AP, 7/29/06)(AP, 7/30/06)(SSFC, 7/30/06, p.A3)(SFC, 7/31/06, p.A3)
2006 Jul 29, Israel said it had pulled forces out of Hezbollah's stronghold in south Lebanon after completing its current operation there. Israeli planes targeted bridges in southern and eastern Lebanon in new airstrikes, destroying one in a resort area on the Syrian border. Israel rejected a request by the UN for a three-day cease-fire in Lebanon to deliver humanitarian supplies and allow civilians to leave the war zone.
(AP, 7/29/06)
2006 Jul 29, Israeli tanks pushed back into the Gaza Strip before dawn, a day after ending a bloody, 3-day sweep that killed 30 Palestinians. Israeli troops killed 2 militants including Hani Awijan (29), a leader of the radical Islamic Jihad’s militant wing in Nablus, in a West Bank raid.
(AP, 7/29/06)(AP, 7/30/06)
2006 Jul 29, A strike protesting against a visit by India's president to Indian Kashmir shut much of the region for a second day, while four soldiers were reportedly hurt in a rebel attack.
(AFP, 7/29/06)
2006 Jul 29, In Puerto Rico drug kingpin Jose Lopez Rosario (b.1976), who allegedly controlled the drug trade in the US island's northeastern region, died from gunshot wounds received on July 23. His death and his alleged connections to political figures were controversial in Puerto Rico, as local newspapers such as El Nuevo Dia and El Vocero covered the story for days after he died.
(AP, 5/12/10)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jose_Lopez_Rosario)
2006 Jul 29, Somalia's PM Mohammed Ali Gedi accused Egypt, Libya and Iran of providing weapons for Islamic militants who have seized control of much of this country's south.
(AP, 7/29/06)
2006 Jul 29, Sri Lanka's air force bombed Tamil Tiger rebel positions for a fourth day, killing at least 8 rebels and wounding 14.
(AP, 7/29/06)
2006 Jul 29, Marathon talks to end Ukraine's political paralysis broke off without an agreement between President Viktor Yushchenko and the pro-Russian parliamentary majority that has nominated his former Orange Revolution rival as prime minister.
(AP, 7/29/06)
2006 Jul 29, An oil spill occurred in Russia’s western Bryansk region on the border with Ukraine and Belarus. It affected a 4-square-mile area and contaminated water sources. 2 days later Russia’s Natural Resources Ministry said that the oil pipeline leak threatened environmental damage, but the pipeline’s operator said the spill only affected a 4,000-square-foot area and that the consequences had been dealt with over the weekend.
(AP, 7/31/06)
2006 Jul 30, Murray Bookchin (b.1921), American anarchist and libertarian socialist, died in Vermont. Bookchin initiated the critical theory of social ecology within anarchist, libertarian socialist, and ecological thought. His books included “Post-Scarcity Anarchism" (1971) and “The Ecology of Freedom: The Emergence and Dissolution of Hierarchy" (1982).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray_Bookchin)
2006 Jul 30, Afghan and coalition forces killed 23 Taliban militants in clashes in Helmand province's Garmser district.
(AFP, 7/31/06)
2006 Jul 30, In Bahrain 16 Indian workers died when a fire broke out in the building where they lived in the capital Manama. The six-storey building housed some 300 workers, mostly Indians, working for a contracting company.
(AFP, 7/30/06)
2006 Jul 30, It was reported that China had lowered the estimated number of HIV/AIDS infected people from 840,000 to 650,000.
(SSFC, 7/30/06, p.A17)
2006 Jul 30, Congolese voted in their first democratic election in more than four decades. Incumbent President Joseph Kabila later won a runoff.
(AP, 7/30/06)(AP, 7/30/07)
2006 Jul 30, Afghan soldiers and police killed six Taliban fighters and captured eight during a clash in southeastern Paktika province's Waza Khwa district. A suspected Taliban died when a land mine he was planting north of Kandahar city exploded.
(AP, 7/30/06)
2006 Jul 30, In India at least 8 people died during heavy monsoon rains at the weekend and more than 25,000 were evacuated in the western state of Gujarat.
(AFP, 7/30/06)
2006 Jul 30, In Iraq gunmen killed at least 23 pilgrims on their way to Najaf. A car bomb in Kirkuk killed 6 people and wounded 17.
(SFC, 7/31/06, p.A3)
2006 Jul 30, Israeli missiles hit several buildings in Qana, a southern Lebanon village, as people slept, killing 29, mostly children, in the deadliest attack in 19 days of fighting. Israeli PM Ehud Olmert expressed "great sorrow" for the airstrikes but blamed Hezbollah guerrillas for using the area to launch rockets at Israel. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan called an emergency meeting of the Security Council. Israel suspended air attacks on south Lebanon for 48 hours in the face of widespread outrage over the airstrike.
(AP, 8/3/06)(AP, 7/30/07)
2006 Jul 30, In Indian Kashmir 6 people were killed in shootings and 10 wounded in a grenade attack on a bus carrying Hindu pilgrims.
(AFP, 7/31/06)
2006 Jul 30, Residents on the tiny island nation of Sao Tome and Principe off West Africa voted for a new president.
(AP, 7/30/06)
2006 Jul 30, The first commercial flight in a decade departed Mogadishu’s newly reopened international airport, demonstrating how Islamic militants have pacified the once-anarchic capital and much of southern Somalia.
(AP, 7/30/06)
2006 Jul 30, The Seychelles held presidential elections. External debt was reported to be $590 million for the population of 82,000 people.
(Econ, 8/12/06, p.40)
2006 Jul 30, Sunbathers on a beach in Spain's Canary Islands came to the aid of 88 African migrants whose boat ran aground, giving them food, water and blankets after their dangerous trip in search of a new life.
(AP, 7/31/06)
2006 Jul 30, Duygu Asena (60), a best-selling writer and crusader for women's rights in Turkey, died after a two-year battle with a brain tumor. In 1978 she founded the first women's magazine in Turkey. Asena was the first Turkish writer to explore such topics as women's rights, sexuality and wife-beating. Her 1987 book “Woman Has No Name" broke sales records when it was printed, but was soon banned by the government which found it to be too lewd and obscene. The ban was lifted after a two-year court battle. A film adaptation of the book broke box office records in Turkey.
(AP, 7/31/06)
2006 Jul 30, In eastern Uganda a minibus that was speeding collided with a fuel truck killing 30 people.
(AP, 7/31/06)
2006 Jul 31, In California PM Blair and Gov. Schwarzenegger committed to a number of actions to fight global warming including a look for market-based ways to stem emissions of the gases believed to cause global warming.
(WSJ, 8/1/06, p.A8)
2006 Jul 31, In Los Angeles 2 women, Olga Rutterschmidt (73) and Helen Golay (75), were charged with killing homeless men in hit-and-run car crashes in order to collect over $2 million in life insurance. In 2008 both women were convicted of murder and conspiracy. They were sentenced to spend the rest of their lives in prison.
(SFC, 8/1/06, p.A3)(SFC, 4/18/08, p.B6)(SFC, 7/16/08, p.B5)
2006 Jul 31, SanDisk Corp. of Milpitas, Ca., agreed to buy M-Systems Flash Disk Pioneers Ltd. of Israel for $1.56 billion in stock.
(SFC, 8/1/06, p.D1)
2006 Jul 31, Scientists reported the development of a vaccine to control obesity in rats. The vaccine produced antibodies against ghrelin, a hormone that stimulates hunger and fat storage.
(SFC, 8/1/06, p.A2)
2006 Jul 31, NATO took command of southern Afghanistan from the United States, and the new commander of the push to pacify the insurgency-wracked region vowed that he would not fail millions of Afghans seeking peace and stability. A bomb exploded outside a mosque in eastern Afghanistan during a memorial service for a mujahedeen commander, killing at least eight people and wounding 16.
(AP, 7/31/06)
2006 Jul 31, Australian PM John Howard said he would seek a fifth straight term, ending his ambitious deputy's leadership hopes and cementing his place as one of the world's most successful conservative leaders.
(Reuters, 7/31/06)
2006 Jul 31, A lesbian couple lost a legal battle to have their Canadian marriage legally recognized in Britain.
(Reuters, 7/31/06)
2006 Jul 31, The Canadian Food Inspection Agency said two separate anthrax outbreaks in the Canadian Prairies have killed about 500 animals on an estimated 100 farms.
(Reuters, 7/31/06)
2006 Jul 31, In Colombia suspected rebels ambushed an army patrol, exploded a car bomb in Bogota and another bomb in the southwest, killing at least 18 people in a wave of attacks a week before the presidential inauguration.
(AP, 7/31/06)
2006 Jul 31, Dozens of polling stations reopened in Congo’s second-largest city, offering citizens stymied by violence during their nation’s historic elections another chance to vote.
(AP, 7/31/06)
2006 Jul 31, Cuban President Fidel Castro temporarily ceded power to his brother, Raul, after gastrointestinal surgery. In 2011 Fidel Castro said he resigned five years ago from all his official positions, including head of Cuba's Communist Party.
(AP, 7/31/07)(AP, 3/22/11)
2006 Jul 31, France's agriculture minister condemned the destruction of two fields of genetically modified corn by activists in southwestern France.
(AP, 7/31/06)
2006 Jul 31, Akbar Mohammadi (34) died in Tehran’s Evin Prison after a nine-day hunger strike to protest a lack of medical care. Mohammadi had been arrested for taking part in protests at Tehran University in July 1999, Iran's biggest anti-government demonstrations since the 1979 Islamic revolution. The EU later expressed grave concern regarding the harsh treatment of dissidents, opposition leaders, student activists and all human rights defenders in Iranian prisons.
(AP, 8/24/06)
2006 Jul 31, In Iraq gunmen wearing military fatigues kidnapped 26 employees and customers from a mobile phone store in the main shopping area of Baghdad. Sectarian killings claimed 30 lives.
(AP, 8/1/06)(WSJ, 8/1/06, p.A1)
2006 Jul 31, Israeli warplanes carried out airstrikes in southern Lebanon, hours after agreeing to temporarily halt raids while investigating a bombing that killed nearly 60 Lebanese civilians. Israel accidentally killed a Lebanese soldier when it hit a car that it believed was carrying a senior Hezbollah official.
(AP, 7/31/06)
2006 Jul 31, In Indian Kashmir four rebels and a policeman were killed in three separate gunbattles in southern Poonch and Pulwama districts.
(AP, 8/1/06)
2006 Jul 31, Every Kuwaiti citizen will get a $694 gift from the government after parliament unanimously backed the one-time payout. 2 million foreign workers, who make up the rest of Kuwait's population of 3 million, do not get the payment.
(AP, 7/31/06)
2006 Jul 31, Malawi's top prosecutor said theft and corruption charges against the former president Bakili Muluzi have been dropped after Pres. Bingu wa Mutharika suspended the chief investigator in the case.
(AP, 7/31/06)
2006 Jul 31, In Mexico supporters of the country’s leftist presidential candidate paralyzed the Mexico City’s financial district and said they won’t leave until the top electoral court rules on their demands for a recount in the disputed race.
(AP, 7/31/06)
2006 Jul 31, Mexican police found the body of a woman on a dirt road in the border city of Ciudad Juarez. Abigail Rodriguez (29), who apparently had been killed by a blow to the head and thrown out of a moving car, was the 14th woman found dead in Juarez so far this year.
(AP, 8/1/06)
2006 Jul 31, Peru’s President Alan Garcia cut government salaries, including his own, three days after announcing a long list of austerity measures in his inaugural address.
(AP, 7/31/06)
2006 Jul 31, Russian officials said more than 220 pieces, including jewelry and enameled objects worth about $5 million, stolen from the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, were not insured. The theft was discovered after a routine inventory check that began in October 2005 and was completed at the end of July.
(AP, 8/1/06)(SFC, 8/1/06, p.A3)
2006 Jul 31, Serbia’s PM Vojislav Kostunica said in published remarks that Serbia will reject independence as a solution for Kosovo and continue to consider the province part of its territory.
(AP, 7/31/06)
2006 Jul 31, In South Korea Jeong Kyung-hak (48) was arrested on charges of being a spy for North Korea and having illegally arrived on Jul 27 with forged Philippines identity documents.
(AP, 8/21/06)
2006 Jul 31, In northeastern Sri Lanka heavy fighting over control of a water supply killed 35 Tamil rebels and seven soldiers. A rebel leader declared the island nation's four-year-old cease-fire over.
(AP, 7/31/06)
2006 Jul 31, Turkey named Gen. Yasar Buyukanit as the new military chief. He favored a tougher line against Kurdish rebels and negotiations on joining the EU.
(AP, 7/31/06)
2006 Jul 31, The UN passed Resolution 1696, which demanded that Iran suspend uranium enrichment by the end of August.
(www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2006/sc8792.doc.htm)
2006 Jul 31, The UN scrapped a meeting of nations that might contribute troops to help stabilize south Lebanon, a decision that reflected the deep divisions among key nations on how to end the three-week war between Israel and Hezbollah.
(AP, 7/31/06)
2006 Jul 31, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez praised Vietnam for its battle against "imperialism" and pledged to help the communist country develop its nascent oil and gas industry during a two-day state visit.
(AP, 8/1/06)
2006 Jul 31, Zimbabwe devalued its currency by 60% and slashed loan rates 550 points to 300%. 3 zeroes were off denominations amid 1200% inflation.
(WSJ, 8/1/06, p.A1)
2006 Jul, Interpol, at the request of the Bush administration, assembled central bankers, police agencies and banknote industry officials to make the US case against counterfeiting by North Korea. In 2008 a 10-month investigation by the McClatchy newspapers found that evidence supporting charges was uncertain at best.
(SFC, 1/10/08, p.A13)
2006 Jul, US Scientists reported that the number of fires in the western United States had increased fourfold since 1986 and attributed the increase to climate change.
(Econ, 7/22/06, p.37)
2006 Jul, Eclipse Aviation of Albuquerque, NM, hoped to get approval from the FAA for its new very light jet (VLJ), which sets 5 passengers and a pilot.
(Econ, 7/1/06, p.61)
2006 Jul, A study led by Roland Griffiths of Johns Hopkins Univ. showed that psilocybin, the active ingredient in “magic mushroom," induces mental states akin to the highest religious experiences, and that it has lasting effects on those who take it.
(www.erowid.org/plants/mushrooms/)(Econ, 7/15/06, p.78)
2006 Jul, Canada’s Montreal Exchange announced plans to start trading credits for carbon-dioxide emissions, a scheme modeled on the Amsterdam-based European Climate Exchange set up in 2005.
(Econ, 7/22/06, p.39)
2006 Jul, In Shanghai, China, a financial scandal was uncovered that involved the misappropriation of one-third of the city’s $1.2 billion social-security fund. An official said that $2 billion had been embezzled from the fund since 1998. Chinese investigators began looking into corruption and malfeasance associated with Shanghai’s $1.2 billion pension fund. On Sep 24 the probe brought down the city’s top official, Communist party Secretary Chen Liangyu, a British educated architect. In 2007 the government made a propaganda film titled “The Harm of Greed" featuring confessions from 11 people involved in the scandal.
(Econ, 9/9/06, p.42)(WSJ, 11/14/06, p.C14)(WSJ, 2/6/07, p.A1)(WSJ, 1/30/08, p.A9)
2006 Jul, The Dominican Republic government imposed a new law to combat crime, all bars, liquor stores and nightclubs must close at midnight on weekdays and at 2 am on weekends.
(AP, 10/14/06)
2006 Jul, Some 162,000 Iraqis had registered as refugees with 30,000 in this month alone. About 3,500 violent deaths were reported across Iraq including 1,500 in the Baghdad area for just this month. Figures showed a steady increase in killings since the beginning of the year.
(Econ, 7/29/06, p.45)(AP, 8/9/06)(WSJ, 8/17/06, p.A1)
2006 Jul, In Japan fans of pachinko slot machines queued up to play the latest Hokuto-no-ken (North-star Fist) game. It was estimated that Japanese spent $260 billion playing pachinko and pachislot slot machines. Parlors gave non-cash prizes, but shops nearby allowed winners to trade their prizes for cash.
(Econ, 7/29/06, p.60)
2006 Jul, Mauritania netted $700 million from the EU for fishing rights over 6 years. The amount of fish in West African waters has declined by 50% over the past 3 decades.
(WSJ, 1/18/07, p.A13)
2006 Jul, In Myanmar the daughter of junta supremo Than Shwe (73) was married. In November a leaked video of the lavish wedding sparked outrage among ordinary people in the military-ruled and deeply impoverished nation.
(Reuters, 11/2/06)
2006 Jul, Oman and the UAE completed the delineation of their 1,000-km (625-mile) shared borders, in line with a June 2002 accord.
(AFP, 1/30/11)
2006 Jul, In Pakistan some 7% of Sindh province landowners hold over 40% of the Sindh’s land.
(Econ, 7/8/06, Survey p.12)
2006 Jul, Willie Hofmeyr, head of South Africa’s Special Investigating Unit, said 400,000 civil servants had been identified getting welfare payments to which they were not entitled.
(http://tinyurl.com/yflgrxl)(Econ, 2/6/10, p.52)
2006 Jul, In Spain employees of the airline Iberia blocked Barcelona runways over a new baggage check arrangement. In 2011 Spain’s Supreme Court confirmed 2-year prison sentences for 23 employees whose actions affected some 600 flights leaving 100,000 passengers stranded.
(SFC, 1/29/11, p.A2)
2006 Jul, Spain’s inflation stood close to 4%, almost 1.5 points above the average for the euro area. Spain’s current account deficit was among the highest in the world heading for over 9% of GDP. Housing was estimated to be overvalued by as much as 25-30%.
(Econ, 7/29/06, p.49)
2006 Jul, In Sudan 8 Sudanese aid workers were killed this month in attacks across Darfur.
(SFC, 8/9/06, p.A3)
2006 Jul, Istanbul’s seventh high court reopened prosecution against Elif Shafak (b.1971), Turkish writer, for “denigrating Turkishness" in her latest novel “The Bastard of Istanbul." Her trial was set for Sep 21, 4 days she was due to give birth.
(http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,,1815420,00.html)
2006 Aug 1, Former President Clinton and mayors of some of the world's largest cities announced an initiative to combat climate change and increase energy efficiency in everything from street lights to building materials.
(AP, 8/1/06)
2006 Aug 1, A US report said graft in Iraq reconstruction is running at $4 billion a year and growing.
(WSJ, 8/2/06, p.A1)
2006 Aug 1, US sanctions on Myanmar were extended for up to three years under a law signed by President Bush, an attempt to increase pressure on the government to follow through with democratic reforms.
(AP, 8/1/06)
2006 Aug 1, Mel Gibson issued a statement in which he denied being a bigot; he also apologized to "everyone in the Jewish community for the vitriolic and harmful words" he'd used when he was arrested in southern California for investigation of drunken driving.
(AP, 8/1/07)
2006 Aug 1, Kansas voters in the state’s primary ousted the conservative majority on the Board of Education that favored “intelligent design" over Darwin’s theory of evolution.
(SFC, 8/3/06, p.A3)
2006 Aug 1, Philip H. Knight, founder of Nike Inc., pledged $105 million to the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Most of it will be used for a new $275 million facility to be called the Knight Management Center.
(SFC, 8/2/06, p.B1)
2006 Aug 1, In southern Afghanistan Taliban militants killed three British soldiers. 18 Taliban militants and one policeman were killed as Afghan forces and coalition aircraft raided an insurgent hide-out near Garmser.
(AP, 8/1/06)(AP, 8/2/06)
2006 Aug 1, Cabinda, a 7,000 sq-km province of Angola located on the western coast just north of the CongoDRC, signed the “Memorandum of Understanding for Peace in Cabinda" with the government of Angola, granting it “a special statute" and greater autonomy. In 2007 the province pumped over half of Angola’s 1.7 million barrels per day oil production.
(Econ, 1/5/08, Angola p.8)
2006 Aug 1, Britain launched the country's first public terror alert system and said it faces a severe risk of another terrorist attack.
(AP, 8/1/06)
2006 Aug 1, Chinese official media reported that Mouding county in Yunnan killed as many as 50,000 dogs in a 5-day government campaign ordered after three people died from rabies. China’s government said police have seized about 6,000 illegal firearms and tons of explosives in a two-month crackdown across three provinces.
(AP, 8/1/06)
2006 Aug 1, A Congolese opposition party and former rebel group denounced widespread fraud in the country's historic elections in a protest that heralded a divisive political dispute over the polls.
(AP, 8/1/06)
2006 Aug 1, Fidel Castro remained out of sight after undergoing intestinal surgery and temporarily turning over power to his brother Raul. He released a statement in which he sought to reassure Cubans that his health was stable after intestinal surgery.
(AP, 8/1/06)(AP, 8/1/07)
2006 Aug 1, In northern India a school bus carrying about 50 children plunged into a canal, killing at least six children.
(AP, 8/1/06)
2006 Aug 1, Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad rejected the UN Security Council resolution giving Iran until Aug. 31 to suspend uranium enrichment. Ahmadinejad added that Tehran will pursue its nuclear program.
(AP, 8/1/06)
2006 Aug 1, Bombings and shootings across Iraq killed over 70 people, including 24 people in a bus destroyed by a roadside bomb in Beiji. In the Karradah neighborhood of Baghdad, a car bomb exploded during morning rush hour near a bank, killing at least 14 people and injuring 37. A US report said graft in Iraq reconstruction is running at $4 billion a year and growing.
(AP, 8/1/06)(AP, 8/2/06)(WSJ, 8/2/06, p.A1)
2006 Aug 1, Israel's air force fired missiles into northern Gaza, killing a 14-year-old boy and wounding four others near Beit Hanoun.
(AP, 8/1/06)
2006 Aug 1, In Indian Kashmir 4 security personnel were killed in a shooting at a popular tourist spot.
(AP, 8/1/06)
2006 Aug 1, Heavy fighting raged in the Lebanese border village of Aita al-Shaab, and Hezbollah television said 35 Israeli soldiers had been killed or wounded in the fighting. Israeli warplanes pounded Shiite Lebanese villages in many areas along the border and struck Hezbollah strongholds deep inside the country.
(AP, 8/1/06)
2006 Aug 1, The Papua New Guinea government declared a state of emergency in the resource-rich Southern Highlands province. PM Somare said security forces had been sent to the graft-ridden province and government controllers appointed to try to restore good governance.
(AFP, 8/1/06)
2006 Aug 1, A Moscow judge declared the Yukos oil company bankrupt, paving the way for the liquidation of what was once Russia's biggest oil producer.
(AP, 8/1/06)
2006 Aug 1, Dutch Cardinal Johannes Willebrands (96), a key figure in the Roman Catholic Church's efforts to improve relations with other Christians and Jews, died.
(AP, 8/2/06)
2006 Aug 1, Officials said incumbent Seychelles President James Michel of the People's Progressive Front won nearly 54% of the vote over the weekend, while opposition leader Wavel Ramkalawan got 46%.
(AP, 8/1/06)
2006 Aug 1, A pro-rebel Web site reported said Tamil Tiger rebels destroyed a Sri Lanka navy boat in a battle near an eastern port killing 8 sailors. Navy spokesman Commander D.K.P Dassanayake denied the report and said sailors destroyed three rebel attack boats.
(AP, 8/1/06)
2006 Aug 1, Assailants carried out at least 40 bomb and arson attacks in Thailand's three Muslim-dominated southernmost provinces. At least three people were reported hurt.
(AP, 8/1/06)
2006 Aug 2, A Pentagon official said evidence collected on the deaths of 24 Iraqis in Haditha supports accusations that US Marines deliberately shot the civilians, including unarmed women and children on Nov 19, 2005.
(AP, 8/2/06)
2006 Aug 2, Five days after being pulled over by police, actor-director Mel Gibson was charged with misdemeanor drunken driving, having an elevated blood-alcohol level and having an open container of liquor in his car. Gibson later pleaded no contest to drunken driving under a deal in which he received three years' probation, paid a fine and agreed to attend alcohol rehabilitation classes.
(AP, 8/2/07)
2006 Aug 2, Florida and CSX Transportation struck a deal on a nearly $1 billion commuter rail system in central Florida to relieve gridlock in and around Orlando.
(Reuters, 8/2/06)
2006 Aug 2, AOL shifted to an advertising strategy as customers cancelled their dial-up service and jumped to high-speed Internet connections.
(SFC, 8/3/06, p.C1)
2006 Aug 2, Australia's central bank raised interest rates by 25 basis points to a six-year high of 6.0% in an effort to head off inflationary pressures in a booming economy.
(AFP, 8/2/06)
2006 Aug 2, The Australian government said it had started reducing troop numbers in East Timor as security in the tiny nation was steadily improving.
(AP, 8/3/06)
2006 Aug 2, In southern Colombia a land mine planted by leftist rebels killed six coca eradicators and injured seven others.
(AP, 8/2/06)
2006 Aug 2, A Paris commercial court granted Eurotunnel protection from creditors, enabling the operator of the Channel Tunnel to freeze payments on its debt mountain of 9.0 billion euros (11.5 billion dollars).
(AFP, 8/2/06)
2006 Aug 2, India banned children under the age of 14 from working as domestic servants or at hotels, tea shops, restaurants and resorts. The labor ministry said the ban would come into effect from October 10.
(Reuters, 8/2/06)
2006 Aug 2, President Jalal Talabani said that Iraqi forces will assume security duties for the whole country by the end of the year, taking over responsibility from US and other foreign troops now policing all but one of the 18 provinces. Sectarian and political violence claimed at least 53 lives, including 11 young soccer players and spectators who died when two bombs exploded in a field in a Shiite neighborhood of Baghdad. 2 US Marines died in Anbar province.
(AP, 8/2/06)(AP, 8/3/06)(SFC, 8/4/06, p.A9)
2006 Aug 2, Israel pressed the first full day of a massive new ground attack, sending 8,000 troops into southern Lebanon and seizing five people it said were Hezbollah fighters in a dramatic airborne raid on a northeastern town. Hezbollah retaliated with its deepest strikes yet into Israel, firing a record number of more than 230 rockets. An Israeli-American was killed as he fled for home by bicycle, and a stray rocket hit the West Bank for the first time. People in the Lebanese village of Al Jamaliyeh, outside the Hezbollah stronghold of Baalbek, used a front-end loader to carry away some of the dead after a night of Israeli airstrikes and a commando raid inside Baalbek that residents said killed at least 15 civilians.
(AP, 8/2/06)(SFC, 8/3/06, p.A1)
2006 Aug 2, In Oaxaca, Mexico, about 500 women banging spoons against pots and pans seized a state-run television station and broadcast a homemade video that showed police kicking protesters out of Oaxaca's main square last month. In southern Monte Orden village heavy rains caused a mountainside to give way, burying 2 homes and killing 11 people, 4 of them children.
(AP, 8/2/06)
2006 Aug 2, Production at Cantarell, Mexico’s biggest oil field, was reported to be declining. The site accounted for about 60% of Mexico’s oil. A third of Mexico’s federal budget depended on oil sales.
(WSJ, 8/2/06, p.A4)
2006 Aug 2, Somali leaders struggled to regroup after a week in which 29 ministers quit the government, with the defectors urging the virtually powerless administration to reconcile with Islamic militants who have seized the capital.
(AP, 8/2/06)
2006 Aug 2, South Africans faced one of their harshest winters in years, with at least four deaths blamed on flooding from heavy rain that has caused travel delays in the south and west of the country.
(AP, 8/2/06)
2006 Aug 2, Tamil rebels said they had overrun four Sri Lankan army camps around the northeastern port of Trincomalee. The Defense Ministry acknowledged that five soldiers were killed in the attacks and claimed its forces killed 40 insurgents and wounded 70 others.
(AP, 8/2/06)
2006 Aug 2, In southern Thailand a bomb planted along a railroad exploded and killed three policemen.
(AP, 8/2/06)
2006 Aug 3, US authorities confirmed at least 25 deaths in 9 states from the heat wave that set in on July 30.
(SFC, 8/4/06, p.A3)
2006 Aug 3, In Phoenix, Ariz., Dale S. Hausner (33) and Samuel John Dieteman (30), accused of shooting two dozen people, including six fatally, were arrested after police tailed them for a week. In 2009 Hausner was convicted of 6 murders. In 2009 Dieteman was sentenced to life in prison for random shootings in the Phoenix area in 2005 and 2006.
(AP, 8/5/06)(WSJ, 3/28/09, p.A2)(SFC, 7/30/09, p.A4)
2006 Aug 3, Arthur Lee (61), rock pioneer, died in Memphis. He fronted the band Love and established himself as the 1st black rock star in the post Beatle’s era. The group’s debut album, “Love," was the 1st rock record released by Electra Records.
(SSFC, 8/6/06, p.B6)
2006 Aug 3, Afghanistan's government ordered around 1,500 South Korean Christians who came to the Islamic republic for a "peace festival" to leave the country. The US-led coalition killed 25 Taliban fighters in a joint operation with Afghan forces in the country's south. A gunbattle near the capital killed one militant. A suspected Taliban suicide car bomber killed 21 civilians and wounded 13 at a bazaar in Panjwayi. On the outskirts of Kandahar city militant attacks killed 4 Canadian soldiers and wounded another 10.
(AFP, 8/3/06)(AP, 8/4/06)
2006 Aug 3, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf (90), German-born opera soprano, died in Schrums, Austria.
(SFC, 8/4/06, p.B9)(Econ, 8/12/06, p.72)
2006 Aug 3, In Brazil officials said authorities are evicting thousands of peasants who have been ordered off ranches in northern Brazil by a court ruling obtained by the land owners.
(AP, 8/3/06)
2006 Aug 3, More than 230,000 customers in Ontario and Quebec were without power following a series of violent thunderstorms over the past couple of days.
(AP, 8/3/06)
2006 Aug 3, Typhoon Prapiroon slammed into southern China, packing heavy rain and 75 mph winds as authorities evacuated tens of thousands of people from their homes.
(AP, 8/3/06)
2006 Aug 3, State press reported that China is building a 27-billion-dollar train line from Beijing to the southern economic hub of Shenzhen and foreign investors will be invited to join the project. The new 2,300-kilometer (1,420-mile) railway will cut travel time between Beijing and Shenzhen, which borders Hong Kong, from 24 hours to 10.
(AFP, 8/3/06)
2006 Aug 3, In eastern Congo a small passenger plane crashed into a mountain and then tumbled into a valley, killing all 17 passengers and crew.
(AP, 8/4/06)
2006 Aug 3, A pair of European central banks raised interest rates, increasing expectations on Wall Street that the Federal Reserve would follow suit next week. The European Central Bank hiked rates .25% to 3%, with a similar hike by the Bank of England to 4.75%.
(AP, 8/3/06)
2006 Aug 3, A French law that allows regulators to force Apple Computer Inc. to make its iPod player and iTunes online store compatible with rival offerings went into effect.
(AP, 8/3/06)
2006 Aug 3, French health officials said the sweltering temperatures that gripped Europe last month killed 112 people.
(AP, 8/3/06)
2006 Aug 3, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, making his first trip to Haiti, called for strengthening the national police force to stem an upsurge in kidnapping and lawlessness.
(AP, 8/3/06)
2006 Aug 3, In India federal MPs demanded a nationwide ban on Pepsi and Coke after the privately-funded Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) said 11 drinks sold by the two US companies contained unacceptable doses of pesticides.
(AFP, 8/4/06)
2006 Aug 3, Siti Fadilah Supari, Indonesia’s health minister, declared that genomic data on bird flu viruses could be accessed by anyone.
(Econ, 8/12/06, p.65)
2006 Aug 3, In Iraq an improvised explosive device in a pile of garbage exploded in the center of Baghdad, killing at least 10 people and injuring 32. Gunmen shot to death four people in separate incidents in Baghdad, Amarah, Mosul and Basra. The bodies of 9 men were found floating in separate places in the Tigris River. At least two of the bodies were blindfolded, bound and shot. Coalition forces killed at least three "terrorists" during an air strike and multiple raids southeast of Baghdad. A suicide bomber drove into a soccer field in the town of Hatra near Mosul, setting off a blast that killed 7 spectators and 3 policemen. Gunmen shot and killed 4 people and wounded 8 from a Shiite family in Dujail. 2 US Marine were killed in Anbar province.
(AP, 8/3/06)(AP, 8/4/06)(SFC, 8/4/06, p.A9)
2006 Aug 3, A massive wave of guerrilla rockets pounded northern Israel in a matter of minutes, killing 8 people. Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah's leader, offered to stop the attacks if Israel ends its airstrikes. Israel lost four soldiers in fighting. Israeli military said four Hezbollah fighters were killed and two wounded. Lebanese security officials said a missile crashed into a two-story house in the border village of Taibeh, killing a couple and their daughter. Lebanese PM Fuad Saniora said Lebanon's death toll in more than three weeks of Israel-Hezbollah fighting has reached more than 900. France circulated a revised UN resolution calling for an immediate halt to Israeli-Hezbollah fighting and spelling out conditions for a permanent cease-fire in Lebanon.
(AP, 8/3/06)
2006 Aug 3, Israeli troops raided southern Gaza, killing at least eight Palestinians, including four militants and an 8-year-old boy.
(AP, 8/3/06)
2006 Aug 3, Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso arrived in Baghdad on a surprise visit, bringing with him a loan of 3.3 billion yen ($29 million) to jump-start Iraq's economic development.
(AP, 8/3/06)
2006 Aug 3, In Malaysia the Islamic world's largest organization of countries demanded on that the UN implement an immediate cease-fire in Lebanon and investigate what it called flagrant human rights violations by Israel.
(AP, 8/3/06)
2006 Aug 3, In Mexico Mrs. Alberta Alcantara Juan and Mrs. Teresa Gonzalez Cornelio were arrested (along with Jacinta Francisco Marcial) for events that supposedly occurred on March 26, 2006 when Federal Investigation Agents attempted to confiscate local merchants’ goods and damaged some of them. In 2010 Mexico's Supreme Court overturned kidnapping convictions and ordered the release of the two Otomi Indian market vendors whose case received international attention. Marcial was freed last year.
(http://tinyurl.com/373f25t)(AP, 4/28/10)
2006 Aug 3, Pakistani Interior Minister Aftab Sherpao and US envoy Ryan Crocker signed a memorandum of understanding for $2.7 million in security and communications gear and to help build more posts on the Afghan frontier.
(AFP, 8/3/06)
2006 Aug 3, Fresh fighting broke out between Philippine forces and Al-Qaeda-linked militants after four people were killed in a major operation to capture two suspected Bali bombers.
(AFP, 8/3/06)
2006 Aug 3, In Sri Lanka artillery fire hit 4 schools being used as shelters from fighting raging between government troops and Tamil Tiger rebels, killing at least 17 people in the northeastern town of Muttur.
(AP, 8/3/06)(SFC, 8/4/06, p.A10)
2006 Aug 3, Ukrainian Pres. Viktor Yushchenko nominated former foe Viktor Yanukovych for prime minister after Yanukovych signed a memorandum on national unity.
(SFC, 8/3/06, p.A3)
2006 Aug 4, The US placed sanctions on 7 firms from North Korea, Russia, India and Cuba for arms dealings with Iran.
(WSJ, 8/5/06, p.A1)
2006 Aug 4, In Philadelphia Danieal Kelly (14), a disabled girl, was found dead in her mother's squalid house covered with bone-deep, maggot-infested bedsores. She weighed 42 pounds. In 2008 4 social workers were among 9 people charged in relation to her death. In 2008 Andrea Kelly, the mother, was charged with murder and Daniel, the father, was charged with child endangerment. Both parents retained lawyers who filed suits against their criminal co-defendants, blaming them for the girl's demise. In 2009 mother Andrea Kelly pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 20-40 years in prison. In 2010 case worker Julius Murray was sentenced to 11 years in prison on fraud and obstruction in the case. He had skipped visits and still faced involuntary manslaughter charges.
(AP, 8/1/08)(www.philly.com/philly/news/26859869.html)(SFC, 4/30/09, p.A4)(SFC, 6/12/10, p.A9)
2006 Aug 4, In southern Afghanistan 2 police officers were killed and eight others wounded in a roadside bomb aimed at a district governor. UNICEF said schools are increasingly being attacked across Afghanistan and an estimated 100,000 children in the south are shut out of the classroom due to closures.
(AFP, 8/5/06)(Reuters, 8/4/06)
2006 Aug 4, In Argentina Julio Simon, a former police officer, was sentenced to 25 years in prison for human rights abuses in connection with the 1978 disappearance of Chilean Jose Poblete and his Argentine wife, Gertrudis Hlaczik, during the military dictatorship.
(AP, 8/5/06)
2006 Aug 4, Bangladesh announced a fresh round of polio vaccination drives amid growing signs that the lethal disease has staged a comeback in the impoverished South Asian country.
(AFP, 8/4/06)
2006 Aug 4, In Colombia leftist rebels were blamed for two attacks, a car bomb that killed four officers outside a Cali police station and an attack that killed two soldiers in a western province.
(AP, 8/4/06)
2006 Aug 4, In India floods caused by heavy monsoon rains swept away people and destroyed homes in the southern coastal area of Andhra Pradesh, killing at least 31 people over the last 2 days.
(AP, 8/4/06)
2006 Aug 4, Hundreds of thousands of Shiites chanting "Death to Israel" and "Death to America" marched through the streets of Baghdad's biggest Shiite district in a massive show of support for Hezbollah in its battle against Israel. At least 35 people were killed elsewhere in Iraq, many of them in a car bombing and gunbattle in the northern city of Mosul. Some 3,700 soldiers of the Army's 172nd Stryker Brigade moved into Baghdad from the northern city of Mosul. In Mosul 20 militants were believed to have been killed during prolonged street gunfights with security forces in the city's eastern neighborhoods. Gunmen killed a bodyguard of a senior Justice Ministry official in western Baghdad, and a police commando was killed by a roadside bomb in the central city of Samarra.
(AP, 8/4/06)(AP, 8/5/06)
2006 Aug 4, Israel expanded its assault on Lebanon, launching its first major attack on the Christian heartland north of Beirut and severing the last significant road link to Syria. Hezbollah renewed attacks on northern Israel, killing two civilians in a barrage of 120 rockets. An Israeli airstrike hit dozens of farm workers loading vegetables near the Lebanon-Syria border, killing as many as 33. Five Lebanese civilians were killed and 19 wounded in the Israeli airstrikes north of Beirut in Christian areas where Hezbollah has little support. Hezbollah's leader offered to stop attacking if Israel ends its airstrikes. Israeli airstrikes flattened two southern Lebanese houses and more than 50 people were buried in the rubble, security officials and the state news agency said. Israel denied attacking the villages.
(AP, 8/4/06)(SFC, 8/5/06, p.A11)
2006 Aug 4, Israel began pulling tanks out of southern Gaza after a two-day incursion. Israeli troops conducted house-to-house searches in the southern Gaza Strip and killed three Palestinians with tanks and air strikes.
(AP, 8/4/06)
2006 Aug 4, In Mexico's southernmost Chiapas state a 7-year-old boy and his father died, bringing to 10 the number of people killed after eating poisonous mushrooms. Officials said recent genetic mutations have made some mushrooms, consumed for years in Indian communities, newly poisonous.
(AP, 8/4/06)
2006 Aug 4, In southern Nigeria 3 Filipinos working for a US construction firm were kidnapped, a day after a German was abducted in the same region.
(AP, 8/4/06)
2006 Aug 4, In northern Pakistan monsoon rains triggered fresh landslides and floods, as officials and reports said 37 people had died over the last 4 days in weather-related incidents.
(AP, 8/4/06)
2006 Aug 4, Sri Lankan troops thwarted a Tamil Tiger rebel attack in northeastern Muttur, killing 35 insurgents. The Red Cross said 6,000 to 7,000 families were still trying to flee Muttur.
(AP, 8/5/06)(AP, 8/7/06)
2006 Aug 4, In Turkey 2 explosives detonated within minutes of each other in a southern city of Adana, seriously wounding one person and injuring 16 others.
(AP, 8/4/06)
2006 Aug 4, In Uganda Vincent Otti, deputy leader of The Lord's Resistance Army, said his group has declared a unilateral cease-fire, but government negotiators said they have not yet agreed to peace.
(AP, 8/4/06)
2006 Aug 4, The Ukraine Parliament named Viktor Yanukovych prime minister. His fraud-tainted 2004 presidential victory was turned back by the Orange Revolution.
(AP, 8/4/06)
2006 Aug 5, The late Reggie White was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame along with Troy Aikman, Warren Moon, John Madden, Rayfield Wright and Harry Carson.
(AP, 8/5/07)
2006 Aug 5, In Oakland, Ca., CHP Officer Brent Clearman (33) was critically wounded at the 66th Ave. on-ramp in a hit-and-run incident. Clearman died the next day of his severe injuries. Russell Rodrigues (47) surrendered on August 7, 2006, and pleaded guilty to felony hit-and-run charges on September 26, 2006. He faced up to 4 years in prison.
(SFC, 9/27/06, p.B7)(www.porac.org/lineofduty6.html)
2006 Aug 5, In Missouri Megan Shultz (24) disappeared from her Columbia home. Her husband, Keith Comfort, told authorities that she walked out of their apartment after an argument at around 1 a.m. and never returned. On Aug. 5, 2019, Comfort (37) walked into the police station in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, and confessed to killing his wife. On Sept. 18, 2019, her remains were found in a landfill
(AP, 9/19/19)
2006 Aug 5, Susan Butcher (51), four-time Iditarod champion, died in Seattle, Wa. In 1986 she became the Alaska race's second female winner and brought increased national attention to its grueling competition.
(AP, 8/6/06)
2006 Aug 5, Afghan and NATO forces aided by air strikes killed 17 Taliban in southern Afghanistan. A NATO soldier was killed and three were injured when their armored jeep crashed in Kandahar province. Taliban attacked a police patrol in southern Ghazni province overnight which left an intelligence official and a rebel killed and two police wounded.
(AP, 8/5/06)(AFP, 8/5/06)(AP, 8/6/06)
2006 Aug 5, The US and France reached agreement on a UN Security Council resolution aimed at ending the fighting between Israel and Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas.
(AP, 8/5/06)
2006 Aug 5, Thousands marched through London to demand a halt to the Lebanon war as the British government tried to deflect criticism that it has failed to call for an immediate ceasefire.
(AP, 8/5/06)
2006 Aug 5, Marie Stopes International hosted Europe's first "Masturbate-a-thon" with the HIV/AIDS charity the Terrence Higgins Trust. It expected up to 200 people to attend the sponsored masturbation session in Clerkenwell, central London.
(Reuters, 8/5/06)
2006 Aug 5, Floyd Landis was fired by his team and the Tour de France no longer considered him its champion after his second doping sample tested positive for higher-than-allowable levels of testosterone. Landis maintained his innocence.
(AP, 8/5/07)
2006 Aug 5, In Iraq 2 members of Saddam's former regime were shot dead in separate incidents. A US soldier died in Anbar province.
(AP, 8/5/06)
2006 Aug 5, Israeli naval commandos battled with Hezbollah in the southern port city of Tyre, while a guerrilla rocket killed a soldier in clashes on the border and Israeli raids left at least eight people dead in multiple strikes across the country. The Lebanese government's Higher Relief Council said 907 Lebanese had been killed in the conflict. 75 Israelis have been killed, 45 soldiers and 30 civilians.
(AP, 8/5/06)
2006 Aug 5, Israel pressed ahead with its incursion into the southern Gaza Strip as airstrikes killed 5 Palestinians, including a mother and her 2 children. Tanks rolled to the edge of Rafah.
(AP, 8/5/06)
2006 Aug 5, Mexico's top electoral court rejected a full recount in the disputed presidential election, ordering a 9% partial count instead, angering leftist protesters camped in the capital demanding a new vote-by-vote tally over their fraud allegations.
(AP, 8/5/06)(WSJ, 8/7/06, p.A1)
2006 Aug 5, A minister said Nepal plans to seize lands owned by King Gyanendra and other royal family members and distribute them to the poor as it moves toward treating the monarch like a "normal citizen."
(AFP, 8/5/06)
2006 Aug 5, In northwestern Pakistan a bridge collapsed amid heavy rains, killing at least 23 people.
(AP, 8/5/06)
2006 Aug 5, Interfax news said Russian police have detained the husband of a museum curator and a 2nd person suspected of stealing hundreds of artworks from St. Petersburg’s Hermitage Museum.
(Reuters, 8/5/06)
2006 Aug 5, Russia's state-controlled arms trader and top aircraft maker criticized Washington for imposing sanctions on them over dealings with Iran. The defense ministry said the move reflected US annoyance at arms sales to Venezuela. A Russian rocket carrying US telecommunications equipment blasted off, 10 days after another rocket carrying 18 satellites crashed after launch.
(AP, 8/5/06)
2006 Aug 5, Sri Lankan soldiers retook control of Muttur after six days of fighting Tamil rebels there, and the military urged thousands of displaced civilians to return.
(AP, 8/5/06)
2006 Aug 6, Oil giant BP announced an indefinite shutdown of the biggest oilfield in the US, at Prudhoe Bay in Alaska, after finding a pipeline leak. BP was able to maintain partial operations.
(AP, 8/6/07)
2006 Aug 6, Walt Disney World hiked ticket prices for the second time in 2006, raising the cost of a basic one-day, one-park admission to $67, according to a pricing chart posted on the company's media Web site.
(AP, 8/6/06)
2006 Aug 6, Scientists said a recurring "dead zone" of low-oxygen water off the Oregon coast is larger than in previous years and may be triggered by global warming. They concluded that it is being caused by explosive blooms of tiny plants known as phytoplankton, which die and sink to the bottom, then are eaten by bacteria which use up the oxygen in the water.
(AP, 8/6/06)
2006 Aug 6, In Afghanistan 4 suspected Taliban killed two police using rocket-propelled grenades and heavy machine guns at a checkpoint in Murghab district in western Badghis province. A suspected suicide bomber in a small truck hit a military convoy outside Kandahar, wounding at least one foreign soldier. A British soldier was killed in Helmand province.
(AP, 8/6/06)(SFC, 8/7/06, p.A8)
2006 Aug 6, Bolivia’s President Evo Morales officially opened a Constituent Assembly to rewrite the nation's constitution.
(AP, 8/6/06)
2006 Aug 6, In Burundi gunmen hurled a grenade at a bar frequented by army officers, killing four people. Authorities said the attack was an attempt to undermine the government.
(AP, 8/7/06)
2006 Aug 6, Cambodian customs over the weekend seized 12 luxury vehicles stolen in Canada, including a Hummer and a Cadillac popular with hip-hop music stars, giving an intriguing insight into the world of international car smuggling.
(Reuters, 8/7/06)
2006 Aug 6, In China an explosion aboard a bus in Hunan province's Guiyang county killed eight people, just days after a similar explosion killed 11. Fatal explosions aboard public buses in recent years have been blamed on both bomb attacks and accidents with gas canisters and other dangerous cargo.
(AP, 8/7/06)
2006 Aug 6, A former official of Egypt's Gama'a Islamiya said that even if some members of the Islamist group had joined al Qaeda it was unlikely that most would.
(AP, 8/6/06)
2006 Aug 6, In eastern Ethiopia over 250 people were killed by flooding in Dire Dawa. As many as 300 remained missing.
(Reuters, 8/8/06)(AP, 8/11/06)
2006 Aug 6, Hong Kong's legislature passed a law regulating phone tapping and other surveillance measures, a move critics fear will curtail civil liberties in the former British colony now ruled by China.
(AP, 8/6/06)
2006 Aug 6, In India a boat capsized in a rain-swollen river near New Delhi, leaving 3 people dead and 27 others missing as the nationwide death toll from the monsoon rose to at least 359.
(AP, 8/6/06)
2006 Aug 6, It was reported that illegal logging in Indonesia’s Aceh province had risen to record levels as people reached into virgin forests to rebuild some 130,000 homes destroyed in December, 2004, tsunami. Deforestation across Indonesia had already led to a 40% loss in the last 50 years.
(SSFC, 8/6/06, p.A20)
2006 Aug 6, Iran's top nuclear negotiator said that Iran will expand uranium enrichment, in defiance of a UN Security Council resolution giving the Islamic Republic until Aug. 31 to halt the activity or face the threat of political and economic sanctions.
(AP, 8/6/06)
2006 Aug 6, In Iraq 3 US soldiers were killed in a roadside bombing southwest of Baghdad.
(AFP, 8/7/06)
2006 Aug 6, Israeli forces arrested the speaker of the Palestinian parliament at his house in the West Bank, and pressed their monthlong offensive in Gaza against Hamas.
(AP, 8/6/06)
2006 Aug 6, Hezbollah guerrillas unleashed their deadliest barrage of rockets yet into northern Israel, killing 12 reservists at a staging area. Israeli bombardment killed at least 25 people in southern Lebanon as fighting only intensified despite a draft UN cease-fire resolution. Hezbollah rockets crashed into Haifa, killing at least three people and wounding more than 40.
(AP, 8/6/06)(SFC, 8/7/06, p.A1)
2006 Aug 6, In Kyrgyzstan Imam Mokhammadrafik Kamalov (53) was killed in the city of Osh along with two suspected Islamic radicals during an operation to track down men suspected of attacking Kyrgyz and Tajik border posts in May, killing nine people.
(AP, 8/8/06)
2006 Aug 6, In Scotland the Fringe Festival kicked off when an estimated 100,000-strong crowd turned out on the streets of Edinburgh to watch a parade by 3,000 performers from the Fringe and the Edinburgh Military Tattoo.
(AFP, 8/7/06)
2006 Aug 6, A government spokesman said Somalia's top interim leaders have agreed to end a rift threatening the fragile administration after crisis talks led by Seyoum Mesfin, Ethiopia's foreign affairs minister.
(Reuters, 8/6/06)
2006 Aug 6, Crews fought more than 20 forest fires in northern Spain and stopped blazes from advancing into two historic towns. The fires killed three people and destroyed thousands of acres of woodland. Authorities said most of the blazes were deliberately set.
(AP, 8/6/06)(AP, 8/7/06)
2006 Aug 6, Sri Lanka rejected peace broker Norway's deal with Tamil Tiger rebels to lift a water blockade at the root of the latest bloodshed that has claimed at least 425 lives.
(AFP, 8/6/06)
2006 Aug 6, Taiwan condemned China after oil producer Chad switched diplomatic ties to Beijing from Taipei, forcing Premier Su Tseng-chang to scrap his plans to visit the African nation at the last minute.
(Reuters, 8/6/06)
2006 Aug 7, In Arizona 9 illegal immigrants died when their SUV, crammed with up to 22 people, flipped while trying to evade pursuit by the Border Patrol.
(WSJ, 8/8/06, p.A1)
2006 Aug 7, In the SF Bay Area Santa Clara County sheriff’s deputies seized over 20,000 marijuana plants on Mount Hamilton. Street value at maturity was estimated at $80 million.
(SFC, 8/9/06, p.B5)
2006 Aug 7, Sue Bierman (82), former SF supervisor (1992-2000) died in a car crash in Cole Valley. A park created in the wake of the demolition ramps leading to and away from the Embarcadero Freeway (1959-1992) was soon renamed Sue Bierman Park, after the former supervisor (d. 2006 at 82) who battled city freeways.
(www.beyondchron.org/news/index.php?itemid=3563)(SSFC, 7/26/09, p.A16)
2006 Aug 7, Wal-Mart announced chainwide pay caps and said they were intended to move people up the company ladder.
(SFC, 8/15/06, p.D3)
2006 Aug 7, Utah doctors successfully separated conjoined twins Kendra and Maliyah Herrin. The 4-year-old sisters had been born fused at the midsection with just one kidney and one set of legs. Reconstruction surgery continued.
(AP, 8/8/06)
2006 Aug 7, A new finding implied that the universe is about 15.8 billion years old and about 180 billion light-years wide based on new evidence, which suggested that the Hubble constant, a number that measures the expansion rate and age of the universe, is actually 15% smaller than other studies have found.
(AP, 8/7/06)(http://tinyurl.com/jnc7x)
2006 Aug 7, Oil company BP scrambled to assess pipeline corrosion in Alaska that will shut shipments from the nation's biggest oil field, removing about 8% of daily US crude production and driving oil and gasoline prices sharply higher. BP said it would have to replace 16 miles of pipeline at the Prudhoe Bay field.
(AP, 8/7/06)(AP, 8/7/07)
2006 Aug 7, John Weinberg (81), former head of the Goldman Sachs investment firm, died. He and John Whitehead led the firm from 1976-1985. Weinberg led it by himself until 1990.
(Econ, 8/19/06, p.73)
2006 Aug 7, Suspected Taliban militants hanged a woman (70) and her son (30) from a tree in Helmand province after accusing them of spying for the government.
(AP, 8/9/06)
2006 Aug 7, Robert McNaught of the Siding Spring Observatory in Australia made the 1st sighting of a comet that came to be called Comet McNaught.
(Econ, 1/20/07, p.89)
2006 Aug 7, Belgian officials said thefts of drain covers in Charleroi have soared in recent days as skyrocketing metal prices have made them lucrative.
(Reuters, 8/8/06)
2006 Aug 7, In Brazil suspected PCC gang members in the pre-dawn hours attacked 78 symbols of government and businesses across Sao Paulo state, many in the city itself. Police killed two suspects after they allegedly opened fire on a gas station, torched a bus and tried to flee in a car as officers chased them. This marked the third time in four months that the gang has unleashed its fury on the streets to oppose the prison transfer of its leaders.
(AP, 8/8/06)
2006 Aug 7, China’s state media said the death toll from Tropical Storm Prapiroon, named after the Thai god of rain, rose to 80 with 9 more people missing.
(AFP, 8/6/06)(AP, 8/8/06)
2006 Aug 7, An explosion at a Chinese perfume factory killed at least seven people and left three hospitalized.
(AP, 8/7/06)
2006 Aug 7, Colombia’s President Alvaro Uribe inaugurated an unprecedented second term, promising to seek an elusive peace with leftist rebels while maintaining the hardline security policies credited with a sharp drop in murder and kidnappings.
(AP, 8/7/06)
2006 Aug 7, Gunmen in Haiti killed Guido Vitiello (67), an Italian businessman, and kidnapped his wife, Gigliola Martino (65), amid a spate of violence in the impoverished Caribbean nation. Martino was released Aug 10.
(AP, 8/8/06)(AP, 8/11/06)
2006 Aug 7, Indonesia barred Islamic militants from traveling to the Mideast to fight Israel after a Jakarta group said more than 200 had already gone.
(WSJ, 8/8/06, p.A1)
2006 Aug 7, A suicide truck bomber struck the provincial headquarters of an Iraqi police commando force north of Baghdad, killing ten policemen. In Baquba six Iraqi soldiers were killed and another 15 wounded when insurgents attacked their checkpoint. In all insurgent and militia attacks left at least 30 Iraqis killed or found dead. Two Iraqi journalists were killed in separate incidents in Baghdad. Mohammed Abbas Hamad (28), a journalist for the Shiite-owned newspaper Al-Bayinnah Al-Jadida, was shot by gunmen at he left his home. Police found the bullet-riddled body of freelance journalist Ismail Amin Ali (30), about a half mile from where he was abducted two weeks ago.
(AP, 8/7/06)(AFP, 8/7/06)(AP, 8/8/06)(WSJ, 8/8/06, p.A1)
2006 Aug 7, The death toll in an Israeli airstrike on a Shiite neighborhood in south Beirut reached 41. Across the country 77 Lebanese were killed along with three Israeli soldiers. The UN said an oil spill caused by Israeli raids on a Lebanese power plant could rival the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster that despoiled the Alaskan coast if not urgently addressed. the Jiyyeh plant, which was bombed by Israel on July 14 and July 15 a few days into its offensive against Hezbollah. 12,000 tons of leaking oil had already polluted more than 140 kilometers (87 miles) of the Lebanese coast and spread north into Syrian waters.
(AP, 8/8/06)(AP, 8/9/06)(AFP, 8/8/06)
2006 Aug 7, Morocco’s state news agency reported that security services have arrested 44 suspected terrorists and dismantled a network allegedly planning attacks.
(AP, 8/7/06)
2006 Aug 7, Dutch police arrested a Rwandan immigrant, identified as Joseph M. (38), and charged him with war crimes and torture for his alleged role in the 1994 genocide that tore apart his home country.
(AP, 8/10/06)
2006 Aug 7, A pro-North Korean newspaper in Japan said floods last month in North Korea killed at least 549 people and left 295 others still missing.
(AP, 8/7/06)
2006 Aug 7, In northwestern Pakistan a discarded ordnance shell exploded in a tribal village, killing three young brothers who were playing with the explosive. A relief official said flooding and heavy rains in northwestern Pakistan in recent days have left 144 people dead and 97 others injured.
(AP, 8/7/06)(AP, 8/8/06)
2006 Aug 7, In Sri Lanka 17 civilians working for a French aid agency were found slain execution style in Muttur after fierce battles between rebels and the government over water supplies. All but one were Tamils. In 2008 a local rights group accused Colombo of a major cover-up of the August 2006 killing of Action Against Hunger (ACF) workers and for the first time named a list of suspects.
(AP, 8/7/06)(AP, 8/29/06)(AFP, 4/3/08)
2006 Aug 7, The only rebel leader to have signed onto a peace deal for Darfur was sworn in as a senior aide to the Sudanese president as international aid groups said the fighting in the war-torn region has intensified.
(AP, 8/7/06)
2006 Aug 7, Venezuelan authorities captured Elias Verde, the alleged head of an international drug trafficking group that was involved in a major cocaine smuggling operation earlier this year in France.
(AP, 8/8/06)
2006 Aug 8, The US Federal Reserve halted interest rate hikes at 5.25%. the DJIA fell 45.79 to 11,173. Nasdaq fell 11.65 to 2,060. Jeffrey Lacker, head of the Richmond Fed, voted against the decision halt rate hikes.
(SFC, 8/9/06, p.C1)(Econ, 8/12/06, p.59)
2006 Aug 8, Medicare said it plans to cut doctor payment rates by 5.1% and force hospitals to disclose financial data.
(WSJ, 8/9/06, p.A1)
2006 Aug 8, Voters in Connecticut rejected three-term Sen. Joe Lieberman for Ned Lamont, a political newcomer, in the nation's first major test of the depth of anger over the Iraq war. Lieberman ended up winning re-election to the Senate by running as an independent.
(AP, 8/9/06)(AP, 8/8/07)
2006 Aug 8, Roger Goodell was chosen as the NFL's next commissioner.
(AP, 8/8/07)
2006 Aug 8, In Indianapolis, Indiana, a fatal stabbing boosted the homicides to 13 in just one week in the midst of an upsurge of violence that has police working longer shifts and saturating high-crime areas.
(AP, 8/8/06)
2006 Aug 8, In eastern Afghanistan US military killed 15 insurgents who attacked a US base in Nuristan province. 12 militants and 8 policemen were killed in fighting in Kandahar.
(AP, 8/9/06)(AP, 8/10/06)
2006 Aug 8, Clive Goodman, royal editor at Britain’s News of the World, and Glenn Mulcaire, a private investigator, were arrested for hacking phones between November 2005 and August 2006. Both men were jailed in January, 2007.
(Econ, 7/16/11, p.26)
2006 Aug 8, Chad and Sudan agreed to reopen their borders and resume diplomatic relations that they severed in a dispute four months ago.
(AP, 8/9/06)
2006 Aug 8, In Chile police used tear gas and water cannons to disperse about 2,000 rock-throwing students seeking better equipment for 21 schools in the Santiago area.
(AP, 8/8/06)
2006 Aug 8, Gustavo Arcos Bergnes (79), who fought alongside Fidel Castro in the Cuban revolution but was later imprisoned as a dissident, died in Havana.
(AP, 8/8/06)
2006 Aug 8, A car bomb killed a prosecutor in Dagestan, Russia, and two police were shot dead as they arrived on the scene.
(AP, 8/8/06)
2006 Aug 8, Eritrea announced that Brigadier General Kemal Gelchu, a dissident Ethiopian general, had defected to Eritrea, said that he would be joining the OLF to fight for his Oromo people's rights.
(Econ, 8/19/06, p.44)
2006 Aug 8, Gunmen with automatic weapons stormed Kaieteur News, Guyana's largest newspaper, killing at least six people and wounding three in an attack that may have been connected to a simultaneous protest at the nation's main prison.
(AP, 8/9/06)
2006 Aug 8, Indian officials said flooding caused by monsoon rains have killed 69 people in western India in the past three days, and caused tens of thousands to flee their homes.
(AP, 8/8/06)
2006 Aug 8, Indonesian health officials said 2 teenagers have died of bird flu. This would bring Indonesia's death toll to 44 and make it the world's hardest-hit country.
(AP, 8/8/06)
2006 Aug 8, A series of bombings and shootings killed at least 31 people in Baghdad and other parts of Iraq as more US troops were seen in the capital as part of Operation Together Forward, a campaign to reduce Sunni-Shiite violence that threatened civil war. A US Army helicopter crashed in Iraq's western Anbar province, leaving two crew members missing and four injured. A policeman was killed and another wounded when they were trying to defuse a roadside bomb in Samarra. An explosion at a mosque in Baqouba left four people dead.
(AP, 8/8/06)(AP, 8/9/06)(Econ, 9/2/06, p.44)
2006 Aug 8, Israeli forces battled Hezbollah guerrillas across southern Lebanon as diplomats at the United Nations struggled to keep a peace plan from collapsing over Arab demands for an immediate Israeli withdrawal. At least 19 Lebanese civilians were killed in Israeli airstrikes. Israel reported five soldiers killed.
(AP, 8/8/06)(AP, 8/9/06)
2006 Aug 8, The Philippine Congress began hearing new impeachment complaints against President Gloria Arroyo, linking her to corruption and human rights abuses and alleging she cheated in the 2004 election.
(AFP, 8/8/06)
2006 Aug 8, Russian officials said drawings by the late architect Yakov Chernikhov (d.1951), worth millions of dollars, had disappeared from the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art. Chernikhov was widely admired for his avant-garde and constructivist designs. Rosokhrankultura said it became aware of the Chernikhov thefts after nine missing drawings were sold at auction by auction house Christie's on June 22.
(AP, 8/8/06)
2006 Aug 8, In Sri Lanka Tamil rebels released water from a disputed reservoir, ending a 19-day blockade that sparked some of the worst fighting between government troops and guerrillas in four years. In Colombo a car bomb killed two people, including a 3-year-old girl.
(AP, 8/8/06)
2006 Aug 8, Turkey battled the largest recorded outbreak of Crimean-Congo Hemorrhagic Fever, which has killed at least 20 people this year, and experts said more cases of the Ebola-like disease are inevitable in coming months.
(AP, 8/8/06)
2006 Aug 8, Five Yemeni army officers were killed when their military helicopter crashed during a heavy rainstorm.
(AP, 8/9/06)
2006 Aug 9, The White House said neither Israel nor Hezbollah should escalate their month-old war, as Israel decided to widen its ground invasion in southern Lebanon.
(AP, 8/9/07)
2006 Aug 9, In Ohio Osama Sabhi Abulhassan (20) and Ali Houssaiky (20), both of Dearborn, Mich., were charged with money laundering in support of terrorism after authorities said they found airplane passenger lists and information on airport security checkpoints in their car.
(AP, 8/9/06)
2006 Aug 9, The American Humane Society said it will give China $100,000 to vaccinate dogs against rabies if it promises to immediately stop their mass slaughter in areas where humans have died from the disease.
(AP, 8/9/06)
2006 Aug 9, Physicist James A. Van Allen (91), who discovered the radiation belts surrounding the Earth that now bear his name, died in Iowa City, Iowa.
(AP, 8/9/07)
2006 Aug 9, Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan's first democratically elected president, strongly hinted in an interview that he will not run for another term in office. A roadside bomb killed 2 Afghan soldiers and wounded 3 as they returned after a mission to help police surrounded by insurgents in Paktika province. In the eastern province of Nuristan US soldiers and warplanes drove off an insurgent attack on a new American base, killing 19 militants. Local authorities pleaded for emergency relief for thousands of villagers made homeless by heavy rain and flooding that has ravaged provinces in eastern Afghanistan and left at least 35 people dead.
(AP, 8/9/06)(AP, 8/10/06)
2006 Aug 9, Roland Horngacher, Vienna's top police commander, was suspended from duty on suspicion of improperly accepting gifts, including travel vouchers from the former head of an Austrian bank linked to the collapse of U.S. commodities broker Refco Inc.
(AP, 8/10/06)
2006 Aug 9, In Buenos Aires Raul Antonio Guglielminetti, a former intelligence agent and two retired military officers, were arrested in connection with human rights abuses dating to Argentina's "Dirty War" against political dissent.
(AP, 8/11/06)
2006 Aug 9, In Brazil suspected gang members threw homemade bombs, sent banks on fire, and torched buses in the region and two other cities overnight in Sao Paulo state. In Rio de Janeiro gunbattles between gangs vying for control of the city's lucrative drug trade have resulted in the deaths of 19 people since Aug 6.
(AP, 8/10/06)
2006 Aug 9, Brazil’s environment ministry said police had arrested 46 people, including 16 agents of the federal environmental protection agency, for allegedly operating illegal logging operations in the Amazon rainforest and in southern Brazil.
(AP, 8/10/06)
2006 Aug 9, Two teenage Britons were finally found guilty of killing 10-year-old Nigerian schoolboy Damilola Taylor following a six-year investigation marred by legal and forensic blunders. Danny Preddie (18) and Ricky Preddie (19) from Peckham, south London, were convicted of the manslaughter of Taylor who died in November, 2000, after being stabbed in the leg with a broken bottle.
(Reuters, 8/9/06)
2006 Aug 9, Masked gunmen killed five Indians in Colombia even as UN officials marked World Indigenous Day with a call for illegal combat groups to keep Indians out of the country's armed conflict. Colombian rebels kidnapped two engineers and a helicopter pilot who were part of a seismographic oil exploration crew in Choco state. The National Liberation Army (ELN) was believed to be responsible.
(AP, 8/10/06)
2006 Aug 9, Ethiopia’s army killed 13 rebels and caught other commanders of the eastern Ogaden National Liberation Front, a separatist movement, after they crossed from Somalia.
(Reuters, 8/12/06)
2006 Aug 9, Kerala, a southern Indian state, banned the sale and production of Coke, Pepsi, Sprite and other soft drinks because of concerns over pesticide contamination. Four Indian states, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Chattisgarh, have already imposed a ban on sale of Coke and Pepsi at colleges, schools and government offices. Several other states have said they are examining the issue.
(AP, 8/9/06)
2006 Aug 9, In India authorities arrested Pritam Singh, a former army soldier and his wife, for allegedly aborting female fetuses, several of which were found dumped in a well behind an illegal clinic in Patran town, Punjab.
(AP, 8/10/06)
2006 Aug 9, Swollen rivers swamped thousands of villages and towns across India's south and west, forcing 4.5 million from their homes as rescuers struggled to bring them food and drinking water.
(Reuters, 8/9/06)
2006 Aug 9, Gunmen on two motorcycles assassinated Col. Qassim Abdel-Qadir, administrative head of an Iraqi army division in the southern city of Basra. A roadside bomb exploded near a US patrol in eastern Baghdad's Shiite neighborhood of Habibiya, killing one bystander and wounding one US soldier. Police found the bodies of three men who were shot in the head and dumped in two locations in southwestern Baghdad.
(AP, 8/9/06)
2006 Aug 9, Israel's Security Cabinet approved a wider ground offensive in south Lebanon that was expected to take 30 days as part of a new push to badly damage Hezbollah. Israeli's military struck Lebanon's largest Palestinian refugee camp, killing at least one person and wounding three others. An Israeli airstrike killed a family of 7 in the Bekaa Valley. 15 Israeli soldiers were killed in a single day of fighting. Israel said it killed as many as 40 Hezbollah fighters but a Hezbollah spokesman said only 3 had been killed. Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah warned all Israeli Arabs to leave the port city of Haifa so the militant group could step up attacks without fear of shedding the blood of fellow Muslims.
(AP, 8/9/06)(SFC, 8/10/06, p.A10)
2006 Aug 9, In Mexico the body of Enrique Perea Quintanilla (50), publisher of the magazine Dos Caras, Una Verdad (Two Faces, One Truth) was found on a dirt road about 10 miles from Chihuahua City. Authorities said that organized crime was likely behind the killing.
(AP, 8/11/06)
2006 Aug 9, Maoist rebels and the Nepal government said they had settled a dispute over monitoring each other's fighters and weapons, a move which revives their peace process and power-sharing plans.
(AFP, 8/9/06)
2006 Aug 9, Two Norwegians and two Ukrainians were kidnapped at gunpoint from an oil services ship off the coast of Nigeria.
(Reuters, 8/9/06)
2006 Aug 9, In Poland the US specialists secretly removed 90 pounds of weapons-grade uranium from a research reactor and transferred it to Russia for re-processing.
(SFC, 8/10/06, p.A8)(WSJ, 8/10/06, p.A1)
2006 Aug 9, Sergei Skripal (55), a retired colonel in the Russian military intelligence, was sentenced by a military court in Moscow to 13 years imprisonment for passing along state secrets to Britain. He was accused of revealing the names of several dozen Russian agents working in Europe. In 2010 he was released as part of a spy swap with the US.
(AP, 8/9/06)(AP, 7/9/10)
2006 Aug 9, A South Korean citizens' group said North Korea has requested help from South Korea to cope with devastating floods.
(AP, 8/9/06)
2006 Aug 9, A Justice Ministry official said Swiss authorities will provide the US with details from bank accounts US investigators suspect of being used for terrorist funding.
(AP, 8/9/06)
2006 Aug 9, In Venezuela 8 candidates opposing Pres. Chavez called off a primary and agreed to support front runner Gov. Manuel Rosales in the Dec 3 presidential balloting.
(SFC, 8/10/06, p.A8)
2006 Aug 10, In NYC organizers said Germany's Madhupran Wolfgang Schwerk (51) won the 3,100-mile Self-Transcendence event, capturing the world's longest foot race in 41 days, eight hours, 16 minutes and 29 seconds. Suprabha Beckjord (50) was 14th overall and the only woman to finish, doing so after 60 days, four hours, 35 minutes and 24 seconds.
(AFP, 8/10/06)
2006 Aug 10, Wal-Mart Stores said it will work with Chinese government officials to establish labor unions in all its outlets in China.
(SFC, 8/11/06, p.D2)
2006 Aug 10, NASA satellite data showed that the ice sheet in Greenland is melting faster than expected.
(WSJ, 8/11/06, p.A1)
2006 Aug 10, In Afghanistan a roadside bomb killed two Afghan civilians in Jalalabad.
(AP, 8/10/06)
2006 Aug 10, A Brazilian congressional committee approved a report recommending the expulsion of 72 federal lawmakers from Congress on charges of participating in a nation-wide plan to divert funds from the country’s health-care system.
(WSJ, 8/11/06, p.A5)
2006 Aug 10, British authorities said they had thwarted a terrorist plot to simultaneously blow up several aircraft heading to the US using explosives smuggled in carry-on luggage. US Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said the terrorists planned to use liquid explosives disguised as beverages and other common products and detonators disguised as electronic devices.
(AP, 8/10/06)
2006 Aug 10, In Chile a drug trafficking network working on behalf of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) was dismantled. Police seized almost a half-ton of cocaine and arrested 12 people.
(AP, 8/12/06)
2006 Aug 10, Saomai, the most powerful typhoon to hit China in five decades, slammed into its southeastern coast, destroying hundreds of homes and battering the region with rain and wind after more than 1.3 million people were evacuated. It ultimately killed at least 483 people.
(AP, 8/10/07)
2006 Aug 10, Hector Orlando Martinez Quinto (38) was captured in Costa Rica. He was accused of participating in a 2002 rebel (FARQ) attack that killed 119 civilians in Boyaya, in one of the worst tragedies in Colombia's four-decade-old guerrilla war.
(AP, 8/11/06)
2006 Aug 10, Rights activists said at least nine inmates have died in Georgian prisons in the past 10 days as the Caucasus Mountains nation suffers through high temperatures not seen in two decades.
(AP, 8/10/06)
2006 Aug 10, In India 2 more states banned the sale of Coca-Cola and PepsiCo soft drinks at government-run schools and colleges over allegations they contain high levels of pesticides.
(AP, 8/10/06)
2006 Aug 10, In Iraq a suicide bomber detonated a belt of explosives near a highly revered Shiite shrine in Najaf, killing at least 35 people and injuring 122.
(AP, 8/10/06)(SFC, 8/11/06, p.A8)
2006 Aug 10, Israel said it will hold back on its new ground offensive in Lebanon until the weekend to give cease-fire efforts another chance. In Jerusalem a tourist (25) was stabbed to death by an Arab youth near one of the gates to the walled Old City in what was believed to be a political attack.
(AP, 8/10/06)
2006 Aug 10-2006 Aug 11, Italian police raided Internet cafes, money-transfer offices and long-distance phone call centers catering to Muslims and arrested 40 people in a crackdown linked to Britain's announcement it had thwarted an alleged terror plot.
(AP, 8/11/06)
2006 Aug 10, Yasuo Takei, Japan’s richest man, died. Forbes listed his assets at $5.4 billion. In 1966 he founded Fuji Shoji, a consumer loan company. In 1974 it was renamed Takefuji and grew to become a leader in Japan’s loan industry. In 2004 he was convicted for ordering an illegal wiretapping of a reported who criticized his company.
(SFC, 8/14/06, p.B8)
2006 Aug 10, Malawi's President Bingu wa Mutharika demanded the resignation of Ishmael Wadi, a top prosecutor, for withdrawing corruption charges against the nation's previous leader. Wadi dropped the charges after Mutharika suspended the head of the anti-corruption bureau, Gustave Kaliwo. Wadi said the suspension left the bureau with no powers to prosecute.
(AP, 8/10/06)
2006 Aug 10, In Mexico leftist activists blockaded bank headquarters and called for a march on the offices of federal prosecutors, as officials recounted some of the ballots from the disputed presidential election. A protester was shot dead when assailants fired on a march of about 8,000 people calling for the governor's resignation in Oaxaca.
(AP, 8/10/06)(AP, 8/11/06)
2006 Aug 10, In southern Nigeria gunmen in military fatigues seized two foreign oil workers. A Belgian and a Moroccan were abducted as they traveled through the city of Port Harcourt taking to at least 10 the number kidnapped in the past week.
(AP, 8/10/06)
2006 Aug 10, In Serbia a panel of international judges convicted and sentenced Selim Krasniqi and two other former rebel fighters to 7 years in prison for detaining and beating fellow ethnic Albanians who allegedly collaborated with Serb authorities during the 1998 Kosovo war.
(AP, 8/10/06)
2006 Aug 10, The Sri Lankan military attacked Tamil Tiger rebels from land and air, and the rebels retaliated in heavy fighting that killed at least 13 combatants. A Nordic cease-fire monitor warned that the situation was worsening.
(AP, 8/10/06)
2006 Aug 11, A Kentucky judge ruled that Gov. Ernie Fletcher, under fire for a hiring scandal, is protected by executive immunity and cannot be prosecuted while in office.
(AP, 8/11/06)
2006 Aug 11, BP PLC announced it would keep one side of the Prudhoe Bay oil field open as it replaced corroded pipes, averting a larger crimp in the nation's oil supply.
(AP, 8/11/07)
2006 Aug 11, In SF Ed Jew, operator of a Chinatown flower shop, filed to run as supervisor for District 4. He won a surprise victory in November. In 2007 he faced residency questions and an FBI investigation regarding money accepted from a businessmen facing permit problems. On January 10, 2008 he resigned from the Board of Supervisors. Jew had been accused of violating the city charter by not living in the district he represented. On November 6, 2007, federal prosecutors obtained a grand jury indictment of Jew on five felony bribery, fraud and extortion charges, accusing him of running a scheme to shake down Sunset District businesses for $84,000 in bribes. His trial on federal charges was slated to being in July 2008.
(SFC, 5/22/07, p.A1)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Jew#Resignation)
2006 Aug 11, Jamie Gold (36), a former Hollywood talent agent, won the $12 million grand prize in the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas, Nv.
(SFC, 8/12/06, p.A2)
2006 Aug 11, In Michigan 3 Palestinian American men from Texas were arrested after buying dozens of cell phones at a Wal-Mart store. They were found with a 1000 cell phones and later charged with federal fraud conspiracy and money laundering. Initial terrorism charges were dropped.
(SFC, 8/17/06, p.A3)
2006 Aug 11, Mike Douglas (born in 1925 as Michael Delaney Dowd Jr.), popular television host, died in Florida. His Mike Douglas Show began in Cleveland in 1961 and ended in 1982. In 1999 he authored the memoir “"I’ll be Right Back: Memories of TV’s Greatest Talk Show."
(SFC, 8/12/06, p.B6)
2006 Aug 11, A suicide car bomber struck a NATO-led convoy in southern Afghanistan, killing one soldier. In northeastern Afghanistan 3 US soldiers were killed and 3 wounded after militants attacked an American patrol with rocket-propelled grenades and small arms fire.
(AP, 8/11/06)(AP, 8/12/06)
2006 Aug 11, In Brazil officials said police had arrested 30 businessmen, government officials and soldiers accused of taking part in a scheme to net millions of dollars by over-billing for meals in the military and at schools.
(AP, 8/11/06)
2006 Aug 11, British officials identified 19 of the suspects accused of planning to blow up US-bound aircraft in the biggest terrorist plot to be uncovered since 9/11, while investigators probed their movements, background and finances. In addition, five Pakistanis have been arrested in Pakistan as suspected "facilitators" of the plot, as well as two Britons arrested there about a week ago. A Pakistani intelligence official said 10 Pakistanis were arrested in Bhawalpur district, 300 miles southwest of Islamabad, in connection with the terror plot in Britain.
(AP, 8/11/06)(AP, 8/12/06)
2006 Aug 11, Typhoon Saomai, the strongest storm to strike China in 50 years, weakened to a tropical depression but drenched the country's southeast after killing at least 105 people with another 190 missing.
(AP, 8/12/06)
2006 Aug 11, German novelist Guenter Grass (78) admitted in an interview that he served in the Waffen SS, the combat arm of Adolf Hitler's dreaded paramilitary forces, during World War II. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1999 for works including his 1959 novel, "The Tin Drum." His new memoir about the war years, Peeling the Onion" was published in September, 2006. The English translation came out in 2007.
(AP, 8/11/06)(SSFC, 7/8/07, p.M1)
2006 Aug 11, Indonesian officials issued a last-minute stay of execution for three Christian militiamen on death row, but they added that the sentences would still be carried out. Fabianus Tibo, Marinus Riwu and Dominggus da Silva, were scheduled to be executed August 12. They had been sentenced to death for inciting and carrying out attacks on Muslims in 2000 during religious violence on Sulawesi that left 1,000 dead from both faiths.
(AP, 8/11/06)
2006 Aug 11, US soldiers raided a funeral and detained 60 men suspected of ties to al-Qaida car bombings in the first major roundup of suspected insurgents since troop reinforcements began arriving for a new crackdown in Baghdad.
(AP, 8/12/06)
2006 Aug 11, Israeli airstrikes pounded south Beirut and border crossings to Syria, killing at least 14 people across Lebanon as ground fighting picked up intensity in the south. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert accepted an emerging Mideast cease-fire deal and informed the United States of his decision. An Israeli drone fired at a convoy of refugees fleeing southern Lebanon, killing at least six people and wounding 16.
(AP, 8/11/06)
2006 Aug 11, North Kenya authorities said they caught at least 45 sympathizers or members of the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), a small Ethiopian group operating on the border. Ethiopia reported having shot dead 11 Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLH) fighters.
(Reuters, 8/11/06)(Econ, 8/19/06, p.44)
2006 Aug 11, An oil tanker sank in rough seas off the Philippine coast of Guimaras Island, about 312 miles southeast of Manila. About 528,000 gallons of industrial fuel was leaking from the accident.
(AP, 8/15/06)
2006 Aug 11, The Sri Lankan air force bombed Tamil Tiger-held areas in the east. Tamil Tigers warned of a humanitarian crisis after 42,000 people were displaced by a surge in violence that has left Sri Lanka's truce in tatters, as fighting erupted on two new fronts.
(AP, 8/11/06)(AFP, 8/11/06)
2006 Aug 11, The UN Human Rights Council condemned Israel for "massive bombardment of Lebanese civilian populations" and other "systematic" human rights violations, and decided to send a commission to investigate. UN Resolution 1701 called for Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon and the disarmament of Hezbollah.
(AP, 8/11/06)(Econ, 8/26/06, p.11)(www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2006/sc8808.doc.htm)
2006 Aug 11, The Zimbabwe Cabinet slashed fuel prices for private motorists by almost half, but experts said the move could lead to further shortages and fail to snuff out a flourishing black market.
(AFP, 8/18/06)
2006 Aug 12, Thousands of people gathered across from the White House, even though President Bush was out of town, to condemn US and Israeli policies in the Middle East. In SF thousands of protesters decried US Mideast policy and Israel’s military actions in Lebanon and Palestine. A smaller group demonstrated on behalf of Israel.
(SSFC, 8/13/06, p.B1)(AP, 8/12/07)
2006 Aug 12, Afghanistan's Health Ministry said the worsening security situation contributed to a fourfold rise in polio cases this year, almost entirely in the insurgency-wracked south. A highway police commander was killed by a blast on his way to work in eastern Lagman province.
(AP, 8/12/06)
2006 Aug 12, Rashid Rauf and Tayib Rauf (22), brothers arrested in Pakistan and England, emerged as key figures in the suspected plot to destroy US-bound aircraft during flight. Prominent Muslims in Britain accused the government of encouraging extremism through its foreign policy.
(AP, 8/12/06)(WSJ, 8/12/06, p.A1)
2006 Aug 12, President Joseph Kabila's share of the vote in Congo's historic elections rose above 50% as 1 million more votes were counted and certified.
(AP, 8/13/06)
2006 Aug 12, The government said PM Nouri al-Maliki had banned the Kurdistan Workers Party, a rebel group fighting for autonomy in southeastern Turkey, from operating in Baghdad. Two people were killed in the southern city of Basra when a bomb exploded at a shop selling CDs featuring sermons and interviews of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Police found a dozen bodies trapped in a grate in the Tigris River, and a roadside bomb killed two US soldiers on a foot patrol south of Baghdad as nearly 50 violent deaths were reported across Iraq.
(AP, 8/12/06)(AP, 8/13/06)
2006 Aug 12, Oil smuggling in Iraq was said to be worth $4 billion a year.
(Econ, 8/12/06, p.40)
2006 Aug 12, Israel staged wide-ranging airstrikes and sent commandos into the Hezbollah heartland as the UN raced to begin enforcing its new cease-fire blueprint and stop the heavy fighting still raging in southern Lebanon. Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah said the militant organization would abide by the UN cease-fire resolution but would keep fighting as long as Israeli troops remained in southern Lebanon. Israel lost 24 soldiers, including five on a helicopter shot out of the air by guerrillas.
(AP, 8/12/06)(AP, 8/13/06)
2006 Aug 12, In Indian Kashmir 7 people, including two civilians mistaken by the army for Islamic guerrillas, died as a strike paralyzed life in the region's main city.
(AFP, 8/12/06)
2006 Aug 12, In northern Italy the stabbed body of Hina Saleem (21) was found in the garden of the family home at Sarezzo. She was killed by her father because she refused to conform to an Islamic lifestyle. News reports said the family had been insisting on an arranged marriage with a cousin in Pakistan. The father and three other men, including her uncle, were charged with premeditated murder and hiding the body.
(AP, 9/7/06)(http://tinyurl.com/rfr4z)
2006 Aug 12, A passenger bus skidded off a highway in central Mexico and rolled down a 320-foot slope, killing 13 people and injuring a dozen others.
(AP, 8/12/06)
2006 Aug 12, Nigeria pulled thousands of troops out of the Bakassi peninsula ahead of an August 12 UN deadline for a complete withdrawal, but many residents said they would resist a handover to Cameroon.
(AP, 8/13/06)
2006 Aug 12, In Northern Ireland about 15,000 Protestants paraded through Londonderry, predominantly Roman Catholic city, following a night of Catholic rioting.
(AP, 8/12/06)
2006 Aug 12, Hundreds of paratroopers joined the struggle to control scores of forest fires in northwestern Spain. A total of 24 people have been arrested since Aug. 1 on suspicion of deliberately starting many of the fires.
(AP, 8/13/06)
2006 Aug 12, Sri Lankan rebels attacked a key naval base as they mounted a fierce push to retake a northeastern peninsula considered the traditional home of the country's ethnic Tamils. Sri Lankan war planes bombed Tiger rebel positions as the fiercest fighting since a 2002 ceasefire left at least 127 people dead. A Sri Lanka government spokesman said the Tamil Tiger rebels offered to renew peace talks. Weeks of intense fighting brought Sri Lanka close to resuming its civil war. Ketheesh Loganathan, a Tamil senior peace official, was assassinated. He was deputy chief of the secretariat which coordinated the government's side of a Norway-brokered peace process.
(AP, 8/12/06)(AFP, 8/12/06)(AP, 8/13/06)
2006 Aug 12, The Ugandan army killed Raska Lukwiya, the third in command of the rebel Lord's Resistance Army and war crimes fugitive, which could affect the stalled south Sudan-mediated peace talks.
(AFP, 8/13/06)
2006 Aug 12, The UN Security Council adopted a resolution seeking a "full cessation" of violence between Israel and Hezbollah, offering the region its best chance yet for peace after a month of fighting that has killed more than 800 people and inflamed Mideast tensions.
(AP, 8/12/06)
2006 Aug 13, In Michigan City, Indiana, fire swept through a two-story house, killing at least six people. An unknown number of others were missing. It was not clear whether they had left the scene or were still inside the home.
(AP, 8/13/06)
2006 Aug 13, In Afghanistan at least 5 Afghan troops and 25 militants were killed.
(WSJ, 8/14/06, p.A1)
2006 Aug 13, The 16th International AIDS conference opened in Toronto with some 24,000 people in attendance.
(SSFC, 8/13/06, p.A15)(Econ, 8/19/06, p.65)
2006 Aug 13, The death toll from Typhoon Saomai, the strongest storm to hit China in 50 years, rose to 114 as more evacuees died when buildings used as shelters collapsed. China’s state media reported About 17 million people in southwest China don't have access to clean drinking water due to sustained drought.
(AP, 8/13/06)(Reuters, 8/13/06)
2006 Aug 13, On his 80th birthday, Fidel Castro cautioned Cubans that he faced a long recovery from surgery and advised them to prepare for "adverse news," but he urged them to stay optimistic.
(AP, 8/13/06)
2006 Aug 13, Iraq's health minister, who is aligned to a powerful Shiite militia, claimed that US forces arrested seven of his personal guards in a surprise pre-dawn raid on his office. 4 vehicle bombs killed 63 Iraqis and wounded 140 in a predominantly Shiite neighborhood of Baghdad.
(AP, 8/13/06)(AP, 8/14/06)(SFC, 8/16/06, p.A6)
2006 Aug 13, After a stormy debate, Israel's Cabinet approved a Mideast cease-fire, agreeing to silence the army's guns on Aug 14 at 8AM. The Israeli military embarked on a last-minute push to devastate Hezbollah guerrillas, rocketing south Beirut with at least 20 missiles. Israeli warplanes fired missiles into gasoline stations in the southern port city of Tyre, killing at least 12 people in those and other attacks. Hezbollah fired more than 150 rockets at northern Israel, killing an Israeli man. Two Israeli air raids on a village in Lebanon's eastern Bekaa Valley killed at least seven people and wounded nearly two dozen.
(AP, 8/13/06)
2006 Aug 13, In Mexico a recount confirmed Calderon as the next president. Lopez Obrador vowed to mount new legal challenges.
(WSJ, 8/14/06, p.A1)
2006 Aug 13, Sri Lankan troops and Tamil Tiger rebels fought ground battles and artillery duels as the weekend death toll rose to 186. The rebels denied they were ready to talk peace. At least 15 people died in fighting around the St. Philip Neri Church in Allaiiddy, a predominantly Tamil village located on an island just west of the Jaffna Peninsula. The island, like the peninsula, is held by the government.
(AFP, 8/13/06)(AP, 8/14/06)
2006 Aug 13, In Turkey the PKK killed 2 policemen in a bomb attack near Tunceli.
(Econ, 9/2/06, p.48)
2006 Aug 13, In Venezuela prison officials discovered that Carlos Ortega, an anti-Chavez union leader, had slipped out of the Ramo Verde prison west of Caracas, where he was serving a 16-year sentence for civil rebellion. Three convicted military officers also escaped.
(AP, 8/14/06)
2006 Aug 14, The US State Department began issuing smart chip-embedded passports to Americans as planned, despite ongoing privacy concerns and legal disputes involving companies bidding on the project. New ones issued under this program will cost $97, which includes a $12 security surcharge added last year.
(AP, 8/14/06)
2006 Aug 15, NYC’s Mayor Bloomberg said he is putting $125 million of his own money into a new worldwide anti-smoking campaign.
(SFC, 8/16/06, p.A2)
2006 Aug 14, In the largest electronics-related recall involving the Consumer Products Safety Commission, Dell Inc. agreed to replace 4.1 million notebook computer batteries made by Sony Corp. because they can burst into flames.
(AP, 8/15/06)
2006 Aug 14, PepsiCo Inc. announced that CFO Indra Nooyi will replace Steven Reinemundi as CEO, making her the No. 2 female CEO in the Fortune 500 behind Patricia Woertz of Archer Daniels Midland. ADM was ranked 56th in the Fortune 500 and PepsiCo was 61st.
(SFC, 8/15/06, p.D5)
2006 Aug 14, Bruno Kirby (57), a veteran character actor known for playing the best friend in two of Billy Crystal's biggest comedies, "When Harry Met Sally" and "City Slickers," died in LA.
(AP, 8/16/06)
2006 Aug 14, In southern Afghanistan clashes between police and militants killed 11 suspected Taliban and six policemen. 4 NATO troops were wounded in one of two bombings in Kabul.
(AP, 8/14/06)
2006 Aug 14, Australian PM John Howard ditched plans for a tough new immigration law, conceding he did not have sufficient support in parliament.
(AFP, 8/14/06)
2006 Aug 14, In Brazil Guilherme Portanova (30), a kidnapped television reporter, was freed after Globo met the gang's demand to broadcast a video calling for improvements in Brazil's troubled prison system. In Rio de Janeiro Andres Costa Ramos Bordalo was stabbed to death by an assailant who stole his knapsack on Copacabana beach. Police stepped up patrols but at least 22 tourists were robbed during the week.
(AP, 8/14/06)(AP, 8/19/06)
2006 Aug 14, The British government downgraded its terror threat level from critical to severe, saying intelligence suggested an attack was no longer imminent.
(AP, 8/14/06)
2006 Aug 14, In Chile a tough nationwide anti-smoking law that took effect.
(AP, 8/14/06)
2006 Aug 14, In China the death toll from Typhoon Saomai rose to 255 after scores more bodies were pulled from the sea.
(AP, 8/14/06)
2006 Aug 14, Cuban state television aired the first video of Fidel Castro since he stepped down as president to recover from surgery, showing the bedridden Cuban leader talking with his brother Raul as well as Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
(AP, 8/14/07)
2006 Aug 14, In southern Ethiopia torrential rains spilled a river from its banks. At least 900 people died as continuing rains submerged five villages, knocked down grain silos and swept away cattle. Tens of thousands were marooned by the waters.
(AFP, 8/15/06)(Reuters, 8/17/06)
2006 Aug 14, At least 10 people were killed in shootings and bombings across Iraq, including three blacksmiths shot by gunmen in the northern city of Mosul.
(AP, 8/14/06)
2006 Aug 14, Israeli soldiers killed six Hezbollah fighters in three skirmishes in Lebanon after the UN-imposed cease-fire took effect. The clashes came as Lebanese civilians defied an Israeli travel ban and streamed back to their homes in war-ravaged areas. Lebanese, Israeli and UN officers met on the border to discuss the withdrawal of Israeli forces from southern Lebanon and the deployment of the Lebanese army in the region. Lebanon said nearly 791 people were killed since the fighting began. Israel said 116 soldiers and 39 civilians were killed in fighting or from Hezbollah rockets in the 34-day war.
(AP, 8/14/06)
2006 Aug 14, A Japanese tanker spilled about 1.4 million gallons of crude oil in the eastern Indian Ocean following a collision with a cargo ship. The spill, which would be about 4,500 tons, may be the largest ever involving a Japanese tanker. The tanker was carrying about 77.6 million gallons, or 250,000 tons, of crude. It had left port in Oman bound for Japan.
(AP, 8/15/06)
2006 Aug 14, Malaysia said it would issue a "big fat no" to any nation or group that asked it to dismantle a system of positive discrimination for its majority ethnic Malays as part of trade talks.
(AFP, 8/14/06)
2006 Aug 14, US authorities arrested Tijuana drug lord Francisco Javier Arellano Felix (36) aboard a boat off Mexico's Pacific coast. Mexican analysts doubted the significance of Arellano Felix's arrest as the gang has effectively lost much of its influence over the years.
(AP, 8/17/06)
2006 Aug 14, Nigeria formally handed sovereignty over the potentially oil-rich Bakassi peninsula to Cameroon after withdrawing its 3,000 troops in compliance with a UN-brokered deadline. This ended a 13-year feud between Abuja and Yaounde. Nigeria will maintain administrative control of southern Bakassi for the next two years, after which the area will be in a state of flux for another five years before it will be finally handed over to Cameroon.
(AP, 8/13/06)(AFP, 8/14/06)
2006 Aug 14, In Nigeria Ayo Daramola, a member of the country's ruling party and a potential candidate in Ekiti state, was found stabbed to death in his home, the third killing of a potential gubernatorial candidate in recent weeks. Armed men kidnapped four more foreign oil workers in the southern oil city of Port Harcourt, but released 3 Filipinos abducted more than 10 days ago.
(AFP, 8/14/06)(AP, 8/15/06)
2006 Aug 14, In Gaza American reporter Steve Centanni (60) and New Zealand cameraman Olaf Wiig (36) were seized by masked gunmen near the headquarters of the Palestinian security services. An Israeli airstrike destroyed a house in the Gaza Strip, injuring at least eight people. The military said an Islamic Jihad command center was targeted but Palestinians said the building was empty.
(AP, 8/14/06)(AP, 8/15/06)
2006 Aug 14, Fighting in Sri Lanka's north and east, and a bombing in the capital, left at least 50 people dead, including 43 schoolgirls killed in what the Tamil Tigers charged was a government air raid on a children's home in rebel territory. Hours later in Colombo, an auto rickshaw packed with explosives blew up as a car carrying Pakistan's high commissioner, Basir Ali Mohmand, passed along a crowded road. At least seven people were killed, including four army commandos guarding the envoy.
(AP, 8/14/06)
2006 Aug 15, US federal agents arrested 138 alleged drug traffickers in 15 cities. They seized over 47 pounds of Mexican black tar heroin and confiscated over $500,000 in illegal profits.
(SFC, 8/16/06, p.A3)
2006 Aug 15, US officials arrested Edgar Alvarez Cruz on immigration violations in Denver. He was suspected of participating in the rapes and killings of at least 10 women in the border city of Ciudad Juarez, where more than 100 young women have been killed since 1993.
(AP, 8/17/06)
2006 Aug 15, Seven northeastern US states said they had agreed on a model rule that would create the country's first market for heat-trapping carbon dioxide by curbing emissions at power plants.
(Reuters, 8/15/06)
2006 Aug 15, Afghan and US troops killed an al-Qaida suspect and detained 13 others in southeastern Afghanistan.
(AP, 8/15/06)
2006 Aug 15, The official death toll in China from Typhoon Saomai jumped to 295 as fishing families grieving the loss of loved ones said authorities were no help and had covered up the number of fatalities.
(AFP, 8/15/06)
2006 Aug 15, In Colombia the last major paramilitary leader to enter into a peace deal with the government handed in his weapon, even as the future of that fragile accord was called into doubt by other ex-militia leaders. Freddy Rendon Herrera and 745 fighters from the Elmer Cardenas bloc handed in 447 rifles in a disarmament ceremony in Unguia, a village 370 miles northwest of Bogota.
(AP, 8/15/06)
2006 Aug 15, French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy said nearly 30,000 illegal immigrants with school-age children applied for French residency under a special government offer, and about 6,000 will get it.
(AP, 8/15/06)
2006 Aug 15, The UN Security Council voted unanimously to extend the UN peacekeeping mission in Haiti for six months and urged its troops and police to help fight gang violence and kidnapping.
(AP, 8/15/06)
2006 Aug 15, A suicide bomber killed nine people at the party headquarters of the Iraqi president. In Basra tribal leader Faisal Raji al-Asadi, an anti-American Shiite cleric, was killed. Gunbattles between his supporters and Iraqi forces left at least six people dead. In Karbala street battles between security forces and followers of anti-American cleric Mahmoud al-Hassani, left 12 dead, including two Iraqi soldiers. A suicide car bomber killed nine people in an attack on the Mosul headquarters of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, a Kurdish party headed by President Jalal Talabani.
(AP, 8/15/06)(AP, 8/16/06)(SFC, 8/17/06, p.A14)
2006 Aug 15, Israel began slowly withdrawing its forces from southern Lebanon and made plans to hand over its captured territory as hopes were raised that a UN-imposed cease-fire would stick, despite early tests on its first day.
(AP, 8/15/06)
2006 Aug 15, Japan’s PM Junichiro Koizumi made a pilgrimage to a Tokyo war shrine reviled by critics as a symbol of militarism, triggering a further erosion in Japan's ties with its neighbors just a month before he leaves office.
(AP, 8/15/06)
2006 Aug 15, Maori Queen Te Arikinui Dame Te Atairangikaahu (75), aka Te Ata, died in New Zealand.
(SFC, 8/16/06, p.B7)(AP, 8/15/07)
2006 Aug 15, Two Norwegian and two Ukrainian oil workers being held hostage in Nigeria were freed as the government promised to crack down on a surge in unrest in Africa's largest oil producer.
(Reuters, 8/15/06)
2006 Aug 15, Pakistani forces arrested 29 suspected Taliban militants in a raid on a private hospital after they came from neighboring Afghanistan.
(AP, 8/15/06)
2006 Aug 16, New York City officials released new tapes of hundreds of heart-wrenching phone calls from the World Trade Center on 9-11, along with other emergency transcripts.
(AP, 8/16/07)
2006 Aug 16, Google launched a free wireless network for its hometown of Mountainview, Ca.
(SFC, 8/16/06, p.C1)
2006 Aug 16, John Mark Karr (41), a former American school teacher, was arrested in Thailand for the December, 1996, murder JonBenet Ramsey in Boulder, Colo. He said he tried to kidnap JonBenet for a $118,000 ransom but that his plan went awry and he strangled her. Karr's confession that he had killed JonBenet was later discredited.
(AP, 8/17/07)
2006 Aug 16, Over 80 immigrant workers in New Orleans filed suit against Decatur Hotels LLC saying they were being exploited. The workers from Peru, Bolivia and the Dominican Rep. had not been reimbursed for travel and were not getting the promised work hours.
(SFC, 8/17/06, p.A16)
2006 Aug 16, In southeastern Afghanistan US and Afghan forces raided compounds suspected of being al-Qaida sanctuaries, seizing weapons and explosives and arresting 8 people. US-led forces killed eight suspected militants after coming under attack in Kunar province. A US soldier was killed when his vehicle struck a Soviet-era mine in Paktika province. Western officials said opium cultivation in Afghanistan has hit record levels, up by more than 40% from 2005, despite hundreds of millions in counternarcotics money.
(AP, 8/16/06)(AP, 8/17/06)
2006 Aug 16, Alfredo Stroessner (93), anti-communist dictator of Paraguay (1954-1989), died in exile in Brazil. He used the right-wing Colorado Party to rule with a blend of force, guile and patronage for 35 years before his ouster in 1989. During his rule membership in the Colorado Party was compulsory for all teachers, doctors, engineers, officers or those who hoped for government service. Party dues was docked from salaries.
(AP, 8/16/06)(Econ, 8/26/06, p.71)
2006 Aug 16, Colombian police arrested 14 top paramilitary leaders for violating the terms of a peace accord that has led to the demobilization of 30,000 right-wing fighters. Anti-narcotics police said they chemically fumigated the Sierra Macarena national park last week, clearing its entire 11,370 acres of coca. The spraying destroyed coca capable of producing 17.5 tons of high-grade cocaine and was likely a major blow to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.
(AP, 8/16/06)(AP, 8/17/06)(Econ, 8/26/06, p.28)
2006 Aug 16, In northeast India a grenade exploded in a Hindu temple, killing at least four people and leaving 40 others injured, mainly in a stampede that followed the blast.
(AP, 8/17/06)
2006 Aug 16, Bombings in Baghdad, killed 21 people and wounded 59. One American soldier was also killed as he was distributing candy to the children. British troops drove off gunmen who attacked the Basra governor's office, apparently to avenge a tribal leader killed the day before. In Mosul armed clashes between police and assailants in three predominantly Sunni Arab neighborhoods killed least five gunmen with six arrested. A roadside bomb exploded near an Iraqi army patrol north of Hillah, killing three soldiers and wounding four. In Karbala 10 militia fighters were killed and 281 arrested. A US soldier died of wounds suffered in Anbar province.
(AP, 8/16/06)(SFC, 8/17/06, p.A14)(AP, 8/17/06)
2006 Aug 16, In Kashmir 5 Islamic rebels were shot dead by Indian troops after they sneaked across the de facto border from the Pakistani zone. The army suffered one casualty.
(AP, 8/16/06)
2006 Aug 16, Top foreign diplomats planned the dispatch of a 15,000-strong international force to enforce a cease-fire in southern Lebanon, but the government was divided over whether Hezbollah should lay down its arms or even withdraw them from the border with Israel.
(AP, 8/16/06)
2006 Aug 16, Palestinian gunmen from the rival Hamas and Fatah militias clashed in southern Gaza, killing a 14-year old boy in the crossfire and injuring four others.
(AP, 8/17/06)
2006 Aug 16, A Russian patrol boat opened fire on a Japanese vessel in disputed waters, killing a fisherman and prompting a strong protest from Tokyo. Moscow urged Japanese boats to stay out of its waters. 3 fishermen were detained.
(AP, 8/16/06)(AP, 8/17/06)
2006 Aug 16, In Mogadishu, Somalia, Islamic leaders gave seven men 40 lashes each for using or selling marijuana, meting out the punishment in public in a dramatic example of the region's new fundamentalist rule.
(AP, 8/16/06)
2006 Aug 16, The presidents of South Africa, Mozambique and Zimbabwe gathered for the official opening the new Giriyondo border post linking South Africa and Mozambique. This was another step in the creation of the 14,000 square mile Greater Limpopo Transfrontier Park, which would span the 3 countries.
(SFC, 8/17/06, p.A2)
2006 Aug 16, A South Korean aid group claimed that massive floods in North Korea last month left about 54,700 people dead or missing and some 2.5 million homeless.
(AP, 8/16/06)
2006 Aug 16, Sri Lankan war planes bombed Tamil Tiger positions as troops hunted rebel infiltrators in northern Jaffna peninsula after resisting a guerrilla advance.
(AFP, 8/16/06)
2006 Aug 17, President Bush signed new rules to prod companies into shoring up their pension plans.
(AP, 8/17/07)
2006 Aug 17, A federal judge in Detroit ruled that President Bush's warrantless surveillance program violated the rights to free speech and privacy, as well as the separation of powers enshrined in the Constitution. The administration said it would appeal.
(AP, 8/18/07)
2006 Aug 17, Several large California auto insurers said they will set premiums based on driving records rather than ZIP codes and reduce rates for most motorists.
(SFC, 8/18/06, p.A1)
2006 Aug 17, In New Orleans Merck & Co. lost a second federal trial over its withdrawn painkiller Vioxx and must pay $51 million to a retired FBI agent who had a heart attack after taking the drug for more than two years.
(AP, 8/17/06)
2006 Aug 17, Scientists believe they have found a key gene that helped the human brain evolve from our chimp-like ancestors. In just a few million years, one area of the human genome seems to have evolved about 70 times faster than the rest of our genetic code. It appears to have a role in a rapid tripling of the size of the brain's crucial cerebral cortex, according to an article published in the journal Nature.
(AP, 8/17/06)
2006 Aug 17, In the Arctic ice Lt. Jessica Hill (31) and Boatswain's Mate Steven Duque (22), divers on the US Coast Guard cutter Healy, died during a practice dive.
(AP, 9/24/06)
2006 Aug 17, In eastern Afghanistan a bomb mistakenly dropped by a US-led coalition aircraft killed 10 Afghan police officers in Paktika province. 16 more people, including a US soldier, died in violence across the country.
(AP, 8/17/06)(WSJ, 8/18/06, p.A1)
2006 Aug 17, An overnight volcanic eruption in Ecuador's Andes mountains killed at least one person and left more than 60 others missing. It was the first fatality reported from a Tungurahua eruption since the volcano rumbled back to life in 1999 after staying dormant for eight decades.
(AP, 8/17/06)
2006 Aug 17, Dominican Republic President Leonel Fernandez named four generals and a former law partner to the Cabinet, a day after his party took control of the Caribbean country's Congress for the first time.
(AP, 8/18/06)
2006 Aug 17, President Jacques Chirac announced that France will immediately double to 400 troops its contingent in the UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon.
(AP, 8/17/06)
2006 Aug 17, In Indonesia an Islamic militant convicted in the 2002 Bali bombings was released from prison and 11 others jailed for minor roles had their sentences reduced to mark independence day.
(AP, 8/17/06)
2006 Aug 17, In Indonesia a woman died of bird flu in a village where authorities were investigating a possible cluster of human cases of the H5N1 virus.
(AP, 8/20/06)
2006 Aug 17, In central Baghdad 2 car bombs killed 13 people and injured 55, hours after another bomb killed 8 laborers. One US soldier killed when a roadside bomb exploded near a foot patrol south of Baghdad. A gallon of gasoline on the black market in Baghdad sold for about $4.92, although the official price was 64 cents a gallon. Iraq said it had doubled the money allocated for importing oil products in August and September to tackle the country's worst fuel shortage since Saddam Hussein's 2003 ouster.
(AP, 8/17/06)(SFC, 8/18/06, p.A7)
2006 Aug 17, Jordanian envoy Ahmed al-Lozi has presented his credentials to the Iraqi government, becoming the first fully accredited Arab ambassador in the country since the fall of Saddam Hussein.
(AP, 8/18/06)
2006 Aug 17, Lebanese troops, tanks and armored vehicles deployed south of the Litani River, a key provision of the UN cease-fire plan that ended fighting between Israel and Hezbollah. The deployment marks a first step toward extending government control in a region Lebanese troops have largely avoided for four decades. A Middle East Airlines passenger jet flew into Beirut airport from Jordan as officials partially lifted a 36-day Israeli air blockade.
(AP, 8/17/06)
2006 Aug 17, An outbreak of strain of bluetongue, a disease transmitted to sheep by insects but which is not contagious nor known to affect humans, was detected in the southern Netherlands. Belgium and Germany soon reported cases.
(AFP, 8/28/06)
2006 Aug 17, Sri Lankan troops beat back a fresh attempt by Tamil Tigers to overrun the main defenses of the northern peninsula of Jaffna and killed at least 98 guerrillas. At least six soldiers were killed and 60 wounded in the intense battle.
(AFP, 8/17/06)
2006 Aug 18, President George W. Bush criticized a federal court ruling the day before that his warrantless wiretapping program was unconstitutional, declaring that opponents "do not understand the nature of the world in which we live."
(AP, 8/18/07)
2006 Aug 18, The US FDA approved a mix of bacteria-killing viruses for spraying on cold cuts, hot dogs and sausages to combat deadly microbes.
(SFC, 8/19/06, p.A4)
2006 Aug 18, Raymond Payne, a former HSBC Bank USA vice president, pleaded guilty in Manhattan federal court to a conspiracy charge over his role in a $30 million telemarketing fraud targeting low-income people with poor credit histories. Prosecutors said First Choice, run by Canadian co-defendants Stephen Clark and Leslie Pinsky, extracted $30 million from people, and transferred the money to the HSBC account. In 2007 Clark was sentenced just over 11 years in prison.
(Reuters, 8/18/06)(Reuters, 6/15/07)
2006 Aug 18, In western Missouri bone fragments from at least two people were found on a three-acre wooded property northeast of Drexel. Michael Lee Shaver Jr. (33) was arrested the next day and charged with murder for a killing in 2001. Shaver claimed that he had killed, dismembered and burned 7 men in his home following drug transactions.
(AP, 8/20/06)(SFC, 8/21/06, p.A3)
2006 Aug 18, In Bristow, Oklahoma, Donald Thompson (59), a former judge convicted of exposing himself while presiding over jury trials, was sentenced to four years in prison and ordered to pay a fine of $40,000.
(SFC, 8/19/06, p.A2)
2006 Aug 18, The Washington Post reported that sprinter Marion Jones had tested positive for the endurance drug EPO at the US Track and Field Championships on June 23. A 2nd test came back negative and cleared the allegations. On October 5, 2007, Jones pleaded guilty to using steroids before the Sydney 2000 Summer Olympics and acknowledged that she had, in fact, lied when she previously denied steroid use. Her sanction required disqualification of all her competitive results obtained after September 1, 2000, and forfeiture of all medals, results, points and prizes. On January 11, 2008, Jones was sentenced to 6 months in jail. She began her sentence on March 7, 2008 and was released on September 5, 2008.
(SFC, 8/19/06, p.A1)(SFC, 9/7/06, p.A1)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marion_Jones)
2006 Aug 18, Ford Motor Co. announced sharp cuts in its North American production that would force it to partially shut down plants in the US and Canada in the fourth quarter.
(AP, 8/18/06)
2006 Aug 18, Boeing took steps toward shutting down production of its C-17 military cargo plane. Production would continue until mid-2009 for the $200 million planes.
(WSJ, 8/19/06, p.A8)
2006 Aug 18, Afghanistan Education Minister Mohammed Hanif Atmar said attacks have closed more than 208 schools, including 144 burned down, in the past year as militants changed tactics to hit soft targets. At least 41 teachers and students have been killed over the past 12 months in a wave of attacks on the country's schools.
(Reuters, 8/18/06)
2006 Aug 18, Anglo-Australian resources giant BHP Billiton closed its operations at the world's biggest copper mine in Chile and ended negotiations with striking workers. The strike began on August 7 at the Escondida Mine, majority owned by BHP. The Chilean government has signaled it was ready to intervene.
(AP, 8/18/06)
2006 Aug 18, The Financial Times reported that Britain has agreed to a multi-billion-dollar defense deal to supply 72 Eurofighter Typhoon aircraft to Saudi Arabia.
(AP, 8/18/06)
2006 Aug 18, In Canada the 16th International AIDS Conference ended in a firestorm with vitriol hurled at G8 countries and South Africa over lapses in the battle against the disease that has claimed 25 million lives.
(Reuters, 8/18/06)
2006 Aug 18, Chile's Supreme Court voted to strip Gen. Augusto Pinochet of immunity from prosecution, allowing him to be tried on corruption charges for his once-secret multimillion dollar overseas bank accounts.
(AP, 8/18/06)
2006 Aug 18, China’s central bank announced its 2nd interest rate hike in 4 months to choke off excess investment. The benchmark lending rate rose .27% to 6.12% effective Aug 19.
(WSJ, 8/19/06, p.A4)
2006 Aug 18, The death toll from Typhoon Saomai, the strongest storm to hit China in more than five decades, jumped to 436 after more than 100 new deaths were confirmed in the country's east.
(AP, 8/18/06)
2006 Aug 18, In southwest Ethiopia search and rescue teams kept up frantic efforts to save thousands marooned by fatal flash floods, where relief workers reported near-total devastation. Some 73,000 people had been affected by raging waters from unusually heavy seasonal rains.
(AFP, 8/18/06)
2006 Aug 18, In Greece a 700-year-old icon, said to have the power to work miracles, was discovered stolen from the cliff-side Elona Monastery. In September police arrested a Romanian national in Crete and recovered the Madonna and Child icon.
(SSFC, 10/8/06, p.A26)(http://tinyurl.com/grxc8)
2006 Aug 18, The United Liberation Front of Asom announced that it would stop attacking the forces of the Indian government, which announced a unilateral cease-fire Aug. 13. It was the first truce announced by the rebel group since its formation in 1979.
(AP, 8/19/06)
2006 Aug 18, In Iraq 7 pilgrims heading to a major Shiite religious gathering were shot dead in a Sunni neighborhood.
(AP, 8/19/06)
2006 Aug 18, Steorn, an Irish company, said it has developed technology that it claims produces free energy. The company said its discovery is based on the interaction of magnetic fields and allows the production of clean, free and constant energy.
(AFP, 8/18/06)
2006 Aug 18, Israeli soldiers killed 3 Palestinian gunmen and wounded 2 others in confrontations in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
(WSJ, 8/19/06, p.A1)
2006 Aug 18, At least 10 people died and as many as 40 were feared missing when a small boat packed with illegal immigrants sank off Sicily, prompting Italy to call for greater cooperation to fight human trafficking.
(Reuters, 8/19/06)
2006 Aug 18, The Lebanese army reached the country's southern border with Israel for the first time in decades, sending a lone jeep on patrol through Kfar Kila, a battered stronghold of support for Hezbollah militants. At least 845 Lebanese were killed in the 34-day war: 743 civilians, 34 soldiers and 68 Hezbollah. Israel says it killed about 530 guerrillas. On the Israeli side, 157 were killed, 118 soldiers and 39 civilians, many from the 3,970 Hezbollah rockets. The Lebanese government estimated infrastructure damages at $2.5 billion. The Lebanese death toll was later raised to 1200 and economic costs put to some $12 billion.
(AP, 8/18/06)(SFC, 8/19/06, p.C1)(Econ, 11/11/06, p.51)
2006 Aug 18, In Lesotho a 14-nation southern Africa summit closed with a pledge to speed up regional economical integration, even as leaders expressed concern about crisis-plagued member-state Zimbabwe.
(AFP, 8/18/06)
2006 Aug 18, Nigeria’s military launched a crackdown on suspected militants in the oil-rich south as militants released another foreign hostage taken in a spate of kidnappings.
(AP, 8/18/06)
2006 Aug 18, Greenpeace warned a sunken Philippine oil tanker was a pollution timebomb as oil from its punctured tanks destroyed coral reefs and washed up blackened fish on pristine beaches. Oil trapped in the tanks of the Solar I, which went down last week with 500,000 gallons of industrial oil on board, could pour out at any time. To date some 50,000 gallons had leaked into the sea close to the central island of Guimaras.
(AP, 8/18/06)
2006 Aug 18, The UN said more than 41,000 people on Sri Lanka’s Jaffna peninsula, about 10 percent of its population, were believed to have fled their homes and warned that supplies in the area had reached "alarmingly low levels".
(AFP, 8/19/06)
2006 Aug 18, A bus carrying Iranian tourists crashed into a truck in eastern Turkey, killing 18 and injuring 29.
(AP, 8/18/06)
2006 Aug 19, In California explorers from the Cave Research Foundation discovered a large cave in Sequoia National Park, which they named Ursa Minor.
(SSFC, 9/24/06, p.A1)
2006 Aug 19, Afghan police backed by NATO aircraft and artillery killed 71 suspected Taliban militant in fierce clashes that also left five Afghan forces dead in southern Kandahar province. 3 US soldiers were killed and 3 others wounded during a clash against Taliban militants in eastern Kunar province. In southern Uruzgan province, an American and an Afghan soldier were killed and 3 other Americans wounded in a four-hour clash with more than 100 insurgents. The latest violence came as the country celebrated the 87th anniversary of its independence from Britain.
(AP, 8/19/06)(AP, 8/20/06)
2006 Aug 19, Roger Deakin (b.1943), English writer and film-maker, died. His last book “Wildwood: A Journey Through Trees," was published posthumously in 2007.
(Econ, 7/28/07, p.85)(http://books.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,,1860073,00.html)
2006 Aug 19, In East Timor rampaging youths set houses on fire in Dili, a reminder that stability has not yet returned to Asia's newest nation following months of violence.
(CP, 8/19/06)
2006 Aug 19, In Germany a 21-year-old Lebanese was arrested in a police swoop on the railway station in Kiel as he tried to flee the city, where he was a student. He was one of two men suspected of planting bombs on German trains in a failed terrorist attack in July.
(AP, 8/20/06)
2006 Aug 19, At least 13 people were killed around Iraq, including four Iraqi soldiers in a roadside bomb explosion in Diwaniyah. An American soldier was killed in combat in Anbar province.
(AP, 8/19/06)(AP, 8/20/06)
2006 Aug 19, Israeli commandos raided a Hezbollah stronghold deep inside Lebanon, sparking a fierce clash with militants that left one Israeli soldier dead. Lebanon called the raid a "flagrant violation" of the UN-brokered cease-fire, while Israel said it was aimed at disrupting arms smuggling from Iran and Syria. A Lebanese civilian was killed when unexploded Israeli munitions from the offensive detonated in the village of Ras al-Ein, outside Tyre.
(AP, 8/19/06)
2006 Aug 19, Israeli soldiers in Ramallah arrested Nasser Shaer, the Palestinian deputy prime minister. He was the highest-ranking Hamas official rounded up in a seven-week-old crackdown against the ruling party.
(AP, 8/19/06)
2006 Aug 19, Ten bodies were found and about 20 other people were believed missing after a 2nd boat in 2 days carrying would-be immigrants sank off the Italian island of Lampedusa. Some 70 survivors were plucked from the water after the boat sank, several of whom said there had been 120 people on the boat.
(AP, 8/20/06)
2006 Aug 19, In Ivory Coast waste, which contained hydrogen sulphide, was unloaded from a Panamanian-registered ship, the Probo Koala, at Abidjan port and then dumped in at least eight open air sites, including the city's main rubbish dump. By mid-September 6 people had died and 16,000 had sought treatment. Dutch-based Trafigura Beheer BV, one of the world's leading commodities traders, said it had chartered the ship and said the material was a "mixture of gasoline, water and caustic washings" following the unloading of a cargo of gasoline in Nigeria.
(Reuters, 9/7/06)(Econ, 9/16/06, p.58)
2006 Aug 19, French soldiers landed in Lebanon, the first reinforcements for an expanded UN peacekeeping force tasked with keeping the truce in the Israel-Hezbollah conflict. About 50 French troops, military engineers, were to prepare for the arrival of 200 more soldiers expected next week.
(AP, 8/19/06)
2006 Aug 19, Ten bodies were found and about 20 other people were believed missing after a 2nd boat in 2 days carrying would-be immigrants sank off the Italian island of Lampedusa. Some 70 survivors were plucked from the water after the boat sank, several of whom said there had been 120 people on the boat.
(AP, 8/20/06)
2006 Aug 19, Mexican prosecutors announced that they have charged two policemen with protecting the Arellano Felix drug trafficking gang. Mexican police said they had broken up a vote-buying scheme in Chiapas on the eve of state elections.
(AP, 8/20/06)
2006 Aug 19, Demonstrations erupted in Kathmandu, Nepal, after the government hiked fuel prices by as much as 25% in a bid to save state-owned Nepal Oil Corp (NOC) from bankruptcy.
(AFP, 8/19/06)
2006 Aug 19, In Nigeria government troops arrested about 100 people in a search for militants suspected of taking oil industry workers hostage in the petroleum-rich south.
(AP, 8/20/06)
2006 Aug 19, Russia handed over the body of a Japanese fisherman killed by a Russian patrol boat that opened fire in disputed waters, sparking a diplomatic feud.
(AP, 8/19/06)
2006 Aug 19, In Sudan 2 African Union peacekeepers from Rwanda were killed and 3 were wounded when their convoy was ambushed in the Darfur region.
(AP, 8/19/06)
2006 Aug 19, The Turkish Foreign Ministry said that it had forced two Syria-bound Iranian planes to land and be searched for rockets and other military equipment, one on Jul 27 and the other on Aug 8, during the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah.
(AP, 8/19/06)
2006 Aug 19, A suspected Kurdish rebel attack caused an explosion and huge fire on a natural gas pipeline in eastern Turkey.
(AP, 8/19/06)
2006 Aug 20, Robert K. Hoffman (59), one of the 3 founders of the National Lampoon magazine, died in Dallas, Texas. Hoffman, Henry Beard and Doug Kenney sold their interests in 1975.
(AP, 8/23/06)
2006 Aug 20, Joe Rosenthal (94), former Associated Press photographer, who had taken the iconic Iwo Jima flag-raising picture (2/23/1945) during World War II, died in Novato, Calif.
(AP, 8/20/07)
2006 Aug 20, In Afghanistan militants ambushed a police patrol in western Farah province, sparking a gunbattle that left one officer and 2 attackers dead. In Helmand province a clash with insurgents left one British soldier dead and three others wounded. A NATO airstrike killed nine militants including a local insurgent leader in Helmand province. A roadside bomb killed three Afghan policemen traveling on the main highway linking Murja and Lashkar Gah districts. Two roadside bombs targeting border police in southeastern Khost province killed two officers and wounded five others. Tens of thousands of health workers fanned out across Afghanistan in a polio vaccination campaign to immunize more than 7 million children under age 5.
(AP, 8/20/06)(AP, 8/21/06)(AP, 8/22/06)
2006 Aug 20, President Joseph Kabila failed to win an outright majority in Congo's first elections in more than four decades. Kabila won 45% of the 16.9 million votes cast in the July 30 ballot; Bemba had 20%. Former rebel leader Jean-Pierre Bemba will face Kabila in a second round of voting. Security-forces loyal to Kabila and Bemba fought gunbattles that killed at least two people.
(AP, 8/21/06)
2006 Aug 20, Arab League foreign ministers convened in Egypt for an emergency meeting to discuss how to fund reconstruction in war-ravaged Lebanon and defuse Mideast tensions amid rising discord between moderate Arabs and Syria, a main backer of Hezbollah.
(AP, 8/20/06)
2006 Aug 20, In northern France a fire broke out in a run-down apartment building that mainly housed immigrants, killing five people and injuring 10.
(AP, 8/20/06)
2006 Aug 20, In India a Canadian was arrested with illegal drugs worth five million dollars in New Delhi in what was billed as a major effort to stop narcotics being shipped to the West. About 100 kilograms (220 pounds) of ephedrine, hashish and other illegal drugs were seized overnight from Girdish Singh Toor while he was leading a convoy of vehicles.
(AFP, 8/20/06)
2006 Aug 20, Snipers firing from rooftops and a cemetery killed 20 people and wounded dozens in a series of attacks on a Shiite religious procession that drew hundreds of thousands of pilgrims to Baghdad. The "terrorist assaults" took place when the pilgrims were walking through Sunni areas on their way to the shrine of Imam Moussa Kadhim. 2 US Marines and a sailor were killed in the western province of Anbar.
(AP, 8/20/06)(AP, 8/21/06)(Reuters, 8/21/06)
2006 Aug 20, Israeli troops detained Mahmoud al-Ramahi, secretary-general of the Hamas parliament, pushing forward with a crackdown on the Islamic militant group.
(AP, 8/20/06)
2006 Aug 20, Lebanese PM Fuad Saniora called the Israeli bombing campaign "a crime against humanity," and Lebanon's defense minister warned any group that breaks the Middle East cease-fire will be dealt with harshly.
(AP, 8/20/06)
2006 Aug 20, Nepal’s government withdrew hikes in gasoline, diesel and cooking fuel prices after thousands of protesters clashed with police, blocked traffic and vandalized government vehicles.
(AP, 8/20/06)
2006 Aug 20, In New Zealand Tuheitia Paki (51), eldest son of the late Queen Te Arikinui Dame Te Atairangikaahu, wore his mother's feather cloak as he was named the new Maori king in the village of Ngaruawahia.
(AP, 8/20/06)
2006 Aug 20, At least 11 people were killed when militants engaged Nigerian troops in a fierce gun battle in the restive Niger Delta. Local press reports said 12 people, 10 militants, a Shell worker and a soldier, were killed during the shootout.
(AFP, 8/22/06)
2006 Aug 21, California’s Gov. Schwarzenegger and Democratic lawmakers agreed to raise California’s minimum wage by $1.25 over the next year to $8.00 per hour, making it the highest minimum wage in the nation.
(SFC, 8/22/06, p.A1)
2006 Aug 21, NATO and Afghan forces used aircraft in clashes that left 14 militants dead, capping several days of intense fighting that killed more than 100 people and threatened efforts to stabilize southern Afghanistan.
(AP, 8/21/06)
2006 Aug 21, Burundi police arrested former President Domitien Ndayizeye, apparently in connection with an alleged plot to overthrow the tiny central African country's government.
(Reuters, 8/21/06)
2006 Aug 21, A fierce gun battle pinned down foreign envoys in the Congolese capital Kinshasa as fighting erupted for a second day following the announcement of a presidential election run-off. At least five people died in overnight gunfire.
(Reuters, 8/21/06)(AFP, 8/21/06)
2006 Aug 21, In northern Egypt a passenger train barreled into railway station and collided with a second train outside Qalyoub, killing at least 58 people and injuring more than 100.
(AFP, 8/21/06)(SFC, 8/22/06, p.A3)
2006 Aug 21, In London, England, 11 people were charged with conspiracy to commit murder in the alleged plot to blow up as many as 10 trans-Atlantic jetliners. One person, a woman, was released without charge. In 2009 Adam Khatib (23) was sentenced for plotting with Abdulla Ahmed Ali, who was convicted of leading the team. Ali was sentenced in September, 2009, to 40 years. Nabeel Hussain (25) received eight years while Mohammed Shamin Uddin (39) was jailed for seven years.
(AP, 8/21/06)(AP, 12/10/09)
2006 Aug 21, In Haiti Amaral Duclona, the leader of a major gang, defied President Rene Preval's orders to disarm, saying his followers would give up their weapons only if UN peacekeepers stop conducting raids in the slums.
(AP, 8/21/06)
2006 Aug 21, Diplomats and UN officials said Iran has turned away UN inspectors wanting to examine its underground nuclear site in an apparent violation of the Nonproliferation Treaty.
(AP, 8/21/06)
2006 Aug 21, In Iraq a US serviceman was killed when the vehicle he was traveling in was hit by a roadside bomb north of Baghdad. A defiant Saddam Hussein refused to enter a plea on genocide charges and dismissed the court as illegitimate as his second trial began.
(Reuters, 8/21/06)(AP, 8/21/07)
2006 Aug 21, Police raided the official residence of Israeli President Moshe Katsav as part of a sexual harassment investigation, seizing computers and documents. Israeli troops shot two Hezbollah guerrillas during a clash in the southern Lebanese village of Chamaa.
(AP, 8/21/06)(AP, 8/22/06)
2006 Aug 21, In Mexico’s Chiapas state Juan Sabines, of Lopez Obrador's Democratic Revolution Party (PRD), held a razor-thin lead over Jose Antonio Aguilar Bodegas, of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), who also is backed by President Vicente Fox's National Action Party. Oaxaca sank further into chaos as protesters armed with machetes, pipes and clubs seized 12 private radio stations, cut off highways, and blockaded bus terminals and newspaper offices.
(AP, 8/21/06)
2006 Aug 21, In Nigeria soldiers stopped cars at checkpoints and arrested 60 people in the third day of a crackdown on militants in the volatile oil region.
(AP, 8/21/06)
2006 Aug 21, In Russia a bomb blast tore through a Moscow market, killing at least 11 people and over 50 people. 3 detainees, all in their late teens or early 20s, confessed to the crime.
(AP, 8/21/06)(AP, 8/22/07)
2006 Aug 21, Somalia’s embattled PM Ali Mohamed Gedi named a new Cabinet, two weeks after the old one was dissolved amid a rift within the UN-backed transitional government over how to respond to the growing influence of Islamic militants.
(AP, 8/21/06)
2006 Aug 21, South Korea and the US launched joint military exercises, held annually since 1975, despite protests from North Korea. The Ulchi Focus Lens exercises were scheduled to run until September 1.
(AP, 8/21/06)
2006 Aug 21, In northern Spain at least 6 people died in a train derailment.
(AP, 8/21/06)
2006 Aug 21, Saudi police killed two armed men during clashes in the Red Sea port of Jeddah.
(AP, 8/21/06)
2006 Aug 22, US sprinter Justin Gatlin agreed to an 8-year ban for doping and will forfeit his 100m world-record tie, set May 12 at the Qatar Super Grand Prix in Doha.
(WSJ, 8/23/06, p.A1)
2006 Aug 22, Paramount Pictures severed ties to Tom Cruise after 14 years, citing unacceptable conduct.
(AP, 8/22/07)
2006 Aug 22, Berkeley, Ca., christened the new $70 million Berkeley City College, formerly known as Vista College. Vista had begun in 1974 as Peralta College for Non-traditional Study (PCNS). The name was changed to vista in 1978. Classes were spread across more than 200 locations.
(SFC, 8/23/06, p.B3)
2006 Aug 22, Sony Corp. announced its purchase of Grouper, a small video-sharing site, for $65 million.
(Econ, 9/2/06, p.58)
2006 Aug 22, In southern Afghanistan a suicide bomber drove his explosives-laden car into a Canadian military patrol, wounding four soldiers. Insurgents ambushed a police vehicle near the Pakistan border, killing five officers. In Helmand province British troops using "high-explosive ammunition" killed nine insurgents. In Kandahar province NATO warplanes killed at least 11 Taliban fighters just hours after militant attacks left one NATO soldier dead and five others wounded. NATO troops killed one Afghan youth and wounded another after a suicide bombing in Kandahar city that targeted a Canadian convoy, killing one soldier and wounding three. 2 roadside bombs struck a truck and a motorbike in the Kandahar district of Daman, killing three civilians and wounding one.
(AP, 8/22/06)(AP, 8/23/06)
2006 Aug 22, British government figures said Britain has taken in an estimated 427,000 migrants from eight former communist states since they joined the European Union in 2004, far more than an earlier prediction of 13,000 newcomers a year.
(AP, 8/23/06)
2006 Aug 22, In China visiting Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said China will expand its cooperation in oil exploration and help his country build a fiber-optic communications network under agreements to be signed in Beijing this week.
(AP, 8/22/06)
2006 Aug 22, In Kinshasa fighting flared for a third day between supporters of Congo's two presidential candidates, as the UN called for an immediate cease-fire and a European Union military force was sending reinforcements.
(AP, 8/22/06)
2006 Aug 22, An Egyptian tour bus overturned in the Sinai peninsula killing 11 people, most of them Israeli Arabs, and injuring more than 30.
(AP, 8/22/06)
2006 Aug 22, Kristjan Lepik of Tallinn, Estonia, settled theft charges with the SEC. He agreed to return over $550,000 in trading profits and pay a $15,000 penalty for illegally trading on corporate information. The SEC said Lepik and co-worker Oliver Peek made at least $7.8 million trading on advanced looks at hundreds of press releases.
(SFC, 8/23/06, p.C2)
2006 Aug 22, Ethiopia began releasing water from dams taxed by two weeks of heavy rain to prevent them from bursting as the confirmed death toll from devastating floods climbed to 626.
(AP, 8/22/06)
2006 Aug 22, Ethiopian troops reportedly arrived in the central Somali town of Galkayo. The move may stoke tensions with the Islamic militiamen who control most of southern Somalia. They were seen inside the town in 13 vehicles.
(AP, 8/22/06)
2006 Aug 22, In India police killed a Pakistani and arrested another in a shootout that authorities said foiled a terrorist attack in Mumbai, India's financial capital.
(AP, 8/22/06)
2006 Aug 22, In Iraq two people were killed in a bomb explosion in Baghdad and two people were killed during clashes between British forces and gunmen in the southern city of Amarah. A policeman was shot to death in a drive-by shooting in Al-Hay, north of Amarah.
(AP, 8/22/06)(AP, 8/23/06)
2006 Aug 22, Israeli troops shot and killed three militants from the Islamic Jihad group near the Israel-Gaza border, as soldiers conducted house-to-house searches and made arrests elsewhere in the coast strip.
(AP, 8/22/06)
2006 Aug 22, The Orizont, a leased Romanian oil rig off the coast of Iran, came under fire from Iranian military vessels and was later occupied by Iranian troops. A 2nd Romanian rig had recently been towed from Iranian waters due to unpaid bills.
(AP, 8/22/06)(WSJ, 10/14/06, p.A8)
2006 Aug 22, A Russian passenger jet with at least 170 people aboard crashed in Ukraine after sending a distress signal. The Pulkovo airlines Tupolev 154, en route from the Russian Black Sea resort of Anapa to St. Petersburg, crashed near the Ukrainian city of Donetsk.
(AP, 8/22/06)
2006 Aug 22, In Spain Grigory Perelman (40), a reclusive Russian, won a Fields Medal, the math world's highest honor, for solving a problem that has stumped some of the discipline's greatest minds for a century, but he refused the award.
(AP, 8/22/06)
2006 Aug 22, Thailand police arrested 175 North Koreans, mostly women and children, who illegally entered the country and were found hiding in an abandoned home in Bangkok.
(AFP, 8/23/06)
2006 Aug 23, In Alaska Republican Gov. Frank Murkowski finished last in a 3-day primary election. Sarah Palin, a former Wasilla mayor, won with over 50% of the vote.
(SFC, 8/24/06, p.A3)
2006 Aug 23, Annie Donnelly (38) of Long Island, NY, pleaded guilty to stealing $2.3 million (1.2 million pounds) from her employers. She spent the money on lottery tickets, buying as much as $6,000 worth of tickets a day in a bid to hit the jackpot.
(Reuters, 8/24/06)
2006 Aug 23, The Citadel released the results of a survey in which almost 20% of female cadets reported being sexually assaulted since enrolling at the South Carolina military college.
(AP, 8/23/07)
2006 Aug 23, In Washington state Gov. Gregoire declared a state of emergency due to a group of southeastern wildfires that had covered 70 square miles near Dayton.
(SFC, 8/25/06, p.A3)
2006 Aug 23, Maynard Ferguson (78), Canadian-born jazz trumpeter, died in Ventura, Ca.
(SFC, 8/25/06, p.B11)
2006 Aug 23, The Afghan and Pakistani armies agreed to conduct coordinated and simultaneous patrols with the US alongside their volatile border. The accord was reached during the 17th meeting of Tripartite Commission. In southern Afghanistan 18 Taliban rebels and an Afghan soldier were killed in a clash that erupted after the militants attacked an army post in Zabul province.
(AP, 8/23/06)(AFP, 8/23/06)
2006 Aug 23, Argentina announced an ambitious plan to expand its nuclear program to meet rising energy demands, including extending the life of existing plants and possibly resuming uranium mining.
(AP, 8/23/06)
2006 Aug 23, Vytautas Pociunas, a top Lithuanian spy posted to Belarus, was found dead in Brest. Some linked his death to feuds within the Lithuanian security service (VSD) over freight contracts. A parliamentary committee called for Arvydas Pocius, the VSD chief, to go.
(Econ, 12/23/06, p.74)(www.data.minsk.by/belarusnews/092006/25.html)
2006 Aug 23, The Canadian Food Inspection Agency confirmed that a mature beef cow in the Prairie province Alberta tested positive for mad cow case. It was the 8th case since 2003.
(Reuters, 8/23/06)
2006 Aug 23, In western India 17 people were killed when a truck overturned and fell into a deep ditch. Victims were sitting on top of sacks of salt that the truck was transporting when it overturned into a ditch flooded from recent monsoon rains.
(AP, 8/23/06)
2006 Aug 23, Iran urged Europe to pay attention to what it called "positive" signals in its counterproposal to a nuclear incentives package aimed at persuading Tehran to roll back its nuclear program. Russia and China backed Iran's call for negotiations to end the standoff.
(AP, 8/23/06)
2006 Aug 23, A roadside bomb exploded in Baghdad and narrowly missed the interior minister's convoy, killing two civilians and wounding several traffic policemen. A suicide bomber blew himself up outside a police headquarters in Mosul, killing at least one person. An Iraqi army officer, 1st Lt. Hassanein Saadi al-Zerjawi (29) was gunned down in a drive-by shooting in Amarah. A roadside bomb missed a US military convoy in Fallujah, 40 miles west of Baghdad, killing two pedestrians and injuring 12. One US soldier was killed during a raid to capture "foreign terrorists." Two militants also were killed.
(AP, 8/23/06)(AP, 8/24/06)
2006 Aug 23, In Indian-controlled Kashmir a crowded bus swerved off a steep mountain road and plunged into a gorge, killing at least 16 people and injuring 35 others.
(AP, 8/23/06)
2006 Aug 23, A leader of Kurdish rebels battling Turkey's government said in a rare interview that his guerrillas will not give in to US pressure to disarm without a "political project" that fulfills their calls for autonomy. PKK party officials met with a group of journalists in the rugged, isolated Qandil Mountain in Iraq's northeast corner where the group is based.
(AP, 8/24/06)
2006 Aug 23, In southern Lebanon 3 Lebanese soldiers were killed while they dismantled an unexploded missile. An Israeli soldier was killed and three others wounded in southern Lebanon when their tank drove over a land mine.
(AP, 8/23/06)
2006 Aug 23, Assailants threw grenades at the offices of a newspaper in the resort city of Cancun in the latest in a series of attacks on news outlets across Mexico.
(AP, 8/24/06)
2006 Aug 23, In Oslo Villa Grande, a sprawling mansion used by Norwegian Nazi collaborator Vidkun Quisling during World War II, opened as a center to oppose the intolerance, hatred and treachery he represented.
(AP, 8/23/06)
2006 Aug 23, A previously unknown Palestinian group released the first video of two kidnapped Fox News journalists and demanded that Muslim prisoners in US jails be released within 72 hours in exchange for the men. Correspondent Steve Centanni and cameraman Olaf Wiig were later freed.
(AP, 8/23/06)(AP, 8/23/07)
2006 Aug 23, Russia’s Gazprom threatened to cut off gas exports to Bosnia on Oct 1 if strides toward repaying $104.8 million from debts incurred during wars that ended in 1995.
(WSJ, 8/24/06, p.A6)
2006 Aug 23, Somalia’s seaport in Mogadishu reopened for the first time in 11 years, the latest sign that the city's Islamic fundamentalist rulers are trying to restore confidence after more than a decade of anarchy.
(AP, 8/23/06)
2006 Aug 23, Sudan's ruling party rejected a proposed Security Council resolution to transfer peacekeeping duties in conflict-wracked Darfur to a UN force, saying it would violate national sovereignty.
(AP, 8/24/06)
2006 Aug 23, Syria opposed deployment of an international force along its border to prevent arms shipments to Hezbollah, and Israel called the situation in Lebanon "explosive." In southern Lebanon 3 Lebanese soldiers were killed while they dismantled an unexploded missile. An Israeli soldier was killed and three others wounded in southern Lebanon when their tank drove over a land mine.
(AP, 8/23/06)(AP, 8/24/06)
2006 Aug 23, Taiwan's cabinet decided to increase military spending by nearly 30% next year as President Chen Shui-bian warned of rival China's continuing hostility towards the island.
(AP, 8/23/06)
2006 Aug 24, A US House report said 70% of contracts for Hurricane Katrina were let with little or no competition. 4 Katrina contractors were indicted for taking $700,000 for no work.
(WSJ, 8/25/06, p.A1)
2006 Aug 24, The US FDA approved Plan B, also called the morning after pill, for sale without prescription to women 18 and older.
(SFC, 8/25/06, p.A1)
2006 Aug 24, In Oakland, Ca., police moved to serve 65 arrest warrants and picked up 30 suspected drug dealers. They planned to continue their sweep.
(AP, 8/25/06)
2006 Aug 24, A Kentucky judge dropped charges against Gov. Fletcher in a plea deal in which Fletcher acknowledged failure to follow the state’s merit-hiring rules.
(WSJ, 8/25/06, p.A1)
2006 Aug 24, In Essex, Vermont, Christopher Williams (26) shot and killed 2 people after breaking up with his girlfriend, and then shot himself in the head. Williams killed Andrea Lambesis (57), the mother of his girlfriend at her home. He then went to Essex Elementary School where he killed teacher Mary Shanks (56) and wounded 2 others.
(SFC, 8/25/06, p.A5)(AP, 8/25/06)
2006 Aug 24, Deadly storms swept across the northern Plains, bringing tornadoes that ripped roofs off houses and hail that smashed car windshields. One man was killed when a tornado hit his home in Minnesota, and in Wisconsin, lightning apparently killed a dozen cows and struck a woman as she left a supermarket.
(AP, 8/25/06)
2006 Aug 24, Carl C. Clark (82), US auto safety and air-bag pioneer, died.
(WSJ, 9/23/06, p.A4)
2006 Aug 24, Arthur Schiff (b.1940), TV-advertising pitchman, died. His pitched products included a kitchen knife, which he renamed Ginsu, made in Ohio. “But wait, there’s more."
(WSJ, 9/9/06, p.A4)
2006 Aug 24, Ralph Schoenstein (73), American humorist, writer and NPR commentator, died in Philadelphia. His 18 books included “Fatherhood" (1987), ghost written for Bill Cosby.
(SFC, 8/28/06, p.B4)
2006 Aug 24, Leading astronomers meeting in Prague declared that Pluto is no longer a planet under historic new guidelines that downsize the solar system from nine planets to eight.
(AP, 8/24/06)
2006 Aug 24, American and Afghan forces killed seven suspected al-Qaida operatives after coming under fire during a raid in eastern Afghanistan. Police, however, claimed those killed were members of two families trying to resolve a dispute.
(AP, 8/24/06)
2006 Aug 24, A Bangladesh court acquitted former military ruler Hossain Mohammad Ershad of graft charges in an oil and defense deal, easing the way for his return to the political mainstream ahead of elections next year.
(Reuters, 8/24/06)
2006 Aug 24, An explosion in Chechnya's capital Grozny killed four people.
(AP, 8/24/06)
2006 Aug 24, In China a blind activist who was arrested after recording complaints of forced abortions was sentenced to four years and three months in prison. Chen Guangcheng was convicted of damaging property and "organizing a mob to disturb traffic" after a trial in the eastern province of Shandong.
(AP, 8/24/06)
2006 Aug 24, China reported that a chemical spill on the Mangniu River in Jilin province was contained. A 3-mile slick had been created by a xylidine spill from a local chemical company.
(SFC, 8/24/06, p.A3)
2006 Aug 24, A Danish prosecutor charged four young Muslims with helping to supply weapons and explosives for a planned terror attack in Europe. The four men, arrested in Denmark last October 27, helped the two main suspects in Bosnia get hold of weapons and explosives with the aim of committing a terror act.
(AP, 8/24/06)
2006 Aug 24, France said it was ready to send an extra 1,600 troops to bolster a revamped U.N. force for Lebanon, bringing the total French contingent to 2,000 and making it easier to recruit other nations.
(Reuters, 8/24/06)
2006 Aug 24, Murat Kurnaz (b.1982), a German native, was released after spending more than 4 years locked up at Guantanamo Bay. He had been arrested in Pakistan in late 2001. In 2007 he and Helmut Kuhn authored “Fünf Jahre meines Lebens: Ein Bericht aus Guantanamo" (Five years of My Life: A Report from Guantanamo).
(Econ, 2/3/07, p.53)(http://tinyurl.com/36pdk5)(Econ, 6/9/07, p.97)
2006 Aug 24, In Iraq gunmen overnight killed at least three people. A US soldiers was killed south of Baghdad. 3 car bombs in Baghdad and a series of bombings and shootings across the country killed 16 Iraqis and two US soldiers. Police found four handcuffed bodies dumped separately in the streets of Kut.
(AP, 8/24/06)(AP, 8/25/06)
2006 Aug 24, Israeli forces crossed into the Gaza Strip in a raid that captured a local Hamas militant leader and left his brother dead near a Gaza border town.
(AP, 8/24/06)
2006 Aug 24, Jihad Hamad (20), the second main suspect in a failed plot to bomb two German trains, was arrested in his native Lebanon after surrendering to police.
(AP, 8/24/06)
2006 Aug 24, Nigeria released 10,000 prisoners incarcerated for up to 10 years without trial. (WSJ, 8/25/06, p.A1)
2006 Aug 24, South Africa's cabinet gave the green light for a bill allowing gay marriage, which would make it the first country in Africa to accord homosexual couples the same rights as their straight counterparts.
(Reuters, 8/24/06)
2006 Aug 25, A college student's checked luggage on a Continental Airlines flight that had arrived in Houston from Buenos Aires, Argentina, was found to contain a stick of dynamite, one of six security incidents that day that caused US flights to be diverted, evacuated or searched.
(AP, 8/25/07)
2006 Aug 25, The US Navy debuted Texas, its newest nuclear-powered submarine. in an Atlantic Ocean swing off the Florida coast. This is the second in the latest fast-attack class that marks a broad departure from the Cold War-era deterrence boats.
(AP, 8/27/06)
2006 Aug 25, Bruce D. Hopfengardner (46), a former US Army Reserve officer, admitted that he steered millions of dollars in Iraq-reconstruction contracts in exchange for jewelry, computers, cigars and sexual favors. Hopfengardner (46) admitted conspiring with Philip H. Bloom, a US citizen with businesses in Romania, Robert J. Stein Jr., a former Defense Department contract official, and others to create a corrupt bidding process that included the theft of $2 million in reconstruction money.
(AP, 8/25/06)
2006 Aug 25, Michael John O'Keefe, the deputy nonimmigrant visa chief at the US Consulate in Toronto, was indicted on bribery and conspiracy charges. International jewelry executive Sunil Agrawal, a native of India, also was charged but remains at large.
(AP, 8/25/06)
2006 Aug 25, The Alabama Supreme Court ruled that Richard Scrushy, the fired CEO of HealthSouth Corp., must repay $47.8 million in bonuses he received during a massive financial fraud at the medical services chain.
(WSJ, 8/26/06, p.A9)
2006 Aug 25, In SF former Ukrainian PM Pavlo Lazarenko (53) was sentenced to nine years in federal prison for money laundering, wire fraud and extortion. The sentence, which also included $10 million in fines, was half of the maximum sought by prosecutors. In March, he was elected to a regional parliament office in Ukraine.
(AP, 8/25/06)
2006 Aug 25, A team led by Andy Jassy made available a beta version of “Elastic Compute Cloud" (EC2), the central offering of Amazon Web Services (AWS), the cloud-computing arm of Amazon.
(Econ, 8/27/16, p.46)(Econ, 8/27/16, p.46)
2006 Aug 25, Coca-Cola was sued as part of a campaign to force US soft drink makers to eliminate ingredients that can form cancer-causing benzene. Two companies, Zone Brands and TalkingRain Beverage Co., had already settled similar charges.
(SFC, 8/26/06, p.A5)
2006 Aug 25, Joseph Stefano (84), who wrote the screenplay for Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho," died in Thousand Oaks, Calif.
(AP, 8/25/07)
2006 Aug 25, President Hamid Karzai ordered an investigation into the killings of eight people in eastern Afghanistan during a raid that US forces claimed targeted al-Qaida members. Afghan police clashed with suspected Taliban militants in southern Zabul province, killing six insurgents and wounding 12. Two French soldiers were killed in an ambush in eastern Laghman province. Separate airstrikes in southern Uruzgan province killed 23 militants, including a known Taliban commander. British troops with a NATO-led force used artillery fire against a convoy of insurgents that was moving into position for attack in Helmand province. About seven insurgents were killed and seven vehicles destroyed.
(AP, 8/25/06)(AP, 8/26/06)(AFP, 8/26/06)
2006 Aug 25, In Bangladesh suspected Maoist attackers shot dead 4 policemen and a ruling party official after hurling bombs and firing bullets in a crowded cattle market. Police said they suspected the Purba Banglar Communist Party (PBCP) was behind the attack.
(AFP, 8/26/06)
2006 Aug 25, Officials said drug users who don't engage in dealing will no longer be sent to prison under a new drug law now in effect across Brazil.
(AP, 8/25/06)
2006 Aug 25, Zhao Yan (44), a Chinese researcher for The New York Times who has been detained since 2004, was cleared of charges of revealing state secrets but convicted of fraud and sentenced to three years in prison. Xinhua News said communities in southeastern China are straining to resettle more than 15 million people left homeless by four devastating typhoons in recent months. A moderate earthquake jolted southwest China, killing two people.
(AP, 8/25/06)
2006 Aug 25, In China a tanker truck loaded with 25 tons of liquid caustic soda, colorless, transparent corrosive liquid that rapidly burns skin and eyes, fell into a river 3 miles away from the Xuefeng reservoir in a city within the municipality of Weinan in Shaanxi province. It polluted a reservoir serving at least 100,000 residents for two days until water quality returned to normal.
(AP, 8/27/06)
2006 Aug 25, The UN established a new mission in East Timor but left Australian-led troops in place following a dispute over whether they should remain independent or be part of a UN force.
(Reuters, 8/25/06)
2006 Aug 25, German police arrested a 3rd suspect in connection with a failed attempt to blow up two trains. Lebanese authorities picked up a 4th man believed to have been involved.
(AP, 8/25/06)
2006 Aug 25, Looters ravaged Camp Abu Naji in Amarah, a former British base, a day after the camp was turned over to Iraqi troops, taking everything from doors and window frames to corrugated roofing and metal pipes. A police officer was killed in a drive-by shooting in downtown Samarra.
(AP, 8/25/06)
2006 Aug 25, Israeli aircraft attacked two buildings in the Gaza Strip, wounding at least nine people.
(AP, 8/25/06)
2006 Aug 25, A military truck carrying UN peacekeepers crashed in Ivory Coast, killing six Bangladeshi troops and injuring 11 others.
(AP, 8/26/06)
2006 Aug 25, In Jordan top leaders of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party gave their leader the go-ahead to begin forming a unity government with the militant Hamas in an effort to end internal feuding and international isolation.
(AP, 8/25/06)
2006 Aug 25, Japanese officials said Kazusaku Tezuka, the president of precision instrument maker Mitutoyo Corp., was arrested along with four other Mitutoyo executives and employees for the alleged export to Malaysia of equipment that can be used in making nuclear weapons.
(AP, 8/25/06)
2006 Aug 25, The UN said unexploded cluster bomb litter homes, gardens and highways in south Lebanon, as the US State Department reportedly investigated whether Israel's use of the American-made weapons violated secret agreements with the United States.
(AP, 8/25/06)
2006 Aug 25, In Mongolia the Dalai Lama elevated a group of monks into the Buddhist priesthood's higher ranks, bolstering the country's traditional faith as it struggles to re-establish itself following decades of communist persecution.
(AP, 8/25/06)
2006 Aug 25, In Niger the UN food agency inaugurated a program to help feed hundreds of thousands of people as the impoverished West African nation struggles to recover from severe shortages.
(AP, 8/25/06)
2006 Aug 25, Nigerian soldiers in Port Harcourt burned hundreds of slum houses located close to the compound of an Italian oil company where at least one Italian worker was kidnapped and his bodyguard killed overnight.
(Reuters, 8/25/06)
2006 Aug 25, Peru's jailed ex-intelligence chief Vladimiro Montesinos was sentenced to six years in prison for using government money to fund former President Alberto Fujimori's 2000 re-election campaign. The sentence will be served concurrently with Montesinos' 15-year prison sentence for various corruption convictions.
(AP, 8/27/06)
2006 Aug 25, The UN food agency said fighting between Sri Lanka's Tamil Tiger rebels and security forces has forced at least 204,000 people from their homes in the eastern and northern parts of the country. A food relief ship began unloading in northern Sri Lanka to lift a two-week siege of the Jaffna peninsula as fresh clashes left five rebels dead.
(AP, 8/25/06)(AFP, 8/25/06)
2006 Aug 26, Tropical Storm Ernesto strengthened over the Caribbean as it headed toward Jamaica and the Cayman Islands, threatening to become the first hurricane of the 2006 Atlantic season.
(AP, 8/26/06)
2006 Aug 26, In Afghanistan a large number of militants attacked the Musa Qala district government compound in Helmand, provoking a clash with police that left 10 insurgents dead.
(AP, 8/27/06)
2006 Aug 26, Thousands of farmers took to the streets across northern Bangladesh over the fatal shooting of at least five people protesting against an open-pit coal mine.
(AFP, 8/27/06)
2006 Aug 26, Chad ordered US energy giant Chevron and Malaysia's Petronas to leave the country within 24 hours for failing to honor tax obligations, a move apparently aimed at increasing control over its oil output. Chad's president Idriss Deby suspended the oil minister and two other Cabinet members who negotiated deals with the two foreign oil firms.
(AP, 8/27/06)
2006 Aug 26, Iran's hard-line president inaugurated a heavy-water production plant, a facility the West fears will be used to develop a nuclear bomb, as Tehran remained defiant ahead of a UN deadline that could lead to sanctions.
(AP, 8/26/06)
2006 Aug 26, Iraq's PM Nouri al-Maliki urged hundreds of tribal leaders to join his efforts to end sectarian strife and terrorism Kidnapped Sunni lawmaker Tayseer al-Mashhadani was released after being held for nearly two months. Al-Mashhadani and 7 of her bodyguards were seized July 1 by gunmen in a Shiite area of east Baghdad. Gunmen in a speeding car opened fire on two sisters working as translators for the British consulate, killing one of them and seriously wounding the other. 26 people were killed in dozens of attacks across Iraq. One US soldier was killed by a roadside bomb.
(AP, 8/26/06)(AP, 8/27/06)(AP, 8/28/06)
2006 Aug 26, In Nepal a landslide in a mountainous western village killed at least 10 people and injured three others.
(AP, 8/26/06)
2006 Aug 26, In Pakistan government forces killed Nawab Akbar Bugti (79), the most prominent leader in the rebellion by Baluch tribesmen, in a raid on his cave hideout in the mountainous area of the southwestern provinces of Baluchistan. A top security official said at least 16 security forces, including four officers, were killed.
(AP, 8/27/06)
2006 Aug 26, In the West Bank, Israeli troops and Palestinian gunmen traded heavy fire during a standoff at a fugitives' hideout and doctors said a 16-year-old Palestinian was killed. Twenty Palestinians were wounded in the clashes in the West Bank city of Nablus.
(AP, 8/27/06)
2006 Aug 26, In Russia's Dagestan region police surrounded a home and exchanged gunfire with suspected militants, killing four and wounding a woman who was with the gunmen.
(AP, 8/27/06)
2006 Aug 26, Vladimir Tretchikoff (92), Manchurian-born artist, died in Cape Town. In 2013 his iconic painting "Chinese Girl," said to be one of the most reproduced in the world, sold at auction for 982,050 British pounds (nearly $1.5 million).
(AP, 3/21/13)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Tretchikoff)
2006 Aug 26, In Sri Lanka police found a large weapons cache hidden in a house on the outskirts of Colombo, and arrested 17 people suspected of planning a major attack. Sporadic fighting left 12 rebels killed and 20 injured during a battle in the northeastern Batticaloa district. A bomb killed six Sri Lankan soldiers and wounded 11 as they cleared up after fierce fighting with Tamil Tiger rebels in the besieged northern Jaffna peninsula.
(AP, 8/26/06)(AFP, 8/27/06)
2006 Aug 26, A Sudanese court charged reporter Paul Salopek (44) with espionage. He was detained by pro-government forces in Darfur on Aug 6. Salopek was on freelance assignment for National Geographic magazine.
(SSFC, 8/27/06, p.A19)
2006 Aug 26, An international rights groups said a court in tightly controlled Turkmenistan has sentenced three rights defenders to jail terms of six to seven years.
(AP, 8/26/06)
2006 Aug 26, Officials said Uganda and the rebel Lord's Resistance Army have signed a truce to end a 19-year conflict that killed thousands of people.
(AP, 8/26/06)
2006 Aug 27, Heart-pounding spy thriller "24" finally broke through at the Emmy Awards, winning the prize as best drama series in its fifth try, while new workplace satire "The Office" was crowned best comedy.
(Reuters, 8/28/06)
2006 Aug 27, In Kentucky a Comair commuter jet carrying 50 people, crashed in a field and caught fire shortly after taking off in light rain. The co-pilot was the sole survivor. The taxi route for commercial jets using Blue Grass Airport's main runway was altered a week before Comair Flight 5191 took the wrong runway and crashed.
(AP, 8/27/06)(AP, 8/28/07)
2006 Aug 27, Ernesto became the first hurricane of the Atlantic season with winds of 75 mph, and forecasters said it would strengthen as it headed toward the Gulf of Mexico.
(AP, 8/27/06)
2006 Aug 27, In Afghanistan insurgent attacks in Helmand province killed a British soldier, while 10 suspected Taliban militants died when police repelled an attack on a government compound in the same province. Insurgent attacks left seven wounded in Kandahar province.
(AP, 8/27/06)(AP, 8/28/06)
2006 Aug 27, In Brazil archbishop Luciano Mendes de Almeida (75), an avid human rights defender, died.
(AP, 8/27/06)
2006 Aug 27, Britain’s National Patient Safety Agency reported that 2,159 patients died between April 2005 and March 2006 as a result of "patient safety incidents" in the National Health Service (NHS).
(AP, 8/27/06)
2006 Aug 27, China adopted a new bankruptcy law making it easier to restructure insolvent firms. It became effective on June 1, 2007.
(http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/china_law_prof_blog/2006/08/revised_bankrup.html)
2006 Aug 27, State media quoted officials saying that one-third of China's vast landmass is suffering from acid rain caused by its rapid industrial growth, while local leaders are failing to enforce environmental standards for fear of hurting business.
(AP, 8/27/06)
2006 Aug 27, In western India a water tank collapsed during a Bharatpur town fair, killing 45 people who had climbed on top of it to watch a wrestling match.
(AP, 8/27/06)
2006 Aug 27, Iran test fired a new submarine-to-surface missile during war games in the Persian Gulf. A brief video clip showed the long-range missile, called Thaqeb, or Saturn, exiting the water and hitting a target on the water's surface within less than a mile.
(AP, 8/27/06)
2006 Aug 27, In Baghdad 2 explosions killed at least 12 people and wounded dozens. Gunmen in 3 cars opened fire at the outdoor market of Khalis, a mostly Shiite town. 12 people were killed and 25 others were wounded. 7 US soldiers were killed in and around Baghdad, 6 by roadside bombs and one by gunfire. Bombings and shootings killed at least 73 people across the country. A US service member died in fighting in Anbar province west of Baghdad.
(AP, 8/27/06)(AP, 8/28/06)(SFC, 8/28/06, p.A3)(AP, 8/29/06)
2006 Aug 27, Israeli aircraft fired two missiles at an armored car belonging to the Reuters news agency, wounding five people, including two cameramen. Two Hamas militants were killed in separate airstrikes.
(AP, 8/27/06)
2006 Aug 27, Jordan's parliament endorsed the country's first anti-terrorism law despite objections by some lawmakers that the bill curtails freedoms.
(AP, 8/27/06)
2006 Aug 27, Mauritania police said the bodies of 15 people found washed ashore on the beaches of Nouakchatt, Mauritania's capital, are believed to be those of African migrants who were trying to reach Spain's Canary Islands by boat. Spain's Interior Ministry said more than 18,300 people have reached the Canary Islands so far this year, the highest total ever.
(AP, 8/27/06)
2006 Aug 27, Mexican electoral officials said Juan Sabines, a leftist candidate, won the governor's race in Mexico's volatile southernmost state of Chiapas, edging out Jose Antonio Aguilar, backed by President Vicente Fox's party by about 6,300 votes.
(AP, 8/27/06)
2006 Aug 27, Hundreds of rioters angered by the killing of a rebel Baluch tribal leader rampaged through Quetta in southwestern Pakistan, burning shops, banks and police vehicles. Police arrested 450 rioters who rampaged overnight.
(AP, 8/27/06)
2006 Aug 27, Militants freed Steve Centanni and cameraman Olaf Wiig, two Fox News journalists in the Gaza Strip, ending a nearly two week hostage drama.
(AP, 8/27/06)
2006 Aug 27, In Russia a man doused himself with flammable liquids and set himself on fire on Red Square before dozens of shocked tourists.
(AP, 8/28/06)
2006 Aug 27, In Turkey a bomb on a minibus injured 21 people including 10 British tourists. The explosion was in the popular Mediterranean resort town of Marmaris. 2 other bomb blasts hit at the same time in garbage cans on the main boulevard.
(www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14546503/)
2006 Aug 28, Prosecutors in Colorado abruptly dropped their case against John Mark Karr in the slaying of JonBenet Ramsey, saying DNA tests failed to put him at the crime scene despite his repeated insistence he'd killed the 6-year-old beauty queen.
(AP, 8/28/07)
2006 Aug 28, Rice farmers in Arkansas, California, Louisiana, Missouri, Mississippi and Texas sued BayerCrop Science alleging that its genetically modified rice has contaminated the nation’s crop. Japan had suspended imports of US long-grain rice a week earlier. On Jul 31 US authorities learned that Bayer’s unapproved rice had been found in commercial bins in Arkansas and Missouri.
(SFC, 8/29/06, p.E1)
2006 Aug 28, Columbus, Ga., beat Kawaguchi City, Japan, 2-1 to win the Little League World Series championship game.
(AP, 8/28/07)
2006 Aug 28, In southeastern Kentucky a small plane from Wichita Fall, Texas, crashed and all 7 people aboard were killed.
(SFC, 8/29/06, p.A3)
2006 Aug 28, Five people were killed and dozens injured after a Montreal-bound Greyhound bus from New York City overturned on a highway in upstate New York.
(Reuters, 8/29/06)
2006 Aug 28, Ed Benedict (94), legendary animator, died in Auburn, Ca. He put life, love and laughter in TV cartoon characters like Fred Flintstone (1960), Huckleberry Hound and Yogi Bear.
(AP, 10/10/06)(SFC, 10/13/06, p.B9)
2006 Aug 28, In Afghanistan a suicide bomber blew himself up in a crowded market in Lashkar Gah, Helmand province, killing 21 people and wounding 43. US-led coalition troops killed 18 suspected insurgents when about 60 militants attacked with heavy machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades in Cahar Cineh district of the southern Uruzgan province.
(AP, 8/28/06)(AP, 8/29/06)
2006 Aug 28, Don Chipp (81), an Australian politician famed for his pledge to "keep the bastards honest," died after a long battle with Parkinson's disease.
(AFP, 8/29/06)
2006 Aug 28, In Chile Paul Schaefer (84), former leader of Colonia Dignidad, or Dignity Colony, was sentenced to 7 years in prison for arms found at the secretive enclave near Parral, 200 miles south of Santiago.
(AP, 8/28/06)
2006 Aug 28, Tropical Storm Ernesto hit Cuba west of the US naval air base at Guantanamo after killing 2 people in Haiti.
(AP, 8/28/06)(AP, 8/29/06)
2006 Aug 28, Ene Ergma (62), a Soviet-trained astronomer, failed to win enough votes in parliament to become Estonia's next president, forcing a new vote on a second candidate.
(AP, 8/28/06)
2006 Aug 28, Gunmen opened fire with assault rifles in a Guatemala pool hall, killing eight people including a 17-year-old boy. The attack occurred in the poor Guatemala City suburb of Ciudad Quetzal.
(AP, 8/29/06)
2006 Aug 28, Guyana held elections. Critics accused Guyana's government of turning a blind eye to the cocaine flowing Guyana to the US and Europe. President Bharrat Jagdeo's party appeared headed to victory in Guyana's election, according to vote results.
(AP, 8/28/06)(AP, 8/30/06)
2006 Aug 28, In India officials said monsoon rains and flooding have killed at least 130 people in the western state of Rajasthan, with huge swathes of desert underwater.
(AP, 8/28/06)
2006 Aug 28, In Iraq a suicide car bombing in Baghdad killed 16 people. Clashes in Diwaniyah between Shiite militia and Iraqi security forces left 73 people dead. A US service member died of wounds sustained in a vehicle accident in Balad north of Baghdad.
(AP, 8/28/06)(AP, 8/29/06)
2006 Aug 28, In Ireland the government and directors of the state-owned airline announced that Aer Lingus Group PLC expects to raise more than $500 million by selling stock for the first time in a public offering next month.
(AP, 8/28/06)
2006 Aug 28, An Israeli airstrike on central Gaza killed 4 Palestinian militants.
(AP, 8/28/06)
2006 Aug 28, Italy approved 2,500 troops in a boost to an expanded international force in Lebanon.
(AP, 8/28/06)
2006 Aug 28, US Sen. Barack Obama urged Kenyans to take control of their country's destiny by opposing corruption and ethnic divisions in government during a policy speech at the main university in his father's homeland.
(AP, 8/28/06)
2006 Aug 28, Mexico’s top electoral court announced that a partial recount found no widespread evidence of fraud.
(SFC, 8/29/06, p.A1)
2006 Aug 28, In the Netherlands prosecutors at the International Criminal Court filed their first indictment, charging Thomas Lubanga, a former Congolese warlord, for allegedly abducting and recruiting children as young as 10 to fight in Congo's brutal civil war.
(AP, 8/29/06)
2006 Aug 28, In Quetta, Pakistan, mobs burned shops, banks and buses in a second day of rioting over the killing of a top tribal chief by Pakistani troops, raising fears that a decades-old conflict in the country's volatile southwest could widen.
(AP, 8/28/06)
2006 Aug 28, Palestinian municipal workers responsible for garbage collection, water treatment, and sewage processing went on strike in Gaza City and two other southern towns.
(AP, 8/31/06)
2006 Aug 28, In Sri Lanka at least 31 people were killed and another 105 wounded as security forces moved to push back rebel artillery threatening a strategic port.
(AP, 8/28/06)
2006 Aug 28, In South Africa Adriaan Vlok, whose ministry helped suppress anti-apartheid protests, last weekend visited the offices of the Rev. Frank Chikane, a top presidential aide, to apologize. Vlok brought his Bible and washed Chikane's feet in an attempt to atone for the sins of the white racist regime that ruled the country until 1994.
(AP, 8/29/06)
2006 Aug 28, In Turkey a bomb in the resort city of Antalya killed 3 people and injured 18. A group calling itself the Kurdistan Freedom Falcons claimed responsibility.
(AP, 8/28/06)(Econ, 9/2/06, p.6)
2006 Aug 29, President George Bush visited New Orleans one year after Hurricane Katrina devastated the region to offer comfort and hope to residents.
(AP, 8/29/07)
2006 Aug 29, A US probe determined that Kenneth Tomlinson, chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, misused government funds on several occasions, overbilling for his time and funneling unauthorized contracts to a friend.
(AP, 8/29/06)(WSJ, 8/30/06, p.A1)
2006 Aug 29, Omeed Aziz Popal (29), a native of Afghanistan, killed one pedestrian in Hayward, Ca., and injured another 16 at 11 locations in SF in a driving rampage. SF police finally rammed him down at California and Spruce streets. In 2008 a SF judge ruled that Popal was legally insane.
(SFC, 8/30/06, p.A1)(SFC, 8/1/08, p.B1)
2006 Aug 29, In East Oakland, Ca., Anthony Quintero (24), a Brink’s guard, was killed during a robbery that involved his partner Clifton Wherry Jr. and Dwight Campbell, who shot Quintero. In 2009 Campbell (26) and Wherry (31) were convicted of 1st degree murder. Both were sentenced to life in prison without parole.
(SFC, 10/9/09, p.D5)(SFC, 12/12/09, p.C2)
2006 Aug 29, Warren Steed Jeffs (50), a fugitive polygamist, was arrested in Nevada. He was on the FBI’s 10 most-wanted list for sex crimes in Utah and Arizona. Jeffs ruled the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS) since his father died in 2002. The sect had broken from the Mormon Church over a century ago.
(SFC, 8/30/06, p.A11)(Econ, 9/9/06, p.34)
2006 Aug 29, Tropical Storm Ernesto's leading edge drenched Miami and the rest of southern Florida.
(AP, 8/29/07)
2006 Aug 29, A suicide car bomber struck a NATO-Afghan military convoy, killing two civilians and wounding one in the violence-wracked south. A remote-controlled bomb killed two police officers on patrol.
(AP, 8/29/06)
2006 Aug 29, About 50 former militants surrendered and handed over their weapons in a ceremony led by Chechnya's powerful prime minister, who said rebel numbers are dwindling in the war-ravaged region.
(AP, 8/29/06)
2006 Aug 29, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad challenged the authority of the UN Security Council as Iran faces a deadline to halt its uranium enrichment and he called for a televised debate with President Bush on world issues.
(AP, 8/29/06)
2006 Aug 29, The bodies of 13 people, believed to have been aged between 25 and 35, were found dumped behind a Shiite mosque in the Turath neighborhood in western Baghdad. All were handcuffed, showed signs of torture and had been shot in the head. 11 of the bullet-riddled corpses were found near a school in the Shiite dominated Maalif neighborhood in southern Baghdad. A pipeline carrying oil byproducts exploded near Diwaniyah, killing at least 36 people with 45 injured.
(AP, 8/29/06)(AP, 8/30/06)
2006 Aug 29, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, Mexico's leftist presidential candidate, rejected a court decision upholding his rival's slim lead in the disputed July 2 race and called on his supporters not to recognize a government led by Felipe Calderon.
(AP, 8/29/06)
2006 Aug 29, In Quetta, Pakistan, gunfire and rioting broke out for a fourth straight day after the funeral service for a prominent tribal chief killed by Pakistani government forces. One policeman was killed and dozens of shops destroyed. Three factory workers were killed in a restaurant bombing in the Baluchistan town of Hub.
(AP, 8/29/06)
2006 Aug 29, An extremist Kurdish militant group warned that "the fear of death will reign everywhere in Turkey" and it urged tourists to avoid travel to the country.
(AP, 8/30/06)
2006 Aug 29, A cease-fire between Uganda's government and the LRA, a shadowy rebel movement that has terrorized this east African nation for nearly two decades, went into effect.
(AP, 8/29/06)
2006 Aug 30, In California Gov. Schwarzenegger and Democrats struck a deal to require state industries to lower greenhouse gas emissions.
(SFC, 8/31/06, p.A1)
2006 Aug 30, Glenn Ford (90), American actor, died at his home in Beverly Hills, Ca. He played strong, thoughtful protagonists in films such as "The Blackboard Jungle," "Gilda" and "The Big Heat."
(AP, 8/31/06)
2006 Aug 30, Brazil’s central bank cut its key interest rate 0.5% to 14.25%, a quarter point more than had been expected. Brazil also released weaker-than-expected data on GDP.
(WSJ, 9/1/06, p.A8)
2006 Aug 30, Canadian miner Uranium One said it had approved Australia's fourth uranium mine, the Honeymoon project in the South Australian outback.
(AP, 8/30/06)
2006 Aug 30, Conservationists said the remains of 100 African elephants killed for their tusks have been found in Chad not far from Sudan's troubled Darfur region.
(AP, 8/31/06)
2006 Aug 30, Nearly 60 inmates escaped from an East Timor jail, including scores of people arrested in recent violence that wracked the tiny nation and militiamen who opposed the country's break from Indonesian rule.
(AP, 8/30/06)
2006 Aug 30, Naguib Mahfouz (b.1911), Arab writer, died in Cairo. He became the first Arab writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature (1988) for his novels depicting modern Egyptian life. Across the span of 35 novels, hundreds of short stories and essays, over 20 movie scripts and five plays, Mahfouz depicted with startling realism the Egyptian "Everyman" balancing between tradition and the modern world.
(AP, 8/30/06)(Econ, 9/2/06, p.78)
2006 Aug 30, Iran released Ramin Jahanbegloo, a Canadian-Iranian writer, who was accused of working with the US to overthrow the government.
(Reuters, 8/30/06)
2006 Aug 30, A roadside bomb exploded in Baghdad's oldest and largest wholesale market district, killing at least 24 people and wounding 35. An explosives-rigged bicycle detonated near an army recruiting center in Hillah killed at least 12 people and wounded 28. Bloodshed left at least 52 dead. 2 American soldiers and a Marine were killed.
(AP, 8/30/06)(AP, 9/1/06)
2006 Aug 30, Israeli troops launched airstrikes on the outskirts of Gaza City and exchanged gunfire with Palestinian militants, killing six people.
(AP, 8/30/06)
2006 Aug 30, Lebanese PM Fuad Saniora said that he refused to have any direct contact with Israel and that Lebanon would be the last Arab country to ever sign a peace deal with the Jewish state. Jan Egeland, the UN humanitarian chief, accused Israel of "shocking" and "completely immoral" behavior for dropping large numbers of cluster bombs on Lebanon when a cease-fire in its war with Hezbollah was in sight.
(AP, 8/30/06)
2006 Aug 30, Hurricane John lashed tourist resorts with heavy winds and rain as the dangerous Category 4 storm marched up Mexico's Pacific coast.
(AP, 8/30/07)
2006 Aug 30, Nigerian officials and the UN refugee agency appealed to some 6,000 recalcitrant Liberian refugees to go back home, warning that time and hospitality were fast running out for them.
(AFP, 8/30/06)
2006 Aug 30, In southwestern Pakistan protesters angry over the killing of a rebel tribal chief blocked highways in Quetta, preventing workers from reaching the provincial capital and forcing most shops to close. In northwestern Pakistan militants decapitated an Islamic cleric and an Afghan refugee accused of spying for US and Afghan authorities.
(AP, 8/30/06)
2006 Aug 30, Russia released two Japanese fishermen held since their boat was seized for allegedly fishing in Russian waters in a confrontation in which a crewman was killed.
(AP, 8/30/06)
2006 Aug 30, In Sudan riot police fired teargas and beat a journalist in central Khartoum on as opposition party supporters gathered to demonstrate against a recent rise in petrol and sugar prices.
(AP, 8/30/06)
2006 Aug 30, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said in Damascus that he and Syrian President Bashar Assad shared a "decisive and firm" stance against American "imperialism" and "domination."
(AP, 8/30/06)
2006 Aug 31, President George Bush, speaking in Salt Lake City, predicted victory in the war on terror, likening the struggle against Islamic fundamentalism with the fight against Nazis and communists.
(AP, 8/31/07)
2006 Aug 31, The United States carried out a subcritical nuclear experiment successfully at an underground test site in Nevada, the 2nd this year and the 23rd such test since 1997.
(http://iraqwar.mirror-world.ru/article/100778)
2006 Aug 31, In California Tony J. Daniloo (32) of Turlock was indicted on 122 charges of fraud and money laundering for allegedly embezzling $7 million from homeowners in the East Bay and the Central Valley.
(SFC, 9/1/06, p.B12)
2006 Aug 31, NASA awarded a multibillion contract to Lockheed Martin Corp. to send astronauts to the moon and maybe on to Mars. The projected Orion crew exploration vehicle program will cost an estimated $7.5 billion through 2019.
(SFC, 9/1/06, p.A7)
2006 Aug 31, In southern Montana a wildfire burned 20 houses and 15 other buildings as it spread over some 156,000 acres.
(SFC, 9/1/06, p.A3)
2006 Aug 31, In New York 2 state troopers were shot while staking out the property of a former girlfriend of escaped convict Ralph Phillips. Trooper Joseph Longobardo (32) died from his wounds on Sep 3. Phillips, a 44-year-old career thief who has spent 20 of the past 23 years in state prison, surrendered Sep 8 without firing a shot.
(SSFC, 9/3/06, p.A3)(AP, 9/9/06)
2006 Aug 31, J.S. Holliday (b.1924), California historian, died. His book included “The World Rushed In" (1981), a history of the California gold rush.
(SFC, 9/2/06, p.B1)
2006 Aug 31, In Afghanistan Taliban militants attacked Naw Zad in Helmand province, sparking intense fighting with government troops that left two insurgents dead. In Zabul province a suicide attacker plowed his explosives-filled car into a police convoy traveling on the main road, wounding three officers. A Dutch F-16 fighter jet crashed in the Ghazni province in central Afghanistan, killing the pilot.
(AP, 8/31/06)
2006 Aug 31, In Argentina tens of thousands gathered in the central square of Buenos Aires for one of the biggest anti-crime rallies ever seen there. It was organized by Juan Carlos Blumberg, a businessman and leader of the law-and-order movement.
(Econ, 9/9/06, p.39)
2006 Aug 31, A minister said Bangladesh has bowed to demands from protestors and cancelled a 734 million pound (1.4-billion dollar) plan by British firm Asia Energy to build an open-pit coal mine.
(AFP, 8/31/06)
2006 Aug 31, Heng Pov, former Phnom Penh police chief, was arrested at a hotel in Singapore when a clerk brought food for him. A Cambodian court warrant had been recently issued against him accusing him of involvement in a number of crimes such as the killing of Phnom Penh judge Sok Sethamony, assassination attempts on general Sao Sokha and judge Uk Savuth, as well as a number of other criminal cases. Pov claimed that he was being framed for refusing orders to kill Hok Lundy, the internal security chief.
(http://tinyurl.com/gtumm)(Econ, 9/9/06, p.46)
2006 Aug 31, A Chinese court sentenced Ching Cheong, a Hong Kong reporter, to five years in prison on spying charges in a case that prompted outcries by press freedom groups. In Hunan Province a mine gas explosion killed at least nine people.
(AP, 8/31/06)(Reuters, 9/3/06)
2006 Aug 31, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., visited a sprawling tent camp in eastern Ethiopia for people displaced by devastating floods earlier this month, saying the US military will continue to help the region.
(AP, 8/31/06)
2006 Aug 31, Sexus Politicus, by co-authors Christophe Dubois and Christophe Deloire, was published in France. It revealed decades of philandering, adultery and seduction at the heart of the French state, with politicians of all colors apparently sharing the same passion for extra-marital sex.
(AP, 8/31/06)
2006 Aug 31, Guyana’s elections commission said President Bharrat Jagdeo won re-election and his ruling People's Progressive Party increased its majority in Guyana's parliament. The PPP received 183,887 votes, or about 55%, and increased its seats in parliament by two to 36.
(AP, 9/1/06)
2006 Aug 31, In eastern India at least 30 people drowned when a crowded boat capsized in the rain-swollen Ganges River in the state of Bihar.
(AP, 8/31/06)
2006 Aug 31, Indian officials said more than 11,000 Tamil refugees have fled to India since January to escape renewed fighting between the Sri Lankan army and separatist rebels and more are likely to come.
(AFP, 8/31/06)
2006 Aug 31, Iran defied a UN deadline to stop enriching uranium.
(AP, 8/31/07)
2006 Aug 31, PM Nouri al-Maliki said Iraqi security forces will take over Dhi Qar province in September, and will take over the control of more provinces during the rest of the year. A suicide car bomb targeting a line of cars waiting at a Baghdad gas station killed two people and wounded 13. A barrage of coordinated attacks across eastern Baghdad neighborhoods killed at least 64 people and wounded 286 within half an hour. The dead included at least 13 women and a dozen children. A total of 85 people were killed across the country.
(AP, 8/31/06)(AP, 9/1/06)(SFC, 9/1/06, p.A3)
2006 Aug 31, The Israeli army said that it has transferred control over a portion of the Israel-Lebanon border to Lebanese and international troops for the first time in two decades.
(AP, 8/31/06)
2006 Aug 31, Israeli soldiers searching for tunnels and explosives withdrew from the outskirts of Gaza City, ending a five-day operation that Palestinians said left 20 people dead and heavily damaged houses, streets and farmlands. Palestinian militants fired five homemade rockets into Israel, defying the calls by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to halt the attacks.
(AP, 8/31/06)
2006 Aug 31, Kenya stepped up criticism of US Senator Barack Obama, accusing him of insulting the Kenyan people and trivializing their achievements during a visit to his father's homeland. Obama had rebuked Kibaki's government for failing to address corruption and said Kenya's democratic progress "is in jeopardy... being threatened by corruption."
(AP, 9/1/06)
2006 Aug 31, Hurricane John pummeled Mexico's resort-studded Pacific Coast with wind and rain.
(AP, 8/31/06)
2006 Aug 31, The UN Security Council passed a resolution that would give the United Nations authority over peacekeepers in Darfur as soon as Sudan's government gives its consent, which it has so far refused to do.
(AP, 8/31/06)
2006 Aug 31, An internal investigation concluded that a UN official steered millions of dollars in contracts to a company owned by the government of his native India in exchange for favors that included low-rent apartments.
(AP, 9/1/06)
2006 Aug 31, In southern Thailand nearly two dozen bombs exploded almost simultaneously inside commercial banks, killing two people in a region bloodied by a Muslim insurgency.
(AP, 8/31/06)
2006 Aug, A report by the US Census Bureau in its 2005 American Community Survey indicated that marriage did not figure in nearly 55.8 million American family households, or 50.2%. The trend represented a dramatic change from just six years ago, when married couples made up 52 percent of 105.5 million American households.
(AFP, 10/15/06)
2006 Aug, Norman Buckley (44) an assistant at Manchester's Central Library, pleaded guilty to theft charges for stealing more than 450 centuries-old books and documents between January 2005 and March 2006. In October he received a 15-month jail sentence, but it was suspended for two years.
(AP, 10/26/06)
2006 Aug, Trading counterparties of Amaranth hedge fund demanded $1.5 billion in collateral to cover losses. The firm’s assets fell by $6 billion in 4 weeks.
(Econ, 6/8/13, p.86)
2006 Aug, In China a project was begun in Shanghai to treat industrial waste with iron filings, a process which had been found to be a cheap and efficient way to clean up polluted water.
(Econ, 12/6/08, TQ p.11)
2006 Aug, In Colombia the telenovela “Sin Tetas no hay Paraiso" (Without Breasts There's No Paradise) premiered. It was based on a best-selling, true-to-life novel by the same name and became very popular.
(AP, 9/19/06)
2006 Aug, In India some 260 million people lived on less than one dollar a day. Nearly half the country’s children under age six were undernourished and more than half the women were illiterate. Half the homes in the country had no electricity.
(Econ, 8/12/06, p.64)
2006 Aug, In Macedonia within 3 days of the new government taking office as many as 544 managers and top officials from state companies were sacked or shunted aside.
(Econ, 10/21/06, p.62)
2006 Aug, In Nigeria Transcorp acquired NITEL, the state-run telecommunication company. Pres. Olusegun Obasanjo was widely believed to have a large stake in Transcorp. In 2009 the government voided the sale.
(AFP, 6/2/09)
2006 Aug, In Romania the heads of the leading spy agencies quit along with the top prosecutor after they failed to keep track of Omar Hayssam. The Syrian-born businessman, arrested on terrorism charges, fled Romania after being paroled for health reasons.
(Econ, 9/16/06, p.62)
2006 Aug, In Sri Lanka Tamil rebels abducted 56 boys and girls during a 4-day period this month in Batticaloa district. UNICEF figures showed that 5,666 children had been abducted between a cease fire in 2002 and July 2006. The organization speculated that only about a third of such cases were reported to them.
(SSFC, 9/17/06, p.A17,18)
2006 Aug, In Turkey a parliamentary report found that 1,091 honor-related crimes had been committed over the last 5 years. Blame for many honor of the killings was placed on the patriarchal and feudal system entrenched in the Kurdish provinces.
(Econ, 4/14/07, p.62)
2006 Sep 1, US military forces launched a rocket interceptor that destroyed a mock warhead in outer space.
(SFC, 9/2/06, p.A5)
2006 Sep 1, US federal agents began rounding up illegal immigrants in Stillmore, Georgia. More than 120 illegal immigrants were loaded onto buses bound for immigration courts in Atlanta. Hundreds more fled Emanuel County. The Crider poultry plant was left scrambling for workers.
(AP, 9/15/06)
2006 Sep 1, Disrupting the start of the Labor Day weekend, the remnants of Tropical Storm Ernesto drenched the Mid-Atlantic region, cut power to more than 400,000 customers and forced evacuations. 3 people were reported killed in North Carolina and Virginia.
(AP, 9/2/06)(SFC, 9/2/06, p.A8)
2006 Sep 1, Nellie Connally (87), the former Texas first lady who was riding in President Kennedy's limousine when he was assassinated, died in Austin, Texas.
(AP, 9/1/07)
2006 Sep 1, In Afghanistan fighting across the volatile south killed nine Afghan policemen, at least 13 suspected Taliban and a British soldier.
(AP, 9/2/06)
2006 Sep 1, Brazil pressured Google to turn over data from Web sites that the government said were used by criminals. Authorities gave Google 15 days to comply or face a daily fine of $23,000.
(SFC, 9/2/06, p.C1)
2006 Sep 1, Cambodia’s PM Hun Sen pushed a bill through the lower house of parliament banning extra-marital affairs. The legislation could get adulterers up to a year in jail.
(Econ, 9/9/06, p.46)
2006 Sep 1, In Chad US Senator Barack Obama held talks with President Idriss Deby Itno on the crisis in Sudan's Darfur region and on Chad's oil production, on the final stop of the African-American politician's tour of the continent.
(AP, 9/1/06)
2006 Sep 1, In Colombia Jesus Ignacio Roldan led special prosecutors and investigators to the alleged grave of Carlos Castano, former right-wing paramilitary leader, near the town of Valencia. Roldan says he killed Castano in April 2004 on the order of Castano's older brother, Vicente Castano.
(AP, 9/1/06)
2006 Sep 1, Greece beat the Americans 101-95 in the semifinals of the world championships in Saitama, Japan.
(AP, 9/1/06)
2006 Sep 1, Hungarian poet Gyorgy Faludy (95), a legend of resistance to the rise of Nazism and Communism, died at his home in Budapest. He spent 1950-1953 in the Stalinist concentration camp at Recsk. Faludy won international fame with his autobiographical novel "My Happy Days in Hell" in the 1960s, which related his escape from fascist Hungary and his return, and imprisonment, in a country under communist rule.
(Reuters, 9/2/06)(Econ, 9/16/06, p.96)
2006 Sep 1, Iran underlined its disregard for the UN deadline to halt uranium enrichment, now expired, when its president vowed never to give up its nuclear program and accused the West of misrepresenting Tehran's nuclear activities.
(AP, 9/1/06)
2006 Sep 1, In northeastern Iran a Russian-made Tupolev 154 airplane with 148 people on board skidded off the runway and caught fire, killing 29 people.
(AP, 9/1/06)
2006 Sep 1, Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani ordered the Iraqi national flag to be replaced with the Kurdish one in his northern autonomous region. Gunmen fatally shot one policeman in each of two towns outside of Baghdad in separate incidents. Police said they found the body of a Saddam Hussein-era intelligence officer who had been kidnapped and shot. A US soldier died from wounds sustained during action in Anbar province.
(AP, 9/1/06)(AP, 9/3/06)
2006 Sep 1, Shinzo Abe, the front-runner to be Japan's next prime minister, announced his candidacy, promising to defend Japan's interests and maintain the security alliance with the US.
(AP, 9/1/06)
2006 Sep 1, In Mexico City riot police, steel barriers, and water cannons surrounded Mexico's Congress as protesters vowed to stop President Vicente Fox from delivering his final state-of-the-nation address. Mexican lawmakers, protesting conservative Felipe Calderon's victory in the July 2 presidential election, stormed the congressional stage and refused to yield, making Fox the first president in modern Mexican history not to deliver his annual address to Congress. Fox handed in a written copy of his report and delivered it over television.
(AP, 9/1/06)(AP, 9/2/06)
2006 Sep 1, Morocco’s Interior Ministry said security agents broke up a group planning terrorist attacks on tourist sites and government facilities, arresting 56 people who included soldiers and the wives of two pilots at the state airline.
(AP, 9/1/06)
2006 Sep 1, A strike paralyzed Pakistan's restive Baluchistan province after the controversial burial of a top rebel leader whose killing sparked days of deadly rioting. Partial strikes also hit southern Sindh and central Punjab provinces.
(AFP, 9/1/06)
2006 Sep 1, World donors pledged $500 million in aid for Palestinians, including $55 million for a UN emergency appeal for humanitarian help. Carin Jamtin, Sweden's aid minister and host of the donors' conference held in the Swedish capital, said a total of $114 million of the money pledged will go toward humanitarian aid, with the rest going to rebuilding infrastructure and other projects.
(AP, 9/1/06)
2006 Sep 1, Spain's Cabinet approved sending 1,100 troops to the UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon, calling it a "legitimate" mission to help maintain peace in the region.
(AP, 9/1/06)
2006 Sep 1, In Spain self-contained, nonsmoking areas with their own ventilation systems, became requisite for larger restaurants and bars.
(AP, 9/1/06)
2006 Sep 1, Sri Lanka's navy said it sank 12 Tamil rebel boats overnight, including five suicide craft, and killed as many as 100 rebel fighters during a fierce six-hour sea battle off the country's northern coast.
(AP, 9/2/06)
2006 Sep 1, Human rights activists and African Union officials said the Sudanese government has launched a major offensive against rebels in war-torn Darfur.
(AP, 9/1/06)
2006 Sep 1, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said that Syria had pledged to step up border patrols and work with the Lebanese army to stop the flow of weapons to Hezbollah.
(AP, 9/1/06)
2006 Sep 1-2006 Sep 2, Separatist Kurdish guerrillas killed 7 Turkish soldiers and wounded two in stepped-up attacks against the military in southeastern Turkey.
(AP, 9/3/06)
2006 Sep 2, USAID announced a new contract totaling $1.4 billion awarded to the joint venture of the Louis Berger Group, Inc. and Black & Veatch Special Projects Corp. for work in Afghanistan. Two months earlier an employee for US contractor Lewis Berger had handed the government evidence of overbilling on contracts going back to the mid-1990s. In 2010 Berger agreed to pay tens of millions to settle allegations of overbilling.
(www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=13518)(SFC, 11/5/10, p.A4)
2006 Sep 2, In Nevada’s Black Rock Desert the Burning Man art festival culminated with the burning of a 40-foot wooden man. It included a Belgian art installation titled “Uchronia" (aka the Belgian Waffle), a 250,000, 15-story wooden cavern funded by Jan Kriekels and constructed by 90 Belgium artists.
(SSFC, 9/3/06, p.B1)
2006 Sep 2, Bob Mathias (b.1930), 2-time Olympic decathlon champion (1948, 1952), died at his home in Fresno, Ca. He also served in the US House of Representatives for 4 terms (1967-1976). He starred as himself in the film “The Bob Mathias Story" (1954).
(SSFC, 9/3/06, p.A1)
2006 Sep 2, Walter Redman (75), aka Dewey Redman, tenor saxophonist and bandleader, died in NYC. He cut his 1st album in SF in 1966.
(SFC, 9/7/06, p.B7)
2006 Sep 2, A NATO Nimrod reconnaissance aircraft crashed in southern Afghanistan, killing 14 British servicemen. The alliance said there was no indication hostile fire was involved. The Nimrod MR2 exploded after an air-to-air refueling operation. A later investigation said that leaking fuel ignited by a hot pipe was the most likely cause of a fire that destroyed the plane. British patrol NATO and Afghan forces began Operation Medusa in southern Afghanistan. Dozens of insurgents were killed during the fighting.
(AP, 9/2/06)(AP, 9/3/06)(AP, 12/4/07)
2006 Sep 2, The UN said opium cultivation in Afghanistan is spiraling out of control, rising 59% this year to produce a record 6,100 tons, nearly a third more than the world's drug users consume.
(AP, 9/2/06)
2006 Sep 2, Bangladesh's trade shipments ground to a virtual halt as shipping companies refused to use the nation's main port in a protest over container fees. Operations began to resume the next day after 2 shipping companies agreed to withdraw their boycott.
(AFP, 9/2/06)(AFP, 9/3/06)
2006 Sep 2, British police arrested 14 people in overnight raids and said they suspected the men had been involved in training and recruiting for terror attacks. Two others were arrested in an unrelated terror investigation in Manchester.
(AP, 9/2/06)
2006 Sep 2, In Chile miners at Escondida returned to work following a 25-day strike that cost the company some $200 million in lost profits. Their new deal included a bonus of $12,000 on account of high copper prices.
(Econ, 9/9/06, p.40)
2006 Sep 2, In China’s Guizhou Province a mine gas explosion killed at least 8 people. Six miners died when their pit in central Hubei province flooded.
(Reuters, 9/3/06)
2006 Sep 2, A small boat of African migrants from Eritrea was intercepted off the coast of Sicily. They said eight people died during their grueling trip. They had left from Libya 10-12 days earlier.
(AP, 9/3/06)
2006 Sep 2, Indonesia said it will send up to 1,000 troops to southern Lebanon by the month's end, after Israel dropped objections to its participation in the U.N. peacekeeping force.
(AP, 9/3/06)
2006 Sep 2, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad vowed Iran would defend the aims of its nuclear program during any negotiations as the EU gave Tehran extra time to show it was serious about talks. Iran offered to help support the cease-fire in Lebanon in talks with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, and insisted that diplomacy is the only way to resolve Tehran's nuclear dispute with the West.
(AP, 9/2/06)
2006 Sep 2, In Iraq attacks killed 13 Pakistani and Indian pilgrims south of Baghdad and three bombings left six people dead.
(AP, 9/2/06)
2006 Sep 2, Italian soldiers poured into Lebanon, part of the first large contingent of international troops dispatched to boost the UN force keeping the peace between Israel and Hezbollah guerrillas.
(AP, 9/2/06)
2006 Sep 2, Hezbollah announced the death of Hajj Ali Mohammed Saleh Bilal, a military commander, from wounds suffered in monthlong fighting with Israel.
(AP, 9/2/06)
2006 Sep 2, At least eight boats carrying 674 migrants from Mauritania reached the Canary Islands in the space of 24 hours.
(AP, 9/3/06)
2006 Sep 2, The former Stella Polaris, a historic ocean liner (1927-1970), sank overnight off Japan's southeastern coast. The Swedish company Petro-Fast AB had planned to operate the ship, renamed the Scandinavia, as a hotel-restaurant in Stockholm.
(AP, 9/2/06)
2006 Sep 2, Unpaid teachers shut down thousands of schools across the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the first day of the school year, in a major challenge to the Hamas government.
(AP, 9/2/06)
2006 Sep 2, In Romania liberal leaders expelled Mona Musca, one of the country's most popular politicians, from the party after she admitted to having collaborated with the Securitate secret police under the communist dictatorship of Nicolae Ceausescu.
(AP, 9/2/06)
2006 Sep 2-2006 Sep 3, In northwestern Russia hundreds of people looted shops and burned a restaurant belonging to Caucasus businessmen in Kondopoga in Karelia. The outbreak of racial violence was triggered by the recent killing of two locals.
(Reuters, 9/3/06)
2006 Sep 2, Sudan's president ordered the release of an envoy of Slovenia's president who was convicted of espionage in the war-torn region of Darfur and sentenced to two years in prison. Tomo Kriznar, the Slovenian president's envoy to Darfur, was arrested in July and convicted on Aug. 14 by a court in the North Darfur capital of el-Fasher.
(AP, 9/2/06)
2006 Sep 3, It was reported that 47% of US development aid is spent on overpriced technical assistance. 70% of US aid was contingent upon the recipient spending it on American stuff including American-made armaments. In total 86 cents of every dollar of US aid was said to be phantom aid, in that it never shows up in recipient countries.
(SSFC, 9/3/06, p.E1)
2006 Sep 3, Andre Agassi retired after losing the third-round match at the US Open.
(AP, 9/3/07)
2006 Sep 3, An apartment fire in Chicago killed six children ages 3 to 14.
(AP, 9/3/07)
2006 Sep 3, Nina Reiser (31) of Oakland, Ca., went missing. On Oct 10 police arrested Hans Reiser (42), her estranged husband on suspicion of murder. In 2008 Reiser confessed to strangling Nina in exchange for a reduced sentence and was sentenced 15 years to life in prison.
(SFC, 10/11/06, p.B1)(SFC, 8/30/08, p.B1)
2006 Sep 3, NATO and Afghan forces hit the Taliban with air strikes and artillery in Operation Medusa in southern Afghanistan. Four NATO soldiers, including 3 Canadians, and more than 200 insurgents were killed in the first two days of a major anti-Taliban operation under way in the Panjwayi district, about 10 miles from the city of Kandahar.
(AFP, 9/3/06)
2006 Sep 3, Another 4 boats carrying 522 migrants from Mauritania reached the Canary Islands. This brought the total for 2 days to nearly 1200.
(AP, 9/3/06)
2006 Sep 3, The SMART-1 spacecraft, Europe's first moon probe launched Sep 27, 2003, signed off its mission on schedule by crashing into the lunar surface, completing a project scientists hope will tell them more about the moon's origin.
(Reuters, 9/3/06)(SSFC, 9/3/06, p.A5)
2006 Sep 3, Indonesia reported that 18% of its population of some 220 million are officially poor. The government benchmark was based on an income of $16.80 per month. Use of a $1 a day benchmark would raise the poverty number to over 80 million.
(Econ, 9/16/06, p.53)(http://indonesiaupdate.org/2006/09/)
2006 Sep 3, Iraq's national security adviser said that Iraqi and coalition forces had arrested the second most senior figure in al-Qaida in Iraq. Hamed Jumaa Farid al-Saeedi, known as Abu Humam or Abu Rana, was captured north of Baghdad "along with another group of his aides and followers. A later report dated his capture to June 19. At least 16 Iraqis and two US soldiers were killed in bomb attacks and shootings nationwide. A US soldier died from wounds in Anbar province and 2 Marines were killed while fighting there.
(AP, 9/3/06)(AP, 9/5/06)(AP, 9/6/06)
2006 Sep 3, In Pakistan Abdul Rahim Muslim Dost and his brother, Badruz Zaman Badar Dost, published “The Broken Shackles of Guantanamo," an account of their 3 years in detention at the US prison. On Sep 29 Abdul was jailed by the Pakistani intelligence service in apparent response to criticism of the agency’s role in the US-led war on terrorism.
(SFC, 12/28/06, p.A17)
2006 Sep 3, A bomb damaged a gas pipeline in southwestern Pakistan, cutting supplies to thousands of homes in the region.
(AP, 9/3/06)
2006 Sep 3, In southeastern Turkey a remote-controlled bomb exploded in a tea garden, killing two people and wounding seven.
(AP, 9/4/06)
2006 Sep 4, Lt. Col. Marshall Gutierrez (41), whistleblower on food overcharging for the Iraq war, was found dead in his quarters in Kuwait. A Kuwaiti contractor had accused Gutierrez of seeking bribes.
(WSJ, 10/20/07, p.A1)
2006 Sep 4, Tropical storm Ernesto soaked the East Coast of the US claiming 6 lives and left 19,000 customers in the new York area without power.
(WSJ, 9/5/06, p.A1)
2006 Sep 4, In Berkeley, Ca., Nicholas Beaudreaux shot and killed Wayne Drummond in front of Blake’s Restaurant. In 2009 Lamar Crowder (21) pleaded no contests to voluntary manslaughter and testified against Beaudreaux (23), who was convicted of first-degree murder in the shooting.
(SFC, 7/9/09, p.D2)
2006 Sep 4, In south-central Montana a wildfire had spread across 180,000 acres, over 280 sq. miles, since it was sparked by lightning on Aug 22. It was only 20% contained.
(SFC, 9/5/06, p.A3)
2006 Sep 4, In Newry, Maine, 4 people were found killed at the Black Bear Bed & Breakfast. The victims were shot and then dismembered. Christian Nielsen (31), a resident at the inn for 2-months, was arrested. The dead included owner Julie Bullard (65), her daughter Selby (30), her friend Cindy Beatson (43), and Arkansas resident James Whitehurst.
(SFC, 9/8/06, p.B2)
2006 Sep 4, In southern Afghanistan 2 US warplanes accidentally strafed their own forces, killing one Canadian soldier and seriously wounding five others. A British soldier attached to NATO was also killed in a Kabul suicide bombing, which left another four Afghans dead. 16 suspected Taliban militants and five Afghan police died in separate Afghan violence.
(AP, 9/4/06)
2006 Sep 4, Steve Irwin (44), world-famous Australian "crocodile hunter" and television environmentalist, was killed by a stingray blow to the chest while filming a documentary on the Great Barrier Reef. His "Crocodile Hunter" show, in which the adventurer appeared in his trademark khaki shorts and shirt, was first broadcast in 1992 and has been shown around the world on the Discovery cable network ever since.
(AFP, 9/4/06)(Econ, 9/9/06, p.82)
2006 Sep 4, Global press titan Rupert Murdoch launched a new free title: thelondonpaper, a 48-page color paper, dominated by gossip and real-life stories, in the city centre. The first free paper in London was launched seven years ago, in 1999. Metro, a daily morning paper published by Associated Newspapers, has a circulation of around a million copies in the capital and 13 other big towns.
(AFP, 9/4/06)
2006 Sep 4, In CongoDRC a boat overloaded with passengers and freight sank in choppy waters on Lake Kivu, killing at least 35 people.
(AP, 9/5/06)
2006 Sep 4, In Cyprus 3 British holidaymakers were charged with willful manslaughter over the death of a Cypriot teenager in a hit-and-run accident in the coastal resort of Protaras last month. A rented Opel "repeatedly rammed" the moped in what police described as a revenge attack following a fight outside a Protaras disco in which a friend of the accused was beaten up.
(AFP, 9/4/06)
2006 Sep 4, In Egypt a passenger train collided with a cargo train north of Cairo, killing 5 people and injuring 30 others.
(AP, 9/4/06)
2006 Sep 4, In France the Airbus A380, the world's largest passenger jet, took off with a full load of passengers for the first time. Carrying 474 Airbus employees, the 308-ton jet left from Toulouse, southern France, on the first of four test flights.
(AP, 9/4/06)
2006 Sep 4, In Iraq a popular Iraqi soccer star was kidnapped. 33 bullet-riddled bodies were found in Baghdad and 2 more in Kut. At least two people also were killed and six were wounded in and around Baqouba. Two suicide bombers slammed into a checkpoint on the outskirts of Baghdad, killing an Iraqi soldier and wounding eight. Gunmen in Ramadi killed Maj. Gen. Mohammad Thumeil, who had served in former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's military. An American soldier was killed by a roadside bomb north of Baghdad, while a 2nd soldier died of non-combat related injuries. 2 US Marines and one sailor were killed in fighting Anbar province.
(AP, 9/4/06)(AP, 9/5/06)
2006 Sep 4, Nabeel Ahmed Issa al-Jaourah opened fire on tourists near a popular Roman ruins site in Jordan's capital, killing Christopher Stokes, a British man, and wounding five other foreigners and a local police officer. Police overpowered and arrested the attacker at the scene. Al-Jaourah was sentenced to death in December.
(AP, 9/4/06)(AP, 12/21/06)
2006 Sep 4, In Lebanon US civil rights leader Rev. Jesse Jackson met with Hezbollah officials and called on them to show proof that two captured Israeli soldiers are still alive. A UN spokesman said Secretary-General Kofi Annan has agreed to requests by Hezbollah and Israel that he mediate in negotiations over the release of two abducted Israeli soldiers. Qatar announced that it would contribute 200 to 300 troops to the UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon, making the Persian Gulf state the first Arab country to commit soldiers to the peace effort in Lebanon.
(AP, 9/4/06)
2006 Sep 4, Philippine marines clashed with nearly 200 al-Qaida-linked rebels on Jolo Island. 6 government troops were killed and 19 wounded in the monthlong US-backed offensive. In Dec the military said Khaddafy Janjalani, head of the al-Qaida-linked Abu Sayyaf, was killed in the fighting and that his remains had been found. DNA evidence confirmed his death.
(AP, 9/4/06)(AP, 12/27/06)(AP, 1/20/07)
2006 Sep 4, Somalia's weak government and an Islamic militia that controls much of the south signed an agreement to eventually form a unified national army.
(AP, 9/4/06)
2006 Sep 4, Sri Lanka President Mahinda Rajapakse said security forces had captured Sampur, a key town used by Tamil Tigers to target artillery at a major naval port. Rajapakse urged the rebels to return to peace talks.
(AFP, 9/4/06)
2006 Sep 4, Sudan said it would allow African troops to remain in Darfur only under African Union control and accused Washington of attempting "regime change" in Khartoum by trying to bring in a UN force.
(Reuters, 9/4/06)
2006 Sep 5, Pres. Bush named Mary Peters, former Federal Highway Administrator, to replace Norm Pineta as transportation secretary.
(SFC, 9/6/06, p.A4)
2006 Sep 5, The Academy of American Poets announced that Michael Palmer (63), a resident of San Francisco, has been selected as the recipient of the 13th Wallace Stevens Award for "outstanding and proven mastery in the art of poetry." The award included $100,000.
(http://tinyurl.com/gcmho)
2006 Sep 5, Dan Rather said he has donated $2 million to his alma mater, Sam Houston State University, the largest single monetary gift in the school's 127-year history.
(AP, 9/6/06)
2006 Sep 5, Chevron and Devon energy announced successful oil production from a new deep water region in the Gulf of Mexico estimated at 3-15 billion barrels of oil plus gas.
(WSJ, 9/5/06, p.A1)
2006 Sep 5, Bill Ford stepped down as CEO of Ford Motor Co. and was replaced by Alan Mulally, a top Boeing executive. Mulally will get a base salary of $2 million and an immediate payout of $18.5 million which includes a $7.5 million hiring bonus and $11 million to offset forfeited performance and stock option awards from Boeing.
(SFC, 9/6/06, p.C3)(WSJ, 9/9/06, p.A1)
2006 Sep 5, The US FDA granted Abiomed approval to sell AbioCor, the world’s first implantable artificial heart.
(SFC, 9/6/06, p.A3)
2006 Sep 5, The lower deck of the SF Bay Bridge reopened after being shut down for the 3-day Labor Day weekend due to demolition work.
(SFC, 9/5/06, p.B1)
2006 Sep 5, The Wireless Silicon Valley Project picked Silicon Valley Metro Connect, a collaboration of Azulstar Networks, Cisco systems, IBM and Seakay, to build and operate a wireless network across 38 cities in the SF Bay Area.
(SFC, 9/6/06, p.C1)
2006 Sep 5, A cook was charged with shooting and dismembering the owner of a Maine bed-and-breakfast and three other people in a Labor Day weekend killing rampage. Christian Nielsen has since pleaded not guilty to murder by reason of insanity.
(AP, 9/5/07)
2006 Sep 5, In southern Afghanistan US artillery and airstrikes killed between 50 and 60 suspected Taliban militants, the fourth day of a NATO-led offensive. NATO said 700 Taliban were trapped by the offensive.
(AP, 9/5/06)(WSJ, 9/6/06, p.A1)
2006 Sep 5, A federal judge in Argentina ruled unconstitutional a 1990 presidential pardon extended to Jorge Rafael Videla, who led Argentina's military junta during the worst periods of the so-called "Dirty War" crackdown on dissidents between 1976 and 1983. A day earlier the same judge ruled that pardons for Albano Harguinday, the interior minister under Videla, and Jose Martinez de Hoz, the economy minister under Videla, were also unconstitutional.
(http://tinyurl.com/0)(Econ, 9/16/06, p.47)
2006 Sep 5, Burundi Vice-President Alice Nzomukunda resigned over corruption and human rights abuses that she says are hampering her nation's progress.
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/5316690.stm)
2006 Sep 5, Danish authorities said they foiled a serious terror plot with the arrest of nine men accused of preparing explosives for a planned attack in Denmark. The suspects were Danish citizens between the ages of 18 and 33. Eight of them had immigrant backgrounds. In 2007 a jury in Copenhagen handed down guilty verdicts to Mohammad Zaher (34), Ahmad Khaldhadi (22), and Abdallah Andersen (32). Riad Anwer Daabas (19) was acquitted. Zaher and Khaldhadi, described as the two most active, were each sentenced to 11 years in prison, while Andersen was given a four-year sentence.
(AP, 9/5/06)(AP, 11/24/07)
2006 Sep 5, Cellular telephones were found inside four prisoners in El Salvador's maximum-security prison after suspicious officials took X-rays of each of the inmates.
(AP, 9/6/06)
2006 Sep 5, French oil and gas field surveyor Geophysique said it will buy US rival Veritas for $3.1 billion in cash and stock, establishing a major new global player in the booming oil exploration industry.
(AP, 9/5/06)
2006 Sep 5, The Iraqi parliament voted to extend the country's state of emergency for 30 more days.
(AP, 9/5/06)
2006 Sep 5, Israeli forces left five villages in southern Lebanon and were replaced by Lebanese troops, who also moved into the center of a Hezbollah stronghold devastated by weeks of fighting.
(AP, 9/5/06)
2006 Sep 5, In Kyrgyzstan Maj. Jill Metzger (33), a US Air Force officer, went missing while shopping in the capital of Bishkek. Metzger reappeared 3 days later and said she had been seized by three young men and a woman in a minibus and held in a rural area about 30 miles from the capital.
(AP, 9/6/06)(AP, 9/9/06)
2006 Sep 5, In south Lebanon a remote-controlled bomb wounded a senior police intelligence officer who played a key role in the investigation into the slaying of a former Lebanese prime minister. Four of the officer's aides and bodyguards were killed in the sophisticated attack.
(AP, 9/5/06)
2006 Sep 5, The president of Mexico's top electoral court recommended that the full tribunal uphold the slim lead of ruling party candidate Felipe Calderon. Marcelo Garza, the top police investigator for Nuevo Leon, a northern Mexican state that borders Texas, was shot to death by a lone gunman outside an art gallery.
(AP, 9/5/06)(AP, 9/6/06)
2006 Sep 5, Pakistan's government and pro-Taliban militants signed an agreement in Miran Shah to ensure "permanent peace" in a tribal region bordering Afghanistan, seeking to end five years of violent unrest in the area. Under the truce the Pakistan army pulled back to barracks tens of thousands of troops that had been involved in bloody operations against suspected Taliban and al-Qaida hideouts, and militants agreed to halt attacks in Pakistan and over the border against foreign troops in Afghanistan. Tribal elders were supposed to police the deal. The truce ended in July 2007. Lawmakers from a coalition of six Islamic groups threatened to vacate their parliamentary seats if the government changes a rape law criticized by human rights activists.
(AP, 9/5/06)(AP, 9/5/06)(AP, 7/16/07)
2006 Sep 5, Palestinian security officers went on the rampage in Gaza City to demand back pay from the cash-strapped Hamas-led government. Israel pressed ahead with its offensive against Hamas militants, killing five with airstrikes in the Rafah refugee camp.
(AP, 9/5/06)(AP, 9/6/06)
2006 Sep 5, Russian President Vladimir Putin met South African leader Thabo Mbeki at the start of a visit intended to forge closer ties between the mineral and diamond superpowers.
(Reuters, 9/5/06)
2006 Sep 5, Turkey became the first Muslim country with diplomatic ties to Israel to pledge troops to an expanding international peacekeeping force that will monitor a fragile cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah.
(AP, 9/6/06)
2006 Sep 5, In Somalia thousands of people massed in Mogadishu vowing to fight any foreign peacekeepers sent to the embattled nation, while a coalition of East African nations approved an ambitious plan to deploy troops in Somalia by early next month.
(AP, 9/5/06)
2006 Sep 5, Police in Uruguay arrested 27 people suspected of trafficking drugs to Europe and seized a record 770 pounds of cocaine.
(AP, 9/6/06)
2006 Sep 6, Pres. Bush acknowledged that the CIA had subjected dozens of detainees to “tough" interrogation at secret prisons abroad and that 14 remaining detainees have been transferred to the detention center at Guantanamo Bay.
(SFC, 9/7/06, p.A1)
2006 Sep 6, In Phoenix, Arizona, police arrested Mark Goudeau (42), a construction worker, for 2 sexual assaults. In December police identified Goudeau as the Baseline Killer and recommended charging him with 71 counts including 9 murders committed from August, 2005, to June, 2006. His trial opened in 2011.
(www.amw.com/fugitives/brief.cfm?id=39736)(SFC, 12/8/06, p.A13)(SFC, 6/7/11, p.A4)
2006 Sep 6, In Chicago George Ryan (72), former Illinois governor, was sentenced to 6½ years in prison for offenses including racketeering, conspiracy and fraud.
(SFC, 9/7/06, p.A4)
2006 Sep 6, Philadelphia’s Art Commission voted 6-2 to move a 2,000-pound bronze statue of Rocky Balboa, commissioned by actor Sylvester Stallone, out of storage and onto a street-level pedestal near the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
(SFC, 9/7/06, p.A2)
2006 Sep 6, Andy Ross, owner of Cody’s bookstore in Berkeley, Ca., announced that the store had been sold to Yohan Inc., a book company based in Tokyo.
(SFC, 9/7/06, p.C1)
2006 Sep 6, Intel announced it would cut more than a tenth of its workforce as part of a drive to become more efficient in the face of tough competition in the computer chip market.
(AFP, 9/6/06)
2006 Sep 6, Reporting in the Annals of Internal Medicine, European researchers said virgin olive oil may be particularly effective at lowering heart disease risk because of its high level of antioxidant plant compounds.
(Reuters, 9/6/06)
2006 Sep 6, Research reported in Nature magazine said thawing permafrost, due to global warming, is releasing trapped methane at a much higher rate than was assumed.
(WSJ, 9/7/06, p.A1)
2006 Sep 6, Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf held talks on counterterrorism in Kabul. NATO forces killed 21 militants in air and ground attacks in southern Kandahar province. Afghan police killed four Taliban fighters in southeastern Paktiya province. 3 British soldiers were killed.
(AP, 9/6/06)(AP, 9/7/06)(WSJ, 9/7/06, p.A1)
2006 Sep 6, Six junior members of British Prime Minister Tony Blair's government resigned to protest his refusal to set a date to leave office amid a growing Labour Party revolt.
(AP, 9/6/06)
2006 Sep 6, State media said hundreds of people in northwestern China have been hospitalized with lead poisoning that was likely caused by pollution from a nearby smelter. The first sign of trouble in the villages of Xinsi and Moba, Gansu province, came on Aug. 18.
(AP, 9/6/06)
2006 Sep 6, In eastern India 50 miners were killed after an explosion inside a state-owned coal mine in Jharkhand state.
(AP, 9/7/06)(AP, 9/8/06)
2006 Sep 6, An Indonesian appeals court sentenced four Australian members of a drug smuggling ring to death, prompting a protest from the Australian government. Scott Rush, Tan Duc Than Nguyen, Si Yi Chen and Matthew Norman had originally received life terms for trying to take home more than 18 pounds of heroin from Indonesia's resort island of Bali last year.
(AP, 9/6/06)
2006 Sep 6, Iran unveiled its first locally manufactured fighter plane during large-scale military exercises. The report said the bomber Saegheh is similar to the American F-18 fighter plane, but "more powerful."
(AP, 9/6/06)
2006 Sep 6, Iraq executed 27 "terrorists" convicted by Iraqi courts of killings and rapes in several provinces. 2 bombs exploded in northern Baghdad within minutes of each other, killing at least nine people and wounding 39 others. In northeastern Baghdad, gunmen opened fire on a procession of pilgrims heading to the Shiite holy city of Karbala, 50 miles south of Baghdad, killing one person and wounding two. Mortar attacks in residential areas in Diyala province, north of Baghdad, killed three people: a 2-year-old child in the Khan Bani Saad area and two people in Muqdadiyah. In Baqouba gunmen killed three construction workers waiting for a bus. An employee in the Diyala police and army coordination office was shot to death as she left her house in the city's Tahrir neighborhood. Gunmen also killed the owner of a food store in the same area. Gunmen, in Baghdad kidnapped the nephew of Iraq's parliament speaker, Mahmoud al-Mashhadani. 2 American soldiers were killed in separate incidents. Attacks across Iraq left 36 dead and 29 corpses were found.
(AP, 9/6/06)(AP, 9/7/06)(WSJ, 9/7/06, p.A1)
2006 Sep 6, Japan's Princess Kiko gave birth to the royal family's first male heir in four decades. The male heir was named Hisahito, meaning "virtuous, calm and everlasting"
(AP, 9/6/06)(AP, 9/12/06)
2006 Sep 6, In Macau Steve Wynn, American gambling mogul, opened his $1.2 billion Wynn Macau, a near replica of his Nevada casino.
(WSJ, 9/7/06, p.A1)
2006 Sep 6, Mexico’s newly declared President-elect Felipe Calderon began building his government and his supporters called on backers of leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador to end weeks of national protests over the disputed July 2 election. Gunmen barged into a bar in central Mexico and tossed five human heads on the dance floor. An avalanche left 10 villagers dead in northern Mexico.
(AP, 9/6/06)(AP, 9/7/06)
2006 Sep 6, Mexican authorities arrested Jaime Maya Duran, a reputed major figure in one of Colombia's largest and most feared drug cartels responsible for nearly half of the cocaine smuggled into the US. He was flown immediately to New York, where he is under indictment on drug trafficking and money laundering charges.
(AP, 9/8/06)
2006 Sep 6, Unpaid employees in the Palestinian prime minister's office joined a widespread strike that is challenging the survival of the Hamas-led government. Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams met with a Hamas legislator in the West Bank and advised Israel and the Palestinians to solve their problems using the Northern Ireland formula, negotiations.
(AP, 9/7/06)
2006 Sep 6, The Philippine government said it will take full control of Manila airport's controversial new airport terminal despite an international court ruling to return it to its builders. Philippine International Air Terminals Co Inc (PIATCO) built the terminal under a "build-operate-transfer" contract, but in 2002 President Arroyo revoked the contract on the grounds that certain terms were illegally renegotiated by Joseph Estrada, her deposed predecessor.
(AP, 9/6/06)
2006 Sep 6, A fire broke out aboard the Daniil Moskovsky, a Russian nuclear submarine in the Barents Sea, killing two crew members and injuring another. The navy said there was no radiation threat.
(AP, 9/7/06)
2006 Sep 6, More than 80 international scientists and academics released a letter that condemned South Africa's AIDS policies as ineffective and immoral and called for the firing of the health minister in a letter to President Thabo Mbeki.
(AP, 9/6/06)
2006 Sep 6, Sudanese security forces in Khartoum fired tear gas and beat demonstrators with sticks in a crackdown on protests against price increases for basic goods, after thwarting similar protests a week ago. In Khartoum the beheaded body of Mohammed Taha Mohammed Ahmed, editor-in-chief of the independent daily Al-Wifaq, was recovered, a day after he was kidnapped by gunmen. He had been accused of insulting Islam. A group claiming to be al-Qaida's branch in Sudan said that it killed the chief editor. In 2007 ten people were sentenced to death for the murder and beheading of Ahmed.
(Reuters, 9/6/06)(AP, 9/7/06)(AP, 9/13/06)(AP, 11/10/07)
2006 Sep 7, American officials said the US government has ordered Venezuela to close its military purchasing office in Miami after suspending arms sales to the South American country.
(AP, 9/7/06)
2006 Sep 7, Former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage confirmed he was the source of a leak that had disclosed the identity of CIA employee Valerie Plame, saying he didn't realize Plame's job was covert.
(AP, 9/7/07)
2006 Sep 7, Mohammad Khatami, former president of Iran (1997-2005), spoke at Washington National Cathedral as part of a 2-week speaking tour in the US. He urged dialogue instead of threats. A group of Jewish Iranians, who say their missing relatives were kidnapped and tortured by the Iranian government, filed suit in Manhattan against Khatami. They delivered the summons to him directly the next day as he visited the US.
(SFC, 9/8/06, p.A13)(AP, 9/10/06)
2006 Sep 7, BP America, the US arm of British energy giant BP, said it will spend more than 550 million dollars (432 million euros) over the next two years on improvements to its Alaskan oil fields, including pipeline repairs.
(AP, 9/7/06)
2006 Sep 7, Hewlett-Packard disclosed that an investigator, hired by its board of directors, had secretly obtained phone records of 9 journalists as part of an effort to unmask information leaks to the media. Director George Keyworth resigned after he was found to be the source of the leak. Sub-contractors engaged in pretexting, the use of false pretences, to obtain personal information. HP faced Congressional hearings over the tactics used to unveil Keyworth.
(SFC, 9/8/06, p.A1)(Econ, 9/16/06, p.70)
2006 Sep 7, Britain’s PM Tony Blair reluctantly promised to resign within a year, hoping that revealing a general time frame for his departure will appease critics who are calling for him to step down.
(AP, 9/7/06)
2006 Sep 7, Burundi's government and the country's last rebel group, the National Liberation Forces (FNL) signed a permanent cease-fire as the central African nation emerges from 12 years of civil war.
(AP, 9/7/06)(Econ, 9/16/06, p.57)
2006 Sep 7, Chad Pres. Idriss Deby and Chevron CEO David O’Reilly met in Paris for talks on oil taxes. Chad said Chevron agreed to pay back taxes.
(SFC, 9/9/06, p.C1)
2006 Sep 7, Cyprus impounded a Panama-flagged vessel on arms smuggling suspicion. It carried 18 North Korean mobile radar units and 3 command vehicles due for delivery to Syria.
(WSJ, 9/8/06, p.A1)(Reuters, 9/11/06)
2006 Sep 7, Gunmen held up a truck in a restricted area of Guatemala City's international airport and made off with $8 million of $22 million that was to be shipped from the Bank of Guatemala to the U.S. Federal Reserve.
(AP, 9/7/06)
2006 Sep 7, Coalition forces handed over control of Iraq's armed forces command to the government. Initially, this would apply only to the 8th Iraqi Army Division, the air force and the navy. The other nine Iraqi division remain under US command, with authority gradually being transferred. Six bomb attacks targeting police patrols in Baghdad killed at least 17 people and wounded more than 50. A British soldier died of injuries sustained when his patrol came under fire in Qurnah.
(AP, 9/7/06)(AP, 9/8/06)
2006 Sep 7, Ivory Coast PM Charles Konan Banny announced the resignation of his cabinet over the Aug 19 toxic waste scandal.
(Reuters, 9/7/06)
2006 Sep 7, Workers at Lebanon's only airport prepared to receive a full flow of commercial flights. Israel began lifting its air blockade of Lebanon, but the naval blockade will remain in place until troops from the new UN international force are in place.
(AP, 9/7/06)
2006 Sep 7, In Mexico a landslide buried buses and cars on a highway in the central state of Puebla and killed at least four travelers.
(AP, 9/7/06)
2006 Sep 7, Russia's state-owned nuclear power company said it was seeking to build Morocco's first nuclear plant, as Russian President Vladimir Putin signed cooperation deals with the Moroccan king as part of an economic mission to expand Russia's African reach.
(AP, 9/8/06)
2006 Sep 7, In Siberia a blaze broke out in the Darasun gold mine in the Chita region. 64 miners were working underground when the fire broke out. 31 were rescued or evacuated, including 15 who were hospitalized. Rescuers recovered 12 bodies. Eight miners emerged from the burning mine after two days. The fate of at least nine others remained unknown in the accident that killed at least 16. Rescuers on Sep 10 found the bodies of the last four miners trapped deep underground at a remote Russian gold mine, bringing the final death toll to 25. On Sep 11 Rescuers recovered the bodies of the last of 25 miners.
(AP, 9/8/06)(AP, 9/9/06)(Reuters, 9/10/06)(AP, 9/11/06)
2006 Sep 7, Medical experts said a killer strain of drug-resistant tuberculosis has been found in at least 28 hospitals across South Africa and that it jeopardized efforts to deal with AIDS.
(SFC, 9/8/06, p.A3)
2006 Sep 7, A Thai court decided to extradite a Vietnamese dissident to face charges of violating airspace for a stunt that involved hijacking a plane and dropping 50,000 anti-communist leaflets over Ho Chi Minh City. Ly Tong, a South Vietnamese air force veteran who later became a US citizen, hijacked the twin-engine plane from Thailand in November 2000.
(AP, 9/7/06)
2006 Sep 8, The Bush administration said it has blocked access to the US financial system by Iran’s Bank Saderat. The bank was alleged to have helped transfer hundreds of millions of dollars to terrorist organizations including Hezbollah and Hamas.
(WSJ, 9/9/06, p.A4)
2006 Sep 8, The United States Naval Air Station Keflavik (NASKEF) closed at Iceland’s Keflavik Int’l. Airport.
(Econ, 10/11/08, p.70)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Air_Station_Keflavik)
2006 Sep 8, A Senate report faulted intelligence gathering in the lead-up to the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, and said Saddam Hussein regarded al-Qaida as a threat rather than a possible ally, contradicting assertions President Bush had used to build support for the war.
(AP, 9/8/07)
2006 Sep 8, Walter C. Anderson (52), US telecom mogul, pleaded guilty to evading over $200 million in federal and local taxes in an offshore scheme from the sale of Mid-Atlantic Telecom. His plea agreement only covered transactions from 1998-1999.
(WSJ, 9/9/06, p.A3)
2006 Sep 8, The Miami Herald reported that 10 South Florida journalists, including three with the Herald's Spanish-language sister paper, received thousands of dollars from the federal government for their work on radio and TV programming aimed at undermining Fidel Castro's communist regime. The Herald fired 3 of the journalists.
(AP, 9/9/06)
2006 Sep 8, SF Mayor Gavin Newsom said 50 new security cameras will be installed in public housing projects around San Francisco over the next 18 months.
(SFC, 9/9/06, p.B1)
2006 Sep 8, In Minneapolis ground was broken for the new Masjid An-Nur mosque, the 1st mosque in Minnesota.
(Econ, 9/23/06, p.32)
2006 Sep 8, The Day fire in California’s Los Padres National Forest burned out of control for a 5th day and blackened over 11,500 acres (18 square miles).
(SFC, 9/9/06, p.B2)
2006 Sep 8, In Florida Melinda Duckett (21) shot herself to death one day after taping a TV interview with Nancy Grace for CNN. Duckett had reported that her 2-year-old son had been kidnapped on Aug 27.
(SFC, 9/14/06, p.A13)
2006 Sep 8, A suicide car bomber struck a convoy of US military vehicles in downtown Kabul, killing at least 16 people, including two American soldiers, and wounding 29 others. It was the Afghan capital's deadliest suicide attack since the Taliban's 2001 ouster.
(AP, 9/8/06)
2006 Sep 8, Opponents of President Evo Morales stayed home from work and blocked key streets in four cities to protest the governing party's handling of an assembly that is rewriting the Bolivian constitution.
(AP, 9/9/06)
2006 Sep 8, The Toronto International Film Festival got off to a multi-cultural start night with the premiere of "The Journals of Knud Rasmussen," a drama about Canada's Inuit people being stripped of their traditions by Christianity.
(Reuters, 9/8/06)
2006 Sep 8, In southern China crowds angered by alleged police mishandling of a school teacher's death attacked government offices in Rui'an City, sparking arrests and beatings by riot troops. Students and local residents claimed police falsified a report and colluded with the wealthy husband of high school English teacher Dai Haijing, 30, to have her Aug 18 death classified as a suicide.
(AP, 9/11/06)
2006 Sep 8, The UN's humanitarian chief called for an end to the rapes plaguing women in war-battered Congo and said the perpetrators, including those wearing military uniforms, must be severely punished.
(AP, 9/8/06)
2006 Sep 8, In western India 2 bombs rigged to bicycles struck in the crowded streets of the city of Malegaon, Maharashtra state, as Muslim worshippers were returning from afternoon prayers At least 37 people were killed and 100 wounded. 8 suspects later arrested for allegedly planting the bombs were all members of the Students' Islamic Movement of India, or SIMI. In 2011 seven of nine Muslim men, wrongfully arrested for the blasts, were released on bail. Two of the men were not released because of allegations they were involved in a separate series of explosions on suburban Mumbai trains that also occurred in 2006.
(AP, 9/8/06)(AP, 11/27/06)(SFC, 11/28/08, p.A6)(AP, 11/16/11)
2006 Sep 8, A roadside bomb in Baghdad and a mortar attack on Shiite pilgrims south of the capital killed five people. A roadside bomb also struck an Iraqi army convoy in a village near Karmah, 50 miles west of Baghdad, killing four Iraqi soldiers. An American soldier died after being wounded in a roadside bomb explosion south of Baghdad. 3 mortar rounds landed on a procession of pilgrims heading to Karbala for a ceremony, killing at least three and wounding 22. A roadside bomb targeting a police patrol In Baghdad killed two people and wounded six.
(AP, 9/8/06)
2006 Sep 8, Israel lifted its nearly two-month naval blockade of Lebanon after European warships began patrolling to keep out weapons shipments for Hezbollah guerrillas.
(AP, 9/8/06)
2006 Sep 8, In Mexico a small plane crash near Ensenada on the US-Mexico border killed three American medical volunteers.
(AP, 9/10/06)
2006 Sep 8, In Pakistan a bomb killed at least five people in restive Baluchistan province. 21 other people were wounded in the explosion near a bus station in the town of Barkhan.
(AP, 9/8/06)
2006 Sep 8, Engineers covered in head-to-toe protective gear inserted a neutralizing solution into bombs filled with a nerve agent, officially starting the work of Russia's first plant for destroying the deadly chemicals.
(AP, 9/9/06)
2006 Sep 8, It was reported that Saudi Arabia’s religious police have issued a decree in Jiddah and Mecca banning the sale of the pets, seen as a sign of Western influence.
(AP, 9/8/06)
2006 Sep 8, In South Africa Hilda Bernstein (b.1915), a London-born anti-apartheid activist and author, died. Her husband was tried for treason alongside Nelson Mandela in 1964. Rusty Bernstein (d.2002) was the only defendant acquitted and freed. Police harassment made life afterward so difficult for the Bernsteins that the couple was forced into exile, leaving their children behind. They crossed the border to Botswana on foot, a journey described in Hilda Bernstein's book "The World That Was Ours."
(AP, 9/11/06)
2006 Sep 8, Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir agreed to release American journalist Paul Salopek and his Chadian assistants after meeting with New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson.
(AP, 9/9/06)
2006 Sep 8, The UN General Assembly adopted a long-awaited strategy to combat terrorism, though many nations lamented that it does not include a definition or say anything about states that commit terrorist acts.
(AP, 9/8/06)
2006 Sep 9, Space shuttle Atlantis and its six astronauts blasted off on a mission to resume construction of the international space station for the first time since the Columbia disaster 3 1/2 years ago.
(AP, 9/9/06)
2006 Sep 9, Joanna Veil, aged 28 and pregnant, vanished after leaving work in Ben Lomond, Ca. Her body was found Sep 14 in a remote area of Santa Cruz County. In 2007 authorities named Michael McClish (38) a suspect in the case. McClish was convicted in 2007 for another murder and sentenced to 18 years in prison. In 2008 he was charged with Veil’s murder.
(SFC, 9/16/06, p.B1)(SFC, 5/8/08, p.B2)
2006 Sep 9, Clair Burgener (84), 5-term US Republican congressman from San Diego (1973-1983), died.
(SFC, 9/15/06, p.B9)
2006 Sep 9, Elisabeth Ogilvie (89), writer, died at her home in Cushing, Maine. Her 46 books included the Tide trilogy, which centered on the Bennet family and lobster-trapping life.
(SFC, 9/15/06, p.B9)
2006 Sep 9, Afghan and NATO soldiers killed at least 40 suspected Taliban militants in fierce raids that destroyed insurgent hideouts and a weapons-making factory in Kandahar province. One NATO soldier died. 2 coalition soldiers training Afghan troops were killed in combat. 2 policemen were killed when dozens of Taliban rebels attacked their post in western Farah province with machine guns and rockets. Gen. Ray Henault, chief of NATO’s military committee, said he would ask the 26 alliance members for up to 2,500 more soldiers.
(AP, 9/9/06)(AP, 9/10/06)(SSFC, 9/10/06, p.A19)
2006 Sep 9, In Brazil Ubiratan Guimaraes, the police colonel accused of ordering a 1992 jail massacre of more than 100 inmates, was shot dead in his apartment in Sao Paulo.
(AP, 9/11/06)
2006 Sep 9, British PM Tony Blair arrived in Tel Aviv for talks with his Israeli counterpart Ehud Olmert and other key players in the region on the stalled Middle East peace process.
(AFP, 9/9/06)
2006 Sep 9, Five central Asian countries (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan) signed a nuclear-free zone treaty, but it did not cancel out a 1992 agreement to allow Russia to transport and deploy nuclear weapons there under certain circumstances.
(SSFC, 9/10/06, p.A18)
2006 Sep 9, In CongoDRC it was reported to take 155 days to register a business at a cost of 5 times the average annual income of $120.
(Econ, 9/9/06, p.60)
2006 Sep 9, In Finland leaders and top officials from 38 Asian and European nations gathered in Helsinki for the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM). The agenda included security issues, trade and global warming.
(AFP, 9/10/06)
2006 Sep 9, In India recent estimates by conservationists and some officials put the population of Bengal tigers at 1,200 to 1,500. The government insisted the tiger population was stable at around 3,500.
(Econ, 9/9/06, p.46)
2006 Sep 9, Iran's top nuclear negotiator met with the European Union foreign policy chief for crucial talks seen as the last chance for Iran to avoid U.N. sanctions over its nuclear defiance.
(AP, 9/9/06)
2006 Sep 9, In Iraq the US-led coalition said an Iraqi court has convicted 38 people of charges related to the insurgency, including kidnapping and murder. Their sentences ranged from six months to life. At least 15 violent deaths were reported across the country. Millions of Shiite pilgrims thronged Karbala for a religious festival that ended peacefully amid tight security. Authorities found the bullet-riddled bodies of 6 people dumped in Mahmoudiya. One unidentified body, blindfolded with hands and feet bound, was found in the Tigris River in Suwayah.
(AP, 9/9/06)(AP, 9/10/06)
2006 Sep 9, The 10-week Israeli military operation, code named Summer Rains, left 230 Gazans dead, including over 60 children. It had no noticeable impact on militant activities.
(Econ, 9/9/06, p.47)
2006 Sep 9, Italy's PM Romano Prodi said Syria has agreed "in principle" to a European Union presence on its border to help stem the flow of weapons into Lebanon.
(AP, 9/9/06)
2006 Sep 9, The Chinese movie "Still Life" won the top award at the Venice Film Festival.
(AP, 9/9/07)
2006 Sep 9, In Indian Kashmir suspected Muslim militants shot dead two policemen in an attack on a police check post. They also looted arms and ammunition.
(AFP, 9/9/06)
2006 Sep 9, The ship Moubarak heading from Madagascar to the Comoros Islands sank in the Indian Ocean this weekend in bad weather. Of the 76 people on board, 43 people were rescued after the boat sank. 33 people were missing.
(AP, 9/11/06)
2006 Sep 9, It was reported that some 15,000 students from Saudi Arabia were enrolling on college campuses across the United States this semester under a new educational exchange program brokered by President Bush and Saudi King Abdullah.
(AP, 9/9/06)
2006 Sep 9, In northern Sri Lanka at least 26 troops were killed and over 125 wounded in new fighting as Tamil rebels resisted an army advance into guerrilla-held territory.
(AFP, 9/9/06)
2006 Sep 9, Sudan authorities confiscated all copies of the independent al-Sudani newspaper, the latest move in a resurgence of censorship since the beheading of a journalist last week. Paul Salopek was released from a prison in the war-torn Darfur region where he was held for more than a month on espionage charges.
(Reuters, 9/10/06)
2006 Sep 9, Tens of thousands of red-clad protesters thronged Taiwan's capital, demanding that President Chen Shui-bian resign over a series of alleged corruption scandals involving his family and inner circle. Shih Ming-teh, a former chairman of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), began camping with fellow protesters in the center of Taipei.
(AP, 9/9/06)(Econ, 9/23/06, p.48)
2006 Sep 9, Pope Benedict XVI began a six-day homecoming to his native Bavaria.
(AP, 9/9/06)
2006 Sep 10, Peyton Manning and the Indianapolis Colts defeated Eli Manning and the New York Giants 26-21 in the first NFL game to feature two brothers starting at quarterback.
(AP, 9/10/07)
2006 Sep 10, Golf pioneer Patty Berg (88) died in Fort Myers, Fla.
(AP, 9/10/07)
2006 Sep 10, Bennie Smith (72), St. Louis blues guitarist, died.
(SFC, 9/15/06, p.B8)
2006 Sep 10, Florence intensified into the second hurricane of the Atlantic season as it headed for Bermuda, where residents installed storm shutters and hauled their yachts onto beaches.
(AP, 9/10/06)
2006 Sep 10, Afghan President Hamid Karzai formally opened a 25-million-dollar Coca-Cola bottling plant, one of the most significant investments in Afghanistan since the ousting of the Taliban five years ago. In eastern Afghanistan Gov. Abdul Hakim Taniwal (63) was killed with his nephew and bodyguard in a suicide attack outside his office in the Paktia capital of Gardez. The US military warned that a suicide bombing cell is targeting foreign troops in Kabul. In the Panjwayi district of Kandahar 94 Taliban were killed and one was wounded in four different engagements overnight. The alliance offensive near the main southern city of Kandahar killed another 92 suspected Taliban fighters, pushing its 10-day toll of militant dead past 510. Gunmen kidnapped a Colombian aid worker and two Afghan employees of a French-funded nongovernment organization west of Kabul.
(AP, 9/10/06)(AFP, 9/10/06)(AP, 9/11/06)(SFC, 9/11/06, p.A3)(AP, 9/12/06)
2006 Sep 10, Daniel Smith (20), the son of Anna Nicole Smith (38) died suddenly in the Bahamas, three days after the former Playboy Playmate gave birth to a girl. A second round of toxicology tests revealed that he died of a toxic combo of methadone and the antidepressants Zoloft and Lexapro.
(Reuters, 9/11/06)(AP, 9/28/06)
2006 Sep 10, in Bangladesh police used batons to break up a protest, where demonstrators took to the streets across the country in another general strike ahead of elections in January.
(AFP, 9/10/06)
2006 Sep 10, In Brazil international trade officials sought to strike a positive tone at the end of a two-day meeting aimed at restarting negotiations for the stalled World Trade Organization's Doha Round. The talks were billed as a High Level Meeting of the Group of 20 (G20) developing nations, but they represented the first time nearly all the parties involved have come together since the Doha talks were suspended.
(AP, 9/11/06)
2006 Sep 10, China announced detailed controls on the distribution of news by foreign news agencies, banning all content that violates its own tight media restrictions.
(AP, 9/10/06)
2006 Sep 10, In Cuba leaders of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) of 116 developing nations began gathering for a 6-day summit (Sep 11-16). NAM was founded in 1961.
(Reuters, 9/10/06)
2006 Sep 10, Wrangling forced Iraq's parliament to suspend debate on a bill that Sunni Arab groups fear would break up the country. At least 27 people were killed across Iraq. In Kut 6 bodies bearing signs of torture were found in the Tigris River. 2 bodies were found in Musayyib and 3 more near the Duluiya bridge.
(AP, 9/10/06)(SFC, 9/11/06, p.A3)
2006 Sep 10, The Chinese film “Still Life" won the top award as the 11-day Venice Film Festival came to a close. The Chinese film was about the Three Gorges Dam project.
(SFC, 9/11/06, p.D5)
2006 Sep 10, Montenegrins voted in the first parliamentary elections since the tiny state split from Serbia. Police announced a crackdown on an alleged ethnic Albanian terrorist group authorities said had threatened the ballot. The coalition of PM Milo Djukanovic headed for an absolute majority with a projected 41 seats in the 81-seat parliament.
(AP, 9/10/06)(SFC, 9/11/06, p.A3)
2006 Sep 10, In southwestern Pakistan a bomb explosion outside a roadside restaurant wounded 14 people in Quetta. In northwestern Pakistan suspected Islamic militants killed a tribal elder.
(AP, 9/10/06)(AP, 9/11/06)
2006 Sep 10, One ethnic Russian man was killed and three were injured in a brawl with ethnic Armenians at a cafe in the town of Volsk in the Saratov region, fueling fears of a rise of ethnic violence across Russia.
(AP, 9/15/06)
2006 Sep 10, Islamic militants controlling much of southern Somalia shut down a radio station for playing love songs and other music, the latest step to impose strict religious rule which has sparked fears of an emerging, Taliban-style regime. Islamic militants, who closed down a Somali radio station, allowed it back on the air so long as it does not play music or love songs.
(AP, 9/10/06)(AP, 9/11/06)
2006 Sep 10, Officials said Sri Lanka's military had lost 28 soldiers in 3 days of stiff artillery and mortar attacks as it advanced slowly toward northern Tamil Tiger rebel strongholds. The rebels accused Colombo of ignoring moves by Norway to end the latest bloodshed.
(AFP, 9/10/06)
2006 Sep 10, Taufa’ahau Tupou IV (b.1918), King of Tonga, died in New Zealand. He was the son of Queen Salote Tupou III and her consort Prince Tungi, and served as the King of Tonga from the death of his mother in 1965.
(WSJ, 9/11/06, p.A1)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taufa'ahau_Tupou_IV)
2006 Sep 10, Armed Yemeni tribesmen kidnapped four French tourists in the east of the country to press for their relatives to be released from jail.
(AP, 9/10/06)
2006 Sep 11, The nation paused to remember the victims of 9/11 on the fifth anniversary of the terrorist attacks. In a prime-time address, President Bush invoked the memory of the victims as he argued for a continued military campaign in Iraq.
(AP, 9/11/07)
2006 Sep 11, It was reported that Florida’s St. Lucie County was planning a $425 million plasma-arc gasification facility to vaporize its garbage. The plant by Geoplasma, a subsidiary of Jacoby Development Inc., was expected to go operational in 2 years.
(SFC, 9/11/06, p.C4)
2006 Sep 11, The memorial statue titled, 'To the Struggle Against World Terrorism', by Russian artist Zurab Tsereteli, was dedicated in Bayonne, N.J. The 100-foot-tall bronze monument with a 40-foot steel teardrop at its center, a gift from the Russian government and Tsereteli, is dedicated to victims of terrorism.
(AP, 9/11/06)
2006 Sep 11, In SF measures to turn back a surge in violence included police enforcement of a long-ignored curfew for young teenagers as well as more police in high crime neighborhoods.
(SFC, 9/12/06, p.A1)
2006 Sep 11, GlaxoSmithKline agreed to pay $3.4 billion to settle a US tax dispute covering the period 1989-2005.
(SFC, 9/12/06, p.D6)
2006 Sep 11, The Pacifica, California, town council voted to ban smoking on its public beaches fishing pier.
(SFC, 9/13/06, p.B10)
2006 Sep 11, In eastern Afghanistan a suicide bomber struck in the Tani district of Khost province at a funeral for Gov. Abdul Hakim Taniwal, a provincial governor assassinated by the Taliban a day earlier. Five people were killed and 30 wounded, but four Cabinet ministers at the service were unhurt.
(AP, 9/11/06)(www.wcbs880.com/pages/81058.php?)
2006 Sep 11, Osama bin Laden's deputy warned that Persian Gulf countries and Israel would be al-Qaida's next targets, according to a new videotape aired by Arab broadcaster Al-Jazeera on the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.
(AP, 9/11/06)
2006 Sep 11, China said it will send 1,000 peacekeeping troops to Lebanon.
(WSJ, 9/12/06, p.A1)
2006 Sep 11, In Cuba a weeklong summit of the Nonaligned Movement began with poverty, health care and the Middle East at the top of the agenda. It will culminate with the meeting of 50 heads of state, including anti-American leaders from Iran and Venezuela.
(AP, 9/11/06)
2006 Sep 11, In Helsinki, Finland, European and Asian leaders representing nearly half the world's population promised to work to reduce global warming, to get world trade talks back on track and to keep up the battle against terrorism. They pledged to set new carbon dioxide emissions targets that go beyond those now set for 2012 under the UN's Kyoto Protocol.
(AP, 9/11/06)
2006 Sep 11, Joachim Fest (79), German journalist and historian, died. He worked closely with Adolf Hitler's architect Albert Speer on his memoirs. Fest's biographical portrait "Hitler," published in English in 1974 the year after its German release, is widely regarded as the best, among many, on the dictator.
(AP, 9/12/06)
2006 Sep 11, Leaders of the breakaway Georgian region of South Ossetia said they would hold a referendum on independence in November, a move likely to infuriate the government in Tbilisi and stoke already spiraling tensions.
(AP, 9/11/06)
2006 Sep 11, In Haiti 3 gang members surrendered their guns in the first handover of weapons in a UN-led effort to disarm hundreds of Haitian criminals.
(AP, 9/11/06)
2006 Sep 11, Iran closed down two opposition newspapers, one of which had recently poked fun at hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the way his government has handled nuclear talks with the West.
(AP, 9/11/06)
2006 Sep 11, In Iraq a mini bus carrying a bomb exploded outside an army recruiting center in Baghdad and killed 16 people, the deadliest of a string of attacks that left 29 Iraqis dead. A US soldier also died over the weekend.
(AP, 9/11/06)
2006 Sep 11, Kazakhstan hosted the Second Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions in Astana.
(Econ, 12/16/06, p.81)(www.asianews.it/index.php?l=en&art=7191&geo=3&size=A)
2006 Sep 11, Nicaragua officials said at least 35 people have died from drinking methanol-laced sugarcane liquor in the past week and nearly 600 have fallen ill, overwhelming hospitals in Nicaragua's worst health crisis in recent history.
(AP, 9/11/06)
2006 Sep 11, Taxi drivers in Sierra Leone went on strike, bringing the capital to a standstill after police jailed 100 of their colleagues for driving with bald tires, broken lights or without a valid license.
(AP, 9/11/06)
2006 Sep 11, In Lebanon an angry protester accusing Tony Blair of complicity in the Israeli bombardment of Lebanon disrupted a news conference. Thousands of demonstrators shouted outside as the British prime minister visited Beirut. Blair pledged help in rebuilding war-ravaged Lebanon.
(AP, 9/11/06)
2006 Sep 11, Pakistan's government agreed to a compromise deal with hardline Islamic lawmakers over proposed changes to a law that has long made punishing rapists almost impossible in the country. Senator S.M. Zafar said the government had agreed to compromise by letting rape victims choose between prosecuting suspects under the four-witness rule, the 1979 Hudood Ordinance, or under Pakistan's civil penal code.
(AP, 9/11/06)
2006 Sep 11, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and PM Ismail Haniyeh agreed that their moderate Fatah and militant Hamas parties would form a coalition government.
(AP, 9/11/06)
2006 Sep 11, President Vladimir Putin gave final orders for a battalion of Russian engineers and explosives experts to travel to Lebanon to help repair the damage inflicted by Israel's campaign to uproot Hezbollah guerrillas.
(AP, 9/11/06)
2006 Sep 11, In southern Russia a military helicopter crashed on the outskirts of Vladikavkaz, the provincial capital of the republic of North Ossetia, killing at least 10 servicemen and injuring another four.
(AP, 9/11/06)
2006 Sep 11, Sri Lankan troops and Tamil Tiger rebels exchanged mortar and artillery fire across their northern front lines. The military said the death toll from five days of heavy fighting rose to 148.
(AP, 9/11/06)
2006 Sep 11, A top Ugandan rebel leader, Lord's Resistance Army deputy Vincent Otti, arrived at a neutral camp in southern Sudan as part of a truce to end 19 years of conflict with the government.
(AP, 9/11/06)
2006 Sep 11, Uruguay arrested 7 former army and police officers in an investigation of dissidents who disappeared during the South American country's military rule in the 1970s.
(AP, 9/11/06)
2006 Sep 12, In California Gov. Schwarzenegger signed a minimum wage bill that will boost the hourly rate by 75 cents in January and another 50 cents a year later to $8 an hour.
(SFC, 9/13/06, p.B3)
2006 Sep 12, Hewlett-Packard named CEO Mark Hurd to succeed Patricia Dunn as board chairman as of mid-January 2007 following the recent furor over phone probes of board members.
(WSJ, 9/13/06, p.A1)
2006 Sep 12, Joan Valerie Bondurant, former spy and UC prof. of political science, died in Tucson, Az. She had translated documents for the CIA in India where she met Gandhi and grew fascinated by satyagraha, a thesis of nonviolent resistance. Her books included “Conquest of Violence: The Gandhian Philosophy of Conflict" (1958).
(SFC, 9/21/06, p.B5)
2006 Sep 12, Hurricane Florence headed toward north Atlantic shipping lanes after blowing out windows, peeling away roofs and knocking out power to thousands in Bermuda.
(AP, 9/12/06)
2006 Sep 12, Afghan forces killed 12 suspected Taliban militants in a shootout south of Kabul. More than 30 suspected insurgents were detained as security forces fought back against a deadly spike in violence. The UN urged NATO forces to take military action to destroy the opium industry in southern Afghanistan, saying cultivation of the crop is out of control.
(AP, 9/12/06)
2006 Sep 12, In Bangladesh police in Dhaka baton-charged thousands of opposition supporters in violent clashes outside the prime minister's office that left at least 110 people injured. A 14-party opposition alliance led by the Awami League is demanding electoral reforms ahead of January's national elections.
(AP, 9/12/06)
2006 Sep 12, Canada and the United States formally signed an agreement to end a protracted dispute over Canadian softwood lumber.
(Reuters, 9/12/06)
2006 Sep 12, Pope Benedict XVI delivered a speech at Regensburg Univ. that included brusque words about Islam. He quoted a 14th century Byzantine emperor as saying “Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." The speech quickly provoked criticism from the world’s Muslim communities. The pontiff later said he regretted that Muslims were offended.
(SFC, 9/15/06, p.A17)(AP, 9/12/07)
2006 Sep 12, Iraqi PM Nouri al-Maliki made his first official visit to Iran since taking office and planned to ask Tehran to prevent al-Qaida members believed to be in Iran from crossing into Iraq to carry out attacks. A parked car bomb detonated in Baghdad's upscale Mansour neighborhood, killing at least six people and wounding 18 others. Bombings, mortar attacks and shootings overnight and during the day left at least 24 people dead and dozens wounded around the country.
(AP, 9/12/06)
2006 Sep 12, An Israeli military court ordered the release of 18 imprisoned Hamas lawmakers, including three Cabinet ministers, and raised questions about the army's case. A spokesman for the outgoing Hamas-led administration said the group is prepared to back peace efforts with Israel as part of the new coalition government being formed by the Palestinians. Hamas militants killed an Israeli soldier during a gunbattle in the Gaza Strip.
(AP, 9/12/06)
2006 Sep 12, In Mexico gunmen ambushed and killed Enrique Barrera, police chief of the town of Linares in the border state of Nuevo Leon, in the latest slaying of a law officer in a region ravaged by a war between drug gangs.
(AP, 9/13/06)
2006 Sep 12, Montenegro's election authorities said the governing pro-Western coalition led by Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic won last weekend's parliamentary elections.
(AP, 9/12/06)
2006 Sep 12, Serbia toughened its stand on Kosovo as parliament decided that a planned new constitution would refer to the disputed province as an "integral" part of Serbia, regardless of U.N.-led negotiations on whether to grant it independence.
(AP, 9/12/06)
2006 Sep 12, In Syria armed Islamic militants attempted to storm the US Embassy in Damascus. Four people were killed, including three of the assailants. One of Syria's anti-terrorism forces was killed and 11 other people were wounded. The only Islamic militant arrested in the attack died from his wounds, and authorities were unable to question him.
(AP, 9/12/06)(AP, 9/13/06)
2006 Sep 12, In Turkey a bomb exploded near a park in a primarily residential area of Diyarbakir and 10 people were killed. 7 children were among the dead. The bomb was made by hand, placed in a thermos and went off as it was being transported.
(AP, 9/13/06)
2006 Sep 12, Uganda extended a September 12 deadline for the rebel Lord's Resistance Army to agree to a peace deal or lose an amnesty offer for war crimes charges its leaders face.
(AFP, 9/13/06)
2006 Sep 12, In Yemen a stampede during a campaign rally for President Ali Abdullah Saleh killed at least 51 people and injured more than 230, most of them schoolchildren and teenagers.
(AP, 9/12/06)
2006 Sep 13, A letter from the office of IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei, sent to the head of the US House of Representatives' Select Committee on Intelligence, said an August 23 committee report contained serious distortions of IAEA findings on Iran's nuclear activity.
(AP, 9/14/06)(SFC, 9/14/06, p.A15)
2006 Sep 13, In California water users and environmentalists announced a settlement that requires Friant to release 364,000 to 462,000 acre-feet of water in normal years to the San Joaquin River, the state’s 2nd longest river.
(SFC, 9/13/06, p.B1)
2006 Sep 13, The SEC froze trade in the shares of Indigenous Global Development Corp. (IGDC), run by Deni Leonard, a Native American businessman. An SEC suit said Leonard claimed to have struck deals with Canadian tribes to develop and purchase natural gas to be sold to power plants, but no deals were made.
(SSFC, 11/26/06, p.A1)
2006 Sep 13, Ann Richards (b.1933), former Texas Gov. (1990-1994), died after a battle with cancer. As governor, Richards appointed the first black University of Texas regent, the first crime victim on the state Criminal Justice Board, the first disabled person on the human services board and the first teacher to lead the State Board of Education. Under Richards, the fabled Texas Rangers pinned stars on their first black and female officers.
(AP, 9/14/06)(Econ, 9/30/06, p.96)
2006 Sep 13, US financier George Soros pledged to invest 50 million dollars in a development project that aims to show how targeted investment can end extreme poverty in African villages. The Millennium Villages project is involved in 79 villages in Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Tanzania and Uganda.
(AP, 9/13/06)
2006 Sep 13, Afghan President Hamid Karzai, while opening a road linking to Pakistan, said Pakistan and Afghanistan must unite to save their people from the menace of terrorism. Afghan and US-led coalition forces killed as many as 30 Taliban in raids on three villages in Ghazni province. In southern Helmand province police killed 16 Taliban in a mountainous area outside the town of Garmser. NATO announced that suicide bombings have killed 173 people in Afghanistan this year. 151 of the year's suicide attack victims were Afghan civilians, including children.
(AP, 9/13/06)(AFP, 9/13/06)
2006 Sep 13, NASA scientists said the ice in the Arctic Sea is melting in winter as well as in summer, likely due to global warming. The ice was reportedly melting at 9% a decade.
(SFC, 9/14/06, p.A1)(Econ, 9/9/06, Survey p.6)
2006 Sep 13, The presidents of Brazil and South Africa, at a trilateral trade meeting in Brasilia, said they supported changes in international rules to allow India to buy nuclear fuel and reactors from the United States and other countries. The trio created the India-Brazil-South Africa Dialogue Forum (IBSA) in 2003 to promote the interests of their emerging markets.
(Reuters, 9/13/06)(AFP, 9/14/06)
2006 Sep 13, A man in a black trench coat opened fire at a downtown Montreal college, slaying a young woman, Anastasia De Sousa (18), a student at Dawson College, and wounding at least 19 other people before police shot and killed him. Officials soon identified the killer as Kimveer Gill (25), resident of a Montreal suburb.
(AP, 9/13/06)(Reuters, 9/14/06)
2006 Sep 13, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao vowed to continue his vast country's opening up to the international community, notably rejecting suggestions Beijing is set to crack down on foreign media.
(AFP, 9/13/06)
2006 Sep 13, International police deployed to East Timor in the wake of unrest in May formally handed over their authority to the UN at a ceremony in the capital. A battle between rival gangs armed with machetes killed one fighter and injured five others in Dili.
(AFP, 9/13/06)(AP, 9/14/06)
2006 Sep 13, The EU's foreign policy chief and Iran's top nuclear negotiator abruptly postponed talks on easing tensions over the refusal of the Tehran regime to suspend uranium enrichment.
(AP, 9/13/06)
2006 Sep 13, In Iraq police found the bodies of 65 men who had been tortured, shot and dumped, most around Baghdad. Car bombs, mortar attacks and shootings killed at least 39 people around Iraq and injured dozens more.
(AP, 9/13/06)(WSJ, 9/14/06, p.A1)
2006 Sep 13, In Jordan a military court convicted 10 suspected militants in two separate terrorism cases that included conspiracies to kill Americans. Lawmakers approved a measure that would only allow a state-appointed council to issue religious edicts, a move aimed at denying Islamic hard-liners a forum for disseminating extremist ideology. The measure will become law with the expected approval of the upper house of Parliament and the king.
(AP, 9/13/06)(AP, 9/14/06)
2006 Sep 13, The Palestinian Cabinet resigned to clear the way for a new unity government, and President Mahmoud Abbas said he plans to send a delegation to the UN to try to revive a Mideast peace plan.
(AP, 9/13/06)
2006 Sep 13, Andrei Kozlov (41), the top deputy chairman of Russia's Central Bank, was shot in Moscow along with his driver, by unidentified assailants. The driver was killed immediately and Frankel died the next morning. Officials suggested the attack was prompted by his efforts to clean up the country's banking system. In October officials arrested 3 Ukrainian citizens, who were allegedly hired to kill Kozlov. In Jan 2007 Alexei Frankel, whose license was revoked by Kozlov in 2004, was charged with organizing the murder. On Oct 28 a Moscow jury found Frankel guilty of organizing the murder.
(AP, 9/14/06)(WSJ, 9/22/06, p.A1)(SFC, 10/17/06, p.A15)(Econ, 1/27/07, p.76)(WSJ, 10/29/08, p.A14)
2006 Sep 13, A helicopter crashed in Siberia, killing three of the four people aboard, an emergency official said. The MD-600 helicopter crashed about 12 miles from the city Novokuznetsk in the Kemerovo region about 1,850 miles east of Moscow.
(AP, 9/13/06)
2006 Sep 13, In South Korea hundreds of workers bulldozed homes in a village to make way for the expansion of a US military base set to become the Americans' new headquarters, despite strong objections from protesters.
(AP, 9/13/06)
2006 Sep 13, Zimbabwe police arrested trade union leaders and blocked streets and the main square of the capital to thwart an anti-government march, and the main labor federation apparently called off a planned nationwide strike at the last minute.
(AP, 9/13/06)
2006 Sep 14, US federal health officials said an outbreak a deadly strain of E. coli (0157:H7) had left at least one person dead in Wisconsin over 100 others sick and warned consumers not to eat bagged fresh spinach. The outbreak in 8 states soon extended to 25. The number sickened rose to at least 190. Most of the spinach crop at this time of the year comes from California. A special effort was under way in the Salinas Valley of California, a major leafy-vegetable growing region, to look for any possible source of contamination there. The outbreak was traced to California’s Natural Selection Foods of San Juan Bautista, which recalled all suspect products. This was the same deadly strain that in 1982 had sickened at least 47 people in Oregon and Michigan who ate McDonald’s burgers. A surveillance system setup after a 1993 outbreak at the Jack-in-the-Box fast food chain helped single out spinach as the likely source of this outbreak. A 2nd death on Sep 20, a 2-year-old boy in Idaho, was attributed to the spinach E. coli. A 3rd death in late August, a woman (84) in Nebraska, was also attributed to the spinach E. coli. On Sep 29 the FDA cleared spinach from California’s Monterey, San Benito and Santa Clara counties.
(SFC, 9/23/06, p.A9)(WSJ, 9/25/06, p.A4)(SFC, 9/30/06, p.A5)(SFC, 10/7/06, p.A6)
2006 Sep 14, In Green Bay, Wisc., police arrested two 17-year-olds, suspected of plotting a shooting spree at East High School. William C. Cornell and Shawn R. Sturtz were arrested for suspicion of conspiracy to commit first-degree intentional homicide and conspiracy to commit arson. Police found homemade bombs and weapons at their homes.
(http://kutv.com/topstories/topstories_story_258075847.html)
2006 Sep 14, In Washington DC 2 people demonstrated prosthesis that moved in response to thoughts. Their bionic arms were designed by the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago.
(SFC, 9/15/06, p.A5)
2006 Sep 14, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation awarded $68.2 million to fight parasitic diseases that included leishmaniasis, trypanosomiasis and hookworm. The new money will support efficacy trials in India and Africa.
(WSJ, 9/14/06, p.A11)
2006 Sep 14, The hedge fund Amaranth Advisors, led by Nick Maounis, announced a loss of some $560 million. The name was taken from the Greek word for “unfading." Brian Hunter (32), a Canadian energy trader, got caught on the wrong side of falling natural gas futures.
(WSJ, 9/23/06, p.B5)(Econ, 9/23/06, p.83)
2006 Sep 14, Mickey Hargitay (80), Hungarian-born actor and world champion bodybuilder, died. He was named Mr. Universe, Mr. America and Mr. Olympia in 1955. He was married to sex siren Jayne Mansfield (1957-1964) and his daughter is the Emmy-winning actress Mariska Hargitay. California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger played Hargitay in the 1982 TV movie "The Jayne Mansfield Story."
(AP, 9/19/06)
2006 Sep 14, Prof. Frederic Evans Wakemen Jr. (68), leading US scholar on China, died in Oregon. His books included “Policing Shanghai 1927-1937" (1995) and “Spymaster: Dai Li and the Chinese Secret Service" (2004). Prof. Wakemen had taught at UC Berkeley (1965-2006).
(SFC, 9/26/06, p.B5)
2006 Sep 14, Taliban militants attacked police headquarters in western Afghanistan, raising fears that insurgents fleeing NATO attacks in the south are opening new fronts. Two police and two militants were killed.
(AP, 9/14/06)
2006 Sep 14, Some 200 Pakistanis and Sri Lankans reached the Canary Islands in a 40-meter (100-feet) metal boat. Officials began making arrangements the next day for the repatriation of the immigrants. Canaries regional President Adan Martin said 500 African children out of 836 minors who have arrived in the Canaries this year were to be transferred to the Spanish mainland. Some 20,000 would-be immigrants to Europe had reached the Canary Islands since the beginning of the year.
(AP, 9/15/06)(Econ, 9/16/06, p.64)
2006 Sep 14, China’s stock market regulator made official a ban on foreign acquisitions of domestic stockbrokers and investment banks.
(Econ, 9/23/06, p.84)
2006 Sep 14, Current and former French officials specializing in terrorism said that an al-Qaida alliance with the Algerian Salafist Group for Call and Combat, known by its French initials GSPC, was cause for concern. Al-Qaida's No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahri, announced the "blessed union" in a video posted this week on the Internet to mark the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States.
(AP, 9/15/06)
2006 Sep 14, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she has again raised human rights issues with visiting Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and urged Beijing to respect the freedom of the press.
(AP, 9/14/06)
2006 Sep 14, Three men became the first rabbis ordained in Germany since World War II.
(AP, 9/14/07)
2006 Sep 14, Ex-Col. Guy Francois, former army commander twice accused of plotting to overthrow Haiti's government, was shot to death in an upscale suburb of the capital.
(AP, 9/15/06)
2006 Sep 14, An Indian federal minister proposed a 1,000 US dollar incentive to encourage people to break centuries-old taboos and marry across caste boundaries.
(AFP, 9/14/06)
2006 Sep 14, An Iranian opposition figure said Iran has secretly revived a program to enrich uranium using laser technology, reportedly with favorable results, citing information from members of the resistance inside the country.
(AP, 9/14/06)
2006 Sep 14, Iraqi officials said Abu Jaafar al-Liby, described by the ministry as either the second or third most important figure in al-Qaida in Iraq, was killed by police earlier this week. Car bombs and drive-by shootings killed at least 19 people, including 5 US soldiers, in a series of attacks around central Iraq. Death squads left behind at least 22 bodies.
(AP, 9/14/06)(AP, 9/15/06)(SFC, 9/15/06, p.A14)
2006 Sep 14, Libya's population grew by 1.8% per year to 5.3 million in 2006 from 1995. A rare government census showed that Libya had also cut its illiteracy rate to 11.9% from 19% a decade ago.
(Reuters, 9/14/06)
2006 Sep 14, Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo held talks in Tokyo on the start of a trans-Pacific trip.
(AP, 9/14/06)
2006 Sep 14, Poland will send at least 900 troops early next year to bolster the NATO mission in Afghanistan. NATO said the offer did not ease the immediate need for 2,500 additional soldiers in the violence-wracked south.
(AP, 9/14/06)
2006 Sep 14, The Swiss central bank raised its key Libor interest rate by a quarter of a percentage point to a range between 1.25% and 2.25% to dampen the threat of inflation.
(AFP, 9/14/06)
2006 Sep 14, Turkey's top Islamic cleric asked Pope Benedict XVI to take back recent remarks he made about Islam on Sep 12. He unleashed a string of counteraccusations against Christianity, raising tensions before the pontiff's November visit.
(AP, 9/14/06)(SFC, 9/15/06, p.A17)
2006 Sep 14, Ukraine’s pro-Russia premier suspended a bid to join NATO.
(WSJ, 9/15/06, p.A1)
2006 Sep 15, The US joined with the EU and Canada charging that China has erected illegal barriers to the sale of U.S. and other foreign-made auto parts there.
(AP, 9/15/06)
2006 Sep 15, US Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio, agreed to plead guilty to two criminal charges in the congressional corruption probe spawned by disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
(AP, 9/15/07)
2006 Sep 15, In Costa Mesa, Ca., the new $200 million Renee and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall opened. It was designed by Cesar Pelli (79).
(www.ocpac.org/about/PressDetail.asp?PressReleaseID=509)
2006 Sep 15, In California Gov. Schwarzenegger signed legislation requiring the driver use of hands-free devices for cell phones starting in 2008.
(SFC, 9/15/06, p.B1)
2006 Sep 15, In East St. Louis, Ill., Jimella Tunstall (23) bled to death after sustaining an abdominal wound caused by a sharp object. Her body was found Sep 21. On Sep 23 investigators found Tunstall’s 3 dead children in a washer and dryer. Prosecutors charged Tiffany Hall (24), a family friend, with the murder of Tunstall and her fetus.
(AP, 9/24/06)
2006 Sep 15, In Jackson, Mississippi, Mayor Frank Melton was indicted along with 2 police bodyguards on numerous felony charges stemming from his crime-fighting tactics.
(SFC, 9/16/06, p.A3)
2006 Sep 15, In Missouri Stephenie Ochsenbine (21) was slashed in the throat and had her week-old baby stolen. Police recovered the baby on Sep 19. On Sep 20 Shannon Torrez (36) was charged with kidnapping and assault and ordered held on $1 million bond. On September 12, 2008, Torrez was sentenced to 30 years in prison.
(AP, 9/20/06)(http://tinyurl.com/3mgvbe)
2006 Sep 15, US automaker Ford Motor Co. unveiled sweeping job cuts and plant closures to stem losses and said it has no intention of selling its luxury brand Jaguar. Ford said it would cut 10,000 more white-collar positions, up from a previous goal of 4,000, and offer buyout and early retirement to all 75,000 hourly employees. Ford stock closed at $8.02.
(AFP, 9/15/06)(SFC, 9/16/06, p.C1)(WSJ, 9/16/06, p.A1)
2006 Sep 15, A large diabetes-prevention study found that the drug Rosiglitazone (Avandia), made by GlaxoSmithKline, can help keep “pre-diabetics" from developing Type 2 diabetes. The drug was already being used to treat the disease, which afflicted over 200 million worldwide.
(SFC, 9/16/06, p.A3)
2006 Sep 15, In southern Afghanistan about 60 suspected Taliban militants attacked a police checkpoint in Uruzgan province, starting a battle in which four militants died.
(AP, 9/16/06)
2006 Sep 15, China denounced accusations by top US officials that it was selling weapons to Iran and North Korea amid nuclear tensions with the two regimes. State media said at least four children, among the hundreds of people sickened by emissions from a lead smelter in western China, are likely to suffer permanent brain damage.
(AP, 9/15/06)
2006 Sep 15, Cuba took over the leadership of the Nonaligned Movement from Malaysia, with Defense Minister Raul Castro standing in for his ailing brother Fidel.
(AP, 9/15/06)
2006 Sep 15, Iraq’s Interior Minister said the government will ring Baghdad with a series of trenches and traffic checkpoints to control movement. Police found 30 bodies bearing signs of torture in Baghdad. A US Marine was killed in Anbar province just hours after an American soldier was killed by a roadside bomb northwest of Baghdad. In central Baghdad, a gunman opened fire from the top of an abandoned building in a Sunni Arab neighborhood, killing an Iraqi civilian and wounding five others. Sheik Muhanad al-Gharairi was a spokesman for the Conference of People of Iraq, a Sunni Arab party headed by Adnan al-Dulaimi, was killed by gunmen.
(AP, 9/15/06)(SFC, 9/16/06, p.A1)
2006 Sep 15, Oriana Fallaci (76), the Italian writer and journalist best known for her abrasive interviews and provocative stances, died in Florence.
(AP, 9/15/06)(Econ, 9/23/06, p.97)
2006 Sep 15, Ivory Coast protesters beat up the transport minister in response to the Aug 19 toxic sludge shipment that sickened 30,000 people.
(WSJ, 9/16/06, p.A1)
2006 Sep 15, Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga joined the race to become the next UN secretary-general, becoming the first woman vying for the UN's top post.
(AP, 9/15/06)
2006 Sep 15, Mexico’s President Vicente Fox backed down from a confrontation with thousands of leftist sympathizers of Manuel Lopez Obrador, moving the annual Independence Day celebration away from Mexico City's main square to avoid protesters. Fox decided to move the ceremony to the central town of Dolores Hidalgo, where Miguel Hidalgo made the first call for independence from Spain in 1810. Supporters of leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador ended the street protest that clogged the heart of the capital for nearly seven weeks, but they vowed to find other ways to resist the incoming conservative president.
(AP, 9/15/06)
2006 Sep 15, Palestinian gunmen opened fire on a car in Gaza City carrying Brig. Gen. Jad Tayeh, a top Palestinian security officer, in a drive-by shooting that killed Tayeh and four of his bodyguards.
(AP, 9/15/06)
2006 Sep 15, In Singapore Paul Wolfowitz, the chief of the World Bank, took a hard line on corruption. Rodrigo de Rato, his counterpart at the IMF, said policy-makers need to be ready to adapt to a more difficult economic environment in the coming year as delegates gathered for the sister institutions' annual meetings. Wolfowitz said that Singapore had damaged its own reputation by imposing "authoritarian" restrictions on the entry of activists for the World Bank/IMF meetings.
(AP, 9/15/06)
2006 Sep 15, Alberto Linero (27) and Alberto Sanchez (24) both privates in the Spanish air force, exchanged vows in a reception room at Seville's town hall, in the first known wedding among same-sex members of the military since Spain legalized gay marriage last year.
(AP, 9/15/06)
2006 Sep 15, More than 100,000 chanting protesters marched through downtown Taipei, trying to pressure Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian to resign over a series of corruption scandals.
(AP, 9/15/06)
2006 Sep 15, Tanzania’s energy minister said ongoing drought in east Africa has forced Tanzania to impose power cuts seven days a week.
(AP, 9/15/06)
2006 Sep 15, Over strong opposition from China, the UN Security Council put Myanmar on its agenda in what US officials called a "major step forward" in American efforts to increase pressure on the country's military dictatorship.
(AP, 9/15/06)
2006 Sep 15, The World Health Organization declared its support for indoor use of DDT to control mosquitoes in regions where malaria is a major health problem.
(SFC, 9/16/06, p.A5)
2006 Sep 15, In Yemen suicide bombers tried to strike two oil facilities with explosives-packed cars. Al-Qaida later claimed responsibility for the attempted suicide attacks and vowed more strikes against the United States and its allies.
(AP, 9/15/06)(AP, 11/7/06)
2006 Sep 15, Zimbabwe said its annual inflation rate has reached a new record high of more than 1,200% in August despite the conversion to a new currency designed to halt the upwards spiral.
(AFP, 9/15/06)
2006 Sep 16, In SF Zachary Roche-Balsam (19) was killed when he tried to stop a robbery of 2 women after a party in the Ingleside Heights neighborhood. In 2007 police arrested and charged Vernon Anderson Jr. (21) with the murder.
(SFC, 4/11/07, p.B2)
2006 Sep 16, Thousands of US-led coalition and Afghan troops launched Mountain Fury, a large-scale anti-Taliban operation in five Afghan provinces. A bomb blast south of Kabul killed three Afghan aid workers and wounded another.
(AP, 9/16/06)(SSFC, 9/17/06, p.A5)
2006 Sep 16, In Cuba representatives of 118 Nonaligned Movement nations condemned Israel's attacks on Lebanon and supported a peaceful resolution to the US-Iran nuclear dispute in the final declaration.
(AP, 9/17/06)
2006 Sep 16, Fouad el-Mohandes (82), one of Egypt's most beloved comedians, died in Cairo. His plays and movies made over a half century brought him fans across the Arab world.
(AP, 9/16/06)
2006 Sep 16, Iraq’s PM Nuri al-Maliki launched a fresh peace bid and the US pledged more troops to help restore stability in the Iraqi capital. At least eight people were killed in rebel attacks. Police recovered 48 bodies from across Baghdad. Most were those of young men who had been tortured, blindfolded, handcuffed and shot several times. Iraqi police uncovered a large munitions cache stored in the southern town of Ad Dayr.
(AP, 9/16/06)(SSFC, 9/17/06, p.A23)(AP, 9/17/06)
2006 Sep 16, Ivory Coast named a new Cabinet, replacing the ministers of transport and environment but reappointing most others, after a toxic waste dumping scandal prompted the resignation of the entire 32-member body last week.
(AP, 9/16/06)
2006 Sep 16, In Mexico hundreds of thousands of supporters of leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador elected him the leader of a "parallel government" opposed to President-elect Felipe Calderon's administration. Mexico extradited accused drug kingpin Francisco Rafael Arellano Felix to the US, making him the first major Mexican drug lord to be sent north to face trial on drug charges. He later pleaded guilty to federal charges of selling cocaine in a San Diego motel. Hurricane Lane, a Category 3 storm, battered Mazatlan.
(SFC, 9/18/06, p.A7)(AP, 9/17/07)
2006 Sep 16, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and Indian PM Manmohan Singh held "historic" talks on the disputed Kashmir region, on the sidelines of a developing-world summit in Havana. They also agreed to restart peace talks suspended since train bombings killed more than 200 people in Mumbai in July.
(AFP, 9/16/06)(AP, 9/16/06)
2006 Sep 16, Leaders across the Muslim world demanded Pope Benedict XVI apologize for his remarks on Islam and jihad. The Vatican said Pope Benedict XVI "sincerely" regretted offending Muslims with his reference to an obscure medieval text characterizing some of the teachings of Islam's founder as "evil and inhuman," but the statement stopped short of the apology demanded by Islamic leaders. Two West Bank Christian churches were hit by firebombs, and a group claiming responsibility said it was protesting Pope Benedict XVI's remarks about Islam.
(AP, 9/16/06)(AP, 9/16/07)
2006 Sep 16, In Singapore top finance chiefs stepped up pressure on China to relax its grip on its currency, warning that trade imbalances threaten a flourishing global economy. G7 finance ministers and central bank governors also called for a resumption of global free trade talks and a revamp of the IMF, saying China should be given a louder voice but must also fulfill its broader economic responsibilities.
(AFP, 9/16/06)
2006 Sep 16, Sten Andersson (b.1923), a leading figure in Sweden's governing Social Democratic Party and one-time mediator in the Middle East peace process, died. As foreign minister from 1985 to 1991, Andersson helped start a dialogue between the Palestine Liberation Organization and the US.
(AP, 9/17/06)
2006 Sep 16, In southern Thailand bomb blasts killed four people including a Canadian (29), who became the first Westerner to die in the two-year Muslim insurgency. At least five bombs exploded: two in department stories; two in front of a bar and a parking lot at the Odean Shopping Mall; and a fifth at a nearby massage parlor in Songkhla province's Hat Yai city.
(AP, 9/17/06)
2006 Sep 16, Togo's Pres. Faure Gnassingbe named Yawovi Agboyibo (63), an opposition party leader, as prime minister, bringing the nation one step closer to long-delayed parliamentary elections.
(AP, 9/17/06)
2006 Sep 16, In Yemen 4 suspected al-Qaida members who were plotting attacks in San’a were arrested.
(AP, 9/17/06)
2006 Sep 17, In California a fire in Los Padres National Forest crossed 60,589 acres, or about 93 square miles, since it began on Labor Day. Containment was estimated at 15%.
(AP, 9/18/06)
2006 Sep 17, Time Warner Inc. said it is selling AOL Germany's Internet access business to Telecom Italia SpA for about $870 million.
(AP, 9/18/06)
2006 Sep 17, In South Carolina Vinson Filyaw (36) was arrested and charged with raping a 14-year-old girl. Filyaw had abducted the girl on Sep 6 and kept her in an underground bunker. The girl was rescued Sep 16 after she used Filyaw’s cell phone to send a text message to her mother.
(SFC, 9/18/06, p.A4)
2006 Sep 17, Elizabeth Blackburn (57), a biochemist at UCSF, was named winner of the Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research. She shared $100,000 the award with Carol W. Greider, a former graduate student, and Jack W. Szostak (53), a Harvard geneticist and longtime collaborator. Their discoveries included proteins called telomeres that cap the ends of chromosomes and regulate the longevity and death of human and animal cells.
(SSFC, 9/17/06, p.B1)
2006 Sep 17, Five Duquesne basketball players were shot and wounded during an apparent act of random violence on campus. As of 2007 two alleged gunmen and two women who allegedly helped facilitate the shooting awaited trial.
(AP, 9/17/07)
2006 Sep 17, Patricia Kennedy Lawford (82), the sister of President John F. Kennedy and ex-wife of actor Peter Lawford, died in New York City.
(AP, 9/17/07)
2006 Sep 17, A top NATO general said Operation Medusa, an offensive aimed at driving Taliban militants out of their safe havens in southern Afghanistan, has been "successfully completed." In southern Afghanistan a suicide bomber plowed his explosive-laden vehicle into a Canadian military convoy, killing one civilian and wounding five.
(AP, 9/17/06)
2006 Sep 17, In northern Austria a Czech bus veered off a road and into a ditch, killing 4 people and injuring 38.
(AP, 9/17/06)
2006 Sep 17, Iran's president made his first visit to Venezuela, seeking to strengthen ties with a government that also opposes the US.
(AP, 9/17/06)
2006 Sep 17, In Iraq a series of attacks, including two suicide car bombings in the northern city of Kirkuk, killed 24 people and wounded dozens. A series of near simultaneous mortar and bomb attacks targeting police patrols in Fallujah killed 4 people, including two policemen, and wounded 10. In Baghdad a bomb left in plastic bag exploded on the central commercial Jumhouriyah street, killing two civilians and wounding 8. The bullet-riddled bodies of 4 unidentified men were found in separate neighborhoods in east Baghdad. Another two bodies were found in the Tigris river in central Baghdad. Both had been shot, and one had been decapitated. Another blindfolded and bound body was found dumped in a river in the city of Kut. Ahmed Riyadh al-Karbouli (25), an Iraqi journalist, was killed in Ramadi.
(AP, 9/17/06)(AP, 9/19/06)
2006 Sep 17, The Israeli Cabinet authorized an inquiry into the government's handling of the recent war in Lebanon, capping weeks of disagreements over the scope of the investigation.
(AP, 9/17/06)
2006 Sep 17, A strong typhoon swept toward southwestern Japan with fierce winds and heavy rains, leaving at least 8 people dead or missing and injuring dozens more.
(AFP, 9/17/06)
2006 Sep 17, Voters in Moldova's breakaway Trans-Dniester region overwhelmingly approved a referendum for the separatist government's bid to eventually join Russia.
(AP, 9/18/06)
2006 Sep 17, A Nigerian military transport aircraft, traveling from Abuja to the southern town of Obudu, went down in the southeast with a group of military officers on board. 12 of 17 people were killed and most were senior military personnel.
(AP, 9/18/06)
2006 Sep 17, Sister Leonella Sgorbati, an Italian nun, was shot dead at a hospital in Mogadishu by Somali gunmen, hours after a leading Muslim cleric condemned Pope Benedict XVI for his remarks on Islam and violence. The nun's bodyguard and a hospital worker were also killed.
(AP, 9/17/06)(AP, 9/21/06)
2006 Sep 17, Sri Lanka's Tamil Tiger rebels accused government soldiers in concert with paramilitary units of killing nearly 100 civilians in the island's embattled Jaffna peninsula this month. Sri Lanka's navy gunboats and war planes bombed a suspected Tamil Tiger arms ship.
(AFP, 9/17/06)
2006 Sep 17, Peace activists around the world staged a day of action to highlight the "forgotten war" in Darfur where tens of thousands of people have been killed and more than 2 million left homeless.
(AP, 9/17/06)
2006 Sep 17, In Sweden PM Goeran Persson, head of the minority Social Democrat government for 10 years, faced Fredrik Reinfeldt (41), who led the four-party Alliance for Sweden, after a campaign focused on getting Swedes back into the job market. The center-right opposition, vowing to streamline Sweden's famed welfare state, ousted the Social Democratic government with 48.1% of the vote, ending 12 years of leftist rule. Fredrik Reinfeldt (41), head of the main opposition Moderate Party, authored the 1993 book "The Sleeping Nation," in which he criticized the cradle-to-grave welfare state. Fredrik Reinfeldt renamed his party the “New Moderates."
(AP, 9/17/06)(Econ, 9/23/06, p.16)(Econ, 9/23/06, p.60)
2006 Sep 17, Pope Benedict XVI said that he was "deeply sorry" about the angry reaction to his recent remarks about Islam, which he said came from a text that didn't reflect his personal opinion.
(AP, 9/17/06)
2006 Sep 18, The US Commerce Department said the current account deficit had widened more than expected in the second quarter to $218.4 billion, as surging oil prices pushed goods imports higher.
(AP, 9/18/06)
2006 Sep 18, A jury in Santa Clara, Ca., convicted Dean Schwartzmiller (64) of molesting 2 San Jose boys. Authorities said he had molested over 100 boys and chronicled his exploits in a manuscript.
(SFC, 9/19/06, p.A1)
2006 Sep 18, Researchers at Intel and UC Santa Barbara announced new technology using lasers on silicon chips for optical computing. Practical use was thought to be 5-7 years away.
(SFC, 9/19/06, p.A1)
2006 Sep 18, The body of Luz Maria Franco-Fierros (49) was found dragged to death in Castle Rock, Colorado, leaving a trail of blood more than mile long. Police the next day arrested Jose Luis Rubi-Nava (36) as suspect in the murder.
(SFC, 9/21/06, p.A20)(SFC, 9/22/06, p.A3)
2006 Sep 18, Anousheh Ansari (40), an Iranian-American telecommunications entrepreneur, took off on a Russian rocket bound for the international space station, becoming the world's first paying female space tourist. Aboard the space station, an oxygen generator overheated and spilled a toxic irritant, forcing the crew to don masks and gloves in the first emergency ever declared aboard the 8-year-old orbiting outpost.
(AP, 9/18/07)
2006 Sep 18, The 184-nation IMF approved reforms to increase the voice of China, South Korea, Turkey, and Mexico to reflect their growing economic sway.
(SFC, 9/19/06, p.D2)
2006 Sep 18, In southern Afghanistan a suicide bomber on a bicycle killed four Canadian troops handing out candy to children and wounded 27 civilians. A suicide car bombing in Kabul killed at least four policemen and wounded one officer and 10 civilians. In Heart a bombing killed 12 people and wounded 17 including the deputy police chief. An outdoor wedding celebration north of Kabul was attacked by assailants who threw a grenade, killing five women and wounding 18. Four suspects were detained after the blast in the village of Sayadan.
(AP, 9/18/06)(AP, 9/19/06)(AP, 9/20/06)
2006 Sep 18, In Bangladesh at least 100,000 opposition supporters rallied in Dhaka demanding electoral reforms ahead of national elections and using strident rhetoric against the ruling coalition.
(AFP, 9/18/06)
2006 Sep 18, A court in Belgium ordered Google to remove all links to French and German language newspaper reports published in Belgium due to copyright laws.
(SFC, 9/19/06, p.D7)
2006 Sep 18, Britain and Spain reached a historic deal to resolve side issues stemming from their 300-year-old dispute over Gibraltar, but sidestepped the main one, their claims to the Rock's sovereignty.
(AP, 9/19/06)
2006 Sep 18, Premier Wen Jiabao said China will increase its peacekeeping force in Lebanon to 1,000 and double the humanitarian aid it has pledged.
(AP, 9/18/06)
2006 Sep 18, In Colombia federal prosecutor Mario Iguaran delivered a televised apology for a scandal surrounding psychic Armando Marti. In 2005 he had hired Marti, a self-described clairvoyant, to help his staff deal with a crushing caseload and to improve relations. The operation was code-named “Mission Perseus of Zeus" and it granted Marti unfettered access to the institution, as much as $1,800 a month, and a government-issued armored car.
(SFC, 9/20/06, p.A8)
2006 Sep 18, In Germany Jacqueline Battles, the German wife of an American contractor accused of cheating the US government in Iraq, was arrested on suspicion of money laundering. In March a US jury ordered contractors Mike Battles and Scott Custer to pay $10 million for swindling the US government over Iraqi rebuilding projects in connection with their Middletown, R.I.-based company, Custer Battles LLC.
(AP, 9/18/06)
2006 Sep 18, The Iraqi army's 4th division took over operational control of central Salahuddin province from the US-led coalition. Sheik Fassal al-Guood, a prominent Sunni tribal leader, said 15 of Ramadi's 18 tribes "have sworn to fight those who are killing Sunnis and Shiites," and said they had an armed force of about 20,000 men. Bombers and gunmen killed 8 people in Baqouba as security forces prepared to further tighten security ahead of the holy month of Ramadan. In southern Basra police found the body of Lt. Col. Fawzi Abdul Karim al-Mousawi, chief of the city's anti-terrorism department. Gunmen killed a former member of the defunct Ba'th Party in Hillah. Police in Baghdad found the bodies of 3 men, bound, blindfolded and shot in the head. Six bombs killed 24 people and wounded 84 in Kirkuk. The tortured bodies of 15 people were found elsewhere. In total bombers and gunmen killed at least 41 people and wounded dozens across Iraq, while parliament leaders again put off debate on legislation that some Iraqis fear could threaten the country's unity and bring even more violence. 3 US soldiers died, including one killed by a roadside bomb explosion and another after being shot. A third soldier died from non-battle-related injuries.
(AP, 9/18/06)(AP, 9/19/06)
2006 Sep 18, Israel said it will consider freeing Palestinian prisoners and releasing millions of dollars in tax rebates to Palestinians if their government moderates its hardline views. Israel charged three Hezbollah members arrested in Lebanon during the recent war with murder for involvement in deadly attacks on soldiers.
(AP, 9/18/06)
2006 Sep 18, Palestine’s PM Ismail Haniyeh's bodyguards opened fire outside the parliament building to disperse a crowd of protesters angry over the government's failure to end a growing economic crisis in the Gaza Strip.
(AP, 9/18/06)
2006 Sep 18, Russia’s Ministry of Natural Resources said it would cancel an environmental permit for a $20 billion oil and natural gas project led by Royal Dutch Shell on the Far East island of Sakhalin.
(WSJ, 9/19/06, p.A17)
2006 Sep 18, In Somalia a massive car bomb exploded outside the makeshift parliament building in Baidoa, killing 11 people, including the president's brother, in an apparent assassination attempt. As Pres. Yusuf fled, a gunbattle broke out between his bodyguards and eight suspected accomplices of an apparent suicide bomber. Six were killed and two were captured.
(AP, 9/18/06)(AP, 9/19/06)
2006 Sep 18, In eastern Sri Lanka the bodies of 11 Muslim men were found hacked to death. Tamil Tiger rebels and government forces blamed each other for the massacre.
(AFP, 9/18/06)
2006 Sep 18, The Vatican opened part of its secret archives to let historians review millions of diplomatic letters, private correspondence and other church documents to gain insight into how the Holy See dealt with the growing persecution of Jews before World War II.
(AP, 9/18/06)
2006 Sep 19, President Bush addressed the 61st meeting of the UN General Assembly with a call for nations to unite to work for a more peaceful world where "extremists are marginalized by the peaceful majority." UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan delivered an emotional farewell address, appealing to the world to unite against human rights abuses, religious divisions, brutal conflicts and an unjust world economy.
(AP, 9/19/06)(AP, 9/19/07)
2006 Sep 19, A Georgia judge struck down the state’s photo ID requirement to vote.
(WSJ, 9/20/06, p.A1)
2006 Sep 19, Sam Harris published his polemic "Letter to a Christian Nation." It was a philosophical attack on the basic tenets held by all major religions.
(WSJ, 9/28/06, p.B2)
2006 Sep 19, Warren Buffet, billionaire investor, pledged $50 million to help set up an international nuclear fuel bank that aspiring powers could turn to for reactor fuel instead of making it on their own.
(SFC, 9/20/06, p.A3)
2006 Sep 19, The MacArthur Foundation announced the 25 winners of its genius awards.
(SFC, 9/19/06, p.B1)
2006 Sep 19, George Lucas, creator of "Star Wars," announced that his private foundation will give his alma mater, the University of Southern California, $175 million to endow and rebuild its School of Cinematic Arts in what amounts to the largest donation in USC history.
(Reuters, 9/19/06)
2006 Sep 19, Motorola Inc. agreed to buy Symbol Technologies, a maker of bar-code readers, for $3.9 billion.
(WSJ, 9/20/06, p.A21)
2006 Sep 19, John Nejedly (91), former 10-year California state senator, died. He helped lead the 1982 fight against the Peripheral Canal and wrote the bill authorizing the construction of the bridge on Highway 160 near Antioch, which was named in his honor.
(SFC, 9/22/06, p.B9)
2006 Sep 19, In central and southern Afghanistan clashes and bombings left up to 34 Taliban fighters and one policeman dead in five separate incidents.
(AP, 9/20/06)
2006 Sep 19, In Argentina Miguel Osvaldo Etchecolatz (77) a former police investigator, was sentenced to life in prison in connection with the disappearance of six people during the so-called "Dirty War" against political dissent.
(AP, 9/19/06)
2006 Sep 19, In Australia Judge Murray Wilcox granted Aborigines a title claim over Perth, the capital of Western Australia.
(AFP, 9/20/06)
2006 Sep 19, Australia and Japan imposed financial sanctions on 11 North Korean companies, a Swiss company and its president, based on allegations they helped the communist nation's weapons programs.
(AP, 9/19/06)
2006 Sep 19, A British soldier pleaded guilty to one count of inhumanely treating Iraqi civilians, while he and his comrades denied all other charges in a landmark court-martial.
(AP, 9/19/06)
2006 Sep 19, Cambodia's King Norodom Sihamoni started the official part of a week-long visit to the Czech Republic, a country where he spent 13 years from 1962-1975 and considers as his "second home."
(AP, 9/19/06)
2006 Sep 19, Supporters of Congo's presidential challenger barricaded streets, stopped traffic and threw stones in Kinshasa, a day after a fire at his headquarters destroyed the party's television and radio stations.
(AP, 9/19/06)
2006 Sep 19, In southern Germany a US AH-64D Apache Longbow attack helicopter crashed on a training mission, killing two American soldiers.
(AP, 9/21/06)
2006 Sep 19, Some 2,000-3,000 protesters stormed the headquarters of Hungarian state television and forced it off the air briefly in an explosion of anger. The protests began after a recording of PM Gyurcsany's comments made in May was leaked to Hungarian media. In his speech to a meeting of Socialist deputies, the prime minister admitted that the government had lied about the state of the economy in order to ensure victory in the elections.
(AP, 9/19/06)
2006 Sep 19, In India at least two people were killed and more than 100 detained during violent protests against a court-ordered crackdown on illegal shops in New Delhi. At least 20 people were killed in coastal villages in eastern India after a major storm swept in to the Bay of Bengal and destroyed hundreds of mud huts.
(AFP, 9/20/06)
2006 Sep 19, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad addressed the UN General Assembly and took aim at US policies in Iraq and Lebanon. He accused Washington of abusing its power in the UN Security Council to punish others while protecting its own interests and allies.
(AP, 9/19/06)
2006 Sep 19, The Iraqi government said it will shut down all offices belonging to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) around the country. The chief judge in Saddam Hussein's genocide trial was replaced amid complaints he was being too easy on the deposed Iraqi leader. A rocket attack on a Shiite neighborhood in southern Baghdad killed 10 people and wounded 19. In northern Iraq at least 17 people were killed and 11 wounded in twin bombings in the town of Al-Shurqat.
(AP, 9/19/06)(AFP, 9/20/06)(AP, 9/19/07)
2006 Sep 19, Police in southern Italy arrested scores of people in an overnight crackdown on organized crime, including on clans that had a grip on the local tourist industry.
(AP, 9/19/06)
2006 Sep 19, Ivory Coast authorities arrested 2 French executives of Trafigura Beheer BV, the Dutch commodities company implicated in the recent dumping of toxic waste. Claude Dauphin and Jean-Pierre Valentini, charged with poisoning and infractions of toxic waste laws, were sent to prison.
(WSJ, 9/20/06, p.A10)
2006 Sep 19, Einars Repse, Latvia's former prime minister (2002-2004), accidentally killed a pedestrian while driving on a remote road. He said he would stop campaigning for parliament, although he will remain a candidate. The EU's official statistics agency, Eurostat, said Latvia registered 222 traffic deaths per 1 million residents in 2004, the highest in the union.
(AP, 9/21/06)
2006 Sep 19, A group of sexual abuse survivors filed a lawsuit against Mexican Cardinal Norberto Rivera, claiming he hid evidence to protect a priest accused of molesting boys. A lawyer for the Chicago-based Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests filed the lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court. Rivera, now Mexico's top-ranking cardinal, helped cover up abuse by the Rev. Nicolas Aguilar involving 50 boys when Aguilar served as a parish priest in central Puebla state in 1987. Rivera was bishop of Tehuacan in Puebla state at the time.
(AP, 9/19/06)
2006 Sep 19, Sudan's Pres. Omar Hassan al-Bashir, on the sidelines of the UN General assembly, said his country would never allow UN peacekeepers into Darfur and charged that the West wanted to dismember his country in order to help Israel. He agreed that the 7,000 AU peacekeepers could stay.
(Reuters, 9/19/06)(Econ, 9/23/06, p.51)
2006 Sep 19, In Thailand a 6-man military junta launched a coup against PM Thaksin Shinawatra, circling his offices with tanks, seizing control of TV stations and declaring a provisional authority pledging loyalty to the king. This was the 18th coup since 1932. General Prem Tinsulanonda was widely seen as the mastermind of the coup.
(AP, 9/19/06)(Econ, 9/23/06, p.27)(Econ, 12/6/08, p.34)
2006 Sep 20, Pres. Bush met with Palestinian leader Abbas in a bid to restart Mideast peace efforts.
(WSJ, 9/21/06, p.A1)
2006 Sep 20, A US federal judge overturned a Bush administration rule that would have allowed roads to be built through nearly 60 million acres of national forest land.
(SFC, 9/21/06, p.A1)
2006 Sep 20, California sued 6 major auto makers for greenhouse-gas inaction.
(WSJ, 9/21/06, p.A1)
2006 Sep 20, The second annual Clinton Global Initiative, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, kicked off in Manhattan and collected over $2 billion in pledges in funds and programs on its 1st day to combat global ills. A day later British mogul Richard Branson pledged to spend $3 billion in the next decade on projects to combat global warming and reduce dependence on fossil fuels. The 3-day summit raised $7.3 billion in pledges.
(SFC, 9/21/06, p.A3)(AFP, 9/21/06)(SFC, 9/23/06, p.A2)
2006 Sep 20, In Florida Clarence Hill was executed for the 1982 murder of a Pensacola police officer. He had argued that Florida’s use of lethal injections amounted to cruel and unusual punishment, but the US Supreme Court denied him another stay of execution.
(SFC, 9/21/06, p.A3)
2006 Sep 20, Dean Everett Wooldridge (93), scientist and co-founder of Ramo-Wooldridge (1953), died. In 1958 Ramo-Wooldridge merged with Thomas Products to become TRW Corp. Wooldridge helped develop the US intercontinental ballistic missile program. He also authored 4 books on neuroscience and predicted the rise of artificial intelligence.
(WSJ, 9/23/06, p.A4)
2006 Sep 20, In Salt Lake City a 2-year-old boy died from kidney failure due to an E. coli infection attributed to spinach.
(SFC, 10/6/06, p.A3)
2006 Sep 20, In southern Afghanistan police clashed with militants who tried to set fire to an oil tanker, killing four suspected members of the Taliban. Authorities found the body of a Turkish national who was kidnapped last month along with another Turk whose body was already recovered.
(AP, 9/21/06)
2006 Sep 20, The African Union (AU) agreed to extend the mandate of its peacekeepers in Sudan's troubled Darfur region for three months until December 31 after receiving promises of financial and logistical support from the United Nations and Arab states.
(AP, 9/20/06)
2006 Sep 20, In Australia arrested 5 Canadian men after cocaine worth A$35 million ($26 million) was found hidden inside computer monitors. This was believed to be Australia's fifth-largest illegal drugs seizure.
(Reuters, 9/21/06)
2006 Sep 20, EU regulators fined 30 companies a total of $399.1 million for fixing prices for copper-pipe fittings.
(WSJ, 9/21/06, p.A8)
2006 Sep 20, Henri Jayer (84), a master of balanced pinot noir, died in Dijon, France. He was viewed by many connoisseurs to be the finest Burgundy winemaker of his generation.
(AP, 9/21/06)
2006 Sep 20, Hungarian PM Ferenc Gyurcsany vowed to crack down on rioters. Police blaming the violence on football hooligans and extreme right-wing groups. Thousands of protesters demonstrated for a 4th day demanding that PM Gyurcsany resign.
(AFP, 9/20/06)(SFC, 9/21/06, p.A3)
2006 Sep 20, An Iraqi police headquarters in Baghdad was hit by a suicide truck bomb, killing at least 7 people. Rebels killed at least 16 people in Iraq in a series of bombings and shootings.
(AFP, 9/20/06)
2006 Sep 20, Israeli forces raided the West Bank cities of Nablus and Jenin, destroying five foreign exchange depots and a bank and taking funds the army said were earmarked for terrorism. Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip fired two rockets at an Israeli town, wounding a 15-year-old boy and another person.
(AP, 9/20/06)
2006 Sep 20, Nationalist candidate Shinzo Abe won the race for Japan's ruling party leader, all but clinching next week's election as prime minister and pledging to make his country a more robust force on the world stage.
(AP, 9/20/06)
2006 Sep 20, In northern Kazakhstan a methane explosion tore through a coal mine, killing 41 miners. Seven miners were pulled out alive and hospitalized after it ripped through the Lenin mine in the town of Shakhtinsk.
(AP, 9/20/06)(AP, 9/21/06)
2006 Sep 20, The UN's International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) acquitted former Rwandan education minister Andre Rwamakuba of murder and incitement charges related to the country's 1994 genocide.
(AP, 9/20/06)
2006 Sep 20, Gen. Sondhi Boonyaratkalin, the army commander who seized Thailand's government in a quick, bloodless coup, pledged to hold elections by October 2007. He received a ringing endorsement from the country's revered king.
(AP, 9/20/06)
2006 Sep 20, In South Africa a judge dismissed corruption charges against Jacob Zuma after the prosecution said it was not ready to proceed against a powerful, populist politician who could be South Africa's next president.
(AP, 9/20/06)
2006 Sep 20, Sven Nykvist (b.1922), Swedish cinematographer, died. He began working with Ingmar Bergman in 1953, eventually became his full-time cinematographer, pushing the director's work in a new direction. Nykvist won the Academy Award for Best Cinematography for two Bergman movies, Cries and Whispers (1973), and Fanny and Alexander (1982).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sven_Nykvist)
2006 Sep 20, In eastern Ukraine a methane blast ripped through a coal mine, killing 13 miners and injuring 36 others.
(AP, 9/20/06)
2006 Sep 20, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez took his verbal battle with the US to the floor of the UN General Assembly, calling President Bush "the devil." "The devil came here yesterday," Chavez said. "He came here talking as if he were the owner of the world."
(AP, 9/20/06)
2006 Sep 20, In Vietnam Pham Xuan An (79), journalist and spy, died. He led a remarkable and perilous double life as a communist spy and a respected reporter for Western news organizations during the Vietnam War.
(AP, 9/20/06)
2006 Sep 20, Yemen's President Ali Abdullah Saleh faced a serious challenger at the polls for the first time. Roughly 5 million of the 9.2 million eligible Yemenis cast ballots. Saleh has ruled since 1978, first as president of North Yemen and then as head of the unified state after the 1990 merger of the North and South.
(AP, 9/20/06)
2006 Sep 21, The US White House and rebellious Senate Republicans announced agreement on rules for the interrogation and trial of suspects in the war on terror.
(AP, 9/21/07)
2006 Sep 21, The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced it would recommend all Americans ages 13 to 64 be routinely tested for HIV.
(AP, 9/21/07)
2006 Sep 21, In NYC Venezuela’s Pres. Chavez visited the Mount Olive Baptist Church in Harlem and promised to double the amount of discounted heating oil his country is shipping to needy Americans. His offer included 100 gallons of heating oil for each of 12,000 households in rural Alaska.
(SFC, 9/22/06, p.A3)(SSFC, 10/8/06, p.A27)
2006 Sep 21, In Santa Cruz, Ca., Kirby Scudder (50), former bike messenger, set up 500 giant flashlights to shine skyward every 30 feet along West Cliff Drive overlooking the Pacific Ocean in his tribute to International Peace Day. The lights came on at 9PM.
(SFC, 9/21/06, p.B1)(SFC, 9/22/06, p.B7)
2006 Sep 21, The US space shuttle Atlantis returned safely to its Florida home port, capping a successful mission to resume International Space Station construction after the 2003 Columbia accident.
(AP, 9/21/06)
2006 Sep 21, Time Warner Inc. said it would sell AOL France's Internet access unit to Neuf Cegetel for $365 million as it overhauls its online business in Europe to boost advertising.
(AP, 9/21/06)
2006 Sep 21, In Afghanistan a NATO helicopter killed 8 suspected insurgents in Helmand province.
(AP, 9/24/06)
2006 Sep 21, The death toll in Bangladesh and India rose to at least 95 and nearly 1,000 remained missing after storms capsized boats, toppled houses and washed away roads.
(AP, 9/21/06)
2006 Sep 21, Chile's President Michelle Bachelet said her decision to allow the government to distribute free morning-after contraception pills to girls as young as 14 was a matter of "equality" within Chilean society.
(AP, 9/21/06)
2006 Sep 21, Iraq’s Defense Ministry said insurgents are no longer using just volunteers as suicide car bombers but are instead kidnapping drivers, rigging their vehicles with explosives and blowing them up. Italy formally handed over security responsibility of the southern Dhi Qar province to Iraqi forces, the second of the country's 18 provinces to be handed over to local control. 2 people were killed and another nine were wounded when a car bomb exploded near an electricity company office in Baghdad. The number of Iraqi civilians killed in July and August hit a record-high 6,599. An American soldier was killed after his vehicle was hit by a roadside bombing in eastern Baghdad.
(AP, 9/21/06)(AP, 9/22/06)
2006 Sep 21, Israeli forces killed at least 5 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip as gunmen fired rockets into Israel.
(SFC, 9/22/06, p.A13)
2006 Sep 21, A Japanese court ruled that an order forcing Tokyo teachers to stand before Japan's flag and sing an anthem to the emperor violated the constitution, a rare victory for the country's waning pacifist movement.
(AP, 9/21/06)
2006 Sep 21, Jordan sentenced 7 people to death for triple hotel bombings that killed 60 people in Amman last November. Sajida al-Rishawi (35), an Iraqi woman, was sentenced to death. 6 others were sentenced to death in absentia.
(AP, 9/21/06)
2006 Sep 21, Vladimiro Montesinos (61), Peru's former spymaster, was sentenced to 20 years in prison for engineering a deal that sent 10,000 assault rifles to Colombian guerrillas.
(AP, 9/22/06)
2006 Sep 21, In Russia Gennady Melikyan, deputy chairman of the Central Bank, was appointed top regulator to replace the recently murdered Andrei Kozlov.
(WSJ, 9/22/06, p.A6)
2006 Sep 21, Thailand's new military rulers said that four top members of deposed PM Thaksin Shinawatra's administration had been detained. The regime also assumed the duties of parliament, which was dissolved when the government was ousted in a coup earlier this week, and banned meetings by all political parties.
(AP, 9/21/06)
2006 Sep 21, Elif Shafak, one of Turkey's leading authors, was acquitted of "insulting Turkishness" in her novel "The Bastard of Istanbul," that touched on the mass killings of Armenians during the final years of the Ottoman Empire. The University of Arizona assistant professor gave birth to a daughter on Sep 16 and did not attend her trial.
(AP, 9/21/06)
2006 Sep 21, Vietnam deported an American pro-democracy activist, state-run television reported. Cong Thanh Do (47) of San Jose, Ca., was accused of plotting to overthrow the government.
(AP, 9/21/06)
2006 Sep 22, US President George W. Bush and Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf met at the White House for key anti-terror talks jarred by his public critiques of US strategy.
(AP, 9/22/06)
2006 Sep 22, It was reported that 11 Domino's employees in Pensacola, Fla., hoping to make a little more dough and get a bigger slice of the profits have formed the nation's first union of pizza delivery drivers.
(AP, 9/22/06)
2006 Sep 22, The new list of Forbes 400 richest people in the US for the 1st time was composed only of billionaires. As a group they were worth a record $1.3 trillion.
(WSJ, 9/23/06, p.B3)
2006 Sep 22, The US CDC recommended that all Americans between 13 and 64 be routinely tested for AIDS.
(Econ, 9/30/06, p.40)(www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/rr5514a1.htm)
2006 Sep 22, Hewlett-Packard Co. Chairwoman Patricia Dunn resigned in the wake of the company's ill-fated investigation of boardroom media leaks.
(AP, 9/22/07)
2006 Sep 22, Edward Albert (b.1951), television and screen actor, died of lung cancer in Malibu, California. He had a meteoric career as a film star in the 1970s after he starred with Goldie Hawn in “Butterflies Are Free" (1972). He also starred in “40 Carats" (1973), “The Ice Runner" (1993), and “Guarding Tess" (1994). Albert was a dedicated environmentalist and worked with several groups, including the California Coastal Commission and the state's Native American Heritage Commission.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Albert)
2006 Sep 22, In southern Afghanistan militants ambushed a bus carrying construction workers, killing 19 of the laborers. The attack occurred in Kandahar province when a roadside bomb exploded near the bus. A NATO helicopter killed 15 suspected insurgents in Helmand province.
(AP, 9/22/06)(AP, 9/24/06)
2006 Sep 22, Enrique Gorriaran Merlo (65), a former Argentine rebel, died. He claimed that he led the squad that killed exiled Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza in 1980.
(AP, 9/22/06)
2006 Sep 22, In Shanghai health officials added 3 more items to a list of toxic metals in SK-II products, made in Japan by US consumer products giant Procter and Gamble. P&G has pulled its popular SK-II line of beauty products off the shelf after authorities a week earlier discovered traces of the two toxic metals in nine SK-II products including powder, foundation, lotion and cleansing oil products. The company said a hotline had been set up and that all refund requests submitted by September 21 would be honored.
(AP, 9/22/06)
2006 Sep 22, Democratic Republic of Congo's first freely elected parliament in more than 40 years convened, with President Joseph Kabila's coalition poised to appoint a prime minister.
(AP, 9/22/06)
2006 Sep 22, France and Russia signed deals in the transport and aviation sectors worth 10 billion dollars following a summit between Russian Pres. Vladimir Putin and his French counterpart Jacques Chirac.
(AP, 9/23/06)
2006 Sep 22, Voters in Gambia went to the polls in a presidential election widely expected to hand incumbent strongman Yahya Jammeh a third elected term.
(AP, 9/22/06)
2006 Sep 22, In northwestern Germany the high-speed, Transrapid magnetic train, traveling at 125 mph, crashed. 23 of the 29 people aboard were killed and others injured in the first fatal wreck involving the high-tech system. A gas tank exploded in a bakery in a south German village, burying a dozen people in the rubble and injuring several more.
(AP, 9/22/06)(AP, 9/23/06)
2006 Sep 22, India’s High Court overturned a ban on the production and sale of Coca-Cola and Pepsi soft drinks in the southern Indian state of Kerala, but state officials said they would seek ways to challenge the decision.
(AP, 9/22/06)
2006 Sep 22, In Indonesia Christian mobs torched cars, blockaded roads and looted Muslim-owned shops in violence touched off by the execution in Central Sulawesi of 3 Roman Catholics convicted of instigating attacks on Muslims. Fabianus Tibo (60), Marinus Riwu (48), and Dominggus da Silva (42), were found guilty of leading a Christian militia that launched a series of attacks on Muslims in May, 2000, that left at least 70 people dead. Some 200 prisoners escaped in the town of Atambua, and only 20 had been recaptured by mid-afternoon.
(AP, 9/22/06)
2006 Sep 22, In Iraq gunmen opened fire on Sunni mosques and homes in a religiously mixed Baghdad neighborhood, killing four people in an attack that drew the condemnation of Sunni leaders across the city. Muntasir Hamoud Ileiwi al-Jubouri, an alleged leader of Ansar al-Sunnah, and two of his aides were captured. He is a leader of the group believed to be behind the 2004 attack on a US military mess hall. An American contractor working for the State Department was killed in a rocket attack in the southern city of Basra. Police found the blindfolded and bound bodies of nine men from a Sunni tribe who had been dragged out of a wedding dinner in east Baghdad the night before by men dressed in Iraqi army uniforms. Four other bodies were found in other parts of the capital, again blindfolded and with their hands and legs tied.
(AP, 9/22/06)(AP, 9/23/06)
2006 Sep 22, Israelis marked the Jewish New Year shaken by the inconclusive war in Lebanon, angry at their leaders and coping with growing gaps between rich and poor.
(AP, 9/22/06)
2006 Sep 22, Some 800,000 Hezbollah supporters packed a 37-acre square in the suburbs of Beirut to hear leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah. In his first public appearance since the start of his group's 34-day war with Israel, he said his group has more than 20,000 rockets, and that an increased UN peacekeeping force will not hurt its guerrillas' arsenal.
(SFC, 9/23/06, p.A7)(AP, 9/25/06)
2006 Sep 22, Nepal's interim parliament passed a new law imposing tighter civilian control over the army which was once fiercely loyal to the nation's royal family.
(AP, 9/22/06)
2006 Sep 22, In Norway police accused four men suspected in an attack on Oslo's main synagogue of also plotting to blow up the US and Israeli embassies. The men were arrested Sep 19 in connection with an attack on the Mosaic Religious Community synagogue, which was hit with at least 10 bullets on Sep 17.
(AP, 9/22/06)
2006 Sep 22, Palestinian PM Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas said he will not head a government that recognizes Israel, striking a potential blow to President Mahmoud Abbas' attempts to create a national unity government.
(AP, 9/22/06)
2006 Sep 23, Barry Bonds hit his 734th career home run in the Giants' 10-8 loss to the Brewers, breaking Hank Aaron's NL record.
(AP, 9/23/07)
2006 Sep 23, Two days of high winds, heavy rain and tornadoes pounded parts of the US Midwest and the South, killing at least 10 people and stranding others in trees and shelters while forecasters warned that the stormy weather was expected to continue.
(AP, 9/23/06)(SSFC, 9/24/06, p.A2)
2006 Sep 23, Three young children were found dead in an East St. Louis, Ill., apartment, hours after Tiffany Hall was charged with killing their pregnant mother and her fetus in a grisly attack. Hall has since been charged with first-degree murder in the deaths of Jimella Tunstall and her children, as well as intentional homicide of Tunstall's fetus.
(AP, 9/23/07)
2006 Sep 23, Etta Baker (93), blues guitarist, died in Fairfax, Va. In 1991 she won a Folk Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Her albums included a 2004 recording with Taj Mahal.
(SFC, 9/26/06, p.D6)
2006 Sep 23, Afghan and NATO-led security forces backed by war planes killed 40 rebels in Helmand province's Greshk district.
(AFP, 9/24/06)
2006 Sep 23, In Bolivia 90% of the country’s productive land was still owned by just 50,000 families. Four-fifths of the rural population remained poor.
(Econ, 9/23/06, p.41)
2006 Sep 23, Toomas Hendrik Ilves (52), a Western-leaning former diplomat and journalist, was narrowly elected Estonia's president, ousting the incumbent who was favored in the race.
(AP, 9/23/06)
2006 Sep 23, Russian Pres. Vladimir Putin and his French counterpart Jacques Chirac joined German Chancellor Angela Merkel for a three-way informal summit in a chateau in Compiegne.
(AP, 9/23/06)
2006 Sep 23, In northern England at least 10,000 anti-war demonstrators marched through the city of Manchester, protesting the presence of British troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
(AP, 9/23/06)
2006 Sep 23, A French newspaper reported that Osama bin Laden had died in Pakistan on August 23 of typhoid fever. The report was not confirmed.
(SSFC, 9/24/06, p.A4)
2006 Sep 23, Gambian President Yahya Jammeh easily won a third term and called for a concerted effort to develop the country socially and economically.
(AP, 9/23/06)
2006 Sep 23, A square in front of Hungary's parliament overflowed with demonstrators demanding that PM Gyurcsany quit in the largest protest yet since a recording was leaked on which he admitted lying to the people about the economy. Hungary’s current-account deficit reached 9% of GDP and the budget deficit hit 10%.
(AP, 9/24/06)(Econ, 9/23/06, p.64)
2006 Sep 23, In Indian Kashmir suspected militants shot dead a man and a woman near Srinagar. A border guard hurt in a bomb explosion died the next day.
(AFP, 9/24/06)
2006 Sep 23, Indian security officials in the western desert state of Rajasthan shot dead three suspected militants who were trying to cross over from Pakistan.
(AP, 9/24/06)
2006 Sep 23, A bombing in the Shiite slum of Sadr City killed 38 people and wounded 42 as they stocked up on fuel for Ramadan. The severed heads of 10 Iraqi soldiers that were tossed into a crowded market in Beiji by unidentified gunmen. Minority Sunnis began the fasting month of Ramadan. Police Col. Ismaiel Chehayyan was killed by gunmen while having his Ramadan fast-breaking dinner at a friend's house. Iraqi security forces arrested a leader of the al-Ashreen Brigades, a group responsible for attacks and kidnappings. The leader along with 7 aides were captured in Kharnabat. 5 apparent death squad victims were turned in to the morgue in Kut. The victims were blindfolded with their arms and hands bound, and showed signs of torture.
(AP, 9/23/06)(AP, 9/24/06)
2006 Sep 23, The TV series “The Renegades," directed by Najdat Anzour of Syria, began showing in Lebanon and the rest of the Arab world. It fictionalized the devastating effects of terrorism on Muslim families.
(SFC, 10/4/06, p.A7)
2006 Sep 23, In Mexico the governor of Oaxaca state warned 70,000 striking teachers that they would be replaced and lose their pay unless they immediately returned to work.
(AP, 9/24/06)
2006 Sep 23, In Nepal's mountainous east a helicopter with 24 people aboard went missing. Searchers found the wreckage on Sep 25. The 24 dead included 2 Americans, Nepalese Forestry Minister Gopal Rai, Finnish Embassy Charge d'Affaires Pauli Mustonen and Canadian Jennifer Headley, a coordinator for WWF, several Nepali journalists, government officials and four crew members, two Russians and two Nepalis.
(AP, 9/23/06)(AP, 9/25/06)
2006 Sep 23, In Pakistan at least 8 people were killed and 55 injured when a bus collided with another on the main highway near the Islamabad. According to official statistics Pakistan has the world's third highest death rate from road accidents.
(AFP, 9/23/06)
2006 Sep 23, Spain's Basque separatist group ETA has said it will not give up its weapons until independence for the Basque region is won, fuelling concerns over the future of a six-month-old ceasefire.
(AFP, 9/24/06)
2006 Sep 23, In eastern Turkey suspected Kurdish guerrillas set off an explosive-laden minibus across from a police guest house, injuring 17 people.
(AP, 9/23/06)
2006 Sep 23, Yemen's President Ali Abdullah Saleh was re-elected with more than 77% of votes in the face of the strongest challenge since he came to power 28 years ago. Faisal bin Shamlan won almost 22% of the vote. Opposition parties backing bin Shamlan immediately rejected the election commission's results, claiming their candidate won at least 40%.
(AP, 9/24/06)
2006 Sep 24, In a combative interview on "Fox News Sunday," former President Clinton defended his handling of the threat posed by Osama bin Laden, and accused host Chris Wallace of a "conservative hit job."
(AP, 9/24/07)
2006 Sep 24, Democrats seized on an intelligence assessment that said the Iraq war had increased the terrorist threat, saying it was further evidence Americans should choose new leadership in upcoming elections.
(AP, 9/24/07)
2006 Sep 24, A survey by the Pew Internet and American Life Project said machines after 2020 will become intelligent, evolve rapidly, and could end up treating humans as pets.
(SFC, 9/25/06, p.F1)
2006 Sep 24, Residents in Richmond, Ca., set up a tent city to protest violence, homicides and drug dealing in their Iron Triangle neighborhood.
(SFC, 10/11/06, p.A7)
2006 Sep 24, Inco, one of Canada’s two largest mining companies, agreed to be acquired by Companhia Vale do Rio Doce of Brazil for $17.8 billion and absorbing Inco's debt of $1.2 billion. The deal was closed in October.
(www.secinfo.com/dRY7g.v113.d.htm)(WSJ, 4/25/08, p.A1)(http://tinyurl.com/ydysrko)
2006 Sep 24, In China Chen Liangyu, the Communist Party boss of Shanghai, was sacked for corruption, toppling the highest leader so far in national party chief Hu Jintao's drive to root out abuse and enforce loyalty.
(Reuters, 9/25/06)(Econ, 9/30/06, p.49)
2006 Sep 24, In Copenhagen, Denmark, youths angered at a court decision to evict squatters from a downtown building hurled stones, bottles and eggs at police during a protest. More than 200 were detained.
(AP, 9/25/06)
2006 Sep 24, In Ecuador a speeding bus overturned on a curving mountain road near Quito, killing 47 people and injuring five children.
(AP, 9/25/06)
2006 Sep 24, India's federal government called off a six-week truce with separatist rebels in Assam and ordered the resumption of military operations in the northeastern state.
(AP, 9/24/06)
2006 Sep 24, Iraq’s PM Nouri al-Maliki called for Shiites and Sunnis to use the Islamic holy month of Ramadan to put aside their differences. Iraq's parliamentary groups agreed to open debate on a contentious Shiite-proposed draft legislation that will allow the creation of federal regions in Iraq. Authorities reported that at least 20 people were killed in scattered violence across the country. Authorities reported that 45 bodies were received at the morgue, the apparent victims of sectarian death squads.
(AP, 9/24/06)(SFC, 9/25/06, p.A9)
2006 Sep 24, In Indian Kashmir 4 suspected Islamic militants were shot dead by troops in northern Uri district in a gunbattle with troops. 2 more were killed in nearby Bandipora.
(AP, 9/24/06)
2006 Sep 24, In Lebanon Samir Geagea, an anti-Syrian Christian leader, dismissed Hezbollah's claims of victory in its war with Israel as tens of thousands of his supporters rallied in a show of strength that highlighted the country’s sharp divisions.
(AP, 9/24/06)
2006 Sep 24, In St. Petersburg, Russia, attackers stabbed to death Nitesh Kumar Singh, an Indian medical student, in the latest in a series of hate crimes there.
(AP, 9/25/06)
2006 Sep 24, In Somalia hundreds of Islamic militiamen in heavily armed trucks took over the southern town of Kismayo, one of the last seaports that had been outside their control.
(AP, 9/24/06)
2006 Sep 24, Swiss voters in a national referendum backed tougher asylum rules put forth by justice minister Christoph Blocher, despite fears that the new rules will deny refugees a fair hearing. 68% approved a new immigration law which was meant to tackle what authorities say is the lack of integration of many foreigners into Swiss society.
(AP, 9/24/06)(Econ, 9/30/06, p.61)
2006 Sep 24, Thailand's military council issued new orders intended to stave off any possible opposition to their coup, banning political activities at the district and provincial levels.
(AP, 9/24/06)
2006 Sep 25, US air safety officials eased restrictions on liquids in carry-ons.
(SFC, 9/26/06, p.A1)
2006 Sep 25, It was reported that the gap in between US debt payments and return from investments abroad had reached $2.5 billion in the 2nd quarter of 2006. This amounted to a quarterly debt payment of about $22 for each American household.
(WSJ, 9/25/06, p.A1)
2006 Sep 25, A US federal judge granted class action status to tens of millions of "light cigarette" smokers for a potential $200 billion lawsuit against cigarette makers.
(AP, 9/25/06)
2006 Sep 25, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed two bills to bar the state's massive pension funds from investing in companies in Sudan and to indemnify the University of California system from liability from divesting its investments in the country.
(Reuters, 9/25/06)
2006 Sep 25, Murphy Oil agreed to pay $330 million to settle a class-action suit filed by victims of Hurricane Katrina whose homes and businesses were inundated when floodwaters carried nearly 1.1 million gallons of crude oil from a company storage tank.
(WSJ, 9/26/06, p.A12)
2006 Sep 25, The Louisiana Superdome, a symbol of misery during Hurricane Katrina, reopened for a New Orleans Saints game. The Saints defeated the Atlanta Falcons, 23-3.
(AP, 9/25/07)
2006 Sep 25, In Afghan 2 gunmen on a motorbike killed Safia Hama Jan, the provincial director of the Ministry of Women's Affairs, outside her home in apparent retribution for her efforts to help educate women. In Khost province a bomb killed 2 policemen and a coalition soldier was injured in a suicide attack. 2 men believed to be suicide attackers were killed when the car they were in blew up on a road often used by the US-led coalition and Afghan forces. In Paktika province six suspected rebels were killed when they were escorting a suicide bomber whose explosives detonated early.
(AFP, 9/25/06)(AFP, 9/26/06)
2006 Sep 25, UCB, a Belgian drug firm, announced a takeover of Germany’s Schwarz Pharma for €4.4 billion.
(Econ, 9/30/06, p.71)
2006 Sep 25, Deutsche Oper, a leading German opera house, canceled a 3-year-old production of Mozart's "Idomeneo" that included a scene showing the severed head of the Prophet Muhammad, unleashing a furious debate over free speech.
(AP, 9/26/06)
2006 Sep 25, In Athens, Greece, a gang of robbers wielding machine guns stole an estimated $1.9 million from a casino's security van after ramming the vehicle with a stolen truck.
(AP, 9/25/06)
2006 Sep 25, Guatemalan security forces took over the Pavon prison farm, which had been controlled for more than 10 years by inmates who produced drugs, lived in spacious homes with luxury goods and even rented space for stores and restaurants. 7 prisoners died when 3,000 police and soldiers firing automatic weapons stormed the prison just after dawn. In 2018 Erwin Sperisen, Guatemala's former police chief, was slapped with a 15-year prison sentence in Switzerland after being reconvicted for the deaths of seven inmates in Pavon jail. Sperisen held dual Swiss and Guatemalan citizenship and local rules allowed Swiss citizens to be tried at home for crimes committed abroad.
(Reuters, 9/25/06)(AP, 11/14/10)(AFP, 4/27/18)
2006 Sep 25, Iraq's feuding ethnic and sectarian groups moved ahead with forming a committee to consider amending the constitution after their leaders agreed to delay any division of the country into autonomous states until 2008. In Basra British forces shot and killed Omar al-Farouq, a leading al-Qaida terrorist, more than a year after he embarrassed the US military by making an unprecedented escape from a maximum security military prison in Afghanistan in July, 2005. A US soldier died of wounds sustained from enemy fire in Mosul. A US Marine and soldier were killed in action in western Anbar province.
(AP, 9/25/06)(AP, 9/26/06)(AP, 9/27/06)
2006 Sep 25, In Nigeria an inauguration ceremony in Lagos featured new bailiffs, a corps of 30 men and women, all graduates, in uniforms of black trousers, ash-colored shirts, yellow badges and cowboy hats and handcuffs on their belts. Former Lagos bailiffs had converted their role as enforcer of court judgments on property into an extortion racket.
(AP, 9/26/06)
2006 Sep 25, Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf’s memoir “In the Line of Fire," was published. He noted that the CIA has paid Pakistan millions for catching al-Qaida fighters.
(SFC, 9/23/06, p.A3)(SFC, 9/26/06, p.A3)
2006 Sep 25, Somalia's interim prime minister called on the UN to partially lift an arms embargo on his country to allow for the deployment of African peacekeepers, which he said are necessary to stop the advance of Islamic radicals. A government order banned human smuggling. Ethiopian troops arrived in Somalia to support the internationally recognized government in its faceoff with radicals. The Islamic militia in the seaport of Kismayo opened fire on thousands protesting the fundamentalists' takeover of the southern town. Witnesses said a teenager was killed.
(AP, 9/25/06)(SFC, 9/26/06, p.A3)(AP, 10/8/06)
2006 Sep 25, The Sri Lankan navy said it had sunk 11 Tamil Tiger rebel ships loaded with troops and weapons during a five-hour sea battle, killing around 70 separatists.
(AP, 9/25/06)
2006 Sep 25, A spokesman for the AU said the African Union will add 4,000 troops to its extended Darfur peacekeeping mission, bringing the number of police and soldiers in western Sudan to 11,000. The UN got its first pledges of troops for a proposed peacekeeping force in Sudan's Darfur region at a meeting of 49 potential contributing nations.
(AP, 9/25/06)(Reuters, 9/25/06)
2006 Sep 25, The United States donated patrol boats and electronic equipment to help Tajikistan guard its borders and stem the flow of heroin from neighboring Afghanistan.
(AP, 9/25/06)
2006 Sep 25, Pope Benedict XVI told over 20 Muslim diplomats that Christians and Muslims must work together to guard against intolerance and violence as he sought to soothe anger over his recent remarks about Islam.
(AP, 9/25/06)(SFC, 9/26/06, p.A8)
2006 Sep 25, In Yemen 4 French tourists kidnapped Sep 10 were freed.
(AP, 9/25/06)
2006 Sep 26, President Bush ordered release of a declassified version of a government intelligence report that said the war in Iraq had become a "cause celebre" for Islamic extremists.
(AP, 9/26/07)
2006 Sep 26, Former Enron chief financial officer Andrew Fastow was sentenced by a federal judge in Houston to six years in prison for his role in the fallen energy company's bankruptcy.
(AP, 9/26/07)
2006 Sep 26, In Florida, brothers Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela (67) and Miguel Rodriguez Orejuela (62), who headed the Colombia’s Cali cocaine cartel, were sentenced to 30 years in prison. They agreed to forfeit $2.1 billion worth of assets linked to the drug trade as part of their plea agreement. In exchange half a dozen of their relatives would not face prosecution.
(SFC, 9/27/06, p.A12)
2006 Sep 26, EMI Classics released a CD of Paul McCartney’s four-movement oratorio “Ecce cor meum." This was his 3rd large-scale choral work.
(WSJ, 9/21/06, p.D6)
2006 Sep 26, Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft Corp., announced a $41 million computerized atlas of the 20,000 genes in the brain of a mouse. The atlas was made available online at www.brainatlas.org.
(SFC, 9/27/06, p.A9)(Econ, 9/30/06, p.91)
2006 Sep 26, Researchers reported that Earth’s temperature has climbed to a 12,000-year high and that it has been warming at a rate of .36° Fahrenheit per decade for the last 30 years.
(SFC, 9/26/06, p.A5)
2006 Sep 26, Iva Toguri D’Aquino, (nee Iva Ikuko Toguri, 1916-2006), a Japanese-American convicted in 1949 for being wartime radio propagandist "Tokyo Rose," died in Chicago. [see Sep 5, 1945]
(SFC, 9/28/06, p.A18)(Econ, 10/7/06, p.93)
2006 Sep 26, In Afghanistan a suicide bomber struck outside the compound of a southern governor, killing 18 people, including several Muslim pilgrims seeking paperwork to travel to Mecca. A bomb in Kabul killed an Italian soldier and a child.
(AP, 9/26/06)
2006 Sep 26, In Brazil officials said Rio will spend $1 million to map two sprawling shantytowns as the first step toward granting land titles to residents who otherwise have no property rights in the sprawling slums.
(AP, 9/26/06)
2006 Sep 26, In Chile thousands of public school teachers held a generally peaceful march in Santiago to demand higher pay.
(AP, 9/26/06)
2006 Sep 26, The European Commission recommended that Bulgaria and Romania join the EU next year, but under some of the harshest terms ever faced by new members.
(AP, 9/26/06)
2006 Sep 26, Iraqi security forces arrested another leader of the 1920 Revolution Brigades, a group accused of numerous attacks on US forces. A series of bomb explosions killed at least 21 people and wounded dozens in and around Baghdad, where police also found 23 tortured bodies, apparently victims of sectarian death squads.
(AP, 9/26/06)(AP, 9/27/06)(WSJ, 9/27/06, p.A1)
2006 Sep 26, In Japan nationalist Shinzo Abe, a proponent of a robust alliance with the US and a more assertive military, easily won election in parliament to become the country’s youngest postwar prime minister. Abe faced a government debt equivalent to 170% of GDP. Junichiro Koizumi formally stepped down as prime minister. His achievements included changing the way politics was carried out, advancing big economic reforms, and extending Japan’s role in foreign affairs.
(AP, 9/26/06)(Econ, 9/16/06, p.14)(Econ, 9/23/06, p.44)
2006 Sep 26, Officials said a cow in northern Japan is suspected of having the country's 29th case of mad cow disease.
(AP, 9/26/06)
2006 Sep 26, Palestinian militants fired at least two rockets from the Gaza Strip into southern Israel, wounding at least one person.
(AP, 9/26/06)
2006 Sep 26, Russia and Iran signed a deal in Moscow whereby Russia will ship fuel to a controversial atomic power plant it is building in Iran by March.
(AP, 9/26/06)
2006 Sep 26, In Turkey 56 Kurdish mayors stood trial, accused in a freedom-of-speech case on charges of helping terrorists by arguing to keep a Kurdish TV station on the air.
(AP, 9/26/06)
2006 Sep 26, The UN and Sudan discussed the deployment of UN military advisers to reinforce African Union peacekeepers in Darfur, in a possible compromise in their standoff over the war-torn region.
(Reuters, 9/26/06)
2006 Sep 26, The Vatican said it has excommunicated Zambia’s Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo, for defying the Holy See by installing four married men as bishops. The prelate had already angered the Vatican by getting married in 2001.
(AP, 9/26/06)
2006 Sep 26, A former chief of environmental protection in the US Virgin Islands pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy to defraud the islands' government of more than $1 million. Hollis Griffin (43) acknowledged engaging in a five-year bribery scheme that paid up to $350,000 in kickbacks to at least four government officials in exchange for consulting contracts worth $1.4 million.
(AP, 9/26/06)
2006 Sep 27, President Bush hosted a peacemaking dinner at the White House for the bickering leaders of Pakistan and Afghanistan, Gen. Pervez Musharraf and Hamid Karzai.
(WSJ, 9/28/06, p.A1)(AP, 9/27/07)
2006 Sep 27, Republicans announced they would hold their 2008 presidential convention in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis-St. Paul.
(Econ, 1/13/07, p.30)(AP, 9/27/07)
2006 Sep 27, Jacob "Kobi" Alexander, the former chief and founder of Comverse Technology Inc., was arrested in Namibia, where he awaited extradition to the US to face criminal fraud charges related to stock options. Alexander had recently transferred tens of millions of dollars to Namibia. He was released after 6 days on $1.4 million bail.
(Reuters, 9/27/06)(WSJ, 9/28/06, p.A1)(WSJ, 11/17/06, p.A1)
2006 Sep 27, The US FDA approved Vectibix (panitimumab), a new colon cancer drug developed by Amgen and Abgenix.
(SFC, 9/28/06, p.C1)
2006 Sep 27, In Bailey, Colorado, Duane Morrison (53) held 6 girls hostage at Platte Canyon High School for hours before fatally wounding Emily Keyes (16). He sexually molested the girls and then killed himself as authorities stormed in.
(AP, 9/28/06)(SFC, 9/28/06, p.A3)(AP, 9/29/06)(SFC, 10/6/06, p.A3)
2006 Sep 27, In Charleston, South Carolina, a video store was held up by a group of children, including a 14-year-old girl suspected of wielding a BB gun that looked like a pistol. City Council member Larry Shirley, reacting later to the video store holdup, said parents who can't properly care for their kids should be sterilized.
(AP, 10/1/06)
2006 Sep 27, Afghan security forces killed 25 suspected insurgents during a clash in southern Afghanistan, while a suicide bombing targeting a NATO convoy wounded one civilian.
(AP, 9/27/06)
2006 Sep 27, British billionaire Richard Branson proposed changes to aircraft movements at busy airports and the way planes land under a plan he said would cut the world's aviation emissions by up to 25%.
(Reuters, 9/27/06)(Econ, 9/30/06, p.65)
2006 Sep 27, EU air safety officials backed tightened rules on the amount of liquids and size of carry-on baggage passengers can bring onto commercial flights.
(AP, 9/27/06)
2006 Sep 27, France ended a decades-old system of inequality by bringing lagging pensions of war veterans from former colonies into line with those of their French counterparts whose retirement payment is two-thirds higher. The decision was not retroactive.
(AP, 9/28/06)
2006 Sep 27, A team of French doctors said they successfully operated on a man in near zero-gravity conditions on a flight looping in the air like a roller coaster to mimic weightlessness.
(AP, 9/27/06)
2006 Sep 27, Germany opened a conference in Berlin on opening a 2-year dialogue separating Islamic fundamentalism from Islam.
(Econ, 9/30/06, p.62)
2006 Sep 27, Indonesia’s government said it will resettle more than 3,000 families whose houses have been swamped by mud surging from a gas exploration site and will dump the sludge into the sea to avoid more destruction. The eruption took place 4 months earlier 150 meters from where PT Lapindo Brantas was drilling an exploratory well. The company was controlled by the family of Aburizal Bakrie, Indonesia’s welfare minister.
(AP, 9/27/06)(Econ, 10/7/06, p.51)
2006 Sep 27, In Iraq the US military said it killed four suspected terrorists and four civilians, including a pregnant woman, in a raid in Baqouba. An investigation followed as surviving family members said the attack was unprovoked. Gunmen killed 10 people near a Sunni mosque at Ramadan prayers.
(AP, 9/27/06)(SFC, 9/28/06, p.A19)(WSJ, 9/28/06, p.A1)
2006 Sep 27, An Israeli court released the Palestinian deputy prime minister, the highest ranking Hamas official to be freed following a crackdown on the Islamic militant group. But the court temporarily banned him from going to his government office in the city of Ramallah. Israeli airstrikes on a house in the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah killed a 14-year-old girl and wounded seven other people.
(AP, 9/27/06)
2006 Sep 27, Jordan's military court convicted five men of plotting attacks against US troops in Iraq, including a cousin of slain al-Qaida in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
(AP, 9/27/06)
2006 Sep 27, At the Hague, Netherlands, a UN tribunal sentenced Momcilio Krajisnik (61), the former speaker of the Bosnian Serb parliament, to 27 years in prison for war crimes, but acquitted him of the harsher charge of genocide.
(AP, 9/27/06)
2006 Sep 27, In northwestern Pakistan drive-by gunmen killed two militants and wounded three in another car. The militants who came under attack were believed to be loyal to a pro-Taliban tribesman known only as Hanan, who had started a campaign to oust Uzbek militants living in the Shakai mountain valley region north of Wana.
(AP, 9/27/06)
2006 Sep 27, Russia's chief election body dismissed a petition aimed at allowing President Vladimir Putin to run for a third term.
(AP, 9/27/06)
2006 Sep 27, The Sri Lanka government revealed that Tamil Tigers have agreed to resume face-to-face negotiations and end a seven-month deadlock in talks.
(AFP, 9/27/06)
2006 Sep 27, The Ugandan army accused rebels of violating the increasingly fragile truce, which was signed last month, by leaving neutral assembly points.
(AP, 9/28/06)
2006 Sep 27, In Venezuela’s Los Roques islands Elena Vecoli (34), a newly married Italian woman, was murdered and her husband, Riccardo Prescendi (46) beaten inside an inn popular with foreign tourists. Police identified 3 suspects the next day.
(AP, 9/29/06)
2006 Sep 28, It was reported that US federal and state authorities were investigating a mortgage fraud in Virginia that involved loans totaling about $80 million.
(WSJ, 9/28/06, p.A1)
2006 Sep 28, The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned that travelers to parts of Africa and Asia are returning with a new mosquito-borne virus. Some people returning to Europe, the US, Canada, Martinique and French Guyana reported cases of Chikungunya fever (CHIKV). The virus first emerged in Tanzania in 1953.
(Reuters 9/28/06)
2006 Sep 28, It was reported that Merck saved some $1.5 billion in US taxes by transferring patents and income to an offshore holding in Bermuda called Project Ryland from 1993-2003. In 2006 the IRS challenged the transactions.
(WSJ, 9/28/06, p.A1)
2006 Sep 28, Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corp., the US unit of Swiss drugmaker Novartis AG, said that at least three out of four patients given an experimental multiple sclerosis treatment were free of relapses for more than two years.
(AP, 9/28/06)
2006 Sep 28, William Whalen (66), former director of the US National Park Service (1977-1980), died of a heart attack. He served as the 1st director of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area (1972-1977). In 1980 he implemented the 1971 Alaska Native Lands Claims Settlement Act, which created 10 national parks in Alaska.
(SFC, 9/30/06, p.B6) (http://tinyurl.com/2v8onh)
2006 Sep 28, In Bangladesh thousands of people set fire to power supply offices and attacked government vehicles Dhaka in protest over electricity shortages.
(Reuters, 9/28/06)
2006 Sep 28, Belgian government officials said the transfer of confidential banking records by a Belgium-based company to US authorities for use in anti-terrorism investigations breached Belgian and likely European Union data privacy rules.
(AP, 9/28/06)
2006 Sep 28, A leaked UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) paper said Pakistan's intelligence service, ISI, indirectly backs terrorism by supporting religious parties in the country.
(www.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=74600)
2006 Sep 28, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said his country rejected the suspension of uranium-enrichment activities by Tehran, "even for one day."
(AP, 9/28/06)
2006 Sep 28, An explosion on a natural gas pipeline outside Bazargan, an Iranian border city, shut down the flow of gas to Turkey. Officials believed the explosion was an act of sabotage by separatist Kurdish rebels.
(AP, 9/29/06)
2006 Sep 28, Iraq's Central Criminal Court said it had convicted 22 suspected insurgents of a range of crimes, including weapons violations and illegally entering the country. The bodies of 60 people who been tortured were found in and around Baghdad in a span of 24 hours. 5 people died from a car-bomb explosion near a restaurant. Attacks left 21 Iraqis dead. Al-Qaida in Iraq released an audiotape calling for nuclear scientists to join in a holy war and urged insurgents to kidnap Westerners.
(AP, 9/28/06)(SFC, 9/29/06, p.A12)(WSJ, 9/29/06, p.A1)
2006 Sep 28, It was reported that the industrial city of Shymkent, Kazakhstan, was reeling after learning that at least 63 children had contracted AIDS through medical negligence many blame on corruption and the illicit sale of blood. At least five infected toddlers had died after receiving injections or blood transfusions. Parents said regional health officials were aware of the outbreak in March, and have been trying to cover it up by pulling pages from the infected toddlers' treatment records to eliminate any mention of blood transfusions.
(AP, 9/28/06)
2006 Sep 28, Jailed Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan has appealed to his Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) to call a ceasefire in its separatist campaign against the Turkish government.
(AFP, 9/28/06)
2006 Sep 28, Mexico’s President-elect Felipe Calderon asked Congress to get tougher on criminals, create a universal health care system and generate jobs so millions of Mexicans do not have to migrate to the US to find work. Calderon also called for reducing the gap between rich and poor and called for a return to life sentences for hardened criminals, including violent kidnappers.
(AP, 9/28/06)
2006 Sep 28, Nigeria's vice president Atiku Abubakar was suspended by his party for three months because of corruption allegations, preventing him from running for president on the party's ticket.
(AP, 9/28/06)
2006 Sep 28, Typhoon Xangsane battered the northern and central Philippines with rains and winds, killing at least 76 people.
(AP, 9/29/06)(AFP, 10/1/06)
2006 Sep 28, Russia agreed to grant Cuba credit worth $350 million and restructure some of its recent debt during a visit by PM Putin. The two countries also signed a military cooperation agreement.
(AP, 9/28/06)
2006 Sep 28, Singapore banned the Far Eastern Economic Review magazine after it failed to comply with media regulations. The Review, published by Dow Jones & Co Inc., is being sued by Singapore's PM Lee Hsien Loong and his father, Singapore's founding PM Lee Kuan Yew, over a July article about opposition politician Chee Soon Juan.
(AP, 9/28/06)
2006 Sep 28, Somali police investigating a car bomb assassination attempt on the president arrested three suspected members of a fundamentalist Islamic group and recovered explosives.
(AP, 9/28/06)
2006 Sep 28, South Korea and the US agreed on a program to reshape their military alliance and give Seoul a bigger role in countering any North Korean attack. The two sides signed new terms for the decades-old alliance after talks in Washington.
(AFP, 9/29/06)
2006 Sep 28, European cease-fire monitors said at least 200 civilians have been killed in two months of fighting between Sri Lankan soldiers and separatist Tamil rebels, and both sides are to blame.
(AP, 9/28/06)
2006 Sep 28, Thailand's auditor general, Jaruvan Maintaka, told reporters that Gen. Surayud Chulanont (62), a highly regarded retired officer, would lead the country until promised elections next year. The US suspended $24 million in military aid due to the coup.
(AP, 9/29/06)(WSJ, 9/29/06, p.A1)
2006 Sep 28, Thailand’s new Suvarnabhumi Airport, built on an area known as "Cobra Swamp," officially opened its doors, more than four decades after the project originated.
(AP, 9/27/06)(AP, 9/28/06)
2006 Sep 28, Uganda state media reported that rebels have walked out of peace talks aimed at ending a 19-year conflict in which thousands of civilians have died.
(AP, 9/28/06)
2006 Sep 28, Zambians voted to decide whether President Levy Mwanawasa would stay in office for a second term despite a strong challenge from opposition candidates who lambasted his economic policies. Voters jammed polling stations after a national election campaign marked by bitter debate about the president's effort to increase foreign investment and combat poverty and corruption.
(AP, 9/28/06)(AP, 9/29/06)
2006 Sep 29, Pres. Bush met with Kazakhstan’s Pres. Nazarbayev and praised him. The meeting was criticized as an unseemly gesture to an oil-rich ruler who tolerates no dissent.
(WSJ, 9/30/06, p.A1)
2006 Sep 29, US Rep. Mark Foley, a prominent House Republican from Florida, resigned after the revelation that he exchanged raunchy electronic messages with a teenage boy, a former congressional page. Foley was the chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children.
(AP, 9/30/06)(SFC, 9/30/06, p.A3)
2006 Sep 29, A Rhode Island nightclub owner was sentenced to four years in prison and his brother to probation, angering relatives of the 100 people who died in a 2003 fire at their club.
(AP, 9/29/07)
2006 Sep 29, Police in Florida said 2 Roman Catholic priests allegedly misappropriated more than $8 million from their church and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on real estate, travel, rare coins and girlfriends.
(Reuters, 9/30/06)
2006 Sep 29, In Oakland, Ca., Anthony J. Quintero, a Brink’s security guard and former Marine, was shot dead during a daylight robbery. Quintero’s partner, Clifton Wherry Jr. (28), was soon arrested for the murder and admitted that he had planned the robbery. On Oct 5 Dwight Omar Campbell (23) was arrested in San Diego County for allegedly shooting Quintero.
(SFC, 9/30/06, p.B1)(SFC, 10/3/06, p.B3)(SFC, 10/7/06, p.B3)
2006 Sep 29, In Lakeland, Fla., 9 SWAT team members fatally shot Angilo Freeland, a man suspected of killing a sheriff's deputy a day earlier. An autopsy showed that officers fired 110 rounds of ammunition at Freeland.
(AP, 9/29/06)(AP, 9/30/06)
2006 Sep 29, In Cazenovia, Wisconsin, Eric Hainstock (15) walked into Weston High School with a shotgun. The principal confronted him in a corridor and was shot and killed. Hainstock was taken into custody and all the children were reported safe.
(AP, 9/29/06)(Econ, 10/7/06, p.38)
2006 Sep 29, In Bolivia police killed two coca farmers and injured a third in the first violent confrontation over coca eradication since President Evo Morales, himself a former coca grower, was elected last year. An estimate 200 coca growers in the Chapare region ambushed a team of police sent to destroy their crop, planted illegally inside the borders of a national park 220 southeast of the capital of La Paz.
(AP, 9/29/06)
2006 Sep 29, A Brazilian jetliner, Gol airlines Flight 1907, with 155 people aboard crashed in the Amazon jungle after reportedly colliding with a smaller ExcelAire executive jet carrying 16 passengers. The Legacy jet stabilized after the apparent collision and then landed at a Brazilian air force base in the Amazon state of Para. It was later reported that the US executive jet was at the wrong altitude and Brazil confiscated the passports of the pilots. In November it was reported that the flight recorder transcript from the executive jet involved in the air disaster showed that the jet's American pilots were told by Brazilian air traffic control to fly at the same altitude as a Boeing 737 before the planes collided over the Amazon rainforest. Pilots Joseph Lepore (42), of Bay Shore, N.Y., and Jan Paladino (34), of Westhampton Beach, N.Y., were allowed to return to the US on Dec 8 after signing a document promising to return to Brazil for their trial or when required by local authorities. In 2010 Air force Sgt. Jomarcelo Fernandes dos Santos was sentenced to 14 months in jail for failing to take action when he saw that the Legacy's anti-collision system had been turned off. In 2011 the American pilots were sentenced to four years of unspecified community service in the USA. On May 19 air traffic controller Lucivando de Alencar was convicted of endangering air safety and sentenced to three years and four months of community service.
(AP, 9/30/06)(AP, 10/1/06)(WSJ, 10/5/06, p.A1)(AP, 11/2/06)(AP, 10/27/10)(AP, 5/17/11)(AP, 5/19/11)
2006 Sep 29, The Nature Conservancy of Canada announced that Roberta Langtry (1916-2005), a Canadian teacher who lived a frugal life but gave large, anonymous donations to people in need, has left a C$4.3 million ($3.8 million) fortune to the environmental charity.
(Reuters, 9/30/06)
2006 Sep 29, Segolene Royal, who tops polls as the Socialist choice to run for French president next spring, formally announced her candidacy.
(AP, 9/29/06)
2006 Sep 29, Georgia charged four Russian military officers with spying, while Russian government planes evacuated dozens of diplomats and their relatives as the diplomatic dispute worsened between Moscow and the former Soviet republic.
(AP, 9/29/06)
2006 Sep 29, The World Diamond Council suggested that all Ghanaian rough-diamond exports be suspended to ensure that Ivorian diamonds were not being illegally exported. Rebel-controlled mines in Ivory Coast produced diamonds worth up to $23 million that were being smuggled to Mali and Ghana, violating UN sanctions and funding the rebel war effort.
(Econ, 11/11/06, p.53)
2006 Sep 29, A senior official said Indian authorities plan to nearly double the number of treatment centers providing free drugs and medical care to people battling HIV/AIDS.
(AP, 9/29/06)
2006 Sep 29, In central India, higher cast villagers of Khairlanji attacked and brutally killed the wife of Bhaiyalal Bhotmanje, a low cast Dalit, along with his 2 sons (19 & 21) and daughter (17). Bhotmanje had left his ancestral occupation of handling cow carcasses and successfully set up a small farm causing envy among neighbors. He escaped the attack thinking his family would not be bothered. Dalit neighborhoods soon exploded across Maharashtra state as protesters set vehicles and store fronts on fire.
(WSJ, 12/27/07, p.A1)
2006 Sep 29, In Iraq Kadhim Abdul-Hussein, the brother-in-law of Judge Mohammed Oreibi al-Khalifa, the new judge presiding over Saddam Hussein's genocide trial, was killed and his nephew was wounded in a shooting in Baghdad. Al-Khalifa had been deputy to the original chief judge in the trial. 3 other people died in scattered attacks. 10 bodies with signs of torture were found in and around Baghdad, apparently victims of the sectarian death squads. The names of more than 150 people who allegedly spied on their fellow Kurds for Saddam's mukhabarat intelligence service after the Kurdish uprising of 1991 were published by the Awina (Mirror) and Hawalati (Citizen) newspapers.
(AP, 9/29/06)(AFP, 10/1/06)
2006 Sep 29, Ireland’s PM Bertie Ahern faced mounting pressure to explain why he received money from Irish businessmen in England, a scandal threatening to torpedo his leadership after nine years in power.
(AP, 9/29/06)
2006 Sep 29, Israeli soldiers killed two Palestinians in the northern Gaza Strip. Tens of thousands of Hamas supporters marched in the Gaza Strip to show their backing for the militant group, even as its efforts to form a national unity government appeared stalled.
(AP, 9/29/06)
2006 Sep 29, A press report said Japan has decided to stop financial support for the development of Iran's largest onshore oil field if the Islamic republic continues uranium enrichment. The move means Japan's virtual withdrawal from its two billion-dollar contract to develop the Azadegan field. The contract was signed in 2004 by Inpex Corp., a Japanese oil exploration company that is supported by the government but also has private stakeholders.
(AP, 9/29/06)
2006 Sep 29, In Mexico a judge and four jail guards were killed in separate attacks in the Pacific resort city of Acapulco.
(AP, 9/29/06)
2006 Sep 29, A new report by Amnesty International alleged that Pakistani authorities have illegally detained innocent people on suspicion of terrorism and secretly imprisoned them or handed them to the US for money.
(AP, 9/29/06)
2006 Sep 29, Rosamund Carr, a New Jersey fashion designer who lived a colorful and tragic life for more than a half century in tumultuous central Africa, died in Rwanda. In 1999 she authored her memoir "Land of a Thousand Hills - My Life in Rwanda."
(AFP, 10/3/06)
2006 Sep 29, In Scotland police found the body of Angelika Kluk (23), a missing Polish student, at Saint Patrick's Roman Catholic Church in the Anderston area of Glasgow.
(AFP, 9/30/06)
2006 Sep 29, Somalia's Islamic fighters seized control of Jawill, a strategic village near the Ethiopian border, widening their grip over much of the southern part of the country. 3 pro-government militiamen and one Islamic courts fighter were killed during the gunbattle for the village.
(AP, 9/30/06)
2006 Sep 29, In Sri Lanka war planes bombed rebels and 8 people were killed in new violence. The UN warned that fighting between troops and Tamil guerrillas had badly hit tsunami reconstruction.
(AFP, 9/29/06)
2006 Sep 29, The UN Security Council extended the mandate of peacekeepers in Eritrea and Ethiopia by four months, and threatened to overhaul the mission if the two sides don't make progress toward demarcating their border.
(AP, 9/29/06)
2006 Sep 29, The UN Security Council allowed UN experts, who have recommended sanctions on top Sudanese officials, to continue monitoring atrocities and arms embargo violations in Darfur.
(AP, 9/29/06)
2006 Sep 29, Yemeni government forces raided a tribal settlement following the kidnappings of foreign tourists, arresting five suspects but killing two women and wounding three children.
(AP, 9/29/06)
2006 Sep 30, Police in North Charleston, SC, discovered the bodies of Detra Rainey and her 4 children. Michael Simmons (41), her husband but not the father of the children, was charged the next day with the murders.
(SFC, 10/2/06, p.A3)
2006 Sep 30, Isabel Bigley (80), Tony Award-winning actress, died in Los Angeles.
(AP, 9/30/07)
2006 Sep 30, Afghan President Hamid Karzai said that he and the Pakistani president will jointly lead a series of tribal gatherings along their countries' shared border to quell attacks by Pakistan-based Taliban rebels. A suicide bomber detonated his explosives in a pedestrian alley next to the Interior Ministry in Kabul, killing at least 12 people including a woman and 2 children.
(AP, 9/30/06)(SSFC, 10/1/06, p.A21)
2006 Sep 30, In Canada at least five people were crushed to death in their cars after the collapse of an overpass near Montreal.
(AP, 10/1/06)
2006 Sep 30, André Schwarz-Bart (b.1928), French novelist of Polish-Jewish origins, died in Guadeloupe. His books included the novel “The Last of the Just" (1960), based on the Jewish teaching that the fate of the world lies with 36 just men.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andre_Schwarz-Bart)(WSJ, 12/9/06, p.P12)
2006 Sep 30, India’s PM Manmohan Singh arrived in South Africa to expand trade links and commemorate the passive resistance movement initiated by Mahatma Gandhi in the African nation 100 years ago.
(AP, 9/30/06)
2006 Sep 30, A.N. Roy, Mumbai's police chief, said his team had cracked the July 11 bombing case and found solid evidence as that “the whole attack was planned by Pakistan's ISI and carried out by Lashkar-e-Taiba and their operatives in India." ISI or the Inter-Services Intelligence agency is Pakistan's military spy agency while Lashkar is a frontline Islamist group fighting against Indian rule in the disputed region of Kashmir. Pakistan and Lashkar rejected the allegations.
(Reuters, 9/30/06)
2006 Sep 30, Baghdad, Iraq, was put under a day long curfew to help break the cycle of violence. 6 people were killed in scattered violence around the country. Police found 10 bodies in Baghdad, apparently victims of sectarian death squads. Two other bodies were turned in to the morgue in Kut.
(AP, 9/30/06)(SSFC, 10/1/06, p.A21)
2006 Sep 30, A Kurdish guerrilla group declared a new unilateral cease-fire in its war for autonomy in Turkey's southeast, heeding a call from its imprisoned rebel leader.
(AP, 9/30/06)
2006 Sep 30, In northwest Nigeria families were swept away in a torrent of water and scores were feared dead in flooding from a dam collapse outside Zamfara state's capital city of Gusau. About 40 people were feared dead and 500 houses were washed away.
(AP, 10/1/06)
2006 Sep 30, Pakistan and United States signed a letter of acceptance for a multi-billion dollar package to supply the Pakistan Air Force with F-16 warplanes.
(AP, 10/2/06)
2006 Sep 30, Thousands of government employees and security officials filled the streets of Gaza, burning tires, blocking roads and firing in the air to protest delays and complications in receiving their long-awaited salaries.
(AP, 9/30/06)
2006 Sep 30, Russia said that it has suspended plans for further withdrawal of its troops from Georgia amid worsening relations between the two neighbors.
(AP, 9/30/06)
2006 Sep 30, Serbia's parliament approved a new constitution declaring UN-run Kosovo part of the Balkan state despite ongoing negotiations on the breakaway province's future.
(AP, 9/30/06)
2006 Sep 30, In Siberia Enver Ziganshin, chief engineer for Rusia Petroleum, was found shot dead at his country home. Rusia Petroleum an affiliate of BP PLC’s Russian joint venture, faced problems over its license to produce natural gas at the large Konvykta field.
(WSJ, 10/3/06, p.A6)
2006 Sep 30, In South Africa the 4th annual Homeless World Cup tournament ended. It brought together 500 players from 48 countries in a project aimed at helping homeless people turn their lives around. The first was held in Austria in 2003 with just five countries competing.
(AP, 9/29/06)
2006 Sep 30, In Tibet Sergiu Matei, a Romanian cameraman with an expedition climbing Cho Oyu, shot a video that shows Chinese forces fatally shooting Tibetan refugee Kelsang Namtso (17), who was with a group of people trying to flee to Nepal at the 19,000-foot Nanpa La Pass. Chinese border guards opened fire on some 75 Tibetans making their way over a 19,000-foot-high Himalayan pass, killing a 25-year-old Buddhist nun and another person. 32 were caught and detained. In January Jamyang Samten (15), one of those detained, escaped to India and provided the first reported account of the fate of the group. Some 3,000 Tibetans continued to sneak across the border to Nepal and India every year. In 2010 Jonathan Green authored “Murder in the High Himalaya: Loyalty, Tragedy, and Escape from Tibet."
(AP, 10/14/06)(Econ, 11/18/06, p.18)(AP, 1/30/07)(Econ, 6/12/10, p.96)
2006 Sep, In New Mexico the Second Chance prison facility opened for non-violent prisoners with substance-abuse problems. It was founded by Rick Pendery, a Scientologist and former real-estate developer, based on principles of L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology.
(WSJ, 1/19/07, p.A1)
2006 Sep, The Bank of San Francisco began operating as a program to provide banking services to low income residents not qualifying for regular bank accounts. The program was formed under the auspices of SF, the Federal Reserve and 15 banks and credit unions.
(SFC, 12/4/07, p.A1)
2006 Sep, Rielle Hunter, a film producer and mistress of North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, created a video sex tape with Edwards. In 2008 she had a child, fathered by Edwards, who only admitted paternity in 2010. Andrew Young, a former Edward’s loyalist, later viewed the tape and in 2010 authored a book that chronicled the affair.
(SFC, 1/30/10, p.A6)
2006 Sep, Irving, Texas, a city of some 200,000 people, signed up for the US government’s Criminal Alien Program (CAP), run by the Immigration and Customs agency. By the end of 2007 some 1,700 people from Irving were handed over for deportation.
(Econ, 12/15/07, p.36)
2006 Sep, In Ethiopia Shane Etzenhouser, an American software developer, premiered “Tsehai Loves Learning," an educational TV show for kids featuring a female giraffe with an insatiable thirst for knowledge.
(SFC, 12/28/06, p.E1)
2006 Sep, Japan’s government approved measures to block the transfer of funds to North Korea. The rules went into effect on Jan 4, 2007.
(Econ, 1/13/07, p.39)
2006 Sep, In Kenya farmers in the Machakos region built small dams and water retention ponds on the Ikiwe River with some $70,000 in aid from people in Archbold, Ohio. The Archbold Mennonite Church project was part of Foods Resource Bank, a Michigan-based hunger fighting organization that connects urban churches with rural farm groups.
(WSJ, 4/23/07, p.A1)
2006 Sep, Steve Wynn, a Las Vegas casino operator, opened an upscale casino in Macao.
(Econ, 1/27/07, p.66)
2006 Sep, In Nepal a warrant was issued for the arrest of Sitaram Prasain, who was accused of stealing $4.3 million from his own bank. Members of the Young Communist League kidnapped Prasain in June, 2007, and handed him over to the police.
(Econ, 6/16/07, p.51)
2006 Sep, In Pakistan scores of wives, mothers and children began protesting outside government offices on behalf of hundreds of men arrested in secret and demanded that Pres. Musharraf release them.
(SFC, 12/28/06, p.A17)
2006 Sep, In Sesena, Spain, a town of fewer than 10,000 40 km from Madrid, some 13,000 apartments were under construction. Mayor Manuel Fuentes expected 40,000 new arrivals.
(Econ, 9/16/06, p.61)
2006 Sep-2006 Oct, In Egypt for the seventh year running, a mysterious black cloud appeared over Cairo, triggering serious health concerns for the polluted city's 16 million residents. This year the black cloud coincided with the month of Ramadan, notorious for its traffic jams.
(AFP, 10/26/06)
2006 Sep, San Marino approved new regulations on fund management.
(Econ, 3/10/07, p.74)
Return to home
2006 Jul 1, New Jersey failed to approve a budget and Gov. Jon S. Corzine began closing the state government amid a bitter dispute with fellow Democrats in the Assembly over his plan to increase the sales tax, threatening to shutter beaches, parks and possibly casinos in the coming days.
(AP, 7/1/06)(WSJ, 7/3/06, p.A1)(Econ, 7/8/06, p.27)
2006 Jul 1, An estimated 5,000 bikers rode into Hollister, Ca., for the annual 4th of July motorcycle rally, even though it was officially cancelled last year by the City Council.
(SSFC, 7/2/06, p.B1)
2006 Jul 1, Thunderstorms forced NASA to call off the launch of Discovery, delaying the first space shuttle flight in a year. Discovery was launched three days later, on July 4.
(AP, 7/1/07)
2006 Jul 1, Phillip Rieff (83), sociologist and a severe critic of contemporary academic culture, died. He was best known for his 1966 book “The Triumph of the Therapeutic: Uses of Faith After Freud." His final work: “Charisma: The Gift of Grace, and How It Has Been Taken Away from Us," was published in 2007.
(WSJ, 2/17/07, p.P12)(http://tinyurl.com/lphph)
2006 Jul 1, In southern Afghanistan 2 rockets fired by insurgents slammed into the main coalition military base. The wounded included five American and two Canadian soldiers, as well as three foreign contract workers. 2 British soldiers and an Afghan interpreter were killed when their base in Sangin district in Helmand province came under attack. Afghan forces killed 11 militants in a separate attack in the same area. A total of five British troops have been killed since the start of Operation Mountain Thrust.
(AP, 7/1/06)(AP, 7/2/06)
2006 Jul 1, China’s new $4.2 billion, 710-mile-long railway from Golmud to Lhasa, Tibet, began operations. Canada’s Bombardier manufactured high-tech cars for the Sky Train with regulated oxygen levels to cope with 16,500-foot passes. Two years later the line was extended from Lhasa to Shigatse.
(SFC, 6/30/06, p.A18)(Reuters, 7/1/06)(Econ, 5/21/16, p.37)c7
2006 Jul 1, It was reported that Chinese consumers had begun ganging up on retailers by arriving en masse at pre-arranged times, arranged online, to push for bargain prices.
(Econ, 7/1/06, p.59)
2006 Jul 1, China reported a new outbreak of bird flu near Zhongwei in the Ningxia region.
(WSJ, 7/3/06, p.A6)
2006 Jul 1, Sources said East Timor's outgoing foreign minister Jose Ramos-Horta will head the government until a new premier is appointed in coming days.
(AFP, 7/1/06)
2006 Jul 1, About 100 Ethiopian troops entered the Somali border town of Beled-Hawo in eight military vehicles, the latest sign that Ethiopia might try to bolster this country's weak interim government as an Islamic militia gains increasing power.
(AP, 7/1/06)
2006 Jul 1, Finland began its 6-month rotating presidency of the EU.
(www.government.fi/eu/suomi-ja-eu/2006/en.jsp)
2006 Jul 1, Thousands of people marched through Paris to protest plans to tighten restrictions on immigration and step up deportations of immigrant families with children who are in the country illegally.
(AP, 7/2/06)
2006 Jul 1, The 3-week Tour de France began. 4 favorites, including Ivan Basso and Jan Ullrich, were barred with 5 others from the cycling competition after their names popped up in a Spanish probe of a network that allegedly supplied riders and other athletes with banned drugs and doping know-how.
(AP, 6/30/06)(SFC, 7/1/06, p.D1)
2006 Jul 1, In Gambia a summit of more than 50 African leaders opened with the aim of pursuing regional integration, but conflicts in Darfur and Somalia are inevitably topping the agenda. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez called on Africa to forge closer ties with Latin America to combat what he called a threat of U.S. hegemony.
(AFP, 7/1/06)(Reuters, 7/1/06)
2006 Jul 1, Thousands chanted slogans and marched through Hong Kong's streets in a pro-democracy protest, while a pro-Beijing parade also drew a big crowd to mark the ninth anniversary of the former British colony's return to Chinese rule.
(AP, 7/1/06)
2006 Jul 1, India's PM Manmohan Singh announced an 835-million-dollar relief package to aid farmers in the country's main cotton belt where crippling debts and falling prices have led to thousands of suicides. A court convicted three men of involvement in a 2002 terrorist attack on a Hindu shrine in western India that killed 33 people, and it sentenced them to death.
(AP, 7/1/06)(AFP, 7/1/06)
2006 Jul 1, Ryutaro Hashimoto (68), former Japanese PM (1996-1998), died. He had stood up to the US in trade negotiations and helped diffuse tensions over US military bases in Japan.
(AP, 7/1/06)
2006 Jul 1, A parked car bomb exploded at a popular outdoor market in a Shiite slum in Baghdad, killing at least 66 people and wounding dozens. It was the bloodiest attack to hit Iraq since the death of terror leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Gunmen in Baghdad kidnapped a Sunni female legislator along with seven of her bodyguards. Iraqi and US authorities freed 495 prisoners from US facilities, completing a mass release announced by the prime minister last month as part of his national reconciliation efforts.
(AP, 7/1/06)
2006 Jul 1, Palestinian militants holding an Israeli soldier issued a new set of demands, calling for the release of 1,000 prisoners and a halt to Israel's military offensive in Gaza. But Israel rejected them.
(AP, 7/1/06)
2006 Jul 1, A new law, combined with a series of bureaucratic bungles, forced some 30% of Russian liquor stores to close indefinitely because they will have nothing to sell. The law, which aimed to block counterfeit wine sales, requires distributors to place new, government-issued excise labels on all wine and liquor. But a series of delays and misunderstandings has meant few properly labeled imports will be ready in time.
(AP, 7/1/06)
2006 Jul 1, In Geneva developing countries emerged from a failed World Trade Organization meeting more united than ever and warned rich countries not to undermine the development thrust of the Doha Round of global trade talks.
(AFP, 7/1/06)
2006 Jul 2, US researchers reported that astemizol, an allergy drug pulled off the market in 1999, could work to treat malaria. It was marketed under the brand name Hismanal by Janssen Pharmaceutica, a unit of Johnson & Johnson, and can kill the Plasmodium falciparum parasite that causes malaria.
(AP, 7/2/06)
2006 Jul 2, Jan Murray (born as Murray Janofsky in 1916), comedian and film and TV actor, died in Beverly Hills. He hosted the TV game show “Treasure Hunt" (1956-1959).
(SFC, 7/3/06, p.A2)
2006 Jul 2, In Afghanistan up to 30 extremists, firing guns and mortars, attacked a coalition patrol that had just found a weapons cache in Sangin. About 20 militants were killed. Afghan police killed seven insurgents that attacked a police checkpoint in Nawzad district in southern Helmand province.
(AP, 7/3/06)
2006 Jul 2, Africa's leaders meeting in Gambia agreed to send troops to Somalia to support regional efforts at calming the chaotic east African state.
(Reuters, 7/2/06)
2006 Jul 2, In Bangladesh 2 people were killed and nearly 200 injured in clashes as opposition parties enforced a countrywide transport shutdown.
(Reuters, 7/2/06)
2006 Jul 2, Bolivians voted for a national assembly that will rewrite the constitution. They voted "yes" or "no" on a ballot question on whether to offer the country's nine states greater autonomy in political and financial affairs. President Morales' supporters failed to win control of an assembly that will rewrite Bolivia's constitution, leaving him no choice but to compromise over his ambitious plans to empower the indigenous majority and boost state control over the economy. Morales allies won 132 seats in the 255-person body. Voters in four of Bolivia's nine states overwhelmingly chose greater political and economic autonomy for their states.
(AP, 6/29/06)(AP, 7/3/06)
2006 Jul 2, EADS's French co-chief executive Noel Forgeard and Airbus's German head Gustav Humbert tendered their resignations over delays to deliveries of the A380 superjumbo that has wiped billions of euros (dollars) off EADS's share price. Louis Gallois became the new EADS co-CEO; Christian Strieff was named the new president and CEO of Airbus.
(AFP, 7/2/06)(WSJ, 7/3/06, p.A2)
2006 Jul 2, Pirates in the Strait of Malacca off Indonesia's coast boarded two UN-chartered ships carrying construction material for the reconstruction of the tsunami-hit Aceh. They stole and damaged equipment on the first ship and robbed the crew of cash and personal belongings on the other.
(AP, 7/4/06)
2006 Jul 2, Israeli aircraft sent missiles tearing through the office of Palestinian PM Ismail Haniyeh in an unmistakable message to his ruling Hamas group to free an Israeli soldier.
(AP, 7/2/06)
2006 Jul 2, Iraq’s largest Sunni Arab bloc in parliament said it was suspending its participation in the legislature until a kidnapped colleague was released, dealing a blow to efforts to involve the disaffected minority in the political process. A roadside bomb in Baghdad killed Col. Muthanna Faeq Abdul-Razzaq, the assistant commander of the Iraqi army's 7th Division, and wounded his driver. 2 policemen were killed and six were wounded in a shootout between gunmen and Iraqi police. A bomb struck a house in Baqouba, killing two people and wounding four. Clashes between insurgents and Iraqi police southwest of Kirkuk left one policeman and two insurgents dead.
(AP, 7/2/06)
2006 Jul 2, Liechtenstein remained on the list of uncooperative tax havens because, unlike 33 other jurisdictions, it had not made a commitment to the OECD to improve transparency and to establish effective exchange of information for tax purposes with OECD countries. The population stood at some 34,600.
(AP, 7/2/06)
2006 Jul 2, Mexico held presidential elections. Felipe Calderon (43) calling himself “the candidate of jobs," faced Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador: “For everyone’s good, the poor first." Lopez Villanueva, head of the Francisco Villa Popular Front, arranged to have 10,000 members as poll watchers for Lopez Obrador. A tight race delayed the results to July 5. The per capita GDP was $10,000. Oil production was 3.35 million barrels per day. On July 6 Calderon was named the winner by 234,000 votes. The final outcome rested with the electoral court, Trife, and its decision was due by September 6.
(Econ, 6/10/06, p.36)(WSJ, 6/28/06, p.A1)(Econ, 7/15/06, p.35)(AP, 7/7/07)
2006 Jul 2, In Nicaragua Herty Lewites (b.1939), former mayor of Managua (2000-2004) and recent presidential candidate, died of a heart attack. He broke with the leftist Sandinista party to run against its leader Daniel Ortega.
(http://tinyurl.com/omz5w)(AP, 7/3/06)(Econ, 11/4/06, p.45)
2006 Jul 2, A Peruvian rescue team found the bodies of 3 American mountaineers killed during an icy climb high in the Andes. They located Kristen Yoder (21), her brother Dustin Yoder (23) and Brennan Larson (24) in a 100-foot-deep crevasse on the Artesonraju peak.
(AP, 7/3/06)
2006 Jul 2, Senegal's President Abdoulaye Wade said his country would try Chad's former leader Hissene Habre, wanted by Belgium for trial on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
(AFP, 7/2/06)
2006 Jul 2, Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tigers, claiming they have just trained 6,000 civilians in armed combat, accused the UN of exaggerating the number of child fighters in the rebels' ranks. Police said Sampath Lakmal, a freelance Sri Lankan journalist, has been gunned down near the capital Colombo.
(AFP, 7/2/06)(AP, 7/2/06)
2006 Jul 3, Former Private Steven D. Green was charged in federal court in Charlotte, N.C., with raping a 14-year-old Iraqi girl (Abeer Qassim al-Janabi) and killing her (March 11), her parents and sister. Four members of Green's unit were charged as well; one later pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 100 years in prison.
(AP, 7/3/07)
2006 Jul 3, A US federal judge issued a temporary retraining order barring the Navy from using a type of high-intensity sonar that could harm marine animals during war games that began last week in the Pacific Ocean. On July 7 the US Navy and environmental groups agreed on a settlement which prevented the Navy from using the sonar within 25 miles of the newly established Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Marine National Monument during the exercises.
(SFC, 7/3/06, p.A3)(SFC, 7/8/06, p.A4)
2006 Jul 3, Benjamin Hendrickson (55), an Emmy Award-winning actor on the "As the World Turns" soap opera, was found dead of suicide with a gunshot to the head in his Long Island home.
(AP, 7/7/06)
2006 Jul 3, Jack Smith (b.1913), singer and TV host for “You Asked for It," died at his home in southern California. In 1958 he replaced Art Baker, who created the show in 1950.
(SFC, 7/11/06, p.B4)
2006 Jul 3, A US general said the United States is giving $2 billion worth of military weapons and vehicles to modernize Afghanistan's national army.
(AP, 7/3/06)
2006 Jul 3, Judges and prosecutors from Cambodia and abroad were sworn in to begin the UN-backed judicial process to try former Khmer Rouge leaders for genocide and crimes against humanity.
(AP, 7/3/06)
2006 Jul 3, China's new train from Beijing to Tibet arrived in the ancient capital of Lhasa, ending its maiden journey after climbing to elevations so high that ballpoint pens and packaged foods burst.
(AP, 7/3/06)
2006 Jul 3, It was reported that 579 Cubans had entered the US over the last 9 months by landing on Puerto Rico’s Mona Island, 40 miles from the coast of the Dominican Rep.
(SFC, 7/3/06, p.A8)
2006 Jul 3, Iraq’s parliament convened despite a boycott by Sunni Arab legislators protesting a colleague's abduction. Bombs struck markets north and south of Baghdad, with nationwide attacks killing at least 10 people and wounding dozens.
(AP, 7/3/06)
2006 Jul 3, Nissan Motor Co. approved opening talks with General Motors Corp. over a possible alliance.
(AP, 7/3/06)
2006 Jul 3, In India's Jammu-Kashmir state clashes between Indian government forces and suspected Islamic separatist militants killed 13 people.
(AP, 7/3/06)
2006 Jul 3, Two bitter rivals declared themselves Mexico's next president, sparking fears of violence. Electoral officials said they wouldn't name a winner until a vote-by-vote hand count.
(AP, 7/3/06)
2006 Jul 3, In northwestern Pakistan an explosion hit a bus carrying paramilitary troops, killing at least 6 soldiers and wounding 5 others.
(AP, 7/3/06)
2006 Jul 3, Palestinian militants holding an Israeli soldier gave Israel less than 24 hours to start releasing 1,500 Palestinian prisoners and implied that he would be killed if it did not comply, but Israel said it would not negotiate.
(AP, 7/3/06)
2006 Jul 3, A subway train derailed in the eastern Spanish city of Valencia, killing 43 people. "Initial investigations show it was an accident," said Vicente Rambla, spokesman for the Valencia regional government.
(AP, 7/3/07)
2006 Jul 3, At least seven people were killed and dozens wounded in three Claymore mine attacks carried out by Tamil Tiger rebels in Sri Lanka's northern and eastern regions.
(AFP, 7/3/06)
2006 Jul 3, Sudan's foreign minister rejected calls by the top UN envoy in the country to make additions to a peace deal for Darfur after widespread rejection of the accord. A group of Sudanese rebels in more than 50 cars attacked the town of Hamarat Sheikh in the Kordofan region of Darfur. At least a dozen people were killed. In southern Sudan at least six people were killed and 11 wounded when gunmen ambushed a German aid agency vehicle. Witnesses said the attackers, some of whom were uniformed, were rebel fighters with the LRA.
(Reuters, 7/3/06)(AP, 7/5/06)(AFP, 7/5/06)
2006 Jul 4, The US space shuttle Discovery took off at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, with 7 astronauts. Up to six pieces of debris that could be foam insulation fell off Discovery's troublesome external fuel tank minutes after liftoff. News arrived that North Korea had launched test missiles [see July 5].
(AFP, 7/5/06)(SFC, 7/5/06, p.A3)
2006 Jul 4, In Gustine, Ca., Trevor Branscum (38) killed his 4 young children with a hunting rifle and then turned the weapon on himself.
(SFC, 7/5/06, p.B3)
2006 Jul 4, A bomb exploded in downtown Kabul, wounding at least 10 people. In eastern Afghanistan 5 laborers were ambushed and fatally shot on their way to a US military base. US-led coalition forces killed 35 suspected militants during a raid late in the village of Gujdar in Helmand province.
(AP, 7/4/06)(AP, 7/5/06)
2006 Jul 4, Two former currency dealers for Australia's biggest bank were jailed for their part in a 260 million US dollar rogue trading scandal. Vince Ficarra (27) and David Bullen (34) made a raft of fictitious trades for the National Australia Bank (NAB) between September 2003 and January 2004 to mask massive losses. Bullen was sentenced to 44 months in prison and Ficarra to 28 months.
(AFP, 7/4/06)
2006 Jul 4, A bomb exploded in downtown Kabul, wounding at least 10 people. In eastern Afghanistan 5 laborers were ambushed and fatally shot on their way to a US military base.
(AP, 7/4/06)
2006 Jul 4, Gunmen attacked a Russian military convoy in the Chechnya region, killing at least five troops and wounding as many as 25 others, officials said. Pro-rebel Web sites claimed more than 20 Russian soldiers were killed.
(AP, 7/4/06)
2006 Jul 4, A French court convicted respected wine exporter Georges Duboeuf Wines of fraud after one of its wineries mixed a variety of grapes in its Beaujolais.
(AP, 7/4/06)
2006 Jul 4, Iraq’s justice minister demanded that the UN Security Council ensure that a group of US troops are punished in the March 11 rape and murder of a young Iraqi and the killing of her family. In eastern Baghdad gunmen in camouflaged uniforms kidnapped Iraq's deputy electricity minister along with 11 of his bodyguards. The minister was released after several hours.
(AP, 7/4/06)
2006 Jul 4, PM Ehud Olmert ignored a deadline to begin releasing Palestinian prisoners and instead issued a veiled threat against Syria, vowing to strike "those who sponsor" the militants in the Gaza Strip who seized a young Israeli soldier.
(AP, 7/4/06)
2006 Jul 4, Japan initiated new rules that tightened 89 existing laws covering the financial industry. It doubled the maximum jail sentence for fraud to 10 years and gave extra power and broader authority to the Financial Services Agency (FSA).
(Econ, 7/8/06, p.67)
2006 Jul 4, The parties of Kazakhstan's leader and his eldest daughter announced a merger, a move that tightens President Nursultan Nazarbayev's grip on power.
(AP, 7/4/06)
2006 Jul 4, Lopez Obrador, Mexico’s leftist presidential candidate, called for a recount of election results that showed him trailing his conservative rival by 1 percentage point.
(AP, 7/4/06)
2006 Jul 4, Lars Korvald (90), the first Christian Democrat to serve as prime minister of Norway (1972-1973), died.
(AP, 7/4/06)
2006 Jul 4, Palestinian militants hit an Israeli city with a rocket from Gaza for the first time, causing no casualties but drawing a pledge of harsh retaliation from Israel while it was already in the midst of a military offensive.
(AP, 7/4/06)
2006 Jul 4, Radical Islamic militia fighters in Somalia shot and killed two people who were watching a World Cup soccer broadcast. The Islamic group that controls Somalia's capital soon arrested two of its own militiamen for killing two people who were watching the soccer match.
(AP, 7/5/06)(AP, 7/6/06)
2006 Jul 4, President Hugo Chavez marked Venezuela's entry into the South American trade bloc Mercosur with a six-nation summit, an alliance that he says should be a common front against US free trade deals.
(AP, 7/4/06)
2006 Jul 5, Pres. Bush met with Pres. Saakashvili and backed Georgia’s bid to join NATO.
(WSJ, 7/6/06, p.A1)
2006 Jul 5, Japan, the United States and Britain readied a UN Security Council resolution demanding that nations withhold all funds, goods and technology that could be used for North Korea's missile program.
(AP, 7/5/06)
2006 Jul 5, New Jersey's casinos ushered the last of the gamblers away from slot machines and tables, and janitors locked the doors behind them as a state government shutdown claimed its latest victims.
(AP, 7/5/06)
2006 Jul 5, Greg Anderson, weight trainer for Barry Bonds, was sent to federal prison fro refusing to testify before a grand jury investigating Bonds and steroid use.
(SFC, 7/6/06, p.A1)
2006 Jul 5, Crude oil for August delivery jumped to a record close of $75.19 per barrel. The previous high was $75.15. The DJIA closed down 76 to 11,151.
(SFC, 7/6/06, p.C1)
2006 Jul 5, Researchers reported that carbon dioxide, the major greenhouse gas, from industrial emissions was raising the acidity of the world’s oceans and threatening organisms that form the base of the entire marine food web.
(SFC, 7/6/06, p.A4)
2006 Jul 5, Kenneth Lay (b.1942). Enron Corp. founder and chief executive, died of a heart attack at his vacation home in Colorado. He was convicted in May for his role in the in the Houston-based company's downfall.
(Reuters, 7/5/06)(Econ, 7/8/06, p.81)
2006 Jul 5, Prince Tu'ipelehake (56), a Tongan prince known for promoting political reform in his South Pacific island nation, died in a car crash along with his wife, Princess Kaimana (46) and driver Vinisia Hefa when a teenage driver, Edith Delgado (18), slammed into them on Highway 101 in Menlo Park, Ca. In 2007 Delgado was sentenced to 2 years in jail and 3 years probation.
(AP, 7/7/06)(SFC, 7/7/06, p.B3)(SFC, 11/6/08, p.B2)
2006 Jul 5, In Afghanistan 3 bombs targeting government workers and security forces exploded in Kabul, killing one bystander and wounding at least 47 other people. A coalition soldier and eight rebels were killed in new clashes in Paktika province. A British soldier and six more militants were killed and six captured in two separate incidents southern Zabul province. The family of Abdul Khaliq, a legislator from Uruzgan province, was fired upon killing Khaliq’s brother-in-law. Khaliq put the blame on American and Australian troops.
(AP, 7/5/06)(AFP, 7/6/06)(SFC, 7/8/06, p.A3)
2006 Jul 5, Afghan President Hamid Karzai met Japanese Emperor Akihito in Tokyo and said he wanted to build peace in the war-torn nation so he could some day invite the emperor and empress. Tokyo has provided about $1 billion in assistance for security and development, and in January pledged another $450 million.
(AP, 7/6/06)
2006 Jul 5, In El Salvador violence broke out after police fired tear gas to disperse students protesting against a hike in electricity rates and public transportation fees. Two officers were killed and 10 others were wounded by gunshots. The next day police arrested Luis Antonio Herrador Funes (37), who allegedly was captured on tape shielding a man who was shooting an M-16 rifle. Police were still looking for the shooter.
(AP, 7/6/06)
2006 Jul 5, A France court convicted 38 people in a vast party financing scandal centered on Paris City Hall from 1987 to 1993, when Jacques Chirac was mayor.
(AP, 7/5/06)
2006 Jul 5, France beat Portugal 1-0 and will play Italy for Soccer’s World Cup on July 9.
(WSJ, 7/6/06, p.A1)
2006 Jul 5, Germany's Cabinet approved a 2007 budget that foresees trimming the deficit to comply with EU rules, and the finance minister said Berlin likely would hit the target this year.
(AP, 7/5/06)
2006 Jul 5, In India heavy rains kept schools and colleges shut for a third day and meteorologists forecast more downpours in Bombay, as the nationwide death toll rose to more than 250 since the monsoon began in June.
(AP, 7/5/06)
2006 Jul 5, An Iraqi vice president said kidnappers of a Sunni legislator have demanded the release of all detainees, a timetable for the withdrawal of foreign troops and an end to attacks on Shiite mosques in exchange for her freedom.
(AP, 7/5/06)
2006 Jul 5, Israeli leaders authorized troops to move into residential areas of the Gaza Strip as they increase pressure on militants holding an Israeli soldier and look to create a security zone to prevent Palestinians from firing rockets into Israel.
(AP, 7/5/06)
2006 Jul 5, Italian prosecutors said they had arrested two Italian intelligence officers and were seeking four more Americans as part of an investigation into the alleged CIA kidnapping of an Egyptian cleric in Milan in 2003.
(AP, 7/5/06)
2006 Jul 5, Macedonia held parliamentary elections. President Branko Crvenkovski urged a free and fair vote in a country struggling to ease tensions between majority Macedonian Slavs and the ethnic Albanian minority, which makes up about a quarter of the nation's population.
(AP, 7/6/06)
2006 Jul 5, Mexico’s recount of election results put Lopez Obrador ahead of Louis Calderon with 83% of the votes tallied.
(WSJ, 7/6/06, p.A1)
2006 Jul 5, North Korea test-fired a long-range missile that may be capable of reaching America, but it failed seconds after launch. North Korea also tested shorter range missiles in an exercise the White House termed "a provocation" but not an immediate threat. The early morning tests came as the US celebrated the Fourth of July and just minutes ahead of the US launch of the space shuttle Discovery.
(AP, 7/4/06)(AP, 7/5/06)(SFC, 7/5/06, p.A1)
2006 Jul 5, In southwestern Pakistan security forces backed by helicopter gunships targeted hideouts of tribal militants accused of blowing up gas pipelines and attacking officials, killing 25 suspects in a 2-day operation.
(AP, 7/5/06)
2006 Jul 5, Venezuela marked its Independence Day showcasing recent arms deals that have alarmed Washington. Pres. Chavez proposed that Mercosur members: Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, Uruguay and Paraguay, should one day join their militaries to guarantee the region's security.
(AP, 7/5/06)
2006 Jul 6, A US federal rule was published designating some 36,750 square miles in the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska as critical habitat for right whales. The rule takes effect Aug. 7.
(AP, 7/7/06)
2006 Jul 6, New Jersey’s governor and lawmakers reached a deal on a new state budget. The deal included an increase in sales tax from 6 to 7%, half of which would be used to lower property taxes, which were among the highest in the US.
(SFC, 7/7/06, p.A7)
2006 Jul 6, New York's highest court ruled that gay marriage is not allowed under state law, rejecting arguments by same-sex couples who said the law violates their constitutional rights.
(AP, 7/6/06)
2006 Jul 6, Emmanuel "Toto" Constant (49), an elusive former strongman from Haiti, accused of sanctioning rape to silence dissent there in the early 1990s, was arrested in a mortgage fraud scheme on Long Island, NY.
(AP, 7/7/06)
2006 Jul 6, Alan Newton (44) of NYC was released from prison after DNA evidence cleared him of a 1985 rape conviction. He had served 20 years of a 40 year sentence.
(SFC, 7/7/06, p.A6)
2006 Jul 6, The Amalgamated Santas gathered in Branson, Missouri, for their first annual convention. In 2007 the group started to splinter following internal squabbles.
(WSJ, 7/10/08, p.A1)(http://tinyurl.com/5mw4kv)
2006 Jul 6, The space shuttle Discovery docked with the international space station, bringing with it European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Reiter, who began a six-month stay aboard the station.
(AP, 7/6/07)
2006 Jul 6, Ralph Ginzburg (b.1929), journalist, magazine publisher and photographer, died in NYC. His magazine included Eros (1962), Avant Garde (1968) and Fact (1964). In 1962 he wrote “100 Years of Lynchings," a chronicle of racist hangings in the South. He was at the center of two First Amendment battles in the 1960s and served 8 months in federal prison for obscenity.
(AP, 7/6/07)(SFC, 7/7/06, p.B9)
2006 Jul 6, Kasey Rogers (80), film and TV actress, died in Los Angeles. Her films included “Strangers on a Train" (1951).
(SFC, 7/15/06, p.B6)
2006 Jul 6, In southern Afghanistan a US-led coalition soldier and five militants were killed in a clash in the Baghran Valley in Helmand province.
(AP, 7/7/06)
2006 Jul 6, An Australian consortium led by Macquarie Bank said it has agreed to a friendly 1.59 billion US dollar takeover of US utility Duquesne Light Holdings.
(AP, 7/6/06)
2006 Jul 6, Brazilian police broke up an international drug ring and arrested Luciano Geraldo Daniel, a man suspected of being the country's top cocaine trafficker.
(AP, 7/6/06)
2006 Jul 6, China’s state media said torrential rains and a tornado killed at least 30 people as storms battered eastern China this week, with millions more affected by flooding and other storm damage.
(AP, 7/6/06)
2006 Jul 6, China and India reopened the 14,000-foot Nathu La pass, an ancient Silk Road pass high in the Himalayas, more than 40 years after it was shut by war.
(AP, 7/6/06)
2006 Jul 6, The European Central Bank held its key interest rate steady at 2.75% as was widely anticipated but pledged to exercise "strong vigilance" on inflation.
(AP, 7/6/06)
2006 Jul 6, Four former officers in Georgia's Interior Ministry were convicted of causing bodily harm leading to death in the case of a banker, Sandro Girgvliani (28), whose beating and stabbing death became a political scandal in this former Soviet republic.
(AP, 7/6/06)
2006 Jul 6, In Iraq a suicide car bomb tore through buses carrying Iranian pilgrims near a Shiite shrine on the outskirts of Kufa, killing 14 people and wounding 38.
(AP, 7/7/06)(SFC, 7/7/06, p.A10)
2006 Jul 6, Israeli forces took over the remains of three abandoned Jewish settlements in the northern Gaza Strip and entered a nearby Palestinian town, creating a temporary buffer zone to prevent Palestinian militants from firing rockets at Israel. At least 21 Palestinians and one Israeli soldier were killed in the fighting.
(AP, 7/6/06)(SFC, 7/7/06, p.A3)
2006 Jul 6, Israel signed a contract with Germany for 2 new Dolphin submarines capable of carrying nuclear warheads.
(AP, 8/25/06)
2006 Jul 6, It was reported that African scholars have launched the continent's first bible commentary which tackles issues like female circumcision, HIV/AIDS and ethnic violence to make the scriptures more relevant for Africans. The African Bible Commentary was launched this week in Kenya and is meant to interpret the bible for Africans by using local proverbs and tradition and by applying Christian teaching to contemporary problems on the poorest continent.
(Reuters, 7/6/06)
2006 Jul 6, PM Vlado Buckovski conceded defeat to the nationalist opposition in Macedonia's parliamentary elections, a vote considered crucial for the tiny Balkan nation's aspirations to join the EU and NATO. Nikola Gruevski led the winning VMRO-DPMNE party.
(AP, 7/6/06)
2006 Jul 6, Felipe Calderon won the official count in Mexico's disputed presidential race, a come-from-behind victory for the stiff technocrat. But his leftist rival refused to concede and said he'd fight the results in court. Calderon won 35.9% of the vote against Obrador’s 35.3%.
(AP, 7/7/06)(Econ, 11/18/06, Survey p.4)
2006 Jul 6, In Moldova an explosion ripped apart a small bus in Tiraspol, capital of the separatist region of Trans-Dniester, killing eight people and injuring 46. The blast was caused by a bomb carried onboard by a passenger. Transdniestrian politicians blamed Moldovan provocateurs.
(AP, 7/8/06)(Econ, 8/5/06, p.48)
2006 Jul 6, A general strike in Niger demanding lower prices for basic goods paralyzed the capital of one of the world's poorest nations, following a similar attempt last month that was met with inaction from the government.
(AP, 7/6/06)
2006 Jul 6, In Nigeria a Dutch oil worker was kidnapped by armed men from a Royal Dutch Shell gas plant. He was released July 10.
(AP, 7/6/06)(AP, 7/10/06)
2006 Jul 6, A defiant North Korea threatened to test-fire more missiles and warned of even stronger action if opponents of the tests put pressure on the country.
(AP, 7/6/06)
2006 Jul 6, Members of the radical Islamic group that controls Somalia's capital met African, Arab and European officials and repeated their opposition to the deployment of peacekeepers to stabilize the lawless country.
(AP, 7/6/06)
2006 Jul 6, A delegate from Spain's ruling party met with the leader of an outlawed Basque separatist group in historic talks hailed by both sides as a possible step toward peace.
(AP, 7/6/06)
2006 Jul 6, Ukraine's pro-Russian opposition ended a 10-day parliament blockade and lawmakers elected a speaker. The pro-Western coalition was sent into a tailspin by a ballot that in a surprise move saw its smallest faction, the Socialists, join with pro-Russian parties to elect its leader Olexander Moroz as speaker.
(AP, 7/6/06)
2006 Jul 6, A UAE freighter sank in strong winds in the Indian Ocean off the Horn of Africa, killing seven crew members. The ship was owned by al-Hufuf Maritime Co., based in the United Arab Emirates, but it sailed under the flag of Panama.
(AP, 7/6/06)
2006 Jul 7, The Arkansas state board barred Dr. Randeep Mann from prescribing narcotics after officials said 10 of his patients died from a lethal mix of drugs or an overdose of prescription medicines.
(AP, 7/7/06)
2006 Jul 7, Louisiana joined 21 other states in banning Internet hunting, the practice of using a mouse click to kill animals on a distant game farm.
(www.livescience.com/othernews/060707_internet_hunting.html)
2006 Jul 7, Oil hit a fresh record high of $75.78 a barrel, boosted by strong demand in the US and global tension ranging from Iran's nuclear work to North Korea's missile tests.
(Reuters, 7/7/06)
2006 Jul 7, Fighting in southern Afghanistan killed a US-led coalition soldier and at least eight suspected Taliban militants.
(AP, 7/8/06)
2006 Jul 7, Syd Barrett (60), a founding member of the rock group Pink Floyd, died at his home in Cambridge, England. The band’s first album was “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn."
(Reuters, 7/11/06)(SFC, 7/12/06, p.B7)(Econ, 7/22/06, p.83)
2006 Jul 7, In Canada 2 Mounties were wounded near the Saskatchewan community of Spiritwood as they investigated what appeared to be a family dispute. Constables Robin Cameron (29) and Marc Bourdages (26) died from their wounds on July 15 and 16.
(AP, 7/17/06)
2006 Jul 7, In northern China a fire ignited explosives at a home in Dongzhai, a village in the coal-mining province of Shanxi, killing at least 47 people, many of them neighbors who had rushed to the scene to battle the flames. A seven-story apartment building collapsed in the major city of Zhengzhou in central China, killing at least two people and burying an unknown number of others.
(AP, 7/7/06)
2006 Jul 7, UN peacekeepers in Haiti found the bodies of 16 people believed killed in a surge of gang violence.
(AP, 7/8/06)
2006 Jul 7, Iraqi forces backed by US aircraft battled militants in a Shiite stronghold of eastern Baghdad, killing or wounding more than 30 fighters and capturing an extremist leader who was the target of the raid. Residents claimed up to 11 civilians died. A series of bombs and a mortar round targeting the main Islamic weekly service struck four Sunni mosques in the Baghdad area and a Shiite mosque in northern Iraq, killing 17 people and wounding more than 50.
(AP, 7/7/06)(AP, 7/8/06)
2006 Jul 7, Israel launched an airstrike in the northern Gaza Strip. Witnesses said three Palestinians were killed. The Israeli military said the attack on the town of Beit Lahiya targeted a group of militants. Palestinians said 32 people had died in days of Gaza fighting.
(AP, 7/7/06)(WSJ, 7/8/06, p.A1)
2006 Jul 7, Former Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi was ordered to stand trial following an investigation into the sale of television rights at Mediaset SpA.
(AP, 7/7/06)
2006 Jul 7, The first batch of Japanese troops began pulling out of Iraq.
(AP, 7/7/06)
2006 Jul 7, North Korea announced a scientific breakthrough. State-run media boasted that researchers developed a new cosmetic agent to make skin supple.
(AP, 7/7/06)
2006 Jul 7, Pakistan's president amended a controversial Islamic law so that women facing charges for adultery and other minor crimes can be released on bail. The much-awaited amendment by President Gen. Pervez Musharraf to the Hadood Ordinance will initially affect 1,300 female prisoners.
(AP, 7/7/06)
2006 Jul 7, In the Philippines 6 fugitive military officers linked to a failed 2003 mutiny against President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo were arrested.
(AP, 7/7/06)
2006 Jul 7, Officials said Russian authorities have dramatically curtailed the number of stations broadcasting Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Voice of America news programs, sending an unsettling signal about the state of press freedoms in Russia.
(AP, 7/8/06)
2006 Jul 7, A Spanish judge charged two former Guatemalan dictators with genocide and issued international warrants for their arrest. National Court Judge Santiago Pedraz issued warrants on charges of genocide, torture, terrorism and illegal detention against Gen. Efrain Rios Montt, Gen. Oscar Humberto Mejia Victores and six other men.
(AP, 7/7/06)
2006 Jul 7, Spain’s Agriculture Ministry said it has recorded its first case of H5N1 bird flu. The deadly strain was found in a water fowl in a marsh area outside the northern city of Vitoria.
(AP, 7/7/06)
2006 Jul 7, The UN General Assembly unanimously approved a series of reforms that were welcomed by the US as a long overdue step toward greater efficiency and accountability. A two-week UN conference reviewing efforts to fight the illegal weapons trade ended in failure, with nations too divided on too many contentious issues to agree on the best way to combat a scourge that fuels conflict worldwide. Japan introduced a draft UN Security Council resolution to sanction North Korea for test-launching a series of missiles. The Council unanimously adopted a compromise resolution on July 15.
(AP, 7/8/06)(AP, 7/7/07)
2006 Jul 8, The US military charged 4 more US soldiers with rape and murder and a fifth with dereliction of duty in the alleged rape-slaying of a young Iraqi woman and the March killings of her relatives in Mahmoudiya.
(AP, 7/9/07)
2006 Jul 8, New Jersey Gov. Jon S. Corzine issued an executive order that ended a weeklong state government shutdown, bringing slot machine bells noisily to life as Atlantic City casinos reopened.
(AP, 7/8/06)
2006 Jul 8, Georgia police found the decomposed body of Carlnell Walker (23), a Morehouse student from Richmond, Ca., in the trunk of his car in Riverdale. On July 21, 2006, 3 men were arrested for his murder. In 2007 4 men were indicted for the murder.
(SFC, 7/12/06, p.B1)(SFC, 7/22/06, p.A1)(SFC, 3/23/07, p.A2)
2006 Jul 8, Discovery astronauts Piers Sellers and Michael Fossum went on a 7 1/2-hour spacewalk to test a repair technique for space shuttles.
(AP, 7/8/07)
2006 Jul 8, June Allyson (b.1917), chorus girl and film star, died in Ojai, Ca. her films included “The Glenn Miller Story" (1953).
(SFC, 7/11/06, p.B5)
2006 Jul 8, The Guggenheim Foundation announced it had commissioned American architect Frank Gehry to build a new branch of the Guggenheim modern and contemporary art museum in Abu Dhabi.
(AP, 7/8/06)
2006 Jul 8, Afghan and coalition forces pounded a Taliban stronghold in southern Afghanistan, killing five rebels and leaving an Afghan and three foreign soldiers wounded. An explosion attributed to a land mine in western Afghanistan killed a Peruvian solder and slightly wounded four Spanish troops.
(AFP, 7/8/06)(AP, 7/9/06)
2006 Jul 8, China launched a Web site, www.linese.com, offering free Chinese lessons and materials to promote the study and use of the language abroad.
(Reuters, 7/8/06)
2006 Jul 8, In central China a landslide at a construction site buried migrant workers sleeping in a tent, killing 11 of them.
(AP, 7/8/06)
2006 Jul 8, In Kinshasa, Congo, gunmen killed Mwamba Bapuwa (64), an independent journalist, a day after foreign donors called on the government to guarantee press freedoms ahead of historic elections this month. Bapuwa had recently criticized the government and survived a previous attack several months ago.
(Reuters, 7/8/06)
2006 Jul 8, Jose Ramos-Horta, Nobel peace laureate, was named East Timor's new prime minister.
(AP, 7/8/06)
2006 Jul 8, In Hungary several thousand labor union members demonstrated in Budapest against a government austerity package they say requires a disproportionate sacrifice from workers.
(AFP, 7/8/06)
2006 Jul 8, In northern India 15 people were killed and eight injured when the bus they were traveling in plunged into a gorge and fell into Bhagirathi river.
(AFP, 7/8/06)
2006 Jul 8, In Iraq 3 American soldiers were killed in fighting in the western province of Anbar. Gunmen in two cars stopped a vehicle in Baghdad's Dora neighborhood, forced the two passengers to get out and killed them in front of horrified bystanders. Gunmen killed three people working in an ice cream shop in the mostly Shiite Baghdad neighborhood of Nahrawan. Police also reported finding two bodies in separate locations in eastern Baghdad. At least 17 others died in a wave of bombings and mortar attacks against mostly Sunni mosques in the Baghdad area and northern Iraq. Iraqi and US authorities released 368 prisoners as they continue to whittle down the number of inmates.
(AP, 7/8/06)
2006 Jul 8, In Indian Kashmir a politician and four civilians died and at least 45 others were injured when suspected Islamic rebels hurled a grenade outside a Muslim shrine.
(AFP, 7/8/06)
2006 Jul 8, Leftist presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador urged his supporters to take to the streets, claiming the governing party stole his victory in Mexico's extremely narrow elections. Obrador called on a huge crowd of supporters to keep peacefully protesting as he goes to court to challenge what he called his fraudulent electoral defeat.
(AP, 7/8/06)(AP, 7/9/06)
2006 Jul 8, A Mexican federal judge threw out genocide charges against former President Luis Echeverria, ruling that a 30-year statute of limitations had run out.
(AP, 7/9/06)
2006 Jul 8, In western Mexico 4 children, who won an airplane ride for good grades at school, were killed along with the pilot when the small aircraft crashed near Tepic.
(AP, 7/12/06)
2006 Jul 8, The Hamas-led Palestinian government called for a cease-fire in its violent two-week standoff with Israel but stopped short of offering to release an Israeli soldier held by Hamas militants. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert rejected the proposal by Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh. Olmert will not agree to a truce until Hamas releases the soldier. Israeli tanks and troops clashed with militants in eastern Gaza.
(AP, 7/8/06)
2006 Jul 8, Poland's governing party accepted the resignation of PM Marcinkiewicz and recommended party chairman Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the president's twin brother, to replace him. A group with roots in Poland's anti-communist Solidarity trade union movement signed an unprecedented accord to join forces with the country's two main post-communist parties.
(AP, 7/8/06)
2006 Jul 8, Saudi officials said 7 suspected terrorists had escaped from a prison in Riyadh a few days earlier.
(AP, 7/8/06)
2006 Jul 8, The Islamic militiamen controlling the Somali capital broke up a wedding celebration because a band, the Mogadishu Stars, was playing and women and men were socializing together. Band members were flogged with electric cables.
(AP, 7/8/06)(Econ, 7/15/06, p.47)
2006 Jul 8, Pope Benedict XVI stressed family values during a visit to Spain, where church influence has waned and the government has angered the Vatican with its liberal take on issues including gay marriage.
(AP, 7/8/06)
2006 Jul 8, A Yemeni court acquitted 19 alleged al-Qaida members of charges they plotted to blow up a hotel frequented by Americans, citing a lack of evidence. The state prosecutor appealed the collective acquittal, and the defendants were returned to their cells at the intelligence services' jail where they have been held for more than two years. 14 Yemenis and 5 Saudis had been caught with guns and fake Iraqi passports.
(AP, 7/8/06)(WSJ, 8/14/06, p.A1)
2006 Jul 9, Freescale Semiconductor, a former division of Motorola, announced the commercial availability of a chip called Magnetoresistive random-access memory (MRAM), which is fast to read and write and can keep data without power. In September the Blackstone Group offered $17.6 billion for Freescale.
(SFC, 7/10/06, p.A3)(Econ, 9/23/06, p.73)
2006 Jul 9, In Washington DC Alan Senitt (27), a British volunteer for the potential presidential campaign of former Virginia Gov. Mark R. Warner, was killed in the Georgetown neighborhood by robbers who slashed his throat and tried to rape his female companion. Within three hours of the attack, police arrested and charged two men, and two other suspects surrendered a few hours later. On May 21, 2007, Christopher Piper and Jeffery Rice pleaded guilty to robbing and killing Alan, and committing other robberies in the city. They were sentenced August 24, 2007, to 37 and 52 years respectively in prison.
(AP, 7/10/06)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Senitt)
2006 Jul 9, In Missouri 5 youths (10-17) including 4 siblings drowned in the Meramtec River during a church outing at Castlewood State Park. One had become caught in an undertow and the others jumped in to help.
(SFC, 7/11/06, p.A3)
2006 Jul 9, In southern Afghanistan a Canadian coalition officer died of wounds suffered in fighting near an opium-rich insurgent stronghold. At least 15 militants were killed. A coalition patrol found the bodies of 10 militants killed in an airstrike in Panjwayi.
(AP, 7/9/06)(SFC, 7/10/06, p.A4)
2006 Jul 9, Roger Federer ended a five-match losing streak to Rafael Nadal, winning 6-0, 7-6 (5), 6-7 (2), 6-3 to earn his fourth straight Wimbledon title.
(AP, 7/9/07)
2006 Jul 9, India test-fired its nuclear-capable Agni III missile for the first time. The missile plunged into the Bay of Bengal short of its target. 14 more people were reported to have died in rain-related incidents in northern India, taking the nationwide death toll since the beginning of the monsoon season in May to 286. Supporters of Shiv Sena, a Hindu fundamentalist party, went on a rampage in Mumbai protesting the defacing of a statue of Meenatai, the wife of the movement’s founder, Balasaheb Thackeray.
(AFP, 7/9/06)(AP, 7/10/06)(Econ, 7/15/06, p.39)
2006 Jul 9, Masked Shiite gunmen stopped cars in western Baghdad and grabbed people off the streets, singling out the Sunni Arabs among them and killing at least 42. Gunmen killed an Iraqi intelligence officer in the Shiite city of Karbala, one of several deadly shootings targeting security forces. Iraqi troops launched a pre-dawn raid on Kadhimiya, a mainly Shi'ite district next to Shula, killing nine militants and capturing seven.
(Reuters, 7/9/06)(AP, 7/9/06)
2006 Jul 9, Top officials said Israel will push forward with its offensive in the Gaza Strip until Palestinian militants release a captured Israeli soldier and halt their rocket attacks.
(AP, 7/9/06)
2006 Jul 9, Italy beat France 5-3 in a shootout following a 1-1 tie in the World Cup final. Zinedine Zidane, captain of the French team, was sent off for head-butting an Italian player.
(SFC, 7/10/06, p.A1)(Econ, 7/15/06, p.49)
2006 Jul 9, A Russian Airbus 310 passenger plane skidded off a rain-slicked Siberian runway and plowed through a concrete barrier, bursting into flames. At least 125 of 203 people on board were killed.
(AP, 7/9/06)(AP, 7/9/07)
2006 Jul 9, In Somalia 20 people were killed in bloody fighting as Islamic fighters fought supporters of Abdi Awale Qaybdiid, who refused to disarm.
(AP, 7/10/06)
2006 Jul 10, A US presidential commission urged Washington to spend $80 million to help nongovernmental groups hasten change in Cuba, but some dissidents here said the move would do them more harm than good.
(AP, 7/10/06)
2006 Jul 10, Colorado Gov. Bill Owens cut a deal with Democratic leaders on a package of bills to deny some state services to illegal immigrants and to punish employers who hire them.
(SFC, 7/12/06, p.A8)
2006 Jul 10, In Berkeley, Ca., Cody’s flagship bookstore on Telegraph Ave. opened and closed for the last time, one day after celebrating its 50th anniversary. Its last store on Shattuck Ave. closed in 2008.
(SFC, 7/10/06, p.B1)(SFC, 6/23/08, p.A7)
2006 Jul 10, In NYC a four-story townhouse collapsed and burned in an apparent gas explosion after what witnesses described as a thunderous explosion that rocked the neighborhood just off Madison Avenue. Dr. Nicholas Bartha (66), owner of the building, was pulled alive from the rubble. He had recently lost a $4 million judgement in a divorce case. Bartha died from his wounds on July 15.
(AP, 7/10/06)(SFC, 7/11/06, p.A4)(AP, 7/16/06)
2006 Jul 10, Falling concrete slabs crushed a car inside one of Boston's troubled Big Dig tunnels, killing Milena Delvalle (38) and tying up traffic with another shutdown in the massive building project that has become a central route through the city. In 2007 the family of Delvalle reached a $6 million settlement with the epoxy supplier blamed for the accident. In 2008 the family settled a wrongful death suit for over $28 million.
(AP, 7/11/06)(SFC, 7/12/06, p.A5)(SFC, 12/26/07, p.A4)(SFC, 10/1/08, p.C5)
2006 Jul 10, Kraft Foods Inc., the No. 1 US food company, said it will pay about $1.07 billion to acquire the Spanish and Portuguese units of United Biscuits and reclaim the rights to Nabisco trademarks in the European Union, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
(AP, 7/10/06)
2006 Jul 10, Afghan and US-led coalition forces killed more than 40 suspected Taliban militants as a warplane dropped 500-pound bombs on a militant compound in Uruzgan province. Britain announced it would send 900 more soldiers to southern Helmand province.
(AP, 7/10/06)(SFC, 7/11/06, p.A6)
2006 Jul 10, Fred Wander (b.1917), writer and Holocaust survivor, died in Vienna. His 1970 novel, “The Seventh Well," describes his survival. The German edition was translated to English in 2007.
(SFC, 12/11/07, p.D2)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Wander)
2006 Jul 10, Bolivia's education minister called for an end to religious education in the country's schools, drawing criticism from the Roman Catholic Church which could see its schools affected by the proposed change.
(AP, 7/10/06)
2006 Jul 10, Britain unveiled a $6 million program to replace Belfast's towering paramilitary wall murals in the most hard-line Protestant areas with more positive, less threatening art works.
(AP, 7/10/06)
2006 Jul 10, Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev (41) was killed in Ingushetia. He had claimed responsibility for modern Russia's worst terrorist attacks including Beslan in 2004. He was killed along with 4 other militant while accompanying a truck filled with 220 pounds of dynamite that blew up in the Ingush village of Ekazhevo. Shortly before his death he was appointed vice-president of Ichkeria, the rebel’s name for their non-existent state.
(AP, 7/10/06)(Econ, 7/15/06, p.84)
2006 Jul 10, The government of Colombia announced that it was nominating Ernesto Samper as ambassador to France. This sparked outrage among many Colombians and allies in Washington in the war on drugs. In a statement, Pres. Uribe said Samper had declined the France ambassadorship so as not to harm Colombia's national interests.
(AP, 7/12/06)
2006 Jul 10, Nobel laureate Jose Ramos-Horta was sworn in as PM of East Timor in a move aimed at ending months of political uncertainty and street violence.
(AP, 7/10/06)
2006 Jul 10, In Honduras a bus with failing brakes slammed into the back of another bus on the outskirts of Tegucigalpa, killing 15 people and injuring more than 24.
(AP, 7/11/06)
2006 Jul 10, In Iraq 2 car bombs struck a Shiite district in Baghdad, killing at least eight people and wounding dozens. Gunmen also ambushed a bus in the predominantly Sunni neighborhood of Amariyah in western Baghdad, killing six passengers, including a woman, and the driver. A bomb exploded in the Shurja market in central Baghdad, killing 3 people and wounding 18. In Kirkuk a suicide truck bomber struck an office of one of the main Kurdish political parties in Iraq, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, killing five people and wounding 12. A member of the provincial council in Diyala, Adnan Iskandar al-Mahdawi, was killed and two of his guards were wounded in a drive-by shooting. A former high-ranking officer from Saddam Hussein's army, ex-staff Maj. Gen. Salih Mohammed Salih, was killed in a shootout in the southern city of Basra.
(AP, 7/10/06)
2006 Jul 10, Israeli aircraft fired missiles at a car in southern Gaza, killing two Islamic Jihad militants. Israeli PM Olmert rebuffed criticism of Gaza tactics as 8 Palestinians died.
(AP, 7/10/06)(WSJ, 7/11/06, p.A1)
2006 Jul 10, In Morocco ministers from 57 European and African countries gathered in Rabat to seek ways to combat illegal immigration to Europe "with dignity but firmness", from tightening border controls to stimulating African development.
(AFP, 7/10/06)
2006 Jul 10, In eastern Pakistan a Fokker F-27 twin-engine aircraft operated by Pakistan International Airlines slammed into a wheat field and burst into flames minutes after takeoff. All 45 people on board were killed.
(AP, 7/10/06)(AP, 7/28/10)
2006 Jul 10, In the Philippines a fire destroyed more than 200 shanties in a squatter colony north of Manila, killing one resident, injuring 6 others and leaving about 5,000 people homeless.
(AP, 7/10/06)
2006 Jul 10, Somalia's Islamic militia battled a pocket of resistance, pounding Mogadishu with machine-gun fire and rocket-propelled grenades and at least 7 people were killed.
(AP, 7/10/06)
2006 Jul 10, South African writer Mary Watson was named the 7th winner of the Caine Prize for African writing her 2004 book “Moss," a collection interlinked stories. The prize was created in honor of the late Sir Michael Caine, a British businessman with a deep interest in Africa who for almost 25 years chaired the management committee of what is today known the Man Booker Prize.
(AP, 7/12/06)(Econ, 7/15/06, p.83)
2006 Jul 10, In Taiwan the son-in-law of President Chen Shui-bian was indicted on insider trading charges, one of several high-profile corruption cases involving Chen's family and inner circle.
(AP, 7/10/06)
2006 Jul 11, The American League edged the National League 3-2 in the All-Star Game in Pittsburgh.
(AP, 7/11/07)
2006 Jul 11, The Bush administration pledged that detainees at Guantanamo will be accorded basic human rights protections under the Geneva Conventions.
(SFC, 7/12/06, p.A1)
2006 Jul 11, In Chicago, a Blue Line train derailed and started a fire during the evening rush hour, filling a subway tunnel with smoke and forcing dozens of soot-covered commuters to evacuate.
(AP, 7/11/07)
2006 Jul 11, It was reported that Nielsen Media Research will begin formal ratings for TV commercial breaks.
(WSJ, 7/11/06, p.A1)
2006 Jul 11, Kathy Augustine (50), Nevada state controller, died suddenly. Her husband, Chaz Higgs, said it was a heart attack and chalked it up to the stress of an uphill election battle for state treasurer. But just days after her death, Higgs tried to kill himself by slitting his wrists. On Sep 29 Police arrested Higgs in Hampton, Va., after toxicology tests found a drug in his wife’s system that would have paralyzed her. Higgs was convicted on June 29, 2007, of killing Augustine by injecting her with succinylcholine, a paralyzing drug. He was sentenced to life with a possibility of parole after serving 20 years.
(AP, 7/21/06)(SFC, 9/30/06, p.A3)(www.krnv.com/Global/story.asp?S=6762551)
2006 Jul 11, Barnard Hughes (b.1915), film and theater actor, died in New York.
(AP, 7/11/07)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnard_Hughes)
2006 Jul 11, Coalition and Afghan forces hunting a Taliban commander killed an estimated 30 extremists in a raid on a hide-out in southern Afghanistan.
(AP, 7/11/06)
2006 Jul 11, In northern Bangladesh a train plowed through a bus at an unmanned railway crossing, killing at least 33 people and injuring about 15 others.
(AP, 7/11/06)
2006 Jul 11, The Bank of Canada held its key overnight interest rate steady, as expected, and gave no sign it was considering further hikes.
(Reuters, 7/11/06)
2006 Jul 11, Central American presidents agreed on a plan to ease border controls and install a common customs system on the way to negotiating an eventual free-trade agreement with the EU. The agreement signed by Panama, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras and Belize would allow residents to cross borders without passports or visas.
(AP, 7/11/06)
2006 Jul 11, EU finance ministers made Slovenia the 13th member of the euro zone. This gave Slovenia 5 months to print and mint euro notes to replace the tolar on January 1.
(WSJ, 7/12/06, p.A10)
2006 Jul 11, A survey, sponsored by the German development agency GTZ, reported that breast ironing, the use of hard or heated objects or other substances to try to stunt breast growth in girls, is widespread in Cameroon. The age-old practice was said to be traditional in West and Central Africa, including Chad, Togo, Benin, Guinea-Conakry, just to name a few.
(Reuters, 7/11/06)
2006 Jul 11, China's president issued an unusual public appeal to a visiting North Korean official to avoid aggravating tensions with its missile test program, as the US and Japan urged Beijing to press its ally Pyongyang for concessions.
(AP, 7/11/06)
2006 Jul 11, Andres Pastrana, Colombia's ambassador to the United States, resigned in anger over President Alvaro Uribe's selection of Ernesto Samper, a disgraced former Colombian leader (1994-1998) as ambassador to France.
(AP, 7/12/06)
2006 Jul 11, Police in Kinshasa, Congo, fired tear gas to break up stone-throwing demonstrators who were alleging electoral irregularities ahead of the country's first presidential vote in four decades.
(AP, 7/12/06)
2006 Jul 11, In India 8 explosions hit Mumbai's commuter rail network during the evening rush hour, killing over 200 people and wounding over 500. Police said Lashkar-e-Taiba was responsible.
(Econ, 7/29/06, p.39)(AP, 7/11/07)(WSJ, 12/8/08, p.A6)
2006 Jul 11, Indonesia passed a law granting tsunami-ravaged Aceh province greater autonomy and paving the way for elections, cementing the terms of a landmark 2005 peace accord with separatist rebels. The law allowed local political parties and for the Acehnese to keep 70% of the revenues from their oil and gas reserves.
(AP, 7/11/06)(Econ, 7/15/06, p.42)
2006 Jul 11, Sunni Arab representatives said they will end their boycott of Iraq's parliament following promises that a kidnapped colleague will be released and a call for reconciliation by a radical Shiite cleric. Gunmen in Baghdad intercepted a minivan carrying a coffin to the Shiite city of Najaf, killing all 10 people on board. Another five people were killed in a double bombing at a restaurant near the Green Zone. Bombings and shootings killed at least 50 people Baghdad. An al-Qaida-linked group posted a Web video purporting to show the mutilated bodies of two US soldiers, claiming it killed them in revenge for the rape-slaying of a young Iraqi woman by American troops from the same unit. The Mujahedeen Shura Council had previously claimed responsibility for killing the two soldiers, who were seized in a June 16 attack near the town of Youssifiyah. The bodies were found on June 20. Gunmen kidnapped Wissam Jabr al-Awadi, an Iraqi diplomat who specializes in relations with Iran, as he was driving near his home in Baghdad.
(AP, 7/11/06)(SFC, 7/12/06, p.A1)
2006 Jul 11, Israeli leaders ordered new incursions into the Gaza Strip after the Hamas leader said he would not free an Israeli soldier captured by Palestinian militants.
(AP, 7/11/06)
2006 Jul 11, In Italy Piaggio & C. SpA, the maker of the iconic Vespa scooter, defied weak market conditions that have derailed other planned public offerings recently to see its shares surge above the IPO price in their debut in Milan.
(AP, 7/11/06)
2006 Jul 11, In Kashmir a series of grenade attacks killed eight people and wounded more than two dozen in the Srinagar.
(AP, 7/11/06)
2006 Jul 11, An officials said Kyrgyzstan's Foreign Ministry has decided to expel two US diplomats for "inappropriate" contacts with nongovernment organizations.
(AP, 7/11/06)
2006 Jul 11, State Department official Paula Dobriansky held talks with Libyan PM Baghdadi Mahmudi and announced that the US has lifted sanctions on Libyan air transport.
(AFP, 7/12/06)
2006 Jul 11, In Mexico a man was shot to death in front of Acapulco's City Hall and a naval officer was abducted, the latest violence in this resort city hit by a wave of drug-related crime. The 2 men slain were later identified as military officers responsible for the mayor's security.
(AP, 7/11/06)(AP, 7/13/06)
2006 Jul 11, With the release of hundreds of prisoners, wrestling matches and hordes of warriors on horseback, Mongolia began a once-in-800-year party in honor of its famed emperor Genghis Khan.
(AFP, 7/11/06)
2006 Jul 11, Nepal's Maoists revealed for the first time how many soldiers they have, 36,000, in published remarks.
(AP, 7/11/06)
2006 Jul 11, In northwestern Pakistan torrential rains triggered flooding that washed away homes in a village, killing 13 people and injuring about 300.
(AP, 7/11/06)
2006 Jul 11, President Mahmoud Abbas' office said it had received $50 million from the Arab League, the most international aid Palestinians have gotten since the Islamic militant group Hamas won legislative elections.
(AP, 7/11/06)
2006 Jul 11, Hundreds of fighters who were battling Somalia's Islamic militia in Mogadishu surrendered after a surge of violence that killed more than 70 people and wounded 150.
(AP, 7/11/06)
2006 Jul 11, In South Korea more than 10,000 workers and activists rallied in the 2nd day of demonstrations aimed at blocking a free-trade agreement under discussion with the US.
(AP, 7/11/06)
2006 Jul 11, Four Tamil Tiger rebels were killed when Sri Lanka's navy retaliated against an attacking rebel boat in the sea off Northern Jaffna peninsula.
(AP, 7/11/06)
2006 Jul 11, Ukraine's newly created pro-Russian governing coalition proposed Viktor Yanukovych, a bitter rival of President Viktor Yushchenko, as the next prime minister, an appointment that would mark a humiliating defeat for the president.
(AP, 7/11/06)
2006 Jul 11, The tiny nation of Vanuatu, one of the "happy isles of Oceania," has topped a new index, the UK-based New Economics Foundation (NEF), that measures quality of life against environmental impact, with industrial countries, perhaps unsurprisingly, faring badly.
(Reuters, 7/11/06)
2006 Jul 12, The US government announced a five-year, 547-million-dollar aid package to Ghana to help the African nation develop agriculture and alleviate poverty.
(AFP, 7/12/06)
2006 Jul 12, A spokesman said computer break-ins at the US State Department that caused broad disruptions in recent weeks apparently originated in the East Asia-Pacific region.
(AP, 7/12/06)
2006 Jul 12, The US FDA approved Atripla, a single pill, 3-drug combination, to fight AIDS. 2 of the drugs were made by Gilead Sciences and the 3rd by Myers Squibb.
(SFC, 7/13/06, p.A2)
2006 Jul 12, An experimental spacecraft bankrolled by real estate magnate Robert Bigelow successfully inflated in orbit, testing a technology that could be used to fulfill his dream of building a commercial space station. Genesis I flew aboard a converted Cold War ballistic missile from Russia's southern Ural Mountains at 6:53 p.m. Moscow time.
(AP, 7/12/06)
2006 Jul 12, The Afghan defense minister said it would take at least 150,000 troops to secure his country, more than 5 times what he commanded. In eastern Afghanistan a suicide attack on a US military convoy killed a boy playing nearby, while a market bombing in a southern border town left two people dead. British and Afghan forces repelled a brazen insurgent attack on a police headquarters in the southern town of Nawzad, killing at least 19 militants. In Musa Qala district insurgents fired rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns at coalition troops, who returned fire and killed local Taliban commander Mullah Saeef. In southern Zabul province, three Afghan border guards were killed in a clash with armed tribesmen crossing from Pakistan.
(AP, 7/12/06)(AP, 7/13/06)(WSJ, 7/13/06, p.A1)
2006 Jul 12, Tony Blair's top fundraiser, Lord Levy, was arrested in an investigation into whether Labour Party leaders improperly nominated their financial backers for seats in the House of Lords.
(AP, 7/12/06)
2006 Jul 12, In central Chile flooding and landslides triggered by heavy rain left at least 11 people dead and forced 30,000 to flee their inundated homes.
(AP, 7/13/06)
2006 Jul 12, The EU fined Microsoft Corp. $357 million and threatened new penalties of $3.82 million a day beginning July 31 because it says the software maker failed to obey a 2004 antitrust order to share program code with rivals.
(AP, 7/12/06)
2006 Jul 12, The EU joined the US in warning Iran it faced UN Security Council action if no solution could be found to a stand-off over its nuclear program. World powers agreed to send Iran back to the UN Security Council for possible punishment, saying the clerical regime has given no sign it means to negotiate seriously over its disputed nuclear program.
(AP, 7/12/06)
2006 Jul 12, Hong Kong's supreme court struck down a ruling that allowed police to carry out controversial government wiretaps, a move activists hailed as a victory for freedoms in the Chinese city.
(AFP, 7/12/06)
2006 Jul 12, The Iraqi Accordance Front, the largest Sunni bloc in parliament, lifted its legislative boycott. It thanked the parliament for its help in seeking the release of kidnapped legislator Tayseer al-Mashhadani and called for a new spirit of cooperation. Gunmen stormed a bus station in Muqdadiya, seizing over 24 people and killing 22 of them. A suicide bomber blew himself up in a restaurant in the southeastern mixed Sunni-Shiite neighborhood of New Baghdad, killing eight people and wounding 30. Gunmen on a motorcycles killed a former member of the ousted Baath Party and a taxi driver in separate attacks in Kut. The US military said Saddam Hussein and three of his co-defendants have been on a hunger strike for nearly a week to protest what the defense says is a lack of security for their attorneys. At least 45 people were killed across Iraq.
(AP, 7/12/06)(SFC, 7/13/06, p.A10)
2006 Jul 12, Hezbollah militants captured two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid. 3 Israeli soldiers were killed in the raid along with one Hezbollah militant. Dozens of Israeli troops crossed the Lebanese frontier with warplanes, tanks and gunboats to hunt for the captives. 5 more Israelis were killed in a tank that hit a mine. Two Lebanese civilians were killed in an Israeli air strike on a coastal bridge at Qasmiyeh.
(AP, 7/12/06)(Econ, 7/15/06, p.45)
2006 Jul 12, Israel killed 18 Palestinians in Gaza including nine members of one family in an air strike that destroyed a residential building where the army said top Hamas commanders were meeting.
(Reuters, 7/12/06)
2006 Jul 12, Tens of thousands of supporters of leftist presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador headed to Mexico City, leaving mountain towns and sprawling industrial cities to demand a ballot-by-ballot recount.
(AP, 7/12/06)
2006 Jul 12, In Nigeria 2 explosions hit oil installations belonging to an Italian oil company along two Agip pipelines in Baleysa state.
(AP, 7/13/06)
2006 Jul 12, Protestants will share power with the Catholics of Sinn Fein "over our dead bodies," Ian Paisley thundered as tens of thousands of Protestant marchers celebrated the most divisive day on Northern Ireland's calendar.
(AP, 7/13/06)
2006 Jul 12, Acting on behalf of Arab nations, Qatar circulated a revised draft UN Security Council resolution demanding Israel end its offensive in the Gaza Strip and release the Palestinian officials it has arrested.
(AP, 7/12/06)
2006 Jul 12, President Vladimir Putin signed into law a bill cutting the length of military service in Russia, but also canceling many deferments from the draft. The legislation reduced the current two-year conscription term to 1½ years beginning next year, then to one year in 2008.
(AP, 7/12/06)
2006 Jul 12, In South Korea some 70,000 people, including 13,000 farmers, rallied in a plaza in downtown Seoul on the third straight day of anti-FTA demonstrations.
(AFP, 7/12/06)
2006 Jul 12, A UN official said rebels in Darfur are fighting each other with the Sudanese military apparently supporting one faction, sometimes with aircraft disguised as relief planes.
(AP, 7/12/06)
2006 Jul 12, UNESCO, meeting in Vilnius, Lithuania, added 8 sites added to its World Heritage list including a panda refuge in China and an agave producing region in Mexico.
(AP, 7/12/06)
2006 Jul 13, President Bush met with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Stralsund, Germany, while on his way to the G8 summit in Russia.
(AP, 7/13/06)
2006 Jul 13, Former CIA officer Valerie Plame sued Vice President Dick Cheney, presidential adviser Karl Rove and other White House officials, saying they orchestrated a "whispering campaign" to destroy her career.
(AP, 7/13/07)
2006 Jul 13, Tongsun Park (71), a South Korean businessman accused of being an Iraqi agent and trying to influence the oil-for-food program, was convicted of conspiracy in New York federal court. Park, arrested last year, was the first person tried in the scandal. He will be sentenced in October and could face more than a dozen years in prison for his role in the decade-long conspiracy.
(AP, 7/25/06)
2006 Jul 13, The Massachusetts Turnpike authority said it found as many as 240 potential defects in ceiling bolts on Boston’s Big Dig tunnel. Gov. Mitt Romney filed emergency legislation and called for the resignation of the head of the Turnpike Authority in the wake of falling concrete slabs that killed a woman on July 10.
(SFC, 7/14/06, p.A4)
2006 Jul 13, Hazleton, Pa., passed Mayor Louis Barletta’s Illegal Immigration Relief Act in an effort to get rid of undocumented immigrants. In August federal lawsuits were filed against Hazleton and other local governments for attempting to regulate immigration. A 1976 US Supreme Court decision said regulation of immigration is exclusively a federal power. In 2007 a federal judge struck down the Hazleton anti-illegal immigration law.
(SFC, 8/16/06, p.A5)(SFC, 7/27/07, p.A13)
2006 Jul 13, The Dow Jones fell 166 to 10846 and Nasdaq closed down 36 to 2,054. Crude oil for August delivery closed at a record $76.70.
(SFC, 7/14/06, p.D1)
2006 Jul 13, The Sawtooth Complex fire in southern California grew to 40,000 acres and remained out of control. It looked to soon merge with the 2,500-acre Millard fire.
(SFC, 7/14/06, p.A1)
2006 Jul 13, Red Buttons (87), comic film and TV star, died at his home in Century City, Ca. His over 30 films included “Hatari" and “The Poseidon Adventure." Buttons was born as Aaron Chwatt in NYC on Feb. 5, 1919.
(SFC, 7/14/06, p.B9)
2006 Jul 13, A collaborative effort to study malaria went public via the Web site [email protected] Project leaders planned to use spare computing capacity to study malaria. By July 19 it reached the stable level of some 5000 computers needed at this stage for MalariaControl.net.
(Econ, 7/15/06, p.79)(http://africa-at-home.web.cern.ch/africa%2Dat%2Dhome/index.htm)
2006 Jul 13, British and Afghan forces battled Taliban holdouts after repelling a brazen insurgent attack on a police headquarters a day earlier. Afghan and US-led coalition forces killed nine militants after suspected Taliban fighters attacked two army checkpoints in the latest fighting to rock southern Afghanistan. More than 30 enemy extremists were killed in an operation in Uruzgan province.
(AP, 7/13/06)(AP, 7/14/06)(AFP, 7/15/06)
2006 Jul 13, In Belarus Alexander Kozulin (50), an opposition leader, was convicted of organizing an unauthorized rally against the disputed election of Pres. Lukashenko and sentenced to 5 1/2 years in jail.
(AP, 7/13/06)
2006 Jul 13, In Brazil gangs torched buses and attacked banks and police stations across Sao Paulo, deepening crime fears as a wave of rampant violence entered its third day.
(AP, 7/13/06)
2006 Jul 13, The NatWest British bankers David Bermingham, Gary Mulgrew and Giles Darby were extradited to the US for a $20 million fraud linked to the collapsed Enron Corp. Many viewed the March, 2003, US and British extradition treaty as imbalanced and favoring US interests.
(Econ, 7/15/06, p.12, 56)
2006 Jul 13, The Guardian newspaper said PM Tony Blair wants China, India, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa to join the G8 to secure multilateral deals on trade, climate change and Iran.
(AP, 7/13/06)
2006 Jul 13, Three Canadian military personnel were killed and four others injured on after their helicopter crashed into the Atlantic Ocean during a search and rescue training exercise off Canada's east coast.
(Reuters, 7/13/06)
2006 Jul 13, Canada confirmed its second case of mad cow disease in as many weeks, and the 7th since 2003.
(AP, 7/13/06)
2006 Jul 13, A Chinese reporter who posted essays on foreign Web sites criticizing the ruling Communist Party was sentenced to two years in prison on subversion charges.
(AP, 7/13/06)
2006 Jul 13, The EU criticized Israel for using "disproportionate" force in its attacks on Lebanon following the cross-border raid by Hezbollah guerillas who captured 2 Israeli soldiers.
(AP, 7/13/06)
2006 Jul 13, Indian police detained about 350 people for questioning in the Bombay train bombings amid suspicion that Kashmiri militants could be linked to the attacks that killed at least 200 people. Officials said they believe the bombings were the work of Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, a Pakistan-based Islamic militant group.
(AP, 7/13/06)(SFC, 7/14/06, p.A17)
2006 Jul 13, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad shrugged off a decision by world powers to refer Iran to the U.N. Security Council over its atomic program, saying Tehran would never abandon its "right to exploit peaceful nuclear technology."
(AP, 7/13/06)
2006 Jul 13, British and Australian forces handed over security duties for a relatively peaceful southern province to Iraqis in the first such transfer of an entire province. Gunmen killed the coach of Iraq's national wrestling team in a botched abduction attempt but a player escaped. A suicide car bomber struck a police patrol in the northern city of Mosul, killing five people and wounding five. At least 19 people were killed in attacks nationwide.
(AP, 7/13/06)
2006 Jul 13, An Israeli warplane bombed the Palestinian Foreign Ministry, collapsing part of the structure and causing widespread damage in the area.
(AP, 7/13/06)
2006 Jul 13, Israel unleashed a furious military campaign on Lebanon's main airport, highways, military bases and other targets, retaliating for scores of Hezbollah guerrilla rockets that rained down on Israel and reached as far as Haifa, its third-largest city, for the first time. The death toll in two days of fighting rose to 57 people. Lebanese guerrillas fired three rockets at the northern Israeli town of Safed, wounding seven people. Israel imposed a sea and air blockade on Lebanon to cut off supply routes to Lebanese militants. Israel hit hundreds of targets in Lebanon as part of its effort to force the release of two soldiers captured by Hezbollah guerrillas. Hezbollah’s Al-Manar Television broadcast pictures of the Iranian supplied 333mm Raad-1 rocket used in an attack on the Israeli army base near Safed.
(AP, 7/13/06)(SFC, 7/14/06, p.A14)
2006 Jul 13, In the northern Philippines a powerful Asian storm strengthen to a typhoon after killing at least nine people.
(AP, 7/13/06)
2006 Jul 13, In Thailand a top court decided to accept a case that accuses PM Thaksin Shinawatra's ruling party and its main rival of electoral fraud.
(AP, 7/13/06)
2006 Jul 13, The presidents of Turkey, Azerbaijan and Georgia formally opened a pipeline designed to bypass Russia and bring Caspian oil to Europe, a route that President Bush said would bolster global energy security.
(AP, 7/13/06)
2006 Jul 14, A US federal appeals court reversed a ruling that struck down Nebraska's same-sex marriage ban, which was approved by voters in 2000.
(AP, 7/14/06)
2006 Jul 14, The US Court of International Law slapped an injunction on the United States government preventing it from handing over any more duties from Canadian softwood lumber imports to US industry competitors.
(Reuters, 7/17/06)
2006 Jul 14, US Gen. Bantz Craddock, head of the US Southern Command, was announced as the next chief of NATO.
(WSJ, 7/15/06, p.A1)
2006 Jul 14, The Dow Jones fell 106 to 10,739 and Nasdaq closed down 16 to 2,037. Crude oil for August delivery closed at a record $77.03. Spurred by Mideast fighting, oil prices rose to an intraday record $78.40 a barrel.
(SFC, 7/14/06, p.D1)(AP, 7/14/07)
2006 Jul 14, The Sawtooth Complex fire in southern California merged with the Millard fire creating a 69,000-acre blaze. Some 1,800 firefighters battled the fire which so far had destroyed 45 homes.
(SFC, 7/15/06, p.A1)
2006 Jul 14, Actress Carrie Nye (b.1936) died in New York at age 69.
(AP, 7/14/07)(www.imdb.com/name/nm0638559/bio)
2006 Jul 14, A suicide bomber was the sole victim in a failed attack on an Afghan police convoy in the Gurbuz district of southeastern Khost province, bordering Pakistan. Skirmishes between coalition and Taliban militants raged throughout the southern Uruzgan province. An estimated 31 enemy extremists were killed during engagements in Chora, Kala Kala, and Khorma villages. Afghan and coalition soldiers also killed two male "foreigners" wearing burkas, the body-shrouding veil worn by women, and detained five Taliban in Uruzgan's Dihrawud district. The Afghan army killed eight rebels in Sangin.
(AP, 7/14/06)(AFP, 7/15/06)
2006 Jul 14, The World Bank said it and Chad had resolved a dispute over oil revenues that will result in significant increases in government spending on projects that benefit the poor.
(AP, 7/14/06)
2006 Jul 14, In China Qiu Xinhua (47) killed the abbot of the Tiewadian temple in the northern city of Ankang, five staff members and four pilgrims. He reportedly believed the abbot had flirted with his wife. Xinhua was executed on Dec 28.
(AP, 12/28/06)
2006 Jul 14, East Timor's President Xanana Gusmao swore in a new government as his tiny nation looked for a return to political order after several weeks of unrest.
(AFP, 7/14/06)
2006 Jul 14, Militants forced open a border gate between Egypt and Gaza, wounding an Egyptian officer and letting hundreds of Palestinians who had been trapped on the Egyptian side of the border to get into Gaza.
(AP, 7/14/06)
2006 Jul 14, India's PM Singh said the Bombay train bombers were "supported by elements across the border" and that Pakistan must rein in terrorists before a peace process can move ahead.
(AP, 7/14/06)
2006 Jul 14, A bomb struck a Sunni mosque in Baghdad, killing seven people and wounding five, while mortars barraged a Shiite mosque north of the capital, leaving five wounded. At least 26 people were killed across Iraq, including 13 Iraqi soldiers in an attack on their checkpoint near the northern oil hub of Kirkuk.
(AFP, 7/14/06)
2006 Jul 14, Israel tightened its seal on Lebanon, blasting its air and road links to the outside world and bringing its offensive to the capital for the first time to punish Hezbollah and with it, the country for the capture of 2 Israeli soldiers. Israel destroyed the home and office of Hezbollah's leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah. Lebanese guerrillas fired a barrage of at least 60 Katyusha rockets throughout the day, hitting more than a dozen communities across northern Israel. Israeli warplanes destroyed the building housing the headquarters of Hezbollah guerrillas in southern Beirut. Hezbollah guerrillas attacked an Israeli warship that had been firing missiles into southern Beirut. A senior Israeli intelligence official said Iranian troops helped Hezbollah fire a missile that damaged the warship off the Lebanese coast. He also said about 100 Iranian soldiers are in Lebanon and helped fire the Iranian-made, radar-guided C-802 at the ship that killed 4 sailors. Deaths in 3 days of fighting rose to 61 people in Lebanon and 10 in Israel.
(AP, 7/14/06)(AP, 7/14/07)(Econ, 11/30/13, p.58)
2006 Jul 14, Japan’s central bank raised a key interest rate for the first time in six years, ending an unorthodox experiment meant to jump-start the country after a decade of economic doldrums. The rate increased from zero to .25%.
(AP, 7/14/06)(Econ, 7/22/06, p.65)
2006 Jul 14, In Kazakhstan police under Mayor Imangali Tasmagambetov moved in to destroy the illegal Shanyrak settlement on the outskirts of Almaty. 30-40 people on each side were injured. A policeman died after being doused with petrol and set on fire.
(Econ, 8/5/06, p.39)
2006 Jul 14, Kyrgyzstan and the US resolved a payment dispute that had threatened the future of the US military base near Bishkek.
(AP, 7/14/06)
2006 Jul 14, In Karachi, Pakistan, a suicide bomber killed a prominent Shiite Muslim cleric and two other people in an attack that was likely to heighten sectarian tensions. About 80% of Pakistan's 150 million people are Sunni; most of the rest are Shiite.
(AP, 7/14/06)
2006 Jul 14, Malaysia's government declassified documents on negotiations with Singapore over an aborted bridge in a bid to counter criticism from defiant ex-premier Mahathir Mohamad.
(AFP, 7/14/06)
2006 Jul 14, Poland's Pres. Lech Kaczynski (57) swore in his identical twin brother, Jaroslaw, as prime minister, along with a socially conservative Cabinet made up largely of the same ministers who resigned in a shake-up days earlier.
(AP, 7/14/06)
2006 Jul 14, In St. Petersburg, Russia, authorities detained more than 200 anti-globalization activists hoping to protest the G-8 summit, as protest organizers vowed to hold a march despite a ban on demonstrations.
(AP, 7/14/06)
2006 Jul 14, In Serbia criminal charges were filed against 9 people accused of helping UN war crimes suspect Ratko Mladic evade justice. The 9 were indicted for "hiding and helping hide Mladic although they knew that he was charged" with war crimes.
(AP, 7/14/06)
2006 Jul 14, Somalia's nearly powerless interim government said it would boycott weekend peace talks with the Islamic militia that has seized control of nearly all the nation's south, accusing the group of civilian massacres and ties to foreign terrorists.
(AP, 7/14/06)
2006 Jul 14, Sri Lankan government troops clashed with Tamil Tiger rebels in the worst fighting since a cease-fire halted the civil war in 2002, leaving as many as 16 dead. The military said 13 soldiers were missing.
(AP, 7/14/06)
2006 Jul 14, In Trinidad a high-court judge convened a special hearing that stayed an arrest order against Satnarine Sharma, the chief justice of Trinidad, who was charged with attempting to pervert the course of justice by helping former PM Basdeo Panday.
(Econ, 7/22/06, p.40)
2006 Jul 15, In a chilly prelude to a Group of Eight (G8) summit in St. Petersburg, President Bush blocked Russia's entry into the World Trade Organization. Russia and the US failed to strike a bilateral deal allowing Russia to join the WTO but agreed to set a deadline to wrap up talks within three months.
(AP, 7/15/07)(Reuters, 7/15/06)
2006 Jul 15, US authorities extradited Jean Succar Kuri, a Mexican businessman with alleged ties to associates of a powerful state governor, to face charges in Mexico of child pornography, statutory rape and corruption of minors.
(AP, 7/16/06)
2006 Jul 15, Robert Wilson (64), theater and opera director, opened his $12 million Watermill Center on Long Island, NY. The arts center was setup to host conferences, student workshops and serve as an intercultural exchange.
(Econ, 7/22/06, p.82)
2006 Jul 15, Phoenix, Ariz., residents were reported to be in fear of 2 serial killers, who have struck in recent months. Six killings were being attributed to the "Baseline Killer," whose name refers to the street where he is believed to have committed his first crimes. The 2nd suspected predator, dubbed the "Serial Shooter," has been definitively linked to the Dec. 29 wounding of one man and authorities believe he could be responsible for a total of five shooting deaths.
(AP, 7/15/06)
2006 Jul 15, The space shuttle Discovery undocked from the international space station.
(AP, 7/15/07)
2006 Jul 15, More than 40 insurgents were killed as hundreds of coalition troops, many dropped by helicopter, wrested a desert town from the Taliban and U.S. forces battled militants across southern Afghanistan.
(AP, 7/16/06)
2006 Jul 15, Arab foreign ministers held an emergency summit in Cairo over Israel's expanding assault on Lebanon, the worst Israeli attack on its neighbor in 24 years.
(AP, 7/15/06)
2006 Jul 15, A gas explosion in a coal mine in Shanxi province killed at least 50 miners in the Linjiazhuang Coal Mine in Jinzhong. In Hunan province 14 coal miners were killed after rains burst a dam, flooding the pit and collapsing buildings above ground at the Shenjiawan Colliery.
(AP, 7/17/06)
2006 Jul 15, Thousands of Ecuadorian villagers fled their homes on the slopes of the Tungurahua volcano since it began erupting lava and toxic gases.
(AP, 7/16/06)
2006 Jul 15, GDP for the Falkland Islands was estimated at $25,000 per head. Fishing licenses around the Falkland Islands generated some $40 million a year. Seismic studies indicated a possible 500,000 barrels of oil in the surrounding waters. Britain insisted that it would not discuss sovereignty of the islands unless its 3,000 citizens there requested it.
(Econ, 7/15/06, p.38)
2006 Jul 15, In Haiti thousands of demonstrators demanding the return of ousted president Jean-Bertrand Aristide marched to the National Palace, pushing past riot police in a dramatic show of support for the exiled former leader.
(AP, 7/16/06)
2006 Jul 15, A Honduras newspaper quoted a senior military official that the United States is helping Honduras establish a new military base to combat international drug trafficking in the northeastern province of Gracias a Dios.
(AP, 7/15/06)
2006 Jul 15, Police investigating Bombay's deadly train bombings swept through several neighborhoods, rounding up more than 300 people for questioning.
(AP, 7/15/06)
2006 Jul 15, Heavy clashes between Iraqi soldiers and gunmen in downtown Baghdad left 11 people wounded. Provincial police in Ramadi confirmed that gunmen had killed a member of the Iraqi Islamic Party. Gunmen kidnapped Ahmed al-Sammarai, the head of Iraq's Olympic committee, and more than a dozen employees storming a sports conference in Baghdad. The kidnappers wore camouflage Iraqi police uniforms and security guards outside the meeting said they did not interfere because they thought the gunmen were legitimate law enforcement.
(AP, 7/15/06)(AP, 8/22/08)
2006 Jul 15, Israeli warplanes pounded Hezbollah's south Beirut stronghold and roads around the country killing at least 33 people. At least 12 Lebanese villagers, including women and children, were killed in what appeared to be an Israeli airstrike on a convoy of vehicles fleeing a village near the border with Israel in southern Lebanon. Hezbollah expanded its rocket fire, hitting another of Israel's main cities, and Israel warned that the guerrillas could strike Tel Aviv. At least 88 people have died in Lebanon, most of them civilians, in the four-day Israeli offensive, sparked by Hezbollah's capture of two Israeli soldiers. On the Israeli side, at least 15 have been killed, four civilians and 11 soldiers.
(AP, 7/15/06)(SSFC, 7/16/06, p.A1)
2006 Jul 15, Israeli aircraft fired at least one missile at a house in Gaza City. Palestinian rescue workers said two Palestinians were killed and many others wounded. Since the offensive began in Gaza, 86 Palestinians have been killed, many of them gunmen.
(AP, 7/15/06)
2006 Jul 15, US Middle East envoy David Welch flew into Tripoli for talks with Libyan officials on strengthening economic and financial ties between the two countries.
(AFP, 7/16/06)
2006 Jul 15, A landslide triggered by monsoon rains swept through a village in northwest Nepal before dawn, killing at least 17 people as they slept.
(AP, 7/15/06)
2006 Jul 15, In Karachi, Pakistan, hundreds of youths set fire to a Pizza Hut, two gas stations and a dozen vehicles after a funeral for an Islamic Shiite cleric killed in a suicide attack.
(AP, 7/15/06)
2006 Jul 15, In St. Petersburg, Russia, world leaders tore up a carefully prepared G8 summit agenda and turned their attention to a growing crisis in the Middle East, hoping to reach common ground on ways to stop the fighting. About 150 protesters faced off with police as they tried to exercise their right of assembly.
(AP, 7/15/06)
2006 Jul 15, The UN Security Council unanimously passed resolution 1718 condemning North Korea's multiple missile launches on July 5 and imposed limited sanctions; a defiant North said it would launch more missiles.
(AP, 7/16/07)(Econ, 2/28/09, p.63)
2006 Jul 16, President Bush and other Group of Eight world leaders meeting in St. Petersburg, Russia, urged Israel to show "utmost restraint" and blamed Hezbollah and Hamas for escalating violence in the Middle East. G8 leaders adopted statements on the summit's three priority areas of energy security, education and the fight against infectious diseases.
(AP, 7/16/06)(AP, 7/16/07)
2006 Jul 16, US federal officials arrested David Carruthers in Texas, the British boss of BetonSports, as he changed planes enroute from London to Costa Rica. He was charged the next day, along with 10 others, with conspiracy and fraud related to online gambling.
(Econ, 7/22/06, p.61)
2006 Jul 16, Robert Brooks (b.1937), chairman of Hooters of America, died in South Carolina. He made a fortune selling chicken wings served by scantily clad waitresses.
(www.cnn.com/2006/US/07/16/obit.hooters.ap/index.html)(Econ, 7/29/06, p.78)
2006 Jul 16, In Afghanistan Amir Gul Hassanyar was arrested in northern Kunduz province. He allegedly carried out numerous roadside bombings and trafficked in weapons and drugs.
(AP, 7/22/06)
2006 Jul 16, A British soldier was killed and 3 others wounded in two different attacks near Iraq's main southern city of Basra. 17 people were killed in rebel violence across Iraq. Six of 29 people seized at an Iraqi Olympic Committee meeting were released in Baghdad.
(AFP, 7/16/06)
2006 Jul 16, Seven Canadians from the same Montreal family, including four young children, were killed in Lebanon when Israeli aircraft bombed a house in the south of the country.
(AP, 7/17/06)
2006 Jul 16, Hundreds of exhausted evacuees flew into Cyprus as Western countries moved their citizens from the Middle East amid continued Israeli bombardment of Lebanon.
(AP, 7/16/06)
2006 Jul 16, A small German tourist plane crashed on takeoff from the Italian island of Elba, killing four people aboard and seriously injuring one.
(AP, 7/16/06)
2006 Jul 16, Iran said that Western incentives to halt its nuclear program were an "acceptable basis" for talks, and it is ready for detailed negotiations.
(AP, 7/16/06)
2006 Jul 16, A suicide bomber detonated explosives inside a cafe packed with Shiites in Tuz Khormato, a mostly Turkomen city 130 miles north of Baghdad. 26 people were killed and 22 injured. In the south, a British soldier was killed and another wounded during a raid against a "terrorist suspect" in Basra.
(AP, 7/17/06)
2006 Jul 16, Lebanese guerrillas fired a relentless barrage of rockets into the northern Israeli city of Haifa, killing eight people at a railway depot and wounding seven in a dramatic escalation of a five-day-old conflict that has shattered hopes for Mideast peace. Israeli airstrikes reduced entire apartment buildings to rubble and knocked out electricity in swaths of Beirut.
(AP, 7/16/06)
2006 Jul 16, In Mexico City Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador led hundreds of thousands of marchers demanding a full recount of in the disputed election.
(SFC, 7/17/06, p.A3)
2006 Jul 16, North Korea rejected a UN Security Council resolution sanctioning the communist nation for recent missile tests and warned the measure was a prelude to a renewed Korean War.
(AP, 7/16/06)
2006 Jul 16, Turkish PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan signaled that his government was planning a tough response to mounting violence by Kurdish rebels after 13 members of the security forces were killed in the southeast over the past week.
(AFP, 7/16/06)
2006 Jul 16, Ugandan negotiators at talks to end one of Africa's longest wars demanded on that Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels disarm and hand over all their weapons in order to receive amnesty.
(Reuters, 7/16/06)
2006 Jul 17, US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said President George W. Bush blocked a Justice Department probe into a secret program to tap international phone calls and electronic communications of US citizens.
(AFP, 7/18/06)
2006 Jul 17, Louisiana Attorney General Charles Foti alleged that a doctor and two nurses decided to administer lethal doses of morphine and a sedative to at least four trapped and desperately ill patients during Hurricane Katrina.
(AP, 7/18/06)
2006 Jul 17, Space shuttle Discovery and its crew of 6 returned to Earth through thick clouds, ending an impressive mission that put NASA's space program back on a solid, safer course.
(AP, 7/17/06)
2006 Jul 17, Mickey Spillane (b.1918), American mystery writer, died in South Carolina. His 13 Mike Hammer novels began with “I, the Jury" (1946). A number of his books were made into films including “The Girl Hunters" (1963) in which he played the starring role.
(SFC, 7/18/06, p.B5)(Econ, 7/29/06, p.78)
2006 Jul 17, In southeastern Afghanistan coalition forces killed four al-Qaida suspects and captured three others. Separate attacks killed three Afghan soldiers and three government employees in the south.
(AP, 7/17/06)
2006 Jul 17, In China tropical storm Bilis left at least 612 people dead as it pounded the southeast over the weekend, toppling houses and forcing the evacuation of a prison and thousands of villages.
(AP, 7/18/06)(AP, 7/24/06)
2006 Jul 17, Congo officials said Peter Karim, a warlord accused of kidnapping seven UN peacekeepers, has agreed to disband his militia and become a colonel in Congo's army. Gunmen opened fire on an election rally and killed several people in Congo's volatile east, the latest outburst of violence as the nation prepares for its first free legislative and presidential balloting in 46 years.
(AP, 7/17/06)(AP, 7/19/06)
2006 Jul 17, Europe’s Airbus, reeling from a management shakeup that followed delays in its flagship superjumbo jet program, unveiled a long-awaited revamp of its mid-sized A350 at the Farnborough Air Show in England.
(AP, 7/17/06)(WSJ, 7/17/06, p.A3)
2006 Jul 17, In India some 500 suspected communist rebels attacked a government-run relief camp and two police stations in eastern Chattisgarh state, killing at least 26 villagers. Four rebels also died.
(AP, 7/17/06)
2006 Jul 17, In Indonesia a magnitude 7.7 earthquake sent a 6-foot-high tsunami crashing into Pangandaran on Java island, killing at least 659 people with some 330 missing.
(AP, 7/19/06)(AP, 7/22/06)
2006 Jul 17, Iraq and the US signed a commercial cooperation agreement. In Mahmoudiya dozens of heavily armed attackers raided an open air market, killing at least 41 people and wounding about 90. Police said they found 12 bodies in different parts Mahmoudiya, possible victims of reprisal killings. A bomb killed two people and wounded nine in east Baghdad. 3 American soldiers were killed in separate attacks, two in the Baghdad area and one in Anbar province west of the capital.
(AP, 7/17/06)(AP, 7/18/06)
2006 Jul 17, Israeli warplanes pummeled Lebanese infrastructure, killing at least 17 people. Hezbollah patron Iran said a cease-fire and a prisoner swap were possible, and the international community signaled willingness to send peacekeepers to back a diplomatic solution. 3 rounds of rockets fired by Hezbollah guerrillas struck Haifa, with one destroying a three-story building and wounding three people. Hezbollah fired a total of 50 rockets in to Israel. Total deaths in Lebanon reached 210 and 24 in Israel.
(AP, 7/17/06)(WSJ, 7/18/06, p.A1,7)
2006 Jul 17, Israel bombed the Palestinian Foreign Ministry building in Gaza City, pushing ahead with its 3-week offensive in Gaza.
(AP, 7/17/06)
2006 Jul 17, British PM Tony Blair and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan called for the deployment of international forces to stop Hezbollah from bombing Israel, a proposal that Israel quickly rejected.
(AP, 7/17/06)
2006 Jul 17, One of two young twin brothers who led a small band of ethnic rebels calling themselves "God's Army" surrendered to Myanmar's military government. Johnny Htoo (18) and 8 fellow members of the group surrendered with weapons in two separate groups on July 17 and 19 at the coastal region military command in southeastern Myanmar.
(AP, 7/25/06)
2006 Jul 17, Nigeria signed a deal with the Clinton Foundation to make cheap AIDS drugs available to fight the disease.
(AFP, 7/17/06)
2006 Jul 17, G8 leaders called on North Korea to stop its missile tests and to abandon its nuclear weapons program.
(AP, 7/17/06)
2006 Jul 17, The presidents of Russia and Kazakhstan agreed at the G8 summit to create a joint venture to process natural gas from Kazakhstan's Karachaganak gas field.
(AP, 7/17/06)
2006 Jul 17, In Moscow full trading began in the shares of Rosneft Oil Co. The company raised $10.4 billion with shares at $7.55. The next day a London court dismissed a blocking plea by Yukos and full trading began in London.
(Econ, 7/22/06, p.71)
2006 Jul 17, A Serbian court issued an international arrest warrant for the widow of former President Slobodan Milosevic, who now lives in Moscow.
(AP, 7/17/06)
2006 Jul 17, In western Venezuela a fire broke out at the Amuay oil refinery. Officials said it was soon extinguished without reported injuries or loss of deliveries.
(AP, 7/17/06)
2006 Jul 18, The US Senate voted after two days of emotional debate to expand federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, sending the measure to President George Bush for a promised veto.
(AP, 7/18/07)
2006 Jul 18, A doctor and two nurses who labored at a flooded-out New Orleans hospital in Hurricane Katrina's chaotic aftermath were arrested and accused of killing four trapped and desperately ill patients with injections of morphine and sedatives.
(AP, 7/18/07)
2006 Jul 18, The Club Deluxe on Haight Street in SF celebrated the 1st anniversary of its open mike poetry and jazz. It was initiated by New York poets Jennifer Barone and Ingrid Keir and jazz musician Dan Heffez.
(SFC, 7/22/06, p.E1)
2006 Jul 18, The Seattle SuperSonics basketball team said a group of Oklahoma businessmen had purchased the club for $350 million. The new ownership group said it plans to keep the team in Seattle, if it can work out a deal for a new arena in the next 12 months. Officials in Seattle said they planned to hold the Sonics to their lease, which expires in 2010.
(Econ, 7/29/06, p.33)(http://tinyurl.com/qga3e)
2006 Jul 18, A heat wave in the US left at least 7 people dead including 5 in Oklahoma and 2 in Pennsylvania.
(SFC, 7/19/06, p.A2)
2006 Jul 18, US researchers reported that men and boys with autism have fewer neurons in the amygdala, a part of the brain involved in emotion and memory.
(AP, 7/18/06)
2006 Jul 18, The Afghan government announced plans to re-establish a Vice and Virtues Ministry, but it assured the public the office would not resemble the Taliban version that became a symbol of the brutal regime toppled by US forces in 2001. One coalition soldier was killed in fighting in Uruzgan province.
(AP, 7/18/06)(SFC, 7/20/06, p.A13)
2006 Jul 18, China reported its fastest economic growth in a decade and warned that booming construction and bank loans could fuel inflation, raising expectations that Beijing might nudge up interest rates and possibly the value of its currency.
(AP, 7/18/06)
2006 Jul 18, The UN said fighting between the army and leftist guerrillas in western Colombia has forced hundreds of civilians from their homes and trapped others in their villages.
(AP, 7/19/06)
2006 Jul 18, Egypt and Israel reopened the Rafah border crossing for the first time in three weeks, triggering a rush to the border by thousands of Palestinians who had been waiting in Egypt.
(AP, 7/18/06)
2006 Jul 18, In India Lashkar-e-Qahhar (Army of Terror), a little-known Islamic militant group that claimed responsibility for the Bombay train bombings, warned that it was planning attacks against government and historic sites in India in an e-mail to an Indian television station. Indian police called the e-mail a hoax.
(AP, 7/18/06)(AP, 7/19/06)
2006 Jul 18, In India several telecom operators confirmed that they had blocked a number of Web sites on orders from India’s Dept. of Telecommunications.
(WSJ, 7/19/06, p.A8)
2006 Jul 18, In southern Iraq a suicide car bomber detonated explosives in a crowd of laborers gathered across the street from a major Shiite shrine in Kufa, killing 59 people and wounding 105. National Security Adviser Mouwafak al-Rubaie said Diyar Ismail Mahmoud (known as Abu al-Afghani), a Jordanian who killed two U.S. soldiers last month, was fatally wounded in a clash with security forces. The country's largest Sunni Arab party called for a conference of all religious and political leaders to end sectarian killing and save the country from sliding into civil war.
(AP, 7/18/06)(WSJ, 7/19/06, p.A1)
2006 Jul 18, The UN reported that nearly 6,000 civilians were slain across Iraq in May and June, a spike that coincided with rising sectarian attacks. The report said 2,669 civilians died in May and 3,149 in June, the first full month of the al-Maliki government.
(AP, 7/19/06)
2006 Jul 18, Israel struck a Lebanese army base outside Beirut and flattened a house near the border, killing 31 people in a new wave of bombings. Hezbollah fired more rockets at northern Israel, killing one Israeli and wounding several others. Israel said its offensive in Lebanon could last several more weeks and involve large numbers of ground forces.
(AP, 7/18/06)(WSJ, 7/19/06, p.A1)
2006 Jul 18, Authorities freed about 100 Poles forced into virtual slavery as Italian and Polish police arrested 25 people involved in a human trafficking ring that brought farm workers to Italy.
(AP, 7/19/06)
2006 Jul 18, Kyrgyz police in Osh arrested six men suspected of taking part in an uprising in neighboring Uzbekistan last year and seized 14 ounces of TNT from them.
(AP, 7/19/06)
2006 Jul 18, Pakistan welcomed a move by Britain to ban one of the major rebel groups, the Baluchistan Liberation Army. Islamabad outlawed the group in April. In eastern Pakistan 3 men convicted of gang-raping a woman during a robbery in 2000 were hanged after President Musharraf rejected their plea for mercy.
(AP, 7/18/06)(AFP, 7/21/06)
2006 Jul 18, In the southern Philippines Armando Pace (56), who often attacked corruption among politicians and the illegal drug trade in Digos city, was gunned down as he was riding home on a motorcycle. He was the ninth journalist killed in the country this year and the 82nd since 1986, based on a count by the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines.
(AP, 7/18/06)
2006 Jul 18, In Somalia Islamic militiamen who rule Mogadishu arrested about 60 people for watching videos in several overnight raids.
(AP, 7/19/06)
2006 Jul 18, South Korea's disaster agency said a fifth straight day of monsoon rains have left 19 people dead and 31 missing.
(AP, 7/18/06)
2006 Jul 18, In northern Sri Lanka a roadside bomb killed one person and wounded six others, including four government soldiers.
(AP, 7/18/06)
2006 Jul 18, Nearly 300 striking doctors in Zimbabwe ignored government demands for them to return to hospital wards. The junior doctors walked out on July 13 after authorities extended their seven-year attachment to state hospitals by another year, to be spent working at rural facilities.
(AP, 7/19/06)
2006 Jul 19, President Bush used his first veto to underscore his politically risky stand against federal funding for the embryonic stem cell research that most Americans support.
(Reuters, 7/20/06)
2006 Jul 19, Chicago prosecutors reported that local police tortured scores of black suspects from the 1970s to the 1980s to extract confessions, but that the cases were too old or too weak to prosecute.
(SFC, 7/20/06, p.A4)
2006 Jul 19, The Dow Jones rose 212.19 to 11,011 and Nasdaq closed up 37.49 to 2,080 following remarks by Ben Bernanke that inflation seems to be under control.
(SFC, 7/19/06, p.C1)
2006 Jul 19, Alain Rappaport premiered the web site www.medstory.com, a consumer search product for information on health and medicine. As of February 2007, Medstory, Inc. was acquired by Microsoft Corporation. Medstory, Inc. develops Web search technology for health information for biotechnology and healthcare sectors.
(SFC, 7/19/06, p.C1)(http://tinyurl.com/yylb6rjs)
2006 Jul 19, Jack Warden (b.1920), an Emmy-winning and Academy Award-nominated actor, died in NYC. He played gruff cops, coaches and soldiers in a career that spanned five decades and included almost 100 feature films.
(AP, 7/22/06)(SFC, 7/22/06, p.B6)
2006 Jul 19, In southern Afghanistan coalition forces retook Garmser and killed 2 Taliban.
(SFC, 7/20/06, p.A13)
2006 Jul 19, Britain faced the hottest day ever recorded in July as a heat wave swept much of Europe. Temperatures hit 96.6 degrees south of London.
(AP, 7/19/06)
2006 Jul 19, In Canada teamsters railway workers said they initiated a strike against Canadian National Railway in an effort to resolve a long-standing contract dispute.
(AP, 7/19/06)
2006 Jul 19, Doku Umarov, the leader of the Chechen rebels, dismissed a Russian amnesty offer, saying attacks outside his home region would be his rebels' answer to Moscow.
(AP, 7/19/06)
2006 Jul 19, It was reported that factories and cities in China dump some 40-60 billion tons of waste-water and sewage into lakes and rivers each year.
(WSJ, 7/19/06, p.A1)
2006 Jul 19, Director Gerard Oury (87), a cultural icon of France whose decades-old comedies remain hits today, died at his Riviera home. His top hits include the 1973 movie "Les Aventures de Rabbi Jacob" (The Mad Adventures of Rabbi Jacob).
(AP, 7/20/06)
2006 Jul 19, In Iraq gunmen kidnapped 20 employees of a government agency that cares for Sunni mosques and shrines nationwide, and the organization suspended its work until further notice. At least 49 people were killed in a string of bombings and shootings, mostly in Baghdad. Sixteen other bodies were found in widely separate parts of the country, apparent victims of sectarian death squads. An explosion in a cafe killed 5 people in Kirkuk. In Basra assailants slit the throats of a mother and her 3 children and killed the mother’s sister. The family had fled there to escape threats that they had cooperated with Americans.
(AP, 7/19/06)(SFC, 7/20/06, p.A3)
2006 Jul 19, A government report said Ireland's population has surged this year to a modern high of more than 4.2 million people largely because of immigrants from the newest EU nations.
(AP, 7/19/06)
2006 Jul 19, Israeli troops clashed with Hezbollah guerrillas on the Lebanese side of the border, while warplanes flattened buildings and killed at least 56 people overnight as fighting entered its second week with the US signaling it will not push Israel toward a fast cease-fire. Lebanon's PM Fuad Saniora called for a cease-fire and said that 300 people have been killed, 1,000 have been wounded and a half-million displaced in Israel's eight-day-old onslaught on Lebanon. Hezbollah rockets slammed into the Arab-Israeli town of Nazareth killing two young brothers as they played outside and wounding 18 other people.
(AP, 7/19/06)(Reuters, 7/19/06)(SFC, 7/20/06, p.A10)
2006 Jul 19, Israeli forces killed six Palestinians after tanks moved into a refugee camp in central Gaza under cover of machine gun fire.
(AP, 7/19/06)
2006 Jul 19, In Nigeria a 4-story apartment building collapsed overnight in Lagos. Red Cross officials confirmed that at least 24 people were killed.
(AFP, 7/20/06)
2006 Jul 19, Pakistani police mounted more raids to catch suspected Taliban fighters living in Baluchistan province. Police said more than 200 Afghans have been arrested in the last 3 days.
(AP, 7/19/06)
2006 Jul 19, South Korea's president condemned North Korea for potentially sparking an arms race with its recent missile launches, while the North said it was ending reunions between relatives separated by the Korean Peninsula divide. An aid group in North Korea said floods and landslides have left more than 100 people dead or missing.
(AP, 7/19/06)
2006 Jul 19, Sweden launched a fresh effort to salvage Sri Lanka's troubled truce as ceasefire monitors reported at least 900 people killed in a surge of ethnic violence since December.
(AP, 7/19/06)
2006 Jul 19, Taiwan’s largest air carrier launched the 1st direct cargo flight between the island and China since 1949.
(WSJ, 7/20/06, p.A6)
2006 Jul 20, President Bush delivered his first address to the 97th annual NAACP convention after having declining invitations for five years in a row. He received mixed support. Bush said he knew racism existed in America and that many black voters distrusted his Republican Party; Bush promised to improve the GOP's rocky relations with blacks.
(AP, 7/20/06)(SFC, 7/21/06, p.A4)(AP, 7/20/07)
2006 Jul 20, The US Senate voted 98-0 to renew the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act for another quarter-century.
(AP, 7/20/07)
2006 Jul 20, The US released new postage stamps featuring Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Supergirl and a half dozen other superheroes.
(AP, 7/20/06)
2006 Jul 20, The SEC filed criminal and civil charges against executives at Brocade Communications in San Jose, Ca., for back-dating stock options. Estimates had it that some 29% of 7,774 US companies may have backdated option grants from 1996-2002.
(SFC, 7/22/06, p.C3)
2006 Jul 20, California’s Gov. Schwarzenegger authorized $150 million in loans to the state’s stem cell agency. A day earlier Pres. Bush vetoed legislation that would have expanded federal funding for stem cell research.
(SFC, 7/21/06, p.B1)
2006 Jul 20, In Afghanistan coalition forces killed 6 Taliban in the district of Garmser in Helmand province.
(AP, 7/22/06)
2006 Jul 20, The UN food agency said China became the world's third-largest food aid donor in 2005, the same year it stopped receiving assistance from the World Food Program, while the US and the EU remained the top two contributors.
(AP, 7/20/06)
2006 Jul 20, German and US scientists began a 2-year project to decipher the genetic code of the Neanderthal.
(SFC, 7/21/06, p.A6)
2006 Jul 20, India arrested three men in connection with last week's Mumbai bombings that killed more than 180 men.
(Reuters, 7/21/06)
2006 Jul 20, Iraq's top Shiite cleric urged his followers to refrain from reprisal violence against Sunnis, his strongest call yet for an end to increasing sectarian bloodshed that threatens to erupt into full-scale civil war. Car bombs in Baghdad killed 9 police officers and 6 civilians. A roadside bomb in eastern Baghdad killed 2. Police in Baghdad found 38 bodies, most of whom were shot in the head. A car bomb exploded at a village gas station in Tikrit, killing 13 people who had gathered around the vehicle after discovering a corpse inside. An explosion in Kirkuk killed 7 people. Gunmen assassinated a former official of Saddam's Baath party in Karbala.
(AP, 7/20/06)(SFC, 7/21/06, p.A3)
2006 Jul 20, Israeli troops met fierce resistance from Hezbollah guerrillas as they crossed into Lebanon to seek tunnels and weapons for a second straight day, and Israel hinted at a full-scale invasion.
(AP, 7/20/06)
2006 Jul 20, Israeli forces killed 3 people and wounded six in the Gaza Strip. The army dropped leaflets on towns and villages warning that homes hiding weapons would be attacked.
(AP, 7/20/06)
2006 Jul 20, In southwest Pakistan 300 tribal militants surrendered to authorities, where President Pervez Musharraf says an insurgency is dying down. In a search near the former rebel stronghold of Dera Bugti, troops seized 10 surface-to-air missiles, 195 anti-personnel and anti-tank mines, 270 hand grenades, 205 rockets and 201 mortar shells.
(AFP, 7/21/06)
2006 Jul 20, Residents of central Somalia said that hundreds of Ethiopian troops were patrolling the town of Baidoa in armored vehicles, less than a day after Islamic militants moved near the base of the weak, UN-backed government.
(AP, 7/20/06)
2006 Jul 20, Bio Fuel Systems, a Spanish company, claimed to have developed a method of breeding plankton and turning the marine plants into oil, providing a potentially inexhaustible source of clean fuel.
(Reuters, 7/20/06)
2006 Jul 20, Luis Jefferson Lira Rodriguez (20), a Venezuela soldier, massacred 8 people at Ranch Adi, but said he acted on orders from at least one other lieutenant who claimed there was a Colombian rebel camp nearby. Officials later said rape was the motive and that the soldier acted alone.
(AP, 8/17/06)
2006 Jul 21, In NYC residents of Queens suffered through a 5th day of power blackouts. ConEdison said power blackouts in Queens had affected some 25,000 customers.
(SFC, 7/22/06, p.A3)
2006 Jul 21, The California Dept. of Education said an estimated 5% of high school seniors (40,173 of 436, 374) did not qualify for graduation because they failed exit exam.
(SFC, 7/22/06, p.B1)
2006 Jul 21, Mako (b.1933 as Makoto Iwamatsu), Japanese-born film and TV actor, died at his home in Ventura Ct., Ca. His films included “The Sand Pebbles" (1966). In 1965 he co-founded the East West Players, the 1st Asian-American theater company.
(SFC, 7/24/06, p.B8)
2006 Jul 21, The Netherlands’ military chief said Dutch commandos had killed 18 enemy fighters who set up positions in rugged hills overlooking a Dutch camp in southern Afghanistan.
(AP, 7/21/06)
2006 Jul 21, In Cambodia Ta Mok (80), known as "The Butcher" for his brutality as military chief of the communist Khmer Rouge, died.
(AP, 7/21/06)(Econ, 8/5/06, p.77)
2006 Jul 21, India urged Pakistan to hand over a top Kashmiri militant as a gesture of its determination to fight terrorism.
(Reuters, 7/21/06)
2006 Jul 21, In Iraq US troops raided a neighborhood northeast of Baghdad, killing 5 people, including two women and a child, after gunmen fired from the rooftops of buildings. Bombs killed two worshippers at mosques in Iraq during prayers and the authorities extended a daytime curfew on Baghdad after one of the bloodiest weeks this year.
(AP, 7/21/06)(Reuters, 7/21/06)
2006 Jul 21, Israel called up reserve troops and warned civilians to flee Hezbollah-controlled southern Lebanon, as it prepared for a likely ground invasion to set up a deep buffer zone. Hezbollah guerrillas fired two volleys of rockets at Haifa, wounding five people and damaging shops and office buildings. At least 335 people have been killed in Lebanon in the Israeli campaign. 34 Israelis also have been killed, including 19 soldiers.
(AP, 7/21/06)
2006 Jul 21, A Hamas activist and three relatives were killed in an explosion at his home in Gaza City, hospital officials said. Palestinians said the house was hit by an Israeli tank shell.
(AP, 7/21/06)
2006 Jul 21, An Islamic militia leader called for a holy war against Ethiopian troops protecting Somalia's weak UN-backed government.
(AP, 7/21/06)
2006 Jul 21, In Oaxaca, Mexico, protests initiated by striking teachers continued. Protest leaders said their fight is not with the tourists but with Gov. Ulises Ruiz, whom they accuse of rigging the state election in 2004 and using force to repress dissent.
(AP, 7/21/06)
2006 Jul 21, It was reported that Saudi Arabia has ordered 76 artillery howitzers from the French armaments manufacturer Giat Industries as defense minister Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz completed a two-day visit.
(AFP, 7/21/06)
2006 Jul 21, The UN refugee agency said international aid operations in refugee camps in the Zalinge area of Sudan's Darfur region have been suspended after three water workers were killed by a mob.
(Reuters, 7/21/06)
2006 Jul 21, Turkey killed 4 Kurdish rebels after a soldier died in an attack.
(WSJ, 7/22/06, p.A1)
2006 Jul 21, Venezuela formally entered Mercosur, increasing the South American trade bloc's economic might and vowing to transform the policy organization into a force for profound social change. Cuba’s Fidel Castro signed a modest trade at the 2-day Mercosur meeting in Cordoba, Argentina.
(AP, 7/21/06)(Econ, 7/29/06, p.36)
2006 Jul 22, President Bush in Texas conferred with PM Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey about how to help the Lebanese people caught up in the conflict between Israel and Hizbollah.
(AP, 7/22/06)
2006 Jul 22, Some 3,000 people gathered at the Stardust Hotel in Las Vegas for the annual Lifestyles conference, a five-day, $700-per-couple event that offers a mix of seminars, socializing and sex.
(Reuters, 7/22/06)
2006 Jul 22, Former Spokane, Wa., Mayor James E. West (55), ousted by a sex scandal in 2005, died of complications from recent cancer surgery.
(SSFC, 7/23/06, p.B6)
2006 Jul 22, Tamika Mack Norton (31), the wife of Quincy Norton Sr. (32), was stabbed to death at her home in Daly City, Ca. Norton was arrested a month later and charged with her murder. In 2008 he was convicted of murder after his sons testified against him, but the conviction was overturned on the grounds that his defense attorney was incompetent. In 2009 a new trial date was set. In 2010 Norton was again convicted of 1st degree murder and faced 26 years to life in prison.
(SFC, 4/22/08, p.B2)(SFC, 5/16/08, p.B5)(SFC, 9/23/09, p.D2)(SFC, 10/8/10, p.C5)
2006 Jul 22, In Afghanistan coalition forces killed 13 Taliban over the last 48 hours in the district of Garmser in Helmand province. 2 suicide blasts struck in Kandahar. A suicide car bomb ripped into a Canadian patrol and killed two soldiers and wounded eight others. Ten Afghans were wounded. About an hour later an attacker blew himself up among a crowd of people who had assembled about 100 meters (yards) from the site of the first explosion. Four Afghan passers-by were killed.
(AP, 7/22/06)(AFP, 7/23/06)
2006 Jul 22, In Preston, England, Shezan Umarji (20), a bank worker and business student, was stabbed in the brawl between around 50 white and South Asian youths. Days later 3 men, one aged 17 and two aged 19, were "jointly charged with murder and violent disorder."
(AFP, 7/25/06)
2006 Jul 22, A magnitude-5.1 earthquake hit southwestern China, killing at least 19 people.
(AFP, 7/22/06)
2006 Jul 22, East Timor's newly installed PM Jose Ramos-Horta offered a weapons amnesty to prevent a repeat of communal clashes which left 21 dead two months ago.
(AFP, 7/22/06)
2006 Jul 22, Ethiopian troops sent to bolster Somalia's weak government against a powerful Islamic militia moved into a second Somali town and seized a strategic airport.
(AP, 7/22/06)
2006 Jul 22, In Haiti a new rash of kidnappings has raised fears that well-armed, politically aligned street gangs are seeking to destabilize the new government, threatening UN-led efforts to restore security 2 1/2 years after a crippling revolt. At least 30 people have been kidnapped so far in July, about the same number for all of June.
(AP, 7/22/06)
2006 Jul 22, Iraq's parliament speaker Mahmud Mashhadani bitterly criticized US forces in Iraq, accusing them of "butchery" and demanded that they pull out of the country. 7 Shiite workers were gunned down in a religiously mixed area of west Baghdad, and explosions in the heart of the capital shattered a one-day calm after a ban on private vehicles expired. 3 people were killed and 5 injured in a bombing and shooting in the market in Baqouba. At least 6 more people died in attacks elsewhere across Iraq. US and Iraqi troops battled Mahdi fighters in Musayyib, 40 miles south of Baghdad in a three-hour gunbattle that killed 15 extremists and one Iraqi soldier. 2 US soldiers were killed in Baghdad, one from a roadside bomb, the other from small arms fire.
(AP, 7/22/06)(AP, 7/23/06)(SSFC, 7/23/06, p.A8)
2006 Jul 22, Israeli tanks and hundreds of troops moved in and out of Lebanon, taking over Maroun al-Ras village, entering a UN observation post and engaging Hezbollah militants by land, sea and air. Israeli warplanes blasted communications and television transmission towers in central and northern Lebanese mountains. Over 130 rockets struck northern Israeli, hitting Karmiel, Kiriyat Shemona, Nahariya and smaller communities such as Bet Hilel, Mayan Baruch and Mashov Am. Five Israelis were wounded. The Lebanese health ministry reported 362 deaths in Lebanon so far in the onslaught. 34 Israelis also have been killed.
(AP, 7/22/06)(SSFC, 7/23/06, p.A1)
2006 Jul 22, Japan's death toll from floods and mudslides triggered by this week's torrential rain rose to 19 as an evacuation warning was issued in the country's southwest. Heavy rains caused mudslides and flooding killed four people in southern Japan. About 100,000 people were urged to flee their homes.
(AFP, 7/22/06)(AP, 7/23/06)
2006 Jul 22, Police said Mudassir, a top Kashmiri militant commander blamed for dozens of attacks and tourist killings, has been arrested in the Indian portion of Kashmir. He was believed to be the chief planner of Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, a Pakistan-based Islamic militant group linked to "25 incidents of grenade attacks and other violent incidents.
(AP, 7/22/06)
2006 Jul 23, US cyclist Floyd Landis (31) won the 3-week, 2,267-mile Tour de France 57 seconds ahead of Oscar Pereiro of Spain. Reports on July 27 Landis said had tested positive for the male sex hormone testosterone. In 2007 arbitrators upheld results that showed he had used synthetic testosterone and that he must forfeit his title.
(SFC, 7/24/06, p.D1)(Reuters, 7/27/06)(WSJ, 9/21/07, p.A1)
2006 Jul 23, Tiger Woods won his 2nd consecutive British Open golf title.
(WSJ, 7/24/06, p.A1)
2006 Jul 23, In southern Indiana 2 sets of sniper attacks within hours of each other left one man dead, another wounded and four vehicles peppered with bullet holes. On July 25 police said a Gaston youth (18) confessed to weekend sniping.
(AP, 7/24/06)(WSJ, 7/26/06, p.A1)
2006 Jul 23, In Afghanistan 19 Taliban were killed and 17 fighters, including two Pakistani nationals, arrested in a raid by Afghan forces in southern Helmand province. Police said three policemen were killed and three others kidnapped in a Taliban attack on a police checkpoint in southeastern Ghazni province. Attackers hurled grenades into the home of a village postman in eastern Khost province, killing three of his daughters.
(AFP, 7/23/06)(AFP, 7/24/06)
2006 Jul 23, The 654-foot Singapore-flagged Cougar Ace, a cargo ship carrying 4,813 cars from Japan to Canada, began tilting to its port side late at night hundreds of miles off Alaska's Aleutian Islands. 23 crew members were rescued the next day. The ship was owned by Tokyo-based Mitsui O.S.K. Lines and listed on its side for several weeks before being righted. 4,703 of the cars were new Mazdas valued at about $100 million. After a year of planning Mazda scheduled all the cars for complete reduction to scrap in Portland, Ore.
(AP, 7/25/06)(SFC, 7/25/06, p.A2)(WSJ, 4/29/08, p.A9)
2006 Jul 23, In England a gust of wind blew an inflatable art exhibit from its moorings at a park in Durham, killing two people and injuring 12. Up to 30 people were on the "Dreamspace", an inflatable network of multicolored tunnels, when wind blew it 30 feet in the air.
(AP, 7/23/06)
2006 Jul 23, Police in India raided a forest hideout for communist rebels in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh state, killing Burra Chinnaiah, a guerrilla chief, and at least 7 other people.
(AP, 7/23/06)
2006 Jul 23, PM Al-Maliki left for Washington for talks on reversing the country's slide toward civil war. A suicide bomber detonated an explosives-laden minibus amid a crowd of day laborers seeking work in a crowded market in Baghdad's mainly Shiite district of Sadr City, killing at least 34 people. This was followed by a bomb attack in front of the area's town hall, which killed eight. Three hours later a one-ton car bomb exploded outside a courthouse in the mixed northern city of Kirkuk, leaving at least 22 dead and 100 injured.
(AFP, 7/23/06)
2006 Jul 23, Israeli warplanes struck a minibus carrying people fleeing the fighting in southern Lebanon, killing three people, Lebanese security officials said, and Israel said it would accept a NATO-led international force to keep the peace along the border. Hezbollah rockets killed two civilians in northern Israel. Layal Nejim (23), a photographer working for a Lebanese magazine, was killed when an Israeli missile exploded near her taxi.
(AP, 7/23/06)
2006 Jul 23, In Indian Kashmir 4 people were killed in three separate incidents.
(AFP, 7/23/06)
2006 Jul 23, Palestinian militants in Gaza fired three rockets at Israel, despite reports that they had agreed to halt such attacks.
(AP, 7/23/06)
2006 Jul 23, Zuleyka Rivera Mendoza (18) of Puerto Rico was crowned as Miss Universe 2006. She hoped to someday star in US and Latin American films.
(AP, 7/24/06)
2006 Jul 23, In Somalia a local rights group said gunmen have killed 682 civilians, including a foreign journalist, in executions over the past year.
(AP, 7/23/06)
2006 Jul 23, Syria, one of Hezbollah's main backers, said it will press for a cease-fire to end the fighting between Israel and the Islamic militant group but only in the framework of a broader Middle East peace initiative.
(AP, 7/23/06)
2006 Jul 24, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made a surprise visit to Lebanon to launch diplomatic efforts aimed at ending 13 days of warfare.
(AP, 7/24/06)
2006 Jul 24, Amnesty Int’l. issued a report saying security agents in Jordan were torturing terrorism suspects on behalf of the US.
(WSJ, 7/24/06, p.A1)
2006 Jul 24, The US FDA approved Anthelios SX, a sunscreen that protects against a type of ultra-violet radiation linked to skin cancer.
(SFC, 7/25/06, p.A4)
2006 Jul 24, Rescuers from the US Coast Guard and Alaska Air National Guard saved 23 crew members from a cargo ship taking on water south of the Aleutian Islands.
(AP, 7/24/07)
2006 Jul 24, Police officers in Salt Lake City found the body of missing 5-year-old Destiny Norton in the basement of a home in her neighborhood and arrested Craig R. Gregerson (20) who lived there. Destiny disappeared from outside her house on July 16.
(AP, 7/25/06)
2006 Jul 24, SF City Attorney Dennis Herrera announced that his office had obtained a civil injunction and $20,000 in penalties against Carlos Romero for his graffiti. This marked the 1st time SF has filed a civil suit against a graffiti tagger.
(SFC, 7/25/06, p.A4)
2006 Jul 24, HCA Inc., the largest US for-profit hospital operator, has agreed to be purchased by a group of investors for about $21.3 billion plus the assumption of $11.7 billion in debt. Shareholders of the Nashville-based company, which was founded by the family of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, will receive $51 in cash for each share of common stock.
(AP, 7/24/06)
2006 Jul 24, Power companies worked to restore electricity to thousands of customers throughout California as a scorching heat wave threatened to push the state into a power emergency with the potential for more blackouts. Storm problems cut power to areas of New York and Missouri.
(AP, 7/24/06)(WSJ, 7/25/06, p.A1)
2006 Jul 24, It was reported that Jeff Bezos (42), founder of Amazon.com, planned to develop a private spaceport at his private ranch in West Texas. A draft environmental review was filed with the FAA and a timetable set commercial flights to begin in 2010.
(SFC, 7/24/06, p.A2)
2006 Jul 24, In southwestern Afghanistan hundreds of Taliban fighters firing rocket-propelled grenades attacked a district headquarters overnight in Farah, killing 3 police and wounding 7. Four suspected suicide attackers riding two motorcycles died in a confrontation with Afghan police. In the west, gunmen killed two Afghans working for international aid agency World Vision who had been delivering medicine. Fighting in Kunar province left a US soldier dead. 7 suspected Taliban were killed in Paktika province.
(AP, 7/25/06)(WSJ, 7/25/06, p.A1)
2006 Jul 24, In Belarus leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez exchanged declarations of solidarity with the authoritarian leader of isolated Belarus, who shares his anti-US views. During the talks with Lukashenko, the two sides signed seven agreements on military-technical cooperation, economic and other ties as well as a declaration pledging a strategic partnership. Bilateral trade was just under $16 million in 2005.
(AP, 7/24/06)
2006 Jul 24, In Colombia 13 doctors were abducted by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. They were on a 10-day mission to remote communities and Indian tribes in Putumayo province.
(AP, 7/25/06)
2006 Jul 24, A UNICEF report said more than 600 children die every day in war-ravaged Congo and even more are displaced, sexually abused or swept into the camps of combatant groups.
(AP, 7/24/06)
2006 Jul 24, Costa Rica relaxed visa requirements for visitors from 102 nations, in the Central American country's most sweeping migration reform in decades.
(AP, 7/24/06)
2006 Jul 24, Hungary’s central bank raised its core interest rate half a percentage point to 6.75% in an aggressive move to stabilize its currency. This followed a quarter point raise in June. Inflation stood at 2.8%.
(WSJ, 7/25/06, p.A8)(Econ, 8/5/06, p.64)
2006 Jul 24, A UN report on the economic impact of HIV/AIDS in India estimated infections there, currently over 5 million, could increase to 20-25 million by 2010.
(WSJ, 7/24/06, p.A6)
2006 Jul 24, Hezbollah's representative in Iran struck a defiant tone, warning that his Islamic militant group plans to widen its attacks on Israel until "no place" is safe for Israelis.
(AP, 7/24/06)
2006 Jul 24, Iraqi PM Nuri al-Maliki condemned Israel's bombing of Lebanon's civilian infrastructure and vowed to push for a ceasefire during talks with his British PM Tony Blair. Gunmen ambushed an Iraqi police unit in central Baghdad, triggering a gunbattle in which six officers were killed and 30 were wounded. Mahmoud Ali Hussein al-Nida, the head of Saddam Hussein's Baijat tribe, was killed when gunmen attacked a meeting in the office of a prominent sheik in Tikrit. The gunmen also killed a lawyer and wounded sheik Mizahim al-Mustafa. Two other civilians caught in the crossfire also were killed.
(AFP, 7/24/06)(AFP, 7/25/06)(AP, 7/25/06)
2006 Jul 24, Israeli ground forces pushed deeper into Lebanon in heavy fighting with Hezbollah guerrillas. An Israeli Apache helicopter crashed near the Lebanese border while attempting an emergency landing, and there were two casualties.
(AP, 7/24/06)
2006 Jul 24, Israeli artillery shelled a town in the Gaza Strip used by Palestinian militants to fire rockets, and hospital officials said three Palestinians were killed and eight were wounded.
(AP, 7/24/06)
2006 Jul 24, Kosovo formally made its pitch for independence in Vienna, Austria, face-to-face with Serbia at their 1st top-level talks since NATO bombs drove Serb forces from the province in 1999.
(AP, 7/24/06)
2006 Jul 24, Liberia began training the first soldiers of a post-war army that officials hope will grow into a small but effective force to take over peacekeeping from UN troops.
(AP, 7/24/06)
2006 Jul 24, A Malaysian princess was stabbed to death by her son as she tried to stop him from attacking her husband (74). The son (21) later died of an apparent drug overdose. Tengku Puteri Kamariah, whose brother is Sultan Ahmad Shah, ruler of the eastern state of Pahang, died at her home in Pekan town, Pahang.
(AP, 7/25/06)
2006 Jul 24, Gunmen raided a pharmaceutical laboratory in Mexico City, killing four guards and stealing about a ton of ephedrine, a key ingredient in making methamphetamine.
(AP, 7/24/06)
2006 Jul 24, In Sudan’s South Darfur's vast Kalma camp, 17 women were raped by armed militiamen as they went out to collect firewood.
(Reuters, 7/29/06)
2006 Jul 24, WTO members in Geneva called a halt to more than five years of commerce liberalization talks (the Doha talks) as differences over farm aid proved unbridgeable. The 25-nation EU criticized US intransigence over agricultural subsidies for the breakdown, while the US blamed Brazil and India for being inflexible on cutting barriers to industrial imports and the EU for refusing to make deeper cuts in its farm import tariffs.
(AP, 7/24/06)
2006 Jul 25, President Bush was visited at the White House by Iraqi PM Nouri al-Maliki, who said he and Bush agreed that training and better arming Iraqi forces as quickly as possible was central to efforts to stabilizing his country. A Darfur rebel leader was in Washington to meet President Bush, who is trying to convince Khartoum to accept UN peacekeepers to quell the increasing violence in Sudan's remote west. President Bush pressed Darfur rebel leader Minni Arcua Minnawi to help implement a deal aimed at ending the violence in western Sudan.
(AP, 7/25/06)(Reuters, 7/25/06)(AP, 7/25/07)
2006 Jul 25, In NYC 14 athletes competed in the 10th annual Self-Transcendence 3,100 Mile Race in Jamaica, Queens. The 51-day event was sponsored by followers of meditation master Sri Chinmoy.
(Reuters, 7/25/06)
2006 Jul 25, SF Supervisors gave final approval to a plan to provide health care coverage to the city’s estimated 82,000 uninsured residents.
(SFC, 7/26/06, p.B1)
2006 Jul 25, Hewlett-Packard signed a $4.5 billion agreement to buy Mercury Interactive Corp., a maker of software for information technology networks.
(SFC, 7/26/06, p.C1)
2006 Jul 25, The Afghan government, together with the UN, appealed for $76 million to head off an "imminent food crisis" due to drought. A roadside bomb exploded in Kabul, killing two Afghans riding in a taxi. US-led coalition troops killed seven suspected Taliban militants in southern Afghanistan. In Musa Qala district 10 militants were killed and 15 wounded by coalition and Afghan forces backed by airstrikes.
(AP, 7/25/06)(AP, 7/26/06)
2006 Jul 25, Canada said it planned to pay a total of C$1.1 billion ($965 million) to around 5,500 people who had contracted hepatitis C from transfusions.
(Reuters, 7/25/06)
2006 Jul 25, Greek protesters toppled a statue of President Truman and clashed with police during demonstrations against the fighting in Lebanon.
(AP, 7/25/06)
2006 Jul 25, The first edition of a newspaper owned by the Iranian version of Hezbollah appeared on newsstands with messages of support for its Lebanese cousins in their fight against Israel.
(AP, 7/25/06)
2006 Jul 25, In Iraq police in Diyala province said five bodies were found on the streets in Muqdadiyah. Gunmen killed a police officer in front of his office in Mosul. 2 roadside bombs exploded in Baghdad, killing two civilians and wounding two bystanders and a policeman. 4 other civilians were shot dead around the capital. Two members of a Shiite family were killed and one was wounded when their removal van was sprayed with bullets. US and Iraqi soldiers captured six members of an alleged "death squad" in Baghdad, hoping to quell the rampant sectarian violence dividing the capital. Attacks elsewhere in Iraq left at least 34 people dead, including an American soldier.
(AP, 7/25/06)(AFP, 7/25/06)
2006 Jul 25, Israeli troops sealed off the town of Bint Jbail, a Hezbollah stronghold in fierce fighting in south Lebanon. Warplanes struck Nabatiyeh and destroyed a house killing seven people, four from the same family. Guerrillas fired rockets at northern Israel, killing a girl. An Israeli airstrike killed 4 UN observers at a UNIFIL post in southern Lebanon. The observers were from Austria, Canada, China and Finland. Irish observers had warned that airstrikes were too close. UNIFIL was created in 1978 after Israel's first major invasion of southern Lebanon and has been there ever since.
(AP, 7/25/06)(Reuters, 7/25/06)(WSJ, 7/27/06, p.A1)
2006 Jul 25, Italian carmaker Fiat Group and India's Tata Motors Ltd. announced they have signed an agreement for a joint-venture in India to make passenger vehicles, engines and transmissions for Indian and overseas markets.
(AP, 7/25/06)
2006 Jul 25, The Slovak central bank raised key interest rates by 50 basis points.
(Econ, 8/12/06, p.43)(www.slovakspectator.sk/clanok.asp?cl=24271)
2006 Jul 25, Sri Lanka, which at 80,000 has the largest contingent of expatriate workers in Lebanon, wants those trapped in the conflict to stay put and those who have fled the bombings to return, a minister said.
(AFP, 7/25/06)
2006 Jul 25, Officials and news reports said the Swedish government knew in 2000 that Saddam Hussein's government demanded kickbacks from companies participating in the UN Oil-for-Food Program.
(AP, 7/25/06)
2006 Jul 25, Thailand's three election commissioners, seen as close allies of embattled PM Thaksin Shinawatra, were convicted of allowing unqualified candidates to run in parliamentary elections and sentenced to four years in prison.
(AP, 7/25/06)
2006 Jul 26, Iraq’s PM Nouri al-Maliki addressed US Congress and asked for more US reconstruction aid. He did not talk of sectarian violence in Iraq and did not mention Hezbollah.
(SFC, 7/27/06, p.A12)
2006 Jul 26, The Washington state Supreme Court upheld a ban on gay marriage, saying lawmakers have the power to restrict marriage to unions between a man and woman.
(AP, 7/26/06)
2006 Jul 26, Chicago’s City Council voted by a veto-proof margin to require big-box stores like Wal-Mart to pay employees at least $10 per hour plus benefits.
(WSJ, 7/27/06, p.A1)
2006 Jul 26, In a dramatic turnaround from her first murder trial, a jury in Houston found Andrea Yates not guilty by reason of insanity in the drowning of her children in the bathtub; she was committed to a state mental hospital.
(AP, 7/26/07)
2006 Jul 26, SF police officer Nick-Tomasito Birco (39) was killed when a Dodge van carrying 4 robbery suspects broadsided his patrol car at Cambridge and Felton. Steven Wayne Petrilli (19) was charged the next day with murder, manslaughter, evading police and robbery. In 2010 Petrilli was convicted of 1st degree murder. In 2011 Carl Lather (25) and Nicholas smith (26) pleaded guilty to manslaughter and robbery charges.
(SFC, 7/27/06, p.A1)(SFC, 7/28/06, p.B1)(SFC, 9/24/10, p.C3)(SFC, 2/5/11, p.C2)
2006 Jul 26, In southern Zabul province, gunmen ambushed and killed one Afghan worker and wounded three others as they drove to work on a road being built between the town of Qalat to a new US air base just outside town. 5 militants were killed and 11 were wounded when they battled 200 Afghan police in Garmser. All 16 people including two Dutch soldiers and at least 2 American civilians were killed when their helicopter crashed in southeast Afghanistan. The Russian-made helicopter was operated by a logistics company ferrying supplies and fuel from Kabul to the Khost airport.
(AP, 7/26/06)(AFP, 7/27/06)
2006 Jul 26, China's PM Wen Jiabao called for urgent steps to prevent economic overheating, as the government forecast more double-digit growth in the next quarter.
(AP, 7/27/06)
2006 Jul 26, Xinhua News said heavy rain from Tropical Storm Kaemi caused a levee in southern China to collapse, threatening to inundate an area that's home to 20,000 villagers.
(AP, 7/26/06)
2006 Jul 26, An unhappy China said that Canada's decision to bestow honorary citizenship on the Dalai Lama could hurt commercial relations between the two countries.
(Reuters, 7/26/06)
2006 Jul 26, Jessica Gilbert (19), a British chess prodigy, fell from an eighth-floor hotel room window in the Czech Republic where she was competing in an international chess tournament. Her death took place days before the trial of her father, whom she had accused of rape, was to begin. In December Ian Gilbert (48), a director of the Royal Bank of Scotland, was acquitted of 5 counts of raping Jessica, while she was still a child, and 6 sexual offenses against other people.
(AP, 12/15/06)
2006 Jul 26, Georgian authorities reported sporadic fighting in a mountainous region where police are trying to subdue a defiant militia leader, the latest confrontation in a volatile former Soviet republic plagued by separatist movements.
(AP, 7/26/06)
2006 Jul 26, Germany, Israel and the US signed an agreement opening to researchers an archive of millions of Nazi files describing how the Holocaust was carried out.
(AP, 7/26/06)
2006 Jul 26, Israel suffered its bloodiest day in Lebanon in its offensive against Hezbollah, with militants killing at least nine soldiers in a battle for the strategic town of Bint Jbail.
(AP, 7/26/06)
2006 Jul 26, Israeli strikes killed 23 people in the Gaza Strip, including 16 militants and a mother and her two young daughters, in the deadliest day of fighting since Israel withdrew from the coastal strip last year.
(AP, 7/26/06)
2006 Jul 26, In Indian Kashmir 5 people were killed and 12 wounded, including nine in a tourist area, in 4 different gun battles.
(AFP, 7/26/06)
2006 Jul 26, Pro-government militia fighters in western Ivory Coast began laying down arms, the first step of a delayed nationwide disarmament program.
(AP, 7/27/06)
2006 Jul 26, Power was restored to parts of Liberia's dilapidated capital Monrovia for the first time in 15 years, another step in the country's emergence from more than a decade of civil war.
(AP, 7/26/06)
2006 Jul 26, A UN report said the death toll from floods and landslides in North Korea this month has risen to at least 154 people, with 127 others missing.
(AP, 7/27/06)
2006 Jul 26, Somalia's virtually powerless government said a cargo plane landed at the capital's airport and was carrying weapons for Islamic militants who have seized control of much of southern Somalia. A spokesman for the country's official government, based 150 miles northwest of Mogadishu, said the plane was carrying land mines, bombs and long-range guns from Eritrea for a militia loyal to the Supreme Islamic Courts Council.
(AP, 7/26/06)
2006 Jul 26, Sri Lanka's military carried out air attacks against suspected Tamil Tiger positions in northeast Sri Lanka after the rebels allegedly blocked an irrigation canal.
(AP, 7/26/06)
2006 Jul 27, Pres. Bush signed the Adam Walsh Act of 2006. It required convicted child molesters to be listed on a national Internet database and face a felony charge for failing to update their whereabouts.
(SFC, 7/28/06, p.A1)(www.fd.org/odstb_AdamWalsh.htm)(Econ, 8/8/09, p.9)
2006 Jul 27, Floyd Landis' stunning Tour de France victory just four days earlier was thrown into question when he tested positive for high levels of testosterone during the race. Landis denied cheating.
(AP, 7/27/07)
2006 Jul 27, An Arkansas judge approved a $90 million settlement between Google Inc. and advertisers who claimed improper billing for fraudulent clicks on ads.
(SFC, 7/28/06, p.D3)
2006 Jul 27, In California as many as 126 people were reported dead over the last 12 days from a heat wave. The heat also killed an estimated 16,000 livestock in the Central Valley as well as some 1 million poultry. By the end of the month the heat wave left 164 dead in California and moved east.
(SSFC, 7/30/06, p.A12)(WSJ, 8/2/06, p.A1)(SFC, 8/3/06, p.C2)
2006 Jul 27, In Richmond, California, police and federal agents arrested Jose Santos Bonilla (33), a suspected leader of the local MS-13 street gang. The gang was in a street war with Richmond Sureno Trece (RST).
(SFC, 7/28/06, p.B5)
2006 Jul 27, Sharman Networks Ltd., the company behind Kazaa file-sharing software, said it will redesign its software and pay over $115 million in penalties to leading music and movie companies.
(SFC, 7/28/06, p.D3)
2006 Jul 27, Robert Charles Browne, serving a life sentence in Colorado for murdering a teenage girl, claimed responsibility for as many as 48 slayings across the country dating back from 1970 until his arrest in 1995. The other claims include 17 murders in Louisiana, nine in Colorado, seven in Texas, five in Arkansas, three in Mississippi, two each in California, New Mexico and Oklahoma, and one in Washington state.
(AP, 7/28/06)
2006 Jul 27, In California the Trust for Public Land donated 6,845 acres of coastline property north of Santa Cruz to the state for public use. The Coast Dairies property was initially settled by the Moretti and Respini families in 1866.
(SFC, 7/28/06, p.A1)
2006 Jul 27, Matthew Amorello, chairman of the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority, resigned in the wake of problems with Boston’s Big Dig tunnels.
(SFC, 7/28/06, p.A10)
2006 Jul 27, Intel introduced a new line of microprocessors called Core 2 Duos. New features included higher performance and lower power consumption.
(SFC, 7/28/06, p.D1)
2006 Jul 27, Ayman al-Zawahri, Al-Qaida's No. 2 leader, issued a worldwide call for Muslims to rise up in a holy war against Israel and join the fighting in Lebanon and Gaza until Islam reigns from "Spain to Iraq."
(AP, 7/27/06)
2006 Jul 27, A fire raged through a rain forest along Brazil's eastern coastline, burning up to 25,000 acres of trees.
(AP, 7/27/06)
2006 Jul 27, Canadian police said they had busted two cross-country drug smuggling schemes, seizing 110 kilograms (243 pounds) of cocaine worth C$8.8 million ($7.8 million) and charging six people.
(Reuters, 7/27/06)
2006 Jul 27, China’s government introduced new taxes on real estate to discourage speculation. State media said flooding and landslides caused by Tropical Storm Kaemi have killed at least 25 people in southern China, including six who died when a torrent of water washed away a military barracks.
(AP, 7/27/06)(SFC, 7/28/06, p.D1)
2006 Jul 27, In Kinshasa, Congo, 3 policemen and a civilian were killed in clashes outside a stadium where 40,000 supporters greeted Vice-President Jean-Pierre Bemba, a rebel leader turned presidential candidate.
(AFP, 7/27/06)
2006 Jul 27, The European Court of Human Rights found Russia guilty of violating the "right to life" of a young Chechen who disappeared after a Russian general ordered him shot. Khadzimurat Yandiyev (25) was last seen in the hands of Russian troops in February 2000.
(AP, 7/27/06)
2006 Jul 27, French health officials said 64 people have died in a heat wave that has gripped the country for nearly two weeks.
(AP, 7/27/06)
2006 Jul 27, Georgia’s Pres. Saakashvili said his troops had established control over the Kodori Gorge area after Emzar Kvitsiani, a former presidential envoy, said he was reactivating a local militia.
(SFC, 7/28/06, p.A3)
2006 Jul 27, Greek authorities said 5 schoolchildren have been charged with killing an 11-year-old boy who disappeared five months ago. Alex Mechisvili dropped from sight in the northern town of Veroia. His body has not been found.
(AP, 7/27/06)
2006 Jul 27, Former Haitian PM Yvon Neptune was released from jail, more than two years after his arrest on charges of orchestrating the killing of political opponents at the start of a rebellion that engulfed the country.
(AP, 7/27/06)
2006 Jul 27, In India police arrested two more men in connection with Bombay's deadly train blasts, bringing to eight the number of people detained by investigators since the explosions killed more than 200 people earlier this month.
(AP, 7/28/06)
2006 Jul 27, In Iraq a rocket and mortar barrage followed by a car bomb blasted an upscale, mostly Shiite district of Baghdad, killing 32 people and wounding 153. 4 US Marines died in action in western Anbar province. A Salvadoran soldier was killed in Iraq, the 2nd soldier from El Salvador to be killed in the conflict in 8 days. Armed men in Iraqi army uniforms and driving Iraqi army vehicles stole $1.35 million in Iraqi currency in West Baghdad. Gunmen killed 3 men working for a foreign security company in Baghdad’s Mansour neighborhood. The bodies of at least 19 men, shot in the head and bearing signs of torture, were found in various parts of Baghdad.
(AP, 7/27/06)(AP, 7/28/06)(SFC, 7/28/06, p.A3)(Reuters, 7/29/06)
2006 Jul 27, Top Israeli Cabinet ministers decided not to expand the country's Lebanon offensive but ordered the call up of thousands of additional reserve soldiers to boost the campaign. The decision came as Israeli jets pounded across Lebanon, extending their air campaign.
(AP, 7/27/06)
2006 Jul 27, The Israeli air force fired missiles at a target in eastern Gaza City, wounding 15 people, at least one of them critically. 5 Palestinians were killed including a woman (75) and a child. A Palestinian was shot and killed in Jerusalem after he attacked a police patrol. The severely burned body of man, thought to be Israeli, was found in the West Bank.
(AP, 7/27/06)(SFC, 7/28/06, p.A14)
2006 Jul 27, Japan said it will allow US beef imports, suspended for the past six months, to restart from all but one of 35 US beef processing plants authorized by the US government as suppliers to Japan.
(AP, 7/27/06)
2006 Jul 27, Malawi's former President Bakili Muluzi was arrested on corruption charges related to millions of dollars in donor funds that allegedly ended up in his personal account. He was released on bail after being questioned. Muluzi faced 42 counts of theft, corruption and breach of trust.
(AP, 7/28/06)
2006 Jul 27, President-elect Alan Garcia made good on a pledge to draw talent from across the political spectrum in his 16-member Cabinet by appointing six women, including Peru's first female justice and interior ministers.
(AP, 7/27/06)
2006 Jul 27, The head of Russia's state arms-trading agency said that Russia has signed contracts with Venezuela for 24 military planes and 53 helicopters.
(AP, 7/27/06)
2006 Jul 27, A Russian rocket that was to put 18 satellites in orbit crashed shortly after liftoff. The Dnepr rocket crashed about 15 miles south of the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The rocket was carrying a Russian satellite and 17 from other countries, including the United States and Italy.
(AP, 7/27/06)
2006 Jul 27, At least 20 members of Somalia's parliament resigned, accusing the country's virtually powerless government of failing to bring peace. The parliament is supposed to have 275 member but 16 members have defected to the Islamic militia and other seats remain unfilled after members' deaths.
(AP, 7/27/06)
2006 Jul 27, Police found the bodies of four Africans on a boat packed with 26 other would-be immigrants that was intercepted off Spain's Canary Islands.
(AP, 7/28/06)
2006 Jul 27, Zambian opposition leaders were scrambling after President Levy Mwanawasa called elections for Sept. 28 and dissolved the parliament and Cabinet.
(AP, 7/27/06)
2006 Jul 28, Actor-director Mel Gibson launched an anti-Semitic tirade as he was arrested on the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu, Calif., for driving drunk; Gibson later apologized and was sentenced to probation and alcohol treatment.
(AP, 7/28/07)
2006 Jul 28, Clark McLeod, who had been chairman and chief executive of McLeodUSA, agreed to turn over $4.4 million in profits he was accused of receiving from the so-called act of "spinning." The former executive was accused by NY Attorney General Eliot Spitzer of directing more than $77 million of McLeodUSA's investment banking business to Salomon Smith Barney. In exchange, the company "secretly" gave McLeod shares of 34 stocks before its initial public offering, which resulted in a windfall of $4.8 million on the first day of public trading of the stock.
(AP, 7/30/06)
2006 Jul 28, The Pfizer Board of Directors named Jeffrey B. Kindler Pfizer's chief executive officer. He succeeds Hank McKinnell, who will remain Pfizer's chairman of the board until his retirement in February, 2007. McKinnell vacated Pfizer’s CEO spot 19 months before he was scheduled to step down, under pressure from investors angered about his retirement package and a drop of as much as 40% in the company's stock price during his five years in charge. The company later disclosed in a filing with the SEC that the package totaled more than $180 million. It includes an estimated $82.3 million in pension benefits, $77.9 million in deferred compensation, and cash and stock totaling more than $20.7 million.
(http://mediaroom.pfizer.com/index.php?s=press_releases&item=83)(AP, 12/21/06)
2006 Jul 28, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said it is ending its loss-generating business in Germany just two months after leaving South Korea in what analysts welcomed as a move to focus resources on expanding in more profitable international markets like China and Latin America. Wal-Mart sold its 85 German stores to Metro, the local market leader.
(AP, 7/28/06)(Econ, 8/5/06, p.54)
2006 Jul 28, In Seattle, Wash., gunman Naveed Afzal Haq (30) killed Pam Waechter (58) of Seattle and wounded five others at the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle. Haq said he was "angry at Israel." On June 4, 2008, a jury found him not guilty on one count of attempted murder (for victim Carol Goldman); on the remaining counts, the jury declared itself to be hung. The judge declared a mistrial. In 2009 a jury found Haq guilty of 8 counts, including aggravated first-degree murder. The murder verdict carried an automatic life sentence.
(AFP, 7/29/06)(AP, 7/30/06)(http://tinyurl.com/6myx9k)(SFC, 12/15/09, p.A9)
2006 Jul 28, In New Orleans 4 men, 3 brothers and a friend, were killed in the Treme neighborhood as they sat on the porch of an abandoned house. The dead included 16-year-old twins, their brother (21) and a friend (39). Another shooting the next day put the year to date homicide number in New Orleans at 77.
(SSFC, 7/30/06, p.A15)
2006 Jul 28, Fourteen Taliban fighters were killed in a "clearance operation" in southern Helmand province's Garmser district. In the northeastern province of Kapisa, police killed four Taliban militants including a "famous commander" while also losing one of their own men. 2 policemen guarding an archaeological site in northern Balkh province were killed and another was wounded when unknown assailants attacked them overnight.
(AFP, 7/29/06)
2006 Jul 28, A US airman convicted of raping three teenage British girls was sentenced to 12 years in prison. Prosecutors said Staff Sgt. James Gardner took advantage of vulnerable girls who lived in a children's home near the US base at Menwith Hill in northern England.
(AP, 7/28/06)
2006 Jul 28, David Gemmell (b.1948), British writer of fantasy novels, died. He wrote over 30 novels.
(WSJ, 1/23/08, p.D8)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Gemmell)
2006 Jul 28, In eastern China an explosion at a chemical plant killed at least 22 people and prompted the evacuation of 7,000 others. 28 people were missing.
(AP, 7/29/06)
2006 Jul 28, In Haiti hundreds of people fled their homes in a hillside slum of Port-au-Prince to escape fierce fighting between gangs that has killed at least 30 people in the past 2 months.
(AP, 7/29/06)
2006 Jul 28, A bomb planted between a Sunni mosque and a youth center exploded during prayers, killing four people and wounding another nine. gunmen in Tikrit killed two civilians who were employed by US troops.
(AP, 7/28/06)
2006 Jul 28, Israeli warplanes and artillery intensified strikes, hitting Hezbollah positions and crushing houses and roads in towns in southern Lebanon, killing as many as 12 people. Hezbollah announced it had fired a new rocket, called the Khaibar-1, striking near the northern Israeli town of Afula. Beirut said 600 people have been killed in Lebanon, with confirmed fatalities at 445, since fighting broke out, most of them Lebanese civilians. 33 Israeli soldiers have died in the fighting and 19 civilians were killed in Hezbollah's unyielding rocket attacks on Israel's northern towns.
(AP, 7/28/06)(WSJ, 7/28/06, p.A1)
2006 Jul 28, Hezbollah politicians, while expressing reservations, joined their critics in the government in agreeing to a peace package that includes strengthening an international force in south Lebanon and disarming the guerrillas.
(AP, 7/28/06)
2006 Jul 28, The UN decided to remove 50 unarmed observers (UNTSO and UNIFIL) from posts along the Israeli-Lebanese border and relocate them with lightly armed UN peacekeepers.
(AP, 7/28/06)
2006 Jul 28, Israeli troops withdrew from northern Gaza after a bloody two-day sweep that killed 29 Palestinians.
(AP, 7/28/06)
2006 Jul 28, The Laos government and UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said an outbreak of the H5N1 strain of bird flu has killed more than 2,000 chicken on a poultry farm. The Xaythani district farm found 155 dead chickens on July 14, and about 2,000 dead birds the following day.
(AFP, 7/28/06)
2006 Jul 28, In Nepal Communist rebels and the government have extended a cease-fire for another three months to allow talks aimed at ending a decade-long conflict to continue.
(AP, 7/28/06)
2006 Jul 28, Dutch retail giant Ahold has announced that its 1.1 billion-dollar (941,000-euro) settlement with US and Dutch investors over the company's accounting scandal that broke in 2003 and sent share prices plummeting, is now final.
(AFP, 7/29/06)
2006 Jul 28, In Quetta, Pakistan, a bomb believed rigged to a motorcycle exploded outside a bank and wounded 21 people, one critically.
(AP, 7/28/06)
2006 Jul 28, Alan Garcia returned to the presidency of Peru, pledging to battle poverty 16 years after ending his first term.
(AP, 7/28/06)
2006 Jul 28, Poland's conservative President Lech Kaczynski vowed to campaign for a return of the death penalty in the European Union.
(AP, 7/28/06)
2006 Jul 28, In Russia Pres. Putin signed a law making slander of a public official a crime.
(WSJ, 7/29/06, p.A1)
2006 Jul 28, Hundreds of people rioted near the headquarters of Somalia's virtually powerless government after a Cabinet minister was fatally shot outside a mosque.
(AP, 7/28/06)
2006 Jul 28, South Korea sent a satellite into orbit primarily for making geographical surveys but also possibly for tracking military movements in North Korea, which raised regional security concerns by launching missiles on July 5.
(Reuters, 8/1/06)
2006 Jul 28, The Spanish government approved a divisive bill allowing reparations for victims of the Spanish Civil War and the ensuing dictatorship of Gen. Francisco Franco.
(AP, 7/29/06)
2006 Jul 28, Sudanese government forces and allied militias attacked bases of a new rebel alliance in Darfur despite a ceasefire in the violent west.
(Reuters, 7/29/06)
2006 Jul 28, Taiwanese prosecutors indicted a man for murder, alleging he helped his brother stage a train derailment that ultimately led to the death of his brother's wife, and said they will seek the death penalty. The wife of Lee Suan-chuan, a train-ticket seller, was injured when the train she was traveling on derailed and tumbled into a deep valley on March 27 in southern Taiwan's Pingtung region.
(AP, 7/28/06)
2006 Jul 28, The five permanent members of the UN Security Council reached a deal on a resolution that would give Iran until the end of August to suspend uranium enrichment or face the threat of economic and diplomatic sanctions.
(AP, 7/28/06)
2006 Jul 28, Danilo Astori, Uruguay’s Finance Minister, said Uruguay will make an early debt payment of $900 million to the IMF due in 2007. The move will save about $40 million in interest payments. This would cancel about half its entire debt to the IMF.
(WSJ, 7/31/06, p.A6)
2006 Jul 29, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice flew back to the Middle East for diplomatic discussions aimed at ending the violence there.
(AP, 7/29/06)
2006 Jul 29, Actor-director Mel Gibson issued a lengthy statement apologizing for his drunken-driving arrest and for what he called his "despicable" statements toward the deputies who arrested him in Malibu, Calif.
(AP, 7/29/07)
2006 Jul 29, Nebraska climatologist Mark Svoboda said more than 60% of the US has abnormally dry or drought conditions, stretching from Georgia to Arizona and across the north through the Dakotas, Minnesota, Montana and Wisconsin.
(AP, 7/29/06)
2006 Jul 29, In Brazil about $200,000 was found in a house in Natal, about 1,400 miles northeast of Sao Paulo. Police were convinced the money was part of the $70 million stolen from the Central Bank in Fortaleza in Aug 2005. By this time only $8 million was recovered.
(AP, 8/4/06)
2006 Jul 29, The Middle East crisis dominated the first full day of PM Tony Blair's tour of California, forcing his promotion of British business interests here to take a back seat. Blair's former foreign secretary, Jack Straw, condemned Israeli action against Lebanon as "disproportionate" in the first such comment by a senior British government minister. PM Blair said an international agreement, leading to a cease-fire in the Israel-Hezbollah conflict, is possible sometime in the next few days.
(AFP, 7/30/06)(AP, 7/29/06)
2006 Jul 29, Daniel Lev (72), a leading Indonesia scholar and longtime University of Washington professor, died following a battle with lung cancer.
(AP, 8/2/06)
2006 Jul 29, US-led coalition forces detained 4 suspected al-Qaida operatives in eastern Afghanistan. In southern Afghanistan US-led coalition forces and Afghan police killed 20 suspected Taliban who had attempted an ambush in Uruzgan province. In Kandahar province 3 militants blew themselves up as they laid an explosive on a road.
(AP, 7/29/06)(AP, 7/30/06)
2006 Jul 29, In Bangladesh more than 20,000 activists marched in Dhaka, defying driving rains, in the fifth day of protests to press for electoral reforms ahead of January polls.
(AFP, 7/29/06)
2006 Jul 29, Workers at Wal-Mart stores in China formed their 1st trade union.
(SFC, 7/31/06, p.A3)(Econ, 9/23/06, p.43)
2006 Jul 29, Iran state radio said the government would reject a proposed UN resolution to suspend uranium enrichment by Aug. 31 or face the threat of international sanctions. State media also reported that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has ordered government and cultural bodies to use modified Persian words to replace foreign words that have crept into the language, such as "pizzas" which will now be known as "elastic loaves."
(AP, 7/29/06)
2006 Jul 29, In Tehran the presidents of Iran and Venezuela pledged to support one another in disputes with Washington, with the Iranian calling Hugo Chavez "a brother and trench mate."
(AP, 7/29/06)
2006 Jul 29, A car packed with explosives blew up in a residential district of Kirkuk, killing four people and injuring 13. A Sunni cleric from a tribe opposed to al-Qaida in Iraq was killed while driving in Samarra. 4 unidentified bodies riddled with bullets were found, two behind a school in western Baghdad and two by the Tigris river. Gunmen fired on a taxi in Baghdad carrying a father and son, killing the boy. The US command announced that it was sending 3,700 troops to Baghdad to try to quell the sectarian violence sweeping the capital, and a US official said more American soldiers would follow as the military gears up to take the streets from gunmen. The tours of 4,000 US soldiers in Iraq were extended for up to 4 months. 4 US Marines were killed in combat in Anbar province.
(AP, 7/29/06)(AP, 7/30/06)(SSFC, 7/30/06, p.A3)(SFC, 7/31/06, p.A3)
2006 Jul 29, Israel said it had pulled forces out of Hezbollah's stronghold in south Lebanon after completing its current operation there. Israeli planes targeted bridges in southern and eastern Lebanon in new airstrikes, destroying one in a resort area on the Syrian border. Israel rejected a request by the UN for a three-day cease-fire in Lebanon to deliver humanitarian supplies and allow civilians to leave the war zone.
(AP, 7/29/06)
2006 Jul 29, Israeli tanks pushed back into the Gaza Strip before dawn, a day after ending a bloody, 3-day sweep that killed 30 Palestinians. Israeli troops killed 2 militants including Hani Awijan (29), a leader of the radical Islamic Jihad’s militant wing in Nablus, in a West Bank raid.
(AP, 7/29/06)(AP, 7/30/06)
2006 Jul 29, A strike protesting against a visit by India's president to Indian Kashmir shut much of the region for a second day, while four soldiers were reportedly hurt in a rebel attack.
(AFP, 7/29/06)
2006 Jul 29, In Puerto Rico drug kingpin Jose Lopez Rosario (b.1976), who allegedly controlled the drug trade in the US island's northeastern region, died from gunshot wounds received on July 23. His death and his alleged connections to political figures were controversial in Puerto Rico, as local newspapers such as El Nuevo Dia and El Vocero covered the story for days after he died.
(AP, 5/12/10)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jose_Lopez_Rosario)
2006 Jul 29, Somalia's PM Mohammed Ali Gedi accused Egypt, Libya and Iran of providing weapons for Islamic militants who have seized control of much of this country's south.
(AP, 7/29/06)
2006 Jul 29, Sri Lanka's air force bombed Tamil Tiger rebel positions for a fourth day, killing at least 8 rebels and wounding 14.
(AP, 7/29/06)
2006 Jul 29, Marathon talks to end Ukraine's political paralysis broke off without an agreement between President Viktor Yushchenko and the pro-Russian parliamentary majority that has nominated his former Orange Revolution rival as prime minister.
(AP, 7/29/06)
2006 Jul 29, An oil spill occurred in Russia’s western Bryansk region on the border with Ukraine and Belarus. It affected a 4-square-mile area and contaminated water sources. 2 days later Russia’s Natural Resources Ministry said that the oil pipeline leak threatened environmental damage, but the pipeline’s operator said the spill only affected a 4,000-square-foot area and that the consequences had been dealt with over the weekend.
(AP, 7/31/06)
2006 Jul 30, Murray Bookchin (b.1921), American anarchist and libertarian socialist, died in Vermont. Bookchin initiated the critical theory of social ecology within anarchist, libertarian socialist, and ecological thought. His books included “Post-Scarcity Anarchism" (1971) and “The Ecology of Freedom: The Emergence and Dissolution of Hierarchy" (1982).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray_Bookchin)
2006 Jul 30, Afghan and coalition forces killed 23 Taliban militants in clashes in Helmand province's Garmser district.
(AFP, 7/31/06)
2006 Jul 30, In Bahrain 16 Indian workers died when a fire broke out in the building where they lived in the capital Manama. The six-storey building housed some 300 workers, mostly Indians, working for a contracting company.
(AFP, 7/30/06)
2006 Jul 30, It was reported that China had lowered the estimated number of HIV/AIDS infected people from 840,000 to 650,000.
(SSFC, 7/30/06, p.A17)
2006 Jul 30, Congolese voted in their first democratic election in more than four decades. Incumbent President Joseph Kabila later won a runoff.
(AP, 7/30/06)(AP, 7/30/07)
2006 Jul 30, Afghan soldiers and police killed six Taliban fighters and captured eight during a clash in southeastern Paktika province's Waza Khwa district. A suspected Taliban died when a land mine he was planting north of Kandahar city exploded.
(AP, 7/30/06)
2006 Jul 30, In India at least 8 people died during heavy monsoon rains at the weekend and more than 25,000 were evacuated in the western state of Gujarat.
(AFP, 7/30/06)
2006 Jul 30, In Iraq gunmen killed at least 23 pilgrims on their way to Najaf. A car bomb in Kirkuk killed 6 people and wounded 17.
(SFC, 7/31/06, p.A3)
2006 Jul 30, Israeli missiles hit several buildings in Qana, a southern Lebanon village, as people slept, killing 29, mostly children, in the deadliest attack in 19 days of fighting. Israeli PM Ehud Olmert expressed "great sorrow" for the airstrikes but blamed Hezbollah guerrillas for using the area to launch rockets at Israel. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan called an emergency meeting of the Security Council. Israel suspended air attacks on south Lebanon for 48 hours in the face of widespread outrage over the airstrike.
(AP, 8/3/06)(AP, 7/30/07)
2006 Jul 30, In Indian Kashmir 6 people were killed in shootings and 10 wounded in a grenade attack on a bus carrying Hindu pilgrims.
(AFP, 7/31/06)
2006 Jul 30, Residents on the tiny island nation of Sao Tome and Principe off West Africa voted for a new president.
(AP, 7/30/06)
2006 Jul 30, The first commercial flight in a decade departed Mogadishu’s newly reopened international airport, demonstrating how Islamic militants have pacified the once-anarchic capital and much of southern Somalia.
(AP, 7/30/06)
2006 Jul 30, The Seychelles held presidential elections. External debt was reported to be $590 million for the population of 82,000 people.
(Econ, 8/12/06, p.40)
2006 Jul 30, Sunbathers on a beach in Spain's Canary Islands came to the aid of 88 African migrants whose boat ran aground, giving them food, water and blankets after their dangerous trip in search of a new life.
(AP, 7/31/06)
2006 Jul 30, Duygu Asena (60), a best-selling writer and crusader for women's rights in Turkey, died after a two-year battle with a brain tumor. In 1978 she founded the first women's magazine in Turkey. Asena was the first Turkish writer to explore such topics as women's rights, sexuality and wife-beating. Her 1987 book “Woman Has No Name" broke sales records when it was printed, but was soon banned by the government which found it to be too lewd and obscene. The ban was lifted after a two-year court battle. A film adaptation of the book broke box office records in Turkey.
(AP, 7/31/06)
2006 Jul 30, In eastern Uganda a minibus that was speeding collided with a fuel truck killing 30 people.
(AP, 7/31/06)
2006 Jul 31, In California PM Blair and Gov. Schwarzenegger committed to a number of actions to fight global warming including a look for market-based ways to stem emissions of the gases believed to cause global warming.
(WSJ, 8/1/06, p.A8)
2006 Jul 31, In Los Angeles 2 women, Olga Rutterschmidt (73) and Helen Golay (75), were charged with killing homeless men in hit-and-run car crashes in order to collect over $2 million in life insurance. In 2008 both women were convicted of murder and conspiracy. They were sentenced to spend the rest of their lives in prison.
(SFC, 8/1/06, p.A3)(SFC, 4/18/08, p.B6)(SFC, 7/16/08, p.B5)
2006 Jul 31, SanDisk Corp. of Milpitas, Ca., agreed to buy M-Systems Flash Disk Pioneers Ltd. of Israel for $1.56 billion in stock.
(SFC, 8/1/06, p.D1)
2006 Jul 31, Scientists reported the development of a vaccine to control obesity in rats. The vaccine produced antibodies against ghrelin, a hormone that stimulates hunger and fat storage.
(SFC, 8/1/06, p.A2)
2006 Jul 31, NATO took command of southern Afghanistan from the United States, and the new commander of the push to pacify the insurgency-wracked region vowed that he would not fail millions of Afghans seeking peace and stability. A bomb exploded outside a mosque in eastern Afghanistan during a memorial service for a mujahedeen commander, killing at least eight people and wounding 16.
(AP, 7/31/06)
2006 Jul 31, Australian PM John Howard said he would seek a fifth straight term, ending his ambitious deputy's leadership hopes and cementing his place as one of the world's most successful conservative leaders.
(Reuters, 7/31/06)
2006 Jul 31, A lesbian couple lost a legal battle to have their Canadian marriage legally recognized in Britain.
(Reuters, 7/31/06)
2006 Jul 31, The Canadian Food Inspection Agency said two separate anthrax outbreaks in the Canadian Prairies have killed about 500 animals on an estimated 100 farms.
(Reuters, 7/31/06)
2006 Jul 31, In Colombia suspected rebels ambushed an army patrol, exploded a car bomb in Bogota and another bomb in the southwest, killing at least 18 people in a wave of attacks a week before the presidential inauguration.
(AP, 7/31/06)
2006 Jul 31, Dozens of polling stations reopened in Congo’s second-largest city, offering citizens stymied by violence during their nation’s historic elections another chance to vote.
(AP, 7/31/06)
2006 Jul 31, Cuban President Fidel Castro temporarily ceded power to his brother, Raul, after gastrointestinal surgery. In 2011 Fidel Castro said he resigned five years ago from all his official positions, including head of Cuba's Communist Party.
(AP, 7/31/07)(AP, 3/22/11)
2006 Jul 31, France's agriculture minister condemned the destruction of two fields of genetically modified corn by activists in southwestern France.
(AP, 7/31/06)
2006 Jul 31, Akbar Mohammadi (34) died in Tehran’s Evin Prison after a nine-day hunger strike to protest a lack of medical care. Mohammadi had been arrested for taking part in protests at Tehran University in July 1999, Iran's biggest anti-government demonstrations since the 1979 Islamic revolution. The EU later expressed grave concern regarding the harsh treatment of dissidents, opposition leaders, student activists and all human rights defenders in Iranian prisons.
(AP, 8/24/06)
2006 Jul 31, In Iraq gunmen wearing military fatigues kidnapped 26 employees and customers from a mobile phone store in the main shopping area of Baghdad. Sectarian killings claimed 30 lives.
(AP, 8/1/06)(WSJ, 8/1/06, p.A1)
2006 Jul 31, Israeli warplanes carried out airstrikes in southern Lebanon, hours after agreeing to temporarily halt raids while investigating a bombing that killed nearly 60 Lebanese civilians. Israel accidentally killed a Lebanese soldier when it hit a car that it believed was carrying a senior Hezbollah official.
(AP, 7/31/06)
2006 Jul 31, In Indian Kashmir four rebels and a policeman were killed in three separate gunbattles in southern Poonch and Pulwama districts.
(AP, 8/1/06)
2006 Jul 31, Every Kuwaiti citizen will get a $694 gift from the government after parliament unanimously backed the one-time payout. 2 million foreign workers, who make up the rest of Kuwait's population of 3 million, do not get the payment.
(AP, 7/31/06)
2006 Jul 31, Malawi's top prosecutor said theft and corruption charges against the former president Bakili Muluzi have been dropped after Pres. Bingu wa Mutharika suspended the chief investigator in the case.
(AP, 7/31/06)
2006 Jul 31, In Mexico supporters of the country’s leftist presidential candidate paralyzed the Mexico City’s financial district and said they won’t leave until the top electoral court rules on their demands for a recount in the disputed race.
(AP, 7/31/06)
2006 Jul 31, Mexican police found the body of a woman on a dirt road in the border city of Ciudad Juarez. Abigail Rodriguez (29), who apparently had been killed by a blow to the head and thrown out of a moving car, was the 14th woman found dead in Juarez so far this year.
(AP, 8/1/06)
2006 Jul 31, Peru’s President Alan Garcia cut government salaries, including his own, three days after announcing a long list of austerity measures in his inaugural address.
(AP, 7/31/06)
2006 Jul 31, Russian officials said more than 220 pieces, including jewelry and enameled objects worth about $5 million, stolen from the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, were not insured. The theft was discovered after a routine inventory check that began in October 2005 and was completed at the end of July.
(AP, 8/1/06)(SFC, 8/1/06, p.A3)
2006 Jul 31, Serbia’s PM Vojislav Kostunica said in published remarks that Serbia will reject independence as a solution for Kosovo and continue to consider the province part of its territory.
(AP, 7/31/06)
2006 Jul 31, In South Korea Jeong Kyung-hak (48) was arrested on charges of being a spy for North Korea and having illegally arrived on Jul 27 with forged Philippines identity documents.
(AP, 8/21/06)
2006 Jul 31, In northeastern Sri Lanka heavy fighting over control of a water supply killed 35 Tamil rebels and seven soldiers. A rebel leader declared the island nation's four-year-old cease-fire over.
(AP, 7/31/06)
2006 Jul 31, Turkey named Gen. Yasar Buyukanit as the new military chief. He favored a tougher line against Kurdish rebels and negotiations on joining the EU.
(AP, 7/31/06)
2006 Jul 31, The UN passed Resolution 1696, which demanded that Iran suspend uranium enrichment by the end of August.
(www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2006/sc8792.doc.htm)
2006 Jul 31, The UN scrapped a meeting of nations that might contribute troops to help stabilize south Lebanon, a decision that reflected the deep divisions among key nations on how to end the three-week war between Israel and Hezbollah.
(AP, 7/31/06)
2006 Jul 31, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez praised Vietnam for its battle against "imperialism" and pledged to help the communist country develop its nascent oil and gas industry during a two-day state visit.
(AP, 8/1/06)
2006 Jul 31, Zimbabwe devalued its currency by 60% and slashed loan rates 550 points to 300%. 3 zeroes were off denominations amid 1200% inflation.
(WSJ, 8/1/06, p.A1)
2006 Jul, Interpol, at the request of the Bush administration, assembled central bankers, police agencies and banknote industry officials to make the US case against counterfeiting by North Korea. In 2008 a 10-month investigation by the McClatchy newspapers found that evidence supporting charges was uncertain at best.
(SFC, 1/10/08, p.A13)
2006 Jul, US Scientists reported that the number of fires in the western United States had increased fourfold since 1986 and attributed the increase to climate change.
(Econ, 7/22/06, p.37)
2006 Jul, Eclipse Aviation of Albuquerque, NM, hoped to get approval from the FAA for its new very light jet (VLJ), which sets 5 passengers and a pilot.
(Econ, 7/1/06, p.61)
2006 Jul, A study led by Roland Griffiths of Johns Hopkins Univ. showed that psilocybin, the active ingredient in “magic mushroom," induces mental states akin to the highest religious experiences, and that it has lasting effects on those who take it.
(www.erowid.org/plants/mushrooms/)(Econ, 7/15/06, p.78)
2006 Jul, Canada’s Montreal Exchange announced plans to start trading credits for carbon-dioxide emissions, a scheme modeled on the Amsterdam-based European Climate Exchange set up in 2005.
(Econ, 7/22/06, p.39)
2006 Jul, In Shanghai, China, a financial scandal was uncovered that involved the misappropriation of one-third of the city’s $1.2 billion social-security fund. An official said that $2 billion had been embezzled from the fund since 1998. Chinese investigators began looking into corruption and malfeasance associated with Shanghai’s $1.2 billion pension fund. On Sep 24 the probe brought down the city’s top official, Communist party Secretary Chen Liangyu, a British educated architect. In 2007 the government made a propaganda film titled “The Harm of Greed" featuring confessions from 11 people involved in the scandal.
(Econ, 9/9/06, p.42)(WSJ, 11/14/06, p.C14)(WSJ, 2/6/07, p.A1)(WSJ, 1/30/08, p.A9)
2006 Jul, The Dominican Republic government imposed a new law to combat crime, all bars, liquor stores and nightclubs must close at midnight on weekdays and at 2 am on weekends.
(AP, 10/14/06)
2006 Jul, Some 162,000 Iraqis had registered as refugees with 30,000 in this month alone. About 3,500 violent deaths were reported across Iraq including 1,500 in the Baghdad area for just this month. Figures showed a steady increase in killings since the beginning of the year.
(Econ, 7/29/06, p.45)(AP, 8/9/06)(WSJ, 8/17/06, p.A1)
2006 Jul, In Japan fans of pachinko slot machines queued up to play the latest Hokuto-no-ken (North-star Fist) game. It was estimated that Japanese spent $260 billion playing pachinko and pachislot slot machines. Parlors gave non-cash prizes, but shops nearby allowed winners to trade their prizes for cash.
(Econ, 7/29/06, p.60)
2006 Jul, Mauritania netted $700 million from the EU for fishing rights over 6 years. The amount of fish in West African waters has declined by 50% over the past 3 decades.
(WSJ, 1/18/07, p.A13)
2006 Jul, In Myanmar the daughter of junta supremo Than Shwe (73) was married. In November a leaked video of the lavish wedding sparked outrage among ordinary people in the military-ruled and deeply impoverished nation.
(Reuters, 11/2/06)
2006 Jul, Oman and the UAE completed the delineation of their 1,000-km (625-mile) shared borders, in line with a June 2002 accord.
(AFP, 1/30/11)
2006 Jul, In Pakistan some 7% of Sindh province landowners hold over 40% of the Sindh’s land.
(Econ, 7/8/06, Survey p.12)
2006 Jul, Willie Hofmeyr, head of South Africa’s Special Investigating Unit, said 400,000 civil servants had been identified getting welfare payments to which they were not entitled.
(http://tinyurl.com/yflgrxl)(Econ, 2/6/10, p.52)
2006 Jul, In Spain employees of the airline Iberia blocked Barcelona runways over a new baggage check arrangement. In 2011 Spain’s Supreme Court confirmed 2-year prison sentences for 23 employees whose actions affected some 600 flights leaving 100,000 passengers stranded.
(SFC, 1/29/11, p.A2)
2006 Jul, Spain’s inflation stood close to 4%, almost 1.5 points above the average for the euro area. Spain’s current account deficit was among the highest in the world heading for over 9% of GDP. Housing was estimated to be overvalued by as much as 25-30%.
(Econ, 7/29/06, p.49)
2006 Jul, In Sudan 8 Sudanese aid workers were killed this month in attacks across Darfur.
(SFC, 8/9/06, p.A3)
2006 Jul, Istanbul’s seventh high court reopened prosecution against Elif Shafak (b.1971), Turkish writer, for “denigrating Turkishness" in her latest novel “The Bastard of Istanbul." Her trial was set for Sep 21, 4 days she was due to give birth.
(http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,,1815420,00.html)
2006 Aug 1, Former President Clinton and mayors of some of the world's largest cities announced an initiative to combat climate change and increase energy efficiency in everything from street lights to building materials.
(AP, 8/1/06)
2006 Aug 1, A US report said graft in Iraq reconstruction is running at $4 billion a year and growing.
(WSJ, 8/2/06, p.A1)
2006 Aug 1, US sanctions on Myanmar were extended for up to three years under a law signed by President Bush, an attempt to increase pressure on the government to follow through with democratic reforms.
(AP, 8/1/06)
2006 Aug 1, Mel Gibson issued a statement in which he denied being a bigot; he also apologized to "everyone in the Jewish community for the vitriolic and harmful words" he'd used when he was arrested in southern California for investigation of drunken driving.
(AP, 8/1/07)
2006 Aug 1, Kansas voters in the state’s primary ousted the conservative majority on the Board of Education that favored “intelligent design" over Darwin’s theory of evolution.
(SFC, 8/3/06, p.A3)
2006 Aug 1, Philip H. Knight, founder of Nike Inc., pledged $105 million to the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Most of it will be used for a new $275 million facility to be called the Knight Management Center.
(SFC, 8/2/06, p.B1)
2006 Aug 1, In southern Afghanistan Taliban militants killed three British soldiers. 18 Taliban militants and one policeman were killed as Afghan forces and coalition aircraft raided an insurgent hide-out near Garmser.
(AP, 8/1/06)(AP, 8/2/06)
2006 Aug 1, Cabinda, a 7,000 sq-km province of Angola located on the western coast just north of the CongoDRC, signed the “Memorandum of Understanding for Peace in Cabinda" with the government of Angola, granting it “a special statute" and greater autonomy. In 2007 the province pumped over half of Angola’s 1.7 million barrels per day oil production.
(Econ, 1/5/08, Angola p.8)
2006 Aug 1, Britain launched the country's first public terror alert system and said it faces a severe risk of another terrorist attack.
(AP, 8/1/06)
2006 Aug 1, Chinese official media reported that Mouding county in Yunnan killed as many as 50,000 dogs in a 5-day government campaign ordered after three people died from rabies. China’s government said police have seized about 6,000 illegal firearms and tons of explosives in a two-month crackdown across three provinces.
(AP, 8/1/06)
2006 Aug 1, A Congolese opposition party and former rebel group denounced widespread fraud in the country's historic elections in a protest that heralded a divisive political dispute over the polls.
(AP, 8/1/06)
2006 Aug 1, Fidel Castro remained out of sight after undergoing intestinal surgery and temporarily turning over power to his brother Raul. He released a statement in which he sought to reassure Cubans that his health was stable after intestinal surgery.
(AP, 8/1/06)(AP, 8/1/07)
2006 Aug 1, In northern India a school bus carrying about 50 children plunged into a canal, killing at least six children.
(AP, 8/1/06)
2006 Aug 1, Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad rejected the UN Security Council resolution giving Iran until Aug. 31 to suspend uranium enrichment. Ahmadinejad added that Tehran will pursue its nuclear program.
(AP, 8/1/06)
2006 Aug 1, Bombings and shootings across Iraq killed over 70 people, including 24 people in a bus destroyed by a roadside bomb in Beiji. In the Karradah neighborhood of Baghdad, a car bomb exploded during morning rush hour near a bank, killing at least 14 people and injuring 37. A US report said graft in Iraq reconstruction is running at $4 billion a year and growing.
(AP, 8/1/06)(AP, 8/2/06)(WSJ, 8/2/06, p.A1)
2006 Aug 1, Israel's air force fired missiles into northern Gaza, killing a 14-year-old boy and wounding four others near Beit Hanoun.
(AP, 8/1/06)
2006 Aug 1, In Indian Kashmir 4 security personnel were killed in a shooting at a popular tourist spot.
(AP, 8/1/06)
2006 Aug 1, Heavy fighting raged in the Lebanese border village of Aita al-Shaab, and Hezbollah television said 35 Israeli soldiers had been killed or wounded in the fighting. Israeli warplanes pounded Shiite Lebanese villages in many areas along the border and struck Hezbollah strongholds deep inside the country.
(AP, 8/1/06)
2006 Aug 1, The Papua New Guinea government declared a state of emergency in the resource-rich Southern Highlands province. PM Somare said security forces had been sent to the graft-ridden province and government controllers appointed to try to restore good governance.
(AFP, 8/1/06)
2006 Aug 1, A Moscow judge declared the Yukos oil company bankrupt, paving the way for the liquidation of what was once Russia's biggest oil producer.
(AP, 8/1/06)
2006 Aug 1, Dutch Cardinal Johannes Willebrands (96), a key figure in the Roman Catholic Church's efforts to improve relations with other Christians and Jews, died.
(AP, 8/2/06)
2006 Aug 1, Officials said incumbent Seychelles President James Michel of the People's Progressive Front won nearly 54% of the vote over the weekend, while opposition leader Wavel Ramkalawan got 46%.
(AP, 8/1/06)
2006 Aug 1, A pro-rebel Web site reported said Tamil Tiger rebels destroyed a Sri Lanka navy boat in a battle near an eastern port killing 8 sailors. Navy spokesman Commander D.K.P Dassanayake denied the report and said sailors destroyed three rebel attack boats.
(AP, 8/1/06)
2006 Aug 1, Assailants carried out at least 40 bomb and arson attacks in Thailand's three Muslim-dominated southernmost provinces. At least three people were reported hurt.
(AP, 8/1/06)
2006 Aug 2, A Pentagon official said evidence collected on the deaths of 24 Iraqis in Haditha supports accusations that US Marines deliberately shot the civilians, including unarmed women and children on Nov 19, 2005.
(AP, 8/2/06)
2006 Aug 2, Five days after being pulled over by police, actor-director Mel Gibson was charged with misdemeanor drunken driving, having an elevated blood-alcohol level and having an open container of liquor in his car. Gibson later pleaded no contest to drunken driving under a deal in which he received three years' probation, paid a fine and agreed to attend alcohol rehabilitation classes.
(AP, 8/2/07)
2006 Aug 2, Florida and CSX Transportation struck a deal on a nearly $1 billion commuter rail system in central Florida to relieve gridlock in and around Orlando.
(Reuters, 8/2/06)
2006 Aug 2, AOL shifted to an advertising strategy as customers cancelled their dial-up service and jumped to high-speed Internet connections.
(SFC, 8/3/06, p.C1)
2006 Aug 2, Australia's central bank raised interest rates by 25 basis points to a six-year high of 6.0% in an effort to head off inflationary pressures in a booming economy.
(AFP, 8/2/06)
2006 Aug 2, The Australian government said it had started reducing troop numbers in East Timor as security in the tiny nation was steadily improving.
(AP, 8/3/06)
2006 Aug 2, In southern Colombia a land mine planted by leftist rebels killed six coca eradicators and injured seven others.
(AP, 8/2/06)
2006 Aug 2, A Paris commercial court granted Eurotunnel protection from creditors, enabling the operator of the Channel Tunnel to freeze payments on its debt mountain of 9.0 billion euros (11.5 billion dollars).
(AFP, 8/2/06)
2006 Aug 2, India banned children under the age of 14 from working as domestic servants or at hotels, tea shops, restaurants and resorts. The labor ministry said the ban would come into effect from October 10.
(Reuters, 8/2/06)
2006 Aug 2, President Jalal Talabani said that Iraqi forces will assume security duties for the whole country by the end of the year, taking over responsibility from US and other foreign troops now policing all but one of the 18 provinces. Sectarian and political violence claimed at least 53 lives, including 11 young soccer players and spectators who died when two bombs exploded in a field in a Shiite neighborhood of Baghdad. 2 US Marines died in Anbar province.
(AP, 8/2/06)(AP, 8/3/06)(SFC, 8/4/06, p.A9)
2006 Aug 2, Israel pressed the first full day of a massive new ground attack, sending 8,000 troops into southern Lebanon and seizing five people it said were Hezbollah fighters in a dramatic airborne raid on a northeastern town. Hezbollah retaliated with its deepest strikes yet into Israel, firing a record number of more than 230 rockets. An Israeli-American was killed as he fled for home by bicycle, and a stray rocket hit the West Bank for the first time. People in the Lebanese village of Al Jamaliyeh, outside the Hezbollah stronghold of Baalbek, used a front-end loader to carry away some of the dead after a night of Israeli airstrikes and a commando raid inside Baalbek that residents said killed at least 15 civilians.
(AP, 8/2/06)(SFC, 8/3/06, p.A1)
2006 Aug 2, In Oaxaca, Mexico, about 500 women banging spoons against pots and pans seized a state-run television station and broadcast a homemade video that showed police kicking protesters out of Oaxaca's main square last month. In southern Monte Orden village heavy rains caused a mountainside to give way, burying 2 homes and killing 11 people, 4 of them children.
(AP, 8/2/06)
2006 Aug 2, Production at Cantarell, Mexico’s biggest oil field, was reported to be declining. The site accounted for about 60% of Mexico’s oil. A third of Mexico’s federal budget depended on oil sales.
(WSJ, 8/2/06, p.A4)
2006 Aug 2, Somali leaders struggled to regroup after a week in which 29 ministers quit the government, with the defectors urging the virtually powerless administration to reconcile with Islamic militants who have seized the capital.
(AP, 8/2/06)
2006 Aug 2, South Africans faced one of their harshest winters in years, with at least four deaths blamed on flooding from heavy rain that has caused travel delays in the south and west of the country.
(AP, 8/2/06)
2006 Aug 2, Tamil rebels said they had overrun four Sri Lankan army camps around the northeastern port of Trincomalee. The Defense Ministry acknowledged that five soldiers were killed in the attacks and claimed its forces killed 40 insurgents and wounded 70 others.
(AP, 8/2/06)
2006 Aug 2, In southern Thailand a bomb planted along a railroad exploded and killed three policemen.
(AP, 8/2/06)
2006 Aug 3, US authorities confirmed at least 25 deaths in 9 states from the heat wave that set in on July 30.
(SFC, 8/4/06, p.A3)
2006 Aug 3, In Phoenix, Ariz., Dale S. Hausner (33) and Samuel John Dieteman (30), accused of shooting two dozen people, including six fatally, were arrested after police tailed them for a week. In 2009 Hausner was convicted of 6 murders. In 2009 Dieteman was sentenced to life in prison for random shootings in the Phoenix area in 2005 and 2006.
(AP, 8/5/06)(WSJ, 3/28/09, p.A2)(SFC, 7/30/09, p.A4)
2006 Aug 3, Arthur Lee (61), rock pioneer, died in Memphis. He fronted the band Love and established himself as the 1st black rock star in the post Beatle’s era. The group’s debut album, “Love," was the 1st rock record released by Electra Records.
(SSFC, 8/6/06, p.B6)
2006 Aug 3, Afghanistan's government ordered around 1,500 South Korean Christians who came to the Islamic republic for a "peace festival" to leave the country. The US-led coalition killed 25 Taliban fighters in a joint operation with Afghan forces in the country's south. A gunbattle near the capital killed one militant. A suspected Taliban suicide car bomber killed 21 civilians and wounded 13 at a bazaar in Panjwayi. On the outskirts of Kandahar city militant attacks killed 4 Canadian soldiers and wounded another 10.
(AFP, 8/3/06)(AP, 8/4/06)
2006 Aug 3, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf (90), German-born opera soprano, died in Schrums, Austria.
(SFC, 8/4/06, p.B9)(Econ, 8/12/06, p.72)
2006 Aug 3, In Brazil officials said authorities are evicting thousands of peasants who have been ordered off ranches in northern Brazil by a court ruling obtained by the land owners.
(AP, 8/3/06)
2006 Aug 3, More than 230,000 customers in Ontario and Quebec were without power following a series of violent thunderstorms over the past couple of days.
(AP, 8/3/06)
2006 Aug 3, Typhoon Prapiroon slammed into southern China, packing heavy rain and 75 mph winds as authorities evacuated tens of thousands of people from their homes.
(AP, 8/3/06)
2006 Aug 3, State press reported that China is building a 27-billion-dollar train line from Beijing to the southern economic hub of Shenzhen and foreign investors will be invited to join the project. The new 2,300-kilometer (1,420-mile) railway will cut travel time between Beijing and Shenzhen, which borders Hong Kong, from 24 hours to 10.
(AFP, 8/3/06)
2006 Aug 3, In eastern Congo a small passenger plane crashed into a mountain and then tumbled into a valley, killing all 17 passengers and crew.
(AP, 8/4/06)
2006 Aug 3, A pair of European central banks raised interest rates, increasing expectations on Wall Street that the Federal Reserve would follow suit next week. The European Central Bank hiked rates .25% to 3%, with a similar hike by the Bank of England to 4.75%.
(AP, 8/3/06)
2006 Aug 3, A French law that allows regulators to force Apple Computer Inc. to make its iPod player and iTunes online store compatible with rival offerings went into effect.
(AP, 8/3/06)
2006 Aug 3, French health officials said the sweltering temperatures that gripped Europe last month killed 112 people.
(AP, 8/3/06)
2006 Aug 3, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, making his first trip to Haiti, called for strengthening the national police force to stem an upsurge in kidnapping and lawlessness.
(AP, 8/3/06)
2006 Aug 3, In India federal MPs demanded a nationwide ban on Pepsi and Coke after the privately-funded Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) said 11 drinks sold by the two US companies contained unacceptable doses of pesticides.
(AFP, 8/4/06)
2006 Aug 3, Siti Fadilah Supari, Indonesia’s health minister, declared that genomic data on bird flu viruses could be accessed by anyone.
(Econ, 8/12/06, p.65)
2006 Aug 3, In Iraq an improvised explosive device in a pile of garbage exploded in the center of Baghdad, killing at least 10 people and injuring 32. Gunmen shot to death four people in separate incidents in Baghdad, Amarah, Mosul and Basra. The bodies of 9 men were found floating in separate places in the Tigris River. At least two of the bodies were blindfolded, bound and shot. Coalition forces killed at least three "terrorists" during an air strike and multiple raids southeast of Baghdad. A suicide bomber drove into a soccer field in the town of Hatra near Mosul, setting off a blast that killed 7 spectators and 3 policemen. Gunmen shot and killed 4 people and wounded 8 from a Shiite family in Dujail. 2 US Marine were killed in Anbar province.
(AP, 8/3/06)(AP, 8/4/06)(SFC, 8/4/06, p.A9)
2006 Aug 3, A massive wave of guerrilla rockets pounded northern Israel in a matter of minutes, killing 8 people. Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah's leader, offered to stop the attacks if Israel ends its airstrikes. Israel lost four soldiers in fighting. Israeli military said four Hezbollah fighters were killed and two wounded. Lebanese security officials said a missile crashed into a two-story house in the border village of Taibeh, killing a couple and their daughter. Lebanese PM Fuad Saniora said Lebanon's death toll in more than three weeks of Israel-Hezbollah fighting has reached more than 900. France circulated a revised UN resolution calling for an immediate halt to Israeli-Hezbollah fighting and spelling out conditions for a permanent cease-fire in Lebanon.
(AP, 8/3/06)
2006 Aug 3, Israeli troops raided southern Gaza, killing at least eight Palestinians, including four militants and an 8-year-old boy.
(AP, 8/3/06)
2006 Aug 3, Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso arrived in Baghdad on a surprise visit, bringing with him a loan of 3.3 billion yen ($29 million) to jump-start Iraq's economic development.
(AP, 8/3/06)
2006 Aug 3, In Malaysia the Islamic world's largest organization of countries demanded on that the UN implement an immediate cease-fire in Lebanon and investigate what it called flagrant human rights violations by Israel.
(AP, 8/3/06)
2006 Aug 3, In Mexico Mrs. Alberta Alcantara Juan and Mrs. Teresa Gonzalez Cornelio were arrested (along with Jacinta Francisco Marcial) for events that supposedly occurred on March 26, 2006 when Federal Investigation Agents attempted to confiscate local merchants’ goods and damaged some of them. In 2010 Mexico's Supreme Court overturned kidnapping convictions and ordered the release of the two Otomi Indian market vendors whose case received international attention. Marcial was freed last year.
(http://tinyurl.com/373f25t)(AP, 4/28/10)
2006 Aug 3, Pakistani Interior Minister Aftab Sherpao and US envoy Ryan Crocker signed a memorandum of understanding for $2.7 million in security and communications gear and to help build more posts on the Afghan frontier.
(AFP, 8/3/06)
2006 Aug 3, Fresh fighting broke out between Philippine forces and Al-Qaeda-linked militants after four people were killed in a major operation to capture two suspected Bali bombers.
(AFP, 8/3/06)
2006 Aug 3, In Sri Lanka artillery fire hit 4 schools being used as shelters from fighting raging between government troops and Tamil Tiger rebels, killing at least 17 people in the northeastern town of Muttur.
(AP, 8/3/06)(SFC, 8/4/06, p.A10)
2006 Aug 3, Ukrainian Pres. Viktor Yushchenko nominated former foe Viktor Yanukovych for prime minister after Yanukovych signed a memorandum on national unity.
(SFC, 8/3/06, p.A3)
2006 Aug 4, The US placed sanctions on 7 firms from North Korea, Russia, India and Cuba for arms dealings with Iran.
(WSJ, 8/5/06, p.A1)
2006 Aug 4, In Philadelphia Danieal Kelly (14), a disabled girl, was found dead in her mother's squalid house covered with bone-deep, maggot-infested bedsores. She weighed 42 pounds. In 2008 4 social workers were among 9 people charged in relation to her death. In 2008 Andrea Kelly, the mother, was charged with murder and Daniel, the father, was charged with child endangerment. Both parents retained lawyers who filed suits against their criminal co-defendants, blaming them for the girl's demise. In 2009 mother Andrea Kelly pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 20-40 years in prison. In 2010 case worker Julius Murray was sentenced to 11 years in prison on fraud and obstruction in the case. He had skipped visits and still faced involuntary manslaughter charges.
(AP, 8/1/08)(www.philly.com/philly/news/26859869.html)(SFC, 4/30/09, p.A4)(SFC, 6/12/10, p.A9)
2006 Aug 4, In southern Afghanistan 2 police officers were killed and eight others wounded in a roadside bomb aimed at a district governor. UNICEF said schools are increasingly being attacked across Afghanistan and an estimated 100,000 children in the south are shut out of the classroom due to closures.
(AFP, 8/5/06)(Reuters, 8/4/06)
2006 Aug 4, In Argentina Julio Simon, a former police officer, was sentenced to 25 years in prison for human rights abuses in connection with the 1978 disappearance of Chilean Jose Poblete and his Argentine wife, Gertrudis Hlaczik, during the military dictatorship.
(AP, 8/5/06)
2006 Aug 4, Bangladesh announced a fresh round of polio vaccination drives amid growing signs that the lethal disease has staged a comeback in the impoverished South Asian country.
(AFP, 8/4/06)
2006 Aug 4, In Colombia leftist rebels were blamed for two attacks, a car bomb that killed four officers outside a Cali police station and an attack that killed two soldiers in a western province.
(AP, 8/4/06)
2006 Aug 4, In India floods caused by heavy monsoon rains swept away people and destroyed homes in the southern coastal area of Andhra Pradesh, killing at least 31 people over the last 2 days.
(AP, 8/4/06)
2006 Aug 4, Hundreds of thousands of Shiites chanting "Death to Israel" and "Death to America" marched through the streets of Baghdad's biggest Shiite district in a massive show of support for Hezbollah in its battle against Israel. At least 35 people were killed elsewhere in Iraq, many of them in a car bombing and gunbattle in the northern city of Mosul. Some 3,700 soldiers of the Army's 172nd Stryker Brigade moved into Baghdad from the northern city of Mosul. In Mosul 20 militants were believed to have been killed during prolonged street gunfights with security forces in the city's eastern neighborhoods. Gunmen killed a bodyguard of a senior Justice Ministry official in western Baghdad, and a police commando was killed by a roadside bomb in the central city of Samarra.
(AP, 8/4/06)(AP, 8/5/06)
2006 Aug 4, Israel expanded its assault on Lebanon, launching its first major attack on the Christian heartland north of Beirut and severing the last significant road link to Syria. Hezbollah renewed attacks on northern Israel, killing two civilians in a barrage of 120 rockets. An Israeli airstrike hit dozens of farm workers loading vegetables near the Lebanon-Syria border, killing as many as 33. Five Lebanese civilians were killed and 19 wounded in the Israeli airstrikes north of Beirut in Christian areas where Hezbollah has little support. Hezbollah's leader offered to stop attacking if Israel ends its airstrikes. Israeli airstrikes flattened two southern Lebanese houses and more than 50 people were buried in the rubble, security officials and the state news agency said. Israel denied attacking the villages.
(AP, 8/4/06)(SFC, 8/5/06, p.A11)
2006 Aug 4, Israel began pulling tanks out of southern Gaza after a two-day incursion. Israeli troops conducted house-to-house searches in the southern Gaza Strip and killed three Palestinians with tanks and air strikes.
(AP, 8/4/06)
2006 Aug 4, In Mexico's southernmost Chiapas state a 7-year-old boy and his father died, bringing to 10 the number of people killed after eating poisonous mushrooms. Officials said recent genetic mutations have made some mushrooms, consumed for years in Indian communities, newly poisonous.
(AP, 8/4/06)
2006 Aug 4, In southern Nigeria 3 Filipinos working for a US construction firm were kidnapped, a day after a German was abducted in the same region.
(AP, 8/4/06)
2006 Aug 4, In northern Pakistan monsoon rains triggered fresh landslides and floods, as officials and reports said 37 people had died over the last 4 days in weather-related incidents.
(AP, 8/4/06)
2006 Aug 4, Sri Lankan troops thwarted a Tamil Tiger rebel attack in northeastern Muttur, killing 35 insurgents. The Red Cross said 6,000 to 7,000 families were still trying to flee Muttur.
(AP, 8/5/06)(AP, 8/7/06)
2006 Aug 4, In Turkey 2 explosives detonated within minutes of each other in a southern city of Adana, seriously wounding one person and injuring 16 others.
(AP, 8/4/06)
2006 Aug 4, In Uganda Vincent Otti, deputy leader of The Lord's Resistance Army, said his group has declared a unilateral cease-fire, but government negotiators said they have not yet agreed to peace.
(AP, 8/4/06)
2006 Aug 4, The Ukraine Parliament named Viktor Yanukovych prime minister. His fraud-tainted 2004 presidential victory was turned back by the Orange Revolution.
(AP, 8/4/06)
2006 Aug 5, The late Reggie White was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame along with Troy Aikman, Warren Moon, John Madden, Rayfield Wright and Harry Carson.
(AP, 8/5/07)
2006 Aug 5, In Oakland, Ca., CHP Officer Brent Clearman (33) was critically wounded at the 66th Ave. on-ramp in a hit-and-run incident. Clearman died the next day of his severe injuries. Russell Rodrigues (47) surrendered on August 7, 2006, and pleaded guilty to felony hit-and-run charges on September 26, 2006. He faced up to 4 years in prison.
(SFC, 9/27/06, p.B7)(www.porac.org/lineofduty6.html)
2006 Aug 5, In Missouri Megan Shultz (24) disappeared from her Columbia home. Her husband, Keith Comfort, told authorities that she walked out of their apartment after an argument at around 1 a.m. and never returned. On Aug. 5, 2019, Comfort (37) walked into the police station in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, and confessed to killing his wife. On Sept. 18, 2019, her remains were found in a landfill
(AP, 9/19/19)
2006 Aug 5, Susan Butcher (51), four-time Iditarod champion, died in Seattle, Wa. In 1986 she became the Alaska race's second female winner and brought increased national attention to its grueling competition.
(AP, 8/6/06)
2006 Aug 5, Afghan and NATO forces aided by air strikes killed 17 Taliban in southern Afghanistan. A NATO soldier was killed and three were injured when their armored jeep crashed in Kandahar province. Taliban attacked a police patrol in southern Ghazni province overnight which left an intelligence official and a rebel killed and two police wounded.
(AP, 8/5/06)(AFP, 8/5/06)(AP, 8/6/06)
2006 Aug 5, The US and France reached agreement on a UN Security Council resolution aimed at ending the fighting between Israel and Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas.
(AP, 8/5/06)
2006 Aug 5, Thousands marched through London to demand a halt to the Lebanon war as the British government tried to deflect criticism that it has failed to call for an immediate ceasefire.
(AP, 8/5/06)
2006 Aug 5, Marie Stopes International hosted Europe's first "Masturbate-a-thon" with the HIV/AIDS charity the Terrence Higgins Trust. It expected up to 200 people to attend the sponsored masturbation session in Clerkenwell, central London.
(Reuters, 8/5/06)
2006 Aug 5, Floyd Landis was fired by his team and the Tour de France no longer considered him its champion after his second doping sample tested positive for higher-than-allowable levels of testosterone. Landis maintained his innocence.
(AP, 8/5/07)
2006 Aug 5, In Iraq 2 members of Saddam's former regime were shot dead in separate incidents. A US soldier died in Anbar province.
(AP, 8/5/06)
2006 Aug 5, Israeli naval commandos battled with Hezbollah in the southern port city of Tyre, while a guerrilla rocket killed a soldier in clashes on the border and Israeli raids left at least eight people dead in multiple strikes across the country. The Lebanese government's Higher Relief Council said 907 Lebanese had been killed in the conflict. 75 Israelis have been killed, 45 soldiers and 30 civilians.
(AP, 8/5/06)
2006 Aug 5, Israel pressed ahead with its incursion into the southern Gaza Strip as airstrikes killed 5 Palestinians, including a mother and her 2 children. Tanks rolled to the edge of Rafah.
(AP, 8/5/06)
2006 Aug 5, Mexico's top electoral court rejected a full recount in the disputed presidential election, ordering a 9% partial count instead, angering leftist protesters camped in the capital demanding a new vote-by-vote tally over their fraud allegations.
(AP, 8/5/06)(WSJ, 8/7/06, p.A1)
2006 Aug 5, A minister said Nepal plans to seize lands owned by King Gyanendra and other royal family members and distribute them to the poor as it moves toward treating the monarch like a "normal citizen."
(AFP, 8/5/06)
2006 Aug 5, In northwestern Pakistan a bridge collapsed amid heavy rains, killing at least 23 people.
(AP, 8/5/06)
2006 Aug 5, Interfax news said Russian police have detained the husband of a museum curator and a 2nd person suspected of stealing hundreds of artworks from St. Petersburg’s Hermitage Museum.
(Reuters, 8/5/06)
2006 Aug 5, Russia's state-controlled arms trader and top aircraft maker criticized Washington for imposing sanctions on them over dealings with Iran. The defense ministry said the move reflected US annoyance at arms sales to Venezuela. A Russian rocket carrying US telecommunications equipment blasted off, 10 days after another rocket carrying 18 satellites crashed after launch.
(AP, 8/5/06)
2006 Aug 5, Sri Lankan soldiers retook control of Muttur after six days of fighting Tamil rebels there, and the military urged thousands of displaced civilians to return.
(AP, 8/5/06)
2006 Aug 6, Oil giant BP announced an indefinite shutdown of the biggest oilfield in the US, at Prudhoe Bay in Alaska, after finding a pipeline leak. BP was able to maintain partial operations.
(AP, 8/6/07)
2006 Aug 6, Walt Disney World hiked ticket prices for the second time in 2006, raising the cost of a basic one-day, one-park admission to $67, according to a pricing chart posted on the company's media Web site.
(AP, 8/6/06)
2006 Aug 6, Scientists said a recurring "dead zone" of low-oxygen water off the Oregon coast is larger than in previous years and may be triggered by global warming. They concluded that it is being caused by explosive blooms of tiny plants known as phytoplankton, which die and sink to the bottom, then are eaten by bacteria which use up the oxygen in the water.
(AP, 8/6/06)
2006 Aug 6, In Afghanistan 4 suspected Taliban killed two police using rocket-propelled grenades and heavy machine guns at a checkpoint in Murghab district in western Badghis province. A suspected suicide bomber in a small truck hit a military convoy outside Kandahar, wounding at least one foreign soldier. A British soldier was killed in Helmand province.
(AP, 8/6/06)(SFC, 8/7/06, p.A8)
2006 Aug 6, Bolivia’s President Evo Morales officially opened a Constituent Assembly to rewrite the nation's constitution.
(AP, 8/6/06)
2006 Aug 6, In Burundi gunmen hurled a grenade at a bar frequented by army officers, killing four people. Authorities said the attack was an attempt to undermine the government.
(AP, 8/7/06)
2006 Aug 6, Cambodian customs over the weekend seized 12 luxury vehicles stolen in Canada, including a Hummer and a Cadillac popular with hip-hop music stars, giving an intriguing insight into the world of international car smuggling.
(Reuters, 8/7/06)
2006 Aug 6, In China an explosion aboard a bus in Hunan province's Guiyang county killed eight people, just days after a similar explosion killed 11. Fatal explosions aboard public buses in recent years have been blamed on both bomb attacks and accidents with gas canisters and other dangerous cargo.
(AP, 8/7/06)
2006 Aug 6, A former official of Egypt's Gama'a Islamiya said that even if some members of the Islamist group had joined al Qaeda it was unlikely that most would.
(AP, 8/6/06)
2006 Aug 6, In eastern Ethiopia over 250 people were killed by flooding in Dire Dawa. As many as 300 remained missing.
(Reuters, 8/8/06)(AP, 8/11/06)
2006 Aug 6, Hong Kong's legislature passed a law regulating phone tapping and other surveillance measures, a move critics fear will curtail civil liberties in the former British colony now ruled by China.
(AP, 8/6/06)
2006 Aug 6, In India a boat capsized in a rain-swollen river near New Delhi, leaving 3 people dead and 27 others missing as the nationwide death toll from the monsoon rose to at least 359.
(AP, 8/6/06)
2006 Aug 6, It was reported that illegal logging in Indonesia’s Aceh province had risen to record levels as people reached into virgin forests to rebuild some 130,000 homes destroyed in December, 2004, tsunami. Deforestation across Indonesia had already led to a 40% loss in the last 50 years.
(SSFC, 8/6/06, p.A20)
2006 Aug 6, Iran's top nuclear negotiator said that Iran will expand uranium enrichment, in defiance of a UN Security Council resolution giving the Islamic Republic until Aug. 31 to halt the activity or face the threat of political and economic sanctions.
(AP, 8/6/06)
2006 Aug 6, In Iraq 3 US soldiers were killed in a roadside bombing southwest of Baghdad.
(AFP, 8/7/06)
2006 Aug 6, Israeli forces arrested the speaker of the Palestinian parliament at his house in the West Bank, and pressed their monthlong offensive in Gaza against Hamas.
(AP, 8/6/06)
2006 Aug 6, Hezbollah guerrillas unleashed their deadliest barrage of rockets yet into northern Israel, killing 12 reservists at a staging area. Israeli bombardment killed at least 25 people in southern Lebanon as fighting only intensified despite a draft UN cease-fire resolution. Hezbollah rockets crashed into Haifa, killing at least three people and wounding more than 40.
(AP, 8/6/06)(SFC, 8/7/06, p.A1)
2006 Aug 6, In Kyrgyzstan Imam Mokhammadrafik Kamalov (53) was killed in the city of Osh along with two suspected Islamic radicals during an operation to track down men suspected of attacking Kyrgyz and Tajik border posts in May, killing nine people.
(AP, 8/8/06)
2006 Aug 6, In Scotland the Fringe Festival kicked off when an estimated 100,000-strong crowd turned out on the streets of Edinburgh to watch a parade by 3,000 performers from the Fringe and the Edinburgh Military Tattoo.
(AFP, 8/7/06)
2006 Aug 6, A government spokesman said Somalia's top interim leaders have agreed to end a rift threatening the fragile administration after crisis talks led by Seyoum Mesfin, Ethiopia's foreign affairs minister.
(Reuters, 8/6/06)
2006 Aug 6, Crews fought more than 20 forest fires in northern Spain and stopped blazes from advancing into two historic towns. The fires killed three people and destroyed thousands of acres of woodland. Authorities said most of the blazes were deliberately set.
(AP, 8/6/06)(AP, 8/7/06)
2006 Aug 6, Sri Lanka rejected peace broker Norway's deal with Tamil Tiger rebels to lift a water blockade at the root of the latest bloodshed that has claimed at least 425 lives.
(AFP, 8/6/06)
2006 Aug 6, Taiwan condemned China after oil producer Chad switched diplomatic ties to Beijing from Taipei, forcing Premier Su Tseng-chang to scrap his plans to visit the African nation at the last minute.
(Reuters, 8/6/06)
2006 Aug 7, In Arizona 9 illegal immigrants died when their SUV, crammed with up to 22 people, flipped while trying to evade pursuit by the Border Patrol.
(WSJ, 8/8/06, p.A1)
2006 Aug 7, In the SF Bay Area Santa Clara County sheriff’s deputies seized over 20,000 marijuana plants on Mount Hamilton. Street value at maturity was estimated at $80 million.
(SFC, 8/9/06, p.B5)
2006 Aug 7, Sue Bierman (82), former SF supervisor (1992-2000) died in a car crash in Cole Valley. A park created in the wake of the demolition ramps leading to and away from the Embarcadero Freeway (1959-1992) was soon renamed Sue Bierman Park, after the former supervisor (d. 2006 at 82) who battled city freeways.
(www.beyondchron.org/news/index.php?itemid=3563)(SSFC, 7/26/09, p.A16)
2006 Aug 7, Wal-Mart announced chainwide pay caps and said they were intended to move people up the company ladder.
(SFC, 8/15/06, p.D3)
2006 Aug 7, Utah doctors successfully separated conjoined twins Kendra and Maliyah Herrin. The 4-year-old sisters had been born fused at the midsection with just one kidney and one set of legs. Reconstruction surgery continued.
(AP, 8/8/06)
2006 Aug 7, A new finding implied that the universe is about 15.8 billion years old and about 180 billion light-years wide based on new evidence, which suggested that the Hubble constant, a number that measures the expansion rate and age of the universe, is actually 15% smaller than other studies have found.
(AP, 8/7/06)(http://tinyurl.com/jnc7x)
2006 Aug 7, Oil company BP scrambled to assess pipeline corrosion in Alaska that will shut shipments from the nation's biggest oil field, removing about 8% of daily US crude production and driving oil and gasoline prices sharply higher. BP said it would have to replace 16 miles of pipeline at the Prudhoe Bay field.
(AP, 8/7/06)(AP, 8/7/07)
2006 Aug 7, John Weinberg (81), former head of the Goldman Sachs investment firm, died. He and John Whitehead led the firm from 1976-1985. Weinberg led it by himself until 1990.
(Econ, 8/19/06, p.73)
2006 Aug 7, Suspected Taliban militants hanged a woman (70) and her son (30) from a tree in Helmand province after accusing them of spying for the government.
(AP, 8/9/06)
2006 Aug 7, Robert McNaught of the Siding Spring Observatory in Australia made the 1st sighting of a comet that came to be called Comet McNaught.
(Econ, 1/20/07, p.89)
2006 Aug 7, Belgian officials said thefts of drain covers in Charleroi have soared in recent days as skyrocketing metal prices have made them lucrative.
(Reuters, 8/8/06)
2006 Aug 7, In Brazil suspected PCC gang members in the pre-dawn hours attacked 78 symbols of government and businesses across Sao Paulo state, many in the city itself. Police killed two suspects after they allegedly opened fire on a gas station, torched a bus and tried to flee in a car as officers chased them. This marked the third time in four months that the gang has unleashed its fury on the streets to oppose the prison transfer of its leaders.
(AP, 8/8/06)
2006 Aug 7, China’s state media said the death toll from Tropical Storm Prapiroon, named after the Thai god of rain, rose to 80 with 9 more people missing.
(AFP, 8/6/06)(AP, 8/8/06)
2006 Aug 7, An explosion at a Chinese perfume factory killed at least seven people and left three hospitalized.
(AP, 8/7/06)
2006 Aug 7, Colombia’s President Alvaro Uribe inaugurated an unprecedented second term, promising to seek an elusive peace with leftist rebels while maintaining the hardline security policies credited with a sharp drop in murder and kidnappings.
(AP, 8/7/06)
2006 Aug 7, Gunmen in Haiti killed Guido Vitiello (67), an Italian businessman, and kidnapped his wife, Gigliola Martino (65), amid a spate of violence in the impoverished Caribbean nation. Martino was released Aug 10.
(AP, 8/8/06)(AP, 8/11/06)
2006 Aug 7, Indonesia barred Islamic militants from traveling to the Mideast to fight Israel after a Jakarta group said more than 200 had already gone.
(WSJ, 8/8/06, p.A1)
2006 Aug 7, A suicide truck bomber struck the provincial headquarters of an Iraqi police commando force north of Baghdad, killing ten policemen. In Baquba six Iraqi soldiers were killed and another 15 wounded when insurgents attacked their checkpoint. In all insurgent and militia attacks left at least 30 Iraqis killed or found dead. Two Iraqi journalists were killed in separate incidents in Baghdad. Mohammed Abbas Hamad (28), a journalist for the Shiite-owned newspaper Al-Bayinnah Al-Jadida, was shot by gunmen at he left his home. Police found the bullet-riddled body of freelance journalist Ismail Amin Ali (30), about a half mile from where he was abducted two weeks ago.
(AP, 8/7/06)(AFP, 8/7/06)(AP, 8/8/06)(WSJ, 8/8/06, p.A1)
2006 Aug 7, The death toll in an Israeli airstrike on a Shiite neighborhood in south Beirut reached 41. Across the country 77 Lebanese were killed along with three Israeli soldiers. The UN said an oil spill caused by Israeli raids on a Lebanese power plant could rival the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster that despoiled the Alaskan coast if not urgently addressed. the Jiyyeh plant, which was bombed by Israel on July 14 and July 15 a few days into its offensive against Hezbollah. 12,000 tons of leaking oil had already polluted more than 140 kilometers (87 miles) of the Lebanese coast and spread north into Syrian waters.
(AP, 8/8/06)(AP, 8/9/06)(AFP, 8/8/06)
2006 Aug 7, Morocco’s state news agency reported that security services have arrested 44 suspected terrorists and dismantled a network allegedly planning attacks.
(AP, 8/7/06)
2006 Aug 7, Dutch police arrested a Rwandan immigrant, identified as Joseph M. (38), and charged him with war crimes and torture for his alleged role in the 1994 genocide that tore apart his home country.
(AP, 8/10/06)
2006 Aug 7, A pro-North Korean newspaper in Japan said floods last month in North Korea killed at least 549 people and left 295 others still missing.
(AP, 8/7/06)
2006 Aug 7, In northwestern Pakistan a discarded ordnance shell exploded in a tribal village, killing three young brothers who were playing with the explosive. A relief official said flooding and heavy rains in northwestern Pakistan in recent days have left 144 people dead and 97 others injured.
(AP, 8/7/06)(AP, 8/8/06)
2006 Aug 7, In Sri Lanka 17 civilians working for a French aid agency were found slain execution style in Muttur after fierce battles between rebels and the government over water supplies. All but one were Tamils. In 2008 a local rights group accused Colombo of a major cover-up of the August 2006 killing of Action Against Hunger (ACF) workers and for the first time named a list of suspects.
(AP, 8/7/06)(AP, 8/29/06)(AFP, 4/3/08)
2006 Aug 7, The only rebel leader to have signed onto a peace deal for Darfur was sworn in as a senior aide to the Sudanese president as international aid groups said the fighting in the war-torn region has intensified.
(AP, 8/7/06)
2006 Aug 7, Venezuelan authorities captured Elias Verde, the alleged head of an international drug trafficking group that was involved in a major cocaine smuggling operation earlier this year in France.
(AP, 8/8/06)
2006 Aug 8, The US Federal Reserve halted interest rate hikes at 5.25%. the DJIA fell 45.79 to 11,173. Nasdaq fell 11.65 to 2,060. Jeffrey Lacker, head of the Richmond Fed, voted against the decision halt rate hikes.
(SFC, 8/9/06, p.C1)(Econ, 8/12/06, p.59)
2006 Aug 8, Medicare said it plans to cut doctor payment rates by 5.1% and force hospitals to disclose financial data.
(WSJ, 8/9/06, p.A1)
2006 Aug 8, Voters in Connecticut rejected three-term Sen. Joe Lieberman for Ned Lamont, a political newcomer, in the nation's first major test of the depth of anger over the Iraq war. Lieberman ended up winning re-election to the Senate by running as an independent.
(AP, 8/9/06)(AP, 8/8/07)
2006 Aug 8, Roger Goodell was chosen as the NFL's next commissioner.
(AP, 8/8/07)
2006 Aug 8, In Indianapolis, Indiana, a fatal stabbing boosted the homicides to 13 in just one week in the midst of an upsurge of violence that has police working longer shifts and saturating high-crime areas.
(AP, 8/8/06)
2006 Aug 8, In eastern Afghanistan US military killed 15 insurgents who attacked a US base in Nuristan province. 12 militants and 8 policemen were killed in fighting in Kandahar.
(AP, 8/9/06)(AP, 8/10/06)
2006 Aug 8, Clive Goodman, royal editor at Britain’s News of the World, and Glenn Mulcaire, a private investigator, were arrested for hacking phones between November 2005 and August 2006. Both men were jailed in January, 2007.
(Econ, 7/16/11, p.26)
2006 Aug 8, Chad and Sudan agreed to reopen their borders and resume diplomatic relations that they severed in a dispute four months ago.
(AP, 8/9/06)
2006 Aug 8, In Chile police used tear gas and water cannons to disperse about 2,000 rock-throwing students seeking better equipment for 21 schools in the Santiago area.
(AP, 8/8/06)
2006 Aug 8, Gustavo Arcos Bergnes (79), who fought alongside Fidel Castro in the Cuban revolution but was later imprisoned as a dissident, died in Havana.
(AP, 8/8/06)
2006 Aug 8, A car bomb killed a prosecutor in Dagestan, Russia, and two police were shot dead as they arrived on the scene.
(AP, 8/8/06)
2006 Aug 8, Eritrea announced that Brigadier General Kemal Gelchu, a dissident Ethiopian general, had defected to Eritrea, said that he would be joining the OLF to fight for his Oromo people's rights.
(Econ, 8/19/06, p.44)
2006 Aug 8, Gunmen with automatic weapons stormed Kaieteur News, Guyana's largest newspaper, killing at least six people and wounding three in an attack that may have been connected to a simultaneous protest at the nation's main prison.
(AP, 8/9/06)
2006 Aug 8, Indian officials said flooding caused by monsoon rains have killed 69 people in western India in the past three days, and caused tens of thousands to flee their homes.
(AP, 8/8/06)
2006 Aug 8, Indonesian health officials said 2 teenagers have died of bird flu. This would bring Indonesia's death toll to 44 and make it the world's hardest-hit country.
(AP, 8/8/06)
2006 Aug 8, A series of bombings and shootings killed at least 31 people in Baghdad and other parts of Iraq as more US troops were seen in the capital as part of Operation Together Forward, a campaign to reduce Sunni-Shiite violence that threatened civil war. A US Army helicopter crashed in Iraq's western Anbar province, leaving two crew members missing and four injured. A policeman was killed and another wounded when they were trying to defuse a roadside bomb in Samarra. An explosion at a mosque in Baqouba left four people dead.
(AP, 8/8/06)(AP, 8/9/06)(Econ, 9/2/06, p.44)
2006 Aug 8, Israeli forces battled Hezbollah guerrillas across southern Lebanon as diplomats at the United Nations struggled to keep a peace plan from collapsing over Arab demands for an immediate Israeli withdrawal. At least 19 Lebanese civilians were killed in Israeli airstrikes. Israel reported five soldiers killed.
(AP, 8/8/06)(AP, 8/9/06)
2006 Aug 8, The Philippine Congress began hearing new impeachment complaints against President Gloria Arroyo, linking her to corruption and human rights abuses and alleging she cheated in the 2004 election.
(AFP, 8/8/06)
2006 Aug 8, Russian officials said drawings by the late architect Yakov Chernikhov (d.1951), worth millions of dollars, had disappeared from the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art. Chernikhov was widely admired for his avant-garde and constructivist designs. Rosokhrankultura said it became aware of the Chernikhov thefts after nine missing drawings were sold at auction by auction house Christie's on June 22.
(AP, 8/8/06)
2006 Aug 8, In Sri Lanka Tamil rebels released water from a disputed reservoir, ending a 19-day blockade that sparked some of the worst fighting between government troops and guerrillas in four years. In Colombo a car bomb killed two people, including a 3-year-old girl.
(AP, 8/8/06)
2006 Aug 8, Turkey battled the largest recorded outbreak of Crimean-Congo Hemorrhagic Fever, which has killed at least 20 people this year, and experts said more cases of the Ebola-like disease are inevitable in coming months.
(AP, 8/8/06)
2006 Aug 8, Five Yemeni army officers were killed when their military helicopter crashed during a heavy rainstorm.
(AP, 8/9/06)
2006 Aug 9, The White House said neither Israel nor Hezbollah should escalate their month-old war, as Israel decided to widen its ground invasion in southern Lebanon.
(AP, 8/9/07)
2006 Aug 9, In Ohio Osama Sabhi Abulhassan (20) and Ali Houssaiky (20), both of Dearborn, Mich., were charged with money laundering in support of terrorism after authorities said they found airplane passenger lists and information on airport security checkpoints in their car.
(AP, 8/9/06)
2006 Aug 9, The American Humane Society said it will give China $100,000 to vaccinate dogs against rabies if it promises to immediately stop their mass slaughter in areas where humans have died from the disease.
(AP, 8/9/06)
2006 Aug 9, Physicist James A. Van Allen (91), who discovered the radiation belts surrounding the Earth that now bear his name, died in Iowa City, Iowa.
(AP, 8/9/07)
2006 Aug 9, Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan's first democratically elected president, strongly hinted in an interview that he will not run for another term in office. A roadside bomb killed 2 Afghan soldiers and wounded 3 as they returned after a mission to help police surrounded by insurgents in Paktika province. In the eastern province of Nuristan US soldiers and warplanes drove off an insurgent attack on a new American base, killing 19 militants. Local authorities pleaded for emergency relief for thousands of villagers made homeless by heavy rain and flooding that has ravaged provinces in eastern Afghanistan and left at least 35 people dead.
(AP, 8/9/06)(AP, 8/10/06)
2006 Aug 9, Roland Horngacher, Vienna's top police commander, was suspended from duty on suspicion of improperly accepting gifts, including travel vouchers from the former head of an Austrian bank linked to the collapse of U.S. commodities broker Refco Inc.
(AP, 8/10/06)
2006 Aug 9, In Buenos Aires Raul Antonio Guglielminetti, a former intelligence agent and two retired military officers, were arrested in connection with human rights abuses dating to Argentina's "Dirty War" against political dissent.
(AP, 8/11/06)
2006 Aug 9, In Brazil suspected gang members threw homemade bombs, sent banks on fire, and torched buses in the region and two other cities overnight in Sao Paulo state. In Rio de Janeiro gunbattles between gangs vying for control of the city's lucrative drug trade have resulted in the deaths of 19 people since Aug 6.
(AP, 8/10/06)
2006 Aug 9, Brazil’s environment ministry said police had arrested 46 people, including 16 agents of the federal environmental protection agency, for allegedly operating illegal logging operations in the Amazon rainforest and in southern Brazil.
(AP, 8/10/06)
2006 Aug 9, Two teenage Britons were finally found guilty of killing 10-year-old Nigerian schoolboy Damilola Taylor following a six-year investigation marred by legal and forensic blunders. Danny Preddie (18) and Ricky Preddie (19) from Peckham, south London, were convicted of the manslaughter of Taylor who died in November, 2000, after being stabbed in the leg with a broken bottle.
(Reuters, 8/9/06)
2006 Aug 9, Masked gunmen killed five Indians in Colombia even as UN officials marked World Indigenous Day with a call for illegal combat groups to keep Indians out of the country's armed conflict. Colombian rebels kidnapped two engineers and a helicopter pilot who were part of a seismographic oil exploration crew in Choco state. The National Liberation Army (ELN) was believed to be responsible.
(AP, 8/10/06)
2006 Aug 9, Ethiopia’s army killed 13 rebels and caught other commanders of the eastern Ogaden National Liberation Front, a separatist movement, after they crossed from Somalia.
(Reuters, 8/12/06)
2006 Aug 9, Kerala, a southern Indian state, banned the sale and production of Coke, Pepsi, Sprite and other soft drinks because of concerns over pesticide contamination. Four Indian states, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Chattisgarh, have already imposed a ban on sale of Coke and Pepsi at colleges, schools and government offices. Several other states have said they are examining the issue.
(AP, 8/9/06)
2006 Aug 9, In India authorities arrested Pritam Singh, a former army soldier and his wife, for allegedly aborting female fetuses, several of which were found dumped in a well behind an illegal clinic in Patran town, Punjab.
(AP, 8/10/06)
2006 Aug 9, Swollen rivers swamped thousands of villages and towns across India's south and west, forcing 4.5 million from their homes as rescuers struggled to bring them food and drinking water.
(Reuters, 8/9/06)
2006 Aug 9, Gunmen on two motorcycles assassinated Col. Qassim Abdel-Qadir, administrative head of an Iraqi army division in the southern city of Basra. A roadside bomb exploded near a US patrol in eastern Baghdad's Shiite neighborhood of Habibiya, killing one bystander and wounding one US soldier. Police found the bodies of three men who were shot in the head and dumped in two locations in southwestern Baghdad.
(AP, 8/9/06)
2006 Aug 9, Israel's Security Cabinet approved a wider ground offensive in south Lebanon that was expected to take 30 days as part of a new push to badly damage Hezbollah. Israeli's military struck Lebanon's largest Palestinian refugee camp, killing at least one person and wounding three others. An Israeli airstrike killed a family of 7 in the Bekaa Valley. 15 Israeli soldiers were killed in a single day of fighting. Israel said it killed as many as 40 Hezbollah fighters but a Hezbollah spokesman said only 3 had been killed. Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah warned all Israeli Arabs to leave the port city of Haifa so the militant group could step up attacks without fear of shedding the blood of fellow Muslims.
(AP, 8/9/06)(SFC, 8/10/06, p.A10)
2006 Aug 9, In Mexico the body of Enrique Perea Quintanilla (50), publisher of the magazine Dos Caras, Una Verdad (Two Faces, One Truth) was found on a dirt road about 10 miles from Chihuahua City. Authorities said that organized crime was likely behind the killing.
(AP, 8/11/06)
2006 Aug 9, Maoist rebels and the Nepal government said they had settled a dispute over monitoring each other's fighters and weapons, a move which revives their peace process and power-sharing plans.
(AFP, 8/9/06)
2006 Aug 9, Two Norwegians and two Ukrainians were kidnapped at gunpoint from an oil services ship off the coast of Nigeria.
(Reuters, 8/9/06)
2006 Aug 9, In Poland the US specialists secretly removed 90 pounds of weapons-grade uranium from a research reactor and transferred it to Russia for re-processing.
(SFC, 8/10/06, p.A8)(WSJ, 8/10/06, p.A1)
2006 Aug 9, Sergei Skripal (55), a retired colonel in the Russian military intelligence, was sentenced by a military court in Moscow to 13 years imprisonment for passing along state secrets to Britain. He was accused of revealing the names of several dozen Russian agents working in Europe. In 2010 he was released as part of a spy swap with the US.
(AP, 8/9/06)(AP, 7/9/10)
2006 Aug 9, A South Korean citizens' group said North Korea has requested help from South Korea to cope with devastating floods.
(AP, 8/9/06)
2006 Aug 9, A Justice Ministry official said Swiss authorities will provide the US with details from bank accounts US investigators suspect of being used for terrorist funding.
(AP, 8/9/06)
2006 Aug 9, In Venezuela 8 candidates opposing Pres. Chavez called off a primary and agreed to support front runner Gov. Manuel Rosales in the Dec 3 presidential balloting.
(SFC, 8/10/06, p.A8)
2006 Aug 10, In NYC organizers said Germany's Madhupran Wolfgang Schwerk (51) won the 3,100-mile Self-Transcendence event, capturing the world's longest foot race in 41 days, eight hours, 16 minutes and 29 seconds. Suprabha Beckjord (50) was 14th overall and the only woman to finish, doing so after 60 days, four hours, 35 minutes and 24 seconds.
(AFP, 8/10/06)
2006 Aug 10, Wal-Mart Stores said it will work with Chinese government officials to establish labor unions in all its outlets in China.
(SFC, 8/11/06, p.D2)
2006 Aug 10, NASA satellite data showed that the ice sheet in Greenland is melting faster than expected.
(WSJ, 8/11/06, p.A1)
2006 Aug 10, In Afghanistan a roadside bomb killed two Afghan civilians in Jalalabad.
(AP, 8/10/06)
2006 Aug 10, A Brazilian congressional committee approved a report recommending the expulsion of 72 federal lawmakers from Congress on charges of participating in a nation-wide plan to divert funds from the country’s health-care system.
(WSJ, 8/11/06, p.A5)
2006 Aug 10, British authorities said they had thwarted a terrorist plot to simultaneously blow up several aircraft heading to the US using explosives smuggled in carry-on luggage. US Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said the terrorists planned to use liquid explosives disguised as beverages and other common products and detonators disguised as electronic devices.
(AP, 8/10/06)
2006 Aug 10, In Chile a drug trafficking network working on behalf of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) was dismantled. Police seized almost a half-ton of cocaine and arrested 12 people.
(AP, 8/12/06)
2006 Aug 10, Saomai, the most powerful typhoon to hit China in five decades, slammed into its southeastern coast, destroying hundreds of homes and battering the region with rain and wind after more than 1.3 million people were evacuated. It ultimately killed at least 483 people.
(AP, 8/10/07)
2006 Aug 10, Hector Orlando Martinez Quinto (38) was captured in Costa Rica. He was accused of participating in a 2002 rebel (FARQ) attack that killed 119 civilians in Boyaya, in one of the worst tragedies in Colombia's four-decade-old guerrilla war.
(AP, 8/11/06)
2006 Aug 10, Rights activists said at least nine inmates have died in Georgian prisons in the past 10 days as the Caucasus Mountains nation suffers through high temperatures not seen in two decades.
(AP, 8/10/06)
2006 Aug 10, In India 2 more states banned the sale of Coca-Cola and PepsiCo soft drinks at government-run schools and colleges over allegations they contain high levels of pesticides.
(AP, 8/10/06)
2006 Aug 10, In Iraq a suicide bomber detonated a belt of explosives near a highly revered Shiite shrine in Najaf, killing at least 35 people and injuring 122.
(AP, 8/10/06)(SFC, 8/11/06, p.A8)
2006 Aug 10, Israel said it will hold back on its new ground offensive in Lebanon until the weekend to give cease-fire efforts another chance. In Jerusalem a tourist (25) was stabbed to death by an Arab youth near one of the gates to the walled Old City in what was believed to be a political attack.
(AP, 8/10/06)
2006 Aug 10-2006 Aug 11, Italian police raided Internet cafes, money-transfer offices and long-distance phone call centers catering to Muslims and arrested 40 people in a crackdown linked to Britain's announcement it had thwarted an alleged terror plot.
(AP, 8/11/06)
2006 Aug 10, Yasuo Takei, Japan’s richest man, died. Forbes listed his assets at $5.4 billion. In 1966 he founded Fuji Shoji, a consumer loan company. In 1974 it was renamed Takefuji and grew to become a leader in Japan’s loan industry. In 2004 he was convicted for ordering an illegal wiretapping of a reported who criticized his company.
(SFC, 8/14/06, p.B8)
2006 Aug 10, Malawi's President Bingu wa Mutharika demanded the resignation of Ishmael Wadi, a top prosecutor, for withdrawing corruption charges against the nation's previous leader. Wadi dropped the charges after Mutharika suspended the head of the anti-corruption bureau, Gustave Kaliwo. Wadi said the suspension left the bureau with no powers to prosecute.
(AP, 8/10/06)
2006 Aug 10, In Mexico leftist activists blockaded bank headquarters and called for a march on the offices of federal prosecutors, as officials recounted some of the ballots from the disputed presidential election. A protester was shot dead when assailants fired on a march of about 8,000 people calling for the governor's resignation in Oaxaca.
(AP, 8/10/06)(AP, 8/11/06)
2006 Aug 10, In southern Nigeria gunmen in military fatigues seized two foreign oil workers. A Belgian and a Moroccan were abducted as they traveled through the city of Port Harcourt taking to at least 10 the number kidnapped in the past week.
(AP, 8/10/06)
2006 Aug 10, In Serbia a panel of international judges convicted and sentenced Selim Krasniqi and two other former rebel fighters to 7 years in prison for detaining and beating fellow ethnic Albanians who allegedly collaborated with Serb authorities during the 1998 Kosovo war.
(AP, 8/10/06)
2006 Aug 10, The Sri Lankan military attacked Tamil Tiger rebels from land and air, and the rebels retaliated in heavy fighting that killed at least 13 combatants. A Nordic cease-fire monitor warned that the situation was worsening.
(AP, 8/10/06)
2006 Aug 11, A Kentucky judge ruled that Gov. Ernie Fletcher, under fire for a hiring scandal, is protected by executive immunity and cannot be prosecuted while in office.
(AP, 8/11/06)
2006 Aug 11, BP PLC announced it would keep one side of the Prudhoe Bay oil field open as it replaced corroded pipes, averting a larger crimp in the nation's oil supply.
(AP, 8/11/07)
2006 Aug 11, In SF Ed Jew, operator of a Chinatown flower shop, filed to run as supervisor for District 4. He won a surprise victory in November. In 2007 he faced residency questions and an FBI investigation regarding money accepted from a businessmen facing permit problems. On January 10, 2008 he resigned from the Board of Supervisors. Jew had been accused of violating the city charter by not living in the district he represented. On November 6, 2007, federal prosecutors obtained a grand jury indictment of Jew on five felony bribery, fraud and extortion charges, accusing him of running a scheme to shake down Sunset District businesses for $84,000 in bribes. His trial on federal charges was slated to being in July 2008.
(SFC, 5/22/07, p.A1)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Jew#Resignation)
2006 Aug 11, Jamie Gold (36), a former Hollywood talent agent, won the $12 million grand prize in the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas, Nv.
(SFC, 8/12/06, p.A2)
2006 Aug 11, In Michigan 3 Palestinian American men from Texas were arrested after buying dozens of cell phones at a Wal-Mart store. They were found with a 1000 cell phones and later charged with federal fraud conspiracy and money laundering. Initial terrorism charges were dropped.
(SFC, 8/17/06, p.A3)
2006 Aug 11, Mike Douglas (born in 1925 as Michael Delaney Dowd Jr.), popular television host, died in Florida. His Mike Douglas Show began in Cleveland in 1961 and ended in 1982. In 1999 he authored the memoir “"I’ll be Right Back: Memories of TV’s Greatest Talk Show."
(SFC, 8/12/06, p.B6)
2006 Aug 11, A suicide car bomber struck a NATO-led convoy in southern Afghanistan, killing one soldier. In northeastern Afghanistan 3 US soldiers were killed and 3 wounded after militants attacked an American patrol with rocket-propelled grenades and small arms fire.
(AP, 8/11/06)(AP, 8/12/06)
2006 Aug 11, In Brazil officials said police had arrested 30 businessmen, government officials and soldiers accused of taking part in a scheme to net millions of dollars by over-billing for meals in the military and at schools.
(AP, 8/11/06)
2006 Aug 11, British officials identified 19 of the suspects accused of planning to blow up US-bound aircraft in the biggest terrorist plot to be uncovered since 9/11, while investigators probed their movements, background and finances. In addition, five Pakistanis have been arrested in Pakistan as suspected "facilitators" of the plot, as well as two Britons arrested there about a week ago. A Pakistani intelligence official said 10 Pakistanis were arrested in Bhawalpur district, 300 miles southwest of Islamabad, in connection with the terror plot in Britain.
(AP, 8/11/06)(AP, 8/12/06)
2006 Aug 11, Typhoon Saomai, the strongest storm to strike China in 50 years, weakened to a tropical depression but drenched the country's southeast after killing at least 105 people with another 190 missing.
(AP, 8/12/06)
2006 Aug 11, German novelist Guenter Grass (78) admitted in an interview that he served in the Waffen SS, the combat arm of Adolf Hitler's dreaded paramilitary forces, during World War II. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1999 for works including his 1959 novel, "The Tin Drum." His new memoir about the war years, Peeling the Onion" was published in September, 2006. The English translation came out in 2007.
(AP, 8/11/06)(SSFC, 7/8/07, p.M1)
2006 Aug 11, Indonesian officials issued a last-minute stay of execution for three Christian militiamen on death row, but they added that the sentences would still be carried out. Fabianus Tibo, Marinus Riwu and Dominggus da Silva, were scheduled to be executed August 12. They had been sentenced to death for inciting and carrying out attacks on Muslims in 2000 during religious violence on Sulawesi that left 1,000 dead from both faiths.
(AP, 8/11/06)
2006 Aug 11, US soldiers raided a funeral and detained 60 men suspected of ties to al-Qaida car bombings in the first major roundup of suspected insurgents since troop reinforcements began arriving for a new crackdown in Baghdad.
(AP, 8/12/06)
2006 Aug 11, Israeli airstrikes pounded south Beirut and border crossings to Syria, killing at least 14 people across Lebanon as ground fighting picked up intensity in the south. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert accepted an emerging Mideast cease-fire deal and informed the United States of his decision. An Israeli drone fired at a convoy of refugees fleeing southern Lebanon, killing at least six people and wounding 16.
(AP, 8/11/06)
2006 Aug 11, North Kenya authorities said they caught at least 45 sympathizers or members of the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), a small Ethiopian group operating on the border. Ethiopia reported having shot dead 11 Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLH) fighters.
(Reuters, 8/11/06)(Econ, 8/19/06, p.44)
2006 Aug 11, An oil tanker sank in rough seas off the Philippine coast of Guimaras Island, about 312 miles southeast of Manila. About 528,000 gallons of industrial fuel was leaking from the accident.
(AP, 8/15/06)
2006 Aug 11, The Sri Lankan air force bombed Tamil Tiger-held areas in the east. Tamil Tigers warned of a humanitarian crisis after 42,000 people were displaced by a surge in violence that has left Sri Lanka's truce in tatters, as fighting erupted on two new fronts.
(AP, 8/11/06)(AFP, 8/11/06)
2006 Aug 11, The UN Human Rights Council condemned Israel for "massive bombardment of Lebanese civilian populations" and other "systematic" human rights violations, and decided to send a commission to investigate. UN Resolution 1701 called for Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon and the disarmament of Hezbollah.
(AP, 8/11/06)(Econ, 8/26/06, p.11)(www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2006/sc8808.doc.htm)
2006 Aug 11, The Zimbabwe Cabinet slashed fuel prices for private motorists by almost half, but experts said the move could lead to further shortages and fail to snuff out a flourishing black market.
(AFP, 8/18/06)
2006 Aug 12, Thousands of people gathered across from the White House, even though President Bush was out of town, to condemn US and Israeli policies in the Middle East. In SF thousands of protesters decried US Mideast policy and Israel’s military actions in Lebanon and Palestine. A smaller group demonstrated on behalf of Israel.
(SSFC, 8/13/06, p.B1)(AP, 8/12/07)
2006 Aug 12, Afghanistan's Health Ministry said the worsening security situation contributed to a fourfold rise in polio cases this year, almost entirely in the insurgency-wracked south. A highway police commander was killed by a blast on his way to work in eastern Lagman province.
(AP, 8/12/06)
2006 Aug 12, Rashid Rauf and Tayib Rauf (22), brothers arrested in Pakistan and England, emerged as key figures in the suspected plot to destroy US-bound aircraft during flight. Prominent Muslims in Britain accused the government of encouraging extremism through its foreign policy.
(AP, 8/12/06)(WSJ, 8/12/06, p.A1)
2006 Aug 12, President Joseph Kabila's share of the vote in Congo's historic elections rose above 50% as 1 million more votes were counted and certified.
(AP, 8/13/06)
2006 Aug 12, The government said PM Nouri al-Maliki had banned the Kurdistan Workers Party, a rebel group fighting for autonomy in southeastern Turkey, from operating in Baghdad. Two people were killed in the southern city of Basra when a bomb exploded at a shop selling CDs featuring sermons and interviews of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Police found a dozen bodies trapped in a grate in the Tigris River, and a roadside bomb killed two US soldiers on a foot patrol south of Baghdad as nearly 50 violent deaths were reported across Iraq.
(AP, 8/12/06)(AP, 8/13/06)
2006 Aug 12, Oil smuggling in Iraq was said to be worth $4 billion a year.
(Econ, 8/12/06, p.40)
2006 Aug 12, Israel staged wide-ranging airstrikes and sent commandos into the Hezbollah heartland as the UN raced to begin enforcing its new cease-fire blueprint and stop the heavy fighting still raging in southern Lebanon. Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah said the militant organization would abide by the UN cease-fire resolution but would keep fighting as long as Israeli troops remained in southern Lebanon. Israel lost 24 soldiers, including five on a helicopter shot out of the air by guerrillas.
(AP, 8/12/06)(AP, 8/13/06)
2006 Aug 12, In Indian Kashmir 7 people, including two civilians mistaken by the army for Islamic guerrillas, died as a strike paralyzed life in the region's main city.
(AFP, 8/12/06)
2006 Aug 12, In northern Italy the stabbed body of Hina Saleem (21) was found in the garden of the family home at Sarezzo. She was killed by her father because she refused to conform to an Islamic lifestyle. News reports said the family had been insisting on an arranged marriage with a cousin in Pakistan. The father and three other men, including her uncle, were charged with premeditated murder and hiding the body.
(AP, 9/7/06)(http://tinyurl.com/rfr4z)
2006 Aug 12, A passenger bus skidded off a highway in central Mexico and rolled down a 320-foot slope, killing 13 people and injuring a dozen others.
(AP, 8/12/06)
2006 Aug 12, Nigeria pulled thousands of troops out of the Bakassi peninsula ahead of an August 12 UN deadline for a complete withdrawal, but many residents said they would resist a handover to Cameroon.
(AP, 8/13/06)
2006 Aug 12, In Northern Ireland about 15,000 Protestants paraded through Londonderry, predominantly Roman Catholic city, following a night of Catholic rioting.
(AP, 8/12/06)
2006 Aug 12, Hundreds of paratroopers joined the struggle to control scores of forest fires in northwestern Spain. A total of 24 people have been arrested since Aug. 1 on suspicion of deliberately starting many of the fires.
(AP, 8/13/06)
2006 Aug 12, Sri Lankan rebels attacked a key naval base as they mounted a fierce push to retake a northeastern peninsula considered the traditional home of the country's ethnic Tamils. Sri Lankan war planes bombed Tiger rebel positions as the fiercest fighting since a 2002 ceasefire left at least 127 people dead. A Sri Lanka government spokesman said the Tamil Tiger rebels offered to renew peace talks. Weeks of intense fighting brought Sri Lanka close to resuming its civil war. Ketheesh Loganathan, a Tamil senior peace official, was assassinated. He was deputy chief of the secretariat which coordinated the government's side of a Norway-brokered peace process.
(AP, 8/12/06)(AFP, 8/12/06)(AP, 8/13/06)
2006 Aug 12, The Ugandan army killed Raska Lukwiya, the third in command of the rebel Lord's Resistance Army and war crimes fugitive, which could affect the stalled south Sudan-mediated peace talks.
(AFP, 8/13/06)
2006 Aug 12, The UN Security Council adopted a resolution seeking a "full cessation" of violence between Israel and Hezbollah, offering the region its best chance yet for peace after a month of fighting that has killed more than 800 people and inflamed Mideast tensions.
(AP, 8/12/06)
2006 Aug 13, In Michigan City, Indiana, fire swept through a two-story house, killing at least six people. An unknown number of others were missing. It was not clear whether they had left the scene or were still inside the home.
(AP, 8/13/06)
2006 Aug 13, In Afghanistan at least 5 Afghan troops and 25 militants were killed.
(WSJ, 8/14/06, p.A1)
2006 Aug 13, The 16th International AIDS conference opened in Toronto with some 24,000 people in attendance.
(SSFC, 8/13/06, p.A15)(Econ, 8/19/06, p.65)
2006 Aug 13, The death toll from Typhoon Saomai, the strongest storm to hit China in 50 years, rose to 114 as more evacuees died when buildings used as shelters collapsed. China’s state media reported About 17 million people in southwest China don't have access to clean drinking water due to sustained drought.
(AP, 8/13/06)(Reuters, 8/13/06)
2006 Aug 13, On his 80th birthday, Fidel Castro cautioned Cubans that he faced a long recovery from surgery and advised them to prepare for "adverse news," but he urged them to stay optimistic.
(AP, 8/13/06)
2006 Aug 13, Iraq's health minister, who is aligned to a powerful Shiite militia, claimed that US forces arrested seven of his personal guards in a surprise pre-dawn raid on his office. 4 vehicle bombs killed 63 Iraqis and wounded 140 in a predominantly Shiite neighborhood of Baghdad.
(AP, 8/13/06)(AP, 8/14/06)(SFC, 8/16/06, p.A6)
2006 Aug 13, After a stormy debate, Israel's Cabinet approved a Mideast cease-fire, agreeing to silence the army's guns on Aug 14 at 8AM. The Israeli military embarked on a last-minute push to devastate Hezbollah guerrillas, rocketing south Beirut with at least 20 missiles. Israeli warplanes fired missiles into gasoline stations in the southern port city of Tyre, killing at least 12 people in those and other attacks. Hezbollah fired more than 150 rockets at northern Israel, killing an Israeli man. Two Israeli air raids on a village in Lebanon's eastern Bekaa Valley killed at least seven people and wounded nearly two dozen.
(AP, 8/13/06)
2006 Aug 13, In Mexico a recount confirmed Calderon as the next president. Lopez Obrador vowed to mount new legal challenges.
(WSJ, 8/14/06, p.A1)
2006 Aug 13, Sri Lankan troops and Tamil Tiger rebels fought ground battles and artillery duels as the weekend death toll rose to 186. The rebels denied they were ready to talk peace. At least 15 people died in fighting around the St. Philip Neri Church in Allaiiddy, a predominantly Tamil village located on an island just west of the Jaffna Peninsula. The island, like the peninsula, is held by the government.
(AFP, 8/13/06)(AP, 8/14/06)
2006 Aug 13, In Turkey the PKK killed 2 policemen in a bomb attack near Tunceli.
(Econ, 9/2/06, p.48)
2006 Aug 13, In Venezuela prison officials discovered that Carlos Ortega, an anti-Chavez union leader, had slipped out of the Ramo Verde prison west of Caracas, where he was serving a 16-year sentence for civil rebellion. Three convicted military officers also escaped.
(AP, 8/14/06)
2006 Aug 14, The US State Department began issuing smart chip-embedded passports to Americans as planned, despite ongoing privacy concerns and legal disputes involving companies bidding on the project. New ones issued under this program will cost $97, which includes a $12 security surcharge added last year.
(AP, 8/14/06)
2006 Aug 15, NYC’s Mayor Bloomberg said he is putting $125 million of his own money into a new worldwide anti-smoking campaign.
(SFC, 8/16/06, p.A2)
2006 Aug 14, In the largest electronics-related recall involving the Consumer Products Safety Commission, Dell Inc. agreed to replace 4.1 million notebook computer batteries made by Sony Corp. because they can burst into flames.
(AP, 8/15/06)
2006 Aug 14, PepsiCo Inc. announced that CFO Indra Nooyi will replace Steven Reinemundi as CEO, making her the No. 2 female CEO in the Fortune 500 behind Patricia Woertz of Archer Daniels Midland. ADM was ranked 56th in the Fortune 500 and PepsiCo was 61st.
(SFC, 8/15/06, p.D5)
2006 Aug 14, Bruno Kirby (57), a veteran character actor known for playing the best friend in two of Billy Crystal's biggest comedies, "When Harry Met Sally" and "City Slickers," died in LA.
(AP, 8/16/06)
2006 Aug 14, In southern Afghanistan clashes between police and militants killed 11 suspected Taliban and six policemen. 4 NATO troops were wounded in one of two bombings in Kabul.
(AP, 8/14/06)
2006 Aug 14, Australian PM John Howard ditched plans for a tough new immigration law, conceding he did not have sufficient support in parliament.
(AFP, 8/14/06)
2006 Aug 14, In Brazil Guilherme Portanova (30), a kidnapped television reporter, was freed after Globo met the gang's demand to broadcast a video calling for improvements in Brazil's troubled prison system. In Rio de Janeiro Andres Costa Ramos Bordalo was stabbed to death by an assailant who stole his knapsack on Copacabana beach. Police stepped up patrols but at least 22 tourists were robbed during the week.
(AP, 8/14/06)(AP, 8/19/06)
2006 Aug 14, The British government downgraded its terror threat level from critical to severe, saying intelligence suggested an attack was no longer imminent.
(AP, 8/14/06)
2006 Aug 14, In Chile a tough nationwide anti-smoking law that took effect.
(AP, 8/14/06)
2006 Aug 14, In China the death toll from Typhoon Saomai rose to 255 after scores more bodies were pulled from the sea.
(AP, 8/14/06)
2006 Aug 14, Cuban state television aired the first video of Fidel Castro since he stepped down as president to recover from surgery, showing the bedridden Cuban leader talking with his brother Raul as well as Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
(AP, 8/14/07)
2006 Aug 14, In southern Ethiopia torrential rains spilled a river from its banks. At least 900 people died as continuing rains submerged five villages, knocked down grain silos and swept away cattle. Tens of thousands were marooned by the waters.
(AFP, 8/15/06)(Reuters, 8/17/06)
2006 Aug 14, At least 10 people were killed in shootings and bombings across Iraq, including three blacksmiths shot by gunmen in the northern city of Mosul.
(AP, 8/14/06)
2006 Aug 14, Israeli soldiers killed six Hezbollah fighters in three skirmishes in Lebanon after the UN-imposed cease-fire took effect. The clashes came as Lebanese civilians defied an Israeli travel ban and streamed back to their homes in war-ravaged areas. Lebanese, Israeli and UN officers met on the border to discuss the withdrawal of Israeli forces from southern Lebanon and the deployment of the Lebanese army in the region. Lebanon said nearly 791 people were killed since the fighting began. Israel said 116 soldiers and 39 civilians were killed in fighting or from Hezbollah rockets in the 34-day war.
(AP, 8/14/06)
2006 Aug 14, A Japanese tanker spilled about 1.4 million gallons of crude oil in the eastern Indian Ocean following a collision with a cargo ship. The spill, which would be about 4,500 tons, may be the largest ever involving a Japanese tanker. The tanker was carrying about 77.6 million gallons, or 250,000 tons, of crude. It had left port in Oman bound for Japan.
(AP, 8/15/06)
2006 Aug 14, Malaysia said it would issue a "big fat no" to any nation or group that asked it to dismantle a system of positive discrimination for its majority ethnic Malays as part of trade talks.
(AFP, 8/14/06)
2006 Aug 14, US authorities arrested Tijuana drug lord Francisco Javier Arellano Felix (36) aboard a boat off Mexico's Pacific coast. Mexican analysts doubted the significance of Arellano Felix's arrest as the gang has effectively lost much of its influence over the years.
(AP, 8/17/06)
2006 Aug 14, Nigeria formally handed sovereignty over the potentially oil-rich Bakassi peninsula to Cameroon after withdrawing its 3,000 troops in compliance with a UN-brokered deadline. This ended a 13-year feud between Abuja and Yaounde. Nigeria will maintain administrative control of southern Bakassi for the next two years, after which the area will be in a state of flux for another five years before it will be finally handed over to Cameroon.
(AP, 8/13/06)(AFP, 8/14/06)
2006 Aug 14, In Nigeria Ayo Daramola, a member of the country's ruling party and a potential candidate in Ekiti state, was found stabbed to death in his home, the third killing of a potential gubernatorial candidate in recent weeks. Armed men kidnapped four more foreign oil workers in the southern oil city of Port Harcourt, but released 3 Filipinos abducted more than 10 days ago.
(AFP, 8/14/06)(AP, 8/15/06)
2006 Aug 14, In Gaza American reporter Steve Centanni (60) and New Zealand cameraman Olaf Wiig (36) were seized by masked gunmen near the headquarters of the Palestinian security services. An Israeli airstrike destroyed a house in the Gaza Strip, injuring at least eight people. The military said an Islamic Jihad command center was targeted but Palestinians said the building was empty.
(AP, 8/14/06)(AP, 8/15/06)
2006 Aug 14, Fighting in Sri Lanka's north and east, and a bombing in the capital, left at least 50 people dead, including 43 schoolgirls killed in what the Tamil Tigers charged was a government air raid on a children's home in rebel territory. Hours later in Colombo, an auto rickshaw packed with explosives blew up as a car carrying Pakistan's high commissioner, Basir Ali Mohmand, passed along a crowded road. At least seven people were killed, including four army commandos guarding the envoy.
(AP, 8/14/06)
2006 Aug 15, US federal agents arrested 138 alleged drug traffickers in 15 cities. They seized over 47 pounds of Mexican black tar heroin and confiscated over $500,000 in illegal profits.
(SFC, 8/16/06, p.A3)
2006 Aug 15, US officials arrested Edgar Alvarez Cruz on immigration violations in Denver. He was suspected of participating in the rapes and killings of at least 10 women in the border city of Ciudad Juarez, where more than 100 young women have been killed since 1993.
(AP, 8/17/06)
2006 Aug 15, Seven northeastern US states said they had agreed on a model rule that would create the country's first market for heat-trapping carbon dioxide by curbing emissions at power plants.
(Reuters, 8/15/06)
2006 Aug 15, Afghan and US troops killed an al-Qaida suspect and detained 13 others in southeastern Afghanistan.
(AP, 8/15/06)
2006 Aug 15, The official death toll in China from Typhoon Saomai jumped to 295 as fishing families grieving the loss of loved ones said authorities were no help and had covered up the number of fatalities.
(AFP, 8/15/06)
2006 Aug 15, In Colombia the last major paramilitary leader to enter into a peace deal with the government handed in his weapon, even as the future of that fragile accord was called into doubt by other ex-militia leaders. Freddy Rendon Herrera and 745 fighters from the Elmer Cardenas bloc handed in 447 rifles in a disarmament ceremony in Unguia, a village 370 miles northwest of Bogota.
(AP, 8/15/06)
2006 Aug 15, French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy said nearly 30,000 illegal immigrants with school-age children applied for French residency under a special government offer, and about 6,000 will get it.
(AP, 8/15/06)
2006 Aug 15, The UN Security Council voted unanimously to extend the UN peacekeeping mission in Haiti for six months and urged its troops and police to help fight gang violence and kidnapping.
(AP, 8/15/06)
2006 Aug 15, A suicide bomber killed nine people at the party headquarters of the Iraqi president. In Basra tribal leader Faisal Raji al-Asadi, an anti-American Shiite cleric, was killed. Gunbattles between his supporters and Iraqi forces left at least six people dead. In Karbala street battles between security forces and followers of anti-American cleric Mahmoud al-Hassani, left 12 dead, including two Iraqi soldiers. A suicide car bomber killed nine people in an attack on the Mosul headquarters of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, a Kurdish party headed by President Jalal Talabani.
(AP, 8/15/06)(AP, 8/16/06)(SFC, 8/17/06, p.A14)
2006 Aug 15, Israel began slowly withdrawing its forces from southern Lebanon and made plans to hand over its captured territory as hopes were raised that a UN-imposed cease-fire would stick, despite early tests on its first day.
(AP, 8/15/06)
2006 Aug 15, Japan’s PM Junichiro Koizumi made a pilgrimage to a Tokyo war shrine reviled by critics as a symbol of militarism, triggering a further erosion in Japan's ties with its neighbors just a month before he leaves office.
(AP, 8/15/06)
2006 Aug 15, Maori Queen Te Arikinui Dame Te Atairangikaahu (75), aka Te Ata, died in New Zealand.
(SFC, 8/16/06, p.B7)(AP, 8/15/07)
2006 Aug 15, Two Norwegian and two Ukrainian oil workers being held hostage in Nigeria were freed as the government promised to crack down on a surge in unrest in Africa's largest oil producer.
(Reuters, 8/15/06)
2006 Aug 15, Pakistani forces arrested 29 suspected Taliban militants in a raid on a private hospital after they came from neighboring Afghanistan.
(AP, 8/15/06)
2006 Aug 16, New York City officials released new tapes of hundreds of heart-wrenching phone calls from the World Trade Center on 9-11, along with other emergency transcripts.
(AP, 8/16/07)
2006 Aug 16, Google launched a free wireless network for its hometown of Mountainview, Ca.
(SFC, 8/16/06, p.C1)
2006 Aug 16, John Mark Karr (41), a former American school teacher, was arrested in Thailand for the December, 1996, murder JonBenet Ramsey in Boulder, Colo. He said he tried to kidnap JonBenet for a $118,000 ransom but that his plan went awry and he strangled her. Karr's confession that he had killed JonBenet was later discredited.
(AP, 8/17/07)
2006 Aug 16, Over 80 immigrant workers in New Orleans filed suit against Decatur Hotels LLC saying they were being exploited. The workers from Peru, Bolivia and the Dominican Rep. had not been reimbursed for travel and were not getting the promised work hours.
(SFC, 8/17/06, p.A16)
2006 Aug 16, In southeastern Afghanistan US and Afghan forces raided compounds suspected of being al-Qaida sanctuaries, seizing weapons and explosives and arresting 8 people. US-led forces killed eight suspected militants after coming under attack in Kunar province. A US soldier was killed when his vehicle struck a Soviet-era mine in Paktika province. Western officials said opium cultivation in Afghanistan has hit record levels, up by more than 40% from 2005, despite hundreds of millions in counternarcotics money.
(AP, 8/16/06)(AP, 8/17/06)
2006 Aug 16, Alfredo Stroessner (93), anti-communist dictator of Paraguay (1954-1989), died in exile in Brazil. He used the right-wing Colorado Party to rule with a blend of force, guile and patronage for 35 years before his ouster in 1989. During his rule membership in the Colorado Party was compulsory for all teachers, doctors, engineers, officers or those who hoped for government service. Party dues was docked from salaries.
(AP, 8/16/06)(Econ, 8/26/06, p.71)
2006 Aug 16, Colombian police arrested 14 top paramilitary leaders for violating the terms of a peace accord that has led to the demobilization of 30,000 right-wing fighters. Anti-narcotics police said they chemically fumigated the Sierra Macarena national park last week, clearing its entire 11,370 acres of coca. The spraying destroyed coca capable of producing 17.5 tons of high-grade cocaine and was likely a major blow to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.
(AP, 8/16/06)(AP, 8/17/06)(Econ, 8/26/06, p.28)
2006 Aug 16, In northeast India a grenade exploded in a Hindu temple, killing at least four people and leaving 40 others injured, mainly in a stampede that followed the blast.
(AP, 8/17/06)
2006 Aug 16, Bombings in Baghdad, killed 21 people and wounded 59. One American soldier was also killed as he was distributing candy to the children. British troops drove off gunmen who attacked the Basra governor's office, apparently to avenge a tribal leader killed the day before. In Mosul armed clashes between police and assailants in three predominantly Sunni Arab neighborhoods killed least five gunmen with six arrested. A roadside bomb exploded near an Iraqi army patrol north of Hillah, killing three soldiers and wounding four. In Karbala 10 militia fighters were killed and 281 arrested. A US soldier died of wounds suffered in Anbar province.
(AP, 8/16/06)(SFC, 8/17/06, p.A14)(AP, 8/17/06)
2006 Aug 16, In Kashmir 5 Islamic rebels were shot dead by Indian troops after they sneaked across the de facto border from the Pakistani zone. The army suffered one casualty.
(AP, 8/16/06)
2006 Aug 16, Top foreign diplomats planned the dispatch of a 15,000-strong international force to enforce a cease-fire in southern Lebanon, but the government was divided over whether Hezbollah should lay down its arms or even withdraw them from the border with Israel.
(AP, 8/16/06)
2006 Aug 16, Palestinian gunmen from the rival Hamas and Fatah militias clashed in southern Gaza, killing a 14-year old boy in the crossfire and injuring four others.
(AP, 8/17/06)
2006 Aug 16, A Russian patrol boat opened fire on a Japanese vessel in disputed waters, killing a fisherman and prompting a strong protest from Tokyo. Moscow urged Japanese boats to stay out of its waters. 3 fishermen were detained.
(AP, 8/16/06)(AP, 8/17/06)
2006 Aug 16, In Mogadishu, Somalia, Islamic leaders gave seven men 40 lashes each for using or selling marijuana, meting out the punishment in public in a dramatic example of the region's new fundamentalist rule.
(AP, 8/16/06)
2006 Aug 16, The presidents of South Africa, Mozambique and Zimbabwe gathered for the official opening the new Giriyondo border post linking South Africa and Mozambique. This was another step in the creation of the 14,000 square mile Greater Limpopo Transfrontier Park, which would span the 3 countries.
(SFC, 8/17/06, p.A2)
2006 Aug 16, A South Korean aid group claimed that massive floods in North Korea last month left about 54,700 people dead or missing and some 2.5 million homeless.
(AP, 8/16/06)
2006 Aug 16, Sri Lankan war planes bombed Tamil Tiger positions as troops hunted rebel infiltrators in northern Jaffna peninsula after resisting a guerrilla advance.
(AFP, 8/16/06)
2006 Aug 17, President Bush signed new rules to prod companies into shoring up their pension plans.
(AP, 8/17/07)
2006 Aug 17, A federal judge in Detroit ruled that President Bush's warrantless surveillance program violated the rights to free speech and privacy, as well as the separation of powers enshrined in the Constitution. The administration said it would appeal.
(AP, 8/18/07)
2006 Aug 17, Several large California auto insurers said they will set premiums based on driving records rather than ZIP codes and reduce rates for most motorists.
(SFC, 8/18/06, p.A1)
2006 Aug 17, In New Orleans Merck & Co. lost a second federal trial over its withdrawn painkiller Vioxx and must pay $51 million to a retired FBI agent who had a heart attack after taking the drug for more than two years.
(AP, 8/17/06)
2006 Aug 17, Scientists believe they have found a key gene that helped the human brain evolve from our chimp-like ancestors. In just a few million years, one area of the human genome seems to have evolved about 70 times faster than the rest of our genetic code. It appears to have a role in a rapid tripling of the size of the brain's crucial cerebral cortex, according to an article published in the journal Nature.
(AP, 8/17/06)
2006 Aug 17, In the Arctic ice Lt. Jessica Hill (31) and Boatswain's Mate Steven Duque (22), divers on the US Coast Guard cutter Healy, died during a practice dive.
(AP, 9/24/06)
2006 Aug 17, In eastern Afghanistan a bomb mistakenly dropped by a US-led coalition aircraft killed 10 Afghan police officers in Paktika province. 16 more people, including a US soldier, died in violence across the country.
(AP, 8/17/06)(WSJ, 8/18/06, p.A1)
2006 Aug 17, An overnight volcanic eruption in Ecuador's Andes mountains killed at least one person and left more than 60 others missing. It was the first fatality reported from a Tungurahua eruption since the volcano rumbled back to life in 1999 after staying dormant for eight decades.
(AP, 8/17/06)
2006 Aug 17, Dominican Republic President Leonel Fernandez named four generals and a former law partner to the Cabinet, a day after his party took control of the Caribbean country's Congress for the first time.
(AP, 8/18/06)
2006 Aug 17, President Jacques Chirac announced that France will immediately double to 400 troops its contingent in the UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon.
(AP, 8/17/06)
2006 Aug 17, In Indonesia an Islamic militant convicted in the 2002 Bali bombings was released from prison and 11 others jailed for minor roles had their sentences reduced to mark independence day.
(AP, 8/17/06)
2006 Aug 17, In Indonesia a woman died of bird flu in a village where authorities were investigating a possible cluster of human cases of the H5N1 virus.
(AP, 8/20/06)
2006 Aug 17, In central Baghdad 2 car bombs killed 13 people and injured 55, hours after another bomb killed 8 laborers. One US soldier killed when a roadside bomb exploded near a foot patrol south of Baghdad. A gallon of gasoline on the black market in Baghdad sold for about $4.92, although the official price was 64 cents a gallon. Iraq said it had doubled the money allocated for importing oil products in August and September to tackle the country's worst fuel shortage since Saddam Hussein's 2003 ouster.
(AP, 8/17/06)(SFC, 8/18/06, p.A7)
2006 Aug 17, Jordanian envoy Ahmed al-Lozi has presented his credentials to the Iraqi government, becoming the first fully accredited Arab ambassador in the country since the fall of Saddam Hussein.
(AP, 8/18/06)
2006 Aug 17, Lebanese troops, tanks and armored vehicles deployed south of the Litani River, a key provision of the UN cease-fire plan that ended fighting between Israel and Hezbollah. The deployment marks a first step toward extending government control in a region Lebanese troops have largely avoided for four decades. A Middle East Airlines passenger jet flew into Beirut airport from Jordan as officials partially lifted a 36-day Israeli air blockade.
(AP, 8/17/06)
2006 Aug 17, An outbreak of strain of bluetongue, a disease transmitted to sheep by insects but which is not contagious nor known to affect humans, was detected in the southern Netherlands. Belgium and Germany soon reported cases.
(AFP, 8/28/06)
2006 Aug 17, Sri Lankan troops beat back a fresh attempt by Tamil Tigers to overrun the main defenses of the northern peninsula of Jaffna and killed at least 98 guerrillas. At least six soldiers were killed and 60 wounded in the intense battle.
(AFP, 8/17/06)
2006 Aug 18, President George W. Bush criticized a federal court ruling the day before that his warrantless wiretapping program was unconstitutional, declaring that opponents "do not understand the nature of the world in which we live."
(AP, 8/18/07)
2006 Aug 18, The US FDA approved a mix of bacteria-killing viruses for spraying on cold cuts, hot dogs and sausages to combat deadly microbes.
(SFC, 8/19/06, p.A4)
2006 Aug 18, Raymond Payne, a former HSBC Bank USA vice president, pleaded guilty in Manhattan federal court to a conspiracy charge over his role in a $30 million telemarketing fraud targeting low-income people with poor credit histories. Prosecutors said First Choice, run by Canadian co-defendants Stephen Clark and Leslie Pinsky, extracted $30 million from people, and transferred the money to the HSBC account. In 2007 Clark was sentenced just over 11 years in prison.
(Reuters, 8/18/06)(Reuters, 6/15/07)
2006 Aug 18, In western Missouri bone fragments from at least two people were found on a three-acre wooded property northeast of Drexel. Michael Lee Shaver Jr. (33) was arrested the next day and charged with murder for a killing in 2001. Shaver claimed that he had killed, dismembered and burned 7 men in his home following drug transactions.
(AP, 8/20/06)(SFC, 8/21/06, p.A3)
2006 Aug 18, In Bristow, Oklahoma, Donald Thompson (59), a former judge convicted of exposing himself while presiding over jury trials, was sentenced to four years in prison and ordered to pay a fine of $40,000.
(SFC, 8/19/06, p.A2)
2006 Aug 18, The Washington Post reported that sprinter Marion Jones had tested positive for the endurance drug EPO at the US Track and Field Championships on June 23. A 2nd test came back negative and cleared the allegations. On October 5, 2007, Jones pleaded guilty to using steroids before the Sydney 2000 Summer Olympics and acknowledged that she had, in fact, lied when she previously denied steroid use. Her sanction required disqualification of all her competitive results obtained after September 1, 2000, and forfeiture of all medals, results, points and prizes. On January 11, 2008, Jones was sentenced to 6 months in jail. She began her sentence on March 7, 2008 and was released on September 5, 2008.
(SFC, 8/19/06, p.A1)(SFC, 9/7/06, p.A1)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marion_Jones)
2006 Aug 18, Ford Motor Co. announced sharp cuts in its North American production that would force it to partially shut down plants in the US and Canada in the fourth quarter.
(AP, 8/18/06)
2006 Aug 18, Boeing took steps toward shutting down production of its C-17 military cargo plane. Production would continue until mid-2009 for the $200 million planes.
(WSJ, 8/19/06, p.A8)
2006 Aug 18, Afghanistan Education Minister Mohammed Hanif Atmar said attacks have closed more than 208 schools, including 144 burned down, in the past year as militants changed tactics to hit soft targets. At least 41 teachers and students have been killed over the past 12 months in a wave of attacks on the country's schools.
(Reuters, 8/18/06)
2006 Aug 18, Anglo-Australian resources giant BHP Billiton closed its operations at the world's biggest copper mine in Chile and ended negotiations with striking workers. The strike began on August 7 at the Escondida Mine, majority owned by BHP. The Chilean government has signaled it was ready to intervene.
(AP, 8/18/06)
2006 Aug 18, The Financial Times reported that Britain has agreed to a multi-billion-dollar defense deal to supply 72 Eurofighter Typhoon aircraft to Saudi Arabia.
(AP, 8/18/06)
2006 Aug 18, In Canada the 16th International AIDS Conference ended in a firestorm with vitriol hurled at G8 countries and South Africa over lapses in the battle against the disease that has claimed 25 million lives.
(Reuters, 8/18/06)
2006 Aug 18, Chile's Supreme Court voted to strip Gen. Augusto Pinochet of immunity from prosecution, allowing him to be tried on corruption charges for his once-secret multimillion dollar overseas bank accounts.
(AP, 8/18/06)
2006 Aug 18, China’s central bank announced its 2nd interest rate hike in 4 months to choke off excess investment. The benchmark lending rate rose .27% to 6.12% effective Aug 19.
(WSJ, 8/19/06, p.A4)
2006 Aug 18, The death toll from Typhoon Saomai, the strongest storm to hit China in more than five decades, jumped to 436 after more than 100 new deaths were confirmed in the country's east.
(AP, 8/18/06)
2006 Aug 18, In southwest Ethiopia search and rescue teams kept up frantic efforts to save thousands marooned by fatal flash floods, where relief workers reported near-total devastation. Some 73,000 people had been affected by raging waters from unusually heavy seasonal rains.
(AFP, 8/18/06)
2006 Aug 18, In Greece a 700-year-old icon, said to have the power to work miracles, was discovered stolen from the cliff-side Elona Monastery. In September police arrested a Romanian national in Crete and recovered the Madonna and Child icon.
(SSFC, 10/8/06, p.A26)(http://tinyurl.com/grxc8)
2006 Aug 18, The United Liberation Front of Asom announced that it would stop attacking the forces of the Indian government, which announced a unilateral cease-fire Aug. 13. It was the first truce announced by the rebel group since its formation in 1979.
(AP, 8/19/06)
2006 Aug 18, In Iraq 7 pilgrims heading to a major Shiite religious gathering were shot dead in a Sunni neighborhood.
(AP, 8/19/06)
2006 Aug 18, Steorn, an Irish company, said it has developed technology that it claims produces free energy. The company said its discovery is based on the interaction of magnetic fields and allows the production of clean, free and constant energy.
(AFP, 8/18/06)
2006 Aug 18, Israeli soldiers killed 3 Palestinian gunmen and wounded 2 others in confrontations in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
(WSJ, 8/19/06, p.A1)
2006 Aug 18, At least 10 people died and as many as 40 were feared missing when a small boat packed with illegal immigrants sank off Sicily, prompting Italy to call for greater cooperation to fight human trafficking.
(Reuters, 8/19/06)
2006 Aug 18, The Lebanese army reached the country's southern border with Israel for the first time in decades, sending a lone jeep on patrol through Kfar Kila, a battered stronghold of support for Hezbollah militants. At least 845 Lebanese were killed in the 34-day war: 743 civilians, 34 soldiers and 68 Hezbollah. Israel says it killed about 530 guerrillas. On the Israeli side, 157 were killed, 118 soldiers and 39 civilians, many from the 3,970 Hezbollah rockets. The Lebanese government estimated infrastructure damages at $2.5 billion. The Lebanese death toll was later raised to 1200 and economic costs put to some $12 billion.
(AP, 8/18/06)(SFC, 8/19/06, p.C1)(Econ, 11/11/06, p.51)
2006 Aug 18, In Lesotho a 14-nation southern Africa summit closed with a pledge to speed up regional economical integration, even as leaders expressed concern about crisis-plagued member-state Zimbabwe.
(AFP, 8/18/06)
2006 Aug 18, Nigeria’s military launched a crackdown on suspected militants in the oil-rich south as militants released another foreign hostage taken in a spate of kidnappings.
(AP, 8/18/06)
2006 Aug 18, Greenpeace warned a sunken Philippine oil tanker was a pollution timebomb as oil from its punctured tanks destroyed coral reefs and washed up blackened fish on pristine beaches. Oil trapped in the tanks of the Solar I, which went down last week with 500,000 gallons of industrial oil on board, could pour out at any time. To date some 50,000 gallons had leaked into the sea close to the central island of Guimaras.
(AP, 8/18/06)
2006 Aug 18, The UN said more than 41,000 people on Sri Lanka’s Jaffna peninsula, about 10 percent of its population, were believed to have fled their homes and warned that supplies in the area had reached "alarmingly low levels".
(AFP, 8/19/06)
2006 Aug 18, A bus carrying Iranian tourists crashed into a truck in eastern Turkey, killing 18 and injuring 29.
(AP, 8/18/06)
2006 Aug 19, In California explorers from the Cave Research Foundation discovered a large cave in Sequoia National Park, which they named Ursa Minor.
(SSFC, 9/24/06, p.A1)
2006 Aug 19, Afghan police backed by NATO aircraft and artillery killed 71 suspected Taliban militant in fierce clashes that also left five Afghan forces dead in southern Kandahar province. 3 US soldiers were killed and 3 others wounded during a clash against Taliban militants in eastern Kunar province. In southern Uruzgan province, an American and an Afghan soldier were killed and 3 other Americans wounded in a four-hour clash with more than 100 insurgents. The latest violence came as the country celebrated the 87th anniversary of its independence from Britain.
(AP, 8/19/06)(AP, 8/20/06)
2006 Aug 19, Roger Deakin (b.1943), English writer and film-maker, died. His last book “Wildwood: A Journey Through Trees," was published posthumously in 2007.
(Econ, 7/28/07, p.85)(http://books.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,,1860073,00.html)
2006 Aug 19, In East Timor rampaging youths set houses on fire in Dili, a reminder that stability has not yet returned to Asia's newest nation following months of violence.
(CP, 8/19/06)
2006 Aug 19, In Germany a 21-year-old Lebanese was arrested in a police swoop on the railway station in Kiel as he tried to flee the city, where he was a student. He was one of two men suspected of planting bombs on German trains in a failed terrorist attack in July.
(AP, 8/20/06)
2006 Aug 19, At least 13 people were killed around Iraq, including four Iraqi soldiers in a roadside bomb explosion in Diwaniyah. An American soldier was killed in combat in Anbar province.
(AP, 8/19/06)(AP, 8/20/06)
2006 Aug 19, Israeli commandos raided a Hezbollah stronghold deep inside Lebanon, sparking a fierce clash with militants that left one Israeli soldier dead. Lebanon called the raid a "flagrant violation" of the UN-brokered cease-fire, while Israel said it was aimed at disrupting arms smuggling from Iran and Syria. A Lebanese civilian was killed when unexploded Israeli munitions from the offensive detonated in the village of Ras al-Ein, outside Tyre.
(AP, 8/19/06)
2006 Aug 19, Israeli soldiers in Ramallah arrested Nasser Shaer, the Palestinian deputy prime minister. He was the highest-ranking Hamas official rounded up in a seven-week-old crackdown against the ruling party.
(AP, 8/19/06)
2006 Aug 19, Ten bodies were found and about 20 other people were believed missing after a 2nd boat in 2 days carrying would-be immigrants sank off the Italian island of Lampedusa. Some 70 survivors were plucked from the water after the boat sank, several of whom said there had been 120 people on the boat.
(AP, 8/20/06)
2006 Aug 19, In Ivory Coast waste, which contained hydrogen sulphide, was unloaded from a Panamanian-registered ship, the Probo Koala, at Abidjan port and then dumped in at least eight open air sites, including the city's main rubbish dump. By mid-September 6 people had died and 16,000 had sought treatment. Dutch-based Trafigura Beheer BV, one of the world's leading commodities traders, said it had chartered the ship and said the material was a "mixture of gasoline, water and caustic washings" following the unloading of a cargo of gasoline in Nigeria.
(Reuters, 9/7/06)(Econ, 9/16/06, p.58)
2006 Aug 19, French soldiers landed in Lebanon, the first reinforcements for an expanded UN peacekeeping force tasked with keeping the truce in the Israel-Hezbollah conflict. About 50 French troops, military engineers, were to prepare for the arrival of 200 more soldiers expected next week.
(AP, 8/19/06)
2006 Aug 19, Ten bodies were found and about 20 other people were believed missing after a 2nd boat in 2 days carrying would-be immigrants sank off the Italian island of Lampedusa. Some 70 survivors were plucked from the water after the boat sank, several of whom said there had been 120 people on the boat.
(AP, 8/20/06)
2006 Aug 19, Mexican prosecutors announced that they have charged two policemen with protecting the Arellano Felix drug trafficking gang. Mexican police said they had broken up a vote-buying scheme in Chiapas on the eve of state elections.
(AP, 8/20/06)
2006 Aug 19, Demonstrations erupted in Kathmandu, Nepal, after the government hiked fuel prices by as much as 25% in a bid to save state-owned Nepal Oil Corp (NOC) from bankruptcy.
(AFP, 8/19/06)
2006 Aug 19, In Nigeria government troops arrested about 100 people in a search for militants suspected of taking oil industry workers hostage in the petroleum-rich south.
(AP, 8/20/06)
2006 Aug 19, Russia handed over the body of a Japanese fisherman killed by a Russian patrol boat that opened fire in disputed waters, sparking a diplomatic feud.
(AP, 8/19/06)
2006 Aug 19, In Sudan 2 African Union peacekeepers from Rwanda were killed and 3 were wounded when their convoy was ambushed in the Darfur region.
(AP, 8/19/06)
2006 Aug 19, The Turkish Foreign Ministry said that it had forced two Syria-bound Iranian planes to land and be searched for rockets and other military equipment, one on Jul 27 and the other on Aug 8, during the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah.
(AP, 8/19/06)
2006 Aug 19, A suspected Kurdish rebel attack caused an explosion and huge fire on a natural gas pipeline in eastern Turkey.
(AP, 8/19/06)
2006 Aug 20, Robert K. Hoffman (59), one of the 3 founders of the National Lampoon magazine, died in Dallas, Texas. Hoffman, Henry Beard and Doug Kenney sold their interests in 1975.
(AP, 8/23/06)
2006 Aug 20, Joe Rosenthal (94), former Associated Press photographer, who had taken the iconic Iwo Jima flag-raising picture (2/23/1945) during World War II, died in Novato, Calif.
(AP, 8/20/07)
2006 Aug 20, In Afghanistan militants ambushed a police patrol in western Farah province, sparking a gunbattle that left one officer and 2 attackers dead. In Helmand province a clash with insurgents left one British soldier dead and three others wounded. A NATO airstrike killed nine militants including a local insurgent leader in Helmand province. A roadside bomb killed three Afghan policemen traveling on the main highway linking Murja and Lashkar Gah districts. Two roadside bombs targeting border police in southeastern Khost province killed two officers and wounded five others. Tens of thousands of health workers fanned out across Afghanistan in a polio vaccination campaign to immunize more than 7 million children under age 5.
(AP, 8/20/06)(AP, 8/21/06)(AP, 8/22/06)
2006 Aug 20, President Joseph Kabila failed to win an outright majority in Congo's first elections in more than four decades. Kabila won 45% of the 16.9 million votes cast in the July 30 ballot; Bemba had 20%. Former rebel leader Jean-Pierre Bemba will face Kabila in a second round of voting. Security-forces loyal to Kabila and Bemba fought gunbattles that killed at least two people.
(AP, 8/21/06)
2006 Aug 20, Arab League foreign ministers convened in Egypt for an emergency meeting to discuss how to fund reconstruction in war-ravaged Lebanon and defuse Mideast tensions amid rising discord between moderate Arabs and Syria, a main backer of Hezbollah.
(AP, 8/20/06)
2006 Aug 20, In northern France a fire broke out in a run-down apartment building that mainly housed immigrants, killing five people and injuring 10.
(AP, 8/20/06)
2006 Aug 20, In India a Canadian was arrested with illegal drugs worth five million dollars in New Delhi in what was billed as a major effort to stop narcotics being shipped to the West. About 100 kilograms (220 pounds) of ephedrine, hashish and other illegal drugs were seized overnight from Girdish Singh Toor while he was leading a convoy of vehicles.
(AFP, 8/20/06)
2006 Aug 20, Snipers firing from rooftops and a cemetery killed 20 people and wounded dozens in a series of attacks on a Shiite religious procession that drew hundreds of thousands of pilgrims to Baghdad. The "terrorist assaults" took place when the pilgrims were walking through Sunni areas on their way to the shrine of Imam Moussa Kadhim. 2 US Marines and a sailor were killed in the western province of Anbar.
(AP, 8/20/06)(AP, 8/21/06)(Reuters, 8/21/06)
2006 Aug 20, Israeli troops detained Mahmoud al-Ramahi, secretary-general of the Hamas parliament, pushing forward with a crackdown on the Islamic militant group.
(AP, 8/20/06)
2006 Aug 20, Lebanese PM Fuad Saniora called the Israeli bombing campaign "a crime against humanity," and Lebanon's defense minister warned any group that breaks the Middle East cease-fire will be dealt with harshly.
(AP, 8/20/06)
2006 Aug 20, Nepal’s government withdrew hikes in gasoline, diesel and cooking fuel prices after thousands of protesters clashed with police, blocked traffic and vandalized government vehicles.
(AP, 8/20/06)
2006 Aug 20, In New Zealand Tuheitia Paki (51), eldest son of the late Queen Te Arikinui Dame Te Atairangikaahu, wore his mother's feather cloak as he was named the new Maori king in the village of Ngaruawahia.
(AP, 8/20/06)
2006 Aug 20, At least 11 people were killed when militants engaged Nigerian troops in a fierce gun battle in the restive Niger Delta. Local press reports said 12 people, 10 militants, a Shell worker and a soldier, were killed during the shootout.
(AFP, 8/22/06)
2006 Aug 21, California’s Gov. Schwarzenegger and Democratic lawmakers agreed to raise California’s minimum wage by $1.25 over the next year to $8.00 per hour, making it the highest minimum wage in the nation.
(SFC, 8/22/06, p.A1)
2006 Aug 21, NATO and Afghan forces used aircraft in clashes that left 14 militants dead, capping several days of intense fighting that killed more than 100 people and threatened efforts to stabilize southern Afghanistan.
(AP, 8/21/06)
2006 Aug 21, Burundi police arrested former President Domitien Ndayizeye, apparently in connection with an alleged plot to overthrow the tiny central African country's government.
(Reuters, 8/21/06)
2006 Aug 21, A fierce gun battle pinned down foreign envoys in the Congolese capital Kinshasa as fighting erupted for a second day following the announcement of a presidential election run-off. At least five people died in overnight gunfire.
(Reuters, 8/21/06)(AFP, 8/21/06)
2006 Aug 21, In northern Egypt a passenger train barreled into railway station and collided with a second train outside Qalyoub, killing at least 58 people and injuring more than 100.
(AFP, 8/21/06)(SFC, 8/22/06, p.A3)
2006 Aug 21, In London, England, 11 people were charged with conspiracy to commit murder in the alleged plot to blow up as many as 10 trans-Atlantic jetliners. One person, a woman, was released without charge. In 2009 Adam Khatib (23) was sentenced for plotting with Abdulla Ahmed Ali, who was convicted of leading the team. Ali was sentenced in September, 2009, to 40 years. Nabeel Hussain (25) received eight years while Mohammed Shamin Uddin (39) was jailed for seven years.
(AP, 8/21/06)(AP, 12/10/09)
2006 Aug 21, In Haiti Amaral Duclona, the leader of a major gang, defied President Rene Preval's orders to disarm, saying his followers would give up their weapons only if UN peacekeepers stop conducting raids in the slums.
(AP, 8/21/06)
2006 Aug 21, Diplomats and UN officials said Iran has turned away UN inspectors wanting to examine its underground nuclear site in an apparent violation of the Nonproliferation Treaty.
(AP, 8/21/06)
2006 Aug 21, In Iraq a US serviceman was killed when the vehicle he was traveling in was hit by a roadside bomb north of Baghdad. A defiant Saddam Hussein refused to enter a plea on genocide charges and dismissed the court as illegitimate as his second trial began.
(Reuters, 8/21/06)(AP, 8/21/07)
2006 Aug 21, Police raided the official residence of Israeli President Moshe Katsav as part of a sexual harassment investigation, seizing computers and documents. Israeli troops shot two Hezbollah guerrillas during a clash in the southern Lebanese village of Chamaa.
(AP, 8/21/06)(AP, 8/22/06)
2006 Aug 21, In Mexico’s Chiapas state Juan Sabines, of Lopez Obrador's Democratic Revolution Party (PRD), held a razor-thin lead over Jose Antonio Aguilar Bodegas, of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), who also is backed by President Vicente Fox's National Action Party. Oaxaca sank further into chaos as protesters armed with machetes, pipes and clubs seized 12 private radio stations, cut off highways, and blockaded bus terminals and newspaper offices.
(AP, 8/21/06)
2006 Aug 21, In Nigeria soldiers stopped cars at checkpoints and arrested 60 people in the third day of a crackdown on militants in the volatile oil region.
(AP, 8/21/06)
2006 Aug 21, In Russia a bomb blast tore through a Moscow market, killing at least 11 people and over 50 people. 3 detainees, all in their late teens or early 20s, confessed to the crime.
(AP, 8/21/06)(AP, 8/22/07)
2006 Aug 21, Somalia’s embattled PM Ali Mohamed Gedi named a new Cabinet, two weeks after the old one was dissolved amid a rift within the UN-backed transitional government over how to respond to the growing influence of Islamic militants.
(AP, 8/21/06)
2006 Aug 21, South Korea and the US launched joint military exercises, held annually since 1975, despite protests from North Korea. The Ulchi Focus Lens exercises were scheduled to run until September 1.
(AP, 8/21/06)
2006 Aug 21, In northern Spain at least 6 people died in a train derailment.
(AP, 8/21/06)
2006 Aug 21, Saudi police killed two armed men during clashes in the Red Sea port of Jeddah.
(AP, 8/21/06)
2006 Aug 22, US sprinter Justin Gatlin agreed to an 8-year ban for doping and will forfeit his 100m world-record tie, set May 12 at the Qatar Super Grand Prix in Doha.
(WSJ, 8/23/06, p.A1)
2006 Aug 22, Paramount Pictures severed ties to Tom Cruise after 14 years, citing unacceptable conduct.
(AP, 8/22/07)
2006 Aug 22, Berkeley, Ca., christened the new $70 million Berkeley City College, formerly known as Vista College. Vista had begun in 1974 as Peralta College for Non-traditional Study (PCNS). The name was changed to vista in 1978. Classes were spread across more than 200 locations.
(SFC, 8/23/06, p.B3)
2006 Aug 22, Sony Corp. announced its purchase of Grouper, a small video-sharing site, for $65 million.
(Econ, 9/2/06, p.58)
2006 Aug 22, In southern Afghanistan a suicide bomber drove his explosives-laden car into a Canadian military patrol, wounding four soldiers. Insurgents ambushed a police vehicle near the Pakistan border, killing five officers. In Helmand province British troops using "high-explosive ammunition" killed nine insurgents. In Kandahar province NATO warplanes killed at least 11 Taliban fighters just hours after militant attacks left one NATO soldier dead and five others wounded. NATO troops killed one Afghan youth and wounded another after a suicide bombing in Kandahar city that targeted a Canadian convoy, killing one soldier and wounding three. 2 roadside bombs struck a truck and a motorbike in the Kandahar district of Daman, killing three civilians and wounding one.
(AP, 8/22/06)(AP, 8/23/06)
2006 Aug 22, British government figures said Britain has taken in an estimated 427,000 migrants from eight former communist states since they joined the European Union in 2004, far more than an earlier prediction of 13,000 newcomers a year.
(AP, 8/23/06)
2006 Aug 22, In China visiting Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said China will expand its cooperation in oil exploration and help his country build a fiber-optic communications network under agreements to be signed in Beijing this week.
(AP, 8/22/06)
2006 Aug 22, In Kinshasa fighting flared for a third day between supporters of Congo's two presidential candidates, as the UN called for an immediate cease-fire and a European Union military force was sending reinforcements.
(AP, 8/22/06)
2006 Aug 22, An Egyptian tour bus overturned in the Sinai peninsula killing 11 people, most of them Israeli Arabs, and injuring more than 30.
(AP, 8/22/06)
2006 Aug 22, Kristjan Lepik of Tallinn, Estonia, settled theft charges with the SEC. He agreed to return over $550,000 in trading profits and pay a $15,000 penalty for illegally trading on corporate information. The SEC said Lepik and co-worker Oliver Peek made at least $7.8 million trading on advanced looks at hundreds of press releases.
(SFC, 8/23/06, p.C2)
2006 Aug 22, Ethiopia began releasing water from dams taxed by two weeks of heavy rain to prevent them from bursting as the confirmed death toll from devastating floods climbed to 626.
(AP, 8/22/06)
2006 Aug 22, Ethiopian troops reportedly arrived in the central Somali town of Galkayo. The move may stoke tensions with the Islamic militiamen who control most of southern Somalia. They were seen inside the town in 13 vehicles.
(AP, 8/22/06)
2006 Aug 22, In India police killed a Pakistani and arrested another in a shootout that authorities said foiled a terrorist attack in Mumbai, India's financial capital.
(AP, 8/22/06)
2006 Aug 22, In Iraq two people were killed in a bomb explosion in Baghdad and two people were killed during clashes between British forces and gunmen in the southern city of Amarah. A policeman was shot to death in a drive-by shooting in Al-Hay, north of Amarah.
(AP, 8/22/06)(AP, 8/23/06)
2006 Aug 22, Israeli troops shot and killed three militants from the Islamic Jihad group near the Israel-Gaza border, as soldiers conducted house-to-house searches and made arrests elsewhere in the coast strip.
(AP, 8/22/06)
2006 Aug 22, The Orizont, a leased Romanian oil rig off the coast of Iran, came under fire from Iranian military vessels and was later occupied by Iranian troops. A 2nd Romanian rig had recently been towed from Iranian waters due to unpaid bills.
(AP, 8/22/06)(WSJ, 10/14/06, p.A8)
2006 Aug 22, A Russian passenger jet with at least 170 people aboard crashed in Ukraine after sending a distress signal. The Pulkovo airlines Tupolev 154, en route from the Russian Black Sea resort of Anapa to St. Petersburg, crashed near the Ukrainian city of Donetsk.
(AP, 8/22/06)
2006 Aug 22, In Spain Grigory Perelman (40), a reclusive Russian, won a Fields Medal, the math world's highest honor, for solving a problem that has stumped some of the discipline's greatest minds for a century, but he refused the award.
(AP, 8/22/06)
2006 Aug 22, Thailand police arrested 175 North Koreans, mostly women and children, who illegally entered the country and were found hiding in an abandoned home in Bangkok.
(AFP, 8/23/06)
2006 Aug 23, In Alaska Republican Gov. Frank Murkowski finished last in a 3-day primary election. Sarah Palin, a former Wasilla mayor, won with over 50% of the vote.
(SFC, 8/24/06, p.A3)
2006 Aug 23, Annie Donnelly (38) of Long Island, NY, pleaded guilty to stealing $2.3 million (1.2 million pounds) from her employers. She spent the money on lottery tickets, buying as much as $6,000 worth of tickets a day in a bid to hit the jackpot.
(Reuters, 8/24/06)
2006 Aug 23, The Citadel released the results of a survey in which almost 20% of female cadets reported being sexually assaulted since enrolling at the South Carolina military college.
(AP, 8/23/07)
2006 Aug 23, In Washington state Gov. Gregoire declared a state of emergency due to a group of southeastern wildfires that had covered 70 square miles near Dayton.
(SFC, 8/25/06, p.A3)
2006 Aug 23, Maynard Ferguson (78), Canadian-born jazz trumpeter, died in Ventura, Ca.
(SFC, 8/25/06, p.B11)
2006 Aug 23, The Afghan and Pakistani armies agreed to conduct coordinated and simultaneous patrols with the US alongside their volatile border. The accord was reached during the 17th meeting of Tripartite Commission. In southern Afghanistan 18 Taliban rebels and an Afghan soldier were killed in a clash that erupted after the militants attacked an army post in Zabul province.
(AP, 8/23/06)(AFP, 8/23/06)
2006 Aug 23, Argentina announced an ambitious plan to expand its nuclear program to meet rising energy demands, including extending the life of existing plants and possibly resuming uranium mining.
(AP, 8/23/06)
2006 Aug 23, Vytautas Pociunas, a top Lithuanian spy posted to Belarus, was found dead in Brest. Some linked his death to feuds within the Lithuanian security service (VSD) over freight contracts. A parliamentary committee called for Arvydas Pocius, the VSD chief, to go.
(Econ, 12/23/06, p.74)(www.data.minsk.by/belarusnews/092006/25.html)
2006 Aug 23, The Canadian Food Inspection Agency confirmed that a mature beef cow in the Prairie province Alberta tested positive for mad cow case. It was the 8th case since 2003.
(Reuters, 8/23/06)
2006 Aug 23, In western India 17 people were killed when a truck overturned and fell into a deep ditch. Victims were sitting on top of sacks of salt that the truck was transporting when it overturned into a ditch flooded from recent monsoon rains.
(AP, 8/23/06)
2006 Aug 23, Iran urged Europe to pay attention to what it called "positive" signals in its counterproposal to a nuclear incentives package aimed at persuading Tehran to roll back its nuclear program. Russia and China backed Iran's call for negotiations to end the standoff.
(AP, 8/23/06)
2006 Aug 23, A roadside bomb exploded in Baghdad and narrowly missed the interior minister's convoy, killing two civilians and wounding several traffic policemen. A suicide bomber blew himself up outside a police headquarters in Mosul, killing at least one person. An Iraqi army officer, 1st Lt. Hassanein Saadi al-Zerjawi (29) was gunned down in a drive-by shooting in Amarah. A roadside bomb missed a US military convoy in Fallujah, 40 miles west of Baghdad, killing two pedestrians and injuring 12. One US soldier was killed during a raid to capture "foreign terrorists." Two militants also were killed.
(AP, 8/23/06)(AP, 8/24/06)
2006 Aug 23, In Indian-controlled Kashmir a crowded bus swerved off a steep mountain road and plunged into a gorge, killing at least 16 people and injuring 35 others.
(AP, 8/23/06)
2006 Aug 23, A leader of Kurdish rebels battling Turkey's government said in a rare interview that his guerrillas will not give in to US pressure to disarm without a "political project" that fulfills their calls for autonomy. PKK party officials met with a group of journalists in the rugged, isolated Qandil Mountain in Iraq's northeast corner where the group is based.
(AP, 8/24/06)
2006 Aug 23, In southern Lebanon 3 Lebanese soldiers were killed while they dismantled an unexploded missile. An Israeli soldier was killed and three others wounded in southern Lebanon when their tank drove over a land mine.
(AP, 8/23/06)
2006 Aug 23, Assailants threw grenades at the offices of a newspaper in the resort city of Cancun in the latest in a series of attacks on news outlets across Mexico.
(AP, 8/24/06)
2006 Aug 23, In Oslo Villa Grande, a sprawling mansion used by Norwegian Nazi collaborator Vidkun Quisling during World War II, opened as a center to oppose the intolerance, hatred and treachery he represented.
(AP, 8/23/06)
2006 Aug 23, A previously unknown Palestinian group released the first video of two kidnapped Fox News journalists and demanded that Muslim prisoners in US jails be released within 72 hours in exchange for the men. Correspondent Steve Centanni and cameraman Olaf Wiig were later freed.
(AP, 8/23/06)(AP, 8/23/07)
2006 Aug 23, Russia’s Gazprom threatened to cut off gas exports to Bosnia on Oct 1 if strides toward repaying $104.8 million from debts incurred during wars that ended in 1995.
(WSJ, 8/24/06, p.A6)
2006 Aug 23, Somalia’s seaport in Mogadishu reopened for the first time in 11 years, the latest sign that the city's Islamic fundamentalist rulers are trying to restore confidence after more than a decade of anarchy.
(AP, 8/23/06)
2006 Aug 23, Sudan's ruling party rejected a proposed Security Council resolution to transfer peacekeeping duties in conflict-wracked Darfur to a UN force, saying it would violate national sovereignty.
(AP, 8/24/06)
2006 Aug 23, Syria opposed deployment of an international force along its border to prevent arms shipments to Hezbollah, and Israel called the situation in Lebanon "explosive." In southern Lebanon 3 Lebanese soldiers were killed while they dismantled an unexploded missile. An Israeli soldier was killed and three others wounded in southern Lebanon when their tank drove over a land mine.
(AP, 8/23/06)(AP, 8/24/06)
2006 Aug 23, Taiwan's cabinet decided to increase military spending by nearly 30% next year as President Chen Shui-bian warned of rival China's continuing hostility towards the island.
(AP, 8/23/06)
2006 Aug 24, A US House report said 70% of contracts for Hurricane Katrina were let with little or no competition. 4 Katrina contractors were indicted for taking $700,000 for no work.
(WSJ, 8/25/06, p.A1)
2006 Aug 24, The US FDA approved Plan B, also called the morning after pill, for sale without prescription to women 18 and older.
(SFC, 8/25/06, p.A1)
2006 Aug 24, In Oakland, Ca., police moved to serve 65 arrest warrants and picked up 30 suspected drug dealers. They planned to continue their sweep.
(AP, 8/25/06)
2006 Aug 24, A Kentucky judge dropped charges against Gov. Fletcher in a plea deal in which Fletcher acknowledged failure to follow the state’s merit-hiring rules.
(WSJ, 8/25/06, p.A1)
2006 Aug 24, In Essex, Vermont, Christopher Williams (26) shot and killed 2 people after breaking up with his girlfriend, and then shot himself in the head. Williams killed Andrea Lambesis (57), the mother of his girlfriend at her home. He then went to Essex Elementary School where he killed teacher Mary Shanks (56) and wounded 2 others.
(SFC, 8/25/06, p.A5)(AP, 8/25/06)
2006 Aug 24, Deadly storms swept across the northern Plains, bringing tornadoes that ripped roofs off houses and hail that smashed car windshields. One man was killed when a tornado hit his home in Minnesota, and in Wisconsin, lightning apparently killed a dozen cows and struck a woman as she left a supermarket.
(AP, 8/25/06)
2006 Aug 24, Carl C. Clark (82), US auto safety and air-bag pioneer, died.
(WSJ, 9/23/06, p.A4)
2006 Aug 24, Arthur Schiff (b.1940), TV-advertising pitchman, died. His pitched products included a kitchen knife, which he renamed Ginsu, made in Ohio. “But wait, there’s more."
(WSJ, 9/9/06, p.A4)
2006 Aug 24, Ralph Schoenstein (73), American humorist, writer and NPR commentator, died in Philadelphia. His 18 books included “Fatherhood" (1987), ghost written for Bill Cosby.
(SFC, 8/28/06, p.B4)
2006 Aug 24, Leading astronomers meeting in Prague declared that Pluto is no longer a planet under historic new guidelines that downsize the solar system from nine planets to eight.
(AP, 8/24/06)
2006 Aug 24, American and Afghan forces killed seven suspected al-Qaida operatives after coming under fire during a raid in eastern Afghanistan. Police, however, claimed those killed were members of two families trying to resolve a dispute.
(AP, 8/24/06)
2006 Aug 24, A Bangladesh court acquitted former military ruler Hossain Mohammad Ershad of graft charges in an oil and defense deal, easing the way for his return to the political mainstream ahead of elections next year.
(Reuters, 8/24/06)
2006 Aug 24, An explosion in Chechnya's capital Grozny killed four people.
(AP, 8/24/06)
2006 Aug 24, In China a blind activist who was arrested after recording complaints of forced abortions was sentenced to four years and three months in prison. Chen Guangcheng was convicted of damaging property and "organizing a mob to disturb traffic" after a trial in the eastern province of Shandong.
(AP, 8/24/06)
2006 Aug 24, China reported that a chemical spill on the Mangniu River in Jilin province was contained. A 3-mile slick had been created by a xylidine spill from a local chemical company.
(SFC, 8/24/06, p.A3)
2006 Aug 24, A Danish prosecutor charged four young Muslims with helping to supply weapons and explosives for a planned terror attack in Europe. The four men, arrested in Denmark last October 27, helped the two main suspects in Bosnia get hold of weapons and explosives with the aim of committing a terror act.
(AP, 8/24/06)
2006 Aug 24, France said it was ready to send an extra 1,600 troops to bolster a revamped U.N. force for Lebanon, bringing the total French contingent to 2,000 and making it easier to recruit other nations.
(Reuters, 8/24/06)
2006 Aug 24, Murat Kurnaz (b.1982), a German native, was released after spending more than 4 years locked up at Guantanamo Bay. He had been arrested in Pakistan in late 2001. In 2007 he and Helmut Kuhn authored “Fünf Jahre meines Lebens: Ein Bericht aus Guantanamo" (Five years of My Life: A Report from Guantanamo).
(Econ, 2/3/07, p.53)(http://tinyurl.com/36pdk5)(Econ, 6/9/07, p.97)
2006 Aug 24, In Iraq gunmen overnight killed at least three people. A US soldiers was killed south of Baghdad. 3 car bombs in Baghdad and a series of bombings and shootings across the country killed 16 Iraqis and two US soldiers. Police found four handcuffed bodies dumped separately in the streets of Kut.
(AP, 8/24/06)(AP, 8/25/06)
2006 Aug 24, Israeli forces crossed into the Gaza Strip in a raid that captured a local Hamas militant leader and left his brother dead near a Gaza border town.
(AP, 8/24/06)
2006 Aug 24, Jihad Hamad (20), the second main suspect in a failed plot to bomb two German trains, was arrested in his native Lebanon after surrendering to police.
(AP, 8/24/06)
2006 Aug 24, Nigeria released 10,000 prisoners incarcerated for up to 10 years without trial. (WSJ, 8/25/06, p.A1)
2006 Aug 24, South Africa's cabinet gave the green light for a bill allowing gay marriage, which would make it the first country in Africa to accord homosexual couples the same rights as their straight counterparts.
(Reuters, 8/24/06)
2006 Aug 25, A college student's checked luggage on a Continental Airlines flight that had arrived in Houston from Buenos Aires, Argentina, was found to contain a stick of dynamite, one of six security incidents that day that caused US flights to be diverted, evacuated or searched.
(AP, 8/25/07)
2006 Aug 25, The US Navy debuted Texas, its newest nuclear-powered submarine. in an Atlantic Ocean swing off the Florida coast. This is the second in the latest fast-attack class that marks a broad departure from the Cold War-era deterrence boats.
(AP, 8/27/06)
2006 Aug 25, Bruce D. Hopfengardner (46), a former US Army Reserve officer, admitted that he steered millions of dollars in Iraq-reconstruction contracts in exchange for jewelry, computers, cigars and sexual favors. Hopfengardner (46) admitted conspiring with Philip H. Bloom, a US citizen with businesses in Romania, Robert J. Stein Jr., a former Defense Department contract official, and others to create a corrupt bidding process that included the theft of $2 million in reconstruction money.
(AP, 8/25/06)
2006 Aug 25, Michael John O'Keefe, the deputy nonimmigrant visa chief at the US Consulate in Toronto, was indicted on bribery and conspiracy charges. International jewelry executive Sunil Agrawal, a native of India, also was charged but remains at large.
(AP, 8/25/06)
2006 Aug 25, The Alabama Supreme Court ruled that Richard Scrushy, the fired CEO of HealthSouth Corp., must repay $47.8 million in bonuses he received during a massive financial fraud at the medical services chain.
(WSJ, 8/26/06, p.A9)
2006 Aug 25, In SF former Ukrainian PM Pavlo Lazarenko (53) was sentenced to nine years in federal prison for money laundering, wire fraud and extortion. The sentence, which also included $10 million in fines, was half of the maximum sought by prosecutors. In March, he was elected to a regional parliament office in Ukraine.
(AP, 8/25/06)
2006 Aug 25, A team led by Andy Jassy made available a beta version of “Elastic Compute Cloud" (EC2), the central offering of Amazon Web Services (AWS), the cloud-computing arm of Amazon.
(Econ, 8/27/16, p.46)(Econ, 8/27/16, p.46)
2006 Aug 25, Coca-Cola was sued as part of a campaign to force US soft drink makers to eliminate ingredients that can form cancer-causing benzene. Two companies, Zone Brands and TalkingRain Beverage Co., had already settled similar charges.
(SFC, 8/26/06, p.A5)
2006 Aug 25, Joseph Stefano (84), who wrote the screenplay for Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho," died in Thousand Oaks, Calif.
(AP, 8/25/07)
2006 Aug 25, President Hamid Karzai ordered an investigation into the killings of eight people in eastern Afghanistan during a raid that US forces claimed targeted al-Qaida members. Afghan police clashed with suspected Taliban militants in southern Zabul province, killing six insurgents and wounding 12. Two French soldiers were killed in an ambush in eastern Laghman province. Separate airstrikes in southern Uruzgan province killed 23 militants, including a known Taliban commander. British troops with a NATO-led force used artillery fire against a convoy of insurgents that was moving into position for attack in Helmand province. About seven insurgents were killed and seven vehicles destroyed.
(AP, 8/25/06)(AP, 8/26/06)(AFP, 8/26/06)
2006 Aug 25, In Bangladesh suspected Maoist attackers shot dead 4 policemen and a ruling party official after hurling bombs and firing bullets in a crowded cattle market. Police said they suspected the Purba Banglar Communist Party (PBCP) was behind the attack.
(AFP, 8/26/06)
2006 Aug 25, Officials said drug users who don't engage in dealing will no longer be sent to prison under a new drug law now in effect across Brazil.
(AP, 8/25/06)
2006 Aug 25, Zhao Yan (44), a Chinese researcher for The New York Times who has been detained since 2004, was cleared of charges of revealing state secrets but convicted of fraud and sentenced to three years in prison. Xinhua News said communities in southeastern China are straining to resettle more than 15 million people left homeless by four devastating typhoons in recent months. A moderate earthquake jolted southwest China, killing two people.
(AP, 8/25/06)
2006 Aug 25, In China a tanker truck loaded with 25 tons of liquid caustic soda, colorless, transparent corrosive liquid that rapidly burns skin and eyes, fell into a river 3 miles away from the Xuefeng reservoir in a city within the municipality of Weinan in Shaanxi province. It polluted a reservoir serving at least 100,000 residents for two days until water quality returned to normal.
(AP, 8/27/06)
2006 Aug 25, The UN established a new mission in East Timor but left Australian-led troops in place following a dispute over whether they should remain independent or be part of a UN force.
(Reuters, 8/25/06)
2006 Aug 25, German police arrested a 3rd suspect in connection with a failed attempt to blow up two trains. Lebanese authorities picked up a 4th man believed to have been involved.
(AP, 8/25/06)
2006 Aug 25, Looters ravaged Camp Abu Naji in Amarah, a former British base, a day after the camp was turned over to Iraqi troops, taking everything from doors and window frames to corrugated roofing and metal pipes. A police officer was killed in a drive-by shooting in downtown Samarra.
(AP, 8/25/06)
2006 Aug 25, Israeli aircraft attacked two buildings in the Gaza Strip, wounding at least nine people.
(AP, 8/25/06)
2006 Aug 25, A military truck carrying UN peacekeepers crashed in Ivory Coast, killing six Bangladeshi troops and injuring 11 others.
(AP, 8/26/06)
2006 Aug 25, In Jordan top leaders of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party gave their leader the go-ahead to begin forming a unity government with the militant Hamas in an effort to end internal feuding and international isolation.
(AP, 8/25/06)
2006 Aug 25, Japanese officials said Kazusaku Tezuka, the president of precision instrument maker Mitutoyo Corp., was arrested along with four other Mitutoyo executives and employees for the alleged export to Malaysia of equipment that can be used in making nuclear weapons.
(AP, 8/25/06)
2006 Aug 25, The UN said unexploded cluster bomb litter homes, gardens and highways in south Lebanon, as the US State Department reportedly investigated whether Israel's use of the American-made weapons violated secret agreements with the United States.
(AP, 8/25/06)
2006 Aug 25, In Mongolia the Dalai Lama elevated a group of monks into the Buddhist priesthood's higher ranks, bolstering the country's traditional faith as it struggles to re-establish itself following decades of communist persecution.
(AP, 8/25/06)
2006 Aug 25, In Niger the UN food agency inaugurated a program to help feed hundreds of thousands of people as the impoverished West African nation struggles to recover from severe shortages.
(AP, 8/25/06)
2006 Aug 25, Nigerian soldiers in Port Harcourt burned hundreds of slum houses located close to the compound of an Italian oil company where at least one Italian worker was kidnapped and his bodyguard killed overnight.
(Reuters, 8/25/06)
2006 Aug 25, Peru's jailed ex-intelligence chief Vladimiro Montesinos was sentenced to six years in prison for using government money to fund former President Alberto Fujimori's 2000 re-election campaign. The sentence will be served concurrently with Montesinos' 15-year prison sentence for various corruption convictions.
(AP, 8/27/06)
2006 Aug 25, The UN food agency said fighting between Sri Lanka's Tamil Tiger rebels and security forces has forced at least 204,000 people from their homes in the eastern and northern parts of the country. A food relief ship began unloading in northern Sri Lanka to lift a two-week siege of the Jaffna peninsula as fresh clashes left five rebels dead.
(AP, 8/25/06)(AFP, 8/25/06)
2006 Aug 26, Tropical Storm Ernesto strengthened over the Caribbean as it headed toward Jamaica and the Cayman Islands, threatening to become the first hurricane of the 2006 Atlantic season.
(AP, 8/26/06)
2006 Aug 26, In Afghanistan a large number of militants attacked the Musa Qala district government compound in Helmand, provoking a clash with police that left 10 insurgents dead.
(AP, 8/27/06)
2006 Aug 26, Thousands of farmers took to the streets across northern Bangladesh over the fatal shooting of at least five people protesting against an open-pit coal mine.
(AFP, 8/27/06)
2006 Aug 26, Chad ordered US energy giant Chevron and Malaysia's Petronas to leave the country within 24 hours for failing to honor tax obligations, a move apparently aimed at increasing control over its oil output. Chad's president Idriss Deby suspended the oil minister and two other Cabinet members who negotiated deals with the two foreign oil firms.
(AP, 8/27/06)
2006 Aug 26, Iran's hard-line president inaugurated a heavy-water production plant, a facility the West fears will be used to develop a nuclear bomb, as Tehran remained defiant ahead of a UN deadline that could lead to sanctions.
(AP, 8/26/06)
2006 Aug 26, Iraq's PM Nouri al-Maliki urged hundreds of tribal leaders to join his efforts to end sectarian strife and terrorism Kidnapped Sunni lawmaker Tayseer al-Mashhadani was released after being held for nearly two months. Al-Mashhadani and 7 of her bodyguards were seized July 1 by gunmen in a Shiite area of east Baghdad. Gunmen in a speeding car opened fire on two sisters working as translators for the British consulate, killing one of them and seriously wounding the other. 26 people were killed in dozens of attacks across Iraq. One US soldier was killed by a roadside bomb.
(AP, 8/26/06)(AP, 8/27/06)(AP, 8/28/06)
2006 Aug 26, In Nepal a landslide in a mountainous western village killed at least 10 people and injured three others.
(AP, 8/26/06)
2006 Aug 26, In Pakistan government forces killed Nawab Akbar Bugti (79), the most prominent leader in the rebellion by Baluch tribesmen, in a raid on his cave hideout in the mountainous area of the southwestern provinces of Baluchistan. A top security official said at least 16 security forces, including four officers, were killed.
(AP, 8/27/06)
2006 Aug 26, In the West Bank, Israeli troops and Palestinian gunmen traded heavy fire during a standoff at a fugitives' hideout and doctors said a 16-year-old Palestinian was killed. Twenty Palestinians were wounded in the clashes in the West Bank city of Nablus.
(AP, 8/27/06)
2006 Aug 26, In Russia's Dagestan region police surrounded a home and exchanged gunfire with suspected militants, killing four and wounding a woman who was with the gunmen.
(AP, 8/27/06)
2006 Aug 26, Vladimir Tretchikoff (92), Manchurian-born artist, died in Cape Town. In 2013 his iconic painting "Chinese Girl," said to be one of the most reproduced in the world, sold at auction for 982,050 British pounds (nearly $1.5 million).
(AP, 3/21/13)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Tretchikoff)
2006 Aug 26, In Sri Lanka police found a large weapons cache hidden in a house on the outskirts of Colombo, and arrested 17 people suspected of planning a major attack. Sporadic fighting left 12 rebels killed and 20 injured during a battle in the northeastern Batticaloa district. A bomb killed six Sri Lankan soldiers and wounded 11 as they cleared up after fierce fighting with Tamil Tiger rebels in the besieged northern Jaffna peninsula.
(AP, 8/26/06)(AFP, 8/27/06)
2006 Aug 26, A Sudanese court charged reporter Paul Salopek (44) with espionage. He was detained by pro-government forces in Darfur on Aug 6. Salopek was on freelance assignment for National Geographic magazine.
(SSFC, 8/27/06, p.A19)
2006 Aug 26, An international rights groups said a court in tightly controlled Turkmenistan has sentenced three rights defenders to jail terms of six to seven years.
(AP, 8/26/06)
2006 Aug 26, Officials said Uganda and the rebel Lord's Resistance Army have signed a truce to end a 19-year conflict that killed thousands of people.
(AP, 8/26/06)
2006 Aug 27, Heart-pounding spy thriller "24" finally broke through at the Emmy Awards, winning the prize as best drama series in its fifth try, while new workplace satire "The Office" was crowned best comedy.
(Reuters, 8/28/06)
2006 Aug 27, In Kentucky a Comair commuter jet carrying 50 people, crashed in a field and caught fire shortly after taking off in light rain. The co-pilot was the sole survivor. The taxi route for commercial jets using Blue Grass Airport's main runway was altered a week before Comair Flight 5191 took the wrong runway and crashed.
(AP, 8/27/06)(AP, 8/28/07)
2006 Aug 27, Ernesto became the first hurricane of the Atlantic season with winds of 75 mph, and forecasters said it would strengthen as it headed toward the Gulf of Mexico.
(AP, 8/27/06)
2006 Aug 27, In Afghanistan insurgent attacks in Helmand province killed a British soldier, while 10 suspected Taliban militants died when police repelled an attack on a government compound in the same province. Insurgent attacks left seven wounded in Kandahar province.
(AP, 8/27/06)(AP, 8/28/06)
2006 Aug 27, In Brazil archbishop Luciano Mendes de Almeida (75), an avid human rights defender, died.
(AP, 8/27/06)
2006 Aug 27, Britain’s National Patient Safety Agency reported that 2,159 patients died between April 2005 and March 2006 as a result of "patient safety incidents" in the National Health Service (NHS).
(AP, 8/27/06)
2006 Aug 27, China adopted a new bankruptcy law making it easier to restructure insolvent firms. It became effective on June 1, 2007.
(http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/china_law_prof_blog/2006/08/revised_bankrup.html)
2006 Aug 27, State media quoted officials saying that one-third of China's vast landmass is suffering from acid rain caused by its rapid industrial growth, while local leaders are failing to enforce environmental standards for fear of hurting business.
(AP, 8/27/06)
2006 Aug 27, In western India a water tank collapsed during a Bharatpur town fair, killing 45 people who had climbed on top of it to watch a wrestling match.
(AP, 8/27/06)
2006 Aug 27, Iran test fired a new submarine-to-surface missile during war games in the Persian Gulf. A brief video clip showed the long-range missile, called Thaqeb, or Saturn, exiting the water and hitting a target on the water's surface within less than a mile.
(AP, 8/27/06)
2006 Aug 27, In Baghdad 2 explosions killed at least 12 people and wounded dozens. Gunmen in 3 cars opened fire at the outdoor market of Khalis, a mostly Shiite town. 12 people were killed and 25 others were wounded. 7 US soldiers were killed in and around Baghdad, 6 by roadside bombs and one by gunfire. Bombings and shootings killed at least 73 people across the country. A US service member died in fighting in Anbar province west of Baghdad.
(AP, 8/27/06)(AP, 8/28/06)(SFC, 8/28/06, p.A3)(AP, 8/29/06)
2006 Aug 27, Israeli aircraft fired two missiles at an armored car belonging to the Reuters news agency, wounding five people, including two cameramen. Two Hamas militants were killed in separate airstrikes.
(AP, 8/27/06)
2006 Aug 27, Jordan's parliament endorsed the country's first anti-terrorism law despite objections by some lawmakers that the bill curtails freedoms.
(AP, 8/27/06)
2006 Aug 27, Mauritania police said the bodies of 15 people found washed ashore on the beaches of Nouakchatt, Mauritania's capital, are believed to be those of African migrants who were trying to reach Spain's Canary Islands by boat. Spain's Interior Ministry said more than 18,300 people have reached the Canary Islands so far this year, the highest total ever.
(AP, 8/27/06)
2006 Aug 27, Mexican electoral officials said Juan Sabines, a leftist candidate, won the governor's race in Mexico's volatile southernmost state of Chiapas, edging out Jose Antonio Aguilar, backed by President Vicente Fox's party by about 6,300 votes.
(AP, 8/27/06)
2006 Aug 27, Hundreds of rioters angered by the killing of a rebel Baluch tribal leader rampaged through Quetta in southwestern Pakistan, burning shops, banks and police vehicles. Police arrested 450 rioters who rampaged overnight.
(AP, 8/27/06)
2006 Aug 27, Militants freed Steve Centanni and cameraman Olaf Wiig, two Fox News journalists in the Gaza Strip, ending a nearly two week hostage drama.
(AP, 8/27/06)
2006 Aug 27, In Russia a man doused himself with flammable liquids and set himself on fire on Red Square before dozens of shocked tourists.
(AP, 8/28/06)
2006 Aug 27, In Turkey a bomb on a minibus injured 21 people including 10 British tourists. The explosion was in the popular Mediterranean resort town of Marmaris. 2 other bomb blasts hit at the same time in garbage cans on the main boulevard.
(www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14546503/)
2006 Aug 28, Prosecutors in Colorado abruptly dropped their case against John Mark Karr in the slaying of JonBenet Ramsey, saying DNA tests failed to put him at the crime scene despite his repeated insistence he'd killed the 6-year-old beauty queen.
(AP, 8/28/07)
2006 Aug 28, Rice farmers in Arkansas, California, Louisiana, Missouri, Mississippi and Texas sued BayerCrop Science alleging that its genetically modified rice has contaminated the nation’s crop. Japan had suspended imports of US long-grain rice a week earlier. On Jul 31 US authorities learned that Bayer’s unapproved rice had been found in commercial bins in Arkansas and Missouri.
(SFC, 8/29/06, p.E1)
2006 Aug 28, Columbus, Ga., beat Kawaguchi City, Japan, 2-1 to win the Little League World Series championship game.
(AP, 8/28/07)
2006 Aug 28, In southeastern Kentucky a small plane from Wichita Fall, Texas, crashed and all 7 people aboard were killed.
(SFC, 8/29/06, p.A3)
2006 Aug 28, Five people were killed and dozens injured after a Montreal-bound Greyhound bus from New York City overturned on a highway in upstate New York.
(Reuters, 8/29/06)
2006 Aug 28, Ed Benedict (94), legendary animator, died in Auburn, Ca. He put life, love and laughter in TV cartoon characters like Fred Flintstone (1960), Huckleberry Hound and Yogi Bear.
(AP, 10/10/06)(SFC, 10/13/06, p.B9)
2006 Aug 28, In Afghanistan a suicide bomber blew himself up in a crowded market in Lashkar Gah, Helmand province, killing 21 people and wounding 43. US-led coalition troops killed 18 suspected insurgents when about 60 militants attacked with heavy machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades in Cahar Cineh district of the southern Uruzgan province.
(AP, 8/28/06)(AP, 8/29/06)
2006 Aug 28, Don Chipp (81), an Australian politician famed for his pledge to "keep the bastards honest," died after a long battle with Parkinson's disease.
(AFP, 8/29/06)
2006 Aug 28, In Chile Paul Schaefer (84), former leader of Colonia Dignidad, or Dignity Colony, was sentenced to 7 years in prison for arms found at the secretive enclave near Parral, 200 miles south of Santiago.
(AP, 8/28/06)
2006 Aug 28, Tropical Storm Ernesto hit Cuba west of the US naval air base at Guantanamo after killing 2 people in Haiti.
(AP, 8/28/06)(AP, 8/29/06)
2006 Aug 28, Ene Ergma (62), a Soviet-trained astronomer, failed to win enough votes in parliament to become Estonia's next president, forcing a new vote on a second candidate.
(AP, 8/28/06)
2006 Aug 28, Gunmen opened fire with assault rifles in a Guatemala pool hall, killing eight people including a 17-year-old boy. The attack occurred in the poor Guatemala City suburb of Ciudad Quetzal.
(AP, 8/29/06)
2006 Aug 28, Guyana held elections. Critics accused Guyana's government of turning a blind eye to the cocaine flowing Guyana to the US and Europe. President Bharrat Jagdeo's party appeared headed to victory in Guyana's election, according to vote results.
(AP, 8/28/06)(AP, 8/30/06)
2006 Aug 28, In India officials said monsoon rains and flooding have killed at least 130 people in the western state of Rajasthan, with huge swathes of desert underwater.
(AP, 8/28/06)
2006 Aug 28, In Iraq a suicide car bombing in Baghdad killed 16 people. Clashes in Diwaniyah between Shiite militia and Iraqi security forces left 73 people dead. A US service member died of wounds sustained in a vehicle accident in Balad north of Baghdad.
(AP, 8/28/06)(AP, 8/29/06)
2006 Aug 28, In Ireland the government and directors of the state-owned airline announced that Aer Lingus Group PLC expects to raise more than $500 million by selling stock for the first time in a public offering next month.
(AP, 8/28/06)
2006 Aug 28, An Israeli airstrike on central Gaza killed 4 Palestinian militants.
(AP, 8/28/06)
2006 Aug 28, Italy approved 2,500 troops in a boost to an expanded international force in Lebanon.
(AP, 8/28/06)
2006 Aug 28, US Sen. Barack Obama urged Kenyans to take control of their country's destiny by opposing corruption and ethnic divisions in government during a policy speech at the main university in his father's homeland.
(AP, 8/28/06)
2006 Aug 28, Mexico’s top electoral court announced that a partial recount found no widespread evidence of fraud.
(SFC, 8/29/06, p.A1)
2006 Aug 28, In the Netherlands prosecutors at the International Criminal Court filed their first indictment, charging Thomas Lubanga, a former Congolese warlord, for allegedly abducting and recruiting children as young as 10 to fight in Congo's brutal civil war.
(AP, 8/29/06)
2006 Aug 28, In Quetta, Pakistan, mobs burned shops, banks and buses in a second day of rioting over the killing of a top tribal chief by Pakistani troops, raising fears that a decades-old conflict in the country's volatile southwest could widen.
(AP, 8/28/06)
2006 Aug 28, Palestinian municipal workers responsible for garbage collection, water treatment, and sewage processing went on strike in Gaza City and two other southern towns.
(AP, 8/31/06)
2006 Aug 28, In Sri Lanka at least 31 people were killed and another 105 wounded as security forces moved to push back rebel artillery threatening a strategic port.
(AP, 8/28/06)
2006 Aug 28, In South Africa Adriaan Vlok, whose ministry helped suppress anti-apartheid protests, last weekend visited the offices of the Rev. Frank Chikane, a top presidential aide, to apologize. Vlok brought his Bible and washed Chikane's feet in an attempt to atone for the sins of the white racist regime that ruled the country until 1994.
(AP, 8/29/06)
2006 Aug 28, In Turkey a bomb in the resort city of Antalya killed 3 people and injured 18. A group calling itself the Kurdistan Freedom Falcons claimed responsibility.
(AP, 8/28/06)(Econ, 9/2/06, p.6)
2006 Aug 29, President George Bush visited New Orleans one year after Hurricane Katrina devastated the region to offer comfort and hope to residents.
(AP, 8/29/07)
2006 Aug 29, A US probe determined that Kenneth Tomlinson, chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, misused government funds on several occasions, overbilling for his time and funneling unauthorized contracts to a friend.
(AP, 8/29/06)(WSJ, 8/30/06, p.A1)
2006 Aug 29, Omeed Aziz Popal (29), a native of Afghanistan, killed one pedestrian in Hayward, Ca., and injured another 16 at 11 locations in SF in a driving rampage. SF police finally rammed him down at California and Spruce streets. In 2008 a SF judge ruled that Popal was legally insane.
(SFC, 8/30/06, p.A1)(SFC, 8/1/08, p.B1)
2006 Aug 29, In East Oakland, Ca., Anthony Quintero (24), a Brink’s guard, was killed during a robbery that involved his partner Clifton Wherry Jr. and Dwight Campbell, who shot Quintero. In 2009 Campbell (26) and Wherry (31) were convicted of 1st degree murder. Both were sentenced to life in prison without parole.
(SFC, 10/9/09, p.D5)(SFC, 12/12/09, p.C2)
2006 Aug 29, Warren Steed Jeffs (50), a fugitive polygamist, was arrested in Nevada. He was on the FBI’s 10 most-wanted list for sex crimes in Utah and Arizona. Jeffs ruled the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS) since his father died in 2002. The sect had broken from the Mormon Church over a century ago.
(SFC, 8/30/06, p.A11)(Econ, 9/9/06, p.34)
2006 Aug 29, Tropical Storm Ernesto's leading edge drenched Miami and the rest of southern Florida.
(AP, 8/29/07)
2006 Aug 29, A suicide car bomber struck a NATO-Afghan military convoy, killing two civilians and wounding one in the violence-wracked south. A remote-controlled bomb killed two police officers on patrol.
(AP, 8/29/06)
2006 Aug 29, About 50 former militants surrendered and handed over their weapons in a ceremony led by Chechnya's powerful prime minister, who said rebel numbers are dwindling in the war-ravaged region.
(AP, 8/29/06)
2006 Aug 29, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad challenged the authority of the UN Security Council as Iran faces a deadline to halt its uranium enrichment and he called for a televised debate with President Bush on world issues.
(AP, 8/29/06)
2006 Aug 29, The bodies of 13 people, believed to have been aged between 25 and 35, were found dumped behind a Shiite mosque in the Turath neighborhood in western Baghdad. All were handcuffed, showed signs of torture and had been shot in the head. 11 of the bullet-riddled corpses were found near a school in the Shiite dominated Maalif neighborhood in southern Baghdad. A pipeline carrying oil byproducts exploded near Diwaniyah, killing at least 36 people with 45 injured.
(AP, 8/29/06)(AP, 8/30/06)
2006 Aug 29, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, Mexico's leftist presidential candidate, rejected a court decision upholding his rival's slim lead in the disputed July 2 race and called on his supporters not to recognize a government led by Felipe Calderon.
(AP, 8/29/06)
2006 Aug 29, In Quetta, Pakistan, gunfire and rioting broke out for a fourth straight day after the funeral service for a prominent tribal chief killed by Pakistani government forces. One policeman was killed and dozens of shops destroyed. Three factory workers were killed in a restaurant bombing in the Baluchistan town of Hub.
(AP, 8/29/06)
2006 Aug 29, An extremist Kurdish militant group warned that "the fear of death will reign everywhere in Turkey" and it urged tourists to avoid travel to the country.
(AP, 8/30/06)
2006 Aug 29, A cease-fire between Uganda's government and the LRA, a shadowy rebel movement that has terrorized this east African nation for nearly two decades, went into effect.
(AP, 8/29/06)
2006 Aug 30, In California Gov. Schwarzenegger and Democrats struck a deal to require state industries to lower greenhouse gas emissions.
(SFC, 8/31/06, p.A1)
2006 Aug 30, Glenn Ford (90), American actor, died at his home in Beverly Hills, Ca. He played strong, thoughtful protagonists in films such as "The Blackboard Jungle," "Gilda" and "The Big Heat."
(AP, 8/31/06)
2006 Aug 30, Brazil’s central bank cut its key interest rate 0.5% to 14.25%, a quarter point more than had been expected. Brazil also released weaker-than-expected data on GDP.
(WSJ, 9/1/06, p.A8)
2006 Aug 30, Canadian miner Uranium One said it had approved Australia's fourth uranium mine, the Honeymoon project in the South Australian outback.
(AP, 8/30/06)
2006 Aug 30, Conservationists said the remains of 100 African elephants killed for their tusks have been found in Chad not far from Sudan's troubled Darfur region.
(AP, 8/31/06)
2006 Aug 30, Nearly 60 inmates escaped from an East Timor jail, including scores of people arrested in recent violence that wracked the tiny nation and militiamen who opposed the country's break from Indonesian rule.
(AP, 8/30/06)
2006 Aug 30, Naguib Mahfouz (b.1911), Arab writer, died in Cairo. He became the first Arab writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature (1988) for his novels depicting modern Egyptian life. Across the span of 35 novels, hundreds of short stories and essays, over 20 movie scripts and five plays, Mahfouz depicted with startling realism the Egyptian "Everyman" balancing between tradition and the modern world.
(AP, 8/30/06)(Econ, 9/2/06, p.78)
2006 Aug 30, Iran released Ramin Jahanbegloo, a Canadian-Iranian writer, who was accused of working with the US to overthrow the government.
(Reuters, 8/30/06)
2006 Aug 30, A roadside bomb exploded in Baghdad's oldest and largest wholesale market district, killing at least 24 people and wounding 35. An explosives-rigged bicycle detonated near an army recruiting center in Hillah killed at least 12 people and wounded 28. Bloodshed left at least 52 dead. 2 American soldiers and a Marine were killed.
(AP, 8/30/06)(AP, 9/1/06)
2006 Aug 30, Israeli troops launched airstrikes on the outskirts of Gaza City and exchanged gunfire with Palestinian militants, killing six people.
(AP, 8/30/06)
2006 Aug 30, Lebanese PM Fuad Saniora said that he refused to have any direct contact with Israel and that Lebanon would be the last Arab country to ever sign a peace deal with the Jewish state. Jan Egeland, the UN humanitarian chief, accused Israel of "shocking" and "completely immoral" behavior for dropping large numbers of cluster bombs on Lebanon when a cease-fire in its war with Hezbollah was in sight.
(AP, 8/30/06)
2006 Aug 30, Hurricane John lashed tourist resorts with heavy winds and rain as the dangerous Category 4 storm marched up Mexico's Pacific coast.
(AP, 8/30/07)
2006 Aug 30, Nigerian officials and the UN refugee agency appealed to some 6,000 recalcitrant Liberian refugees to go back home, warning that time and hospitality were fast running out for them.
(AFP, 8/30/06)
2006 Aug 30, In southwestern Pakistan protesters angry over the killing of a rebel tribal chief blocked highways in Quetta, preventing workers from reaching the provincial capital and forcing most shops to close. In northwestern Pakistan militants decapitated an Islamic cleric and an Afghan refugee accused of spying for US and Afghan authorities.
(AP, 8/30/06)
2006 Aug 30, Russia released two Japanese fishermen held since their boat was seized for allegedly fishing in Russian waters in a confrontation in which a crewman was killed.
(AP, 8/30/06)
2006 Aug 30, In Sudan riot police fired teargas and beat a journalist in central Khartoum on as opposition party supporters gathered to demonstrate against a recent rise in petrol and sugar prices.
(AP, 8/30/06)
2006 Aug 30, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said in Damascus that he and Syrian President Bashar Assad shared a "decisive and firm" stance against American "imperialism" and "domination."
(AP, 8/30/06)
2006 Aug 31, President George Bush, speaking in Salt Lake City, predicted victory in the war on terror, likening the struggle against Islamic fundamentalism with the fight against Nazis and communists.
(AP, 8/31/07)
2006 Aug 31, The United States carried out a subcritical nuclear experiment successfully at an underground test site in Nevada, the 2nd this year and the 23rd such test since 1997.
(http://iraqwar.mirror-world.ru/article/100778)
2006 Aug 31, In California Tony J. Daniloo (32) of Turlock was indicted on 122 charges of fraud and money laundering for allegedly embezzling $7 million from homeowners in the East Bay and the Central Valley.
(SFC, 9/1/06, p.B12)
2006 Aug 31, NASA awarded a multibillion contract to Lockheed Martin Corp. to send astronauts to the moon and maybe on to Mars. The projected Orion crew exploration vehicle program will cost an estimated $7.5 billion through 2019.
(SFC, 9/1/06, p.A7)
2006 Aug 31, In southern Montana a wildfire burned 20 houses and 15 other buildings as it spread over some 156,000 acres.
(SFC, 9/1/06, p.A3)
2006 Aug 31, In New York 2 state troopers were shot while staking out the property of a former girlfriend of escaped convict Ralph Phillips. Trooper Joseph Longobardo (32) died from his wounds on Sep 3. Phillips, a 44-year-old career thief who has spent 20 of the past 23 years in state prison, surrendered Sep 8 without firing a shot.
(SSFC, 9/3/06, p.A3)(AP, 9/9/06)
2006 Aug 31, J.S. Holliday (b.1924), California historian, died. His book included “The World Rushed In" (1981), a history of the California gold rush.
(SFC, 9/2/06, p.B1)
2006 Aug 31, In Afghanistan Taliban militants attacked Naw Zad in Helmand province, sparking intense fighting with government troops that left two insurgents dead. In Zabul province a suicide attacker plowed his explosives-filled car into a police convoy traveling on the main road, wounding three officers. A Dutch F-16 fighter jet crashed in the Ghazni province in central Afghanistan, killing the pilot.
(AP, 8/31/06)
2006 Aug 31, In Argentina tens of thousands gathered in the central square of Buenos Aires for one of the biggest anti-crime rallies ever seen there. It was organized by Juan Carlos Blumberg, a businessman and leader of the law-and-order movement.
(Econ, 9/9/06, p.39)
2006 Aug 31, A minister said Bangladesh has bowed to demands from protestors and cancelled a 734 million pound (1.4-billion dollar) plan by British firm Asia Energy to build an open-pit coal mine.
(AFP, 8/31/06)
2006 Aug 31, Heng Pov, former Phnom Penh police chief, was arrested at a hotel in Singapore when a clerk brought food for him. A Cambodian court warrant had been recently issued against him accusing him of involvement in a number of crimes such as the killing of Phnom Penh judge Sok Sethamony, assassination attempts on general Sao Sokha and judge Uk Savuth, as well as a number of other criminal cases. Pov claimed that he was being framed for refusing orders to kill Hok Lundy, the internal security chief.
(http://tinyurl.com/gtumm)(Econ, 9/9/06, p.46)
2006 Aug 31, A Chinese court sentenced Ching Cheong, a Hong Kong reporter, to five years in prison on spying charges in a case that prompted outcries by press freedom groups. In Hunan Province a mine gas explosion killed at least nine people.
(AP, 8/31/06)(Reuters, 9/3/06)
2006 Aug 31, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., visited a sprawling tent camp in eastern Ethiopia for people displaced by devastating floods earlier this month, saying the US military will continue to help the region.
(AP, 8/31/06)
2006 Aug 31, Sexus Politicus, by co-authors Christophe Dubois and Christophe Deloire, was published in France. It revealed decades of philandering, adultery and seduction at the heart of the French state, with politicians of all colors apparently sharing the same passion for extra-marital sex.
(AP, 8/31/06)
2006 Aug 31, Guyana’s elections commission said President Bharrat Jagdeo won re-election and his ruling People's Progressive Party increased its majority in Guyana's parliament. The PPP received 183,887 votes, or about 55%, and increased its seats in parliament by two to 36.
(AP, 9/1/06)
2006 Aug 31, In eastern India at least 30 people drowned when a crowded boat capsized in the rain-swollen Ganges River in the state of Bihar.
(AP, 8/31/06)
2006 Aug 31, Indian officials said more than 11,000 Tamil refugees have fled to India since January to escape renewed fighting between the Sri Lankan army and separatist rebels and more are likely to come.
(AFP, 8/31/06)
2006 Aug 31, Iran defied a UN deadline to stop enriching uranium.
(AP, 8/31/07)
2006 Aug 31, PM Nouri al-Maliki said Iraqi security forces will take over Dhi Qar province in September, and will take over the control of more provinces during the rest of the year. A suicide car bomb targeting a line of cars waiting at a Baghdad gas station killed two people and wounded 13. A barrage of coordinated attacks across eastern Baghdad neighborhoods killed at least 64 people and wounded 286 within half an hour. The dead included at least 13 women and a dozen children. A total of 85 people were killed across the country.
(AP, 8/31/06)(AP, 9/1/06)(SFC, 9/1/06, p.A3)
2006 Aug 31, The Israeli army said that it has transferred control over a portion of the Israel-Lebanon border to Lebanese and international troops for the first time in two decades.
(AP, 8/31/06)
2006 Aug 31, Israeli soldiers searching for tunnels and explosives withdrew from the outskirts of Gaza City, ending a five-day operation that Palestinians said left 20 people dead and heavily damaged houses, streets and farmlands. Palestinian militants fired five homemade rockets into Israel, defying the calls by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to halt the attacks.
(AP, 8/31/06)
2006 Aug 31, Kenya stepped up criticism of US Senator Barack Obama, accusing him of insulting the Kenyan people and trivializing their achievements during a visit to his father's homeland. Obama had rebuked Kibaki's government for failing to address corruption and said Kenya's democratic progress "is in jeopardy... being threatened by corruption."
(AP, 9/1/06)
2006 Aug 31, Hurricane John pummeled Mexico's resort-studded Pacific Coast with wind and rain.
(AP, 8/31/06)
2006 Aug 31, The UN Security Council passed a resolution that would give the United Nations authority over peacekeepers in Darfur as soon as Sudan's government gives its consent, which it has so far refused to do.
(AP, 8/31/06)
2006 Aug 31, An internal investigation concluded that a UN official steered millions of dollars in contracts to a company owned by the government of his native India in exchange for favors that included low-rent apartments.
(AP, 9/1/06)
2006 Aug 31, In southern Thailand nearly two dozen bombs exploded almost simultaneously inside commercial banks, killing two people in a region bloodied by a Muslim insurgency.
(AP, 8/31/06)
2006 Aug, A report by the US Census Bureau in its 2005 American Community Survey indicated that marriage did not figure in nearly 55.8 million American family households, or 50.2%. The trend represented a dramatic change from just six years ago, when married couples made up 52 percent of 105.5 million American households.
(AFP, 10/15/06)
2006 Aug, Norman Buckley (44) an assistant at Manchester's Central Library, pleaded guilty to theft charges for stealing more than 450 centuries-old books and documents between January 2005 and March 2006. In October he received a 15-month jail sentence, but it was suspended for two years.
(AP, 10/26/06)
2006 Aug, Trading counterparties of Amaranth hedge fund demanded $1.5 billion in collateral to cover losses. The firm’s assets fell by $6 billion in 4 weeks.
(Econ, 6/8/13, p.86)
2006 Aug, In China a project was begun in Shanghai to treat industrial waste with iron filings, a process which had been found to be a cheap and efficient way to clean up polluted water.
(Econ, 12/6/08, TQ p.11)
2006 Aug, In Colombia the telenovela “Sin Tetas no hay Paraiso" (Without Breasts There's No Paradise) premiered. It was based on a best-selling, true-to-life novel by the same name and became very popular.
(AP, 9/19/06)
2006 Aug, In India some 260 million people lived on less than one dollar a day. Nearly half the country’s children under age six were undernourished and more than half the women were illiterate. Half the homes in the country had no electricity.
(Econ, 8/12/06, p.64)
2006 Aug, In Macedonia within 3 days of the new government taking office as many as 544 managers and top officials from state companies were sacked or shunted aside.
(Econ, 10/21/06, p.62)
2006 Aug, In Nigeria Transcorp acquired NITEL, the state-run telecommunication company. Pres. Olusegun Obasanjo was widely believed to have a large stake in Transcorp. In 2009 the government voided the sale.
(AFP, 6/2/09)
2006 Aug, In Romania the heads of the leading spy agencies quit along with the top prosecutor after they failed to keep track of Omar Hayssam. The Syrian-born businessman, arrested on terrorism charges, fled Romania after being paroled for health reasons.
(Econ, 9/16/06, p.62)
2006 Aug, In Sri Lanka Tamil rebels abducted 56 boys and girls during a 4-day period this month in Batticaloa district. UNICEF figures showed that 5,666 children had been abducted between a cease fire in 2002 and July 2006. The organization speculated that only about a third of such cases were reported to them.
(SSFC, 9/17/06, p.A17,18)
2006 Aug, In Turkey a parliamentary report found that 1,091 honor-related crimes had been committed over the last 5 years. Blame for many honor of the killings was placed on the patriarchal and feudal system entrenched in the Kurdish provinces.
(Econ, 4/14/07, p.62)
2006 Sep 1, US military forces launched a rocket interceptor that destroyed a mock warhead in outer space.
(SFC, 9/2/06, p.A5)
2006 Sep 1, US federal agents began rounding up illegal immigrants in Stillmore, Georgia. More than 120 illegal immigrants were loaded onto buses bound for immigration courts in Atlanta. Hundreds more fled Emanuel County. The Crider poultry plant was left scrambling for workers.
(AP, 9/15/06)
2006 Sep 1, Disrupting the start of the Labor Day weekend, the remnants of Tropical Storm Ernesto drenched the Mid-Atlantic region, cut power to more than 400,000 customers and forced evacuations. 3 people were reported killed in North Carolina and Virginia.
(AP, 9/2/06)(SFC, 9/2/06, p.A8)
2006 Sep 1, Nellie Connally (87), the former Texas first lady who was riding in President Kennedy's limousine when he was assassinated, died in Austin, Texas.
(AP, 9/1/07)
2006 Sep 1, In Afghanistan fighting across the volatile south killed nine Afghan policemen, at least 13 suspected Taliban and a British soldier.
(AP, 9/2/06)
2006 Sep 1, Brazil pressured Google to turn over data from Web sites that the government said were used by criminals. Authorities gave Google 15 days to comply or face a daily fine of $23,000.
(SFC, 9/2/06, p.C1)
2006 Sep 1, Cambodia’s PM Hun Sen pushed a bill through the lower house of parliament banning extra-marital affairs. The legislation could get adulterers up to a year in jail.
(Econ, 9/9/06, p.46)
2006 Sep 1, In Chad US Senator Barack Obama held talks with President Idriss Deby Itno on the crisis in Sudan's Darfur region and on Chad's oil production, on the final stop of the African-American politician's tour of the continent.
(AP, 9/1/06)
2006 Sep 1, In Colombia Jesus Ignacio Roldan led special prosecutors and investigators to the alleged grave of Carlos Castano, former right-wing paramilitary leader, near the town of Valencia. Roldan says he killed Castano in April 2004 on the order of Castano's older brother, Vicente Castano.
(AP, 9/1/06)
2006 Sep 1, Greece beat the Americans 101-95 in the semifinals of the world championships in Saitama, Japan.
(AP, 9/1/06)
2006 Sep 1, Hungarian poet Gyorgy Faludy (95), a legend of resistance to the rise of Nazism and Communism, died at his home in Budapest. He spent 1950-1953 in the Stalinist concentration camp at Recsk. Faludy won international fame with his autobiographical novel "My Happy Days in Hell" in the 1960s, which related his escape from fascist Hungary and his return, and imprisonment, in a country under communist rule.
(Reuters, 9/2/06)(Econ, 9/16/06, p.96)
2006 Sep 1, Iran underlined its disregard for the UN deadline to halt uranium enrichment, now expired, when its president vowed never to give up its nuclear program and accused the West of misrepresenting Tehran's nuclear activities.
(AP, 9/1/06)
2006 Sep 1, In northeastern Iran a Russian-made Tupolev 154 airplane with 148 people on board skidded off the runway and caught fire, killing 29 people.
(AP, 9/1/06)
2006 Sep 1, Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani ordered the Iraqi national flag to be replaced with the Kurdish one in his northern autonomous region. Gunmen fatally shot one policeman in each of two towns outside of Baghdad in separate incidents. Police said they found the body of a Saddam Hussein-era intelligence officer who had been kidnapped and shot. A US soldier died from wounds sustained during action in Anbar province.
(AP, 9/1/06)(AP, 9/3/06)
2006 Sep 1, Shinzo Abe, the front-runner to be Japan's next prime minister, announced his candidacy, promising to defend Japan's interests and maintain the security alliance with the US.
(AP, 9/1/06)
2006 Sep 1, In Mexico City riot police, steel barriers, and water cannons surrounded Mexico's Congress as protesters vowed to stop President Vicente Fox from delivering his final state-of-the-nation address. Mexican lawmakers, protesting conservative Felipe Calderon's victory in the July 2 presidential election, stormed the congressional stage and refused to yield, making Fox the first president in modern Mexican history not to deliver his annual address to Congress. Fox handed in a written copy of his report and delivered it over television.
(AP, 9/1/06)(AP, 9/2/06)
2006 Sep 1, Morocco’s Interior Ministry said security agents broke up a group planning terrorist attacks on tourist sites and government facilities, arresting 56 people who included soldiers and the wives of two pilots at the state airline.
(AP, 9/1/06)
2006 Sep 1, A strike paralyzed Pakistan's restive Baluchistan province after the controversial burial of a top rebel leader whose killing sparked days of deadly rioting. Partial strikes also hit southern Sindh and central Punjab provinces.
(AFP, 9/1/06)
2006 Sep 1, World donors pledged $500 million in aid for Palestinians, including $55 million for a UN emergency appeal for humanitarian help. Carin Jamtin, Sweden's aid minister and host of the donors' conference held in the Swedish capital, said a total of $114 million of the money pledged will go toward humanitarian aid, with the rest going to rebuilding infrastructure and other projects.
(AP, 9/1/06)
2006 Sep 1, Spain's Cabinet approved sending 1,100 troops to the UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon, calling it a "legitimate" mission to help maintain peace in the region.
(AP, 9/1/06)
2006 Sep 1, In Spain self-contained, nonsmoking areas with their own ventilation systems, became requisite for larger restaurants and bars.
(AP, 9/1/06)
2006 Sep 1, Sri Lanka's navy said it sank 12 Tamil rebel boats overnight, including five suicide craft, and killed as many as 100 rebel fighters during a fierce six-hour sea battle off the country's northern coast.
(AP, 9/2/06)
2006 Sep 1, Human rights activists and African Union officials said the Sudanese government has launched a major offensive against rebels in war-torn Darfur.
(AP, 9/1/06)
2006 Sep 1, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said that Syria had pledged to step up border patrols and work with the Lebanese army to stop the flow of weapons to Hezbollah.
(AP, 9/1/06)
2006 Sep 1-2006 Sep 2, Separatist Kurdish guerrillas killed 7 Turkish soldiers and wounded two in stepped-up attacks against the military in southeastern Turkey.
(AP, 9/3/06)
2006 Sep 2, USAID announced a new contract totaling $1.4 billion awarded to the joint venture of the Louis Berger Group, Inc. and Black & Veatch Special Projects Corp. for work in Afghanistan. Two months earlier an employee for US contractor Lewis Berger had handed the government evidence of overbilling on contracts going back to the mid-1990s. In 2010 Berger agreed to pay tens of millions to settle allegations of overbilling.
(www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=13518)(SFC, 11/5/10, p.A4)
2006 Sep 2, In Nevada’s Black Rock Desert the Burning Man art festival culminated with the burning of a 40-foot wooden man. It included a Belgian art installation titled “Uchronia" (aka the Belgian Waffle), a 250,000, 15-story wooden cavern funded by Jan Kriekels and constructed by 90 Belgium artists.
(SSFC, 9/3/06, p.B1)
2006 Sep 2, Bob Mathias (b.1930), 2-time Olympic decathlon champion (1948, 1952), died at his home in Fresno, Ca. He also served in the US House of Representatives for 4 terms (1967-1976). He starred as himself in the film “The Bob Mathias Story" (1954).
(SSFC, 9/3/06, p.A1)
2006 Sep 2, Walter Redman (75), aka Dewey Redman, tenor saxophonist and bandleader, died in NYC. He cut his 1st album in SF in 1966.
(SFC, 9/7/06, p.B7)
2006 Sep 2, A NATO Nimrod reconnaissance aircraft crashed in southern Afghanistan, killing 14 British servicemen. The alliance said there was no indication hostile fire was involved. The Nimrod MR2 exploded after an air-to-air refueling operation. A later investigation said that leaking fuel ignited by a hot pipe was the most likely cause of a fire that destroyed the plane. British patrol NATO and Afghan forces began Operation Medusa in southern Afghanistan. Dozens of insurgents were killed during the fighting.
(AP, 9/2/06)(AP, 9/3/06)(AP, 12/4/07)
2006 Sep 2, The UN said opium cultivation in Afghanistan is spiraling out of control, rising 59% this year to produce a record 6,100 tons, nearly a third more than the world's drug users consume.
(AP, 9/2/06)
2006 Sep 2, Bangladesh's trade shipments ground to a virtual halt as shipping companies refused to use the nation's main port in a protest over container fees. Operations began to resume the next day after 2 shipping companies agreed to withdraw their boycott.
(AFP, 9/2/06)(AFP, 9/3/06)
2006 Sep 2, British police arrested 14 people in overnight raids and said they suspected the men had been involved in training and recruiting for terror attacks. Two others were arrested in an unrelated terror investigation in Manchester.
(AP, 9/2/06)
2006 Sep 2, In Chile miners at Escondida returned to work following a 25-day strike that cost the company some $200 million in lost profits. Their new deal included a bonus of $12,000 on account of high copper prices.
(Econ, 9/9/06, p.40)
2006 Sep 2, In China’s Guizhou Province a mine gas explosion killed at least 8 people. Six miners died when their pit in central Hubei province flooded.
(Reuters, 9/3/06)
2006 Sep 2, A small boat of African migrants from Eritrea was intercepted off the coast of Sicily. They said eight people died during their grueling trip. They had left from Libya 10-12 days earlier.
(AP, 9/3/06)
2006 Sep 2, Indonesia said it will send up to 1,000 troops to southern Lebanon by the month's end, after Israel dropped objections to its participation in the U.N. peacekeeping force.
(AP, 9/3/06)
2006 Sep 2, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad vowed Iran would defend the aims of its nuclear program during any negotiations as the EU gave Tehran extra time to show it was serious about talks. Iran offered to help support the cease-fire in Lebanon in talks with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, and insisted that diplomacy is the only way to resolve Tehran's nuclear dispute with the West.
(AP, 9/2/06)
2006 Sep 2, In Iraq attacks killed 13 Pakistani and Indian pilgrims south of Baghdad and three bombings left six people dead.
(AP, 9/2/06)
2006 Sep 2, Italian soldiers poured into Lebanon, part of the first large contingent of international troops dispatched to boost the UN force keeping the peace between Israel and Hezbollah guerrillas.
(AP, 9/2/06)
2006 Sep 2, Hezbollah announced the death of Hajj Ali Mohammed Saleh Bilal, a military commander, from wounds suffered in monthlong fighting with Israel.
(AP, 9/2/06)
2006 Sep 2, At least eight boats carrying 674 migrants from Mauritania reached the Canary Islands in the space of 24 hours.
(AP, 9/3/06)
2006 Sep 2, The former Stella Polaris, a historic ocean liner (1927-1970), sank overnight off Japan's southeastern coast. The Swedish company Petro-Fast AB had planned to operate the ship, renamed the Scandinavia, as a hotel-restaurant in Stockholm.
(AP, 9/2/06)
2006 Sep 2, Unpaid teachers shut down thousands of schools across the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the first day of the school year, in a major challenge to the Hamas government.
(AP, 9/2/06)
2006 Sep 2, In Romania liberal leaders expelled Mona Musca, one of the country's most popular politicians, from the party after she admitted to having collaborated with the Securitate secret police under the communist dictatorship of Nicolae Ceausescu.
(AP, 9/2/06)
2006 Sep 2-2006 Sep 3, In northwestern Russia hundreds of people looted shops and burned a restaurant belonging to Caucasus businessmen in Kondopoga in Karelia. The outbreak of racial violence was triggered by the recent killing of two locals.
(Reuters, 9/3/06)
2006 Sep 2, Sudan's president ordered the release of an envoy of Slovenia's president who was convicted of espionage in the war-torn region of Darfur and sentenced to two years in prison. Tomo Kriznar, the Slovenian president's envoy to Darfur, was arrested in July and convicted on Aug. 14 by a court in the North Darfur capital of el-Fasher.
(AP, 9/2/06)
2006 Sep 3, It was reported that 47% of US development aid is spent on overpriced technical assistance. 70% of US aid was contingent upon the recipient spending it on American stuff including American-made armaments. In total 86 cents of every dollar of US aid was said to be phantom aid, in that it never shows up in recipient countries.
(SSFC, 9/3/06, p.E1)
2006 Sep 3, Andre Agassi retired after losing the third-round match at the US Open.
(AP, 9/3/07)
2006 Sep 3, An apartment fire in Chicago killed six children ages 3 to 14.
(AP, 9/3/07)
2006 Sep 3, Nina Reiser (31) of Oakland, Ca., went missing. On Oct 10 police arrested Hans Reiser (42), her estranged husband on suspicion of murder. In 2008 Reiser confessed to strangling Nina in exchange for a reduced sentence and was sentenced 15 years to life in prison.
(SFC, 10/11/06, p.B1)(SFC, 8/30/08, p.B1)
2006 Sep 3, NATO and Afghan forces hit the Taliban with air strikes and artillery in Operation Medusa in southern Afghanistan. Four NATO soldiers, including 3 Canadians, and more than 200 insurgents were killed in the first two days of a major anti-Taliban operation under way in the Panjwayi district, about 10 miles from the city of Kandahar.
(AFP, 9/3/06)
2006 Sep 3, Another 4 boats carrying 522 migrants from Mauritania reached the Canary Islands. This brought the total for 2 days to nearly 1200.
(AP, 9/3/06)
2006 Sep 3, The SMART-1 spacecraft, Europe's first moon probe launched Sep 27, 2003, signed off its mission on schedule by crashing into the lunar surface, completing a project scientists hope will tell them more about the moon's origin.
(Reuters, 9/3/06)(SSFC, 9/3/06, p.A5)
2006 Sep 3, Indonesia reported that 18% of its population of some 220 million are officially poor. The government benchmark was based on an income of $16.80 per month. Use of a $1 a day benchmark would raise the poverty number to over 80 million.
(Econ, 9/16/06, p.53)(http://indonesiaupdate.org/2006/09/)
2006 Sep 3, Iraq's national security adviser said that Iraqi and coalition forces had arrested the second most senior figure in al-Qaida in Iraq. Hamed Jumaa Farid al-Saeedi, known as Abu Humam or Abu Rana, was captured north of Baghdad "along with another group of his aides and followers. A later report dated his capture to June 19. At least 16 Iraqis and two US soldiers were killed in bomb attacks and shootings nationwide. A US soldier died from wounds in Anbar province and 2 Marines were killed while fighting there.
(AP, 9/3/06)(AP, 9/5/06)(AP, 9/6/06)
2006 Sep 3, In Pakistan Abdul Rahim Muslim Dost and his brother, Badruz Zaman Badar Dost, published “The Broken Shackles of Guantanamo," an account of their 3 years in detention at the US prison. On Sep 29 Abdul was jailed by the Pakistani intelligence service in apparent response to criticism of the agency’s role in the US-led war on terrorism.
(SFC, 12/28/06, p.A17)
2006 Sep 3, A bomb damaged a gas pipeline in southwestern Pakistan, cutting supplies to thousands of homes in the region.
(AP, 9/3/06)
2006 Sep 3, In southeastern Turkey a remote-controlled bomb exploded in a tea garden, killing two people and wounding seven.
(AP, 9/4/06)
2006 Sep 4, Lt. Col. Marshall Gutierrez (41), whistleblower on food overcharging for the Iraq war, was found dead in his quarters in Kuwait. A Kuwaiti contractor had accused Gutierrez of seeking bribes.
(WSJ, 10/20/07, p.A1)
2006 Sep 4, Tropical storm Ernesto soaked the East Coast of the US claiming 6 lives and left 19,000 customers in the new York area without power.
(WSJ, 9/5/06, p.A1)
2006 Sep 4, In Berkeley, Ca., Nicholas Beaudreaux shot and killed Wayne Drummond in front of Blake’s Restaurant. In 2009 Lamar Crowder (21) pleaded no contests to voluntary manslaughter and testified against Beaudreaux (23), who was convicted of first-degree murder in the shooting.
(SFC, 7/9/09, p.D2)
2006 Sep 4, In south-central Montana a wildfire had spread across 180,000 acres, over 280 sq. miles, since it was sparked by lightning on Aug 22. It was only 20% contained.
(SFC, 9/5/06, p.A3)
2006 Sep 4, In Newry, Maine, 4 people were found killed at the Black Bear Bed & Breakfast. The victims were shot and then dismembered. Christian Nielsen (31), a resident at the inn for 2-months, was arrested. The dead included owner Julie Bullard (65), her daughter Selby (30), her friend Cindy Beatson (43), and Arkansas resident James Whitehurst.
(SFC, 9/8/06, p.B2)
2006 Sep 4, In southern Afghanistan 2 US warplanes accidentally strafed their own forces, killing one Canadian soldier and seriously wounding five others. A British soldier attached to NATO was also killed in a Kabul suicide bombing, which left another four Afghans dead. 16 suspected Taliban militants and five Afghan police died in separate Afghan violence.
(AP, 9/4/06)
2006 Sep 4, Steve Irwin (44), world-famous Australian "crocodile hunter" and television environmentalist, was killed by a stingray blow to the chest while filming a documentary on the Great Barrier Reef. His "Crocodile Hunter" show, in which the adventurer appeared in his trademark khaki shorts and shirt, was first broadcast in 1992 and has been shown around the world on the Discovery cable network ever since.
(AFP, 9/4/06)(Econ, 9/9/06, p.82)
2006 Sep 4, Global press titan Rupert Murdoch launched a new free title: thelondonpaper, a 48-page color paper, dominated by gossip and real-life stories, in the city centre. The first free paper in London was launched seven years ago, in 1999. Metro, a daily morning paper published by Associated Newspapers, has a circulation of around a million copies in the capital and 13 other big towns.
(AFP, 9/4/06)
2006 Sep 4, In CongoDRC a boat overloaded with passengers and freight sank in choppy waters on Lake Kivu, killing at least 35 people.
(AP, 9/5/06)
2006 Sep 4, In Cyprus 3 British holidaymakers were charged with willful manslaughter over the death of a Cypriot teenager in a hit-and-run accident in the coastal resort of Protaras last month. A rented Opel "repeatedly rammed" the moped in what police described as a revenge attack following a fight outside a Protaras disco in which a friend of the accused was beaten up.
(AFP, 9/4/06)
2006 Sep 4, In Egypt a passenger train collided with a cargo train north of Cairo, killing 5 people and injuring 30 others.
(AP, 9/4/06)
2006 Sep 4, In France the Airbus A380, the world's largest passenger jet, took off with a full load of passengers for the first time. Carrying 474 Airbus employees, the 308-ton jet left from Toulouse, southern France, on the first of four test flights.
(AP, 9/4/06)
2006 Sep 4, In Iraq a popular Iraqi soccer star was kidnapped. 33 bullet-riddled bodies were found in Baghdad and 2 more in Kut. At least two people also were killed and six were wounded in and around Baqouba. Two suicide bombers slammed into a checkpoint on the outskirts of Baghdad, killing an Iraqi soldier and wounding eight. Gunmen in Ramadi killed Maj. Gen. Mohammad Thumeil, who had served in former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's military. An American soldier was killed by a roadside bomb north of Baghdad, while a 2nd soldier died of non-combat related injuries. 2 US Marines and one sailor were killed in fighting Anbar province.
(AP, 9/4/06)(AP, 9/5/06)
2006 Sep 4, Nabeel Ahmed Issa al-Jaourah opened fire on tourists near a popular Roman ruins site in Jordan's capital, killing Christopher Stokes, a British man, and wounding five other foreigners and a local police officer. Police overpowered and arrested the attacker at the scene. Al-Jaourah was sentenced to death in December.
(AP, 9/4/06)(AP, 12/21/06)
2006 Sep 4, In Lebanon US civil rights leader Rev. Jesse Jackson met with Hezbollah officials and called on them to show proof that two captured Israeli soldiers are still alive. A UN spokesman said Secretary-General Kofi Annan has agreed to requests by Hezbollah and Israel that he mediate in negotiations over the release of two abducted Israeli soldiers. Qatar announced that it would contribute 200 to 300 troops to the UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon, making the Persian Gulf state the first Arab country to commit soldiers to the peace effort in Lebanon.
(AP, 9/4/06)
2006 Sep 4, Philippine marines clashed with nearly 200 al-Qaida-linked rebels on Jolo Island. 6 government troops were killed and 19 wounded in the monthlong US-backed offensive. In Dec the military said Khaddafy Janjalani, head of the al-Qaida-linked Abu Sayyaf, was killed in the fighting and that his remains had been found. DNA evidence confirmed his death.
(AP, 9/4/06)(AP, 12/27/06)(AP, 1/20/07)
2006 Sep 4, Somalia's weak government and an Islamic militia that controls much of the south signed an agreement to eventually form a unified national army.
(AP, 9/4/06)
2006 Sep 4, Sri Lanka President Mahinda Rajapakse said security forces had captured Sampur, a key town used by Tamil Tigers to target artillery at a major naval port. Rajapakse urged the rebels to return to peace talks.
(AFP, 9/4/06)
2006 Sep 4, Sudan said it would allow African troops to remain in Darfur only under African Union control and accused Washington of attempting "regime change" in Khartoum by trying to bring in a UN force.
(Reuters, 9/4/06)
2006 Sep 5, Pres. Bush named Mary Peters, former Federal Highway Administrator, to replace Norm Pineta as transportation secretary.
(SFC, 9/6/06, p.A4)
2006 Sep 5, The Academy of American Poets announced that Michael Palmer (63), a resident of San Francisco, has been selected as the recipient of the 13th Wallace Stevens Award for "outstanding and proven mastery in the art of poetry." The award included $100,000.
(http://tinyurl.com/gcmho)
2006 Sep 5, Dan Rather said he has donated $2 million to his alma mater, Sam Houston State University, the largest single monetary gift in the school's 127-year history.
(AP, 9/6/06)
2006 Sep 5, Chevron and Devon energy announced successful oil production from a new deep water region in the Gulf of Mexico estimated at 3-15 billion barrels of oil plus gas.
(WSJ, 9/5/06, p.A1)
2006 Sep 5, Bill Ford stepped down as CEO of Ford Motor Co. and was replaced by Alan Mulally, a top Boeing executive. Mulally will get a base salary of $2 million and an immediate payout of $18.5 million which includes a $7.5 million hiring bonus and $11 million to offset forfeited performance and stock option awards from Boeing.
(SFC, 9/6/06, p.C3)(WSJ, 9/9/06, p.A1)
2006 Sep 5, The US FDA granted Abiomed approval to sell AbioCor, the world’s first implantable artificial heart.
(SFC, 9/6/06, p.A3)
2006 Sep 5, The lower deck of the SF Bay Bridge reopened after being shut down for the 3-day Labor Day weekend due to demolition work.
(SFC, 9/5/06, p.B1)
2006 Sep 5, The Wireless Silicon Valley Project picked Silicon Valley Metro Connect, a collaboration of Azulstar Networks, Cisco systems, IBM and Seakay, to build and operate a wireless network across 38 cities in the SF Bay Area.
(SFC, 9/6/06, p.C1)
2006 Sep 5, A cook was charged with shooting and dismembering the owner of a Maine bed-and-breakfast and three other people in a Labor Day weekend killing rampage. Christian Nielsen has since pleaded not guilty to murder by reason of insanity.
(AP, 9/5/07)
2006 Sep 5, In southern Afghanistan US artillery and airstrikes killed between 50 and 60 suspected Taliban militants, the fourth day of a NATO-led offensive. NATO said 700 Taliban were trapped by the offensive.
(AP, 9/5/06)(WSJ, 9/6/06, p.A1)
2006 Sep 5, A federal judge in Argentina ruled unconstitutional a 1990 presidential pardon extended to Jorge Rafael Videla, who led Argentina's military junta during the worst periods of the so-called "Dirty War" crackdown on dissidents between 1976 and 1983. A day earlier the same judge ruled that pardons for Albano Harguinday, the interior minister under Videla, and Jose Martinez de Hoz, the economy minister under Videla, were also unconstitutional.
(http://tinyurl.com/0)(Econ, 9/16/06, p.47)
2006 Sep 5, Burundi Vice-President Alice Nzomukunda resigned over corruption and human rights abuses that she says are hampering her nation's progress.
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/5316690.stm)
2006 Sep 5, Danish authorities said they foiled a serious terror plot with the arrest of nine men accused of preparing explosives for a planned attack in Denmark. The suspects were Danish citizens between the ages of 18 and 33. Eight of them had immigrant backgrounds. In 2007 a jury in Copenhagen handed down guilty verdicts to Mohammad Zaher (34), Ahmad Khaldhadi (22), and Abdallah Andersen (32). Riad Anwer Daabas (19) was acquitted. Zaher and Khaldhadi, described as the two most active, were each sentenced to 11 years in prison, while Andersen was given a four-year sentence.
(AP, 9/5/06)(AP, 11/24/07)
2006 Sep 5, Cellular telephones were found inside four prisoners in El Salvador's maximum-security prison after suspicious officials took X-rays of each of the inmates.
(AP, 9/6/06)
2006 Sep 5, French oil and gas field surveyor Geophysique said it will buy US rival Veritas for $3.1 billion in cash and stock, establishing a major new global player in the booming oil exploration industry.
(AP, 9/5/06)
2006 Sep 5, The Iraqi parliament voted to extend the country's state of emergency for 30 more days.
(AP, 9/5/06)
2006 Sep 5, Israeli forces left five villages in southern Lebanon and were replaced by Lebanese troops, who also moved into the center of a Hezbollah stronghold devastated by weeks of fighting.
(AP, 9/5/06)
2006 Sep 5, In Kyrgyzstan Maj. Jill Metzger (33), a US Air Force officer, went missing while shopping in the capital of Bishkek. Metzger reappeared 3 days later and said she had been seized by three young men and a woman in a minibus and held in a rural area about 30 miles from the capital.
(AP, 9/6/06)(AP, 9/9/06)
2006 Sep 5, In south Lebanon a remote-controlled bomb wounded a senior police intelligence officer who played a key role in the investigation into the slaying of a former Lebanese prime minister. Four of the officer's aides and bodyguards were killed in the sophisticated attack.
(AP, 9/5/06)
2006 Sep 5, The president of Mexico's top electoral court recommended that the full tribunal uphold the slim lead of ruling party candidate Felipe Calderon. Marcelo Garza, the top police investigator for Nuevo Leon, a northern Mexican state that borders Texas, was shot to death by a lone gunman outside an art gallery.
(AP, 9/5/06)(AP, 9/6/06)
2006 Sep 5, Pakistan's government and pro-Taliban militants signed an agreement in Miran Shah to ensure "permanent peace" in a tribal region bordering Afghanistan, seeking to end five years of violent unrest in the area. Under the truce the Pakistan army pulled back to barracks tens of thousands of troops that had been involved in bloody operations against suspected Taliban and al-Qaida hideouts, and militants agreed to halt attacks in Pakistan and over the border against foreign troops in Afghanistan. Tribal elders were supposed to police the deal. The truce ended in July 2007. Lawmakers from a coalition of six Islamic groups threatened to vacate their parliamentary seats if the government changes a rape law criticized by human rights activists.
(AP, 9/5/06)(AP, 9/5/06)(AP, 7/16/07)
2006 Sep 5, Palestinian security officers went on the rampage in Gaza City to demand back pay from the cash-strapped Hamas-led government. Israel pressed ahead with its offensive against Hamas militants, killing five with airstrikes in the Rafah refugee camp.
(AP, 9/5/06)(AP, 9/6/06)
2006 Sep 5, Russian President Vladimir Putin met South African leader Thabo Mbeki at the start of a visit intended to forge closer ties between the mineral and diamond superpowers.
(Reuters, 9/5/06)
2006 Sep 5, Turkey became the first Muslim country with diplomatic ties to Israel to pledge troops to an expanding international peacekeeping force that will monitor a fragile cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah.
(AP, 9/6/06)
2006 Sep 5, In Somalia thousands of people massed in Mogadishu vowing to fight any foreign peacekeepers sent to the embattled nation, while a coalition of East African nations approved an ambitious plan to deploy troops in Somalia by early next month.
(AP, 9/5/06)
2006 Sep 5, Police in Uruguay arrested 27 people suspected of trafficking drugs to Europe and seized a record 770 pounds of cocaine.
(AP, 9/6/06)
2006 Sep 6, Pres. Bush acknowledged that the CIA had subjected dozens of detainees to “tough" interrogation at secret prisons abroad and that 14 remaining detainees have been transferred to the detention center at Guantanamo Bay.
(SFC, 9/7/06, p.A1)
2006 Sep 6, In Phoenix, Arizona, police arrested Mark Goudeau (42), a construction worker, for 2 sexual assaults. In December police identified Goudeau as the Baseline Killer and recommended charging him with 71 counts including 9 murders committed from August, 2005, to June, 2006. His trial opened in 2011.
(www.amw.com/fugitives/brief.cfm?id=39736)(SFC, 12/8/06, p.A13)(SFC, 6/7/11, p.A4)
2006 Sep 6, In Chicago George Ryan (72), former Illinois governor, was sentenced to 6½ years in prison for offenses including racketeering, conspiracy and fraud.
(SFC, 9/7/06, p.A4)
2006 Sep 6, Philadelphia’s Art Commission voted 6-2 to move a 2,000-pound bronze statue of Rocky Balboa, commissioned by actor Sylvester Stallone, out of storage and onto a street-level pedestal near the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
(SFC, 9/7/06, p.A2)
2006 Sep 6, Andy Ross, owner of Cody’s bookstore in Berkeley, Ca., announced that the store had been sold to Yohan Inc., a book company based in Tokyo.
(SFC, 9/7/06, p.C1)
2006 Sep 6, Intel announced it would cut more than a tenth of its workforce as part of a drive to become more efficient in the face of tough competition in the computer chip market.
(AFP, 9/6/06)
2006 Sep 6, Reporting in the Annals of Internal Medicine, European researchers said virgin olive oil may be particularly effective at lowering heart disease risk because of its high level of antioxidant plant compounds.
(Reuters, 9/6/06)
2006 Sep 6, Research reported in Nature magazine said thawing permafrost, due to global warming, is releasing trapped methane at a much higher rate than was assumed.
(WSJ, 9/7/06, p.A1)
2006 Sep 6, Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf held talks on counterterrorism in Kabul. NATO forces killed 21 militants in air and ground attacks in southern Kandahar province. Afghan police killed four Taliban fighters in southeastern Paktiya province. 3 British soldiers were killed.
(AP, 9/6/06)(AP, 9/7/06)(WSJ, 9/7/06, p.A1)
2006 Sep 6, Six junior members of British Prime Minister Tony Blair's government resigned to protest his refusal to set a date to leave office amid a growing Labour Party revolt.
(AP, 9/6/06)
2006 Sep 6, State media said hundreds of people in northwestern China have been hospitalized with lead poisoning that was likely caused by pollution from a nearby smelter. The first sign of trouble in the villages of Xinsi and Moba, Gansu province, came on Aug. 18.
(AP, 9/6/06)
2006 Sep 6, In eastern India 50 miners were killed after an explosion inside a state-owned coal mine in Jharkhand state.
(AP, 9/7/06)(AP, 9/8/06)
2006 Sep 6, An Indonesian appeals court sentenced four Australian members of a drug smuggling ring to death, prompting a protest from the Australian government. Scott Rush, Tan Duc Than Nguyen, Si Yi Chen and Matthew Norman had originally received life terms for trying to take home more than 18 pounds of heroin from Indonesia's resort island of Bali last year.
(AP, 9/6/06)
2006 Sep 6, Iran unveiled its first locally manufactured fighter plane during large-scale military exercises. The report said the bomber Saegheh is similar to the American F-18 fighter plane, but "more powerful."
(AP, 9/6/06)
2006 Sep 6, Iraq executed 27 "terrorists" convicted by Iraqi courts of killings and rapes in several provinces. 2 bombs exploded in northern Baghdad within minutes of each other, killing at least nine people and wounding 39 others. In northeastern Baghdad, gunmen opened fire on a procession of pilgrims heading to the Shiite holy city of Karbala, 50 miles south of Baghdad, killing one person and wounding two. Mortar attacks in residential areas in Diyala province, north of Baghdad, killed three people: a 2-year-old child in the Khan Bani Saad area and two people in Muqdadiyah. In Baqouba gunmen killed three construction workers waiting for a bus. An employee in the Diyala police and army coordination office was shot to death as she left her house in the city's Tahrir neighborhood. Gunmen also killed the owner of a food store in the same area. Gunmen, in Baghdad kidnapped the nephew of Iraq's parliament speaker, Mahmoud al-Mashhadani. 2 American soldiers were killed in separate incidents. Attacks across Iraq left 36 dead and 29 corpses were found.
(AP, 9/6/06)(AP, 9/7/06)(WSJ, 9/7/06, p.A1)
2006 Sep 6, Japan's Princess Kiko gave birth to the royal family's first male heir in four decades. The male heir was named Hisahito, meaning "virtuous, calm and everlasting"
(AP, 9/6/06)(AP, 9/12/06)
2006 Sep 6, In Macau Steve Wynn, American gambling mogul, opened his $1.2 billion Wynn Macau, a near replica of his Nevada casino.
(WSJ, 9/7/06, p.A1)
2006 Sep 6, Mexico’s newly declared President-elect Felipe Calderon began building his government and his supporters called on backers of leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador to end weeks of national protests over the disputed July 2 election. Gunmen barged into a bar in central Mexico and tossed five human heads on the dance floor. An avalanche left 10 villagers dead in northern Mexico.
(AP, 9/6/06)(AP, 9/7/06)
2006 Sep 6, Mexican authorities arrested Jaime Maya Duran, a reputed major figure in one of Colombia's largest and most feared drug cartels responsible for nearly half of the cocaine smuggled into the US. He was flown immediately to New York, where he is under indictment on drug trafficking and money laundering charges.
(AP, 9/8/06)
2006 Sep 6, Unpaid employees in the Palestinian prime minister's office joined a widespread strike that is challenging the survival of the Hamas-led government. Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams met with a Hamas legislator in the West Bank and advised Israel and the Palestinians to solve their problems using the Northern Ireland formula, negotiations.
(AP, 9/7/06)
2006 Sep 6, The Philippine government said it will take full control of Manila airport's controversial new airport terminal despite an international court ruling to return it to its builders. Philippine International Air Terminals Co Inc (PIATCO) built the terminal under a "build-operate-transfer" contract, but in 2002 President Arroyo revoked the contract on the grounds that certain terms were illegally renegotiated by Joseph Estrada, her deposed predecessor.
(AP, 9/6/06)
2006 Sep 6, A fire broke out aboard the Daniil Moskovsky, a Russian nuclear submarine in the Barents Sea, killing two crew members and injuring another. The navy said there was no radiation threat.
(AP, 9/7/06)
2006 Sep 6, More than 80 international scientists and academics released a letter that condemned South Africa's AIDS policies as ineffective and immoral and called for the firing of the health minister in a letter to President Thabo Mbeki.
(AP, 9/6/06)
2006 Sep 6, Sudanese security forces in Khartoum fired tear gas and beat demonstrators with sticks in a crackdown on protests against price increases for basic goods, after thwarting similar protests a week ago. In Khartoum the beheaded body of Mohammed Taha Mohammed Ahmed, editor-in-chief of the independent daily Al-Wifaq, was recovered, a day after he was kidnapped by gunmen. He had been accused of insulting Islam. A group claiming to be al-Qaida's branch in Sudan said that it killed the chief editor. In 2007 ten people were sentenced to death for the murder and beheading of Ahmed.
(Reuters, 9/6/06)(AP, 9/7/06)(AP, 9/13/06)(AP, 11/10/07)
2006 Sep 7, American officials said the US government has ordered Venezuela to close its military purchasing office in Miami after suspending arms sales to the South American country.
(AP, 9/7/06)
2006 Sep 7, Former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage confirmed he was the source of a leak that had disclosed the identity of CIA employee Valerie Plame, saying he didn't realize Plame's job was covert.
(AP, 9/7/07)
2006 Sep 7, Mohammad Khatami, former president of Iran (1997-2005), spoke at Washington National Cathedral as part of a 2-week speaking tour in the US. He urged dialogue instead of threats. A group of Jewish Iranians, who say their missing relatives were kidnapped and tortured by the Iranian government, filed suit in Manhattan against Khatami. They delivered the summons to him directly the next day as he visited the US.
(SFC, 9/8/06, p.A13)(AP, 9/10/06)
2006 Sep 7, BP America, the US arm of British energy giant BP, said it will spend more than 550 million dollars (432 million euros) over the next two years on improvements to its Alaskan oil fields, including pipeline repairs.
(AP, 9/7/06)
2006 Sep 7, Hewlett-Packard disclosed that an investigator, hired by its board of directors, had secretly obtained phone records of 9 journalists as part of an effort to unmask information leaks to the media. Director George Keyworth resigned after he was found to be the source of the leak. Sub-contractors engaged in pretexting, the use of false pretences, to obtain personal information. HP faced Congressional hearings over the tactics used to unveil Keyworth.
(SFC, 9/8/06, p.A1)(Econ, 9/16/06, p.70)
2006 Sep 7, Britain’s PM Tony Blair reluctantly promised to resign within a year, hoping that revealing a general time frame for his departure will appease critics who are calling for him to step down.
(AP, 9/7/06)
2006 Sep 7, Burundi's government and the country's last rebel group, the National Liberation Forces (FNL) signed a permanent cease-fire as the central African nation emerges from 12 years of civil war.
(AP, 9/7/06)(Econ, 9/16/06, p.57)
2006 Sep 7, Chad Pres. Idriss Deby and Chevron CEO David O’Reilly met in Paris for talks on oil taxes. Chad said Chevron agreed to pay back taxes.
(SFC, 9/9/06, p.C1)
2006 Sep 7, Cyprus impounded a Panama-flagged vessel on arms smuggling suspicion. It carried 18 North Korean mobile radar units and 3 command vehicles due for delivery to Syria.
(WSJ, 9/8/06, p.A1)(Reuters, 9/11/06)
2006 Sep 7, Gunmen held up a truck in a restricted area of Guatemala City's international airport and made off with $8 million of $22 million that was to be shipped from the Bank of Guatemala to the U.S. Federal Reserve.
(AP, 9/7/06)
2006 Sep 7, Coalition forces handed over control of Iraq's armed forces command to the government. Initially, this would apply only to the 8th Iraqi Army Division, the air force and the navy. The other nine Iraqi division remain under US command, with authority gradually being transferred. Six bomb attacks targeting police patrols in Baghdad killed at least 17 people and wounded more than 50. A British soldier died of injuries sustained when his patrol came under fire in Qurnah.
(AP, 9/7/06)(AP, 9/8/06)
2006 Sep 7, Ivory Coast PM Charles Konan Banny announced the resignation of his cabinet over the Aug 19 toxic waste scandal.
(Reuters, 9/7/06)
2006 Sep 7, Workers at Lebanon's only airport prepared to receive a full flow of commercial flights. Israel began lifting its air blockade of Lebanon, but the naval blockade will remain in place until troops from the new UN international force are in place.
(AP, 9/7/06)
2006 Sep 7, In Mexico a landslide buried buses and cars on a highway in the central state of Puebla and killed at least four travelers.
(AP, 9/7/06)
2006 Sep 7, Russia's state-owned nuclear power company said it was seeking to build Morocco's first nuclear plant, as Russian President Vladimir Putin signed cooperation deals with the Moroccan king as part of an economic mission to expand Russia's African reach.
(AP, 9/8/06)
2006 Sep 7, In Siberia a blaze broke out in the Darasun gold mine in the Chita region. 64 miners were working underground when the fire broke out. 31 were rescued or evacuated, including 15 who were hospitalized. Rescuers recovered 12 bodies. Eight miners emerged from the burning mine after two days. The fate of at least nine others remained unknown in the accident that killed at least 16. Rescuers on Sep 10 found the bodies of the last four miners trapped deep underground at a remote Russian gold mine, bringing the final death toll to 25. On Sep 11 Rescuers recovered the bodies of the last of 25 miners.
(AP, 9/8/06)(AP, 9/9/06)(Reuters, 9/10/06)(AP, 9/11/06)
2006 Sep 7, Medical experts said a killer strain of drug-resistant tuberculosis has been found in at least 28 hospitals across South Africa and that it jeopardized efforts to deal with AIDS.
(SFC, 9/8/06, p.A3)
2006 Sep 7, A Thai court decided to extradite a Vietnamese dissident to face charges of violating airspace for a stunt that involved hijacking a plane and dropping 50,000 anti-communist leaflets over Ho Chi Minh City. Ly Tong, a South Vietnamese air force veteran who later became a US citizen, hijacked the twin-engine plane from Thailand in November 2000.
(AP, 9/7/06)
2006 Sep 8, The Bush administration said it has blocked access to the US financial system by Iran’s Bank Saderat. The bank was alleged to have helped transfer hundreds of millions of dollars to terrorist organizations including Hezbollah and Hamas.
(WSJ, 9/9/06, p.A4)
2006 Sep 8, The United States Naval Air Station Keflavik (NASKEF) closed at Iceland’s Keflavik Int’l. Airport.
(Econ, 10/11/08, p.70)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Air_Station_Keflavik)
2006 Sep 8, A Senate report faulted intelligence gathering in the lead-up to the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, and said Saddam Hussein regarded al-Qaida as a threat rather than a possible ally, contradicting assertions President Bush had used to build support for the war.
(AP, 9/8/07)
2006 Sep 8, Walter C. Anderson (52), US telecom mogul, pleaded guilty to evading over $200 million in federal and local taxes in an offshore scheme from the sale of Mid-Atlantic Telecom. His plea agreement only covered transactions from 1998-1999.
(WSJ, 9/9/06, p.A3)
2006 Sep 8, The Miami Herald reported that 10 South Florida journalists, including three with the Herald's Spanish-language sister paper, received thousands of dollars from the federal government for their work on radio and TV programming aimed at undermining Fidel Castro's communist regime. The Herald fired 3 of the journalists.
(AP, 9/9/06)
2006 Sep 8, SF Mayor Gavin Newsom said 50 new security cameras will be installed in public housing projects around San Francisco over the next 18 months.
(SFC, 9/9/06, p.B1)
2006 Sep 8, In Minneapolis ground was broken for the new Masjid An-Nur mosque, the 1st mosque in Minnesota.
(Econ, 9/23/06, p.32)
2006 Sep 8, The Day fire in California’s Los Padres National Forest burned out of control for a 5th day and blackened over 11,500 acres (18 square miles).
(SFC, 9/9/06, p.B2)
2006 Sep 8, In Florida Melinda Duckett (21) shot herself to death one day after taping a TV interview with Nancy Grace for CNN. Duckett had reported that her 2-year-old son had been kidnapped on Aug 27.
(SFC, 9/14/06, p.A13)
2006 Sep 8, A suicide car bomber struck a convoy of US military vehicles in downtown Kabul, killing at least 16 people, including two American soldiers, and wounding 29 others. It was the Afghan capital's deadliest suicide attack since the Taliban's 2001 ouster.
(AP, 9/8/06)
2006 Sep 8, Opponents of President Evo Morales stayed home from work and blocked key streets in four cities to protest the governing party's handling of an assembly that is rewriting the Bolivian constitution.
(AP, 9/9/06)
2006 Sep 8, The Toronto International Film Festival got off to a multi-cultural start night with the premiere of "The Journals of Knud Rasmussen," a drama about Canada's Inuit people being stripped of their traditions by Christianity.
(Reuters, 9/8/06)
2006 Sep 8, In southern China crowds angered by alleged police mishandling of a school teacher's death attacked government offices in Rui'an City, sparking arrests and beatings by riot troops. Students and local residents claimed police falsified a report and colluded with the wealthy husband of high school English teacher Dai Haijing, 30, to have her Aug 18 death classified as a suicide.
(AP, 9/11/06)
2006 Sep 8, The UN's humanitarian chief called for an end to the rapes plaguing women in war-battered Congo and said the perpetrators, including those wearing military uniforms, must be severely punished.
(AP, 9/8/06)
2006 Sep 8, In western India 2 bombs rigged to bicycles struck in the crowded streets of the city of Malegaon, Maharashtra state, as Muslim worshippers were returning from afternoon prayers At least 37 people were killed and 100 wounded. 8 suspects later arrested for allegedly planting the bombs were all members of the Students' Islamic Movement of India, or SIMI. In 2011 seven of nine Muslim men, wrongfully arrested for the blasts, were released on bail. Two of the men were not released because of allegations they were involved in a separate series of explosions on suburban Mumbai trains that also occurred in 2006.
(AP, 9/8/06)(AP, 11/27/06)(SFC, 11/28/08, p.A6)(AP, 11/16/11)
2006 Sep 8, A roadside bomb in Baghdad and a mortar attack on Shiite pilgrims south of the capital killed five people. A roadside bomb also struck an Iraqi army convoy in a village near Karmah, 50 miles west of Baghdad, killing four Iraqi soldiers. An American soldier died after being wounded in a roadside bomb explosion south of Baghdad. 3 mortar rounds landed on a procession of pilgrims heading to Karbala for a ceremony, killing at least three and wounding 22. A roadside bomb targeting a police patrol In Baghdad killed two people and wounded six.
(AP, 9/8/06)
2006 Sep 8, Israel lifted its nearly two-month naval blockade of Lebanon after European warships began patrolling to keep out weapons shipments for Hezbollah guerrillas.
(AP, 9/8/06)
2006 Sep 8, In Mexico a small plane crash near Ensenada on the US-Mexico border killed three American medical volunteers.
(AP, 9/10/06)
2006 Sep 8, In Pakistan a bomb killed at least five people in restive Baluchistan province. 21 other people were wounded in the explosion near a bus station in the town of Barkhan.
(AP, 9/8/06)
2006 Sep 8, Engineers covered in head-to-toe protective gear inserted a neutralizing solution into bombs filled with a nerve agent, officially starting the work of Russia's first plant for destroying the deadly chemicals.
(AP, 9/9/06)
2006 Sep 8, It was reported that Saudi Arabia’s religious police have issued a decree in Jiddah and Mecca banning the sale of the pets, seen as a sign of Western influence.
(AP, 9/8/06)
2006 Sep 8, In South Africa Hilda Bernstein (b.1915), a London-born anti-apartheid activist and author, died. Her husband was tried for treason alongside Nelson Mandela in 1964. Rusty Bernstein (d.2002) was the only defendant acquitted and freed. Police harassment made life afterward so difficult for the Bernsteins that the couple was forced into exile, leaving their children behind. They crossed the border to Botswana on foot, a journey described in Hilda Bernstein's book "The World That Was Ours."
(AP, 9/11/06)
2006 Sep 8, Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir agreed to release American journalist Paul Salopek and his Chadian assistants after meeting with New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson.
(AP, 9/9/06)
2006 Sep 8, The UN General Assembly adopted a long-awaited strategy to combat terrorism, though many nations lamented that it does not include a definition or say anything about states that commit terrorist acts.
(AP, 9/8/06)
2006 Sep 9, Space shuttle Atlantis and its six astronauts blasted off on a mission to resume construction of the international space station for the first time since the Columbia disaster 3 1/2 years ago.
(AP, 9/9/06)
2006 Sep 9, Joanna Veil, aged 28 and pregnant, vanished after leaving work in Ben Lomond, Ca. Her body was found Sep 14 in a remote area of Santa Cruz County. In 2007 authorities named Michael McClish (38) a suspect in the case. McClish was convicted in 2007 for another murder and sentenced to 18 years in prison. In 2008 he was charged with Veil’s murder.
(SFC, 9/16/06, p.B1)(SFC, 5/8/08, p.B2)
2006 Sep 9, Clair Burgener (84), 5-term US Republican congressman from San Diego (1973-1983), died.
(SFC, 9/15/06, p.B9)
2006 Sep 9, Elisabeth Ogilvie (89), writer, died at her home in Cushing, Maine. Her 46 books included the Tide trilogy, which centered on the Bennet family and lobster-trapping life.
(SFC, 9/15/06, p.B9)
2006 Sep 9, Afghan and NATO soldiers killed at least 40 suspected Taliban militants in fierce raids that destroyed insurgent hideouts and a weapons-making factory in Kandahar province. One NATO soldier died. 2 coalition soldiers training Afghan troops were killed in combat. 2 policemen were killed when dozens of Taliban rebels attacked their post in western Farah province with machine guns and rockets. Gen. Ray Henault, chief of NATO’s military committee, said he would ask the 26 alliance members for up to 2,500 more soldiers.
(AP, 9/9/06)(AP, 9/10/06)(SSFC, 9/10/06, p.A19)
2006 Sep 9, In Brazil Ubiratan Guimaraes, the police colonel accused of ordering a 1992 jail massacre of more than 100 inmates, was shot dead in his apartment in Sao Paulo.
(AP, 9/11/06)
2006 Sep 9, British PM Tony Blair arrived in Tel Aviv for talks with his Israeli counterpart Ehud Olmert and other key players in the region on the stalled Middle East peace process.
(AFP, 9/9/06)
2006 Sep 9, Five central Asian countries (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan) signed a nuclear-free zone treaty, but it did not cancel out a 1992 agreement to allow Russia to transport and deploy nuclear weapons there under certain circumstances.
(SSFC, 9/10/06, p.A18)
2006 Sep 9, In CongoDRC it was reported to take 155 days to register a business at a cost of 5 times the average annual income of $120.
(Econ, 9/9/06, p.60)
2006 Sep 9, In Finland leaders and top officials from 38 Asian and European nations gathered in Helsinki for the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM). The agenda included security issues, trade and global warming.
(AFP, 9/10/06)
2006 Sep 9, In India recent estimates by conservationists and some officials put the population of Bengal tigers at 1,200 to 1,500. The government insisted the tiger population was stable at around 3,500.
(Econ, 9/9/06, p.46)
2006 Sep 9, Iran's top nuclear negotiator met with the European Union foreign policy chief for crucial talks seen as the last chance for Iran to avoid U.N. sanctions over its nuclear defiance.
(AP, 9/9/06)
2006 Sep 9, In Iraq the US-led coalition said an Iraqi court has convicted 38 people of charges related to the insurgency, including kidnapping and murder. Their sentences ranged from six months to life. At least 15 violent deaths were reported across the country. Millions of Shiite pilgrims thronged Karbala for a religious festival that ended peacefully amid tight security. Authorities found the bullet-riddled bodies of 6 people dumped in Mahmoudiya. One unidentified body, blindfolded with hands and feet bound, was found in the Tigris River in Suwayah.
(AP, 9/9/06)(AP, 9/10/06)
2006 Sep 9, The 10-week Israeli military operation, code named Summer Rains, left 230 Gazans dead, including over 60 children. It had no noticeable impact on militant activities.
(Econ, 9/9/06, p.47)
2006 Sep 9, Italy's PM Romano Prodi said Syria has agreed "in principle" to a European Union presence on its border to help stem the flow of weapons into Lebanon.
(AP, 9/9/06)
2006 Sep 9, The Chinese movie "Still Life" won the top award at the Venice Film Festival.
(AP, 9/9/07)
2006 Sep 9, In Indian Kashmir suspected Muslim militants shot dead two policemen in an attack on a police check post. They also looted arms and ammunition.
(AFP, 9/9/06)
2006 Sep 9, The ship Moubarak heading from Madagascar to the Comoros Islands sank in the Indian Ocean this weekend in bad weather. Of the 76 people on board, 43 people were rescued after the boat sank. 33 people were missing.
(AP, 9/11/06)
2006 Sep 9, It was reported that some 15,000 students from Saudi Arabia were enrolling on college campuses across the United States this semester under a new educational exchange program brokered by President Bush and Saudi King Abdullah.
(AP, 9/9/06)
2006 Sep 9, In northern Sri Lanka at least 26 troops were killed and over 125 wounded in new fighting as Tamil rebels resisted an army advance into guerrilla-held territory.
(AFP, 9/9/06)
2006 Sep 9, Sudan authorities confiscated all copies of the independent al-Sudani newspaper, the latest move in a resurgence of censorship since the beheading of a journalist last week. Paul Salopek was released from a prison in the war-torn Darfur region where he was held for more than a month on espionage charges.
(Reuters, 9/10/06)
2006 Sep 9, Tens of thousands of red-clad protesters thronged Taiwan's capital, demanding that President Chen Shui-bian resign over a series of alleged corruption scandals involving his family and inner circle. Shih Ming-teh, a former chairman of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), began camping with fellow protesters in the center of Taipei.
(AP, 9/9/06)(Econ, 9/23/06, p.48)
2006 Sep 9, Pope Benedict XVI began a six-day homecoming to his native Bavaria.
(AP, 9/9/06)
2006 Sep 10, Peyton Manning and the Indianapolis Colts defeated Eli Manning and the New York Giants 26-21 in the first NFL game to feature two brothers starting at quarterback.
(AP, 9/10/07)
2006 Sep 10, Golf pioneer Patty Berg (88) died in Fort Myers, Fla.
(AP, 9/10/07)
2006 Sep 10, Bennie Smith (72), St. Louis blues guitarist, died.
(SFC, 9/15/06, p.B8)
2006 Sep 10, Florence intensified into the second hurricane of the Atlantic season as it headed for Bermuda, where residents installed storm shutters and hauled their yachts onto beaches.
(AP, 9/10/06)
2006 Sep 10, Afghan President Hamid Karzai formally opened a 25-million-dollar Coca-Cola bottling plant, one of the most significant investments in Afghanistan since the ousting of the Taliban five years ago. In eastern Afghanistan Gov. Abdul Hakim Taniwal (63) was killed with his nephew and bodyguard in a suicide attack outside his office in the Paktia capital of Gardez. The US military warned that a suicide bombing cell is targeting foreign troops in Kabul. In the Panjwayi district of Kandahar 94 Taliban were killed and one was wounded in four different engagements overnight. The alliance offensive near the main southern city of Kandahar killed another 92 suspected Taliban fighters, pushing its 10-day toll of militant dead past 510. Gunmen kidnapped a Colombian aid worker and two Afghan employees of a French-funded nongovernment organization west of Kabul.
(AP, 9/10/06)(AFP, 9/10/06)(AP, 9/11/06)(SFC, 9/11/06, p.A3)(AP, 9/12/06)
2006 Sep 10, Daniel Smith (20), the son of Anna Nicole Smith (38) died suddenly in the Bahamas, three days after the former Playboy Playmate gave birth to a girl. A second round of toxicology tests revealed that he died of a toxic combo of methadone and the antidepressants Zoloft and Lexapro.
(Reuters, 9/11/06)(AP, 9/28/06)
2006 Sep 10, in Bangladesh police used batons to break up a protest, where demonstrators took to the streets across the country in another general strike ahead of elections in January.
(AFP, 9/10/06)
2006 Sep 10, In Brazil international trade officials sought to strike a positive tone at the end of a two-day meeting aimed at restarting negotiations for the stalled World Trade Organization's Doha Round. The talks were billed as a High Level Meeting of the Group of 20 (G20) developing nations, but they represented the first time nearly all the parties involved have come together since the Doha talks were suspended.
(AP, 9/11/06)
2006 Sep 10, China announced detailed controls on the distribution of news by foreign news agencies, banning all content that violates its own tight media restrictions.
(AP, 9/10/06)
2006 Sep 10, In Cuba leaders of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) of 116 developing nations began gathering for a 6-day summit (Sep 11-16). NAM was founded in 1961.
(Reuters, 9/10/06)
2006 Sep 10, Wrangling forced Iraq's parliament to suspend debate on a bill that Sunni Arab groups fear would break up the country. At least 27 people were killed across Iraq. In Kut 6 bodies bearing signs of torture were found in the Tigris River. 2 bodies were found in Musayyib and 3 more near the Duluiya bridge.
(AP, 9/10/06)(SFC, 9/11/06, p.A3)
2006 Sep 10, The Chinese film “Still Life" won the top award as the 11-day Venice Film Festival came to a close. The Chinese film was about the Three Gorges Dam project.
(SFC, 9/11/06, p.D5)
2006 Sep 10, Montenegrins voted in the first parliamentary elections since the tiny state split from Serbia. Police announced a crackdown on an alleged ethnic Albanian terrorist group authorities said had threatened the ballot. The coalition of PM Milo Djukanovic headed for an absolute majority with a projected 41 seats in the 81-seat parliament.
(AP, 9/10/06)(SFC, 9/11/06, p.A3)
2006 Sep 10, In southwestern Pakistan a bomb explosion outside a roadside restaurant wounded 14 people in Quetta. In northwestern Pakistan suspected Islamic militants killed a tribal elder.
(AP, 9/10/06)(AP, 9/11/06)
2006 Sep 10, One ethnic Russian man was killed and three were injured in a brawl with ethnic Armenians at a cafe in the town of Volsk in the Saratov region, fueling fears of a rise of ethnic violence across Russia.
(AP, 9/15/06)
2006 Sep 10, Islamic militants controlling much of southern Somalia shut down a radio station for playing love songs and other music, the latest step to impose strict religious rule which has sparked fears of an emerging, Taliban-style regime. Islamic militants, who closed down a Somali radio station, allowed it back on the air so long as it does not play music or love songs.
(AP, 9/10/06)(AP, 9/11/06)
2006 Sep 10, Officials said Sri Lanka's military had lost 28 soldiers in 3 days of stiff artillery and mortar attacks as it advanced slowly toward northern Tamil Tiger rebel strongholds. The rebels accused Colombo of ignoring moves by Norway to end the latest bloodshed.
(AFP, 9/10/06)
2006 Sep 10, Taufa’ahau Tupou IV (b.1918), King of Tonga, died in New Zealand. He was the son of Queen Salote Tupou III and her consort Prince Tungi, and served as the King of Tonga from the death of his mother in 1965.
(WSJ, 9/11/06, p.A1)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taufa'ahau_Tupou_IV)
2006 Sep 10, Armed Yemeni tribesmen kidnapped four French tourists in the east of the country to press for their relatives to be released from jail.
(AP, 9/10/06)
2006 Sep 11, The nation paused to remember the victims of 9/11 on the fifth anniversary of the terrorist attacks. In a prime-time address, President Bush invoked the memory of the victims as he argued for a continued military campaign in Iraq.
(AP, 9/11/07)
2006 Sep 11, It was reported that Florida’s St. Lucie County was planning a $425 million plasma-arc gasification facility to vaporize its garbage. The plant by Geoplasma, a subsidiary of Jacoby Development Inc., was expected to go operational in 2 years.
(SFC, 9/11/06, p.C4)
2006 Sep 11, The memorial statue titled, 'To the Struggle Against World Terrorism', by Russian artist Zurab Tsereteli, was dedicated in Bayonne, N.J. The 100-foot-tall bronze monument with a 40-foot steel teardrop at its center, a gift from the Russian government and Tsereteli, is dedicated to victims of terrorism.
(AP, 9/11/06)
2006 Sep 11, In SF measures to turn back a surge in violence included police enforcement of a long-ignored curfew for young teenagers as well as more police in high crime neighborhoods.
(SFC, 9/12/06, p.A1)
2006 Sep 11, GlaxoSmithKline agreed to pay $3.4 billion to settle a US tax dispute covering the period 1989-2005.
(SFC, 9/12/06, p.D6)
2006 Sep 11, The Pacifica, California, town council voted to ban smoking on its public beaches fishing pier.
(SFC, 9/13/06, p.B10)
2006 Sep 11, In eastern Afghanistan a suicide bomber struck in the Tani district of Khost province at a funeral for Gov. Abdul Hakim Taniwal, a provincial governor assassinated by the Taliban a day earlier. Five people were killed and 30 wounded, but four Cabinet ministers at the service were unhurt.
(AP, 9/11/06)(www.wcbs880.com/pages/81058.php?)
2006 Sep 11, Osama bin Laden's deputy warned that Persian Gulf countries and Israel would be al-Qaida's next targets, according to a new videotape aired by Arab broadcaster Al-Jazeera on the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.
(AP, 9/11/06)
2006 Sep 11, China said it will send 1,000 peacekeeping troops to Lebanon.
(WSJ, 9/12/06, p.A1)
2006 Sep 11, In Cuba a weeklong summit of the Nonaligned Movement began with poverty, health care and the Middle East at the top of the agenda. It will culminate with the meeting of 50 heads of state, including anti-American leaders from Iran and Venezuela.
(AP, 9/11/06)
2006 Sep 11, In Helsinki, Finland, European and Asian leaders representing nearly half the world's population promised to work to reduce global warming, to get world trade talks back on track and to keep up the battle against terrorism. They pledged to set new carbon dioxide emissions targets that go beyond those now set for 2012 under the UN's Kyoto Protocol.
(AP, 9/11/06)
2006 Sep 11, Joachim Fest (79), German journalist and historian, died. He worked closely with Adolf Hitler's architect Albert Speer on his memoirs. Fest's biographical portrait "Hitler," published in English in 1974 the year after its German release, is widely regarded as the best, among many, on the dictator.
(AP, 9/12/06)
2006 Sep 11, Leaders of the breakaway Georgian region of South Ossetia said they would hold a referendum on independence in November, a move likely to infuriate the government in Tbilisi and stoke already spiraling tensions.
(AP, 9/11/06)
2006 Sep 11, In Haiti 3 gang members surrendered their guns in the first handover of weapons in a UN-led effort to disarm hundreds of Haitian criminals.
(AP, 9/11/06)
2006 Sep 11, Iran closed down two opposition newspapers, one of which had recently poked fun at hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the way his government has handled nuclear talks with the West.
(AP, 9/11/06)
2006 Sep 11, In Iraq a mini bus carrying a bomb exploded outside an army recruiting center in Baghdad and killed 16 people, the deadliest of a string of attacks that left 29 Iraqis dead. A US soldier also died over the weekend.
(AP, 9/11/06)
2006 Sep 11, Kazakhstan hosted the Second Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions in Astana.
(Econ, 12/16/06, p.81)(www.asianews.it/index.php?l=en&art=7191&geo=3&size=A)
2006 Sep 11, Nicaragua officials said at least 35 people have died from drinking methanol-laced sugarcane liquor in the past week and nearly 600 have fallen ill, overwhelming hospitals in Nicaragua's worst health crisis in recent history.
(AP, 9/11/06)
2006 Sep 11, Taxi drivers in Sierra Leone went on strike, bringing the capital to a standstill after police jailed 100 of their colleagues for driving with bald tires, broken lights or without a valid license.
(AP, 9/11/06)
2006 Sep 11, In Lebanon an angry protester accusing Tony Blair of complicity in the Israeli bombardment of Lebanon disrupted a news conference. Thousands of demonstrators shouted outside as the British prime minister visited Beirut. Blair pledged help in rebuilding war-ravaged Lebanon.
(AP, 9/11/06)
2006 Sep 11, Pakistan's government agreed to a compromise deal with hardline Islamic lawmakers over proposed changes to a law that has long made punishing rapists almost impossible in the country. Senator S.M. Zafar said the government had agreed to compromise by letting rape victims choose between prosecuting suspects under the four-witness rule, the 1979 Hudood Ordinance, or under Pakistan's civil penal code.
(AP, 9/11/06)
2006 Sep 11, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and PM Ismail Haniyeh agreed that their moderate Fatah and militant Hamas parties would form a coalition government.
(AP, 9/11/06)
2006 Sep 11, President Vladimir Putin gave final orders for a battalion of Russian engineers and explosives experts to travel to Lebanon to help repair the damage inflicted by Israel's campaign to uproot Hezbollah guerrillas.
(AP, 9/11/06)
2006 Sep 11, In southern Russia a military helicopter crashed on the outskirts of Vladikavkaz, the provincial capital of the republic of North Ossetia, killing at least 10 servicemen and injuring another four.
(AP, 9/11/06)
2006 Sep 11, Sri Lankan troops and Tamil Tiger rebels exchanged mortar and artillery fire across their northern front lines. The military said the death toll from five days of heavy fighting rose to 148.
(AP, 9/11/06)
2006 Sep 11, A top Ugandan rebel leader, Lord's Resistance Army deputy Vincent Otti, arrived at a neutral camp in southern Sudan as part of a truce to end 19 years of conflict with the government.
(AP, 9/11/06)
2006 Sep 11, Uruguay arrested 7 former army and police officers in an investigation of dissidents who disappeared during the South American country's military rule in the 1970s.
(AP, 9/11/06)
2006 Sep 12, In California Gov. Schwarzenegger signed a minimum wage bill that will boost the hourly rate by 75 cents in January and another 50 cents a year later to $8 an hour.
(SFC, 9/13/06, p.B3)
2006 Sep 12, Hewlett-Packard named CEO Mark Hurd to succeed Patricia Dunn as board chairman as of mid-January 2007 following the recent furor over phone probes of board members.
(WSJ, 9/13/06, p.A1)
2006 Sep 12, Joan Valerie Bondurant, former spy and UC prof. of political science, died in Tucson, Az. She had translated documents for the CIA in India where she met Gandhi and grew fascinated by satyagraha, a thesis of nonviolent resistance. Her books included “Conquest of Violence: The Gandhian Philosophy of Conflict" (1958).
(SFC, 9/21/06, p.B5)
2006 Sep 12, Hurricane Florence headed toward north Atlantic shipping lanes after blowing out windows, peeling away roofs and knocking out power to thousands in Bermuda.
(AP, 9/12/06)
2006 Sep 12, Afghan forces killed 12 suspected Taliban militants in a shootout south of Kabul. More than 30 suspected insurgents were detained as security forces fought back against a deadly spike in violence. The UN urged NATO forces to take military action to destroy the opium industry in southern Afghanistan, saying cultivation of the crop is out of control.
(AP, 9/12/06)
2006 Sep 12, In Bangladesh police in Dhaka baton-charged thousands of opposition supporters in violent clashes outside the prime minister's office that left at least 110 people injured. A 14-party opposition alliance led by the Awami League is demanding electoral reforms ahead of January's national elections.
(AP, 9/12/06)
2006 Sep 12, Canada and the United States formally signed an agreement to end a protracted dispute over Canadian softwood lumber.
(Reuters, 9/12/06)
2006 Sep 12, Pope Benedict XVI delivered a speech at Regensburg Univ. that included brusque words about Islam. He quoted a 14th century Byzantine emperor as saying “Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." The speech quickly provoked criticism from the world’s Muslim communities. The pontiff later said he regretted that Muslims were offended.
(SFC, 9/15/06, p.A17)(AP, 9/12/07)
2006 Sep 12, Iraqi PM Nouri al-Maliki made his first official visit to Iran since taking office and planned to ask Tehran to prevent al-Qaida members believed to be in Iran from crossing into Iraq to carry out attacks. A parked car bomb detonated in Baghdad's upscale Mansour neighborhood, killing at least six people and wounding 18 others. Bombings, mortar attacks and shootings overnight and during the day left at least 24 people dead and dozens wounded around the country.
(AP, 9/12/06)
2006 Sep 12, An Israeli military court ordered the release of 18 imprisoned Hamas lawmakers, including three Cabinet ministers, and raised questions about the army's case. A spokesman for the outgoing Hamas-led administration said the group is prepared to back peace efforts with Israel as part of the new coalition government being formed by the Palestinians. Hamas militants killed an Israeli soldier during a gunbattle in the Gaza Strip.
(AP, 9/12/06)
2006 Sep 12, In Mexico gunmen ambushed and killed Enrique Barrera, police chief of the town of Linares in the border state of Nuevo Leon, in the latest slaying of a law officer in a region ravaged by a war between drug gangs.
(AP, 9/13/06)
2006 Sep 12, Montenegro's election authorities said the governing pro-Western coalition led by Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic won last weekend's parliamentary elections.
(AP, 9/12/06)
2006 Sep 12, Serbia toughened its stand on Kosovo as parliament decided that a planned new constitution would refer to the disputed province as an "integral" part of Serbia, regardless of U.N.-led negotiations on whether to grant it independence.
(AP, 9/12/06)
2006 Sep 12, In Syria armed Islamic militants attempted to storm the US Embassy in Damascus. Four people were killed, including three of the assailants. One of Syria's anti-terrorism forces was killed and 11 other people were wounded. The only Islamic militant arrested in the attack died from his wounds, and authorities were unable to question him.
(AP, 9/12/06)(AP, 9/13/06)
2006 Sep 12, In Turkey a bomb exploded near a park in a primarily residential area of Diyarbakir and 10 people were killed. 7 children were among the dead. The bomb was made by hand, placed in a thermos and went off as it was being transported.
(AP, 9/13/06)
2006 Sep 12, Uganda extended a September 12 deadline for the rebel Lord's Resistance Army to agree to a peace deal or lose an amnesty offer for war crimes charges its leaders face.
(AFP, 9/13/06)
2006 Sep 12, In Yemen a stampede during a campaign rally for President Ali Abdullah Saleh killed at least 51 people and injured more than 230, most of them schoolchildren and teenagers.
(AP, 9/12/06)
2006 Sep 13, A letter from the office of IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei, sent to the head of the US House of Representatives' Select Committee on Intelligence, said an August 23 committee report contained serious distortions of IAEA findings on Iran's nuclear activity.
(AP, 9/14/06)(SFC, 9/14/06, p.A15)
2006 Sep 13, In California water users and environmentalists announced a settlement that requires Friant to release 364,000 to 462,000 acre-feet of water in normal years to the San Joaquin River, the state’s 2nd longest river.
(SFC, 9/13/06, p.B1)
2006 Sep 13, The SEC froze trade in the shares of Indigenous Global Development Corp. (IGDC), run by Deni Leonard, a Native American businessman. An SEC suit said Leonard claimed to have struck deals with Canadian tribes to develop and purchase natural gas to be sold to power plants, but no deals were made.
(SSFC, 11/26/06, p.A1)
2006 Sep 13, Ann Richards (b.1933), former Texas Gov. (1990-1994), died after a battle with cancer. As governor, Richards appointed the first black University of Texas regent, the first crime victim on the state Criminal Justice Board, the first disabled person on the human services board and the first teacher to lead the State Board of Education. Under Richards, the fabled Texas Rangers pinned stars on their first black and female officers.
(AP, 9/14/06)(Econ, 9/30/06, p.96)
2006 Sep 13, US financier George Soros pledged to invest 50 million dollars in a development project that aims to show how targeted investment can end extreme poverty in African villages. The Millennium Villages project is involved in 79 villages in Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Tanzania and Uganda.
(AP, 9/13/06)
2006 Sep 13, Afghan President Hamid Karzai, while opening a road linking to Pakistan, said Pakistan and Afghanistan must unite to save their people from the menace of terrorism. Afghan and US-led coalition forces killed as many as 30 Taliban in raids on three villages in Ghazni province. In southern Helmand province police killed 16 Taliban in a mountainous area outside the town of Garmser. NATO announced that suicide bombings have killed 173 people in Afghanistan this year. 151 of the year's suicide attack victims were Afghan civilians, including children.
(AP, 9/13/06)(AFP, 9/13/06)
2006 Sep 13, NASA scientists said the ice in the Arctic Sea is melting in winter as well as in summer, likely due to global warming. The ice was reportedly melting at 9% a decade.
(SFC, 9/14/06, p.A1)(Econ, 9/9/06, Survey p.6)
2006 Sep 13, The presidents of Brazil and South Africa, at a trilateral trade meeting in Brasilia, said they supported changes in international rules to allow India to buy nuclear fuel and reactors from the United States and other countries. The trio created the India-Brazil-South Africa Dialogue Forum (IBSA) in 2003 to promote the interests of their emerging markets.
(Reuters, 9/13/06)(AFP, 9/14/06)
2006 Sep 13, A man in a black trench coat opened fire at a downtown Montreal college, slaying a young woman, Anastasia De Sousa (18), a student at Dawson College, and wounding at least 19 other people before police shot and killed him. Officials soon identified the killer as Kimveer Gill (25), resident of a Montreal suburb.
(AP, 9/13/06)(Reuters, 9/14/06)
2006 Sep 13, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao vowed to continue his vast country's opening up to the international community, notably rejecting suggestions Beijing is set to crack down on foreign media.
(AFP, 9/13/06)
2006 Sep 13, International police deployed to East Timor in the wake of unrest in May formally handed over their authority to the UN at a ceremony in the capital. A battle between rival gangs armed with machetes killed one fighter and injured five others in Dili.
(AFP, 9/13/06)(AP, 9/14/06)
2006 Sep 13, The EU's foreign policy chief and Iran's top nuclear negotiator abruptly postponed talks on easing tensions over the refusal of the Tehran regime to suspend uranium enrichment.
(AP, 9/13/06)
2006 Sep 13, In Iraq police found the bodies of 65 men who had been tortured, shot and dumped, most around Baghdad. Car bombs, mortar attacks and shootings killed at least 39 people around Iraq and injured dozens more.
(AP, 9/13/06)(WSJ, 9/14/06, p.A1)
2006 Sep 13, In Jordan a military court convicted 10 suspected militants in two separate terrorism cases that included conspiracies to kill Americans. Lawmakers approved a measure that would only allow a state-appointed council to issue religious edicts, a move aimed at denying Islamic hard-liners a forum for disseminating extremist ideology. The measure will become law with the expected approval of the upper house of Parliament and the king.
(AP, 9/13/06)(AP, 9/14/06)
2006 Sep 13, The Palestinian Cabinet resigned to clear the way for a new unity government, and President Mahmoud Abbas said he plans to send a delegation to the UN to try to revive a Mideast peace plan.
(AP, 9/13/06)
2006 Sep 13, Andrei Kozlov (41), the top deputy chairman of Russia's Central Bank, was shot in Moscow along with his driver, by unidentified assailants. The driver was killed immediately and Frankel died the next morning. Officials suggested the attack was prompted by his efforts to clean up the country's banking system. In October officials arrested 3 Ukrainian citizens, who were allegedly hired to kill Kozlov. In Jan 2007 Alexei Frankel, whose license was revoked by Kozlov in 2004, was charged with organizing the murder. On Oct 28 a Moscow jury found Frankel guilty of organizing the murder.
(AP, 9/14/06)(WSJ, 9/22/06, p.A1)(SFC, 10/17/06, p.A15)(Econ, 1/27/07, p.76)(WSJ, 10/29/08, p.A14)
2006 Sep 13, A helicopter crashed in Siberia, killing three of the four people aboard, an emergency official said. The MD-600 helicopter crashed about 12 miles from the city Novokuznetsk in the Kemerovo region about 1,850 miles east of Moscow.
(AP, 9/13/06)
2006 Sep 13, In South Korea hundreds of workers bulldozed homes in a village to make way for the expansion of a US military base set to become the Americans' new headquarters, despite strong objections from protesters.
(AP, 9/13/06)
2006 Sep 13, Zimbabwe police arrested trade union leaders and blocked streets and the main square of the capital to thwart an anti-government march, and the main labor federation apparently called off a planned nationwide strike at the last minute.
(AP, 9/13/06)
2006 Sep 14, US federal health officials said an outbreak a deadly strain of E. coli (0157:H7) had left at least one person dead in Wisconsin over 100 others sick and warned consumers not to eat bagged fresh spinach. The outbreak in 8 states soon extended to 25. The number sickened rose to at least 190. Most of the spinach crop at this time of the year comes from California. A special effort was under way in the Salinas Valley of California, a major leafy-vegetable growing region, to look for any possible source of contamination there. The outbreak was traced to California’s Natural Selection Foods of San Juan Bautista, which recalled all suspect products. This was the same deadly strain that in 1982 had sickened at least 47 people in Oregon and Michigan who ate McDonald’s burgers. A surveillance system setup after a 1993 outbreak at the Jack-in-the-Box fast food chain helped single out spinach as the likely source of this outbreak. A 2nd death on Sep 20, a 2-year-old boy in Idaho, was attributed to the spinach E. coli. A 3rd death in late August, a woman (84) in Nebraska, was also attributed to the spinach E. coli. On Sep 29 the FDA cleared spinach from California’s Monterey, San Benito and Santa Clara counties.
(SFC, 9/23/06, p.A9)(WSJ, 9/25/06, p.A4)(SFC, 9/30/06, p.A5)(SFC, 10/7/06, p.A6)
2006 Sep 14, In Green Bay, Wisc., police arrested two 17-year-olds, suspected of plotting a shooting spree at East High School. William C. Cornell and Shawn R. Sturtz were arrested for suspicion of conspiracy to commit first-degree intentional homicide and conspiracy to commit arson. Police found homemade bombs and weapons at their homes.
(http://kutv.com/topstories/topstories_story_258075847.html)
2006 Sep 14, In Washington DC 2 people demonstrated prosthesis that moved in response to thoughts. Their bionic arms were designed by the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago.
(SFC, 9/15/06, p.A5)
2006 Sep 14, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation awarded $68.2 million to fight parasitic diseases that included leishmaniasis, trypanosomiasis and hookworm. The new money will support efficacy trials in India and Africa.
(WSJ, 9/14/06, p.A11)
2006 Sep 14, The hedge fund Amaranth Advisors, led by Nick Maounis, announced a loss of some $560 million. The name was taken from the Greek word for “unfading." Brian Hunter (32), a Canadian energy trader, got caught on the wrong side of falling natural gas futures.
(WSJ, 9/23/06, p.B5)(Econ, 9/23/06, p.83)
2006 Sep 14, Mickey Hargitay (80), Hungarian-born actor and world champion bodybuilder, died. He was named Mr. Universe, Mr. America and Mr. Olympia in 1955. He was married to sex siren Jayne Mansfield (1957-1964) and his daughter is the Emmy-winning actress Mariska Hargitay. California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger played Hargitay in the 1982 TV movie "The Jayne Mansfield Story."
(AP, 9/19/06)
2006 Sep 14, Prof. Frederic Evans Wakemen Jr. (68), leading US scholar on China, died in Oregon. His books included “Policing Shanghai 1927-1937" (1995) and “Spymaster: Dai Li and the Chinese Secret Service" (2004). Prof. Wakemen had taught at UC Berkeley (1965-2006).
(SFC, 9/26/06, p.B5)
2006 Sep 14, Taliban militants attacked police headquarters in western Afghanistan, raising fears that insurgents fleeing NATO attacks in the south are opening new fronts. Two police and two militants were killed.
(AP, 9/14/06)
2006 Sep 14, Some 200 Pakistanis and Sri Lankans reached the Canary Islands in a 40-meter (100-feet) metal boat. Officials began making arrangements the next day for the repatriation of the immigrants. Canaries regional President Adan Martin said 500 African children out of 836 minors who have arrived in the Canaries this year were to be transferred to the Spanish mainland. Some 20,000 would-be immigrants to Europe had reached the Canary Islands since the beginning of the year.
(AP, 9/15/06)(Econ, 9/16/06, p.64)
2006 Sep 14, China’s stock market regulator made official a ban on foreign acquisitions of domestic stockbrokers and investment banks.
(Econ, 9/23/06, p.84)
2006 Sep 14, Current and former French officials specializing in terrorism said that an al-Qaida alliance with the Algerian Salafist Group for Call and Combat, known by its French initials GSPC, was cause for concern. Al-Qaida's No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahri, announced the "blessed union" in a video posted this week on the Internet to mark the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States.
(AP, 9/15/06)
2006 Sep 14, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she has again raised human rights issues with visiting Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and urged Beijing to respect the freedom of the press.
(AP, 9/14/06)
2006 Sep 14, Three men became the first rabbis ordained in Germany since World War II.
(AP, 9/14/07)
2006 Sep 14, Ex-Col. Guy Francois, former army commander twice accused of plotting to overthrow Haiti's government, was shot to death in an upscale suburb of the capital.
(AP, 9/15/06)
2006 Sep 14, An Indian federal minister proposed a 1,000 US dollar incentive to encourage people to break centuries-old taboos and marry across caste boundaries.
(AFP, 9/14/06)
2006 Sep 14, An Iranian opposition figure said Iran has secretly revived a program to enrich uranium using laser technology, reportedly with favorable results, citing information from members of the resistance inside the country.
(AP, 9/14/06)
2006 Sep 14, Iraqi officials said Abu Jaafar al-Liby, described by the ministry as either the second or third most important figure in al-Qaida in Iraq, was killed by police earlier this week. Car bombs and drive-by shootings killed at least 19 people, including 5 US soldiers, in a series of attacks around central Iraq. Death squads left behind at least 22 bodies.
(AP, 9/14/06)(AP, 9/15/06)(SFC, 9/15/06, p.A14)
2006 Sep 14, Libya's population grew by 1.8% per year to 5.3 million in 2006 from 1995. A rare government census showed that Libya had also cut its illiteracy rate to 11.9% from 19% a decade ago.
(Reuters, 9/14/06)
2006 Sep 14, Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo held talks in Tokyo on the start of a trans-Pacific trip.
(AP, 9/14/06)
2006 Sep 14, Poland will send at least 900 troops early next year to bolster the NATO mission in Afghanistan. NATO said the offer did not ease the immediate need for 2,500 additional soldiers in the violence-wracked south.
(AP, 9/14/06)
2006 Sep 14, The Swiss central bank raised its key Libor interest rate by a quarter of a percentage point to a range between 1.25% and 2.25% to dampen the threat of inflation.
(AFP, 9/14/06)
2006 Sep 14, Turkey's top Islamic cleric asked Pope Benedict XVI to take back recent remarks he made about Islam on Sep 12. He unleashed a string of counteraccusations against Christianity, raising tensions before the pontiff's November visit.
(AP, 9/14/06)(SFC, 9/15/06, p.A17)
2006 Sep 14, Ukraine’s pro-Russia premier suspended a bid to join NATO.
(WSJ, 9/15/06, p.A1)
2006 Sep 15, The US joined with the EU and Canada charging that China has erected illegal barriers to the sale of U.S. and other foreign-made auto parts there.
(AP, 9/15/06)
2006 Sep 15, US Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio, agreed to plead guilty to two criminal charges in the congressional corruption probe spawned by disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
(AP, 9/15/07)
2006 Sep 15, In Costa Mesa, Ca., the new $200 million Renee and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall opened. It was designed by Cesar Pelli (79).
(www.ocpac.org/about/PressDetail.asp?PressReleaseID=509)
2006 Sep 15, In California Gov. Schwarzenegger signed legislation requiring the driver use of hands-free devices for cell phones starting in 2008.
(SFC, 9/15/06, p.B1)
2006 Sep 15, In East St. Louis, Ill., Jimella Tunstall (23) bled to death after sustaining an abdominal wound caused by a sharp object. Her body was found Sep 21. On Sep 23 investigators found Tunstall’s 3 dead children in a washer and dryer. Prosecutors charged Tiffany Hall (24), a family friend, with the murder of Tunstall and her fetus.
(AP, 9/24/06)
2006 Sep 15, In Jackson, Mississippi, Mayor Frank Melton was indicted along with 2 police bodyguards on numerous felony charges stemming from his crime-fighting tactics.
(SFC, 9/16/06, p.A3)
2006 Sep 15, In Missouri Stephenie Ochsenbine (21) was slashed in the throat and had her week-old baby stolen. Police recovered the baby on Sep 19. On Sep 20 Shannon Torrez (36) was charged with kidnapping and assault and ordered held on $1 million bond. On September 12, 2008, Torrez was sentenced to 30 years in prison.
(AP, 9/20/06)(http://tinyurl.com/3mgvbe)
2006 Sep 15, US automaker Ford Motor Co. unveiled sweeping job cuts and plant closures to stem losses and said it has no intention of selling its luxury brand Jaguar. Ford said it would cut 10,000 more white-collar positions, up from a previous goal of 4,000, and offer buyout and early retirement to all 75,000 hourly employees. Ford stock closed at $8.02.
(AFP, 9/15/06)(SFC, 9/16/06, p.C1)(WSJ, 9/16/06, p.A1)
2006 Sep 15, A large diabetes-prevention study found that the drug Rosiglitazone (Avandia), made by GlaxoSmithKline, can help keep “pre-diabetics" from developing Type 2 diabetes. The drug was already being used to treat the disease, which afflicted over 200 million worldwide.
(SFC, 9/16/06, p.A3)
2006 Sep 15, In southern Afghanistan about 60 suspected Taliban militants attacked a police checkpoint in Uruzgan province, starting a battle in which four militants died.
(AP, 9/16/06)
2006 Sep 15, China denounced accusations by top US officials that it was selling weapons to Iran and North Korea amid nuclear tensions with the two regimes. State media said at least four children, among the hundreds of people sickened by emissions from a lead smelter in western China, are likely to suffer permanent brain damage.
(AP, 9/15/06)
2006 Sep 15, Cuba took over the leadership of the Nonaligned Movement from Malaysia, with Defense Minister Raul Castro standing in for his ailing brother Fidel.
(AP, 9/15/06)
2006 Sep 15, Iraq’s Interior Minister said the government will ring Baghdad with a series of trenches and traffic checkpoints to control movement. Police found 30 bodies bearing signs of torture in Baghdad. A US Marine was killed in Anbar province just hours after an American soldier was killed by a roadside bomb northwest of Baghdad. In central Baghdad, a gunman opened fire from the top of an abandoned building in a Sunni Arab neighborhood, killing an Iraqi civilian and wounding five others. Sheik Muhanad al-Gharairi was a spokesman for the Conference of People of Iraq, a Sunni Arab party headed by Adnan al-Dulaimi, was killed by gunmen.
(AP, 9/15/06)(SFC, 9/16/06, p.A1)
2006 Sep 15, Oriana Fallaci (76), the Italian writer and journalist best known for her abrasive interviews and provocative stances, died in Florence.
(AP, 9/15/06)(Econ, 9/23/06, p.97)
2006 Sep 15, Ivory Coast protesters beat up the transport minister in response to the Aug 19 toxic sludge shipment that sickened 30,000 people.
(WSJ, 9/16/06, p.A1)
2006 Sep 15, Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga joined the race to become the next UN secretary-general, becoming the first woman vying for the UN's top post.
(AP, 9/15/06)
2006 Sep 15, Mexico’s President Vicente Fox backed down from a confrontation with thousands of leftist sympathizers of Manuel Lopez Obrador, moving the annual Independence Day celebration away from Mexico City's main square to avoid protesters. Fox decided to move the ceremony to the central town of Dolores Hidalgo, where Miguel Hidalgo made the first call for independence from Spain in 1810. Supporters of leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador ended the street protest that clogged the heart of the capital for nearly seven weeks, but they vowed to find other ways to resist the incoming conservative president.
(AP, 9/15/06)
2006 Sep 15, Palestinian gunmen opened fire on a car in Gaza City carrying Brig. Gen. Jad Tayeh, a top Palestinian security officer, in a drive-by shooting that killed Tayeh and four of his bodyguards.
(AP, 9/15/06)
2006 Sep 15, In Singapore Paul Wolfowitz, the chief of the World Bank, took a hard line on corruption. Rodrigo de Rato, his counterpart at the IMF, said policy-makers need to be ready to adapt to a more difficult economic environment in the coming year as delegates gathered for the sister institutions' annual meetings. Wolfowitz said that Singapore had damaged its own reputation by imposing "authoritarian" restrictions on the entry of activists for the World Bank/IMF meetings.
(AP, 9/15/06)
2006 Sep 15, Alberto Linero (27) and Alberto Sanchez (24) both privates in the Spanish air force, exchanged vows in a reception room at Seville's town hall, in the first known wedding among same-sex members of the military since Spain legalized gay marriage last year.
(AP, 9/15/06)
2006 Sep 15, More than 100,000 chanting protesters marched through downtown Taipei, trying to pressure Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian to resign over a series of corruption scandals.
(AP, 9/15/06)
2006 Sep 15, Tanzania’s energy minister said ongoing drought in east Africa has forced Tanzania to impose power cuts seven days a week.
(AP, 9/15/06)
2006 Sep 15, Over strong opposition from China, the UN Security Council put Myanmar on its agenda in what US officials called a "major step forward" in American efforts to increase pressure on the country's military dictatorship.
(AP, 9/15/06)
2006 Sep 15, The World Health Organization declared its support for indoor use of DDT to control mosquitoes in regions where malaria is a major health problem.
(SFC, 9/16/06, p.A5)
2006 Sep 15, In Yemen suicide bombers tried to strike two oil facilities with explosives-packed cars. Al-Qaida later claimed responsibility for the attempted suicide attacks and vowed more strikes against the United States and its allies.
(AP, 9/15/06)(AP, 11/7/06)
2006 Sep 15, Zimbabwe said its annual inflation rate has reached a new record high of more than 1,200% in August despite the conversion to a new currency designed to halt the upwards spiral.
(AFP, 9/15/06)
2006 Sep 16, In SF Zachary Roche-Balsam (19) was killed when he tried to stop a robbery of 2 women after a party in the Ingleside Heights neighborhood. In 2007 police arrested and charged Vernon Anderson Jr. (21) with the murder.
(SFC, 4/11/07, p.B2)
2006 Sep 16, Thousands of US-led coalition and Afghan troops launched Mountain Fury, a large-scale anti-Taliban operation in five Afghan provinces. A bomb blast south of Kabul killed three Afghan aid workers and wounded another.
(AP, 9/16/06)(SSFC, 9/17/06, p.A5)
2006 Sep 16, In Cuba representatives of 118 Nonaligned Movement nations condemned Israel's attacks on Lebanon and supported a peaceful resolution to the US-Iran nuclear dispute in the final declaration.
(AP, 9/17/06)
2006 Sep 16, Fouad el-Mohandes (82), one of Egypt's most beloved comedians, died in Cairo. His plays and movies made over a half century brought him fans across the Arab world.
(AP, 9/16/06)
2006 Sep 16, Iraq’s PM Nuri al-Maliki launched a fresh peace bid and the US pledged more troops to help restore stability in the Iraqi capital. At least eight people were killed in rebel attacks. Police recovered 48 bodies from across Baghdad. Most were those of young men who had been tortured, blindfolded, handcuffed and shot several times. Iraqi police uncovered a large munitions cache stored in the southern town of Ad Dayr.
(AP, 9/16/06)(SSFC, 9/17/06, p.A23)(AP, 9/17/06)
2006 Sep 16, Ivory Coast named a new Cabinet, replacing the ministers of transport and environment but reappointing most others, after a toxic waste dumping scandal prompted the resignation of the entire 32-member body last week.
(AP, 9/16/06)
2006 Sep 16, In Mexico hundreds of thousands of supporters of leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador elected him the leader of a "parallel government" opposed to President-elect Felipe Calderon's administration. Mexico extradited accused drug kingpin Francisco Rafael Arellano Felix to the US, making him the first major Mexican drug lord to be sent north to face trial on drug charges. He later pleaded guilty to federal charges of selling cocaine in a San Diego motel. Hurricane Lane, a Category 3 storm, battered Mazatlan.
(SFC, 9/18/06, p.A7)(AP, 9/17/07)
2006 Sep 16, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and Indian PM Manmohan Singh held "historic" talks on the disputed Kashmir region, on the sidelines of a developing-world summit in Havana. They also agreed to restart peace talks suspended since train bombings killed more than 200 people in Mumbai in July.
(AFP, 9/16/06)(AP, 9/16/06)
2006 Sep 16, Leaders across the Muslim world demanded Pope Benedict XVI apologize for his remarks on Islam and jihad. The Vatican said Pope Benedict XVI "sincerely" regretted offending Muslims with his reference to an obscure medieval text characterizing some of the teachings of Islam's founder as "evil and inhuman," but the statement stopped short of the apology demanded by Islamic leaders. Two West Bank Christian churches were hit by firebombs, and a group claiming responsibility said it was protesting Pope Benedict XVI's remarks about Islam.
(AP, 9/16/06)(AP, 9/16/07)
2006 Sep 16, In Singapore top finance chiefs stepped up pressure on China to relax its grip on its currency, warning that trade imbalances threaten a flourishing global economy. G7 finance ministers and central bank governors also called for a resumption of global free trade talks and a revamp of the IMF, saying China should be given a louder voice but must also fulfill its broader economic responsibilities.
(AFP, 9/16/06)
2006 Sep 16, Sten Andersson (b.1923), a leading figure in Sweden's governing Social Democratic Party and one-time mediator in the Middle East peace process, died. As foreign minister from 1985 to 1991, Andersson helped start a dialogue between the Palestine Liberation Organization and the US.
(AP, 9/17/06)
2006 Sep 16, In southern Thailand bomb blasts killed four people including a Canadian (29), who became the first Westerner to die in the two-year Muslim insurgency. At least five bombs exploded: two in department stories; two in front of a bar and a parking lot at the Odean Shopping Mall; and a fifth at a nearby massage parlor in Songkhla province's Hat Yai city.
(AP, 9/17/06)
2006 Sep 16, Togo's Pres. Faure Gnassingbe named Yawovi Agboyibo (63), an opposition party leader, as prime minister, bringing the nation one step closer to long-delayed parliamentary elections.
(AP, 9/17/06)
2006 Sep 16, In Yemen 4 suspected al-Qaida members who were plotting attacks in San’a were arrested.
(AP, 9/17/06)
2006 Sep 17, In California a fire in Los Padres National Forest crossed 60,589 acres, or about 93 square miles, since it began on Labor Day. Containment was estimated at 15%.
(AP, 9/18/06)
2006 Sep 17, Time Warner Inc. said it is selling AOL Germany's Internet access business to Telecom Italia SpA for about $870 million.
(AP, 9/18/06)
2006 Sep 17, In South Carolina Vinson Filyaw (36) was arrested and charged with raping a 14-year-old girl. Filyaw had abducted the girl on Sep 6 and kept her in an underground bunker. The girl was rescued Sep 16 after she used Filyaw’s cell phone to send a text message to her mother.
(SFC, 9/18/06, p.A4)
2006 Sep 17, Elizabeth Blackburn (57), a biochemist at UCSF, was named winner of the Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research. She shared $100,000 the award with Carol W. Greider, a former graduate student, and Jack W. Szostak (53), a Harvard geneticist and longtime collaborator. Their discoveries included proteins called telomeres that cap the ends of chromosomes and regulate the longevity and death of human and animal cells.
(SSFC, 9/17/06, p.B1)
2006 Sep 17, Five Duquesne basketball players were shot and wounded during an apparent act of random violence on campus. As of 2007 two alleged gunmen and two women who allegedly helped facilitate the shooting awaited trial.
(AP, 9/17/07)
2006 Sep 17, Patricia Kennedy Lawford (82), the sister of President John F. Kennedy and ex-wife of actor Peter Lawford, died in New York City.
(AP, 9/17/07)
2006 Sep 17, A top NATO general said Operation Medusa, an offensive aimed at driving Taliban militants out of their safe havens in southern Afghanistan, has been "successfully completed." In southern Afghanistan a suicide bomber plowed his explosive-laden vehicle into a Canadian military convoy, killing one civilian and wounding five.
(AP, 9/17/06)
2006 Sep 17, In northern Austria a Czech bus veered off a road and into a ditch, killing 4 people and injuring 38.
(AP, 9/17/06)
2006 Sep 17, Iran's president made his first visit to Venezuela, seeking to strengthen ties with a government that also opposes the US.
(AP, 9/17/06)
2006 Sep 17, In Iraq a series of attacks, including two suicide car bombings in the northern city of Kirkuk, killed 24 people and wounded dozens. A series of near simultaneous mortar and bomb attacks targeting police patrols in Fallujah killed 4 people, including two policemen, and wounded 10. In Baghdad a bomb left in plastic bag exploded on the central commercial Jumhouriyah street, killing two civilians and wounding 8. The bullet-riddled bodies of 4 unidentified men were found in separate neighborhoods in east Baghdad. Another two bodies were found in the Tigris river in central Baghdad. Both had been shot, and one had been decapitated. Another blindfolded and bound body was found dumped in a river in the city of Kut. Ahmed Riyadh al-Karbouli (25), an Iraqi journalist, was killed in Ramadi.
(AP, 9/17/06)(AP, 9/19/06)
2006 Sep 17, The Israeli Cabinet authorized an inquiry into the government's handling of the recent war in Lebanon, capping weeks of disagreements over the scope of the investigation.
(AP, 9/17/06)
2006 Sep 17, A strong typhoon swept toward southwestern Japan with fierce winds and heavy rains, leaving at least 8 people dead or missing and injuring dozens more.
(AFP, 9/17/06)
2006 Sep 17, Voters in Moldova's breakaway Trans-Dniester region overwhelmingly approved a referendum for the separatist government's bid to eventually join Russia.
(AP, 9/18/06)
2006 Sep 17, A Nigerian military transport aircraft, traveling from Abuja to the southern town of Obudu, went down in the southeast with a group of military officers on board. 12 of 17 people were killed and most were senior military personnel.
(AP, 9/18/06)
2006 Sep 17, Sister Leonella Sgorbati, an Italian nun, was shot dead at a hospital in Mogadishu by Somali gunmen, hours after a leading Muslim cleric condemned Pope Benedict XVI for his remarks on Islam and violence. The nun's bodyguard and a hospital worker were also killed.
(AP, 9/17/06)(AP, 9/21/06)
2006 Sep 17, Sri Lanka's Tamil Tiger rebels accused government soldiers in concert with paramilitary units of killing nearly 100 civilians in the island's embattled Jaffna peninsula this month. Sri Lanka's navy gunboats and war planes bombed a suspected Tamil Tiger arms ship.
(AFP, 9/17/06)
2006 Sep 17, Peace activists around the world staged a day of action to highlight the "forgotten war" in Darfur where tens of thousands of people have been killed and more than 2 million left homeless.
(AP, 9/17/06)
2006 Sep 17, In Sweden PM Goeran Persson, head of the minority Social Democrat government for 10 years, faced Fredrik Reinfeldt (41), who led the four-party Alliance for Sweden, after a campaign focused on getting Swedes back into the job market. The center-right opposition, vowing to streamline Sweden's famed welfare state, ousted the Social Democratic government with 48.1% of the vote, ending 12 years of leftist rule. Fredrik Reinfeldt (41), head of the main opposition Moderate Party, authored the 1993 book "The Sleeping Nation," in which he criticized the cradle-to-grave welfare state. Fredrik Reinfeldt renamed his party the “New Moderates."
(AP, 9/17/06)(Econ, 9/23/06, p.16)(Econ, 9/23/06, p.60)
2006 Sep 17, Pope Benedict XVI said that he was "deeply sorry" about the angry reaction to his recent remarks about Islam, which he said came from a text that didn't reflect his personal opinion.
(AP, 9/17/06)
2006 Sep 18, The US Commerce Department said the current account deficit had widened more than expected in the second quarter to $218.4 billion, as surging oil prices pushed goods imports higher.
(AP, 9/18/06)
2006 Sep 18, A jury in Santa Clara, Ca., convicted Dean Schwartzmiller (64) of molesting 2 San Jose boys. Authorities said he had molested over 100 boys and chronicled his exploits in a manuscript.
(SFC, 9/19/06, p.A1)
2006 Sep 18, Researchers at Intel and UC Santa Barbara announced new technology using lasers on silicon chips for optical computing. Practical use was thought to be 5-7 years away.
(SFC, 9/19/06, p.A1)
2006 Sep 18, The body of Luz Maria Franco-Fierros (49) was found dragged to death in Castle Rock, Colorado, leaving a trail of blood more than mile long. Police the next day arrested Jose Luis Rubi-Nava (36) as suspect in the murder.
(SFC, 9/21/06, p.A20)(SFC, 9/22/06, p.A3)
2006 Sep 18, Anousheh Ansari (40), an Iranian-American telecommunications entrepreneur, took off on a Russian rocket bound for the international space station, becoming the world's first paying female space tourist. Aboard the space station, an oxygen generator overheated and spilled a toxic irritant, forcing the crew to don masks and gloves in the first emergency ever declared aboard the 8-year-old orbiting outpost.
(AP, 9/18/07)
2006 Sep 18, The 184-nation IMF approved reforms to increase the voice of China, South Korea, Turkey, and Mexico to reflect their growing economic sway.
(SFC, 9/19/06, p.D2)
2006 Sep 18, In southern Afghanistan a suicide bomber on a bicycle killed four Canadian troops handing out candy to children and wounded 27 civilians. A suicide car bombing in Kabul killed at least four policemen and wounded one officer and 10 civilians. In Heart a bombing killed 12 people and wounded 17 including the deputy police chief. An outdoor wedding celebration north of Kabul was attacked by assailants who threw a grenade, killing five women and wounding 18. Four suspects were detained after the blast in the village of Sayadan.
(AP, 9/18/06)(AP, 9/19/06)(AP, 9/20/06)
2006 Sep 18, In Bangladesh at least 100,000 opposition supporters rallied in Dhaka demanding electoral reforms ahead of national elections and using strident rhetoric against the ruling coalition.
(AFP, 9/18/06)
2006 Sep 18, A court in Belgium ordered Google to remove all links to French and German language newspaper reports published in Belgium due to copyright laws.
(SFC, 9/19/06, p.D7)
2006 Sep 18, Britain and Spain reached a historic deal to resolve side issues stemming from their 300-year-old dispute over Gibraltar, but sidestepped the main one, their claims to the Rock's sovereignty.
(AP, 9/19/06)
2006 Sep 18, Premier Wen Jiabao said China will increase its peacekeeping force in Lebanon to 1,000 and double the humanitarian aid it has pledged.
(AP, 9/18/06)
2006 Sep 18, In Colombia federal prosecutor Mario Iguaran delivered a televised apology for a scandal surrounding psychic Armando Marti. In 2005 he had hired Marti, a self-described clairvoyant, to help his staff deal with a crushing caseload and to improve relations. The operation was code-named “Mission Perseus of Zeus" and it granted Marti unfettered access to the institution, as much as $1,800 a month, and a government-issued armored car.
(SFC, 9/20/06, p.A8)
2006 Sep 18, In Germany Jacqueline Battles, the German wife of an American contractor accused of cheating the US government in Iraq, was arrested on suspicion of money laundering. In March a US jury ordered contractors Mike Battles and Scott Custer to pay $10 million for swindling the US government over Iraqi rebuilding projects in connection with their Middletown, R.I.-based company, Custer Battles LLC.
(AP, 9/18/06)
2006 Sep 18, The Iraqi army's 4th division took over operational control of central Salahuddin province from the US-led coalition. Sheik Fassal al-Guood, a prominent Sunni tribal leader, said 15 of Ramadi's 18 tribes "have sworn to fight those who are killing Sunnis and Shiites," and said they had an armed force of about 20,000 men. Bombers and gunmen killed 8 people in Baqouba as security forces prepared to further tighten security ahead of the holy month of Ramadan. In southern Basra police found the body of Lt. Col. Fawzi Abdul Karim al-Mousawi, chief of the city's anti-terrorism department. Gunmen killed a former member of the defunct Ba'th Party in Hillah. Police in Baghdad found the bodies of 3 men, bound, blindfolded and shot in the head. Six bombs killed 24 people and wounded 84 in Kirkuk. The tortured bodies of 15 people were found elsewhere. In total bombers and gunmen killed at least 41 people and wounded dozens across Iraq, while parliament leaders again put off debate on legislation that some Iraqis fear could threaten the country's unity and bring even more violence. 3 US soldiers died, including one killed by a roadside bomb explosion and another after being shot. A third soldier died from non-battle-related injuries.
(AP, 9/18/06)(AP, 9/19/06)
2006 Sep 18, Israel said it will consider freeing Palestinian prisoners and releasing millions of dollars in tax rebates to Palestinians if their government moderates its hardline views. Israel charged three Hezbollah members arrested in Lebanon during the recent war with murder for involvement in deadly attacks on soldiers.
(AP, 9/18/06)
2006 Sep 18, Palestine’s PM Ismail Haniyeh's bodyguards opened fire outside the parliament building to disperse a crowd of protesters angry over the government's failure to end a growing economic crisis in the Gaza Strip.
(AP, 9/18/06)
2006 Sep 18, Russia’s Ministry of Natural Resources said it would cancel an environmental permit for a $20 billion oil and natural gas project led by Royal Dutch Shell on the Far East island of Sakhalin.
(WSJ, 9/19/06, p.A17)
2006 Sep 18, In Somalia a massive car bomb exploded outside the makeshift parliament building in Baidoa, killing 11 people, including the president's brother, in an apparent assassination attempt. As Pres. Yusuf fled, a gunbattle broke out between his bodyguards and eight suspected accomplices of an apparent suicide bomber. Six were killed and two were captured.
(AP, 9/18/06)(AP, 9/19/06)
2006 Sep 18, In eastern Sri Lanka the bodies of 11 Muslim men were found hacked to death. Tamil Tiger rebels and government forces blamed each other for the massacre.
(AFP, 9/18/06)
2006 Sep 18, The Vatican opened part of its secret archives to let historians review millions of diplomatic letters, private correspondence and other church documents to gain insight into how the Holy See dealt with the growing persecution of Jews before World War II.
(AP, 9/18/06)
2006 Sep 19, President Bush addressed the 61st meeting of the UN General Assembly with a call for nations to unite to work for a more peaceful world where "extremists are marginalized by the peaceful majority." UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan delivered an emotional farewell address, appealing to the world to unite against human rights abuses, religious divisions, brutal conflicts and an unjust world economy.
(AP, 9/19/06)(AP, 9/19/07)
2006 Sep 19, A Georgia judge struck down the state’s photo ID requirement to vote.
(WSJ, 9/20/06, p.A1)
2006 Sep 19, Sam Harris published his polemic "Letter to a Christian Nation." It was a philosophical attack on the basic tenets held by all major religions.
(WSJ, 9/28/06, p.B2)
2006 Sep 19, Warren Buffet, billionaire investor, pledged $50 million to help set up an international nuclear fuel bank that aspiring powers could turn to for reactor fuel instead of making it on their own.
(SFC, 9/20/06, p.A3)
2006 Sep 19, The MacArthur Foundation announced the 25 winners of its genius awards.
(SFC, 9/19/06, p.B1)
2006 Sep 19, George Lucas, creator of "Star Wars," announced that his private foundation will give his alma mater, the University of Southern California, $175 million to endow and rebuild its School of Cinematic Arts in what amounts to the largest donation in USC history.
(Reuters, 9/19/06)
2006 Sep 19, Motorola Inc. agreed to buy Symbol Technologies, a maker of bar-code readers, for $3.9 billion.
(WSJ, 9/20/06, p.A21)
2006 Sep 19, John Nejedly (91), former 10-year California state senator, died. He helped lead the 1982 fight against the Peripheral Canal and wrote the bill authorizing the construction of the bridge on Highway 160 near Antioch, which was named in his honor.
(SFC, 9/22/06, p.B9)
2006 Sep 19, In central and southern Afghanistan clashes and bombings left up to 34 Taliban fighters and one policeman dead in five separate incidents.
(AP, 9/20/06)
2006 Sep 19, In Argentina Miguel Osvaldo Etchecolatz (77) a former police investigator, was sentenced to life in prison in connection with the disappearance of six people during the so-called "Dirty War" against political dissent.
(AP, 9/19/06)
2006 Sep 19, In Australia Judge Murray Wilcox granted Aborigines a title claim over Perth, the capital of Western Australia.
(AFP, 9/20/06)
2006 Sep 19, Australia and Japan imposed financial sanctions on 11 North Korean companies, a Swiss company and its president, based on allegations they helped the communist nation's weapons programs.
(AP, 9/19/06)
2006 Sep 19, A British soldier pleaded guilty to one count of inhumanely treating Iraqi civilians, while he and his comrades denied all other charges in a landmark court-martial.
(AP, 9/19/06)
2006 Sep 19, Cambodia's King Norodom Sihamoni started the official part of a week-long visit to the Czech Republic, a country where he spent 13 years from 1962-1975 and considers as his "second home."
(AP, 9/19/06)
2006 Sep 19, Supporters of Congo's presidential challenger barricaded streets, stopped traffic and threw stones in Kinshasa, a day after a fire at his headquarters destroyed the party's television and radio stations.
(AP, 9/19/06)
2006 Sep 19, In southern Germany a US AH-64D Apache Longbow attack helicopter crashed on a training mission, killing two American soldiers.
(AP, 9/21/06)
2006 Sep 19, Some 2,000-3,000 protesters stormed the headquarters of Hungarian state television and forced it off the air briefly in an explosion of anger. The protests began after a recording of PM Gyurcsany's comments made in May was leaked to Hungarian media. In his speech to a meeting of Socialist deputies, the prime minister admitted that the government had lied about the state of the economy in order to ensure victory in the elections.
(AP, 9/19/06)
2006 Sep 19, In India at least two people were killed and more than 100 detained during violent protests against a court-ordered crackdown on illegal shops in New Delhi. At least 20 people were killed in coastal villages in eastern India after a major storm swept in to the Bay of Bengal and destroyed hundreds of mud huts.
(AFP, 9/20/06)
2006 Sep 19, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad addressed the UN General Assembly and took aim at US policies in Iraq and Lebanon. He accused Washington of abusing its power in the UN Security Council to punish others while protecting its own interests and allies.
(AP, 9/19/06)
2006 Sep 19, The Iraqi government said it will shut down all offices belonging to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) around the country. The chief judge in Saddam Hussein's genocide trial was replaced amid complaints he was being too easy on the deposed Iraqi leader. A rocket attack on a Shiite neighborhood in southern Baghdad killed 10 people and wounded 19. In northern Iraq at least 17 people were killed and 11 wounded in twin bombings in the town of Al-Shurqat.
(AP, 9/19/06)(AFP, 9/20/06)(AP, 9/19/07)
2006 Sep 19, Police in southern Italy arrested scores of people in an overnight crackdown on organized crime, including on clans that had a grip on the local tourist industry.
(AP, 9/19/06)
2006 Sep 19, Ivory Coast authorities arrested 2 French executives of Trafigura Beheer BV, the Dutch commodities company implicated in the recent dumping of toxic waste. Claude Dauphin and Jean-Pierre Valentini, charged with poisoning and infractions of toxic waste laws, were sent to prison.
(WSJ, 9/20/06, p.A10)
2006 Sep 19, Einars Repse, Latvia's former prime minister (2002-2004), accidentally killed a pedestrian while driving on a remote road. He said he would stop campaigning for parliament, although he will remain a candidate. The EU's official statistics agency, Eurostat, said Latvia registered 222 traffic deaths per 1 million residents in 2004, the highest in the union.
(AP, 9/21/06)
2006 Sep 19, A group of sexual abuse survivors filed a lawsuit against Mexican Cardinal Norberto Rivera, claiming he hid evidence to protect a priest accused of molesting boys. A lawyer for the Chicago-based Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests filed the lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court. Rivera, now Mexico's top-ranking cardinal, helped cover up abuse by the Rev. Nicolas Aguilar involving 50 boys when Aguilar served as a parish priest in central Puebla state in 1987. Rivera was bishop of Tehuacan in Puebla state at the time.
(AP, 9/19/06)
2006 Sep 19, Sudan's Pres. Omar Hassan al-Bashir, on the sidelines of the UN General assembly, said his country would never allow UN peacekeepers into Darfur and charged that the West wanted to dismember his country in order to help Israel. He agreed that the 7,000 AU peacekeepers could stay.
(Reuters, 9/19/06)(Econ, 9/23/06, p.51)
2006 Sep 19, In Thailand a 6-man military junta launched a coup against PM Thaksin Shinawatra, circling his offices with tanks, seizing control of TV stations and declaring a provisional authority pledging loyalty to the king. This was the 18th coup since 1932. General Prem Tinsulanonda was widely seen as the mastermind of the coup.
(AP, 9/19/06)(Econ, 9/23/06, p.27)(Econ, 12/6/08, p.34)
2006 Sep 20, Pres. Bush met with Palestinian leader Abbas in a bid to restart Mideast peace efforts.
(WSJ, 9/21/06, p.A1)
2006 Sep 20, A US federal judge overturned a Bush administration rule that would have allowed roads to be built through nearly 60 million acres of national forest land.
(SFC, 9/21/06, p.A1)
2006 Sep 20, California sued 6 major auto makers for greenhouse-gas inaction.
(WSJ, 9/21/06, p.A1)
2006 Sep 20, The second annual Clinton Global Initiative, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, kicked off in Manhattan and collected over $2 billion in pledges in funds and programs on its 1st day to combat global ills. A day later British mogul Richard Branson pledged to spend $3 billion in the next decade on projects to combat global warming and reduce dependence on fossil fuels. The 3-day summit raised $7.3 billion in pledges.
(SFC, 9/21/06, p.A3)(AFP, 9/21/06)(SFC, 9/23/06, p.A2)
2006 Sep 20, In Florida Clarence Hill was executed for the 1982 murder of a Pensacola police officer. He had argued that Florida’s use of lethal injections amounted to cruel and unusual punishment, but the US Supreme Court denied him another stay of execution.
(SFC, 9/21/06, p.A3)
2006 Sep 20, Dean Everett Wooldridge (93), scientist and co-founder of Ramo-Wooldridge (1953), died. In 1958 Ramo-Wooldridge merged with Thomas Products to become TRW Corp. Wooldridge helped develop the US intercontinental ballistic missile program. He also authored 4 books on neuroscience and predicted the rise of artificial intelligence.
(WSJ, 9/23/06, p.A4)
2006 Sep 20, In Salt Lake City a 2-year-old boy died from kidney failure due to an E. coli infection attributed to spinach.
(SFC, 10/6/06, p.A3)
2006 Sep 20, In southern Afghanistan police clashed with militants who tried to set fire to an oil tanker, killing four suspected members of the Taliban. Authorities found the body of a Turkish national who was kidnapped last month along with another Turk whose body was already recovered.
(AP, 9/21/06)
2006 Sep 20, The African Union (AU) agreed to extend the mandate of its peacekeepers in Sudan's troubled Darfur region for three months until December 31 after receiving promises of financial and logistical support from the United Nations and Arab states.
(AP, 9/20/06)
2006 Sep 20, In Australia arrested 5 Canadian men after cocaine worth A$35 million ($26 million) was found hidden inside computer monitors. This was believed to be Australia's fifth-largest illegal drugs seizure.
(Reuters, 9/21/06)
2006 Sep 20, EU regulators fined 30 companies a total of $399.1 million for fixing prices for copper-pipe fittings.
(WSJ, 9/21/06, p.A8)
2006 Sep 20, Henri Jayer (84), a master of balanced pinot noir, died in Dijon, France. He was viewed by many connoisseurs to be the finest Burgundy winemaker of his generation.
(AP, 9/21/06)
2006 Sep 20, Hungarian PM Ferenc Gyurcsany vowed to crack down on rioters. Police blaming the violence on football hooligans and extreme right-wing groups. Thousands of protesters demonstrated for a 4th day demanding that PM Gyurcsany resign.
(AFP, 9/20/06)(SFC, 9/21/06, p.A3)
2006 Sep 20, An Iraqi police headquarters in Baghdad was hit by a suicide truck bomb, killing at least 7 people. Rebels killed at least 16 people in Iraq in a series of bombings and shootings.
(AFP, 9/20/06)
2006 Sep 20, Israeli forces raided the West Bank cities of Nablus and Jenin, destroying five foreign exchange depots and a bank and taking funds the army said were earmarked for terrorism. Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip fired two rockets at an Israeli town, wounding a 15-year-old boy and another person.
(AP, 9/20/06)
2006 Sep 20, Nationalist candidate Shinzo Abe won the race for Japan's ruling party leader, all but clinching next week's election as prime minister and pledging to make his country a more robust force on the world stage.
(AP, 9/20/06)
2006 Sep 20, In northern Kazakhstan a methane explosion tore through a coal mine, killing 41 miners. Seven miners were pulled out alive and hospitalized after it ripped through the Lenin mine in the town of Shakhtinsk.
(AP, 9/20/06)(AP, 9/21/06)
2006 Sep 20, The UN's International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) acquitted former Rwandan education minister Andre Rwamakuba of murder and incitement charges related to the country's 1994 genocide.
(AP, 9/20/06)
2006 Sep 20, Gen. Sondhi Boonyaratkalin, the army commander who seized Thailand's government in a quick, bloodless coup, pledged to hold elections by October 2007. He received a ringing endorsement from the country's revered king.
(AP, 9/20/06)
2006 Sep 20, In South Africa a judge dismissed corruption charges against Jacob Zuma after the prosecution said it was not ready to proceed against a powerful, populist politician who could be South Africa's next president.
(AP, 9/20/06)
2006 Sep 20, Sven Nykvist (b.1922), Swedish cinematographer, died. He began working with Ingmar Bergman in 1953, eventually became his full-time cinematographer, pushing the director's work in a new direction. Nykvist won the Academy Award for Best Cinematography for two Bergman movies, Cries and Whispers (1973), and Fanny and Alexander (1982).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sven_Nykvist)
2006 Sep 20, In eastern Ukraine a methane blast ripped through a coal mine, killing 13 miners and injuring 36 others.
(AP, 9/20/06)
2006 Sep 20, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez took his verbal battle with the US to the floor of the UN General Assembly, calling President Bush "the devil." "The devil came here yesterday," Chavez said. "He came here talking as if he were the owner of the world."
(AP, 9/20/06)
2006 Sep 20, In Vietnam Pham Xuan An (79), journalist and spy, died. He led a remarkable and perilous double life as a communist spy and a respected reporter for Western news organizations during the Vietnam War.
(AP, 9/20/06)
2006 Sep 20, Yemen's President Ali Abdullah Saleh faced a serious challenger at the polls for the first time. Roughly 5 million of the 9.2 million eligible Yemenis cast ballots. Saleh has ruled since 1978, first as president of North Yemen and then as head of the unified state after the 1990 merger of the North and South.
(AP, 9/20/06)
2006 Sep 21, The US White House and rebellious Senate Republicans announced agreement on rules for the interrogation and trial of suspects in the war on terror.
(AP, 9/21/07)
2006 Sep 21, The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced it would recommend all Americans ages 13 to 64 be routinely tested for HIV.
(AP, 9/21/07)
2006 Sep 21, In NYC Venezuela’s Pres. Chavez visited the Mount Olive Baptist Church in Harlem and promised to double the amount of discounted heating oil his country is shipping to needy Americans. His offer included 100 gallons of heating oil for each of 12,000 households in rural Alaska.
(SFC, 9/22/06, p.A3)(SSFC, 10/8/06, p.A27)
2006 Sep 21, In Santa Cruz, Ca., Kirby Scudder (50), former bike messenger, set up 500 giant flashlights to shine skyward every 30 feet along West Cliff Drive overlooking the Pacific Ocean in his tribute to International Peace Day. The lights came on at 9PM.
(SFC, 9/21/06, p.B1)(SFC, 9/22/06, p.B7)
2006 Sep 21, The US space shuttle Atlantis returned safely to its Florida home port, capping a successful mission to resume International Space Station construction after the 2003 Columbia accident.
(AP, 9/21/06)
2006 Sep 21, Time Warner Inc. said it would sell AOL France's Internet access unit to Neuf Cegetel for $365 million as it overhauls its online business in Europe to boost advertising.
(AP, 9/21/06)
2006 Sep 21, In Afghanistan a NATO helicopter killed 8 suspected insurgents in Helmand province.
(AP, 9/24/06)
2006 Sep 21, The death toll in Bangladesh and India rose to at least 95 and nearly 1,000 remained missing after storms capsized boats, toppled houses and washed away roads.
(AP, 9/21/06)
2006 Sep 21, Chile's President Michelle Bachelet said her decision to allow the government to distribute free morning-after contraception pills to girls as young as 14 was a matter of "equality" within Chilean society.
(AP, 9/21/06)
2006 Sep 21, Iraq’s Defense Ministry said insurgents are no longer using just volunteers as suicide car bombers but are instead kidnapping drivers, rigging their vehicles with explosives and blowing them up. Italy formally handed over security responsibility of the southern Dhi Qar province to Iraqi forces, the second of the country's 18 provinces to be handed over to local control. 2 people were killed and another nine were wounded when a car bomb exploded near an electricity company office in Baghdad. The number of Iraqi civilians killed in July and August hit a record-high 6,599. An American soldier was killed after his vehicle was hit by a roadside bombing in eastern Baghdad.
(AP, 9/21/06)(AP, 9/22/06)
2006 Sep 21, Israeli forces killed at least 5 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip as gunmen fired rockets into Israel.
(SFC, 9/22/06, p.A13)
2006 Sep 21, A Japanese court ruled that an order forcing Tokyo teachers to stand before Japan's flag and sing an anthem to the emperor violated the constitution, a rare victory for the country's waning pacifist movement.
(AP, 9/21/06)
2006 Sep 21, Jordan sentenced 7 people to death for triple hotel bombings that killed 60 people in Amman last November. Sajida al-Rishawi (35), an Iraqi woman, was sentenced to death. 6 others were sentenced to death in absentia.
(AP, 9/21/06)
2006 Sep 21, Vladimiro Montesinos (61), Peru's former spymaster, was sentenced to 20 years in prison for engineering a deal that sent 10,000 assault rifles to Colombian guerrillas.
(AP, 9/22/06)
2006 Sep 21, In Russia Gennady Melikyan, deputy chairman of the Central Bank, was appointed top regulator to replace the recently murdered Andrei Kozlov.
(WSJ, 9/22/06, p.A6)
2006 Sep 21, Thailand's new military rulers said that four top members of deposed PM Thaksin Shinawatra's administration had been detained. The regime also assumed the duties of parliament, which was dissolved when the government was ousted in a coup earlier this week, and banned meetings by all political parties.
(AP, 9/21/06)
2006 Sep 21, Elif Shafak, one of Turkey's leading authors, was acquitted of "insulting Turkishness" in her novel "The Bastard of Istanbul," that touched on the mass killings of Armenians during the final years of the Ottoman Empire. The University of Arizona assistant professor gave birth to a daughter on Sep 16 and did not attend her trial.
(AP, 9/21/06)
2006 Sep 21, Vietnam deported an American pro-democracy activist, state-run television reported. Cong Thanh Do (47) of San Jose, Ca., was accused of plotting to overthrow the government.
(AP, 9/21/06)
2006 Sep 22, US President George W. Bush and Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf met at the White House for key anti-terror talks jarred by his public critiques of US strategy.
(AP, 9/22/06)
2006 Sep 22, It was reported that 11 Domino's employees in Pensacola, Fla., hoping to make a little more dough and get a bigger slice of the profits have formed the nation's first union of pizza delivery drivers.
(AP, 9/22/06)
2006 Sep 22, The new list of Forbes 400 richest people in the US for the 1st time was composed only of billionaires. As a group they were worth a record $1.3 trillion.
(WSJ, 9/23/06, p.B3)
2006 Sep 22, The US CDC recommended that all Americans between 13 and 64 be routinely tested for AIDS.
(Econ, 9/30/06, p.40)(www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/rr5514a1.htm)
2006 Sep 22, Hewlett-Packard Co. Chairwoman Patricia Dunn resigned in the wake of the company's ill-fated investigation of boardroom media leaks.
(AP, 9/22/07)
2006 Sep 22, Edward Albert (b.1951), television and screen actor, died of lung cancer in Malibu, California. He had a meteoric career as a film star in the 1970s after he starred with Goldie Hawn in “Butterflies Are Free" (1972). He also starred in “40 Carats" (1973), “The Ice Runner" (1993), and “Guarding Tess" (1994). Albert was a dedicated environmentalist and worked with several groups, including the California Coastal Commission and the state's Native American Heritage Commission.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Albert)
2006 Sep 22, In southern Afghanistan militants ambushed a bus carrying construction workers, killing 19 of the laborers. The attack occurred in Kandahar province when a roadside bomb exploded near the bus. A NATO helicopter killed 15 suspected insurgents in Helmand province.
(AP, 9/22/06)(AP, 9/24/06)
2006 Sep 22, Enrique Gorriaran Merlo (65), a former Argentine rebel, died. He claimed that he led the squad that killed exiled Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza in 1980.
(AP, 9/22/06)
2006 Sep 22, In Shanghai health officials added 3 more items to a list of toxic metals in SK-II products, made in Japan by US consumer products giant Procter and Gamble. P&G has pulled its popular SK-II line of beauty products off the shelf after authorities a week earlier discovered traces of the two toxic metals in nine SK-II products including powder, foundation, lotion and cleansing oil products. The company said a hotline had been set up and that all refund requests submitted by September 21 would be honored.
(AP, 9/22/06)
2006 Sep 22, Democratic Republic of Congo's first freely elected parliament in more than 40 years convened, with President Joseph Kabila's coalition poised to appoint a prime minister.
(AP, 9/22/06)
2006 Sep 22, France and Russia signed deals in the transport and aviation sectors worth 10 billion dollars following a summit between Russian Pres. Vladimir Putin and his French counterpart Jacques Chirac.
(AP, 9/23/06)
2006 Sep 22, Voters in Gambia went to the polls in a presidential election widely expected to hand incumbent strongman Yahya Jammeh a third elected term.
(AP, 9/22/06)
2006 Sep 22, In northwestern Germany the high-speed, Transrapid magnetic train, traveling at 125 mph, crashed. 23 of the 29 people aboard were killed and others injured in the first fatal wreck involving the high-tech system. A gas tank exploded in a bakery in a south German village, burying a dozen people in the rubble and injuring several more.
(AP, 9/22/06)(AP, 9/23/06)
2006 Sep 22, India’s High Court overturned a ban on the production and sale of Coca-Cola and Pepsi soft drinks in the southern Indian state of Kerala, but state officials said they would seek ways to challenge the decision.
(AP, 9/22/06)
2006 Sep 22, In Indonesia Christian mobs torched cars, blockaded roads and looted Muslim-owned shops in violence touched off by the execution in Central Sulawesi of 3 Roman Catholics convicted of instigating attacks on Muslims. Fabianus Tibo (60), Marinus Riwu (48), and Dominggus da Silva (42), were found guilty of leading a Christian militia that launched a series of attacks on Muslims in May, 2000, that left at least 70 people dead. Some 200 prisoners escaped in the town of Atambua, and only 20 had been recaptured by mid-afternoon.
(AP, 9/22/06)
2006 Sep 22, In Iraq gunmen opened fire on Sunni mosques and homes in a religiously mixed Baghdad neighborhood, killing four people in an attack that drew the condemnation of Sunni leaders across the city. Muntasir Hamoud Ileiwi al-Jubouri, an alleged leader of Ansar al-Sunnah, and two of his aides were captured. He is a leader of the group believed to be behind the 2004 attack on a US military mess hall. An American contractor working for the State Department was killed in a rocket attack in the southern city of Basra. Police found the blindfolded and bound bodies of nine men from a Sunni tribe who had been dragged out of a wedding dinner in east Baghdad the night before by men dressed in Iraqi army uniforms. Four other bodies were found in other parts of the capital, again blindfolded and with their hands and legs tied.
(AP, 9/22/06)(AP, 9/23/06)
2006 Sep 22, Israelis marked the Jewish New Year shaken by the inconclusive war in Lebanon, angry at their leaders and coping with growing gaps between rich and poor.
(AP, 9/22/06)
2006 Sep 22, Some 800,000 Hezbollah supporters packed a 37-acre square in the suburbs of Beirut to hear leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah. In his first public appearance since the start of his group's 34-day war with Israel, he said his group has more than 20,000 rockets, and that an increased UN peacekeeping force will not hurt its guerrillas' arsenal.
(SFC, 9/23/06, p.A7)(AP, 9/25/06)
2006 Sep 22, Nepal's interim parliament passed a new law imposing tighter civilian control over the army which was once fiercely loyal to the nation's royal family.
(AP, 9/22/06)
2006 Sep 22, In Norway police accused four men suspected in an attack on Oslo's main synagogue of also plotting to blow up the US and Israeli embassies. The men were arrested Sep 19 in connection with an attack on the Mosaic Religious Community synagogue, which was hit with at least 10 bullets on Sep 17.
(AP, 9/22/06)
2006 Sep 22, Palestinian PM Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas said he will not head a government that recognizes Israel, striking a potential blow to President Mahmoud Abbas' attempts to create a national unity government.
(AP, 9/22/06)
2006 Sep 23, Barry Bonds hit his 734th career home run in the Giants' 10-8 loss to the Brewers, breaking Hank Aaron's NL record.
(AP, 9/23/07)
2006 Sep 23, Two days of high winds, heavy rain and tornadoes pounded parts of the US Midwest and the South, killing at least 10 people and stranding others in trees and shelters while forecasters warned that the stormy weather was expected to continue.
(AP, 9/23/06)(SSFC, 9/24/06, p.A2)
2006 Sep 23, Three young children were found dead in an East St. Louis, Ill., apartment, hours after Tiffany Hall was charged with killing their pregnant mother and her fetus in a grisly attack. Hall has since been charged with first-degree murder in the deaths of Jimella Tunstall and her children, as well as intentional homicide of Tunstall's fetus.
(AP, 9/23/07)
2006 Sep 23, Etta Baker (93), blues guitarist, died in Fairfax, Va. In 1991 she won a Folk Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Her albums included a 2004 recording with Taj Mahal.
(SFC, 9/26/06, p.D6)
2006 Sep 23, Afghan and NATO-led security forces backed by war planes killed 40 rebels in Helmand province's Greshk district.
(AFP, 9/24/06)
2006 Sep 23, In Bolivia 90% of the country’s productive land was still owned by just 50,000 families. Four-fifths of the rural population remained poor.
(Econ, 9/23/06, p.41)
2006 Sep 23, Toomas Hendrik Ilves (52), a Western-leaning former diplomat and journalist, was narrowly elected Estonia's president, ousting the incumbent who was favored in the race.
(AP, 9/23/06)
2006 Sep 23, Russian Pres. Vladimir Putin and his French counterpart Jacques Chirac joined German Chancellor Angela Merkel for a three-way informal summit in a chateau in Compiegne.
(AP, 9/23/06)
2006 Sep 23, In northern England at least 10,000 anti-war demonstrators marched through the city of Manchester, protesting the presence of British troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
(AP, 9/23/06)
2006 Sep 23, A French newspaper reported that Osama bin Laden had died in Pakistan on August 23 of typhoid fever. The report was not confirmed.
(SSFC, 9/24/06, p.A4)
2006 Sep 23, Gambian President Yahya Jammeh easily won a third term and called for a concerted effort to develop the country socially and economically.
(AP, 9/23/06)
2006 Sep 23, A square in front of Hungary's parliament overflowed with demonstrators demanding that PM Gyurcsany quit in the largest protest yet since a recording was leaked on which he admitted lying to the people about the economy. Hungary’s current-account deficit reached 9% of GDP and the budget deficit hit 10%.
(AP, 9/24/06)(Econ, 9/23/06, p.64)
2006 Sep 23, In Indian Kashmir suspected militants shot dead a man and a woman near Srinagar. A border guard hurt in a bomb explosion died the next day.
(AFP, 9/24/06)
2006 Sep 23, Indian security officials in the western desert state of Rajasthan shot dead three suspected militants who were trying to cross over from Pakistan.
(AP, 9/24/06)
2006 Sep 23, A bombing in the Shiite slum of Sadr City killed 38 people and wounded 42 as they stocked up on fuel for Ramadan. The severed heads of 10 Iraqi soldiers that were tossed into a crowded market in Beiji by unidentified gunmen. Minority Sunnis began the fasting month of Ramadan. Police Col. Ismaiel Chehayyan was killed by gunmen while having his Ramadan fast-breaking dinner at a friend's house. Iraqi security forces arrested a leader of the al-Ashreen Brigades, a group responsible for attacks and kidnappings. The leader along with 7 aides were captured in Kharnabat. 5 apparent death squad victims were turned in to the morgue in Kut. The victims were blindfolded with their arms and hands bound, and showed signs of torture.
(AP, 9/23/06)(AP, 9/24/06)
2006 Sep 23, The TV series “The Renegades," directed by Najdat Anzour of Syria, began showing in Lebanon and the rest of the Arab world. It fictionalized the devastating effects of terrorism on Muslim families.
(SFC, 10/4/06, p.A7)
2006 Sep 23, In Mexico the governor of Oaxaca state warned 70,000 striking teachers that they would be replaced and lose their pay unless they immediately returned to work.
(AP, 9/24/06)
2006 Sep 23, In Nepal's mountainous east a helicopter with 24 people aboard went missing. Searchers found the wreckage on Sep 25. The 24 dead included 2 Americans, Nepalese Forestry Minister Gopal Rai, Finnish Embassy Charge d'Affaires Pauli Mustonen and Canadian Jennifer Headley, a coordinator for WWF, several Nepali journalists, government officials and four crew members, two Russians and two Nepalis.
(AP, 9/23/06)(AP, 9/25/06)
2006 Sep 23, In Pakistan at least 8 people were killed and 55 injured when a bus collided with another on the main highway near the Islamabad. According to official statistics Pakistan has the world's third highest death rate from road accidents.
(AFP, 9/23/06)
2006 Sep 23, Spain's Basque separatist group ETA has said it will not give up its weapons until independence for the Basque region is won, fuelling concerns over the future of a six-month-old ceasefire.
(AFP, 9/24/06)
2006 Sep 23, In eastern Turkey suspected Kurdish guerrillas set off an explosive-laden minibus across from a police guest house, injuring 17 people.
(AP, 9/23/06)
2006 Sep 23, Yemen's President Ali Abdullah Saleh was re-elected with more than 77% of votes in the face of the strongest challenge since he came to power 28 years ago. Faisal bin Shamlan won almost 22% of the vote. Opposition parties backing bin Shamlan immediately rejected the election commission's results, claiming their candidate won at least 40%.
(AP, 9/24/06)
2006 Sep 24, In a combative interview on "Fox News Sunday," former President Clinton defended his handling of the threat posed by Osama bin Laden, and accused host Chris Wallace of a "conservative hit job."
(AP, 9/24/07)
2006 Sep 24, Democrats seized on an intelligence assessment that said the Iraq war had increased the terrorist threat, saying it was further evidence Americans should choose new leadership in upcoming elections.
(AP, 9/24/07)
2006 Sep 24, A survey by the Pew Internet and American Life Project said machines after 2020 will become intelligent, evolve rapidly, and could end up treating humans as pets.
(SFC, 9/25/06, p.F1)
2006 Sep 24, Residents in Richmond, Ca., set up a tent city to protest violence, homicides and drug dealing in their Iron Triangle neighborhood.
(SFC, 10/11/06, p.A7)
2006 Sep 24, Inco, one of Canada’s two largest mining companies, agreed to be acquired by Companhia Vale do Rio Doce of Brazil for $17.8 billion and absorbing Inco's debt of $1.2 billion. The deal was closed in October.
(www.secinfo.com/dRY7g.v113.d.htm)(WSJ, 4/25/08, p.A1)(http://tinyurl.com/ydysrko)
2006 Sep 24, In China Chen Liangyu, the Communist Party boss of Shanghai, was sacked for corruption, toppling the highest leader so far in national party chief Hu Jintao's drive to root out abuse and enforce loyalty.
(Reuters, 9/25/06)(Econ, 9/30/06, p.49)
2006 Sep 24, In Copenhagen, Denmark, youths angered at a court decision to evict squatters from a downtown building hurled stones, bottles and eggs at police during a protest. More than 200 were detained.
(AP, 9/25/06)
2006 Sep 24, In Ecuador a speeding bus overturned on a curving mountain road near Quito, killing 47 people and injuring five children.
(AP, 9/25/06)
2006 Sep 24, India's federal government called off a six-week truce with separatist rebels in Assam and ordered the resumption of military operations in the northeastern state.
(AP, 9/24/06)
2006 Sep 24, Iraq’s PM Nouri al-Maliki called for Shiites and Sunnis to use the Islamic holy month of Ramadan to put aside their differences. Iraq's parliamentary groups agreed to open debate on a contentious Shiite-proposed draft legislation that will allow the creation of federal regions in Iraq. Authorities reported that at least 20 people were killed in scattered violence across the country. Authorities reported that 45 bodies were received at the morgue, the apparent victims of sectarian death squads.
(AP, 9/24/06)(SFC, 9/25/06, p.A9)
2006 Sep 24, In Indian Kashmir 4 suspected Islamic militants were shot dead by troops in northern Uri district in a gunbattle with troops. 2 more were killed in nearby Bandipora.
(AP, 9/24/06)
2006 Sep 24, In Lebanon Samir Geagea, an anti-Syrian Christian leader, dismissed Hezbollah's claims of victory in its war with Israel as tens of thousands of his supporters rallied in a show of strength that highlighted the country’s sharp divisions.
(AP, 9/24/06)
2006 Sep 24, In St. Petersburg, Russia, attackers stabbed to death Nitesh Kumar Singh, an Indian medical student, in the latest in a series of hate crimes there.
(AP, 9/25/06)
2006 Sep 24, In Somalia hundreds of Islamic militiamen in heavily armed trucks took over the southern town of Kismayo, one of the last seaports that had been outside their control.
(AP, 9/24/06)
2006 Sep 24, Swiss voters in a national referendum backed tougher asylum rules put forth by justice minister Christoph Blocher, despite fears that the new rules will deny refugees a fair hearing. 68% approved a new immigration law which was meant to tackle what authorities say is the lack of integration of many foreigners into Swiss society.
(AP, 9/24/06)(Econ, 9/30/06, p.61)
2006 Sep 24, Thailand's military council issued new orders intended to stave off any possible opposition to their coup, banning political activities at the district and provincial levels.
(AP, 9/24/06)
2006 Sep 25, US air safety officials eased restrictions on liquids in carry-ons.
(SFC, 9/26/06, p.A1)
2006 Sep 25, It was reported that the gap in between US debt payments and return from investments abroad had reached $2.5 billion in the 2nd quarter of 2006. This amounted to a quarterly debt payment of about $22 for each American household.
(WSJ, 9/25/06, p.A1)
2006 Sep 25, A US federal judge granted class action status to tens of millions of "light cigarette" smokers for a potential $200 billion lawsuit against cigarette makers.
(AP, 9/25/06)
2006 Sep 25, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed two bills to bar the state's massive pension funds from investing in companies in Sudan and to indemnify the University of California system from liability from divesting its investments in the country.
(Reuters, 9/25/06)
2006 Sep 25, Murphy Oil agreed to pay $330 million to settle a class-action suit filed by victims of Hurricane Katrina whose homes and businesses were inundated when floodwaters carried nearly 1.1 million gallons of crude oil from a company storage tank.
(WSJ, 9/26/06, p.A12)
2006 Sep 25, The Louisiana Superdome, a symbol of misery during Hurricane Katrina, reopened for a New Orleans Saints game. The Saints defeated the Atlanta Falcons, 23-3.
(AP, 9/25/07)
2006 Sep 25, In Afghan 2 gunmen on a motorbike killed Safia Hama Jan, the provincial director of the Ministry of Women's Affairs, outside her home in apparent retribution for her efforts to help educate women. In Khost province a bomb killed 2 policemen and a coalition soldier was injured in a suicide attack. 2 men believed to be suicide attackers were killed when the car they were in blew up on a road often used by the US-led coalition and Afghan forces. In Paktika province six suspected rebels were killed when they were escorting a suicide bomber whose explosives detonated early.
(AFP, 9/25/06)(AFP, 9/26/06)
2006 Sep 25, UCB, a Belgian drug firm, announced a takeover of Germany’s Schwarz Pharma for €4.4 billion.
(Econ, 9/30/06, p.71)
2006 Sep 25, Deutsche Oper, a leading German opera house, canceled a 3-year-old production of Mozart's "Idomeneo" that included a scene showing the severed head of the Prophet Muhammad, unleashing a furious debate over free speech.
(AP, 9/26/06)
2006 Sep 25, In Athens, Greece, a gang of robbers wielding machine guns stole an estimated $1.9 million from a casino's security van after ramming the vehicle with a stolen truck.
(AP, 9/25/06)
2006 Sep 25, Guatemalan security forces took over the Pavon prison farm, which had been controlled for more than 10 years by inmates who produced drugs, lived in spacious homes with luxury goods and even rented space for stores and restaurants. 7 prisoners died when 3,000 police and soldiers firing automatic weapons stormed the prison just after dawn. In 2018 Erwin Sperisen, Guatemala's former police chief, was slapped with a 15-year prison sentence in Switzerland after being reconvicted for the deaths of seven inmates in Pavon jail. Sperisen held dual Swiss and Guatemalan citizenship and local rules allowed Swiss citizens to be tried at home for crimes committed abroad.
(Reuters, 9/25/06)(AP, 11/14/10)(AFP, 4/27/18)
2006 Sep 25, Iraq's feuding ethnic and sectarian groups moved ahead with forming a committee to consider amending the constitution after their leaders agreed to delay any division of the country into autonomous states until 2008. In Basra British forces shot and killed Omar al-Farouq, a leading al-Qaida terrorist, more than a year after he embarrassed the US military by making an unprecedented escape from a maximum security military prison in Afghanistan in July, 2005. A US soldier died of wounds sustained from enemy fire in Mosul. A US Marine and soldier were killed in action in western Anbar province.
(AP, 9/25/06)(AP, 9/26/06)(AP, 9/27/06)
2006 Sep 25, In Nigeria an inauguration ceremony in Lagos featured new bailiffs, a corps of 30 men and women, all graduates, in uniforms of black trousers, ash-colored shirts, yellow badges and cowboy hats and handcuffs on their belts. Former Lagos bailiffs had converted their role as enforcer of court judgments on property into an extortion racket.
(AP, 9/26/06)
2006 Sep 25, Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf’s memoir “In the Line of Fire," was published. He noted that the CIA has paid Pakistan millions for catching al-Qaida fighters.
(SFC, 9/23/06, p.A3)(SFC, 9/26/06, p.A3)
2006 Sep 25, Somalia's interim prime minister called on the UN to partially lift an arms embargo on his country to allow for the deployment of African peacekeepers, which he said are necessary to stop the advance of Islamic radicals. A government order banned human smuggling. Ethiopian troops arrived in Somalia to support the internationally recognized government in its faceoff with radicals. The Islamic militia in the seaport of Kismayo opened fire on thousands protesting the fundamentalists' takeover of the southern town. Witnesses said a teenager was killed.
(AP, 9/25/06)(SFC, 9/26/06, p.A3)(AP, 10/8/06)
2006 Sep 25, The Sri Lankan navy said it had sunk 11 Tamil Tiger rebel ships loaded with troops and weapons during a five-hour sea battle, killing around 70 separatists.
(AP, 9/25/06)
2006 Sep 25, A spokesman for the AU said the African Union will add 4,000 troops to its extended Darfur peacekeeping mission, bringing the number of police and soldiers in western Sudan to 11,000. The UN got its first pledges of troops for a proposed peacekeeping force in Sudan's Darfur region at a meeting of 49 potential contributing nations.
(AP, 9/25/06)(Reuters, 9/25/06)
2006 Sep 25, The United States donated patrol boats and electronic equipment to help Tajikistan guard its borders and stem the flow of heroin from neighboring Afghanistan.
(AP, 9/25/06)
2006 Sep 25, Pope Benedict XVI told over 20 Muslim diplomats that Christians and Muslims must work together to guard against intolerance and violence as he sought to soothe anger over his recent remarks about Islam.
(AP, 9/25/06)(SFC, 9/26/06, p.A8)
2006 Sep 25, In Yemen 4 French tourists kidnapped Sep 10 were freed.
(AP, 9/25/06)
2006 Sep 26, President Bush ordered release of a declassified version of a government intelligence report that said the war in Iraq had become a "cause celebre" for Islamic extremists.
(AP, 9/26/07)
2006 Sep 26, Former Enron chief financial officer Andrew Fastow was sentenced by a federal judge in Houston to six years in prison for his role in the fallen energy company's bankruptcy.
(AP, 9/26/07)
2006 Sep 26, In Florida, brothers Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela (67) and Miguel Rodriguez Orejuela (62), who headed the Colombia’s Cali cocaine cartel, were sentenced to 30 years in prison. They agreed to forfeit $2.1 billion worth of assets linked to the drug trade as part of their plea agreement. In exchange half a dozen of their relatives would not face prosecution.
(SFC, 9/27/06, p.A12)
2006 Sep 26, EMI Classics released a CD of Paul McCartney’s four-movement oratorio “Ecce cor meum." This was his 3rd large-scale choral work.
(WSJ, 9/21/06, p.D6)
2006 Sep 26, Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft Corp., announced a $41 million computerized atlas of the 20,000 genes in the brain of a mouse. The atlas was made available online at www.brainatlas.org.
(SFC, 9/27/06, p.A9)(Econ, 9/30/06, p.91)
2006 Sep 26, Researchers reported that Earth’s temperature has climbed to a 12,000-year high and that it has been warming at a rate of .36° Fahrenheit per decade for the last 30 years.
(SFC, 9/26/06, p.A5)
2006 Sep 26, Iva Toguri D’Aquino, (nee Iva Ikuko Toguri, 1916-2006), a Japanese-American convicted in 1949 for being wartime radio propagandist "Tokyo Rose," died in Chicago. [see Sep 5, 1945]
(SFC, 9/28/06, p.A18)(Econ, 10/7/06, p.93)
2006 Sep 26, In Afghanistan a suicide bomber struck outside the compound of a southern governor, killing 18 people, including several Muslim pilgrims seeking paperwork to travel to Mecca. A bomb in Kabul killed an Italian soldier and a child.
(AP, 9/26/06)
2006 Sep 26, In Brazil officials said Rio will spend $1 million to map two sprawling shantytowns as the first step toward granting land titles to residents who otherwise have no property rights in the sprawling slums.
(AP, 9/26/06)
2006 Sep 26, In Chile thousands of public school teachers held a generally peaceful march in Santiago to demand higher pay.
(AP, 9/26/06)
2006 Sep 26, The European Commission recommended that Bulgaria and Romania join the EU next year, but under some of the harshest terms ever faced by new members.
(AP, 9/26/06)
2006 Sep 26, Iraqi security forces arrested another leader of the 1920 Revolution Brigades, a group accused of numerous attacks on US forces. A series of bomb explosions killed at least 21 people and wounded dozens in and around Baghdad, where police also found 23 tortured bodies, apparently victims of sectarian death squads.
(AP, 9/26/06)(AP, 9/27/06)(WSJ, 9/27/06, p.A1)
2006 Sep 26, In Japan nationalist Shinzo Abe, a proponent of a robust alliance with the US and a more assertive military, easily won election in parliament to become the country’s youngest postwar prime minister. Abe faced a government debt equivalent to 170% of GDP. Junichiro Koizumi formally stepped down as prime minister. His achievements included changing the way politics was carried out, advancing big economic reforms, and extending Japan’s role in foreign affairs.
(AP, 9/26/06)(Econ, 9/16/06, p.14)(Econ, 9/23/06, p.44)
2006 Sep 26, Officials said a cow in northern Japan is suspected of having the country's 29th case of mad cow disease.
(AP, 9/26/06)
2006 Sep 26, Palestinian militants fired at least two rockets from the Gaza Strip into southern Israel, wounding at least one person.
(AP, 9/26/06)
2006 Sep 26, Russia and Iran signed a deal in Moscow whereby Russia will ship fuel to a controversial atomic power plant it is building in Iran by March.
(AP, 9/26/06)
2006 Sep 26, In Turkey 56 Kurdish mayors stood trial, accused in a freedom-of-speech case on charges of helping terrorists by arguing to keep a Kurdish TV station on the air.
(AP, 9/26/06)
2006 Sep 26, The UN and Sudan discussed the deployment of UN military advisers to reinforce African Union peacekeepers in Darfur, in a possible compromise in their standoff over the war-torn region.
(Reuters, 9/26/06)
2006 Sep 26, The Vatican said it has excommunicated Zambia’s Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo, for defying the Holy See by installing four married men as bishops. The prelate had already angered the Vatican by getting married in 2001.
(AP, 9/26/06)
2006 Sep 26, A former chief of environmental protection in the US Virgin Islands pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy to defraud the islands' government of more than $1 million. Hollis Griffin (43) acknowledged engaging in a five-year bribery scheme that paid up to $350,000 in kickbacks to at least four government officials in exchange for consulting contracts worth $1.4 million.
(AP, 9/26/06)
2006 Sep 27, President Bush hosted a peacemaking dinner at the White House for the bickering leaders of Pakistan and Afghanistan, Gen. Pervez Musharraf and Hamid Karzai.
(WSJ, 9/28/06, p.A1)(AP, 9/27/07)
2006 Sep 27, Republicans announced they would hold their 2008 presidential convention in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis-St. Paul.
(Econ, 1/13/07, p.30)(AP, 9/27/07)
2006 Sep 27, Jacob "Kobi" Alexander, the former chief and founder of Comverse Technology Inc., was arrested in Namibia, where he awaited extradition to the US to face criminal fraud charges related to stock options. Alexander had recently transferred tens of millions of dollars to Namibia. He was released after 6 days on $1.4 million bail.
(Reuters, 9/27/06)(WSJ, 9/28/06, p.A1)(WSJ, 11/17/06, p.A1)
2006 Sep 27, The US FDA approved Vectibix (panitimumab), a new colon cancer drug developed by Amgen and Abgenix.
(SFC, 9/28/06, p.C1)
2006 Sep 27, In Bailey, Colorado, Duane Morrison (53) held 6 girls hostage at Platte Canyon High School for hours before fatally wounding Emily Keyes (16). He sexually molested the girls and then killed himself as authorities stormed in.
(AP, 9/28/06)(SFC, 9/28/06, p.A3)(AP, 9/29/06)(SFC, 10/6/06, p.A3)
2006 Sep 27, In Charleston, South Carolina, a video store was held up by a group of children, including a 14-year-old girl suspected of wielding a BB gun that looked like a pistol. City Council member Larry Shirley, reacting later to the video store holdup, said parents who can't properly care for their kids should be sterilized.
(AP, 10/1/06)
2006 Sep 27, Afghan security forces killed 25 suspected insurgents during a clash in southern Afghanistan, while a suicide bombing targeting a NATO convoy wounded one civilian.
(AP, 9/27/06)
2006 Sep 27, British billionaire Richard Branson proposed changes to aircraft movements at busy airports and the way planes land under a plan he said would cut the world's aviation emissions by up to 25%.
(Reuters, 9/27/06)(Econ, 9/30/06, p.65)
2006 Sep 27, EU air safety officials backed tightened rules on the amount of liquids and size of carry-on baggage passengers can bring onto commercial flights.
(AP, 9/27/06)
2006 Sep 27, France ended a decades-old system of inequality by bringing lagging pensions of war veterans from former colonies into line with those of their French counterparts whose retirement payment is two-thirds higher. The decision was not retroactive.
(AP, 9/28/06)
2006 Sep 27, A team of French doctors said they successfully operated on a man in near zero-gravity conditions on a flight looping in the air like a roller coaster to mimic weightlessness.
(AP, 9/27/06)
2006 Sep 27, Germany opened a conference in Berlin on opening a 2-year dialogue separating Islamic fundamentalism from Islam.
(Econ, 9/30/06, p.62)
2006 Sep 27, Indonesia’s government said it will resettle more than 3,000 families whose houses have been swamped by mud surging from a gas exploration site and will dump the sludge into the sea to avoid more destruction. The eruption took place 4 months earlier 150 meters from where PT Lapindo Brantas was drilling an exploratory well. The company was controlled by the family of Aburizal Bakrie, Indonesia’s welfare minister.
(AP, 9/27/06)(Econ, 10/7/06, p.51)
2006 Sep 27, In Iraq the US military said it killed four suspected terrorists and four civilians, including a pregnant woman, in a raid in Baqouba. An investigation followed as surviving family members said the attack was unprovoked. Gunmen killed 10 people near a Sunni mosque at Ramadan prayers.
(AP, 9/27/06)(SFC, 9/28/06, p.A19)(WSJ, 9/28/06, p.A1)
2006 Sep 27, An Israeli court released the Palestinian deputy prime minister, the highest ranking Hamas official to be freed following a crackdown on the Islamic militant group. But the court temporarily banned him from going to his government office in the city of Ramallah. Israeli airstrikes on a house in the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah killed a 14-year-old girl and wounded seven other people.
(AP, 9/27/06)
2006 Sep 27, Jordan's military court convicted five men of plotting attacks against US troops in Iraq, including a cousin of slain al-Qaida in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
(AP, 9/27/06)
2006 Sep 27, At the Hague, Netherlands, a UN tribunal sentenced Momcilio Krajisnik (61), the former speaker of the Bosnian Serb parliament, to 27 years in prison for war crimes, but acquitted him of the harsher charge of genocide.
(AP, 9/27/06)
2006 Sep 27, In northwestern Pakistan drive-by gunmen killed two militants and wounded three in another car. The militants who came under attack were believed to be loyal to a pro-Taliban tribesman known only as Hanan, who had started a campaign to oust Uzbek militants living in the Shakai mountain valley region north of Wana.
(AP, 9/27/06)
2006 Sep 27, Russia's chief election body dismissed a petition aimed at allowing President Vladimir Putin to run for a third term.
(AP, 9/27/06)
2006 Sep 27, The Sri Lanka government revealed that Tamil Tigers have agreed to resume face-to-face negotiations and end a seven-month deadlock in talks.
(AFP, 9/27/06)
2006 Sep 27, The Ugandan army accused rebels of violating the increasingly fragile truce, which was signed last month, by leaving neutral assembly points.
(AP, 9/28/06)
2006 Sep 27, In Venezuela’s Los Roques islands Elena Vecoli (34), a newly married Italian woman, was murdered and her husband, Riccardo Prescendi (46) beaten inside an inn popular with foreign tourists. Police identified 3 suspects the next day.
(AP, 9/29/06)
2006 Sep 28, It was reported that US federal and state authorities were investigating a mortgage fraud in Virginia that involved loans totaling about $80 million.
(WSJ, 9/28/06, p.A1)
2006 Sep 28, The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned that travelers to parts of Africa and Asia are returning with a new mosquito-borne virus. Some people returning to Europe, the US, Canada, Martinique and French Guyana reported cases of Chikungunya fever (CHIKV). The virus first emerged in Tanzania in 1953.
(Reuters 9/28/06)
2006 Sep 28, It was reported that Merck saved some $1.5 billion in US taxes by transferring patents and income to an offshore holding in Bermuda called Project Ryland from 1993-2003. In 2006 the IRS challenged the transactions.
(WSJ, 9/28/06, p.A1)
2006 Sep 28, Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corp., the US unit of Swiss drugmaker Novartis AG, said that at least three out of four patients given an experimental multiple sclerosis treatment were free of relapses for more than two years.
(AP, 9/28/06)
2006 Sep 28, William Whalen (66), former director of the US National Park Service (1977-1980), died of a heart attack. He served as the 1st director of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area (1972-1977). In 1980 he implemented the 1971 Alaska Native Lands Claims Settlement Act, which created 10 national parks in Alaska.
(SFC, 9/30/06, p.B6) (http://tinyurl.com/2v8onh)
2006 Sep 28, In Bangladesh thousands of people set fire to power supply offices and attacked government vehicles Dhaka in protest over electricity shortages.
(Reuters, 9/28/06)
2006 Sep 28, Belgian government officials said the transfer of confidential banking records by a Belgium-based company to US authorities for use in anti-terrorism investigations breached Belgian and likely European Union data privacy rules.
(AP, 9/28/06)
2006 Sep 28, A leaked UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) paper said Pakistan's intelligence service, ISI, indirectly backs terrorism by supporting religious parties in the country.
(www.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=74600)
2006 Sep 28, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said his country rejected the suspension of uranium-enrichment activities by Tehran, "even for one day."
(AP, 9/28/06)
2006 Sep 28, An explosion on a natural gas pipeline outside Bazargan, an Iranian border city, shut down the flow of gas to Turkey. Officials believed the explosion was an act of sabotage by separatist Kurdish rebels.
(AP, 9/29/06)
2006 Sep 28, Iraq's Central Criminal Court said it had convicted 22 suspected insurgents of a range of crimes, including weapons violations and illegally entering the country. The bodies of 60 people who been tortured were found in and around Baghdad in a span of 24 hours. 5 people died from a car-bomb explosion near a restaurant. Attacks left 21 Iraqis dead. Al-Qaida in Iraq released an audiotape calling for nuclear scientists to join in a holy war and urged insurgents to kidnap Westerners.
(AP, 9/28/06)(SFC, 9/29/06, p.A12)(WSJ, 9/29/06, p.A1)
2006 Sep 28, It was reported that the industrial city of Shymkent, Kazakhstan, was reeling after learning that at least 63 children had contracted AIDS through medical negligence many blame on corruption and the illicit sale of blood. At least five infected toddlers had died after receiving injections or blood transfusions. Parents said regional health officials were aware of the outbreak in March, and have been trying to cover it up by pulling pages from the infected toddlers' treatment records to eliminate any mention of blood transfusions.
(AP, 9/28/06)
2006 Sep 28, Jailed Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan has appealed to his Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) to call a ceasefire in its separatist campaign against the Turkish government.
(AFP, 9/28/06)
2006 Sep 28, Mexico’s President-elect Felipe Calderon asked Congress to get tougher on criminals, create a universal health care system and generate jobs so millions of Mexicans do not have to migrate to the US to find work. Calderon also called for reducing the gap between rich and poor and called for a return to life sentences for hardened criminals, including violent kidnappers.
(AP, 9/28/06)
2006 Sep 28, Nigeria's vice president Atiku Abubakar was suspended by his party for three months because of corruption allegations, preventing him from running for president on the party's ticket.
(AP, 9/28/06)
2006 Sep 28, Typhoon Xangsane battered the northern and central Philippines with rains and winds, killing at least 76 people.
(AP, 9/29/06)(AFP, 10/1/06)
2006 Sep 28, Russia agreed to grant Cuba credit worth $350 million and restructure some of its recent debt during a visit by PM Putin. The two countries also signed a military cooperation agreement.
(AP, 9/28/06)
2006 Sep 28, Singapore banned the Far Eastern Economic Review magazine after it failed to comply with media regulations. The Review, published by Dow Jones & Co Inc., is being sued by Singapore's PM Lee Hsien Loong and his father, Singapore's founding PM Lee Kuan Yew, over a July article about opposition politician Chee Soon Juan.
(AP, 9/28/06)
2006 Sep 28, Somali police investigating a car bomb assassination attempt on the president arrested three suspected members of a fundamentalist Islamic group and recovered explosives.
(AP, 9/28/06)
2006 Sep 28, South Korea and the US agreed on a program to reshape their military alliance and give Seoul a bigger role in countering any North Korean attack. The two sides signed new terms for the decades-old alliance after talks in Washington.
(AFP, 9/29/06)
2006 Sep 28, European cease-fire monitors said at least 200 civilians have been killed in two months of fighting between Sri Lankan soldiers and separatist Tamil rebels, and both sides are to blame.
(AP, 9/28/06)
2006 Sep 28, Thailand's auditor general, Jaruvan Maintaka, told reporters that Gen. Surayud Chulanont (62), a highly regarded retired officer, would lead the country until promised elections next year. The US suspended $24 million in military aid due to the coup.
(AP, 9/29/06)(WSJ, 9/29/06, p.A1)
2006 Sep 28, Thailand’s new Suvarnabhumi Airport, built on an area known as "Cobra Swamp," officially opened its doors, more than four decades after the project originated.
(AP, 9/27/06)(AP, 9/28/06)
2006 Sep 28, Uganda state media reported that rebels have walked out of peace talks aimed at ending a 19-year conflict in which thousands of civilians have died.
(AP, 9/28/06)
2006 Sep 28, Zambians voted to decide whether President Levy Mwanawasa would stay in office for a second term despite a strong challenge from opposition candidates who lambasted his economic policies. Voters jammed polling stations after a national election campaign marked by bitter debate about the president's effort to increase foreign investment and combat poverty and corruption.
(AP, 9/28/06)(AP, 9/29/06)
2006 Sep 29, Pres. Bush met with Kazakhstan’s Pres. Nazarbayev and praised him. The meeting was criticized as an unseemly gesture to an oil-rich ruler who tolerates no dissent.
(WSJ, 9/30/06, p.A1)
2006 Sep 29, US Rep. Mark Foley, a prominent House Republican from Florida, resigned after the revelation that he exchanged raunchy electronic messages with a teenage boy, a former congressional page. Foley was the chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children.
(AP, 9/30/06)(SFC, 9/30/06, p.A3)
2006 Sep 29, A Rhode Island nightclub owner was sentenced to four years in prison and his brother to probation, angering relatives of the 100 people who died in a 2003 fire at their club.
(AP, 9/29/07)
2006 Sep 29, Police in Florida said 2 Roman Catholic priests allegedly misappropriated more than $8 million from their church and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on real estate, travel, rare coins and girlfriends.
(Reuters, 9/30/06)
2006 Sep 29, In Oakland, Ca., Anthony J. Quintero, a Brink’s security guard and former Marine, was shot dead during a daylight robbery. Quintero’s partner, Clifton Wherry Jr. (28), was soon arrested for the murder and admitted that he had planned the robbery. On Oct 5 Dwight Omar Campbell (23) was arrested in San Diego County for allegedly shooting Quintero.
(SFC, 9/30/06, p.B1)(SFC, 10/3/06, p.B3)(SFC, 10/7/06, p.B3)
2006 Sep 29, In Lakeland, Fla., 9 SWAT team members fatally shot Angilo Freeland, a man suspected of killing a sheriff's deputy a day earlier. An autopsy showed that officers fired 110 rounds of ammunition at Freeland.
(AP, 9/29/06)(AP, 9/30/06)
2006 Sep 29, In Cazenovia, Wisconsin, Eric Hainstock (15) walked into Weston High School with a shotgun. The principal confronted him in a corridor and was shot and killed. Hainstock was taken into custody and all the children were reported safe.
(AP, 9/29/06)(Econ, 10/7/06, p.38)
2006 Sep 29, In Bolivia police killed two coca farmers and injured a third in the first violent confrontation over coca eradication since President Evo Morales, himself a former coca grower, was elected last year. An estimate 200 coca growers in the Chapare region ambushed a team of police sent to destroy their crop, planted illegally inside the borders of a national park 220 southeast of the capital of La Paz.
(AP, 9/29/06)
2006 Sep 29, A Brazilian jetliner, Gol airlines Flight 1907, with 155 people aboard crashed in the Amazon jungle after reportedly colliding with a smaller ExcelAire executive jet carrying 16 passengers. The Legacy jet stabilized after the apparent collision and then landed at a Brazilian air force base in the Amazon state of Para. It was later reported that the US executive jet was at the wrong altitude and Brazil confiscated the passports of the pilots. In November it was reported that the flight recorder transcript from the executive jet involved in the air disaster showed that the jet's American pilots were told by Brazilian air traffic control to fly at the same altitude as a Boeing 737 before the planes collided over the Amazon rainforest. Pilots Joseph Lepore (42), of Bay Shore, N.Y., and Jan Paladino (34), of Westhampton Beach, N.Y., were allowed to return to the US on Dec 8 after signing a document promising to return to Brazil for their trial or when required by local authorities. In 2010 Air force Sgt. Jomarcelo Fernandes dos Santos was sentenced to 14 months in jail for failing to take action when he saw that the Legacy's anti-collision system had been turned off. In 2011 the American pilots were sentenced to four years of unspecified community service in the USA. On May 19 air traffic controller Lucivando de Alencar was convicted of endangering air safety and sentenced to three years and four months of community service.
(AP, 9/30/06)(AP, 10/1/06)(WSJ, 10/5/06, p.A1)(AP, 11/2/06)(AP, 10/27/10)(AP, 5/17/11)(AP, 5/19/11)
2006 Sep 29, The Nature Conservancy of Canada announced that Roberta Langtry (1916-2005), a Canadian teacher who lived a frugal life but gave large, anonymous donations to people in need, has left a C$4.3 million ($3.8 million) fortune to the environmental charity.
(Reuters, 9/30/06)
2006 Sep 29, Segolene Royal, who tops polls as the Socialist choice to run for French president next spring, formally announced her candidacy.
(AP, 9/29/06)
2006 Sep 29, Georgia charged four Russian military officers with spying, while Russian government planes evacuated dozens of diplomats and their relatives as the diplomatic dispute worsened between Moscow and the former Soviet republic.
(AP, 9/29/06)
2006 Sep 29, The World Diamond Council suggested that all Ghanaian rough-diamond exports be suspended to ensure that Ivorian diamonds were not being illegally exported. Rebel-controlled mines in Ivory Coast produced diamonds worth up to $23 million that were being smuggled to Mali and Ghana, violating UN sanctions and funding the rebel war effort.
(Econ, 11/11/06, p.53)
2006 Sep 29, A senior official said Indian authorities plan to nearly double the number of treatment centers providing free drugs and medical care to people battling HIV/AIDS.
(AP, 9/29/06)
2006 Sep 29, In central India, higher cast villagers of Khairlanji attacked and brutally killed the wife of Bhaiyalal Bhotmanje, a low cast Dalit, along with his 2 sons (19 & 21) and daughter (17). Bhotmanje had left his ancestral occupation of handling cow carcasses and successfully set up a small farm causing envy among neighbors. He escaped the attack thinking his family would not be bothered. Dalit neighborhoods soon exploded across Maharashtra state as protesters set vehicles and store fronts on fire.
(WSJ, 12/27/07, p.A1)
2006 Sep 29, In Iraq Kadhim Abdul-Hussein, the brother-in-law of Judge Mohammed Oreibi al-Khalifa, the new judge presiding over Saddam Hussein's genocide trial, was killed and his nephew was wounded in a shooting in Baghdad. Al-Khalifa had been deputy to the original chief judge in the trial. 3 other people died in scattered attacks. 10 bodies with signs of torture were found in and around Baghdad, apparently victims of the sectarian death squads. The names of more than 150 people who allegedly spied on their fellow Kurds for Saddam's mukhabarat intelligence service after the Kurdish uprising of 1991 were published by the Awina (Mirror) and Hawalati (Citizen) newspapers.
(AP, 9/29/06)(AFP, 10/1/06)
2006 Sep 29, Ireland’s PM Bertie Ahern faced mounting pressure to explain why he received money from Irish businessmen in England, a scandal threatening to torpedo his leadership after nine years in power.
(AP, 9/29/06)
2006 Sep 29, Israeli soldiers killed two Palestinians in the northern Gaza Strip. Tens of thousands of Hamas supporters marched in the Gaza Strip to show their backing for the militant group, even as its efforts to form a national unity government appeared stalled.
(AP, 9/29/06)
2006 Sep 29, A press report said Japan has decided to stop financial support for the development of Iran's largest onshore oil field if the Islamic republic continues uranium enrichment. The move means Japan's virtual withdrawal from its two billion-dollar contract to develop the Azadegan field. The contract was signed in 2004 by Inpex Corp., a Japanese oil exploration company that is supported by the government but also has private stakeholders.
(AP, 9/29/06)
2006 Sep 29, In Mexico a judge and four jail guards were killed in separate attacks in the Pacific resort city of Acapulco.
(AP, 9/29/06)
2006 Sep 29, A new report by Amnesty International alleged that Pakistani authorities have illegally detained innocent people on suspicion of terrorism and secretly imprisoned them or handed them to the US for money.
(AP, 9/29/06)
2006 Sep 29, Rosamund Carr, a New Jersey fashion designer who lived a colorful and tragic life for more than a half century in tumultuous central Africa, died in Rwanda. In 1999 she authored her memoir "Land of a Thousand Hills - My Life in Rwanda."
(AFP, 10/3/06)
2006 Sep 29, In Scotland police found the body of Angelika Kluk (23), a missing Polish student, at Saint Patrick's Roman Catholic Church in the Anderston area of Glasgow.
(AFP, 9/30/06)
2006 Sep 29, Somalia's Islamic fighters seized control of Jawill, a strategic village near the Ethiopian border, widening their grip over much of the southern part of the country. 3 pro-government militiamen and one Islamic courts fighter were killed during the gunbattle for the village.
(AP, 9/30/06)
2006 Sep 29, In Sri Lanka war planes bombed rebels and 8 people were killed in new violence. The UN warned that fighting between troops and Tamil guerrillas had badly hit tsunami reconstruction.
(AFP, 9/29/06)
2006 Sep 29, The UN Security Council extended the mandate of peacekeepers in Eritrea and Ethiopia by four months, and threatened to overhaul the mission if the two sides don't make progress toward demarcating their border.
(AP, 9/29/06)
2006 Sep 29, The UN Security Council allowed UN experts, who have recommended sanctions on top Sudanese officials, to continue monitoring atrocities and arms embargo violations in Darfur.
(AP, 9/29/06)
2006 Sep 29, Yemeni government forces raided a tribal settlement following the kidnappings of foreign tourists, arresting five suspects but killing two women and wounding three children.
(AP, 9/29/06)
2006 Sep 30, Police in North Charleston, SC, discovered the bodies of Detra Rainey and her 4 children. Michael Simmons (41), her husband but not the father of the children, was charged the next day with the murders.
(SFC, 10/2/06, p.A3)
2006 Sep 30, Isabel Bigley (80), Tony Award-winning actress, died in Los Angeles.
(AP, 9/30/07)
2006 Sep 30, Afghan President Hamid Karzai said that he and the Pakistani president will jointly lead a series of tribal gatherings along their countries' shared border to quell attacks by Pakistan-based Taliban rebels. A suicide bomber detonated his explosives in a pedestrian alley next to the Interior Ministry in Kabul, killing at least 12 people including a woman and 2 children.
(AP, 9/30/06)(SSFC, 10/1/06, p.A21)
2006 Sep 30, In Canada at least five people were crushed to death in their cars after the collapse of an overpass near Montreal.
(AP, 10/1/06)
2006 Sep 30, André Schwarz-Bart (b.1928), French novelist of Polish-Jewish origins, died in Guadeloupe. His books included the novel “The Last of the Just" (1960), based on the Jewish teaching that the fate of the world lies with 36 just men.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andre_Schwarz-Bart)(WSJ, 12/9/06, p.P12)
2006 Sep 30, India’s PM Manmohan Singh arrived in South Africa to expand trade links and commemorate the passive resistance movement initiated by Mahatma Gandhi in the African nation 100 years ago.
(AP, 9/30/06)
2006 Sep 30, A.N. Roy, Mumbai's police chief, said his team had cracked the July 11 bombing case and found solid evidence as that “the whole attack was planned by Pakistan's ISI and carried out by Lashkar-e-Taiba and their operatives in India." ISI or the Inter-Services Intelligence agency is Pakistan's military spy agency while Lashkar is a frontline Islamist group fighting against Indian rule in the disputed region of Kashmir. Pakistan and Lashkar rejected the allegations.
(Reuters, 9/30/06)
2006 Sep 30, Baghdad, Iraq, was put under a day long curfew to help break the cycle of violence. 6 people were killed in scattered violence around the country. Police found 10 bodies in Baghdad, apparently victims of sectarian death squads. Two other bodies were turned in to the morgue in Kut.
(AP, 9/30/06)(SSFC, 10/1/06, p.A21)
2006 Sep 30, A Kurdish guerrilla group declared a new unilateral cease-fire in its war for autonomy in Turkey's southeast, heeding a call from its imprisoned rebel leader.
(AP, 9/30/06)
2006 Sep 30, In northwest Nigeria families were swept away in a torrent of water and scores were feared dead in flooding from a dam collapse outside Zamfara state's capital city of Gusau. About 40 people were feared dead and 500 houses were washed away.
(AP, 10/1/06)
2006 Sep 30, Pakistan and United States signed a letter of acceptance for a multi-billion dollar package to supply the Pakistan Air Force with F-16 warplanes.
(AP, 10/2/06)
2006 Sep 30, Thousands of government employees and security officials filled the streets of Gaza, burning tires, blocking roads and firing in the air to protest delays and complications in receiving their long-awaited salaries.
(AP, 9/30/06)
2006 Sep 30, Russia said that it has suspended plans for further withdrawal of its troops from Georgia amid worsening relations between the two neighbors.
(AP, 9/30/06)
2006 Sep 30, Serbia's parliament approved a new constitution declaring UN-run Kosovo part of the Balkan state despite ongoing negotiations on the breakaway province's future.
(AP, 9/30/06)
2006 Sep 30, In Siberia Enver Ziganshin, chief engineer for Rusia Petroleum, was found shot dead at his country home. Rusia Petroleum an affiliate of BP PLC’s Russian joint venture, faced problems over its license to produce natural gas at the large Konvykta field.
(WSJ, 10/3/06, p.A6)
2006 Sep 30, In South Africa the 4th annual Homeless World Cup tournament ended. It brought together 500 players from 48 countries in a project aimed at helping homeless people turn their lives around. The first was held in Austria in 2003 with just five countries competing.
(AP, 9/29/06)
2006 Sep 30, In Tibet Sergiu Matei, a Romanian cameraman with an expedition climbing Cho Oyu, shot a video that shows Chinese forces fatally shooting Tibetan refugee Kelsang Namtso (17), who was with a group of people trying to flee to Nepal at the 19,000-foot Nanpa La Pass. Chinese border guards opened fire on some 75 Tibetans making their way over a 19,000-foot-high Himalayan pass, killing a 25-year-old Buddhist nun and another person. 32 were caught and detained. In January Jamyang Samten (15), one of those detained, escaped to India and provided the first reported account of the fate of the group. Some 3,000 Tibetans continued to sneak across the border to Nepal and India every year. In 2010 Jonathan Green authored “Murder in the High Himalaya: Loyalty, Tragedy, and Escape from Tibet."
(AP, 10/14/06)(Econ, 11/18/06, p.18)(AP, 1/30/07)(Econ, 6/12/10, p.96)
2006 Sep, In New Mexico the Second Chance prison facility opened for non-violent prisoners with substance-abuse problems. It was founded by Rick Pendery, a Scientologist and former real-estate developer, based on principles of L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology.
(WSJ, 1/19/07, p.A1)
2006 Sep, The Bank of San Francisco began operating as a program to provide banking services to low income residents not qualifying for regular bank accounts. The program was formed under the auspices of SF, the Federal Reserve and 15 banks and credit unions.
(SFC, 12/4/07, p.A1)
2006 Sep, Rielle Hunter, a film producer and mistress of North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, created a video sex tape with Edwards. In 2008 she had a child, fathered by Edwards, who only admitted paternity in 2010. Andrew Young, a former Edward’s loyalist, later viewed the tape and in 2010 authored a book that chronicled the affair.
(SFC, 1/30/10, p.A6)
2006 Sep, Irving, Texas, a city of some 200,000 people, signed up for the US government’s Criminal Alien Program (CAP), run by the Immigration and Customs agency. By the end of 2007 some 1,700 people from Irving were handed over for deportation.
(Econ, 12/15/07, p.36)
2006 Sep, In Ethiopia Shane Etzenhouser, an American software developer, premiered “Tsehai Loves Learning," an educational TV show for kids featuring a female giraffe with an insatiable thirst for knowledge.
(SFC, 12/28/06, p.E1)
2006 Sep, Japan’s government approved measures to block the transfer of funds to North Korea. The rules went into effect on Jan 4, 2007.
(Econ, 1/13/07, p.39)
2006 Sep, In Kenya farmers in the Machakos region built small dams and water retention ponds on the Ikiwe River with some $70,000 in aid from people in Archbold, Ohio. The Archbold Mennonite Church project was part of Foods Resource Bank, a Michigan-based hunger fighting organization that connects urban churches with rural farm groups.
(WSJ, 4/23/07, p.A1)
2006 Sep, Steve Wynn, a Las Vegas casino operator, opened an upscale casino in Macao.
(Econ, 1/27/07, p.66)
2006 Sep, In Nepal a warrant was issued for the arrest of Sitaram Prasain, who was accused of stealing $4.3 million from his own bank. Members of the Young Communist League kidnapped Prasain in June, 2007, and handed him over to the police.
(Econ, 6/16/07, p.51)
2006 Sep, In Pakistan scores of wives, mothers and children began protesting outside government offices on behalf of hundreds of men arrested in secret and demanded that Pres. Musharraf release them.
(SFC, 12/28/06, p.A17)
2006 Sep, In Sesena, Spain, a town of fewer than 10,000 40 km from Madrid, some 13,000 apartments were under construction. Mayor Manuel Fuentes expected 40,000 new arrivals.
(Econ, 9/16/06, p.61)
2006 Sep-2006 Oct, In Egypt for the seventh year running, a mysterious black cloud appeared over Cairo, triggering serious health concerns for the polluted city's 16 million residents. This year the black cloud coincided with the month of Ramadan, notorious for its traffic jams.
(AFP, 10/26/06)
2006 Sep, San Marino approved new regulations on fund management.
(Econ, 3/10/07, p.74)
