Timeline 2009 July - September
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2009 Jul 1, California’s Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a fiscal state of emergency after Lawmakers failed to balance the state's main checkbook. State Controller John Chiang said his office is prepared to issue IOUs totaling $3.3 billion in July.
(AP, 7/2/09)
2009 Jul 1, Utah ditched a 40-year-old requirement for bar customers to fill out applications and pay a fee to become a member of a private club before entering a bar.
(SFC, 7/2/09, p.A5)
2009 Jul 1, The Financial Times reported that Citigroup Inc increased interest rates on up to 15 million US credit card accounts just months before curbs on such rises come into effect.
(AP, 7/1/09)
2009 Jul 1, A US federal “cash for clunkers" scheme went into effect providing incentives for car buyers.
(Econ, 7/11/09, p.66)
2009 Jul 1, US car giants General Motors and Ford suspended operations on their production lines in Russia as the deepening economic crisis squeezes Russian consumers' demand for new cars.
(AP, 7/1/09)
2009 Jul 1, Karl Malden (b.1912 as Mladen Sekulovich), Academy Award-winning actor, died. His intelligent characterizations on stage, screen and television made him a star despite his plain looks. His more than 50 film credits included "Patton," "Pollyanna," "Fear Strikes Out," "The Sting II," "Bombers B-52," "Cheyenne Autumn," and "All Fall Down." Malden gained his greatest fame as Lt. Mike Stone in the 1970s television show "The Streets of San Francisco," in which Michael Douglas played the veteran detective's junior partner.
(AP, 7/2/09)(SFC, 7/2/09, p.A8)
2009 Jul 1, In southern Afghanistan an explosion killed two NATO troops and wounded six others.
(AP, 7/1/09)
2009 Jul 1, Albania's governing Democrats claimed they won weekend parliamentary elections, but the opposition Socialists accused PM Sali Berisha's party of attempting to snatch victory. Near complete results showed the Democrats were ahead by just over one percentage point. It was unclear whether Berisha had secured enough seats in parliament needed to govern alone.
(AP, 7/1/09)
2009 Jul 1, In Argentina Juan Luis Manzur, a doctor and vice governor in Tucuman province, replaced Health Minister Graciela Ocana, who resigned on June 29 as concerns over the virus rose. He announced plans to boost public health spending by $263 million this year and said pregnant women could miss work for 15 days to avoid contracting swine flu.
(AP, 7/2/09)
2009 Jul 1, Bolivia enacted what animal rights defenders called the world's first law that prohibits the use of animals in circuses. A handful of other countries have banned the use of wild animals in circuses, but the Bolivian ban includes domestic animals as well. The law would become effective on July 1, 2010.
(AP, 7/30/09)(AP, 4/16/10)
2009 Jul 1, In Brazil Sao Paulo state officials launched what they say is Latin America's first passenger bus with an electric engine powered by hydrogen fuel cells. The bus will start test runs on the streets of Sao Paulo in August and will be joined by three similarly powered vehicles next year.
(AP, 7/1/09)
2009 Jul 1, British actress Mollie Sugden (86), best-known for her role as Mrs. Slocombe in the television comedy series "Are You Being Served?" (1972-1985), died.
(Reuters, 7/2/09)
2009 Jul 1, In Germany Marwa al-Sherbini (31), a pregnant Muslim woman from Egypt, was stabbed to death in a Dresden courtroom as her young son (3) watched. She was involved in a court case against her neighbor for calling her a terrorist and was set to testify against him when Alex Wiens (28) stabbed her at least 16 times inside the courtroom. Her husband, Elwy Okaz, who was in Germany on a research fellowship, came to her aid and was also stabbed by Wiens and shot in the leg by a security guard who initially mistook him for the attacker. On Nov 11 Wiens was sentenced to life in prison.
(AP, 7/6/09)(AFP, 11/11/09)
2009 Jul 1, In Honduras thousands demonstrated for the return of ousted Pres. Manuel Zelaya. Thousands more rallied in favor of the military-backed government. The Organization of American States said Honduran coup leaders have three days to restore deposed President Manuel Zelaya to power, before Honduras risks being suspended from the group.
(AP, 6/30/09)(SFC, 7/2/09, p.A3)
2009 Jul 1, The Indian government announced a rise in petrol and diesel fuel prices, saying its hand had been forced by the increase in global crude oil prices.
(AFP, 7/1/09)
2009 Jul 1, In India Tyeb Mehta (b.1925), a celebrated modernist painter, died in Mumbai.
(SSFC, 7/5/09, p.C8)
2009 Jul 1, In Iran opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi reasserted his claim that the June 12 election was illegitimate, and demanded that Iran's cleric-led government release all political prisoners and institute electoral reforms and press freedoms. A reformist political group said that authorities banned the daily Etemad-e-Melli (National Confidence) newspaper allied to presidential candidate Mehdi Karroubi after he denounced Iran's government as "illegitimate" because of claims of voting fraud. Former President Mohammad Khatami lashed out at what he termed "a poisonous security situation" in the wake of violent street protests.
(AP, 7/1/09)(AP, 7/2/09)
2009 Jul 1, In Iran Clotilde Reiss (24), a French academic, was among the hundreds of people detained following the disputed presidential elections. She was released on bail after a month and a half and later convicted of provoking unrest and spying. In May, 2010, she was released after paying a $300,000 fine.
(AP, 5/15/10)(AP, 5/16/10)
2009 Jul 1, Iraq's government approved a BP-led consortium's offer to develop a giant southern oil field near Basra, moving forward with the only deal struck during a disappointing international oil auction. On Oct 16 the Iraqi government approved the deal by BP and its Chinese partner CNPC to develop the 17.8 billion barrel Rumaila field, the 2nd largest in the Middle East. A bombing in Kirkuk killed at least 30 people.
(AP, 7/1/09)(AP, 7/2/09)(AP, 10/17/09)(Econ, 12/4/10, p.58)
2009 Jul 1, In Libya an African Union summit opened.
(AP, 7/1/09)
2009 Jul 1, In Namibia the annual seal hunt opened despite objections by animal welfare groups. Hunters were expected to club over 90,000 seals including 85,000 pups by Nov 15.
(SFC, 7/7/09, p.A2)(AFP, 8/4/09)
2009 Jul 1, In Nicaragua Managua Mayor Alexis Arguello (b.1952), a three-time world boxing champion, was found dead at his home. The La Prensa newspaper reported he was found with a gunshot wound to the chest in an apparent suicide.
(AP, 7/1/09)
2009 Jul 1, Nigeria's President Umaru Yar'Adua extended an amnesty offer to the jailed rebel leader Henry Okah, detained on treason charges for over 18 months.
(AP, 7/1/09)
2009 Jul 1, In northwestern Pakistan tribesmen attacked Taliban hide-outs, killing 28 militants and suffering seven fatalities themselves. The intensifying battles prompted them to ask for army troops to help. A new opinion poll was released saying 81 percent of Pakistanis view the fundamentalist Muslim militants as a critical threat to the country.
(AP, 7/1/09)
2009 Jul 1, Businessman Ricardo Martinelli (57) was sworn in as Panama's new president, promising to start the biggest job-creation push ever in the country. Martinelli said he wants to make the nation of 3.3 million inhabitants the best place to do business in Latin America.
(AP, 7/1/09)
2009 Jul 1, In Russia thousands of casinos, slot-machine parlors and betting halls across the country shut down, complying with sweeping new restrictions that require all gambling business to relocate to four remote regions of the country. Lawmakers had signed the casino closure law in 2006. Under the new law, casinos and slot machines will be allowed to operate only in Kaliningrad on the Baltic Sea; the Primorsky region on the Pacific coast; the mountainous Altai region in Siberia; and near the southern cities of Krasnodar and Rostov.
(AP, 7/1/09)
2009 Jul 1, In San Sebastian, Spain, a meeting was underway of five regional fisheries management organizations, tasked primarily with protecting tuna populations worldwide. The groups representing 80 countries met for the first time in two years to assess stocks of the fish and determine what more can be done to save the 23 tuna populations, nine of which are under threat.
(AP, 7/1/09)
2009 Jul 1, Darfur rebels signed an accord with one of Sudan's main opposition parties in Cairo, agreeing to push for a new transitional government, a move that will infuriate Khartoum.
(Reuters, 7/3/09)
2009 Jul 1, Sweden took over the rotating presidency of the EU.
(Econ, 7/4/09, p.51)
2009 Jul 1, Switzerland said it had refused a request to extradite a Rwandan national wanted in his own country for alleged genocide and war crimes. Other European countries have also refused extradition requests arguing that suspects cannot at present receive a fair trial in the country.
(AFP, 7/1/09)
2009 Jul 1, In southern Thailand a rampaging elephant stomped three rubber tappers to death after it was left to wander freely by its handler.
(AP, 7/1/09)
2009 Jul 1, Zimbabwe's former finance minister Simba Makoni launched a new opposition party that promises to "clean up" the country's political landscape.
(AFP, 7/1/09)
2009 Jul 2, The US Labor dept. reported that employers cut a larger-than-expected 467,000 jobs in June, driving the unemployment rate up to a 26-year high of 9.5 percent, suggesting that the economy's road to recovery will be bumpy.
(AP, 7/2/09)
2009 Jul 2, In NYC federal marshals seized disgraced financier Bernard Madoff's $7 million Manhattan penthouse and forced his wife to move out and leave her possessions behind, including a fur coat she had asked to take with her.
(AP, 7/3/09)
2009 Jul 2, California State Controller John Chiang began to issuing IOUs to pay taxpayer refunds and vendors. On July 9 the SEC classified the IOUs as municipal securities subject to regulation to prevent their being traded by entrepreneurs in an open secondary market.
(SFC, 7/10/09, p.A1, 12)
2009 Jul 2, In South Carolina 2 victims were found in their family's small furniture and appliance shop near downtown Gaffney around closing time. Stephen Tyler (45) was killed. His daughter, Abby Tyler (15) died from her wounds on July 4. A day earlier and about seven miles away, family members found the bodies of Hazel Linder (83) and her 50-year-old daughter, Gena Linder Parker, bound and shot in Linder's home. The killing spree began June 27, about 10 miles from Tyler Home Center, where peach farmer Kline Cash (63) was found shot in his living room.
(AP, 7/4/09)(SSFC, 7/5/09, p.A11)
2009 Jul 2, Thousands of US Marines poured from helicopters and armored vehicles into Taliban-controlled villages in southern Afghanistan in Operation Khanjar (Strike of the Sword), the first major operation under President Barack Obama's strategy to stabilize the country. A parallel British operation, Panchai Palang (Panther’s Claw), fought the Taliban for control of the Nad Ali district. The Taliban responded with their own Operation Foladi (Iron Net).
(AP, 7/2/09)(AP, 7/6/09)(Econ, 7/11/09, p.40)
2009 Jul 2, A British RAF Tornado fighter aircraft crashed in a remote area of Scotland.
(AFP, 7/2/09)
2009 Jul 2, Canada said it has forgiven C$2.3 million in debt owed by Haiti as part of a plan that aims to relieve the world's poorest countries of C$1.3 billion in debt.
(Reuters, 7/2/09)
2009 Jul 2, Pina Bausch (b.1940), influential German choreographer and dancer, died. She was the artistic director of the Tanztheater Wuppertal, founded in 1973.
(SFC, 7/4/09, p.B3)
2009 Jul 2, A top Indian court issued a landmark ruling that decriminalized gay sex between consenting adults by declaring Section 377 of a colonial-era ban on homosexuality unconstitutional. The decision applied only to the territory of the capital, New Delhi. In December 2013 two Supreme Court judges overturned the ruling. In 2018 the top court said it would re-examine its earlier decision.
(AFP, 7/2/09)(SFC, 7/3/09, p.A5)(Econ, 10/11/14, p.29)(SFC, 1/9/18, p.A2)
2009 Jul 2, In Iraq bombings killed at least three people in the Baghdad area in the first significant violence since Iraqi forces assumed responsibility for securing cities after the withdrawal of US combat troops from urban areas earlier this week.
(AP, 7/2/09)
2009 Jul 2, Manabu Kurita caught a 22-pound, 4-ounce largemouth bass on Lake Biwa, Japan's largest lake. On Jan 8, 2010, the Florida-based International Game Fish Association credited him with tying the 77-year-old world record for catching the biggest largemouth bass.
(AP, 1/9/10)
2009 Jul 2, Amnesty International accused Israel and Palestinian militants of war crimes in the most comprehensive report on the recent Gaza war. Both sides rejected the findings.
(AP, 7/2/09)
2009 Jul 2, Liberia's truth and reconciliation commission recommended that ex-President Charles Taylor and seven other former warlords be prosecuted for crimes against humanity for their alleged roles in the West African country's civil war.
(AP, 7/2/09)
2009 Jul 2, African heads of state meeting in Libya discussed a drastic new decision against the International Criminal Court that would in practice give Sudan's president impunity from prosecution for war crimes by the ICC, a draft document at the AU summit showed. Leaders also struggled to overcome divisions on a proposed "African government", as Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi pressed for a powerful new continental authority.
(AP, 7/2/09)(AFP, 7/2/09)
2009 Jul 2, In Nepal landslides triggered by monsoon rains swept through three villages in the mountainous west, burying homes and killing at least nine people.
(AP, 7/2/09)
2009 Jul 2, North Korea test-fired four short-range missiles, further stoking tension in the region that was already high due to Pyongyang's nuclear test and threats to boost its nuclear arsenal in response to UN sanctions.
(Reuters, 7/2/09)
2009 Jul 2, In Rawalpindi, Pakistan, a suicide bomber targeted employees of a nuclear facility left 29 people wounded. Near Peshawar, the main city in the northwest, a roadside bomb killed two policemen and wounded five more. Maulvi Nazir, a powerful militant chieftain in the frontier region of South Waziristan, declared a cease-fire against security forces.
(AP, 7/2/09)
2009 Jul 2, In Peru two buses crashed head-on on a mountain road near Lake Titicaca, killing at least 23 people and injuring 50 more.
(AP, 7/2/09)
2009 Jul 2, South Africa urged its public service doctors to halt wildcat strikes and accept a revised wage offer after low salaries and abysmal working conditions led them to abandon patients.
(AFP, 7/2/09)
2009 Jul 2, Spain's intelligence chief, Alberto Saiz, resigned amid allegations he used government money to go on hunting and fishing trips and had staffers remodel his house.
(AP, 7/2/09)
2009 Jul 2, The BBC reported that Syria’s Pres. Assad has issued a presidential decree ordering honor killers to face at least 2 years in prison.
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8130639.stm)
2009 Jul 2, The UN nuclear agency's governing board (IAEA) chose Yukiya Amano, a veteran Japanese diplomat as its new head. The term of the present head, Mohamed ElBaradei, ends in November.
(AP, 7/2/09)
2009 Jul 2, In Vietnam an official said for every 100 girls born to Vietnamese families, there are 112 boys born, a disparity in the sex ratio that has been rapidly increasing in recent years. The rising imbalance was blamed on a cultural preference for boys who can continue the bloodline and the belief that boys can better care for parents as they age.
(AP, 7/2/09)
2009 Jul 3, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin announced her decision to leave office more than a year early, effective July 26. The announcement left open the possibility of a presidential run.
(AP, 7/4/09)
2009 Jul 3, In Washington state federal agents said they have arrested 31 people and busted a drug trafficking ring that was directed by a cartel in Jalisco, Mexico. The 2-week Operation Arctic Chill seized 23 guns including a .50 Desert Eagle pistol and an AK-47-type assault rifle.
(SFC, 7/4/09, p.A5)
2009 Jul 3, The “Dog Days of Summer" officially begin and continue to August 11. This period got its name from the Egyptian belief that the Dog Star, Sirius, added heat to Earth as it rose and fell with the sun during this period.
(SFC, 7/3/09, p.D8)
2009 Jul 3, US Marines moved into villages in Taliban strongholds in southern Afghanistan, meeting little resistance as they tried to win over local chiefs on the second day of the biggest military operation here since the fall of the Taliban government in 2001. In southeast Afghanistan two US soldiers were killed when their base came under attack. The attack included an attempted suicide truck bombing of the base in the Zirok district of southeastern Paktika province. As many as 30 Taliban insurgents might have been killed when troops called in air strikes.
(AP, 7/3/09)(AP, 7/6/09)
2009 Jul 3, Algeria, Niger and Nigeria signed an accord to build a 10-billion-dollar trans-Saharan gas pipeline linking vast reserves in Nigeria to Europe.
(AFP, 7/3/09)
2009 Jul 3, Australia announced a 155 million US dollar package for isolated Aboriginal communities, after a new report revealed shocking levels of child abuse among the downtrodden minority.
(AFP, 7/3/09)
2009 Jul 3, In Brazil prison guards foiled a new attempt to smuggle a cell phone into Danilo Pinheiro prison near the city of Sorocaba by a carrier pigeon wearing a tiny backpack. Police said that the practice is becoming almost commonplace.
(AP, 7/3/09)
2009 Jul 3, In London a fire ripped through the 12-story Lakanal House block of Sceaux Gardens Estate, a 1960s-era public housing block in south London, killing six people including a newborn baby.
(AFP, 7/4/09)
2009 Jul 3, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, a top Iranian cleric, said that some of the detained Iranian staffers of the British Embassy in Tehran will be put on trial, and he accused Britain of a role in instigating widespread protests that erupted over the country's disputed presidential election.
(AP, 7/3/09)
2009 Jul 3, In Kashmir police used batons and tear gas to break up fresh anti-India protests, with more than two dozen people injured in the clashes in Srinagar and Baramullah.
(AFP, 7/3/09)
2009 Jul 3, In Libya peacekeepers in Somalia and the war crimes warrant for Sudan's president dominated the final day of an African Union summit, after a late-night compromise on a new regional authority. Africa's leaders agreed to denounce the International Criminal Court and refuse to extradite Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir, who has been indicted for crimes against humanity in Darfur.
(AFP, 7/3/09)(AP, 7/3/09)
2009 Jul 3, In Mexico City kidnappers opened fire with AK-47 assault rifles during an attempted rescue of the victim. The rescue failed with catastrophic errors. When police fired back, two commanders, including the chief of the city's elite rapid response force, were shot from behind by their own officers. Meanwhile, one of the kidnappers inside the home fatally shot Yolanda Ceballos (50) before killing himself. Seven other kidnappers were captured. Anti-kidnapping chief Juan Maya Aviles was later suspended.
(AP, 8/21/09)
2009 Jul 3, In Pakistan US missiles slammed into the hideout of Taliban commander Noor Wali, allied to warlord Baitullah Mehsud in the tribal belt in South Waziristan. Another missile strike hit an insurgent communications center in Kokat Khel. The strikes reportedly killed a total of 17 people. Pakistani warplanes bombed suspected militant hide-outs, killing at least four insurgents and wounding seven others. The Pakistani military said at least 13 militants and four local tribesmen were killed over the last 24 hours in the districts of Swat and Dir. A Pakistani helicopter crash killed 26 security personnel on the mountainous border of the Orakzai and Khyber ethnic Pashtun tribal regions. The Taliban claimed responsibility, but a senior security official said the military MI-17 helicopter had crashed due to a technical fault. Ehsan, alias Abu Jandal, a mid-level Taliban commander, was killed in Qambar area.
(AFP, 7/3/09)(AP, 7/3/09)(AFP, 7/4/09)(SFC, 7/4/09, p.A3)(AFP, 7/5/09)
2009 Jul 3, A top Kremlin aide said Russia will allow the US to ship weapons across its territory to Afghanistan, in a gesture aimed at bolstering US military operations and improving strained ties between Washington and Moscow.
(AP, 7/3/09)
2009 Jul 3, In Sudan gunmen kidnapped an Irish and Ugandan women from the office of the Irish aid group Goal in the North Darfur city of Kutum. A Sudanese watchman was also seized before being released later. Arab tribes supported by the government were implicated. Sharon Commins (33) and her Ugandan colleague, Hilda Kuwuki (42), were released on Oct 18.
(AFP, 7/4/09)(AP, 10/18/09)(AFP, 10/24/09)
2009 Jul 3, Sudanese police arrested 13 women in a raid on a Khartoum cafe for wearing trousers in violation of the country's strict Islamic law. 10 of them were flogged inside a Khartoum police station. One of those arrested, journalist Lubna Hussein, said she is challenging the charges, which can be punishable by up to 40 lashes.
(AP, 7/13/09)(AP, 7/21/09)
2009 Jul 3, The head of Venezuela's telecommunications regulatory agency said that 240 radio stations will have their licenses revoked for failing to update their registrations with the government. The government now controls six television channels, including the Caracas-based international network Telesur, two national radio networks and other smaller media outlets including 600 radio stations and 72 community TV stations.
(AP, 7/3/09)
2009 Jul 4, Attacks began on more than two dozen Internet sites in the United States and South Korea and some were disabled by hackers. South Korea's spy agency later said the attacks were possibly linked to North Korea. Some of the affected US government Web sites, such as the Treasury Department, Federal Trade Commission and Secret Service, were still reporting problems days after it started during the July 4 holiday.
(Reuters, 7/8/09)(AP, 7/8/09)
2009 Jul 4, NYC police arrested a dozen people and seized 33 pounds of heroin worth $30 million that was stuffed inside Build-A-Bear toys.
(SSFC, 7/5/09, p.A11)
2009 Jul 4, In North Carolina 2 workers were killed when a truckload of fireworks exploded on a dock at the southern end of Ocracoke Island. 2 others soon died from their injuries.
(AP, 7/5/09)(SFC, 7/6/09, p.A10)
2009 Jul 4, In Tennessee Steve McNair (36), a four-time Pro Bowl selection, was found dead with multiple gunshot wounds on a sofa in his Nashville condominium living room. Sahel Kazemi, (20), discovered near him, was killed by a single gunshot wound. McNair was married with four children.
(AP, 7/5/09)
2009 Jul 4, Drake Levin (b.1946), blues guitarist and former lead guitarist for Paul Revere and the Raiders, died of cancer in SF.
(SFC, 7/17/09, p.D5)
2009 Jul 4, In Afghanistan insurgent attacks in Helmand province killed 3 British soldiers. Gunmen in the east abducted 16 mine-clearing personnel working for the United Nations as they traveled between Paktia and Khost provinces.
(Reuters, 7/4/09)(AP, 7/5/09)(AP, 7/6/09)
2009 Jul 4, Albania's opposition Socialists charged that the ruling Democrats were improperly trying to influence the country's lengthy vote count by declaring victory before all ballots from last week's national election were tallied.
(AP, 7/4/09)
2009 Jul 4, In Canada an explosion damaged a natural gas pipeline in northeast British Columbia, the sixth attack on an energy facility in that area in recent months. In a letter to a local newspaper the bomber gave EnCana until mid-October to cease operations in the area, or face larger attacks.
(Reuters, 7/4/09)(Econ, 8/15/09, p.32)
2009 Jul 4, A joint French-Spanish operation captured 3 suspected members of ETA in the French city of Pau.
(SFC, 7/6/09, p.A2)
2009 Jul 4, The OAS suspended Honduras participation in the organization because of last week's military coup.
(AP, 7/4/09)
2009 Jul 4, In Mali dozens of people were killed during clashes in the Timbuktu region between the army and Al-Qaeda of the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) fighters.
(AFP, 7/21/09)
2009 Jul 4, In Myanmar UN chief Ban Ki-moon gave a rare public speech outlining his vision for a democratic Myanmar, just hours after the ruling junta refused to let him meet opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
(AFP, 7/4/09)
2009 Jul 4, Nigeria's rebel group MEND threatened to thwart a 10-billion-dollar trans-Saharan gas pipeline linking vast reserves in Nigeria to Europe. The army vowed to protect the project. Rebels Sichem Peace oil tanker and its six crew members. The ship and crew were freed July 21 after spending 18 days in captivity in the Niger Delta.
(AFP, 7/4/09)(AP, 7/22/09)
2009 Jul 4, North Korea fired seven ballistic missiles off its eastern coast, in a violation of UN resolutions and an apparent message of defiance to the US on its Independence Day.
(AP, 7/4/09)
2009 Jul 4, Pakistani warplanes and helicopter gunships pounded Taliban positions in the country's volatile northwest, killing at least 12 suspected insurgents. Clashes between tribesmen and Taliban fighters left 16 people dead in the remote Mohmand region. Army helicopters attacked a militant position in the area the previous day’s helicopter crash and struck a militant bunker on a peak. 10 bodies were reported found lying there.
(AP, 7/4/09)(Reuters, 7/4/09)
2009 Jul 5, In Florida 2 monorail trains crashed in the Magic Kingdom section of Walt Disney World, killing one train's operator.
(AP, 7/5/09)
2009 Jul 5, John Bachar (b.1957), free-style rock climber, fell to his death from a dike wall in the eastern Sierra near Mammoth Lakes, Ca.
(Econ, 7/18/09, p.84)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bachar)
2009 Jul 5, Terry Herbert (55), an unemployed treasure hunter, unearthed the biggest hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold and silver ever found in a country field in Staffordshire. The trove of at least 1,350 items, including five kilos (11 pounds) of gold and a smaller amount of silver, was found by Herbert with a metal detector near his home in Burntwood, some 15 miles north of Birmingham. It is believed to date from the seventh century AD, and may have belonged to Saxon royalty. It was later valued at more than three million pounds, to be split equally between the man who found it and the owner of the land.
(AFP, 9/24/09)(AFP, 11/26/09)(www.nydailynews.com/topics/Terry+Herbert)
2009 Jul 5, Bulgaria held parliamentary elections. The Conservative opposition center-right GERB party, led by ex-wrestler Boyko Borisov, won elections with 39.7% of the vote as voters punished the governing Socialists for failing to crack down on corruption.
(Reuters, 7/5/09)(AP, 7/6/09)(Econ, 7/11/09, p.52)(Econ, 1/9/10, p.51)
2009 Jul 5, In China’s far west protesters from a Muslim ethnic group clashed with police, with activists saying police fired shots in the air and used batons to disperse a crowd that had swelled to nearly 1,000. Over the next few days some 192 people were killed and over 800 wounded in protests that roiled Urumqi, the capital of western Xinjiang province. State media said at least 20 people have died and more than 670,000 had to be evacuated in China after torrential rain and floods destroyed houses, damaged roads and caused rivers to overflow.
(AP, 7/5/09)(AFP, 7/5/09)(Time.com, 7/6/09)(AP, 7/16/09)
2009 Jul 5, Guinea-Bissau said the second round of presidential elections has been brought forward to July 26 to enable farmers to continue harvesting unhindered.
(AFP, 7/5/09)
2009 Jul 5, Honduras' ousted President Manuel Zelaya said he was getting on a flight home to reclaim his post, accompanied by the UN General Assembly president and a group of journalists. The interim government said it ordered the military to prevent the landing of Zelaya's plane. Soldiers clashed with thousands of Zelaya backers massed at the airport in hopes of welcoming home the deposed leader removed a week earlier. Isis Obed Murillo Mencia (19) was killed by soldiers as a crowd tried to break through an airport fence. Pilots of the plane loaned by Venezuelan Pres. Hugo Chavez circled the airport and decided not to risk a crash.
(AP, 7/5/09)(AP, 7/6/09)(SFC, 7/7/09, p.A3)
2009 Jul 5, Iran said it has released a British-Greek journalist held for more than two weeks following its disputed presidential elections as dissent continued. Ali Reza Beheshti, the son of a prominent Iranian revolutionary icon, made a rare public push for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's removal from office. The Assembly of Qom Seminary Scholars and Researchers, a pro-reform Iranian clerical group, said the outcome of last month's presidential vote was "invalid," even though Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has upheld the result.
(AP, 7/5/09)(Reuters, 7/5/09)
2009 Jul 5, In Iraq an attack on the checkpoint in western Baghdad killed two Iraqi police officers and three soldiers.
(AP, 7/6/09)
2009 Jul 5, Mexicans voted in midterm congressional elections. The old Institutional Revolutionary Party made a big comeback in defiance of those who had written off what is still the country's biggest and most representative party. The PAN will lose some of its 206 seats in the lower house, and the PRI stands to more than double its 106 seats.
(AP, 7/5/09)(AP, 7/6/09)
2009 Jul 5, Nigerian rebels announced they had launched a fresh attack on an oil facility run by the Anglo-Dutch group Shell in the restive Niger Delta. The militants destroyed a Chevron oil pipeline junction in the latest attack on Nigeria's key money earner since the government offered an amnesty.
(AP, 7/5/09)(AFP, 7/6/09)
2009 Jul 5, Pakistani fighter jets targeted suspected Taliban hide-outs in a tribal region near Afghanistan, killing as many as six people in North Waziristan. Gunship helicopters shelled militant hideouts at Mangaltan area of Charbagh town. At least ten militants were killed in the shelling. At least three militants were killed and many injured in shelling in the Orakzai region. Elsewhere in the northwest, two bomb explosions killed two people and wounded 15 more in Upper Dir district.
(AP, 7/5/09)(AFP, 7/5/09)
2009 Jul 5, In the southern Philippines suspected Muslim guerrillas detonated a bomb near a Roman Catholic cathedral in Cotabato city, killing at least five people and wounding 46.
(AP, 7/5/09)
2009 Jul 5, In Somalia heavy shelling between rebels and government forces near the presidential palace killed at least 12 people. PM Omar Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke looked for help from more African Union peacekeepers.
(AP, 7/5/09)
2009 Jul 5, An official Zimbabwe newspaper reported that the government has promised to withdraw soldiers from diamond fields in the east, a week after a rights group alleged the military was committing killings and abuses in the area.
(AP, 7/5/09)
2009 Jul 6, In San Francisco crews cleaning a homeless encampment in McLaren Park discovered a body later identified as Ronnie Brown (32), who was last seen in San Leandro on Oct 20, 2007. Brown, aka Allah, was on parole for a weapons conviction and had been associated with people connected to Oakland’s Your Black Muslim Bakery.
(SFC, 7/15/09, p.A13)
2009 Jul 6, In North Carolina suspected killer Patrick Burris (41), a career criminal paroled just two months ago, was shot to death by officers investigating a burglary complaint at a home in Gastonia, 30 miles from Gaffney, SC, where the killing spree started June 27.
(AP, 7/7/09)
2009 Jul 6, Robert McNamara (b.1916), former US defense secretary, died. He was one of the main architects of the US war in Vietnam (1961-1968). McNamara wrote or co-authored 11 books on topics that mainly focused on issues of defense and development, the most recent one in 2001.
(AFP, 7/6/09)
2009 Jul 6, In northern Afghanistan four US soldiers were among six people killed by a roadside bomb in Kunduz province. Two Americans were killed in a roadside blast in southern Afghanistan. An American soldier died in a firefight with militants in the east. In southern Kandahar, a suicide bomber killed two people when he drove a car packed with explosives toward a line of truck drivers waiting to supply foreign troops. The Taliban movement said they had launched a guerrilla operation to thwart a major assault by newly deployed US Marines on their Helmand strongholds. 3 NATO troops died in a helicopter crash in Zabul province.
(AP, 7/6/09)(AFP, 7/6/09)(AP, 7/7/09)
2009 Jul 6, The 2nd Panafrican Festival opened in Algiers and was scheduled to last to July 20. The first Panafrican Festival took place back in 1969.
(AP, 7/9/09)
2009 Jul 6, In Croatia deputy Jadranka Kosor (b.1953), a former journalist, was confirmed as the new prime minister.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jadranka_Kosor)
2009 Jul 6, Ethnic Somali rebels (ONLF) in Ethiopia's Ogaden region claimed they killed 90 government troops in recent clashes, but the government denied any losses, claiming victory instead.
(AFP, 7/6/09)
2009 Jul 6, Honduras' interim government closed its main airport to all flights after blocking the runway to prevent the return of ousted President Manuel Zelaya.
(AP, 7/6/09)
2009 Jul 6, In western India people began falling ill after a night of drinking tainted home-brewed liquor. The death toll soon rose to at least 112.
(AP, 7/8/09)(AP, 7/9/09)(AP, 7/10/09)
2009 Jul 6, In Iraq a car bomb targeted a police patrol in Mosul but missed, killing an 18-year-old man and injuring eight other bystanders.
(AP, 7/6/09)
2009 Jul 6, Israel deported Cynthia McKinney, a former US congresswoman, Mairead Corrigan Maguire, a Nobel peace prize laureate, and other activists who were arrested and jailed after trying to break the naval blockade of the Gaza Strip. The Israeli navy seized their boat last week as it tried to sail with medical supplies from Cyprus to Gaza.
(AP, 7/6/09)
2009 Jul 6, Liberia's truth and reconciliation commission recommended barring President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and dozens of other high-profile figures from public office for 30 years for supporting armed groups in the country's civil wars.
(AP, 7/7/09)
2009 Jul 6, Nepal's national assembly sat for the first time in more than two months after the Maoist party agreed to halt protests that have paralyzed parliament.
(AFP, 7/6/09)
2009 Jul 6, In Russia President Barack Obama opened his first Moscow summit with confidence. Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev struck a preliminary deal to reduce their stockpiles of nuclear warheads to as few as 1,500 each, pointing the two countries' arsenals toward lower levels than in any previous arms control agreement.
(AP, 7/6/09)
2009 Jul 6, Vasily Aksyonov (b.1932), Russian novelist and Soviet dissident, died in Moscow. He was forced into exile in 1980 after being branded as “anti-Soviet" and lived in the US for over two decades. His over 20 novels included “The Moscow Saga" (1994), which was adopted for a popular TV series in 2004.
(SFC, 7/8/09, p.D5)
2009 Jul 6, The office of South Korea's Pres. Lee Myung-bak said he will donate about 33.1 billion won ($26 million), almost all of his personal fortune, to establish a new youth scholarship program.
(AP, 7/6/09)
2009 Jul 6, Vatican Radio began airing advertisements for the first time in its 80-year history. Vatican debt last year was pegged at $22 Million.
(SFC, 7/27/09, p.D3)
2009 Jul 6, In Yemen a barber was publicly executed after he was found guilty of raping and killing an 11-year-old boy who came to his shop for a haircut. The barber was arrested in December 2008 and confessed during a January trial to raping the boy inside his salon, killing him and cutting up his body before dumping it outside San'a.
(AP, 7/6/09)
2009 Jul 7, Google announced its new operating system, Google Chrome OS, which would initially target low cost netbooks.
(SFC, 7/9/09, p.C1)
2009 Jul 7, Ron Nicolino (b.1939), artist and former resident of Point Richmond, Ca., died of cancer. He had attempted to string a collection of bras across the Grand Canyon in the mid-1990s, but was unable to get federal permission. Instead he and Ellen Duffy concocted the creation of a bra ball. A dispute led each one to create their own versions. Nicolino’s 1,600 pound “Big Giant Bra Ball" was left with his mother in Washington state.
(SFC, 7/16/09, p.D7)
2009 Jul 7, In eastern Afghanistan a hand grenade thrown at a police vehicle exploded in a crowd, killing one civilian and wounding 28 others in Khost province. A British soldier died in an explosion in Helmand province. He was the 7th British soldier killed in Afghanistan in a week. Hundreds of insurgents attacked police posts and a government building in eastern Nuristan province. The attacks continued into the next day leaving 6 policemen and 21 insurgents dead. (AP, 7/7/09)(AP, 7/8/09)
2009 Jul 7, British officials unveiled a memorial of 52 steel pillars in a London park, one for each victim of the July 7, 2005, attacks on the city's transit system.
(AP, 7/7/09)
2009 Jul 7, The Cameroonian newspaper Le Jour said five Chinese workers were abducted off the oil-rich Bakassi peninsula in Cameroon near the border with Nigeria.
(AFP, 7/8/09)
2009 Jul 7, Canadian officials said they had identified yet another new flu virus, this one a mixture of human and swine influenzas, in two farm workers in Western Canada.
(Reuters, 7/8/09)
2009 Jul 7, In China mobs of Han Chinese wielding meat cleavers and clubs and groups of Muslim Uighur men beat people in the streets of Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang region. The government imposed a curfew as it tried to stem communal violence. The official Xinhua News Agency said that 1,434 suspects had been arrested, and that checkpoints had been set up to stop rioters from escaping.
(AP, 7/7/09)
2009 Jul 7, In Egypt 22 people were killed in two separate accidents on the notoriously dangerous road between the capital Cairo and the southern city of Minya.
(AP, 7/7/09)
2009 Jul 7, Ethiopia's parliament adopted a new anti-terrorism bill despite criticism by rights groups that the legislation violates civil liberties.
(AFP, 7/7/09)
2009 Jul 7, In India at least 16 people were killed and 25 injured after a fire tore through a firecracker factory in Madurai.
(SFC, 7/9/09, p.A2)
2009 Jul 7, In Italy Matteo Salvini, a member of the often xenophobic, anti-immigrant Northern League party, resigned his seat in the lower chamber of Parliament after being filmed singing a racist chant about Naples and its residents.
(AP, 7/8/09)
2009 Jul 7, In northern Mexico an anti-crime activist and a neighbor were killed by gunmen believed linked to a drug cartel. Anti-crime activists said the slaying of Benjamin LeBaron, a US citizen, in Chihuahua state was the first time one of their own had been killed for denouncing crime and called it a chilling warning. Jose Rodolfo Escajeda, a lieutenant and one of the main operators of the Juarez cartel, was later presumed responsible for the killing of LeBaron and a neighbor near Nuevo Casas Grandes.
(AP, 7/8/09)(AP, 9/6/09)
2009 Jul 7, In Pakistan a US missile strike pulverized a compound in a stronghold of Taliban warlord Baitullah Mehsud, killing 16 foreign and local militants in South Waziristan. Two paramilitary soldiers were killed and nine security personnel wounded in three bomb attacks in North and South Waziristan. The military said that four militants were killed, including a brother of Ibn-e-Amin, one of the most-wanted Taliban commanders in the Swat valley.
(AFP, 7/7/09)
2009 Jul 7, In the Philippines a crude bomb hidden on a motorcycle exploded in a port city on southern Jolo island where al-Qaida-linked militants are active, killing at least two people and wounding 24.
(AP, 7/7/09)
2009 Jul 7, In Moscow President Barack Obama asked the Russian people to "forge a lasting partnership" with the US, but he acknowledged after talks with PM Vladimir Putin that on divisive issues there won't be "a meeting of the minds anytime soon.
(AP, 7/7/09)
2009 Jul 7, Spanish police arrested Jorge Alberto Soza (72), an ex-Argentine police official suspected of human rights abuses committed during the South American country's dirty war. Soza was wanted in Argentina in connection with 18 cases of kidnapping and torture between 1975 and 1977 when he was an assistant Federal Police commissioner and chief delegate in the southern Argentine city of Neuquen.
(AP, 7/24/09)
2009 Jul 7, Pope Benedict XVI called for a radical rethinking of global economy in “Caritas et Verite" (Charity in Truth) his 3rd encyclical.
(SFC, 7/8/09, p.A2)
2009 Jul 8, In SF Philip Day (63), former head of SF City College, was charged with 8 felonies for using public funds for political donations and other banned expenditures.
(SFC, 7/9/09, p.A1)
2009 Jul 8, In Chesnee, North Carolina, Ricky Lee Blackwell shot a girl (8) twice in the driveway of a home where he had taken her and his estranged wife to swim and play. The girl's father was dating Blackwell's estranged wife. Blackwell shot himself as police closed in. He was taken to a hospital but his condition wasn't released.
(AP, 7/9/09)
2009 Jul 8, In Afghanistan a roadside bomb attack killed two NATO soldiers.
(AP, 7/9/09)
2009 Jul 8, Australia said Chinese authorities had detained Stern Hu, Rio Tinto Ltd's top iron ore negotiator, as well as three other Rio employees on suspicion of espionage and stealing state secrets, threatening to strain already fraying ties.
(Reuters, 7/8/09)
2009 Jul 8, Australian residents of rural Bundanoon, hoping to protect the earth and their wallets, voted to ban the sale of bottled water, the first community in the country, and possibly the world, to take such a drastic step in the growing backlash against the industry.
(AP, 7/9/09)
2009 Jul 8, Azerbaijan police arrested Adnan Hadzhizade, a video blogger and member of the "OL!" opposition movement, and Emin Milli, a youth activist who also runs an Internet TV program, after a fight in a Baku cafe with two unknown men. Both were charged with hooliganism. A Baku court decision soon ordered two months of pretrial detention for Milli and Hadzhizade, which prompted criticism from international journalism advocates.
(AP, 7/14/09)
2009 Jul 8, The British government set out plans to toughen regulation of its banking sector, including greater oversight of bonuses paid to staff.
(AFP, 7/8/09)
2009 Jul 8, British scientists claimed to have created human sperm from embryonic stem cells for the first time. Several critics said the sperm cells were clearly abnormal. The paper was retracted by the end of the month because two paragraphs in its introduction had been plagiarized. Experts acknowledged that concerns might be raised about the study's credibility.
(SFC, 7/9/09, p.A5)(AP, 7/31/09)
2009 Jul 8, In China hundreds of helmeted troops in riot gear swarmed the central square of Urumqi, capital of western Xinjiang, after ethnic riots left some 192 dead. The city's Communist Party boss promised those behind the killings would be executed. On July 11 China said 137 of the riot victims were Han while 46 were Uighurs and one was a Hui, another Muslim group. Uighurs on the streets of Urumqi, and from exile activist groups disputed the new figures.
(AP, 7/8/09)(AP, 7/11/09)(AP, 7/15/09)
2009 Jul 8, In France some 60 youths rioted outside Saint-Etienne after hearing that man had tried to hang himself in jail. Mohamed Benmouna (21) died soon after at a hospital.
(SFC, 7/9/09, p.A2)
2009 Jul 8, In Haiti Bill Clinton said a lack of coordination among aid groups and Haitian leaders is hurting efforts to ease poverty in the Caribbean nation, as he wrapped up his first trip here as a special UN envoy.
(AP, 7/8/09)
2009 Jul 8, Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono won a second term. Exit polls gave him a massive lead in only the second presidential vote since the fall of Suharto. Yudhoyono won 61% of the vote. Jusuf Kalla, his former vice-president, won 12%. Megawati Sukarnoputri won 27%.
(AP, 7/8/09)(Econ, 9/12/09, SR p.4)
2009 Jul 8, In Iraq car bombs in two Shiite villages near Mosul killed 16 civilians and injured more than two dozen.
(AP, 7/10/09)
2009 Jul 8, The Irish government said Irish voters who rejected the EU's Lisbon Treaty last year will be asked to vote again Oct. 2 on the long-delayed blueprint for reform.
(AP, 7/8/09)
2009 Jul 8, G8 Leaders met in L'Aquila, Italy, for talks on threats to global security and stability at a summit where climate change, a continuing global economic crisis, nuclear proliferation and world hunger took top billing.
(AP, 7/8/09)
2009 Jul 8, Protesters in Indian Kashmir set fire to a police van and stoned other security vehicles after the body of a missing young man was recovered in the regional capital Srinagar.
(AFP, 7/8/09)
2009 Jul 8, Malaysian education officials announced that they will abandon the use of English to teach math and science, bowing to protesters who demanded more use of the national Malay language.
(SFC, 7/9/09, p.A2)
2009 Jul 8, In Mexico investigators found a severed head and two arms inside a plastic bag in the of Ario de Rosales, Michoacan state.
(AP, 7/9/09)
2009 Jul 8, Nigerian MEND militants said they blew up two key oil pipelines as they stepped up attacks in response to a government amnesty offer.
(AFP, 7/8/09)
2009 Jul 8, In Pakistan a US drone fired 6 missiles and killed 10 suspected militants at a training camp about 35 kilometers northeast of Wana. At least 35 suspected militants were killed in a second US missile strike targeting insurgents in the northwest tribal belt.
(AFP, 7/8/09)(SFC, 7/9/09, p.A4)
2009 Jul 8, Saudi officials said a criminal court has convicted and sentenced an al-Qaida militant to death and given more 330 others jail terms, fines and travel bans in the country's first known terrorism trials for suspected members of the terror network. The 330 are believed to be among the 991 suspected militants that Interior Minister Prince Nayef has said had been charged with participating in terrorist attacks over the past five years.
(AP, 7/8/09)
2009 Jul 8, Somali pirates seized a Turkish ship with 23 crew and were being shadowed by a Turkish warship in the Gulf of Aden. The pirates first surrounded the Horizon-1 in speed boats and then boarded the ship, which was carrying sulfate from Saudi Arabia to Jordan.
(AP, 7/8/09)
2009 Jul 8, A senior UN official said fighting between tribes in southern Sudan has increasingly targeted women and children and likely killed more than 1,000 people since January.
(AP, 7/8/09)
2009 Jul 8, Switzerland's government said it would forbid the Swiss bank UBS AG from complying with any court-ordered transfer of data on tens of thousands of American clients to the US government, and would consider seizing documents to prevent that.
(AP, 7/8/09)
2009 Jul 9, In Florida Byrd and Melanie Billings were killed at their sprawling home near Pensacola. The wealthy Florida couple had 4 children and adopted 12 others with developmental disabilities and other problems. Three men were soon arrested in connection with the slayings. In 2010 a jury found Patrick Gonzalez Jr. guilty of 2 counts of 1st degree murder and one count of robber. He had led a group of men dressed as ninjas in the attack.
(AP, 7/13/09)(SFC, 7/14/09, p.A5)(SFC, 10/29/10, p.A6)
2009 Jul 9, An Afghan government spokesman said President Hamid Karzai has pardoned five heroin smugglers, at least one of them a relative of a man who heads Karzai's campaign for re-election next month. A truck rigged with explosives blew up near Kabul killing 25 people including 13 primary school students. Militants attacked a district headquarters in the southern province of Zabul, sparking a clash in which 15 Taliban were killed. 30 insurgents planting bombs in a road in Zabul were killed in an Afghan military ambush. Overnight clashes with troops killed 27 suspected militants in Helmand.
(Reuters, 7/9/09)(AFP, 7/9/09)
2009 Jul 9, An African Union panel said former UN chief Kofi Annan handed the International Criminal Court the names of key suspects in Kenya's post-poll violence which he helped end last year.
(AFP, 7/9/09)
2009 Jul 9, The US deported Luis Arce Gomez (71), a key figure in Bolivia's last military dictatorship, back home to serve a 30-year prison sentence for crimes including genocide and political assassinations. Gomez, known as "the minister of cocaine," took part in the July 1980 coup led by then-Gen. Luis Garcia Meza and backed by drug traffickers.
(AP, 7/9/09)
2009 Jul 9, In China a 6.0 earthquake rocked Yunnan province, killing one person and destroying thousands of houses. More than 400,000 people left their homes following the tremor that left at least one person dead.
(AP, 7/10/09)
2009 Jul 9, Egypt’s Interior Ministry said authorities have arrested 25 militants with links to al-Qaida on suspicion of plotting attacks on oil pipelines and ships in the Suez Canal.
(AP, 7/9/09)
2009 Jul 9, In Iran hundreds of young men and women chanted "death to the dictator" and fled baton-wielding police in Tehran as opposition activists sought to revive street protests despite authorities' vows to "smash" any new marches.
(AP, 7/9/09)
2009 Jul 9, In Iraq 2 suicide bombings in Tal Afar, in Nineveh province, killed 38 people and wounded 66. Tal Afar is mainly home to minority Turkmen of the Shiite Muslim faith. In Baghdad, 8 people were killed and 30 wounded by two bombs in a market in Sadr City, a poor, Shiite Muslim area. 10 more people were killed by bombs elsewhere in Baghdad. US forces released five Iranian officials detained in January 2007 in northern Iraq on suspicion of aiding local Shiite militants. An Iranian television report identified the men as Mohsen Bagheri, Mahmoud Farhadi, Majid Ghaemi, Majid Dagheri and Abbas Jami. A car driver was killed in a head-on collision with a US Army Stryker vehicle, the lead vehicle of a US-Iraqi convoy in western Diyala province.
(Reuters, 7/9/09)(AP, 7/9/09)(AP, 7/10/09)(AP, 7/11/09)
2009 Jul 9, In Italy the G8 opened their summit to include the G5, which made their fifth straight appearance at the annual summit, albeit as guests, to discuss climate change, development aid, global economic growth and international trade.
(AP, 7/9/09)
2009 Jul 9, Mexican police found four mutilated bodies in plastic bags on the side of a highway in La Huacana, Michoacan state.
(AP, 7/9/09)
2009 Jul 9, In Nigeria Henry Okah, a key militant in Nigeria's southern Niger Delta detained since September 2007, accepted President Umaru Yar'Adua recent offer of unconditional amnesty. Armed robbers killed six police officers as they fled after a raid on a commercial bank at Idi-Iroko, a Nigerian border town with Benin.
(AFP, 7/10/09)
2009 Jul 9, Pakistan’s government announced a plan to allow some 2 million people who fled the offensive to return home next week, saying the region was now secure and essential services restored. A landmine killed five paramilitary soldiers and wounded four others in the insurgency-plagued province of Baluchistan. Dozens of militants overran a police post and killed four officers in the northwest city of Khar.
(AFP, 7/9/09)(AP, 7/10/09)
2009 Jul 9-2009 Aug 2, Saudi Arabian authorities arrested 44 suspected militants who sought to recruit youths and finance their "deviant activities" through charitable donations.
(AP, 8/19/09)
2009 Jul 9, In South Africa World Cup organizers said a strike by construction workers entered its second day as negotiators meet to try and resolve the standoff.
(AP, 7/9/09)
2009 Jul 9, South Korean Web sites were attacked again after a wave of Web site outages in the US and South Korea that several officials suspect North Korea was behind.
(AP, 7/9/09)
2009 Jul 9, The Swedish government said it will expel Sylvere Ahorugeze (53) within three weeks, fulfilling a request from authorities in Rwanda and marking the first time an EU nation has sent back a suspect to face charges in the 1994 genocide.
(AP, 7/10/09)
2009 Jul 9, The UN passed a resolution extending the lifetime of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda to next year. The latest extension is the second for the Tanzania-based court which had originally been scheduled wind up its lower court cases by December 2008, but had its life extended to December 2009.
(AFP, 7/9/09)
2009 Jul 9, In Venezuela’s top telecommunications official said President Hugo Chavez's government is imposing new regulations on cable television while revoking the licenses of more than 200 radio stations.
(AP, 7/9/09)
2009 Jul 10, General Motors emerged from bankruptcy protection. CEO Fritz Henderson said the new GM will be far faster and more responsive to customers than the old one, and it will make money and repay government loans faster than required.
(AP, 7/10/09)
2009 Jul 10, A US plant scientists said late blight, which caused the Irish Potato Famine of the 1840s and 1850s, is killing potato and tomato plants in home gardens from Maine to Ohio and threatening commercial and organic farms.
(Reuters, 7/10/09)
2009 Jul 10, Police in Illinois closed a black cemetery in Alsip and declared it a crime scene after former employees were accused of dumping hundreds of unearthed corpses in a scheme to resell their plots.
(SFC, 7/11/09, p.A4)
2009 Jul 10, Kenneth Stampp (b.1913), US Berkeley historian, died. His books included “The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Antebellum South" (1956) and “The Era of Reconstruction, 1865-1877" (1965).
(SFC, 7/22/09, p.D5)
2009 Jul 10, In Afghanistan 8 British soldiers were reported killed over the last 24 hours. A US service member wounded in June in Afghanistan died in the US.
(AP, 7/11/09)(AP, 7/12/09)
2009 Jul 10, Millions of Argentines stayed home from work, churches in Bolivia canceled Mass and Ecuador announced its first fatalities from swine flu, as the virus continued its spread during the South American winter season.
(AP, 7/11/09)
2009 Jul 10, Britain’s the last ever Royal Show closed in Warwickshire. The agricultural jamboree, intended to spread innovation among farmers, ended a 170 year run.
(Econ, 7/11/09, p.57)
2009 Jul 10, In China boisterous crowds turned up at mosques in riot-hit parts of Urumqi, ignoring orders canceling Friday prayers due to the ethnic violence and forcing officials to let them in.
(AP, 7/10/09)
2009 Jul 10, China’s state media said 4 detained Rio Tinto Ltd. employees are accused of paying bribes for secret information about China's stance in iron ore price talks. A Chinese steel executive, also detained along with four Rio Tinto employees, was being investigated for leaking China's "bottom line" on iron ore prices. Chinalco denied the move was payback for a collapsed deal.
(AP, 7/10/09)(Reuters, 7/10/09)
2009 Jul 10, In Iraq an American soldier in Iraq shot and killed a truck driver who did not respond to warnings to stop on a highway between Tikrit and Balad.
(AP, 7/11/09)
2009 Jul 10, In Italy the 3-day G8 summit came to close. World leaders launched a $15 billion initiative to help farmers in poor countries boost production in a shift in the way the West tackles world hunger.
(AP, 7/10/09)
2009 Jul 10, Nigerian militants claimed to have blown up for a second time a recently repaired oil pipeline operated by US petroleum giant Chevron.
(AP, 7/11/09)
2009 Jul 10, Earl Haig (91), Scottish artist and son of WWI Field Marshal Douglas Haig, died. He developed his gift for painting as a prisoner of war in World War II.
(AP, 7/15/09)
2009 Jul 10, Somali residents said Islamist insurgent fighters in Baidoa have beheaded seven people accused of abandoning their religion and of espionage, in the largest mass execution since the Islamists were chased from power two and a half years ago.
(AP, 7/10/09)
2009 Jul 10, South Korea’s spy agency told lawmakers that a research institute affiliated with the North's Ministry of People's Armed Forces received an order on June 7 to "destroy the South Korean puppet communications networks in an instant." The Chosun Ilbo newspaper reported that the North has between 500-1,000 hacking specialists.
(AP, 7/11/09)
2009 Jul 10, In Spain charging bull gored a young Spanish man to death at Pamplona's San Fermin festival, the first such fatality in nearly 15 years. Nine others were injured in a particularly dangerous and chaotic chapter of the running of the bulls.
(AP, 7/10/09)
2009 Jul 10, In Switzerland British conductor Edward Downes (b.1924) died with his wife Joan (74) at an assisted suicide clinic. He was a longtime stalwart at the Royal Opera and maestro of the first-ever performance at Sydney's iconic Opera House.
(AP, 7/14/09)
2009 Jul 10, At the Vatican Pope Benedict XVI stressed the church's opposition to abortion and stem cell research in his first meeting with President Barack Obama.
(AP, 7/10/09)
2009 Jul 10, Zimbabwe's army and police refused to vacate diamond fields where security forces are accused of human rights abuses, despite a pledge last week for their withdrawal. Finance Minister Tendai Biti said the government will provide 142 million dollars in aid to small-scale farmers as the country struggles to revive its shattered agricultural sector.
(AFP, 7/10/09)(AP, 7/10/09)
2009 Jul 11, In Afghanistan bomb blasts killed 2 US Marines in Helmand province. At least six police officers were killed by roadside bombs, two in southern Helmand province and at least four south of Kabul in Logar province. In a gunbattle in eastern Paktia province between insurgents and Afghan police, two militants and one police officer were killed.
(AP, 7/12/09)(SFC, 7/13/09, p.A3)
2009 Jul 11, It was reported that Brazilian police were investigating some 660 “secret acts" passed by the Senate since 1995 which have awarded jobs and pay raises members of staff.
(Econ, 7/11/09, p.39)
2009 Jul 11, In Brazil the body of Arturo Gatti (37), former Canadian boxing champion, was found in a hotel room at the northeastern Porto de Galinhas resort. He was apparently strangled with the strap of a purse, which was found at the scene with blood stains. His wife, Amanda Rodrigues (23), was soon taken into custody after contradictions in her interrogation. A police inquiry later concluded that he committed suicide using the strap of a rucksack on a staircase in the early hours of the morning.
(AP, 7/12/09)(Reuters, 7/31/09)
2009 Jul 11, In Ghana US Pres. Obama met with Ghanaian President John Atta Mills. Obama praised and scolded the continent of his ancestors, asserting forces of tyranny and corruption must yield if Africa is to achieve its promise.
(AP, 7/11/09)
2009 Jul 11, A ferry capsized off Haiti's southern coast, killing at least five people. Authorities said it wasn't clear how many people were on board, but as many as two dozen could be missing.
(AP, 7/11/09)
2009 Jul 11, In India 2 boats capsized in the Wainganga River in western Bhandara district leaving 26 women drowned.
(SFC, 7/13/09, p.A2)
2009 Jul 11, In Indonesia an Australian working for the Indonesian subsidiary of US-based mining giant Freeport McMoRan was shot dead by unknown attackers in Papua.
(AFP, 7/11/09)
2009 Jul 11, In Iraq a car bomb has exploded in Gugjeli a Shiite village in northern Iraq, killing at least four people. Another 6 people died in bombings in Baghdad.
(AP, 7/11/09)(SSFC, 7/12/09, p.A2)
2009 Jul 11, In Israel 2 religious Jews were stabbed and another was beaten in a fight with secular Jews in Jerusalem.
(AP, 7/11/09)
2009 Jul 11, In Mexico gunmen boldly attacked federal forces across the western state of Michoacan following the capture of Arnoldo Rueda Medina, an alleged member of La Familia drug cartel. In Zitacuaro, a mountain town famous for its Monarch butterfly nesting grounds, 3 federal agents were killed, and two soldiers were fatally shot in the town of Zamora. Two federal agents were killed and three others were wounded along a highway between Morelia and the port City of Lazaro Cardenas when dozens of gunmen ambushed their patrol cars.
(AP, 7/12/09)
2009 Jul 11, In central Pakistan police killed one suspected militant and seized a truckload of automatic weapons and explosives after a five-hour shootout at a religious school in Dera Ghazi Khan, Punjab province. A clash with militants in South Waziristan killed a soldier. Gunmen killed 5 police officers and a forestry official responding to reports of a dead body in Mansehra.
(AP, 7/11/09)(AP, 7/12/09)(SFC, 7/13/09, p.A2)
2009 Jul 11, Peru’s President Alan Garcia shuffled his Cabinet following months of protests, replacing seven of 16 ministers and naming a new chief, the third person to hold the post in nine months.
(AP, 7/12/09)
2009 Jul 11, In Somalia a foreign fighter and Nor Daqli, head of security for the capital, were among 16 people killed in fighting between UN-backed government forces and Islamist insurgents in the north of Mogadishu.
(AP, 7/11/09)
2009 Jul 12, In Novato, California, James Raphael Mitchell (27) allegedly bludgeoned to death Danielle Keller, the mother of his one-year-old daughter. He was arrested late the same day. Mitchell’s father, Jim Mitchell, was the co-founder of San Francisco’s x-rated O’Farrell Theater. In 2011 Mitchell testified he did not kill Keller and had fought off two attackers at her home on the day of her death. Mitchell was convicted of 1st degree murder on July 12, 2011. On Aug 16 Mitchell was sentenced to 35 years in prison.
(SFC, 7/14/09, p.A1)(SFC, 7/6/11, p.C5)(SFC, 7/13/11, p.C3)(SFC, 8/17/11, p.C3)
2009 Jul 12, Ben Novack Jr. (53) was killed in a NY hotel room. His mother was killed at her Fort Lauderdale home three months earlier on April 4. In 2012 Narcy Novack (55), the Fort Lauderdale wife of Ben, and her brother, Cristobal Veliz (58), were found guilty in White Plains, NY, of orchestrating the murders in a grab for the family estate. On Dec 17, 2012, Narcy Novack was sentenced to life in prison.
(SFC, 6/21/12, p.A8)(http://tinyurl.com/6mdhvmf)(SFC, 12/18/12, p.A7)
2009 Jul 12, Colombia’s President Alvaro Uribe delivered reparations totaling nearly $1 million to 279 victims of Colombia's long-running conflict.
(AP, 7/13/09)
2009 Jul 12, The Republic of Congo held elections. Pres. Denis Sassou-Nguesso was re-elected with 78.6% of the vote.
(SFC, 7/16/09, p.A2)
2009 Jul 12, Hondurans enjoyed their first night of unfettered freedom in two weeks after the interim government lifted a curfew imposed following the ouster of President Manuel Zelaya.
(AP, 7/13/09)
2009 Jul 12, Indian Maoists killed at least 30 policemen, including a senior officer, in two separate ambushes in the eastern state of Chhattisgarh. A section of a bridge being built for the New Delhi metro rail system collapsed, crushing to death 5 workers and injuring 13 in a major setback to the project that officials hope to complete before the 2010 Commonwealth Games.
(AFP, 7/12/09)
2009 Jul 12, In Indonesia gunmen killed a security guard working for US mining conglomerate Freeport, then ambushed police responding to the attack blamed on separatist rebels in one of Indonesia's most underdeveloped and remote regions.
(AP, 7/12/09)
2009 Jul 12, Five Iranian officials held in Iraq for more than two years by US forces returned home after the US released them under pressure from the Iraqi government. They were handed over to Iraqi officials on July 9. The Iranians were detained in the northern Iraqi city of Irbil in January 2007. At the time, US authorities said the men included the operations chief and other members of Iran's elite Quds Force, which is accused of arming and training Iraqi militants.
(AP, 7/12/09)
2009 Jul 12, In Iraq bombings in or near churches killed at least four people, including one that happened as worshippers were leaving Mass in eastern Baghdad. It was reported that below-average rainfall and insufficient water in the Euphrates and Tigris rivers have left Iraq bone dry for a second straight year, wrecking swaths of farm land, threatening drinking water supplies and intensifying fierce sandstorms that have coated the country in brown dust. The severity of the drought has resulted in a testy water dispute between Iraq and Turkey, which has built five dams along the Euphrates upstream from where it enters western Iraq.
(AP, 7/13/09)
2009 Jul 12, In Kyrgyzstan government critic Almaz Tashiyev (Tashiev) died of complications from head injuries after surgery. Relatives said he told them before the operation that he had been beaten by eight police officers earlier in the week. His death came after a series of attacks on reporters and shortly before next week's presidential election, reinforcing concerns about the risks faced by independent journalists in the Central Asian nation. Junior lieutenant Shukurbek Nurmatov was arrested July 16 on suspicion of being involved in the beating.
(AP, 7/13/09)(AP, 7/17/09)(Econ, 8/1/09, p.38)
2009 Jul 12, Mexican federal agents captured 2 suspects in connection with a series of attacks on federal forces across Michoacan state that left 5 officers and 2 soldiers dead.
(AP, 7/13/09)
2009 Jul 12, Nigerian rebels took their battle with the government into the country's main city, targeting an oil tanker loading facility in Lagos harbor in an unprecedented attack there.
(AFP, 7/13/09)
2009 Jul 12, Pakistani fighter jets pounded suspected militant hide-outs in the South Waziristan tribal region as part of ongoing operations against Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud. At least 8 militants were killed. A military statement described continued reports of unrest in the Swat valley, including a remote-controlled bomb that wounded 7 tribal police officers in the past 24 hours.
(AP, 7/12/09)
2009 Jul 12, Somali government forces with the help of African Union tanks fought Islamic militants in the capital, with clashes killing at least seven people. Witnesses said dozens of people were killed and some 150 wounded.
(AFP, 7/12/09)(AP, 7/13/09)
2009 Jul 12, In Spain 10 people were injured, two of them seriously, in the Pamplona bull run, two days after a man was gored to death by a bull.
(AP, 7/12/09)
2009 Jul 12, Swiss police divers harpooned a zander fish, which was 70 centimeters (two feet three inches) long and weighed eight kilos (17.5 pounds), after it bit six swimmers over the weekend in Lac Majeur.
(AFP, 7/13/09)
2009 Jul 12, Thailand's swine flu death toll rose to 18 as the government confirmed three more fatalities and opened a vaccine plant to prevent tens of thousands of infections across the country.
(AFP, 7/12/09)
2009 Jul 13, The US Fisheries Service of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued a ban on krill fishing within 200 miles of the Pacific coast of California, Oregon and Washington due to concerns that commercial krill fishing threatened food sources for fish, whales and seabirds.
(SFC, 7/14/09, p.A4)
2009 Jul 13, In southern Afghanistan 2 US Marines were killed in a hostile incident. An insurgent attack in eastern Nuristan province killed a US soldier. The police chief of Jalrez district in Wardak province was killed along with 3 officers in a roadside blast.
(AP, 7/14/09)(SFC, 7/14/09, p.A3)
2009 Jul 13, British and Israeli officials said Britain has revoked several licenses granted to British companies to sell weapons parts to Israel because of concerns over their use in Israel's recent war in the Gaza Strip.
(AP, 7/13/09)
2009 Jul 13, In China police shot dead two Uighur men and wounded a third on the streets of Urumqi, where tens of thousands of troops are stationed to restore calm a week after deadly ethnic riots.
(AP, 7/13/09)
2009 Jul 13, China's Health Ministry ordered a hospital to stop using electric shock therapy to cure youths of Internet addiction, saying there was no scientific evidence it worked.
(AP, 7/14/09)
2009 Jul 13, In Cuba the body of Rev. Mariano Arroyo Merino (74) was discovered in his room at the parish he served in the coastal neighborhood of Regla, situated on Havana Bay across from the capital. Authorities were still investigating the death of another Spanish priest, the Rev. Eduardo de la Fuente Serrano, whose body was found in a remote, sparsely populated area just outside the capital in mid-February.
(AP, 7/13/09)
2009 Jul 13, In Germany retired auto worker John Demjanjuk was formally charged with 27,900 counts of acting as an accessory to murder, one for every person who died at Sobibor during the time he is accused of serving as a guard at the Nazi death camp.
(AP, 7/13/09)
2009 Jul 13, German automobile group Daimler said it sold 40 percent of its stake in US electric car maker Tesla Motors to United Arab Emirate's Aabar Investments group to boost development of low-emission vehicles.
(AP, 7/13/09)
2009 Jul 13, Munich Re, the world’s largest reinsurance group, invited 20 large companies to join it in forming a consortium called Desertec to build a legion of solar power stations in Africa and Arabia and connect them to Europe.
(Econ, 7/11/09, p.83)
2009 Jul 13, In Indonesia a policeman's body was found at the bottom of a ravine near the Indonesian operations of US mining conglomerate Freeport, raising the death toll from a series of weekend ambushes in restive Papua province to three.
(AP, 7/13/09)
2009 Jul 13, Iraqi authorities imposed vehicle bans in two mostly Christian towns and increased security around churches in Baghdad after attacks targeting the Christian minority. An Iraqi soldier was killed when a bomb attached to his private vehicle exploded at noon in an area of northern Mosul.
(AP, 7/13/09)
2009 Jul 13, Japan passed a law that will allow children to receive organ transplants for the first time, reversing a ban that doomed many young patients or forced them to seek medical care abroad.
(AP, 7/13/09)
2009 Jul 13, Former Lebanese PM Amin al-Hafez (83) died. He served a turbulent two-month term in 1973 before he was forced to resign.
(AP, 7/13/09)
2009 Jul 13, Mexican prosecutors said they found the bound, blindfolded and tortured bodies of a dozen people on a roadside near La Huacana in the western state of Michoacan. The 12 bodies were soon identified as federal agents investigating organized crime.
(AP, 7/14/09)(AP, 7/15/09)(SFC, 7/15/09, p.A2)
2009 Jul 13, Mexico and the US announced that they were working on a protocol for sharing information in arms trafficking cases.
(AP, 7/14/09)(AP, 8/6/09)
2009 Jul 13, Pakistan began sending home about two million people displaced two months ago by the army's assault on Taliban militants in the Swat valley. An explosion in Punjab province destroyed a house used as a religious seminary, killing at least nine people, seven of them children, and leaving many others in critical condition.
(AP, 7/13/09)
2009 Jul 13, In Russia 5 suspected militants and two law enforcement officers were killed in separate attacks in the south. The militants were killed in two separate gunbattles in Chechnya, while Interior Ministry troops in Dagestan died in an ambush by insurgents.
(AP, 7/13/09)
2009 Jul 13, South Korea reported that North Korean leader Kim Jong Il (67) has life-threatening pancreatic cancer, days after fresh images of him looking gaunt spurred speculation that his health was worsening following a reported stroke last year.
(AP, 7/13/09)
2009 Jul 13, Turkey and four EU countries (Austria, Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary) formally agreed to route the Nabucco natural gas pipeline across their territories, pushing ahead with a US- and EU-backed attempt to make Europe less dependent on Russian gas.
(AP, 7/13/09)(Econ, 7/18/09, p.47)
2009 Jul 13, Uganda said it would arrest Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir if he enters the country, an unusual stance after a summit of African leaders denounced the international arrest warrant against al-Bashir.
(AP, 7/13/09)
2009 Jul 13, The UN’s highest court set travel rules for the Nicaraguan river that borders Costa Rica, affirming freedom for Costa Rican boats while upholding Nicaragua's right to regulate traffic.
(AP, 7/13/09)
2009 Jul 13, In Zimbabwe militants from President Robert Mugabe's party disrupted the start of a national conference aimed at drawing up a new constitution.
(AP, 7/13/09)
2009 Jul 14, President Barack Obama unveiled a $12 billion initiative to boost community colleges and propel the United States toward his goal of having the highest proportion of college graduates in the world by 2020.
(AP, 7/14/09)
2009 Jul 14, Episcopalians meeting in Anaheim, NY, declared gays and lesbians eligible any ordained ministry.
(SFC, 7/15/09, p.A6)
2009 Jul 14, Exxon Mobil said it would put $300 million into an effort to create a new generation of biofuels, and to add $300 if plans with Synthetic Genomics, a San Diego firm under Craig Venter, proved successful.
(Econ, 7/18/09, p.78)
2009 Jul 14, In San Francisco Rev. Floyd Lotito (74), founder of St. Anthony’s Dining Room (1981) died after a long struggle with Parkinson’s disease. The St. Anthony free-meal program currently served nearly 2,600 meals per day.
(SFC, 7/20/09, p.C5)
2009 Jul 14, The Int’l. Accounting Standards Board (IASB) proposed to put all financial assets into 2 buckets. Loans and securities would be in one and held at cost; all others would be in another and held at fair value.
(Econ, 7/18/09, p.74)
2009 Jul 14, In Afghanistan a NATO-contracted helicopter was shot down killing six Ukrainian crew members on board and an Afghan child on the ground in Helmand province. A roadside bomb killed one Italian soldier and wounded three others in western Afghanistan. Another roadside blast hit a civilian vehicle in Uruzgan province, killing three people and wounded six others. US coalition and Afghan forces searched compounds in Kandahar and found bomb-making materials, mortar rounds, AK-47 rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and 100 pounds (45 kilograms) of opium.
(AP, 7/14/09)(SFC, 7/15/09, p.A2)(AP, 7/26/09)
2009 Jul 14, The European Parliament elected ex-Polish Prime Minister Jerzy Buzek as its president, making him the first leader from a former Soviet bloc country to hold one of the top European Union posts.
(Reuters, 7/14/09)
2009 Jul 14, Iran’s official IRNA news agency reported that authorities in the southeastern city of Zahedan hanged 13 members of a Sunni Muslim rebel group convicted of bombings and killings in the area. The report said Abdulhamid Rigi, brother of Abdulmalik Rigi, leader of the group known as Jundallah or soldiers of God, had been scheduled to be hanged along with the 13 men, but his execution was postponed.
(AP, 7/14/09)
2009 Jul 14, In Iraq one person was killed and 9 others were wounded when a bomb exploded near an Internet cafe late at night in south Baghdad. Two traffic policemen were killed in eastern Baghdad by 2 gunmen who refused to stop at a checkpoint near the fortified Green Zone.
(AP, 7/15/09)
2009 Jul 14, Lithuania's Parliament approved a censorship bill that sharply curbs the spreading of public information that lawmakers say could harm the mental, physical, intellectual and moral development of youngsters. The bill comes into law on March 2010 at the latest.
(www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,4487209,00.html?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf)
2009 Jul 14, In Nairobi, Kenya, authorities seized over 660 pounds of illegal ivory and black rhinoceros horn, some of it still bloody, on a Mozambique-to-Asia plane.
(SFC, 7/15/09, p.A2)
2009 Jul 14, Nigeria's main militant group declared a 60-day truce, effective July 15, in its "oil war" with the government after the release of its leader Henry Okah under an amnesty deal.
(AFP, 7/15/09)
2009 Jul 14, In Pakistan fighting overnight in the lawless tribal belt killed 23 Taliban militants. An attack in the Khyber region destroyed an oil tanker supplying NATO forces based across the border in Afghanistan and left 2 civilians dead. Troops killed 13 militants in the latest clashes in the Swat Valley, underscoring the region's fragile security even as refugees displaced by fighting return home.
(AFP, 7/14/09)(AP, 7/15/09)
2009 Jul 14, In Russia 6 men emerged from three months of isolation in Soviet-era metal tubes after completing an experiment simulating a mission to Mars.
(AP, 7/14/09)
2009 Jul 14, In Somalia two French officials working as security advisers to the Somali government were kidnapped in Mogadishu. Agent Marc Aubriere managed to escape on August 26. Secret-agent Alexx Denis remained captive.
(Reuters, 7/14/09)(AP, 8/26/09)(SFC, 8/27/09, p.A2)(Econ, 8/13/11, p.45)
2009 Jul 14, South Korean police said hackers extracted files from computers they contaminated with the virus that triggered cyberattacks last week in the United States and South Korea, a sign that they tried to steal information from the victims. North Korea has supposedly trained an elite group of hackers at Mirim College, its military school.
(AP, 7/14/09)(Econ, 7/11/09, p.62)
2009 Jul 14, In Tanzania Tharcisse Renzaho, the former prefect of Rwandan capital Kigali, was sentenced to life for genocide-related crimes by the UN-backed war crimes court trying masterminds of the country's 1994 massacre.
(AFP, 7/14/09)
2009 Jul 14, Venezuela's oil minister Rafael Ramirez said workers at the state oil company must support President Hugo Chavez's endeavors or be suspected of conspiring against his socialist revolution.
(AP, 7/14/09)
2009 Jul 14, Zimbabwe's constitution talks, violently disrupted by militant backers of President Robert Mugabe, resumed with calls for tolerance in work on a charter meant to pave the way to fresh polls.
(AFP, 7/14/09)
2009 Jul 15, Space shuttle Endeavour rocketed toward the international space station as engineers on Earth pored over launch pictures that showed debris breaking off the fuel tank and striking the craft.
(AP, 7/16/09)
2009 Jul 15, In Alaska Anthony Rollins, a 13-year decorated Anchorage police officer, was arrested after being indicted for assaulting multiple women while on duty.
(SFC, 7/16/09, p.A6)
2009 Jul 15, California tax officials said a bill to tax and regulate marijuana in California like alcohol would generate nearly $1.4 billion in revenue for the cash-strapped state.
(AP, 7/16/09)
2009 Jul 15, In Afghanistan at least 4 civilians were killed and 13 were wounded in a late night airstrike on the southern village of Shawalikot. 3 police were killed by a suicide car bomber in Nimroz province, and two Afghan army soldiers died in two other attacks in the south. NATO forces killed two insurgents in an attack in the east.
(AP, 7/16/09)(http://news.yahoo.com/s/mcclatchy/20090717/wl_mcclatchy/3274354)
2009 Jul 15, Luxury carmaker Jaguar, owned by India's Tata Motors, announced it would end Liverpool production of its X-Type car by the end of the year with the loss of up to 300 jobs.
(AFP, 7/15/09)
2009 Jul 15, In China the former head of oil giant Sinopec was sentenced to death after being found guilty of corrupt practices over many years, but state press reported that he will likely not be executed. The Beijing court had found Chen Tonghai guilty of graft amounting to 195.7 million yuan (28.8 million dollars) when he served in top Sinopec ranks from 1999 to 2007.
(AFP, 7/15/09)
2009 Jul 15, In Egypt the two-day Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) opened in Sharm-El-Sheik. 50 leaders from the 118-nation grouping of mostly of African, Asian and Latin American nations gathered for their 15th meeting to address the world's biggest problems, such as terrorism and financial instability. Cuba's Pres. Raul Castro called for an international financial system that better takes into account developing countries interests.
(AP, 7/15/09)
2009 Jul 15, The EU urged Canada to restore visa-free travel for Czech visitors, removed by Ottawa after hundreds of Roma from the central European country sought asylum.
(Reuters, 7/15/09)
2009 Jul 15, Honduras' interim government suggested that backers of ousted President Manuel Zelaya were taking up arms to return him to power and it reinstated an overnight curfew it had lifted only days earlier.
(AP, 7/16/09)
2009 Jul 15, In Ingushetia police officials said that the body of Natalya Estemirova (b.1959), a prominent rights activist, was found not far from the main city of Nazran, hours after she was kidnapped in Chechnya.
(AP, 7/15/09)(Econ, 7/25/09, p.23)
2009 Jul 15, In Iran a Russian-made Caspian Airlines TU-154 jet plane carrying nearly 170 people crashed shortly after takeoff from Tehran's Imam Khomeini International Airport. It was headed to the Armenian capital Yerevan. All on board were killed.
(AP, 7/15/09)
2009 Jul 15, In Iraq a suicide bomber killed six people, including an Iraqi policeman, in an attack on security forces in Ramadi, a former insurgent stronghold in western Anbar province. A bombing in Sadr City killed 5 people.
(AP, 7/15/09)(SFC, 7/16/09, p.A2)
2009 Jul 15, A court in Indian-run Kashmir ordered the arrest of four police officers for allegedly destroying evidence in the rape and murder of two women that triggered violent protests last month.
(AP, 7/15/09)
2009 Jul 15, In northwest Pakistan a roadside bomb exploded at a police checkpoint, killing a paramilitary soldier and a police officer and wounding six policemen in the Bannu area.
(AP, 7/15/09)
2009 Jul 15, In the Philippines five employees of a logging company, including a woman, were seized by eight guerrillas belonging to the Moro Islamic Liberation Front in Kapai township in Lanao del Sur province. Army troops and police rescued the victims on July 18 near Kapai without a fire fight. Basit Kauyag was identified as the leader of the kidnappers.
(AP, 7/19/09)
2009 Jul 15, Mazen Abdul-Jawad (32), a Saudi man, appeared on the Lebanese-based LBC satellite TV station’s "Bold Red Line" program and shocked Saudis by publicly confessing to sexual exploits. More than 200 people soon filed legal complaints against Abdul-Jawad, dubbed a "sex braggart" by the media, and many Saudis said he should be severely punished. On July 31 Abdul-Jawad was detained for questioning. The Jiddah offices of the LBC station were closed soon thereafter.
(AP, 8/6/09)(AP, 8/9/09)
2009 Jul 15, In Turkmenistan President Gurbanguli Berdymukhamedov led a ceremony for channeling water across hundreds of miles to create Golden Age Lake in the heart of the barren Karakum Desert, in a Soviet-style engineering feat that some experts fear could unleash an environmental catastrophe.
(AP, 7/16/09)
2009 Jul 15, In Venezuela National Guard troops seized a police station controlled by a leading opponent of President Hugo Chavez, sparking clashes between soldiers and protesters that authorities said injured eight people.
(AP, 7/15/09)
2009 Jul 16, Michelle Cawthra, a former Colorado Dept. of Revenue supervisor, said love for her ex-boyfriend Hysear Randell led her to steal $11 million in unclaimed tax refunds from the state over a 2-year period. Randell was on trial in Denver for theft, forgery, computer crimes and racketeering.
(SFC, 7/17/09, p.A6)
2009 Jul 16, In Phoenix, Arizona, 4 boys, all Liberian refugees (9-14) lured a Liberian girl (8) to a storage shed and raped her. Charges against one of the boys, aged 8, were dropped on Dec 16 after a judge ruled the boy was not competent to stand trial.
(SFC, 8/10/09, p.A4)(SFC, 12/17/09, p.A12)
2009 Jul 16, In Chicago Willis Tower was introduced to Chicago by Mayor Richard M. Daley and others during a public Sears Tower renaming ceremony hosted by Willis Group Holdings. The London-based insurance brokerage secured the naming rights as part an agreement to lease 140,000 square feet of space, and has said it plans to bring hundreds of jobs to the city.
(AP, 7/16/09)
2009 Jul 16, CIT Group Inc. shares tumbled 75% as its inability to get emergency government funding raised expectations that the commercial lender will file for bankruptcy protection.
(AP, 7/16/09)(SFC, 7/17/09, p.C1)
2009 Jul 16, In California the UC Board of Regents cut $813 million from US budgets and approved pay raises, dividends and other benefits for over two dozen executives.
(http://tinyurl.com/n3hcj3)(SFC, 8/7/09, p.A1)
2009 Jul 16, Jeffrey Locker (52), a debt-ridden motivational speaker, was found strangled and stabbed in his car in East Harlem, hours after he was seen buying condoms. In 2011 jurors found Kenneth Minor guilty of helping Locker commit suicide.
(SFC, 3/4/11, p.A10)
2009 Jul 16, In southeastern Afghanistan local Taliban commanders threatened to kill a captured American soldier unless the US military stops operations in Ghazni province's Giro district and Paktika province's Khoshamand district. The British soldier was killed during a foot patrol near Gereshk in southern Helmand province.
(AP, 7/16/09)(AP, 7/17/09)
2009 Jul 16, Australia and China traded warnings over Rio Tinto employees detained for spying, as the United States urged Beijing to ensure transparency and fair treatment for staff of foreign companies.
(Reuters, 7/16/09)
2009 Jul 16, The Chadian rebel Union of Forces of Resistance (UFR) claimed the Chadian air force attacked two villages in the southeastern Chadian region of Tissi. Rebels claimed some 50 had been killed some 100 wounded. Sudan accused Chad of launching air raids on its western region of Darfur.
(AFP, 7/16/09)
2009 Jul 16, Colombian authorities extradited to the United States Gerardo Aguilar (50), alias "Cesar," a FARC rebel "jailer" captured in last year's July 2 rescue of three US military contractors and ex-presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt. He faced drug-trafficking charges, kidnapping and other charges on an indictment in Washington, D.C. federal court.
(AP, 7/17/09)
2009 Jul 16, In Egypt 8 Serb tourists and 3 Egyptians were killed when a truck on the wrong side of the road hit their coach head-on along Egypt's Red Sea coast.
(AP, 7/16/09)
2009 Jul 16, In Marseilles, France, a worker was killed immediately when the roof of a stage being built for a Madonna concert fell apart on top of several workers. Madonna canceled her scheduled July 19 performance. A 2nd worker died the next day.
(AP, 7/17/09)
2009 Jul 16, Iceland’s Althingi (parliament) voted 33 to 28 to apply to join the EU.
(Econ, 7/25/09, p.50)
2009 Jul 16, The leaders of India and Pakistan, following rare talks in Egypt, vowed to cooperate in the fight against terror in the wake of the devastating Mumbai attacks.
(AFP, 7/16/09)
2009 Jul 16, In India Rita Bahuguna Joshi, a leading politician of India's ruling Congress party, was arrested and her house set on fire by activists after she suggested that a rival leader be raped so she can better understand the plight of rape victims.
(AP, 7/16/09)
2009 Jul 16, Iran announced that Gholam Reza Aghazadeh, the head of its nuclear agency, has resigned, a move that may have been connected to the country's postelection turmoil. Aghazadeh told the semiofficial ISNA news agency that he submitted his resignation from Iran's Atomic Energy Organization 20 days ago and also resigned from his other post as one of Pres. Ahmadinejad's vice presidents.
(AP, 7/16/09)
2009 Jul 16, In Iraq 18 people were injured in an explosion that targeted a minibus transporting Shiite pilgrims to a holy shrine in Najaf. 3 US soldiers were killed in a rocket attack on a base outside of Basra. On July 18 an Iranian-backed militiaman confessed to the rocket attack near the Basra airport.
(AP, 7/16/09)(AP, 7/17/09)(AP, 7/18/09)
2009 Jul 16, In Israel Ultra-Orthodox Jews clashed with police using horses and water cannon in Jerusalem in the third day of rioting over the arrest of a mentally ill Hasidic woman who authorities say was starving her child.
(AP, 7/16/09)
2009 Jul 16, Mexico’s Interior Secretary Fernando Gomez Mont said the government was pouring 1,500 federal police officers, 2,500 soldiers and 1,500 navy personnel into Michoacan state, the home base for the violent La Familia cartel led by Servando "La Tuta" Gomez.
(AP, 7/16/09)
2009 Jul 16, In northwestern Pakistan gunmen killed UN employee Zill-e-Usman (59) and a guard during a failed kidnap attempt at a refugee camp near Peshawar, a blow to humanitarian efforts to help civilians displaced by army offensives against the Taliban.
(AP, 7/16/09)(SFC, 7/17/09, p.A2)
2009 Jul 16, In Taiwan’s southern city of Kaohsiung, more than 3,000 athletes and staff from 105 countries and territories marched into the World Games Stadium, a new, eye-catching structure designed by renowned Japanese architect Toyo Ito. China’s 100-strong delegation boycotted the opening ceremony of the World Games in Taiwan, underscoring the limits of the historic breakthrough in relations between Taipei and Beijing.
(AP, 7/16/09)
2009 Jul 16, In Tajikistan 5 militants were killed in a gunfight at a remote military checkpoint near the border with Afghanistan. Law enforcement agencies later issued a joint statement claiming the perpetrators of the attack were suspected terrorists with Russian citizenship. Authorities said that earlier this month Mirzo Ziyoyev, a rebel commander in Tajikistan's 1990s civil war, who later became a government minister, was killed by members of a militant group he had allegedly joined recently. The government said Azizov was a member of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, or IMU, an al-Qaida-linked militant group that has operated in ex-Soviet Central Asia and Afghanistan.
(AP, 7/20/09)
2009 Jul 16, The UN Security Council banned travel and froze assets of 10 North Korean individuals and businesses linked to the country’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
(SFC, 7/17/09, p.A2)
2009 Jul 17, In Douglas, Georgia, federal authorities arrested Cecil Stephen Haire (51), the so-called “limping bandit." He was said to have robbed 23 banks across the Southwest over the last 3 years.
(SFC, 7/22/09, p.A4)
2009 Jul 17, Walter Cronkite (b.1916), TV journalist, died with his family by his side at his Manhattan home after a long illness. On April 16, 1962, he replaced Douglas Edwards as anchor of the CBS "Evening News." Polls in 1972 and 1974 had pronounced Cronkite the "most trusted man in America."
(AP, 7/18/09)
2009 Jul 17, In southern Afghanistan a roadside bomb tore through a vehicle, killing a British soldier and 11 civilians, including five children. In Nangarhar province, a gunfight broke out between Taliban fighters and local civilians after militants fired at an Afghan army officer who had come to visit his relatives. 3 militants and two civilians were killed and one civilian was missing. Eleven militants were captured, eight of them Pakistanis.
(AP, 7/17/09)(AP, 7/18/09)(SFC, 7/18/09, p.A2)
2009 Jul 17, Leszek Kolakowski (b.1927), Polish-born Oxford philosopher and historian of ideas, died in Oxford. “We Learn history not in order to know how to behave or how to succeed, but to know who we are." His work included the 3-volume series “Main currents of Marxism: Its Rise, Growth and Dissolution" (1976).
(Econ, 8/1/09, p.76)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leszek_Ko%C5%82akowski)
2009 Jul 17, In China government officials in Beijing descended on the Open Constitution Initiative (OCI), a public interest lawyer’s group that challenged abuse and corruption by state and local governments. They took away almost everything the group owned and tax authorities ordered it to pay $207,900.
(Econ, 7/25/09, p.38)
2009 Jul 17, The Republic of Congo's top opposition politician, Mathias Dzon, filed for an annulment of the incumbent president's re-election and claimed there had been vote-rigging and intimidation.
(AP, 7/17/09)
2009 Jul 17, In Ecuador a US anti-narcotics force flew its last surveillance mission from Ecuador's Pacific Coast. The force had begun dismantling its operation and would be out of the country by September, two months before the end of its lease.
(AP, 7/19/09)
2009 Jul 17, In Indonesia suicide attacks at the Marriott and the Ritz-Carlton hotels in Jakarta killed 9 people including 2 suspected suicide bombers and wounded 53. Suspicion quickly fell on Jemaah Islamiyah and anti-terror desk chief, Ansyaad Mbai, said evidence pointed to Malaysian-born extremist Noordin Mohammed Top. In 2010 the South Jakarta District Court found Amid Abdillah guilty of violating the Anti-Terror Law by helping a splinter of the Southeast Asian terror network Jemaah Islamiyah plan the suicide bombings. The same court has earlier sentenced Saefudin Zuhri, an in-law of Top, and Aris Susanto to eight years in prison for assisting and harboring Top and two other suspects.
(AP, 7/17/09)(AFP, 7/18/09)(AP, 7/21/09)(AP, 8/7/09)(AP, 6/14/10)
2009 Jul 17, In Iran tens of thousands of government opponents packed Iran's main Islamic prayer sermon, chanting "freedom, freedom" and other slogans as their top clerical backer Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani delivered a sermon bluntly criticizing the country's leadership over the crackdown on election protests. Outside, pro-government Basiji militiamen in front of a line of riot police fired tear gas at thousands of protesters who chanted "death to the dictator" and called on President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to resign.
(AP, 7/17/09)
2009 Jul 17, In Iraq two bombs exploded around 3 a.m. in Karmah near the house of police Capt. Bahjat Khawam. The bombs were planted under the police officer's car and near a gate to his house. The officer's daughter (12) and a granddaughter (4) were killed in the attack. In Baghdad bombings killed 3 Iraqis and injured over 40 others. One bomb planted under a bridge killed a married couple who were among hundreds of thousands of Shiite pilgrims heading to a shrine to commemorate Imam Mousa al-Kazim.
(AP, 7/17/09)(SFC, 7/18/09, p.A2)
2009 Jul 17, In Japan 10 senior citizen climbers were found dead in the northern mountains of Hokkaido, apparently from hypothermia. Police began investigating possible negligence by the tour organizers.
(AP, 7/17/09)
2009 Jul 17, The Malian army announced that it had killed 26 "Islamist fighters" in the far north of the country.
(AFP, 7/21/09)
2009 Jul 17, In Nouakchott, Mauritania, police exchanged fire with suspected Islamic extremists, killing one and wounding another who was wearing explosives wrapped around his body. A 3rd suspect reportedly escaped.
(AP, 7/18/09)
2009 Jul 17, Mexico's central bank cut its benchmark interest rate by a quarter percentage point, dropping the interbank rate to 4.5% to stimulate a recession-dogged economy.
(AP, 7/18/09)
2009 Jul 17, In Namibia 2 European journalists were fined $625 (US) by a court for filming the annual seal hunt along the coast of the southern African nation. On July 31 British investigative journalist Jim Wilckens and South African cameraman Bart Smithers were found guilty of violating the Marine Resources Act by entering a restricted area without permission.
(AFP, 7/18/09)(AFP, 8/4/09)
2009 Jul 17, In Pakistan a missile believed to have been fired by a US drone killed five militants in North Waziristan, a tribal region known as a haven for Taliban and al Qaeda fighters. Militants destroyed two NATO fuel tankers in separate roadside bomb attacks in the Khyber tribal region, one of the two land routes for supplies going to Afghanistan.
(Reuters, 7/17/09)
2009 Jul 17, Russia said it would lift a ban on live pigs and raw pork imports from the US state of Wisconsin and Canada's Ontario province from July 18 due to what it said was a "stabilization" of the situation of the H1N1 virus in those places.
(Reuters, 7/17/09)
2009 Jul 17, The UN said an international accord requiring governments to publicly identify sites of environmental pollution will come into force on Oct. 8.
(AP, 7/17/09)
2009 Jul 18, In southern Tennessee 5 people were found dead in two neighboring rural homes near Fayetteville, and a sixth body was discovered at a business about 30 miles away in Huntsville, Ala. Jacob Shaffer (30) of Fayetteville was charged later that day with homicide.
(AP, 7/19/09)
2009 Jul 18, In Afghanistan a US Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle fighter jet crashed in central Ghazni, killing the two crew members. A suicide driver blew up his explosive-laden vehicle next to an Afghan army convoy in Zabul province, killing three soldiers and wounding three others. 35 militants were killed during a joint operation by Afghan and coalition troops in the Shah Walk Kot district of Kandahar province. In Nangarhar province a suicide bomber attacked the Afghan-Pakistan border crossing at Torkham, killing a border police officer and a civilian.
(AP, 7/18/09)(AP, 7/19/09)
2009 Jul 18, In Australian Min Lin, his wife, two sons aged 12 and 9, and a female relative were killed by blunt force trauma to the upper bodies and heads in their home in a Sydney suburb. The family had run a convenience store for more than six years after immigrating from China.
(AP, 7/19/09)
2009 Jul 18, In Canada wind and dry conditions fueled large blazes that broke out in the rugged hills along Okanagan Lake west of the city of Kelowna, British Columbia, where housing subdivisions have encroached on the surrounding forest in recent years.
(AP, 7/20/09)
2009 Jul 18, In Iraq a government spokesman said the Iraqi Cabinet had approved a measure to confiscate the assets of the family of toppled dictator Saddam Hussein and 52 former close aides who had used their powers to take over or misuse public properties or funds. A roadside bomb killed three people, including the son of a tribal leader, near Fallujah. In Mosul a police officer was killed after a bomb exploded at a checkpoint. Also in Mosul a civilian was killed by unidentified gunmen.
(AFP, 7/18/09)(SSFC, 7/19/09, p.A7)
2009 Jul 18, Mauritania held post-coup elections. Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, a former military general who ousted this Islamic nation's first freely elected president, vied with 8 other candidates to become the legitimate ruler.
(AP, 7/18/09)
2009 Jul 18, Mexican soldiers arrested Luis Ibarra, a suspected drug trafficker in the border city of Tijuana. He was carrying jewelry, narcotics and $3.6 million in cash. Ibarra belonged to a cell in charge of making and trafficking methamphetamine for alleged drug kingpin Teodoro Garcia Simental.
(AP, 7/20/09)
2009 Jul 18, Pakistani government warplanes flattened a suspected Taliban hide-out in the northwest, killing nine associates of Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud.
(AP, 7/18/09)
2009 Jul 18, Sudanese rebels set free 60 captured government soldiers and policemen in north Darfur. The detainees had been held by the Justice and Equality Movement following recent armed clashes.
(AP, 7/18/09)
2009 Jul 19, Frank McCourt (78), former NYC teacher and Irish-born author, died of cancer. He won a Pulitzer Prize for his memoir “Angela’s Ashes" (1996).
(SFC, 7/20/09, p.C5)
2009 Jul 19, Warren Titus (94), founder of the Royal Viking and Seabourn cruise ship lines, died at a hospice in Marin County, Ca. He helped father the modern cruise concept as president of Peninsular and Oriental Navigation Co., which later morphed into Princess Cruises. He left P.&O. to start the Royal Viking Line in 1972. After the SF-based Royal Viking went out of business in 1987, he was called by Atle Brynestad, a Norwegian millionaire, to start Seabourn Cruise Lines.
(SFC, 7/31/09, p.D5)
2009 Jul 19, In southern Afghanistan a Russian-owned civilian Mi-8 helicopter crashed and burst into flames shortly after takeoff from the Kandahar NATO base, killing 16 civilians in the latest in a string of deadly aircraft crashes in the country. Gunmen killed a candidate for provincial council in Kunduz province as he was traveling to a campaign event. The US military denounced the release of a video showing a soldier captured in Afghanistan, describing the images as Taliban propaganda that violated international law. 3 civilians were killed when German troops opened fire on their pickup truck. In Farah province, a van full of civilians hit a roadside bomb, killing 11 people on board, including a child and his mother. A British soldier was killed by an explosion while on a foot patrol in the Sangin region of Helmand province.
(AP, 7/19/09)(Reuters, 7/19/09)(AP, 7/20/09)
2009 Jul 19, An amateur astronomer in Australia detected a new scar on Jupiter that covered some 73 million square miles, a larger area than the Pacific ocean.
(SFC, 7/22/09, p.A1)
2009 Jul 19, In Kazakhstan more than 5,000 ethnic Uighurs rallied in Almaty to protest China's use of deadly force to quash Uighur protests this month.
(AP, 7/19/09)
2009 Jul 19, In Mauritania Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz (b.1956), former head of the junta that toppled the country’s first freely elected leader, won the presidency in a vote his opponents decried as a fraudulent "electoral coup." The final result gave Aziz 52.47% of the vote, enabling him to avoid a runoff. The Constitutional Court declared the result official on July 23, just hours after the head of the election commission resigned over doubts about the ballot.
(AP, 7/19/09)(AP, 7/23/09)
2009 Jul 19, In Pakistan at least 26 people died in heavy overnight rains in Karachi.
(AP, 7/19/09)
2009 Jul 19, Palestinian authorities allowed Al-Jazeera to resume operations in the West Bank, four days after banning the Arab satellite station over the airing of a claim linking President Mahmoud Abbas to the death of his legendary predecessor, Yasser Arafat.
(AP, 7/19/09)
2009 Jul 19, Philippine officials said hundreds of marines and army troops have been deployed to two islands in the southern Philippines for a new offensive aimed at eradicating al-Qaida-linked Abu Sayyaf militants by the end of this year.
(AP, 7/19/09)
2009 Jul 19, Sudan said it was committed to peace with neighboring Chad after accusing it of bombing its western Darfur region last week, but also warned it would not be held back if threatened.
(AFP, 7/19/09)
2009 Jul 19, In Thailand’s Yala province a 48-year-old rubber plantation owner was shot dead in a drive-by shooting as he returned home by motorcycle. In another attack a gold shopkeeper was killed after suspect insurgents fired assault rifles into his shop in Narathiwat province before fleeing on a motorcycle.
(AP, 7/20/09)
2009 Jul 19, In Turkey patrons of a usually smoke-filled hookah bar stepped outside to light up as a ban on indoor public smoking extended to bars, restaurants and coffeehouses.
(AP, 7/19/09)
2009 Jul 20, The United States and India agreed on a defense pact that takes a major step toward allowing the sale of sophisticated US arms to the South Asian nation as it modernizes its military. New Delhi also approved sites for two US nuclear reactors.
(Reuters, 7/20/09)
2009 Jul 20, In California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and four legislative leaders agreed to bridge a $26.3 billion gap between expenditures and the state's plummeting revenues. The agreement composed of cuts, borrowing and fund shifts was not expected to resolve California's financial problems as the economy continues to struggle and tax revenue lags far behind the level of the boom years.
(AP, 7/21/09)
2009 Jul 20, In Afghanistan 10 Taliban were killed and three other militants wounded while making bombs in a house in Ghazni province. A roadside bomb killed 4 US soldiers.
(AP, 7/21/09)(SFC, 7/21/09, p.A3)
2009 Jul 20, Algeria’s Ministry of Transport said the Chinese civil engineering group CCECC has won 3 contracts worth a total of 1.46 billion euros to build railways in Algeria.
(AFP, 7/20/09)
2009 Jul 20, In Australia Adelaide-based Vaxine began swine flu vaccine trials with 300 subjects. Melbourne's CSL had 240 people in its seven-month trial, which started Jul 22. The companies said their trials are the first tests of a swine flu vaccine on humans.
(AP, 7/22/09)
2009 Jul 20, In eastern Democratic Republic of Congo at least 24 people, most of them civilians, were killed when rebels attacked an army base.
(Reuters, 7/23/09)
2009 Jul 20, In India Ajmal Kasab (21), the lone surviving gunman in the Nov 26, 2008, Mumbai attacks, pleaded guilty and gave a detailed account of the plot, his training in Pakistan and his role in the rampage that killed 171 people dead and paralyzed the city for three days.
(AP, 7/20/09)(SFC, 7/21/09, p.A3)
2009 Jul 20, Iran's supreme leader issued a tough warning to the opposition to back down after pro-reform former president Mohammad Khatami called for a referendum on the government's legitimacy.
(AP, 7/20/09)
2009 Jul 20, In Malaysia Kartika Sari Dewi Shukarno (32), a Muslim woman, was sentenced to six lashes and a fine of 5,000 ringgit ($1,400) for having a beer in a nightclub in Dec 2007. She would become the first woman in Malaysia to be given the punishment under Islamic law. Her caning was delayed on Aug 24 because of the holy month of Ramadan. On Mar 30, 2010, the state's sultan spared her the caning and instead ordered her to do 3 weeks of community service.
(AP, 7/21/09)(AP, 8/19/09)(AP, 8/24/09)(AP, 4/1/10)
2009 Jul 20, In Mexico 3 men were killed outside a bar before dawn in Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso, Texas.
(AP, 7/2o/09)
2009 Jul 20, Pakistani said clashes between security forces and militants have left 20 people dead in the northwest over the past 24 hours.
(AP, 7/20/09)
2009 Jul 20, A Palestinian official said more than 30 Israeli settlers, some of them on horseback, set fire to fields and olive trees and stoned Palestinian cars during a rampage in the West Bank. Two Palestinians were lightly injured.
(AP, 7/20/09)
2009 Jul 20, Peru’s former President Alberto Fujimori was convicted of embezzlement and sentenced to 7 1/2 years in prison after he admitted illegally paying his spy chief $15 million in government funds.
(AP, 7/21/09)
2009 Jul 20, The Russian rights group, where slain activist Natalia Estemirova worked, said it has suspended operations in Chechnya because of safety fears for her co-workers. Memorial said it will continue tracking human rights abuses in nearby Ingushetia. A spokesman for Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, who has condemned the murder and promised to find those responsible, said a Moscow court had accepted a lawsuit from Kadyrov against Memorial head Oleg Orlov for libel after the group's chairman blamed Kadyrov for Estemirova's death.
(Reuters, 7/20/09)
2009 Jul 20, In Somalia Islamic insurgents with alleged links with al-Qaida looted two United Nations compounds in southern Somalia, and announced they will ban three UN agencies from operating in areas the militants control.
(AP, 7/20/09)
2009 Jul 20, In South Africa 9 workers died when the roof of the mine shaft they were working in collapsed and trapped them about half a mile (1 km) underground in Rustenburg.
(AP, 7/21/09)
2009 Jul 20, In Thailand Southeast Asian foreign ministers (ASEAN) endorsed the region's first human rights watchdog, rejecting criticisms that the body would be powerless to tackle rogue members such as Myanmar. 2 assailants on a motorcycle shot and killed a Buddhist man who was traveling on a road in Pattani province.
(AFP, 7/20/09)(AP, 7/20/09)
2009 Jul 20, A UN war crimes court in the Hague convicted Milan Lukic and Sredoje Lukic, two Bosnian Serb cousins, for a "callous" 1992 killing spree that included locking scores of Muslims in two houses and burning them alive in Visegrad. He sentenced Milan to life in prison and Sredoje to 30 years.
(AP, 7/20/09)
2009 Jul 20, In Venezuela Alicia Torres, a judge handling one of Venezuela's most politically charged cases, said that she was fired after complaining about pressure to rule against an opponent of President Hugo Chavez. Torres said last week she was pressured by a superior to prohibit Guillermo Zuloaga, president and owner of the Globovision TV channel, from leaving the country.
(AP, 7/20/09)
2009 Jul 20, Zambia's Catholic bishops and the International Press Institute condemned the arrest on obscenity charges of a newspaper editor who says she was trying to draw attention to the consequences of a health workers' strike. Chansa Kabwela, editor of the independent Post, was arrested last week after e-mailing pictures of a woman giving birth in the streets to policy makers and aid groups.
(AP, 7/20/09)
2009 Jul 21, The US Senate voted to stop production of the F-22 fighter plane, handing President Barack Obama a victory as he tries to rein in defense spending.
(Reuters, 7/21/09)
2009 Jul 21, In Delaware creditors charged in a court filing that racetrack operator Magna Entertainment Corp fraudulently transferred more than $125 million to companies controlled by Canadian billionaire Frank Stronach before filing for bankruptcy.
(Reuters, 7/22/09)
2009 Jul 21, The Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals in SF ruled that police who tell investigators about alleged corruption in their departments have no constitutional protection for their statements and can be fired.
(SFC, 7/22/09, p.D2)
2009 Jul 21, Oakland, Ca., residents overwhelmingly voted to approve a first-of-its kind tax on medical marijuana sold at the city's four cannabis dispensaries.
(AP, 7/22/09)
2009 Jul 21, John Dawson (64), co-founder of the “New Riders of the Purple Sage" (1969), a psychedelic country rock band, died at his home in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. His band released 8 albums from 1971-1976 including the gold certified “The Adventures of Panama Red" (1973). His songs included “Glendale Train." He was also a long time collaborator with Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead.
(SFC, 7/25/09, p.C4)
2009 Jul 21, In Afghanistan Taliban militants attacked three government buildings in Gardez and a US base near Jalalabad and in near-simultaneous attacks, a signature of major Taliban assaults. 8 insurgents and 5 Afghan security forces died. Canadian troops were involved in two shooting incidents in southern Afghanistan, killing a girl and wounding three policemen. Afghan authorities said later that police arrested 7 would-be suicide bombers, who would have inflicted mayhem in further coordinated strikes.
(AP, 7/21/09)(AP, 7/23/09)(AFP, 7/25/09)
2009 Jul 21, Several Chinese Internet sites and parts of popular Web portals went offline amid tightening controls that have already left mainland Web users without access to Facebook, Twitter and other well-known social networking sites.
(AP, 7/21/09)
2009 Jul 21, The general manager of Dubai's Al Nassma said the world's first brand of chocolate made with camels' milk plans to expand into new Arab markets, Europe, Japan and the United States.
(AP, 7/21/09)
2009 Jul 21, French factory workers angry over layoffs and cost cuts locked up their bosses at a Michelin tire plant and a US-owned cigarette-paper mill. The managers were released the next morning after regional officials offered to mediate.
(AP, 7/22/09)
2009 Jul 21, Honduras’s interim government ordered Venezuelan diplomats to leave the country in 72 hours as the int’l. community threatened new sanctions if negotiations fail the resolve the overthrow of Pres. Manuel Zelaya.
(SFC, 7/22/09, p.A2)
2009 Jul 21, Iran's supreme leader handed a humiliation to Pres. Ahmadinejad, ordering him to dismiss Esfandiar Rahim Mashai, his choice for top deputy, after the appointment drew sharp condemnation from their hard-line base. Mashai, a relative by marriage to Ahmadinejad, angered hard-liners in 2008 when he said Iranians were "friends of all people in the world, even Israelis." Ahmadinejad appeared to openly defy the order.
(AP, 7/22/09)(SFC, 7/22/09, p.A3)
2009 Jul 21, In Iraq bombs killed 19 people and wounded 80 across the country. 6 bombs exploded in Baghdad killing 14 people and wounded at least 30 others. These included 2 bombs near a group of day laborers in Baghdad's Sadr City area.
(AP, 7/21/09)(SFC, 7/22/09, p.A2)
2009 Jul 21, Japan’s PM Taro Aso dissolved the powerful lower house of the parliament and vowed his divided ruling party will make a new start in national elections next month despite forecasts it may lose the grip it has held on the nation for most of the past 55 years.
(AP, 7/21/09)
2009 Jul 21, In southern Japan torrential rains triggered floods and landslides, leaving at least six people dead and 10 others missing, including elderly residents at a nursing home.
(AP, 7/22/09)
2009 Jul 21, In southwest Kenya a bus driver swerved at a sharp corner and collided with another bus, killing at least 22 people and injuring dozens.
(AP, 7/22/09)
2009 Jul 21, Mali's president's office announced that Spain plans to help Mali fight Al-Qaeda of the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), which is active in the desert north of the west African nation.
(AFP, 7/21/09)
2009 Jul 21, Mexican police detained a woman (65) in the deaths of two professional wrestlers who were found drugged in a low-rent hotel in Mexico City on June 29. One of the diminutive wrestlers went by the name "La Parkita" (Little Death") and wore a skeleton costume in the ring. The other was known as "Espectrito Jr." An autopsy on the two wrestlers, who were brothers, detected a substance found in eye drops that can damage the nervous system when mixed with alcohol. Three bodies, one of them headless, were found floating in an irrigation ditch in the northern border city of Ciudad Juarez, where drug violence has spiked despite the presence of thousands of soldiers. Police captured four men, members of the La Familia drug cartel, accused of slaying 12 federal agents on the weekend of July 12 and dumping their bloodied bodies along a highway in President Felipe Calderon's home state of Michoacan.
(AP, 7/21/09)(http://alibi.com/index.php?story=28392&scn=news)(AP, 7/23/09)
2009 Jul 21, Pakistan’s military said 3 days of clashes between security forces and militants in the northwest left more than 56 militants and six soldiers dead. Pakistani fighter jets destroyed two suspected militant hide-outs in South Waziristan, killing six men believed to be associates of Taliban commander Baitullah Mehsud.
(AP, 7/21/09)(AP, 7/22/09)
2009 Jul 21, Spain’s foreign minister, Miguel Angel Moratinos, drove across the border to Gibraltar to meet with British foreign secretary, David Miliband, and Gibraltar chief minister, Pater Caruana. This was the first time in over 300 years that a Spanish government minister had visited the British territory.
(Econ, 7/25/09, p.51)
2009 Jul 21, Sri Lanka welcomed a tentative agreement with the IMF for a 2.5-billion-dollar bailout as the country emerged from a near four-decade-long separatist war.
(AFP, 7/21/09)
2009 Jul 21, In Turkey a father and two sons allegedly opened fire in the eastern village in Elazig province, killing six people and wounding seven others. They were soon captured.
(AP, 7/22/09)
2009 Jul 21, The WHO said that deaths from the H1N1 swine flu virus have double in the past 3 weeks to over 700.
(SFC, 7/22/09, p.A2)
2009 Jul 22, In Lynn, Massachusetts, 6 boys, aged 7-15, used bricks to severely beat Damien Merida (30), a Guatemalan immigrant, as he slept near railroad tracks.
(http://tinyurl.com/l6cuf3)(SFC, 9/17/09, p.A7)
2009 Jul 22, Millions of Asians turned their eyes skyward as dawn suddenly turned to darkness across the continent in the longest total solar eclipse this century will see.
(AP, 7/22/09)
2009 Jul 22, Officials said Afghanistan was repositioning forces to the south after complaints too few are involved in major US and British offensives against the Taliban. A convoy belonging to a minor presidential candidate, former Taliban commander Mullah Salam Rocketi, was ambushed as he returned to Kabul after campaigning in northern Baghlan and one of his campaign officials was killed.
(Reuters, 7/22/09)
2009 Jul 22, The Algerian government issued a decree effective as of August shifting the dates of the weekend to Friday and Saturday in a move viewed as a boost the North African nation's faltering economy. Algeria had observed its weekends on Thursdays and Fridays since 1976 as do a few other countries including Iran and Saudi Arabia.
(AP, 7/22/09)
2009 Jul 22, In Iraq gunmen in four cars opened fire on a convoy of buses carrying Iranian pilgrims through Iraq, killing five of them near the village of Kebasi. Some 35 others were wounded.
(AP, 7/22/09)
2009 Jul 22, Israel’s education minister said the Israeli government will remove references to what Palestinians call the "catastrophe" of Israel's creation from textbooks for Arab schoolchildren. The reference to "al-naqba," the Arabic word catastrophe as Palestinians call their defeat and exile in the war over Israel's 1948 creation, was controversially inserted by a dovish education minister for the first time in 2007.
(AP, 7/22/09)
2009 Jul 22, Italian authorities seized some euro200 million ($284 million) in assets and businesses owned by the 'ndrangheta crime syndicate, including the Cafe de Paris of "La Dolce Vita" movie fame. 12 other restaurants, apartments and luxury cars were also impounded in the operation.
(AP, 7/22/09)
2009 Jul 22, Malaysia’s PM Najib Razak said a decision to expand TIA (1MDB), a regional development fund for oil-rich Terengganu state, into a federal entity was made to enable its benefits to reach a broad spectrum of Malaysians rather than to the residents of only one state. Tycoon Low Taek Jho helped set up 1MDB.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1Malaysia_Development_Berhad)(Econ, 3/5/15, p.34)(Econ, 7/23/16, p.61)
2009 Jul 22, Pakistan urged the US to share intelligence from spy flights and arm its soldiers against militants accused by Washington of plotting attacks from the Afghan border.
(AP, 7/22/09)
2009 Jul 22, Amnesty International reported that Saudi Arabia is holding more than 3,000 people in secret detention and has used torture to extract confessions in its anti-terrorism crackdown since the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks.
(AP, 7/22/09)
2009 Jul 22, Somali Islamist insurgents clashed with government forces and African Union peacekeepers, killing 3 government, 3 insurgent fighters. The renewed fighting between the radical Shebab militia and AU-backed government forces killed at least 15 civilians in Mogadishu.
(AP, 7/23/09)(AFP, 7/24/09)
2009 Jul 22, South Africa reported that wave of protests have erupted in townships across the country over shoddy housing and public services, adding to pressure on President Jacob Zuma to deliver on promises to fight poverty.
(AFP, 7/22/09)
2009 Jul 22, An international arbitration panel awarded the Sudanese government control over almost all major oil reserves in a disputed region of Sudan that erupted into violence last year between state forces and former southern rebels.
(AP, 7/22/09)
2009 Jul 23, US Vice President Joe Biden pledged Washington's full support for Georgia a year after its war with Russia and urged Moscow to abide by a ceasefire pact and pull its troops back from two rebel regions.
(Reuters, 7/23/09)
2009 Jul 23, US Border Patrol Agent Robert Rosas was killed near Campo, Ca. On July 25 Mexican federal police detained four men suspected of involvement in the killing of Rosas. Included was Ernesto Parra Valenzuela, identified as the suspected killer of Rosas. In 2009 Christian Daniel Castro Alvarez (17) pleaded guilty to murdering Rosas. On April 29, 2010, Alvarez was sentenced to 40 years in prison. A 2nd suspect, Marcos Manuel Rodriguez Perez, was arrested on April 11, 2011.
(AP, 7/26/09)(http://texasfred.net/archives/4628)(SFC, 7/27/09, p.A4)(SFC, 11/21/09, p.A4)(AP, 4/29/10)(AP, 4/11/11)
2009 Jul 23, US counter-terrorism officials said that Saad bin Laden (27), the 2nd-eldest son of Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, was apparently killed in a US missile strike inside Pakistan this year.
(SFC, 7/24/09, p.A4)
2009 Jul 23, Federal prosecutors arrested over 40 people in New Jersey and New York as part of a major corruption and international money laundering conspiracy probe. They included New Jersey Assemblyman Daniel Van Pelt, Hoboken Mayor Peter Cammarano III, Secaucus Mayor Dennis Elwell and Jersey City Deputy Mayor Leona Beldini. Several rabbis in New York and New Jersey were also arrested. Some were accused of laundering tens of millions of dollars and of black-market trafficking of kidneys and fake Gucci handbags.
(AP, 7/23/09)(AP, 7/24/09)
2009 Jul 23, The Columbus Salame plant in South San Francisco, established in 1967, was devastated by fire.
(SFC, 7/24/09, p.D2)
2009 Jul 23, In Michigan the last edition of The Ann Arbor News rolled off the presses After 174 years, with a three-word headline: "Farewell, Ann Arbor." It is being replaced by AnnArbor.com, an online news site that will produce a print edition twice a week.
(AP, 7/23/09)
2009 Jul 23, E. Lynn Harris (b.1955), pioneer of gay black fiction, died while promoting his latest book in Los Angeles. Long before the secret world of closeted black gay men came to light in America, Harris introduced a generation of black women to the phenomenon known as the "down low." His debut "Invisible Life" (1994) was a coming-of-age story that dealt with the then-taboo topic.
(AP, 7/24/09)
2009 Jul 23, In Afghanistan an operation conducted by US-led coalition forces in the Baidar area of Gelan district killed eight Taliban, five of them foreigners.
(AFP, 7/24/09)
2009 Jul 23, Arab health ministers decided to ban children, the elderly and those with chronic medical conditions from attending the annual Muslim pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia this year in effort to slow the spread of swine flu.
(AP, 7/23/09)
2009 Jul 23, Chinese researchers reported that they have produced living mice from connective tissue cells induced to revert to their embryonic state.
(SFC, 7/24/09, p.A11)
2009 Jul 23, In China a landslide triggered by heavy rain hit a county in southwestern Sichuan province, killing at least four people and leaving 53 others missing.
(AP, 7/23/09)
2009 Jul 23, In China female panda You You (pronounced Yo Yo) gave birth to the new cub at the Wolong Giant Panda Research Center in southwestern Sichuan. This was the first successful birth of a panda cub from artificial insemination using frozen sperm, giving a new option for the notoriously poor breeders.
(AP, 7/24/09)
2009 Jul 23, Iceland formally applied to join the European Union but said it would not accept a "rotten deal" for its fishing industry, a key sector of the island nation's troubled economy.
(AP, 7/23/09)
2009 Jul 23, The wife of Iranian opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi said that her brother is among the hundreds arrested in Iran's postelection crackdown, and she warned authorities not to publish any "forced confessions" from him or other detainees.
(AP, 7/23/09)
2009 Jul 23, Israeli defense officials said tests of a missile-defense system meant to shield Israel from Iranian attack were aborted over the past week on three occasions because of various malfunctions.
(AP, 7/23/09)
2009 Jul 23, In Japan Jerry Yu (30), a US citizen who worked for a Japanese communications company in Tokyo, was found dead of probable hypothermia off a trail just below the peak of Mount Fuji. His colleague, Takeshi Nakamura (27), was found dead the next day.
(AP, 7/24/09)
2009 Jul 23, In Kyrgyzstan Almazbek Atambayev, the main opposition candidate, said he was no longer taking part in this day’s presidential election, citing widespread ballot-stuffing and the intimidation of election monitors. Pres. Bakiyev (59) won another 5-year term with 76% of the ballots. International monitors said the election was marred by ballot-box stuffing and widespread irregularities in vote counting.
(AP, 7/23/09)(AP, 8/2/09)
2009 Jul 23, In Nigeria Wole Soyinka, 1986 Nobel laureate in literature, slammed Nigeria's handling of the crisis in the oil region and urged the government to adopt a "holistic" approach in tackling it. Excerpts of the news conference were reported the next day on private Channels television.
(AFP, 7/24/09)
2009 Jul 23, In Pakistan the Taliban denied claims that Maulana Fazlullah, architect of a brutal uprising in Pakistan's Swat valley, was wounded and threatened to unleash renewed holy war. Pakistan said on July 8 it had "credible" information that Fazlullah was injured during a blistering offensive designed to crush Taliban militants. Two policemen were killed and three others wounded when a roadside bomb exploded near a checkpoint in Shangla district. A bomb hidden in a supposed gift of a tape recorder killed another policeman at a checkpoint outside the town of Karak, which borders the Taliban-infested North Waziristan tribal district.
(AFP, 7/23/09)
2009 Jul 23, The Philippine government ordered its military to stop offensives against Muslim separatist rebels in a bid to restart peace talks, a move welcomed by the guerrillas.
(AP, 7/23/09)
2009 Jul 23, In Poland say seven people died in violent storms.
(AP, 7/24/09)
2009 Jul 23, South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma's new government warned protesters they must respect the law as violent demonstrations against shoddy public services spread across townships.
(AP, 7/23/09)
2009 Jul 23, Yemeni security forces opened fire on thousands of protesters in the south chanting anti-government slogans, killing 12 and wounding scores of others. Demonstrations by former army members in southern Yemen demanding political reforms have been occurring regularly since August, 2007.
(AP, 7/24/09)
2009 Jul 24, President Barack Obama conceded his words, that a white police officer "acted stupidly" when he arrested a black university scholar in his own home, were ill-chosen. He invited both men to visit him at the White House, but stopped short of publicly apologizing for his remark. Obama said he had personally telephoned the two men, Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Cambridge, Mass., police Sgt. James Crowley, in an effort to end the rancorous back-and-forth over the issue. The case began on July 20, when word broke that Gates (58) had been arrested five days earlier at the 2-story home he rents from Harvard.
(AP, 7/25/09)
2009 Jul 24, Pres. Obama challenged states and school districts to raise academic standards and improve teacher quality if they want a chance at some $5 billion in new grants in the administration’s “Race to the Top" program.
(SFC, 7/25/09, p.A3)
2009 Jul 24, The United States transferred $200 million to the Palestinian government to help ease a growing budget deficit.
(AP, 7/24/09)
2009 Jul 24, A federal minimum wage increase took effect. Some economists said it could prolong the recession by forcing small businesses to lay off the same workers that the pay hike passed in better times was meant to help. The increase to $7.25 meant 70 cents more an hour for the lowest-paid workers in the 30 states that have lower minimums or no minimum wage.
(AP, 7/24/09)
2009 Jul 24, The California Senate approved a plan to close the state's $26 billion budget deficit, providing a glimmer of hope after weeks of fiscal gloom.
(AP, 7/24/09)
2009 Jul 24, In Oakland, Ca., a city parking department memo ordered parking officers to avoid enforcing neighborhood parking violations in some wealthier neighborhoods, but to continue enforcing the same violations in the rest of the city.
(SFC, 2/25/10, p.A1)
2009 Jul 24, Isaiah M.K. Kalebu (23) was arrested for breaking into a Seattle home and stabbing 2 women, one fatally. Kalebu had a history of mental illness.
(SSFC, 7/26/09, p.A12)
2009 Jul 24, In Afghanistan four Taliban were killed in a clash with foreign forces In northern Balkh province. Fighting killed two US soldiers. NATO troops came under fire in the east and one NATO soldier was killed. Air strikes followed killing several insurgents. Up to 12 insurgents were killed in a gun battle with US-led troops in the eastern province of Nangarhar.
(AFP, 7/24/09)(AP, 7/25/09)
2009 Jul 24, Burundi army officials said 3 of its soldiers serving with African Union peacekeepers in Somalia have died of a mysterious illness in a Kenyan hospital where more than 10 others are being treated.
(AFP, 7/24/09)
2009 Jul 24, Via Rail, Canada's national passenger rail service, said it was shutting down service after mediated talks with the Teamsters union failed to resolve a contract dispute, and locomotive engineers walked off the job.
(Reuters, 7/24/09)
2009 Jul 24, A senior Chechen official held talks in Norway with prominent separatist figure Akhmed Zakayev, who said they had agreed to seek a political settlement of rebellion in the south Russian region.
(Reuters, 7/24/09)
2009 Jul 24, In China some 30,000 steelworkers in Tonghua clashed with police in a protest over plans to merge their mill with another company. Angry employees of Tonghua Iron and Steel Group attacked Jianlong Steel general manager Chen Guojun during the protest and beat him to death.
(AP, 7/25/09)
2009 Jul 24, The UN refugee agency said 536,000 people have been chased from their homes in eastern Congo this year as a result of clashes between government forces and rebels linked to neighboring Rwanda's 1994 genocide.
(AP, 7/24/09)
2009 Jul 24, In southern Croatia a passenger train derailed, killing at least six people and injuring about 20.
(AP, 7/24/09)
2009 Jul 24, In Europe deadly summer wild fires spread across Spain, France, Italy and Greece with holidaymakers rescued from beaches and thousands of firefighters brought into the battle.
(AFP, 7/24/09)
2009 Jul 24, Ousted Honduras President Manuel Zelaya stood on the edge of his country and called on his fellow Hondurans to resist the coup-installed government. He then quickly retreated back to Nicaraguan territory, saying he wanted to avoid bloodshed and give negotiations another try.
(AP, 7/25/09)
2009 Jul 24, Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad caved into pressure from hardline clerics and the country's supreme leader and allowed the resignation of his top deputy, Esfandiar Rahim Mashai, who last year angered conservatives when he made friendly comments toward Israel.
(AP, 7/25/09)
2009 Jul 24, In Iran a Russian Ilyushin-62 plane, operated by Tehran-based Aria Airlines and carrying 153 passengers and crew, skidded off the runway and hit a wall while landing in the northeastern city of Mashhad. 13 of the 16 people killed in the crash were members of the crew, 9 of them from Kazakhstan. The plane landed at high speed and the tires failed.
(AP, 7/25/09)
2009 Jul 24, In northern Iraq Fakri Hadi Gari, the deputy commander of a radical Sunni Islamic group linked to al-Qaida, was arrested. Ansar al-Islam is believed by the military to be behind attacks on US and Iraqi troops in Mosul. Gari, also known as Abu Abbas and Mullah Halgurd, was arrested with nine other suspected members. An American soldier died of non-combat related injuries.
(AP, 8/4/09)(AP, 7/24/09)
2009 Jul 24, In Pakistan 10 militants were killed in Buner district and 29 were arrested elsewhere in the region. Troops killed four militants in Swat and destroyed a training camp and a militants' cave. In Upper Dir jets pounded a suspected Taliban base, killing at least four militants.
(AFP, 7/24/09)(AFP, 7/25/09)
2009 Jul 24, The Arctic Sea, a Maltese-flagged bulk carrier, was boarded by 8 attackers posing as police. The timber carrying vessel was boarded off the Swedish coast, searched by attackers, who reportedly tied up the crew for 12 hours. It disappeared following its last communication on July 28. The failed to arrive at the Algerian port of Bejaia on August 4 as planned. The 4,700-ton ship, originally called Okhotsk, built in 1991, had a Russian crew of 13 and was operated by a firm based in the Russian port of Arkhangelsk. Russian naval warships tracked down the ship off the Cape Verde islands and freed the crew. On August 18 Russia reported that eight people from Latvia, Estonia and Russia had been arrested for piracy. On Aug 19 Yulia Latynina, a leading Russian opposition journalist and commentator, reported that “the Arctic Sea was carrying some sort of anti-aircraft or nuclear contraption intended for a nice, peaceful country like Syria, and they were caught with it." In March 2011 six men were convicted and sentenced to 6-12 years in prison. Two others were already convicted.
(Reuters, 8/9/09)(Reuters, 8/18/09)(AP, 8/19/09)(AP, 3/24/11)
2009 Jul 24, The IMF approved a $2.6 billion loan to Sri Lanka.
(Econ, 8/8/09, p.35)
2009 Jul 24, Turkish commandos captured five pirates in the Gulf of Aden as part of an international mission to curb piracy off the coast of Somalia.
(AP, 7/24/09)
2009 Jul 24, Zimbabwe's coalition government launched a campaign of "national healing" and reconciliation, with political leaders urging supporters to end years of political violence and intimidation.
(AP, 7/24/09)
2009 Jul 25, In Afghanistan 7 suicide bombers tried to storm state targets in Khost, killing one civilian and wounding others in the third Taliban commando raid in a week. A British soldier was killed when a bomb exploded in southern Helmand province. A US service member died during a clash with insurgents in the south. Afghan elders struck the first local truce with Taliban insurgents in northwestern Badghis province after nearly three weeks of talks.
(AFP, 7/25/09)(AP, 7/26/09)(AP, 7/27/09)
2009 Jul 25, In Algeria five Islamists were killed by the army about 15 km (nine miles) east of Tizi Ouzou.
(AFP, 7/29/09)
2009 Jul 25, Brazil agreed to triple its compensation to Paraguay to operate the huge Itaipu hydroelectric dam on their shared border, ending a decades-long dispute between the neighbors. President Fernando Lugo persuaded Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to sign a deal tripling Brazil's payments from $120 million to $360 million a year. On Apr 6, 2011, Brazil's lower house of Congress finally approved the deal.
(AFP, 7/25/09)(AP, 4/21/11)
2009 Jul 25, In Britain a new poll was released showing solid support for the right to die. The Royal College of Nursing said it was adopting a neutral stance on the issue after its research showed nurses were divided. The British Medical Association remained opposed.
(AP, 7/25/09)
2009 Jul 25, In eastern China more than 3,000 villagers of Shipu town, in Zhejiang province, blocked a highway and clashed with police while protesting alleged official corruption in a land compensation deal.
(AP, 7/26/09)
2009 Jul 25, Chinese state television launched an Arabic-language channel beamed to the Middle East and Africa as part of efforts to expand the communist government's media influence abroad.
(AP, 7/25/09)
2009 Jul 25, In Colombia at least 16 suspected FARC guerrillas and one soldier have been killed in clashes over the last 24 hours.
(AP, 7/25/09)
2009 Jul 25, Iran's opposition leaders appealed to the top clerics in the holy city of Qom to pressure the ruling Islamic regime to release protesters and activists, who they say have been tortured following last month's disputed presidential election. Protesters across the world called on Iran to end its clampdown on opposition activists, demanding the release of hundreds rounded up during demonstrations against the country's disputed election.
(AP, 7/25/09)
2009 Jul 25, Iraqis voted in elections in the self-ruled Kurdish north. Regional Kurdish President Massoud Barzani, who has been a consistent critic of the central government, won re-election with almost 70% of the vote, while the leading candidate from the opposition party, Kamal Mirawdeli, received 25%. A coalition of the two ruling parties, Barzani's Kurdistan Democratic Party and Iraqi President Jalal Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, received a little over 57% of the vote for the 111-seat parliament, while the opposition Gorran, or Change, party took about 23%.
(AP, 7/25/09)(AP, 7/29/09)
2009 Jul 25, Mexican police captured 11 suspected members of the La Familia cartel and seized a methamphetamine lab in the western state of Michoacan.
(AP, 7/25/09)
2009 Jul 25, In Pakistan a remote controlled bomb killed two Pakistani soldiers in the tribal Bajaur district. Troops retaliated killing three suspected Taliban militants.
(AP, 7/25/09)
2009 Jul 25, Swedish wireless equipment maker LM Ericsson said it had penned a deal to buy a majority of Nortel Networks' North American wireless business for $1.13 billion.
(AP, 7/25/09)
2009 Jul 25, In Sweden a woman in her 40s and her five daughters were killed when they tried to escape an apartment fire in a Stockholm suburb.
(AP, 7/26/09)
2009 Jul 25, Zimbabwe’s PM Morgan Tsvangirai said compensation must be considered for victims of political violence as the country held a weekend of national reconciliation.
(AFP, 7/25/09)
2009 July 26, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin stepped down and was replaced by Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sean_Parnell)(SSFC, 11/16/14, p.A9)
2009 Jul 26, In New York a car crash in Briarcliff killed 8 people including 4 children. Diane Schuler (36) was drunk and high on marijuana when she went the wrong way on Taconic State Parkway and crashed into an SUV.
(SFC, 7/27/09, p.A4)(SFC, 8/5/09, p.A5)
2009 Jul 26, Merce Cunningham (b.1919), avant-garde dancer and choreographer, died at his home in Manhattan.
(SFC, 7/28/09, p.A7)
2009 Jul 26, It was reported that Marines in Helmand working alongside DEA-mentored Afghan police seized 297 tons of poppy seeds, 77 pounds (35 kilograms) of heroin and 300 pounds (135 kilograms) of opium in raids in mid-July. Some 1,200 pounds (550 kilograms) of hashish and 4,225 gallons (16,000 liters) of chemicals used to convert opium to heroin were also seized.
(AP, 7/26/09)
2009 Jul 26, In northwestern Algeria members of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb killed two local security officers in an ambush in the Mascara region.
(AFP, 7/28/09)
2009 Jul 26, In Chechnya a suicide bomber killed five people and wounded a number of others near a concert hall in the capital. 4 policemen died trying to prevent the bomber from entering the hall. 4 militants were found dead after an explosion in the Nazran district of Ingushetia province that borders Chechnya to the west.
(AP, 7/26/09)
2009 Jul 26, In Macao, China, Fernando Chui (52), the sole candidate for chief executive in the former Portuguese colony, was endorsed by a 300-member panel in the first leadership change since Macao reverted to Chinese rule in 1999.
(AP, 7/26/09)
2009 Jul 26, Egypt's prosecutor general officially charged 26 suspects, including two Lebanese and five Palestinians, for spying for the militant group Hezbollah, as well as plotting terrorist attacks and aiding militants in the Gaza strip. Some were accused of planning to attack ships on the Suez canal and tourists in Egypt.
(Reuters, 7/26/09)(AP, 7/26/09)
2009 Jul 26, Guinea-Bissau voters went to the polls for a presidential runoff between two former heads of state. The West African country’s veteran leader was assassinated in March. On July 29 election officials announced that Malam Bacai Sanha was the new president. Sanha took 63.39% of the runoff vote, beating opponent Kumba Yala, who took 36.69%.
(AFP, 7/26/09)(AP, 7/29/09)
2009 Jul 26, India launched the first nuclear-powered submarine built on its soil, asserting itself as a world power. It joined 5 other countries that can design and construct such vessels. The 367-foot (112-meter) -long submarine, named "Arihant" or "Destroyer of Enemies," was sent for sea trials at a ceremony attended by PM Manmohan Singh.
(AP, 7/26/09)
2009 Jul 26, Human Rights Watch said Iranian authorities are spreading fear by arresting prominent human rights lawyers to prevent them from representing protesters detained in the aftermath of the country's disputed presidential election. An appeals court found Iran's Industry, Minister Ali Akbar Mehrabian, guilty of fraud, in a new embarrassment for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Ahmadinejad's office announced the dismissal of Intelligence Minister Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejehi. No reasons were given but the two had differed over top vice president Rahim Mashai.
(AP, 7/27/09)(AP, 7/27/09)
2009 Jul 26, In Iraq 5 people were killed in a daylight attack at a popular money exchange office, a reflection of the increasing crime in Iraq even as violence is on the decline. 5 more people, including 3 police officers, were killed and 23 others wounded when a suicide bomber struck a Ramadi funeral for a police officer, who had been killed the day before in a roadside bomb attack.
(AP, 7/26/09)(AP, 7/27/09)
2009 Jul 26, Hazem al-Braikan (36), a Kuwaiti businessman linked to Citigroup and charged in the United States with fraud, was found dead in his bed in Kuwait City with a gunshot wound to the head and a handgun at his side. The US SEC charged al-Braikan last week with scheming to make millions by manipulating the stock of certain US companies.
(AP, 7/26/09)
2009 Jul 26, Gaza's top judge said that he has ordered female lawyers to wear Muslim headscarves when they appear in court, the latest sign that the Islamic militant group is increasingly imposing its strict interpretation of Islamic law on residents of the coastal strip.
(AP, 7/26/09)
2009 Jul 26, In northern Nigeria Islamist militants attacked a police station in Bauchi. Police killed over 50 militants and arrested more than 150 others. The fundamentalists, known as Boko Haram (education is prohibited) in the local Hausa language, clamored for the prohibition of western education in Bauchi and Yobe states. In 2010 Nigerian police said 32 of its men were murdered in the Bauchi attack.
(AP, 7/26/09)(Reuters, 7/26/09)(Econ, 8/1/09, p.44)(AFP, 7/29/10)
2009 Jul 26, In Pakistan Moulana Sufi Mohammad, the radical Islamic cleric who brokered a peace deal with the Taliban in Swat, was arrested in the restive northwest. Sufi Mohammad is the father-in-law of Moulana Fazllulah, the leader of the Taliban in Swat and head of a banned Pakistani Islamist rebel group called Tehreek-e-Nafaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM).
(AP, 7/26/09)
2009 Jul 26, Somali government troops took full control of Belet Weyne, the strategic western town where the national security minister was killed last month.
(AFP, 7/26/09)
2009 Jul 26, In Tajikistan a small explosion hit the Tajik capital of Dushanbe. A 2nd small explosion followed the next day. There were no injuries. A high-profile meeting between the leaders of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Russia, was scheduled to start July 30 for talks on communications and transportation.
(AP, 7/27/09)
2009 Jul 26, In Tanzania a bus crashed into a truck in Korogwe killing 33 people.
(SSFC, 7/26/09, p.A2)
2009 Jul 27, President Barack Obama in Washington, DC, opened 2 days of high-level talks with China. Obama called for deeper US-Chinese economic cooperation and outlined a broad agenda for a positive relationship between two countries that do not always see eye to eye.
(Reuters, 7/27/09)
2009 Jul 27, In North Carolina Daniel Patrick Boyd (39) was arrested with his two sons and four other North Carolina men. Prosecutors accused them of military-style training at home and plotting "violent jihad" through a series of terror attacks abroad. In 1991 Boyd and his brother were convicted of bank robbery in Pakistan. They were also accused of carrying identification showing they belonged to the radical Afghan guerrilla group, Hezb-e-Islami, or Party of Islam. Each was sentenced to have a foot and a hand cut off for the robbery, but the decision was later overturned. In 2011 Zakarija Boyd (22) pleaded guilty to one charge of conspiring to provide material support to terrorists. In June, 2012, Anes Subasic was sentenced to 30 years in jail. On Aug 24, 2012, Daniel Patrick Boyd was sentenced to 18 years in prison.
(AP, 7/28/09)(SFC, 6/8/11, p.A8)(SFC, 8/25/12, p.A5)
2009 Jul 27, Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai said he wants new rules governing the conduct of US-led forces in Afghanistan and would be willing to talk with Taliban leaders who publicly renounce violence and endorse peace. The British government announced the end of the first phase of Operation Panther's Claw against the Taliban in southern Afghanistan, saying it now needs to hold and build on the ground it has cleared of insurgents. A Taliban rocket killed 4 civilians at home in the central province of Ghazni overnight. A civilian was killed in a bomb blast in eastern Khost province. The US military in Afghanistan said it has stopped releasing body counts of insurgents believed killed in operations because the tolls distract from the US objective of protecting Afghans.
(AP, 7/27/09)(AFP, 7/27/09)
2009 Jul 27, Algerian papers reported that security forces have killed five armed Islamic extremists in the northeastern Tizi Ouzou region, about 100 km (60 miles) east of Algiers.
(AFP, 7/27/09)
2009 Jul 27, In Canada union officials in Toronto said they had reached a tentative deal to settle a civic workers strike that had halted garbage collection and many other city services for more than a month.
(Reuters, 7/27/09)
2009 Jul 27, In Colombia three soldiers and two civilians were killed in a rifle and grenade attack on a boat carrying coca eradication workers on the San Juan river in Choco state. Six people were wounded and six more were missing.
(AP, 7/28/09)
2009 Jul 27, A Congo government spokesman said The Democratic Republic of Congo has suspended transmission of French broadcaster Radio France International (RFI).
(Reuters, 7/27/09)
2009 Jul 27, El Salvador announced a decision to close schools nationwide for two weeks to combat the spread of swine flu. El Salvador has already confirmed 545 cases of swine flu, including seven deaths.
(AP, 7/27/09)
2009 Jul 27, In Ethiopia Bashir Ahmed Makhtal (36), an Ethiopian-born Canadian citizen, was found guilty of being a member of a rebel group fighting for autonomy for an ethnically Somali part of the country. Bashir was convicted of membership in the ONLF and supporting terrorism in Ogaden, and could face the death penalty. His grandfather was a founder of the ONLF. On August 3 he was sentenced to life in prison for terrorism-related charges.
(Reuters, 7/27/09)(AP, 8/3/09)
2009 Jul 27, European Union nations gave their final approval to a ban on imports of seal products in an effort to force Canada to end its annual seal hunt.
(AP, 7/27/09)
2009 Jul 27, An overloaded sailboat carrying an estimated 200 Haitian migrants sank off the Turks and Caicos Islands and as many as 85 people were missing.
(AP, 7/28/09)
2009 Jul 27, Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ordered the closure of Kahrizak prison, where rights workers say protesters detained in the country's election turmoil have died.
(AP, 7/28/09)
2009 Jul 27, In Iraq 2 people were killed in bombings targeting police officers, considered the weakest link among the Iraqi security forces that have taken the lead from withdrawing American forces. The first bombing came in eastern Baghdad, when a roadside bomb targeted a police patrol but missed, killing one civilian. A short time later, a bomb attached to a car exploded in Fallujah, killing a police captain.
(AP, 7/27/09)
2009 Jul 27, Mexico announced a pilot program to have special courts handle cases involving addicted offenders who commit crimes while under the influence of drugs.
(AP, 7/27/09)
2009 Jul 27, Amnesty Int’l. launched a campaign to repeal Nicaragua’s 2006 total ban on abortion.
(SFC, 7/28/09, p.A4)
2009 Jul 27, In Nigeria Residents of Gamboru-Ngala in Borno state said heavily armed members of a Nigerian Taliban sect stormed the town and went on the rampage, burning a police headquarters, a church and a customs post. Police put the death toll in weekend religious clashes at 65, including 5 police officers.
(AP, 7/27/09)
2009 Jul 27, In Pakistan North West Frontier Province Senior Minister Bashir Ahmad Bilour said security forces had rescued dozens of children aged 6 to 15 who the Taliban were allegedly training as suicide bombers.
(AP, 7/28/09)
2009 Jul 27, Russia’s Interior Ministry said Semyon Mogilevich, an alleged organized crime boss who is also wanted in the US, was released from pretrial detention 18 months after his arrest in Moscow. He has been on the FBI's wanted list since 2003, accused of manipulating the stock of a Pennsylvania-based company, YBM Magnex Inc., which collapsed in 1998.
(AP, 7/27/09)
2009 Jul 27, In Somalia mortar attacks by rebels disrupted a parliamentary session as heavy fighting between the militia and African Union-backed government forces killed 7 civilians.
(AP, 7/27/09)
2009 Jul 27, Thousands of South African council workers went on strike to press for wage hikes, crippling public services in Africa's biggest economy and piling political pressure on new President Jacob Zuma.
(AP, 7/27/09)
2009 Jul 27, Sweden said it was demanding an explanation as to why Swedish-made anti-tank rocket launchers, sold to Venezuela years ago, were obtained by Colombia's main rebel group. Three launchers were recovered in October in a FARC arms cache belonging to a rebel commander known as "Jhon 40" and Colombia only recently asked Sweden to confirm whether they had been sold to Venezuela,
(AP, 7/27/09)
2009 Jul 27, The Taiwanese and Chinese presidents swapped messages, the first such exchange since the two sides split amid civil war 60 years ago.
(AP, 7/27/09)
2009 Jul 27, The leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, led solemn prayers in Kiev on the first day of 10-day visit aimed at reasserting Moscow's dominance over church leaders in Ukraine.
(AP, 7/27/09)
2009 Jul 28, The US government turned up the pressure on the interim government of Honduras to accept the return of exiled President Manuel Zelaya, suspending the diplomatic visas of four Honduran officials a month after a military coup.
(AP, 7/29/09)
2009 Jul 28, California’s Gov. Schwarzenegger cut a half billion more from the state budget and signed a package of legislation to wipe out the state’s $24 billion deficit. It was later reported that state lawmakers added 336 employees between January and the end of July adding about $14.4 million a year to the state payroll.
(SFC, 7/29/09, p.A1)(SSFC, 8/9/09, p.A1)
2009 Jul 28, Tennessee state Sen. Paul Stanley (47) resigned in Nashville after his extramarital affair with an intern (22) was revealed by an investigation into an extortion case. McKensie Morrison’s boyfriend was charged with trying to extort $10,000 from the GOP lawmaker.
(SFC, 7/29/09, p.A6)
2009 Jul 28, It was reported that scientists claimed to have created a form of aluminum that's nearly transparent to extreme ultraviolet radiation and which is a new state of matter.
(www.livescience.com/technology/090728-new-state-matter.html)
2009 Jul 28, At the EAA AirVenture air show in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, Aabar Investments, an Abu Dhabi-based sovereign wealth fund, and Virgin Galactic signed a strategic partnership in which Aabar would take a 32% stake in Virgin Galactic for $280 million. To date Virgin Galactic has been wholly owned and funded by Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Group.
(Econ, 9/12/09, p.87)(http://tinyurl.com/y8gtjad)
2009 Jul 28, Tony Rosenthal (b.1914), American artist and abstract sculptor, died in Southampton, NY. He created the Regent’s Cube located in the Regent’s Plaza at the Univ. of Michigan, his alma mater. Commissioned by the Class of 1965 and officially titled “Endover," the revolving cube is one of three designed Rosenthal. It was installed on Regents’ Plaza (the open space bounded by the LS&A Building, Michigan Union and Fleming Building) in 1968. The others are at home in New York City and Miami.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Rosenthal)(www.ur.umich.edu/0001/Nov06_00/6.htm)
2009 Jul 28, Richard Holbrooke, the US special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, said in Brussels that Taliban militants are receiving more funding from sympathizers abroad than from Afghanistan's illegal drug trade. NATO military officials in Afghanistan have estimated that the Taliban raise between $60-$100 million a year from the trade in illegal narcotics.
(AP, 7/28/09)
2009 Jul 28, The top UN official in Afghanistan urged the Taliban not to disrupt elections, as militants killed nine people, ambushed a presidential campaign manager and fired rockets into a UN compound.
(AP, 7/28/09)
2009 Jul 28, Algeria's coast guard arrested 19 illegal migrants in a dinghy off the western town of Arzew, near Oran, as they tried to reach Europe.
(AP, 7/28/09)
2009 Jul 28, In Australia Shane Kent (33), an Australian convert to Islam, admitted being part of a terror cell that plotted to kill thousands of people by bombing major sports events. The former forklift truck driver was about to face a retrial on the charges, which he previously denied, after a Supreme Court jury last September failed to reach a verdict.
(AFP, 7/28/09)
2009 Jul 28, In Bangladesh the heaviest rain in 53 years battered the capital, Dhaka, leaving at least six people dead and stranding thousands in their swamped homes.
(AP, 7/28/09)
2009 Jul 28, A majority of people in Britain see the Afghan war as impossible to win, according to a new poll taken amid steeply rising casualties and growing government emphasis on finding a political solution to the conflict.
(AP, 7/28/09)
2009 Jul 28, Britain said it will withdraw its remaining 100-odd troops in Iraq to Kuwait by the end of the month after the Iraqi parliament failed to pass a deal allowing them to stay to protect oil platforms and provide training.
(AP, 7/28/09)
2009 Jul 28, A court in southwest China accepted the country's first lawsuit filed by an environmental group against a local government. The All-China Environmental Federation had filed the suit on behalf of residents against the local land resources bureau in Qingzhen city in Guizhou province, which sold land to a drink and ice cream processing plant they allege is a threat to a scenic lake area.
(AP, 7/31/09)
2009 Jul 28, Fiji’s self-appointed PM Commodore Frank Bainimarama, who took power in a bloodless 2006 coup, said aged and ailing President Ratu Josefa Iloilo will retire on July 30.
(AP, 7/28/09)
2009 Jul 28, An Iranian parliament official said 140 people detained in Iran's postelection turmoil have been released from Tehran's main prison Evin.
(AP, 7/28/09)
2009 Jul 28, Iraqi forces raided Camp Ashraf, an Iranian opposition settlement north of Baghdad. The standoff continued into the next day and left 11 people dead. A gang made up of members of the presidential guard and led by the head of security for the 2nd biggest Shia party robbed a bank in central Baghdad killing 8 security guards. Initially police said the gunmen made off with 8 billion Iraqi dinars ($6.9 million). Five members of Iraq's security forces charged in the bank robbery went on trial on Aug 23. They had allegedly made off with $4.8 million. On Sep 2 four members of the security forces, convicted of the robbery, were sentenced to hang.
(AP, 7/29/09)(SFC, 7/29/09, p.A2)(Econ, 8/8/09, p.43)(AP, 8/23/09)(SFC, 9/3/09, p.A2)
2009 Jul 28, President Felipe Calderon said Mexico will start issuing nationwide identity cards for its citizens starting this year, and by 2012 everyone will have one. The body of Juan Daniel Martinez (48), a Mexican radio journalist, was found beaten, gagged and partially buried the resort city of Acapulco. Jose Ibarra, a federal agent who had been investigating the Nov 13, 2008, killing of Mexican journalist Armando Rodriguez, was shot dead at his home in the northern border city of Ciudad Juarez.
(AP, 7/28/09)(AP, 7/29/09)(AP, 7/30/09)
2009 Jul 28, In Morocco a man accused of leading a terrorist network was sentenced to life in prison for terror attacks in Morocco, holdups in Europe, large-scale money laundering projects and arms trafficking. Abdelkader Belliraj (51), a dual Moroccan-Belgian national, had faced the death penalty. 34 co-defendants were handed sentences ranging from 30 years in prison to one-year suspended sentences.
(AP, 7/28/09)
2009 Jul 28, Nigerian authorities imposed curfews and poured security forces onto the streets of several northern towns after a two-day wave of Islamic militant attacks against police killed dozens of people.
(AP, 7/28/09)
2009 Jul 28, In Pakistan the decapitated body of a Pakistani police constable was discovered in the Swat town of Sangota. The find was a sign that Taliban militants have not given up the fight for the northwestern valley, despite the nearly three-month-old army offensive there. A suicide car bomber rammed his vehicle into a checkpoint in North Waziristan tribal region, causing an explosion that killed 2 police and wounded 5 other security officials.
(AP, 7/28/09)
2009 Jul 28, The UN refugee agency said thousands of Somalis are preparing to cross the Gulf of Aden to Yemen after fleeing fighting around the capital of Mogadishu.
(AP, 7/28/09)
2009 Jul 28, Venezuela’s Pres. Hugo Chavez recalled his ambassador from Bogota and threatened to halt Colombian imports after the neighboring country said anti-tank weapons found in a rebel arms cache came from Venezuela.
(AP, 7/28/09)
2009 Jul 29, In Van Nuys, Ca., Sandro Karmryan was kidnapped. He was beaten and held captive for days as his tormentors tried to negotiate a $1 million ransom. In 2011 Suren Garibyan (34) was sentenced to 17½ years in prison for his role in the kidnapping.
(SFC, 4/27/11, p.C2)
2009 Jul 29, Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc. agreed to a 10-year Internet search partnership, capping a convoluted pursuit that dragged on for years and finally setting the stage for the rivals to make an all-out assault against the dominance of Google Inc. The extended reach will allow Microsoft to introduce its recently upgraded search engine, called Bing, to more people.
(AP, 7/29/09)
2009 Jul 29, The anti-death penalty group Hands Off Cain said the number of prisoners put to death worldwide decreased in 2008. At least 5,727 executions were carried out in 2008, down from 5,851 the year before. China accounted for at least 5,000 executions, or 87.3$ of the total, the same estimate as last year.
(AP, 7/29/09)
2009 Jul 29, The Algerian media reported that the army has killed 16 Islamist extremists in separate operations in recent days. The bodies of eight Islamists were discovered on July 27-28 near Batna, 435 km (270 miles) southeast of Algiers, after army shelling followed by a ground operation. 3 other armed Islamists were killed in two ambushes near Tizi Ouzou, 110 km (70 miles) east of the capital, on July 27-28. At least 11 Algerian soldiers were killed in an ambush by Islamic extremists while they escorted a military convoy in an Algerian tourist region outside the coastal town of Damous. Five Islamists were killed when the soldiers shot back.
(AFP, 7/29/09)(AFP, 7/30/09)
2009 Jul 29, China’s state media reported that contaminated drinking water has sickened more than 2,600 people in northern China, including 59 who were hospitalized with fevers, diarrhea, stomach aches and vomiting.
(AP, 7/29/09)
2009 Jul 29, In China Xu Zhiyong (35), prominent legal scholar, was arrested in Beijing. A week later he was accused of tax evasion. His group had tackled some of China’s most politically sensitive cases.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xu_Zhiyong)(SFC, 8/5/09, p.A2)
2009 Jul 29, Cuban state media said Russia and Cuba have signed agreements to search for oil in the Gulf of Mexico. Moscow extended the island $150 million in credit for construction materials and farm machinery.
(AP, 7/29/09)
2009 Jul 29, Germany entered into deflation this month for the first time in 22 years according to government statistics, with a projected 0.6% decline in prices compared to one year ago.
(AP, 7/29/09)
2009 Jul 29, One of India’s last queens, Maharani Gayatri Devi (90), died. She was feted as an international style icon and spent time in jail after she became a politician. Devi had married the Maharaja of Jaipur in 1939, becoming a member of the royal family that effectively ruled the city of Jaipur and the surrounding area of Rajasthan state. She became a successful politician winning a seat in parliament in 1962 and retaining it twice in elections.
(AFP, 7/29/09)
2009 Jul 29, Iran's top diplomat in Bolivia said the Islamic republic has approved a $280 million low-interest loan for President Evo Morales' government to use as it sees fit. Gas and oil exploration are possibilities.
(AP, 7/29/09)
2009 Jul 29, Ireland said it has agreed to accept two inmates from the Guantanamo prison camp in Cuba within the next two months.
(AP, 7/29/09)
2009 Jul 29, In Kyrgyzstan a number of protestors were detained, as police suppressed a series of demonstrations against the disputed re-election of President Kurmanbek Bakiyev. Police said 42 protesters were detained in Bishkek. The opposition reported that about 80 people were detained in Besh-Kungei.
(AP, 7/29/09)
2009 Jul 29, In Mexico gunmen shot up and torched the home of Jesus Antonio Romero (39), a police commander in Veracruz, killing the officer, his wife and his four children, including a 6-year-old boy. He had been promoted a month ago to deputy operations coordinator for the Veracruz-Boca del Rio area, a hotbed of drug violence and a stronghold of the Zetas. In a remote mountain town south of Ciudad Juarez, gunmen killed a government welfare official and three police officers during a robbery. Police announced the capture of six more suspected La Familia members, including a man accused of being a chief financial operator.
(AP, 7/30/09)
2009 Jul 29, Moldova held elections. At least three people were killed and hundreds of others arrested after protesters, some of whom used the social network Twitter to organize after cell phone networks went down, stormed parliament and the president's office. With 98% of the vote counted, the four opposition parties had 50.9 percent to the Communists' 45.1%. A pro-European alliance of four parties won the most seats in the 101-seat parliament but fell short of the 61 votes necessary to elect a president.
(AP, 7/29/09)(AP, 7/30/09)(AP, 11/28/10)
2009 Jul 29, Morocco's King Mohammed VI (45), on the eve of commemorations of his 10th anniversary on the throne, granted pardons to 24,865 prisoners, and commuted 32 death sentences.
(AFP, 7/29/09)
2009 Jul 29, In northern Nigeria troops struggled to crush an Islamist sect as the death toll from four days of clashes surged past 300. Thousands of people were forced from their homes. Militants attacked security forces in Yobe state. Police said that 43 sect members were killed in a shootout near the city of Potiskum. The government, which blames the Boko Haram sect for instigating days of violence in the mostly Muslim region, shelled and stormed the group's mosque and headquarters in Maiduguri. Sect leader Mohammed Yusuf escaped along with about 300 followers but his deputy was killed.
(AFP, 7/29/09)(AP, 7/30/09)
2009 Jul 29, Drug maker Pfizer Inc. confirmed that it has resolved a long-running legal dispute with the Nigerian government over allegations that children there were harmed in a 1996 Pfizer study of an experimental antibiotic during a meningitis outbreak. The settlement reportedly called for a $75 million payment by Pfizer.
(AP, 7/29/09)
2009 Jul 29, In northwestern Pakistan a bomb ripped through the parking area at a court in Dera Ismail Khan, killing two men guarding a Shiite Muslim lawyer. Troops waging an offensive elsewhere in the region killed at least four suspected Taliban fighters over the last 24 hours.
(AP, 7/29/09)
2009 Jul 29, An unmanned Russian cargo ship has docked successfully at the international space station to deliver supplies for its six-member crew.
(AP, 7/29/09)
2009 Jul 29, In South Africa a ceremony was held for “Fire Walker," a new four-story sculpture in Johannesburg. A plaque was unveiled with the names of the South African artists who created it: William Kentridge and Gerhard Marx. The three-dimensional steel conception by Marx was of a Kentridge watercolor.
(AP, 7/29/09)
2009 Jul 29, In northern Spain a powerful car bomb destroyed a police barracks housing officers and their families in Burgos, injuring about 60 people and causing major damage in the surrounding area. The attack was blamed on the Basque separatist group ETA.
(AP, 7/29/09)
2009 Jul 29, A Sudanese court adjourned the case of Lubna Ahmed al-Hussein, a woman journalist facing 40 lashes for wearing "indecent" trousers. 10 women had already been whipped on July 3 for similar offences against Islamic law. "I wish to resign from the UN, I wish this court case to continue," Hussein told a packed courtroom before the judge adjourned the case to August 4.
(AFP, 7/29/09)
2009 Jul 29, In Tajikistan the Pakistani and Tajik presidents pledged to step up efforts to fight Islamist militants at a regional summit amid concerns about the spread of violence from neighboring Afghanistan.
(AFP, 7/29/09)
2009 Jul 29, Turkey's government said it is prepared to grant more rights to the nation's Kurds in an effort to end the 25-year insurgency by Kurdish rebels.
(AP, 7/29/09)
2009 Jul 29, In Zimbabwe the British Broadcasting Corp. resumed broadcasting for the first time since it was banned in 2001. The five-month-old coalition government said it also was considering allowing CNN back.
(AP, 7/30/09)
2009 Jul 30, A US federal judge ordered the release of Mohammed Jawad, a Guantanamo Bay detainee accused of attacking US troops with a grenade on December 17, 2002. American authorities claimed he was at least 16-years old at the time of his arrest, but it later emerged he may have been as young as 12-years old.
(SFC, 7/31/09, p.A5)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohamed_Jawad)
2009 Jul 30, Bill Leigon, president of Hahn Family Wines in Soledad, Calif., said that visits to the company's Web site have increased tenfold since news of an Alabama ban on his Cycles Gladiator wine broke late last week. Callers from across the country have been asking where they can buy the wine. It was reported that the Alabama Alcoholic Beverage Control Board had recently told stores and restaurants to quit serving Cycles Gladiator wine because of a label that features a nude nymph. The wine's label is copied from an 1895 French advertising poster for Cycles Gladiator bicycles. It shows a side view of a full-bodied nymph flying alongside a winged bicycle.
(AP, 7/31/09)
2009 Jul 30, The Taliban urged Afghans to stay away from the Aug. 20 elections, dismissing the balloting as an "American process" and threatening to block roads to polling stations. In western Afghanistan a Taliban ambush on a NATO convoy left nine insurgents and a policeman dead. A Taliban unit ambushed a convoy of electoral material in Farah province. Insurgents killed four Afghan soldiers in the gunbattle but the ballots and other voting material were retrieved.
(AP, 7/30/09)(AP, 7/31/09)
2009 Jul 30, In China nearly a thousand villagers gathered at government and police offices in Zhentou township in Hunan province to highlight what they say is deadly pollution being discharged from the Xianghe Chemical Factory in nearby Liuyang city.
(AP, 8/2/09)
2009 Jul 30, A Hamburg court ordered a German publisher to pay Sweden's Princess Madeleine euro400,000 ($560,000) in damages for fabricating stories about her. Sonnenverlag GmbH & Co KG magazines had carried false reports about the 27-year-old princess being engaged and pregnant, among other things. Sonnenverlag's parent company, Baden-Baden based KLAMBT media group, confirmed the ruling.
(AP, 7/31/09)
2009 Jul 30, In Honduras Roger Vallejo (38), a high school teacher in the capital of Tegucigalpa, was wounded as thousands of Zelaya supporters blocked a highway and clashed with security forces. Vallejo died of his wounds on Aug 1.
(AP, 8/2/09)
2009 Jul 30, Iranian police fired tear gas and beat anti-government protesters with batons to disperse thousands attending a graveside memorial for victims of post-election violence.
(AP, 7/30/09)
2009 Jul 30, In Iraq a bomb blast in a building used by a Sunni-backed political group in Iraq's Diyala province killed at least seven people. Government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh confirmed that seven people were killed when Iraqi forces seized control of the Iranian Camp Ashraf on July 28. The government said it will change the name of the camp to New Iraqi Camp to remove the Iranian reference. The camp was originally named for one of the founders of the People's Mujahedeen, Ashraf Rajavi.
(AP, 7/30/09)
2009 Jul 30, Italy approved the use of the abortion drug RU-486, drawing fierce protests by the Vatican. The Italian Drug Agency ruled that the drug cannot be sold in drug stores but can only be administered by doctors in a hospital.
(AP, 7/31/09)
2009 Jul 30, Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata described his test of new underwear, called J-Wear, as the shuttle Endeavour prepared to come home after over 2 weeks aloft. Wakata tested the high-tech underwear for a month at a time during his 4½ months aboard the ISS.
(SFC, 7/31/09, p.A9)
2009 Jul 30, A Libyan officials said Libya and Canada have signed a memorandum of intent on nuclear power. Since July 2007, Libya has signed three similar agreements with France, Russia and Ukraine.
(AFP, 7/30/09)
2009 Jul 30, North Korea's military seized four South Korean fishermen after their boat strayed into North Korean waters. The fishermen were released on Aug 29.
(AP, 7/31/09)(AP, 8/29/09)
2009 Jul 30, In northern Nigeria security forces hunted door-to-door for Islamic militants after killing more than 100 of them by storming the sect's compound. A top rights group said innocent people were getting executed in the process. Mohammed Yusuf (39), the leader of the Boko Haram movement, was shot dead while in police detention. In February, 2011, seven suspects accused of killing Yusuf were arraigned in a federal court. Abubakar Shekau took over Boko Haram following the death of Yusuf.
(AP, 7/30/09)(Reuters, 7/31/09)(AP, 7/19/11)(Econ, 9/5/15, p.54)
2009 Jul 30, On the Spanish island of Majorca 2 civil guard officers were killed when their booby-trapped car exploded near a barracks.
(AP, 7/30/09)
2009 Jul 30, South African President Jacob Zuma accepted "very substantial damages" from Britain's Guardian newspaper over an article that wrongly suggested he was a rapist.
(AP, 7/30/09)
2009 Jul 30, The UN Security Council unanimously extended the mandate for the joint UN-African Union peacekeeping mission which has been slowly deploying in Sudan's conflict-torn Darfur region.
(Reuters, 7/30/09)
2009 Jul 30, Venezuela's top prosecutor, Attorney General Luisa Ortega, insisted that freedom of expression in Venezuela "must be limited" and proposed legislation that would slap additional restrictions on the country's news media.
(AP, 7/30/09)
2009 Jul 30, Zimbabwe’s Daily News, a popular newspaper banned nearly six years ago, won a new license to resume printing. It was renowned for its willingness to criticize Pres. Robert Mugabe. CNN said Zimbabwe agreed last week to allow it to resume working in the country.
(AFP, 7/31/09)
2009 Jul 30, Zimbabwe's health minister said a cholera epidemic has ended, after more than 4,200 deaths and 100,000 cases since last August, but warned new outbreaks remain a threat.
(AP, 7/30/09)
2009 Jul 31, California authorities said the white striped fruit fly has been found in Southern California, marking the first detection of the Southeast Asian pest in the Western Hemisphere. Several thousand traps were soon placed in the La Verne area of eastern Los Angeles County, where 7 of the flies were found.
(SFC, 8/1/09, p.A4)
2009 Jul 31, A jury ordered Joel Tenenbaum (b.1983), a student at Boston Univ., to pay damages of $675,000 for sharing 30 songs over the Internet. He was later ordered to destroy his illegal music files — but a judge declined to force him to stop promoting the activity.
(Econ, 9/5/09, TQ p.4)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joel_Tenenbaum)(AP, 12/7/09)
2009 Jul 31, The space shuttle Endeavour returned to Florida after over 2 weeks aloft and a successful construction job that boosted the size and power of the international space station.
(AP, 8/1/09)
2009 Jul 31, In Afghanistan a US service member died in the south of the country. In Geneva the UN issued a report stating that the number of civilians killed in conflict in Afghanistan has jumped 24% so far this year, with bombings by insurgent and airstrikes by international forces the biggest single killers.
(AP, 7/31/09)
2009 Jul 31, UN human rights experts asked Azerbaijan to stop curbing free speech and to protect journalists from harassment, violence and even murder.
(Reuters, 7/31/09)
2009 Jul 31, In southeastern Bangladesh landslides caused by heavy monsoon rains killed 10 people.
(AP, 7/31/09)
2009 Jul 31, Britain's defense ministry said Sikh soldiers have begun guarding the monarch and her treasures. “Regiments take it in turn to stand in for the Household Division and it just happens that two of the soldiers this time round are Sikh."
(AP, 7/31/09)
2009 Jul 31, In Colombia at least eight former officials of the domestic intelligence agency surrendered to face criminal charges for allegedly spying illegally on opponents of President Alvaro Uribe including judges, journalists and human rights workers.
(AP, 8/1/09)
2009 Jul 31, Cuba suspended plans for a Communist Party congress and lowered its 2009 economic growth projection from 2.5% to 1.7%, as the island's economy struggled through a "very serious" crisis.
(AP, 7/31/09)
2009 Jul 31, An Indian court issued a warrant for the arrest of Warren Anderson, the former head of the American chemical company responsible for a gas leak that killed at least 10,000 people in Bhopal 25 years ago. Anderson was the head of Union Carbide Corp. when its factory in the central Indian city leaked 40 tons of poisonous gas on Dec. 3, 1984, in the world's worst industrial disaster. In 1989, Union Carbide paid $470 million in compensation to the Indian government and said officials were responsible for the cleanup. India said its efforts were slowed when Midland, Mich.-based Dow Chemical Co. took over Union Carbide in 2001, seven years after Union Carbide sold its interest in the Bhopal plant.
(AP, 7/31/09)
2009 Jul 31, Iran detained 3 Americans after they mistakenly crossed the border from northern Iraq. They crossed into Iranian territory while hiking in a mountainous area near the town of Ahmed Awaa. Freelance journalist Shane Bauer, Sara Shourd and Josh Fattal, all graduates of the University of California, Berkeley, were detained after apparently straying across the border while hiking in Iraq's northern Kurdish region.
(AP, 8/1/09)(AP, 11/9/09)
2009 Jul 31, In Iraq bombs exploded near five Shiite mosques in Baghdad, killing at least 29 people, in an apparent coordinated attack that targeted worshippers leaving Friday prayers. Iraqi police announced they had recovered millions of dollars stolen on July 28 from a state-run bank in a robbery that left eight guards dead.
(AP, 7/31/09)
2009 Jul 31, The Irish Times newspaper won a long-running legal battle to protect the identity of a key source who provided documents showing that former PM Bertie Ahern was under investigation for corruption. Colm Keena and Geraldine Kennedy had refused to comply with an October 2007 High Court judgment ordering them to identify their source for the confidential documents from a fact-finding tribunal into political corruption. The scandal spurred Ahern to resign in May 2008 after 11 years in power.
(AP, 7/31/09)
2009 Jul 31, In Mexico assailants gunned down five men and a woman in a pool hall in the border city of Ciudad Juarez.
(AP, 7/31/09)
2009 Jul 31, Anuradha Koirala, the founder of Nepalese charity Maiti Nepal, said British actress Joanna Lumley has agreed to be its international ambassador. The charity helps victims of human trafficking.
(AFP, 7/31/09)
2009 Jul 31, Nigeria's national police claimed victory over a radical Islamist sect after its leader was killed by security forces. Experts warned revenge attacks could occur and a leading human rights group demanded a probe into the killing. At least 300 people were killed in violence that erupted in several states around northern Nigeria since July 26.
(Reuters, 7/31/09)
2009 Jul 31, Pakistan's Supreme Court ruled that former Pres. Pervez Musharraf's imposition of emergency rule in 2007 was unconstitutional.
(AP, 7/31/09)
2009 Jul 31, Turkey's navy commandos aboard a frigate captured seven pirates in the Gulf of Aden off Somalia's coast. Turkish commandos had captured five other pirates in a similar operation in the Gulf of Aden a week ago.
(AP, 7/31/09)
2009 Jul 31, Venezuelan regulators revoked the broadcast rights of 34 radio stations for allegedly failing to submit the proper paperwork to the broadcasting regulator, deepening a rift between President Chavez's government and the private media. Venezuelan lawmakers approved an election law to redraw voting districts, a step that President Hugo Chavez's opponents say will give his party a big advantage in next year's congressional vote.
(AP, 7/31/09)(AP, 8/1/09)(Econ, 8/8/09, p.32, 34)
2009 Jul 31, A new study by the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation and Vietnam's ministry of defense said more than one-third of the land in six central Vietnamese provinces remained contaminated with land mines and unexploded bombs from the Vietnam War.
(AP, 7/31/09)
2009 Jul 31, Global Witness, which monitors the exploitation of natural resources, backed calls for a ban on trading in Zimbabwe diamonds due to human rights abuses in mining of the gem.
(AFP, 7/31/09)
2009 Jul, Los Angeles police arrested Mohammad Reza Sadeghnia. Prosecutors said he tried to hire a man to kill Jamshid Sharmahd, who ran a LA-based radio programming for the Iranian opposition group Tondar. Sadeghnia spent a year in jai and then was placed on probation and traveled to Iran. H e failed to return for a court date and was declared a fugitive.
(SFC, 12/4/10, p.A7)
2009 Jul, California’s Air Resources Board adopted a 24-mile threshold for ships bound for state ports to begin using low sulfur fuel.
(SFC, 3/29/11, p.C5)
2009 Jul, Paul Romer (b.1955), American economist, spoke at the TED conference and unveiled a bold idea: "charter cities," city-scale administrative zones governed by a coalition of nations.
(Econ, 12/10/11, p.65)(www.ted.com/talks/paul_romer.html)
2009 Jul, Oswaldo Juarez (21), a Peruvian visiting Florida to study English, Juarez swallowed his last pills, packed a few small suitcases and left the A.G. Holley State Hospital following 19 months of treatment. He was the first US case of a contagious, aggressive, especially drug-resistant form of tuberculosis.
(AP, 12/27/09)
2009 Jul, Chinese authorities, following riots in Xinjiang province, put the province under electronic lockdown for the next 10 months. Clashes between Uighurs and Hans left some 200 people dead in Urumqi.
(AP, 9/3/09)(Econ, 4/6/13, SR p.15)(Econ, 8/9/14, p.38)
2009 Jul, In Puerto Rico Police Stephanie Rodriguez Pizarro died in a San Juan housing project after she sought treatment to help with marital and financial troubles. A spiritual healer allegedly dropped a candle into an alcohol bath where she was undergoing a Santeria ritual. She died of second-degree burns over half her body. In 2010 healer Jose Cadiz Tapia (46) was charged with negligent homicide.
(AP, 7/15/10)
2009 Jul, Latvia’s leading newspaper, Diena, along with sister publication Dienas Bizness, was bought by Luxembourg based Nedela S.A. in a highly clandestine transaction. The deal was initially structured as a loan to Tralmaks' company Nedela, allowing it to buy the two papers from then-owner, Sweden's Bonnier Business Press. The loan was later restructured, placing the Rowlands as the new owners. The Rowland Capital family office runs an asset management business, Blackfish Capital Management, a London based company.
(http://tinyurl.com/yjgb4ls)(Econ, 10/17/09, p.64)
2009 Jul, Oman’s population was estimated at 3.4 million.
(NYT 2011 Almanac, p.653)
2009 Aug 1, The new US Post-9/11 GI Bill took effect to reimburse veterans for their full undergraduate tuition at public colleges. An amount equivalent to that tuition would go to veterans who choose private schools or graduate programs.
(SFC, 8/1/09, p.A1)
2009 Aug 1, In San Francisco David Wehrer (26) shot and killed himself when police caught up with him 4 days after his partner, Robert Christopher (56), was found dead in their Castro Street apartment.
(SFC, 8/17/09, p.C1)
2009 Aug 1, In Detroit a woman (24) was shot killed during a street robbery by a boy (12).
(SFC, 8/20/09, p.A4)
2009 Aug 1, In Afghanistan 3 US troops were killed by improvised explosives in Kandahar province and a French soldier was killed in an insurgent attack in Kapisa province. Two more ISAF troops were killed when two bomb blasts struck their patrol in the south. A dozen rebels were killed in a gunfight with police in the southwestern province of Nimroz. 4 Afghan soldiers were killed when their vehicle struck a roadside bomb planted by "terrorists" in southern Helmand province. 3 policemen including a senior officer were killed when their vehicle struck a roadside bomb in the northern province of Baghlan.
(AFP, 8/1/09)(AFP, 8/2/09)
2009 Aug 1, Australia's centre-left ruling party voted for national recognition of same-sex unions but stopped short of lifting a ban on gay marriage.
(AFP, 8/1/09)
2009 Aug 1, Brazilian police said they have busted a ring that allegedly sent some 200 women in the last year to the United States, Europe and elsewhere to work as prostitutes. Most of the women were recruited through the Internet or Brazilian brothels and then sent to Las Vegas, the Dominican Republic and France.
(AP, 8/1/09)
2009 Aug 1, Burundi said it has deployed a third battalion of 850 soldiers to Mogadishu to reinforce the African Union peacekeeping mission there. With the new troops, more than 5,000 soldiers from Burundi and Uganda are now taking part in the AU Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), which began in March 2007 and has cost the lives of 17 Burundian soldiers.
(AFP, 8/2/09)
2009 Aug 1, In Canada a fierce thunderstorm caused an outdoor stage to collapse at the Big Valley Jamboree in Camrose, a country music festival in central Alberta. One person was killed and up to 40 others injured.
(AP, 8/2/09)
2009 Aug 1, Humanitarian groups said members of the Lord's Resistance Army, a Ugandan rebel group, have launched attacks against towns in the Central African Republic that have left at least 10 people dead in the last two weeks. The attacks by the LRA, launched from its rear bases in the Democratic Republic of Congo, have also forced hundreds of people to flee their villages.
(AFP, 8/2/09)
2009 Aug 1, It was reported that output from Chile’s fish farms was expected to be down 40% this year due to infectious salmon anemia (ISA). The virus also led to premature harvesting for fear other fish would catch the disease, which apparently turned up in imported salmon eggs.
(Econ, 8/1/09, p.34)
2009 Aug 1, China’s Ziketan town in Qinghai province was put under collective quarantine when laboratory tests showed it had been struck by the highly virulent disease. 2 of its residents had recently died from pneumonic plague, which spreads through the air, making it easier to contract than bubonic plague, which requires that a person is bitten by an infected flea. Its fatality rate was up to 100% if left untreated, compared with 60% for bubonic plague. The outbreak was first detected on July 30.
(AFP, 8/2/09)(AP, 8/4/09)
2009 Aug 1, Chinese police detained the head of the Xianghe Chemical Factory and the government suspended the chief and deputy chief of the city's environment protection bureau.
(AP, 8/2/09)
2009 Aug 1, The war in Iraq became an American-only effort after Britain and Australia, the last of its international partners, pulled out. In Iraq a bomb hidden inside a toilet struck a Sunni mosque south of Baghdad, injuring two people, the latest in a wave of attacks against Islamic sites of worship. Al-Jazeera television broadcast an audio clip purportedly from Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, a former top deputy of Saddam Hussein, calling on Sunni insurgents to unite under one political umbrella.
(AP, 8/1/09)
2009 Aug 1, In Tel Aviv, Israel, a gunman shot and killed two people, a man (26), who was a counselor at the center, and a girl (17) at a youth club. This was initially considered as the worst ever attack on homosexuals in Israel. Eleven people were wounded, four of them seriously. In 2013 police arrested 4 suspects in connection with the killing and said the shooting was no longer being considered as a hate crime.
(AP, 8/2/09)(AP, 6/7/13)
2009 Aug 1, Kyrgyzstan allowed Russia to open a second military base on its territory, expanding Moscow's military reach to balance against the US presence.
(Reuters, 8/1/09)
2009 Aug 1, Police broke up Malaysia's biggest street protest in nearly two years, firing tear gas and chemical-laced water at thousands of opposition supporters demanding an end to a law that allows detention without trial.
(AP, 8/1/09)
2009 Aug 1, Two Moroccan magazines were taken off news stands after they published an opinion poll on the 10 years under the reign of King Mohammed VI. The poll revealed that 91% of Moroccans who were interviewed say that the performance of the reign of King Mohammed VI is positive or very positive.
(AFP, 8/1/09)
2009 Aug 1, Mozambique’s Pres. Armando Guebuza inaugurated an 80-million-euro (113-million-dollar) bridge over the Zambezi River, a major link for a country long divided between north and south. Work on the bridge had begun in 1977.
(AFP, 8/2/09)
2009 Aug 1, In Nigeria robbers hijacked the bus on Sagamu-Benin expressway in Ogun State and forced passengers to lie on a road at gunpoint as they ransacked their bus. 20 people were crushed to death as a truck ran into them.
(AFP, 8/2/09)
2009 Aug 1, The Sydney Morning Herald reported that North Korea is helping Myanmar build a secret nuclear reactor and plutonium extraction plant to build an atomic bomb within five years, citing the evidence of defectors. "In the event that the testimony of the defectors is proved, the alleged secret reactor could be capable of being operational and producing one bomb a year, every year, after 2014."
(AFP, 8/1/09)
2009 Aug 1, In Pakistan an angry mob of Muslims killed six Christians and wounded dozens after burning 40 houses and a church over the alleged desecration of the Koran in Gojra village, Punjab province. Two men wounded by gunfire died in the hospital overnight. A building collapsed in Karachi killing at least 21 people.
(AFP, 8/1/09)(AP, 8/2/09)(SSFC, 8/2/09, p.A6)
2009 Aug 1, In the Philippines former President Corazon Aquino (b.1933) died. The "people power" uprising she led in 1986 brought down the repressive 20-year regime of Ferdinand Marcos and served as an inspiration to nonviolent resistance across the globe. Due to the time difference her death was reported in the US on July 31.
(Reuters, 8/1/09)
2009 Aug 1, Authorities in the separatist Georgian region of South Ossetia said two mortar shells were fired into the territory from Georgia proper. Georgia denied the claim and suggested it was a provocation ahead of the anniversary of last year's war with Russia.
(AP, 8/1/09)
2009 Aug 2, In eastern Afghanistan 3 American soldiers died in a complex militant ambush, raising NATO's two-day August death toll to nine and continuing the bloodiest period of the eight-year war for US and allied troops.
(AP, 8/2/09)
2009 Aug 2, In Austria researchers unveiled two piano pieces recently identified as childhood creations by Mozart (1756-1791). He likely wrote the two newly attributed pieces when he was 7 or 8 years old, with his father, Leopold, transcribing the notes as his son played them at the keyboard.
(www.usatoday.com/life/music/news/2009-08-02-new-mozart_N.htm)
2009 Apr 2, Austrian authorities arrested British-born Julius Meinl V (b.1959), head of Meinl Bank, for suspected breach of trust and deception of investors. He had spun much of his family’s property portfolio into Meinl European Land (MEL). By 2007 MEL had lost €1.8 billion in an attempt to support its share price. He was released after posting a €100 million bail.
(Econ, 8/1/09, p.60)
2009 Aug 2, China reported that police in the northwest region of Xinjiang have arrested hundreds of people in connection with disturbances that left at least 197 people dead.
(AFP, 8/2/09)
2009 Aug 2, In Dagestan militants shot and killed a police officer. In Ingushetia militants killed three government workers.
(AP, 8/2/09)
2009 Aug 2, In eastern Indonesia a plane carrying 16 people disappeared over a jungle-clad and mountainous region of Papua. All aboard were killed.
(AP, 8/2/09)(AP, 8/5/09)
2009 Aug 2, In Iraq Tariq Aziz, one of Saddam Hussein's best-known lieutenants, was convicted of helping to plan the forced displacement of Kurds from northeastern Iraq and sentenced to seven years in jail. The ruling came more than four months after Aziz was sentenced to 15 years in prison for crimes against humanity in the 1992 execution of Iraqi merchants. Rania Ibrahim, a teenage Iraqi girl, was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison for attempting to blow herself up at a checkpoint in Baqouba in August, 2008. She claimed her husband's female relatives strapped explosives on her. An explosives-laden car exploded near an outdoor market in a mainly Sunni area of Haditha, killing at least 5 people and wounding 34, raising concern that sectarian violence could resurge.
(AP, 8/2/09)(SFC, 8/4/09, p.A2)(AP, 8/6/09)
2009 Aug 2, Mexican police raided a church service in Apatzingan, Michoacan state, and arrested Miguel Angel Beraza, a man known as "The Truck," and another suspect. Beraza was suspected of moving a half ton of crystal methamphetamine into the US each month and was said to be a high-ranking lieutenant in the drug cartel known as La Familia.
(AP, 8/3/09)
2009 Aug 2, It was reported that illegal blast fishing had become rampant in Nicaragua and was spreading across Central America’s Pacific coast.
(SSFC, 8/2/09, p.A8)
2009 Aug 2, Red Cross and Nigerian defense officials said more than 700 people were killed during a 5-day uprising by a radical Islamic sect in the north. Over 700 dead bodies were given mass burial in Maiduguri town alone, as a search for bodies continued.
(Reuters, 8/2/09)
2009 Aug 2, In Pakistan two policemen were shot and killed by men who fled from a checkpoint in the northwestern city of Peshawar. The military said that four militants were killed and another 27, including a suspected local commander, were arrested in several search-and-clearance operations in Swat and nearby areas.
(AP, 8/2/09)
2009 Aug 2, In Peru attackers believed to be Shining Path rebels killed three police officers and two women in an assault on a remote police post in San Jose de Secce in Ayacucho province, a coca-growing region.
(AP, 8/3/09)
2009 Aug 2, Stanley Robertson (69), the last of Scotland’s traveling storytellers, died. He had spent 47 years filleting fish for a living.
(Econ, 9/5/09, p.94)
2009 Aug 2, On the Spanish Canary Island of La Palma strong winds fanned forest fires for a 2nd day, and firefighters were forced to retreat as flames raged out of control near two towns.
(AP, 8/2/09)
2009 Aug 2, In southeast Sudan armed tribesmen attacked a fishing village where hundreds of displaced people were camped near a river, leaving at least 185 people, most of them women and children, dead in the worst violence in three months.
(AP, 8/3/09)
2009 Aug 2, In Zimbabwe 40 people were killed and 30 others injured when a bus overturned after colliding with a lorry south of Harare.
(AP, 8/2/09)(AP, 8/3/09)
2009 Aug 3, Bank of America agreed to pay $33 million to settle a complaint filed by the SEC alleging that the bank misled investors over bonuses at Merrill Lynch as BofA was finalizing its takeover of the securities firm in late 2008.
(Econ, 8/8/09, p.63)
2009 Aug 3, In Afghanistan a bomb hidden in a rubbish bin exploded near a police convoy in Herat, killing 12 people, including a woman and a girl and 2 police officers, as a wave of Taliban violence gripped the nation ahead of elections. An ambush in Faryab province killed an Afghan driver, but his passenger, a Korean engineer, escaped without injury.
(AFP, 8/3/09)(SSFC, 8/2/09, p.A2)
2009 Aug 3, Belgian authorities recaptured Abdelhaq Melloul-Khayari, a convict who escaped twice in as many weeks, including once from a Bruges prison by helicopter.
(AP, 8/3/09)
2009 Aug 3, Karlheinz Schreiber (75), a German-Canadian arms dealer and key figure in a political party financing scandal involving former Chancellor Helmut Kohl, was extradited to Germany from Canada to face criminal charges after losing a decade-long court battle. He was key figure in a funding scandal which badly damaged Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives a decade ago. Schreiber was arrested in Canada about 10 years ago, and is wanted by prosecutors in Augsburg for tax evasion, fraud and bribery.
(AP, 8/3/09)(Reuters, 8/3/09)
2009 Aug 3, China’s state media reported that more than 500 villagers in central China have been found to have high concentrations of a dangerous metal in their bodies after a series of leaks from the Changsha Xianghe Chemical Plant in Hunan province's Zhentou township. 509 people were found to have high concentrations of cadmium and 33 were hospitalized over the weekend.
(AP, 8/3/09)
2009 Aug 3, Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa, announced that "many" radio and TV frequencies will revert to the state over what he called irregularities in their licenses. He gave no specifics.
(AP, 8/3/09)
2009 Aug 3, Nikolaos Makarezos (90), one of the leaders of the military dictatorship that ruled Greece from 1967-1974, died. Makarezos, the junta's chief economic policymaker, served as deputy prime minister and minister for coordination under dictator George Papadopoulos.
(AP, 8/6/09)
2009 Aug 3, A seven-minute video, apparently made by the Korps Brigade Mobil, or Brimob, the paramilitary police, shows prisoner Yawen Wayeni lying in a jungle clearing in eastern Indonesia moments after troops allegedly sliced open his abdomen with a bayonet. Police said Wayeni, captured for allegedly vandalizing several of their buildings and vehicles, was shot in the thigh and stomach while resisting arrest and that he died on the way to the hospital. The video was made public in the Internet in 2010.
(AP, 8/4/10)(http://hub.witness.org/en/upload/killing-yawan-wayeni)
2009 Aug 3, In Iran Fahimeh Mousavi-nejad, the wife of former Vice President Mohammad Abtahi on trial for postelection violence, said his televised "confessions" were made under pressure. Her husband was one of the top figures in a trial that began Aug 1 for around 100 people detained in the postelection crackdown. Iran's supreme leader formally endorsed Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for a second term as president in a ceremony that sought to portray unity among the country's leadership but was snubbed by prominent critics of the disputed election.
(AP, 8/3/09)
2009 Aug 3, In Iraq Asaib Ahl al-Haq (League of the Righteous), a group believed to be responsible for killing US soldiers and kidnapping British soldiers, agreed to renounce violence following a weekend meeting with PM al-Maliki. A suicide car bomber detonated his explosives at a police checkpoint in Saqlawiya. 3 civilians were killed and 7 people were wounded including 3 police officers.
(SFC, 8/4/09, p.A2)
2009 Aug 3, Israeli police said that they had broken up an Israeli-American crime ring specializing in tax fraud and money laundering in an operation codenamed "American Pie." The chief suspect was Marvin Berkowitz (62) who holds dual Israeli and US citizenship. Avigdor Lieberman, Israel's ultranationalist foreign minister, promised to step down if he is charged after police recommended that he be indicted for a string of alleged corruption offenses.
(AP, 8/3/09)
2009 Aug 3, Kenya's Pres. Mwai Kibaki said all prisoners on death row will immediately have their sentences commuted to life imprisonment. Kenya's 97 prisons were built for a population of about 15,000 but currently have an inmate population of more than 40,000.
(AP, 8/3/09)
2009 Aug 3, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, a former Danish prime minister, took office as NATO's new secretary-general. He said his top priorities would be guiding the war in Afghanistan to a successful conclusion, repairing ties with Russia, and expanding NATO's partnership with moderate nations in North Africa and the Middle East.
(AP, 8/3/09)
2009 Aug 3, The Palestinian Fatah movement published a new platform saying it will keep pursuing peace talks but reserves the right to resist Israeli occupation.
(AP, 8/3/09)
2009 Aug 3, In South Korea thousands of riot police strengthened their siege of a troubled South Korean auto firm, spraying liquid tear gas from a helicopter, after talks to end a prolonged occupation by strikers collapsed.
(AFP, 8/3/09)
2009 Aug 3, In Switzerland there was an arson attack at Novartis CEO Daniel Vasella's lodge in Bach, Austria. An attack on his mother's grave took place a week earlier. The next day drug maker Novartis said animal rights militants were responsible.
(AP, 8/4/09)
2009 Aug 3, In Venezuela a far-left party led by Lina Ron attacked the opposition-aligned Globovision TV station. The next day Pres. Chavez condemned the attack and had Ron arrested for taking part in the assault.
(SFC, 8/3/09, p.A2)
2009 Aug 4, A US federal court panel ordered California to reduce its prison population by 40,000 over the next 2 years to meet constitutional standards for inmate health care.
(SFC, 8/5/09, p.A1)
2009 Aug 4, Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said that the SEC plans to ban so-called "flash trading," where high-frequency traders can get information just before it becomes public.
(www.marketwatch.com/story/schumer-sec-to-ban-flash-trading-2009-08-04)
2009 Aug 4, SF Mayor Gavin Newsom signed a $6.6 billion city budget, making it the city’s biggest budget ever.
(SFC, 8/5/09, p.D1)
2009 Aug 4, In Bridgeville, Pennsylvania, George Sodini (48) sprayed bullets into a fitness class filled with women, killing three and then himself. He kept a Web page in which he wrote about years of rejection by women and an earlier plan for violence at the gym.
(AP, 8/5/09)
2009 Aug 4, In Afghanistan a string of rockets slammed into Kabul at daybreak in the first major attack on the relatively calm Afghan capital in the run-up to this month's presidential election. A child and a man were lightly wounded when they were hit by flying glass in residential areas next to the airport, where most of the rockets landed. A suicide bomber killed five people and wounded 18 in southern Zabul province.
(AP, 8/4/09)
2009 Aug 4, Antigua's highest mountain, Boggy Peak, officially became "Mount Obama" as the small Caribbean nation celebrated the American president on his birthday and saluted him as a symbol of black achievement.
(AP, 8/4/09)(SFC, 8/5/09, p.A2)
2009 Aug 4, Australian police said they thwarted a terrorist plot in which extremists with ties to an al-Qaida-linked Somali Islamist group planned to invade a military base and open fire with automatic weapons until they were shot dead themselves. Some 400 officers from state and national security services took part in 19 raids on properties in Melbourne, before dawn, arresting four men and detaining several others for questioning. Police said all four arrested are Australian citizens of Somali or Lebanese descent aged between 22 and 26.
(AP, 8/4/09)
2009 Aug 4, In Belgium three prisoners escaped from the sprawling Palace of Justice courthouse in central Brussels when two armed men burst into a court hearing and took them with them, bringing the total to 12 over the past two weeks. Five of the escaped inmates have been caught again, but seven remained at large.
(AP, 8/4/09)
2009 Aug 4, Officials said a forest fire on the Canary Island of La Palma was brought under control and another that raged for two weeks in Spain's northern Catalonia region has been extinguished.
(AP, 8/4/09)
2009 Aug 4, China’s state media reported that police have formally arrested 83 people on charges including murder and arson in connection with last month's deadly rioting in the western region of Xinjiang.
(AP, 8/4/09)
2009 Aug 4, In northern China an unfinished factory building collapsed as torrential rain hit the city of Shijiazhuang. 17 people were reported killed.
(AP, 8/4/09)
2009 Aug 4, Haiti’s lawmakers voted to more than double the minimum wage after long hours of debate and clashes between police and protesters, who complained they can't feed and shelter their families on the current pay of about $1.75 a day.
(AP, 8/4/09)
2009 Aug 4, India’s Right to Education Act (RTE) was passed. It included provisions for the minimum size of playgrounds and the minimum level of teachers’ salaries effective in 2014. It made school attendance compulsory up to age 14.
(Econ, 3/23/13, p.74)(Econ 6/10/17, p.39)
2009 Aug 4, In eastern India at least 11 people were killed and 15 others seriously injured after being struck by lightning in Burdwan district in West Bengal state.
(AP, 8/5/09)
2009 Aug 4, The Lithuanian ministry said that the Lithuanian-flagged refrigerator vessel Saturnas, with a crew of 14, was attacked by unidentified perpetrators off the coast of Nigeria. Five crew members were said to have been taken hostage. The attackers did not seize the vessel itself but left in a high-speed boat with the hostages. The 5 Lithuanian sailors were reported freed on Aug 14, ending their 11-day ordeal.
(AFP, 8/4/09)(AFP, 8/14/09)
2009 Aug 4, In Mexico 4 bodies were found in the border city of Ciudad Juarez. In the nearby town of Llano Blanco, police chief Gerardo Silva (40) was found dead in a pickup truck, shot five times.
(AP, 8/5/09)
2009 Aug 4, NATO's governing body approved a plan to reorganize the alliance's command structure in Afghanistan by setting up a new headquarters to handle the day-to-day running of the war.
(AP, 8/4/09)
2009 Aug 4, In Niger clashes erupted as citizens voted in a constitutional referendum to extend President Mamadou Tandja's long rule amid low turnout after an opposition boycott in the uranium-rich African nation. On Aug 7 the Electoral Commission released provisional results saying that 92.5% of votes cast supported a new constitution that would allow President Mamadou Tandja to stay in power. About 68.3% of all registered voters participated.
(AP, 8/4/09)(AP, 8/7/09)
2009 Aug 4, In North Korea former US Pres. Bill Clinton met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il on the first day of a surprise visit to Pyongyang, with the "exhaustive" talks covering a wide range of topics. Clinton was in communist North Korea on a mission to secure the release of Americans, who were arrested along the Chinese-North Korean border in March and sentenced in June to 12 years of hard labor for illegal entry and engaging in "hostile acts." After 140 days in custody, the reporters were granted a pardon by North Korea.
(AP, 8/4/09)(AP, 8/5/09)
2009 Aug 4, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas launched his Fatah movement's first conference in two decades with a call for his people to limit their resistance to Israel to marches and protests and not to abandon peace talks despite years of setbacks. The 3-day general assembly’s main task was to elect a new central committee.
(AP, 8/4/09)(Econ, 8/8/09, p.42)
2009 Aug 4, Sudanese police fired tear gas and beat women protesting outside a Sudanese court during the trial of a female journalist accused of violating the Islamic dress code by wearing trousers in public. The judge adjourned Lubna Hussein's trial for a month to seek clarification from Sudan's foreign ministry.
(AP, 8/4/09)
2009 Aug 4, In Thailand a passenger plane skidded off the runway and crashed into a building after landing on the Thai resort island of Samui, killing the chief pilot and injuring at least seven people including foreign tourists.
(AP, 8/4/09)
2009 Aug 5, Euna Lee (36) and Laura Ling (32), American journalists freed by North Korea, returned home to the United States along with former Pres. Clinton for a jubilant, emotional reunion with family members and friends they hadn't seen since their arrests on March 17.
(AP, 8/5/09)
2009 Aug 5, Federal jurors in Alexandria, Va., convicted former Louisiana Rep. William Jefferson on 11 0f 16 counts that included bribery, racketeering and money laundering. The next day jurors said Jefferson must forfeit $470,000 in bribery receipts. On Nov 13 he was sentenced to 13 years in prison.
(SFC, 8/6/09, p.A6)(SFC, 8/7/09, p.A5)(SFC, 11/14/09, p.A7)
2009 Aug 5, In Arizona Brenda Arenas (15), was shot in the head during a botched carjacking in Tucson. She died in her mother's arms soon after the attack. Her 3-year-old sister watched the crime from the backseat of the car. On Jan 29, 2011, Orel Vasquez (20) Christian Vasquez (26), and Juan Leon (29) approached a border crossing point at Nogales and told US officers they were wanted for the shooting and were turning themselves in.
(Reuters, 1/30/11)
2009 Aug 5, Outraged southern Afghan villagers said that a pre-dawn airstrike by foreign troops killed three children and a man in the latest case of civilian deaths at the hands of Western troops. A US military spokeswoman said a helicopter had fired on four insurgents carrying jugs on motorcycles through a field away from a populated area of the local district, Arghandab. In eastern Nangarhar province a roadside bomb killed two tribal elders and four armed guards. Across southern Afghanistan roadside explosions and a US airstrike killed at least 15 people, including members of a family who hit a mine on their way to a wedding party.
(AP, 8/5/09)(AP, 8/6/09)
2009 Aug 5, Australian police charged four men with planning to attack an army base and shoot soldiers as the government considered whether to ban a Somalia militant group linked to the plot.
(Reuters, 8/5/09)
2009 Aug 5, In Colombia David Murcia Guzman, a Colombian businessman, was convicted in a notorious pyramid scheme that authorities say bilked investors out of more than $2.4 billion. Guzman was convicted of money laundering and illegal wealth accumulation through the company he founded, DMG Group Holdings SA. A New York court has sought his extradition. Murcia was extradited to the US on Jan 5, 2009.
(AP, 8/5/09)(AP, 1/5/10)
2009 Aug 5, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was sworn in for a second term as Iran's president while security forces battled hundreds of protesters chanting "Death to the Dictator" in the streets around parliament where the ceremony was held.
(AP, 8/5/09)
2009 Aug 5, Amos Kenan (b.1927), Israeli artist and writer, died in Tel Aviv. As a member of Israel's founding generation his writing and art helped define modern Israeli culture. Kenan was party to several efforts to create an alliance with the Palestinians. He helped pen a 1957 manifesto calling for the creation of a Palestinian state in federation with Israel at a time when few Israelis acknowledged the Palestinians' existence as a national group.
(AP, 8/5/09)
2009 Aug 5, In Nairobi, Kenya, US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton criticized Kenya for rampant graft and corruption as she made the case that business and trade across Africa cannot grow without good governance and solid democracy.
(AP, 8/5/09)
2009 Aug 5, In Mexico 5 bodies, one of them headless, were found in a van in the border city of Ciudad Juarez. US Sen. Patrick Leahy a Democrat from Vermont, delayed the release of $100 million of a $1.4 billion, three-year package meant to help Mexico combat drug traffickers. Leahy said Mexico needs effective police forces and a justice system that works.
(AP, 8/5/09)
2009 Aug 5, In Pakistan the 2nd wife of Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud was killed in a US drone attack targeting her husband at a home in the tribal belt near the Afghan border. Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud was also killed in the US missile strike in South Waziristan. He had led a violent campaign of suicide attacks and assassinations against the Pakistani government. News of his death was not made public until 2 days later.
(AFP, 8/5/09)(AP, 8/7/09)
2009 Aug 5, In South Korea helicopter-borne police commandos fought militant strikers at the Ssangyong Motor Co.’s Pyeongtaek factory, seizing all but one key building.
(SFC, 8/5/09, p.A2)
2009 Aug 5, Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez said his government will buy dozens of Russian tanks because Venezuela feels threatened by a pending deal for the US military to increase its presence in neighboring Colombia.
(AP, 8/6/09)
2009 Aug 5, Zimbabwe's veteran Vice-President Joseph Msika (86) died. His death was expected to reignite debate over who will eventually succeed President Robert Mugabe.
(Reuters, 8/5/09)
2009 Aug 6, The US Senate confirmed Justice Sonia Sotomajor to the Supreme Court on a largely partisan vote of 68-31.
(SFC, 8/7/09, p.A1)
2009 Aug 6, The Securities and Exchange Commission said that former American International Group Inc. CEO Maurice "Hank" Greenberg agreed to pay a $15 million fine to settle fraud charges.
(AP, 8/7/09)
2009 Aug 6, Writer-director John Hughes (b.1950) died of a heart attack while visiting family in NYC. His films in the 1980s and '90s included "The Breakfast Club," "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" and "Home Alone." He also wrote or directed such hits as "National Lampoon's Vacation," "Pretty in Pink," "Planes, Trains & Automobiles" and "Uncle Buck."
(AP, 8/7/09)
2009 Aug 6, In western Afghanistan four American service members were killed in a roadside bombing. 3 British paratroopers were killed after their armored vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb and Taliban opened fire during a patrol with Afghan forces north of Lashkar Gah in Helmand province. Roadside bombs killed 5 policemen in Kandahar's Arghandab district. An airstrike in Zabul province killed 3 suspected militants who were planting a bomb on a road.
(AP, 8/6/09)(AP, 8/7/09)
2009 Aug 6, In Belgium a fire killed nine elderly people at a care home in the Flemish town of Melle. Officials later said it was probably caused by an electrical fault.
(AFP, 8/7/09)
2009 Aug 6, Two well-dressed thieves walked into a London Bond Street jewelry store and, after brandishing handguns at shop workers, made off with $65 million worth of gems in one of Britain's biggest jewelry heists. The arrest of one suspect was announced on Aug 12. On Sep 7 a 9th suspect, David Joseph (22), was detained. On June 25, 2010, Aman Kassaye (24) was convicted for his role in the robbery. On Aug 6, 2010, Kassaye was sentenced to 23 years in jail. Three other men involved in the robbery, Solomun Beyene, Clinton Mogg and Thomas Thomas, were sentenced to 16 years each. Two others were cleared by the court.
(AP, 8/12/09)(SFC, 8/13/09, p.A2)(SFC, 9/8/09, p.A2)(AFP, 6/25/10)(AP, 8/6/10)
2009 Aug 6, DR Congo President Joseph Kabila met his Rwandan counterpart Paul Kagame in the lakeside city of Goma for the first official bilateral talks between the neighboring states in 13 years.
(AP, 8/6/09)
2009 Aug 6, Ethiopia’s Federal High Court issued the guilty verdicts against 13 men, including a US-based professor, convicted in absentia for plotting to overthrow the government. Berhanu Nega, Ethiopian-born professor with US nationality and teacher of economics at Philadelphia's Bucknell Univ., was accused of masterminding a plan to topple PM Meles Zenawi.
(Reuters, 8/7/09)
2009 Aug 6, Iraq's cabinet approved a bill to ban smoking in public places. A roadside bomb struck a car full of Shiite pilgrims in southern Baghdad, killing one and wounding four others. Gunmen broke into a goldsmith shop in the western Baghdad district of Baiyaa, killing the owner and making off with an unknown quantity of gold.
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8188265.stm)(AP, 8/6/09)(AP, 8/7/09)
2009 Aug 6, Japan's first jury trial since World War II concluded with a mixed group of citizens and professional judges convicting a man of murder and sentencing him to a tougher-than-expected 15 years in prison.
(AP, 8/6/09)
2009 Aug 6, In Mexico 11 people, including two police officers and nine gunmen, died following a running battle between police and gunmen in the central city of Pachuca.
(AP, 8/7/09)
2009 Aug 6, Nigeria began a 60-day amnesty for militants fighting in the country's oil-rich Delta region, a government official said, but the main militant group said it would not participate. A cache of weapons and ammunitions was uncovered at an arms depot owned by Niger Delta militant leader Mujahid Dokubo-Asari in Port Harcourt.
(AP, 8/6/09)(AFP, 8/7/09)
2009 Aug 6, Nigeria's northern Kano state withdrew a landmark criminal and civil suit against US drug group Pfizer over a 1996 drug trial that left 11 children dead and 189 others deformed. The withdrawal of the suit followed a 75-million dollar (52 million euros) out-of-court settlement between the two parties.
(AFP, 8/6/09)
2009 Aug 6, In northern Pakistan a bus veered off a narrow mountain road and plunged into a river, leaving about 34 people, including 26 soldiers, missing and presumed dead. Sardar Rustam Jamali, the excise and taxation minister in the western province of Baluchistan, was killed when robbers tried to steal his car in an eastern neighborhood of the city.
(AP, 8/6/09)
2009 Aug 6, In Paraguay Social Development Minister Pablino Caceres said he would meet with a 6 protesters who have hammered long nails through their hands and tied themselves to crosses or laid in coffins in an appeal for land.
(AP, 8/6/09)
2009 Aug 6, In the northern Philippines heavy monsoon rains inundated wide areas, triggering flash floods and landslides that killed 21 people, including two French citizens and a Belgian who were touring Mount Pinatubo. Typhoon Morakot left seven others missing in landslides and floodwaters.
(AP, 8/7/09)(AP, 8/9/09)
2009 Aug 6, Russia’s PM Putin and his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, signed an agreements in Ankara that included the construction of part of the South Stream gas pipeline through the Black Sea.
(AP, 8/6/09)(Econ, 8/15/09, p.47)
2009 Aug 6, US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, speaking in Kenya, pledged to "expand and extend" American support for Somalia's weak interim government as it struggles against Islamist extremists believed linked to al-Qaida.
(AP, 8/6/09)
2009 Aug 6, Juan Manuel Inciarte Gallardo (55), a suspected member of the armed Basque group ETA, was deported from Mexico and arrested in Spain, where he is wanted for allegedly killing five Spanish police officers and a pregnant wife of one of the officers. Inciarte allegedly took part in the slaying of the five police officers and the pregnant wife of one officer between 1983 and 1985. He was wanted on terrorism charges.
(AP, 8/6/09)
2009 Aug 6, In South Korea unionists who occupied a car plant in protest at mass layoffs agreed to end a 77-day sit-in which halted production and sparked violent clashes with police.
(AFP, 8/6/09)
2009 Aug 6, Rescue workers searched for missing people after the Princess Ashika ferry, carrying 149 passengers and crew, sank overnight off the coast of Tonga. 93 people were missing and feared dead.
(SFC, 8/6/09, p.A2)(AP, 8/9/09)
2009 Aug 6, In northern Yemen local officials and the rebels said Shiite Muslim rebels have seized a key control post on a strategic highway linking the capital San'a with Saudi Arabia, overcoming an army brigade after 12 hours of intense combat.
(AP, 8/6/09)
2009 Aug 7, Pres. Obama signed into law a measure tripling the budget of the $1 billion incentive “cash for clunkers" program.
(SFC, 8/8/09, p.A5)
2009 Aug 7, The US Environmental Protection Agency said the US Department of Agriculture has agreed to pay $30,000 in penalties for alleged improper maintenance of underground storage tanks in Puerto Rico.
(AP, 8/8/09)
2009 Aug 7, In eastern Afghanistan an American service member was killed in an attack on a convoy. A blast in Kandahar's Zhari district killed an Afghan guard escorting a NATO supply convoy.
(AP, 8/7/09)
2009 Aug 7, Britain’s Ministry of Justice said Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs (79) has been officially released from his prison sentence. Biggs earned notoriety for his role in the 1963 Great Train Robbery, for which he was sentenced to 30 years in prison. Escaping, he spent 35 years as a celebrity fugitive, living a party lifestyle in Brazil before returning home.
(AFP, 8/7/09)
2009 Aug 7, James Robinson (71), a former California priest, arrived at London's Heathrow Airport after being extradited from the United States. He was charged with sexually abusing young boys when he served in the United Kingdom between 1959 and 1983.
(AP, 8/8/09)
2009 Aug 7, In China Li Peiying (60), the former head of Beijing airport's management company, was executed following his conviction on corruption charges. He was found guilty in February of accepting almost $4 million in bribes and embezzling about $12 million in public money since 1995.
(AP, 8/7/09)
2009 Aug 7, Guatemala's top three police officials were fired after hundreds of pounds of cocaine allegedly disappeared from a shipment seized by authorities. Interior Minister Raul Velazquez said police made the 1-ton seizure on Aug 6, but when federal prosecutors weighed the drugs, 258 pounds (117 kilograms) were missing.
(AP, 8/7/09)
2009 Aug 7, Indonesia's anti-terrorism unit engaged in a shootout in Central Java during a raid targeting suspected militants behind deadly bomb attacks in Jakarta last month.
(Reuters, 8/7/09)
2009 Aug 7, In Iraq a suicide car bomb devastated a Shiite mosque in northern Iraq, one of a series of attacks that killed at least 37 Shiite pilgrims and worshippers. The deadliest blast occurred in Rasheediyah, north of Mosul, when a suicide car bomb struck a mosque, killing at least 30 people and trapping dozens more underneath the rubble. In Baghdad 3 roadside bombs targeting Shiite pilgrims killed 7 people returning from Karbala.
(AP, 8/7/09)
2009 Aug 7, In Mexico Zambrano Flores, a top lieutenant of the Tijuana-based Arellano Felix cartel, was arrested in Tijuana. Police seized 10 rifles, 7 pistols, almost 4,000 rounds of ammunition during his arrest.
(AP, 8/8/09)
2009 Aug 7, Nepal's Maoists launched a fresh round of protests, paralyzing parliament and accusing the new government of failing to address their demands.
(AFP, 8/7/09)
2009 Aug 7, Nigeria's President Umaru Yar'Adua formally received the first set of 32 Niger Delta militants who have surrendered their arms under an amnesty he offered them in June and commended them for their "patriotism."
(AP, 8/8/09)
2009 Aug 7, In Pakistan a deadly shooting reportedly took place at a meeting of top Taliban commanders Hakimullah Mehsud (28), a deputy to Baitullah Mehsud and the warlord's main spokesman, and Wali-ur Rehman, a senior commander in Mehsud's umbrella Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) movement. They had convened to discuss the choice of a successor to Baitullah Mehsud. Both commanders later phoned international media organizations to prove they were alive.
(AFP, 8/9/09)(AP, 8/12/09)(Econ, 10/17/09, p.34)
2009 Aug 7, A Peruvian government prosecutor presented homicide charges against two police generals and 15 other officers for a June government crackdown at an Amazon highway blockade manned by Indians protesting development on their ancestral lands. The criminal charges, which must be ratified by a judge, were the first to implicate police in violence that left at least 33 dead, including 23 police.
(AP, 8/12/09)
2009 Aug 7, Portugal said it has agreed to take two Syrian detainees from Guantanamo prison.
(AP, 8/7/09)
2009 Aug 7, Sri Lankan authorities questioned Selvarasa Pathmanathan, former chief arms smuggler the new leader of the Tamil Tiger rebels, after he was arrested 2 days earlier in Southeast Asia and flown to Sri Lanka. Rebels said he was arrested in Kuala Lumpur.
(AP, 8/7/09)
2009 Aug 7, International donor the Global Fund, which had a financial dispute with Zimbabwe's previous government, took the unusual step of giving $37.9 million in aid directly to Zimbabwe's new unity government instead of channeling it through private groups.
(AP, 8/7/09)
2009 Aug 8, Sonia Sotomayor was sworn-in as the first Hispanic on the US Supreme Court.
(AP, 8/8/09)
2009 Aug 8, In Dinuba, Ca., a car fleeing from police ran a stop sign and slammed into a pickup, killing three people in the car and four young children in the truck.
(AP, 8/9/09)
2009 Aug 8, In Chino, Ca., a 2-day prison riot began. It housed almost twice as many prisoners as it was designed for and was typical of California’s 33 state prisons. At this time California spent about $49,000 a year on each prisoner, almost twice the national average.
(Econ, 8/15/09, p.28)
2009 Aug 8, Continental Express Flight 2816, en route with 47 passengers to Minneapolis from Houston, was stranded overnight at Rochester, Minn., after being forced to land due to storms. On Nov 24 the Dept. of Transportation levied $175,000 in fines against Continental, ExpressJet and Mesaba Airlines for keeping the plane on the tarmac.
(SFC, 11/25/09, p.A6)
2009 Aug 8, Near Hoboken, New Jersey, 9 people died in an air collision over the Hudson River, including 3 members of a Pennsylvania family in the private plane and five Italian tourists and a pilot from New Jersey in a Liberty Tours helicopter.
(AP, 8/9/09)(SSFC, 8/9/09, p.A9)
2009 Aug 8, NATO helicopters wounded five Afghan police by mistake during a battle with insurgents in Ghazni province. A British soldier, serving with NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), was killed by an improvised explosive device (IED). A US soldier was killed in the south in a hostile fire incident.
(Reuters, 8/8/09)(AFP, 8/9/09)(AP, 8/11/09)
2009 Aug 8, In China hundreds of villagers rioted after news broke about the lead poisoning at the Wugang Manganese Smelting Plant in Wenping township, central Hunan province. A crowd of 600 to 700 people overturned four police cars and smashed a local government sign. China later detained two factory officials after 1,354 children were reported poisoned by lead pollution from the manganese processing plant.
(AP, 8/20/09)
2009 Aug 8, India’s army said its troops killed three Islamic militants along the de facto Kashmir border, thwarting the seventh attempt by rebels to infiltrate from Pakistan in a week.
(AFP, 8/8/09)
2009 Aug 8, In northern India landslides triggered by heavy rains killed at least 43 people in three remote villages in Pithoragarh district of Uttarakhand state.
(AP, 8/9/09)
2009 Aug 8, Indonesian police reportedly killed Noordin Mohammad Top, the self-proclaimed Southeast Asian commander of al-Qaida, in a 16-hour siege of a village hide-out in Central Java. Authorities said they could not confirm that a recovered body was that of the militant leader without DNA tests. DNA tests failed to confirm Top’s death. Police raided a house on the outskirts of Jakarta where they killed two suspected militants and seized bombs and a car rigged to carry them. The house was just 3 miles (5 kilometers) from the president's residence.
(AP, 8/8/09)(AP, 8/9/09)(AP, 8/12/09)
2009 Aug 8, In northern Italy rules for officially condoned vigilante groups took effect.
(Econ, 8/15/09, p.46)
2009 Aug 8, In Mauritania a suicide bomber killed himself outside the French Embassy, wounding two embassy guards and a woman in the street. An African branch of Al-Qaida later said the attack was a response to the aggression of "crusaders" including former colonial ruler France, and to Mauritanian leaders against Islam and Muslims.
(AP, 8/8/09)(AP, 8/18/09)
2009 Aug 8, In Mexico assailants in the state of Guerrero opened fire on a car carrying a couple and their 3-year-old son, killing all three. In Chihuahua gunmen killed four people in an attack in a bar.
(AP, 8/10/09)
2009 Aug 8, In Moldova the four pro-Western parties that upset the Communists in recent elections agreed on a coalition deal to form a new government.
(AP, 8/8/09)
2009 Aug 8, Myanmar government troops seized a weapons factory near the Chinese border after being informed about it during a ministerial meeting with China on combating transnational crime. This triggered several days of clashes with an ethnic militia that sent more than 30,000 refugees fleeing across the border into China.
(AP, 9/9/09)
2009 Aug 8, In Pakistan a gunfight between militants and supporters of a pro-government tribal elder killed 6 militants and 2 tribesmen in the Mohmand tribal region near the Afghan border.
(AFP, 8/9/09)
2009 Aug 8, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was named head of his Fatah movements at his party's first conference in two decades, strengthening the hand of the Western-backed leader in his bid to revive peace talks with Israel.
(AP, 8/8/09)
2009 Aug 8, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev hailed the Russian victory in a war with Georgia a year ago, saying the war had redrawn the map of the Caucasus for good.
(Reuters, 8/8/09)
2009 Aug 8, In Somalia’s pirate stronghold of Harardhere, fighting over the last 24 hours killed at least 12 people. A dispute over a car escalated as clan militias got involved. Mortar shells slammed into a busy market in the capital, Mogadishu, killing six people and wounding 18.
(AP, 8/8/09)
2009 Aug 8, In South Africa US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and South African President Jacob Zuma pledged to cement closer ties between their new administrations.
(AFP, 8/8/09)
2009 Aug 8, Sri Lanka held local elections near an area once dominated by the Tamil Tiger rebels, but voters largely stayed away from the polls in the violence-scarred region. Voter turnout was 22% in Jaffna and 52% in Vavuniya, according to election monitors. The pro-Tiger Tamil National Alliance (TNA) scored unexpected success with 8 of 23 seats in Jaffna and 5 of 11 seats in Vavuniya.
(AP, 8/8/09)(Econ, 8/15/09, p.35)
2009 Aug 8, Typhoon Morakot lashed Taiwan with powerful winds and downpours leaving at least one person killed and five missing.
(AFP, 8/8/09)
2009 Aug 8, Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez said he's returning his ambassador to Colombia, moving to resolve rising diplomatic tensions after weapons sold to Venezuela were found in a rebel cache.
(AP, 8/8/09)
2009 Aug 9, In San Francisco Bruce Sherman (66), accordionist and singer of sea chanteys, committed suicide.
(SSFC, 9/6/09, p.A2)
2009 Aug 9, In Afghanistan a suicide attacker in a bomb-filled vehicle blew up close to a US-led coalition military convoy in Nangarhar province, but did no harm to the troops. 3 Afghan army soldiers were killed after their vehicle was struck by a roadside bomb in Shahjoy district, Zabul province. A US soldier was killed in the south in a hostile fire incident.
(AFP, 8/9/09)(AP, 8/11/09)
2009 Aug 9, US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton arrived in oil-rich Angola to underscore America's presence in one of sub-Saharan Africa's largest energy producers where America is competing with China for resources.
(AP, 8/9/09)
2009 Aug 9, Typhoon Morakot slammed into China's eastern coast, forcing the evacuation of nearly a million people after earlier lashing Taiwan with torrential rains that caused the island's worst flooding in 50 years and left dozens missing and feared dead.
(AP, 8/9/09)
2009 Aug 9, The French advertising group Publicis said it would buy the digital advertising agency Razorfish from Microsoft for 530 million dollars (380 million euros).
(AFP, 8/9/09)
2009 Aug 9, Iran's police chief acknowledged that detained protesters were abused in prison and the country's top prosecutor said those responsible for the mistreatment should be punished, in unusually pointed criticism of security officials. Revolutionary Guard Commander Yadollah Javani called for opposition leaders Mir Hossein Mousavi and former President Mohammad Khatami to be put on trial.
(AP, 8/9/09)
2009 Aug 9, Iraqi authorities arrested Daniel Fitzsimmons, a British contractor, on murder charges over the shooting deaths of a British and an Australian contractor in Baghdad's protected Green Zone. Two employees of ArmorGroup Iraq, identified as Paul McGuigan of Britain and Darren Hoare of Australia, were killed in the firearms incident. On Feb 28, 2011, An Iraqi court convicted Fitzsimmons and sentenced him to 20 years in prison, making him the first Westerner convicted in an Iraqi court since the 2003 US invasion.
(AP, 8/9/09)(AP, 8/10/09)(AP, 2/28/11)
2009 Aug 9, Italians newspapers reported that burglars earlier in the week had made off with jewels and cash worth 11 million euros (15.6 million dollars) from the hotel room of a Saudi princess in Sardinia, sparking a diplomatic incident. On Sep 15 Sardinia police said most of the jewels had been recovered.
(AFP, 8/9/09)(AP, 9/15/09)
2009 Aug 9, Madagascar's bitter political rivals signed a power-sharing deal, agreeing to create an interim government to end months of violence.
(AP, 8/9/09)
2009 Aug 9, In Mexico some 400 people marched in Guadalajara to protest the negative affects of free trade and to demand benefits for retired Mexican laborers who worked in the US as Pres. Barack Obama, Mexican President Felipe Calderon and Canadian PM Stephen Harper arrived for a two-day summit.
(AP, 8/9/09)
2009 Aug 9, Mexican lawyer Silvia Raquenel Villanueva, known for defending high-profile drug trafficking suspects, was shot to death at a street market in the northern city of Monterrey. Army soldiers killed two suspects in a shootout with gunmen in the western state of Michoacan. Federal police arrested Dimas Diaz, a drug cartel suspect they believe was behind a plot to kill President Felipe Calderon in retaliation for his crackdown on organized crime. Dia was the alleged financial operator of the Pacific cartel.
(AP, 8/10/09)
2009 Aug 9, In Pakistan two civilians and a policeman were killed when militants ambushed a police convoy in the northwestern town of Bannu. Two Pakistani soldiers were killed and four were wounded near Naurak village in the troubled North Waziristan tribal district when a remote-control bomb targeting a military convoy exploded. At least eight dead bodies of suspected Taliban militants were found in different areas of the northwestern Swat valley.
(AFP, 8/9/09)
2009 Aug 9, Gaza militants launched mortar shells at a border crossing between Gaza and Israel just as Palestinian patients were being transferred into Israel for medical treatment.
(AP, 8/10/09)
2009 Aug 9, On the Spanish island of Mallorca a small bomb exploded in a restaurant, causing minor damage and no injuries. A caller, who said he was calling on ETA's behalf, warned of the bomb.
(AP, 8/9/09)
2009 Aug 9, In southern Taiwan Typhoon Morakot spawned a mudslide engulfing the mountain village of Shiao Lin, burying up to 600 people. The official death toll from Morakot stood at 14. Another 51, not including the people in Shiao Lin.
(AP, 8/10/09)
2009 Aug 10, In Oakland, Ca., Hassani Campbell (5) was reported missing by his foster parents Louis Ross (38) and Jennifer Campbell (33). The couple were arrested on Aug 28 on suspicion of killing the boy, who suffered from cerebral palsy.
(SFC, 8/29/09, p.A1)
2009 Aug 10, At least three Afghan police and two civilians were killed in a brazen attack by Taliban gunmen and suicide bombers on government buildings near Kabul. A US soldier was killed in the south in a hostile fire incident. 22 Taliban insurgents and two Afghan soldiers also died in violence.
(Reuters, 8/10/09)(AP, 8/11/09)
2009 Aug 10, Australia said it has pledged 7.8 million US dollars this year to help save more than 100 indigenous languages which are in grave danger of dying out.
(AFP, 8/10/09)
2009 Aug 10, Canada’s Nortel Networks said its chief executive would step down immediately and its board would shrink from nine directors to just three as the bankrupt telecom equipment maker sheds its major assets.
(Reuters, 8/10/09)
2009 Aug 10, China said that it has released more than 1,200 detainees held over the unrest in Tibet last year while more than 700 people are still being held over last month's riots in Xinjiang. China's police said they have installed 2.75 million surveillance cameras since 2003 and are expanding the system into the largely neglected countryside.
(AFP, 8/10/09)
2009 Aug 10, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived in the strife-torn Democratic Republic of Congo on the fourth leg of her seven-nation African tour. Clinton said she would press Democratic Republic of Congo's government to address the root causes of the conflict in the east and stop the use of women as "weapons of war."
(Reuters, 8/10/09)
2009 Aug 10, In Cuba 14 people were killed and at least 33 hospitalized after two trucks loaded with passengers collided in the central Cuban province of Ciego de Avila.
(AP, 8/10/09)
2009 Aug 10, Leaders of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUL), a 12-member group inspired by Brazil, met in Quito, Ecuador, in an attempt to further integration. Colombia’s Pres. Uribe did not attend, in part because Ecuador broke of ties with Colombia last year.
(Econ, 8/15/09, p.31)
2009 Aug 10, In Iraq a double truck bombing tore through the village of a small Shiite ethnic minority near the northern city of Mosul killing at least 35 people in Khazna. 9 blasts wracked Baghdad in a wave of violence that killed 22 people. All told more than 250 were left wounded.
(AP, 8/10/09)(SFC, 8/11/09, p.A4)
2009 Aug 10, Israeli warplanes bombed a smuggling tunnel along the Gaza-Egypt border in response to Palestinian rocket and mortar fire, in a brief flare-up of violence at a time of relative quiet in the volatile Palestinian territory.
(AP, 8/10/09)
2009 Aug 10, Typhoon Etau slammed into the west coast of Japan. 13 people were killed in raging floodwaters and landslides, and 10 others were missing.
(AP, 8/10/09)
2009 Aug 10, In Mexico Pres. Obama huddled with the leaders of Mexico and Canada for a swift North American summit, where the swine flu epidemic and knotty disputes over cross-border trade dominated a lengthy agenda.
(AP, 8/10/09)
2009 Aug 10, Mexican soldiers arrested Juan Daniel Carranco Salazar, the alleged leader of the Gulf cartel's operations in the Caribbean resort of Cancun. State prosecutors in Baja California announced their arrest of state detective Sergio Alvarado Chong in the border city of Mexicali with 8 kilograms (17.64 pounds) of cocaine.
(AP, 8/11/09)
2009 Aug 10, New Zealand announced that it will cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 10 to 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2020.
(AP, 8/10/09)
2009 Aug 10, In Pakistan attack helicopters and artillery pounded militant hideouts following clashes between rebels and security forces in North Waziristan. 3 militants were reported killed.
(AFP, 8/10/09)
2009 Aug 10, In central Slovakia 19 workers were trapped underground after a fire and explosion hit the Handlova coal mine. The trapped workers were nine miners who were initially sent to battle a blaze and 11 sent as reinforcements as the fire grew. All were believed killed.
(AP, 8/10/09)(AP, 8/11/09)
2009 Aug 11, The US Homeland Security department was scheduled to return $2.4 million to Mexico's tax administration, the first batch of money seized during a binational investigation into smuggled oil that authorities expect to lead to more arrests and seizures. So far this year, oil theft was up 10 percent, and confirmed in 19 states, up from 13 in 2008.
(AP, 8/11/09)
2009 Aug 11, Former US President Bill Clinton appointed the physician and Harvard University professor Paul Farmer as the UN Deputy Special Envoy to Haiti to assist in advancing the economic and social development of the impoverished Caribbean nation.
(www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=31740)
2009 Aug 11, Bernard Madoff's long-time deputy, Frank DiPascali, pleaded guilty to financial crimes including helping others carry out Wall Street's biggest investment fraud, but shed little more light in court on the decades-long swindle.
(Reuters, 8/11/09)
2009 Aug 11, North Carolina Gov. Beverley Purdue signed the Racial Justice Act into law.
(Econ, 4/28/12, p.34)(http://tinyurl.com/yj8xuzw)
2009 Aug 11, General Motors Corp. said its Chevrolet Volt rechargeable electric car should get 230 miles per gallon of gasoline in city driving, more than four times the mileage of the current champion, the Toyota Prius.
(AP, 8/11/09)
2009 Aug 11, Eunice Kennedy Shriver (88), the sister of President John F. Kennedy, died at a Hyannis hospital. She carried on the family's public service tradition by founding the Special Olympics and championing the rights of the mentally disabled. Shriver organized the first Special Olympics in 1968 in Chicago.
(AP, 8/11/09)
2009 Aug 11, In Richmond, Ca., distraught boyfriend Nathaniel Burris (46) shot and killed toll collector Deborah Ross (51) in her booth at the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge. He also shot and killed Golden Gate Transit bus driver Ersie Charles Everette III (58) in the parking lot and then escaped. Burris was arrested later in the day in Placer County. Burris was convicted of the double murder on Nov 7, 2012. On Nov 20 a jury sentenced him to death.
(SFC, 8/12/09, p.A1)(SFC, 8/13/09, p.A12)(SFC, 11/8/12, p.C3)(SFC, 11/21/12, p.C1)
2009 Aug 11, An Afghan official said authorities have hired some 10,000 Afghan tribesmen to protect this month's presidential election, raising the possibility that village militias could be enlisted to fight against the Taliban. In southern Afghanistan roadside bombs killed nine civilians. The body of a Polish soldier, who had disappeared while under fire a day earlier, was found in Ghazni province.
(AP, 8/11/09)
2009 Aug 11, In Brazil authorities charged Bishop Edir Macedo and nine other people linked to the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God with siphoning off billions of dollars in donations from his mostly poor followers to buy jewelry, TV stations and other businesses for himself. Macedo, who founded the church in 1977, owns a large television network, three newspapers and several radio stations. He also owns a tourism agency and an air taxi company.
(AP, 8/11/09)
2009 Aug 11, In Brazil police were reported to be investigating the "Canal Livre" crime TV show saying the show's host, state legislator Wallace Souza, was suspected of commissioning at least five murders to boost his ratings and prove his claim that Brazil's Amazon region is awash in violent crime. Police also have accused Souza of drug trafficking.
(AP, 8/11/09)
2009 Aug 11, Canada signed a free trade deal with Panama and said it wanted to conclude more such agreements, given that talks to open up the global trading system were going nowhere.
(Reuters, 8/11/09)
2009 Aug 11, In Chechnya Zarema Sadulayeva, the head of the Save the Generation Chechen aid group, and her husband, Alik Dzhabrailov, were found shot dead in the trunk of their car a day after being kidnapped.
(AP, 8/11/09)
2009 Aug 11, China formally arrested four employees of Anglo-American mining giant Rio Tinto Ltd. for infringing trade secrets and bribery, but stopped short of laying politically explosive espionage charges in a case that has strained ties with key trading partner Australia.
(AP, 8/12/09)
2009 Aug 11, Authorities in the Democratic Republic of Congo arrested Gregoire Ndahimana, a former Rwandan mayor, for his alleged role in the 1994 genocide. Measures were taken for him to be transferred to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) headquarters in Arusha, Tanzania.
(AFP, 8/12/09)
2009 Aug 11, In Congo US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called for the Democratic Republic of Congo to punish soldiers responsible for rape as she toured the war-torn east. She also unveiled a $17 million plan to help fight the sexual violence in eastern Congo.
(AFP, 8/11/09)(SFC, 8/12/09, p.A3)
2009 Aug 11, In France restive youths in a Paris suburb torched a tourist bus and nearly a half-dozen cars and hurled objects at police, in a night of fullblown unrest prompted by the death of a teen fleeing police on Aug 9. Some witnesses claimed a police car hit the young motorcyclist after he tried to flee a document check outside the project.
(AP, 8/11/09)
2009 Aug 11, In Honduras some 10,000 protesters arrived in Tegucigalpa after staging weeklong walks across Honduras, producing one of the largest demonstrations in support of Zelaya since he was ousted by the army June 28 and flown out of the country.
(AP, 8/12/09)
2009 Aug 11, In Indonesia UNAIDS regional director Prasada Rao cited a new report saying more than 1.5 million women living with HIV in Asia were infected by their partners and 50 million more are at risk of infection. Rao spoke on the sidelines of the ninth International Congress on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific (ICAAP), which is being held on the Indonesian resort island of Bali.
(AFP, 8/11/09)
2009 Aug 11, Iran's opposition said at least 69 people have died in two months of postelection unrest based on accounts from the victims' families, more than double the official toll released by parliament. Mir Hossein Mousavi, the top opposition leader, said that the abuse and death of protesters detained after the disputed presidential elections shows the need for "deep change" in the country, in the most sweeping call for reform of the system to date.
(AP, 8/11/09)(AP, 8/12/09)
2009 Aug 11, In southeastern Kenya assailants armed with arrows, spears and machetes killed Campbell Bridges (72), a Scottish-born geologist, in an apparent dispute over mining rights. In 1968 Bridges became the first to record the discovery of gemstone-quality tsavorite, in Tanzania. Tsavorite, mined in Tanzania and Kenya, is a green variety of garnet that shines even before polishing. On Aug 19 Kenyan police arrested Alfred Makogo Njiruka, the chairman of a small miners association and the suspected mastermind in the killing of Bridges.
(AP, 8/13/09)(AP, 8/20/09)
2009 Aug 11, Kuwaiti authorities announced they have arrested an al-Qaida-linked group that was planning to attack Camp Arifjan, a key US military base in Kuwait. 5 of the suspects are cousins who were convicted for involvement in the 2002 attack on a group of US Marines training on the Kuwaiti island of Failaka, where one Marine was killed and another wounded.
(AP, 8/11/09)(AP, 8/13/09)
2009 Aug 11, Liechtenstein raised the gate on its tax-haven fortress, making a deal enabling London to snare about 5,000 British accounts holders with up to 3.0 billion pounds in secret deposits.
(AFP, 8/11/09)
2009 Aug 11, In northern Mexico Monterrey city police were told not to sit in parked patrol cars observing traffic, because officials suspect they could be spying for criminal gangs or drug cartels. Gunmen attacked a vehicle carrying a prison director in Chihuahua, killing three bodyguards and wounding two more seriously.
(AP, 8/12/09)
2009 Aug 11, A Myanmar court convicted Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi of violating her house arrest by allowing John Yettaw, an uninvited American, to stay at her home. The head of the military-ruled country ordered the democracy leader to serve an 18-month sentence under house arrest. Yettaw was also convicted, and had just spent a week in a prison hospital for epileptic seizures.
(AP, 8/11/09)(AP, 8/15/09)
2009 Aug 11, In Pakistan police officials in Islamabad confirmed that they had registered a criminal case against former Pres. Pervez Musharraf for detaining 60 Supreme Court judges and their families following emergency rule in 2007.
(SFC, 8/12/09, p.A3)
2009 Aug 11, In Pakistan at least 10 militants were killed in a suspected US drone strike in South Waziristan region, the same area where Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud is said to have been killed last week.
(Reuters, 8/11/09)
2009 Aug 11, The Palestinian Fatah movement ended a 4-day conference. Pres. Abbas was unanimously re-elected as party head and a group of younger leaders were elected to its top council, bolstering its credentials as the West's best hope for Mideast peace. Also elected were Marwan Barghouti (50), a firebrand militant leader now jailed by Israel and seen as a likely future president, and Jibril Rajoub (56), a former aide to the late Yasser Arafat who led several crackdowns against Hamas.
(AP, 8/11/09)(Econ, 8/15/09, p.41)
2009 Aug 11, In Papua New Guinea a charter plane carrying 13 people to a popular tourist site vanished on approach in bad weather to an airport nestled in rugged terrain. No survivors were found in the wreckage, which was located the next day in the mountainous Kokoda region.
(AP, 8/11/09)(AP, 8/12/09)
2009 Aug 11, In Somalia 4 European aid workers and two Kenyan pilots were released after being held hostage for nine months.
(AP, 8/11/09)
2009 Aug 11, In South Africa a report to the Parliament said first year students at 4 universities were found to be unable to read or write properly. The country’s education system was described as dysfunctional.
(SSFC, 8/16/09, p.A4)
2009 Aug 11, Taiwanese authorities put the confirmed death toll from Morakot at 62 and listed 57 people as missing, but that did not include residents in the village of Shiao Lin.
(AP, 8/11/09)
2009 Aug 11, A Thai court rejected a US request to extradite Viktor Bout, an alleged Russian arms smuggler dubbed the "Merchant of Death," dealing a setback to American efforts to try him on charges of plotting to supply weapons to Colombian rebels. The court rejected the extradition request because Bout had not been accused of committing any crimes against Thailand, which has not listed FARC as a terrorist group.
(AP, 8/11/09)
2009 Aug 11, Yemen’s government launched "Operation Scorched Earth," an all-out offensive to stamp out an uprising in the northern Saada province, after rebels claimed they had wrested more control of the region from Sunni-led government troops.
(AP, 8/13/09)(AFP, 2/8/10)
2009 Aug 11, Two Yemenis jailed in the United States over terrorism charges received a tumultuous public welcome on their return home after serving more than six years in prison. Sheik Mohammed Ali Hasan Al-Moayad (60) and his assistant Mohammed Zayed were arrested in 2003 and convicted of supporting terrorist groups such as Al-Qaida. Al-Moayad was sentenced to 75 years in prison and Mohammed Zayed received 45 years, but on August 7 they pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of supporting the Palestinian militant group Hamas and given six years time served.
(AP, 8/11/09)
2009 Aug 12, Pres. Obama awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, to 16 “agents of change."
(SFC, 8/13/09, p.A5)
2009 Aug 12, In Atlanta, Georgia, Ehsanul Islam (23) was convicted of aiding terrorist groups by sending videotapes of US landmarks overseas and plotting to support “violent jihad." He faced a maximum of 60 years in prison.
(SFC, 8/13/09, p.A4)
2009 Aug 12, In Montana a grizzly bear named Maximus, one of the largest in the state, was found shot to death on a ranch near Dupuyer. He had stood 7½ feet tall and weighed 800 lbs.
(SSFC, 8/23/09, p.A7)
2009 Aug 12, In southern Afghanistan helicopter-borne US Marines backed by Harrier jets stormed a Taliban-held town before dawn, launching a new operation (Eastern Resolve 2) to uproot Taliban fighters from a longtime base and provide security for next week's presidential election. Marines said they killed between seven and 10 militants in Dahaneh and seized about 66 pounds (30 kilograms) of opium, which the militants use to finance their insurgency. A blast on a road in the Gereshk district of Helmand province ripped through a vehicle carrying a family, killing 11 people, including two women and nine men. In Kandahar province three children were killed after they started playing with a bomb which they had found on the side of the road west of the provincial capital.
(AP, 8/12/09)(AP, 8/13/09)
2009 Aug 12, Australian forces shot 2 Afghan policemen on a motorcycle at the Dorafshan checkpoint near Tarin Kowt. One of the Afghans was shot 16 times and died. The other was wounded. The Australian military later said the soldiers did not know the men were police and were acting in self-defense.
(AFP, 10/13/09)(www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/08/12/2653950.htm)
2009 Aug 12, In Argentina Retired Gen. Santiago Riveros and four other members of the military were convicted and sentenced to long prison terms in the 1976 killing of Floreal Avellaneda (14), the son of a communist activist.
(www.cidh.oas.org/annualrep/87.88eng/chap5.htm)(AP, 8/12/09)
2009 Aug 12, Argentina’s customs service confiscated a total of 4.2 metric tons (4.6 tons) of pseudoephedrine, chemical that can be used to make methamphetamine, at several government warehouses at the port in Buenos Aires during an investigation into drug traffickers with ties to Mexico.
(AP, 8/13/09)
2009 Aug 12, In La Paz, Bolivia, exploding envelopes wounded 7 people, 3 of them severely.
(AP, 8/13/09)
2009 Aug 12, In Chile Mapuche activist Fabian Facundo Mendoza Collio (24) was shot and killed by police during a confrontation with Mapuche Indians outside Collipulli. Hours after the Collio was killed, an agricultural warehouse in the area was set on fire, destroying about $1 million worth of equipment.
(AP, 8/13/09)
2009 Aug 12, China’s state media reported that authorities in northern China have shut down the Dongling Lead and Zinc Smelting Co. in Shaanxi province after it was found to have caused lead poisoning that sickened more than 300 children. Media later reported that 851 children in Changqing township had tested positive for lead poisoning.
(AP, 8/12/09)(AP, 8/14/09)(AFP, 8/19/09)
2009 Aug 12, The WTO upheld American complaints that China breaks trade commitments by the way it regulates the import and distribution of foreign publications, films and music. The initial complaint was filed in 2007 and was later joined by the EU, Japan, Australia and others.
(Econ, 8/15/09, p.36)
2009 Aug 12, A French teenager (16) shot and killed his parents and twin brothers, apparently while they were asleep in their home on the island of Corsica.
(AFP, 8/13/09)
2009 Aug 12, In France a 35-year-old convert to Islam, identified only as Carole, complained of religious discrimination after trying to go swimming in a "burquini," a full-body swimsuit, in the town of Emerainville, southeast of Paris. Officials insisted they banned the woman's use of the Islam-friendly suit at a local pool because of France's pool hygiene standards.
(AP, 8/13/09)
2009 Aug 12, In Honduras supporters of ousted President Manuel Zelaya clashed with police in Tegucigalpa and some of them attacked the second-ranking member of Congress.
(AP, 8/12/09)
2009 Aug 12, In Mexico’s border city of Nuevo Laredo, city police found a bullet-ridden sport utility vehicle belonging to the federal Communications and Transportation Department crashed into a post on a street. There was blood on the seats, and four department employees identified as cargo inspectors were reported missing.
(AP, 8/12/09)
2009 Aug 12, In Nigeria US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton encouraged the government to take a firmer line on corruption and offered US help to implement badly needed electoral reforms in Africa's biggest energy producer.
(Reuters, 8/12/09)
2009 Aug 12, In northwestern Pakistan's tribal belt clashes between Taliban militants and followers of pro-government Turkistan Bitani left at least 70 fighters dead.
(AP, 8/12/09)(SFC, 8/13/09, p.A2)
2009 Aug 12, Philippine troops overran two jungle camps of al-Qaida-linked militants in their deadliest clash in years, with 23 soldiers and 31 guerrillas killed. The two camps served as a stronghold and a bomb factory for the Abu Sayyaf on Basilan. Troops found several bombs, booby traps and 15 assault rifles and grenade launchers.
(AP, 8/13/09)
2009 Aug 12, Russian PM Vladimir Putin made a surprise visit to Abkhazia and said Russia will spend at least 15 billion rubles ($470 million) next year to build Russian military bases in Abkhazia and tighten the separatist Georgian region's borders.
(AP, 8/12/09)
2009 Aug 12, Chechen Interior Ministry spokesman Magomed Deniyev said 2 policemen were killed in separate attacks during the night as they returned to their homes.
(AP, 8/12/09)
2009 Aug 12, Ruslan Amerkhanov, the construction minister in Russia's violence-plagued Ingushetia, was shot to death in his office. Ingush Security Council secretary Alexei Vorobyov said investigators believe the killing could be related to recent audits of construction projects that turned up building violations and misuse of funds.
(AP, 8/12/09)
2009 Aug 12, World Bank President Robert Zoellick pledged to boost development aid to Rwanda to help the rebuild the country ripped apart by genocide.
(Reuters, 8/12/09)
2009 Aug 12, In Somalia masked gunmen killed five Pakistani preachers outside the Tawfiq Mosque in Galkayo following morning prayers.
(AP, 8/12/09)
2009 Aug 12, Yemeni government forces used artillery and aircraft to attack Shiite rebels near the border with Saudi Arabia in an escalation of the five-year-old conflict. A local government official said 20 rebels were killed. A local Health Ministry official said 12 others died in fighting across Saada and 51 were injured.
(AP, 8/12/09)
2009 Aug 12, Doctors at Zimbabwe's state hospitals went on strike, demanding higher salaries and payment of their monthly allowances.
(AFP, 8/12/09)
2009 Aug 13, Legendary guitarist and inventor Les Paul (94), who pioneered the design of solid body Gibson electric guitars that bore his name, died at a New York hospital of complications from pneumonia. Paul was born as Lester William Polsfuss in Waukesha, Wisconsin, on June 9, 1915. He created one of the first solid-body electric guitars in 1941, but it took nearly 10 years before he, working with Gibson Guitar Corp., perfected it.
(Reuters, 8/13/09)
2009 Aug 13, Australian police said a 20-year-old Australian man has been charged with infecting more than 3,000 computers around the world with a virus designed to capture banking and credit card data.
(AP, 8/13/09)
2009 Aug 13, It was reported that millions of sockeye salmon have disappeared mysteriously from the Fraser river on Canada's Pacific Coast. It was once known as the world's most fertile spawning ground for sockeye. Up to 10.6 million bright-red sockeye salmon were expected to return to spawn this summer. The latest estimates say fewer than 1 million have returned. The Canadian government has closed the river to commercial and recreational sockeye fishing for the third straight year, hitting the livelihood of nearby Indian reserves.
(Reuters, 8/13/09)
2009 Aug 13, In Chechnya a gun battle between police and 2 suspected militants left the 2 militants dead as well as 4 police officers.
(SFC, 8/15/09, p.A3)
2009 Aug 13, Chinese officials retreated from a plan to install anti-pornography software on every computer sold, but said Internet cafes, schools and other public places must use the program.
(SFC, 8/14/09, p.A2)
2009 Aug 13, In Dagestan some 10 men opened fire on a police post in Buinaksk, killing 4 officers. The gunmen then entered a sauna complex nearby and killed 7 women working there.
(SFC, 8/15/09, p.A3)
2009 Aug 13, Ecuador’s Citizen Participation Minister Doris Soliz called for the creation of local citizen committees to defend the government and its "revolution," sparking criticism that the president aims to control opponents in a system reminiscent of Cuba or Venezuela.
(AP, 8/13/09)
2009 Aug 13, The EU said it was extending its sanctions on Myanmar to cover members of the judiciary responsible for the verdict in the trial of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
(Reuters, 8/13/09)
2009 Aug 13, In India thousands of schools, colleges and cinemas shut down in Mumbai to combat the spread of swine flu as the government struggled to contain public anxiety.
(AFP, 8/13/09)
2009 Aug 13, In Iran a group of former reformist lawmakers appealed to a powerful clerical body to investigate Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's qualification to rule in an unprecedented challenge to the country's most powerful man over the postelection crackdown.
(AP, 8/14/09)
2009 Aug 13, In Iraq a gunfight erupted during an attempted bank heist in Baghdad, as a court official announced that five members of Iraq's presidential guard will go on trial later this month for their alleged roles in the deadly July 28 robbery of Baghdad’s Rafidain Bank. In the northwest city of Sinjar 2 suicide bombers blew themselves up at a popular cafe killing 21 people and wounding 30 others.
(AP, 8/13/09)(SFC, 8/14/09, p.A2)
2009 Aug 13, In Japan a woman (23) crashed her moped when it hit a rope that was stretched across the road. She suffered a fractured skull after being thrown from her bike near western Tokyo's US Yokota Air Base. Police later arrested four children, three boys and one girl aged between 15 and 18, of US military personnel on suspicion of attempted murder.
(AFP, 12/5/09)
2009 Aug 13, In Liberia US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton hailed the country’s post-war transition to democracy and threw support behind President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, who has faced calls to resign because she helped fund a warlord.
(AFP, 8/13/09)
2009 Aug 13, In Mexico state security officials banned police from setting up sobriety checkpoints in the northern city of Monterrey because they say the officers routinely use them to extort motorists. Bishop Eduardo Patino Leal was detained in the town of Huatusco, Veracruz state, lost control of his vehicle and ran over 6 Indian street vendors, killing one.
(AP, 8/14/09)
2009 Aug 13, North Korea freed Yu Seong-Jin (44), a South Korean worker it had detained since March, raising hopes of better cross-border relations after 18 months of bitter hostility from the communist state.
(AFP, 8/13/09)
2009 Aug 13, In northwest Pakistan helicopter gunships pummeled the bases of Taliban commander Hakimullah Mehsud, killing at least 12 insurgents as government forces ratcheted up pressure on the militants following their top leader's reported death. 2 intelligence officials said a suicide bomber killed pro-government lashkar leader Malik Khadeen, who was instrumental in fighting Uzbek militants operating with the Taliban in South Waziristan. In the Bajur tribal area authorities found the bodies of two anti-Taliban lashkar leaders near a security checkpoint. The two lashkar commanders, Malik Sehar Gul and Malik Jalindhar, had been kidnapped the night before.
(AP, 8/13/09)
2009 Aug 13, Scottish officials said they were considering early release for the Lockerbie bomber, leading to sharp debate among victims' relatives in the US and Britain over whether he should be allowed to return home to Libya. British media said Abdel Baset Ali al-Megrahi could soon be freed on compassionate grounds because he is terminally ill with cancer.
(AP, 8/13/09)
2009 Aug 13, The crew of two Egyptian fishing vessels overpowered Somali pirates after being held hostage for four months and, with machetes and tools, killed at least two pirates before sailing to freedom. The fight took place near the coastal town of Las Qorey off the Gulf of Aden. The pirates had demanded a ransom of $1.5 million.
(AP, 8/14/09)
2009 Aug 13, Taiwan deployed thousands of extra troops as it faced growing public anger and pressure to rescue people trapped by landslides. The confirmed death toll from the destruction wreaked by the typhoon rose to at least 116.
(AFP, 8/13/09)
2009 Aug 13, In Venezuela attackers injured 12 of the journalists as they passed out leaflets warning against a new education law that critics fear could lead to indoctrination in schools. Their fliers warned against a provision for sanctions against reports that "produce terror" among children or incite hate. The government condemned the violence and ordered an investigation.
(AP, 8/15/09)
2009 Aug 13, Yemeni warplanes bombed a northern province bordering Saudi Arabia for a second straight day, in an ongoing offensive that has brought casualties and pushed the area close to an all-out war.
(AP, 8/13/09)
2009 Aug 14, Real estate lender Colonial BancGroup Inc. was shut down by federal officials in the biggest US bank failure this year. The FDIC, which was appointed receiver of the Montgomery, Ala.-based Colonial and its about $25 billion in assets, said the failed bank's 346 branches in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Nevada and Texas will reopen at the normal times starting on Aug 15 as offices of Winston-Salem, N.C.-based BB&T. Regulators also closed four other banks: Community Bank of Arizona, based in Phoenix; Union Bank, based in Gilbert, Ariz.; Community Bank of Nevada, based in Las Vegas; and Dwelling House Savings and Loan Association, located in Pittsburgh. The closures boosted to 77 the number of federally insured banks that have failed in 2009.
(AP, 8/15/09)
2009 Aug 14, Lynette “Squeaky" Fromme (60), the Charles Manson follower convicted of trying to assassinate President Gerald Ford in 1975, was released from a Texas prison hospital after more than three decades behind bars.
(AP, 8/14/09)
2009 Aug 14, It was reported that in North Carolina nine women, who lived at the edges of the poor community in Rocky Mount, have disappeared since 2005. Six bodies have been found along rural roads just a few miles outside town, most so decomposed that investigators could not tell how they died. At least one of the women was strangled. All the deaths have been classified as homicides. Three women were still missing.
(AP, 8/14/09)
2009 Aug 14, In California the Lockheed fire in Santa Cruz County, which began on Aug 12, covered over 5,000 acres and was only 15% contained. 9 big wildfires across the state covered over 100,000 acres.
(SFC, 8/15/09, p.A8)
2009 Aug 14, Hillary Clinton ended her whirlwind seven-nation African trip at Cape Verde, with a tough love message that Africans must tackle their own problems.
(AFP, 8/14/09)
2009 Aug 14, An Australian judge ruled that Christian Rossiter (49), a quadriplegic man who says he cannot "undertake any basic human functions," has the right to direct a nursing home to stop feeding him and allow him to die.
(AP, 8/14/09)(SFC, 8/15/09, p.A2)
2009 Aug 14, In Dagestan gunmen killed 2 traffic police officers in Makhachkala. 3 suspected militants were killed in a separate episode.
(SFC, 8/15/09, p.A3)
2009 Aug 14, In Germany shares in Volkswagen, Europe's biggest carmaker, plunged after it approved a takeover of luxury auto manufacturer Porsche to create a sector giant.
(AFP, 8/14/09)
2009 Aug 14, In Honduras 2 dozen supporters of ousted Pres. Zelaya were charged with sedition in an intensifying crackdown on protests against the coup-installed government.
(AP, 8/15/09)
2009 Aug 14, In Iraq journalists took to the streets in Baghdad to protest what they say is political pressure to silence the media. The rally came as journalist Ahmed Abdul-Hussein was threatened with a lawsuit over editorials related to the July 28 Baghdad bank robbery that left eight security guards dead.
(AP, 8/14/09)
2009 Aug 14, In Libya a delegation of US senators led by John McCain met with Libya's leader to discuss the possible delivery of non-lethal defense equipment.
(AP, 8/15/09)
2009 Aug 14, In northern Mexico a fight among prisoners killed 19 inmates and left more than 20 injured at the prison in the city of Gomez Palacio, Durango state. The battle apparently involved inmates jailed on drug or organized crime charges. Assailants in pickup trucks opened fire on Monclova police chief Juan Carlos Pacheco as he headed home. Pacheco was not hurt but three of the police officers guarding him died. Federal police announced the capture of Hector Oyarzabal, an alleged La Familia leader, who was described as director of the gang's drug operations in several towns of the state of Mexico, which surrounds most of Mexico City. In Ciudad Juarez two women and a man were found shot to death in their car.
(AP, 8/15/09)
2009 Aug 14, Nigeria’s banking chief said the government will inject US$2.55 billion into five troubled banks, in Africa's first major bank rescue program since the global credit crunch began. Central Bank Chief Sanusi Lamido Sanusi also announced the sacking of the heads of five major banks for piling up debts worth billions of dollars and poor management. The heads of Afribank plc, Intercontinental Bank plc, Union Bank plc, Oceanic Bank plc and Finbank plc were removed by Sanusi. The Nigerian anti-graft agency soon froze the accounts of the sacked directors for running the institutions into insolvency.
(AP, 8/14/09)(AFP, 8/22/09)
2009 Aug 14, In Nigeria the number of polio cases caused by the vaccine was reported to have doubled so far this year with 124 children paralyzed, compared to 62 in 2008, out of about 42 million children vaccinated. For every case of paralysis, hundreds of other children don't develop symptoms, but pass on the disease.
(AP, 8/14/09)
2009 Aug 14, Pakistan lifted a ban on political activities in its tribal regions, granting the areas close to Afghan border parliamentary representation for the first time in the hopes it would reduce the grip of the Taliban there. 3 bomb explosions killed a man and wounded 18 other people in Baluchistan, an impoverished but oil-rich province where Baluch nationalist groups have been fighting for more autonomy for decades.
(AP, 8/14/09)
2009 Aug 14, In the southern Gaza town of Rafah on the Egyptian border fighting broke out when Hamas security men surrounded a mosque where about 100 members of Jund Ansar Allah, or the Soldiers of the Companions of God, were holed up. Abdel-Latif Moussa, the leader of the group, defied Gaza's Hamas rulers by declaring in a prayer sermon that the territory was an Islamic emirate. 11 homemade rockets were launched from Gaza into Egypt. Only five of the rockets detonated, injuring a young girl.
(AP, 8/15/09)
2009 Aug 14, A Swiss court backed the government's plan to give aid agencies 7 million Swiss francs ($6 million) seized from bank accounts linked to Haiti's former dictator Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier. The Duvalier family, which wants to reclaim the money, can now appeal the case to Switzerland's highest court. The accounts have been blocked since 2002.
(AP, 8/14/09)
2009 Aug 14, Taiwan's president said floods and mudslides unleashed by Typhoon Morakot last weekend have killed about 500 people on the island, as he called on rescue crews to step up their efforts. Ma said the death toll includes 120 confirmed deaths, and about 380 people believed to be buried in the debris of a landslide in Shiao Lin, the hardest-hit village. Taiwan asked major world donors for heavy equipment to alleviate damages from Typhoon Morakot. Aid offers were initially refused on Aug 11. On Aug 23 the death toll from Typhoon Morakot was raised to at least 650.
(AP, 8/14/09)(Reuters, 8/15/09)(AP, 8/23/09)
2009 Aug 14, A Taiwanese telephone company said Seabed movements believed caused by Typhoon Morakat damaged seven undersea cables linking Asian nations, disrupting Internet and telephone services.
(AP, 8/14/09)
2009 Aug 14, In Venezuela lawmakers loyal to President Hugo Chavez gave final approval on to legislation that has raised fears among government opponents of impending socialist indoctrination in schools. The National Assembly also approved a law that paves the way for the government to take over private buildings and land in urban areas.
(AP, 8/14/09)
2009 Aug 15, In Georgia former college professor Lothar Karl Schweder (77) and his wife Sherry (65) were found mauled to death by dogs near their home in Lexington.
(SFC, 8/18/09, p.A7)
2009 Aug 15, In southern California the body of Jasmine Fiore (28), a swimsuit model, was found stuffed in a suitcase and dumped into a trash bin in Orange County. Her husband Ryan Alexander Jenkins (32), a reality TV show contestant and CEO of Skyhomes in Calgary, Canada, reported her missing the same day. On Aug 20 Jenkins was charged with murder and believed to be hiding in Canada. On Aug 23 Jenkins was found dead of apparent suicide in a motel in Hope, British Columbia.
(SFC, 8/20/09, p.A5)(SFC, 8/20/09, p.A9)(Reuters, 8/24/09)
2009 Aug 15, In Afghanistan a suicide car bomb exploded outside the main gate of NATO's headquarters five days before presidential elections, killing seven and wounding 91 in the biggest attack in the Afghan capital in six months. A British soldier succumbed to injuries sustained while out on foot patrol in Helmand province, becoming the 201st British military fatality in Afghanistan.
(AP, 8/15/09)(AFP, 8/16/09)
2009 Aug 15, In northern Algeria an explosion followed by gunfire left one police officer dead and two others wounded at a beach. A head-on collision between a lorry and a minibus killed 16 people on the outskirts of the city of Ghazaouet, including more than a dozen members of the same family traveling together.
(AFP, 8/15/09)
2009 Aug 15, Canada said it will pay some farmers to stop raising hogs and offer loans to help others restructure, assistance that drew praise from Canadian hog farmers and concerns from a top US farmer group.
(Reuters, 8/15/09)
2009 Aug 15, In southern Chile Manuel Calfiu, head of the Mapuche community Meli Wixan Mapu, said dozens of Indian communities agreed to form the Mapuche Territorial Alliance to fight for political autonomy, said after several days of violence over land seizures.
(AP, 8/15/09)
2009 Aug 15, Three Iraqi men herding cattle were killed after wandering into the middle of a US-Iraqi mortar training exercise north of the Iraqi capital.
(AP, 8/16/09)
2009 Aug 15, In Kuwait a fire at a wedding tent killed 57 women and children as it consumed the structure in a blazing inferno lasting just three minutes. The bridegroom’s ex-wife was later found to be the arsonist. In 2010 a Kuwaiti appeals court confirmed a death sentence against Nasra Yussef Mohammed al-Enezi (23). She had been convicted in March of setting fire to the wedding tent as her husband took a second wife. Al-Enezi was among seven people hanged on January 25, 2017.
(AP, 8/16/09)(AP, 8/18/09)(SFC, 8/18/09, p.A4)(AFP, 5/26/10)(SFC, 1/26/17, p.A3)
2009 Aug 15, Japan's PM Taro Aso expressed deep regret over the suffering his country inflicted on Asian countries during World War II in a solemn ceremony that marked the 64th anniversary of Tokyo's surrender.
(AP, 8/15/09)
2009 Aug 15, In Mexico the dismembered body of Jesus Arroyo, a legal adviser for the leftist Democratic Revolution Party, was found in an ice box in Ciudad Altamirano, in Guerrero state. In Guadalajara singer Carlos Vicente Ocaranza, who specialized in drug ballads, was shot to death outside a bar. His manager died of wounds 2 days later. Ocaranza was better known as "El Loco Elizalde," or The Crazy Elizalde, a reference to his distant relation by marriage to Valentin Elizalde, a much more famous musician, also killed by gunshots in 2006.
(AP, 8/15/09)(www.wtop.com/?nid=105&sid=1646540)
2009 Aug 15, In Myanmar US Sen. Jim Webb won the release of John Yettaw (53), an American prisoner convicted and sentenced to seven years in prison for swimming secretly to the residence of detained democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
(AP, 8/15/09)
2009 Aug 15, Nigeria's anti-graft agency said it had recovered more than 50 billion naira ($320.5 million / €224.2 million) in looted funds and secured 70 convictions in the past year. Police in the western Nigerian state of Niger raided the Darul Islam community and detained hundreds of its members, weeks after an uprising by a radical sect killed almost 800 in the remote northeast. Sect leader Amrul Bashir Abdullahi said: "We decided to create a camp for ourselves outside the community because of the problems in the larger society. These are problems of corruption, drunkenness, prostitution and so on which Allah forbids."
(AFP, 8/15/09)(Reuters, 8/16/09)
2009 Aug 15, In Pakistan a suicide bomber rammed an explosives-laden car into a checkpoint in the northwestern Swat Valley, killing at least five people in a reminder that extremists can still strike despite the military's retaking of the area. Air strikes by government fighter jets killed 16 militants and destroyed several Taliban hideouts in tribal South Waziristan.
(AP, 8/15/09)(AFP, 8/17/09)
2009 Aug 15, In the Gaza Strip Abdel-Latif Moussa, the leader of an al-Qaida-inspired group, blew himself up during a shootout with Hamas security forces, ending hours of violence sparked by a rebellious sermon at a Salafist mosque near the Egyptian border. A total of 24 people, including six Hamas police officers and an 11-year-old girl, were killed and 150 were wounded.
(AP, 8/15/09)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdel_Latif_Moussa)
2009 Aug 15, In Peru farmers freed 13 police officers and four civilians seized at a hydroelectric dam in the Andean region after local officials agreed to provide them with fertilizer.
(AP, 8/15/09)
2009 Aug 15, In Puerto Rico Ricardo Lebron Berrios (23), a prisoner being taken to jail to face car theft charges, allegedly shot one police officer to death and gravely wounded a second, then escaped in their squad car.
(AP, 8/16/09)
2009 Aug 15, Somali pirates found seven dead colleagues floating in the ocean and vowed to take revenge against Egyptian fishermen they say killed them during an August 13 escape.
(Reuters, 8/15/09)
2009 Aug 15, South Korea's president renewed his offer of aid for impoverished North Korea if it abandons its nuclear weapons and called for talks on the reduction of conventional weapons along their heavily fortified border.
(AP, 8/15/09)
2009 Aug 15, Sri Lanka's Roman Catholic leaders called for the release of ethnic Tamils held in military-run displacement camps, saying they are confined like prisoners behind barbed wire.
(AP, 8/15/09)
2009 Aug 15, Taiwan's President Ma Ying-jeou bowed to public anger, apologizing for his government's slow response to Typhoon Morakot, which devastated central and southern parts of the island.
(AFP, 8/15/09)
2009 Aug 15, Yemen widened a military offensive against Shiite rebels in the country's north, blasting the fighters' positions with artillery and airstrikes.
(AP, 8/15/09)
2009 Aug 16, Y.E. Yang (37) of South Korea won the PGA Championship at Chaska, Minnesota, with a 2-under par 70 beating Tiger Woods who shot a 5 over par 75.
(AP, 8/17/09)
2009 Aug 16, In San Francisco BART management and union leaders reached a tentative contract agreement less that 6 hours before a planned strike to shut down the regional rail system.
(SFC, 8/17/09, p.A1)
2009 Aug 16, Afghan President Hamid Karzai took part in a live television debate with two of his main rivals running in this week's election, a first for an incumbent head of state in the war-scarred country. The Afghan defense ministry said that more than 30 rebels, including foreigners, were killed in an operation pounding Taliban centers in a bid to secure a northeast troublespot for key elections. Two US troops and a US civilian died in gun and bomb attacks in eastern Afghanistan. 3 British soldiers were killed in an explosion in the volatile south.
(AFP, 8/16/09)(AFP, 8/17/09)
2009 Aug 16, Chinese authorities in central Henan province called off the takeover of Linzhou Iron and Steel Co. Ltd., a state-owned steel plant, after workers protested and trapped an official in the factory office for four days, the second time in a month that the country's steelworkers have rallied to successfully avoid privatization.
(AP, 8/16/09)
2009 Aug 16, Iran expanded its mass trial of opposition supporters, adding 25 more defendants including a Jewish teenager who are accused of involvement in unrest over the disputed presidential election.
(AP, 8/16/09)
2009 Aug 16, The US Peace Corps says it has pulled more than 100 American volunteers out of Mauritania for security reasons. The volunteers left for neighboring Senegal and will not return to Mauritania.
(AP, 8/17/09)
2009 Aug 16, North Korean leader Kim Jong Il held talks with Hyun Jeong-eun, the head of South Korea's Hyundai Group, in a rare meeting that could warm prospects for a resumption of stalled cross-border projects.
(AP, 8/16/09)
2009 Aug 16, In Pakistan seven suspected Taliban militants were killed during a gunfight with soldiers in Kabal village, about 20 kilometers northwest of Mingora in the Swat Valley. Police arrested militant commander Qari Saifullah, a close Mehsud aide, as he was being treated in a private hospital in Islamabad.
(AP, 8/17/09)(AP, 8/18/09)
2009 Aug 16, It was reported that Peru has become the world’s largest “factory" of counterfeit US dollars. Police were said to seize some $10 million in false dollars each month in Lima alone. The Peruvian dollars were mostly found in such countries as Italy, France, Germany and Ecuador. Gunmen robbed 12 foreigners on an ecological tourism trip to the Manu nature reserve in the Tres Cruces area of the Cusco region.
(SSFC, 8/16/09, p.A4)(AP, 8/16/09)
2009 Aug 16, Two Russian air force fighters rehearsing acrobatic maneuvers collided near Moscow, killing one pilot and sending the jets crashing into nearby vacation homes.
(AP, 8/16/09)
2009 Aug 16, An American cargo plane arrived in Taiwan with supplies for victims of the recent Typhoon Morakot disaster. It was the first American military aircraft to land in Taiwan in the 30 years since the US severed its diplomatic ties in favor of China.
(Econ, 8/22/09, p.36)
2009 Aug 16, In Uruguay some 20 dead Fraser's dolphins turned up this weekend on the Punta Negra beach in Piriapolis outside Montevideo. Experts theorized the tropical dolphins became disoriented or were carried there by changing water currents.
(AP, 8/18/09)
2009 Aug 17, Albert Gonzalez (28) of Miami, a former informant for the US Secret Service who helped the agency hunt hackers, was indicted in New Jersey and charged with conspiring with two other unnamed suspects to steal the private information. He allegedly stole information from 130 million credit and debit card accounts in what federal prosecutors called the largest case of identity theft yet. He was already in jail awaiting trial in a hacking case. On Aug 28 Gonzalez agreed to plead guilty and serve up to 25 years in federal prison.
(AP, 8/18/09)(SFC, 8/29/09, p.A4)
2009 Aug 17, In Afghanistan former Uzbek militia chief General Abdul Rashid Dostum threw his support behind President Hamid Karzai one day after returning from exile in Turkey. Four minor candidates announced they were withdrawing and throwing their support behind Karzai. A roadside bomb in southern Afghanistan killed a US service member, while an American civilian working for the military died after insurgents attacked a patrol in the east.
(AP, 8/17/09)
2009 Aug 17, The Central African Republic’s Communications Minister Cyriaque Gonda said on state radio that the government has set a three-year timetable to disarm, demobilize and reintegrate former rebels.
(AFP, 8/17/09)
2009 Aug 17, Czech media reported that two Russians have been ordered out of Prague, including a deputy military attache. Prague has previously complained about an increase in Russian spying that it linked to the US plans. Russia responded by ordering two Czech diplomats out of Russia.
(Reuters, 8/18/09)
2009 Aug 17, In Ingushetia a suicide bomber attacked a police station in Nazran city in Russia's North Caucasus with an explosives-laden truck, killing at least 21 people and wounding more than 100 others. 9 officers were still missing.
(AP, 8/17/09)(AP, 8/18/09)
2009 Aug 17, The new head of Iran's judiciary suggested that he would prosecute security agents accused of torture in the postelection crackdown, a nod from the country's conservative leadership to widespread anger to reports that jailed protesters were abused.
(AP, 8/17/09)
2009 Aug 17, Human Rights Watch said Iraqi militiamen are torturing and killing gay men with impunity in a systematic campaign that has spread from Baghdad to several other cities.
(AP, 8/17/09)
2009 Aug 17, Israeli soldiers mistakenly shot and wounded an Egyptian policeman near Eilat along the border between the two countries.
(AP, 8/17/09)
2009 Aug 17, In Mexico at least 8 people were killed early in the day when gunmen opened fire in a bar in drug-plagued Ciudad Juarez on the Texas border. Gunmen killed a father and his 4-year-old son and wounded the mother as the family drove on a highway near Ciudad Juarez. 2 girls, ages 12 and 14, died after being struck by lightning on a soccer field during a religious service in the city of Tuxtla Gutierrez in Chiapas state. In Monterrey four gunmen died in a shootout with soldiers and three other suspects were detained. Three soldiers suffered light injuries in the clash.
(AP, 8/17/09)(www.wtop.com/?nid=105&sid=1646540)(AP, 8/18/09)
2009 Aug 17, North Korea said it would restart tours to a scenic mountain resort and allow reunions for families separated since the Korean War, a surprise move that could help ease months of tensions with South Korea over Pyongyang's missile and nuclear tests.
(AP, 8/17/09)
2009 Aug 17, In northwest Pakistan a bomb blast claimed by Taliban militants killed seven people including children, as 31 insurgents were reported dead in a fresh wave of unrest. Overnight in Swat's main town Mingora, a suicide bomber blew himself up, wounding four soldiers as they tried to arrest him. Security forces captured Maulvi Umar, the Pakistani Taliban's top spokesman, and he acknowledged the death of the group's leader in a recent US missile strike.
(AFP, 8/17/09)(AP, 8/18/09)
2009 Aug 17, Russian media reported that the Arctic Sea has been found near Cape Verde and that the ship's 15-man Russian crew has been taken aboard a Russian naval vessel.
(AP, 8/17/09)
2009 Aug 17, In Russia powerful explosion took place during repair work at the Sayano-Shushinskaya hydroelectric plant in southern Siberia. The death toll soon reached 69 with 6 still missing and feared dead after an engine room was suddenly flooded. The accident produced an oil spill and the slick that floated down the Yenisei River.
(AP, 8/17/09)(AP, 8/18/09)(AP, 8/21/09)(AP, 8/23/09)
2009 Aug 17, It was reported that 200,000 Russian military officers faced early retirement, as the government conducts a sweeping reform that will eliminate the jobs of six out of every 10 members of its top-heavy officer corps.
(AP, 8/17/09)
2009 Aug 17, In Somalia gunmen stormed a UN aid compound in Wajid overnight, sparking a gunbattle that killed three of the attackers and wounded one. Hundreds of pro-government militiamen rolled into Bula Hawa town near the Kenyan border after al-Shabab fighters abandoned it.
(AP, 8/17/09)
2009 Aug 17, In Sweden the Aftonbladet tabloid published an incendiary article claiming that Israeli soldiers had harvested the organs of some Palestinians whom they had shot. Israel quickly denounced the article, while Sweden defended its freedom of expression.
(Econ, 8/29/09, p.44)
2009 Aug 17, In Thailand thousands of supporters of deposed PM Thaksin Shinawatra rallied in central Bangkok and then marched to the royal palace, seeking a pardon for the fugitive leader.
(AP, 8/17/09)
2009 Aug 17, Former Zambian President Frederick Chiluba (1991-2001) was cleared of corruption charges following a six-year trial after a magistrate ruled that $500,000 of allegedly embezzled funds could not be traced to government money.
(AP, 8/17/09)(Econ, 8/22/09, p.43)(Econ, 11/21/09, p.51)
2009 Aug 18, Robert Novak (78), political columnist, died in Washington DC after a battle with brain cancer that was diagnosed in July 2008. He was a conservative, pugilistic debater and proud owner of the "Prince of Darkness" moniker, which he used in his 2007 memoir: "The Prince of Darkness: 50 Years Reporting in Washington." A column of his in 2003 outed Valerie Plame as a CIA agent.
(AP, 8/18/09)
2009 Aug 18, A Taliban suicide bomber attacked a NATO convoy on the outskirts of Kabul, killing 8 people and wounding more than 50, just days before the presidential election that the militant group has vowed to disrupt. A suicide bomber struck the gates of an Afghan army base in the southern Uruzgan province, killing 3 Afghan soldiers and two civilians. Two US soldiers were killed and 3 wounded in a separate blast in eastern Afghanistan.
(AP, 8/18/09)(SFC, 8/19/09, p.A3)
2009 Aug 18, An international claims commission in The Hague awarded Ethiopia slightly more than Eritrea as it settled mutual claims worth hundreds of millions of dollars for death, injury, rape, looting and destruction during their two-year border conflict. This concluded a complex arbitration that was part of the 2000 peace agreement closing out a border conflict that cost tens of thousands of lives.
(AP, 8/19/09)
2009 Aug 18, In Indonesia a dump truck, packed with more than 60 plantation workers and their families, overturned and killing at least 25 with dozens injured. At least three children were among the dead near Sampit town in Central Kalimantan.
(AP, 8/19/09)
2009 Aug 18, Iraqi forces seized a launcher loaded with 13 Iranian-made rockets after an attack the previous day against the US base outside the southern city of Basra.
(AP, 8/18/09)
2009 Aug 18, Israeli government officials said Israel has quietly stopped approving new building projects in the West Bank while publicly still refusing US demands for an official settlement freeze.
(AP, 8/18/09)
2009 Aug 18, In Lebanon 8 members of an al-Qaida-inspired group sawed bars off their cell windows in a high-security prison, scaled down the building using blankets tied together, then stood on each other's shoulders to help one jump over a wall and escape. Prison guards managed to stop the other seven from fleeing. Officials described the escaped prisoner, Taha al-Hajj Suleiman, as a Syrian militant and a "dangerous" member of the Fatah Islam group. Suleiman was caught the next day in the woods just north of the Roumieh prison.
(AP, 8/18/09)(AP, 8/19/09)
2009 Aug 18, In Mexico gunmen shot up the offices of the Siglo de Torreon newspaper in Torreon, Coahuila state.
(SFC, 8/19/09, p.A2)
2009 Aug 18, In Mozambique an overcrowded ferry with 50 people went down off the coast in a northern province. 17 people were feared drowned.
(AP, 8/19/09)
2009 Aug 18, Pakistani government and UN officials said flash floods have killed at least 27 people in the northwest, and that more than 80,000 have seen their homes or crops destroyed.
(AP, 8/18/09)
2009 Aug 18, Russia's President Dmitry Medvedev hosted Israeli counterpart Shimon Peres for talks that were expected to focus on the Middle East and the Iranian nuclear standoff.
(AP, 8/18/09)
2009 Aug 18, Former South Korean Pres. Kim Dae-jung (85) died. He spent years as a dissident under a military dictatorship and later won the Nobel Peace Prize for seeking reconciliation with communist North Korea.
(AP, 8/18/09)
2009 Aug 18, In Sudan clashes between rival militias broke out in the southern oil-rich Unity state, the latest to hit a region still recovering from two decades of civil war.
(AFP, 8/18/09)
2009 Aug 18, In Zimbabwe a truck hit a bus head-on, killing 11 people including six members of a family returning from a funeral.
(AP, 8/19/09)
2009 Aug 19, US authorities in collaboration with Venezuela led to the seizure of about a ton of cocaine aboard a ship in the Caribbean Sea. Two Venezuelans and a Colombian were arrested.
(AP, 8/20/09)
2009 Aug 19, Don Hewitt (86), a TV news pioneer, died. He created the "60 Minutes" news hour in 1968 and produced the popular CBS newsmagazine for 36 years.
(AP, 8/19/09)
2009 Aug 19, Afghan journalists rejected a Foreign Ministry demand that they suspend the broadcasting of news about attacks or violence on election day, accusing the government of unconstitutional censorship. Police stormed a bank in Kabul and killed three insurgents who had taken it over, while a wave of attacks killed at least six election workers around the country on the eve of the presidential election.
(AP, 8/19/09)
2009 Aug 19, Australia celebrated the biggest trade deal in its history and said it proved vital ties with China had survived a series of bruising rows. PM Kevin Rudd said ExxonMobil's 41.3 billion US dollar liquefied natural gas contract with PetroChina would create up to 6,000 jobs and pump billions of dollars into the economy. PetroChina ordered 2.25 million tons of liquefied natural gas (LNG) a year over two decades from ExxonMobil's share of the still-undeveloped Gorgon plant off Western Australia.
(AFP, 8/19/09)
2009 Aug 19, Brazilian prosecutors said Father Clodoveo Piazza, an Italian priest who ran an award-winning shelter for homeless children in Brazil, has been charged with sexually abusing boys for years and allowing visiting foreigners to exploit the children. Piazza, now working as a missionary in Mozambique, was charged along with another former director of the nonprofit group Fraternal Help Organization, a private group based in Salvador.
(AP, 8/20/09)
2009 Aug 19, London's Metropolitan Police said two men were arrested in the Aug 6 robbery of $66 million in jewelry. The Barnes Flying Squad, a specialist unit that deals with armed robberies and high value thefts, made the arrests.
(AP, 8/20/09)
2009 Aug 19, French police with Spanish help detained three suspected members of Basque separatist group ETA in a French Alps ski resort and seized material for making explosives, after a series of bombings claimed by the group on the Spanish island of Mallorca.
(AP, 8/19/09)
2009 Aug 19, Germany launched a campaign to put 1 million electric cars on the road by 2020, making battery research a priority as it tries to position the country as a market leader.
(AP, 8/19/09)
2009 Aug 19, Rights group Amnesty International alleged widespread abuse of protesters demanding the return of the Honduran president ousted in a coup, saying in a report that hundreds of people have been beaten and detained under the interim government.
(AP, 8/19/09)
2009 Aug 19, Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad nominated Ahmad Vahidi as Defense Minister. Vahidi had commanded a unit of the Revolutionary Guard known as the Quds Force at the time of the July 18, 1994, attack on a Jewish cultural center in Argentina. The Quds Force is involved in operations abroad, including working with Lebanon's Hezbollah militant group, which is accused to carrying out the Buenos Aires attack.
(AP, 8/21/09)
2009 Aug 19, In Iraq a truck bomb tore through the Foreign Ministry, knocking out concrete slabs and windows and leaving a mass of charred cars outside killing at least 65 people and wounding 250. A suicide truck bomber took aim at the Finance Ministry complex causing part of a nearby overpass to collapse killing least 28 people. A wave of explosions around Baghdad killed at least 8 more people as mortars struck inside the Green Zone. The total death toll from the string of blasts was later set at 106. One of the suspected masterminds said in a confession broadcast on Aug 23 that attackers paid $10,000 to get a bomb-laden truck past checkpoints and next to the Finance Ministry. A US soldier died of a non-combat related injury.
(AP, 8/19/09)(AP, 8/20/09)(AP, 8/23/09)(AP, 9/8/09)(AFP, 1/19/12)
2009 Aug 19, Philippine troops clashed with about 30 Muslim gunmen, who took over Mantangule islet in the southern part of Palawan Island, killing at least seven and capturing two.
(AP, 8/19/09)
2009 Aug 19, Saudi authorities said they have arrested 44 suspected militants with al-Qaida links in a yearlong sweep that also uncovered dozens of machine guns and electronic circuits for bombs.
(AP, 8/20/09)
2009 Aug 19, In Sudan former enemies from the north and south signed a deal aimed at bolstering the 2005 peace deal that ended a 22-year civil war, the African continent's longest.
(AP, 8/20/09)
2009 Aug 19, Swiss banking giant UBS AG agreed to turn over to the IRS the details of 4,450 accounts suspected of holding undeclared assets by American customers, piercing Switzerland's long-standing tradition of banking secrecy.
(AP, 8/19/09)
2009 Aug 19, Syrian President Bashar Assad opened talks with Iranian officials in a visit expected to include an appeal to free a French academic accused of plotting to overthrow the Islamic regime.
(AP, 8/19/09)
2009 Aug 19, In Zimbabwe 10 lawmakers from PM Morgan Tsvangirai's party were arrested and charged with disturbing the peace as they headed into the Finance Ministry for a meeting.
(AP, 8/19/09)
2009 Aug 20, In Colorado a Black Hawk helicopter crashed during training on Mount Massive, the state’s 2nd highest mountain. 4 soldiers were killed in the crash.
(SFC, 8/21/09, p.A8)
2009 Aug 20, Afghans voted to elect a president for only the second time in history as fears emerged of poor turnout. Some $300 million was spent in organizational costs alone. Top security officials said 26 civilians and security forces have died in election-day militant attacks. Insurgents launched scattered rocket, suicide and bomb attacks that closed some polling sites. In northern Baghlan province, insurgent attacks closed 14 polling sites, and several police were reported killed. In southern Helmand province more than 20 rockets landed in the capital of Lashkar Gah, including one near a line of voters that killed a child. Initial election results weren't expected until Aug 22. Taliban militants cut off the nose and both ears of an Afghan father of 8 he tried to vote. The attack became the third confirmed report of the Taliban mutilating people who sought to cast ballots in the electoral contest. Some 400 insurgent incidents took place during the poll.
(AP, 8/20/09)(AP, 8/31/09)(Econ, 8/29/09, p.35)(Econ, 11/7/09, p.40)
2009 Aug 20, Angola and South Africa signed a number of trade agreements including cooperation in the oil sector, following major bilateral talks aimed at strengthening economic relations.
(AFP, 8/20/09)
2009 Aug 20, Australia passed a clean energy law requiring the country to produce 20 percent of its power from renewable sources by 2020 in move that could draw billions of dollars of green investment.
(AFP, 8/20/09)
2009 Aug 20, A French government-sponsored report was released saying that decomposing algae covering some beaches in Brittany represent a serious health risk and gases that can kill within minutes were detected on a beach where a horse died last month.
(AP, 8/20/09)
2009 Aug 20, Usain Bolt of Jamaica set a world record of 19.19 seconds in the 200 meters at the world championships in Berlin, adding to the gold he won in the 100.
(AP, 8/20/09)
2009 Aug 20, Diplomats said Iran has lifted a year-long ban and allowed UN nuclear inspectors to visit a nearly completed nuclear reactor as well as granting greater monitoring rights at another atomic site.
(SFC, 8/21/09, p.A2)
2009 Aug 20, The Iraqi government announced the detention of 11 army and police commanders, accusing them of negligence in the previous day’s bombings. The government also decided to keep concrete blast barriers around potential targets. A bicycle bomb exploded near a restaurant in Baghdad killing two people. There were three bombings in Babil province, a region once so notorious for violence it was called the Triangle of Death. A bomb attached to a minibus killed three and wounded eight in Hillah, while two bombs at a market in Musayyib wounded 45.
(AP, 8/20/09)(AP, 8/21/09)(SFC, 8/21/09, p.A4)
2009 Aug 20, Drug developer Warner Chilcott, which focuses on women's healthcare and dermatology, completed its move to Ireland from Bermuda.
(AP, 8/21/09)
2009 Aug 20, Italian customs found a boat with five Eritrean survivors of what it called a "shocking tragedy. Around 75 African migrants died in the Mediterranean after their stranded boat ran out of food and water.
(Reuters, 8/21/09)
2009 Aug 20, The Association of Parents of Disappeared People (APDP) said their workers have discovered several unmarked graves containing about 1,500 unidentified bodies in Indian Kashmir, and alleged that some of corpses were likely innocent people killed by government forces. APDP said at least eight of the graves held more than one body.
(AP, 8/20/09)
2009 Aug 20, In Mexico the body of leftist congressman Armando Chavarria was found in the passenger seat of a vehicle in Guerrero’s state capital of Chilpancingo. State police said three human heads were found in ice boxes in the municipality of Coyuca de Catalan. The mutilated bodies were in bags nearby. A message from alleged drug traffickers was also found.
(AP, 8/21/09)
2009 Aug 20, Pakistan's military said that about 60 militants had surrendered to authorities in northwest Swat valley, where the government claims to have eliminated Taliban extremists. Baluchistan authorities found the bodies of 10 policemen in a remote mountain pass. Earlier this week, the separatist Baluch Republican Army called local media organizations and said it had killed the remaining 10 of 25 police officers kidnapped last month.
(AP, 8/20/09)(AP, 8/21/09)
2009 Aug 20, Russia’s PM Vladimir Putin ordered that key parts of Russia's aging infrastructure be checked and upgraded after a power plant accident in Siberia left scores feared dead and strained the vast region's power supply. The confirmed death toll in the power plant accident rose to 17 after three more bodies were found. 57 were still missing.
(AP, 8/20/09)
2009 Aug 20, Russian authorities flew the suspected hijackers of the cargo vessel Arctic Sea to Moscow and took off them for interrogation, dismissing suggestions that the ship may have been carrying weapons.
(Reuters, 8/20/09)
2009 Aug 20, Kenny MacAskill, Scotland’s justice secretary, freed Abdel Baset al-Megrahi (57), former Libyan intelligence agent and alleged Lockerbie bomber (Dec 21, 1988), on compassionate grounds after eight years in jail allowing him to go home to Libya to die. Al-Megrahi has terminal prostate cancer and has been given less than three months to live. In 2010 Professor Karol Sikora, who assessed for the Libyan authorities, told The Sunday Times it was "embarrassing" that he had outlived his three-month prognosis and that al-Megrahi could survive for 10 years or longer. It was later reported that BP had promoted the deal in order to protect a $900 million oil and gas exploration deal off the Libyan Mediterranean coast.
(AP, 8/20/09)(Econ, 8/29/09, p.48)(AP, 7/03/10)(SFC, 7/16/10, p.A2)
2009 Aug 20, In central Somalia fighting between government soldiers and Islamic insurgents killed at least 40 people as the warring sides tried to gain ground in strategic towns.
(AP, 8/20/09)(SFC, 8/21/09, p.A2)
2009 Aug 20, Swiss President Hans-Rudolf Merz and Libyan PM al-Baghdadi Ali al-Mahmoudi signed an accord pledging to restore relations between the two countries and to have Hannibal Gadhafi July 15, 2008, arrest examined by a joint arbitration tribunal in London. The next day Merz defended his apology to Libya for the arrest of Moammar Gadhafi's son, saying it was the only way to secure the release of two Swiss citizens detained by Tripoli.
(AP, 8/21/09)
2009 Aug 20, Taiwan's Cabinet approved a NT$100 billion ($3 billion) reconstruction budget after the island's worst typhoon in more than 50 years killed hundreds of people and wiped out roads and bridges in the mountainous south.
(AP, 8/20/09)
2009 Aug 21, Guaranty Bank became the 2nd-largest US bank to fail this year after the Texas lender was shut down by regulators and most of its operations sold at a loss of billions of dollars for the US government to a major Spanish bank. Guaranty's failure, along with those of three small banks in Georgia and Alabama, brought to 81 the number of US bank failures this year.
(AP, 8/22/09)
2009 Aug 21, In Oakland, Ca., Ricardo Cortes Jr. (14), was shot and killed by gang member Julio Montano. Gang member Francisco Zamora accompanied Montano and drove him from the scene. They thought they were avenging a friend who had been slain by a rival gang. Cortes had nothing to do with gangs. In 2010 Montano (23) and Zamora (29) were convicted of 1st degree murder. On Dec 9 Montano was sentenced to 40 years to life in prison. Zamora was sentenced 27 years to life.
(SFC, 10/1/10, p.C4)(SFC, 12/11/10, p.C1)
2009 Aug 21, Afghan President Hamid Karzai's campaign and chief rival Abdullah Abdullah both said they had won Afghanistan's election, but Washington's chief envoy warned candidates not to declare victory prematurely.
(Reuters, 8/21/09)
2009 Aug 21, Australian leader Kevin Rudd and his trans-Tasman counterpart John Key chaired the first-ever joint meeting of their cabinets, and said it had been a valuable opportunity to discuss their joint challenges. They vowed closer military ties and collaboration on climate change in the historic meeting.
(AFP, 8/22/09)
2009 Aug 21, A massive oil and gas leak forced the evacuation of an oil rig off Australia's northwest coast. PTTEP Australasia, a branch of Thai-owned PTT Exploration and Production Co. Ltd., said about 40 barrels of oil had been discharged in the initial incident, and it was still attempting to bring the leak under control at the rig, owned by Norway's Seadrill. After 2 days PTTEP said plugging the leak will take weeks. Government officials said there was little threat of environmental damage. By the end of October an estimated 400 barrels a day of oil continued leaking from the fissure off the Australian coast. PTTEP Australasia has failed repeatedly to stop the leak but said it is still trying.
(AFP, 8/22/09)(AP, 8/23/09)(AP, 10/30/09)
2009 Aug 21, In Chechnya suicide bombers on bicycles detonated explosives, killing at least four police officers and a civilian in coordinated attacks in the capital.
(AP, 8/21/09)
2009 Aug 21, Chile's health ministry said it ordered a quarantine for two turkey farms outside the port city of Valparaiso after genetic tests confirmed sick birds were afflicted with the same swine flu virus circulating in humans.
(AP, 8/21/09)
2009 Aug 21, In Iraq a small truck passed through an Iraqi police checkpoint in southern Baghdad but was not searched minutes before exploding at the front gate of the market, killing two and wounding 20.
(AP, 8/21/09)
2009 Aug 21, Mexico decriminalized small amounts of marijuana, cocaine and heroin, a move that prosecutors say makes sense even in the midst of the government's grueling battle against drug traffickers. Gunmen killed an army officer Capt. Alejandro Aranda and another man in a bowling alley in Ciudad Juarez, a border city that has seen Mexico's highest levels of drug-related violence in recent years.
(AP, 8/21/09)(AP, 8/22/09)
2009 Aug 21, New Zealanders voted overwhelmingly to overturn a law that prohibits parents from hitting children, according to the results of a nationwide referendum, but the government said the law is working and won't be changed. In the postal vote 87.6% of voters responded "No" to the question: "Should a smack as part of good parental correction be a criminal offense in New Zealand?"
(AP, 8/21/09)
2009 Aug 21, Leading Pakistani Taliban commander Hakimullah Mehsud was appointed the new head of the militant group. Hakimullah (28), the military chief of Baitullah's Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or Pakistani Taliban Movement, commanded 3 tribal regions and has a reputation as Baitullah's most ruthless deputy. A US drone fired a missile into a suspected militant hide-out in North Waziristan, killing 12 people in an attempt to take out Siraj Haqqani, a jihadist commander accused of attacks on Western troops in Afghanistan. Haqqani, a prime suspect in suicide blasts in Kabul, held close ties to Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency and controlled a swathe of territory in North Waziristan and eastern Afghanistan.
(AP, 8/22/09)(AP, 8/21/09)(SFC, 8/22/09, p.A2)(Econ, 10/17/09, p.36)
2009 Aug 21, Philippine police arrested Dinno-Amor Rosalejos Pareja, also known as Khalil Pareja, the alleged leader of a radical Islamist group believed to be responsible for one of Southeast Asia's deadliest terror attacks. Pareja is allegedly the leader of the Rajah Solaiman Movement, a group of Christian converts to Islam. The group is believed to be behind the 2004 ferry bombing that killed 116 people in Manila Bay. It was the second-most deadly terrorist attack in Southeast Asia after the 2002 attack on the Indonesian resort island of Bali that killed 202 people.
(AP, 8/21/09)
2009 Aug 21, A landslide at Portugal’s Maria Luisa beach in Albufeira on the Algarve coast killed five people and injured at least four.
(AP, 8/22/09)
2009 Aug 21, Slovakia stopped Hungary’s Pres. Laszlo Solyom from crossing its border. This was a breach of EU rules on freedom of movement. Solyom had planned to unveil a statue of St. Stephen, the first king of Hungary, in the predominantly Hungarian city of Komarno. Slovakia’s government had objected to the visit as the date coincided with the “Prague Spring" of 1968, when Hungary, as part of the Warsaw pact, took part in the Soviet crush of Czechoslovakia’s independence movement.
(Econ, 8/29/09, p.46)
2009 Aug 21, In Somalia an insurgent attack on a peacekeeping base sparked gunbattles that killed at least 22 people, as the undermanned African peacekeeping force tried to maintain the government's tenuous hold on Somalia's battered capital.
(Reuters, 8/21/09)
2009 Aug 22, Vicki Cruse (40) from Santa Paula, Calif., died in an accident during the World Aerobatic Championships at Britain's Silverstone motor racing circuit. She was a former member of the US national aerobatics team and was the first woman to qualify to race in her class at the Reno National Championship Air Races.
(AP, 8/22/09)
2009 Aug 22, The West Australian town of Broome, with deep historical ties to Japan, voted to sever its sister city relationship with the Japanese village of Taiji to protest an annual dolphin slaughter near there. At an extraordinary meeting on October 13 Broome rescinded the decision, which it said was made in haste and without wide consultation, and issued an apology to the Japanese community in Broome and Taiji, their families and friends for any disrespect caused by council's resolution. But it noted that it did not condone the harvest of dolphins in Taiji, with which it forged sister-city relations in 1981.
(AP, 8/24/09)(AFP, 10/16/09)
2009 Aug 22, Colombian authorities said police have captured Jose Armando Cadena Cabrera, a guerrilla suspected of killing a US military contractor and a Colombian soldier after their surveillance plane crashed in the jungle in 2003.
(AP, 8/22/09)
2009 Aug 22, The EU published a list of nearly 4,000 airlines that it says should reduce their impact on the environment from 2012 or face being banned from European airports.
(AP, 8/22/09)
2009 Aug 22, Cologne prosecutors said they are investigating 100 professors across Germany on suspicion they took bribes to illegally help students with their doctorates. The investigation has been going on for more than a year after it emerged that a law professor at Hannover University had organized degrees for 61 students whose exam results were otherwise insufficient.
(AP, 8/22/09)
2009 Aug 22, India and Nepal agreed to a new trade treaty as PM Madhav Kumar Nepal ended a five-day official visit to the regional giant that both countries hailed a great success.
(AFP, 8/22/09)
2009 Aug 22, In Indonesia a group of thieves killed an endangered Sumatran tiger in a zoo in Jambi province on Sumatra island and stole most of its body. Police suspected the theft was motivated by the animal's valuable fur and bones. The number of Sumatran tigers has dwindled to about 250 from about 1,000 in the 1970s, according to the Washington DC-based World Wildlife Fund.
(AP, 8/23/09)
2009 Aug 22, In Iraq an attack on a police checkpoint in the Azamiyah district of Baghdad left two officers dead.
(AP, 8/23/09)
2009 Aug 22, In Italy a lucky lotto player in Tuscany won Italy's record euro147.8 million ($211.8 million) state lottery, pocketing what has been billed as Europe's biggest jackpot.
(AP, 8/23/09)
2009 Aug 22, In Tijuana, Mexico, at least three police officers were in critical condition after gunmen opened fire on their patrol cars.
(AP, 8/22/09)
2009 Aug 22, In Nigeria a top militant commander and nearly 1,000 of his followers surrendered to the government, handing over rocket launchers, gunboats, guns and bullets in the biggest move since a government amnesty began two weeks ago. Ebikabowei "Boyloaf" Victor Ben, state commander for the region's biggest armed group, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), and 25 commanders under his leadership delivered weapons to police overnight.
(AP, 8/22/09)
2009 Aug 22, In Pakistan a suicide bomber blew himself up to evade capture during a raid in Kanju town in the troubled northwestern Swat Valley. Local media said two security officials were killed and two others were wounded.
(AP, 8/22/09)
2009 Aug 22, In Somalia Islamic insurgents attacked a government checkpoint in Mogadishu, sparking a gunbattle that killed at least five people on the first day of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
(AP, 8/22/09)
2009 Aug 22, In Tanzania a fire ripped through a dormitory in the rural Iringa district, killing 12 schoolgirls and wounding 23 others. Preliminary investigations indicated the fire was caused by a candle after a student fell asleep studying.
(AP, 8/24/09)
2009 Aug 22, Venezuelan police dispersed opponents of Pres. Chavez's government as thousands demonstrated both for and against an education law that critics fear will lead to political indoctrination in schools.
(AP, 8/23/09)
2009 Aug 23, Afghan former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah, President Karzai's main challenger, said he had evidence last week's election had been widely rigged by the incumbent and that he had lodged more than 100 complaints. The Election Complaints Commission (ECC) said it had received 225 complaints of which 35 had been labeled a priority. An American service member died in an insurgent attack. Two Estonian soldiers were killed after their unit stumbled on a roadside bomb in southern Helmand province.
(Reuters, 8/23/09)(AP, 8/24/09)
2009 Aug 23, NATO military commanders told US President Barack Obama's envoy on that they needed more troops and other resources to beat back a resurgent Taliban, particularly in eastern Afghanistan near the Pakistan border.
(Reuters, 8/23/09)
2009 Aug 23, In the Bahamas Stefania Fernandez (18), Miss Venezuela, was the fairest of them all once again, winning the 2009 Miss Universe crown for the second year straight and the sixth time since the pageant's creation.
(AP, 8/24/09)
2009 Aug 23, A Chinese state news agency reported that a drought in the north has left nearly 5 million people short of drinking water and damaged crops, while dry weather in the south could cause more shortages.
(AP, 8/23/09)
2009 Aug 23, In Greece a raging fire bore down on Athens' northern suburbs, prompting panicked residents to battle the flames with tree limbs and buckets, and police to order 10,000 people to evacuate one town immediately. The fires ignited late on Aug 21; by today they were reported across an area more than 25 miles (40 kilometers) wide.
(AP, 8/23/09)
2009 Aug 23, The Iraqi military broadcast the confession of a Sunni man, Wisam Ali Khazim Ibrahim (57), identified as the mastermind of one of two Aug 19 suicide truck bombings targeting government buildings in Baghdad. In northern Iraq gunmen attacked a police checkpoint in Mosul, killing one police officer. An American soldier died of injuries sustained during an attack on a US patrol in the Iraqi capital.
(AP, 8/23/09)
2009 Aug 23, Mexican army soldiers captured Luis Ricardo Magana. Prosecutors described him as a leading member of the violent La Familia drug cartel. A team of top US law enforcement officials began a three-day visit to Mexico to explore ways to improve efforts against arms smuggling into Mexico as part of joint efforts to combat drug gangs.
(AP, 8/24/09)
2009 Aug 23, In Pakistan a suicide bombing on the outskirts in the northwestern city of Peshawar killed three people and wounded 15 others. Police in Karachi arrested seven members of the banned Lashkar-e-Jhangvi movement in a raid. The al-Qaida-linked movement is blamed for two failed assassination attempts against former President Pervez Musharraf and the beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.
(AP, 8/23/09)(AP, 8/24/09)
2009 Aug 23, In Zimbabwe a cabinet retreat by the unity government collapsed this weekend as President Robert Mugabe's ministers walked out after the deputy prime minister said last year's polls were fraudulent.
(AP, 8/23/09)
2009 Aug 24, A senior administration said that Pres. Obama has approved establishment of the new unit, to be known as the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group, which will be overseen by the National Security Council.
(AP, 8/24/09)
2009 Aug 24, The US government cash for clunkers program ended.
(SFC, 8/24/09, p.A4)
2009 Aug 24, Reader’s Digest, founded in 1922, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The company piled on debt following a $1.6 billion leveraged buyout in 2007 by investors led by Ripplewood Holdings LLC, a NY private equity firm.
(SFC, 8/25/09, p.D3)
2009 Aug 24, In the San Francisco Bay Area Alexander Robert Youshock (17), a former Hillsdale High School student in San Mateo, lit 2 of 10 pipe bombs before he was tackled by teachers. Youshock also carried a chain saw and a sword and planned to attack students as the ran from the bombs.
(SFC, 8/25/09, p.A1)(SFC, 8/27/09, p.A1)
2009 Aug 24, Mohammed Jawad (~21), a Guantanamo prisoner once charged with wounding two US soldiers and their interpreter was back home in Afghanistan, months after a war crimes case against him unraveled when a military judge ruled his confession was coerced.
(AP, 8/24/09)
2009 Aug 24, Argentine federal police uncovered four tons (4,200 kilograms) of ephedrine worth millions in oil drums and boxes to be sent to Mexico and the US. The lead investigator called it the largest illegal shipment of the methamphetamine precursor ever seized there.
(AP, 8/24/09)
2009 Aug 24, Bangladesh awarded three offshore blocks to two global energy companies to explore for gas in the Bay of Bengal. The US-based ConocoPhillips and Ireland's Tullow Oil could start exploration work by early next year.
(AP, 8/25/09)
2009 Aug 24, In China 14 workers were killed in a gas explosion at a coal mine in northern Shanxi province.
(AP, 8/25/09)
2009 Aug 24, In Honduras foreign ministers from seven OAS nations launched a direct, high-profile attempt to persuade the interim government to restore ousted Pres. Manuel Zelaya. The delegation failed to win a pledge to restore ousted President Manuel Zelaya.
(AP, 8/24/09)(AP, 8/25/09)
2009 Aug 24, In Iran conservative rivals handed a new snub to Pres. Ahmadinejad, appointing Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejehi, the man he fired from the post of intelligence minister, as the country's state prosecutor. Senior opposition figure Mahdi Karroubi made public an account of a prisoner who was raped by jailers. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ordered the closure of Kahrizak prison, where at least 3 prisoners are known to have died.
(AP, 8/24/09)(SFC, 8/25/09, p.A3)
2009 Aug 24, Iraqi lawmakers said major Shiite groups have formed a new alliance that will exclude Iraqi PM al-Maliki, a step likely to stoke fears of increasing Iranian influence and shake up the political landscape before January parliamentary elections. The new bloc, called the Iraqi National Alliance, will include the largest Shiite party, the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council, or SIIC, and anti-US cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's bloc, which both have close ties to Tehran, as well as some small Sunni and secular parties.
(AP, 8/24/09)
2009 Aug 24, Israeli soldiers fired on a group of suspicious Palestinians across the border in northern Gaza. 3 Palestinians were wounded. 2 mortar shells were later fired from Gaza slightly wounding one soldier.
(SFC, 8/25/09, p.A2)
2009 Aug 24, Kenya began its first national census in a decade amid an outcry over one question that asks people to identify their ethnic group, a contentious issue in this East African nation. Kenya’s 2009 census put the population at about 39 million.
(AP, 8/24/09)(Econ, 10/30/10, p.45)
2009 Aug 24, An American UN peacekeeper under investigation for sexual exploitation and abuse of minors in Liberia was found dead in his house in Monrovia. Sources said it appeared that the American, a civilian in the Liberia mission, known as UNMIL, had committed suicide due to the investigations.
(Reuters, 8/26/09)
2009 Aug 24, Mexican police in the northern state of Sinaloa found four severed human heads in a cooler by the side of a rural roadway.
(AP, 8/24/09)
2009 Aug 24, Myanmar police seized more than 100 blocks of heroin and nearly 3 million methamphetamine tablets near the border with Thailand in one of the military-ruled country's largest drug seizures.
(AP, 8/26/09)
2009 Aug 24, Nigeria's anti-graft agency EFCC declared two sacked bank directors wanted over alleged frauds and running their institutions into insolvency.
(AFP, 8/24/09)
2009 Aug 24, In the eastern Pakistani city of Sargodha, police arrested six militants in two raids. They were said to be linked to Mehsud's Taliban and had planned to launch strikes next week on at least two places of worship. Among the six was Zaid Mustafa, said to have recruited potential suicide bombers for training in Afghanistan and who is suspected of providing logistics, explosives and other support for terror attacks in Lahore, Karachi or Rawalpindi. Gunmen shot dead an Afghan television journalist and severely wounded his colleague in northwestern Pakistan.
(AP, 8/24/09)
2009 Aug 24, It was reported that Peruvian police expecting to find a shipment of cocaine hidden in a crate holding two live turkeys were surprised to discover the drug surgically implanted inside the birds.
(AP, 8/24/09)
2009 Aug 24, In Rustenberg, South Africa some 13,000 platinum miners at Impala Platinum, the world's second-largest producer, downed tools over a pay dispute.
(AFP, 8/26/09)
2009 Aug 24, The Stockholm District Court threatened to fine Internet provider Black Internet 500,000 Swedish kronor (about $70,000) unless it stopped serving Pirate Bay. Court documents showed the company has to comply with the order until the ongoing case between Pirate Bay and the entertainment industry is over.
(AP, 8/25/09)
2009 Aug 24, Taiwan's government confirmed that 292 people were killed and 385 missing after Typhoon Morakot struck the island and caused its worst flooding in half a century earlier this month.
(AP, 8/24/09)
2009 Aug 25, The US White House forecast a 10-year federal deficit of $9 trillion, more than the sum of all previous deficits since America’s founding.
(SFC, 8/26/09, p.A6)
2009 Aug 25, US Senator Jim Webb, back from a rare trip to Myanmar, called sanctions against the military regime "overwhelmingly counter-productive" and asked the opposition to consider taking part in upcoming elections.
(AFP, 8/26/09)
2009 Aug 25, Sony Corp. unveiled a new electronic book reader for the American market, dubbed the “Daily Edition." It was scheduled to become available in December for $399 and compete with Amazon’s Kindle.
(Econ, 8/29/09, p.56)
2009 Aug 25, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (b.1932) of Massachusetts, died at his home on Cape Cod after a yearlong struggle with brain cancer. He was the last surviving brother in an enduring political dynasty and one of the most influential senators in history. His memoir “True Compass: A Memoir" was published in September.
(AP, 8/26/09)(Econ, 9/19/09, p.97)
2009 Aug 25, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson met with Ricardo Alarcon, president of Cuba's parliament, as well as members of the island's chamber of commerce as he headed a trade mission there this week.
(AP, 8/25/09)
2009 Aug 25, The Afghan election commission said President Hamid Karzai and top challenger Abdullah Abdullah both have roughly 40% of the nationwide vote for president with 10% of ballots counted. A large explosion detonated in Kandahar and was followed by gunfire on the street afterward. A major bombing killed at least 43 people and wounded 65 in Kandahar just after dark.
(AP, 8/25/09)(AP, 8/26/09)
2009 Aug 25, Argentina's Supreme Court ruled out prison for pot possession, saying the government should go after major traffickers and provide treatment instead of jail for consumers of marijuana.
(AP, 8/25/09)
2009 Aug 25, In Belize PM Dean Barrow rushed thru the nationalization of Belize Telemedia, the country’s dominant telecommunications company, and appointed a new board of directors. This was seen locally as an escalation in Barrow’s long standing dispute with Michael Ashcroft, a British peer with interests in Belize Bank. In 2011 Belize’s Court of appeal ruled that the nationalization was unconstitutional.
(Econ, 10/24/09, p.41)(http://tinyurl.com/ykson7t)(Econ, 7/2/11, p.30)
2009 Aug 25, Four Ethiopian athletes, two women and two men, fled their hotel in London and failed to make a connecting flight to Edinburgh ahead of the Falkirk Cup athletics event.
(AFP, 8/26/09)
2009 Aug 25, In Chechnya a suicide bombing killed three police officers at a gas station-carwash complex in the Shali region. Earlier in the day the Chechen Interior Ministry said a policeman was killed and another wounded in an overnight clash with militants.
(AP, 8/25/09)(AP, 8/28/09)
2009 Aug 25, Iraq recalled its ambassador from Syria and demanded that Damascus hand over two suspected Saddam Hussein loyalists it has linked to the Aug 19 suicide attacks.
(AP, 8/25/09)
2009 Aug 25, An Israeli air strike on a smuggling tunnel between the Gaza Strip and Egypt killed three Palestinians and wounded seven.
(AP, 8/25/09)
2009 Aug 25, The World Food Program said that 3.8 million Kenyans need emergency food aid because of a prolonged drought, which is even causing electrical blackouts in the capital because there's not enough water for hydroelectric plants.
(AP, 8/25/09)
2009 Aug 25, Nicaragua said it will reroute the San Juan River on the border with Costa Rica. The river has been at the center of a lengthy dispute between the two Central American countries. The UN’s highest court last month set travel rules for the San Juan River, affirming freedom for Costa Rican boats to navigate the waterway while upholding Nicaragua's right to regulate traffic. The judgment ended a four-year legal battle. Under an 1858 treaty, the entire river belongs to Nicaragua up to the Costa Rican bank, but Costa Rican ships have freedom of navigation for commerce.
(AP, 8/26/09)
2009 Aug 25, The UN said Somalia is facing its worst humanitarian crisis in 18 years, with more than half of the population needing humanitarian aid amid an escalating crisis.
(AP, 8/25/09)
2009 Aug 25, South Korea launched its first rocket, just months after rival North Korea's launch drew international anger, but space officials said the satellite it carried failed to enter its intended orbit.
(AP, 8/25/09)
2009 Aug 25, Turkey's military indicated that it would back government efforts to grant more rights to Kurds and improve the economy of their region. The military, however, drew the line at moves that would involve negotiating with Kurdish rebels, harm Turkey's unity or make Kurdish an official language.
(AP, 8/25/09)
2009 Aug 25, An international forum in Turkey sought to boost aid and investment in Pakistan as a way to support its democratic institutions and curb violence there.
(AP, 8/25/09)
2009 Aug 26, In California Phillip Garrido (58) and his wife Nancy (55) were arrested for their 1991 kidnapping of Jaycee Lee Dugard (11) from a bus stop outside her home in South Lake Tahoe. Police freed Dugard and her 2 children who were fathered by Dugard, who had kept them in tents in a fenced, backyard compound in Antioch, Ca.
(AP, 8/28/09)
2009 Aug 26, In southern California the Station Fire began in Los Angeles County and soon grew to become the largest wildfire in county history. It did not get contained until Sep 1.
(SFC, 11/14/09, p.A4)
2009 Aug 26, Dominick Dunne (b.1925), novelist and Vanity Fair columnist, died. His books included “The Two Mrs. Grenvilles" (1985), based on the 1955 Woodward murder case.
(SFC, 8/27/09, p.A9)
2009 Aug 26, Ellie Greenwich (b.1940), songwriter, died. Her string of hits in the 1960s included “Da Doo Ron Ron" (1963), “Chapel of Love" (1964) and “Be My Baby" (1963). Many of her songs were done in collaboration with producer Phil Spector and her husband Jeff Barry.
(SFC, 8/28/09, p.D5)
2009 Aug 26, Afghan President Hamid Karzai widened his lead after officials released more partial vote results. The latest returns boosted Karzai's standing to 44.8% and Abdullah’s at 35.1%. The count was based on returns from 17% of polling stations nationwide. In eastern Afghanistan a firefight left as many as 12 militants dead. Reports of the death toll varied widely. A spokesman of the governor of Paktika province said 12 militants died, while police said two were killed. The US military did not report any deaths. 7 insurgents, including a wounded commander, were detained.
(AP, 8/26/09)(AP, 8/27/09)
2009 Aug 26, Australia's highest court ruled that the country's military justice system is unconstitutional because its judges are not independent of the military command, throwing into doubt 171 cases judged in the past two years.
(AP, 8/26/09)
2009 Aug 26, A Brazilian prosecutor in Amazonas state accused Wallace Souza, a former police officer and TV crime show host, of attempting to have a federal judge assassinated in 2007. Souza was already accused of setting up at least 5 killings to boost his TV ratings. Souza was soon kicked out of the state legislature and on Oct 5 police issued a warrant for his arrest.
(SFC, 8/27/09, p.A2)(AP, 10/7/09)
2009 Aug 26, In Cambodia a Phnom Penh Municipal Court Judge found Michael James Dodd of Washington, DC, guilty of soliciting sex from a 14-year-old girl. He was arrested in October 2008 at his rented house in Phnom Penh, in the girl's company. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison and ordered to pay 20 million riel ($4,878) in compensation to the girl's family.
(AP, 8/26/09)
2009 Aug 26, China’s state media reported that the majority of transplanted organs in China come from executed prisoners in a rare disclosure about an industry often criticized for being opaque and unethical.
(AP, 8/26/09)
2009 Aug 26, In China six members of an alleged "terror gang" were detained in the suburbs of the city of Aksu, 675km (420 miles) southwest of Urumqi. The Ministry of Public Security later said a "large quantity" of materials and tools needed to make explosive devices was seized.
(AFP, 9/16/09)
2009 Aug 26, In Colombia hooded men in uniforms without insignias shot and killed 12 members of the Awa indigenous group, including five children, on a reserve in a region plagued by the cocaine trade.
(AP, 8/26/09)
2009 Aug 26, In the Republic of Congo 7 people, including five Russian crew members, were killed when a cargo plane crashed on the outskirts of Brazzaville.
(AFP, 8/26/09)
2009 Aug 26, In Greece the fires around Athens were put out or contained to small areas after razing 80 square miles (210 square km) of forest and hillside scrub, an area more than three times the size of Manhattan. It was the most destructive blaze in decades in the Attica region, and the worst in Greece since wildfires in 2007 killed 76 people and blackened 1,060 square miles (2,750 square km).
(AP, 8/26/09)
2009 Aug 26, Central America's development bank said it is freezing credits to Honduras following the June 28 coup that ousted President Manuel Zelaya. Many other multilateral agencies and foreign governments have put Honduras aid projects on hold, in the face of the interim government's refusal to reinstate Zelaya.
(AP, 8/26/09)
2009 Aug 26, A small Indonesian ferry sank off the resort island of Bali, killing nine people while three others are still missing.
(Reuters, 8/26/09)
2009 Aug 26, Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim (b.1950), the scion of a revered clerical family, died of lung cancer in Iran, the country that was long his key ally. He channeled rising Shiite Muslim power after the fall of Saddam Hussein to become one of Iraq's most influential politicians.
(AP, 8/26/09)
2009 Aug 26, In Mexico gunmen in Ciudad Juarez killed Pablo Pasillas (33), the aide of a Mexican federal agent investigating the death of a crime reporter, a month after the first agent assigned to the case was shot dead. In a separate attack, gunmen in the western town of Tlaquepaque wounded Maximiano Barbosa, the founder of Mexico's most influential debtors group, as well as his son.
(AP, 8/27/09)
2009 Aug 26, Nigerian authorities arrested two dozen people wanted over massive debts owed to troubled banks in a scandal that has rocked the country's financial industry.
(AFP, 8/26/09)
2009 Aug 26, In Bucharest, Romania, fans at first politely applauded the Roma performers sharing a stage with Madonna. Then the pop star condemned widespread discrimination against Roma, or Gypsies, and the cheers gave way to jeers. Official Romanian data put the local Roma population at 500,000.
(AP, 8/27/09)
2009 Aug 26, Top Russian officials acknowledged for the first time that the Arctic Sea, a ship hijacked last month in the Baltic Sea, might have been carrying a suspicious cargo, deepening the mystery around its seizure.
(AFP, 8/26/09)
2009 Aug 26, Russia, worried about North Korean missile and nuclear tests, said it has deployed sophisticated air defenses in its Far East region to protect against any potential test mishap.
(AFP, 8/26/09)
2009 Aug 26, Somali pirates in the Gulf of Aden fired at a US Navy helicopter as it made a surveillance flight over the Win Far, a Taiwanese-flagged fishing vessel seized in April, the first such attack by pirates on an American military aircraft.
(AP, 8/27/09)
2009 Aug 26, In South Africa soldiers, demanding higher wages, tried to scale the fence at the Union Buildings where President Jacob Zuma has his office. Police used teargas, rubber bullets and water cannons to disperse the soldiers, who marched despite a court order barring their protest.
(AP, 9/1/09)
2009 Aug 26, In Spain Bunol's town hall estimated more than 40,000 people, some from as far away as Japan and Australia, took up arms with 100 tons of tomatoes in the yearly food fight known as the "Tomatina," now in its 64th year.
(AP, 8/26/09)
2009 Aug 26, In Thailand suspected Muslim insurgents detonated a car bomb outside a crowded open-air restaurant during lunchtime, wounding 26 people.
(SFC, 8/26/09, p.A2)
2009 Aug 26, Doctors at Zimbabwe's state hospitals called off a crippling two-week strike, broken by the reality that the government had no money to meet their wage demands.
(AFP, 8/26/09)
2009 Aug 27, Chicago's 9-story old main post office, which dated from the 1920s and has been vacant for more than a decade, was sold at auction for $40 million to International Property Developers North America Inc, which did not specify its plans.
(AP, 8/28/09)
2009 Aug 27, Toyota confirmed that it would stop making cars at the NUMMI plant in Fremont, Ca., idling some 4,700 workers.
(SFC, 8/28/09, p.A1)
2009 Aug 27, In Afghanistan a US service member died in a militant attack involving a roadside bomb and gunfire, a death that pushed August into a tie with July as the deadliest months of the eight-year war.
(AP, 8/27/09)
2009 Aug 27, A senior UN official condemned Australia's controversial intervention into remote Aboriginal communities, describing the measures as discriminatory and finding entrenched racism in Australia.
(Reuters, 8/27/09)
2009 Aug 27, Mike Perham (17) became the youngest person to sail solo around the world with assistance, as he entered British waters after 156 days at sea. The Guinness Book of World Records created a new category for Perham: youngest sailor to circumnavigate the globe solo, supported. His father, Peter, sailed in a boat behind him, but did not offer assistance, which Guinness defines as being accompanied on the boat by another human being.
(AFP, 8/27/09)
2009 Aug 27, In Honduras a plan was made public in which the interim leader offered to resign and back exiled President Manuel Zelaya's return home, provided the ousted leader gives up his claim to the presidency.
(AP, 8/28/09)
2009 Aug 27, In Iraq car bombs targeted primarily Iraqi troops in the city and a northern Baghdad suburb, killing one and wounding 22 people. Iraqi forces tightened security around Shiite mosques, shrines and political party offices ahead of the funeral of Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, a top Shiite leader, who died in Iran a day earlier.
(AP, 8/27/09)
2009 Aug 27, In Mexico the bodies of four farm workers were found dumped in a stable for bulls in the western state of Michoacan. The bodies bore signs of torture and had the letter "Z" carved into their foreheads, a possible reference to the Zetas, hit men tied to the Gulf cartel. In the northern state of Nuevo Leon, state Public Safety Secretary Aldo Fasci said about 2,000 police officers across the state had been fired over the last two years for suspected links to organized crime and drug cartels. Speaking at a meeting of private security firms, he said 500 others were dismissed for other causes.
(AP, 8/28/09)
2009 Aug 27, In Oaxaca, Mexico, supporters of a teacher’s union tried to retake a school controlled by Section 59 when gunfire erupted and teacher Antonio Norberto Camacho was shot to death. Section 59 was created in the midst of the protests led by Section 22 and anti-government groups in 2006.
(AP, 8/29/09)
2009 Aug 27, In Myanmar fresh fighting erupted between government forces and an armed ethnic group in the remote northeast, forcing tens of thousands to flee across the border into China.
(Reuters, 8/28/09)
2009 Aug 27, In Pakistan a suicide bomber killed at least 19 security officers at the Torkham security checkpoint, one of the main border crossings for convoys ferrying NATO supplies into Afghanistan. A suspected US drone fired two missiles at a militant hide-out in northwest Pakistan, killing at least six people and wounding nine.
(AP, 8/27/09)(AP, 8/30/09)
2009 Aug 27, In Russia Sergei Mikhalkov (96), an author favored by Stalin who wrote the lyrics for the Soviet and Russian national anthems, died. He fathered two noted film directors. As a functionary and later chairman of the government-regulated Soviet Writers' Union, Mikhalkov became an integral part of the propaganda machine designed to indoctrinate Soviet citizens and weed out dissidents.
(AP, 8/27/09)(Econ, 9/12/09, p.96)
2009 Aug 27, In Saudi Arabia a suicide bomber targeted the assistant interior minister, Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, and blew himself up just before going into a gathering of well-wishers for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan in Jiddah. Nayef was slightly wounded.
(AP, 8/28/09)
2009 Aug 27, In Sudan Martin Luther Agwai, the outgoing military commander of the joint UN-African Union (UNAMID) peacekeeping force in the western Sudan region, said there is no more war in Darfur. Agwai defended his soldiers against persistent criticism of their effectiveness, insisting they have ended the massacres that long plagued the Sudanese region. The Nigerian officer will be replaced next week by Rwandan Patrick Nyamvumba.
(AFP, 8/27/09)
2009 Aug 27, Taiwan's president angered China with his surprise announcement that he has agreed to let the Dalai Lama visit the island to comfort survivors of a devastating typhoon.
(AP, 8/27/09)
2009 Aug 27, A Turkish train collided with a construction vehicle during a journey from Ankara to Istanbul, derailing several carriages and leaving many people injured.
(AP, 8/27/09)
2009 Aug 27, Uruguay lawmakers approved a bill allowing gay and lesbian couples to adopt. The 99-seat Chamber or Representatives passed the bill 40-13, with the remaining members absent. The law, still needing Senate approval, was supported by socialist President Tabare Vazquez's Broad Front coalition, which has already legalized gay civil unions and ended a ban on homosexuals in the armed forces.
(AP, 8/28/09)
2009 Aug 27, Vietnam police took Bui Thanh Hieu, who writes a blog under the pen name Nguoi Buon Gio, or Wind Trader, into custody for questioning. Pham Doan Trang, a writer for the popular online newspaper VietnamNet, was detained the day before. Both were released on Sep 6.
(AP, 9/6/09)
2009 Aug 27, In Zimbabwe South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma he met with PM Tsvangirai who has accused Mugabe's ZANU-PF party of stalling on reforms and continuing to attack and harass its activists.
(AP, 8/28/09)
2009 Aug 28, The space shuttle Discovery with 7 astronauts blasted off from Cape Canaveral just before midnight to bring supplies to the int’l. space station.
(SFC, 8/29/09, p.A4)
2009 Aug 28, California Gov. Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency in Los Angeles and Monterey counties due to wild fires.
(SSFC, 8/30/09, p.A10)
2009 Aug 28, Afghan Taliban insurgents ambushed a police convoy, killing three policemen and wounding about 30 others near Ghazni. In northern Afghanistan foreign troops attacked a militant commander in Kunduz province, killing him and his six men. A female militant who engaged troops with an assault rifle and with ammunition packed to her chest was among the dead. In eastern Afghanistan an American service member died in a bomb blast that also wounded Cami McCormick, a CBS Radio News correspondent. This made August the deadliest month of the eight-year war for US forces.
(AP, 8/28/09)(AP, 8/29/09)
2009 Aug 28, PM Gordon Brown said Britain will commit 665 million pounds ($1.08 billion) in aid to help Pakistan stabilize its violent border areas and tackle the underlying causes of extremism.
(AP, 8/28/09)
2009 Aug 28, In Cameroon a petroleum-loaded cargo train collided with another train in the southwest of the capital Yaounde. 2 firefighters were killed when 4 petroleum tankers exploded.
(AP, 8/30/09)
2009 Aug 28, Two Chechen militants blew themselves up to escape capture, wounding three policemen and three civilians in the process.
(AP, 8/28/09)
2009 Aug 28, In China 15 miners died after inhaling poisonous gas at the Jicai Graphite Mine near Chenzhou City in central Hunan province.
(AP, 8/29/09)
2009 Aug 28, Dagestan police killed three militants who had opened fire on a police post in Makhachkala, the capital. A policeman was shot dead in a separate attack in the capital.
(AP, 8/28/09)
2009 Aug 28, Denmark announced the 5 winners of its biennial Index design awards. The winners included: Kiva.org, of the SF Bay Area for bringing money and intellectual capital to the working poor; Better Place, of the SF Bay Area for a clean energy system for all-electric cars; the Freeplay fetal heart rate monitor; Philip Design for its India-team designed safe kitchen stove for one-room homes; and Rotterdam-based Pig 05049 for its list of 185 good and bad products made from a single pig.
(SFC, 8/29/09, p.E1)
2009 Aug 28, Iceland's parliament approved a controversial deal to pay back billions of euros (dollars) lost by British and Dutch savers in the collapse of the online Icesave bank. The deal provided for the payment of 3.8 billion euros by 2023 to the British and Dutch governments for the compensation they forked out to disgruntled savers.
(AFP, 8/28/09)
2009 Aug 28, It was reported that dozens of impoverished Indian farmers in southern Andhra Pradesh state have killed themselves in recent weeks due to debt and poor rainfall.
(SFC, 8/28/09, p.A2)
2009 Aug 28, India's first moon mission, launched amid much fanfare in 2008, came to an abrupt end after the country's lunar craft lost contact with its controllers. The satellite was launched on October 22 and then fired a TV-set-sized probe painted in the green, white and orange colors of the Indian flag which landed on the moon on November 14.
(AFP, 8/29/09)
2009 Aug 28, In Indonesia the overcrowded ferry Sari Mulia capsized in the Negara River in the South Kalimantan province, leaving at least 19 people dead and 15 others missing.
(AP, 8/29/09)(AP, 8/30/09)
2009 Aug 28, Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called for the leaders of the opposition to be prosecuted over the postelection turmoil, stepping up pressure against the pro-reform movement that says he won the election by fraud. Ahmadinejad also admitted for the first time that some detained protesters were abused in custody but also denied any government involvement, claiming instead that it was the work of Iran's enemies and the opposition.
(AP, 8/28/09)
2009 Aug 28, In Iraq two American soldiers died following an attack on a patrol in eastern Baghdad.
(AP, 8/28/09)
2009 Aug 28, In Mexico a convoy of gunmen engaged state police in a running shootout that killed five officers and possibly one of the attackers in the western Mexico state of Jalisco. Americo Delgado (80), a lawyer for convicted Mexican drug kingpin Benjamin Arellano Felix, was found stabbed to death in his home. Felix was in prison serving a 22-year-sentence on drug trafficking and organized crime charges and was fighting extradition to the United States.
(AP, 8/28/09)(AP, 8/29/09)
2009 Aug 28, In Mozambique talks aimed at determining who should lead Madagascar in a new interim government ended in failure with the ousted president and the man who replaced him in a military coup both claiming the right to do so. The parties set a deadline of Sept. 4 to arrive at a compromise.
(AP, 8/28/09)
2009 Aug 28, A Pakistani court ordered the government to lift any remaining restrictions on Abdul Qadeer Khan, a scientist alleged to have spread nuclear technology to Iran, North Korea and Libya. Mehdi-Muhammed Ghezali, a Swedish national and former Guantanamo detainee, was arrested on the outskirts of Dera Ghazi Khan in southern Pakistani town along with a group of foreigners, including 7 Turks and 3 other Swedes, who lacked proper immigration stamps. They were allegedly trying to join al-Qaida in the lawless tribal areas.
(AP, 8/28/09)
2009 Aug 28, In Pakistan helicopter gunships destroyed a training camp for suicide bombers in the Swat Valley, killing six Taliban fighters, as scattered violence killed 12 others in the region recently retaken by the army. 12 suspected foreign militants were arrested in Dera Ghazi Khan on the edge of the South Waziristan tribal area, after they allegedly sneaked into the country from Iran.
(AP, 8/29/09)
2009 Aug 28, Mehdi-Muhammed Ghezali, a Swedish national and former Guantanamo detainee, was arrested on the outskirts of Dera Ghazi Khan in southern Pakistani town along with a group of foreigners, including 7 Turks and 3 other Swedes, who lacked proper immigration stamps. They were allegedly trying to join al-Qaida in the lawless tribal areas.
(AP, 9/14/09)
2009 Aug 28, In southern Sudan the Lou-Nuer tribe attacked a village of the Dinka tribe in Twic East County, leaving 46 people dead and 15 in critical condition. The attackers wore new military uniforms and were using new machine guns, but did not provide their identity.
(Reuters, 8/29/09)(AP, 9/1/09)
2009 Aug 28, In Thailand former journalist Daranee Charnchoengsilpakul was sentenced to 18 years in prison for insulting King Bhumibol Adulyadej during a speech in 2008.
(SFC, 8/29/09, p.A2)
2009 Aug 28, NATO’s Sec. Gen. Fogh Rasmussen ended a 2-day visit to Turkey where he got a commitment for more Turkish troops to work on reconstruction projects in Afghanistan.
(Econ, 9/12/09, p.57)(www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=107181)
2009 Aug 28, The United Arab Emirates confirmed that it has seized a cargo ship earlier this month bound for Iran with a cache of banned arms from North Korea. Diplomats identified the vessel as a Bahamas-flagged cargo vessel, the ANL Australia, carrying rocket-propelled grenades and other weapons.
(AP, 8/29/09)
2009 Aug 28, In Zimbabwe South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma met with President Robert Mugabe and other leaders and appeared cautiously optimistic that their differences within the coalition government could be resolved.
(AP, 8/28/09)
2009 Aug 29, California Gov. Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency in Mariposa County due to a wild fire in Yosemite National Park.
(SSFC, 8/30/09, p.A10)
2009 Aug 29, In San Francisco the Outlands Music and Arts Festival continued in Golden Gate Park for the 2nd of 3 days with 7 stages and nearly 100 bands. Ticket prices were $95 for a single day and $225.50 for all 3 days.
(SSFC, 8/30/09, p.C2)
2009 Aug 29, In southeast Georgia 7 people were found dead inside a dingy mobile home at a trailer park built on the grounds of a historic US plantation near Brunswick. One of two critically injured survivors died soon after. Police arrested Guy Heinze Jr. (22), a family member who called 911 to report finding the people slain, but the charges were drug-related and police wouldn't say if the man was a suspect in the killings. On Sep 4 police Heinze on 8 counts of first-degree murder. On Oct 25, 2013, Heinze was convicted on 8 counts of murder. Prosecutors agreed not to seek the death penalty.
(AP, 8/30/09)(SFC, 8/31/09, p.A5)(SFC, 9/5/09, p.A6)(SFC, 10/26/13, p.A7)
2009 Aug 29, Chris Connor (b.1927 as Mary Loutsenhizer), jazz singer of the 1950s and 1960s, died. Her 2 charted hits included “I Miss You" (1956) and “Trust in Me" (1957).
(SFC, 9/1/09, p.C5)
2009 Aug 29, Afghan President Hamid Karzai widened his lead in the presidential race as new vote tallies were released, inching closer to the 50 percent threshold of votes he needs to avoid a run-off. The latest results show Karzai ahead with 46.2% of the votes already counted against Abdullah's 31.4%.
(AP, 8/29/09)
2009 Aug 29, Australian authorities intercepted a boat carrying 52 suspected asylum seekers, the 18th such vessel to be discovered this year.
(AFP, 8/29/09)
2009 Aug 29, Britain’s PM Gordon Brown made a surprise visit to Afghanistan, where he pledged to speed up the training of Afghan security forces.
(AFP, 8/29/09)
2009 Aug 29, Britain’s Cairn Energy began pumping crude from a vast oilfield in the Indian desert state of Rajasthan that is set to increase the country's crude output by 20 percent.
(AFP, 8/29/09)
2009 Aug 29, The EU signed a temporary trade pact with Mauritius, Seychelles, Zimbabwe and Madagascar calling for tariffs on European goods to be removed over the next 15 years.
(AP, 8/29/09)
2009 Aug 29, In Iraq a suicide truck bomber attacked a small police station in the remote village of Hamad north of Baghdad, killing at least 12 people. a second attack occurred near Mosul in the city of Sinjar, where a parked truck bomb killed at least four people and wounded 23 others. A suicide bomber on a motorcycle killed 2 people in a market in eastern Baghdad.
(AP, 8/29/09)(SSFC, 8/30/09, p.A7)
2009 Aug 29, In northwestern Mexico a shooting killed eight people partying on a seaside boulevard in Navolato, Sinaloa state. Among the dead were two brothers in their 30s who had a record of car theft, Investigators were considering the possibility that the gunmen belonged to a criminal gang known as the "Death Squad," which has been killing car thieves in the region.
(AP, 8/31/09)
2009 Aug 29, Fighting erupted in northeast Myanmar after days of clashes in which the leader of ethnic forces said more than 30 government troops had been killed. Hundreds of ethnic rebels fled clashes in northeastern Myanmar, surrendering their weapons and uniforms to Chinese border police and crossing to safety after several days of skirmishes with Myanmar government troops. The UN and Chinese officials said up to 30,000 civilian refugees have streamed into China to escape the fighting.
(Reuters, 8/29/09)(AP, 8/30/09)
2009 Aug 29, Portugal’s government said 2 Syrians previously held at Guantanamo Bay have arrived in Portugal as free men.
(AP, 8/29/09)
2009 Aug 29, Somali witnesses said hundreds of Ethiopian troops have crossed the border and seized control of the Somali town of Belet Weyne from Islamist insurgents.
(AP, 8/29/09)
2009 Aug 29, In Sudan an armed group kidnapped two foreign civilians working for the joint UN-African Union peacekeeping mission in Darfur. The UNAMID workers, a Nigerian man and a Zimbabwean woman, were released on Dec 13.
(AP, 8/29/09)(AFP, 12/13/09)
2009 Aug 30, In Utah a fire, which already destroyed 3 houses and covered over 15 square miles, threatened the rural town of New Harmony.
(SFC, 8/31/09, p.A4)
2009 Aug 30, Major allegations of fraud in Afghanistan's presidential election topped 550, more than doubling the figure investigators reported just two days earlier.
(AP, 8/30/09)
2009 Aug 30, British police estimated that about 220,000 people turned up to dance, drink and eat jerk chicken for the first of two days of the Notting Hill Carnival in west London. The Afro-Caribbean carnival began the 1950s in response to deteriorating race relations, and has been based in Notting Hill since 1964.
(AFP, 8/31/09)
2009 Aug 30, In Cameroon a passenger train carrying about 1,000 people crashed in the northwest of Yaounde. Nine people were killed in the crash and its aftermath.
(AP, 8/30/09)
2009 Aug 30, In eastern China Yu Xiaochun (37) was going home when she was surrounded by five Wal-Mart employees, four men and one woman, all in their 20s, who accused her of shoplifting. They fought and Yu fell to the ground and was taken to a hospital, where she died on Sept. 2. Two employees, a man surnamed Liu and a man surnamed Yu, were detained following her death.
(AP, 9/8/09)
2009 Aug 30, Gabon held free elections for the first time in more than 41 years. 18 candidates vied to replace the late President Omar Bongo, who ruled for more than four decades and ran as the only candidate in many elections. The leading contender was the dead ruler's son, Ali Bongo Ondimba (50). He put up posters of himself every 30 feet (9 meters) on the capital's main highway and crisscrossed the country in a private jet to campaign. On Sep 3 Ali Bongo Ondimba was declared the winner with 41.7% of the vote.
(AP, 8/30/09)(AP, 9/3/09)
2009 Aug 30, Israeli legal authorities indicted former PM Ehud Olmert on corruption charges, the first criminal indictment ever filed against a current or past Israeli prime minister. Olmert was accused of illegally accepting funds from an American backer, double-billing for trips abroad and concealing funds from a government watchdog.
(AP, 8/30/09)
2009 Aug 30, Japan's ruling party conceded a crushing defeat as voters were poised to hand the opposition a landslide victory in nationwide elections, driven by economic anxiety and a powerful desire for change. The left-of-center Democratic Party of Japan, under Yukio Hatoyama (62), won 308 of the 480 seats in the lower house of parliament, ousting the Liberal Democrats, who have governed Japan for all but 11 months since 1955.
(AP, 8/30/09)(Econ, 9/5/09, p.29)
2009 Aug 30, Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi and Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi laid the foundation stone for an ambitious highway stretching along the entire Libyan coast.
(AFP, 8/30/09)
2009 Aug 30, The Myanmar junta ended a news blackout about clashes with ethnic rebels near the China border, saying three days of fighting killed 26 government forces and at least eight rebels.
(AP, 8/30/09)
2009 Aug 30, In Pakistan a suicide bomber killed 17 police recruits in the Swat Valley in the deadliest attack since the army regained control over the northwestern valley from the Taliban. After the blast, security forces pursuing Taliban suspects killed 18 militants in a gunbattle just outside Mingora.
(AP, 8/30/09)(AP, 8/31/09)
2009 Aug 30, In Zimbabwe Godknows Dzoro Mtshakazi, a member of PM Morgan Tsvangirai's party, was killed by soldiers in Shurugwi for playing a song praising the premier.
(AFP, 9/8/09)
2009 Aug 31, In southern California fashion designer Anand Jon Alexander was sentenced to 59 years to life in prison for sexually assaulting aspiring models he lured to Los Angeles.
(AP, 9/1/09)
2009 Aug 31, In southern California a massive fire in the Angeles National Forest nearly doubled in size overnight, threatening 12,000 homes in a 20-mile-long swath of flame and smoke and surging toward a mountaintop broadcasting complex. 2 firefighters died a day earlier when their vehicle rolled down a mountainside amid the flames.
(AP, 8/31/09)(SFC, 8/31/09, p.A4)
2009 Aug 31, Florida’s Gov. Crist signed a 20-year gambling pact with the Seminole Indian tribe, which agreed to pay Florida $12.5 million a month for 30 months for running, currently illegal, slot machines and blackjack games.
(Econ, 9/5/09, p.40)
2009 Aug 31, Deere & Co., the world's largest agricultural-equipment maker, said its board of directors has approved a plan to establish a new manufacturing and parts center in Russia.
(AP, 8/31/09)
2009 Aug 31, The Walt Disney Co. said it is buying Marvel Entertainment Inc. for $4 billion in cash and stock, bringing such characters as Iron Man and Spider-Man into the family of Mickey Mouse and WALL-E.
(AP, 8/31/09)
2009 Aug 31, In Afghanistan 2 bombings killed two US service members, the last day of the deadliest month of the war for US forces.
(AP, 8/31/09)
2009 Aug 31, In China a demonstration occurred when angry villagers from Fujian province's Fengwei town confronted 2,000 riot police over a wastewater treatment plant that had fouled local air and water. At least 10 people were injured when the demonstrations turned violent and riot police fired warning shots.
(AP, 9/1/09)
2009 Aug 31, Egyptian police found the entrances to four tunnels and two tons of explosives hidden near the border with Gaza. A day earlier they had thwarted an attempt to smuggle 500 kg (1,100 lb) of explosives into Gaza.
(AP, 9/1/09)
2009 Aug 31, The European Commission said an EU-wide transition of power-draining light bulbs to more energy efficient ones will start Aug 1. The new rules follow an agreement reached by the 27 EU governments last year to phase out the traditional incandescent light bulb over three years starting this year to help European countries lower greenhouse gas emissions.
(AP, 8/31/09)
2009 Aug 31, A Georgian court sentenced a Turkish cargo ship captain to 24 years in prison for smuggling and border violations.
(AP, 9/3/09)
2009 Aug 31, A Guatemalan court convicted and sentenced a former paramilitary to 150 years in prison for the forced disappearance of six people who were abducted and presumably killed during the country's civil war. The sentence against Felipe Cusanero represents 25 years for each victim who disappeared between 1982 and 1984 from the village of Choatalum.
(AP, 9/2/09)
2009 Aug 31, Muhsin Mohammed Muhsin (11) was kidnapped around noon on his way home from a neighbor's funeral in Baghdad's eastern Shiite district of Sadr City. Kidnappers demanded $100,000, but the father of six said he only had $10,000. 3 days later police found the boy dumped in the garbage with his head and hands chopped off. His body showed burns and marks of torture.
(AP, 9/22/09)
2009 Aug 31, African leaders gathered in Libya for a special summit to discuss the continent's trouble spots, on the eve of celebrations to mark 40 years of Moamer Kadhafi's rule.
(AFP, 8/31/09)
2009 Aug 31, Mexican authorities said they have arrested four men accused of killing at least 211 people for the Juarez cartel. The men allegedly belong to La Linea, a gang of hit men for the Juarez cartel. One of the men alone was accused of killing 97 people and another 87.
(AP, 8/31/09)
2009 Aug 31, Thousands of Myanmar refugees headed home from China as fighting between government troops and a rebel militia that left more than 30 people dead appeared to be over.
(AP, 8/31/09)
2009 Aug 31, Nepal's PM Madhav Kumar Nepal opened the first climate change conference of Himalayan nations with a warning about the dangers of melting glaciers, floods and violent storms for the region.
(AFP, 8/31/09)
2009 Aug 31, The Nigerian anti-graft agency filed charges against 16 bank chiefs arrested for incurring billions of dollars in bad loans for five ailing banks.
(AFP, 8/31/09)
2009 Aug 31, The Pakistani army said it killed at least 45 Taliban militants over the last 24 hours in scattered gunbattles across the northwestern Swat Valley.
(AP, 8/31/09)
2009 Aug 31, In Sri Lanka reporter J.S. Tissainayagam, singled out by President Barack Obama as an example of persecuted journalists around the globe, was sentenced to 20 years in prison on charges of violating the country's harsh anti-terror law. He was arrested in March, 2008, and indicted five months later under the anti-terror law.
(AP, 8/31/09)
2009 Aug 31, Turkmenistan President Gurbanguli Berdymukhamedov said a base will be built at the Caspian Sea port city of Turkmenbashi to help "effectively fight smugglers, terrorists and any other forces." Turkmenistan is locked in a dispute with Azerbaijan, on the opposite shore, over several oil and gas fields.
(AP, 8/31/09)
2009 Aug, In Georgia Kristi Cornwell (38), a former probation officer, disappeared in Blairsville. Her bones were found on Jan 1, 2011. Scott Carringer, the primary suspect in her disappearance, killed himself in the spring of 2010 during a standoff with Atlanta police.
(SFC, 1/4/11, p.A5)
2009 Aug, Pennsylvania Central Bucks East High School English teacher Natalie Munroe started a blog for friends and family in suburban Philadelphia. Munroe blogged about 85 times and only about 15 to 20 of the posts involved her being a teacher. In 2011 she was suspended for the profanity-laced blog in which she called her students "disengaged, lazy whiners," and daring to ask: “Why are today's students unmotivated, and what's wrong with calling them out?"
(AP, 2/16/11)
2009 Aug, In China the Canton Tower was topped out in Guangzhou. At 1,969 feet it was the world’s tallest tower. It opened on Sep 30, 2010.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canton_Tower)
2009 Aug, In China a new micro-blogging service (Sina Weibo), similar to Twitter, began operating. Property mogul Pan Shiyi, co-founder of SOHO China, was signed on for one of the first 20 accounts.
(Econ, 10/30/10, p.42)(Econ, 4/6/13, SR p.7)
2009 Aug, Colombia’s Supreme Court suspended further extraditions of paramilitary leaders arguing that the gravity of the drug charges they face in the US pales in comparison with the mass murders and other enormities that they are accused of in Colombia.
(Econ, 10/31/09, p.46)
2009 Aug, Aliaksandr Barankov (27) arrived in Ecuador after fleeing fraud and extortion charges in Belarus. He called the charges bogus, retribution for his having exposed a petroleum-smuggling ring involving senior officials of President Lukashenko's government, including relatives of the leader.
(AP, 8/20/12)
2009 Aug, In Fiji Laisenia Qarase and Mahendra Chaudhry, rivals to military leader Commodore Bainimarama, joined forces against him.
(Econ, 11/14/09, p.53)
2009 Aug, Jamaica’s government received an extradition request for Christopher "Dudus" Coke (40). By late October it had only responded with requests for more information about the gun and drug trafficking charges against the reputed gang leader. Coke, the alleged leader of the "Shower Posse" gang, is charged in the US Southern District of New York with conspiracy to distribute cocaine and marijuana and conspiracy to illegally traffic in firearms.
(AP, 10/29/09)
2009 Aug, In Mexico the director of immigrant affairs in the southern border city of Tapachula was found in a tub of cement, months after he was kidnapped.
(Econ, 9/26/09, p.48)
2009 Aug, In South Africa construction began on the Northern Cape of the MeerKAT Precursor Array (also known as KAT-7). The 7-dish array was a precursor for MeerKAT which will consist of 64 dishes of 13.5 meters in diameter, the most powerful in the southern hemisphere.
(Econ, 11/5/11, p.96)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MeerKAT)
2009 Sep 1, A top State Department official said the US has released $214 million of an aid package to help Mexico fight drug trafficking, including funds for five helicopters for the military to be delivered by year's end.
(AP, 9/2/09)
2009 Sep 1, In San Francisco charges were filed against 5 workers of the Public Utilities Commission and 2 workers at city approved vendors in a scam that bilked the city of over $200,000 in goods from 2003-2007. Donnie Alan Thomas and Miles Bonner, line workers making over $95,000 a year, masterminded the scam. In 2011 Thomas pleaded guilty to 4 felony charges. Hatim Mansori (11) was stabbed on his first MUNI ride by himself. No footage of his assailant was captured. Mansori suffered life-threatening wounds, but was recovering.
(SFC, 9/2/09, p.D2)(SSFC, 11/15/09, p.A13)(SFC, 9/20/11, p.C2)
2009 Sep 1, In Southern California the Station wildfire continued to rage with 53 homes up in smoke, thousands more threatened and new rounds of evacuations as towering flames crackled close to foothill neighborhoods just 15 miles north of downtown Los Angeles. On Sep 3 investigators said the fire was an act of arson. On Oct 17 the US Forest Service said the 250-square-mile Station fire was 100% contained, 52 days after it began.
(AP, 9/1/09)(SFC, 9/4/09, p.A7)(SFC, 10/20/09, p.A5)
2009 Sep 1, Idaho hunters began stalking gray wolves, following their removal from the federal endangered species a few months earlier. The quota for this season was 220. The quota in Montana was set at 75.
(SFC, 9/2/09, p.A8)
2009 Sep 1, In southern Afghanistan an American service member died of wounds suffered in a bombing the day before.
(AP, 9/1/09)
2009 Sep 1, In the Bahamas an amended fisheries laws took effect to give full protection to all sea turtles found in the Atlantic archipelago's waters by banning the harvest, possession, purchase and sale of the endangered reptiles, including their eggs.
(AP, 8/30/09)
2009 Sep 1, A Chilean judge ordered the arrests of 129 former security officers on charges tied to the disappearance of leftists and the slaying of the communist party leadership during the Pinochet dictatorship.
(AP, 9/1/09)
2009 Sep 1, The 53-nation Commonwealth says it has suspended Fiji automatically after it failed to respond to a demand to begin restoring democracy to the island nation.
(AP, 9/1/09)
2009 Sep 1, Ammar al-Hakim (38), the son of the late leader of Iraq's largest Shiite political party, acknowledged setbacks and reached out to political rivals as he formally replaced his father at the helm of the Iranian-backed Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council. Two American soldiers were killed in a vehicle accident in northern Iraq.
(AP, 9/1/09)(AP, 9/3/09)
2009 Sep 1, In Japan dolphin hunting season opened in Taijii. Over the next 6 months fishermen were expected to catch about 2,300 of Japan’s annual quota of 20,000 dolphins, to be sold for meat and to aquariums.
(SSFC, 9/20/09, p.A20)
2009 Sep 1, Malaysian police arrested Alain Robert (47), a French climber nicknamed "Spiderman," after he scaled the iconic 88-story Petronas Twin Towers.
(AP, 9/1/09)
2009 Sep 1, Pakistani government forces destroyed four militant bases and killed 40 insurgents of Lashkar-e-Islam in a new offensive near the Khyber Pass, the main route for supplies to US and NATO troops in Afghanistan. 43 militants were arrested.
(AP, 9/1/09)
2009 Sep 1, Mohammed Nayef (14) one of three Palestinians who hurled Molotov cocktails at a guard post near a Jewish settlement in the West Bank, died of gunshot shots from Israeli troops inflicted the previous evening. The Hamas militant group said two of its fighters have been killed in the Gaza Strip.
(AP, 9/1/09)
2009 Sep 1, In Slovakia a new language law was scheduled to come into force to promote the use of Slovak in public. Hungarian speakers, who numbered about a fifth of the population, viewed this as a direct attack on their right to speak their mother-tongue.
(Econ, 8/1/09, p.47)
2009 Sep 1, South Africa’s defense ministry said it has issued around 2,000 letters of dismissal to soldiers who last week staged an illegal march and tried to storm the seat of government.
(AFP, 9/1/09)
2009 Sep 1, In Taiwan the wife and adult children of Taiwan's former Pres. Chen Shui-bian were convicted of perjury and sentenced to prison for lying to investigators in a high-profile corruption case against the ex-leader. Chen (58) was accused of embezzling $3.15 million during his 2000-2008 presidency from a special presidential fund, receiving bribes worth at least $9 million in connection with a government land deal, and laundering some of the money through Swiss bank accounts.
(AP, 9/2/09)
2009 Sep 1, Ukrainian PM Yulia Tymoshenko said Russia and Ukraine have resolved a long standing dispute over natural gas supplies, after meeting her Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin at a resort on the Baltic coast in northern Poland.
(Reuters, 9/1/09)
2009 Sep 2, US federal prosecutors hit Pfizer Inc. with a record-breaking $2.3 billion in fines for illegal drug promotions surrounding the marketing of 13 drugs.
(SFC, 9/3/09, p.C1)
2009 Sep 2, BP announced the discovery of oil at its new Tiber Prospect oil reserve in the Gulf of Mexico. It later estimated the reserve held between 4 and 6 billion barrels of oil. Its Deepwater Horizon rig had drilled down 7 miles to reach the oil.
(http://tinyurl.com/mhnujo)(SSFC, 9/6/09, p.E4)
2009 Sep 2, A Taliban suicide bomber killed Abdullah Laghmani, Afghanistan's deputy chief of intelligence, during a visit to a mosque in Laghman province. The blast east of Kabul also killed the executive director of Laghman's governor's office, the head of Laghman's provincial council, two of Laghmani's body guards, and 18 civilians. An intelligence officer kidnapped a few days ago by Taliban militants in Kunduz province was found hanging from a tree on the outskirts of Baghlan city. 4 militants were killed overnight when a roadside bomb they were planting detonated. On Dec 20 Abdul Rahman, a Taliban military commander in Laghman, and three members of his insurgent network were arrested for the murder of Laghmani.
(AP, 9/2/09)(AP, 12/29/09)
2009 Sep 2, In central Afghanistan American troops stormed through a hospital run by a Swedish charity in Wardak province, breaking down doors and tying up staff in a search for militants. The charity's country director later said this went against an agreement between NATO forces and charities working in the area, and was a clear violation of internationally recognized rules and principles.
(AP, 9/7/09)
2009 Sep 2, In Algeria Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez called for closer economic ties with Algeria, notably in the energy sector, during a two-day visit here.
(AFP, 9/3/09)
2009 Sep 2, In Burkina Faso 5 people were killed and 150,000 left homeless as heavy rainfall triggered flooding across West Africa.
(Reuters, 9/2/09)
2009 Sep 2, In Chile Judge Manuel Valderrama said the accounts of General Pinochet and his family reached a value of $25,978,602.79 shortly before his death in December 2006. The investigating judge said that more than $20 million of the funds have no justifiable origin.
(AP, 9/2/09)
2009 Sep 2, In eastern China a chemical explosion near Linyi city in Shandong province killed 18 people and injured 10 others.
(AP, 9/2/09)
2009 Sep 2, The IMF said China is buying the equivalent of $50 billion of the International Monetary Fund's first bond sale in a move that might boost Beijing's standing in the Fund and help its quiet campaign to expand the reach of its tightly controlled currency. Brazil, Russia and India have also agreed to participate in the $80 billion issue.
(www.wsoctv.com/money/20698248/detail.html)(Econ, 9/19/09, p.83)
2009 Sep 2, In El Salvador Christian Poveda (52), a French filmmaker who recently made a documentary about the lives of members of El Salvador's street gangs, was found shot dead in Tonacatepeque, a rural region north of San Salvador. Earlier this year, Poveda, made the documentary "La Vida Loca," which follows the lives of members La 18 street gang and received widespread attention in El Salvador. 4 Mara 18 members and a policeman were soon detained. On Dec 16 police arrested 10 more members of the Mara 18 gang. 9 other gang members already in prison have also been charged in the case. On Mar 9, 2011 a court sentenced 10 gang members and a police officer to prison terms ranging from four to 30 years. 20 additional defendants were acquitted, but 17 of them were serving time for other crimes.
(AP, 9/3/09)(AP, 12/17/09)(AP, 3/10/11)
2009 Sep 2, In Germany 6 countries met for talks to try to address concerns about Iran's nuclear program. The German government said it has received no official word yet on new proposals that Tehran is pledging to make.
(AP, 9/2/09)
2009 Sep 2, In Greece a van bomb exploded outside the Athens Stock Exchange, injuring a woman and causing extensive damage to the building in what police said was a coordinated double bombing that also targeted a government building in the northern city of Thessaloniki.
(AP, 9/2/09)
2009 Sep 2, Authorities in Guinea banned live political chat shows, the latest sign of political unease after violent demonstrations and accusations of phone censorship deepened a row over delayed elections. The military junta that has run the world's top bauxite producer since a December 2008 coup is facing mounting opposition and criticism after it delayed until 2010 elections which the military leader has not ruled out standing in.
(Reuters, 9/3/09)
2009 Sep 2, In India a helicopter carrying Y.S.R. Reddy (60), a powerful politician from southern Andhra Pradesh state, disappeared in heavy rains as it flew over a forested region largely controlled by Maoist rebels. Wreckage and the bodies of all 5 aboard were found the next day.
(AP, 9/2/09)(AP, 9/3/09)
2009 Sep 2, A powerful 7.0 earthquake rattled southern Indonesia, killing at least 64 people crushed by falling rock or collapsed buildings and sending thousands fleeing outdoors for safety in the middle of the work day. More than 10,000 buildings were severely damaged.
(AP, 9/2/09)(AP, 9/4/09)
2009 Sep 2, Liberia's Defense Minister Brownie Samukai said police had arrested six Pakistani men earlier in the week who tried to enter Liberia on fake US passports with possible intent to carry out terrorism.
(AP, 9/3/09)
2009 Sep 2, In Mexico gunmen broke into a drug rehabilitation center in Ciudad Juarez, lined people against a wall and shot 18 dead. The brazen attack followed the killing of Jose Manuel Revuelta, the No. 2 security official in Michoacan, President Felipe Calderon's home state. 2 bodyguards and a truck driver were also killed in the crossfire. The federal Attorney General's Office announced the arrest of its two top officials in Quintana Roo, a state on the Yucatan Peninsula, for allegedly protecting the Gulf and the Beltran Levya drug cartels. Chihuahua state authorities said they were investigating reports that rehabilitation centers have turned into hideouts for drug smugglers being sought by police and hit men from rival gangs.
(AP, 9/3/09)(AP, 9/4/09)
2009 Sep 2, Dutch prosecutors said they will charge an Arab cultural group under hate speech laws for publishing a cartoon that suggests the death of 6 million Jews during World War II is a fabrication.
(AP, 9/2/09)
2009 Sep 2, In Pakistan government forces killed three suspected militants, captured 35 others and destroyed six of their bases on the second day of its new offensive near Pakistan's famed Khyber Pass. Suspected militants opened fire on a vehicle carrying the religious affairs minister, wounding him and killing his driver in a brazen attack in the heart of Islamabad. Hamid Saeed Kazmi had been critical of Muslim extremists blamed for scores of attacks in Pakistan over the last 2½ years.
(AP, 9/2/09)
2009 Sep 2, In Peru drug-funded Shining Path rebels shot down an air force helicopter in the coca-growing highlands of Junin province, killing three troops and wounding five. The military said three rebels were arrested and another four killed.
(AP, 9/3/09)
2009 Sep 2, In Thailand a number of drive-by shootings in the provinces of Narathiwat, Pattani and Yala left eight dead, including a Muslim teacher and his son (13). Security forces raided a rubber plantation in Yala and a house in Narathiwat, sparking separate gunbattles in which two suspected insurgents were killed.
(AP, 9/3/09)
2009 Sep 2, Vietnamese authorities arrested blogger Nguyen Ngoc Nhu Quynh (30), who writes under the pen name Me Nam, at her home in Nha Trang. Quynh's arrest was the latest in a series of police moves against writers who criticized government policies toward China. The government tightened its rules for bloggers earlier this year, saying they must restrict their writings to personal matters. Quynh was released on Sep 12.
(AP, 9/4/09)(AP, 9/12/09)
2009 Sep 3, Washington cut off millions of dollars in aid to Honduras. Interim Pres. Roberto Micheletti vowed that ousted Pres. Zelaya would not return to power despite increasing international pressure.
(AP, 9/4/09)
2009 Sep 3, The San Francisco Bay Bridge was completely shut down at 8pm to replace a 300-foot section of the bridge as part of the project to replace the entire eastern span by 2013. The bridge was expected to reopen on Sep 8. The original estimated cost of $132 million was now projected at $527.6 million.
(SSFC, 8/30/09, p.A14)(SFC, 9/3/09, p.A1)
2009 Sep 3, The Ford Motor Co. settled a lawsuit filed by residents of a northern New Jersey town over toxic waste dumped there in the 1960s and '70s. Thousands of tons of paint sludge and other toxic material from Ford's old Mahwah factory were dumped in Ringwood, and residents sued in 2006 claiming that the waste led to illnesses ranging from skin rashes to cancer, and threatened the Wanaque Reservoir. The Record of Bergen County reported that residents of Ringwood will receive about $10 million.
(AP, 9/4/09)
2009 Sep 3, In the US Virgin Islands two ticket agent contractors who worked for Delta Airlines and an airport employee were arrested after being indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of conspiracy to smuggle illegal immigrants into the US.
(AP, 9/5/09)
2009 Sep 3, Sergio Saucedo (30), a drug trafficker, was taken from his home in Horizon City, outside of El Paso, Texas. He was murdered and mutilated in Ciudad Juarez in retaliation for the loss of 700 pounds (315 kilos) of marijuana seized by border patrol agents. His body was found on Sep 8. On April 1, 2011, the West Texas Federal Court jury found Cesar Obregon-Reyes and Rafael Vega guilty of abducting Sergio Saucedo from his home.
(AP, 3/20/10)(http://tinyurl.com/m7lpok)(AP, 4/2/11)
2009 Sep 3, SpaceX signed a contract worth $50 million with ORBCOMM, a satellite communications firm, to launch 18 satellites.
(Econ, 9/12/09, p.87)
2009 Sep 3, The US Embassy in Afghanistan said it has banned alcohol and assigned American personnel to watch over the embassy's security guards following allegations of lewd behavior and sexual misconduct at their living quarters.
(AP, 9/3/09)
2009 Sep 3, In Australia millionaire Michael McGurk (45), a Scottish-born property developer, was gunned down in front of his son (10) outside their exclusive Sydney home. In 2007 McGurk had unsuccessfully tried to sue the Sultan of Brunei over an alleged eight million US dollar agreement to buy a 400-year-old gold-lined miniature Koran.
(AFP, 9/4/09)
2009 Sep 3, Hundreds of Chinese protested deteriorating public safety after a series of mysterious syringe attacks further unnerved residents in the western Chinese city of Urumqi where ethnic rioting in July killed nearly 200 people.
(AP, 9/3/09)
2009 Sep 3, EU regulators launched an antitrust probe into US software maker Oracle Corp.'s takeover of Sun Microsystems Inc., saying they wanted to make sure Oracle was committed to developing Sun's rival open-source database software MySQL.
(AP, 9/3/09)
2009 Sep 3, The government of Gabon declared the eldest son of the late dictator Omar Bongo the winner of weekend presidential elections, triggering a rampage in a coastal city and allegations of fraud. Interior Minister Jean-Francois Ndongou said Ali Bongo, the country's defense minister who campaigned from a private jet and plastered the capital with billboards, won with 41.7% of the vote. The top two opposition leaders — Andre Mba Obame and Pierre Mamboundou — were nearly tied, receiving 25.8% and 25.2% of the vote respectively.
(AP, 9/3/09)
2009 Sep 3, In India heavy rain triggered a landslide in Sakinaka, a densely populated suburban Mumbai slum killing at least 12 people and injuring 25 others. Many others remained trapped under piles of mud and stones.
(AP, 9/4/09)
2009 Sep 3, In Iraq a car bomb apparently targeting Osama al-Tikriti, the leader of Iraq's largest Sunni political party (the Iraqi Islamic Party), wounded four people in Baqouba. The politician escaped unharmed. Police arrested Adnan al-Obeidi, the deputy transport minister, after he was allegedly filmed taking a bribe in a sting operation. Police had filmed al-Obeidi accepting a $100,000 bribe from a company doing work at the Baghdad airport.
(AP, 9/3/09)
2009 Sep 3, In Iraq Ahmed Hashim Abed, suspected of masterminding the March 31, 2004, attack on Blackwater guards, was captured in a covert operation by US Navy SEALs. Abed later alleged that he was beaten by US Navy SEALs. In 2010 two of the 3 accused Navy SEALs were acquitted. Petty Officer 2nd Class Matthew McCabe, of Perrysburg, Ohio, the SEAL charged with assaulting Abed, was scheduled to be court-martialed May 3, 2010, in Virginia.
(AP, 4/22/10)(http://tinyurl.com/yd5smcb)(AP, 4/23/10)
2009 Sep 3, Japan’s Dainippon Sumitomo Pharma Co. said it is acquiring US drug maker Sepracor Inc., which makes insomnia drug Lunesta, for about $2.6 billion in an effort to expand in the US market.
(AP, 9/3/09)
2009 Sep 3, In Kazakhstan a court convicted Yevgenii Zhovtis of vehicular manslaughter and sentenced him to 4 years in prison. Zhovtis, Kazakhstan’s best known human rights activists, claimed he had been blinded by the lights of an oncoming car when he hit a hit and killed a pedestrian on a country road late at night.
(Econ, 9/12/09, p.46)
2009 Sep 3, Myanmar-born Kyaw Zaw Lwin, an American citizen also known as Nyi Nyi Aung, was arrested when he arrived at Yangon airport. Lwin started a hunger strike on Dec. 4 to protest conditions of political prisoners in Myanmar. He ended his hunger strike Dec. 15 and was subsequently placed in solitary confinement. On Jan 1, 2010, Lwin was charged for forgery and violation of the foreign currency act. Lwin (40) was released on March 18, 2010.
(AP, 12/29/09)(AP, 1/1/10)(AFP, 3/18/10)
2009 Sep 3, Russian’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko warned Georgia that attempts to block ships from reaching a Moscow-aligned separatist region of Georgia could end in military intervention.
(AP, 9/3/09)
2009 Sep 3, Rwanda's state radio reported that Alfred Mukezamfura, former speaker of parliament, was sentenced in absentia to life in prison for inciting hatred during the 1994 genocide in which some 800,000 people died. Mukezamfura fled the country in March to Belgium where he has sought asylum.
(AFP, 9/3/09)
2009 Sep 3, In central Serbia a series of explosions at an underground ammunition factory in Uzice killed at least seven people and injured 15.
(AP, 9/4/09)
2009 Sep 3, In Thailand a bomb hidden in a motorcycle parked outside a row of open-air shops and restaurants in Pattani city exploded, killing a Buddhist man and wounding 24 others.
(AP, 9/3/09)
2009 Sep 3, A water rights battle over the historic Tigris and Euphrates rivers simmered, as Iraq and Syria appealed for increased water flows to cope with severe drought but Turkey said it was already too overstretched.
(AP, 9/3/09)
2009 Sep 4, A US federal appeals court has ruled that former Attorney General John Ashcroft can be sued by people who claim they were wrongfully detained as material witnesses after 9/11, and called the government practice "repugnant to the Constitution." The ruling allows Abdullah al-Kidd, a US citizen, to proceed with a lawsuit that claims his constitutional rights were violated when he was detained in 2003 as a material witness in a federal terrorism case.
(AP, 9/5/09)
2009 Sep 4, US regulators closed the First Bank of Kansas in Missouri, pushing to 85 the number of US banks that have failed this year.
(SFC, 9/5/09, p.D1)
2009 Sep 4, The US Embassy in Afghanistan says it has fired eight security guards following allegations of lewd behavior and sexual misconduct at their living quarters. Two other guards resigned and also left. All of them appeared in photographs that depicted guards and supervisors in various stages of nudity at parties flowing with alcohol. The management team of the private contractor that provided the guards was also to being replaced immediately.
(AP, 9/4/09)
2009 Sep 4, In northern Afghanistan a US jet blasted two fuel tankers hijacked by the Taliban in Kunduz province, setting off a huge fireball that killed dozens of civilians who had rushed to the scene to collect fuel. As many as 142 civilians died in the German-ordered NATO airstrike. The strike was ordered by the commander of the German base in Kunduz, Georg Klein, who feared insurgents could use the trucks to carry out attacks. A French soldier was killed and nine others injured when their vehicles were hit by a bomb near Bagram Air Base north of Kabul. A Polish soldier was killed in the east. A French marine was killed in an IED attack.
(AP, 9/4/09)(AFP, 9/5/09)(AP, 9/17/09)(AP, 10/8/09)(Econ, 1/2/10, p.37)(AP, 9/4/19)
2009 Sep 4, Arab League chief Amr Moussa, speaking in Italy, said any Israeli offer for a settlement freeze that doesn't include east Jerusalem is unacceptable and "will suspend the peace process." Aides of Israel’s PM said Benjamin Netanyahu will approve hundreds of new housing units in West Bank settlements before slowing settlement construction, in an apparent snub of Washington's public demand for a total settlement freeze.
(AP, 9/4/09)
2009 Sep 4, The Belgian government said it has accepted a US request to take in one detainee from U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay.
(AP, 9/4/09)
2009 Sep 4, In China security forces in the far-west city of Urumqi used tear gas to break up fresh protests, as thousands of Han Chinese demanded better security after a reported spate of attacks with syringes.
(Reuters, 9/4/09)
2009 Sep 4, In Ingushetia a roadside bomb blast ripped through a police car, killing three officers and wounding two others. Ingush authorities shot dead 3 insurgents. One man, identified as Rustam Dzortov, was a suspected ringleader of rebel operations in Ingushetia and had organized the suicide bombing of Ingush President Yunus Bek Yevkurov's motorcade earlier this year. The two others may have been planning a terrorist act in Moscow. In neighboring Chechnya two suspected insurgents were killed in a similar incident. The suspected insurgents were found to have explosives strapped to them, hand grenades, and train tickets to Moscow.
(AP, 9/4/09)(AP, 9/5/09)
2009 Sep 4, Mexican federal police detained Armando Medina (49), a small-town mayor of Mugica, Michoacan state, on suspicion of aiding drug traffickers. This is the same state where eight other city chiefs have been arrested since May on similar charges. In the northern state of Durango, two gunmen were killed in a shootout with federal police in the city of Gomez Palacio. The federal government auctioned off property seized from drug traffickers, smugglers, money launderers and tax evaders, including a DC-9 jet that was used to transport 5.5 metric tons of cocaine in 2006. The agency did not disclose the identity of winning bidders. Mexican soldiers, acting on a tip about armed men, detained Jose Rodolfo Escajeda in Nuevo Casas Grandes, in northern Chihuahua state. The suspected drug gang leader was linked to a 2006 border incursion by armed traffickers into Texas and the killing of an anti-crime activist in July. Five gunmen and a bystander were killed in a shootout at a lake that began when assailants opened fire on an army patrol on the outskirts of the northern city of Monterrey. A Ciudad Juarez police officer was shot to death outside his home.
(AP, 9/5/09)(AP, 9/6/09)
2009 Sep 4, Pakistan said paramilitary troops have killed five suspected militants and arrested 24 in an ongoing operation in the northwestern Khyber tribal region.
(AP, 9/4/09)
2009 Sep 4, In southern Sudan heavily armed fighters attacked an ethnic Dinka settlement in Bony-Thiang, north of the state capital Malakal, killing 20 people. Angry Dinka groups then launched a retaliatory raid on the nearby Shilluk village of Bon, killing five people including a woman and two children.
(AFP, 9/5/09)
2009 Sep 4, In southern Thailand bomb believed to have been planted by Islamic insurgents exploded outside a restaurant where security forces were eating breakfast, killing a policeman and wounding 12 other people.
(AP, 9/4/09)
2009 Sep 4, Thousands of opponents of Hugo Chavez marched against the Venezuelan president across Latin America, accusing him of everything from authoritarianism to international meddling. The protests, coordinated through Twitter and Facebook, drew more than 5,000 people in Bogota, and thousands more in the capitals of Venezuela and Honduras. Smaller demonstrations were held in other Latin American capitals, as well as New York and Madrid.
(AP, 9/5/09)
2009 Sep 5, Crews working on a seismic retrofit of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge found what authorities called a "significant crack" in the eastern span that could keep the California landmark closed beyond a planned holiday weekend shutdown.
(AP, 9/6/09)
2009 Sep 5, In Louisiana Dennis Carter Sr. (50) shot his estranged wife, son and 2-year-old grandson to death and critically wounded his pregnant daughter-in-law at their rural home, then killed himself as police tried to pull over his car 20 minutes later.
(AP, 9/6/09)
2009 Sep 5, A small airplane crashed into a Tulsa, Okla., park killing all 5 people on board.
(SSFC, 9/6/09, p.A7)
2009 Sep 5, Milwaukee police arrested Walter Ellis (49) after DNA evidence linked him to the slaying of 9 women, including 8 suspected prostitutes, dating back to 1986. On Feb 18, 2011, Ellis was convicted in the deaths of 7 women and faced a mandatory sentence of life in prison.
(SFC, 9/8/09, p.A6)(SFC, 2/19/11, p.A6)
2009 Sep 5, In Afghanistan a US soldier serving in the NATO-led coalition died after coming under fire in the east of the country. Gunmen snatched New York Times reporter Stephen Farrell, who has dual British-Irish nationality, and his interpreter Sultan Munadi, while they were reporting on the aftermath of a NATO air strike on fuel tankers that killed scores of people. On Sep 9 Farrell was freed in a raid that killed a British soldier as well as Afghan translator Sultan Munadi (34).
(AFP, 9/5/09)(AFP, 9/9/09)
2009 Sep 5, The Group of 20 rich and developing countries held talks in London. They were expected to commit to further efforts to boost growth, despite fledging signs of an economic recovery. Top finance officials agreed to curb hefty bankers’ bonuses, but the US and Britain shied away from imposing a cap.
(AP, 9/5/09)(SSFC, 9/6/09, p.A5)
2009 Sep 5, In Britain racially charged violence erupted between a group protesting Islamic extremism and counter-demonstrators in the central city of Birmingham. Authorities arrested 90 people. The clashes erupted when a rally by the English Defense League ran into counter-demonstrators including anti-fascists and youths of South Asian descent.
(AP, 9/6/09)
2009 Sep 5, Keith Waterhouse (80) a prolific British author, journalist and playwright, died. Waterhouse was best known for the 1959 novel Billy Liar -- the story of a day-dreamer who plans his escape from a depressing job as an undertaker. It was made into a film in 1963.
(AFP, 9/5/09)
2009 Sep 5, The sightseeing boat Ilinden, carrying 55 Bulgarian tourists, sank in Lake Ohrid on Macedonia's western border, and 15 people drowned.
(AP, 9/5/09)(AFP, 9/6/09)
2009 Sep 5, Chinese leaders removed the Communist Party chief of the restive western city of Urumqi, trying to appease public anger following sometimes violent protests this week that the government worries could re-ignite deadly ethnic rioting. The removal of Li Zhi came amid reports of police again dispersing crowds outside Urumqi's government offices using tear gas, and more unconfirmed reports of needle attacks.
(Reuters, 9/5/09)
2009 Sep 5, In Colombia a grenade exploded in a crowd celebrating a national soccer team win in Medellin, killing one person and wounding at least 30. Police thought a reveler may have accidentally detonated the grenade by mishandling it.
(AP, 9/6/09)
2009 Sep 5, In Iraq hundreds of Sunni Arabs opposed to the presence of Kurdish troops in disputed areas of northern Iraq demonstrated against a plan to deploy a mixed force of American, Kurdish and Iraqi soldiers in the area.
(AP, 9/5/09)
2009 Sep 5, In southern Mexico gunmen killed Jose Francisco Fuentes Esperon (43), a state congressional candidate, his wife (38) and two sons (9&13) in their home in Villahermosa in the Gulf coast state of Tabasco. Police later arrested a boy (16) and two young men for allegedly killing Fuentes and his family. Chihuahua state prosecutors reported that a severed human head was found placed on a car hood in the border city of Ciudad Juarez, along with a message relating to drug cartels.
(AP, 9/5/09)(AP, 9/7/09)
2009 Sep 5, Gani Fawehinmi (71) prominent Nigerian lawyer and rights activist died in Lagos after a prolonged battle with cancer. Fawehinmi, holder of Nigeria's highest legal title, the Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), was an author, publisher, philanthropist, social critic, human and civil rights lawyer and politician.
(AFP, 9/5/09)
2009 Sep 5, Pakistan officials said troops killed 43 alleged militants in an operation in the Khyber tribal region while airstrikes left several more dead in the stronghold of the new Taliban chief elsewhere in the northwest. Government fighter jets and helicopter gunships pounded militant hide-outs in three villages of the Orakzai tribal region, the stronghold of new Pakistani Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud. The tortured body of Akhtar Ali (28), operator of an electrical repair shop, was dumped on the doorstep of the family home in Mingora. He had been kidnapped on Sep 1. His death was believed to have resulted from a case of mistaken identity.
(AP, 9/5/09)(Econ, 10/3/09, p.49)
2009 Sep 5, In Somalia at least six civilians were killed and 18 others wounded in clashes that erupted when insurgents attacked government and African Union forces in Mogadishu.
(AFP, 9/6/09)
2009 Sep 5, In Sweden Tesfaldet Tesloy (28), an illegal Eritrean immigrant who has lived in Sweden for six years, appeared on TV to collect a tax-free lottery prize of 1.2 million Swedish crown (101,654 pounds). Sweden's attempts to deport the man have failed due to his country's refusal to take him back, highlighting a common problem for immigration officials.
(Reuters, 9/5/09)
2009 Sep 5, The IMF said Zimbabwe has received about 400 million dollars, as Special Drawing Rights, in support from the International Monetary Fund, part of its broader effort to cushion the blows of the global economic crisis. To convert the SDRs into hard currency, Zimbabwe would have to find another country to buy them. Otherwise the money serves to bolster Harare's meager foreign reserves.
(AFP, 9/5/09)
2009 Sep 5, Milwaukee police arrested Walter Ellis (49) after DNA evidence linked him to the slaying of 9 women, including 8 suspected prostitutes, dating back to 1986.
(SFC, 9/7/09, p.A6)
2009 Sep 6, British PM Gordon Brown said he would support compensation claims against Libya by families of IRA victims who say Tripoli helped to arm the guerrillas.
(Reuters, 9/6/09)
2009 Sep 6, In Ecuador Lt. Col. John Merino, President Rafael Correa's chief of security, died of swine flu. Ecuador has reported 36 confirmed deaths from swine flu as of last week, along with 1,382 infected.
(AP, 9/7/09)
2009 Sep 6, The El Salvador navy said it has found 76 migrants aboard a boat in the Pacific. They included 25 Bangladeshis, 25 Nepalese, 21 Eritreans and five Ecuadoreans. The boat had set sail a week ago from the Ecuadorean port of Manta.
(AP, 9/7/09)
2009 Sep 6, In Hong Kong a man hurled acid at pedestrians in the Mong Kok shopping district, in the neighborhood's fourth acid attack in a year. The attacker (28), arrested nearby, targeted a couple strolling through the district, but also hurt nine others.
(AP, 9/6/09)
2009 Sep 6, In Iran Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez sealed an agreement to export 20,000 barrels per day of gasoline to Iran. The deal would give Tehran a cushion if the West carries out threats of fuel sanctions over Iran's nuclear program. The two countries also agreed to set up a bank together to help finance joint projects.
(AP, 9/7/09)
2009 Sep 6, In Iraq a gunman broke into a house in Mosul, killing a 3-year-old girl and her grandmother before fleeing. Gunmen also attacked checkpoints in the city, killing three policemen. In southeast Baghdad, a car parked near a security checkpoint exploded, killing one person and wounding five civilians.
(AP, 9/6/09)
2009 Sep 6, In Mexico attackers shot four men to death in a motel parking lot in the border city of Ciudad Juarez.
(AP, 9/8/09)
2009 Sep 6, Pakistani military destroyed two training centers and 17 militant homes. 2 people kidnapped by militants were recovered. Troops killed 33 militants during the latest action to pacify the Khyber Pass. Thousands of civilians were reported fleeing the latest military operation in the northwestern Khyber tribal region. 3 policemen were found fatally shot, each by a single bullet to the head, west of Islamabad.
(AP, 9/6/09)(AP, 9/7/09)
2009 Sep 6, In the southern Philippines the Superferry 9, carrying nearly 1,000 passengers, sank leaving at least 9 people dead. After rescue efforts one passenger was left unaccounted.
(AFP, 9/6/09)(AP, 9/7/09)
2009 Sep 6, Somali authorities, who say they were not informed of a hostage exchange plan, stopped a deal to swap three hostages held by Somali pirates with 23 suspected pirates, who had been held in the Seychelles.
(AP, 9/7/09)
2009 Sep 6, Six South Koreans camping and fishing along a river flowing from North Korea were swept away when it suddenly doubled in height, because a new dam in the North released a large amount of water without warning. On Oct 14 North Korea offered a rare apology for unleashing the dam water and promised to alert Seoul to such measures in the future.
(AP, 9/6/09)(AP, 10/14/09)
2009 Sep 7, US snacks company Kraft Foods launched a 10.2 billion pound bid for its British rival Cadbury, with traders expecting the price to run higher as takeover activity returns to the markets. Cadbury immediately rejected the offer.
(AP, 9/7/09)
2009 Sep 7, In Tennessee 3 people were shot to death at a mobile home near Lafayette.
(SFC, 9/8/09, p.A6)
2009 Sep 7, Six American tourists in Antigua were charged with assault and malicious damage after refusing to pay a cab fare on Sep 4, which they thought was excessive and later scuffling with police officers. They were released on $5,000 bail each. Their Carnival Cruise Lines ship left without them. On Oct 3 five New York tourists pleaded guilty to fighting with plainclothes police officers after disputing the $100 cab fare. Prosecutors dropped charges against a sixth tourist.
(AP, 9/8/09)(AP, 10/3/09)
2009 Sep 7, Three British Muslims were convicted of conspiring to kill thousands of civilians by blowing up trans-Atlantic flights in mid-air with liquid explosives disguised as soft drinks. Abdulla Ahmed Ali (28), Assad Sarwar (29), and Tanvir Hussain (28) were found guilty of conspiracy to murder by detonating explosives on aircraft. The men's arrests in August 2006 had led to huge travel chaos. 5 others were also tried. Umar Islam was convicted of conspiracy to murder. The jury failed to reach a verdict on 3 others. Donald Stewart-Whyte was cleared.
(AP, 9/7/09)(Econ, 9/12/09, p.62)
2009 Sep 7, Gabon's main opposition parties demanded authorities conduct a recount of a disputed election the government said was won by the son of the country's long-ruling president.
(AP, 9/7/09)
2009 Sep 7, In Guatemala four prison officials were shot to death in three separate attacks that authorities believed were retaliation for a jail crackdown. Officials over the weekend had seized cell phones and moved inmates to different prisons to break up an extortion ring.
(AP, 9/7/09)
2009 Sep 7, A small Indonesian military plane crashed on Borneo with nine passengers and crew aboard, killing four.
(AP, 9/7/09)
2009 Sep 7, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Iran will neither halt uranium enrichment nor negotiate over its nuclear rights but is ready to sit and talk with world powers over "global challenges."
(AP, 9/7/09)
2009 Sep 7, In western Iraq a suicide car bomber targeted a line of vehicles stopped at a checkpoint near Ramadi, killing eight people and wounding 16. In Baghdad a bomb killed a driver as he approached a military checkpoint in Sadr City district. Two children playing with a hand grenade they found in a stream were killed when it exploded in the northern city of Kirkuk. Abdul-Basit Turki, director general of the Finance Ministry’s auditing department, was charged with wasting public funds. Bombings killed at least 17 people nationwide.
(AP, 9/7/09)(SFC, 9/8/09, p.A4)
2009 Sep 7, Israel officially approved the construction of hundreds of new homes in the West Bank, deepening an already unprecedented rift with the US over Israeli settlement expansion. Israel PM Netanyahu vanished from public view in Israel for most of the day. His office said he had visited a secret security facility. It was later confirmed that he had made a secret trip to Russia, which included a meeting with the Russia’s Pres. Dmitry Medvedev.
(AP, 9/7/09)(AP, 9/20/09)
2009 Sep 7, Yukio Hatoyama, Japan's next prime minister, vowed to slash greenhouse gas emissions by 25% from 1990 levels by 2020.
(AP, 9/7/09)
2009 Sep 7, Mexican President Felipe Calderon accepted the resignation of Attorney General Eduardo Medina-Mora, who was leading the battle against drug cartels, making the biggest shake-up yet in his offensive against organized crime. Calderon said he will send the Senate the nomination of Arturo Chavez, a little known lawyer who has worked as both a state and federal prosecutor, to replace Medina-Mora. In the Pacific port of Lazaro Cardenas, about 150 federal police officers assigned to fight cartels went on strike, saying they have not been paid in two months or received hazard bonuses.
(AP, 9/7/09)(AP, 9/8/09)
2009 Sep 7, Five Pakistani soldiers were killed in a land mine blast in the Taliban bastion of South Waziristan. A suspected US missile strike killed 5 people at Machi Khel village in North Waziristan close to the Afghan border. Al-Qaida operations chief Ilyas Kashmiri, a Pakistani national, was later believed to be among the dead.
(AP, 9/7/09)(SFC, 9/8/09, p.A2)(AP, 9/17/09)
2009 Sep 7, A Sudanese judge convicted Lubna Hussein, a woman journalist, for violating the public indecency law by wearing trousers outdoors and fined her $200, but did not impose a feared flogging penalty. Hussein said she will not pay a penny while still in court custody, wearing the same trousers that had sparked her arrest.
(AP, 9/7/09)
2009 Sep 7, UK-based Global Witness said they had found serious discrepancies in reports of Sudan's oil revenues which could mean Khartoum's government was underpaying its strife torn south by hundreds of millions of dollars.
(Reuters, 9/7/09)
2009 Sep 7, Taiwan's Premier Liu Chao-shiuan resigned amid strong criticism of the government's slow response to the most devastating storm to hit the island in 50 years. Pres. Ma Ying-jeou named Nationalist Party Secretary General Wu Den-yih (61) to replace Liu.
(AP, 9/7/09)
2009 Sep 7, The UN’s Children's Fund reacted furiously to Sri Lanka's decision to expel its spokesman over his allegedly pro-rebel stance in the final stages of the island's ethnic war. James Elder, communications chief for UNICEF in Sri Lanka, was accused by the government of issuing "propaganda" in support of the Tamil Tiger separatists before their defeat at the hands of government forces in May.
(AFP, 9/7/09)
2009 Sep 7, Turkish military police stormed an Istanbul villa to rescue nine captive women whose scantily clad images were posted online after they were recruited for a television reality show. The women had been held captive for about two months. About 14 people had been working on the show for the Istanbul Grup Bilisim Electronic, Trade, Communication and Advertisement company.
(AP, 9/10/09)
2009 Sep 8, Pres. Obama made a speech aired on C-SPAN, addressed to school children encouraging them to study hard and stay in school.
(SFC, 9/9/09, p.A6)
2009 Sep 8, A review committee on NASA, led by Norman Augustine, delivered a summary report saying the agency does not have enough money to return to the moon. The Augustine report also said that NASA should stop traveling to the Int’l. Space Station and to low Earth orbit in general, leaving these to the private sector.
(Econ, 9/12/09, p.87)
2009 Sep 8, Philip Barry (52) of Brooklyn was charged with operating an alleged $40 million Ponzi scheme that stretched for three decades and apparently helped finance a pornography business. He had turned himself in to authorities in August after running the scheme for 31 years. Barry spent a portion of his investors' money on real-estate purchases that he hoped would appreciate. They did not.
(http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2009/09/brooklyns_philip_barry_may_hav.html)
2009 Sep 8, A US District judge in San Francisco sentenced Williams “Boots" Del Biaggio III (41), former co-owner of the San Jose Sharks hockey team, to over 8 years in prison for bilking investors of million of dollars in a series of schemes to help buy a stake in the Nashville Predators professional hockey team and to pay off debts.
(SFC, 9/9/09, p.D3)
2009 Sep 8, The SF Bay Bridge opened as work to fix a crack on the cantilever section of the bridge was fixed ahead of schedule. Cars were allowed to start crossing around 6:30 a.m.
(www.contracostatimes.com/news/ci_13290522?source=rss)
2009 Sep 8, In Connecticut Annie Le (24), a California graduate student at Yale, disappeared after entering a laboratory building. She was due to be married on Sep 13. On Sep 13 police found her body stuffed behind a wall in the high-security laboratory building where she worked. On June 3, 2011, Raymond Clark III was sentenced to 44 years in prison for the murder. In 2016 Yale agreed to pay $3 million to settle a wrongful death lawsuit filed by Le’s family.
(SSFC, 9/13/09, p.A16)(AP, 9/14/09)(SFC, 6/4/11, p.A4)(SFC, 11/22/16, p.A6)
2009 Sep 8, Afghan President Hamid Karzai surpassed for the first time the 50% threshold needed to avoid a run-off in the presidential election, according to preliminary results, but with fraud allegations rising, a UN-backed commission ordered a re-count of tainted ballots. A suicide car bomb exploded outside the gates of the ISAF military airport in Kabul, killing three civilians and wounding nine people, including four foreign soldiers.
(AP, 9/8/09)(AFP, 9/9/09)
2009 Sep 8, In Afghanistan Marine Corporal Dakota Meyer (21) saved the lives of 13 Marines and 23 Afghan soldiers during a 6-hour fight the with Taliban that left 5 other US soldiers dead in Kunar province. Marine Staff Sgt. Juan Rodriguez-Chavez accompanied Meyer. In 2011 the Kentucky farm boy was awarded the US Medal of Honor. For his valor, Rodriguez-Chavez, who hailed originally from Acuna, Mexico, would be awarded the Navy Cross.
(SFC, 9/15/11, p.A12)(AP, 9/15/11)
2009 Sep 8, Across northern Argentina and southern Brazil a violent storm that spawned a tornado and mudslides killed at least 15 people. Dozens were injured in the winds and hail as their homes were destroyed.
(AP, 9/8/09)
2009 Sep 8, The British government said the last remaining armed paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland had pledged to decommission all their weapons within six months. Hours later army experts in Northern Ireland defused a massive roadside bomb, averting what could have been a "devastating" explosion in the long-troubled British province.
(AP, 9/8/09)(AFP, 9/8/09)
2009 Sep 8, A British judge sentenced Neil Lewington (44), a racist who planned to attack people he considered "non-British," to at least six years in jail for terrorist offenses.
(AP, 9/8/09)
2009 Sep 8, Deutsche Telekom AG and France Telecom SA said they intend to combine their British mobile phone units, shaking up the country's intensely competitive market and forming the country's biggest mobile operator. Analysts said Nokia Siemens Networks, the key equipment vendor to British operations of Deutsche Telekom and France Telecom, had most to lose in the merger.
(AP, 9/8/09)(Reuters, 9/8/09)
2009 Sep 8, In central China's Henan province an explosion at an illegal coal mine killed 42 miners and left another 37 men trapped. Elsewhere in Henan province 13 workers were killed in gold mine fire sparked by the severing of electrical wires in a cave-in.
(AP, 9/8/09)(AP, 9/9/09)
2009 Sep 8, Colombia’s President Alvaro Uribe signed legislation calling for a national referendum on amending the constitution to allow him to seek re-election for a second time.
(AP, 9/9/09)
2009 Sep 8, In the Democratic Republic of Congo two Norwegians were sentenced to death by a court for murdering a Congolese man in the northeast of the country in May.
(AFP, 9/8/09)
2009 Sep 8, A security official said Egyptian border guards shot dead four sub-Saharan migrants as they tried to illegally enter Israel.
(AFP, 9/8/09)
2009 Sep 8, The EU said that a member states could be allowed to ban gambling websites if its intention was to stop crime.
(Reuters, 9/8/09)
2009 Sep 8, Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom declared "a state of public calamity" to help mobilize funds and resources to confront a food shortage that will affect thousands of families.
(AP, 9/9/09)
2009 Sep 8, Iranian security forces cracked down on the opposition's campaign to highlight torture and abuse of prisoners in the country's postelection crisis, shutting down offices of pro-reform leaders and arresting five of their aides in a startling series of raids.
(AP, 9/9/09)
2009 Sep 8, In Iraq a roadside bomb killed Lt. Col. Zaid Hussein Khalaf, the head of an anti-terrorism police unit, and four of his bodyguards in the northern town of Armili, home to a large Shiite population. A roadside bomb struck a police patrol near the town of Daqouq, killing two policemen and wounding 3 others. A Health Ministry official escaped an assassination attempt when a roadside bomb hit his convoy in the eastern part of Baghdad, but one ministry employee died in the blast. Roadside bombs killed 4 US soldiers in separate incidents.
(AP, 9/8/09)
2009 Sep 8, Mike Bongiorno (85), called Italy's "Quiz King," died. His big TV break came in the 1950s when he helped popularize the quiz show on Italian pubcaster Rai. One of his biggest hits was "Lascia o Raddoppia?" (Double or quits) the Italian version of "The $64,000 Question."
(www.variety.com/article/VR1118008405.html?categoryid=14&cs=1&nid=2562)
2009 Sep 8, Kenya replaced its police chief on months after human rights groups complained that some his officers killed and raped during the violent aftermath of the disputed December 2007 elections, but activists said more reforms are needed to restore confidence in a notoriously predatory police force.
(AP, 9/8/09)
2009 Sep 8, In Mexico Police a body with both arms cut off was found dumped on a street in the border city of Ciudad Juarez. The court system in southern Tabasco state said rural journalists Roberto Juarez and Lazaro Abreu Tejero Sanchez have been arrested for allegedly working as informants for the Zetas, a gang aligned with the Gulf drug cartel.
(AP, 9/9/09)
2009 Sep 8, In northwest Pakistan Taliban militants attacked a group of boys on their way to school, killing four and wounding three in Orakzai ethnic Pashtun tribal region, because they were minority Shi'ite Muslims. Taliban militants are from the majority Sunni community and attack Shi'ites as part of their strategy to fight the government. Tribesmen retaliated after the attack and killed at least two militants and wounded several. Government aircraft attacked militants in a village, 30 km (20 miles) east of Kalaya, killing six of them and destroying four hideouts. Gunmen kidnapped a Greek man after killing a police guard in the northern Chitral region on the Afghan border.
(Reuters, 9/8/09)
2009 Sep 8, Russia's foreign minister rejected speculation that the Arctic Sea, a hijacked Russian-crewed freighter, was carrying S-300 missiles possibly destined for Iran. A Russian shipping expert and an EU anti-piracy official have speculated that the vessel was carrying a clandestine cargo, possibly S-300 surface-to-air missiles for Iran or Syria.
(AP, 9/8/09)
2009 Sep 8, Somalia graduated its first 500 naval recruits hoping they would form the backbone of the country’s first naval force in nearly two decades. 8 civilians were killed and 31 wounded overnight during clashes pitting insurgents against government and African Union forces in Mogadishu.
(SFC, 9/9/09, p.A2)(AFP, 9/8/09)
2009 Sep 8, Sudanese journalist Lubna Ahmed Hussein, who spent a day in jail for refusing to pay a fine for wearing "indecent trousers," vowed on her release to keep up the battle against the law. The UN’s human rights office said Sudan's conviction Hussein for indecency for wearing trousers violates international law and is emblematic of wider gender discrimination in the Islamic country.
(AFP, 9/8/09)(Reuters, 9/8/09)
2009 Sep 8, The Turkish conglomerate, Dogan Yayin, was slapped with a 3.75 lira ($2.5 billion) fine for allegedly evading taxes in the transfer of assets from one of its companies to another. This followed a $609 million fine levied in February against Aydin Dogan’s conglomerate.
(http://tinyurl.com/mkkebw)(Econ, 9/12/09, p.72)
2009 Sep 8, In northwestern Turkey flash floods triggered by torrential rains killed six people and left swaths of lands awash. At least three people were reported missing.
(AP, 9/8/09)
2009 Sep 8, Uganda’s defense spokesman, Lieutenant Colonel Felix Kulayigye, said Ugandan troops have crossed into the neighboring Central African Republic (CAR) in pursuit of Lord's Resistance Army rebels with Bangui's blessing.
(AFP, 9/8/09)
2009 Sep 8, Yemen’s the Interior Ministry said 4 Yemenis carrying explosives and guns had been arrested near the US embassy in San'a.
(AP, 9/8/09)
2009 Sep 9, President Barack Obama, in a major speech before Congress, promised to overhaul the nation's health care system. Not a single Republican has endorsed any of the plans approved so far by four House and Senate committees. Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., heckled Obama with a shout of “You lie!" regarding Obama’s assertion of no planned medical care to illegal immigrants. Wilson soon apologized but refused to do so on the House floor.
(AP, 9/9/09)(SFC, 9/11/09, p.A18)
2009 Sep 9, The US, Britain, Cyprus, Japan and Singapore signed on to an international plan, the “New York Declaration," to fight piracy off the coast of Somalia. The New York Declaration is an agreement between the signatory flag states which condemns acts of piracy and armed robbery against vessels and seafarers and recognizes that self protection measures taken by vessels can be highly effective in avoiding, delaying and deterring acts of piracy. The nonbinding political document was originally tabled on May 29, 2009.
(SFC, 9/10/09, p.A2)(www.unmultimedia.org/tv/unifeed/d/13476.html)
2009 Sep 9, Lawyers said 3 Chinese Muslims detained at Guantanamo Bay formally accepted an offer to take up new lives in the Pacific island nation of Palau and could be moved there as early as next month.
(AP, 9/10/09)
2009 Sep 9, California Assemblyman Mike Duvall, R-Yorba Linda, resigned after a videotape surfaced of his bragging about sexual exploits with 2 women, one of whom reportedly worked as a lobbyist.
(SFC, 9/10/09, p.A11)
2009 Sep 9, In Afghanistan a suicide bomber blew himself up outside the Camp Bastion NATO base in southern Helmand province, killing at least two Afghan civilians and wounding several foreign and local troops. British commandos freed NY Times reporter Stephen Farrell (46) in a raid on a Taliban hide-out in northern Afghanistan. Farrell and his translator had been taken hostage on Sep 5. A British soldier died during the raid as well as Afghan translator, Sultan Munadi (34) and 2 civilians.
(AFP, 9/9/09)(AP, 9/9/09)
2009 Sep 9, Australia announced that it has launched a war crimes investigation into the 1975 killing of five Australian-based journalists during an attack by Indonesian forces in East Timor.
(AP, 9/9/09)
2009 Sep 9, Colombian customs agents said they seized $11.3 million in cash from a shipping container in the nation's largest cargo port. Ret. Gen. Francisco Pedraza was captured at the installations of the IV Brigade in Medellin, Antioquia. He is being investigated for homicide, forced displacement and terrorism as part of an investigation into the 2001 massacre of at least 26 people in Naya, Cauca state.
(AP, 9/9/09)(AP, 9/10/09)
2009 Sep 9, Dubai’s Sheikh Mohammed al-Maktoum opened the Arabian Peninsula's first metro system, the $7.6 billion project, hoping to capture the world's spotlight on the catchy date of 9/9/09, whether the sleek system is fully ready to go or not.
(AP, 9/9/09)(Econ, 9/12/09, p.52)
2009 Sep 9, In Ecuador Gloria Daniela Lopez, a Los Angeles college student, was stabbed to death in Ambato. Her body was found the next day with her throat slit. A family friend later said she had been decapitated and possibly raped. A local police investigation was said to be stalled because she was American.
(SFC, 10/9/09, p.D5)
2009 Sep 9, Gabon’s opposition claimed that violence in Port-Gentil, Gabon's second city, claimed 15 lives after last week's disputed presidential election, far more than the official toll provided by the government.
(AFP, 9/9/09)
2009 Sep 9, Grenada’s PM Tillman Thomas said Grenada has sold some 100 Venezuelan-built houses at a deep discount to people left homeless by Hurricane Ivan in 2004. Venezuela financed the construction of 120 homes. They were finished three years ago, but electrical inspections delayed their sale. Valued at $92,000 each, the structures were sold for only $2,000, to help cover the cost of the land title transfer. The government selected mostly single mothers who were renting or living with relatives. The unsold structures were planned to be used as shelters for victims of domestic violence and sexual abuse.
(AP, 9/9/09)
2009 Sep 9, In Iraq a car bomb exploded outside a house in the flash point city of Kirkuk, killing eight people inside the building and wounding one. US-backed Iraqi soldiers raided a home in southeastern Baghdad before dawn, killing two men inside and arresting an Iraqi soldier from an intelligence unit. A roadside bomb struck an Iraqi patrol in the Abu Ghraib district, killing one soldier and injuring two others. An Iraqi army colonel was killed by a bomb attached to his car in the insurgent stronghold of Mosul.
(AP, 9/9/09)
2009 Sep 9, In Jamaica John A. Terry (65), Britain’s honorary consul in Montego Bay, was found strangled in bed with a note denouncing him as a homosexual.
(Econ, 9/19/09, p.49)(AP, 10/3/09)
2009 Sep 9, Conservationists said poaching and drought-related hunger have killed more than 100 of Kenya's famous elephants in the north of the country so far this year. Around 23,000 elephants live in Kenya but populations can be devastated by poaching within a couple of years. A recent survey in Chad showed its elephant population had declined from 3,800 to just over 600 in the past three years.
(AP, 9/9/09)
2009 Sep 9, A Malaysian government report said indigenous tribal girls have been sexually abused by loggers in remote jungles on Borneo island, in the first official verification of rape accusations involving timber companies.
(AP, 9/9/09)
2009 Sep 9, In Mexico a Bolivian-born man, clutching a Bible and claiming a divine mission, hijacked a plane with more than 100 people aboard after takeoff from Cancun. The incident ended quickly and without bloodshed when police arrested Jose Flores (44) in Mexico City. Police in Morelia said that they had seized eight counterfeit police and rescue vehicles including an intensive care ambulance with official-looking logos and paint jobs. The vehicles belonged to gang members who planned to use them to conduct illegal activities. In 2011 Josmar Flores was sentenced to seven years, seven months and 15 days in prison.
(Reuters, 9/10/09)(AP, 9/10/09)(AP, 5/19/11)
2009 Sep 9, Salvadoran authorities said they had arrested 4 alleged Mara 18 gang members and a police officer in the Sep 2 slaying of French documentary filmmaker Christian Poveda. The arrested officer was identified as Jose Napoleon Espinoza, an agent assigned to the 911 emergency phone system in Soyapango outside the capital, San Salvador.
(AP, 9/10/09)
2009 Sep 9, In Sierra Leone at least 221 people, including many schoolchildren returning from holidays, remained missing a day after the wooden Teh Teh ferry capsized at sea. 39 people survived. 30 bodies were recovered and all the missing were feared dead.
(AP, 9/10/09)(AP, 9/12/09)
2009 Sep 9, The Dalai Lama received Slovakia's Jan Langos award for his promotion of human rights and his leadership in the nonviolent campaign by Tibetans seeking autonomy from China. The Jan Langos Foundation gives its award to "an outstanding figure of the local defiance against oppressed regimes and their security services" and to civil servants and politicians who "endeavor for human dignity and freedom."
(AP, 9/9/09)
2009 Sep 9, A Somali Islamic court cut off the hands of two men accused of theft and lashed another accused of rape.
(AP, 9/9/09)
2009 Sep 9, In South Korea performers from around the world have gathered on the South Korean island of Jeju for this week's international Delphic Games, popularly known as the "Culture Olympics." The first Delphic Games of the modern era were held in Russia in 2000 and the second in Malaysia in 2005.
(AP, 9/9/09)
2009 Sep 9, Spain’s PM Rodriguez Zapatero told Parliament the 2010 budget would aim to raise overall taxes by 1.5% of GDP in order to help meet demands of the most needy. Unemployment, the worst in Europe, had reached 18% and was still climbing.
(Econ, 9/12/09, p.58)
2009 Sep 9, Thailand's national police chief resigned after being transferred to an inactive post in the wake of an official recommendation that he be prosecuted for his role in a deadly crackdown against anti-government protesters last year.
(AP, 9/9/09)
2009 Sep 9, A teacher (29) in Bangkok, Thailand, was captured on film beating a student (14) and bashing his head against a blackboard. The 50-second clip, filmed by a classmate using a mobile phone, was broadcast Sep 21 on a nationally televised morning news program, sparking national outrage and pledges from education officials to crack down on corporal punishment in classrooms.
(AP, 9/22/09)
2009 Sep 9, In Turkey flash floods roared across a major highway and a commercial district in Istanbul, killing at least 32 people and forcing dozens to scramble onto the roofs of cars and trucks. Some of the dead drowned inside their vehicles.
(Reuters, 9/9/09)(AFP, 9/10/09)
2009 Sep 9, A Uganda army spokesman said government forces have rescued 100 kidnapped children and young adults during an operation against the Lord’s Resistance Army rebel group in neighboring Central African Republic.
(AP, 9/9/09)
2009 Sep 9, Uruguay’s Senate gave final approval for gay and lesbian couples to adopt children, making it the first country in Latin America to do so. The executive branch will decide when the law takes effect.
(SFC, 9/10/09, p.A2)
2009 Sep 9, In Yemen 17 rebels were killed in an air strike, according to a government statement, which said they were caught sneaking through the mountains near Saada. Four men survived the attack and were in custody.
(AP, 9/10/09)
2009 Sep 10, NASA made a successful first test of its Ares I rocket at promontory, Utah. It was created as part of a plan to return to the moon, but a recent panel said there isn’t enough money for the moon project.
(SFC, 9/11/09, p.A13)
2009 Sep 10, GM announced that it agreed to the sale of 55% of Ruesselsheim-based Adam Opel and Vauxhall unit to Canadian auto parts maker Magna International Inc. and Russian lender Sberbank. Detroit-based GM will keep a 35% stake and continue to work with Opel on developing vehicles, sharing technology and engineering resources.
(AP, 9/11/09)
2009 Sep 10, The UN-backed commission investigating fraud in Afghanistan's election issued its first orders to exclude some ballots from the final tally, throwing out votes from 83 polling stations in areas of strong support for President Hamid Karzai. A US service member was killed in an attack on a patrol. Another service member was killed after coming under fire.
(AP, 9/10/09)(AP, 9/11/09)
2009 Sep 10, The African Union joined international condemnation of a new "unity" government named by Madagascar leader Andry Rajoelina who overthrew the recognized president this year.
(AP, 9/11/09)
2009 Sep 10, Australia announced liquefied natural gas (LNG) deals worth up to 60 billion US dollars with Japan and South Korea, raising its status as a major energy supplier.
(AP, 9/10/09)
2009 Sep 10, Guy Laliberte, the Canadian billionaire founder of the Cirque du Soleil, said that he aims to read a statement to the world about the planet's water problems after taking a Russian rocket to the space station. Laliberte and two others will blast off Sep 30 from the Russian space program's Baikonur launch facility in Kazakhstan. He said his reading from space will be part of several shows in 14 cities around the world beginning Oct 9.
(AP, 9/10/09)
2009 Sep 10, Colombia’s police said they have seized $55 million in properties and assets from drug traffickers in a 2 day operation in five cities in Antioquia state and six cities in Cundinamarca state. The assets included shares in a popular soccer team.
(AP, 9/10/09)
2009 Sep 10, A new book, whose title translates as "Hold-Ups, Swindles and Treasons," by French journalists Antonin Andre and Karim Rissouli, hit French stores alleging that a vote last year to elect the leader of France's Socialist Party was rigged, sparking further disarray among the once-mighty champions of the left.
(AP, 9/10/09)
2009 Sep 10, Berlin won Spain's prestigious Prince of Asturias prize for its contribution to promoting peace and harmony.
(AP, 9/10/09)
2009 Sep 10, In India hundreds of students, who were jammed into a narrow New Delhi school staircase, panicked and set off a stampede that left five girls dead and 31 other students injured. Mohammed Shahabuddin, a 12-year old snack vendor, had to have his left leg amputated after Bihar state railway police threw him out of a moving train when he failed to pay them 10 rupees (20 cents) as a bribe. The boy had offered the policemen five rupees, which was all the money he had.
(AP, 9/10/09)(AP, 9/11/09)
2009 Sep 10, In northern Iraq a suicide truck bomber hit the Kurdish village of Wardek before dawn, killing at least 25 people and injuring 50 others, in what appeared to be the latest in a string of attacks targeting Kurds and other ethnic and religious groups in the region. The government of the semiautonomous Kurdish region arrested the head of the provincial intelligence service, Brig. Abdul-Rahman Ali, on accusations he was directly involved in the planning of an Aug. 13 bombing near Mosul. 3 successive bombs exploded at a popular market in the city of Mahmoudiya, killing 4 people and wounding 30. Violence broke out at Abu Ghraib prison and two prisoners were killed.
(AP, 9/10/09)(AP, 9/11/09)
2009 Sep 10, The Japanese space agency successfully launched a new rocket carrying an unmanned cargo ship on a $680 million maiden voyage to the Int’l. Space Station.
(SFC, 9/11/09, p.A9)
2009 Sep 10, Amnesty International issued a new report saying Japan executes mentally ill prisoners, some of whom are driven insane by harsh treatment while on death row.
(AP, 9/10/09)
2009 Sep 10, Lebanese Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri said he is abandoning efforts to form a new government after the Hezbollah-led parliament minority rejected his list for a national unity Cabinet. This forced President Michel Suleiman to start consultations with lawmakers from scratch over naming a new premier.
(AP, 9/10/09)
2009 Sep 10, Mexican defense dept. said soldiers have arrested Michael Escalante (29) of El Paso, suspected of killing 18 people in a series of attacks this year in violence-plagued Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso, Texas.
(AP, 9/10/09)
2009 Sep 10, In northeast Nepal a bus veered off a highway and plunged into a river, killing at least 11 people and leaving about 20 missing and feared dead.
(AP, 9/10/09)
2009 Sep 10, In Russia Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez recognized the pro-Russian rebel regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent states, a rare boost to the Kremlin's campaign for their international acceptance.
(Reuters 9/10/09)
2009 Sep 10, In Uganda at least 7 people were killed in clashes after the government prevented a representative of the traditional ruler of the Buganda kingdom from traveling to a region northeast of the capital for a political rally.
(SFC, 9/11/09, p.A2)
2009 Sep 10, Vietnamese and US scientists wrapped up their annual meetings on Agent Orange, launching a task force to examine health issues in areas where the defoliant was used during the Vietnam War. Vietnam has said 1 million to 4 million of its citizens may have suffered serious health consequences after being exposed to dioxin, a highly toxic element in Agent Orange.
(AP, 9/10/09)
2009 Sep 10, A Yemeni army statement said the government launched a new offensive against Shiite rebels in the north, destroying many of their vehicles and hideouts. The rebels said they have been able to keep the government from entering the northern town of Saada, which has been at the center of the rebellion.
(AP, 9/10/09)
2009 Sep 11, Pres. Obama slapped punitive tariffs on all car and light truck tires entering the US from China as the rising tide of imported tires hurt American producers.
(SFC, 9/12/09, p.A4)
2009 Sep 11, The US said it would accept Iran's offer of wide-ranging talks with major powers despite the Islamic Republic's stated refusal to discuss its nuclear program.
(Reuters, 9/11/09)
2009 Sep 11, In Richmond, Ca., Kaneesha Mallard (19) of Hercules and her boyfriend, Alfred Thomas (20) of Vallejo, were killed by a spray of bullets while parked at the snack shop of a Union 76 gas station.
(SFC, 9/17/09, p.D2)
2009 Sep 11, In Owosso, Michigan, Harlan James Drake (33) killed an abortion protester outside a school along with the owner of a nearby gravel pit.
(SFC, 9/12/09, p.A4)
2009 Sep 11, Jim Carrol (60), poet, addict and author, died in Manhattan following a heart attack. His books included “Basketball Diaries" (1978), which was turned into a 1995 movie. His 1980 song “People who Died" became a punk classic.
(SFC, 9/16/09, p.D5)
2009 Sep 11, Larry Gelbart (b.1928, comedy writer, died in Los Angeles. His work included developing the MASH TV series and co-writing the books for the Broadway musical “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum" and the film “Tootsie." His 1998 memoir was titled “Laughing Matters."
(SFC, 9/12/09, p.A5)
2009 Sep 11, Afghan former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah, the chief challenger to President Hamid Karzai, called for a full investigation of hundreds of reports of fraud in the Aug. 20 presidential contest. 14 civilians were killed Uruzgan province when their vehicle hit a roadside bomb in Churra district. In Kandahar six civilians were killed by an improvised explosive device in the Maiwand district. Four police were killed in Nangarhar when militants attacked a border police checkpoint. In eastern Paktika province, a suicide bomber detonated his explosives in Bermel district. Only the bomber died.
(AP, 9/11/09)(AP, 9/12/09)
2009 Sep 11, A risk consultancy said Australians have overtaken Americans as the world's biggest individual producers of carbon dioxide, which is blamed for global warming. British firm Maplecroft placed Australia's per capita output at 20.58 tons a year, some four percent higher than the United States and top of a list of 185 countries.
(AFP, 9/11/09)
2009 Sep 11, In Belgium the Flemish education board banned religious symbols in all 700 secular state schools under its control.
(Econ, 9/19/09, p.64)
2009 Sep 11, In Chile police and hooded protesters clashed Santiago on the anniversary of the 1973 military coup that toppled elected President Salvador Allende. State television reported one death amid the disturbances.
(AP, 9/12/09)
2009 Sep 11, Chinese officials said mystery needle attacks appeared to spread in China's far western region as authorities arrested nine new suspects in three cities. Since last week, more than 500 people in Urumqi have reported attacks, though only about 100 showed evidence of being pricked.
(AP, 9/11/09)
2009 Sep 11, In Colombia two bombs being carried by donkeys exploded, killing two coca-eradication workers and wounding six soldiers in Norte de Santander state.
(AP, 9/11/09)
2009 Sep 11, In Cuba Juan Almeida Bosque (b.1927), a comrade-in-arms of Fidel Castro since the start of his guerrilla struggle more than a half-century ago, died of a heart attack. Almeida was the only black commander among the rebel leaders.
(AP, 9/12/09)
2009 Sep 11, In Germany 12 officers were injured in late night clashes with left-wing demonstrators in Hamburg following a far-right rally.
(AP, 9/12/09)
2009 Sep 11, Europe's biggest automaker Volkswagen said it planned to invest 4.0 billion euros (5.8 billion dollars) to boost its presence in China over the next three years.
(AP, 9/11/09)
2009 Sep 11, Authorities in Guatemala arrested nine suspects, including five police officers, in the May 10 killing of lawyer Rodrigo Rosenberg, who accused President Alvaro Colom of involvement in his death in a posthumously released video.
(AP, 9/11/09)
2009 Sep 11, In Iraq prison inmates at Abu Ghraib rioted for a 2nd day to demand better conditions. The facility, now under Iraqi control, has been renamed the Baghdad Central Prison.
(SFC, 9/12/09, p.A3)
2009 Sep 11, A Kenyan magistrate sentenced Jon Cardon Wagner, an American who founded a popular chain of coffee shops, to 15 years' imprisonment for the statutory rape of three teenage Kenyan girls. Wagner's lawyer Mohammed Nyaoga said his client is the victim of an extortion racket and will appeal. Nairobi Java House began a culture of gourmet coffee drinking nine years ago and now has eight coffee shops in the capital.
(AP, 9/11/09)
2009 Sep 11, A senior Lebanese military official said two rockets were fired toward Israel from the town of Qlaileh inside Lebanon. Israel responded with a barrage of 14 rockets. No injuries or damage were reported.
(AP, 9/11/09)(SFC, 9/12/09, p.A2)
2009 Sep 11, Malaysian authorities seized a consignment of 10,000 copies of the Bible sent from Jakarta to Kuching in Sarawak state, because the Indonesian-language books contained the word "Allah," a translation that has been banned in this Muslim-majority country. Another 5,100 Bibles, also imported from Indonesia, were reportedly seized in March. Church officials said Allah is not exclusive to Islam but is an Arabic word that predates Islam.
(AP, 10/29/09)
2009 Sep 11, Mexican authorities found at least $5 million hidden in a shipment of ammonium sulfate at a Pacific coast port.
(AP, 9/12/09)
2009 Sep 11, The Pakistani Military said it had arrested the Swat Taliban spokesman Muslim Khan and commanders Mahmood Khan, Fazle Ghaffar, Abdul Rehman and Sartaj Ali in the suburbs of Mingora, striking its first direct blow against the leadership of the insurgency in the one-time tourist resort.
(AP, 9/11/09)
2009 Sep 11, In Peru lawyer Alfredo Crespo announced the publication of a book of manuscripts written in prison by Shining Path rebel leader Abimael Guzman. On Sep 13 the justice minister asked a public prosecutor to file "apology for terrorism" charges against Crespo.
(AP, 9/14/09)
2009 Sep 11, In Somalia mortars slammed into Mogadishu, killing three civilians and at least 12 men at a home for disabled veterans. Nearly a dozen other former soldiers were wounded in the attack.
(AP, 9/12/09)
2009 Sep 11, In South Africa reports on gender testing on running sensation Caster Semenya has determined she has male and female sexual organs. This triggered outrage and dealt a blow to her family, who may have been unaware of the reported condition. There was worry about how the 18-year-old will handle all this. Testing determined that Semenya has internal testes, meaning the runner herself, who was raised in a poor village, may have been unaware of such a condition. The condition is generally referred to as intersexuality. The older term for someone who has both male and female organs is hermaphrodite.
(AP, 9/11/09)
2009 Sep 11, South Africa and the European Union started a summit expected to be dominated by calls from African nations for sanctions against Zimbabwe to be lifted.
(AP, 9/11/09)
2009 Sep 11, Spain's government agreed to send 220 more troops to Afghanistan, raising the total to about 1,000.
(AP, 9/11/09)
2009 Sep 11, In Spain Venezuela’s Pres. Chavez paid a brief courtesy call on King Juan Carlos and met briefly with PM Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero to discuss energy issues and Spanish investment in oil-rich Venezuela.
(AP, 9/11/09)
2009 Sep 11, Sri Lankan authorities sent home nearly 10,000 war refugees amid growing international concern for the nearly 300,000 Tamil civilians still detained in government-run camps.
(AP, 9/11/09)
2009 Sep 11, A Taiwan court sentenced ex-president Chen Shui-bian (58) to life in jail after a corruption trial he claims was political revenge for his lifelong push to declare independence from China. The court also handed a life term to his wheelchair-bound wife Wu Shu-chen.
(AFP, 9/11/09)
2009 Sep 11, In Uganda 3 people including a child were shot dead in rioting in Kampala. Clashes began on Sep 10 after the government prevented a representative of the traditional ruler of the Buganda kingdom from traveling to a region northeast of the capital for a political rally. The overall death toll from the unrest rose to at least 24 following deaths in hospitals.
(AP, 9/11/09)(AP, 9/12/09)(AP, 9/14/09)(Econ, 9/19/09, p.59)
2009 Sep 11, Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez returned home from a world tour. He said he has signed military agreements with Russia and is soon expecting the arrival of some "little rockets," which reach up to 186 miles (300km) and are strictly for defense purposes.
(AP, 9/12/09)
2009 Sep 11, In Vietnam the Canadian environmental firm Hatfield Consultants said new environmental tests confirm extremely high levels of dioxin, the toxic ingredient of Agent Orange, in people, fish and soil near Danang airport, a former US air base where American troops stored the herbicide during the Vietnam War.
(AP, 9/11/09)
2009 Sep 12, Researchers reported finding dangerous methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) bacteria in sand and water for the first time at five public beaches along the coast of Washington state.
(AP, 9/12/09)
2009 Sep 12, William E. Sparkman (51), a US census worker, was found bound with duct tape and a rope around his neck near a cemetery in Clay County in a remote patch of Kentucky’s Daniel Boone National Forest. The word "fed" was scrawled on his chest. The area where Sparkman was found has a history of problems with prescription drug and methamphetamine trading. State police later said evidence at the death scene indicated that it was staged as a murder and that Sparkman had committed suicide.
(AP, 9/24/09)(SFC, 11/25/09, p.A4)
2009 Sep 12, Dr. Norman Borlaug (b.1914), Nobel Prize winner (1970), died at his Dallas home. He was known as the father of the “green revolution" for his work in high-yield crop varieties, which helped to more than double food production between 1960 and 1990.
(SFC, 9/14/09, p.A7)
2009 Sep 12, Christopher Kelly (51), former chief fundraiser for ousted Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, died in Chicago after being found slumped over in his car the previous evening. An overdose of drugs was suspected. Kelly faced at least 8 years in prison after pleading guilty to fraud charges in 2 separate cases.
(SFC, 9/14/09, p.A4)
2009 Sep 12, In Afghanistan a Taliban ambush killed six private security guards working for a construction company in the eastern province of Kunar. In Khost province a suspected militant rocket attack killed three civilians in Sabari district. In Kandahar 3 suicide bombers tried to attack an office of the country's intelligence agency. Officers and the bombers traded gunfire. One bomber blew himself up and killed an intelligence officer, while the other bombers’ explosives went off but didn't kill anyone. Coalition and Afghan forces killed 11 militants during an overnight raid in northern Kunduz province. In Kunduz province a turncoat policeman poisoned 8 other officers at a guard post, killed his commander and called in the Taliban who beheaded or shot 7 other policemen. A roadside bomb killed two US troops in the east. In western Afghanistan 3 US soldiers were killed following a roadside bomb attack and small arms fire. Altogether 50 civilians, security forces and militants were killed in the spate of attacks, including 20 noncombatants killed in two roadside bomb explosions. In western Farah province a battle that included airstrikes killed about 50 Taliban militants after an insurgent ambush left 3 US troops and 7 Afghan soldiers dead.
(AP, 9/12/09)(AP, 9/13/09)(SSFC, 9/13/09, p.A4)(SFC, 9/14/09, p.A2)
2009 Sep 12, Australia intercepted a boat carrying 83 suspected asylum seekers off its northwest coast after it was spotted from the air by a military patrol plane. Later in the day the Australian navy intercepted a suspected people-smuggling boat carrying 65 asylum seekers off the country's northwest coast.
(AFP, 9/12/09)(AFP, 9/13/09)
2009 Sep 12, President Evo Morales said Bolivia has decided to buy a presidential plane from Russia after Moscow offered to set up an aircraft maintenance center in the South American nation. Defense Minister Walker San Miguel announced in early August that Bolivia had agreed to purchase an Antonov presidential plane with satellite phone, Internet links and a meeting room from Russia for $30 million.
(AP, 9/12/09)
2009 Sep 12, In Chechnya three police were wounded when a suicide bomber blew himself up in Grozny. An alleged militant was killed in a separate incident in Chechnya.
(AP, 9/12/09)
2009 Sep 12, China decried a US decision to impose added duty on Chinese-made tires, saying the move sent a dangerous protectionist signal before a G20 summit and could stoke reactions impeding global recovery. The tire duty was the first time Washington has applied special "safeguard" provisions Beijing agreed to before joining the WTO in 2001.
(Reuters, 9/12/09)
2009 Sep 12, A court in western China's Xinjiang region sentenced three people to up to 15 years in prison in the first trials over a series of mysterious syringe attacks that led to mass protests against the local government. In eastern China 3 people died and an additional 17 required medical treatment after they were exposed to bags of a toxic chemical illegally dumped by a factory in Dongyang.
(AP, 9/12/09)(AP, 9/16/09)
2009 Sep 12, Costa Rican authorities detained 54 US-bound migrants from Africa and Nepal after their boat arrived on the country's coast. Authorities also took into custody three suspected Colombian smugglers who were traveling with them.
(AP, 9/13/09)
2009 Sep 12, In Dagestan security forces besieged a home and killed four alleged militants.
(AP, 9/12/09)
2009 Sep 12, Willy Ronis (99), the last of the great French photographers, died. Lovers, nudes and scenes from Paris streets were the mainstay of Ronis' photographs in an award-winning career that began in the 1930s.
(AP, 9/12/09)
2009 Sep 12, In Iraq 2 bombs exploded moments apart near the tomb of a revered Shiite religious figure in central Baghdad, killing three people and wounding 22. A bomb attached to a civilian car exploded in the northwest of Baghdad, killing the driver and wounding two passengers. 4 people were killed by a roadside bomb in Diyala province. In the northern city of Mosul, a roadside bomb went off near an Iraqi army patrol, prompting soldiers to open fire to scare off any attackers. A stray bullet from the shooting killed a traffic policeman.
(AP, 9/12/09)
2009 Sep 12, In Indian-administered Kashmir suspected Islamic militants set off a powerful bomb blast killing three people and wounding at least seven others.
(AP, 9/12/09)
2009 Sep 12, In Lebanon Salah Ezzedine (47), a Shiite businessman with connections to Hezbollah, and his partner Youssef Faour were arrested on suspicion of cheating investors of hundreds of millions of dollars. They charged with fraudulent embezzlement.
(www.nytimes.com/2009/09/16/world/middleeast/16lebanon.html?_r=3&ref=world)
2009 Sep 12, Mexican police said they have found the bodies of five men dumped in a landfill near the resort city of Acapulco. The men had been shot to death and officers found a note with the bodies signed "The boss of bosses."
(AP, 9/12/09)
2009 Sep 12, In Pakistan paramilitary troops destroyed three militant hide-outs and killed 22 insurgents. Officials said hundreds of tribal police in the northwestern Khyber region have quit their jobs because of militant threats.
(AP, 9/12/09)
2009 Sep 12, Uganda’s army killed five rebels in the CAR, including Arit Santos, a commander of the LRA insurgent group. Soldiers also seized 24 sub-machineguns, several rounds of ammunition, medicine and laptop computers in the operation.
(AFP, 9/14/09)
2009 Sep 12, In Venezuela opposition Mayor Lluvane Alvarez was shot by unidentified assailants as he entered his home in western Tachira state, which is plagued by crime related to drug trafficking and other illicit activities.
(AP, 9/12/09)
2009 Sep 12, Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe welcomed the first top-level European Union delegation to visit in seven years with "open arms" and said talks on implementing a power-sharing deal went well.
(Reuters, 9/12/09)
2009 Sep 13, Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden described President Barack Obama as "powerless" to stop the war in Afghanistan and threatened to step up guerrilla warfare there in a new audiotape released to mark the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks in the US.
(AP, 9/14/09)
2009 Sep 13, It was reported that the hoki fish, harvested in the deep waters around New Zealand, had declined substantially. Hoki, the main ingredient in McDonald’s Fillet-O-Fish sandwich, was also used by Denny’s and Long John Silver’s restaurants. From 1996 to 2001 some 275,000 tons were harvested by factory trawlers. The allowed catch was reduced to 100,000 tons in 2007 and 2008.
(SSFC, 9/13/09, p.A20)
2009 Sep 13, The Afghan health ministry said it has so far recorded 673 cases of cholera countrywide in almost a third of the country's 34 provinces, including Kabul. No deaths have been reported. A British soldier was killed in an attack on a foot patrol in Helmand province. A 2nd NATO service member died in a bomb blast in the south.
(AFP, 9/13/09)(AP, 9/14/09)
2009 Sep 13, Bolivia's Pres. Evo Morales began a visit to Spain. His plans to nationalize Bolivia’s electricity sector and how this might affect Spanish companies will be among the top items on his agenda.
(AP, 9/14/09)
2009 Sep 13, In southern Democratic Republic of Congo at least 14 people were dead and another 34 missing after their boat sank in an isolated stretch of the Lualaba river.
(Reuters, 9/14/09)
2009 Sep 13, In Hong Kong a construction platform inside an elevator shaft collapsed, sending 5 workers 20 stories down to their deaths inside a skyscraper. One worker was injured.
(AP, 9/13/09)
2009 Sep 13, In Iraq gunmen broke into the home of a Kurdish policeman in Kirkuk, killing his wife and three children execution-style with shots to the head as they slept. Two separate police patrols were hit with roadside bombs in southern Kirkuk, wounding six policemen. Four people were killed in an area about 60 miles (100km) south of Mosul in a tribal dispute. A civilian contractor was shot and killed on an American military base in Tikrit. A US soldier was detained in connection with the incident. US and Iraqi forces killed one fighter, captured another and seized a truck loaded with weapons in Mosul, an area of that remains an insurgent stronghold. Later Iraqi policemen searching for the gunman who escaped clashed with insurgents. Two policemen and two insurgents were killed.
(AP, 9/13/09)(AP, 9/14/09)
2009 Sep 13, In Israel Capt. Asaf Ramon (21), the son of Ilan Ramon, Israel's first and only astronaut, was killed when his F-16 warplane crashed on a routine training flight. Ilan Ramon was one of seven crew members killed when the Columbia exploded as it re-entered the atmosphere in 2003.
(AP, 9/14/09)
2009 Sep 13, In southeast Kazakhstan 37 people were killed when a fire ripped through a decrepit drugs treatment facility in Taldykorgan.
(AFP, 9/13/09)
2009 Sep 13, In Pakistan a bomb blast killed 3 paramilitary troops in the Mandiknas area of the Khyber region. A suicide bomber was killed as he tried to attack a security post in the Swat Valley.
(SFC, 9/14/09, p.A2)
2009 Sep 13, In central Russia 5 soldiers died in a fire at a military base in Tambov. A state news report said the blaze may have destroyed sensitive security documents.
(SFC, 9/14/09, p.A2)
2009 Sep 13, In southern Thailand suspected Muslim insurgents shot and killed five paramilitary troops in Yala province.
(AP, 9/14/09)
2009 Sep 13, Venezuela’s Pres. Chavez said Russia has opened a $2.2 billion line of credit for Venezuela to purchase weapons including armored vehicles and surface-to-air missiles.
(AP, 9/14/09)
2009 Sep 13, Zimbabwe's PM Morgan Tsvangirai accused President Robert Mugabe of violating a fledgling power-sharing deal. The EU said ties with Zimbabwe would only normalize once a unity accord is properly implemented, but pledged a further 90 million euro this year to assist the troubled nation.
(AFP, 9/13/09)
2009 Sep 14, The US attended its first formal meeting of the UN Human Rights Council, saying it will try to promote dialogue at a body it once avoided and heavily criticized.
(AP, 9/14/09)
2009 Sep 14, Google rolled out Fast Flip, which lets users scroll through the contents of online newspapers in much the same way as they leaf through pages in print.
(www.nytimes.com/2009/09/15/technology/internet/15google.html)(Econ, 9/19/09, p.74)
2009 Sep 14, Jody Powell (65), former White House press secretary for Jimmy Carter (1977-1981, died of a heart attack at his home in Maryland.
(SFC, 9/15/09, p.C4)
2009 Sep 14, Patrick Swayze (57), actor, died from pancreatic cancer in Los Angeles. He personified a particular kind of masculine grace both on and off screen, from his roles in films like "Dirty Dancing" and "Ghost" to the way he carried himself in his long fight with cancer.
(AP, 9/15/09)
2009 Sep 14, Afghan and foreign forces killed 27 Taliban militants in gunfights and an air strike in a rebel stronghold of Kandahar province. A Taliban spokesman said four militants were killed and five civilians died in the crossfire.
(AFP, 9/15/09)
2009 Sep 14, In Australia energy giants Chevron, Shell and ExxonMobil agreed to develop the massive Gorgon field, giving the final go-ahead to a liquefied natural gas (LNG) project worth hundreds of billions of dollars.
(AP, 9/14/09)
2009 Sep 14, The leaders of Brazil and Guyana met to inaugurate the $5 million Takutu River Bridge, that is expected to boost trade between Brazil and the Caribbean. Traffic began crossing the bridge nearly two months ago but today’s ceremony was billed as its formal commissioning.
(AP, 9/15/09)
2009 Sep 14, A British judge sentenced Abdulla Ahmed Ali (28), the ringleader of a plot to bring down trans-Atlantic planes with liquid explosives, to at least 40 years in jail and three fellow British Muslims to long prison sentences.
(AP, 9/14/09)
2009 Sep 14, China filed a WTO complaint over new US tariffs on Chinese tires, stepping up pressure on Washington in the latest in a series of trade disputes.
(AP, 9/14/09)
2009 Sep 14, China broke ground on its fourth space center. The new port on the southern island province of Hainan, slated to go into use in 2013, highlights the country's soaring space ambitions six years after it sent its first man into orbit.
(AP, 9/14/09)
2009 Sep 14, France Telecom SA summoned all 20,000 of its managers to a conference call in an effort to respond to a string of 23 employee suicides that unions blame partly on layoffs and restructuring at the telecommunications giant.
(AP, 9/14/09)
2009 Sep 14, In Germany Siegfried Wolf, the co-chief executive of Magna International Inc., said as many as 10,500 Opel jobs in Europe could be cut, including nearly half of them in Germany. Opel employs some 49,000 workers in Europe and has plants in Germany, Spain, Britain, Poland and Germany.
(AP, 9/14/09)
2009 Sep 14, In Indonesia expanded Islamic law was passed by the regional parliament in Aceh province. One key article regarding adultery threatened 100 cane lashes for the unmarried and stoning to death for those who are married.
(AP, 9/14/09)
2009 Sep 14, In Iran authorities arrested at least 7 children and grandchildren of senior clerics in Qom in fresh pressure on religious leaders who sympathize with the opposition.
(SFC, 9/16/09, p.A5)
2009 Sep 14, In Mexico 31 police officers were arrested in Hidalgo state on suspicion of collaborating with the Zetas, a gang of drug cartel hit men. 92 police were arrested there in June. Gunmen opened fire inside a Ciudad Juarez hardware store, killing the woman who owned the store and four other people, including a 19-year-old man. Minutes later an armed gang killed five men riding in a pickup truck.
(AP, 9/14/09)(AP, 9/16/09)
2009 Sep 14, Norway's left-leaning government faced a splintered opposition in an election focused on how to manage the Nordic nation's soaring oil wealth and seal cracks in its welfare system. Jens Stoltenberg's Labor-led coalition won 86 seats to keep a slim majority in the 169-seat Parliament after using oil money to shield the welfare state from the global recession.
(AP, 9/14/09)(AP, 9/15/09)
2009 Sep 14, In Pakistan at least 18 women and girls were killed in a stampede which broke out as charity workers were handing out free flour to the poor in a crowded neighborhood of Pakistan's financial capital Karachi.
(AP, 9/15/09)
2009 Sep 14, In Pakistan a US missile slammed into a car at dawn, killing up to five militants in the remote tribal belt near the Afghan border in the third attack in a week. Nazimuddin, alias Yahyo, a top Uzbek militant, was believed to be among the dead. Burqa-clad assailants armed with Kalashnikov rifles and hand grenades attempted to attack an oil terminal in Karachi, but were thwarted by a security guard who was gunned down as the suspects escaped. Police later found a large cache of rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs), explosives, suicide vests, burqas and other items apparently dumped by the suspects near a sewer in the area. Fighter jets pounded suspected militant hide-outs and killed five insurgents in the Salarzai area of the northwest Bajur tribal region.
(AP, 9/15/09)(AFP, 9/14/09)(AP, 9/15/09)(AP, 9/17/09)
2009 Sep 14, Finance Minister Diana Dragutinovic said Serbia will have to lay off about one-fifth of its government employees, 14,000 people, to meet conditions set by the International Monetary Fund to receive more financial aid. A trade union representing state employees has already announced strikes if the layoffs are carried out.
(AP, 9/14/09)
2009 Sep 14, In southern Somalia foreign troops firing from 6 helicopters killed two people in a car and then took two others captive in an insurgent-held village near Barawe. Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan (30), a Kenyan citizen and one of Africa's most wanted al-Qaida suspects, was one of the dead. He was wanted for questioning in connection with the car bombing of a beach resort in Kenya and the near simultaneous attempt to shoot down an Israeli airliner in 2002. Forces from the US Joint Special Operations Command were involved in the raid.
(AP, 9/14/09)(AP, 9/15/09)
2009 Sep 14, The Saudi Interior Ministry said on Jan 18, 2010, that an investigation has shown that three Saudi militants were killed in a Sept. 14 blast outside the country [see Afghanistan and Pakistan Sep 14, 2009].
(AP, 1/18/10)
2009 Sep 14, Vietnamese scholars disbanded the Institute of Development Studies, the country's first independent think tank, to protest a government decree, effective Sep 15, restricting the right to conduct and publish research.
(AP, 9/15/09)
2009 Sep 15, The Obama administration embraced cloud computing to help reduce government waste and ease environmental impact.
(SFC, 9/16/09, p.C1)
2009 Sep 15, California’s Gov. Schwarzenegger signed an executive order mandating that the state Air Resources Board create a regulation requiring that 1/3 of energy sold by utility companies in the state over the next decade come from renewable sources.
(SFC, 9/16/09, p.A16)
2009 Sep 15, In California a juice sucking grapevine moth, known as Lobesia botrana, was first detected in the Oakville area of Napa County. In March, 2010, the California Dept. of Food and Agriculture quarantined 162 square miles of land in the area to halt the infestation.
(SFC, 3/12/10, p.A1)
2009 Sep 15, In northern Afghanistan a mass grave was unearthed in Ali Abad district of Kunduz province, containing at least 20 bodies believed to date from the Soviet-backed government era. During Soviet-backed rule in the late 1970s, a group of 35 people were arrested in Ali Abad district and were never heard of again.
(AFP, 9/15/09)
2009 Sep 15, Australia announced shock plans to break up dominant telecommunications player Telstra to boost competition as it presses ahead with a 37 billion US dollar national broadband network.
(AP, 9/15/09)
2009 Sep 15, The Frankfurt auto show opened. The French company Renault unveiled a lineup that includes a purely electric sedan, without a backup internal combustion engine. Renault says the vehicle will be in showrooms by 2011.
(www.nytimes.com/2009/09/14/automobiles/14electric.html)(Econ, 10/17/09, p.74)
2009 Sep 15, In Guatemala the bullet-ridden bodies of eight men suspected to be drug traffickers were found in a frontier town near the Mexican border.
(AP, 9/16/09)
2009 Sep 15, Muntadhar al-Zeidi (30), the Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at former President George W. Bush, was released after nine months in prison and in a defiant address, he accused Iraqi security forces of torturing him with beatings, whippings and electric shocks. 3 rockets were fired at Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone, where visiting Vice President Joe Biden was spending the night. A fourth rocket fell short and hit a residential building, killing two and injuring five others. US-Iraqi forces arrested three militants suspected of firing the rockets.
(AP, 9/15/09)(AP, 9/16/09)
2009 Sep 15, Israeli and Palestinian activists presented the most detailed vision yet of what a peace deal could look like. It included more than 400 pages crammed with maps, timetables for troop withdrawals and even a list of weapons a non-militarized Palestine would be barred from having. The UN Goldstone Commission accused Israel of having deliberately committed war crimes during its 3-week attack on Gaza in January.
(AP, 9/15/09)(Econ, 9/19/09, p.14)
2009 Sep 15, In Kenya clashes between the Samburu and Pokot tribes killed 24 people and wounded dozens as the country's scorching drought exacerbates tensions over land and water in the arid north.
(AP, 9/15/09)
2009 Sep 15, Lithuanian lawmakers ousted their speaker in a no-confidence vote after he was accused of links to an organized crime syndicate in the Baltic state. Arunas Valinskas (42), a former showbiz personality who took the political stage in last year's parliamentary election, denied any wrongdoing and said he was the victim of a political vendetta by former party allies, among others.
(AP, 9/15/09)
2009 Sep 15, In Mexico firefighters found six bodies inside a burning car in Tijuana. In Ciudad Juarez gunmen killed five people at a car wash. Gunmen burst into a drug treatment center in Ciudad Juarez and shot to death 10 people, the second such mass killing this month.
(AP, 9/16/09)(AP, 9/16/09)
2009 Sep 15, In the Netherlands the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal announced it has approved the early release from prison of former Bosnian Serb President Biljana Plavsic (79) after she served two-thirds of her 11-year sentence for persecution.
(AP, 9/15/09)
2009 Sep 15, Norway's PM Jens Stoltenberg (50) said fighting climate change would be a priority in his 2nd term after his left-leaning government beat a splintered opposition to win re-election.
(AP, 9/15/09)
2009 Sep 15, In Puerto Rico several employees of American Airlines were among a group of at least 20 people arrested on suspicion of aiding a smuggling ring that shipped drugs from Puerto Rico's main airport to the US mainland.
(AP, 9/15/09)
2009 Sep 15, Russian news agencies said the country's coast guard warned that it will detain Georgian ships entering the territorial waters of Abkhazia. Viktor Turfanov, the head of the coastal division of the border guards service, said that Georgia this year has intercepted more than 20 ships in Abkhazian waters.
(AP, 9/15/09)
2009 Sep 15, In Turkey security talks failed over Syria's refusal to extradite some suspects accused of deadly bombings in Baghdad. Senior Iraqi and Syrian diplomats attended the talks.
(AP, 9/16/09)
2009 Sep 15, The UN refugee agency said 16 African migrants have died and another 49 were missing and presumed dead after trying to cross the Gulf of Aden in three boats. One boat reached Yemen on Sep 13, one had capsized on Sep 13 and one sank on Sep 14.
(AP, 9/15/09)
2009 Sep 16, Sen. Max Baucus brought out the much-awaited Senate Finance Committee version of an American health-system remake, a landmark $856 billion, 10-year measure that starts a rough ride through Congress without visible Republican backing. The 6 committee members received an average $74,600 from health industry lobbyists through June. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, led the group with $223,600. Baucus, D-Montana, was 2nd with $141,000.
(AP, 9/16/09)(SSFC, 9/20/09, p.A1)
2009 Sep 16, In Pennsylvania Andrew Mogilyansky, a wealthy Russian-American car exporter from suburban Philadelphia, was sentenced to 8 years in prison for procuring girls from a Russian orphanage to have sex with them.
(SFC, 9/17/09, p.A7)
2009 Sep 16, Melvin Simon (b.1926), co-owner with brother Herb of the Indiana Pacers basketball franchise and chairman emeritus of Simon Property Group Inc., the nation’s largest owner of retail real estate, died. A few months before his death he signed a controversial will that excluded a son and 2 sisters in favor of his 2nd wife.
(www.ibj.com/community-icon-melvin-simon-dies-at-83/PARAMS/article/7094)
2009 Sep 16, Afghanistan's election commission released preliminary vote totals showing President Hamid Karzai with 54.6 percent of the vote in the first full results to be released since the country's Aug. 20 election. A UN-backed group investigating fraud has ordered a massive audit and recount of about 10 percent of the country's voting stations. A NATO service member died from a bomb strike in the south.
(AP, 9/16/09)(AP, 9/17/09)
2009 Sep 16, Brazil’s JBS Friboi company announced that Texas-based chicken processor Pilgrim’s Pride has agreed to be taken over for $800 million. This and a pending acquisition with Bertin, another Brazilian firm, would make JBS the world’s largest processor of meat.
(Econ, 10/31/09, p.74)(http://tinyurl.com/yb7czq9)
2009 Sep 16, In Bulgaria Sport Minister Svilen Neikov ordered a probe after the numbers 4, 15, 23, 24, 35 and 42 were selected by a machine, in a different order, on consecutive draws televised live on Sept. 6 and Sept. 10. No one won the Sept. 6 draw, but 18 people guessed correctly in the Sept. 10 contest and each received 10,164 leva ($7,585, euro5,150) in prize money.
(AP, 9/17/09)
2009 Sep 16, In Chechnya a suicide bomber wounded six police officers in Grozny.
(AP, 9/16/09)
2009 Sep 16, The European Parliament gave Jose Manuel Barroso another five-year term as European Commission president, but its vote reflected lingering misgivings about the conservative ex-Portuguese premier.
(AP, 9/16/09)
2009 Sep 16, Hungary said it will accept a detainee from Guantanamo Bay, inching President Barack Obama closer to his pledge to close the U.S. military detention center.
(AP, 9/16/09)
2009 Sep 16, In Iraq the US military closed Camp Bucca, an isolated desert prison that was once its largest lockup in Iraq, as it moved to release thousands of detainees or transfer them to Iraqi custody before the end of the year. American Marines shot and wounded an Iraqi man in the former flashpoint city of Fallujah believing he was throwing a grenade at them. Local police and witnesses said the object was only the man's slipper. Al-Jumaili, a 30-year-old auto mechanic, said he ran after throwing his slipper, but was slowed after a bullet grazed his leg.
(AP, 9/16/09)(AP, 9/17/09)
2009 Sep 16, Israel rejected UN calls to open an independent inquiry into its conduct in last winter's Gaza Strip war and said it would launch a diplomatic offensive to block any attempt to bring its soldiers before an international war crimes tribunal. The Goldstone Commission report had concluded that Israel committed actions amounting to war crimes during its December incursion into Gaza. It also concluded that there was evidence that Palestinian armed groups had committed war crimes against humanity.
(AP, 9/16/09)(SSFC, 9/20/09, p.A20)
2009 Sep 16, Japan opposition leader Yukio Hatoyama took office as prime minister, naming a new Cabinet and vowing to rebuild the economy and refocus Japan's place on the world stage with his largely untested party. Japan’s debt was almost 200% of GDP. Shizuka Kamei, founder of the People’s New Party (PNP) (2005), took office as the new minister for financial and postal services.
(AP, 9/16/09)(Econ, 9/5/09, p.69)(Econ, 9/26/09, p.88)
2009 Sep 16, Kenyan government trucks took 1,500 slum residents to new homes as part of a UN-backed plan to eliminate the shantytowns that house more than half the capital's population.
(AP, 9/16/09)
2009 Sep 16, Liberia's parliament approved a new law to crack down on narco trafficking amid concerns that druglords want to turn the west African nation into a transit point.
(AFP, 9/16/09)
2009 Sep 16, Mexican navy personnel arrested of a suspect in the June 1 kidnapping of Francisco Serrano, the customs administrator for the Gulf coast state of Veracruz, who remains missing. Jose Osiris was captured in the port of Veracruz along with 10 other people who may have been accomplices. Guerrero state police reported they had found the decomposed bodies of four men by the side of a highway. Because of their poor condition, the cause of death and identity of the bodies has not yet been established.
(AP, 9/17/09)
2009 Sep 16, Nigerian militants (MEND) announced they will extend a cease-fire that expired overnight by one month, holding off on attacks on oil installations and kidnapping foreigners, but warned that the government must address the group's grievances.
(AP, 9/16/09)
2009 Sep 16, Russia’s Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said Russia has reached a settlement with Bank of New York Mellon over a $22.5 billion lawsuit against the bank stemming from a 1990s money laundering scheme by one of its executives. Russia would receive no less than $14 million for court costs under the long-anticipated, out-of-court deal. The government would also get a $4 billion discounted loan from the bank, an "act of goodwill." The two-year court case stems from a decade-old scandal in which a Bank of NY vice president and her husband were convicted of illegally wiring $7.5 billion of Russian money into accounts at the bank.
(AP, 9/16/09)
2009 Sep 16, Syrian President Bashar Assad met with Turkey's PM Erdogan in Istanbul to discuss ways to revive the stalled peace process between Syria and Israel, a day after security talks with Iraq collapsed.
(AP, 9/16/09)
2009 Sep 16, In Venezuela the collision of a truck carrying chlorine gas and a cargo vehicle killed nine people and provoking breathing problems in 326 others.
(AP, 9/17/09)
2009 Sep 16, Yemeni warplanes hit a makeshift camp for civilians fleeing fighting between the government and Shiite rebels. Nearly 87 civilians were killed as government warplanes hit a camp of people fleeing fighting in the northern region of Saada.
(AP, 9/16/09)(SFC, 9/18/09, p.A2)
2009 Sep 17, Pres. Obama said he is abandoning Bush-era plans for a long-range missile defense system based in Poland and the Czech Rep. Czechs and Poles expressed rancor and relief that Obama was scrapping plans for the US missile defense shield on their territories, reflecting deep divisions over a proposal that had angered Russia.
(AP, 9/17/09)(SFC, 9/18/09, p.A7)
2009 Sep 17, In Connecticut Raymond Clark III (24) was arrested at a hotel and charged with murdering Annie Le (24), whose body was found on Sep 13, stuffed in the wall of a research building at Yale on what would have been her wedding day. On March 17, 2011, Clark pleaded guilty to killing Le and faced 44 years in prison.
(AP, 9/17/09)(SFC, 3/18/11, p.A4)
2009 Sep 17, In Washington state Phillip Arnold Paul (47), a criminally insane killer, escaped during a field trip to the Spokane County Fair that his mental hospital organized. Paul was committed after he was acquitted by reason of insanity in the 1987 slaying of an elderly woman, whose body he soaked in gasoline to throw off search dogs. Paul was re-captured on Sep 20.
(AP, 9/19/09)(SFC, 9/21/09, p.A6)
2009 Sep 17, In Kabul, Afghanistan, a suicide bomber rammed a car packed with explosives into two Italian military vehicles killing six of those aboard and wounding four. 10 Afghan civilians were also killed. A US service member and a Canadian soldier died in separate roadside bomb explosions in the south.
(AP, 9/17/09)(AP, 9/18/09)
2009 Sep 17, Brixton, England, officially launched Brixton pounds (B£), a local currency fixed at a one-to-one exchange rate with sterling. It aimed to boost the local economy and build a mutual support system amongst independent businesses.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brixton#Brixton_Pound)(Econ, 1/7/17, p.56)
2009 Sep 17, In London the musical play “Enron," written by Lucy Prebble, opened at the Royal Court Theater.
(Econ, 10/10/09, p.90)
2009 Sep 17, In Britain the Communication Workers Union called for a national walkout following a rolling program of local postal strikes that began in July. The strikes over higher pay and job security have already caused a backlog of 20 million letters and parcels, about a quarter of the Royal Mail's daily volume.
(AP, 9/17/09)
2009 Sep 17, Chinese state media said nine people have been killed and nine others are missing after Typhoon Koppu roared into the southern province of Guangdong. A knife-wielding man stabbed two guards to death and wounded 14 near Beijing's Tiananmen Square. The attacker, a 46-year-old man, was drunk at the time.
(AP, 9/17/09)(AP, 9/19/09)
2009 Sep 17, In China a knife-wielding man stabbed two guards to death and wounded 14 near Beijing's Tiananmen Square. The attacker, a 46-year-old man, was drunk at the time.
(AP, 9/19/09)
2009 Sep 17, An Egyptian judge convicted two American couples of human trafficking in an illegal adoptions case and sentenced them to two years in prison. The trial highlighted bureaucratic entanglements and murky legislation on adopting children in the predominantly Muslim country.
(AP, 9/17/09)
2009 Sep 17, In southern Germany an 18-year-old student armed with an ax and knives lobbed Molotov cocktails at his Carolinum High School in the Bavarian town of Ansbach, wounding eight pupils and a teacher before he was shot and arrested by police. In 2010 the student, identified as Georg R, was convicted of 47 counts of attempted murder and order to 9 years in youth detention and psychiatric care.
(AP, 9/17/09)(AP, 4/29/10)
2009 Sep 17, Armed Indonesian police stormed an Islamic militant hideout in a raid that killed fugitive terror mastermind Noordin Mohammed Top (41) and 3 other militants in central Java. Putri Munawaroh (21) was wounded and arrested after police raided her house, sparking the gunbattle. In 2010 she was sentenced to 3 years in prison for harboring terrorists.
(AFP, 9/17/09)(AP, 7/29/10)
2009 Sep 17, Myanmar's junta announced amnesty to 7,114 convicts at prisons across the country, but it was not immediately known if they included political detainees.
(AP, 9/17/09)
2009 Sep 17, Pakistan's military killed 10 insurgents and said it had arrested Sher Muhammad Qasab, a militant commander accused of beheading troops in the northwestern Swat Valley.
(AP, 9/17/09)
2009 Sep 17, In Pakistan-controlled Kashmir a speeding bus, whose driver apparently was eager to break his daylong Ramadan fast, spun out of control and plunged off a mountainous road, killing 25 people and injuring 30 others.
(AP, 9/17/09)
2009 Sep 17, Serbian men brutally attacked Brice Taton (28), a French soccer fan, in front of a downtown cafe in the Serbian capital before Partizan Belgrade's Europa Cup match against Toulouse. On Jan 25 a Belgrade court convicted 14 Serbs of the fatal beating of Taton. Two of the convicted remain at large and were tried in absentia.
(AP, 1/25/11)
2009 Sep 17, In Somalia Islamist insurgents drove two stolen UN cars loaded with explosives onto the main base of African Union peacekeepers and triggered massive blasts that a witness said killed 21 people, including 4 suicide bombers, 16 officials from the government and AMISOM, the AU peacekeeping force, and the Burundian deputy commander of the force. Islamist insurgents said the attack was in revenge for a US commando raid that killed an al-Qaida operative. An hour later missiles were fired from the AU base strike rebel-controlled areas of Mogadishu, killing seven people and wounded 16. It was later suspected that one of the suicide bombers was a Somali-American teenager, Omar Mohamud (18), of Seattle, Wa. Al-Shabab said the bombing was in retaliation for a U.S. raid days earlier that killed an al-Qaida operative in southern Somalia.
(AP, 9/17/09)(AP, 9/18/09)(AP, 9/25/09)(AP, 10/6/11)
2009 Sep 17, Spanish National Court Judge Ismael Moreno indicted three alleged ex-Nazi death camp guards, who are or were longtime residents of the United States, charging them with being accessories to genocide and crimes against humanity. Moreno issued international arrest warrants for the three: Johann Leprich, Anton Tittjung and Josias Kumpf. The 18-page indictment says Kumpf apparently lives now in Austria and other two in the US.
(AP, 9/17/09)
2009 Sep 17, Spanish oil major Repsol YPF said it had discovered oil off the coast of Sierra Leone, its first find in the west African nation, along with its Australian, American and British partners.
(AFP, 9/17/09)
2009 Sep 17, Ugandan cricket authorities said Six Ugandan cricketers are missing in Canada after playing in a qualifying tournament for next year's World Cup.
(AP, 9/17/09)
2009 Sep 18, In Chicago 4 former members of a now-disbanded police unit admitted that they used to barge into people’s homes and steal money. They were sentenced to 6 months in jail and promised to cooperate in an ongoing investigation.
(SFC, 9/19/09, p.A6)
2009 Sep 18, Mesac Damas (33), a man with prior charges of domestic violence, left Miami on flight to Haiti. The next day his wife and 5 children were found slain in Naples, Fl. Damas was later arrested in Haiti and returned to the US where he was charged with 6 counts of first-degree murder.
(SFC, 9/21/09, p.A7)(SFC, 10/27/09, p.A4)
2009 Sep 18, In Virginia the bodies of four people were found at a Longwood University professor's home near campus in Farmville, about 50 miles west of Richmond. Richard Alden Samuel McCroskey III (20) was arrested the next day as he tried to catch a flight back to his home in Castro Valley, California. McCroskey had recorded songs that spoke of death, murder and mutilation under the name Syko Sam. His MySpace Web page said he has only been rapping for a few months but has been a fan for years of the horrorcore genre. The victims included his girlfriend, Emma Niederbrock (16), her mother, Prof. Debra Kelley (53), her father, Pastor Mark Niederbrock (50), and Emma’s best friend, Melanie Wells (18). In 2010 McCroskey pleaded guilty to the murders and was sentenced to life in prison.
(AP, 9/20/09)(SFC, 9/22/09, p.A12)(SFC, 9/23/09, p.D1)(SFC, 9/21/10, p.A5)
2009 Sep 18, It was reported that some 20-50 thousands birds have died along the shore of Utah’s Great Salt Lake so far this year from avian botulism.
(SFC, 9/18/09, p.A21)
2009 Sep 18, Irving Kristol (89), political writer and publisher, died in Washington DC. He was known as the godfather of neoconservatism. In 1965 Kristol and Daniel Bell founded the “Public Interest," a quarterly public policy journal. Kristol’s books included “Neoconservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea" (1995).
(SFC, 9/19/09, p.A9)(Econ, 9/26/09, p.100)
2009 Sep 18, In Afghanistan gunmen opened fire in a mosque in Jawzjan province, killing five men and wounding another two.
(AFP, 9/19/09)
2009 Sep 18, The African Union announced it would impose sanctions on Guinea's junta leader, Captain Moussa Dadis Camara, over his intention to run in upcoming presidential polls.
(AFP, 9/18/09)
2009 Sep 18, Australia approved a vaccine against swine flu and said it would start administering the medicine this month to its most at-risk citizens, including medical staff, pregnant women and the chronically ill. Regulators approved CSL Ltd.'s vaccine for people above age 10, but the Therapeutic Drug Administration was awaiting the results of more clinical trials before approving it for younger children.
(AP, 9/18/09)
2009 Sep 18, In Vienna, Austria, a 150-nation IAEA nuclear conference passed a resolution directly criticizing Israel and its atomic program for the first time in 18 years. Iran hailed the vote as a "glorious moment." 49 voted for the resolution. 45 were against and 16 abstained from endorsing or rejecting he document.
(AP, 9/18/09)
2009 Sep 18, Paul Gilles Nanda (52), a Cameroonian employee of the Development Bank of Central African States (BDEAC), was jailed in the Republic Congo. He had compiled a document to disclose bad management at the bank with evidence to back it up. The Austrian daily Oberosterreichische Nachrichten revealed at the end of August that the BDEAC had lost 11 billion CFA francs during an affair in which international financier Bernard Madoff stole billions of dollars from thousands of investors.
(AFP, 9/22/09)
2009 Sep 18, Canada-based oil producer Verenex Energy Inc. agreed to be sold to the Libyan Investment Authority for about $314.1 million Canadian ($293.7 million) in cash, after a better deal with a Chinese firm fell through.
(AP, 9/20/09)
2009 Sep 18, Colombia’s spy chief, Felipe Munoz Gomez, said the domestic spy department will be dismantled and a new agency will be set up to focus on intelligence and counterintelligence work involving national security. This followed a recent wiretapping scandal.
(AP, 9/18/09)
2009 Sep 18, In Ecuador the last 15 US troops left the Pacific Manta air base, officially closing the US military post in what Ecuador's government calls a recovery of sovereignty.
(AP, 9/19/09)
2009 Sep 18, Angry French farmers dumped millions of liters of fresh milk next to next the famed Mont Saint-Michel, one of France's most famous tourist sites, to denounce the slumping cost of milk and an EU plan to end production quotas, which could further drive prices down.
(AP, 9/18/09)
2009 Sep 18, In Hong Kong Du Jun (41), a Beijing native and former managing director for Morgan Stanley, was sentenced to 7 years in prison for insider trading. He was also fined about $3 million.
(SFC, 9/19/09, p.D1)
2009 Sep 18, In India at least nine Maoists and a soldier were killed when government troops launched a major offensive against a rebel stronghold in the central state of Chhattisgarh.
(AFP, 9/18/09)
2009 Sep 18, In Iran hard-liners attacked senior pro-reform leaders in the streets on Quds Day as tens of thousands marched in competing mass demonstrations by the opposition and government supporters. Opposition protesters, chanting "death to the dictator," hurled stones and bricks in clashes with security forces firing tear gas. The Quds Day ceremony was established in 1979 by the leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini as an annual event opposing Israel’s control of Jerusalem.
(AP, 9/18/09)(www.alqudsday.com/)
2009 Sep 18, In Iraq a car bomb exploded at a market in Mahmoudiya, a region that was once the scene of frequent attacks on Shiites, killing seven people and wounding 21 others.
(AP, 9/18/09)
2009 Sep 18, Israelis welcomed the Jewish New Year, grateful for the recent calm spell in the region but skeptical that the coming year would see the achievement of ever-elusive peace. It coincided this year with Eid al-Fitr, a Muslim feast marking the end of the fasting month of Ramadan.
(AP, 9/18/09)
2009 Sep 18, In Mexico City Luis Felipe Hernandez Castillo (38), while scrawling graffiti inside the downtown at the Balderas subway station, pulled out a gun and began shooting when confronted by police, killing at least two people and wounding five before being shot and subdued by officers.
(AP, 9/19/09)
2009 Sep 18, Myanmar released at least 25 political detainees as part of an amnesty program. The country was believed to be holding some 65,000 prisoners including over 2,200 political detainees.
(SFC, 9/19/09, p.A2)
2009 Sep 18, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen called for the US, Russia and NATO to link their missile defense systems against potential new nuclear threats from Asia and the Middle East, saying that the old foes must forget their lingering Cold War animosity.
(AP, 9/18/09)
2009 Sep 18, In northwest Pakistan a suicide car bomb destroyed a 2-story hotel at a market in Usterzai, a small mainly Shiite town, killing over 30 people and trapping victims under smashed shops as families bought supplies for a major religious festival.
(AFP, 9/18/09)(SFC, 9/19/09, p.A4)(AP, 9/20/09)
2009 Sep 18, In Poland a methane leak in a coal mine set off an explosion that killed 12 miners in the southwestern city of Ruda Slaska.
(AP, 9/18/09)
2009 Sep 18, Puerto Rican authorities captured Angel Ayala Vazquez, also known as "Angelo Millones," an alleged dealer they say led a violent drug ring in at least two sprawling housing projects in Puerto Rico and trafficked narcotics to the US mainland.
(AP, 9/22/09)
2009 Sep 18, South Korean scientists said they had developed a new transistor which moves faster and consumes less energy than existing semiconductors, a technology opening the way for no-booting computers.
(AP, 9/18/09)
2009 Sep 18, In Sudan Darfur rebels accused Sudanese government forces of attacking their positions over the last 2 days, weeks after a senior peacekeeper said the region was no longer in a state of war.
(Reuters, 9/19/09)
2009 Sep 18, Turkey's military said it was planning to spend close to $1 billion (euro680 million) for its first long-range missile defense system.
(AP, 9/18/09)
2009 Sep 18, In Venezuela an emergency meeting of the Inter American Press Association (IAPA) took place in Caracas. Former presidents from Peru and Bolivia joined newspaper editors from across the Americas in condemning what they call a series of attempts by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, and some of his allies, to clamp down on the news media.
(AP, 9/19/09)
2009 Sep 19, The FBI arrested Najibullah Zazi (24) of the Denver suburb of Aurora, Colorado, on charges of making false statements to federal agents in an ongoing terror investigation. Supporting documents contend the man admitted receiving weapons and explosives training from al-Qaida in Pakistan. Also arrested were Zazi's father, Mohammed Wali Zazi (53) in Denver; and an associate, Ahmad Wais Afzali (37) of Queens, NY. On Feb 22, 2010, Zazi pleaded guilty admitting that he had agreed to conduct an Al-Qaida-led “martyrdom operation" in NYC.
(AP, 9/20/09)(SFC, 2/23/10, p.A6)
2009 Sep 19, NASA launched the Black Brant XII to gather data on the highest clouds in the Earth's atmosphere.
(AP, 9/20/09)
2009 Sep 19, In Afghanistan two children were killed when a suicide attacker, believed to have been a woman, blew herself up in a crowded area of western Herat city. A Danish soldier was killed and another injured after they came under fire during a patrol in Helmand province. A suicide attacker drove a vehicle into a Hungarian convoy morning in the northern city of Pul-e-Khumri. The suicide attacker was killed, but there were no casualties in the convoy. An American soldier died in fighting in the east.
(AFP, 9/19/09)(AP, 9/19/09)(AP, 9/20/09)
2009 Sep 19, Australian authorities delivered a formal apology to the many thousands of people who were abused in state-run orphanages and children's homes in decades past.
(AFP, 9/19/09)
2009 Sep 19, In southeastern China at least 16 people died and 14 were injured after a truck hit a road maintenance vehicle from behind, sending it off a bridge.
(AP, 9/19/09)
2009 Sep 19, Colombia extradited Nancy Conde Rubio (37), a captured leftist rebel who unwittingly helped officials rescue 15 hostages, including three American military contractors. She was bundled aboard a plane to Florida to face charges of terrorism in a US federal court. Colombia also sent back another woman and eight men to face charges in the US related to drug trafficking.
(AP, 9/20/09)
2009 Sep 19, In the Dominican Republic Angel Villanova (19), baseball player for the SF Giants, allegedly shot and killed Mario Velete (25). Villanova had first signed with the Giants in 2006 and had recently signed a contract for $2.1 million.
(SSFC, 9/27/09, p.A1)
2009 Sep 19, In Germany a doctor (50) leading a group therapy session gave participants drugs and other substances that killed two and hospitalized ten. One person was left comatose and in critical condition.
(AP, 9/20/09)
2009 Sep 19, In Indonesia a strong earthquake shook the popular resort island of Bali, injuring at least seven people and sending panicked tourists and residents fleeing out of homes and hotels.
(AP, 9/19/09)
2009 Sep 19, Maurizio Montalbini (56), Italian sociologist, died. He had spent months dwelling in caves to study how the mind and body cope with complete isolation. In 1987 he claimed his first world record after spending 210 days alone in a cave in the Apennine mountains.
(AP, 9/20/09)
2009 Sep 19, In southern Mexico gunmen attacked a group of illegal immigrants, killing one and wounding five as well as an alleged people smuggler in Chiapas state.
(AP, 9/19/09)
2009 Sep 19, Off the Moroccan coast an inflatable dinghy sank before dawn off Perejil, a rocky Spanish-owned islet in the Mediterranean Sea. Some 42 would-be illegal immigrants were crammed onto the boat. 11 migrants from Niger and Senegal survived and 8 bodies were recovered. The next day the 11 migrants were expelled from Morocco.
(AFP, 9/21/09)(AFP, 9/22/09)
2009 Sep 19, Nigeria’s Information Minister Dora Akunyili said she's asked movie houses to stop screening "District 9" because the South Africa-based sci-fi movie about aliens and discrimination makes Nigerians look bad. Akunyili said she has asked Sony for an apology and wants them to edit out the Nigerian antagonists and the name of the main Nigerian gangster Obesandjo, whose name closely resembles that of former President Olusegun Obasanjo. The film brought in some US$37 million (euro25.16 million) during its US debut weekend in August.
(AP, 9/19/09)
2009 Sep 19, Russia said it will scrap a plan to deploy missiles near Poland since Washington has dumped a planned missile shield in Eastern Europe. It also harshly criticized Iran's president for new comments denying the Holocaust.
(AP, 9/19/09)
2009 Sep 19, Lt. Col. Yelizaveta Mukasei (97), a Soviet spy who worked undercover in the West with her husband, died in Moscow. Mukasei, whose code name was Elza, lived in Los Angeles from 1939 to 1943 when her husband, Mikhail, was working undercover there. Mikhail, whose code name was Zephyr, died last year at age 101.
(AP, 9/21/09)
2009 Sep 19, Sweden's centre-right government announced income tax cuts of 10 billion kronor to stimulate the job market, its primary objective.
(AFP, 9/19/09)
2009 Sep 19, Thai nationalists clashed with police and villagers as they tried to march toward an ancient temple on the Cambodian border, while anti-government protesters in the capital marked the third anniversary of a coup that continues to create political turmoil.
(AP, 9/19/09)
2009 Sep 19, Yemen offered a conditional cease-fire to the Shiite rebels it is battling in the north, following international concern over a deadly airstrike against civilians displaced from the war zones.
(AP, 9/19/09)
2009 Sep 20, It was reported that US Democrat Rep. Charlie Rangel (79), the person most in charge of writing the nation's tax laws, had neglected to pay taxes on rental income from his vacation villa in the Dominican Republic, and that he had also failed to report assets worth hundreds of thousands of dollars on his annual disclosure forms, including a hard-to-miss credit union account worth up to $500,000.
(AP, 9/20/09)
2009 Sep 20, In the 61st Annual Primetime Emmys the winners included “Mad Men" won for best drama series and “30 Rock" for best comedy series.
(SFC, 9/21/09, p.C3)
2009 Sep 20, Michele Dickerson of Alameda County, Ca., won the $32 million state lottery. She planned to take a $19.7 million lump sum before taxes.
(SFC, 9/23/09, p.A14)
2009 Sep 20, In San Francisco Andres Siordia (19) killed 2 men and wounded a 3rd at Papa Potrero’s Pizza. Police believed the shootings were in retaliation for the slaying of Norteno gang member Michael Sanchez (21) on Sep 18.
(SFC, 9/24/09, p.D2)
2009 Sep 20, In Afghanistan NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said 2 US soldiers were killed in a noncombat-related incident in the south. The Afghan defense ministry said Afghan and foreign troops will halt offensive operations in the war against Taliban-led insurgents for the UN's International Day of Peace on Sep 21.
(AFP, 9/20/09)
2009 Sep 20, Australian border protection officials rescued 54 asylum seekers from a boat stranded in northern waters.
(AP, 9/20/09)
2009 Sep 20, Cubans in their multitudes flocked to sprawling Revolution Plaza for a massive open-air "peace concert" headlined by Colombian rocker Juanes, an event criticized by some Cuban-Americans who say the performers are lending support to the island's communist government simply by showing up.
(AP, 9/20/09)
2009 Sep 20, German authorities said al Qaeda threatened Germany with attacks for the second time this weekend in an online video criticizing the country for its deployment of troops in Afghanistan. The interior ministry identified al Qaeda's messenger in the latest video as Bekkay Harrach (32), a German-Moroccan.
(Reuters, 9/20/09)
2009 Sep 20, In Iraq a roadside bomb exploded on a main road in Iskandariyah, 30 miles (50km) south of Baghdad, killing the driver of a car and injuring four passengers. A Black Hawk helicopter crashed at a Balad Air Base, killing one US service member and injuring 12 others.
(AP, 9/20/09)
2009 Sep 20, An Israeli border patrol fired at Palestinian militants planting a bomb at the Gaza border fence. 2 men were killed and 3 wounded.
(SFC, 9/21/09, p.A2)
2009 Sep 20, Trafigura, a Netherlands-based oil trading company, said it has agreed to a settlement with people who claim they fell ill after a tanker dumped hundreds of tons of waste around the Ivory Coast's main city of Abidjan in 2006. Trafigura paid Ivory Coast's government euro152 million (US$197 million) in 2007 to assist in cleaning up the waste without admitting responsibility.
(AP, 9/20/09)
2009 Sep 20, In Nigeria Bayo Ohu (45), assistant news editor at the influential Guardian newspaper, was shot dead by unidentified gunmen as he answered a knock at the front door of his house in a northern suburb of Lagos. On March 15, 2010, police detained three suspects for the murder of Ohu.
(AFP, 9/22/09)(AFP, 3/15/10)
2009 Sep 20, In Pakistan Sher Muhammad Qasab, a feared Taliban commander known for beheading opponents, died in custody from wounds sustained during a fierce firefight with Pakistani security forces last week. The military said security forces killed eight militants in search operations throughout Swat over the last 24 hours and that 23 insurgents were apprehended and another 22 surrendered. One of the militants killed was a Taliban commander identified as Chamtu Khan.
(AP, 9/20/09)
2009 Sep 20, In the southern Philippines clashes erupted when al-Qaida-linked militants resisted attempts by government forces to serve arrest warrants on 3 of their commanders. Troops took control of the Abu Sayyaf group's biggest camp on the island of Jolo following rounds of air strikes.
(AP, 9/20/09)(AP, 9/21/09)
2009 Sep 20, Somali al-Shabab insurgents attacked a town near the border with Ethiopia, killing at least 10 people.
(AP, 9/21/09)
2009 Sep 20, The Sudanese army said it has cleared several more areas of rebel control in North Darfur province ahead of peace talks set for October. Rebels denied the government claims. In southern Sudan Lou Nuer tribesman attacked the village of Duk-Padiet in Jonglei state killing around 102 people, including 51 civilians and 23 attackers.
(AP, 9/20/09)(AFP, 9/21/09)
2009 Sep 21, Bob Woodward released an exclusive 66-page report from Gen. Stanley McChrystal to President Barack Obama about Afghanistan policy, the first major national security leak and a sure sign that the celebrated Washington Post reporter has penetrated yet another administration. The report was presented to US Defense Secretary Robert Gates on August 30 and was being reviewed by the White House, with McChrystal widely expected to make a formal request to increase the 62,000-strong US force.
(http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20090922/pl_politico/27414)(AFP, 9/22/09)
2009 Sep 21, US prosecutors said Hassan Nemazee, a fund-raiser for Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and other Democrats, has been indicted for defrauding Bank of America, HSBC and Citigroup Inc out of more than $290 million in loan proceeds.
(Reuters, 9/21/09)
2009 Sep 21, The annual MacArthur awards were announced with 24 recipients chosen as winners. Each will receive $500,000, paid as quarterly installments over five years. The grants, nicknamed the Genius Award, are given by the Chicago-based John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation each year to typically 20 to 40 United States citizens or residents.
(SFC, 9/22/09, p.C2)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacArthur_Award)
2009 Sep 21, The Philadelphia Daily News reported that police officer Thomas Strain was put on desk duty this month because of braids, even though the paper reported dozens of black officers wear cornrows. The white officer, who came to work with cornrows, was ordered by a black superior to get a haircut because the braids violated department standards.
(AP, 9/21/09)
2009 Sep 21, In Illinois a couple and their 3 children were found brutally slain in the central farming community of Beason. On May 31, 2013, Christopher Harris (34) was found guilty of beating 5 members of his ex-wife’s family to death.
(SFC, 9/23/09, p.A10)(SFC, 6/1/13, p.A4)
2009 Sep 21, Coca Cola chose the hip-hop song “Wavin’ Flag" by Somali-born singer K’naan (31) as the anthem for the coming World Cup in South Africa. Born Keynaan Warsame in Somalia’s seaside capital, Mogadishu, he is now a citizen of Canada.
(www.thecoca-colacompany.com/presscenter/nr_20090921_fifa_world_cup.html)
2009 Sep 21, Christian Rossiter (49) an Australian quadriplegic died, ending an existence he had described as a "living hell." On Aug 14 he had won a landmark legal battle to starve himself to death by refusing food.
(AP, 9/21/09)
2009 Sep 21, Grant Kippen, the Canadian head of the UN-backed panel investigating fraud in Afghanistan's presidential vote, said the panel has agreed to allow a recount of just a sampling of hundreds of thousands of suspect ballots to speed the process. In southern Afghanistan a roadside bomb killed an American service member.
(AP, 9/21/09)(AP, 9/22/09)
2009 Sep 21, A strong 6.3-magnitude earthquake struck the remote Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan, killing at least 12 people and damaging monasteries and other buildings.
(AP, 9/21/09)(AP, 9/22/09)
2009 Sep 21, Bisa Williams, senior US diplomat in Cuba for the highest level talks in decades, met with opposition activists in Havana. Williams led a delegation with the USPS that held talks September 17 in a first round of talks aimed at restarting bilateral mail service which was cut off in 1963.
(http://newsfeedresearcher.com/data/articles_w40/cuba-cubans-talks.html)(SFC, 10/1/09, p.A2)
2009 Sep 21, A Danish court rejected the military's request to stop a book by a former special forces soldier from being published. Denmark's armed forces had asked the Bailiff's Court in Copenhagen to ban Thomas Rathsack's book, "Ranger: At War With the Elite," for national security reasons. It describes operations that he took part in as a member of an army ranger unit in Afghanistan and Iraq.
(AP, 9/21/09)
2009 Sep 21, Gambian President Yahya Jammeh warned that anyone who sought to destabilize the tiny west African nation would be killed.
(AP, 9/21/09)
2009 Sep 21, In Honduras deposed President Manuel Zelaya sneaked back into the country and holed up at the Brazilian embassy to avoid threatened arrest.
(AP, 9/22/09)
2009 Sep 21, In Indonesia Akbar Risuddin came into the world at a national record 19.2 pounds (8.7 kilograms). He was born to a diabetic mother in a 40-minute cesarean delivery that was complicated because of his unusual weight and size. Guinness World Records cites the heaviest baby as being born in the US in 1879, weighing 23.75 pounds (10.4 kilograms). However, it died 11 hours after birth. The book also cites 22.5-pound (10.2-kilogram) babies born in Italy in 1955 and in South Africa in 1982.
(AP, 9/25/09)
2009 Sep 21, Gordon Wateridge (78), a carer at the former Haut de la Garenne children’s home during the 1970s on the Channel island of Jersey, was jailed for two years for sexually assaulting teenage girls there.
(AFP, 9/21/09)
2009 Sep 21, Mexican soldiers raiding a drug gang safehouse in Monterrey found money-stuffed envelopes earmarked for various police forces and one marked for "press." Four people were arrested and $5 million in US and Mexican currency was seized during the raid.
(AP, 9/23/09)
2009 Sep 21, In northwestern Pakistan police officers foiled a plan to assassinate a regional education minister when they took on four militants in a gunbattle that ended with a teenage suicide bomber blowing himself up. Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, founder of Laskhar-e-Taiba, was placed under house arrest in Lahore for a 2nd time. His militant group was believed to have masterminded the November, 2008, commando assault that left 171 dead in Mumbai.
(AP, 9/21/09)(SFC, 9/22/09, p.A3)
2009 Sep 21, Philippine marines were ambushed by Abu Sayyaf fighters, as they were leaving a newly-captured camp on Jolo Island, resulting in the deaths of 8 troopers and 5 guerrillas. Abu Sayyaf reinforcements had come in by boat from the nearby islands of Basilan to help their comrades on Jolo.
(AFP, 9/21/09)
2009 Sep 21, Taiwan’s former President Chen Shui-bian filed a petition to the US Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces in Washington, DC, claiming that the US still controls Taiwan because former colonial power Japan never officially transferred the island to another nation after being defeated in World War II.
(AP, 9/23/09)
2009 Sep 21, Zimbabwe teachers, who went on strike over salaries at the start of the new school term three weeks ago, returned to work after their union called off the boycott.
(AFP, 9/21/09)
2009 Sep 22, The Massachusetts state Senate approved a bill allowing the appointment of a temporary replacement for the late Sen. Edward Kennedy. The measure had passed the House last week.
(SFC, 9/23/09, p.A10)
2009 Sep 22, In Georgia washed-out roads and flooded interstate highways around Atlanta added to the misery after days of torrential rain in the Southeast claimed at least eight lives.
(AP, 9/22/09)
2009 Sep 22, In Michigan off-duty Canton police officer Edward Williams II (36), shot and killed his wife (33), a Detroit police officer, in a library parking lot before shooting himself. He soon after at a hospital.
(SFC, 9/23/09, p.A10)(http://tinyurl.com/mlswtr)
2009 Sep 22, In Afghanistan a roadside bomb blast killed five people in western Farah province. Eight others in the van were wounded.
(AP, 9/23/09)
2009 Sep 22, Britain’s Office of Fair Trading (OFT) said it has imposed fines totaling 129.5 million pounds on 103 construction firms in England which it has found had colluded with competitors on building contracts.
(AFP, 9/22/09)
2009 Sep 22, China appealed at the last minute against a World Trade Organization ruling upholding parts of a US complaint about Chinese restrictions on imports of films, books and other audio-visual material.
(Reuters, 9/22/09)
2009 Sep 22, A sharply divided EU failed to protect the threatened bluefin tuna, as the bloc's Mediterranean nations refused to back even a temporary a ban on catching the fish prized by sushi aficionados. Greece, Cyprus, Malta, Spain, France and Italy, with strong fishermen's lobbies at home, insisted on continuing the hunt despite the precarious state of the species. Conservation groups had earlier criticized the EU for not pushing to list the bluefin tuna under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species.
(AP, 9/22/09)
2009 Sep 22, French police cleared out, then bulldozed, a squalid forest camp near the northern city of Calais, detaining hundreds of illegal immigrants who had hoped to slip across the English Channel into Britain.
(AP, 9/22/09)
2009 Sep 22, In western Germany 5 people were killed in a bus accident at Radevormwald. It broke through a crash barrier and plunged 65 feet (20 meters) into the Wupper river.
(AP, 9/22/09)
2009 Sep 22, In Honduras baton-wielding police fired tear gas at thousands of demonstrators, chasing them away from the Brazilian embassy where deposed President Manuel Zelaya, who a day earlier had sneaked back into the country, remains holed up, avoiding threatened arrest.
(AP, 9/22/09)
2009 Sep 22, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that Iran is stronger than ever and warned that its military will "cut the hand" of anyone who attacks. But a military parade where he spoke was marred when an air force plane crashed, killing seven people.
(AP, 9/22/09)
2009 Sep 22, Mexican authorities said there would be no compensation for Jacinta Francisco Marcial, an Indian market vendor who was wrongfully convicted of kidnapping and spent three years in prison, in a case that provoked an international protest.
(AP, 9/22/09)
2009 Sep 22, In northwestern Pakistan suspected Islamist militants blew up an empty girls school on the outskirts of the Peshawar.
(AP, 9/22/09)
2009 Sep 22, In Somalia Islamic insurgents attacked an African Union peacekeeping base, sparking a battle that killed at least 8 people and wounded more than a dozen.
(AP, 9/22/09)
2009 Sep 22, In Spain Julio Alberto Poch, an Argentine-born pilot for a low-cost airline, was arrested during a stopover in a Spanish airport on suspicion of piloting planes that carried hundreds of dissidents to their deaths during his country's 1976-1983 "dirty war." He was wanted for questioning in four probes of more than 1,000 deaths during his time as a pilot at the Navy Mechanics School.
(AP, 9/23/09)
2009 Sep 22, In Taiwan former President Chen Shui-bian was indicted on new embezzlement charges just weeks after being sentenced to life in prison.
(AP, 9/23/09)
2009 Sep 22, The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs announced that flash floods and lighting have claimed 187 lives and affected 635,273 people in west Africa since the rainy season started in June. This included 103 dead in Sierra Leone, followed by Ghana (24), Mali (20), Ivory Coast (19), Burkina Faso (8), Niger (7) and Senegal (6).
(AFP, 9/22/09)
2009 Sep 22, Venezuelan police have captured Julio Mendez (38), an American pilot wanted since 2007 on cocaine smuggling charges in the United States.
(AP, 9/23/09)
2009 Sep 23, US President Barack Obama delivered a stern message to global leaders to work together to solve the world's most pressing problems in his maiden speech to UN General Assembly. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon challenged world leaders to cleanse the globe of nuclear weapons, tackle the threat of catastrophic climate change and combat growing poverty from the global financial crisis.
(AFP, 9/23/09)(AP, 9/23/09)
2009 Sep 23, In San Mateo, Ca., a federal grand jury indicted Seth Sundberg (34), a branch manager for a mortgage and financial business, with mail fraud and falsifying a tax return. He had claimed a tax refund of just over $5 million after allegedly paying $5.7 million in taxes for receiving interest income.
(SFC, 9/25/09, p.C4)
2009 Sep 23, In Oakland, Ca., Damon Wessel (48) and Michael Caldwell (44) were shot and killed at 4075 Canon Ave. On Nov 18 Damon Joseph Ferreira (34), wanted for a parole violation and for connection to the slayings, shot and killed himself in Stockton as he was confronted by police.
(SFC, 11/19/09, p.C2)
2009 Sep 23, In Illinois Michael Finton (29) was arrested in Springfield after federal officials said he attempted to detonate what he believed to be explosives in a van in Springfield. The FBI had provided the decoy devices.
(SFC, 9/26/09, p.A6)
2009 Sep 23, In Texas Maria Refugia Camarillo (72), a Fort Worth grandmother, was sentenced to nearly 4 years in prison for running a scheme in which her family members married scores of foreigners seeking to stay in the US.
(SFC, 9/24/09, p.A7)
2009 Sep 23, It was reported that solar power company SolarCity and Dutch Bank RaboBank have teamed together to build 5 recharging stations along Highway 101, between the SF Bay Area and Los Angeles, to support the new Tesla electric cars. The $109,000 roadster was limited to range of about 250 miles. Recharging would take 30-45 minutes. Fully charging the cars took over 3 hours at a cost of about $4.
(SFC, 9/23/09, p.A1)
2009 Sep 23, John Hart (b.1917), former film and TV star, died in Baha, Ca. He had temporarily replaced Clayton Moore as the Lone Ranger in 1952. His career started with bit parts in “The Buccaneer" (1938). In 1947 he played the title role in the 1947 serial “Jack Armstrong: The All-American Boy." In 1957 he starred as Hawkeye in the TV series “Hawkeye and the Last of the Mohicans."
(SFC, 9/24/09, p.D5)
2009 Sep 23, In Afghanistan a family of seven died when their vehicle struck a bomb in Panjwayi district, in Kandahar province. All in the car were killed including two young children.
(AP, 9/23/09)
2009 Sep 23, The 20-member African Leaders Malaria alliance began a campaign to stop malaria from killing an estimated 1 million people in Africa each year.
(SFC, 9/24/09, p.A2)
2009 Sep 23, Australia's worst dust storm in 70 years blanketed the heavily populated east coast in a cloud of red Outback grit, nearly closed the country's largest airport and left millions of people coughing and sputtering in the streets.
(AP, 9/23/09)
2009 Sep 23, An Australian naval ship stopped a boat carrying 98 asylum seekers off the country's northwest coast.
(AP, 9/23/09)
2009 Sep 23, Sidney Cambridge (45) of Nassau, a prominent Bahamian lawyer, was indicted on US federal corruption charges in a case that allegedly involves a South Florida politician and nearly $1 million in laundered money. Also charged in the case was Broward County Commissioner and Vice Mayor Josephus Eggelletion, who was suspended pending the outcome of the case.
(AP, 9/24/09)
2009 Sep 23, In Canada the Globe and Mail said Ford Motor Co's Canadian subsidiary faces a $1.8 billion shortfall in its pension plan, citing a company letter to employees and retirees.
(Reuters, 9/23/09)
2009 Sep 23, Ethiopia said its national electricity company has signed contracts with three Chinese firms to develop hydro-electric projects and made preliminary accords for wind power projects.
(AFP, 9/23/09)
2009 Sep 23, Europe laid out new proposals to police its banks and financial markets, seeking to set an example on the eve of a summit of G20 major economies.
(AFP, 9/23/09)
2009 Sep 23, England's top prosecutor unveiled new guidelines that could decriminalize many forms of assisted suicide, saying that most people who help close friends or family kill themselves aren't likely to face charges.
(AP, 9/23/09)
2009 Sep 23, Honduras' interim government extended an already long curfew after police skirmished with backers of ousted President Manuel Zelaya throughout the night and arrested more than 100 people for vandalism and looting. The curfew was lifted for 6 hours to allow businesses to reopen and people to restock supplies.
(AP, 9/23/09)(SFC, 9/24/09, p.A2)
2009 Sep 23, In central India an 820-foot (250m) chimney collapsed during bad weather killing 40 people. More than 100 workers were feared dead at the site in Korba, Chhattisgarh state, where the giant chimney came crashing down on the plant's cafeteria as the workers had tea. On Jan 11, 2010, 2 Chinese engineers and a project manager wee charged with culpable homicide not amounting to murder. The arrests took to 7 the number of people held in connection with the accident.
(AP, 9/24/09)(AFP, 9/24/09)(AFP, 1/11/10)
2009 Sep 23, Iranian police warned shop owners against displaying female mannequins wearing underwear or showing off their curves as part of a government campaign against Western influence. Azar Mansouri, a senior leader from reformist political party, Islamic Iran Participation Front, was arrested during a widespread crackdown on opposition supporters who challenged the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in June 2009. In March 2010 Mansouri was sentenced to three years in jail for plotting to harm national security.
(AP, 9/23/09)(AFP, 3/13/10)(www.sign4change.info/english/spip.php?article579)
2009 Sep 23, In Iraq a bomb in southwestern Baghdad killed a woman and her 2 children. Other bombings in Baghdad and the northern city of Mosul killed at least 7 Iraqi security personnel and a local politician. 5 al-Qaida-linked prisoners awaiting execution and 11 other inmates broke out of a prison, just before midnight, in Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit, prompting a massive manhunt. More than 100 prison officials and guards were soon detained for questioning. 6 of the escaped convicts, including 3 of the al-Qaida linked inmates, were arrested by late Sep 25. Iraqi security teams recaptured two more of prisoners on Sep 26.
(AP, 9/23/09)(AP, 9/24/09)(AP, 9/25/09)(AP, 9/26/09)
2009 Sep 23, Israel's foreign minister said that the summit of Israeli, US and Palestinian leaders proved Israel could successfully fend off international pressure to freeze West Bank settlement construction.
(AP, 9/23/09)
2009 Sep 23, Four Serbs were arrested in Novo Brdo, Kosovo, 20 miles east of Pristina, under suspicion of committing war crimes against Albanian civilians during the 1998-1999 Kosovo war.
(SFC, 9/24/09, p.A2)
2009 Sep 23, Officials in Kyrgyzstan called for the death penalty to be reinstated and said public executions could be carried out, a sharp reversal that will likely draw international condemnation.
(AP, 9/23/09)
2009 Sep 23, Morocco’s interior ministry said security services have arrested 24 members of a "terrorist network" linked to Al-Qaeda that recruited volunteers for suicide bombings in Iraq.
(AFP, 9/23/09)
2009 Sep 23, Saudi Arabia opened a new multibillion dollar coed university outside the coastal city of Jeddah. The King Abdullah Science and Technology University, or KAUST, boasts state-of-the-art labs, the world's 14th fastest supercomputer and one of the biggest endowments worldwide. 817 students representing 61 different countries were currently enrolled, with 314 beginning classes this month.
(AP, 9/23/09)
2009 Sep 23, Swedish police held one suspect after armed robbers used a helicopter to stage a spectacular raid on the roof of a cash storage facility belonging to Anglo-Danish firm G4S in Vastberga, just south of Stockholm. On August 2, 2010, ten men accused of stealing nearly 40 million kronor ($5 million) pleaded innocent as prosecutors opened their trial with surveillance video of the brazen helicopter heist.
(Reuters, 9/23/09)(AP, 8/2/10)
2009 Sep 23, In Turkey heavy rains in the northeast triggered floods and a landslide that killed 4 people. One person was reported missing.
(AP, 9/24/09)
2009 Sep 24, Massachusetts’ Gov. Deval Patrick named former Democratic Party chairman Paul G. Kirk Jr. to temporarily fill the late Sen. Edward Kennedy's seat. The appointment will let Kirk, who was close friends with the senator, serve in the post until voters pick a permanent replacement in a Jan. 19 special election.
(AP, 9/24/09)
2009 Sep 24, A US federal jury rejected a New Orleans family’s claims that a FEMA issued trailer they lived in after Hurricane Katrina was defective and exposed them to dangerous fumes. The trailer made by Gulf Stream Coach Inc. had been occupied for 19 months by Alana Alexander and her son (12).
(SFC, 9/25/09, p.A8)
2009 Sep 24, In California thousands of students, professors and workers at UC campuses across the state poured out of classrooms to rally against deep cuts to public education.
(SFC, 9/25/09, p.A1)
2009 Sep 24, In Chicago Derrion Albert (16), a sophomore at Christian Fenger Academy High School, was beaten to death as 2 groups of students from different neighborhoods engaged in a fight following a shooting earlier in the day. 4 teenagers were charged with murder. The melee was caught on video. On Dec 8, 2010, a 15-year-old boy was convicted of first-degree murder. 4 suspects were still awaiting trial. In 2011 the last of 5 convicted suspects was sentenced to 32 years in prison.
(SFC, 9/29/09, p.A7)(www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSH2CafhcX4)(AP, 12/9/10)(SFC, 8/30/11, p.A6)
2009 Sep 24, In Pennsylvania US Pres. Obama hosted a 2-day meeting of the G20 as it opened in Pittsburgh.
(SFC, 9/26/09, p.A4)
2009 Sep 24, In Texas Hosam Maher Husein Smadi (19) parked what he thought was an explosive laden truck in a parking garage beneath the 60-story Fountain Place office tower in Dallas. FBI agents had provided Smadi with the truck. Smadi was indicted the next day.
(SFC, 9/26/09, p.A6)
2009 Sep 24, Susan Atkins (61), a follower of cult leader Charles Manson, died at a prison facility in Chowchilla, Ca. Her remorseless witness stand confession to killing pregnant actress Sharon Tate in 1969 shocked the world. She had been suffering from brain cancer.
(AP, 9/25/09)
2009 Sep 24, Emile Norman (b.1918), pioneering gay artist, died in Monterey, Ca.
(SFC, 9/26/09, p.A12)
2009 Sep 24, Afghan officials started a partial vote recount from last month's presidential election in a long-awaited procedure due to bring to an end weeks of uncertainty over the ballot. The process was expected to take about two weeks. Four US soldiers died in southeastern Zabul province, three of them killed when their Stryker vehicle hit a bomb, and the fourth shot to death in an insurgent attack.
(Reuters, 9/25/09)(AP, 9/25/09)
2009 Sep 24, Australia said it has created a massive nature reserve in the country's far north that will be managed by Aborigines. The so-called Indigenous Protected Areas in the Northern Territory contain rock art sites that are 50,000 years old and wilderness areas rivaling the nearby World Heritage-listed Kakadu National Park.
(AFP, 9/24/09)
2009 Sep 24, In Belgium 2 armed robbers made off with a $1.1 million painting by Belgian surrealist Rene Magritte, “Olympia" (1948), in a morning heist at a small museum in Brussels.
(AP, 9/24/09)
2009 Sep 24, In the Central African Republic 2 local employees of the Italian Coopi NGO were killed when Lord's Resistance Army rebels attacked their vehicle.
(AFP, 9/25/09)
2009 Sep 24, The Colombian military discovered a mass grave holding 16 rebels believed killed in combat, including a nephew of a top guerrilla commander. the FARC fighters were believed killed during fighting in July and included a nephew of the rebel band's No. 2 leader, Jorge Briceno.
(AP, 9/25/09)
2009 Sep 24, Two French military fighter Rafale jets crashed into the Mediterranean Sea during a training mission and one pilot was missing.
(AP, 9/24/09)
2009 Sep 24, The Clinton Global Initiative announced $258 million in aid projects for Haiti. The 21 projects included a $2 million pledge by actor mat Damon’s Water.org to get water and sanitation to 50,000 people.
(SFC, 9/25/09, p.A2)
2009 Sep 24, In Honduras the national curfew was lifted, but hundreds of troops and police continued to ring the Brazilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa, where an increasingly exhausted President Manuel Zelaya, his family and about 70 supporters, have been sheltered since he sneaked back into Honduras on Sep 21.
(AP, 9/24/09)
2009 Sep 24, Ireland, the first nation to tax plastic bags as a way to stop them littering the countryside, announced plans to double its levy to a 44 euro cents (59 US cents) per bag.
(AP, 9/24/09)
2009 Sep 24, Japan’s Tokyo Game Show, billed as the world's largest computer entertainment fest, kicked off with hopes that depressed sales of game consoles will enjoy a holiday resurrection.
(AP, 9/24/09)
2009 Sep 24, In Mexico Chihuahua state prosecutor Arturo Chavez, criticized for failing to solve dozens of rapes and murders of women in his northern border state, was confirmed as Mexico's attorney general and leader of the nation's war on vicious drug cartels.
(AP, 9/24/09)
2009 Sep 24, In northwestern Pakistan militants ambushed a convoy of prominent anti-Taliban tribal elders, spraying their cars with gunfire and killing nine people. Tribesmen killed two militants in the gunbattle. In a separate attack militants killed two members of another anti-Taliban committee in the Swat Valley to the northeast. Soldiers killed at least six militants in the nearby Malakand region after insurgents ambushed a vehicle carrying Pakistani troops near an Afghan refugee camp. 10 suspects were arrested in operations over the past 24 hours and 15 militants surrendered to security forces. A suspected US missile strike killed 4 people near the town of Mir Ali in North Waziristan.
(AP, 9/24/09)(SFC, 9/25/09, p.A7)
2009 Sep 24, In Puerto Rico police officer Luis Martinez was killed in the northern coastal city of Manati. In 2011 suspect Anthony Rivera Morales (23) was arrested at a homeless shelter in New York and extradited back to the US island territory to face murder charges.
(AP, 4/16/11)
2009 Sep 24, Spain said it has disqualified a group of Israeli academics from a solar power design competition because their university is in the West Bank, the latest in a series of low-level European sanctions against Israel over its settlement policy.
(AP, 9/24/09)
2009 Sep 24, In Spain Garry Kasparov soundly defeated Anatoly Karpov in an exhibition chess match marking the 25th anniversary of their first title bout.
(AP, 9/25/09)
2009 Sep 24, Swiss lawmakers decided not to join the European Union's anti-piracy efforts, amid concern that participating in the mission off Somalia could violate the Alpine nation's long-standing neutrality.
(AP, 9/24/09)
2009 Sep 24, In Thailand an experimental combination of two previously unsuccessful vaccines cut the risk of becoming infected with HIV by more than 31%, in the world's largest AIDS vaccine trial of more than 16,000 volunteers. This was the first time an experimental vaccine has prevented infection with the AIDS virus.
(AP, 9/24/09)
2009 Sep 24, The UN Security Council unanimously approved a historic resolution aimed at ridding the world of nuclear weapons at a summit-level meeting chaired by President Barack Obama.
(AP, 9/24/09)
2009 Sep 24, Venezuela’s Justice Minister Tareck El Aissami said the animated television series "Family Guy." should be pulled from the airwaves because it promotes the use of marijuana. He said that cable networks that broadcast "Family Guy" would be fined by Venezuela's telecommunications regulator if they refuse to dump the program.
(AP, 9/25/09)
2009 Sep 24, In Vietnam 9 North Koreans took refuge in Denmark's embassy in Hanoi seeking political asylum and passage to Seoul. On Oct 20 they left the mission and were on their way to South Korea.
(Reuters, 10/20/09)(SFC, 9/25/09, p.A2)
2009 Sep 25, US regulators shut down Atlanta-based Georgian Bank, the 95th US bank to fail this year as loan defaults rise in the worst financial climate in decades.
(AP, 9/25/09)
2009 Sep 25, In NYC the Clinton Global Initiative launched the Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN), a new asset class aiming to yield a financial return alongside a social or environmental benefit.
(Econ, 9/26/09, p.83)(www.globalimpactinvestingnetwork.org/cgi-bin/iowa/home/index.html)
2009 Sep 25, In Sacramento, Ca., Garret Griffith Gililland III (28) pleaded not guilty to charges that included 24 counts in an alleged $100 million mortgage fraud ring. He was arrested last year in Spain and was returned to the US to face federal fraud charges.
(SSFC, 9/27/09, p.A8)
2009 Sep 25, Robbers in Pebble Beach, Ca., allegedly stole some 30 pieces of art valued at $27 million. Angelo Amadio (31) and Dr. Ralph Kennaugh (62) said the stolen art included paintings by Jackson Pollock, Henri Matisse and Vincent Van Gogh. Investigators on Oct 6 said the heist appeared to be a scam.
(SFC, 9/30/09, p.D3)(SFC, 10/7/09, p.A1)
2009 Sep 25, In Pennsylvania police arrested 83 people during protests at the meeting of the G20 Pittsburgh. A “People’s March" attracted nearly 5.000 people. The G20 ended a 2-day meeting and reached a series of agreements aimed at navigating the world out of recession. The alliance announced that it will replace the G7 as the main forum for int’l. economic cooperation. The G7 will now concentrate mainly on security issues.
(http://articles.latimes.com/2009/sep/26/business/fi-protest26)(Econ, 10/3/09, p.88)(Econ, 10/10/09, p.51)
2009 Sep 25, In Maryland 4 bodies were found in a home in Mount Airy. Police said Charles Dalton (38), a school janitor struggling to survive the recession, killed his sleeping wife and 2 children before shooting himself with a 12-guage shotgun.
(SSFC, 9/27/09, p.A8)
2009 Sep 25, In South Carolina a medical helicopter, which had just dropped off a patient in Charleston, crashed near Georgetown killing the pilot, a flight nurse and a paramedic.
(SSFC, 9/27/09, p.A8)
2009 Sep 25, In Afghanistan an American died of gunshot wounds from and insurgent attack in Nimroz province.
(SFC, 9/26/09, p.A2)
2009 Sep 25, An Australian court sentenced Belal Khazaal (39), a former Qantas Airways baggage handler, to 12 years in prison for publishing a do-it-yourself jihad book on the Internet. The book was titled "Provisions of the Rules of Jihad: Short Judicial Rulings and Organizational Instructions for Fighters and Mujahideen Against Infidels." Khazaal had also been convicted in absentia by Lebanese military courts in 2003 and 2005 on terrorism-related charges.
(AP, 9/25/09)
2009 Sep 25, Authorities in China's restive northwestern Xinjiang region charged 21 suspects over deadly July unrest, the first reported criminal charges to emerge from the violence.
(AFP, 9/25/09)
2009 Sep 25, In Colombia the chief prosecutor's office said it has unearthed the remains of 17 peasants tortured and killed at a ranch that belonged to the since-slain, far-right militia leader Carlos Castano in Colombia's northwest. The peasants were believed slain 10 to 12 years ago by men under the command of Jesus Ignacio Roldan, alias "Monoleche," a Castano lieutenant who later participated in the 2004 murder of the right-wing militia leader.
(AP, 9/25/09)
2009 Sep 25, On the Dutch Caribbean island of Curacao James Hogan (49), a US diplomat, was reported missing by his wife. On Oct 1 authorities confirmed that DNA on bloody clothes found along Baya Beach matched with Hogan. Curacao, the headquarters of the Netherlands Antilles government, lies about 40 miles (65km) off Venezuela's coast.
(AP, 10/2/09)
2009 Sep 25, The International Atomic Energy Agency said that Iran has revealed the existence of a secret uranium-enrichment plant, a development that could heighten fears about Tehran's ability to produce a nuclear weapon and escalate its diplomatic confrontation with the West. Armed with the disclosure President Barack Obama and the leaders of France and Britain demanded that Tehran fully disclose its nuclear ambitions "or be held accountable" to an impatient world community.
(AP, 9/25/09)(Econ, 10/10/09, p.51)
2009 Sep 25, In Iraq a controlled explosion of weapons confiscated by the Iraqi military went awry east of Mosul, killing 15 soldiers.
(AP, 9/25/09)
2009 Sep 25, An Israeli airstrike killed 3 members of the Palestinian Jihad movement who were allegedly on their way to fire rockets into Israel.
(SFC, 9/26/09, p.A2)
2009 Sep 25, Japan's new government launched an investigation into whether previous administrations entered secret security pacts with Washington, including one said to endorse US nuclear-armed ships despite a policy of barring such weapons.
(AP, 9/25/09)
2009 Sep 25, Mexican police arrested five men accused of dozens of murders, including two mass killings at drug treatment centers in this northern Mexico border city.
(AP, 9/26/09)
2009 Sep 25, Palau announced to the UN General Assembly that it is creating a shark and ray sanctuary over some 240,000 square miles around its coastline. Palau had just one boat to patrol the protected waters. Some 20,000 people populated the 190-square mile archipelago.
(SFC, 9/25/09, p.A6)
2009 Sep 25, Poland approved a law making chemical castration mandatory for pedophiles in some cases, sparking criticism from human rights groups.
(Reuters, 9/25/09)
2009 Sep 25, Puerto Rico's government announced that it will lay off more than 16,000 public workers in the US Caribbean territory, adding to an unemployment rate higher than that of any US state.
(AP, 9/26/09)
2009 Sep 25, Spanish pianist Alicia de Larrocha died (86). She thrilled music listeners for decades with polished and enthralling interpretations of great classical works.
(AP, 9/26/09)
2009 Sep 25, UN officials said tens of thousands of Yemenis displaced by warfare between the government and Shiite rebels were stranded around the war zone with aid agencies unable to reach them because of the intensified fighting.
(AP, 9/25/09)
2009 Sep 25, An environmental group said a gecko with leopard-like spots on its body and a fanged frog that eats birds are among 163 new species discovered last year in the Mekong River region of Southeast Asia, which included Laos, Thailand and Vietnam.
(AP, 9/25/09)
2009 Sep 26, In Afghanistan an airstrike by international forces in Wardak province, bordering Kabul, killed three Afghan civilians. 7 Taliban militants were killed in a gunbattle with police in Kunduz province. 3 Afghan civilians died when their vehicle hit a roadside bomb in western Farah province. Two US service members died in the south, one from a roadside bomb explosion and the other from an insurgent attack. 3 French soldiers were killed in a violent storm in northeastern Kapisa province when one was struck by lightning and two others were carried off by a flooding river. A 4th French soldier was killed when an armored vehicle fell into a ravine.
(AP, 9/27/09)
2009 Sep 26, The Australian town of Bundanoon pulled all bottled water from its shelves and replaced it with refillable bottles in what is believed to be a world-first ban.
(AFP, 9/26/09)
2009 Sep 26, In Belgium two burglary suspects were killed after the excessive explosives they were using to break into a bank's safe blew up the whole building.
(AP, 9/28/09)
2009 Sep 26, China reported that medical tests have shown at least 121 children living near a battery plant in eastern Fujian province are suffering from lead poisoning, the latest in a recent string of such cases that have affected hundreds. The government has ordered the Huaqiang Battery Plant to shut about 10 days ago after local villagers approached the authorities with test results showing lead poisoning in some children.
(AP, 9/27/09)
2009 Sep 26, Greek socialist opposition leader George Papandreou (57), who is widely expected to win the national election next weekend, said fighting endemic corruption and creating a stimulus package are essential if Greece is to emerge from a deep financial crisis.
(AP, 9/27/09)
2009 Sep 26, Ali Akbar Salehi, Iran's nuclear chief, said his country will allow the UN nuclear agency to inspect its newly revealed, still unfinished uranium enrichment facility.
(AP, 9/26/09)
2009 Sep 26, In Iran, one day before the sale of Telecommunication Co. of Iran (TCI), the Pishgaman Kavir Yazd Cooperative Co. received a letter from the Iranian Privatization Organization (IPO) stating that it wasn't qualified to participate in the bid process.
(Reuters, 12/24/13)
2009 Sep 26, In northern Iraq a US military drone crashed, hitting a regional office of Iraq's largest Sunni political party in Mosul, an area that remains an insurgent stronghold. At least six suspected insurgents were killed in a raid by Iraqi police about 50 miles (85km) northwest of Kirkuk. Gunmen killed an off-duty policeman during a drive-by shooting in central Mosul.
(AP, 9/27/09)
2009 Sep 26, In Morocco Akhbar Al Youm published a caricature of a member of the royal family, Prince Moulay Ismail, cousin of King Mohammed VI. On Dec 29 an appeal court in Casablanca upheld a four-year suspended jail term for the chief editor of Akhbar Al Youm, Taoufiq Bouachrine, and cartoonist Khalid Gueddar.
(AFP, 12/29/09)
2009 Sep 26, In North Korea 97 older South Koreans reunited with 228 North Korean relatives at the Diamond Mountain resort. This was the first reunion in nearly two years.
(SSFC, 9/27/09, p.A4)
2009 Sep 26, In northwestern Pakistan 2 suicide car bombs killed 22 people and wounded about 150 others in separate attacks in Bannu and Peshawar, just days after the Taliban warned suicide strikes were coming if the military pressed forward with an offensive. A third bomb injured 4 in the region.
(AP, 9/26/09)(AP, 9/27/09)
2009 Sep 26, In the northern Philippines nearly a month's worth of rain fell in six hours as Tropical Storm Ketsana slammed ashore, stranding thousands on rooftops in the capital's worst flooding in more than 42 years.
(AP, 9/26/09)
2009 Sep 26, In Rwanda at least four people were killed and 52 injured when an unidentified man lobbed a grenade into a crowd at a village market. Police suspect it was an act of sabotage to sow terror in rural districts.
(AFP, 9/27/09)
2009 Sep 26, In Spain "City of Life and Death," Chinese director Lu Chuan's account of the Japanese occupation of Nanjing in 1937, won top honors at the San Sebastian film festival.
(AFP, 9/26/09)
2009 Sep 26, In Sri Lanka soldiers fired on a group of war refugees trying to flee a camp in the north of the island, wounding two.
(AP, 9/27/09)
2009 Sep 26, In Switzerland director Roman Polanski (76) was taken into custody on a 31-year-old US arrest warrant, where he traveled to receive an award at the Zurich Film Festival for his lifetime work as a director. Polanski fled the United States in 1978, a year after pleading guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse with a 13-year-old girl in 1977.
(AP, 9/27/09)(SFC, 9/30/09, p.A4)
2009 Sep 26, Turkey's navy commandos aboard a frigate captured seven pirates in the Gulf of Aden off Somalia's coast.
(AP, 9/26/09)
2009 Sep 26, Pope Benedict XVI criticized the communist era's fierce religious persecution as he began a three-day pilgrimage to the Czech Republic, and urged the heavily secular nation to rediscover its Christian roots.
(AP, 9/26/09)
2009 Sep 26, In Venezuela some 30 African and South American leaders met for a 2-day summit on Margarita Island seeking to build on their alliances.
(AP, 9/26/09)
2009 Sep 27, Donald Fisher, co-founder of the Gap Inc. (1969), died in SF. He and his wife began collecting art as they founded their blue jeans outlet and by 2009 the Doris and Donald Fisher Collection had become one of the world’s largest private holdings of late 20th and early 21st century art.
(SFC, 9/28/09, p.A1)
2009 Sep 27, William Safire (b.1929), conservative columnist for the NY Times, died. Safire had authored over a dozen books and won a Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 1978, for his scathing articles on the financial affairs of Carter White House budget director Bert Lance.
(SFC, 9/28/09, p.A4)
2009 Sep 27, In Afghanistan a suicide car bomb explosion targeting Afghanistan's energy minister killed four civilians in Herat province. In southern Afghanistan a roadside explosion killed a British soldier on a vehicle patrol in Helmand province. Taliban militants ambushed a truck convoy in eastern Kunar province, killing six drivers and burning their vehicles. A private van hit a roadside bomb in northern Faryab province. Six of the people inside were killed and another seven injured.
(AP, 9/27/09)(AP, 9/28/09)
2009 Sep 27, Germans voted on whether to give Chancellor Angela Merkel a second term, as the country faces rising unemployment and threats by Islamic extremists over Germany's role in Afghanistan. Voters ended the conservative Merkel's right-left "grand coalition" and gave her a comfortable center-right majority, thanks to a strong performance by her new government ally, the business-oriented Free Democrats.
(AP, 9/27/09)(AP, 9/28/09)
2009 Sep 27, In Guatemala Adolfo Ich, a Maya Q’eqchi’ teacher and community leader who opposed the Fenix mine outside the town of El Estor, was killed. Bystander German Chub was shot and paralyzed by mine security personnel. In 2021 Mynor Padilla, ex-security chief at a mine, pleaded guilty to homicide.
(https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-55573682)
2009 Sep 27, Iran said it successfully test-fired short-range missiles during military drills by the elite Revolutionary Guard, a show of force days after the US warned Tehran over a newly revealed underground nuclear facility it was secretly constructing.
(AP, 9/27/09)(AP, 9/28/09)
2009 Sep 27, In Iran a consortium of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and a multi-billion dollar business empire known as Setad, that is controlled by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, bid on a controlling stake in Telecommunication Co of Iran, or TCI, which had a near monopoly on landline telephone services. They won the stake for $7.8 billion, Iran's largest privatization ever.
(AP, 9/28/09)(Reuters, 12/24/13)
2009 Sep 27, Two Uzbeks, including Oybek Jabbarov (31), freed from the Guantanamo Bay prison arrived in Ireland. Amnesty International appealed to other EU nations to deliver on pledges to give new homes to US terror detainees.
(AP, 9/27/09)
2009 Sep 27, Israeli police used stun grenades to disperse Palestinian rioters at a volatile Jerusalem site holy to Jews and Muslims. The compound is home to the gold-capped Dome of the Rock and the Al Aqsa mosque, and Muslims see it as their religion's third-holiest site after the Saudi Arabian holy cities of Mecca and Medina. The site has been under Israeli control since 1967, but is administered by a Muslim religious body known as the Waqf.
(AP, 9/27/09)
2009 Sep 27, A New Zealand teen, Cherelle May Dudfield (18), flashed her breasts at passing cars and ended with up in a hospital after a distracted driver ran into her. In Dec she was found guilty of disorderly behavior for the prank and was fined $198.
(AP, 12/18/09)
2009 Sep 27, In the northern Philippines rescuers plucked bodies from muddy floodwaters and saved drenched survivors from rooftops. The death toll in the Philippines from Typhoon Ketsana reached 246 with 42 missing. The economic cost was nearly $100 million.
(AP, 9/27/09)(AP, 9/30/09)
2009 Sep 27, Portugal voted in parliamentary elections that are predicted to keep the Socialist Party in power despite the highest jobless rate in over 20 years. The center-left Socialist Party of PM Jose Socrates retained power winning 36.5% of the vote compared with 29% for the center-right Social Democratic Party. Turnout was about 60%.
(AP, 9/27/09)(SFC, 9/28/09, p.A2)(Econ, 10/3/09, p.65)
2009 Sep 27, It was reported that some 300,000 Syrian farmers, herders and their families have been forced by drought to abandon their homes for makeshift urban camps.
(SSFC, 9/27/09, p.A18)
2009 Sep 27, Sudan’s President Omar al-Beshir announced the immediate lifting of state censorship on the press, meeting a key demand of the media ahead of Sudan's first elections in almost 25 years.
(AFP, 9/27/09)
2009 Sep 27, In Venezuela Pres. Hugo Chavez proposed that South American and African nations unite to create a cross-continental mining corporation to keep control of their resources. Chavez made diplomatic inroads in Africa at a summit of South American and African leaders where he offered Venezuela's help in oil projects, mining and financial assistance. Venezuela signed agreements to work together on oil projects with South Africa, Mauritania, Niger, Sudan and Cape Verde.
(Reuters, 9/27/09)(AP, 9/28/09)
2009 Sep 28, In San Jose, Ca., Cristina Warthen (36), a Stanford law school graduate, was sentenced to home detention for one year for tax evasion and ordered to pay $243,000 in back taxes. She had run an escort service beginning in 2001 (touchofbrazil.net), and grossed $133,717 in 2003. In 2004 she married David Warthen, co-founder of Ask Jeeves, later Ask.com. They were later divorced.
(SFC, 9/29/09, p.C5)
2009 Sep 28, In Afghan three civilians, including a woman, were killed when their car hit a bomb in the road between Herat and Kandahar. A US team and Afghan soldiers killed 30 Taliban fighters at a militant stronghold in Farah province.
(AFP, 9/29/09)(www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,556329,00.html)
2009 Sep 28, Britain’s Business Secretary Peter Mandelson said the government will extend its car scrapping scheme with extra funding for an additional 100,000 cars and vans.
(AP, 9/28/09)
2009 Sep 28, Canada’s train maker Bombardier Transportation says its Chinese joint venture has been awarded a $4 billion contract to build 80 high-speed trains for China's railway ministry.
(AP, 9/28/09)
2009 Sep 28, In China foreign ministers from China, Japan and South Korea pledged to deepen cooperation on non-proliferation and disarmament, as pressure grew on Pyongyang over its nuclear program.
(AFP, 9/28/09)
2009 Sep 28, Luis Alberto Santacruz Echeverri, an alleged Colombian cocaine trafficker arrested in the Dominican Republic, was extradited to the US to face drug trafficking charges.
(AP, 9/29/09)
2009 Sep 28, In Ecuador hundreds of Indians blocked the Pan American highway in several provinces with rocks, tree trunks and burning tires to protest new water, mining and oil laws.
(AP, 9/28/09)
2009 Sep 28, In Cairo, Egypt, a 2-day meeting of the International Commission on Nuclear Nonproliferation and Disarmament (ICNND) opened. It was set up by the governments of Australia and Japan to probe ideas on how to cut the world's nuclear arms stockpile ahead of a UN conference on the subject next year. Iran and Israel stated their positions on disarmament separately during the gathering.
(AP, 10/22/09)
2009 Sep 28, Guinea’s military's presidential guard shot at pro-democracy demonstrators in Conakry, leaving at least 157 people dead. The government put the death toll at 57. Eyewitnesses said security forces had stripped female protesters and raped them in the streets. Other eyewitnesses said soldiers had stabbed protesters with knives and bayonets. On June 27, 2013, Lieutenant-Colonel Claude Pivi, an influential member of the junta at the time and now minister for presidential security, was charged over his alleged role in a stadium massacre. On Dec 16, 2016, Aboubacar Sidiki Diakite was arrested in Senegal for involvement in the massacre.
(AP, 9/29/09)(AP, 10/2/09)(Reuters, 6/28/13)(AFP, 1/10/17)
2009 Sep 28, Honduras' coup-installed government silenced two key dissident broadcasters hours after it suspended civil liberties to prevent an uprising by backers of ousted Pres. Manuel Zelaya. The measures were announced just hours after Zelaya called on his backers to stage mass protest marches in what he called a "final offensive" against the government. Interim president Roberto Micheletti promised to restore civil liberties and allow an Organization of American States mediation team into the country, quickly backpedalling from tough measures amid criticism from his own allies that he had gone too far in his fight to stay in power.
(AP, 9/28/09)(AP, 9/29/09)
2009 Sep 28, In Iraq a tanker truck packed with explosives ripped through a police outpost, killing at least 7 people in a suicide attack at a former insurgent stronghold outside Ramadi. In a separate attack, at least three Iraqi soldiers were killed in a double roadside bombing in the predominantly Sunni neighborhood of Ghazaliyah in western Baghdad. In southern Iraq, bomb attached to a bus exploded in mostly Shiite southern Iraq, killing at least six. In northern Iraq, a roadside bomb targeting a police patrol in Mosul killed two officers and wounded two. The US military freed another 35 members of a group linked to the abduction of five British citizens from Iraq's Finance Ministry in 2007. The prisoner release means nearly 100 members of Asaib Ahl al-Haq, or League of the Righteous, have left U.S. custody since late last week. In total, about 250 have been freed since July as talks intensify over the fate of Peter Moore, the sole British hostage believed to be still alive.
(AP, 9/28/09)
2009 Sep 28, In Malaysia news reports said a judge has upheld a court verdict to cane a Muslim woman for drinking beer, re-igniting a controversy over Islamic justice in this moderate Muslim-majority country. The chief Shariah judge of Pahang state ruled that a Shariah High Court's verdict against Kartika Sari Dewi Shukarno (32) was correct and should stay.
(AP, 9/28/09)
2009 Sep 28, In Mexico 2 Canadian men were shot to death in execution-style slayings outside an apartment building in the Mexican resort of Puerto Vallarta. Gordon Douglas Kendall and Jeffrey Ronald Ivans were believed to be involved in the drug trade. In Michoacan state police arrested three federal agents for allegedly passing information to organized crime.
(AP, 9/28/09)(SFC, 9/29/09, p.A2)
2009 Sep 28, In Pakistan a suicide car bomber killed five people including a prominent tribal elder in Baka Khel, which lies close to Waziristan. One Pakistani soldier was killed and seven others critically wounded in a militant rocket attack on an army camp in the northwest. Hundreds of civilians fled the Taliban and al-Qaida's main stronghold in the northwest.
(AP, 9/28/09)
2009 Sep 28, Guillermo Endara (73), Panama’s former President (1989-1994), died. He led Panama to democracy after the US invasion that toppled dictator Gen. Manuel Noriega.
(AP, 9/29/09)
2009 Sep 28, In Peru former President Alberto Fujimori, who already faces the prospect of spending the rest of his life in prison, pleaded guilty to authorizing illegal wiretaps and bribes of politicians, journalists and businessmen.
(AP, 9/28/09)
2009 Sep 28, In Romania Gen. Nicolae Plesita (b.1929), a die-hard Communist and ruthless chief of the Securitate secret police (1980-1984), died. He had arranged shelter in Romania for terrorist Carlos the Jackal, and was tried for the 1981 bombing in Munich of Radio Free Europe.
(AP, 9/30/09)
2009 Sep 28, In Somalia the al-Shabab extremist Islamic group executed two Somali men in Mogadishu, accusing them of being spies for foreign organizations. Mortars and missiles pounded parts of Mogadishu, killing at least 13 civilians in two separate battles between Islamic militiamen and the African Union peacekeeping force.
(AP, 9/28/09)
2009 Sep 28, South Korea's parliament endorsed the appointment of economics professor Chung Un-Chan as prime minister despite strong objections by opposition parties.
(AP, 9/28/09)
2009 Sep 28, In Sudan a Nigerian peacekeeper was killed and two Kenyan colleagues were wounded in the troubled Darfur region when armed men ambushed their convoy.
(Reuters, 9/29/09)
2009 Sep 28, In Thailand climate talks kicked off in Bangkok with the UN urging nations to break the deadlock over a global warming deal that is supposed to be finalized in just 70 days time, and warning that failure to act would leave future generations fighting for survival.
(AP, 9/28/09)
2009 Sep 28, In Venezuela Pres. Hugo Chavez and Libya's Muammar Gaddafi called for a new global definition of terrorism. Meeting a day after the end of a summit of African and South American leaders in Venezuela, the two men signed a declaration urging a global conference be held to sketch out new terms defining terrorism.
(Reuters, 9/28/09)
2009 Sep 29, The US signaled a new approach to Myanmar as Kurt Campbell, assistant to the US Sec. of State, met in NY with U Thaung, Myanmar’s minister of science, technology and labor.
(Econ, 10/3/09, p.52)
2009 Sep 29, Norman Hsu (58), former US Democratic fundraiser, was sentenced to over 24 years in prison for fraud and breaking campaign finance laws. His decade long Ponzi scheme collapsed in Sep. 2007 after he stole over $50 million from investors. He must separately serve a 3 years sentence for a conviction in California.
(SFC, 9/30/09, p.A8)
2009 Sep 29, Starbucks premiered its new instant coffee, Via, with tens of thousands of free samples nationwide. A 3-pack was priced at just under $1 per cup.
(SFC, 9/30/09, p.C3)
2009 Sep 29, Toyota Motor Corp. issued its largest-ever US recall, involving 3.8 million vehicles. Toyota and the government warned owners to remove the mats from their vehicles that could cause accelerators to get stuck and lead to a crash.
(AP, 9/30/09)
2009 Sep 29, Xerox launched a $6.4 billion bid for Affiliated Computer Services (ACS), an outsourcing company.
(Econ, 10/3/09, p.80)
2009 Sep 29, In southern Afghanistan at least 30 civilians were killed when a bus hit a roadside bomb in an attack blamed on the Taliban.
(AFP, 9/29/09)
2009 Sep 29, China said it has completed a high-resolution, three-dimensional map of the entire surface of the moon, in an important step towards a future lunar landing.
(AP, 9/29/09)
2009 Sep 29, Ethiopian and Kenyan authorities seized more than 2,600 pounds (1,200 kilograms) of ivory from nearly 100 illegally killed elephants. Specially trained dogs sniffed out a consignment of bloodstained tusks at Kenya's national airport. Another shipment of tusks sent by the same individual had been seized a day earlier at the airport in Ethiopia's capital.
(AP, 9/30/09)
2009 Sep 29, In India 2 boats capsized in flooded rivers in eastern Bihar state during a major Hindu festival, killing at least 27 people and leaving around 24 missing.
(AP, 9/29/09)
2009 Sep 29, Iran's nuclear chief said his country built its newly revealed uranium enrichment facility inside a mountain and next to a military site near the city of Qom to ensure continuity of its nuclear activities in case of an attack. Vice President Ali Akbar Salehi said the site will be open to inspections by the UN nuclear watchdog.
(AP, 9/29/09)
2009 Sep 29, In northwest Pakistan two suspected US missile strikes killed 13 militants. The first attack killed six militants and wounded six others in South Waziristan. A 2nd missile hit a house owned by a known Afghan militant in North Waziristan killing 7 insurgents. Kalimullah Mehsud, the brother of the new head of the Pakistani Taliban, was said to be among several militants to die in one of the drone strikes.
(AP, 9/29/09)(AP, 9/30/09)
2009 Sep 29, Paraguay's interior minister Rafael Filizzola said 3 police chiefs imprisoned for torture have finally have been fired after collecting their salaries from behind bars since 1995. Filizzola called it unfortunate that convicts Camilo Almada Morel, Lucilo Benitez and Juan Martinez were able to collect pay for so long.
(AP, 9/29/09)(SFC, 9/30/09, p.A2)
2009 Sep 29, In the southern Philippines 2 US soldiers were killed in the deadliest attack against American troops there since they began helping local forces stamp out Muslim extremists in 2001. In 2011 Arabi Sali, suspected of involvement in the roadside bombing that killed the 2 US soldiers, was arrested. On June 1, 2014, Miraji Bairulla, a bomb expert of the rebel group the Moro National Liberation Front, was arrested for his role in the attack.
(AFP, 9/29/09)(AP, 2/2/11)(AP, 6/1/14)
2009 Sep 29, In southern Puerto Rico hundreds of US and local agents swept into a town to break up violent drug rings accused of operating out of several public housing projects.
(AP, 9/29/09)
2009 Sep 29, A magnitude 8.0-8.3 earthquake struck about 120 miles south of the islands of Samoa, population about 180,000 people, and American Samoa, a US territory of 65,000. Four tsunami waves 15 to 20 feet (4 to 6 meters) high roared ashore on American Samoa, reaching up to a mile (1.5km) inland. At least 142 were killed in Samoa and at least 32 on American Samoa and leaving dozens missing. Authorities in Tonga, south of the Samoas, confirmed at least 9 dead. In 2010 new research indicated that 2 great earthquakes caused the tsunami.
(AP, 9/30/09)(AFP, 10/1/09)(AP, 10/5/09)(SSFC, 10/11/09, p.A14)(SFC, 8/19/10, p.A2)
2009 Sep 29, Beauty queen Miss Singapore World gave up her crown after it emerged that she had stolen credit cards to go on a shopping spree for lingerie. Ris Low had come under public pressure to be stripped of her 2009 title, after local media reported she stole seven credit cards last year while working at a medical clinic, buying goods worth about S$8,000 ($5,662) including gold anklets and phones.
(Reuters, 9/30/09)
2009 Sep 29, Typhoon Ketsana slammed into central Vietnam, killing 74 as officials recovered more bodies from the muck and swollen rivers along the country's long coastline. 179 were reported injured and a dozen missing. In neighboring Cambodia, at least 11 people were killed and 29 injured.
(Reuters, 9/29/09)(AP, 9/30/09)
2009 Sep 30, The US fiscal year ended with a budget deficit at a record $1.4 trillion.
(SFC, 10/17/09, p.A5)
2009 Sep 30, The US government and ICANN, the body in charge of assigning Internet addresses, signed an agreement that allows for greater global participation in the Internet domain name process. The agreement, which allows ICANN to become a "private sector led organization," subjects ICANN to periodic reviews by a panel that includes a US representative and independent experts, essentially allowing the organization to no longer report solely to the United States.
(Reuters, 9/30/09)
2009 Sep 30, In Arizona a new law took effect allowing people with concealed weapons permits to enter bars and restaurants, that haven’t posted signs banning guns. Those carrying weapons would not be allowed to drink alcohol.
(SFC, 9/30/09, p.A8)
2009 Sep 30, Google rolled out Google Wave for a test involving some 100,000 people. The product was billed as a revolutionary way to collaborate online.
(Econ, 9/19/09, p.74)
2009 Sep 30, The Penske Automotive Group Inc. announced it is walking away from a deal to acquire the Saturn brand from GM, after being unable to find a manufacturer to make Saturn cars when GM stops producing models sometime after the end of 2011. The brand was set up in 1990 to fight growing Japanese imports.
(AP, 10/1/09)
2009 Sep 30, In Nevada Karamjit Kaur (16), a high school sophomore, disappeared in Reno. Police suspected foul play. She was found with her brother-in-law on Oct 5 at a hotel in Merrillville, Ind.
(SSFC, 10/4/09, p.A10)(SFC, 10/5/09, p.A5)
2009 Sep 30, The 24 members of UNESCO's Intergovernmental Committee of Intangible Heritage granted the tango dance and its music protected cultural status at its meeting in Abu Dhabi. The designation may make Argentina and Uruguay, which both claim to be tango's birthplace, eligible to receive financial assistance from a specialized fund for safeguarding cultural traditions.
(AP, 9/30/09)
2009 Sep 30, In southern Afghanistan 9 civilians including six children were killed in a NATO air strike targeting a Taliban position. Four armed Taliban were also killed in the air attack in Khoshal village in Helmand province.
(AFP, 10/1/09)
2009 Sep 30, The UN dismissed Peter Galbraith, the top US diplomat at the UN mission in Afghanistan, after he quarreled with Kai Eide, his European boss, over the Afghan presidential election.
(Reuters, 9/30/09)
2009 Sep 30, Bangladesh awarded a farmer who killed more than 83,000 rats and launched a monthlong campaign nationwide to kill millions more, to protect crops and reduce the need for food imports.
(AP, 9/30/09)
2009 Sep 30, The British Office of Fair Trading said six recruitment companies have together been fined almost 40 million pounds for price-fixing and the boycott of a rival company. They had all breached Britain's 1998 Competition Act.
(AFP, 9/30/09)
2009 Sep 30, Amnesty International said tens of thousands of women who fled unrest in Darfur face the daily threat or rape and violence in refugee camps in neighboring Chad.
(AP, 9/30/09)
2009 Sep 30, China launched a massive shut-down of bustling central Beijing on the eve of a spectacular celebration of 60 years of Communist rule, with authorities determined to leave nothing to chance.
(AFP, 9/30/09)
2009 Sep 30, Colombian authorities said a gunman on horseback killed German Herrera (41), a town councilman in Castillo, and wounded an 11-year-old boy. Herrera had been threatened by leftist FARC rebels active in the area. The national councilman's federation said nine town councilmen have been killed in Colombia this year, compared to 13 in all of 2008.
(AP, 9/30/09)
2009 Sep 30, In Ecuador a battle in the southeastern jungle killed at least one Indian and wounded 40 police and nine Indians on the Upano River in the province of Morona Santiago. The Amazon Indian federation said 500 police provoked the violence by attacking Shuar Indians who were blocking roads to protest resources legislation.
(AP, 10/1/09)
2009 Sep 30, A spokesman said the US military has begun an exercise in Gabon with personnel from 25 African countries to improve command and control between forces for possible peacekeeping or anti-terrorism missions. Africom, headquartered in Stuttgart, Germany, formally activated last October, sponsored the exercise.
(AP, 9/30/09)
2009 Sep 30, An EU-commissioned report said Georgia's attack on its breakaway South Ossetia region marked the start of last year's war with Russia, which retaliated with excessive force.
(AP, 9/30/09)
2009 Sep 30, Guinea's military leader, Capt. Moussa "Dadis" Camara, banned all gatherings and demonstrations and called for two days of mourning after troops opened fire on 50,000 pro-democracy protesters at a stadium rally on Sep 28.
(AP, 9/30/09)
2009 Sep 30, In Honduras soldiers and police enforced an emergency decree suspending civil liberties despite promises by the coup-imposed government to lift the measures criticized by its own allies as going too far.
(AP, 9/30/09)
2009 Sep 30, In southern India a state-owned boat carrying 75 tourists capsized on a reservoir in the remote Thekkady forest area in Kerala state, killing at least 17 people and leaving dozens missing.
(AP, 9/30/09)
2009 Sep 30, A 7.6 underwater earthquake rocked western Indonesia, briefly triggering a tsunami alert for countries along the Indian Ocean and sending panicked residents out of their houses. The quake toppled buildings, cut power and triggered a landslide on Sumatra island. The UN later said 1,100 had been killed in and around Padang, a port city of 900,000 that sits atop one of the world's most active seismic fault lines along the Pacific "Ring of Fire." At least three villages were obliterated by earthquake-triggered landslides that buried as many as 644 people including a wedding party under mountains of mud and debris.
(AFP, 9/30/09)(AP, 10/2/09)(Reuters, 10/2/09)(AP, 10/3/09)
2009 Sep 30, In Iran Saeed Hajjarian (55), considered a top architect and ideologue of the movement pushing for more social and political freedoms, was released on bail after more than three months in jail on charges of inciting the country's postelection unrest.
(AP, 10/1/09)
2009 Sep 30, In Kazakhstan Canadian circus billionaire Guy Laliberte blasted off in a Russian Soyuz spaceship to become the world's seventh space tourist.
(Reuters, 9/30/09)
2009 Sep 30, Aaron Ringera, Kenya's anti-corruption chief, resigned after weeks of public protest and a parliamentary vote against his reappointment. Ringera led the Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission for five years before President Mwai Kibaki reappointed him in August. The commission had not successfully concluded one case of high-level corruption. Ringera blamed the commission's lack of powers to prosecute.
(AP, 9/30/09)
2009 Sep 30, In North Korea a ceremony marked the return of UN Development Program to the country. UNDP withdrew its operations in March 2007 following allegations that the agency had left itself open to exploitation by the communist regime for money laundering and other illicit purposes. A UN audit cleared UNDP of wrongdoing in June, 2008.
(AP, 9/30/09)
2009 Sep 30, In Pakistan a suspected US missile attack killed 6 alleged militants just over the border from Afghanistan, the 3rd such strike on the al-Qaida and Taliban stronghold in 24 hours.
(AP, 9/30/09)
2009 Sep 30, In Peru a court imposed a six-year prison sentence on disgraced ex-President Alberto Fujimori, who already faced the prospect of spending the rest of his life in a cell after three previous convictions. He also was fined $9 million for authorizing wiretaps and bribes.
(AP, 9/30/09)
2009 Sep 30, In Venezuela more than 150 university students ended a hunger strike after the Organization of American States (OAS) agreed to hear their concerns over alleged political persecution by President Hugo Chavez's government.
(AP, 10/1/09)
2009 Sep 30, The World Bank announced a 74-million-dollar grant to revive Zimbabwe's agriculture sector.
(AFP, 9/30/09)
2009 Sep, General David Petraeus issued a secret order authorizing an escalation that included boosting military and intelligence assistance to help Yemeni forces strike al Qaeda targets, as well as deployment of more unmanned aerial drones to collect information and track high-value targets.
(Reuters, 5/24/10)
2009 Sep, George Zimmermann, a Pennsylvania landowner, filed suit against Atlas Energy Inc. for polluting his soil and water in an attempt to link a natural gas drilling technique with environmental contamination. Atlas was exploiting the Marcellus Shale, a vast gas reserve that underlies about two-thirds of Pennsylvania and parts of West Virginia, Ohio and New York State. Experts estimated that it contains enough natural gas to meet total US demand for at least a decade. Baseline tests on Zimmermann's water a year before drilling began were "perfect," he said. In June, water tests found arsenic at 2,600 times acceptable levels, benzene at 44 times above limits and naphthalene five times the federal standard.
(Reuters, 11/9/09)
2009 Sep, Huntington, West Virginia, ranked as America’s fattest town, welcomed Jamie Oliver, Britain’s famous Naked Chef, into its school district. His food education program was turned into a reality television series called Food Revolution.
(www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/09/huntington-west-virginia-_n_315687.html)
2009 Sep, Britain launched its Future Jobs Fund (FTJ). It aimed to help long term unemployed people back into employment. It was cut by the Coalition government of PM David Cameron claiming the scheme was "expensive, badly targeted and did not work". However, a 2012 report by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP)[2] found that the scheme produced a net benefit though tax receipts and a reduced benefits bill.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_Jobs_Fund)(Econ., 8/22/20, p.47)
2009 Sep, In the Dominican Rep. Juan Almonte Herreras (51), a father of three who served as secretary-general of the Dominican Commission of Human Rights, was kidnapped and killed. The commission concluded that police had kidnapped Almonte, tortured him and later set his body on fire. The Inter-American Court of Human Rights accused the Dominican government of conducting a lax investigation.
(AP, 10/25/11)
2009 Sep, Indonesia’s Parliament, regarded as the most corrupt of Indonesia’s institutions, passed a law weakening its Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK).
(Econ, 10/10/09, p.44)
2009 Sep, In Israel Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv (99) outlawed the use of elevators. Jewish law, or halacha, forbids the use of electrical items on the Sabbath. He also has proclaimed that Jews could not wear Crocs shoes on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, because they were deemed too comfortable for the somber fasting holiday.
(AP, 10/27/09)
2009 Sep, A US cable, revealed in 2010, said that Kingston, Jamaica, Mayor Desmond McKenzie told a US Embassy officer that his administration had collaborated for years with local drug baron Christopher “Dudus" Coke to fight crime.
(SFC, 12/23/10, p.A5)
2009 Sep, Nigeria launched a multi-million-dollar dredging exercise to boost navigation and commerce on the Niger River. Then government planned to construct seven ports to serve the 152 host communities along the river.
(AFP, 11/8/09)
2009 Sep, Turkey banned MySpace, an Internet-based social networking site.
(Econ, 10/3/09, p.67)
2009 Sep, Most of Uruguay’s 380,000 primary-school pupils had received an XO laptop, developed by the One Laptop Per Child, an NGO based in Massachusetts. The scheme at $260 per machine cost less than 5% of the country’s education budget. Internet connection was still limited.
(Econ, 10/3/09, p.46)
2009 Sep, In Vietnam some 400 disciples of Thich Nhat Hanh, who has popularized Buddhism in the West and sold millions of books worldwide, were forcibly evicted from the Bat Nha monastery in Lam Dong province. Since then, nearly 200 monks have taken refuge at the nearby Phuoc Hue pagoda, but they have been ordered to leave by Dec. 31. On Dec 18 the disciples asked for temporary asylum in France.
(AP, 12/17/09)(AFP, 12/18/09)
Return to home
2009 Jul 1, California’s Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a fiscal state of emergency after Lawmakers failed to balance the state's main checkbook. State Controller John Chiang said his office is prepared to issue IOUs totaling $3.3 billion in July.
(AP, 7/2/09)
2009 Jul 1, Utah ditched a 40-year-old requirement for bar customers to fill out applications and pay a fee to become a member of a private club before entering a bar.
(SFC, 7/2/09, p.A5)
2009 Jul 1, The Financial Times reported that Citigroup Inc increased interest rates on up to 15 million US credit card accounts just months before curbs on such rises come into effect.
(AP, 7/1/09)
2009 Jul 1, A US federal “cash for clunkers" scheme went into effect providing incentives for car buyers.
(Econ, 7/11/09, p.66)
2009 Jul 1, US car giants General Motors and Ford suspended operations on their production lines in Russia as the deepening economic crisis squeezes Russian consumers' demand for new cars.
(AP, 7/1/09)
2009 Jul 1, Karl Malden (b.1912 as Mladen Sekulovich), Academy Award-winning actor, died. His intelligent characterizations on stage, screen and television made him a star despite his plain looks. His more than 50 film credits included "Patton," "Pollyanna," "Fear Strikes Out," "The Sting II," "Bombers B-52," "Cheyenne Autumn," and "All Fall Down." Malden gained his greatest fame as Lt. Mike Stone in the 1970s television show "The Streets of San Francisco," in which Michael Douglas played the veteran detective's junior partner.
(AP, 7/2/09)(SFC, 7/2/09, p.A8)
2009 Jul 1, In southern Afghanistan an explosion killed two NATO troops and wounded six others.
(AP, 7/1/09)
2009 Jul 1, Albania's governing Democrats claimed they won weekend parliamentary elections, but the opposition Socialists accused PM Sali Berisha's party of attempting to snatch victory. Near complete results showed the Democrats were ahead by just over one percentage point. It was unclear whether Berisha had secured enough seats in parliament needed to govern alone.
(AP, 7/1/09)
2009 Jul 1, In Argentina Juan Luis Manzur, a doctor and vice governor in Tucuman province, replaced Health Minister Graciela Ocana, who resigned on June 29 as concerns over the virus rose. He announced plans to boost public health spending by $263 million this year and said pregnant women could miss work for 15 days to avoid contracting swine flu.
(AP, 7/2/09)
2009 Jul 1, Bolivia enacted what animal rights defenders called the world's first law that prohibits the use of animals in circuses. A handful of other countries have banned the use of wild animals in circuses, but the Bolivian ban includes domestic animals as well. The law would become effective on July 1, 2010.
(AP, 7/30/09)(AP, 4/16/10)
2009 Jul 1, In Brazil Sao Paulo state officials launched what they say is Latin America's first passenger bus with an electric engine powered by hydrogen fuel cells. The bus will start test runs on the streets of Sao Paulo in August and will be joined by three similarly powered vehicles next year.
(AP, 7/1/09)
2009 Jul 1, British actress Mollie Sugden (86), best-known for her role as Mrs. Slocombe in the television comedy series "Are You Being Served?" (1972-1985), died.
(Reuters, 7/2/09)
2009 Jul 1, In Germany Marwa al-Sherbini (31), a pregnant Muslim woman from Egypt, was stabbed to death in a Dresden courtroom as her young son (3) watched. She was involved in a court case against her neighbor for calling her a terrorist and was set to testify against him when Alex Wiens (28) stabbed her at least 16 times inside the courtroom. Her husband, Elwy Okaz, who was in Germany on a research fellowship, came to her aid and was also stabbed by Wiens and shot in the leg by a security guard who initially mistook him for the attacker. On Nov 11 Wiens was sentenced to life in prison.
(AP, 7/6/09)(AFP, 11/11/09)
2009 Jul 1, In Honduras thousands demonstrated for the return of ousted Pres. Manuel Zelaya. Thousands more rallied in favor of the military-backed government. The Organization of American States said Honduran coup leaders have three days to restore deposed President Manuel Zelaya to power, before Honduras risks being suspended from the group.
(AP, 6/30/09)(SFC, 7/2/09, p.A3)
2009 Jul 1, The Indian government announced a rise in petrol and diesel fuel prices, saying its hand had been forced by the increase in global crude oil prices.
(AFP, 7/1/09)
2009 Jul 1, In India Tyeb Mehta (b.1925), a celebrated modernist painter, died in Mumbai.
(SSFC, 7/5/09, p.C8)
2009 Jul 1, In Iran opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi reasserted his claim that the June 12 election was illegitimate, and demanded that Iran's cleric-led government release all political prisoners and institute electoral reforms and press freedoms. A reformist political group said that authorities banned the daily Etemad-e-Melli (National Confidence) newspaper allied to presidential candidate Mehdi Karroubi after he denounced Iran's government as "illegitimate" because of claims of voting fraud. Former President Mohammad Khatami lashed out at what he termed "a poisonous security situation" in the wake of violent street protests.
(AP, 7/1/09)(AP, 7/2/09)
2009 Jul 1, In Iran Clotilde Reiss (24), a French academic, was among the hundreds of people detained following the disputed presidential elections. She was released on bail after a month and a half and later convicted of provoking unrest and spying. In May, 2010, she was released after paying a $300,000 fine.
(AP, 5/15/10)(AP, 5/16/10)
2009 Jul 1, Iraq's government approved a BP-led consortium's offer to develop a giant southern oil field near Basra, moving forward with the only deal struck during a disappointing international oil auction. On Oct 16 the Iraqi government approved the deal by BP and its Chinese partner CNPC to develop the 17.8 billion barrel Rumaila field, the 2nd largest in the Middle East. A bombing in Kirkuk killed at least 30 people.
(AP, 7/1/09)(AP, 7/2/09)(AP, 10/17/09)(Econ, 12/4/10, p.58)
2009 Jul 1, In Libya an African Union summit opened.
(AP, 7/1/09)
2009 Jul 1, In Namibia the annual seal hunt opened despite objections by animal welfare groups. Hunters were expected to club over 90,000 seals including 85,000 pups by Nov 15.
(SFC, 7/7/09, p.A2)(AFP, 8/4/09)
2009 Jul 1, In Nicaragua Managua Mayor Alexis Arguello (b.1952), a three-time world boxing champion, was found dead at his home. The La Prensa newspaper reported he was found with a gunshot wound to the chest in an apparent suicide.
(AP, 7/1/09)
2009 Jul 1, Nigeria's President Umaru Yar'Adua extended an amnesty offer to the jailed rebel leader Henry Okah, detained on treason charges for over 18 months.
(AP, 7/1/09)
2009 Jul 1, In northwestern Pakistan tribesmen attacked Taliban hide-outs, killing 28 militants and suffering seven fatalities themselves. The intensifying battles prompted them to ask for army troops to help. A new opinion poll was released saying 81 percent of Pakistanis view the fundamentalist Muslim militants as a critical threat to the country.
(AP, 7/1/09)
2009 Jul 1, Businessman Ricardo Martinelli (57) was sworn in as Panama's new president, promising to start the biggest job-creation push ever in the country. Martinelli said he wants to make the nation of 3.3 million inhabitants the best place to do business in Latin America.
(AP, 7/1/09)
2009 Jul 1, In Russia thousands of casinos, slot-machine parlors and betting halls across the country shut down, complying with sweeping new restrictions that require all gambling business to relocate to four remote regions of the country. Lawmakers had signed the casino closure law in 2006. Under the new law, casinos and slot machines will be allowed to operate only in Kaliningrad on the Baltic Sea; the Primorsky region on the Pacific coast; the mountainous Altai region in Siberia; and near the southern cities of Krasnodar and Rostov.
(AP, 7/1/09)
2009 Jul 1, In San Sebastian, Spain, a meeting was underway of five regional fisheries management organizations, tasked primarily with protecting tuna populations worldwide. The groups representing 80 countries met for the first time in two years to assess stocks of the fish and determine what more can be done to save the 23 tuna populations, nine of which are under threat.
(AP, 7/1/09)
2009 Jul 1, Darfur rebels signed an accord with one of Sudan's main opposition parties in Cairo, agreeing to push for a new transitional government, a move that will infuriate Khartoum.
(Reuters, 7/3/09)
2009 Jul 1, Sweden took over the rotating presidency of the EU.
(Econ, 7/4/09, p.51)
2009 Jul 1, Switzerland said it had refused a request to extradite a Rwandan national wanted in his own country for alleged genocide and war crimes. Other European countries have also refused extradition requests arguing that suspects cannot at present receive a fair trial in the country.
(AFP, 7/1/09)
2009 Jul 1, In southern Thailand a rampaging elephant stomped three rubber tappers to death after it was left to wander freely by its handler.
(AP, 7/1/09)
2009 Jul 1, Zimbabwe's former finance minister Simba Makoni launched a new opposition party that promises to "clean up" the country's political landscape.
(AFP, 7/1/09)
2009 Jul 2, The US Labor dept. reported that employers cut a larger-than-expected 467,000 jobs in June, driving the unemployment rate up to a 26-year high of 9.5 percent, suggesting that the economy's road to recovery will be bumpy.
(AP, 7/2/09)
2009 Jul 2, In NYC federal marshals seized disgraced financier Bernard Madoff's $7 million Manhattan penthouse and forced his wife to move out and leave her possessions behind, including a fur coat she had asked to take with her.
(AP, 7/3/09)
2009 Jul 2, California State Controller John Chiang began to issuing IOUs to pay taxpayer refunds and vendors. On July 9 the SEC classified the IOUs as municipal securities subject to regulation to prevent their being traded by entrepreneurs in an open secondary market.
(SFC, 7/10/09, p.A1, 12)
2009 Jul 2, In South Carolina 2 victims were found in their family's small furniture and appliance shop near downtown Gaffney around closing time. Stephen Tyler (45) was killed. His daughter, Abby Tyler (15) died from her wounds on July 4. A day earlier and about seven miles away, family members found the bodies of Hazel Linder (83) and her 50-year-old daughter, Gena Linder Parker, bound and shot in Linder's home. The killing spree began June 27, about 10 miles from Tyler Home Center, where peach farmer Kline Cash (63) was found shot in his living room.
(AP, 7/4/09)(SSFC, 7/5/09, p.A11)
2009 Jul 2, Thousands of US Marines poured from helicopters and armored vehicles into Taliban-controlled villages in southern Afghanistan in Operation Khanjar (Strike of the Sword), the first major operation under President Barack Obama's strategy to stabilize the country. A parallel British operation, Panchai Palang (Panther’s Claw), fought the Taliban for control of the Nad Ali district. The Taliban responded with their own Operation Foladi (Iron Net).
(AP, 7/2/09)(AP, 7/6/09)(Econ, 7/11/09, p.40)
2009 Jul 2, A British RAF Tornado fighter aircraft crashed in a remote area of Scotland.
(AFP, 7/2/09)
2009 Jul 2, Canada said it has forgiven C$2.3 million in debt owed by Haiti as part of a plan that aims to relieve the world's poorest countries of C$1.3 billion in debt.
(Reuters, 7/2/09)
2009 Jul 2, Pina Bausch (b.1940), influential German choreographer and dancer, died. She was the artistic director of the Tanztheater Wuppertal, founded in 1973.
(SFC, 7/4/09, p.B3)
2009 Jul 2, A top Indian court issued a landmark ruling that decriminalized gay sex between consenting adults by declaring Section 377 of a colonial-era ban on homosexuality unconstitutional. The decision applied only to the territory of the capital, New Delhi. In December 2013 two Supreme Court judges overturned the ruling. In 2018 the top court said it would re-examine its earlier decision.
(AFP, 7/2/09)(SFC, 7/3/09, p.A5)(Econ, 10/11/14, p.29)(SFC, 1/9/18, p.A2)
2009 Jul 2, In Iraq bombings killed at least three people in the Baghdad area in the first significant violence since Iraqi forces assumed responsibility for securing cities after the withdrawal of US combat troops from urban areas earlier this week.
(AP, 7/2/09)
2009 Jul 2, Manabu Kurita caught a 22-pound, 4-ounce largemouth bass on Lake Biwa, Japan's largest lake. On Jan 8, 2010, the Florida-based International Game Fish Association credited him with tying the 77-year-old world record for catching the biggest largemouth bass.
(AP, 1/9/10)
2009 Jul 2, Amnesty International accused Israel and Palestinian militants of war crimes in the most comprehensive report on the recent Gaza war. Both sides rejected the findings.
(AP, 7/2/09)
2009 Jul 2, Liberia's truth and reconciliation commission recommended that ex-President Charles Taylor and seven other former warlords be prosecuted for crimes against humanity for their alleged roles in the West African country's civil war.
(AP, 7/2/09)
2009 Jul 2, African heads of state meeting in Libya discussed a drastic new decision against the International Criminal Court that would in practice give Sudan's president impunity from prosecution for war crimes by the ICC, a draft document at the AU summit showed. Leaders also struggled to overcome divisions on a proposed "African government", as Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi pressed for a powerful new continental authority.
(AP, 7/2/09)(AFP, 7/2/09)
2009 Jul 2, In Nepal landslides triggered by monsoon rains swept through three villages in the mountainous west, burying homes and killing at least nine people.
(AP, 7/2/09)
2009 Jul 2, North Korea test-fired four short-range missiles, further stoking tension in the region that was already high due to Pyongyang's nuclear test and threats to boost its nuclear arsenal in response to UN sanctions.
(Reuters, 7/2/09)
2009 Jul 2, In Rawalpindi, Pakistan, a suicide bomber targeted employees of a nuclear facility left 29 people wounded. Near Peshawar, the main city in the northwest, a roadside bomb killed two policemen and wounded five more. Maulvi Nazir, a powerful militant chieftain in the frontier region of South Waziristan, declared a cease-fire against security forces.
(AP, 7/2/09)
2009 Jul 2, In Peru two buses crashed head-on on a mountain road near Lake Titicaca, killing at least 23 people and injuring 50 more.
(AP, 7/2/09)
2009 Jul 2, South Africa urged its public service doctors to halt wildcat strikes and accept a revised wage offer after low salaries and abysmal working conditions led them to abandon patients.
(AFP, 7/2/09)
2009 Jul 2, Spain's intelligence chief, Alberto Saiz, resigned amid allegations he used government money to go on hunting and fishing trips and had staffers remodel his house.
(AP, 7/2/09)
2009 Jul 2, The BBC reported that Syria’s Pres. Assad has issued a presidential decree ordering honor killers to face at least 2 years in prison.
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8130639.stm)
2009 Jul 2, The UN nuclear agency's governing board (IAEA) chose Yukiya Amano, a veteran Japanese diplomat as its new head. The term of the present head, Mohamed ElBaradei, ends in November.
(AP, 7/2/09)
2009 Jul 2, In Vietnam an official said for every 100 girls born to Vietnamese families, there are 112 boys born, a disparity in the sex ratio that has been rapidly increasing in recent years. The rising imbalance was blamed on a cultural preference for boys who can continue the bloodline and the belief that boys can better care for parents as they age.
(AP, 7/2/09)
2009 Jul 3, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin announced her decision to leave office more than a year early, effective July 26. The announcement left open the possibility of a presidential run.
(AP, 7/4/09)
2009 Jul 3, In Washington state federal agents said they have arrested 31 people and busted a drug trafficking ring that was directed by a cartel in Jalisco, Mexico. The 2-week Operation Arctic Chill seized 23 guns including a .50 Desert Eagle pistol and an AK-47-type assault rifle.
(SFC, 7/4/09, p.A5)
2009 Jul 3, The “Dog Days of Summer" officially begin and continue to August 11. This period got its name from the Egyptian belief that the Dog Star, Sirius, added heat to Earth as it rose and fell with the sun during this period.
(SFC, 7/3/09, p.D8)
2009 Jul 3, US Marines moved into villages in Taliban strongholds in southern Afghanistan, meeting little resistance as they tried to win over local chiefs on the second day of the biggest military operation here since the fall of the Taliban government in 2001. In southeast Afghanistan two US soldiers were killed when their base came under attack. The attack included an attempted suicide truck bombing of the base in the Zirok district of southeastern Paktika province. As many as 30 Taliban insurgents might have been killed when troops called in air strikes.
(AP, 7/3/09)(AP, 7/6/09)
2009 Jul 3, Algeria, Niger and Nigeria signed an accord to build a 10-billion-dollar trans-Saharan gas pipeline linking vast reserves in Nigeria to Europe.
(AFP, 7/3/09)
2009 Jul 3, Australia announced a 155 million US dollar package for isolated Aboriginal communities, after a new report revealed shocking levels of child abuse among the downtrodden minority.
(AFP, 7/3/09)
2009 Jul 3, In Brazil prison guards foiled a new attempt to smuggle a cell phone into Danilo Pinheiro prison near the city of Sorocaba by a carrier pigeon wearing a tiny backpack. Police said that the practice is becoming almost commonplace.
(AP, 7/3/09)
2009 Jul 3, In London a fire ripped through the 12-story Lakanal House block of Sceaux Gardens Estate, a 1960s-era public housing block in south London, killing six people including a newborn baby.
(AFP, 7/4/09)
2009 Jul 3, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, a top Iranian cleric, said that some of the detained Iranian staffers of the British Embassy in Tehran will be put on trial, and he accused Britain of a role in instigating widespread protests that erupted over the country's disputed presidential election.
(AP, 7/3/09)
2009 Jul 3, In Kashmir police used batons and tear gas to break up fresh anti-India protests, with more than two dozen people injured in the clashes in Srinagar and Baramullah.
(AFP, 7/3/09)
2009 Jul 3, In Libya peacekeepers in Somalia and the war crimes warrant for Sudan's president dominated the final day of an African Union summit, after a late-night compromise on a new regional authority. Africa's leaders agreed to denounce the International Criminal Court and refuse to extradite Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir, who has been indicted for crimes against humanity in Darfur.
(AFP, 7/3/09)(AP, 7/3/09)
2009 Jul 3, In Mexico City kidnappers opened fire with AK-47 assault rifles during an attempted rescue of the victim. The rescue failed with catastrophic errors. When police fired back, two commanders, including the chief of the city's elite rapid response force, were shot from behind by their own officers. Meanwhile, one of the kidnappers inside the home fatally shot Yolanda Ceballos (50) before killing himself. Seven other kidnappers were captured. Anti-kidnapping chief Juan Maya Aviles was later suspended.
(AP, 8/21/09)
2009 Jul 3, In Pakistan US missiles slammed into the hideout of Taliban commander Noor Wali, allied to warlord Baitullah Mehsud in the tribal belt in South Waziristan. Another missile strike hit an insurgent communications center in Kokat Khel. The strikes reportedly killed a total of 17 people. Pakistani warplanes bombed suspected militant hide-outs, killing at least four insurgents and wounding seven others. The Pakistani military said at least 13 militants and four local tribesmen were killed over the last 24 hours in the districts of Swat and Dir. A Pakistani helicopter crash killed 26 security personnel on the mountainous border of the Orakzai and Khyber ethnic Pashtun tribal regions. The Taliban claimed responsibility, but a senior security official said the military MI-17 helicopter had crashed due to a technical fault. Ehsan, alias Abu Jandal, a mid-level Taliban commander, was killed in Qambar area.
(AFP, 7/3/09)(AP, 7/3/09)(AFP, 7/4/09)(SFC, 7/4/09, p.A3)(AFP, 7/5/09)
2009 Jul 3, A top Kremlin aide said Russia will allow the US to ship weapons across its territory to Afghanistan, in a gesture aimed at bolstering US military operations and improving strained ties between Washington and Moscow.
(AP, 7/3/09)
2009 Jul 3, In Sudan gunmen kidnapped an Irish and Ugandan women from the office of the Irish aid group Goal in the North Darfur city of Kutum. A Sudanese watchman was also seized before being released later. Arab tribes supported by the government were implicated. Sharon Commins (33) and her Ugandan colleague, Hilda Kuwuki (42), were released on Oct 18.
(AFP, 7/4/09)(AP, 10/18/09)(AFP, 10/24/09)
2009 Jul 3, Sudanese police arrested 13 women in a raid on a Khartoum cafe for wearing trousers in violation of the country's strict Islamic law. 10 of them were flogged inside a Khartoum police station. One of those arrested, journalist Lubna Hussein, said she is challenging the charges, which can be punishable by up to 40 lashes.
(AP, 7/13/09)(AP, 7/21/09)
2009 Jul 3, The head of Venezuela's telecommunications regulatory agency said that 240 radio stations will have their licenses revoked for failing to update their registrations with the government. The government now controls six television channels, including the Caracas-based international network Telesur, two national radio networks and other smaller media outlets including 600 radio stations and 72 community TV stations.
(AP, 7/3/09)
2009 Jul 4, Attacks began on more than two dozen Internet sites in the United States and South Korea and some were disabled by hackers. South Korea's spy agency later said the attacks were possibly linked to North Korea. Some of the affected US government Web sites, such as the Treasury Department, Federal Trade Commission and Secret Service, were still reporting problems days after it started during the July 4 holiday.
(Reuters, 7/8/09)(AP, 7/8/09)
2009 Jul 4, NYC police arrested a dozen people and seized 33 pounds of heroin worth $30 million that was stuffed inside Build-A-Bear toys.
(SSFC, 7/5/09, p.A11)
2009 Jul 4, In North Carolina 2 workers were killed when a truckload of fireworks exploded on a dock at the southern end of Ocracoke Island. 2 others soon died from their injuries.
(AP, 7/5/09)(SFC, 7/6/09, p.A10)
2009 Jul 4, In Tennessee Steve McNair (36), a four-time Pro Bowl selection, was found dead with multiple gunshot wounds on a sofa in his Nashville condominium living room. Sahel Kazemi, (20), discovered near him, was killed by a single gunshot wound. McNair was married with four children.
(AP, 7/5/09)
2009 Jul 4, Drake Levin (b.1946), blues guitarist and former lead guitarist for Paul Revere and the Raiders, died of cancer in SF.
(SFC, 7/17/09, p.D5)
2009 Jul 4, In Afghanistan insurgent attacks in Helmand province killed 3 British soldiers. Gunmen in the east abducted 16 mine-clearing personnel working for the United Nations as they traveled between Paktia and Khost provinces.
(Reuters, 7/4/09)(AP, 7/5/09)(AP, 7/6/09)
2009 Jul 4, Albania's opposition Socialists charged that the ruling Democrats were improperly trying to influence the country's lengthy vote count by declaring victory before all ballots from last week's national election were tallied.
(AP, 7/4/09)
2009 Jul 4, In Canada an explosion damaged a natural gas pipeline in northeast British Columbia, the sixth attack on an energy facility in that area in recent months. In a letter to a local newspaper the bomber gave EnCana until mid-October to cease operations in the area, or face larger attacks.
(Reuters, 7/4/09)(Econ, 8/15/09, p.32)
2009 Jul 4, A joint French-Spanish operation captured 3 suspected members of ETA in the French city of Pau.
(SFC, 7/6/09, p.A2)
2009 Jul 4, The OAS suspended Honduras participation in the organization because of last week's military coup.
(AP, 7/4/09)
2009 Jul 4, In Mali dozens of people were killed during clashes in the Timbuktu region between the army and Al-Qaeda of the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) fighters.
(AFP, 7/21/09)
2009 Jul 4, In Myanmar UN chief Ban Ki-moon gave a rare public speech outlining his vision for a democratic Myanmar, just hours after the ruling junta refused to let him meet opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
(AFP, 7/4/09)
2009 Jul 4, Nigeria's rebel group MEND threatened to thwart a 10-billion-dollar trans-Saharan gas pipeline linking vast reserves in Nigeria to Europe. The army vowed to protect the project. Rebels Sichem Peace oil tanker and its six crew members. The ship and crew were freed July 21 after spending 18 days in captivity in the Niger Delta.
(AFP, 7/4/09)(AP, 7/22/09)
2009 Jul 4, North Korea fired seven ballistic missiles off its eastern coast, in a violation of UN resolutions and an apparent message of defiance to the US on its Independence Day.
(AP, 7/4/09)
2009 Jul 4, Pakistani warplanes and helicopter gunships pounded Taliban positions in the country's volatile northwest, killing at least 12 suspected insurgents. Clashes between tribesmen and Taliban fighters left 16 people dead in the remote Mohmand region. Army helicopters attacked a militant position in the area the previous day’s helicopter crash and struck a militant bunker on a peak. 10 bodies were reported found lying there.
(AP, 7/4/09)(Reuters, 7/4/09)
2009 Jul 5, In Florida 2 monorail trains crashed in the Magic Kingdom section of Walt Disney World, killing one train's operator.
(AP, 7/5/09)
2009 Jul 5, John Bachar (b.1957), free-style rock climber, fell to his death from a dike wall in the eastern Sierra near Mammoth Lakes, Ca.
(Econ, 7/18/09, p.84)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bachar)
2009 Jul 5, Terry Herbert (55), an unemployed treasure hunter, unearthed the biggest hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold and silver ever found in a country field in Staffordshire. The trove of at least 1,350 items, including five kilos (11 pounds) of gold and a smaller amount of silver, was found by Herbert with a metal detector near his home in Burntwood, some 15 miles north of Birmingham. It is believed to date from the seventh century AD, and may have belonged to Saxon royalty. It was later valued at more than three million pounds, to be split equally between the man who found it and the owner of the land.
(AFP, 9/24/09)(AFP, 11/26/09)(www.nydailynews.com/topics/Terry+Herbert)
2009 Jul 5, Bulgaria held parliamentary elections. The Conservative opposition center-right GERB party, led by ex-wrestler Boyko Borisov, won elections with 39.7% of the vote as voters punished the governing Socialists for failing to crack down on corruption.
(Reuters, 7/5/09)(AP, 7/6/09)(Econ, 7/11/09, p.52)(Econ, 1/9/10, p.51)
2009 Jul 5, In China’s far west protesters from a Muslim ethnic group clashed with police, with activists saying police fired shots in the air and used batons to disperse a crowd that had swelled to nearly 1,000. Over the next few days some 192 people were killed and over 800 wounded in protests that roiled Urumqi, the capital of western Xinjiang province. State media said at least 20 people have died and more than 670,000 had to be evacuated in China after torrential rain and floods destroyed houses, damaged roads and caused rivers to overflow.
(AP, 7/5/09)(AFP, 7/5/09)(Time.com, 7/6/09)(AP, 7/16/09)
2009 Jul 5, Guinea-Bissau said the second round of presidential elections has been brought forward to July 26 to enable farmers to continue harvesting unhindered.
(AFP, 7/5/09)
2009 Jul 5, Honduras' ousted President Manuel Zelaya said he was getting on a flight home to reclaim his post, accompanied by the UN General Assembly president and a group of journalists. The interim government said it ordered the military to prevent the landing of Zelaya's plane. Soldiers clashed with thousands of Zelaya backers massed at the airport in hopes of welcoming home the deposed leader removed a week earlier. Isis Obed Murillo Mencia (19) was killed by soldiers as a crowd tried to break through an airport fence. Pilots of the plane loaned by Venezuelan Pres. Hugo Chavez circled the airport and decided not to risk a crash.
(AP, 7/5/09)(AP, 7/6/09)(SFC, 7/7/09, p.A3)
2009 Jul 5, Iran said it has released a British-Greek journalist held for more than two weeks following its disputed presidential elections as dissent continued. Ali Reza Beheshti, the son of a prominent Iranian revolutionary icon, made a rare public push for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's removal from office. The Assembly of Qom Seminary Scholars and Researchers, a pro-reform Iranian clerical group, said the outcome of last month's presidential vote was "invalid," even though Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has upheld the result.
(AP, 7/5/09)(Reuters, 7/5/09)
2009 Jul 5, In Iraq an attack on the checkpoint in western Baghdad killed two Iraqi police officers and three soldiers.
(AP, 7/6/09)
2009 Jul 5, Mexicans voted in midterm congressional elections. The old Institutional Revolutionary Party made a big comeback in defiance of those who had written off what is still the country's biggest and most representative party. The PAN will lose some of its 206 seats in the lower house, and the PRI stands to more than double its 106 seats.
(AP, 7/5/09)(AP, 7/6/09)
2009 Jul 5, Nigerian rebels announced they had launched a fresh attack on an oil facility run by the Anglo-Dutch group Shell in the restive Niger Delta. The militants destroyed a Chevron oil pipeline junction in the latest attack on Nigeria's key money earner since the government offered an amnesty.
(AP, 7/5/09)(AFP, 7/6/09)
2009 Jul 5, Pakistani fighter jets targeted suspected Taliban hide-outs in a tribal region near Afghanistan, killing as many as six people in North Waziristan. Gunship helicopters shelled militant hideouts at Mangaltan area of Charbagh town. At least ten militants were killed in the shelling. At least three militants were killed and many injured in shelling in the Orakzai region. Elsewhere in the northwest, two bomb explosions killed two people and wounded 15 more in Upper Dir district.
(AP, 7/5/09)(AFP, 7/5/09)
2009 Jul 5, In the southern Philippines suspected Muslim guerrillas detonated a bomb near a Roman Catholic cathedral in Cotabato city, killing at least five people and wounding 46.
(AP, 7/5/09)
2009 Jul 5, In Somalia heavy shelling between rebels and government forces near the presidential palace killed at least 12 people. PM Omar Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke looked for help from more African Union peacekeepers.
(AP, 7/5/09)
2009 Jul 5, An official Zimbabwe newspaper reported that the government has promised to withdraw soldiers from diamond fields in the east, a week after a rights group alleged the military was committing killings and abuses in the area.
(AP, 7/5/09)
2009 Jul 6, In San Francisco crews cleaning a homeless encampment in McLaren Park discovered a body later identified as Ronnie Brown (32), who was last seen in San Leandro on Oct 20, 2007. Brown, aka Allah, was on parole for a weapons conviction and had been associated with people connected to Oakland’s Your Black Muslim Bakery.
(SFC, 7/15/09, p.A13)
2009 Jul 6, In North Carolina suspected killer Patrick Burris (41), a career criminal paroled just two months ago, was shot to death by officers investigating a burglary complaint at a home in Gastonia, 30 miles from Gaffney, SC, where the killing spree started June 27.
(AP, 7/7/09)
2009 Jul 6, Robert McNamara (b.1916), former US defense secretary, died. He was one of the main architects of the US war in Vietnam (1961-1968). McNamara wrote or co-authored 11 books on topics that mainly focused on issues of defense and development, the most recent one in 2001.
(AFP, 7/6/09)
2009 Jul 6, In northern Afghanistan four US soldiers were among six people killed by a roadside bomb in Kunduz province. Two Americans were killed in a roadside blast in southern Afghanistan. An American soldier died in a firefight with militants in the east. In southern Kandahar, a suicide bomber killed two people when he drove a car packed with explosives toward a line of truck drivers waiting to supply foreign troops. The Taliban movement said they had launched a guerrilla operation to thwart a major assault by newly deployed US Marines on their Helmand strongholds. 3 NATO troops died in a helicopter crash in Zabul province.
(AP, 7/6/09)(AFP, 7/6/09)(AP, 7/7/09)
2009 Jul 6, The 2nd Panafrican Festival opened in Algiers and was scheduled to last to July 20. The first Panafrican Festival took place back in 1969.
(AP, 7/9/09)
2009 Jul 6, In Croatia deputy Jadranka Kosor (b.1953), a former journalist, was confirmed as the new prime minister.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jadranka_Kosor)
2009 Jul 6, Ethnic Somali rebels (ONLF) in Ethiopia's Ogaden region claimed they killed 90 government troops in recent clashes, but the government denied any losses, claiming victory instead.
(AFP, 7/6/09)
2009 Jul 6, Honduras' interim government closed its main airport to all flights after blocking the runway to prevent the return of ousted President Manuel Zelaya.
(AP, 7/6/09)
2009 Jul 6, In western India people began falling ill after a night of drinking tainted home-brewed liquor. The death toll soon rose to at least 112.
(AP, 7/8/09)(AP, 7/9/09)(AP, 7/10/09)
2009 Jul 6, In Iraq a car bomb targeted a police patrol in Mosul but missed, killing an 18-year-old man and injuring eight other bystanders.
(AP, 7/6/09)
2009 Jul 6, Israel deported Cynthia McKinney, a former US congresswoman, Mairead Corrigan Maguire, a Nobel peace prize laureate, and other activists who were arrested and jailed after trying to break the naval blockade of the Gaza Strip. The Israeli navy seized their boat last week as it tried to sail with medical supplies from Cyprus to Gaza.
(AP, 7/6/09)
2009 Jul 6, Liberia's truth and reconciliation commission recommended barring President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and dozens of other high-profile figures from public office for 30 years for supporting armed groups in the country's civil wars.
(AP, 7/7/09)
2009 Jul 6, Nepal's national assembly sat for the first time in more than two months after the Maoist party agreed to halt protests that have paralyzed parliament.
(AFP, 7/6/09)
2009 Jul 6, In Russia President Barack Obama opened his first Moscow summit with confidence. Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev struck a preliminary deal to reduce their stockpiles of nuclear warheads to as few as 1,500 each, pointing the two countries' arsenals toward lower levels than in any previous arms control agreement.
(AP, 7/6/09)
2009 Jul 6, Vasily Aksyonov (b.1932), Russian novelist and Soviet dissident, died in Moscow. He was forced into exile in 1980 after being branded as “anti-Soviet" and lived in the US for over two decades. His over 20 novels included “The Moscow Saga" (1994), which was adopted for a popular TV series in 2004.
(SFC, 7/8/09, p.D5)
2009 Jul 6, The office of South Korea's Pres. Lee Myung-bak said he will donate about 33.1 billion won ($26 million), almost all of his personal fortune, to establish a new youth scholarship program.
(AP, 7/6/09)
2009 Jul 6, Vatican Radio began airing advertisements for the first time in its 80-year history. Vatican debt last year was pegged at $22 Million.
(SFC, 7/27/09, p.D3)
2009 Jul 6, In Yemen a barber was publicly executed after he was found guilty of raping and killing an 11-year-old boy who came to his shop for a haircut. The barber was arrested in December 2008 and confessed during a January trial to raping the boy inside his salon, killing him and cutting up his body before dumping it outside San'a.
(AP, 7/6/09)
2009 Jul 7, Google announced its new operating system, Google Chrome OS, which would initially target low cost netbooks.
(SFC, 7/9/09, p.C1)
2009 Jul 7, Ron Nicolino (b.1939), artist and former resident of Point Richmond, Ca., died of cancer. He had attempted to string a collection of bras across the Grand Canyon in the mid-1990s, but was unable to get federal permission. Instead he and Ellen Duffy concocted the creation of a bra ball. A dispute led each one to create their own versions. Nicolino’s 1,600 pound “Big Giant Bra Ball" was left with his mother in Washington state.
(SFC, 7/16/09, p.D7)
2009 Jul 7, In eastern Afghanistan a hand grenade thrown at a police vehicle exploded in a crowd, killing one civilian and wounding 28 others in Khost province. A British soldier died in an explosion in Helmand province. He was the 7th British soldier killed in Afghanistan in a week. Hundreds of insurgents attacked police posts and a government building in eastern Nuristan province. The attacks continued into the next day leaving 6 policemen and 21 insurgents dead. (AP, 7/7/09)(AP, 7/8/09)
2009 Jul 7, British officials unveiled a memorial of 52 steel pillars in a London park, one for each victim of the July 7, 2005, attacks on the city's transit system.
(AP, 7/7/09)
2009 Jul 7, The Cameroonian newspaper Le Jour said five Chinese workers were abducted off the oil-rich Bakassi peninsula in Cameroon near the border with Nigeria.
(AFP, 7/8/09)
2009 Jul 7, Canadian officials said they had identified yet another new flu virus, this one a mixture of human and swine influenzas, in two farm workers in Western Canada.
(Reuters, 7/8/09)
2009 Jul 7, In China mobs of Han Chinese wielding meat cleavers and clubs and groups of Muslim Uighur men beat people in the streets of Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang region. The government imposed a curfew as it tried to stem communal violence. The official Xinhua News Agency said that 1,434 suspects had been arrested, and that checkpoints had been set up to stop rioters from escaping.
(AP, 7/7/09)
2009 Jul 7, In Egypt 22 people were killed in two separate accidents on the notoriously dangerous road between the capital Cairo and the southern city of Minya.
(AP, 7/7/09)
2009 Jul 7, Ethiopia's parliament adopted a new anti-terrorism bill despite criticism by rights groups that the legislation violates civil liberties.
(AFP, 7/7/09)
2009 Jul 7, In India at least 16 people were killed and 25 injured after a fire tore through a firecracker factory in Madurai.
(SFC, 7/9/09, p.A2)
2009 Jul 7, In Italy Matteo Salvini, a member of the often xenophobic, anti-immigrant Northern League party, resigned his seat in the lower chamber of Parliament after being filmed singing a racist chant about Naples and its residents.
(AP, 7/8/09)
2009 Jul 7, In northern Mexico an anti-crime activist and a neighbor were killed by gunmen believed linked to a drug cartel. Anti-crime activists said the slaying of Benjamin LeBaron, a US citizen, in Chihuahua state was the first time one of their own had been killed for denouncing crime and called it a chilling warning. Jose Rodolfo Escajeda, a lieutenant and one of the main operators of the Juarez cartel, was later presumed responsible for the killing of LeBaron and a neighbor near Nuevo Casas Grandes.
(AP, 7/8/09)(AP, 9/6/09)
2009 Jul 7, In Pakistan a US missile strike pulverized a compound in a stronghold of Taliban warlord Baitullah Mehsud, killing 16 foreign and local militants in South Waziristan. Two paramilitary soldiers were killed and nine security personnel wounded in three bomb attacks in North and South Waziristan. The military said that four militants were killed, including a brother of Ibn-e-Amin, one of the most-wanted Taliban commanders in the Swat valley.
(AFP, 7/7/09)
2009 Jul 7, In the Philippines a crude bomb hidden on a motorcycle exploded in a port city on southern Jolo island where al-Qaida-linked militants are active, killing at least two people and wounding 24.
(AP, 7/7/09)
2009 Jul 7, In Moscow President Barack Obama asked the Russian people to "forge a lasting partnership" with the US, but he acknowledged after talks with PM Vladimir Putin that on divisive issues there won't be "a meeting of the minds anytime soon.
(AP, 7/7/09)
2009 Jul 7, Spanish police arrested Jorge Alberto Soza (72), an ex-Argentine police official suspected of human rights abuses committed during the South American country's dirty war. Soza was wanted in Argentina in connection with 18 cases of kidnapping and torture between 1975 and 1977 when he was an assistant Federal Police commissioner and chief delegate in the southern Argentine city of Neuquen.
(AP, 7/24/09)
2009 Jul 7, Pope Benedict XVI called for a radical rethinking of global economy in “Caritas et Verite" (Charity in Truth) his 3rd encyclical.
(SFC, 7/8/09, p.A2)
2009 Jul 8, In SF Philip Day (63), former head of SF City College, was charged with 8 felonies for using public funds for political donations and other banned expenditures.
(SFC, 7/9/09, p.A1)
2009 Jul 8, In Chesnee, North Carolina, Ricky Lee Blackwell shot a girl (8) twice in the driveway of a home where he had taken her and his estranged wife to swim and play. The girl's father was dating Blackwell's estranged wife. Blackwell shot himself as police closed in. He was taken to a hospital but his condition wasn't released.
(AP, 7/9/09)
2009 Jul 8, In Afghanistan a roadside bomb attack killed two NATO soldiers.
(AP, 7/9/09)
2009 Jul 8, Australia said Chinese authorities had detained Stern Hu, Rio Tinto Ltd's top iron ore negotiator, as well as three other Rio employees on suspicion of espionage and stealing state secrets, threatening to strain already fraying ties.
(Reuters, 7/8/09)
2009 Jul 8, Australian residents of rural Bundanoon, hoping to protect the earth and their wallets, voted to ban the sale of bottled water, the first community in the country, and possibly the world, to take such a drastic step in the growing backlash against the industry.
(AP, 7/9/09)
2009 Jul 8, Azerbaijan police arrested Adnan Hadzhizade, a video blogger and member of the "OL!" opposition movement, and Emin Milli, a youth activist who also runs an Internet TV program, after a fight in a Baku cafe with two unknown men. Both were charged with hooliganism. A Baku court decision soon ordered two months of pretrial detention for Milli and Hadzhizade, which prompted criticism from international journalism advocates.
(AP, 7/14/09)
2009 Jul 8, The British government set out plans to toughen regulation of its banking sector, including greater oversight of bonuses paid to staff.
(AFP, 7/8/09)
2009 Jul 8, British scientists claimed to have created human sperm from embryonic stem cells for the first time. Several critics said the sperm cells were clearly abnormal. The paper was retracted by the end of the month because two paragraphs in its introduction had been plagiarized. Experts acknowledged that concerns might be raised about the study's credibility.
(SFC, 7/9/09, p.A5)(AP, 7/31/09)
2009 Jul 8, In China hundreds of helmeted troops in riot gear swarmed the central square of Urumqi, capital of western Xinjiang, after ethnic riots left some 192 dead. The city's Communist Party boss promised those behind the killings would be executed. On July 11 China said 137 of the riot victims were Han while 46 were Uighurs and one was a Hui, another Muslim group. Uighurs on the streets of Urumqi, and from exile activist groups disputed the new figures.
(AP, 7/8/09)(AP, 7/11/09)(AP, 7/15/09)
2009 Jul 8, In France some 60 youths rioted outside Saint-Etienne after hearing that man had tried to hang himself in jail. Mohamed Benmouna (21) died soon after at a hospital.
(SFC, 7/9/09, p.A2)
2009 Jul 8, In Haiti Bill Clinton said a lack of coordination among aid groups and Haitian leaders is hurting efforts to ease poverty in the Caribbean nation, as he wrapped up his first trip here as a special UN envoy.
(AP, 7/8/09)
2009 Jul 8, Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono won a second term. Exit polls gave him a massive lead in only the second presidential vote since the fall of Suharto. Yudhoyono won 61% of the vote. Jusuf Kalla, his former vice-president, won 12%. Megawati Sukarnoputri won 27%.
(AP, 7/8/09)(Econ, 9/12/09, SR p.4)
2009 Jul 8, In Iraq car bombs in two Shiite villages near Mosul killed 16 civilians and injured more than two dozen.
(AP, 7/10/09)
2009 Jul 8, The Irish government said Irish voters who rejected the EU's Lisbon Treaty last year will be asked to vote again Oct. 2 on the long-delayed blueprint for reform.
(AP, 7/8/09)
2009 Jul 8, G8 Leaders met in L'Aquila, Italy, for talks on threats to global security and stability at a summit where climate change, a continuing global economic crisis, nuclear proliferation and world hunger took top billing.
(AP, 7/8/09)
2009 Jul 8, Protesters in Indian Kashmir set fire to a police van and stoned other security vehicles after the body of a missing young man was recovered in the regional capital Srinagar.
(AFP, 7/8/09)
2009 Jul 8, Malaysian education officials announced that they will abandon the use of English to teach math and science, bowing to protesters who demanded more use of the national Malay language.
(SFC, 7/9/09, p.A2)
2009 Jul 8, In Mexico investigators found a severed head and two arms inside a plastic bag in the of Ario de Rosales, Michoacan state.
(AP, 7/9/09)
2009 Jul 8, Nigerian MEND militants said they blew up two key oil pipelines as they stepped up attacks in response to a government amnesty offer.
(AFP, 7/8/09)
2009 Jul 8, In Pakistan a US drone fired 6 missiles and killed 10 suspected militants at a training camp about 35 kilometers northeast of Wana. At least 35 suspected militants were killed in a second US missile strike targeting insurgents in the northwest tribal belt.
(AFP, 7/8/09)(SFC, 7/9/09, p.A4)
2009 Jul 8, Saudi officials said a criminal court has convicted and sentenced an al-Qaida militant to death and given more 330 others jail terms, fines and travel bans in the country's first known terrorism trials for suspected members of the terror network. The 330 are believed to be among the 991 suspected militants that Interior Minister Prince Nayef has said had been charged with participating in terrorist attacks over the past five years.
(AP, 7/8/09)
2009 Jul 8, Somali pirates seized a Turkish ship with 23 crew and were being shadowed by a Turkish warship in the Gulf of Aden. The pirates first surrounded the Horizon-1 in speed boats and then boarded the ship, which was carrying sulfate from Saudi Arabia to Jordan.
(AP, 7/8/09)
2009 Jul 8, A senior UN official said fighting between tribes in southern Sudan has increasingly targeted women and children and likely killed more than 1,000 people since January.
(AP, 7/8/09)
2009 Jul 8, Switzerland's government said it would forbid the Swiss bank UBS AG from complying with any court-ordered transfer of data on tens of thousands of American clients to the US government, and would consider seizing documents to prevent that.
(AP, 7/8/09)
2009 Jul 9, In Florida Byrd and Melanie Billings were killed at their sprawling home near Pensacola. The wealthy Florida couple had 4 children and adopted 12 others with developmental disabilities and other problems. Three men were soon arrested in connection with the slayings. In 2010 a jury found Patrick Gonzalez Jr. guilty of 2 counts of 1st degree murder and one count of robber. He had led a group of men dressed as ninjas in the attack.
(AP, 7/13/09)(SFC, 7/14/09, p.A5)(SFC, 10/29/10, p.A6)
2009 Jul 9, An Afghan government spokesman said President Hamid Karzai has pardoned five heroin smugglers, at least one of them a relative of a man who heads Karzai's campaign for re-election next month. A truck rigged with explosives blew up near Kabul killing 25 people including 13 primary school students. Militants attacked a district headquarters in the southern province of Zabul, sparking a clash in which 15 Taliban were killed. 30 insurgents planting bombs in a road in Zabul were killed in an Afghan military ambush. Overnight clashes with troops killed 27 suspected militants in Helmand.
(Reuters, 7/9/09)(AFP, 7/9/09)
2009 Jul 9, An African Union panel said former UN chief Kofi Annan handed the International Criminal Court the names of key suspects in Kenya's post-poll violence which he helped end last year.
(AFP, 7/9/09)
2009 Jul 9, The US deported Luis Arce Gomez (71), a key figure in Bolivia's last military dictatorship, back home to serve a 30-year prison sentence for crimes including genocide and political assassinations. Gomez, known as "the minister of cocaine," took part in the July 1980 coup led by then-Gen. Luis Garcia Meza and backed by drug traffickers.
(AP, 7/9/09)
2009 Jul 9, In China a 6.0 earthquake rocked Yunnan province, killing one person and destroying thousands of houses. More than 400,000 people left their homes following the tremor that left at least one person dead.
(AP, 7/10/09)
2009 Jul 9, Egypt’s Interior Ministry said authorities have arrested 25 militants with links to al-Qaida on suspicion of plotting attacks on oil pipelines and ships in the Suez Canal.
(AP, 7/9/09)
2009 Jul 9, In Iran hundreds of young men and women chanted "death to the dictator" and fled baton-wielding police in Tehran as opposition activists sought to revive street protests despite authorities' vows to "smash" any new marches.
(AP, 7/9/09)
2009 Jul 9, In Iraq 2 suicide bombings in Tal Afar, in Nineveh province, killed 38 people and wounded 66. Tal Afar is mainly home to minority Turkmen of the Shiite Muslim faith. In Baghdad, 8 people were killed and 30 wounded by two bombs in a market in Sadr City, a poor, Shiite Muslim area. 10 more people were killed by bombs elsewhere in Baghdad. US forces released five Iranian officials detained in January 2007 in northern Iraq on suspicion of aiding local Shiite militants. An Iranian television report identified the men as Mohsen Bagheri, Mahmoud Farhadi, Majid Ghaemi, Majid Dagheri and Abbas Jami. A car driver was killed in a head-on collision with a US Army Stryker vehicle, the lead vehicle of a US-Iraqi convoy in western Diyala province.
(Reuters, 7/9/09)(AP, 7/9/09)(AP, 7/10/09)(AP, 7/11/09)
2009 Jul 9, In Italy the G8 opened their summit to include the G5, which made their fifth straight appearance at the annual summit, albeit as guests, to discuss climate change, development aid, global economic growth and international trade.
(AP, 7/9/09)
2009 Jul 9, Mexican police found four mutilated bodies in plastic bags on the side of a highway in La Huacana, Michoacan state.
(AP, 7/9/09)
2009 Jul 9, In Nigeria Henry Okah, a key militant in Nigeria's southern Niger Delta detained since September 2007, accepted President Umaru Yar'Adua recent offer of unconditional amnesty. Armed robbers killed six police officers as they fled after a raid on a commercial bank at Idi-Iroko, a Nigerian border town with Benin.
(AFP, 7/10/09)
2009 Jul 9, Pakistan’s government announced a plan to allow some 2 million people who fled the offensive to return home next week, saying the region was now secure and essential services restored. A landmine killed five paramilitary soldiers and wounded four others in the insurgency-plagued province of Baluchistan. Dozens of militants overran a police post and killed four officers in the northwest city of Khar.
(AFP, 7/9/09)(AP, 7/10/09)
2009 Jul 9-2009 Aug 2, Saudi Arabian authorities arrested 44 suspected militants who sought to recruit youths and finance their "deviant activities" through charitable donations.
(AP, 8/19/09)
2009 Jul 9, In South Africa World Cup organizers said a strike by construction workers entered its second day as negotiators meet to try and resolve the standoff.
(AP, 7/9/09)
2009 Jul 9, South Korean Web sites were attacked again after a wave of Web site outages in the US and South Korea that several officials suspect North Korea was behind.
(AP, 7/9/09)
2009 Jul 9, The Swedish government said it will expel Sylvere Ahorugeze (53) within three weeks, fulfilling a request from authorities in Rwanda and marking the first time an EU nation has sent back a suspect to face charges in the 1994 genocide.
(AP, 7/10/09)
2009 Jul 9, The UN passed a resolution extending the lifetime of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda to next year. The latest extension is the second for the Tanzania-based court which had originally been scheduled wind up its lower court cases by December 2008, but had its life extended to December 2009.
(AFP, 7/9/09)
2009 Jul 9, In Venezuela’s top telecommunications official said President Hugo Chavez's government is imposing new regulations on cable television while revoking the licenses of more than 200 radio stations.
(AP, 7/9/09)
2009 Jul 10, General Motors emerged from bankruptcy protection. CEO Fritz Henderson said the new GM will be far faster and more responsive to customers than the old one, and it will make money and repay government loans faster than required.
(AP, 7/10/09)
2009 Jul 10, A US plant scientists said late blight, which caused the Irish Potato Famine of the 1840s and 1850s, is killing potato and tomato plants in home gardens from Maine to Ohio and threatening commercial and organic farms.
(Reuters, 7/10/09)
2009 Jul 10, Police in Illinois closed a black cemetery in Alsip and declared it a crime scene after former employees were accused of dumping hundreds of unearthed corpses in a scheme to resell their plots.
(SFC, 7/11/09, p.A4)
2009 Jul 10, Kenneth Stampp (b.1913), US Berkeley historian, died. His books included “The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Antebellum South" (1956) and “The Era of Reconstruction, 1865-1877" (1965).
(SFC, 7/22/09, p.D5)
2009 Jul 10, In Afghanistan 8 British soldiers were reported killed over the last 24 hours. A US service member wounded in June in Afghanistan died in the US.
(AP, 7/11/09)(AP, 7/12/09)
2009 Jul 10, Millions of Argentines stayed home from work, churches in Bolivia canceled Mass and Ecuador announced its first fatalities from swine flu, as the virus continued its spread during the South American winter season.
(AP, 7/11/09)
2009 Jul 10, Britain’s the last ever Royal Show closed in Warwickshire. The agricultural jamboree, intended to spread innovation among farmers, ended a 170 year run.
(Econ, 7/11/09, p.57)
2009 Jul 10, In China boisterous crowds turned up at mosques in riot-hit parts of Urumqi, ignoring orders canceling Friday prayers due to the ethnic violence and forcing officials to let them in.
(AP, 7/10/09)
2009 Jul 10, China’s state media said 4 detained Rio Tinto Ltd. employees are accused of paying bribes for secret information about China's stance in iron ore price talks. A Chinese steel executive, also detained along with four Rio Tinto employees, was being investigated for leaking China's "bottom line" on iron ore prices. Chinalco denied the move was payback for a collapsed deal.
(AP, 7/10/09)(Reuters, 7/10/09)
2009 Jul 10, In Iraq an American soldier in Iraq shot and killed a truck driver who did not respond to warnings to stop on a highway between Tikrit and Balad.
(AP, 7/11/09)
2009 Jul 10, In Italy the 3-day G8 summit came to close. World leaders launched a $15 billion initiative to help farmers in poor countries boost production in a shift in the way the West tackles world hunger.
(AP, 7/10/09)
2009 Jul 10, Nigerian militants claimed to have blown up for a second time a recently repaired oil pipeline operated by US petroleum giant Chevron.
(AP, 7/11/09)
2009 Jul 10, Earl Haig (91), Scottish artist and son of WWI Field Marshal Douglas Haig, died. He developed his gift for painting as a prisoner of war in World War II.
(AP, 7/15/09)
2009 Jul 10, Somali residents said Islamist insurgent fighters in Baidoa have beheaded seven people accused of abandoning their religion and of espionage, in the largest mass execution since the Islamists were chased from power two and a half years ago.
(AP, 7/10/09)
2009 Jul 10, South Korea’s spy agency told lawmakers that a research institute affiliated with the North's Ministry of People's Armed Forces received an order on June 7 to "destroy the South Korean puppet communications networks in an instant." The Chosun Ilbo newspaper reported that the North has between 500-1,000 hacking specialists.
(AP, 7/11/09)
2009 Jul 10, In Spain charging bull gored a young Spanish man to death at Pamplona's San Fermin festival, the first such fatality in nearly 15 years. Nine others were injured in a particularly dangerous and chaotic chapter of the running of the bulls.
(AP, 7/10/09)
2009 Jul 10, In Switzerland British conductor Edward Downes (b.1924) died with his wife Joan (74) at an assisted suicide clinic. He was a longtime stalwart at the Royal Opera and maestro of the first-ever performance at Sydney's iconic Opera House.
(AP, 7/14/09)
2009 Jul 10, At the Vatican Pope Benedict XVI stressed the church's opposition to abortion and stem cell research in his first meeting with President Barack Obama.
(AP, 7/10/09)
2009 Jul 10, Zimbabwe's army and police refused to vacate diamond fields where security forces are accused of human rights abuses, despite a pledge last week for their withdrawal. Finance Minister Tendai Biti said the government will provide 142 million dollars in aid to small-scale farmers as the country struggles to revive its shattered agricultural sector.
(AFP, 7/10/09)(AP, 7/10/09)
2009 Jul 11, In Afghanistan bomb blasts killed 2 US Marines in Helmand province. At least six police officers were killed by roadside bombs, two in southern Helmand province and at least four south of Kabul in Logar province. In a gunbattle in eastern Paktia province between insurgents and Afghan police, two militants and one police officer were killed.
(AP, 7/12/09)(SFC, 7/13/09, p.A3)
2009 Jul 11, It was reported that Brazilian police were investigating some 660 “secret acts" passed by the Senate since 1995 which have awarded jobs and pay raises members of staff.
(Econ, 7/11/09, p.39)
2009 Jul 11, In Brazil the body of Arturo Gatti (37), former Canadian boxing champion, was found in a hotel room at the northeastern Porto de Galinhas resort. He was apparently strangled with the strap of a purse, which was found at the scene with blood stains. His wife, Amanda Rodrigues (23), was soon taken into custody after contradictions in her interrogation. A police inquiry later concluded that he committed suicide using the strap of a rucksack on a staircase in the early hours of the morning.
(AP, 7/12/09)(Reuters, 7/31/09)
2009 Jul 11, In Ghana US Pres. Obama met with Ghanaian President John Atta Mills. Obama praised and scolded the continent of his ancestors, asserting forces of tyranny and corruption must yield if Africa is to achieve its promise.
(AP, 7/11/09)
2009 Jul 11, A ferry capsized off Haiti's southern coast, killing at least five people. Authorities said it wasn't clear how many people were on board, but as many as two dozen could be missing.
(AP, 7/11/09)
2009 Jul 11, In India 2 boats capsized in the Wainganga River in western Bhandara district leaving 26 women drowned.
(SFC, 7/13/09, p.A2)
2009 Jul 11, In Indonesia an Australian working for the Indonesian subsidiary of US-based mining giant Freeport McMoRan was shot dead by unknown attackers in Papua.
(AFP, 7/11/09)
2009 Jul 11, In Iraq a car bomb has exploded in Gugjeli a Shiite village in northern Iraq, killing at least four people. Another 6 people died in bombings in Baghdad.
(AP, 7/11/09)(SSFC, 7/12/09, p.A2)
2009 Jul 11, In Israel 2 religious Jews were stabbed and another was beaten in a fight with secular Jews in Jerusalem.
(AP, 7/11/09)
2009 Jul 11, In Mexico gunmen boldly attacked federal forces across the western state of Michoacan following the capture of Arnoldo Rueda Medina, an alleged member of La Familia drug cartel. In Zitacuaro, a mountain town famous for its Monarch butterfly nesting grounds, 3 federal agents were killed, and two soldiers were fatally shot in the town of Zamora. Two federal agents were killed and three others were wounded along a highway between Morelia and the port City of Lazaro Cardenas when dozens of gunmen ambushed their patrol cars.
(AP, 7/12/09)
2009 Jul 11, In central Pakistan police killed one suspected militant and seized a truckload of automatic weapons and explosives after a five-hour shootout at a religious school in Dera Ghazi Khan, Punjab province. A clash with militants in South Waziristan killed a soldier. Gunmen killed 5 police officers and a forestry official responding to reports of a dead body in Mansehra.
(AP, 7/11/09)(AP, 7/12/09)(SFC, 7/13/09, p.A2)
2009 Jul 11, Peru’s President Alan Garcia shuffled his Cabinet following months of protests, replacing seven of 16 ministers and naming a new chief, the third person to hold the post in nine months.
(AP, 7/12/09)
2009 Jul 11, In Somalia a foreign fighter and Nor Daqli, head of security for the capital, were among 16 people killed in fighting between UN-backed government forces and Islamist insurgents in the north of Mogadishu.
(AP, 7/11/09)
2009 Jul 12, In Novato, California, James Raphael Mitchell (27) allegedly bludgeoned to death Danielle Keller, the mother of his one-year-old daughter. He was arrested late the same day. Mitchell’s father, Jim Mitchell, was the co-founder of San Francisco’s x-rated O’Farrell Theater. In 2011 Mitchell testified he did not kill Keller and had fought off two attackers at her home on the day of her death. Mitchell was convicted of 1st degree murder on July 12, 2011. On Aug 16 Mitchell was sentenced to 35 years in prison.
(SFC, 7/14/09, p.A1)(SFC, 7/6/11, p.C5)(SFC, 7/13/11, p.C3)(SFC, 8/17/11, p.C3)
2009 Jul 12, Ben Novack Jr. (53) was killed in a NY hotel room. His mother was killed at her Fort Lauderdale home three months earlier on April 4. In 2012 Narcy Novack (55), the Fort Lauderdale wife of Ben, and her brother, Cristobal Veliz (58), were found guilty in White Plains, NY, of orchestrating the murders in a grab for the family estate. On Dec 17, 2012, Narcy Novack was sentenced to life in prison.
(SFC, 6/21/12, p.A8)(http://tinyurl.com/6mdhvmf)(SFC, 12/18/12, p.A7)
2009 Jul 12, Colombia’s President Alvaro Uribe delivered reparations totaling nearly $1 million to 279 victims of Colombia's long-running conflict.
(AP, 7/13/09)
2009 Jul 12, The Republic of Congo held elections. Pres. Denis Sassou-Nguesso was re-elected with 78.6% of the vote.
(SFC, 7/16/09, p.A2)
2009 Jul 12, Hondurans enjoyed their first night of unfettered freedom in two weeks after the interim government lifted a curfew imposed following the ouster of President Manuel Zelaya.
(AP, 7/13/09)
2009 Jul 12, Indian Maoists killed at least 30 policemen, including a senior officer, in two separate ambushes in the eastern state of Chhattisgarh. A section of a bridge being built for the New Delhi metro rail system collapsed, crushing to death 5 workers and injuring 13 in a major setback to the project that officials hope to complete before the 2010 Commonwealth Games.
(AFP, 7/12/09)
2009 Jul 12, In Indonesia gunmen killed a security guard working for US mining conglomerate Freeport, then ambushed police responding to the attack blamed on separatist rebels in one of Indonesia's most underdeveloped and remote regions.
(AP, 7/12/09)
2009 Jul 12, Five Iranian officials held in Iraq for more than two years by US forces returned home after the US released them under pressure from the Iraqi government. They were handed over to Iraqi officials on July 9. The Iranians were detained in the northern Iraqi city of Irbil in January 2007. At the time, US authorities said the men included the operations chief and other members of Iran's elite Quds Force, which is accused of arming and training Iraqi militants.
(AP, 7/12/09)
2009 Jul 12, In Iraq bombings in or near churches killed at least four people, including one that happened as worshippers were leaving Mass in eastern Baghdad. It was reported that below-average rainfall and insufficient water in the Euphrates and Tigris rivers have left Iraq bone dry for a second straight year, wrecking swaths of farm land, threatening drinking water supplies and intensifying fierce sandstorms that have coated the country in brown dust. The severity of the drought has resulted in a testy water dispute between Iraq and Turkey, which has built five dams along the Euphrates upstream from where it enters western Iraq.
(AP, 7/13/09)
2009 Jul 12, In Kyrgyzstan government critic Almaz Tashiyev (Tashiev) died of complications from head injuries after surgery. Relatives said he told them before the operation that he had been beaten by eight police officers earlier in the week. His death came after a series of attacks on reporters and shortly before next week's presidential election, reinforcing concerns about the risks faced by independent journalists in the Central Asian nation. Junior lieutenant Shukurbek Nurmatov was arrested July 16 on suspicion of being involved in the beating.
(AP, 7/13/09)(AP, 7/17/09)(Econ, 8/1/09, p.38)
2009 Jul 12, Mexican federal agents captured 2 suspects in connection with a series of attacks on federal forces across Michoacan state that left 5 officers and 2 soldiers dead.
(AP, 7/13/09)
2009 Jul 12, Nigerian rebels took their battle with the government into the country's main city, targeting an oil tanker loading facility in Lagos harbor in an unprecedented attack there.
(AFP, 7/13/09)
2009 Jul 12, Pakistani fighter jets pounded suspected militant hide-outs in the South Waziristan tribal region as part of ongoing operations against Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud. At least 8 militants were killed. A military statement described continued reports of unrest in the Swat valley, including a remote-controlled bomb that wounded 7 tribal police officers in the past 24 hours.
(AP, 7/12/09)
2009 Jul 12, Somali government forces with the help of African Union tanks fought Islamic militants in the capital, with clashes killing at least seven people. Witnesses said dozens of people were killed and some 150 wounded.
(AFP, 7/12/09)(AP, 7/13/09)
2009 Jul 12, In Spain 10 people were injured, two of them seriously, in the Pamplona bull run, two days after a man was gored to death by a bull.
(AP, 7/12/09)
2009 Jul 12, Swiss police divers harpooned a zander fish, which was 70 centimeters (two feet three inches) long and weighed eight kilos (17.5 pounds), after it bit six swimmers over the weekend in Lac Majeur.
(AFP, 7/13/09)
2009 Jul 12, Thailand's swine flu death toll rose to 18 as the government confirmed three more fatalities and opened a vaccine plant to prevent tens of thousands of infections across the country.
(AFP, 7/12/09)
2009 Jul 13, The US Fisheries Service of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued a ban on krill fishing within 200 miles of the Pacific coast of California, Oregon and Washington due to concerns that commercial krill fishing threatened food sources for fish, whales and seabirds.
(SFC, 7/14/09, p.A4)
2009 Jul 13, In southern Afghanistan 2 US Marines were killed in a hostile incident. An insurgent attack in eastern Nuristan province killed a US soldier. The police chief of Jalrez district in Wardak province was killed along with 3 officers in a roadside blast.
(AP, 7/14/09)(SFC, 7/14/09, p.A3)
2009 Jul 13, British and Israeli officials said Britain has revoked several licenses granted to British companies to sell weapons parts to Israel because of concerns over their use in Israel's recent war in the Gaza Strip.
(AP, 7/13/09)
2009 Jul 13, In China police shot dead two Uighur men and wounded a third on the streets of Urumqi, where tens of thousands of troops are stationed to restore calm a week after deadly ethnic riots.
(AP, 7/13/09)
2009 Jul 13, China's Health Ministry ordered a hospital to stop using electric shock therapy to cure youths of Internet addiction, saying there was no scientific evidence it worked.
(AP, 7/14/09)
2009 Jul 13, In Cuba the body of Rev. Mariano Arroyo Merino (74) was discovered in his room at the parish he served in the coastal neighborhood of Regla, situated on Havana Bay across from the capital. Authorities were still investigating the death of another Spanish priest, the Rev. Eduardo de la Fuente Serrano, whose body was found in a remote, sparsely populated area just outside the capital in mid-February.
(AP, 7/13/09)
2009 Jul 13, In Germany retired auto worker John Demjanjuk was formally charged with 27,900 counts of acting as an accessory to murder, one for every person who died at Sobibor during the time he is accused of serving as a guard at the Nazi death camp.
(AP, 7/13/09)
2009 Jul 13, German automobile group Daimler said it sold 40 percent of its stake in US electric car maker Tesla Motors to United Arab Emirate's Aabar Investments group to boost development of low-emission vehicles.
(AP, 7/13/09)
2009 Jul 13, Munich Re, the world’s largest reinsurance group, invited 20 large companies to join it in forming a consortium called Desertec to build a legion of solar power stations in Africa and Arabia and connect them to Europe.
(Econ, 7/11/09, p.83)
2009 Jul 13, In Indonesia a policeman's body was found at the bottom of a ravine near the Indonesian operations of US mining conglomerate Freeport, raising the death toll from a series of weekend ambushes in restive Papua province to three.
(AP, 7/13/09)
2009 Jul 13, Iraqi authorities imposed vehicle bans in two mostly Christian towns and increased security around churches in Baghdad after attacks targeting the Christian minority. An Iraqi soldier was killed when a bomb attached to his private vehicle exploded at noon in an area of northern Mosul.
(AP, 7/13/09)
2009 Jul 13, Japan passed a law that will allow children to receive organ transplants for the first time, reversing a ban that doomed many young patients or forced them to seek medical care abroad.
(AP, 7/13/09)
2009 Jul 13, Former Lebanese PM Amin al-Hafez (83) died. He served a turbulent two-month term in 1973 before he was forced to resign.
(AP, 7/13/09)
2009 Jul 13, Mexican prosecutors said they found the bound, blindfolded and tortured bodies of a dozen people on a roadside near La Huacana in the western state of Michoacan. The 12 bodies were soon identified as federal agents investigating organized crime.
(AP, 7/14/09)(AP, 7/15/09)(SFC, 7/15/09, p.A2)
2009 Jul 13, Mexico and the US announced that they were working on a protocol for sharing information in arms trafficking cases.
(AP, 7/14/09)(AP, 8/6/09)
2009 Jul 13, Pakistan began sending home about two million people displaced two months ago by the army's assault on Taliban militants in the Swat valley. An explosion in Punjab province destroyed a house used as a religious seminary, killing at least nine people, seven of them children, and leaving many others in critical condition.
(AP, 7/13/09)
2009 Jul 13, In Russia 5 suspected militants and two law enforcement officers were killed in separate attacks in the south. The militants were killed in two separate gunbattles in Chechnya, while Interior Ministry troops in Dagestan died in an ambush by insurgents.
(AP, 7/13/09)
2009 Jul 13, South Korea reported that North Korean leader Kim Jong Il (67) has life-threatening pancreatic cancer, days after fresh images of him looking gaunt spurred speculation that his health was worsening following a reported stroke last year.
(AP, 7/13/09)
2009 Jul 13, Turkey and four EU countries (Austria, Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary) formally agreed to route the Nabucco natural gas pipeline across their territories, pushing ahead with a US- and EU-backed attempt to make Europe less dependent on Russian gas.
(AP, 7/13/09)(Econ, 7/18/09, p.47)
2009 Jul 13, Uganda said it would arrest Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir if he enters the country, an unusual stance after a summit of African leaders denounced the international arrest warrant against al-Bashir.
(AP, 7/13/09)
2009 Jul 13, The UN’s highest court set travel rules for the Nicaraguan river that borders Costa Rica, affirming freedom for Costa Rican boats while upholding Nicaragua's right to regulate traffic.
(AP, 7/13/09)
2009 Jul 13, In Zimbabwe militants from President Robert Mugabe's party disrupted the start of a national conference aimed at drawing up a new constitution.
(AP, 7/13/09)
2009 Jul 14, President Barack Obama unveiled a $12 billion initiative to boost community colleges and propel the United States toward his goal of having the highest proportion of college graduates in the world by 2020.
(AP, 7/14/09)
2009 Jul 14, Episcopalians meeting in Anaheim, NY, declared gays and lesbians eligible any ordained ministry.
(SFC, 7/15/09, p.A6)
2009 Jul 14, Exxon Mobil said it would put $300 million into an effort to create a new generation of biofuels, and to add $300 if plans with Synthetic Genomics, a San Diego firm under Craig Venter, proved successful.
(Econ, 7/18/09, p.78)
2009 Jul 14, In San Francisco Rev. Floyd Lotito (74), founder of St. Anthony’s Dining Room (1981) died after a long struggle with Parkinson’s disease. The St. Anthony free-meal program currently served nearly 2,600 meals per day.
(SFC, 7/20/09, p.C5)
2009 Jul 14, The Int’l. Accounting Standards Board (IASB) proposed to put all financial assets into 2 buckets. Loans and securities would be in one and held at cost; all others would be in another and held at fair value.
(Econ, 7/18/09, p.74)
2009 Jul 14, In Afghanistan a NATO-contracted helicopter was shot down killing six Ukrainian crew members on board and an Afghan child on the ground in Helmand province. A roadside bomb killed one Italian soldier and wounded three others in western Afghanistan. Another roadside blast hit a civilian vehicle in Uruzgan province, killing three people and wounded six others. US coalition and Afghan forces searched compounds in Kandahar and found bomb-making materials, mortar rounds, AK-47 rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and 100 pounds (45 kilograms) of opium.
(AP, 7/14/09)(SFC, 7/15/09, p.A2)(AP, 7/26/09)
2009 Jul 14, The European Parliament elected ex-Polish Prime Minister Jerzy Buzek as its president, making him the first leader from a former Soviet bloc country to hold one of the top European Union posts.
(Reuters, 7/14/09)
2009 Jul 14, Iran’s official IRNA news agency reported that authorities in the southeastern city of Zahedan hanged 13 members of a Sunni Muslim rebel group convicted of bombings and killings in the area. The report said Abdulhamid Rigi, brother of Abdulmalik Rigi, leader of the group known as Jundallah or soldiers of God, had been scheduled to be hanged along with the 13 men, but his execution was postponed.
(AP, 7/14/09)
2009 Jul 14, In Iraq one person was killed and 9 others were wounded when a bomb exploded near an Internet cafe late at night in south Baghdad. Two traffic policemen were killed in eastern Baghdad by 2 gunmen who refused to stop at a checkpoint near the fortified Green Zone.
(AP, 7/15/09)
2009 Jul 14, Lithuania's Parliament approved a censorship bill that sharply curbs the spreading of public information that lawmakers say could harm the mental, physical, intellectual and moral development of youngsters. The bill comes into law on March 2010 at the latest.
(www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,4487209,00.html?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf)
2009 Jul 14, In Nairobi, Kenya, authorities seized over 660 pounds of illegal ivory and black rhinoceros horn, some of it still bloody, on a Mozambique-to-Asia plane.
(SFC, 7/15/09, p.A2)
2009 Jul 14, Nigeria's main militant group declared a 60-day truce, effective July 15, in its "oil war" with the government after the release of its leader Henry Okah under an amnesty deal.
(AFP, 7/15/09)
2009 Jul 14, In Pakistan fighting overnight in the lawless tribal belt killed 23 Taliban militants. An attack in the Khyber region destroyed an oil tanker supplying NATO forces based across the border in Afghanistan and left 2 civilians dead. Troops killed 13 militants in the latest clashes in the Swat Valley, underscoring the region's fragile security even as refugees displaced by fighting return home.
(AFP, 7/14/09)(AP, 7/15/09)
2009 Jul 14, In Russia 6 men emerged from three months of isolation in Soviet-era metal tubes after completing an experiment simulating a mission to Mars.
(AP, 7/14/09)
2009 Jul 14, In Somalia two French officials working as security advisers to the Somali government were kidnapped in Mogadishu. Agent Marc Aubriere managed to escape on August 26. Secret-agent Alexx Denis remained captive.
(Reuters, 7/14/09)(AP, 8/26/09)(SFC, 8/27/09, p.A2)(Econ, 8/13/11, p.45)
2009 Jul 14, South Korean police said hackers extracted files from computers they contaminated with the virus that triggered cyberattacks last week in the United States and South Korea, a sign that they tried to steal information from the victims. North Korea has supposedly trained an elite group of hackers at Mirim College, its military school.
(AP, 7/14/09)(Econ, 7/11/09, p.62)
2009 Jul 14, In Tanzania Tharcisse Renzaho, the former prefect of Rwandan capital Kigali, was sentenced to life for genocide-related crimes by the UN-backed war crimes court trying masterminds of the country's 1994 massacre.
(AFP, 7/14/09)
2009 Jul 14, Venezuela's oil minister Rafael Ramirez said workers at the state oil company must support President Hugo Chavez's endeavors or be suspected of conspiring against his socialist revolution.
(AP, 7/14/09)
2009 Jul 14, Zimbabwe's constitution talks, violently disrupted by militant backers of President Robert Mugabe, resumed with calls for tolerance in work on a charter meant to pave the way to fresh polls.
(AFP, 7/14/09)
2009 Jul 15, Space shuttle Endeavour rocketed toward the international space station as engineers on Earth pored over launch pictures that showed debris breaking off the fuel tank and striking the craft.
(AP, 7/16/09)
2009 Jul 15, In Alaska Anthony Rollins, a 13-year decorated Anchorage police officer, was arrested after being indicted for assaulting multiple women while on duty.
(SFC, 7/16/09, p.A6)
2009 Jul 15, California tax officials said a bill to tax and regulate marijuana in California like alcohol would generate nearly $1.4 billion in revenue for the cash-strapped state.
(AP, 7/16/09)
2009 Jul 15, In Afghanistan at least 4 civilians were killed and 13 were wounded in a late night airstrike on the southern village of Shawalikot. 3 police were killed by a suicide car bomber in Nimroz province, and two Afghan army soldiers died in two other attacks in the south. NATO forces killed two insurgents in an attack in the east.
(AP, 7/16/09)(http://news.yahoo.com/s/mcclatchy/20090717/wl_mcclatchy/3274354)
2009 Jul 15, Luxury carmaker Jaguar, owned by India's Tata Motors, announced it would end Liverpool production of its X-Type car by the end of the year with the loss of up to 300 jobs.
(AFP, 7/15/09)
2009 Jul 15, In China the former head of oil giant Sinopec was sentenced to death after being found guilty of corrupt practices over many years, but state press reported that he will likely not be executed. The Beijing court had found Chen Tonghai guilty of graft amounting to 195.7 million yuan (28.8 million dollars) when he served in top Sinopec ranks from 1999 to 2007.
(AFP, 7/15/09)
2009 Jul 15, In Egypt the two-day Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) opened in Sharm-El-Sheik. 50 leaders from the 118-nation grouping of mostly of African, Asian and Latin American nations gathered for their 15th meeting to address the world's biggest problems, such as terrorism and financial instability. Cuba's Pres. Raul Castro called for an international financial system that better takes into account developing countries interests.
(AP, 7/15/09)
2009 Jul 15, The EU urged Canada to restore visa-free travel for Czech visitors, removed by Ottawa after hundreds of Roma from the central European country sought asylum.
(Reuters, 7/15/09)
2009 Jul 15, Honduras' interim government suggested that backers of ousted President Manuel Zelaya were taking up arms to return him to power and it reinstated an overnight curfew it had lifted only days earlier.
(AP, 7/16/09)
2009 Jul 15, In Ingushetia police officials said that the body of Natalya Estemirova (b.1959), a prominent rights activist, was found not far from the main city of Nazran, hours after she was kidnapped in Chechnya.
(AP, 7/15/09)(Econ, 7/25/09, p.23)
2009 Jul 15, In Iran a Russian-made Caspian Airlines TU-154 jet plane carrying nearly 170 people crashed shortly after takeoff from Tehran's Imam Khomeini International Airport. It was headed to the Armenian capital Yerevan. All on board were killed.
(AP, 7/15/09)
2009 Jul 15, In Iraq a suicide bomber killed six people, including an Iraqi policeman, in an attack on security forces in Ramadi, a former insurgent stronghold in western Anbar province. A bombing in Sadr City killed 5 people.
(AP, 7/15/09)(SFC, 7/16/09, p.A2)
2009 Jul 15, A court in Indian-run Kashmir ordered the arrest of four police officers for allegedly destroying evidence in the rape and murder of two women that triggered violent protests last month.
(AP, 7/15/09)
2009 Jul 15, In northwest Pakistan a roadside bomb exploded at a police checkpoint, killing a paramilitary soldier and a police officer and wounding six policemen in the Bannu area.
(AP, 7/15/09)
2009 Jul 15, In the Philippines five employees of a logging company, including a woman, were seized by eight guerrillas belonging to the Moro Islamic Liberation Front in Kapai township in Lanao del Sur province. Army troops and police rescued the victims on July 18 near Kapai without a fire fight. Basit Kauyag was identified as the leader of the kidnappers.
(AP, 7/19/09)
2009 Jul 15, Mazen Abdul-Jawad (32), a Saudi man, appeared on the Lebanese-based LBC satellite TV station’s "Bold Red Line" program and shocked Saudis by publicly confessing to sexual exploits. More than 200 people soon filed legal complaints against Abdul-Jawad, dubbed a "sex braggart" by the media, and many Saudis said he should be severely punished. On July 31 Abdul-Jawad was detained for questioning. The Jiddah offices of the LBC station were closed soon thereafter.
(AP, 8/6/09)(AP, 8/9/09)
2009 Jul 15, In Turkmenistan President Gurbanguli Berdymukhamedov led a ceremony for channeling water across hundreds of miles to create Golden Age Lake in the heart of the barren Karakum Desert, in a Soviet-style engineering feat that some experts fear could unleash an environmental catastrophe.
(AP, 7/16/09)
2009 Jul 15, In Venezuela National Guard troops seized a police station controlled by a leading opponent of President Hugo Chavez, sparking clashes between soldiers and protesters that authorities said injured eight people.
(AP, 7/15/09)
2009 Jul 16, Michelle Cawthra, a former Colorado Dept. of Revenue supervisor, said love for her ex-boyfriend Hysear Randell led her to steal $11 million in unclaimed tax refunds from the state over a 2-year period. Randell was on trial in Denver for theft, forgery, computer crimes and racketeering.
(SFC, 7/17/09, p.A6)
2009 Jul 16, In Phoenix, Arizona, 4 boys, all Liberian refugees (9-14) lured a Liberian girl (8) to a storage shed and raped her. Charges against one of the boys, aged 8, were dropped on Dec 16 after a judge ruled the boy was not competent to stand trial.
(SFC, 8/10/09, p.A4)(SFC, 12/17/09, p.A12)
2009 Jul 16, In Chicago Willis Tower was introduced to Chicago by Mayor Richard M. Daley and others during a public Sears Tower renaming ceremony hosted by Willis Group Holdings. The London-based insurance brokerage secured the naming rights as part an agreement to lease 140,000 square feet of space, and has said it plans to bring hundreds of jobs to the city.
(AP, 7/16/09)
2009 Jul 16, CIT Group Inc. shares tumbled 75% as its inability to get emergency government funding raised expectations that the commercial lender will file for bankruptcy protection.
(AP, 7/16/09)(SFC, 7/17/09, p.C1)
2009 Jul 16, In California the UC Board of Regents cut $813 million from US budgets and approved pay raises, dividends and other benefits for over two dozen executives.
(http://tinyurl.com/n3hcj3)(SFC, 8/7/09, p.A1)
2009 Jul 16, Jeffrey Locker (52), a debt-ridden motivational speaker, was found strangled and stabbed in his car in East Harlem, hours after he was seen buying condoms. In 2011 jurors found Kenneth Minor guilty of helping Locker commit suicide.
(SFC, 3/4/11, p.A10)
2009 Jul 16, In southeastern Afghanistan local Taliban commanders threatened to kill a captured American soldier unless the US military stops operations in Ghazni province's Giro district and Paktika province's Khoshamand district. The British soldier was killed during a foot patrol near Gereshk in southern Helmand province.
(AP, 7/16/09)(AP, 7/17/09)
2009 Jul 16, Australia and China traded warnings over Rio Tinto employees detained for spying, as the United States urged Beijing to ensure transparency and fair treatment for staff of foreign companies.
(Reuters, 7/16/09)
2009 Jul 16, The Chadian rebel Union of Forces of Resistance (UFR) claimed the Chadian air force attacked two villages in the southeastern Chadian region of Tissi. Rebels claimed some 50 had been killed some 100 wounded. Sudan accused Chad of launching air raids on its western region of Darfur.
(AFP, 7/16/09)
2009 Jul 16, Colombian authorities extradited to the United States Gerardo Aguilar (50), alias "Cesar," a FARC rebel "jailer" captured in last year's July 2 rescue of three US military contractors and ex-presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt. He faced drug-trafficking charges, kidnapping and other charges on an indictment in Washington, D.C. federal court.
(AP, 7/17/09)
2009 Jul 16, In Egypt 8 Serb tourists and 3 Egyptians were killed when a truck on the wrong side of the road hit their coach head-on along Egypt's Red Sea coast.
(AP, 7/16/09)
2009 Jul 16, In Marseilles, France, a worker was killed immediately when the roof of a stage being built for a Madonna concert fell apart on top of several workers. Madonna canceled her scheduled July 19 performance. A 2nd worker died the next day.
(AP, 7/17/09)
2009 Jul 16, Iceland’s Althingi (parliament) voted 33 to 28 to apply to join the EU.
(Econ, 7/25/09, p.50)
2009 Jul 16, The leaders of India and Pakistan, following rare talks in Egypt, vowed to cooperate in the fight against terror in the wake of the devastating Mumbai attacks.
(AFP, 7/16/09)
2009 Jul 16, In India Rita Bahuguna Joshi, a leading politician of India's ruling Congress party, was arrested and her house set on fire by activists after she suggested that a rival leader be raped so she can better understand the plight of rape victims.
(AP, 7/16/09)
2009 Jul 16, Iran announced that Gholam Reza Aghazadeh, the head of its nuclear agency, has resigned, a move that may have been connected to the country's postelection turmoil. Aghazadeh told the semiofficial ISNA news agency that he submitted his resignation from Iran's Atomic Energy Organization 20 days ago and also resigned from his other post as one of Pres. Ahmadinejad's vice presidents.
(AP, 7/16/09)
2009 Jul 16, In Iraq 18 people were injured in an explosion that targeted a minibus transporting Shiite pilgrims to a holy shrine in Najaf. 3 US soldiers were killed in a rocket attack on a base outside of Basra. On July 18 an Iranian-backed militiaman confessed to the rocket attack near the Basra airport.
(AP, 7/16/09)(AP, 7/17/09)(AP, 7/18/09)
2009 Jul 16, In Israel Ultra-Orthodox Jews clashed with police using horses and water cannon in Jerusalem in the third day of rioting over the arrest of a mentally ill Hasidic woman who authorities say was starving her child.
(AP, 7/16/09)
2009 Jul 16, Mexico’s Interior Secretary Fernando Gomez Mont said the government was pouring 1,500 federal police officers, 2,500 soldiers and 1,500 navy personnel into Michoacan state, the home base for the violent La Familia cartel led by Servando "La Tuta" Gomez.
(AP, 7/16/09)
2009 Jul 16, In northwestern Pakistan gunmen killed UN employee Zill-e-Usman (59) and a guard during a failed kidnap attempt at a refugee camp near Peshawar, a blow to humanitarian efforts to help civilians displaced by army offensives against the Taliban.
(AP, 7/16/09)(SFC, 7/17/09, p.A2)
2009 Jul 16, In Taiwan’s southern city of Kaohsiung, more than 3,000 athletes and staff from 105 countries and territories marched into the World Games Stadium, a new, eye-catching structure designed by renowned Japanese architect Toyo Ito. China’s 100-strong delegation boycotted the opening ceremony of the World Games in Taiwan, underscoring the limits of the historic breakthrough in relations between Taipei and Beijing.
(AP, 7/16/09)
2009 Jul 16, In Tajikistan 5 militants were killed in a gunfight at a remote military checkpoint near the border with Afghanistan. Law enforcement agencies later issued a joint statement claiming the perpetrators of the attack were suspected terrorists with Russian citizenship. Authorities said that earlier this month Mirzo Ziyoyev, a rebel commander in Tajikistan's 1990s civil war, who later became a government minister, was killed by members of a militant group he had allegedly joined recently. The government said Azizov was a member of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, or IMU, an al-Qaida-linked militant group that has operated in ex-Soviet Central Asia and Afghanistan.
(AP, 7/20/09)
2009 Jul 16, The UN Security Council banned travel and froze assets of 10 North Korean individuals and businesses linked to the country’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
(SFC, 7/17/09, p.A2)
2009 Jul 17, In Douglas, Georgia, federal authorities arrested Cecil Stephen Haire (51), the so-called “limping bandit." He was said to have robbed 23 banks across the Southwest over the last 3 years.
(SFC, 7/22/09, p.A4)
2009 Jul 17, Walter Cronkite (b.1916), TV journalist, died with his family by his side at his Manhattan home after a long illness. On April 16, 1962, he replaced Douglas Edwards as anchor of the CBS "Evening News." Polls in 1972 and 1974 had pronounced Cronkite the "most trusted man in America."
(AP, 7/18/09)
2009 Jul 17, In southern Afghanistan a roadside bomb tore through a vehicle, killing a British soldier and 11 civilians, including five children. In Nangarhar province, a gunfight broke out between Taliban fighters and local civilians after militants fired at an Afghan army officer who had come to visit his relatives. 3 militants and two civilians were killed and one civilian was missing. Eleven militants were captured, eight of them Pakistanis.
(AP, 7/17/09)(AP, 7/18/09)(SFC, 7/18/09, p.A2)
2009 Jul 17, Leszek Kolakowski (b.1927), Polish-born Oxford philosopher and historian of ideas, died in Oxford. “We Learn history not in order to know how to behave or how to succeed, but to know who we are." His work included the 3-volume series “Main currents of Marxism: Its Rise, Growth and Dissolution" (1976).
(Econ, 8/1/09, p.76)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leszek_Ko%C5%82akowski)
2009 Jul 17, In China government officials in Beijing descended on the Open Constitution Initiative (OCI), a public interest lawyer’s group that challenged abuse and corruption by state and local governments. They took away almost everything the group owned and tax authorities ordered it to pay $207,900.
(Econ, 7/25/09, p.38)
2009 Jul 17, The Republic of Congo's top opposition politician, Mathias Dzon, filed for an annulment of the incumbent president's re-election and claimed there had been vote-rigging and intimidation.
(AP, 7/17/09)
2009 Jul 17, In Ecuador a US anti-narcotics force flew its last surveillance mission from Ecuador's Pacific Coast. The force had begun dismantling its operation and would be out of the country by September, two months before the end of its lease.
(AP, 7/19/09)
2009 Jul 17, In Indonesia suicide attacks at the Marriott and the Ritz-Carlton hotels in Jakarta killed 9 people including 2 suspected suicide bombers and wounded 53. Suspicion quickly fell on Jemaah Islamiyah and anti-terror desk chief, Ansyaad Mbai, said evidence pointed to Malaysian-born extremist Noordin Mohammed Top. In 2010 the South Jakarta District Court found Amid Abdillah guilty of violating the Anti-Terror Law by helping a splinter of the Southeast Asian terror network Jemaah Islamiyah plan the suicide bombings. The same court has earlier sentenced Saefudin Zuhri, an in-law of Top, and Aris Susanto to eight years in prison for assisting and harboring Top and two other suspects.
(AP, 7/17/09)(AFP, 7/18/09)(AP, 7/21/09)(AP, 8/7/09)(AP, 6/14/10)
2009 Jul 17, In Iran tens of thousands of government opponents packed Iran's main Islamic prayer sermon, chanting "freedom, freedom" and other slogans as their top clerical backer Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani delivered a sermon bluntly criticizing the country's leadership over the crackdown on election protests. Outside, pro-government Basiji militiamen in front of a line of riot police fired tear gas at thousands of protesters who chanted "death to the dictator" and called on President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to resign.
(AP, 7/17/09)
2009 Jul 17, In Iraq two bombs exploded around 3 a.m. in Karmah near the house of police Capt. Bahjat Khawam. The bombs were planted under the police officer's car and near a gate to his house. The officer's daughter (12) and a granddaughter (4) were killed in the attack. In Baghdad bombings killed 3 Iraqis and injured over 40 others. One bomb planted under a bridge killed a married couple who were among hundreds of thousands of Shiite pilgrims heading to a shrine to commemorate Imam Mousa al-Kazim.
(AP, 7/17/09)(SFC, 7/18/09, p.A2)
2009 Jul 17, In Japan 10 senior citizen climbers were found dead in the northern mountains of Hokkaido, apparently from hypothermia. Police began investigating possible negligence by the tour organizers.
(AP, 7/17/09)
2009 Jul 17, The Malian army announced that it had killed 26 "Islamist fighters" in the far north of the country.
(AFP, 7/21/09)
2009 Jul 17, In Nouakchott, Mauritania, police exchanged fire with suspected Islamic extremists, killing one and wounding another who was wearing explosives wrapped around his body. A 3rd suspect reportedly escaped.
(AP, 7/18/09)
2009 Jul 17, Mexico's central bank cut its benchmark interest rate by a quarter percentage point, dropping the interbank rate to 4.5% to stimulate a recession-dogged economy.
(AP, 7/18/09)
2009 Jul 17, In Namibia 2 European journalists were fined $625 (US) by a court for filming the annual seal hunt along the coast of the southern African nation. On July 31 British investigative journalist Jim Wilckens and South African cameraman Bart Smithers were found guilty of violating the Marine Resources Act by entering a restricted area without permission.
(AFP, 7/18/09)(AFP, 8/4/09)
2009 Jul 17, In Pakistan a missile believed to have been fired by a US drone killed five militants in North Waziristan, a tribal region known as a haven for Taliban and al Qaeda fighters. Militants destroyed two NATO fuel tankers in separate roadside bomb attacks in the Khyber tribal region, one of the two land routes for supplies going to Afghanistan.
(Reuters, 7/17/09)
2009 Jul 17, Russia said it would lift a ban on live pigs and raw pork imports from the US state of Wisconsin and Canada's Ontario province from July 18 due to what it said was a "stabilization" of the situation of the H1N1 virus in those places.
(Reuters, 7/17/09)
2009 Jul 17, The UN said an international accord requiring governments to publicly identify sites of environmental pollution will come into force on Oct. 8.
(AP, 7/17/09)
2009 Jul 18, In southern Tennessee 5 people were found dead in two neighboring rural homes near Fayetteville, and a sixth body was discovered at a business about 30 miles away in Huntsville, Ala. Jacob Shaffer (30) of Fayetteville was charged later that day with homicide.
(AP, 7/19/09)
2009 Jul 18, In Afghanistan a US Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle fighter jet crashed in central Ghazni, killing the two crew members. A suicide driver blew up his explosive-laden vehicle next to an Afghan army convoy in Zabul province, killing three soldiers and wounding three others. 35 militants were killed during a joint operation by Afghan and coalition troops in the Shah Walk Kot district of Kandahar province. In Nangarhar province a suicide bomber attacked the Afghan-Pakistan border crossing at Torkham, killing a border police officer and a civilian.
(AP, 7/18/09)(AP, 7/19/09)
2009 Jul 18, In Australian Min Lin, his wife, two sons aged 12 and 9, and a female relative were killed by blunt force trauma to the upper bodies and heads in their home in a Sydney suburb. The family had run a convenience store for more than six years after immigrating from China.
(AP, 7/19/09)
2009 Jul 18, In Canada wind and dry conditions fueled large blazes that broke out in the rugged hills along Okanagan Lake west of the city of Kelowna, British Columbia, where housing subdivisions have encroached on the surrounding forest in recent years.
(AP, 7/20/09)
2009 Jul 18, In Iraq a government spokesman said the Iraqi Cabinet had approved a measure to confiscate the assets of the family of toppled dictator Saddam Hussein and 52 former close aides who had used their powers to take over or misuse public properties or funds. A roadside bomb killed three people, including the son of a tribal leader, near Fallujah. In Mosul a police officer was killed after a bomb exploded at a checkpoint. Also in Mosul a civilian was killed by unidentified gunmen.
(AFP, 7/18/09)(SSFC, 7/19/09, p.A7)
2009 Jul 18, Mauritania held post-coup elections. Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, a former military general who ousted this Islamic nation's first freely elected president, vied with 8 other candidates to become the legitimate ruler.
(AP, 7/18/09)
2009 Jul 18, Mexican soldiers arrested Luis Ibarra, a suspected drug trafficker in the border city of Tijuana. He was carrying jewelry, narcotics and $3.6 million in cash. Ibarra belonged to a cell in charge of making and trafficking methamphetamine for alleged drug kingpin Teodoro Garcia Simental.
(AP, 7/20/09)
2009 Jul 18, Pakistani government warplanes flattened a suspected Taliban hide-out in the northwest, killing nine associates of Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud.
(AP, 7/18/09)
2009 Jul 18, Sudanese rebels set free 60 captured government soldiers and policemen in north Darfur. The detainees had been held by the Justice and Equality Movement following recent armed clashes.
(AP, 7/18/09)
2009 Jul 19, Frank McCourt (78), former NYC teacher and Irish-born author, died of cancer. He won a Pulitzer Prize for his memoir “Angela’s Ashes" (1996).
(SFC, 7/20/09, p.C5)
2009 Jul 19, Warren Titus (94), founder of the Royal Viking and Seabourn cruise ship lines, died at a hospice in Marin County, Ca. He helped father the modern cruise concept as president of Peninsular and Oriental Navigation Co., which later morphed into Princess Cruises. He left P.&O. to start the Royal Viking Line in 1972. After the SF-based Royal Viking went out of business in 1987, he was called by Atle Brynestad, a Norwegian millionaire, to start Seabourn Cruise Lines.
(SFC, 7/31/09, p.D5)
2009 Jul 19, In southern Afghanistan a Russian-owned civilian Mi-8 helicopter crashed and burst into flames shortly after takeoff from the Kandahar NATO base, killing 16 civilians in the latest in a string of deadly aircraft crashes in the country. Gunmen killed a candidate for provincial council in Kunduz province as he was traveling to a campaign event. The US military denounced the release of a video showing a soldier captured in Afghanistan, describing the images as Taliban propaganda that violated international law. 3 civilians were killed when German troops opened fire on their pickup truck. In Farah province, a van full of civilians hit a roadside bomb, killing 11 people on board, including a child and his mother. A British soldier was killed by an explosion while on a foot patrol in the Sangin region of Helmand province.
(AP, 7/19/09)(Reuters, 7/19/09)(AP, 7/20/09)
2009 Jul 19, An amateur astronomer in Australia detected a new scar on Jupiter that covered some 73 million square miles, a larger area than the Pacific ocean.
(SFC, 7/22/09, p.A1)
2009 Jul 19, In Kazakhstan more than 5,000 ethnic Uighurs rallied in Almaty to protest China's use of deadly force to quash Uighur protests this month.
(AP, 7/19/09)
2009 Jul 19, In Mauritania Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz (b.1956), former head of the junta that toppled the country’s first freely elected leader, won the presidency in a vote his opponents decried as a fraudulent "electoral coup." The final result gave Aziz 52.47% of the vote, enabling him to avoid a runoff. The Constitutional Court declared the result official on July 23, just hours after the head of the election commission resigned over doubts about the ballot.
(AP, 7/19/09)(AP, 7/23/09)
2009 Jul 19, In Pakistan at least 26 people died in heavy overnight rains in Karachi.
(AP, 7/19/09)
2009 Jul 19, Palestinian authorities allowed Al-Jazeera to resume operations in the West Bank, four days after banning the Arab satellite station over the airing of a claim linking President Mahmoud Abbas to the death of his legendary predecessor, Yasser Arafat.
(AP, 7/19/09)
2009 Jul 19, Philippine officials said hundreds of marines and army troops have been deployed to two islands in the southern Philippines for a new offensive aimed at eradicating al-Qaida-linked Abu Sayyaf militants by the end of this year.
(AP, 7/19/09)
2009 Jul 19, Sudan said it was committed to peace with neighboring Chad after accusing it of bombing its western Darfur region last week, but also warned it would not be held back if threatened.
(AFP, 7/19/09)
2009 Jul 19, In Thailand’s Yala province a 48-year-old rubber plantation owner was shot dead in a drive-by shooting as he returned home by motorcycle. In another attack a gold shopkeeper was killed after suspect insurgents fired assault rifles into his shop in Narathiwat province before fleeing on a motorcycle.
(AP, 7/20/09)
2009 Jul 19, In Turkey patrons of a usually smoke-filled hookah bar stepped outside to light up as a ban on indoor public smoking extended to bars, restaurants and coffeehouses.
(AP, 7/19/09)
2009 Jul 20, The United States and India agreed on a defense pact that takes a major step toward allowing the sale of sophisticated US arms to the South Asian nation as it modernizes its military. New Delhi also approved sites for two US nuclear reactors.
(Reuters, 7/20/09)
2009 Jul 20, In California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and four legislative leaders agreed to bridge a $26.3 billion gap between expenditures and the state's plummeting revenues. The agreement composed of cuts, borrowing and fund shifts was not expected to resolve California's financial problems as the economy continues to struggle and tax revenue lags far behind the level of the boom years.
(AP, 7/21/09)
2009 Jul 20, In Afghanistan 10 Taliban were killed and three other militants wounded while making bombs in a house in Ghazni province. A roadside bomb killed 4 US soldiers.
(AP, 7/21/09)(SFC, 7/21/09, p.A3)
2009 Jul 20, Algeria’s Ministry of Transport said the Chinese civil engineering group CCECC has won 3 contracts worth a total of 1.46 billion euros to build railways in Algeria.
(AFP, 7/20/09)
2009 Jul 20, In Australia Adelaide-based Vaxine began swine flu vaccine trials with 300 subjects. Melbourne's CSL had 240 people in its seven-month trial, which started Jul 22. The companies said their trials are the first tests of a swine flu vaccine on humans.
(AP, 7/22/09)
2009 Jul 20, In eastern Democratic Republic of Congo at least 24 people, most of them civilians, were killed when rebels attacked an army base.
(Reuters, 7/23/09)
2009 Jul 20, In India Ajmal Kasab (21), the lone surviving gunman in the Nov 26, 2008, Mumbai attacks, pleaded guilty and gave a detailed account of the plot, his training in Pakistan and his role in the rampage that killed 171 people dead and paralyzed the city for three days.
(AP, 7/20/09)(SFC, 7/21/09, p.A3)
2009 Jul 20, Iran's supreme leader issued a tough warning to the opposition to back down after pro-reform former president Mohammad Khatami called for a referendum on the government's legitimacy.
(AP, 7/20/09)
2009 Jul 20, In Malaysia Kartika Sari Dewi Shukarno (32), a Muslim woman, was sentenced to six lashes and a fine of 5,000 ringgit ($1,400) for having a beer in a nightclub in Dec 2007. She would become the first woman in Malaysia to be given the punishment under Islamic law. Her caning was delayed on Aug 24 because of the holy month of Ramadan. On Mar 30, 2010, the state's sultan spared her the caning and instead ordered her to do 3 weeks of community service.
(AP, 7/21/09)(AP, 8/19/09)(AP, 8/24/09)(AP, 4/1/10)
2009 Jul 20, In Mexico 3 men were killed outside a bar before dawn in Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso, Texas.
(AP, 7/2o/09)
2009 Jul 20, Pakistani said clashes between security forces and militants have left 20 people dead in the northwest over the past 24 hours.
(AP, 7/20/09)
2009 Jul 20, A Palestinian official said more than 30 Israeli settlers, some of them on horseback, set fire to fields and olive trees and stoned Palestinian cars during a rampage in the West Bank. Two Palestinians were lightly injured.
(AP, 7/20/09)
2009 Jul 20, Peru’s former President Alberto Fujimori was convicted of embezzlement and sentenced to 7 1/2 years in prison after he admitted illegally paying his spy chief $15 million in government funds.
(AP, 7/21/09)
2009 Jul 20, The Russian rights group, where slain activist Natalia Estemirova worked, said it has suspended operations in Chechnya because of safety fears for her co-workers. Memorial said it will continue tracking human rights abuses in nearby Ingushetia. A spokesman for Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, who has condemned the murder and promised to find those responsible, said a Moscow court had accepted a lawsuit from Kadyrov against Memorial head Oleg Orlov for libel after the group's chairman blamed Kadyrov for Estemirova's death.
(Reuters, 7/20/09)
2009 Jul 20, In Somalia Islamic insurgents with alleged links with al-Qaida looted two United Nations compounds in southern Somalia, and announced they will ban three UN agencies from operating in areas the militants control.
(AP, 7/20/09)
2009 Jul 20, In South Africa 9 workers died when the roof of the mine shaft they were working in collapsed and trapped them about half a mile (1 km) underground in Rustenburg.
(AP, 7/21/09)
2009 Jul 20, In Thailand Southeast Asian foreign ministers (ASEAN) endorsed the region's first human rights watchdog, rejecting criticisms that the body would be powerless to tackle rogue members such as Myanmar. 2 assailants on a motorcycle shot and killed a Buddhist man who was traveling on a road in Pattani province.
(AFP, 7/20/09)(AP, 7/20/09)
2009 Jul 20, A UN war crimes court in the Hague convicted Milan Lukic and Sredoje Lukic, two Bosnian Serb cousins, for a "callous" 1992 killing spree that included locking scores of Muslims in two houses and burning them alive in Visegrad. He sentenced Milan to life in prison and Sredoje to 30 years.
(AP, 7/20/09)
2009 Jul 20, In Venezuela Alicia Torres, a judge handling one of Venezuela's most politically charged cases, said that she was fired after complaining about pressure to rule against an opponent of President Hugo Chavez. Torres said last week she was pressured by a superior to prohibit Guillermo Zuloaga, president and owner of the Globovision TV channel, from leaving the country.
(AP, 7/20/09)
2009 Jul 20, Zambia's Catholic bishops and the International Press Institute condemned the arrest on obscenity charges of a newspaper editor who says she was trying to draw attention to the consequences of a health workers' strike. Chansa Kabwela, editor of the independent Post, was arrested last week after e-mailing pictures of a woman giving birth in the streets to policy makers and aid groups.
(AP, 7/20/09)
2009 Jul 21, The US Senate voted to stop production of the F-22 fighter plane, handing President Barack Obama a victory as he tries to rein in defense spending.
(Reuters, 7/21/09)
2009 Jul 21, In Delaware creditors charged in a court filing that racetrack operator Magna Entertainment Corp fraudulently transferred more than $125 million to companies controlled by Canadian billionaire Frank Stronach before filing for bankruptcy.
(Reuters, 7/22/09)
2009 Jul 21, The Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals in SF ruled that police who tell investigators about alleged corruption in their departments have no constitutional protection for their statements and can be fired.
(SFC, 7/22/09, p.D2)
2009 Jul 21, Oakland, Ca., residents overwhelmingly voted to approve a first-of-its kind tax on medical marijuana sold at the city's four cannabis dispensaries.
(AP, 7/22/09)
2009 Jul 21, John Dawson (64), co-founder of the “New Riders of the Purple Sage" (1969), a psychedelic country rock band, died at his home in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. His band released 8 albums from 1971-1976 including the gold certified “The Adventures of Panama Red" (1973). His songs included “Glendale Train." He was also a long time collaborator with Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead.
(SFC, 7/25/09, p.C4)
2009 Jul 21, In Afghanistan Taliban militants attacked three government buildings in Gardez and a US base near Jalalabad and in near-simultaneous attacks, a signature of major Taliban assaults. 8 insurgents and 5 Afghan security forces died. Canadian troops were involved in two shooting incidents in southern Afghanistan, killing a girl and wounding three policemen. Afghan authorities said later that police arrested 7 would-be suicide bombers, who would have inflicted mayhem in further coordinated strikes.
(AP, 7/21/09)(AP, 7/23/09)(AFP, 7/25/09)
2009 Jul 21, Several Chinese Internet sites and parts of popular Web portals went offline amid tightening controls that have already left mainland Web users without access to Facebook, Twitter and other well-known social networking sites.
(AP, 7/21/09)
2009 Jul 21, The general manager of Dubai's Al Nassma said the world's first brand of chocolate made with camels' milk plans to expand into new Arab markets, Europe, Japan and the United States.
(AP, 7/21/09)
2009 Jul 21, French factory workers angry over layoffs and cost cuts locked up their bosses at a Michelin tire plant and a US-owned cigarette-paper mill. The managers were released the next morning after regional officials offered to mediate.
(AP, 7/22/09)
2009 Jul 21, Honduras’s interim government ordered Venezuelan diplomats to leave the country in 72 hours as the int’l. community threatened new sanctions if negotiations fail the resolve the overthrow of Pres. Manuel Zelaya.
(SFC, 7/22/09, p.A2)
2009 Jul 21, Iran's supreme leader handed a humiliation to Pres. Ahmadinejad, ordering him to dismiss Esfandiar Rahim Mashai, his choice for top deputy, after the appointment drew sharp condemnation from their hard-line base. Mashai, a relative by marriage to Ahmadinejad, angered hard-liners in 2008 when he said Iranians were "friends of all people in the world, even Israelis." Ahmadinejad appeared to openly defy the order.
(AP, 7/22/09)(SFC, 7/22/09, p.A3)
2009 Jul 21, In Iraq bombs killed 19 people and wounded 80 across the country. 6 bombs exploded in Baghdad killing 14 people and wounded at least 30 others. These included 2 bombs near a group of day laborers in Baghdad's Sadr City area.
(AP, 7/21/09)(SFC, 7/22/09, p.A2)
2009 Jul 21, Japan’s PM Taro Aso dissolved the powerful lower house of the parliament and vowed his divided ruling party will make a new start in national elections next month despite forecasts it may lose the grip it has held on the nation for most of the past 55 years.
(AP, 7/21/09)
2009 Jul 21, In southern Japan torrential rains triggered floods and landslides, leaving at least six people dead and 10 others missing, including elderly residents at a nursing home.
(AP, 7/22/09)
2009 Jul 21, In southwest Kenya a bus driver swerved at a sharp corner and collided with another bus, killing at least 22 people and injuring dozens.
(AP, 7/22/09)
2009 Jul 21, Mali's president's office announced that Spain plans to help Mali fight Al-Qaeda of the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), which is active in the desert north of the west African nation.
(AFP, 7/21/09)
2009 Jul 21, Mexican police detained a woman (65) in the deaths of two professional wrestlers who were found drugged in a low-rent hotel in Mexico City on June 29. One of the diminutive wrestlers went by the name "La Parkita" (Little Death") and wore a skeleton costume in the ring. The other was known as "Espectrito Jr." An autopsy on the two wrestlers, who were brothers, detected a substance found in eye drops that can damage the nervous system when mixed with alcohol. Three bodies, one of them headless, were found floating in an irrigation ditch in the northern border city of Ciudad Juarez, where drug violence has spiked despite the presence of thousands of soldiers. Police captured four men, members of the La Familia drug cartel, accused of slaying 12 federal agents on the weekend of July 12 and dumping their bloodied bodies along a highway in President Felipe Calderon's home state of Michoacan.
(AP, 7/21/09)(http://alibi.com/index.php?story=28392&scn=news)(AP, 7/23/09)
2009 Jul 21, Pakistan’s military said 3 days of clashes between security forces and militants in the northwest left more than 56 militants and six soldiers dead. Pakistani fighter jets destroyed two suspected militant hide-outs in South Waziristan, killing six men believed to be associates of Taliban commander Baitullah Mehsud.
(AP, 7/21/09)(AP, 7/22/09)
2009 Jul 21, Spain’s foreign minister, Miguel Angel Moratinos, drove across the border to Gibraltar to meet with British foreign secretary, David Miliband, and Gibraltar chief minister, Pater Caruana. This was the first time in over 300 years that a Spanish government minister had visited the British territory.
(Econ, 7/25/09, p.51)
2009 Jul 21, Sri Lanka welcomed a tentative agreement with the IMF for a 2.5-billion-dollar bailout as the country emerged from a near four-decade-long separatist war.
(AFP, 7/21/09)
2009 Jul 21, In Turkey a father and two sons allegedly opened fire in the eastern village in Elazig province, killing six people and wounding seven others. They were soon captured.
(AP, 7/22/09)
2009 Jul 21, The WHO said that deaths from the H1N1 swine flu virus have double in the past 3 weeks to over 700.
(SFC, 7/22/09, p.A2)
2009 Jul 22, In Lynn, Massachusetts, 6 boys, aged 7-15, used bricks to severely beat Damien Merida (30), a Guatemalan immigrant, as he slept near railroad tracks.
(http://tinyurl.com/l6cuf3)(SFC, 9/17/09, p.A7)
2009 Jul 22, Millions of Asians turned their eyes skyward as dawn suddenly turned to darkness across the continent in the longest total solar eclipse this century will see.
(AP, 7/22/09)
2009 Jul 22, Officials said Afghanistan was repositioning forces to the south after complaints too few are involved in major US and British offensives against the Taliban. A convoy belonging to a minor presidential candidate, former Taliban commander Mullah Salam Rocketi, was ambushed as he returned to Kabul after campaigning in northern Baghlan and one of his campaign officials was killed.
(Reuters, 7/22/09)
2009 Jul 22, The Algerian government issued a decree effective as of August shifting the dates of the weekend to Friday and Saturday in a move viewed as a boost the North African nation's faltering economy. Algeria had observed its weekends on Thursdays and Fridays since 1976 as do a few other countries including Iran and Saudi Arabia.
(AP, 7/22/09)
2009 Jul 22, In Iraq gunmen in four cars opened fire on a convoy of buses carrying Iranian pilgrims through Iraq, killing five of them near the village of Kebasi. Some 35 others were wounded.
(AP, 7/22/09)
2009 Jul 22, Israel’s education minister said the Israeli government will remove references to what Palestinians call the "catastrophe" of Israel's creation from textbooks for Arab schoolchildren. The reference to "al-naqba," the Arabic word catastrophe as Palestinians call their defeat and exile in the war over Israel's 1948 creation, was controversially inserted by a dovish education minister for the first time in 2007.
(AP, 7/22/09)
2009 Jul 22, Italian authorities seized some euro200 million ($284 million) in assets and businesses owned by the 'ndrangheta crime syndicate, including the Cafe de Paris of "La Dolce Vita" movie fame. 12 other restaurants, apartments and luxury cars were also impounded in the operation.
(AP, 7/22/09)
2009 Jul 22, Malaysia’s PM Najib Razak said a decision to expand TIA (1MDB), a regional development fund for oil-rich Terengganu state, into a federal entity was made to enable its benefits to reach a broad spectrum of Malaysians rather than to the residents of only one state. Tycoon Low Taek Jho helped set up 1MDB.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1Malaysia_Development_Berhad)(Econ, 3/5/15, p.34)(Econ, 7/23/16, p.61)
2009 Jul 22, Pakistan urged the US to share intelligence from spy flights and arm its soldiers against militants accused by Washington of plotting attacks from the Afghan border.
(AP, 7/22/09)
2009 Jul 22, Amnesty International reported that Saudi Arabia is holding more than 3,000 people in secret detention and has used torture to extract confessions in its anti-terrorism crackdown since the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks.
(AP, 7/22/09)
2009 Jul 22, Somali Islamist insurgents clashed with government forces and African Union peacekeepers, killing 3 government, 3 insurgent fighters. The renewed fighting between the radical Shebab militia and AU-backed government forces killed at least 15 civilians in Mogadishu.
(AP, 7/23/09)(AFP, 7/24/09)
2009 Jul 22, South Africa reported that wave of protests have erupted in townships across the country over shoddy housing and public services, adding to pressure on President Jacob Zuma to deliver on promises to fight poverty.
(AFP, 7/22/09)
2009 Jul 22, An international arbitration panel awarded the Sudanese government control over almost all major oil reserves in a disputed region of Sudan that erupted into violence last year between state forces and former southern rebels.
(AP, 7/22/09)
2009 Jul 23, US Vice President Joe Biden pledged Washington's full support for Georgia a year after its war with Russia and urged Moscow to abide by a ceasefire pact and pull its troops back from two rebel regions.
(Reuters, 7/23/09)
2009 Jul 23, US Border Patrol Agent Robert Rosas was killed near Campo, Ca. On July 25 Mexican federal police detained four men suspected of involvement in the killing of Rosas. Included was Ernesto Parra Valenzuela, identified as the suspected killer of Rosas. In 2009 Christian Daniel Castro Alvarez (17) pleaded guilty to murdering Rosas. On April 29, 2010, Alvarez was sentenced to 40 years in prison. A 2nd suspect, Marcos Manuel Rodriguez Perez, was arrested on April 11, 2011.
(AP, 7/26/09)(http://texasfred.net/archives/4628)(SFC, 7/27/09, p.A4)(SFC, 11/21/09, p.A4)(AP, 4/29/10)(AP, 4/11/11)
2009 Jul 23, US counter-terrorism officials said that Saad bin Laden (27), the 2nd-eldest son of Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, was apparently killed in a US missile strike inside Pakistan this year.
(SFC, 7/24/09, p.A4)
2009 Jul 23, Federal prosecutors arrested over 40 people in New Jersey and New York as part of a major corruption and international money laundering conspiracy probe. They included New Jersey Assemblyman Daniel Van Pelt, Hoboken Mayor Peter Cammarano III, Secaucus Mayor Dennis Elwell and Jersey City Deputy Mayor Leona Beldini. Several rabbis in New York and New Jersey were also arrested. Some were accused of laundering tens of millions of dollars and of black-market trafficking of kidneys and fake Gucci handbags.
(AP, 7/23/09)(AP, 7/24/09)
2009 Jul 23, The Columbus Salame plant in South San Francisco, established in 1967, was devastated by fire.
(SFC, 7/24/09, p.D2)
2009 Jul 23, In Michigan the last edition of The Ann Arbor News rolled off the presses After 174 years, with a three-word headline: "Farewell, Ann Arbor." It is being replaced by AnnArbor.com, an online news site that will produce a print edition twice a week.
(AP, 7/23/09)
2009 Jul 23, E. Lynn Harris (b.1955), pioneer of gay black fiction, died while promoting his latest book in Los Angeles. Long before the secret world of closeted black gay men came to light in America, Harris introduced a generation of black women to the phenomenon known as the "down low." His debut "Invisible Life" (1994) was a coming-of-age story that dealt with the then-taboo topic.
(AP, 7/24/09)
2009 Jul 23, In Afghanistan an operation conducted by US-led coalition forces in the Baidar area of Gelan district killed eight Taliban, five of them foreigners.
(AFP, 7/24/09)
2009 Jul 23, Arab health ministers decided to ban children, the elderly and those with chronic medical conditions from attending the annual Muslim pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia this year in effort to slow the spread of swine flu.
(AP, 7/23/09)
2009 Jul 23, Chinese researchers reported that they have produced living mice from connective tissue cells induced to revert to their embryonic state.
(SFC, 7/24/09, p.A11)
2009 Jul 23, In China a landslide triggered by heavy rain hit a county in southwestern Sichuan province, killing at least four people and leaving 53 others missing.
(AP, 7/23/09)
2009 Jul 23, In China female panda You You (pronounced Yo Yo) gave birth to the new cub at the Wolong Giant Panda Research Center in southwestern Sichuan. This was the first successful birth of a panda cub from artificial insemination using frozen sperm, giving a new option for the notoriously poor breeders.
(AP, 7/24/09)
2009 Jul 23, Iceland formally applied to join the European Union but said it would not accept a "rotten deal" for its fishing industry, a key sector of the island nation's troubled economy.
(AP, 7/23/09)
2009 Jul 23, The wife of Iranian opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi said that her brother is among the hundreds arrested in Iran's postelection crackdown, and she warned authorities not to publish any "forced confessions" from him or other detainees.
(AP, 7/23/09)
2009 Jul 23, Israeli defense officials said tests of a missile-defense system meant to shield Israel from Iranian attack were aborted over the past week on three occasions because of various malfunctions.
(AP, 7/23/09)
2009 Jul 23, In Japan Jerry Yu (30), a US citizen who worked for a Japanese communications company in Tokyo, was found dead of probable hypothermia off a trail just below the peak of Mount Fuji. His colleague, Takeshi Nakamura (27), was found dead the next day.
(AP, 7/24/09)
2009 Jul 23, In Kyrgyzstan Almazbek Atambayev, the main opposition candidate, said he was no longer taking part in this day’s presidential election, citing widespread ballot-stuffing and the intimidation of election monitors. Pres. Bakiyev (59) won another 5-year term with 76% of the ballots. International monitors said the election was marred by ballot-box stuffing and widespread irregularities in vote counting.
(AP, 7/23/09)(AP, 8/2/09)
2009 Jul 23, In Nigeria Wole Soyinka, 1986 Nobel laureate in literature, slammed Nigeria's handling of the crisis in the oil region and urged the government to adopt a "holistic" approach in tackling it. Excerpts of the news conference were reported the next day on private Channels television.
(AFP, 7/24/09)
2009 Jul 23, In Pakistan the Taliban denied claims that Maulana Fazlullah, architect of a brutal uprising in Pakistan's Swat valley, was wounded and threatened to unleash renewed holy war. Pakistan said on July 8 it had "credible" information that Fazlullah was injured during a blistering offensive designed to crush Taliban militants. Two policemen were killed and three others wounded when a roadside bomb exploded near a checkpoint in Shangla district. A bomb hidden in a supposed gift of a tape recorder killed another policeman at a checkpoint outside the town of Karak, which borders the Taliban-infested North Waziristan tribal district.
(AFP, 7/23/09)
2009 Jul 23, The Philippine government ordered its military to stop offensives against Muslim separatist rebels in a bid to restart peace talks, a move welcomed by the guerrillas.
(AP, 7/23/09)
2009 Jul 23, In Poland say seven people died in violent storms.
(AP, 7/24/09)
2009 Jul 23, South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma's new government warned protesters they must respect the law as violent demonstrations against shoddy public services spread across townships.
(AP, 7/23/09)
2009 Jul 23, Yemeni security forces opened fire on thousands of protesters in the south chanting anti-government slogans, killing 12 and wounding scores of others. Demonstrations by former army members in southern Yemen demanding political reforms have been occurring regularly since August, 2007.
(AP, 7/24/09)
2009 Jul 24, President Barack Obama conceded his words, that a white police officer "acted stupidly" when he arrested a black university scholar in his own home, were ill-chosen. He invited both men to visit him at the White House, but stopped short of publicly apologizing for his remark. Obama said he had personally telephoned the two men, Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Cambridge, Mass., police Sgt. James Crowley, in an effort to end the rancorous back-and-forth over the issue. The case began on July 20, when word broke that Gates (58) had been arrested five days earlier at the 2-story home he rents from Harvard.
(AP, 7/25/09)
2009 Jul 24, Pres. Obama challenged states and school districts to raise academic standards and improve teacher quality if they want a chance at some $5 billion in new grants in the administration’s “Race to the Top" program.
(SFC, 7/25/09, p.A3)
2009 Jul 24, The United States transferred $200 million to the Palestinian government to help ease a growing budget deficit.
(AP, 7/24/09)
2009 Jul 24, A federal minimum wage increase took effect. Some economists said it could prolong the recession by forcing small businesses to lay off the same workers that the pay hike passed in better times was meant to help. The increase to $7.25 meant 70 cents more an hour for the lowest-paid workers in the 30 states that have lower minimums or no minimum wage.
(AP, 7/24/09)
2009 Jul 24, The California Senate approved a plan to close the state's $26 billion budget deficit, providing a glimmer of hope after weeks of fiscal gloom.
(AP, 7/24/09)
2009 Jul 24, In Oakland, Ca., a city parking department memo ordered parking officers to avoid enforcing neighborhood parking violations in some wealthier neighborhoods, but to continue enforcing the same violations in the rest of the city.
(SFC, 2/25/10, p.A1)
2009 Jul 24, Isaiah M.K. Kalebu (23) was arrested for breaking into a Seattle home and stabbing 2 women, one fatally. Kalebu had a history of mental illness.
(SSFC, 7/26/09, p.A12)
2009 Jul 24, In Afghanistan four Taliban were killed in a clash with foreign forces In northern Balkh province. Fighting killed two US soldiers. NATO troops came under fire in the east and one NATO soldier was killed. Air strikes followed killing several insurgents. Up to 12 insurgents were killed in a gun battle with US-led troops in the eastern province of Nangarhar.
(AFP, 7/24/09)(AP, 7/25/09)
2009 Jul 24, Burundi army officials said 3 of its soldiers serving with African Union peacekeepers in Somalia have died of a mysterious illness in a Kenyan hospital where more than 10 others are being treated.
(AFP, 7/24/09)
2009 Jul 24, Via Rail, Canada's national passenger rail service, said it was shutting down service after mediated talks with the Teamsters union failed to resolve a contract dispute, and locomotive engineers walked off the job.
(Reuters, 7/24/09)
2009 Jul 24, A senior Chechen official held talks in Norway with prominent separatist figure Akhmed Zakayev, who said they had agreed to seek a political settlement of rebellion in the south Russian region.
(Reuters, 7/24/09)
2009 Jul 24, In China some 30,000 steelworkers in Tonghua clashed with police in a protest over plans to merge their mill with another company. Angry employees of Tonghua Iron and Steel Group attacked Jianlong Steel general manager Chen Guojun during the protest and beat him to death.
(AP, 7/25/09)
2009 Jul 24, The UN refugee agency said 536,000 people have been chased from their homes in eastern Congo this year as a result of clashes between government forces and rebels linked to neighboring Rwanda's 1994 genocide.
(AP, 7/24/09)
2009 Jul 24, In southern Croatia a passenger train derailed, killing at least six people and injuring about 20.
(AP, 7/24/09)
2009 Jul 24, In Europe deadly summer wild fires spread across Spain, France, Italy and Greece with holidaymakers rescued from beaches and thousands of firefighters brought into the battle.
(AFP, 7/24/09)
2009 Jul 24, Ousted Honduras President Manuel Zelaya stood on the edge of his country and called on his fellow Hondurans to resist the coup-installed government. He then quickly retreated back to Nicaraguan territory, saying he wanted to avoid bloodshed and give negotiations another try.
(AP, 7/25/09)
2009 Jul 24, Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad caved into pressure from hardline clerics and the country's supreme leader and allowed the resignation of his top deputy, Esfandiar Rahim Mashai, who last year angered conservatives when he made friendly comments toward Israel.
(AP, 7/25/09)
2009 Jul 24, In Iran a Russian Ilyushin-62 plane, operated by Tehran-based Aria Airlines and carrying 153 passengers and crew, skidded off the runway and hit a wall while landing in the northeastern city of Mashhad. 13 of the 16 people killed in the crash were members of the crew, 9 of them from Kazakhstan. The plane landed at high speed and the tires failed.
(AP, 7/25/09)
2009 Jul 24, In northern Iraq Fakri Hadi Gari, the deputy commander of a radical Sunni Islamic group linked to al-Qaida, was arrested. Ansar al-Islam is believed by the military to be behind attacks on US and Iraqi troops in Mosul. Gari, also known as Abu Abbas and Mullah Halgurd, was arrested with nine other suspected members. An American soldier died of non-combat related injuries.
(AP, 8/4/09)(AP, 7/24/09)
2009 Jul 24, In Pakistan 10 militants were killed in Buner district and 29 were arrested elsewhere in the region. Troops killed four militants in Swat and destroyed a training camp and a militants' cave. In Upper Dir jets pounded a suspected Taliban base, killing at least four militants.
(AFP, 7/24/09)(AFP, 7/25/09)
2009 Jul 24, The Arctic Sea, a Maltese-flagged bulk carrier, was boarded by 8 attackers posing as police. The timber carrying vessel was boarded off the Swedish coast, searched by attackers, who reportedly tied up the crew for 12 hours. It disappeared following its last communication on July 28. The failed to arrive at the Algerian port of Bejaia on August 4 as planned. The 4,700-ton ship, originally called Okhotsk, built in 1991, had a Russian crew of 13 and was operated by a firm based in the Russian port of Arkhangelsk. Russian naval warships tracked down the ship off the Cape Verde islands and freed the crew. On August 18 Russia reported that eight people from Latvia, Estonia and Russia had been arrested for piracy. On Aug 19 Yulia Latynina, a leading Russian opposition journalist and commentator, reported that “the Arctic Sea was carrying some sort of anti-aircraft or nuclear contraption intended for a nice, peaceful country like Syria, and they were caught with it." In March 2011 six men were convicted and sentenced to 6-12 years in prison. Two others were already convicted.
(Reuters, 8/9/09)(Reuters, 8/18/09)(AP, 8/19/09)(AP, 3/24/11)
2009 Jul 24, The IMF approved a $2.6 billion loan to Sri Lanka.
(Econ, 8/8/09, p.35)
2009 Jul 24, Turkish commandos captured five pirates in the Gulf of Aden as part of an international mission to curb piracy off the coast of Somalia.
(AP, 7/24/09)
2009 Jul 24, Zimbabwe's coalition government launched a campaign of "national healing" and reconciliation, with political leaders urging supporters to end years of political violence and intimidation.
(AP, 7/24/09)
2009 Jul 25, In Afghanistan 7 suicide bombers tried to storm state targets in Khost, killing one civilian and wounding others in the third Taliban commando raid in a week. A British soldier was killed when a bomb exploded in southern Helmand province. A US service member died during a clash with insurgents in the south. Afghan elders struck the first local truce with Taliban insurgents in northwestern Badghis province after nearly three weeks of talks.
(AFP, 7/25/09)(AP, 7/26/09)(AP, 7/27/09)
2009 Jul 25, In Algeria five Islamists were killed by the army about 15 km (nine miles) east of Tizi Ouzou.
(AFP, 7/29/09)
2009 Jul 25, Brazil agreed to triple its compensation to Paraguay to operate the huge Itaipu hydroelectric dam on their shared border, ending a decades-long dispute between the neighbors. President Fernando Lugo persuaded Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to sign a deal tripling Brazil's payments from $120 million to $360 million a year. On Apr 6, 2011, Brazil's lower house of Congress finally approved the deal.
(AFP, 7/25/09)(AP, 4/21/11)
2009 Jul 25, In Britain a new poll was released showing solid support for the right to die. The Royal College of Nursing said it was adopting a neutral stance on the issue after its research showed nurses were divided. The British Medical Association remained opposed.
(AP, 7/25/09)
2009 Jul 25, In eastern China more than 3,000 villagers of Shipu town, in Zhejiang province, blocked a highway and clashed with police while protesting alleged official corruption in a land compensation deal.
(AP, 7/26/09)
2009 Jul 25, Chinese state television launched an Arabic-language channel beamed to the Middle East and Africa as part of efforts to expand the communist government's media influence abroad.
(AP, 7/25/09)
2009 Jul 25, In Colombia at least 16 suspected FARC guerrillas and one soldier have been killed in clashes over the last 24 hours.
(AP, 7/25/09)
2009 Jul 25, Iran's opposition leaders appealed to the top clerics in the holy city of Qom to pressure the ruling Islamic regime to release protesters and activists, who they say have been tortured following last month's disputed presidential election. Protesters across the world called on Iran to end its clampdown on opposition activists, demanding the release of hundreds rounded up during demonstrations against the country's disputed election.
(AP, 7/25/09)
2009 Jul 25, Iraqis voted in elections in the self-ruled Kurdish north. Regional Kurdish President Massoud Barzani, who has been a consistent critic of the central government, won re-election with almost 70% of the vote, while the leading candidate from the opposition party, Kamal Mirawdeli, received 25%. A coalition of the two ruling parties, Barzani's Kurdistan Democratic Party and Iraqi President Jalal Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, received a little over 57% of the vote for the 111-seat parliament, while the opposition Gorran, or Change, party took about 23%.
(AP, 7/25/09)(AP, 7/29/09)
2009 Jul 25, Mexican police captured 11 suspected members of the La Familia cartel and seized a methamphetamine lab in the western state of Michoacan.
(AP, 7/25/09)
2009 Jul 25, In Pakistan a remote controlled bomb killed two Pakistani soldiers in the tribal Bajaur district. Troops retaliated killing three suspected Taliban militants.
(AP, 7/25/09)
2009 Jul 25, Swedish wireless equipment maker LM Ericsson said it had penned a deal to buy a majority of Nortel Networks' North American wireless business for $1.13 billion.
(AP, 7/25/09)
2009 Jul 25, In Sweden a woman in her 40s and her five daughters were killed when they tried to escape an apartment fire in a Stockholm suburb.
(AP, 7/26/09)
2009 Jul 25, Zimbabwe’s PM Morgan Tsvangirai said compensation must be considered for victims of political violence as the country held a weekend of national reconciliation.
(AFP, 7/25/09)
2009 July 26, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin stepped down and was replaced by Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sean_Parnell)(SSFC, 11/16/14, p.A9)
2009 Jul 26, In New York a car crash in Briarcliff killed 8 people including 4 children. Diane Schuler (36) was drunk and high on marijuana when she went the wrong way on Taconic State Parkway and crashed into an SUV.
(SFC, 7/27/09, p.A4)(SFC, 8/5/09, p.A5)
2009 Jul 26, Merce Cunningham (b.1919), avant-garde dancer and choreographer, died at his home in Manhattan.
(SFC, 7/28/09, p.A7)
2009 Jul 26, It was reported that Marines in Helmand working alongside DEA-mentored Afghan police seized 297 tons of poppy seeds, 77 pounds (35 kilograms) of heroin and 300 pounds (135 kilograms) of opium in raids in mid-July. Some 1,200 pounds (550 kilograms) of hashish and 4,225 gallons (16,000 liters) of chemicals used to convert opium to heroin were also seized.
(AP, 7/26/09)
2009 Jul 26, In northwestern Algeria members of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb killed two local security officers in an ambush in the Mascara region.
(AFP, 7/28/09)
2009 Jul 26, In Chechnya a suicide bomber killed five people and wounded a number of others near a concert hall in the capital. 4 policemen died trying to prevent the bomber from entering the hall. 4 militants were found dead after an explosion in the Nazran district of Ingushetia province that borders Chechnya to the west.
(AP, 7/26/09)
2009 Jul 26, In Macao, China, Fernando Chui (52), the sole candidate for chief executive in the former Portuguese colony, was endorsed by a 300-member panel in the first leadership change since Macao reverted to Chinese rule in 1999.
(AP, 7/26/09)
2009 Jul 26, Egypt's prosecutor general officially charged 26 suspects, including two Lebanese and five Palestinians, for spying for the militant group Hezbollah, as well as plotting terrorist attacks and aiding militants in the Gaza strip. Some were accused of planning to attack ships on the Suez canal and tourists in Egypt.
(Reuters, 7/26/09)(AP, 7/26/09)
2009 Jul 26, Guinea-Bissau voters went to the polls for a presidential runoff between two former heads of state. The West African country’s veteran leader was assassinated in March. On July 29 election officials announced that Malam Bacai Sanha was the new president. Sanha took 63.39% of the runoff vote, beating opponent Kumba Yala, who took 36.69%.
(AFP, 7/26/09)(AP, 7/29/09)
2009 Jul 26, India launched the first nuclear-powered submarine built on its soil, asserting itself as a world power. It joined 5 other countries that can design and construct such vessels. The 367-foot (112-meter) -long submarine, named "Arihant" or "Destroyer of Enemies," was sent for sea trials at a ceremony attended by PM Manmohan Singh.
(AP, 7/26/09)
2009 Jul 26, Human Rights Watch said Iranian authorities are spreading fear by arresting prominent human rights lawyers to prevent them from representing protesters detained in the aftermath of the country's disputed presidential election. An appeals court found Iran's Industry, Minister Ali Akbar Mehrabian, guilty of fraud, in a new embarrassment for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Ahmadinejad's office announced the dismissal of Intelligence Minister Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejehi. No reasons were given but the two had differed over top vice president Rahim Mashai.
(AP, 7/27/09)(AP, 7/27/09)
2009 Jul 26, In Iraq 5 people were killed in a daylight attack at a popular money exchange office, a reflection of the increasing crime in Iraq even as violence is on the decline. 5 more people, including 3 police officers, were killed and 23 others wounded when a suicide bomber struck a Ramadi funeral for a police officer, who had been killed the day before in a roadside bomb attack.
(AP, 7/26/09)(AP, 7/27/09)
2009 Jul 26, Hazem al-Braikan (36), a Kuwaiti businessman linked to Citigroup and charged in the United States with fraud, was found dead in his bed in Kuwait City with a gunshot wound to the head and a handgun at his side. The US SEC charged al-Braikan last week with scheming to make millions by manipulating the stock of certain US companies.
(AP, 7/26/09)
2009 Jul 26, Gaza's top judge said that he has ordered female lawyers to wear Muslim headscarves when they appear in court, the latest sign that the Islamic militant group is increasingly imposing its strict interpretation of Islamic law on residents of the coastal strip.
(AP, 7/26/09)
2009 Jul 26, In northern Nigeria Islamist militants attacked a police station in Bauchi. Police killed over 50 militants and arrested more than 150 others. The fundamentalists, known as Boko Haram (education is prohibited) in the local Hausa language, clamored for the prohibition of western education in Bauchi and Yobe states. In 2010 Nigerian police said 32 of its men were murdered in the Bauchi attack.
(AP, 7/26/09)(Reuters, 7/26/09)(Econ, 8/1/09, p.44)(AFP, 7/29/10)
2009 Jul 26, In Pakistan Moulana Sufi Mohammad, the radical Islamic cleric who brokered a peace deal with the Taliban in Swat, was arrested in the restive northwest. Sufi Mohammad is the father-in-law of Moulana Fazllulah, the leader of the Taliban in Swat and head of a banned Pakistani Islamist rebel group called Tehreek-e-Nafaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM).
(AP, 7/26/09)
2009 Jul 26, Somali government troops took full control of Belet Weyne, the strategic western town where the national security minister was killed last month.
(AFP, 7/26/09)
2009 Jul 26, In Tajikistan a small explosion hit the Tajik capital of Dushanbe. A 2nd small explosion followed the next day. There were no injuries. A high-profile meeting between the leaders of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Russia, was scheduled to start July 30 for talks on communications and transportation.
(AP, 7/27/09)
2009 Jul 26, In Tanzania a bus crashed into a truck in Korogwe killing 33 people.
(SSFC, 7/26/09, p.A2)
2009 Jul 27, President Barack Obama in Washington, DC, opened 2 days of high-level talks with China. Obama called for deeper US-Chinese economic cooperation and outlined a broad agenda for a positive relationship between two countries that do not always see eye to eye.
(Reuters, 7/27/09)
2009 Jul 27, In North Carolina Daniel Patrick Boyd (39) was arrested with his two sons and four other North Carolina men. Prosecutors accused them of military-style training at home and plotting "violent jihad" through a series of terror attacks abroad. In 1991 Boyd and his brother were convicted of bank robbery in Pakistan. They were also accused of carrying identification showing they belonged to the radical Afghan guerrilla group, Hezb-e-Islami, or Party of Islam. Each was sentenced to have a foot and a hand cut off for the robbery, but the decision was later overturned. In 2011 Zakarija Boyd (22) pleaded guilty to one charge of conspiring to provide material support to terrorists. In June, 2012, Anes Subasic was sentenced to 30 years in jail. On Aug 24, 2012, Daniel Patrick Boyd was sentenced to 18 years in prison.
(AP, 7/28/09)(SFC, 6/8/11, p.A8)(SFC, 8/25/12, p.A5)
2009 Jul 27, Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai said he wants new rules governing the conduct of US-led forces in Afghanistan and would be willing to talk with Taliban leaders who publicly renounce violence and endorse peace. The British government announced the end of the first phase of Operation Panther's Claw against the Taliban in southern Afghanistan, saying it now needs to hold and build on the ground it has cleared of insurgents. A Taliban rocket killed 4 civilians at home in the central province of Ghazni overnight. A civilian was killed in a bomb blast in eastern Khost province. The US military in Afghanistan said it has stopped releasing body counts of insurgents believed killed in operations because the tolls distract from the US objective of protecting Afghans.
(AP, 7/27/09)(AFP, 7/27/09)
2009 Jul 27, Algerian papers reported that security forces have killed five armed Islamic extremists in the northeastern Tizi Ouzou region, about 100 km (60 miles) east of Algiers.
(AFP, 7/27/09)
2009 Jul 27, In Canada union officials in Toronto said they had reached a tentative deal to settle a civic workers strike that had halted garbage collection and many other city services for more than a month.
(Reuters, 7/27/09)
2009 Jul 27, In Colombia three soldiers and two civilians were killed in a rifle and grenade attack on a boat carrying coca eradication workers on the San Juan river in Choco state. Six people were wounded and six more were missing.
(AP, 7/28/09)
2009 Jul 27, A Congo government spokesman said The Democratic Republic of Congo has suspended transmission of French broadcaster Radio France International (RFI).
(Reuters, 7/27/09)
2009 Jul 27, El Salvador announced a decision to close schools nationwide for two weeks to combat the spread of swine flu. El Salvador has already confirmed 545 cases of swine flu, including seven deaths.
(AP, 7/27/09)
2009 Jul 27, In Ethiopia Bashir Ahmed Makhtal (36), an Ethiopian-born Canadian citizen, was found guilty of being a member of a rebel group fighting for autonomy for an ethnically Somali part of the country. Bashir was convicted of membership in the ONLF and supporting terrorism in Ogaden, and could face the death penalty. His grandfather was a founder of the ONLF. On August 3 he was sentenced to life in prison for terrorism-related charges.
(Reuters, 7/27/09)(AP, 8/3/09)
2009 Jul 27, European Union nations gave their final approval to a ban on imports of seal products in an effort to force Canada to end its annual seal hunt.
(AP, 7/27/09)
2009 Jul 27, An overloaded sailboat carrying an estimated 200 Haitian migrants sank off the Turks and Caicos Islands and as many as 85 people were missing.
(AP, 7/28/09)
2009 Jul 27, Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ordered the closure of Kahrizak prison, where rights workers say protesters detained in the country's election turmoil have died.
(AP, 7/28/09)
2009 Jul 27, In Iraq 2 people were killed in bombings targeting police officers, considered the weakest link among the Iraqi security forces that have taken the lead from withdrawing American forces. The first bombing came in eastern Baghdad, when a roadside bomb targeted a police patrol but missed, killing one civilian. A short time later, a bomb attached to a car exploded in Fallujah, killing a police captain.
(AP, 7/27/09)
2009 Jul 27, Mexico announced a pilot program to have special courts handle cases involving addicted offenders who commit crimes while under the influence of drugs.
(AP, 7/27/09)
2009 Jul 27, Amnesty Int’l. launched a campaign to repeal Nicaragua’s 2006 total ban on abortion.
(SFC, 7/28/09, p.A4)
2009 Jul 27, In Nigeria Residents of Gamboru-Ngala in Borno state said heavily armed members of a Nigerian Taliban sect stormed the town and went on the rampage, burning a police headquarters, a church and a customs post. Police put the death toll in weekend religious clashes at 65, including 5 police officers.
(AP, 7/27/09)
2009 Jul 27, In Pakistan North West Frontier Province Senior Minister Bashir Ahmad Bilour said security forces had rescued dozens of children aged 6 to 15 who the Taliban were allegedly training as suicide bombers.
(AP, 7/28/09)
2009 Jul 27, Russia’s Interior Ministry said Semyon Mogilevich, an alleged organized crime boss who is also wanted in the US, was released from pretrial detention 18 months after his arrest in Moscow. He has been on the FBI's wanted list since 2003, accused of manipulating the stock of a Pennsylvania-based company, YBM Magnex Inc., which collapsed in 1998.
(AP, 7/27/09)
2009 Jul 27, In Somalia mortar attacks by rebels disrupted a parliamentary session as heavy fighting between the militia and African Union-backed government forces killed 7 civilians.
(AP, 7/27/09)
2009 Jul 27, Thousands of South African council workers went on strike to press for wage hikes, crippling public services in Africa's biggest economy and piling political pressure on new President Jacob Zuma.
(AP, 7/27/09)
2009 Jul 27, Sweden said it was demanding an explanation as to why Swedish-made anti-tank rocket launchers, sold to Venezuela years ago, were obtained by Colombia's main rebel group. Three launchers were recovered in October in a FARC arms cache belonging to a rebel commander known as "Jhon 40" and Colombia only recently asked Sweden to confirm whether they had been sold to Venezuela,
(AP, 7/27/09)
2009 Jul 27, The Taiwanese and Chinese presidents swapped messages, the first such exchange since the two sides split amid civil war 60 years ago.
(AP, 7/27/09)
2009 Jul 27, The leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, led solemn prayers in Kiev on the first day of 10-day visit aimed at reasserting Moscow's dominance over church leaders in Ukraine.
(AP, 7/27/09)
2009 Jul 28, The US government turned up the pressure on the interim government of Honduras to accept the return of exiled President Manuel Zelaya, suspending the diplomatic visas of four Honduran officials a month after a military coup.
(AP, 7/29/09)
2009 Jul 28, California’s Gov. Schwarzenegger cut a half billion more from the state budget and signed a package of legislation to wipe out the state’s $24 billion deficit. It was later reported that state lawmakers added 336 employees between January and the end of July adding about $14.4 million a year to the state payroll.
(SFC, 7/29/09, p.A1)(SSFC, 8/9/09, p.A1)
2009 Jul 28, Tennessee state Sen. Paul Stanley (47) resigned in Nashville after his extramarital affair with an intern (22) was revealed by an investigation into an extortion case. McKensie Morrison’s boyfriend was charged with trying to extort $10,000 from the GOP lawmaker.
(SFC, 7/29/09, p.A6)
2009 Jul 28, It was reported that scientists claimed to have created a form of aluminum that's nearly transparent to extreme ultraviolet radiation and which is a new state of matter.
(www.livescience.com/technology/090728-new-state-matter.html)
2009 Jul 28, At the EAA AirVenture air show in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, Aabar Investments, an Abu Dhabi-based sovereign wealth fund, and Virgin Galactic signed a strategic partnership in which Aabar would take a 32% stake in Virgin Galactic for $280 million. To date Virgin Galactic has been wholly owned and funded by Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Group.
(Econ, 9/12/09, p.87)(http://tinyurl.com/y8gtjad)
2009 Jul 28, Tony Rosenthal (b.1914), American artist and abstract sculptor, died in Southampton, NY. He created the Regent’s Cube located in the Regent’s Plaza at the Univ. of Michigan, his alma mater. Commissioned by the Class of 1965 and officially titled “Endover," the revolving cube is one of three designed Rosenthal. It was installed on Regents’ Plaza (the open space bounded by the LS&A Building, Michigan Union and Fleming Building) in 1968. The others are at home in New York City and Miami.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Rosenthal)(www.ur.umich.edu/0001/Nov06_00/6.htm)
2009 Jul 28, Richard Holbrooke, the US special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, said in Brussels that Taliban militants are receiving more funding from sympathizers abroad than from Afghanistan's illegal drug trade. NATO military officials in Afghanistan have estimated that the Taliban raise between $60-$100 million a year from the trade in illegal narcotics.
(AP, 7/28/09)
2009 Jul 28, The top UN official in Afghanistan urged the Taliban not to disrupt elections, as militants killed nine people, ambushed a presidential campaign manager and fired rockets into a UN compound.
(AP, 7/28/09)
2009 Jul 28, Algeria's coast guard arrested 19 illegal migrants in a dinghy off the western town of Arzew, near Oran, as they tried to reach Europe.
(AP, 7/28/09)
2009 Jul 28, In Australia Shane Kent (33), an Australian convert to Islam, admitted being part of a terror cell that plotted to kill thousands of people by bombing major sports events. The former forklift truck driver was about to face a retrial on the charges, which he previously denied, after a Supreme Court jury last September failed to reach a verdict.
(AFP, 7/28/09)
2009 Jul 28, In Bangladesh the heaviest rain in 53 years battered the capital, Dhaka, leaving at least six people dead and stranding thousands in their swamped homes.
(AP, 7/28/09)
2009 Jul 28, A majority of people in Britain see the Afghan war as impossible to win, according to a new poll taken amid steeply rising casualties and growing government emphasis on finding a political solution to the conflict.
(AP, 7/28/09)
2009 Jul 28, Britain said it will withdraw its remaining 100-odd troops in Iraq to Kuwait by the end of the month after the Iraqi parliament failed to pass a deal allowing them to stay to protect oil platforms and provide training.
(AP, 7/28/09)
2009 Jul 28, A court in southwest China accepted the country's first lawsuit filed by an environmental group against a local government. The All-China Environmental Federation had filed the suit on behalf of residents against the local land resources bureau in Qingzhen city in Guizhou province, which sold land to a drink and ice cream processing plant they allege is a threat to a scenic lake area.
(AP, 7/31/09)
2009 Jul 28, Fiji’s self-appointed PM Commodore Frank Bainimarama, who took power in a bloodless 2006 coup, said aged and ailing President Ratu Josefa Iloilo will retire on July 30.
(AP, 7/28/09)
2009 Jul 28, An Iranian parliament official said 140 people detained in Iran's postelection turmoil have been released from Tehran's main prison Evin.
(AP, 7/28/09)
2009 Jul 28, Iraqi forces raided Camp Ashraf, an Iranian opposition settlement north of Baghdad. The standoff continued into the next day and left 11 people dead. A gang made up of members of the presidential guard and led by the head of security for the 2nd biggest Shia party robbed a bank in central Baghdad killing 8 security guards. Initially police said the gunmen made off with 8 billion Iraqi dinars ($6.9 million). Five members of Iraq's security forces charged in the bank robbery went on trial on Aug 23. They had allegedly made off with $4.8 million. On Sep 2 four members of the security forces, convicted of the robbery, were sentenced to hang.
(AP, 7/29/09)(SFC, 7/29/09, p.A2)(Econ, 8/8/09, p.43)(AP, 8/23/09)(SFC, 9/3/09, p.A2)
2009 Jul 28, President Felipe Calderon said Mexico will start issuing nationwide identity cards for its citizens starting this year, and by 2012 everyone will have one. The body of Juan Daniel Martinez (48), a Mexican radio journalist, was found beaten, gagged and partially buried the resort city of Acapulco. Jose Ibarra, a federal agent who had been investigating the Nov 13, 2008, killing of Mexican journalist Armando Rodriguez, was shot dead at his home in the northern border city of Ciudad Juarez.
(AP, 7/28/09)(AP, 7/29/09)(AP, 7/30/09)
2009 Jul 28, In Morocco a man accused of leading a terrorist network was sentenced to life in prison for terror attacks in Morocco, holdups in Europe, large-scale money laundering projects and arms trafficking. Abdelkader Belliraj (51), a dual Moroccan-Belgian national, had faced the death penalty. 34 co-defendants were handed sentences ranging from 30 years in prison to one-year suspended sentences.
(AP, 7/28/09)
2009 Jul 28, Nigerian authorities imposed curfews and poured security forces onto the streets of several northern towns after a two-day wave of Islamic militant attacks against police killed dozens of people.
(AP, 7/28/09)
2009 Jul 28, In Pakistan the decapitated body of a Pakistani police constable was discovered in the Swat town of Sangota. The find was a sign that Taliban militants have not given up the fight for the northwestern valley, despite the nearly three-month-old army offensive there. A suicide car bomber rammed his vehicle into a checkpoint in North Waziristan tribal region, causing an explosion that killed 2 police and wounded 5 other security officials.
(AP, 7/28/09)
2009 Jul 28, The UN refugee agency said thousands of Somalis are preparing to cross the Gulf of Aden to Yemen after fleeing fighting around the capital of Mogadishu.
(AP, 7/28/09)
2009 Jul 28, Venezuela’s Pres. Hugo Chavez recalled his ambassador from Bogota and threatened to halt Colombian imports after the neighboring country said anti-tank weapons found in a rebel arms cache came from Venezuela.
(AP, 7/28/09)
2009 Jul 29, In Van Nuys, Ca., Sandro Karmryan was kidnapped. He was beaten and held captive for days as his tormentors tried to negotiate a $1 million ransom. In 2011 Suren Garibyan (34) was sentenced to 17½ years in prison for his role in the kidnapping.
(SFC, 4/27/11, p.C2)
2009 Jul 29, Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc. agreed to a 10-year Internet search partnership, capping a convoluted pursuit that dragged on for years and finally setting the stage for the rivals to make an all-out assault against the dominance of Google Inc. The extended reach will allow Microsoft to introduce its recently upgraded search engine, called Bing, to more people.
(AP, 7/29/09)
2009 Jul 29, The anti-death penalty group Hands Off Cain said the number of prisoners put to death worldwide decreased in 2008. At least 5,727 executions were carried out in 2008, down from 5,851 the year before. China accounted for at least 5,000 executions, or 87.3$ of the total, the same estimate as last year.
(AP, 7/29/09)
2009 Jul 29, The Algerian media reported that the army has killed 16 Islamist extremists in separate operations in recent days. The bodies of eight Islamists were discovered on July 27-28 near Batna, 435 km (270 miles) southeast of Algiers, after army shelling followed by a ground operation. 3 other armed Islamists were killed in two ambushes near Tizi Ouzou, 110 km (70 miles) east of the capital, on July 27-28. At least 11 Algerian soldiers were killed in an ambush by Islamic extremists while they escorted a military convoy in an Algerian tourist region outside the coastal town of Damous. Five Islamists were killed when the soldiers shot back.
(AFP, 7/29/09)(AFP, 7/30/09)
2009 Jul 29, China’s state media reported that contaminated drinking water has sickened more than 2,600 people in northern China, including 59 who were hospitalized with fevers, diarrhea, stomach aches and vomiting.
(AP, 7/29/09)
2009 Jul 29, In China Xu Zhiyong (35), prominent legal scholar, was arrested in Beijing. A week later he was accused of tax evasion. His group had tackled some of China’s most politically sensitive cases.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xu_Zhiyong)(SFC, 8/5/09, p.A2)
2009 Jul 29, Cuban state media said Russia and Cuba have signed agreements to search for oil in the Gulf of Mexico. Moscow extended the island $150 million in credit for construction materials and farm machinery.
(AP, 7/29/09)
2009 Jul 29, Germany entered into deflation this month for the first time in 22 years according to government statistics, with a projected 0.6% decline in prices compared to one year ago.
(AP, 7/29/09)
2009 Jul 29, One of India’s last queens, Maharani Gayatri Devi (90), died. She was feted as an international style icon and spent time in jail after she became a politician. Devi had married the Maharaja of Jaipur in 1939, becoming a member of the royal family that effectively ruled the city of Jaipur and the surrounding area of Rajasthan state. She became a successful politician winning a seat in parliament in 1962 and retaining it twice in elections.
(AFP, 7/29/09)
2009 Jul 29, Iran's top diplomat in Bolivia said the Islamic republic has approved a $280 million low-interest loan for President Evo Morales' government to use as it sees fit. Gas and oil exploration are possibilities.
(AP, 7/29/09)
2009 Jul 29, Ireland said it has agreed to accept two inmates from the Guantanamo prison camp in Cuba within the next two months.
(AP, 7/29/09)
2009 Jul 29, In Kyrgyzstan a number of protestors were detained, as police suppressed a series of demonstrations against the disputed re-election of President Kurmanbek Bakiyev. Police said 42 protesters were detained in Bishkek. The opposition reported that about 80 people were detained in Besh-Kungei.
(AP, 7/29/09)
2009 Jul 29, In Mexico gunmen shot up and torched the home of Jesus Antonio Romero (39), a police commander in Veracruz, killing the officer, his wife and his four children, including a 6-year-old boy. He had been promoted a month ago to deputy operations coordinator for the Veracruz-Boca del Rio area, a hotbed of drug violence and a stronghold of the Zetas. In a remote mountain town south of Ciudad Juarez, gunmen killed a government welfare official and three police officers during a robbery. Police announced the capture of six more suspected La Familia members, including a man accused of being a chief financial operator.
(AP, 7/30/09)
2009 Jul 29, Moldova held elections. At least three people were killed and hundreds of others arrested after protesters, some of whom used the social network Twitter to organize after cell phone networks went down, stormed parliament and the president's office. With 98% of the vote counted, the four opposition parties had 50.9 percent to the Communists' 45.1%. A pro-European alliance of four parties won the most seats in the 101-seat parliament but fell short of the 61 votes necessary to elect a president.
(AP, 7/29/09)(AP, 7/30/09)(AP, 11/28/10)
2009 Jul 29, Morocco's King Mohammed VI (45), on the eve of commemorations of his 10th anniversary on the throne, granted pardons to 24,865 prisoners, and commuted 32 death sentences.
(AFP, 7/29/09)
2009 Jul 29, In northern Nigeria troops struggled to crush an Islamist sect as the death toll from four days of clashes surged past 300. Thousands of people were forced from their homes. Militants attacked security forces in Yobe state. Police said that 43 sect members were killed in a shootout near the city of Potiskum. The government, which blames the Boko Haram sect for instigating days of violence in the mostly Muslim region, shelled and stormed the group's mosque and headquarters in Maiduguri. Sect leader Mohammed Yusuf escaped along with about 300 followers but his deputy was killed.
(AFP, 7/29/09)(AP, 7/30/09)
2009 Jul 29, Drug maker Pfizer Inc. confirmed that it has resolved a long-running legal dispute with the Nigerian government over allegations that children there were harmed in a 1996 Pfizer study of an experimental antibiotic during a meningitis outbreak. The settlement reportedly called for a $75 million payment by Pfizer.
(AP, 7/29/09)
2009 Jul 29, In northwestern Pakistan a bomb ripped through the parking area at a court in Dera Ismail Khan, killing two men guarding a Shiite Muslim lawyer. Troops waging an offensive elsewhere in the region killed at least four suspected Taliban fighters over the last 24 hours.
(AP, 7/29/09)
2009 Jul 29, An unmanned Russian cargo ship has docked successfully at the international space station to deliver supplies for its six-member crew.
(AP, 7/29/09)
2009 Jul 29, In South Africa a ceremony was held for “Fire Walker," a new four-story sculpture in Johannesburg. A plaque was unveiled with the names of the South African artists who created it: William Kentridge and Gerhard Marx. The three-dimensional steel conception by Marx was of a Kentridge watercolor.
(AP, 7/29/09)
2009 Jul 29, In northern Spain a powerful car bomb destroyed a police barracks housing officers and their families in Burgos, injuring about 60 people and causing major damage in the surrounding area. The attack was blamed on the Basque separatist group ETA.
(AP, 7/29/09)
2009 Jul 29, A Sudanese court adjourned the case of Lubna Ahmed al-Hussein, a woman journalist facing 40 lashes for wearing "indecent" trousers. 10 women had already been whipped on July 3 for similar offences against Islamic law. "I wish to resign from the UN, I wish this court case to continue," Hussein told a packed courtroom before the judge adjourned the case to August 4.
(AFP, 7/29/09)
2009 Jul 29, In Tajikistan the Pakistani and Tajik presidents pledged to step up efforts to fight Islamist militants at a regional summit amid concerns about the spread of violence from neighboring Afghanistan.
(AFP, 7/29/09)
2009 Jul 29, Turkey's government said it is prepared to grant more rights to the nation's Kurds in an effort to end the 25-year insurgency by Kurdish rebels.
(AP, 7/29/09)
2009 Jul 29, In Zimbabwe the British Broadcasting Corp. resumed broadcasting for the first time since it was banned in 2001. The five-month-old coalition government said it also was considering allowing CNN back.
(AP, 7/30/09)
2009 Jul 30, A US federal judge ordered the release of Mohammed Jawad, a Guantanamo Bay detainee accused of attacking US troops with a grenade on December 17, 2002. American authorities claimed he was at least 16-years old at the time of his arrest, but it later emerged he may have been as young as 12-years old.
(SFC, 7/31/09, p.A5)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohamed_Jawad)
2009 Jul 30, Bill Leigon, president of Hahn Family Wines in Soledad, Calif., said that visits to the company's Web site have increased tenfold since news of an Alabama ban on his Cycles Gladiator wine broke late last week. Callers from across the country have been asking where they can buy the wine. It was reported that the Alabama Alcoholic Beverage Control Board had recently told stores and restaurants to quit serving Cycles Gladiator wine because of a label that features a nude nymph. The wine's label is copied from an 1895 French advertising poster for Cycles Gladiator bicycles. It shows a side view of a full-bodied nymph flying alongside a winged bicycle.
(AP, 7/31/09)
2009 Jul 30, The Taliban urged Afghans to stay away from the Aug. 20 elections, dismissing the balloting as an "American process" and threatening to block roads to polling stations. In western Afghanistan a Taliban ambush on a NATO convoy left nine insurgents and a policeman dead. A Taliban unit ambushed a convoy of electoral material in Farah province. Insurgents killed four Afghan soldiers in the gunbattle but the ballots and other voting material were retrieved.
(AP, 7/30/09)(AP, 7/31/09)
2009 Jul 30, In China nearly a thousand villagers gathered at government and police offices in Zhentou township in Hunan province to highlight what they say is deadly pollution being discharged from the Xianghe Chemical Factory in nearby Liuyang city.
(AP, 8/2/09)
2009 Jul 30, A Hamburg court ordered a German publisher to pay Sweden's Princess Madeleine euro400,000 ($560,000) in damages for fabricating stories about her. Sonnenverlag GmbH & Co KG magazines had carried false reports about the 27-year-old princess being engaged and pregnant, among other things. Sonnenverlag's parent company, Baden-Baden based KLAMBT media group, confirmed the ruling.
(AP, 7/31/09)
2009 Jul 30, In Honduras Roger Vallejo (38), a high school teacher in the capital of Tegucigalpa, was wounded as thousands of Zelaya supporters blocked a highway and clashed with security forces. Vallejo died of his wounds on Aug 1.
(AP, 8/2/09)
2009 Jul 30, Iranian police fired tear gas and beat anti-government protesters with batons to disperse thousands attending a graveside memorial for victims of post-election violence.
(AP, 7/30/09)
2009 Jul 30, In Iraq a bomb blast in a building used by a Sunni-backed political group in Iraq's Diyala province killed at least seven people. Government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh confirmed that seven people were killed when Iraqi forces seized control of the Iranian Camp Ashraf on July 28. The government said it will change the name of the camp to New Iraqi Camp to remove the Iranian reference. The camp was originally named for one of the founders of the People's Mujahedeen, Ashraf Rajavi.
(AP, 7/30/09)
2009 Jul 30, Italy approved the use of the abortion drug RU-486, drawing fierce protests by the Vatican. The Italian Drug Agency ruled that the drug cannot be sold in drug stores but can only be administered by doctors in a hospital.
(AP, 7/31/09)
2009 Jul 30, Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata described his test of new underwear, called J-Wear, as the shuttle Endeavour prepared to come home after over 2 weeks aloft. Wakata tested the high-tech underwear for a month at a time during his 4½ months aboard the ISS.
(SFC, 7/31/09, p.A9)
2009 Jul 30, A Libyan officials said Libya and Canada have signed a memorandum of intent on nuclear power. Since July 2007, Libya has signed three similar agreements with France, Russia and Ukraine.
(AFP, 7/30/09)
2009 Jul 30, North Korea's military seized four South Korean fishermen after their boat strayed into North Korean waters. The fishermen were released on Aug 29.
(AP, 7/31/09)(AP, 8/29/09)
2009 Jul 30, In northern Nigeria security forces hunted door-to-door for Islamic militants after killing more than 100 of them by storming the sect's compound. A top rights group said innocent people were getting executed in the process. Mohammed Yusuf (39), the leader of the Boko Haram movement, was shot dead while in police detention. In February, 2011, seven suspects accused of killing Yusuf were arraigned in a federal court. Abubakar Shekau took over Boko Haram following the death of Yusuf.
(AP, 7/30/09)(Reuters, 7/31/09)(AP, 7/19/11)(Econ, 9/5/15, p.54)
2009 Jul 30, On the Spanish island of Majorca 2 civil guard officers were killed when their booby-trapped car exploded near a barracks.
(AP, 7/30/09)
2009 Jul 30, South African President Jacob Zuma accepted "very substantial damages" from Britain's Guardian newspaper over an article that wrongly suggested he was a rapist.
(AP, 7/30/09)
2009 Jul 30, The UN Security Council unanimously extended the mandate for the joint UN-African Union peacekeeping mission which has been slowly deploying in Sudan's conflict-torn Darfur region.
(Reuters, 7/30/09)
2009 Jul 30, Venezuela's top prosecutor, Attorney General Luisa Ortega, insisted that freedom of expression in Venezuela "must be limited" and proposed legislation that would slap additional restrictions on the country's news media.
(AP, 7/30/09)
2009 Jul 30, Zimbabwe’s Daily News, a popular newspaper banned nearly six years ago, won a new license to resume printing. It was renowned for its willingness to criticize Pres. Robert Mugabe. CNN said Zimbabwe agreed last week to allow it to resume working in the country.
(AFP, 7/31/09)
2009 Jul 30, Zimbabwe's health minister said a cholera epidemic has ended, after more than 4,200 deaths and 100,000 cases since last August, but warned new outbreaks remain a threat.
(AP, 7/30/09)
2009 Jul 31, California authorities said the white striped fruit fly has been found in Southern California, marking the first detection of the Southeast Asian pest in the Western Hemisphere. Several thousand traps were soon placed in the La Verne area of eastern Los Angeles County, where 7 of the flies were found.
(SFC, 8/1/09, p.A4)
2009 Jul 31, A jury ordered Joel Tenenbaum (b.1983), a student at Boston Univ., to pay damages of $675,000 for sharing 30 songs over the Internet. He was later ordered to destroy his illegal music files — but a judge declined to force him to stop promoting the activity.
(Econ, 9/5/09, TQ p.4)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joel_Tenenbaum)(AP, 12/7/09)
2009 Jul 31, The space shuttle Endeavour returned to Florida after over 2 weeks aloft and a successful construction job that boosted the size and power of the international space station.
(AP, 8/1/09)
2009 Jul 31, In Afghanistan a US service member died in the south of the country. In Geneva the UN issued a report stating that the number of civilians killed in conflict in Afghanistan has jumped 24% so far this year, with bombings by insurgent and airstrikes by international forces the biggest single killers.
(AP, 7/31/09)
2009 Jul 31, UN human rights experts asked Azerbaijan to stop curbing free speech and to protect journalists from harassment, violence and even murder.
(Reuters, 7/31/09)
2009 Jul 31, In southeastern Bangladesh landslides caused by heavy monsoon rains killed 10 people.
(AP, 7/31/09)
2009 Jul 31, Britain's defense ministry said Sikh soldiers have begun guarding the monarch and her treasures. “Regiments take it in turn to stand in for the Household Division and it just happens that two of the soldiers this time round are Sikh."
(AP, 7/31/09)
2009 Jul 31, In Colombia at least eight former officials of the domestic intelligence agency surrendered to face criminal charges for allegedly spying illegally on opponents of President Alvaro Uribe including judges, journalists and human rights workers.
(AP, 8/1/09)
2009 Jul 31, Cuba suspended plans for a Communist Party congress and lowered its 2009 economic growth projection from 2.5% to 1.7%, as the island's economy struggled through a "very serious" crisis.
(AP, 7/31/09)
2009 Jul 31, An Indian court issued a warrant for the arrest of Warren Anderson, the former head of the American chemical company responsible for a gas leak that killed at least 10,000 people in Bhopal 25 years ago. Anderson was the head of Union Carbide Corp. when its factory in the central Indian city leaked 40 tons of poisonous gas on Dec. 3, 1984, in the world's worst industrial disaster. In 1989, Union Carbide paid $470 million in compensation to the Indian government and said officials were responsible for the cleanup. India said its efforts were slowed when Midland, Mich.-based Dow Chemical Co. took over Union Carbide in 2001, seven years after Union Carbide sold its interest in the Bhopal plant.
(AP, 7/31/09)
2009 Jul 31, Iran detained 3 Americans after they mistakenly crossed the border from northern Iraq. They crossed into Iranian territory while hiking in a mountainous area near the town of Ahmed Awaa. Freelance journalist Shane Bauer, Sara Shourd and Josh Fattal, all graduates of the University of California, Berkeley, were detained after apparently straying across the border while hiking in Iraq's northern Kurdish region.
(AP, 8/1/09)(AP, 11/9/09)
2009 Jul 31, In Iraq bombs exploded near five Shiite mosques in Baghdad, killing at least 29 people, in an apparent coordinated attack that targeted worshippers leaving Friday prayers. Iraqi police announced they had recovered millions of dollars stolen on July 28 from a state-run bank in a robbery that left eight guards dead.
(AP, 7/31/09)
2009 Jul 31, The Irish Times newspaper won a long-running legal battle to protect the identity of a key source who provided documents showing that former PM Bertie Ahern was under investigation for corruption. Colm Keena and Geraldine Kennedy had refused to comply with an October 2007 High Court judgment ordering them to identify their source for the confidential documents from a fact-finding tribunal into political corruption. The scandal spurred Ahern to resign in May 2008 after 11 years in power.
(AP, 7/31/09)
2009 Jul 31, In Mexico assailants gunned down five men and a woman in a pool hall in the border city of Ciudad Juarez.
(AP, 7/31/09)
2009 Jul 31, Anuradha Koirala, the founder of Nepalese charity Maiti Nepal, said British actress Joanna Lumley has agreed to be its international ambassador. The charity helps victims of human trafficking.
(AFP, 7/31/09)
2009 Jul 31, Nigeria's national police claimed victory over a radical Islamist sect after its leader was killed by security forces. Experts warned revenge attacks could occur and a leading human rights group demanded a probe into the killing. At least 300 people were killed in violence that erupted in several states around northern Nigeria since July 26.
(Reuters, 7/31/09)
2009 Jul 31, Pakistan's Supreme Court ruled that former Pres. Pervez Musharraf's imposition of emergency rule in 2007 was unconstitutional.
(AP, 7/31/09)
2009 Jul 31, Turkey's navy commandos aboard a frigate captured seven pirates in the Gulf of Aden off Somalia's coast. Turkish commandos had captured five other pirates in a similar operation in the Gulf of Aden a week ago.
(AP, 7/31/09)
2009 Jul 31, Venezuelan regulators revoked the broadcast rights of 34 radio stations for allegedly failing to submit the proper paperwork to the broadcasting regulator, deepening a rift between President Chavez's government and the private media. Venezuelan lawmakers approved an election law to redraw voting districts, a step that President Hugo Chavez's opponents say will give his party a big advantage in next year's congressional vote.
(AP, 7/31/09)(AP, 8/1/09)(Econ, 8/8/09, p.32, 34)
2009 Jul 31, A new study by the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation and Vietnam's ministry of defense said more than one-third of the land in six central Vietnamese provinces remained contaminated with land mines and unexploded bombs from the Vietnam War.
(AP, 7/31/09)
2009 Jul 31, Global Witness, which monitors the exploitation of natural resources, backed calls for a ban on trading in Zimbabwe diamonds due to human rights abuses in mining of the gem.
(AFP, 7/31/09)
2009 Jul, Los Angeles police arrested Mohammad Reza Sadeghnia. Prosecutors said he tried to hire a man to kill Jamshid Sharmahd, who ran a LA-based radio programming for the Iranian opposition group Tondar. Sadeghnia spent a year in jai and then was placed on probation and traveled to Iran. H e failed to return for a court date and was declared a fugitive.
(SFC, 12/4/10, p.A7)
2009 Jul, California’s Air Resources Board adopted a 24-mile threshold for ships bound for state ports to begin using low sulfur fuel.
(SFC, 3/29/11, p.C5)
2009 Jul, Paul Romer (b.1955), American economist, spoke at the TED conference and unveiled a bold idea: "charter cities," city-scale administrative zones governed by a coalition of nations.
(Econ, 12/10/11, p.65)(www.ted.com/talks/paul_romer.html)
2009 Jul, Oswaldo Juarez (21), a Peruvian visiting Florida to study English, Juarez swallowed his last pills, packed a few small suitcases and left the A.G. Holley State Hospital following 19 months of treatment. He was the first US case of a contagious, aggressive, especially drug-resistant form of tuberculosis.
(AP, 12/27/09)
2009 Jul, Chinese authorities, following riots in Xinjiang province, put the province under electronic lockdown for the next 10 months. Clashes between Uighurs and Hans left some 200 people dead in Urumqi.
(AP, 9/3/09)(Econ, 4/6/13, SR p.15)(Econ, 8/9/14, p.38)
2009 Jul, In Puerto Rico Police Stephanie Rodriguez Pizarro died in a San Juan housing project after she sought treatment to help with marital and financial troubles. A spiritual healer allegedly dropped a candle into an alcohol bath where she was undergoing a Santeria ritual. She died of second-degree burns over half her body. In 2010 healer Jose Cadiz Tapia (46) was charged with negligent homicide.
(AP, 7/15/10)
2009 Jul, Latvia’s leading newspaper, Diena, along with sister publication Dienas Bizness, was bought by Luxembourg based Nedela S.A. in a highly clandestine transaction. The deal was initially structured as a loan to Tralmaks' company Nedela, allowing it to buy the two papers from then-owner, Sweden's Bonnier Business Press. The loan was later restructured, placing the Rowlands as the new owners. The Rowland Capital family office runs an asset management business, Blackfish Capital Management, a London based company.
(http://tinyurl.com/yjgb4ls)(Econ, 10/17/09, p.64)
2009 Jul, Oman’s population was estimated at 3.4 million.
(NYT 2011 Almanac, p.653)
2009 Aug 1, The new US Post-9/11 GI Bill took effect to reimburse veterans for their full undergraduate tuition at public colleges. An amount equivalent to that tuition would go to veterans who choose private schools or graduate programs.
(SFC, 8/1/09, p.A1)
2009 Aug 1, In San Francisco David Wehrer (26) shot and killed himself when police caught up with him 4 days after his partner, Robert Christopher (56), was found dead in their Castro Street apartment.
(SFC, 8/17/09, p.C1)
2009 Aug 1, In Detroit a woman (24) was shot killed during a street robbery by a boy (12).
(SFC, 8/20/09, p.A4)
2009 Aug 1, In Afghanistan 3 US troops were killed by improvised explosives in Kandahar province and a French soldier was killed in an insurgent attack in Kapisa province. Two more ISAF troops were killed when two bomb blasts struck their patrol in the south. A dozen rebels were killed in a gunfight with police in the southwestern province of Nimroz. 4 Afghan soldiers were killed when their vehicle struck a roadside bomb planted by "terrorists" in southern Helmand province. 3 policemen including a senior officer were killed when their vehicle struck a roadside bomb in the northern province of Baghlan.
(AFP, 8/1/09)(AFP, 8/2/09)
2009 Aug 1, Australia's centre-left ruling party voted for national recognition of same-sex unions but stopped short of lifting a ban on gay marriage.
(AFP, 8/1/09)
2009 Aug 1, Brazilian police said they have busted a ring that allegedly sent some 200 women in the last year to the United States, Europe and elsewhere to work as prostitutes. Most of the women were recruited through the Internet or Brazilian brothels and then sent to Las Vegas, the Dominican Republic and France.
(AP, 8/1/09)
2009 Aug 1, Burundi said it has deployed a third battalion of 850 soldiers to Mogadishu to reinforce the African Union peacekeeping mission there. With the new troops, more than 5,000 soldiers from Burundi and Uganda are now taking part in the AU Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), which began in March 2007 and has cost the lives of 17 Burundian soldiers.
(AFP, 8/2/09)
2009 Aug 1, In Canada a fierce thunderstorm caused an outdoor stage to collapse at the Big Valley Jamboree in Camrose, a country music festival in central Alberta. One person was killed and up to 40 others injured.
(AP, 8/2/09)
2009 Aug 1, Humanitarian groups said members of the Lord's Resistance Army, a Ugandan rebel group, have launched attacks against towns in the Central African Republic that have left at least 10 people dead in the last two weeks. The attacks by the LRA, launched from its rear bases in the Democratic Republic of Congo, have also forced hundreds of people to flee their villages.
(AFP, 8/2/09)
2009 Aug 1, It was reported that output from Chile’s fish farms was expected to be down 40% this year due to infectious salmon anemia (ISA). The virus also led to premature harvesting for fear other fish would catch the disease, which apparently turned up in imported salmon eggs.
(Econ, 8/1/09, p.34)
2009 Aug 1, China’s Ziketan town in Qinghai province was put under collective quarantine when laboratory tests showed it had been struck by the highly virulent disease. 2 of its residents had recently died from pneumonic plague, which spreads through the air, making it easier to contract than bubonic plague, which requires that a person is bitten by an infected flea. Its fatality rate was up to 100% if left untreated, compared with 60% for bubonic plague. The outbreak was first detected on July 30.
(AFP, 8/2/09)(AP, 8/4/09)
2009 Aug 1, Chinese police detained the head of the Xianghe Chemical Factory and the government suspended the chief and deputy chief of the city's environment protection bureau.
(AP, 8/2/09)
2009 Aug 1, The war in Iraq became an American-only effort after Britain and Australia, the last of its international partners, pulled out. In Iraq a bomb hidden inside a toilet struck a Sunni mosque south of Baghdad, injuring two people, the latest in a wave of attacks against Islamic sites of worship. Al-Jazeera television broadcast an audio clip purportedly from Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, a former top deputy of Saddam Hussein, calling on Sunni insurgents to unite under one political umbrella.
(AP, 8/1/09)
2009 Aug 1, In Tel Aviv, Israel, a gunman shot and killed two people, a man (26), who was a counselor at the center, and a girl (17) at a youth club. This was initially considered as the worst ever attack on homosexuals in Israel. Eleven people were wounded, four of them seriously. In 2013 police arrested 4 suspects in connection with the killing and said the shooting was no longer being considered as a hate crime.
(AP, 8/2/09)(AP, 6/7/13)
2009 Aug 1, Kyrgyzstan allowed Russia to open a second military base on its territory, expanding Moscow's military reach to balance against the US presence.
(Reuters, 8/1/09)
2009 Aug 1, Police broke up Malaysia's biggest street protest in nearly two years, firing tear gas and chemical-laced water at thousands of opposition supporters demanding an end to a law that allows detention without trial.
(AP, 8/1/09)
2009 Aug 1, Two Moroccan magazines were taken off news stands after they published an opinion poll on the 10 years under the reign of King Mohammed VI. The poll revealed that 91% of Moroccans who were interviewed say that the performance of the reign of King Mohammed VI is positive or very positive.
(AFP, 8/1/09)
2009 Aug 1, Mozambique’s Pres. Armando Guebuza inaugurated an 80-million-euro (113-million-dollar) bridge over the Zambezi River, a major link for a country long divided between north and south. Work on the bridge had begun in 1977.
(AFP, 8/2/09)
2009 Aug 1, In Nigeria robbers hijacked the bus on Sagamu-Benin expressway in Ogun State and forced passengers to lie on a road at gunpoint as they ransacked their bus. 20 people were crushed to death as a truck ran into them.
(AFP, 8/2/09)
2009 Aug 1, The Sydney Morning Herald reported that North Korea is helping Myanmar build a secret nuclear reactor and plutonium extraction plant to build an atomic bomb within five years, citing the evidence of defectors. "In the event that the testimony of the defectors is proved, the alleged secret reactor could be capable of being operational and producing one bomb a year, every year, after 2014."
(AFP, 8/1/09)
2009 Aug 1, In Pakistan an angry mob of Muslims killed six Christians and wounded dozens after burning 40 houses and a church over the alleged desecration of the Koran in Gojra village, Punjab province. Two men wounded by gunfire died in the hospital overnight. A building collapsed in Karachi killing at least 21 people.
(AFP, 8/1/09)(AP, 8/2/09)(SSFC, 8/2/09, p.A6)
2009 Aug 1, In the Philippines former President Corazon Aquino (b.1933) died. The "people power" uprising she led in 1986 brought down the repressive 20-year regime of Ferdinand Marcos and served as an inspiration to nonviolent resistance across the globe. Due to the time difference her death was reported in the US on July 31.
(Reuters, 8/1/09)
2009 Aug 1, Authorities in the separatist Georgian region of South Ossetia said two mortar shells were fired into the territory from Georgia proper. Georgia denied the claim and suggested it was a provocation ahead of the anniversary of last year's war with Russia.
(AP, 8/1/09)
2009 Aug 2, In eastern Afghanistan 3 American soldiers died in a complex militant ambush, raising NATO's two-day August death toll to nine and continuing the bloodiest period of the eight-year war for US and allied troops.
(AP, 8/2/09)
2009 Aug 2, In Austria researchers unveiled two piano pieces recently identified as childhood creations by Mozart (1756-1791). He likely wrote the two newly attributed pieces when he was 7 or 8 years old, with his father, Leopold, transcribing the notes as his son played them at the keyboard.
(www.usatoday.com/life/music/news/2009-08-02-new-mozart_N.htm)
2009 Apr 2, Austrian authorities arrested British-born Julius Meinl V (b.1959), head of Meinl Bank, for suspected breach of trust and deception of investors. He had spun much of his family’s property portfolio into Meinl European Land (MEL). By 2007 MEL had lost €1.8 billion in an attempt to support its share price. He was released after posting a €100 million bail.
(Econ, 8/1/09, p.60)
2009 Aug 2, China reported that police in the northwest region of Xinjiang have arrested hundreds of people in connection with disturbances that left at least 197 people dead.
(AFP, 8/2/09)
2009 Aug 2, In Dagestan militants shot and killed a police officer. In Ingushetia militants killed three government workers.
(AP, 8/2/09)
2009 Aug 2, In eastern Indonesia a plane carrying 16 people disappeared over a jungle-clad and mountainous region of Papua. All aboard were killed.
(AP, 8/2/09)(AP, 8/5/09)
2009 Aug 2, In Iraq Tariq Aziz, one of Saddam Hussein's best-known lieutenants, was convicted of helping to plan the forced displacement of Kurds from northeastern Iraq and sentenced to seven years in jail. The ruling came more than four months after Aziz was sentenced to 15 years in prison for crimes against humanity in the 1992 execution of Iraqi merchants. Rania Ibrahim, a teenage Iraqi girl, was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison for attempting to blow herself up at a checkpoint in Baqouba in August, 2008. She claimed her husband's female relatives strapped explosives on her. An explosives-laden car exploded near an outdoor market in a mainly Sunni area of Haditha, killing at least 5 people and wounding 34, raising concern that sectarian violence could resurge.
(AP, 8/2/09)(SFC, 8/4/09, p.A2)(AP, 8/6/09)
2009 Aug 2, Mexican police raided a church service in Apatzingan, Michoacan state, and arrested Miguel Angel Beraza, a man known as "The Truck," and another suspect. Beraza was suspected of moving a half ton of crystal methamphetamine into the US each month and was said to be a high-ranking lieutenant in the drug cartel known as La Familia.
(AP, 8/3/09)
2009 Aug 2, It was reported that illegal blast fishing had become rampant in Nicaragua and was spreading across Central America’s Pacific coast.
(SSFC, 8/2/09, p.A8)
2009 Aug 2, Red Cross and Nigerian defense officials said more than 700 people were killed during a 5-day uprising by a radical Islamic sect in the north. Over 700 dead bodies were given mass burial in Maiduguri town alone, as a search for bodies continued.
(Reuters, 8/2/09)
2009 Aug 2, In Pakistan two policemen were shot and killed by men who fled from a checkpoint in the northwestern city of Peshawar. The military said that four militants were killed and another 27, including a suspected local commander, were arrested in several search-and-clearance operations in Swat and nearby areas.
(AP, 8/2/09)
2009 Aug 2, In Peru attackers believed to be Shining Path rebels killed three police officers and two women in an assault on a remote police post in San Jose de Secce in Ayacucho province, a coca-growing region.
(AP, 8/3/09)
2009 Aug 2, Stanley Robertson (69), the last of Scotland’s traveling storytellers, died. He had spent 47 years filleting fish for a living.
(Econ, 9/5/09, p.94)
2009 Aug 2, On the Spanish Canary Island of La Palma strong winds fanned forest fires for a 2nd day, and firefighters were forced to retreat as flames raged out of control near two towns.
(AP, 8/2/09)
2009 Aug 2, In southeast Sudan armed tribesmen attacked a fishing village where hundreds of displaced people were camped near a river, leaving at least 185 people, most of them women and children, dead in the worst violence in three months.
(AP, 8/3/09)
2009 Aug 2, In Zimbabwe 40 people were killed and 30 others injured when a bus overturned after colliding with a lorry south of Harare.
(AP, 8/2/09)(AP, 8/3/09)
2009 Aug 3, Bank of America agreed to pay $33 million to settle a complaint filed by the SEC alleging that the bank misled investors over bonuses at Merrill Lynch as BofA was finalizing its takeover of the securities firm in late 2008.
(Econ, 8/8/09, p.63)
2009 Aug 3, In Afghanistan a bomb hidden in a rubbish bin exploded near a police convoy in Herat, killing 12 people, including a woman and a girl and 2 police officers, as a wave of Taliban violence gripped the nation ahead of elections. An ambush in Faryab province killed an Afghan driver, but his passenger, a Korean engineer, escaped without injury.
(AFP, 8/3/09)(SSFC, 8/2/09, p.A2)
2009 Aug 3, Belgian authorities recaptured Abdelhaq Melloul-Khayari, a convict who escaped twice in as many weeks, including once from a Bruges prison by helicopter.
(AP, 8/3/09)
2009 Aug 3, Karlheinz Schreiber (75), a German-Canadian arms dealer and key figure in a political party financing scandal involving former Chancellor Helmut Kohl, was extradited to Germany from Canada to face criminal charges after losing a decade-long court battle. He was key figure in a funding scandal which badly damaged Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives a decade ago. Schreiber was arrested in Canada about 10 years ago, and is wanted by prosecutors in Augsburg for tax evasion, fraud and bribery.
(AP, 8/3/09)(Reuters, 8/3/09)
2009 Aug 3, China’s state media reported that more than 500 villagers in central China have been found to have high concentrations of a dangerous metal in their bodies after a series of leaks from the Changsha Xianghe Chemical Plant in Hunan province's Zhentou township. 509 people were found to have high concentrations of cadmium and 33 were hospitalized over the weekend.
(AP, 8/3/09)
2009 Aug 3, Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa, announced that "many" radio and TV frequencies will revert to the state over what he called irregularities in their licenses. He gave no specifics.
(AP, 8/3/09)
2009 Aug 3, Nikolaos Makarezos (90), one of the leaders of the military dictatorship that ruled Greece from 1967-1974, died. Makarezos, the junta's chief economic policymaker, served as deputy prime minister and minister for coordination under dictator George Papadopoulos.
(AP, 8/6/09)
2009 Aug 3, A seven-minute video, apparently made by the Korps Brigade Mobil, or Brimob, the paramilitary police, shows prisoner Yawen Wayeni lying in a jungle clearing in eastern Indonesia moments after troops allegedly sliced open his abdomen with a bayonet. Police said Wayeni, captured for allegedly vandalizing several of their buildings and vehicles, was shot in the thigh and stomach while resisting arrest and that he died on the way to the hospital. The video was made public in the Internet in 2010.
(AP, 8/4/10)(http://hub.witness.org/en/upload/killing-yawan-wayeni)
2009 Aug 3, In Iran Fahimeh Mousavi-nejad, the wife of former Vice President Mohammad Abtahi on trial for postelection violence, said his televised "confessions" were made under pressure. Her husband was one of the top figures in a trial that began Aug 1 for around 100 people detained in the postelection crackdown. Iran's supreme leader formally endorsed Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for a second term as president in a ceremony that sought to portray unity among the country's leadership but was snubbed by prominent critics of the disputed election.
(AP, 8/3/09)
2009 Aug 3, In Iraq Asaib Ahl al-Haq (League of the Righteous), a group believed to be responsible for killing US soldiers and kidnapping British soldiers, agreed to renounce violence following a weekend meeting with PM al-Maliki. A suicide car bomber detonated his explosives at a police checkpoint in Saqlawiya. 3 civilians were killed and 7 people were wounded including 3 police officers.
(SFC, 8/4/09, p.A2)
2009 Aug 3, Israeli police said that they had broken up an Israeli-American crime ring specializing in tax fraud and money laundering in an operation codenamed "American Pie." The chief suspect was Marvin Berkowitz (62) who holds dual Israeli and US citizenship. Avigdor Lieberman, Israel's ultranationalist foreign minister, promised to step down if he is charged after police recommended that he be indicted for a string of alleged corruption offenses.
(AP, 8/3/09)
2009 Aug 3, Kenya's Pres. Mwai Kibaki said all prisoners on death row will immediately have their sentences commuted to life imprisonment. Kenya's 97 prisons were built for a population of about 15,000 but currently have an inmate population of more than 40,000.
(AP, 8/3/09)
2009 Aug 3, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, a former Danish prime minister, took office as NATO's new secretary-general. He said his top priorities would be guiding the war in Afghanistan to a successful conclusion, repairing ties with Russia, and expanding NATO's partnership with moderate nations in North Africa and the Middle East.
(AP, 8/3/09)
2009 Aug 3, The Palestinian Fatah movement published a new platform saying it will keep pursuing peace talks but reserves the right to resist Israeli occupation.
(AP, 8/3/09)
2009 Aug 3, In South Korea thousands of riot police strengthened their siege of a troubled South Korean auto firm, spraying liquid tear gas from a helicopter, after talks to end a prolonged occupation by strikers collapsed.
(AFP, 8/3/09)
2009 Aug 3, In Switzerland there was an arson attack at Novartis CEO Daniel Vasella's lodge in Bach, Austria. An attack on his mother's grave took place a week earlier. The next day drug maker Novartis said animal rights militants were responsible.
(AP, 8/4/09)
2009 Aug 3, In Venezuela a far-left party led by Lina Ron attacked the opposition-aligned Globovision TV station. The next day Pres. Chavez condemned the attack and had Ron arrested for taking part in the assault.
(SFC, 8/3/09, p.A2)
2009 Aug 4, A US federal court panel ordered California to reduce its prison population by 40,000 over the next 2 years to meet constitutional standards for inmate health care.
(SFC, 8/5/09, p.A1)
2009 Aug 4, Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said that the SEC plans to ban so-called "flash trading," where high-frequency traders can get information just before it becomes public.
(www.marketwatch.com/story/schumer-sec-to-ban-flash-trading-2009-08-04)
2009 Aug 4, SF Mayor Gavin Newsom signed a $6.6 billion city budget, making it the city’s biggest budget ever.
(SFC, 8/5/09, p.D1)
2009 Aug 4, In Bridgeville, Pennsylvania, George Sodini (48) sprayed bullets into a fitness class filled with women, killing three and then himself. He kept a Web page in which he wrote about years of rejection by women and an earlier plan for violence at the gym.
(AP, 8/5/09)
2009 Aug 4, In Afghanistan a string of rockets slammed into Kabul at daybreak in the first major attack on the relatively calm Afghan capital in the run-up to this month's presidential election. A child and a man were lightly wounded when they were hit by flying glass in residential areas next to the airport, where most of the rockets landed. A suicide bomber killed five people and wounded 18 in southern Zabul province.
(AP, 8/4/09)
2009 Aug 4, Antigua's highest mountain, Boggy Peak, officially became "Mount Obama" as the small Caribbean nation celebrated the American president on his birthday and saluted him as a symbol of black achievement.
(AP, 8/4/09)(SFC, 8/5/09, p.A2)
2009 Aug 4, Australian police said they thwarted a terrorist plot in which extremists with ties to an al-Qaida-linked Somali Islamist group planned to invade a military base and open fire with automatic weapons until they were shot dead themselves. Some 400 officers from state and national security services took part in 19 raids on properties in Melbourne, before dawn, arresting four men and detaining several others for questioning. Police said all four arrested are Australian citizens of Somali or Lebanese descent aged between 22 and 26.
(AP, 8/4/09)
2009 Aug 4, In Belgium three prisoners escaped from the sprawling Palace of Justice courthouse in central Brussels when two armed men burst into a court hearing and took them with them, bringing the total to 12 over the past two weeks. Five of the escaped inmates have been caught again, but seven remained at large.
(AP, 8/4/09)
2009 Aug 4, Officials said a forest fire on the Canary Island of La Palma was brought under control and another that raged for two weeks in Spain's northern Catalonia region has been extinguished.
(AP, 8/4/09)
2009 Aug 4, China’s state media reported that police have formally arrested 83 people on charges including murder and arson in connection with last month's deadly rioting in the western region of Xinjiang.
(AP, 8/4/09)
2009 Aug 4, In northern China an unfinished factory building collapsed as torrential rain hit the city of Shijiazhuang. 17 people were reported killed.
(AP, 8/4/09)
2009 Aug 4, Haiti’s lawmakers voted to more than double the minimum wage after long hours of debate and clashes between police and protesters, who complained they can't feed and shelter their families on the current pay of about $1.75 a day.
(AP, 8/4/09)
2009 Aug 4, India’s Right to Education Act (RTE) was passed. It included provisions for the minimum size of playgrounds and the minimum level of teachers’ salaries effective in 2014. It made school attendance compulsory up to age 14.
(Econ, 3/23/13, p.74)(Econ 6/10/17, p.39)
2009 Aug 4, In eastern India at least 11 people were killed and 15 others seriously injured after being struck by lightning in Burdwan district in West Bengal state.
(AP, 8/5/09)
2009 Aug 4, The Lithuanian ministry said that the Lithuanian-flagged refrigerator vessel Saturnas, with a crew of 14, was attacked by unidentified perpetrators off the coast of Nigeria. Five crew members were said to have been taken hostage. The attackers did not seize the vessel itself but left in a high-speed boat with the hostages. The 5 Lithuanian sailors were reported freed on Aug 14, ending their 11-day ordeal.
(AFP, 8/4/09)(AFP, 8/14/09)
2009 Aug 4, In Mexico 4 bodies were found in the border city of Ciudad Juarez. In the nearby town of Llano Blanco, police chief Gerardo Silva (40) was found dead in a pickup truck, shot five times.
(AP, 8/5/09)
2009 Aug 4, NATO's governing body approved a plan to reorganize the alliance's command structure in Afghanistan by setting up a new headquarters to handle the day-to-day running of the war.
(AP, 8/4/09)
2009 Aug 4, In Niger clashes erupted as citizens voted in a constitutional referendum to extend President Mamadou Tandja's long rule amid low turnout after an opposition boycott in the uranium-rich African nation. On Aug 7 the Electoral Commission released provisional results saying that 92.5% of votes cast supported a new constitution that would allow President Mamadou Tandja to stay in power. About 68.3% of all registered voters participated.
(AP, 8/4/09)(AP, 8/7/09)
2009 Aug 4, In North Korea former US Pres. Bill Clinton met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il on the first day of a surprise visit to Pyongyang, with the "exhaustive" talks covering a wide range of topics. Clinton was in communist North Korea on a mission to secure the release of Americans, who were arrested along the Chinese-North Korean border in March and sentenced in June to 12 years of hard labor for illegal entry and engaging in "hostile acts." After 140 days in custody, the reporters were granted a pardon by North Korea.
(AP, 8/4/09)(AP, 8/5/09)
2009 Aug 4, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas launched his Fatah movement's first conference in two decades with a call for his people to limit their resistance to Israel to marches and protests and not to abandon peace talks despite years of setbacks. The 3-day general assembly’s main task was to elect a new central committee.
(AP, 8/4/09)(Econ, 8/8/09, p.42)
2009 Aug 4, Sudanese police fired tear gas and beat women protesting outside a Sudanese court during the trial of a female journalist accused of violating the Islamic dress code by wearing trousers in public. The judge adjourned Lubna Hussein's trial for a month to seek clarification from Sudan's foreign ministry.
(AP, 8/4/09)
2009 Aug 4, In Thailand a passenger plane skidded off the runway and crashed into a building after landing on the Thai resort island of Samui, killing the chief pilot and injuring at least seven people including foreign tourists.
(AP, 8/4/09)
2009 Aug 5, Euna Lee (36) and Laura Ling (32), American journalists freed by North Korea, returned home to the United States along with former Pres. Clinton for a jubilant, emotional reunion with family members and friends they hadn't seen since their arrests on March 17.
(AP, 8/5/09)
2009 Aug 5, Federal jurors in Alexandria, Va., convicted former Louisiana Rep. William Jefferson on 11 0f 16 counts that included bribery, racketeering and money laundering. The next day jurors said Jefferson must forfeit $470,000 in bribery receipts. On Nov 13 he was sentenced to 13 years in prison.
(SFC, 8/6/09, p.A6)(SFC, 8/7/09, p.A5)(SFC, 11/14/09, p.A7)
2009 Aug 5, In Arizona Brenda Arenas (15), was shot in the head during a botched carjacking in Tucson. She died in her mother's arms soon after the attack. Her 3-year-old sister watched the crime from the backseat of the car. On Jan 29, 2011, Orel Vasquez (20) Christian Vasquez (26), and Juan Leon (29) approached a border crossing point at Nogales and told US officers they were wanted for the shooting and were turning themselves in.
(Reuters, 1/30/11)
2009 Aug 5, Outraged southern Afghan villagers said that a pre-dawn airstrike by foreign troops killed three children and a man in the latest case of civilian deaths at the hands of Western troops. A US military spokeswoman said a helicopter had fired on four insurgents carrying jugs on motorcycles through a field away from a populated area of the local district, Arghandab. In eastern Nangarhar province a roadside bomb killed two tribal elders and four armed guards. Across southern Afghanistan roadside explosions and a US airstrike killed at least 15 people, including members of a family who hit a mine on their way to a wedding party.
(AP, 8/5/09)(AP, 8/6/09)
2009 Aug 5, Australian police charged four men with planning to attack an army base and shoot soldiers as the government considered whether to ban a Somalia militant group linked to the plot.
(Reuters, 8/5/09)
2009 Aug 5, In Colombia David Murcia Guzman, a Colombian businessman, was convicted in a notorious pyramid scheme that authorities say bilked investors out of more than $2.4 billion. Guzman was convicted of money laundering and illegal wealth accumulation through the company he founded, DMG Group Holdings SA. A New York court has sought his extradition. Murcia was extradited to the US on Jan 5, 2009.
(AP, 8/5/09)(AP, 1/5/10)
2009 Aug 5, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was sworn in for a second term as Iran's president while security forces battled hundreds of protesters chanting "Death to the Dictator" in the streets around parliament where the ceremony was held.
(AP, 8/5/09)
2009 Aug 5, Amos Kenan (b.1927), Israeli artist and writer, died in Tel Aviv. As a member of Israel's founding generation his writing and art helped define modern Israeli culture. Kenan was party to several efforts to create an alliance with the Palestinians. He helped pen a 1957 manifesto calling for the creation of a Palestinian state in federation with Israel at a time when few Israelis acknowledged the Palestinians' existence as a national group.
(AP, 8/5/09)
2009 Aug 5, In Nairobi, Kenya, US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton criticized Kenya for rampant graft and corruption as she made the case that business and trade across Africa cannot grow without good governance and solid democracy.
(AP, 8/5/09)
2009 Aug 5, In Mexico 5 bodies, one of them headless, were found in a van in the border city of Ciudad Juarez. US Sen. Patrick Leahy a Democrat from Vermont, delayed the release of $100 million of a $1.4 billion, three-year package meant to help Mexico combat drug traffickers. Leahy said Mexico needs effective police forces and a justice system that works.
(AP, 8/5/09)
2009 Aug 5, In Pakistan the 2nd wife of Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud was killed in a US drone attack targeting her husband at a home in the tribal belt near the Afghan border. Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud was also killed in the US missile strike in South Waziristan. He had led a violent campaign of suicide attacks and assassinations against the Pakistani government. News of his death was not made public until 2 days later.
(AFP, 8/5/09)(AP, 8/7/09)
2009 Aug 5, In South Korea helicopter-borne police commandos fought militant strikers at the Ssangyong Motor Co.’s Pyeongtaek factory, seizing all but one key building.
(SFC, 8/5/09, p.A2)
2009 Aug 5, Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez said his government will buy dozens of Russian tanks because Venezuela feels threatened by a pending deal for the US military to increase its presence in neighboring Colombia.
(AP, 8/6/09)
2009 Aug 5, Zimbabwe's veteran Vice-President Joseph Msika (86) died. His death was expected to reignite debate over who will eventually succeed President Robert Mugabe.
(Reuters, 8/5/09)
2009 Aug 6, The US Senate confirmed Justice Sonia Sotomajor to the Supreme Court on a largely partisan vote of 68-31.
(SFC, 8/7/09, p.A1)
2009 Aug 6, The Securities and Exchange Commission said that former American International Group Inc. CEO Maurice "Hank" Greenberg agreed to pay a $15 million fine to settle fraud charges.
(AP, 8/7/09)
2009 Aug 6, Writer-director John Hughes (b.1950) died of a heart attack while visiting family in NYC. His films in the 1980s and '90s included "The Breakfast Club," "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" and "Home Alone." He also wrote or directed such hits as "National Lampoon's Vacation," "Pretty in Pink," "Planes, Trains & Automobiles" and "Uncle Buck."
(AP, 8/7/09)
2009 Aug 6, In western Afghanistan four American service members were killed in a roadside bombing. 3 British paratroopers were killed after their armored vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb and Taliban opened fire during a patrol with Afghan forces north of Lashkar Gah in Helmand province. Roadside bombs killed 5 policemen in Kandahar's Arghandab district. An airstrike in Zabul province killed 3 suspected militants who were planting a bomb on a road.
(AP, 8/6/09)(AP, 8/7/09)
2009 Aug 6, In Belgium a fire killed nine elderly people at a care home in the Flemish town of Melle. Officials later said it was probably caused by an electrical fault.
(AFP, 8/7/09)
2009 Aug 6, Two well-dressed thieves walked into a London Bond Street jewelry store and, after brandishing handguns at shop workers, made off with $65 million worth of gems in one of Britain's biggest jewelry heists. The arrest of one suspect was announced on Aug 12. On Sep 7 a 9th suspect, David Joseph (22), was detained. On June 25, 2010, Aman Kassaye (24) was convicted for his role in the robbery. On Aug 6, 2010, Kassaye was sentenced to 23 years in jail. Three other men involved in the robbery, Solomun Beyene, Clinton Mogg and Thomas Thomas, were sentenced to 16 years each. Two others were cleared by the court.
(AP, 8/12/09)(SFC, 8/13/09, p.A2)(SFC, 9/8/09, p.A2)(AFP, 6/25/10)(AP, 8/6/10)
2009 Aug 6, DR Congo President Joseph Kabila met his Rwandan counterpart Paul Kagame in the lakeside city of Goma for the first official bilateral talks between the neighboring states in 13 years.
(AP, 8/6/09)
2009 Aug 6, Ethiopia’s Federal High Court issued the guilty verdicts against 13 men, including a US-based professor, convicted in absentia for plotting to overthrow the government. Berhanu Nega, Ethiopian-born professor with US nationality and teacher of economics at Philadelphia's Bucknell Univ., was accused of masterminding a plan to topple PM Meles Zenawi.
(Reuters, 8/7/09)
2009 Aug 6, Iraq's cabinet approved a bill to ban smoking in public places. A roadside bomb struck a car full of Shiite pilgrims in southern Baghdad, killing one and wounding four others. Gunmen broke into a goldsmith shop in the western Baghdad district of Baiyaa, killing the owner and making off with an unknown quantity of gold.
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8188265.stm)(AP, 8/6/09)(AP, 8/7/09)
2009 Aug 6, Japan's first jury trial since World War II concluded with a mixed group of citizens and professional judges convicting a man of murder and sentencing him to a tougher-than-expected 15 years in prison.
(AP, 8/6/09)
2009 Aug 6, In Mexico 11 people, including two police officers and nine gunmen, died following a running battle between police and gunmen in the central city of Pachuca.
(AP, 8/7/09)
2009 Aug 6, Nigeria began a 60-day amnesty for militants fighting in the country's oil-rich Delta region, a government official said, but the main militant group said it would not participate. A cache of weapons and ammunitions was uncovered at an arms depot owned by Niger Delta militant leader Mujahid Dokubo-Asari in Port Harcourt.
(AP, 8/6/09)(AFP, 8/7/09)
2009 Aug 6, Nigeria's northern Kano state withdrew a landmark criminal and civil suit against US drug group Pfizer over a 1996 drug trial that left 11 children dead and 189 others deformed. The withdrawal of the suit followed a 75-million dollar (52 million euros) out-of-court settlement between the two parties.
(AFP, 8/6/09)
2009 Aug 6, In northern Pakistan a bus veered off a narrow mountain road and plunged into a river, leaving about 34 people, including 26 soldiers, missing and presumed dead. Sardar Rustam Jamali, the excise and taxation minister in the western province of Baluchistan, was killed when robbers tried to steal his car in an eastern neighborhood of the city.
(AP, 8/6/09)
2009 Aug 6, In Paraguay Social Development Minister Pablino Caceres said he would meet with a 6 protesters who have hammered long nails through their hands and tied themselves to crosses or laid in coffins in an appeal for land.
(AP, 8/6/09)
2009 Aug 6, In the northern Philippines heavy monsoon rains inundated wide areas, triggering flash floods and landslides that killed 21 people, including two French citizens and a Belgian who were touring Mount Pinatubo. Typhoon Morakot left seven others missing in landslides and floodwaters.
(AP, 8/7/09)(AP, 8/9/09)
2009 Aug 6, Russia’s PM Putin and his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, signed an agreements in Ankara that included the construction of part of the South Stream gas pipeline through the Black Sea.
(AP, 8/6/09)(Econ, 8/15/09, p.47)
2009 Aug 6, US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, speaking in Kenya, pledged to "expand and extend" American support for Somalia's weak interim government as it struggles against Islamist extremists believed linked to al-Qaida.
(AP, 8/6/09)
2009 Aug 6, Juan Manuel Inciarte Gallardo (55), a suspected member of the armed Basque group ETA, was deported from Mexico and arrested in Spain, where he is wanted for allegedly killing five Spanish police officers and a pregnant wife of one of the officers. Inciarte allegedly took part in the slaying of the five police officers and the pregnant wife of one officer between 1983 and 1985. He was wanted on terrorism charges.
(AP, 8/6/09)
2009 Aug 6, In South Korea unionists who occupied a car plant in protest at mass layoffs agreed to end a 77-day sit-in which halted production and sparked violent clashes with police.
(AFP, 8/6/09)
2009 Aug 6, Rescue workers searched for missing people after the Princess Ashika ferry, carrying 149 passengers and crew, sank overnight off the coast of Tonga. 93 people were missing and feared dead.
(SFC, 8/6/09, p.A2)(AP, 8/9/09)
2009 Aug 6, In northern Yemen local officials and the rebels said Shiite Muslim rebels have seized a key control post on a strategic highway linking the capital San'a with Saudi Arabia, overcoming an army brigade after 12 hours of intense combat.
(AP, 8/6/09)
2009 Aug 7, Pres. Obama signed into law a measure tripling the budget of the $1 billion incentive “cash for clunkers" program.
(SFC, 8/8/09, p.A5)
2009 Aug 7, The US Environmental Protection Agency said the US Department of Agriculture has agreed to pay $30,000 in penalties for alleged improper maintenance of underground storage tanks in Puerto Rico.
(AP, 8/8/09)
2009 Aug 7, In eastern Afghanistan an American service member was killed in an attack on a convoy. A blast in Kandahar's Zhari district killed an Afghan guard escorting a NATO supply convoy.
(AP, 8/7/09)
2009 Aug 7, Britain’s Ministry of Justice said Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs (79) has been officially released from his prison sentence. Biggs earned notoriety for his role in the 1963 Great Train Robbery, for which he was sentenced to 30 years in prison. Escaping, he spent 35 years as a celebrity fugitive, living a party lifestyle in Brazil before returning home.
(AFP, 8/7/09)
2009 Aug 7, James Robinson (71), a former California priest, arrived at London's Heathrow Airport after being extradited from the United States. He was charged with sexually abusing young boys when he served in the United Kingdom between 1959 and 1983.
(AP, 8/8/09)
2009 Aug 7, In China Li Peiying (60), the former head of Beijing airport's management company, was executed following his conviction on corruption charges. He was found guilty in February of accepting almost $4 million in bribes and embezzling about $12 million in public money since 1995.
(AP, 8/7/09)
2009 Aug 7, Guatemala's top three police officials were fired after hundreds of pounds of cocaine allegedly disappeared from a shipment seized by authorities. Interior Minister Raul Velazquez said police made the 1-ton seizure on Aug 6, but when federal prosecutors weighed the drugs, 258 pounds (117 kilograms) were missing.
(AP, 8/7/09)
2009 Aug 7, Indonesia's anti-terrorism unit engaged in a shootout in Central Java during a raid targeting suspected militants behind deadly bomb attacks in Jakarta last month.
(Reuters, 8/7/09)
2009 Aug 7, In Iraq a suicide car bomb devastated a Shiite mosque in northern Iraq, one of a series of attacks that killed at least 37 Shiite pilgrims and worshippers. The deadliest blast occurred in Rasheediyah, north of Mosul, when a suicide car bomb struck a mosque, killing at least 30 people and trapping dozens more underneath the rubble. In Baghdad 3 roadside bombs targeting Shiite pilgrims killed 7 people returning from Karbala.
(AP, 8/7/09)
2009 Aug 7, In Mexico Zambrano Flores, a top lieutenant of the Tijuana-based Arellano Felix cartel, was arrested in Tijuana. Police seized 10 rifles, 7 pistols, almost 4,000 rounds of ammunition during his arrest.
(AP, 8/8/09)
2009 Aug 7, Nepal's Maoists launched a fresh round of protests, paralyzing parliament and accusing the new government of failing to address their demands.
(AFP, 8/7/09)
2009 Aug 7, Nigeria's President Umaru Yar'Adua formally received the first set of 32 Niger Delta militants who have surrendered their arms under an amnesty he offered them in June and commended them for their "patriotism."
(AP, 8/8/09)
2009 Aug 7, In Pakistan a deadly shooting reportedly took place at a meeting of top Taliban commanders Hakimullah Mehsud (28), a deputy to Baitullah Mehsud and the warlord's main spokesman, and Wali-ur Rehman, a senior commander in Mehsud's umbrella Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) movement. They had convened to discuss the choice of a successor to Baitullah Mehsud. Both commanders later phoned international media organizations to prove they were alive.
(AFP, 8/9/09)(AP, 8/12/09)(Econ, 10/17/09, p.34)
2009 Aug 7, A Peruvian government prosecutor presented homicide charges against two police generals and 15 other officers for a June government crackdown at an Amazon highway blockade manned by Indians protesting development on their ancestral lands. The criminal charges, which must be ratified by a judge, were the first to implicate police in violence that left at least 33 dead, including 23 police.
(AP, 8/12/09)
2009 Aug 7, Portugal said it has agreed to take two Syrian detainees from Guantanamo prison.
(AP, 8/7/09)
2009 Aug 7, Sri Lankan authorities questioned Selvarasa Pathmanathan, former chief arms smuggler the new leader of the Tamil Tiger rebels, after he was arrested 2 days earlier in Southeast Asia and flown to Sri Lanka. Rebels said he was arrested in Kuala Lumpur.
(AP, 8/7/09)
2009 Aug 7, International donor the Global Fund, which had a financial dispute with Zimbabwe's previous government, took the unusual step of giving $37.9 million in aid directly to Zimbabwe's new unity government instead of channeling it through private groups.
(AP, 8/7/09)
2009 Aug 8, Sonia Sotomayor was sworn-in as the first Hispanic on the US Supreme Court.
(AP, 8/8/09)
2009 Aug 8, In Dinuba, Ca., a car fleeing from police ran a stop sign and slammed into a pickup, killing three people in the car and four young children in the truck.
(AP, 8/9/09)
2009 Aug 8, In Chino, Ca., a 2-day prison riot began. It housed almost twice as many prisoners as it was designed for and was typical of California’s 33 state prisons. At this time California spent about $49,000 a year on each prisoner, almost twice the national average.
(Econ, 8/15/09, p.28)
2009 Aug 8, Continental Express Flight 2816, en route with 47 passengers to Minneapolis from Houston, was stranded overnight at Rochester, Minn., after being forced to land due to storms. On Nov 24 the Dept. of Transportation levied $175,000 in fines against Continental, ExpressJet and Mesaba Airlines for keeping the plane on the tarmac.
(SFC, 11/25/09, p.A6)
2009 Aug 8, Near Hoboken, New Jersey, 9 people died in an air collision over the Hudson River, including 3 members of a Pennsylvania family in the private plane and five Italian tourists and a pilot from New Jersey in a Liberty Tours helicopter.
(AP, 8/9/09)(SSFC, 8/9/09, p.A9)
2009 Aug 8, NATO helicopters wounded five Afghan police by mistake during a battle with insurgents in Ghazni province. A British soldier, serving with NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), was killed by an improvised explosive device (IED). A US soldier was killed in the south in a hostile fire incident.
(Reuters, 8/8/09)(AFP, 8/9/09)(AP, 8/11/09)
2009 Aug 8, In China hundreds of villagers rioted after news broke about the lead poisoning at the Wugang Manganese Smelting Plant in Wenping township, central Hunan province. A crowd of 600 to 700 people overturned four police cars and smashed a local government sign. China later detained two factory officials after 1,354 children were reported poisoned by lead pollution from the manganese processing plant.
(AP, 8/20/09)
2009 Aug 8, India’s army said its troops killed three Islamic militants along the de facto Kashmir border, thwarting the seventh attempt by rebels to infiltrate from Pakistan in a week.
(AFP, 8/8/09)
2009 Aug 8, In northern India landslides triggered by heavy rains killed at least 43 people in three remote villages in Pithoragarh district of Uttarakhand state.
(AP, 8/9/09)
2009 Aug 8, Indonesian police reportedly killed Noordin Mohammad Top, the self-proclaimed Southeast Asian commander of al-Qaida, in a 16-hour siege of a village hide-out in Central Java. Authorities said they could not confirm that a recovered body was that of the militant leader without DNA tests. DNA tests failed to confirm Top’s death. Police raided a house on the outskirts of Jakarta where they killed two suspected militants and seized bombs and a car rigged to carry them. The house was just 3 miles (5 kilometers) from the president's residence.
(AP, 8/8/09)(AP, 8/9/09)(AP, 8/12/09)
2009 Aug 8, In northern Italy rules for officially condoned vigilante groups took effect.
(Econ, 8/15/09, p.46)
2009 Aug 8, In Mauritania a suicide bomber killed himself outside the French Embassy, wounding two embassy guards and a woman in the street. An African branch of Al-Qaida later said the attack was a response to the aggression of "crusaders" including former colonial ruler France, and to Mauritanian leaders against Islam and Muslims.
(AP, 8/8/09)(AP, 8/18/09)
2009 Aug 8, In Mexico assailants in the state of Guerrero opened fire on a car carrying a couple and their 3-year-old son, killing all three. In Chihuahua gunmen killed four people in an attack in a bar.
(AP, 8/10/09)
2009 Aug 8, In Moldova the four pro-Western parties that upset the Communists in recent elections agreed on a coalition deal to form a new government.
(AP, 8/8/09)
2009 Aug 8, Myanmar government troops seized a weapons factory near the Chinese border after being informed about it during a ministerial meeting with China on combating transnational crime. This triggered several days of clashes with an ethnic militia that sent more than 30,000 refugees fleeing across the border into China.
(AP, 9/9/09)
2009 Aug 8, In Pakistan a gunfight between militants and supporters of a pro-government tribal elder killed 6 militants and 2 tribesmen in the Mohmand tribal region near the Afghan border.
(AFP, 8/9/09)
2009 Aug 8, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was named head of his Fatah movements at his party's first conference in two decades, strengthening the hand of the Western-backed leader in his bid to revive peace talks with Israel.
(AP, 8/8/09)
2009 Aug 8, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev hailed the Russian victory in a war with Georgia a year ago, saying the war had redrawn the map of the Caucasus for good.
(Reuters, 8/8/09)
2009 Aug 8, In Somalia’s pirate stronghold of Harardhere, fighting over the last 24 hours killed at least 12 people. A dispute over a car escalated as clan militias got involved. Mortar shells slammed into a busy market in the capital, Mogadishu, killing six people and wounding 18.
(AP, 8/8/09)
2009 Aug 8, In South Africa US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and South African President Jacob Zuma pledged to cement closer ties between their new administrations.
(AFP, 8/8/09)
2009 Aug 8, Sri Lanka held local elections near an area once dominated by the Tamil Tiger rebels, but voters largely stayed away from the polls in the violence-scarred region. Voter turnout was 22% in Jaffna and 52% in Vavuniya, according to election monitors. The pro-Tiger Tamil National Alliance (TNA) scored unexpected success with 8 of 23 seats in Jaffna and 5 of 11 seats in Vavuniya.
(AP, 8/8/09)(Econ, 8/15/09, p.35)
2009 Aug 8, Typhoon Morakot lashed Taiwan with powerful winds and downpours leaving at least one person killed and five missing.
(AFP, 8/8/09)
2009 Aug 8, Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez said he's returning his ambassador to Colombia, moving to resolve rising diplomatic tensions after weapons sold to Venezuela were found in a rebel cache.
(AP, 8/8/09)
2009 Aug 9, In San Francisco Bruce Sherman (66), accordionist and singer of sea chanteys, committed suicide.
(SSFC, 9/6/09, p.A2)
2009 Aug 9, In Afghanistan a suicide attacker in a bomb-filled vehicle blew up close to a US-led coalition military convoy in Nangarhar province, but did no harm to the troops. 3 Afghan army soldiers were killed after their vehicle was struck by a roadside bomb in Shahjoy district, Zabul province. A US soldier was killed in the south in a hostile fire incident.
(AFP, 8/9/09)(AP, 8/11/09)
2009 Aug 9, US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton arrived in oil-rich Angola to underscore America's presence in one of sub-Saharan Africa's largest energy producers where America is competing with China for resources.
(AP, 8/9/09)
2009 Aug 9, Typhoon Morakot slammed into China's eastern coast, forcing the evacuation of nearly a million people after earlier lashing Taiwan with torrential rains that caused the island's worst flooding in 50 years and left dozens missing and feared dead.
(AP, 8/9/09)
2009 Aug 9, The French advertising group Publicis said it would buy the digital advertising agency Razorfish from Microsoft for 530 million dollars (380 million euros).
(AFP, 8/9/09)
2009 Aug 9, Iran's police chief acknowledged that detained protesters were abused in prison and the country's top prosecutor said those responsible for the mistreatment should be punished, in unusually pointed criticism of security officials. Revolutionary Guard Commander Yadollah Javani called for opposition leaders Mir Hossein Mousavi and former President Mohammad Khatami to be put on trial.
(AP, 8/9/09)
2009 Aug 9, Iraqi authorities arrested Daniel Fitzsimmons, a British contractor, on murder charges over the shooting deaths of a British and an Australian contractor in Baghdad's protected Green Zone. Two employees of ArmorGroup Iraq, identified as Paul McGuigan of Britain and Darren Hoare of Australia, were killed in the firearms incident. On Feb 28, 2011, An Iraqi court convicted Fitzsimmons and sentenced him to 20 years in prison, making him the first Westerner convicted in an Iraqi court since the 2003 US invasion.
(AP, 8/9/09)(AP, 8/10/09)(AP, 2/28/11)
2009 Aug 9, Italians newspapers reported that burglars earlier in the week had made off with jewels and cash worth 11 million euros (15.6 million dollars) from the hotel room of a Saudi princess in Sardinia, sparking a diplomatic incident. On Sep 15 Sardinia police said most of the jewels had been recovered.
(AFP, 8/9/09)(AP, 9/15/09)
2009 Aug 9, Madagascar's bitter political rivals signed a power-sharing deal, agreeing to create an interim government to end months of violence.
(AP, 8/9/09)
2009 Aug 9, In Mexico some 400 people marched in Guadalajara to protest the negative affects of free trade and to demand benefits for retired Mexican laborers who worked in the US as Pres. Barack Obama, Mexican President Felipe Calderon and Canadian PM Stephen Harper arrived for a two-day summit.
(AP, 8/9/09)
2009 Aug 9, Mexican lawyer Silvia Raquenel Villanueva, known for defending high-profile drug trafficking suspects, was shot to death at a street market in the northern city of Monterrey. Army soldiers killed two suspects in a shootout with gunmen in the western state of Michoacan. Federal police arrested Dimas Diaz, a drug cartel suspect they believe was behind a plot to kill President Felipe Calderon in retaliation for his crackdown on organized crime. Dia was the alleged financial operator of the Pacific cartel.
(AP, 8/10/09)
2009 Aug 9, In Pakistan two civilians and a policeman were killed when militants ambushed a police convoy in the northwestern town of Bannu. Two Pakistani soldiers were killed and four were wounded near Naurak village in the troubled North Waziristan tribal district when a remote-control bomb targeting a military convoy exploded. At least eight dead bodies of suspected Taliban militants were found in different areas of the northwestern Swat valley.
(AFP, 8/9/09)
2009 Aug 9, Gaza militants launched mortar shells at a border crossing between Gaza and Israel just as Palestinian patients were being transferred into Israel for medical treatment.
(AP, 8/10/09)
2009 Aug 9, On the Spanish island of Mallorca a small bomb exploded in a restaurant, causing minor damage and no injuries. A caller, who said he was calling on ETA's behalf, warned of the bomb.
(AP, 8/9/09)
2009 Aug 9, In southern Taiwan Typhoon Morakot spawned a mudslide engulfing the mountain village of Shiao Lin, burying up to 600 people. The official death toll from Morakot stood at 14. Another 51, not including the people in Shiao Lin.
(AP, 8/10/09)
2009 Aug 10, In Oakland, Ca., Hassani Campbell (5) was reported missing by his foster parents Louis Ross (38) and Jennifer Campbell (33). The couple were arrested on Aug 28 on suspicion of killing the boy, who suffered from cerebral palsy.
(SFC, 8/29/09, p.A1)
2009 Aug 10, At least three Afghan police and two civilians were killed in a brazen attack by Taliban gunmen and suicide bombers on government buildings near Kabul. A US soldier was killed in the south in a hostile fire incident. 22 Taliban insurgents and two Afghan soldiers also died in violence.
(Reuters, 8/10/09)(AP, 8/11/09)
2009 Aug 10, Australia said it has pledged 7.8 million US dollars this year to help save more than 100 indigenous languages which are in grave danger of dying out.
(AFP, 8/10/09)
2009 Aug 10, Canada’s Nortel Networks said its chief executive would step down immediately and its board would shrink from nine directors to just three as the bankrupt telecom equipment maker sheds its major assets.
(Reuters, 8/10/09)
2009 Aug 10, China said that it has released more than 1,200 detainees held over the unrest in Tibet last year while more than 700 people are still being held over last month's riots in Xinjiang. China's police said they have installed 2.75 million surveillance cameras since 2003 and are expanding the system into the largely neglected countryside.
(AFP, 8/10/09)
2009 Aug 10, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived in the strife-torn Democratic Republic of Congo on the fourth leg of her seven-nation African tour. Clinton said she would press Democratic Republic of Congo's government to address the root causes of the conflict in the east and stop the use of women as "weapons of war."
(Reuters, 8/10/09)
2009 Aug 10, In Cuba 14 people were killed and at least 33 hospitalized after two trucks loaded with passengers collided in the central Cuban province of Ciego de Avila.
(AP, 8/10/09)
2009 Aug 10, Leaders of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUL), a 12-member group inspired by Brazil, met in Quito, Ecuador, in an attempt to further integration. Colombia’s Pres. Uribe did not attend, in part because Ecuador broke of ties with Colombia last year.
(Econ, 8/15/09, p.31)
2009 Aug 10, In Iraq a double truck bombing tore through the village of a small Shiite ethnic minority near the northern city of Mosul killing at least 35 people in Khazna. 9 blasts wracked Baghdad in a wave of violence that killed 22 people. All told more than 250 were left wounded.
(AP, 8/10/09)(SFC, 8/11/09, p.A4)
2009 Aug 10, Israeli warplanes bombed a smuggling tunnel along the Gaza-Egypt border in response to Palestinian rocket and mortar fire, in a brief flare-up of violence at a time of relative quiet in the volatile Palestinian territory.
(AP, 8/10/09)
2009 Aug 10, Typhoon Etau slammed into the west coast of Japan. 13 people were killed in raging floodwaters and landslides, and 10 others were missing.
(AP, 8/10/09)
2009 Aug 10, In Mexico Pres. Obama huddled with the leaders of Mexico and Canada for a swift North American summit, where the swine flu epidemic and knotty disputes over cross-border trade dominated a lengthy agenda.
(AP, 8/10/09)
2009 Aug 10, Mexican soldiers arrested Juan Daniel Carranco Salazar, the alleged leader of the Gulf cartel's operations in the Caribbean resort of Cancun. State prosecutors in Baja California announced their arrest of state detective Sergio Alvarado Chong in the border city of Mexicali with 8 kilograms (17.64 pounds) of cocaine.
(AP, 8/11/09)
2009 Aug 10, New Zealand announced that it will cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 10 to 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2020.
(AP, 8/10/09)
2009 Aug 10, In Pakistan attack helicopters and artillery pounded militant hideouts following clashes between rebels and security forces in North Waziristan. 3 militants were reported killed.
(AFP, 8/10/09)
2009 Aug 10, In central Slovakia 19 workers were trapped underground after a fire and explosion hit the Handlova coal mine. The trapped workers were nine miners who were initially sent to battle a blaze and 11 sent as reinforcements as the fire grew. All were believed killed.
(AP, 8/10/09)(AP, 8/11/09)
2009 Aug 11, The US Homeland Security department was scheduled to return $2.4 million to Mexico's tax administration, the first batch of money seized during a binational investigation into smuggled oil that authorities expect to lead to more arrests and seizures. So far this year, oil theft was up 10 percent, and confirmed in 19 states, up from 13 in 2008.
(AP, 8/11/09)
2009 Aug 11, Former US President Bill Clinton appointed the physician and Harvard University professor Paul Farmer as the UN Deputy Special Envoy to Haiti to assist in advancing the economic and social development of the impoverished Caribbean nation.
(www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=31740)
2009 Aug 11, Bernard Madoff's long-time deputy, Frank DiPascali, pleaded guilty to financial crimes including helping others carry out Wall Street's biggest investment fraud, but shed little more light in court on the decades-long swindle.
(Reuters, 8/11/09)
2009 Aug 11, North Carolina Gov. Beverley Purdue signed the Racial Justice Act into law.
(Econ, 4/28/12, p.34)(http://tinyurl.com/yj8xuzw)
2009 Aug 11, General Motors Corp. said its Chevrolet Volt rechargeable electric car should get 230 miles per gallon of gasoline in city driving, more than four times the mileage of the current champion, the Toyota Prius.
(AP, 8/11/09)
2009 Aug 11, Eunice Kennedy Shriver (88), the sister of President John F. Kennedy, died at a Hyannis hospital. She carried on the family's public service tradition by founding the Special Olympics and championing the rights of the mentally disabled. Shriver organized the first Special Olympics in 1968 in Chicago.
(AP, 8/11/09)
2009 Aug 11, In Richmond, Ca., distraught boyfriend Nathaniel Burris (46) shot and killed toll collector Deborah Ross (51) in her booth at the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge. He also shot and killed Golden Gate Transit bus driver Ersie Charles Everette III (58) in the parking lot and then escaped. Burris was arrested later in the day in Placer County. Burris was convicted of the double murder on Nov 7, 2012. On Nov 20 a jury sentenced him to death.
(SFC, 8/12/09, p.A1)(SFC, 8/13/09, p.A12)(SFC, 11/8/12, p.C3)(SFC, 11/21/12, p.C1)
2009 Aug 11, An Afghan official said authorities have hired some 10,000 Afghan tribesmen to protect this month's presidential election, raising the possibility that village militias could be enlisted to fight against the Taliban. In southern Afghanistan roadside bombs killed nine civilians. The body of a Polish soldier, who had disappeared while under fire a day earlier, was found in Ghazni province.
(AP, 8/11/09)
2009 Aug 11, In Brazil authorities charged Bishop Edir Macedo and nine other people linked to the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God with siphoning off billions of dollars in donations from his mostly poor followers to buy jewelry, TV stations and other businesses for himself. Macedo, who founded the church in 1977, owns a large television network, three newspapers and several radio stations. He also owns a tourism agency and an air taxi company.
(AP, 8/11/09)
2009 Aug 11, In Brazil police were reported to be investigating the "Canal Livre" crime TV show saying the show's host, state legislator Wallace Souza, was suspected of commissioning at least five murders to boost his ratings and prove his claim that Brazil's Amazon region is awash in violent crime. Police also have accused Souza of drug trafficking.
(AP, 8/11/09)
2009 Aug 11, Canada signed a free trade deal with Panama and said it wanted to conclude more such agreements, given that talks to open up the global trading system were going nowhere.
(Reuters, 8/11/09)
2009 Aug 11, In Chechnya Zarema Sadulayeva, the head of the Save the Generation Chechen aid group, and her husband, Alik Dzhabrailov, were found shot dead in the trunk of their car a day after being kidnapped.
(AP, 8/11/09)
2009 Aug 11, China formally arrested four employees of Anglo-American mining giant Rio Tinto Ltd. for infringing trade secrets and bribery, but stopped short of laying politically explosive espionage charges in a case that has strained ties with key trading partner Australia.
(AP, 8/12/09)
2009 Aug 11, Authorities in the Democratic Republic of Congo arrested Gregoire Ndahimana, a former Rwandan mayor, for his alleged role in the 1994 genocide. Measures were taken for him to be transferred to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) headquarters in Arusha, Tanzania.
(AFP, 8/12/09)
2009 Aug 11, In Congo US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called for the Democratic Republic of Congo to punish soldiers responsible for rape as she toured the war-torn east. She also unveiled a $17 million plan to help fight the sexual violence in eastern Congo.
(AFP, 8/11/09)(SFC, 8/12/09, p.A3)
2009 Aug 11, In France restive youths in a Paris suburb torched a tourist bus and nearly a half-dozen cars and hurled objects at police, in a night of fullblown unrest prompted by the death of a teen fleeing police on Aug 9. Some witnesses claimed a police car hit the young motorcyclist after he tried to flee a document check outside the project.
(AP, 8/11/09)
2009 Aug 11, In Honduras some 10,000 protesters arrived in Tegucigalpa after staging weeklong walks across Honduras, producing one of the largest demonstrations in support of Zelaya since he was ousted by the army June 28 and flown out of the country.
(AP, 8/12/09)
2009 Aug 11, In Indonesia UNAIDS regional director Prasada Rao cited a new report saying more than 1.5 million women living with HIV in Asia were infected by their partners and 50 million more are at risk of infection. Rao spoke on the sidelines of the ninth International Congress on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific (ICAAP), which is being held on the Indonesian resort island of Bali.
(AFP, 8/11/09)
2009 Aug 11, Iran's opposition said at least 69 people have died in two months of postelection unrest based on accounts from the victims' families, more than double the official toll released by parliament. Mir Hossein Mousavi, the top opposition leader, said that the abuse and death of protesters detained after the disputed presidential elections shows the need for "deep change" in the country, in the most sweeping call for reform of the system to date.
(AP, 8/11/09)(AP, 8/12/09)
2009 Aug 11, In southeastern Kenya assailants armed with arrows, spears and machetes killed Campbell Bridges (72), a Scottish-born geologist, in an apparent dispute over mining rights. In 1968 Bridges became the first to record the discovery of gemstone-quality tsavorite, in Tanzania. Tsavorite, mined in Tanzania and Kenya, is a green variety of garnet that shines even before polishing. On Aug 19 Kenyan police arrested Alfred Makogo Njiruka, the chairman of a small miners association and the suspected mastermind in the killing of Bridges.
(AP, 8/13/09)(AP, 8/20/09)
2009 Aug 11, Kuwaiti authorities announced they have arrested an al-Qaida-linked group that was planning to attack Camp Arifjan, a key US military base in Kuwait. 5 of the suspects are cousins who were convicted for involvement in the 2002 attack on a group of US Marines training on the Kuwaiti island of Failaka, where one Marine was killed and another wounded.
(AP, 8/11/09)(AP, 8/13/09)
2009 Aug 11, Liechtenstein raised the gate on its tax-haven fortress, making a deal enabling London to snare about 5,000 British accounts holders with up to 3.0 billion pounds in secret deposits.
(AFP, 8/11/09)
2009 Aug 11, In northern Mexico Monterrey city police were told not to sit in parked patrol cars observing traffic, because officials suspect they could be spying for criminal gangs or drug cartels. Gunmen attacked a vehicle carrying a prison director in Chihuahua, killing three bodyguards and wounding two more seriously.
(AP, 8/12/09)
2009 Aug 11, A Myanmar court convicted Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi of violating her house arrest by allowing John Yettaw, an uninvited American, to stay at her home. The head of the military-ruled country ordered the democracy leader to serve an 18-month sentence under house arrest. Yettaw was also convicted, and had just spent a week in a prison hospital for epileptic seizures.
(AP, 8/11/09)(AP, 8/15/09)
2009 Aug 11, In Pakistan police officials in Islamabad confirmed that they had registered a criminal case against former Pres. Pervez Musharraf for detaining 60 Supreme Court judges and their families following emergency rule in 2007.
(SFC, 8/12/09, p.A3)
2009 Aug 11, In Pakistan at least 10 militants were killed in a suspected US drone strike in South Waziristan region, the same area where Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud is said to have been killed last week.
(Reuters, 8/11/09)
2009 Aug 11, The Palestinian Fatah movement ended a 4-day conference. Pres. Abbas was unanimously re-elected as party head and a group of younger leaders were elected to its top council, bolstering its credentials as the West's best hope for Mideast peace. Also elected were Marwan Barghouti (50), a firebrand militant leader now jailed by Israel and seen as a likely future president, and Jibril Rajoub (56), a former aide to the late Yasser Arafat who led several crackdowns against Hamas.
(AP, 8/11/09)(Econ, 8/15/09, p.41)
2009 Aug 11, In Papua New Guinea a charter plane carrying 13 people to a popular tourist site vanished on approach in bad weather to an airport nestled in rugged terrain. No survivors were found in the wreckage, which was located the next day in the mountainous Kokoda region.
(AP, 8/11/09)(AP, 8/12/09)
2009 Aug 11, In Somalia 4 European aid workers and two Kenyan pilots were released after being held hostage for nine months.
(AP, 8/11/09)
2009 Aug 11, In South Africa a report to the Parliament said first year students at 4 universities were found to be unable to read or write properly. The country’s education system was described as dysfunctional.
(SSFC, 8/16/09, p.A4)
2009 Aug 11, Taiwanese authorities put the confirmed death toll from Morakot at 62 and listed 57 people as missing, but that did not include residents in the village of Shiao Lin.
(AP, 8/11/09)
2009 Aug 11, A Thai court rejected a US request to extradite Viktor Bout, an alleged Russian arms smuggler dubbed the "Merchant of Death," dealing a setback to American efforts to try him on charges of plotting to supply weapons to Colombian rebels. The court rejected the extradition request because Bout had not been accused of committing any crimes against Thailand, which has not listed FARC as a terrorist group.
(AP, 8/11/09)
2009 Aug 11, Yemen’s government launched "Operation Scorched Earth," an all-out offensive to stamp out an uprising in the northern Saada province, after rebels claimed they had wrested more control of the region from Sunni-led government troops.
(AP, 8/13/09)(AFP, 2/8/10)
2009 Aug 11, Two Yemenis jailed in the United States over terrorism charges received a tumultuous public welcome on their return home after serving more than six years in prison. Sheik Mohammed Ali Hasan Al-Moayad (60) and his assistant Mohammed Zayed were arrested in 2003 and convicted of supporting terrorist groups such as Al-Qaida. Al-Moayad was sentenced to 75 years in prison and Mohammed Zayed received 45 years, but on August 7 they pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of supporting the Palestinian militant group Hamas and given six years time served.
(AP, 8/11/09)
2009 Aug 12, Pres. Obama awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, to 16 “agents of change."
(SFC, 8/13/09, p.A5)
2009 Aug 12, In Atlanta, Georgia, Ehsanul Islam (23) was convicted of aiding terrorist groups by sending videotapes of US landmarks overseas and plotting to support “violent jihad." He faced a maximum of 60 years in prison.
(SFC, 8/13/09, p.A4)
2009 Aug 12, In Montana a grizzly bear named Maximus, one of the largest in the state, was found shot to death on a ranch near Dupuyer. He had stood 7½ feet tall and weighed 800 lbs.
(SSFC, 8/23/09, p.A7)
2009 Aug 12, In southern Afghanistan helicopter-borne US Marines backed by Harrier jets stormed a Taliban-held town before dawn, launching a new operation (Eastern Resolve 2) to uproot Taliban fighters from a longtime base and provide security for next week's presidential election. Marines said they killed between seven and 10 militants in Dahaneh and seized about 66 pounds (30 kilograms) of opium, which the militants use to finance their insurgency. A blast on a road in the Gereshk district of Helmand province ripped through a vehicle carrying a family, killing 11 people, including two women and nine men. In Kandahar province three children were killed after they started playing with a bomb which they had found on the side of the road west of the provincial capital.
(AP, 8/12/09)(AP, 8/13/09)
2009 Aug 12, Australian forces shot 2 Afghan policemen on a motorcycle at the Dorafshan checkpoint near Tarin Kowt. One of the Afghans was shot 16 times and died. The other was wounded. The Australian military later said the soldiers did not know the men were police and were acting in self-defense.
(AFP, 10/13/09)(www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/08/12/2653950.htm)
2009 Aug 12, In Argentina Retired Gen. Santiago Riveros and four other members of the military were convicted and sentenced to long prison terms in the 1976 killing of Floreal Avellaneda (14), the son of a communist activist.
(www.cidh.oas.org/annualrep/87.88eng/chap5.htm)(AP, 8/12/09)
2009 Aug 12, Argentina’s customs service confiscated a total of 4.2 metric tons (4.6 tons) of pseudoephedrine, chemical that can be used to make methamphetamine, at several government warehouses at the port in Buenos Aires during an investigation into drug traffickers with ties to Mexico.
(AP, 8/13/09)
2009 Aug 12, In La Paz, Bolivia, exploding envelopes wounded 7 people, 3 of them severely.
(AP, 8/13/09)
2009 Aug 12, In Chile Mapuche activist Fabian Facundo Mendoza Collio (24) was shot and killed by police during a confrontation with Mapuche Indians outside Collipulli. Hours after the Collio was killed, an agricultural warehouse in the area was set on fire, destroying about $1 million worth of equipment.
(AP, 8/13/09)
2009 Aug 12, China’s state media reported that authorities in northern China have shut down the Dongling Lead and Zinc Smelting Co. in Shaanxi province after it was found to have caused lead poisoning that sickened more than 300 children. Media later reported that 851 children in Changqing township had tested positive for lead poisoning.
(AP, 8/12/09)(AP, 8/14/09)(AFP, 8/19/09)
2009 Aug 12, The WTO upheld American complaints that China breaks trade commitments by the way it regulates the import and distribution of foreign publications, films and music. The initial complaint was filed in 2007 and was later joined by the EU, Japan, Australia and others.
(Econ, 8/15/09, p.36)
2009 Aug 12, A French teenager (16) shot and killed his parents and twin brothers, apparently while they were asleep in their home on the island of Corsica.
(AFP, 8/13/09)
2009 Aug 12, In France a 35-year-old convert to Islam, identified only as Carole, complained of religious discrimination after trying to go swimming in a "burquini," a full-body swimsuit, in the town of Emerainville, southeast of Paris. Officials insisted they banned the woman's use of the Islam-friendly suit at a local pool because of France's pool hygiene standards.
(AP, 8/13/09)
2009 Aug 12, In Honduras supporters of ousted President Manuel Zelaya clashed with police in Tegucigalpa and some of them attacked the second-ranking member of Congress.
(AP, 8/12/09)
2009 Aug 12, In Mexico’s border city of Nuevo Laredo, city police found a bullet-ridden sport utility vehicle belonging to the federal Communications and Transportation Department crashed into a post on a street. There was blood on the seats, and four department employees identified as cargo inspectors were reported missing.
(AP, 8/12/09)
2009 Aug 12, In Nigeria US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton encouraged the government to take a firmer line on corruption and offered US help to implement badly needed electoral reforms in Africa's biggest energy producer.
(Reuters, 8/12/09)
2009 Aug 12, In northwestern Pakistan's tribal belt clashes between Taliban militants and followers of pro-government Turkistan Bitani left at least 70 fighters dead.
(AP, 8/12/09)(SFC, 8/13/09, p.A2)
2009 Aug 12, Philippine troops overran two jungle camps of al-Qaida-linked militants in their deadliest clash in years, with 23 soldiers and 31 guerrillas killed. The two camps served as a stronghold and a bomb factory for the Abu Sayyaf on Basilan. Troops found several bombs, booby traps and 15 assault rifles and grenade launchers.
(AP, 8/13/09)
2009 Aug 12, Russian PM Vladimir Putin made a surprise visit to Abkhazia and said Russia will spend at least 15 billion rubles ($470 million) next year to build Russian military bases in Abkhazia and tighten the separatist Georgian region's borders.
(AP, 8/12/09)
2009 Aug 12, Chechen Interior Ministry spokesman Magomed Deniyev said 2 policemen were killed in separate attacks during the night as they returned to their homes.
(AP, 8/12/09)
2009 Aug 12, Ruslan Amerkhanov, the construction minister in Russia's violence-plagued Ingushetia, was shot to death in his office. Ingush Security Council secretary Alexei Vorobyov said investigators believe the killing could be related to recent audits of construction projects that turned up building violations and misuse of funds.
(AP, 8/12/09)
2009 Aug 12, World Bank President Robert Zoellick pledged to boost development aid to Rwanda to help the rebuild the country ripped apart by genocide.
(Reuters, 8/12/09)
2009 Aug 12, In Somalia masked gunmen killed five Pakistani preachers outside the Tawfiq Mosque in Galkayo following morning prayers.
(AP, 8/12/09)
2009 Aug 12, Yemeni government forces used artillery and aircraft to attack Shiite rebels near the border with Saudi Arabia in an escalation of the five-year-old conflict. A local government official said 20 rebels were killed. A local Health Ministry official said 12 others died in fighting across Saada and 51 were injured.
(AP, 8/12/09)
2009 Aug 12, Doctors at Zimbabwe's state hospitals went on strike, demanding higher salaries and payment of their monthly allowances.
(AFP, 8/12/09)
2009 Aug 13, Legendary guitarist and inventor Les Paul (94), who pioneered the design of solid body Gibson electric guitars that bore his name, died at a New York hospital of complications from pneumonia. Paul was born as Lester William Polsfuss in Waukesha, Wisconsin, on June 9, 1915. He created one of the first solid-body electric guitars in 1941, but it took nearly 10 years before he, working with Gibson Guitar Corp., perfected it.
(Reuters, 8/13/09)
2009 Aug 13, Australian police said a 20-year-old Australian man has been charged with infecting more than 3,000 computers around the world with a virus designed to capture banking and credit card data.
(AP, 8/13/09)
2009 Aug 13, It was reported that millions of sockeye salmon have disappeared mysteriously from the Fraser river on Canada's Pacific Coast. It was once known as the world's most fertile spawning ground for sockeye. Up to 10.6 million bright-red sockeye salmon were expected to return to spawn this summer. The latest estimates say fewer than 1 million have returned. The Canadian government has closed the river to commercial and recreational sockeye fishing for the third straight year, hitting the livelihood of nearby Indian reserves.
(Reuters, 8/13/09)
2009 Aug 13, In Chechnya a gun battle between police and 2 suspected militants left the 2 militants dead as well as 4 police officers.
(SFC, 8/15/09, p.A3)
2009 Aug 13, Chinese officials retreated from a plan to install anti-pornography software on every computer sold, but said Internet cafes, schools and other public places must use the program.
(SFC, 8/14/09, p.A2)
2009 Aug 13, In Dagestan some 10 men opened fire on a police post in Buinaksk, killing 4 officers. The gunmen then entered a sauna complex nearby and killed 7 women working there.
(SFC, 8/15/09, p.A3)
2009 Aug 13, Ecuador’s Citizen Participation Minister Doris Soliz called for the creation of local citizen committees to defend the government and its "revolution," sparking criticism that the president aims to control opponents in a system reminiscent of Cuba or Venezuela.
(AP, 8/13/09)
2009 Aug 13, The EU said it was extending its sanctions on Myanmar to cover members of the judiciary responsible for the verdict in the trial of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
(Reuters, 8/13/09)
2009 Aug 13, In India thousands of schools, colleges and cinemas shut down in Mumbai to combat the spread of swine flu as the government struggled to contain public anxiety.
(AFP, 8/13/09)
2009 Aug 13, In Iran a group of former reformist lawmakers appealed to a powerful clerical body to investigate Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's qualification to rule in an unprecedented challenge to the country's most powerful man over the postelection crackdown.
(AP, 8/14/09)
2009 Aug 13, In Iraq a gunfight erupted during an attempted bank heist in Baghdad, as a court official announced that five members of Iraq's presidential guard will go on trial later this month for their alleged roles in the deadly July 28 robbery of Baghdad’s Rafidain Bank. In the northwest city of Sinjar 2 suicide bombers blew themselves up at a popular cafe killing 21 people and wounding 30 others.
(AP, 8/13/09)(SFC, 8/14/09, p.A2)
2009 Aug 13, In Japan a woman (23) crashed her moped when it hit a rope that was stretched across the road. She suffered a fractured skull after being thrown from her bike near western Tokyo's US Yokota Air Base. Police later arrested four children, three boys and one girl aged between 15 and 18, of US military personnel on suspicion of attempted murder.
(AFP, 12/5/09)
2009 Aug 13, In Liberia US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton hailed the country’s post-war transition to democracy and threw support behind President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, who has faced calls to resign because she helped fund a warlord.
(AFP, 8/13/09)
2009 Aug 13, In Mexico state security officials banned police from setting up sobriety checkpoints in the northern city of Monterrey because they say the officers routinely use them to extort motorists. Bishop Eduardo Patino Leal was detained in the town of Huatusco, Veracruz state, lost control of his vehicle and ran over 6 Indian street vendors, killing one.
(AP, 8/14/09)
2009 Aug 13, North Korea freed Yu Seong-Jin (44), a South Korean worker it had detained since March, raising hopes of better cross-border relations after 18 months of bitter hostility from the communist state.
(AFP, 8/13/09)
2009 Aug 13, In northwest Pakistan helicopter gunships pummeled the bases of Taliban commander Hakimullah Mehsud, killing at least 12 insurgents as government forces ratcheted up pressure on the militants following their top leader's reported death. 2 intelligence officials said a suicide bomber killed pro-government lashkar leader Malik Khadeen, who was instrumental in fighting Uzbek militants operating with the Taliban in South Waziristan. In the Bajur tribal area authorities found the bodies of two anti-Taliban lashkar leaders near a security checkpoint. The two lashkar commanders, Malik Sehar Gul and Malik Jalindhar, had been kidnapped the night before.
(AP, 8/13/09)
2009 Aug 13, Scottish officials said they were considering early release for the Lockerbie bomber, leading to sharp debate among victims' relatives in the US and Britain over whether he should be allowed to return home to Libya. British media said Abdel Baset Ali al-Megrahi could soon be freed on compassionate grounds because he is terminally ill with cancer.
(AP, 8/13/09)
2009 Aug 13, The crew of two Egyptian fishing vessels overpowered Somali pirates after being held hostage for four months and, with machetes and tools, killed at least two pirates before sailing to freedom. The fight took place near the coastal town of Las Qorey off the Gulf of Aden. The pirates had demanded a ransom of $1.5 million.
(AP, 8/14/09)
2009 Aug 13, Taiwan deployed thousands of extra troops as it faced growing public anger and pressure to rescue people trapped by landslides. The confirmed death toll from the destruction wreaked by the typhoon rose to at least 116.
(AFP, 8/13/09)
2009 Aug 13, In Venezuela attackers injured 12 of the journalists as they passed out leaflets warning against a new education law that critics fear could lead to indoctrination in schools. Their fliers warned against a provision for sanctions against reports that "produce terror" among children or incite hate. The government condemned the violence and ordered an investigation.
(AP, 8/15/09)
2009 Aug 13, Yemeni warplanes bombed a northern province bordering Saudi Arabia for a second straight day, in an ongoing offensive that has brought casualties and pushed the area close to an all-out war.
(AP, 8/13/09)
2009 Aug 14, Real estate lender Colonial BancGroup Inc. was shut down by federal officials in the biggest US bank failure this year. The FDIC, which was appointed receiver of the Montgomery, Ala.-based Colonial and its about $25 billion in assets, said the failed bank's 346 branches in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Nevada and Texas will reopen at the normal times starting on Aug 15 as offices of Winston-Salem, N.C.-based BB&T. Regulators also closed four other banks: Community Bank of Arizona, based in Phoenix; Union Bank, based in Gilbert, Ariz.; Community Bank of Nevada, based in Las Vegas; and Dwelling House Savings and Loan Association, located in Pittsburgh. The closures boosted to 77 the number of federally insured banks that have failed in 2009.
(AP, 8/15/09)
2009 Aug 14, Lynette “Squeaky" Fromme (60), the Charles Manson follower convicted of trying to assassinate President Gerald Ford in 1975, was released from a Texas prison hospital after more than three decades behind bars.
(AP, 8/14/09)
2009 Aug 14, It was reported that in North Carolina nine women, who lived at the edges of the poor community in Rocky Mount, have disappeared since 2005. Six bodies have been found along rural roads just a few miles outside town, most so decomposed that investigators could not tell how they died. At least one of the women was strangled. All the deaths have been classified as homicides. Three women were still missing.
(AP, 8/14/09)
2009 Aug 14, In California the Lockheed fire in Santa Cruz County, which began on Aug 12, covered over 5,000 acres and was only 15% contained. 9 big wildfires across the state covered over 100,000 acres.
(SFC, 8/15/09, p.A8)
2009 Aug 14, Hillary Clinton ended her whirlwind seven-nation African trip at Cape Verde, with a tough love message that Africans must tackle their own problems.
(AFP, 8/14/09)
2009 Aug 14, An Australian judge ruled that Christian Rossiter (49), a quadriplegic man who says he cannot "undertake any basic human functions," has the right to direct a nursing home to stop feeding him and allow him to die.
(AP, 8/14/09)(SFC, 8/15/09, p.A2)
2009 Aug 14, In Dagestan gunmen killed 2 traffic police officers in Makhachkala. 3 suspected militants were killed in a separate episode.
(SFC, 8/15/09, p.A3)
2009 Aug 14, In Germany shares in Volkswagen, Europe's biggest carmaker, plunged after it approved a takeover of luxury auto manufacturer Porsche to create a sector giant.
(AFP, 8/14/09)
2009 Aug 14, In Honduras 2 dozen supporters of ousted Pres. Zelaya were charged with sedition in an intensifying crackdown on protests against the coup-installed government.
(AP, 8/15/09)
2009 Aug 14, In Iraq journalists took to the streets in Baghdad to protest what they say is political pressure to silence the media. The rally came as journalist Ahmed Abdul-Hussein was threatened with a lawsuit over editorials related to the July 28 Baghdad bank robbery that left eight security guards dead.
(AP, 8/14/09)
2009 Aug 14, In Libya a delegation of US senators led by John McCain met with Libya's leader to discuss the possible delivery of non-lethal defense equipment.
(AP, 8/15/09)
2009 Aug 14, In northern Mexico a fight among prisoners killed 19 inmates and left more than 20 injured at the prison in the city of Gomez Palacio, Durango state. The battle apparently involved inmates jailed on drug or organized crime charges. Assailants in pickup trucks opened fire on Monclova police chief Juan Carlos Pacheco as he headed home. Pacheco was not hurt but three of the police officers guarding him died. Federal police announced the capture of Hector Oyarzabal, an alleged La Familia leader, who was described as director of the gang's drug operations in several towns of the state of Mexico, which surrounds most of Mexico City. In Ciudad Juarez two women and a man were found shot to death in their car.
(AP, 8/15/09)
2009 Aug 14, Nigeria’s banking chief said the government will inject US$2.55 billion into five troubled banks, in Africa's first major bank rescue program since the global credit crunch began. Central Bank Chief Sanusi Lamido Sanusi also announced the sacking of the heads of five major banks for piling up debts worth billions of dollars and poor management. The heads of Afribank plc, Intercontinental Bank plc, Union Bank plc, Oceanic Bank plc and Finbank plc were removed by Sanusi. The Nigerian anti-graft agency soon froze the accounts of the sacked directors for running the institutions into insolvency.
(AP, 8/14/09)(AFP, 8/22/09)
2009 Aug 14, In Nigeria the number of polio cases caused by the vaccine was reported to have doubled so far this year with 124 children paralyzed, compared to 62 in 2008, out of about 42 million children vaccinated. For every case of paralysis, hundreds of other children don't develop symptoms, but pass on the disease.
(AP, 8/14/09)
2009 Aug 14, Pakistan lifted a ban on political activities in its tribal regions, granting the areas close to Afghan border parliamentary representation for the first time in the hopes it would reduce the grip of the Taliban there. 3 bomb explosions killed a man and wounded 18 other people in Baluchistan, an impoverished but oil-rich province where Baluch nationalist groups have been fighting for more autonomy for decades.
(AP, 8/14/09)
2009 Aug 14, In the southern Gaza town of Rafah on the Egyptian border fighting broke out when Hamas security men surrounded a mosque where about 100 members of Jund Ansar Allah, or the Soldiers of the Companions of God, were holed up. Abdel-Latif Moussa, the leader of the group, defied Gaza's Hamas rulers by declaring in a prayer sermon that the territory was an Islamic emirate. 11 homemade rockets were launched from Gaza into Egypt. Only five of the rockets detonated, injuring a young girl.
(AP, 8/15/09)
2009 Aug 14, A Swiss court backed the government's plan to give aid agencies 7 million Swiss francs ($6 million) seized from bank accounts linked to Haiti's former dictator Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier. The Duvalier family, which wants to reclaim the money, can now appeal the case to Switzerland's highest court. The accounts have been blocked since 2002.
(AP, 8/14/09)
2009 Aug 14, Taiwan's president said floods and mudslides unleashed by Typhoon Morakot last weekend have killed about 500 people on the island, as he called on rescue crews to step up their efforts. Ma said the death toll includes 120 confirmed deaths, and about 380 people believed to be buried in the debris of a landslide in Shiao Lin, the hardest-hit village. Taiwan asked major world donors for heavy equipment to alleviate damages from Typhoon Morakot. Aid offers were initially refused on Aug 11. On Aug 23 the death toll from Typhoon Morakot was raised to at least 650.
(AP, 8/14/09)(Reuters, 8/15/09)(AP, 8/23/09)
2009 Aug 14, A Taiwanese telephone company said Seabed movements believed caused by Typhoon Morakat damaged seven undersea cables linking Asian nations, disrupting Internet and telephone services.
(AP, 8/14/09)
2009 Aug 14, In Venezuela lawmakers loyal to President Hugo Chavez gave final approval on to legislation that has raised fears among government opponents of impending socialist indoctrination in schools. The National Assembly also approved a law that paves the way for the government to take over private buildings and land in urban areas.
(AP, 8/14/09)
2009 Aug 15, In Georgia former college professor Lothar Karl Schweder (77) and his wife Sherry (65) were found mauled to death by dogs near their home in Lexington.
(SFC, 8/18/09, p.A7)
2009 Aug 15, In southern California the body of Jasmine Fiore (28), a swimsuit model, was found stuffed in a suitcase and dumped into a trash bin in Orange County. Her husband Ryan Alexander Jenkins (32), a reality TV show contestant and CEO of Skyhomes in Calgary, Canada, reported her missing the same day. On Aug 20 Jenkins was charged with murder and believed to be hiding in Canada. On Aug 23 Jenkins was found dead of apparent suicide in a motel in Hope, British Columbia.
(SFC, 8/20/09, p.A5)(SFC, 8/20/09, p.A9)(Reuters, 8/24/09)
2009 Aug 15, In Afghanistan a suicide car bomb exploded outside the main gate of NATO's headquarters five days before presidential elections, killing seven and wounding 91 in the biggest attack in the Afghan capital in six months. A British soldier succumbed to injuries sustained while out on foot patrol in Helmand province, becoming the 201st British military fatality in Afghanistan.
(AP, 8/15/09)(AFP, 8/16/09)
2009 Aug 15, In northern Algeria an explosion followed by gunfire left one police officer dead and two others wounded at a beach. A head-on collision between a lorry and a minibus killed 16 people on the outskirts of the city of Ghazaouet, including more than a dozen members of the same family traveling together.
(AFP, 8/15/09)
2009 Aug 15, Canada said it will pay some farmers to stop raising hogs and offer loans to help others restructure, assistance that drew praise from Canadian hog farmers and concerns from a top US farmer group.
(Reuters, 8/15/09)
2009 Aug 15, In southern Chile Manuel Calfiu, head of the Mapuche community Meli Wixan Mapu, said dozens of Indian communities agreed to form the Mapuche Territorial Alliance to fight for political autonomy, said after several days of violence over land seizures.
(AP, 8/15/09)
2009 Aug 15, Three Iraqi men herding cattle were killed after wandering into the middle of a US-Iraqi mortar training exercise north of the Iraqi capital.
(AP, 8/16/09)
2009 Aug 15, In Kuwait a fire at a wedding tent killed 57 women and children as it consumed the structure in a blazing inferno lasting just three minutes. The bridegroom’s ex-wife was later found to be the arsonist. In 2010 a Kuwaiti appeals court confirmed a death sentence against Nasra Yussef Mohammed al-Enezi (23). She had been convicted in March of setting fire to the wedding tent as her husband took a second wife. Al-Enezi was among seven people hanged on January 25, 2017.
(AP, 8/16/09)(AP, 8/18/09)(SFC, 8/18/09, p.A4)(AFP, 5/26/10)(SFC, 1/26/17, p.A3)
2009 Aug 15, Japan's PM Taro Aso expressed deep regret over the suffering his country inflicted on Asian countries during World War II in a solemn ceremony that marked the 64th anniversary of Tokyo's surrender.
(AP, 8/15/09)
2009 Aug 15, In Mexico the dismembered body of Jesus Arroyo, a legal adviser for the leftist Democratic Revolution Party, was found in an ice box in Ciudad Altamirano, in Guerrero state. In Guadalajara singer Carlos Vicente Ocaranza, who specialized in drug ballads, was shot to death outside a bar. His manager died of wounds 2 days later. Ocaranza was better known as "El Loco Elizalde," or The Crazy Elizalde, a reference to his distant relation by marriage to Valentin Elizalde, a much more famous musician, also killed by gunshots in 2006.
(AP, 8/15/09)(www.wtop.com/?nid=105&sid=1646540)
2009 Aug 15, In Myanmar US Sen. Jim Webb won the release of John Yettaw (53), an American prisoner convicted and sentenced to seven years in prison for swimming secretly to the residence of detained democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
(AP, 8/15/09)
2009 Aug 15, Nigeria's anti-graft agency said it had recovered more than 50 billion naira ($320.5 million / €224.2 million) in looted funds and secured 70 convictions in the past year. Police in the western Nigerian state of Niger raided the Darul Islam community and detained hundreds of its members, weeks after an uprising by a radical sect killed almost 800 in the remote northeast. Sect leader Amrul Bashir Abdullahi said: "We decided to create a camp for ourselves outside the community because of the problems in the larger society. These are problems of corruption, drunkenness, prostitution and so on which Allah forbids."
(AFP, 8/15/09)(Reuters, 8/16/09)
2009 Aug 15, In Pakistan a suicide bomber rammed an explosives-laden car into a checkpoint in the northwestern Swat Valley, killing at least five people in a reminder that extremists can still strike despite the military's retaking of the area. Air strikes by government fighter jets killed 16 militants and destroyed several Taliban hideouts in tribal South Waziristan.
(AP, 8/15/09)(AFP, 8/17/09)
2009 Aug 15, In the Gaza Strip Abdel-Latif Moussa, the leader of an al-Qaida-inspired group, blew himself up during a shootout with Hamas security forces, ending hours of violence sparked by a rebellious sermon at a Salafist mosque near the Egyptian border. A total of 24 people, including six Hamas police officers and an 11-year-old girl, were killed and 150 were wounded.
(AP, 8/15/09)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdel_Latif_Moussa)
2009 Aug 15, In Peru farmers freed 13 police officers and four civilians seized at a hydroelectric dam in the Andean region after local officials agreed to provide them with fertilizer.
(AP, 8/15/09)
2009 Aug 15, In Puerto Rico Ricardo Lebron Berrios (23), a prisoner being taken to jail to face car theft charges, allegedly shot one police officer to death and gravely wounded a second, then escaped in their squad car.
(AP, 8/16/09)
2009 Aug 15, Somali pirates found seven dead colleagues floating in the ocean and vowed to take revenge against Egyptian fishermen they say killed them during an August 13 escape.
(Reuters, 8/15/09)
2009 Aug 15, South Korea's president renewed his offer of aid for impoverished North Korea if it abandons its nuclear weapons and called for talks on the reduction of conventional weapons along their heavily fortified border.
(AP, 8/15/09)
2009 Aug 15, Sri Lanka's Roman Catholic leaders called for the release of ethnic Tamils held in military-run displacement camps, saying they are confined like prisoners behind barbed wire.
(AP, 8/15/09)
2009 Aug 15, Taiwan's President Ma Ying-jeou bowed to public anger, apologizing for his government's slow response to Typhoon Morakot, which devastated central and southern parts of the island.
(AFP, 8/15/09)
2009 Aug 15, Yemen widened a military offensive against Shiite rebels in the country's north, blasting the fighters' positions with artillery and airstrikes.
(AP, 8/15/09)
2009 Aug 16, Y.E. Yang (37) of South Korea won the PGA Championship at Chaska, Minnesota, with a 2-under par 70 beating Tiger Woods who shot a 5 over par 75.
(AP, 8/17/09)
2009 Aug 16, In San Francisco BART management and union leaders reached a tentative contract agreement less that 6 hours before a planned strike to shut down the regional rail system.
(SFC, 8/17/09, p.A1)
2009 Aug 16, Afghan President Hamid Karzai took part in a live television debate with two of his main rivals running in this week's election, a first for an incumbent head of state in the war-scarred country. The Afghan defense ministry said that more than 30 rebels, including foreigners, were killed in an operation pounding Taliban centers in a bid to secure a northeast troublespot for key elections. Two US troops and a US civilian died in gun and bomb attacks in eastern Afghanistan. 3 British soldiers were killed in an explosion in the volatile south.
(AFP, 8/16/09)(AFP, 8/17/09)
2009 Aug 16, Chinese authorities in central Henan province called off the takeover of Linzhou Iron and Steel Co. Ltd., a state-owned steel plant, after workers protested and trapped an official in the factory office for four days, the second time in a month that the country's steelworkers have rallied to successfully avoid privatization.
(AP, 8/16/09)
2009 Aug 16, Iran expanded its mass trial of opposition supporters, adding 25 more defendants including a Jewish teenager who are accused of involvement in unrest over the disputed presidential election.
(AP, 8/16/09)
2009 Aug 16, The US Peace Corps says it has pulled more than 100 American volunteers out of Mauritania for security reasons. The volunteers left for neighboring Senegal and will not return to Mauritania.
(AP, 8/17/09)
2009 Aug 16, North Korean leader Kim Jong Il held talks with Hyun Jeong-eun, the head of South Korea's Hyundai Group, in a rare meeting that could warm prospects for a resumption of stalled cross-border projects.
(AP, 8/16/09)
2009 Aug 16, In Pakistan seven suspected Taliban militants were killed during a gunfight with soldiers in Kabal village, about 20 kilometers northwest of Mingora in the Swat Valley. Police arrested militant commander Qari Saifullah, a close Mehsud aide, as he was being treated in a private hospital in Islamabad.
(AP, 8/17/09)(AP, 8/18/09)
2009 Aug 16, It was reported that Peru has become the world’s largest “factory" of counterfeit US dollars. Police were said to seize some $10 million in false dollars each month in Lima alone. The Peruvian dollars were mostly found in such countries as Italy, France, Germany and Ecuador. Gunmen robbed 12 foreigners on an ecological tourism trip to the Manu nature reserve in the Tres Cruces area of the Cusco region.
(SSFC, 8/16/09, p.A4)(AP, 8/16/09)
2009 Aug 16, Two Russian air force fighters rehearsing acrobatic maneuvers collided near Moscow, killing one pilot and sending the jets crashing into nearby vacation homes.
(AP, 8/16/09)
2009 Aug 16, An American cargo plane arrived in Taiwan with supplies for victims of the recent Typhoon Morakot disaster. It was the first American military aircraft to land in Taiwan in the 30 years since the US severed its diplomatic ties in favor of China.
(Econ, 8/22/09, p.36)
2009 Aug 16, In Uruguay some 20 dead Fraser's dolphins turned up this weekend on the Punta Negra beach in Piriapolis outside Montevideo. Experts theorized the tropical dolphins became disoriented or were carried there by changing water currents.
(AP, 8/18/09)
2009 Aug 17, Albert Gonzalez (28) of Miami, a former informant for the US Secret Service who helped the agency hunt hackers, was indicted in New Jersey and charged with conspiring with two other unnamed suspects to steal the private information. He allegedly stole information from 130 million credit and debit card accounts in what federal prosecutors called the largest case of identity theft yet. He was already in jail awaiting trial in a hacking case. On Aug 28 Gonzalez agreed to plead guilty and serve up to 25 years in federal prison.
(AP, 8/18/09)(SFC, 8/29/09, p.A4)
2009 Aug 17, In Afghanistan former Uzbek militia chief General Abdul Rashid Dostum threw his support behind President Hamid Karzai one day after returning from exile in Turkey. Four minor candidates announced they were withdrawing and throwing their support behind Karzai. A roadside bomb in southern Afghanistan killed a US service member, while an American civilian working for the military died after insurgents attacked a patrol in the east.
(AP, 8/17/09)
2009 Aug 17, The Central African Republic’s Communications Minister Cyriaque Gonda said on state radio that the government has set a three-year timetable to disarm, demobilize and reintegrate former rebels.
(AFP, 8/17/09)
2009 Aug 17, Czech media reported that two Russians have been ordered out of Prague, including a deputy military attache. Prague has previously complained about an increase in Russian spying that it linked to the US plans. Russia responded by ordering two Czech diplomats out of Russia.
(Reuters, 8/18/09)
2009 Aug 17, In Ingushetia a suicide bomber attacked a police station in Nazran city in Russia's North Caucasus with an explosives-laden truck, killing at least 21 people and wounding more than 100 others. 9 officers were still missing.
(AP, 8/17/09)(AP, 8/18/09)
2009 Aug 17, The new head of Iran's judiciary suggested that he would prosecute security agents accused of torture in the postelection crackdown, a nod from the country's conservative leadership to widespread anger to reports that jailed protesters were abused.
(AP, 8/17/09)
2009 Aug 17, Human Rights Watch said Iraqi militiamen are torturing and killing gay men with impunity in a systematic campaign that has spread from Baghdad to several other cities.
(AP, 8/17/09)
2009 Aug 17, Israeli soldiers mistakenly shot and wounded an Egyptian policeman near Eilat along the border between the two countries.
(AP, 8/17/09)
2009 Aug 17, In Mexico at least 8 people were killed early in the day when gunmen opened fire in a bar in drug-plagued Ciudad Juarez on the Texas border. Gunmen killed a father and his 4-year-old son and wounded the mother as the family drove on a highway near Ciudad Juarez. 2 girls, ages 12 and 14, died after being struck by lightning on a soccer field during a religious service in the city of Tuxtla Gutierrez in Chiapas state. In Monterrey four gunmen died in a shootout with soldiers and three other suspects were detained. Three soldiers suffered light injuries in the clash.
(AP, 8/17/09)(www.wtop.com/?nid=105&sid=1646540)(AP, 8/18/09)
2009 Aug 17, North Korea said it would restart tours to a scenic mountain resort and allow reunions for families separated since the Korean War, a surprise move that could help ease months of tensions with South Korea over Pyongyang's missile and nuclear tests.
(AP, 8/17/09)
2009 Aug 17, In northwest Pakistan a bomb blast claimed by Taliban militants killed seven people including children, as 31 insurgents were reported dead in a fresh wave of unrest. Overnight in Swat's main town Mingora, a suicide bomber blew himself up, wounding four soldiers as they tried to arrest him. Security forces captured Maulvi Umar, the Pakistani Taliban's top spokesman, and he acknowledged the death of the group's leader in a recent US missile strike.
(AFP, 8/17/09)(AP, 8/18/09)
2009 Aug 17, Russian media reported that the Arctic Sea has been found near Cape Verde and that the ship's 15-man Russian crew has been taken aboard a Russian naval vessel.
(AP, 8/17/09)
2009 Aug 17, In Russia powerful explosion took place during repair work at the Sayano-Shushinskaya hydroelectric plant in southern Siberia. The death toll soon reached 69 with 6 still missing and feared dead after an engine room was suddenly flooded. The accident produced an oil spill and the slick that floated down the Yenisei River.
(AP, 8/17/09)(AP, 8/18/09)(AP, 8/21/09)(AP, 8/23/09)
2009 Aug 17, It was reported that 200,000 Russian military officers faced early retirement, as the government conducts a sweeping reform that will eliminate the jobs of six out of every 10 members of its top-heavy officer corps.
(AP, 8/17/09)
2009 Aug 17, In Somalia gunmen stormed a UN aid compound in Wajid overnight, sparking a gunbattle that killed three of the attackers and wounded one. Hundreds of pro-government militiamen rolled into Bula Hawa town near the Kenyan border after al-Shabab fighters abandoned it.
(AP, 8/17/09)
2009 Aug 17, In Sweden the Aftonbladet tabloid published an incendiary article claiming that Israeli soldiers had harvested the organs of some Palestinians whom they had shot. Israel quickly denounced the article, while Sweden defended its freedom of expression.
(Econ, 8/29/09, p.44)
2009 Aug 17, In Thailand thousands of supporters of deposed PM Thaksin Shinawatra rallied in central Bangkok and then marched to the royal palace, seeking a pardon for the fugitive leader.
(AP, 8/17/09)
2009 Aug 17, Former Zambian President Frederick Chiluba (1991-2001) was cleared of corruption charges following a six-year trial after a magistrate ruled that $500,000 of allegedly embezzled funds could not be traced to government money.
(AP, 8/17/09)(Econ, 8/22/09, p.43)(Econ, 11/21/09, p.51)
2009 Aug 18, Robert Novak (78), political columnist, died in Washington DC after a battle with brain cancer that was diagnosed in July 2008. He was a conservative, pugilistic debater and proud owner of the "Prince of Darkness" moniker, which he used in his 2007 memoir: "The Prince of Darkness: 50 Years Reporting in Washington." A column of his in 2003 outed Valerie Plame as a CIA agent.
(AP, 8/18/09)
2009 Aug 18, A Taliban suicide bomber attacked a NATO convoy on the outskirts of Kabul, killing 8 people and wounding more than 50, just days before the presidential election that the militant group has vowed to disrupt. A suicide bomber struck the gates of an Afghan army base in the southern Uruzgan province, killing 3 Afghan soldiers and two civilians. Two US soldiers were killed and 3 wounded in a separate blast in eastern Afghanistan.
(AP, 8/18/09)(SFC, 8/19/09, p.A3)
2009 Aug 18, An international claims commission in The Hague awarded Ethiopia slightly more than Eritrea as it settled mutual claims worth hundreds of millions of dollars for death, injury, rape, looting and destruction during their two-year border conflict. This concluded a complex arbitration that was part of the 2000 peace agreement closing out a border conflict that cost tens of thousands of lives.
(AP, 8/19/09)
2009 Aug 18, In Indonesia a dump truck, packed with more than 60 plantation workers and their families, overturned and killing at least 25 with dozens injured. At least three children were among the dead near Sampit town in Central Kalimantan.
(AP, 8/19/09)
2009 Aug 18, Iraqi forces seized a launcher loaded with 13 Iranian-made rockets after an attack the previous day against the US base outside the southern city of Basra.
(AP, 8/18/09)
2009 Aug 18, Israeli government officials said Israel has quietly stopped approving new building projects in the West Bank while publicly still refusing US demands for an official settlement freeze.
(AP, 8/18/09)
2009 Aug 18, In Lebanon 8 members of an al-Qaida-inspired group sawed bars off their cell windows in a high-security prison, scaled down the building using blankets tied together, then stood on each other's shoulders to help one jump over a wall and escape. Prison guards managed to stop the other seven from fleeing. Officials described the escaped prisoner, Taha al-Hajj Suleiman, as a Syrian militant and a "dangerous" member of the Fatah Islam group. Suleiman was caught the next day in the woods just north of the Roumieh prison.
(AP, 8/18/09)(AP, 8/19/09)
2009 Aug 18, In Mexico gunmen shot up the offices of the Siglo de Torreon newspaper in Torreon, Coahuila state.
(SFC, 8/19/09, p.A2)
2009 Aug 18, In Mozambique an overcrowded ferry with 50 people went down off the coast in a northern province. 17 people were feared drowned.
(AP, 8/19/09)
2009 Aug 18, Pakistani government and UN officials said flash floods have killed at least 27 people in the northwest, and that more than 80,000 have seen their homes or crops destroyed.
(AP, 8/18/09)
2009 Aug 18, Russia's President Dmitry Medvedev hosted Israeli counterpart Shimon Peres for talks that were expected to focus on the Middle East and the Iranian nuclear standoff.
(AP, 8/18/09)
2009 Aug 18, Former South Korean Pres. Kim Dae-jung (85) died. He spent years as a dissident under a military dictatorship and later won the Nobel Peace Prize for seeking reconciliation with communist North Korea.
(AP, 8/18/09)
2009 Aug 18, In Sudan clashes between rival militias broke out in the southern oil-rich Unity state, the latest to hit a region still recovering from two decades of civil war.
(AFP, 8/18/09)
2009 Aug 18, In Zimbabwe a truck hit a bus head-on, killing 11 people including six members of a family returning from a funeral.
(AP, 8/19/09)
2009 Aug 19, US authorities in collaboration with Venezuela led to the seizure of about a ton of cocaine aboard a ship in the Caribbean Sea. Two Venezuelans and a Colombian were arrested.
(AP, 8/20/09)
2009 Aug 19, Don Hewitt (86), a TV news pioneer, died. He created the "60 Minutes" news hour in 1968 and produced the popular CBS newsmagazine for 36 years.
(AP, 8/19/09)
2009 Aug 19, Afghan journalists rejected a Foreign Ministry demand that they suspend the broadcasting of news about attacks or violence on election day, accusing the government of unconstitutional censorship. Police stormed a bank in Kabul and killed three insurgents who had taken it over, while a wave of attacks killed at least six election workers around the country on the eve of the presidential election.
(AP, 8/19/09)
2009 Aug 19, Australia celebrated the biggest trade deal in its history and said it proved vital ties with China had survived a series of bruising rows. PM Kevin Rudd said ExxonMobil's 41.3 billion US dollar liquefied natural gas contract with PetroChina would create up to 6,000 jobs and pump billions of dollars into the economy. PetroChina ordered 2.25 million tons of liquefied natural gas (LNG) a year over two decades from ExxonMobil's share of the still-undeveloped Gorgon plant off Western Australia.
(AFP, 8/19/09)
2009 Aug 19, Brazilian prosecutors said Father Clodoveo Piazza, an Italian priest who ran an award-winning shelter for homeless children in Brazil, has been charged with sexually abusing boys for years and allowing visiting foreigners to exploit the children. Piazza, now working as a missionary in Mozambique, was charged along with another former director of the nonprofit group Fraternal Help Organization, a private group based in Salvador.
(AP, 8/20/09)
2009 Aug 19, London's Metropolitan Police said two men were arrested in the Aug 6 robbery of $66 million in jewelry. The Barnes Flying Squad, a specialist unit that deals with armed robberies and high value thefts, made the arrests.
(AP, 8/20/09)
2009 Aug 19, French police with Spanish help detained three suspected members of Basque separatist group ETA in a French Alps ski resort and seized material for making explosives, after a series of bombings claimed by the group on the Spanish island of Mallorca.
(AP, 8/19/09)
2009 Aug 19, Germany launched a campaign to put 1 million electric cars on the road by 2020, making battery research a priority as it tries to position the country as a market leader.
(AP, 8/19/09)
2009 Aug 19, Rights group Amnesty International alleged widespread abuse of protesters demanding the return of the Honduran president ousted in a coup, saying in a report that hundreds of people have been beaten and detained under the interim government.
(AP, 8/19/09)
2009 Aug 19, Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad nominated Ahmad Vahidi as Defense Minister. Vahidi had commanded a unit of the Revolutionary Guard known as the Quds Force at the time of the July 18, 1994, attack on a Jewish cultural center in Argentina. The Quds Force is involved in operations abroad, including working with Lebanon's Hezbollah militant group, which is accused to carrying out the Buenos Aires attack.
(AP, 8/21/09)
2009 Aug 19, In Iraq a truck bomb tore through the Foreign Ministry, knocking out concrete slabs and windows and leaving a mass of charred cars outside killing at least 65 people and wounding 250. A suicide truck bomber took aim at the Finance Ministry complex causing part of a nearby overpass to collapse killing least 28 people. A wave of explosions around Baghdad killed at least 8 more people as mortars struck inside the Green Zone. The total death toll from the string of blasts was later set at 106. One of the suspected masterminds said in a confession broadcast on Aug 23 that attackers paid $10,000 to get a bomb-laden truck past checkpoints and next to the Finance Ministry. A US soldier died of a non-combat related injury.
(AP, 8/19/09)(AP, 8/20/09)(AP, 8/23/09)(AP, 9/8/09)(AFP, 1/19/12)
2009 Aug 19, Philippine troops clashed with about 30 Muslim gunmen, who took over Mantangule islet in the southern part of Palawan Island, killing at least seven and capturing two.
(AP, 8/19/09)
2009 Aug 19, Saudi authorities said they have arrested 44 suspected militants with al-Qaida links in a yearlong sweep that also uncovered dozens of machine guns and electronic circuits for bombs.
(AP, 8/20/09)
2009 Aug 19, In Sudan former enemies from the north and south signed a deal aimed at bolstering the 2005 peace deal that ended a 22-year civil war, the African continent's longest.
(AP, 8/20/09)
2009 Aug 19, Swiss banking giant UBS AG agreed to turn over to the IRS the details of 4,450 accounts suspected of holding undeclared assets by American customers, piercing Switzerland's long-standing tradition of banking secrecy.
(AP, 8/19/09)
2009 Aug 19, Syrian President Bashar Assad opened talks with Iranian officials in a visit expected to include an appeal to free a French academic accused of plotting to overthrow the Islamic regime.
(AP, 8/19/09)
2009 Aug 19, In Zimbabwe 10 lawmakers from PM Morgan Tsvangirai's party were arrested and charged with disturbing the peace as they headed into the Finance Ministry for a meeting.
(AP, 8/19/09)
2009 Aug 20, In Colorado a Black Hawk helicopter crashed during training on Mount Massive, the state’s 2nd highest mountain. 4 soldiers were killed in the crash.
(SFC, 8/21/09, p.A8)
2009 Aug 20, Afghans voted to elect a president for only the second time in history as fears emerged of poor turnout. Some $300 million was spent in organizational costs alone. Top security officials said 26 civilians and security forces have died in election-day militant attacks. Insurgents launched scattered rocket, suicide and bomb attacks that closed some polling sites. In northern Baghlan province, insurgent attacks closed 14 polling sites, and several police were reported killed. In southern Helmand province more than 20 rockets landed in the capital of Lashkar Gah, including one near a line of voters that killed a child. Initial election results weren't expected until Aug 22. Taliban militants cut off the nose and both ears of an Afghan father of 8 he tried to vote. The attack became the third confirmed report of the Taliban mutilating people who sought to cast ballots in the electoral contest. Some 400 insurgent incidents took place during the poll.
(AP, 8/20/09)(AP, 8/31/09)(Econ, 8/29/09, p.35)(Econ, 11/7/09, p.40)
2009 Aug 20, Angola and South Africa signed a number of trade agreements including cooperation in the oil sector, following major bilateral talks aimed at strengthening economic relations.
(AFP, 8/20/09)
2009 Aug 20, Australia passed a clean energy law requiring the country to produce 20 percent of its power from renewable sources by 2020 in move that could draw billions of dollars of green investment.
(AFP, 8/20/09)
2009 Aug 20, A French government-sponsored report was released saying that decomposing algae covering some beaches in Brittany represent a serious health risk and gases that can kill within minutes were detected on a beach where a horse died last month.
(AP, 8/20/09)
2009 Aug 20, Usain Bolt of Jamaica set a world record of 19.19 seconds in the 200 meters at the world championships in Berlin, adding to the gold he won in the 100.
(AP, 8/20/09)
2009 Aug 20, Diplomats said Iran has lifted a year-long ban and allowed UN nuclear inspectors to visit a nearly completed nuclear reactor as well as granting greater monitoring rights at another atomic site.
(SFC, 8/21/09, p.A2)
2009 Aug 20, The Iraqi government announced the detention of 11 army and police commanders, accusing them of negligence in the previous day’s bombings. The government also decided to keep concrete blast barriers around potential targets. A bicycle bomb exploded near a restaurant in Baghdad killing two people. There were three bombings in Babil province, a region once so notorious for violence it was called the Triangle of Death. A bomb attached to a minibus killed three and wounded eight in Hillah, while two bombs at a market in Musayyib wounded 45.
(AP, 8/20/09)(AP, 8/21/09)(SFC, 8/21/09, p.A4)
2009 Aug 20, Drug developer Warner Chilcott, which focuses on women's healthcare and dermatology, completed its move to Ireland from Bermuda.
(AP, 8/21/09)
2009 Aug 20, Italian customs found a boat with five Eritrean survivors of what it called a "shocking tragedy. Around 75 African migrants died in the Mediterranean after their stranded boat ran out of food and water.
(Reuters, 8/21/09)
2009 Aug 20, The Association of Parents of Disappeared People (APDP) said their workers have discovered several unmarked graves containing about 1,500 unidentified bodies in Indian Kashmir, and alleged that some of corpses were likely innocent people killed by government forces. APDP said at least eight of the graves held more than one body.
(AP, 8/20/09)
2009 Aug 20, In Mexico the body of leftist congressman Armando Chavarria was found in the passenger seat of a vehicle in Guerrero’s state capital of Chilpancingo. State police said three human heads were found in ice boxes in the municipality of Coyuca de Catalan. The mutilated bodies were in bags nearby. A message from alleged drug traffickers was also found.
(AP, 8/21/09)
2009 Aug 20, Pakistan's military said that about 60 militants had surrendered to authorities in northwest Swat valley, where the government claims to have eliminated Taliban extremists. Baluchistan authorities found the bodies of 10 policemen in a remote mountain pass. Earlier this week, the separatist Baluch Republican Army called local media organizations and said it had killed the remaining 10 of 25 police officers kidnapped last month.
(AP, 8/20/09)(AP, 8/21/09)
2009 Aug 20, Russia’s PM Vladimir Putin ordered that key parts of Russia's aging infrastructure be checked and upgraded after a power plant accident in Siberia left scores feared dead and strained the vast region's power supply. The confirmed death toll in the power plant accident rose to 17 after three more bodies were found. 57 were still missing.
(AP, 8/20/09)
2009 Aug 20, Russian authorities flew the suspected hijackers of the cargo vessel Arctic Sea to Moscow and took off them for interrogation, dismissing suggestions that the ship may have been carrying weapons.
(Reuters, 8/20/09)
2009 Aug 20, Kenny MacAskill, Scotland’s justice secretary, freed Abdel Baset al-Megrahi (57), former Libyan intelligence agent and alleged Lockerbie bomber (Dec 21, 1988), on compassionate grounds after eight years in jail allowing him to go home to Libya to die. Al-Megrahi has terminal prostate cancer and has been given less than three months to live. In 2010 Professor Karol Sikora, who assessed for the Libyan authorities, told The Sunday Times it was "embarrassing" that he had outlived his three-month prognosis and that al-Megrahi could survive for 10 years or longer. It was later reported that BP had promoted the deal in order to protect a $900 million oil and gas exploration deal off the Libyan Mediterranean coast.
(AP, 8/20/09)(Econ, 8/29/09, p.48)(AP, 7/03/10)(SFC, 7/16/10, p.A2)
2009 Aug 20, In central Somalia fighting between government soldiers and Islamic insurgents killed at least 40 people as the warring sides tried to gain ground in strategic towns.
(AP, 8/20/09)(SFC, 8/21/09, p.A2)
2009 Aug 20, Swiss President Hans-Rudolf Merz and Libyan PM al-Baghdadi Ali al-Mahmoudi signed an accord pledging to restore relations between the two countries and to have Hannibal Gadhafi July 15, 2008, arrest examined by a joint arbitration tribunal in London. The next day Merz defended his apology to Libya for the arrest of Moammar Gadhafi's son, saying it was the only way to secure the release of two Swiss citizens detained by Tripoli.
(AP, 8/21/09)
2009 Aug 20, Taiwan's Cabinet approved a NT$100 billion ($3 billion) reconstruction budget after the island's worst typhoon in more than 50 years killed hundreds of people and wiped out roads and bridges in the mountainous south.
(AP, 8/20/09)
2009 Aug 21, Guaranty Bank became the 2nd-largest US bank to fail this year after the Texas lender was shut down by regulators and most of its operations sold at a loss of billions of dollars for the US government to a major Spanish bank. Guaranty's failure, along with those of three small banks in Georgia and Alabama, brought to 81 the number of US bank failures this year.
(AP, 8/22/09)
2009 Aug 21, In Oakland, Ca., Ricardo Cortes Jr. (14), was shot and killed by gang member Julio Montano. Gang member Francisco Zamora accompanied Montano and drove him from the scene. They thought they were avenging a friend who had been slain by a rival gang. Cortes had nothing to do with gangs. In 2010 Montano (23) and Zamora (29) were convicted of 1st degree murder. On Dec 9 Montano was sentenced to 40 years to life in prison. Zamora was sentenced 27 years to life.
(SFC, 10/1/10, p.C4)(SFC, 12/11/10, p.C1)
2009 Aug 21, Afghan President Hamid Karzai's campaign and chief rival Abdullah Abdullah both said they had won Afghanistan's election, but Washington's chief envoy warned candidates not to declare victory prematurely.
(Reuters, 8/21/09)
2009 Aug 21, Australian leader Kevin Rudd and his trans-Tasman counterpart John Key chaired the first-ever joint meeting of their cabinets, and said it had been a valuable opportunity to discuss their joint challenges. They vowed closer military ties and collaboration on climate change in the historic meeting.
(AFP, 8/22/09)
2009 Aug 21, A massive oil and gas leak forced the evacuation of an oil rig off Australia's northwest coast. PTTEP Australasia, a branch of Thai-owned PTT Exploration and Production Co. Ltd., said about 40 barrels of oil had been discharged in the initial incident, and it was still attempting to bring the leak under control at the rig, owned by Norway's Seadrill. After 2 days PTTEP said plugging the leak will take weeks. Government officials said there was little threat of environmental damage. By the end of October an estimated 400 barrels a day of oil continued leaking from the fissure off the Australian coast. PTTEP Australasia has failed repeatedly to stop the leak but said it is still trying.
(AFP, 8/22/09)(AP, 8/23/09)(AP, 10/30/09)
2009 Aug 21, In Chechnya suicide bombers on bicycles detonated explosives, killing at least four police officers and a civilian in coordinated attacks in the capital.
(AP, 8/21/09)
2009 Aug 21, Chile's health ministry said it ordered a quarantine for two turkey farms outside the port city of Valparaiso after genetic tests confirmed sick birds were afflicted with the same swine flu virus circulating in humans.
(AP, 8/21/09)
2009 Aug 21, In Iraq a small truck passed through an Iraqi police checkpoint in southern Baghdad but was not searched minutes before exploding at the front gate of the market, killing two and wounding 20.
(AP, 8/21/09)
2009 Aug 21, Mexico decriminalized small amounts of marijuana, cocaine and heroin, a move that prosecutors say makes sense even in the midst of the government's grueling battle against drug traffickers. Gunmen killed an army officer Capt. Alejandro Aranda and another man in a bowling alley in Ciudad Juarez, a border city that has seen Mexico's highest levels of drug-related violence in recent years.
(AP, 8/21/09)(AP, 8/22/09)
2009 Aug 21, New Zealanders voted overwhelmingly to overturn a law that prohibits parents from hitting children, according to the results of a nationwide referendum, but the government said the law is working and won't be changed. In the postal vote 87.6% of voters responded "No" to the question: "Should a smack as part of good parental correction be a criminal offense in New Zealand?"
(AP, 8/21/09)
2009 Aug 21, Leading Pakistani Taliban commander Hakimullah Mehsud was appointed the new head of the militant group. Hakimullah (28), the military chief of Baitullah's Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or Pakistani Taliban Movement, commanded 3 tribal regions and has a reputation as Baitullah's most ruthless deputy. A US drone fired a missile into a suspected militant hide-out in North Waziristan, killing 12 people in an attempt to take out Siraj Haqqani, a jihadist commander accused of attacks on Western troops in Afghanistan. Haqqani, a prime suspect in suicide blasts in Kabul, held close ties to Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency and controlled a swathe of territory in North Waziristan and eastern Afghanistan.
(AP, 8/22/09)(AP, 8/21/09)(SFC, 8/22/09, p.A2)(Econ, 10/17/09, p.36)
2009 Aug 21, Philippine police arrested Dinno-Amor Rosalejos Pareja, also known as Khalil Pareja, the alleged leader of a radical Islamist group believed to be responsible for one of Southeast Asia's deadliest terror attacks. Pareja is allegedly the leader of the Rajah Solaiman Movement, a group of Christian converts to Islam. The group is believed to be behind the 2004 ferry bombing that killed 116 people in Manila Bay. It was the second-most deadly terrorist attack in Southeast Asia after the 2002 attack on the Indonesian resort island of Bali that killed 202 people.
(AP, 8/21/09)
2009 Aug 21, A landslide at Portugal’s Maria Luisa beach in Albufeira on the Algarve coast killed five people and injured at least four.
(AP, 8/22/09)
2009 Aug 21, Slovakia stopped Hungary’s Pres. Laszlo Solyom from crossing its border. This was a breach of EU rules on freedom of movement. Solyom had planned to unveil a statue of St. Stephen, the first king of Hungary, in the predominantly Hungarian city of Komarno. Slovakia’s government had objected to the visit as the date coincided with the “Prague Spring" of 1968, when Hungary, as part of the Warsaw pact, took part in the Soviet crush of Czechoslovakia’s independence movement.
(Econ, 8/29/09, p.46)
2009 Aug 21, In Somalia an insurgent attack on a peacekeeping base sparked gunbattles that killed at least 22 people, as the undermanned African peacekeeping force tried to maintain the government's tenuous hold on Somalia's battered capital.
(Reuters, 8/21/09)
2009 Aug 22, Vicki Cruse (40) from Santa Paula, Calif., died in an accident during the World Aerobatic Championships at Britain's Silverstone motor racing circuit. She was a former member of the US national aerobatics team and was the first woman to qualify to race in her class at the Reno National Championship Air Races.
(AP, 8/22/09)
2009 Aug 22, The West Australian town of Broome, with deep historical ties to Japan, voted to sever its sister city relationship with the Japanese village of Taiji to protest an annual dolphin slaughter near there. At an extraordinary meeting on October 13 Broome rescinded the decision, which it said was made in haste and without wide consultation, and issued an apology to the Japanese community in Broome and Taiji, their families and friends for any disrespect caused by council's resolution. But it noted that it did not condone the harvest of dolphins in Taiji, with which it forged sister-city relations in 1981.
(AP, 8/24/09)(AFP, 10/16/09)
2009 Aug 22, Colombian authorities said police have captured Jose Armando Cadena Cabrera, a guerrilla suspected of killing a US military contractor and a Colombian soldier after their surveillance plane crashed in the jungle in 2003.
(AP, 8/22/09)
2009 Aug 22, The EU published a list of nearly 4,000 airlines that it says should reduce their impact on the environment from 2012 or face being banned from European airports.
(AP, 8/22/09)
2009 Aug 22, Cologne prosecutors said they are investigating 100 professors across Germany on suspicion they took bribes to illegally help students with their doctorates. The investigation has been going on for more than a year after it emerged that a law professor at Hannover University had organized degrees for 61 students whose exam results were otherwise insufficient.
(AP, 8/22/09)
2009 Aug 22, India and Nepal agreed to a new trade treaty as PM Madhav Kumar Nepal ended a five-day official visit to the regional giant that both countries hailed a great success.
(AFP, 8/22/09)
2009 Aug 22, In Indonesia a group of thieves killed an endangered Sumatran tiger in a zoo in Jambi province on Sumatra island and stole most of its body. Police suspected the theft was motivated by the animal's valuable fur and bones. The number of Sumatran tigers has dwindled to about 250 from about 1,000 in the 1970s, according to the Washington DC-based World Wildlife Fund.
(AP, 8/23/09)
2009 Aug 22, In Iraq an attack on a police checkpoint in the Azamiyah district of Baghdad left two officers dead.
(AP, 8/23/09)
2009 Aug 22, In Italy a lucky lotto player in Tuscany won Italy's record euro147.8 million ($211.8 million) state lottery, pocketing what has been billed as Europe's biggest jackpot.
(AP, 8/23/09)
2009 Aug 22, In Tijuana, Mexico, at least three police officers were in critical condition after gunmen opened fire on their patrol cars.
(AP, 8/22/09)
2009 Aug 22, In Nigeria a top militant commander and nearly 1,000 of his followers surrendered to the government, handing over rocket launchers, gunboats, guns and bullets in the biggest move since a government amnesty began two weeks ago. Ebikabowei "Boyloaf" Victor Ben, state commander for the region's biggest armed group, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), and 25 commanders under his leadership delivered weapons to police overnight.
(AP, 8/22/09)
2009 Aug 22, In Pakistan a suicide bomber blew himself up to evade capture during a raid in Kanju town in the troubled northwestern Swat Valley. Local media said two security officials were killed and two others were wounded.
(AP, 8/22/09)
2009 Aug 22, In Somalia Islamic insurgents attacked a government checkpoint in Mogadishu, sparking a gunbattle that killed at least five people on the first day of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
(AP, 8/22/09)
2009 Aug 22, In Tanzania a fire ripped through a dormitory in the rural Iringa district, killing 12 schoolgirls and wounding 23 others. Preliminary investigations indicated the fire was caused by a candle after a student fell asleep studying.
(AP, 8/24/09)
2009 Aug 22, Venezuelan police dispersed opponents of Pres. Chavez's government as thousands demonstrated both for and against an education law that critics fear will lead to political indoctrination in schools.
(AP, 8/23/09)
2009 Aug 23, Afghan former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah, President Karzai's main challenger, said he had evidence last week's election had been widely rigged by the incumbent and that he had lodged more than 100 complaints. The Election Complaints Commission (ECC) said it had received 225 complaints of which 35 had been labeled a priority. An American service member died in an insurgent attack. Two Estonian soldiers were killed after their unit stumbled on a roadside bomb in southern Helmand province.
(Reuters, 8/23/09)(AP, 8/24/09)
2009 Aug 23, NATO military commanders told US President Barack Obama's envoy on that they needed more troops and other resources to beat back a resurgent Taliban, particularly in eastern Afghanistan near the Pakistan border.
(Reuters, 8/23/09)
2009 Aug 23, In the Bahamas Stefania Fernandez (18), Miss Venezuela, was the fairest of them all once again, winning the 2009 Miss Universe crown for the second year straight and the sixth time since the pageant's creation.
(AP, 8/24/09)
2009 Aug 23, A Chinese state news agency reported that a drought in the north has left nearly 5 million people short of drinking water and damaged crops, while dry weather in the south could cause more shortages.
(AP, 8/23/09)
2009 Aug 23, In Greece a raging fire bore down on Athens' northern suburbs, prompting panicked residents to battle the flames with tree limbs and buckets, and police to order 10,000 people to evacuate one town immediately. The fires ignited late on Aug 21; by today they were reported across an area more than 25 miles (40 kilometers) wide.
(AP, 8/23/09)
2009 Aug 23, The Iraqi military broadcast the confession of a Sunni man, Wisam Ali Khazim Ibrahim (57), identified as the mastermind of one of two Aug 19 suicide truck bombings targeting government buildings in Baghdad. In northern Iraq gunmen attacked a police checkpoint in Mosul, killing one police officer. An American soldier died of injuries sustained during an attack on a US patrol in the Iraqi capital.
(AP, 8/23/09)
2009 Aug 23, Mexican army soldiers captured Luis Ricardo Magana. Prosecutors described him as a leading member of the violent La Familia drug cartel. A team of top US law enforcement officials began a three-day visit to Mexico to explore ways to improve efforts against arms smuggling into Mexico as part of joint efforts to combat drug gangs.
(AP, 8/24/09)
2009 Aug 23, In Pakistan a suicide bombing on the outskirts in the northwestern city of Peshawar killed three people and wounded 15 others. Police in Karachi arrested seven members of the banned Lashkar-e-Jhangvi movement in a raid. The al-Qaida-linked movement is blamed for two failed assassination attempts against former President Pervez Musharraf and the beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.
(AP, 8/23/09)(AP, 8/24/09)
2009 Aug 23, In Zimbabwe a cabinet retreat by the unity government collapsed this weekend as President Robert Mugabe's ministers walked out after the deputy prime minister said last year's polls were fraudulent.
(AP, 8/23/09)
2009 Aug 24, A senior administration said that Pres. Obama has approved establishment of the new unit, to be known as the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group, which will be overseen by the National Security Council.
(AP, 8/24/09)
2009 Aug 24, The US government cash for clunkers program ended.
(SFC, 8/24/09, p.A4)
2009 Aug 24, Reader’s Digest, founded in 1922, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The company piled on debt following a $1.6 billion leveraged buyout in 2007 by investors led by Ripplewood Holdings LLC, a NY private equity firm.
(SFC, 8/25/09, p.D3)
2009 Aug 24, In the San Francisco Bay Area Alexander Robert Youshock (17), a former Hillsdale High School student in San Mateo, lit 2 of 10 pipe bombs before he was tackled by teachers. Youshock also carried a chain saw and a sword and planned to attack students as the ran from the bombs.
(SFC, 8/25/09, p.A1)(SFC, 8/27/09, p.A1)
2009 Aug 24, Mohammed Jawad (~21), a Guantanamo prisoner once charged with wounding two US soldiers and their interpreter was back home in Afghanistan, months after a war crimes case against him unraveled when a military judge ruled his confession was coerced.
(AP, 8/24/09)
2009 Aug 24, Argentine federal police uncovered four tons (4,200 kilograms) of ephedrine worth millions in oil drums and boxes to be sent to Mexico and the US. The lead investigator called it the largest illegal shipment of the methamphetamine precursor ever seized there.
(AP, 8/24/09)
2009 Aug 24, Bangladesh awarded three offshore blocks to two global energy companies to explore for gas in the Bay of Bengal. The US-based ConocoPhillips and Ireland's Tullow Oil could start exploration work by early next year.
(AP, 8/25/09)
2009 Aug 24, In China 14 workers were killed in a gas explosion at a coal mine in northern Shanxi province.
(AP, 8/25/09)
2009 Aug 24, In Honduras foreign ministers from seven OAS nations launched a direct, high-profile attempt to persuade the interim government to restore ousted Pres. Manuel Zelaya. The delegation failed to win a pledge to restore ousted President Manuel Zelaya.
(AP, 8/24/09)(AP, 8/25/09)
2009 Aug 24, In Iran conservative rivals handed a new snub to Pres. Ahmadinejad, appointing Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejehi, the man he fired from the post of intelligence minister, as the country's state prosecutor. Senior opposition figure Mahdi Karroubi made public an account of a prisoner who was raped by jailers. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ordered the closure of Kahrizak prison, where at least 3 prisoners are known to have died.
(AP, 8/24/09)(SFC, 8/25/09, p.A3)
2009 Aug 24, Iraqi lawmakers said major Shiite groups have formed a new alliance that will exclude Iraqi PM al-Maliki, a step likely to stoke fears of increasing Iranian influence and shake up the political landscape before January parliamentary elections. The new bloc, called the Iraqi National Alliance, will include the largest Shiite party, the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council, or SIIC, and anti-US cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's bloc, which both have close ties to Tehran, as well as some small Sunni and secular parties.
(AP, 8/24/09)
2009 Aug 24, Israeli soldiers fired on a group of suspicious Palestinians across the border in northern Gaza. 3 Palestinians were wounded. 2 mortar shells were later fired from Gaza slightly wounding one soldier.
(SFC, 8/25/09, p.A2)
2009 Aug 24, Kenya began its first national census in a decade amid an outcry over one question that asks people to identify their ethnic group, a contentious issue in this East African nation. Kenya’s 2009 census put the population at about 39 million.
(AP, 8/24/09)(Econ, 10/30/10, p.45)
2009 Aug 24, An American UN peacekeeper under investigation for sexual exploitation and abuse of minors in Liberia was found dead in his house in Monrovia. Sources said it appeared that the American, a civilian in the Liberia mission, known as UNMIL, had committed suicide due to the investigations.
(Reuters, 8/26/09)
2009 Aug 24, Mexican police in the northern state of Sinaloa found four severed human heads in a cooler by the side of a rural roadway.
(AP, 8/24/09)
2009 Aug 24, Myanmar police seized more than 100 blocks of heroin and nearly 3 million methamphetamine tablets near the border with Thailand in one of the military-ruled country's largest drug seizures.
(AP, 8/26/09)
2009 Aug 24, Nigeria's anti-graft agency EFCC declared two sacked bank directors wanted over alleged frauds and running their institutions into insolvency.
(AFP, 8/24/09)
2009 Aug 24, In the eastern Pakistani city of Sargodha, police arrested six militants in two raids. They were said to be linked to Mehsud's Taliban and had planned to launch strikes next week on at least two places of worship. Among the six was Zaid Mustafa, said to have recruited potential suicide bombers for training in Afghanistan and who is suspected of providing logistics, explosives and other support for terror attacks in Lahore, Karachi or Rawalpindi. Gunmen shot dead an Afghan television journalist and severely wounded his colleague in northwestern Pakistan.
(AP, 8/24/09)
2009 Aug 24, It was reported that Peruvian police expecting to find a shipment of cocaine hidden in a crate holding two live turkeys were surprised to discover the drug surgically implanted inside the birds.
(AP, 8/24/09)
2009 Aug 24, In Rustenberg, South Africa some 13,000 platinum miners at Impala Platinum, the world's second-largest producer, downed tools over a pay dispute.
(AFP, 8/26/09)
2009 Aug 24, The Stockholm District Court threatened to fine Internet provider Black Internet 500,000 Swedish kronor (about $70,000) unless it stopped serving Pirate Bay. Court documents showed the company has to comply with the order until the ongoing case between Pirate Bay and the entertainment industry is over.
(AP, 8/25/09)
2009 Aug 24, Taiwan's government confirmed that 292 people were killed and 385 missing after Typhoon Morakot struck the island and caused its worst flooding in half a century earlier this month.
(AP, 8/24/09)
2009 Aug 25, The US White House forecast a 10-year federal deficit of $9 trillion, more than the sum of all previous deficits since America’s founding.
(SFC, 8/26/09, p.A6)
2009 Aug 25, US Senator Jim Webb, back from a rare trip to Myanmar, called sanctions against the military regime "overwhelmingly counter-productive" and asked the opposition to consider taking part in upcoming elections.
(AFP, 8/26/09)
2009 Aug 25, Sony Corp. unveiled a new electronic book reader for the American market, dubbed the “Daily Edition." It was scheduled to become available in December for $399 and compete with Amazon’s Kindle.
(Econ, 8/29/09, p.56)
2009 Aug 25, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (b.1932) of Massachusetts, died at his home on Cape Cod after a yearlong struggle with brain cancer. He was the last surviving brother in an enduring political dynasty and one of the most influential senators in history. His memoir “True Compass: A Memoir" was published in September.
(AP, 8/26/09)(Econ, 9/19/09, p.97)
2009 Aug 25, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson met with Ricardo Alarcon, president of Cuba's parliament, as well as members of the island's chamber of commerce as he headed a trade mission there this week.
(AP, 8/25/09)
2009 Aug 25, The Afghan election commission said President Hamid Karzai and top challenger Abdullah Abdullah both have roughly 40% of the nationwide vote for president with 10% of ballots counted. A large explosion detonated in Kandahar and was followed by gunfire on the street afterward. A major bombing killed at least 43 people and wounded 65 in Kandahar just after dark.
(AP, 8/25/09)(AP, 8/26/09)
2009 Aug 25, Argentina's Supreme Court ruled out prison for pot possession, saying the government should go after major traffickers and provide treatment instead of jail for consumers of marijuana.
(AP, 8/25/09)
2009 Aug 25, In Belize PM Dean Barrow rushed thru the nationalization of Belize Telemedia, the country’s dominant telecommunications company, and appointed a new board of directors. This was seen locally as an escalation in Barrow’s long standing dispute with Michael Ashcroft, a British peer with interests in Belize Bank. In 2011 Belize’s Court of appeal ruled that the nationalization was unconstitutional.
(Econ, 10/24/09, p.41)(http://tinyurl.com/ykson7t)(Econ, 7/2/11, p.30)
2009 Aug 25, Four Ethiopian athletes, two women and two men, fled their hotel in London and failed to make a connecting flight to Edinburgh ahead of the Falkirk Cup athletics event.
(AFP, 8/26/09)
2009 Aug 25, In Chechnya a suicide bombing killed three police officers at a gas station-carwash complex in the Shali region. Earlier in the day the Chechen Interior Ministry said a policeman was killed and another wounded in an overnight clash with militants.
(AP, 8/25/09)(AP, 8/28/09)
2009 Aug 25, Iraq recalled its ambassador from Syria and demanded that Damascus hand over two suspected Saddam Hussein loyalists it has linked to the Aug 19 suicide attacks.
(AP, 8/25/09)
2009 Aug 25, An Israeli air strike on a smuggling tunnel between the Gaza Strip and Egypt killed three Palestinians and wounded seven.
(AP, 8/25/09)
2009 Aug 25, The World Food Program said that 3.8 million Kenyans need emergency food aid because of a prolonged drought, which is even causing electrical blackouts in the capital because there's not enough water for hydroelectric plants.
(AP, 8/25/09)
2009 Aug 25, Nicaragua said it will reroute the San Juan River on the border with Costa Rica. The river has been at the center of a lengthy dispute between the two Central American countries. The UN’s highest court last month set travel rules for the San Juan River, affirming freedom for Costa Rican boats to navigate the waterway while upholding Nicaragua's right to regulate traffic. The judgment ended a four-year legal battle. Under an 1858 treaty, the entire river belongs to Nicaragua up to the Costa Rican bank, but Costa Rican ships have freedom of navigation for commerce.
(AP, 8/26/09)
2009 Aug 25, The UN said Somalia is facing its worst humanitarian crisis in 18 years, with more than half of the population needing humanitarian aid amid an escalating crisis.
(AP, 8/25/09)
2009 Aug 25, South Korea launched its first rocket, just months after rival North Korea's launch drew international anger, but space officials said the satellite it carried failed to enter its intended orbit.
(AP, 8/25/09)
2009 Aug 25, Turkey's military indicated that it would back government efforts to grant more rights to Kurds and improve the economy of their region. The military, however, drew the line at moves that would involve negotiating with Kurdish rebels, harm Turkey's unity or make Kurdish an official language.
(AP, 8/25/09)
2009 Aug 25, An international forum in Turkey sought to boost aid and investment in Pakistan as a way to support its democratic institutions and curb violence there.
(AP, 8/25/09)
2009 Aug 26, In California Phillip Garrido (58) and his wife Nancy (55) were arrested for their 1991 kidnapping of Jaycee Lee Dugard (11) from a bus stop outside her home in South Lake Tahoe. Police freed Dugard and her 2 children who were fathered by Dugard, who had kept them in tents in a fenced, backyard compound in Antioch, Ca.
(AP, 8/28/09)
2009 Aug 26, In southern California the Station Fire began in Los Angeles County and soon grew to become the largest wildfire in county history. It did not get contained until Sep 1.
(SFC, 11/14/09, p.A4)
2009 Aug 26, Dominick Dunne (b.1925), novelist and Vanity Fair columnist, died. His books included “The Two Mrs. Grenvilles" (1985), based on the 1955 Woodward murder case.
(SFC, 8/27/09, p.A9)
2009 Aug 26, Ellie Greenwich (b.1940), songwriter, died. Her string of hits in the 1960s included “Da Doo Ron Ron" (1963), “Chapel of Love" (1964) and “Be My Baby" (1963). Many of her songs were done in collaboration with producer Phil Spector and her husband Jeff Barry.
(SFC, 8/28/09, p.D5)
2009 Aug 26, Afghan President Hamid Karzai widened his lead after officials released more partial vote results. The latest returns boosted Karzai's standing to 44.8% and Abdullah’s at 35.1%. The count was based on returns from 17% of polling stations nationwide. In eastern Afghanistan a firefight left as many as 12 militants dead. Reports of the death toll varied widely. A spokesman of the governor of Paktika province said 12 militants died, while police said two were killed. The US military did not report any deaths. 7 insurgents, including a wounded commander, were detained.
(AP, 8/26/09)(AP, 8/27/09)
2009 Aug 26, Australia's highest court ruled that the country's military justice system is unconstitutional because its judges are not independent of the military command, throwing into doubt 171 cases judged in the past two years.
(AP, 8/26/09)
2009 Aug 26, A Brazilian prosecutor in Amazonas state accused Wallace Souza, a former police officer and TV crime show host, of attempting to have a federal judge assassinated in 2007. Souza was already accused of setting up at least 5 killings to boost his TV ratings. Souza was soon kicked out of the state legislature and on Oct 5 police issued a warrant for his arrest.
(SFC, 8/27/09, p.A2)(AP, 10/7/09)
2009 Aug 26, In Cambodia a Phnom Penh Municipal Court Judge found Michael James Dodd of Washington, DC, guilty of soliciting sex from a 14-year-old girl. He was arrested in October 2008 at his rented house in Phnom Penh, in the girl's company. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison and ordered to pay 20 million riel ($4,878) in compensation to the girl's family.
(AP, 8/26/09)
2009 Aug 26, China’s state media reported that the majority of transplanted organs in China come from executed prisoners in a rare disclosure about an industry often criticized for being opaque and unethical.
(AP, 8/26/09)
2009 Aug 26, In China six members of an alleged "terror gang" were detained in the suburbs of the city of Aksu, 675km (420 miles) southwest of Urumqi. The Ministry of Public Security later said a "large quantity" of materials and tools needed to make explosive devices was seized.
(AFP, 9/16/09)
2009 Aug 26, In Colombia hooded men in uniforms without insignias shot and killed 12 members of the Awa indigenous group, including five children, on a reserve in a region plagued by the cocaine trade.
(AP, 8/26/09)
2009 Aug 26, In the Republic of Congo 7 people, including five Russian crew members, were killed when a cargo plane crashed on the outskirts of Brazzaville.
(AFP, 8/26/09)
2009 Aug 26, In Greece the fires around Athens were put out or contained to small areas after razing 80 square miles (210 square km) of forest and hillside scrub, an area more than three times the size of Manhattan. It was the most destructive blaze in decades in the Attica region, and the worst in Greece since wildfires in 2007 killed 76 people and blackened 1,060 square miles (2,750 square km).
(AP, 8/26/09)
2009 Aug 26, Central America's development bank said it is freezing credits to Honduras following the June 28 coup that ousted President Manuel Zelaya. Many other multilateral agencies and foreign governments have put Honduras aid projects on hold, in the face of the interim government's refusal to reinstate Zelaya.
(AP, 8/26/09)
2009 Aug 26, A small Indonesian ferry sank off the resort island of Bali, killing nine people while three others are still missing.
(Reuters, 8/26/09)
2009 Aug 26, Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim (b.1950), the scion of a revered clerical family, died of lung cancer in Iran, the country that was long his key ally. He channeled rising Shiite Muslim power after the fall of Saddam Hussein to become one of Iraq's most influential politicians.
(AP, 8/26/09)
2009 Aug 26, In Mexico gunmen in Ciudad Juarez killed Pablo Pasillas (33), the aide of a Mexican federal agent investigating the death of a crime reporter, a month after the first agent assigned to the case was shot dead. In a separate attack, gunmen in the western town of Tlaquepaque wounded Maximiano Barbosa, the founder of Mexico's most influential debtors group, as well as his son.
(AP, 8/27/09)
2009 Aug 26, Nigerian authorities arrested two dozen people wanted over massive debts owed to troubled banks in a scandal that has rocked the country's financial industry.
(AFP, 8/26/09)
2009 Aug 26, In Bucharest, Romania, fans at first politely applauded the Roma performers sharing a stage with Madonna. Then the pop star condemned widespread discrimination against Roma, or Gypsies, and the cheers gave way to jeers. Official Romanian data put the local Roma population at 500,000.
(AP, 8/27/09)
2009 Aug 26, Top Russian officials acknowledged for the first time that the Arctic Sea, a ship hijacked last month in the Baltic Sea, might have been carrying a suspicious cargo, deepening the mystery around its seizure.
(AFP, 8/26/09)
2009 Aug 26, Russia, worried about North Korean missile and nuclear tests, said it has deployed sophisticated air defenses in its Far East region to protect against any potential test mishap.
(AFP, 8/26/09)
2009 Aug 26, Somali pirates in the Gulf of Aden fired at a US Navy helicopter as it made a surveillance flight over the Win Far, a Taiwanese-flagged fishing vessel seized in April, the first such attack by pirates on an American military aircraft.
(AP, 8/27/09)
2009 Aug 26, In South Africa soldiers, demanding higher wages, tried to scale the fence at the Union Buildings where President Jacob Zuma has his office. Police used teargas, rubber bullets and water cannons to disperse the soldiers, who marched despite a court order barring their protest.
(AP, 9/1/09)
2009 Aug 26, In Spain Bunol's town hall estimated more than 40,000 people, some from as far away as Japan and Australia, took up arms with 100 tons of tomatoes in the yearly food fight known as the "Tomatina," now in its 64th year.
(AP, 8/26/09)
2009 Aug 26, In Thailand suspected Muslim insurgents detonated a car bomb outside a crowded open-air restaurant during lunchtime, wounding 26 people.
(SFC, 8/26/09, p.A2)
2009 Aug 26, Doctors at Zimbabwe's state hospitals called off a crippling two-week strike, broken by the reality that the government had no money to meet their wage demands.
(AFP, 8/26/09)
2009 Aug 27, Chicago's 9-story old main post office, which dated from the 1920s and has been vacant for more than a decade, was sold at auction for $40 million to International Property Developers North America Inc, which did not specify its plans.
(AP, 8/28/09)
2009 Aug 27, Toyota confirmed that it would stop making cars at the NUMMI plant in Fremont, Ca., idling some 4,700 workers.
(SFC, 8/28/09, p.A1)
2009 Aug 27, In Afghanistan a US service member died in a militant attack involving a roadside bomb and gunfire, a death that pushed August into a tie with July as the deadliest months of the eight-year war.
(AP, 8/27/09)
2009 Aug 27, A senior UN official condemned Australia's controversial intervention into remote Aboriginal communities, describing the measures as discriminatory and finding entrenched racism in Australia.
(Reuters, 8/27/09)
2009 Aug 27, Mike Perham (17) became the youngest person to sail solo around the world with assistance, as he entered British waters after 156 days at sea. The Guinness Book of World Records created a new category for Perham: youngest sailor to circumnavigate the globe solo, supported. His father, Peter, sailed in a boat behind him, but did not offer assistance, which Guinness defines as being accompanied on the boat by another human being.
(AFP, 8/27/09)
2009 Aug 27, In Honduras a plan was made public in which the interim leader offered to resign and back exiled President Manuel Zelaya's return home, provided the ousted leader gives up his claim to the presidency.
(AP, 8/28/09)
2009 Aug 27, In Iraq car bombs targeted primarily Iraqi troops in the city and a northern Baghdad suburb, killing one and wounding 22 people. Iraqi forces tightened security around Shiite mosques, shrines and political party offices ahead of the funeral of Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, a top Shiite leader, who died in Iran a day earlier.
(AP, 8/27/09)
2009 Aug 27, In Mexico the bodies of four farm workers were found dumped in a stable for bulls in the western state of Michoacan. The bodies bore signs of torture and had the letter "Z" carved into their foreheads, a possible reference to the Zetas, hit men tied to the Gulf cartel. In the northern state of Nuevo Leon, state Public Safety Secretary Aldo Fasci said about 2,000 police officers across the state had been fired over the last two years for suspected links to organized crime and drug cartels. Speaking at a meeting of private security firms, he said 500 others were dismissed for other causes.
(AP, 8/28/09)
2009 Aug 27, In Oaxaca, Mexico, supporters of a teacher’s union tried to retake a school controlled by Section 59 when gunfire erupted and teacher Antonio Norberto Camacho was shot to death. Section 59 was created in the midst of the protests led by Section 22 and anti-government groups in 2006.
(AP, 8/29/09)
2009 Aug 27, In Myanmar fresh fighting erupted between government forces and an armed ethnic group in the remote northeast, forcing tens of thousands to flee across the border into China.
(Reuters, 8/28/09)
2009 Aug 27, In Pakistan a suicide bomber killed at least 19 security officers at the Torkham security checkpoint, one of the main border crossings for convoys ferrying NATO supplies into Afghanistan. A suspected US drone fired two missiles at a militant hide-out in northwest Pakistan, killing at least six people and wounding nine.
(AP, 8/27/09)(AP, 8/30/09)
2009 Aug 27, In Russia Sergei Mikhalkov (96), an author favored by Stalin who wrote the lyrics for the Soviet and Russian national anthems, died. He fathered two noted film directors. As a functionary and later chairman of the government-regulated Soviet Writers' Union, Mikhalkov became an integral part of the propaganda machine designed to indoctrinate Soviet citizens and weed out dissidents.
(AP, 8/27/09)(Econ, 9/12/09, p.96)
2009 Aug 27, In Saudi Arabia a suicide bomber targeted the assistant interior minister, Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, and blew himself up just before going into a gathering of well-wishers for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan in Jiddah. Nayef was slightly wounded.
(AP, 8/28/09)
2009 Aug 27, In Sudan Martin Luther Agwai, the outgoing military commander of the joint UN-African Union (UNAMID) peacekeeping force in the western Sudan region, said there is no more war in Darfur. Agwai defended his soldiers against persistent criticism of their effectiveness, insisting they have ended the massacres that long plagued the Sudanese region. The Nigerian officer will be replaced next week by Rwandan Patrick Nyamvumba.
(AFP, 8/27/09)
2009 Aug 27, Taiwan's president angered China with his surprise announcement that he has agreed to let the Dalai Lama visit the island to comfort survivors of a devastating typhoon.
(AP, 8/27/09)
2009 Aug 27, A Turkish train collided with a construction vehicle during a journey from Ankara to Istanbul, derailing several carriages and leaving many people injured.
(AP, 8/27/09)
2009 Aug 27, Uruguay lawmakers approved a bill allowing gay and lesbian couples to adopt. The 99-seat Chamber or Representatives passed the bill 40-13, with the remaining members absent. The law, still needing Senate approval, was supported by socialist President Tabare Vazquez's Broad Front coalition, which has already legalized gay civil unions and ended a ban on homosexuals in the armed forces.
(AP, 8/28/09)
2009 Aug 27, Vietnam police took Bui Thanh Hieu, who writes a blog under the pen name Nguoi Buon Gio, or Wind Trader, into custody for questioning. Pham Doan Trang, a writer for the popular online newspaper VietnamNet, was detained the day before. Both were released on Sep 6.
(AP, 9/6/09)
2009 Aug 27, In Zimbabwe South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma he met with PM Tsvangirai who has accused Mugabe's ZANU-PF party of stalling on reforms and continuing to attack and harass its activists.
(AP, 8/28/09)
2009 Aug 28, The space shuttle Discovery with 7 astronauts blasted off from Cape Canaveral just before midnight to bring supplies to the int’l. space station.
(SFC, 8/29/09, p.A4)
2009 Aug 28, California Gov. Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency in Los Angeles and Monterey counties due to wild fires.
(SSFC, 8/30/09, p.A10)
2009 Aug 28, Afghan Taliban insurgents ambushed a police convoy, killing three policemen and wounding about 30 others near Ghazni. In northern Afghanistan foreign troops attacked a militant commander in Kunduz province, killing him and his six men. A female militant who engaged troops with an assault rifle and with ammunition packed to her chest was among the dead. In eastern Afghanistan an American service member died in a bomb blast that also wounded Cami McCormick, a CBS Radio News correspondent. This made August the deadliest month of the eight-year war for US forces.
(AP, 8/28/09)(AP, 8/29/09)
2009 Aug 28, PM Gordon Brown said Britain will commit 665 million pounds ($1.08 billion) in aid to help Pakistan stabilize its violent border areas and tackle the underlying causes of extremism.
(AP, 8/28/09)
2009 Aug 28, In Cameroon a petroleum-loaded cargo train collided with another train in the southwest of the capital Yaounde. 2 firefighters were killed when 4 petroleum tankers exploded.
(AP, 8/30/09)
2009 Aug 28, Two Chechen militants blew themselves up to escape capture, wounding three policemen and three civilians in the process.
(AP, 8/28/09)
2009 Aug 28, In China 15 miners died after inhaling poisonous gas at the Jicai Graphite Mine near Chenzhou City in central Hunan province.
(AP, 8/29/09)
2009 Aug 28, Dagestan police killed three militants who had opened fire on a police post in Makhachkala, the capital. A policeman was shot dead in a separate attack in the capital.
(AP, 8/28/09)
2009 Aug 28, Denmark announced the 5 winners of its biennial Index design awards. The winners included: Kiva.org, of the SF Bay Area for bringing money and intellectual capital to the working poor; Better Place, of the SF Bay Area for a clean energy system for all-electric cars; the Freeplay fetal heart rate monitor; Philip Design for its India-team designed safe kitchen stove for one-room homes; and Rotterdam-based Pig 05049 for its list of 185 good and bad products made from a single pig.
(SFC, 8/29/09, p.E1)
2009 Aug 28, Iceland's parliament approved a controversial deal to pay back billions of euros (dollars) lost by British and Dutch savers in the collapse of the online Icesave bank. The deal provided for the payment of 3.8 billion euros by 2023 to the British and Dutch governments for the compensation they forked out to disgruntled savers.
(AFP, 8/28/09)
2009 Aug 28, It was reported that dozens of impoverished Indian farmers in southern Andhra Pradesh state have killed themselves in recent weeks due to debt and poor rainfall.
(SFC, 8/28/09, p.A2)
2009 Aug 28, India's first moon mission, launched amid much fanfare in 2008, came to an abrupt end after the country's lunar craft lost contact with its controllers. The satellite was launched on October 22 and then fired a TV-set-sized probe painted in the green, white and orange colors of the Indian flag which landed on the moon on November 14.
(AFP, 8/29/09)
2009 Aug 28, In Indonesia the overcrowded ferry Sari Mulia capsized in the Negara River in the South Kalimantan province, leaving at least 19 people dead and 15 others missing.
(AP, 8/29/09)(AP, 8/30/09)
2009 Aug 28, Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called for the leaders of the opposition to be prosecuted over the postelection turmoil, stepping up pressure against the pro-reform movement that says he won the election by fraud. Ahmadinejad also admitted for the first time that some detained protesters were abused in custody but also denied any government involvement, claiming instead that it was the work of Iran's enemies and the opposition.
(AP, 8/28/09)
2009 Aug 28, In Iraq two American soldiers died following an attack on a patrol in eastern Baghdad.
(AP, 8/28/09)
2009 Aug 28, In Mexico a convoy of gunmen engaged state police in a running shootout that killed five officers and possibly one of the attackers in the western Mexico state of Jalisco. Americo Delgado (80), a lawyer for convicted Mexican drug kingpin Benjamin Arellano Felix, was found stabbed to death in his home. Felix was in prison serving a 22-year-sentence on drug trafficking and organized crime charges and was fighting extradition to the United States.
(AP, 8/28/09)(AP, 8/29/09)
2009 Aug 28, In Mozambique talks aimed at determining who should lead Madagascar in a new interim government ended in failure with the ousted president and the man who replaced him in a military coup both claiming the right to do so. The parties set a deadline of Sept. 4 to arrive at a compromise.
(AP, 8/28/09)
2009 Aug 28, A Pakistani court ordered the government to lift any remaining restrictions on Abdul Qadeer Khan, a scientist alleged to have spread nuclear technology to Iran, North Korea and Libya. Mehdi-Muhammed Ghezali, a Swedish national and former Guantanamo detainee, was arrested on the outskirts of Dera Ghazi Khan in southern Pakistani town along with a group of foreigners, including 7 Turks and 3 other Swedes, who lacked proper immigration stamps. They were allegedly trying to join al-Qaida in the lawless tribal areas.
(AP, 8/28/09)
2009 Aug 28, In Pakistan helicopter gunships destroyed a training camp for suicide bombers in the Swat Valley, killing six Taliban fighters, as scattered violence killed 12 others in the region recently retaken by the army. 12 suspected foreign militants were arrested in Dera Ghazi Khan on the edge of the South Waziristan tribal area, after they allegedly sneaked into the country from Iran.
(AP, 8/29/09)
2009 Aug 28, Mehdi-Muhammed Ghezali, a Swedish national and former Guantanamo detainee, was arrested on the outskirts of Dera Ghazi Khan in southern Pakistani town along with a group of foreigners, including 7 Turks and 3 other Swedes, who lacked proper immigration stamps. They were allegedly trying to join al-Qaida in the lawless tribal areas.
(AP, 9/14/09)
2009 Aug 28, In southern Sudan the Lou-Nuer tribe attacked a village of the Dinka tribe in Twic East County, leaving 46 people dead and 15 in critical condition. The attackers wore new military uniforms and were using new machine guns, but did not provide their identity.
(Reuters, 8/29/09)(AP, 9/1/09)
2009 Aug 28, In Thailand former journalist Daranee Charnchoengsilpakul was sentenced to 18 years in prison for insulting King Bhumibol Adulyadej during a speech in 2008.
(SFC, 8/29/09, p.A2)
2009 Aug 28, NATO’s Sec. Gen. Fogh Rasmussen ended a 2-day visit to Turkey where he got a commitment for more Turkish troops to work on reconstruction projects in Afghanistan.
(Econ, 9/12/09, p.57)(www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=107181)
2009 Aug 28, The United Arab Emirates confirmed that it has seized a cargo ship earlier this month bound for Iran with a cache of banned arms from North Korea. Diplomats identified the vessel as a Bahamas-flagged cargo vessel, the ANL Australia, carrying rocket-propelled grenades and other weapons.
(AP, 8/29/09)
2009 Aug 28, In Zimbabwe South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma met with President Robert Mugabe and other leaders and appeared cautiously optimistic that their differences within the coalition government could be resolved.
(AP, 8/28/09)
2009 Aug 29, California Gov. Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency in Mariposa County due to a wild fire in Yosemite National Park.
(SSFC, 8/30/09, p.A10)
2009 Aug 29, In San Francisco the Outlands Music and Arts Festival continued in Golden Gate Park for the 2nd of 3 days with 7 stages and nearly 100 bands. Ticket prices were $95 for a single day and $225.50 for all 3 days.
(SSFC, 8/30/09, p.C2)
2009 Aug 29, In southeast Georgia 7 people were found dead inside a dingy mobile home at a trailer park built on the grounds of a historic US plantation near Brunswick. One of two critically injured survivors died soon after. Police arrested Guy Heinze Jr. (22), a family member who called 911 to report finding the people slain, but the charges were drug-related and police wouldn't say if the man was a suspect in the killings. On Sep 4 police Heinze on 8 counts of first-degree murder. On Oct 25, 2013, Heinze was convicted on 8 counts of murder. Prosecutors agreed not to seek the death penalty.
(AP, 8/30/09)(SFC, 8/31/09, p.A5)(SFC, 9/5/09, p.A6)(SFC, 10/26/13, p.A7)
2009 Aug 29, Chris Connor (b.1927 as Mary Loutsenhizer), jazz singer of the 1950s and 1960s, died. Her 2 charted hits included “I Miss You" (1956) and “Trust in Me" (1957).
(SFC, 9/1/09, p.C5)
2009 Aug 29, Afghan President Hamid Karzai widened his lead in the presidential race as new vote tallies were released, inching closer to the 50 percent threshold of votes he needs to avoid a run-off. The latest results show Karzai ahead with 46.2% of the votes already counted against Abdullah's 31.4%.
(AP, 8/29/09)
2009 Aug 29, Australian authorities intercepted a boat carrying 52 suspected asylum seekers, the 18th such vessel to be discovered this year.
(AFP, 8/29/09)
2009 Aug 29, Britain’s PM Gordon Brown made a surprise visit to Afghanistan, where he pledged to speed up the training of Afghan security forces.
(AFP, 8/29/09)
2009 Aug 29, Britain’s Cairn Energy began pumping crude from a vast oilfield in the Indian desert state of Rajasthan that is set to increase the country's crude output by 20 percent.
(AFP, 8/29/09)
2009 Aug 29, The EU signed a temporary trade pact with Mauritius, Seychelles, Zimbabwe and Madagascar calling for tariffs on European goods to be removed over the next 15 years.
(AP, 8/29/09)
2009 Aug 29, In Iraq a suicide truck bomber attacked a small police station in the remote village of Hamad north of Baghdad, killing at least 12 people. a second attack occurred near Mosul in the city of Sinjar, where a parked truck bomb killed at least four people and wounded 23 others. A suicide bomber on a motorcycle killed 2 people in a market in eastern Baghdad.
(AP, 8/29/09)(SSFC, 8/30/09, p.A7)
2009 Aug 29, In northwestern Mexico a shooting killed eight people partying on a seaside boulevard in Navolato, Sinaloa state. Among the dead were two brothers in their 30s who had a record of car theft, Investigators were considering the possibility that the gunmen belonged to a criminal gang known as the "Death Squad," which has been killing car thieves in the region.
(AP, 8/31/09)
2009 Aug 29, Fighting erupted in northeast Myanmar after days of clashes in which the leader of ethnic forces said more than 30 government troops had been killed. Hundreds of ethnic rebels fled clashes in northeastern Myanmar, surrendering their weapons and uniforms to Chinese border police and crossing to safety after several days of skirmishes with Myanmar government troops. The UN and Chinese officials said up to 30,000 civilian refugees have streamed into China to escape the fighting.
(Reuters, 8/29/09)(AP, 8/30/09)
2009 Aug 29, Portugal’s government said 2 Syrians previously held at Guantanamo Bay have arrived in Portugal as free men.
(AP, 8/29/09)
2009 Aug 29, Somali witnesses said hundreds of Ethiopian troops have crossed the border and seized control of the Somali town of Belet Weyne from Islamist insurgents.
(AP, 8/29/09)
2009 Aug 29, In Sudan an armed group kidnapped two foreign civilians working for the joint UN-African Union peacekeeping mission in Darfur. The UNAMID workers, a Nigerian man and a Zimbabwean woman, were released on Dec 13.
(AP, 8/29/09)(AFP, 12/13/09)
2009 Aug 30, In Utah a fire, which already destroyed 3 houses and covered over 15 square miles, threatened the rural town of New Harmony.
(SFC, 8/31/09, p.A4)
2009 Aug 30, Major allegations of fraud in Afghanistan's presidential election topped 550, more than doubling the figure investigators reported just two days earlier.
(AP, 8/30/09)
2009 Aug 30, British police estimated that about 220,000 people turned up to dance, drink and eat jerk chicken for the first of two days of the Notting Hill Carnival in west London. The Afro-Caribbean carnival began the 1950s in response to deteriorating race relations, and has been based in Notting Hill since 1964.
(AFP, 8/31/09)
2009 Aug 30, In Cameroon a passenger train carrying about 1,000 people crashed in the northwest of Yaounde. Nine people were killed in the crash and its aftermath.
(AP, 8/30/09)
2009 Aug 30, In eastern China Yu Xiaochun (37) was going home when she was surrounded by five Wal-Mart employees, four men and one woman, all in their 20s, who accused her of shoplifting. They fought and Yu fell to the ground and was taken to a hospital, where she died on Sept. 2. Two employees, a man surnamed Liu and a man surnamed Yu, were detained following her death.
(AP, 9/8/09)
2009 Aug 30, Gabon held free elections for the first time in more than 41 years. 18 candidates vied to replace the late President Omar Bongo, who ruled for more than four decades and ran as the only candidate in many elections. The leading contender was the dead ruler's son, Ali Bongo Ondimba (50). He put up posters of himself every 30 feet (9 meters) on the capital's main highway and crisscrossed the country in a private jet to campaign. On Sep 3 Ali Bongo Ondimba was declared the winner with 41.7% of the vote.
(AP, 8/30/09)(AP, 9/3/09)
2009 Aug 30, Israeli legal authorities indicted former PM Ehud Olmert on corruption charges, the first criminal indictment ever filed against a current or past Israeli prime minister. Olmert was accused of illegally accepting funds from an American backer, double-billing for trips abroad and concealing funds from a government watchdog.
(AP, 8/30/09)
2009 Aug 30, Japan's ruling party conceded a crushing defeat as voters were poised to hand the opposition a landslide victory in nationwide elections, driven by economic anxiety and a powerful desire for change. The left-of-center Democratic Party of Japan, under Yukio Hatoyama (62), won 308 of the 480 seats in the lower house of parliament, ousting the Liberal Democrats, who have governed Japan for all but 11 months since 1955.
(AP, 8/30/09)(Econ, 9/5/09, p.29)
2009 Aug 30, Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi and Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi laid the foundation stone for an ambitious highway stretching along the entire Libyan coast.
(AFP, 8/30/09)
2009 Aug 30, The Myanmar junta ended a news blackout about clashes with ethnic rebels near the China border, saying three days of fighting killed 26 government forces and at least eight rebels.
(AP, 8/30/09)
2009 Aug 30, In Pakistan a suicide bomber killed 17 police recruits in the Swat Valley in the deadliest attack since the army regained control over the northwestern valley from the Taliban. After the blast, security forces pursuing Taliban suspects killed 18 militants in a gunbattle just outside Mingora.
(AP, 8/30/09)(AP, 8/31/09)
2009 Aug 30, In Zimbabwe Godknows Dzoro Mtshakazi, a member of PM Morgan Tsvangirai's party, was killed by soldiers in Shurugwi for playing a song praising the premier.
(AFP, 9/8/09)
2009 Aug 31, In southern California fashion designer Anand Jon Alexander was sentenced to 59 years to life in prison for sexually assaulting aspiring models he lured to Los Angeles.
(AP, 9/1/09)
2009 Aug 31, In southern California a massive fire in the Angeles National Forest nearly doubled in size overnight, threatening 12,000 homes in a 20-mile-long swath of flame and smoke and surging toward a mountaintop broadcasting complex. 2 firefighters died a day earlier when their vehicle rolled down a mountainside amid the flames.
(AP, 8/31/09)(SFC, 8/31/09, p.A4)
2009 Aug 31, Florida’s Gov. Crist signed a 20-year gambling pact with the Seminole Indian tribe, which agreed to pay Florida $12.5 million a month for 30 months for running, currently illegal, slot machines and blackjack games.
(Econ, 9/5/09, p.40)
2009 Aug 31, Deere & Co., the world's largest agricultural-equipment maker, said its board of directors has approved a plan to establish a new manufacturing and parts center in Russia.
(AP, 8/31/09)
2009 Aug 31, The Walt Disney Co. said it is buying Marvel Entertainment Inc. for $4 billion in cash and stock, bringing such characters as Iron Man and Spider-Man into the family of Mickey Mouse and WALL-E.
(AP, 8/31/09)
2009 Aug 31, In Afghanistan 2 bombings killed two US service members, the last day of the deadliest month of the war for US forces.
(AP, 8/31/09)
2009 Aug 31, In China a demonstration occurred when angry villagers from Fujian province's Fengwei town confronted 2,000 riot police over a wastewater treatment plant that had fouled local air and water. At least 10 people were injured when the demonstrations turned violent and riot police fired warning shots.
(AP, 9/1/09)
2009 Aug 31, Egyptian police found the entrances to four tunnels and two tons of explosives hidden near the border with Gaza. A day earlier they had thwarted an attempt to smuggle 500 kg (1,100 lb) of explosives into Gaza.
(AP, 9/1/09)
2009 Aug 31, The European Commission said an EU-wide transition of power-draining light bulbs to more energy efficient ones will start Aug 1. The new rules follow an agreement reached by the 27 EU governments last year to phase out the traditional incandescent light bulb over three years starting this year to help European countries lower greenhouse gas emissions.
(AP, 8/31/09)
2009 Aug 31, A Georgian court sentenced a Turkish cargo ship captain to 24 years in prison for smuggling and border violations.
(AP, 9/3/09)
2009 Aug 31, A Guatemalan court convicted and sentenced a former paramilitary to 150 years in prison for the forced disappearance of six people who were abducted and presumably killed during the country's civil war. The sentence against Felipe Cusanero represents 25 years for each victim who disappeared between 1982 and 1984 from the village of Choatalum.
(AP, 9/2/09)
2009 Aug 31, Muhsin Mohammed Muhsin (11) was kidnapped around noon on his way home from a neighbor's funeral in Baghdad's eastern Shiite district of Sadr City. Kidnappers demanded $100,000, but the father of six said he only had $10,000. 3 days later police found the boy dumped in the garbage with his head and hands chopped off. His body showed burns and marks of torture.
(AP, 9/22/09)
2009 Aug 31, African leaders gathered in Libya for a special summit to discuss the continent's trouble spots, on the eve of celebrations to mark 40 years of Moamer Kadhafi's rule.
(AFP, 8/31/09)
2009 Aug 31, Mexican authorities said they have arrested four men accused of killing at least 211 people for the Juarez cartel. The men allegedly belong to La Linea, a gang of hit men for the Juarez cartel. One of the men alone was accused of killing 97 people and another 87.
(AP, 8/31/09)
2009 Aug 31, Thousands of Myanmar refugees headed home from China as fighting between government troops and a rebel militia that left more than 30 people dead appeared to be over.
(AP, 8/31/09)
2009 Aug 31, Nepal's PM Madhav Kumar Nepal opened the first climate change conference of Himalayan nations with a warning about the dangers of melting glaciers, floods and violent storms for the region.
(AFP, 8/31/09)
2009 Aug 31, The Nigerian anti-graft agency filed charges against 16 bank chiefs arrested for incurring billions of dollars in bad loans for five ailing banks.
(AFP, 8/31/09)
2009 Aug 31, The Pakistani army said it killed at least 45 Taliban militants over the last 24 hours in scattered gunbattles across the northwestern Swat Valley.
(AP, 8/31/09)
2009 Aug 31, In Sri Lanka reporter J.S. Tissainayagam, singled out by President Barack Obama as an example of persecuted journalists around the globe, was sentenced to 20 years in prison on charges of violating the country's harsh anti-terror law. He was arrested in March, 2008, and indicted five months later under the anti-terror law.
(AP, 8/31/09)
2009 Aug 31, Turkmenistan President Gurbanguli Berdymukhamedov said a base will be built at the Caspian Sea port city of Turkmenbashi to help "effectively fight smugglers, terrorists and any other forces." Turkmenistan is locked in a dispute with Azerbaijan, on the opposite shore, over several oil and gas fields.
(AP, 8/31/09)
2009 Aug, In Georgia Kristi Cornwell (38), a former probation officer, disappeared in Blairsville. Her bones were found on Jan 1, 2011. Scott Carringer, the primary suspect in her disappearance, killed himself in the spring of 2010 during a standoff with Atlanta police.
(SFC, 1/4/11, p.A5)
2009 Aug, Pennsylvania Central Bucks East High School English teacher Natalie Munroe started a blog for friends and family in suburban Philadelphia. Munroe blogged about 85 times and only about 15 to 20 of the posts involved her being a teacher. In 2011 she was suspended for the profanity-laced blog in which she called her students "disengaged, lazy whiners," and daring to ask: “Why are today's students unmotivated, and what's wrong with calling them out?"
(AP, 2/16/11)
2009 Aug, In China the Canton Tower was topped out in Guangzhou. At 1,969 feet it was the world’s tallest tower. It opened on Sep 30, 2010.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canton_Tower)
2009 Aug, In China a new micro-blogging service (Sina Weibo), similar to Twitter, began operating. Property mogul Pan Shiyi, co-founder of SOHO China, was signed on for one of the first 20 accounts.
(Econ, 10/30/10, p.42)(Econ, 4/6/13, SR p.7)
2009 Aug, Colombia’s Supreme Court suspended further extraditions of paramilitary leaders arguing that the gravity of the drug charges they face in the US pales in comparison with the mass murders and other enormities that they are accused of in Colombia.
(Econ, 10/31/09, p.46)
2009 Aug, Aliaksandr Barankov (27) arrived in Ecuador after fleeing fraud and extortion charges in Belarus. He called the charges bogus, retribution for his having exposed a petroleum-smuggling ring involving senior officials of President Lukashenko's government, including relatives of the leader.
(AP, 8/20/12)
2009 Aug, In Fiji Laisenia Qarase and Mahendra Chaudhry, rivals to military leader Commodore Bainimarama, joined forces against him.
(Econ, 11/14/09, p.53)
2009 Aug, Jamaica’s government received an extradition request for Christopher "Dudus" Coke (40). By late October it had only responded with requests for more information about the gun and drug trafficking charges against the reputed gang leader. Coke, the alleged leader of the "Shower Posse" gang, is charged in the US Southern District of New York with conspiracy to distribute cocaine and marijuana and conspiracy to illegally traffic in firearms.
(AP, 10/29/09)
2009 Aug, In Mexico the director of immigrant affairs in the southern border city of Tapachula was found in a tub of cement, months after he was kidnapped.
(Econ, 9/26/09, p.48)
2009 Aug, In South Africa construction began on the Northern Cape of the MeerKAT Precursor Array (also known as KAT-7). The 7-dish array was a precursor for MeerKAT which will consist of 64 dishes of 13.5 meters in diameter, the most powerful in the southern hemisphere.
(Econ, 11/5/11, p.96)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MeerKAT)
2009 Sep 1, A top State Department official said the US has released $214 million of an aid package to help Mexico fight drug trafficking, including funds for five helicopters for the military to be delivered by year's end.
(AP, 9/2/09)
2009 Sep 1, In San Francisco charges were filed against 5 workers of the Public Utilities Commission and 2 workers at city approved vendors in a scam that bilked the city of over $200,000 in goods from 2003-2007. Donnie Alan Thomas and Miles Bonner, line workers making over $95,000 a year, masterminded the scam. In 2011 Thomas pleaded guilty to 4 felony charges. Hatim Mansori (11) was stabbed on his first MUNI ride by himself. No footage of his assailant was captured. Mansori suffered life-threatening wounds, but was recovering.
(SFC, 9/2/09, p.D2)(SSFC, 11/15/09, p.A13)(SFC, 9/20/11, p.C2)
2009 Sep 1, In Southern California the Station wildfire continued to rage with 53 homes up in smoke, thousands more threatened and new rounds of evacuations as towering flames crackled close to foothill neighborhoods just 15 miles north of downtown Los Angeles. On Sep 3 investigators said the fire was an act of arson. On Oct 17 the US Forest Service said the 250-square-mile Station fire was 100% contained, 52 days after it began.
(AP, 9/1/09)(SFC, 9/4/09, p.A7)(SFC, 10/20/09, p.A5)
2009 Sep 1, Idaho hunters began stalking gray wolves, following their removal from the federal endangered species a few months earlier. The quota for this season was 220. The quota in Montana was set at 75.
(SFC, 9/2/09, p.A8)
2009 Sep 1, In southern Afghanistan an American service member died of wounds suffered in a bombing the day before.
(AP, 9/1/09)
2009 Sep 1, In the Bahamas an amended fisheries laws took effect to give full protection to all sea turtles found in the Atlantic archipelago's waters by banning the harvest, possession, purchase and sale of the endangered reptiles, including their eggs.
(AP, 8/30/09)
2009 Sep 1, A Chilean judge ordered the arrests of 129 former security officers on charges tied to the disappearance of leftists and the slaying of the communist party leadership during the Pinochet dictatorship.
(AP, 9/1/09)
2009 Sep 1, The 53-nation Commonwealth says it has suspended Fiji automatically after it failed to respond to a demand to begin restoring democracy to the island nation.
(AP, 9/1/09)
2009 Sep 1, Ammar al-Hakim (38), the son of the late leader of Iraq's largest Shiite political party, acknowledged setbacks and reached out to political rivals as he formally replaced his father at the helm of the Iranian-backed Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council. Two American soldiers were killed in a vehicle accident in northern Iraq.
(AP, 9/1/09)(AP, 9/3/09)
2009 Sep 1, In Japan dolphin hunting season opened in Taijii. Over the next 6 months fishermen were expected to catch about 2,300 of Japan’s annual quota of 20,000 dolphins, to be sold for meat and to aquariums.
(SSFC, 9/20/09, p.A20)
2009 Sep 1, Malaysian police arrested Alain Robert (47), a French climber nicknamed "Spiderman," after he scaled the iconic 88-story Petronas Twin Towers.
(AP, 9/1/09)
2009 Sep 1, Pakistani government forces destroyed four militant bases and killed 40 insurgents of Lashkar-e-Islam in a new offensive near the Khyber Pass, the main route for supplies to US and NATO troops in Afghanistan. 43 militants were arrested.
(AP, 9/1/09)
2009 Sep 1, Mohammed Nayef (14) one of three Palestinians who hurled Molotov cocktails at a guard post near a Jewish settlement in the West Bank, died of gunshot shots from Israeli troops inflicted the previous evening. The Hamas militant group said two of its fighters have been killed in the Gaza Strip.
(AP, 9/1/09)
2009 Sep 1, In Slovakia a new language law was scheduled to come into force to promote the use of Slovak in public. Hungarian speakers, who numbered about a fifth of the population, viewed this as a direct attack on their right to speak their mother-tongue.
(Econ, 8/1/09, p.47)
2009 Sep 1, South Africa’s defense ministry said it has issued around 2,000 letters of dismissal to soldiers who last week staged an illegal march and tried to storm the seat of government.
(AFP, 9/1/09)
2009 Sep 1, In Taiwan the wife and adult children of Taiwan's former Pres. Chen Shui-bian were convicted of perjury and sentenced to prison for lying to investigators in a high-profile corruption case against the ex-leader. Chen (58) was accused of embezzling $3.15 million during his 2000-2008 presidency from a special presidential fund, receiving bribes worth at least $9 million in connection with a government land deal, and laundering some of the money through Swiss bank accounts.
(AP, 9/2/09)
2009 Sep 1, Ukrainian PM Yulia Tymoshenko said Russia and Ukraine have resolved a long standing dispute over natural gas supplies, after meeting her Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin at a resort on the Baltic coast in northern Poland.
(Reuters, 9/1/09)
2009 Sep 2, US federal prosecutors hit Pfizer Inc. with a record-breaking $2.3 billion in fines for illegal drug promotions surrounding the marketing of 13 drugs.
(SFC, 9/3/09, p.C1)
2009 Sep 2, BP announced the discovery of oil at its new Tiber Prospect oil reserve in the Gulf of Mexico. It later estimated the reserve held between 4 and 6 billion barrels of oil. Its Deepwater Horizon rig had drilled down 7 miles to reach the oil.
(http://tinyurl.com/mhnujo)(SSFC, 9/6/09, p.E4)
2009 Sep 2, A Taliban suicide bomber killed Abdullah Laghmani, Afghanistan's deputy chief of intelligence, during a visit to a mosque in Laghman province. The blast east of Kabul also killed the executive director of Laghman's governor's office, the head of Laghman's provincial council, two of Laghmani's body guards, and 18 civilians. An intelligence officer kidnapped a few days ago by Taliban militants in Kunduz province was found hanging from a tree on the outskirts of Baghlan city. 4 militants were killed overnight when a roadside bomb they were planting detonated. On Dec 20 Abdul Rahman, a Taliban military commander in Laghman, and three members of his insurgent network were arrested for the murder of Laghmani.
(AP, 9/2/09)(AP, 12/29/09)
2009 Sep 2, In central Afghanistan American troops stormed through a hospital run by a Swedish charity in Wardak province, breaking down doors and tying up staff in a search for militants. The charity's country director later said this went against an agreement between NATO forces and charities working in the area, and was a clear violation of internationally recognized rules and principles.
(AP, 9/7/09)
2009 Sep 2, In Algeria Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez called for closer economic ties with Algeria, notably in the energy sector, during a two-day visit here.
(AFP, 9/3/09)
2009 Sep 2, In Burkina Faso 5 people were killed and 150,000 left homeless as heavy rainfall triggered flooding across West Africa.
(Reuters, 9/2/09)
2009 Sep 2, In Chile Judge Manuel Valderrama said the accounts of General Pinochet and his family reached a value of $25,978,602.79 shortly before his death in December 2006. The investigating judge said that more than $20 million of the funds have no justifiable origin.
(AP, 9/2/09)
2009 Sep 2, In eastern China a chemical explosion near Linyi city in Shandong province killed 18 people and injured 10 others.
(AP, 9/2/09)
2009 Sep 2, The IMF said China is buying the equivalent of $50 billion of the International Monetary Fund's first bond sale in a move that might boost Beijing's standing in the Fund and help its quiet campaign to expand the reach of its tightly controlled currency. Brazil, Russia and India have also agreed to participate in the $80 billion issue.
(www.wsoctv.com/money/20698248/detail.html)(Econ, 9/19/09, p.83)
2009 Sep 2, In El Salvador Christian Poveda (52), a French filmmaker who recently made a documentary about the lives of members of El Salvador's street gangs, was found shot dead in Tonacatepeque, a rural region north of San Salvador. Earlier this year, Poveda, made the documentary "La Vida Loca," which follows the lives of members La 18 street gang and received widespread attention in El Salvador. 4 Mara 18 members and a policeman were soon detained. On Dec 16 police arrested 10 more members of the Mara 18 gang. 9 other gang members already in prison have also been charged in the case. On Mar 9, 2011 a court sentenced 10 gang members and a police officer to prison terms ranging from four to 30 years. 20 additional defendants were acquitted, but 17 of them were serving time for other crimes.
(AP, 9/3/09)(AP, 12/17/09)(AP, 3/10/11)
2009 Sep 2, In Germany 6 countries met for talks to try to address concerns about Iran's nuclear program. The German government said it has received no official word yet on new proposals that Tehran is pledging to make.
(AP, 9/2/09)
2009 Sep 2, In Greece a van bomb exploded outside the Athens Stock Exchange, injuring a woman and causing extensive damage to the building in what police said was a coordinated double bombing that also targeted a government building in the northern city of Thessaloniki.
(AP, 9/2/09)
2009 Sep 2, Authorities in Guinea banned live political chat shows, the latest sign of political unease after violent demonstrations and accusations of phone censorship deepened a row over delayed elections. The military junta that has run the world's top bauxite producer since a December 2008 coup is facing mounting opposition and criticism after it delayed until 2010 elections which the military leader has not ruled out standing in.
(Reuters, 9/3/09)
2009 Sep 2, In India a helicopter carrying Y.S.R. Reddy (60), a powerful politician from southern Andhra Pradesh state, disappeared in heavy rains as it flew over a forested region largely controlled by Maoist rebels. Wreckage and the bodies of all 5 aboard were found the next day.
(AP, 9/2/09)(AP, 9/3/09)
2009 Sep 2, A powerful 7.0 earthquake rattled southern Indonesia, killing at least 64 people crushed by falling rock or collapsed buildings and sending thousands fleeing outdoors for safety in the middle of the work day. More than 10,000 buildings were severely damaged.
(AP, 9/2/09)(AP, 9/4/09)
2009 Sep 2, Liberia's Defense Minister Brownie Samukai said police had arrested six Pakistani men earlier in the week who tried to enter Liberia on fake US passports with possible intent to carry out terrorism.
(AP, 9/3/09)
2009 Sep 2, In Mexico gunmen broke into a drug rehabilitation center in Ciudad Juarez, lined people against a wall and shot 18 dead. The brazen attack followed the killing of Jose Manuel Revuelta, the No. 2 security official in Michoacan, President Felipe Calderon's home state. 2 bodyguards and a truck driver were also killed in the crossfire. The federal Attorney General's Office announced the arrest of its two top officials in Quintana Roo, a state on the Yucatan Peninsula, for allegedly protecting the Gulf and the Beltran Levya drug cartels. Chihuahua state authorities said they were investigating reports that rehabilitation centers have turned into hideouts for drug smugglers being sought by police and hit men from rival gangs.
(AP, 9/3/09)(AP, 9/4/09)
2009 Sep 2, Dutch prosecutors said they will charge an Arab cultural group under hate speech laws for publishing a cartoon that suggests the death of 6 million Jews during World War II is a fabrication.
(AP, 9/2/09)
2009 Sep 2, In Pakistan government forces killed three suspected militants, captured 35 others and destroyed six of their bases on the second day of its new offensive near Pakistan's famed Khyber Pass. Suspected militants opened fire on a vehicle carrying the religious affairs minister, wounding him and killing his driver in a brazen attack in the heart of Islamabad. Hamid Saeed Kazmi had been critical of Muslim extremists blamed for scores of attacks in Pakistan over the last 2½ years.
(AP, 9/2/09)
2009 Sep 2, In Peru drug-funded Shining Path rebels shot down an air force helicopter in the coca-growing highlands of Junin province, killing three troops and wounding five. The military said three rebels were arrested and another four killed.
(AP, 9/3/09)
2009 Sep 2, In Thailand a number of drive-by shootings in the provinces of Narathiwat, Pattani and Yala left eight dead, including a Muslim teacher and his son (13). Security forces raided a rubber plantation in Yala and a house in Narathiwat, sparking separate gunbattles in which two suspected insurgents were killed.
(AP, 9/3/09)
2009 Sep 2, Vietnamese authorities arrested blogger Nguyen Ngoc Nhu Quynh (30), who writes under the pen name Me Nam, at her home in Nha Trang. Quynh's arrest was the latest in a series of police moves against writers who criticized government policies toward China. The government tightened its rules for bloggers earlier this year, saying they must restrict their writings to personal matters. Quynh was released on Sep 12.
(AP, 9/4/09)(AP, 9/12/09)
2009 Sep 3, Washington cut off millions of dollars in aid to Honduras. Interim Pres. Roberto Micheletti vowed that ousted Pres. Zelaya would not return to power despite increasing international pressure.
(AP, 9/4/09)
2009 Sep 3, The San Francisco Bay Bridge was completely shut down at 8pm to replace a 300-foot section of the bridge as part of the project to replace the entire eastern span by 2013. The bridge was expected to reopen on Sep 8. The original estimated cost of $132 million was now projected at $527.6 million.
(SSFC, 8/30/09, p.A14)(SFC, 9/3/09, p.A1)
2009 Sep 3, The Ford Motor Co. settled a lawsuit filed by residents of a northern New Jersey town over toxic waste dumped there in the 1960s and '70s. Thousands of tons of paint sludge and other toxic material from Ford's old Mahwah factory were dumped in Ringwood, and residents sued in 2006 claiming that the waste led to illnesses ranging from skin rashes to cancer, and threatened the Wanaque Reservoir. The Record of Bergen County reported that residents of Ringwood will receive about $10 million.
(AP, 9/4/09)
2009 Sep 3, In the US Virgin Islands two ticket agent contractors who worked for Delta Airlines and an airport employee were arrested after being indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of conspiracy to smuggle illegal immigrants into the US.
(AP, 9/5/09)
2009 Sep 3, Sergio Saucedo (30), a drug trafficker, was taken from his home in Horizon City, outside of El Paso, Texas. He was murdered and mutilated in Ciudad Juarez in retaliation for the loss of 700 pounds (315 kilos) of marijuana seized by border patrol agents. His body was found on Sep 8. On April 1, 2011, the West Texas Federal Court jury found Cesar Obregon-Reyes and Rafael Vega guilty of abducting Sergio Saucedo from his home.
(AP, 3/20/10)(http://tinyurl.com/m7lpok)(AP, 4/2/11)
2009 Sep 3, SpaceX signed a contract worth $50 million with ORBCOMM, a satellite communications firm, to launch 18 satellites.
(Econ, 9/12/09, p.87)
2009 Sep 3, The US Embassy in Afghanistan said it has banned alcohol and assigned American personnel to watch over the embassy's security guards following allegations of lewd behavior and sexual misconduct at their living quarters.
(AP, 9/3/09)
2009 Sep 3, In Australia millionaire Michael McGurk (45), a Scottish-born property developer, was gunned down in front of his son (10) outside their exclusive Sydney home. In 2007 McGurk had unsuccessfully tried to sue the Sultan of Brunei over an alleged eight million US dollar agreement to buy a 400-year-old gold-lined miniature Koran.
(AFP, 9/4/09)
2009 Sep 3, Hundreds of Chinese protested deteriorating public safety after a series of mysterious syringe attacks further unnerved residents in the western Chinese city of Urumqi where ethnic rioting in July killed nearly 200 people.
(AP, 9/3/09)
2009 Sep 3, EU regulators launched an antitrust probe into US software maker Oracle Corp.'s takeover of Sun Microsystems Inc., saying they wanted to make sure Oracle was committed to developing Sun's rival open-source database software MySQL.
(AP, 9/3/09)
2009 Sep 3, The government of Gabon declared the eldest son of the late dictator Omar Bongo the winner of weekend presidential elections, triggering a rampage in a coastal city and allegations of fraud. Interior Minister Jean-Francois Ndongou said Ali Bongo, the country's defense minister who campaigned from a private jet and plastered the capital with billboards, won with 41.7% of the vote. The top two opposition leaders — Andre Mba Obame and Pierre Mamboundou — were nearly tied, receiving 25.8% and 25.2% of the vote respectively.
(AP, 9/3/09)
2009 Sep 3, In India heavy rain triggered a landslide in Sakinaka, a densely populated suburban Mumbai slum killing at least 12 people and injuring 25 others. Many others remained trapped under piles of mud and stones.
(AP, 9/4/09)
2009 Sep 3, In Iraq a car bomb apparently targeting Osama al-Tikriti, the leader of Iraq's largest Sunni political party (the Iraqi Islamic Party), wounded four people in Baqouba. The politician escaped unharmed. Police arrested Adnan al-Obeidi, the deputy transport minister, after he was allegedly filmed taking a bribe in a sting operation. Police had filmed al-Obeidi accepting a $100,000 bribe from a company doing work at the Baghdad airport.
(AP, 9/3/09)
2009 Sep 3, In Iraq Ahmed Hashim Abed, suspected of masterminding the March 31, 2004, attack on Blackwater guards, was captured in a covert operation by US Navy SEALs. Abed later alleged that he was beaten by US Navy SEALs. In 2010 two of the 3 accused Navy SEALs were acquitted. Petty Officer 2nd Class Matthew McCabe, of Perrysburg, Ohio, the SEAL charged with assaulting Abed, was scheduled to be court-martialed May 3, 2010, in Virginia.
(AP, 4/22/10)(http://tinyurl.com/yd5smcb)(AP, 4/23/10)
2009 Sep 3, Japan’s Dainippon Sumitomo Pharma Co. said it is acquiring US drug maker Sepracor Inc., which makes insomnia drug Lunesta, for about $2.6 billion in an effort to expand in the US market.
(AP, 9/3/09)
2009 Sep 3, In Kazakhstan a court convicted Yevgenii Zhovtis of vehicular manslaughter and sentenced him to 4 years in prison. Zhovtis, Kazakhstan’s best known human rights activists, claimed he had been blinded by the lights of an oncoming car when he hit a hit and killed a pedestrian on a country road late at night.
(Econ, 9/12/09, p.46)
2009 Sep 3, Myanmar-born Kyaw Zaw Lwin, an American citizen also known as Nyi Nyi Aung, was arrested when he arrived at Yangon airport. Lwin started a hunger strike on Dec. 4 to protest conditions of political prisoners in Myanmar. He ended his hunger strike Dec. 15 and was subsequently placed in solitary confinement. On Jan 1, 2010, Lwin was charged for forgery and violation of the foreign currency act. Lwin (40) was released on March 18, 2010.
(AP, 12/29/09)(AP, 1/1/10)(AFP, 3/18/10)
2009 Sep 3, Russian’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko warned Georgia that attempts to block ships from reaching a Moscow-aligned separatist region of Georgia could end in military intervention.
(AP, 9/3/09)
2009 Sep 3, Rwanda's state radio reported that Alfred Mukezamfura, former speaker of parliament, was sentenced in absentia to life in prison for inciting hatred during the 1994 genocide in which some 800,000 people died. Mukezamfura fled the country in March to Belgium where he has sought asylum.
(AFP, 9/3/09)
2009 Sep 3, In central Serbia a series of explosions at an underground ammunition factory in Uzice killed at least seven people and injured 15.
(AP, 9/4/09)
2009 Sep 3, In Thailand a bomb hidden in a motorcycle parked outside a row of open-air shops and restaurants in Pattani city exploded, killing a Buddhist man and wounding 24 others.
(AP, 9/3/09)
2009 Sep 3, A water rights battle over the historic Tigris and Euphrates rivers simmered, as Iraq and Syria appealed for increased water flows to cope with severe drought but Turkey said it was already too overstretched.
(AP, 9/3/09)
2009 Sep 4, A US federal appeals court has ruled that former Attorney General John Ashcroft can be sued by people who claim they were wrongfully detained as material witnesses after 9/11, and called the government practice "repugnant to the Constitution." The ruling allows Abdullah al-Kidd, a US citizen, to proceed with a lawsuit that claims his constitutional rights were violated when he was detained in 2003 as a material witness in a federal terrorism case.
(AP, 9/5/09)
2009 Sep 4, US regulators closed the First Bank of Kansas in Missouri, pushing to 85 the number of US banks that have failed this year.
(SFC, 9/5/09, p.D1)
2009 Sep 4, The US Embassy in Afghanistan says it has fired eight security guards following allegations of lewd behavior and sexual misconduct at their living quarters. Two other guards resigned and also left. All of them appeared in photographs that depicted guards and supervisors in various stages of nudity at parties flowing with alcohol. The management team of the private contractor that provided the guards was also to being replaced immediately.
(AP, 9/4/09)
2009 Sep 4, In northern Afghanistan a US jet blasted two fuel tankers hijacked by the Taliban in Kunduz province, setting off a huge fireball that killed dozens of civilians who had rushed to the scene to collect fuel. As many as 142 civilians died in the German-ordered NATO airstrike. The strike was ordered by the commander of the German base in Kunduz, Georg Klein, who feared insurgents could use the trucks to carry out attacks. A French soldier was killed and nine others injured when their vehicles were hit by a bomb near Bagram Air Base north of Kabul. A Polish soldier was killed in the east. A French marine was killed in an IED attack.
(AP, 9/4/09)(AFP, 9/5/09)(AP, 9/17/09)(AP, 10/8/09)(Econ, 1/2/10, p.37)(AP, 9/4/19)
2009 Sep 4, Arab League chief Amr Moussa, speaking in Italy, said any Israeli offer for a settlement freeze that doesn't include east Jerusalem is unacceptable and "will suspend the peace process." Aides of Israel’s PM said Benjamin Netanyahu will approve hundreds of new housing units in West Bank settlements before slowing settlement construction, in an apparent snub of Washington's public demand for a total settlement freeze.
(AP, 9/4/09)
2009 Sep 4, The Belgian government said it has accepted a US request to take in one detainee from U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay.
(AP, 9/4/09)
2009 Sep 4, In China security forces in the far-west city of Urumqi used tear gas to break up fresh protests, as thousands of Han Chinese demanded better security after a reported spate of attacks with syringes.
(Reuters, 9/4/09)
2009 Sep 4, In Ingushetia a roadside bomb blast ripped through a police car, killing three officers and wounding two others. Ingush authorities shot dead 3 insurgents. One man, identified as Rustam Dzortov, was a suspected ringleader of rebel operations in Ingushetia and had organized the suicide bombing of Ingush President Yunus Bek Yevkurov's motorcade earlier this year. The two others may have been planning a terrorist act in Moscow. In neighboring Chechnya two suspected insurgents were killed in a similar incident. The suspected insurgents were found to have explosives strapped to them, hand grenades, and train tickets to Moscow.
(AP, 9/4/09)(AP, 9/5/09)
2009 Sep 4, Mexican federal police detained Armando Medina (49), a small-town mayor of Mugica, Michoacan state, on suspicion of aiding drug traffickers. This is the same state where eight other city chiefs have been arrested since May on similar charges. In the northern state of Durango, two gunmen were killed in a shootout with federal police in the city of Gomez Palacio. The federal government auctioned off property seized from drug traffickers, smugglers, money launderers and tax evaders, including a DC-9 jet that was used to transport 5.5 metric tons of cocaine in 2006. The agency did not disclose the identity of winning bidders. Mexican soldiers, acting on a tip about armed men, detained Jose Rodolfo Escajeda in Nuevo Casas Grandes, in northern Chihuahua state. The suspected drug gang leader was linked to a 2006 border incursion by armed traffickers into Texas and the killing of an anti-crime activist in July. Five gunmen and a bystander were killed in a shootout at a lake that began when assailants opened fire on an army patrol on the outskirts of the northern city of Monterrey. A Ciudad Juarez police officer was shot to death outside his home.
(AP, 9/5/09)(AP, 9/6/09)
2009 Sep 4, Pakistan said paramilitary troops have killed five suspected militants and arrested 24 in an ongoing operation in the northwestern Khyber tribal region.
(AP, 9/4/09)
2009 Sep 4, In southern Sudan heavily armed fighters attacked an ethnic Dinka settlement in Bony-Thiang, north of the state capital Malakal, killing 20 people. Angry Dinka groups then launched a retaliatory raid on the nearby Shilluk village of Bon, killing five people including a woman and two children.
(AFP, 9/5/09)
2009 Sep 4, In southern Thailand bomb believed to have been planted by Islamic insurgents exploded outside a restaurant where security forces were eating breakfast, killing a policeman and wounding 12 other people.
(AP, 9/4/09)
2009 Sep 4, Thousands of opponents of Hugo Chavez marched against the Venezuelan president across Latin America, accusing him of everything from authoritarianism to international meddling. The protests, coordinated through Twitter and Facebook, drew more than 5,000 people in Bogota, and thousands more in the capitals of Venezuela and Honduras. Smaller demonstrations were held in other Latin American capitals, as well as New York and Madrid.
(AP, 9/5/09)
2009 Sep 5, Crews working on a seismic retrofit of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge found what authorities called a "significant crack" in the eastern span that could keep the California landmark closed beyond a planned holiday weekend shutdown.
(AP, 9/6/09)
2009 Sep 5, In Louisiana Dennis Carter Sr. (50) shot his estranged wife, son and 2-year-old grandson to death and critically wounded his pregnant daughter-in-law at their rural home, then killed himself as police tried to pull over his car 20 minutes later.
(AP, 9/6/09)
2009 Sep 5, A small airplane crashed into a Tulsa, Okla., park killing all 5 people on board.
(SSFC, 9/6/09, p.A7)
2009 Sep 5, Milwaukee police arrested Walter Ellis (49) after DNA evidence linked him to the slaying of 9 women, including 8 suspected prostitutes, dating back to 1986. On Feb 18, 2011, Ellis was convicted in the deaths of 7 women and faced a mandatory sentence of life in prison.
(SFC, 9/8/09, p.A6)(SFC, 2/19/11, p.A6)
2009 Sep 5, In Afghanistan a US soldier serving in the NATO-led coalition died after coming under fire in the east of the country. Gunmen snatched New York Times reporter Stephen Farrell, who has dual British-Irish nationality, and his interpreter Sultan Munadi, while they were reporting on the aftermath of a NATO air strike on fuel tankers that killed scores of people. On Sep 9 Farrell was freed in a raid that killed a British soldier as well as Afghan translator Sultan Munadi (34).
(AFP, 9/5/09)(AFP, 9/9/09)
2009 Sep 5, The Group of 20 rich and developing countries held talks in London. They were expected to commit to further efforts to boost growth, despite fledging signs of an economic recovery. Top finance officials agreed to curb hefty bankers’ bonuses, but the US and Britain shied away from imposing a cap.
(AP, 9/5/09)(SSFC, 9/6/09, p.A5)
2009 Sep 5, In Britain racially charged violence erupted between a group protesting Islamic extremism and counter-demonstrators in the central city of Birmingham. Authorities arrested 90 people. The clashes erupted when a rally by the English Defense League ran into counter-demonstrators including anti-fascists and youths of South Asian descent.
(AP, 9/6/09)
2009 Sep 5, Keith Waterhouse (80) a prolific British author, journalist and playwright, died. Waterhouse was best known for the 1959 novel Billy Liar -- the story of a day-dreamer who plans his escape from a depressing job as an undertaker. It was made into a film in 1963.
(AFP, 9/5/09)
2009 Sep 5, The sightseeing boat Ilinden, carrying 55 Bulgarian tourists, sank in Lake Ohrid on Macedonia's western border, and 15 people drowned.
(AP, 9/5/09)(AFP, 9/6/09)
2009 Sep 5, Chinese leaders removed the Communist Party chief of the restive western city of Urumqi, trying to appease public anger following sometimes violent protests this week that the government worries could re-ignite deadly ethnic rioting. The removal of Li Zhi came amid reports of police again dispersing crowds outside Urumqi's government offices using tear gas, and more unconfirmed reports of needle attacks.
(Reuters, 9/5/09)
2009 Sep 5, In Colombia a grenade exploded in a crowd celebrating a national soccer team win in Medellin, killing one person and wounding at least 30. Police thought a reveler may have accidentally detonated the grenade by mishandling it.
(AP, 9/6/09)
2009 Sep 5, In Iraq hundreds of Sunni Arabs opposed to the presence of Kurdish troops in disputed areas of northern Iraq demonstrated against a plan to deploy a mixed force of American, Kurdish and Iraqi soldiers in the area.
(AP, 9/5/09)
2009 Sep 5, In southern Mexico gunmen killed Jose Francisco Fuentes Esperon (43), a state congressional candidate, his wife (38) and two sons (9&13) in their home in Villahermosa in the Gulf coast state of Tabasco. Police later arrested a boy (16) and two young men for allegedly killing Fuentes and his family. Chihuahua state prosecutors reported that a severed human head was found placed on a car hood in the border city of Ciudad Juarez, along with a message relating to drug cartels.
(AP, 9/5/09)(AP, 9/7/09)
2009 Sep 5, Gani Fawehinmi (71) prominent Nigerian lawyer and rights activist died in Lagos after a prolonged battle with cancer. Fawehinmi, holder of Nigeria's highest legal title, the Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), was an author, publisher, philanthropist, social critic, human and civil rights lawyer and politician.
(AFP, 9/5/09)
2009 Sep 5, Pakistan officials said troops killed 43 alleged militants in an operation in the Khyber tribal region while airstrikes left several more dead in the stronghold of the new Taliban chief elsewhere in the northwest. Government fighter jets and helicopter gunships pounded militant hide-outs in three villages of the Orakzai tribal region, the stronghold of new Pakistani Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud. The tortured body of Akhtar Ali (28), operator of an electrical repair shop, was dumped on the doorstep of the family home in Mingora. He had been kidnapped on Sep 1. His death was believed to have resulted from a case of mistaken identity.
(AP, 9/5/09)(Econ, 10/3/09, p.49)
2009 Sep 5, In Somalia at least six civilians were killed and 18 others wounded in clashes that erupted when insurgents attacked government and African Union forces in Mogadishu.
(AFP, 9/6/09)
2009 Sep 5, In Sweden Tesfaldet Tesloy (28), an illegal Eritrean immigrant who has lived in Sweden for six years, appeared on TV to collect a tax-free lottery prize of 1.2 million Swedish crown (101,654 pounds). Sweden's attempts to deport the man have failed due to his country's refusal to take him back, highlighting a common problem for immigration officials.
(Reuters, 9/5/09)
2009 Sep 5, The IMF said Zimbabwe has received about 400 million dollars, as Special Drawing Rights, in support from the International Monetary Fund, part of its broader effort to cushion the blows of the global economic crisis. To convert the SDRs into hard currency, Zimbabwe would have to find another country to buy them. Otherwise the money serves to bolster Harare's meager foreign reserves.
(AFP, 9/5/09)
2009 Sep 5, Milwaukee police arrested Walter Ellis (49) after DNA evidence linked him to the slaying of 9 women, including 8 suspected prostitutes, dating back to 1986.
(SFC, 9/7/09, p.A6)
2009 Sep 6, British PM Gordon Brown said he would support compensation claims against Libya by families of IRA victims who say Tripoli helped to arm the guerrillas.
(Reuters, 9/6/09)
2009 Sep 6, In Ecuador Lt. Col. John Merino, President Rafael Correa's chief of security, died of swine flu. Ecuador has reported 36 confirmed deaths from swine flu as of last week, along with 1,382 infected.
(AP, 9/7/09)
2009 Sep 6, The El Salvador navy said it has found 76 migrants aboard a boat in the Pacific. They included 25 Bangladeshis, 25 Nepalese, 21 Eritreans and five Ecuadoreans. The boat had set sail a week ago from the Ecuadorean port of Manta.
(AP, 9/7/09)
2009 Sep 6, In Hong Kong a man hurled acid at pedestrians in the Mong Kok shopping district, in the neighborhood's fourth acid attack in a year. The attacker (28), arrested nearby, targeted a couple strolling through the district, but also hurt nine others.
(AP, 9/6/09)
2009 Sep 6, In Iran Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez sealed an agreement to export 20,000 barrels per day of gasoline to Iran. The deal would give Tehran a cushion if the West carries out threats of fuel sanctions over Iran's nuclear program. The two countries also agreed to set up a bank together to help finance joint projects.
(AP, 9/7/09)
2009 Sep 6, In Iraq a gunman broke into a house in Mosul, killing a 3-year-old girl and her grandmother before fleeing. Gunmen also attacked checkpoints in the city, killing three policemen. In southeast Baghdad, a car parked near a security checkpoint exploded, killing one person and wounding five civilians.
(AP, 9/6/09)
2009 Sep 6, In Mexico attackers shot four men to death in a motel parking lot in the border city of Ciudad Juarez.
(AP, 9/8/09)
2009 Sep 6, Pakistani military destroyed two training centers and 17 militant homes. 2 people kidnapped by militants were recovered. Troops killed 33 militants during the latest action to pacify the Khyber Pass. Thousands of civilians were reported fleeing the latest military operation in the northwestern Khyber tribal region. 3 policemen were found fatally shot, each by a single bullet to the head, west of Islamabad.
(AP, 9/6/09)(AP, 9/7/09)
2009 Sep 6, In the southern Philippines the Superferry 9, carrying nearly 1,000 passengers, sank leaving at least 9 people dead. After rescue efforts one passenger was left unaccounted.
(AFP, 9/6/09)(AP, 9/7/09)
2009 Sep 6, Somali authorities, who say they were not informed of a hostage exchange plan, stopped a deal to swap three hostages held by Somali pirates with 23 suspected pirates, who had been held in the Seychelles.
(AP, 9/7/09)
2009 Sep 6, Six South Koreans camping and fishing along a river flowing from North Korea were swept away when it suddenly doubled in height, because a new dam in the North released a large amount of water without warning. On Oct 14 North Korea offered a rare apology for unleashing the dam water and promised to alert Seoul to such measures in the future.
(AP, 9/6/09)(AP, 10/14/09)
2009 Sep 7, US snacks company Kraft Foods launched a 10.2 billion pound bid for its British rival Cadbury, with traders expecting the price to run higher as takeover activity returns to the markets. Cadbury immediately rejected the offer.
(AP, 9/7/09)
2009 Sep 7, In Tennessee 3 people were shot to death at a mobile home near Lafayette.
(SFC, 9/8/09, p.A6)
2009 Sep 7, Six American tourists in Antigua were charged with assault and malicious damage after refusing to pay a cab fare on Sep 4, which they thought was excessive and later scuffling with police officers. They were released on $5,000 bail each. Their Carnival Cruise Lines ship left without them. On Oct 3 five New York tourists pleaded guilty to fighting with plainclothes police officers after disputing the $100 cab fare. Prosecutors dropped charges against a sixth tourist.
(AP, 9/8/09)(AP, 10/3/09)
2009 Sep 7, Three British Muslims were convicted of conspiring to kill thousands of civilians by blowing up trans-Atlantic flights in mid-air with liquid explosives disguised as soft drinks. Abdulla Ahmed Ali (28), Assad Sarwar (29), and Tanvir Hussain (28) were found guilty of conspiracy to murder by detonating explosives on aircraft. The men's arrests in August 2006 had led to huge travel chaos. 5 others were also tried. Umar Islam was convicted of conspiracy to murder. The jury failed to reach a verdict on 3 others. Donald Stewart-Whyte was cleared.
(AP, 9/7/09)(Econ, 9/12/09, p.62)
2009 Sep 7, Gabon's main opposition parties demanded authorities conduct a recount of a disputed election the government said was won by the son of the country's long-ruling president.
(AP, 9/7/09)
2009 Sep 7, In Guatemala four prison officials were shot to death in three separate attacks that authorities believed were retaliation for a jail crackdown. Officials over the weekend had seized cell phones and moved inmates to different prisons to break up an extortion ring.
(AP, 9/7/09)
2009 Sep 7, A small Indonesian military plane crashed on Borneo with nine passengers and crew aboard, killing four.
(AP, 9/7/09)
2009 Sep 7, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Iran will neither halt uranium enrichment nor negotiate over its nuclear rights but is ready to sit and talk with world powers over "global challenges."
(AP, 9/7/09)
2009 Sep 7, In western Iraq a suicide car bomber targeted a line of vehicles stopped at a checkpoint near Ramadi, killing eight people and wounding 16. In Baghdad a bomb killed a driver as he approached a military checkpoint in Sadr City district. Two children playing with a hand grenade they found in a stream were killed when it exploded in the northern city of Kirkuk. Abdul-Basit Turki, director general of the Finance Ministry’s auditing department, was charged with wasting public funds. Bombings killed at least 17 people nationwide.
(AP, 9/7/09)(SFC, 9/8/09, p.A4)
2009 Sep 7, Israel officially approved the construction of hundreds of new homes in the West Bank, deepening an already unprecedented rift with the US over Israeli settlement expansion. Israel PM Netanyahu vanished from public view in Israel for most of the day. His office said he had visited a secret security facility. It was later confirmed that he had made a secret trip to Russia, which included a meeting with the Russia’s Pres. Dmitry Medvedev.
(AP, 9/7/09)(AP, 9/20/09)
2009 Sep 7, Yukio Hatoyama, Japan's next prime minister, vowed to slash greenhouse gas emissions by 25% from 1990 levels by 2020.
(AP, 9/7/09)
2009 Sep 7, Mexican President Felipe Calderon accepted the resignation of Attorney General Eduardo Medina-Mora, who was leading the battle against drug cartels, making the biggest shake-up yet in his offensive against organized crime. Calderon said he will send the Senate the nomination of Arturo Chavez, a little known lawyer who has worked as both a state and federal prosecutor, to replace Medina-Mora. In the Pacific port of Lazaro Cardenas, about 150 federal police officers assigned to fight cartels went on strike, saying they have not been paid in two months or received hazard bonuses.
(AP, 9/7/09)(AP, 9/8/09)
2009 Sep 7, Five Pakistani soldiers were killed in a land mine blast in the Taliban bastion of South Waziristan. A suspected US missile strike killed 5 people at Machi Khel village in North Waziristan close to the Afghan border. Al-Qaida operations chief Ilyas Kashmiri, a Pakistani national, was later believed to be among the dead.
(AP, 9/7/09)(SFC, 9/8/09, p.A2)(AP, 9/17/09)
2009 Sep 7, A Sudanese judge convicted Lubna Hussein, a woman journalist, for violating the public indecency law by wearing trousers outdoors and fined her $200, but did not impose a feared flogging penalty. Hussein said she will not pay a penny while still in court custody, wearing the same trousers that had sparked her arrest.
(AP, 9/7/09)
2009 Sep 7, UK-based Global Witness said they had found serious discrepancies in reports of Sudan's oil revenues which could mean Khartoum's government was underpaying its strife torn south by hundreds of millions of dollars.
(Reuters, 9/7/09)
2009 Sep 7, Taiwan's Premier Liu Chao-shiuan resigned amid strong criticism of the government's slow response to the most devastating storm to hit the island in 50 years. Pres. Ma Ying-jeou named Nationalist Party Secretary General Wu Den-yih (61) to replace Liu.
(AP, 9/7/09)
2009 Sep 7, The UN’s Children's Fund reacted furiously to Sri Lanka's decision to expel its spokesman over his allegedly pro-rebel stance in the final stages of the island's ethnic war. James Elder, communications chief for UNICEF in Sri Lanka, was accused by the government of issuing "propaganda" in support of the Tamil Tiger separatists before their defeat at the hands of government forces in May.
(AFP, 9/7/09)
2009 Sep 7, Turkish military police stormed an Istanbul villa to rescue nine captive women whose scantily clad images were posted online after they were recruited for a television reality show. The women had been held captive for about two months. About 14 people had been working on the show for the Istanbul Grup Bilisim Electronic, Trade, Communication and Advertisement company.
(AP, 9/10/09)
2009 Sep 8, Pres. Obama made a speech aired on C-SPAN, addressed to school children encouraging them to study hard and stay in school.
(SFC, 9/9/09, p.A6)
2009 Sep 8, A review committee on NASA, led by Norman Augustine, delivered a summary report saying the agency does not have enough money to return to the moon. The Augustine report also said that NASA should stop traveling to the Int’l. Space Station and to low Earth orbit in general, leaving these to the private sector.
(Econ, 9/12/09, p.87)
2009 Sep 8, Philip Barry (52) of Brooklyn was charged with operating an alleged $40 million Ponzi scheme that stretched for three decades and apparently helped finance a pornography business. He had turned himself in to authorities in August after running the scheme for 31 years. Barry spent a portion of his investors' money on real-estate purchases that he hoped would appreciate. They did not.
(http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2009/09/brooklyns_philip_barry_may_hav.html)
2009 Sep 8, A US District judge in San Francisco sentenced Williams “Boots" Del Biaggio III (41), former co-owner of the San Jose Sharks hockey team, to over 8 years in prison for bilking investors of million of dollars in a series of schemes to help buy a stake in the Nashville Predators professional hockey team and to pay off debts.
(SFC, 9/9/09, p.D3)
2009 Sep 8, The SF Bay Bridge opened as work to fix a crack on the cantilever section of the bridge was fixed ahead of schedule. Cars were allowed to start crossing around 6:30 a.m.
(www.contracostatimes.com/news/ci_13290522?source=rss)
2009 Sep 8, In Connecticut Annie Le (24), a California graduate student at Yale, disappeared after entering a laboratory building. She was due to be married on Sep 13. On Sep 13 police found her body stuffed behind a wall in the high-security laboratory building where she worked. On June 3, 2011, Raymond Clark III was sentenced to 44 years in prison for the murder. In 2016 Yale agreed to pay $3 million to settle a wrongful death lawsuit filed by Le’s family.
(SSFC, 9/13/09, p.A16)(AP, 9/14/09)(SFC, 6/4/11, p.A4)(SFC, 11/22/16, p.A6)
2009 Sep 8, Afghan President Hamid Karzai surpassed for the first time the 50% threshold needed to avoid a run-off in the presidential election, according to preliminary results, but with fraud allegations rising, a UN-backed commission ordered a re-count of tainted ballots. A suicide car bomb exploded outside the gates of the ISAF military airport in Kabul, killing three civilians and wounding nine people, including four foreign soldiers.
(AP, 9/8/09)(AFP, 9/9/09)
2009 Sep 8, In Afghanistan Marine Corporal Dakota Meyer (21) saved the lives of 13 Marines and 23 Afghan soldiers during a 6-hour fight the with Taliban that left 5 other US soldiers dead in Kunar province. Marine Staff Sgt. Juan Rodriguez-Chavez accompanied Meyer. In 2011 the Kentucky farm boy was awarded the US Medal of Honor. For his valor, Rodriguez-Chavez, who hailed originally from Acuna, Mexico, would be awarded the Navy Cross.
(SFC, 9/15/11, p.A12)(AP, 9/15/11)
2009 Sep 8, Across northern Argentina and southern Brazil a violent storm that spawned a tornado and mudslides killed at least 15 people. Dozens were injured in the winds and hail as their homes were destroyed.
(AP, 9/8/09)
2009 Sep 8, The British government said the last remaining armed paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland had pledged to decommission all their weapons within six months. Hours later army experts in Northern Ireland defused a massive roadside bomb, averting what could have been a "devastating" explosion in the long-troubled British province.
(AP, 9/8/09)(AFP, 9/8/09)
2009 Sep 8, A British judge sentenced Neil Lewington (44), a racist who planned to attack people he considered "non-British," to at least six years in jail for terrorist offenses.
(AP, 9/8/09)
2009 Sep 8, Deutsche Telekom AG and France Telecom SA said they intend to combine their British mobile phone units, shaking up the country's intensely competitive market and forming the country's biggest mobile operator. Analysts said Nokia Siemens Networks, the key equipment vendor to British operations of Deutsche Telekom and France Telecom, had most to lose in the merger.
(AP, 9/8/09)(Reuters, 9/8/09)
2009 Sep 8, In central China's Henan province an explosion at an illegal coal mine killed 42 miners and left another 37 men trapped. Elsewhere in Henan province 13 workers were killed in gold mine fire sparked by the severing of electrical wires in a cave-in.
(AP, 9/8/09)(AP, 9/9/09)
2009 Sep 8, Colombia’s President Alvaro Uribe signed legislation calling for a national referendum on amending the constitution to allow him to seek re-election for a second time.
(AP, 9/9/09)
2009 Sep 8, In the Democratic Republic of Congo two Norwegians were sentenced to death by a court for murdering a Congolese man in the northeast of the country in May.
(AFP, 9/8/09)
2009 Sep 8, A security official said Egyptian border guards shot dead four sub-Saharan migrants as they tried to illegally enter Israel.
(AFP, 9/8/09)
2009 Sep 8, The EU said that a member states could be allowed to ban gambling websites if its intention was to stop crime.
(Reuters, 9/8/09)
2009 Sep 8, Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom declared "a state of public calamity" to help mobilize funds and resources to confront a food shortage that will affect thousands of families.
(AP, 9/9/09)
2009 Sep 8, Iranian security forces cracked down on the opposition's campaign to highlight torture and abuse of prisoners in the country's postelection crisis, shutting down offices of pro-reform leaders and arresting five of their aides in a startling series of raids.
(AP, 9/9/09)
2009 Sep 8, In Iraq a roadside bomb killed Lt. Col. Zaid Hussein Khalaf, the head of an anti-terrorism police unit, and four of his bodyguards in the northern town of Armili, home to a large Shiite population. A roadside bomb struck a police patrol near the town of Daqouq, killing two policemen and wounding 3 others. A Health Ministry official escaped an assassination attempt when a roadside bomb hit his convoy in the eastern part of Baghdad, but one ministry employee died in the blast. Roadside bombs killed 4 US soldiers in separate incidents.
(AP, 9/8/09)
2009 Sep 8, Mike Bongiorno (85), called Italy's "Quiz King," died. His big TV break came in the 1950s when he helped popularize the quiz show on Italian pubcaster Rai. One of his biggest hits was "Lascia o Raddoppia?" (Double or quits) the Italian version of "The $64,000 Question."
(www.variety.com/article/VR1118008405.html?categoryid=14&cs=1&nid=2562)
2009 Sep 8, Kenya replaced its police chief on months after human rights groups complained that some his officers killed and raped during the violent aftermath of the disputed December 2007 elections, but activists said more reforms are needed to restore confidence in a notoriously predatory police force.
(AP, 9/8/09)
2009 Sep 8, In Mexico Police a body with both arms cut off was found dumped on a street in the border city of Ciudad Juarez. The court system in southern Tabasco state said rural journalists Roberto Juarez and Lazaro Abreu Tejero Sanchez have been arrested for allegedly working as informants for the Zetas, a gang aligned with the Gulf drug cartel.
(AP, 9/9/09)
2009 Sep 8, In northwest Pakistan Taliban militants attacked a group of boys on their way to school, killing four and wounding three in Orakzai ethnic Pashtun tribal region, because they were minority Shi'ite Muslims. Taliban militants are from the majority Sunni community and attack Shi'ites as part of their strategy to fight the government. Tribesmen retaliated after the attack and killed at least two militants and wounded several. Government aircraft attacked militants in a village, 30 km (20 miles) east of Kalaya, killing six of them and destroying four hideouts. Gunmen kidnapped a Greek man after killing a police guard in the northern Chitral region on the Afghan border.
(Reuters, 9/8/09)
2009 Sep 8, Russia's foreign minister rejected speculation that the Arctic Sea, a hijacked Russian-crewed freighter, was carrying S-300 missiles possibly destined for Iran. A Russian shipping expert and an EU anti-piracy official have speculated that the vessel was carrying a clandestine cargo, possibly S-300 surface-to-air missiles for Iran or Syria.
(AP, 9/8/09)
2009 Sep 8, Somalia graduated its first 500 naval recruits hoping they would form the backbone of the country’s first naval force in nearly two decades. 8 civilians were killed and 31 wounded overnight during clashes pitting insurgents against government and African Union forces in Mogadishu.
(SFC, 9/9/09, p.A2)(AFP, 9/8/09)
2009 Sep 8, Sudanese journalist Lubna Ahmed Hussein, who spent a day in jail for refusing to pay a fine for wearing "indecent trousers," vowed on her release to keep up the battle against the law. The UN’s human rights office said Sudan's conviction Hussein for indecency for wearing trousers violates international law and is emblematic of wider gender discrimination in the Islamic country.
(AFP, 9/8/09)(Reuters, 9/8/09)
2009 Sep 8, The Turkish conglomerate, Dogan Yayin, was slapped with a 3.75 lira ($2.5 billion) fine for allegedly evading taxes in the transfer of assets from one of its companies to another. This followed a $609 million fine levied in February against Aydin Dogan’s conglomerate.
(http://tinyurl.com/mkkebw)(Econ, 9/12/09, p.72)
2009 Sep 8, In northwestern Turkey flash floods triggered by torrential rains killed six people and left swaths of lands awash. At least three people were reported missing.
(AP, 9/8/09)
2009 Sep 8, Uganda’s defense spokesman, Lieutenant Colonel Felix Kulayigye, said Ugandan troops have crossed into the neighboring Central African Republic (CAR) in pursuit of Lord's Resistance Army rebels with Bangui's blessing.
(AFP, 9/8/09)
2009 Sep 8, Yemen’s the Interior Ministry said 4 Yemenis carrying explosives and guns had been arrested near the US embassy in San'a.
(AP, 9/8/09)
2009 Sep 9, President Barack Obama, in a major speech before Congress, promised to overhaul the nation's health care system. Not a single Republican has endorsed any of the plans approved so far by four House and Senate committees. Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., heckled Obama with a shout of “You lie!" regarding Obama’s assertion of no planned medical care to illegal immigrants. Wilson soon apologized but refused to do so on the House floor.
(AP, 9/9/09)(SFC, 9/11/09, p.A18)
2009 Sep 9, The US, Britain, Cyprus, Japan and Singapore signed on to an international plan, the “New York Declaration," to fight piracy off the coast of Somalia. The New York Declaration is an agreement between the signatory flag states which condemns acts of piracy and armed robbery against vessels and seafarers and recognizes that self protection measures taken by vessels can be highly effective in avoiding, delaying and deterring acts of piracy. The nonbinding political document was originally tabled on May 29, 2009.
(SFC, 9/10/09, p.A2)(www.unmultimedia.org/tv/unifeed/d/13476.html)
2009 Sep 9, Lawyers said 3 Chinese Muslims detained at Guantanamo Bay formally accepted an offer to take up new lives in the Pacific island nation of Palau and could be moved there as early as next month.
(AP, 9/10/09)
2009 Sep 9, California Assemblyman Mike Duvall, R-Yorba Linda, resigned after a videotape surfaced of his bragging about sexual exploits with 2 women, one of whom reportedly worked as a lobbyist.
(SFC, 9/10/09, p.A11)
2009 Sep 9, In Afghanistan a suicide bomber blew himself up outside the Camp Bastion NATO base in southern Helmand province, killing at least two Afghan civilians and wounding several foreign and local troops. British commandos freed NY Times reporter Stephen Farrell (46) in a raid on a Taliban hide-out in northern Afghanistan. Farrell and his translator had been taken hostage on Sep 5. A British soldier died during the raid as well as Afghan translator, Sultan Munadi (34) and 2 civilians.
(AFP, 9/9/09)(AP, 9/9/09)
2009 Sep 9, Australia announced that it has launched a war crimes investigation into the 1975 killing of five Australian-based journalists during an attack by Indonesian forces in East Timor.
(AP, 9/9/09)
2009 Sep 9, Colombian customs agents said they seized $11.3 million in cash from a shipping container in the nation's largest cargo port. Ret. Gen. Francisco Pedraza was captured at the installations of the IV Brigade in Medellin, Antioquia. He is being investigated for homicide, forced displacement and terrorism as part of an investigation into the 2001 massacre of at least 26 people in Naya, Cauca state.
(AP, 9/9/09)(AP, 9/10/09)
2009 Sep 9, Dubai’s Sheikh Mohammed al-Maktoum opened the Arabian Peninsula's first metro system, the $7.6 billion project, hoping to capture the world's spotlight on the catchy date of 9/9/09, whether the sleek system is fully ready to go or not.
(AP, 9/9/09)(Econ, 9/12/09, p.52)
2009 Sep 9, In Ecuador Gloria Daniela Lopez, a Los Angeles college student, was stabbed to death in Ambato. Her body was found the next day with her throat slit. A family friend later said she had been decapitated and possibly raped. A local police investigation was said to be stalled because she was American.
(SFC, 10/9/09, p.D5)
2009 Sep 9, Gabon’s opposition claimed that violence in Port-Gentil, Gabon's second city, claimed 15 lives after last week's disputed presidential election, far more than the official toll provided by the government.
(AFP, 9/9/09)
2009 Sep 9, Grenada’s PM Tillman Thomas said Grenada has sold some 100 Venezuelan-built houses at a deep discount to people left homeless by Hurricane Ivan in 2004. Venezuela financed the construction of 120 homes. They were finished three years ago, but electrical inspections delayed their sale. Valued at $92,000 each, the structures were sold for only $2,000, to help cover the cost of the land title transfer. The government selected mostly single mothers who were renting or living with relatives. The unsold structures were planned to be used as shelters for victims of domestic violence and sexual abuse.
(AP, 9/9/09)
2009 Sep 9, In Iraq a car bomb exploded outside a house in the flash point city of Kirkuk, killing eight people inside the building and wounding one. US-backed Iraqi soldiers raided a home in southeastern Baghdad before dawn, killing two men inside and arresting an Iraqi soldier from an intelligence unit. A roadside bomb struck an Iraqi patrol in the Abu Ghraib district, killing one soldier and injuring two others. An Iraqi army colonel was killed by a bomb attached to his car in the insurgent stronghold of Mosul.
(AP, 9/9/09)
2009 Sep 9, In Jamaica John A. Terry (65), Britain’s honorary consul in Montego Bay, was found strangled in bed with a note denouncing him as a homosexual.
(Econ, 9/19/09, p.49)(AP, 10/3/09)
2009 Sep 9, Conservationists said poaching and drought-related hunger have killed more than 100 of Kenya's famous elephants in the north of the country so far this year. Around 23,000 elephants live in Kenya but populations can be devastated by poaching within a couple of years. A recent survey in Chad showed its elephant population had declined from 3,800 to just over 600 in the past three years.
(AP, 9/9/09)
2009 Sep 9, A Malaysian government report said indigenous tribal girls have been sexually abused by loggers in remote jungles on Borneo island, in the first official verification of rape accusations involving timber companies.
(AP, 9/9/09)
2009 Sep 9, In Mexico a Bolivian-born man, clutching a Bible and claiming a divine mission, hijacked a plane with more than 100 people aboard after takeoff from Cancun. The incident ended quickly and without bloodshed when police arrested Jose Flores (44) in Mexico City. Police in Morelia said that they had seized eight counterfeit police and rescue vehicles including an intensive care ambulance with official-looking logos and paint jobs. The vehicles belonged to gang members who planned to use them to conduct illegal activities. In 2011 Josmar Flores was sentenced to seven years, seven months and 15 days in prison.
(Reuters, 9/10/09)(AP, 9/10/09)(AP, 5/19/11)
2009 Sep 9, Salvadoran authorities said they had arrested 4 alleged Mara 18 gang members and a police officer in the Sep 2 slaying of French documentary filmmaker Christian Poveda. The arrested officer was identified as Jose Napoleon Espinoza, an agent assigned to the 911 emergency phone system in Soyapango outside the capital, San Salvador.
(AP, 9/10/09)
2009 Sep 9, In Sierra Leone at least 221 people, including many schoolchildren returning from holidays, remained missing a day after the wooden Teh Teh ferry capsized at sea. 39 people survived. 30 bodies were recovered and all the missing were feared dead.
(AP, 9/10/09)(AP, 9/12/09)
2009 Sep 9, The Dalai Lama received Slovakia's Jan Langos award for his promotion of human rights and his leadership in the nonviolent campaign by Tibetans seeking autonomy from China. The Jan Langos Foundation gives its award to "an outstanding figure of the local defiance against oppressed regimes and their security services" and to civil servants and politicians who "endeavor for human dignity and freedom."
(AP, 9/9/09)
2009 Sep 9, A Somali Islamic court cut off the hands of two men accused of theft and lashed another accused of rape.
(AP, 9/9/09)
2009 Sep 9, In South Korea performers from around the world have gathered on the South Korean island of Jeju for this week's international Delphic Games, popularly known as the "Culture Olympics." The first Delphic Games of the modern era were held in Russia in 2000 and the second in Malaysia in 2005.
(AP, 9/9/09)
2009 Sep 9, Spain’s PM Rodriguez Zapatero told Parliament the 2010 budget would aim to raise overall taxes by 1.5% of GDP in order to help meet demands of the most needy. Unemployment, the worst in Europe, had reached 18% and was still climbing.
(Econ, 9/12/09, p.58)
2009 Sep 9, Thailand's national police chief resigned after being transferred to an inactive post in the wake of an official recommendation that he be prosecuted for his role in a deadly crackdown against anti-government protesters last year.
(AP, 9/9/09)
2009 Sep 9, A teacher (29) in Bangkok, Thailand, was captured on film beating a student (14) and bashing his head against a blackboard. The 50-second clip, filmed by a classmate using a mobile phone, was broadcast Sep 21 on a nationally televised morning news program, sparking national outrage and pledges from education officials to crack down on corporal punishment in classrooms.
(AP, 9/22/09)
2009 Sep 9, In Turkey flash floods roared across a major highway and a commercial district in Istanbul, killing at least 32 people and forcing dozens to scramble onto the roofs of cars and trucks. Some of the dead drowned inside their vehicles.
(Reuters, 9/9/09)(AFP, 9/10/09)
2009 Sep 9, A Uganda army spokesman said government forces have rescued 100 kidnapped children and young adults during an operation against the Lord’s Resistance Army rebel group in neighboring Central African Republic.
(AP, 9/9/09)
2009 Sep 9, Uruguay’s Senate gave final approval for gay and lesbian couples to adopt children, making it the first country in Latin America to do so. The executive branch will decide when the law takes effect.
(SFC, 9/10/09, p.A2)
2009 Sep 9, In Yemen 17 rebels were killed in an air strike, according to a government statement, which said they were caught sneaking through the mountains near Saada. Four men survived the attack and were in custody.
(AP, 9/10/09)
2009 Sep 10, NASA made a successful first test of its Ares I rocket at promontory, Utah. It was created as part of a plan to return to the moon, but a recent panel said there isn’t enough money for the moon project.
(SFC, 9/11/09, p.A13)
2009 Sep 10, GM announced that it agreed to the sale of 55% of Ruesselsheim-based Adam Opel and Vauxhall unit to Canadian auto parts maker Magna International Inc. and Russian lender Sberbank. Detroit-based GM will keep a 35% stake and continue to work with Opel on developing vehicles, sharing technology and engineering resources.
(AP, 9/11/09)
2009 Sep 10, The UN-backed commission investigating fraud in Afghanistan's election issued its first orders to exclude some ballots from the final tally, throwing out votes from 83 polling stations in areas of strong support for President Hamid Karzai. A US service member was killed in an attack on a patrol. Another service member was killed after coming under fire.
(AP, 9/10/09)(AP, 9/11/09)
2009 Sep 10, The African Union joined international condemnation of a new "unity" government named by Madagascar leader Andry Rajoelina who overthrew the recognized president this year.
(AP, 9/11/09)
2009 Sep 10, Australia announced liquefied natural gas (LNG) deals worth up to 60 billion US dollars with Japan and South Korea, raising its status as a major energy supplier.
(AP, 9/10/09)
2009 Sep 10, Guy Laliberte, the Canadian billionaire founder of the Cirque du Soleil, said that he aims to read a statement to the world about the planet's water problems after taking a Russian rocket to the space station. Laliberte and two others will blast off Sep 30 from the Russian space program's Baikonur launch facility in Kazakhstan. He said his reading from space will be part of several shows in 14 cities around the world beginning Oct 9.
(AP, 9/10/09)
2009 Sep 10, Colombia’s police said they have seized $55 million in properties and assets from drug traffickers in a 2 day operation in five cities in Antioquia state and six cities in Cundinamarca state. The assets included shares in a popular soccer team.
(AP, 9/10/09)
2009 Sep 10, A new book, whose title translates as "Hold-Ups, Swindles and Treasons," by French journalists Antonin Andre and Karim Rissouli, hit French stores alleging that a vote last year to elect the leader of France's Socialist Party was rigged, sparking further disarray among the once-mighty champions of the left.
(AP, 9/10/09)
2009 Sep 10, Berlin won Spain's prestigious Prince of Asturias prize for its contribution to promoting peace and harmony.
(AP, 9/10/09)
2009 Sep 10, In India hundreds of students, who were jammed into a narrow New Delhi school staircase, panicked and set off a stampede that left five girls dead and 31 other students injured. Mohammed Shahabuddin, a 12-year old snack vendor, had to have his left leg amputated after Bihar state railway police threw him out of a moving train when he failed to pay them 10 rupees (20 cents) as a bribe. The boy had offered the policemen five rupees, which was all the money he had.
(AP, 9/10/09)(AP, 9/11/09)
2009 Sep 10, In northern Iraq a suicide truck bomber hit the Kurdish village of Wardek before dawn, killing at least 25 people and injuring 50 others, in what appeared to be the latest in a string of attacks targeting Kurds and other ethnic and religious groups in the region. The government of the semiautonomous Kurdish region arrested the head of the provincial intelligence service, Brig. Abdul-Rahman Ali, on accusations he was directly involved in the planning of an Aug. 13 bombing near Mosul. 3 successive bombs exploded at a popular market in the city of Mahmoudiya, killing 4 people and wounding 30. Violence broke out at Abu Ghraib prison and two prisoners were killed.
(AP, 9/10/09)(AP, 9/11/09)
2009 Sep 10, The Japanese space agency successfully launched a new rocket carrying an unmanned cargo ship on a $680 million maiden voyage to the Int’l. Space Station.
(SFC, 9/11/09, p.A9)
2009 Sep 10, Amnesty International issued a new report saying Japan executes mentally ill prisoners, some of whom are driven insane by harsh treatment while on death row.
(AP, 9/10/09)
2009 Sep 10, Lebanese Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri said he is abandoning efforts to form a new government after the Hezbollah-led parliament minority rejected his list for a national unity Cabinet. This forced President Michel Suleiman to start consultations with lawmakers from scratch over naming a new premier.
(AP, 9/10/09)
2009 Sep 10, Mexican defense dept. said soldiers have arrested Michael Escalante (29) of El Paso, suspected of killing 18 people in a series of attacks this year in violence-plagued Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso, Texas.
(AP, 9/10/09)
2009 Sep 10, In northeast Nepal a bus veered off a highway and plunged into a river, killing at least 11 people and leaving about 20 missing and feared dead.
(AP, 9/10/09)
2009 Sep 10, In Russia Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez recognized the pro-Russian rebel regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent states, a rare boost to the Kremlin's campaign for their international acceptance.
(Reuters 9/10/09)
2009 Sep 10, In Uganda at least 7 people were killed in clashes after the government prevented a representative of the traditional ruler of the Buganda kingdom from traveling to a region northeast of the capital for a political rally.
(SFC, 9/11/09, p.A2)
2009 Sep 10, Vietnamese and US scientists wrapped up their annual meetings on Agent Orange, launching a task force to examine health issues in areas where the defoliant was used during the Vietnam War. Vietnam has said 1 million to 4 million of its citizens may have suffered serious health consequences after being exposed to dioxin, a highly toxic element in Agent Orange.
(AP, 9/10/09)
2009 Sep 10, A Yemeni army statement said the government launched a new offensive against Shiite rebels in the north, destroying many of their vehicles and hideouts. The rebels said they have been able to keep the government from entering the northern town of Saada, which has been at the center of the rebellion.
(AP, 9/10/09)
2009 Sep 11, Pres. Obama slapped punitive tariffs on all car and light truck tires entering the US from China as the rising tide of imported tires hurt American producers.
(SFC, 9/12/09, p.A4)
2009 Sep 11, The US said it would accept Iran's offer of wide-ranging talks with major powers despite the Islamic Republic's stated refusal to discuss its nuclear program.
(Reuters, 9/11/09)
2009 Sep 11, In Richmond, Ca., Kaneesha Mallard (19) of Hercules and her boyfriend, Alfred Thomas (20) of Vallejo, were killed by a spray of bullets while parked at the snack shop of a Union 76 gas station.
(SFC, 9/17/09, p.D2)
2009 Sep 11, In Owosso, Michigan, Harlan James Drake (33) killed an abortion protester outside a school along with the owner of a nearby gravel pit.
(SFC, 9/12/09, p.A4)
2009 Sep 11, Jim Carrol (60), poet, addict and author, died in Manhattan following a heart attack. His books included “Basketball Diaries" (1978), which was turned into a 1995 movie. His 1980 song “People who Died" became a punk classic.
(SFC, 9/16/09, p.D5)
2009 Sep 11, Larry Gelbart (b.1928, comedy writer, died in Los Angeles. His work included developing the MASH TV series and co-writing the books for the Broadway musical “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum" and the film “Tootsie." His 1998 memoir was titled “Laughing Matters."
(SFC, 9/12/09, p.A5)
2009 Sep 11, Afghan former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah, the chief challenger to President Hamid Karzai, called for a full investigation of hundreds of reports of fraud in the Aug. 20 presidential contest. 14 civilians were killed Uruzgan province when their vehicle hit a roadside bomb in Churra district. In Kandahar six civilians were killed by an improvised explosive device in the Maiwand district. Four police were killed in Nangarhar when militants attacked a border police checkpoint. In eastern Paktika province, a suicide bomber detonated his explosives in Bermel district. Only the bomber died.
(AP, 9/11/09)(AP, 9/12/09)
2009 Sep 11, A risk consultancy said Australians have overtaken Americans as the world's biggest individual producers of carbon dioxide, which is blamed for global warming. British firm Maplecroft placed Australia's per capita output at 20.58 tons a year, some four percent higher than the United States and top of a list of 185 countries.
(AFP, 9/11/09)
2009 Sep 11, In Belgium the Flemish education board banned religious symbols in all 700 secular state schools under its control.
(Econ, 9/19/09, p.64)
2009 Sep 11, In Chile police and hooded protesters clashed Santiago on the anniversary of the 1973 military coup that toppled elected President Salvador Allende. State television reported one death amid the disturbances.
(AP, 9/12/09)
2009 Sep 11, Chinese officials said mystery needle attacks appeared to spread in China's far western region as authorities arrested nine new suspects in three cities. Since last week, more than 500 people in Urumqi have reported attacks, though only about 100 showed evidence of being pricked.
(AP, 9/11/09)
2009 Sep 11, In Colombia two bombs being carried by donkeys exploded, killing two coca-eradication workers and wounding six soldiers in Norte de Santander state.
(AP, 9/11/09)
2009 Sep 11, In Cuba Juan Almeida Bosque (b.1927), a comrade-in-arms of Fidel Castro since the start of his guerrilla struggle more than a half-century ago, died of a heart attack. Almeida was the only black commander among the rebel leaders.
(AP, 9/12/09)
2009 Sep 11, In Germany 12 officers were injured in late night clashes with left-wing demonstrators in Hamburg following a far-right rally.
(AP, 9/12/09)
2009 Sep 11, Europe's biggest automaker Volkswagen said it planned to invest 4.0 billion euros (5.8 billion dollars) to boost its presence in China over the next three years.
(AP, 9/11/09)
2009 Sep 11, Authorities in Guatemala arrested nine suspects, including five police officers, in the May 10 killing of lawyer Rodrigo Rosenberg, who accused President Alvaro Colom of involvement in his death in a posthumously released video.
(AP, 9/11/09)
2009 Sep 11, In Iraq prison inmates at Abu Ghraib rioted for a 2nd day to demand better conditions. The facility, now under Iraqi control, has been renamed the Baghdad Central Prison.
(SFC, 9/12/09, p.A3)
2009 Sep 11, A Kenyan magistrate sentenced Jon Cardon Wagner, an American who founded a popular chain of coffee shops, to 15 years' imprisonment for the statutory rape of three teenage Kenyan girls. Wagner's lawyer Mohammed Nyaoga said his client is the victim of an extortion racket and will appeal. Nairobi Java House began a culture of gourmet coffee drinking nine years ago and now has eight coffee shops in the capital.
(AP, 9/11/09)
2009 Sep 11, A senior Lebanese military official said two rockets were fired toward Israel from the town of Qlaileh inside Lebanon. Israel responded with a barrage of 14 rockets. No injuries or damage were reported.
(AP, 9/11/09)(SFC, 9/12/09, p.A2)
2009 Sep 11, Malaysian authorities seized a consignment of 10,000 copies of the Bible sent from Jakarta to Kuching in Sarawak state, because the Indonesian-language books contained the word "Allah," a translation that has been banned in this Muslim-majority country. Another 5,100 Bibles, also imported from Indonesia, were reportedly seized in March. Church officials said Allah is not exclusive to Islam but is an Arabic word that predates Islam.
(AP, 10/29/09)
2009 Sep 11, Mexican authorities found at least $5 million hidden in a shipment of ammonium sulfate at a Pacific coast port.
(AP, 9/12/09)
2009 Sep 11, The Pakistani Military said it had arrested the Swat Taliban spokesman Muslim Khan and commanders Mahmood Khan, Fazle Ghaffar, Abdul Rehman and Sartaj Ali in the suburbs of Mingora, striking its first direct blow against the leadership of the insurgency in the one-time tourist resort.
(AP, 9/11/09)
2009 Sep 11, In Peru lawyer Alfredo Crespo announced the publication of a book of manuscripts written in prison by Shining Path rebel leader Abimael Guzman. On Sep 13 the justice minister asked a public prosecutor to file "apology for terrorism" charges against Crespo.
(AP, 9/14/09)
2009 Sep 11, In Somalia mortars slammed into Mogadishu, killing three civilians and at least 12 men at a home for disabled veterans. Nearly a dozen other former soldiers were wounded in the attack.
(AP, 9/12/09)
2009 Sep 11, In South Africa reports on gender testing on running sensation Caster Semenya has determined she has male and female sexual organs. This triggered outrage and dealt a blow to her family, who may have been unaware of the reported condition. There was worry about how the 18-year-old will handle all this. Testing determined that Semenya has internal testes, meaning the runner herself, who was raised in a poor village, may have been unaware of such a condition. The condition is generally referred to as intersexuality. The older term for someone who has both male and female organs is hermaphrodite.
(AP, 9/11/09)
2009 Sep 11, South Africa and the European Union started a summit expected to be dominated by calls from African nations for sanctions against Zimbabwe to be lifted.
(AP, 9/11/09)
2009 Sep 11, Spain's government agreed to send 220 more troops to Afghanistan, raising the total to about 1,000.
(AP, 9/11/09)
2009 Sep 11, In Spain Venezuela’s Pres. Chavez paid a brief courtesy call on King Juan Carlos and met briefly with PM Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero to discuss energy issues and Spanish investment in oil-rich Venezuela.
(AP, 9/11/09)
2009 Sep 11, Sri Lankan authorities sent home nearly 10,000 war refugees amid growing international concern for the nearly 300,000 Tamil civilians still detained in government-run camps.
(AP, 9/11/09)
2009 Sep 11, A Taiwan court sentenced ex-president Chen Shui-bian (58) to life in jail after a corruption trial he claims was political revenge for his lifelong push to declare independence from China. The court also handed a life term to his wheelchair-bound wife Wu Shu-chen.
(AFP, 9/11/09)
2009 Sep 11, In Uganda 3 people including a child were shot dead in rioting in Kampala. Clashes began on Sep 10 after the government prevented a representative of the traditional ruler of the Buganda kingdom from traveling to a region northeast of the capital for a political rally. The overall death toll from the unrest rose to at least 24 following deaths in hospitals.
(AP, 9/11/09)(AP, 9/12/09)(AP, 9/14/09)(Econ, 9/19/09, p.59)
2009 Sep 11, Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez returned home from a world tour. He said he has signed military agreements with Russia and is soon expecting the arrival of some "little rockets," which reach up to 186 miles (300km) and are strictly for defense purposes.
(AP, 9/12/09)
2009 Sep 11, In Vietnam the Canadian environmental firm Hatfield Consultants said new environmental tests confirm extremely high levels of dioxin, the toxic ingredient of Agent Orange, in people, fish and soil near Danang airport, a former US air base where American troops stored the herbicide during the Vietnam War.
(AP, 9/11/09)
2009 Sep 12, Researchers reported finding dangerous methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) bacteria in sand and water for the first time at five public beaches along the coast of Washington state.
(AP, 9/12/09)
2009 Sep 12, William E. Sparkman (51), a US census worker, was found bound with duct tape and a rope around his neck near a cemetery in Clay County in a remote patch of Kentucky’s Daniel Boone National Forest. The word "fed" was scrawled on his chest. The area where Sparkman was found has a history of problems with prescription drug and methamphetamine trading. State police later said evidence at the death scene indicated that it was staged as a murder and that Sparkman had committed suicide.
(AP, 9/24/09)(SFC, 11/25/09, p.A4)
2009 Sep 12, Dr. Norman Borlaug (b.1914), Nobel Prize winner (1970), died at his Dallas home. He was known as the father of the “green revolution" for his work in high-yield crop varieties, which helped to more than double food production between 1960 and 1990.
(SFC, 9/14/09, p.A7)
2009 Sep 12, Christopher Kelly (51), former chief fundraiser for ousted Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, died in Chicago after being found slumped over in his car the previous evening. An overdose of drugs was suspected. Kelly faced at least 8 years in prison after pleading guilty to fraud charges in 2 separate cases.
(SFC, 9/14/09, p.A4)
2009 Sep 12, In Afghanistan a Taliban ambush killed six private security guards working for a construction company in the eastern province of Kunar. In Khost province a suspected militant rocket attack killed three civilians in Sabari district. In Kandahar 3 suicide bombers tried to attack an office of the country's intelligence agency. Officers and the bombers traded gunfire. One bomber blew himself up and killed an intelligence officer, while the other bombers’ explosives went off but didn't kill anyone. Coalition and Afghan forces killed 11 militants during an overnight raid in northern Kunduz province. In Kunduz province a turncoat policeman poisoned 8 other officers at a guard post, killed his commander and called in the Taliban who beheaded or shot 7 other policemen. A roadside bomb killed two US troops in the east. In western Afghanistan 3 US soldiers were killed following a roadside bomb attack and small arms fire. Altogether 50 civilians, security forces and militants were killed in the spate of attacks, including 20 noncombatants killed in two roadside bomb explosions. In western Farah province a battle that included airstrikes killed about 50 Taliban militants after an insurgent ambush left 3 US troops and 7 Afghan soldiers dead.
(AP, 9/12/09)(AP, 9/13/09)(SSFC, 9/13/09, p.A4)(SFC, 9/14/09, p.A2)
2009 Sep 12, Australia intercepted a boat carrying 83 suspected asylum seekers off its northwest coast after it was spotted from the air by a military patrol plane. Later in the day the Australian navy intercepted a suspected people-smuggling boat carrying 65 asylum seekers off the country's northwest coast.
(AFP, 9/12/09)(AFP, 9/13/09)
2009 Sep 12, President Evo Morales said Bolivia has decided to buy a presidential plane from Russia after Moscow offered to set up an aircraft maintenance center in the South American nation. Defense Minister Walker San Miguel announced in early August that Bolivia had agreed to purchase an Antonov presidential plane with satellite phone, Internet links and a meeting room from Russia for $30 million.
(AP, 9/12/09)
2009 Sep 12, In Chechnya three police were wounded when a suicide bomber blew himself up in Grozny. An alleged militant was killed in a separate incident in Chechnya.
(AP, 9/12/09)
2009 Sep 12, China decried a US decision to impose added duty on Chinese-made tires, saying the move sent a dangerous protectionist signal before a G20 summit and could stoke reactions impeding global recovery. The tire duty was the first time Washington has applied special "safeguard" provisions Beijing agreed to before joining the WTO in 2001.
(Reuters, 9/12/09)
2009 Sep 12, A court in western China's Xinjiang region sentenced three people to up to 15 years in prison in the first trials over a series of mysterious syringe attacks that led to mass protests against the local government. In eastern China 3 people died and an additional 17 required medical treatment after they were exposed to bags of a toxic chemical illegally dumped by a factory in Dongyang.
(AP, 9/12/09)(AP, 9/16/09)
2009 Sep 12, Costa Rican authorities detained 54 US-bound migrants from Africa and Nepal after their boat arrived on the country's coast. Authorities also took into custody three suspected Colombian smugglers who were traveling with them.
(AP, 9/13/09)
2009 Sep 12, In Dagestan security forces besieged a home and killed four alleged militants.
(AP, 9/12/09)
2009 Sep 12, Willy Ronis (99), the last of the great French photographers, died. Lovers, nudes and scenes from Paris streets were the mainstay of Ronis' photographs in an award-winning career that began in the 1930s.
(AP, 9/12/09)
2009 Sep 12, In Iraq 2 bombs exploded moments apart near the tomb of a revered Shiite religious figure in central Baghdad, killing three people and wounding 22. A bomb attached to a civilian car exploded in the northwest of Baghdad, killing the driver and wounding two passengers. 4 people were killed by a roadside bomb in Diyala province. In the northern city of Mosul, a roadside bomb went off near an Iraqi army patrol, prompting soldiers to open fire to scare off any attackers. A stray bullet from the shooting killed a traffic policeman.
(AP, 9/12/09)
2009 Sep 12, In Indian-administered Kashmir suspected Islamic militants set off a powerful bomb blast killing three people and wounding at least seven others.
(AP, 9/12/09)
2009 Sep 12, In Lebanon Salah Ezzedine (47), a Shiite businessman with connections to Hezbollah, and his partner Youssef Faour were arrested on suspicion of cheating investors of hundreds of millions of dollars. They charged with fraudulent embezzlement.
(www.nytimes.com/2009/09/16/world/middleeast/16lebanon.html?_r=3&ref=world)
2009 Sep 12, Mexican police said they have found the bodies of five men dumped in a landfill near the resort city of Acapulco. The men had been shot to death and officers found a note with the bodies signed "The boss of bosses."
(AP, 9/12/09)
2009 Sep 12, In Pakistan paramilitary troops destroyed three militant hide-outs and killed 22 insurgents. Officials said hundreds of tribal police in the northwestern Khyber region have quit their jobs because of militant threats.
(AP, 9/12/09)
2009 Sep 12, Uganda’s army killed five rebels in the CAR, including Arit Santos, a commander of the LRA insurgent group. Soldiers also seized 24 sub-machineguns, several rounds of ammunition, medicine and laptop computers in the operation.
(AFP, 9/14/09)
2009 Sep 12, In Venezuela opposition Mayor Lluvane Alvarez was shot by unidentified assailants as he entered his home in western Tachira state, which is plagued by crime related to drug trafficking and other illicit activities.
(AP, 9/12/09)
2009 Sep 12, Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe welcomed the first top-level European Union delegation to visit in seven years with "open arms" and said talks on implementing a power-sharing deal went well.
(Reuters, 9/12/09)
2009 Sep 13, Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden described President Barack Obama as "powerless" to stop the war in Afghanistan and threatened to step up guerrilla warfare there in a new audiotape released to mark the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks in the US.
(AP, 9/14/09)
2009 Sep 13, It was reported that the hoki fish, harvested in the deep waters around New Zealand, had declined substantially. Hoki, the main ingredient in McDonald’s Fillet-O-Fish sandwich, was also used by Denny’s and Long John Silver’s restaurants. From 1996 to 2001 some 275,000 tons were harvested by factory trawlers. The allowed catch was reduced to 100,000 tons in 2007 and 2008.
(SSFC, 9/13/09, p.A20)
2009 Sep 13, The Afghan health ministry said it has so far recorded 673 cases of cholera countrywide in almost a third of the country's 34 provinces, including Kabul. No deaths have been reported. A British soldier was killed in an attack on a foot patrol in Helmand province. A 2nd NATO service member died in a bomb blast in the south.
(AFP, 9/13/09)(AP, 9/14/09)
2009 Sep 13, Bolivia's Pres. Evo Morales began a visit to Spain. His plans to nationalize Bolivia’s electricity sector and how this might affect Spanish companies will be among the top items on his agenda.
(AP, 9/14/09)
2009 Sep 13, In southern Democratic Republic of Congo at least 14 people were dead and another 34 missing after their boat sank in an isolated stretch of the Lualaba river.
(Reuters, 9/14/09)
2009 Sep 13, In Hong Kong a construction platform inside an elevator shaft collapsed, sending 5 workers 20 stories down to their deaths inside a skyscraper. One worker was injured.
(AP, 9/13/09)
2009 Sep 13, In Iraq gunmen broke into the home of a Kurdish policeman in Kirkuk, killing his wife and three children execution-style with shots to the head as they slept. Two separate police patrols were hit with roadside bombs in southern Kirkuk, wounding six policemen. Four people were killed in an area about 60 miles (100km) south of Mosul in a tribal dispute. A civilian contractor was shot and killed on an American military base in Tikrit. A US soldier was detained in connection with the incident. US and Iraqi forces killed one fighter, captured another and seized a truck loaded with weapons in Mosul, an area of that remains an insurgent stronghold. Later Iraqi policemen searching for the gunman who escaped clashed with insurgents. Two policemen and two insurgents were killed.
(AP, 9/13/09)(AP, 9/14/09)
2009 Sep 13, In Israel Capt. Asaf Ramon (21), the son of Ilan Ramon, Israel's first and only astronaut, was killed when his F-16 warplane crashed on a routine training flight. Ilan Ramon was one of seven crew members killed when the Columbia exploded as it re-entered the atmosphere in 2003.
(AP, 9/14/09)
2009 Sep 13, In southeast Kazakhstan 37 people were killed when a fire ripped through a decrepit drugs treatment facility in Taldykorgan.
(AFP, 9/13/09)
2009 Sep 13, In Pakistan a bomb blast killed 3 paramilitary troops in the Mandiknas area of the Khyber region. A suicide bomber was killed as he tried to attack a security post in the Swat Valley.
(SFC, 9/14/09, p.A2)
2009 Sep 13, In central Russia 5 soldiers died in a fire at a military base in Tambov. A state news report said the blaze may have destroyed sensitive security documents.
(SFC, 9/14/09, p.A2)
2009 Sep 13, In southern Thailand suspected Muslim insurgents shot and killed five paramilitary troops in Yala province.
(AP, 9/14/09)
2009 Sep 13, Venezuela’s Pres. Chavez said Russia has opened a $2.2 billion line of credit for Venezuela to purchase weapons including armored vehicles and surface-to-air missiles.
(AP, 9/14/09)
2009 Sep 13, Zimbabwe's PM Morgan Tsvangirai accused President Robert Mugabe of violating a fledgling power-sharing deal. The EU said ties with Zimbabwe would only normalize once a unity accord is properly implemented, but pledged a further 90 million euro this year to assist the troubled nation.
(AFP, 9/13/09)
2009 Sep 14, The US attended its first formal meeting of the UN Human Rights Council, saying it will try to promote dialogue at a body it once avoided and heavily criticized.
(AP, 9/14/09)
2009 Sep 14, Google rolled out Fast Flip, which lets users scroll through the contents of online newspapers in much the same way as they leaf through pages in print.
(www.nytimes.com/2009/09/15/technology/internet/15google.html)(Econ, 9/19/09, p.74)
2009 Sep 14, Jody Powell (65), former White House press secretary for Jimmy Carter (1977-1981, died of a heart attack at his home in Maryland.
(SFC, 9/15/09, p.C4)
2009 Sep 14, Patrick Swayze (57), actor, died from pancreatic cancer in Los Angeles. He personified a particular kind of masculine grace both on and off screen, from his roles in films like "Dirty Dancing" and "Ghost" to the way he carried himself in his long fight with cancer.
(AP, 9/15/09)
2009 Sep 14, Afghan and foreign forces killed 27 Taliban militants in gunfights and an air strike in a rebel stronghold of Kandahar province. A Taliban spokesman said four militants were killed and five civilians died in the crossfire.
(AFP, 9/15/09)
2009 Sep 14, In Australia energy giants Chevron, Shell and ExxonMobil agreed to develop the massive Gorgon field, giving the final go-ahead to a liquefied natural gas (LNG) project worth hundreds of billions of dollars.
(AP, 9/14/09)
2009 Sep 14, The leaders of Brazil and Guyana met to inaugurate the $5 million Takutu River Bridge, that is expected to boost trade between Brazil and the Caribbean. Traffic began crossing the bridge nearly two months ago but today’s ceremony was billed as its formal commissioning.
(AP, 9/15/09)
2009 Sep 14, A British judge sentenced Abdulla Ahmed Ali (28), the ringleader of a plot to bring down trans-Atlantic planes with liquid explosives, to at least 40 years in jail and three fellow British Muslims to long prison sentences.
(AP, 9/14/09)
2009 Sep 14, China filed a WTO complaint over new US tariffs on Chinese tires, stepping up pressure on Washington in the latest in a series of trade disputes.
(AP, 9/14/09)
2009 Sep 14, China broke ground on its fourth space center. The new port on the southern island province of Hainan, slated to go into use in 2013, highlights the country's soaring space ambitions six years after it sent its first man into orbit.
(AP, 9/14/09)
2009 Sep 14, France Telecom SA summoned all 20,000 of its managers to a conference call in an effort to respond to a string of 23 employee suicides that unions blame partly on layoffs and restructuring at the telecommunications giant.
(AP, 9/14/09)
2009 Sep 14, In Germany Siegfried Wolf, the co-chief executive of Magna International Inc., said as many as 10,500 Opel jobs in Europe could be cut, including nearly half of them in Germany. Opel employs some 49,000 workers in Europe and has plants in Germany, Spain, Britain, Poland and Germany.
(AP, 9/14/09)
2009 Sep 14, In Indonesia expanded Islamic law was passed by the regional parliament in Aceh province. One key article regarding adultery threatened 100 cane lashes for the unmarried and stoning to death for those who are married.
(AP, 9/14/09)
2009 Sep 14, In Iran authorities arrested at least 7 children and grandchildren of senior clerics in Qom in fresh pressure on religious leaders who sympathize with the opposition.
(SFC, 9/16/09, p.A5)
2009 Sep 14, In Mexico 31 police officers were arrested in Hidalgo state on suspicion of collaborating with the Zetas, a gang of drug cartel hit men. 92 police were arrested there in June. Gunmen opened fire inside a Ciudad Juarez hardware store, killing the woman who owned the store and four other people, including a 19-year-old man. Minutes later an armed gang killed five men riding in a pickup truck.
(AP, 9/14/09)(AP, 9/16/09)
2009 Sep 14, Norway's left-leaning government faced a splintered opposition in an election focused on how to manage the Nordic nation's soaring oil wealth and seal cracks in its welfare system. Jens Stoltenberg's Labor-led coalition won 86 seats to keep a slim majority in the 169-seat Parliament after using oil money to shield the welfare state from the global recession.
(AP, 9/14/09)(AP, 9/15/09)
2009 Sep 14, In Pakistan at least 18 women and girls were killed in a stampede which broke out as charity workers were handing out free flour to the poor in a crowded neighborhood of Pakistan's financial capital Karachi.
(AP, 9/15/09)
2009 Sep 14, In Pakistan a US missile slammed into a car at dawn, killing up to five militants in the remote tribal belt near the Afghan border in the third attack in a week. Nazimuddin, alias Yahyo, a top Uzbek militant, was believed to be among the dead. Burqa-clad assailants armed with Kalashnikov rifles and hand grenades attempted to attack an oil terminal in Karachi, but were thwarted by a security guard who was gunned down as the suspects escaped. Police later found a large cache of rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs), explosives, suicide vests, burqas and other items apparently dumped by the suspects near a sewer in the area. Fighter jets pounded suspected militant hide-outs and killed five insurgents in the Salarzai area of the northwest Bajur tribal region.
(AP, 9/15/09)(AFP, 9/14/09)(AP, 9/15/09)(AP, 9/17/09)
2009 Sep 14, Finance Minister Diana Dragutinovic said Serbia will have to lay off about one-fifth of its government employees, 14,000 people, to meet conditions set by the International Monetary Fund to receive more financial aid. A trade union representing state employees has already announced strikes if the layoffs are carried out.
(AP, 9/14/09)
2009 Sep 14, In southern Somalia foreign troops firing from 6 helicopters killed two people in a car and then took two others captive in an insurgent-held village near Barawe. Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan (30), a Kenyan citizen and one of Africa's most wanted al-Qaida suspects, was one of the dead. He was wanted for questioning in connection with the car bombing of a beach resort in Kenya and the near simultaneous attempt to shoot down an Israeli airliner in 2002. Forces from the US Joint Special Operations Command were involved in the raid.
(AP, 9/14/09)(AP, 9/15/09)
2009 Sep 14, The Saudi Interior Ministry said on Jan 18, 2010, that an investigation has shown that three Saudi militants were killed in a Sept. 14 blast outside the country [see Afghanistan and Pakistan Sep 14, 2009].
(AP, 1/18/10)
2009 Sep 14, Vietnamese scholars disbanded the Institute of Development Studies, the country's first independent think tank, to protest a government decree, effective Sep 15, restricting the right to conduct and publish research.
(AP, 9/15/09)
2009 Sep 15, The Obama administration embraced cloud computing to help reduce government waste and ease environmental impact.
(SFC, 9/16/09, p.C1)
2009 Sep 15, California’s Gov. Schwarzenegger signed an executive order mandating that the state Air Resources Board create a regulation requiring that 1/3 of energy sold by utility companies in the state over the next decade come from renewable sources.
(SFC, 9/16/09, p.A16)
2009 Sep 15, In California a juice sucking grapevine moth, known as Lobesia botrana, was first detected in the Oakville area of Napa County. In March, 2010, the California Dept. of Food and Agriculture quarantined 162 square miles of land in the area to halt the infestation.
(SFC, 3/12/10, p.A1)
2009 Sep 15, In northern Afghanistan a mass grave was unearthed in Ali Abad district of Kunduz province, containing at least 20 bodies believed to date from the Soviet-backed government era. During Soviet-backed rule in the late 1970s, a group of 35 people were arrested in Ali Abad district and were never heard of again.
(AFP, 9/15/09)
2009 Sep 15, Australia announced shock plans to break up dominant telecommunications player Telstra to boost competition as it presses ahead with a 37 billion US dollar national broadband network.
(AP, 9/15/09)
2009 Sep 15, The Frankfurt auto show opened. The French company Renault unveiled a lineup that includes a purely electric sedan, without a backup internal combustion engine. Renault says the vehicle will be in showrooms by 2011.
(www.nytimes.com/2009/09/14/automobiles/14electric.html)(Econ, 10/17/09, p.74)
2009 Sep 15, In Guatemala the bullet-ridden bodies of eight men suspected to be drug traffickers were found in a frontier town near the Mexican border.
(AP, 9/16/09)
2009 Sep 15, Muntadhar al-Zeidi (30), the Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at former President George W. Bush, was released after nine months in prison and in a defiant address, he accused Iraqi security forces of torturing him with beatings, whippings and electric shocks. 3 rockets were fired at Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone, where visiting Vice President Joe Biden was spending the night. A fourth rocket fell short and hit a residential building, killing two and injuring five others. US-Iraqi forces arrested three militants suspected of firing the rockets.
(AP, 9/15/09)(AP, 9/16/09)
2009 Sep 15, Israeli and Palestinian activists presented the most detailed vision yet of what a peace deal could look like. It included more than 400 pages crammed with maps, timetables for troop withdrawals and even a list of weapons a non-militarized Palestine would be barred from having. The UN Goldstone Commission accused Israel of having deliberately committed war crimes during its 3-week attack on Gaza in January.
(AP, 9/15/09)(Econ, 9/19/09, p.14)
2009 Sep 15, In Kenya clashes between the Samburu and Pokot tribes killed 24 people and wounded dozens as the country's scorching drought exacerbates tensions over land and water in the arid north.
(AP, 9/15/09)
2009 Sep 15, Lithuanian lawmakers ousted their speaker in a no-confidence vote after he was accused of links to an organized crime syndicate in the Baltic state. Arunas Valinskas (42), a former showbiz personality who took the political stage in last year's parliamentary election, denied any wrongdoing and said he was the victim of a political vendetta by former party allies, among others.
(AP, 9/15/09)
2009 Sep 15, In Mexico firefighters found six bodies inside a burning car in Tijuana. In Ciudad Juarez gunmen killed five people at a car wash. Gunmen burst into a drug treatment center in Ciudad Juarez and shot to death 10 people, the second such mass killing this month.
(AP, 9/16/09)(AP, 9/16/09)
2009 Sep 15, In the Netherlands the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal announced it has approved the early release from prison of former Bosnian Serb President Biljana Plavsic (79) after she served two-thirds of her 11-year sentence for persecution.
(AP, 9/15/09)
2009 Sep 15, Norway's PM Jens Stoltenberg (50) said fighting climate change would be a priority in his 2nd term after his left-leaning government beat a splintered opposition to win re-election.
(AP, 9/15/09)
2009 Sep 15, In Puerto Rico several employees of American Airlines were among a group of at least 20 people arrested on suspicion of aiding a smuggling ring that shipped drugs from Puerto Rico's main airport to the US mainland.
(AP, 9/15/09)
2009 Sep 15, Russian news agencies said the country's coast guard warned that it will detain Georgian ships entering the territorial waters of Abkhazia. Viktor Turfanov, the head of the coastal division of the border guards service, said that Georgia this year has intercepted more than 20 ships in Abkhazian waters.
(AP, 9/15/09)
2009 Sep 15, In Turkey security talks failed over Syria's refusal to extradite some suspects accused of deadly bombings in Baghdad. Senior Iraqi and Syrian diplomats attended the talks.
(AP, 9/16/09)
2009 Sep 15, The UN refugee agency said 16 African migrants have died and another 49 were missing and presumed dead after trying to cross the Gulf of Aden in three boats. One boat reached Yemen on Sep 13, one had capsized on Sep 13 and one sank on Sep 14.
(AP, 9/15/09)
2009 Sep 16, Sen. Max Baucus brought out the much-awaited Senate Finance Committee version of an American health-system remake, a landmark $856 billion, 10-year measure that starts a rough ride through Congress without visible Republican backing. The 6 committee members received an average $74,600 from health industry lobbyists through June. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, led the group with $223,600. Baucus, D-Montana, was 2nd with $141,000.
(AP, 9/16/09)(SSFC, 9/20/09, p.A1)
2009 Sep 16, In Pennsylvania Andrew Mogilyansky, a wealthy Russian-American car exporter from suburban Philadelphia, was sentenced to 8 years in prison for procuring girls from a Russian orphanage to have sex with them.
(SFC, 9/17/09, p.A7)
2009 Sep 16, Melvin Simon (b.1926), co-owner with brother Herb of the Indiana Pacers basketball franchise and chairman emeritus of Simon Property Group Inc., the nation’s largest owner of retail real estate, died. A few months before his death he signed a controversial will that excluded a son and 2 sisters in favor of his 2nd wife.
(www.ibj.com/community-icon-melvin-simon-dies-at-83/PARAMS/article/7094)
2009 Sep 16, Afghanistan's election commission released preliminary vote totals showing President Hamid Karzai with 54.6 percent of the vote in the first full results to be released since the country's Aug. 20 election. A UN-backed group investigating fraud has ordered a massive audit and recount of about 10 percent of the country's voting stations. A NATO service member died from a bomb strike in the south.
(AP, 9/16/09)(AP, 9/17/09)
2009 Sep 16, Brazil’s JBS Friboi company announced that Texas-based chicken processor Pilgrim’s Pride has agreed to be taken over for $800 million. This and a pending acquisition with Bertin, another Brazilian firm, would make JBS the world’s largest processor of meat.
(Econ, 10/31/09, p.74)(http://tinyurl.com/yb7czq9)
2009 Sep 16, In Bulgaria Sport Minister Svilen Neikov ordered a probe after the numbers 4, 15, 23, 24, 35 and 42 were selected by a machine, in a different order, on consecutive draws televised live on Sept. 6 and Sept. 10. No one won the Sept. 6 draw, but 18 people guessed correctly in the Sept. 10 contest and each received 10,164 leva ($7,585, euro5,150) in prize money.
(AP, 9/17/09)
2009 Sep 16, In Chechnya a suicide bomber wounded six police officers in Grozny.
(AP, 9/16/09)
2009 Sep 16, The European Parliament gave Jose Manuel Barroso another five-year term as European Commission president, but its vote reflected lingering misgivings about the conservative ex-Portuguese premier.
(AP, 9/16/09)
2009 Sep 16, Hungary said it will accept a detainee from Guantanamo Bay, inching President Barack Obama closer to his pledge to close the U.S. military detention center.
(AP, 9/16/09)
2009 Sep 16, In Iraq the US military closed Camp Bucca, an isolated desert prison that was once its largest lockup in Iraq, as it moved to release thousands of detainees or transfer them to Iraqi custody before the end of the year. American Marines shot and wounded an Iraqi man in the former flashpoint city of Fallujah believing he was throwing a grenade at them. Local police and witnesses said the object was only the man's slipper. Al-Jumaili, a 30-year-old auto mechanic, said he ran after throwing his slipper, but was slowed after a bullet grazed his leg.
(AP, 9/16/09)(AP, 9/17/09)
2009 Sep 16, Israel rejected UN calls to open an independent inquiry into its conduct in last winter's Gaza Strip war and said it would launch a diplomatic offensive to block any attempt to bring its soldiers before an international war crimes tribunal. The Goldstone Commission report had concluded that Israel committed actions amounting to war crimes during its December incursion into Gaza. It also concluded that there was evidence that Palestinian armed groups had committed war crimes against humanity.
(AP, 9/16/09)(SSFC, 9/20/09, p.A20)
2009 Sep 16, Japan opposition leader Yukio Hatoyama took office as prime minister, naming a new Cabinet and vowing to rebuild the economy and refocus Japan's place on the world stage with his largely untested party. Japan’s debt was almost 200% of GDP. Shizuka Kamei, founder of the People’s New Party (PNP) (2005), took office as the new minister for financial and postal services.
(AP, 9/16/09)(Econ, 9/5/09, p.69)(Econ, 9/26/09, p.88)
2009 Sep 16, Kenyan government trucks took 1,500 slum residents to new homes as part of a UN-backed plan to eliminate the shantytowns that house more than half the capital's population.
(AP, 9/16/09)
2009 Sep 16, Liberia's parliament approved a new law to crack down on narco trafficking amid concerns that druglords want to turn the west African nation into a transit point.
(AFP, 9/16/09)
2009 Sep 16, Mexican navy personnel arrested of a suspect in the June 1 kidnapping of Francisco Serrano, the customs administrator for the Gulf coast state of Veracruz, who remains missing. Jose Osiris was captured in the port of Veracruz along with 10 other people who may have been accomplices. Guerrero state police reported they had found the decomposed bodies of four men by the side of a highway. Because of their poor condition, the cause of death and identity of the bodies has not yet been established.
(AP, 9/17/09)
2009 Sep 16, Nigerian militants (MEND) announced they will extend a cease-fire that expired overnight by one month, holding off on attacks on oil installations and kidnapping foreigners, but warned that the government must address the group's grievances.
(AP, 9/16/09)
2009 Sep 16, Russia’s Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said Russia has reached a settlement with Bank of New York Mellon over a $22.5 billion lawsuit against the bank stemming from a 1990s money laundering scheme by one of its executives. Russia would receive no less than $14 million for court costs under the long-anticipated, out-of-court deal. The government would also get a $4 billion discounted loan from the bank, an "act of goodwill." The two-year court case stems from a decade-old scandal in which a Bank of NY vice president and her husband were convicted of illegally wiring $7.5 billion of Russian money into accounts at the bank.
(AP, 9/16/09)
2009 Sep 16, Syrian President Bashar Assad met with Turkey's PM Erdogan in Istanbul to discuss ways to revive the stalled peace process between Syria and Israel, a day after security talks with Iraq collapsed.
(AP, 9/16/09)
2009 Sep 16, In Venezuela the collision of a truck carrying chlorine gas and a cargo vehicle killed nine people and provoking breathing problems in 326 others.
(AP, 9/17/09)
2009 Sep 16, Yemeni warplanes hit a makeshift camp for civilians fleeing fighting between the government and Shiite rebels. Nearly 87 civilians were killed as government warplanes hit a camp of people fleeing fighting in the northern region of Saada.
(AP, 9/16/09)(SFC, 9/18/09, p.A2)
2009 Sep 17, Pres. Obama said he is abandoning Bush-era plans for a long-range missile defense system based in Poland and the Czech Rep. Czechs and Poles expressed rancor and relief that Obama was scrapping plans for the US missile defense shield on their territories, reflecting deep divisions over a proposal that had angered Russia.
(AP, 9/17/09)(SFC, 9/18/09, p.A7)
2009 Sep 17, In Connecticut Raymond Clark III (24) was arrested at a hotel and charged with murdering Annie Le (24), whose body was found on Sep 13, stuffed in the wall of a research building at Yale on what would have been her wedding day. On March 17, 2011, Clark pleaded guilty to killing Le and faced 44 years in prison.
(AP, 9/17/09)(SFC, 3/18/11, p.A4)
2009 Sep 17, In Washington state Phillip Arnold Paul (47), a criminally insane killer, escaped during a field trip to the Spokane County Fair that his mental hospital organized. Paul was committed after he was acquitted by reason of insanity in the 1987 slaying of an elderly woman, whose body he soaked in gasoline to throw off search dogs. Paul was re-captured on Sep 20.
(AP, 9/19/09)(SFC, 9/21/09, p.A6)
2009 Sep 17, In Kabul, Afghanistan, a suicide bomber rammed a car packed with explosives into two Italian military vehicles killing six of those aboard and wounding four. 10 Afghan civilians were also killed. A US service member and a Canadian soldier died in separate roadside bomb explosions in the south.
(AP, 9/17/09)(AP, 9/18/09)
2009 Sep 17, Brixton, England, officially launched Brixton pounds (B£), a local currency fixed at a one-to-one exchange rate with sterling. It aimed to boost the local economy and build a mutual support system amongst independent businesses.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brixton#Brixton_Pound)(Econ, 1/7/17, p.56)
2009 Sep 17, In London the musical play “Enron," written by Lucy Prebble, opened at the Royal Court Theater.
(Econ, 10/10/09, p.90)
2009 Sep 17, In Britain the Communication Workers Union called for a national walkout following a rolling program of local postal strikes that began in July. The strikes over higher pay and job security have already caused a backlog of 20 million letters and parcels, about a quarter of the Royal Mail's daily volume.
(AP, 9/17/09)
2009 Sep 17, Chinese state media said nine people have been killed and nine others are missing after Typhoon Koppu roared into the southern province of Guangdong. A knife-wielding man stabbed two guards to death and wounded 14 near Beijing's Tiananmen Square. The attacker, a 46-year-old man, was drunk at the time.
(AP, 9/17/09)(AP, 9/19/09)
2009 Sep 17, In China a knife-wielding man stabbed two guards to death and wounded 14 near Beijing's Tiananmen Square. The attacker, a 46-year-old man, was drunk at the time.
(AP, 9/19/09)
2009 Sep 17, An Egyptian judge convicted two American couples of human trafficking in an illegal adoptions case and sentenced them to two years in prison. The trial highlighted bureaucratic entanglements and murky legislation on adopting children in the predominantly Muslim country.
(AP, 9/17/09)
2009 Sep 17, In southern Germany an 18-year-old student armed with an ax and knives lobbed Molotov cocktails at his Carolinum High School in the Bavarian town of Ansbach, wounding eight pupils and a teacher before he was shot and arrested by police. In 2010 the student, identified as Georg R, was convicted of 47 counts of attempted murder and order to 9 years in youth detention and psychiatric care.
(AP, 9/17/09)(AP, 4/29/10)
2009 Sep 17, Armed Indonesian police stormed an Islamic militant hideout in a raid that killed fugitive terror mastermind Noordin Mohammed Top (41) and 3 other militants in central Java. Putri Munawaroh (21) was wounded and arrested after police raided her house, sparking the gunbattle. In 2010 she was sentenced to 3 years in prison for harboring terrorists.
(AFP, 9/17/09)(AP, 7/29/10)
2009 Sep 17, Myanmar's junta announced amnesty to 7,114 convicts at prisons across the country, but it was not immediately known if they included political detainees.
(AP, 9/17/09)
2009 Sep 17, Pakistan's military killed 10 insurgents and said it had arrested Sher Muhammad Qasab, a militant commander accused of beheading troops in the northwestern Swat Valley.
(AP, 9/17/09)
2009 Sep 17, In Pakistan-controlled Kashmir a speeding bus, whose driver apparently was eager to break his daylong Ramadan fast, spun out of control and plunged off a mountainous road, killing 25 people and injuring 30 others.
(AP, 9/17/09)
2009 Sep 17, Serbian men brutally attacked Brice Taton (28), a French soccer fan, in front of a downtown cafe in the Serbian capital before Partizan Belgrade's Europa Cup match against Toulouse. On Jan 25 a Belgrade court convicted 14 Serbs of the fatal beating of Taton. Two of the convicted remain at large and were tried in absentia.
(AP, 1/25/11)
2009 Sep 17, In Somalia Islamist insurgents drove two stolen UN cars loaded with explosives onto the main base of African Union peacekeepers and triggered massive blasts that a witness said killed 21 people, including 4 suicide bombers, 16 officials from the government and AMISOM, the AU peacekeeping force, and the Burundian deputy commander of the force. Islamist insurgents said the attack was in revenge for a US commando raid that killed an al-Qaida operative. An hour later missiles were fired from the AU base strike rebel-controlled areas of Mogadishu, killing seven people and wounded 16. It was later suspected that one of the suicide bombers was a Somali-American teenager, Omar Mohamud (18), of Seattle, Wa. Al-Shabab said the bombing was in retaliation for a U.S. raid days earlier that killed an al-Qaida operative in southern Somalia.
(AP, 9/17/09)(AP, 9/18/09)(AP, 9/25/09)(AP, 10/6/11)
2009 Sep 17, Spanish National Court Judge Ismael Moreno indicted three alleged ex-Nazi death camp guards, who are or were longtime residents of the United States, charging them with being accessories to genocide and crimes against humanity. Moreno issued international arrest warrants for the three: Johann Leprich, Anton Tittjung and Josias Kumpf. The 18-page indictment says Kumpf apparently lives now in Austria and other two in the US.
(AP, 9/17/09)
2009 Sep 17, Spanish oil major Repsol YPF said it had discovered oil off the coast of Sierra Leone, its first find in the west African nation, along with its Australian, American and British partners.
(AFP, 9/17/09)
2009 Sep 17, Ugandan cricket authorities said Six Ugandan cricketers are missing in Canada after playing in a qualifying tournament for next year's World Cup.
(AP, 9/17/09)
2009 Sep 18, In Chicago 4 former members of a now-disbanded police unit admitted that they used to barge into people’s homes and steal money. They were sentenced to 6 months in jail and promised to cooperate in an ongoing investigation.
(SFC, 9/19/09, p.A6)
2009 Sep 18, Mesac Damas (33), a man with prior charges of domestic violence, left Miami on flight to Haiti. The next day his wife and 5 children were found slain in Naples, Fl. Damas was later arrested in Haiti and returned to the US where he was charged with 6 counts of first-degree murder.
(SFC, 9/21/09, p.A7)(SFC, 10/27/09, p.A4)
2009 Sep 18, In Virginia the bodies of four people were found at a Longwood University professor's home near campus in Farmville, about 50 miles west of Richmond. Richard Alden Samuel McCroskey III (20) was arrested the next day as he tried to catch a flight back to his home in Castro Valley, California. McCroskey had recorded songs that spoke of death, murder and mutilation under the name Syko Sam. His MySpace Web page said he has only been rapping for a few months but has been a fan for years of the horrorcore genre. The victims included his girlfriend, Emma Niederbrock (16), her mother, Prof. Debra Kelley (53), her father, Pastor Mark Niederbrock (50), and Emma’s best friend, Melanie Wells (18). In 2010 McCroskey pleaded guilty to the murders and was sentenced to life in prison.
(AP, 9/20/09)(SFC, 9/22/09, p.A12)(SFC, 9/23/09, p.D1)(SFC, 9/21/10, p.A5)
2009 Sep 18, It was reported that some 20-50 thousands birds have died along the shore of Utah’s Great Salt Lake so far this year from avian botulism.
(SFC, 9/18/09, p.A21)
2009 Sep 18, Irving Kristol (89), political writer and publisher, died in Washington DC. He was known as the godfather of neoconservatism. In 1965 Kristol and Daniel Bell founded the “Public Interest," a quarterly public policy journal. Kristol’s books included “Neoconservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea" (1995).
(SFC, 9/19/09, p.A9)(Econ, 9/26/09, p.100)
2009 Sep 18, In Afghanistan gunmen opened fire in a mosque in Jawzjan province, killing five men and wounding another two.
(AFP, 9/19/09)
2009 Sep 18, The African Union announced it would impose sanctions on Guinea's junta leader, Captain Moussa Dadis Camara, over his intention to run in upcoming presidential polls.
(AFP, 9/18/09)
2009 Sep 18, Australia approved a vaccine against swine flu and said it would start administering the medicine this month to its most at-risk citizens, including medical staff, pregnant women and the chronically ill. Regulators approved CSL Ltd.'s vaccine for people above age 10, but the Therapeutic Drug Administration was awaiting the results of more clinical trials before approving it for younger children.
(AP, 9/18/09)
2009 Sep 18, In Vienna, Austria, a 150-nation IAEA nuclear conference passed a resolution directly criticizing Israel and its atomic program for the first time in 18 years. Iran hailed the vote as a "glorious moment." 49 voted for the resolution. 45 were against and 16 abstained from endorsing or rejecting he document.
(AP, 9/18/09)
2009 Sep 18, Paul Gilles Nanda (52), a Cameroonian employee of the Development Bank of Central African States (BDEAC), was jailed in the Republic Congo. He had compiled a document to disclose bad management at the bank with evidence to back it up. The Austrian daily Oberosterreichische Nachrichten revealed at the end of August that the BDEAC had lost 11 billion CFA francs during an affair in which international financier Bernard Madoff stole billions of dollars from thousands of investors.
(AFP, 9/22/09)
2009 Sep 18, Canada-based oil producer Verenex Energy Inc. agreed to be sold to the Libyan Investment Authority for about $314.1 million Canadian ($293.7 million) in cash, after a better deal with a Chinese firm fell through.
(AP, 9/20/09)
2009 Sep 18, Colombia’s spy chief, Felipe Munoz Gomez, said the domestic spy department will be dismantled and a new agency will be set up to focus on intelligence and counterintelligence work involving national security. This followed a recent wiretapping scandal.
(AP, 9/18/09)
2009 Sep 18, In Ecuador the last 15 US troops left the Pacific Manta air base, officially closing the US military post in what Ecuador's government calls a recovery of sovereignty.
(AP, 9/19/09)
2009 Sep 18, Angry French farmers dumped millions of liters of fresh milk next to next the famed Mont Saint-Michel, one of France's most famous tourist sites, to denounce the slumping cost of milk and an EU plan to end production quotas, which could further drive prices down.
(AP, 9/18/09)
2009 Sep 18, In Hong Kong Du Jun (41), a Beijing native and former managing director for Morgan Stanley, was sentenced to 7 years in prison for insider trading. He was also fined about $3 million.
(SFC, 9/19/09, p.D1)
2009 Sep 18, In India at least nine Maoists and a soldier were killed when government troops launched a major offensive against a rebel stronghold in the central state of Chhattisgarh.
(AFP, 9/18/09)
2009 Sep 18, In Iran hard-liners attacked senior pro-reform leaders in the streets on Quds Day as tens of thousands marched in competing mass demonstrations by the opposition and government supporters. Opposition protesters, chanting "death to the dictator," hurled stones and bricks in clashes with security forces firing tear gas. The Quds Day ceremony was established in 1979 by the leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini as an annual event opposing Israel’s control of Jerusalem.
(AP, 9/18/09)(www.alqudsday.com/)
2009 Sep 18, In Iraq a car bomb exploded at a market in Mahmoudiya, a region that was once the scene of frequent attacks on Shiites, killing seven people and wounding 21 others.
(AP, 9/18/09)
2009 Sep 18, Israelis welcomed the Jewish New Year, grateful for the recent calm spell in the region but skeptical that the coming year would see the achievement of ever-elusive peace. It coincided this year with Eid al-Fitr, a Muslim feast marking the end of the fasting month of Ramadan.
(AP, 9/18/09)
2009 Sep 18, In Mexico City Luis Felipe Hernandez Castillo (38), while scrawling graffiti inside the downtown at the Balderas subway station, pulled out a gun and began shooting when confronted by police, killing at least two people and wounding five before being shot and subdued by officers.
(AP, 9/19/09)
2009 Sep 18, Myanmar released at least 25 political detainees as part of an amnesty program. The country was believed to be holding some 65,000 prisoners including over 2,200 political detainees.
(SFC, 9/19/09, p.A2)
2009 Sep 18, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen called for the US, Russia and NATO to link their missile defense systems against potential new nuclear threats from Asia and the Middle East, saying that the old foes must forget their lingering Cold War animosity.
(AP, 9/18/09)
2009 Sep 18, In northwest Pakistan a suicide car bomb destroyed a 2-story hotel at a market in Usterzai, a small mainly Shiite town, killing over 30 people and trapping victims under smashed shops as families bought supplies for a major religious festival.
(AFP, 9/18/09)(SFC, 9/19/09, p.A4)(AP, 9/20/09)
2009 Sep 18, In Poland a methane leak in a coal mine set off an explosion that killed 12 miners in the southwestern city of Ruda Slaska.
(AP, 9/18/09)
2009 Sep 18, Puerto Rican authorities captured Angel Ayala Vazquez, also known as "Angelo Millones," an alleged dealer they say led a violent drug ring in at least two sprawling housing projects in Puerto Rico and trafficked narcotics to the US mainland.
(AP, 9/22/09)
2009 Sep 18, South Korean scientists said they had developed a new transistor which moves faster and consumes less energy than existing semiconductors, a technology opening the way for no-booting computers.
(AP, 9/18/09)
2009 Sep 18, In Sudan Darfur rebels accused Sudanese government forces of attacking their positions over the last 2 days, weeks after a senior peacekeeper said the region was no longer in a state of war.
(Reuters, 9/19/09)
2009 Sep 18, Turkey's military said it was planning to spend close to $1 billion (euro680 million) for its first long-range missile defense system.
(AP, 9/18/09)
2009 Sep 18, In Venezuela an emergency meeting of the Inter American Press Association (IAPA) took place in Caracas. Former presidents from Peru and Bolivia joined newspaper editors from across the Americas in condemning what they call a series of attempts by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, and some of his allies, to clamp down on the news media.
(AP, 9/19/09)
2009 Sep 19, The FBI arrested Najibullah Zazi (24) of the Denver suburb of Aurora, Colorado, on charges of making false statements to federal agents in an ongoing terror investigation. Supporting documents contend the man admitted receiving weapons and explosives training from al-Qaida in Pakistan. Also arrested were Zazi's father, Mohammed Wali Zazi (53) in Denver; and an associate, Ahmad Wais Afzali (37) of Queens, NY. On Feb 22, 2010, Zazi pleaded guilty admitting that he had agreed to conduct an Al-Qaida-led “martyrdom operation" in NYC.
(AP, 9/20/09)(SFC, 2/23/10, p.A6)
2009 Sep 19, NASA launched the Black Brant XII to gather data on the highest clouds in the Earth's atmosphere.
(AP, 9/20/09)
2009 Sep 19, In Afghanistan two children were killed when a suicide attacker, believed to have been a woman, blew herself up in a crowded area of western Herat city. A Danish soldier was killed and another injured after they came under fire during a patrol in Helmand province. A suicide attacker drove a vehicle into a Hungarian convoy morning in the northern city of Pul-e-Khumri. The suicide attacker was killed, but there were no casualties in the convoy. An American soldier died in fighting in the east.
(AFP, 9/19/09)(AP, 9/19/09)(AP, 9/20/09)
2009 Sep 19, Australian authorities delivered a formal apology to the many thousands of people who were abused in state-run orphanages and children's homes in decades past.
(AFP, 9/19/09)
2009 Sep 19, In southeastern China at least 16 people died and 14 were injured after a truck hit a road maintenance vehicle from behind, sending it off a bridge.
(AP, 9/19/09)
2009 Sep 19, Colombia extradited Nancy Conde Rubio (37), a captured leftist rebel who unwittingly helped officials rescue 15 hostages, including three American military contractors. She was bundled aboard a plane to Florida to face charges of terrorism in a US federal court. Colombia also sent back another woman and eight men to face charges in the US related to drug trafficking.
(AP, 9/20/09)
2009 Sep 19, In the Dominican Republic Angel Villanova (19), baseball player for the SF Giants, allegedly shot and killed Mario Velete (25). Villanova had first signed with the Giants in 2006 and had recently signed a contract for $2.1 million.
(SSFC, 9/27/09, p.A1)
2009 Sep 19, In Germany a doctor (50) leading a group therapy session gave participants drugs and other substances that killed two and hospitalized ten. One person was left comatose and in critical condition.
(AP, 9/20/09)
2009 Sep 19, In Indonesia a strong earthquake shook the popular resort island of Bali, injuring at least seven people and sending panicked tourists and residents fleeing out of homes and hotels.
(AP, 9/19/09)
2009 Sep 19, Maurizio Montalbini (56), Italian sociologist, died. He had spent months dwelling in caves to study how the mind and body cope with complete isolation. In 1987 he claimed his first world record after spending 210 days alone in a cave in the Apennine mountains.
(AP, 9/20/09)
2009 Sep 19, In southern Mexico gunmen attacked a group of illegal immigrants, killing one and wounding five as well as an alleged people smuggler in Chiapas state.
(AP, 9/19/09)
2009 Sep 19, Off the Moroccan coast an inflatable dinghy sank before dawn off Perejil, a rocky Spanish-owned islet in the Mediterranean Sea. Some 42 would-be illegal immigrants were crammed onto the boat. 11 migrants from Niger and Senegal survived and 8 bodies were recovered. The next day the 11 migrants were expelled from Morocco.
(AFP, 9/21/09)(AFP, 9/22/09)
2009 Sep 19, Nigeria’s Information Minister Dora Akunyili said she's asked movie houses to stop screening "District 9" because the South Africa-based sci-fi movie about aliens and discrimination makes Nigerians look bad. Akunyili said she has asked Sony for an apology and wants them to edit out the Nigerian antagonists and the name of the main Nigerian gangster Obesandjo, whose name closely resembles that of former President Olusegun Obasanjo. The film brought in some US$37 million (euro25.16 million) during its US debut weekend in August.
(AP, 9/19/09)
2009 Sep 19, Russia said it will scrap a plan to deploy missiles near Poland since Washington has dumped a planned missile shield in Eastern Europe. It also harshly criticized Iran's president for new comments denying the Holocaust.
(AP, 9/19/09)
2009 Sep 19, Lt. Col. Yelizaveta Mukasei (97), a Soviet spy who worked undercover in the West with her husband, died in Moscow. Mukasei, whose code name was Elza, lived in Los Angeles from 1939 to 1943 when her husband, Mikhail, was working undercover there. Mikhail, whose code name was Zephyr, died last year at age 101.
(AP, 9/21/09)
2009 Sep 19, Sweden's centre-right government announced income tax cuts of 10 billion kronor to stimulate the job market, its primary objective.
(AFP, 9/19/09)
2009 Sep 19, Thai nationalists clashed with police and villagers as they tried to march toward an ancient temple on the Cambodian border, while anti-government protesters in the capital marked the third anniversary of a coup that continues to create political turmoil.
(AP, 9/19/09)
2009 Sep 19, Yemen offered a conditional cease-fire to the Shiite rebels it is battling in the north, following international concern over a deadly airstrike against civilians displaced from the war zones.
(AP, 9/19/09)
2009 Sep 20, It was reported that US Democrat Rep. Charlie Rangel (79), the person most in charge of writing the nation's tax laws, had neglected to pay taxes on rental income from his vacation villa in the Dominican Republic, and that he had also failed to report assets worth hundreds of thousands of dollars on his annual disclosure forms, including a hard-to-miss credit union account worth up to $500,000.
(AP, 9/20/09)
2009 Sep 20, In the 61st Annual Primetime Emmys the winners included “Mad Men" won for best drama series and “30 Rock" for best comedy series.
(SFC, 9/21/09, p.C3)
2009 Sep 20, Michele Dickerson of Alameda County, Ca., won the $32 million state lottery. She planned to take a $19.7 million lump sum before taxes.
(SFC, 9/23/09, p.A14)
2009 Sep 20, In San Francisco Andres Siordia (19) killed 2 men and wounded a 3rd at Papa Potrero’s Pizza. Police believed the shootings were in retaliation for the slaying of Norteno gang member Michael Sanchez (21) on Sep 18.
(SFC, 9/24/09, p.D2)
2009 Sep 20, In Afghanistan NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said 2 US soldiers were killed in a noncombat-related incident in the south. The Afghan defense ministry said Afghan and foreign troops will halt offensive operations in the war against Taliban-led insurgents for the UN's International Day of Peace on Sep 21.
(AFP, 9/20/09)
2009 Sep 20, Australian border protection officials rescued 54 asylum seekers from a boat stranded in northern waters.
(AP, 9/20/09)
2009 Sep 20, Cubans in their multitudes flocked to sprawling Revolution Plaza for a massive open-air "peace concert" headlined by Colombian rocker Juanes, an event criticized by some Cuban-Americans who say the performers are lending support to the island's communist government simply by showing up.
(AP, 9/20/09)
2009 Sep 20, German authorities said al Qaeda threatened Germany with attacks for the second time this weekend in an online video criticizing the country for its deployment of troops in Afghanistan. The interior ministry identified al Qaeda's messenger in the latest video as Bekkay Harrach (32), a German-Moroccan.
(Reuters, 9/20/09)
2009 Sep 20, In Iraq a roadside bomb exploded on a main road in Iskandariyah, 30 miles (50km) south of Baghdad, killing the driver of a car and injuring four passengers. A Black Hawk helicopter crashed at a Balad Air Base, killing one US service member and injuring 12 others.
(AP, 9/20/09)
2009 Sep 20, An Israeli border patrol fired at Palestinian militants planting a bomb at the Gaza border fence. 2 men were killed and 3 wounded.
(SFC, 9/21/09, p.A2)
2009 Sep 20, Trafigura, a Netherlands-based oil trading company, said it has agreed to a settlement with people who claim they fell ill after a tanker dumped hundreds of tons of waste around the Ivory Coast's main city of Abidjan in 2006. Trafigura paid Ivory Coast's government euro152 million (US$197 million) in 2007 to assist in cleaning up the waste without admitting responsibility.
(AP, 9/20/09)
2009 Sep 20, In Nigeria Bayo Ohu (45), assistant news editor at the influential Guardian newspaper, was shot dead by unidentified gunmen as he answered a knock at the front door of his house in a northern suburb of Lagos. On March 15, 2010, police detained three suspects for the murder of Ohu.
(AFP, 9/22/09)(AFP, 3/15/10)
2009 Sep 20, In Pakistan Sher Muhammad Qasab, a feared Taliban commander known for beheading opponents, died in custody from wounds sustained during a fierce firefight with Pakistani security forces last week. The military said security forces killed eight militants in search operations throughout Swat over the last 24 hours and that 23 insurgents were apprehended and another 22 surrendered. One of the militants killed was a Taliban commander identified as Chamtu Khan.
(AP, 9/20/09)
2009 Sep 20, In the southern Philippines clashes erupted when al-Qaida-linked militants resisted attempts by government forces to serve arrest warrants on 3 of their commanders. Troops took control of the Abu Sayyaf group's biggest camp on the island of Jolo following rounds of air strikes.
(AP, 9/20/09)(AP, 9/21/09)
2009 Sep 20, Somali al-Shabab insurgents attacked a town near the border with Ethiopia, killing at least 10 people.
(AP, 9/21/09)
2009 Sep 20, The Sudanese army said it has cleared several more areas of rebel control in North Darfur province ahead of peace talks set for October. Rebels denied the government claims. In southern Sudan Lou Nuer tribesman attacked the village of Duk-Padiet in Jonglei state killing around 102 people, including 51 civilians and 23 attackers.
(AP, 9/20/09)(AFP, 9/21/09)
2009 Sep 21, Bob Woodward released an exclusive 66-page report from Gen. Stanley McChrystal to President Barack Obama about Afghanistan policy, the first major national security leak and a sure sign that the celebrated Washington Post reporter has penetrated yet another administration. The report was presented to US Defense Secretary Robert Gates on August 30 and was being reviewed by the White House, with McChrystal widely expected to make a formal request to increase the 62,000-strong US force.
(http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20090922/pl_politico/27414)(AFP, 9/22/09)
2009 Sep 21, US prosecutors said Hassan Nemazee, a fund-raiser for Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and other Democrats, has been indicted for defrauding Bank of America, HSBC and Citigroup Inc out of more than $290 million in loan proceeds.
(Reuters, 9/21/09)
2009 Sep 21, The annual MacArthur awards were announced with 24 recipients chosen as winners. Each will receive $500,000, paid as quarterly installments over five years. The grants, nicknamed the Genius Award, are given by the Chicago-based John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation each year to typically 20 to 40 United States citizens or residents.
(SFC, 9/22/09, p.C2)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacArthur_Award)
2009 Sep 21, The Philadelphia Daily News reported that police officer Thomas Strain was put on desk duty this month because of braids, even though the paper reported dozens of black officers wear cornrows. The white officer, who came to work with cornrows, was ordered by a black superior to get a haircut because the braids violated department standards.
(AP, 9/21/09)
2009 Sep 21, In Illinois a couple and their 3 children were found brutally slain in the central farming community of Beason. On May 31, 2013, Christopher Harris (34) was found guilty of beating 5 members of his ex-wife’s family to death.
(SFC, 9/23/09, p.A10)(SFC, 6/1/13, p.A4)
2009 Sep 21, Coca Cola chose the hip-hop song “Wavin’ Flag" by Somali-born singer K’naan (31) as the anthem for the coming World Cup in South Africa. Born Keynaan Warsame in Somalia’s seaside capital, Mogadishu, he is now a citizen of Canada.
(www.thecoca-colacompany.com/presscenter/nr_20090921_fifa_world_cup.html)
2009 Sep 21, Christian Rossiter (49) an Australian quadriplegic died, ending an existence he had described as a "living hell." On Aug 14 he had won a landmark legal battle to starve himself to death by refusing food.
(AP, 9/21/09)
2009 Sep 21, Grant Kippen, the Canadian head of the UN-backed panel investigating fraud in Afghanistan's presidential vote, said the panel has agreed to allow a recount of just a sampling of hundreds of thousands of suspect ballots to speed the process. In southern Afghanistan a roadside bomb killed an American service member.
(AP, 9/21/09)(AP, 9/22/09)
2009 Sep 21, A strong 6.3-magnitude earthquake struck the remote Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan, killing at least 12 people and damaging monasteries and other buildings.
(AP, 9/21/09)(AP, 9/22/09)
2009 Sep 21, Bisa Williams, senior US diplomat in Cuba for the highest level talks in decades, met with opposition activists in Havana. Williams led a delegation with the USPS that held talks September 17 in a first round of talks aimed at restarting bilateral mail service which was cut off in 1963.
(http://newsfeedresearcher.com/data/articles_w40/cuba-cubans-talks.html)(SFC, 10/1/09, p.A2)
2009 Sep 21, A Danish court rejected the military's request to stop a book by a former special forces soldier from being published. Denmark's armed forces had asked the Bailiff's Court in Copenhagen to ban Thomas Rathsack's book, "Ranger: At War With the Elite," for national security reasons. It describes operations that he took part in as a member of an army ranger unit in Afghanistan and Iraq.
(AP, 9/21/09)
2009 Sep 21, Gambian President Yahya Jammeh warned that anyone who sought to destabilize the tiny west African nation would be killed.
(AP, 9/21/09)
2009 Sep 21, In Honduras deposed President Manuel Zelaya sneaked back into the country and holed up at the Brazilian embassy to avoid threatened arrest.
(AP, 9/22/09)
2009 Sep 21, In Indonesia Akbar Risuddin came into the world at a national record 19.2 pounds (8.7 kilograms). He was born to a diabetic mother in a 40-minute cesarean delivery that was complicated because of his unusual weight and size. Guinness World Records cites the heaviest baby as being born in the US in 1879, weighing 23.75 pounds (10.4 kilograms). However, it died 11 hours after birth. The book also cites 22.5-pound (10.2-kilogram) babies born in Italy in 1955 and in South Africa in 1982.
(AP, 9/25/09)
2009 Sep 21, Gordon Wateridge (78), a carer at the former Haut de la Garenne children’s home during the 1970s on the Channel island of Jersey, was jailed for two years for sexually assaulting teenage girls there.
(AFP, 9/21/09)
2009 Sep 21, Mexican soldiers raiding a drug gang safehouse in Monterrey found money-stuffed envelopes earmarked for various police forces and one marked for "press." Four people were arrested and $5 million in US and Mexican currency was seized during the raid.
(AP, 9/23/09)
2009 Sep 21, In northwestern Pakistan police officers foiled a plan to assassinate a regional education minister when they took on four militants in a gunbattle that ended with a teenage suicide bomber blowing himself up. Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, founder of Laskhar-e-Taiba, was placed under house arrest in Lahore for a 2nd time. His militant group was believed to have masterminded the November, 2008, commando assault that left 171 dead in Mumbai.
(AP, 9/21/09)(SFC, 9/22/09, p.A3)
2009 Sep 21, Philippine marines were ambushed by Abu Sayyaf fighters, as they were leaving a newly-captured camp on Jolo Island, resulting in the deaths of 8 troopers and 5 guerrillas. Abu Sayyaf reinforcements had come in by boat from the nearby islands of Basilan to help their comrades on Jolo.
(AFP, 9/21/09)
2009 Sep 21, Taiwan’s former President Chen Shui-bian filed a petition to the US Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces in Washington, DC, claiming that the US still controls Taiwan because former colonial power Japan never officially transferred the island to another nation after being defeated in World War II.
(AP, 9/23/09)
2009 Sep 21, Zimbabwe teachers, who went on strike over salaries at the start of the new school term three weeks ago, returned to work after their union called off the boycott.
(AFP, 9/21/09)
2009 Sep 22, The Massachusetts state Senate approved a bill allowing the appointment of a temporary replacement for the late Sen. Edward Kennedy. The measure had passed the House last week.
(SFC, 9/23/09, p.A10)
2009 Sep 22, In Georgia washed-out roads and flooded interstate highways around Atlanta added to the misery after days of torrential rain in the Southeast claimed at least eight lives.
(AP, 9/22/09)
2009 Sep 22, In Michigan off-duty Canton police officer Edward Williams II (36), shot and killed his wife (33), a Detroit police officer, in a library parking lot before shooting himself. He soon after at a hospital.
(SFC, 9/23/09, p.A10)(http://tinyurl.com/mlswtr)
2009 Sep 22, In Afghanistan a roadside bomb blast killed five people in western Farah province. Eight others in the van were wounded.
(AP, 9/23/09)
2009 Sep 22, Britain’s Office of Fair Trading (OFT) said it has imposed fines totaling 129.5 million pounds on 103 construction firms in England which it has found had colluded with competitors on building contracts.
(AFP, 9/22/09)
2009 Sep 22, China appealed at the last minute against a World Trade Organization ruling upholding parts of a US complaint about Chinese restrictions on imports of films, books and other audio-visual material.
(Reuters, 9/22/09)
2009 Sep 22, A sharply divided EU failed to protect the threatened bluefin tuna, as the bloc's Mediterranean nations refused to back even a temporary a ban on catching the fish prized by sushi aficionados. Greece, Cyprus, Malta, Spain, France and Italy, with strong fishermen's lobbies at home, insisted on continuing the hunt despite the precarious state of the species. Conservation groups had earlier criticized the EU for not pushing to list the bluefin tuna under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species.
(AP, 9/22/09)
2009 Sep 22, French police cleared out, then bulldozed, a squalid forest camp near the northern city of Calais, detaining hundreds of illegal immigrants who had hoped to slip across the English Channel into Britain.
(AP, 9/22/09)
2009 Sep 22, In western Germany 5 people were killed in a bus accident at Radevormwald. It broke through a crash barrier and plunged 65 feet (20 meters) into the Wupper river.
(AP, 9/22/09)
2009 Sep 22, In Honduras baton-wielding police fired tear gas at thousands of demonstrators, chasing them away from the Brazilian embassy where deposed President Manuel Zelaya, who a day earlier had sneaked back into the country, remains holed up, avoiding threatened arrest.
(AP, 9/22/09)
2009 Sep 22, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that Iran is stronger than ever and warned that its military will "cut the hand" of anyone who attacks. But a military parade where he spoke was marred when an air force plane crashed, killing seven people.
(AP, 9/22/09)
2009 Sep 22, Mexican authorities said there would be no compensation for Jacinta Francisco Marcial, an Indian market vendor who was wrongfully convicted of kidnapping and spent three years in prison, in a case that provoked an international protest.
(AP, 9/22/09)
2009 Sep 22, In northwestern Pakistan suspected Islamist militants blew up an empty girls school on the outskirts of the Peshawar.
(AP, 9/22/09)
2009 Sep 22, In Somalia Islamic insurgents attacked an African Union peacekeeping base, sparking a battle that killed at least 8 people and wounded more than a dozen.
(AP, 9/22/09)
2009 Sep 22, In Spain Julio Alberto Poch, an Argentine-born pilot for a low-cost airline, was arrested during a stopover in a Spanish airport on suspicion of piloting planes that carried hundreds of dissidents to their deaths during his country's 1976-1983 "dirty war." He was wanted for questioning in four probes of more than 1,000 deaths during his time as a pilot at the Navy Mechanics School.
(AP, 9/23/09)
2009 Sep 22, In Taiwan former President Chen Shui-bian was indicted on new embezzlement charges just weeks after being sentenced to life in prison.
(AP, 9/23/09)
2009 Sep 22, The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs announced that flash floods and lighting have claimed 187 lives and affected 635,273 people in west Africa since the rainy season started in June. This included 103 dead in Sierra Leone, followed by Ghana (24), Mali (20), Ivory Coast (19), Burkina Faso (8), Niger (7) and Senegal (6).
(AFP, 9/22/09)
2009 Sep 22, Venezuelan police have captured Julio Mendez (38), an American pilot wanted since 2007 on cocaine smuggling charges in the United States.
(AP, 9/23/09)
2009 Sep 23, US President Barack Obama delivered a stern message to global leaders to work together to solve the world's most pressing problems in his maiden speech to UN General Assembly. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon challenged world leaders to cleanse the globe of nuclear weapons, tackle the threat of catastrophic climate change and combat growing poverty from the global financial crisis.
(AFP, 9/23/09)(AP, 9/23/09)
2009 Sep 23, In San Mateo, Ca., a federal grand jury indicted Seth Sundberg (34), a branch manager for a mortgage and financial business, with mail fraud and falsifying a tax return. He had claimed a tax refund of just over $5 million after allegedly paying $5.7 million in taxes for receiving interest income.
(SFC, 9/25/09, p.C4)
2009 Sep 23, In Oakland, Ca., Damon Wessel (48) and Michael Caldwell (44) were shot and killed at 4075 Canon Ave. On Nov 18 Damon Joseph Ferreira (34), wanted for a parole violation and for connection to the slayings, shot and killed himself in Stockton as he was confronted by police.
(SFC, 11/19/09, p.C2)
2009 Sep 23, In Illinois Michael Finton (29) was arrested in Springfield after federal officials said he attempted to detonate what he believed to be explosives in a van in Springfield. The FBI had provided the decoy devices.
(SFC, 9/26/09, p.A6)
2009 Sep 23, In Texas Maria Refugia Camarillo (72), a Fort Worth grandmother, was sentenced to nearly 4 years in prison for running a scheme in which her family members married scores of foreigners seeking to stay in the US.
(SFC, 9/24/09, p.A7)
2009 Sep 23, It was reported that solar power company SolarCity and Dutch Bank RaboBank have teamed together to build 5 recharging stations along Highway 101, between the SF Bay Area and Los Angeles, to support the new Tesla electric cars. The $109,000 roadster was limited to range of about 250 miles. Recharging would take 30-45 minutes. Fully charging the cars took over 3 hours at a cost of about $4.
(SFC, 9/23/09, p.A1)
2009 Sep 23, John Hart (b.1917), former film and TV star, died in Baha, Ca. He had temporarily replaced Clayton Moore as the Lone Ranger in 1952. His career started with bit parts in “The Buccaneer" (1938). In 1947 he played the title role in the 1947 serial “Jack Armstrong: The All-American Boy." In 1957 he starred as Hawkeye in the TV series “Hawkeye and the Last of the Mohicans."
(SFC, 9/24/09, p.D5)
2009 Sep 23, In Afghanistan a family of seven died when their vehicle struck a bomb in Panjwayi district, in Kandahar province. All in the car were killed including two young children.
(AP, 9/23/09)
2009 Sep 23, The 20-member African Leaders Malaria alliance began a campaign to stop malaria from killing an estimated 1 million people in Africa each year.
(SFC, 9/24/09, p.A2)
2009 Sep 23, Australia's worst dust storm in 70 years blanketed the heavily populated east coast in a cloud of red Outback grit, nearly closed the country's largest airport and left millions of people coughing and sputtering in the streets.
(AP, 9/23/09)
2009 Sep 23, An Australian naval ship stopped a boat carrying 98 asylum seekers off the country's northwest coast.
(AP, 9/23/09)
2009 Sep 23, Sidney Cambridge (45) of Nassau, a prominent Bahamian lawyer, was indicted on US federal corruption charges in a case that allegedly involves a South Florida politician and nearly $1 million in laundered money. Also charged in the case was Broward County Commissioner and Vice Mayor Josephus Eggelletion, who was suspended pending the outcome of the case.
(AP, 9/24/09)
2009 Sep 23, In Canada the Globe and Mail said Ford Motor Co's Canadian subsidiary faces a $1.8 billion shortfall in its pension plan, citing a company letter to employees and retirees.
(Reuters, 9/23/09)
2009 Sep 23, Ethiopia said its national electricity company has signed contracts with three Chinese firms to develop hydro-electric projects and made preliminary accords for wind power projects.
(AFP, 9/23/09)
2009 Sep 23, Europe laid out new proposals to police its banks and financial markets, seeking to set an example on the eve of a summit of G20 major economies.
(AFP, 9/23/09)
2009 Sep 23, England's top prosecutor unveiled new guidelines that could decriminalize many forms of assisted suicide, saying that most people who help close friends or family kill themselves aren't likely to face charges.
(AP, 9/23/09)
2009 Sep 23, Honduras' interim government extended an already long curfew after police skirmished with backers of ousted President Manuel Zelaya throughout the night and arrested more than 100 people for vandalism and looting. The curfew was lifted for 6 hours to allow businesses to reopen and people to restock supplies.
(AP, 9/23/09)(SFC, 9/24/09, p.A2)
2009 Sep 23, In central India an 820-foot (250m) chimney collapsed during bad weather killing 40 people. More than 100 workers were feared dead at the site in Korba, Chhattisgarh state, where the giant chimney came crashing down on the plant's cafeteria as the workers had tea. On Jan 11, 2010, 2 Chinese engineers and a project manager wee charged with culpable homicide not amounting to murder. The arrests took to 7 the number of people held in connection with the accident.
(AP, 9/24/09)(AFP, 9/24/09)(AFP, 1/11/10)
2009 Sep 23, Iranian police warned shop owners against displaying female mannequins wearing underwear or showing off their curves as part of a government campaign against Western influence. Azar Mansouri, a senior leader from reformist political party, Islamic Iran Participation Front, was arrested during a widespread crackdown on opposition supporters who challenged the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in June 2009. In March 2010 Mansouri was sentenced to three years in jail for plotting to harm national security.
(AP, 9/23/09)(AFP, 3/13/10)(www.sign4change.info/english/spip.php?article579)
2009 Sep 23, In Iraq a bomb in southwestern Baghdad killed a woman and her 2 children. Other bombings in Baghdad and the northern city of Mosul killed at least 7 Iraqi security personnel and a local politician. 5 al-Qaida-linked prisoners awaiting execution and 11 other inmates broke out of a prison, just before midnight, in Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit, prompting a massive manhunt. More than 100 prison officials and guards were soon detained for questioning. 6 of the escaped convicts, including 3 of the al-Qaida linked inmates, were arrested by late Sep 25. Iraqi security teams recaptured two more of prisoners on Sep 26.
(AP, 9/23/09)(AP, 9/24/09)(AP, 9/25/09)(AP, 9/26/09)
2009 Sep 23, Israel's foreign minister said that the summit of Israeli, US and Palestinian leaders proved Israel could successfully fend off international pressure to freeze West Bank settlement construction.
(AP, 9/23/09)
2009 Sep 23, Four Serbs were arrested in Novo Brdo, Kosovo, 20 miles east of Pristina, under suspicion of committing war crimes against Albanian civilians during the 1998-1999 Kosovo war.
(SFC, 9/24/09, p.A2)
2009 Sep 23, Officials in Kyrgyzstan called for the death penalty to be reinstated and said public executions could be carried out, a sharp reversal that will likely draw international condemnation.
(AP, 9/23/09)
2009 Sep 23, Morocco’s interior ministry said security services have arrested 24 members of a "terrorist network" linked to Al-Qaeda that recruited volunteers for suicide bombings in Iraq.
(AFP, 9/23/09)
2009 Sep 23, Saudi Arabia opened a new multibillion dollar coed university outside the coastal city of Jeddah. The King Abdullah Science and Technology University, or KAUST, boasts state-of-the-art labs, the world's 14th fastest supercomputer and one of the biggest endowments worldwide. 817 students representing 61 different countries were currently enrolled, with 314 beginning classes this month.
(AP, 9/23/09)
2009 Sep 23, Swedish police held one suspect after armed robbers used a helicopter to stage a spectacular raid on the roof of a cash storage facility belonging to Anglo-Danish firm G4S in Vastberga, just south of Stockholm. On August 2, 2010, ten men accused of stealing nearly 40 million kronor ($5 million) pleaded innocent as prosecutors opened their trial with surveillance video of the brazen helicopter heist.
(Reuters, 9/23/09)(AP, 8/2/10)
2009 Sep 23, In Turkey heavy rains in the northeast triggered floods and a landslide that killed 4 people. One person was reported missing.
(AP, 9/24/09)
2009 Sep 24, Massachusetts’ Gov. Deval Patrick named former Democratic Party chairman Paul G. Kirk Jr. to temporarily fill the late Sen. Edward Kennedy's seat. The appointment will let Kirk, who was close friends with the senator, serve in the post until voters pick a permanent replacement in a Jan. 19 special election.
(AP, 9/24/09)
2009 Sep 24, A US federal jury rejected a New Orleans family’s claims that a FEMA issued trailer they lived in after Hurricane Katrina was defective and exposed them to dangerous fumes. The trailer made by Gulf Stream Coach Inc. had been occupied for 19 months by Alana Alexander and her son (12).
(SFC, 9/25/09, p.A8)
2009 Sep 24, In California thousands of students, professors and workers at UC campuses across the state poured out of classrooms to rally against deep cuts to public education.
(SFC, 9/25/09, p.A1)
2009 Sep 24, In Chicago Derrion Albert (16), a sophomore at Christian Fenger Academy High School, was beaten to death as 2 groups of students from different neighborhoods engaged in a fight following a shooting earlier in the day. 4 teenagers were charged with murder. The melee was caught on video. On Dec 8, 2010, a 15-year-old boy was convicted of first-degree murder. 4 suspects were still awaiting trial. In 2011 the last of 5 convicted suspects was sentenced to 32 years in prison.
(SFC, 9/29/09, p.A7)(www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSH2CafhcX4)(AP, 12/9/10)(SFC, 8/30/11, p.A6)
2009 Sep 24, In Pennsylvania US Pres. Obama hosted a 2-day meeting of the G20 as it opened in Pittsburgh.
(SFC, 9/26/09, p.A4)
2009 Sep 24, In Texas Hosam Maher Husein Smadi (19) parked what he thought was an explosive laden truck in a parking garage beneath the 60-story Fountain Place office tower in Dallas. FBI agents had provided Smadi with the truck. Smadi was indicted the next day.
(SFC, 9/26/09, p.A6)
2009 Sep 24, Susan Atkins (61), a follower of cult leader Charles Manson, died at a prison facility in Chowchilla, Ca. Her remorseless witness stand confession to killing pregnant actress Sharon Tate in 1969 shocked the world. She had been suffering from brain cancer.
(AP, 9/25/09)
2009 Sep 24, Emile Norman (b.1918), pioneering gay artist, died in Monterey, Ca.
(SFC, 9/26/09, p.A12)
2009 Sep 24, Afghan officials started a partial vote recount from last month's presidential election in a long-awaited procedure due to bring to an end weeks of uncertainty over the ballot. The process was expected to take about two weeks. Four US soldiers died in southeastern Zabul province, three of them killed when their Stryker vehicle hit a bomb, and the fourth shot to death in an insurgent attack.
(Reuters, 9/25/09)(AP, 9/25/09)
2009 Sep 24, Australia said it has created a massive nature reserve in the country's far north that will be managed by Aborigines. The so-called Indigenous Protected Areas in the Northern Territory contain rock art sites that are 50,000 years old and wilderness areas rivaling the nearby World Heritage-listed Kakadu National Park.
(AFP, 9/24/09)
2009 Sep 24, In Belgium 2 armed robbers made off with a $1.1 million painting by Belgian surrealist Rene Magritte, “Olympia" (1948), in a morning heist at a small museum in Brussels.
(AP, 9/24/09)
2009 Sep 24, In the Central African Republic 2 local employees of the Italian Coopi NGO were killed when Lord's Resistance Army rebels attacked their vehicle.
(AFP, 9/25/09)
2009 Sep 24, The Colombian military discovered a mass grave holding 16 rebels believed killed in combat, including a nephew of a top guerrilla commander. the FARC fighters were believed killed during fighting in July and included a nephew of the rebel band's No. 2 leader, Jorge Briceno.
(AP, 9/25/09)
2009 Sep 24, Two French military fighter Rafale jets crashed into the Mediterranean Sea during a training mission and one pilot was missing.
(AP, 9/24/09)
2009 Sep 24, The Clinton Global Initiative announced $258 million in aid projects for Haiti. The 21 projects included a $2 million pledge by actor mat Damon’s Water.org to get water and sanitation to 50,000 people.
(SFC, 9/25/09, p.A2)
2009 Sep 24, In Honduras the national curfew was lifted, but hundreds of troops and police continued to ring the Brazilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa, where an increasingly exhausted President Manuel Zelaya, his family and about 70 supporters, have been sheltered since he sneaked back into Honduras on Sep 21.
(AP, 9/24/09)
2009 Sep 24, Ireland, the first nation to tax plastic bags as a way to stop them littering the countryside, announced plans to double its levy to a 44 euro cents (59 US cents) per bag.
(AP, 9/24/09)
2009 Sep 24, Japan’s Tokyo Game Show, billed as the world's largest computer entertainment fest, kicked off with hopes that depressed sales of game consoles will enjoy a holiday resurrection.
(AP, 9/24/09)
2009 Sep 24, In Mexico Chihuahua state prosecutor Arturo Chavez, criticized for failing to solve dozens of rapes and murders of women in his northern border state, was confirmed as Mexico's attorney general and leader of the nation's war on vicious drug cartels.
(AP, 9/24/09)
2009 Sep 24, In northwestern Pakistan militants ambushed a convoy of prominent anti-Taliban tribal elders, spraying their cars with gunfire and killing nine people. Tribesmen killed two militants in the gunbattle. In a separate attack militants killed two members of another anti-Taliban committee in the Swat Valley to the northeast. Soldiers killed at least six militants in the nearby Malakand region after insurgents ambushed a vehicle carrying Pakistani troops near an Afghan refugee camp. 10 suspects were arrested in operations over the past 24 hours and 15 militants surrendered to security forces. A suspected US missile strike killed 4 people near the town of Mir Ali in North Waziristan.
(AP, 9/24/09)(SFC, 9/25/09, p.A7)
2009 Sep 24, In Puerto Rico police officer Luis Martinez was killed in the northern coastal city of Manati. In 2011 suspect Anthony Rivera Morales (23) was arrested at a homeless shelter in New York and extradited back to the US island territory to face murder charges.
(AP, 4/16/11)
2009 Sep 24, Spain said it has disqualified a group of Israeli academics from a solar power design competition because their university is in the West Bank, the latest in a series of low-level European sanctions against Israel over its settlement policy.
(AP, 9/24/09)
2009 Sep 24, In Spain Garry Kasparov soundly defeated Anatoly Karpov in an exhibition chess match marking the 25th anniversary of their first title bout.
(AP, 9/25/09)
2009 Sep 24, Swiss lawmakers decided not to join the European Union's anti-piracy efforts, amid concern that participating in the mission off Somalia could violate the Alpine nation's long-standing neutrality.
(AP, 9/24/09)
2009 Sep 24, In Thailand an experimental combination of two previously unsuccessful vaccines cut the risk of becoming infected with HIV by more than 31%, in the world's largest AIDS vaccine trial of more than 16,000 volunteers. This was the first time an experimental vaccine has prevented infection with the AIDS virus.
(AP, 9/24/09)
2009 Sep 24, The UN Security Council unanimously approved a historic resolution aimed at ridding the world of nuclear weapons at a summit-level meeting chaired by President Barack Obama.
(AP, 9/24/09)
2009 Sep 24, Venezuela’s Justice Minister Tareck El Aissami said the animated television series "Family Guy." should be pulled from the airwaves because it promotes the use of marijuana. He said that cable networks that broadcast "Family Guy" would be fined by Venezuela's telecommunications regulator if they refuse to dump the program.
(AP, 9/25/09)
2009 Sep 24, In Vietnam 9 North Koreans took refuge in Denmark's embassy in Hanoi seeking political asylum and passage to Seoul. On Oct 20 they left the mission and were on their way to South Korea.
(Reuters, 10/20/09)(SFC, 9/25/09, p.A2)
2009 Sep 25, US regulators shut down Atlanta-based Georgian Bank, the 95th US bank to fail this year as loan defaults rise in the worst financial climate in decades.
(AP, 9/25/09)
2009 Sep 25, In NYC the Clinton Global Initiative launched the Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN), a new asset class aiming to yield a financial return alongside a social or environmental benefit.
(Econ, 9/26/09, p.83)(www.globalimpactinvestingnetwork.org/cgi-bin/iowa/home/index.html)
2009 Sep 25, In Sacramento, Ca., Garret Griffith Gililland III (28) pleaded not guilty to charges that included 24 counts in an alleged $100 million mortgage fraud ring. He was arrested last year in Spain and was returned to the US to face federal fraud charges.
(SSFC, 9/27/09, p.A8)
2009 Sep 25, Robbers in Pebble Beach, Ca., allegedly stole some 30 pieces of art valued at $27 million. Angelo Amadio (31) and Dr. Ralph Kennaugh (62) said the stolen art included paintings by Jackson Pollock, Henri Matisse and Vincent Van Gogh. Investigators on Oct 6 said the heist appeared to be a scam.
(SFC, 9/30/09, p.D3)(SFC, 10/7/09, p.A1)
2009 Sep 25, In Pennsylvania police arrested 83 people during protests at the meeting of the G20 Pittsburgh. A “People’s March" attracted nearly 5.000 people. The G20 ended a 2-day meeting and reached a series of agreements aimed at navigating the world out of recession. The alliance announced that it will replace the G7 as the main forum for int’l. economic cooperation. The G7 will now concentrate mainly on security issues.
(http://articles.latimes.com/2009/sep/26/business/fi-protest26)(Econ, 10/3/09, p.88)(Econ, 10/10/09, p.51)
2009 Sep 25, In Maryland 4 bodies were found in a home in Mount Airy. Police said Charles Dalton (38), a school janitor struggling to survive the recession, killed his sleeping wife and 2 children before shooting himself with a 12-guage shotgun.
(SSFC, 9/27/09, p.A8)
2009 Sep 25, In South Carolina a medical helicopter, which had just dropped off a patient in Charleston, crashed near Georgetown killing the pilot, a flight nurse and a paramedic.
(SSFC, 9/27/09, p.A8)
2009 Sep 25, In Afghanistan an American died of gunshot wounds from and insurgent attack in Nimroz province.
(SFC, 9/26/09, p.A2)
2009 Sep 25, An Australian court sentenced Belal Khazaal (39), a former Qantas Airways baggage handler, to 12 years in prison for publishing a do-it-yourself jihad book on the Internet. The book was titled "Provisions of the Rules of Jihad: Short Judicial Rulings and Organizational Instructions for Fighters and Mujahideen Against Infidels." Khazaal had also been convicted in absentia by Lebanese military courts in 2003 and 2005 on terrorism-related charges.
(AP, 9/25/09)
2009 Sep 25, Authorities in China's restive northwestern Xinjiang region charged 21 suspects over deadly July unrest, the first reported criminal charges to emerge from the violence.
(AFP, 9/25/09)
2009 Sep 25, In Colombia the chief prosecutor's office said it has unearthed the remains of 17 peasants tortured and killed at a ranch that belonged to the since-slain, far-right militia leader Carlos Castano in Colombia's northwest. The peasants were believed slain 10 to 12 years ago by men under the command of Jesus Ignacio Roldan, alias "Monoleche," a Castano lieutenant who later participated in the 2004 murder of the right-wing militia leader.
(AP, 9/25/09)
2009 Sep 25, On the Dutch Caribbean island of Curacao James Hogan (49), a US diplomat, was reported missing by his wife. On Oct 1 authorities confirmed that DNA on bloody clothes found along Baya Beach matched with Hogan. Curacao, the headquarters of the Netherlands Antilles government, lies about 40 miles (65km) off Venezuela's coast.
(AP, 10/2/09)
2009 Sep 25, The International Atomic Energy Agency said that Iran has revealed the existence of a secret uranium-enrichment plant, a development that could heighten fears about Tehran's ability to produce a nuclear weapon and escalate its diplomatic confrontation with the West. Armed with the disclosure President Barack Obama and the leaders of France and Britain demanded that Tehran fully disclose its nuclear ambitions "or be held accountable" to an impatient world community.
(AP, 9/25/09)(Econ, 10/10/09, p.51)
2009 Sep 25, In Iraq a controlled explosion of weapons confiscated by the Iraqi military went awry east of Mosul, killing 15 soldiers.
(AP, 9/25/09)
2009 Sep 25, An Israeli airstrike killed 3 members of the Palestinian Jihad movement who were allegedly on their way to fire rockets into Israel.
(SFC, 9/26/09, p.A2)
2009 Sep 25, Japan's new government launched an investigation into whether previous administrations entered secret security pacts with Washington, including one said to endorse US nuclear-armed ships despite a policy of barring such weapons.
(AP, 9/25/09)
2009 Sep 25, Mexican police arrested five men accused of dozens of murders, including two mass killings at drug treatment centers in this northern Mexico border city.
(AP, 9/26/09)
2009 Sep 25, Palau announced to the UN General Assembly that it is creating a shark and ray sanctuary over some 240,000 square miles around its coastline. Palau had just one boat to patrol the protected waters. Some 20,000 people populated the 190-square mile archipelago.
(SFC, 9/25/09, p.A6)
2009 Sep 25, Poland approved a law making chemical castration mandatory for pedophiles in some cases, sparking criticism from human rights groups.
(Reuters, 9/25/09)
2009 Sep 25, Puerto Rico's government announced that it will lay off more than 16,000 public workers in the US Caribbean territory, adding to an unemployment rate higher than that of any US state.
(AP, 9/26/09)
2009 Sep 25, Spanish pianist Alicia de Larrocha died (86). She thrilled music listeners for decades with polished and enthralling interpretations of great classical works.
(AP, 9/26/09)
2009 Sep 25, UN officials said tens of thousands of Yemenis displaced by warfare between the government and Shiite rebels were stranded around the war zone with aid agencies unable to reach them because of the intensified fighting.
(AP, 9/25/09)
2009 Sep 25, An environmental group said a gecko with leopard-like spots on its body and a fanged frog that eats birds are among 163 new species discovered last year in the Mekong River region of Southeast Asia, which included Laos, Thailand and Vietnam.
(AP, 9/25/09)
2009 Sep 26, In Afghanistan an airstrike by international forces in Wardak province, bordering Kabul, killed three Afghan civilians. 7 Taliban militants were killed in a gunbattle with police in Kunduz province. 3 Afghan civilians died when their vehicle hit a roadside bomb in western Farah province. Two US service members died in the south, one from a roadside bomb explosion and the other from an insurgent attack. 3 French soldiers were killed in a violent storm in northeastern Kapisa province when one was struck by lightning and two others were carried off by a flooding river. A 4th French soldier was killed when an armored vehicle fell into a ravine.
(AP, 9/27/09)
2009 Sep 26, The Australian town of Bundanoon pulled all bottled water from its shelves and replaced it with refillable bottles in what is believed to be a world-first ban.
(AFP, 9/26/09)
2009 Sep 26, In Belgium two burglary suspects were killed after the excessive explosives they were using to break into a bank's safe blew up the whole building.
(AP, 9/28/09)
2009 Sep 26, China reported that medical tests have shown at least 121 children living near a battery plant in eastern Fujian province are suffering from lead poisoning, the latest in a recent string of such cases that have affected hundreds. The government has ordered the Huaqiang Battery Plant to shut about 10 days ago after local villagers approached the authorities with test results showing lead poisoning in some children.
(AP, 9/27/09)
2009 Sep 26, Greek socialist opposition leader George Papandreou (57), who is widely expected to win the national election next weekend, said fighting endemic corruption and creating a stimulus package are essential if Greece is to emerge from a deep financial crisis.
(AP, 9/27/09)
2009 Sep 26, Ali Akbar Salehi, Iran's nuclear chief, said his country will allow the UN nuclear agency to inspect its newly revealed, still unfinished uranium enrichment facility.
(AP, 9/26/09)
2009 Sep 26, In Iran, one day before the sale of Telecommunication Co. of Iran (TCI), the Pishgaman Kavir Yazd Cooperative Co. received a letter from the Iranian Privatization Organization (IPO) stating that it wasn't qualified to participate in the bid process.
(Reuters, 12/24/13)
2009 Sep 26, In northern Iraq a US military drone crashed, hitting a regional office of Iraq's largest Sunni political party in Mosul, an area that remains an insurgent stronghold. At least six suspected insurgents were killed in a raid by Iraqi police about 50 miles (85km) northwest of Kirkuk. Gunmen killed an off-duty policeman during a drive-by shooting in central Mosul.
(AP, 9/27/09)
2009 Sep 26, In Morocco Akhbar Al Youm published a caricature of a member of the royal family, Prince Moulay Ismail, cousin of King Mohammed VI. On Dec 29 an appeal court in Casablanca upheld a four-year suspended jail term for the chief editor of Akhbar Al Youm, Taoufiq Bouachrine, and cartoonist Khalid Gueddar.
(AFP, 12/29/09)
2009 Sep 26, In North Korea 97 older South Koreans reunited with 228 North Korean relatives at the Diamond Mountain resort. This was the first reunion in nearly two years.
(SSFC, 9/27/09, p.A4)
2009 Sep 26, In northwestern Pakistan 2 suicide car bombs killed 22 people and wounded about 150 others in separate attacks in Bannu and Peshawar, just days after the Taliban warned suicide strikes were coming if the military pressed forward with an offensive. A third bomb injured 4 in the region.
(AP, 9/26/09)(AP, 9/27/09)
2009 Sep 26, In the northern Philippines nearly a month's worth of rain fell in six hours as Tropical Storm Ketsana slammed ashore, stranding thousands on rooftops in the capital's worst flooding in more than 42 years.
(AP, 9/26/09)
2009 Sep 26, In Rwanda at least four people were killed and 52 injured when an unidentified man lobbed a grenade into a crowd at a village market. Police suspect it was an act of sabotage to sow terror in rural districts.
(AFP, 9/27/09)
2009 Sep 26, In Spain "City of Life and Death," Chinese director Lu Chuan's account of the Japanese occupation of Nanjing in 1937, won top honors at the San Sebastian film festival.
(AFP, 9/26/09)
2009 Sep 26, In Sri Lanka soldiers fired on a group of war refugees trying to flee a camp in the north of the island, wounding two.
(AP, 9/27/09)
2009 Sep 26, In Switzerland director Roman Polanski (76) was taken into custody on a 31-year-old US arrest warrant, where he traveled to receive an award at the Zurich Film Festival for his lifetime work as a director. Polanski fled the United States in 1978, a year after pleading guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse with a 13-year-old girl in 1977.
(AP, 9/27/09)(SFC, 9/30/09, p.A4)
2009 Sep 26, Turkey's navy commandos aboard a frigate captured seven pirates in the Gulf of Aden off Somalia's coast.
(AP, 9/26/09)
2009 Sep 26, Pope Benedict XVI criticized the communist era's fierce religious persecution as he began a three-day pilgrimage to the Czech Republic, and urged the heavily secular nation to rediscover its Christian roots.
(AP, 9/26/09)
2009 Sep 26, In Venezuela some 30 African and South American leaders met for a 2-day summit on Margarita Island seeking to build on their alliances.
(AP, 9/26/09)
2009 Sep 27, Donald Fisher, co-founder of the Gap Inc. (1969), died in SF. He and his wife began collecting art as they founded their blue jeans outlet and by 2009 the Doris and Donald Fisher Collection had become one of the world’s largest private holdings of late 20th and early 21st century art.
(SFC, 9/28/09, p.A1)
2009 Sep 27, William Safire (b.1929), conservative columnist for the NY Times, died. Safire had authored over a dozen books and won a Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 1978, for his scathing articles on the financial affairs of Carter White House budget director Bert Lance.
(SFC, 9/28/09, p.A4)
2009 Sep 27, In Afghanistan a suicide car bomb explosion targeting Afghanistan's energy minister killed four civilians in Herat province. In southern Afghanistan a roadside explosion killed a British soldier on a vehicle patrol in Helmand province. Taliban militants ambushed a truck convoy in eastern Kunar province, killing six drivers and burning their vehicles. A private van hit a roadside bomb in northern Faryab province. Six of the people inside were killed and another seven injured.
(AP, 9/27/09)(AP, 9/28/09)
2009 Sep 27, Germans voted on whether to give Chancellor Angela Merkel a second term, as the country faces rising unemployment and threats by Islamic extremists over Germany's role in Afghanistan. Voters ended the conservative Merkel's right-left "grand coalition" and gave her a comfortable center-right majority, thanks to a strong performance by her new government ally, the business-oriented Free Democrats.
(AP, 9/27/09)(AP, 9/28/09)
2009 Sep 27, In Guatemala Adolfo Ich, a Maya Q’eqchi’ teacher and community leader who opposed the Fenix mine outside the town of El Estor, was killed. Bystander German Chub was shot and paralyzed by mine security personnel. In 2021 Mynor Padilla, ex-security chief at a mine, pleaded guilty to homicide.
(https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-55573682)
2009 Sep 27, Iran said it successfully test-fired short-range missiles during military drills by the elite Revolutionary Guard, a show of force days after the US warned Tehran over a newly revealed underground nuclear facility it was secretly constructing.
(AP, 9/27/09)(AP, 9/28/09)
2009 Sep 27, In Iran a consortium of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and a multi-billion dollar business empire known as Setad, that is controlled by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, bid on a controlling stake in Telecommunication Co of Iran, or TCI, which had a near monopoly on landline telephone services. They won the stake for $7.8 billion, Iran's largest privatization ever.
(AP, 9/28/09)(Reuters, 12/24/13)
2009 Sep 27, Two Uzbeks, including Oybek Jabbarov (31), freed from the Guantanamo Bay prison arrived in Ireland. Amnesty International appealed to other EU nations to deliver on pledges to give new homes to US terror detainees.
(AP, 9/27/09)
2009 Sep 27, Israeli police used stun grenades to disperse Palestinian rioters at a volatile Jerusalem site holy to Jews and Muslims. The compound is home to the gold-capped Dome of the Rock and the Al Aqsa mosque, and Muslims see it as their religion's third-holiest site after the Saudi Arabian holy cities of Mecca and Medina. The site has been under Israeli control since 1967, but is administered by a Muslim religious body known as the Waqf.
(AP, 9/27/09)
2009 Sep 27, A New Zealand teen, Cherelle May Dudfield (18), flashed her breasts at passing cars and ended with up in a hospital after a distracted driver ran into her. In Dec she was found guilty of disorderly behavior for the prank and was fined $198.
(AP, 12/18/09)
2009 Sep 27, In the northern Philippines rescuers plucked bodies from muddy floodwaters and saved drenched survivors from rooftops. The death toll in the Philippines from Typhoon Ketsana reached 246 with 42 missing. The economic cost was nearly $100 million.
(AP, 9/27/09)(AP, 9/30/09)
2009 Sep 27, Portugal voted in parliamentary elections that are predicted to keep the Socialist Party in power despite the highest jobless rate in over 20 years. The center-left Socialist Party of PM Jose Socrates retained power winning 36.5% of the vote compared with 29% for the center-right Social Democratic Party. Turnout was about 60%.
(AP, 9/27/09)(SFC, 9/28/09, p.A2)(Econ, 10/3/09, p.65)
2009 Sep 27, It was reported that some 300,000 Syrian farmers, herders and their families have been forced by drought to abandon their homes for makeshift urban camps.
(SSFC, 9/27/09, p.A18)
2009 Sep 27, Sudan’s President Omar al-Beshir announced the immediate lifting of state censorship on the press, meeting a key demand of the media ahead of Sudan's first elections in almost 25 years.
(AFP, 9/27/09)
2009 Sep 27, In Venezuela Pres. Hugo Chavez proposed that South American and African nations unite to create a cross-continental mining corporation to keep control of their resources. Chavez made diplomatic inroads in Africa at a summit of South American and African leaders where he offered Venezuela's help in oil projects, mining and financial assistance. Venezuela signed agreements to work together on oil projects with South Africa, Mauritania, Niger, Sudan and Cape Verde.
(Reuters, 9/27/09)(AP, 9/28/09)
2009 Sep 28, In San Jose, Ca., Cristina Warthen (36), a Stanford law school graduate, was sentenced to home detention for one year for tax evasion and ordered to pay $243,000 in back taxes. She had run an escort service beginning in 2001 (touchofbrazil.net), and grossed $133,717 in 2003. In 2004 she married David Warthen, co-founder of Ask Jeeves, later Ask.com. They were later divorced.
(SFC, 9/29/09, p.C5)
2009 Sep 28, In Afghan three civilians, including a woman, were killed when their car hit a bomb in the road between Herat and Kandahar. A US team and Afghan soldiers killed 30 Taliban fighters at a militant stronghold in Farah province.
(AFP, 9/29/09)(www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,556329,00.html)
2009 Sep 28, Britain’s Business Secretary Peter Mandelson said the government will extend its car scrapping scheme with extra funding for an additional 100,000 cars and vans.
(AP, 9/28/09)
2009 Sep 28, Canada’s train maker Bombardier Transportation says its Chinese joint venture has been awarded a $4 billion contract to build 80 high-speed trains for China's railway ministry.
(AP, 9/28/09)
2009 Sep 28, In China foreign ministers from China, Japan and South Korea pledged to deepen cooperation on non-proliferation and disarmament, as pressure grew on Pyongyang over its nuclear program.
(AFP, 9/28/09)
2009 Sep 28, Luis Alberto Santacruz Echeverri, an alleged Colombian cocaine trafficker arrested in the Dominican Republic, was extradited to the US to face drug trafficking charges.
(AP, 9/29/09)
2009 Sep 28, In Ecuador hundreds of Indians blocked the Pan American highway in several provinces with rocks, tree trunks and burning tires to protest new water, mining and oil laws.
(AP, 9/28/09)
2009 Sep 28, In Cairo, Egypt, a 2-day meeting of the International Commission on Nuclear Nonproliferation and Disarmament (ICNND) opened. It was set up by the governments of Australia and Japan to probe ideas on how to cut the world's nuclear arms stockpile ahead of a UN conference on the subject next year. Iran and Israel stated their positions on disarmament separately during the gathering.
(AP, 10/22/09)
2009 Sep 28, Guinea’s military's presidential guard shot at pro-democracy demonstrators in Conakry, leaving at least 157 people dead. The government put the death toll at 57. Eyewitnesses said security forces had stripped female protesters and raped them in the streets. Other eyewitnesses said soldiers had stabbed protesters with knives and bayonets. On June 27, 2013, Lieutenant-Colonel Claude Pivi, an influential member of the junta at the time and now minister for presidential security, was charged over his alleged role in a stadium massacre. On Dec 16, 2016, Aboubacar Sidiki Diakite was arrested in Senegal for involvement in the massacre.
(AP, 9/29/09)(AP, 10/2/09)(Reuters, 6/28/13)(AFP, 1/10/17)
2009 Sep 28, Honduras' coup-installed government silenced two key dissident broadcasters hours after it suspended civil liberties to prevent an uprising by backers of ousted Pres. Manuel Zelaya. The measures were announced just hours after Zelaya called on his backers to stage mass protest marches in what he called a "final offensive" against the government. Interim president Roberto Micheletti promised to restore civil liberties and allow an Organization of American States mediation team into the country, quickly backpedalling from tough measures amid criticism from his own allies that he had gone too far in his fight to stay in power.
(AP, 9/28/09)(AP, 9/29/09)
2009 Sep 28, In Iraq a tanker truck packed with explosives ripped through a police outpost, killing at least 7 people in a suicide attack at a former insurgent stronghold outside Ramadi. In a separate attack, at least three Iraqi soldiers were killed in a double roadside bombing in the predominantly Sunni neighborhood of Ghazaliyah in western Baghdad. In southern Iraq, bomb attached to a bus exploded in mostly Shiite southern Iraq, killing at least six. In northern Iraq, a roadside bomb targeting a police patrol in Mosul killed two officers and wounded two. The US military freed another 35 members of a group linked to the abduction of five British citizens from Iraq's Finance Ministry in 2007. The prisoner release means nearly 100 members of Asaib Ahl al-Haq, or League of the Righteous, have left U.S. custody since late last week. In total, about 250 have been freed since July as talks intensify over the fate of Peter Moore, the sole British hostage believed to be still alive.
(AP, 9/28/09)
2009 Sep 28, In Malaysia news reports said a judge has upheld a court verdict to cane a Muslim woman for drinking beer, re-igniting a controversy over Islamic justice in this moderate Muslim-majority country. The chief Shariah judge of Pahang state ruled that a Shariah High Court's verdict against Kartika Sari Dewi Shukarno (32) was correct and should stay.
(AP, 9/28/09)
2009 Sep 28, In Mexico 2 Canadian men were shot to death in execution-style slayings outside an apartment building in the Mexican resort of Puerto Vallarta. Gordon Douglas Kendall and Jeffrey Ronald Ivans were believed to be involved in the drug trade. In Michoacan state police arrested three federal agents for allegedly passing information to organized crime.
(AP, 9/28/09)(SFC, 9/29/09, p.A2)
2009 Sep 28, In Pakistan a suicide car bomber killed five people including a prominent tribal elder in Baka Khel, which lies close to Waziristan. One Pakistani soldier was killed and seven others critically wounded in a militant rocket attack on an army camp in the northwest. Hundreds of civilians fled the Taliban and al-Qaida's main stronghold in the northwest.
(AP, 9/28/09)
2009 Sep 28, Guillermo Endara (73), Panama’s former President (1989-1994), died. He led Panama to democracy after the US invasion that toppled dictator Gen. Manuel Noriega.
(AP, 9/29/09)
2009 Sep 28, In Peru former President Alberto Fujimori, who already faces the prospect of spending the rest of his life in prison, pleaded guilty to authorizing illegal wiretaps and bribes of politicians, journalists and businessmen.
(AP, 9/28/09)
2009 Sep 28, In Romania Gen. Nicolae Plesita (b.1929), a die-hard Communist and ruthless chief of the Securitate secret police (1980-1984), died. He had arranged shelter in Romania for terrorist Carlos the Jackal, and was tried for the 1981 bombing in Munich of Radio Free Europe.
(AP, 9/30/09)
2009 Sep 28, In Somalia the al-Shabab extremist Islamic group executed two Somali men in Mogadishu, accusing them of being spies for foreign organizations. Mortars and missiles pounded parts of Mogadishu, killing at least 13 civilians in two separate battles between Islamic militiamen and the African Union peacekeeping force.
(AP, 9/28/09)
2009 Sep 28, South Korea's parliament endorsed the appointment of economics professor Chung Un-Chan as prime minister despite strong objections by opposition parties.
(AP, 9/28/09)
2009 Sep 28, In Sudan a Nigerian peacekeeper was killed and two Kenyan colleagues were wounded in the troubled Darfur region when armed men ambushed their convoy.
(Reuters, 9/29/09)
2009 Sep 28, In Thailand climate talks kicked off in Bangkok with the UN urging nations to break the deadlock over a global warming deal that is supposed to be finalized in just 70 days time, and warning that failure to act would leave future generations fighting for survival.
(AP, 9/28/09)
2009 Sep 28, In Venezuela Pres. Hugo Chavez and Libya's Muammar Gaddafi called for a new global definition of terrorism. Meeting a day after the end of a summit of African and South American leaders in Venezuela, the two men signed a declaration urging a global conference be held to sketch out new terms defining terrorism.
(Reuters, 9/28/09)
2009 Sep 29, The US signaled a new approach to Myanmar as Kurt Campbell, assistant to the US Sec. of State, met in NY with U Thaung, Myanmar’s minister of science, technology and labor.
(Econ, 10/3/09, p.52)
2009 Sep 29, Norman Hsu (58), former US Democratic fundraiser, was sentenced to over 24 years in prison for fraud and breaking campaign finance laws. His decade long Ponzi scheme collapsed in Sep. 2007 after he stole over $50 million from investors. He must separately serve a 3 years sentence for a conviction in California.
(SFC, 9/30/09, p.A8)
2009 Sep 29, Starbucks premiered its new instant coffee, Via, with tens of thousands of free samples nationwide. A 3-pack was priced at just under $1 per cup.
(SFC, 9/30/09, p.C3)
2009 Sep 29, Toyota Motor Corp. issued its largest-ever US recall, involving 3.8 million vehicles. Toyota and the government warned owners to remove the mats from their vehicles that could cause accelerators to get stuck and lead to a crash.
(AP, 9/30/09)
2009 Sep 29, Xerox launched a $6.4 billion bid for Affiliated Computer Services (ACS), an outsourcing company.
(Econ, 10/3/09, p.80)
2009 Sep 29, In southern Afghanistan at least 30 civilians were killed when a bus hit a roadside bomb in an attack blamed on the Taliban.
(AFP, 9/29/09)
2009 Sep 29, China said it has completed a high-resolution, three-dimensional map of the entire surface of the moon, in an important step towards a future lunar landing.
(AP, 9/29/09)
2009 Sep 29, Ethiopian and Kenyan authorities seized more than 2,600 pounds (1,200 kilograms) of ivory from nearly 100 illegally killed elephants. Specially trained dogs sniffed out a consignment of bloodstained tusks at Kenya's national airport. Another shipment of tusks sent by the same individual had been seized a day earlier at the airport in Ethiopia's capital.
(AP, 9/30/09)
2009 Sep 29, In India 2 boats capsized in flooded rivers in eastern Bihar state during a major Hindu festival, killing at least 27 people and leaving around 24 missing.
(AP, 9/29/09)
2009 Sep 29, Iran's nuclear chief said his country built its newly revealed uranium enrichment facility inside a mountain and next to a military site near the city of Qom to ensure continuity of its nuclear activities in case of an attack. Vice President Ali Akbar Salehi said the site will be open to inspections by the UN nuclear watchdog.
(AP, 9/29/09)
2009 Sep 29, In northwest Pakistan two suspected US missile strikes killed 13 militants. The first attack killed six militants and wounded six others in South Waziristan. A 2nd missile hit a house owned by a known Afghan militant in North Waziristan killing 7 insurgents. Kalimullah Mehsud, the brother of the new head of the Pakistani Taliban, was said to be among several militants to die in one of the drone strikes.
(AP, 9/29/09)(AP, 9/30/09)
2009 Sep 29, Paraguay's interior minister Rafael Filizzola said 3 police chiefs imprisoned for torture have finally have been fired after collecting their salaries from behind bars since 1995. Filizzola called it unfortunate that convicts Camilo Almada Morel, Lucilo Benitez and Juan Martinez were able to collect pay for so long.
(AP, 9/29/09)(SFC, 9/30/09, p.A2)
2009 Sep 29, In the southern Philippines 2 US soldiers were killed in the deadliest attack against American troops there since they began helping local forces stamp out Muslim extremists in 2001. In 2011 Arabi Sali, suspected of involvement in the roadside bombing that killed the 2 US soldiers, was arrested. On June 1, 2014, Miraji Bairulla, a bomb expert of the rebel group the Moro National Liberation Front, was arrested for his role in the attack.
(AFP, 9/29/09)(AP, 2/2/11)(AP, 6/1/14)
2009 Sep 29, In southern Puerto Rico hundreds of US and local agents swept into a town to break up violent drug rings accused of operating out of several public housing projects.
(AP, 9/29/09)
2009 Sep 29, A magnitude 8.0-8.3 earthquake struck about 120 miles south of the islands of Samoa, population about 180,000 people, and American Samoa, a US territory of 65,000. Four tsunami waves 15 to 20 feet (4 to 6 meters) high roared ashore on American Samoa, reaching up to a mile (1.5km) inland. At least 142 were killed in Samoa and at least 32 on American Samoa and leaving dozens missing. Authorities in Tonga, south of the Samoas, confirmed at least 9 dead. In 2010 new research indicated that 2 great earthquakes caused the tsunami.
(AP, 9/30/09)(AFP, 10/1/09)(AP, 10/5/09)(SSFC, 10/11/09, p.A14)(SFC, 8/19/10, p.A2)
2009 Sep 29, Beauty queen Miss Singapore World gave up her crown after it emerged that she had stolen credit cards to go on a shopping spree for lingerie. Ris Low had come under public pressure to be stripped of her 2009 title, after local media reported she stole seven credit cards last year while working at a medical clinic, buying goods worth about S$8,000 ($5,662) including gold anklets and phones.
(Reuters, 9/30/09)
2009 Sep 29, Typhoon Ketsana slammed into central Vietnam, killing 74 as officials recovered more bodies from the muck and swollen rivers along the country's long coastline. 179 were reported injured and a dozen missing. In neighboring Cambodia, at least 11 people were killed and 29 injured.
(Reuters, 9/29/09)(AP, 9/30/09)
2009 Sep 30, The US fiscal year ended with a budget deficit at a record $1.4 trillion.
(SFC, 10/17/09, p.A5)
2009 Sep 30, The US government and ICANN, the body in charge of assigning Internet addresses, signed an agreement that allows for greater global participation in the Internet domain name process. The agreement, which allows ICANN to become a "private sector led organization," subjects ICANN to periodic reviews by a panel that includes a US representative and independent experts, essentially allowing the organization to no longer report solely to the United States.
(Reuters, 9/30/09)
2009 Sep 30, In Arizona a new law took effect allowing people with concealed weapons permits to enter bars and restaurants, that haven’t posted signs banning guns. Those carrying weapons would not be allowed to drink alcohol.
(SFC, 9/30/09, p.A8)
2009 Sep 30, Google rolled out Google Wave for a test involving some 100,000 people. The product was billed as a revolutionary way to collaborate online.
(Econ, 9/19/09, p.74)
2009 Sep 30, The Penske Automotive Group Inc. announced it is walking away from a deal to acquire the Saturn brand from GM, after being unable to find a manufacturer to make Saturn cars when GM stops producing models sometime after the end of 2011. The brand was set up in 1990 to fight growing Japanese imports.
(AP, 10/1/09)
2009 Sep 30, In Nevada Karamjit Kaur (16), a high school sophomore, disappeared in Reno. Police suspected foul play. She was found with her brother-in-law on Oct 5 at a hotel in Merrillville, Ind.
(SSFC, 10/4/09, p.A10)(SFC, 10/5/09, p.A5)
2009 Sep 30, The 24 members of UNESCO's Intergovernmental Committee of Intangible Heritage granted the tango dance and its music protected cultural status at its meeting in Abu Dhabi. The designation may make Argentina and Uruguay, which both claim to be tango's birthplace, eligible to receive financial assistance from a specialized fund for safeguarding cultural traditions.
(AP, 9/30/09)
2009 Sep 30, In southern Afghanistan 9 civilians including six children were killed in a NATO air strike targeting a Taliban position. Four armed Taliban were also killed in the air attack in Khoshal village in Helmand province.
(AFP, 10/1/09)
2009 Sep 30, The UN dismissed Peter Galbraith, the top US diplomat at the UN mission in Afghanistan, after he quarreled with Kai Eide, his European boss, over the Afghan presidential election.
(Reuters, 9/30/09)
2009 Sep 30, Bangladesh awarded a farmer who killed more than 83,000 rats and launched a monthlong campaign nationwide to kill millions more, to protect crops and reduce the need for food imports.
(AP, 9/30/09)
2009 Sep 30, The British Office of Fair Trading said six recruitment companies have together been fined almost 40 million pounds for price-fixing and the boycott of a rival company. They had all breached Britain's 1998 Competition Act.
(AFP, 9/30/09)
2009 Sep 30, Amnesty International said tens of thousands of women who fled unrest in Darfur face the daily threat or rape and violence in refugee camps in neighboring Chad.
(AP, 9/30/09)
2009 Sep 30, China launched a massive shut-down of bustling central Beijing on the eve of a spectacular celebration of 60 years of Communist rule, with authorities determined to leave nothing to chance.
(AFP, 9/30/09)
2009 Sep 30, Colombian authorities said a gunman on horseback killed German Herrera (41), a town councilman in Castillo, and wounded an 11-year-old boy. Herrera had been threatened by leftist FARC rebels active in the area. The national councilman's federation said nine town councilmen have been killed in Colombia this year, compared to 13 in all of 2008.
(AP, 9/30/09)
2009 Sep 30, In Ecuador a battle in the southeastern jungle killed at least one Indian and wounded 40 police and nine Indians on the Upano River in the province of Morona Santiago. The Amazon Indian federation said 500 police provoked the violence by attacking Shuar Indians who were blocking roads to protest resources legislation.
(AP, 10/1/09)
2009 Sep 30, A spokesman said the US military has begun an exercise in Gabon with personnel from 25 African countries to improve command and control between forces for possible peacekeeping or anti-terrorism missions. Africom, headquartered in Stuttgart, Germany, formally activated last October, sponsored the exercise.
(AP, 9/30/09)
2009 Sep 30, An EU-commissioned report said Georgia's attack on its breakaway South Ossetia region marked the start of last year's war with Russia, which retaliated with excessive force.
(AP, 9/30/09)
2009 Sep 30, Guinea's military leader, Capt. Moussa "Dadis" Camara, banned all gatherings and demonstrations and called for two days of mourning after troops opened fire on 50,000 pro-democracy protesters at a stadium rally on Sep 28.
(AP, 9/30/09)
2009 Sep 30, In Honduras soldiers and police enforced an emergency decree suspending civil liberties despite promises by the coup-imposed government to lift the measures criticized by its own allies as going too far.
(AP, 9/30/09)
2009 Sep 30, In southern India a state-owned boat carrying 75 tourists capsized on a reservoir in the remote Thekkady forest area in Kerala state, killing at least 17 people and leaving dozens missing.
(AP, 9/30/09)
2009 Sep 30, A 7.6 underwater earthquake rocked western Indonesia, briefly triggering a tsunami alert for countries along the Indian Ocean and sending panicked residents out of their houses. The quake toppled buildings, cut power and triggered a landslide on Sumatra island. The UN later said 1,100 had been killed in and around Padang, a port city of 900,000 that sits atop one of the world's most active seismic fault lines along the Pacific "Ring of Fire." At least three villages were obliterated by earthquake-triggered landslides that buried as many as 644 people including a wedding party under mountains of mud and debris.
(AFP, 9/30/09)(AP, 10/2/09)(Reuters, 10/2/09)(AP, 10/3/09)
2009 Sep 30, In Iran Saeed Hajjarian (55), considered a top architect and ideologue of the movement pushing for more social and political freedoms, was released on bail after more than three months in jail on charges of inciting the country's postelection unrest.
(AP, 10/1/09)
2009 Sep 30, In Kazakhstan Canadian circus billionaire Guy Laliberte blasted off in a Russian Soyuz spaceship to become the world's seventh space tourist.
(Reuters, 9/30/09)
2009 Sep 30, Aaron Ringera, Kenya's anti-corruption chief, resigned after weeks of public protest and a parliamentary vote against his reappointment. Ringera led the Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission for five years before President Mwai Kibaki reappointed him in August. The commission had not successfully concluded one case of high-level corruption. Ringera blamed the commission's lack of powers to prosecute.
(AP, 9/30/09)
2009 Sep 30, In North Korea a ceremony marked the return of UN Development Program to the country. UNDP withdrew its operations in March 2007 following allegations that the agency had left itself open to exploitation by the communist regime for money laundering and other illicit purposes. A UN audit cleared UNDP of wrongdoing in June, 2008.
(AP, 9/30/09)
2009 Sep 30, In Pakistan a suspected US missile attack killed 6 alleged militants just over the border from Afghanistan, the 3rd such strike on the al-Qaida and Taliban stronghold in 24 hours.
(AP, 9/30/09)
2009 Sep 30, In Peru a court imposed a six-year prison sentence on disgraced ex-President Alberto Fujimori, who already faced the prospect of spending the rest of his life in a cell after three previous convictions. He also was fined $9 million for authorizing wiretaps and bribes.
(AP, 9/30/09)
2009 Sep 30, In Venezuela more than 150 university students ended a hunger strike after the Organization of American States (OAS) agreed to hear their concerns over alleged political persecution by President Hugo Chavez's government.
(AP, 10/1/09)
2009 Sep 30, The World Bank announced a 74-million-dollar grant to revive Zimbabwe's agriculture sector.
(AFP, 9/30/09)
2009 Sep, General David Petraeus issued a secret order authorizing an escalation that included boosting military and intelligence assistance to help Yemeni forces strike al Qaeda targets, as well as deployment of more unmanned aerial drones to collect information and track high-value targets.
(Reuters, 5/24/10)
2009 Sep, George Zimmermann, a Pennsylvania landowner, filed suit against Atlas Energy Inc. for polluting his soil and water in an attempt to link a natural gas drilling technique with environmental contamination. Atlas was exploiting the Marcellus Shale, a vast gas reserve that underlies about two-thirds of Pennsylvania and parts of West Virginia, Ohio and New York State. Experts estimated that it contains enough natural gas to meet total US demand for at least a decade. Baseline tests on Zimmermann's water a year before drilling began were "perfect," he said. In June, water tests found arsenic at 2,600 times acceptable levels, benzene at 44 times above limits and naphthalene five times the federal standard.
(Reuters, 11/9/09)
2009 Sep, Huntington, West Virginia, ranked as America’s fattest town, welcomed Jamie Oliver, Britain’s famous Naked Chef, into its school district. His food education program was turned into a reality television series called Food Revolution.
(www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/09/huntington-west-virginia-_n_315687.html)
2009 Sep, Britain launched its Future Jobs Fund (FTJ). It aimed to help long term unemployed people back into employment. It was cut by the Coalition government of PM David Cameron claiming the scheme was "expensive, badly targeted and did not work". However, a 2012 report by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP)[2] found that the scheme produced a net benefit though tax receipts and a reduced benefits bill.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_Jobs_Fund)(Econ., 8/22/20, p.47)
2009 Sep, In the Dominican Rep. Juan Almonte Herreras (51), a father of three who served as secretary-general of the Dominican Commission of Human Rights, was kidnapped and killed. The commission concluded that police had kidnapped Almonte, tortured him and later set his body on fire. The Inter-American Court of Human Rights accused the Dominican government of conducting a lax investigation.
(AP, 10/25/11)
2009 Sep, Indonesia’s Parliament, regarded as the most corrupt of Indonesia’s institutions, passed a law weakening its Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK).
(Econ, 10/10/09, p.44)
2009 Sep, In Israel Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv (99) outlawed the use of elevators. Jewish law, or halacha, forbids the use of electrical items on the Sabbath. He also has proclaimed that Jews could not wear Crocs shoes on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, because they were deemed too comfortable for the somber fasting holiday.
(AP, 10/27/09)
2009 Sep, A US cable, revealed in 2010, said that Kingston, Jamaica, Mayor Desmond McKenzie told a US Embassy officer that his administration had collaborated for years with local drug baron Christopher “Dudus" Coke to fight crime.
(SFC, 12/23/10, p.A5)
2009 Sep, Nigeria launched a multi-million-dollar dredging exercise to boost navigation and commerce on the Niger River. Then government planned to construct seven ports to serve the 152 host communities along the river.
(AFP, 11/8/09)
2009 Sep, Turkey banned MySpace, an Internet-based social networking site.
(Econ, 10/3/09, p.67)
2009 Sep, Most of Uruguay’s 380,000 primary-school pupils had received an XO laptop, developed by the One Laptop Per Child, an NGO based in Massachusetts. The scheme at $260 per machine cost less than 5% of the country’s education budget. Internet connection was still limited.
(Econ, 10/3/09, p.46)
2009 Sep, In Vietnam some 400 disciples of Thich Nhat Hanh, who has popularized Buddhism in the West and sold millions of books worldwide, were forcibly evicted from the Bat Nha monastery in Lam Dong province. Since then, nearly 200 monks have taken refuge at the nearby Phuoc Hue pagoda, but they have been ordered to leave by Dec. 31. On Dec 18 the disciples asked for temporary asylum in France.
(AP, 12/17/09)(AFP, 12/18/09)
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