Timeline 2018 October - December
Return to home
2018 Oct 1, Researchers from the United States and Japan won the Nobel Prize in medicine for discoveries that help the body marshal its cellular troops to attack invading cancers. James Allison of the University of Texas and Tasuku Honjo of Kyoto University will share the 9-million-kronor ($1.01 million) prize for 2018.
(AP, 10/1/18)
2018 Oct 1, The US Supreme Court decided not to take the case of billionaire Vinod Khosla who wants to block people from crossing his property to access Martins Beach in San Mateo County, Ca.
(SFC, 10/2/18, p.A1)
2018 Oct 1, In the SF Bay Area Anthony Pimentel (19) visited San Leandro police with his father and admitted to killing his girlfriend. Pimentel led police to the body of Mariah Davis near lake Chabot Dam. Davis (18) was last seen Sept. 26.
(SFC, 10/2/18, p.C1)
2018 Oct 1, In Boston Carlos Melara (21), a member of the MS-13 gang who helped lure a 15-year-old Boston boy to his death through a fake Facebook page in 2015, was sentenced to 36 years in federal prison.
(AP, 10/2/18)
2018 Oct 1, Police officers in Florida fatally shot Brian Baker (33), an unarmed patient at Orlando Regional Medical Center. Police said hospital emergency workers said the man had a gun.
(SFC, 10/2/18, p.A6)
2018 Oct 1, The Oregonian/OregonLive reported that the real-estate brokers tasked with selling units in the TwentyTwenty building in northeast Portland expect to offer up to 45 of the 162 units to buyers from countries that include China, Japan and Singapore.
(AP, 10/2/18)
2018 Oct 1, Judges at the International Court of Justice ruled that landlocked Bolivia cannot force Chile to negotiate over granting it "sovereign access" to the Pacific Ocean, in a setback to Bolivian President Evo Morales.
(Reuters, 10/1/18)
2018 Oct 1, The Canadian province of Quebec held an election that is primed to be a showdown between the long-dominant Liberals and a center-right party, with immigration playing out as a key issue.
(AP, 10/1/18)
2018 Oct 1, Canadian dairy farmers castigated PM Justin Trudeau's government for yielding to US demands for greater access to Canada's protected milk and cheese market as part of a new continental trade pact, but auto workers were pleased. The concessions, gave US farmers an additional 3.59 percent slice of the Canadian dairy market.
(AFP, 10/1/18)
2018 Oct 1, In Egypt Islamic State militant Abu Hamza al-Maqdisi was killed in an air raid at Sheikh Zuweid, North Sinai province.
(AFP, 10/3/18)
2018 Oct 1, Legendary French Armenian singer Charles Aznavour (b.1924) died at his home in Alpilles. Aznavour was named "Entertainer of the Century" by CNN in 1998 because of his immense global popularity. His leading role in Francois Truffaut's film "Shoot the Piano Player" in 1960 catapulted Aznavour to international fame.
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z24X730KABU)(AFP, 10/1/18)
2018 Oct 1, German police arrested six more men on suspicion of forming a "far-right terrorist organization" in the eastern city of Chemnitz and planning to carry out attacks against foreigners and political enemies. A seventh suspect was arrested in a separate case last month.
(AP, 10/1/18)
2018 Oct 1, Hungary's Index.hu, the largest source of independent news in the country, briefly took down the front page of its online portal to sound the alarm over what it sees as its declining editorial freedom and to secure funding from readers to help protect its independence.
(Reuters, 10/1/18)
2018 Oct 1, Iran's Revolutionary Guards fired missiles at Islamic State militants in eastern Syria. It blame them for an attack on its soil on Sept. 22 and said the action shows the government's readiness to punish the "wickedness" of its enemies.
(AP, 10/1/18)(SFC, 10/2/18, p.A4)
2018 Oct 1, Italian coffee company Lavazza Group said it has acquired Virginia-based Mars Inc.'s beverage division in an effort to expand its North American presence.
(AP, 10/1/18)
2018 Oct 1, In Morocco 26 survivors were taken ashore to the town of Nador after waiting to be rescued from a semi-sunken boat for more than 36 hours. They said that 34 people had died or disappeared in the Mediterranean Sea.
(AP, 10/2/18)
2018 Oct 1, Namibia's President Hage Geingob called for a change to the constitution to allow the government to expropriate land and re-distribute it to the majority black population.
(Reuters, 10/1/18)
2018 Oct 1, North and South Korea began removing mines and other explosives at two sites inside their heavily armed border as part of their recent tension-reduction steps.
(AP, 10/1/18)
2018 Oct 1, Pakistan's Railways Minister Sheikh Rasheed said Islamabad has cut the size of the biggest Chinese "Silk Road" project in Pakistan by $2 billion, citing government concerns about the country's debt levels.
(Reuters, 10/1/18)
2018 Oct 1, Palestinians across the occupied West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem held a general strike in support of an Israeli-Arab protest against Israel's new Nation State Law.
(Reuters, 10/1/18)
2018 Oct 1, In the northern Philippines gunmen killed a town mayor and two other people and wounded the mayor's wife late today in Bangar town, La Union province.
(AP, 10/2/18)
2018 Oct 1, Puerto Rico's government said it has bought four new ferries and announced a new departure site for those traveling to two nearby islands popular with tourists.
(AP, 10/1/18)
2018 Oct 1, Qatar also launched an action at the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Geneva, accusing Saudi Arabia of violating intellectual property rights, over beIN. Qatari sports broadcasting giant beIN launched a massive $1-billion compensation claim against Saudi channels it accuses of "flagrantly breaching international law" by showing live sports programs.
(AFP, 10/1/18)
2018 Oct 1, The Serbian government said China Shandong International Economic and Technical Cooperation Corp has won a concession to charge a toll on the highway it is constructing in Bosnia's autonomous Serb Republic.
(Reuters, 10/1/18)
2018 Oct 1, In Slovakia a prosecutor said that a total sum of 70,000 euros ($81,000) was paid for the Feb. 21 contract slayings of investigative journalist Jan Kuciak and his fiancee.
(AP, 10/1/18)
2018 Oct 1, Slovenian police resumed their strike for higher wages, less then three weeks after a new minority center-left government led by PM Marjan Sarec took power following a June parliamentary election.
(Reuters, 10/1/18)
2018 Oct 1, In Somalia three people were killed in a suicide car bombing by Islamist group al Shabaab which hit an EU armored convoy in Mogadishu. A US military's Africa Command (Africom) airstrike near Kismayo killed nine militants.
(Reuters, 10/1/18)(Reuters, 10/9/18)
2018 Oct 1, South Korea's Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon told parliament the estimates on the size of North Korea's nuclear arsenal range from 20 bombs to as many as 60.
(AP, 10/2/18)
2018 Oct 1, In Spain tens of thousands of Catalans filled central Barcelona to mark the first anniversary of an ill-fated independence referendum, as protesters made short-lived attempts to block roads and train tracks in the northeastern region.
(Reuters, 10/1/18)
2018 Oct 1, In Sweden Jean-Claude Arnault (72), the man at the center of a sex abuse and financial crimes scandal that is tarnishing the academy that awards the Nobel Prize in Literature, was convicted of rape and sentenced to two years in prison.
(AP, 10/1/18)
2018 Oct 1, President Tayyip Erdogan said Turkey aims to secure control of the region of northern Syria east of the Euphrates river, removing the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia from the area, and to clear Iraq's Sinjar and Qandil regions of Kurdish militants.
(Reuters, 10/1/18)
2018 Oct 1, UNRWA pulled part of its international staff out of the Gaza Strip due to security concerns.
(AP, 10/2/18)
2018 Oct 2, The Wall Street Journal reported that Pres. Donald Trump personally guided efforts in February to keep Stormy Daniels from talking about their alleged 2006 tryst, and that his son Eric was enlisted to help in the matter.
(SFC, 10/3/18, p.A8)
2018 Oct 2, Three scientists from the United States, Canada and France won the Nobel Prize in physics for work with lasers. Arthur Ashkin (96) of Bell Laboratories in New Jersey, developed "optical tweezers" that can grab tiny particles such as viruses without damaging them. Donna Strickland, of the University of Waterloo in Canada, and Frenchman Gerard Mourou of the Ecole Polytechnique and University of Michigan, helped develop short and intense laser pulses that have broad industrial and medical applications, including laser eye surgery and highly precise machine cutting.
(AP, 10/2/18)
2018 Oct 2, In Chicago Kiera Coles (27), a pregnant postal worker, was last seen after calling in sick for work. Police suspected foul play.
(SFC, 10/20/18, p.A6)
2018 Oct 2, Amazon said it is boosting its minimum wage for all US workers to $15 per hour starting next month and said it will push for an increase in the federally mandated minimum wage, which now stands at $7.25 per hour.
(AP, 10/2/18)
2018 Oct 2, In Abu Dhabi eight members of one Emirati family were killed in a house fire in the country.
(AP, 10/2/18)
2018 Oct 2, In Afghanistan a suicide bomber struck an election rally in eastern Nangarhar province, killing at least 13 people and wounding around 40. At least nine police officers were killed in attacks late today by insurgents on checkpoints in three different parts of the country.
(AP, 10/2/18)(AP, 10/3/18)
2018 Oct 2, Britain's PM Theresa May announced that her government will change the law so that opposite-sex couples can enter into civil partnerships.
(SFC, 10/3/18, p.A2)
2018 Oct 2, Former British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson revved up Britain's Conservative Party and ramped up pressure on PM Theresa May, condemning her proposed divorce deal with the European Union as a "cheat" that would keep the country manacled to the bloc.
(AP, 10/2/18)
2018 Oct 2, Six fraudsters were jailed in Britain for orchestrating a 17 million pound ($22 million) scam to sell and install solar energy panels, often targeting vulnerable people.
(Reuters, 10/2/18)
2018 Oct 2, Geoff Emerick (72), who worked as recording engineer for the Beatles for many years and played an important role in the creation of "Revolver," ''Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" and other albums, died.
(AP, 10/3/18)
2018 Oct 2, It was reported that a court in Dubai has sentenced an Egyptian taxi driver (34)to six months in prison and deportation after convicting him of sexually assaulting a US Navy officer (22) in March 2017.
(AP, 10/2/18)
2018 Oct 2, Ethiopian officials said more than 70,000 people have fled ethnically-charged violence in western Ethiopia, part of an eruption of unrest that has piled pressure on reformist PM Abiy Ahmed.
(Reuters, 10/2/18)
2018 Oct 2, Around 200 French police launched a dawn anti-terror raid on one of the biggest Shiite Muslim centers in France, the Zahra Center France, as well as the homes of its directors. France accused Iran's intelligence ministry of being behind a foiled plot to bomb an exiled opposition group near Paris. The accusation was taken three months after the alleged plot to bomb a meeting of the People's Mujahedeen of Iran (MEK) in a suburb of Paris.
(AFP, 10/2/18)
2018 Oct 2, German ministers said the government will ease immigration rules to attract foreign jobseekers, including giving well-integrated, irregular migrants who are employed a shot at staying in the country to combat a fast-ageing worker shortage.
(AFP, 10/2/18)
2018 Oct 2, German car giant Volkswagen said it was removing Rupert Stadler, the chief executive of subsidiary Audi who has been jailed in an emissions fraud probe since June, from his post and the parent group's board.
(AFP, 10/2/18)
2018 Oct 2, Melania Trump touched down at mid-morning in Ghana's capital, Accra, kicking off a four-country visit and receiving a warm welcome on a continent her husband once referred to derisively.
(Reuters, 10/2/18)
2018 Oct 2, Greenland PM Kim Kielsen presented a new minority government, ending a political crisis that started when he lost his majority last month with the withdrawal of a pro-independence party.
(Reuters, 10/2/18)
2018 Oct 2, Indian police fired teargas and water cannons to halt and scatter a march by thousands of protesting farmers heading for the capital New Delhi to demand better prices for their produce.
(Reuters, 10/2/18)
2018 Oct 2, Iran's environment chief Isa Kalantari said his country faces losing 70 percent of its farmlands if urgent action is not taken to overcome a litany of climate woes.
(AFP, 10/5/18)
2018 Oct 2, Iraq's lawmakers met to elect a new president after a dispute between the two main Kurdish parties delayed the vote, eventually forcing them to choose among 20 nominees. Veteran Kurdish politician Barham Salih (58) was elected president by parliament and sworn in. He then tapped Adel Abdel Mahdi (76) for the difficult task of navigating the country's tangled politics to form a government within 30 days.
(AP, 10/2/18)(AP, 10/3/18)(AFP, 10/3/18)
2018 Oct 2, Israel detained Lara Alqasem (22), an American citizen with Palestinian grandparents, after she landed at Ben-Gurion Airport with a valid student visa. She was barred from entering the country and ordered deported, based on suspicions that she supports a campaign that calls for boycotts, divestments, and sanctions against Israel. A week later she was still in detention.
(AP, 10/9/18)
2018 Oct 2, Italy's leaders refused to budge from new spending plans that have been spooking investors, pushing the eurozone's third-largest economy on a collision course with its EU partners.
(AP, 10/2/18)
2018 Oct 2, In Morocco a long-awaited law aimed at protecting thousands of young girls working as housemaids took effect, the country's first such legislation. The law sets a minimum age of 18 for household work. It allowed 16-17 year-olds to work as domestic helpers for a further five years until October 2023.
(AFP, 10/2/18)
2018 Oct 2, In Pakistan a roadside bomb hit a security convoy in the Awaran district of Baluchistan province, killing three members of a provincial paramilitary force and wounding eight.
(AP, 10/2/18)
2018 Oct 2, Palestinian schoolchildren in a West Bank hamlet slated for destruction asked for German Chancellor Angela Merkel to intervene on their behalf.
(AP, 10/2/18)
2018 Oct 2, Workers for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees went on strike to protest job cuts due to a funding crisis sparked by US President Donald Trump's aid cancellation.
(AP, 10/2/18)
2018 Oct 2, In Poland more than 20,000 policemen, firemen, border and prison guards gathered in Warsaw to decry "outrageous" working conditions and demand pay rises, in what they described as the biggest protest in Polish police history.
(Reuters, 10/2/18)
2018 Oct 2, An appeals court in Poland ruled that a Roman Catholic order should pay damages to a woman who was abducted and sexually abused by one of its priests when she was 13. The priest was arrested in 2008 and convicted of pedophilia. He has served four years in prison, and was removed from the religious order last year.
(AP, 10/2/18)
2018 Oct 2, Moscow said it had delivered the S-300 surface-to-air missile system to Syria after the downing of a Russian spy plane by Syrian forces in September.
(Reuters, 10/5/18)
2018 Oct 2, Saudi Arabia said it will deposit $200 million in Yemen's central bank to help stem a slide in the riyal that has sent food prices soaring in the famine-threatened country.
(AFP, 10/2/18)
2018 Oct 2, A Saudi newspaper reported that a Saudi woman has lost a judicial battle to marry the man of her choice as a court deemed him "religiously" unfit because he plays a musical instrument. The woman said she will seek intervention from the country's "highest authorities" -- a reference to the royal court.
(AFP, 10/2/18)
2018 Oct 2, In Spain the Catalan parliament voted to reject a Spanish Supreme Court ruling that suspended former Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont and five other pro-independence politicians from public office, marking a new standoff with Madrid.
(Reuters, 10/2/18)
2018 Oct 2, In Sudan newspaper editors attended a meeting held by the EU at its office in Khartoum that urged press freedoms in the country. Several Sudanese journalists highlighted the challenges faced by the media industry in Sudan, including newspaper seizures by security agents.
(AFP, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 2, In Turkey Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi (59), who has written Washington Post columns critical of the kingdom's assertive crown prince, went missing after visiting the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. The Saudi Consulate insisted that Khashoggi left its building before disappearing.
(AP, 10/3/18)(SFC, 10/5/18, p.A3)
2018 Oct 2, The World Health Organization said it was helping Yemeni authorities with a second round of vaccination against cholera in three hard-hit districts. More than 2,500 people have died of the waterborne infection since the worst cholera outbreak in Yemen's history began in April 2017.
(AFP, 10/2/18)
2018 Oct 3, A federal judge in San Francisco blocked Pres. Donald Trump's plans to end temporary protection status for immigrants.
(SFC, 10/6/1, p.A6)
2018 Oct 3, In the SF Bay Area Chinedu Okobi (36), a black man, was tased by police in Milbrae and soon died of cardiac arrest. Authorities said he had been running through traffic and acting erratically. A video showed he was walking on the sidewalk before being confronted by police. His family later alleged excessive police force.
(SFC, 11/20/18, p.A1)(SFC, 1/24/19, p.C1)
2018 Oct 3, US security firm FireEye raised the alarm over a North Korean group that it says has stolen hundreds of millions of dollars by infiltrating the computer systems of banks around the world since 2014 through highly sophisticated and destructive attacks that have spanned at least 11 countries.
(AP, 10/3/18)
2018 Oct 3, Two Americans and a Briton won the 2018 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for harnessing the power of evolution to generate novel proteins used in everything from environmentally friendly detergents to cancer drugs. Frances Arnold of the California Institute of Technology, George Smith from the University of Missouri and Gregory Winter of Britain's MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology were awarded the prize for pioneering science in enzymes and antibodies.
(Reuters, 10/3/18)
2018 Oct 3, New Jersey's Supreme Court dismissed more than 500 lawsuits against Hoffman-LaRoche, maker of the acne drug Acutane, saying warning labels that the drug is associated with inflammatory bowel disease, were adequate.
(SFC, 10/4/18, p.A5)
2018 Oct 3, In South Carolina Frederick Hopkins (74), a Vietnam veteran, shot at seven law officers killing one as police arrived to speak to his adopted son (27) about a sex assault investigation at his home in Florence. Police Sgt. Terrence Carraway (52) died trying to save other wounded officers. Hopkins was taken into custody after a two hour standoff.
(SFC, 10/5/18, p.A8)(SFC, 10/6/18, p.A6)(SFC, 10/9/18, p.A4)
2018 Oct 3, Upwork (UPWK), a global marketing place for freelance work, made its Wall Street debut. Its IPO was offered at $15 and closed at $21.18.
(SFC, 10/4/18, p.D1)
2018 Oct 3, It was reported that General Motors will partner with Honda in the "large-scale" development of autonomous vehicles.
(AP, 10/3/18)
2018 Oct 3, British sandwich shop chain Pret a Manger said it would list all ingredients, including allergens, on its products after Natasha Ednan-Laperouse (15) died in 2016 from an allergic reaction to sesame seeds.
(AFP, 10/3/18)
2018 Oct 3, Aston Martin stalled after making a glitzy £4.3-billion ($5.6-billion, 4.9-billion-euro) IPO debut on the London stock market.
(AFP, 10/3/18)
2018 Oct 3, Britain's biggest coffee house chain, Costa Coffee, was banned from repeating an advert that implied their breakfast deals were a better bet than eating an avocado.
(AFP, 10/3/18)
2018 Oct 3, In northern Burkina Faso a gendarme was killed and another injured, where three people, including an Indian and a South African national, had been kidnapped at the end of last month.
(AFP, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 3, China's official Xinhua News Agency reported that tax authorities have ordered "X-Men" star Fan Bingbing and companies she represents to pay taxes and penalties totaling $130 million, ending speculation over the fate of one of the country's highest-profile entertainers three months after she disappeared from public view.
(AP, 10/3/18)
2018 Oct 3, Costa Rican police arrested former Romanian Tourism Minister Elena Udrea and former chief prosecutor Alina Bica who had fled there before they could be sentenced for crimes committed while in office.
(AP, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 3, Egypt's Interior Ministry said that police have killed 15 suspected militants in a shootout in the city of el-Arish, northern Sinai Peninsula, where they are battling an Islamic State-led insurgency.
(AP, 10/3/18)
2018 Oct 3, Finland's parliament voted to add new exceptions to a clause in the constitution that guarantees the right to privacy, to enable swift approval of an intelligence bill aimed at combating terrorism and spying by foreign governments.
(Reuters, 10/3/18)
2018 Oct 3, France's PM Edouard Philippe assumed responsibility for the country's domestic security after Interior Minister Gerard Collomb resigned in an apparent act of defiance toward President Emmanuel Macron.
(AP, 10/3/18)
2018 Oct 3, French police caught one of France's most wanted men in a pre-dawn raid, finding the gangster holed up in his hometown north of Paris. Fugitive Redoine Faid (46) was arrested in Creil three months after his spectacular helicopter escape.
(AP, 10/3/18)
2018 Oct 3, A Guinea-Bissau coast guard commander said around 60 migrants are missing and believed drowned after their boat was seen sinking off the country's coast.
(Reuters, 10/3/18)
2018 Oct 3, India raised state-mandated prices for winter crops such as wheat and rapeseed, as PM Narendra Modi tried to defuse discontent among farmers ahead of elections in 2019.
(Reuters, 10/3/18)
2018 Oct 3, Indian police bussed seven Rohingya Muslims to the border to be deported to neighboring Myanmar for illegal entry. An estimated 40,000 Rohingya live in India after having fled violence and persecution in Buddhist-majority Myanmar's Rakhine state over the years.
(Reuters, 10/3/18)
2018 Oct 3, In Indonesia Mount Soputan on Sulawesi island spewed a massive column of ash more than 6,000 meters (19,700 feet) into the sky. The official death toll from the Sept. 28 earthquake and tsunami on Sulawesi increased to 1,407, with thousands injured and more than 70,000 displaced from their homes.
(AP, 10/3/18)
2018 Oct 3, The Japan Space Exploration Agency said the Mobile Asteroid Surface Scout (MASCOT), a German-French observation device, was released from the unmanned spacecraft Hayabusa2 and successfully landed on the asteroid Ryugu.
(AP, 10/3/18)
2018 Oct 3, Malaysia's anti-graft agency said that Rosmah Mansor, the wife of former PM Najib Razak, has been arrested and will face money laundering charges in a graft scandal involving the 1MDB state investment fund.
(AP, 10/3/18)
2018 Oct 3, The Maldives Elections Commission restored 12 lawmakers who were earlier deemed to have lost their seats. The restoration of the lawmakers in line with a Supreme Court order is a sign that president-elect Ibrahim Mohamed Solih is consolidating his victory over outgoing strongman Yameen Abdul Gayoom.
(AP, 10/3/18)
2018 Oct 3, Niger kicked out an employee of the medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF), accused of exaggerating the death toll from a malaria epidemic in the south of the West African country. A video by Anne Pittet, an MSF pediatrist, said 10 children were dying each day in the southern town of Magaria from malaria or malnutrition.
(AFP, 10/3/18)
2018 Oct 3, Romania's PM Viorica Dancila accused prosecutors in her country of falsifying evidence, pressurizing witnesses and modifying testimony.
(AP, 10/3/18)
2018 Oct 3, South Africa's Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene told a judicial corruption inquiry that he was fired by former president Jacob Zuma for refusing to approve a $100 billion nuclear power deal with Russia in 2015. Nene also said his decision to reject a new route for the state airline to Sudan contributed to his sacking in 2015.
(Reuters, 10/3/18)
2018 Oct 3, Spain's Supreme Court confirmed that former International Monetary Fund chief Rodrigo Rato will have to serve a four-and-a-half year jail sentence for misusing company credit cards when he worked at state-owned lender Bankia. Rato chaired Bankia for two years until just before its state bailout in 2012.
(Reuters, 10/3/18)
2018 Oct 3, President Bashar Assad told a little-known Kuwaiti newspaper that Syria has reached a "major understanding" with Arab states after years of hostility over the country's civil war.
(AP, 10/3/18)
2018 Oct 3, Eight Turkish soldiers were killed and two were wounded after a roadside bomb in the southeastern province of Batman was detonated by outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants.
(AP, 10/4/18)(Reuters, 10/6/18)
2018 Oct 3, The UN's top court (ICJ) ordered the United States to lift sanctions on humanitarian goods for Iran in a stunning rebuke to US President Donald Trump.
(AFP, 10/3/18)(SFC, 10/4/18, p.A2)
2018 Oct 3, Pope Francis opened a gathering of bishops with the Catholic Church in a swirling state of crisis over sex abuse, urging its leaders not to let the next generation's faith be snuffed out "by our own shortcomings, mistakes and sins".
(Reuters, 10/3/18)
2018 Oct 3, Vietnam Communist Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong was nominated as the only candidate for president, effectively ordaining him as the most powerful person in the country.
(AFP, 10/3/18)
2018 Oct 3, Yemen's Shiite rebels released Salah and Madian Saleh, the two sons of late former president Ali Abdullah Saleh. The UN children's agency suspended cash transfers to 9 million of Yemen's most impoverished citizens under pressure from Yemen's Houthi rebels. UNICEF said the decision came after it was unable to set up a call center to get feedback from beneficiaries.
(AP, 10/3/18)
2018 Oct 4, The US Treasury issued new North Korea-related sanctions that target SIA Falcon International Group, a Turkish company, and two Turkish individuals among others.
(AP, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, The US Justice Department charged seven Russian military intelligence officers with hacking anti-doping agencies and other organizations. Britain and the Netherlands condemned the Russian GRU military intelligence for a series of alleged global cybercrimes. Konstantin Kosachev, the head of the foreign affairs committee in the upper house of Russian parliament, denounced the accusations as fake.
(AP, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, In southern California a judge sentenced former rap mogul Marion "Suge" Knight to 28 years in prison for running over businessman Terry Carter outside a Compton burger stand in 2015.
(SFC, 10/5/18, p.A14)
2018 Oct 4, In San Francisco almost 2,500 hotel workers began a strike that spanned seven Marriott hotels. On Dec. 3 the hotel workers finally approved a new contract.
(SFC, 12/4/18, p.A1)
2018 Oct 4, In New Mexico Cameron Martinez (18) died from gunshot wounds in a vehicle near the Ohkay Hotel Casino near Espanola. Three other people were expected to survive their wounds. Martinez had recently appeared in a political ad for Michelle Lujan Grisham, a Democratic candidate for state governor.
(SSFC, 10/7/18, p.A10)
2018 Oct 4, In Utah the Mormon church joined lawmakers, the governor and advocates to back a deal that would legalize medical marijuana in the state.
(SFC, 10/5/18, p.A7)
2018 Oct 4, In Afghanistan two women were killed and 16 other people wounded when their vehicle hit a roadside bomb in the Zhari district. In Nangarhar province a bomb blast near a non-governmental organization office killed two people and wounded seven others. In Kabul one person was killed when a sticky bomb attached to a vehicle detonated. US service member James Slape (23) of North Carolina died from wounds of an IED in Helmand province.
(AP, 10/4/18)(Reuters, 10/4/18)(SSFC, 10/7/18, p.A4)
2018 Oct 4, In southeastern Afghanistan Taliban militants mounted an attack in the Maroof district of Kandahar province when security forces responded with an airstrike. that killed four people and wounded eight others who were part of a wedding procession.
(Reuters, 10/5/18)
2018 Oct 4, Bahrain received a $10 billion pledge from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to aid its sufering economy.
(AP, 10/7/18)
2018 Oct 4, Lawyers for Benin tycoon and opposition politician Sebastien Ajavon discovered that their client and three others were accused of "high-risk international drug trafficking", which carries a prison term of 10-20 years. Ajavon launched his own political party in march and has made known he wants to stand at the next election that is expected in 2020.
(AFP, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, In eastern Burkina Faso six soldiers were killed and several others seriously injured when their vehicle hit an improvised explosive device (IED).
(AFP, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, Human Rights Watch said more than 235 people have been killed in the Beni area of CongoDRC this year in attacks with guns, axes or machetes. More than 165 others have been kidnapped. In the past four years more than 1,000 people have died.
(AP, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, In eastern CongoDRC a rebel attack on an army post left six people dead. The Ugandan Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) was suspected of having carried out the late night attack in the city of Beni.
(AFP, 10/5/18)
2018 Oct 4, In Egypt one person was killed and at least three others injured in a blast at a fuel depot on the outskirts of Cairo.
(Reuters, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, French authorities helicoptered a Slovenian she-bear into the Pyrenees mountains, despite an all-night protest by furious local farmers who fear she will eat their sheep.
(AFP, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, German Chancellor Angela Merkel paid homage in Jerusalem to the six million Jews killed by the Nazis and said Germany had a responsibility to confront anti-Semitism and never to forget the Holocaust. At a news conference Merkel reaffirmed her support for a two-state solution in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and concern about Israeli settlement expansion in occupied territory where Palestinians seek for a country of their own. Germany and Israel agree that Iran should never be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons but they differ on how to achieve this goal.
(Reuters, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, Hungary and Poland said they have gone to the European Court of Justice to challenge tighter European Union rules on the employment of workers from low-pay EU states.
(Reuters, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, India deported seven Rohingya Muslim men to Myanmar.
(Reuters, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, In Indonesia electricity was restored and some shops reopened in the quake and tsunami stricken city of Palu. The official death toll stood at 1,424, but was expected to rise.
(Reuters, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, In Ingushetia thousands attended a rare protest to decry a land-swap deal with neighboring Chechnya, despite authorities reportedly setting up roadblocks to hinder demonstrators. Russia turned off 3G and 4G mobile Internet services in Ingushetia from Oct. 4 to Oct. 17 "on the basis of the justified decision of the law enforcement authorities".
(AFP, 10/4/18)(Reuters, 11/16/18)
2018 Oct 4, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in an address broadcast by state television that the people of Iran face a sensitive time because of pressure from America and economic problems. The Iranian rial has lost approximately 75 percent of its value since the beginning of 2018.
(Reuters, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat announced in a statement a "detailed plan to remove UNRWA from Jerusalem and replace its services with municipal services".
(AFP, 10/5/18)
2018 Oct 4, In Kazakhstan the Russian Soyuz MS-08 space capsule carrying Russia's Oleg Artemyev and NASA's Drew Feustel and Ricky Arnold landed safely after a six-month mission aboard the International Space Station.
(AP, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, US First Lady Melania Trump brought soccer balls and books to a school in Malawi to highlight a USAID scheme to support African schools, on the second stop of her four-nation tour of the continent. President Donald Trump has sought to roll back the US foreign aid budget.
(Reuters, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, Qasim Ibrahim, a Maldives opposition leader, returned home after being exiled in Germany for months to escape a prison sentence on charges of plotting to overthrow the government.
(AP, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, Mexican police detained a couple on the outskirts of Mexico City on suspicion they may have killed as many as 10 women and sold a dead woman's baby.
(AP, 10/5/18)
2018 Oct 4, Mexican police in the northern border state of Sonora said five police officers died after unidentified assailants attacked their patrol vehicle in the town of Guaymas.
(AP, 10/5/18)
2018 Oct 4, Authorities in Myanmar destroyed an estimated $1.3 million worth of confiscated ivory and other parts of endangered animals, days after a conservation group charged that the country's ivory exports to China are increasing.
(AP, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, In Norway Russian businessman Boris Rotenberg, under US sanctions over the Ukraine conflict due to his close ties with President Vladimir Putin, filed suit against four Nordic banks, accusing them of discrimination. Rotenberg also holds a Finnish passport and is not subject to European sanctions over Russia's role in Ukraine, but European banks must comply with the US sanctions in order to do business with American banks.
(Reuters, 10/22/18)
2018 Oct 4, A spokeswoman for ActionAid said Pakistan has ordered 18 international aid groups to shut down operations and leave the country. ActionAid focuses on education, poverty alleviation and human rights and is headquartered in Johannesburg.
(Reuters, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, Philippine police, backed by troops, killed nine drug suspects and arrested more than 100 others in two days of raids that ended today in central Cebu province. The government's massive crackdown has left more than 4,800 suspects dead.
(AP, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived in India for a two-day visit during which India is expected to sign a $5 billion deal to buy Russian S-400 air defense systems despite a new US law ordering sanctions on any country trading with Russia's defense and intelligence sectors.
(AP, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, Russia's Defense Ministry said the United States appears to be running a clandestine biological weapons lab in the country of Georgia, allegedly flouting international rules and posing a direct security threat to Russia.
(AP, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, A South Korean government delegation arrived in North Korea for a joint celebration of the anniversary of a 2007 summit and to possibly hold further peace talks.
(AP, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, In South Korea this year's Busan International Film Festival (BIFF) opened with a movie portraying the plight of a North Korean defector and the unlikely family she formed during her harrowing journey.
(AFP, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, Sudanese security agents confiscated the entire print runs of two newspapers, days after the European Union and Washington pushed for press freedoms in the African country.
(AFP, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, Ukraine said it had given a Hungarian consul 72 hours to leave the country after accusing his consulate of illegally issuing passports to members of an ethnic Hungarian minority in Ukraine. Ukraine's constitution bars Ukrainians from holding citizenship of other countries. Hungary in turn expelled a Ukrainian consul in Budapest and reiterated a threat to block Ukraine's EU and NATO integration.
(Reuters, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, Vietnam seized eight tons of pangolin scales and elephant ivory shipped from Nigeria, the second such haul in a week.
(AFP, 10/5/18)
2018 Oct 5, US Senators held an initial vote on Brett Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court as President Donald Trump accused liberal financier George Soros of bankrolling opposition to the nominee.
(AFP, 10/5/18)
2018 Oct 5, US First Lady Melania Trump cozied up to baby elephants and went on safari in Kenya, on the third leg of a solo tour of Africa that has contrasted with the ongoing tumult in Washington.
(AP, 10/5/18)
2018 Oct 5, The US FDA announced that it will be removing six artificial flavors from the food supply. The FDA cited a 60-year-old regulation, known as the Delaney clause, that prohibits additives shown to have caused cancer in animals, even if tested at doses far higher than what aa person would consume.
(http://tinyurl.com/ybaa9m9k)(SFC, 11/22/18, p.D5)
2018 Oct 5, In the SF Bay Area San Quentin State prison inmate Jonathan Fajardo (30) was stabbed to death by inmate Luis Rodriguez (34). Fajardo was facing a death sentence for killing a black girl, Cheryl Green (14), in a racially motivated shooting on Dec 15, 2006 in Los Angeles.
(http://articles.latimes.com/keyword/jonathan-fajardo)(SFC, 10/6/18, p.C1)
2018 Oct 5, In southern California former Marine Andrew Urdiales (54) was sentenced to death for the murder of five women between 1986 and 1995. He had previously been senteced to death for killing three women in Illinois, but that sentence was communted to life without parole after Illinois barred the death penalty.
(SSFC, 10/7/18, p.A12)
2018 Oct 5, Chicago police Officer Jason Van Dyke (40) was convicted of 2nd-degree murder for the 2014 shooting of Laquan McDonald, a black teenager.
(SFC, 10/6/18, p.A5)
2018 Oct 5, The Nobel Peace Prize went to Denis Mukwege, a doctor who treats war rape victims in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Nadia Murad, a Yazidi rights activist and survivor of sexual slavery by Islamic State. Mukwege dedicated his award to all women affected by rape and sexual violence.
(Reuters, 10/5/18)
2018 Oct 5, In Afghanistan security forces arrived in Lal Sar Jangal, a district in the remote and largely lawless province of Ghor, to arrest Alipur, a commander from the mainly Shi'ite Hazara minority accused of serious human rights abuses. A gunbattle followed with four police and eight civilians killed. Alipur escaped.
(Reuters, 10/11/18)
2018 Oct 5, Belarus Pres. Alexander Lukashenko rejected prospective steps against domestic violence as Western "nonsense," saying that physical punishment could be useful in raising children.
(AP, 10/6/18)
2018 Oct 5, Anglo-Dutch consumer goods multinational Unilever, whose brands include Knorr and Dove, said it has scrapped a plan to consolidate its headquarters in the Netherlands following opposition from British shareholders.
(AP, 10/5/18)
2018 Oct 5, British street artist Banksy stunned the art world with arguably his most audacious prank yet, self-destructing one of his best-known works moments after it fetched more than a million pounds at auction in London.
(AFP, 10/6/18)
2018 Oct 5, Chinese tech stocks Lenovo Group and ZTE Corp. tumbled in Hong Kong following a news report Chinese spies might have used chips supplied by another company to hack into US computer systems.
(AP, 10/5/18)
2018 Oct 5, The Council of Europe said it has urged Croatia to investigate alleged police abuse of migrants trying to cross its borders.
(AFP, 10/5/18)
2018 Oct 5, Denmark's PM Lars Lokke Rasmussen said the government plans to build a new island near Copenhagen's harbor to create more space for the city's growing population.
(Reuters, 10/5/18)
2018 Oct 5, Ethiopia's ruling EPRDF coalition extended the chairmanship of PM Abiy Ahmed (42), as he pushed through sweeping political and economic reforms.
(Reuters, 10/5/18)
2018 Oct 5, French police said they are probing the disappearance of Meng Hongwei (64), the Chinese head of Interpol, who has reportedly been detained for questioning in his home country. The Hong-Kong based South China Morning Post newspaper reported that Meng was under investigation in China.
(AFP, 10/5/18)
2018 Oct 5, In Germany the Muenster administrative court issued a temporary halt after an environmental group argued that the Hambacher Forest near Cologne deserves protected status because of the bats that live there.
(AP, 10/6/18)
2018 Oct 5, It was reported that Hong Kong authorities have rejected an application to renew the work visa of Victor Mallet, Asia news editor at the Financial Times. Mallett is also an official of the city's Foreign Correspondents' Club (FCC).
(Reuters, 10/5/18)
2018 Oct 5, In Indonesia the official death toll from the Sept. 28 earthquake and tsunami rose to 1,571, and was expected to rise.
(Reuters, 10/5/18)
2018 Oct 5, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu underwent a new round of questioning over one of several graft cases that have threatened to topple him.
(AP, 10/5/18)
2018 Oct 5, Lebanon's leading Christian parties clashed over how power should be divided in a new unity government, casting doubt over PM-designate Saad al-Hariri's prediction that one will be agreed soon.
(Reuters, 10/5/18)
2018 Oct 5, A Macedonia appeals court upheld ex-premier Nikola Gruevski's two-year sentence for abuse of power over the use of a luxury car. Gruevski faced a number of graft cases, with the Mercedes charge the first to go to trial.
(AFP, 10/5/18)
2018 Oct 5, In Pakistan agents of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) arrested opposition leader Shehbaz Sharif, the brother of ousted PM Nawaz Sharif, in a longstanding corruption case, nine days before crucial by-elections are due to be held.
(Reuters, 10/5/18)
2018 Oct 5, In Pakistan unidentified gunmen shot and killed Ismail Darvesh, the senior leader of a Sunni extremist group, along with his guard in the northwestern city of Peshawar.
(AP, 10/5/18)
2018 Oct 5, Three Palestinians, among them a 13-year-old boy, were killed by Israeli troops during protests at five locations along the frontier. 376 were wounded, including 126 with bullet wounds. Israel said the demonstrators threw grenades at the soldiers, adding that they also tore at parts of the fence with bolt cutters.
(AP, 10/6/18)(AFP, 10/6/18)
2018 Oct 5, Russia signed a $5 billion deal with India to supply five regiments of S-400 anti-aircraft missiles to India. The contract was signed during Pres. Vladimir Putin's trip to India.
(Reuters, 10/5/18)(SFC, 10/6/18, p.A3)
2018 Oct 5, A Rwandan High Court granted bail to Diane Rwigara (37), a prominent critic of President Paul Kagame, who had been jailed for over a year awaiting trial.
(AFP, 10/5/18)
2018 Oct 5, A South Korea court jailed former President Lee Myung-bak for 15 years for corruption, making him the latest in a string of high-profile political and business leaders ensnared by graft charges.
(Reuters, 10/5/18)
2018 Oct 5, Spain said it will scrap a controversial levy on solar power affecting households and small businesses, making it easier for consumers to erect panels for their own use.
(Reuters, 10/5/18)
2018 Oct 5, The Swedish Academy, which awards the Nobel Literature Prize, announced an Iranian-born poet and a judge as new members as it seeks to recover from a #MeToo scandal that forced it to postpone this year's Nobel.
(AFP, 10/5/18)
2018 Oct 5, Taiwan wiped the criminal records of 1,270 victims of the island's "White Terror" purges, the first time the government has fully exonerated those who suffered political persecution under martial law. Thousands of political opponents were killed and imprisoned during the White Terror period of suppression under authoritarian leader Chiang Kai-shek, who ruled Taiwan from 1949 to his death in 1975.
(AFP, 10/5/18)
2018 Oct 5, Ukrainian film director Oleg Sentsov, jailed in Russia on terrorism charges, said he had been forced to end a prolonged hunger strike because prison authorities had told him they planned to force feed him.
(Reuters, 10/5/18)
2018 Oct 5, In Venezuela opposition councilman Fernando Alban (56) was taken into custody at Caracas' international airport upon arriving from New York. On October 8 officials said he killed himself by leaping from the 10th floor of the state police agency's headquarters.
(AP, 10/9/18)
2018 Oct 5, A Vietnamese court found five people guilty of attempting to overthrow the state, and sentenced them to between eight and 15 years in prison after a one-day trial in Ho Chi Minh City. Luu Van Vinh, chairman of the "Vietnam National Coalition," was handed a 15-year jail term, while the others were given lighter sentences.
(Reuters, 10/5/18)
2018 Oct 6, Conservative US judge Brett Kavanaugh (53) was confirmed to the Supreme Court by a 50-48 margin in the Senate, ending months of partisan rancor over his nomination and offering Donald Trump one of the biggest victories of his presidency.
(AFP, 10/7/18)
2018 Oct 6, In upper New York state 20 people were killed, including two pedestrians, when a limo carrying 18 people to a birthday party crashed in Schoharie. Limousine operator Nauman Hussain was later charged with criminally negligent homicide. In 2021 Hussain was sentenced to five years probation and 1,000 hours of community service in a plea deal to spare families the emotional toll of a trial.
(SFC, 10/8/18, p.A7)(SFC, 10/11/18, p.A6)(SFC, 9/3/21, p.A5)
2018 Oct 6, In Afghanistan heavily armed Taliban fighters destroyed bridges near the central city of Ghazni, closing the main highway between the capital Kabul and southern Afghanistan. Five militants were killed as they were planting bombs on three bridges on the Kabul-Kandahar highway. Officials said at least 25 Taliban insurgents were killed and 17 were wounded in clashes to secure the highway linking Ghazni and Paktia provinces. At least two Afghan security forces were killed in Taliban attacks in Kabul.
(Reuters, 10/6/18)(AP, 10/6/18)
2018 Oct 6, In Afghanistan 10 civilians were reported killed and 20 wounded in an air strike on Garda Serai district. US Forces denied it carried out the attack. The Taliban set fire to a government building in Wardak's Sayeed Abad district and killed the district police chief along with nine other policemen late today.
(AFP, 10/7/18)(Reuters, 10/7/18)
2018 Oct 6, In Armenia Karo Karapetian, a former member of parliament, and Arutyun Karagezian, also a former lawmaker, met in a restaurant in Yerevan. A quarrel over unspecified financial issues broke out. Karapetian was shot and pronounced dead at a hospital. Karagezian was found dead the next day in a suspected suicide.
(AP, 10/7/18)
2018 Oct 6, Bulgarian authorities discovered the body of television reporter Viktoria Marinova (30) in the northern town of Ruse near the Romanian border. Her body was dumped near the Danube River after she reported on the possible misuse of European Union funds in Bulgaria. Prosecutors later said Marinova had been raped, beaten and suffocated.
(AP, 10/8/18)(AP, 10/9/18)
2018 Oct 6, In eastern China 2 people were killed and 16 wounded after a knife-wielding man drove a vehicle into a crowd of pedestrians late today in Ningbo city, Zhejiang province.
(AP, 10/7/18)
2018 Oct 6, In western CongoDRC at least 53 people were dead and more than 72 people hospitalized after a tanker truck collided with another truck in the village of Mbuba, Kongo Central province.
(AP, 10/7/18)(AP, 10/8/18)
2018 Oct 6, In Egypt US First Lady Melania Trump held talks in Cairo on the final leg of a solo four-nation tour of Africa that will also see her visit the Pyramids.
(AFP, 10/6/18)
2018 Oct 6, An Egyptian judge slapped a travel ban on Khaled Ali, a former presidential candidate and rights lawyer, over an ongoing investigation into funding for civil society groups.
(AP, 10/6/18)
2018 Oct 6, Oil-rich Gabon, ruled by the same political dynasty for nearly half a century, voted in long-delayed legislative and municipal polls, the first since a presidential election two years ago that was marred by deadly violence and allegations of fraud.
(AFP, 10/6/18)
2018 Oct 6, In western Germany thousands of environmentalists protested the expansion of a coal mine a day after a court blocked the felling of endangered Hambacher Forest near the site.
(AP, 10/6/18)
2018 Oct 6, A magnitude 5.9 earthquake hit Haiti late today killing at least 14 people with135 injured. At least seven people died in the coastal city of Port-de-Paix and three people died in the nearby community of Gros-Morne in the province of Artibonite.
(AP, 10/7/18)(Reuters, 10/8/18)
2018 Oct 6, In eastern India 34 schoolgirls aged between 12 and 16 were taken to hospital after being beaten with sticks by a group of boys, along with the boys' mothers and neighbors, who had harassed them earlier in the day in the village of Darpakha, Bihar state. Ten people, including four women, were arrested.
(Reuters, 10/8/18)
2018 Oct 6, Indonesia's disaster agency said the death toll from the powerful earthquake and tsunami has climbed to 1,649, with at least 265 people still missing. It also said that number could be higher.
(AP, 10/6/18)
2018 Oct 6, Iranian businessman Farhad Zahedifar, CEO of the Samen Coin website, was returned to Iran with Interpol's help after he fled abroad. He accused of defrauding thousands of investors.
(Reuters, 10/6/18)
2018 Oct 6, In northern Iraq at least one person was killed and 14 wounded when a bus carrying workers at the small Siniya oil refinery was blown up by an improvised explosive device in Salahuddin province. Three civilians and a policeman were injured when a parked car exploded in a market area in Falluja, Anbar province.
(Reuters, 10/6/18)
2018 Oct 6, Israel announced new restrictions on Gaza, weeks after the territory's Hamas rulers stepped up protests along the enclave's land and sea borders with Israel. Israel's defence minister ordered the fishing zone to be reduced to six nautical miles (11 km) from nine nautical miles. Under the Oslo Accords of the early 1990s, fishermen are supposed to be allowed to operate up to 20 nautical miles off the coast.
(AP, 10/6/18)(AFP, 10/6/18)
2018 Oct 6, In Indian-controlled Kashmir at least 20 people were killed and 16 others injured when an overcrowded minibus fell into a deep gorge along a mountainous road near southern Ramban town.
(AP, 10/6/18)
2018 Oct 6, In Japan Tokyo's famed Tsukiji market, the world's largest fishmarket and a major tourist attraction, held its final tuna auction before a controversial move to a new site next week.
(Reuters, 10/6/18)
2018 Oct 6, Latvians voted in a general election expected to yield a ruling coalition of pro-Kremlin and populist parties and tarnished by a hacker attack on a popular social network. The pro-Kremlin Harmony party won 19.8 percent of the vote ahead of two populist parties -- KPV LV with 14.25 percent and the New Conservative Party with 13.6 percent. The center-right Greens and Farmers Union of PM Maris Kucinskis won 9.9 percent and New Unity took 6.7 percent as the last party crossing the five-percent threshold to have seats in parliament.
(AFP, 10/6/18)(AFP, 10/7/18)
2018 Oct 6, Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri said the process of forming a government more than five months after a national election had returned "to zero", after saying earlier this week there had been a "glimmer of hope".
(Reuters, 10/6/18)
2018 Oct 6, Malaysian police said that eight suspected militants, including seven foreigners, have been arrested for allegedly spreading religious extremism that could threaten national security and fan terrorism in the region.
(AP, 10/6/18)
2018 Oct 6, Mozambique President Filipe Nyusi launched an initiative to disarm and reintegrate the military wing of the country's main opposition party, Renamo, as part of efforts to bolster peace and security.
(Reuters, 10/6/18)
2018 Oct 6, Romania began two days of voting on a constitutional amendment that would make it harder to legalize same-sex marriage. Romanian law already prohibits same-sex marriages.
(AP, 10/6/18)
2018 Oct 6, In Somalia the US military's Africa Command (Africom) carried out an air strike in the vicinity of Kunyo Barrow, north of the town of Kismayo. One militant was reported killed.
(Reuters, 10/9/18)
2018 Oct 6, Montserrat Caballe (85), Spanish opera singer, died in Barcelona. She was renowned for her bel canto technique and her interpretations of the roles of Rossini, Bellini and Donizetti.
(AP, 10/6/18)
2018 Oct 6, In northern Syria an explosive device detonated in the town of Azaz held by Turkey-backed opposition fighters killing four people, including two children.
(AP, 10/6/18)
2018 Oct 6, Two Turkey-backed Syrian rebel officials said that rebel groups had begun to withdraw heavy weaponry from a demilitarized zone in northwest Syria.
(Reuters, 10/6/18)
2018 Oct 6, The Vatican said Pope Francis has authorized a thorough study of Vatican archives into how American ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick advanced through church ranks despite allegations that he slept with seminarians and young priests.
(SSFC, 10/7/18, p.A6)
2018 Oct 6, Yemen's Houthi group arrested a number of people in Sanaa, following demonstrations over economic hardship. Dozens were reported arrested, including 16 female students.
(Reuters, 10/6/18)
2018 Oct 7, In southern California SpaceX launched a commercial satellite for Argentina from Vandenberg Air Force Base. This was the 17th mission this year for Elon Musk's rocket company.
(SFC, 10/9/18, p.A4D4)
2018 Oct 7, In eastern Afghanistan Taliban fighters killed 14 members of the security forces overnight in a district that straddles the strategic Kabul-Kandahar highway linking the Afghan capital and the group's southern strongholds. Taliban militants destroyed highway bridges between Kabul and three provinces. Around 20 Taliban fighters were reported killed.
(AFP, 10/7/18)(SFC, 10/8/18, p.A2)
2018 Oct 7, Bahrain's House of Representatives has approved a bill allowing for value-added tax to be collected, sending it onto the National Assembly's upper chamber, the Shura Council. Once approved by the Shura Council, it must be implemented by King Hamad to take effect.
(AP, 10/7/18)
2018 Oct 7, Bosnia held elections for the three-person presidency, the Serb president, and the two entities' parliaments and cantonal authorities. Bosnia consists of a Serb regional government and a Muslim-Croat one tied loosely by central institutions, including the presidency. Serb nationalist Milorad Dodik, who opposes Bosnia as a state, won a share of its tripartite presidency. Sefik Dzaferovic won the Bosniak seat in the inter-ethnic presidency. A coalition led by the largest Croat party HDZ won the most votes of Croats in the Federation parliament and in the majority Croat cantons. Its leader Dragan Covic lost the seat in the presidency to Zeljko Komsic, seen as a more moderate figure.
(AP, 10/7/18)(Reuters, 10/8/18)
2018 Oct 7, Brazilians began voting in a polarized presidential race. Far-right candidate Jair Bolsonar, a former Army captain and veteran lawmaker, nearly won the presidency outright in Sunday's first-round election, taking 46 percent of votes to leftist Fernando Haddad's 29 percent.
(AP, 10/7/18)(Reuters, 10/8/18)
2018 Oct 7, Around a thousand dogs and their owners marched on Britain's parliament demanding an end to Brexit via a second vote on the terms of the country's exit from the European Union.
(Reuters, 10/7/18)
2018 Oct 7, Cameroon held elections. President Paul Biya (85), Africa's oldest leader, was expected to win another term amid fighting and threats from separatists that have already prevented residents in English-speaking regions from voting. In the northwest at least three armed separatists were shot dead by security forces in the city of Bamenda as they tried to disrupt voting in the presidential election. On Oct. 22 Cameroon's Constitutional Council said Paul Biya (85) won 71.3 percent of the ballot.
(AP, 10/7/18)(Reuters, 10/7/18)(AFP, 10/22/18)
2018 Oct 7, Chinese authorities scrambled to contain a public relations mess over the disappearance of Meng Hongwei, the former Interpol president during his trip home to China, saying that he was being lawfully investigated for bribery and other crimes.
(AP, 10/8/18)
2018 Oct 7, A local CongoDRC official said machete-wielding attackers killed at least 14 civilians near the village of Rubaya in the restive North Kivu province.
(AFP, 10/7/18)
2018 Oct 7, Czech Pres. Milos Zeman refused to back down from comments slamming what he called a 90 percent unemployment rate among the country's Roma, earning a rebuke from campaigners and rights activists.
(Reuters, 10/7/18)
2018 Oct 7, A cargo ship rammed into another freight vessel near the French Mediterranean island of Corsica early today, causing no injuries but causing a leak which officials say is most likely fuel. The Ulysse, operated by the Tunisian operator CTN, struck the Cyprus-based CLS Virgina while it was anchored about 30 km (20 miles) off the northern tip of the island.
(AFP, 10/7/18)
2018 Oct 7, The Dubai Court of Appeals' ruling added another five years onto the prison sentence of former British Gulf News editor Francis Matthew, who initially was found guilty in March of bludgeoning his wife to death at their home and received a 10-year sentence.
(AP, 10/7/18)
2018 Oct 7, In Indonesia the official death toll from the Sept. 28 earthquake and tsunami rose to 1,763 but bodies were still being recovered. Disaster agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said large-scale searches with many personnel and heavy equipment would cease on October 11. An official said number of people believed missing in Palu city has soared to 5,000.
(Reuters, 10/7/18)(AFP, 10/7/18)
2018 Oct 7, In Ingushetia several thousand protesters demanded the resignation of veteran local leader Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, accusing him of surrendering swathes of territory to neighboring Chechnya.
(AFP, 10/7/18)
2018 Oct 7, Iran's parliament voted to join a global convention to cut off terror financing, hoping to avoid further international sanctions as the 2015 nuclear accord unravels. The bill must be ratified by the Guardian Council, a constitutional authority, to become a law.
(AP, 10/7/18)
2018 Oct 7, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s wife, Sara, appeared in court for the first hearing in the fraud trial against her, in which she is alleged to have misused state funds in ordering catered meals.
(Reuters, 10/7/18)
2018 Oct 7, In Nigeria Atiku Abubakar (71) won almost half the votes cast in a primary race to become the main opposition challenger to Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari in next year's elections.
(AP, 10/7/18)
2018 Oct 7, A Palestinian attacker opened fire inside a West Bank industrial zone this morning where Israelis and Palestinians work together, killing two Israelis and seriously wounding a third. The gunman escaped the scene.
(AP, 10/7/18)
2018 Oct 7, A private foundation in Poland published a map of 255 cases of sexual abuse of minors by the country's Catholic priests — the latest development pressuring Poland's church to admit and take responsibility for such abuse cases.
(AP, 10/7/18)
2018 Oct 7, Romanians voted for a second day on a constitutional amendment backed by the influential Romanian Orthodox Church that would make it harder to legalize same-sex marriage. The vote required a 30 percent turnout to be valid. More than 90 percent of those who took part in a national referendum supported defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman, but the vote was invalidated as too few people cast ballots.
(AP, 10/7/18)(AP, 10/8/18)
2018 Oct 7, In South Sudan prisoners disarmed guards and seized control of part of a detention center in Juba early today. A detainee said the inmates taking the action were political prisoners seeking freedom.
(Reuters, 10/7/18)
2018 Oct 7, Thousands of Spaniards attended a rally of the fledging far-right VOX party as it tries to grab a foothold in Spain's political spectrum. Founded in 2013, VOX hoped that its vehement stance against immigration and the separatists in Catalonia will allow it to break out of obscurity and into public office. It claimed to have 10,000 members.
(AP, 10/7/18)
2018 Oct 7, Sudan slashed the official value of its currency against the US dollar by more than half, the third devaluation this year in the face of a mounting economic crisis.
(AFP, 10/7/18)
2018 Oct 7, In Thailand suspected teenage gang members were involved in a shooting that killed a nearby Indian tourist and injured four others, two critically, outside a Bangkok shopping arcade.
(AP, 10/8/18)
2018 Oct 7, Turkey's President Tayyip Erdogan said he was closely following the case of missing Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi after Turkish officials said they believed he had been killed at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.
(Reuters, 10/7/18)
2018 Oct 7, The UN children's agency resumed emergency cash transfers to 9 million Yemenis after it was allowed to operate a call center to help monitor aid distribution.
(AP, 10/9/18)
2018 Oct 7, Cardinal Marc Ouellet, a top Vatican official, issued a scathing open letter accusing Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, who launched an unprecedented attack on Pope Francis, of mounting a "political frame job devoid of real foundation".
(Reuters, 10/7/18)
2018 Oct 8, The Nobel prize in economics was awarded to to William Nordhaus of Yale University and Paul Romer of New York University. Nordhaus has developed models that suggest how governments can combat global warming. Romer has produced research that shows how governments can advance innovation.
(AP, 10/8/18)
2018 Oct 8, US Interior Sec. Ryan Zinke approved a 20-year ban on new mining in the Paradise Valley and Gardiner Basin in Montana. Most of the land is within the Custer Gallatin National Forest north of Yellowstone National Park.
(SFC, 10/9/18, p.A4)
2018 Oct 8, In the SF Bay Area Dominic Sarkar (56), a Fremont chef, was shot and killed at his home. Police later called it a murder-for-hire and charged his domestic partner Maria Moore (50) and Marvel Salvant (46) with murder. Moore had acknowledged that she was the beneficiery of two life insurance policies.
(SFC, 12/21/18, p.C9)
2018 Oct 8, Kentucky Catholic Bishop William Medley said his Owensboro diocese has received 66 sexual abuse allegations against 27 priests since 1937, the year the diocese was founded.
(SFC, 10/10/18, p.A4)
2018 Oct 8, Rhode Island-based Deepwater Wind announced that Denmark-based Orsted has entered into an agreement to buy it. Orsted said it's paying $510 million.
(AP, 10/8/18)
2018 Oct 8, Baker-Hughes, a subsidiary of General Electric Co., said it has agreed to purchase a 5-percent stake in the drilling arm of Abu Dhabi's state oil company for $550 million. This marks the first time Abu Dhabi has sold a stake in its businesses to a foreign interest.
(AP, 10/8/18)
2018 Oct 8, Bangladesh President Abdul Hamid signed the Digital Security Act into law. The bill that has been criticized as stifling freedom of speech. Bangladesh's cabinet approved a draft law prescribing the death penalty for drug offences, despite widespread criticism over a drugs crackdown in which police have shot dead more than 200 people since May.
(AP, 10/8/18)(Reuters, 10/8/18)
2018 Oct 8, The second of two Russians who Britain blames for the poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal was named by investigative website Bellingcat as Alexander Yevgenyevich Mishkin (39), a military doctor for Russia's GRU intelligence service.
(Reuters, 10/9/18)
2018 Oct 8, Cameroon opposition candidate Maurice Kamto declared victory in presidential elections, saying he had "achieved his goal" in Sunday's vote and calling on President Paul Biya to hand over power peacefully.
(Reuters, 10/8/18)
2018 Oct 8, In Indian-controlled Kashmir the first phase of local council elections ended amid tight security and a separatist-sponsored shutdown.
(AP, 10/8/18)
2018 Oct 8, In Indonesia the death toll from the Sept. 28 devastating earthquake and tsunami on Sulawesi island neared 2,000. Thousands more are believed unaccounted for and officials said search teams plan to stop looking for victims later this week.
(AP, 10/8/18)
2018 Oct 8, In Japan zookeeper Akira Furusho died after he was found bleeding from his neck and lying on the floor inside a tiger cage at Hirakawa Zoological Park in Kagoshima following an apparent attack by a white tiger.
(AP, 10/9/18)
2018 Oct 8, Forces of Libyan strongman Khalifa Haftar captured Hisham el-Ashmawy, one of Egypt's most-wanted jihadists in the east of the chaos-ridden country. He was accused of being behind attacks in Egypt's Western Desert region.
(AFP, 10/8/18)
2018 Oct 8, A Macedonian criminal court sentenced former interior minister Gordana Jankuloska (42) to six years in prison over the purchase of a luxury bulletproof car for the government. She remained free pending appeal.
(AP, 10/8/18)
2018 Oct 8, Qatar Airways' boss Akbar al-Baker said US sanctions on Iran will not impact its flights to the Islamic republic.
(AFP, 10/8/18)
2018 Oct 8, Russia's foreign ministry said four Russians, accused by the Netherlands last week of hacking, were traveling with technical equipment intended to test their embassy's IT systems in the Hague.
(Reuters, 10/8/18)
2018 Oct 8, A Madrid court ruled that Dr. Eduardo Vela (85) had seized Ines Madrigal from her biological mother in 1969, but said he could not be legally convicted because she waited too long to file a complaint against him. Madrigal, now 49, is one of thousands of babies removed from their mothers -- who were told their children had died -- and adopted during and after General Francisco Franco's 1939-1975 rule.
(AFP, 10/8/18)
2018 Oct 8, Syrian rebels completed the withdrawal of heavy weapons from the frontline in Idlib, under the deal between Russia and Turkey to create a demilitarized zone.
(AP, 10/8/18)
2018 Oct 8, Venezuelan officials said opposition councilman Fernando Alban (56) said killed himself by leaping from the 10th floor of the state police agency's headquarters. But opposition leaders denied the official version.
(AFP, 10/9/18)
2018 Oct 8, In Yemen an airstrike by the Saudi-led coalition killed four civilians working at a bee farm in the Red Sea city of Hodeida.
(AP, 10/8/18)
2018 Oct 9, Nikki Haley (46) announced her resignation as the top US diplomat to the United Nations saying was leaving by the end of the year.
(AP, 10/10/18)
2018 Oct 9, In Florida Gal Vallerius (36), a Frenchman who was arrested when he arrived in the US for a world beard-growing championship in 2017, was sentenced to 20 years in prison for online drug trafficking using the alias "OxyMonster."
(AP, 10/9/18)
2018 Oct 9, In Afghanistan a suicide bomber struck the home of Saleh Mohammad Achekzai, a candidate in parliamentary elections later this month, killing him and seven other people in Lashkar Gah, Helmand province.
(AP, 10/9/18)
2018 Oct 9, Two Afghan military officials were jailed for 20 years after a two-year trial for sharing state secrets with Pakistan. Shah Mohammad and Nazirullah were arrested in 2016 after traveling to Pakistan to hand over information to Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) agency.
(Reuters, 10/10/18)
2018 Oct 9, Albania's PM Edi Rama said that by Dec. 31 all casinos, including shops taking bets on sports and animal races, will need to be closed and move to city outskirts especially in Tirana.
(AP, 10/9/18)
2018 Oct 9, In Algeria a man with a hammer attacked and damaged a statue of a bare-breasted woman, an emblem of the eastern city of Setif. In 1997, when extremist violence raged across Algeria, Islamists dynamited the statue, which was repaired in Italy. The colonial-era statue is the work of French sculptor Francis Saint Vidal, dating to 1889.
(AP, 10/9/18)
2018 Oct 9, In Bahrain four people were killed and some 20 others were injured when a building collapsed in Manama. The two-story residential building reportedly housed foreign laborers.
(AP, 10/10/18)
2018 Oct 9, In Bosnia a powerful blast rocked the Brod oil refinery late today leaving one worker dead and nine people injured.
(Reuters, 10/10/18)
2018 Oct 9, In Britain drivers for taxi-sharing app Uber went on strike, demanding higher fares and improved workers' rights and urging users not to cross the digital picket line by ordering rides.
(AFP, 10/9/18)
2018 Oct 9, Egypt said its security forces have killed 10 militants in a shootout in the city of el-Arish in the turbulent northern Sinai Peninsula. The Interior Ministry did not say when the battle took place.
(AP, 10/9/18)
2018 Oct 9, German police arrested a suspect in the rape and killing of a television journalist from Bulgaria whose work highlighted corruption in the East European country. Severin Krassimirov (21), a Bulgarian citizen, was arrested outside the city of Hamburg.
(AP, 10/10/18)
2018 Oct 9, A Berlin court ordered the city to ban older diesel vehicles from several downtown streets to reduce nitrogen dioxide levels in the German capital.
(AP, 10/9/18)
2018 Oct 9, Greek Coast Guard Lieutenant Kyriakos Papadopoulos (44) died late today of a heart attack. He is credited with having rescued more than 5,000 refugees fleeing in small rubber boats across the sea at the height of Europe's migrant crisis in 2015.
(AP, 10/10/18)
2018 Oct 9, Former Guatemalan Vice President Roxana Baldetti (56) was sentenced to 15-1/2 years in prison for fraud, influence peddling and illicit association related to a government contract to clean up a polluted lake, in the first of several cases she faces.
(Reuters, 10/9/18)
2018 Oct 9, In India it was reported that tens of thousands of workers have fled Gujarat state in recent days, and many of the small factories and businesses they work in have come to a standstill. This followed news of violence in Gujarat against migrant workers from the central states of Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. The exodus began after the rape of a 14-month-old girl last month, allegedly by a man from the state of Bihar, sparked anger among locals.
(Reuters, 10/9/18)
2018 Oct 9, Indonesia's disaster agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said the toll from the Sept. 28 earthquake and tsunami had climbed to 2,010.
(AP, 10/9/18)
2018 Oct 9, Malaysia freed from detention 11 ethnic Uighur Muslims who fled to the southeast Asian nation after a Thai jailbreak last year, and sent them to Turkey, in disregard of China's request to hand them to Beijing.
(Reuters, 10/11/18)
2018 Oct 9, The Dutch government lost a legal appeal against a landmark 2015 court ruling which ordered it to slash greenhouse gases by at least 25 percent by 2020.
(AFP, 10/9/18)
2018 Oct 9, Pakistan's currency plunged by about 7 percent after the government said it would seek emergency bailout loans from the International Monetary Fund.
(AP, 10/9/18)
2018 Oct 9, Qatari-bought fuel arrived at the Gaza Strip's only power station after entering through Israel in a bid to alleviate conditions in the Palestinian enclave.
(AFP, 10/9/18)
2018 Oct 9, In Serbia dense morning fog led to two multi-vehicle crashes on a key highway, leaving seven people dead and injuring 27 others.
(AP, 10/9/18)
2018 Oct 9, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa announced the departure of Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene at a news conference. Nene faced calls to resign after he admitted to visiting the Gupta brothers, friends of scandal-plagued former president Jacob Zuma who have been accused of high-level influence-peddling, and failing to disclose the meetings earlier.
(Reuters, 10/9/18)
2018 Oct 9, AfriForum's CEO said South Africa's Zulu king and Afrikaans nationalist group AfriForum are forming a partnership to develop the agriculture on vast swathes of land the monarch controls through a trust. King Goodwill Zwelithini controls 2.8 million hectares, a fragmented sub-tropical area the size of Belgium, under an entity called the Ingonyama Trust.
(Reuters, 10/9/18)
2018 Oct 9, Flash floods hit the Spanish holiday island of Majorca leaving at least 10 people dead, including two Britons. Two more people were found dead on Oct. 11, bringing to at least 12 the number of people killed. A Spanish boy remained missing. The death toll to 13 on Oct 17 after the body of a missing five-year-old boy was discovered.
(AFP, 10/10/18)(Reuters, 10/11/18)(AFP, 10/17/18)
2018 Oct 9, Syria's President Bashar al-Assad issued a general amnesty for army deserters and those who have avoided compulsory military service during the country's seven-year civil war.
(AFP, 10/9/18)
2018 Oct 9, Turkey said it will search the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul as part of an investigation into the disappearance of Jamal Khashoggi (59), the missing Saudi contributor to The Washington Post, a week after he vanished during a visit there.
(AP, 10/9/18)
2018 Oct 9, President Tayyip Erdogan agreed to increase releases of water from a dam in southeastern Turkey to neighboring Iraq, which is struggling with a water crisis.
(Reuters, 10/10/18)
2018 Oct 9, In northern Ukraine more than 12,000 people were evacuated after ammunition stored at an arms depot began exploding early today sparking a huge fire.
(AFP, 10/9/18)
2018 Oct 9, Uzbekistan's Pres. Shavkat Mirziyoyev made his first trip to a European Union country, meeting with French leader Emmanuel Macron in Paris. He signed partnership agreements with French companies including energy group Total, Veolia and Suez for water facilities, nuclear company Orano and Airbus Helicopters. No final contract was expected to be reached.
(AP, 10/9/18)
2018 Oct 10, A new damning US congressional report concluded China is undertaking unprecedented repression of its ethnic minorities including Muslim Uighurs, with authoritarian tactics potentially constituting "crimes against humanity" as human rights conditions deteriorate.
(AFP, 10/10/18)
2018 Oct 10, The US Justice Dept. approved the $69 billion merger betrween CVS Health, a pharmaceutical retailer, and the Aetna insurance company.
(SFC, 10/11/18, p.D1)
2018 Oct 10, Former NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg said he has re-registered as a Democrat, eyeing a possible presidential run against Pres. Donald Trump.
(SFC, 10/11/18, p.A8)
2018 Oct 10, Category 4 Hurricane Michael made landfall on the Florida Panhandle and charged into Georgia leaving at least three people dead. By Oct. 28 the death toll over the storm's path from Florida to Virginia reached 45 with 35 dead in Florida.
(AP, 10/10/18)(SFC, 10/11/18, p.A6)(SFC, 10/12/18, p.A5)(SFC, 10/29/18, p.A5)
2018 Oct 10, Father Louis Brouillard (97) died in Minnesota. He was removed from public ministry in 1985, but continued to receive a stipend from the church. In 2016 he signed a sworn statement admitting to sexually abusing at least 20 children in Guam. In 2019 more than 220 former altar boys, students and Boy Scouts were suing the US territory's Catholic archdiocese over sexual assaults by 35 clergy, teachers and scoutmasters.
(http://tinyurl.com/y647kxjy)(AP, 8/8/19)
2018 Oct 10, US stocks plundged to their worst loss in eight months. The DJIA fell 831 points. NASDAQ fell 315.97, its biggest loss in over two years.
(SFC, 10/11/18, p.D1)
2018 Oct 10, Sears Holdings nosedived after the Wall Street Journal reported that the struggling retailer hired an advisory firm to prepare a bankruptcy filing that could come within days. The stock fell 38.5 percent to 36 cents in morning trading. It was more than $40 five years ago.
(AP, 10/10/18)
2018 Oct 10, It was reported that lack of markets led officials to suspend recycling programs in Gouldsboro, Maine; DeBary, Florida; Franklin, New Hampshire; and Adrian Township, Michigan. Programs have been scaled back in Flagstaff, Arizona; La Crosse, Wisconsin; and Kankakee, Illinois.
(AP, 10/10/18)
2018 Oct 10, A Bangladeshi court sentenced 19 people to death and the son of the opposition leader to life imprisonment over a deadly 2004 attack at a political rally held by current PM Sheikh Hasina. Tarique Rahman was tried in absentia as he is living in exile in London.
(AP, 10/10/18)(Reuters, 10/10/18)
2018 Oct 10, Prosecutors in Brazil said Paulo Guedes, the chief economic advisor to far-right presidential front-runner Jair Bolsonaro, is under a federal investigation for alleged fraud tied to the pension funds of major state-run companies.
(Reuters, 10/10/18)
2018 Oct 10, A British court lifted an order granting anonymity to Zamira Hajiyeva (55), the wife of former International Bank of Azerbaijan chairman Jahangir Hajiyev, who was sentenced to 15 years in jail in his home country in 2016 for fraud and embezzlement. A court has ordered her to explain where she got the money to also buy an 11.5 million pound ($15 million) London home close to Harrods and a golf course outside the city worth 10.5 million pounds ($14 million).
(AP, 10/10/18)
2018 Oct 10, Egyptian police detained Abdullah Morsi (25), the youngest son of jailed former president Mohammed Morsi, without giving a reason. The family feared he'll be held indefinitely.
(AP, 10/10/18)
2018 Oct 10, Egypt said that inflation jumped to 15.4 percent last month, a rise of more than two percentage points over the previous month and the highest level since eight months ago.
(AP, 10/10/18)
2018 Oct 10, In Ethiopia a group of "disgruntled" elite soldiers, who had been sent to quell bloody ethnic clashes on the capital's outskirts, marched on PM Abiy Ahmed's office to protest low salaries. PM Ahmed listened to the grievances, reprimanded them for the wrong procedure they followed to express those grievances, but concluded the meeting with a promise to meet properly in the near future.
(AFP, 10/11/18)
2018 Oct 10, France's highest court overturned an appeals court ruling that required around 1,700 women around the world to pay back compensation they received over rupture-prone breast implants. The decision means that the years-long case must be retried.
(AP, 10/10/18)
2018 Oct 10, In northern India an express train partially derailed, killing five passengers and injuring dozens more in Uttar Pradesh state.
(AP, 10/10/18)
2018 Oct 10, Indonesia's disaster agency said the death toll from the double disaster on Sept. 28 has risen to 2,045, with most of the fatalities in the coastal city of Palu. More than 80,000 people were living in temporary shelters or otherwise displaced.
(AP, 10/10/18)
2018 Oct 10, Jerusalem Magistrates Court awarded three 17-year-old girls 45,000 shekels ($12,426.48), plus costs and lawyers' fees for the cancellation of a concert by singer Lorde in Tel Aviv in June. The case arose from an open letter that activists Justine Sachs and Nadia Abu-Shanab wrote to Lorde, a New Zealander, on the web site "thespinoff.co.nz" last December urging her to call off her planned concert.
(Reuters, 10/12/18)
2018 Oct 10, In Kenya 50 people were killed when a bus travelling between Nairobi and the western city of Kisumu swerved off the road coming down a slope.
(Reuters, 10/10/18)
2018 Oct 10, In Kosovo hundreds of people took part in a gay parade in Pristina, demanding "freedom" and "equal rights" in the patriarchal and Muslim majority country.
(AP, 10/10/18)
2018 Oct 10, A Libyan official said a mass grave containing 75 bodies has been found near the former jihadist bastion of Sirte. The find was made "a few days ago" and the bodies were believed to be of Islamic State (IS) group members.
(AFP, 10/10/18)
2018 Oct 10, It was reported that four of the five members of Maldives' Elections Commission have fled the country because of threats from supporters of outgoing President Yameen Abdul Gayoom, who accused them of rigging last month's presidential election in favor of the opposition candidate.
(AP, 10/10/18)
2018 Oct 10, Three senior journalists at Myanmar's largest private newspaper were remanded in custody after handing themselves in to police, facing accusations of causing "fear or alarm" following a complaint from the Yangon regional government.
(AP, 10/10/18)
2018 Oct 10, A bakery run by a Christian family in Northern Ireland won a landmark case in Britain's highest court over its refusal to make a cake decorated with the words "Support Gay Marriage". The Supreme Court upheld the owners' appeal against a May decision that found them guilty of discriminating against gay rights activist Gareth Lee.
(AFP, 10/10/18)
2018 Oct 10, Former Peruvian presidential candidate Keiko Fujimori was detained in Lima as part of a money-maundering investigation.
(SFC, 10/11/18, p.A2)
2018 Oct 10, Poland's Pres. Andrzej Duda swore in 27 new Supreme Court judges, stepping up the conflict over control of the judiciary and ignoring another top court that said the appointments should be suspended pending an opinion by EU judges.
(AP, 10/10/18)
2018 Oct 10, A report commissioned by South Africa's central bank was published. It found at least 1.9 billion rand ($130 million) had been siphoned illegally from VBS, a failed local bank that bailed out former president Jacob Zuma after a corruption scandal. The report said one of the beneficiaries was Brian Shivambu, who received 16 million rand of "looted" funds from VBS. Brian Shivambu is the younger brother of Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) Deputy President Floyd Shivambu.
(Reuters, 10/11/18)
2018 Oct 10, Switzerland's high court upheld the acquittal of Rudolf Elmer, a former bank accountant, who handed over confidential client information to WikiLeaks in 2008, ruling he wasn't bound by the country's strict banking secrecy laws at the time. The court ruled that prosecutors cannot extend Swiss banking secrecy rules to all corners of the globe to pursue whistleblowers and other leakers at foreign subsidiaries.
(AP, 10/10/18)(Reuters, 10/10/18)
2018 Oct 10, In a National Day address Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen called on China not to be a "source of conflict" and pledged to boost the island's defenses against Beijing's military threats.
(AP, 10/10/18)
2018 Oct 10, In Thailand Panthongtae Shinawatra, the son of former PM Thaksin Shinawatra, was indicted on charges of laundering 10 million baht ($303,500) linked to a 2015 corruption case involving Krungthai Bank.
(AP, 10/10/18)
2018 Oct 10, A pro-government Turkish daily published preliminary evidence from investigators it said identified a 15-member Saudi intelligence team involved in the unexplained disappearance of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
(Reuters, 10/10/18)
2018 Oct 10, The Turkish coast guard said eight people died after a boat filled with migrants sank off the western coast of Turkey and another 25 were missing.
(Reuters, 10/10/18)
2018 Oct 10, The UN said that the number of Afghans killed or wounded by air strikes rose 39 percent in the first nine months of 2018. At least 8,050 Afghan civilians were killed or wounded in the first nine months of 2018. The United States is the only foreign force known to carry out air strikes in Afghanistan.
(AFP, 10/10/18)(AP, 10/10/18)
2018 Oct 10, The UN urged warring parties in Syria to allow basic health service deliveries to tens of thousands of increasingly desperate Syrians trapped in the desert near the Jordanian border. UNICEF said two babies without access to hospitals had died in the past 48 hours near the Rukban border crossing.
(AFP, 10/10/18)
2018 Oct 11, US President Donald Trump blamed "crazy" policies of the Federal Reserve for contributing to financial market turmoil. European stock markets fell as economic strains and a drastic downturn in Asia spooked investors, but Wall Street managed to put a halt on its sharp fall seen the previous day, the worst since February.
(AFP, 10/11/18)
2018 Oct 11, US President Donald Trump said he was wary of halting arms sales to Saudi Arabia over the case as the key US ally would just shift its weapons purchases to Russia and China. Major US defense contractors were concerned that lawmakers angered by the disappearance of a Saudi journalist in Turkey will block further arms deals with Saudi Arabia.
(Reuters, 10/12/18)
2018 Oct 11, Arkansas' highest court upheld a voter ID law that is nearly identical to a restriction struck down by the court four years ago.
(SFC, 10/12/18, p.A5)
2018 Oct 11, In the SF Bay Area Rodney Halbower (70), a man called the Gypsy Hill Killer, was sentenced to two life sentences for the rape and murder of two teenage Peninsula women in 1976.
(SFC, 10/12/18, p.C1)
2018 Oct 11, At least 15 Afghan border police were killed battling Taliban insurgents, as fighting continues ahead of this month's elections, with 21 Taliban killed in an operation in Wardak, west of the capital Kabul. In the north four civilians were killed when a Taliban car bomb targeting an election campaign headquarters in Faryab province exploded prematurely. Several Taliban fighters were also killed.
(Reuters, 10/11/18)(AP, 10/12/18)
2018 Oct 11, Belgian authorities charged five people in relation to a massive financial fraud and match-fixing probe into soccer.
(AP, 10/11/18)
2018 Oct 11, Bosnian Muslim wartime commander Atif Dudakovic (65) and 16 senior members of his unit were charged with carrying out atrocities against Serbs in western Bosnia during the 1992-95 war.
(Reuters, 10/11/18)
2018 Oct 11, An Egyptian military court sentenced 17 Islamic militants to death for involvement in deadly attacks on Christians in December 2016 and plotting twin suicide bombings in churches in Alexandria and Tanta, on Palm Sunday in April 2017. The court in Alexandria also issued life sentences to 19 defendants and sentenced another nine to 15 years in prison on terror-related charges.
(AP, 10/11/18)
2018 Oct 11, In France scuba divers found two people dead inside an upended car lolling on a beach after torrential rains wrought havoc along the Riviera coast overnight.
(Reuters, 10/11/18)
2018 Oct 11, In eastern India Cyclone Titli (Butterfly) damaged homes and blew down trees and power poles, where nine people were killed and about 300,000 forced to move to higher ground.
(AP, 10/11/18)(SFC, 10/12/18, p.A2)
2018 Oct 11, In Indonesia leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) reaffirmed their commitment to open trading systems that have underpinned their economic growth. The leaders met in Bali, on the sidelines of the annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank.
(AP, 10/11/18)
2018 Oct 11, Israel destroyed a cross-border tunnel running from the Gaza Strip into Israeli territory, which it said was dug by the Palestinian Hamas group with the aim of carrying out attacks.
(Reuters, 10/11/18)
2018 Oct 11, Italian PM Giuseppe Conte visited Ethiopia. He was expected to discuss migration, a sensitive topic in Italy, as well as investment opportunities in Ethiopia.
(AP, 10/11/18)
2018 Oct 11, Tokyo's famous fish market reopened at a new location but retained its most famous tradition: the tuna auction at the waterfront Toyosu facility.
(AP, 10/11/18)
2018 Oct 11, Manan Wani, a Kashmiri scholar-turned rebel leader, and his colleague were killed in a gunbattle with Indian troops.
(AP, 10/11/18)
2018 Oct 11, The An-Nahar daily, one of Lebanon's leading newspapers, printed a blank issue to protest the country's long-running political gridlock and the failure to form a government five months after elections.
(AP, 10/11/18)
2018 Oct 11, Libyan authorities said they have found a mass grave believed to contain the bodies of 75 Islamic State fighters near the coastal city of Sirte, formerly the main North African stronghold of the extremist group. A resident reported the grave about a month ago on his farm in al-Daheir district.
(AP, 10/11/18)
2018 Oct 11, Malaysia's new government said it will abolish the death penalty for all crimes and halt all pending executions.
(AP, 10/11/18)
2018 Oct 11, The Maldives Supreme Court said it would examine President Abdulla Yameen's petition to annul his September election defeat despite international pressure on the strongman leader to go quietly.
(AFP, 10/11/18)
2018 Oct 11, Mexican authorities in Guerrero state said Marines have found the skeletal remains of six men in illegal burial pits inside a house in the resort of Acapulco.
(AP, 10/11/18)
2018 Oct 11, In northern Mexico three levels of a shopping mall collapsed killing at least seven men in Monterrey. Work was being carried without the necessary licenses.
(SFC, 10/13/18, p.A2)
2018 Oct 11, In Poland an official of the Supreme Administrative Court confirmed that the court had now ruled in favor of the lesbian parents of a Polish boy and have been given the right to register him in Poland as their child.
(Reuters, 10/11/18)
2018 Oct 11, The two-man US-Russian crew of a Soyuz spacecraft en route to the International Space Station was forced to make a dramatic emergency landing in Kazakhstan when their rocket failed in mid-air. The rocket malfunctioned two minutes after liftoff, forcing its two-man crew of Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Alexei Ovchinin to make an emergency landing. Investigators later said the rocket failure was caused by a sensor that was damaged during assembly at the Soviet-era cosmodrome at Baikonur.
(Reuters, 10/11/18)(Reuters, 10/8/19)
2018 Oct 11, Saudi Arabia's new high-speed railway opened to the public, whisking Muslim pilgrims and other travelers between Mecca and Medina, Islam's holiest cities.
(AFP, 10/11/18)
2018 Oct 11, In eastern Syria US-backed fighters braved a sandstorm to battle the Islamic State group in heavy clashes that killed several fighters on both sides. The fighting began a day earlier and killed at least 10 US-allied fighters, with the fate of 35 others unknown. 18 IS militants were reported killed.
(AP, 10/11/18)
2018 Oct 11, Relief workers and refugees said thousands of Syrians stranded on Jordan's border with Syria are running out of food as routes leading to their camp are closed by the Syrian army and Jordan is blocking aid deliveries.
(Reuters, 10/11/18)
2018 Oct 11, In Tanzania Mohammed Dewji (43), Africa's youngest billionaire, was snatched as he entered the gym of a hotel in Dar es Salaam. Dewji heads the MeTL Group which operates in about 10 countries with interests in agriculture to insurance, transport, logistics and the food industry.
(AFP, 10/11/18)
2018 Oct 11, Thai authorities convicted 70 Pakistani asylum seekers of staying illegally in Thailand despite their protestations that they face persecution if they are sent home, as police intensified a crackdown on illegal immigration.
(AP, 10/11/18)
2018 Oct 11, In eastern Uganda at least 34 people died in mudslides triggered by torrential rains in the district of Bududa. Wanjenwa village was wrecked by a torrent of rocks carried down river by the deluge. The death toll soon rose to 43.
(AP, 10/12/18)(AFP, 10/14/18)
2018 Oct 11, In Yemen unidentified men snatched Abdullah Yahia al-Ayolofi from a market in a district called al-Jarraf in Sanaa on Thursday. Al-Ayolofi, a convert to Bahaism, has been outspoken about Houthi abuses against Bahai followers. His whereabouts remain unknown.
(AP, 10/12/18)
2018 Oct 11, Zimbabwe police arrested dozens of trade union members and activists ahead of a planned protest in the capital over the worst economic crisis in a decade. Police arrested Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions members in Harare and the cities of Mutare and Masvingo. The government banned the protest, citing an ongoing cholera outbreak. The arrested Trade union leaders and scores of activists were released on bail over the next two days.
(AP, 10/11/18)(AP, 10/13/18)
2018 Oct 12, It was reported that the US Army has discharged more than 500 immigrant enlistees, over the last twelve months, who had been recruited across the globe for their language or medical skills and promised a fast track to citizenship in exchange for their service.
(SFC, 10/12/18, p.A5)
2018 Oct 12, Bloomberg withdrew from a Saudi investment conference at the end of the month, following other media companies that have dropped plans to participate after the disappearance of Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi. CNBC cable news network added its name to the growing list of media companies, citing the disappearance of dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
(Reuters, 10/12/18)
2018 Oct 12, In Detroit, Mich., the decomposed bodies of 11 infants were found in a ceiling compartment of the former Cantrell Funeral Home. The facility had been closed sinece April when inspectors suspended its license following the discovery of bodies covered with what appeared to be mold.
(SSFC, 10/14/18, p.A10)
2018 Oct 12, In northern Afghanistan an attack by the Taliban killed four soldiers in Kunduz province. Several Taliban fighters were also killed.
(AP, 10/12/18)
2018 Oct 12, A Taliban delegation met with US envoy Zalmay Khalilzad in Qatar to discuss ending the Afghan conflict.
(AFP, 10/13/18)
2018 Oct 12, It was reported that Albania's base at Kucova, long the graveyard of its once mighty air force, is set to become a NATO station. Albania retired its 224 Soviet- and Chinese-made MiGs in 2005.
(AP, 10/12/18)
2018 Oct 12, In Australia Chinese property developer Xu Longwei was sentenced to at least two-and-a-half years in jail by a court for non-consensual intercourse with a woman after a Sydney dinner party hosted by billionaire JD.com-founder Richard Liu.
(Reuters, 10/12/18)
2018 Oct 12, In Austria two women tied the knot in Vienna in the country's first same-sex marriage, months after the country's Constitutional Court ruled to legalize it.
(AP, 10/12/18)
2018 Oct 12, According to the UN refugee agency UNHCR Ethiopian authorities have registered more than 6,700 new arrivals from Eritrea since the border's opening. Eritrean refugee arrivals to Ethiopia have jumped to about 390 per day from around 53.
(AFP, 10/12/18)
2018 Oct 12, A French police van was seen driving into Italy to return recently-arrived migrants to the town of Calviere. French authorities later admitted to returning migrants to Italy in "error".
(AFP, 10/16/18)
2018 Oct 12, Germany said it will extend temporary controls at its border with Austria for six months due to concerns the EU's external frontiers are not sufficiently protected. The Danish government made a similar announcement, citing the threat of terrorism.
(Reuters, 10/12/18)
2018 Oct 12, Hong Kong authorities barred former lawmaker Lau Siu-lai from contesting an election next month given her past advocacy of greater autonomy for Hong Kong. A small group of pro-democracy lawmakers and activists protested outside government headquarters, holding up banners decrying the decision as "political suppression".
(Reuters, 10/12/18)
2018 Oct 12, In eastern India 12 people were feared dead in a cyclone shelter swamped by a landslide caused by heavy rains from Cyclone Titli in Orissa state.
(AP, 10/13/18)
2018 Oct 12, In Indonesia torrential rains triggered flash floods and landslides on the island of Sumatra, killing at least 27 people, including a dozen children at a school.
(AP, 10/13/18)
2018 Oct 12, An Israeli court upheld the barring of Lara Alqasem (22), an American student, from the country over her activities in support of an international boycott campaign by pro-Palestinian groups.
(AP, 10/12/18)
2018 Oct 12, Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman late today ordered the deliveries of Qatari-bought fuel to stop after clashes on the Gaza-Israel border. The Israeli army said five people were shot dead after "an organized attack" on an army post. The Gaza health ministry said seven Palestinians were killed. 50 other protesters were wounded by live bullets.
(AP, 10/12/18)(AFP, 10/13/18)
2018 Oct 12, Israeli forces said they had arrested a Palestinian, identified as Ashraf Naalwa (23), on suspicion of stabbing and wounding an army reservist on guard duty at a checkpoint south of Nablus the previous day.
(AFP, 10/13/18)
2018 Oct 12, Palestinian Aisha Rabi (47), a mother of nine, was fatally wounded in an attack near the Jewish settlement of Rechalim in the West Bank. On Jan 6, 2019, Israeli authorities confirmed that they have arrested five Jewish seminary students, all under age 18, suspected of the fatal stone-throwing attack.
(AP, 1/6/19)(Reuters, 1/6/19)
2018 Oct 12, Italy's PM Giuseppe Conte made a rare visit to Eritrea to support its surprising new peace with neighboring Ethiopia as the international community waits to see what happens next in one of the world's most closed-off nations.
(AP, 10/12/18)
2018 Oct 12, Students across Italy demonstrated against the government's education funding plans, in the first widespread show of dissidence against the new populist government.
(AP, 10/12/18)
2018 Oct 12, Denny Tamaki, the new governor of Okinawa, said he wants Americans to know that the US and Japanese governments are forcing a relocation of a US Marine base that residents want removed from the southern Japanese island.
(AP, 10/12/18)
2018 Oct 12, Japan-based Toyota said it is recalling nearly 188,000 pickup trucks, SUVs and cars worldwide because the air bags may not inflate in a crash.
(AP, 10/12/18)
2018 Oct 12, Japan's space agency said it is delaying a touchdown of its Hayabusa2 spacecraft on the Ryugu asteroid due to a rockier than expected surface.
(SFC, 10/13/18, p.A2)
2018 Oct 12, It was reported that animal-rights in Nepal campaigned to reduce animal slaughter as the 15-day Dasain festival began this week. Traditionally tens of thousands of goats, buffaloes, chickens and ducks are sacrificed to please the gods and goddesses as part of a practice that dates back centuries.
(AP, 10/12/18)
2018 Oct 12, In southeastern Nigeria at least 19 people were killed when a leaking oil pipeline exploded in Abia state. Oil thieves were suspected of hacking into the pipe
(SSFC, 10/14/18, p.A4)
2018 Oct 12, A Pakistani judge signed the execution order for Mohammad Imran, a serial child killer convicted of killing eight children in eastern Punjab province. He was arrested in January, two weeks after authorities say he raped and killed Zainab Ansari (7) and threw her body into a garbage dump in the city of Kasur.
(AP, 10/12/18)
2018 Oct 12, Hundreds of supporters from an extremist Islamist party rallied in the eastern Pakistan city of Lahore to pressure judges to uphold a death sentence for Asia Bibi, a Christian woman convicted in 2010 of blasphemy.
(AP, 10/12/18)
2018 Oct 12, Five Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire at a protest near the fence dividing the territory and Israel. 50 other protesters were wounded by live bullets.
(AP, 10/12/18)
2018 Oct 12, In Nepal seven people, including South Korean climbers, were killed and two more left missing on Gurja Himal mountain after a strong storm swept through their base camp.
(AP, 10/13/18)
2018 Oct 12, Nigerian troops foiled an attempt by Boko Haram fighters to overrun a military base in the restive northeast leaving six soldiers wounded.
(AP, 10/13/18)
2018 Oct 12, The Philippines became one of 18 new council members elected to the UN Human Rights Council despite rights groups' complaints that its government, widely condemned internationally for a deadly drug crackdown, doesn't belong in a group meant to call out abuses.
(AP, 10/12/18)
2018 Oct 12, Rwanda's foreign minister Louise Mushikiwabo was named head of the International Organization of La Francophonie (OIF), a sign of slowly improving relations between Paris and Kigali a decade after the African nation turned its back on the French language.
(Reuters, 10/12/18)
2018 Oct 12, In Somalia several missiles were fired by two unmanned US drones. At least 60 extremists were later reported killed. It was the deadliest strike since one on Nov. 21, 2017, against a camp killed about 100 al-Shabab fighters.
(AP, 10/17/18)
2018 Oct 12, In Spain thousands of people flooded the streets of Barcelona for rival protests on Spain's national day, highlighting the division in Catalonia over support for the Spanish state and those seeking independence.
(Reuters, 10/12/18)
2018 Oct 12, Spain's maritime rescue service recovered the bodies of three migrants and feared that another 17 were missing in the Mediterranean Sea. The service pulled 509 migrants from 15 small boats.
(AP, 10/13/18)
2018 Oct 12, In eastern Syria the Islamic State group stormed the Hajin camp, a settlement for displaced people in Deir el-Zour province, and abducted scores of civilians. 20 IS gunmen and "several" SDF fighters were killed.
(AP, 10/13/18)
2018 Oct 12, Amnesty Int'l. said 2,521 bodies have been recovered from the 2017 battle for Raqqa, Syria, with the majority killed by coalition air strikes. At least 3,000 more bodies were expected to be recovered.
(SFC, 10/12/18, p.A4)
2018 Oct 12, A Turkish court freed American pastor Andrew Brunson held for the last two years in Turkey. He was freed taking into account time served and his good conduct during the trial. Brunson was flown out of Turkey.
(AFP, 10/12/18)(AP, 10/12/18)
2018 Oct 12, The UN children's agency UNICEF said a militia fighting against the Islamist militant group Boko Haram in northeast Nigeria has released 833 children from its own ranks, some as young as 11.
(AP, 10/12/18)
2018 Oct 12, Pope Francis accepted the resignation of Washington Cardinal Donald Wuerl after he became entangled in two major sexual abuse and cover-up scandals and lost the support of many in his flock.
(AP, 10/12/18)
2018 Oct 12, Venezuelan authorities freed a prominent opposition activist jailed for four years just days after an anti-government politician died in state custody. Lorent Saleh (30) was immediately escorted to the airport and put on a flight to Madrid.
(AFP, 10/13/18)
2018 Oct 13, US President Donald Trump said in a CBS interview that there would be "severe punishment" for Saudi Arabia if it turns out that missing Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi was killed in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.
(Reuters, 10/13/18)
2018 Oct 13, In southern Texas gunfire erupted a a toddler's first birthday party leaving four men dead in Taft.
(SFC, 10/15/18, p.A6)
2018 Oct 13, In northeastern Afghanistan a motorcycle rigged with explosives detonated at an election rally in Takhar province killing at least 14 people, including civilians and security forces. The death toll soon climbed from 14 to 22.
(AP, 10/13/18)(AP, 10/14/18)
2018 Oct 13, In Afghanistan the police chief of Mizan, a district in southern Zabul province, was killed late today in armed clashes with Taliban insurgents. Taliban fighters in Farah province killed 21 troops at two checkpoints in the district of Posht-e Rud. The Taliban captured 11 soldiers and seized their weapons as fighting continued into the next day.
(Reuters, 10/14/18)(SFC, 10/15/18, p.A4)
2018 Oct 13, In Afghanistan blast in Helmand went off inside the campaign office of Abdul Jabar Qahraman, killing him and wounding seven people.
(AP, 10/17/18)
2018 Oct 13, Taliban leaders said they will continue to meet for discussions with the newly appointed US special envoy for peace efforts in Afghanistan.
(Reuters, 10/13/18)
2018 Oct 13, In Bangladesh a small party led by prominent lawyer Kamal Hossain forged a new alliance with the country's main opposition party that could be seen as a boost against PM Sheikh Hasina's government ahead of national elections due in December.
(AP, 10/13/18)
2018 Oct 13, In Bangladesh an influential body of newspaper editors criticized the government for a new digital security law that they say will stifle constitutionally protected freedom of speech and curtail press freedom.
(AP, 10/13/18)
2018 Oct 13, The Bank of England said that a new 50-pound note will be printed on thin, flexible polymer with extra security measures to prevent forgeries. The new note will not be introduced until the newest version of the 20-pound note enters circulation in 2020.
(AP, 10/13/18)
2018 Oct 13, Storm Callum left one man dead after a landslide in western Wales while another was swept away by rough seas in Brighton on the southern coast of England.
(AP, 10/14/18)
2018 Oct 13, Mark Sutton (34), a Briton riding a mountain bike, was shot dead by a hunter (22) as he sped down a wooded track near Montriond in the French Alps.
(AFP, 10/14/18)
2018 Oct 13, Cambodia's PM Hun Sen said he has agreed to the resumption of US military-led missions to search for the remains of Americans missing in action during the Vietnam War. The long-running program was suspended a year ago after the US government stopped issuing visas to senior Cambodian Foreign Ministry officials and their families. The visa ban remained in place.
(AP, 10/13/18)
2018 Oct 13, In the Czech Rep. a conservative opposition party won an election for a third of the seats in Parliament's upper house as the ruling coalition of PM Andrej Babis suffered a setback. The Civic Democratic Party won 10 of the 27 seats up for grabs in the 81-seat Senate in the two-round election. Opposition parties now control the Senate.
(AP, 10/13/18)
2018 Oct 13, Gabon's ruling party won just over half of the parliamentary seats in the first round of legislative elections in a vote marred by low turnout. The 2nd round will be held in 61 constituencies on October 27.
(AFP, 10/13/18)
2018 Oct 13, In Germany tens of thousands of people protested racism and discrimination in Berlin, a demonstration that came amid rising concerns about Germany's increasingly confident far right.
(AP, 10/13/18)
2018 Oct 13, In northern Greece a speeding car carrying migrants collided with a truck, killing 11 people.
(AP, 10/13/18)
2018 Oct 13, In Indonesia global financial leaders meeting in Bali wrapped up an annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank by urging countries to brace for potential risks from trade disputes and other tensions.
(AP, 10/13/18)
2018 Oct 13, In Italy women's rights groups marched in protest in the northern city of Verona, after the local council passed a motion to fund Catholic anti-abortion groups.
(AFP, 10/13/18)
2018 Oct 13, Charismatic Malaysian politician Anwar Ibrahim won a by-election for a parliamentary seat with a landslide victory in a grand political comeback to help him prepare for his eventual takeover from PM Mahathir Mohamad.
(AP, 10/13/18)
2018 Oct 13, Palestinian security sources said Aisha Mohammed Rabi (48), a mother of eight, has died of her wounds in Nablus after Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank threw stones a day earlier at the car she was traveling in.
(AFP, 10/13/18)
2018 Oct 13, Polish police used tear gas and a water cannon against right-wing extremists who were trying to block the first equality parade in the city of Lublin.
(AP, 10/13/18)
2018 Oct 13, The Russian Orthodox Church said it would respond firmly to the Istanbul-based Ecumenical Patriarchate over its decision to back Ukraine's request to establish an independent, or "autocephalous", Church.
(Reuters, 10/13/18)
2018 Oct 13, Saudi Arabia dismissed accusations that Jamal Khashoggi was ordered murdered by a hit squad inside its Istanbul consulate as "lies and baseless allegations".
(AFP, 10/13/18)
2018 Oct 13, In Somalia two suspected suicide bombers struck in the southern city of Baidoa killing 20 people.
(Reuters, 10/14/18)
2018 Oct 13, South Korea's Busan Film Festival closed after screening 324 films from 79 countries across its varied 10-day program, which included 115 world premieres, with just over 195,000 people attending.
(AFP, 10/12/18)
2018 Oct 13, In northwest Syria opposition fighters fired mortar shells from a planned buffer zone late today in Hama province, killing two soldiers. The deadly attack threatened a deal to protect the last major rebel bastion from a regime offensive.
(AFP, 10/14/18)
2018 Oct 13, In Syria IS militants reportedly took around 700 hostages in Deir-al Zor province after attacking a refugee camp in an area controlled by US-backed forces.
(Reuters, 10/18/18)
2018 Oct 13, UN sanctions monitors in an unpublished report said banned charcoal exports from Somalia are thriving, generating millions of dollars a year for al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab extremists — and often passing through Iran to have their origins obscured.
(AP, 10/13/18)
2018 Oct 13, The Vatican said Pope Francis has defrocked Chilean bishops Francisco José Cox Huneeus (84), former archbishop emeritus of the city of La Serena, and Marco Antonio Órdenes Fernández (53), former archbishop emeritus of Iquique, who have been caught up in the country's widening sexual abuse crisis.
(Reuters, 10/13/18)
2018 Oct 13, In Yemen air strikes by the Saudi-led coalition fighting the Houthi group killed 10 civilians in Hodeidah province. The Houthi movement’s Al Massira TV said 17 died and many others were in a critical condition.
(Reuters, 10/13/18)
2018 Oct 14, In California a teenager in Fresno fatally shot his father and called the police. The man had been drinking and allegedly began choking his wife at their home.
(SFC, 10/16/18, p.A6)
2018 Oct 14, Mel Ramos (b.1935), pop art pioneer, died in Oakland, Ca.
(SFC, 10/18/18, p.C3)
2018 Oct 14, In western Afghanistan a young girl was killed and three others were wounded in the crossfire of a battle between Afghan forces and the Taliban in Herat province.
(AP, 10/14/18)
2018 Oct 14, In Argentina Patrick Baumann (51) of Switzerland, the secretary general of basketball's world governing body, died of a heart attack at the Youth Olympics. Baumann was the top administrator of the International Basketball Federation (FIBA) for 15 years, and an International Olympic Committee (IOC) member since 2007.
(AP, 10/14/18)
2018 Oct 14, Britain, France and Germany insisted that "light must be shed" on the whereabouts of journalist Jamal Khashoggi as they called for a credible investigation into his disappearance at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.
(AFP, 10/14/18)
2018 Oct 14, Burundi accused former colonial power Belgium of ordering the assassination of independence hero and Crown Prince Louis Rwagasore in 1961, a move likely to further poison ties between the two countries.
(AFP, 10/14/18)
2018 Oct 14, China accused the United States of going on the offensive by sending US Navy vessels into the South China Sea and described US arms sales to Taiwan as interference in Chinese internal affairs.
(Reuters, 10/14/18)
2018 Oct 14, Congolese migrants and officials said dozens of people were killed this month in neighboring Angola in a crackdown on artisanal diamond mining, an accusation Angolan security forces strongly denied. Border guard officials said the Angolan operation began on October 1.
(Reuters, 10/14/18)
2018 Oct 14, The Egyptian military said commercial truck traffic with Israel has resumed via a border crossing in the Sinai Peninsula that had been shut down amid the insurgency there.
(AP, 10/14/18)
2018 Oct 14, An Egyptian court upheld death sentences for three people for establishing and running a militant group known as Ansar al-Sharia.
(AP, 10/14/18)
2018 Oct 14, In Germany the Christian Social Union (CSU), the sister party of Merkel's own Christian Democrats (CDU), slumped to its worst result in almost 70 years in the election in Bavaria.
(Reuters, 10/15/18)
2018 Oct 14, In western Germany several people died when a Cessna plane crashed into a crowd near Fulda, Hesse state.
(Reuters, 10/14/18)
2018 Oct 14, India's junior external affairs minister, M.J. Akbar, denied any wrongdoing after more than a dozen women accused him of sexual misconduct when he was a newspaper editor.
(AP, 10/14/18)
2018 Oct 14, Iran's judiciary spokesman said a court has sentenced a dual national man, surname Tavakkoli, to eight and a half years in prison after finding him guilty of infiltration of important governmental bodies.
(AP, 10/14/18)
2018 Oct 14, Israel's Supreme Court t ruled that Lara Alqasem's deportation be frozen until judges have a chance to hear the appeal in the coming week. The American graduate student has been held in detention while fighting an expulsion order over her involvement in the boycott movement against Israel.
(AP, 10/14/18)
2018 Oct 14, Italy's Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini defended his decision to move hundreds of migrants out of Riace, a southern Italian town widely seen as a model of successful integration, as opposition groups accused him of racism.
(Reuters, 10/14/18)
2018 Oct 14, Japanese PM Shinzo Abe renewed his pledge to push for a revision to the country's war-renouncing constitution, in which he wants the military explicitly mentioned.
(AP, 10/14/18)
2018 Oct 14, Jordan's King Abdullah II vowed authorities would crack down on corruption in the country, following mass protests against graft and price rises earlier this year.
(AFP, 10/14/18)
2018 Oct 14, Jordan and Syria agreed to reopen a vital border crossing between the two countries, three years after the commercial lifeline fell to rebel groups and traffic was halted. The Naseeb crossing would be opened Oct. 15 after operational details are agreed upon.
(AP, 10/14/18)
2018 Oct 14, In Libya emergency workers uncovered another 35 bodies at a mass grave near Sirte, taking to 110 the total number of remains retrieved from the site. IS jihadists overran Sirte in June 2015 and were ousted by forces loyal to Libya's UN-backed government in December 2016, after an eight-month battle.
(AFP, 10/14/18)
2018 Oct 14, Luxembourg held parliamentary elections. The center-right was expected to return to power after a rare five years in opposition.
(Reuters, 10/14/18)
2018 Oct 14, In Myanmar several thousand pro-military and nationalist demonstrators marched through Yangon, voicing their support for Myanmar's armed forces and government while condemning foreign involvement in the country's affairs. Ultra-nationalist monk Wirathu, dubbed the "Buddhist Bin Laden," condemned the international community for their calls to bring Myanmar's generals to justice over the Rohingya crisis.
(AP, 10/14/18)(AFP, 10/14/18)
2018 Oct 14, Nepalese officials said local internet providers have begun blocking thousands of pornographic websites as part of a government directive aimed at stopping sexual violence.
(AP, 10/14/18)
2018 Oct 14, Rescuers In Nepal retrieved the bodies of five South Korean climbers and their four Nepalese guides from Gurja Himal mountain, where they were killed when their base camp was swept by a strong storm on Oct. 12.
(AP, 10/14/18)
2018 Oct 14, Violent storms hit Portugal, leaving hundreds of thousands of people without power before carrying heavy rain on into Spain. Leslie was dubbed a "zombie" hurricane as it first formed on September 23, only to meander through the Atlantic Ocean for weeks before making landfall.
(AFP, 10/14/18)
2018 Oct 14, Kremlin opposition leader Alexei Navalny was released from jail after serving 50 days on two consecutive sentences for organizing unsanctioned protests.
(AP, 10/14/18)
2018 Oct 14, Saudi Arabia warned it would retaliate against any sanctions imposed on the oil-rich kingdom over the disappearance of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, as the Riyadh stock market plunged on growing investor jitters.
(AFP, 10/14/18)
2018 Oct 14, Somalia executed by firing squad Hassan Adan Isak, linked to one of the country's deadliest ever attacks, one year after the tragedy which left over 500 dead.
(AFP, 10/14/18)
2018 Oct 14, In western Turkey 22 people, including children, were killed when a truck carrying migrants crashed in Izmir province. The truck's passengers were reportedly foreign migrants who had reached a deal with traffickers to be transported by boat to the Greek island of Samos south of Izmir.
(Reuters, 10/14/18)
2018 Oct 14, Pope Francis lauded new saints Pope Paul VI and slain Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero (d.1980) as prophets of a church that looks out for the poor as he presided over a canonization ceremony.
(AP, 10/14/18)
2018 Oct 14, In Venezuela seven people were killed near a remote gold mine in the southeast. Family members believed the incident was the result of a struggle between armed groups for control of the area.
(Reuters, 10/18/18)
2018 Oct 15, US Attorney General Jeff Sessions said he had designated five groups, including Hezbollah and MS-13, as transnational criminal organizations to target with tougher investigations and prosecutions.
(Reuters, 10/15/18)
2018 Oct 15, It was reported that Idaho Fish and Game Commissioner Blake Fisher and his wife were being criticized after having shot at least 14 animals while hunting in Namibia. One photo showed showed him smiling with four dead baboons propped in front of him. Idaho Gov. C.L. Otter asked for and accepted Fischer's resignation.
(SFC, 10/15/18, p.A6)(SFC, 10/17/18, p.A6)
2018 Oct 15, In Pennsylvania a charter bus crashed into trees near Scranton killing one person and injuring at least three others.
(SFC, 10/16/18, p.A6)
2018 Oct 15, Paul Allen (65), co-founder of Microsoft, died in Seattle.
(SFC, 10/16/18, p.A7)
2018 Oct 15, In Wisconsin Jake Patterson gunned down James and Denise Closs, dragged away their daughter Jayme Closs (13), and held her under a bed in his remote cabin for 88 days before she made a daring escape. An Amber Alert was issued for Jayme Closs after deputies found her parents dead in Barron. Jayme was found safe on Jan. 10 in the small town of Gordon and suspect In March, 2019, Patterson (21) pleaded guilty to two counts of intentional homicide and one count of kidnapping. On May 24 Patterson was sentenced to life in prison.
(SFC, 10/16/18, p.A6)(SFC, 1/11/19, p.A5)(SFC, 1/15/19, p.A4)(SFC, 5/25/19, p.A6)(AP, 12/20/19)
2018 Oct 15, US retailer Sears filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and said it will close 142 stores nationwide near the end of the year.
(SFC, 10/16/18, p.D1)
2018 Oct 15, In Bangladesh editors of major daily newspapers in Dhaka formed a human chain to protest a new digital security law they say will stifle freedom of speech and media freedom.
(AP, 10/15/18)
2018 Oct 15, British protesters gathered near a shale gas exploration site in northwestern England, as fracking began in the UK for the first time since 2011.
(AP, 10/15/18)
2018 Oct 15, China and India launched a program to train Afghan diplomats and China's ambassador said it would likely be followed by joint programs in other fields to help war-torn Afghanistan. The joint training of 10 Afghan diplomats will take place at the Indian Foreign Service Institute.
(Reuters, 10/15/18)
2018 Oct 15, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang reaffirmed pledges to open up his country to foreign investment as a way of promoting commerce between his country and the Netherlands.
(AP, 10/15/18)
2018 Oct 15, Protesters barricaded roads with tree trunks, stoned cars and clashed with soldiers in the Indian Ocean island nation of Comoros in demonstrations against President Azali Assoumani's bid to extend term limits.
(Reuters, 10/15/18)
2018 Oct 15, Cuba's government released Tomas Nunez Magdariaga, jailed since August on charges of making threats. He had carried out a lengthy hunger strike to protest his imprisonment.
(AP, 10/16/18)
2018 Oct 15, Egyptian security forces killed nine "terrorists" in a raid on a cave hideout along the Nile River. The raid targeted men who were planning attacks on vital installations, resulting in a shootout that led to their deaths.
(AP, 10/15/18)
2018 Oct 15, Egypt's main appeals court upheld a three-year prison sentence for former lawmaker Mustafa el-Nagar and some two dozen people, including former Pres. Mohammed Morsi, following their convictions of insulting the judiciary. El-Nagar had gone missing on Sept. 27 and was not present.
(AP, 10/17/18)
2018 Oct 15, Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi arrived in Russia on a visit expected to further boost ties between the two nations.
(AP, 10/15/18)
2018 Oct 15, In France overnight flash floods struck the southwest Aude region. At least 14 people died and one remained missing after the storms and floods.
(AP, 10/15/18)(AFP, 10/17/18)
2018 Oct 15, It was reported that France over the summer seized part of a severance payment to the former co-chairman of LafargeHolcim as part of an investigation into whether the cement maker paid off Islamic State and other militants in Syria.
(AP, 10/15/18)
2018 Oct 15, Gambia swore in an 11-member commission tasked with shedding light on summary executions, disappearances, torture, rape and other crimes under ousted dictator Yahya Jammeh.
(AFP, 10/15/18)
2018 Oct 15, Germany deported Mounir el Motassadeq (44) to Morocco. He was convicted in 2003 of membership in a terrorist organization and accessory to the murder of the 246 passengers and crew on the four jetliners used in the 2001 al-Qaida attacks on New York and Washington.
(AP, 10/15/18)
2018 Oct 15, In Germany a Syrian refugee, identified only as Mohammad A.R. (55), sparked panic at the busy station in Cologne after he started a fire in a McDonald's restaurant that left a 14-year-old girl with burns. He then took a female employee hostage in a nearby pharmacy. Police opened fire on the suspect, who underwent emergency surgery and remained in a coma.
(AFP, 10/17/18)
2018 Oct 15, Up to 3,000 migrants crossed from Honduras into Guatemala on a trek northward, after a standoff with police in riot gear and warnings from Washington that migrants should not try to enter the United States illegally.
(Reuters, 10/16/18)
2018 Oct 15, Indian government minister M.J. Akbar filed a defamation suit against one of at least 10 women who have accused him of sexual harassment, calling her allegations false and malicious.
(Reuters, 10/15/18)
2018 Oct 15, Italy's cabinet signed off on a draft budget that will hike the deficit at a time when under EU regulations it should be falling, as well as boosting welfare spending and cutting the retirement age.
(Reuters, 10/18/18)
2018 Oct 15, The border crossing between Jordan and Syria opened to people and goods after being closed for three years.
(Reuters, 10/15/18)
2018 Oct 15, Running great Kip Keino was given more time to report to police in Kenya after being one of seven former Olympic and government officials accused of corruption relating to the misappropriation of more than $545,000 around the time of the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games.
(AP, 10/15/18)
2018 Oct 15, The Nigerian government said a medical aid worker held hostage by Islamic State in West Africa (ISWA) militants was killed after a deadline they set expired. The next day the Red Cross named the health worker as Hauwa Mohammed Liman, a 24-year-old midwife. She and two other Nigerian aid workers, Alice Loksha and Saifura Hussaini Ahmed Khorsa, were working in the northeastern town of Rann when they were kidnapped by ISWA in March. Khorsa, also a midwife, was killed in September.
(Reuters, 10/16/18)
2018 Oct 15, North and South Korea continued their push for peace with high-level talks that resulted in a host of agreements, including a plan by the rivals for a groundbreaking ceremony this year on an ambitious project to connect their railways and roads.
(AP, 10/15/18)
2018 Oct 15, A Palestinian was shot dead after trying to stab an Israeli soldier in the occupied West Bank.
(AFP, 10/15/18)
2018 Oct 15, Romania's government passed an emergency ordinance requiring prosecutors in key agencies to have more years of experience — a move that prosecutors say would hamper current investigations and force some anti-corruption prosecutors from their jobs.
(AP, 10/15/18)
2018 Oct 15, Saudi Arabia's King Salman ordered an internal probe into the unexplained disappearance of prominent journalist Jamal Khashoggi as a joint Turkish-Saudi team was set to search the Saudi consulate in Istanbul where he was last seen on Oct. 2.
(Reuters, 10/15/18)
2018 Oct 14, In Somalia a US military strike killed four al-Shabab extremists in the Lower Juba region.
(SFC, 10/16/18, p.A2)
2018 Oct 15, South Africa's President Cyril Ramaphosa denied accusations that he ignored widespread looting and financial misconduct at a major retail bank that collapsed weeks after he came into office.
(AFP, 10/15/18)
2018 Oct 15, Sweden's outgoing Social Democrats PM Stefan Lofven was given a mandate to form a government a day after a rival center-right leader failed in his first attempt.
(AFP, 10/15/18)
2018 Oct 15, Jihadists in Syria's Idlib failed to meet a deadline to leave a planned buffer zone ringing the country's last rebel bastion, casting fresh doubt over a deal to avert bloodshed. Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and other, more extreme jihadists hold over two-thirds of the planned buffer area, and over half of the rest of Idlib.
(AFP, 10/15/18)
2018 Oct 15, Turkey's government said it has dismissed 259 local officials for suspected links to terrorist groups or unsuitable behavior, a move the pro-Kurdish opposition said was aimed at helping the ruling AK Party ahead of 2019 polls.
(Reuters, 10/15/18)
2018 Oct 15, Turkish authorities said they have an audio recording which indicates that missing Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi was killed in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.
(Reuters, 10/15/18)
2018 Oct 15, Kanye West and his wife Kim Kardashian paid a visit to Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, gifting the 74-year-old leader a pair of white sneakers. West was in Uganda to record his ninth studio album "Yandhi".
(AFP, 10/15/18)
2018 Oct 15, In Venezuela a blackout started this evening with an explosion at a power station in the northern state of Carabobo. It left at least 11 of 23 states in the dark.
(AP, 10/16/18)
2018 Oct 16, US President Donald Trump threatened to withdraw funding and aid from Honduras if it does not stop a caravan of people that is heading to the United States.
(Reuters, 10/16/18)
2018 Oct 16, The US Treasury Department slapped sanctions on a network of more than 20 businesses it said had financial links to the Basij paramilitary group, which enforces internal security in Iran.
(AFP, 10/17/18)
2018 Oct 16, Alaska's Lt. Gov. Byron Mallott resigned for making unspecified innappropriate comments, imperiling the re-election of Gov. Bill Walker.
(SFC, 10/18/18, p.A6)
2018 Oct 16, In Nevada Dennis Hof (72), Republican nominee to the state Assembly, died overnight at his Love Branch Brothel, just outside Pahrump. On Nov. 6 voters chose Hoff over Lesia Romanov for the 36th Assembly District. Officials planned to appoint a Republican to take his place.
(SFC, 10/17/18, p.A5)(SFC, 11/8/18, p.A8)
2018 Oct 16, Around 200 deputies kept Algeria's parliament locked up for several hours in a protest action to press demands for the house speaker to step down. Said Bouhadja, president of the lower house, has since late September resisted calls to resign over charges of "mismanagement, exaggerated and illicit expenses and dubious recruitment".
(AFP, 10/16/18)
2018 Oct 16, The US Treasury Department slapped sanctions on a network of more than 20 businesses it said had financial links to the Basij paramilitary group, which enforces internal security in Iran.
(AFP, 10/17/18)
2018 Oct 16, London police arrested eight people suspected of being part of an international human trafficking gang with ties to Romania.
(AP, 10/17/18)
2018 Oct 16, China characterized its mass internment of Muslims as a push to bring into the "modern, civilized" world a destitute people who are easily led astray — a depiction that analysts said bore troubling colonial overtones.
(AP, 10/16/18)
2018 Oct 16, A Chinese maker of rabies vaccine was fined $1.3 billion for falsifying production records in a scandal that prompted a nationwide crackdown on the industry. Changchun Changsheng Life Sciences Ltd. also was stripped of its production licenses for vaccines and drugs.
(AP, 10/16/18)
2018 Oct 16, Chinese state media reported that Gen. Fang Fenghui was expelled and stripped of his rank. He now faces a court martial on corruption allegations. Fang, formerly chief of the PLA's joint staff department, dropped out of public view last year, shortly after an August 2017 meeting with the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine Corps Gen. Joseph Dunford.
(AP, 10/16/18)
2018 Oct 16, Egypt extended its state of emergency for another three months.
(AP, 10/16/18)
2018 Oct 16, Ethiopia's PM Abiy Ahmed created a new Ministry of Peace and handed half the posts in his cabinet to women in a sweeping cabinet reshuffle as he sought to tackle a wave of ethnic violence.
(Reuters, 10/16/18)
2018 Oct 16, Ethiopia released some 1,100 of the youth from a military camp after a monthlong detention in which the federal police commissioner said they were "brainwashed." The youths had rallied to condemn killings of ethnic minorities on the outskirts of Addis Ababa.
(AP, 10/20/18)
2018 Oct 16, In India tensions rose at the Sabarimala hill temple in Kerala state before an expected face-off between women of menstrual age who can enter for the first time in centuries and conservative Hindu groups who want to stop them.
(Reuters, 10/16/18)
2018 Oct 16, Local council elections ended in Indian-controlled Kashmir, with most voters staying away in Muslim-dominated areas of the disputed region. The overall voting percentage for all four phases in the Kashmir valley, the heartland of anti-India dissent, was less than 6 percent.
(AP, 10/16/18)
2018 Oct 16, It was reported that Indonesia's Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) has arrested nine people, including a top district government official and a company director, in a bribery investigation linked to the Lippo Group's $21 billion Meikarta real estate project near Jakarta.
(Reuters, 10/16/18)
2018 Oct 16, At least 10 Iranian security personnel including Revolutionary Guards were kidnapped on the border with Pakistan, and a separatist group that claimed responsibility described the act as revenge for oppression of Sunni Muslims. The kidnapped security personnel were reportedly unconscious at the time. Reports followed that they had eaten drugged food and that infiltrators helped with the abduction to Pakistan.
(Reuters, 10/16/18)(Reuters, 10/17/18)
2018 Oct 16, The rival Koreas and the US-led United Nations Command met to discuss efforts to disarm a military zone the rivals control within their shared border under a peace agreement between the two countries.
(AP, 10/16/18)
2018 Oct 16, In Morocco a shuttle train linking Rabat to a town farther north on the Atlantic coast derailed, killing at least seven people and injuring dozens. The train was traveling at more than twice the speed limit on the part of the track where it derailed.
(AP, 10/16/18)(Reuters, 10/23/18)
2018 Oct 16, In the Netherlands former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon appealed for a sense of urgency as he launched the Global Commission on Adaptation that aims to accelerate and expand ways the world can prepare for climate change.
(AP, 10/16/18)
2018 Oct 16, In Pakistan at least 15 people, mostly women and schoolgirls, were killed in two separate road accidents.
(AP, 10/16/18)
2018 Oct 16, In Pakistan the sons of suspected drug dealer Musarrat Iqbal, arrested in the country's northwest, killed local reporter Sohail Khan, who wrote about their father's case. Khan was the second Kay-2 journalist to be killed in just over a year in Haripur.
(AP, 10/17/18)
2018 Oct 16, Security guards aboard the Hong Kong-flagged MV KSL freighter repelled an attack by pirates in a gunbattle 340 nautical miles off Somalia's coast.
(Reuters, 10/19/18)
2018 Oct 16, It was reported that Spain's bishops have set up a commission on child sex abuse in the Catholic Church, in preparation for meeting next year called by Pope Francis to cope with a spreading sexual abuse crisis.
(Reuters, 10/16/18)
2018 Oct 16, It was reported that Swiss glaciers have lost 2.5 percent of their volume this year.
(AFP, 10/16/18)
2018 Oct 16, The UN refugee agency expressed concern over Angola's expulsion of some 200,000 Congolese in the past two weeks, saying it would create a humanitarian crisis.
(SFC, 10/17/18, p.A2)
2018 Oct 16, In Yemen Alain Goma, a French citizen who had been held captive since June by Houthi forces, was freed.
(Reuters, 10/16/18)
2018 Oct 17, The US Treasury imposed sanctions on an Iraq-based money services business, Afaq Dubai, believed to be moving funds for the Islamic State militant group.
(Reuters, 10/17/18)
2018 Oct 17, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan had made clear in talks in Ankara that Saudi officials were cooperating with Turkey's investigation into missing journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
(Reuters, 10/17/18)
2018 Oct 17, US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis visited a former American air base in southern Vietnam that will soon become the biggest-ever US cleanup site for contamination left by the defoliant Agent Orange during the Vietnam War.
(Reuters, 10/17/18)
2018 Oct 17, It was reported that six to ten sea lions suffering from leptospirosis were being received on a daily basis at the Marine Mammal Center in the Marin Headlands of northern California. Veterinarians have treated 220 sea lions so far this year.
(SFC, 10/17/18, p.A1)
2018 Oct 17, In North Carolina state Trooper Kevin Conner was shot and killed during a traffic stop in Columbus County. Raheem Cole Dashanell Davis (20) was soon charged first-degree murder. On October 22 a polcie offi8cer shot and killed Tafahree Maynard
(SFC, 10/18/18, p.A5)
2018 Oct 17, In Pennsylvania Rev. David Lee Poulson (65) of Oil City admitted that he sexually abused children and pleaded guilty to corruption of minors and child endangerment.
(SFC, 10/18/18, p.A9)
2018 Oct 17, Twitter said that it had identified 3,841 accounts affiliated with the St. Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency, a Russian “troll farm" that has been indicted by US Special Counsel Robert Mueller for attempts to interfere with the 2016 presidential election.
(Reuters, 10/17/18)
2018 Oct 17, In Afghanistan the Taliban attacked checkpoints in the northern Baghlan province, killing six policemen and wounding two others in a four-hour battle. A suicide car bomber targeted a military vehicle, killing two army troops in eastern Maidan Wardak province. A bomb accidently detonated inside a local Taliban commander's home in western Herat province, killing five people.
(AP, 10/17/18)
2018 Oct 17, Bahrain began hosting a four-day meeting of the Green Climate Fund's board. The UN-backed fund to help poor countries tackle climate change met following the recent resignation of its director and a shortfall in contributions from rich nations.
(AP, 10/17/18)
2018 Oct 17, Canada became the first industrialized nation to legalize recreational cannabis, but a lawful buzz will be hard to come by in its biggest cities like Toronto and Vancouver, which will have no stores open.
(Reuters, 10/17/18)
2018 Oct 17, In Russian-annexed Crimea 20 people were killed and dozens more wounded, most of them teenagers, after a student opened fire at the Kerch Polytechnical College. Investigators identified the attacker as Vladislav Roslyakov (18), a fourth-year student whose body was found "with a gunshot wound" on the premises.
(AFP, 10/17/18)(Reuters, 10/19/18)
2018 Oct 17, French Pres. Emmanuel Macron met with visiting Japanese PM Shinzo Abe to prepare next year's summits of the group of developing countries G-20 in Japan and the world's advanced economies G-7 in France.
(AP, 10/17/18)
2018 Oct 17, The France-based Interpol police organization said coordinated police raids in 93 countries have netted more than 55 tons of drugs including a cocaine, heroin and millions of synthetic drug pills. 1,300 people in all were arrested in an operation codenamed Lionfish, and which took place between Sept. 17 and Oct. 8.
(Reuters, 10/17/18)
2018 Oct 17, Greek PM Alexis Tsipras took over as foreign minister following the resignation of Nikos Kotzias, who quit amid reports of a growing rift with a coalition partner over a June 2018 deal with Macedonia to end the name dispute.
(Reuters, 10/17/18)
2018 Oct 17, In Haiti at least two people were killed and dozens injured during large protests over alleged misuse of government funds.
(AP, 10/18/18)
2018 Oct 17, In India conservative Hindu groups prevented women from entering an Indian hill temple, in defiance of India's top court which says a centuries-long ban at the holy site is illegal.
(Reuters, 10/17/18)
2018 Oct 17, Indian government junior minister M.J. Akbar resigned to fight accusations of sexual harassment from more than a dozen women during his previous career as a journalist.
(Reuters, 10/17/18)
2018 Oct 17, Anti-India protests and clashes erupted in the main city in disputed Kashmir after a gunbattle between militants and government forces killed at least two rebels.
(AP, 10/17/18)
2018 Oct 17, A rocket fired from the Gaza Strip hit a house in in Beersheba, the largest city in southern Israel early today, prompting Israeli air strikes that killed a militant in the Palestinian enclave.
(Reuters, 10/17/18)
2018 Oct 17, Jordan said a group of 279 Syrian rescue workers have left the kingdom for resettlement in Western countries three months after they were evacuated from Israel.
(AFP, 10/17/18)
2018 Oct 17, Norway's government officially apologized to Norwegian women targeted for reprisals by authorities for having intimate relations with German soldiers during the country's war-time occupation.
(AP, 10/17/18)
2018 Oct 17, In Pakistan Mohammad Imran, a man convicted of killing eight children, was executed at a prison early today after the country's top court rejected a request for his public hanging.
(AP, 10/17/18)
2018 Oct 17, A Peruvian judge freed conservative opposition leader Keiko Fujimori from jail where she spent the past week pending charges in a money laundering probe.
(Reuters, 10/18/18)
2018 Oct 17, Slovakia's defense ministry said the country will keep its military presence in Iraq after the government approved a plan to deploy up to 42 soldiers there next year to help train Iraqi security forces as part of a NATO mission.
(AP, 10/17/18)
2018 Oct 17, Francisco Tejon, leader of the "Los Castanas" clan and one of Spain's most-wanted drug traffickers, was arrested in Cadiz province after seeming to taunt police by appearing in a music video.
(AFP, 10/17/18)
2018 Oct 17, Moldova's President Igor Dodon met with visiting Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The two-day visit aimed at boosting political and trade ties with the former Soviet republic.
(AP, 10/17/18)
2018 Oct 17, A landslide in Tibet blocked the flow of one of the region's key rivers, creating a lake that could endanger downstream areas in India. Chinese emergency services evacuated about 6,000 people in the region.
(AP, 10/18/18)
2018 Oct 17, UN agencies called for an end to the practice in some countries of determining whether a girl or woman is a virgin through gynecological testing.
(SFC, 10/18/18, p.A2)
2018 Oct 17, The Vietnamese dissident known as "Mother Mushroom" was released from prison and left Vietnam on a flight to the United States. Nguyen Ngoc Nhu Quynh was serving a 10-year sentence for anti-state propaganda.
(Reuters, 10/17/18)
2018 Oct 18, US President Donald Trump threatened to send the military to the Mexican border and to imperil a trade deal in an intensification of his anti-immigrant rhetoric ahead of congressional elections. Trump threatened to close the US-Mexico border if authorities there fail to stop an impromptu caravan, as about 3,000 Hondurans made their way north through Guatemala.
(AFP, 10/18/18)(AP, 10/18/18)
2018 Oct 18, The United States downgraded the status of its main diplomatic mission to the Palestinians by placing it under the authority of the US Embassy to Israel.
(AP, 10/18/18)
2018 Oct 18, The US Treasury Department designated Pedro Luis Zuleta Noscue as a drug kingpin. The Colombian man with ties to the South American country's largest rebel group allegedly controls a narcotics trafficking corridor in northern Colombia.
(AP, 10/18/18)
2018 Oct 18, The Catholic Diocese of San Jose, Ca., released the names of 15 clergy members who were known by the church to be child sex abusers. At least nine priests on the list are dead.
(SFC, 10/19/18, p.A1)
2018 Oct 18, A San Francisco jury found Michael Phillips (65) guilty of murdering his acquaintance James Sheahan (75) in August 2017 after being rebuffed for a loan. Phillips was found guilty of eight additional felony accounts.
(SFC, 10/20/18, p.C4)
2018 Oct 18, Florida authorities said Hurricane Michael killed 20 people in the state. A firefighter was killed while helping his family clear debris in the Florida Panhandle increasing the overall storm-related death toll to 35.
(SFC, 10/19/18, p.A8)(SFC, 10/20/18, p.A6)
2018 Oct 18, It was reported that the Baltimore police department is shutting down its administrative functins in order to put more officers on the streets.the city has rtecorded 250 homicides this year, 44 of them in the last 30 days.
(SFC, 10/19/18, p.A6)
2018 Oct 18, The Committee to Protect Journalists, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and Reporters Without Borders urged Turkey to request a UN investigation into the possible murder of Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi to prevent a "whitewash" of the alleged crime.
(AFP, 10/18/18)
2018 Oct 18, In Afghanistan the three top officials in Kandahar province were killed when their own guards opened fire on them at a security conference. US Brigadier General Jeffrey Smiley was among 13 wounded in the Taliban-claimed shooting.
(AP, 10/18/18)(AFP, 10/22/18)
2018 Oct 18, Brazilian presidential hopeful Fernando Haddad of the leftist Workers Party accused his right-wing rival Jair Bolsonaro of creating a criminal group along with businessmen to spread false election-related messages on WhatsApp.
(Reuters, 10/18/18)
2018 Oct 18, Burundi's public security ministry accused a prominent opposition MP Pierre-Celestin Ndikumana of planning the assassination of President Pierre Nkurunziza and other top officials, in an address on state television.
(AFP, 10/19/18)
2018 Oct 18, China criticized Washington's decision to leave the UN treaty that regulates international postage. President Donald Trump has said the 144-year-old Universal Postal Union (UPU) puts US businesses at a disadvantage and is used by shippers of the narcotic fentanyl to the U.S. from China.
(AP, 10/18/18)
2018 Oct 18, European Union leaders in Brussels agreed to push ahead with plans to boost cooperation with North African countries and beef up the bloc's borders in an effort to stop migrants entering Europe.
(AP, 10/18/18)
2018 Oct 18, The Asia-Europe meeting began this evening with a dinner in Brussels attended by 30 European leaders with their counterparts from 21 Asian nations, a membership that accounts for 55 percent of global trade.
(AP, 10/18/18)
2018 Oct 18, A group of media outlets led by Germany's non-profit Correctiv reported that traders have manipulated transactions in multiple European countries over years, draining tax coffers of some 55.2 billion euros ($63.5 billion).
(AP, 10/18/18)
2018 Oct 18, In India Hindu hardliners blocked intersections, threatened drivers, threw stones at buses and ordered a 12-hour strike to successfully bar women from the Lord Ayyappa temple at Sabarimala for a second day. India's ruling party and the main opposition both supported the protest blocking women from entering the pilgrimage site, in what political observers said is a bid to court voters in the country's south ahead of a general election due next year.
(AFP, 10/18/18)(AP, 10/18/18)
2018 Oct 18, Indonesia's disaster agency said helicopters are dropping disinfectant on neighborhoods in the earthquake- and tsunami-stricken city of Palu to reduce disease risks from the thousands of victims believed buried in obliterated communities.
(AP, 10/18/18)
2018 Oct 18, Indonesian police arrested two men who allegedly operated a Facebook account to facilitate meet-ups for gay people and other sex-related services.
(Reuters, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 18, Italy's PM Giuseppe Conte defended the country's "beautiful" 2019 budget, brushing off criticism of it from Brussels as European authorities stepped up pressure for changes to a draft that breaches the bloc's fiscal rules.
(Reuters, 10/18/18)
2018 Oct 18, Malaysia's anti-graft agency said it has detained former Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi in a case linked to misappropriation of funds in a welfare group.
(AP, 10/18/18)
2018 Oct 18, In Malaysia John William Jones (63), a British citizen, was found stabbed to death at his resort home. In 2020 his wife Samantha Jones (51) was sentenced to 42 months in jail after pleading guilty to culpable homicide.
(SFC, 8/4/20, p.A2)
2018 Oct 18, A high court in the Maldives overturned a prison sentence for the country's ex-President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, who had been jailed for not cooperating with a police investigation into allegations he was trying to overthrow the government. Maumoon still faced a separate case under the terrorism law over the same alleged plot to overthrow his half-brother, outgoing President Yameen Abdul Gayoom.
(AP, 10/18/18)
2018 Oct 18, The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) said it had seen weapons being transported from Russia to rebel-held areas of eastern Ukraine over the last week, contradicting Moscow's claim it is not arming separatists.
(AFP, 10/18/18)
2018 Oct 18, Disgraced Pakistan legspinner Danish Kaneria finally admitted his involvement in a fixing scandal, more than six years after he was banned for life and denied he was guilty.
(AP, 10/18/18)
2018 Oct 18, Spain's prime minister said the status of the British overseas territory of Gibraltar, a small isthmus on Spain's southern coast, after Britain leaves the European Union has been agreed with Britain. Gibraltar will leave the EU along with the United Kingdom on March 29 next year.
(Reuters, 10/18/18)
2018 Oct 18, Spanish police announced the arrests or four people including Nervis Villalobos, a former Venezuelan officials, Argentinian businessman Luis Fernando Vuteff, and two of their business associates as part of a money laundering investigation.
(SFC, 10/19/18, p.A2)
2018 Oct 18, In Syria a US coalition air strike killed 12 militants, disabling a command center they had used to attack coalition forces and their allies.
(Reuters, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 18, Ukraine's parliament voted to hand over a landmark Kiev church to the Istanbul-based Ecumenical Patriarchate after it agreed to recognize the independence of Ukraine's Orthodox Church. The church will be transferred to Constantinople for its permanent use free of charge, but will still be the property of Ukraine.
(AFP, 10/18/18)
2018 Oct 18, A new UN report said South Sudan's armed opposition abducted women and girls as young as 12 and lined them up so commanders could choose "wives," and those not selected were left to be raped repeatedly by other fighters. The report focused on the Western Equatoria region between April and August, saying 900 people were abducted and some 24,000 people forced to flee their homes as fighting surged after months of relative calm.
(AP, 10/18/18)
2018 Oct 18, A UN humanitarian aid official said that Syria's government has withdrawn a controversial law that allowed authorities to seize property left behind by civilians who fled the country's civil war.
(AP, 10/18/18)
2018 Oct 18, Uruguay's Congress approved a law that guarantees rights to the country's transgender community. Lawmakers in the lower house voted in favor of the measure late today. It had already been approved by the Senate.
(http://tinyurl.com/y8fupdq6)(SSFC, 10/21/18, p.A4)
2018 Oct 19, The US accused Russian woman Elena Alekseevna Khusyaynova of helping oversee the finances of a sweeping, secretive effort to sway American public opinion through social media in the first federal case alleging foreign interference in the 2018 midterm elections.
(AP, 10/20/18)
2018 Oct 19, American intelligence officials released a rare public statement asserting that Russia, China, Iran and other countries are engaged in ongoing efforts to influence US policy and voters in future elections.
(AP, 10/22/18)
2018 Oct 19, In northern California William Deen Brown (39) was arrested in Santa Rosa after DNA evidence linked him to the rape of a girl (14) near a Rohnert Park creek.
(SSFC, 10/21/18, p.C3)
2018 Oct 19, In Michigan police raided the Perry Funeral Home in Detroit. Officers found 36 fetuses in boxes and 27 others in freezers. The business was immediately closed and its license suspended.
(SSFC, 10/21/18, p.A14)
2018 Oct 19, Afghanistan's election commission postponed elections in Kandahar for a week, following a brazen attack on a high-profile security meeting there.
(AP, 10/19/18)
2018 Oct 19, British former deputy prime minister Nick Clegg, a leading anti-Brexit advocate, said he would be starting a job at Facebook, as the US giant faces up to regulatory pressures.
(AFP, 10/19/18)
2018 Oct 19, The London-based European Medicines Agency said it had adopted a "positive opinion" of Dengvaxia, the first vaccine for dengue, made by Sanofi of France.
(SFC, 10/20/18, p.A2)
2018 Oct 19, It was reported that 20 men have been jailed for raping and abusing more than a dozen teenage girls in the city of Huddersfield in northern England after a judge lifted reporting restrictions. The men were found guilty in a series of trials this year.
(AP, 10/19/18)
2018 Oct 19, Radical Islamic preacher Anjem Choudary (51) was released from a British prison after serving less than half of a 5-1/2-year prison sentence for encouraging support for the Islamic State group.
(AP, 10/19/18)
2018 Oct 19, The Comoros government and main opposition signed a deal that could end the latest bout of instability to rock the Indian Ocean nation after violence flared on Anjouan island.
(AFP, 10/19/18)
2018 Oct 19, Europe and Asia presented a united front in support of free trade based on international rules and cooperation, starkly underscoring their differences with U.S. President Donald Trump's "America First" policy.
(AP, 10/19/18)
2018 Oct 19, European and Asian leaders gave their backing to the Iran nuclear deal, saying the pact is good for global security and that it's important to respect international agreements.
(AP, 10/19/18)
2018 Oct 19, The European Union's top court ordered Poland to "immediately suspend" its decision to lower the retirement age of its Supreme Court judges, which it said threatens judicial independence. Poland's rightwing government has lowered the age at which Supreme Court judges must retire from 70 to 65, allowing the appointment of figures seen as loyal by Warsaw's current leadership.
(AFP, 10/19/18)
2018 Oct 19, Hundreds of Central American migrants bedded down overnight on a bridge separating Guatemala and Mexico, many squeezed against a metal border gate, as efforts to halt a trek north by a caravan of thousands of people gathered pace under US pressure. A rush on the border ended when Mexican security forces with riot shields and pepper spray drove them back.
(Reuters, 10/19/18)(AP, 10/20/18)
2018 Oct 19, In India dozens of Hindu priests joined conservative protesters to block women of menstruating age from the Sabarimala temple, one of the world's largest Hindu pilgrimage sites, defying a ruling from India's top court to let them enter.
(AP, 10/19/18)
2018 Oct 19, In India a train ran over people in the northern state of Punjab. 59 people watching fireworks were killed on the outskirts of Amritsar with another 57 injured.
(Reuters, 10/19/18)(AP, 10/19/18)(Reuters, 10/20/18)
2018 Oct 19, Iran's official IRNA news agency reported that three seamen have died from an unspecified toxic substance that poisoned all 11 crew members of an Iranian cargo ship on the Caspian Sea. Preliminary information indicated that the crew had been poisoned by chemicals used to protect grain being carried from Kazakhstan to Azerbaijan.
(AP, 10/19/18)
2018 Oct 19, The Japanese government ordered KYB Corp., a company that falsified quality data for earthquake "shock absorbers" used in hundreds of buildings, to speed up an investigation and fix any problems quickly.
(AP, 10/19/18)
2018 Oct 19, In Kenya running great Kip Keino (78) said that charges against him in a Kenyan Olympic corruption case have been dropped and he has been released.
(AP, 10/19/18)
2018 Oct 19, Macedonia's parliament approved the proposed new name of Republic of North Macedonia after a referendum last month failed to reach the minimum participation threshold.
(Reuters, 10/20/18)
2018 Oct 19, Malaysia's former deputy prime minister, Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, was charged with abuse of power, corruption and money laundering involving millions of dollars in another graft investigation against leaders ousted in elections earlier this year.
(AP, 10/19/18)
2018 Oct 19, Members of a 3,000-strong US-bound migrant caravan massed in a Guatemalan border town and prepared to begin crossing the muddy Suchiate River to Mexico. Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray said that members of a caravan of Central American migrants heading north should proceed individually if they decide to enter Mexico.
(AP, 10/19/18)(Reuters, 10/19/18)
2018 Oct 19, Norway released Mikhail Bochkarev (51), a Russian man suspected of spying at the Norwegian parliament. A Norwegian judge ruled a day earlier that investigators had failed to substantiate their case and Norway's intelligence service withdrew an appeal against the decision.
(AFP, 10/19/18)
2018 Oct 19, Thousands of Palestinians massed along Israel's frontier, with dozens approaching and breaching the perimeter fence that separates Gaza from Israel. Gaza's Health Ministry reported 77 Palestinians were wounded by Israeli fire and six of them were in serious condition.
(AP, 10/19/18)
2018 Oct 19, In South Africa at least 27 people, including small children, were killed in a multi-vehicle accident in Limpopo province.
(AP, 10/20/18)
2018 Oct 19, In Syria US coalition air strikes killed 41 people, including 10 children, in al-Sousa village and its environs over the last two days. The coalition raids also killed 22 jihadists around the Euphrates River near the Iraqi border, one of the last Islamic State enclaves in Syria.
(AP, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 19, The Islamic State group released two women and four children among 27 surviving Druze hostages it seized during a deadly July 25 attack on the minority community's heartland in southern Syria.
(AFP, 10/20/18)
2018 Oct 19, Turkey widened the investigation into the disappearance of journalist Jamal Khashoggi after his visit to the Saudi consulate, searching a forest in the city and interviewing the mission's staff.
(AFP, 10/19/18)
2018 Oct 19, In Uzbekistan Russian President Vladimir Putin and Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev ordered the start of preliminary work at the ex-Soviet republic's first nuclear power plant. The $11 billion plant will have two 1,200-megawatt nuclear reactors and was set to begin operating in 2028.
(AP, 10/19/18)
2018 Oct 19, Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, the Vatican ambassador who accused Pope Francis of rehabilitating a disgraced ex-American cardinal, doubled down on his claims, asserting that the "scourge of homosexuality" in the priesthood is responsible for sex abuse and that the Vatican is being hypocritical in refusing to acknowledge it.
(AP, 10/19/18)
2018 Oct 20, President Donald Trump said Washington would withdraw from a landmark 1987 Cold War-era treaty that eliminated nuclear missiles from Europe because Russia was violating the pact, triggering a warning of retaliatory measures from Moscow.
(Reuters, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 20, The $1.5 million XPrize for Water Abundance was won by The Skysource / Skywater Alliance, based in Venice Beach, California for developing an easily deployable high-volume water generator. The winning team was led by David Hertz and his wife Laura Doss-Hertz.
(http://tinyurl.com/y93ras2c)(SFC, 10/26/18, p.A8)
2018 Oct 20, Georgia police Officer Antwan Toney (30) was fatally shot while responding to a suspicious vehicle parked near a middle school near Snellville. The vehicle crashed a short time later and four people were seen running from the scene. Police identified Tafahree Maynard (18) as the man who shot Toney. Isiah Pretlow (19) was arrested and charged with aggravated assault. On October 22 police in the Atlanta area shot and killed Maynard during a door to door search.
(SSFC, 10/21/18, p.A14)(SFC, 10/22/18, p.A6)
2018 Oct 20, In Afghanistan a suicide bomber blew himself up in Kabul, killing at least 15 people as voting concluded in parliamentary elections overshadowed by the threat of violence and long delays at polling stations. Over 120 incidents involving hand grenades or improvised explosive devices were reported and at least 36 people were killed and some 130 wounded across the country.. Voting was postponed for a week in Kandahar province after the assassination of the powerful local police chief Gen. Abdul Razeq. The ballot was also delayed in Ghazni province by arguments about the representation of different ethnic groups. The voting process was extended for another day in those places where election officers or election material arrived late.
(Reuters, 10/20/18)(AFP, 10/20/18)(Reuters, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 20, Angolan state minister Pedro Sebastiao said about 380,000 illegal migrants, mostly from the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo, have left Angola in less than a month during a massive operation targeting diamond smuggling. He told traveling reporters that diamonds worth more than $1 million had been seized.
(AFP, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 20, Australia's ruling coalition was forced into minority government after a massive swing against its senior partner, the Liberal Party, in a by-election for the seat of the prime minister the party itself had dismissed.
(AP, 10/20/18)
2018 Oct 20, In eastern China two people died and 18 were trapped in a coal mine after a rock burst destroyed part of a mining tunnel in Shandong province. The death toll soon climbed to three after one of the miners who was rescued died after receiving medical treatment.
(AP, 10/21/18)(AP, 10/22/18)
2018 Oct 20, The Comoros military started an operation to disperse armed rebels who took control of Mutsamudu's old city center on the island of Anjouan earlier this week.
(AFP, 10/20/18)
2018 Oct 20, Congolese rebels killed 15 civilians and abducted a dozen children in an attack in the Beni area at the center of the latest deadly Ebola outbreak. Confirmed Ebola cases have now reached 200, including 117 deaths.
(AP, 10/21/18)(SFC, 10/22/18, p.A2)
2018 Oct 20, In Costa Rica four American tourists and a Costa Rican guide were killed in a rafting accident on the swollen on the Naranjo river near Liverpool de Quepos.
(AP, 10/21/18)(SFC, 10/22/18, p.A2)
2018 Oct 20, In Croatia several thousand people protested in Zagreb over government plans to raise the retirement age to 67 and cut pensions for those who retire early.
(Reuters, 10/20/18)
2018 Oct 20, In Egypt three workers contracted to build a security wall in the northern Sinai city of el-Arish were shot dead by suspected militants. Six militants were killed in two separate raids by security forces targeting hideouts in northern Sinai. The raids left two policemen wounded following shootouts.
(AP, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 20, Tens of thousands of supporters of the European Union began marching through London as part of what organizers say will be the largest ever demonstration to demand that the British government holds a public vote on the terms of Brexit.
(Reuters, 10/20/18)
2018 Oct 20, European and Japanese space agencies said an Ariane 5 rocket successfully lifted a spacecraft carrying two probes into orbit for a joint mission to Mercury. The unmanned BepiColombo spacecraft successfully separated and was sent into orbit from French Guiana as planned to begin a seven-year journey to Mercury.
(AP, 10/20/18)
2018 Oct 20, The German group Sea-Watch said that the vessel, Sea-Watch 3, has been cleared to leave Malta for repairs. It had been "blocked" from leaving Malta since July 2 amid an investigation into Dutch-registered rescue ships.
(AP, 10/20/18)
2018 Oct 20, In Germany a 19-year-old man died after blowing up a ticket machine at a railway station in the eastern city of Halle. Two alleged accomplices, aged 15 and 20. were soon arrested. Six other ticket machines and an ATM were destroyed in Halle earlier this month.
(AP, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 20, An Indian court ordered the trial of sexual harassment charges against one of world's leading climate change experts, Rajendra K. Pachauri (78).
(Reuters, 10/20/18)
2018 Oct 20, The leaders of Italy's ruling coalition parties met to patch up a row over a disputed tax amnesty which has threatened to undermine the anti-establishment government.
(Reuters, 10/20/18)
2018 Oct 20, In Macau Zheng Xiaosong (59) the Chinese government's liaison officer in the semi-autonomous former Portuguese colony, fell to his death from the building where he lived. Authorities said he had been suffering from depression.
(AFP, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 20, Russia's defence minister said that almost 88,000 rebels had been killed in Syria in the three years since Moscow's intervention to back government forces.
(AFP, 10/20/18)
2018 Oct 20, Saudi Arabia said that Jamal Khashoggi, a prominent journalist and critic of the kingdom's de facto leader Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, had died in a fight inside its Istanbul consulate. This came after two weeks of denials that it was involved in his disappearance. Saudi state media said King Salman had ordered the dismissal of five officials, including Saud al-Qahtani, a royal court adviser seen as the right-hand man to Prince Mohammed, and deputy intelligence chief Ahmed Asiri.
(Reuters, 10/20/18)
2018 Oct 20, In Singapore several countries including the United States and China agreed "in principle" to multilateral guidelines to manage unexpected encounters between their military aircraft, joining 10 Southeast Asian nations already in the pact. The agreement was initially adopted a day earlier by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
(Reuters, 10/20/18)
2018 Oct 20, Syria's foreign ministry said that coalition warplanes had "committed a crime", killing at least 62 civilians in al-Sousa and a nearby village in Deir al-Zor province.
(AP, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 20, In Taiwan thousands of pro-independence demonstrators gathered in Taipei to express their disapproval with China's stance toward their island.
(AP, 10/20/18)
2018 Oct 20, In Tanzania Mohammed Dewji (43), the CEO of the METL Group family conglomerate, returned home unharmed after being released by his kidnappers.
(Reuters, 10/20/18)
2018 Oct 20, Tanzanian officials said police have arrested 104 suspected militants over the last few months planning to establish bases in neighboring Mozambique, where scores of people have been killed in Islamist attacks over the last year.
(Reuters, 10/20/18)
2018 Oct 21, Charles Wang (74), the founder Computer Associates (1976), now called CA Technologies, and former owner of the New York Islanders hockey team, died in Oyster Bay, New York.
(AP, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 21, Afghans unable to vote in yesterday's parliamentary election after hundreds of polling stations failed to open were given another chance to cast their ballot after voting times were extended despite security threats and warnings of fraud. A roadside bomb brought the death toll over the past two days to over 50, including several children.
(Reuters, 10/21/18)(AP, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 21, The Green Climate Fund said it has approved more than $1 billion in new investments after a four-day meeting in Bahrain. The UN-backed fund approved 19 new projects, including a program to protect freshwater resources in Bahrain.
(AP, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 21, Officials from Chad and South Africa said two of six critically endangered black rhinos have died of unknown causes five months after being flown from South Africa to Chad in a pioneering project to re-introduce the animals. The carcasses of the cow and bull were discovered on October 15.
(AFP, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 21, In northern China three individuals died after they were attacked in public early today in Wenan County, Hebei province.
(Reuters, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 21, Residents on the Comoros island of Anjouan slowly returned to their daily lives after a six-day siege in the old quarter of Mutsamudu city. The island's governor Abdou Salami Abdou, a member of the opposition Juwa party, surrendered to the police, but denied any links to the armed rebels.
(AFP, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 21, Egypt's parliament voted to extend a state of emergency in the country for three months, prolonging the authorities' ability to use special powers into 2019.
(Reuters, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 21, Egypt arrested economist Abdel-Khaleq Farouq and his publisher, Ibrahim el-Khateib, over a book that challenged Pres. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi's economic policies. The book — entitled "Is Egypt Really a Poor Country?" — has not been published, but was posted online by activists. On Oct. 29 an Egyptian court released Abdul Khalik Farouk and the owner of the print shop that published his book.
(AP, 10/23/18)(Reuters, 10/30/18)
2018 Oct 21, Multinational giants Siemens and General Electric say they have signed memorandums of understanding with Iraq to rebuild the country's electricity infrastructure.
(AP, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 21, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu said he has decided to postpone the planned demolition of a West Bank hamlet to allow time for a negotiated solution with its residents, in a move that appeared aimed at staving off the fierce international condemnation such a demolition would likely entail.
(AP, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 21, Jordan's King Abdullah II said he has decided not to renew parts of his country's landmark peace treaty with Israel. Abdullah released a statement that he intends to pull out of two annexes from the 1994 peace agreement that allowed Israel to lease two small areas, Baqura and Ghamr, from the Jordanians for 25 years.
(AP, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 21, In disputed Kashmir three local rebels were killed in a gunbattle with Indian government forces, and six civilians were killed in an explosion at the site after the fighting was over. 3 Indian army soldiers and two suspected militants were killed in a gunbattle along the militarized line of control dividing Kashmir between India and Pakistan. The death toll of civilians climbed to seven as another injured young man died at a hospital the next day.
(AP, 10/21/18)(AP, 10/22/18)
2018 Oct 21, The Maldives' top court dismissed the outgoing president's petition seeking an annulment of last month's presidential election result. The five-member Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the election was conducted within the law.
(AP, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 21, Despite Mexican efforts to stop them at the border, a growing throng of Central American migrants resumed their advance toward the US border early today in southern Mexico. Their numbers swelled to about 5,000 overnight and at first light they set out walking toward the Mexican town of Tapachula.
(AP, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 21, In northern Morocco a migrant died and 19 others were hurt after around 200 people scaled a fence to enter Spain's Melilla enclave.
(AFP, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 21, Nigerian police said communal violence in the northern state of Kaduna over the last few days has killed 55 people.
(Reuters, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 21, A Norwegian citizen of Iranian background was arrested in Sweden in connection with a plot to assassinate an Iranian Arab opposition figure in Denmark. He was extradited to Denmark. The attack was meant to target the leader of the Danish branch of the Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahvaz (ASMLA).
(AP, 10/30/18)
2018 Oct 21, Polish voters cast ballots in local elections that were the first nationwide test of support for the conservative ruling party. A pro-European Union opposition party defeated the ruling conservatives in local elections in Warsaw. The ruling populist party, Law and Justice, won 254 of the 552 seats in regional assemblies in local elections, with 194 going to the key opposition coalition.
(AP, 10/21/18)(AP, 10/24/18)(AP, 10/25/18)
2018 Oct 21, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said that a unilateral withdrawal by the United States from a landmark 1987 Cold War-era treaty that eliminated nuclear missiles from Europe would be "very dangerous" and lead to a "military-technical" retaliation.
(Reuters, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 21, Exchange data showed that foreigners sold a net 4.01 billion riyals ($1.07 billion) in Saudi stocks in the week ending October 18, - one of the biggest selloffs since the market opened to direct foreign buying in mid-2015.
(Reuters, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 21, It was reported that the Sagrada Familia basilica in Barcelona, Spain, has agreed to pay about $41 million over ten years to settle a dispute over the legality of ongoing work and help pay for transportation improvements around the structure designed by Antoni Gaudi (1852-1926).
(SSFC, 10/21/18, p.A12)
2018 Oct 21, A Spanish firefighter died overnight while emergency services responded to flash floods caused by heavy rain in southern Spain.
(AP, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 21, In Syria an explosion in the rebel-held northwestern city of Idlib killed at least three people and wounded others.
(AP, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 21, One of Taiwan's fastest passenger trains derailed on a curve along a popular weekend route, killing 18 people and injuring 187 others.
(AP, 10/21/18)(AP, 10/22/18)
2018 Oct 22, President Donald Trump said the US will start cutting aid to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador as a caravan of thousands of mostly Honduran migrants rolled on regardless toward the US border.
(AFP, 10/22/18)
2018 Oct 22, A pipe bomb was sent to the home of billionaire philanthropist George Soros. Over the next two days similar devices were sent to prominent Democratic politicians including former Pres. Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and the CNN offices in Midtown Manhattan.
(SFC, 10/25/18, p.A5)
2018 Oct 22, In Utah a dump truck crossed a highway median near Heber and collided with an oncoming pickup truck, killing all six men in the pickup. Jamie Don McKenzie (41), the driver of the truck, was booked on suspicion of vehicular manslaughter. Prescription pills and open containers of alcohol were found inside the truck.
(SFC, 10/22/18, p.A6)
2018 Oct 22, Yahoo agreed to pay $50 million in damages and provide two years of free credit monitoring services to 200 million people whose email addresses and other personal information were stolen in digital burglaries in 2013 and 2014, but not disclosed until 2016.
(SFC, 10/24/18, p.D2)
2018 Oct 22, In Afghanistan a NATO soldier was killed and two others wounded in a Taliban-claimed attack in the western province of Herat.
(AFP, 10/22/18)
2018 Oct 22, Australia's PM Scott Morrison delivered a formal apology to the victims of child sex abuse, saying the nation must acknowledge their long, painful journey and its failure to protect them.
(AP, 10/22/18)
2018 Oct 22, Bangladesh police arrested Mainul Hosein, a prominent lawyer and newspaper publisher, late today in a raid on the opposition leader's home in Dhaka.
(AP, 10/23/18)
2018 Oct 22, It was reported that Belgium has chosen Lockheed Martin's F-35 stealth jets over the Eurofighter Typhoon to replace its aging F-16s.
(Reuters, 10/22/18)
2018 Oct 22, Bosnian police blocked some 200 migrants from reaching the border with neighboring Croatia, which is a member of the European Union.
(AP, 10/22/18)
2018 Oct 22, Canada Post workers went on a rotating strike, affecting mail deliveries in four cities after nearly one year of stalled contract negotiations.
(AFP, 10/22/18)
2018 Oct 22, A Croatian court sentenced former PM Ivo Sanader to 2 ½ years in prison for war profiteering following his retrial in the high-profile corruption case. The court also ruled that Sanader must return about half a million euros ($570,000) in kickbacks he took in a deal with Austria's Hypo Bank in the 1990s.
(AP, 10/22/18)
2018 Oct 22, A German man (54) was convicted of attempted murder for poisoning baby food and putting it on store shelves in a failed attempt to extort money from supermarkets. He was sentenced in Ravensburg state court to 12 years in prison.
(AP, 10/23/18)
2018 Oct 22, In India the body of Kuriakose Kattuthara, a Catholic priest who police said had spoken to them about Bishop Franco Mulakkal, was found in his room in a church in the northern state of Punjab. He was witness in a case involving the alleged rape of a nun by the Roman Catholic bishop. Mulakkal, bishop of the Diocese of Jalandhar in Punjab, was arrested in the southern state of Kerala last month on charges of raping the nun.
(Reuters, 10/22/18)
2018 Oct 22, The Press Trust of India news agency reported that the number of Zika virus cases has crossed 100 in the northern state of Rajasthan.
(AP, 10/22/18)
2018 Oct 22, Iran's state TV reported that the Supreme Court has upheld the death sentences for two individuals convicted of financial crimes. They were identified as Vahid Mazloumin and Mohammad Esmail Ghasemi, whom local media dubbed the "Sultan of Coins" after he was arrested after hoarding two tons of gold coins in an attempt to manipulate the local currency.
(AP, 10/22/18)
2018 Oct 22, The Israeli military said it has uncovered a militant outpost on the Lebanese border that Hezbollah guerrillas have set up under the guise of an environmental advocacy group.
(AP, 10/22/18)
2018 Oct 22, Italy's populist government responded to EU criticism of its budget with a vow to stick to its public spending hike while scrupulously keeping to its own deficit limits.
(AFP, 10/22/18)
2018 Oct 22, A court in the Maldives freed opposition leader Qasim Ibrahim, setting aside a lower court's conviction for bribery.
(AP, 10/22/18)
2018 Oct 22, Morocco said it would deport 141 migrants who were arrested a day earlier as they tried to storm a border fence with the Spanish enclave of Melilla.
(Reuters, 10/22/18)
2018 Oct 22, In northeastern Nigeria Boko Haram jihadists killed two people late today in an attack on a village near the town of Chibok.
(AFP, 10/23/18)
2018 Oct 22, In Pakistan rickshaw driver Mohammad Khalid died in Karachi two days after setting himself on fire to protest police demands for bribes.
(AP, 10/22/18)
2018 Oct 22, In the Gaza Strip Hamas sentenced 17 people convicted of drug trafficking to hard labor prison terms of 10 years to life. Officers in military fatigues poured gasoline and set alight more than 1 million tablets of opioid painkiller tramadol, about 1,500 slabs of hashish and 900 grams of opium.
(AP, 10/22/18)
2018 Oct 22, Poland's Supreme Court chief justice asked 23 of the court's judges to return to work, days after the European Union's top court ordered Poland to "immediately suspend" their retirement under a disputed law.
(AFP, 10/22/18)
2018 Oct 22, Russia's President Vladimir Putin, in a presidential decree posted on the Kremlin's website, instructed the government to draw up a list of Ukrainian firms and individuals to be targeted for economic sanctions.
(Reuters, 10/22/18)
2018 Oct 22, South Korean officials said the two Koreas have completed removing land mines planted at their shared border village as part of efforts to disarm the area located inside the world's most heavily fortified border.
(AP, 10/22/18)
2018 Oct 22, Saudi Arabia scrambled to prepare for the three-day Future Investment Initiative (FII) after a string of cancellations from global business titans, with Turkey's threat to reveal the "naked truth" over critic Jamal Khashoggi's murder casting a fresh shadow.
(AFP, 10/22/18)
2018 Oct 22, A South Korean lawmaker said North Korea imported at least $640 million worth of luxury goods from China last year, in defiance of UN sanctions outlawing such trade over North Korea's nuclear and missile programs.
(Reuters, 10/22/18)
2018 Oct 22, Thai rappers uploaded the song "Prathet Ku Mee" (Which is My Country), to YouTube. It soon racked up more than 6.4 million views and tens of thousands of comments since it went live on the platform, prompting authorities to take notice. The video features rappers from the Rap Against Dictatorship collective dishing out barbs about the military and blasting corruption, censorship and the lack of elections.
(AFP, 10/27/18)
2018 Oct 22, Two children died after a boat carrying migrants sank just 50 meters off Turkey's western coast near Bodrum early today.
(Reuters, 10/22/18)
2018 Oct 23, The US Treasury Department imposed sanctions targeting Afghanistan's Taliban insurgency, designating eight people including two Iranians linked to Tehran's Revolutionary Guards' Quds force.
(Reuters, 10/23/18)
2018 Oct 23, Johnson & Johnson said it is paying about $2 billion in cash for the outstanding stake of Ci:z Holdings Co., a Japanese cosmetics and skincare products company.
(AP, 10/23/18)
2018 Oct 23, In Afghanistan at least 14 civilians were killed during an operation by Afghan security forces in eastern Nangarhar province.
(Reuters, 10/24/18)
2018 Oct 23, British electric appliance pioneer Dyson said it had picked Singapore as the site for its first electric car plant, sparking criticism of the company's Brexit-backing billionaire founder James Dyson for not investing more in British manufacturing.
(AFP, 10/23/18)
2018 Oct 23, A Cameroon court sentenced former opposition presidential candidate and anti-corruption campaigner Akere Muna to a three-year suspended sentence on forgery charges.
(AFP, 10/24/18)
2018 Oct 23, Chinese media Caixin reported that a senior official overseeing birth policy explained birth policy changes last week to a UN conference held in Beijing. He said China won't set a population target in the future and will give epople more freedom around childbirth.
(SFC, 10/25/18, p.A3)
2018 Oct 23, China opened the world's longest sea-crossing bridge linking Hong Kong to the mainland, a feat of engineering carrying immense economic and political significance. The 55-km (34-mile)-long bridge linked China to the semi-autonomous regions of Hong Kong and Macau.
(AP, 10/23/18)
2018 Oct 23, The European Commission rejected Italy's proposed budget — the first time it has ever done so with a member state.
(AP, 10/23/18)
2018 Oct 23, France-based Interpol said coordinated police raids in 116 countries have netted 500 tons of illicit pharmaceuticals available online, including fake cancer medications, counterfeit pain pills and illegal medical syringes.
(Reuters, 10/23/18)
2018 Oct 23, German automaker BMW said it is expanding a recall to cover 1.6 million vehicles worldwide due to possible fluid leaks that could result in a fire.
(AP, 10/23/18)
2018 Oct 23, In Iraq a bomb blast at a market in a town south of the city of Mosul killed at least six people, including two soldiers.
(AP, 10/23/18)
2018 Oct 23, Ireland's government approved a forensic excavation of the former Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home in Tuam, County Galway, a Catholic-run orphanage where a mass grave containing the remains of hundreds of children was discovered.
(AP, 10/24/18)
2018 Oct 23, The live-betting esports platform Unikrn had its wagering license approved by the Isle of Man, clearing the way for users to legally gamble on competitive video games. Unikrn had previously only been licensed to provide real-money betting on esports in the UK and Australia.
(AP, 10/23/18)
2018 Oct 23, Japan was informed by Qatar that a man, believed to be journalist Jumpei Yasuda, has been released. Yasuda was last heard from in Syria in 2015. Contact was lost with Yasuda after he sent a message to another Japanese freelancer on June 23, 2015.
(AP, 10/23/18)
2018 Oct 23, In Mexico thousands of people were evacuated, buildings were boarded up and schools closed along the Pacific coast as Hurricane Willa threatened to batter tourist resorts. Hurricane Willa crashed ashore in western Mexico, lashing the Pacific coast with powerful winds and heavy rain before weakening to a tropical depression as it moved inland. Nearly 102,000 homes last power after the storm made landfall.
(Reuters, 10/23/18)(AFP, 10/24/18)(SFC, 10/25/18, p.A4)
2018 Oct 23, Nigeria's President Muhammadu Buhari flew in by helicopter to cut the ribbon at the new Seme-Krake Joint Border Post with his Beninese counterpart Patrice Talon.
(AFP, 10/28/18)
2018 Oct 23, Human Rights Watch said security forces of the rival Palestinian governments routinely use torture and arbitrary arrests, among other tactics, to quash dissent by peaceful activists and political opponents.
(AP, 10/23/18)
2018 Oct 23, Pakistan negotiated a $6 billion assistance package of loans and deferred payments from Saudi Arabia in hopes of resuscitating its flagging economy, struggling under the weight of a whopping $18 billion deficit.
(AP, 10/24/18)
2018 Oct 23, A high-profile economic forum in Saudi Arabia began in Riyadh. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman trumpeted a conference that has drawn investment deals worth $50 billion despite a boycott over the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
(AP, 10/23/18)
2018 Oct 23, Saudi Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih said the OPEC kingpin was ready to boost its crude production and spare capacity to help maintain a balance in the global oil market.
(AFP, 10/23/18)
2018 Oct 23, Saudi Arabia said it and Bahrain had added Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps and senior officers of its Quds Force to their lists of people and organizations suspected of involvement in terrorism.
(Reuters, 10/23/18)
2018 Oct 23, Tech entrepreneurs in Somalia began holding a first ever summit in battle-scarred Mogadishu, attracting hundreds to talk about business and innovation in a city more used to conflict and suffering.
(AFP, 10/25/18)
2018 Oct 23, The UN Human Rights Committee said that France's ban on the niqab, the full-body Islamic veil, was a violation of human rights and called on it to review the legislation. It gave Paris 180 days to report back to say what actions it had taken.
(Reuters, 10/23/18)
2018 Oct 23, Vietnam's rubber stamp National Assembly elected Communist Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong (74) as the country's president. He succeeds Tran Dai Quang, who died last month after battling a viral illness for more than a year.
(AP, 10/23/18)
2018 Oct 23, Zimbabwe's main opposition leader Nelson Chamisa called for a transitional emergency government to resolve the worsening economic and political crisis engulfing the country.
(AFP, 10/23/18)
2018 Oct 24, US regulators approved Xofluza, the first new type of flu drug in nearly two decades. It was initially developed by Shionogi & Co. of Japan with marketing rights sold to Roche.
(SFC, 10/25/18, p.A14)
2018 Oct 24, Spenger's Fish Grotto in Berkeley, Ca., dating back to 1890, posted a notice of permanent closure. Another notice announced the application by Joe's Crab Shack for a new restaurant at the location.
(SFC, 10/25/18, p.A11)
2018 Oct 24, In Kentucky Gregory Alan Bush (51) fatally shot two African American customers at a Kroger grocery store and was swiftly arrested. Police said Bush had a history of mental illness. In november a federal grand jury charged Bush with hate crimes.
(SFC, 10/26/18, p.A9)(SFC, 11/16/18, p.A5)
2018 Oct 24, Former New York state Senate leader Dean Skelos was sentenced to four years and three months in prison on corruption charges.
(SFC, 10/25/18, p.A5)
2018 Oct 24, In New Jersey the Wannaque Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation said another child has died of adenovirus, bringing the death toll to seven in the viral outbreak.
(SFC, 10/25/18, p.A5)
2018 Oct 24, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation announced thirteen winners of its Safety and Justice Challenge grants to cities and counties for implementing criminal justice reforms to reduce jail populations. Philadelphia's award of $4 million was the largest and followed a $3.5 million grant during the first awards in 2016.
(SFC, 10/25/18, p.A8)
2018 Oct 24, Lottery officials said a single ticket sold at the KC Mart in Simpsonville, South Carolina, matched all six numbers to win the $1.537 billion Mega Millions jackpot.
(AP, 10/24/18)
2018 Oct 24, Algeria's governing coalition elected Mouad Bouchared (47), a relatively youthful new parliamentary speaker, to replace Said Bouhadja whom it accused of mismanagement.
(Reuters, 10/24/18)
2018 Oct 24, Dozens of migrants clashed with Bosnian police while trying to cross from Bosnia into Croatia and enter the European Union.
(AP, 10/24/18)
2018 Oct 24, Britain's Supreme Court blocked an appeal by US prosecutors seeking to extradite former HSBC trader Stuart Scott to face fraud charges over allegations that he and a colleague defrauded client Cairn Energy in a $3.5 billion currency trade in 2011.
(Reuters, 10/24/18)
2018 Oct 24, Canada's central bank increased its key lending rate 0.25 percentage points to 1.75 percent, saying a continental trade deal reached with the United States and Mexico has lifted uncertainty that was weighing on the economy.
(AFP, 10/24/18)
2018 Oct 24, The European Parliament overwhelmingly backed a wide-ranging ban on single-use plastics to counter pollution in seas, fields and waterways.
(AP, 10/24/18)
2018 Oct 24, A court in Germany ruled that Volkswagen's parent company must pay 47 million euros ($54 million) in damages to investors for not making a timely disclosure of its scandal over cars rigged to cheat on diesel emissions tests.
(AP, 10/24/18)
2018 Oct 24, In Israel China's VP Wang Qishan and Israel's PM Benjamin Netanyahu kicked off a joint innovation summit. China has become Israel's third largest trading partner, behind only the US and the European Union.
(AP, 10/24/18)
2018 Oct 24, Israel allowed a resumption of Qatari-financed fuel deliveries to Gaza after a 12-day halt it imposed over heavy border clashes.
(AFP, 10/24/18)
2018 Oct 24, In Kashmir government forces killed two rebels during a gunbattle on the outskirts of Srinagar, sparking violent anti-India protests by residents.
(AP, 10/24/18)
2018 Oct 24, In Mexico thousands of Central American migrants renewed their hoped-for march to the United States, setting out before dawn with plans to travel another 45 miles (75 km) of the more than 1,000 miles that still lie before them. Mexican authorities said that about 500 migrants had accepted an offer to be bused back to their countries.
(AP, 10/24/18)
2018 Oct 24, Pakistani officials said Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, a senior Taliban commander arrested in 2010, has been released from prison after high-level negotiations. Baradar was a senior figure in the insurgent group and coordinated military operations in southern Afghanistan before his arrest eight years ago in Karachi.
(AP, 10/24/18)
2018 Oct 24, Poland's national airline LOT cancelled some flights as some crew members struck to protest layoffs and demand better working conditions. Almost 70 flight crew members have been fired for participating in the strike that started Oct. 18 and that the management says is illegal.
(AP, 10/24/18)
2018 Oct 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin met with Italian PM Giuseppe Conte in Moscow. They vowed to expand economic ties between their two countries despite European Union sanctions against Russia.
(AP, 10/24/18)
2018 Oct 24, Saudi Arabia's crown prince said the case of Jamal Khashoggi was "painful" and that "justice will prevail" following the killing of the Saudi journalist at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.
(Reuters, 10/24/18)
2018 Oct 24, In Spain the government of Madrid banned electric scooters from sidewalks to both remove a threat to pedestrians and help regulate alternative transport technologies that have become more popular amid efforts to cut air pollution.
(Reuters, 10/24/18)
2018 Oct 24, Sudan's PM Moataz Moussa announced to parliament a 15-month emergency economic-reform plan, including "further strict austerity measures", to begin this month.
(Reuters, 10/24/18)
2018 Oct 24, In Thailand Malaysian PM Mahathir Mohamad met with PM Prayuth Chan-ocha and discussed peace talks in Thailand's southern border provinces.
(AP, 10/24/18)
2018 Oct 24, Turkey's state media reported that Saudi authorities have denied permission to Turkish police to search a well in the garden of the kingdom's consulate in Istanbul as part of a probe into the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
(AFP, 10/24/18)
2018 Oct 24, The Vatican said Pope Francis has removed from office Bishop Martin Holley (63) of Memphis, Tennessee. The widely-read National Catholic Reporter newspaper said Holley had been the subject of a Vatican investigation in June following complaints among priests about his leadership.
(Reuters, 10/24/18)
2018 Oct 24, In Yemen a Saudi-led coalition airstrike at a fruit-and-vegetable market near the Red Sea port of Hodeida killed at least 21 civilians, including children.
(AP, 10/25/18)
2018 Oct 25, The US Treasury Department imposed sanctions on two Singapore-based entities and Tan Wee Beng, a director and shareholder of a Singapore-based commodities trading company, accused of money laundering through the US financial system to evade sanctions against North Korea.
(Reuters, 10/25/18)
2018 Oct 25, This year's Kirkus Prize for non-fiction was awarded to Rebecca Solnit for her latest book "Call Them By Their True Names: American Crises (and Essays)." Ling ma won the fiction award for her first novel "Severance." Winners received $50,000.
(SFC, 10/27/18, p.E3)
2018 Oct 25, In California Yosemite Park rangers recovered the bodies of 29-year-old Vishnu Viswanath and 30-year-old Meenakshi Moorthy from about 800 feet (245 meters) below Taft Point. The couple had set up a tripod for a selfie near the ledge on the evening of Oct 23.
(AP, 10/30/18)
2018 Oct 25, Oregon's Gov. Kate Brown issued an executive order blocking offshore oil and gas drilling to protect the state's coatal economy.
(SFC, 10/27/18, p.A6)
2018 Oct 25, Argentina's lower house approved a 2019 budget bill that includes austerity measures demanded by the International Monetary Fund.
(AP, 10/25/18)
2018 Oct 25, A British judge ruled that unregistered beautician Donna Francis (38) should be sent to the United States to face trial for allegedly killing an American woman with a botched buttocks injection. Kelly Mayhew (34) died in May 2015 after silicone was injected into her buttocks at a house in New York's Queens borough.
(AP, 10/25/18)
2018 Oct 25, China denounced a US newspaper report that it is listening to President Donald Trump's phone calls as "fake news," and suggested he exchange his iPhone for a cellphone made by Chinese manufacturer Huawei.
(AP, 10/25/18)
2018 Oct 25, The EU awarded its top human rights prize to Oleg Sentsov, a Ukrainian filmmaker imprisoned in Russia accused of plotting acts of terrorism, calling him a symbol of all political prisoners being held there.
(AP, 10/25/18)
2018 Oct 25, Central European University said it will move its US-accredited programs from Budapest to the Austrian capital of Vienna because of the "uncertain" academic environment in Hungary. Central European University was founded by Hungarian-American billionaire and philanthropist George Soros in 1991.
(AP, 10/25/18)
2018 Oct 25, The Paris-based International Federation for Human Rights said foreign fighters, including many Europeans, took a leading role in carrying out the Islamic State group's atrocities against minority Yazidis.
(AP, 10/25/18)
2018 Oct 25, Italian authorities said 3 suspects, two Senegalese citizens and one Nigerian, were being held on suspicion of murder, group sexual assault and handing out drugs in the death late last week of 16-year-old Desiree Mariottini.
(AP, 10/25/18)
2018 Oct 25, Japan's PM Shinzo Abe arrived in Beijing as both countries try to repair ties that have been riven by disputes over territory, military expansion in the Pacific and World War II history.
(AP, 10/25/18)
2018 Oct 25, In Jordan flash floods killed at least 21 people, most of them school children in a bus that was swept away.
(AP, 10/26/18)
2018 Oct 25, Jihadist-hit Mali extended by a year a state of emergency in place since a deadly November 2015 attack on a top hotel in the capital Bamako which claimed 20 lives.
(AFP, 10/25/18)
2018 Oct 25, NATO's biggest military maneuvers since the Cold War kicked off in Norway with about 55,000 military personnel.
(AP, 10/25/18)
2018 Oct 25, Residents of the Northern Mariana Islands braced for months without electricity or running water after the islands were slammed by Super Typhoon Yutu, the strongest storm to hit any part of the US this year. At least one person was killed.
(AP, 10/25/18)(SFC, 10/26/18, p.A8)
2018 Oct 25, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte fired the head of the Bureau of Customs and ordered all top bureau officials replaced after the agency failed to intercept more than a ton of drugs, the second such case in two years.
(Reuters, 10/25/18)
2018 Oct 25, President Vladimir Putin says Russia will commission new weapons that have no comparisons anywhere in the world.
(AP, 10/25/18)
2018 Oct 25, A Russian military tribunal upheld murder and torture convictions against senior security and police officers in the region of Ingushetia. The officers were convicted of using electric shocks and other torture techniques to force confessions from detainees in the mainly-Muslim region.
(AFP, 10/26/18)
2018 Oct 25, A Russian Soyuz rocket lifted off from the Plesetsk launch facility in Mirny and put a military satellite into orbit.
(SFC, 10/26/18, p.A2)
2018 Oct 25, Saudi state TV quoted the Saudi public prosecutor as saying the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi was premeditated, and that prosecutors were interrogating suspects on the basis of information provided by a joint Saudi-Turkish task force. 18 Saudis have been arrested and five top officials fired in the case.
(Reuters, 10/25/18)(SFC, 10/25/18, p.A2)
2018 Oct 25, South Africa's top court ruled that a platinum miner that has a deal with a tribal chief could not evict a group of black farmers, in a decision that could curtail the power of traditional leaders whose deals often disadvantage poor blacks.
(Reuters, 10/25/18)
2018 Oct 25, South Sudan freed five political detainees and prisoners of war, although none appeared to be senior rebel officials, a category of captive whose release is required by a peace deal signed last month.
(Reuters, 10/25/18)
2018 Oct 25, Spain's Supreme Court ordered 18 former Catalan leaders to stand trial over their role in last year's declaration of independence.
(AFP, 10/25/18)
2018 Oct 25, Spanish police said they have seized more than 6.3 metric tons (6.94 tons) of cocaine and broken up a Dutch-led drug-trafficking gang, arresting 16 people.
(AP, 10/25/18)
2018 Oct 25, Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir lifted a 17-month long ban on agricultural imports from Egypt, during an official visit by Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to Khartoum.
(AFP, 10/25/18)
2018 Oct 26, The FBI said Democratic US Senator Cory Booker is the latest target in a spree of 11 suspicious packages sent to opponents of Donald Trump. US media said a 12th package addressed to former director of national intelligence James Clapper had been intercepted in Manhattan.
(AP, 10/26/18)
2018 Oct 26, The US Dept. of Justice said Cesar Sayoc, Jr. (56) has been taken into custody in Florida. . He had created a two-week crisis by mailing 16 packages of inoperative pipe bombs packed with fireworks powder and shards of glass to 13 famous Democrats and CNN.
(AP, 10/26/18)(SFC, 10/31/18, p.C6)(http://tinyurl.com/yxlgztw5)(AP, 8/4/19)
2018 Oct 26, John McGuire (b.1932), civil rights activist, died in Pomona, Ca. He was one of the first US college educators to use diersity as a guiding principle in student admissions.
(SSFC, 11/11/18, p.C10)
2018 Oct 26, In Belgium hundreds of passengers were left stranded at Brussels international airport after luggage handlers went on strike over workload and pay demands.
(AP, 10/26/18)
2018 Oct 26, China and Japan pledged to forge closer ties as both countries stood together at an "historic turning point", signing a broad range of agreements including a $30 billion currency swap pact, amid rising trade tensions with Washington. Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said 500 business deals worth $18 billion had been signed between Chinese and Japanese companies during PM Shinzo Abe's visit.
(Reuters, 10/26/18)
2018 Oct 26, China changed its law to allow judgments to be delivered in corruption and terror cases even when the suspects do not appear in court, as Beijing ramps up pressure on dozens of suspected criminals hiding overseas.
(Reuters, 10/26/18)
2018 Oct 26, In western China a knife-wielding female assailant injured 14 children at a kindergarten in the city of Chongqing.
(AP, 10/26/18)
2018 Oct 26, China's state media reported that the death toll in the Oct. 20 coal mine collapse in Shandong province has risen to 11. Ten miners remained trapped underground.
(AP, 10/27/18)
2018 Oct 26, CongoDRC police fanned out across Kinshasa and other main cities as thousands of opposition supporters marched seeking the withdrawal of electronic voting machines in a long-delayed election due at the end of December.
(AFP, 10/26/18)
2018 Oct 26, The rival leaders of ethnically divided Cyprus agreed to open more checkpoints along the militarized frontier that separates them, marking a rare sign of cooperation in the deadlocked conflict.
(Reuters, 10/26/18)
2018 Oct 26, French President Emmanuel Macron dismissed as "demagoguery" the calls by several European countries including Germany to suspend arms sales to Saudi Arabia following the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
(Reuters, 10/26/18)
2018 Oct 26, Indian officials said police have rounded 2,061 people for stopping women from entering the Sabarimala temple complex, a flashpoint Hindu shrine, in defiance of a Supreme Court order.
(AFP, 10/26/18)
2018 Oct 26, India's Central Pollution Control Board said New Delhi's air quality had plummeted to the worst possible category. The level of PM2.5, tiny particulate matter that can dangerously clog lungs, was 187, more than six times higher than the World Health Organization considers safe.
(AP, 10/26/18)
2018 Oct 26, In northern India a powerful explosion at a fireworks factory in Uttar Pradesh state killed at least eight people and injured three others, as Hindus prepare to celebrate the highly popular Diwali festival early next month.
(AP, 10/26/18)
2018 Oct 26, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu visited the Gulf state of Oman and discussed peace initiatives in the Middle East with Omani leader Sultan Qaboos in the first meeting of its kind in more than 20 years.
(Reuters, 10/26/18)
2018 Oct 26, In Italy travelers and commuters faced delays as several national trade unions staged a 24-hour strike, disrupting transport services as well as some public schools.
(Reuters, 10/26/18)
2018 Oct 26, In Kashmir eight rebels and two Indian soldiers were killed in gunbattles in northwestern Sopore area that sparked violent anti-India protests by residents seeking an end to Indian rule in the region.
(AP, 10/26/18)
2018 Oct 26, Macedonia's criminal court ordered former conservative PM Nikola Gruevski, to appear at the capital's jail by Nov. 8 to begin serving a two-year prison sentence for influencing officials to buy a luxury car.
(AP, 10/26/18)
2018 Oct 26, In Mexico members of the migrant caravan began leaving the southern city of Pijijiapan and walking in the pre-dawn darkness to the next stop, Arriaga, 60 miles away. Pres. Pena Nieto announced the launch of what's called the "You are at home" plan in an address directed at migrants. However, migrants traveling in a caravan through southern Mexico rejected the proposal.
(AP, 10/26/18)
2018 Oct 26, A Myanmar judge freed on bail three journalists from the country’s largest private newspaper detained on incitement charges after publishing an article that raised questions over government spending. Reporter Phyo Wai Win, and two editors, Kyaw Zaw Lin and Nayi Min, were arrested on Oct. 10 following a complaint by the regional government in the commercial capital of Yangon.
(Reuters, 10/26/18)
2018 Oct 26, The North and South Korean militaries agreed to completely destroy 22 front-line guard posts by the end of November as they discussed their next steps in implementing a wide-ranging military agreement signed last month to reduce tensions.
(AP, 10/26/18)
2018 Oct 26, Pakistan's army chief approved death sentences for 14 "hardcore terrorists" convicted by military courts for attacks in recent years that killed 19 security forces and three civilians.
(AP, 10/26/18)
2018 Oct 26, Five Palestinians were killed as fresh clashes broke out with Israeli troops on Gaza's border with the Jewish state, despite Egyptian-brokered truce efforts.
(AFP, 10/26/18)
2018 Oct 26, In the Philippines boatloads of tourists sailed to Boracay island, which officials reopened to visitors after a six-month closure to clean waters the president had called a "cesspool" due to years of overcrowding, partying and neglect.
(AP, 10/26/18)
2018 Oct 26, Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) said it had detained six members of an Islamic State cell plotting attacks in Moscow.
(Reuters, 10/26/18)
2018 Oct 26, Singapore hanged Prabu N Pathmanathan, a convicted Malaysian drug trafficker (31), after the city-state rejected last minute efforts to save him.
(AFP, 10/26/18)
2018 Oct 26, The Spanish government said it is moving to ban the high-speed semi-inflatable boats used by traffickers to bring both drugs and migrants across the Strait of Gibraltar to Spain from North Africa.
(AP, 10/26/18)
2018 Oct 26, Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena sacked Ranil Wickremesinghe, the country's prime minister, and replaced him with former strongman Mahinda Rajapaksa.
(AP, 10/26/18)
2018 Oct 26, Syrian regime artillery fire killed seven civilians in Idlib, in the highest death toll since a deal last month to prevent a government assault on the province.
(AFP, 10/26/18)
2018 Oct 26, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan urged Saudi Arabia to disclose who ordered the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul, as well as the location of his body, heightening international pressure on the kingdom to come clean on the case.
(Reuters, 10/26/18)
2018 Oct 26, A Turkish court sentenced a German man to six years and three months in prison for membership in a terrorist organization. The Turkish prosecutor accused Patrick K. (29) of being a member of the Syrian Kurdish YPG, considered by Ankara to be a branch of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).
(Reuters, 10/26/18)
2018 Oct 27, In Ohio former US Sec. of State Colin Powell marked the grand opening of the new National Veterans Museum and Memorial in Columbus. The museum was the vision of late US Sen. John Glenn.
(SSFC, 10/28/18, p.A10)
2018 Oct 27, In Pittsburgh, Pa., Robert Bowers (46) killed eight men and three women inside the Tree of Life Synagogue during worship services before a tactical police team shot and wounded him. Bowers told officers afterward that Jews were committing genocide and that he wanted them all to die.
(AP, 10/28/18)
2018 Oct 27, Afghanistan held parliamentary elections in the southern province of Kandahar, a week late because of the assassination of the provincial police chief by Taliban insurgents. At least five people were killed and 15 more wounded when a suicide bomber detonated a car packed with explosives outside a police compound in central province of Wardak.
(Reuters, 10/27/18)
2018 Oct 27, In Australia protesters rallied in Sydney and Melbourne calling for an end to the country's controversial South Pacific detention centers which house refugees who try to reach Australia by boat. Particular focus was directed toward the wellbeing of children on the tiny island nation of Nauru. More than 1,400 people are being held on the Australian-run detention centers on Nauru and Papua New Guinea, some for years.
(Reuters, 10/27/18)
2018 Oct 27, Former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont launched a new party, as he tries to rally separatists from his base in Belgium.
(AFP, 10/27/18)
2018 Oct 27, In central England Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha, a Thai tycoon and owner of the Leicester City soccer club, was among five people on board a helicopter that crashed and then exploded after a Premier League match. Vichai was the fifth-richest person in Thailand with an estimated net worth of $4.9 billion.
(Reuters, 10/28/18)
2018 Oct 27, Cameroon's Vision 4 TV station, thought to be close to the government, erroneously reported that Gabonese President Ali Bongo Ondimba had died. Days later the privately held station was barred from broadcasting for six months in neighboring Gabon. Libreville authorities said Bongo (59) is in hospital in Saudi Arabia suffering from exhaustion.
(AP, 10/31/18)
2018 Oct 27, China's first attempt to deploy a privately developed rocket capable of carrying a satellite failed. Beijing-based Landspace said that the first and second stage of its ZQ-1 rocket worked normally but something went wrong with the third stage.
(AP, 10/28/18)
2018 Oct 27, In CongoDRC tens of thousands rallied in support of Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary, President Joseph Kabila's preferred successor, two months before an election that could mark the country's first democratic transition of power.
(Reuters, 10/27/18)
2018 Oct 27, Gabon began voting in the second round of legislative elections with the party of President Ali Bongo, whose family has ruled the country for nearly 50 years, coasting towards victory.
(AFP, 10/27/18)
2018 Oct 27, In western Germany protesters blocked a railway line leading to a large strip coal mine near Cologne that has become a cause celebre for environmentalists amid plans to clear part of a neighboring forest to expand the facility.
(AP, 10/27/18)
2018 Oct 27, In southern India protesters set fire to a Hindu religious center in Kerala state for supporting a Supreme Court decision allowing women of menstruating age at one of the world's largest Hindu pilgrimage sites.
(AP, 10/27/18)
2018 Oct 27, In central India at least four Indian paramilitary soldiers were killed in a powerful land mine blast triggered by Maoist rebels in their stronghold in Chhattisgarh state.
(AP, 10/27/18)
2018 Oct 27, In eastern India seven elephants in search of food were electrocuted after coming in contact with loosely hanging electric wires in Orissa state.
(AP, 10/27/18)
2018 Oct 27, In Italy thousands of protesters rallied in the center of Rome over the capital's decrepit infrastructure, as the legal woes of its mayor whetted political appetites on the far right. Demonstrators said Virginia Raggi, the city's first female mayor, was responsible for Rome's pitiful transport service and woeful garbage collection.
(AFP, 10/27/18)
2018 Oct 27, Kashmiris observed 'Black Day' across Pakistan and other parts of the world including in Pakistan's zone of the disputed Himalayan region to mark the Indian occupation dating back to 1947.
(AP, 10/27/18)
2018 Oct 27, Hundreds of Mexican federal officers carrying plastic shields blocked a Central American caravan from advancing toward the United States, after a group of several thousand migrants turned down the chance to apply for refugee status and obtain a Mexican offer of benefits.
(AP, 10/27/18)
2018 Oct 27, In Morocco the tents and belongings of some 1,000 migrants were destroyed by a fire late today, the third at the camp since July 2017.
(Reuters, 10/30/18)
2018 Oct 27, In Nigeria three members of the IMN (IMN) were killed during protests in Abuja. The IMN has staged a series of demonstrations demanding the release of leader Zakzaky, who has been detained since bloody clashes broke out in the northern city of Zaria in 2015.
(AFP, 10/30/18)
2018 Oct 27, Pirates off the coast of Nigeria struck the MV Pomerania Sky, a container ship bound for the Nigerian port of Onne and abducted 11 of the crew, including 8 from Poland.
(Reuters, 10/29/18)
2018 Oct 27, Pakistan's top court reinstated a ban on the broadcast of Indian TV content following a petition from local producers.
(AP, 10/28/18)
2018 Oct 27, Palestinian militants said they would halt attacks into Israel from the Gaza Strip after they fired the heaviest rocket salvoes across the border since August. Israel said its fighter jets struck dozens of targets across Gaza and accused Iranian forces in Damascus of orchestrating the barrages.
(Reuters, 10/27/18)(AP, 10/27/18)
2018 Oct 27, Pakistani police Officer Tahir Khan Dawar disappeared and was presumed abducted by militants. Photographs purporting to show his badly beaten and tortured body surfaced on social media Nov. 14. The body was later found in Afghanistan's volatile Nangarhar province and handed over to Pakistani authorities.
(AP, 11/15/18)
2018 Oct 27, Sri Lanka's president suspended parliament even as ousted PM Ranil Wickremesinghe, fired the previous day, claimed he has majority support, adding to a growing political crisis in the South Asian island nation.
(AP, 10/27/18)
2018 Oct 27, In eastern Syria members of the Islamic State group killed at least 40 US-backed Syrian fighters, captured several alive and regained areas they lost earlier this month over the last 24 hours in Deir el-Zour province near the border with Iraq.
(AP, 10/27/18)
2018 Oct 27, In Taiwan tens of thousands of people gathered in Taipei for the city's annual gay pride parade ahead of referendums next month that will determine whether same-sex marriages will be recognized on the island.
(AP, 10/27/18)
2018 Oct 27, It was reported that Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has appointed new governors to 39 of the country's 81 provinces.
(Reuters, 10/27/18)
2018 Oct 27, The leaders of Turkey, Russia, France and Germany met to try to find a political solution to Syria's devastating civil war, provide access to humanitarian aid and salvage a fragile ceasefire in the country's last major rebel-held bastion.
(AFP, 10/27/18)
2018 Oct 28, In Los Angeles the Boston Red Sox beat the Los Angeles Dodgers 5-1 in Game 5 of the World Series to win the series 4 games to 1. Manager Alex Cora capped off one of the greatest runs by a first-year skipper in leading Boston to the World Series championship.
(AP, 10/29/18)
2018 Oct 28, IBM said it has agreed to buy software maker Red Hat Inc. for $33.4 billion, its biggest ever acquisition to date.
(SFC, 10/29/18, p.D1)
2018 Oct 28, William J. Murtagh (b.1923), the first keeper of the US National Register of Historic Places, died in Florida. He authored the first leading textbook on historical preservation: "The History and Theory of Preservation in America" (1988).
(SFC, 11/7/18, p.C3)
2018 Oct 28, In Abu Dhabi Israel's national anthem was played at a judo tournament after one of its athletes won gold in what was thought to be a first in the Gulf emirate.
(AFP, 10/28/18)
2018 Oct 28, In Albania Konstantinos Kacifa died in an exchange of gunfire with police during an event to celebrate Greece's entry in World War II against Italy. He initially shot in the air, apparently as a celebratory gesture, but later fired at approaching police cars.
(AP, 11/8/18)
2018 Oct 28, Brazil held presidential elections. Voters were picking between far-right Congressman Jair Bolsonaro and former Sao Paulo Mayor Fernando Haddad. Bolsonaro (63) won 55 percent of the run-off vote.
(AP, 10/28/18)(AFP, 10/29/18)
2018 Oct 28, Japan Airlines pilot Katsutoshi Jitsukawa (42) was arrested after the driver of a Heathrow Airport crew bus smelled alcohol and reported it to security officials. Tests later found the first officer had 189 milligrams of alcohol per 100 milliliters of blood in his system, almost 10 times the 20 milligrams limit for a pilot.
(AP, 11/29/18)
2018 Oct 28, Cameroon authorities have released around 50 opposition supporters detained in Douala a day earlier, but also arrested others in Yaounde.
(AFP, 10/28/18)
2018 Oct 28, In southwestern China 15 people were killed after the bus to plunged off a high bridge into the Yangtze River in the western city of Chongqing. A surveillance camera later showed that a fight between a bus driver and a passenger who missed her stop caused the bus to plunge off the high bridge.
(AP, 10/28/18)(AP, 11/2/18)(AP, 11/4/18)
2018 Oct 28, The Czech Republic marked 100 years since the creation of Czechoslovakia with the biggest military parade in its post-communist history, highlighting a weekend of celebrations.
(Reuters, 10/28/18)
2018 Oct 28, Georgians voted for a new president. Former foreign minister Salome Zurabishvili, supported by the ruling Georgian Dream party, was in a close contest with opposition leader Grigol Vashadze, also a former foreign minister. The election went to a run-off after no candidate won the first round. Salome Zurabishvili (66) narrowly led with 38.64 percent of the vote against 37.73 percent for opposition leader Grigol Vashadze.
(AFP, 10/28/18)(AFP, 10/29/18)
2018 Oct 28, Indonesia's anti-graft agency said it has arrested seven people, including a senior executive of palm firm Sinar Mas Agro Resources and Technology, in connection with a bribery case.
(Reuters, 10/28/18)
2018 Oct 28, Iran sold oil to private buyers through its energy exchange for the first time, as part of its efforts to counter the imminent return of US sanctions.
(AFP, 10/28/18)
2018 Oct 28, In Italy former party sympathizers set fire to the 5-Star flag in the southern town of Melendugno to protest at the government's decision to endorse the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) that will bring Azeri gas into Italy via their coastline.
(Reuters, 10/29/18)
2018 Oct 28, In Japan visiting Indian PM Narendra Modi met with Japanese PM Shinzo Abe at a resort area near Mount Fuji reaffirming their ties amid growing worries about trade and regional stability.
(AP, 10/28/18)
2018 Oct 28, Mexican voters in a referendum rejected the completion of a new, partly constructed Mexico City airport by a 70 to 29 percent margin. This effectively ended the $13 billion project that was already one-third built.
(SFC, 10/30/18, p.A2)
2018 Oct 28, A long-awaited reform of Qatar's controversial exit visa system, which requires foreign workers to obtain their bosses' permission to leave the country, came into force.
(AFP, 10/28/18)
2018 Oct 28, Pakistan's President Arif Alvi says the country will not establishing ties with Israel and that it supports the Palestinians because the Gaza Strip has also faced "unprecedented atrocities" like Kashmir.
(AP, 10/28/18)
2018 Oct 28, It was reported that traces of oil have been found along Pakistan's coastline near Karachi. Leakage from an underwater pipeline was suspected and a nearby refinery was ordered to suspend operations.
(SFC, 10/29/18, p.A2)
2018 Oct 28, Palestinian Yahya al-Hassanat (37) died two days after suffering gunshot wounds in clashes on the Israel-Gaza border. The death raised to seven the number of Palestinians killed as a result of the Oct. 26 clashes when thousands again approached the border fence.
(AFP, 10/28/18)
2018 Oct 28, Three Palestinian boys were killed in an Israeli air strike at the Gaza frontier. Israel said it targeted Palestinians trying to blow up part of the fence.
(Reuters, 10/29/18)
2018 Oct 28, Philippine Pres. Rodrigo Duterte put the Bureau of Customs temporarily under military control after two large shipments of illegal drugs slipped past the agency through the port of Manila.
(AP, 10/29/18)
2018 Oct 28, In Sri Lanka a constitutional crisis gripping the country since the president's shock dismissal of PM Ranil Wickremesinghe erupted into violence, with a man shot dead and two others injured in Colombo. Pres. Maithripala Sirisena said that the main reason he decided to sack his prime minister was the alleged involvement of a Cabinet minister in a plot to assassinate him.
(AFP, 10/28/18)(AP, 10/28/18)
2018 Oct 28, Syrian officials, foreign archeologists and restoration specialists attended the reopening ceremony of Syria's National Museum in the heart of Damascus, more than six years after the prominent institution was shut down and emptied as the country's civil war encroached on the capital.
(AP, 10/28/18)
2018 Oct 28, In Syria 72 SDF fighters were reported killed over the last three days as the Islamic State took advantage of a sandstorm that hampered coalition air cover and dispatched suicide bombers as part of their fightback.
(AFP, 10/28/18)
2018 Oct 28, The Turkish army struck Kurdish targets in northern Syria east of the Euphrates River. Artillery strikes hit positions belonging to the Syrian Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) in Zor Moghar.
(AP, 10/28/18)
2018 Oct 28, At the Vatican Pope Francis ended a month-long meeting on the theme of Catholic youth. He told young people that in order to be good members of the Church they should not be obsessed with "doctrinal formulae" but blend its rules with social activism to help those in need.
(Reuters, 10/28/18)
2018 Oct 29, The Trump administration imposed restrictions on technology exports to Fujian Jinhua Integrated Circuit Co., a state-supported Chinese semiconductor maker, citing national security grounds amid a mounting tariff battle.
(AP, 10/30/18)
2018 Oct 29, A study published in JAMA Pediatrics said 75,000 US children and teens suffered gun injuries over nine years. A third of the kids were hospitalized and 6 percent were killed.
(SFC, 10/30/18, p.A5)
2018 Oct 29, In North Carolina Jatwan Craig Cuffie (16) shot and killed fellow student Bobby McKeithen (16) at Butler High School in Matthews.
(SFC, 10/30/18, p.A5)
2018 Oct 29, In South Dakota Rodney Berget (56) was executed for the 2011 slaying of prison guard Ronald Johnson at the state penitentiary in Sioux Falls.
(SFC, 10/30/18, p.A5)
2018 Oct 29, In Afghanistan a suicide bombing targeting the election commission's office in Kabul killed a police officer and wounded five people. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack.
(AP, 10/29/18)
2018 Oct 29, Former Bangladesh PM Khaleda Zia, the leader of the country's opposition, was sentenced to seven years in jail after being found guilty of misusing her power to collect money for a charity named after her late husband. Separately, the Election Commission withdrew the registration of the country's largest Islamist party in another blow for opposition forces.
(AP, 10/29/18)
2018 Oct 29, In Belgium a strike by baggage handlers disrupted flights to and from the main airport for a fifth day.
(AP, 10/29/18)
2018 Oct 29, In England seven men were convicted at Sheffield Crown Court of sexually abusing vulnerable teenagers in a prosecution sparked by revelations of sexual exploitation stretching back years. The perpetrators were mostly men of Pakistani heritage.
(AP, 10/29/18)
2018 Oct 29, In Central African Rep. lawmaker Alfred Yekatom fired into the air in the parliament after an altercation with a colleague as MPs were preparing to vote for a new speaker. Police arrested Yekatom while he was still in the parliament building.
(AFP, 10/29/18)
2018 Oct 29, China's State Council unexpectedly announced that it would allow the sale of rhino and tiger products under "special circumstances". China prohibited the trade of rhino horn and tiger bones in 1993 but a thriving transnational black market has since flourished.
(AFP, 10/30/18)
2018 Oct 29, China's yuan sank to a 10-year low against the dollar, coming close to breaking the politically sensitive level of seven to the US currency. The People's Bank of China has been trying to make its exchange rate mechanism more efficient by increasing the role of market forces.
(AP, 10/29/18)
2018 Oct 29, Angela Merkel announced she will quit as German chancellor when her mandate ends in 2021, as she sought to draw a line under a series of political crises that have rocked her fragile coalition.
(AP, 10/29/18)
2018 Oct 29, Greek youths clashed with police in central Athens as a protest against education reform turned violent when it reached parliament's Syntagma square.
(Reuters, 10/29/18)
2018 Oct 29, In Guinea a "dead city" strike call by the opposition largely emptied the streets of the capital Conakry, with no solution in sight to a pay dispute in the education sector.
(AFP, 10/29/18)
2018 Oct 29, In Indonesia a Lion Air plane crashed into the sea likely killing all 189 people on board. The 2-month-old Boeing 737 MAX 8 jet plunged into the Java Sea early today, just 13 minutes after taking off from Jakarta for an island off Sumatra. The privately owned carrier was founded in 1999 to provide access to air travel to everyone.
(AP, 10/29/18)(AP, 10/30/18)
2018 Oct 29, Israeli forces shot dead a Palestinian man and wounded 25 including two medics during Palestinian protests along the Gaza Strip's beachfront border with Israel.
(Reuters, 10/29/18)
2018 Oct 29, In Myanmar dozens of striking workers from a Chinese-owned garment factory marched to a government compound in Yangon, demanding to meet the city’s chief minister, as part of efforts to get sacked colleagues reinstated.
(Reuters, 10/29/18)
2018 Oct 29, In Nigeria three more IMN supporters were killed during a protest on the outskirts of Abuja.
(AFP, 10/30/18)
2018 Oct 29, Russia sent a high-level official delegation to Venezuela, including a deputy finance minister, to help advise the cash-strapped country on economic reform at a time of crisis.
(Reuters, 10/29/18)
2018 Oct 29, A report by environmental campaign group Greenpeace said South Africa's eastern Mpumalanga province has the most polluting cluster of coal-fired power stations in the world producing record levels of nitrogen dioxide.
(AFP, 10/29/18)
2018 Oct 29, The World Food Program said violence in South Sudan is blocking deliveries of food aid needed to stave off severe hunger in some areas, adding to evidence that a peace deal signed last month is not holding.
(Reuters, 10/29/18)
2018 Oct 29, In Spain hundreds of police backed by a helicopter raided dozens of apartments in Barcelona used for selling and consuming heroin and other drugs, arresting 55 people.
(AFP, 10/29/18)
2018 Oct 29, Ousted Sri Lankan prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe demanded parliament be allowed to choose between the two rivals to run the country's government amid warnings that the constitutional crisis could become a "bloodbath". President Maithripala Sirisena appointed newly appointed PM Mahinda Rajapaksa as the finance minister. Sri Lankan police arrested deposed oil minister Arjuna Ranatunga over a shooting that killed one person on the weekend.
(AFP, 10/29/18)(Reuters, 10/29/18)
2018 Oct 29, In Tunisia a woman (30) blew herself up in the center of Tunis, wounding nine people including eight police in what the Interior Ministry called a "terrorist explosion".
(Reuters, 10/29/18)
2018 Oct 29, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan inaugurated Istanbul's new airport, a megaproject that he has pushed to meet its symbolic deadline. Human Rights has cited at least 38 workplace deaths over the past three years.
(AP, 10/29/18)
2018 Oct 29, UN aid chief Mark Lowcock told the UN Security Council that up to 15,000 people remain within the IS-controlled area and around 7,000 people have in recent weeks been displaced by fighting from Hajin, the last major stronghold of Islamic State in Syria on the eastern bank of the Euphrates River.
(AP, 10/29/18)
2018 Oct 30, US Pres. Donald Trump said he wants to end the constitutional right to citizenship for babies born in the United States to non-citizens" they're saying I can do it with just an executive order".
(SFC, 10/31/18, p.A7)
2018 Oct 30, The US Pentagon said it is deploying 5,200 troops to the Southwest border in an extraordinary military operation a week before nationwide elections in which President Donald Trump wants voters to focus on what he calls an "invasion" — a slow-moving caravan of Central American migrants.
(AP, 10/30/18)
2018 Oct 30, Hawaii's Supreme Court upheld a decision to grant a construction permit for the Thirty Meter Telescope planned for Mauna Kea on the Big Island.
(SFC, 10/31/18, p.A5)
2018 Oct 30, Boston gangster James "whitey" Bulger (89) was found dead in his cell one day after being transferred to the West Virginia federal prison. He was apparently beaten to death by at least two fellow inmates.
(SFC, 10/31/18, p.A5)
2018 Oct 30, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said five members of the Afghan Taliban who were freed from the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay in exchange for captured American army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl have joined the insurgent group's political office in Qatar.
(AP, 10/30/18)
2018 Oct 30, Bangladesh and Myanmar agreed to begin by November the repatriation of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims who fled to Bangladesh to escape a Myanmar army crackdown, though doubts about a speedy return are likely to persist.
(Reuters, 10/30/18)
2018 Oct 30, Bulgarian authorities said they have busted a criminal ring run by state officials who sold fake documents to foreigners seeking to obtain Bulgarian passports that grant the right to live and work throughout the EU. Prosecutors pressed charges against the head of the State Agency for Bulgarians Abroad, Petar Haralampiev, who was arrested along with 20 other agency officials in police raids across the country.
(AP, 10/30/18)
2018 Oct 30, In Cameroon Charles Trumann Wesco, a missionary from the US state of Indiana had been in the region with his wife Stephanie and eight children for nearly two weeks before he was shot in the head and died amid fighting between armed separatists and soldiers the northwest. The military killed at least four suspects in Wesco's death and arrested many others.
(AP, 10/31/18)
2018 Oct 30, China defended its controversial decision to ease a 25-year ban on trading tiger bones and rhinoceros horns after conservationists warned that the government had effectively signed a "death warrant" for the endangered species.
(AFP, 10/30/18)
2018 Oct 30, Chinese state media said searchers have recovered the bodies of all 21 miners who died in the Oct. 20 coal mine collapse in Shandong province.
(AP, 10/30/18)
2018 Oct 30, Heavy snowfall across south-central France, with up to 40 centimeters (16 inches) falling in some towns and villages, has caused chaos on the roads and knocked out electricity to nearly 200,000 homes.
(Reuters, 10/30/18)
2018 Oct 30, In Germany Chancellor Angela Merkel opened the G20 Compact with Africa meeting saying it's critical "not only to talk about Africa but to talk with Africa" about development needs and goals. So far 11 countries have joined the program: Benin, Ivory Coast, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, Morocco, Rwanda, Senegal, Togo and Tunisia.
(AP, 10/30/18)
2018 Oct 30, A German court ordered the release of former Audi CEO Rupert Stadler, on condition that he refrain from contact with people relevant to the investigation, more than four months after he was arrested in an investigation into the manipulation of diesel emissions controls.
(AP, 10/30/18)
2018 Oct 30, German police arrested a Russian man (43) suspected of smuggling some 12 million cigarettes into the country from 2009-2011.
(AP, 11/1/18)
2018 Oct 30, More than 1,000 migrants forged across the river from Guatemala and began walking through southern Mexico reaching the city of Tapachula, some 250 miles behind a larger group moving toward the US border.
(SFC, 10/31/18, p.A2)
2018 Oct 30, Hong Kong journalist Louis Cha (94), a best-selling Chinese martial arts novelist, died after a long illness. Cha's novels about ancient Chinese swordsmen have sold millions and are among the most widely read in the Chinese-speaking world.
(AP, 10/30/18)
2018 Oct 30, In central India Maoist rebels killed a cameraman working for a state-run television channel and two policemen in an ambush in Chhattisgarh state.
(AP, 10/30/18)
2018 Oct 30, The Constitutional Court of Ingushetia ruled to invalidate a deal that was signed last month by the leaders of that region and Chechnya. It also said that the deal cannot be implemented unless it is put up to vote at a referendum.
(AP, 10/30/18)
2018 Oct 30, In northern Iraq American and Iraqi forces in Salahuddin province killed five IS leaders and more than 30 other militants. The leaders killed in the raid were responsible for coordinating attacks across northern and western Iraq.
(AP, 11/11/18)
2018 Oct 30, Israelis voted in municipal elections across the country. None of the six candidates for mayor of Jerusalem, all Jewish, won the 40 percent of votes required to be elected in the first round. A runoff between the top two will be held on November 13. In comparatively liberal Tel Aviv, Labor mayor Ron Huldai was elected to a fifth five-year term.
(AP, 10/30/18)(AFP, 10/31/18)
2018 Oct 30, In Italy the death toll from fierce storms battering the country rose to at least 11, as wild weather swept parts of Europe, leaving motorists and tourists stranded. In Venice winds drove the high tide to more than 61 inches above average sea level, one of the highest levels ever recorded.
(AFP, 10/30/18)(SFC, 10/31/18, p.A2)
2018 Oct 30, The Maldives Supreme Court suspended a 13-year jail sentence given to Mohamed Nasheed, the country's exiled former president, until it reviews his conviction as requested by the prosecutor general.
(AP, 10/30/18)
2018 Oct 30, Nigerian police fired shots and tear gas at thousands of supporters of an imprisoned Shiite cleric in Abuja.
(AFP, 10/30/18)
2018 Oct 30, In Norway British PM Theresa May and Norway's PM Erna Solberg said British citizens already living in Norway and Norwegian citizens living in Britain will have the right to remain residents, even in case of a no-deal Brexit.
(Reuters, 10/30/18)
2018 Oct 30, In Pakistan Arshad Jamal (35) opened fire from a rifle, killing his mother, his brother's wife and her 3-year-old son amid a family feud over property inheritance. Jamal fired again and killed his cousin, who tried to stop him, before fleeing the scene in the northwestern town of Charsadda.
(AP, 10/30/18)
2018 Oct 30, Typhoon Yutu blew across the northern Philippines setting off landslides that left at least six people dead.
(AP, 10/30/18)
2018 Oct 30, A Danish man was arrested in South Africa on suspicion of having played a key role in a fraud case that caused a Danish government welfare agency to lose at least 111 million-kroner ($17 million). Britta Nielsen (64) remained the main suspect. She has vanished from Denmark and her whereabouts were unknown.
(AP, 11/1/18)
2018 Oct 30, South Korea's Supreme Court ruled that Nippon Steel should compensate four South Koreans $89,000 for forced labor during Japan's colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula before the end of World War II. Japanese PM Shinzo Abe said the ruling violated a 1965 treaty between Seoul and Tokyo that was accompanied by Japanese payments to restore diplomatic ties.
(AP, 10/30/18)(SFC, 2/14/19, p.A5)
2018 Oct 30, In Sri Lanka more than ten thousand people marched in Colombo to demand the president immediately convene Parliament to resolve a deepening political crisis following his sacking of the prime minister.
(AP, 10/30/18)
2018 Oct 31, Willie McCovey (80), the Hall of Fame first baseman who spent 10 of his 22 major-league seasons with the SF Giants, died at Stanford Hospital.
(SFC, 11/1/18, p.A1)
2018 Oct 31, An Afghan army helicopter crashed in bad weather in the western Farah province, killing all 25 people on board.
(AP, 10/31/18)
2018 Oct 31, Albanian police said they have arrested five people suspected of trafficking migrants from Greece to Montenegro following a months-long investigation.
(AP, 10/31/18)
2018 Oct 31, The Austrian government said that it won't sign a global compact to promote safe and orderly migration, citing concerns about national sovereignty as it joined neighboring Hungary in shunning the agreement. The Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration was approved in July by all 193 member nations except the United States, which backed out last year.
(AP, 10/31/18)(Reuters, 10/31/18)
2018 Oct 31, In Belgium unions and management found agreement to end a six-day strike by baggage handlers that has disrupted flights to and from the main airport for part of the autumn holiday season.
(AP, 10/31/18)
2018 Oct 31, About 2,000 migrants began walking north from El Salvador's capital, the latest of several groups trying to reach the United States, even as President Donald Trump increases pressure to halt the flow of people.
(Reuters, 10/31/18)
2018 Oct 31, In Greece John Macris (46), a Greek-Australian married to a model who appeared on a Greek reality TV show, was shot and killed as he left his home in Voula in his car this evening in a seaside suburb of Athens. Australian media have described Macris as having been involved in Sydney's organized crime scene.
(AP, 11/1/18)
2018 Oct 31, Iceland's Foreign Ministry said Icelandic citizens in Britain and British citizens in Iceland will keep their residence rights after Brexit, even in the case of no deal with the European Union.
(Reuters, 10/31/18)
2018 Oct 31, India's PM Narendra Modi unveiled a towering bronze statue of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, a key independence leader being promoted as a national icon in the ruling party's campaign ahead of next year's general elections.
(AP, 10/31/18)
2018 Oct 31, Iraq's Shi'ite paramilitaries, also known as the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), said in a statement that they had killed two IS commanders in the border area who were responsible for an attack last week on US-backed Syrian Kurdish forces along the Iraq-Syria border.
(Reuters, 10/31/18)
2018 Oct 31, An operation in northern Iraq by American and Iraqi forces killed around 20 IS fighters in the Makhmour Mountains.
(AP, 11/11/18)
2018 Oct 31, Italian news agency ANSA reported that prosecutors were focusing on whether the remains found in an annex of the Holy See's embassy in Rome could be linked either to Mirella Gregori, or to Emanuela Orlandi, two 15-year-old girls who went missing in 1983.
(AP, 10/31/18)
2018 Oct 31, Mexico's Supreme Court issued two more rulings in individual cases establishing a precedent that a blanket prohibition on recreational marijuana use is unconstitutional.
(SFC, 11/1/18, p.A2)
2018 Oct 31, Millions of people in Mexico City prepared to be without water for at least four days as authorities began maintenance work on one of the major supply systems. The system won't return to full capacity until November 8.
(AFP, 10/31/18)
2018 Oct 31, In northeast Nigeria suspected members of the Islamist Boko Haram insurgency killed at least 15 people late today in an attack on a group of villages.
(Reuters, 11/1/18)
2018 Oct 31, In Norway Anne-Elisabeth Falkevik Hagen (68) married to a real estate and energy magnate, disappeared from her home in Lorenskog. Ten weeks later police said a ransom demand for $10.3 million in cryptocurrency has been received for the missing woman.
(AP, 1/9/19)
2018 Oct 31, Pakistan's top court acquitted a Christian woman who was sentenced to death under the country's controversial blasphemy law, a landmark ruling that sparked protests by hard-line Islamists and raised fears of violence. Asia Bibi had been on death row since 2010.
(AP, 10/31/18)
2018 Oct 31, In the northern Philippines rescuers pulled out four bodies and four survivors, but at least 19 others remained missing after a massive Typhoon Yutu triggered landslide crashed down on two government buildings.
(AP, 10/31/18)
2018 Oct 31, Russia opened an investigation into suspected terrorism after a 17-year-old youth blew himself up in the lobby of an office belonging to Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) in the northern city of Arkhangelsk. On Nov. 6 a Moscow court arrested a 14-year-old boy believed to be linked to the bomb attack.
(Reuters, 10/31/18)(AP, 11/6/18)
2018 Oct 31, In South Africa Patricia De Lille (67), the mayor of Cape Town, resigned amid a bitter dispute roiling the country's main opposition in the runup to 2019 elections. Her seven-year tenure has been marred by allegations of corruption and financial mismanagement that have threatened to tarnish Cape Town's reputation.
(AFP, 10/31/18)
2018 Oct 31, In South Sudan opposition leader Riek Machar returned to Juba to take part in a nationwide peace celebration after fleeing South Sudan more than two years ago. To further reinforce the peace deal, President Salva Kiir ordered the release of a jailed advisor to Machar, and a spokesman to his rebel group.
(AP, 10/31/18)(Reuters, 10/31/18)
2018 Oct 31, Sweden offered to host talks between Yemen's warring parties as Washington called for an urgent halt to hostilities and the UN special envoy ramped up efforts to revive discussions that failed nearly two months ago.
(AP, 10/31/18)
2018 Oct 31, A Syrian medical official said a new mass grave was discovered in the northern city of Raqqa that until last year was a stronghold and the de facto capital of IS. The new mass grave includes more than 1,500 bodies who were killed by airstrikes of the US-led coalition that gave cover to US-backed Syrian fighters who captured Raqqa from IS in October last year.
(AP, 11/1/18)
2018 Oct 31, In Tanzania Dar es Salaam's administrative chief Paul Makonda said that a special committee would seek to identify and punish homosexuals, prostitutes and online fraudsters in the city from this week.
(AP, 11/4/18)
2018 Oct 31, Venezuela named Army General Manuel Cristophe as the new chief of its state intelligence agency, following the death of a politician in custody that was officially ruled a suicide but critics called a murder. Cristopher replaced outgoing Sebin chief Gustavo Gonzalez.
(Reuters, 10/31/18)
2018 Oct, US federal authorities armed with a secret indictment arrested Iranian Prof. Masoud Soleimani as he touched down on US soil, on charges that he had violated trade sanctions by trying to have biological material brought to Iran. Soleimani had plans to complete the final stage of his research on treating stroke patients as a visiting scholar at the prestigious Mayo Clinic in Minnesota.
(AP, 7/7/19)
2018 Oct, Wells Fargo agreed to a $65 million settlement with New York state for opening unauthorized accounts in customers' names.
(SFC, 12/29/18, p.D3)
2018 Oct, In Afghanistan a week of clashes late this month killed at least 21 people in the central province of Uruzgan. Taliban fighters attacked a remote cluster of Hazara villages after they refused to pay tax to the insurgents.
(Reuters, 11/3/18)
2018 Oct, In Ethiopia the secessionist Ogaden National Liberation Front group declared a unilateral ceasefire this month in the Somali Region in the wake of reforms. The province holds four trillion cubic feet of oil and gas reserves, government estimates show. China’s GCL-Poly Petroleum Investments has been developing two gas fields there since 2013.
(AP, 10/19/18)
2018 Oct, Iran jailed Dr. Kylie Moore-Gilbert, a Cambridge-educated academic specializing in Middle Eastern politics. The British-Australian woman was later sentenced to 10 years in Evin prison. Her detention was not reported until 2019.
(The Telegraph, 9/13/19)
2018 Oct, CEO Katie Meyler (37) started her leave of absence after ProPublica reported that former staffer Macintosh Johnson had sexually assaulted students at a More Than Me branch in the Liberian capital of Monrovia. Meyler resigned six months later. Johnson had AIDS and died in jail in 2016 while awaiting trial.
(AP, 4/21/19)
2018 Oct, In Myanmar the Karen National Union (KNU) and the Restoration Council of Shan State (RCSS) withdrew from the 2015 Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement (NCA) drawn up under Thein Sein.
(Econ., 8/22/20, p.31)
2018 Oct, At The Hague four alleged members of Russia's GRU military intelligence agency were caught red-handed with a car full of electronic gear in a carpark next to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.
(AFP, 10/6/18)
2018 Oct, Valery Alemchenko, a former convict who worked for Yevgeny Prigozhin, a Russian businessman who has been indicted by American investigators for allegedly trying to interfere with the 2016 US election, disappeared early this month. Alemchenko had recently told a reporter that he orchestrated attacks on Prigozhin's opponents as well as the killing of an opposition blogger in northwest Russia, all at the mogul's behalf.
(AP, 10/22/18)
2018 Oct, Russia's National Guard, which polices anti-government protests, received delivery of two vehicles fitted with a laser and a sonic sound system to disorient people. News of this raised fears among the opposition they could be used to disperse peaceful protesters.
(Reuters, 11/22/18)
2018 Oct, Saudi Arabia's King Salman ordered the resumption of annual bonus payments to all government workers from the beginning of next year. The bonuses had been suspended under austerity measures in 2016 amid low oil prices.
(AFP, 11/6/18)
2018 Oct, Serbia sold agricultural company Poljoprivredna Korporacija Beograd (PKB) to United Arab Emirates-based Al Dahra Agricultural Company for 105.05 million euros ($118.98 million).
(Reuters, 3/5/19)
2018 Oct, In Somalia a top Islamic State leader was killed by a suspected al-Shabab death squad in Mogadishu. This indicated the start of a bloody feud between the two groups.
(SFC, 12/7/18, p.A4)
2018 Nov 1, The US Justice Department charged fugitive Malaysian financier Low Taek Jho, also known as Jho Low, in a money laundering and bribery scheme that pilfered billions of dollars from a Malaysian investment fund created to promote economic development projects in that country. Also charged was a Goldman Sachs banker, Tim Leissner, who pleaded guilty to money laundering conspiracy and to conspiring to violating foreign bribery laws.
(AP, 11/1/18)
2018 Nov 1, Tennessee executed Edmund Zagorski (63) for killing two men during a drug-deal-turned-robbery in 1983. Zagorski was strapped into the stout wooden chair nicknamed 'Old Sparky' and put to death for shooting and slitting the throats of two men during the drug deal. Zagorski had told the state he'd rather die in the electric chair than receive a lethal injection. Since then, the state has executed two other inmates by electrocution, bringing the total to three in the past year.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Zagorski)(SFC, 11/2/18, p.A6)(AP, 10/25/19)
2018 Nov 1, Google employees held a wave of walkouts around the world to protest the internet company’s handling of sexual harassment. In Ireland hundreds of employees walked out of Google's European headquarters in Dublin as part of a global campaign over the US tech giant's handling of sexual harassment. Amit Singhal, a former search chief, left the company in 2016 after being accused of groping a female. The Google board had approved a $45 million settlement for him. Andy Rubin, who used to head the Android division, had left the company after being accused of sexual misconduct. His exit package was $90 million.
(http://tinyurl.com/y7fsfyst)(AP, 11/1/18)(SFC, 3/13/19, p.D4)
2018 Nov 1, Scientists said the world's oceans have absorbed 60 percent more heat than previously thought over the last quarter of a century. Soon after publication, an independent climate scientist, one who has repeatedly voiced skepticism of the consensus that human behavior is causing global warming, spotted an error in the Nature paper's maths.
(AFP, 11/1/18)(AFP, 11/23/18)
2018 Nov 1, In Afghanistan a massive fire destroyed hundreds of stores late today at a market in central Kabul. All the stores had closed and no casualties were reported.
(SFC, 11/3/18, p.A2)
2018 Nov 1, Australia announced it will invest in redeveloping a Papua New Guinea naval base as concerns mount over increasing Chinese influence in the South Pacific.
(AP, 11/1/18)
2018 Nov 1, Australia said it aims to remove all asylum seeker children from Nauru within two months as concerns escalate about their deteriorating health after languishing on the tiny Pacific atoll nation for up to five years.
(AP, 11/1/18)
2018 Nov 1, Brazilian Judge Sergio Moroat, at the center of one of the largest corruption investigations in history, said he will become justice minister in the incoming government of President-elect Jair Bolsonaro.
(AP, 11/1/18)
2018 Nov 1, British immigration officials found a group of 21 Vietnamese illegal immigrants hidden inside a truck transporting sparkling water from France to Britain.
(AP, 11/7/18)
2018 Nov 1, In restive southwestern Cameroon separatist militants attacked workers on a state-run rubber plantation, chopping off their fingers because the men had defied an order to stay away from the farms.
(AP, 11/2/18)
2018 Nov 1, In China Salvadoran President Salvador Sanchez Ceren met with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, just months after the small Central American nation broke its diplomatic ties with Taiwan.
(AP, 11/1/18)
2018 Nov 1, The Ebola outbreak in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo has claimed 180 lives, according to the health ministry, with 10 more reported deaths in recent days.
(AFP, 11/2/18)
2018 Nov 1, Greek authorities arrested eight suspected members of a criminal organization that smuggled migrants from Greece to Italy by yacht.
(AP, 11/2/18)
2018 Nov 1, India's environment minister blamed the Delhi government and its neighboring states for failing in their efforts to check air pollution which today was six times above the recommended limit, posing severe health risks.
(Reuters, 11/1/18)
2018 Nov 1, In northern Italy trees covering the mountainsides in the Dolomites range were reduced to matchsticks, flattened by winds that tore through the Veneto region as storms killed five people. The fatalities brought to 18 the number of people killed by bad weather in Italy since the start of the week.
(AFP, 11/2/18)
2018 Nov 1, Macedonia's criminal court ordered the temporary freezing of property belonging to the main conservative opposition party as part of an investigation into allegations of unlawful political financing.
(AP, 11/1/18)
2018 Nov 1, Mohamed Nasheed, the first democratically elected president of the Maldives, returned home after more than two years in exile to escape a long prison term.
(AP, 11/1/18)
2018 Nov 1, Thousands of Central American migrants resumed their slow trek through southern Mexico. Activists aiding the group said they were shifting their route toward the Gulf coast, a path closer to the Texas border.
(AP, 11/1/18)
2018 Nov 1, A court in the Netherlands banned Ryanair from transferring 16 pilots overseas following the closure of its Dutch base in Eindhoven, saying that the move appeared to be a reprisal by the budget carrier for strikes by Dutch employees.
(AP, 11/1/18)
2018 Nov 1, The Russian government published a list of 322 individuals and 68 companies in the Ukraine who will have their assets — if they have any — frozen, in a largely symbolic gesture in the ongoing conflict between the two countries.
(AP, 11/1/18)
2018 Nov 1, South Korea's top court ruled that South Korean men can legally reject their mandatory military service on conscientious or religious grounds without punishment.
(AP, 11/1/18)
2018 Nov 1, Turkish and US forces started joint patrols in the Manbij region of northern Syria. In June Turkey agreed a plan with the United States under which the two countries would jointly maintain security and stability there.
(Reuters, 11/1/18)
2018 Nov 1, The Saudi-backed Yemeni government said it was ready to work on confidence-building measures under UN-led peace efforts as the United States pressed for an end to a war that has pushed Yemen to the brink of starvation.
(Reuters, 11/1/18)
2018 Nov 1, In Syria jihadists killed four pro-regime fighters in Idlib province, the rebel stronghold where Russia and Turkey have agreed to set up a buffer zone.
(AFP, 11/1/18)
2018 Nov 1, The UN General Assembly vote 189-2 to approve a resolution condemning the American embargo of Cuba. The US and Israel voted no. Moldova and Ukraine did not vote.
(SFC, 11/2/18, p.A2)
2018 Nov 1, The UN children's agency said over seven million children face a serious threat of famine in Yemen and ending the country's war will not save all of them.
(AFP, 11/1/18)
2018 Nov 2, The United States lifted sanctions on two top officials in Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan's cabinet, a sign of improved relations after Turkey freed an American pastor from detention three weeks ago.
(Reuters, 11/2/18)
2018 Nov 2, US immigration officials said Dias Kadyrbayev, a college friend of Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, has been deported to his native Kazakhstan after he was convicted of concealing evidence in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing.
(AP, 11/2/18)
2018 Nov 2, The United States said it will temporarily allow eight importers to keep buying Iranian oil when it re-imposes sanctions on Nov. 5 to try to force Iran to curb its nuclear, missile and regional activities.
(Reuters, 11/3/18)
2018 Nov 2, The US Trade Representative's Office (USTR) said President Donald Trump intends to end trade benefits for Mauritania on Jan. 1 for not making sufficient progress on ending forced labor practices.
(Reuters, 11/3/18)
2018 Nov 2, In Florida a gunman killed two people and wounded three others at a Tallahassee yoga studio. He then fatally shot himself.
(SFC, 11/3/18, p.A7)
2018 Nov 2, In Maryland part of an Amazon distribution warehouse collapsed in Baltimore as strong winds tore through the state. Two people were killed when a 50-ffot wall collapsed at the warehouse.
(SSFC, 11/4/18, p.A13)
2018 Nov 2, Acclaimed jazz trumpeter Roy Hargrove (b.1969) died in NYC following a long fight with kidney disease.
(SFC, 11/5/18, p.A5)
2018 Nov 2, Argentina's National University of La Matanza revealed that a team of Spanish and Argentine paleontologists have discovered the remains of a dinosaur that lived 110 million years ago in the center of the country. The new species from the herbivorous group of sauropods has been named Lavocatisaurus agrioensis.
(AP, 11/3/18)
2018 Nov 2, China's the foreign ministry said President Xi Jinping had an "extremely positive" phone conversation with US Pres. Donald Trump about trade and other issues.
(AP, 11/2/18)
2018 Nov 2, In China Dominican Republic President Danilo Medina met with Chinese President Xi Jinping after a formal welcome ceremony at the Great Hall of the People.
(AP, 11/2/18)
2018 Nov 2, China promised to support Pakistan's economy as visiting PM Imran Khan spoke of his country's "very difficult" economic situation amid a burgeoning financial crisis.
(AP, 11/2/18)
2018 Nov 2, In Egypt masked men opened fire on three buses from different directions. Seven people were killed in the ambush by Islamic State militants of buses carrying pilgrims to St. Samuel the Confessor desert monastery near Minya.
(AP, 11/3/18)
2018 Nov 2, Hong Kong organizers of an exhibition by dissident Chinese-Australian cartoonist Badiucao canceled the exhibition in the Chinese-ruled city given what they said were threats by China. The exhibition by Badiucao was to have been his first international solo event.
(Reuters, 11/2/18)
2018 Nov 2, In India a man-eating tiger that stalked the hills of Maharashtra state was killed after an attempt to tranquilize her failed. She was suspected of killing at least 13 villagers.
(SSFC, 11/4/18, p.A6)
2018 Nov 2, In Indonesia thousands of conservative Muslims protested Jakarta about the burning of an Islamic flag last month, sparking criticism from the government's top security minister that the country was in mourning after a plane crash and back-to-back natural disasters.
(AP, 11/2/18)
2018 Nov 2, Indonesian rescue diver Syachrul Anto (48) died while diving to search for victims of the crashed Lion Air aircraft.
(Reuters, 11/3/18)
2018 Nov 2, In Mexico four people were slain at a funeral home in Iguala, Guerrero state. The attack was believed to be related to an incident the previous day in which three other people were killed.
(AP, 11/3/18)
2018 Nov 2, In Mexico a third caravan of 1,000 to 1,500 people, this time from El Salvador, entered the country hoping to reach the US border.
(SFC, 11/3/18, p.A2)
2018 Nov 2, North Korea warned it could revive a state policy aimed at strengthening its nuclear arsenal if the US does not lift economic sanctions against the country.
(AP, 11/3/18)
2018 Nov 2, In Pakistan prominent cleric Maulana Samiul Haq (81), head of his faction of the Jamiat-e-Ulema Islam party, was killed in a knife attack at his home in the garrison city of Rawalpindi. Haq was known as 'father of the Taliban'.
(AP, 11/2/18)(AP, 11/3/18)
2018 Nov 2, Islamists held rallies across Pakistan against freedom for Asia Bibi and to denounce the Oct. 31 Supreme Court ruling that overturned her 2010 conviction of insulting the Prophet Muhammad. Her release was apparently delayed after talks failed between the government and radical Islamists who want her publicly hanged.
(AP, 11/2/18)
2018 Nov 2, A senior Palestinian official condemned Brazilian far-right President-elect Jair Bolsonaro's announcement a day earlier that he would move his country's Israel embassy to Jerusalem.
(AFP, 11/2/18)
2018 Nov 2, Russian President Vladimir Putin met Cuba's President Miguel Diaz-Canel who was making his first official visit to long-term ally Moscow.
(AFP, 11/2/18)
2018 Nov 2, Ousted Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said there is credible evidence that his replacement is attempting to buy support in parliament ahead of an expected vote of confidence when it reconvenes.
(AP, 11/2/18)
2018 Nov 2, Syrian government shelling of a rebel-held area in the northwestern Idlib province killed at least eight people in the latest and deadliest violation of a truce in the area reached two months ago.
(AP, 11/2/18)
2018 Nov 2, Turkey lifted sanctions on the US Secretary of Homeland Security and Attorney General, minutes after Washington removed two Turkish ministers from its sanctions list.
(Reuters, 11/2/18)
2018 Nov 2, The World Bank reported that it will cost Colombia upward of $1 billion to tend to the surge of Venezuelan migrants fleeing their nation's economic and humanitarian crisis.
(AP, 11/3/18)
2018 Nov 2, Vietnam's PM In and French PM Edouard Philippe witnessed the signing of two business deals in Hanoi worth over $10 billion and dozens of other cooperation agreements covering energy, education, health, technology and the environment.
(AP, 11/2/18)
2018 Nov 2, In Yemen a Saudi-led coalition fighting Shiite Houthi rebels bombed an air base adjacent to the Sanaa international airport allegedly being used by the rebels to launch drone and ballistic missile attacks.
(AP, 11/2/18)
2018 Nov 3, In California Laudemer Arboleda (33) was shot and killed by Danville Office Andrew Hall. Arboleda had led Danville police on a slow-speed pursuit after someone called the police in response to the Newark man knocking on their door. In 2021 a jury convicted Hall of assault. His mother received $4.9 million to settle a federal civil rights lawsuit.
(SFC, 10/28/21, p.C1)(https://tinyurl.com/fhw8ssm)
2018 Nov 3, A Florida boy (15) was charged with the strangulation death of his mother after the body of Gail Cleavanger (46) was found under a church fire pit in DeBary.
(SSFC, 11/4/18, p.A13)
2018 Nov 3, In Chicago one railroad worker was killed and another seriously hurt when an acetylene tank on truck exploded near a commuter rail line station.
(SFC, 11/5/18, p.A5)
2018 Nov 3, In Texas newlyweds Will Byler and Bailee Ackerman were killed along with a pilot in a helicopter crash hours after they were married at a rach in Uvalde.
(SFC, 11/6/18, p.A6)
2018 Nov 3, In Wisconsin three Girl Scouts and an adult were killed while collecting trash on a rural highway. A pickup truck veered off the road and hit them and sped away. Driver Colton Treu (21) of Chippewa Falls surrendered later. Treu was accused of inhaling chemical vapors before the crash and faced homicide charges. On March 11, 2020, Treu was sentenced to 54 years in prison.
(SFC, 11/5/18, p.A5)(SFC, 11/7/18, p.A4)(NBC News, 3/12/20)
2018 Nov 3, In Afghanistan Maj. Brent Taylor (39) was fatally shot by one of his Afghan trainees in Kabul. Another US military member was wounded. Initial reports indicated the attacker was immediately killed by other Afghan Forces. In 2020 an Army report said Afghan commando Sgt. Asfar Khan (20) had planned the killing for weeks. Taylor was the Utah mayor of Ogden serving in the National Guard.
(Reuters, 11/3/18)(AP, 11/5/18)(AP, 6/8/20)
2018 Nov 3, China said it was willing to offer assistance to Pakistan to help it weather its current fiscal woes but that terms of such aid are still being discussed. Pakistani PM Imran Khan met with his Chinese counterpart Li Keqiang in Beijing.
(AP, 11/3/18)(AFP, 11/3/18)
2018 Nov 3, In China at least 14 people were killed and 27 injured late today in a highway pile-up after a heavy truck lost control and crashed into a line of vehicles waiting at a toll station in the northwestern province of Gansu.
(AP, 11/4/18)
2018 Nov 3, Chinese photographer Lu Guang was traveling in Xinjiang when his wife lost contact with him. He had connected with photographers in Urumqi one week before and was scheduled to meet a friend in Sichuan province on Nov.
(AP, 11/28/18)
2018 Nov 3, In eastern CongoDRC rebels late today killed at least seven civilians and abducted 15 others, including children, in fresh raids in the North Kivu region bordering Uganda.
(AFP, 11/4/18)
2018 Nov 3, The Dominican Republic opened its embassy in Beijing, months after cutting ties with Taiwan amid a Chinese diplomatic offensive that aims to politically isolate the island it claims as its own territory.
(AP, 11/3/18)
2018 Nov 3, In Egypt President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi's World Youth Forum opened in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.
(AP, 11/3/18)
2018 Nov 3, In Egypt security forces killed 19 militants suspected of involvement in an attack the previous day killed at least seven Christians near the Monastery of St Samuel the Confessor in Minya.
(AP, 11/4/18)(Reuters, 12/8/18)
2018 Nov 3, In Hong Kong Raymond Chow (91), film producer, died. He is credited with bringing kung fu legend Bruce Lee to the silver screen and widely regarded as the "godfather" of Hong Kong cinema. He produced more than 170 films over his career.
(AFP, 11/3/18)
2018 Nov 3, Iran inaugurated the production line of its domestically produced fighter jet. Some military experts believe the fighter jet is a carbon copy of an F-5 first produced in the United States in the 1960s.
(Reuters, 11/3/18)
2018 Nov 3, Iraqi officials said jihadists have killed three village chiefs in less than a week in Kirkuk province.
(AFP, 11/3/18)
2018 Nov 3, In southern Mexico thousands of Central American migrants traveling in a caravan resumed their journey toward the United States by hitchhiking and walking along highways, after a governor reneged on a brief offer to provide dozens of buses to take them to Mexico City more quickly.
(AP, 11/3/18)
2018 Nov 3, Voters in several parts of Myanmar went to the polls in 13 by-elections seen as a test of support for leader Aung San Suu Kyi and her ruling party. The party of Aung San Suu Kyi was defeated in six constituencies, showing uneven support for her government after a string of controversies. The ruling National League for Democracy (NLD) won at least six seats to fill 13 of the 1,171 seats in national, regional and state parliaments.
(AP, 11/3/18)(AFP, 11/4/18)(AP, 11/5/18)
2018 Nov 3, Nigeria's main Shiite Muslim movement said the army killed at least 50 of its members who were protesting this week. Nigeria's military said it killed six people and claims the protesters had fired first.
(AP, 11/3/18)
2018 Nov 3, In Pakistan nationwide protests triggered by a Christian woman's acquittal on blasphemy charges ended following an overnight deal between Islamists and the government. Under the agreement Asia Bibi may not leave the country until the Pakistan Supreme Court's ruling is reviewed. Her lawyer, Saiful Mulook, left Pakistan and fled to the Netherlands, due to fear that he could be attacked after Bibi's conviction was overturned days earlier.
(AP, 11/3/18)(Reuters, 11/5/18)
2018 Nov 3, In the Philippines Sister Patricia Anne Fox, an Australian nun who angered the Philippine president by joining anti-government protests, used her final hours in the country to call on Filipinos to unite and fight human rights abuses.
(AP, 11/3/18)
2018 Nov 3, In Sicily a family of nine drowned overnight after a swollen river on a plain near the coastal town of Casteldaccia submerged their holiday villa in water and mud in seconds, leaving them no chance for escape.
(AFP, 11/6/18)
2018 Nov 3, A jury in Spain found Patrick Nogueira (21), a Brazilian man, guilty of killing his aunt, uncle and two young cousins in 2016 and ruled unanimously that the slayings were premeditated.
(AP, 11/4/18)
2018 Nov 3, Russia said that Afghan President Ashraf Ghani had agreed to send a group of senior politicians to peace talks in Moscow, at which a delegation representing the Taliban would be present.
(Reuters, 11/3/18)
2018 Nov 3, Spanish police said they have busted a crime ring that cloned credit cards and was headed by an Algerian man (49) man who had previously been found guilty of helping finance the September 11, 2001 attacks.
(AP, 11/3/18)
2018 Nov 3, In Sri Lanka an ethnic minority Tamil party said that it will support a no-confidence motion to be brought against Mahinda Rajapaksa, the country's former strongman, whose controversial appointment as prime minister has plunged the country into a political crisis.
(AP, 11/3/18)
2018 Nov 3, In eastern Syria 14 civilians and nine IS jihadists were reported killed in coalition air strikes in Hajin and the nearby towns of Sousa and Al-Shaafa.
(AP, 11/4/18)
2018 Nov 3, In Turkey Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko and the Istanbul-based Orthodox patriarch signed an accord that paves the way for the recognition of an independent Ukrainian church, a plan that has infuriated Moscow.
(AFP, 11/3/18)
2018 Nov 3, A United Nations aid convoy reached the Rukban refugee camp in Syria where thousands of people are stranded in the desert, close to the border with Jordan. Rukban is home to more than 50,000 people whose last UN aid convoy arrived in January.
(Reuters, 11/3/18)
2018 Nov 4, It was reported that the world's wild animal population has lunged 60 percent since 1970 because of pressure from human activities.
(SSFC, 11/4/18, p.B12)
2018 Nov 4, In Afghanistan a Taliban attack in southern Kandahar province late today killed at least four policemen.
(AP, 11/5/18)
2018 Nov 4, In Bahrain Shiite cleric Sheikh Ali Salman, who was a central figure in Bahrain's 2011 Arab Spring protests, was sentenced to life in prison on spying charges along with co-defendants Sheikh Hassan Ali Juma Sultan and Ali Mahdi Ali al-Aswad.
(AP, 11/4/18)
2018 Nov 4, Jeremy Heywood (56), the former head of Britain's civil service and a senior adviser to PM Theresa May on implementing Brexit, died following illness.
(Reuters, 11/4/18)
2018 Nov 4, In China a Tibetan man set himself on fire and died in a protest calling for the return of the region's exiled Buddhist leader, the Dalai Lama. Dorbe (23) self-immolated in Ngaba county, a traditionally Tibetan region of Sichuan province.
(AP, 11/9/18)
2018 Nov 4, Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel arrived in Pyongyang with his wife. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel — both hoping to get out from under US economic sanctions — agreed to expand and strengthen their strategic relations.
(AP, 11/5/18)
2018 Nov 4, French President Emmanuel Macron kicked off a week of commemorations for the 100th anniversary of the end of World War One.
(AFP, 11/4/18)
2018 Nov 4, Police in India said that they are investigating allegations that a 4-year-old girl was gang-raped the previous evening while being treated for a snake bite in an intensive care unit at a hospital in Uttar Pradesh state. One man was in custody and police were looking for others.
(AP, 11/4/18)
2018 Nov 4, In India villagers circled around the female tiger after it killed the farmer late today in Uttar Pradesh state. When the tiger tried to escape, the villagers crushed it under the wheels of a tractor. Villagers said the tiger injured another person in an attack about 10 days ago.
(AP, 11/5/18)
2018 Nov 4, Thousands of Iranians chanting "Death to America" rallied to mark the anniversary of the seizure of the US Embassy during the 1979 Islamic Revolution and the imminent reimposition of US sanctions on Iran's oil sector.
(Reuters, 11/4/18)
2018 Nov 4, Rescuers said floods killed 12 people on the island of Sicily, including nine members of a single family, pushing Italy's week-long storm toll beyond 30.
(AFP, 11/4/18)
2018 Nov 4, Japanese author Haruki Murakami (69) announced that he is working to set up a library that will showcase his works and also serve as a meeting place for research and international exchanges.
(AP, 11/4/18)
2018 Nov 4, Voters in New Caledonia voted in a referendum on whether the French territory in the South Pacific should break free from the European country that claimed it in the mid-19th century. 56.4 percent of people rejected the proposition.
(AFP, 11/4/18)
2018 Nov 4, In Mexico thousands of wary Central American migrants resumed their push toward the US, a day after arguments over the path ahead saw some travelers splinter away from the main caravan, which is entering a treacherous part of its journey. Mexico now faces the unprecedented situation of having three caravans stretched over 300 miles (500 km) of highway in the states of Chiapas, Oaxaca and Veracruz, with a total of more than 6,000 migrants. More than 500 migrants arrived at the Jesus Martinez stadium on the eastern side of Mexico City, where they were served hot meals and supplied with blankets to spend the night.
(AP, 11/4/18)(Reuters, 11/5/18)(AP, 11/5/18)
2018 Nov 4, In eastern Syria the Islamic State group reportedly killed 12 US-backed SDF fighters in a surprise attack from the jihadists' holdout on the Iraqi border. An SDF spokesman, however, denied any members of his Kurdish-led alliance had been killed.
(AP, 11/4/18)
2018 Nov 4, In Ukraine Kateryna Gandzyuk (33), an adviser to the mayor of the southern city of Kherson and an outspoken critic of corruption in law enforcement agencies, died following an acid attack in July. In 2019 Vladyslav Manger, the head of the regional council in the southern region of Kherson, was accused of financing the crime.
(http://tinyurl.com/y5wkvl3h)(AP, 2/11/19)
2018 Nov 4, Officials in Yemen said fighting has escalated around the key port city of Hodeida, with more than 150 combatants killed over the weekend from both the rebel and government-backed sides. Yemeni forces backed by a Saudi-led coalition inched closer to the Red Sea port city of Hodeidah as they battled Iranian-aligned Houthi fighters entrenched there.
(AP, 11/4/18)(Reuters, 11/4/18)
2018 Nov 5, The Trump administration's tough new sanctions on Iran took effect, but eight major importers of Iranian oil were spared from immediate penalties. They included China, India, Italy, Greece, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Turkey.
(AP, 11/5/18)(AFP, 11/5/18)
2018 Nov 5, The FDA approved a new sublingual formulation of sufentanil, Dsuvia, for the management of acute pain in adults in medically supervised healthcare settings, such as hospitals, surgical centers, and emergency departments. Dsuvia, a synthetic opioid, The drug was developed BY AcelRx Pharmaceuticals in collaboration with the Department of Defense with the military population in mind.
(https://tinyurl.com/ybvm2akx)
2018 Nov 5, In Marin County, Ca., Davance Lamar Reed (37) went on a shooting spree killing one man and seriously injuring his girlfriend (30) and another Man (32).
(SFC, 11/7/18, p.D1)
2018 Nov 5, In North Carolina Hania Noelia Aguilar (13) was kidnapped from a mobile home park as she prepared to leave for a bus stop. Police found her body several weeks later in a body of water 10 miles away. On Dec. 8 the FBI said Michael Ray McLellan (34) has been charged with murder, rape and eight other felonies.
(SFC, 11/8/18, p.A6)(SSFC, 12/9/18, p.A8)
2018 Nov 5, In Afghanistan the Taliban launched an attack on a newly established joint Afghan army and police checkpoint in eastern Ghazni province, killing at least 13 soldiers and policemen.
(AP, 11/5/18)
2018 Nov 5, In Australia a shark killed Daniel Christidis (33) near Cid Harbor on Whitsunday Island on the Great Barrier Reef where two tourists were mauled on consecutive days in September.
(AP, 11/6/18)
2018 Nov 5, Bulgarian prosecutors said more than $1.35 million in fake banknotes have been seized and three men charged in Varna for suspected membership in an organized crime ring making counterfeit bills.
(AP, 11/5/18)
2018 Nov 5, In Cameroon gunmen kidnapped 79 school students along with their principal, a teacher and a driver, in an English-speaking region where separatists are fighting an armed campaign for independence.
(AFP, 11/5/18)
2018 Nov 5, A Chinese trawler suspected of poaching off Japan's southern coast sailed away with Japanese inspectors on board. The inspectors returned to their own ship after its half-day chase of the trawler, with the help of Japanese coast guard. The incident surfaced more than 50 days after it occurred when Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga responded to a reporter's question following a news report.
(AP, 12/27/18)
2018 Nov 5, France gave 30 million euros ($34 million) of aid to Gambia as part of efforts to support its democratic transition and ensure stability in a region Paris deems vital to its interests.
(Reuters, 11/5/18)
2018 Nov 5, France said it has issued international arrest warrants for three ranking Syrian officials, accusing them of complicity with crimes against humanity in the deaths of a father and son who were detained in 2013.
(AP, 11/5/18)
2018 Nov 5, In France two buildings collapsed into a giant pile of rubble and beams in the southern city of Marseille. Firefighters soon found the bodies of three people in the ruins. On Nov. 7 death toll rose to six in with the discoveries of two men's bodies.
(AP, 11/5/18)(AFP, 11/6/18)(AP, 11/7/18)
2018 Nov 5, Iran greeted the re-imposition of US sanctions with air defense drills and a statement from President Hassan Rouhani that the nation faces a "war situation," raising Mideast tensions as America's maximalist approach to the Islamic Republic takes hold.
(AP, 11/5/18)
2018 Nov 5, In Italy a knife-wielding man held hostages in a northern post office, days after receiving a 19-year jail term for a Mafia conviction. Francesco Amato is one of 125 defendants convicted last week in nearby Reggio Emilia in a trial about infiltration by the 'ndrangheta, a southern Italy-based organized crime group, into businesses in the affluent Reggio Emilia region.
(AP, 11/5/18)
2018 Nov 5, In Malaysia Musa Aman (67), former leader of resource-rich Sabah state, was detained by the anti-graft agency before being taken to court. He pleaded not guilty to 35 counts of corruption for allegedly receiving a total of $63.3 million in Hong Kong and Singapore through proxies between 2004 and 2008 in exchange for timber contracts.
(AP, 11/5/18)
2018 Nov 5, A big group of Central Americans pushed on toward Mexico City, planning to exit a part of the country that has long been treacherous for migrants seeking to get to the United States.
(AP, 11/5/18)
2018 Nov 5, In Poland a North Korean worker who claims he is a victim of modern slavery in a Polish shipyard filed a criminal complaint against a Dutch shipbuilder that bought products from the Polish firm. Dutch lawyer Barbara van Straaten filed the case on the worker's behalf.
(AP, 11/8/18)
2018 Nov 5, Saudi Arabia told the United Nations it would prosecute those responsible for the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at its Istanbul consulate, as Western states pressed it for a credible investigation.
(Reuters, 11/5/18)
2018 Nov 5, In Senegal a two-day African security forum opened in Dakar amid concerns about funding for a much-trumpeted initiative to bind the G5 Sahel force (Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger) into an anti-terror force.
(AFP, 11/5/18)
2018 Nov 5, South African police officers arrested Danish woman Britta Nielsen (64) suspected of a huge fraud at home. She had 648,700 rand in cash ($46,000) in her possession which was confiscated. Her son, Jimmy Hayat, was arrested Oct. 30 at Johannesburg's international airport as he was about to leave the country with two diamonds in his luggage.
(AP, 11/6/18)
2018 Nov 5, South Korea soccer international Lee Chang-min was involved in a car crash that left one person dead and two injured on Jeju Island.
(AP, 11/10/18)
2018 Nov 5, The Spanish coast guard said at least 17 migrants died in the space of 24 hours while trying to cross the sea from North Africa to Spain, and rescuers picked up more than 100 others.
(Reuters, 11/6/18)
2018 Nov 5, Former Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapakse rallied tens of thousands of supporters in a show of strength even as the parliament's speaker refused to recognize his controversial appointment as prime minister.
(AFP, 11/5/18)
2018 Nov 5, In southern Taiwan the new National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts opened. The sprawling complex of four theaters was billed as the biggest performing arts center in the world.
(AP, 11/5/18)
2018 Nov 5, In Yemen Battles raged near the port of Hodeida, crucial for humanitarian aid, but Saudi Arabia and its allies said they were committed to de-escalating hostilities with rebels as calls for a ceasefire mount.
(AFP, 11/5/18)
2018 Nov 6, Democrats wrested control of the US House of Representatives from Trump's Republicans in midterm elections seen as a referendum on his two-year-old presidency and closely watched around the world. Republicans increased their majority in the Senate. Onetime Somali refugee Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, the daughter of Palestinian immigrants, shared the historic distinction of becoming the first two Muslim women elected to Congress.
(Reuters, 11/7/18)(AFP, 11/7/18)
2018 Nov 6, San Francisco voters approved Prop. C, designed to inject the most money ever at city homeless problems by taxing big businesses.
(SFC, 11/7/18, p.A1)
2018 Nov 6, Voters in Mt. View, California, the home town of Google, backed Measure P, which implements a per-employee business license tax that ranges from $5 to $150 per worker, rising with the size of the company.
(SFC, 11/9/18, p.D2)
2018 Nov 6, Colorado voters rejected a measure that could have sharply reduced oil and gas drilling, including the method known as fracking, by requiring new oil and gas wells to be farther from occupied buildings than allowed under current law.
(AP, 11/7/18)
2018 Nov 6, Guillermo Falcon, one of Miami's former drug kingpins, was deported to the Dominican Republic after completing a 20-year money-laundering sentence. His partner Salvador Magluta continued to serve a 195-year drug trafficking sentence.
(SFC, 11/21/18, p.A6)
2018 Nov 6, Illinois voters elected J.B. Pritzker, the billionaire heir to the Hyatt Hotel fortune, as state governor.
(SFC, 11/7/18, p.A6)
2018 Nov 6, In Kansas, Sharice Davids and Deb Haaland became the first Native American women elected to Congress.
(AFP, 11/7/18)
2018 Nov 6, Kansas voters elected Laura Kelly (D) over Kris Kobach (R) to serve as state governor.
(SFC, 11/7/18, p.A6)
2018 Nov 6, Michigan voters elected Gretchen Whitmer (D) to serve as state governor.
(SFC, 11/7/18, p.A6)
2018 Nov 6, Voters in Michigan passed a ballot measure to legalize marijuana. Rashida Tlaib became the first Palestinian-American woman to be elected to the US Congress representing southwest Detroit and its suburbs west to the city of Dearborn.
(AP, 11/7/18) (Reuters, 11/7/18)
2018 Nov 6, Missouri became the 31st state to approve marijuana for medical use.
(AP, 11/7/18)
2018 Nov 6, Missouri voters back a ballot initiative known as Clean Missouri. This put a squeeze on campaign contributions and limited the value of gifts and meals lobbyists could dish out. It also stated that an independent demographer would have the final say in the redistricting commission.
(https://tinyurl.com/y5xxwtsa)(Econ., 9/12/20, p.24)
2018 Nov 6, Voters in Utah joined the growing number of US states to legalize medical marijuana.
(SSFC, 11/11/18, p.A8)
2018 Nov 6, Washington state voters raised the minimum age from 18 to 21 for buying semiautomatic rifles.
(SFC, 2/12/19, p.A7)
2018 Nov 6, In Afghanistan the Taliban attacked border troops in western Farah province killing at least 20.
(SFC, 11/7/18, p.A2)
2018 Nov 6, An aircraft flew 20 tons of pine nuts from Afghanistan to China, inaugurating their first air cargo link as the landlocked South Asian nation turns to overseas markets to offset its trade deficit.
(Reuters, 11/6/18)
2018 Nov 6, A United Nations report released today found that 56 civilians were killed and 379 others wounded in attacks during Afghanistan's recent parliamentary election.
(AP, 11/6/18)
2018 Nov 6, Representatives from Bosnia, Croatia, Kosovo, Montenegro and Serbia signed an agreement to identify victims of the 1990s wars. Around 12,000 people were still not accounted for out of the 40,000 missing from the wars that tore apart the former Yugoslavia.
(AFP, 11/7/18)
2018 Nov 6, Cameroon's President Paul Biya (85) was sworn in for a seventh term after disputed elections and amid mounting unrest in an English-speaking region.
(AFP, 11/6/18)
2018 Nov 6, China rejected Western criticism of suspected mass detention and heavy surveillance of Uighurs in the western region of Xinjiang as Western countries including France, Germany and the United States, called on China to close down detention camps that activists say hold 1 million Uighurs and other Muslims.
(Reuters, 11/6/18)
2018 Nov 6, The 6-day biennial Airshow China opened in the coastal city of Zhuhai. It is traditionally an event for Beijing to parade its growing aviation prowess.
(Reuters, 11/6/18)
2018 Nov 6, In China billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates helped kickoff the 3-day "Reinvented Toilet" Expo in Beijing.
(SFC, 11/7/18, p.A3)
2018 Nov 6, China unveiled a replica of its first permanently crewed space station, which would replace the international community's orbiting laboratory and symbolizes the country's major ambitions beyond Earth.
(AFP, 11/6/18)
2018 Nov 6, The EU extended sanctions against Venezuela until November 2019 for what it said were human rights violations and undermining of democracy and the rule of law under President Nicolas Maduro.
(Reuters, 11/6/18)
2018 Nov 6, French police arrested five men and a woman, all from the radical far right, suspected of plotting to attack French President Emmanuel Macron.
(AP, 11/6/18)
2018 Nov 6, Hungary's government set out plans to create new administrative courts overseen by the justice minister - a move the leftist opposition has said will limit the independence of the judiciary.
(Reuters, 11/7/18)
2018 Nov 6, A Hungarian police spokesman said that a probe opened in February on the basis of findings by the European Union's anti-fraud office OLAF had been terminated.
(AFP, 11/7/18)
2018 Nov 6, In India the northern city of Ayodhya broke a Guinness World Record by lighting 300,150 earthen lamps and keeping them lit for at least 45 minutes as part of the annual celebration of Diwali.
(SFC, 11/7/18, p.A2)
2018 Nov 6, UN investigators said more than 200 mass graves containing between 6,000 and 12,000 bodies have been found in Iraq from the time of the Islamic State group's three-year reign.
(AP, 11/6/18)
2018 Nov 6, Italy said it will help Asia Bibi, a Pakistani Christian woman, leave her country because her life is in danger following charges of blasphemy against Islam that put her on death row for eight years.
(Reuters, 11/6/18)
2018 Nov 6, In Mexico thousands of Central Americans dreaming of getting to the United States awoke to donations of fruit and hot coffee at a sports stadium in Mexico's chilly capital as the US held midterm elections.
(AP, 11/6/18)
2018 Nov 6, Peru's former police chief Raul Becerra and a dozen others were arrested for allegedly trafficking babies. One five-month-old baby was rescued as police raided 18 properties in the southern city of Arequipa.
(Reuters, 11/7/18)
2018 Nov 6, In the Philippines lawyer Benjamin Ramos (56) was shot and killed as he left his office by men on a motorcycle near the town of Kabankalan. He was the 34th lawyer killed since Pres. Rodrigo Duterte took office.
(SFC, 11/9/18, p.A4)
2018 Nov 6, Romania's President Klaus Iohannis blasted the ruling party's leader as a "criminal at the top of the state apparatus," saying politicians with criminal convictions are trying to take over the country's justice system and undermine efforts to fight corruption.
(AP, 11/6/18)
2018 Nov 6, Russia's PM Dmitry Medvedev signed measures approving regulations that would identify smartphone messenger users by their cellphone numbers. The decree goes into effect after 180 days.
(AP, 11/6/18)
2018 Nov 6, In Syria a bomb went off inside a car in the northern town of Manbij, killing one person.
(AP, 11/6/18)
2018 Nov 6, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that joint patrols by US forces and a Kurdish-led militia in northern Syria are "unacceptable".
(AP, 11/6/18)
2018 Nov 6, President Tayyip Erdogan said Turkey would not abide by the renewed US sanctions on Iran's oil and shipping industries, adding that they were aimed at "unbalancing the world".
(Reuters, 11/6/18)
2018 Nov 6, Yemen's Houthi rebels claimed they halted advances of their adversaries, the US-backed, Saudi-led Arab coalition, at a key battlefield around a strategic Red Sea port city. Fighting continued around Hodeida despite the statement from the Shiite rebels.
(AP, 11/6/18)
2018 Nov 7, US Attorney Gen'l. Jeff Sessions submitted his resignation following Pres. Donald Trump's request that he resign. Trump announced in a tweet that Matthew Whitaker, Session's Chief of Staff, would take over as acting attorney general.
(SFC, 11/8/18, p.A1)
2018 Nov 7, In southern California former Marine Ian David Long (28) released a smoke bomb and opened gunfire late today killing 12 people at the Borderline Bar and Grill in Thousand Oaks. Long then turned the gun on himself. It was later reported that Sgt. Jon Helus, among the 12 killed, was hit five times by the gunman, but that the fatal bullet was fired by a CHP officer.
(SFC, 11/9/18, p.A1)(SFC, 12/8/18, p.A6)
2018 Nov 7, Oscar-winning actress Emma Thompson received a damehood in recognition for her splendid career, an event made special by the fact that it was given to her by Prince William, a longtime friend.
(AP, 11/7/18)
2018 Nov 7, Kidnappers in west Cameroon freed 78 school children and a driver early today. Two other children were still missing, along with the principal and a teacher. Armed men had seized the youngsters on Nov. 5 in the city of Bamend.
(Reuters, 11/7/18)
2018 Nov 7, In Cameroon Mimi Mefo, a prominent journalist and television presenter from the restive anglophone region, was jailed for "attacking state security". Mefo was charged over a social media post which said "the army was responsible for the death of US missionary Charles Trumann Wesco who died in October.
(AFP, 11/8/18)
2018 Nov 7, French composer Francis Lai (86), who won an Oscar in 1970 for the iconic "Love Story" soundtrack, died. Lai started as an accordionist, but quickly rose through the ranks as a composer, writing songs for singers including Edith Piaf and Yves Montand.
(AP, 11/8/18)
2018 Nov 7, Guam's Catholic church said it will file for bankruptcy — a move that will allow the archdiocese to avoid trial in dozens of lawsuits alleging child sexual abuse by priests and move toward settlements.
(AP, 11/7/18)
2018 Nov 7, In India Yogi Adityanath, a robe-wearing Hindu priest who is the BJP chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, changed the name of Faizabad district to Ayodhya, the place where Hindus believe Lord Ram was born thousands of years ago. Before the change, Ayodhya was the name of a town in Faizabad. Last month PM Narendra Modi changed the name of Allahabad, where three rivers considered holy by Hindus meet, to the Hindu name Prayagraj.
(Reuters, 11/8/18)
2018 Nov 7, Japan's Tokyo Medical University, that acknowledged systematically discriminating against female applicants, announced plans to accept more than 60 who were unfairly rejected over the past two years.
(AP, 11/7/18)
2018 Nov 7, Madagascar voted for a president to tackle unemployment, poverty and corruption on the Indian Ocean island, with the incumbent and two former heads of state leading a field of 36 contenders. Former president Marc Ravalomanana garnered 35.35 percent of the vote in the first round, behind his successor, Andry Rajoelina, who got 39.23 percent.
(Reuters, 11/7/18)(Reuters, 11/28/18)
2018 Nov 7, Central American migrants continued to straggle in for a rest stop at a Mexico City stadium, where about 4,500 continue to weigh offers to stay in Mexico against the desire of many to reach the US border.
(AP, 11/7/18)
2018 Nov 7, Palestinian Ahmad al-Najar (21), shot last month during protests on the Israel-Gaza border, succumbed to his wounds.
(AFP, 11/8/18)
2018 Nov 7, Saudi Arabia's King Salman began a domestic tour with a first stop in the conservative heartland of Qassim province, where he pardoned prisoners serving time on financial charges and announced 16 billion riyals (about $4.27 billion) in new projects.
(AP, 11/7/18)
2018 Nov 7, In Sweden Jayne Svenungsson, a member of the academy that awards the Nobel Prize in Literature, said she is leaving the body. She became the eighth person to quit or to be forced off the 18-member board of the Swedish Academy since the scandals broke last year.
(AP, 11/7/18)
2018 Nov 7, Thailand's Supreme Court restored a 37-year prison term given to Vivat Yodprasert, convicted of shooting four people during 2014 political violence. He was dubbed the "Popcorn Gunman" because he opened fire with an assault rifle concealed in a sack with the word "POPCORN" emblazoned on it.
(AP, 11/7/18)
2018 Nov 7, Police in Thailand arrested Sgt. Maj. Jakkrit Khomsing (43), an HIV-infected soldier, who allegedly blackmailed and raped more than 70 teenage boys.
(AP, 11/8/18)
2018 Nov 7, The UN and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent completed a desperately needed aid delivery to displaced Syrians in the remote Rukban desert camp near the border with Jordan. Nearly 50,000 people were stranded in the desert and had received no aid since January.
(AP, 11/7/18)
2018 Nov 7, Vietnam and the United States said they have finished the cleanup of dioxin contamination at Danang airport caused by the transport and storage of the herbicide Agent Orange during the Vietnam War.
(AP, 11/7/18)
2018 Nov 7, In Yemen troops from a US-backed, Saudi-led coalition pounded Houthi rebel positions in Hodeida with airstrikes and a ground assault and took control of a major road leading into the city.
(AP, 11/7/18)
2018 Nov 7, In Zimbabwe a head-on collision between two buses killed 47 people near Rusape. Police said the death toll could rise because there 80 others admitted to hospital, some with serious injuries.
(AP, 11/8/18)(SFC, 11/9/18, p.A2)
2018 Nov 8, The White House suspended CNN reporter Jim Acosta after he and Pres. Trump had a heated confrontation during a news conference a day earlier.
(SFC, 11/9/18, p.A7)
2018 Nov 8, In northern California more than 30,000 people fled for their lives as the Camp Fire exploded to more than 20,000 acres in Butte County. The community of Paradise was pretty much devastated.
(SFC, 11/9/18, p.A1)
2018 Nov 8, In southern California transient Johnny Josue Sanchez was convicted of five counts of murder for setting a fire in a vacant Los Angeles building that killed five people on June 13, 2016. In 2019 Sanchez (25) was sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole.
(http://tinyurl.com/yhx4n8u3)(SSFC, 11/10/19, p.A8)
2018 Nov 8, In northern California the new $300 million City Center Bishop Ranch shopping mall, designed by Renzo Piano, opened.
(SSFC, 11/11/18, p.D1)
2018 Nov 8, C.Y. Lee (102), author of the Flower Drum Song (1957) died in Los Angeles. It was adopted for Broadway (1958-1960) and turned into a film in 1961.
(SFC, 2/5/19, p.C3)
2018 Nov 8, Raymond Plank (b.1922), co-founder of Apache Corp., died at his home in Ucross, Wyoming.
(SSFC, 11/11/18, p.C10)
2018 Nov 8, Tesla's board named one of its own as chairman to replace Elon Musk, complying with terms of a fraud settlement with US securities regulators. The company's board named Australian telecommunications executive Robyn Denholm (55) as chairman, effective immediately.
(AP, 11/8/18)
2018 Nov 8, In Afghanistan insurgents attacked a police outpost early today in Khugyani district, killing eight policemen, including a district commander. The attack set of a firefight that lasted for hours until the government sent reinforcements and drove Taliban from the compound. The Taliban also attacked a police outpost in central Wardak province, killing five policemen.
(AP, 11/8/18)
2018 Nov 8, Australia launched a multi-billion dollar fund to counter China's rising influence in the region. PM Scott Morrison said Australia would invest in telecommunications, energy, transport and water projects in the region.
(Reuters, 11/8/18)
2018 Nov 8, In Australia former New South Wales (NSW) state Labor party leader Luke Foley resigned after being accused of sexually harassing an ABC journalist, four months before a state election he had been in a position to win. Foley denied the allegations and said he has hired lawyers to sue for defamation over the claims.
(AP, 11/9/18)
2018 Nov 8, Brazilian police arrested seven lawmakers in Rio de Janeiro. Three others were taken into custody earlier. They were served with arrest warrants based on allegations they accepted bribes in exchange for supporting then-Gov. Sergio Cabral's "criminal organization".
(AP, 11/8/18)
2018 Nov 8, Zamira Hajiyeva (55) was freed on bail by a British judge while she fights extradition to Azerbaijan over embezzlement allegations. She is also the subject of a separate investigation in her home country of Azerbaijan, where her husband, former International Bank of Azerbaijan Chairman Jahangir Hajiyev, was sentenced to 15 years in jail in 2016 for fraud and embezzlement.
(AP, 11/8/18)
2018 Nov 8, Canadian aerospace and transportation manufacturer Bombardier announced 5,000 global job cuts over the next year to 18 months in a bid to "streamline" the struggling firm.
(AFP, 11/8/18)
2018 Nov 8, An Egyptian court convicted 65 suspected militants of setting up a terrorist group and declaring allegiance to the Islamic State. 18 of them were sentenced to life in prison.
(SFC, 11/9/18, p.A2)
2018 Nov 8, The Asia editor of the Financial Times, Victor Mallet, was refused entry to Hong Kong, weeks after he was denied a new work visa in what critics call an ominous sign of Beijing encroaching on the semi-autonomous Chinese territory's civil liberties.
(AP, 11/9/18)
2018 Nov 8, In India Maoist rebels blew up a bus, killing four civilians and a paramilitary soldier in Dantewada district of Chhattisgarh state.
(AP, 11/8/18)
2018 Nov 8, In India pollution levels in New Delhi that shot up to 681, as reported by the US Embassy from 200 a day earlier after tens of thousands of people set off a multitude of firecrackers to celebrate the major Hindu festival of Diwali.
(AP, 11/8/18)
2018 Nov 8, Iranian celebrities including Oscar-winning film director Asghar Farhadi and Grammy winner Kayhan Kalhor launched a petition condemning US sanctions on Tehran and warning of the impact on ordinary people.
(AFP, 11/9/18)
2018 Nov 8, Israeli police recommended bribery charges against PM Benjamin Netanyahu's lawyer and five other suspects over a $2 billion sale of German Thyssenkrupp submarines to Israel.
(Reuters, 11/8/18)
2018 Nov 8, Former Madagascan president Hery Rajaonarimampianina alleged that "many voting irregularities" pointed to fraud in this week's election, heightening fears of protests and a disputed result.
(AFP, 11/8/18)
2018 Nov 8, International rights groups urged Mauritania to release anti-slavery activists, as the United States has announced it will end trade benefits to the West African country over the continuation of slavery. 33 human rights organizations called for the release of blogger Mohamed Cheikh Ould Mkhaitir (35), who remains in custody in an undisclosed location.
(AP, 11/8/18)
2018 Nov 8, In western Norway an operation was underway to try to stop a Norwegian navy frigate from sinking after it collided with a Maltese oil tanker in a fjord.
(AFP, 11/8/18)
2018 Nov 8, In Pakistan Aasia Bibi was with her family and under heavy security after being transferred to Islamabad overnight from her detention facility in southern Punjab, triggering expectations that her departure from the country could be imminent.
(AP, 11/8/18)
2018 Nov 8, A Pakistani court found a woman and her friend guilty of poisoning to death 17 family members and sentenced them each to multiple life sentences in prison. The judge also fined Aasia Bibi and Shahid Lashari 3 million rupees ($23,000) each. Bibi was married against her will in September last year to Amjad Hussain in the central city of Rajan Pur.
(AP, 11/9/18)
2018 Nov 8, Syrian TV reported that Syria's army has freed a group of 19 women and children who were abducted by Islamic State during a raid on the city of Sweida and neighboring villages in July. Islamic State group militants shot and killed two children during the operation.
(Reuters, 11/8/18)(AP, 11/9/18)
2018 Nov 8, Tajikistan security sources reported that 24 prisoners and two guards were killed after dozens of inmates rioted overnight at a maximum security prison.
(AFP, 11/8/18)
2018 Nov 8, Tanzania released two staff members of the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), a day after they were detained and their passports seized.
(Reuters, 11/8/18)
2018 Nov 8, Tunisian President Beji Caid Essebsi said he was ready to swear in ten new ministers named in a reshuffle that he had originally rejected, easing a high-level political standoff that has alarmed donors.
(Reuters, 11/8/18)
2018 Nov 8, Turkish journalist Husnu Mahalli was handed a suspended sentence of two years and five months in prison for insulting Turkey's President Tayyip Erdogan.
(Reuters, 11/8/18)
2018 Nov 8, The UN said at least 2.3 million people have fled economic and political crisis in Venezuela, mostly since 2015.
(AFP, 11/8/18)
2018 Nov 9, President Donald Trump invoked extraordinary national security powers to deny asylum to migrants who enter the country illegally, tightening the border as caravans of Central Americans slowly approach the United States. The plan was immediately challenged in court.
(AP, 11/9/18)
2018 Nov 9, In California nine people were reported killed in the Camp Fire in Paradise. Hundreds of thousands were ordered to evacuate as wildfires raged in the north and south. The rapidly spreading Woolsey Fire threatened the resort of Malibu, home to Hollywood stars. In 2020 investigators reported that Southern California Edison equipment had sparked the Woolsey Fire.
(AFP, 11/10/18)(SFC, 11/12/18, p.A8)(SFC, 10/31/20, p.A4)
2018 Nov 9, In Macon, Georgia, Jermaine Bernard Anthony (39), on trial for child molestation, was found dead from a gunshot wound to the head.
(SFC, 11/10/18, p.A6)
2018 Nov 9, In central Iowa a small plane crashed near the Guthrie Center Airport killing all four people on board.
(SSFC, 11/11/18, p.A8)
2018 Nov 9, Dorothy L. Cheney (68), American primate scientist, died at her home in Pennsylvania. She and her husband, Robert M. Seyfarth, authored "How Monkeys See the World: Inside the Mind of Another Species" (1990) and "Baboon Metaphysics: The Evolution of a Social Mind" (2007).
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_Cheney_(scientist))(SFC, 11/16/18, p.C4)
2018 Nov 9, In Australia Somali-born Hassan Khalif Shire Ali (30) set fire to a pickup truck laden with gas cylinders in the center of Melbourne and stabbed three people, killing one, before he was shot by police in a rampage they called an act of terrorism. Police said he was radicalized and inspired by the militant group's propaganda.
(Reuters, 11/9/18)(Reuters, 11/10/18)
2018 Nov 9, Austria's government said that a retired colonel in the country's military is suspected of having spied for Russia for decades, a claim swiftly dismissed by Moscow.
(AP, 11/9/18)
2018 Nov 9, Brazilian police arrested Joesley Batista, a former chairman of the world's largest meatpacker, whose testimony was central to allegations of corruption against the president. Ricardo Saud, a former executive at the holding company that controls JBS, was also arrested. The arrests were part of an investigation into a graft scheme that dates to 2014-2015 in which executives paid bribes to civil servants and politicians linked to the Agriculture Ministry in exchange for favorable decisions and regulation that helped JBS eliminate competition.
(AP, 11/9/18)
2018 Nov 9, Congo's health ministry said the latest Ebola outbreak is the worst in the country's recorded history with 319 confirmed and probable cases. The deadly virus has killed about 198 people since the outbreak was declared Aug. 1 in the volatile east.
(AP, 11/10/18)
2018 Nov 9, In Denmark Britta Nielsen, the main suspect in a huge fraud involving public money, was arrested on her return to Copenhagen after she voluntarily left South Africa.
(AP, 11/9/18)
2018 Nov 9, In Ethiopia Somalia's President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed and Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki met with Ethiopian PM Abiy Ahmed to cement regional economic ties as relations warm between the once-rival nations.
(AFP, 11/9/18)
2018 Nov 9, Floods struck several areas of Jordan. 12 people were killed, including two children and a diver who had been involved in rescue efforts. Rescuers on Nov. 12 found the body of a five-year-old girl killed raising the death toll to 13.
(AP, 11/10/18)(AFP, 11/12/18)
2018 Nov 9, Macedonia extended the state of emergency at its southern and northern borders until June 2019 in an effort to reduce illegal border crossings by migrants.
(AP, 11/9/18)
2018 Nov 9, In Mexico thousands of Central American migrants decided to depart Mexico City and head toward the northern city of Tijuana, opting for the longer but likely safer route to the US border.
(AP, 11/9/18)
2018 Nov 9, A Myanmar court dismissed a case against three senior journalists from the country’s largest private newspaper, after authorities in the city of Yangon agreed to drop the charges.
(Reuters, 11/9/18)
2018 Nov 9, Dutch officials said they will prosecute a nursing home doctor for euthanizing an elderly woman with dementia, the first time a doctor has been charged since the Netherlands legalized euthanasia in 2002.
(AP, 11/9/18)
2018 Nov 9, A court in the Netherlands convicted 34 people for blocking a highway last year to prevent anti-racism demonstrators from protesting at a festive parade featuring the Dutch version of Santa Claus and his helpers, called Black Petes.
(AP, 11/9/18)
2018 Nov 9, A Philippine court found former first lady Imelda Marcos (89) guilty of graft and ordered her arrest in a rare conviction among many corruption cases that she plans to appeal to avoid jail and losing her seat in Congress. Marcos was ordered to serve 6 to 11 years in prison. She posted a $7,400 bail on Nov. 16 pending an appeal.
(AP, 11/9/18)(SFC, 11/17/18, p.A2)
2018 Nov 9, A $15 million Qatari cash infusion was paid out to impoverished Palestinian civil servants in the Gaza Strip, offering the enclave's dominant Hamas Islamists a potential domestic reprieve though Israel said the money would not go to them.
(Reuters, 11/9/18)
2018 Nov 9, Romania's government passed an emergency ordinance that will create two different levels for the minimum national wage. The minimum monthly salary will be 2,080 lei ($507) starting Jan.1, while those with higher education qualifications or 15 years of employment are guaranteed 2,350 lei ($573).
(AP, 11/9/18)
2018 Nov 9, In Russia a Taliban delegation attended a diplomatic conference for the first time, in a move that underscored Moscow's keenness to play a role in the Afghan peace process, but the Kabul government sent no official representative.
(Reuters, 11/9/18)
2018 Nov 9, Singapore's central bank said it had filed a police report against an online article by an Australia-based independent blogger about Singapore banks and Malaysia's scandal-linked 1MDB state fund.
(AP, 11/10/18)
2018 Nov 9, In Somalia suicide attackers set off two car bombs at a hotel near the headquarters of the Criminal Investigations Department in Mogadishu, killing at least 17 people. The death toll soon jumped to at least 41.
(Reuters, 11/9/18)(AP, 11/10/18)
2018 Nov 9, In South Korea a fire that likely blocked a crucial exit at a low-cost dormitory-style housing facility in central Seoul killed at least seven people and injured 11 others. The residents were mostly manual laborers who made their living on day-to-day jobs.
(AP, 11/9/18)
2018 Nov 9, Sri Lanka President Maithripala Sirisena dissolved parliament five days before it was due to reconvene, but a new cabinet he installed was in danger of losing a vote of no confidence. Sirisena also called a general election for Jan. 5.
(Reuters, 11/10/18)
2018 Nov 9, In Sweden Michael Salonen (43), was convicted of attempted murder for sending a letter bomb to a bitcoin company in London and also convicted of sending threatening letters to lawmakers in Sweden, including government members. He was sentenced to seven years in prison.
(AP, 11/9/18)
2018 Nov 9, Syrian government forces clashed with rebels in Hama province in some of the heaviest fighting in the northwest for a year. At least 22 members of the Jaish al-Izza faction died and dozens more were wounded. Jihadists killed at least eight government troops near a planned buffer zone.
(Reuters, 11/9/18)(AFP, 11/10/18)
2018 Nov 9, Tanzanian authorities carried out physical examinations on 10 men suspected of homosexual activity in Zanzibar. The men were arrested last week on suspicion of celebrating a gay marriage at a resort hotel.
(AP, 11/9/18)
2018 Nov 9, In southeastern Turkey seven soldiers were killed in an "accidental" explosion at an army munitions depot in Hakkari province.
(AFP, 11/10/18)(SSFC, 11/11/18, p.A4)
2018 Nov 9, Airstrikes by Turkish warplanes "neutralized" 15 militants of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in northern Iraq.
(Reuters, 11/10/18)
2018 Nov 9, Police in Vietnam arrested Le Bach Hong, a former deputy labor minister, on allegations of economic mismanagement, as the communist-led government presses on with a crackdown on corruption.
(Reuters, 11/9/18)
2018 Nov 9, Yemeni rebels launched fierce barrages of mortar fire as they battled to slow an advance by pro-government forces deeper into the port city of Hodeida. Some 445,000 Hodeida residents have fled the area since June.
(AFP, 11/9/18)(SFC, 11/10/18, p.A4)
2018 Nov 10, Pres. Donald Trump announced his first recipients of the US Presidential Medal of Honor. They included Miriam Adelson, the wife Republican donor and casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, former Dallas Cowboys quarterback Roger Staubach and former NFL player Alan Page. Posthumous recognition will go to Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, Elvis Presley and Babe Ruth.
(SSFC, 11/11/18, p.A8)
2018 Nov 10, It was reported that Saudi Arabia and the US have agreed to end US refueling of aircraft from the Saudi-led coalition battling Houthi insurgents in Yemen.
(Reuters, 11/10/18)
2018 Nov 10, In northern California the number of deaths in the Butte County Camp Fire rose to 23 as the fire grew to 164 square miles. In southern California two people were found dead inside a burned car in Malibu where the Woolsey Fire destroyed 177 homes.
(SSFC, 11/11/18, p.A1,15)(SFC, 11/12/18, p.A8)
2018 Nov 10, Florida's sec. of state ordered recounts in the US Senate and governor's races after unofficial results fell within the margin that by law initiates a recount.
(SSFC, 11/11/18, p.A9)
2018 Nov 10, In New York Episcopal Bishop William Love issued a directive banning same-sex marriage in his diocese in Albany.
(SFC, 11/12/18, p.A6)
2018 Nov 10, In eastern Utah two workers were electrocuted and a third injured when industrial equipment at a potash mine touched a power line near Moab.
(SFC, 11/12/18, p.A5)
2018 Nov 10, In western Afghanistan a district administrator was killed when a bomb exploded inside his office in Herat province. In the north the Taliban attacked a small army base late today, killing 12 members of the security forces and leaving behind explosives that killed four tribal elders who had come to help collect the bodies in Baghlan province.
(AP, 11/10/18)(AP, 11/11/18)
2018 Nov 10, In France President Donald Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron insisted they were good friends after a dustup over their comments about European security that threatened to divert attention from a weekend ceremony marking 100 years since the end of World War I.
(AP, 11/10/18)
2018 Nov 10, In Hong Kong dissident Chinese author Ma Jian (65) hit out at threats to freedom of speech saying it was the "basis of civilization" after a struggle to find a venue to host his talks at Hong Kong's literary festival.
(AFP, 11/10/18)
2018 Nov 10, As pollution in India's capital hit "severe" on the air quality scale, the New Delhi chief minister, Arvind Kejriwal, came under fire following reports he had left the city for an overseas family trip to Dubai.
(Reuters, 11/10/18)
2018 Nov 10, Rome's embattled Mayor Virginia Raggi was found not guilty of a charge of lying over a City Hall appointment, ending a months-long trial that had threatened her political career.
(AP, 11/10/18)
2018 Nov 10, North Korean diplomat Jo Song Gil, disappeared with his wife after leaving the North Korea's embassy in Italy without notice. On Jan. 3, 2019, it was reported that he had applied for asylum to an unspecified Western country and was in a "safe place" with his family under the protection of the Italian government.
(AP, 1/3/19)(Reuters, 2/20/19)
2018 Nov 10, Hundreds of Central American migrants resumed their march north through Mexico, en route to the US border where President Donald Trump has effectively suspended the granting of asylum to migrants who cross illegally.
(Reuters, 11/11/18)
2018 Nov 10, The North and South Korean militaries completed withdrawing troops and firearms from 22 front-line guard posts as they continue to implement a wide-ranging agreement reached in September to reduce tensions across the world's most fortified border.
(AP, 11/10/18)
2018 Nov 10, In Pakistan journalist Nasrullah Khan was taken from home early today by armed men, some wearing uniforms, who said he would be released after questioning. They also took his computer. Khan worked as a subeditor for a local daily in Karachi. On Nov. 12 Khan was charged with possessing "provocative literature."
(AP, 11/11/18)(AP, 11/12/18)
2018 Nov 10, Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev, a formal suspect in an investigation into corruption and influence-peddling in Monaco, returned to Moscow. Earlier this week, police in Monaco had detained the billionaire, who also owns soccer club AS Monaco, for questioning as part of the probe.
(Reuters, 11/10/18)
2018 Nov 10, In Spain Catalan regional police used batons to drive back a group of separatists in the city center, stopping them from advancing toward a march by an association of Spain's national police forces demanding higher pay.
(AP, 11/10/18)
2018 Nov 10, Spanish police recovered the bodies of two Moroccans from a boat that reached Spain's coast after crossing the Mediterranean Sea with migrants and a hashish shipment.
(AP, 11/11/18)
2018 Nov 10, In Thailand a 13-year-old boy was knocked out during a kickboxing match and died two days later from a brain hemorrhage. This was his 174th match in a career that began at age 8. His death sparked debate over whether to ban matches involving children. The death of Anucha Tasako came after a Muay Thai boxing match in the Bangkok suburb of Samut Prakarn.
(AP, 11/13/18)(AP, 11/19/18)
2018 Nov 10, President Tayyip Erdogan said that Turkey has given recordings related to the killing of Jamal Khashoggi to Germany, France and Britain, seeking to maintain international pressure on Riyadh over the Saudi journalist's death.
(AP, 11/10/18)
2018 Nov 10, An air strike by a Turkish warplane "neutralized" 14 militants of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in northern Iraq.
(Reuters, 11/11/18)
2018 Nov 10, Yemeni government forces pressed further into the strategic port city of Hodeida, seizing its main hospital in heavy fighting.
(AFP, 11/10/18)
2018 Nov 11, In northern California the death toll from Camp Fire in Butte County rose to 29 with 228 people still unaccounted for.
(SFC, 11/12/18, p.A1)
2018 Nov 11, It was reported that a Florida trapper has captured a record-setting 17-foot, 5-inch female Burmese python in Miami-Dade County last week. Python hunters have now eliminated 1,859 of the snakes from the Everglades.
(SSFC, 11/11/18, p.A8)
2018 Nov 11, In Robbins, Illinois, black security guard Jemel Roberson (26) was shot and killed by a white police officer outside the Manny's Blue Room, a bar where Roberson worked.
(SFC, 11/14/18, p.A5)
2018 Nov 11, In Afghanistan dozens of elite commandos were among the casualties suffered by Afghan security forces as the Taliban claimed to have taken a district in Ghazni province. About 50 police and soldiers were killed around Farah when Taliban fighters attacked check posts in the city and nearby districts.
(Reuters, 11/12/18)
2018 Nov 11, In Australia My Ut Trinh (50), a former strawberry farm supervisor, was arrested and charged with seven counts of contaminating goods after a "complex" investigation into a strawberry scare where needles were found stuck into the fruit. She was accused of retaliating over a workplace grievance.
(AP, 11/11/18)(SFC, 11/12/18, p.A2)
2018 Nov 11, In Bangladesh Nagad, a digital financial service, was launched as a joint venture between Third Wave Technologies Limited (TWTL) and the post office. Founder Tanvir served as the managing director.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nagad)(Econ., 3/7/20, p.33)
2018 Nov 11, Canadian actor Douglas Rain, the voice of the hal 9000 computer in the 1968 film "2001: A Space Odyssey," died in St. Marys, Ontario. He had performed for 32 seasons at the Stratford Festival in Ontario.
(SFC, 11/14/18, p.C8)
2018 Nov 11, Online shoppers in China shattered last year's record of $24 billion in sales on the country's annual Singles Day buying frenzy, as the tradition marked its 10th year.
(AP, 11/11/18)
2018 Nov 11, Seven CongoDRC opposition leaders, meeting in Geneva, picked the little-known Martin Fayulu (61) as their joint candidate for the December 23 ballot to succeed President Joseph Kabila, who has been in power for 18 years. UDPS leader Felix Tshisekedi was widely regarded as the front-runner.
(AFP, 11/12/18)
2018 Nov 11, In eastern CongoDRC suspected Ugandan rebels killed six people overnight, hacking one woman to death, and kidnapped five others -- mostly children -- in the Beni area.
(AP, 11/11/18)
2018 Nov 11, Thousands of Ethiopians and Eritreans took part in a 10-km reconciliation run in Addis Ababa in the first joint sporting event since the former bitter foes launched a rapid diplomatic thaw in July.
(AFP, 11/11/18)
2018 Nov 11, President Emmanuel Macron led tributes to the millions of soldiers killed during World War One, holding an emotional ceremony in Paris attended by dozens of world leaders to commemorate the centenary of the Armistice.
(Reuters, 11/11/18)
2018 Nov 11, Gabon's presidency admitted for the first time that President Omar Bongo (59), hospitalized for nearly three weeks in Saudi Arabia, is in a serious condition but said his health is improving. About a third of Gabon's population of 1.8 million still live below the poverty line -- the result, say experts, of inequality, poor governance and corruption.
(AFP, 11/11/18)
2018 Nov 11, In central India Maoist rebels triggered a blast and exchanged gunfire with government forces in Chhattisgarh state on the eve of legislative elections. One suspected rebel was killed.
(AP, 11/11/18)
2018 Nov 11, Iran's semi-official Fars news agency reported that an appeals court has upheld former Foreign Ministry official Kamal Amirbeig's 10-year prison sentence and fined him $200,000. He had been convicted of spying.
(AP, 11/11/18)
2018 Nov 11, A botched Israeli undercover operation in the Gaza Strip led to fighting that killed a Hamas commander, six other Palestinian militants and an Israeli colonel. Palestinians fired 17 rockets into southern Israel in response to the Israeli incursion and air strikes.
(Reuters, 11/12/18)
2018 Nov 11, Italy's PM Giuseppe Conte visited the Libyan city of Benghazi to meet military strongman Khalifa Haftar ahead of talks aimed at stabilizing the war-torn North African country.
(AFP, 11/11/18)
2018 Nov 11, In disputed Kashmir two Indian soldiers were killed over the last 24 hours when Pakistani soldiers fired along the highly militarized de facto frontier.
(AP, 11/11/18)
2018 Nov 11, Electron, a small rocket from the little-known company Rocket Lab, lifted off from the east coast of New Zealand carrying a clutch of tiny satellites. This was the first commercial launch by the US-New Zealand company.
(https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/10/science/rocket-lab-launch.html)
2018 Nov 11, A Pakistani official said Iranian border guards have killed two people trying to cross through an illegal route from the Panjgur district in Baluchistan.
(AP, 11/11/18)
2018 Nov 11, Philippine prosecutors said they will file charges of tax evasion against a news website, Rappler Holdings Corp. and its president, journalist Maria Ressa, that has been critical of President Rodrigo Duterte.
(AP, 11/11/18)
2018 Nov 11, South Korean military transport aircraft began a tangerine airlift to North Korea, the first of a gift of 200 tons of the fruit from the southern island of Jeju.
(Reuters, 11/11/18)
2018 Nov 11, Sri Lanka's former strongman and current PM Mahinda Rajapaksa left his longtime political party and joined another, in a move that could weaken the country's president. Rajapaksa joined the Sri Lanka People's Front, a party of which he was shadow leader for months.
(AP, 11/11/18)
2018 Nov 11, Syria's state news agency SANA reported that residents now have a full year instead of one month to prove they own property in redevelopment zones in order to receive shares in the projects. Otherwise, the ownership will be transferred to the local government.
(AP, 11/12/18)
2018 Nov 11, Residents of the eastern Ukraine regions controlled by Russia-backed separatist rebels voted for local governments in elections denounced by Kiev and the West. The Donetsk region's acting head Denis Pushilin, whose predecessor was killed in an explosion in August, was confirmed as leader with 61 percent of the vote while the acting chief of Luhansk region, Leonid Pasechnik, also won with 68 percent.
(AP, 11/11/18)(Reuters, 11/12/18)
2018 Nov 11, In Yemen street battles raged in residential areas of the main port city of Hodeidah, forcing medical staff to flee the largest hospital, as Houthi insurgents tried to repel forces backed by a Saudi-led coalition. Medics said at least 61 combatants have been killed over the last 24 hours.
(Reuters, 11/11/18)(AFP, 11/11/18)
2018 Nov 12, US analysts said they have located more than half of an estimated 20 secret North Korean missile development sites.
(AP, 11/12/18)
2018 Nov 12, In Arizona Kyrsten Sinema (42) was declared the winner for a Senate seat defeating her Republican opponent Martha McSally. Her victory guarantees the Democrats at least 47 US Senate seats.
(SFC, 11/13/18, p.A7)
2018 Nov 12, In northern California the death toll from the Camp Fire in Butte County rose to 42. The fire covered 117,000 acres and was 30 percent contained.
(SFC, 11/13/18, p.A1)
2018 Nov 12, Stan Lee (b.1922 as Stanley Martin Lieber), creator of the comic book franchises that included Spider-Man and the Incredible Hulk, died in Los Angeles.
(SFC, 11/13/18, p.A14)
2018 Nov 12, In Afghanistan a suicide bomber struck near an anti-Taliban rally in Kabul, killing at least four people. A lawmaker reported that insurgents killed at least 20 Afghan policemen over the past 24 hours in eastern Ghazni province.
(AP, 11/12/18)
2018 Nov 12, A jury at Birmingham Crown Court in central England found Adam Thomas (22) and Claudia Patatas (38) guilty of being members of National Action. The British couple with neo-Nazi views had named their son after Adolf Hitler. A third defendant, Daniel Bogunovic, was also convicted of membership in the banned group. Three others pleaded guilty before the trial started.
(AP, 11/12/18)
2018 Nov 12, London police arrested Ramanodge Unmathallegadoo (50) after he wounded Devi Unmathallegadoo (35) in the abdomen with a crossbow. She died in a local hospital, where medics delivered her son.
(AP, 11/13/18)
2018 Nov 12, Bulgaria joined the growing ranks of EU nations opposed to a United Nations pact that aims to regulate the treatment of migrants worldwide.
(AP, 11/12/18)
2018 Nov 12, Canadian PM Justin Trudeau became the first Western leader to acknowledge his country had heard recordings of the killing of Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi.
(AP, 11/12/18)
2018 Nov 12, China said is postponing its decision to allow trading in tiger and rhinoceros parts a bare two weeks after the easing of the ban had raised fears the country was giving legal cover to poaching and smuggling of endangered wildlife.
(AP, 11/13/18)
2018 Nov 12, Cypriot officials opened two new border crossings for the first time in eight years, the latest push for peace by the two sides after UN-backed talks collapsed last year.
(AFP, 11/12/18)
2018 Nov 12, DR Congo's main opposition party rejected a deal agreed by its leader just a day earlier to select a single opposition candidate for upcoming presidential elections.
(AP, 11/12/18)
2018 Nov 12, An Egyptian court sentenced former Menoufiya province governor Hisham Abdel Basset to 10 years in prison for accepting bribes to award public works contracts.
(AP, 11/12/18)
2018 Nov 12, Ethiopia's attorney general Berhanu Tsegaye said investigations had uncovered corruption at METEC (Metal and Engineering Corporation), which makes military equipment and is involved in sectors from agriculture to construction. Tsegaye announced the arrests of several METEC executives in a corruption investigation and the detention of security officials accused of abusing prisoners.
(Reuters, 11/13/18)
2018 Nov 12, The French government said 51 states, including all EU members, have pledged their support for a new international agreement to set standards on cyberweapons and the use of the internet. The states have signed up to a so-called "Paris Call for Trust and Security in Cyberspace", an attempt to kickstart stalled global negotiations. China, Russia and the United States did not sign the pledge.
(AFP, 11/12/18)
2018 Nov 12, In France police Officer Maggy Biskupski (36), who warned that growing anti-police violence was undermining morale in the force, was found dead at her home in a suspected suicide. She had founded the Angry Police Movement protest group after the October 2016 firebombing of a squad car with two officers inside.
(AFP, 11/13/18)
2018 Nov 12, Representatives of Libya's quarreling factions attended a conference in Palermo aimed at finding a political settlement to bolster the fight against Islamic militants and stop illegal immigrants from crossing to Europe's southern shores.
(SFC, 11/13/18, p.A5)
2018 Nov 12, Macedonian police issued an arrest warrant for former PM Nikola Gruevski, who resigned in 2016 after 10 years in power, after he failed to show up to begin his sentence following a Nov. 9 court ruling against his motion for a reprieve. Gruevski fled to Hungary and submitted an asylum request.
(Reuters, 11/14/18)
2018 Nov 12, The Netherlands resumed visa and passport services in Pakistan following a brief suspension, denying that its embassy had closed over security concerns after the country gave shelter to the lawyer of a Christian woman in a blasphemy case.
(Reuters, 11/12/18)
2018 Nov 12, Taliban officials said Pakistan has released Abdul Samad Sani, a US-designated terrorist who served as the Afghan Central Bank governor during the militants' rule, along with a lower-ranking commander named Salahuddin.
(AP, 11/12/18)
2018 Nov 12, Palestinians in Gaza fired dozens of rockets at southern Israel, critically wounding one person in a strike on a bus, a day after an Israeli incursion prompted deadly fighting in the enclave. Israel's military said it was carrying out air strikes "throughout the Gaza Strip" following a barrage of rocket fire from the Palestinian enclave.
(Reuters, 11/12/18)(AFP, 11/12/18)
2018 Nov 12, Qatar's Sidra Medicine Hospital officially opened in Doha. It featured 14 giant bronze sculptures by British artist Damien Hirst graphically charting the moment of conception to birth greet patients arriving at the $8-billion hospital. The sculptures were originally unveiled in October 2013 but then covered from public view until recent weeks.
(https://www.sidra.org/media/news-room/)(AP, 11/18/18)
2018 Nov 12, Romania's Pres. Klaus Iohannis said his country isn't ready to take over the European Union's rotating presidency on Jan. 1 and called for the government to step down.
(AP, 11/12/18)
2018 Nov 12, In western Romania an explosion occurred in a tunnel where weapons are tested at the plant in the city of Cugir, followed by a fire. One woman employed at the factory died in the blast.
(AP, 11/12/18)
2018 Nov 12, Russia denied being behind the recent disruption to GPS signals across Lapland which put civil aviation at risk, after Finland's PM Juha Sipila said the interference was "almost certainly deliberate".
(AFP, 11/12/18)
2018 Nov 12, In Sudan many cash machines in Khartoum have run out of banknotes as the government scrambled to prevent economic collapse with a sharp devaluation and emergency austerity measures. Sudan has suffered from a lack of foreign currency since losing three-quarters of its output of oil when the south of the country seceded in 2011.
(Reuters, 11/12/18)
2018 Nov 12, In northern Syria, a car bomb in Jarablus, a Turkish-controlled town, killed one person, wounded 24 and caused extensive material damage.
(AP, 11/12/18)
2018 Nov 12, The Turkish coast guard said five people, including three children, died after a boat carrying 15 migrants sank off the western coast. Five others were missing and a search was underway.
(Reuters, 11/12/18)
2018 Nov 12, In Yemen at least 150 people were reported killed over the last 24 hours of clashes in the port city of Hodeida.
(AFP, 11/12/18)
2018 Nov 13, The US Treasury expanded its attack on Hezbollah's financial network, hitting key representatives of the Lebanese militant group in Iraq with sanctions. The Treasury blacklisted Shibl Muhsin 'Ubayd Al-Zaydi, Yusuf Hashim, Adnan Hussein Kawtharani, and Muhammad 'Abd-Al-Hadi Farhat under its Specially Designated Global Terrorists program.
(AFP, 11/13/18)
2018 Nov 13, CNN demnded the reinstatement of of correspondent Jim Acosta's White House credentials because their revocation violates the right of freedom of the press. The Trump administration stripped Acosta of his pass following Pres. Trump's Nov. 8 contentious new conference.
(SFC, 11/14/18, p.A5)
2018 Nov 13, In northern California several victims of the Camp Fire in Butte County filed suit against PG&E and its parent company.
(SFC, 11/14/18, p.D1)
2018 Nov 13, In southern California the Woolsey Fire roared to life again. 435 buildings have been burned over 146 square miles. It was 35 percent contained.
(SFC, 11/14/18, p.A11)
2018 Nov 13, Amazon announced NYC and Arlington, Va., as joint winners for a second company headquarters. NYC had offered more than $1.5 billion in tax credits and other incentives. Arlington offered $573 million.
(SFC, 11/14/18, p.D2)
2018 Nov 13, Christie's sold the "Pink Legacy" diamond at auction for more than $50 million to renowned jeweler Harry Winston.
(SFC, 11/14/18, p.A2)
2018 Nov 13, Bahrain's public prosecutor detained and charged Ali Rashed al-Asheeri, a former member of parliament with the now-banned Al-Wefaq opposition group, for a tweet saying he would boycott elections this month, with a rights group identifying him as a former lawmaker.
(AFP, 11/13/18)
2018 Nov 13, A Cambodian court charged 18 people, including 11 pregnant women, with violating laws against surrogate births.
(AP, 11/13/18)
2018 Nov 13, In China students and alumni of several Chinese universities sounded the alarm over the apparent detention of more than a dozen young labor activists who have been missing since the weekend. They were involved in a coalition, led by young Marxist activists, that was founded this summer to show solidarity with factory workers at Jasic Technology, a welding equipment manufacturer in southern China.
(AP, 11/14/18)
2018 Nov 13, The Czech Republic's highest legal authority upheld a ban for the operations of the ride-sharing service Uber in Brno, the second-largest city in the country. The ban doesn't apply in the capital, Prague, where Uber faces similar accusations in a separate case.
(AP, 11/13/18)
2018 Nov 13, Ethiopia arrested Kinfe Dagnew, the former head of a military-run industrial conglomerate, and flew him in handcuffs to the capital.
(Reuters, 11/13/18)
2018 Nov 13, The European Commission complained that Romania has gone back on court reforms, urging Bucharest to revive efforts immediately to fight corruption and ensure judicial independence.
(AFP, 11/13/18)
2018 Nov 13, French authorities said they have closed an investigation into the disappearance and subsequent detention in China of Meng Hongwei, the former president of Interpol, and found no evidence to support his wife's claim that she got a threatening call in Chinese after he was picked up.
(AP, 11/14/18)
2018 Nov 13, German Chancellor Angela Merkel called for an integrated EU military, recalling the lessons of the First World War and the divisions that led to the conflict.
(Reuters, 11/13/18)
2018 Nov 13, German authorities said they suspect a male nurse of killing six elderly patients, and attempting to kill at least three more, after he admitted to injecting them with diabetes medication. Suspect Grzegorz Stanislaw Wolsztajn (36), arrested last February, denied intending to kill them.
(AP, 11/13/18)
2018 Nov 13, Greece's culture ministry said archaeologists have located the first tangible remains of the lost ancient city of Tenea that, according to tradition, was first settled by Trojan war captives after the Greek sack of Troy. The remains dated from the 4th century BC to late Roman times.
(AP, 11/13/18)
2018 Nov 13, Italy's leaders sought to affirm their commitment to a free press after journalists protested against insults from prominent figures in the governing 5-Star Movement.
(SFC, 11/14/18, p.A2)
2018 Nov 13, The International Monetary Fund warned the Italian government that its plan to sharply increase spending carries "substantial" risks and would leave the country vulnerable to market turmoil.
(AP, 11/13/18)
2018 Nov 13, Lebanese PM-designate Saad al-Hariri blamed the Iran-backed Hezbollah for what he called a "big obstacle" in efforts to form a new government, indicating there could be no solution if it did not back down.
(Reuters, 11/13/18)
2018 Nov 13, Malaysian PM Mahathir Mohamed sharply criticized Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi for her handling of an ethnic crisis that led to mass killings and the exodus of more than 700,000 Rohingya Muslims from her country.
(AP, 11/13/18)
2018 Nov 13, In Mexico a group of 357 migrants arrived in the border city of Tijuana aboard nine buses and immediately went to a stretch of border fence to celebrate. After their visit to the border, most were taken to shelters in groups of 30 or 40.
(AP, 11/14/18)
2018 Nov 13, Palestinian militant groups in the Gaza Strip announced an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire with Israel after a severe escalation of violence threatened to descend into full-blown war. Seven Palestinians were killed in Gaza over the course of some 24 hours as Israeli strikes targeted militants and flattened buildings while sending fireballs and plumes of smoke into the sky. Around 460 rockets and mortar rounds were fired from the Gaza Strip, wounding 27 people, including three severely.
(AFP, 11/13/18)
2018 Nov 13, Romania's PM Viorica Dancila dismissed suggestions that the country is not prepared to take over the rotating presidency of the European Union next year, despite criticism from the EU that the country is backsliding on democratic reforms.
(AP, 11/13/18)
2018 Nov 13, Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny said he was prevented from flying out of Moscow for a European court ruling on whether his recent detentions have been politically motivated.
(AP, 11/13/18)
2018 Nov 13, The independent Russian New Times magazine, fined 22 million rubles last month for failing to notify authorities on time of receiving foreign funding, said it has raised over $370,000 in four days to pay the fine. Critics and media experts have viewed the fine as retribution by the government for the New Times' critical reporting.
(AP, 11/13/18)
2018 Nov 13, In Singapore the annual gathering of Southeast Asian leaders (ASEAN) began with a warning from the host, Singapore PM Lee Hsien Loong, about threats against international rules that underpin world stability and economic growth.
(AP, 11/13/18)
2018 Nov 13, Sri Lanka's Supreme Court suspended the president's order to dissolve Parliament and hold new elections, opening the way for lawmakers to vote on whether to accept his earlier ouster of the prime minister.
(AP, 11/13/18)
2018 Nov 13, Turkey's President Tayyip Erdogan said recordings related to the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, which Turkey has shared with Western allies, are "appalling" and shocked a Saudi intelligence officer who listened to them.
(Reuters, 11/13/18)
2018 Nov 13, Turkey pulled out of Italian-sponsored Libya crisis talks in Palermo saying it had been "excluded", dealing a fresh blow to the latest international bid to stabilize the chaos-stricken country.
(AFP, 11/13/18)
2018 Nov 12, In central Uganda 9 students were killed in an alleged arson attack targeting a school dormitory. A 10th died while being admitted at a local hospital. 40 other students escaped with injuries of varying degrees.
(AP, 11/14/18)
2018 Nov 13, Angry Ukrainians took to the streets and blocked roads as hundreds of thousands remain without heating at a time when temperatures are plunging because of a dispute between the national gas company and regional utility providers. Bills for hot water and heating were expected to increase by another 15% on December 1.
(AP, 11/13/18)
2018 Nov 13, UN human rights boss Michelle Bachelet called on Bangladesh to halt plans to repatriate 2,200 Rohingya refugees to Myanmar, warning that their lives would be at "serious risk".
(Reuters, 11/13/18)
2018 Nov 13, Pope Francis named Archbishop Charles Scicluna as a deputy, or adjunct secretary, at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican office that processes sex abuse cases globally.
(AP, 11/13/18)
2018 Nov 13, Yemeni officials said an informal agreement to reduce hostilities between Saudi-led coalition forces and rebels in and around the Red Sea port city of Hodeida has taken hold.
(AP, 11/13/18)
2018 Nov 13, In Yemen an airstrike by the Saudi-led coalition killed at least seven civilians late today in the rebel-held port city of Hodeida.
(AP, 11/14/18)
2018 Nov 14, The US Customs and Border Protection announced that it has awarded a $167 million contract to build 8 miles (13 km) of border wall in south Texas.
(AP, 11/14/18)
2018 Nov 14, It was reported that US federal disease experts have confirmed 90 cases of sudden-onset paralysis, almost all in children, this year. The illness called acute flaccid myelitis was first widely reported in 2014.
(SFC, 11/14/18, p.C6)
2018 Nov 14, California's state Supreme Court rejected an appeal by AC Transit of a jury's $15.3 million damage award to a Richmond woman whose spine was fractured after a bus careened over a speed bump in a school zone in San Pablo in August 2011. Unpaid damages plus interest now totaled $20.1 million.
(SFC, 11/19/18, p.C1)
2018 Nov 14, In California riots Pleasant Valley State Prison and Avenal State Prison, both in Fresno County, involved hundreds of inmates and sent 11 to the hospital.
(SFC, 11/15/18, p.A7)
2018 Nov 14, In San Francisco Bart Kylstra (52), the CEO of Rio Mobility, was found dead in a mixed use building on the 1000 block of Market. Kuk Kim (28), the chief operating oficer of the company, was booked the next day on suspicion of murder.
(SSFC, 11/18/18, p.C2)
2018 Nov 14, In northern California the death toll from Camp Fire in Butte County rose to 56 with 130 people still missing.
(SFC, 11/15/18, p.A1)
2018 Nov 14, Afghan officials said thousands of members of the mainly Shi'ite Hazara ethnic minority have fled their homes in the central province of Ghazni as the Taliban pressed into two previously safe districts.
(Reuters, 11/14/18)
2018 Nov 14, Bangladesh authorities said they are ready to begin repatriating some of the more than 700,000 Rohingya Muslims who have fled from army-led violence in Myanmar since last year, but refugees scheduled to leave said they would refuse to go because of fears for their safety.
(AP, 11/14/18)
2018 Nov 14, Bangladesh police fired rubber bullets and tear gas at opposition party supporters in the capital Dhaka as tension soared weeks before a general election.
(Reuters, 11/14/18)
2018 Nov 14, British PM Theresa May defended her anguished draft divorce deal with the EU before rowdy lawmakers and a splintered cabinet that threatens to fall apart. Brexit supporters and opponents rallied near PM Theresa May's Downing Street office. The cabinet endorsed the draft to end Britain's four decades in the bloc, a nearly 600-page, dense legal text that is far from certain to pass in the UK parliament.
(AFP, 11/14/18)(Reuters, 11/15/18)
2018 Nov 14, The British government says it will cut the maximum stake on electronic slot machines from 100 pounds ($130) to 2 pounds ($2.60) in April — reversing an unpopular decision to delay the move.
(AP, 11/14/18)
2018 Nov 14, Cameroon's military said at least 30 separatists have been killed in two days of intense fighting in the turbulent English-speaking North West region. The mayor of Nwa, a local council in the same region, was found dead. He was believed to have been killed by separatists.
(AP, 11/14/18)
2018 Nov 14, Cuba said it would pull 8,517 of its doctors from Brazil after the South American nation’s President-elect Jair Bolsonaro questioned their training and demanded changes to their contracts.
(Reuters, 11/14/18)(SFC, 6/12/19, p.A3)
2018 Nov 14, EU lawmakers said European arms were stoking the conflict in Yemen, where a Saudi Arabia-led coalition is battling Iran-backed Houthi rebels.
(Reuters, 11/14/18)
2018 Nov 14, In Fiji PM Voreqe Bainimarama and his FijiFirst party were headed for a convincing election win early today as votes were tallied.
(AP, 11/14/18)
2018 Nov 14, The French government attempted to head off planned protests over rising fuel costs by announcing a series of measures to help poorer families pay their bills.
(AFP, 11/14/18)
2018 Nov 14, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said freedom of the press is being eroded in Gabon, after the government suspended a newspaper for commenting on the hospitalization of President Ali Bongo.
(AFP, 11/14/18)
2018 Nov 14, Police in India said a monkey has snatched a 12-day-old boy from his mother and killed him in Runkata town on the outskirts of Agra.
(Reuters, 11/14/18)
2018 Nov 14, Iran's state media reported the hanging of two financial traders convicted of stockpiling gold coins and profiteering during a currency crisis.
(SFC, 11/15/18, p.A2)
2018 Nov 14, Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman announced his resignation on and called for early elections after a sharp disagreement over a Gaza ceasefire deal, throwing the government into turmoil.
(AFP, 11/14/18)
2018 Nov 14, Italian borrowing costs nudged higher after the populist government resubmitted draft budget proposals without the significant changes sought by the European Commission.
(AP, 11/14/18)
2018 Nov 14, The leader of Latvia's New Conservative Party, Janis Bordans, abandoned his attempt to form a government after three potential coalition partners pulled out of talks. The president nominated Bordans as prime minister last week and gave him a deadline of Nov. 21 to form a government after October's vote, which delivered a fragmented parliament of seven parties.
(Reuters, 11/14/18)
2018 Nov 14, Christian rivals from the Lebanese civil war, Samir Geagea and Suleiman Frangieh, shook hands with each other, marking a formal reconciliation to end more than four decades of enmity.
(AP, 11/14/18)
2018 Nov 14, In Libya dozens of migrants have barricaded themselves in a container ship in the port city of Misrata for the past five days, after being picked up at sea, and refuse to disembark, saying Libya is too dangerous for them.
(AP, 11/14/18)
2018 Nov 14, Malaysia's anti-graft agency said the wife of ex-PM Najib Razak will face new corruption charges, along with two former government officials and a businessman.
(AP, 11/14/18)
2018 Nov 14, In Mexico 398 more migrants arrived at in Tijuana after more than a month's journey to reach the US border.
(SFC, 11/15/18, p.A2)
2018 Nov 14, Palestinian Nawaf al-Aatar (20) was killed by Israeli fire in the border area of the northern Gaza Strip. A Gazan security source said he was fishing at the time near the border fence.
(AFP, 11/14/18)
2018 Nov 14, A knife wielding Palestinian sneaked into a Jerusalem police station late today and wounded four police officers before he was shot and captured.
(SFC, 11/16/18, p.A2)
2018 Nov 14, In Papua New Guinea the APEC grouping of nations that includes the US and China held its lavish annual leaders' meeting in the country that can least afford it.
(AP, 11/14/18)
2018 Nov 14, Lawmakers in Romania approved a bill that would cancel wiretap evidence used to prosecute past corruption cases and could wipe out hundreds of convictions, including that of the head of the ruling Social Democrats.
(Reuters, 11/14/18)
2018 Nov 14, Meeting in Singapore Russia's President Vladimir Putin and Japan's PM Shinzo Abe agreed to step up the pace of talks to end a decades-old territorial dispute.
(Reuters, 11/14/18)
2018 Nov 14, In Singapore leaders of Southeast Asian nations again pushed back an agreement on a pan-Asian free trade deal amid a whirlwind of diplomacy at their annual summit. Singapore PM Lee Hsien Loong said a final agreement will be delayed until 2019.
(AP, 11/14/18)
2018 Nov 14, Sri Lanka's Parliament passed the no-confidence motion against recently appointed PM Mahinda Rajapaksa and his government with the backing of 122 of the 225 lawmakers in a voice vote, followed by a signed document.
(Reuters, 11/15/18)
2018 Nov 14, A court sentenced Turkish journalist Ali Unal to 19 years in jail on a charge of being a leader in the network accused of carrying out a failed coup in July 2016. Unal was chief writer at the now-defunct Zaman newspaper.
(Reuters, 11/14/18)
2018 Nov 14, A Turkish court sentenced a German citizen to more than six years in jail on terrorism charges. State news said Saide Inac, a singer who also goes by the name Hozen Cane, was sentenced to six years and three months in jail for her membership in an armed terrorist organization.
(Reuters, 11/14/18)
2018 Nov 14, Ukraine's PM Volodymyr Groisman accused local officials of causing a crisis that has left hundreds of thousands without heating in freezing weather.
(AP, 11/14/18)
2018 Nov 14, The UN Security Council unanimously voted to lift a nearly decade-old arms embargo and targeted sanctions on Eritrea after a rapprochement with Ethiopia and thawing of relations with Djibouti.
(Reuters, 11/14/18)
2018 Nov 14, In Yemen pro-government forces were "ordered" to stop their assault against the Iran-linked Huthi rebels until further notice, as the United Arab Emirates, a key member of the pro-government coalition, threw its weight behind "early" UN peace talks in Sweden.
(AFP, 11/14/18)
2018 Nov 15, A report from New York University's Congo Research Group and the Bridgeway Foundation said an Islamist rebel group in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo received money from a financier linked to Islamic State, suggesting tentative ties between the Congo insurgents and other jihadists in Africa and beyond. The report said Islamist "financial facilitator" Waleed Ahmed Zein paid the Allied Democratic Forces at least once. The ADF was set up by Ugandan Muslims in the 1990s purporting to fight for the rights of the Tablighi Jamaat sect.
(Reuters, 11/15/18)
2018 Nov 15, It was reported that US prosecutors have obtained a sealed indictment in a Virginia federal court against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. Assange's name appears twice in a recently-unsealed August court filing from a federal prosecutor in Virginia who was attempting to keep sealed a separate case involving a man accused of coercing a minor for sex.
(AP, 11/16/18)
2018 Nov 15, In northern California the death toll in the Butte County Camp Fire rose to 63. The number of missing skyrocketed to 631.
(SFC, 11/16/18, p.A1)
2018 Nov 15, It was reported that a Minnesota-based food distributor has been sold to South Korea's largest food company. CJ CheilJedang will pay $1.8 billion for an 80 percent stake in Schwan's and gain control of its businesses that serve restaurants, grocery stores and other retailers.
(AP, 11/15/18)
2018 Nov 15, In NYC a 1972 painting by David Hockney, "Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures), fetched $90.3 milliion at Christie's. This easily broke the record for a work by a living artist sold at auction.
(SFC, 11/17/18, p.A6)
2018 Nov 15, Roy Clark, US country music star, died in Oklahoma. He headlined the TV show "Hee Haw" for nearly a quarter century.
(SFC, 11/16/18, p.A7)
2018 Nov 15, A blistering overnight attack by the Taliban on an Afghan police outpost in western Farah province killed 30 policemen. Unofficial estimates said that about 45 Afghan policemen or soldiers are killed or wounded on a daily basis.
(AP, 11/15/18)
2018 Nov 15, Human Rights Watch called on Angola to halt mass deportations after more than 400,000 migrants, mainly from the Democratic Republic of Congo, fled or were expelled from Angola in just weeks.
(AFP, 11/15/18)
2018 Nov 15, The head of Bangladesh's refugee commission said plans to start the repatriation of 700,000 Rohingya Muslims to Myanmar today were scrapped after officials were unable to find anyone who wanted to return.
(AP, 11/15/18)
2018 Nov 15, British PM Theresa May battled to save a draft divorce deal with the European Union after her Brexit secretary Dominic Raab and other ministers quit in protest and eurosceptic lawmakers stepped up efforts to topple her.
(Reuters, 11/15/18)
2018 Nov 15, In the Central African Rep. more than 40 people were killed and dozens wounded in an attack on a Catholic mission sheltering 20,000 refugees in Alindao.
(Reuters, 11/17/18)
2018 Nov 15, China said that 15 foreign ambassadors exceeded their diplomatic roles by issuing a letter expressing concern about the incarceration of hundreds of thousands of members of the country's Muslim minorities in re-education camps.
(AP, 11/15/18)
2018 Nov 15, At least four major international hotel chains apologized after hidden camera video of their room cleaning practices in China was posted online.
(AP, 11/15/18)
2018 Nov 15, Denmark said it is cutting about $10 million in aid to the government of Tanzania over what it called "negative developments" in human rights in the East African country.
(AP, 11/15/18)
2018 Nov 15, The European Court of Human Rights ruled that Russia's repeated arrests and detention of opposition leader Alexei Navalny were politically-motivated and breached his human rights, a decision Moscow called questionable.
(Reuters, 11/15/18)
2018 Nov 15, France led calls among EU states for changes to Britain's draft Brexit deal. France spearheaded a group of states in raising objections to what has so far been agreed on fishing between the EU and UK after Brexit.
(Reuters, 11/15/18)
2018 Nov 15, A French court acquitted former government minister Georges Tron (61) and his former deputy, Brigitte Gruel (61), of raping two employees during foot-massaging sessions in his office. Virginie Ettel (41) and Eva Loubrieu (44) had testified that they felt powerless to resist being groped and penetrated digitally by Tron because they were afraid of losing their jobs.
(AFP, 11/15/18)
2018 Nov 15, A French court granted release to Islamic scholar Tariq Ramadan (56), a Swiss citizen and professor at Oxford University, on condition he pay 300,000 euros ($340,000) bail, surrender his Swiss passport and remain in France. Two women have accused Ramadan of raping them in France.
(AP, 11/16/18)
2018 Nov 15, French Polynesian President Edouard Fritch said the leaders of the French collectivity of islands in the South Pacific lied to the population for three decades over the dangers of nuclear testing. From 1960 to 1996, France carried out 193 nuclear tests in French Polynesia. In 2010 the French government offered millions of euros in compensation for the government's 201 nuclear tests in the South Pacific and Algeria.
(AP, 11/16/18)
2018 Nov 15, Greek authorities said about 74,000 asylum-seekers are now living in the country, and efforts are underway to expand housing for them and improve conditions at island camps for migrants who arrive by sea.
(AP, 11/15/18)
2018 Nov 15, Cardinal Gualtiero Bassetti, president of the Italian bishops' conference, said that a national advisory group of lay and religious experts is being created to help dioceses educate personnel about protecting children and to help bishops investigate abuse reports.
(AP, 11/15/18)
2018 Nov 15, In Italy a nurse (48) reportedly killed her two young children, a boy of 7 and a girl of 9, by lethal injection, then took her own life in the northwestern mountain town of Aymavilles. The woman left notes saying she couldn't bear the "weight of life's adversities".
(AP, 11/16/18)
2018 Nov 15, Morocco inaugurated Africa's fastest train which will halve traveling time between the commercial and industrial hubs of Casablanca and Tangier. The train, which was tested at a speed of 357 km (222 miles)per hour, is planned to run at 320 km (198 miles) per hour. The $2 billion project was jointly funded with France and several Arab states.
(Reuters, 11/15/18)(SFC, 11/16/18, p.A2)
2018 Nov 15, Saudi Arabia's public prosecutor's office said it is seeking the death penalty for five out of 11 suspects charged in the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The prosecutor's spokesman Shaalan al-Shaalan denied Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had any knowledge of the killing.
(Reuters, 11/15/18)(AFP, 11/15/18)
2018 Nov 15, South Korea exploded a front-line guard post, sending plumes of thick, black smoke into the sky above the border with North Korea, in the most dramatic scene to date in the rivals' efforts to reduce animosities.
(AP, 11/15/18)
2018 Nov 15, In Sri Lanka rival lawmakers exchanged blows in Parliament as disputed PM Mahinda Rajapaksa claimed the speaker had no authority to remove him from office by voice vote.
(AP, 11/15/18)
2018 Nov 15, In Tunisia a three-day forum opened in Tunis for a conference on freedom of expression and new challenges facing the media. It attracted 600 journalists, bloggers, newspaper chiefs and media academics from Arabic and French-speaking countries across the Mediterranean, Africa and Europe.
(AFP, 11/16/18)
2018 Nov 15, In Ukraine unknown assailants threw petrol bombs at a historic 18th century Orthodox church in Kiev and attacked a priest early today. The petrol bombs did not explode and no damage was done to St. Andrew's church. A church spokesman blamed Moscow for the incident.
(Reuters, 11/15/18)
2018 Nov 15, A prominent Yemeni rights group released a report documenting heavy damage from ground fighting and airstrikes to at least 34 archaeological sites over the past four years.
(AP, 11/15/18)
2016 Nov 15, US Secretary of State John Kerry said that Yemen's Houthi group and the Saudi-led coalition fighting it had agreed to a ceasefire from Nov 17. The internationally recognized Yemeni government quickly rejected the move.
(Reuters, 11/15/16)
2016 Nov 15, The rebuilt cast-iron dome of the US Capitol, a soaring symbol of national unity since the 19th century, was formally completed after a $60 million overhaul that included repairing rust-choked gutters and more than 1,300 cracks.
(Reuters, 11/15/16)
2016 Nov 15, The companies behind the Dakota Access Pipeline asked a US court to intervene in the fight over its completion as demonstrators fanned out across North America to protest the controversial project.
(Reuters, 11/15/16)
2016 Nov 15, In Belgium some 8,500 off-duty military personnel marched in the streets of Brussels over a rise in the pension age, at times clashing with police.
(AFP, 11/15/16)
2016 Nov 15, Thousands of British prison officers in England and Wales walked out in protest at rising levels of violence in jails, prompting the government to seek a court injunction to force them back to work.
(Reuters, 11/15/16)
2016 Nov 15, Canada's attorney general announced a move to repeal Section 159 of the Criminal Code used to effectively prosecute gay youths who engage in anal sex, calling it "discriminatory."
(AFP, 11/15/16)
2016 Nov 15, Canada’s Chief of Defense Gen. Jonathan Vance said Canadian troops are allowed to fire first in Iraq.
(http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/liberals-canadians-shoot-first-raq/)
2016 Nov 15, China executed Jia Jinglong (30), a protester against forced expropriation in Hebei province. In 2013 his home was destroyed under official expropriation 18 days before his wedding. In Feb, 2015, he shot a local party chief in the back of the head at a New Year party.
(Econ, 11/26/16, p.86)
2016 Nov 15, In Congo DRC reporter Marcel Lubala was shot three times early today at his home in the central town of Mbuji-Mayi. The group Journalist in Danger said his body was dragged in front of his wife, who had been tied up.
(AP, 11/16/16)
2016 Nov 15, Thousands of people along the Dominican Republic's north coast were evacuated amid heavy rains that have caused widespread flooding and destroyed dozens of homes.
(AP, 11/15/16)
2016 Nov 15, An Egyptian court struck down the death sentence passed by a lower tribunal against former Islamist President Mohammed Morsi for his part in a mass prison break during the country's 2011 uprising.
(AP, 11/15/16)
2016 Nov 15, Egypt's parliament approved a bill to regulate non-governmental organizations in a move human rights groups say effectively bans their work.
(Reuters, 11/15/16)
2016 Nov 15, The European Union agreed to increase its military research budget for the first time since 2010 after Britain softened its opposition, a breakthrough that may signal British support for defense co-operation even once outside the bloc.
(Reuters, 11/15/16)
2016 Nov 15, Sources said Volkswagen AG has reached an agreement with US regulators for a mix of buybacks and fixes for 80,000 polluting Audi, Porsche and VW 3.0-liter vehicles.
(AP, 11/15/16)
2016 Nov 15, In Ghana Nana Afia Kobi Serwaa Ampem II (b.1907), revered queen of the powerful Ashanti kingdom, died. King Otumfuo Osei Tutu II is the deceased queen's biological son.
(http://tinyurl.com/jq22mxx)(AP, 11/25/16)
2016 Nov 15, Greek riot police used tear gas and stun grenades in Athens to disperse about 3,000 left-wing marchers protesting President Barack Obama's visit. Greek left-wingers still resent US support for Greece's 1967-74 military dictatorship. Obama offered solidarity with Greece over its debt and migrant crises on Tuesday during his final trip to Europe as US president before handing over power to Donald Trump.
(AP, 11/15/16)(Reuters, 11/15/16)
2016 Nov 15, Hungarian police said anti-terror squads have detained 12 people in eight localities suspected of involvement with the extremist Hungarian National Front.
(AP, 11/15/16)
2016 Nov 15, Iran's official IRNA news agency said the nation's intelligence service has confiscated about 2 tons of explosives linked to planned attacks by the Islamic State group in the country's west.
(AP, 11/15/16)
2016 Nov 15, Israel appointed an ambassador to Turkey, its first since both countries recalled their envoys five years ago amid a spat over a deadly Israeli raid on a Turkish vessel trying to reach the Gaza Strip.
(AP, 11/15/16)
2016 Nov 15, In Italy more than 1,000 people marched under torchlight through the Medieval center of Soave where the mayor is fending off plans to house more than 100 migrants.
(AP, 11/16/16)
2016 Nov 15, Swimmers crossed the Dead Sea from Jordan to Israel to raise awareness of what they said was an environmental disaster that has shrunk the inland lake's surface by a third in 30 years. They were the first people to thrash their way over the body of water so salty that it poisons anyone who drinks it.
(Reuters, 11/15/16)
2016 Nov 15, Kenya destroyed some 5,250 illegal firearms by fire as part of efforts to fight crimes like cattle rustling, carjackings and to eliminate threats from terrorism.
(Reuters, 11/15/16)
2016 Nov 15, Amnesty International said Kenya is coercing residents of the world's largest refugee camp to leave it and return to Somalia where they risk getting killed or forcibly recruited into the Islamic extremist group, al-Shabab.
(AP, 11/15/16)
2016 Nov 15, In Libya an air strike targeting Islamist militants killed at least seven people near the southwestern city of Sabha. Gunmen later seized the remains of the suspected militants from a morgue.
(Reuters, 11/15/16)
2016 Nov 15, In southern Libya tribal clashes erupted after three young men turned a pet monkey loose on a high school girl. The girl's family sought revenge and killed all three men along with the animal. Over the next days at least 20 people were killed and 50 wounded in the clashes.
(AP, 11/20/16)(AFP, 11/20/16)
2016 Nov 15, Around 95 people were missing, feared drowned, in the Mediterranean after another migrant dinghy capsized off Libya.
(AFP, 11/15/16)(AFP, 11/16/16)
2016 Nov 15, Myanmar’s army said sixty-nine members of the government described Rohingya Muslim militant group and 17 members of the security forces have been killed since the October 9 start of fighting in western Rakhine State.
(Reuters, 11/18/16)
2016 Nov 15, Nepalese authorities said police have detained 41 Tibetans trying to cross the border into India, in a crackdown on people fleeing the disputed region where opposition to Chinese control persists.
(Reuters, 11/15/16)
2016 Nov 15, Russian President Vladimir Putin dismissed Economy Minister Alexei Ulyukayev over allegations he extorted a $2 million bribe from top oil producer Rosneft, a case that could expose fault lines in the Russian leader's inner circle.
(Reuters, 11/15/16)
2016 Nov 15, Russia launched coordinated missile strikes against rebels in Syria and Moscow for the first time used its only aircraft carrier in combat.
(Reuters, 11/15/16)
2016 Nov 15, South Africa's main opposition party filed a criminal complaint accusing President Jacob Zuma of corruption after a report this month by an anti-graft agency listed allegations of influence-peddling in his government.
(Reuters, 11/15/16)
2016 Nov 15, In Syria Russia launched new air strikes involving carrier-borne jets and long range missiles in rebel-held districts of eastern Aleppo after a weeks-long pause. Activists said between 4 and 10 people were killed in the strikes on Aleppo.
(Reuters, 11/15/16)(SFC, 11/16/16, p.A3)
2016 Nov 15, The UN warned that 75,000 Nigerian children risk dying in "a few months" as hunger grips the country's ravaged northeast in the wake of the Boko Haram insurgency. Doctors Without Borders said thousands of children have died of starvation in the Boko Haram ravaged northeast.
(AFP, 11/15/16)(SFC, 11/16/16, p.A5)
2016 Nov 15, A key UN committee approved a resolution condemning North Korea's "systematic, widespread and gross violations of human rights" and encouraging the Security Council to refer the country to the International Criminal Court.
(AP, 11/15/16)
2016 Nov 15, Venezuela's high court ordered the opposition to drop plans for a political trial against President Nicolas Maduro, whose rivals blame him for food shortages in the volatile country.
(AFP, 11/15/16)
2017 Nov 15, A 500-year-old painting believed to be by Leonardo da Vinci sold for $450.3 million in New York, blazing a new world record for the most expensive work of art sold at auction.
(AFP, 11/16/17)
2017 Nov 15, The Trump administration told 29 local and state governments with “sanctuary" policies to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement or forfeit some federal grants, despite court rulings that such demands are unenforceable.
(SFC, 11/16/17, p.A8)
2017 Nov 15, US President Donald Trump exhorted three suspended UCLA basketball players to thank him for their freedom following a shoplifting incident while they were in China. The trio apologized later in the day and publicly thanked Trump.
(AP, 11/16/17)
2017 Nov 15, US President Donald Trump told reporters that China had agreed with the US that North Korea must unilaterally cease its nuclear weapons program before negotiations can begin.
(AP, 11/16/17)
2017 Nov 15, In Louisiana Wilbert Jones (65) was freed after his life sentence, issued in 1974, was overturned. He had been convicted of raping a nurse on Oct, 2, 1971. The nurse (d.2008) had picked him out of a police lineup more than three months after the rape. She had also said the rapist was taller and had a rougher voice than Jones had.
(SFC, 11/16/17, p.A8)
2017 Nov 15, In Maryland Detective Sean Suiter was shot and killed in Baltimore with his own gun during a violent confrontation with a man in a vacant lot.
(SFC, 11/30/17, p.A7)
2017 Nov 15, Ohio officials called off the execution of Alva Campbell (69) after the state’s execution team failed to find the inmate vein. The execution was rescheduled for June 5, 2019. He had been scheduled to die for killing a teenager during a carjacking two decades earlier.
(SFC, 11/16/17, p.A7)
2017 Nov 15, Astronomers announced the discovery of an Earth-sized planet around the red star Ross 128 in our corner of the Milky Way. Ross 128 appeared to be at least 5 billion years old.
(SFC, 11/16/17, p.A6)
2017 Nov 15, Argentina lost communications with the submarine ARA San Juan, a German-built diesel-electric vessel with 44 crewmembers aboard.
(AP, 11/17/17)
2017 Nov 15, China said that it would send a high-level special envoy to North Korea's capital, Pyongyang, amid an extended chill in relations between the neighbors.
(AP, 11/16/17)
2017 Nov 15, In eastern China more than 30 vehicles collided in heavy fog on an expressway, killing at least 18 people and injuring 19 others in Fuyang, Anhui province.
(AP, 11/15/17)
2017 Nov 15, Colombia’s Senate backed a law to regulate transitional justice under the country's peace deal with Marxist FARC rebels, including special tribunals that will try guerrilla leaders for war crimes.
(Reuters, 11/16/17)
2017 Nov 15, At the Dubai Air Show Airbus signed a $49.5 billion deal to sell 430 airplanes to the Phoenix-based private equity firm that owns Frontier Airlines. Boeing reached an agreement with low-cost carrier FlyDubai to sell 225 Boeing 737 MAX 10 aircraft — a deal valued at $27 billion.
(AP, 11/15/17)
2017 Nov 15, In Egypt leaders of the local musicians union said Sherine Abdel-Wahab, a famous Arab singer, has been banned from performing in her native Egypt after advising a fan against drinking from the Nile River.
(AP, 11/15/17)
2017 Nov 15, In Egypt Mohamed Badie, the leader of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood movement, lost his appeal against a life sentence for his role in violent clashes during political turmoil in 2013. The court also upheld life sentences against seven other people and handed 10-year sentences to 39 and three-year sentences to 19 others.
(Reuters, 11/15/17)
2017 Nov 15, European lawmakers triggered the first stage of a so-called rule-of-law procedure against the Polish government amid concerns that new laws in Poland undermine judicial independence and the rule of law. Poland's prime minister reacted furiously over the call for the country to face EU sanctions.
(AP, 11/15/17)(AFP, 11/15/17)
2017 Nov 15, In Greece flash floods killed at least 20 people. Most of the fatalities occurred in Mandra, a working-class district on the western outskirts of Athens. Days later two people remained missing.
(AP, 11/16/17)(SFC, 11/17/17, p.A2)(AFP, 11/18/17)(AP, 11/20/17)
2017 Nov 15, Hungary's foreign minister accused the United States government of meddling in his country's internal affairs and upcoming election campaign by offering to fund "objective media in Hungary." Practically all major newspapers published outside Budapest are now in the hands of pro-government publishers, some of whom also own television or radio stations.
(AP, 11/15/17)
2017 Nov 15, An Indonesian police officer was killed and a second wounded, after both were shot in the back in an area near Freeport-McMoRan Inc's giant Grasberg copper mine in the eastern province of Papua.
(Reuters, 11/15/17)
2017 Nov 15, Mexican authorities seized more than 800 pounds (371 kg) of cocaine being transported toward the US border inside a truck bearing the markings of the country's Social Security Institute.
(AP, 11/17/17)
2017 Nov 15, In Nigeria four suicide bombers killed 14 people and wounded 29 in Maiduguri, home of the Boko Haram insurgency.
(SFC, 11/16/17, p.A2)
2017 Nov 15, The Russian Finance Ministry says it has signed a deal to restructure Venezuela's debt.
(AP, 11/15/17)
2017 Nov 15, Slovakia's government approved plans to build military armored vehicles with the Finnish defense industry company Patria to replace the NATO member's outdated armored personnel carriers.
(Reuters, 11/15/17)
2017 Nov 15, Syrian rebel officials said a senior commander has defected to Turkey from the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a leading combatant in the fight against Islamic State. Brigadier General Talal Silo handed himself in at dawn to the Free Syrian Army (FSA), an adversary of the SDF, and was escorted to Turkey.
(Reuters, 11/15/17)
2017 Nov 15, In Syria six Russian long-range bombers struck Islamic State targets near the town of Albu Kamal in Deir al-Zor Province.
(Reuters, 11/15/17)
2017 Nov 15, Turkish authorities in Ankara banned a German gay film festival the day before it was due to start, citing public safety and terrorism risks.
(Reuters, 11/19/17)
2017 Nov 15, Zimbabwe's military was in control of the country as President Robert Mugabe said he was under house arrest, although generals denied staging a coup. The country, which has an unemployment rate of over 90 percent, is due to hold elections next year with Mugabe pledging to stand for office again.
(AFP, 11/15/17)
2018 Nov 16, It was reported that the CIA believes Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul, complicating President Donald Trump's efforts to preserve ties with a key US ally.
(Reuters, 11/17/18)
2018 Nov 16, The United States said it would oppose for the first time an annual resolution at the United Nations calling on Israel to rescind its authority in the occupied Golan Heights, drawing praise from Israeli officials.
(Reuters, 11/16/18)
2018 Nov 16, A US federal judge directed the White House to restore the press credentials of Jim Acosta of CNN ruling the the Trump administration had likely violated his due process rights when it revoked his press badge last week.
(SFC, 11/17/18, p.A6)
2018 Nov 16, A US federal judge ruled that John Hinckley Jr. (63), the man who tried to assassinate Pres. Ronald Reagan in 1981, can now move out of his mother's house in Williamsburg and live within 75 miles of the city with the approval of his doctors.
(SSFC, 11/18/18, p.A9)
2018 Nov 16, In northern California the death toll in the Butte County Camp Fire rose to 71. The number of missing skyrocketed to 1011.
(SFC, 11/17/18, p.A1)
2018 Nov 16, William Goldman (87), American novelist and Oscar-winning screenwriter, died in Manhattan. His work included more than 20 novels and more than 20 screenplays. His original screeplay for "Butch Cassidy and the Sundace Kid" sold for $400,000.
(SSFC, 11/18/18, p.C10)
2018 Nov 16, In Australia Shinzo Abe became the first prime minister of Japan to visit Darwin since the northern city was bombed by Japanese forces in World War II, as he and PM Scott Morrison spoke of strengthening defense and other ties between their countries ahead of the APEC meeting in Papua New Guinea.
(AP, 11/16/18)
2018 Nov 16, Investigative group Bellingcat and Russian website The Insider published a report suggesting that Russian intelligence has infiltrated the computer infrastructure of a company that processes British visa applications.
(AP, 11/16/18)
2018 Nov 16, In Cambodia Nuon Chea (92) and Khieu Samphan (97), the last surviving leaders of the Khmer Rouge regime that ruled Cambodia in the 1970s, when their reign of terror was responsible for the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million people, were convicted by an international tribunal of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.
(AP, 11/16/18)(SFC, 11/17/18, p.A2)
2018 Nov 16, Meeting in Versailles, France, 50-plus nations unanimously approved a ground-breaking overhaul to the international system of measurements that underpins global trade and other vital human endeavors, uniting together behind new scientific definitions for the kilogram and other units in a way that they have failed to do on so many other issues.
(AP, 11/16/18)
2018 Nov 16, In India thousands of protesters blocked all the exits at a southern airport for more than 14 hours, stopping rights activist Trupti Desai from heading to a Hindu temple to defy a centuries-old ban on most women entering. Desai has led a successful campaign to give women the right to enter the inner sanctums of three temples in the western state of Maharashtra under the slogan "Right to Pray".
(Reuters, 11/16/18)
2018 Nov 16, Cyclone Gaya made landfall in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, killing at least 11 people, uprooting trees and knocking down electricity poles after more than 80,000 people were moved out of its path to safety.
(Reuters, 11/16/18)
2018 Nov 16, An Indonesian conservation official said a Sumatran elephant was found dead earlier this week in Aceh province with its tusks removed in an apparent poaching case targeting the critically endangered animal.
(AP, 11/17/18)
2018 Nov 16, Iraq's central government said it has agreed with Kurdish authorities to resume oil exports from Kirkuk, a year after federal forces seized the lucrative fields.
(AFP, 11/16/18)
2018 Nov 16, It was reported that Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu will take over the defense portfolio in his government after his defense minister resigned this week.
(Reuters, 11/16/18)
2018 Nov 16, North Korea said it will deport Bruce Byron Lowrance, an American citizen it detained for illegal entrance, an apparent concession to the United States that came even as it announced the test of a newly developed but unspecified "ultramodern" weapon that will be seen as a pressuring tactic by Washington.
(AP, 11/16/18)
2018 Nov 16, A senior North Korean official on a visit to South Korea called for Japan to apologize for the wartime forced labor of thousands of Koreans.
(AP, 11/16/18)
2018 Nov 16, World leaders began landing in Papua New Guinea for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting.
(AP, 11/16/18)
2018 Nov 16, In Poland Sister Cecylia Roszak (b.1908) died. During the German occupation of Poland during World War II she was one of several nuns who set up a new convent near Vilnius, today in Lithuania, sheltering Jews who had escaped the ghetto there.
(http://tinyurl.com/ybc6xo6w)(AP, 11/22/18)
2018 Nov 16, The Russian Defense Ministry said that nearly 6,000 people have returned to Syria in the last week alone and that nearly 270,000 Syrian refugees have returned home in recent months, a fraction of the estimated 5.6 million Syrians who have fanned out across the world fleeing the seven-year conflict.
(AP, 11/16/18)
2018 Nov 16, Russian investigators opened a criminal case after finding pollution levels in the Novaya river in St. Petersburg far exceeded norms, with ethyl alcohol levels charted at 5,400 times the acceptable limit.
(AP, 11/17/18)
2018 Nov 16, A Russian Soyuz rocket launched its first cargo mission to the International Space Station since a Soyuz rocket carrying astronauts failed last month.
(AFP, 11/17/18)
2018 Nov 16, In Sri Lanka lawmakers in Parliament supporting disputed PM Mahinda Rajapaksa threw books, chairs and chili powder mixed with water to try to block proceedings. Parliament for the second time passed a no-confidence motion against Rajapaksa and his government by a voice vote.
(AP, 11/16/18)
2018 Nov 16, Turkish police detained 13 people including two prominent academics under an investigation into jailed rights activist Osman Kavala, accusing them of following him in a bid to unseat the government through mass protests in 2013.
(Reuters, 11/16/18)
2018 Nov 16, In southern Zimbabwe at least 42 people were feared dead after flames swept through a passenger bus overnight driving towards South Africa.
(Reuters, 11/16/18)
2018 Nov 17, Pres. Donald Trump joined Gov. Jerry Brown and Gov.-elect Gavin Newsom to tour the devastation of California's Butte County Camp Fire. The death toll in the fire rose to 76 with number of missing up to 1,276.
(SFC, 11/18/18, p.A14)
2018 Nov 17, In Idaho an explosion at a hazardous waste site 50 miles south of Boise killed one worker.
(SFC, 11/19/18, p.A4)
2018 Nov 17, Jerry Frankel (b.1930), former dress manufacturer and producer of Broadway shows, died in Manhattan. In all he produced 53 Broadway plays wih various partners, most ofter with Jeffrey Richards.
(SFC, 11/21/18, p.C5)
2018 Nov 17, In Texas a privately owned vintage WWII Mustang fighter crashed in Fredericksburg after participating in a flyover for a museum event. The pilot and a passenger were killed.
(SFC, 11/19/18, p.A4)
2018 Nov 17, An unmanned Cygnus cargo ship blasted off from Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia toward the International Space Station, marking the second supply mission in 24 hours destined to carry food and supplies to the astronauts living in space.
(AFP, 11/17/18)
2018 Nov 17, In Afghanistan at least five police officers were killed when their checkpoint came under attack by insurgents in the northwestern Badghis province. A roadside bomb late today killed two local officials in the eastern Logar province. The Taliban claimed the attack.
(AP, 11/17/18)(AP, 11/18/18)
2018 Nov 17, The Argentine Navy announced that a submarine that went missing Nov. 15, 2017, off the country's Atlantic Coast has been found by a private company, marine tracking contractor Ocean Infinity, involved in what had been a massive search for the vessel and its 44-member crew. It was found "imploded" 907 meters (2,975 feet) below the ocean surface.
(Reuters, 11/17/18)
2018 Nov 17, An Australia man went into cardiac arrest at Lauderdale Beach, east of Hobart in Tasmania, after he suffered a stingray puncture wound to his lower abdomen.
(AP, 11/18/18)
2018 Nov 17, In Azerbaijan Ali Karimli, head of the Azeri opposition party Popular Front, was detained for leading an unsanctioned procession through Baku's Alley of Martyrs. 52 participants were detained by the police. 41 were soon released and 11 remained in detention.
(AP, 11/18/18)
2018 Nov 17, Hundreds of British protesters turned out in central London and blocked off the capital's main bridges to demand the government take climate change seriously.
(AP, 11/17/18)
2018 Nov 17, Central African Republic (CAR) lawmaker and former militia leader Alfred Yekatom was extradited to The Hague to stand trial in the International Criminal Court probing war crimes and crimes against humanity.
(AP, 11/17/18)
2018 Nov 17, In the Central African Rep. three soldiers died in a shootout between members of military engineering units in the town of Bambari. Three other soldiers were injured in the gunfight.
(AFP, 11/18/18)
2018 Nov 17, In Chechnya a young woman blew herself up near a police checkpoint in Grozny, but nobody else was killed or injured.
(Reuters, 11/17/18)
2018 Nov 17, China's agriculture ministry said four new outbreaks of African swine fever have been reported in the provinces of Jiangxi, Yunnan and Sichuan as well as the municipality of Shanghai.
(Reuters, 11/17/18)
2018 Nov 17, Thousands of Czechs used the anniversary of their country's 1989 anti-communist Velvet Revolution to rally against PM Andrej Babis. Babis has been charged with misusing European Union subsidies for a farm he transferred to family members.
(AP, 11/17/18)
2018 Nov 17, Egypt sentenced an alleged Islamic State supporter to death for stabbing and killing an 82-year-old Christian doctor in Cairo in Sept. 2017.
(AP, 11/17/18)
2018 Nov 17, In Ethiopia African Union leaders, led by Rwanda's President Paul Kagame, convened an extraordinary summit at its headquarters in Addis Ababa to consider reforms to encourage peace, development and a united Africa.
(AP, 11/17/18)
2018 Nov 17, In France thousands gathered on motorways across the country to protest against higher fuel taxes and President Emmanuel Macron's economic policies, in a campaign of road blockades. One female protester (63) was accidentally killed and dozens were injured.
(Reuters, 11/17/18)(AFP, 11/17/18)
2018 Nov 17, Iraq's President Barham Salih began a visit to Iran, where he pledged to improve relations less than two weeks after the United States restored oil sanctions that had been lifted under the 2015 nuclear deal.
(AP, 11/17/18)
2018 Nov 17, In Iraq Wissam al-Ghrawi, a prominent figure in demonstrations demanding clean water and reliable electricity in Basra, was shot and killed in front of his house by unknown assailants.
(AP, 11/18/18)
2018 Nov 17, Italy's coast guard said it is searching for eight Algerian migrants who apparently tried to swim to shore on Nov. 15 when the motor of their boat failed off Sardinia's southwest coast. Two bodies were already recovered.
(AP, 11/17/18)
2018 Nov 17, New Maldives Pres. Ibrahim Mohamed Solih (54) took office, declaring the state coffers to have been looted and warned that the country was in financial difficulty after racking up debt with Chinese lenders in an infrastructure boom.
(Reuters, 11/17/18)
2018 Nov 17, In Mexico many of the nearly 3,000 Central American migrants who have reached the border with California via caravan said they do not feel welcome in the city of Tijuana, where hundreds more migrants are headed after more than a month on the road. Tijuana Mayor Juan Manuel Gastelum has called the migrants' arrival an "avalanche" that the city is ill-prepared to handle.
(AP, 11/18/18)
2018 Nov 17, In the Netherlands scattered confrontations broke out between supporters and opponents of the divisive helper of the Dutch version of Santa Claus, amid a fierce and increasingly polarized debate about the helper known as Black Pete.
(AP, 11/17/18)
2018 Nov 17, In Norway thousands of protesters demonstrated in cities against restricting women's access to abortion, the subject of talks between the ruling minority coalition and a small party seeking to join the government.
(Reuters, 11/17/18)
2018 Nov 17, Papua New Guinea hosted leaders from Pacific Rim countries, including the United States, Russia and China, this weekend in a coming-out party for the jungle-clad nation that is regarded as one of the world's last frontiers for trade and investment. Chinese President Xi Jinping and US Vice President Mike Pence traded barbs in speeches at the summit, outlining competing visions for global leadership as trade and other tensions between them simmer.
(AP, 11/17/18)
2018 Nov 17, Speaking in Papua New Guinea US Vice President Mike Pence said the United States will join Pacific ally Australia to build a naval base on Papua New Guinea's Manus Island.
(Reuters, 11/17/18)
2018 Nov 17, In Peru former Pres. Alan Garcia sought diplomatic asylum in Uruguay's mission in Lima hours after a judge retained his passport as part of a corruption probe.
(SFC, 11/19/18, p.A2)
2018 Nov 17, In Romania a painting believed to be "Tête d’Arlequin" by Pablo Picasso, stolen in 2012 from Rotterdam’s Kunsthal museum, was found in Tulcea county. It was valued at roughly 800,000 euros ($913,440). A Romanian ringleader and his accomplices were convicted of the theft in 2013, but none of the artworks had been recovered. Romanian prosecutors the next day said they were trying to verify the work's authenticity. Dutch media soon reported that the work is more likely a forgery created as a publicity stunt.
(Reuters, 11/18/18)(AP, 11/19/18)
2018 Nov 17, Greenpeace said six of its activists boarded a tanker off Spain loaded with "dirty" palm oil to protest against a Nature-damaging commodity found in everything from soap to biscuits. The ship was travelling from Indonesia, the world's top palm oil producer, to Rotterdam in the Netherlands.
(AFP, 11/17/18)
2018 Nov 17, It was reported that Sheikh Ahmad al-Fahad al-Sabah, a former Kuwaiti minister and one of the most powerful officials in international sports, has been charged in Switzerland with forgery. Le Temps newspaper said Sheikh Ahmad stands accused with four others of an intricate forgery scheme linked to his efforts to prove that Kuwait's former prime minister and speaker of parliament were guilty of coup-plotting and corruption.
(AFP, 11/17/18)
2018 Nov 17, In Syria US-led coalition airstrikes on the last pocket held by Islamic State militants reportedly killed at least 43 people, mostly women and children in the village of Abu al-Husn, a jihadist pocket in Deir el-Zour province. The coalition confirmed strikes in the area but said no "civilian casualties are associated" with them.
(AP, 11/17/18)(AFP, 11/18/18)
2018 Nov 17, Syrian government forces reportedly captured the rugged southern Tulul al-Safa region from the Islamic State group after weeks of fighting that left scores dead on both sides. IS fighters withdrew through the desert to hideouts in Homs province and other areas south of the capital.
(AP, 11/19/18)
2018 Nov 17, In Taiwan "An Elephant Sitting Still" won the top prize at the Golden Horse Awards, the Chinese-language version of the Oscars. Director Hu Bo, who committed suicide before its release, upset the highly touted martial-arts epic "Shadow," by veteran director Zhang Yimou. Zhang won best director for "Shadow". The film "Our Youth in Taiwan," by President Tsai Ing-wen, won the best documentary award.
(AP, 11/17/18)(AP, 11/19/18)
2018 Nov 17, Officials recovered a boat that sank in rough weather off Thailand's southern resort island of Phuket in July, killing 47 Chinese tourists. Two tour boats sank off Phuket on July 5.
(AP, 11/17/18)
2018 Nov 18, Former NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg said he is donating $1.8 billion to his alma mater, Johns Hopkins Univ. in Baltimore. This was the largest gift to any educational institute in the US.
(SFC, 11/19/18, p.A4)
2018 Nov 18, At the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in Papua New Guinea, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, the US and Papua New Guinea signed an electrification agreement to bring electricity to 70 percent of Papua New Guinea's people by 2030.
(AP, 11/18/18)
2018 Nov 18, Cameroon reported that a professor and staff member of the University of Buea in the troubled west have been kidnapped. Charles Doumta, on the Health Sciences faculty, and George Ongey, who works for the research and cooperation office, were seized on Nov. 16 and Nov. 10, respectively.
(AP, 11/18/18)
2018 Nov 18, Authorities in the Democratic Republic of Congo provisionally freed 17 pro-democracy activists who were arrested in the capital on November 1.
(AFP, 11/19/18)
2018 Nov 18, Croatian police said international police organization Interpol has decided to renew an arrest warrant for the head of Hungarian energy group MOL issued by Croatia. MOL called the move surprising. MOL Chief Executive Zsolt Hernadi has been indicted in Croatia for allegedly bribing former Croatian PM Ivo Sanader to allow MOL to become the key decision-maker in Croatian energy company INA, in which MOL is the biggest but not the majority shareholder.
(Reuters, 11/18/18)
2018 Nov 18, Police chiefs from around the world gathered in Dubai for Interpol's general assembly to select a new president after the agency's former official in the post was detained in China.
(AP, 11/18/18)
2018 Nov 18, Human Rights Watch said Egyptian authorities have rounded up at least 40 rights workers, activists and lawyers since late October and detained them in "undisclosed locations." HRW said many of those arrested were people who provided humanitarian and legal support to families of political detainees.
(AFP, 11/18/18)
2018 Nov 18, Fijian PM Frank Bainimarama will stay in power for a second term as he narrowly won a general election after voting resumed following delays due to bad weather.
(Reuters, 11/18/18)
2018 Nov 18, French Interior Minister Christophe Castaner said more than 400 people were hurt, 14 seriously, in a day and night of "yellow vest" protests over rising fuel price hikes as more protests continued in several regions across France.
(AP, 11/18/18)
2018 Nov 18, Indian officials said Cyclone Gaya has killed at least 33 people in Tamil Nadu state, caused massive damage to homes and roads and drove tens of thousands of people into relief camps.
(AP, 11/18/18)
2018 Nov 18, In northern India three people were killed and over a dozen injured when two men on a motorbike targeted a prayer hall with a grenade on the outskirts of Amritsar, Punjab state.
(AP, 11/18/18)
2018 Nov 18, Iran's state-run IRNA news agency reported that the country's authorities have detained four workers protesting not having been paid their salaries for months in the southwestern province of Khuzestan.
(AP, 11/18/18)
2018 Nov 18, In northern Iraq five people were killed in a car bomb blast in the city of Tikrit.
(AP, 11/18/18)
2018 Nov 18, The Sunday Times of Malta reported that investigators have identified a group of at least three Maltese nationals who they believe masterminded the killing of anti-corruption journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia 13 months ago.
(Reuters, 11/18/18)
2018 Nov 18, In southern Mexico a Red Cross paramedic and three policemen were killed after a gang of 20 gunmen opened fire on an aid distribution meeting near the city of Taxco, Guerrero state.
(AP, 11/19/18)
2018 Nov 18, Myanmar police shot and injured four Rohingya Muslims, after detaining two men accused of smuggling people out of a camp for displaced people in western Rakhine state.
(Reuters, 11/18/18)
2018 Nov 18, In Nigeria 44 soldiers were killed in an attack in Metele in the northeastern state of Borno. Nigerian troops later released a video claiming dozens had died in the attack and deploring the poor state of their equipment.
(Reuters, 11/22/18)(AP, 11/24/18)
2018 Nov 18, In Pakistan a roadside bomb exploded in the suburbs of Quetta as a paramilitary vehicle was passing, killing three soldiers and wounding another four. A rocket-propelled grenade hit a security vehicle in North Waziristan, killing two soldiers and wounding another two.
(AP, 11/18/18)
2018 Nov 18, In Papua New Guinea an acrimonious meeting of world leaders failed to agree on a final communique, highlighting widening divisions between global powers China and the US.
(AP, 11/18/18)
2018 Nov 18, Saudi Arabia's King Salman received Iraq's Pres. Barham Salih in Riyadh, a day after the Iraqi official visited the kingdom's rival, Iran.
(AP, 11/18/18)
2018 Nov 18, Spanish police intervened to keep trouble from erupting at a rally in Madrid marking the anniversary of military dictator Francisco Franco's death after feminist protesters interrupted the event.
(AP, 11/18/18)
2018 Nov 18, In Timor-Leste police officer Jose Mina was apprehended after he stood on a bench and opened fire randomly in the dark after electricity suddenly went out at a party in Dili city. Three men died instantly and five other guests were hospitalized with gun wounds.
(AP, 11/19/18)
2018 Nov 18, Turkey warned energy companies against working with the Greek Cypriot government in carrying out exploratory drilling in the eastern Mediterranean, saying such activities could damage regional stability.
(Reuters, 11/18/18)
2018 Nov 18, A Turkish court jailed pending trial Istanbul academic Yigit Aksakoglu following raids on professors and activists deemed to have links to Osman Kavala, a prominent financier of civil society activities, who has been imprisoned for the past year.
(AFP, 11/18/18)
2018 Nov 18, In Ukraine two activists were attacked with pepper-spray in Kiev during a transgender rights march that was interrupted by dozens of far-right protesters.
(AFP, 11/18/18)
2018 Nov 18, Pope Francis railed against social inequality, lamenting "the din of the rich few" drowning out the voice of the needy, as he marked the second "World Day of the Poor".
(AFP, 11/18/18)
2018 Nov 18, Officials in central Vietnam said flash floods and landslides killed at least 12 people, as hundreds of troops were dispatched to clean up destroyed villages and washed out roads.
(AFP, 11/18/18)
2018 Nov 19, A US federal judge in San Francisco barred the Trump administration from refusing asylum to immigrants who cross the southern border illegally.
(AP, 11/20/18)(SFC, 11/21/18, p.A1)
2018 Nov 19, The US Justice Department accused Venezuelan television mogul Raul Gorrin of bribing officials in the South American country and helping them launder the funds through assets in the United States in an indictment unsealed in federal court in West Palm Beach, Florida.
(Reuters, 11/20/18)
2018 Nov 19, The US Treasury Department placed sanctions on Libyan Islamist commander Salah Badi, who Libya's UN-backed Government of National Accord has blamed for a May 2017 attack in Tripoli.
(Reuters, 11/19/18)
2018 Nov 19, The United States closed off northbound traffic for several hours at the busiest border crossing with Mexico to install new security barriers, a day after hundreds of Tijuana residents protested against the presence of thousands of Central American migrants.
(AP, 11/19/18)
2018 Nov 19, In California two police officers, arrested last week in an alleged corruption scandal, were arraigned in Visalia. They were accused of obtaining search wrrants based upon controlled narcotics buys that did not occur.
(SFC, 11/19/18, p.A4)
2018 Nov 19, In southern California the number buildings destroyed by the Woolsey Fire rose to 1500 as containment lines were completed around 94 percent of the area where three people were killed. In northern California the death toll from the Camp Fire rose to 79. The number of missing dropped to 699.
(SFC, 11/20/18, p.A1,5)
2018 Nov 19, In Colorado one person was killed and four others were wounded in a shooting in downtown Denver. Police had no description of any suspects.
(SFC, 11/20/18, p.A5)
2018 Nov 19, In Missouri a man killed Jamie Schmidt (53), when she refused sexual demands, and assaulted two others inside a Catholic religious supplies store in Ballwin, a suburb of St. Louis. Thomas Bruce was later charged with first degree murder.
(SFC, 1/12/19, p.A6)
2018 Nov 19, In Pennsylvania two men and two women were found fatally shot in a basement of a house being renovated in Philadelphia.
(SFC, 11/20/18, p.A5)
2018 Nov 19, Home-renting company Airbnb Inc said that it had decided to remove its listings in Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, enclaves that most world powers consider illegal for taking up land where Palestinians seek statehood.
(Reuters, 11/19/18)
2018 Nov 19, In Australia shareholders gave final approval to the merger of television network Nine Entertainment and newspaper publisher Fairfax Media into an Australian media giant to be known only as Nine despite one shareholder's late bid to stop the deal.
(AP, 11/19/18)
2018 Nov 19, A British Parole Board panel ruled that John Worboys (61), a former London taxi driver who was convicted in 2009 of raping or sexually assaulting 12 women he picked up as passengers, wasn't suitable for release. 102 women had made allegations against him.
(AP, 11/19/18)
2018 Nov 19, Canada's Globe and Mail newspaper reported that group of Canadian diplomats who left the embassy in Cuba after they suffered unusual health symptoms says their foreign ministry has abandoned them. Canadian and US diplomats have complained of dizziness, headaches and nausea in Havana.
(Reuters, 11/19/18)
2018 Nov 19, China's state-run media said female novelist Tianyi has been sentenced to 10 years in jail for writing and distributing books containing explicit descriptions of gay male sex. She attracted the scrutiny of authorities after one of her homoerotic novels, "Gongzhan", went viral last year.
(AFP, 11/19/18)
2018 Nov 19, In Denmark whistleblower Howard Wilkinson, who uncovered a massive alleged money laundering scheme at Danske Bank's Estonian branch, told a parliamentary commission that he had notified his superiors four times about suspicious transactions but no action was ever taken.
(AFP, 11/19/18)
2018 Nov 19, In Denmark former gang leader Nedim Yasar (31), who repented and wrote a book about his experiences, was fatally shot by a lone gunman in dark clothes. Yasar was rushed to a nearby hospital and died the next day.
(AP, 11/20/18)
2018 Nov 19, Hundreds of Ethiopian Jews gathered in the capital, Addis Ababa, to protest the Israeli government's decision not to allow all of them to emigrate to Israel, leaving their families divided between the two countries.
(AP, 11/19/18)
2018 Nov 19, A powerful party in Ethiopia's government accused authorities of arresting members of its ethnic group in a politically-driven crackdown - an unprecedented public charge exposing deep rifts at the heart of the ruling elite.
(Reuters, 11/20/18)
2018 Nov 19, European ministers signed off on Britain's draft divorce deal as they launched a "painful" final week of negotiations on future cross-Channel ties.
(AFP, 11/19/18)
2018 Nov 19, European Union foreign ministers endorsed a French government decision to sanction Iranian nationals accused of a bomb plot in France, a move that could enable EU-wide enforcement of the measures.
(Reuters, 11/19/18)
2018 Nov 19, Social media in Finland was ablaze with bemused comments after US President Donald Trump claimed the forest-covered nation prevents wildfires by raking its forest floors.
(AFP, 11/19/18)
2018 Nov 19, In France UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay and World Jewish Congress President Ronald Lauder unveiled the interactive "Facts about the Holocaust " site at the cultural agency's Paris headquarters.
(AP, 11/19/18)
2018 Nov 19, Germany banned Saudi citizens suspected of involvement in the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi from much of Europe and moved to halt all arms sales to the kingdom in a firming of its stance towards Riyadh.
(Reuters, 11/19/18)
2018 Nov 19, Nearly 4,000 people were evacuated from areas around Guatemala's Fuego volcano, which began violently erupting overnight.
(Reuters, 11/19/18)
2018 Nov 19, Hong Kong protest leaders went on trial for spearheading pro-democracy demonstrations in 2014. Benny Tai along with another professor and a pastor, were leaders of the "Occupy Central" campaign to press for free elections of Hong Kong's top leader.
(AP, 11/19/18)
2018 Nov 19, In Indonesia the rotting carcass of a 31-foot sperm whale in Southeast
Sulawesi province. Researchers found 13 pounds of plastic inside the animal's stomach. A study plublished last January said Indonesia produces 3.2 million tons of mismanaged plastic waste a year, of which 1.29 million tons end up in the ocean.
(SFC, 11/21/18, p.A5)
2018 Nov 19, Nissan chairman Carlos Ghosn was arrested in Japan over allegations of financial misconduct and faced being fired this week, in a stunning fall from grace for one of the world's best-known businessmen.
(AFP, 11/19/18)
2018 Nov 19, Japan's coast guard said that a Chinese fishing boat sank off a southern Japanese island and five of its crewmembers were missing. Three others were rescued.
(AP, 11/19/18)
2018 Nov 19, Romania's ruling Social Democratic Party fired six ministers as the beleaguered chairman Liviu Dragnea sought to tighten his grip on the government.
(AP, 11/19/18)
2018 Nov 18, Romanian diplomat Mihnea Constanescu (57), praised internationally for his efforts to combat anti-Semitism, died in Nice, France, after a long illness.
(AP, 11/20/18)
2018 Nov 19, Russia clashed bitterly with the West as it tried to block the world chemical arms watchdog's new ability to attribute blame for attacks like those in Syria and Salisbury.
(AFP, 11/19/18)
2018 Nov 19, Russian prosecutors said they suspected Kremlin critic Bill Browder (54) of ordering the 2009 murder of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky whose memory he has championed, but he dismissed the accusation as a cynical ploy to tar him for lobbying for sanctions on Moscow.
(Reuters, 11/19/18)
2018 Nov 19, In Somalia the US military killed a total of 37 Islamic extremists in two airstrikes. Africa Command said the airstrikes were carried out in coordination with the government of Somalia.
(AP, 11/20/18)
2018 Nov 19, Pravin Gordhan, the South African minister of state-owned companies and anti-graft campaigner, warned an official probe into widespread state corruption risks being subverted by those who illicitly enriched themselves.
(AFP, 11/19/18)
2018 Nov 19, Spanish PM Pedro Sanchez made his first official visit to Morocco, where he pushed for greater cooperation between the two countries on tackling migration.
(AFP, 11/19/18)
2018 Nov 19, The Swedish Academy said its new committee would have five of its own members and five external experts that could pick the Nobel Prize in Literature winners in 2019 and 2020.
(Reuters, 11/19/18)
2018 Nov 19, In Turkey Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan marked the completion of a key phase of TurkStream, a natural gas pipeline connecting the two countries. The last part of the offshore pipe was laid on live broadcast, reaching Turkish shores at Kiyikoy near Istanbul.
(AP, 11/19/18)
2018 Nov 19, A UN draft resolution on Yemen was presented to the Security Council. It called for an immediate truce in the port city of Hodeida and set a two-week deadline for the warring sides to remove all barriers to humanitarian aid.
(AFP, 11/19/18)
2018 Nov 19, Vietnamese police arrested Nguyen Huu Tin (61), a former deputy chairman of Ho Chi Minh City for violating regulations on state asset management and use.
(AP, 11/19/18)
2018 Nov 19, Yemen's Shiite rebels said that they will halt rocket fire into Saudi Arabia for the sake of peace efforts, answering a key Saudi demand in the latest push to stop the civil war in the Arab world's poorest country.
(AP, 11/19/18)
2018 Nov 19, In Yemen fierce clashes erupted in the Red Sea city of Hodeida late today after a lull. The clashes lasted up to four hours and resulted in fatalities.
(AFP, 11/20/18)
2018 Nov 20, US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer issued a report accusing China of stepping up hacking aimed at stealing American technology.
(AP, 11/21/18)
2018 Nov 20, Massachusetts's first two legal pot shops opened in Leicester and Northampton.
(SFC, 11/21/18, p.A6)
2018 Nov 20, US federal judge Carlton Reeves struck down a Mississippi law that bans most abortions after 15 weeks.
(http://tinyurl.com/y8nj2eqv)(SFC, 11/22/18, p.A8)
2018 Nov 20, In Afghanistan a suicide bomber targeted a gathering of hundreds of Muslim religious scholars in Kabul, killing at least 55 people as Muslims around the world marked the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad. The Taliban denied involvement in the suicide bombing. 94 others were wounded in the attack.
(AP, 11/20/18)(AP, 11/21/18)
2018 Nov 20, Award-winning Bangladeshi photographer and activist Shahidul Alam (63) was released from prison after more than 100 days behind bars. He was arrested on August 5 for making "false" and "provocative" statements on Al Jazeera television and Facebook during student protests.
(AFP, 11/20/18)
2018 Nov 20, A Brussels police officer was wounded and a terrorism inquiry has been launched after pre-dawn knife attack. The suspect in the attack was shot by two of the officer's colleagues and was hospitalized in a "critical condition".
(AFP, 11/20/18)
2018 Nov 20, Bosnia inaugurated the country's three-member presidency following last month's election, with nationalist politicians dominating a body designed to heal the country's ethnic divide.
(AP, 11/20/18)
2018 Nov 20, Brazil's incoming justice minister, the former anti-corruption judge Sergio Moro, picked Mauricio Valeixo to be director-general of the federal police with a mission to fight graft and organized crime.
(Reuters, 11/20/18)
2018 Nov 20, In Chile Luis Mayol, the top government official in the restive Araucania region, resigned late on today amid mounting political fallout after a controversial police raid last week ended in the shooting of an indigenous Mapuche man.
(Reuters, 11/21/18)
2018 Nov 20, China's Pres. Xi Jinping held talks with President Rodrigo Duterte and other officials on a visit to the Philippines aimed at deepening relations with the American treaty ally. Jinping said negotiations between Beijing and Southeast Asian nations on a nonaggression pact to prevent clashes in the disputed South China Sea could be concluded in three years and promised that any differences will be dealt with peacefully.
(AP, 11/20/18)
2018 Nov 20, The Shanghai Stock Exchange said billionaire Chinese actress Zhao Wei and her husband have been barred from taking on key positions at listed companies for five years for violating securities regulations.
(Reuters, 11/20/18)
2018 Nov 20, A Croatian court says a tycoon who founded a deeply indebted food and retail company should be released from jail after he deposited a one-million-euro bail ($1.1 million). Ivica Todoric must hand in his passport to authorities and won't be allowed to leave the capital pending the end of his trial.
(AP, 11/20/18)
2018 Nov 20, Amnesty International said that Egypt has committed "shocking violations" against children, including torture and enforced disappearances.
(AP, 11/20/18)
2018 Nov 20, The European Union said it will suspend 100 million euros ($114 million) of aid to Moldova over concerns about its democracy and the slow pace of reforms in the former Soviet republic.
(AP, 11/20/18)
2018 Nov 20, The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) urged Turkey to swiftly process the legal case of Selahattin Demirtas, the ex-head of the pro-Kurdish opposition, saying his pre-trial detention had gone on longer than could be justified.
(Reuters, 11/20/18)
2018 Nov 20, Fiji's leader Voreqe Bainimarama was sworn in for four more years after winning an election with a reduced majority, after earlier lashing out at his opponents.
(AP, 11/20/18)
2018 Nov 20, In France Rev. Robert Bonan was arrested in the town of Lautenbach on preliminary charges of raping minors. The charges were based on multiple complaints, some dating to the 1980s.
(AP, 11/23/18)
2018 Nov 20, In Iran a Revolutionary Court ruled to release Abdolfattah Soltani, a prominent human rights lawyer, after eight years in prison.
(AP, 11/21/18)
2018 Nov 20, The World Health Organizations said that laboratory tests completed after a shocking fish die-off in Iraq's Euphrates River show the water is contaminated with high levels of bacteria, heavy metals, and ammonia.
(AP, 11/20/18)
2018 Nov 20, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would join the United States and other countries in rejecting the UN Global Compact for Migration, aimed at boosting cooperation to address the world's growing number of migrants, set to be adopted during a conference in Morocco on December 10-11.
(AFP, 11/20/18)
2018 Nov 20, In Israel Palestinian teenager Abdul Rahman Abu Jamal (17), who attacked Israeli officers on Nov. 14 at a police station in annexed east Jerusalem before being shot, died of his wounds at the Shaare Zedek hospital in Jerusalem.
(AFP, 11/20/18)
2018 Nov 20, Italian prosecutors said they have ordered the seizure of the Aquarius, a migrant rescue ship, and accused the aid group Doctors Without Borders of illegally disposing of 24 metric tons (26.5 tons) of medical and contaminated waste accumulated during nearly 50 rescues.
(AP, 11/20/18)
2018 Nov 20, Rome city officials sent in 600 police officers to evict a purported crime family from eight villas that were allegedly built without authorization decades ago. Mayor Virginia Raggi accused the Casamonicas of replacing public authorities in the area and of "terrorizing" honest Romans.
(AP, 11/20/18)
2018 Nov 20, The MUDEC museum in Milan said it is hosting the first exhibit of street-artist Banksy's works in an Italian public museum, just weeks after the artist grabbed international attention by partially shredding one of his works at a London auction. The exhibition will open to visitors Nov. 21, 2018 through to April 14, 2019.
(AP, 11/20/18)
2018 Nov 20, Iraq launched air strikes on Islamic State targets inside neighboring Syria, destroying two buildings housing 40 fighters and weapons.
(Reuters, 11/20/18)
2018 Nov 20, Assailants in Indian-controlled Kashmir killed Hafizullah Mir, a prominent separatist leader, as anti-India protests and clashes followed a gunbattle that killed four rebels and an army commando in the disputed region.
(AP, 11/20/18)
2018 Nov 20, In Kenya gunmen kidnapped Silvia Costanza Romano (23) and shot and wounded four people in Chakama, a small town south of the border with Somalia. Romano was working as a volunteer with an Italian humanitarian group when she was abducted. On Dec. 9 a suspect, identified as Ibrahim Adan Omar, was arrested in Bangali town in Tana county. Abductors eventually passed her into the hands of militants linked to Somalia’s al-Shabab Islamic extremists. On May 10, 2020, she returned home after 18 months as a hostage.
(Reuters, 11/21/18)(AP, 11/22/18)(AP, 12/11/18)(AP, 5/10/20)
2018 Nov 20, Interpol's general assembly, meeting in Dubai, voted against allowing Kosovo to join the international police agency. The bids of Pacific island nations Kiribati and Vanuatu were approved by delegates, but Kosovo did not secure the required two-thirds majority.
(AFP, 11/20/18)
2018 Nov 20, In Libya eight gunmen attacked a substation of the National Oil Corporation's southwestern Sharara oilfield but no employees were hurt and production was unaffected. The attackers stole three company vehicles and mobile phones.
(AP, 11/21/18)
2018 Nov 20, Former Macedonian premier Nikola Gruevski said that he has been granted asylum by Hungary. He fled to Budapest after being sentenced to jail for abuse of power.
(AFP, 11/20/18)
2018 Nov 20, Malaysian police detained two women and two men from Finland at their hotel after police received complaints about their distributing Christian materials at public places. He said police seized 47 pens with Bible verses and 336 notebooks containing texts from the Bible.
(AP, 11/21/18)
2018 Nov 20, FIFA Ethics Committee judge Sundra Rajoo was arrested on suspicion of corruption in his native Malaysia. He was held overnight, but released after a court accepted his representatives' arguments that he effectively has diplomatic immunity due to his high-profile legal roles. Rajoo resigned the next day from his position with the arbitration service.
(AP, 11/21/18)
2018 Nov 20, North Korea blew up some of its front-line guard posts as part of an agreement to ease tensions along its heavily fortified border with South Korea.
(AP, 11/20/18)
2018 Nov 20, In Papua New Guinea disgruntled police, military and prison guards stormed the Parliament in a violent pay dispute stemming from an international summit hosted by the impoverished South Pacific island nation over the weekend.
(AP, 11/20/18)
2018 Nov 20, The Polish government said that it will not support a global compact to promote safe and orderly migration, citing national sovereignty as it joins countries including Hungary, Austria and the United States in rejecting it.
(AP, 11/20/18)
2018 Nov 20, Russia failed in its bid to stall the global chemical warfare watchdog's controversial new power to apportion blame for attacks like those in Syria. Member states approved the 2019 budget for the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which includes funding for the new role.
(AFP, 11/20/18)
2018 Nov 20, Amnesty International, citing three separate testimonies, said activists, held since May in Saudi Arabia's Dhahban prison on the western Red Sea coast, have faced repeated electrocution and flogging, leaving some of them unable to stand or walk. Human Rights Watch said in a separate statement that at least three women activists also endured "forcible kissing and hugging".
(AFP, 11/23/18)
2018 Nov 20, In central Somalia the US military carried out an airstrike targeting al-Shabab that killed seven extremists.
(AP, 11/21/18)
2018 Nov 20, Thai police arrested British brothers Joseph Michael Mulhare and Gregory Michael Mulhare wanted on drug trafficking charges in their homeland.
(AP, 11/23/18)
2018 Nov 21, In northern California the death toll from the Camp Fire rose to 83. The number of missing dropped to about 563.
(SFC, 11/22/18, p.A13)
2018 Nov 21, Interpol, an international body that connects police from 194 countries, elected South Korean Kim Jong Yang as its new president. He defeated Russian Alexander Prokopchuk in a vote amid US-led warnings that Russia would try to use the position to hunt down political opponents and fugitive dissidents.
(AP, 11/21/18)
2018 Nov 21, Bahrain detained and charged five people for "obstructing the electoral process", ahead of parliamentary polls set for the end of the week.
(AFP, 11/21/18)
2018 Nov 21, In Britain Feim Vata (32) and Xhemal Baco (24) were sentenced at Canterbury Crown Court for conspiracy to assist unlawful immigration. The men were arrested on Oct. 20 after Baco was seen picking up six Albanian migrants in France and taking them across the English Channel to Britain.
(AP, 11/21/18)
2018 Nov 21, The Bulgarian Parliament approved the resignation of Deputy PM Valeri Simeonov after a month of street protests over his remarks about disabled people. Parliament elected Mariana Nikolova to replace him.
(AP, 11/21/18)
2018 Nov 21, In Cameroon cleric Cosmos Omboto Ondari (33) was shot dead at a church in Kembong parish in the Southwest region. The Roman Catholic Church in the restive Anglophone region later said it suspected the army of killing the Kenyan priest.
(AP, 11/23/18)
2018 Nov 21, Cypriot authorities said that 47 Syrian migrants had been found on the island's northwestern tip after being dropped off by suspected people smugglers.
(AFP, 11/21/18)
2018 Nov 21, The European Commission officially rejected Italy's big-spending budget, clearing the path for unprecedented sanctions and deepening a bitter row with Rome's populist government.
(AFP, 11/21/18)
2018 Nov 21, The French government said thirty police officers have been injured in five days of protests over rising living costs on the French Indian Ocean island of La Reunion. Roads across the volcanic island of 850,000 people off southeast Africa remained blocked by demonstrators, causing petrol stations to run low on fuel, and schools were closed for fear of violence.
(AP, 11/21/18)
2018 Nov 21, The International Alliance for the Defence of Rights and Freedoms (AIDL) filed a lawsuit against Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan during his visit to France, accusing him of war crimes, complicity in torture and inhumane treatment in Yemen.
(Reuters, 11/21/18)
2018 Nov 21, Researchers said they have found a second patient in Hong Kong who contracted a strain of hepatitis carried by rats, in what appears to be the first known human cases in the world.
(AP, 11/21/18)
2018 Nov 21, Indian police officer Vijay Singh said seven fishermen have been arrested for facilitating a visit by American John Allen Chau to North Sentinel Island, where he was apparently killed. North Sentinel is in the Andaman Islands, a group of islands at the juncture of the Bay of Bengal and Andaman Sea. Chau had reached the vicinity of the island on Nov. 16, before transferring to a canoe. His body was spotted the following day by the fishermen on their return.
(AP, 11/21/18)
2018 Nov 21, The Italian luxury fashion house Dolce&Gabbana apologized Wednesday for insulting remarks about China it allegedly made in exchanges on Instagram but claimed its accounts had been hacked.
(AP, 11/21/18)
2018 Nov 21, Italian authorities arrested Issam Elsayed Abouelayem Shalabi (22), an Egyptian man accused of supporting the Islamic State and planning go to fight himself, saying he used social media chats to spread jihadist propaganda.
(AP, 11/21/18)
2018 Nov 21, Kosovo's government said it will put a 100 percent import tax on all goods imported from Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. A day earlier, Kosovo failed to join Interpol due to what it claimed was campaigning by Serbia.
(AP, 11/21/18)
2018 Nov 21, Kuwaiti officials said unprecedented recent heavy rains have unearthed dozens of land mines planted by Iraqi troops during their 1990-91 occupation, disrupting the emirate's popular desert camping season. Authorities have closed 18 desert sites and have so far removed at least 48 mines after receiving complaints from the campers.
(AFP, 11/21/18)
2018 Nov 21, Former Macedonian intelligence chief Saso Mijalkov was taken into custody for a minimum of 30 days after judicial authorities considered him a flight risk to potentially avoid standing trial over a major wiretapping scandal.
(AP, 11/21/18)
2018 Nov 21, Poland's parliament passed legislation reversing a disputed Supreme Court retirement law, bowing to a ruling from the EU's top court, which had raised fears of a threat to judicial independence.
(AFP, 11/21/18)
2018 Nov 21, Russian police detained rapper Dmitry Kuznetsov (25), aka Husky, for performing on a car in Krasnodar after prosecutors banned his gig. Husky is known for his songs mocking authorities and police brutality.
(AP, 11/22/18)
2018 Nov 21, Russian Colonel-General Igor Korobov (62), the head of the military intelligence agency that the West has blamed for a string of brazen attacks died, after "a serious and long illness".
(Reuters, 11/22/18)
2018 Nov 21, In Somalia the US Africa Command launched two new strikes that killed six fighters and destroyed a weapons cache near Harardere. The US has now carried out 35 airstrikes this year against al-Shabab, Africa's deadliest Islamic extremist group.
(AP, 11/22/18)
2018 Nov 21, South Korea said it will dissolve a foundation funded by Japan to compensate South Korean women who were forced to work in Japan's World War II military brothels. The widely expected decision, if carried out, would effectively kill a controversial 2015 agreement to settle a decades-long impasse over the sexual slavery issue. Japan still hasn't acknowledged legal responsibility for atrocities during its colonial occupation of the Korean Peninsula from 1910 to 1945.
(AP, 11/21/18)
2018 Nov 21, A Turkish court sentenced 74 people, including soldiers, to life in prison for their role in the July 2016 attempted coup. Three men, accused of being members of the PKK, were jailed for life for a March 2016 car bombing that killed 36 people and wounded 344 in a crowded transport hub in Ankara.
(Reuters, 11/21/18)
2018 Nov 21, A United Arab Emirates court sentenced British student Matthew Hedges (31) to life in jail on spying charges, prompting a "shocked" Britain to warn of repercussions for relations with its longstanding Gulf ally. Hedges had been researching the UAE's foreign and internal security policies after the Arab Spring revolutions of 2011.
(AP, 11/21/18)
2018 Nov 21, Save the Children said that a conservative estimate based on UN data showed 84,700 children suffering from severe acute malnutrition may have died between April 2015 and October 2018 in Yemen as a Western-backed Arab alliance battled the Iran-aligned Houthi movement that holds the capital Sanaa.
(Reuters, 11/21/18)
2018 Nov 22, President Donald Trump threatened to close the US border with Mexico for an undisclosed period of time if his administration determines that its southern ally has lost "control" on its side.
(AP, 11/22/18)
2018 Nov 22, US Ambassador Kenneth Ward told a meeting of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) at The Hague that Iran had failed to report a production facility for the filling of aerial bombs and maintains a program to obtain banned toxic munitions.
(Reuters, 11/22/18)
2018 Nov 22, In Alabama a gunman shot another man (18) during a fight at the Riverchase Galleria in Hoover. Emantic Bradford (21), who had a legal permit to carry a gun, was fatally shot by a police officer. Police later said that it was unlikely that Bradford had done the initial shooting. A forensic examination showed that Bradford was shot three times in the back side of his body.
(SFC, 11/24/18, p.A8)(SFC, 11/26/18, p.A4)(SFC, 12/4/18, p.A6)
2018 Nov 22, In northern California rain helped boost containment for the Camp Fire to 95%.
(SFC, 11/22/18, p.A13)
2018 Nov 22, In Colorado Kelsey Berreth (29) was last seen in a grocery store near Colorado Springs. It was later reported that she had been beaten to death with a baseball bat. On Dec. 21 Patrick Frazee (32), her fiance, was arrested at his home in Florissant and charged with first-degree murder.
(SFC, 12/22/18, p.A5)(SFC, 2/21/19, p.A6)
2018 Nov 22, In northeastern Indiana three people were killed and two others critically injured during a possible home invasion late this Thanksgiving day in Fort Wayne. Suspect Kameron Joyner (22) was arrested the next day.
(SFC, 11/24/18, p.A6)
2018 Nov 22, Several hundred Albanian protesters scuffled with police as they tried to force their way into Parliament to protest against a government decision to demolish their buildings for a new road.
(AP, 11/22/18)
2018 Nov 22, The Austria-based Int'l. Biathlon Union said nine biathletes from Kazakhstan have been suspended on suspicion of doping, including the country's entire women's Olympic team.
(AP, 11/22/18)
2018 Nov 22, Britain and the European Union said they agreed a draft text setting out a close post-Brexit relationship.
(Reuters, 11/22/18)
2018 Nov 22, The nonprofit organization Shelter reported that the number of homeless people in Britain is increasing steadily and has reached 320,000 across England and Wales.
(SFC, 11/23/18, p.A2)
2018 Nov 22, China rejected a US government report that accuses Beijing of stepping up efforts to steal technology ahead of a meeting between Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping.
(AP, 11/22/18)
2018 Nov 22, In China Dolce&Gabbana goods disappeared from Chinese e-commerce sites as the fallout grew over remarks insulting to China that were apparently made by two of its Instagram accounts.
(AP, 11/22/18)
2018 Nov 22, In northeastern China a car plowed into a crowd of children outside a primary school, killing five people and injuring 18 in the coastal city of Huludao, Liaoning province. The driver was taken into custody. All but two of the injured were children.
(AP, 11/22/18)
2018 Nov 22, France said it had imposed sanctions, including travel bans, on 18 Saudi citizens linked to the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi and warned that more could follow depending on results of the current investigation.
(Reuters, 11/22/18)
2018 Nov 22, A German teenager (15) was convicted of murder for killing a 14-year-old girl in a case that was seized upon by far-right groups, who falsely claimed that the perpetrator was a migrant. The German-born boy had reportedly planned the March 3 murder of schoolmate Keira G. (14) in advance.
(AP, 11/22/18)
2018 Nov 22, A Greek court convicted and sentenced six of the nine suspects in the fatal beating of American tourist Bakari Henderson at an island resort in July 2017, finding them guilty of reduced charges in a move that angered the victim's parents.
(AP, 11/22/18)
2018 Nov 22, India approved the building of a new border entry point and road connecting the northern state of Punjab to the border with arch rival Pakistan, making it quicker and easier for Sikh pilgrims to visit a holy site.
(Reuters, 11/22/18)
2018 Nov 22, Iranian media reported that the country has implemented a measure allowing officials to waive rules relating to stamping visas in foreigners' passports.
(AP, 11/22/18)
2018 Nov 22, In Japan Nissan board members voted unanimously to sack Carlos Ghosn as chairman, a spectacular fall from grace for the once-revered boss who was stripped of the role while languishing in a Japanese jail. Ghosn stood accused of under-reporting his income by millions of dollars and a host of other financial irregularities.
(AFP, 11/22/18)
2018 Nov 22, In Mali Amadou Koufa, one of the most prominent jihadist leaders in the country, was killed late today in a raid by French forces. The operation killed about 30 Islamist militants.
(Reuters, 11/24/18)
2018 Nov 22, In Nepal a bus packed with people returning from a village fair drove off a mountain highway, killing 16 people and injuring 20 others.
(AP, 11/22/18)
2018 Nov 22, In southeastern Niger seven local employees of a French drilling firm and a government official were killed when suspected Boko Haram gunmen stormed the compound where they were sleeping in the Diffa region near the Lake Chad basin.
(AFP, 11/22/18)
2018 Nov 22, Nigerian security sources said attacks blamed on Islamic State West Africa have killed around 100 soldiers in northeast Nigeria since Nov. 18.
(Reuters, 11/22/18)
2018 Nov 22, In Pakistan a bomb targeting Haqqani network militants in their hideout in the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan killed three people, including two militants. No group claimed responsibility for the blast.
(Reuters, 11/22/18)
2018 Nov 22, Hamas published photos of six men and two women who it said were involved in the botched Nov. 11 Israeli undercover raid into the Gaza Strip and appealed for details about them.
(Reuters, 11/22/18)
2018 Nov 22, Poland introduced temporary border checks of people entering the country, to ensure peace during a global climate summit that it is hosting next month.
(AP, 11/22/18)
2018 Nov 22, Portuguese police in riot gear broke up a picket line of striking stevedores in the port of Setubal to clear the way for strikebreakers hired to resume shipments of cars made at a nearby Volkswagen plant nearby. Thousands of cars have piled up at the port and at the Volkswagen Autoeuropa plant since the strike began on Nov. 5, forcing the manufacturer to cancel seven shipments.
(Reuters, 11/22/18)
2018 Nov 22, Tunisian civil servants staged the largest general strike in five years after their powerful trade union failed to secure wage hikes in tense negotiations with the government.
(AFP, 11/22/18)
2018 Nov 22, A Turkish newspaper reported that CIA director Gina Haspel signaled to Turkish officials last month that the agency had a recording of a call in which Saudi Arabia's crown prince gave instructions to "silence" Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
(Reuters, 11/22/18)
2018 Nov 22, United Nations envoy Martin Griffiths met Yemen's rebel chief to nail down details of peace talks expected in December, a day before a planned visit to the battleground port city of Hodeida.
(AFP, 11/22/18)
2018 Nov 23, In southern California the body of Christopher Ludwig (59) was found near a hiking trail in Laguna Niguel, Orange County. His son Maximilian Ludwig was soon arrested on suspicion of murder.
(SFC, 11/27/18, p.A6)
2018 Nov 23, In Afghanistan an explosion ripped through a mosque inside an army base in the country's volatile eastern Khost province as prayers were drawing to a close, killing 27 soldiers and wounding 57.
(AP, 11/23/18)
2018 Nov 23, Bosnian prosecutors said police have arrested an Islamist militant for terrorism offences. A Balkan news service said the man was believed to assisted a 2011 attack on the US Embassy in Sarajevo.
(Reuters, 11/23/18)
2018 Nov 23, Nicolas Roeg (b.1928), the prominent British film director known for making provocative films and working with rock stars Mick Jagger and David Bowie over a six-decade career, died. His films included "Performance" (1970), "Walkabout" (1971), "Don't Look Now" (1973), "The Man Who Fell to Earth" (1976), "Bad Timing" (1980), "Eureka" (1983), "Insignificance" (1985), "Track 29" (1988) and "The Witches" (1990).
(AP, 11/24/18)(SFC, 11/27/18, p.C2)
2018 Nov 23, Cameroon's military said it has killed at least 43 armed separatists over the last 24 hours in the North West region.
(SFC, 11/24/18, p.A2)
2018 Nov 23, In China a man (20) wielding a weapon killed one student and wounded 11 at a technical institute in southwestern Yunnan province.
(AP, 11/23/18)
2018 Nov 23, In northeastern China a blast late today at a factory that made industrial machinery killed two people and injured 57 others. It also knocked down 15 houses and damaged 355 others in Jilin province.
(AP, 11/23/18)
2018 Nov 23, China reported its first cases of swine fever in Beijing. Xiamen Airlines announced it was suspending the use of pork in inflight meals.
(SSFC, 11/25/18, p.A9)
2018 Nov 23, The co-founders of Dolce&Gabbana apologized in a video on Chinese social media after promotional videos seen as racist and subsequent Instagram messages stoked a furor in one of the world's largest markets for luxury goods.
(AP, 11/23/18)
2018 Nov 23, Two Colombian soldiers were killed and another two wounded along the country's border with Venezuela in a bomb attack blamed by the military on rebels from the National Liberation Army.
(AFP, 11/23/18)
2018 Nov 23, Congo's two leading opposition parties announced that they are joining forces for a run at the presidency after withdrawing from a wider pact to support a single contender to take on President Joseph Kabila's chosen candidate. Felix Tshisekedi with Congo's most prominent opposition party said he will represent his party as well as that of Vital Kamerhe.
(AP, 11/23/18)
2018 Nov 23, Ecuador officials said it will cost $550 million to respond to the influx of Venezuelan migrants.
(SSFC, 11/25/18, p.A4)
2018 Nov 23, Berlin prosecutors said Hans Werner H. (95) has been charged with more than 36,000 counts of being an accessory to murder on allegations that he served as a guard at the Nazis' Mauthausen concentration camp from 1944 to 1945.
(AP, 11/23/18)
2018 Nov 23, The 170 member states of the Paris-based Bureau International des Expositions chose Japan's Osaka to host the 2025 World Expo, beating out cities in Russia and Azerbaijan for an event expected to draw millions of visitors.
(AP, 11/23/18)
2018 Nov 23, Indian security forces killed six suspected insurgents in a fierce exchange of gunfire early today in the Indian portion of disputed Kashmir.
(AP, 11/23/18)
2018 Nov 23, The Iranian judiciary’s website Mizan reported that Iran's Revolutionary Guards have detained a Saudi Arabian fishing boat and arrested its crew.
(AP, 11/23/18)
2018 Nov 23, A judicial source said human bones found at the Vatican's embassy in Rome belong to a male who died more than 50 years ago, dispelling speculation they might solve one of Italy's most enduring mysteries: the 1980s vanishing of two teenage girls.
(AP, 11/23/18)
2018 Nov 23, Kosovo police arrested three ethnic Serbs, including two police officers, early today on suspicion of involvement in the killing earlier this year of a leading Serb politician in the north of the country.
(AP, 11/23/18)
2018 Nov 23, In Libya gunmen raided a town deep in the southern desert, killing nine people and kidnapping several others in the oasis town of Tazerbo, north of Kufra.
(Reuters, 11/24/18)
2018 Nov 23, One week after taking power, the new government of the Maldives says it has no idea how much it owes China, which has led a construction spree in the tiny Indian Ocean nation, but fears the debts run up in the past five years could be unsustainable.
(Reuters, 11/23/18)
2018 Nov 23, In Mexico the mayor of Tijuana declared a humanitarian crisis in his border city and said that he has asked the United Nations for aid to deal with the approximately 5,000 Central American migrants who have arrived.
(AP, 11/23/18)
2018 Nov 23, In northern Mozambique 12 people were killed in a suspected Islamist attack, with thousands of villagers fleeing the area into neighboring Tanzania.
(AFP, 11/25/18)
2018 Nov 23, In Pakistan armed separatists stormed the Chinese Consulate in the southern port city of Karachi, triggering an intense hour-long shootout during which two civilians, two police officers and all three assailants were killed. Four suspects, who allegedly facilitated three attackers, were soon arrested in Karachi and other Sindh province towns. The attack was later claimed by Baluch separatists who have long accused the federal government of unfairly exploiting the oil and mineral-rich region.
(AP, 11/23/18)(AP, 11/24/18)(AP, 11/25/18)
2018 Nov 23, Saudi Arabia dismissed as "baseless" reports that detained activists, including women, faced sexual harassment and torture during interrogation.
(AP, 11/23/18)
2018 Nov 23, A South Korean court ruled that the government must pay 80 million won ($70,700) to three men who were enslaved on salt farms in remote islands off the country's southwest coast for several years.
(AP, 11/23/18)
2018 Nov 23, Spain's National Court said it has agreed to extradite to Venezuela Adrian Velasquez Figueroa, a former bodyguard of the country's late leader Hugo Chavez, to face charges of corruption and money-laundering. The court had previously ruled that his wife, Claudia Diaz, a one-time Chavez nurse, should also be extradited on the same charges.
(AP, 11/23/18)
2018 Nov 23, Unions in Britain said they would stage protests at five sites to complain about safety conditions. In Germany, workers walked off the job at Amazon distribution centers in Rheinberg and Bad Hersfeld as part of a years-long push for higher pay. In Spain Labor groups representing workers at Amazon said that around 90 percent of workers at a logistics depot near Madrid joined a walkout.
(AP, 11/23/18)
2018 Nov 23, Lawmakers in Sri Lanka opposed to disputed PM Mahinda Rajapaksa won control of a key committee setting Parliament's agenda during a vote that dealt a severe blow to his leadership.
(AP, 11/23/18)
2018 Nov 23, In Syria gunmen in a rebel-held northwestern province shot and killed Raed Fares, a prominent anti-government journalist who was also a sharp critic of Islamist militants.
(AP, 11/23/18)
2018 Nov 23, In eastern Syria around 500 IS fighters burst out of the fog shrouding an area near the border with Iraq to launch a deadly assault. At least 61 jihadists and 51 civilians, mostly their relatives, died in the violence along with 92 fighters from the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
(AFP, 11/24/18)(AFP, 11/26/18)
2018 Nov 23, The UN migration agency said at least 631 African migrants have died trying to reach Spain so far this year, nearly three times more than in all of 2017.
(Reuters, 11/23/18)
2018 Nov 23, Pope Francis named the Vatican's top sex abuse investigator and a close US ally to an organizing committee for a February abuse prevention summit.
(AP, 11/23/18)
2018 Nov 23, In Zimbabwe a small plane en route to the popular tourist site of Victoria Falls crashed in Masvingo killing four people from Finland.
(AP, 11/24/18)
2018 Nov 24, The Washington Post reported that the administration of US President Donald Trump has won support from the Mexican president-elect's team for a plan dubbed "Remain in Mexico." Mexico's incoming government denied the report.
(AP, 11/25/18)
2018 Nov 24, In northern California three more bodies were discovered in the area burned by the Camp Fire, which was now 98 percent contained. 475 people were still reported missing.
(SSFC, 11/25/18, p.A18)
2018 Nov 24, Ricky Jay (b.1946), noted American magician, author and actor, died at his home in Los Angeles. His acting credits included the films "The Prestige" (2006), "The Spanish Prisoner" (1997), "Mystery Men" (1999), "Heist" (2001), "Boogie Nights" (1997), "Tomorrow Never Dies" (1997), "House of Games" (1987", and "Magnolia" (1999), as well as the HBO series "Deadwood" (2004-2006).
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricky_Jay)(SFC, 11/27/18, p.C2)
2018 Nov 24, In Utah police Officer David Romrell (31) died after he was intentionally struck by a driver while responding to a burglary call in Salt Lake City. Car driver Felix Anthony Calata was fatally shot by police and an accomplice was arrested.
(SFC, 11/26/18, p.A4)
2018 Nov 24, In Afghanistan US Army Sgt. Leandro A.S. Jasso (25) was killed, bringing the US combat death toll this year to eight. Two Afghan soldiers died when their helicopter made an "emergency landing" in the southern Kandahar province due to a technical problem. In Kabul a senior religious scholar was shot and killed. No one immediately claimed the killing of Abdul Basir Haqqani, but police arrested a man with a pistol near the scene of the shooting.
(Reuters, 11/24/18)(AP, 11/24/18)(SFC, 11/26/18, p.A4)
2018 Nov 24, Bahrainis voted in a parliamentary election from which opposition groups have been barred, in a crackdown on dissent in the small Sunni-led, Western-allied kingdom.
(Reuters, 11/24/18)
2018 Nov 24, Congo DRC ministers in the outgoing government of Joseph Kabila awarded themselves "golden-handshake" benefits in two decrees, that safeguarded lifetime cash payments. The decrees will benefit 71 ex-ministers, 11 former deputy ministers and two government secretaries, along with "personalities who carry out duties equivalent in rank to members of the government in the cabinet of the president of the republic and the cabinet of the prime minister. The two decrees were published in the official government gazette on December 15.
(AP, 2/1/19)
2018 Nov 24, In Ethiopia seven employees of Indian company Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services (IL&FS) were taken hostage by local staff due to non-payment of salaries by the debt-laden firm. The Indian government took control of IL&FS in October after it defaulted on some of its debt. On Dec. 1 Two of the 7 employees were reported released.
(Reuters, 12/1/18)
2018 Nov 24, The European Union removed the last major obstacle to sealing an agreement on Brexit after Spain said it had reached a deal with Britain over Gibraltar on the eve of an EU summit.
(AP, 11/24/18)
2018 Nov 24, French police firing tear gas and using water cannon clashed with protesters in Paris who are angry over rising fuel costs and President Emmanuel Macron's economic policies, the second weekend of "yellow vest" protests across the country.
(Reuters, 11/24/18)
2018 Nov 24, Gabon authorities said they have banned an opposition party from state media for three months over statements about the health of President Omar Bongo, who has been in a Saudi hospital for a month.
(AFP, 11/24/18)
2018 Nov 24, In southern India at least 25 people, many of them schoolchildren, were killed when a speeding bus fell into a canal in Karnataka state.
(AP, 11/24/18)
2018 Nov 24, Malaysian authorities said office of former Malaysian premier Najib Razak ordered changes to a 2016 audit report of scandal-plagued state fund 1MDB, including removing mention of financier Low Taek Jho's presence at a board meeting.
(Reuters, 11/25/18)
2018 Nov 24, In southeastern Niger about 50 unidentified armed men kidnapped 15 girls overnight in the Diffa region.
(Reuters, 11/24/18)
2018 Nov 24, Police in Pakistan said they have arrested some 300 supporters of a detained radical Islamic cleric who disrupted daily life with nationwide rallies following the acquittal of a Christian woman sentenced to death for blasphemy. Supporters of the Tehreek-e-Labbaik party were picked up in sweeps across Punjab province following the arrest overnight of its leader, Khadim Hussain Rizvi.
(AP, 11/24/18)
2018 Nov 24, South Korea said that the United Nations Security Council granted an exemption to sanctions that will allow surveys on North Korean railroad sections the Koreas want to connect with the South.
(AP, 11/24/18)
2018 Nov 24, Spanish police said they have arrested 79 people suspected of producing and distributing child pornography on the Internet an operation that started in 2016.
(AP, 11/24/18)
2018 Nov 24, In Syria government shelling killed three children and two women in the rebel-held Idlib province, where Russia and Turkey agreed on a buffer zone.
(Reuters, 11/24/18)
2018 Nov 24, In Syria an alleged chemical attack late today was carried out by "terrorist groups positioned in Aleppo countryside" that fired shells containing toxic gases on three neighborhoods in Syria's largest city. Government shelling in Idlib province killed at least seven civilians.
(AP, 11/25/18)(SSFC, 11/25/18, p.A6)
2018 Nov 24, In Syria coalition raids overnight killed 17 civilians, including five children, in an IS-pocket in the eastern province of Deir Ezzor. 27 IS jihadists were also reported killed in clashes and air strikes over the last 24 hours.
(AFP, 11/24/18)
2018 Nov 24, Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen resigned as head of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party after the party was handed a major defeat in local elections seen as a referendum on the administration of the island's independence-leaning president amid growing economic and political pressure from China.
(AP, 11/24/18)
2018 Nov 24, In Uganda the MV Templa, a boat on a routine pleasure cruise and full of mostly youthful revelers, overturned and sank this evening in Lake Victoria. The vessel was believed to be overcrowded with nearly 100 passengers. At least 27 people were rescued overnight. Divers retrieved 31 bodies and were expected to find more in the capsized vessel.
(AP, 11/25/18)
2018 Nov 25, In southern California the US Customs and Border Protection Agency temporarily shut down the San Ysidro border crossing and fired tear gas to push back migrants from the border fence. Hundreds of people tried to evade a Mexican police blockade and ran toward the border crossing that leads into San Diego.
(SFC, 11/26/18, p.A4)
2018 Nov 25, Two San Diego teenagers and a Mexican youth were found shot dead at an apartment complex in Tijuana. Christopher Alexis Gomez (17), Juan Suarez-Ojeda (18) and Mexican youth Angel Said Robles (17) were headed to a barbecue on Nov. 23 in Ensenada, south of Tijuana, and were supposed to return that night. The three teens were reportedly tortured before they were shot.
(AP, 11/30/18)
2018 Nov 25, In northern California firefighters said the Camp Fire in Butte County is now 100 percent contained. The death toll stood at 88 and 296 people were still reported missing.
(SFC, 11/26/18, p.A1)(SFC, 11/27/18, p.A9)
2018 Nov 25, In Florida a bicyclist died and another was critically injured after a car crashed into a group of 14 cyclists on a state road in Davie. The driver rep[orted that the sun was in her eyes.
(SFC, 11/26/18, p.A4)
2018 Nov 25, A winter storm blanketed much of the US central Midwest. Some 1200 flights were reported canceled.
(SFC, 11/26/18, p.A4)
2018 Nov 25, In Afghanistan hundreds of demonstrators in Shi'ite areas of Kabul and Bamyan province protested against the arrest of Alipur, an ethnic Hazara militia commander.
(Reuters, 11/25/18)
2018 Nov 25, In western Afghanistan a Taliban ambush of a police convoy killed 20 policemen while 10 troops died in an insurgent attack on an army checkpoint in Farah province. In northern Faryab province the Taliban attacked an army check point in Qaisar district, killing 10 troops.
(AP, 11/26/18)
2018 Nov 25, Bahrain said it will hold a second round of voting for 31 of 40 seats in parliament next week, in an election from which opposition groups have been barred.
(Reuters, 11/25/18)
2018 Nov 25, Chadian President Idriss Deby met with Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem, the first such visit by a leader of the central African nation which severed bilateral ties in 1972.
(Reuters, 11/25/18)
2018 Nov 25, Egypt's highest appeal court upheld death sentences against nine defendants convicted for their involvement in the 2015 assassination of Hisham Barakat, the country's chief prosecutor.
(AP, 11/25/18)
2018 Nov 25, European Union leaders finally sealed a Brexit deal, saying the package agreed with PM Theresa May was the best Britain will get in a warning to the British parliament not to reject it.
(Reuters, 11/25/18)
2018 Nov 25, French Senate employee Benoit Quennedey, suspected of spying for North Korea, was detained. Quennedey has traveled to the Koreas in his role as the head of the French-Korean Friendship Association, and wrote a book and essays about North Korea.
(AP, 11/27/18)
2018 Nov 25, French economy minister Bruno Le Maire said Renault had launched an internal audit into Ghosn's pay. Nissan's former chairman Carlos Ghosn has denied allegations of financial misconduct, claiming he had no intention of making false reports.
(AFP, 11/25/18)
2018 Nov 25, In northern India tens of thousands of Hindus gathered in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh state, and renewed calls to build a Hindu temple on a site where a 16th century mosque was attacked and demolished by Hindu hard-liners in 1992, sparking deadly Hindu-Muslim violence.
(AFP, 11/25/18)
2018 Nov 25, In Indian-controlled Kashmir six rebels and an army soldier were killed in a gunbattle, sparking violent protests by residents seeking an end to Indian rule over the disputed region and leaving a teenage boy dead and 20 people injured.
(AP, 11/25/18)
2018 Nov 25, Iraq's health ministry said least 21 people have died and tens of thousands displaced by heavy rains that have battered the country over two days.
(AFP, 11/25/18)
2018 Nov 25, Israeli police overnight arrested Adnan Gheith, the Palestinian governor of Jerusalem, for the second time in as many months after an investigation related to a land sale.
(AFP, 11/25/18)
2018 Nov 25, The Jordanian army killed four drug smugglers seeking to cross into the kingdom from Syria's southeastern desert border area.
(Reuters, 11/25/18)
2018 Nov 25, Tens of thousands of Romanians braved hours of cold weather Sunday for the blessing of a grandiose Orthodox cathedral consecrated to mark 100 years since modern-day Romania was created in the aftermath of World War I. Romanian King Carol I passed a law for the cathedral to be built in 1884, but two world wars and decades of communism meant it never happened. Building work began on the neo-Byzantine structure in 2010.
(AP, 11/25/18)
2018 Nov 25, Russia stopped three Ukrainian navy vessels from entering the Sea of Azov via the Kerch Strait by placing a huge cargo ship beneath a Russian-controlled bridge, with officials from both countries accusing the other of provocative behavior. A bilateral treaty gives both countries the right to use the sea, which lies between them and is linked by the narrow Kerch Strait to the Black Sea. Russian coast guards opened fire on three Ukrainian ships near the Kerch Strait and then seized them. Three Ukrainian sailors were wounded and 24 were detained.
(Reuters, 11/25/18)(Reuters, 11/26/18)
2018 Nov 25, Slovakia's PM Peter Pellegrini said his country will not support the UN pact on the treatment of migrants worldwide.
(Reuters, 11/25/18)
2018 Nov 25, In Spain tens of thousands of protesters, many wearing purple, marched through Madrid and other cities to mark the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.
(Reuters, 11/25/18)
2018 Nov 25, Sri Lanka's President Maithripala Sirisena assured non-interference in ongoing investigations into abductions, killings of journalists and other crimes allegedly committed by those connected to the new prime minister and his Cabinet. Sirisena said he would not reinstate Ranil Wickremesinghe as prime minister even if he was able to prove his majority in parliament.
(AP, 11/25/18)(Reuters, 11/25/18)
2018 Nov 25, Syrian officials said more than 100 people were treated at hospitals for a suspected poison gas attack the previous evening in the northern city of Aleppo that Damascus and Moscow blamed on rebels. Russian warplanes attacked rebel-held areas in northern Syria for the first time in weeks.
(AP, 11/25/18)
2018 Nov 25, Voters in Taiwan passed a referendum asking that marriage be restricted to one man and one woman, a setback to LGBT couples hoping their island will be the first place in Asia to let same-sex couples share child custody and insurance benefits.
(AP, 11/25/18)
2018 Nov 25, In Yemen a Saudi-led military coalition resumed air strikes against rebel supply lines around Hodeida, two days after a UN envoy visited the lifeline port city.
(AFP, 11/25/18)
2018 Nov 25, In Yemen a suspected US drone strike killed six alleged al-Qaida militants in the country's southwest.
(AP, 11/26/18)
2018 Nov 26, US prosecutors working for special counsel Robert Mueller said Paul Manafort had repeatedly lied to federal investigators in breach of a plea agreement he signed two months ago.
(SFC, 11/27/18, p.A12)
2018 Nov 26, Five int'l. charities urged the US to halt all military support for the Saudi-led coalition fighting Yemen's Shiite rebels, saying the move would save millions of lives.
(SFC, 11/27/18, p.A2)
2018 Nov 26, San Francisco State Univ. said alumni George and Judy Marcus are donating $26.8 million, the largest gift in campus history.
(SFC, 11/27/18, p.C1)
2018 Nov 26, In the SF Bay Area Google said it has purchased the former site of LinkedIn's Mountain View headquarters, the 12-building Britannia Shoreline Technology Park, for $1 billion.
(SFC, 11/27/18, p.D1)
2018 Nov 26, American marine cartoonist Stephen Hillenburg (57), creator of SpongeBob Square Pants (1999), died of Lou Gehrig's disease in San Marino, Ca.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Hillenburg)(SFC, 11/28/18, p.C5)
2018 Nov 26, Detroit-based General Motors said it will lay off 14,700 factory and white-collar workers in North America and put five plants up for possible closure as it restructures to cut costs and focus more on autonomous and electric vehicles.
(AP, 11/26/18)
2018 Nov 26, A NASA spacecraft designed to burrow beneath the surface of Mars landed on the red planet Monday after a six-month, 300 million-mile (482 million-km) journey and a perilous, six-minute descent through the rose-hued atmosphere.
(AP, 11/26/18)
2018 Nov 26, In Afghanistan minority Shiites took to the streets in Kabul for the second day to protest the arrest of a local militia commander.
(AP, 11/26/18)
2018 Nov 26, Human Rights Watch asked Argentina to use a war crimes clause in its constitution to investigate any involvement by Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in possible crimes against humanity in Yemen and Khashoggi's murder.
(Reuters, 11/28/18)
2018 Nov 26, Trains stopped running across Austria as last-minute pay negotiations failed to avert a planned two-hour strike, disrupting travel for 100,000 travelers in Europe.
(Reuters, 11/26/18)
2018 Nov 26, In Bangladesh Rohingya refugees from Myanmar began a protest demanding that Bangladesh recognize their ethnicity as Rohingya and that officials and aid agencies stop sharing their family information with Myanmar.
(Reuters, 11/26/18)
2018 Nov 26, Socialite, codebreaker, British government minister and bon vivant Jean Barker (b.1922), better known by her title, Baroness Trumpington, died.
(AP, 11/27/18)
2018 Nov 26, Police in Cambodia arrested more than 200 Chinese citizens accused of defrauding people in China over the internet.
(AP, 11/26/18)
2018 Nov 26, Chile said it is returning a second planeload of Haitian immigrants to their native country and will make use of the return flight from the Caribbean island to bring home Chileans stranded in crisis-stricken Venezuela.
(Reuters, 11/26/18)
2018 Nov 26, Chinese researcher He Jiankui of Shenzhen claimed that he helped make the world's first genetically edited babies, twin girls born this month, whose DNA he said he altered with a powerful new tool capable of rewriting the very blueprint of life. He said his goal was not to cure or prevent an inherited disease, but to try to bestow a trait that few people naturally have — an ability to resist possible future infection with HIV, the AIDS virus.
(AP, 11/26/18)
2018 Nov 26, The WHO said Congo last week began the first-ever trial to test the effectiveness and safety of four experimental Ebola drugs, the first time scientists have directly compared such treatments.
(AP, 11/26/18)
2018 Nov 26, The French government unveiled a planned bill to invest 13.4 billion euros ($15.2 billion) by 2022 aimed to develop the rail network, car-pooling, electric cars and unmanned shuttles. The government also said it has dropped plans that would have eased the introduction of urban tolls amid nationwide protests against rising fuel costs.
(AP, 11/26/18)(Reuters, 11/26/18)
2018 Nov 26, In northern Greece four migrants were killed late today by a train near the land border with Turkey. Blankets were found by the lines at the point of impact, suggesting that the migrants had wrapped up for sleep.
(AP, 11/28/18)
2018 Nov 26, Israeli police arrested 32 Palestinians in east Jerusalem, accusing them of illegally working with Palestinian security services.
(AP, 11/26/18)
2018 Nov 26, Italian police said they have detained five Egyptians accused of smuggling a boatload of 264 migrants from Libya to Sicily.
(AP, 11/26/18)
2018 Nov 26, Italian filmmaker Bernardo Bertolucci (b.1941), one of cinema's most talented directors, died of cancer at his home in Rome.
(AFP, 11/26/18)
2018 Nov 26, Japanese police said they found six bodies believed to be members of a family in a farmhouse in a remote mountain village, and the body of a seventh person who jumped or fell from a nearby bridge.
(AP, 11/26/18)
2018 Nov 26, Japanese police arrested 11 Chinese nationals in northern Japan for allegedly working at a construction site without passports or proper visas. Officials looked for 46 other Chinese who disappeared from the construction site after the arrests.
(AP, 12/3/18)
2018 Nov 26, Latvia's Pres. Raimonds Vejonis nominated Aldis Gobzems from the populist party KPV LV as prime minister and gave him two weeks to form a cabinet and secure majority support in parliament following an inconclusive election last month.
(Reuters, 11/26/18)
2018 Nov 26, In Lebanon British radio presenter Gavin Ford (53), who hosted one of Lebanon's most popular shows, was killed during a robbery at his home in Beit Meri. Two Syrians, born in 1991 and 1995, were soon arrested and confessed to his killing.
(AFP, 11/29/18)
2018 Nov 26, In Malaysia 21 people were arrested over rioting that broke out amid a dispute over the relocation of an Indian temple outside Kuala Lumpur. 12 people were reported injured, one critically.
(AP, 11/27/18)
2018 Nov 26, The Maldives Supreme Court canceled former president Mohamed Nasheed’s 13-year jail sentence after a review of the controversial terrorism conviction.
(Reuters, 11/26/18)
2018 Nov 26, Maldives' new finance minister said that China is executing infrastructure projects at vastly higher prices than originally proposed but the island nation cannot get out of its commitments now.
(Reuters, 11/26/18)
2018 Nov 26, The incoming Mexican government said voters over the weekend have approved all ten pet projects of President-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in a referendum questioned because of low voter turnout.
(Reuters, 11/26/18)
2018 Nov 26, North Korea's ceremonial leader Kim Yong Nam arrived in Caracas and was expected to meet with socialist Venezuelan Pres. Nicolas Maduro the next day.
(Reuters, 11/27/18)
2018 Nov 26, A Palestinian rammed his car into a group of Israeli soldiers in the West Bank before being shot and killed.
(AP, 11/26/18)
2018 Nov 26, State-owned Qatar Airways said it will add more flights to Iran from January, just weeks after the United States re-imposed sanctions aimed at crippling Tehran's economy.
(Reuters, 11/26/18)
2018 Nov 26, Saudi energy giant Aramco said it has signed 31 agreements and memoranda of understandings worth $27.5 billion with local and international suppliers.
(AFP, 11/26/18)
2018 Nov 26, Somalia was hit by two violent attacks, one killing Islamic cleric Sheikh Abdiweli Ali Elmi and 17 of his followers for playing music and a second killing at least six people in a car bomb blast in Mogadishu.
(AP, 11/26/18)
2018 Nov 26, South Africa's President Cyril Ramaphosa signed into law the national minimum wage bill, part of efforts by the government to tackle wage inequality in Africa's most industrialized economy. The National Minimum Wage Act sets South Africa's minimum wage at 20 rand ($1.45) an hour, equal to 3,500 rand per month.
(Reuters, 11/26/18)
2018 Nov 26, George Soros's Open Society Foundation said it would cease operations in Turkey, days after President Tayyip Erdogan accused the billionaire philanthropist of trying to divide and destroy nations.
(Reuters, 11/26/18)
2018 Nov 26, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko halved his proposal for martial law in the country to 30 days, an apparent concession to opponents, effective from 9 am on November 28.
(Reuters, 11/26/18)
2018 Nov 26, Ukraine's biggest state-run bank said an arbitration court in Paris has ruled that Russia must pay $1.3 billion in damages for property seized in the annexation of Crimea.
(AP, 11/26/18)
2018 Nov 26, UNESCO said Korean wrestling was added to a list of "Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity" on the basis of an application by the two Koreas.
(AP, 11/26/18)
2018 Nov 26, The United Arab Emirates pardoned and released British academic Matthew Hedges (31), jailed for life on spying charges, granting a request for clemency after showing a video of him purportedly confessing to membership of the UK's MI6 intelligence service. The UAE president issued the pardon as part of a mass clemency of more than 700 prisoners to mark the country's National Day.
(Reuters, 11/26/18)
2018 Nov 27, US President Donald Trump intensified his attacks on the special counsel probing possible collusion between Russia and his 2016 electoral campaign, after prosecutors said his former campaign chairman lied to investigators.
(AFP, 11/27/18)
2018 Nov 27, US President Donald Trump said he would "totally be willing" to shut down the federal government unless Congress authorized $5 billion to fund his long-promised wall along the US border with Mexico.
(Reuters, 11/28/18)
2018 Nov 27 The US State Department said Hungary denied a US request to extradite suspected Russian arms dealers Vladimir Lyubishin Sr. and Vladimir Lyubishin Jr. and sent the men to Russia, where it is unclear whether they will face trial.
(Reuters, 11/27/18)
2018 Nov 27, In northern California the number of missing in the Butte County Car Fire dropped to 158 as the death toll remained at 88. On Dec. 3 the number of missing was lowered to 24.
(SFC, 11/28/18, p.A6)(SFC, 12/4/18, p.C1)
2018 Nov 27, In Chicago lawyers for Neringa Venckiene (47), a former Lithuania judge, asked the Chicago-based 7th US Circuit Court of Appeals to delay her extradition to Lithuania until her US asylum application is processed. She faced charges that include reporting a false crime linked to her claims a ring of influential pedophiles exists in Lithuania.
(AP, 11/27/18)
2018 Nov 27, In Louisiana Jeannot Franco Plessy (49), a New Orleans pastor's wife, was run over and killed by her own car during a carjacking. Three teeagers were arrested on Dec. 2.
(SFC, 12/4/18, p.A6)
2018 Nov 27, In Boston MS-13 gang member Edwin Gonzalez (23) was sentenced to life in prison for his role in two killings in which teenage victims were lured to their deaths via social media. He was sentenced following a conviction on racketeering charges that included his participation in the September 2015 murder of a 15-year-old boy and the January 2016 murder of a 16-year-old boy.
(AP, 11/28/18)
2018 Nov 27, In Mississippi Rep. US Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith won a divisive state runoff over Mike Espy. The runoff was rocked by a video in which Hyde-Smith said of a supporter: "If he invited me to a public hanging, I'd be on the front row."
(SFC, 11/28/18, p.A4)
2018 Nov 27, Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani made an investment pitch at a two-day UN conference in Geneva, describing the business opportunities and challenges in a country where millions are displaced or close to starvation.
(Reuters, 11/27/18)
2018 Nov 27, In central Afghanistan a roadside bomb blast killed three US service members and wounded three others near Ghazni. At least 11 US service members have now died in Afghanistan this year. On Dec. 2 a 4th soldier died from his wounds.
(Reuters, 11/27/18)(SFC, 12/4/18, p.A6)
2018 Nov 27, In Afghanistan a US airstrike hit a house late today during military operations in Helmand province. At least 30 Afghan civilians including women and 16 children were among the dead.
(Reuters, 11/28/18)
2018 Nov 27, Britain's Information Commissioner's Office said it fined Uber 385,000 pounds ($491,000) and Dutch officials imposed a 600,000-euro ($679,000) fine for failing to protect customers' data during a cyberattack in 2016.
(AP, 11/27/18)
2018 Nov 27, Shenzhen Harmonicare Women and Children's Hospital, the Chinese hospital linked to a controversial experiment purporting to have created the world's first genetically-edited babies, denied its involvement.
(AFP, 11/27/18)
2018 Nov 27, Congolese opposition scion Felix Tshisekedi (55) returned home to Kinshasa greeted by tens of thousands of supporters as he kicked off his campaign to replace longtime president and foe Joseph Kabila in December elections.
(AFP, 11/27/18)
2018 Nov 27, In Costa Rica Carla Stefaniak of south Florida went missing during a vacation to celebrate her 36th birthday. On Dec. 3 authorities said they've found a body behind an AirBnB villa where she was staying. Officials soon identified her using fingerprints and arrested Bismark Espinosa Martinez (32), a guard at the Villa Buena Vista resort near the capital, after he contradicted himself in statements to police. On Feb 17, 2020, Espinoza Martinez was convicted of killing her. He was sentenced to 16 years in prison.
(AP, 12/4/18)(AP, 12/5/18)(SFC, 2/19/20, p.A2)
2018 Nov 27, Ethiopia's PM Abiy Ahmed met members of 81 opposition parties to discuss ways of reforming the electoral system.
(Reuters, 11/27/18)
2018 Nov 27, The European Court of Human Rights issued a fresh rebuke to the Kremlin, ruling that Russia's continued ban on LGBT rallies is discriminatory and represents a violation of human rights.
(AP, 11/27/18)
2018 Nov 27, President Emmanuel Macron said France would reduce the share of nuclear in the power mix to 50 percent by 2035, down from 75 percent today, rather than the total phasing out planned by neighbor Germany.
(Reuters, 11/27/18)
2018 Nov 27, In Germany Sergej Wenergold (29), who launched a shrapnel bomb attack on the team bus of football club Borussia Dortmund in April 2017 to make money on the club's shares diving, was sentenced to 14 years in jail.
(AFP, 11/27/18)
2018 Nov 27, In Iran Sunni cleric Abdolghafour Jamalzai, who had worked to reconcile Sunnis and Shiites, was shot and killed in the town of Gorgan.
(AP, 11/27/18)
2018 Nov 27, A few thousand Kosovo Serbs people rallied in the divided town of Mitrovica demanding that the government abolish a 100 percent tax it has slapped on all goods imported from Serbia.
(AP, 11/27/18)
2018 Nov 27, A Lebanese Cabinet minister said some Syrian refugees who have returned home from Lebanon have been killed, detained or forced to join the military, leading to a slowdown in the return of Syrians residing in Lebanon. So far about 12,000 Syrian refugees have returned home since June. The refugee count in Lebanon was now about 940,000.
(AP, 11/27/18)
2018 Nov 27, In Malaysia four Finnish tourists, arrested last week for distributing Christian materials in public places on a resort island, were deported home.
(AP, 11/28/18)
2018 Nov 27, Mexico's Foreign Ministry announced that Pres. Enrique Pena Nieto would bestow the Mexican Order of the Aztec Eagle, the nation's highest honor for foreigners, to Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of Pres. Trump, for his role in pushing through a free-trade deal between Mexico and the US.
(SFC, 11/29/18, p.A7)
2018 Nov 27, Niger's health minister said Niger has ordered the closure of two centers run by British charity Marie Stopes International on grounds it was illegally performing abortions. Niger allows abortion only in cases where the pregnancy endangers the mother's life.
(AFP, 11/27/18)
2018 Nov 27, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte accepted the resignation of his adviser on peace talks with insurgents and sacked two other officials due to corruption in an anti-poverty program created for insurgency-hit areas.
(AP, 11/27/18)
2018 Nov 27, Poland's anti-corruption officers detained Marek Chrzanowski, the former head of a financial regulatory body, who resigned recently after a media report he sought a bribe.
(AP, 11/27/18)
2018 Nov 27, Russia's TASS news agency reported that a court in Russian-annexed Crimea ordered the first of 24 Ukrainian navy sailors captured by Russia to be detained for two months.
(Reuters, 11/27/18)
2018 Nov 27, Slovenia said it has appointed Major General Alenka Ermenc as chief of the army, making her the only woman in charge of a NATO country's military.
(Reuters, 11/27/18)
2018 Nov 27, South Korea's top public prosecutor apologized over what he described as a botched investigation into the enslavement and mistreatment of thousands of people at a vagrants' facility in the 1970s and 1980s. In 1989 Park In-keun, the owner of the now-closed Brothers Home, was acquitted from serious charges amid an obvious cover-up orchestrated at the highest levels of government.
(AP, 11/27/18)(SFC, 4/18/20, p.A2)
2018 Nov 27, Sri Lankan lawmakers supporting disputed PM Mahinda Rajapaksa boycotted Parliament for a second day, accusing the speaker of bias during a political crisis that has engulfed the island nation for nearly a month.
(AP, 11/27/18)
2018 Nov 27, Sweden's Center Party said it would consider accepting Social Democrat Stefan Lofven as prime minister if he meets their policy demands, including lower taxes.
(Reuters, 11/27/18)
2018 Nov 27, A local official said Syrian workers have exhumed more than 500 bodies from one of the largest mass graves near the northern city of Raqqa, once the capital of the Islamic State group's self-styled caliphate, and are still uncovering remains. So far 516 bodies believed to be of Islamic State fighters and civilians have been exhumed.
(AP, 11/27/18)
2018 Nov 27, Thailand detained soccer player Hakeem al-Araibi, who held refugee status in Australia, upon his entry at Bangkok's airport on a holiday with his wife. He was held legally following a request from Bahrain's government. He had fled Bahrain four years ago.
(AP, 12/7/18)
2018 Nov 27, Hundreds of Tunisian protesters marched through Tunis in opposition to a planned visit by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, urging justice over the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
(AFP, 11/27/18)
2018 Nov 27, UN agencies said asylum seekers at the Mexican border fleeing violence or persecution are entitled to lodge claims in the United States to obtain sanctuary there in a fresh attempt to shield migrants from tough US immigration policies.
(Reuters, 11/27/18)
2018 Nov 27, The United Nations environment office warned that the gap is widening between current greenhouse gas emissions and the levels needed to stop catastrophic global warming. It said in order to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 F) this century, emissions need to drop 55 percent by 2030 compared to 2017 levels.
(AP, 11/27/18)
2018 Nov 28, The US Justice Dept. charged Iranian hackers Faramarz Shahi Savandi (34) and Mohammad Mehdi Shah Mansouri (27) in connection with a multimillion-dollar extortion scheme with ransomware starting in January 2016.
(SFC, 11/29/18, p.A6)
2018 Nov 28, US authorities said five inmates in the Carolinas had been indicted for extorting more than half a million dollars from military personnel across the country, using illegal cell phones to pose as underage women on dating sites.
(SFC, 11/29/18, p.A7)
2018 Nov 28, A Pew Research Center study reported that the number of undocumented migrants living in the US has fallen to 10.7 million, the lowest since 2004. Pew attributed the decline to a big drop in undocumented Mexicans. The number of undocumented immigrants in the US peaked in 2007 at an estimated 12.2 million people.
(AFP, 11/28/18)
2018 Nov 28, In Afghanistan 16 Taliban fighters were killed as Afghan government forces battled insurgents in southern Helmand province overnight. Insurgents staged a coordinated attack against security forces in Kabul when a suicide bomber detonated his explosives and fighters engaged them in a gun battle. The Taliban attack targeted the Kabul offices of British security company G4S Risk Management Group. Five of its staffers were killed, including a British national. A 6th person was also killed.
(AP, 11/28/18)(AP, 11/29/18)
2018 Nov 28, Large swaths of northeast Australia endured unprecedented fire danger with 138 wildfires across Queensland state forcing schools to be closed and thousands of homes to be evacuated.
(AP, 11/28/18)
2018 Nov 28, A British court rejected an extradition request from Turkey for exiled businessman Akin Ipek (54) to face terrorism-funding, fraud and other charges, saying he faced a real risk of ill-treatment should he be returned.
(Reuters, 11/28/18)
2018 Nov 28, Chile's Pres. Sebastian Pinera signed a measure that lets people over the age of 14 change their name and gender in official records.
(SFC, 11/29/18, p.A2)
2018 Nov 28, Chinese scientist He Jiankui, who claims to have created the world's first genetically-edited babies, defended the highly controversial procedure, but announced a halt to the trial following an international outcry.
(AFP, 11/28/18)
2018 Nov 28, In northeastern China an explosion outside a chemical plant early today killed at least 22 people and destroyed scores of vehicles in Zhangjiakou city.
(AP, 11/28/18)
2018 Nov 28, The EU's second highest court upheld a decision by the European Union to recover money from far-right politician Marine Le Pen, delivering the former French presidential candidate a second legal setback this year.
(Reuters, 11/28/18)
2018 Nov 28, Georgians voted in the second round of a presidential election seen as a crucial test for the increasingly unpopular ruling party and watched closely by Russia and the West. French-born former foreign minister Salome Zurabishvili (66) won nearly 60 percent of the vote.
(AFP, 11/28/18)(AP, 11/29/18)
2018 Nov 28, In Greece train and island ferry services were suspended and most Athens public transport was idle as the country's biggest labor union held a strike against persisting austerity measures.
(AP, 11/28/18)
2018 Nov 28, In Greece a Syrian man was killed overnight and six more people injured when a car used by a smuggling gang that was crammed with nine people crashed on a northern highway near the town of Kavala.
(AP, 11/28/18)
2018 Nov 28, The US ambassador to Israel called on Palestinians to free Issam Akel, an American-Palestinian, who was detained two months ago for "selling land to a Jew", apparently violating a long-standing Palestinian ban on selling land to Israelis.
(Reuters, 11/28/18)
2018 Nov 28, Lebanon's army detained around 400 Syrians in raids on refugee camps in the eastern Bekaa valley, mostly for overstaying their residence permits.
(AFP, 11/29/18)
2018 Nov 28, Mexico's human rights commission blasted the government's investigation of the 2014 disappearance of 43 students for a long list of failures, adding the remains of 19 unidentified people were found in a trash dump linked to the case.
(Reuters, 11/29/18)
2018 Nov 28, Nigeria's military revealed a death toll of 39 from five attacks by extremists on soldiers between Nov. 2 and Nov. 18.
(SFC, 11/29/18, p.A2)
2018 Nov 28, At least 15 Nigerian news organizations joined forces on the CrossCheck Nigeria project to fight misinformation ahead of February's elections in a collaborative first as the country's main political parties trade accusations of fabrication and exaggeration.
(AFP, 11/28/18)
2018 Nov 28, Pakistan's PM Imran Khan attended a groundbreaking ceremony at the Kartarpur corridor for the first visa-free border crossing with India that will allow Sikh pilgrims to easily visit their shrines on each side of the border.
(AP, 11/28/18)
2018 Nov 28, President Vladimir Putin said that Russia had no choice but to cut its dependency on dollars to conduct trade, after becoming the target of increasingly severe US sanctions.
(AFP, 11/28/18)
2018 Nov 28, President Vladimir Putin insisted that Russian forces had the right to seize three Ukrainian ships at the weekend, as Kiev lashed out at Moscow for failing to release its sailors.
(AFP, 11/28/18)
2018 Nov 28, Moscow's latest tourist attraction, a cable car over the Moskva River, was shut the day after it opened because of what the operator said was a cyberattack.
(Reuters, 11/29/18)
2018 Nov 28, Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman landed in Buenos Aires for the G20 summit of industrialized nations.
(Reuters, 11/28/18)
2018 Nov 28, A Sri Lankan court ordered the detention of Chief of Defense Staff Admiral Ravindra Wijegunaratne, the country's top military officer, for investigation in connection with the abduction and disappearance of 11 young people, including ethnic minority Tamils, during the country's civil war. Wijegunaratne has been accused of giving refuge to former navy Lieutenant Commander Chandana Prasad Hettiarachchi, who is the main suspect in the abduction of the 11 young people in 2008-2009. They are believed to have been murdered while being held for ransom.
(AP, 11/28/18)
2018 Nov 28, In Switzerland Afghanistan's President Ashraf Ghani announced a 12-person team for prospective peace talks with the Taliban. Top diplomats from Russia, the United States and the European Union united in support for Ghani's efforts to stabilize his war-battered nation.
(AFP, 11/28/18)(AP, 11/28/18)
2018 Nov 28, In northeastern Thailand a man was killed by a wild elephant after his speeding car hit the animal near Khao Yai National Park.
(AP, 11/29/18)
2018 Nov 28, In northwest Turkey a large concrete block fell during the construction of a highway viaduct, killing one worker and trapping two others beneath it near the town of Gebze, Kocaeli province.
(AP, 11/28/18)
2018 Nov 28, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko signed an act introducing martial law after Russia's seizure of three of Kiev's navy vessels sparked the worst crisis in years between the neighbors.
(AFP, 11/28/18)
2018 Nov 29, President Donald Trump headed to Argentina for a fractious weekend of G20 summitry boasting that his trade war with China had injected billions into the US economy.
(AFP, 11/29/18)
2018 Nov 29, It was reported that the Trump administration has granted nearly 3,000 requests that could exempt Chinese-made metal products from tariffs enacted in March.
(SFC, 11/29/18, p.A4)
2018 Nov 29, In Arizona US Marshall Ryan White (41) was shot and killed while serving a warrant in Tucson. Ryan Schlesinger (26) was arrested after an hours long standoff.
(SFC, 12/1/18, p.A6)
2018 Nov 29, In southern California an attempt to smuggle immigrants into the country illegally ended with three people dead and eight seriously injured in Campo, San Diego County.
(AP, 12/1/18)(SFC, 12/1/18, p.A6)
2018 Nov 29, It was reported that Puerto Rico's largest public university has paid the US government $1.7 million as part of a settlement after the institution was accused of misusing grant money.
(AP, 11/29/18)
2018 Nov 29, In Brazil Rio de Janeiro Gov. Luiz Fernando Pezao was arrested for allegedly taking about $10 million in bribes since 2007, adding to a string of corruption arrests of senior political figures.
(AP, 11/29/18)
2018 Nov 29, Hundreds of Bulgarian coal miners and energy workers protested to demand government guarantees that their jobs will be preserved amid bids by the European Union to close mines and tackle climate change. 150,000 jobs were reportedly at risk.
(AP, 11/29/18)
2018 Nov 29, In Burkina Faso several thousand people took the streets of Ouagadougou as workers downed tools in a nationwide strike over higher fuel prices.
(AFP, 11/29/18)
2018 Nov 29, Canada announced targeted sanctions against 17 Saudi nationals it said were linked to the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul last month.
(AFP, 11/29/18)
2018 Nov 29, Top leaders from Chad, Nigeria, Niger and Cameroon held talks in N'Djamena (Chad) to discuss the recent escalation of attacks by Boko Haram jihadists in the Lake Chad area.
(AFP, 11/29/18)
2018 Nov 29, China's government ordered a halt to work by a medical team that claimed to have helped make the world's first gene-edited babies, as a group of leading scientists declared that it's still too soon to try to make permanent changes to DNA that can be inherited by future generations.
(AP, 11/29/18)
2018 Nov 29, China said it has assembled a standby force of thousands of United Nations peacekeepers, furthering its leading role in the global body's efforts to tamp down conflicts worldwide.
(AP, 11/29/18)
2018 Nov 29, It was reported that China has called upon all electric vehicle manufacturers in China to report the precise location of their customer's cars to the Chinese government.
(AP, 11/29/18)
2018 Nov 29, Gabon's President Ali Bongo (59) arrived in Morocco to convalesce after a month's treatment at a Saudi hospital for an illness that has not been officially revealed.
(AP, 11/29/18)
2018 Nov 29, Grigol Vashadze, Georgia's defeated opposition candidate for the presidency, said he did not recognize the victory of his ruling party rival and called for peaceful protests on Dec. 2.
(Reuters, 11/29/18)
2018 Nov 29, In Germany some 170 police officers, investigators and prosecutors raided the offices of Deutsche Bank on the suspicion bank employees helped clients set up offshore companies in tax havens to launder hundreds of millions of euros.
(AP, 11/29/18)
2018 Nov 29, Hundreds of schoolchildren took part in rival protests in Greece over the country's name deal with Macedonia aimed at ending a three-decade dispute but which has sparked controversy.
(AFP, 11/29/18)
2018 Nov 29, A Honduran court found seven people guilty of participating in the 2016 murder of indigenous and environmental rights activist Berta Caceres, while acquitting one suspect in a case that has drawn international attention.
(AP, 12/8/18)
2018 Nov 29, Indian police said they have arrested nearly two dozen people on suspicion of defrauding people around the world by sending fake pop-up messages warning them that their computers were infected with a virus and offering to fix the problem at a price. Those arrested over the last two days posed as representatives of Microsoft and other companies and used their logos.
(AP, 11/29/18)
2018 Nov 29, An Israeli court extended the remand of Adnan Gheith, the Palestinian governor of Jerusalem, for three days following his Nov. 25 arrest in connection with an investigation related to a land sale.
(AFP, 11/29/18)
2018 Nov 29, Up to 90 pilot whales beached themselves at Hanson Bay on the Chatham Islands of New Zealand. 51 died by the next day, less than a week after 145 pilot whales and nine pigmy whales perished in two other strandings.
(SFC, 12/1/18, p.A2)
2018 Nov 29, Pakistan's recently elected PM Imran Khan said his government will introduce a new law that will reward whistleblowers who help authorities identify corrupt politicians, bureaucrats and private citizens who stash money in Pakistan and in foreign banks.
(AP, 11/29/18)
2018 Nov 29, A Philippine court found three police officers guilty of killing a student they alleged was a drug dealer. Kian Loyd delos Santos (17) was killed during a raid in Caloocan city's slums in the Manila metropolis last year. The court sentenced officers Arnel Oares, Jeremias Pereda and Jerwin Cruz, to be imprisoned for up to 40 years without parole, although they can appeal.
(AP, 11/29/18)
2018 Nov 29, Portugal's parliament approved in the final reading the minority Socialist government's 2019 budget bill that aims to nearly eliminate the deficit in an election year, further reducing Portugal's debt burden, still one of Europe's heaviest. PM Antonio Costa announced that his fiscal consolidation policies will allow the early repayment of the remaining part of bailout loans provided by the International Monetary Fund by the end of this year.
(Reuters, 11/29/18)
2018 Nov 29, Police in Russia's fourth-largest city of Yekaterinburg seized children's paintings over what they consider to be depictions of gay love. A high school drawing competition on the subject of tolerance had featured several drawings which depicted same-sex couples.
(AP, 11/29/18)
2018 Nov 29, South Korea's top court ordered Japanese company Mitsubishi Heavy Industries to financially compensate 10 Koreans for forced labor during Tokyo's 1910-45 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula, in the second such ruling in a month that again drew quick, vehement protests from Japan.
(AP, 11/29/18)
2018 Nov 29, South Korea sent about 50 tons of insecticide to North Korea to help stop a pine tree disease from spreading.
(AP, 11/29/18)
2018 Nov 29, In Spain thousands of Catalan civil servants joined strikes and ongoing protests by students and health workers to demand more funding and better working conditions.
(AP, 11/29/18)
2018 Nov 29, Sri Lankan lawmakers approved a motion barring disputed PM Mahinda Rajapaksa from using state funds after he lost two no-confidence votes, in an escalation of the country's political crisis.
(AP, 11/29/18)
2018 Nov 29, Sri Lanka penned two multi-million dollar contracts with Chinese firms for a port upgrade project in the middle of a political hiatus that has raised doubts over the legitimacy of the government and the legality of the deals.
(Reuters, 11/29/18)
2018 Nov 29, The Syrian National Coalition said that Leila Shuweikani, a Syrian-American woman detained two years, ago died on Dec. 28 shortly after being detained and that she was tortured. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said it has documented 16,065 persons who were killed in government detention centers.
(AP, 11/29/18)
2018 Nov 29, An investigation by the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) of its widely-praised refugee program in Uganda said it has found corruption costing millions of dollars and misconduct.
(Reuters, 11/29/18)
2018 Nov 29, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko accused Russia's Vladimir Putin of wanting to annex his entire country and called for NATO to deploy warships to a sea shared by the two nations. Ukrainian border guards said all non-Ukrainians will be barred from crossing into the Russia-occupied Crimean peninsula by land after martial law went into effect.
(Reuters, 11/29/18)(AP, 11/29/18)
2018 Nov 29, Ukraine's infrastructure minister, Volodymyr Omelyan, said two Ukrainian Azov Sea ports, Berdyansk and Mariupol, are effectively under blockade by Russia as vessels are being barred from leaving and entering.
(Reuters, 11/29/18)
2018 Nov 29, In Zimbabwe Several thousand anti-government demonstrators marched through the capital Harare, closely watched by armed police in the first rally since a deadly crackdown on an election protest in August.
(AFP, 11/29/18)
2018 Nov 30, US Pres. Donald Trump signed a trade pact (the USMCA) with Mexico and Canada at a ceremony with Canadian PM Justin Trudeau Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
(AP, 12/1/18)
2018 Nov 30, George H.W. Bush (94), the 41st president of the United States, died in Houston.
(AP, 12/1/18)
2018 Nov 30, George Higginbotham, a former Justice Department official, admitted his role in a multimillion-dollar effort to try to get the United States to drop its investigation into a money laundering and bribery scheme that pilfered billions from a Malaysian investment fund.
(AP, 12/1/18)
2018 Nov 30, In Alaska magnitude 7.0 and 5.7 earthquakes hit the Anchorage area. Buildings shook and roads buckled, butr no deaths were reported.
(SFC, 12/1/18, p.A7)
2018 Nov 30, In southern California Los Angeles teacher Marston Riley (64) was charged with a misdemeanor count of corporal injury to a child. A video posted last month showed Riley scuffling with a student who had repeatedly called him a racial slur.
(SFC, 12/3/18, p.A5)
2018 Nov 30, In the SF Bay Area Quora, a question and answer website based in Mountain View, discovered a data breach that reportedly affected 100 milliuon users.
(SFC, 12/5/18, p.D1)
2018 Nov 30, In southern Indiana a small jet crashed with no survivors after taking off from Clark County Airport. Three people were believed to have been aboard.
(SFC, 12/1/18, p.A6)
2018 Nov 30, At the American Health Summit in Washington DC former NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced a $50 million donation to help ten states fight the nation's opioid epidemic.
(SFC, 12/1/18, p.A8)
2018 Nov 30, The Marriott Int'l. hotel chain said that the database of its Starwood reservation system had been hacked and that the personal details of up to 500 million guests going back to 2014 had been compromised.
(SFC, 12/1/18, p.D1)
2018 Nov 30, G7 nations called Russia's seizure of three Ukrainian ships off Moscow-annexed Crimea unjustified and demanded the release of the 24 sailors, saying the standoff had "dangerously raised tensions".
(AFP, 11/30/18)
2018 Nov 30, The Pan-American Health Organization reported a big jump in measles cases in the Americas this year, with Brazil surpassing crisis-hit Venezuela as the nation with the most confirmed cases.
(AP, 12/1/18)
2018 Nov 30, In Argentina thousands of demonstrators gathered in Buenos Aires to march against the G20's economic policies as the world's leading industrialized nations opened their annual summit in the Argentine capital.
(Reuters, 11/30/18)
2018 Nov 30, In Argentina Russian President Vladimir Putin reportedly briefed his US counterpart Donald Trump on the Ukraine crisis as the leaders met briefly at a G20 summit dinner.
(AFP, 12/2/18)
2018 Nov 30, Thousands of Australian students skipped school to join nationwide protests demanding government action on climate change.
(AFP, 11/30/18)
2018 Nov 30, Belgian police fired water cannon and teargas in central Brussels to drive back protesters inspired by France's "yellow vest" anti-tax movement who hurled rocks at the prime minister's office.
(Reuters, 11/30/18)
2018 Nov 30, A Bosnian appeals court acquitted Naser Oric, the wartime commander of Srebrenica who was accused of committing atrocities during the 1992-95 Balkan conflict.
(AP, 11/30/18)
2018 Nov 30, Britain unveiled four agreements signed with Spain as part of the Brexit withdrawal deal that provide for unprecedented cooperation between Madrid and Gibraltar.
(AFP, 11/30/18)
2018 Nov 30, British government minister Sam Gyimah quit late today over PM Theresa May's "naive" Brexit plan, dealing her another blow in her fight to pass it through parliament.
(AFP, 12/1/18)
2018 Nov 30, UNICEF reported that thousands of children in the Central African Rep. are trapped in armed groups with many suffering sexual violence. Thousands were reported going hungry and one in four have fled their homes as a result of interreligious and intercommunal fighting.
(SFC, 12/1/18, p.A4)
2018 Nov 30, China said on it had lodged "stern representations" with the United States after the U.S. Navy sailed a ship through the contested South China Sea, passing near islands claimed by China.
(Reuters, 11/30/18)
2018 Nov 30, Denmark's right-wing minority government secured the necessary backing from its populist ally, the Danish People's Party, to be able to pass its 2019 budget.
(Reuters, 11/30/18)
2018 Nov 30, Hundreds of women took part in a race in Cairo to campaign for an end to violence against women and push for acceptance of women running in public spaces.
(Reuters, 11/30/18)
2018 Nov 30, French President Emmanuel Macron told Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Europeans will insist on international experts being part of the investigations into a Saudi journalist's murder.
(Reuters, 11/30/18)
2018 Nov 30, A Greek court acquitted 21 people accused of raiding prospective gold mining facilities that some see as a welcome foreign investment but many local residents strongly oppose on environmental grounds. About 40 masked people attacked the facilities at Skouries in the Halkidiki peninsula in northern Greece in February 2013.
(AP, 11/30/18)
2018 Nov 30, In India thousands of farmers marched to the Parliament in New Delhi demanding higher prices for their produce and a government waiver on their farm loans to alleviate hardships.
(AP, 11/30/18)
2018 Nov 30, Italy's national anti-Mafia prosecutor, Federico Cafiero de Raho, said police have arrested 30 suspected mobsters in a sweep against the Foggia mafiosi, the country's so-called "fourth Mafia".
(AP, 11/30/18)
2018 Nov 30, A Japanese court approved a 10-day extension of the detention of former Nissan chairman Carlos Ghosn.
(AP, 11/30/18)
2018 Nov 30, A Jordanian man attacked two Israeli port workers with a hammer seriously wounding them in the Israeli Red Sea resort of Eilat. The assailant was detained for questioning and police said they suspect the motive was terrorism.
(AP, 11/30/18)
2018 Nov 30, Lebanon's caretaker finance minister and the World Bank jointly called for the formation of a new government after half a year of political stalemate, saying a new administration was needed to halt "confusion" over the economy.
(Reuters, 11/30/18)
2018 Nov 30, Montenegrin police arrested Nebojsa Medojevic, a lawmaker and a prominent opposition leader, after a high court ordered he serve a two-month jail sentence passed in March for refusing to testify about high-level corruption.
(Reuters, 11/30/18)
2018 Nov 30, In the Netherlands a rotating roster of preachers continued to lead a non-stop, round-the-clock service at a small Protestant chapel in The Hague in an attempt to shield a family of Armenian asylum-seekers from deportation. The Tamrazyan family has been living in the Netherlands for nearly nine years, as their asylum application and various appeals proceeded slowly through the courts. The Council of State, the country's highest administrative court, has ruled they must return to their home country, which is considered safe by the Dutch government.
(AP, 11/30/18)
2018 Nov 30, Romanian health authorities temporarily closed a maternity hospital in the capital after 13 babies born there recently were diagnosed with antibiotic-resistant Staphylococcus aureus.
(AP, 11/30/18)
2018 Nov 30, In eastern Slovakia five people, including four children, were killed in a house fire in the town of Richnava.
(AP, 11/30/18)
2018 Nov 30, In Somalia a US military air strike killed nine militants targeting al Shabaab in Lebede, as part of its operations to support the government's efforts to weaken the militant group.
(Reuters, 12/2/18)
2018 Nov 30, South Africa's High Court rejected a legal challenge brought by a group representing white farmers against President Cyril Ramaphosa's plans for land expropriation without compensation.
(Reuters, 11/30/18)
2018 Nov 30, A South Korean train rolled into North Korea for the first time in a decade as the countries began joint surveys on northern railway sections they hope someday to connect with the South.
(AP, 11/30/18)
2018 Nov 30, Spanish police said they have arrested art dealer Oswaldo Aulestia (72), accused of selling fake works by Picasso, Dali, Warhol and other 20th century masters to unsuspecting US buyers, and evading arrest for years.
(Reuters, 11/30/18)
2018 Nov 30, Sri Lanka's parliament voted to halt payment of ministers' salaries and travel expenses, but it remained unclear how the move would impact the disputed government of PM Mahinda Rajapaksa whose ministers boycotted the vote.
(Reuters, 11/30/18)
2018 Nov 30, Swiss-based FIFA's ethics committee said it has imposed a four-year ban on Manuel Dende, former president of the Sao Tomean Football Association, for accepting a bribe, reportedly from former presidential candidate Mohamed bin Hammam. Dende was also fined 75,000 Swiss francs ($75,000).
(AP, 11/30/18)
2018 Nov 30, Syrian state news said new air strikes on al-Shafa killed around 30, bringing the total killed this week in strikes on the Islamic State pocket to around 45.
(Reuters, 11/30/18)
2018 Nov 30, Tunisia's interior ministry said authorities have arrested 12 suspected members of the Islamic State group and seized bomb making materials since a suicide attack last month.
(AFP, 11/30/18)
2018 Nov 30, A Turkish court ruled that the former leader of Turkey's pro-Kurdish opposition remain in prison, after top EU officials last week called for the politician's swift release.
(Reuters, 11/30/18)
2018 Nov 30, Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko said his country has received 500 million euros ($568 million) in assistance from the European Commission.
(Reuters, 11/30/18)
2018 Nov 30, Ukraine banned Russian men of combat age from entering the country, a move introduced under martial law after Russia fired on and captured three Ukrainian naval ships off Crimea last weekend.
(Reuters, 11/30/18)
2018 Nov 30, Ukraine's state security service raided the residence of a senior Russian-backed Orthodox priest, who heads one of the country's holiest sites, citing a clause in the criminal code relating to whipping up religious hatred. Metropolitan Pavel, heads the Kiev Pechersk Lavra, one of Ukraine's most famous monasteries and a tourist site where mummified monks rest in labyrinthine underground caves.
(Reuters, 11/30/18)
2018 Nov 30, The United Nations said it had helped hundreds of Central Americans who travelled with migrant caravans towards the US to return to their home countries.
(AFP, 11/30/18)
2018 Nov 30, The Vatican announced the approval by the European Payments Council to bring the Vatican into the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA). This allows the Vatican bank to have its own IBAN code, the unique numerical identifier that facilitates wire transfers between banks.
(AP, 11/30/18)
2018 Nov 30, A court in northern Vietnam jailed two former police generals for protecting a multimillion-dollar online gambling ring as the Communist government steps up its crackdown on graft. Former national police chief Phan Van Vinh and former head of hi-tech crimes police department Nguyen Thanh Hoa were sentenced to nine and 10 years respectively.
(AP, 11/30/18)
2018 Nov 30, In Vietnam Huynh Thuc Vy (33), founder of the organization Vietnamese Women for Human Rights, was sentenced to two years and nine months in prison for spraying paint on Vietnamese flags and posting a photo of them on Facebook.
(Reuters, 11/30/18)
2018 Nov 30, In Yemen fighting erupted in the east and south of the Red Sea port city of Hodeida. Huthi rebels on their television channel referred to an exchange of tank fire. Intermittent clashes continued into the next day.
(AP, 12/1/18)
2018 Nov, In Australia two conjoined girls from Bhutan were separated by a team of 25 surgeons, nurses and anesthetists in an operation at Melbourne's Royal Children's Hospital that lasted almost six hours. Twenty-month-old Nima and Dawa returned to Bhutan after a 22-hour flight from Melbourne with their mother, four months after their operation.
(AP, 3/7/19)
2018 Nov, An Ecuadorean court authorized the extradition of wood pellet salesman Paul Ceglia, who faced US charges of mail fraud and wire fraud over allegations he forged documents to extort Facebook and Zuckerberg. Ceglia had sued Zuckerberg in 2010 saying he had signed a contract in 2003 while studying at Harvard University that gave him half of the planned social network site that would become Facebook. In April, 2019, Ceglia requested asylum in Ecuador.
(Reuters, 4/12/19)
2018 Nov, In South Africa VBS, a regional bank that catered to poorer customers, collapsed. The bank was left in ruins after 53 people stole $130 million deposited by individuals. South Africa's central bank was forced to step in and guaranteed $7,300 per retail depositor through a competing bank.
(AFP, 3/9/19)
2018 Nov, A UN-backed study was published saying the area of Mexico that illegally farms opium poppies had grown by more than one-fifth this year, to an area the size of Philadelphia.
(AP, 2/6/19)
2018 Dec 1, US President Donald Trump said he will soon notify Congress that he plans to end the NAFTA agreement with Mexico and Canada in favor of a new regional trade deal, setting up a potential clash on Capitol Hill.
(AFP, 12/2/18)
2018 Dec 1, In Los Angeles Deontay Wilder and Tyson Fury (30) battled to a controversial split-decision draw in their WBC heavyweight title showdown, triggering immediate demands from both camps for a rematch.
(AFP, 12/2/18)
2018 Dec 1, In Los Angeles Jarrett Hurd (28) of Maryland stopped Britain's Jason Welborn in the fourth round to retain his WBA, IBF and IBO light middleweight titles.
(AP, 12/2/18)
2018 Dec 1, In San Francisco hundreds of people gathered at the National AIDS Memorial Grove in Golden Gate Park for the 25th Annual World AIDS Day.
(SSFC, 12/2/18, p.A16)
2018 Dec 1, In Louisiana the Democratic Governors Assoc. meeting in New Orleans selected Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo as its new chairwoman.
(SSFC, 12/2/18, p.A10)
2018 Dec 1, Vice Admiral Scott Stearney, a Chicago native and the commander of the US Navy's Bahrain-based 5th Fleet, was found dead at his residence in Bahrain. No foul play was suspected.
(AP, 12/2/18)
2018 Dec 1, In Afghanistan Abdul Manan, a top commander of the Taliban, was killed in the southern province of Helmand in a joint operation by Afghan and US Special Forces. He was killed along with 29 others by an air strike while he was meeting local commanders and fighters in the Nawzad district.
(Reuters, 12/2/18)
2018 Dec 1, In Argentina European officials said that G20 nations had agreed to commit to reforming the World Trade Organization in a preliminary draft of the communique due to be released at the end of a two-day meeting of the bloc. G20 leaders of the world's largest economic powers agreed to overhaul the global body that regulates trade disputes, but they faced resistance from President Donald Trump over the Paris accord on climate change.
(Reuters, 12/1/18)(AP, 12/2/18)
2018 Dec 1, In Argentina President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed to halt additional tariffs in a deal that keeps their trade war from escalating as the two sides try again to bridge their differences with fresh talks aimed at reaching an agreement within 90 days.
(Reuters, 12/2/18)
2018 Dec 1, In Argentina Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan demanded that Saudi Arabia extradite suspects in the killing in Istanbul of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, taking to task the kingdom's crown prince who was basking in his quick return to the world stage at the G20.
(AFP, 12/1/18)
2018 Dec 1, The Bristol-based disciplinary panel of the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association, founded in 1968, handed long bans to two Chinese snooker players for fixing matches in one of the sport's biggest corruption scandals.
(http://tinyurl.com/ya85vruc)(AP, 12/1/18)
2018 Dec 1, Canada detained Huawei Technologies executive Meng Wanzhou in Vancouver. Wanzhou faced possible extradition to the United States where she is suspected of trying to evade US trade curbs on Iran.
(AP, 12/6/18)
2018 Dec 1, In Canada Oleksandr Gvozdyk (31) of Ukraine knocked out Canadian Adonis Stevenson with 13 seconds remaining in the 11th round to capture the World Boxing Council light heavyweight championship in Quebec City.
(AFP, 12/2/18)
2018 Dec 1, Billionaire Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis faced renewed pressure over his business dealings after an EU legal document said he has a conflict of interest due to links to agribusiness companies that received European funds. A legal opinion, dated Nov. 19, said "the situation of Mr Babis qualifies as a conflict of interest," because he could "influence" decisions on the use of EU funds of which companies linked to him had benefited.
(Reuters, 12/1/18)
2018 Dec 1, In France police and anti-government protesters clashed near the Champs-Elysees and in other parts of central Paris. Paris police arrested 412 people during the worst clashes for years in the capital. 378 remained in custody.
(AFP, 12/1/18)(AP, 12/2/18)
2018 Dec 1, In Germany thousands of people marched in Berlin to demand that Germany make a quick exit from using coal-fired energy. This and a simultaneous event in the western city of Cologne were organized by environmental groups.
(AP, 12/1/18)
2018 Dec 1, In Indonesia about 300 West Papuan demonstrators calling for independence for the restive Indonesian region faced off with counter protesters in Surabaya, the country's second-largest city and capital of East Java province.
(AP, 12/1/18)
2018 Dec 1, Iran's navy launched a domestically made destroyer, which state media said has radar-evading stealth properties.
(AP, 12/1/18)
2018 Dec 1, Iran's state media reported that a revolutionary court has sentenced Hengameh Shahidi (43), a female pro-reform journalist, to a nearly 13-year prison term over security charges.
(AP, 12/1/18)
2018 Dec 1, Controversial Islamic preacher Zakir Naik (53), wanted in his home country of India, said he has not broken any Indian law and was being targeted by the "enemies of Islam," in a rare public speech in Malaysia where he has sought refuge. Naik faced charges in India of money laundering and hate speech.
(Reuters, 12/2/18)
2018 Dec 1, Veteran leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador assumed the Mexican presidency vowing to champion the poor and contain business elites he says have conspired with politicians for years to fuel corruption and lawlessness.
(AP, 12/1/18)
2018 Dec 1, In New Zealand Grace Millane (22), a British tourist, was last seen entering a central Auckland hotel with a 26-year-old man. The man was arrested on Dec 8 and police planned to charge him with murder. Millane, from Wickford in Essex, was on a round-the-world trip when she was allegedly strangled during rough sex at an apartment in Auckland. A suitcase containing her remains was found in a shallow grave in a forested area of the Waitakere ranges a week later on December 9.
(AP, 12/8/18)(The Telegraph, 11/6/19)
2018 Dec 1, A North Korean soldier fled across a heavily fortified border to defect to South Korea.
(AP, 12/1/18)
2018 Dec 1, Pakistan's Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry said that Tehreek-e-Labbaik party chief Khadim Hussain Rizvi and two other leaders have been booked under treason and terrorism charges. This came after violent rallies followed the Oct 31 acquittal of Asia Bibi, who had been charged with blasphemy in 2010. Rizvi and 3,000 followers were initially arrested under pre-emptive laws last week.
{Pakistan}
(AP, 12/1/18)(SFC, 12/3/18, p.A2)
2018 Dec 1, Pakistani security forces said they have killed Hakim Khan, a local Taliban commander, who had taken six people hostage in the country's northwest. Security forces rescued all the hostages safely in an operation in the Daraban area of Dera Ismail Khan overnight.
(AP, 12/1/18)
2018 Dec 1, Tens of thousands of Romanians turned out to celebrate 100 years since their nation became a modern-day state, and some noted current concerns about the rule of law and the state of democracy in the Balkan nation.
(AP, 12/1/18)
2018 Dec 1, Doctors Without Borders said a "dramatic increase" in sexual violence occurred in South Sudan over 10 days, between Nov. 19 and Nov. 29, as 125 women and girls walked to a food distribution site in Bentiu in Unity state. The women and girls were raped, whipped and clubbed in attacks so shocking that some aid workers in South Sudan said they are left speechless.
(AP, 12/1/18)
2018 Dec 1, In Spain jailed Catalan separatist leaders Jordi Sanchez and Jordi Turull, awaiting trial for their role in the region's failed bid to secede from Spain, said they were starting a hunger strike to protest over their treatment by Spanish courts.
(Reuters, 12/1/18)
2018 Dec 1, Sri Lanka slashed a tax on sugary drinks in a controversial reversal of an anti-diabetes policy that attracted immediate criticism. Health campaigners and a former minister condemned the move as damaging the fight against obesity and diabetes among young people.
(AFP, 12/1/18)
2018 Dec 1, Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko said Russia is building up its land forces and weapons along the border as German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned Russia not to block Ukrainian ports in the Sea of Azov.
(AP, 12/1/18)
2018 Dec 2, In Belgium tens of thousands of marchers took to the streets of Brussels asking politicians to fight harder to assure a greener future and to mark the start of the UN climate summit in Poland.
(AFP, 12/2/18)
2018 Dec 2, French President Emmanuel Macron led a crisis meeting after a day of riots in Paris by anti-government protesters left hundreds injured nationwide and widespread destruction around the capital.
(AFP, 12/2/18)
2018 Dec 2, Thousands of Georgians protested in the capital Tbilisi against the result of the country's presidential election, as defeated candidate Grigol Vashadze said opposition parties would challenge the outcome in court.
(AP, 12/2/18)
2018 Dec 2, Germany's Development Minister Gerd Mueller said his country will unveil an initiative at UN talks on climate change this week to attract more private investment in projects in Africa and elsewhere.
(Reuters, 12/2/18)
2018 Dec 2, In Indonesia tens of thousands of Muslims held a rally in Jakarta led by hardline groups who had agitated to remove the city's Christian governor, underscoring the growing influence of Islamist groups ahead of elections in 2019.
(Reuters, 12/2/18)
2018 Dec 2, In Indonesia 24 workers were killed when gunmen stormed a government bridge construction project in a remote mountainous village in Nduga district of Papua province. Eight other workers on the trans Papua highway fled to the nearby house of a local parliament member. An armed group came a day later and killed seven of them.
(AP, 12/4/18)(AP, 3/8/19)
2018 Dec 2, Iran said it would continue missile tests to build up its defenses and denied this was in breach of UN resolutions following US allegations that Tehran had tested a new missile capable of carrying multiple warheads.
(Reuters, 12/2/18)
2018 Dec 2, Israeli police recommended that PM Benjamin Netanyahu be indicted for bribery and fraud. It was the third such police recommendation against the four-term veteran, who has consistently denied any wrongdoing.
(Reuters, 12/2/18)
2018 Dec 2, An Israeli court ruled that the Palestinians' Jerusalem governor, Adnan Ghaith, could leave custody on bail and on condition he not enter the West Bank for two weeks.
(AP, 12/2/18)
2018 Dec 2, Wiam Wahhab, a pro-Syrian Lebanese politician, urged calm after one of his aides was killed by gunfire during a police attempt to bring him in for questioning over accusations of stirring civil strife.
(Reuters, 12/2/18)
2018 Dec 2, Eleven migrants who were stranded on a Spanish fishing boat for more than a week after being rescued off Libya were brought to Malta, which had agreed with Madrid that this was only a temporary solution dictated by "humanitarian reasons", and they would be taken to Spain in due course.
(Reuters, 12/2/18)
2018 Dec 2, In Poland delegates from nearly 200 nations began two weeks of talks in Katowice to tackle deep political divisions at the most important UN meeting on global warming since the landmark 2015 Paris deal to shift away from fossil fuels.
(Reuters, 12/2/18)
2018 Dec 2, Saudi dissident Omar Abdulaziz filed a lawsuit in Tel Aviv against an Israeli surveillance company, claiming its sophisticated spyware targeted him and helped lead to the killing of his friend, Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
(AP, 12/3/18)
2018 Dec 2, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman arrived in Mauritania, resuming a tour of Arab countries after attending the G20 summit in Argentina.
(Reuters, 12/2/18)
2018 Dec 2, Voters went to the polls in Spain's Andalusia region in a first electoral test for PM Pedro Sanchez, whose minority government has struggled to pass a budget since taking office last summer. The anti-migrant, anti-feminist and euro skeptic Vox party won 12 seats in the 109-member parliament of Andalusia dealing a major setback to the ruling Socialists.
(Reuters, 12/2/18)(AP, 12/3/18)
2018 Dec 2, In southeastern Syria the US-led coalition targeted Abu al-Umarayn and several other Islamic State militants. Al-Umarayn was involved in the 2014 beheading of American aid worker Peter Kassig.
(SFC, 12/4/18, p.A2)
2018 Dec 2, It was reported that authorities in the Houthi-held Yemeni capital Sanaa are sterilizing water supplies at wells, distribution networks and houses to help stem the world's worst outbreak of cholera. UNICEF said more than 250,000 cases of cholera have been recorded in Yemen since the beginning of 2018, with 358 associated deaths.
(Reuters, 12/2/18)
2018 Dec 3, A new leak website, Distributed Denial of Secrets, made its debut wrestling with what to make available to the public, an illustration of the difficulty of balancing full transparency with respect for privacy in an age of mass disclosures. The site's founders eventually decided to pull from its public collection the haul from the Ashley Madison site along with more than a dozen other leaks.
(AP, 12/3/18)
2018 Dec 3, In Arkansas a charter bus overturned on I-30 near Benton. One child was killed and 45 people were injured.
(SFC, 12/4/18, p.A12)
2018 Dec 3, Algeria's President Abdelaziz Bouteflika (81) called off a meeting with visiting Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman because of ill health, the national news agency APS reported. The prince held talks instead with PM Ahmed Ouyahia.
(AP, 12/3/18)
2018 Dec 3, In Bangladesh an alliance of opposition parties accused the Election Commission (EC) of being biased in favor of the ruling Awami League Party after it rejected nearly a quarter of the candidates the alliance nominated for elections on Dec. 30.
(Reuters, 12/3/18)
2018 Dec 3, Supporters of a second referendum on Brexit from all of Britain's main political parties handed in a petition with more than one million signatures to PM Theresa May's Downing Street residence.
(AFP, 12/3/18)
2018 Dec 3, In London three-time Wimbledon champion Boris Becker dropped his claim of diplomatic immunity from bankruptcy proceedings because of his role as a sporting ambassador for the Central African Republic. The sale of Becker's belongings, worth an estimated £200,000 (224,000 euros, $255,000) will now go ahead.
(AFP, 12/3/18)
2018 Dec 3, The British government announced that 48 US students have been awarded the 2019 Marshall Scholarship, the largest class of scholars in the program's 65-year history.
(AP, 12/3/18)
2018 Dec 3, UN official Michel Forst called on the Colombian government to step up measures to protect human rights defenders following an upsurge in the number murdered since the signing of a peace agreement with former FARC guerrillas.
(AFP, 12/4/18)
2018 Dec 3, The Czech spy agency BIS said it's "obvious" that Russia was behind cyberattacks against the country's foreign ministry, calling them the most serious case of cyberespionage to hit the European country.
(AP, 12/3/18)
2018 Dec 3, Egypt opened its first international weapons fair, an event that organizers hope will project a message to the world that the country is secure and stable.
(AP, 12/3/18)
2018 Dec 3, In France anti-government protesters gained new allies as paramedics and students joined ongoing rallies while PM Macron met with political rivals in a bid to ease the anger following riots that rocked Paris.
(AP, 12/3/18)
2018 Dec 3, German police said the body of a missing 17-year-old girl has been found at a shelter for homeless people and others in western Germany and a resident has been detained. The girl's parents had reported her missing on Nov. 30 from her home in a neighboring region.
(AP, 12/3/18)
2018 Dec 3, The Central European University (CEU), founded by billionaire George Soros, said it had been forced out of Hungary in "an arbitrary eviction" that violated academic freedom, and it confirmed plans to open a new campus in Austria.
(Reuters, 12/3/18)
2018 Dec 3, In India a senior policeman and another man were killed in violent protests over a dead cow in Uttar Pradesh state.
(Reuters, 12/3/18)
2018 Dec 3, Indian authorities said two men accused of trying to molest a woman (20) in northern India set her on fire two days later after she lodged a complaint with police. Her suspected attackers have been arrested and three policemen suspended for dereliction of duties.
(Reuters, 12/3/18)
2018 Dec 3, A Jordanian security source said around 28,000 Syrians have returned home from Jordan since the border between the two Arab countries was reopened in mid-October.
(AFP, 12/3/18)
2018 Dec 3, A Soyuz rocket carrying Russian, American and Canadian astronauts took off from Kazakhstan and reached orbit, the first manned mission since a failed launch in October.
(AFP, 12/3/18)
2018 Dec 3, Mexico's newly inaugurated Pres. Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador hit the ground running with his pledge to govern as a common man and end decades of secrecy, heavy security and luxury enjoyed by past presidents.
(AP, 12/3/18)
2018 Dec 3, A Hamas-controlled military court sentenced six Palestinians to death for allegedly collaborating with Israel.
(AP, 12/3/18)
2018 Dec 3, In Poland UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres issued a dramatic appeal to world leaders to take the threat of global warming seriously and to act boldly to avert a catastrophic rise in temperatures before the end of the century. Nations facing imminent environmental disaster called on rich polluters to help them back from the brink.
(AP, 12/3/18)(AFP, 12/3/18)
2018 Dec 3, Qatar announced it will withdraw from OPEC in January, a rebuke of the Saudi-dominated cartel as the kingdom's boycott of Doha continues unabated and a crucial meeting of the group looms this week. This would make Qatar the first Middle East nation to leave the cartel since its founding in 1960.
(AP, 12/3/18)
2018 Dec 3, A Sri Lankan court ordered disputed PM Mahinda Rajapaksa and his ministers to refrain from carrying out their duties as it hears an appeal against them.
(AP, 12/3/18)
2018 Dec 3, A Swedish appeals court found Jean-Claude Arnault, the man at the center of a sex scandal that forced the postponement of this year's Nobel Prize in Literature, guilty of an additional rape and increased his prison term.
(Reuters, 12/3/18)
2018 Dec 3, Ukraine's president announced a partial call-up of reservists for training amid tensions with Russia, saying that the country needs to beef up its defenses to counter the threat of a Russian invasion.
(AP, 12/3/18)
2018 Dec 3, Ukrainian police searched the homes of Russian Orthodox priests and Russian Orthodox churches in several cities, stepping up pressure as Kiev pushes for the creation of an independent Ukrainian church.
(AP, 12/3/18)
2018 Dec 3, The UN World Intellectual Property Organization said China has issued the most international patent applications for an eighth straight year, showing the country's heft in intellectual property amid US President Donald Trump's accusation that the growing Asia power steals it.
(AP, 12/3/18)
2018 Dec 3, A UN chartered flight flew 50 wounded rebels along with their escorts out of the Yemeni capital Sanaa for medical treatment, a critical step towards bringing warring parties to planned UN-brokered negotiations in Sweden.
(AFP, 12/3/18)
2018 Dec 3, It was reported that Uruguay has rejected an asylum request by former Peruvian President Alan Garcia, who sought protection in the country's consulate after a judge retained his passport as part of a corruption probe.
(AP, 12/3/18)
2018 Dec 3, The Vatican expressed concern over the status of Jerusalem as Pope Francis and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas held their first meeting since the United States stirred international anxiety by moving its embassy there. The Vatican reaffirmed its longstanding call for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
(Reuters, 12/3/18)(AP, 12/3/18)
2018 Dec 4, In Washington DC a sentencing recommendation late today from Russia probe head Robert Mueller, that Flynn spend no time in jail, explained that the retired three-star general had given "substantial assistance" to his and other secret, high-level investigations.
(AFP, 12/5/18)
2018 Dec 4, US federal authorities announced a raft of conspiracy and tax fraud charges against four men in the first US prosecution related to the so-called Panama Papers.
(SFC, 12/5/18, p.A4)
2018 Dec 4, The US Department of Agriculture says a unit of Brazil's JBS is now recalling a total of more than 12 million pounds of raw beef that was shipped around the country because it may be contaminated with salmonella. JBS Tolleson in Arizona already recalled about 7 million pounds of beef in October.
(AP, 12/4/18)
2018 Dec 4, In the SF Bay Area Damani Chadly (17) was shot dead and a friend (19) wounded in a marijauna sale gone wrong in Fremont. Police took Christian Lucas Kelling into custody on Dec. 12 after finding him in Pflugerville, Texas.
(SFC, 12/20/18, p.C6)
2018 Dec 4, Texas executed Joseph Garcia (47), a member of the "Texas 7" gang of escaped prisoners, for the fatal shooting of a Dallas police officer on Christmas Eve in 2000. He was the 22nd inmate put to death in the US this year and the 12th in Texas.
(SFC, 12/5/18, p.A4)
2018 Dec 4, The DJIA fell about 800 points on trade jitters over a potential US-China trade war.
(SFC, 12/5/18, p.A1)
2018 Dec 4, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani ordered an investigation after the Guardian reported that members of the national women's soccer team were sexually and physically abused by men from the country's football federation.
(AP, 12/4/18)
2018 Dec 4, In Armenia an Su-25 two-seat combat jet crashed during a regular training mission. The Su-25 is a twin-engine ground attack aircraft designed in the Soviet Union in the 1970s.
(AP, 12/4/18)
2018 Dec 4, Austrian police found 22 asylum-seekers from Iraq and Syria in a Romanian-registered van near the country's eastern border.
(AP, 12/5/18)
2018 Dec 4, Brazil's Supreme Court said it had authorized a federal investigation into allegations that Onyx Lorenzoni, the incoming chief of staff for far-right President-elect Jair Bolsonaro, had taken illegal campaign donations.
(Reuters, 12/4/18)
2018 Dec 4, Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived in Portugal or a two-day visit to boost economic ties, despite concern in some EU capitals over China's growing influence across the continent.
(AFP, 12/4/18)
2018 Dec 4, An Egyptian survivor said 15 migrants have died in a boat off the Libyan coast after spending 12 days at sea without food or water. Only 10 migrants from the capsized boat survived.
(AP, 12/4/18)
2018 Dec 4, A senior European Union legal adviser said Britain had the right to withdraw its Brexit notice, opening a new front in a battle over PM Theresa May's plans to leave the bloc, which could be rejected in parliament next week.
(Reuters, 12/4/18)
2018 Dec 4, French PM Edouard Philippe announced in a live televised address that the planned increases set for January would be postponed until summer. Demonstrations continued around the country.
(AP, 12/4/18)
2018 Dec 4, Germany's top human rights official said she has been denied entry to China's Xinjiang region, where the UN estimates that up to one million Muslims are being held in detention camps.
(AFP, 12/5/18)
2018 Dec 4, Authorities in northern India said they have arrested four people for their alleged involvement in an attack on police over rumors of cow slaughter that left two people dead, including a police official, a day earlier. A case was filed against 28 people who allegedly set a police outpost on fire and killed a local police inspector.
(AP, 12/4/18)
2018 Dec 4, Angry Iraqi lawmakers disrupted a parliamentary session meant to include a vote on the remainder of PM Adel Abdul Mahdi's cabinet, banging tables and shouting "illegitimate" in opposition to his proposed candidates.
(Reuters, 12/4/18)
2018 Dec 4, Israel said it had launched an operation to "expose and thwart" cross-border attack tunnels from Lebanon dug by the Iran-backed Lebanese movement Hezbollah.
(AP, 12/4/18)
2018 Dec 4, Israeli troops killed a Palestinian man early today during a military operation in the West Bank city of Tulkarem. Tulkarem governor Isam Abu Baker said that Mohammed Habali (22) was shot in the head "without posing any threat to the soldiers".
(AP, 12/4/18)
2018 Dec 4, Thousands of Israeli women protested against domestic violence in a nationwide strike, calling for more action and state funding to deal with the problem.
(AFP, 12/4/18)
2018 Dec 4, It was reported that Italy's health minister Giulia Grillo has removed 30 doctors and scientists from the ministry's public health advisory committee as part of the "government of change" promised by the 5-Star Movement and League, which opposes the previous Democratic Party-led government's move to increase the number of mandatory vaccinations to 10.
(AP, 12/4/18)
2018 Dec 4, Italian police arrested new Mafia boss Settimino Mineo and dozens of other suspects in a major swoop against a resurgent Cosa Nostra.
(AFP, 12/4/18)
2018 Dec 4, In northwestern Pakistan gunmen opened fire overnight on a vehicle in Peshawar carrying local TV journalist Noor-ul-Hassan, killing him and wounding his cameraman.
(AP, 12/4/18)
2018 Dec 4, Poland's PM Mateusz Morawieck said the country, which has some of Europe's most polluted cities, will invest between 3-4 billion euros ($3.4-$ 4.5 billion) in low-emissions public transport.
(AP, 12/4/18)
2018 Dec 4, In Poland negotiators at the UN climate talks got down to the nitty-gritty task of finalizing the rules for the 2015 Paris accord, a landmark agreement by countries three years ago to curb global warming. Five international banks pledged to use the billions at their disposal to steer clients away from businesses that emit large amounts of greenhouse gases.
(AP, 12/4/18)
2018 Dec 4, Serbia sought support from allies Russia and China in opposing the formation of a Kosovo army, warning that a military in its former province could lead to renewed clashes in the Balkans.
(AP, 12/4/18)
2018 Dec 4, Doctors in Sierra Leone's public hospitals began a strike to protest against low wages and poor working conditions. Nurses said they may follow suit.
(Reuters, 12/5/18)
2018 Dec 4, Singapore said it has lodged a "strong protest" with Malaysia over its plan to extend the limits of a port in Malaysia's southern-most state, saying it encroached into the territorial waters of the city-state.
(Reuters, 12/4/18)
2018 Dec 4, Slovakia's general prosecutor ordered the release of 12 Greenpeace activists who were detained last week after climbing a tower during a protest at a coal mine that supplies one of the country's most polluting power plants. The order overturned the decision of a Slovak court on Dec. 2 to keep the activists in custody until trial.
(Reuters, 12/4/18)
2018 Dec 4, Syria's President Bashar Assad received North Korea's foreign minister Ri Yong Ho, who said his country and Syria face the same "enemy" and called for increased cooperation between them. Assad responded by identifying the United States as a hostile country to Syria and North Korea.
(AP, 12/4/18)
2018 Dec 4, In Thailand Islam's guiding council introduced new regulations requiring that marriages of children under age 17 be approved by a religious committee.
(AP, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 4, A Turkish appeals court has upheld the terror propaganda conviction of Selahattin Demirtas, the former head of Turkey's pro-Kurdish opposition party.
(AP, 12/4/18)
2018 Dec 4, Ukraine said it had resumed grain shipments from the Azov Sea, blocked for around 10 days after a military standoff with Russia in the Kerch Strait off Crimea.
(Reuters, 12/4/18)
2018 Dec 4, The UN said it was seeking $738 million in 2019 to help neighboring countries cope with the inflow of millions of Venezuelan refugees and migrants, who have "no prospect for return in the short to medium term".
(Reuters, 12/4/18)
2018 Dec 4, The UN warned of a "severe increase" in Yemen's hunger rate and cautioned the situation would deteriorate further in 2019, when four million more people are expected to need food aid.
(AFP, 12/4/18)
2018 Dec 4, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro arrived in Russia, looking for support amid a spiraling economic crisis.
(AP, 12/4/18)
2018 Dec 4, A Houthi delegation left for Sweden for UN-sponsored Yemen peace talks, the first since 2016, as Western nations pressed for an end to the war and the United Nations warned of a looming economic disaster.
(Reuters, 12/4/18)
2018 Dec 5, US President Donald Trump urged OPEC members not to slash production at their upcoming meeting, saying global oil prices should remain low.
(AFP, 12/5/18)
2018 Dec 5, In Washington DC international dignitaries gathered with US leaders at the funeral service for George H.W. Bush.
(AP, 12/5/18)
2018 Dec 5, In the SF Bay Area San Quentin prison officials called an emergency meeting to discuss a possible connection between contraband illegal drugs and the unexplained recent deaths of two Death Row inmates.
(SFC, 12/6/18, p.A1)
2018 Dec 5, In the SF Bay Area Berkeley street poet Julia Vinograd (74), widely known as the Bubble Lady of Telegraph Avenue, died in an Oakland hospital. Her work included 68 collections of verse.
(SSFC, 12/9/18, p.C11)
2018 Dec 5, Afghanistan appointed its first woman to a senior post at the Interior Ministry, naming Hosna Jalil as deputy for policy and strategic affairs.
(AP, 12/5/18)
2018 Dec 5, The Albanian government gave in to demands from students and canceled a double charge for repeated exams but said it could do nothing about the level of tuition fees because these are set by the individual institutions, which are partially self-supporting. Students said they would continue the protest until all their demands were fulfilled.
(AP, 12/6/18)
2018 Dec 5, The Australia-based Institute for Economics and Peace recorded nearly 19,000 deaths last year in its annual Global Terrorism Index. That is a decrease of 27 percent from a year earlier and down 44 percent from a peak in 2014.
(AP, 12/5/18)
2018 Dec 5, Bosnia's prosecutors office said Dragoljub Kunarac (58), a Bosnian Serb ex-commander who was jailed for 28 years by the UN war crimes tribunal for rape and enslavement in Bosnia's war of the 1990s, has now been indicted over the killing of Muslim civilians.
(Reuters, 12/5/18)
2018 Dec 5, Britain's High Court has ruled that Deliveroo riders do not have the right to collective bargaining, the latest in a series of rulings as U.K. courts grappled with the rise of the so-called "gig economy".
(AP, 12/5/18)
2018 Dec 5, Bulgaria's government confirmed that it would not join the United Nations pact for better regulating worldwide migration, set to be adopted later this month.
(AFP, 12/5/18)
2018 Dec 5, Bulgarian authorities said they have seized a huge amount of weapons and munitions during police raids in the capital Sofia and a small village in central Bulgaria.
(AP, 12/5/18)
2018 Dec 5, Cambodian officials said 32 Cambodian women who were charged with human trafficking for serving as surrogate mothers have been provisionally released from detention after agreeing to keep the babies rather than giving them up as originally planned.
(AP, 12/5/18)
2018 Dec 5, China issued an upbeat but vague promise to carry out a tariff cease-fire with Washington but gave no details that might dispel confusion about what Presidents Xi Jinping and Donald Trump agreed to in Argentina.
(AP, 12/5/18)
2018 Dec 5, It was reported that Croatia is suffering a severe labor shortage, most glaringly in its booming seaside tourist resorts, that is compounding obstacles to economic growth and dimming hopes of catching up to more developed EU peers.
(Reuters, 12/5/18)
2018 Dec 5, In northern Cyprus at least four people were killed in flooding late today as hail and rain hammered the island.
(Reuters, 12/6/18)
2018 Dec 5, An Egyptian court sentenced five people, including Mohammed Badie the head of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood group, to life in prison on charges related to inciting violence and supporting militants.
(AP, 12/5/18)
2018 Dec 5, EU diplomatic chief Federica Mogherini urged Russia and the US to save a Cold War arms control treaty after Washington issued a 60-day ultimatum to Moscow.
(AFP, 12/5/18)
2018 Dec 5, Police arrested dozens of suspected mobsters in Europe and South America in dubbed "Operation Pollina," a huge international swoop targeting Italy's notorious 'Ndrangheta mafia clan. Police seized four tons of cocaine, 120 kilos of ecstasy and two million euros (dollars) in cash across Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and Suriname.
(AFP, 12/5/18)
2018 Dec 5, It was reported that Pinna nobilis, a giant species of clam only found in the Mediterranean Sea, was in danger of extinction due to a mysterious parasite. The mollusk has been the EU's list of protected species for decades.
(SFC, 12/5/18, p.A2)
2018 Dec 5, French trade unions and farmers pledged to join nationwide protests against President Emmanuel Macron, as concessions by the government failed to stem the momentum of the most violent demonstrations France has seen in decades.
(AP, 12/5/18)
2018 Dec 5, A Paris court of appeal approved an extradition request by Burkina Faso's government for the brother of ex-Burkinabe president Blaise Compaore.
(Reuters, 12/5/18)
2018 Dec 5, Greece intercepted a Syrian ship sailing for Libya. The Noka was escorted to Heraklion port on the Greek island on Dec. 8, where the authorities unloaded its entire cargo and found about six tons of processed cannabis and 3 million super-strength "Captagon" amphetamine pills worth more than 100 million euros ($113 million).
(Reuters, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 5, An Indian court remanded to custody British businessman Christian Michel accused of paying bribes to Indian officials to win a helicopter deal for Anglo-Italian firm AgustaWestland, following a rare extradition.
(Reuters, 12/5/18)
2018 Dec 5, Italy was informed by North Korea that acting ambassador Jo Song Gil and his wife had left the North Korean embassy in Rome on Nov. 10 and that their daughter (17) had been repatriated on Nov. 14.
(Reuters, 2/20/19)
2018 Dec 5, In Luxembourg Xavier Bettel started his second term as prime minister, leading a coalition of his liberals along with Socialists and Greens.
(AP, 12/5/18)
2018 Dec 5, In central Mali 15 civilians from the Fulani community were killed when armed men from a rival ethnic group attacked their village.
(Reuters, 12/8/18)
2018 Dec 5, Mexico's new Pres. Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said he will take a three-year break from awarding new oil exploration contracts in order to judge the results of contracts already awarded.
(AP, 12/5/18)
2018 Dec 5, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador took aim at the finances of the powerful Jalisco cartel in what a top anti-money laundering official said was the opening salvo in the fight to stop criminal gangs from flourishing with impunity.
(Reuters, 12/7/18)
2018 Dec 5, NATO's foreign ministers meeting in Brussels reaffirmed their commitment to stay the course for security in Afghanistan despite mounting Afghan casualties and the slow pace of peace moves.
(AP, 12/5/18)
2018 Dec 5, NATO gave Bosnia-Herzegovina the green light to take a major step forward on its path toward joining the world's biggest military alliance, despite Bosnian Serb objections to membership.
(AP, 12/5/18)
2018 Dec 5, Young Nepalis created a map of the Dead Sea with used plastic bags in a bid to set a new international record and raise awareness about the vast volumes polluting the world's oceans.
(AFP, 12/5/18)
2018 Dec 5, Portugal and China signed a memorandum of understanding on cooperation within China's modern Silk Road initiative, with special emphasis on transport connections and energy during a 24-hour state visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping.
(AP, 12/5/18)
2018 Dec 5, Russian President Vladimir Putin voiced support for Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro as he visited Moscow seeking financial assistance for the socialist country's collapsing economy.
(AFP, 12/5/18)
2018 Dec 5, Russia warned authorities in Cyprus not to allow the US military to deploy on their territory, saying such a move would draw a Russian reaction and result in "dangerous and destabilizing consequences" for the Mediterranean island.
(Reuters, 12/5/18)
2018 Dec 5, Serbia's PM Ana Brnabic warned that the formation of a Kosovo army could trigger Serbia's armed intervention in the former province.
(AP, 12/5/18)
2018 Dec 5, Slovakia's PM Peter Pellegrini said his country has expelled a Russian diplomat after discovering he was a spy working under diplomatic cover.
(AP, 12/5/18)
2018 Dec 5, Somali commandos backed by US forces raided two al-Shabab checkpoints overnight at which the extremists extort money from commercial vehicles, killing several fighters.
(AP, 12/5/18)
2018 Dec 5, A Spanish regional court confirmed a controversial ruling that cleared five men of gang-raping an 18-year-old woman during Pamplona's 2016 San Fermin festival, a case which led to protests across Spain over chauvinism and sexual abuse. The Navarra court confirmed nine-year prison sentences for the men.
(Reuters, 12/5/18)
2018 Dec 5, The Swiss government chose Ueli Maurer (68) of the anti-immigration Swiss People's Party to become president in 2019. Parliament also elected Viola Amherd of the centrist Christian Democratic Party and Karin Keller-Sutter of the center-right Radical-Liberal Party as two new members of the council, bringing the number of female members to three.
(AP, 12/5/18)
2018 Dec 5, Togo's government banned a series of planned opposition protests on security grounds, saying the marches posed a security risk.
(AFP, 12/6/18)
2018 Dec 5, A Turkish court issued arrest warrants for two suspects close to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman over the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, increasing pressure on the kingdom's de facto leader.
(AFP, 12/5/18)
2018 Dec 5, The UN secretary-general's envoy for Western Sahara met with foreign ministers from Algeria, Morocco and Mauritania plus leaders of the Polisario Front in Geneva over the future of the Morocco-annexed territory.
(AP, 12/5/18)
2018 Dec 5, The Vatican launched an investigation into a small Chilean religious order of nuns after some sisters denounced sexual abuse at the hands of priests and mistreatment by their superiors.
(AP, 12/7/18)
2018 Dec 6, It was reported that the Trump administration has separated 81 migrant children from their families at the US-Mexico border since the June executive order that stopped the general practice amid a crackdown on illegal crossings.
(AP, 12/6/18)
2018 Dec 6, A girl (7) from Guatemala was found near Lordsburg, New Mexico, by US Border Patrol agents. Jackeline Caal was in custody for about eight hours before she began having seizures. Emergency medical technicians discovered the girl's fever was 105.7 degrees Fahrenheit (40.9 degrees Celsius), and she was airlifted to an El Paso, Texas, hospital, where she later died. The girl was traveling with a group of 163 people, who approached agents to turn themselves in.
(AP, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 6, It was reported that a North Carolina court has struck down more legislation Republicans approved for their lame-duck governor's signature to erode powers of an incoming Democrat.
(SFC, 12/6/18, p.A6)
2018 Dec 6, Tennessee inmate David Earl Miller (61) was executed in an electric chair for the 1981 killing of Lee Standifer (23), a mentally handicapped woman. He was the 2nd person to choose the electric chair over lethal injection in the past month.
(SFC, 12/7/18, p.A6)
2018 Dec 6, An Australian appeal court overturned a conviction against Adelaide Archbishop Philip Wilson (68), the most senior Roman Catholic cleric ever found guilty of covering up child sex abuse.
(AP, 12/6/18)
2018 Dec 6, OPEC countries were gathered in Austria to find a way to support the falling price of oil, with analysts predicting the cartel and key ally Russia would agree to cut production by at least 1 million barrels per day.
(AP, 12/6/18)
2018 Dec 6, In Bolivia Jorge Roca Suarez (67), one of South America's leading drug traffickers in the 1980s who served 28 years in prison in the United States before returning to Bolivia earlier this year, fled a medical clinic where he was receiving treatment.
(AP, 12/9/18)
2018 Dec 6, It was reported that Britain will suspend its top tier investor visas, which require 2 million pounds ($2.55 million) in investment, as part of a drive to crack down on organized crime and money laundering.
(Reuters, 12/6/18)
2018 Dec 6, China demanded Canada release a Huawei Technologies executive who was arrested in Vancouver on Dec. 1. Huawei's chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, faced possible extradition to the United States on suspicion of trying to evade US trade curbs on Iran.
(AP, 12/6/18)
2018 Dec 6, Chile's Constitutional Court threw out a regulation that prohibited some private hospitals and clinics from refusing to perform legal abortions.
(AP, 12/7/18)
2018 Dec 6, In eastern CongoDRC suspected militiamen killed at least 18 civilians, near the town of Beni, the epicenter of an Ebola outbreak. Congo's health ministry announced 13 new confirmed cases.
(Reuters, 12/7/18)
2018 Dec 6, Cuba began offering its citizens full internet access for mobile phones over its 3G network.
(SFC, 12/6/18, p.A5)
2018 Dec 6, Dominican authorities called on the Coast Guard for assistance when seven of 28 migrants went missing after a boat capsized southeast of the Dominican Republic. They were believed to be Dominicans who were headed east to Puerto Rico.
(AP, 12/7/18)
2018 Dec 6, The 28-nation EU's interior ministers approved a declaration recognizing a common definition of anti-Semitism and acknowledging Jewish concerns given the prevalence of attacks in recent years.
(AP, 12/6/18)
2018 Dec 6, The European Union and France said their total investment in development funding aimed at preventing terrorism in the G5 African Sahel countries (Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, and Niger) would rise to 1.3 billion euros ($1.5 billion), as the region struggles with jihadism and lawlessness.
(AFP, 12/6/18)
2018 Dec 6, France's PM Edouard Philippe said he was open to new measures to benefit workers on the lowest salaries, as the government scrambled to head off another round of 'yellow vest' protests in Paris this weekend.
(Reuters, 12/6/18)
2018 Dec 6, Around 200 French high schools were blocked or disrupted by students protesting a raft of education overhauls, on a fourth day of action called to coincide with anti-government demonstrations which have rocked the country in recent weeks.
(AFP, 12/6/18)
2018 Dec 6, In France aid groups Doctors Without Borders and SOS Mediterranee said they have been forced to end the migrant rescue operations of the Aquarius ship in the Mediterranean Sea.
(AP, 12/7/18)
2018 Dec 6, Demonstrators in Greece threw firebombs and pelted police with rocks as marches on the 10th anniversary of the fatal police shooting of a teenager degenerated into violence.
(AP, 12/6/18)
2018 Dec 6, In southeastern Iran a suicide car bombing followed by an armed assault killed at least two policemen and wounding 42 people outside police headquarters in the port city of Chabahar. The city lies in Sistan-Baluchistan province which has long been a flashpoint, with Pakistan-based Baluchi separatists and Sunni Muslim extremists carrying out cross-border attacks targeting the Shiite authorities. Security forces soon detained 10 people suspected of links to the attack.
(AFP, 12/6/18)(Reuters, 12/6/18)(AP, 12/8/18)(Reuters, 12/9/18)
2018 Dec 6, A US F/A-18 Hornet fighter jet and a KC-130 Hercules refueling aircraft collided during training off Japan's coast. One of two crew members recovered was dead and five others remain missing.
(AP, 12/6/18)
2018 Dec 6, A Dutch court gave the go-ahead for a cull of hundreds of red deer in a nature reserve north of Amsterdam, in a wildlife management case that has sparked fierce opposition from animal rights activists.
(AP, 12/6/18)
2018 Dec 6, In Pakistan hundreds of supporters of opposition leader, Shahbaz Sharif, clashed with police in the eastern city of Lahore, leaving dozens of protesters hurt. The violence erupted when riot police used batons to prevent Sharif's supporters from reaching an anti-graft tribunal.
(AP, 12/6/18)
2018 Dec 6, It was reported that Pakistan is kicking out 18 international charities after rejecting their final appeal to stay in the country. The majority of the shuttered aid groups are US-based, while the rest are from Britain and the European Union.
(AP, 12/6/18)
2018 Dec 6, A Palestinian court extended the detention of hunger-striking Palestinian-American activist Suha Jbara, a US citizen born in Panama, who claims she was tortured in captivity.
(AP, 12/6/18)
2018 Dec 6, Philippine immigration authorities said they have arrested an American Roman Catholic priest accused of sexually assaulting altar boys was arrested in a church in Naval town on the island province of Biliran. Rev. Kenneth Bernard Hendricks (77) has been indicted in Ohio for alleged illicit sexual conduct in the Philippines.
(AP, 12/6/18)
2018 Dec 6, A Polish court ruled that Lech Walesa, the anti-communist dissident and former president of Poland, must apologize to Jaroslaw Kaczynsk, the head of Poland's ruling party in a slander case.
(AP, 12/6/18)
2018 Dec 6, A Rwandan court found dissident politician Diane Rwigara (37) not guilty of forgery and inciting insurrection, charges that saw her imprisoned for over a year and highlighted a crackdown on opposition in the country.
(AFP, 12/6/18)
2018 Dec 6, In northern Sudan three miners were killed in Qabqaba when a gold mine they were working at collapsed. 10 others were trapped underground.
(AP, 12/7/18)
2018 Dec 6, Meeting in Sweden Yemen's warring sides agreed to free thousands of prisoners, in what a UN mediator called a hopeful start to the first peace talks in years to end a war that has pushed millions of people on the verge of starvation.
(AP, 12/6/18)
2018 Dec 6, In Geneva two days of UN talks on Western Sahara ended with all sides promising to meet again for a similar "round table" in the first quarter of 2019, UN envoy Horst Koehler told reporters after the meeting ended unexpectedly early.
(Reuters, 12/6/18)
2018 Dec 6, A Syrian Democratic Forces commander said the US-backed Syrian fighters (SDF) had managed to break into the pocket and wrest part of its main town from IS in the eastern province of Deir Ezzor. Over the last 3 days 34 jihadists including three suicide bombers, and 17 SDF fighters have been killed in the fighting.
(AFP, 12/6/18)
2018 Dec 6, Turkish journalist Kamil Demirkaya, accused by Turkey of terrorism, said he has applied for political asylum in Romania after Turkey sought his extradition.
(AP, 12/6/18)
2018 Dec 6, The Ukrainian parliament voted to withdraw from a wide-ranging treaty on friendship with Russia, the latest step in escalating tensions between the two neighbors.
(AP, 12/6/18)
2018 Dec 6, UAE-based global port operator DP World says it has acquired Danish logistics firm Unifeeder for $748 million, about 660 million euros, helping the Dubai-owned company expand its foothold through the largest feeder and shortsea network in Europe.
(AP, 12/6/18)
2018 Dec 6, The UN's human rights office said Burundi's government has asked it to leave, months after the outgoing UN rights chief called the country one of the "most prolific slaughterhouses of humans in recent times".
(AP, 12/6/18)
2018 Dec 6, The UN World Food Program said a survey of food security in Yemen has found more than 15 million people are in a "crisis" or "emergency" situation and that number could hit 20 million without sustained food aid.
(Reuters, 12/6/18)
2018 Dec 6, In Venezuela former baseball major league players Luis Valbuena (33) and Jose Castillo (37) were killed in a car crash as they were heading to the city of Barquisimeto after a game in Caracas.
(AP, 12/7/18)
2018 Dec 7, US Pres. Donald Trump announced his nomination of State Dept. spokeswoman Heather Nauert to be the next US ambassador to the UN. Trump also said he will nominate William Barr to serve as attorney general. Barr had already served as attorney general (1991-1993) under the late Pres. George H.W. Bush.
(SFC, 12/8/18, p.A7)
2018 Dec 7, In southern California CHP Officer Robert stephano (44) was arrested on suspicion of sexual misconduct with two teenage girls. Investigators say he had solicited minors for sex as far back as 2010.
(SSFC, 12/9/18, p.A8)
2018 Dec 7, Court filings from prosecutors in New York and special counsel Robert Mueller's office laid out previously undisclosed contacts between Trump associates and Russian intermediaries and suggested the Kremlin aimed early on to influence Trump and his campaign by playing to both his political aspirations and his personal business interests.
(AP, 12/8/18)
2018 Dec 7, In western Afghanistan the Taliban staged a coordinated attack overnight on two Afghan army outposts in Herat province, killing 14 Afghan soldiers and taking 21 captive.
(AP, 12/7/18)
2018 Dec 7, ABC News reported that a 28-year-old Australian man will spend five months in prison for brutally killing a kangaroo in an attack filmed and posted on social media. Ricky Ian Swan was one of four men charged in September with using weapons to torture and kill two kangaroos.
(Reuters, 12/8/18)
2018 Dec 7, Meeting in Austria OPEC and non-OPEC countries agreed to cut oil production 1.2 million barrels a day in January for 6 months. Oil prices spiked sharply higher in response.
(AP, 12/7/18)
2018 Dec 7, In northeastern Brazil at least 12 people were killed, including six policemen, in an early morning shootout between police and bank robbers on the main street in Milagres, Ceará state.
(Reuters, 12/7/18)
2018 Dec 7, British teenager George Duke-Cohan (19) was jailed for three years after his bogus bomb threats led to school evacuations and an airport security incident.
(AP, 12/7/18)
2018 Dec 7, Former Colombian President Belisario Betancur (95) died in Bogota. He had attempted to broker peace with leftist rebels during his 1982-1986 administration.
(Reuters, 12/7/18)
2018 Dec 7, CongoDRC officials said authorities have arrested a Congolese colonel who failed to disclose that he had met with two UN experts just two days before the March 2017 killings of American Michael Sharp and Swedish national Zaida Catalan.
(AP, 12/7/18)
2018 Dec 7, Police in Croatia said they have detained 13 people suspected of smuggling migrants who are trying to reach Western Europe through the Balkans.
(AP, 12/7/18)
2018 Dec 7, In Cuba Decree 349, which was published in July, theoretically came into force. It gave government inspectors the right to shut down exhibits and performances deemed to violate Cuba's revolutionary values and to confiscate artists' belongings. The government said it would seek artists' backing for how it will be implemented, a move those who had protested against the decree hailed as a victory.
(Reuters, 12/8/18)
2018 Dec 7, Pete Shelley (63), the lead singer and songwriter with influential British pop punk band the "Buzzcocks", died at his home in Estonia. The band helped create the New Wave genre, fusing punk's energy with a more melodic sound.
(AP, 12/7/18)
2018 Dec 7, The head of the Czech Republic's counter-intelligence service said his agency broke a Russian spying network earlier this year and completely paralyzed its activities.
(AP, 12/7/18)
2018 Dec 7, Germany's Christian Democrats elected Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer (56) to replace Angela Merkel as party leader, a decision that moves her into pole position to succeed Europe's most influential leader as chancellor.
(Reuters, 12/7/18)
2018 Dec 7, Rebels in Indonesia's troubled Papua province demanded that the government hold negotiations on self-determination for the province and warned of more attacks.
(AP, 12/7/18)
2018 Dec 7, Mexico's Supreme Court suspended a new law that cuts public sector pay, freezing it until the tribunal has made a definitive ruling on the legislation, and dealing a blow to President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.
(Reuters, 12/8/18)
2018 Dec 7, A Myanmar court jailed three activists for defaming the military during anti-war protests, amid growing concern about a clamp-down on civil society. Lum Zawng, Nang Pu, and Zau Jat were sentenced to six months in prison and fined $320 each..
(Reuters, 12/7/18)
2018 Dec 7, Pakistan's PM Imran Khan said his country will no longer act as a hired gun in someone else's war, striking a note of defiance against US demands for Islamabad to do more in the battle against militancy.
(AFP, 12/7/18)
2018 Dec 7, In Portugal a walkout by rail workers over pay disrupted train services amid a spate of strikes by government employees.
(AP, 12/7/18)
2018 Dec 7, Qatar paid the salaries of nearly 30,000 Gazan civil servants, delighting the impoverished workers but angering some in the deeply divided Palestinian leadership who balked at the intervention of a foreign power.
(Reuters, 12/7/18)
2018 Dec 7, Romania's President Klaus Iohannis refused to appoint two ministers, saying the government is run by a "criminal" through intermediaries.
(AP, 12/7/18)
2018 Dec 7, Russia's Pres. Vladimir Putin held Kremlin talks with Greek PM Alexis Tsipras and overcome a rift over the expulsions of diplomats that have strained their traditionally friendly ties.
(AP, 12/7/18)
2018 Dec 7, Prosecutors in Slovenia said they have filed charges against right-wing politician Andrej Sisko, who was shown leading a paramilitary group in a video circulating on social media.
(AP, 12/7/18)
2018 Dec 7, In South Korea a former military intelligence chief was found dead in a suspected suicide. Former Defense Security Command head Lee Jae-su was being investigated by state prosecutors for allegedly ordering the illegal surveillance of families of people killed in a 2014 ferry sinking.
(AP, 12/7/18)
2018 Dec 7, South Korean prosecutors charged four people with illegally importing North Korean coal via Russia in violation of UN sanctions.
(AP, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 7, Rath Rott Mony (47), a Cambodian labor activist, was arrested in Bangkok as he attempted to travel to the Netherlands with his family after helping produce a sex-trafficking documentary for the Russia Today channel in October. Cambodia has dismissed the documentary as fake.
(Reuters, 12/7/18)
2018 Dec 7, Turkey and the United States agreed to speed up efforts to put in place an agreement on Syria's Manbij by the end of the year.
(Reuters, 12/7/18)
2018 Dec 7, In southern Turkey an employee fired shots in a municipality building in Cukurova, Adana province, killing two of his colleagues. The gunman was reportedly motivated by a "personal" feud between the employees.
(AP, 12/7/18)
2018 Dec 8, President Donald Trump announced that he wants Gen. Mark Milley, a battle-hardened commander who oversaw troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, to be the nation's next top military adviser.
(AP, 12/8/18)
2018 Dec 8, The US Justice Dept. said Pres. Donald Trump directed illegal payments to buy the silence of two women whose claims of extra-marital affairs threatened his presidential campaign.
(SSFC, 12/9/18, p.A8)
2018 Dec 8, US customs officials found 70 live finches inside har rollers at NY's JFK Int'l. Airport. A passenger from Guyana had the birds in a duffel bag to participate in singing contests.
(SFC, 12/14/18, p.A6)
2018 Dec 8, In Afghanistan a civilian vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb, killing three civilians in western Herat province. In northern Kunduz province, at least four Taliban insurgents were killed by their own bomb. In eastern Nangarhar province, three members of the Islamic State group were arrested during a military operation in Bahsud district. The Taliban attacked an army checkpoint late today in the western Farah province, killing at least eight Afghan soldiers. Another 10 soldiers were abducted in the attack. Three insurgents were killed and four others were wounded.
(AP, 12/8/18)(AP, 12/9/18)
2018 Dec 8, In Albania public university students protesting in Tirana turned down offers to negotiate with the government, saying their demands must be met first. Dec. 8 is considered a national holiday in Albania, marking the date in 1990 when a student protest brought down the communist regime.
(AP, 12/8/18)
2018 Dec 8, Australian school children led thousands of demonstrators nationwide calling for a halt on plans for Indian mining firm Adani to construct a controversial coal mine in the country's northeast.
(AFP, 12/8/18)
2018 Dec 8, Belgian police fired tear gas and water cannons at some 400 yellow-vested protesters calling for the resignation of PM Charles Michel after they tried to breach a riot barricade.
(AP, 12/8/18)
2018 Dec 8, In Bolivia two buses crashed head-on on a highway in the Andes Mountains, leaving at least 17 people dead and 10 injured.
(AP, 12/9/18)
2018 Dec 8, In Brazil José Bernardo da Silva and Rodrigo Celestino, members of Brazil's landless activist group MST, were killed late today in a rural area in the northeast state of Paraíba.
(AP, 12/9/18)
2018 Dec 8, In Brazil ten women on the Globo TV network accused self-styled spiritual healer Joao Teixeira de Faria, known as John of God, of sexually abusing them at a clinic in the central-western state of Goias.
(AP, 12/9/18)
2018 Dec 8, Authorities in Brazil said two more people have died after bank robbers attempted to carry out heists in Ceara state, bringing the death toll to 14. The dead included six hostages executed by the criminal group.
(AP, 12/8/18)(SFC, 12/10/18, p.A2)
2018 Dec 8, In Brazil a major oil leak in Rio de Janeiro was caused by fuel thieves who punctured a pipeline in the Guanabara Bay. About 15,850 gallons (60,000 liters) were released into the bay.
(AP, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 8, In Canada right-wing protesters opposed to joining a UN pact for better regulating worldwide migration clashed with pro-immigration groups in the biting cold outside parliament in Ottawa.
(AFP, 12/8/18)
2018 Dec 8, China warned Canada that there would be severe consequences if it did not immediately release Meng Wanzhou, Huawei Technologies Co Ltd's chief financial officer, calling the case "extremely nasty".
(Reuters, 12/8/18)
2018 Dec 8, China launched a Long March 3B rocket carrying a lunar probe from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in Sichuan Province. It hoped to land the spacecraft on the largely unexplored far side of the moon.
(AP, 12/8/18)
2018 Dec 8, Egypt said police have killed two gunmen who carried out a Nov. 2 attack on a bus carrying Christians in Minya governorate to the south of Cairo.
(AP, 12/8/18)
2018 Dec 8, French riot police fired tear gas and water cannon in Paris, trying to stop thousands of yellow-vested protesters from converging on the presidential palace to express their anger at high taxes and French President Emmanuel Macron. Yellow-vested protesters blocked the border with Italy near the town of Ventimiglia causing a 6-km (nearly 4-mile) backup of traffic in both directions. Some 125,000 yellow vests took to the streets with a bevy of demands related to high living costs and a sense that Pres. Macron favors the elite and is trying to modernize the French economy too fast. Running battles between protesters and police left at least 71 injured in Paris and caused widespread damage in cities around the country.
(AP, 12/8/18)(AP, 12/9/18)
2018 Dec 8, Hungarian trade unions protested a government plan to raise workers' allowable overtime from 250 to 400 hours a year and the relaxing of other labor rules meant to offset Hungary's growing labor shortage.
(AP, 12/8/18)
2018 Dec 8, Italian Deputy PM Matteo Salvini filled one of Rome's main squares with tens of thousands of flag-waving supporters in a rally that underscored the growing predominance of his rightist League party.
(Reuters, 12/8/18)
2018 Dec 8, In Italy six people, including five young teenagers, were crushed to death early today following a stampede when a walkway leading out of the Lanterna Azzurra nightclub in the town of Corinaldo collapsed. Witnesses reported seeing a hooded man spray a substance like pepper spray or tear gas into the crowd, triggering a panicked rush to the emergency exits.
(AP, 12/8/18)
2018 Dec 8, Japanese lawmakers approved government-proposed legislation allowing hundreds of thousands of foreign laborers to live and work in a country that has long resisted accepting outsiders.
(AP, 12/8/18)
2018 Dec 8, In Indian-controlled Kashmir at least 12 people were killed and 18 others injured after a bus fell into a rocky gorge along a mountainous road near southern Poonch town.
(AP, 12/8/18)
2018 Dec 8, In Malaysia tens of thousands of Muslims rallied in Kuala Lumpur against any attempt to strip the ethnic Malay majority of its privileges, in the first massive street gathering since PM Mahathir Mohamad's alliance won a historic vote in May.
(AP, 12/8/18)
2018 Dec 8, Mexico's Pres. Lopez Obrador accused Supreme Court judges of looking after their own pocketbooks: "They themselves decide that they are going to keep receiving exaggerated, stratospheric salaries - salaries of up to 600,000 pesos ($29,000) a month - those who impart justice." Obrador repeated one of his favorite mantras: "There can't be a rich government with a poor people".
(AP, 12/9/18)
2018 Dec 8, In Pakistan a blast late today targeted a religious gathering of an ethnic party and wounded six people in the southern port city of Karachi.
(AP, 12/9/18)
2018 Dec 8, In southern Poland thousands of people from around the world marched through Katowice, the city that's hosting this year's UN climate talks, demanding that their governments take tougher action to curb global warming.
(AP, 12/8/18)
2018 Dec 8, In Russia Lyudmila Alexeyeva (91), the founder of Russia's oldest human rights group, died in hospital in Moscow.
(Reuters, 12/8/18)
2018 Dec 8, Serbs took to the streets after thugs beat an opposition leader with brass knuckles, briefly knocking him unconscious and injuring his two associates. Images of Left party leader Borko Stefanovic with a bloody head and shirt alarmed citizens who thought the days of political violence were behind them.
(AP, 2/23/19)
2018 Dec 9, Nick Ayers, the chief of staff to US VP Mike Pence, confirmed that he will not step in to replace John Kelly, the chief of staff for Pres. Donald Trump, who planned to leave by year's end.
(SFC, 12/10/18, p.A6)
2018 Dec 9, In Indiana Breanna Rouhselang (17) and her fetus died after being stabbed by Aaron Trejo (16) in Mishawaka following an argument over her pregnancy. Trejo said she had waited too long to tell him she was pregnant ad it was too late to get an abortion.
(SFC, 12/11/18, p.A5)
2018 Dec 9, Afghan authorities announced the suspension of the head of the soccer federation and five other senior officials amid allegations of sexual and physical abuse of female athletes.
(AP, 12/9/18)
2018 Dec 9, In Algeria the Roman Catholic Church beatified 19 Christians killed in a civil war in the 1990s including seven Trappist monks who were beheaded at their monastery by Islamist militants.
(Reuters, 12/9/18)
2018 Dec 9, Armenians cast ballots in an early parliamentary election that is expected to further consolidate the power of PM Nikol Pashinian (43). Allies of PM Pashinian won an overwhelming majority of seats in the country's early parliamentary election.
(AP, 12/9/18)(AP, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 9, The Australian government called for Hakeem al-Araibi, an Australian-based refugee soccer player, to be immediately released from detention in Thailand.
(AP, 12/9/18)
2018 Dec 9, China summoned the US ambassador to Beijing to protest the detention of Meng Wanzhou, an executive of Chinese electronics giant Huawei, in Canada at Washington's behest and demanded Washington cancel an order for her arrest.
(AP, 12/9/18)
2018 Dec 9, In China at least 80 churchgoers and seminary students from the Early Rain Covenant Church were taken away late today in the southwestern city of Chengdu. The church was operating outside the government's official Protestant organization. The government requires that Protestants worship only in churches recognized and regulated by the Three-Self Patriotic Movement.
(AP, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 9, In India dozens of Hindu monks and tens of thousands of followers, gathered under the banner of groups linked to PM Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalist party, urged the Indian government to help build a temple on the ruins of a 16th-century mosque, torn down in 1992, in the northern town of Ayodhya.
(Reuters, 12/9/18)
2018 Dec 9, Gerald Cotton (30), the CEO of Canadian cryptocurrency exchange QuadrigaCX, died of complications from Crohn's disease while traveling to an orphanage in India. He was the only person who knew the security keys and passwords needed to access at least $250 million in client accounts.
(SFC, 2/7/19, p.D2)
2018 Dec 9, In Iran's judiciary said fast-track courts set up in Iran to fight economic crime have jailed 30 men for up to 20 years each, as the country faces renewed US sanctions and a public outcry against profiteering and corruption.
(Reuters, 12/9/18)
2018 Dec 9, Iran state media said Australian-based academic has been detained on charges of trying to "infiltrate" Iranian institutions. Hosseini-Chavoshi, a population expert, is affiliated with the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health.
(Reuters, 12/9/18)
2018 Dec 9, The Israeli military said it has opened an investigation into the death of a 22-year-old Palestinian man in the West Bank after a video surfaced appearing to show him being shot in the back. A Dec. 4 video showed Mohammed Habali walking in an alleyway holding a stick when he is shot from behind and falls down on his face.
(AP, 12/9/18)
2018 Dec 9, In Kashmir Indian troops killed three rebels on the outskirts of Srinagar, ending a nearly 18-hour-long gunbattle. Mudasir Rashid Parray (14) and Saqib Bilal Sheikh (17) were killed in the gunbattle.
(AP, 12/9/18)(AP, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 9, In southwestern Libya an armed group seized the Sharara oilfield, one of the country's largest oilfields. The National Oil Corporation (NOC) declared a state of force majeure at the Akakus-operated field.
(AFP, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 9, New Zealand police said they found a body they believe to be that of missing British tourist Grace Millane (22), who went missing on Dec 1. The body was in a forested area about 10 meters (33 feet) from the side of the road in the Waitakere Ranges near Auckland.
(AP, 12/9/18)
2018 Dec 9, A Palestinian opened fire at a group of Israelis standing at a bus stop next to a Jewish settlement near Ramallah, wounding six people, one - a pregnant woman - critically, in a drive-by shooting.
(Reuters, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 9, Peruvians began voting in a referendum on a raft of political and judicial reforms introduced by the new government of Pres. Martin Vizcarra aimed at stamping out corruption and cronyism in one of Latin America's most promising economies. Peruvians overwhelmingly approved a government overhaul that among other things sends all members of Congress packing by 2021. Three of the four constitutional reforms proposed by Pres. Vizcarra were approved by nearly 80 percent of voters.
(Reuters, 12/9/18)(AFP, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 9, At least two Rwandan soldiers were killed in an attack by rebels who had crossed the border from the Democratic Republic of Congo.
(AFP, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 9, In Somalia the head of the parliament's administration said he had filed a motion with the speaker of parliament to impeach the country's president, Mohamed Abdullahi, but the grounds for the move were unclear.
(Reuters, 12/9/18)
2018 Dec 9, In Saudi Arabia a summit of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) opened. Kuwait's Emir, Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber al-Sabah, called for an end to media campaigns in the region which threatened the unity of the Gulf. Qatar's Sheikh Tamim sent Sultan bin Saad al-Muraikhi, minister of state for foreign affairs, to represent the country.
(AP, 12/9/18)(Reuters, 12/9/18)
2018 Dec 9, In Sudan at least seven local government officials were killed in a helicopter crash in eastern al-Qadarif state.
(AP, 12/9/18)
2018 Dec 9, The UN's humanitarian office said that 369 trucks will carry one month's worth of supplies to Syria. It's the first cross-border aid shipment since the Syrian government recaptured a trade crossing with Jordan from Syrian rebels and reopened it in October.
(AP, 12/9/18)
2018 Dec 10, US tire company Goodyear announced it will no longer continue production in Venezuela as economic conditions in the South American nation continue to deteriorate.
(AP, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 10, In California Kaiser therapists began a 5-day statewide strike to protest long wait times for patients seeking appointments for mental health conditions.
(SFC, 12/11/18, p.D1)
2018 Dec 10, Miami-Dade librarian Jamie Humet (47) was killed after leaving an ATM. In 2020 Miami Gardens police arrested suspect Sean Fortune (19) on charges of second-degree murder and armed robbery.
(Miami Herald, 11/24/20)
2018 Dec 10, In Ohio five children, including 1-year-old twins, died in a house fire in Youngstown.
(SFC, 12/11/18, p.A5)
2018 Dec 10, Bangladesh's telecoms regulator shut down dozens of online news portals for several hours, citing security reasons. An official said 58 sites were found to be not registered with the information ministry and therefore their content was being examined ahead of a parliamentary election later this month.
(Reuters, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 10, Brazil's incoming foreign relations minister said Brazil will pull out of a United Nations pact on dealing with rising migration, joining the United States and a growing number of countries in rejecting the agreement.
(Reuters, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 10, British PM Theresa May postponed Parliament's vote on her Brexit divorce deal with the European Union, acknowledging that lawmakers would have rejected it by a "significant margin." May said she would seek "assurances" from the EU and bring the Brexit deal back to Parliament, but did not set a new date for the vote.
(AP, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 10, A British court handed charismatic Indian tycoon Vijay Mallya a substantial setback by ruling he should be extradited to India to face financial fraud allegations.
(AP, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 10, China detained entrepreneur Michael Spavor and former diplomat Michael Kovrig on suspicion of "engaging in activities that endanger the national security". Kovrig, a Chinese-speaking expert, had served as a Canadian diplomat in Beijing, Hong Kong and at the United Nations.
(AFP, 12/11/18)(AP, 12/13/18)
2018 Dec 10, In eastern CongoDRC suspected ADF militiamen killed nine civilians in a fresh late night attack in the town of Oicha, in the Beni region.
(AP, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 10, Croatia has unveiled a monument to late leader Franjo Tudjman, who led the country to independence from the former Yugoslavia but has also been criticized for his nationalist policies. This marked the 19th anniversary of Tudjman's death.
(AP, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 10, The EU voiced alarm as a survey showed nine of 10 European Jews believe anti-Semitism has worsened in the last five years, calling it a "canary in the coal mine".
(AFP, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 10, EU security commissioner Julian King alleged that Russia launched a year-long fake news campaign about Kiev's and NATO's plans for the Azov Sea before seizing three Ukrainian ships and their crew there.
(AFP, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 10, The EU blacklisted nine locals involved in last month's rebel elections in east Ukraine, but was unlikely to heed swiftly Kiev's call for more reprisals against Moscow over the latest flare-up of tensions in the Azov Sea.
(Reuters, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 10, French President Emmanuel Macron announced measures to help low-income families and so end the "yellow vest" protests. Economists soon estimated that the cost of the sweeteners could reach 11 billion euros ($12.5 billion) -- a blowout for a country already struggling to meet EU budget rules.
(AFP, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 10, In Germany Thomas K. (37) was sentenced in Duesseldorf state court to six years in prison. He had fought for the Taliban in Afghanistan from 2013-2018 and was convicted of membership in a terrorist organization.
(AP, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 10, In Germany a four-hour strike affected more than 1,400 trains nationwide, hitting long-distance traffic and also metro rail systems in Berlin, Munich, Hannover and Frankfurt. The EVG labor union called the so-called "warning strike" to put pressure on Deutsche Bahn after wage negotiations broke off on Dec. 8 without an agreement.
(AP, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 10, In Hong Kong a runaway school bus with no one aboard accelerated downhill and plowed into pedestrians, killing two people and injuring a dozen others.
(AP, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 10, Reserve Bank of India Gov. Urjit Patel resigned amid a growing split between the Indian government and the independent monetary policy authority. The government of PM Narendra Modi has disagreed with some of the central bank's decisions under Patel, including a move to restrict lending by debt-ridden banks.
(AP, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 10, Iraq began removing cement walls from areas surrounding the capital's most fortified enclave, opening parts of the so-called Green Zone to traffic in a symbolic move coinciding with nationwide celebrations marking the anniversary of the country's costly victory over the Islamic State group.
(AP, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 10, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu said Oman will let Israeli planes fly through its airspace. The permission however provides Israel with little immediate practical use since its planes cannot fly over Oman's neighbor Saudi Arabia.
(AFP, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 10, Israeli soldiers raided the offices of Palestinian news agency Wafa in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah. They withdrew from the agency's office after they took copies of security camera footage.
(Reuters, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 10, Israel became a full member of the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force (FATF), a global financial watchdog on money laundering and terror financing, after having previously been blacklisted by the organization.
(AFP, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 10, Prosecutors in Japan charged Nissan Motor Co.'s former chairman Carlos Ghosn, executive Greg Kelly and the automaker itself for allegedly violating financial laws by underreporting income.
(AP, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 10, A Kenyan court charged senior officials from the state-run oil pipeline and others from the state health insurance fund for abuse of office and economic crimes that led to the loss of billions of shillings from the two institutions.
(Reuters, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 10, Latvia's Pres. Raimonds Vejonis said he had withdrawn his nomination of Aldis Gobzems of the populist KPV LV party as prime minister after Gobzems failed to secure majority support for his proposed cabinet.
(Reuters, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 10, In Morocco a United Nations conference in Marrakesh adopted a migration pact in front of leaders and representatives from around 150 countries, despite a string of withdrawals driven by anti-immigrant populism.
(AFP, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 10, In Norway Nobel laureates Denis Mukwege of CongoDRC and Nadia Murad of Iraq called on the world to protect victims of wartime sexual violence in their Peace Prize acceptance speeches, slamming indifference to the plight of women and children in conflict.
(AFP, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 10, In Poland protesters disturbed a US-sponsored event promoting fossil fuels on the sidelines of the UN climate change talks, saying attempts to rebrand coal as a potentially "clean" energy source were misleading.
(Reuters, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 10, Puerto Rico's governor signed a bill to overhaul the US territory's tax laws in a bid to help workers and some business owners amid a 12-year recession.
(AP, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 10, Romanian authorities said the number of babies diagnosed with antibiotic-resistant Staphylococcus aureus at a maternity hospital in Bucharest has risen to 39.
(AP, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 10, In Romania men from three cars clambered onto a moving truck and looted laptops and other electrical equipment worth 50,000 euros ($70,000). Police soon detained seven men suspected of previously committing similar thefts.
(AP, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 10, In Russia Mikhail Popkov (54), a former police officer jailed for murdering 22 women, received a second life sentence for the murder of 56 more people, making him one of modern Russia's deadliest serial killers. He has been dubbed the "maniac of Angarsk" after his home city in Siberia.
(Reuters, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 10, Syria's army announced the demobilization of officers who have completed five years of compulsory service, the second such move in recent months as fighting abates in the civil war.
(AFP, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 10, In Syria the Kurdish-led SDF pushed deeper into Hajin, the Islamic State's last remaining stronghold, and took full control of an abandoned hospital on the edge of town.
(SFC, 12/11/18, p.A4)
2018 Dec 10, Pope Francis accepted the resignation of Indian Bishop Prasad Gallela (56) of Cuddapah who, according to news reports, was accused of misappropriating church funds to support a secret family.
(AP, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 10, Delegations from Yemen's warring sides discussed expanding a shaky truce in the key port city of Hodeida, however neither side appeared ready to agree on initial draft proposals at the UN sponsored talks in Sweden.
(AP, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 11, US Pres. Donald Trump clashed angrily with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi on funding for a border wall in an Oval Office meeting carried live on television.
(AFP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 11, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo added mainly Muslim Pakistan to the US list of "countries of particular concern", which have violated religious freedoms or tolerated abuses against religious groups.
(Reuters, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 11, The US returned three bells to the Philippines that were seized in 1901 from the town of Balangiga following a rebel attack on an American garrison. US troops were ordered to kill every male citizen ten or older and capable of bearing arms to avenge the death of 48 US soldiers.
(SFC, 12/12/18, p.A2)
2018 Dec 11, Time magazine named a group of journalists, including a slain Saudi Arabian writer Jamal Khashoggi, as its "Person of the Year," in a cover story headlined "The Guardians and the War on Truth." Also named were Philippine journalist Maria Ressa, Reuters reporters Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo -- currently imprisoned in Myanmar -- and the staff of the Capital Gazette in the US city of Annapolis, including five members killed in a June shooting.
(Reuters, 12/11/18)(AFP, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 11, In Los Angeles a federal judge ordered porn star Stormy Daniels to pay Pres. Trump nearly $293,000 for his attorney's fees and another $1000 in sanctions after her defamation suit against the president was dismissed.
(SFC, 12/12/18, p.A5)
2018 Dec 11, North Carolina reported three deaths after melting snow from a winter storm in several southern states transformed to ice.
(SFC, 12/12/18, p.A7)
2018 Dec 11, Texas executed Alvin Braziel Jr. for the 1993 robbery and slaying of Douglas White (27), who was attacked as he and his wife walked on a jogging trail.
(SFC, 12/12/18, p.A5)
2018 Dec 11, Thousands of Albanian university students took to Tirana's streets for their biggest show of strength yet in a protest movement demanding lower tuition fees and more investment in public education.
(AFP, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 11, In Argentina a court sentenced former Ford Motor Co. executives Pedro Muller and Hector Francisco Sibilla to prison for crimes against humanity committed during the country's 1976-1983 military dictatorship.
(SFC, 12/12/18, p.A2)
2018 Dec 11, An Australian court sentenced a Sydney teenager (18) to at least 12 years in prison for planning an attack inspired by the Islamic State group in 2016.
(AP, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 11, An Australian court found Cardinal George Pell (77), one of the highest ranking Vatican officials and a former top adviser to Pope Francis, guilty on five charges of child sexual offences committed more than two decades ago against 13-year-old boys. The verdict was only made public on Feb. 26, 2019.
(Reuters, 2/26/19)
2018 Dec 11, In southern Brazil a man opened fire at the Metropolitan Cathedral in Campinas killing four people and wounding four more before taking a bullet in the ribs and then shooting himself in the head.
(SFC, 12/12/18, p.A2)
2018 Dec 11, Six Cambodian union leaders each received suspended 2 1/2-year prison terms in connection with labor protests in January, 2014, in which four garment workers were killed and around 20 others hurt.
(AP, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 11, In Canada Meng Wanzhou (46) a top executive of Chinese telecoms giant Huawei Technologies Co Ltd was granted bail by court, 10 days after her arrest in Vancouver at the request of US authorities sparked a diplomatic dispute. US President Donald Trump said he would intervene in the US Justice Department's case against Meng if it would serve national security interests or help close a trade deal with China.
(Reuters, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 11, China's economy czar and US trade envoys discussed plans for talks on a tariff battle, indicating negotiations are going ahead despite tension over the arrest of a Chinese tech executive.
(AP, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 11, In CongoDRC two supporters of opposition candidate Martin Fayulu were killed and 43 hurt as he went for a rally in Lubumbashi.
(AFP, 12/13/18)
2018 Dec 11, Traders in Cairo said Egyptian authorities have unofficially restricted the sale of "yellow vests," signaling fears of possible protests inspired by those in France.
(AFP, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 11, In France a man killed three people in a gun attack on a Christmas market in Strasbourg and escaped the scene. 12 other people were wounded. He was soon identified as Strasbourg-born Cherif Chekatt (29), was known to have been religiously radicalized while in jail, and was on an intelligence services watch list as a potential security risk.
(Reuters, 12/12/18)(SFC, 12/12/18, p.A4)
2018 Dec 11, India's ruling party lost power in three key states, dealing PM Narendra Modi his biggest defeat since he took office in 2014 and boosting the opposition ahead of national polls next year. The opposition Congress party was a clear winner in Chhattisgarh state, and fell one seat short of a majority in both Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh.
(Reuters, 12/11/18)(AP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 11, Iran's Arman daily reported that human rights lawyers Ghasem Sholeh-Saadi and Arash Keikhosravi have been sentenced to six years in prison for taking part in an "illegal gathering" and one year for "propaganda" against the ruling system. Lawyer Mohammad Najafi was sentenced to 10 years for "conveying information to a hostile country" through interviews with foreign media, two years for insulting the supreme leader and one year for publicity in support of opposition groups.
(AP, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 11, Israel said it had uncovered another Hezbollah "attack tunnel" infiltrating its territory from Lebanon -- the third since it started a search and destroy operation along the border last week.
(AP, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 11, Israeli forces shot and killed a Palestinian man in the West Bank city of Hebron after he attempted to ram his car into them. In the northern West Bank another Palestinian drove his car toward Israeli forces, who opened fire and arrested the driver.
(AP, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 11, Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, arrived in Israel for a two-day visit that has prompted criticism over his far-right policies and anti-migration views.
(AP, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 11, Rome's longstanding garbage problems turned into an emergency after a huge fire at the Salaria waste disposal plant blanketed the Eternal City in smoke and forced authorities to scramble to find alternative facilities to treat the capital's trash.
(AP, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 11, A Tokyo court ruled that Nissan Motor Co.'s former chairman, Carlos Ghosn, and another executive will remain in custody through Dec. 20, more than a month after their arrest. Their detention could continue for months more under the Japanese legal system.
(AP, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 11, In Kashmir rebels fighting against Indian rule attacked a police post, killing four officers in the southern Shopian area.
(AP, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 11, In central Mexico seven people were killed in a fireworks accident in the community of Fuentezuelas, Queretaro state. Improperly stored fireworks were accidentally ignited as a procession celebrating the Virgin of Guadalupe neared a chapel.
(AP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 11, New Zealand's government passed a law that will make medical marijuana widely available for thousands of patients over time.
(AP, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 11, Pakistan's anti-graft body said it has arrested a senior politician from former PM Nawaz Sharif's party over links to a multimillion-dollar housing scam. Khawaja Saad Rafique and his brother, who is also accused in the case, were arrested in Lahore after a court refused to extend their bail.
(AP, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 11, President Vladimir Putin said it was unclear to him why a Russian woman, Maria Butina, had been detained in the United States and accused of being a Russian agent because his intelligence chiefs had told him they knew nothing about her.
(Reuters, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 11, The Russian military said that nearly 114,000 Syrian refugees have been repatriated this year, a fraction of the estimated 6 million who have fled since the start of the conflict.
(AP, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 11, Thailand's military government lifted a ban on political activities it imposed when it seized power in a coup more than four years ago, an action taken in preparation for elections promised for early next year.
(AP, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 11, A Thai court ruled that soccer player Hakeem al-Araibi, who holds refugee status in Australia, can be held for 60 days pending the completion of an extradition request by Bahrain. In 2014 Bahrain sentenced him in absentia to 10 years in prison for vandalizing a police station, a charge he denies.
(AP, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 11, In northern Turkey a police officer angered that his request for a transfer was rejected fired shots at his superiors inside a police station in Rize, killing the local police chief and wounding two other officers.
(AP, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 11, Yemen's Houthi movement and the Saudi-backed government exchanged lists of some 15,000 prisoners for a swap agreed as a confidence-building measure at the start of UN-sponsored peace talks in Sweden.
(Reuters, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 12, Michael Cohen (52), Donald Trump's former devoted lawyer and fizer, was sentenced to three years in prison, for lying about business deals related to dt, for lying about business deals related to Donald Trump.
(SFC, 12/13/18, p.A6)
2018 Dec 12, The New York Times reported that US investigators believe that Chinese intelligence was behind the massive hack of data on some 500 million guests of hotel giant Marriott.
(AFP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, The Wall Street Journal reported that a revised plan would play down China's bid to dominate manufacturing, and allow more outside competition.
(AP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, In Texas three police officers were wounded while serving a family violence warrant in Houston. Suspect Daniel Trevino was found dead hours later of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
(SFC, 12/13/18, p.A6)
2018 Dec 12, Afghan provincial officials said government forces have abandoned the Shebkoh district of Farah province, leaving the area to Taliban insurgents after the government failed to resupply dozens of troops stationed there.
(Reuters, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, In Antarctica two technicians performing maintenance at the US research McMurdo Station died while working on a building that houses a generator for a nearby radio transmitter.
(AP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, Argentina's foreign minister said his crisis-ridden country desperately needed international investment, as he began a two-day visit to one of the world's richest nations, Qatar.
(AFP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, British Conservative lawmakers forced a no-confidence vote in PM Theresa May, throwing UK politics deeper into crisis and Brexit further into doubt. May won the vote after promising lawmakers privately that she would quit before Britain's next national election, which is scheduled for 2022.
(Reuters, 12/12/18)(AP, 12/13/18)
2018 Dec 12, China's police confirmed they have arrested award-winning photographer Lu Guang, who went missing in November while travelling in Xinjiang.
(AP, 12/13/18)
2018 Dec 12, In CongoDRC police fired teargas and live bullets for a second day to disperse supporters of opposition presidential candidate Martin Fayulu, killing three people in the town of Kalemie in the southeastern Katanga region.
(Reuters, 12/12/18)(AFP, 12/12/18)(AFP, 12/13/18)
2018 Dec 12, Egypt released blogger and journalist Wael Abbas, known for standing up against police violence, after nearly seven months in detention. Abbas has been posting about police violence, torture and corruption on social media for more than a decade.
(AFP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, In Egypt Coptic father Imad Kamal Sadeq (49) and his son, David (21), were killed at a construction site by a security police officer in Minya province.
(Reuters, 12/13/18)
2018 Dec 12, Eight European Union nations (Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Sweden and the United Kingdom) underlined their commitment to the Iran nuclear deal while urging Tehran to stop its "destabilizing regional activities" especially the launch of ballistic missiles.
(AP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, In France a cousin of jailed Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov accepted the European Parliament's Sakharov human rights prize on his behalf, saying the director remained committed to winning the release of all "political prisoners" in Russia.
(AFP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, A top French appeals court overturned the suspended prison terms handed to activists Cedric Herrou and Pierre-Alain Mannoni for helping migrants who entered the country illegally. The Cour de Cassation, France's court of final appeal, sent the case back to the Lyon appeals' court, which is expected to void the case.
(AFP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, France arrested Patrice-Edouard Ngaissona, a member of Africa's top footballing body, on war crimes charges in the Central African Republic.
(AFP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, In Hungary rare scenes of chaos gripped the parliament as it passed a controversial judicial reform, as well as labor legislation that critics call a "slave law".
(AFP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, Hungary passed a law to set up courts overseen directly by the justice minister, a move critics said would allow political interference in judicial matters and further undermine the rule of law.
(AP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, In India Isha Ambani, the Ivy League-educated daughter of industrialist Mukesh Ambani, thought to be India's richest man, married Anand Piramal, whose father is industrialist Ajay Piramal, thought to be worth $10 billion.
(AP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, In Iran social media activist Vahid Sayyadi Nasiri, on hunger strike since October 13, 2018 to protest the denial of his right to counsel and inhumane prison conditions, died at the Shahid Beheshti Hospital in Qom.
(Reuters, 12/16/18)
2018 Dec 12, In Baghdad Nobel laureate and former jihadist captive Nadia Murad (25) called on Iraq to create a special team to investigate the fate of other members of her Yazidi minority kidnapped by the Islamic State group.
(AFP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, Israeli forces late today killed Salah Barghouti, a Palestinian suspect wanted in the drive-by shooting on Dec. 9 at a West Bank bus stop.
(AP, 12/13/18)
2018 Dec 12, Italy's PM Giuseppe Conte told the European Commission he was lowering next year's target to 2.04 percent of gross domestic product from 2.4 percent to avoid disciplinary action by Brussels.
(Reuters, 12/13/18)
2018 Dec 12, In northeastern Mali several dozen civilians were shot dead by gunmen who raided an area near the border with Niger. Jihadists on motorcycles killed at least 42 people in a series of attacks on their nomadic camps over the last 24 hours in the eastern Menaka region.
(AFP, 12/13/18)(SFC, 12/14/18, p.A2)
2018 Dec 12, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador signed an initiative that would cancel the controversial education reforms of his predecessor.
(AP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, In Myanmar several dozen journalists and activists held a rally in Yangon to mark the anniversary of the arrest of two reporters for the Reuters news agency who are among a group of journalists being honored by Time magazine as its "Person of the Year".
(AP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, In the Netherlands Sarah Papenheim (21), a native of Minnesota, was fatally stabbed at her home in an apartment building near Erasmus University, where she had been studying since 2016. A suspect (23) was arrested the same day.
(AP, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 12, Nigerian opposition candidate Atiku Abubakar signed an election peace accord, a day after his absence from the official signing ceremony raised concerns about the conduct of the February 2019 vote.
(Reuters, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, Dozens of North and South Korean soldiers crossed over the world's most heavily armed border as they inspected the sites of their rival's front-line guard posts to verify they'd been removed.
(AP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, Hundreds of Gazans attended the funeral of Ahmed Abu Abed, a four-year-old boy who died after being hit by Israeli shrapnel at a border protest last week.
(Reuters, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, The Philippine Congress approved a request by the president to extend martial law in the country's volatile south by a year due to continuing threats by Islamic State group-linked militants and communist insurgents.
(AP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, In Romania dozens of people protested against poor air quality in Bucharest, which recently was ranked one of Europe's most traffic-congested cities.
(AP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, In Saudi Arabia representatives from Egypt, Djibouti, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen and Jordan gathered in Riyadh to discuss an alliance of the six countries bordering the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. No final agreement was reached.
(AP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, Slovak Defense Minister Peter Gajdos signed the contract to buy 14 F-16 military jets from Lockheed Martin as it seeks to replace Soviet-era jets.
(AP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, Sri Lanka's former prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe won a confidence vote in Parliament receiving 117 votes in favor in the 225-member legislative body. His October sacking by President Maithripala Sirisena precipitated a political crisis.
(AP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, Sweden said it was freezing its support to UNAIDS until executive director Michel Sidibe is removed. An expert report has blasted the agency's leadership for systematically failing to address bullying, abuse and sexual harassment.
(AFP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, In Thailand a local policeman was arrested for allegedly shooting and killing Malik Djamel, a French man, at a shopping plaza in Bangkok. Police said Senior Sgt.-Maj. Kantapong Huadsri had confessed to killing the man over an argument involving a woman, but that the dispute was not a love triangle.
(AP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, The Vatican said Pope Francis has removed from his group of close advisers two cardinals hit by sexual abuse scandals, including his economy minister, Australian George Pell (77). The other member removed from the so called C-9 is Francisco Javier Errázuriz (85) of Chile.
(Reuters, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, Sources said Yemen's warring parties agreed to reopen Sanaa airport in the Houthi-held capital, as Western nations pressed the two sides to accept confidence-building steps before the end of UN-led peace talks in Sweden.
(Reuters, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 13, The Trump administration announced a sharp refocus of its Africa strategy to counter what it called the "predatory" practices of China and Russia, which are "deliberately and aggressively targeting their investments in the region to gain a competitive advantage".
(AP, 12/13/18)
2018 Dec 13, The US Senate delivered an unusual rebuke of Pres. Donald Trump's response to the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi In back-to-back votes against Saudi Arabia, and signaled new skepticism from Capitol Hill toward the longtime ally.
(AP, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 13, A wave of hoax emailed bomb threats demanding bitcoin payment caused worry but no damage in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
(Reuters, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 13, Timothy May (b.1951), an early advocate for guarding the privacy of internet users, died at his home in Santa Cruz County, Ca. In 1988 May authored the one-page Crypto Anarchist Manifesto and in 1992 co-founded the Cypherpunks with John Gilmore and Eric Hughes.
(SFC, 12/23/18, p.C9)
2018 Dec 13, Cleveland-based Rock & Roll Hall of Fame organizers announced that pop icon Janet Jackson, angst rockers Radiohead and post-punk innovators The Cure earned spots in its Class of 2019. Stevie Nicks, already an inductee with her band Fleetwood Mac, was now also honored as a solo artist. British heavy metal group Def Leppard, pop experimentalists Roxy Music and English psychedelic rock harmonists The Zombies round out the list of artists.
(AFP, 12/13/18)
2018 Dec 13, Nancy Wilson (81), a Grammy-winning singer who performed everything from jazz ballads to pop songs during a career spanning decades, died in California.
(AFP, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 13, The Virgin Galactic tourism spaceship Unity climbed to 51 miles above the Mohave Desert reaching the boundary of space in a test flight followed by a gliding descent.
(SFC, 12/14/18, p.D1)
2018 Dec 13, Apple announced plans to build a $1 billion campus in Austin, Texas.
(SFC, 12/14/18, p.D1)
2018 Dec 13, In northeastern Afghanistan an assault on Taliban positions in Kunar province, which included US air strikes, killed at least 20 insurgents, contradicting Taliban claims of civilian casualties. In southern Helmand province, a US drone strike killed four suspected insurgents.
(AP, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 13, Brazil's president-elect Jair Bolsonaro faced growing scrutiny as a government financial crime unit questioned payments made to his son and wife that totaled more than $300,000.
(AFP, 12/13/18)
2018 Dec 13, In Brazil Justice Luiz Fux ordered the arrest of Cesare Battisti, an Italian communist militant convicted of murder in his home country. The president would have the final word over his extradition to Italy. Battisti escaped from an Italian prison in 1981 while awaiting trial on four counts of murder allegedly committed when he was a member of the Armed Proletarians for Communism.
(AP, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 13, British PM Theresa May pleaded with EU leaders for concessions that might save her Brexit deal, while playing down hopes of a swift breakthrough.
(AFP, 12/13/18)
2018 Dec 13, Cambodia's Parliament passed legislation that could allow the lifting of a five-year ban on political activity by some top opposition politicians.
(AP, 12/13/18)
2018 Dec 13, Cambodian authorities seized more than 3 tons of rare African ivory hidden inside an abandoned shipping container, the country's largest haul of elephant tusks in the last four years. The ivory was sent from Mozambique.
(AP, 12/15/18)
2018 Dec 13, China confirmed that it has detained two Canadian men, raising the stakes in a three-way dispute over a Chinese technology executive facing possible extradition from Canada to the United States.
(AP, 12/13/18)
2018 Dec 13, At a ceremony in Beijing, China Wanda Group and the Yanan city government agreed to start work on a 12 billion yuan ($1.74 billion) sprawling complex for patriotic tourists to visit a site where the ruling Communist Party's traces its revolutionary roots in northwestern Shaanxi province.
(Reuters, 12/15/18)
2018 Dec 13, In CongoDRC an early-morning fire in Kinshasa destroyed nearly 80 percent of the capital city's voting machines just 10 days before the presidential election.
(AFP, 12/13/18)
2018 Dec 13, In CongoDRC a teenager was shot dead in the central Kasai region as party faithful gathered ahead of a rally by Felix Tshisekedi of the UDPS, one of the leading opposition candidates.
(AP, 12/13/18)
2018 Dec 13, Egyptian authorities arrested a camel driver and a woman accused of having helped two Danes scale the Great Pyramid of Giza to take a video and naked photograph, sparking outrage in the country. The woman had put the pair into contact with the camel driver who took them to the site illegally at night on November 29 for 4,000 Egyptian pounds ($225, 200 euros). Photographer Andreas Hvid appears to scale the 4,500-year-old tomb on the outskirts of Cairo with a woman who is later seen removing her top. The video "Climbing the Great Pyramid of Giza" was posted on YouTube on December 8.
(AP, 12/13/18)
2018 Dec 13, In southern Ethiopia heavy fighting broke out between Somalis and Oromos in Moyale. Over the next two days at least 21 people were killed and 61 wounded.
(Reuters, 12/15/18)
2018 Dec 13, The European Central Bank said it is ending the massive stimulus program that helped nurse the eurozone economy back to health over the past four years.
(AP, 12/13/18)
2018 Dec 13, The EU's lawmaking body condemned Egyptian authorities for human rights abuses and urged them to lift restrictions on free speech and assembly, halt mass trials and stop sentencing minors to death, and release political prisoners.
(AP, 12/13/18)
2018 Dec 13, Europe's top human rights body urged Moldova to stop "intimidation and violence" against prisoners allegedly carried out by other detainees with the tacit agreement of prison management.
(AP, 12/13/18)
2018 Dec 13, In France gunman Cherif Chekatt (29) was killed by police in the Neudorf neighborhood of Strasbourg after a two-day manhunt.
(Reuters, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 13, The Paris prosecutor's office said a fifth person has been arrested and placed in custody in connection with the investigation into the Dec. 11 shooting near Strasbourg's Christmas market.
(AP, 12/13/18)
2018 Dec 13, In southern France a sixth "yellow vest" protester was killed after being hit by a truck at a road where activists staged a blockade, as the protest movement showed no signs of abating.
(AP, 12/13/18)
2018 Dec 13, In Germany three women were stabbed and wounded in Nuremberg. Police investigated whether the incidents were connected. A German man (38) was arrested on Dec. 15 in connection with the stabbing.
(AP, 12/14/18)(AP, 12/16/18)
2018 Dec 13, In northern Greece three men died and three were injured after a car carrying migrants crashed and caught fire in Kavala.
(AP, 12/13/18)
2018 Dec 13, In northeastern India at least 15 young miners went missing and were feared dead following the collapse of a shaft and flooding of a coal mine they were digging illegally in the state of Meghalaya. Three weeks later rescuers trying to reach the miners struggled to pump out water from the 370-foot-deep pit, further dimming their chances of survival. On Jan. 26 rescuers located a second body from the site of a "rat-hole" mining accident, two days after recovering the first body.
(AP, 12/14/18)(Reuters, 1/4/19)(Reuters, 1/26/19)
2018 Dec 13, Israeli security forces in Nablus tracked down and killed Ashraf Naalweh, a Palestinian accused of killing two Israelis in October. A Palestinian gunman got out of a car and opened fire at a bus stop outside a West Bank settlement, killing two Israeli soldiers before speeding away. Hours later, the army said it shot and killed a Palestinian man who attempted to ram his car into soldiers on a West Bank road. A Palestinian assailant stabbed two officers in Jerusalem's Old City, wounding them lightly. Officers opened fire on the attacker (26) and he was killed.
(AP, 12/13/18)
2018 Dec 13, Japan's space agency says more than 200 photos taken by the two small Minerva II-1 rovers on Ryugu asteroid show no signs of a smooth area for the planned touchdown of a spacecraft early next year.
(AP, 12/13/18)
2018 Dec 13, A court in Kenya convicted ex-senior police officer Nahashon Mutua of murder in the death of Martin Koome, a suspect taken into custody in 2013, in what rights groups welcomed as a further step toward curbing years of police brutality.
(Reuters, 12/13/18)
2018 Dec 13, A group of Israelis beat up a Palestinian bus driver, Nidal Sake, near a West Bank settlement.
(AP, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 13, In Poland dozens of nations threatened with catastrophe from unchecked climate change warned they "face extinction" without immediate action to rein in mankind's emissions, as UN climate talks limped towards their conclusion.
(AFP, 12/13/18)
2018 Dec 13, Somalia's Internal Security Ministry arrested Mukhtar Robow, accusing him of bringing Islamist militants and weapons back to Baidoa, the capital of South West region. At least 10 people were killed in the clashes. Robow's spokesman later said he was beaten by Ethiopian troops, who are part of the African Union peacekeeping force in Somalia, in the course of his arrest.
(Reuters, 12/13/18)(Reuters, 12/14/18)(Reuters, 12/15/18)
2018 Dec 13, A South African court ruled that former president Jacob Zuma must pay back state funds and cover his own costs, leaving him facing massive legal bills as he fights graft charges.
(AFP, 12/13/18)
2018 Dec 13, South Africa issued an arrest warrant for Zimbabwe's former first lady Grace Mugabe over the alleged assault of a model in a luxury Johannesburg hotel in 2017. Police sought Interpol's help to enforce the warrant.
(Reuters, 12/19/18)
2018 Dec 13, Sri Lanka's Supreme Court ruled unanimously that President Maithripala Sirisena's order to dissolve Parliament and hold new elections was unconstitutional.
(AP, 12/13/18)
2018 Dec 13, Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) commander-in-chief Mazloum Kobani said that at least 5,000 IS fighters remain holed up in the pocket of territory including Hajin and that they had decided to fight to the death.
(AP, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 13, In Turkey nine people were killed and nearly 90 injured after a high-speed train crashed into a locomotive in Ankara. Three employees of the railway authority were arrested on Dec. 17 for their role in the accident.
(AFP, 12/13/18)(SFC, 12/18/18, p.A2)
2018 Dec 13, United Nations human rights experts expressed concern over recent rollbacks of women's rights in Poland, especially those regarding reproductive health and societal roles.
(AFP, 12/13/18)
2018 Dec 13, Scandal-plagued UNAIDS head Michel Sidibe offered to resign in June, following an expert report that said his "defective leadership" had plunged the agency into crisis.
(AFP, 12/13/18)
2018 Dec 13, Yemen's warring parties agreed to cease fighting for the Houthi-held port city of Hodeidah and withdraw their troops. The Houthis have agreed in principle on a UN's role in Sanaa airport, a spokesman for the armed movement said in Sweden. The UN role would include carrying out safety and inspection checks at the airport.
(Reuters, 12/13/18)
2018 Dec 14, US Pres. Donald Trump picked budget director Mick Mulvaney to be his next chief of staff.
(SFC, 12/15/18, p.A6)
2018 Dec 14, The Wall Street Journal reported that Chinese hackers have breached US Navy contractors to steal a raft of information, including missile plans, through what some officials describe as some of the most debilitating cyber campaigns linked to Beijing.
(Reuters, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 14, The California Air Resources Board required all state buses to be emission free by 20140. New rules prohibited the purchase of any new gas or diesel-powered public transit buses by 2029.
(SFC, 12/17/18, p.C1)
2018 Dec 14, In Florida Gabino Peralta-Saucedo (43) of Michoacan, an organizer for multiple Mexican drug cartels, pleaded guilty to a conspiracy charge for his role in smuggling thousands of kilograms of cocaine from Mexico into the United States.
(AP, 12/15/18)
2018 Dec 14, In Hawaii ten Indonesian fishermen, who were arrested and charged with attempting to smuggle shark fins, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge that they attempted to export the fins. A judge sentenced them to time they already served in jail.
(AP, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 14, In Texas federal Judge Reed O'Connor ruled that the US health care law known as Obamacare is unconstitutional -- a ruling that opposition Democrats vowed to appeal. On Dec. 30 O'Connor stayed his ruling to allow for appeals.
(AFP, 12/15/18)(SFC, 12/31/18, p.A5)
2018 Dec 14, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker signed a sweeping package of Republican-written legislation that restricts early voting and weakens the incoming Democratic governor and attormey general.
(SFC, 12/15/18, p.A8)
2018 Dec 14, CBS pledged to give $20 million to 16 organizations dedicated to eliminating sexual harassment in the workplace.
(SFC, 12/15/18, p.A6)
2018 Dec 14, Brazil launched the first of five navy attack submarines it is building under a $7.6-billion technology-sharing deal struck with France.
(AFP, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 14, British PM Theresa May left the EU summit exactly as she had arrived -- promising talks to extract reassuring words from EU leaders to help her sell the Brexit deal back home.
(AFP, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 14, Cameroon released nearly 300 people who were arrested in connection with the anglophone crisis, a day after being pardoned by President Paul Biya.
(AFP, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 14, China announced a 90-day suspension of tariff hikes on $126 billion of US cars, trucks and auto parts following its cease-fire in a trade battle with Washington that threatens global economic growth.
(AP, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 14, Chinese President Xi Jinping declared an "overwhelming victory" in his fight against graft within the ruling Chinese Communist Party, while still vowing that the campaign to weed out deep-seated corruption will continue, state media reported.
(Reuters, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 14, A Chinese court jailed for 17 years businessman Zhang Tianming, who ran a 100 billion yuan pyramid scheme and organized a rare street protest in Beijing against police investigations into his activities. Nine other staff from his company, Shenzhen-based Shan Xin Hui, were also found guilty.
(Reuters, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 14, Egypt's state news agency said the Arab Parliament has urged the Arab League to reinstate Syria's membership, which was suspended seven years ago.
(Reuters, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 14, EU leaders, except for Britain, took a step toward deeper euro zone integration to help prevent future crises, but deep disagreement over some key elements of the plan left issues like a euro zone budget or a deposit guarantee mechanism unresolved.
(Reuters, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 14, EU leaders called for urgent action to combat fake news on the Internet at a summit, saying more needed to be done to safeguard next year's EU election against disinformation.
(Reuters, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 14, It was reported that scientists in Finland have developed what they believe is the world's first vaccine to protect bees against disease, raising hopes for tackling the drastic decline in insect numbers which could cause a global food crisis.
(AFP, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 14, President Emmanuel Macron called for a return to calm in France after nearly a month of protests by the 'yellow vest' movement against his government's policies which have hit growth and caused widespread disruption.
(Reuters, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 14, In France a fourth person died following the Dec. 11 attack in Strasbourg.
(AP, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 14, A Berlin court said the insolvency administrator for bankrupt airline Air Berlin has sued its former largest shareholder, UAE-based airline Etihad, for 2 billion euros ($2.26 billion) in damages.
(AP, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 14, An Indonesian official vowed to do more to combat human trafficking after an investigation by the Associated Press revealed that scores of trafficked girls have quietly disappeared from one of the nation's poorest regions.
(AP, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 14, Israeli forces arrested dozens of Hamas activists in the West Bank as the army intensified a crackdown in response to a pair of deadly shootings believed to have been carried out by Hamas militants. An Israeli soldier was severely wounded by a Palestinian assailant who attacked him with a rock, while Israeli soldiers clashed with Palestinian demonstrators outside Ramallah. Palestinian Mahmoud Nakhla (18) was shot in the abdomen and died in Ramallah.
(AP, 12/14/18)(SFC, 12/15/18, p.A2)
2018 Dec 14, Japan's central government started main reclamation work at a disputed US military base relocation site on the southern island of Okinawa despite fierce local opposition.
(AP, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 14, Kosovo passed laws to build an army, asserting its statehood in a US-backed move that has angered Serbia, which does not recognize the former province's independence.
(AFP, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 14, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador announced a $5.7-billion, two-year plan to revamp the country's health care system for the poor.
(AP, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 14, The Amsterdam Appeals Court confirmed the maximum 10 years and eight months sentence imposed in March last year on the man identified by Dutch authorities as Aydin C., who was convicted of fraud and blackmail via the internet for the online abuse.
(AP, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 14, Nicaraguan authorities said they had seized the assets of 10 blacklisted organizations, dealing another blow to civil society after months of protests against President Daniel Ortega that were met with a heavy-handed crackdown.
(Reuters, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 14, In Nicaragua nine police officers armed with rifles entered the offices of an opposition daily late today and started pushing people, beating others and making fun of reporters after journalist Carlos Fernando Chamorro challenged them to take on his media outlet without a search warrant in his online daily Confidencial and news broadcasts Esta Semana and Esta Noche.
(AFP, 12/15/18)
2018 Dec 14, The Nigerian military accused United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) staff of spying for Islamist militants in northeast Nigeria, and suspended the agency's activities there. A new military statement hours later lifted a suspension of UNICEF's work in the extremist-threatened northeast. The reversal came after an emergency meeting with UNICEF representatives.
(Reuters, 12/14/18)(AP, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 14, In southwestern Pakistan six security officials were killed and 14 others wounded in an attack when their convoy came under heavy firing in a mountainous area near the border with Iran. Some 30 militants attacked the Frontier Corps convoy. Four attackers were killed in the shootout.
(Reuters, 12/14/18)(AP, 12/16/18)
2018 Dec 14, A Philippine court found 66 alleged members of the Abu Sayyaf guilty of kidnapping dozens of students, teachers and a Catholic priest in the south in 2000, in the largest single conviction involving the brutal Muslim militant group.
(AP, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 14, In Poland a group of small islands and countries, particularly vulnerable to global warming threatened to block agreement at UN climate talks unless their demands are met. Former Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed, head of the Alliance of Small Island States, said "we are deeply unhappy with the way the talks are going".
(AP, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 14, A Romanian court rejected a request by Turkey to extradite Kamil Demirkaya, a Turkish journalist it accuses of terrorism, after prosecutors said the case was political.
(AP, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 14, In Somalia lawmaker Abdishakur Bule was killed in Baidoa in cross fire between security forces and supporters of former al Shabaab leader Mukhtar Robow.
(Reuters, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 14, Spain's government announced a plan to spend 7.3 billion euros ($8.2 billion) over the next 10 years on improving its military defense capabilities.
(AP, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 14, Spanish prosecutors charged pop music star Shakira with tax evasion, alleging she failed to pay more than 14.5 million euros ($16.3 million) between 2012 and 2014. Shakira listed the Bahamas as her official residence for tax purposes while living in Spain.
(AP, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 14, Sri Lanka's Supreme Court rejected PM Mahinda Rajapaksa's bid for an injunction on a lower court's order that barred him and his cabinet from carrying out their roles in government. Rajapaksa planned to resign the next day.
(Reuters, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 14, In eastern Syria Kurdish-led forces seized the Islamic State's main hub of Hajin, a milestone in a massive and costly US-backed operation to eradicate the jihadists from Deir Ezzor province.
(AFP, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 14, Syrian Kurdish parties said that Turkish threats to attack northern Syria amounted to a "declaration of war" and urged world powers to prevent an assault on the region.
(Reuters, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 14, The Turkish military said it had killed eight militants from the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in air strikes targeting the Zap, Hakurk and Haftanin regions of northern Iraq.
(Reuters, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 14, A Huthi rebel delegation returned to Yemen's insurgent-controlled capital of Sanaa after wrapping up an initial round of breakthrough UN-brokered peace talks in Sweden.
(AFP, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 15, Pres. Donald Trump said Interior Sec. Ryan Zinke will be leaving the administration by the year's end. Zinke faced federal investigations into his travel, political activity and potential conflicts of interest.
(SSFC, 12/16/18, p.A10)
2018 Dec 15, In Maryland Nadia Dominique Morgan (35), an award-winning Johns Hopkins rheumatologist, was killed in a hit-and-run involving three vehicles. Jason William Hines (31) was later in connection with the fatal hit-and-run.
(AP, 12/17/18)
2018 Dec 15, The foreign ministers of Afghanistan, Pakistan and China met in Kabul to discuss trade, development and ways to end Afghanistan's 17-year war.
(AP, 12/15/18)
2018 Dec 15, Australia's PM Scott Morrison said his country now formally recognizes West Jerusalem as Israel's capital, reversing decades of Middle East policy, but will not move its embassy there immediately. The Palestinian leadership described as "irresponsible" Australia's recognition of west Jerusalem as Israel's capital, saying it violated international law.
(Reuters, 12/15/18)(AFP, 12/15/18)
2018 Dec 15, In Bangladesh barrister Mahabub Uddin Khokon, a candidate for the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), was wounded with shotgun pellets by a senior police officer in Noakhali, a mostly-rural district in the country's southeast. He was reportedly out canvassing for votes along with hundreds of supporters, of whom about 40 were also injured.
(Reuters, 12/28/18)
2018 Dec 15, A fire at the Chester Zoo in northwest England killed insects, frogs, fish and small birds in an enclosure devoted to exotic tropical habitats.
(AP, 12/16/18)
2018 Dec 15, In China a coal mine accident in the southwestern city of Chongqing killed seven workers and injured three.
(Reuters, 12/15/18)
2018 Dec 15, The security court in Comoros handed down life sentences with hard labor to four senior opposition figures and lengthy jail terms to several others for plotting against the state. Former vice-president Djaffar Said Ahmed Hassane, who has taken refuge in Tanzania, was among those sentenced to forced labor. Colonel Ibrahim Salim, a former head of the army, was one of those jailed.
(AFP, 12/16/18)
2018 Dec 15, It was reported that harsh weather conditions and tight police border controls have stopped thousands of migrants from attempting to cross into Croatia at the EU's Balkan frontier, leaving them stuck in impoverished Bosnia until spring.
(Reuters, 12/15/18)
2018 Dec 15, A military court in Ethiopia jailed 66 soldiers for between five and 14 years for marching on PM Abiy Ahmed's palace in October, ruling they had broken military ethics.
(Reuters, 12/15/18)
2018 Dec 15, Former Ethiopian president Girma Woldegiorgis died, two weeks short of his 95th birthday. He was president of Ethiopia for twelve years between 2001 to 2013, a largely ceremonial role.
(AFP, 12/15/18)
2018 Dec 15, In France groups of defiant "yellow vest" demonstrators faced off with tens of thousands of police around the country, but their numbers were sharply lower on a fifth and decisive weekend for the anti-government movement. Around 66,000 protesters turned out again on the fifth round of anti-government demonstrations, which sprung up over fuel tax hikes last month.
(AFP, 12/15/18)(AFP, 12/16/18)
2018 Dec 15, In southern India police arrested three people after at least 11 died of suspected food poisoning following a ceremony to celebrate the construction of a new Hindu temple in Karnataka state. Laboratory tests later showed the presence of monocrotophos, a pesticide which attacks the nerves, in food and vomit samples.
(AP, 12/15/18)(AP, 12/18/18)
2018 Dec 15, Israeli forces in Ramallah demolished the home of Islam Abu Hmaid, a Palestinian charged with killing a soldier during an Israeli raid in the West Bank earlier this year.
(AP, 12/15/18)
2018 Dec 15, In Kashmir seven civilians died and dozens were injured when Indian security forces opened fire at people protesting the killing of three militants in a gun battle in a village in Pulwama district. The gunfight also left three armed rebels and a soldier dead. The separatist group Hurriyat Conference called for a three-day strike and protests across Kashmir.
(Reuters, 12/15/18)(AFP, 12/15/18)
2018 Dec 15, Police in the Maldives questioned Yameen Abdul Gayoom, the country's defeated former strongman president, over complaints of alleged illegal financial transactions, a day after they froze bank accounts with millions of dollars.
(AP, 12/15/18)
2018 Dec 15, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador detailed plans to "rescue" the national oil industry by boosting crude production at the state-owned oil company by 45 percent before 2025.
(AP, 12/16/18)
2018 Dec 15, Nicaraguan police beat at least seven journalists with batons, including one of the country's best known editors, in an escalating crackdown on independent media in the aftermath of protests against President Daniel Ortega.
(Reuters, 12/15/18)
2018 Dec 15, In Nigeria leaders of countries in the Lake Chad region met to give fresh impetus to their fight against Boko Haram. Benin, the Central African Republic, Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria will hold a follow-up to a November gathering in Chad to tackle a surge in Boko Haram attacks in the restive region.
(AFP, 12/15/18)
2018 Dec 15, In Paraguay Carlos Eduardo Sales Cardoso (aka Capile), the leader of the Brazilian criminal organization Pure Third Command, was captured in Asuncion and will be expelled from the country.
(AP, 12/16/18)
2018 Dec 15, In Poland nearly 200 countries at the United Nations talks in Katowice saved the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement from disintegration by agreeing a package of guidelines for its implementation. It deferred rules on carbon credits and lacked any firm commitment to strengthen countries' emissions cut targets by 2020, when the agreement comes into force.
(Reuters, 12/16/18)
2018 Dec 15, In Portugal four people died when a helicopter in the country's medical emergency service crashed in the Serra de Pias hills east of Porto.
(AP, 12/16/18)
2018 Dec 15, Qatar called for a new regional alliance following the failure of the four-decade-old Gulf Cooperation Council to resolve an 18-month rift between the emirate and its neighbors.
(AFP, 12/15/18)
2018 Dec 15, Somalia saw a third day of protests over the arrest of Muhktar Robow, the former No. 2 leader of the al-Shabab extremist group, who has been a leading candidate for a regional presidency. Officials said at least eight people have been killed so far as angry supporters take to the streets and clash with police.
(AP, 12/15/18)
2018 Dec 15, In Somalia the US military's Africa Command (Africom) carried out four air strikes with Somali partners, killing 34 militants.
(Reuters, 12/17/18)
2018 Dec 15, Sri Lanka's disputed PM Mahinda Rajapaksa announced that he would step aside, paving the way for his sacked predecessor to regain the position.
(AP, 12/15/18)
2018 Dec 15, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople welcomed the creation of an Orthodox church in Ukraine independent of Moscow and invited its leader to Istanbul to receive official confirmation of its status.
(AFP, 12/16/18)
2018 Dec 15, Ukraine chose the leader of a new national church, marking an historic split from Russia which its leaders see as vital to the country's security and independence. President Petro Poroshenko said Metropolitan Epifaniy, of the Kiev Patriarchate church, had been chosen as head of the new church.
(Reuters, 12/15/18)
2018 Dec 15, A Ukrainian air force pilot died when his Sukhoi Su-27 fighter jet crashed while attempting to land at a base in the northern region of Zhytomyr.
(AP, 12/15/18)
2018 Dec 15, Zimbabwe's President Emmerson Mnangagwa pledged to reform his party and promote democracy in his closing address to the ruling ZANU PF party's annual conference.
(AFP, 12/15/18)
2018 Dec 16, US Badger CEO John Anton said that his company would halt shipment from Hetian Taida Apparel while it investigates reports of sportswear being manufactured at an internment camp in China's Xingiang region.
(SFC, 12/19/18, p.A4)
2018 Dec 16, In Florida Coast Guard Petty Officer First Class John Presnar (44) shot and killed his wife and their 7-year-old son and critically wounded their daughter (8) before killing himself following an argument at their home south of Miami.
(SFC, 12/17/18, p.A6)
2018 Dec 16, It was reported that Boston's Museum of Fine Arts has received what museum officials are calling a transformative gift of nearly 200 pieces of Chinese art that have been in the same family for six generations. The gift from Wan-go H. C. Weng is the largest and most significant gift of Chinese art in museum history.
(AP, 12/16/18)
2018 Dec 16, Belgium police deployed teargas and water cannon after scuffles broke out in Brussels as thousands of people answered a call by far-right groups to reject a UN migration pact.
(AFP, 12/16/18)
2018 Dec 16, In Brazil Joao Teixeira de Faria (76), better known as "Joao de Deus" or "John of God," was arrested after women came forward in Brazilian media and to police to allege he sexually forced himself on them on pretext of "curing" them of ailments. Police conducted raids on properties linked to Faria and found handguns, gemstones and -- hidden behind a false panel in a wardrobe -- a suitcase containing the equivalent of $300,000 in cash.
(AFP, 12/23/18)
2018 Dec 16, In CongoDRC at least one person was killed and over 80 injured in clashes between supporters of rival candidates in Tshikapa, a city in the central Kasai region, just days ahead of a crucial presidential election.
(AFP, 12/17/18)
2018 Dec 16, In France yellow vest protesters occupied dozens of traffic roundabouts across the country even as their movement for economic justice appeared to be losing momentum on the fifth straight weekend of protests.
(AP, 12/16/18)
2018 Dec 16, Georgia's incoming President Salome Zurabishvili vowed to reconcile political divisions and deepen ties with NATO and Europe at Sunday's inauguration that opposition protesters were blocked from reaching.
(Reuters, 12/16/18)
2018 Dec 16, Thousands of Hungarians protested in Budapest against a new labor law and what they see as the increasingly authoritarian rule of right-wing nationalist PM Viktor Orban.
(Reuters, 12/16/18)
2018 Dec 16, In India a New Delhi security guard allegedly raped a three-year-old girl after luring her with sweets. The girl was hospitalized and her suspected attacker was soon arrested.
(Reuters, 12/17/18)
2018 Dec 16, In Indonesia Mount Soputan, located on the northern part of Sulawesi island, erupted twice. Local residents were urged to avoid activities near the mountain.
(AP, 12/16/18)
2018 Dec 16, In Iran the appointment of Kambiz Mehdizadeh, President Hassan Rouhani's son-in-law, as head of Iran's geological survey led to the resignation of Jafar Sargheyni, head of the mining section in the industries ministry. It was reported that the appointment has renewed accusations of nepotism.
(AFP, 12/16/18)
2018 Dec 16, Iranian authorities detained an unspecified number of steel mill workers after five weeks of protests over delays in salaries in Khuzestan province.
(AP, 12/17/18)
2018 Dec 16, In Iran a website of the Revolutionary Guard reported that Gen. Ghodratollah Mansouri, a vetran of the 1980s Iran-Iraq war, accidentally shot himself in the head while cleaning a his pistol.
(SFC, 12/17/18, p.A2)
2018 Dec 16, Iraqis laid the cornerstone in rebuilding Mosul's Al-Nuri mosque and leaning minaret, national emblems destroyed last year in the ferocious battle against the Islamic State group.
(AFP, 12/16/18)
2018 Dec 16, The Israeli military said it has exposed a fourth Hezbollah attack tunnel dug from Lebanon.
(AP, 12/16/18)
2018 Dec 16, In northern Japan 42 people were injured in an explosion at a bar in Sapporo.
(Reuters, 12/16/18)
2018 Dec 16, In Kashmir a security clampdown and a strike sponsored by separatists fighting against Indian rule shut most of the Indian-administered state.
(AP, 12/16/18)
2018 Dec 16, In western Kenya five people were killed in a village after residents resisted the arrest of a suspect in a domestic abuse case. A policeman was soon arrested in connection with the deaths.
(AP, 12/17/18)
2018 Dec 16, Hundreds of Lebanese took to the streets to protest against a political stalemate that has prevented the formation of a new government seven months after elections.
(AP, 12/16/18)
2018 Dec 16, North Korea condemned the US administration for stepping up sanctions and pressure on the nuclear-armed country, warning of a return to "exchanges of fire" and that disarming Pyongyang could be blocked forever.
(Reuters, 12/16/18)
2018 Dec 16, It was reported that Pakistan's army chief has approved death sentences for 15 people convicted by military courts of involvement in attacks that killed 32 security forces and two civilians.
(AP, 12/16/18)
2018 Dec 16, In southern Romania Anca Pop (34), a Romanian-Canadian singer-songwriter, died after her car plunged into the Danube River.
(AP, 12/18/18)
2018 Dec 16, Russians living in the far eastern region of Primorsky Krai elected a Kremlin-backed candidate for governor on Sunday after a previous election was thrown out due to voting fraud. Oleg Kozhemyako won 61.4 percent of the votes after 95 percent of the ballots had been counted.
(AP, 12/16/18)
2018 Dec 16, At least two Rwandan civilians were reported killed and eight injured when attackers set fire to three passenger vehicles in the southern Nyamagabe district, which borders Burundi.
(AP, 12/16/18)
2018 Dec 16, In southern Serbia a bus skidded off the road and overturned amid wintry weather, killing three people and injuring 32 others.
(AP, 12/16/18)
2018 Dec 16, In Somalia the US military's Africa Command (Africom) carried out two air strikes with Somali partners, killing 28 militants.
(Reuters, 12/17/18)
2018 Dec 16, In Spain dozens of animal rights activists stripped naked and covered themselves in fake blood in Barcelona in a protest against the use of fur and leather.
(Reuters, 12/16/18)
2018 Dec 16, Sri Lanka's president reappointed Ranil Wickremesinghe as prime minister, nearly two months after firing him and setting off a long political stalemate in the South Asian island nation.
(AP, 12/16/18)
2018 Dec 16, In Switzerland a tour bus on its way to Germany crashed, killing one person and injuring 44 others.
(AP, 12/16/18)
2018 Dec 16, In Syria a car bomb killed at least eight people including four civilians near a pro-Turkey rebel post in the northern city of Afrin.
(AFP, 12/16/18)
2018 Dec 16, In Yemen clashes shook Hodeida after air strikes and deadly fighting on the outskirts overnight. At least 12 were killed and 25 others wounded from both sides.
(AFP, 12/16/18)(SFC, 12/17/18, p.A2)
2018 Dec 17, US plane maker Boeing and Brazil's Embraer said they have approved the terms of a partnership to create a joint venture now worth $5.26 billion -- more than when they first announced it in July.
(AFP, 12/17/18)
2018 Dec 17, The Taliban held "another" meeting with US officials, this time in the United Arab Emirates and also involving Saudi, Pakistani and Emirati representatives in the latest attempt to bring a negotiated end to Afghanistan's 17-year war.
(AP, 12/17/18)
2018 Dec 17, Penny Marshall (b.1943), co-star of the "Laverne and Shirley" sitcom (1976-1983), died at her home in Los Angeles. Following the sitcom whe went on to direct such films as "A League of Their Own" (1992), "Renaissance Man" (1994), "The Preacher's Wife" (1996) and "Riding in Cars With Boys" (2001).
(SFC, 12/19/18, p.C3)(SFC, 12/21/18, p.E2)
2018 Dec 17, Two Chicago police officers were fatally struck by a train as they investigated a report of gunshots on the city's far South Side.
(SFC, 12/18/18, p.A6)
2018 Dec 17, Google said it will spend more than $1 billion to build a new office complex in NYC allowing it to double its current 7,000 now employed there.
(SFC, 12/18/18, p.D2)
2018 Dec 17, Astronomers announced the discovery of the farthest known object in our solar system. The cosmic body, located about 11 billion miles away, was nicknamed "Farout".
(SFC, 12/18/18, p.A6)
2018 Dec 17, The head of Albania's top court was removed after he failed to account for his income. The nine-member court is currently unable to function as eight of its judges have been removed from duty in the vetting process. Albania is vetting some 800 judges and prosecutors to root out bribery and ensure they are independent from politics.
(AP, 12/17/18)
2018 Dec 17, Bangladesh's main opposition group promised to remove curbs on free speech and the media and to rein in the police if it unseats PM Sheikh Hasina from her decade-long rule in this month's national election.
(Reuters, 12/17/18)
2018 Dec 17, A Belgian court ruled that a Roman Catholic priest cannot use the secrecy of confession as a defense when it convicted a clergyman in Bruges of failing to seek help for a man who went on to commit suicide. The court handed Alexan der Stroobandt a suspended one month jail term and ordered him to pay the widow a symbolic euro in damages.
(Reuters, 12/17/18)
2018 Dec 17, In Brazil a fire began late today in the low-income Educandos neighborhood of Manaus and was extinguished several hours later. At least 600 wooden houses were destroyed.
(AP, 12/18/18)
2018 Dec 17, Britain's PM Theresa May warned MPs against supporting a second Brexit referendum, as calls mounted for a public vote to break the political impasse over the deal she has struck with the EU.
(AFP, 12/17/18)
2018 Dec 17, Cambodia's PM Hun Sen inaugurated the 400-megawatt Lower Sesan II hydropower dam in the northeastern province of Stung Treng. It was built over four years at a cost of nearly $800 million and is a joint venture of China's Hydrolancang International Energy, which has a 51 percent stake.
(AP, 12/17/18)
2018 Dec 17, China and the United States clashed again over their respective trade policies at the WTO in Geneva as the two countries are tried to iron out their differences so further US tariffs are not imposed on Chinese goods.
(AP, 12/17/18)
2018 Dec 17, In China the wife of detained Chinese lawyer Wang Quanzhang and three supporters shaved their heads and attempted to submit to a Beijing court a petition protesting her husband's indefinite detention.
(AFP, 12/17/18)
2018 Dec 17, Colombia's armed forces rescued Melissa Martinez Garcia (34), a relative of late Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez who won the 1982 Nobel Prize for literature. She was seized at the end of August by a group of armed men who intercepted her vehicle near the northern city of Santa Marta. They demanded a ransom of $5 million for her release.
(Reuters, 12/17/18)
2018 Dec 17, Colombia's ELN Marxist guerrilla group announced a Christmas ceasefire as peace talks with the country's government have been on hold since August.
(AFP, 12/17/18)
2018 Dec 17, In Colombia six men were shot dead by unidentified gunmen in a rural area of Mapiripan, southeastern Meta province, an area known for cocaine trafficking.
(Reuters, 12/18/18)
2018 Dec 17, The Czech Rep.'s National Cyber and Information Security Agency warned that the hardware and software made by Huawei and another Chinese telecommunications company, ZTE, pose a security threat.
(AP, 12/18/18)
2018 Dec 17, In Egypt two roadside bombs hit a police convoy in northern Sinai, killing two conscripts. The bombs struck two armored vehicles that were part of a convoy on a search-and-destroy mission in an area west of Rafah.
(AP, 12/17/18)
2018 Dec 17, In Egypt a German man (18) went missing before he was due to take a domestic flight from Luxor to Cairo, where he planned to visit his grandfather.
(AP, 1/7/19)
2018 Dec 17, France's Alliance police labor union urged the government to invest in rebuilding the country's police forces and called for a work slowdown to protest planned cuts in the national police budget.
(AP, 12/17/18)
2018 Dec 17, In France two people weredetained as part of the terrorism investigation in the Dec. 11 attack that killed five people. They were suspected of provinding the firearm used by Cherif Chekatt.
(SFC, 12/18/18, p.A4)
2018 Dec 17, German authorities said five Frankfurt police officers are under investigation over allegations they shared far-right images, videos and texts in a chat group with one another.
(AP, 12/17/18)
2018 Dec 17, In Greece a bomb blast early today damaged a building in Athens housing the headquarters of the private radio and television network Skai, but there were no casualties.
(AFP, 12/17/18)
2018 Dec 17, In Hungary security forces physically ejected opposition lawmakers from the headquarters of the state broadcaster MTVA in Budapest early today. A group of 10 lawmakers had entered the building, insisting on the right to read five demands live on air, including the revocation of a new labor law, passed last week in parliament.
(AP, 12/17/18)
2018 Dec 17, PM Narendra Modi said India will give financial assistance of $1.4 billion to the Maldives, the biggest aid yet to the Indian Ocean island nation that is grappling with debt from a Chinese building spree.
(Reuters, 12/17/18)
2018 Dec 17, An Indian court jailed for life Sajjan Kumar, a leader of the main opposition Congress party, for his role in anti-Sikh riots that erupted after the 1984 murder of the then prime minister, Indira Gandhi, and killed nearly 3,000 people.
(Reuters, 12/17/18)
2018 Dec 17, In India at least six people died and 129 others were injured in a fire that broke out in the five-story government-run ESIC Kamgar Hospital in the suburban Andheri area of Mumbai. The death toll soon rose to eight.
(AP, 12/17/18)(AP, 12/18/18)
2018 Dec 17, The Israeli military partially demolished the home of Ashraf Naalweh, a Palestinian accused of killing two Israelis in an attack two months ago. Israeli troops killed Naalweh in an arrest raid last week after a two-month manhunt.
(AP, 12/17/18)
2018 Dec 17, Lebanese soldiers went on alert after Israeli troops rolled out barbed wire along the border, as tensions remained high two weeks after Israel launched an operation to identify and destroy Hezbollah tunnels.
(AP, 12/17/18)
2018 Dec 17, Malaysia filed criminal charges against Goldman Sachs and two former executives for their role in the alleged multibillion-dollar ransacking of state investment fund 1MDB.
(AP, 12/17/18)
2018 Dec 17, In Morocco two Scandinavian women were found dead in the High Atlas mountains. Hikers Louisa Vesterager Jespersen (24) of Denmark and Maren Ueland (28) of Norway were found dead with cuts to their necks. One suspect was arrested the next day and other suspects were being sought. On Dec. 20 authorities arrested three more suspects.
(AFP, 12/18/18)(AP, 12/20/18)
2018 Dec 17, In Myanmar Private Aung Kyaw Thet went missing after his patrol was fired on from the Bangladesh side of the border. His body was found on Dec. 21 with gunshot wounds in his face, arm and leg. The identity of the attackers was unknown and police were still investigating
(Reuters, 12/23/18)
2018 Dec 17, Pakistan's foreign ministry spokesman, Mohammad Faisal, said that Indian national Hamid Nehal Ansari is being repatriated to New Delhi after serving a three-year prison sentence for spying.
(AP, 12/17/18)
2018 Dec 17, Poland's Pres. Andrzej Duda, an ally of the governing Law and Justice (PiS) party, signed into law amendments to contentious legislation that will allow some Supreme Court judges to remain in their posts after having been forced into early retirement.
(AP, 12/18/18)
2018 Dec 17, Russia said it had built new barracks for troops on a disputed chain of islands near Japan and would build more facilities for armored vehicles, a move likely to anger Tokyo after it urged Moscow to reduce its military activity there.
(Reuters, 12/17/18)
2018 Dec 17, Serbia reported that two men have frozen to death as a cold spell throughout the Balkan region slowed down traffic, disrupted power supplies and closed down schools in some areas.
(AP, 12/17/18)
2018 Dec 17, The Sierra Leone health ministry said late today it had agreed a timeline with doctors to respond to their demands, announcing the agreement in a statement signed by the heads of two doctors' associations.
(Reuters, 12/18/18)
2018 Dec 17, In Singapore a gay man won the right to adopt a child he fathered via a surrogate in the United States, in a landmark court ruling for the conservative city-state.
(AFP, 12/17/18)
2018 Dec 17, Switzerland and Britain signed an agreement guaranteeing that flights between the two countries can continue uninterrupted even if London opts to leave the European Union without a deal with Brussels.
(AFP, 12/17/18)
2018 Dec 17, In Thailand Catriona Gray (24) of the Philippines was named Miss Universe 2018 in the 67th competition held in Bangkok, besting contestants from 93 other countries
(AP, 12/17/18)
2018 Dec 17, In Thailand Sului Piew (2), a son of migrant workers from Myanmar, went missing when he went out to play near the sugarcane plantation where his parents work. A 3-year-old friend told her parents that she saw Sului being abducted. Piew's body was found on Dec. 25 in a sugarcane plantation a few miles from where he disappeared.
(AP, 12/24/18)(AP, 12/26/18)
2018 Dec 17, The United Nations and the Palestinian Authority appealed for $350 million in aid for Palestinians next year, saying much more was needed but they had to be realistic after a year of funding cuts.
(Reuters, 12/17/18)
2018 Dec 17, The Vatican's criminal tribunal convicted Italian builder Angelo Proietti of using his accounts in the Vatican bank to launder money, and sentenced him to 2½ years in prison. The decision was announced on Dec. 27. This marked the first time the Vatican court had handed down a money-laundering verdict since the city state criminalized the offense in 2010 as part of its financial reform efforts.
(AP, 12/27/18)
2018 Dec 18, US President Donald Trump took a swipe at America's tech giants, accusing them of having a liberal bias, and claiming Twitter was making it more difficult to follow his account.
(AFP, 12/18/18)
2018 Dec 18, US Pres. Donald Trump signed a one page memorandum launching the Pentagon's new Space Command. The program was estimated to cost over $800 million over the next five years.
(SFC, 12/19/18, p.A7)
2018 Dec 18, The Trump administration moved to officially ban bump stocks, which allow semiautomatic weapons to fire rapidly, and has made them illegal to possess beginning in late March.
(SFC, 12/19/18, p.A7)
2018 Dec 18, The United States pledged $5.8 billion in aid and investment for strengthening government and economic development in Central America and another $4.8 billion in development aid for southern Mexico.
(SFC, 12/19/18, p.A4)
2018 Dec 18, The US government said that it is reviewing reports of forced labor at a Chinese internment camp where ethnic minorities are sewing clothes that have been shipped to the US market.
(AP, 12/19/18)
2018 Dec 18, Arizona's Republican Gov. Doug Ducey named Rep. Martha McSally to replace US Sen. Jon Kyl in the US Senate seat that belonged to Sen. John McCain.
(SFC, 12/19/18, p.A6)
2018 Dec 18, A US federal judge in NYC ruled that a 1974 state ban on nunchucks is unconstitutional under the Second Amendment.
(SFC, 12/19/18, p.A6)
2018 Dec 18, The New York attorney general's office said the Donald J, Trump Foundation has agreed to close following a court decision that allowed a lawsuit against the foundation to proceed.
(SFC, 12/19/18, p.A6)
2018 Dec 18, The New York Times reported late today that hackers had broken into the EU's diplomatic communications for years, downloading cables that showed worries about the Trump administration, struggles to deal with Russia and China, and the threat of Iran reviving its nuclear program.
(Reuters, 12/19/18)
2018 Dec 18, The Washington-based Fulbright Association said its 2018 prize for international understanding will go to German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
(AP, 12/18/18)
2018 Dec 18, World oil prices tumbled to strike the lowest levels in more than a year, hit by fears over the outlook for the global economy.
(AFP, 12/18/18)
2018 Dec 18, In Austria European officials and companies met with African leaders in Vienna for talks intended as a springboard to increase investment in Africa.
(AP, 12/18/18)
2018 Dec 18, British ministers agreed to make no-deal Brexit planning "an operational priority" amid continued opposition to PM Theresa's May draft divorce deal, just 14 weeks before the country leaves the EU.
(AFP, 12/18/18)
2018 Dec 18, Cameroon's military killed seven suspected English-speaking separatist rebels in overnight fighting in Bamenda in the North West region. The government said that at least 1,200 people have died in the violence since January, which started after Nigeria detained and extradited separatist leader Julius Ayuk Tabe and 46 other alleged separatists to Cameroon.
(AP, 12/18/18)
2018 Dec 18, President Xi Jinping repeated China's commitment to a multilateral trading system and further opening of its economy.
(AP, 12/18/18)
2018 Dec 18, The chairman of Huawei challenged the US and other governments to provide evidence for claims the Chinese tech giant is a security risk as the company launched a public relations effort to defuse fears that threaten its role in next-generation communications.
(AP, 12/18/18)
2018 Dec 18, The Czech Republic's PM Andrej Babis ordered his government office to stop using mobile phones by Chinese telecoms company Huawei.
(AP, 12/18/18)
2018 Dec 18, French "yellow vest" protesters caused transport chaos after occupying highway toll booths and setting some of them on fire.
(Reuters, 12/18/18)
2018 Dec 18, A German court convicted a man of unauthorized dealing in firearms over the sale in 2016 of weapons that he advertised as being usable to "shoot down asylum-seekers." Mario R. (35) was sentenced to two years and 10 months in prison and was confiscated 99,100 euros ($112,287) in proceeds.
(AP, 12/18/18)
2018 Dec 18, Israel's PM Benjamin Netanyahu said more than 130 Palestinians have been arrested in recent days in Israel's search for a suspect wanted in a deadly West Bank shooting.
(AP, 12/18/18)
2018 Dec 18, Libyan customs seized a consignment of arms which arrived from Turkey at Khoms port. A day earlier a cargo of 2.5 million Turkish-made bullets was seized at the same port. The UN last June extended an arms embargo on Libya for another year.
(Reuters, 12/22/18)
2018 Dec 18, Lithuanian lawmakers voted to buy a floating liquefied natural gas terminal that has been providing gas to the Baltic nation as it tries to reduce its reliance on Russian energy. The vessel is estimated to cost some 308 million euros ($349 million). Lithuania plans to buy it by 2025.
(AP, 12/18/18)
2018 Dec 18, Mexico's Pres. Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said his new government is increasing minimum wages across the country by 16 percent and doubling the minimum wage in a narrow stretch of territory along the border with the US. The minimum is currently equivalent to $4.40 per day, and will rise to $5.10 in January.
(AP, 12/18/18)
2018 Dec 18, In the Netherlands an appeals court has upheld a ban on a Dutch arm of the Bandidos Motorcycle Club, agreeing with a lower court's conclusion that the biker gang forms a threat to public order.
(AP, 12/18/18)
2018 Dec 18, The Dutch Supreme Court upheld the war crimes conviction of timber dealer Guus Kouwenhoven, who was found guilty last year of selling arms to former Liberian leader Charles Taylor, and of complicity in war crimes committed by Taylor's forces in Liberia and Guinea from 2000 to 2003.
(AP, 12/18/18)
2018 Dec 18, In the Netherlands Humeyra Ergincanli (16) was shot dead in front of fellow students in her high school's bicycle shed. Suspect Bekir E. (31) was arrested shortly after the shooting at the Rotterdam Design College.
(AP, 12/18/18)(AP, 12/21/18)
2018 Dec 18, North Korea's main state newspaper warned of the "negative impact" from mobile phones use around the world, as both legal and illicit communications devices proliferate in the isolated country.
(Reuters, 12/18/18)
2018 Dec 18, Russia said it has cut its military flights in Syria from more than 100 per day to fewer than four a week, in another sign the country's conflict is winding down.
(AFP, 12/18/18)
2018 Dec 18, Sierra Leone doctors returned to work, ending a 13-day strike over pay and conditions that paralyzed hospitals nationwide.
(Reuters, 12/18/18)
2018 Dec 18, South Korean fire department officials said that three teenage boys were presumed dead and seven other boys were being treated for injuries after they were found unconscious at a motel in the seaside town of Gangneung.
(AP, 12/18/18)
2018 Dec 18, South Sudan's National Security Service forced several officials assessing the country's new peace deal to strip and face "inhuman" treatment. Four East African monitors were blindfolded, bound, kicked and robbed of money and a wedding ring. The men were stripped to their underwear and the woman was stripped naked. All were released five hours later.
(AP, 12/19/18)
2018 Dec 18, Meeting in Geneva the foreign ministers of Iran, Russia and Turkey said that a new Syrian Constitutional Committee should convene early next year, kicking off a viable political peace process.
(Reuters, 12/18/18)
2018 Dec 18, Pope Francis announced a shakeup of the Vatican's communications operations, replacing the longtime editor of the Holy See newspaper and naming a prominent Italian journalist to coordinate the editorial line of all Vatican media.
(AP, 12/18/18)
2018 Dec 18, Vietnam's state media reported the arrest of Do Van Khanh, a former senior executive of a state-owned oil company, for "abusing power to appropriate property".
(Reuters, 12/18/18)
2018 Dec 18, A Zimbabwean inquiry said the military's use of live bullets to quell post-election violence earlier this year was "disproportionate and unjustified".
(Reuters, 12/18/18)
2018 Dec 19, President Donald Trump declared victory against the militant group in Syria and hinted that a withdrawal could be imminent.
(Reuters, 12/19/18)
2018 Dec 19, The US Treasury Dept. sanctioned 15 Russians over hacking, interference in US elections and a nerve agent attack in England.
(SFC, 12/20/18, p.A6)
2018 Dec 19, US stocks fell after the Federal Reserve raised interest rates for a 4th time this year to a range of 2.25 to 2.5 percent. The market finished at its lowest point since September 2017. The DJIA fell to 23,323.
(SFC, 12/20/18, p.D1)
2018 Dec 19, An annual report by the NY-based Committee to Protect Journalists said the number of journalists killed worldwide in retaliation for their work nearly doubled this year. It found that 34 journalists were killed in retaliation for their work as of Dec. 14, while at least 53 were killed overall.
(AP, 12/19/18)
2018 Dec 19, The robotic arm of the Mars Insight lander removed a seismometer from the spacecraft deck and set it on the ground to monitor earthquakes.
(SFC, 12/21/18, p.A8)
2018 Dec 19, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan issued a blistering report about clergy sexual abuse, saying the Catholic dioceses of the state have not released the names of at least 500 clergy accused of sexually abusing children.
(SFC, 12/20/18, p.A6)
2018 Dec 19, The Baltimore Sun reported that Clarence Shipley Jr. (47) was exonerated and released this week after being imprisoned for 27 years for the 1991 death of Kevin Smith (29) in a false witness testimony. New witnesses identified the killer as a man who died in 2005.
(SFC, 12/20/18, p.A6)
2018 Dec 19, Facebook announced its third and biggest purge of military-linked accounts in Myanmar, where critics have charged that the social network did too little to block inflammatory material that fueled communal hatred and violence, particularly against the country's Muslim Rohingya minority.
(AP, 12/19/18)
2018 Dec 19, Albania's Foreign Ministry said two Iranian diplomats had been expelled for "violating their diplomatic status" following talks with other countries, including Israel.
(AP, 12/20/18)
2018 Dec 19, It was reported that Britain's GlaxoSmithKline and US-based Pfizer are merging their health care divisions, creating a market leader in "over the counter" health care products like pain relievers and vitamins with combined sales of 9.8 billion pounds ($12.7 billion). GSK will own 68 percent of the joint venture.
(AP, 12/19/18)
2018 Dec 19, Britain's Financial Conduct Authority said Santander's UK banking division has been fined £32.8 million for failing to process accounts and investments of deceased customers.
(AFP, 12/19/18)
2018 Dec 19, A Canadian government official said third Canadian has been detained in China but the incident does not appear to be linked to the arrest of two other citizens over the last week.
(Reuters, 12/19/18)
2018 Dec 19, The Norwegian Refugee Council said that more than 430,000 people have fled violence in Cameroon's restive English-speaking regions and are hiding in rural areas with few resources.
(AP, 12/19/18)
2018 Dec 19, In CongoDRC Andre Kimbuta, the governor Kinshasa, cancelled all political rallies in the capital for the 21 candidates vying for the presidency in the Dec. 23 elections.
(AP, 12/19/18)
2018 Dec 19, In Cyprus Jordan's foreign affairs minister said his country is seeking closer ties with Greece and Cyprus as part of a strategy to bolster regional peace and security and promote economic cooperation.
(AP, 12/19/18)
2018 Dec 19, It was reported that ten former employees of the Estonian branch of Danske Bank have been detained in connection with a probe into a major money laundering scandal that allegedly involved money from Russia and former Soviet states.
(AP, 12/19/18)
2018 Dec 19, The European Union said it is investigating a cyber hack of its diplomatic communications, allegedly by Chinese hackers, that revealed EU concern about US Donald Trump, Russia and Iran.
(Reuters, 12/19/18)
2018 Dec 19, The EU moved closer to banning single-use straws, plates, cutlery and cotton swabs after officials from EU member states and the European Parliament said they're following recommendations by its executive branch designed to reduce marine pollution.
(AP, 12/19/18)
2018 Dec 19, France's human rights ombudsman reported that undocumented migrants living in makeshift camps in northern France have been subjected to an "unprecedented" violation of their basic rights over the past three years.
(AFP, 12/19/18)
2018 Dec 19, Chancellor Angela Merkel's cabinet passed new immigration laws to make it easier for lower-skilled foreigners to seek work in Germany and offer rejected asylum seekers who can't be deported a path to residency.
(Reuters, 12/19/18)
2018 Dec 19, German weekly Der Spiegel said Claas Relotius (33), one of its star reporters, has left the publication after committing journalistic fraud "on a grand scale" over a number of years. He resigned after admitting to inventing interviews.
(AP, 12/19/18)
2018 Dec 19, The Greek Supreme Court ordered the extradition to France of Russian Alexander Vinnik, who headed the Bitcoin exchange BTC-e, on suspicion of money laundering.
(AFP, 12/19/18)
2018 Dec 19, In India Swaroop Raj (35), an assistant vice president at Genpact India, committed suicide following accusations of sexual misconduct.
(http://tinyurl.com/ya8cj4a2)(Reuters, 12/21/18)
2018 Dec 19, Italian PM Giuseppe Conte heralded a budget deal with the European Commission, saying the long-awaited accord allowed his government to honor its main commitments and boost the economy.
(Reuters, 12/19/18)
2018 Dec 19, SoftBank Group Corp.'s Japanese mobile subsidiary suffered a bitter debut on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, slumping 15 percent, hurt by a recent service outage and concerns about the use of parts from Chinese telecom giant Huawei.
(AP, 12/19/18)
2018 Dec 19, Kuwait's Supreme Constitutional Court paved the way for two convicted lawmakers to be deprived of their seats by stripping parliament's final say in a politically stormy case.
(Reuters, 12/19/18)
2018 Dec 19, Police in Lithuania said one Russian and several Lithuanians have been detained, suspected of being part of a ring spying for Russia. Those arrested included Valery Ivanov, a former anti-independence leader in the early 1990s, and Algirdas Paleckis, a former lawmaker and leader of the Lithuania's Socialist People's Front.
(AP, 12/19/18)
2018 Dec 19, Madagascar voted in a two-man contest between former presidents Andry Rajoelina and Marc Ravalomanana, who have waited years to come face-to-face in a fiercely personal battle for power in the Indian Ocean island.
(AFP, 12/19/18)
2018 Dec 19, It was reported that Nepal's government has stopped eight Italian contractors from leaving the Himalayan country in an effort to complete a critical but much delayed water supply project for the capital.
(AP, 12/19/18)
2018 Dec 19, In the southern Philippines communist guerrillas abducted two soldiers and at least a dozen militiamen and seized several rifles in an attack on an army base near Sibagat town, Agusan del Sur province.
(AP, 12/19/18)
2018 Dec 19, Romanian stocks dived after the government unveiled a surprise package to slash the budget deficit by raising 10 billion lei ($2.45 billion) of extra revenue, including through a tax on banks.
(AP, 12/19/18)
2018 Dec 19, Russia's top domestic security agency said it has killed suspected members of the Islamic State group plotting a terror attack. FSB commandos tracked down the IS members in the city of Stavropol in southwestern Russia.
(AP, 12/19/18)
2018 Dec 19, In Somalia lawmakers in the volatile South West state elected Abdiasis Hassan Mohamed, the federal government's preferred candidate, as its leader after Mukhtar Robow, a popular former al Shabaab leader, was barred from running in the vote seen as test of the country's political progress.
(Reuters, 12/19/18)
2018 Dec 19, The UN's World Food Program (WFP) said it will cut food aid next year to about 190,000 poor Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank due a shortage of funds.
(Reuters, 12/19/18)
2018 Dec 19, Vatican officials said Pope Francis has accepted the resignation of Los Angeles auxiliary bishop, Monsignor Alexander Salazar (69), following allegations of misconduct with a minor in the 1990s.
(SFC, 12/20/18, p.A4)
2018 Dec 19, In Yemen the Saudi-led coalition bombed the air base next to Sanaa's international airport as a local cease-fire held around the Red Sea port city of Hodeida.
(AP, 12/19/18)
2018 Dec 20, US Defense Sec. James Mattis resigned in protest of Pres. Donald Trump's decision to withdraw US forces from Syria and his rejection of int'l. alliances.
(SFC, 12/21/18, p.A6)
2018 Dec 20, The United States told the UN Security Council that it was committed to the "permanent destruction" of Islamic State in Syria and would "use all instruments of our national power" to push for the withdrawal of Iranian-backed forces in the country.
(Reuters, 12/20/18)
2018 Dec 20, The US Justice Department charged two Chinese citizens with carrying out an extensive hacking campaign to steal data from US companies. Court papers filed in Manhattan federal court alleged the hackers were able to breach the computers of more than 45 entities in 12 states. Prosecutors said Zhu Hua and Zhang Shillong were acting on behalf of China's main intelligence agency.
(AP, 12/20/18)
2018 Dec 20, A report by the US Commission on Civil Rights said that funding for Native American tribes are woefully inadequate.
(SFC, 12/21/18, p.A6)
2018 Dec 20, San Francisco police displayed high-end loot and announced the take-down of a major criminal enterprise. An 8-month investigation yielded 40 fugitive suspects, 12 of who were arrested in SF and Daly City.
(SFC, 12/21/18, p.C1)
2018 Dec 20, In Atlanta, Georgia, four people were killed in a business jet crash. They included Wei Chen, founder and CEO of Memphis-based Sunshine Enterprise Inc., and three co-workers.
(AP, 12/21/18)
2018 Dec 20, Tobacco giant Atria announced that it will invest $12.8 billion to acquire a 35 percent stake in Juul, a San Francisco-based vaping company.
(SFC, 12/21/18, p.A1)
2018 Dec 20, A Facebook official said the company is shutting down a series of fake news sites spreading false information about the Bangladesh opposition days before national elections.
(AP, 12/20/18)
2018 Dec 20, Drones flying near London’s Gatwick airport grounded flights for at least 15 hours, causing chaos for tens of thousands of Christmas travelers in what authorities said was a reckless attempt to cripple Britain’s second busiest airport.
(Reuters, 12/20/18)
2018 Dec 20, Britain's Office for National Statistics estimated that nearly 600 homeless people in England and Wales died the last year -- a 24 percent rise over the past five years.
(AP, 12/20/18)
2018 Dec 20, Britain, Germany and France, three of the United States' main allies in the war against the Islamic State group, reacted with alarm to President Donald Trump's decision to pull US troops out of Syria. Analysts said the US decision to pull troops out of eastern Syria will leave the Kurds exposed to Turkish military threats and forced to cooperate with Damascus.
(AFP, 12/20/18)
2018 Dec 20, The eldest son of Cambodian PM Hun Sen joined the inner circle of his father's ruling Cambodian People's Party, bolstering speculation he is being groomed to succeed to the premiership. Lt. Gen. Hun Manet (41) was boosted from the 865-member Central Committee of the ruling Cambodian People's Party to its 37-member Standing Committee.
(AP, 12/20/18)
2018 Dec 20, The Chinese government lashed out at recent US media reports about forced labor of mostly ethnic Muslim detainees in its western Xinjiang region.
(AP, 12/20/18)
2018 Dec 20, It was reported that authorities in Langfang, a city in China's Hebei province, have issued a ban on all Christmas displays on streets and stores.
(SFC, 12/20/18, p.A2)
2018 Dec 20, The Democratic Republic of Congo's election board postponed a presidential vote scheduled for Dec. 23 by one week until Dec. 30 after a fire destroyed voting materials.
(Reuters, 12/20/18)
2018 Dec 20, Congo's health minister said the second-deadliest Ebola outbreak in history is "certainly" expected to continue for another three or four months. So far there have been 549 Ebola cases in the outbreak that was declared on Aug. 1, including 501 confirmed cases. There have been 278 confirmed deaths.
(AP, 12/20/18)
2018 Dec 20, A Congolese cargo plane went missing after delivering materials for a presidential election to Tshikapa. The plane crashed and it was not clear how many people were on board.
(Reuters, 12/21/18)
2018 Dec 20, In the Czech Rep. an explosion at the CSM mine near the town of Karvina killed 13 men. 12 of the dead were Polish nationals while one was Czech.
(AP, 12/21/18)
2018 Dec 20, In Egypt 43 NGO workers, including at least 15 Americans, were cleared by a court in a case concerning the work of groups promoting democracy in the country. A lower court convicted the 43 in 2013.
(AP, 12/20/18)
2018 Dec 20, Egypt said its security forces have killed eight militants and detained four more who planned attacks on minority Christians during the upcoming holiday season.
(AP, 12/20/18)
2018 Dec 20, The French government said the death toll linked to the anti-government "yellow vest" protests has risen to nine, as demonstrators kept up major disruptions of road traffic.
(Reuters, 12/20/18)
2018 Dec 20, France said it will keep troops in northern Syria for now because Islamic State militants have not been wiped out, contrary to the US view, and has started talks with the United States on the conditions and calendar of its withdrawal.
(Reuters, 12/20/18)
2018 Dec 20, Germany's top appeal court partially overturned the conviction of former Rwandan rebel group leader Ignace Murwanashyaka for abetting war crimes in CongoDRC, citing a lack of evidence and referring it to a different court.
(Reuters, 12/20/18)
2018 Dec 20, Hungary's Pres. Janos Ader said he has signed into law disputed amendments to labor rules which greatly increase overtime hours employers can request from workers.
(AP, 12/20/18)
2018 Dec 20, An Indian schoolgirl (15) died in a Delhi hospital of severe burns after two men set fire to her on a busy street earlier this week in the tourist city of Agra.
(Reuters, 12/21/18)
2018 Dec 20, The Israeli military shot dead a Palestinian car passenger in the West Bank after it broke through a checkpoint. The dead passenger was identified as Qasim Abbasi (17) from east Jerusalem.
(AP, 12/21/18)
2018 Dec 20, In Italy police in Rome searched the Tiber River for twin 6-month-old sisters after recovering the body of their mother.
(AP, 12/20/18)
2018 Dec 20, Three astronauts returned to Earth after more than six months aboard the International Space Station. A Russian Soyuz capsule with NASA's Serena Aunon-Chancellor, Russian Sergey Prokopyev and German astronaut Alexander Gerst of the European Space Agency landed on the snow-covered steppes in Kazakhstan.
(AP, 12/20/18)
2018 Dec 20, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said that the armed forces would build a new airport he plans for Mexico City at a military air base in the town of Santa Lucia north of the capital.
(Reuters, 12/20/18)
2018 Dec 20, Mexico's foreign ministry said that it would allow some non-Mexican migrants back into the country temporarily for humanitarian reasons while they have their US immigration status processed.
(Reuters, 12/20/18)
2018 Dec 20, North Korea said it will never unilaterally give up its nuclear weapons unless the United States first removes what Pyongyang called a nuclear threat.
(AP, 12/20/18)
2018 Dec 20, Vladimir Putin took over 60 questions from a hall of journalists, speaking on everything from rap to pensions to the prospect of taking over the world. Putin said the West was trying to hold back an increasingly powerful Russia.
(AFP, 12/20/18)
2018 Dec 20, Spain's Supreme Court ruled that the captain and the insurer of the Prestige oil tanker must pay more than 1.5 billion euros ($1.7 billion) in compensation for Spain's biggest environmental disaster, when the vessel sank in 2002.
(AP, 12/20/18)
2018 Dec 20, In Spain four jailed Catalan separatist leaders, incarcerated since October 2017 ahead of a trial for their involvement in a push by the region for independence, called off their hunger strike after 20 days.
(Reuters, 12/20/18)
2018 Dec 20, Spain's Maritime Rescue Services found 11 dead migrants in a boat off the country's southern coast and rescued 33 other passengers.
(SFC, 12/21/18, p.A2)
2018 Dec 20, In Sudan anti-government street protests broke out for the second consecutive day in a string of cities, including the capital Khartoum where police used tear gas to disperse protesters. The protests have been sparked by a steep rise in the price of bread and shortages of basic food items and fuel. Angry protesters torched the headquarters of President Omar al-Bashir's National Congress Party in Atbara and set fire to its offices in two other locations. At least nine people were killed in two days of unrest, six in the eastern city of Gadaref, two in Karima north of Khartoum and one in Barbar, also north of the capital. Student demonstrator Moayed Ahmad Mahmoud was killed in Al-Qadarif.
(AP, 12/20/18)(AFP, 12/20/18)(Reuters, 12/21/18)
2018 Dec 20, Togo held elections. President Faure Gnassingbe's party won most seats in parliamentary elections, according to provisional results, in polls overshadowed by pre-ballot clashes and an opposition boycott. The 14-party opposition coalition, C-14, refuse to take part, condemning the playing field as skewed.
(AFP, 12/24/18)
2018 Dec 20, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Iranian counterpart Hassan Rouhani met in Ankara and vowed to work closer to end the fighting in Syria.
(AFP, 12/20/18)
2018 Dec 20, In Ukraine about 1,000 Orthodox believers rallied outside parliament to protest its demand that they change their church's name to reflect its ties to Moscow.
(AP, 12/20/18)
2018 Dec 20, The UN said the "overwhelming majority" of women and older girls who passed through Libya as migrants reported being gang-raped by traffickers or having witnessed others taken away to be sexually abused in a report based on hundreds of interviews.
(AP, 12/20/18)
2018 Dec 20, Uzbek imam Fazliddin Parpiyev, who ran into trouble for urging President Shavkat Mirziyoyev to lift a school headscarf ban, said he has left the mainly Muslim nation due to pressure from security services.
(Reuters, 12/20/18)
2018 Dec 21, US President Donald Trump threatened a "very long" federal work stoppage unless Democrats agree to his border wall demands. More than 800,000 federal workers faced furloughs or work without pay if a resolution was not reached by midnight.
(AFP, 12/21/18)(SFC, 12/21/18, p.A7)
2018 Dec 21, A US official said President Donald Trump has decided to pull about 7,000 troops from Afghanistan. The Afghan presidency brushed off concerns the drawdown would affect security.
(AFP, 12/21/18)
2018 Dec 21, The US State Department said the US has granted Iraq a 90-day Iran sanctions waiver to allow it to continue to import electricity from Tehran.
(AP, 12/21/18)
2018 Dec 21, Brett McGurk, the US envoy to the global coalition fighting the Islamic State group, submitted his resignation in protest over President Donald Trump's abrupt decision to withdraw US troops from Syria.
(AP, 12/23/18)
2018 Dec 21, US Federal prosecutors said that Hongjin Tan (35), a Chinese national employed by an Oklahoma petroleum company, has been charged with stealing trade secrets from his unnamed US-based employer that operates a research facility in the Tulsa area.
(AP, 12/22/18)
2018 Dec 21, The US State Department said the United States will provide an additional $10 million in military financing to Ukraine to bolster its navy after Russia captured three Ukrainian vessels at sea last month.
(Reuters, 12/22/18)
2018 Dec 21, The Trump administration formally scrapped an Obama-era policy from that was meant to curb racial discrimination in schools but that became tangled in a national debate over school safety. The 2014 policy had urged not to suspend, expel or report students to police except as a last resort.
(SFC, 12/23/18, p.A10)
2018 Dec 21, Another day of big losses left the US market with its worst week in more than seven years. The Dow Jones Industrial Average sank 414.23 points, or 1.8 percent, to 22,445.37.
(AP, 12/21/18)
2018 Dec 21, The California Public Utilities Commission approved a bid by Zoox of Foster City to offer rides to the public in self-driving cars, but with a trained test driver at the wheel ready to take over. This was the state's first approval of a robot-taxi.
(SFC, 12/22/18, p.D1)
2018 Dec 21, In Colorado three men stole about $800,000 worth of diamond-encased jewelry from a display case in the Little Nell hotel in Aspen.
(SFC, 12/26/18, p.A6)
2018 Dec 21, In Indiana John Miller (59) was sentenced to 80 years in prison for the 1988 abduction, rape and killing of April Tinsley (8) of Fort Wayne.
(SFC, 12/22/18, p.A5)
2018 Dec 21, Minnesota prosecutors said Chinese billionaire Richard Liu will not face charges over an Aug. 31 rape accusation by a Chinese woman studying in Minnesota because they could not prove his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
(AP, 12/22/18)
2018 Dec 21, It was reported that Cargill, Bunge and other global traders have halted food supply deals with Iran because new US sanctions have paralyzed banking systems required to secure payments.
(AP, 12/21/18)
2018 Dec 21, In Austria one person died and another was seriously injured after a shooting in the center of Vienna. The suspected shooter escaped in a car. Police soon detained both a witness and a man who was wounded in the shooting at a Viennese restaurant that left another man (32) dead. Police said it appeared the dispute was over illegal drug deals.
(AFP, 12/21/18)(AP, 12/23/18)
2018 Dec 21, Belgium's King Philippe accepted the resignation of PM Charles Michel, but asked him to stay on at the head of a caretaker government until elections in May.
(SFC, 12/22/18, p.A2)
2018 Dec 21, British police arrested two people late today over the suspected "criminal use of drones" at London's Gatwick Airport. A damaged drone was soon found near the airfield perimeter. On Dec. 23 Paul Gait (47) and his wife Elaine Kirk (54), arrested over the drone disruption, were released without charge.
(AFP, 12/22/18)(AFP, 12/23/18)(SFC, 12/23/18, p.A4)
2018 Dec 21, Britain's Beefeater guards at the Tower of London switched their traditional red uniforms for yellow vests as they went on strike with staff at other historic sites over pensions.
(AFP, 12/22/18)
2018 Dec 21, China called the US arrogant and selfish after two Chinese citizens were charged with stealing American trade secrets and other sensitive information on behalf of Beijing's main intelligence agency.
(AP, 12/21/18)
2018 Dec 21, It was reported that schools in southern China are using chip-powered "smart" school uniforms to track their students in a bid to tackle truancy and boost attendance.
(AFP, 12/21/18)
2018 Dec 21, In Colombia Walter Arizala, a former leftist rebel who terrorized residents of southern Colombia after abandoning the country's peace process to plunge headlong into drug trafficking, was killed during an operation after a months-long, US-backed manhunt that followed the kidnapping and murder of three Ecuadorian press workers in the turbulent border area.
(AP, 12/22/18)
2018 Dec 21, The EU slapped asset freezes and travel bans on seven more people accused of human rights violations against the Rohingya minority in Myanmar. This brings to 14 the total number of people in Myanmar under EU sanctions for such abuses.
(AP, 12/21/18)
2018 Dec 21, Europol said that police in Spain, Italy and Argentina took part in an operation that broke up an international cocaine-trafficking gang. Almost 50 suspects were arrested.
(AP, 12/21/18)
2018 Dec 21, French authorities confirmed the arrest of a suspected extremist linked to the 2015 attack on Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine that killed 12 people. French media reported that French citizen Peter Cherif, also known as Abu Hamza, had been arrested in Djibouti.
(AP, 12/21/18)
2018 Dec 21, In Guyana a lawmaker from the ruling coalition voted late today with the opposition for a no-confidence motion, bringing down the administration of President David Granger and forcing fresh elections by March.
(AP, 12/22/18)
2018 Dec 21, In Hungary at least 5,000 demonstrators took to the streets of the Budapest late today, as rightwing nationalist PM Viktor Orban dismissed a wave of protests against a new labor reform as "hysterical shouting".
(AFP, 12/21/18)
2018 Dec 21, Indian police arrested 126 people working for a allegedly fake call center making up to $50,000 a day by duping US citizens.
(AFP, 12/21/18)
2018 Dec 21, In India boulders crashed down on Indian workers who were widening a mountainous road leading to a Hindu temple in the Himalayas, killing seven of them in Uttarakhand state.
(AP, 12/21/18)
2018 Dec 21, Indonesia said it has finalized the transfer of majority control over a giant gold and copper mine from US company Freeport-McMoRan.
(AP, 12/21/18)
2018 Dec 21, In Indonesia hundreds of Muslims held a rally outside the Chinese embassy in Jakarta to protest against the treatment of members of the mostly Muslim ethnic Uighur minority in China's far western Xinjiang region.
(Reuters, 12/21/18)
2018 Dec 21, Japan's Cabinet approved a record 5.26 trillion yen ($47 billion) defense budget as the country seeks to bolster its arms capability by increasingly buying advanced US weapons.
(AP, 12/21/18)
2018 Dec 21, Prosecutors in Japan accused Carlos Ghosn of a breach of trust causing Nissan a financial loss of more than 1.8 billion yen ($16 million).
(AP, 12/21/18)
2018 Dec 21, Mexico's foreign minister Marcelo Ebrard said his government would not deport people seeking asylum, a day after the country said it would accept some migrants returned from the United States while their asylum requests are being processed.
(Reuters, 12/21/18)
2018 Dec 21, Moroccan authorities said nine more people have been arrested for connections to the four initial suspects in the Dec. 17 killing of two Scandinavian university students in a remote corner of the Atlas Mountains.
(AP, 12/21/18)
2018 Dec 21, The Myanmar military announced a more than four-month cessation of its activities in northern areas where it is fighting ethnic minority insurgents, in what appeared to be a rare conciliatory move aimed at kick-starting peace talks.
(Reuters, 12/21/18)
2018 Dec 21, Nicaraguan authorities late today raided the offices of a critical television station and shut it down, a week after raiding the offices of non-governmental groups and a newspaper. 100% Noticias station director Miguel Mora was detained.
(AP, 12/21/18)
2018 Dec 21, Pakistan reportedly opened fire in the Keran sector of Kashmir, killing two Indian army officers.
(AP, 12/22/18)
2018 Dec 21, In northwestern Pakistan the bodies of two men and two women, 18 to 21 years old were found near their remote mountain village. The four cousins were reportedly shot dead over "family honor" on the orders of a village council. Police soon arrested one man involved in the killings and searched for others.
(AP, 12/23/18)
2018 Dec 21, Three Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire during protests along the Gaza-Israel frontier, including Mohammed Jahjouh (16). A 4th Palestinian, Ayman Shehr (18), died of his wounds the next day.
(AP, 12/22/18)
2018 Dec 21, In Portugal a few hundred "yellow vest" protesters demanding lower taxes and inspired by riots in Paris took to the streets across the country in an attempt to stop traffic.
(Reuters, 12/21/18)
2018 Dec 21, In Romania visiting Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz suggested that foreign companies could pull out of Romania after the government unveiled a surprise plan to levy extra taxes on banks and energy companies.
(AP, 12/21/18)
2018 Dec 21, A Russian court charged one of the Kremlin's most vocal foreign critics, British financier and human rights activist William Browder, with creating an international criminal syndicate. The court called for his extradition to Russia and a two-month period of arrest.
(AP, 12/21/18)
2018 Dec 21, In southern Serbia a train slammed into a bus carrying mostly high school students, killing five people and injuring 30 near the city of Nis. The number of dead in the crash later rose to seven.
(AP, 12/21/18)(AP, 1/3/19)
2018 Dec 21, Spanish PM Pedro Sanchez decreed a 22 percent rise in the minimum wage, the biggest in four decades, and a move that could strengthen his grip on power but defies warnings that it could worsen unemployment.
(Reuters, 12/21/18)
2018 Dec 21, In Spain Catalan pro-independence groups blocked roads and clashed with baton-wielding police in protests against a Spanish government cabinet meeting in Barcelona branded a provocation by separatists.
(AFP, 12/21/18)
2018 Dec 21, In Sudan protests over the rising cost of bread broke out in Khartoum and its twin city Omdurman.
(AFP, 12/21/18)
2018 Dec 21, In Syria the Islamic State launched an attack in the southeast against the US-backed SDF militia, employing car bombs and dozens of militants.
(AP, 12/21/18)
2018 Dec 21, The UAE government via its state-run news agency said the government-owned Abu Dhabi Fund for Development will deposit the $3 billion in State Bank of Pakistan in the coming days.
(AP, 12/21/18)
2018 Dec 22, An air of chaos enveloped Washington as the US government kicked off the holidays by partially shutting down, following the failure of leaders to pass a federal spending bill as negotiations stalled over Donald Trump's demand for money to build a US-Mexico border wall.
(AFP, 12/22/18)
2018 Dec 22, Human rights groups along with current and former soccer players on called on FIFA and the Australian government to intervene to stop the extradition of Hakeem al-Araibi, a Melbourne-based refugee and semi-professional soccer player, from Thailand to Bahrain.
(AP, 12/22/18)
2018 Dec 22, Balkan leaders from Bulgaria, Greece and Serbia gathered in the Serbian capital of Belgrade as part of a regular regional initiative to foster cooperation on an array of issues such as migration and trade.
(AP, 12/22/18)
2018 Dec 22, The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) said authorities closed its website last week when they shut 54 news portals and websites for what they claimed were security reasons, just days before the December 30 polls.
(AFP, 12/22/18)
2018 Dec 22, A Brazilian court shot down a fresh injunction by a judge over a plan by plane makers Boeing of the US and Embraer of Brazil to create a $5.26-billion joint venture.
(AP, 12/22/18)
2018 Dec 22, Paddy Ashdown (b.1941), the face of centrist politics in Britain for more than a decade died after being treated for cancer. The one-time marine commando stood down in 1999 and went on to become the United Nations high representative and European Union special representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina.
(Reuters, 12/23/18)
2018 Dec 22, Canadian PM Justin Trudeau made a surprise holiday visit to Mali to see troops on a UN peacekeeping mission. Trudeau also met with Mali's PM Soumeylou Boubeye Maiga to discuss relations between the two countries.
(AP, 12/23/18)
2018 Dec 22, In eastern CongoDRC rebels attacked the city of Beni late today, killing five civilians and wounding eight others. The ADF militia from Uganda was blamed.
(AP, 12/23/18)
2018 Dec 22, Cuban lawmakers unanimously approved a revised draft of a new constitution that retains the island's one-party socialist system but reflects its socio-economic opening since the fall of the Soviet Union.
(Reuters, 12/23/18)
2018 Dec 22, Dr. Jiko Luveni (72), the first female speaker of Fiji's Parliament, died. She was re-elected in last month's general election and retained the role of speaker.
(AP, 12/23/18)
2018 Dec 22, French President Emmanuel Macron traveled to Chad for a two-day visit to meet with French soldiers deployed in the Sahel region with Operation Barkhane amid persistent extremist threats.
(AP, 12/22/18)
2018 Dec 22, French "yellow vests" turned out in smaller numbers for a sixth Saturday of protests in cities and border points, as a fatal road accident brought the death toll to 10 since the movement began last month.
(AFP, 12/22/18)
2018 Dec 22, In Indonesia a deadly tsunami struck in the dark, without warning, killing at least 222 people late today along the Sunda Strait. The disaster followed an eruption and possible landslide on the volcanic island of Anak Krakatau. The death toll soon climbed to 430, with at least 159 missing and more than 1,400 injured.
(AP, 12/23/18)(AP, 12/24/18)(Reuters, 12/26/18)
2018 Dec 22, Iran's state TV reported the execution by lynching of Hamid Reza Bagheri Derain, a businessman convicted of fraud, bribery and embezzlement.
(Reuters, 12/22/18)
2018 Dec 22, In Israel Holocaust survivor Simcha Rotem (94) died. He was among the last known Jewish fighters from the 1943 Warsaw ghetto uprising against the Nazis.
(AP, 12/23/18)
2018 Dec 22, Italy's far-right Interior Minister Matteo Salvini said Italian ports were closed to hundreds of migrants rescued off Libya after a mother and newborn baby were evacuated to Malta. A day earlier Proactiva Open Arms rescued more than 300 migrants from three vessels in difficulty.
(AFP, 12/22/18)
2018 Dec 22, In Kashmir a gunbattle between Indian troops and rebels early today left six militants dead and triggered a new round of anti-India protests in the disputed Himalayan region.
(AP, 12/22/18)
2018 Dec 22, Libya and Turkey agreed to open an urgent joint investigation into a consignment of arms which arrived from Turkey and was seized On Dec. 18 at the Khoms port. The consignment contained 3,000 Turkish-made pistols, as well as some other pistols, hunting rifles and ammunition.
(Reuters, 12/22/18)
2018 Dec 22, In Madagascar former president Andry Rajoelina was set to return to power as partial election results gave him a clear lead over his predecessor Marc Ravalomanana, who has alleged the vote count was fraudulent.
(AFP, 12/22/18)
2018 Dec 22, Palestinian Pres. Mahmud Abbas said he intended to dissolve the Palestinian Legislative Council after a court decision that ordered the move and elections to be held within six months.
(AFP, 12/23/18)
2018 Dec 22, Russia's state-controlled Rosatom corporation said that Reactor No. 1 at the Leningrad nuclear power plant has been shut down as planned. It said it will take until 2023 to fully unload its uranium fuel. Launched in 1973, the reactor became the first unit of the RBMK-1000 type to be built in the Soviet Union. A reactor of the same type exploded in Chernobyl in April 1986.
(AP, 12/22/18)
2018 Dec 22, In Russia nine construction workers were trapped inside a burning potash mine in the Perm region near the Ural Mountains. Rescuers soon found the nine construction workers dead in the mine operated by potash maker Uralkali.
(AP, 12/22/18)(Reuters, 12/23/18)
2018 Dec 22, Saudi Prince Talal bin Abdul Aziz (87), a half-brother of King Salman, died. He was known as a tireless advocate of reform, sometimes in defiance of the royal family.
(AFP, 12/22/18)
2018 Dec 22, In Serbia thousands of protesters marched in Belgrade for the third week in a row against what they say is a crackdown by the government of President Aleksandar Vucic on opposition parties and the media.
(AFP, 12/22/18)
2018 Dec 22, In Somalia at least 13 people were killed and 17 wounded in a car bomb attack claimed by al Qaeda-linked group al Shabaab close to the president's residence in Mogadishu. The death toll from a double car-bomb attack soon rose to 26.
(Reuters, 12/22/18)(AP, 12/24/18)
2018 Dec 22, In Spain multiple people picked the top winning Gordo number, spreading the 680 million euros ($773 million) distributed for it to 46 of the country's 50 provinces.
(AP, 12/22/18)
2018 Dec 22, In Sudan protests over worsening economic conditions resumed for a fourth consecutive day. Activists reported that authorities rounded up more than a dozen politicians from a leftist opposition coalition. Main opposition leader Sadiq al-Mahdi blamed "armed repression" for the death of 22 people in days of protests, although officials gave a lower death toll.
(AP, 12/22/18)(AFP, 12/22/18)
2018 Dec 22, In Turkey thousands of protesters took to the streets in Istanbul to demonstrate against the rising cost of living and crippling inflation. The protest was organized by the KESK, a confederation of public service workers unions.
(AFP, 12/22/18)
2018 Dec 22, Turkey's Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu said nearly 300,000 Syrians have returned to their country following Turkey's two cross-border operations in northern Syria.
(Reuters, 12/22/18)
2018 Dec 22, Ukraine's president signed a bill that orders the Ukrainian Orthodox Church to change its name to reflect its ties to Moscow.
(AP, 12/22/18)
2018 Dec 22, UN monitors arrived in Yemen to oversee a fragile ceasefire in the rebel-held city of Hodeida, the latest push to secure peace in the devastated country.
(AFP, 12/22/18)
2018 Dec 22, The Vatican announced that Pope Francis has given the homeless of Rome a Christmas gift of a new clinic in St. Peter's Square where they can get free medical help.
(Reuters, 12/22/18)
2018 Dec 22, Venezuela's navy "intercepted" a ship exploring for oil on behalf of Exxon Mobil Corp in Guyanese waters. An Exxon spokeswoman said seismic explorations in the western portion of Guyana's Stabroek Block "have been paused until they can be safely continued," and that the vessel was operating in Guyana's exclusive economic zone.
(Reuters, 12/23/18)
2018 Dec 23, US Pres. Donald Trump said deputy defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan will take over as acting secretary on Jan. 1, pushing out Pentagon Chief Jim Mattis two months earlier than planned.
(SFC, 12/24/18, p.A5)
2018 Dec 23, SpaceX launched the US Air Force's most powerful GPS satellite ever constructed. This was the company's 21st and final launch of the year.
(SFC, 12/24/18, p.A4)
2018 Dec 23, It was reported that three major banks have stopped offering mortgages for homes in San Francisco at the former Hunters Point Naval Shipyard due to unresolved questions about the safety of the land. The 75-acre site is adjacent to America's largest Superfund site, where hundreds of acres were contaminated with radioactive materials spread by the navy during the Cold War.
(SFC, 12/23/18, p.A1)
2018 Dec 23, Afghan Pres. Ashraf Ghani appointed hard-line opponents of neighboring Pakistan to two top security posts, potentially complicating US efforts to revive peace talks with the Taliban ahead of next summer's withdrawal of 7,000 American troops.
(AP, 12/23/18)
2018 Dec 23, The Burundi army said it opposed a request by the African Union that it withdraw 1,000 soldiers serving in an African peacekeeping force in Somalia by Feb. 28.
(AFP, 12/23/18)
2018 Dec 23, Speaking on a visit to Chad, French Pres. Emmanuel Macron insisted that France will make no cuts to its military despite domestic budget tightening.
(AP, 12/23/18)
2018 Dec 23, Egypt said its security forces have killed 14 militants in separate shootouts in the city of el-Arish in the turbulent north of the Sinai Peninsula. The government statement did not say when the shooting happened or provide other details.
(AP, 12/23/18)
2018 Dec 23, Fugitive extremist Peter Cherif, who recently was arrested in the former French colony of Djibouti and expelled to France, was immediately taken into custody and charged upon his arrival at Paris' Charles de Gaulle Airport.
(AP, 12/23/18)
2018 Dec 23, The Italian Senate approved a national budget law early today that was tweaked after the European Union objected to plans by Italy's populist government to satisfy expensive campaign promises with a large deficit.
(AP, 12/23/18)
2018 Dec 23, A Japanese court approved prosecutors' request to keep Nissan's former chairman Carlos Ghosn in detention for another 10 days.
(AP, 12/23/18)
2018 Dec 23, Hundreds of Lebanese protested against deteriorating economic conditions, with some briefly scuffling with army troops, as public anger mounted against politicians deadlocked over forming a new government since May.
(AP, 12/23/18)
2018 Dec 23, Libyan authorities exhumed the bodies of 34 Ethiopian Christians from a mass grave. They had been executed in Libya by Islamic State (IS) in 2015. A video posted on social media in April 2015 appeared to show IS militants shooting and beheading the Christians, who were wearing orange jumpsuits, on a beach.
(Reuters, 12/24/18)
2018 Dec 23, In Slovenia human remains were found near a popular hiking place at Iski Vintgar gorge. They were later confirmed as those of a Jonathan Luskin of Wisconsin, who was reported missing to Slovenian authorities on July 25.
(AP, 12/29/18)
2018 Dec 23, In Sudan fresh protests against bread price hikes hit two cities. An umbrella coalition of professional unions said doctors will go on an indefinite strike in the first of a series of work stoppages amid protests calling on the country's longtime autocratic leader, President Omar Bashir, to step down.
(AFP, 12/23/18)(AP, 12/23/18)
2018 Dec 23, A UN team led by a Dutch officer arrived at Hodeida to monitor a cease-fire that went into force in the Red Sea port city where Yemen's civil war rivals been fighting for months.
(AP, 12/23/18)
2018 Dec 24, The US defense department said outgoing Defense Secretary James Mattis has signed the order for the withdrawal of the US forces from Syria.
(Reuters, 12/24/18)
2018 Dec 24, A US federal judge ordered North Korea to pay $501 million in a wrongful death suit filed by the parents of Otto Warmbier, an American college student who died in 2017 shortly after being released from that country.
(AFP, 12/25/18)
2018 Dec 24, In Afghanistan a suicide bomber exploded his car outside a building housing the government's department for martyrs and disabled persons in Kabul. Militants then stormed a government building, taking civilians hostage as they fought a gun battle against soldiers. Three militants were killed. Gunmen in a nearby building exchanged fire with security forces. The death toll soon climbed to 43.
(AP, 12/24/18)(Reuters, 12/24/18)(Reuters, 12/25/18)
2018 Dec 24, In Australia some 3,000 people were evacuated from a 36-story Sydney high-rise when cracking was heard and an internal support wall failed at the newly opened Opal Tower overlooking Olympic Park.
(AP, 12/25/18)
2018 Dec 24, It was reported that Britain has banned third-party sales of puppies and kittens to protect the animals from exploitation.
(AP, 12/24/18)
2018 Dec 24, It was reported that British academic publisher Taylor and Francis has dropped more than 80 journals from its offerings in China at the government's request, including the Asian Studies Review which had content deemed "inappropriate" by authorities.
(Reuters, 12/24/18)
2018 Dec 24, In Cameroon armed English-speaking separatists attacked a French-speaking town, killing one person, kidnapping 15 others and burning 86 homes over the last 24 hours in the restive North West region.
(AP, 12/25/18)
2018 Dec 24, Environmental groups said than 1.6 million people have signed an online petition to take the French state to court for not doing enough to fight climate change.
(AP, 12/24/18)
2018 Dec 24, In Sicily lava and ash spewed from a new fracture on the active Mt. Etna volcano amid an unusually high level of seismic activity.
(AP, 12/24/18)
2018 Dec 24, Journalists in Liberia sounded the alarm on press freedom after two ministers mounted an attack on a paper that ran an article about alleged top-level corruption.
(AFP, 12/24/18)
2018 Dec 24, In Mexico Martha Erika Alonso, the governor of the state of Puebla, and her husband, Senator Rafael Moreno Valle, were killed in a helicopter crash. Two pilots and an assistant to the senator also died in the crash.
(AFP, 12/25/18)
2018 Dec 24, Moroccan security sources said 19 people have been arrested in the wake of the Dec. 17 murder of two Scandinavian women in the Atlas Mountains.
(Reuters, 12/24/18)
2018 Dec 24, Nigeria said it has resolved a dispute with Africa's largest mobile operator over $8.13 billion (6.96 billion euros) which it accused MTN of illegally repatriating to South Africa.
(AFP, 12/24/18)
2018 Dec 24, In Nigeria 14 military and police personnel were killed in an ambush by Boko Haram exstremists outside Damaturu town in Yobe state.
(SFC, 12/26/18, p.A2)
2018 Dec 24, In Pakistan an anti-graft tribunal sentenced former PM Nawaz Sharif to seven years in prison for corruption, drawing criticism from his party, which said the decision was a "black stain" on the justice system. He can appeal the verdict, under which he was also fined $25 million for not disclosing how his family set up the Al-Azizia Steel Mills when he was exiled to Saudi Arabia in 1999.
(AP, 12/24/18)
2018 Dec 24, In Somalia al Shabaab member Abdikadir Abukar was executed. He was the mastermind of militant car bombs that killed 26 people and injured nearly 40 others in Mogadishu in 2017.
(Reuters, 12/24/18)
2018 Dec 24, South Korea said it will fine BMW 11.2 billion won ($9.9 million) and file a criminal complaint against the company with state prosecutors over an allegedly botched response to dozens of engine fires reported in the country. BMW has apologized and recalled some 172,000 vehicles of 65 different models in July and October over the fires.
(AP, 12/24/18)
2018 Dec 24, Sri Lanka's finance ministry said that it will present next year's full budget in February after the parliament approved a 1.77-trillion-rupee ($9.39 billion) stopgap measure to cover public expenditures over the first four months of 2019, averting a government shutdown January 1.
(AP, 12/24/18)
2018 Dec 24, Doctors in Sudan went on strike, feeding into deadly protests against bread prices that represent one of the biggest challenges President Omar al-Bashir has faced in nearly three decades in power.
(AFP, 12/24/18)
2018 Dec 24, In Tunisia police fired tear gas at dozens of people who took to the streets late today in the city of Kasserine, setting tires ablaze and blocking the main street. Journalist Abdel Razaq Zorgi (32) died after setting himself on fire in the protest over harsh living conditions.
(AFP, 12/25/18)
2018 Dec 24, The United Arab Emirates said Princess Sheikha Latifa bint Mohammed al-Maktoum, the daughter of Dubai’s ruler, was at home and living with her family. The UAE foreign ministry said that on 15th December 2018, Mary Robinson, former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and former President of Ireland, had met with Her Highness Sheikha Latifa in Dubai.
(Reuters, 12/24/18)
2018 Dec 25, In Afghanistan a suicide bomber disguised as a beggar killed six people in a wealthy subdivision of the southern city of Kandahar. Aslam Baloch, one of the leaders of the Baluch Liberation Army, and five of his associates were killed in the blast. The separatist leader was blamed for masterminding last month's attack on a Chinese Consulate in Pakistan.
(AP, 12/26/18)(AP, 12/27/18)
2018 Dec 25, Bangladesh opposition parties said police have arrested more than 10,500 opposition activists in a crackdown ahead of elections this week.
(AFP, 12/25/18)
2018 Dec 25, Tensions soared in the Serb-run part of Bosnia after police detained Davor Dragicevic, a man whose quest for truth in the March death of his son has sparked months of anti-government protests. Several other people also were detained, including Dragicevic's ex-wife and some opposition politicians. Dragicevic and a regional parliamentary deputy who was also detained, were released the next day.
(AP, 12/25/18)(Reuters, 12/26/18)
2018 Dec 25, In southeastern China eight people were killed after a hijacker with a knife drove a bus into pedestrians in Longyan city, Fujian province. 22 others were reported injured. The attacker was captured.
(AP, 12/26/18)
2018 Dec 25, In China a blast at a chemical plant in northwestern Xinjiang autonomous region killed three people and severely injured six.
(Reuters, 12/25/18)
2018 Dec 25, In CongoDRC at least 27 people were dead after a bus and a truck collided overnight about 200 km southwest of Kinshasa.
(AP, 12/25/18)
2018 Dec 25, Opposition candidates in this weekend's presidential election in Democratic Republic of Congo demanded that the electoral board deactivate SIM cards in voting machines to prevent the electronic transmission of results.
(Reuters, 12/25/18)
2018 Dec 25, In India many Delhi residents were forced to spend Christmas indoors as air quality remained at "severe to emergency" levels for a fourth day, in the capital's worst smog crisis this year.
(Reuters, 12/25/18)
2018 Dec 25, In India a woman (42) attacked her alleged stalker (25) and cut off his genitals before rushing him to a Mumbai hospital to save his life. The woman and her two alleged acquaintances were taken into police custody as investigations continued.
(Reuters, 12/27/18)
2018 Dec 25, Iran's President Hassan Rouhani presented a $47 billion state budget with increased spending on lower income groups, saying US sanctions would affect people's lives and economic growth but not bring the government to its knees.
(Reuters, 12/25/18)
2018 Dec 25, In Iran a bus overturned at Azad University in Tehran, killing seven students and injuring 28.
(AP, 12/25/18)
2018 Dec 25, In Iraq at least two people were killed and 11 wounded by a car bomb in the northern city of Tal Afar. Islamic State soon claimed responsibility for the attack.
(Reuters, 12/25/18)
2018 Dec 25, Israel's Parliament late today unanimously approved a law to permit exports of medical marijuana, allowing Israel to tap the lucrative global market. The law empowers police to supervise licensing and still needed Cabinet approval.
(AP, 12/26/18)
2018 Dec 25, In Israel Palestinian PM Rami Hamdallah's convoy was hit with a number of stones as he was returning home after attending Christmas Eve mass in Bethlehem.
(AFP, 1/3/19)
2018 Dec 25, In northwest Italy two 57-year-old French tourists were found dead of carbon monoxide poisoning in a two-room house in Monterosso Grana, a small mountain town near Cuneo.
(AP, 12/25/18)
2018 Dec 25, In Italy Marcello Bruzzese (51), the brother of a turncoat from an 'ndrangheta crime clan family, was gunned down by two masked attackers near his home in the Adriatic beach town of Pesaro.
(AP, 12/26/18)
2018 Dec 25, In Japan Nissan Motor Co. executive Greg Kelly was released from detention after being granted bail over the alleged underreporting of his boss Carlos Ghosn's pay.
(AP, 12/25/18)
2018 Dec 25, In Libya suicide attackers stormed the foreign ministry in Tripoli, killing at least three people including a senior civil servant. The Islamic State jihadist group (IS) was accused of responsibility.
(AFP, 12/25/18)
2018 Dec 25, New Zealand athlete William "Bill" Baillie (84), who in 1963 set world records in the now obscure 20,000-meter and one-hour running events, died.
(AP, 12/27/18)
2018 Dec 25, In Pakistan assailants killed former lawmaker Ali Raza Abidi outside his home in Karachi.
(AP, 12/28/18)
2018 Dec 25, In Poland six people died late today in a fire at a small wooden building sometimes used by the homeless in an outlying district of Warsaw.
(AP, 12/26/18)
2018 Dec 25, In Sudan police used tear gas and fired in the air to disperse thousands of protesters attempting to march on the presidential palace to demand that Pres. Omar Bashir step down. at least 22 protesters were wounded during protests. 22 protesters were reported killed over the weekend in anti-government demonstrations.
(AP, 12/25/18)(AP, 12/26/18)
2018 Dec 25, Syrian air defenses reportedly destroyed 14 of 16 Israeli missiles launched against unspecified targets near Damascus.
(Reuters, 12/26/18)
2018 Dec 25, The US-led coalition said its attacks in Syria during the week of Dec. 16-22, including air strikes and "coordinated fires," had destroyed logistics facilities and staging areas used by Islamic State.
(Reuters, 12/25/18)
2018 Dec 25, Thailand's legislature agreed to amend the country's drug law to allow the licensed medical use of marijuana, as well as kratom, a locally grown plant traditionally used as a stimulant and painkiller. The changes become law when published in the Royal Gazette.
(AP, 12/25/18)
2018 Dec 25, In northern Thailand two South Korean tourists died after the golf cart they were riding fell into the Nan river.
(AP, 12/27/18)
2018 Dec 25, In Turkey Max Zirngast (29), an Austrian freelance writer, was released from a prison but barred from leaving the country. Zirngast was jailed in September after Turkey accused him and two others of "membership in an armed terrorist organization." On Sept. 11, 2019, Zirngast confirmed his acquittal.
(AP, 12/25/18)(AP, 9/11/19)
2018 Dec 26, Pres. Donald Trump slipped into Iraq to greet US service members and show that his norm-busting presidency would hew at least to this tradition. He did not meet Iraqi officials while there but spoke on the phone with PM Adel Abdul-Mahdi.
(AP, 12/27/18)
2018 Dec 26, US Customs and Border Protection ordered medical checks on every child in its custody after Agustin Gomez (8) of Guatemala died a day earlier, marking the second death of an immigrant child in the agency's care this month.
(AP, 12/26/18)
2018 Dec 26, The Dow Jones industrial average jumped more than 1,000 points, its biggest point gain ever, as Wall Street had its best day in 10 years.
(SFC, 12/27/18, p.D1)
2018 Dec 26, In central California police Cpl. Ronil Singh (33) was shot and killed a few minutes after radioing in that he was pulling over a gray pickup truck that had no license plate in Newman. Gustavo Perez Arriaga was captured in Bakersfield on Dec. 28 after a manhunt following Singh's killing. Seven other people were soon arrested on suspicion of helping Perez Arriaga, including his girlfriend and two of his brothers. On Nov. 5, 2020, Paulo Virgen Mendoza, a Mexican immigrant in the country illegally, admitted to shooting Singh.
(AP, 12/27/18)(AP, 12/29/18)(AP, 11/5/20)
2018 Dec 26, Al Hinkle (b.1926), an original member of the Beat Generation, died in Los Gatos, Ca. He was a friend of Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassidy and accompanied them on their 1949 cross-country road trip that became the focus of Kerouac's "On the Road" (1957).
(SSFC, 12/30/18, DB p.50)
2018 Dec 26, Nancy Grace Roman (b.1925), NASA's first chief of astronomy, died in Germantown, Maryland. She took part in the development of the cosmic Background Explorer, launched in 1989, and oversaw the early development of the Hubble Space Telescope, launched in 1990.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Roman)(SFC, 1/2/19, p.C5)
2018 Dec 26, Colin O'Brady (33) of Portland, Oregon, completed a 932-mile trek across Antarctica to become the first prson to traverse the continent without any assistance.
(SFC, 12/28/18, p.A4)
2018 Dec 26, Albania's Defense Ministry said it has extended for a year its navy's participation in the search-and-rescue operations of the EU border control force Frontex.
(AP, 12/26/18)
2018 Dec 26, Albania's government said it has fulfilled the demands of public university students, who boycotted classes for more than two weeks this month.
(AP, 12/26/18)
2018 Dec 26, Argentine police said an Argentine woman kidnapped 32 years ago as a teenager has been found alive and well in Bolivia following a joint investigation between the two countries. Police liberated the woman (45) and her son.
(AFP, 12/26/18)
2018 Dec 26, Sister Wendy Beckett (b.1930), a nun who became a BBC art critic star (1991-1996), died in East Harling, England. Her work included 15 books on art and religion and another ten of poetry and meditations.
(SFC, 12/27/18, p.C4)
2018 Dec 26, In Burkina Faso gunmen late today killed 10 gendarmes in Loroni village near the Malian border.
(Reuters, 12/28/18)
2018 Dec 26, Chinese police detained Qiu Zhanxuan, a well-known Marxist, at Peking University as he went to attend a memorial for the 125th anniversary of Mao Zedong's birthday that he organized.
(AP, 12/26/18)
2018 Dec 26, CongoDRC's national electoral commission (CENI) said an Ebola outbreak - the second-worst in history - was behind the postponement of voting until March in the eastern cities of Beni and Butembo and surrounding areas. It cited ethnic violence for the same delay in the western city of Yumbi.
(Reuters, 12/26/18)
2018 Dec 26, Eritrea partially closed two border crossings with Ethiopia that opened this year after the former East African rivals made peace and restored relations. Only Ethiopians faced the restrictions.
(AP, 12/28/18)
2018 Dec 26, A legal source said French judges have dropped their long-running investigation into the deadly 1994 attack on former Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana, which sparked the country's genocide.
(AFP, 12/26/18)
2018 Dec 26, Sea-Watch 3, a private rescue boat operated by a German humanitarian group, continued its appeal for a safe port. It has tweeted that 33 migrants were rescued from waters off Libya on Dec. 22.
(AP, 12/26/18)
2018 Dec 26, Israel's army said it had located a fifth Hezbollah attack tunnel crossing into its territory from Lebanon and destroyed it with explosives.
(AFP, 12/26/18)
2018 Dec 26, It was reported that Israeli authorities have advanced plans for nearly 2,200 settlement homes in the occupied West Bank.
(AFP, 12/26/18)
2018 Dec 26, An Israeli official confirmed overnight attacks on several targets in Syria involved in Iranian arms transfers to the Hezbollah militant group.
(SFC, 12/27/18, p.A2)
2018 Dec 26, Japan announced that it is leaving the International Whaling Commission to resume commercial hunts for the animals for the first time in 30 years, but said it would no longer go to the Antarctic for its much-criticized annual killings.
(AP, 12/26/18)
2018 Dec 26, In Nigeria militants attacked a military base late today in Baga, in eastern Borno state. 10 people were killed and clashes were continued as the militants tried to capture the town. The attacks in the Baga-Kawa area caused more than 6,357 people to flee east into Chad and some 20,000 others to flee to safety within Nigeria.
(Reuters, 12/28/18)(Reuters, 1/18/19)
2018 Dec 26, North and South Korea broke ground on an ambitious project to modernize North Korean railways and roads and connect them with the South, but without progress in nuclear negotiations, regular trains won't be crossing the border anytime soon.
(AP, 12/26/18)
2018 Dec 26, Pakistani journalists, who have taken on military dictators and been beaten and jailed in the pursuit of a free press, said they now face a form of censorship that is more subtle but no less chilling, one spearheaded by the security services.
(AP, 12/26/18)
2018 Dec 26, It was reported that Qatar has airlifted 24 armored vehicles to Mali, in a move it said would help the countries of the African Sahel region combat terrorism.
(Reuters, 12/26/18)
2018 Dec 26, The Russian government approved a draft bill allowing the country to produce crops used in medicinal narcotics, saying this would reduce its dependence on foreign states that have imposed sanctions against it.
(Reuters, 12/26/18)
2018 Dec 26, Russian blogger Alexander Valov, critical of the authorities in Sochi, was sentenced to six years in prison. He was charged earlier this year with extorting money from federal lawmaker Yuri Napso.
(Reuters, 12/26/18)
2018 Dec 26, Russia's Kommersant newspaper reported that a Russian court has sentenced Igor Kiyashko, a Ukrainian lawyer, to eight years in a maximum security prison for espionage and trying to illegally obtain and export military goods.
(Reuters, 12/26/18)
2018 Dec 26, A magnitude 4.8 earthquake triggered by Mount Etna's eruption jolted eastern Sicily before dawn, injuring at least 10 people.
(Reuters, 12/26/18)
2018 Dec 26, In northern Syria torrential rains washed away hundreds of tents in camps sheltering displaced Syrians as residents pleaded for help.
(AFP, 12/28/18)
2018 Dec 26, Tunisian authorities said 18 people have been arrested during protests that erupted after the death of a journalist who set himself on fire to protest economic problems in the North African nation.
(AP, 12/26/18)
2018 Dec 26, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko announced an end to the 30-day martial law imposed after Russia seized Ukrainian ships in the Black Sea.
(AP, 12/26/18)
2018 Dec 27, In Brazil Gen. Walter Souza Braga Netto, the man in charge of military intervention into Rio de Janeiro's public security, called the operation an unmitigated success with all its objectives reached. The operation officially ends Dec. 31.
(AP, 12/27/18)
2018 Dec 27, China's former deputy intelligence chief was sentenced to life in prison for corruption. Ma Jian was found guilty of crimes including accepting bribes and insider trading. He was also ordered to pay more than 50 million yuan ($7.26 million) in penalties.
(AP, 12/27/18)
2018 Dec 27, Security forces in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo fired live rounds and tear gas to scatter demonstrators who burned tires and attacked Ebola centers in protest at their exclusion from the presidential election. 24 patients fled an Ebola treatment center in Beni when it came under attack by people protesting the cancellation of Sunday's presidential election in the eastern city.
(Reuters, 12/27/18)
2018 Dec 27, Egyptian authorities released Amal Fathy, a prominent activist who had criticized the government and decried sexual harassment, after more than seven months of detention.
(AP, 12/27/18)
2018 Dec 27, In Egypt a German man (23) was detained at Cairo airport. On Jan. 7 German news agency dpa reported that he still had not been heard from.
(AP, 1/7/19)
2018 Dec 27, French conglomerate Vinci said it had bought control of Gatwick airport, Britain's second-busiest, for nearly three billion pounds only months before Brexit.
(AFP, 12/27/18)
2018 Dec 27, German authorities said customs officials in the Hamburg area destroyed nine tons of drugs last week with an estimated total street value of about 520 million euros ($592 million).
(AP, 12/27/18)
2018 Dec 27, In southern Iceland an SUV carrying seven members of a British family plunged off a high bridge, killing three people and critically injuring four others.
(AP, 12/27/18)
2018 Dec 27, India's lower house of Parliament approved a bill to implement the Supreme Court's ruling that found the Muslim practice of instant divorce was unconstitutional.
(AP, 12/27/18)
2018 Dec 27, Iraqi lawmakers demanded US forces leave the country in the wake of a surprise visit by President Donald Trump that politicians denounced as arrogant and a violation of Iraqi sovereignty.
(AP, 12/27/18)
2018 Dec 27, Former Israeli armed forces chief Benny Gantz, who opinion polls show poses the toughest challenge to PM Benjamin Netanyahu's bid for reelection next year, formally established the Israel Resilience Party.
(Reuters, 12/27/18)
2018 Dec 27, In southern Libya a Chadian armed group attacked a military camp of forces loyal to General Khalifa Haftar, killing one and injuring 13 others near Traghen, about 400 km north of the border with Chad.
(Reuters, 12/27/18)
2018 Dec 27, The Madagascar electoral commission said former president Andry Rajoelina (44) has beaten his rival and predecessor Marc Ravalomanana in the Dec. 19 election beset by allegations of fraud from both sides. Results showed that Rajoelina had won 55.66 percent of the vote against 44.34 percent for Ravalomanana.
(AFP, 12/27/18)(AFP, 12/29/18)
2018 Dec 27, In Mongolia some 25 thousand people took to the streets to protest against corruption in the top echelons of politics, braving temperatures that dropped below minus 20 degrees Celsius in the capital, Ulaanbaatar.
(Reuters, 12/27/18)
2018 Dec 27, In southwestern Niger a French air raid mounted by French and Nigerian fighters and Tiger attack helicopters struck" jihadists gathered near Tongo Tongo. Some 15 suspected jihadists were reported killed.
(AFP, 12/30/18)
2018 Dec 27, Pakistan announced a travel ban on former President Asif Ali Zardari and 171 other individuals while authorities complete an investigation into alleged money laundering.
(AP, 12/27/18)
2018 Dec 27, Saudi Arabia's King Salman ordered a sweeping government reshuffle, replacing key security and political figures including the foreign minister, as the kingdom grapples with the international fallout over critic Jamal Khashoggi's murder.
(AFP, 12/27/18)
2018 Dec 27, A network of Sudanese journalists went on strike in the wake of deadly protests sparked by a hike in bread prices, while opposition groups called for further rallies.
(AFP, 12/27/18)
2018 Dec 27, The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 11,500 people have fled the Islamic State group's last stronghold in eastern Syria since Kurdish-led forces broke IS defenses and took the jihadists' main hub of Hajin two weeks ago.
(AFP, 12/27/18)
2018 Dec 27, Thousands of Taiwanese, taking a page from France's yellow vest movement, protested for the third time in a week to demand lower taxes and the fair handling of tax disputes.
(AP, 12/27/18)
2018 Dec 27, It was reported that Thailand investigators have found Gen. Prawit Wongsuwan, the deputy prime minister, innocent of failing to declare assets a year after he was discovered to have several luxury watches that would have been out of reach of his government salary.
(AP, 12/27/18)
2018 Dec 27, In Tunisia protesters clashed with police for a third consecutive night in six different towns including Kasserine, where journalist Abderrazak Zorgui set himself ablaze earlier this week.
(AP, 12/27/18)
2018 Dec 27, Turkey detained Adnan Sutcu (56) of Germany shortly after his arrival in Ankara to attend his mother's funeral. He was barred from leaving Turkey after the authorities accused him of supporting a terrorist organization on social media.
(Reuters, 12/31/18)
2018 Dec 27, The United Arab Emirates reopened its embassy in Damascus, the latest sign of efforts to bring the Syrian government back into the Arab fold.
(AFP, 12/27/18)
2018 Dec 27, In Venezuela a magnitude 5.5 earthquake jolted people from their sleep early today, forcing residents in the capital to evacuate buildings in their pajamas before sunrise. There were no immediate reports of casualties.
(AP, 12/27/18)
2018 Dec 28, Pres. Donald Trump threatened to close the southern US border and cut off aid to Central America if Congress refuses to fund a border wall.
(SFC, 12/29/18, p.A5)
2018 Dec 28, Wells Fargo agreed to pay $575 million to resolve investigations by all 50 US states and Washington, DC, related to unauthorized accounts in customers' names. More than a quarter of the settlement will go to the state of California.
(SFC, 12/29/18, p.D1)
2018 Dec 28, Afghanistan's attorney general slapped a travel ban on five top football officials, hours after graphic details emerged of alleged sexual and physical abuse against members of the women's national team.
(AFP, 12/28/18)
2018 Dec 28, Albania's PM Edi Rama shuffled his Cabinet in response to a students' protest and complaints of corruption and inefficiency from the opposition.
(AP, 12/28/18)
2018 Dec 28, Bangladesh's telecoms regulator ordered mobile operators to shut down high-speed mobile internet services until midnight Dec 29, the day of a national election, to prevent rumors and propaganda surrounding the vote.
(Reuters, 12/29/18)
2018 Dec 28, In Brazil Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu hailed what he said would be a "new era" in ties with "great power" Brazil ahead of meeting with the Latin America's country's incoming far-right leader, Jair Bolsonaro.
(AFP, 12/28/18)
2018 Dec 28, In Britain three men were found guilty of murdering five people in an explosion as part of a plot to claim over 300,000 pounds ($380,000) from an insurance policy. Arkan Ali, Hawkar Hassan and Aram Kurd were convicted in Leicester Crown Court for an arson attack in February.
(AP, 12/28/18)
2018 Dec 28, British music retailer HMV (His Master's Voice), which was launched by English composer Edward Elgar in 1921 and helped propel the Beatles to fame, collapsed into administration as consumers switch to digital streaming in droves.
(AFP, 12/28/18)
2018 Dec 28, A Canadian teacher detained in China over a problem with her work permit returned home. Albertan Sarah McIver was arrested earlier this month for issues related to her teaching job.
(AP, 12/29/18)
2018 Dec 28, Chinese police detained a group of students who protested against a crackdown on the Peking University Marxist Society.
(Reuters, 12/28/18)
2018 Dec 28, In CongoDRC protests flared for a second straight day in eastern cities in response to the decision to cancel voting in Beni and Butembo in the east and Yumbi in the west. New polling showed opposition candidate Martin Fayulu favored to win the Dec. 30 elections.
(AP, 12/28/18)
2018 Dec 28, It was reported that cash-strapped Cuba plans fresh austerity measures and will pressure the sluggish bureaucracy to tighten its belt and cut red tape to address weak growth, falling export earnings and rising debt.
(Reuters, 12/28/18)
2018 Dec 28, Ecuador's government banned most fireworks in the Galapagos archipelago due to damage caused to the islands' wildlife from the sounds of explosions, including heart problems and nervous stress.
(AP, 12/28/18)
2018 Dec 28, In Egypt a roadside bomb hit a tourist bus near the Giza Pyramids, killing three Vietnamese and their Egyptian guide.
(AP, 12/29/18)
2018 Dec 28, In India a top official at Purvanchal University urged his students to "murder" fellow students if confronted instead of complaining to him, amid a wave of violence being reported from across Uttar Pradesh where the school is based.
(Reuters, 12/30/18)
2018 Dec 28, It was reported that steep price drops in India in recent weeks for onions and potatoes have badly hit the rural economy in large states.
(Reuters, 12/28/18)
2018 Dec 28, Indonesia's disaster agency said that 426 people died in the Dec. 22 Sunda Strait tsunami. That was slightly lower than previously announced due to some victims being recorded twice. It said 23 are missing and more than 40,000 displaced.
(AP, 12/28/18)
2018 Dec 28, Israeli fire killed Karam Fayyad (26) during protests on the border east of the city of Khan Yunis. Witnesses said Fayyad had Down syndrome. An Israeli aircraft hit a Hamas position in the Gaza Strip late today in response to the first fire from the territory since a November flare-up.
(AFP, 12/29/18)(SFC, 12/29/18, p.A2)
2018 Dec 28, Amos Oz (b.1939), celebrated Israeli novelist and passionate peace advocate, died of cancer. His stirring memoir "A Tale of Love and Darkness" (2002) became a worldwide bestseller.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amos_Oz)(AFP, 12/28/18)
2018 Dec 28, Mexican authorities confirmed the kidnap-murder of a medical student who was the daughter of a Cuernavaca university administrator. The woman was reported missing Dec. 13 and her body was later discovered in Yautepec. Two suspects were reported detained in Cuernavaca.
(AP, 12/29/18)
2018 Dec 28, In Mexico 7 children died in a house fire in the poor Iztapalapa neighborhood of Mexico City.
(AP, 12/29/18)
2018 Dec 28, Shehu Shagari (93), Nigeria's second president (1978-1983), died. His civilian tenure was sandwiched between two military rulers in an era rocked by coups.
(AP, 12/29/18)
2018 Dec 28, Pakistan's army chief, Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa, approved death sentences for 22 militants convicted by military courts of involvement in attacks that killed 176 security forces and civilians in recent years.
(AP, 12/28/18)
2018 Dec 28, Russia's FSB state security service detained an American citizen suspected of spying in Moscow. This was only announced on Dec. 31. The English-language service of TASS news agency then named him as Paul Whelan (48). The Canadian-born former US Marine with triple UK, US and Irish citizenship, was charged with espionage. His lawyer Vladimir Zherebenkov later said Whelan was handed a USB drive containing state secrets but he had thought it was information about Russian culture. Whelan denied the charge. If found guilty he could face up to 20 years in jail.
(AP, 12/28/18)(AFP, 12/28/18)(Reuters, 5/24/19)
2018 Dec 28, Syrian troops deployed in support of Kurdish forces around Manbij, a strategic northern city, in a shift of alliances hastened by last week's announcement of a US military withdrawal. The deployment creates a regime buffer arching across northern Syria that fully separates the Turkish army and its proxies from the Kurds.
(AFP, 12/28/18)
2018 Dec 28, In southern Thailand four people in Narathiwat were wounded by one of several bombs suspected of being planted by the Muslim insurgents. There was a shootout between security forces and suspected insurgents who attacked a defense outpost at a small rural village.
(AP, 12/29/18)
2018 Dec 28, Venezuela launched a complaint at the World Trade Organization to challenge US sanctions, saying that a ban on travel by blacklisted individuals and trade restrictions break WTO rules.
(Reuters, 1/8/19)
2018 Dec 29, The United States detained Russian citizen Dmitry Makarenko (b.1979) on the Northern Mariana Islands, a US commonwealth in the Pacific Ocean. He was soon transferred to Florida. Makarenko was accused in June 2017 by federal prosecutors of conspiring with another man, Vladimir Nevidomy, to export defense articles including night-vision scopes from the United States to Russia without US approval. Court papers showed Nevidomy pleaded guilty in the case in June 2018 and was sentenced to 26 months in prison with three years of supervised release.
(Reuters, 1/5/19)
2018 Dec 29, In Arizona an incapacitated woman (29) with significant intellectual disabilities at the Hacienda Health-Care facility gave birth following a sexual assault. Nathan Sutherland, a nurse whose DNA police said matches a sample from the baby, later pleaded not guilty to charges of rape.
(SFC, 1/14/19, p.A4)(SFC, 1/21/19, p.A4)(SSFC, 2/10/19, p.A8)
2018 Dec 29, In Missouri police in St. Louis identified Richard Darren Emery (46) as the shooter in the overnight killing of his girlfriend (39), her two children and her mother.
(SSFC, 12/30/18, p.A9)
2018 Dec 29, In Nevada a woman skipped out on a $35 manicure and used a stolen car to run over and kill manicurist Ngoc Nguyen (51) in Las Vegas. Krystal Whipple (21) was arrested on Jan. 11, 2019, in Glendale, Arizona, by a team of fugitive hunters. In 2020 Whipple pleaded guilty and faced up to 25 years in prison.
(SFC, 1/12/19, p.A6)(SFC, 12/8/20, p.A5)
2018 Dec 29, Australia said it stripped Neil Prakash, a suspected militant held in Turkey, of citizenship because he fought for the Islamic State group. He became the 12th person to be stripped of Australian citizenship because of militant links, based on a 2007 law.
(AP, 12/29/18)
2018 Dec 29, Brazil's far-right President-elect Jair Bolsonaro said he plans to issue a decree allowing all Brazilians without criminal records to own firearms, welcome news to many core supporters who want him to loosen Brazil's strict gun laws.
(Reuters, 12/29/18)
2018 Dec 29, A Chinese court ordered a retrial of a Canadian citizen on drug smuggling charges after prosecutors said his sentence of 15 years was too light. Robert Lloyd Schellenberg had lodged an appeal after being handed a 15 year sentence on Nov. 20 in the northeastern city of Dalian.
(Reuters, 12/29/18)
(AP, 12/29/18)
2018 Dec 29, Colombian Foreign Minister Carlos Holmes Trujillo said in a video message that there was intelligence indicating "credible" plans to target the right-wing Pres. Ivan Duque, who took office in August. He said three Venezuelans were arrested in recent days with "weapons of war".
(Reuters, 12/30/18)
2018 Dec 29, Egypt's Interior Ministry said security forces have killed 40 suspected militants in three separate incidents in North Sinai and Giza.
(Reuters, 12/29/18)
2018 Dec 29, In France yellow vest protesters marched on the headquarters of leading broadcasters, as small groups turned out in Paris and around the country despite waning momentum for their movement. Police fired tear gas at the demonstrators in Paris.
(AP, 12/29/18)(AFP, 12/29/18)
2018 Dec 29, In India a police officer was stoned to death during violent protests in Ghazipur, Uttar Pradesh state.
(Reuters, 12/30/18)
2018 Dec 29, In Italy the city officials of Venice passed a budget bill that will allow charging all visitors to the city a new tax to help cover the costs of keeping the tourist-thronged historic city clean and safe.
(AFP, 12/31/18)
2018 Dec 29, In Israel Education Minister Naftali Bennett and Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked announced that they are forming a new party to run in April elections, hoping to present a hard-line alternative to PM Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud Party.
(AP, 12/30/18)
2018 Dec 29, In Kashmir anti-India protests and clashes erupted after a gunbattle between militants and government forces killed four rebels in the Pulwama area.
(AP, 12/29/18)
2018 Dec 29, Lebanon's finance minister said the heavily indebted country is in a state of economic crisis and warned it faces becoming a financial crisis, as politicians struggle to form a new government.
(Reuters, 12/30/18)
2018 Dec 29, In Madagascar some two thousand opposition supporters took to the streets in Antananarivo to protest against the victory of ex-president Andry Rajoelina in last week's elections.
(AP, 12/29/18)
2018 Dec 29, The Mexican military assumed control of policing in three municipalities of the central state of Morelos (Cuernavaca, Jiutepec and Yautepec), and conducted a review of their firearms, munitions, personnel and equipment.
(AP, 12/29/18)
2018 Dec 29, Dutch police on horseback broke up a "Yellow Vest" protest in The Hague and arrested eight people after the demonstration turned violent.
(AP, 12/29/18)
2018 Dec 29, In the southern Philippines a magnitude 7.2 undersea earthquake struck off Davao Oriental province, prompting people to scramble out of shopping malls and buildings and authorities to warn villagers to stay away from beaches in case of a tsunami. The death toll from the storm eventually rose to 126. Authorities said landslides caused by torrential rain were the top cause.
(AP, 12/29/18)(AFP, 1/6/19)
2018 Dec 29, In Serbia thousands of people protested for a fourth consecutive week over what they say has been a stifling of democratic freedoms under President Aleksandar Vucic.
(AP, 12/29/18)
2018 Dec 29 South Africa arrested Manuel Chang, the former Mozambican finance minister, at the Johannesburg airport. A US indictment alleged that Chang and others violated US anti-corruption laws in a $2 billion loan scandal that plunged Mozambique into financial crisis.
(AP, 1/9/19)
2018 Dec 29, In southern Thailand violence presumed to have been carried out by Muslim separatists continued for the fourth day in a row, with three paramilitary soldiers wounded and a female civilian shot dead in Pattani province.
(AP, 12/29/18)
2018 Dec 29, Yemen's Houthi forces said they have started to redeploy overnight from the port of the Red Sea city of Hodeidah as part of a UN-sponsored peace agreement signed in Sweden earlier this month. The government denied this, saying it was a ploy by the rebels to maintain control. Under the deal, international monitors are to be deployed in Hodeidah and a Redeployment Coordination Committee (RCC) including both sides, chaired by Cammaert, will oversee implementation.
(Reuters, 12/29/18)(AP, 12/30/18)
2018 Dec 30, A senior US Republican senator said Pres. Donald Trump had promised to stay in Syria to finish the job of defeating the Islamic State group, also known as ISIS.
(AFP, 12/31/18)
2018 Dec 30, In North Carolina a lion killed Alexandra Black (22) after it got loose from a locked space at a wildlife conservatory in Burlington. The lion was killed after attempts to tranquilize it failed.
(SFC, 12/31/18, p.A5)
2018 Dec 30, In Texas a driver fired several shots into a car carrying a family, killing Jazmine Barnes (7) and wounding the child's mother in the Houston area. A tip implicated two black men in a case of mistaken identity. Suspect Eric Black Jr. was arrested on Jan. 5 during a traffic stop. Black and Larry Woodruffe (24) were soon charged with capital murder.
(SFC, 1/2/19, p.A4)(SFC, 1/8/19, p.A6)(SFC, 1/9/19, p.A6)
2018 Dec 30, Bangladesh voters went to the polls to decide whether to give PM Sheikh Hasina a third consecutive term, in an election seen as a referendum on what critics call Hasina's increasingly authoritarian tendencies. Opposition leader Kamal Hossain said a few hours after voting ended that about 100 candidates from the alliance had withdrawn from their races during the day amid allegations of vote rigging. Hasina's ruling alliance won 288 out of 300 parliamentary seats in the general election. Transparency International later said its investigation into the Bangladesh election found irregularities at 47 of the 50 constituencies surveyed, including fake votes, ballot stuffing, and voters and opposition polling agents barred from entering polling centers.
(AP, 12/30/18)(Reuters, 12/30/18)(AP, 12/31/18)(Reuters, 1/24/19)
2018 Dec 30, CongoDRC struggled with hundreds of reports of malfunctioning voting machines, missing voters' lists, vote-buying and other problems. The election in Beni ended on time, and the vote-counting began. Officially, voting in Beni and Butembo was to take place in March, months after Congo inaugurates its new president in mid-January.
(AP, 12/30/18)
2018 Dec 30, In Germany an 18-year-old driver trying to evade a highway patrol crashed into a stationary vehicle near Heppenheim, killing a woman (39) and injuring her son (10).
(AP, 12/31/18)
2018 Dec 30, In western Germany Edgar Hilsenrath (92), a German-Jewish writer whose fictional account of the Holocaust from the perspective of a Nazi perpetrator became a best-seller, died. His first novel, "Night," recounting the horrors of trying to survive in a Jewish ghetto, was published in 1954. His 1971 novel "The Nazi and the Barber," a grotesque story about an SS member who pretends to be Jewish after the war to escape prosecution, sold millions of copies worldwide.
(AP, 1/1/19)
2018 Dec 30, Hundreds of Iranian students held protests for a second day, calling for university officials to resign over the Dec. 25 bus crash that killed 10.
(AFP, 12/30/18)
2018 Dec 30, In Mexico Maria Asuncion Torres Cruz, an alderwoman-elect, was shot and killed outside her home in Mazatepec, Morelos stae, by a hooded man.
(SFC, 1/1/18, p.A2)
2018 Dec 30, Five Nigerien and five Nigerian" troops and 11 enemy fighters were killed over the last 24 hours in an operation launched against gangs in the Maradi region.
(AFP, 12/31/18)
2018 Dec 30, Philippine authorities said least 22 people died from a storm that swept through the central islands at the weekend, with rescue operations under way in flood-inundated communities.
(AFP, 12/30/18)
2018 Dec 30, Russia's Defence Ministry said it will deploy in 2019 the S-350 Vityaz new generation short-to-mid range surface-to-air defence missile complex, in a long-planned move to replace its ageing S-300 system.
(Reuters, 12/30/18)
2018 Dec 30, In Sudan an umbrella of independent professional unions called on people to march on the presidential palace in Khartoum, to demand that autocratic President Omar Bashir step down. Bashir told police to abstain from using excessive force against anti-government demonstrators as the UN called for a probe into deaths during the violent protests. At least 19 people have been killed since December 19.
(AP, 12/30/18)(AFP, 12/30/18)
2018 Dec 30, Syria's state news agency said President Bashar Assad has authorized Iraqi forces to attack the Islamic State group inside Syria without waiting for permission from authorities in Damascus.
(AP, 12/30/18)
2018 Dec 31, The International Federation of Journalists said in an annual report that 94 journalists and media workers died in targeted killings, bomb attacks and conflict crossfire this year, 12 more than in 2017.
(AP, 12/31/18)
2018 Dec 31, In Ohio Devaughn Gibson (23), DelVaunte Johnson (19) and Toshon Banks (21) were all shot dead after a row outside an Airbnb rental in Cleveland. On August 29, 2019, Tevin Biles-Thomas, the brother of Olympic gold medalist Simone Biles, was arrested in Georgia and charged with murder in the shooting.
(The Independent, 8/30/19)(SFC, 8/31/19, p.A7)
2018 Dec 31, Afghan special forces launched a new offensive against the Islamic State group in eastern Nangarhar province, killing 27 militants. Meanwhile, Taliban attacks in the north killed 15 members of the country's security forces.
(AP, 1/1/19)
2018 Dec 31, Bahraini prominent activist Nabeel Rajab lost his appeal and was handed down a five-year jail term. He had been jailed for criticizing his country's rulers on social media.
(AFP, 12/31/18)
2018 Dec 31, The mayor of the northwestern Bosnian town of Banja Luka canceled New Year celebrations for security reasons after protesters demanding the truth about a student's death prevented a public concert taking place the previous evening.
(Reuters, 12/31/18)
2018 Dec 31, British police arrested 39 people early today on suspicion of attempted murder following a stabbing in west London.
(AP, 12/31/18)
2018 Dec 31, In Britain a triple stabbing at a Manchester railway station on New Year's Eve injured three people. It was soon treated as "a terrorist investigation." Counter-terrorism police arrested a 25-year-old man.
(AFP, 1/1/19)
2018 Dec 31, Burkina Faso said it is declaring a state of emergency in provinces grappling with jihadist violence. Gunmen on motorbikes attacked the village of Yirgou in Barsalogo district, killing seven people, including the village chief.
(AP, 12/31/18)(Reuters, 1/4/19)
2018 Dec 31, Dubai's stock market ended 2018 with a 25-percent annual loss, the worst year since the global financial crisis a decade ago, as the real estate and tourism sectors struggled.
(AFP, 12/31/18)
2018 Dec 31, In Egypt Amal Fathi (34), arrested in May over a video she posted online in which she spoke out against sexual harassment, lost her appeal and was handed a two-year prison term, as well as a fine of 10,000 Egyptian pounds ($560).
(AFP, 12/31/18)
2018 Dec 31, A French court authorized Central Africa Republic soccer executive and alleged militia leader Patrice-Edouard Ngaissona to be handed over to the Hague war crimes tribunal.
(Reuters, 12/31/18)
2018 Dec 31, Indian troops fired at Pakistani forces across the two countries' line of control in the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir, killing a woman and wounding nine civilians.
(AP, 12/31/18)
2018 Dec 31, In Indonesia rescuers recovered six more bodies buried under tons of mud from a landslide that crashed onto a hilly village on the main island of Java, bringing the death toll to 15. At least 20 people were missing after landslides during heavy rain buried 30 houses in Sukabumi regency, West Java.
(AP, 1/1/19)(Reuters, 1/1/19)
2018 Dec 31, In Iran security forces clashed with students in Tehran in the third day of protests over a deadly bus crash, adding to officials' fears that rising public unrest could threaten national security.
(Reuters, 12/31/18)
2018 Dec 31, Iran's intelligence ministry said it had arrested 11 "economic disruptors" who misappropriated some $400 million earmarked for essential goods and smuggled the money out of the country.
(AFP, 12/31/18)
2018 Dec 31, Iraqi fighter jets struck an Islamic State position inside Syria, a day after the Syrian government authorized its neighbor to target the militants at will.
(AP, 12/31/18)
2018 Dec 31, An Israeli court sentenced Palestinian Jamil Tamimi (59) to 18 years imprisonment for stabbing to death Hannah Bladon (21), a British woman in Jerusalem on April 14, 2017. A plea bargain acknowledged that Tamimi is mentally ill.
(Reuters, 12/31/18)
2018 Dec 31, Italy's ruling 5-Star Movement expelled four parliamentarians from the party in an effort to instill discipline in its ranks. The decision means the ruling coalition, made up of 5-Star and the League, has just 167 seats in the 320-seat Senate.
(Reuters, 12/31/18)
2018 Dec 31, The self-styled Libyan National Army freed 19 people who were kidnapped by Islamic State group militants during attacks in central Libya.
(AP, 1/1/19)
2018 Dec 31, A Palestinian court sentenced Issam Akel (55) from east Jerusalem to life in prison with hard labor for trying to sell property in the Old City to an Israeli group.
(AP, 12/31/18)
2018 Dec 31, A Panamanian car carrier heading from Japan to Hawaii caught fire. Nearby merchant vessels rescued 16 crew members. Three were found dead in the water and two were missing.
(SFC, 1/3/19, p.A6)
2018 Dec 31, Peru's attorney general dismissed a team investigating the far-reaching Odebrecht corruption scandal, setting off street protests in cities across the country.
(AP, 12/31/18)
2018 Dec 31, in the southern Philippines a remotely controlled bomb, blamed by security forces on a small pro-Islamic State militant group, killed two people and wounded dozens at a shopping mall in Cotabato city.
(AP, 12/31/18)
2018 Dec 31, A Russian apartment block partially collapsed in an explosion, killing at least four people in Magnitogorsk. Russian rescue crews soon pulled two more bodies from the rubble of a collapsed apartment building, bringing the death toll to nine. By Jan. 2 the number of confirmed dead rose to 22 and 19 remained missing. The number of dead from the gas explosion jumped to 39 on Jan. 3 as rescuers finished searching for bodies in the rubble of the partially collapsed building.
(Reuters, 12/31/18)(AP, 1/1/19)(AP, 1/2/19)(AFP, 1/3/19)
2018 Dec 31, Spanish police said they have seized 3.25 metric tons (3.64 short tons) of hashish in two operations against drug trafficking across the Strait of Gibraltar. Police made 42 arrests and broke up what they believed to be one of most important drug smuggling gangs operating between Spain and North Africa.
(AP, 12/31/18)
2018 Dec 31, Sudanese riot police fired tear gas at demonstrators in Khartoum, dispersing protesters who had planned to march on the presidential palace following deadly anti-government rallies. President Omar al-Bashir ordered an investigation into "recent events" after two weeks of violent protests against his 29-year autocratic rule, as he seeks to placate popular anger over worsening economic conditions. Al-Bashir sought to defuse the anger, promising better days ahead and pledging more "transparency, effectiveness and justice in all our national institutions" in an address to the nation marking the anniversary of Sudan's independence 63 years ago.
(AFP, 12/31/18)(AP, 1/1/19)
2018 Dec 31, The UAE's Federal Supreme Court upheld a 10-year sentence for human rights activist Ahmed Mansoor (49).
(AFP, 12/31/18)
2018 Dec 31, The UN food agency threatened to suspend some aid shipments to Yemen if the Houthi rebels do not investigate and stop theft and fraud in food distribution. The suspension would affect some 3 million people.
(AP, 12/31/18)
2018 Dec 31, The Vatican spokesman and his deputy resigned over disagreements on strategy, ending a year of upheaval in the Holy See's communications structure.
(Reuters, 12/31/18)
2018 Dec 31, Zambian President Edgar Lungu sacked the army commander and his deputy, a rare firing of the top military brass in the country.
(AFP, 12/31/18)
2018 Dec, In Belgium Sanda Dia (20) died in a hospital after he was forced to drink excessive amounts of alcohol, fish oil, and made to sit in freezing water during a vicious hazing to enter the elite student fraternity called Reuzegom. In 2021 All eighteen students accused of playing a role in the death of the Black student were ordered to stand trial.
(AP, 8/5/21)
2018 Dec, Chinese police arrested five former Huawei employees over WeChat discussions of claims the company violated sanctions against Iran. This was only made public in 2020.
(Engadget, 4/26/20)
2018 Dec, In western Congo DRC at least 535 men, women and children from the Banunu community were killed in attack
Return to home
2018 Oct 1, Researchers from the United States and Japan won the Nobel Prize in medicine for discoveries that help the body marshal its cellular troops to attack invading cancers. James Allison of the University of Texas and Tasuku Honjo of Kyoto University will share the 9-million-kronor ($1.01 million) prize for 2018.
(AP, 10/1/18)
2018 Oct 1, The US Supreme Court decided not to take the case of billionaire Vinod Khosla who wants to block people from crossing his property to access Martins Beach in San Mateo County, Ca.
(SFC, 10/2/18, p.A1)
2018 Oct 1, In the SF Bay Area Anthony Pimentel (19) visited San Leandro police with his father and admitted to killing his girlfriend. Pimentel led police to the body of Mariah Davis near lake Chabot Dam. Davis (18) was last seen Sept. 26.
(SFC, 10/2/18, p.C1)
2018 Oct 1, In Boston Carlos Melara (21), a member of the MS-13 gang who helped lure a 15-year-old Boston boy to his death through a fake Facebook page in 2015, was sentenced to 36 years in federal prison.
(AP, 10/2/18)
2018 Oct 1, Police officers in Florida fatally shot Brian Baker (33), an unarmed patient at Orlando Regional Medical Center. Police said hospital emergency workers said the man had a gun.
(SFC, 10/2/18, p.A6)
2018 Oct 1, The Oregonian/OregonLive reported that the real-estate brokers tasked with selling units in the TwentyTwenty building in northeast Portland expect to offer up to 45 of the 162 units to buyers from countries that include China, Japan and Singapore.
(AP, 10/2/18)
2018 Oct 1, Judges at the International Court of Justice ruled that landlocked Bolivia cannot force Chile to negotiate over granting it "sovereign access" to the Pacific Ocean, in a setback to Bolivian President Evo Morales.
(Reuters, 10/1/18)
2018 Oct 1, The Canadian province of Quebec held an election that is primed to be a showdown between the long-dominant Liberals and a center-right party, with immigration playing out as a key issue.
(AP, 10/1/18)
2018 Oct 1, Canadian dairy farmers castigated PM Justin Trudeau's government for yielding to US demands for greater access to Canada's protected milk and cheese market as part of a new continental trade pact, but auto workers were pleased. The concessions, gave US farmers an additional 3.59 percent slice of the Canadian dairy market.
(AFP, 10/1/18)
2018 Oct 1, In Egypt Islamic State militant Abu Hamza al-Maqdisi was killed in an air raid at Sheikh Zuweid, North Sinai province.
(AFP, 10/3/18)
2018 Oct 1, Legendary French Armenian singer Charles Aznavour (b.1924) died at his home in Alpilles. Aznavour was named "Entertainer of the Century" by CNN in 1998 because of his immense global popularity. His leading role in Francois Truffaut's film "Shoot the Piano Player" in 1960 catapulted Aznavour to international fame.
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z24X730KABU)(AFP, 10/1/18)
2018 Oct 1, German police arrested six more men on suspicion of forming a "far-right terrorist organization" in the eastern city of Chemnitz and planning to carry out attacks against foreigners and political enemies. A seventh suspect was arrested in a separate case last month.
(AP, 10/1/18)
2018 Oct 1, Hungary's Index.hu, the largest source of independent news in the country, briefly took down the front page of its online portal to sound the alarm over what it sees as its declining editorial freedom and to secure funding from readers to help protect its independence.
(Reuters, 10/1/18)
2018 Oct 1, Iran's Revolutionary Guards fired missiles at Islamic State militants in eastern Syria. It blame them for an attack on its soil on Sept. 22 and said the action shows the government's readiness to punish the "wickedness" of its enemies.
(AP, 10/1/18)(SFC, 10/2/18, p.A4)
2018 Oct 1, Italian coffee company Lavazza Group said it has acquired Virginia-based Mars Inc.'s beverage division in an effort to expand its North American presence.
(AP, 10/1/18)
2018 Oct 1, In Morocco 26 survivors were taken ashore to the town of Nador after waiting to be rescued from a semi-sunken boat for more than 36 hours. They said that 34 people had died or disappeared in the Mediterranean Sea.
(AP, 10/2/18)
2018 Oct 1, Namibia's President Hage Geingob called for a change to the constitution to allow the government to expropriate land and re-distribute it to the majority black population.
(Reuters, 10/1/18)
2018 Oct 1, North and South Korea began removing mines and other explosives at two sites inside their heavily armed border as part of their recent tension-reduction steps.
(AP, 10/1/18)
2018 Oct 1, Pakistan's Railways Minister Sheikh Rasheed said Islamabad has cut the size of the biggest Chinese "Silk Road" project in Pakistan by $2 billion, citing government concerns about the country's debt levels.
(Reuters, 10/1/18)
2018 Oct 1, Palestinians across the occupied West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem held a general strike in support of an Israeli-Arab protest against Israel's new Nation State Law.
(Reuters, 10/1/18)
2018 Oct 1, In the northern Philippines gunmen killed a town mayor and two other people and wounded the mayor's wife late today in Bangar town, La Union province.
(AP, 10/2/18)
2018 Oct 1, Puerto Rico's government said it has bought four new ferries and announced a new departure site for those traveling to two nearby islands popular with tourists.
(AP, 10/1/18)
2018 Oct 1, Qatar also launched an action at the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Geneva, accusing Saudi Arabia of violating intellectual property rights, over beIN. Qatari sports broadcasting giant beIN launched a massive $1-billion compensation claim against Saudi channels it accuses of "flagrantly breaching international law" by showing live sports programs.
(AFP, 10/1/18)
2018 Oct 1, The Serbian government said China Shandong International Economic and Technical Cooperation Corp has won a concession to charge a toll on the highway it is constructing in Bosnia's autonomous Serb Republic.
(Reuters, 10/1/18)
2018 Oct 1, In Slovakia a prosecutor said that a total sum of 70,000 euros ($81,000) was paid for the Feb. 21 contract slayings of investigative journalist Jan Kuciak and his fiancee.
(AP, 10/1/18)
2018 Oct 1, Slovenian police resumed their strike for higher wages, less then three weeks after a new minority center-left government led by PM Marjan Sarec took power following a June parliamentary election.
(Reuters, 10/1/18)
2018 Oct 1, In Somalia three people were killed in a suicide car bombing by Islamist group al Shabaab which hit an EU armored convoy in Mogadishu. A US military's Africa Command (Africom) airstrike near Kismayo killed nine militants.
(Reuters, 10/1/18)(Reuters, 10/9/18)
2018 Oct 1, South Korea's Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon told parliament the estimates on the size of North Korea's nuclear arsenal range from 20 bombs to as many as 60.
(AP, 10/2/18)
2018 Oct 1, In Spain tens of thousands of Catalans filled central Barcelona to mark the first anniversary of an ill-fated independence referendum, as protesters made short-lived attempts to block roads and train tracks in the northeastern region.
(Reuters, 10/1/18)
2018 Oct 1, In Sweden Jean-Claude Arnault (72), the man at the center of a sex abuse and financial crimes scandal that is tarnishing the academy that awards the Nobel Prize in Literature, was convicted of rape and sentenced to two years in prison.
(AP, 10/1/18)
2018 Oct 1, President Tayyip Erdogan said Turkey aims to secure control of the region of northern Syria east of the Euphrates river, removing the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia from the area, and to clear Iraq's Sinjar and Qandil regions of Kurdish militants.
(Reuters, 10/1/18)
2018 Oct 1, UNRWA pulled part of its international staff out of the Gaza Strip due to security concerns.
(AP, 10/2/18)
2018 Oct 2, The Wall Street Journal reported that Pres. Donald Trump personally guided efforts in February to keep Stormy Daniels from talking about their alleged 2006 tryst, and that his son Eric was enlisted to help in the matter.
(SFC, 10/3/18, p.A8)
2018 Oct 2, Three scientists from the United States, Canada and France won the Nobel Prize in physics for work with lasers. Arthur Ashkin (96) of Bell Laboratories in New Jersey, developed "optical tweezers" that can grab tiny particles such as viruses without damaging them. Donna Strickland, of the University of Waterloo in Canada, and Frenchman Gerard Mourou of the Ecole Polytechnique and University of Michigan, helped develop short and intense laser pulses that have broad industrial and medical applications, including laser eye surgery and highly precise machine cutting.
(AP, 10/2/18)
2018 Oct 2, In Chicago Kiera Coles (27), a pregnant postal worker, was last seen after calling in sick for work. Police suspected foul play.
(SFC, 10/20/18, p.A6)
2018 Oct 2, Amazon said it is boosting its minimum wage for all US workers to $15 per hour starting next month and said it will push for an increase in the federally mandated minimum wage, which now stands at $7.25 per hour.
(AP, 10/2/18)
2018 Oct 2, In Abu Dhabi eight members of one Emirati family were killed in a house fire in the country.
(AP, 10/2/18)
2018 Oct 2, In Afghanistan a suicide bomber struck an election rally in eastern Nangarhar province, killing at least 13 people and wounding around 40. At least nine police officers were killed in attacks late today by insurgents on checkpoints in three different parts of the country.
(AP, 10/2/18)(AP, 10/3/18)
2018 Oct 2, Britain's PM Theresa May announced that her government will change the law so that opposite-sex couples can enter into civil partnerships.
(SFC, 10/3/18, p.A2)
2018 Oct 2, Former British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson revved up Britain's Conservative Party and ramped up pressure on PM Theresa May, condemning her proposed divorce deal with the European Union as a "cheat" that would keep the country manacled to the bloc.
(AP, 10/2/18)
2018 Oct 2, Six fraudsters were jailed in Britain for orchestrating a 17 million pound ($22 million) scam to sell and install solar energy panels, often targeting vulnerable people.
(Reuters, 10/2/18)
2018 Oct 2, Geoff Emerick (72), who worked as recording engineer for the Beatles for many years and played an important role in the creation of "Revolver," ''Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" and other albums, died.
(AP, 10/3/18)
2018 Oct 2, It was reported that a court in Dubai has sentenced an Egyptian taxi driver (34)to six months in prison and deportation after convicting him of sexually assaulting a US Navy officer (22) in March 2017.
(AP, 10/2/18)
2018 Oct 2, Ethiopian officials said more than 70,000 people have fled ethnically-charged violence in western Ethiopia, part of an eruption of unrest that has piled pressure on reformist PM Abiy Ahmed.
(Reuters, 10/2/18)
2018 Oct 2, Around 200 French police launched a dawn anti-terror raid on one of the biggest Shiite Muslim centers in France, the Zahra Center France, as well as the homes of its directors. France accused Iran's intelligence ministry of being behind a foiled plot to bomb an exiled opposition group near Paris. The accusation was taken three months after the alleged plot to bomb a meeting of the People's Mujahedeen of Iran (MEK) in a suburb of Paris.
(AFP, 10/2/18)
2018 Oct 2, German ministers said the government will ease immigration rules to attract foreign jobseekers, including giving well-integrated, irregular migrants who are employed a shot at staying in the country to combat a fast-ageing worker shortage.
(AFP, 10/2/18)
2018 Oct 2, German car giant Volkswagen said it was removing Rupert Stadler, the chief executive of subsidiary Audi who has been jailed in an emissions fraud probe since June, from his post and the parent group's board.
(AFP, 10/2/18)
2018 Oct 2, Melania Trump touched down at mid-morning in Ghana's capital, Accra, kicking off a four-country visit and receiving a warm welcome on a continent her husband once referred to derisively.
(Reuters, 10/2/18)
2018 Oct 2, Greenland PM Kim Kielsen presented a new minority government, ending a political crisis that started when he lost his majority last month with the withdrawal of a pro-independence party.
(Reuters, 10/2/18)
2018 Oct 2, Indian police fired teargas and water cannons to halt and scatter a march by thousands of protesting farmers heading for the capital New Delhi to demand better prices for their produce.
(Reuters, 10/2/18)
2018 Oct 2, Iran's environment chief Isa Kalantari said his country faces losing 70 percent of its farmlands if urgent action is not taken to overcome a litany of climate woes.
(AFP, 10/5/18)
2018 Oct 2, Iraq's lawmakers met to elect a new president after a dispute between the two main Kurdish parties delayed the vote, eventually forcing them to choose among 20 nominees. Veteran Kurdish politician Barham Salih (58) was elected president by parliament and sworn in. He then tapped Adel Abdel Mahdi (76) for the difficult task of navigating the country's tangled politics to form a government within 30 days.
(AP, 10/2/18)(AP, 10/3/18)(AFP, 10/3/18)
2018 Oct 2, Israel detained Lara Alqasem (22), an American citizen with Palestinian grandparents, after she landed at Ben-Gurion Airport with a valid student visa. She was barred from entering the country and ordered deported, based on suspicions that she supports a campaign that calls for boycotts, divestments, and sanctions against Israel. A week later she was still in detention.
(AP, 10/9/18)
2018 Oct 2, Italy's leaders refused to budge from new spending plans that have been spooking investors, pushing the eurozone's third-largest economy on a collision course with its EU partners.
(AP, 10/2/18)
2018 Oct 2, In Morocco a long-awaited law aimed at protecting thousands of young girls working as housemaids took effect, the country's first such legislation. The law sets a minimum age of 18 for household work. It allowed 16-17 year-olds to work as domestic helpers for a further five years until October 2023.
(AFP, 10/2/18)
2018 Oct 2, In Pakistan a roadside bomb hit a security convoy in the Awaran district of Baluchistan province, killing three members of a provincial paramilitary force and wounding eight.
(AP, 10/2/18)
2018 Oct 2, Palestinian schoolchildren in a West Bank hamlet slated for destruction asked for German Chancellor Angela Merkel to intervene on their behalf.
(AP, 10/2/18)
2018 Oct 2, Workers for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees went on strike to protest job cuts due to a funding crisis sparked by US President Donald Trump's aid cancellation.
(AP, 10/2/18)
2018 Oct 2, In Poland more than 20,000 policemen, firemen, border and prison guards gathered in Warsaw to decry "outrageous" working conditions and demand pay rises, in what they described as the biggest protest in Polish police history.
(Reuters, 10/2/18)
2018 Oct 2, An appeals court in Poland ruled that a Roman Catholic order should pay damages to a woman who was abducted and sexually abused by one of its priests when she was 13. The priest was arrested in 2008 and convicted of pedophilia. He has served four years in prison, and was removed from the religious order last year.
(AP, 10/2/18)
2018 Oct 2, Moscow said it had delivered the S-300 surface-to-air missile system to Syria after the downing of a Russian spy plane by Syrian forces in September.
(Reuters, 10/5/18)
2018 Oct 2, Saudi Arabia said it will deposit $200 million in Yemen's central bank to help stem a slide in the riyal that has sent food prices soaring in the famine-threatened country.
(AFP, 10/2/18)
2018 Oct 2, A Saudi newspaper reported that a Saudi woman has lost a judicial battle to marry the man of her choice as a court deemed him "religiously" unfit because he plays a musical instrument. The woman said she will seek intervention from the country's "highest authorities" -- a reference to the royal court.
(AFP, 10/2/18)
2018 Oct 2, In Spain the Catalan parliament voted to reject a Spanish Supreme Court ruling that suspended former Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont and five other pro-independence politicians from public office, marking a new standoff with Madrid.
(Reuters, 10/2/18)
2018 Oct 2, In Sudan newspaper editors attended a meeting held by the EU at its office in Khartoum that urged press freedoms in the country. Several Sudanese journalists highlighted the challenges faced by the media industry in Sudan, including newspaper seizures by security agents.
(AFP, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 2, In Turkey Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi (59), who has written Washington Post columns critical of the kingdom's assertive crown prince, went missing after visiting the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. The Saudi Consulate insisted that Khashoggi left its building before disappearing.
(AP, 10/3/18)(SFC, 10/5/18, p.A3)
2018 Oct 2, The World Health Organization said it was helping Yemeni authorities with a second round of vaccination against cholera in three hard-hit districts. More than 2,500 people have died of the waterborne infection since the worst cholera outbreak in Yemen's history began in April 2017.
(AFP, 10/2/18)
2018 Oct 3, A federal judge in San Francisco blocked Pres. Donald Trump's plans to end temporary protection status for immigrants.
(SFC, 10/6/1, p.A6)
2018 Oct 3, In the SF Bay Area Chinedu Okobi (36), a black man, was tased by police in Milbrae and soon died of cardiac arrest. Authorities said he had been running through traffic and acting erratically. A video showed he was walking on the sidewalk before being confronted by police. His family later alleged excessive police force.
(SFC, 11/20/18, p.A1)(SFC, 1/24/19, p.C1)
2018 Oct 3, US security firm FireEye raised the alarm over a North Korean group that it says has stolen hundreds of millions of dollars by infiltrating the computer systems of banks around the world since 2014 through highly sophisticated and destructive attacks that have spanned at least 11 countries.
(AP, 10/3/18)
2018 Oct 3, Two Americans and a Briton won the 2018 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for harnessing the power of evolution to generate novel proteins used in everything from environmentally friendly detergents to cancer drugs. Frances Arnold of the California Institute of Technology, George Smith from the University of Missouri and Gregory Winter of Britain's MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology were awarded the prize for pioneering science in enzymes and antibodies.
(Reuters, 10/3/18)
2018 Oct 3, New Jersey's Supreme Court dismissed more than 500 lawsuits against Hoffman-LaRoche, maker of the acne drug Acutane, saying warning labels that the drug is associated with inflammatory bowel disease, were adequate.
(SFC, 10/4/18, p.A5)
2018 Oct 3, In South Carolina Frederick Hopkins (74), a Vietnam veteran, shot at seven law officers killing one as police arrived to speak to his adopted son (27) about a sex assault investigation at his home in Florence. Police Sgt. Terrence Carraway (52) died trying to save other wounded officers. Hopkins was taken into custody after a two hour standoff.
(SFC, 10/5/18, p.A8)(SFC, 10/6/18, p.A6)(SFC, 10/9/18, p.A4)
2018 Oct 3, Upwork (UPWK), a global marketing place for freelance work, made its Wall Street debut. Its IPO was offered at $15 and closed at $21.18.
(SFC, 10/4/18, p.D1)
2018 Oct 3, It was reported that General Motors will partner with Honda in the "large-scale" development of autonomous vehicles.
(AP, 10/3/18)
2018 Oct 3, British sandwich shop chain Pret a Manger said it would list all ingredients, including allergens, on its products after Natasha Ednan-Laperouse (15) died in 2016 from an allergic reaction to sesame seeds.
(AFP, 10/3/18)
2018 Oct 3, Aston Martin stalled after making a glitzy £4.3-billion ($5.6-billion, 4.9-billion-euro) IPO debut on the London stock market.
(AFP, 10/3/18)
2018 Oct 3, Britain's biggest coffee house chain, Costa Coffee, was banned from repeating an advert that implied their breakfast deals were a better bet than eating an avocado.
(AFP, 10/3/18)
2018 Oct 3, In northern Burkina Faso a gendarme was killed and another injured, where three people, including an Indian and a South African national, had been kidnapped at the end of last month.
(AFP, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 3, China's official Xinhua News Agency reported that tax authorities have ordered "X-Men" star Fan Bingbing and companies she represents to pay taxes and penalties totaling $130 million, ending speculation over the fate of one of the country's highest-profile entertainers three months after she disappeared from public view.
(AP, 10/3/18)
2018 Oct 3, Costa Rican police arrested former Romanian Tourism Minister Elena Udrea and former chief prosecutor Alina Bica who had fled there before they could be sentenced for crimes committed while in office.
(AP, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 3, Egypt's Interior Ministry said that police have killed 15 suspected militants in a shootout in the city of el-Arish, northern Sinai Peninsula, where they are battling an Islamic State-led insurgency.
(AP, 10/3/18)
2018 Oct 3, Finland's parliament voted to add new exceptions to a clause in the constitution that guarantees the right to privacy, to enable swift approval of an intelligence bill aimed at combating terrorism and spying by foreign governments.
(Reuters, 10/3/18)
2018 Oct 3, France's PM Edouard Philippe assumed responsibility for the country's domestic security after Interior Minister Gerard Collomb resigned in an apparent act of defiance toward President Emmanuel Macron.
(AP, 10/3/18)
2018 Oct 3, French police caught one of France's most wanted men in a pre-dawn raid, finding the gangster holed up in his hometown north of Paris. Fugitive Redoine Faid (46) was arrested in Creil three months after his spectacular helicopter escape.
(AP, 10/3/18)
2018 Oct 3, A Guinea-Bissau coast guard commander said around 60 migrants are missing and believed drowned after their boat was seen sinking off the country's coast.
(Reuters, 10/3/18)
2018 Oct 3, India raised state-mandated prices for winter crops such as wheat and rapeseed, as PM Narendra Modi tried to defuse discontent among farmers ahead of elections in 2019.
(Reuters, 10/3/18)
2018 Oct 3, Indian police bussed seven Rohingya Muslims to the border to be deported to neighboring Myanmar for illegal entry. An estimated 40,000 Rohingya live in India after having fled violence and persecution in Buddhist-majority Myanmar's Rakhine state over the years.
(Reuters, 10/3/18)
2018 Oct 3, In Indonesia Mount Soputan on Sulawesi island spewed a massive column of ash more than 6,000 meters (19,700 feet) into the sky. The official death toll from the Sept. 28 earthquake and tsunami on Sulawesi increased to 1,407, with thousands injured and more than 70,000 displaced from their homes.
(AP, 10/3/18)
2018 Oct 3, The Japan Space Exploration Agency said the Mobile Asteroid Surface Scout (MASCOT), a German-French observation device, was released from the unmanned spacecraft Hayabusa2 and successfully landed on the asteroid Ryugu.
(AP, 10/3/18)
2018 Oct 3, Malaysia's anti-graft agency said that Rosmah Mansor, the wife of former PM Najib Razak, has been arrested and will face money laundering charges in a graft scandal involving the 1MDB state investment fund.
(AP, 10/3/18)
2018 Oct 3, The Maldives Elections Commission restored 12 lawmakers who were earlier deemed to have lost their seats. The restoration of the lawmakers in line with a Supreme Court order is a sign that president-elect Ibrahim Mohamed Solih is consolidating his victory over outgoing strongman Yameen Abdul Gayoom.
(AP, 10/3/18)
2018 Oct 3, Niger kicked out an employee of the medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF), accused of exaggerating the death toll from a malaria epidemic in the south of the West African country. A video by Anne Pittet, an MSF pediatrist, said 10 children were dying each day in the southern town of Magaria from malaria or malnutrition.
(AFP, 10/3/18)
2018 Oct 3, Romania's PM Viorica Dancila accused prosecutors in her country of falsifying evidence, pressurizing witnesses and modifying testimony.
(AP, 10/3/18)
2018 Oct 3, South Africa's Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene told a judicial corruption inquiry that he was fired by former president Jacob Zuma for refusing to approve a $100 billion nuclear power deal with Russia in 2015. Nene also said his decision to reject a new route for the state airline to Sudan contributed to his sacking in 2015.
(Reuters, 10/3/18)
2018 Oct 3, Spain's Supreme Court confirmed that former International Monetary Fund chief Rodrigo Rato will have to serve a four-and-a-half year jail sentence for misusing company credit cards when he worked at state-owned lender Bankia. Rato chaired Bankia for two years until just before its state bailout in 2012.
(Reuters, 10/3/18)
2018 Oct 3, President Bashar Assad told a little-known Kuwaiti newspaper that Syria has reached a "major understanding" with Arab states after years of hostility over the country's civil war.
(AP, 10/3/18)
2018 Oct 3, Eight Turkish soldiers were killed and two were wounded after a roadside bomb in the southeastern province of Batman was detonated by outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants.
(AP, 10/4/18)(Reuters, 10/6/18)
2018 Oct 3, The UN's top court (ICJ) ordered the United States to lift sanctions on humanitarian goods for Iran in a stunning rebuke to US President Donald Trump.
(AFP, 10/3/18)(SFC, 10/4/18, p.A2)
2018 Oct 3, Pope Francis opened a gathering of bishops with the Catholic Church in a swirling state of crisis over sex abuse, urging its leaders not to let the next generation's faith be snuffed out "by our own shortcomings, mistakes and sins".
(Reuters, 10/3/18)
2018 Oct 3, Vietnam Communist Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong was nominated as the only candidate for president, effectively ordaining him as the most powerful person in the country.
(AFP, 10/3/18)
2018 Oct 3, Yemen's Shiite rebels released Salah and Madian Saleh, the two sons of late former president Ali Abdullah Saleh. The UN children's agency suspended cash transfers to 9 million of Yemen's most impoverished citizens under pressure from Yemen's Houthi rebels. UNICEF said the decision came after it was unable to set up a call center to get feedback from beneficiaries.
(AP, 10/3/18)
2018 Oct 4, The US Treasury issued new North Korea-related sanctions that target SIA Falcon International Group, a Turkish company, and two Turkish individuals among others.
(AP, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, The US Justice Department charged seven Russian military intelligence officers with hacking anti-doping agencies and other organizations. Britain and the Netherlands condemned the Russian GRU military intelligence for a series of alleged global cybercrimes. Konstantin Kosachev, the head of the foreign affairs committee in the upper house of Russian parliament, denounced the accusations as fake.
(AP, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, In southern California a judge sentenced former rap mogul Marion "Suge" Knight to 28 years in prison for running over businessman Terry Carter outside a Compton burger stand in 2015.
(SFC, 10/5/18, p.A14)
2018 Oct 4, In San Francisco almost 2,500 hotel workers began a strike that spanned seven Marriott hotels. On Dec. 3 the hotel workers finally approved a new contract.
(SFC, 12/4/18, p.A1)
2018 Oct 4, In New Mexico Cameron Martinez (18) died from gunshot wounds in a vehicle near the Ohkay Hotel Casino near Espanola. Three other people were expected to survive their wounds. Martinez had recently appeared in a political ad for Michelle Lujan Grisham, a Democratic candidate for state governor.
(SSFC, 10/7/18, p.A10)
2018 Oct 4, In Utah the Mormon church joined lawmakers, the governor and advocates to back a deal that would legalize medical marijuana in the state.
(SFC, 10/5/18, p.A7)
2018 Oct 4, In Afghanistan two women were killed and 16 other people wounded when their vehicle hit a roadside bomb in the Zhari district. In Nangarhar province a bomb blast near a non-governmental organization office killed two people and wounded seven others. In Kabul one person was killed when a sticky bomb attached to a vehicle detonated. US service member James Slape (23) of North Carolina died from wounds of an IED in Helmand province.
(AP, 10/4/18)(Reuters, 10/4/18)(SSFC, 10/7/18, p.A4)
2018 Oct 4, In southeastern Afghanistan Taliban militants mounted an attack in the Maroof district of Kandahar province when security forces responded with an airstrike. that killed four people and wounded eight others who were part of a wedding procession.
(Reuters, 10/5/18)
2018 Oct 4, Bahrain received a $10 billion pledge from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to aid its sufering economy.
(AP, 10/7/18)
2018 Oct 4, Lawyers for Benin tycoon and opposition politician Sebastien Ajavon discovered that their client and three others were accused of "high-risk international drug trafficking", which carries a prison term of 10-20 years. Ajavon launched his own political party in march and has made known he wants to stand at the next election that is expected in 2020.
(AFP, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, In eastern Burkina Faso six soldiers were killed and several others seriously injured when their vehicle hit an improvised explosive device (IED).
(AFP, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, Human Rights Watch said more than 235 people have been killed in the Beni area of CongoDRC this year in attacks with guns, axes or machetes. More than 165 others have been kidnapped. In the past four years more than 1,000 people have died.
(AP, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, In eastern CongoDRC a rebel attack on an army post left six people dead. The Ugandan Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) was suspected of having carried out the late night attack in the city of Beni.
(AFP, 10/5/18)
2018 Oct 4, In Egypt one person was killed and at least three others injured in a blast at a fuel depot on the outskirts of Cairo.
(Reuters, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, French authorities helicoptered a Slovenian she-bear into the Pyrenees mountains, despite an all-night protest by furious local farmers who fear she will eat their sheep.
(AFP, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, German Chancellor Angela Merkel paid homage in Jerusalem to the six million Jews killed by the Nazis and said Germany had a responsibility to confront anti-Semitism and never to forget the Holocaust. At a news conference Merkel reaffirmed her support for a two-state solution in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and concern about Israeli settlement expansion in occupied territory where Palestinians seek for a country of their own. Germany and Israel agree that Iran should never be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons but they differ on how to achieve this goal.
(Reuters, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, Hungary and Poland said they have gone to the European Court of Justice to challenge tighter European Union rules on the employment of workers from low-pay EU states.
(Reuters, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, India deported seven Rohingya Muslim men to Myanmar.
(Reuters, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, In Indonesia electricity was restored and some shops reopened in the quake and tsunami stricken city of Palu. The official death toll stood at 1,424, but was expected to rise.
(Reuters, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, In Ingushetia thousands attended a rare protest to decry a land-swap deal with neighboring Chechnya, despite authorities reportedly setting up roadblocks to hinder demonstrators. Russia turned off 3G and 4G mobile Internet services in Ingushetia from Oct. 4 to Oct. 17 "on the basis of the justified decision of the law enforcement authorities".
(AFP, 10/4/18)(Reuters, 11/16/18)
2018 Oct 4, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in an address broadcast by state television that the people of Iran face a sensitive time because of pressure from America and economic problems. The Iranian rial has lost approximately 75 percent of its value since the beginning of 2018.
(Reuters, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat announced in a statement a "detailed plan to remove UNRWA from Jerusalem and replace its services with municipal services".
(AFP, 10/5/18)
2018 Oct 4, In Kazakhstan the Russian Soyuz MS-08 space capsule carrying Russia's Oleg Artemyev and NASA's Drew Feustel and Ricky Arnold landed safely after a six-month mission aboard the International Space Station.
(AP, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, US First Lady Melania Trump brought soccer balls and books to a school in Malawi to highlight a USAID scheme to support African schools, on the second stop of her four-nation tour of the continent. President Donald Trump has sought to roll back the US foreign aid budget.
(Reuters, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, Qasim Ibrahim, a Maldives opposition leader, returned home after being exiled in Germany for months to escape a prison sentence on charges of plotting to overthrow the government.
(AP, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, Mexican police detained a couple on the outskirts of Mexico City on suspicion they may have killed as many as 10 women and sold a dead woman's baby.
(AP, 10/5/18)
2018 Oct 4, Mexican police in the northern border state of Sonora said five police officers died after unidentified assailants attacked their patrol vehicle in the town of Guaymas.
(AP, 10/5/18)
2018 Oct 4, Authorities in Myanmar destroyed an estimated $1.3 million worth of confiscated ivory and other parts of endangered animals, days after a conservation group charged that the country's ivory exports to China are increasing.
(AP, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, In Norway Russian businessman Boris Rotenberg, under US sanctions over the Ukraine conflict due to his close ties with President Vladimir Putin, filed suit against four Nordic banks, accusing them of discrimination. Rotenberg also holds a Finnish passport and is not subject to European sanctions over Russia's role in Ukraine, but European banks must comply with the US sanctions in order to do business with American banks.
(Reuters, 10/22/18)
2018 Oct 4, A spokeswoman for ActionAid said Pakistan has ordered 18 international aid groups to shut down operations and leave the country. ActionAid focuses on education, poverty alleviation and human rights and is headquartered in Johannesburg.
(Reuters, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, Philippine police, backed by troops, killed nine drug suspects and arrested more than 100 others in two days of raids that ended today in central Cebu province. The government's massive crackdown has left more than 4,800 suspects dead.
(AP, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived in India for a two-day visit during which India is expected to sign a $5 billion deal to buy Russian S-400 air defense systems despite a new US law ordering sanctions on any country trading with Russia's defense and intelligence sectors.
(AP, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, Russia's Defense Ministry said the United States appears to be running a clandestine biological weapons lab in the country of Georgia, allegedly flouting international rules and posing a direct security threat to Russia.
(AP, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, A South Korean government delegation arrived in North Korea for a joint celebration of the anniversary of a 2007 summit and to possibly hold further peace talks.
(AP, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, In South Korea this year's Busan International Film Festival (BIFF) opened with a movie portraying the plight of a North Korean defector and the unlikely family she formed during her harrowing journey.
(AFP, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, Sudanese security agents confiscated the entire print runs of two newspapers, days after the European Union and Washington pushed for press freedoms in the African country.
(AFP, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, Ukraine said it had given a Hungarian consul 72 hours to leave the country after accusing his consulate of illegally issuing passports to members of an ethnic Hungarian minority in Ukraine. Ukraine's constitution bars Ukrainians from holding citizenship of other countries. Hungary in turn expelled a Ukrainian consul in Budapest and reiterated a threat to block Ukraine's EU and NATO integration.
(Reuters, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 4, Vietnam seized eight tons of pangolin scales and elephant ivory shipped from Nigeria, the second such haul in a week.
(AFP, 10/5/18)
2018 Oct 5, US Senators held an initial vote on Brett Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court as President Donald Trump accused liberal financier George Soros of bankrolling opposition to the nominee.
(AFP, 10/5/18)
2018 Oct 5, US First Lady Melania Trump cozied up to baby elephants and went on safari in Kenya, on the third leg of a solo tour of Africa that has contrasted with the ongoing tumult in Washington.
(AP, 10/5/18)
2018 Oct 5, The US FDA announced that it will be removing six artificial flavors from the food supply. The FDA cited a 60-year-old regulation, known as the Delaney clause, that prohibits additives shown to have caused cancer in animals, even if tested at doses far higher than what aa person would consume.
(http://tinyurl.com/ybaa9m9k)(SFC, 11/22/18, p.D5)
2018 Oct 5, In the SF Bay Area San Quentin State prison inmate Jonathan Fajardo (30) was stabbed to death by inmate Luis Rodriguez (34). Fajardo was facing a death sentence for killing a black girl, Cheryl Green (14), in a racially motivated shooting on Dec 15, 2006 in Los Angeles.
(http://articles.latimes.com/keyword/jonathan-fajardo)(SFC, 10/6/18, p.C1)
2018 Oct 5, In southern California former Marine Andrew Urdiales (54) was sentenced to death for the murder of five women between 1986 and 1995. He had previously been senteced to death for killing three women in Illinois, but that sentence was communted to life without parole after Illinois barred the death penalty.
(SSFC, 10/7/18, p.A12)
2018 Oct 5, Chicago police Officer Jason Van Dyke (40) was convicted of 2nd-degree murder for the 2014 shooting of Laquan McDonald, a black teenager.
(SFC, 10/6/18, p.A5)
2018 Oct 5, The Nobel Peace Prize went to Denis Mukwege, a doctor who treats war rape victims in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Nadia Murad, a Yazidi rights activist and survivor of sexual slavery by Islamic State. Mukwege dedicated his award to all women affected by rape and sexual violence.
(Reuters, 10/5/18)
2018 Oct 5, In Afghanistan security forces arrived in Lal Sar Jangal, a district in the remote and largely lawless province of Ghor, to arrest Alipur, a commander from the mainly Shi'ite Hazara minority accused of serious human rights abuses. A gunbattle followed with four police and eight civilians killed. Alipur escaped.
(Reuters, 10/11/18)
2018 Oct 5, Belarus Pres. Alexander Lukashenko rejected prospective steps against domestic violence as Western "nonsense," saying that physical punishment could be useful in raising children.
(AP, 10/6/18)
2018 Oct 5, Anglo-Dutch consumer goods multinational Unilever, whose brands include Knorr and Dove, said it has scrapped a plan to consolidate its headquarters in the Netherlands following opposition from British shareholders.
(AP, 10/5/18)
2018 Oct 5, British street artist Banksy stunned the art world with arguably his most audacious prank yet, self-destructing one of his best-known works moments after it fetched more than a million pounds at auction in London.
(AFP, 10/6/18)
2018 Oct 5, Chinese tech stocks Lenovo Group and ZTE Corp. tumbled in Hong Kong following a news report Chinese spies might have used chips supplied by another company to hack into US computer systems.
(AP, 10/5/18)
2018 Oct 5, The Council of Europe said it has urged Croatia to investigate alleged police abuse of migrants trying to cross its borders.
(AFP, 10/5/18)
2018 Oct 5, Denmark's PM Lars Lokke Rasmussen said the government plans to build a new island near Copenhagen's harbor to create more space for the city's growing population.
(Reuters, 10/5/18)
2018 Oct 5, Ethiopia's ruling EPRDF coalition extended the chairmanship of PM Abiy Ahmed (42), as he pushed through sweeping political and economic reforms.
(Reuters, 10/5/18)
2018 Oct 5, French police said they are probing the disappearance of Meng Hongwei (64), the Chinese head of Interpol, who has reportedly been detained for questioning in his home country. The Hong-Kong based South China Morning Post newspaper reported that Meng was under investigation in China.
(AFP, 10/5/18)
2018 Oct 5, In Germany the Muenster administrative court issued a temporary halt after an environmental group argued that the Hambacher Forest near Cologne deserves protected status because of the bats that live there.
(AP, 10/6/18)
2018 Oct 5, It was reported that Hong Kong authorities have rejected an application to renew the work visa of Victor Mallet, Asia news editor at the Financial Times. Mallett is also an official of the city's Foreign Correspondents' Club (FCC).
(Reuters, 10/5/18)
2018 Oct 5, In Indonesia the official death toll from the Sept. 28 earthquake and tsunami rose to 1,571, and was expected to rise.
(Reuters, 10/5/18)
2018 Oct 5, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu underwent a new round of questioning over one of several graft cases that have threatened to topple him.
(AP, 10/5/18)
2018 Oct 5, Lebanon's leading Christian parties clashed over how power should be divided in a new unity government, casting doubt over PM-designate Saad al-Hariri's prediction that one will be agreed soon.
(Reuters, 10/5/18)
2018 Oct 5, A Macedonia appeals court upheld ex-premier Nikola Gruevski's two-year sentence for abuse of power over the use of a luxury car. Gruevski faced a number of graft cases, with the Mercedes charge the first to go to trial.
(AFP, 10/5/18)
2018 Oct 5, In Pakistan agents of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) arrested opposition leader Shehbaz Sharif, the brother of ousted PM Nawaz Sharif, in a longstanding corruption case, nine days before crucial by-elections are due to be held.
(Reuters, 10/5/18)
2018 Oct 5, In Pakistan unidentified gunmen shot and killed Ismail Darvesh, the senior leader of a Sunni extremist group, along with his guard in the northwestern city of Peshawar.
(AP, 10/5/18)
2018 Oct 5, Three Palestinians, among them a 13-year-old boy, were killed by Israeli troops during protests at five locations along the frontier. 376 were wounded, including 126 with bullet wounds. Israel said the demonstrators threw grenades at the soldiers, adding that they also tore at parts of the fence with bolt cutters.
(AP, 10/6/18)(AFP, 10/6/18)
2018 Oct 5, Russia signed a $5 billion deal with India to supply five regiments of S-400 anti-aircraft missiles to India. The contract was signed during Pres. Vladimir Putin's trip to India.
(Reuters, 10/5/18)(SFC, 10/6/18, p.A3)
2018 Oct 5, A Rwandan High Court granted bail to Diane Rwigara (37), a prominent critic of President Paul Kagame, who had been jailed for over a year awaiting trial.
(AFP, 10/5/18)
2018 Oct 5, A South Korea court jailed former President Lee Myung-bak for 15 years for corruption, making him the latest in a string of high-profile political and business leaders ensnared by graft charges.
(Reuters, 10/5/18)
2018 Oct 5, Spain said it will scrap a controversial levy on solar power affecting households and small businesses, making it easier for consumers to erect panels for their own use.
(Reuters, 10/5/18)
2018 Oct 5, The Swedish Academy, which awards the Nobel Literature Prize, announced an Iranian-born poet and a judge as new members as it seeks to recover from a #MeToo scandal that forced it to postpone this year's Nobel.
(AFP, 10/5/18)
2018 Oct 5, Taiwan wiped the criminal records of 1,270 victims of the island's "White Terror" purges, the first time the government has fully exonerated those who suffered political persecution under martial law. Thousands of political opponents were killed and imprisoned during the White Terror period of suppression under authoritarian leader Chiang Kai-shek, who ruled Taiwan from 1949 to his death in 1975.
(AFP, 10/5/18)
2018 Oct 5, Ukrainian film director Oleg Sentsov, jailed in Russia on terrorism charges, said he had been forced to end a prolonged hunger strike because prison authorities had told him they planned to force feed him.
(Reuters, 10/5/18)
2018 Oct 5, In Venezuela opposition councilman Fernando Alban (56) was taken into custody at Caracas' international airport upon arriving from New York. On October 8 officials said he killed himself by leaping from the 10th floor of the state police agency's headquarters.
(AP, 10/9/18)
2018 Oct 5, A Vietnamese court found five people guilty of attempting to overthrow the state, and sentenced them to between eight and 15 years in prison after a one-day trial in Ho Chi Minh City. Luu Van Vinh, chairman of the "Vietnam National Coalition," was handed a 15-year jail term, while the others were given lighter sentences.
(Reuters, 10/5/18)
2018 Oct 6, Conservative US judge Brett Kavanaugh (53) was confirmed to the Supreme Court by a 50-48 margin in the Senate, ending months of partisan rancor over his nomination and offering Donald Trump one of the biggest victories of his presidency.
(AFP, 10/7/18)
2018 Oct 6, In upper New York state 20 people were killed, including two pedestrians, when a limo carrying 18 people to a birthday party crashed in Schoharie. Limousine operator Nauman Hussain was later charged with criminally negligent homicide. In 2021 Hussain was sentenced to five years probation and 1,000 hours of community service in a plea deal to spare families the emotional toll of a trial.
(SFC, 10/8/18, p.A7)(SFC, 10/11/18, p.A6)(SFC, 9/3/21, p.A5)
2018 Oct 6, In Afghanistan heavily armed Taliban fighters destroyed bridges near the central city of Ghazni, closing the main highway between the capital Kabul and southern Afghanistan. Five militants were killed as they were planting bombs on three bridges on the Kabul-Kandahar highway. Officials said at least 25 Taliban insurgents were killed and 17 were wounded in clashes to secure the highway linking Ghazni and Paktia provinces. At least two Afghan security forces were killed in Taliban attacks in Kabul.
(Reuters, 10/6/18)(AP, 10/6/18)
2018 Oct 6, In Afghanistan 10 civilians were reported killed and 20 wounded in an air strike on Garda Serai district. US Forces denied it carried out the attack. The Taliban set fire to a government building in Wardak's Sayeed Abad district and killed the district police chief along with nine other policemen late today.
(AFP, 10/7/18)(Reuters, 10/7/18)
2018 Oct 6, In Armenia Karo Karapetian, a former member of parliament, and Arutyun Karagezian, also a former lawmaker, met in a restaurant in Yerevan. A quarrel over unspecified financial issues broke out. Karapetian was shot and pronounced dead at a hospital. Karagezian was found dead the next day in a suspected suicide.
(AP, 10/7/18)
2018 Oct 6, Bulgarian authorities discovered the body of television reporter Viktoria Marinova (30) in the northern town of Ruse near the Romanian border. Her body was dumped near the Danube River after she reported on the possible misuse of European Union funds in Bulgaria. Prosecutors later said Marinova had been raped, beaten and suffocated.
(AP, 10/8/18)(AP, 10/9/18)
2018 Oct 6, In eastern China 2 people were killed and 16 wounded after a knife-wielding man drove a vehicle into a crowd of pedestrians late today in Ningbo city, Zhejiang province.
(AP, 10/7/18)
2018 Oct 6, In western CongoDRC at least 53 people were dead and more than 72 people hospitalized after a tanker truck collided with another truck in the village of Mbuba, Kongo Central province.
(AP, 10/7/18)(AP, 10/8/18)
2018 Oct 6, In Egypt US First Lady Melania Trump held talks in Cairo on the final leg of a solo four-nation tour of Africa that will also see her visit the Pyramids.
(AFP, 10/6/18)
2018 Oct 6, An Egyptian judge slapped a travel ban on Khaled Ali, a former presidential candidate and rights lawyer, over an ongoing investigation into funding for civil society groups.
(AP, 10/6/18)
2018 Oct 6, Oil-rich Gabon, ruled by the same political dynasty for nearly half a century, voted in long-delayed legislative and municipal polls, the first since a presidential election two years ago that was marred by deadly violence and allegations of fraud.
(AFP, 10/6/18)
2018 Oct 6, In western Germany thousands of environmentalists protested the expansion of a coal mine a day after a court blocked the felling of endangered Hambacher Forest near the site.
(AP, 10/6/18)
2018 Oct 6, A magnitude 5.9 earthquake hit Haiti late today killing at least 14 people with135 injured. At least seven people died in the coastal city of Port-de-Paix and three people died in the nearby community of Gros-Morne in the province of Artibonite.
(AP, 10/7/18)(Reuters, 10/8/18)
2018 Oct 6, In eastern India 34 schoolgirls aged between 12 and 16 were taken to hospital after being beaten with sticks by a group of boys, along with the boys' mothers and neighbors, who had harassed them earlier in the day in the village of Darpakha, Bihar state. Ten people, including four women, were arrested.
(Reuters, 10/8/18)
2018 Oct 6, Indonesia's disaster agency said the death toll from the powerful earthquake and tsunami has climbed to 1,649, with at least 265 people still missing. It also said that number could be higher.
(AP, 10/6/18)
2018 Oct 6, Iranian businessman Farhad Zahedifar, CEO of the Samen Coin website, was returned to Iran with Interpol's help after he fled abroad. He accused of defrauding thousands of investors.
(Reuters, 10/6/18)
2018 Oct 6, In northern Iraq at least one person was killed and 14 wounded when a bus carrying workers at the small Siniya oil refinery was blown up by an improvised explosive device in Salahuddin province. Three civilians and a policeman were injured when a parked car exploded in a market area in Falluja, Anbar province.
(Reuters, 10/6/18)
2018 Oct 6, Israel announced new restrictions on Gaza, weeks after the territory's Hamas rulers stepped up protests along the enclave's land and sea borders with Israel. Israel's defence minister ordered the fishing zone to be reduced to six nautical miles (11 km) from nine nautical miles. Under the Oslo Accords of the early 1990s, fishermen are supposed to be allowed to operate up to 20 nautical miles off the coast.
(AP, 10/6/18)(AFP, 10/6/18)
2018 Oct 6, In Indian-controlled Kashmir at least 20 people were killed and 16 others injured when an overcrowded minibus fell into a deep gorge along a mountainous road near southern Ramban town.
(AP, 10/6/18)
2018 Oct 6, In Japan Tokyo's famed Tsukiji market, the world's largest fishmarket and a major tourist attraction, held its final tuna auction before a controversial move to a new site next week.
(Reuters, 10/6/18)
2018 Oct 6, Latvians voted in a general election expected to yield a ruling coalition of pro-Kremlin and populist parties and tarnished by a hacker attack on a popular social network. The pro-Kremlin Harmony party won 19.8 percent of the vote ahead of two populist parties -- KPV LV with 14.25 percent and the New Conservative Party with 13.6 percent. The center-right Greens and Farmers Union of PM Maris Kucinskis won 9.9 percent and New Unity took 6.7 percent as the last party crossing the five-percent threshold to have seats in parliament.
(AFP, 10/6/18)(AFP, 10/7/18)
2018 Oct 6, Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri said the process of forming a government more than five months after a national election had returned "to zero", after saying earlier this week there had been a "glimmer of hope".
(Reuters, 10/6/18)
2018 Oct 6, Malaysian police said that eight suspected militants, including seven foreigners, have been arrested for allegedly spreading religious extremism that could threaten national security and fan terrorism in the region.
(AP, 10/6/18)
2018 Oct 6, Mozambique President Filipe Nyusi launched an initiative to disarm and reintegrate the military wing of the country's main opposition party, Renamo, as part of efforts to bolster peace and security.
(Reuters, 10/6/18)
2018 Oct 6, Romania began two days of voting on a constitutional amendment that would make it harder to legalize same-sex marriage. Romanian law already prohibits same-sex marriages.
(AP, 10/6/18)
2018 Oct 6, In Somalia the US military's Africa Command (Africom) carried out an air strike in the vicinity of Kunyo Barrow, north of the town of Kismayo. One militant was reported killed.
(Reuters, 10/9/18)
2018 Oct 6, Montserrat Caballe (85), Spanish opera singer, died in Barcelona. She was renowned for her bel canto technique and her interpretations of the roles of Rossini, Bellini and Donizetti.
(AP, 10/6/18)
2018 Oct 6, In northern Syria an explosive device detonated in the town of Azaz held by Turkey-backed opposition fighters killing four people, including two children.
(AP, 10/6/18)
2018 Oct 6, Two Turkey-backed Syrian rebel officials said that rebel groups had begun to withdraw heavy weaponry from a demilitarized zone in northwest Syria.
(Reuters, 10/6/18)
2018 Oct 6, The Vatican said Pope Francis has authorized a thorough study of Vatican archives into how American ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick advanced through church ranks despite allegations that he slept with seminarians and young priests.
(SSFC, 10/7/18, p.A6)
2018 Oct 6, Yemen's Houthi group arrested a number of people in Sanaa, following demonstrations over economic hardship. Dozens were reported arrested, including 16 female students.
(Reuters, 10/6/18)
2018 Oct 7, In southern California SpaceX launched a commercial satellite for Argentina from Vandenberg Air Force Base. This was the 17th mission this year for Elon Musk's rocket company.
(SFC, 10/9/18, p.A4D4)
2018 Oct 7, In eastern Afghanistan Taliban fighters killed 14 members of the security forces overnight in a district that straddles the strategic Kabul-Kandahar highway linking the Afghan capital and the group's southern strongholds. Taliban militants destroyed highway bridges between Kabul and three provinces. Around 20 Taliban fighters were reported killed.
(AFP, 10/7/18)(SFC, 10/8/18, p.A2)
2018 Oct 7, Bahrain's House of Representatives has approved a bill allowing for value-added tax to be collected, sending it onto the National Assembly's upper chamber, the Shura Council. Once approved by the Shura Council, it must be implemented by King Hamad to take effect.
(AP, 10/7/18)
2018 Oct 7, Bosnia held elections for the three-person presidency, the Serb president, and the two entities' parliaments and cantonal authorities. Bosnia consists of a Serb regional government and a Muslim-Croat one tied loosely by central institutions, including the presidency. Serb nationalist Milorad Dodik, who opposes Bosnia as a state, won a share of its tripartite presidency. Sefik Dzaferovic won the Bosniak seat in the inter-ethnic presidency. A coalition led by the largest Croat party HDZ won the most votes of Croats in the Federation parliament and in the majority Croat cantons. Its leader Dragan Covic lost the seat in the presidency to Zeljko Komsic, seen as a more moderate figure.
(AP, 10/7/18)(Reuters, 10/8/18)
2018 Oct 7, Brazilians began voting in a polarized presidential race. Far-right candidate Jair Bolsonar, a former Army captain and veteran lawmaker, nearly won the presidency outright in Sunday's first-round election, taking 46 percent of votes to leftist Fernando Haddad's 29 percent.
(AP, 10/7/18)(Reuters, 10/8/18)
2018 Oct 7, Around a thousand dogs and their owners marched on Britain's parliament demanding an end to Brexit via a second vote on the terms of the country's exit from the European Union.
(Reuters, 10/7/18)
2018 Oct 7, Cameroon held elections. President Paul Biya (85), Africa's oldest leader, was expected to win another term amid fighting and threats from separatists that have already prevented residents in English-speaking regions from voting. In the northwest at least three armed separatists were shot dead by security forces in the city of Bamenda as they tried to disrupt voting in the presidential election. On Oct. 22 Cameroon's Constitutional Council said Paul Biya (85) won 71.3 percent of the ballot.
(AP, 10/7/18)(Reuters, 10/7/18)(AFP, 10/22/18)
2018 Oct 7, Chinese authorities scrambled to contain a public relations mess over the disappearance of Meng Hongwei, the former Interpol president during his trip home to China, saying that he was being lawfully investigated for bribery and other crimes.
(AP, 10/8/18)
2018 Oct 7, A local CongoDRC official said machete-wielding attackers killed at least 14 civilians near the village of Rubaya in the restive North Kivu province.
(AFP, 10/7/18)
2018 Oct 7, Czech Pres. Milos Zeman refused to back down from comments slamming what he called a 90 percent unemployment rate among the country's Roma, earning a rebuke from campaigners and rights activists.
(Reuters, 10/7/18)
2018 Oct 7, A cargo ship rammed into another freight vessel near the French Mediterranean island of Corsica early today, causing no injuries but causing a leak which officials say is most likely fuel. The Ulysse, operated by the Tunisian operator CTN, struck the Cyprus-based CLS Virgina while it was anchored about 30 km (20 miles) off the northern tip of the island.
(AFP, 10/7/18)
2018 Oct 7, The Dubai Court of Appeals' ruling added another five years onto the prison sentence of former British Gulf News editor Francis Matthew, who initially was found guilty in March of bludgeoning his wife to death at their home and received a 10-year sentence.
(AP, 10/7/18)
2018 Oct 7, In Indonesia the official death toll from the Sept. 28 earthquake and tsunami rose to 1,763 but bodies were still being recovered. Disaster agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said large-scale searches with many personnel and heavy equipment would cease on October 11. An official said number of people believed missing in Palu city has soared to 5,000.
(Reuters, 10/7/18)(AFP, 10/7/18)
2018 Oct 7, In Ingushetia several thousand protesters demanded the resignation of veteran local leader Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, accusing him of surrendering swathes of territory to neighboring Chechnya.
(AFP, 10/7/18)
2018 Oct 7, Iran's parliament voted to join a global convention to cut off terror financing, hoping to avoid further international sanctions as the 2015 nuclear accord unravels. The bill must be ratified by the Guardian Council, a constitutional authority, to become a law.
(AP, 10/7/18)
2018 Oct 7, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s wife, Sara, appeared in court for the first hearing in the fraud trial against her, in which she is alleged to have misused state funds in ordering catered meals.
(Reuters, 10/7/18)
2018 Oct 7, In Nigeria Atiku Abubakar (71) won almost half the votes cast in a primary race to become the main opposition challenger to Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari in next year's elections.
(AP, 10/7/18)
2018 Oct 7, A Palestinian attacker opened fire inside a West Bank industrial zone this morning where Israelis and Palestinians work together, killing two Israelis and seriously wounding a third. The gunman escaped the scene.
(AP, 10/7/18)
2018 Oct 7, A private foundation in Poland published a map of 255 cases of sexual abuse of minors by the country's Catholic priests — the latest development pressuring Poland's church to admit and take responsibility for such abuse cases.
(AP, 10/7/18)
2018 Oct 7, Romanians voted for a second day on a constitutional amendment backed by the influential Romanian Orthodox Church that would make it harder to legalize same-sex marriage. The vote required a 30 percent turnout to be valid. More than 90 percent of those who took part in a national referendum supported defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman, but the vote was invalidated as too few people cast ballots.
(AP, 10/7/18)(AP, 10/8/18)
2018 Oct 7, In South Sudan prisoners disarmed guards and seized control of part of a detention center in Juba early today. A detainee said the inmates taking the action were political prisoners seeking freedom.
(Reuters, 10/7/18)
2018 Oct 7, Thousands of Spaniards attended a rally of the fledging far-right VOX party as it tries to grab a foothold in Spain's political spectrum. Founded in 2013, VOX hoped that its vehement stance against immigration and the separatists in Catalonia will allow it to break out of obscurity and into public office. It claimed to have 10,000 members.
(AP, 10/7/18)
2018 Oct 7, Sudan slashed the official value of its currency against the US dollar by more than half, the third devaluation this year in the face of a mounting economic crisis.
(AFP, 10/7/18)
2018 Oct 7, In Thailand suspected teenage gang members were involved in a shooting that killed a nearby Indian tourist and injured four others, two critically, outside a Bangkok shopping arcade.
(AP, 10/8/18)
2018 Oct 7, Turkey's President Tayyip Erdogan said he was closely following the case of missing Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi after Turkish officials said they believed he had been killed at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.
(Reuters, 10/7/18)
2018 Oct 7, The UN children's agency resumed emergency cash transfers to 9 million Yemenis after it was allowed to operate a call center to help monitor aid distribution.
(AP, 10/9/18)
2018 Oct 7, Cardinal Marc Ouellet, a top Vatican official, issued a scathing open letter accusing Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, who launched an unprecedented attack on Pope Francis, of mounting a "political frame job devoid of real foundation".
(Reuters, 10/7/18)
2018 Oct 8, The Nobel prize in economics was awarded to to William Nordhaus of Yale University and Paul Romer of New York University. Nordhaus has developed models that suggest how governments can combat global warming. Romer has produced research that shows how governments can advance innovation.
(AP, 10/8/18)
2018 Oct 8, US Interior Sec. Ryan Zinke approved a 20-year ban on new mining in the Paradise Valley and Gardiner Basin in Montana. Most of the land is within the Custer Gallatin National Forest north of Yellowstone National Park.
(SFC, 10/9/18, p.A4)
2018 Oct 8, In the SF Bay Area Dominic Sarkar (56), a Fremont chef, was shot and killed at his home. Police later called it a murder-for-hire and charged his domestic partner Maria Moore (50) and Marvel Salvant (46) with murder. Moore had acknowledged that she was the beneficiery of two life insurance policies.
(SFC, 12/21/18, p.C9)
2018 Oct 8, Kentucky Catholic Bishop William Medley said his Owensboro diocese has received 66 sexual abuse allegations against 27 priests since 1937, the year the diocese was founded.
(SFC, 10/10/18, p.A4)
2018 Oct 8, Rhode Island-based Deepwater Wind announced that Denmark-based Orsted has entered into an agreement to buy it. Orsted said it's paying $510 million.
(AP, 10/8/18)
2018 Oct 8, Baker-Hughes, a subsidiary of General Electric Co., said it has agreed to purchase a 5-percent stake in the drilling arm of Abu Dhabi's state oil company for $550 million. This marks the first time Abu Dhabi has sold a stake in its businesses to a foreign interest.
(AP, 10/8/18)
2018 Oct 8, Bangladesh President Abdul Hamid signed the Digital Security Act into law. The bill that has been criticized as stifling freedom of speech. Bangladesh's cabinet approved a draft law prescribing the death penalty for drug offences, despite widespread criticism over a drugs crackdown in which police have shot dead more than 200 people since May.
(AP, 10/8/18)(Reuters, 10/8/18)
2018 Oct 8, The second of two Russians who Britain blames for the poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal was named by investigative website Bellingcat as Alexander Yevgenyevich Mishkin (39), a military doctor for Russia's GRU intelligence service.
(Reuters, 10/9/18)
2018 Oct 8, Cameroon opposition candidate Maurice Kamto declared victory in presidential elections, saying he had "achieved his goal" in Sunday's vote and calling on President Paul Biya to hand over power peacefully.
(Reuters, 10/8/18)
2018 Oct 8, In Indian-controlled Kashmir the first phase of local council elections ended amid tight security and a separatist-sponsored shutdown.
(AP, 10/8/18)
2018 Oct 8, In Indonesia the death toll from the Sept. 28 devastating earthquake and tsunami on Sulawesi island neared 2,000. Thousands more are believed unaccounted for and officials said search teams plan to stop looking for victims later this week.
(AP, 10/8/18)
2018 Oct 8, In Japan zookeeper Akira Furusho died after he was found bleeding from his neck and lying on the floor inside a tiger cage at Hirakawa Zoological Park in Kagoshima following an apparent attack by a white tiger.
(AP, 10/9/18)
2018 Oct 8, Forces of Libyan strongman Khalifa Haftar captured Hisham el-Ashmawy, one of Egypt's most-wanted jihadists in the east of the chaos-ridden country. He was accused of being behind attacks in Egypt's Western Desert region.
(AFP, 10/8/18)
2018 Oct 8, A Macedonian criminal court sentenced former interior minister Gordana Jankuloska (42) to six years in prison over the purchase of a luxury bulletproof car for the government. She remained free pending appeal.
(AP, 10/8/18)
2018 Oct 8, Qatar Airways' boss Akbar al-Baker said US sanctions on Iran will not impact its flights to the Islamic republic.
(AFP, 10/8/18)
2018 Oct 8, Russia's foreign ministry said four Russians, accused by the Netherlands last week of hacking, were traveling with technical equipment intended to test their embassy's IT systems in the Hague.
(Reuters, 10/8/18)
2018 Oct 8, A Madrid court ruled that Dr. Eduardo Vela (85) had seized Ines Madrigal from her biological mother in 1969, but said he could not be legally convicted because she waited too long to file a complaint against him. Madrigal, now 49, is one of thousands of babies removed from their mothers -- who were told their children had died -- and adopted during and after General Francisco Franco's 1939-1975 rule.
(AFP, 10/8/18)
2018 Oct 8, Syrian rebels completed the withdrawal of heavy weapons from the frontline in Idlib, under the deal between Russia and Turkey to create a demilitarized zone.
(AP, 10/8/18)
2018 Oct 8, Venezuelan officials said opposition councilman Fernando Alban (56) said killed himself by leaping from the 10th floor of the state police agency's headquarters. But opposition leaders denied the official version.
(AFP, 10/9/18)
2018 Oct 8, In Yemen an airstrike by the Saudi-led coalition killed four civilians working at a bee farm in the Red Sea city of Hodeida.
(AP, 10/8/18)
2018 Oct 9, Nikki Haley (46) announced her resignation as the top US diplomat to the United Nations saying was leaving by the end of the year.
(AP, 10/10/18)
2018 Oct 9, In Florida Gal Vallerius (36), a Frenchman who was arrested when he arrived in the US for a world beard-growing championship in 2017, was sentenced to 20 years in prison for online drug trafficking using the alias "OxyMonster."
(AP, 10/9/18)
2018 Oct 9, In Afghanistan a suicide bomber struck the home of Saleh Mohammad Achekzai, a candidate in parliamentary elections later this month, killing him and seven other people in Lashkar Gah, Helmand province.
(AP, 10/9/18)
2018 Oct 9, Two Afghan military officials were jailed for 20 years after a two-year trial for sharing state secrets with Pakistan. Shah Mohammad and Nazirullah were arrested in 2016 after traveling to Pakistan to hand over information to Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) agency.
(Reuters, 10/10/18)
2018 Oct 9, Albania's PM Edi Rama said that by Dec. 31 all casinos, including shops taking bets on sports and animal races, will need to be closed and move to city outskirts especially in Tirana.
(AP, 10/9/18)
2018 Oct 9, In Algeria a man with a hammer attacked and damaged a statue of a bare-breasted woman, an emblem of the eastern city of Setif. In 1997, when extremist violence raged across Algeria, Islamists dynamited the statue, which was repaired in Italy. The colonial-era statue is the work of French sculptor Francis Saint Vidal, dating to 1889.
(AP, 10/9/18)
2018 Oct 9, In Bahrain four people were killed and some 20 others were injured when a building collapsed in Manama. The two-story residential building reportedly housed foreign laborers.
(AP, 10/10/18)
2018 Oct 9, In Bosnia a powerful blast rocked the Brod oil refinery late today leaving one worker dead and nine people injured.
(Reuters, 10/10/18)
2018 Oct 9, In Britain drivers for taxi-sharing app Uber went on strike, demanding higher fares and improved workers' rights and urging users not to cross the digital picket line by ordering rides.
(AFP, 10/9/18)
2018 Oct 9, Egypt said its security forces have killed 10 militants in a shootout in the city of el-Arish in the turbulent northern Sinai Peninsula. The Interior Ministry did not say when the battle took place.
(AP, 10/9/18)
2018 Oct 9, German police arrested a suspect in the rape and killing of a television journalist from Bulgaria whose work highlighted corruption in the East European country. Severin Krassimirov (21), a Bulgarian citizen, was arrested outside the city of Hamburg.
(AP, 10/10/18)
2018 Oct 9, A Berlin court ordered the city to ban older diesel vehicles from several downtown streets to reduce nitrogen dioxide levels in the German capital.
(AP, 10/9/18)
2018 Oct 9, Greek Coast Guard Lieutenant Kyriakos Papadopoulos (44) died late today of a heart attack. He is credited with having rescued more than 5,000 refugees fleeing in small rubber boats across the sea at the height of Europe's migrant crisis in 2015.
(AP, 10/10/18)
2018 Oct 9, Former Guatemalan Vice President Roxana Baldetti (56) was sentenced to 15-1/2 years in prison for fraud, influence peddling and illicit association related to a government contract to clean up a polluted lake, in the first of several cases she faces.
(Reuters, 10/9/18)
2018 Oct 9, In India it was reported that tens of thousands of workers have fled Gujarat state in recent days, and many of the small factories and businesses they work in have come to a standstill. This followed news of violence in Gujarat against migrant workers from the central states of Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. The exodus began after the rape of a 14-month-old girl last month, allegedly by a man from the state of Bihar, sparked anger among locals.
(Reuters, 10/9/18)
2018 Oct 9, Indonesia's disaster agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said the toll from the Sept. 28 earthquake and tsunami had climbed to 2,010.
(AP, 10/9/18)
2018 Oct 9, Malaysia freed from detention 11 ethnic Uighur Muslims who fled to the southeast Asian nation after a Thai jailbreak last year, and sent them to Turkey, in disregard of China's request to hand them to Beijing.
(Reuters, 10/11/18)
2018 Oct 9, The Dutch government lost a legal appeal against a landmark 2015 court ruling which ordered it to slash greenhouse gases by at least 25 percent by 2020.
(AFP, 10/9/18)
2018 Oct 9, Pakistan's currency plunged by about 7 percent after the government said it would seek emergency bailout loans from the International Monetary Fund.
(AP, 10/9/18)
2018 Oct 9, Qatari-bought fuel arrived at the Gaza Strip's only power station after entering through Israel in a bid to alleviate conditions in the Palestinian enclave.
(AFP, 10/9/18)
2018 Oct 9, In Serbia dense morning fog led to two multi-vehicle crashes on a key highway, leaving seven people dead and injuring 27 others.
(AP, 10/9/18)
2018 Oct 9, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa announced the departure of Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene at a news conference. Nene faced calls to resign after he admitted to visiting the Gupta brothers, friends of scandal-plagued former president Jacob Zuma who have been accused of high-level influence-peddling, and failing to disclose the meetings earlier.
(Reuters, 10/9/18)
2018 Oct 9, AfriForum's CEO said South Africa's Zulu king and Afrikaans nationalist group AfriForum are forming a partnership to develop the agriculture on vast swathes of land the monarch controls through a trust. King Goodwill Zwelithini controls 2.8 million hectares, a fragmented sub-tropical area the size of Belgium, under an entity called the Ingonyama Trust.
(Reuters, 10/9/18)
2018 Oct 9, Flash floods hit the Spanish holiday island of Majorca leaving at least 10 people dead, including two Britons. Two more people were found dead on Oct. 11, bringing to at least 12 the number of people killed. A Spanish boy remained missing. The death toll to 13 on Oct 17 after the body of a missing five-year-old boy was discovered.
(AFP, 10/10/18)(Reuters, 10/11/18)(AFP, 10/17/18)
2018 Oct 9, Syria's President Bashar al-Assad issued a general amnesty for army deserters and those who have avoided compulsory military service during the country's seven-year civil war.
(AFP, 10/9/18)
2018 Oct 9, Turkey said it will search the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul as part of an investigation into the disappearance of Jamal Khashoggi (59), the missing Saudi contributor to The Washington Post, a week after he vanished during a visit there.
(AP, 10/9/18)
2018 Oct 9, President Tayyip Erdogan agreed to increase releases of water from a dam in southeastern Turkey to neighboring Iraq, which is struggling with a water crisis.
(Reuters, 10/10/18)
2018 Oct 9, In northern Ukraine more than 12,000 people were evacuated after ammunition stored at an arms depot began exploding early today sparking a huge fire.
(AFP, 10/9/18)
2018 Oct 9, Uzbekistan's Pres. Shavkat Mirziyoyev made his first trip to a European Union country, meeting with French leader Emmanuel Macron in Paris. He signed partnership agreements with French companies including energy group Total, Veolia and Suez for water facilities, nuclear company Orano and Airbus Helicopters. No final contract was expected to be reached.
(AP, 10/9/18)
2018 Oct 10, A new damning US congressional report concluded China is undertaking unprecedented repression of its ethnic minorities including Muslim Uighurs, with authoritarian tactics potentially constituting "crimes against humanity" as human rights conditions deteriorate.
(AFP, 10/10/18)
2018 Oct 10, The US Justice Dept. approved the $69 billion merger betrween CVS Health, a pharmaceutical retailer, and the Aetna insurance company.
(SFC, 10/11/18, p.D1)
2018 Oct 10, Former NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg said he has re-registered as a Democrat, eyeing a possible presidential run against Pres. Donald Trump.
(SFC, 10/11/18, p.A8)
2018 Oct 10, Category 4 Hurricane Michael made landfall on the Florida Panhandle and charged into Georgia leaving at least three people dead. By Oct. 28 the death toll over the storm's path from Florida to Virginia reached 45 with 35 dead in Florida.
(AP, 10/10/18)(SFC, 10/11/18, p.A6)(SFC, 10/12/18, p.A5)(SFC, 10/29/18, p.A5)
2018 Oct 10, Father Louis Brouillard (97) died in Minnesota. He was removed from public ministry in 1985, but continued to receive a stipend from the church. In 2016 he signed a sworn statement admitting to sexually abusing at least 20 children in Guam. In 2019 more than 220 former altar boys, students and Boy Scouts were suing the US territory's Catholic archdiocese over sexual assaults by 35 clergy, teachers and scoutmasters.
(http://tinyurl.com/y647kxjy)(AP, 8/8/19)
2018 Oct 10, US stocks plundged to their worst loss in eight months. The DJIA fell 831 points. NASDAQ fell 315.97, its biggest loss in over two years.
(SFC, 10/11/18, p.D1)
2018 Oct 10, Sears Holdings nosedived after the Wall Street Journal reported that the struggling retailer hired an advisory firm to prepare a bankruptcy filing that could come within days. The stock fell 38.5 percent to 36 cents in morning trading. It was more than $40 five years ago.
(AP, 10/10/18)
2018 Oct 10, It was reported that lack of markets led officials to suspend recycling programs in Gouldsboro, Maine; DeBary, Florida; Franklin, New Hampshire; and Adrian Township, Michigan. Programs have been scaled back in Flagstaff, Arizona; La Crosse, Wisconsin; and Kankakee, Illinois.
(AP, 10/10/18)
2018 Oct 10, A Bangladeshi court sentenced 19 people to death and the son of the opposition leader to life imprisonment over a deadly 2004 attack at a political rally held by current PM Sheikh Hasina. Tarique Rahman was tried in absentia as he is living in exile in London.
(AP, 10/10/18)(Reuters, 10/10/18)
2018 Oct 10, Prosecutors in Brazil said Paulo Guedes, the chief economic advisor to far-right presidential front-runner Jair Bolsonaro, is under a federal investigation for alleged fraud tied to the pension funds of major state-run companies.
(Reuters, 10/10/18)
2018 Oct 10, A British court lifted an order granting anonymity to Zamira Hajiyeva (55), the wife of former International Bank of Azerbaijan chairman Jahangir Hajiyev, who was sentenced to 15 years in jail in his home country in 2016 for fraud and embezzlement. A court has ordered her to explain where she got the money to also buy an 11.5 million pound ($15 million) London home close to Harrods and a golf course outside the city worth 10.5 million pounds ($14 million).
(AP, 10/10/18)
2018 Oct 10, Egyptian police detained Abdullah Morsi (25), the youngest son of jailed former president Mohammed Morsi, without giving a reason. The family feared he'll be held indefinitely.
(AP, 10/10/18)
2018 Oct 10, Egypt said that inflation jumped to 15.4 percent last month, a rise of more than two percentage points over the previous month and the highest level since eight months ago.
(AP, 10/10/18)
2018 Oct 10, In Ethiopia a group of "disgruntled" elite soldiers, who had been sent to quell bloody ethnic clashes on the capital's outskirts, marched on PM Abiy Ahmed's office to protest low salaries. PM Ahmed listened to the grievances, reprimanded them for the wrong procedure they followed to express those grievances, but concluded the meeting with a promise to meet properly in the near future.
(AFP, 10/11/18)
2018 Oct 10, France's highest court overturned an appeals court ruling that required around 1,700 women around the world to pay back compensation they received over rupture-prone breast implants. The decision means that the years-long case must be retried.
(AP, 10/10/18)
2018 Oct 10, In northern India an express train partially derailed, killing five passengers and injuring dozens more in Uttar Pradesh state.
(AP, 10/10/18)
2018 Oct 10, Indonesia's disaster agency said the death toll from the double disaster on Sept. 28 has risen to 2,045, with most of the fatalities in the coastal city of Palu. More than 80,000 people were living in temporary shelters or otherwise displaced.
(AP, 10/10/18)
2018 Oct 10, Jerusalem Magistrates Court awarded three 17-year-old girls 45,000 shekels ($12,426.48), plus costs and lawyers' fees for the cancellation of a concert by singer Lorde in Tel Aviv in June. The case arose from an open letter that activists Justine Sachs and Nadia Abu-Shanab wrote to Lorde, a New Zealander, on the web site "thespinoff.co.nz" last December urging her to call off her planned concert.
(Reuters, 10/12/18)
2018 Oct 10, In Kenya 50 people were killed when a bus travelling between Nairobi and the western city of Kisumu swerved off the road coming down a slope.
(Reuters, 10/10/18)
2018 Oct 10, In Kosovo hundreds of people took part in a gay parade in Pristina, demanding "freedom" and "equal rights" in the patriarchal and Muslim majority country.
(AP, 10/10/18)
2018 Oct 10, A Libyan official said a mass grave containing 75 bodies has been found near the former jihadist bastion of Sirte. The find was made "a few days ago" and the bodies were believed to be of Islamic State (IS) group members.
(AFP, 10/10/18)
2018 Oct 10, It was reported that four of the five members of Maldives' Elections Commission have fled the country because of threats from supporters of outgoing President Yameen Abdul Gayoom, who accused them of rigging last month's presidential election in favor of the opposition candidate.
(AP, 10/10/18)
2018 Oct 10, Three senior journalists at Myanmar's largest private newspaper were remanded in custody after handing themselves in to police, facing accusations of causing "fear or alarm" following a complaint from the Yangon regional government.
(AP, 10/10/18)
2018 Oct 10, A bakery run by a Christian family in Northern Ireland won a landmark case in Britain's highest court over its refusal to make a cake decorated with the words "Support Gay Marriage". The Supreme Court upheld the owners' appeal against a May decision that found them guilty of discriminating against gay rights activist Gareth Lee.
(AFP, 10/10/18)
2018 Oct 10, Former Peruvian presidential candidate Keiko Fujimori was detained in Lima as part of a money-maundering investigation.
(SFC, 10/11/18, p.A2)
2018 Oct 10, Poland's Pres. Andrzej Duda swore in 27 new Supreme Court judges, stepping up the conflict over control of the judiciary and ignoring another top court that said the appointments should be suspended pending an opinion by EU judges.
(AP, 10/10/18)
2018 Oct 10, A report commissioned by South Africa's central bank was published. It found at least 1.9 billion rand ($130 million) had been siphoned illegally from VBS, a failed local bank that bailed out former president Jacob Zuma after a corruption scandal. The report said one of the beneficiaries was Brian Shivambu, who received 16 million rand of "looted" funds from VBS. Brian Shivambu is the younger brother of Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) Deputy President Floyd Shivambu.
(Reuters, 10/11/18)
2018 Oct 10, Switzerland's high court upheld the acquittal of Rudolf Elmer, a former bank accountant, who handed over confidential client information to WikiLeaks in 2008, ruling he wasn't bound by the country's strict banking secrecy laws at the time. The court ruled that prosecutors cannot extend Swiss banking secrecy rules to all corners of the globe to pursue whistleblowers and other leakers at foreign subsidiaries.
(AP, 10/10/18)(Reuters, 10/10/18)
2018 Oct 10, In a National Day address Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen called on China not to be a "source of conflict" and pledged to boost the island's defenses against Beijing's military threats.
(AP, 10/10/18)
2018 Oct 10, In Thailand Panthongtae Shinawatra, the son of former PM Thaksin Shinawatra, was indicted on charges of laundering 10 million baht ($303,500) linked to a 2015 corruption case involving Krungthai Bank.
(AP, 10/10/18)
2018 Oct 10, A pro-government Turkish daily published preliminary evidence from investigators it said identified a 15-member Saudi intelligence team involved in the unexplained disappearance of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
(Reuters, 10/10/18)
2018 Oct 10, The Turkish coast guard said eight people died after a boat filled with migrants sank off the western coast of Turkey and another 25 were missing.
(Reuters, 10/10/18)
2018 Oct 10, The UN said that the number of Afghans killed or wounded by air strikes rose 39 percent in the first nine months of 2018. At least 8,050 Afghan civilians were killed or wounded in the first nine months of 2018. The United States is the only foreign force known to carry out air strikes in Afghanistan.
(AFP, 10/10/18)(AP, 10/10/18)
2018 Oct 10, The UN urged warring parties in Syria to allow basic health service deliveries to tens of thousands of increasingly desperate Syrians trapped in the desert near the Jordanian border. UNICEF said two babies without access to hospitals had died in the past 48 hours near the Rukban border crossing.
(AFP, 10/10/18)
2018 Oct 11, US President Donald Trump blamed "crazy" policies of the Federal Reserve for contributing to financial market turmoil. European stock markets fell as economic strains and a drastic downturn in Asia spooked investors, but Wall Street managed to put a halt on its sharp fall seen the previous day, the worst since February.
(AFP, 10/11/18)
2018 Oct 11, US President Donald Trump said he was wary of halting arms sales to Saudi Arabia over the case as the key US ally would just shift its weapons purchases to Russia and China. Major US defense contractors were concerned that lawmakers angered by the disappearance of a Saudi journalist in Turkey will block further arms deals with Saudi Arabia.
(Reuters, 10/12/18)
2018 Oct 11, Arkansas' highest court upheld a voter ID law that is nearly identical to a restriction struck down by the court four years ago.
(SFC, 10/12/18, p.A5)
2018 Oct 11, In the SF Bay Area Rodney Halbower (70), a man called the Gypsy Hill Killer, was sentenced to two life sentences for the rape and murder of two teenage Peninsula women in 1976.
(SFC, 10/12/18, p.C1)
2018 Oct 11, At least 15 Afghan border police were killed battling Taliban insurgents, as fighting continues ahead of this month's elections, with 21 Taliban killed in an operation in Wardak, west of the capital Kabul. In the north four civilians were killed when a Taliban car bomb targeting an election campaign headquarters in Faryab province exploded prematurely. Several Taliban fighters were also killed.
(Reuters, 10/11/18)(AP, 10/12/18)
2018 Oct 11, Belgian authorities charged five people in relation to a massive financial fraud and match-fixing probe into soccer.
(AP, 10/11/18)
2018 Oct 11, Bosnian Muslim wartime commander Atif Dudakovic (65) and 16 senior members of his unit were charged with carrying out atrocities against Serbs in western Bosnia during the 1992-95 war.
(Reuters, 10/11/18)
2018 Oct 11, An Egyptian military court sentenced 17 Islamic militants to death for involvement in deadly attacks on Christians in December 2016 and plotting twin suicide bombings in churches in Alexandria and Tanta, on Palm Sunday in April 2017. The court in Alexandria also issued life sentences to 19 defendants and sentenced another nine to 15 years in prison on terror-related charges.
(AP, 10/11/18)
2018 Oct 11, In France scuba divers found two people dead inside an upended car lolling on a beach after torrential rains wrought havoc along the Riviera coast overnight.
(Reuters, 10/11/18)
2018 Oct 11, In eastern India Cyclone Titli (Butterfly) damaged homes and blew down trees and power poles, where nine people were killed and about 300,000 forced to move to higher ground.
(AP, 10/11/18)(SFC, 10/12/18, p.A2)
2018 Oct 11, In Indonesia leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) reaffirmed their commitment to open trading systems that have underpinned their economic growth. The leaders met in Bali, on the sidelines of the annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank.
(AP, 10/11/18)
2018 Oct 11, Israel destroyed a cross-border tunnel running from the Gaza Strip into Israeli territory, which it said was dug by the Palestinian Hamas group with the aim of carrying out attacks.
(Reuters, 10/11/18)
2018 Oct 11, Italian PM Giuseppe Conte visited Ethiopia. He was expected to discuss migration, a sensitive topic in Italy, as well as investment opportunities in Ethiopia.
(AP, 10/11/18)
2018 Oct 11, Tokyo's famous fish market reopened at a new location but retained its most famous tradition: the tuna auction at the waterfront Toyosu facility.
(AP, 10/11/18)
2018 Oct 11, Manan Wani, a Kashmiri scholar-turned rebel leader, and his colleague were killed in a gunbattle with Indian troops.
(AP, 10/11/18)
2018 Oct 11, The An-Nahar daily, one of Lebanon's leading newspapers, printed a blank issue to protest the country's long-running political gridlock and the failure to form a government five months after elections.
(AP, 10/11/18)
2018 Oct 11, Libyan authorities said they have found a mass grave believed to contain the bodies of 75 Islamic State fighters near the coastal city of Sirte, formerly the main North African stronghold of the extremist group. A resident reported the grave about a month ago on his farm in al-Daheir district.
(AP, 10/11/18)
2018 Oct 11, Malaysia's new government said it will abolish the death penalty for all crimes and halt all pending executions.
(AP, 10/11/18)
2018 Oct 11, The Maldives Supreme Court said it would examine President Abdulla Yameen's petition to annul his September election defeat despite international pressure on the strongman leader to go quietly.
(AFP, 10/11/18)
2018 Oct 11, Mexican authorities in Guerrero state said Marines have found the skeletal remains of six men in illegal burial pits inside a house in the resort of Acapulco.
(AP, 10/11/18)
2018 Oct 11, In northern Mexico three levels of a shopping mall collapsed killing at least seven men in Monterrey. Work was being carried without the necessary licenses.
(SFC, 10/13/18, p.A2)
2018 Oct 11, In Poland an official of the Supreme Administrative Court confirmed that the court had now ruled in favor of the lesbian parents of a Polish boy and have been given the right to register him in Poland as their child.
(Reuters, 10/11/18)
2018 Oct 11, The two-man US-Russian crew of a Soyuz spacecraft en route to the International Space Station was forced to make a dramatic emergency landing in Kazakhstan when their rocket failed in mid-air. The rocket malfunctioned two minutes after liftoff, forcing its two-man crew of Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Alexei Ovchinin to make an emergency landing. Investigators later said the rocket failure was caused by a sensor that was damaged during assembly at the Soviet-era cosmodrome at Baikonur.
(Reuters, 10/11/18)(Reuters, 10/8/19)
2018 Oct 11, Saudi Arabia's new high-speed railway opened to the public, whisking Muslim pilgrims and other travelers between Mecca and Medina, Islam's holiest cities.
(AFP, 10/11/18)
2018 Oct 11, In eastern Syria US-backed fighters braved a sandstorm to battle the Islamic State group in heavy clashes that killed several fighters on both sides. The fighting began a day earlier and killed at least 10 US-allied fighters, with the fate of 35 others unknown. 18 IS militants were reported killed.
(AP, 10/11/18)
2018 Oct 11, Relief workers and refugees said thousands of Syrians stranded on Jordan's border with Syria are running out of food as routes leading to their camp are closed by the Syrian army and Jordan is blocking aid deliveries.
(Reuters, 10/11/18)
2018 Oct 11, In Tanzania Mohammed Dewji (43), Africa's youngest billionaire, was snatched as he entered the gym of a hotel in Dar es Salaam. Dewji heads the MeTL Group which operates in about 10 countries with interests in agriculture to insurance, transport, logistics and the food industry.
(AFP, 10/11/18)
2018 Oct 11, Thai authorities convicted 70 Pakistani asylum seekers of staying illegally in Thailand despite their protestations that they face persecution if they are sent home, as police intensified a crackdown on illegal immigration.
(AP, 10/11/18)
2018 Oct 11, In eastern Uganda at least 34 people died in mudslides triggered by torrential rains in the district of Bududa. Wanjenwa village was wrecked by a torrent of rocks carried down river by the deluge. The death toll soon rose to 43.
(AP, 10/12/18)(AFP, 10/14/18)
2018 Oct 11, In Yemen unidentified men snatched Abdullah Yahia al-Ayolofi from a market in a district called al-Jarraf in Sanaa on Thursday. Al-Ayolofi, a convert to Bahaism, has been outspoken about Houthi abuses against Bahai followers. His whereabouts remain unknown.
(AP, 10/12/18)
2018 Oct 11, Zimbabwe police arrested dozens of trade union members and activists ahead of a planned protest in the capital over the worst economic crisis in a decade. Police arrested Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions members in Harare and the cities of Mutare and Masvingo. The government banned the protest, citing an ongoing cholera outbreak. The arrested Trade union leaders and scores of activists were released on bail over the next two days.
(AP, 10/11/18)(AP, 10/13/18)
2018 Oct 12, It was reported that the US Army has discharged more than 500 immigrant enlistees, over the last twelve months, who had been recruited across the globe for their language or medical skills and promised a fast track to citizenship in exchange for their service.
(SFC, 10/12/18, p.A5)
2018 Oct 12, Bloomberg withdrew from a Saudi investment conference at the end of the month, following other media companies that have dropped plans to participate after the disappearance of Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi. CNBC cable news network added its name to the growing list of media companies, citing the disappearance of dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
(Reuters, 10/12/18)
2018 Oct 12, In Detroit, Mich., the decomposed bodies of 11 infants were found in a ceiling compartment of the former Cantrell Funeral Home. The facility had been closed sinece April when inspectors suspended its license following the discovery of bodies covered with what appeared to be mold.
(SSFC, 10/14/18, p.A10)
2018 Oct 12, In northern Afghanistan an attack by the Taliban killed four soldiers in Kunduz province. Several Taliban fighters were also killed.
(AP, 10/12/18)
2018 Oct 12, A Taliban delegation met with US envoy Zalmay Khalilzad in Qatar to discuss ending the Afghan conflict.
(AFP, 10/13/18)
2018 Oct 12, It was reported that Albania's base at Kucova, long the graveyard of its once mighty air force, is set to become a NATO station. Albania retired its 224 Soviet- and Chinese-made MiGs in 2005.
(AP, 10/12/18)
2018 Oct 12, In Australia Chinese property developer Xu Longwei was sentenced to at least two-and-a-half years in jail by a court for non-consensual intercourse with a woman after a Sydney dinner party hosted by billionaire JD.com-founder Richard Liu.
(Reuters, 10/12/18)
2018 Oct 12, In Austria two women tied the knot in Vienna in the country's first same-sex marriage, months after the country's Constitutional Court ruled to legalize it.
(AP, 10/12/18)
2018 Oct 12, According to the UN refugee agency UNHCR Ethiopian authorities have registered more than 6,700 new arrivals from Eritrea since the border's opening. Eritrean refugee arrivals to Ethiopia have jumped to about 390 per day from around 53.
(AFP, 10/12/18)
2018 Oct 12, A French police van was seen driving into Italy to return recently-arrived migrants to the town of Calviere. French authorities later admitted to returning migrants to Italy in "error".
(AFP, 10/16/18)
2018 Oct 12, Germany said it will extend temporary controls at its border with Austria for six months due to concerns the EU's external frontiers are not sufficiently protected. The Danish government made a similar announcement, citing the threat of terrorism.
(Reuters, 10/12/18)
2018 Oct 12, Hong Kong authorities barred former lawmaker Lau Siu-lai from contesting an election next month given her past advocacy of greater autonomy for Hong Kong. A small group of pro-democracy lawmakers and activists protested outside government headquarters, holding up banners decrying the decision as "political suppression".
(Reuters, 10/12/18)
2018 Oct 12, In eastern India 12 people were feared dead in a cyclone shelter swamped by a landslide caused by heavy rains from Cyclone Titli in Orissa state.
(AP, 10/13/18)
2018 Oct 12, In Indonesia torrential rains triggered flash floods and landslides on the island of Sumatra, killing at least 27 people, including a dozen children at a school.
(AP, 10/13/18)
2018 Oct 12, An Israeli court upheld the barring of Lara Alqasem (22), an American student, from the country over her activities in support of an international boycott campaign by pro-Palestinian groups.
(AP, 10/12/18)
2018 Oct 12, Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman late today ordered the deliveries of Qatari-bought fuel to stop after clashes on the Gaza-Israel border. The Israeli army said five people were shot dead after "an organized attack" on an army post. The Gaza health ministry said seven Palestinians were killed. 50 other protesters were wounded by live bullets.
(AP, 10/12/18)(AFP, 10/13/18)
2018 Oct 12, Israeli forces said they had arrested a Palestinian, identified as Ashraf Naalwa (23), on suspicion of stabbing and wounding an army reservist on guard duty at a checkpoint south of Nablus the previous day.
(AFP, 10/13/18)
2018 Oct 12, Palestinian Aisha Rabi (47), a mother of nine, was fatally wounded in an attack near the Jewish settlement of Rechalim in the West Bank. On Jan 6, 2019, Israeli authorities confirmed that they have arrested five Jewish seminary students, all under age 18, suspected of the fatal stone-throwing attack.
(AP, 1/6/19)(Reuters, 1/6/19)
2018 Oct 12, Italy's PM Giuseppe Conte made a rare visit to Eritrea to support its surprising new peace with neighboring Ethiopia as the international community waits to see what happens next in one of the world's most closed-off nations.
(AP, 10/12/18)
2018 Oct 12, Students across Italy demonstrated against the government's education funding plans, in the first widespread show of dissidence against the new populist government.
(AP, 10/12/18)
2018 Oct 12, Denny Tamaki, the new governor of Okinawa, said he wants Americans to know that the US and Japanese governments are forcing a relocation of a US Marine base that residents want removed from the southern Japanese island.
(AP, 10/12/18)
2018 Oct 12, Japan-based Toyota said it is recalling nearly 188,000 pickup trucks, SUVs and cars worldwide because the air bags may not inflate in a crash.
(AP, 10/12/18)
2018 Oct 12, Japan's space agency said it is delaying a touchdown of its Hayabusa2 spacecraft on the Ryugu asteroid due to a rockier than expected surface.
(SFC, 10/13/18, p.A2)
2018 Oct 12, It was reported that animal-rights in Nepal campaigned to reduce animal slaughter as the 15-day Dasain festival began this week. Traditionally tens of thousands of goats, buffaloes, chickens and ducks are sacrificed to please the gods and goddesses as part of a practice that dates back centuries.
(AP, 10/12/18)
2018 Oct 12, In southeastern Nigeria at least 19 people were killed when a leaking oil pipeline exploded in Abia state. Oil thieves were suspected of hacking into the pipe
(SSFC, 10/14/18, p.A4)
2018 Oct 12, A Pakistani judge signed the execution order for Mohammad Imran, a serial child killer convicted of killing eight children in eastern Punjab province. He was arrested in January, two weeks after authorities say he raped and killed Zainab Ansari (7) and threw her body into a garbage dump in the city of Kasur.
(AP, 10/12/18)
2018 Oct 12, Hundreds of supporters from an extremist Islamist party rallied in the eastern Pakistan city of Lahore to pressure judges to uphold a death sentence for Asia Bibi, a Christian woman convicted in 2010 of blasphemy.
(AP, 10/12/18)
2018 Oct 12, Five Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire at a protest near the fence dividing the territory and Israel. 50 other protesters were wounded by live bullets.
(AP, 10/12/18)
2018 Oct 12, In Nepal seven people, including South Korean climbers, were killed and two more left missing on Gurja Himal mountain after a strong storm swept through their base camp.
(AP, 10/13/18)
2018 Oct 12, Nigerian troops foiled an attempt by Boko Haram fighters to overrun a military base in the restive northeast leaving six soldiers wounded.
(AP, 10/13/18)
2018 Oct 12, The Philippines became one of 18 new council members elected to the UN Human Rights Council despite rights groups' complaints that its government, widely condemned internationally for a deadly drug crackdown, doesn't belong in a group meant to call out abuses.
(AP, 10/12/18)
2018 Oct 12, Rwanda's foreign minister Louise Mushikiwabo was named head of the International Organization of La Francophonie (OIF), a sign of slowly improving relations between Paris and Kigali a decade after the African nation turned its back on the French language.
(Reuters, 10/12/18)
2018 Oct 12, In Somalia several missiles were fired by two unmanned US drones. At least 60 extremists were later reported killed. It was the deadliest strike since one on Nov. 21, 2017, against a camp killed about 100 al-Shabab fighters.
(AP, 10/17/18)
2018 Oct 12, In Spain thousands of people flooded the streets of Barcelona for rival protests on Spain's national day, highlighting the division in Catalonia over support for the Spanish state and those seeking independence.
(Reuters, 10/12/18)
2018 Oct 12, Spain's maritime rescue service recovered the bodies of three migrants and feared that another 17 were missing in the Mediterranean Sea. The service pulled 509 migrants from 15 small boats.
(AP, 10/13/18)
2018 Oct 12, In eastern Syria the Islamic State group stormed the Hajin camp, a settlement for displaced people in Deir el-Zour province, and abducted scores of civilians. 20 IS gunmen and "several" SDF fighters were killed.
(AP, 10/13/18)
2018 Oct 12, Amnesty Int'l. said 2,521 bodies have been recovered from the 2017 battle for Raqqa, Syria, with the majority killed by coalition air strikes. At least 3,000 more bodies were expected to be recovered.
(SFC, 10/12/18, p.A4)
2018 Oct 12, A Turkish court freed American pastor Andrew Brunson held for the last two years in Turkey. He was freed taking into account time served and his good conduct during the trial. Brunson was flown out of Turkey.
(AFP, 10/12/18)(AP, 10/12/18)
2018 Oct 12, The UN children's agency UNICEF said a militia fighting against the Islamist militant group Boko Haram in northeast Nigeria has released 833 children from its own ranks, some as young as 11.
(AP, 10/12/18)
2018 Oct 12, Pope Francis accepted the resignation of Washington Cardinal Donald Wuerl after he became entangled in two major sexual abuse and cover-up scandals and lost the support of many in his flock.
(AP, 10/12/18)
2018 Oct 12, Venezuelan authorities freed a prominent opposition activist jailed for four years just days after an anti-government politician died in state custody. Lorent Saleh (30) was immediately escorted to the airport and put on a flight to Madrid.
(AFP, 10/13/18)
2018 Oct 13, US President Donald Trump said in a CBS interview that there would be "severe punishment" for Saudi Arabia if it turns out that missing Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi was killed in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.
(Reuters, 10/13/18)
2018 Oct 13, In southern Texas gunfire erupted a a toddler's first birthday party leaving four men dead in Taft.
(SFC, 10/15/18, p.A6)
2018 Oct 13, In northeastern Afghanistan a motorcycle rigged with explosives detonated at an election rally in Takhar province killing at least 14 people, including civilians and security forces. The death toll soon climbed from 14 to 22.
(AP, 10/13/18)(AP, 10/14/18)
2018 Oct 13, In Afghanistan the police chief of Mizan, a district in southern Zabul province, was killed late today in armed clashes with Taliban insurgents. Taliban fighters in Farah province killed 21 troops at two checkpoints in the district of Posht-e Rud. The Taliban captured 11 soldiers and seized their weapons as fighting continued into the next day.
(Reuters, 10/14/18)(SFC, 10/15/18, p.A4)
2018 Oct 13, In Afghanistan blast in Helmand went off inside the campaign office of Abdul Jabar Qahraman, killing him and wounding seven people.
(AP, 10/17/18)
2018 Oct 13, Taliban leaders said they will continue to meet for discussions with the newly appointed US special envoy for peace efforts in Afghanistan.
(Reuters, 10/13/18)
2018 Oct 13, In Bangladesh a small party led by prominent lawyer Kamal Hossain forged a new alliance with the country's main opposition party that could be seen as a boost against PM Sheikh Hasina's government ahead of national elections due in December.
(AP, 10/13/18)
2018 Oct 13, In Bangladesh an influential body of newspaper editors criticized the government for a new digital security law that they say will stifle constitutionally protected freedom of speech and curtail press freedom.
(AP, 10/13/18)
2018 Oct 13, The Bank of England said that a new 50-pound note will be printed on thin, flexible polymer with extra security measures to prevent forgeries. The new note will not be introduced until the newest version of the 20-pound note enters circulation in 2020.
(AP, 10/13/18)
2018 Oct 13, Storm Callum left one man dead after a landslide in western Wales while another was swept away by rough seas in Brighton on the southern coast of England.
(AP, 10/14/18)
2018 Oct 13, Mark Sutton (34), a Briton riding a mountain bike, was shot dead by a hunter (22) as he sped down a wooded track near Montriond in the French Alps.
(AFP, 10/14/18)
2018 Oct 13, Cambodia's PM Hun Sen said he has agreed to the resumption of US military-led missions to search for the remains of Americans missing in action during the Vietnam War. The long-running program was suspended a year ago after the US government stopped issuing visas to senior Cambodian Foreign Ministry officials and their families. The visa ban remained in place.
(AP, 10/13/18)
2018 Oct 13, In the Czech Rep. a conservative opposition party won an election for a third of the seats in Parliament's upper house as the ruling coalition of PM Andrej Babis suffered a setback. The Civic Democratic Party won 10 of the 27 seats up for grabs in the 81-seat Senate in the two-round election. Opposition parties now control the Senate.
(AP, 10/13/18)
2018 Oct 13, Gabon's ruling party won just over half of the parliamentary seats in the first round of legislative elections in a vote marred by low turnout. The 2nd round will be held in 61 constituencies on October 27.
(AFP, 10/13/18)
2018 Oct 13, In Germany tens of thousands of people protested racism and discrimination in Berlin, a demonstration that came amid rising concerns about Germany's increasingly confident far right.
(AP, 10/13/18)
2018 Oct 13, In northern Greece a speeding car carrying migrants collided with a truck, killing 11 people.
(AP, 10/13/18)
2018 Oct 13, In Indonesia global financial leaders meeting in Bali wrapped up an annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank by urging countries to brace for potential risks from trade disputes and other tensions.
(AP, 10/13/18)
2018 Oct 13, In Italy women's rights groups marched in protest in the northern city of Verona, after the local council passed a motion to fund Catholic anti-abortion groups.
(AFP, 10/13/18)
2018 Oct 13, Charismatic Malaysian politician Anwar Ibrahim won a by-election for a parliamentary seat with a landslide victory in a grand political comeback to help him prepare for his eventual takeover from PM Mahathir Mohamad.
(AP, 10/13/18)
2018 Oct 13, Palestinian security sources said Aisha Mohammed Rabi (48), a mother of eight, has died of her wounds in Nablus after Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank threw stones a day earlier at the car she was traveling in.
(AFP, 10/13/18)
2018 Oct 13, Polish police used tear gas and a water cannon against right-wing extremists who were trying to block the first equality parade in the city of Lublin.
(AP, 10/13/18)
2018 Oct 13, The Russian Orthodox Church said it would respond firmly to the Istanbul-based Ecumenical Patriarchate over its decision to back Ukraine's request to establish an independent, or "autocephalous", Church.
(Reuters, 10/13/18)
2018 Oct 13, Saudi Arabia dismissed accusations that Jamal Khashoggi was ordered murdered by a hit squad inside its Istanbul consulate as "lies and baseless allegations".
(AFP, 10/13/18)
2018 Oct 13, In Somalia two suspected suicide bombers struck in the southern city of Baidoa killing 20 people.
(Reuters, 10/14/18)
2018 Oct 13, South Korea's Busan Film Festival closed after screening 324 films from 79 countries across its varied 10-day program, which included 115 world premieres, with just over 195,000 people attending.
(AFP, 10/12/18)
2018 Oct 13, In northwest Syria opposition fighters fired mortar shells from a planned buffer zone late today in Hama province, killing two soldiers. The deadly attack threatened a deal to protect the last major rebel bastion from a regime offensive.
(AFP, 10/14/18)
2018 Oct 13, In Syria IS militants reportedly took around 700 hostages in Deir-al Zor province after attacking a refugee camp in an area controlled by US-backed forces.
(Reuters, 10/18/18)
2018 Oct 13, UN sanctions monitors in an unpublished report said banned charcoal exports from Somalia are thriving, generating millions of dollars a year for al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab extremists — and often passing through Iran to have their origins obscured.
(AP, 10/13/18)
2018 Oct 13, The Vatican said Pope Francis has defrocked Chilean bishops Francisco José Cox Huneeus (84), former archbishop emeritus of the city of La Serena, and Marco Antonio Órdenes Fernández (53), former archbishop emeritus of Iquique, who have been caught up in the country's widening sexual abuse crisis.
(Reuters, 10/13/18)
2018 Oct 13, In Yemen air strikes by the Saudi-led coalition fighting the Houthi group killed 10 civilians in Hodeidah province. The Houthi movement’s Al Massira TV said 17 died and many others were in a critical condition.
(Reuters, 10/13/18)
2018 Oct 14, In California a teenager in Fresno fatally shot his father and called the police. The man had been drinking and allegedly began choking his wife at their home.
(SFC, 10/16/18, p.A6)
2018 Oct 14, Mel Ramos (b.1935), pop art pioneer, died in Oakland, Ca.
(SFC, 10/18/18, p.C3)
2018 Oct 14, In western Afghanistan a young girl was killed and three others were wounded in the crossfire of a battle between Afghan forces and the Taliban in Herat province.
(AP, 10/14/18)
2018 Oct 14, In Argentina Patrick Baumann (51) of Switzerland, the secretary general of basketball's world governing body, died of a heart attack at the Youth Olympics. Baumann was the top administrator of the International Basketball Federation (FIBA) for 15 years, and an International Olympic Committee (IOC) member since 2007.
(AP, 10/14/18)
2018 Oct 14, Britain, France and Germany insisted that "light must be shed" on the whereabouts of journalist Jamal Khashoggi as they called for a credible investigation into his disappearance at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.
(AFP, 10/14/18)
2018 Oct 14, Burundi accused former colonial power Belgium of ordering the assassination of independence hero and Crown Prince Louis Rwagasore in 1961, a move likely to further poison ties between the two countries.
(AFP, 10/14/18)
2018 Oct 14, China accused the United States of going on the offensive by sending US Navy vessels into the South China Sea and described US arms sales to Taiwan as interference in Chinese internal affairs.
(Reuters, 10/14/18)
2018 Oct 14, Congolese migrants and officials said dozens of people were killed this month in neighboring Angola in a crackdown on artisanal diamond mining, an accusation Angolan security forces strongly denied. Border guard officials said the Angolan operation began on October 1.
(Reuters, 10/14/18)
2018 Oct 14, The Egyptian military said commercial truck traffic with Israel has resumed via a border crossing in the Sinai Peninsula that had been shut down amid the insurgency there.
(AP, 10/14/18)
2018 Oct 14, An Egyptian court upheld death sentences for three people for establishing and running a militant group known as Ansar al-Sharia.
(AP, 10/14/18)
2018 Oct 14, In Germany the Christian Social Union (CSU), the sister party of Merkel's own Christian Democrats (CDU), slumped to its worst result in almost 70 years in the election in Bavaria.
(Reuters, 10/15/18)
2018 Oct 14, In western Germany several people died when a Cessna plane crashed into a crowd near Fulda, Hesse state.
(Reuters, 10/14/18)
2018 Oct 14, India's junior external affairs minister, M.J. Akbar, denied any wrongdoing after more than a dozen women accused him of sexual misconduct when he was a newspaper editor.
(AP, 10/14/18)
2018 Oct 14, Iran's judiciary spokesman said a court has sentenced a dual national man, surname Tavakkoli, to eight and a half years in prison after finding him guilty of infiltration of important governmental bodies.
(AP, 10/14/18)
2018 Oct 14, Israel's Supreme Court t ruled that Lara Alqasem's deportation be frozen until judges have a chance to hear the appeal in the coming week. The American graduate student has been held in detention while fighting an expulsion order over her involvement in the boycott movement against Israel.
(AP, 10/14/18)
2018 Oct 14, Italy's Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini defended his decision to move hundreds of migrants out of Riace, a southern Italian town widely seen as a model of successful integration, as opposition groups accused him of racism.
(Reuters, 10/14/18)
2018 Oct 14, Japanese PM Shinzo Abe renewed his pledge to push for a revision to the country's war-renouncing constitution, in which he wants the military explicitly mentioned.
(AP, 10/14/18)
2018 Oct 14, Jordan's King Abdullah II vowed authorities would crack down on corruption in the country, following mass protests against graft and price rises earlier this year.
(AFP, 10/14/18)
2018 Oct 14, Jordan and Syria agreed to reopen a vital border crossing between the two countries, three years after the commercial lifeline fell to rebel groups and traffic was halted. The Naseeb crossing would be opened Oct. 15 after operational details are agreed upon.
(AP, 10/14/18)
2018 Oct 14, In Libya emergency workers uncovered another 35 bodies at a mass grave near Sirte, taking to 110 the total number of remains retrieved from the site. IS jihadists overran Sirte in June 2015 and were ousted by forces loyal to Libya's UN-backed government in December 2016, after an eight-month battle.
(AFP, 10/14/18)
2018 Oct 14, Luxembourg held parliamentary elections. The center-right was expected to return to power after a rare five years in opposition.
(Reuters, 10/14/18)
2018 Oct 14, In Myanmar several thousand pro-military and nationalist demonstrators marched through Yangon, voicing their support for Myanmar's armed forces and government while condemning foreign involvement in the country's affairs. Ultra-nationalist monk Wirathu, dubbed the "Buddhist Bin Laden," condemned the international community for their calls to bring Myanmar's generals to justice over the Rohingya crisis.
(AP, 10/14/18)(AFP, 10/14/18)
2018 Oct 14, Nepalese officials said local internet providers have begun blocking thousands of pornographic websites as part of a government directive aimed at stopping sexual violence.
(AP, 10/14/18)
2018 Oct 14, Rescuers In Nepal retrieved the bodies of five South Korean climbers and their four Nepalese guides from Gurja Himal mountain, where they were killed when their base camp was swept by a strong storm on Oct. 12.
(AP, 10/14/18)
2018 Oct 14, Violent storms hit Portugal, leaving hundreds of thousands of people without power before carrying heavy rain on into Spain. Leslie was dubbed a "zombie" hurricane as it first formed on September 23, only to meander through the Atlantic Ocean for weeks before making landfall.
(AFP, 10/14/18)
2018 Oct 14, Kremlin opposition leader Alexei Navalny was released from jail after serving 50 days on two consecutive sentences for organizing unsanctioned protests.
(AP, 10/14/18)
2018 Oct 14, Saudi Arabia warned it would retaliate against any sanctions imposed on the oil-rich kingdom over the disappearance of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, as the Riyadh stock market plunged on growing investor jitters.
(AFP, 10/14/18)
2018 Oct 14, Somalia executed by firing squad Hassan Adan Isak, linked to one of the country's deadliest ever attacks, one year after the tragedy which left over 500 dead.
(AFP, 10/14/18)
2018 Oct 14, In western Turkey 22 people, including children, were killed when a truck carrying migrants crashed in Izmir province. The truck's passengers were reportedly foreign migrants who had reached a deal with traffickers to be transported by boat to the Greek island of Samos south of Izmir.
(Reuters, 10/14/18)
2018 Oct 14, Pope Francis lauded new saints Pope Paul VI and slain Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero (d.1980) as prophets of a church that looks out for the poor as he presided over a canonization ceremony.
(AP, 10/14/18)
2018 Oct 14, In Venezuela seven people were killed near a remote gold mine in the southeast. Family members believed the incident was the result of a struggle between armed groups for control of the area.
(Reuters, 10/18/18)
2018 Oct 15, US Attorney General Jeff Sessions said he had designated five groups, including Hezbollah and MS-13, as transnational criminal organizations to target with tougher investigations and prosecutions.
(Reuters, 10/15/18)
2018 Oct 15, It was reported that Idaho Fish and Game Commissioner Blake Fisher and his wife were being criticized after having shot at least 14 animals while hunting in Namibia. One photo showed showed him smiling with four dead baboons propped in front of him. Idaho Gov. C.L. Otter asked for and accepted Fischer's resignation.
(SFC, 10/15/18, p.A6)(SFC, 10/17/18, p.A6)
2018 Oct 15, In Pennsylvania a charter bus crashed into trees near Scranton killing one person and injuring at least three others.
(SFC, 10/16/18, p.A6)
2018 Oct 15, Paul Allen (65), co-founder of Microsoft, died in Seattle.
(SFC, 10/16/18, p.A7)
2018 Oct 15, In Wisconsin Jake Patterson gunned down James and Denise Closs, dragged away their daughter Jayme Closs (13), and held her under a bed in his remote cabin for 88 days before she made a daring escape. An Amber Alert was issued for Jayme Closs after deputies found her parents dead in Barron. Jayme was found safe on Jan. 10 in the small town of Gordon and suspect In March, 2019, Patterson (21) pleaded guilty to two counts of intentional homicide and one count of kidnapping. On May 24 Patterson was sentenced to life in prison.
(SFC, 10/16/18, p.A6)(SFC, 1/11/19, p.A5)(SFC, 1/15/19, p.A4)(SFC, 5/25/19, p.A6)(AP, 12/20/19)
2018 Oct 15, US retailer Sears filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and said it will close 142 stores nationwide near the end of the year.
(SFC, 10/16/18, p.D1)
2018 Oct 15, In Bangladesh editors of major daily newspapers in Dhaka formed a human chain to protest a new digital security law they say will stifle freedom of speech and media freedom.
(AP, 10/15/18)
2018 Oct 15, British protesters gathered near a shale gas exploration site in northwestern England, as fracking began in the UK for the first time since 2011.
(AP, 10/15/18)
2018 Oct 15, China and India launched a program to train Afghan diplomats and China's ambassador said it would likely be followed by joint programs in other fields to help war-torn Afghanistan. The joint training of 10 Afghan diplomats will take place at the Indian Foreign Service Institute.
(Reuters, 10/15/18)
2018 Oct 15, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang reaffirmed pledges to open up his country to foreign investment as a way of promoting commerce between his country and the Netherlands.
(AP, 10/15/18)
2018 Oct 15, Protesters barricaded roads with tree trunks, stoned cars and clashed with soldiers in the Indian Ocean island nation of Comoros in demonstrations against President Azali Assoumani's bid to extend term limits.
(Reuters, 10/15/18)
2018 Oct 15, Cuba's government released Tomas Nunez Magdariaga, jailed since August on charges of making threats. He had carried out a lengthy hunger strike to protest his imprisonment.
(AP, 10/16/18)
2018 Oct 15, Egyptian security forces killed nine "terrorists" in a raid on a cave hideout along the Nile River. The raid targeted men who were planning attacks on vital installations, resulting in a shootout that led to their deaths.
(AP, 10/15/18)
2018 Oct 15, Egypt's main appeals court upheld a three-year prison sentence for former lawmaker Mustafa el-Nagar and some two dozen people, including former Pres. Mohammed Morsi, following their convictions of insulting the judiciary. El-Nagar had gone missing on Sept. 27 and was not present.
(AP, 10/17/18)
2018 Oct 15, Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi arrived in Russia on a visit expected to further boost ties between the two nations.
(AP, 10/15/18)
2018 Oct 15, In France overnight flash floods struck the southwest Aude region. At least 14 people died and one remained missing after the storms and floods.
(AP, 10/15/18)(AFP, 10/17/18)
2018 Oct 15, It was reported that France over the summer seized part of a severance payment to the former co-chairman of LafargeHolcim as part of an investigation into whether the cement maker paid off Islamic State and other militants in Syria.
(AP, 10/15/18)
2018 Oct 15, Gambia swore in an 11-member commission tasked with shedding light on summary executions, disappearances, torture, rape and other crimes under ousted dictator Yahya Jammeh.
(AFP, 10/15/18)
2018 Oct 15, Germany deported Mounir el Motassadeq (44) to Morocco. He was convicted in 2003 of membership in a terrorist organization and accessory to the murder of the 246 passengers and crew on the four jetliners used in the 2001 al-Qaida attacks on New York and Washington.
(AP, 10/15/18)
2018 Oct 15, In Germany a Syrian refugee, identified only as Mohammad A.R. (55), sparked panic at the busy station in Cologne after he started a fire in a McDonald's restaurant that left a 14-year-old girl with burns. He then took a female employee hostage in a nearby pharmacy. Police opened fire on the suspect, who underwent emergency surgery and remained in a coma.
(AFP, 10/17/18)
2018 Oct 15, Up to 3,000 migrants crossed from Honduras into Guatemala on a trek northward, after a standoff with police in riot gear and warnings from Washington that migrants should not try to enter the United States illegally.
(Reuters, 10/16/18)
2018 Oct 15, Indian government minister M.J. Akbar filed a defamation suit against one of at least 10 women who have accused him of sexual harassment, calling her allegations false and malicious.
(Reuters, 10/15/18)
2018 Oct 15, Italy's cabinet signed off on a draft budget that will hike the deficit at a time when under EU regulations it should be falling, as well as boosting welfare spending and cutting the retirement age.
(Reuters, 10/18/18)
2018 Oct 15, The border crossing between Jordan and Syria opened to people and goods after being closed for three years.
(Reuters, 10/15/18)
2018 Oct 15, Running great Kip Keino was given more time to report to police in Kenya after being one of seven former Olympic and government officials accused of corruption relating to the misappropriation of more than $545,000 around the time of the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games.
(AP, 10/15/18)
2018 Oct 15, The Nigerian government said a medical aid worker held hostage by Islamic State in West Africa (ISWA) militants was killed after a deadline they set expired. The next day the Red Cross named the health worker as Hauwa Mohammed Liman, a 24-year-old midwife. She and two other Nigerian aid workers, Alice Loksha and Saifura Hussaini Ahmed Khorsa, were working in the northeastern town of Rann when they were kidnapped by ISWA in March. Khorsa, also a midwife, was killed in September.
(Reuters, 10/16/18)
2018 Oct 15, North and South Korea continued their push for peace with high-level talks that resulted in a host of agreements, including a plan by the rivals for a groundbreaking ceremony this year on an ambitious project to connect their railways and roads.
(AP, 10/15/18)
2018 Oct 15, A Palestinian was shot dead after trying to stab an Israeli soldier in the occupied West Bank.
(AFP, 10/15/18)
2018 Oct 15, Romania's government passed an emergency ordinance requiring prosecutors in key agencies to have more years of experience — a move that prosecutors say would hamper current investigations and force some anti-corruption prosecutors from their jobs.
(AP, 10/15/18)
2018 Oct 15, Saudi Arabia's King Salman ordered an internal probe into the unexplained disappearance of prominent journalist Jamal Khashoggi as a joint Turkish-Saudi team was set to search the Saudi consulate in Istanbul where he was last seen on Oct. 2.
(Reuters, 10/15/18)
2018 Oct 14, In Somalia a US military strike killed four al-Shabab extremists in the Lower Juba region.
(SFC, 10/16/18, p.A2)
2018 Oct 15, South Africa's President Cyril Ramaphosa denied accusations that he ignored widespread looting and financial misconduct at a major retail bank that collapsed weeks after he came into office.
(AFP, 10/15/18)
2018 Oct 15, Sweden's outgoing Social Democrats PM Stefan Lofven was given a mandate to form a government a day after a rival center-right leader failed in his first attempt.
(AFP, 10/15/18)
2018 Oct 15, Jihadists in Syria's Idlib failed to meet a deadline to leave a planned buffer zone ringing the country's last rebel bastion, casting fresh doubt over a deal to avert bloodshed. Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and other, more extreme jihadists hold over two-thirds of the planned buffer area, and over half of the rest of Idlib.
(AFP, 10/15/18)
2018 Oct 15, Turkey's government said it has dismissed 259 local officials for suspected links to terrorist groups or unsuitable behavior, a move the pro-Kurdish opposition said was aimed at helping the ruling AK Party ahead of 2019 polls.
(Reuters, 10/15/18)
2018 Oct 15, Turkish authorities said they have an audio recording which indicates that missing Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi was killed in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.
(Reuters, 10/15/18)
2018 Oct 15, Kanye West and his wife Kim Kardashian paid a visit to Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, gifting the 74-year-old leader a pair of white sneakers. West was in Uganda to record his ninth studio album "Yandhi".
(AFP, 10/15/18)
2018 Oct 15, In Venezuela a blackout started this evening with an explosion at a power station in the northern state of Carabobo. It left at least 11 of 23 states in the dark.
(AP, 10/16/18)
2018 Oct 16, US President Donald Trump threatened to withdraw funding and aid from Honduras if it does not stop a caravan of people that is heading to the United States.
(Reuters, 10/16/18)
2018 Oct 16, The US Treasury Department slapped sanctions on a network of more than 20 businesses it said had financial links to the Basij paramilitary group, which enforces internal security in Iran.
(AFP, 10/17/18)
2018 Oct 16, Alaska's Lt. Gov. Byron Mallott resigned for making unspecified innappropriate comments, imperiling the re-election of Gov. Bill Walker.
(SFC, 10/18/18, p.A6)
2018 Oct 16, In Nevada Dennis Hof (72), Republican nominee to the state Assembly, died overnight at his Love Branch Brothel, just outside Pahrump. On Nov. 6 voters chose Hoff over Lesia Romanov for the 36th Assembly District. Officials planned to appoint a Republican to take his place.
(SFC, 10/17/18, p.A5)(SFC, 11/8/18, p.A8)
2018 Oct 16, Around 200 deputies kept Algeria's parliament locked up for several hours in a protest action to press demands for the house speaker to step down. Said Bouhadja, president of the lower house, has since late September resisted calls to resign over charges of "mismanagement, exaggerated and illicit expenses and dubious recruitment".
(AFP, 10/16/18)
2018 Oct 16, The US Treasury Department slapped sanctions on a network of more than 20 businesses it said had financial links to the Basij paramilitary group, which enforces internal security in Iran.
(AFP, 10/17/18)
2018 Oct 16, London police arrested eight people suspected of being part of an international human trafficking gang with ties to Romania.
(AP, 10/17/18)
2018 Oct 16, China characterized its mass internment of Muslims as a push to bring into the "modern, civilized" world a destitute people who are easily led astray — a depiction that analysts said bore troubling colonial overtones.
(AP, 10/16/18)
2018 Oct 16, A Chinese maker of rabies vaccine was fined $1.3 billion for falsifying production records in a scandal that prompted a nationwide crackdown on the industry. Changchun Changsheng Life Sciences Ltd. also was stripped of its production licenses for vaccines and drugs.
(AP, 10/16/18)
2018 Oct 16, Chinese state media reported that Gen. Fang Fenghui was expelled and stripped of his rank. He now faces a court martial on corruption allegations. Fang, formerly chief of the PLA's joint staff department, dropped out of public view last year, shortly after an August 2017 meeting with the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine Corps Gen. Joseph Dunford.
(AP, 10/16/18)
2018 Oct 16, Egypt extended its state of emergency for another three months.
(AP, 10/16/18)
2018 Oct 16, Ethiopia's PM Abiy Ahmed created a new Ministry of Peace and handed half the posts in his cabinet to women in a sweeping cabinet reshuffle as he sought to tackle a wave of ethnic violence.
(Reuters, 10/16/18)
2018 Oct 16, Ethiopia released some 1,100 of the youth from a military camp after a monthlong detention in which the federal police commissioner said they were "brainwashed." The youths had rallied to condemn killings of ethnic minorities on the outskirts of Addis Ababa.
(AP, 10/20/18)
2018 Oct 16, In India tensions rose at the Sabarimala hill temple in Kerala state before an expected face-off between women of menstrual age who can enter for the first time in centuries and conservative Hindu groups who want to stop them.
(Reuters, 10/16/18)
2018 Oct 16, Local council elections ended in Indian-controlled Kashmir, with most voters staying away in Muslim-dominated areas of the disputed region. The overall voting percentage for all four phases in the Kashmir valley, the heartland of anti-India dissent, was less than 6 percent.
(AP, 10/16/18)
2018 Oct 16, It was reported that Indonesia's Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) has arrested nine people, including a top district government official and a company director, in a bribery investigation linked to the Lippo Group's $21 billion Meikarta real estate project near Jakarta.
(Reuters, 10/16/18)
2018 Oct 16, At least 10 Iranian security personnel including Revolutionary Guards were kidnapped on the border with Pakistan, and a separatist group that claimed responsibility described the act as revenge for oppression of Sunni Muslims. The kidnapped security personnel were reportedly unconscious at the time. Reports followed that they had eaten drugged food and that infiltrators helped with the abduction to Pakistan.
(Reuters, 10/16/18)(Reuters, 10/17/18)
2018 Oct 16, The rival Koreas and the US-led United Nations Command met to discuss efforts to disarm a military zone the rivals control within their shared border under a peace agreement between the two countries.
(AP, 10/16/18)
2018 Oct 16, In Morocco a shuttle train linking Rabat to a town farther north on the Atlantic coast derailed, killing at least seven people and injuring dozens. The train was traveling at more than twice the speed limit on the part of the track where it derailed.
(AP, 10/16/18)(Reuters, 10/23/18)
2018 Oct 16, In the Netherlands former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon appealed for a sense of urgency as he launched the Global Commission on Adaptation that aims to accelerate and expand ways the world can prepare for climate change.
(AP, 10/16/18)
2018 Oct 16, In Pakistan at least 15 people, mostly women and schoolgirls, were killed in two separate road accidents.
(AP, 10/16/18)
2018 Oct 16, In Pakistan the sons of suspected drug dealer Musarrat Iqbal, arrested in the country's northwest, killed local reporter Sohail Khan, who wrote about their father's case. Khan was the second Kay-2 journalist to be killed in just over a year in Haripur.
(AP, 10/17/18)
2018 Oct 16, Security guards aboard the Hong Kong-flagged MV KSL freighter repelled an attack by pirates in a gunbattle 340 nautical miles off Somalia's coast.
(Reuters, 10/19/18)
2018 Oct 16, It was reported that Spain's bishops have set up a commission on child sex abuse in the Catholic Church, in preparation for meeting next year called by Pope Francis to cope with a spreading sexual abuse crisis.
(Reuters, 10/16/18)
2018 Oct 16, It was reported that Swiss glaciers have lost 2.5 percent of their volume this year.
(AFP, 10/16/18)
2018 Oct 16, The UN refugee agency expressed concern over Angola's expulsion of some 200,000 Congolese in the past two weeks, saying it would create a humanitarian crisis.
(SFC, 10/17/18, p.A2)
2018 Oct 16, In Yemen Alain Goma, a French citizen who had been held captive since June by Houthi forces, was freed.
(Reuters, 10/16/18)
2018 Oct 17, The US Treasury imposed sanctions on an Iraq-based money services business, Afaq Dubai, believed to be moving funds for the Islamic State militant group.
(Reuters, 10/17/18)
2018 Oct 17, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan had made clear in talks in Ankara that Saudi officials were cooperating with Turkey's investigation into missing journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
(Reuters, 10/17/18)
2018 Oct 17, US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis visited a former American air base in southern Vietnam that will soon become the biggest-ever US cleanup site for contamination left by the defoliant Agent Orange during the Vietnam War.
(Reuters, 10/17/18)
2018 Oct 17, It was reported that six to ten sea lions suffering from leptospirosis were being received on a daily basis at the Marine Mammal Center in the Marin Headlands of northern California. Veterinarians have treated 220 sea lions so far this year.
(SFC, 10/17/18, p.A1)
2018 Oct 17, In North Carolina state Trooper Kevin Conner was shot and killed during a traffic stop in Columbus County. Raheem Cole Dashanell Davis (20) was soon charged first-degree murder. On October 22 a polcie offi8cer shot and killed Tafahree Maynard
(SFC, 10/18/18, p.A5)
2018 Oct 17, In Pennsylvania Rev. David Lee Poulson (65) of Oil City admitted that he sexually abused children and pleaded guilty to corruption of minors and child endangerment.
(SFC, 10/18/18, p.A9)
2018 Oct 17, Twitter said that it had identified 3,841 accounts affiliated with the St. Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency, a Russian “troll farm" that has been indicted by US Special Counsel Robert Mueller for attempts to interfere with the 2016 presidential election.
(Reuters, 10/17/18)
2018 Oct 17, In Afghanistan the Taliban attacked checkpoints in the northern Baghlan province, killing six policemen and wounding two others in a four-hour battle. A suicide car bomber targeted a military vehicle, killing two army troops in eastern Maidan Wardak province. A bomb accidently detonated inside a local Taliban commander's home in western Herat province, killing five people.
(AP, 10/17/18)
2018 Oct 17, Bahrain began hosting a four-day meeting of the Green Climate Fund's board. The UN-backed fund to help poor countries tackle climate change met following the recent resignation of its director and a shortfall in contributions from rich nations.
(AP, 10/17/18)
2018 Oct 17, Canada became the first industrialized nation to legalize recreational cannabis, but a lawful buzz will be hard to come by in its biggest cities like Toronto and Vancouver, which will have no stores open.
(Reuters, 10/17/18)
2018 Oct 17, In Russian-annexed Crimea 20 people were killed and dozens more wounded, most of them teenagers, after a student opened fire at the Kerch Polytechnical College. Investigators identified the attacker as Vladislav Roslyakov (18), a fourth-year student whose body was found "with a gunshot wound" on the premises.
(AFP, 10/17/18)(Reuters, 10/19/18)
2018 Oct 17, French Pres. Emmanuel Macron met with visiting Japanese PM Shinzo Abe to prepare next year's summits of the group of developing countries G-20 in Japan and the world's advanced economies G-7 in France.
(AP, 10/17/18)
2018 Oct 17, The France-based Interpol police organization said coordinated police raids in 93 countries have netted more than 55 tons of drugs including a cocaine, heroin and millions of synthetic drug pills. 1,300 people in all were arrested in an operation codenamed Lionfish, and which took place between Sept. 17 and Oct. 8.
(Reuters, 10/17/18)
2018 Oct 17, Greek PM Alexis Tsipras took over as foreign minister following the resignation of Nikos Kotzias, who quit amid reports of a growing rift with a coalition partner over a June 2018 deal with Macedonia to end the name dispute.
(Reuters, 10/17/18)
2018 Oct 17, In Haiti at least two people were killed and dozens injured during large protests over alleged misuse of government funds.
(AP, 10/18/18)
2018 Oct 17, In India conservative Hindu groups prevented women from entering an Indian hill temple, in defiance of India's top court which says a centuries-long ban at the holy site is illegal.
(Reuters, 10/17/18)
2018 Oct 17, Indian government junior minister M.J. Akbar resigned to fight accusations of sexual harassment from more than a dozen women during his previous career as a journalist.
(Reuters, 10/17/18)
2018 Oct 17, Anti-India protests and clashes erupted in the main city in disputed Kashmir after a gunbattle between militants and government forces killed at least two rebels.
(AP, 10/17/18)
2018 Oct 17, A rocket fired from the Gaza Strip hit a house in in Beersheba, the largest city in southern Israel early today, prompting Israeli air strikes that killed a militant in the Palestinian enclave.
(Reuters, 10/17/18)
2018 Oct 17, Jordan said a group of 279 Syrian rescue workers have left the kingdom for resettlement in Western countries three months after they were evacuated from Israel.
(AFP, 10/17/18)
2018 Oct 17, Norway's government officially apologized to Norwegian women targeted for reprisals by authorities for having intimate relations with German soldiers during the country's war-time occupation.
(AP, 10/17/18)
2018 Oct 17, In Pakistan Mohammad Imran, a man convicted of killing eight children, was executed at a prison early today after the country's top court rejected a request for his public hanging.
(AP, 10/17/18)
2018 Oct 17, A Peruvian judge freed conservative opposition leader Keiko Fujimori from jail where she spent the past week pending charges in a money laundering probe.
(Reuters, 10/18/18)
2018 Oct 17, Slovakia's defense ministry said the country will keep its military presence in Iraq after the government approved a plan to deploy up to 42 soldiers there next year to help train Iraqi security forces as part of a NATO mission.
(AP, 10/17/18)
2018 Oct 17, Francisco Tejon, leader of the "Los Castanas" clan and one of Spain's most-wanted drug traffickers, was arrested in Cadiz province after seeming to taunt police by appearing in a music video.
(AFP, 10/17/18)
2018 Oct 17, Moldova's President Igor Dodon met with visiting Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The two-day visit aimed at boosting political and trade ties with the former Soviet republic.
(AP, 10/17/18)
2018 Oct 17, A landslide in Tibet blocked the flow of one of the region's key rivers, creating a lake that could endanger downstream areas in India. Chinese emergency services evacuated about 6,000 people in the region.
(AP, 10/18/18)
2018 Oct 17, UN agencies called for an end to the practice in some countries of determining whether a girl or woman is a virgin through gynecological testing.
(SFC, 10/18/18, p.A2)
2018 Oct 17, The Vietnamese dissident known as "Mother Mushroom" was released from prison and left Vietnam on a flight to the United States. Nguyen Ngoc Nhu Quynh was serving a 10-year sentence for anti-state propaganda.
(Reuters, 10/17/18)
2018 Oct 18, US President Donald Trump threatened to send the military to the Mexican border and to imperil a trade deal in an intensification of his anti-immigrant rhetoric ahead of congressional elections. Trump threatened to close the US-Mexico border if authorities there fail to stop an impromptu caravan, as about 3,000 Hondurans made their way north through Guatemala.
(AFP, 10/18/18)(AP, 10/18/18)
2018 Oct 18, The United States downgraded the status of its main diplomatic mission to the Palestinians by placing it under the authority of the US Embassy to Israel.
(AP, 10/18/18)
2018 Oct 18, The US Treasury Department designated Pedro Luis Zuleta Noscue as a drug kingpin. The Colombian man with ties to the South American country's largest rebel group allegedly controls a narcotics trafficking corridor in northern Colombia.
(AP, 10/18/18)
2018 Oct 18, The Catholic Diocese of San Jose, Ca., released the names of 15 clergy members who were known by the church to be child sex abusers. At least nine priests on the list are dead.
(SFC, 10/19/18, p.A1)
2018 Oct 18, A San Francisco jury found Michael Phillips (65) guilty of murdering his acquaintance James Sheahan (75) in August 2017 after being rebuffed for a loan. Phillips was found guilty of eight additional felony accounts.
(SFC, 10/20/18, p.C4)
2018 Oct 18, Florida authorities said Hurricane Michael killed 20 people in the state. A firefighter was killed while helping his family clear debris in the Florida Panhandle increasing the overall storm-related death toll to 35.
(SFC, 10/19/18, p.A8)(SFC, 10/20/18, p.A6)
2018 Oct 18, It was reported that the Baltimore police department is shutting down its administrative functins in order to put more officers on the streets.the city has rtecorded 250 homicides this year, 44 of them in the last 30 days.
(SFC, 10/19/18, p.A6)
2018 Oct 18, The Committee to Protect Journalists, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and Reporters Without Borders urged Turkey to request a UN investigation into the possible murder of Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi to prevent a "whitewash" of the alleged crime.
(AFP, 10/18/18)
2018 Oct 18, In Afghanistan the three top officials in Kandahar province were killed when their own guards opened fire on them at a security conference. US Brigadier General Jeffrey Smiley was among 13 wounded in the Taliban-claimed shooting.
(AP, 10/18/18)(AFP, 10/22/18)
2018 Oct 18, Brazilian presidential hopeful Fernando Haddad of the leftist Workers Party accused his right-wing rival Jair Bolsonaro of creating a criminal group along with businessmen to spread false election-related messages on WhatsApp.
(Reuters, 10/18/18)
2018 Oct 18, Burundi's public security ministry accused a prominent opposition MP Pierre-Celestin Ndikumana of planning the assassination of President Pierre Nkurunziza and other top officials, in an address on state television.
(AFP, 10/19/18)
2018 Oct 18, China criticized Washington's decision to leave the UN treaty that regulates international postage. President Donald Trump has said the 144-year-old Universal Postal Union (UPU) puts US businesses at a disadvantage and is used by shippers of the narcotic fentanyl to the U.S. from China.
(AP, 10/18/18)
2018 Oct 18, European Union leaders in Brussels agreed to push ahead with plans to boost cooperation with North African countries and beef up the bloc's borders in an effort to stop migrants entering Europe.
(AP, 10/18/18)
2018 Oct 18, The Asia-Europe meeting began this evening with a dinner in Brussels attended by 30 European leaders with their counterparts from 21 Asian nations, a membership that accounts for 55 percent of global trade.
(AP, 10/18/18)
2018 Oct 18, A group of media outlets led by Germany's non-profit Correctiv reported that traders have manipulated transactions in multiple European countries over years, draining tax coffers of some 55.2 billion euros ($63.5 billion).
(AP, 10/18/18)
2018 Oct 18, In India Hindu hardliners blocked intersections, threatened drivers, threw stones at buses and ordered a 12-hour strike to successfully bar women from the Lord Ayyappa temple at Sabarimala for a second day. India's ruling party and the main opposition both supported the protest blocking women from entering the pilgrimage site, in what political observers said is a bid to court voters in the country's south ahead of a general election due next year.
(AFP, 10/18/18)(AP, 10/18/18)
2018 Oct 18, Indonesia's disaster agency said helicopters are dropping disinfectant on neighborhoods in the earthquake- and tsunami-stricken city of Palu to reduce disease risks from the thousands of victims believed buried in obliterated communities.
(AP, 10/18/18)
2018 Oct 18, Indonesian police arrested two men who allegedly operated a Facebook account to facilitate meet-ups for gay people and other sex-related services.
(Reuters, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 18, Italy's PM Giuseppe Conte defended the country's "beautiful" 2019 budget, brushing off criticism of it from Brussels as European authorities stepped up pressure for changes to a draft that breaches the bloc's fiscal rules.
(Reuters, 10/18/18)
2018 Oct 18, Malaysia's anti-graft agency said it has detained former Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi in a case linked to misappropriation of funds in a welfare group.
(AP, 10/18/18)
2018 Oct 18, In Malaysia John William Jones (63), a British citizen, was found stabbed to death at his resort home. In 2020 his wife Samantha Jones (51) was sentenced to 42 months in jail after pleading guilty to culpable homicide.
(SFC, 8/4/20, p.A2)
2018 Oct 18, A high court in the Maldives overturned a prison sentence for the country's ex-President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, who had been jailed for not cooperating with a police investigation into allegations he was trying to overthrow the government. Maumoon still faced a separate case under the terrorism law over the same alleged plot to overthrow his half-brother, outgoing President Yameen Abdul Gayoom.
(AP, 10/18/18)
2018 Oct 18, The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) said it had seen weapons being transported from Russia to rebel-held areas of eastern Ukraine over the last week, contradicting Moscow's claim it is not arming separatists.
(AFP, 10/18/18)
2018 Oct 18, Disgraced Pakistan legspinner Danish Kaneria finally admitted his involvement in a fixing scandal, more than six years after he was banned for life and denied he was guilty.
(AP, 10/18/18)
2018 Oct 18, Spain's prime minister said the status of the British overseas territory of Gibraltar, a small isthmus on Spain's southern coast, after Britain leaves the European Union has been agreed with Britain. Gibraltar will leave the EU along with the United Kingdom on March 29 next year.
(Reuters, 10/18/18)
2018 Oct 18, Spanish police announced the arrests or four people including Nervis Villalobos, a former Venezuelan officials, Argentinian businessman Luis Fernando Vuteff, and two of their business associates as part of a money laundering investigation.
(SFC, 10/19/18, p.A2)
2018 Oct 18, In Syria a US coalition air strike killed 12 militants, disabling a command center they had used to attack coalition forces and their allies.
(Reuters, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 18, Ukraine's parliament voted to hand over a landmark Kiev church to the Istanbul-based Ecumenical Patriarchate after it agreed to recognize the independence of Ukraine's Orthodox Church. The church will be transferred to Constantinople for its permanent use free of charge, but will still be the property of Ukraine.
(AFP, 10/18/18)
2018 Oct 18, A new UN report said South Sudan's armed opposition abducted women and girls as young as 12 and lined them up so commanders could choose "wives," and those not selected were left to be raped repeatedly by other fighters. The report focused on the Western Equatoria region between April and August, saying 900 people were abducted and some 24,000 people forced to flee their homes as fighting surged after months of relative calm.
(AP, 10/18/18)
2018 Oct 18, A UN humanitarian aid official said that Syria's government has withdrawn a controversial law that allowed authorities to seize property left behind by civilians who fled the country's civil war.
(AP, 10/18/18)
2018 Oct 18, Uruguay's Congress approved a law that guarantees rights to the country's transgender community. Lawmakers in the lower house voted in favor of the measure late today. It had already been approved by the Senate.
(http://tinyurl.com/y8fupdq6)(SSFC, 10/21/18, p.A4)
2018 Oct 19, The US accused Russian woman Elena Alekseevna Khusyaynova of helping oversee the finances of a sweeping, secretive effort to sway American public opinion through social media in the first federal case alleging foreign interference in the 2018 midterm elections.
(AP, 10/20/18)
2018 Oct 19, American intelligence officials released a rare public statement asserting that Russia, China, Iran and other countries are engaged in ongoing efforts to influence US policy and voters in future elections.
(AP, 10/22/18)
2018 Oct 19, In northern California William Deen Brown (39) was arrested in Santa Rosa after DNA evidence linked him to the rape of a girl (14) near a Rohnert Park creek.
(SSFC, 10/21/18, p.C3)
2018 Oct 19, In Michigan police raided the Perry Funeral Home in Detroit. Officers found 36 fetuses in boxes and 27 others in freezers. The business was immediately closed and its license suspended.
(SSFC, 10/21/18, p.A14)
2018 Oct 19, Afghanistan's election commission postponed elections in Kandahar for a week, following a brazen attack on a high-profile security meeting there.
(AP, 10/19/18)
2018 Oct 19, British former deputy prime minister Nick Clegg, a leading anti-Brexit advocate, said he would be starting a job at Facebook, as the US giant faces up to regulatory pressures.
(AFP, 10/19/18)
2018 Oct 19, The London-based European Medicines Agency said it had adopted a "positive opinion" of Dengvaxia, the first vaccine for dengue, made by Sanofi of France.
(SFC, 10/20/18, p.A2)
2018 Oct 19, It was reported that 20 men have been jailed for raping and abusing more than a dozen teenage girls in the city of Huddersfield in northern England after a judge lifted reporting restrictions. The men were found guilty in a series of trials this year.
(AP, 10/19/18)
2018 Oct 19, Radical Islamic preacher Anjem Choudary (51) was released from a British prison after serving less than half of a 5-1/2-year prison sentence for encouraging support for the Islamic State group.
(AP, 10/19/18)
2018 Oct 19, The Comoros government and main opposition signed a deal that could end the latest bout of instability to rock the Indian Ocean nation after violence flared on Anjouan island.
(AFP, 10/19/18)
2018 Oct 19, Europe and Asia presented a united front in support of free trade based on international rules and cooperation, starkly underscoring their differences with U.S. President Donald Trump's "America First" policy.
(AP, 10/19/18)
2018 Oct 19, European and Asian leaders gave their backing to the Iran nuclear deal, saying the pact is good for global security and that it's important to respect international agreements.
(AP, 10/19/18)
2018 Oct 19, The European Union's top court ordered Poland to "immediately suspend" its decision to lower the retirement age of its Supreme Court judges, which it said threatens judicial independence. Poland's rightwing government has lowered the age at which Supreme Court judges must retire from 70 to 65, allowing the appointment of figures seen as loyal by Warsaw's current leadership.
(AFP, 10/19/18)
2018 Oct 19, Hundreds of Central American migrants bedded down overnight on a bridge separating Guatemala and Mexico, many squeezed against a metal border gate, as efforts to halt a trek north by a caravan of thousands of people gathered pace under US pressure. A rush on the border ended when Mexican security forces with riot shields and pepper spray drove them back.
(Reuters, 10/19/18)(AP, 10/20/18)
2018 Oct 19, In India dozens of Hindu priests joined conservative protesters to block women of menstruating age from the Sabarimala temple, one of the world's largest Hindu pilgrimage sites, defying a ruling from India's top court to let them enter.
(AP, 10/19/18)
2018 Oct 19, In India a train ran over people in the northern state of Punjab. 59 people watching fireworks were killed on the outskirts of Amritsar with another 57 injured.
(Reuters, 10/19/18)(AP, 10/19/18)(Reuters, 10/20/18)
2018 Oct 19, Iran's official IRNA news agency reported that three seamen have died from an unspecified toxic substance that poisoned all 11 crew members of an Iranian cargo ship on the Caspian Sea. Preliminary information indicated that the crew had been poisoned by chemicals used to protect grain being carried from Kazakhstan to Azerbaijan.
(AP, 10/19/18)
2018 Oct 19, The Japanese government ordered KYB Corp., a company that falsified quality data for earthquake "shock absorbers" used in hundreds of buildings, to speed up an investigation and fix any problems quickly.
(AP, 10/19/18)
2018 Oct 19, In Kenya running great Kip Keino (78) said that charges against him in a Kenyan Olympic corruption case have been dropped and he has been released.
(AP, 10/19/18)
2018 Oct 19, Macedonia's parliament approved the proposed new name of Republic of North Macedonia after a referendum last month failed to reach the minimum participation threshold.
(Reuters, 10/20/18)
2018 Oct 19, Malaysia's former deputy prime minister, Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, was charged with abuse of power, corruption and money laundering involving millions of dollars in another graft investigation against leaders ousted in elections earlier this year.
(AP, 10/19/18)
2018 Oct 19, Members of a 3,000-strong US-bound migrant caravan massed in a Guatemalan border town and prepared to begin crossing the muddy Suchiate River to Mexico. Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray said that members of a caravan of Central American migrants heading north should proceed individually if they decide to enter Mexico.
(AP, 10/19/18)(Reuters, 10/19/18)
2018 Oct 19, Norway released Mikhail Bochkarev (51), a Russian man suspected of spying at the Norwegian parliament. A Norwegian judge ruled a day earlier that investigators had failed to substantiate their case and Norway's intelligence service withdrew an appeal against the decision.
(AFP, 10/19/18)
2018 Oct 19, Thousands of Palestinians massed along Israel's frontier, with dozens approaching and breaching the perimeter fence that separates Gaza from Israel. Gaza's Health Ministry reported 77 Palestinians were wounded by Israeli fire and six of them were in serious condition.
(AP, 10/19/18)
2018 Oct 19, In South Africa at least 27 people, including small children, were killed in a multi-vehicle accident in Limpopo province.
(AP, 10/20/18)
2018 Oct 19, In Syria US coalition air strikes killed 41 people, including 10 children, in al-Sousa village and its environs over the last two days. The coalition raids also killed 22 jihadists around the Euphrates River near the Iraqi border, one of the last Islamic State enclaves in Syria.
(AP, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 19, The Islamic State group released two women and four children among 27 surviving Druze hostages it seized during a deadly July 25 attack on the minority community's heartland in southern Syria.
(AFP, 10/20/18)
2018 Oct 19, Turkey widened the investigation into the disappearance of journalist Jamal Khashoggi after his visit to the Saudi consulate, searching a forest in the city and interviewing the mission's staff.
(AFP, 10/19/18)
2018 Oct 19, In Uzbekistan Russian President Vladimir Putin and Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev ordered the start of preliminary work at the ex-Soviet republic's first nuclear power plant. The $11 billion plant will have two 1,200-megawatt nuclear reactors and was set to begin operating in 2028.
(AP, 10/19/18)
2018 Oct 19, Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, the Vatican ambassador who accused Pope Francis of rehabilitating a disgraced ex-American cardinal, doubled down on his claims, asserting that the "scourge of homosexuality" in the priesthood is responsible for sex abuse and that the Vatican is being hypocritical in refusing to acknowledge it.
(AP, 10/19/18)
2018 Oct 20, President Donald Trump said Washington would withdraw from a landmark 1987 Cold War-era treaty that eliminated nuclear missiles from Europe because Russia was violating the pact, triggering a warning of retaliatory measures from Moscow.
(Reuters, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 20, The $1.5 million XPrize for Water Abundance was won by The Skysource / Skywater Alliance, based in Venice Beach, California for developing an easily deployable high-volume water generator. The winning team was led by David Hertz and his wife Laura Doss-Hertz.
(http://tinyurl.com/y93ras2c)(SFC, 10/26/18, p.A8)
2018 Oct 20, Georgia police Officer Antwan Toney (30) was fatally shot while responding to a suspicious vehicle parked near a middle school near Snellville. The vehicle crashed a short time later and four people were seen running from the scene. Police identified Tafahree Maynard (18) as the man who shot Toney. Isiah Pretlow (19) was arrested and charged with aggravated assault. On October 22 police in the Atlanta area shot and killed Maynard during a door to door search.
(SSFC, 10/21/18, p.A14)(SFC, 10/22/18, p.A6)
2018 Oct 20, In Afghanistan a suicide bomber blew himself up in Kabul, killing at least 15 people as voting concluded in parliamentary elections overshadowed by the threat of violence and long delays at polling stations. Over 120 incidents involving hand grenades or improvised explosive devices were reported and at least 36 people were killed and some 130 wounded across the country.. Voting was postponed for a week in Kandahar province after the assassination of the powerful local police chief Gen. Abdul Razeq. The ballot was also delayed in Ghazni province by arguments about the representation of different ethnic groups. The voting process was extended for another day in those places where election officers or election material arrived late.
(Reuters, 10/20/18)(AFP, 10/20/18)(Reuters, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 20, Angolan state minister Pedro Sebastiao said about 380,000 illegal migrants, mostly from the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo, have left Angola in less than a month during a massive operation targeting diamond smuggling. He told traveling reporters that diamonds worth more than $1 million had been seized.
(AFP, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 20, Australia's ruling coalition was forced into minority government after a massive swing against its senior partner, the Liberal Party, in a by-election for the seat of the prime minister the party itself had dismissed.
(AP, 10/20/18)
2018 Oct 20, In eastern China two people died and 18 were trapped in a coal mine after a rock burst destroyed part of a mining tunnel in Shandong province. The death toll soon climbed to three after one of the miners who was rescued died after receiving medical treatment.
(AP, 10/21/18)(AP, 10/22/18)
2018 Oct 20, The Comoros military started an operation to disperse armed rebels who took control of Mutsamudu's old city center on the island of Anjouan earlier this week.
(AFP, 10/20/18)
2018 Oct 20, Congolese rebels killed 15 civilians and abducted a dozen children in an attack in the Beni area at the center of the latest deadly Ebola outbreak. Confirmed Ebola cases have now reached 200, including 117 deaths.
(AP, 10/21/18)(SFC, 10/22/18, p.A2)
2018 Oct 20, In Costa Rica four American tourists and a Costa Rican guide were killed in a rafting accident on the swollen on the Naranjo river near Liverpool de Quepos.
(AP, 10/21/18)(SFC, 10/22/18, p.A2)
2018 Oct 20, In Croatia several thousand people protested in Zagreb over government plans to raise the retirement age to 67 and cut pensions for those who retire early.
(Reuters, 10/20/18)
2018 Oct 20, In Egypt three workers contracted to build a security wall in the northern Sinai city of el-Arish were shot dead by suspected militants. Six militants were killed in two separate raids by security forces targeting hideouts in northern Sinai. The raids left two policemen wounded following shootouts.
(AP, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 20, Tens of thousands of supporters of the European Union began marching through London as part of what organizers say will be the largest ever demonstration to demand that the British government holds a public vote on the terms of Brexit.
(Reuters, 10/20/18)
2018 Oct 20, European and Japanese space agencies said an Ariane 5 rocket successfully lifted a spacecraft carrying two probes into orbit for a joint mission to Mercury. The unmanned BepiColombo spacecraft successfully separated and was sent into orbit from French Guiana as planned to begin a seven-year journey to Mercury.
(AP, 10/20/18)
2018 Oct 20, The German group Sea-Watch said that the vessel, Sea-Watch 3, has been cleared to leave Malta for repairs. It had been "blocked" from leaving Malta since July 2 amid an investigation into Dutch-registered rescue ships.
(AP, 10/20/18)
2018 Oct 20, In Germany a 19-year-old man died after blowing up a ticket machine at a railway station in the eastern city of Halle. Two alleged accomplices, aged 15 and 20. were soon arrested. Six other ticket machines and an ATM were destroyed in Halle earlier this month.
(AP, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 20, An Indian court ordered the trial of sexual harassment charges against one of world's leading climate change experts, Rajendra K. Pachauri (78).
(Reuters, 10/20/18)
2018 Oct 20, The leaders of Italy's ruling coalition parties met to patch up a row over a disputed tax amnesty which has threatened to undermine the anti-establishment government.
(Reuters, 10/20/18)
2018 Oct 20, In Macau Zheng Xiaosong (59) the Chinese government's liaison officer in the semi-autonomous former Portuguese colony, fell to his death from the building where he lived. Authorities said he had been suffering from depression.
(AFP, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 20, Russia's defence minister said that almost 88,000 rebels had been killed in Syria in the three years since Moscow's intervention to back government forces.
(AFP, 10/20/18)
2018 Oct 20, Saudi Arabia said that Jamal Khashoggi, a prominent journalist and critic of the kingdom's de facto leader Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, had died in a fight inside its Istanbul consulate. This came after two weeks of denials that it was involved in his disappearance. Saudi state media said King Salman had ordered the dismissal of five officials, including Saud al-Qahtani, a royal court adviser seen as the right-hand man to Prince Mohammed, and deputy intelligence chief Ahmed Asiri.
(Reuters, 10/20/18)
2018 Oct 20, In Singapore several countries including the United States and China agreed "in principle" to multilateral guidelines to manage unexpected encounters between their military aircraft, joining 10 Southeast Asian nations already in the pact. The agreement was initially adopted a day earlier by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
(Reuters, 10/20/18)
2018 Oct 20, Syria's foreign ministry said that coalition warplanes had "committed a crime", killing at least 62 civilians in al-Sousa and a nearby village in Deir al-Zor province.
(AP, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 20, In Taiwan thousands of pro-independence demonstrators gathered in Taipei to express their disapproval with China's stance toward their island.
(AP, 10/20/18)
2018 Oct 20, In Tanzania Mohammed Dewji (43), the CEO of the METL Group family conglomerate, returned home unharmed after being released by his kidnappers.
(Reuters, 10/20/18)
2018 Oct 20, Tanzanian officials said police have arrested 104 suspected militants over the last few months planning to establish bases in neighboring Mozambique, where scores of people have been killed in Islamist attacks over the last year.
(Reuters, 10/20/18)
2018 Oct 21, Charles Wang (74), the founder Computer Associates (1976), now called CA Technologies, and former owner of the New York Islanders hockey team, died in Oyster Bay, New York.
(AP, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 21, Afghans unable to vote in yesterday's parliamentary election after hundreds of polling stations failed to open were given another chance to cast their ballot after voting times were extended despite security threats and warnings of fraud. A roadside bomb brought the death toll over the past two days to over 50, including several children.
(Reuters, 10/21/18)(AP, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 21, The Green Climate Fund said it has approved more than $1 billion in new investments after a four-day meeting in Bahrain. The UN-backed fund approved 19 new projects, including a program to protect freshwater resources in Bahrain.
(AP, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 21, Officials from Chad and South Africa said two of six critically endangered black rhinos have died of unknown causes five months after being flown from South Africa to Chad in a pioneering project to re-introduce the animals. The carcasses of the cow and bull were discovered on October 15.
(AFP, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 21, In northern China three individuals died after they were attacked in public early today in Wenan County, Hebei province.
(Reuters, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 21, Residents on the Comoros island of Anjouan slowly returned to their daily lives after a six-day siege in the old quarter of Mutsamudu city. The island's governor Abdou Salami Abdou, a member of the opposition Juwa party, surrendered to the police, but denied any links to the armed rebels.
(AFP, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 21, Egypt's parliament voted to extend a state of emergency in the country for three months, prolonging the authorities' ability to use special powers into 2019.
(Reuters, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 21, Egypt arrested economist Abdel-Khaleq Farouq and his publisher, Ibrahim el-Khateib, over a book that challenged Pres. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi's economic policies. The book — entitled "Is Egypt Really a Poor Country?" — has not been published, but was posted online by activists. On Oct. 29 an Egyptian court released Abdul Khalik Farouk and the owner of the print shop that published his book.
(AP, 10/23/18)(Reuters, 10/30/18)
2018 Oct 21, Multinational giants Siemens and General Electric say they have signed memorandums of understanding with Iraq to rebuild the country's electricity infrastructure.
(AP, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 21, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu said he has decided to postpone the planned demolition of a West Bank hamlet to allow time for a negotiated solution with its residents, in a move that appeared aimed at staving off the fierce international condemnation such a demolition would likely entail.
(AP, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 21, Jordan's King Abdullah II said he has decided not to renew parts of his country's landmark peace treaty with Israel. Abdullah released a statement that he intends to pull out of two annexes from the 1994 peace agreement that allowed Israel to lease two small areas, Baqura and Ghamr, from the Jordanians for 25 years.
(AP, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 21, In disputed Kashmir three local rebels were killed in a gunbattle with Indian government forces, and six civilians were killed in an explosion at the site after the fighting was over. 3 Indian army soldiers and two suspected militants were killed in a gunbattle along the militarized line of control dividing Kashmir between India and Pakistan. The death toll of civilians climbed to seven as another injured young man died at a hospital the next day.
(AP, 10/21/18)(AP, 10/22/18)
2018 Oct 21, The Maldives' top court dismissed the outgoing president's petition seeking an annulment of last month's presidential election result. The five-member Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the election was conducted within the law.
(AP, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 21, Despite Mexican efforts to stop them at the border, a growing throng of Central American migrants resumed their advance toward the US border early today in southern Mexico. Their numbers swelled to about 5,000 overnight and at first light they set out walking toward the Mexican town of Tapachula.
(AP, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 21, In northern Morocco a migrant died and 19 others were hurt after around 200 people scaled a fence to enter Spain's Melilla enclave.
(AFP, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 21, Nigerian police said communal violence in the northern state of Kaduna over the last few days has killed 55 people.
(Reuters, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 21, A Norwegian citizen of Iranian background was arrested in Sweden in connection with a plot to assassinate an Iranian Arab opposition figure in Denmark. He was extradited to Denmark. The attack was meant to target the leader of the Danish branch of the Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahvaz (ASMLA).
(AP, 10/30/18)
2018 Oct 21, Polish voters cast ballots in local elections that were the first nationwide test of support for the conservative ruling party. A pro-European Union opposition party defeated the ruling conservatives in local elections in Warsaw. The ruling populist party, Law and Justice, won 254 of the 552 seats in regional assemblies in local elections, with 194 going to the key opposition coalition.
(AP, 10/21/18)(AP, 10/24/18)(AP, 10/25/18)
2018 Oct 21, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said that a unilateral withdrawal by the United States from a landmark 1987 Cold War-era treaty that eliminated nuclear missiles from Europe would be "very dangerous" and lead to a "military-technical" retaliation.
(Reuters, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 21, Exchange data showed that foreigners sold a net 4.01 billion riyals ($1.07 billion) in Saudi stocks in the week ending October 18, - one of the biggest selloffs since the market opened to direct foreign buying in mid-2015.
(Reuters, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 21, It was reported that the Sagrada Familia basilica in Barcelona, Spain, has agreed to pay about $41 million over ten years to settle a dispute over the legality of ongoing work and help pay for transportation improvements around the structure designed by Antoni Gaudi (1852-1926).
(SSFC, 10/21/18, p.A12)
2018 Oct 21, A Spanish firefighter died overnight while emergency services responded to flash floods caused by heavy rain in southern Spain.
(AP, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 21, In Syria an explosion in the rebel-held northwestern city of Idlib killed at least three people and wounded others.
(AP, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 21, One of Taiwan's fastest passenger trains derailed on a curve along a popular weekend route, killing 18 people and injuring 187 others.
(AP, 10/21/18)(AP, 10/22/18)
2018 Oct 22, President Donald Trump said the US will start cutting aid to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador as a caravan of thousands of mostly Honduran migrants rolled on regardless toward the US border.
(AFP, 10/22/18)
2018 Oct 22, A pipe bomb was sent to the home of billionaire philanthropist George Soros. Over the next two days similar devices were sent to prominent Democratic politicians including former Pres. Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and the CNN offices in Midtown Manhattan.
(SFC, 10/25/18, p.A5)
2018 Oct 22, In Utah a dump truck crossed a highway median near Heber and collided with an oncoming pickup truck, killing all six men in the pickup. Jamie Don McKenzie (41), the driver of the truck, was booked on suspicion of vehicular manslaughter. Prescription pills and open containers of alcohol were found inside the truck.
(SFC, 10/22/18, p.A6)
2018 Oct 22, Yahoo agreed to pay $50 million in damages and provide two years of free credit monitoring services to 200 million people whose email addresses and other personal information were stolen in digital burglaries in 2013 and 2014, but not disclosed until 2016.
(SFC, 10/24/18, p.D2)
2018 Oct 22, In Afghanistan a NATO soldier was killed and two others wounded in a Taliban-claimed attack in the western province of Herat.
(AFP, 10/22/18)
2018 Oct 22, Australia's PM Scott Morrison delivered a formal apology to the victims of child sex abuse, saying the nation must acknowledge their long, painful journey and its failure to protect them.
(AP, 10/22/18)
2018 Oct 22, Bangladesh police arrested Mainul Hosein, a prominent lawyer and newspaper publisher, late today in a raid on the opposition leader's home in Dhaka.
(AP, 10/23/18)
2018 Oct 22, It was reported that Belgium has chosen Lockheed Martin's F-35 stealth jets over the Eurofighter Typhoon to replace its aging F-16s.
(Reuters, 10/22/18)
2018 Oct 22, Bosnian police blocked some 200 migrants from reaching the border with neighboring Croatia, which is a member of the European Union.
(AP, 10/22/18)
2018 Oct 22, Canada Post workers went on a rotating strike, affecting mail deliveries in four cities after nearly one year of stalled contract negotiations.
(AFP, 10/22/18)
2018 Oct 22, A Croatian court sentenced former PM Ivo Sanader to 2 ½ years in prison for war profiteering following his retrial in the high-profile corruption case. The court also ruled that Sanader must return about half a million euros ($570,000) in kickbacks he took in a deal with Austria's Hypo Bank in the 1990s.
(AP, 10/22/18)
2018 Oct 22, A German man (54) was convicted of attempted murder for poisoning baby food and putting it on store shelves in a failed attempt to extort money from supermarkets. He was sentenced in Ravensburg state court to 12 years in prison.
(AP, 10/23/18)
2018 Oct 22, In India the body of Kuriakose Kattuthara, a Catholic priest who police said had spoken to them about Bishop Franco Mulakkal, was found in his room in a church in the northern state of Punjab. He was witness in a case involving the alleged rape of a nun by the Roman Catholic bishop. Mulakkal, bishop of the Diocese of Jalandhar in Punjab, was arrested in the southern state of Kerala last month on charges of raping the nun.
(Reuters, 10/22/18)
2018 Oct 22, The Press Trust of India news agency reported that the number of Zika virus cases has crossed 100 in the northern state of Rajasthan.
(AP, 10/22/18)
2018 Oct 22, Iran's state TV reported that the Supreme Court has upheld the death sentences for two individuals convicted of financial crimes. They were identified as Vahid Mazloumin and Mohammad Esmail Ghasemi, whom local media dubbed the "Sultan of Coins" after he was arrested after hoarding two tons of gold coins in an attempt to manipulate the local currency.
(AP, 10/22/18)
2018 Oct 22, The Israeli military said it has uncovered a militant outpost on the Lebanese border that Hezbollah guerrillas have set up under the guise of an environmental advocacy group.
(AP, 10/22/18)
2018 Oct 22, Italy's populist government responded to EU criticism of its budget with a vow to stick to its public spending hike while scrupulously keeping to its own deficit limits.
(AFP, 10/22/18)
2018 Oct 22, A court in the Maldives freed opposition leader Qasim Ibrahim, setting aside a lower court's conviction for bribery.
(AP, 10/22/18)
2018 Oct 22, Morocco said it would deport 141 migrants who were arrested a day earlier as they tried to storm a border fence with the Spanish enclave of Melilla.
(Reuters, 10/22/18)
2018 Oct 22, In northeastern Nigeria Boko Haram jihadists killed two people late today in an attack on a village near the town of Chibok.
(AFP, 10/23/18)
2018 Oct 22, In Pakistan rickshaw driver Mohammad Khalid died in Karachi two days after setting himself on fire to protest police demands for bribes.
(AP, 10/22/18)
2018 Oct 22, In the Gaza Strip Hamas sentenced 17 people convicted of drug trafficking to hard labor prison terms of 10 years to life. Officers in military fatigues poured gasoline and set alight more than 1 million tablets of opioid painkiller tramadol, about 1,500 slabs of hashish and 900 grams of opium.
(AP, 10/22/18)
2018 Oct 22, Poland's Supreme Court chief justice asked 23 of the court's judges to return to work, days after the European Union's top court ordered Poland to "immediately suspend" their retirement under a disputed law.
(AFP, 10/22/18)
2018 Oct 22, Russia's President Vladimir Putin, in a presidential decree posted on the Kremlin's website, instructed the government to draw up a list of Ukrainian firms and individuals to be targeted for economic sanctions.
(Reuters, 10/22/18)
2018 Oct 22, South Korean officials said the two Koreas have completed removing land mines planted at their shared border village as part of efforts to disarm the area located inside the world's most heavily fortified border.
(AP, 10/22/18)
2018 Oct 22, Saudi Arabia scrambled to prepare for the three-day Future Investment Initiative (FII) after a string of cancellations from global business titans, with Turkey's threat to reveal the "naked truth" over critic Jamal Khashoggi's murder casting a fresh shadow.
(AFP, 10/22/18)
2018 Oct 22, A South Korean lawmaker said North Korea imported at least $640 million worth of luxury goods from China last year, in defiance of UN sanctions outlawing such trade over North Korea's nuclear and missile programs.
(Reuters, 10/22/18)
2018 Oct 22, Thai rappers uploaded the song "Prathet Ku Mee" (Which is My Country), to YouTube. It soon racked up more than 6.4 million views and tens of thousands of comments since it went live on the platform, prompting authorities to take notice. The video features rappers from the Rap Against Dictatorship collective dishing out barbs about the military and blasting corruption, censorship and the lack of elections.
(AFP, 10/27/18)
2018 Oct 22, Two children died after a boat carrying migrants sank just 50 meters off Turkey's western coast near Bodrum early today.
(Reuters, 10/22/18)
2018 Oct 23, The US Treasury Department imposed sanctions targeting Afghanistan's Taliban insurgency, designating eight people including two Iranians linked to Tehran's Revolutionary Guards' Quds force.
(Reuters, 10/23/18)
2018 Oct 23, Johnson & Johnson said it is paying about $2 billion in cash for the outstanding stake of Ci:z Holdings Co., a Japanese cosmetics and skincare products company.
(AP, 10/23/18)
2018 Oct 23, In Afghanistan at least 14 civilians were killed during an operation by Afghan security forces in eastern Nangarhar province.
(Reuters, 10/24/18)
2018 Oct 23, British electric appliance pioneer Dyson said it had picked Singapore as the site for its first electric car plant, sparking criticism of the company's Brexit-backing billionaire founder James Dyson for not investing more in British manufacturing.
(AFP, 10/23/18)
2018 Oct 23, A Cameroon court sentenced former opposition presidential candidate and anti-corruption campaigner Akere Muna to a three-year suspended sentence on forgery charges.
(AFP, 10/24/18)
2018 Oct 23, Chinese media Caixin reported that a senior official overseeing birth policy explained birth policy changes last week to a UN conference held in Beijing. He said China won't set a population target in the future and will give epople more freedom around childbirth.
(SFC, 10/25/18, p.A3)
2018 Oct 23, China opened the world's longest sea-crossing bridge linking Hong Kong to the mainland, a feat of engineering carrying immense economic and political significance. The 55-km (34-mile)-long bridge linked China to the semi-autonomous regions of Hong Kong and Macau.
(AP, 10/23/18)
2018 Oct 23, The European Commission rejected Italy's proposed budget — the first time it has ever done so with a member state.
(AP, 10/23/18)
2018 Oct 23, France-based Interpol said coordinated police raids in 116 countries have netted 500 tons of illicit pharmaceuticals available online, including fake cancer medications, counterfeit pain pills and illegal medical syringes.
(Reuters, 10/23/18)
2018 Oct 23, German automaker BMW said it is expanding a recall to cover 1.6 million vehicles worldwide due to possible fluid leaks that could result in a fire.
(AP, 10/23/18)
2018 Oct 23, In Iraq a bomb blast at a market in a town south of the city of Mosul killed at least six people, including two soldiers.
(AP, 10/23/18)
2018 Oct 23, Ireland's government approved a forensic excavation of the former Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home in Tuam, County Galway, a Catholic-run orphanage where a mass grave containing the remains of hundreds of children was discovered.
(AP, 10/24/18)
2018 Oct 23, The live-betting esports platform Unikrn had its wagering license approved by the Isle of Man, clearing the way for users to legally gamble on competitive video games. Unikrn had previously only been licensed to provide real-money betting on esports in the UK and Australia.
(AP, 10/23/18)
2018 Oct 23, Japan was informed by Qatar that a man, believed to be journalist Jumpei Yasuda, has been released. Yasuda was last heard from in Syria in 2015. Contact was lost with Yasuda after he sent a message to another Japanese freelancer on June 23, 2015.
(AP, 10/23/18)
2018 Oct 23, In Mexico thousands of people were evacuated, buildings were boarded up and schools closed along the Pacific coast as Hurricane Willa threatened to batter tourist resorts. Hurricane Willa crashed ashore in western Mexico, lashing the Pacific coast with powerful winds and heavy rain before weakening to a tropical depression as it moved inland. Nearly 102,000 homes last power after the storm made landfall.
(Reuters, 10/23/18)(AFP, 10/24/18)(SFC, 10/25/18, p.A4)
2018 Oct 23, Nigeria's President Muhammadu Buhari flew in by helicopter to cut the ribbon at the new Seme-Krake Joint Border Post with his Beninese counterpart Patrice Talon.
(AFP, 10/28/18)
2018 Oct 23, Human Rights Watch said security forces of the rival Palestinian governments routinely use torture and arbitrary arrests, among other tactics, to quash dissent by peaceful activists and political opponents.
(AP, 10/23/18)
2018 Oct 23, Pakistan negotiated a $6 billion assistance package of loans and deferred payments from Saudi Arabia in hopes of resuscitating its flagging economy, struggling under the weight of a whopping $18 billion deficit.
(AP, 10/24/18)
2018 Oct 23, A high-profile economic forum in Saudi Arabia began in Riyadh. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman trumpeted a conference that has drawn investment deals worth $50 billion despite a boycott over the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
(AP, 10/23/18)
2018 Oct 23, Saudi Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih said the OPEC kingpin was ready to boost its crude production and spare capacity to help maintain a balance in the global oil market.
(AFP, 10/23/18)
2018 Oct 23, Saudi Arabia said it and Bahrain had added Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps and senior officers of its Quds Force to their lists of people and organizations suspected of involvement in terrorism.
(Reuters, 10/23/18)
2018 Oct 23, Tech entrepreneurs in Somalia began holding a first ever summit in battle-scarred Mogadishu, attracting hundreds to talk about business and innovation in a city more used to conflict and suffering.
(AFP, 10/25/18)
2018 Oct 23, The UN Human Rights Committee said that France's ban on the niqab, the full-body Islamic veil, was a violation of human rights and called on it to review the legislation. It gave Paris 180 days to report back to say what actions it had taken.
(Reuters, 10/23/18)
2018 Oct 23, Vietnam's rubber stamp National Assembly elected Communist Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong (74) as the country's president. He succeeds Tran Dai Quang, who died last month after battling a viral illness for more than a year.
(AP, 10/23/18)
2018 Oct 23, Zimbabwe's main opposition leader Nelson Chamisa called for a transitional emergency government to resolve the worsening economic and political crisis engulfing the country.
(AFP, 10/23/18)
2018 Oct 24, US regulators approved Xofluza, the first new type of flu drug in nearly two decades. It was initially developed by Shionogi & Co. of Japan with marketing rights sold to Roche.
(SFC, 10/25/18, p.A14)
2018 Oct 24, Spenger's Fish Grotto in Berkeley, Ca., dating back to 1890, posted a notice of permanent closure. Another notice announced the application by Joe's Crab Shack for a new restaurant at the location.
(SFC, 10/25/18, p.A11)
2018 Oct 24, In Kentucky Gregory Alan Bush (51) fatally shot two African American customers at a Kroger grocery store and was swiftly arrested. Police said Bush had a history of mental illness. In november a federal grand jury charged Bush with hate crimes.
(SFC, 10/26/18, p.A9)(SFC, 11/16/18, p.A5)
2018 Oct 24, Former New York state Senate leader Dean Skelos was sentenced to four years and three months in prison on corruption charges.
(SFC, 10/25/18, p.A5)
2018 Oct 24, In New Jersey the Wannaque Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation said another child has died of adenovirus, bringing the death toll to seven in the viral outbreak.
(SFC, 10/25/18, p.A5)
2018 Oct 24, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation announced thirteen winners of its Safety and Justice Challenge grants to cities and counties for implementing criminal justice reforms to reduce jail populations. Philadelphia's award of $4 million was the largest and followed a $3.5 million grant during the first awards in 2016.
(SFC, 10/25/18, p.A8)
2018 Oct 24, Lottery officials said a single ticket sold at the KC Mart in Simpsonville, South Carolina, matched all six numbers to win the $1.537 billion Mega Millions jackpot.
(AP, 10/24/18)
2018 Oct 24, Algeria's governing coalition elected Mouad Bouchared (47), a relatively youthful new parliamentary speaker, to replace Said Bouhadja whom it accused of mismanagement.
(Reuters, 10/24/18)
2018 Oct 24, Dozens of migrants clashed with Bosnian police while trying to cross from Bosnia into Croatia and enter the European Union.
(AP, 10/24/18)
2018 Oct 24, Britain's Supreme Court blocked an appeal by US prosecutors seeking to extradite former HSBC trader Stuart Scott to face fraud charges over allegations that he and a colleague defrauded client Cairn Energy in a $3.5 billion currency trade in 2011.
(Reuters, 10/24/18)
2018 Oct 24, Canada's central bank increased its key lending rate 0.25 percentage points to 1.75 percent, saying a continental trade deal reached with the United States and Mexico has lifted uncertainty that was weighing on the economy.
(AFP, 10/24/18)
2018 Oct 24, The European Parliament overwhelmingly backed a wide-ranging ban on single-use plastics to counter pollution in seas, fields and waterways.
(AP, 10/24/18)
2018 Oct 24, A court in Germany ruled that Volkswagen's parent company must pay 47 million euros ($54 million) in damages to investors for not making a timely disclosure of its scandal over cars rigged to cheat on diesel emissions tests.
(AP, 10/24/18)
2018 Oct 24, In Israel China's VP Wang Qishan and Israel's PM Benjamin Netanyahu kicked off a joint innovation summit. China has become Israel's third largest trading partner, behind only the US and the European Union.
(AP, 10/24/18)
2018 Oct 24, Israel allowed a resumption of Qatari-financed fuel deliveries to Gaza after a 12-day halt it imposed over heavy border clashes.
(AFP, 10/24/18)
2018 Oct 24, In Kashmir government forces killed two rebels during a gunbattle on the outskirts of Srinagar, sparking violent anti-India protests by residents.
(AP, 10/24/18)
2018 Oct 24, In Mexico thousands of Central American migrants renewed their hoped-for march to the United States, setting out before dawn with plans to travel another 45 miles (75 km) of the more than 1,000 miles that still lie before them. Mexican authorities said that about 500 migrants had accepted an offer to be bused back to their countries.
(AP, 10/24/18)
2018 Oct 24, Pakistani officials said Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, a senior Taliban commander arrested in 2010, has been released from prison after high-level negotiations. Baradar was a senior figure in the insurgent group and coordinated military operations in southern Afghanistan before his arrest eight years ago in Karachi.
(AP, 10/24/18)
2018 Oct 24, Poland's national airline LOT cancelled some flights as some crew members struck to protest layoffs and demand better working conditions. Almost 70 flight crew members have been fired for participating in the strike that started Oct. 18 and that the management says is illegal.
(AP, 10/24/18)
2018 Oct 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin met with Italian PM Giuseppe Conte in Moscow. They vowed to expand economic ties between their two countries despite European Union sanctions against Russia.
(AP, 10/24/18)
2018 Oct 24, Saudi Arabia's crown prince said the case of Jamal Khashoggi was "painful" and that "justice will prevail" following the killing of the Saudi journalist at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.
(Reuters, 10/24/18)
2018 Oct 24, In Spain the government of Madrid banned electric scooters from sidewalks to both remove a threat to pedestrians and help regulate alternative transport technologies that have become more popular amid efforts to cut air pollution.
(Reuters, 10/24/18)
2018 Oct 24, Sudan's PM Moataz Moussa announced to parliament a 15-month emergency economic-reform plan, including "further strict austerity measures", to begin this month.
(Reuters, 10/24/18)
2018 Oct 24, In Thailand Malaysian PM Mahathir Mohamad met with PM Prayuth Chan-ocha and discussed peace talks in Thailand's southern border provinces.
(AP, 10/24/18)
2018 Oct 24, Turkey's state media reported that Saudi authorities have denied permission to Turkish police to search a well in the garden of the kingdom's consulate in Istanbul as part of a probe into the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
(AFP, 10/24/18)
2018 Oct 24, The Vatican said Pope Francis has removed from office Bishop Martin Holley (63) of Memphis, Tennessee. The widely-read National Catholic Reporter newspaper said Holley had been the subject of a Vatican investigation in June following complaints among priests about his leadership.
(Reuters, 10/24/18)
2018 Oct 24, In Yemen a Saudi-led coalition airstrike at a fruit-and-vegetable market near the Red Sea port of Hodeida killed at least 21 civilians, including children.
(AP, 10/25/18)
2018 Oct 25, The US Treasury Department imposed sanctions on two Singapore-based entities and Tan Wee Beng, a director and shareholder of a Singapore-based commodities trading company, accused of money laundering through the US financial system to evade sanctions against North Korea.
(Reuters, 10/25/18)
2018 Oct 25, This year's Kirkus Prize for non-fiction was awarded to Rebecca Solnit for her latest book "Call Them By Their True Names: American Crises (and Essays)." Ling ma won the fiction award for her first novel "Severance." Winners received $50,000.
(SFC, 10/27/18, p.E3)
2018 Oct 25, In California Yosemite Park rangers recovered the bodies of 29-year-old Vishnu Viswanath and 30-year-old Meenakshi Moorthy from about 800 feet (245 meters) below Taft Point. The couple had set up a tripod for a selfie near the ledge on the evening of Oct 23.
(AP, 10/30/18)
2018 Oct 25, Oregon's Gov. Kate Brown issued an executive order blocking offshore oil and gas drilling to protect the state's coatal economy.
(SFC, 10/27/18, p.A6)
2018 Oct 25, Argentina's lower house approved a 2019 budget bill that includes austerity measures demanded by the International Monetary Fund.
(AP, 10/25/18)
2018 Oct 25, A British judge ruled that unregistered beautician Donna Francis (38) should be sent to the United States to face trial for allegedly killing an American woman with a botched buttocks injection. Kelly Mayhew (34) died in May 2015 after silicone was injected into her buttocks at a house in New York's Queens borough.
(AP, 10/25/18)
2018 Oct 25, China denounced a US newspaper report that it is listening to President Donald Trump's phone calls as "fake news," and suggested he exchange his iPhone for a cellphone made by Chinese manufacturer Huawei.
(AP, 10/25/18)
2018 Oct 25, The EU awarded its top human rights prize to Oleg Sentsov, a Ukrainian filmmaker imprisoned in Russia accused of plotting acts of terrorism, calling him a symbol of all political prisoners being held there.
(AP, 10/25/18)
2018 Oct 25, Central European University said it will move its US-accredited programs from Budapest to the Austrian capital of Vienna because of the "uncertain" academic environment in Hungary. Central European University was founded by Hungarian-American billionaire and philanthropist George Soros in 1991.
(AP, 10/25/18)
2018 Oct 25, The Paris-based International Federation for Human Rights said foreign fighters, including many Europeans, took a leading role in carrying out the Islamic State group's atrocities against minority Yazidis.
(AP, 10/25/18)
2018 Oct 25, Italian authorities said 3 suspects, two Senegalese citizens and one Nigerian, were being held on suspicion of murder, group sexual assault and handing out drugs in the death late last week of 16-year-old Desiree Mariottini.
(AP, 10/25/18)
2018 Oct 25, Japan's PM Shinzo Abe arrived in Beijing as both countries try to repair ties that have been riven by disputes over territory, military expansion in the Pacific and World War II history.
(AP, 10/25/18)
2018 Oct 25, In Jordan flash floods killed at least 21 people, most of them school children in a bus that was swept away.
(AP, 10/26/18)
2018 Oct 25, Jihadist-hit Mali extended by a year a state of emergency in place since a deadly November 2015 attack on a top hotel in the capital Bamako which claimed 20 lives.
(AFP, 10/25/18)
2018 Oct 25, NATO's biggest military maneuvers since the Cold War kicked off in Norway with about 55,000 military personnel.
(AP, 10/25/18)
2018 Oct 25, Residents of the Northern Mariana Islands braced for months without electricity or running water after the islands were slammed by Super Typhoon Yutu, the strongest storm to hit any part of the US this year. At least one person was killed.
(AP, 10/25/18)(SFC, 10/26/18, p.A8)
2018 Oct 25, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte fired the head of the Bureau of Customs and ordered all top bureau officials replaced after the agency failed to intercept more than a ton of drugs, the second such case in two years.
(Reuters, 10/25/18)
2018 Oct 25, President Vladimir Putin says Russia will commission new weapons that have no comparisons anywhere in the world.
(AP, 10/25/18)
2018 Oct 25, A Russian military tribunal upheld murder and torture convictions against senior security and police officers in the region of Ingushetia. The officers were convicted of using electric shocks and other torture techniques to force confessions from detainees in the mainly-Muslim region.
(AFP, 10/26/18)
2018 Oct 25, A Russian Soyuz rocket lifted off from the Plesetsk launch facility in Mirny and put a military satellite into orbit.
(SFC, 10/26/18, p.A2)
2018 Oct 25, Saudi state TV quoted the Saudi public prosecutor as saying the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi was premeditated, and that prosecutors were interrogating suspects on the basis of information provided by a joint Saudi-Turkish task force. 18 Saudis have been arrested and five top officials fired in the case.
(Reuters, 10/25/18)(SFC, 10/25/18, p.A2)
2018 Oct 25, South Africa's top court ruled that a platinum miner that has a deal with a tribal chief could not evict a group of black farmers, in a decision that could curtail the power of traditional leaders whose deals often disadvantage poor blacks.
(Reuters, 10/25/18)
2018 Oct 25, South Sudan freed five political detainees and prisoners of war, although none appeared to be senior rebel officials, a category of captive whose release is required by a peace deal signed last month.
(Reuters, 10/25/18)
2018 Oct 25, Spain's Supreme Court ordered 18 former Catalan leaders to stand trial over their role in last year's declaration of independence.
(AFP, 10/25/18)
2018 Oct 25, Spanish police said they have seized more than 6.3 metric tons (6.94 tons) of cocaine and broken up a Dutch-led drug-trafficking gang, arresting 16 people.
(AP, 10/25/18)
2018 Oct 25, Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir lifted a 17-month long ban on agricultural imports from Egypt, during an official visit by Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to Khartoum.
(AFP, 10/25/18)
2018 Oct 26, The FBI said Democratic US Senator Cory Booker is the latest target in a spree of 11 suspicious packages sent to opponents of Donald Trump. US media said a 12th package addressed to former director of national intelligence James Clapper had been intercepted in Manhattan.
(AP, 10/26/18)
2018 Oct 26, The US Dept. of Justice said Cesar Sayoc, Jr. (56) has been taken into custody in Florida. . He had created a two-week crisis by mailing 16 packages of inoperative pipe bombs packed with fireworks powder and shards of glass to 13 famous Democrats and CNN.
(AP, 10/26/18)(SFC, 10/31/18, p.C6)(http://tinyurl.com/yxlgztw5)(AP, 8/4/19)
2018 Oct 26, John McGuire (b.1932), civil rights activist, died in Pomona, Ca. He was one of the first US college educators to use diersity as a guiding principle in student admissions.
(SSFC, 11/11/18, p.C10)
2018 Oct 26, In Belgium hundreds of passengers were left stranded at Brussels international airport after luggage handlers went on strike over workload and pay demands.
(AP, 10/26/18)
2018 Oct 26, China and Japan pledged to forge closer ties as both countries stood together at an "historic turning point", signing a broad range of agreements including a $30 billion currency swap pact, amid rising trade tensions with Washington. Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said 500 business deals worth $18 billion had been signed between Chinese and Japanese companies during PM Shinzo Abe's visit.
(Reuters, 10/26/18)
2018 Oct 26, China changed its law to allow judgments to be delivered in corruption and terror cases even when the suspects do not appear in court, as Beijing ramps up pressure on dozens of suspected criminals hiding overseas.
(Reuters, 10/26/18)
2018 Oct 26, In western China a knife-wielding female assailant injured 14 children at a kindergarten in the city of Chongqing.
(AP, 10/26/18)
2018 Oct 26, China's state media reported that the death toll in the Oct. 20 coal mine collapse in Shandong province has risen to 11. Ten miners remained trapped underground.
(AP, 10/27/18)
2018 Oct 26, CongoDRC police fanned out across Kinshasa and other main cities as thousands of opposition supporters marched seeking the withdrawal of electronic voting machines in a long-delayed election due at the end of December.
(AFP, 10/26/18)
2018 Oct 26, The rival leaders of ethnically divided Cyprus agreed to open more checkpoints along the militarized frontier that separates them, marking a rare sign of cooperation in the deadlocked conflict.
(Reuters, 10/26/18)
2018 Oct 26, French President Emmanuel Macron dismissed as "demagoguery" the calls by several European countries including Germany to suspend arms sales to Saudi Arabia following the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
(Reuters, 10/26/18)
2018 Oct 26, Indian officials said police have rounded 2,061 people for stopping women from entering the Sabarimala temple complex, a flashpoint Hindu shrine, in defiance of a Supreme Court order.
(AFP, 10/26/18)
2018 Oct 26, India's Central Pollution Control Board said New Delhi's air quality had plummeted to the worst possible category. The level of PM2.5, tiny particulate matter that can dangerously clog lungs, was 187, more than six times higher than the World Health Organization considers safe.
(AP, 10/26/18)
2018 Oct 26, In northern India a powerful explosion at a fireworks factory in Uttar Pradesh state killed at least eight people and injured three others, as Hindus prepare to celebrate the highly popular Diwali festival early next month.
(AP, 10/26/18)
2018 Oct 26, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu visited the Gulf state of Oman and discussed peace initiatives in the Middle East with Omani leader Sultan Qaboos in the first meeting of its kind in more than 20 years.
(Reuters, 10/26/18)
2018 Oct 26, In Italy travelers and commuters faced delays as several national trade unions staged a 24-hour strike, disrupting transport services as well as some public schools.
(Reuters, 10/26/18)
2018 Oct 26, In Kashmir eight rebels and two Indian soldiers were killed in gunbattles in northwestern Sopore area that sparked violent anti-India protests by residents seeking an end to Indian rule in the region.
(AP, 10/26/18)
2018 Oct 26, Macedonia's criminal court ordered former conservative PM Nikola Gruevski, to appear at the capital's jail by Nov. 8 to begin serving a two-year prison sentence for influencing officials to buy a luxury car.
(AP, 10/26/18)
2018 Oct 26, In Mexico members of the migrant caravan began leaving the southern city of Pijijiapan and walking in the pre-dawn darkness to the next stop, Arriaga, 60 miles away. Pres. Pena Nieto announced the launch of what's called the "You are at home" plan in an address directed at migrants. However, migrants traveling in a caravan through southern Mexico rejected the proposal.
(AP, 10/26/18)
2018 Oct 26, A Myanmar judge freed on bail three journalists from the country’s largest private newspaper detained on incitement charges after publishing an article that raised questions over government spending. Reporter Phyo Wai Win, and two editors, Kyaw Zaw Lin and Nayi Min, were arrested on Oct. 10 following a complaint by the regional government in the commercial capital of Yangon.
(Reuters, 10/26/18)
2018 Oct 26, The North and South Korean militaries agreed to completely destroy 22 front-line guard posts by the end of November as they discussed their next steps in implementing a wide-ranging military agreement signed last month to reduce tensions.
(AP, 10/26/18)
2018 Oct 26, Pakistan's army chief approved death sentences for 14 "hardcore terrorists" convicted by military courts for attacks in recent years that killed 19 security forces and three civilians.
(AP, 10/26/18)
2018 Oct 26, Five Palestinians were killed as fresh clashes broke out with Israeli troops on Gaza's border with the Jewish state, despite Egyptian-brokered truce efforts.
(AFP, 10/26/18)
2018 Oct 26, In the Philippines boatloads of tourists sailed to Boracay island, which officials reopened to visitors after a six-month closure to clean waters the president had called a "cesspool" due to years of overcrowding, partying and neglect.
(AP, 10/26/18)
2018 Oct 26, Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) said it had detained six members of an Islamic State cell plotting attacks in Moscow.
(Reuters, 10/26/18)
2018 Oct 26, Singapore hanged Prabu N Pathmanathan, a convicted Malaysian drug trafficker (31), after the city-state rejected last minute efforts to save him.
(AFP, 10/26/18)
2018 Oct 26, The Spanish government said it is moving to ban the high-speed semi-inflatable boats used by traffickers to bring both drugs and migrants across the Strait of Gibraltar to Spain from North Africa.
(AP, 10/26/18)
2018 Oct 26, Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena sacked Ranil Wickremesinghe, the country's prime minister, and replaced him with former strongman Mahinda Rajapaksa.
(AP, 10/26/18)
2018 Oct 26, Syrian regime artillery fire killed seven civilians in Idlib, in the highest death toll since a deal last month to prevent a government assault on the province.
(AFP, 10/26/18)
2018 Oct 26, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan urged Saudi Arabia to disclose who ordered the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul, as well as the location of his body, heightening international pressure on the kingdom to come clean on the case.
(Reuters, 10/26/18)
2018 Oct 26, A Turkish court sentenced a German man to six years and three months in prison for membership in a terrorist organization. The Turkish prosecutor accused Patrick K. (29) of being a member of the Syrian Kurdish YPG, considered by Ankara to be a branch of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).
(Reuters, 10/26/18)
2018 Oct 27, In Ohio former US Sec. of State Colin Powell marked the grand opening of the new National Veterans Museum and Memorial in Columbus. The museum was the vision of late US Sen. John Glenn.
(SSFC, 10/28/18, p.A10)
2018 Oct 27, In Pittsburgh, Pa., Robert Bowers (46) killed eight men and three women inside the Tree of Life Synagogue during worship services before a tactical police team shot and wounded him. Bowers told officers afterward that Jews were committing genocide and that he wanted them all to die.
(AP, 10/28/18)
2018 Oct 27, Afghanistan held parliamentary elections in the southern province of Kandahar, a week late because of the assassination of the provincial police chief by Taliban insurgents. At least five people were killed and 15 more wounded when a suicide bomber detonated a car packed with explosives outside a police compound in central province of Wardak.
(Reuters, 10/27/18)
2018 Oct 27, In Australia protesters rallied in Sydney and Melbourne calling for an end to the country's controversial South Pacific detention centers which house refugees who try to reach Australia by boat. Particular focus was directed toward the wellbeing of children on the tiny island nation of Nauru. More than 1,400 people are being held on the Australian-run detention centers on Nauru and Papua New Guinea, some for years.
(Reuters, 10/27/18)
2018 Oct 27, Former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont launched a new party, as he tries to rally separatists from his base in Belgium.
(AFP, 10/27/18)
2018 Oct 27, In central England Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha, a Thai tycoon and owner of the Leicester City soccer club, was among five people on board a helicopter that crashed and then exploded after a Premier League match. Vichai was the fifth-richest person in Thailand with an estimated net worth of $4.9 billion.
(Reuters, 10/28/18)
2018 Oct 27, Cameroon's Vision 4 TV station, thought to be close to the government, erroneously reported that Gabonese President Ali Bongo Ondimba had died. Days later the privately held station was barred from broadcasting for six months in neighboring Gabon. Libreville authorities said Bongo (59) is in hospital in Saudi Arabia suffering from exhaustion.
(AP, 10/31/18)
2018 Oct 27, China's first attempt to deploy a privately developed rocket capable of carrying a satellite failed. Beijing-based Landspace said that the first and second stage of its ZQ-1 rocket worked normally but something went wrong with the third stage.
(AP, 10/28/18)
2018 Oct 27, In CongoDRC tens of thousands rallied in support of Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary, President Joseph Kabila's preferred successor, two months before an election that could mark the country's first democratic transition of power.
(Reuters, 10/27/18)
2018 Oct 27, Gabon began voting in the second round of legislative elections with the party of President Ali Bongo, whose family has ruled the country for nearly 50 years, coasting towards victory.
(AFP, 10/27/18)
2018 Oct 27, In western Germany protesters blocked a railway line leading to a large strip coal mine near Cologne that has become a cause celebre for environmentalists amid plans to clear part of a neighboring forest to expand the facility.
(AP, 10/27/18)
2018 Oct 27, In southern India protesters set fire to a Hindu religious center in Kerala state for supporting a Supreme Court decision allowing women of menstruating age at one of the world's largest Hindu pilgrimage sites.
(AP, 10/27/18)
2018 Oct 27, In central India at least four Indian paramilitary soldiers were killed in a powerful land mine blast triggered by Maoist rebels in their stronghold in Chhattisgarh state.
(AP, 10/27/18)
2018 Oct 27, In eastern India seven elephants in search of food were electrocuted after coming in contact with loosely hanging electric wires in Orissa state.
(AP, 10/27/18)
2018 Oct 27, In Italy thousands of protesters rallied in the center of Rome over the capital's decrepit infrastructure, as the legal woes of its mayor whetted political appetites on the far right. Demonstrators said Virginia Raggi, the city's first female mayor, was responsible for Rome's pitiful transport service and woeful garbage collection.
(AFP, 10/27/18)
2018 Oct 27, Kashmiris observed 'Black Day' across Pakistan and other parts of the world including in Pakistan's zone of the disputed Himalayan region to mark the Indian occupation dating back to 1947.
(AP, 10/27/18)
2018 Oct 27, Hundreds of Mexican federal officers carrying plastic shields blocked a Central American caravan from advancing toward the United States, after a group of several thousand migrants turned down the chance to apply for refugee status and obtain a Mexican offer of benefits.
(AP, 10/27/18)
2018 Oct 27, In Morocco the tents and belongings of some 1,000 migrants were destroyed by a fire late today, the third at the camp since July 2017.
(Reuters, 10/30/18)
2018 Oct 27, In Nigeria three members of the IMN (IMN) were killed during protests in Abuja. The IMN has staged a series of demonstrations demanding the release of leader Zakzaky, who has been detained since bloody clashes broke out in the northern city of Zaria in 2015.
(AFP, 10/30/18)
2018 Oct 27, Pirates off the coast of Nigeria struck the MV Pomerania Sky, a container ship bound for the Nigerian port of Onne and abducted 11 of the crew, including 8 from Poland.
(Reuters, 10/29/18)
2018 Oct 27, Pakistan's top court reinstated a ban on the broadcast of Indian TV content following a petition from local producers.
(AP, 10/28/18)
2018 Oct 27, Palestinian militants said they would halt attacks into Israel from the Gaza Strip after they fired the heaviest rocket salvoes across the border since August. Israel said its fighter jets struck dozens of targets across Gaza and accused Iranian forces in Damascus of orchestrating the barrages.
(Reuters, 10/27/18)(AP, 10/27/18)
2018 Oct 27, Pakistani police Officer Tahir Khan Dawar disappeared and was presumed abducted by militants. Photographs purporting to show his badly beaten and tortured body surfaced on social media Nov. 14. The body was later found in Afghanistan's volatile Nangarhar province and handed over to Pakistani authorities.
(AP, 11/15/18)
2018 Oct 27, Sri Lanka's president suspended parliament even as ousted PM Ranil Wickremesinghe, fired the previous day, claimed he has majority support, adding to a growing political crisis in the South Asian island nation.
(AP, 10/27/18)
2018 Oct 27, In eastern Syria members of the Islamic State group killed at least 40 US-backed Syrian fighters, captured several alive and regained areas they lost earlier this month over the last 24 hours in Deir el-Zour province near the border with Iraq.
(AP, 10/27/18)
2018 Oct 27, In Taiwan tens of thousands of people gathered in Taipei for the city's annual gay pride parade ahead of referendums next month that will determine whether same-sex marriages will be recognized on the island.
(AP, 10/27/18)
2018 Oct 27, It was reported that Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has appointed new governors to 39 of the country's 81 provinces.
(Reuters, 10/27/18)
2018 Oct 27, The leaders of Turkey, Russia, France and Germany met to try to find a political solution to Syria's devastating civil war, provide access to humanitarian aid and salvage a fragile ceasefire in the country's last major rebel-held bastion.
(AFP, 10/27/18)
2018 Oct 28, In Los Angeles the Boston Red Sox beat the Los Angeles Dodgers 5-1 in Game 5 of the World Series to win the series 4 games to 1. Manager Alex Cora capped off one of the greatest runs by a first-year skipper in leading Boston to the World Series championship.
(AP, 10/29/18)
2018 Oct 28, IBM said it has agreed to buy software maker Red Hat Inc. for $33.4 billion, its biggest ever acquisition to date.
(SFC, 10/29/18, p.D1)
2018 Oct 28, William J. Murtagh (b.1923), the first keeper of the US National Register of Historic Places, died in Florida. He authored the first leading textbook on historical preservation: "The History and Theory of Preservation in America" (1988).
(SFC, 11/7/18, p.C3)
2018 Oct 28, In Abu Dhabi Israel's national anthem was played at a judo tournament after one of its athletes won gold in what was thought to be a first in the Gulf emirate.
(AFP, 10/28/18)
2018 Oct 28, In Albania Konstantinos Kacifa died in an exchange of gunfire with police during an event to celebrate Greece's entry in World War II against Italy. He initially shot in the air, apparently as a celebratory gesture, but later fired at approaching police cars.
(AP, 11/8/18)
2018 Oct 28, Brazil held presidential elections. Voters were picking between far-right Congressman Jair Bolsonaro and former Sao Paulo Mayor Fernando Haddad. Bolsonaro (63) won 55 percent of the run-off vote.
(AP, 10/28/18)(AFP, 10/29/18)
2018 Oct 28, Japan Airlines pilot Katsutoshi Jitsukawa (42) was arrested after the driver of a Heathrow Airport crew bus smelled alcohol and reported it to security officials. Tests later found the first officer had 189 milligrams of alcohol per 100 milliliters of blood in his system, almost 10 times the 20 milligrams limit for a pilot.
(AP, 11/29/18)
2018 Oct 28, Cameroon authorities have released around 50 opposition supporters detained in Douala a day earlier, but also arrested others in Yaounde.
(AFP, 10/28/18)
2018 Oct 28, In southwestern China 15 people were killed after the bus to plunged off a high bridge into the Yangtze River in the western city of Chongqing. A surveillance camera later showed that a fight between a bus driver and a passenger who missed her stop caused the bus to plunge off the high bridge.
(AP, 10/28/18)(AP, 11/2/18)(AP, 11/4/18)
2018 Oct 28, The Czech Republic marked 100 years since the creation of Czechoslovakia with the biggest military parade in its post-communist history, highlighting a weekend of celebrations.
(Reuters, 10/28/18)
2018 Oct 28, Georgians voted for a new president. Former foreign minister Salome Zurabishvili, supported by the ruling Georgian Dream party, was in a close contest with opposition leader Grigol Vashadze, also a former foreign minister. The election went to a run-off after no candidate won the first round. Salome Zurabishvili (66) narrowly led with 38.64 percent of the vote against 37.73 percent for opposition leader Grigol Vashadze.
(AFP, 10/28/18)(AFP, 10/29/18)
2018 Oct 28, Indonesia's anti-graft agency said it has arrested seven people, including a senior executive of palm firm Sinar Mas Agro Resources and Technology, in connection with a bribery case.
(Reuters, 10/28/18)
2018 Oct 28, Iran sold oil to private buyers through its energy exchange for the first time, as part of its efforts to counter the imminent return of US sanctions.
(AFP, 10/28/18)
2018 Oct 28, In Italy former party sympathizers set fire to the 5-Star flag in the southern town of Melendugno to protest at the government's decision to endorse the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) that will bring Azeri gas into Italy via their coastline.
(Reuters, 10/29/18)
2018 Oct 28, In Japan visiting Indian PM Narendra Modi met with Japanese PM Shinzo Abe at a resort area near Mount Fuji reaffirming their ties amid growing worries about trade and regional stability.
(AP, 10/28/18)
2018 Oct 28, Mexican voters in a referendum rejected the completion of a new, partly constructed Mexico City airport by a 70 to 29 percent margin. This effectively ended the $13 billion project that was already one-third built.
(SFC, 10/30/18, p.A2)
2018 Oct 28, A long-awaited reform of Qatar's controversial exit visa system, which requires foreign workers to obtain their bosses' permission to leave the country, came into force.
(AFP, 10/28/18)
2018 Oct 28, Pakistan's President Arif Alvi says the country will not establishing ties with Israel and that it supports the Palestinians because the Gaza Strip has also faced "unprecedented atrocities" like Kashmir.
(AP, 10/28/18)
2018 Oct 28, It was reported that traces of oil have been found along Pakistan's coastline near Karachi. Leakage from an underwater pipeline was suspected and a nearby refinery was ordered to suspend operations.
(SFC, 10/29/18, p.A2)
2018 Oct 28, Palestinian Yahya al-Hassanat (37) died two days after suffering gunshot wounds in clashes on the Israel-Gaza border. The death raised to seven the number of Palestinians killed as a result of the Oct. 26 clashes when thousands again approached the border fence.
(AFP, 10/28/18)
2018 Oct 28, Three Palestinian boys were killed in an Israeli air strike at the Gaza frontier. Israel said it targeted Palestinians trying to blow up part of the fence.
(Reuters, 10/29/18)
2018 Oct 28, Philippine Pres. Rodrigo Duterte put the Bureau of Customs temporarily under military control after two large shipments of illegal drugs slipped past the agency through the port of Manila.
(AP, 10/29/18)
2018 Oct 28, In Sri Lanka a constitutional crisis gripping the country since the president's shock dismissal of PM Ranil Wickremesinghe erupted into violence, with a man shot dead and two others injured in Colombo. Pres. Maithripala Sirisena said that the main reason he decided to sack his prime minister was the alleged involvement of a Cabinet minister in a plot to assassinate him.
(AFP, 10/28/18)(AP, 10/28/18)
2018 Oct 28, Syrian officials, foreign archeologists and restoration specialists attended the reopening ceremony of Syria's National Museum in the heart of Damascus, more than six years after the prominent institution was shut down and emptied as the country's civil war encroached on the capital.
(AP, 10/28/18)
2018 Oct 28, In Syria 72 SDF fighters were reported killed over the last three days as the Islamic State took advantage of a sandstorm that hampered coalition air cover and dispatched suicide bombers as part of their fightback.
(AFP, 10/28/18)
2018 Oct 28, The Turkish army struck Kurdish targets in northern Syria east of the Euphrates River. Artillery strikes hit positions belonging to the Syrian Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) in Zor Moghar.
(AP, 10/28/18)
2018 Oct 28, At the Vatican Pope Francis ended a month-long meeting on the theme of Catholic youth. He told young people that in order to be good members of the Church they should not be obsessed with "doctrinal formulae" but blend its rules with social activism to help those in need.
(Reuters, 10/28/18)
2018 Oct 29, The Trump administration imposed restrictions on technology exports to Fujian Jinhua Integrated Circuit Co., a state-supported Chinese semiconductor maker, citing national security grounds amid a mounting tariff battle.
(AP, 10/30/18)
2018 Oct 29, A study published in JAMA Pediatrics said 75,000 US children and teens suffered gun injuries over nine years. A third of the kids were hospitalized and 6 percent were killed.
(SFC, 10/30/18, p.A5)
2018 Oct 29, In North Carolina Jatwan Craig Cuffie (16) shot and killed fellow student Bobby McKeithen (16) at Butler High School in Matthews.
(SFC, 10/30/18, p.A5)
2018 Oct 29, In South Dakota Rodney Berget (56) was executed for the 2011 slaying of prison guard Ronald Johnson at the state penitentiary in Sioux Falls.
(SFC, 10/30/18, p.A5)
2018 Oct 29, In Afghanistan a suicide bombing targeting the election commission's office in Kabul killed a police officer and wounded five people. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack.
(AP, 10/29/18)
2018 Oct 29, Former Bangladesh PM Khaleda Zia, the leader of the country's opposition, was sentenced to seven years in jail after being found guilty of misusing her power to collect money for a charity named after her late husband. Separately, the Election Commission withdrew the registration of the country's largest Islamist party in another blow for opposition forces.
(AP, 10/29/18)
2018 Oct 29, In Belgium a strike by baggage handlers disrupted flights to and from the main airport for a fifth day.
(AP, 10/29/18)
2018 Oct 29, In England seven men were convicted at Sheffield Crown Court of sexually abusing vulnerable teenagers in a prosecution sparked by revelations of sexual exploitation stretching back years. The perpetrators were mostly men of Pakistani heritage.
(AP, 10/29/18)
2018 Oct 29, In Central African Rep. lawmaker Alfred Yekatom fired into the air in the parliament after an altercation with a colleague as MPs were preparing to vote for a new speaker. Police arrested Yekatom while he was still in the parliament building.
(AFP, 10/29/18)
2018 Oct 29, China's State Council unexpectedly announced that it would allow the sale of rhino and tiger products under "special circumstances". China prohibited the trade of rhino horn and tiger bones in 1993 but a thriving transnational black market has since flourished.
(AFP, 10/30/18)
2018 Oct 29, China's yuan sank to a 10-year low against the dollar, coming close to breaking the politically sensitive level of seven to the US currency. The People's Bank of China has been trying to make its exchange rate mechanism more efficient by increasing the role of market forces.
(AP, 10/29/18)
2018 Oct 29, Angela Merkel announced she will quit as German chancellor when her mandate ends in 2021, as she sought to draw a line under a series of political crises that have rocked her fragile coalition.
(AP, 10/29/18)
2018 Oct 29, Greek youths clashed with police in central Athens as a protest against education reform turned violent when it reached parliament's Syntagma square.
(Reuters, 10/29/18)
2018 Oct 29, In Guinea a "dead city" strike call by the opposition largely emptied the streets of the capital Conakry, with no solution in sight to a pay dispute in the education sector.
(AFP, 10/29/18)
2018 Oct 29, In Indonesia a Lion Air plane crashed into the sea likely killing all 189 people on board. The 2-month-old Boeing 737 MAX 8 jet plunged into the Java Sea early today, just 13 minutes after taking off from Jakarta for an island off Sumatra. The privately owned carrier was founded in 1999 to provide access to air travel to everyone.
(AP, 10/29/18)(AP, 10/30/18)
2018 Oct 29, Israeli forces shot dead a Palestinian man and wounded 25 including two medics during Palestinian protests along the Gaza Strip's beachfront border with Israel.
(Reuters, 10/29/18)
2018 Oct 29, In Myanmar dozens of striking workers from a Chinese-owned garment factory marched to a government compound in Yangon, demanding to meet the city’s chief minister, as part of efforts to get sacked colleagues reinstated.
(Reuters, 10/29/18)
2018 Oct 29, In Nigeria three more IMN supporters were killed during a protest on the outskirts of Abuja.
(AFP, 10/30/18)
2018 Oct 29, Russia sent a high-level official delegation to Venezuela, including a deputy finance minister, to help advise the cash-strapped country on economic reform at a time of crisis.
(Reuters, 10/29/18)
2018 Oct 29, A report by environmental campaign group Greenpeace said South Africa's eastern Mpumalanga province has the most polluting cluster of coal-fired power stations in the world producing record levels of nitrogen dioxide.
(AFP, 10/29/18)
2018 Oct 29, The World Food Program said violence in South Sudan is blocking deliveries of food aid needed to stave off severe hunger in some areas, adding to evidence that a peace deal signed last month is not holding.
(Reuters, 10/29/18)
2018 Oct 29, In Spain hundreds of police backed by a helicopter raided dozens of apartments in Barcelona used for selling and consuming heroin and other drugs, arresting 55 people.
(AFP, 10/29/18)
2018 Oct 29, Ousted Sri Lankan prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe demanded parliament be allowed to choose between the two rivals to run the country's government amid warnings that the constitutional crisis could become a "bloodbath". President Maithripala Sirisena appointed newly appointed PM Mahinda Rajapaksa as the finance minister. Sri Lankan police arrested deposed oil minister Arjuna Ranatunga over a shooting that killed one person on the weekend.
(AFP, 10/29/18)(Reuters, 10/29/18)
2018 Oct 29, In Tunisia a woman (30) blew herself up in the center of Tunis, wounding nine people including eight police in what the Interior Ministry called a "terrorist explosion".
(Reuters, 10/29/18)
2018 Oct 29, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan inaugurated Istanbul's new airport, a megaproject that he has pushed to meet its symbolic deadline. Human Rights has cited at least 38 workplace deaths over the past three years.
(AP, 10/29/18)
2018 Oct 29, UN aid chief Mark Lowcock told the UN Security Council that up to 15,000 people remain within the IS-controlled area and around 7,000 people have in recent weeks been displaced by fighting from Hajin, the last major stronghold of Islamic State in Syria on the eastern bank of the Euphrates River.
(AP, 10/29/18)
2018 Oct 30, US Pres. Donald Trump said he wants to end the constitutional right to citizenship for babies born in the United States to non-citizens" they're saying I can do it with just an executive order".
(SFC, 10/31/18, p.A7)
2018 Oct 30, The US Pentagon said it is deploying 5,200 troops to the Southwest border in an extraordinary military operation a week before nationwide elections in which President Donald Trump wants voters to focus on what he calls an "invasion" — a slow-moving caravan of Central American migrants.
(AP, 10/30/18)
2018 Oct 30, Hawaii's Supreme Court upheld a decision to grant a construction permit for the Thirty Meter Telescope planned for Mauna Kea on the Big Island.
(SFC, 10/31/18, p.A5)
2018 Oct 30, Boston gangster James "whitey" Bulger (89) was found dead in his cell one day after being transferred to the West Virginia federal prison. He was apparently beaten to death by at least two fellow inmates.
(SFC, 10/31/18, p.A5)
2018 Oct 30, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said five members of the Afghan Taliban who were freed from the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay in exchange for captured American army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl have joined the insurgent group's political office in Qatar.
(AP, 10/30/18)
2018 Oct 30, Bangladesh and Myanmar agreed to begin by November the repatriation of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims who fled to Bangladesh to escape a Myanmar army crackdown, though doubts about a speedy return are likely to persist.
(Reuters, 10/30/18)
2018 Oct 30, Bulgarian authorities said they have busted a criminal ring run by state officials who sold fake documents to foreigners seeking to obtain Bulgarian passports that grant the right to live and work throughout the EU. Prosecutors pressed charges against the head of the State Agency for Bulgarians Abroad, Petar Haralampiev, who was arrested along with 20 other agency officials in police raids across the country.
(AP, 10/30/18)
2018 Oct 30, In Cameroon Charles Trumann Wesco, a missionary from the US state of Indiana had been in the region with his wife Stephanie and eight children for nearly two weeks before he was shot in the head and died amid fighting between armed separatists and soldiers the northwest. The military killed at least four suspects in Wesco's death and arrested many others.
(AP, 10/31/18)
2018 Oct 30, China defended its controversial decision to ease a 25-year ban on trading tiger bones and rhinoceros horns after conservationists warned that the government had effectively signed a "death warrant" for the endangered species.
(AFP, 10/30/18)
2018 Oct 30, Chinese state media said searchers have recovered the bodies of all 21 miners who died in the Oct. 20 coal mine collapse in Shandong province.
(AP, 10/30/18)
2018 Oct 30, Heavy snowfall across south-central France, with up to 40 centimeters (16 inches) falling in some towns and villages, has caused chaos on the roads and knocked out electricity to nearly 200,000 homes.
(Reuters, 10/30/18)
2018 Oct 30, In Germany Chancellor Angela Merkel opened the G20 Compact with Africa meeting saying it's critical "not only to talk about Africa but to talk with Africa" about development needs and goals. So far 11 countries have joined the program: Benin, Ivory Coast, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, Morocco, Rwanda, Senegal, Togo and Tunisia.
(AP, 10/30/18)
2018 Oct 30, A German court ordered the release of former Audi CEO Rupert Stadler, on condition that he refrain from contact with people relevant to the investigation, more than four months after he was arrested in an investigation into the manipulation of diesel emissions controls.
(AP, 10/30/18)
2018 Oct 30, German police arrested a Russian man (43) suspected of smuggling some 12 million cigarettes into the country from 2009-2011.
(AP, 11/1/18)
2018 Oct 30, More than 1,000 migrants forged across the river from Guatemala and began walking through southern Mexico reaching the city of Tapachula, some 250 miles behind a larger group moving toward the US border.
(SFC, 10/31/18, p.A2)
2018 Oct 30, Hong Kong journalist Louis Cha (94), a best-selling Chinese martial arts novelist, died after a long illness. Cha's novels about ancient Chinese swordsmen have sold millions and are among the most widely read in the Chinese-speaking world.
(AP, 10/30/18)
2018 Oct 30, In central India Maoist rebels killed a cameraman working for a state-run television channel and two policemen in an ambush in Chhattisgarh state.
(AP, 10/30/18)
2018 Oct 30, The Constitutional Court of Ingushetia ruled to invalidate a deal that was signed last month by the leaders of that region and Chechnya. It also said that the deal cannot be implemented unless it is put up to vote at a referendum.
(AP, 10/30/18)
2018 Oct 30, In northern Iraq American and Iraqi forces in Salahuddin province killed five IS leaders and more than 30 other militants. The leaders killed in the raid were responsible for coordinating attacks across northern and western Iraq.
(AP, 11/11/18)
2018 Oct 30, Israelis voted in municipal elections across the country. None of the six candidates for mayor of Jerusalem, all Jewish, won the 40 percent of votes required to be elected in the first round. A runoff between the top two will be held on November 13. In comparatively liberal Tel Aviv, Labor mayor Ron Huldai was elected to a fifth five-year term.
(AP, 10/30/18)(AFP, 10/31/18)
2018 Oct 30, In Italy the death toll from fierce storms battering the country rose to at least 11, as wild weather swept parts of Europe, leaving motorists and tourists stranded. In Venice winds drove the high tide to more than 61 inches above average sea level, one of the highest levels ever recorded.
(AFP, 10/30/18)(SFC, 10/31/18, p.A2)
2018 Oct 30, The Maldives Supreme Court suspended a 13-year jail sentence given to Mohamed Nasheed, the country's exiled former president, until it reviews his conviction as requested by the prosecutor general.
(AP, 10/30/18)
2018 Oct 30, Nigerian police fired shots and tear gas at thousands of supporters of an imprisoned Shiite cleric in Abuja.
(AFP, 10/30/18)
2018 Oct 30, In Norway British PM Theresa May and Norway's PM Erna Solberg said British citizens already living in Norway and Norwegian citizens living in Britain will have the right to remain residents, even in case of a no-deal Brexit.
(Reuters, 10/30/18)
2018 Oct 30, In Pakistan Arshad Jamal (35) opened fire from a rifle, killing his mother, his brother's wife and her 3-year-old son amid a family feud over property inheritance. Jamal fired again and killed his cousin, who tried to stop him, before fleeing the scene in the northwestern town of Charsadda.
(AP, 10/30/18)
2018 Oct 30, Typhoon Yutu blew across the northern Philippines setting off landslides that left at least six people dead.
(AP, 10/30/18)
2018 Oct 30, A Danish man was arrested in South Africa on suspicion of having played a key role in a fraud case that caused a Danish government welfare agency to lose at least 111 million-kroner ($17 million). Britta Nielsen (64) remained the main suspect. She has vanished from Denmark and her whereabouts were unknown.
(AP, 11/1/18)
2018 Oct 30, South Korea's Supreme Court ruled that Nippon Steel should compensate four South Koreans $89,000 for forced labor during Japan's colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula before the end of World War II. Japanese PM Shinzo Abe said the ruling violated a 1965 treaty between Seoul and Tokyo that was accompanied by Japanese payments to restore diplomatic ties.
(AP, 10/30/18)(SFC, 2/14/19, p.A5)
2018 Oct 30, In Sri Lanka more than ten thousand people marched in Colombo to demand the president immediately convene Parliament to resolve a deepening political crisis following his sacking of the prime minister.
(AP, 10/30/18)
2018 Oct 31, Willie McCovey (80), the Hall of Fame first baseman who spent 10 of his 22 major-league seasons with the SF Giants, died at Stanford Hospital.
(SFC, 11/1/18, p.A1)
2018 Oct 31, An Afghan army helicopter crashed in bad weather in the western Farah province, killing all 25 people on board.
(AP, 10/31/18)
2018 Oct 31, Albanian police said they have arrested five people suspected of trafficking migrants from Greece to Montenegro following a months-long investigation.
(AP, 10/31/18)
2018 Oct 31, The Austrian government said that it won't sign a global compact to promote safe and orderly migration, citing concerns about national sovereignty as it joined neighboring Hungary in shunning the agreement. The Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration was approved in July by all 193 member nations except the United States, which backed out last year.
(AP, 10/31/18)(Reuters, 10/31/18)
2018 Oct 31, In Belgium unions and management found agreement to end a six-day strike by baggage handlers that has disrupted flights to and from the main airport for part of the autumn holiday season.
(AP, 10/31/18)
2018 Oct 31, About 2,000 migrants began walking north from El Salvador's capital, the latest of several groups trying to reach the United States, even as President Donald Trump increases pressure to halt the flow of people.
(Reuters, 10/31/18)
2018 Oct 31, In Greece John Macris (46), a Greek-Australian married to a model who appeared on a Greek reality TV show, was shot and killed as he left his home in Voula in his car this evening in a seaside suburb of Athens. Australian media have described Macris as having been involved in Sydney's organized crime scene.
(AP, 11/1/18)
2018 Oct 31, Iceland's Foreign Ministry said Icelandic citizens in Britain and British citizens in Iceland will keep their residence rights after Brexit, even in the case of no deal with the European Union.
(Reuters, 10/31/18)
2018 Oct 31, India's PM Narendra Modi unveiled a towering bronze statue of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, a key independence leader being promoted as a national icon in the ruling party's campaign ahead of next year's general elections.
(AP, 10/31/18)
2018 Oct 31, Iraq's Shi'ite paramilitaries, also known as the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), said in a statement that they had killed two IS commanders in the border area who were responsible for an attack last week on US-backed Syrian Kurdish forces along the Iraq-Syria border.
(Reuters, 10/31/18)
2018 Oct 31, An operation in northern Iraq by American and Iraqi forces killed around 20 IS fighters in the Makhmour Mountains.
(AP, 11/11/18)
2018 Oct 31, Italian news agency ANSA reported that prosecutors were focusing on whether the remains found in an annex of the Holy See's embassy in Rome could be linked either to Mirella Gregori, or to Emanuela Orlandi, two 15-year-old girls who went missing in 1983.
(AP, 10/31/18)
2018 Oct 31, Mexico's Supreme Court issued two more rulings in individual cases establishing a precedent that a blanket prohibition on recreational marijuana use is unconstitutional.
(SFC, 11/1/18, p.A2)
2018 Oct 31, Millions of people in Mexico City prepared to be without water for at least four days as authorities began maintenance work on one of the major supply systems. The system won't return to full capacity until November 8.
(AFP, 10/31/18)
2018 Oct 31, In northeast Nigeria suspected members of the Islamist Boko Haram insurgency killed at least 15 people late today in an attack on a group of villages.
(Reuters, 11/1/18)
2018 Oct 31, In Norway Anne-Elisabeth Falkevik Hagen (68) married to a real estate and energy magnate, disappeared from her home in Lorenskog. Ten weeks later police said a ransom demand for $10.3 million in cryptocurrency has been received for the missing woman.
(AP, 1/9/19)
2018 Oct 31, Pakistan's top court acquitted a Christian woman who was sentenced to death under the country's controversial blasphemy law, a landmark ruling that sparked protests by hard-line Islamists and raised fears of violence. Asia Bibi had been on death row since 2010.
(AP, 10/31/18)
2018 Oct 31, In the northern Philippines rescuers pulled out four bodies and four survivors, but at least 19 others remained missing after a massive Typhoon Yutu triggered landslide crashed down on two government buildings.
(AP, 10/31/18)
2018 Oct 31, Russia opened an investigation into suspected terrorism after a 17-year-old youth blew himself up in the lobby of an office belonging to Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) in the northern city of Arkhangelsk. On Nov. 6 a Moscow court arrested a 14-year-old boy believed to be linked to the bomb attack.
(Reuters, 10/31/18)(AP, 11/6/18)
2018 Oct 31, In South Africa Patricia De Lille (67), the mayor of Cape Town, resigned amid a bitter dispute roiling the country's main opposition in the runup to 2019 elections. Her seven-year tenure has been marred by allegations of corruption and financial mismanagement that have threatened to tarnish Cape Town's reputation.
(AFP, 10/31/18)
2018 Oct 31, In South Sudan opposition leader Riek Machar returned to Juba to take part in a nationwide peace celebration after fleeing South Sudan more than two years ago. To further reinforce the peace deal, President Salva Kiir ordered the release of a jailed advisor to Machar, and a spokesman to his rebel group.
(AP, 10/31/18)(Reuters, 10/31/18)
2018 Oct 31, Sweden offered to host talks between Yemen's warring parties as Washington called for an urgent halt to hostilities and the UN special envoy ramped up efforts to revive discussions that failed nearly two months ago.
(AP, 10/31/18)
2018 Oct 31, A Syrian medical official said a new mass grave was discovered in the northern city of Raqqa that until last year was a stronghold and the de facto capital of IS. The new mass grave includes more than 1,500 bodies who were killed by airstrikes of the US-led coalition that gave cover to US-backed Syrian fighters who captured Raqqa from IS in October last year.
(AP, 11/1/18)
2018 Oct 31, In Tanzania Dar es Salaam's administrative chief Paul Makonda said that a special committee would seek to identify and punish homosexuals, prostitutes and online fraudsters in the city from this week.
(AP, 11/4/18)
2018 Oct 31, Venezuela named Army General Manuel Cristophe as the new chief of its state intelligence agency, following the death of a politician in custody that was officially ruled a suicide but critics called a murder. Cristopher replaced outgoing Sebin chief Gustavo Gonzalez.
(Reuters, 10/31/18)
2018 Oct, US federal authorities armed with a secret indictment arrested Iranian Prof. Masoud Soleimani as he touched down on US soil, on charges that he had violated trade sanctions by trying to have biological material brought to Iran. Soleimani had plans to complete the final stage of his research on treating stroke patients as a visiting scholar at the prestigious Mayo Clinic in Minnesota.
(AP, 7/7/19)
2018 Oct, Wells Fargo agreed to a $65 million settlement with New York state for opening unauthorized accounts in customers' names.
(SFC, 12/29/18, p.D3)
2018 Oct, In Afghanistan a week of clashes late this month killed at least 21 people in the central province of Uruzgan. Taliban fighters attacked a remote cluster of Hazara villages after they refused to pay tax to the insurgents.
(Reuters, 11/3/18)
2018 Oct, In Ethiopia the secessionist Ogaden National Liberation Front group declared a unilateral ceasefire this month in the Somali Region in the wake of reforms. The province holds four trillion cubic feet of oil and gas reserves, government estimates show. China’s GCL-Poly Petroleum Investments has been developing two gas fields there since 2013.
(AP, 10/19/18)
2018 Oct, Iran jailed Dr. Kylie Moore-Gilbert, a Cambridge-educated academic specializing in Middle Eastern politics. The British-Australian woman was later sentenced to 10 years in Evin prison. Her detention was not reported until 2019.
(The Telegraph, 9/13/19)
2018 Oct, CEO Katie Meyler (37) started her leave of absence after ProPublica reported that former staffer Macintosh Johnson had sexually assaulted students at a More Than Me branch in the Liberian capital of Monrovia. Meyler resigned six months later. Johnson had AIDS and died in jail in 2016 while awaiting trial.
(AP, 4/21/19)
2018 Oct, In Myanmar the Karen National Union (KNU) and the Restoration Council of Shan State (RCSS) withdrew from the 2015 Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement (NCA) drawn up under Thein Sein.
(Econ., 8/22/20, p.31)
2018 Oct, At The Hague four alleged members of Russia's GRU military intelligence agency were caught red-handed with a car full of electronic gear in a carpark next to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.
(AFP, 10/6/18)
2018 Oct, Valery Alemchenko, a former convict who worked for Yevgeny Prigozhin, a Russian businessman who has been indicted by American investigators for allegedly trying to interfere with the 2016 US election, disappeared early this month. Alemchenko had recently told a reporter that he orchestrated attacks on Prigozhin's opponents as well as the killing of an opposition blogger in northwest Russia, all at the mogul's behalf.
(AP, 10/22/18)
2018 Oct, Russia's National Guard, which polices anti-government protests, received delivery of two vehicles fitted with a laser and a sonic sound system to disorient people. News of this raised fears among the opposition they could be used to disperse peaceful protesters.
(Reuters, 11/22/18)
2018 Oct, Saudi Arabia's King Salman ordered the resumption of annual bonus payments to all government workers from the beginning of next year. The bonuses had been suspended under austerity measures in 2016 amid low oil prices.
(AFP, 11/6/18)
2018 Oct, Serbia sold agricultural company Poljoprivredna Korporacija Beograd (PKB) to United Arab Emirates-based Al Dahra Agricultural Company for 105.05 million euros ($118.98 million).
(Reuters, 3/5/19)
2018 Oct, In Somalia a top Islamic State leader was killed by a suspected al-Shabab death squad in Mogadishu. This indicated the start of a bloody feud between the two groups.
(SFC, 12/7/18, p.A4)
2018 Nov 1, The US Justice Department charged fugitive Malaysian financier Low Taek Jho, also known as Jho Low, in a money laundering and bribery scheme that pilfered billions of dollars from a Malaysian investment fund created to promote economic development projects in that country. Also charged was a Goldman Sachs banker, Tim Leissner, who pleaded guilty to money laundering conspiracy and to conspiring to violating foreign bribery laws.
(AP, 11/1/18)
2018 Nov 1, Tennessee executed Edmund Zagorski (63) for killing two men during a drug-deal-turned-robbery in 1983. Zagorski was strapped into the stout wooden chair nicknamed 'Old Sparky' and put to death for shooting and slitting the throats of two men during the drug deal. Zagorski had told the state he'd rather die in the electric chair than receive a lethal injection. Since then, the state has executed two other inmates by electrocution, bringing the total to three in the past year.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Zagorski)(SFC, 11/2/18, p.A6)(AP, 10/25/19)
2018 Nov 1, Google employees held a wave of walkouts around the world to protest the internet company’s handling of sexual harassment. In Ireland hundreds of employees walked out of Google's European headquarters in Dublin as part of a global campaign over the US tech giant's handling of sexual harassment. Amit Singhal, a former search chief, left the company in 2016 after being accused of groping a female. The Google board had approved a $45 million settlement for him. Andy Rubin, who used to head the Android division, had left the company after being accused of sexual misconduct. His exit package was $90 million.
(http://tinyurl.com/y7fsfyst)(AP, 11/1/18)(SFC, 3/13/19, p.D4)
2018 Nov 1, Scientists said the world's oceans have absorbed 60 percent more heat than previously thought over the last quarter of a century. Soon after publication, an independent climate scientist, one who has repeatedly voiced skepticism of the consensus that human behavior is causing global warming, spotted an error in the Nature paper's maths.
(AFP, 11/1/18)(AFP, 11/23/18)
2018 Nov 1, In Afghanistan a massive fire destroyed hundreds of stores late today at a market in central Kabul. All the stores had closed and no casualties were reported.
(SFC, 11/3/18, p.A2)
2018 Nov 1, Australia announced it will invest in redeveloping a Papua New Guinea naval base as concerns mount over increasing Chinese influence in the South Pacific.
(AP, 11/1/18)
2018 Nov 1, Australia said it aims to remove all asylum seeker children from Nauru within two months as concerns escalate about their deteriorating health after languishing on the tiny Pacific atoll nation for up to five years.
(AP, 11/1/18)
2018 Nov 1, Brazilian Judge Sergio Moroat, at the center of one of the largest corruption investigations in history, said he will become justice minister in the incoming government of President-elect Jair Bolsonaro.
(AP, 11/1/18)
2018 Nov 1, British immigration officials found a group of 21 Vietnamese illegal immigrants hidden inside a truck transporting sparkling water from France to Britain.
(AP, 11/7/18)
2018 Nov 1, In restive southwestern Cameroon separatist militants attacked workers on a state-run rubber plantation, chopping off their fingers because the men had defied an order to stay away from the farms.
(AP, 11/2/18)
2018 Nov 1, In China Salvadoran President Salvador Sanchez Ceren met with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, just months after the small Central American nation broke its diplomatic ties with Taiwan.
(AP, 11/1/18)
2018 Nov 1, The Ebola outbreak in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo has claimed 180 lives, according to the health ministry, with 10 more reported deaths in recent days.
(AFP, 11/2/18)
2018 Nov 1, Greek authorities arrested eight suspected members of a criminal organization that smuggled migrants from Greece to Italy by yacht.
(AP, 11/2/18)
2018 Nov 1, India's environment minister blamed the Delhi government and its neighboring states for failing in their efforts to check air pollution which today was six times above the recommended limit, posing severe health risks.
(Reuters, 11/1/18)
2018 Nov 1, In northern Italy trees covering the mountainsides in the Dolomites range were reduced to matchsticks, flattened by winds that tore through the Veneto region as storms killed five people. The fatalities brought to 18 the number of people killed by bad weather in Italy since the start of the week.
(AFP, 11/2/18)
2018 Nov 1, Macedonia's criminal court ordered the temporary freezing of property belonging to the main conservative opposition party as part of an investigation into allegations of unlawful political financing.
(AP, 11/1/18)
2018 Nov 1, Mohamed Nasheed, the first democratically elected president of the Maldives, returned home after more than two years in exile to escape a long prison term.
(AP, 11/1/18)
2018 Nov 1, Thousands of Central American migrants resumed their slow trek through southern Mexico. Activists aiding the group said they were shifting their route toward the Gulf coast, a path closer to the Texas border.
(AP, 11/1/18)
2018 Nov 1, A court in the Netherlands banned Ryanair from transferring 16 pilots overseas following the closure of its Dutch base in Eindhoven, saying that the move appeared to be a reprisal by the budget carrier for strikes by Dutch employees.
(AP, 11/1/18)
2018 Nov 1, The Russian government published a list of 322 individuals and 68 companies in the Ukraine who will have their assets — if they have any — frozen, in a largely symbolic gesture in the ongoing conflict between the two countries.
(AP, 11/1/18)
2018 Nov 1, South Korea's top court ruled that South Korean men can legally reject their mandatory military service on conscientious or religious grounds without punishment.
(AP, 11/1/18)
2018 Nov 1, Turkish and US forces started joint patrols in the Manbij region of northern Syria. In June Turkey agreed a plan with the United States under which the two countries would jointly maintain security and stability there.
(Reuters, 11/1/18)
2018 Nov 1, The Saudi-backed Yemeni government said it was ready to work on confidence-building measures under UN-led peace efforts as the United States pressed for an end to a war that has pushed Yemen to the brink of starvation.
(Reuters, 11/1/18)
2018 Nov 1, In Syria jihadists killed four pro-regime fighters in Idlib province, the rebel stronghold where Russia and Turkey have agreed to set up a buffer zone.
(AFP, 11/1/18)
2018 Nov 1, The UN General Assembly vote 189-2 to approve a resolution condemning the American embargo of Cuba. The US and Israel voted no. Moldova and Ukraine did not vote.
(SFC, 11/2/18, p.A2)
2018 Nov 1, The UN children's agency said over seven million children face a serious threat of famine in Yemen and ending the country's war will not save all of them.
(AFP, 11/1/18)
2018 Nov 2, The United States lifted sanctions on two top officials in Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan's cabinet, a sign of improved relations after Turkey freed an American pastor from detention three weeks ago.
(Reuters, 11/2/18)
2018 Nov 2, US immigration officials said Dias Kadyrbayev, a college friend of Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, has been deported to his native Kazakhstan after he was convicted of concealing evidence in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing.
(AP, 11/2/18)
2018 Nov 2, The United States said it will temporarily allow eight importers to keep buying Iranian oil when it re-imposes sanctions on Nov. 5 to try to force Iran to curb its nuclear, missile and regional activities.
(Reuters, 11/3/18)
2018 Nov 2, The US Trade Representative's Office (USTR) said President Donald Trump intends to end trade benefits for Mauritania on Jan. 1 for not making sufficient progress on ending forced labor practices.
(Reuters, 11/3/18)
2018 Nov 2, In Florida a gunman killed two people and wounded three others at a Tallahassee yoga studio. He then fatally shot himself.
(SFC, 11/3/18, p.A7)
2018 Nov 2, In Maryland part of an Amazon distribution warehouse collapsed in Baltimore as strong winds tore through the state. Two people were killed when a 50-ffot wall collapsed at the warehouse.
(SSFC, 11/4/18, p.A13)
2018 Nov 2, Acclaimed jazz trumpeter Roy Hargrove (b.1969) died in NYC following a long fight with kidney disease.
(SFC, 11/5/18, p.A5)
2018 Nov 2, Argentina's National University of La Matanza revealed that a team of Spanish and Argentine paleontologists have discovered the remains of a dinosaur that lived 110 million years ago in the center of the country. The new species from the herbivorous group of sauropods has been named Lavocatisaurus agrioensis.
(AP, 11/3/18)
2018 Nov 2, China's the foreign ministry said President Xi Jinping had an "extremely positive" phone conversation with US Pres. Donald Trump about trade and other issues.
(AP, 11/2/18)
2018 Nov 2, In China Dominican Republic President Danilo Medina met with Chinese President Xi Jinping after a formal welcome ceremony at the Great Hall of the People.
(AP, 11/2/18)
2018 Nov 2, China promised to support Pakistan's economy as visiting PM Imran Khan spoke of his country's "very difficult" economic situation amid a burgeoning financial crisis.
(AP, 11/2/18)
2018 Nov 2, In Egypt masked men opened fire on three buses from different directions. Seven people were killed in the ambush by Islamic State militants of buses carrying pilgrims to St. Samuel the Confessor desert monastery near Minya.
(AP, 11/3/18)
2018 Nov 2, Hong Kong organizers of an exhibition by dissident Chinese-Australian cartoonist Badiucao canceled the exhibition in the Chinese-ruled city given what they said were threats by China. The exhibition by Badiucao was to have been his first international solo event.
(Reuters, 11/2/18)
2018 Nov 2, In India a man-eating tiger that stalked the hills of Maharashtra state was killed after an attempt to tranquilize her failed. She was suspected of killing at least 13 villagers.
(SSFC, 11/4/18, p.A6)
2018 Nov 2, In Indonesia thousands of conservative Muslims protested Jakarta about the burning of an Islamic flag last month, sparking criticism from the government's top security minister that the country was in mourning after a plane crash and back-to-back natural disasters.
(AP, 11/2/18)
2018 Nov 2, Indonesian rescue diver Syachrul Anto (48) died while diving to search for victims of the crashed Lion Air aircraft.
(Reuters, 11/3/18)
2018 Nov 2, In Mexico four people were slain at a funeral home in Iguala, Guerrero state. The attack was believed to be related to an incident the previous day in which three other people were killed.
(AP, 11/3/18)
2018 Nov 2, In Mexico a third caravan of 1,000 to 1,500 people, this time from El Salvador, entered the country hoping to reach the US border.
(SFC, 11/3/18, p.A2)
2018 Nov 2, North Korea warned it could revive a state policy aimed at strengthening its nuclear arsenal if the US does not lift economic sanctions against the country.
(AP, 11/3/18)
2018 Nov 2, In Pakistan prominent cleric Maulana Samiul Haq (81), head of his faction of the Jamiat-e-Ulema Islam party, was killed in a knife attack at his home in the garrison city of Rawalpindi. Haq was known as 'father of the Taliban'.
(AP, 11/2/18)(AP, 11/3/18)
2018 Nov 2, Islamists held rallies across Pakistan against freedom for Asia Bibi and to denounce the Oct. 31 Supreme Court ruling that overturned her 2010 conviction of insulting the Prophet Muhammad. Her release was apparently delayed after talks failed between the government and radical Islamists who want her publicly hanged.
(AP, 11/2/18)
2018 Nov 2, A senior Palestinian official condemned Brazilian far-right President-elect Jair Bolsonaro's announcement a day earlier that he would move his country's Israel embassy to Jerusalem.
(AFP, 11/2/18)
2018 Nov 2, Russian President Vladimir Putin met Cuba's President Miguel Diaz-Canel who was making his first official visit to long-term ally Moscow.
(AFP, 11/2/18)
2018 Nov 2, Ousted Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said there is credible evidence that his replacement is attempting to buy support in parliament ahead of an expected vote of confidence when it reconvenes.
(AP, 11/2/18)
2018 Nov 2, Syrian government shelling of a rebel-held area in the northwestern Idlib province killed at least eight people in the latest and deadliest violation of a truce in the area reached two months ago.
(AP, 11/2/18)
2018 Nov 2, Turkey lifted sanctions on the US Secretary of Homeland Security and Attorney General, minutes after Washington removed two Turkish ministers from its sanctions list.
(Reuters, 11/2/18)
2018 Nov 2, The World Bank reported that it will cost Colombia upward of $1 billion to tend to the surge of Venezuelan migrants fleeing their nation's economic and humanitarian crisis.
(AP, 11/3/18)
2018 Nov 2, Vietnam's PM In and French PM Edouard Philippe witnessed the signing of two business deals in Hanoi worth over $10 billion and dozens of other cooperation agreements covering energy, education, health, technology and the environment.
(AP, 11/2/18)
2018 Nov 2, In Yemen a Saudi-led coalition fighting Shiite Houthi rebels bombed an air base adjacent to the Sanaa international airport allegedly being used by the rebels to launch drone and ballistic missile attacks.
(AP, 11/2/18)
2018 Nov 3, In California Laudemer Arboleda (33) was shot and killed by Danville Office Andrew Hall. Arboleda had led Danville police on a slow-speed pursuit after someone called the police in response to the Newark man knocking on their door. In 2021 a jury convicted Hall of assault. His mother received $4.9 million to settle a federal civil rights lawsuit.
(SFC, 10/28/21, p.C1)(https://tinyurl.com/fhw8ssm)
2018 Nov 3, A Florida boy (15) was charged with the strangulation death of his mother after the body of Gail Cleavanger (46) was found under a church fire pit in DeBary.
(SSFC, 11/4/18, p.A13)
2018 Nov 3, In Chicago one railroad worker was killed and another seriously hurt when an acetylene tank on truck exploded near a commuter rail line station.
(SFC, 11/5/18, p.A5)
2018 Nov 3, In Texas newlyweds Will Byler and Bailee Ackerman were killed along with a pilot in a helicopter crash hours after they were married at a rach in Uvalde.
(SFC, 11/6/18, p.A6)
2018 Nov 3, In Wisconsin three Girl Scouts and an adult were killed while collecting trash on a rural highway. A pickup truck veered off the road and hit them and sped away. Driver Colton Treu (21) of Chippewa Falls surrendered later. Treu was accused of inhaling chemical vapors before the crash and faced homicide charges. On March 11, 2020, Treu was sentenced to 54 years in prison.
(SFC, 11/5/18, p.A5)(SFC, 11/7/18, p.A4)(NBC News, 3/12/20)
2018 Nov 3, In Afghanistan Maj. Brent Taylor (39) was fatally shot by one of his Afghan trainees in Kabul. Another US military member was wounded. Initial reports indicated the attacker was immediately killed by other Afghan Forces. In 2020 an Army report said Afghan commando Sgt. Asfar Khan (20) had planned the killing for weeks. Taylor was the Utah mayor of Ogden serving in the National Guard.
(Reuters, 11/3/18)(AP, 11/5/18)(AP, 6/8/20)
2018 Nov 3, China said it was willing to offer assistance to Pakistan to help it weather its current fiscal woes but that terms of such aid are still being discussed. Pakistani PM Imran Khan met with his Chinese counterpart Li Keqiang in Beijing.
(AP, 11/3/18)(AFP, 11/3/18)
2018 Nov 3, In China at least 14 people were killed and 27 injured late today in a highway pile-up after a heavy truck lost control and crashed into a line of vehicles waiting at a toll station in the northwestern province of Gansu.
(AP, 11/4/18)
2018 Nov 3, Chinese photographer Lu Guang was traveling in Xinjiang when his wife lost contact with him. He had connected with photographers in Urumqi one week before and was scheduled to meet a friend in Sichuan province on Nov.
(AP, 11/28/18)
2018 Nov 3, In eastern CongoDRC rebels late today killed at least seven civilians and abducted 15 others, including children, in fresh raids in the North Kivu region bordering Uganda.
(AFP, 11/4/18)
2018 Nov 3, The Dominican Republic opened its embassy in Beijing, months after cutting ties with Taiwan amid a Chinese diplomatic offensive that aims to politically isolate the island it claims as its own territory.
(AP, 11/3/18)
2018 Nov 3, In Egypt President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi's World Youth Forum opened in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.
(AP, 11/3/18)
2018 Nov 3, In Egypt security forces killed 19 militants suspected of involvement in an attack the previous day killed at least seven Christians near the Monastery of St Samuel the Confessor in Minya.
(AP, 11/4/18)(Reuters, 12/8/18)
2018 Nov 3, In Hong Kong Raymond Chow (91), film producer, died. He is credited with bringing kung fu legend Bruce Lee to the silver screen and widely regarded as the "godfather" of Hong Kong cinema. He produced more than 170 films over his career.
(AFP, 11/3/18)
2018 Nov 3, Iran inaugurated the production line of its domestically produced fighter jet. Some military experts believe the fighter jet is a carbon copy of an F-5 first produced in the United States in the 1960s.
(Reuters, 11/3/18)
2018 Nov 3, Iraqi officials said jihadists have killed three village chiefs in less than a week in Kirkuk province.
(AFP, 11/3/18)
2018 Nov 3, In southern Mexico thousands of Central American migrants traveling in a caravan resumed their journey toward the United States by hitchhiking and walking along highways, after a governor reneged on a brief offer to provide dozens of buses to take them to Mexico City more quickly.
(AP, 11/3/18)
2018 Nov 3, Voters in several parts of Myanmar went to the polls in 13 by-elections seen as a test of support for leader Aung San Suu Kyi and her ruling party. The party of Aung San Suu Kyi was defeated in six constituencies, showing uneven support for her government after a string of controversies. The ruling National League for Democracy (NLD) won at least six seats to fill 13 of the 1,171 seats in national, regional and state parliaments.
(AP, 11/3/18)(AFP, 11/4/18)(AP, 11/5/18)
2018 Nov 3, Nigeria's main Shiite Muslim movement said the army killed at least 50 of its members who were protesting this week. Nigeria's military said it killed six people and claims the protesters had fired first.
(AP, 11/3/18)
2018 Nov 3, In Pakistan nationwide protests triggered by a Christian woman's acquittal on blasphemy charges ended following an overnight deal between Islamists and the government. Under the agreement Asia Bibi may not leave the country until the Pakistan Supreme Court's ruling is reviewed. Her lawyer, Saiful Mulook, left Pakistan and fled to the Netherlands, due to fear that he could be attacked after Bibi's conviction was overturned days earlier.
(AP, 11/3/18)(Reuters, 11/5/18)
2018 Nov 3, In the Philippines Sister Patricia Anne Fox, an Australian nun who angered the Philippine president by joining anti-government protests, used her final hours in the country to call on Filipinos to unite and fight human rights abuses.
(AP, 11/3/18)
2018 Nov 3, In Sicily a family of nine drowned overnight after a swollen river on a plain near the coastal town of Casteldaccia submerged their holiday villa in water and mud in seconds, leaving them no chance for escape.
(AFP, 11/6/18)
2018 Nov 3, A jury in Spain found Patrick Nogueira (21), a Brazilian man, guilty of killing his aunt, uncle and two young cousins in 2016 and ruled unanimously that the slayings were premeditated.
(AP, 11/4/18)
2018 Nov 3, Russia said that Afghan President Ashraf Ghani had agreed to send a group of senior politicians to peace talks in Moscow, at which a delegation representing the Taliban would be present.
(Reuters, 11/3/18)
2018 Nov 3, Spanish police said they have busted a crime ring that cloned credit cards and was headed by an Algerian man (49) man who had previously been found guilty of helping finance the September 11, 2001 attacks.
(AP, 11/3/18)
2018 Nov 3, In Sri Lanka an ethnic minority Tamil party said that it will support a no-confidence motion to be brought against Mahinda Rajapaksa, the country's former strongman, whose controversial appointment as prime minister has plunged the country into a political crisis.
(AP, 11/3/18)
2018 Nov 3, In eastern Syria 14 civilians and nine IS jihadists were reported killed in coalition air strikes in Hajin and the nearby towns of Sousa and Al-Shaafa.
(AP, 11/4/18)
2018 Nov 3, In Turkey Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko and the Istanbul-based Orthodox patriarch signed an accord that paves the way for the recognition of an independent Ukrainian church, a plan that has infuriated Moscow.
(AFP, 11/3/18)
2018 Nov 3, A United Nations aid convoy reached the Rukban refugee camp in Syria where thousands of people are stranded in the desert, close to the border with Jordan. Rukban is home to more than 50,000 people whose last UN aid convoy arrived in January.
(Reuters, 11/3/18)
2018 Nov 4, It was reported that the world's wild animal population has lunged 60 percent since 1970 because of pressure from human activities.
(SSFC, 11/4/18, p.B12)
2018 Nov 4, In Afghanistan a Taliban attack in southern Kandahar province late today killed at least four policemen.
(AP, 11/5/18)
2018 Nov 4, In Bahrain Shiite cleric Sheikh Ali Salman, who was a central figure in Bahrain's 2011 Arab Spring protests, was sentenced to life in prison on spying charges along with co-defendants Sheikh Hassan Ali Juma Sultan and Ali Mahdi Ali al-Aswad.
(AP, 11/4/18)
2018 Nov 4, Jeremy Heywood (56), the former head of Britain's civil service and a senior adviser to PM Theresa May on implementing Brexit, died following illness.
(Reuters, 11/4/18)
2018 Nov 4, In China a Tibetan man set himself on fire and died in a protest calling for the return of the region's exiled Buddhist leader, the Dalai Lama. Dorbe (23) self-immolated in Ngaba county, a traditionally Tibetan region of Sichuan province.
(AP, 11/9/18)
2018 Nov 4, Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel arrived in Pyongyang with his wife. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel — both hoping to get out from under US economic sanctions — agreed to expand and strengthen their strategic relations.
(AP, 11/5/18)
2018 Nov 4, French President Emmanuel Macron kicked off a week of commemorations for the 100th anniversary of the end of World War One.
(AFP, 11/4/18)
2018 Nov 4, Police in India said that they are investigating allegations that a 4-year-old girl was gang-raped the previous evening while being treated for a snake bite in an intensive care unit at a hospital in Uttar Pradesh state. One man was in custody and police were looking for others.
(AP, 11/4/18)
2018 Nov 4, In India villagers circled around the female tiger after it killed the farmer late today in Uttar Pradesh state. When the tiger tried to escape, the villagers crushed it under the wheels of a tractor. Villagers said the tiger injured another person in an attack about 10 days ago.
(AP, 11/5/18)
2018 Nov 4, Thousands of Iranians chanting "Death to America" rallied to mark the anniversary of the seizure of the US Embassy during the 1979 Islamic Revolution and the imminent reimposition of US sanctions on Iran's oil sector.
(Reuters, 11/4/18)
2018 Nov 4, Rescuers said floods killed 12 people on the island of Sicily, including nine members of a single family, pushing Italy's week-long storm toll beyond 30.
(AFP, 11/4/18)
2018 Nov 4, Japanese author Haruki Murakami (69) announced that he is working to set up a library that will showcase his works and also serve as a meeting place for research and international exchanges.
(AP, 11/4/18)
2018 Nov 4, Voters in New Caledonia voted in a referendum on whether the French territory in the South Pacific should break free from the European country that claimed it in the mid-19th century. 56.4 percent of people rejected the proposition.
(AFP, 11/4/18)
2018 Nov 4, In Mexico thousands of wary Central American migrants resumed their push toward the US, a day after arguments over the path ahead saw some travelers splinter away from the main caravan, which is entering a treacherous part of its journey. Mexico now faces the unprecedented situation of having three caravans stretched over 300 miles (500 km) of highway in the states of Chiapas, Oaxaca and Veracruz, with a total of more than 6,000 migrants. More than 500 migrants arrived at the Jesus Martinez stadium on the eastern side of Mexico City, where they were served hot meals and supplied with blankets to spend the night.
(AP, 11/4/18)(Reuters, 11/5/18)(AP, 11/5/18)
2018 Nov 4, In eastern Syria the Islamic State group reportedly killed 12 US-backed SDF fighters in a surprise attack from the jihadists' holdout on the Iraqi border. An SDF spokesman, however, denied any members of his Kurdish-led alliance had been killed.
(AP, 11/4/18)
2018 Nov 4, In Ukraine Kateryna Gandzyuk (33), an adviser to the mayor of the southern city of Kherson and an outspoken critic of corruption in law enforcement agencies, died following an acid attack in July. In 2019 Vladyslav Manger, the head of the regional council in the southern region of Kherson, was accused of financing the crime.
(http://tinyurl.com/y5wkvl3h)(AP, 2/11/19)
2018 Nov 4, Officials in Yemen said fighting has escalated around the key port city of Hodeida, with more than 150 combatants killed over the weekend from both the rebel and government-backed sides. Yemeni forces backed by a Saudi-led coalition inched closer to the Red Sea port city of Hodeidah as they battled Iranian-aligned Houthi fighters entrenched there.
(AP, 11/4/18)(Reuters, 11/4/18)
2018 Nov 5, The Trump administration's tough new sanctions on Iran took effect, but eight major importers of Iranian oil were spared from immediate penalties. They included China, India, Italy, Greece, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Turkey.
(AP, 11/5/18)(AFP, 11/5/18)
2018 Nov 5, The FDA approved a new sublingual formulation of sufentanil, Dsuvia, for the management of acute pain in adults in medically supervised healthcare settings, such as hospitals, surgical centers, and emergency departments. Dsuvia, a synthetic opioid, The drug was developed BY AcelRx Pharmaceuticals in collaboration with the Department of Defense with the military population in mind.
(https://tinyurl.com/ybvm2akx)
2018 Nov 5, In Marin County, Ca., Davance Lamar Reed (37) went on a shooting spree killing one man and seriously injuring his girlfriend (30) and another Man (32).
(SFC, 11/7/18, p.D1)
2018 Nov 5, In North Carolina Hania Noelia Aguilar (13) was kidnapped from a mobile home park as she prepared to leave for a bus stop. Police found her body several weeks later in a body of water 10 miles away. On Dec. 8 the FBI said Michael Ray McLellan (34) has been charged with murder, rape and eight other felonies.
(SFC, 11/8/18, p.A6)(SSFC, 12/9/18, p.A8)
2018 Nov 5, In Afghanistan the Taliban launched an attack on a newly established joint Afghan army and police checkpoint in eastern Ghazni province, killing at least 13 soldiers and policemen.
(AP, 11/5/18)
2018 Nov 5, In Australia a shark killed Daniel Christidis (33) near Cid Harbor on Whitsunday Island on the Great Barrier Reef where two tourists were mauled on consecutive days in September.
(AP, 11/6/18)
2018 Nov 5, Bulgarian prosecutors said more than $1.35 million in fake banknotes have been seized and three men charged in Varna for suspected membership in an organized crime ring making counterfeit bills.
(AP, 11/5/18)
2018 Nov 5, In Cameroon gunmen kidnapped 79 school students along with their principal, a teacher and a driver, in an English-speaking region where separatists are fighting an armed campaign for independence.
(AFP, 11/5/18)
2018 Nov 5, A Chinese trawler suspected of poaching off Japan's southern coast sailed away with Japanese inspectors on board. The inspectors returned to their own ship after its half-day chase of the trawler, with the help of Japanese coast guard. The incident surfaced more than 50 days after it occurred when Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga responded to a reporter's question following a news report.
(AP, 12/27/18)
2018 Nov 5, France gave 30 million euros ($34 million) of aid to Gambia as part of efforts to support its democratic transition and ensure stability in a region Paris deems vital to its interests.
(Reuters, 11/5/18)
2018 Nov 5, France said it has issued international arrest warrants for three ranking Syrian officials, accusing them of complicity with crimes against humanity in the deaths of a father and son who were detained in 2013.
(AP, 11/5/18)
2018 Nov 5, In France two buildings collapsed into a giant pile of rubble and beams in the southern city of Marseille. Firefighters soon found the bodies of three people in the ruins. On Nov. 7 death toll rose to six in with the discoveries of two men's bodies.
(AP, 11/5/18)(AFP, 11/6/18)(AP, 11/7/18)
2018 Nov 5, Iran greeted the re-imposition of US sanctions with air defense drills and a statement from President Hassan Rouhani that the nation faces a "war situation," raising Mideast tensions as America's maximalist approach to the Islamic Republic takes hold.
(AP, 11/5/18)
2018 Nov 5, In Italy a knife-wielding man held hostages in a northern post office, days after receiving a 19-year jail term for a Mafia conviction. Francesco Amato is one of 125 defendants convicted last week in nearby Reggio Emilia in a trial about infiltration by the 'ndrangheta, a southern Italy-based organized crime group, into businesses in the affluent Reggio Emilia region.
(AP, 11/5/18)
2018 Nov 5, In Malaysia Musa Aman (67), former leader of resource-rich Sabah state, was detained by the anti-graft agency before being taken to court. He pleaded not guilty to 35 counts of corruption for allegedly receiving a total of $63.3 million in Hong Kong and Singapore through proxies between 2004 and 2008 in exchange for timber contracts.
(AP, 11/5/18)
2018 Nov 5, A big group of Central Americans pushed on toward Mexico City, planning to exit a part of the country that has long been treacherous for migrants seeking to get to the United States.
(AP, 11/5/18)
2018 Nov 5, In Poland a North Korean worker who claims he is a victim of modern slavery in a Polish shipyard filed a criminal complaint against a Dutch shipbuilder that bought products from the Polish firm. Dutch lawyer Barbara van Straaten filed the case on the worker's behalf.
(AP, 11/8/18)
2018 Nov 5, Saudi Arabia told the United Nations it would prosecute those responsible for the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at its Istanbul consulate, as Western states pressed it for a credible investigation.
(Reuters, 11/5/18)
2018 Nov 5, In Senegal a two-day African security forum opened in Dakar amid concerns about funding for a much-trumpeted initiative to bind the G5 Sahel force (Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger) into an anti-terror force.
(AFP, 11/5/18)
2018 Nov 5, South African police officers arrested Danish woman Britta Nielsen (64) suspected of a huge fraud at home. She had 648,700 rand in cash ($46,000) in her possession which was confiscated. Her son, Jimmy Hayat, was arrested Oct. 30 at Johannesburg's international airport as he was about to leave the country with two diamonds in his luggage.
(AP, 11/6/18)
2018 Nov 5, South Korea soccer international Lee Chang-min was involved in a car crash that left one person dead and two injured on Jeju Island.
(AP, 11/10/18)
2018 Nov 5, The Spanish coast guard said at least 17 migrants died in the space of 24 hours while trying to cross the sea from North Africa to Spain, and rescuers picked up more than 100 others.
(Reuters, 11/6/18)
2018 Nov 5, Former Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapakse rallied tens of thousands of supporters in a show of strength even as the parliament's speaker refused to recognize his controversial appointment as prime minister.
(AFP, 11/5/18)
2018 Nov 5, In southern Taiwan the new National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts opened. The sprawling complex of four theaters was billed as the biggest performing arts center in the world.
(AP, 11/5/18)
2018 Nov 5, In Yemen Battles raged near the port of Hodeida, crucial for humanitarian aid, but Saudi Arabia and its allies said they were committed to de-escalating hostilities with rebels as calls for a ceasefire mount.
(AFP, 11/5/18)
2018 Nov 6, Democrats wrested control of the US House of Representatives from Trump's Republicans in midterm elections seen as a referendum on his two-year-old presidency and closely watched around the world. Republicans increased their majority in the Senate. Onetime Somali refugee Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, the daughter of Palestinian immigrants, shared the historic distinction of becoming the first two Muslim women elected to Congress.
(Reuters, 11/7/18)(AFP, 11/7/18)
2018 Nov 6, San Francisco voters approved Prop. C, designed to inject the most money ever at city homeless problems by taxing big businesses.
(SFC, 11/7/18, p.A1)
2018 Nov 6, Voters in Mt. View, California, the home town of Google, backed Measure P, which implements a per-employee business license tax that ranges from $5 to $150 per worker, rising with the size of the company.
(SFC, 11/9/18, p.D2)
2018 Nov 6, Colorado voters rejected a measure that could have sharply reduced oil and gas drilling, including the method known as fracking, by requiring new oil and gas wells to be farther from occupied buildings than allowed under current law.
(AP, 11/7/18)
2018 Nov 6, Guillermo Falcon, one of Miami's former drug kingpins, was deported to the Dominican Republic after completing a 20-year money-laundering sentence. His partner Salvador Magluta continued to serve a 195-year drug trafficking sentence.
(SFC, 11/21/18, p.A6)
2018 Nov 6, Illinois voters elected J.B. Pritzker, the billionaire heir to the Hyatt Hotel fortune, as state governor.
(SFC, 11/7/18, p.A6)
2018 Nov 6, In Kansas, Sharice Davids and Deb Haaland became the first Native American women elected to Congress.
(AFP, 11/7/18)
2018 Nov 6, Kansas voters elected Laura Kelly (D) over Kris Kobach (R) to serve as state governor.
(SFC, 11/7/18, p.A6)
2018 Nov 6, Michigan voters elected Gretchen Whitmer (D) to serve as state governor.
(SFC, 11/7/18, p.A6)
2018 Nov 6, Voters in Michigan passed a ballot measure to legalize marijuana. Rashida Tlaib became the first Palestinian-American woman to be elected to the US Congress representing southwest Detroit and its suburbs west to the city of Dearborn.
(AP, 11/7/18) (Reuters, 11/7/18)
2018 Nov 6, Missouri became the 31st state to approve marijuana for medical use.
(AP, 11/7/18)
2018 Nov 6, Missouri voters back a ballot initiative known as Clean Missouri. This put a squeeze on campaign contributions and limited the value of gifts and meals lobbyists could dish out. It also stated that an independent demographer would have the final say in the redistricting commission.
(https://tinyurl.com/y5xxwtsa)(Econ., 9/12/20, p.24)
2018 Nov 6, Voters in Utah joined the growing number of US states to legalize medical marijuana.
(SSFC, 11/11/18, p.A8)
2018 Nov 6, Washington state voters raised the minimum age from 18 to 21 for buying semiautomatic rifles.
(SFC, 2/12/19, p.A7)
2018 Nov 6, In Afghanistan the Taliban attacked border troops in western Farah province killing at least 20.
(SFC, 11/7/18, p.A2)
2018 Nov 6, An aircraft flew 20 tons of pine nuts from Afghanistan to China, inaugurating their first air cargo link as the landlocked South Asian nation turns to overseas markets to offset its trade deficit.
(Reuters, 11/6/18)
2018 Nov 6, A United Nations report released today found that 56 civilians were killed and 379 others wounded in attacks during Afghanistan's recent parliamentary election.
(AP, 11/6/18)
2018 Nov 6, Representatives from Bosnia, Croatia, Kosovo, Montenegro and Serbia signed an agreement to identify victims of the 1990s wars. Around 12,000 people were still not accounted for out of the 40,000 missing from the wars that tore apart the former Yugoslavia.
(AFP, 11/7/18)
2018 Nov 6, Cameroon's President Paul Biya (85) was sworn in for a seventh term after disputed elections and amid mounting unrest in an English-speaking region.
(AFP, 11/6/18)
2018 Nov 6, China rejected Western criticism of suspected mass detention and heavy surveillance of Uighurs in the western region of Xinjiang as Western countries including France, Germany and the United States, called on China to close down detention camps that activists say hold 1 million Uighurs and other Muslims.
(Reuters, 11/6/18)
2018 Nov 6, The 6-day biennial Airshow China opened in the coastal city of Zhuhai. It is traditionally an event for Beijing to parade its growing aviation prowess.
(Reuters, 11/6/18)
2018 Nov 6, In China billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates helped kickoff the 3-day "Reinvented Toilet" Expo in Beijing.
(SFC, 11/7/18, p.A3)
2018 Nov 6, China unveiled a replica of its first permanently crewed space station, which would replace the international community's orbiting laboratory and symbolizes the country's major ambitions beyond Earth.
(AFP, 11/6/18)
2018 Nov 6, The EU extended sanctions against Venezuela until November 2019 for what it said were human rights violations and undermining of democracy and the rule of law under President Nicolas Maduro.
(Reuters, 11/6/18)
2018 Nov 6, French police arrested five men and a woman, all from the radical far right, suspected of plotting to attack French President Emmanuel Macron.
(AP, 11/6/18)
2018 Nov 6, Hungary's government set out plans to create new administrative courts overseen by the justice minister - a move the leftist opposition has said will limit the independence of the judiciary.
(Reuters, 11/7/18)
2018 Nov 6, A Hungarian police spokesman said that a probe opened in February on the basis of findings by the European Union's anti-fraud office OLAF had been terminated.
(AFP, 11/7/18)
2018 Nov 6, In India the northern city of Ayodhya broke a Guinness World Record by lighting 300,150 earthen lamps and keeping them lit for at least 45 minutes as part of the annual celebration of Diwali.
(SFC, 11/7/18, p.A2)
2018 Nov 6, UN investigators said more than 200 mass graves containing between 6,000 and 12,000 bodies have been found in Iraq from the time of the Islamic State group's three-year reign.
(AP, 11/6/18)
2018 Nov 6, Italy said it will help Asia Bibi, a Pakistani Christian woman, leave her country because her life is in danger following charges of blasphemy against Islam that put her on death row for eight years.
(Reuters, 11/6/18)
2018 Nov 6, In Mexico thousands of Central Americans dreaming of getting to the United States awoke to donations of fruit and hot coffee at a sports stadium in Mexico's chilly capital as the US held midterm elections.
(AP, 11/6/18)
2018 Nov 6, Peru's former police chief Raul Becerra and a dozen others were arrested for allegedly trafficking babies. One five-month-old baby was rescued as police raided 18 properties in the southern city of Arequipa.
(Reuters, 11/7/18)
2018 Nov 6, In the Philippines lawyer Benjamin Ramos (56) was shot and killed as he left his office by men on a motorcycle near the town of Kabankalan. He was the 34th lawyer killed since Pres. Rodrigo Duterte took office.
(SFC, 11/9/18, p.A4)
2018 Nov 6, Romania's President Klaus Iohannis blasted the ruling party's leader as a "criminal at the top of the state apparatus," saying politicians with criminal convictions are trying to take over the country's justice system and undermine efforts to fight corruption.
(AP, 11/6/18)
2018 Nov 6, Russia's PM Dmitry Medvedev signed measures approving regulations that would identify smartphone messenger users by their cellphone numbers. The decree goes into effect after 180 days.
(AP, 11/6/18)
2018 Nov 6, In Syria a bomb went off inside a car in the northern town of Manbij, killing one person.
(AP, 11/6/18)
2018 Nov 6, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that joint patrols by US forces and a Kurdish-led militia in northern Syria are "unacceptable".
(AP, 11/6/18)
2018 Nov 6, President Tayyip Erdogan said Turkey would not abide by the renewed US sanctions on Iran's oil and shipping industries, adding that they were aimed at "unbalancing the world".
(Reuters, 11/6/18)
2018 Nov 6, Yemen's Houthi rebels claimed they halted advances of their adversaries, the US-backed, Saudi-led Arab coalition, at a key battlefield around a strategic Red Sea port city. Fighting continued around Hodeida despite the statement from the Shiite rebels.
(AP, 11/6/18)
2018 Nov 7, US Attorney Gen'l. Jeff Sessions submitted his resignation following Pres. Donald Trump's request that he resign. Trump announced in a tweet that Matthew Whitaker, Session's Chief of Staff, would take over as acting attorney general.
(SFC, 11/8/18, p.A1)
2018 Nov 7, In southern California former Marine Ian David Long (28) released a smoke bomb and opened gunfire late today killing 12 people at the Borderline Bar and Grill in Thousand Oaks. Long then turned the gun on himself. It was later reported that Sgt. Jon Helus, among the 12 killed, was hit five times by the gunman, but that the fatal bullet was fired by a CHP officer.
(SFC, 11/9/18, p.A1)(SFC, 12/8/18, p.A6)
2018 Nov 7, Oscar-winning actress Emma Thompson received a damehood in recognition for her splendid career, an event made special by the fact that it was given to her by Prince William, a longtime friend.
(AP, 11/7/18)
2018 Nov 7, Kidnappers in west Cameroon freed 78 school children and a driver early today. Two other children were still missing, along with the principal and a teacher. Armed men had seized the youngsters on Nov. 5 in the city of Bamend.
(Reuters, 11/7/18)
2018 Nov 7, In Cameroon Mimi Mefo, a prominent journalist and television presenter from the restive anglophone region, was jailed for "attacking state security". Mefo was charged over a social media post which said "the army was responsible for the death of US missionary Charles Trumann Wesco who died in October.
(AFP, 11/8/18)
2018 Nov 7, French composer Francis Lai (86), who won an Oscar in 1970 for the iconic "Love Story" soundtrack, died. Lai started as an accordionist, but quickly rose through the ranks as a composer, writing songs for singers including Edith Piaf and Yves Montand.
(AP, 11/8/18)
2018 Nov 7, Guam's Catholic church said it will file for bankruptcy — a move that will allow the archdiocese to avoid trial in dozens of lawsuits alleging child sexual abuse by priests and move toward settlements.
(AP, 11/7/18)
2018 Nov 7, In India Yogi Adityanath, a robe-wearing Hindu priest who is the BJP chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, changed the name of Faizabad district to Ayodhya, the place where Hindus believe Lord Ram was born thousands of years ago. Before the change, Ayodhya was the name of a town in Faizabad. Last month PM Narendra Modi changed the name of Allahabad, where three rivers considered holy by Hindus meet, to the Hindu name Prayagraj.
(Reuters, 11/8/18)
2018 Nov 7, Japan's Tokyo Medical University, that acknowledged systematically discriminating against female applicants, announced plans to accept more than 60 who were unfairly rejected over the past two years.
(AP, 11/7/18)
2018 Nov 7, Madagascar voted for a president to tackle unemployment, poverty and corruption on the Indian Ocean island, with the incumbent and two former heads of state leading a field of 36 contenders. Former president Marc Ravalomanana garnered 35.35 percent of the vote in the first round, behind his successor, Andry Rajoelina, who got 39.23 percent.
(Reuters, 11/7/18)(Reuters, 11/28/18)
2018 Nov 7, Central American migrants continued to straggle in for a rest stop at a Mexico City stadium, where about 4,500 continue to weigh offers to stay in Mexico against the desire of many to reach the US border.
(AP, 11/7/18)
2018 Nov 7, Palestinian Ahmad al-Najar (21), shot last month during protests on the Israel-Gaza border, succumbed to his wounds.
(AFP, 11/8/18)
2018 Nov 7, Saudi Arabia's King Salman began a domestic tour with a first stop in the conservative heartland of Qassim province, where he pardoned prisoners serving time on financial charges and announced 16 billion riyals (about $4.27 billion) in new projects.
(AP, 11/7/18)
2018 Nov 7, In Sweden Jayne Svenungsson, a member of the academy that awards the Nobel Prize in Literature, said she is leaving the body. She became the eighth person to quit or to be forced off the 18-member board of the Swedish Academy since the scandals broke last year.
(AP, 11/7/18)
2018 Nov 7, Thailand's Supreme Court restored a 37-year prison term given to Vivat Yodprasert, convicted of shooting four people during 2014 political violence. He was dubbed the "Popcorn Gunman" because he opened fire with an assault rifle concealed in a sack with the word "POPCORN" emblazoned on it.
(AP, 11/7/18)
2018 Nov 7, Police in Thailand arrested Sgt. Maj. Jakkrit Khomsing (43), an HIV-infected soldier, who allegedly blackmailed and raped more than 70 teenage boys.
(AP, 11/8/18)
2018 Nov 7, The UN and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent completed a desperately needed aid delivery to displaced Syrians in the remote Rukban desert camp near the border with Jordan. Nearly 50,000 people were stranded in the desert and had received no aid since January.
(AP, 11/7/18)
2018 Nov 7, Vietnam and the United States said they have finished the cleanup of dioxin contamination at Danang airport caused by the transport and storage of the herbicide Agent Orange during the Vietnam War.
(AP, 11/7/18)
2018 Nov 7, In Yemen troops from a US-backed, Saudi-led coalition pounded Houthi rebel positions in Hodeida with airstrikes and a ground assault and took control of a major road leading into the city.
(AP, 11/7/18)
2018 Nov 7, In Zimbabwe a head-on collision between two buses killed 47 people near Rusape. Police said the death toll could rise because there 80 others admitted to hospital, some with serious injuries.
(AP, 11/8/18)(SFC, 11/9/18, p.A2)
2018 Nov 8, The White House suspended CNN reporter Jim Acosta after he and Pres. Trump had a heated confrontation during a news conference a day earlier.
(SFC, 11/9/18, p.A7)
2018 Nov 8, In northern California more than 30,000 people fled for their lives as the Camp Fire exploded to more than 20,000 acres in Butte County. The community of Paradise was pretty much devastated.
(SFC, 11/9/18, p.A1)
2018 Nov 8, In southern California transient Johnny Josue Sanchez was convicted of five counts of murder for setting a fire in a vacant Los Angeles building that killed five people on June 13, 2016. In 2019 Sanchez (25) was sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole.
(http://tinyurl.com/yhx4n8u3)(SSFC, 11/10/19, p.A8)
2018 Nov 8, In northern California the new $300 million City Center Bishop Ranch shopping mall, designed by Renzo Piano, opened.
(SSFC, 11/11/18, p.D1)
2018 Nov 8, C.Y. Lee (102), author of the Flower Drum Song (1957) died in Los Angeles. It was adopted for Broadway (1958-1960) and turned into a film in 1961.
(SFC, 2/5/19, p.C3)
2018 Nov 8, Raymond Plank (b.1922), co-founder of Apache Corp., died at his home in Ucross, Wyoming.
(SSFC, 11/11/18, p.C10)
2018 Nov 8, Tesla's board named one of its own as chairman to replace Elon Musk, complying with terms of a fraud settlement with US securities regulators. The company's board named Australian telecommunications executive Robyn Denholm (55) as chairman, effective immediately.
(AP, 11/8/18)
2018 Nov 8, In Afghanistan insurgents attacked a police outpost early today in Khugyani district, killing eight policemen, including a district commander. The attack set of a firefight that lasted for hours until the government sent reinforcements and drove Taliban from the compound. The Taliban also attacked a police outpost in central Wardak province, killing five policemen.
(AP, 11/8/18)
2018 Nov 8, Australia launched a multi-billion dollar fund to counter China's rising influence in the region. PM Scott Morrison said Australia would invest in telecommunications, energy, transport and water projects in the region.
(Reuters, 11/8/18)
2018 Nov 8, In Australia former New South Wales (NSW) state Labor party leader Luke Foley resigned after being accused of sexually harassing an ABC journalist, four months before a state election he had been in a position to win. Foley denied the allegations and said he has hired lawyers to sue for defamation over the claims.
(AP, 11/9/18)
2018 Nov 8, Brazilian police arrested seven lawmakers in Rio de Janeiro. Three others were taken into custody earlier. They were served with arrest warrants based on allegations they accepted bribes in exchange for supporting then-Gov. Sergio Cabral's "criminal organization".
(AP, 11/8/18)
2018 Nov 8, Zamira Hajiyeva (55) was freed on bail by a British judge while she fights extradition to Azerbaijan over embezzlement allegations. She is also the subject of a separate investigation in her home country of Azerbaijan, where her husband, former International Bank of Azerbaijan Chairman Jahangir Hajiyev, was sentenced to 15 years in jail in 2016 for fraud and embezzlement.
(AP, 11/8/18)
2018 Nov 8, Canadian aerospace and transportation manufacturer Bombardier announced 5,000 global job cuts over the next year to 18 months in a bid to "streamline" the struggling firm.
(AFP, 11/8/18)
2018 Nov 8, An Egyptian court convicted 65 suspected militants of setting up a terrorist group and declaring allegiance to the Islamic State. 18 of them were sentenced to life in prison.
(SFC, 11/9/18, p.A2)
2018 Nov 8, The Asia editor of the Financial Times, Victor Mallet, was refused entry to Hong Kong, weeks after he was denied a new work visa in what critics call an ominous sign of Beijing encroaching on the semi-autonomous Chinese territory's civil liberties.
(AP, 11/9/18)
2018 Nov 8, In India Maoist rebels blew up a bus, killing four civilians and a paramilitary soldier in Dantewada district of Chhattisgarh state.
(AP, 11/8/18)
2018 Nov 8, In India pollution levels in New Delhi that shot up to 681, as reported by the US Embassy from 200 a day earlier after tens of thousands of people set off a multitude of firecrackers to celebrate the major Hindu festival of Diwali.
(AP, 11/8/18)
2018 Nov 8, Iranian celebrities including Oscar-winning film director Asghar Farhadi and Grammy winner Kayhan Kalhor launched a petition condemning US sanctions on Tehran and warning of the impact on ordinary people.
(AFP, 11/9/18)
2018 Nov 8, Israeli police recommended bribery charges against PM Benjamin Netanyahu's lawyer and five other suspects over a $2 billion sale of German Thyssenkrupp submarines to Israel.
(Reuters, 11/8/18)
2018 Nov 8, Former Madagascan president Hery Rajaonarimampianina alleged that "many voting irregularities" pointed to fraud in this week's election, heightening fears of protests and a disputed result.
(AFP, 11/8/18)
2018 Nov 8, International rights groups urged Mauritania to release anti-slavery activists, as the United States has announced it will end trade benefits to the West African country over the continuation of slavery. 33 human rights organizations called for the release of blogger Mohamed Cheikh Ould Mkhaitir (35), who remains in custody in an undisclosed location.
(AP, 11/8/18)
2018 Nov 8, In western Norway an operation was underway to try to stop a Norwegian navy frigate from sinking after it collided with a Maltese oil tanker in a fjord.
(AFP, 11/8/18)
2018 Nov 8, In Pakistan Aasia Bibi was with her family and under heavy security after being transferred to Islamabad overnight from her detention facility in southern Punjab, triggering expectations that her departure from the country could be imminent.
(AP, 11/8/18)
2018 Nov 8, A Pakistani court found a woman and her friend guilty of poisoning to death 17 family members and sentenced them each to multiple life sentences in prison. The judge also fined Aasia Bibi and Shahid Lashari 3 million rupees ($23,000) each. Bibi was married against her will in September last year to Amjad Hussain in the central city of Rajan Pur.
(AP, 11/9/18)
2018 Nov 8, Syrian TV reported that Syria's army has freed a group of 19 women and children who were abducted by Islamic State during a raid on the city of Sweida and neighboring villages in July. Islamic State group militants shot and killed two children during the operation.
(Reuters, 11/8/18)(AP, 11/9/18)
2018 Nov 8, Tajikistan security sources reported that 24 prisoners and two guards were killed after dozens of inmates rioted overnight at a maximum security prison.
(AFP, 11/8/18)
2018 Nov 8, Tanzania released two staff members of the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), a day after they were detained and their passports seized.
(Reuters, 11/8/18)
2018 Nov 8, Tunisian President Beji Caid Essebsi said he was ready to swear in ten new ministers named in a reshuffle that he had originally rejected, easing a high-level political standoff that has alarmed donors.
(Reuters, 11/8/18)
2018 Nov 8, Turkish journalist Husnu Mahalli was handed a suspended sentence of two years and five months in prison for insulting Turkey's President Tayyip Erdogan.
(Reuters, 11/8/18)
2018 Nov 8, The UN said at least 2.3 million people have fled economic and political crisis in Venezuela, mostly since 2015.
(AFP, 11/8/18)
2018 Nov 9, President Donald Trump invoked extraordinary national security powers to deny asylum to migrants who enter the country illegally, tightening the border as caravans of Central Americans slowly approach the United States. The plan was immediately challenged in court.
(AP, 11/9/18)
2018 Nov 9, In California nine people were reported killed in the Camp Fire in Paradise. Hundreds of thousands were ordered to evacuate as wildfires raged in the north and south. The rapidly spreading Woolsey Fire threatened the resort of Malibu, home to Hollywood stars. In 2020 investigators reported that Southern California Edison equipment had sparked the Woolsey Fire.
(AFP, 11/10/18)(SFC, 11/12/18, p.A8)(SFC, 10/31/20, p.A4)
2018 Nov 9, In Macon, Georgia, Jermaine Bernard Anthony (39), on trial for child molestation, was found dead from a gunshot wound to the head.
(SFC, 11/10/18, p.A6)
2018 Nov 9, In central Iowa a small plane crashed near the Guthrie Center Airport killing all four people on board.
(SSFC, 11/11/18, p.A8)
2018 Nov 9, Dorothy L. Cheney (68), American primate scientist, died at her home in Pennsylvania. She and her husband, Robert M. Seyfarth, authored "How Monkeys See the World: Inside the Mind of Another Species" (1990) and "Baboon Metaphysics: The Evolution of a Social Mind" (2007).
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_Cheney_(scientist))(SFC, 11/16/18, p.C4)
2018 Nov 9, In Australia Somali-born Hassan Khalif Shire Ali (30) set fire to a pickup truck laden with gas cylinders in the center of Melbourne and stabbed three people, killing one, before he was shot by police in a rampage they called an act of terrorism. Police said he was radicalized and inspired by the militant group's propaganda.
(Reuters, 11/9/18)(Reuters, 11/10/18)
2018 Nov 9, Austria's government said that a retired colonel in the country's military is suspected of having spied for Russia for decades, a claim swiftly dismissed by Moscow.
(AP, 11/9/18)
2018 Nov 9, Brazilian police arrested Joesley Batista, a former chairman of the world's largest meatpacker, whose testimony was central to allegations of corruption against the president. Ricardo Saud, a former executive at the holding company that controls JBS, was also arrested. The arrests were part of an investigation into a graft scheme that dates to 2014-2015 in which executives paid bribes to civil servants and politicians linked to the Agriculture Ministry in exchange for favorable decisions and regulation that helped JBS eliminate competition.
(AP, 11/9/18)
2018 Nov 9, Congo's health ministry said the latest Ebola outbreak is the worst in the country's recorded history with 319 confirmed and probable cases. The deadly virus has killed about 198 people since the outbreak was declared Aug. 1 in the volatile east.
(AP, 11/10/18)
2018 Nov 9, In Denmark Britta Nielsen, the main suspect in a huge fraud involving public money, was arrested on her return to Copenhagen after she voluntarily left South Africa.
(AP, 11/9/18)
2018 Nov 9, In Ethiopia Somalia's President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed and Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki met with Ethiopian PM Abiy Ahmed to cement regional economic ties as relations warm between the once-rival nations.
(AFP, 11/9/18)
2018 Nov 9, Floods struck several areas of Jordan. 12 people were killed, including two children and a diver who had been involved in rescue efforts. Rescuers on Nov. 12 found the body of a five-year-old girl killed raising the death toll to 13.
(AP, 11/10/18)(AFP, 11/12/18)
2018 Nov 9, Macedonia extended the state of emergency at its southern and northern borders until June 2019 in an effort to reduce illegal border crossings by migrants.
(AP, 11/9/18)
2018 Nov 9, In Mexico thousands of Central American migrants decided to depart Mexico City and head toward the northern city of Tijuana, opting for the longer but likely safer route to the US border.
(AP, 11/9/18)
2018 Nov 9, A Myanmar court dismissed a case against three senior journalists from the country’s largest private newspaper, after authorities in the city of Yangon agreed to drop the charges.
(Reuters, 11/9/18)
2018 Nov 9, Dutch officials said they will prosecute a nursing home doctor for euthanizing an elderly woman with dementia, the first time a doctor has been charged since the Netherlands legalized euthanasia in 2002.
(AP, 11/9/18)
2018 Nov 9, A court in the Netherlands convicted 34 people for blocking a highway last year to prevent anti-racism demonstrators from protesting at a festive parade featuring the Dutch version of Santa Claus and his helpers, called Black Petes.
(AP, 11/9/18)
2018 Nov 9, A Philippine court found former first lady Imelda Marcos (89) guilty of graft and ordered her arrest in a rare conviction among many corruption cases that she plans to appeal to avoid jail and losing her seat in Congress. Marcos was ordered to serve 6 to 11 years in prison. She posted a $7,400 bail on Nov. 16 pending an appeal.
(AP, 11/9/18)(SFC, 11/17/18, p.A2)
2018 Nov 9, A $15 million Qatari cash infusion was paid out to impoverished Palestinian civil servants in the Gaza Strip, offering the enclave's dominant Hamas Islamists a potential domestic reprieve though Israel said the money would not go to them.
(Reuters, 11/9/18)
2018 Nov 9, Romania's government passed an emergency ordinance that will create two different levels for the minimum national wage. The minimum monthly salary will be 2,080 lei ($507) starting Jan.1, while those with higher education qualifications or 15 years of employment are guaranteed 2,350 lei ($573).
(AP, 11/9/18)
2018 Nov 9, In Russia a Taliban delegation attended a diplomatic conference for the first time, in a move that underscored Moscow's keenness to play a role in the Afghan peace process, but the Kabul government sent no official representative.
(Reuters, 11/9/18)
2018 Nov 9, Singapore's central bank said it had filed a police report against an online article by an Australia-based independent blogger about Singapore banks and Malaysia's scandal-linked 1MDB state fund.
(AP, 11/10/18)
2018 Nov 9, In Somalia suicide attackers set off two car bombs at a hotel near the headquarters of the Criminal Investigations Department in Mogadishu, killing at least 17 people. The death toll soon jumped to at least 41.
(Reuters, 11/9/18)(AP, 11/10/18)
2018 Nov 9, In South Korea a fire that likely blocked a crucial exit at a low-cost dormitory-style housing facility in central Seoul killed at least seven people and injured 11 others. The residents were mostly manual laborers who made their living on day-to-day jobs.
(AP, 11/9/18)
2018 Nov 9, Sri Lanka President Maithripala Sirisena dissolved parliament five days before it was due to reconvene, but a new cabinet he installed was in danger of losing a vote of no confidence. Sirisena also called a general election for Jan. 5.
(Reuters, 11/10/18)
2018 Nov 9, In Sweden Michael Salonen (43), was convicted of attempted murder for sending a letter bomb to a bitcoin company in London and also convicted of sending threatening letters to lawmakers in Sweden, including government members. He was sentenced to seven years in prison.
(AP, 11/9/18)
2018 Nov 9, Syrian government forces clashed with rebels in Hama province in some of the heaviest fighting in the northwest for a year. At least 22 members of the Jaish al-Izza faction died and dozens more were wounded. Jihadists killed at least eight government troops near a planned buffer zone.
(Reuters, 11/9/18)(AFP, 11/10/18)
2018 Nov 9, Tanzanian authorities carried out physical examinations on 10 men suspected of homosexual activity in Zanzibar. The men were arrested last week on suspicion of celebrating a gay marriage at a resort hotel.
(AP, 11/9/18)
2018 Nov 9, In southeastern Turkey seven soldiers were killed in an "accidental" explosion at an army munitions depot in Hakkari province.
(AFP, 11/10/18)(SSFC, 11/11/18, p.A4)
2018 Nov 9, Airstrikes by Turkish warplanes "neutralized" 15 militants of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in northern Iraq.
(Reuters, 11/10/18)
2018 Nov 9, Police in Vietnam arrested Le Bach Hong, a former deputy labor minister, on allegations of economic mismanagement, as the communist-led government presses on with a crackdown on corruption.
(Reuters, 11/9/18)
2018 Nov 9, Yemeni rebels launched fierce barrages of mortar fire as they battled to slow an advance by pro-government forces deeper into the port city of Hodeida. Some 445,000 Hodeida residents have fled the area since June.
(AFP, 11/9/18)(SFC, 11/10/18, p.A4)
2018 Nov 10, Pres. Donald Trump announced his first recipients of the US Presidential Medal of Honor. They included Miriam Adelson, the wife Republican donor and casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, former Dallas Cowboys quarterback Roger Staubach and former NFL player Alan Page. Posthumous recognition will go to Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, Elvis Presley and Babe Ruth.
(SSFC, 11/11/18, p.A8)
2018 Nov 10, It was reported that Saudi Arabia and the US have agreed to end US refueling of aircraft from the Saudi-led coalition battling Houthi insurgents in Yemen.
(Reuters, 11/10/18)
2018 Nov 10, In northern California the number of deaths in the Butte County Camp Fire rose to 23 as the fire grew to 164 square miles. In southern California two people were found dead inside a burned car in Malibu where the Woolsey Fire destroyed 177 homes.
(SSFC, 11/11/18, p.A1,15)(SFC, 11/12/18, p.A8)
2018 Nov 10, Florida's sec. of state ordered recounts in the US Senate and governor's races after unofficial results fell within the margin that by law initiates a recount.
(SSFC, 11/11/18, p.A9)
2018 Nov 10, In New York Episcopal Bishop William Love issued a directive banning same-sex marriage in his diocese in Albany.
(SFC, 11/12/18, p.A6)
2018 Nov 10, In eastern Utah two workers were electrocuted and a third injured when industrial equipment at a potash mine touched a power line near Moab.
(SFC, 11/12/18, p.A5)
2018 Nov 10, In western Afghanistan a district administrator was killed when a bomb exploded inside his office in Herat province. In the north the Taliban attacked a small army base late today, killing 12 members of the security forces and leaving behind explosives that killed four tribal elders who had come to help collect the bodies in Baghlan province.
(AP, 11/10/18)(AP, 11/11/18)
2018 Nov 10, In France President Donald Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron insisted they were good friends after a dustup over their comments about European security that threatened to divert attention from a weekend ceremony marking 100 years since the end of World War I.
(AP, 11/10/18)
2018 Nov 10, In Hong Kong dissident Chinese author Ma Jian (65) hit out at threats to freedom of speech saying it was the "basis of civilization" after a struggle to find a venue to host his talks at Hong Kong's literary festival.
(AFP, 11/10/18)
2018 Nov 10, As pollution in India's capital hit "severe" on the air quality scale, the New Delhi chief minister, Arvind Kejriwal, came under fire following reports he had left the city for an overseas family trip to Dubai.
(Reuters, 11/10/18)
2018 Nov 10, Rome's embattled Mayor Virginia Raggi was found not guilty of a charge of lying over a City Hall appointment, ending a months-long trial that had threatened her political career.
(AP, 11/10/18)
2018 Nov 10, North Korean diplomat Jo Song Gil, disappeared with his wife after leaving the North Korea's embassy in Italy without notice. On Jan. 3, 2019, it was reported that he had applied for asylum to an unspecified Western country and was in a "safe place" with his family under the protection of the Italian government.
(AP, 1/3/19)(Reuters, 2/20/19)
2018 Nov 10, Hundreds of Central American migrants resumed their march north through Mexico, en route to the US border where President Donald Trump has effectively suspended the granting of asylum to migrants who cross illegally.
(Reuters, 11/11/18)
2018 Nov 10, The North and South Korean militaries completed withdrawing troops and firearms from 22 front-line guard posts as they continue to implement a wide-ranging agreement reached in September to reduce tensions across the world's most fortified border.
(AP, 11/10/18)
2018 Nov 10, In Pakistan journalist Nasrullah Khan was taken from home early today by armed men, some wearing uniforms, who said he would be released after questioning. They also took his computer. Khan worked as a subeditor for a local daily in Karachi. On Nov. 12 Khan was charged with possessing "provocative literature."
(AP, 11/11/18)(AP, 11/12/18)
2018 Nov 10, Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev, a formal suspect in an investigation into corruption and influence-peddling in Monaco, returned to Moscow. Earlier this week, police in Monaco had detained the billionaire, who also owns soccer club AS Monaco, for questioning as part of the probe.
(Reuters, 11/10/18)
2018 Nov 10, In Spain Catalan regional police used batons to drive back a group of separatists in the city center, stopping them from advancing toward a march by an association of Spain's national police forces demanding higher pay.
(AP, 11/10/18)
2018 Nov 10, Spanish police recovered the bodies of two Moroccans from a boat that reached Spain's coast after crossing the Mediterranean Sea with migrants and a hashish shipment.
(AP, 11/11/18)
2018 Nov 10, In Thailand a 13-year-old boy was knocked out during a kickboxing match and died two days later from a brain hemorrhage. This was his 174th match in a career that began at age 8. His death sparked debate over whether to ban matches involving children. The death of Anucha Tasako came after a Muay Thai boxing match in the Bangkok suburb of Samut Prakarn.
(AP, 11/13/18)(AP, 11/19/18)
2018 Nov 10, President Tayyip Erdogan said that Turkey has given recordings related to the killing of Jamal Khashoggi to Germany, France and Britain, seeking to maintain international pressure on Riyadh over the Saudi journalist's death.
(AP, 11/10/18)
2018 Nov 10, An air strike by a Turkish warplane "neutralized" 14 militants of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in northern Iraq.
(Reuters, 11/11/18)
2018 Nov 10, Yemeni government forces pressed further into the strategic port city of Hodeida, seizing its main hospital in heavy fighting.
(AFP, 11/10/18)
2018 Nov 11, In northern California the death toll from Camp Fire in Butte County rose to 29 with 228 people still unaccounted for.
(SFC, 11/12/18, p.A1)
2018 Nov 11, It was reported that a Florida trapper has captured a record-setting 17-foot, 5-inch female Burmese python in Miami-Dade County last week. Python hunters have now eliminated 1,859 of the snakes from the Everglades.
(SSFC, 11/11/18, p.A8)
2018 Nov 11, In Robbins, Illinois, black security guard Jemel Roberson (26) was shot and killed by a white police officer outside the Manny's Blue Room, a bar where Roberson worked.
(SFC, 11/14/18, p.A5)
2018 Nov 11, In Afghanistan dozens of elite commandos were among the casualties suffered by Afghan security forces as the Taliban claimed to have taken a district in Ghazni province. About 50 police and soldiers were killed around Farah when Taliban fighters attacked check posts in the city and nearby districts.
(Reuters, 11/12/18)
2018 Nov 11, In Australia My Ut Trinh (50), a former strawberry farm supervisor, was arrested and charged with seven counts of contaminating goods after a "complex" investigation into a strawberry scare where needles were found stuck into the fruit. She was accused of retaliating over a workplace grievance.
(AP, 11/11/18)(SFC, 11/12/18, p.A2)
2018 Nov 11, In Bangladesh Nagad, a digital financial service, was launched as a joint venture between Third Wave Technologies Limited (TWTL) and the post office. Founder Tanvir served as the managing director.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nagad)(Econ., 3/7/20, p.33)
2018 Nov 11, Canadian actor Douglas Rain, the voice of the hal 9000 computer in the 1968 film "2001: A Space Odyssey," died in St. Marys, Ontario. He had performed for 32 seasons at the Stratford Festival in Ontario.
(SFC, 11/14/18, p.C8)
2018 Nov 11, Online shoppers in China shattered last year's record of $24 billion in sales on the country's annual Singles Day buying frenzy, as the tradition marked its 10th year.
(AP, 11/11/18)
2018 Nov 11, Seven CongoDRC opposition leaders, meeting in Geneva, picked the little-known Martin Fayulu (61) as their joint candidate for the December 23 ballot to succeed President Joseph Kabila, who has been in power for 18 years. UDPS leader Felix Tshisekedi was widely regarded as the front-runner.
(AFP, 11/12/18)
2018 Nov 11, In eastern CongoDRC suspected Ugandan rebels killed six people overnight, hacking one woman to death, and kidnapped five others -- mostly children -- in the Beni area.
(AP, 11/11/18)
2018 Nov 11, Thousands of Ethiopians and Eritreans took part in a 10-km reconciliation run in Addis Ababa in the first joint sporting event since the former bitter foes launched a rapid diplomatic thaw in July.
(AFP, 11/11/18)
2018 Nov 11, President Emmanuel Macron led tributes to the millions of soldiers killed during World War One, holding an emotional ceremony in Paris attended by dozens of world leaders to commemorate the centenary of the Armistice.
(Reuters, 11/11/18)
2018 Nov 11, Gabon's presidency admitted for the first time that President Omar Bongo (59), hospitalized for nearly three weeks in Saudi Arabia, is in a serious condition but said his health is improving. About a third of Gabon's population of 1.8 million still live below the poverty line -- the result, say experts, of inequality, poor governance and corruption.
(AFP, 11/11/18)
2018 Nov 11, In central India Maoist rebels triggered a blast and exchanged gunfire with government forces in Chhattisgarh state on the eve of legislative elections. One suspected rebel was killed.
(AP, 11/11/18)
2018 Nov 11, Iran's semi-official Fars news agency reported that an appeals court has upheld former Foreign Ministry official Kamal Amirbeig's 10-year prison sentence and fined him $200,000. He had been convicted of spying.
(AP, 11/11/18)
2018 Nov 11, A botched Israeli undercover operation in the Gaza Strip led to fighting that killed a Hamas commander, six other Palestinian militants and an Israeli colonel. Palestinians fired 17 rockets into southern Israel in response to the Israeli incursion and air strikes.
(Reuters, 11/12/18)
2018 Nov 11, Italy's PM Giuseppe Conte visited the Libyan city of Benghazi to meet military strongman Khalifa Haftar ahead of talks aimed at stabilizing the war-torn North African country.
(AFP, 11/11/18)
2018 Nov 11, In disputed Kashmir two Indian soldiers were killed over the last 24 hours when Pakistani soldiers fired along the highly militarized de facto frontier.
(AP, 11/11/18)
2018 Nov 11, Electron, a small rocket from the little-known company Rocket Lab, lifted off from the east coast of New Zealand carrying a clutch of tiny satellites. This was the first commercial launch by the US-New Zealand company.
(https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/10/science/rocket-lab-launch.html)
2018 Nov 11, A Pakistani official said Iranian border guards have killed two people trying to cross through an illegal route from the Panjgur district in Baluchistan.
(AP, 11/11/18)
2018 Nov 11, Philippine prosecutors said they will file charges of tax evasion against a news website, Rappler Holdings Corp. and its president, journalist Maria Ressa, that has been critical of President Rodrigo Duterte.
(AP, 11/11/18)
2018 Nov 11, South Korean military transport aircraft began a tangerine airlift to North Korea, the first of a gift of 200 tons of the fruit from the southern island of Jeju.
(Reuters, 11/11/18)
2018 Nov 11, Sri Lanka's former strongman and current PM Mahinda Rajapaksa left his longtime political party and joined another, in a move that could weaken the country's president. Rajapaksa joined the Sri Lanka People's Front, a party of which he was shadow leader for months.
(AP, 11/11/18)
2018 Nov 11, Syria's state news agency SANA reported that residents now have a full year instead of one month to prove they own property in redevelopment zones in order to receive shares in the projects. Otherwise, the ownership will be transferred to the local government.
(AP, 11/12/18)
2018 Nov 11, Residents of the eastern Ukraine regions controlled by Russia-backed separatist rebels voted for local governments in elections denounced by Kiev and the West. The Donetsk region's acting head Denis Pushilin, whose predecessor was killed in an explosion in August, was confirmed as leader with 61 percent of the vote while the acting chief of Luhansk region, Leonid Pasechnik, also won with 68 percent.
(AP, 11/11/18)(Reuters, 11/12/18)
2018 Nov 11, In Yemen street battles raged in residential areas of the main port city of Hodeidah, forcing medical staff to flee the largest hospital, as Houthi insurgents tried to repel forces backed by a Saudi-led coalition. Medics said at least 61 combatants have been killed over the last 24 hours.
(Reuters, 11/11/18)(AFP, 11/11/18)
2018 Nov 12, US analysts said they have located more than half of an estimated 20 secret North Korean missile development sites.
(AP, 11/12/18)
2018 Nov 12, In Arizona Kyrsten Sinema (42) was declared the winner for a Senate seat defeating her Republican opponent Martha McSally. Her victory guarantees the Democrats at least 47 US Senate seats.
(SFC, 11/13/18, p.A7)
2018 Nov 12, In northern California the death toll from the Camp Fire in Butte County rose to 42. The fire covered 117,000 acres and was 30 percent contained.
(SFC, 11/13/18, p.A1)
2018 Nov 12, Stan Lee (b.1922 as Stanley Martin Lieber), creator of the comic book franchises that included Spider-Man and the Incredible Hulk, died in Los Angeles.
(SFC, 11/13/18, p.A14)
2018 Nov 12, In Afghanistan a suicide bomber struck near an anti-Taliban rally in Kabul, killing at least four people. A lawmaker reported that insurgents killed at least 20 Afghan policemen over the past 24 hours in eastern Ghazni province.
(AP, 11/12/18)
2018 Nov 12, A jury at Birmingham Crown Court in central England found Adam Thomas (22) and Claudia Patatas (38) guilty of being members of National Action. The British couple with neo-Nazi views had named their son after Adolf Hitler. A third defendant, Daniel Bogunovic, was also convicted of membership in the banned group. Three others pleaded guilty before the trial started.
(AP, 11/12/18)
2018 Nov 12, London police arrested Ramanodge Unmathallegadoo (50) after he wounded Devi Unmathallegadoo (35) in the abdomen with a crossbow. She died in a local hospital, where medics delivered her son.
(AP, 11/13/18)
2018 Nov 12, Bulgaria joined the growing ranks of EU nations opposed to a United Nations pact that aims to regulate the treatment of migrants worldwide.
(AP, 11/12/18)
2018 Nov 12, Canadian PM Justin Trudeau became the first Western leader to acknowledge his country had heard recordings of the killing of Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi.
(AP, 11/12/18)
2018 Nov 12, China said is postponing its decision to allow trading in tiger and rhinoceros parts a bare two weeks after the easing of the ban had raised fears the country was giving legal cover to poaching and smuggling of endangered wildlife.
(AP, 11/13/18)
2018 Nov 12, Cypriot officials opened two new border crossings for the first time in eight years, the latest push for peace by the two sides after UN-backed talks collapsed last year.
(AFP, 11/12/18)
2018 Nov 12, DR Congo's main opposition party rejected a deal agreed by its leader just a day earlier to select a single opposition candidate for upcoming presidential elections.
(AP, 11/12/18)
2018 Nov 12, An Egyptian court sentenced former Menoufiya province governor Hisham Abdel Basset to 10 years in prison for accepting bribes to award public works contracts.
(AP, 11/12/18)
2018 Nov 12, Ethiopia's attorney general Berhanu Tsegaye said investigations had uncovered corruption at METEC (Metal and Engineering Corporation), which makes military equipment and is involved in sectors from agriculture to construction. Tsegaye announced the arrests of several METEC executives in a corruption investigation and the detention of security officials accused of abusing prisoners.
(Reuters, 11/13/18)
2018 Nov 12, The French government said 51 states, including all EU members, have pledged their support for a new international agreement to set standards on cyberweapons and the use of the internet. The states have signed up to a so-called "Paris Call for Trust and Security in Cyberspace", an attempt to kickstart stalled global negotiations. China, Russia and the United States did not sign the pledge.
(AFP, 11/12/18)
2018 Nov 12, In France police Officer Maggy Biskupski (36), who warned that growing anti-police violence was undermining morale in the force, was found dead at her home in a suspected suicide. She had founded the Angry Police Movement protest group after the October 2016 firebombing of a squad car with two officers inside.
(AFP, 11/13/18)
2018 Nov 12, Representatives of Libya's quarreling factions attended a conference in Palermo aimed at finding a political settlement to bolster the fight against Islamic militants and stop illegal immigrants from crossing to Europe's southern shores.
(SFC, 11/13/18, p.A5)
2018 Nov 12, Macedonian police issued an arrest warrant for former PM Nikola Gruevski, who resigned in 2016 after 10 years in power, after he failed to show up to begin his sentence following a Nov. 9 court ruling against his motion for a reprieve. Gruevski fled to Hungary and submitted an asylum request.
(Reuters, 11/14/18)
2018 Nov 12, The Netherlands resumed visa and passport services in Pakistan following a brief suspension, denying that its embassy had closed over security concerns after the country gave shelter to the lawyer of a Christian woman in a blasphemy case.
(Reuters, 11/12/18)
2018 Nov 12, Taliban officials said Pakistan has released Abdul Samad Sani, a US-designated terrorist who served as the Afghan Central Bank governor during the militants' rule, along with a lower-ranking commander named Salahuddin.
(AP, 11/12/18)
2018 Nov 12, Palestinians in Gaza fired dozens of rockets at southern Israel, critically wounding one person in a strike on a bus, a day after an Israeli incursion prompted deadly fighting in the enclave. Israel's military said it was carrying out air strikes "throughout the Gaza Strip" following a barrage of rocket fire from the Palestinian enclave.
(Reuters, 11/12/18)(AFP, 11/12/18)
2018 Nov 12, Qatar's Sidra Medicine Hospital officially opened in Doha. It featured 14 giant bronze sculptures by British artist Damien Hirst graphically charting the moment of conception to birth greet patients arriving at the $8-billion hospital. The sculptures were originally unveiled in October 2013 but then covered from public view until recent weeks.
(https://www.sidra.org/media/news-room/)(AP, 11/18/18)
2018 Nov 12, Romania's Pres. Klaus Iohannis said his country isn't ready to take over the European Union's rotating presidency on Jan. 1 and called for the government to step down.
(AP, 11/12/18)
2018 Nov 12, In western Romania an explosion occurred in a tunnel where weapons are tested at the plant in the city of Cugir, followed by a fire. One woman employed at the factory died in the blast.
(AP, 11/12/18)
2018 Nov 12, Russia denied being behind the recent disruption to GPS signals across Lapland which put civil aviation at risk, after Finland's PM Juha Sipila said the interference was "almost certainly deliberate".
(AFP, 11/12/18)
2018 Nov 12, In Sudan many cash machines in Khartoum have run out of banknotes as the government scrambled to prevent economic collapse with a sharp devaluation and emergency austerity measures. Sudan has suffered from a lack of foreign currency since losing three-quarters of its output of oil when the south of the country seceded in 2011.
(Reuters, 11/12/18)
2018 Nov 12, In northern Syria, a car bomb in Jarablus, a Turkish-controlled town, killed one person, wounded 24 and caused extensive material damage.
(AP, 11/12/18)
2018 Nov 12, The Turkish coast guard said five people, including three children, died after a boat carrying 15 migrants sank off the western coast. Five others were missing and a search was underway.
(Reuters, 11/12/18)
2018 Nov 12, In Yemen at least 150 people were reported killed over the last 24 hours of clashes in the port city of Hodeida.
(AFP, 11/12/18)
2018 Nov 13, The US Treasury expanded its attack on Hezbollah's financial network, hitting key representatives of the Lebanese militant group in Iraq with sanctions. The Treasury blacklisted Shibl Muhsin 'Ubayd Al-Zaydi, Yusuf Hashim, Adnan Hussein Kawtharani, and Muhammad 'Abd-Al-Hadi Farhat under its Specially Designated Global Terrorists program.
(AFP, 11/13/18)
2018 Nov 13, CNN demnded the reinstatement of of correspondent Jim Acosta's White House credentials because their revocation violates the right of freedom of the press. The Trump administration stripped Acosta of his pass following Pres. Trump's Nov. 8 contentious new conference.
(SFC, 11/14/18, p.A5)
2018 Nov 13, In northern California several victims of the Camp Fire in Butte County filed suit against PG&E and its parent company.
(SFC, 11/14/18, p.D1)
2018 Nov 13, In southern California the Woolsey Fire roared to life again. 435 buildings have been burned over 146 square miles. It was 35 percent contained.
(SFC, 11/14/18, p.A11)
2018 Nov 13, Amazon announced NYC and Arlington, Va., as joint winners for a second company headquarters. NYC had offered more than $1.5 billion in tax credits and other incentives. Arlington offered $573 million.
(SFC, 11/14/18, p.D2)
2018 Nov 13, Christie's sold the "Pink Legacy" diamond at auction for more than $50 million to renowned jeweler Harry Winston.
(SFC, 11/14/18, p.A2)
2018 Nov 13, Bahrain's public prosecutor detained and charged Ali Rashed al-Asheeri, a former member of parliament with the now-banned Al-Wefaq opposition group, for a tweet saying he would boycott elections this month, with a rights group identifying him as a former lawmaker.
(AFP, 11/13/18)
2018 Nov 13, A Cambodian court charged 18 people, including 11 pregnant women, with violating laws against surrogate births.
(AP, 11/13/18)
2018 Nov 13, In China students and alumni of several Chinese universities sounded the alarm over the apparent detention of more than a dozen young labor activists who have been missing since the weekend. They were involved in a coalition, led by young Marxist activists, that was founded this summer to show solidarity with factory workers at Jasic Technology, a welding equipment manufacturer in southern China.
(AP, 11/14/18)
2018 Nov 13, The Czech Republic's highest legal authority upheld a ban for the operations of the ride-sharing service Uber in Brno, the second-largest city in the country. The ban doesn't apply in the capital, Prague, where Uber faces similar accusations in a separate case.
(AP, 11/13/18)
2018 Nov 13, Ethiopia arrested Kinfe Dagnew, the former head of a military-run industrial conglomerate, and flew him in handcuffs to the capital.
(Reuters, 11/13/18)
2018 Nov 13, The European Commission complained that Romania has gone back on court reforms, urging Bucharest to revive efforts immediately to fight corruption and ensure judicial independence.
(AFP, 11/13/18)
2018 Nov 13, French authorities said they have closed an investigation into the disappearance and subsequent detention in China of Meng Hongwei, the former president of Interpol, and found no evidence to support his wife's claim that she got a threatening call in Chinese after he was picked up.
(AP, 11/14/18)
2018 Nov 13, German Chancellor Angela Merkel called for an integrated EU military, recalling the lessons of the First World War and the divisions that led to the conflict.
(Reuters, 11/13/18)
2018 Nov 13, German authorities said they suspect a male nurse of killing six elderly patients, and attempting to kill at least three more, after he admitted to injecting them with diabetes medication. Suspect Grzegorz Stanislaw Wolsztajn (36), arrested last February, denied intending to kill them.
(AP, 11/13/18)
2018 Nov 13, Greece's culture ministry said archaeologists have located the first tangible remains of the lost ancient city of Tenea that, according to tradition, was first settled by Trojan war captives after the Greek sack of Troy. The remains dated from the 4th century BC to late Roman times.
(AP, 11/13/18)
2018 Nov 13, Italy's leaders sought to affirm their commitment to a free press after journalists protested against insults from prominent figures in the governing 5-Star Movement.
(SFC, 11/14/18, p.A2)
2018 Nov 13, The International Monetary Fund warned the Italian government that its plan to sharply increase spending carries "substantial" risks and would leave the country vulnerable to market turmoil.
(AP, 11/13/18)
2018 Nov 13, Lebanese PM-designate Saad al-Hariri blamed the Iran-backed Hezbollah for what he called a "big obstacle" in efforts to form a new government, indicating there could be no solution if it did not back down.
(Reuters, 11/13/18)
2018 Nov 13, Malaysian PM Mahathir Mohamed sharply criticized Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi for her handling of an ethnic crisis that led to mass killings and the exodus of more than 700,000 Rohingya Muslims from her country.
(AP, 11/13/18)
2018 Nov 13, In Mexico a group of 357 migrants arrived in the border city of Tijuana aboard nine buses and immediately went to a stretch of border fence to celebrate. After their visit to the border, most were taken to shelters in groups of 30 or 40.
(AP, 11/14/18)
2018 Nov 13, Palestinian militant groups in the Gaza Strip announced an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire with Israel after a severe escalation of violence threatened to descend into full-blown war. Seven Palestinians were killed in Gaza over the course of some 24 hours as Israeli strikes targeted militants and flattened buildings while sending fireballs and plumes of smoke into the sky. Around 460 rockets and mortar rounds were fired from the Gaza Strip, wounding 27 people, including three severely.
(AFP, 11/13/18)
2018 Nov 13, Romania's PM Viorica Dancila dismissed suggestions that the country is not prepared to take over the rotating presidency of the European Union next year, despite criticism from the EU that the country is backsliding on democratic reforms.
(AP, 11/13/18)
2018 Nov 13, Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny said he was prevented from flying out of Moscow for a European court ruling on whether his recent detentions have been politically motivated.
(AP, 11/13/18)
2018 Nov 13, The independent Russian New Times magazine, fined 22 million rubles last month for failing to notify authorities on time of receiving foreign funding, said it has raised over $370,000 in four days to pay the fine. Critics and media experts have viewed the fine as retribution by the government for the New Times' critical reporting.
(AP, 11/13/18)
2018 Nov 13, In Singapore the annual gathering of Southeast Asian leaders (ASEAN) began with a warning from the host, Singapore PM Lee Hsien Loong, about threats against international rules that underpin world stability and economic growth.
(AP, 11/13/18)
2018 Nov 13, Sri Lanka's Supreme Court suspended the president's order to dissolve Parliament and hold new elections, opening the way for lawmakers to vote on whether to accept his earlier ouster of the prime minister.
(AP, 11/13/18)
2018 Nov 13, Turkey's President Tayyip Erdogan said recordings related to the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, which Turkey has shared with Western allies, are "appalling" and shocked a Saudi intelligence officer who listened to them.
(Reuters, 11/13/18)
2018 Nov 13, Turkey pulled out of Italian-sponsored Libya crisis talks in Palermo saying it had been "excluded", dealing a fresh blow to the latest international bid to stabilize the chaos-stricken country.
(AFP, 11/13/18)
2018 Nov 12, In central Uganda 9 students were killed in an alleged arson attack targeting a school dormitory. A 10th died while being admitted at a local hospital. 40 other students escaped with injuries of varying degrees.
(AP, 11/14/18)
2018 Nov 13, Angry Ukrainians took to the streets and blocked roads as hundreds of thousands remain without heating at a time when temperatures are plunging because of a dispute between the national gas company and regional utility providers. Bills for hot water and heating were expected to increase by another 15% on December 1.
(AP, 11/13/18)
2018 Nov 13, UN human rights boss Michelle Bachelet called on Bangladesh to halt plans to repatriate 2,200 Rohingya refugees to Myanmar, warning that their lives would be at "serious risk".
(Reuters, 11/13/18)
2018 Nov 13, Pope Francis named Archbishop Charles Scicluna as a deputy, or adjunct secretary, at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican office that processes sex abuse cases globally.
(AP, 11/13/18)
2018 Nov 13, Yemeni officials said an informal agreement to reduce hostilities between Saudi-led coalition forces and rebels in and around the Red Sea port city of Hodeida has taken hold.
(AP, 11/13/18)
2018 Nov 13, In Yemen an airstrike by the Saudi-led coalition killed at least seven civilians late today in the rebel-held port city of Hodeida.
(AP, 11/14/18)
2018 Nov 14, The US Customs and Border Protection announced that it has awarded a $167 million contract to build 8 miles (13 km) of border wall in south Texas.
(AP, 11/14/18)
2018 Nov 14, It was reported that US federal disease experts have confirmed 90 cases of sudden-onset paralysis, almost all in children, this year. The illness called acute flaccid myelitis was first widely reported in 2014.
(SFC, 11/14/18, p.C6)
2018 Nov 14, California's state Supreme Court rejected an appeal by AC Transit of a jury's $15.3 million damage award to a Richmond woman whose spine was fractured after a bus careened over a speed bump in a school zone in San Pablo in August 2011. Unpaid damages plus interest now totaled $20.1 million.
(SFC, 11/19/18, p.C1)
2018 Nov 14, In California riots Pleasant Valley State Prison and Avenal State Prison, both in Fresno County, involved hundreds of inmates and sent 11 to the hospital.
(SFC, 11/15/18, p.A7)
2018 Nov 14, In San Francisco Bart Kylstra (52), the CEO of Rio Mobility, was found dead in a mixed use building on the 1000 block of Market. Kuk Kim (28), the chief operating oficer of the company, was booked the next day on suspicion of murder.
(SSFC, 11/18/18, p.C2)
2018 Nov 14, In northern California the death toll from Camp Fire in Butte County rose to 56 with 130 people still missing.
(SFC, 11/15/18, p.A1)
2018 Nov 14, Afghan officials said thousands of members of the mainly Shi'ite Hazara ethnic minority have fled their homes in the central province of Ghazni as the Taliban pressed into two previously safe districts.
(Reuters, 11/14/18)
2018 Nov 14, Bangladesh authorities said they are ready to begin repatriating some of the more than 700,000 Rohingya Muslims who have fled from army-led violence in Myanmar since last year, but refugees scheduled to leave said they would refuse to go because of fears for their safety.
(AP, 11/14/18)
2018 Nov 14, Bangladesh police fired rubber bullets and tear gas at opposition party supporters in the capital Dhaka as tension soared weeks before a general election.
(Reuters, 11/14/18)
2018 Nov 14, British PM Theresa May defended her anguished draft divorce deal with the EU before rowdy lawmakers and a splintered cabinet that threatens to fall apart. Brexit supporters and opponents rallied near PM Theresa May's Downing Street office. The cabinet endorsed the draft to end Britain's four decades in the bloc, a nearly 600-page, dense legal text that is far from certain to pass in the UK parliament.
(AFP, 11/14/18)(Reuters, 11/15/18)
2018 Nov 14, The British government says it will cut the maximum stake on electronic slot machines from 100 pounds ($130) to 2 pounds ($2.60) in April — reversing an unpopular decision to delay the move.
(AP, 11/14/18)
2018 Nov 14, Cameroon's military said at least 30 separatists have been killed in two days of intense fighting in the turbulent English-speaking North West region. The mayor of Nwa, a local council in the same region, was found dead. He was believed to have been killed by separatists.
(AP, 11/14/18)
2018 Nov 14, Cuba said it would pull 8,517 of its doctors from Brazil after the South American nation’s President-elect Jair Bolsonaro questioned their training and demanded changes to their contracts.
(Reuters, 11/14/18)(SFC, 6/12/19, p.A3)
2018 Nov 14, EU lawmakers said European arms were stoking the conflict in Yemen, where a Saudi Arabia-led coalition is battling Iran-backed Houthi rebels.
(Reuters, 11/14/18)
2018 Nov 14, In Fiji PM Voreqe Bainimarama and his FijiFirst party were headed for a convincing election win early today as votes were tallied.
(AP, 11/14/18)
2018 Nov 14, The French government attempted to head off planned protests over rising fuel costs by announcing a series of measures to help poorer families pay their bills.
(AFP, 11/14/18)
2018 Nov 14, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said freedom of the press is being eroded in Gabon, after the government suspended a newspaper for commenting on the hospitalization of President Ali Bongo.
(AFP, 11/14/18)
2018 Nov 14, Police in India said a monkey has snatched a 12-day-old boy from his mother and killed him in Runkata town on the outskirts of Agra.
(Reuters, 11/14/18)
2018 Nov 14, Iran's state media reported the hanging of two financial traders convicted of stockpiling gold coins and profiteering during a currency crisis.
(SFC, 11/15/18, p.A2)
2018 Nov 14, Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman announced his resignation on and called for early elections after a sharp disagreement over a Gaza ceasefire deal, throwing the government into turmoil.
(AFP, 11/14/18)
2018 Nov 14, Italian borrowing costs nudged higher after the populist government resubmitted draft budget proposals without the significant changes sought by the European Commission.
(AP, 11/14/18)
2018 Nov 14, The leader of Latvia's New Conservative Party, Janis Bordans, abandoned his attempt to form a government after three potential coalition partners pulled out of talks. The president nominated Bordans as prime minister last week and gave him a deadline of Nov. 21 to form a government after October's vote, which delivered a fragmented parliament of seven parties.
(Reuters, 11/14/18)
2018 Nov 14, Christian rivals from the Lebanese civil war, Samir Geagea and Suleiman Frangieh, shook hands with each other, marking a formal reconciliation to end more than four decades of enmity.
(AP, 11/14/18)
2018 Nov 14, In Libya dozens of migrants have barricaded themselves in a container ship in the port city of Misrata for the past five days, after being picked up at sea, and refuse to disembark, saying Libya is too dangerous for them.
(AP, 11/14/18)
2018 Nov 14, Malaysia's anti-graft agency said the wife of ex-PM Najib Razak will face new corruption charges, along with two former government officials and a businessman.
(AP, 11/14/18)
2018 Nov 14, In Mexico 398 more migrants arrived at in Tijuana after more than a month's journey to reach the US border.
(SFC, 11/15/18, p.A2)
2018 Nov 14, Palestinian Nawaf al-Aatar (20) was killed by Israeli fire in the border area of the northern Gaza Strip. A Gazan security source said he was fishing at the time near the border fence.
(AFP, 11/14/18)
2018 Nov 14, A knife wielding Palestinian sneaked into a Jerusalem police station late today and wounded four police officers before he was shot and captured.
(SFC, 11/16/18, p.A2)
2018 Nov 14, In Papua New Guinea the APEC grouping of nations that includes the US and China held its lavish annual leaders' meeting in the country that can least afford it.
(AP, 11/14/18)
2018 Nov 14, Lawmakers in Romania approved a bill that would cancel wiretap evidence used to prosecute past corruption cases and could wipe out hundreds of convictions, including that of the head of the ruling Social Democrats.
(Reuters, 11/14/18)
2018 Nov 14, Meeting in Singapore Russia's President Vladimir Putin and Japan's PM Shinzo Abe agreed to step up the pace of talks to end a decades-old territorial dispute.
(Reuters, 11/14/18)
2018 Nov 14, In Singapore leaders of Southeast Asian nations again pushed back an agreement on a pan-Asian free trade deal amid a whirlwind of diplomacy at their annual summit. Singapore PM Lee Hsien Loong said a final agreement will be delayed until 2019.
(AP, 11/14/18)
2018 Nov 14, Sri Lanka's Parliament passed the no-confidence motion against recently appointed PM Mahinda Rajapaksa and his government with the backing of 122 of the 225 lawmakers in a voice vote, followed by a signed document.
(Reuters, 11/15/18)
2018 Nov 14, A court sentenced Turkish journalist Ali Unal to 19 years in jail on a charge of being a leader in the network accused of carrying out a failed coup in July 2016. Unal was chief writer at the now-defunct Zaman newspaper.
(Reuters, 11/14/18)
2018 Nov 14, A Turkish court sentenced a German citizen to more than six years in jail on terrorism charges. State news said Saide Inac, a singer who also goes by the name Hozen Cane, was sentenced to six years and three months in jail for her membership in an armed terrorist organization.
(Reuters, 11/14/18)
2018 Nov 14, Ukraine's PM Volodymyr Groisman accused local officials of causing a crisis that has left hundreds of thousands without heating in freezing weather.
(AP, 11/14/18)
2018 Nov 14, The UN Security Council unanimously voted to lift a nearly decade-old arms embargo and targeted sanctions on Eritrea after a rapprochement with Ethiopia and thawing of relations with Djibouti.
(Reuters, 11/14/18)
2018 Nov 14, In Yemen pro-government forces were "ordered" to stop their assault against the Iran-linked Huthi rebels until further notice, as the United Arab Emirates, a key member of the pro-government coalition, threw its weight behind "early" UN peace talks in Sweden.
(AFP, 11/14/18)
2018 Nov 15, A report from New York University's Congo Research Group and the Bridgeway Foundation said an Islamist rebel group in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo received money from a financier linked to Islamic State, suggesting tentative ties between the Congo insurgents and other jihadists in Africa and beyond. The report said Islamist "financial facilitator" Waleed Ahmed Zein paid the Allied Democratic Forces at least once. The ADF was set up by Ugandan Muslims in the 1990s purporting to fight for the rights of the Tablighi Jamaat sect.
(Reuters, 11/15/18)
2018 Nov 15, It was reported that US prosecutors have obtained a sealed indictment in a Virginia federal court against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. Assange's name appears twice in a recently-unsealed August court filing from a federal prosecutor in Virginia who was attempting to keep sealed a separate case involving a man accused of coercing a minor for sex.
(AP, 11/16/18)
2018 Nov 15, In northern California the death toll in the Butte County Camp Fire rose to 63. The number of missing skyrocketed to 631.
(SFC, 11/16/18, p.A1)
2018 Nov 15, It was reported that a Minnesota-based food distributor has been sold to South Korea's largest food company. CJ CheilJedang will pay $1.8 billion for an 80 percent stake in Schwan's and gain control of its businesses that serve restaurants, grocery stores and other retailers.
(AP, 11/15/18)
2018 Nov 15, In NYC a 1972 painting by David Hockney, "Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures), fetched $90.3 milliion at Christie's. This easily broke the record for a work by a living artist sold at auction.
(SFC, 11/17/18, p.A6)
2018 Nov 15, Roy Clark, US country music star, died in Oklahoma. He headlined the TV show "Hee Haw" for nearly a quarter century.
(SFC, 11/16/18, p.A7)
2018 Nov 15, A blistering overnight attack by the Taliban on an Afghan police outpost in western Farah province killed 30 policemen. Unofficial estimates said that about 45 Afghan policemen or soldiers are killed or wounded on a daily basis.
(AP, 11/15/18)
2018 Nov 15, Human Rights Watch called on Angola to halt mass deportations after more than 400,000 migrants, mainly from the Democratic Republic of Congo, fled or were expelled from Angola in just weeks.
(AFP, 11/15/18)
2018 Nov 15, The head of Bangladesh's refugee commission said plans to start the repatriation of 700,000 Rohingya Muslims to Myanmar today were scrapped after officials were unable to find anyone who wanted to return.
(AP, 11/15/18)
2018 Nov 15, British PM Theresa May battled to save a draft divorce deal with the European Union after her Brexit secretary Dominic Raab and other ministers quit in protest and eurosceptic lawmakers stepped up efforts to topple her.
(Reuters, 11/15/18)
2018 Nov 15, In the Central African Rep. more than 40 people were killed and dozens wounded in an attack on a Catholic mission sheltering 20,000 refugees in Alindao.
(Reuters, 11/17/18)
2018 Nov 15, China said that 15 foreign ambassadors exceeded their diplomatic roles by issuing a letter expressing concern about the incarceration of hundreds of thousands of members of the country's Muslim minorities in re-education camps.
(AP, 11/15/18)
2018 Nov 15, At least four major international hotel chains apologized after hidden camera video of their room cleaning practices in China was posted online.
(AP, 11/15/18)
2018 Nov 15, Denmark said it is cutting about $10 million in aid to the government of Tanzania over what it called "negative developments" in human rights in the East African country.
(AP, 11/15/18)
2018 Nov 15, The European Court of Human Rights ruled that Russia's repeated arrests and detention of opposition leader Alexei Navalny were politically-motivated and breached his human rights, a decision Moscow called questionable.
(Reuters, 11/15/18)
2018 Nov 15, France led calls among EU states for changes to Britain's draft Brexit deal. France spearheaded a group of states in raising objections to what has so far been agreed on fishing between the EU and UK after Brexit.
(Reuters, 11/15/18)
2018 Nov 15, A French court acquitted former government minister Georges Tron (61) and his former deputy, Brigitte Gruel (61), of raping two employees during foot-massaging sessions in his office. Virginie Ettel (41) and Eva Loubrieu (44) had testified that they felt powerless to resist being groped and penetrated digitally by Tron because they were afraid of losing their jobs.
(AFP, 11/15/18)
2018 Nov 15, A French court granted release to Islamic scholar Tariq Ramadan (56), a Swiss citizen and professor at Oxford University, on condition he pay 300,000 euros ($340,000) bail, surrender his Swiss passport and remain in France. Two women have accused Ramadan of raping them in France.
(AP, 11/16/18)
2018 Nov 15, French Polynesian President Edouard Fritch said the leaders of the French collectivity of islands in the South Pacific lied to the population for three decades over the dangers of nuclear testing. From 1960 to 1996, France carried out 193 nuclear tests in French Polynesia. In 2010 the French government offered millions of euros in compensation for the government's 201 nuclear tests in the South Pacific and Algeria.
(AP, 11/16/18)
2018 Nov 15, Greek authorities said about 74,000 asylum-seekers are now living in the country, and efforts are underway to expand housing for them and improve conditions at island camps for migrants who arrive by sea.
(AP, 11/15/18)
2018 Nov 15, Cardinal Gualtiero Bassetti, president of the Italian bishops' conference, said that a national advisory group of lay and religious experts is being created to help dioceses educate personnel about protecting children and to help bishops investigate abuse reports.
(AP, 11/15/18)
2018 Nov 15, In Italy a nurse (48) reportedly killed her two young children, a boy of 7 and a girl of 9, by lethal injection, then took her own life in the northwestern mountain town of Aymavilles. The woman left notes saying she couldn't bear the "weight of life's adversities".
(AP, 11/16/18)
2018 Nov 15, Morocco inaugurated Africa's fastest train which will halve traveling time between the commercial and industrial hubs of Casablanca and Tangier. The train, which was tested at a speed of 357 km (222 miles)per hour, is planned to run at 320 km (198 miles) per hour. The $2 billion project was jointly funded with France and several Arab states.
(Reuters, 11/15/18)(SFC, 11/16/18, p.A2)
2018 Nov 15, Saudi Arabia's public prosecutor's office said it is seeking the death penalty for five out of 11 suspects charged in the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The prosecutor's spokesman Shaalan al-Shaalan denied Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had any knowledge of the killing.
(Reuters, 11/15/18)(AFP, 11/15/18)
2018 Nov 15, South Korea exploded a front-line guard post, sending plumes of thick, black smoke into the sky above the border with North Korea, in the most dramatic scene to date in the rivals' efforts to reduce animosities.
(AP, 11/15/18)
2018 Nov 15, In Sri Lanka rival lawmakers exchanged blows in Parliament as disputed PM Mahinda Rajapaksa claimed the speaker had no authority to remove him from office by voice vote.
(AP, 11/15/18)
2018 Nov 15, In Tunisia a three-day forum opened in Tunis for a conference on freedom of expression and new challenges facing the media. It attracted 600 journalists, bloggers, newspaper chiefs and media academics from Arabic and French-speaking countries across the Mediterranean, Africa and Europe.
(AFP, 11/16/18)
2018 Nov 15, In Ukraine unknown assailants threw petrol bombs at a historic 18th century Orthodox church in Kiev and attacked a priest early today. The petrol bombs did not explode and no damage was done to St. Andrew's church. A church spokesman blamed Moscow for the incident.
(Reuters, 11/15/18)
2018 Nov 15, A prominent Yemeni rights group released a report documenting heavy damage from ground fighting and airstrikes to at least 34 archaeological sites over the past four years.
(AP, 11/15/18)
2016 Nov 15, US Secretary of State John Kerry said that Yemen's Houthi group and the Saudi-led coalition fighting it had agreed to a ceasefire from Nov 17. The internationally recognized Yemeni government quickly rejected the move.
(Reuters, 11/15/16)
2016 Nov 15, The rebuilt cast-iron dome of the US Capitol, a soaring symbol of national unity since the 19th century, was formally completed after a $60 million overhaul that included repairing rust-choked gutters and more than 1,300 cracks.
(Reuters, 11/15/16)
2016 Nov 15, The companies behind the Dakota Access Pipeline asked a US court to intervene in the fight over its completion as demonstrators fanned out across North America to protest the controversial project.
(Reuters, 11/15/16)
2016 Nov 15, In Belgium some 8,500 off-duty military personnel marched in the streets of Brussels over a rise in the pension age, at times clashing with police.
(AFP, 11/15/16)
2016 Nov 15, Thousands of British prison officers in England and Wales walked out in protest at rising levels of violence in jails, prompting the government to seek a court injunction to force them back to work.
(Reuters, 11/15/16)
2016 Nov 15, Canada's attorney general announced a move to repeal Section 159 of the Criminal Code used to effectively prosecute gay youths who engage in anal sex, calling it "discriminatory."
(AFP, 11/15/16)
2016 Nov 15, Canada’s Chief of Defense Gen. Jonathan Vance said Canadian troops are allowed to fire first in Iraq.
(http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/liberals-canadians-shoot-first-raq/)
2016 Nov 15, China executed Jia Jinglong (30), a protester against forced expropriation in Hebei province. In 2013 his home was destroyed under official expropriation 18 days before his wedding. In Feb, 2015, he shot a local party chief in the back of the head at a New Year party.
(Econ, 11/26/16, p.86)
2016 Nov 15, In Congo DRC reporter Marcel Lubala was shot three times early today at his home in the central town of Mbuji-Mayi. The group Journalist in Danger said his body was dragged in front of his wife, who had been tied up.
(AP, 11/16/16)
2016 Nov 15, Thousands of people along the Dominican Republic's north coast were evacuated amid heavy rains that have caused widespread flooding and destroyed dozens of homes.
(AP, 11/15/16)
2016 Nov 15, An Egyptian court struck down the death sentence passed by a lower tribunal against former Islamist President Mohammed Morsi for his part in a mass prison break during the country's 2011 uprising.
(AP, 11/15/16)
2016 Nov 15, Egypt's parliament approved a bill to regulate non-governmental organizations in a move human rights groups say effectively bans their work.
(Reuters, 11/15/16)
2016 Nov 15, The European Union agreed to increase its military research budget for the first time since 2010 after Britain softened its opposition, a breakthrough that may signal British support for defense co-operation even once outside the bloc.
(Reuters, 11/15/16)
2016 Nov 15, Sources said Volkswagen AG has reached an agreement with US regulators for a mix of buybacks and fixes for 80,000 polluting Audi, Porsche and VW 3.0-liter vehicles.
(AP, 11/15/16)
2016 Nov 15, In Ghana Nana Afia Kobi Serwaa Ampem II (b.1907), revered queen of the powerful Ashanti kingdom, died. King Otumfuo Osei Tutu II is the deceased queen's biological son.
(http://tinyurl.com/jq22mxx)(AP, 11/25/16)
2016 Nov 15, Greek riot police used tear gas and stun grenades in Athens to disperse about 3,000 left-wing marchers protesting President Barack Obama's visit. Greek left-wingers still resent US support for Greece's 1967-74 military dictatorship. Obama offered solidarity with Greece over its debt and migrant crises on Tuesday during his final trip to Europe as US president before handing over power to Donald Trump.
(AP, 11/15/16)(Reuters, 11/15/16)
2016 Nov 15, Hungarian police said anti-terror squads have detained 12 people in eight localities suspected of involvement with the extremist Hungarian National Front.
(AP, 11/15/16)
2016 Nov 15, Iran's official IRNA news agency said the nation's intelligence service has confiscated about 2 tons of explosives linked to planned attacks by the Islamic State group in the country's west.
(AP, 11/15/16)
2016 Nov 15, Israel appointed an ambassador to Turkey, its first since both countries recalled their envoys five years ago amid a spat over a deadly Israeli raid on a Turkish vessel trying to reach the Gaza Strip.
(AP, 11/15/16)
2016 Nov 15, In Italy more than 1,000 people marched under torchlight through the Medieval center of Soave where the mayor is fending off plans to house more than 100 migrants.
(AP, 11/16/16)
2016 Nov 15, Swimmers crossed the Dead Sea from Jordan to Israel to raise awareness of what they said was an environmental disaster that has shrunk the inland lake's surface by a third in 30 years. They were the first people to thrash their way over the body of water so salty that it poisons anyone who drinks it.
(Reuters, 11/15/16)
2016 Nov 15, Kenya destroyed some 5,250 illegal firearms by fire as part of efforts to fight crimes like cattle rustling, carjackings and to eliminate threats from terrorism.
(Reuters, 11/15/16)
2016 Nov 15, Amnesty International said Kenya is coercing residents of the world's largest refugee camp to leave it and return to Somalia where they risk getting killed or forcibly recruited into the Islamic extremist group, al-Shabab.
(AP, 11/15/16)
2016 Nov 15, In Libya an air strike targeting Islamist militants killed at least seven people near the southwestern city of Sabha. Gunmen later seized the remains of the suspected militants from a morgue.
(Reuters, 11/15/16)
2016 Nov 15, In southern Libya tribal clashes erupted after three young men turned a pet monkey loose on a high school girl. The girl's family sought revenge and killed all three men along with the animal. Over the next days at least 20 people were killed and 50 wounded in the clashes.
(AP, 11/20/16)(AFP, 11/20/16)
2016 Nov 15, Around 95 people were missing, feared drowned, in the Mediterranean after another migrant dinghy capsized off Libya.
(AFP, 11/15/16)(AFP, 11/16/16)
2016 Nov 15, Myanmar’s army said sixty-nine members of the government described Rohingya Muslim militant group and 17 members of the security forces have been killed since the October 9 start of fighting in western Rakhine State.
(Reuters, 11/18/16)
2016 Nov 15, Nepalese authorities said police have detained 41 Tibetans trying to cross the border into India, in a crackdown on people fleeing the disputed region where opposition to Chinese control persists.
(Reuters, 11/15/16)
2016 Nov 15, Russian President Vladimir Putin dismissed Economy Minister Alexei Ulyukayev over allegations he extorted a $2 million bribe from top oil producer Rosneft, a case that could expose fault lines in the Russian leader's inner circle.
(Reuters, 11/15/16)
2016 Nov 15, Russia launched coordinated missile strikes against rebels in Syria and Moscow for the first time used its only aircraft carrier in combat.
(Reuters, 11/15/16)
2016 Nov 15, South Africa's main opposition party filed a criminal complaint accusing President Jacob Zuma of corruption after a report this month by an anti-graft agency listed allegations of influence-peddling in his government.
(Reuters, 11/15/16)
2016 Nov 15, In Syria Russia launched new air strikes involving carrier-borne jets and long range missiles in rebel-held districts of eastern Aleppo after a weeks-long pause. Activists said between 4 and 10 people were killed in the strikes on Aleppo.
(Reuters, 11/15/16)(SFC, 11/16/16, p.A3)
2016 Nov 15, The UN warned that 75,000 Nigerian children risk dying in "a few months" as hunger grips the country's ravaged northeast in the wake of the Boko Haram insurgency. Doctors Without Borders said thousands of children have died of starvation in the Boko Haram ravaged northeast.
(AFP, 11/15/16)(SFC, 11/16/16, p.A5)
2016 Nov 15, A key UN committee approved a resolution condemning North Korea's "systematic, widespread and gross violations of human rights" and encouraging the Security Council to refer the country to the International Criminal Court.
(AP, 11/15/16)
2016 Nov 15, Venezuela's high court ordered the opposition to drop plans for a political trial against President Nicolas Maduro, whose rivals blame him for food shortages in the volatile country.
(AFP, 11/15/16)
2017 Nov 15, A 500-year-old painting believed to be by Leonardo da Vinci sold for $450.3 million in New York, blazing a new world record for the most expensive work of art sold at auction.
(AFP, 11/16/17)
2017 Nov 15, The Trump administration told 29 local and state governments with “sanctuary" policies to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement or forfeit some federal grants, despite court rulings that such demands are unenforceable.
(SFC, 11/16/17, p.A8)
2017 Nov 15, US President Donald Trump exhorted three suspended UCLA basketball players to thank him for their freedom following a shoplifting incident while they were in China. The trio apologized later in the day and publicly thanked Trump.
(AP, 11/16/17)
2017 Nov 15, US President Donald Trump told reporters that China had agreed with the US that North Korea must unilaterally cease its nuclear weapons program before negotiations can begin.
(AP, 11/16/17)
2017 Nov 15, In Louisiana Wilbert Jones (65) was freed after his life sentence, issued in 1974, was overturned. He had been convicted of raping a nurse on Oct, 2, 1971. The nurse (d.2008) had picked him out of a police lineup more than three months after the rape. She had also said the rapist was taller and had a rougher voice than Jones had.
(SFC, 11/16/17, p.A8)
2017 Nov 15, In Maryland Detective Sean Suiter was shot and killed in Baltimore with his own gun during a violent confrontation with a man in a vacant lot.
(SFC, 11/30/17, p.A7)
2017 Nov 15, Ohio officials called off the execution of Alva Campbell (69) after the state’s execution team failed to find the inmate vein. The execution was rescheduled for June 5, 2019. He had been scheduled to die for killing a teenager during a carjacking two decades earlier.
(SFC, 11/16/17, p.A7)
2017 Nov 15, Astronomers announced the discovery of an Earth-sized planet around the red star Ross 128 in our corner of the Milky Way. Ross 128 appeared to be at least 5 billion years old.
(SFC, 11/16/17, p.A6)
2017 Nov 15, Argentina lost communications with the submarine ARA San Juan, a German-built diesel-electric vessel with 44 crewmembers aboard.
(AP, 11/17/17)
2017 Nov 15, China said that it would send a high-level special envoy to North Korea's capital, Pyongyang, amid an extended chill in relations between the neighbors.
(AP, 11/16/17)
2017 Nov 15, In eastern China more than 30 vehicles collided in heavy fog on an expressway, killing at least 18 people and injuring 19 others in Fuyang, Anhui province.
(AP, 11/15/17)
2017 Nov 15, Colombia’s Senate backed a law to regulate transitional justice under the country's peace deal with Marxist FARC rebels, including special tribunals that will try guerrilla leaders for war crimes.
(Reuters, 11/16/17)
2017 Nov 15, At the Dubai Air Show Airbus signed a $49.5 billion deal to sell 430 airplanes to the Phoenix-based private equity firm that owns Frontier Airlines. Boeing reached an agreement with low-cost carrier FlyDubai to sell 225 Boeing 737 MAX 10 aircraft — a deal valued at $27 billion.
(AP, 11/15/17)
2017 Nov 15, In Egypt leaders of the local musicians union said Sherine Abdel-Wahab, a famous Arab singer, has been banned from performing in her native Egypt after advising a fan against drinking from the Nile River.
(AP, 11/15/17)
2017 Nov 15, In Egypt Mohamed Badie, the leader of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood movement, lost his appeal against a life sentence for his role in violent clashes during political turmoil in 2013. The court also upheld life sentences against seven other people and handed 10-year sentences to 39 and three-year sentences to 19 others.
(Reuters, 11/15/17)
2017 Nov 15, European lawmakers triggered the first stage of a so-called rule-of-law procedure against the Polish government amid concerns that new laws in Poland undermine judicial independence and the rule of law. Poland's prime minister reacted furiously over the call for the country to face EU sanctions.
(AP, 11/15/17)(AFP, 11/15/17)
2017 Nov 15, In Greece flash floods killed at least 20 people. Most of the fatalities occurred in Mandra, a working-class district on the western outskirts of Athens. Days later two people remained missing.
(AP, 11/16/17)(SFC, 11/17/17, p.A2)(AFP, 11/18/17)(AP, 11/20/17)
2017 Nov 15, Hungary's foreign minister accused the United States government of meddling in his country's internal affairs and upcoming election campaign by offering to fund "objective media in Hungary." Practically all major newspapers published outside Budapest are now in the hands of pro-government publishers, some of whom also own television or radio stations.
(AP, 11/15/17)
2017 Nov 15, An Indonesian police officer was killed and a second wounded, after both were shot in the back in an area near Freeport-McMoRan Inc's giant Grasberg copper mine in the eastern province of Papua.
(Reuters, 11/15/17)
2017 Nov 15, Mexican authorities seized more than 800 pounds (371 kg) of cocaine being transported toward the US border inside a truck bearing the markings of the country's Social Security Institute.
(AP, 11/17/17)
2017 Nov 15, In Nigeria four suicide bombers killed 14 people and wounded 29 in Maiduguri, home of the Boko Haram insurgency.
(SFC, 11/16/17, p.A2)
2017 Nov 15, The Russian Finance Ministry says it has signed a deal to restructure Venezuela's debt.
(AP, 11/15/17)
2017 Nov 15, Slovakia's government approved plans to build military armored vehicles with the Finnish defense industry company Patria to replace the NATO member's outdated armored personnel carriers.
(Reuters, 11/15/17)
2017 Nov 15, Syrian rebel officials said a senior commander has defected to Turkey from the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a leading combatant in the fight against Islamic State. Brigadier General Talal Silo handed himself in at dawn to the Free Syrian Army (FSA), an adversary of the SDF, and was escorted to Turkey.
(Reuters, 11/15/17)
2017 Nov 15, In Syria six Russian long-range bombers struck Islamic State targets near the town of Albu Kamal in Deir al-Zor Province.
(Reuters, 11/15/17)
2017 Nov 15, Turkish authorities in Ankara banned a German gay film festival the day before it was due to start, citing public safety and terrorism risks.
(Reuters, 11/19/17)
2017 Nov 15, Zimbabwe's military was in control of the country as President Robert Mugabe said he was under house arrest, although generals denied staging a coup. The country, which has an unemployment rate of over 90 percent, is due to hold elections next year with Mugabe pledging to stand for office again.
(AFP, 11/15/17)
2018 Nov 16, It was reported that the CIA believes Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul, complicating President Donald Trump's efforts to preserve ties with a key US ally.
(Reuters, 11/17/18)
2018 Nov 16, The United States said it would oppose for the first time an annual resolution at the United Nations calling on Israel to rescind its authority in the occupied Golan Heights, drawing praise from Israeli officials.
(Reuters, 11/16/18)
2018 Nov 16, A US federal judge directed the White House to restore the press credentials of Jim Acosta of CNN ruling the the Trump administration had likely violated his due process rights when it revoked his press badge last week.
(SFC, 11/17/18, p.A6)
2018 Nov 16, A US federal judge ruled that John Hinckley Jr. (63), the man who tried to assassinate Pres. Ronald Reagan in 1981, can now move out of his mother's house in Williamsburg and live within 75 miles of the city with the approval of his doctors.
(SSFC, 11/18/18, p.A9)
2018 Nov 16, In northern California the death toll in the Butte County Camp Fire rose to 71. The number of missing skyrocketed to 1011.
(SFC, 11/17/18, p.A1)
2018 Nov 16, William Goldman (87), American novelist and Oscar-winning screenwriter, died in Manhattan. His work included more than 20 novels and more than 20 screenplays. His original screeplay for "Butch Cassidy and the Sundace Kid" sold for $400,000.
(SSFC, 11/18/18, p.C10)
2018 Nov 16, In Australia Shinzo Abe became the first prime minister of Japan to visit Darwin since the northern city was bombed by Japanese forces in World War II, as he and PM Scott Morrison spoke of strengthening defense and other ties between their countries ahead of the APEC meeting in Papua New Guinea.
(AP, 11/16/18)
2018 Nov 16, Investigative group Bellingcat and Russian website The Insider published a report suggesting that Russian intelligence has infiltrated the computer infrastructure of a company that processes British visa applications.
(AP, 11/16/18)
2018 Nov 16, In Cambodia Nuon Chea (92) and Khieu Samphan (97), the last surviving leaders of the Khmer Rouge regime that ruled Cambodia in the 1970s, when their reign of terror was responsible for the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million people, were convicted by an international tribunal of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.
(AP, 11/16/18)(SFC, 11/17/18, p.A2)
2018 Nov 16, Meeting in Versailles, France, 50-plus nations unanimously approved a ground-breaking overhaul to the international system of measurements that underpins global trade and other vital human endeavors, uniting together behind new scientific definitions for the kilogram and other units in a way that they have failed to do on so many other issues.
(AP, 11/16/18)
2018 Nov 16, In India thousands of protesters blocked all the exits at a southern airport for more than 14 hours, stopping rights activist Trupti Desai from heading to a Hindu temple to defy a centuries-old ban on most women entering. Desai has led a successful campaign to give women the right to enter the inner sanctums of three temples in the western state of Maharashtra under the slogan "Right to Pray".
(Reuters, 11/16/18)
2018 Nov 16, Cyclone Gaya made landfall in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, killing at least 11 people, uprooting trees and knocking down electricity poles after more than 80,000 people were moved out of its path to safety.
(Reuters, 11/16/18)
2018 Nov 16, An Indonesian conservation official said a Sumatran elephant was found dead earlier this week in Aceh province with its tusks removed in an apparent poaching case targeting the critically endangered animal.
(AP, 11/17/18)
2018 Nov 16, Iraq's central government said it has agreed with Kurdish authorities to resume oil exports from Kirkuk, a year after federal forces seized the lucrative fields.
(AFP, 11/16/18)
2018 Nov 16, It was reported that Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu will take over the defense portfolio in his government after his defense minister resigned this week.
(Reuters, 11/16/18)
2018 Nov 16, North Korea said it will deport Bruce Byron Lowrance, an American citizen it detained for illegal entrance, an apparent concession to the United States that came even as it announced the test of a newly developed but unspecified "ultramodern" weapon that will be seen as a pressuring tactic by Washington.
(AP, 11/16/18)
2018 Nov 16, A senior North Korean official on a visit to South Korea called for Japan to apologize for the wartime forced labor of thousands of Koreans.
(AP, 11/16/18)
2018 Nov 16, World leaders began landing in Papua New Guinea for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting.
(AP, 11/16/18)
2018 Nov 16, In Poland Sister Cecylia Roszak (b.1908) died. During the German occupation of Poland during World War II she was one of several nuns who set up a new convent near Vilnius, today in Lithuania, sheltering Jews who had escaped the ghetto there.
(http://tinyurl.com/ybc6xo6w)(AP, 11/22/18)
2018 Nov 16, The Russian Defense Ministry said that nearly 6,000 people have returned to Syria in the last week alone and that nearly 270,000 Syrian refugees have returned home in recent months, a fraction of the estimated 5.6 million Syrians who have fanned out across the world fleeing the seven-year conflict.
(AP, 11/16/18)
2018 Nov 16, Russian investigators opened a criminal case after finding pollution levels in the Novaya river in St. Petersburg far exceeded norms, with ethyl alcohol levels charted at 5,400 times the acceptable limit.
(AP, 11/17/18)
2018 Nov 16, A Russian Soyuz rocket launched its first cargo mission to the International Space Station since a Soyuz rocket carrying astronauts failed last month.
(AFP, 11/17/18)
2018 Nov 16, In Sri Lanka lawmakers in Parliament supporting disputed PM Mahinda Rajapaksa threw books, chairs and chili powder mixed with water to try to block proceedings. Parliament for the second time passed a no-confidence motion against Rajapaksa and his government by a voice vote.
(AP, 11/16/18)
2018 Nov 16, Turkish police detained 13 people including two prominent academics under an investigation into jailed rights activist Osman Kavala, accusing them of following him in a bid to unseat the government through mass protests in 2013.
(Reuters, 11/16/18)
2018 Nov 16, In southern Zimbabwe at least 42 people were feared dead after flames swept through a passenger bus overnight driving towards South Africa.
(Reuters, 11/16/18)
2018 Nov 17, Pres. Donald Trump joined Gov. Jerry Brown and Gov.-elect Gavin Newsom to tour the devastation of California's Butte County Camp Fire. The death toll in the fire rose to 76 with number of missing up to 1,276.
(SFC, 11/18/18, p.A14)
2018 Nov 17, In Idaho an explosion at a hazardous waste site 50 miles south of Boise killed one worker.
(SFC, 11/19/18, p.A4)
2018 Nov 17, Jerry Frankel (b.1930), former dress manufacturer and producer of Broadway shows, died in Manhattan. In all he produced 53 Broadway plays wih various partners, most ofter with Jeffrey Richards.
(SFC, 11/21/18, p.C5)
2018 Nov 17, In Texas a privately owned vintage WWII Mustang fighter crashed in Fredericksburg after participating in a flyover for a museum event. The pilot and a passenger were killed.
(SFC, 11/19/18, p.A4)
2018 Nov 17, An unmanned Cygnus cargo ship blasted off from Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia toward the International Space Station, marking the second supply mission in 24 hours destined to carry food and supplies to the astronauts living in space.
(AFP, 11/17/18)
2018 Nov 17, In Afghanistan at least five police officers were killed when their checkpoint came under attack by insurgents in the northwestern Badghis province. A roadside bomb late today killed two local officials in the eastern Logar province. The Taliban claimed the attack.
(AP, 11/17/18)(AP, 11/18/18)
2018 Nov 17, The Argentine Navy announced that a submarine that went missing Nov. 15, 2017, off the country's Atlantic Coast has been found by a private company, marine tracking contractor Ocean Infinity, involved in what had been a massive search for the vessel and its 44-member crew. It was found "imploded" 907 meters (2,975 feet) below the ocean surface.
(Reuters, 11/17/18)
2018 Nov 17, An Australia man went into cardiac arrest at Lauderdale Beach, east of Hobart in Tasmania, after he suffered a stingray puncture wound to his lower abdomen.
(AP, 11/18/18)
2018 Nov 17, In Azerbaijan Ali Karimli, head of the Azeri opposition party Popular Front, was detained for leading an unsanctioned procession through Baku's Alley of Martyrs. 52 participants were detained by the police. 41 were soon released and 11 remained in detention.
(AP, 11/18/18)
2018 Nov 17, Hundreds of British protesters turned out in central London and blocked off the capital's main bridges to demand the government take climate change seriously.
(AP, 11/17/18)
2018 Nov 17, Central African Republic (CAR) lawmaker and former militia leader Alfred Yekatom was extradited to The Hague to stand trial in the International Criminal Court probing war crimes and crimes against humanity.
(AP, 11/17/18)
2018 Nov 17, In the Central African Rep. three soldiers died in a shootout between members of military engineering units in the town of Bambari. Three other soldiers were injured in the gunfight.
(AFP, 11/18/18)
2018 Nov 17, In Chechnya a young woman blew herself up near a police checkpoint in Grozny, but nobody else was killed or injured.
(Reuters, 11/17/18)
2018 Nov 17, China's agriculture ministry said four new outbreaks of African swine fever have been reported in the provinces of Jiangxi, Yunnan and Sichuan as well as the municipality of Shanghai.
(Reuters, 11/17/18)
2018 Nov 17, Thousands of Czechs used the anniversary of their country's 1989 anti-communist Velvet Revolution to rally against PM Andrej Babis. Babis has been charged with misusing European Union subsidies for a farm he transferred to family members.
(AP, 11/17/18)
2018 Nov 17, Egypt sentenced an alleged Islamic State supporter to death for stabbing and killing an 82-year-old Christian doctor in Cairo in Sept. 2017.
(AP, 11/17/18)
2018 Nov 17, In Ethiopia African Union leaders, led by Rwanda's President Paul Kagame, convened an extraordinary summit at its headquarters in Addis Ababa to consider reforms to encourage peace, development and a united Africa.
(AP, 11/17/18)
2018 Nov 17, In France thousands gathered on motorways across the country to protest against higher fuel taxes and President Emmanuel Macron's economic policies, in a campaign of road blockades. One female protester (63) was accidentally killed and dozens were injured.
(Reuters, 11/17/18)(AFP, 11/17/18)
2018 Nov 17, Iraq's President Barham Salih began a visit to Iran, where he pledged to improve relations less than two weeks after the United States restored oil sanctions that had been lifted under the 2015 nuclear deal.
(AP, 11/17/18)
2018 Nov 17, In Iraq Wissam al-Ghrawi, a prominent figure in demonstrations demanding clean water and reliable electricity in Basra, was shot and killed in front of his house by unknown assailants.
(AP, 11/18/18)
2018 Nov 17, Italy's coast guard said it is searching for eight Algerian migrants who apparently tried to swim to shore on Nov. 15 when the motor of their boat failed off Sardinia's southwest coast. Two bodies were already recovered.
(AP, 11/17/18)
2018 Nov 17, New Maldives Pres. Ibrahim Mohamed Solih (54) took office, declaring the state coffers to have been looted and warned that the country was in financial difficulty after racking up debt with Chinese lenders in an infrastructure boom.
(Reuters, 11/17/18)
2018 Nov 17, In Mexico many of the nearly 3,000 Central American migrants who have reached the border with California via caravan said they do not feel welcome in the city of Tijuana, where hundreds more migrants are headed after more than a month on the road. Tijuana Mayor Juan Manuel Gastelum has called the migrants' arrival an "avalanche" that the city is ill-prepared to handle.
(AP, 11/18/18)
2018 Nov 17, In the Netherlands scattered confrontations broke out between supporters and opponents of the divisive helper of the Dutch version of Santa Claus, amid a fierce and increasingly polarized debate about the helper known as Black Pete.
(AP, 11/17/18)
2018 Nov 17, In Norway thousands of protesters demonstrated in cities against restricting women's access to abortion, the subject of talks between the ruling minority coalition and a small party seeking to join the government.
(Reuters, 11/17/18)
2018 Nov 17, Papua New Guinea hosted leaders from Pacific Rim countries, including the United States, Russia and China, this weekend in a coming-out party for the jungle-clad nation that is regarded as one of the world's last frontiers for trade and investment. Chinese President Xi Jinping and US Vice President Mike Pence traded barbs in speeches at the summit, outlining competing visions for global leadership as trade and other tensions between them simmer.
(AP, 11/17/18)
2018 Nov 17, Speaking in Papua New Guinea US Vice President Mike Pence said the United States will join Pacific ally Australia to build a naval base on Papua New Guinea's Manus Island.
(Reuters, 11/17/18)
2018 Nov 17, In Peru former Pres. Alan Garcia sought diplomatic asylum in Uruguay's mission in Lima hours after a judge retained his passport as part of a corruption probe.
(SFC, 11/19/18, p.A2)
2018 Nov 17, In Romania a painting believed to be "Tête d’Arlequin" by Pablo Picasso, stolen in 2012 from Rotterdam’s Kunsthal museum, was found in Tulcea county. It was valued at roughly 800,000 euros ($913,440). A Romanian ringleader and his accomplices were convicted of the theft in 2013, but none of the artworks had been recovered. Romanian prosecutors the next day said they were trying to verify the work's authenticity. Dutch media soon reported that the work is more likely a forgery created as a publicity stunt.
(Reuters, 11/18/18)(AP, 11/19/18)
2018 Nov 17, Greenpeace said six of its activists boarded a tanker off Spain loaded with "dirty" palm oil to protest against a Nature-damaging commodity found in everything from soap to biscuits. The ship was travelling from Indonesia, the world's top palm oil producer, to Rotterdam in the Netherlands.
(AFP, 11/17/18)
2018 Nov 17, It was reported that Sheikh Ahmad al-Fahad al-Sabah, a former Kuwaiti minister and one of the most powerful officials in international sports, has been charged in Switzerland with forgery. Le Temps newspaper said Sheikh Ahmad stands accused with four others of an intricate forgery scheme linked to his efforts to prove that Kuwait's former prime minister and speaker of parliament were guilty of coup-plotting and corruption.
(AFP, 11/17/18)
2018 Nov 17, In Syria US-led coalition airstrikes on the last pocket held by Islamic State militants reportedly killed at least 43 people, mostly women and children in the village of Abu al-Husn, a jihadist pocket in Deir el-Zour province. The coalition confirmed strikes in the area but said no "civilian casualties are associated" with them.
(AP, 11/17/18)(AFP, 11/18/18)
2018 Nov 17, Syrian government forces reportedly captured the rugged southern Tulul al-Safa region from the Islamic State group after weeks of fighting that left scores dead on both sides. IS fighters withdrew through the desert to hideouts in Homs province and other areas south of the capital.
(AP, 11/19/18)
2018 Nov 17, In Taiwan "An Elephant Sitting Still" won the top prize at the Golden Horse Awards, the Chinese-language version of the Oscars. Director Hu Bo, who committed suicide before its release, upset the highly touted martial-arts epic "Shadow," by veteran director Zhang Yimou. Zhang won best director for "Shadow". The film "Our Youth in Taiwan," by President Tsai Ing-wen, won the best documentary award.
(AP, 11/17/18)(AP, 11/19/18)
2018 Nov 17, Officials recovered a boat that sank in rough weather off Thailand's southern resort island of Phuket in July, killing 47 Chinese tourists. Two tour boats sank off Phuket on July 5.
(AP, 11/17/18)
2018 Nov 18, Former NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg said he is donating $1.8 billion to his alma mater, Johns Hopkins Univ. in Baltimore. This was the largest gift to any educational institute in the US.
(SFC, 11/19/18, p.A4)
2018 Nov 18, At the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in Papua New Guinea, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, the US and Papua New Guinea signed an electrification agreement to bring electricity to 70 percent of Papua New Guinea's people by 2030.
(AP, 11/18/18)
2018 Nov 18, Cameroon reported that a professor and staff member of the University of Buea in the troubled west have been kidnapped. Charles Doumta, on the Health Sciences faculty, and George Ongey, who works for the research and cooperation office, were seized on Nov. 16 and Nov. 10, respectively.
(AP, 11/18/18)
2018 Nov 18, Authorities in the Democratic Republic of Congo provisionally freed 17 pro-democracy activists who were arrested in the capital on November 1.
(AFP, 11/19/18)
2018 Nov 18, Croatian police said international police organization Interpol has decided to renew an arrest warrant for the head of Hungarian energy group MOL issued by Croatia. MOL called the move surprising. MOL Chief Executive Zsolt Hernadi has been indicted in Croatia for allegedly bribing former Croatian PM Ivo Sanader to allow MOL to become the key decision-maker in Croatian energy company INA, in which MOL is the biggest but not the majority shareholder.
(Reuters, 11/18/18)
2018 Nov 18, Police chiefs from around the world gathered in Dubai for Interpol's general assembly to select a new president after the agency's former official in the post was detained in China.
(AP, 11/18/18)
2018 Nov 18, Human Rights Watch said Egyptian authorities have rounded up at least 40 rights workers, activists and lawyers since late October and detained them in "undisclosed locations." HRW said many of those arrested were people who provided humanitarian and legal support to families of political detainees.
(AFP, 11/18/18)
2018 Nov 18, Fijian PM Frank Bainimarama will stay in power for a second term as he narrowly won a general election after voting resumed following delays due to bad weather.
(Reuters, 11/18/18)
2018 Nov 18, French Interior Minister Christophe Castaner said more than 400 people were hurt, 14 seriously, in a day and night of "yellow vest" protests over rising fuel price hikes as more protests continued in several regions across France.
(AP, 11/18/18)
2018 Nov 18, Indian officials said Cyclone Gaya has killed at least 33 people in Tamil Nadu state, caused massive damage to homes and roads and drove tens of thousands of people into relief camps.
(AP, 11/18/18)
2018 Nov 18, In northern India three people were killed and over a dozen injured when two men on a motorbike targeted a prayer hall with a grenade on the outskirts of Amritsar, Punjab state.
(AP, 11/18/18)
2018 Nov 18, Iran's state-run IRNA news agency reported that the country's authorities have detained four workers protesting not having been paid their salaries for months in the southwestern province of Khuzestan.
(AP, 11/18/18)
2018 Nov 18, In northern Iraq five people were killed in a car bomb blast in the city of Tikrit.
(AP, 11/18/18)
2018 Nov 18, The Sunday Times of Malta reported that investigators have identified a group of at least three Maltese nationals who they believe masterminded the killing of anti-corruption journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia 13 months ago.
(Reuters, 11/18/18)
2018 Nov 18, In southern Mexico a Red Cross paramedic and three policemen were killed after a gang of 20 gunmen opened fire on an aid distribution meeting near the city of Taxco, Guerrero state.
(AP, 11/19/18)
2018 Nov 18, Myanmar police shot and injured four Rohingya Muslims, after detaining two men accused of smuggling people out of a camp for displaced people in western Rakhine state.
(Reuters, 11/18/18)
2018 Nov 18, In Nigeria 44 soldiers were killed in an attack in Metele in the northeastern state of Borno. Nigerian troops later released a video claiming dozens had died in the attack and deploring the poor state of their equipment.
(Reuters, 11/22/18)(AP, 11/24/18)
2018 Nov 18, In Pakistan a roadside bomb exploded in the suburbs of Quetta as a paramilitary vehicle was passing, killing three soldiers and wounding another four. A rocket-propelled grenade hit a security vehicle in North Waziristan, killing two soldiers and wounding another two.
(AP, 11/18/18)
2018 Nov 18, In Papua New Guinea an acrimonious meeting of world leaders failed to agree on a final communique, highlighting widening divisions between global powers China and the US.
(AP, 11/18/18)
2018 Nov 18, Saudi Arabia's King Salman received Iraq's Pres. Barham Salih in Riyadh, a day after the Iraqi official visited the kingdom's rival, Iran.
(AP, 11/18/18)
2018 Nov 18, Spanish police intervened to keep trouble from erupting at a rally in Madrid marking the anniversary of military dictator Francisco Franco's death after feminist protesters interrupted the event.
(AP, 11/18/18)
2018 Nov 18, In Timor-Leste police officer Jose Mina was apprehended after he stood on a bench and opened fire randomly in the dark after electricity suddenly went out at a party in Dili city. Three men died instantly and five other guests were hospitalized with gun wounds.
(AP, 11/19/18)
2018 Nov 18, Turkey warned energy companies against working with the Greek Cypriot government in carrying out exploratory drilling in the eastern Mediterranean, saying such activities could damage regional stability.
(Reuters, 11/18/18)
2018 Nov 18, A Turkish court jailed pending trial Istanbul academic Yigit Aksakoglu following raids on professors and activists deemed to have links to Osman Kavala, a prominent financier of civil society activities, who has been imprisoned for the past year.
(AFP, 11/18/18)
2018 Nov 18, In Ukraine two activists were attacked with pepper-spray in Kiev during a transgender rights march that was interrupted by dozens of far-right protesters.
(AFP, 11/18/18)
2018 Nov 18, Pope Francis railed against social inequality, lamenting "the din of the rich few" drowning out the voice of the needy, as he marked the second "World Day of the Poor".
(AFP, 11/18/18)
2018 Nov 18, Officials in central Vietnam said flash floods and landslides killed at least 12 people, as hundreds of troops were dispatched to clean up destroyed villages and washed out roads.
(AFP, 11/18/18)
2018 Nov 19, A US federal judge in San Francisco barred the Trump administration from refusing asylum to immigrants who cross the southern border illegally.
(AP, 11/20/18)(SFC, 11/21/18, p.A1)
2018 Nov 19, The US Justice Department accused Venezuelan television mogul Raul Gorrin of bribing officials in the South American country and helping them launder the funds through assets in the United States in an indictment unsealed in federal court in West Palm Beach, Florida.
(Reuters, 11/20/18)
2018 Nov 19, The US Treasury Department placed sanctions on Libyan Islamist commander Salah Badi, who Libya's UN-backed Government of National Accord has blamed for a May 2017 attack in Tripoli.
(Reuters, 11/19/18)
2018 Nov 19, The United States closed off northbound traffic for several hours at the busiest border crossing with Mexico to install new security barriers, a day after hundreds of Tijuana residents protested against the presence of thousands of Central American migrants.
(AP, 11/19/18)
2018 Nov 19, In California two police officers, arrested last week in an alleged corruption scandal, were arraigned in Visalia. They were accused of obtaining search wrrants based upon controlled narcotics buys that did not occur.
(SFC, 11/19/18, p.A4)
2018 Nov 19, In southern California the number buildings destroyed by the Woolsey Fire rose to 1500 as containment lines were completed around 94 percent of the area where three people were killed. In northern California the death toll from the Camp Fire rose to 79. The number of missing dropped to 699.
(SFC, 11/20/18, p.A1,5)
2018 Nov 19, In Colorado one person was killed and four others were wounded in a shooting in downtown Denver. Police had no description of any suspects.
(SFC, 11/20/18, p.A5)
2018 Nov 19, In Missouri a man killed Jamie Schmidt (53), when she refused sexual demands, and assaulted two others inside a Catholic religious supplies store in Ballwin, a suburb of St. Louis. Thomas Bruce was later charged with first degree murder.
(SFC, 1/12/19, p.A6)
2018 Nov 19, In Pennsylvania two men and two women were found fatally shot in a basement of a house being renovated in Philadelphia.
(SFC, 11/20/18, p.A5)
2018 Nov 19, Home-renting company Airbnb Inc said that it had decided to remove its listings in Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, enclaves that most world powers consider illegal for taking up land where Palestinians seek statehood.
(Reuters, 11/19/18)
2018 Nov 19, In Australia shareholders gave final approval to the merger of television network Nine Entertainment and newspaper publisher Fairfax Media into an Australian media giant to be known only as Nine despite one shareholder's late bid to stop the deal.
(AP, 11/19/18)
2018 Nov 19, A British Parole Board panel ruled that John Worboys (61), a former London taxi driver who was convicted in 2009 of raping or sexually assaulting 12 women he picked up as passengers, wasn't suitable for release. 102 women had made allegations against him.
(AP, 11/19/18)
2018 Nov 19, Canada's Globe and Mail newspaper reported that group of Canadian diplomats who left the embassy in Cuba after they suffered unusual health symptoms says their foreign ministry has abandoned them. Canadian and US diplomats have complained of dizziness, headaches and nausea in Havana.
(Reuters, 11/19/18)
2018 Nov 19, China's state-run media said female novelist Tianyi has been sentenced to 10 years in jail for writing and distributing books containing explicit descriptions of gay male sex. She attracted the scrutiny of authorities after one of her homoerotic novels, "Gongzhan", went viral last year.
(AFP, 11/19/18)
2018 Nov 19, In Denmark whistleblower Howard Wilkinson, who uncovered a massive alleged money laundering scheme at Danske Bank's Estonian branch, told a parliamentary commission that he had notified his superiors four times about suspicious transactions but no action was ever taken.
(AFP, 11/19/18)
2018 Nov 19, In Denmark former gang leader Nedim Yasar (31), who repented and wrote a book about his experiences, was fatally shot by a lone gunman in dark clothes. Yasar was rushed to a nearby hospital and died the next day.
(AP, 11/20/18)
2018 Nov 19, Hundreds of Ethiopian Jews gathered in the capital, Addis Ababa, to protest the Israeli government's decision not to allow all of them to emigrate to Israel, leaving their families divided between the two countries.
(AP, 11/19/18)
2018 Nov 19, A powerful party in Ethiopia's government accused authorities of arresting members of its ethnic group in a politically-driven crackdown - an unprecedented public charge exposing deep rifts at the heart of the ruling elite.
(Reuters, 11/20/18)
2018 Nov 19, European ministers signed off on Britain's draft divorce deal as they launched a "painful" final week of negotiations on future cross-Channel ties.
(AFP, 11/19/18)
2018 Nov 19, European Union foreign ministers endorsed a French government decision to sanction Iranian nationals accused of a bomb plot in France, a move that could enable EU-wide enforcement of the measures.
(Reuters, 11/19/18)
2018 Nov 19, Social media in Finland was ablaze with bemused comments after US President Donald Trump claimed the forest-covered nation prevents wildfires by raking its forest floors.
(AFP, 11/19/18)
2018 Nov 19, In France UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay and World Jewish Congress President Ronald Lauder unveiled the interactive "Facts about the Holocaust " site at the cultural agency's Paris headquarters.
(AP, 11/19/18)
2018 Nov 19, Germany banned Saudi citizens suspected of involvement in the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi from much of Europe and moved to halt all arms sales to the kingdom in a firming of its stance towards Riyadh.
(Reuters, 11/19/18)
2018 Nov 19, Nearly 4,000 people were evacuated from areas around Guatemala's Fuego volcano, which began violently erupting overnight.
(Reuters, 11/19/18)
2018 Nov 19, Hong Kong protest leaders went on trial for spearheading pro-democracy demonstrations in 2014. Benny Tai along with another professor and a pastor, were leaders of the "Occupy Central" campaign to press for free elections of Hong Kong's top leader.
(AP, 11/19/18)
2018 Nov 19, In Indonesia the rotting carcass of a 31-foot sperm whale in Southeast
Sulawesi province. Researchers found 13 pounds of plastic inside the animal's stomach. A study plublished last January said Indonesia produces 3.2 million tons of mismanaged plastic waste a year, of which 1.29 million tons end up in the ocean.
(SFC, 11/21/18, p.A5)
2018 Nov 19, Nissan chairman Carlos Ghosn was arrested in Japan over allegations of financial misconduct and faced being fired this week, in a stunning fall from grace for one of the world's best-known businessmen.
(AFP, 11/19/18)
2018 Nov 19, Japan's coast guard said that a Chinese fishing boat sank off a southern Japanese island and five of its crewmembers were missing. Three others were rescued.
(AP, 11/19/18)
2018 Nov 19, Romania's ruling Social Democratic Party fired six ministers as the beleaguered chairman Liviu Dragnea sought to tighten his grip on the government.
(AP, 11/19/18)
2018 Nov 18, Romanian diplomat Mihnea Constanescu (57), praised internationally for his efforts to combat anti-Semitism, died in Nice, France, after a long illness.
(AP, 11/20/18)
2018 Nov 19, Russia clashed bitterly with the West as it tried to block the world chemical arms watchdog's new ability to attribute blame for attacks like those in Syria and Salisbury.
(AFP, 11/19/18)
2018 Nov 19, Russian prosecutors said they suspected Kremlin critic Bill Browder (54) of ordering the 2009 murder of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky whose memory he has championed, but he dismissed the accusation as a cynical ploy to tar him for lobbying for sanctions on Moscow.
(Reuters, 11/19/18)
2018 Nov 19, In Somalia the US military killed a total of 37 Islamic extremists in two airstrikes. Africa Command said the airstrikes were carried out in coordination with the government of Somalia.
(AP, 11/20/18)
2018 Nov 19, Pravin Gordhan, the South African minister of state-owned companies and anti-graft campaigner, warned an official probe into widespread state corruption risks being subverted by those who illicitly enriched themselves.
(AFP, 11/19/18)
2018 Nov 19, Spanish PM Pedro Sanchez made his first official visit to Morocco, where he pushed for greater cooperation between the two countries on tackling migration.
(AFP, 11/19/18)
2018 Nov 19, The Swedish Academy said its new committee would have five of its own members and five external experts that could pick the Nobel Prize in Literature winners in 2019 and 2020.
(Reuters, 11/19/18)
2018 Nov 19, In Turkey Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan marked the completion of a key phase of TurkStream, a natural gas pipeline connecting the two countries. The last part of the offshore pipe was laid on live broadcast, reaching Turkish shores at Kiyikoy near Istanbul.
(AP, 11/19/18)
2018 Nov 19, A UN draft resolution on Yemen was presented to the Security Council. It called for an immediate truce in the port city of Hodeida and set a two-week deadline for the warring sides to remove all barriers to humanitarian aid.
(AFP, 11/19/18)
2018 Nov 19, Vietnamese police arrested Nguyen Huu Tin (61), a former deputy chairman of Ho Chi Minh City for violating regulations on state asset management and use.
(AP, 11/19/18)
2018 Nov 19, Yemen's Shiite rebels said that they will halt rocket fire into Saudi Arabia for the sake of peace efforts, answering a key Saudi demand in the latest push to stop the civil war in the Arab world's poorest country.
(AP, 11/19/18)
2018 Nov 19, In Yemen fierce clashes erupted in the Red Sea city of Hodeida late today after a lull. The clashes lasted up to four hours and resulted in fatalities.
(AFP, 11/20/18)
2018 Nov 20, US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer issued a report accusing China of stepping up hacking aimed at stealing American technology.
(AP, 11/21/18)
2018 Nov 20, Massachusetts's first two legal pot shops opened in Leicester and Northampton.
(SFC, 11/21/18, p.A6)
2018 Nov 20, US federal judge Carlton Reeves struck down a Mississippi law that bans most abortions after 15 weeks.
(http://tinyurl.com/y8nj2eqv)(SFC, 11/22/18, p.A8)
2018 Nov 20, In Afghanistan a suicide bomber targeted a gathering of hundreds of Muslim religious scholars in Kabul, killing at least 55 people as Muslims around the world marked the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad. The Taliban denied involvement in the suicide bombing. 94 others were wounded in the attack.
(AP, 11/20/18)(AP, 11/21/18)
2018 Nov 20, Award-winning Bangladeshi photographer and activist Shahidul Alam (63) was released from prison after more than 100 days behind bars. He was arrested on August 5 for making "false" and "provocative" statements on Al Jazeera television and Facebook during student protests.
(AFP, 11/20/18)
2018 Nov 20, A Brussels police officer was wounded and a terrorism inquiry has been launched after pre-dawn knife attack. The suspect in the attack was shot by two of the officer's colleagues and was hospitalized in a "critical condition".
(AFP, 11/20/18)
2018 Nov 20, Bosnia inaugurated the country's three-member presidency following last month's election, with nationalist politicians dominating a body designed to heal the country's ethnic divide.
(AP, 11/20/18)
2018 Nov 20, Brazil's incoming justice minister, the former anti-corruption judge Sergio Moro, picked Mauricio Valeixo to be director-general of the federal police with a mission to fight graft and organized crime.
(Reuters, 11/20/18)
2018 Nov 20, In Chile Luis Mayol, the top government official in the restive Araucania region, resigned late on today amid mounting political fallout after a controversial police raid last week ended in the shooting of an indigenous Mapuche man.
(Reuters, 11/21/18)
2018 Nov 20, China's Pres. Xi Jinping held talks with President Rodrigo Duterte and other officials on a visit to the Philippines aimed at deepening relations with the American treaty ally. Jinping said negotiations between Beijing and Southeast Asian nations on a nonaggression pact to prevent clashes in the disputed South China Sea could be concluded in three years and promised that any differences will be dealt with peacefully.
(AP, 11/20/18)
2018 Nov 20, The Shanghai Stock Exchange said billionaire Chinese actress Zhao Wei and her husband have been barred from taking on key positions at listed companies for five years for violating securities regulations.
(Reuters, 11/20/18)
2018 Nov 20, A Croatian court says a tycoon who founded a deeply indebted food and retail company should be released from jail after he deposited a one-million-euro bail ($1.1 million). Ivica Todoric must hand in his passport to authorities and won't be allowed to leave the capital pending the end of his trial.
(AP, 11/20/18)
2018 Nov 20, Amnesty International said that Egypt has committed "shocking violations" against children, including torture and enforced disappearances.
(AP, 11/20/18)
2018 Nov 20, The European Union said it will suspend 100 million euros ($114 million) of aid to Moldova over concerns about its democracy and the slow pace of reforms in the former Soviet republic.
(AP, 11/20/18)
2018 Nov 20, The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) urged Turkey to swiftly process the legal case of Selahattin Demirtas, the ex-head of the pro-Kurdish opposition, saying his pre-trial detention had gone on longer than could be justified.
(Reuters, 11/20/18)
2018 Nov 20, Fiji's leader Voreqe Bainimarama was sworn in for four more years after winning an election with a reduced majority, after earlier lashing out at his opponents.
(AP, 11/20/18)
2018 Nov 20, In France Rev. Robert Bonan was arrested in the town of Lautenbach on preliminary charges of raping minors. The charges were based on multiple complaints, some dating to the 1980s.
(AP, 11/23/18)
2018 Nov 20, In Iran a Revolutionary Court ruled to release Abdolfattah Soltani, a prominent human rights lawyer, after eight years in prison.
(AP, 11/21/18)
2018 Nov 20, The World Health Organizations said that laboratory tests completed after a shocking fish die-off in Iraq's Euphrates River show the water is contaminated with high levels of bacteria, heavy metals, and ammonia.
(AP, 11/20/18)
2018 Nov 20, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would join the United States and other countries in rejecting the UN Global Compact for Migration, aimed at boosting cooperation to address the world's growing number of migrants, set to be adopted during a conference in Morocco on December 10-11.
(AFP, 11/20/18)
2018 Nov 20, In Israel Palestinian teenager Abdul Rahman Abu Jamal (17), who attacked Israeli officers on Nov. 14 at a police station in annexed east Jerusalem before being shot, died of his wounds at the Shaare Zedek hospital in Jerusalem.
(AFP, 11/20/18)
2018 Nov 20, Italian prosecutors said they have ordered the seizure of the Aquarius, a migrant rescue ship, and accused the aid group Doctors Without Borders of illegally disposing of 24 metric tons (26.5 tons) of medical and contaminated waste accumulated during nearly 50 rescues.
(AP, 11/20/18)
2018 Nov 20, Rome city officials sent in 600 police officers to evict a purported crime family from eight villas that were allegedly built without authorization decades ago. Mayor Virginia Raggi accused the Casamonicas of replacing public authorities in the area and of "terrorizing" honest Romans.
(AP, 11/20/18)
2018 Nov 20, The MUDEC museum in Milan said it is hosting the first exhibit of street-artist Banksy's works in an Italian public museum, just weeks after the artist grabbed international attention by partially shredding one of his works at a London auction. The exhibition will open to visitors Nov. 21, 2018 through to April 14, 2019.
(AP, 11/20/18)
2018 Nov 20, Iraq launched air strikes on Islamic State targets inside neighboring Syria, destroying two buildings housing 40 fighters and weapons.
(Reuters, 11/20/18)
2018 Nov 20, Assailants in Indian-controlled Kashmir killed Hafizullah Mir, a prominent separatist leader, as anti-India protests and clashes followed a gunbattle that killed four rebels and an army commando in the disputed region.
(AP, 11/20/18)
2018 Nov 20, In Kenya gunmen kidnapped Silvia Costanza Romano (23) and shot and wounded four people in Chakama, a small town south of the border with Somalia. Romano was working as a volunteer with an Italian humanitarian group when she was abducted. On Dec. 9 a suspect, identified as Ibrahim Adan Omar, was arrested in Bangali town in Tana county. Abductors eventually passed her into the hands of militants linked to Somalia’s al-Shabab Islamic extremists. On May 10, 2020, she returned home after 18 months as a hostage.
(Reuters, 11/21/18)(AP, 11/22/18)(AP, 12/11/18)(AP, 5/10/20)
2018 Nov 20, Interpol's general assembly, meeting in Dubai, voted against allowing Kosovo to join the international police agency. The bids of Pacific island nations Kiribati and Vanuatu were approved by delegates, but Kosovo did not secure the required two-thirds majority.
(AFP, 11/20/18)
2018 Nov 20, In Libya eight gunmen attacked a substation of the National Oil Corporation's southwestern Sharara oilfield but no employees were hurt and production was unaffected. The attackers stole three company vehicles and mobile phones.
(AP, 11/21/18)
2018 Nov 20, Former Macedonian premier Nikola Gruevski said that he has been granted asylum by Hungary. He fled to Budapest after being sentenced to jail for abuse of power.
(AFP, 11/20/18)
2018 Nov 20, Malaysian police detained two women and two men from Finland at their hotel after police received complaints about their distributing Christian materials at public places. He said police seized 47 pens with Bible verses and 336 notebooks containing texts from the Bible.
(AP, 11/21/18)
2018 Nov 20, FIFA Ethics Committee judge Sundra Rajoo was arrested on suspicion of corruption in his native Malaysia. He was held overnight, but released after a court accepted his representatives' arguments that he effectively has diplomatic immunity due to his high-profile legal roles. Rajoo resigned the next day from his position with the arbitration service.
(AP, 11/21/18)
2018 Nov 20, North Korea blew up some of its front-line guard posts as part of an agreement to ease tensions along its heavily fortified border with South Korea.
(AP, 11/20/18)
2018 Nov 20, In Papua New Guinea disgruntled police, military and prison guards stormed the Parliament in a violent pay dispute stemming from an international summit hosted by the impoverished South Pacific island nation over the weekend.
(AP, 11/20/18)
2018 Nov 20, The Polish government said that it will not support a global compact to promote safe and orderly migration, citing national sovereignty as it joins countries including Hungary, Austria and the United States in rejecting it.
(AP, 11/20/18)
2018 Nov 20, Russia failed in its bid to stall the global chemical warfare watchdog's controversial new power to apportion blame for attacks like those in Syria. Member states approved the 2019 budget for the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which includes funding for the new role.
(AFP, 11/20/18)
2018 Nov 20, Amnesty International, citing three separate testimonies, said activists, held since May in Saudi Arabia's Dhahban prison on the western Red Sea coast, have faced repeated electrocution and flogging, leaving some of them unable to stand or walk. Human Rights Watch said in a separate statement that at least three women activists also endured "forcible kissing and hugging".
(AFP, 11/23/18)
2018 Nov 20, In central Somalia the US military carried out an airstrike targeting al-Shabab that killed seven extremists.
(AP, 11/21/18)
2018 Nov 20, Thai police arrested British brothers Joseph Michael Mulhare and Gregory Michael Mulhare wanted on drug trafficking charges in their homeland.
(AP, 11/23/18)
2018 Nov 21, In northern California the death toll from the Camp Fire rose to 83. The number of missing dropped to about 563.
(SFC, 11/22/18, p.A13)
2018 Nov 21, Interpol, an international body that connects police from 194 countries, elected South Korean Kim Jong Yang as its new president. He defeated Russian Alexander Prokopchuk in a vote amid US-led warnings that Russia would try to use the position to hunt down political opponents and fugitive dissidents.
(AP, 11/21/18)
2018 Nov 21, Bahrain detained and charged five people for "obstructing the electoral process", ahead of parliamentary polls set for the end of the week.
(AFP, 11/21/18)
2018 Nov 21, In Britain Feim Vata (32) and Xhemal Baco (24) were sentenced at Canterbury Crown Court for conspiracy to assist unlawful immigration. The men were arrested on Oct. 20 after Baco was seen picking up six Albanian migrants in France and taking them across the English Channel to Britain.
(AP, 11/21/18)
2018 Nov 21, The Bulgarian Parliament approved the resignation of Deputy PM Valeri Simeonov after a month of street protests over his remarks about disabled people. Parliament elected Mariana Nikolova to replace him.
(AP, 11/21/18)
2018 Nov 21, In Cameroon cleric Cosmos Omboto Ondari (33) was shot dead at a church in Kembong parish in the Southwest region. The Roman Catholic Church in the restive Anglophone region later said it suspected the army of killing the Kenyan priest.
(AP, 11/23/18)
2018 Nov 21, Cypriot authorities said that 47 Syrian migrants had been found on the island's northwestern tip after being dropped off by suspected people smugglers.
(AFP, 11/21/18)
2018 Nov 21, The European Commission officially rejected Italy's big-spending budget, clearing the path for unprecedented sanctions and deepening a bitter row with Rome's populist government.
(AFP, 11/21/18)
2018 Nov 21, The French government said thirty police officers have been injured in five days of protests over rising living costs on the French Indian Ocean island of La Reunion. Roads across the volcanic island of 850,000 people off southeast Africa remained blocked by demonstrators, causing petrol stations to run low on fuel, and schools were closed for fear of violence.
(AP, 11/21/18)
2018 Nov 21, The International Alliance for the Defence of Rights and Freedoms (AIDL) filed a lawsuit against Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan during his visit to France, accusing him of war crimes, complicity in torture and inhumane treatment in Yemen.
(Reuters, 11/21/18)
2018 Nov 21, Researchers said they have found a second patient in Hong Kong who contracted a strain of hepatitis carried by rats, in what appears to be the first known human cases in the world.
(AP, 11/21/18)
2018 Nov 21, Indian police officer Vijay Singh said seven fishermen have been arrested for facilitating a visit by American John Allen Chau to North Sentinel Island, where he was apparently killed. North Sentinel is in the Andaman Islands, a group of islands at the juncture of the Bay of Bengal and Andaman Sea. Chau had reached the vicinity of the island on Nov. 16, before transferring to a canoe. His body was spotted the following day by the fishermen on their return.
(AP, 11/21/18)
2018 Nov 21, The Italian luxury fashion house Dolce&Gabbana apologized Wednesday for insulting remarks about China it allegedly made in exchanges on Instagram but claimed its accounts had been hacked.
(AP, 11/21/18)
2018 Nov 21, Italian authorities arrested Issam Elsayed Abouelayem Shalabi (22), an Egyptian man accused of supporting the Islamic State and planning go to fight himself, saying he used social media chats to spread jihadist propaganda.
(AP, 11/21/18)
2018 Nov 21, Kosovo's government said it will put a 100 percent import tax on all goods imported from Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. A day earlier, Kosovo failed to join Interpol due to what it claimed was campaigning by Serbia.
(AP, 11/21/18)
2018 Nov 21, Kuwaiti officials said unprecedented recent heavy rains have unearthed dozens of land mines planted by Iraqi troops during their 1990-91 occupation, disrupting the emirate's popular desert camping season. Authorities have closed 18 desert sites and have so far removed at least 48 mines after receiving complaints from the campers.
(AFP, 11/21/18)
2018 Nov 21, Former Macedonian intelligence chief Saso Mijalkov was taken into custody for a minimum of 30 days after judicial authorities considered him a flight risk to potentially avoid standing trial over a major wiretapping scandal.
(AP, 11/21/18)
2018 Nov 21, Poland's parliament passed legislation reversing a disputed Supreme Court retirement law, bowing to a ruling from the EU's top court, which had raised fears of a threat to judicial independence.
(AFP, 11/21/18)
2018 Nov 21, Russian police detained rapper Dmitry Kuznetsov (25), aka Husky, for performing on a car in Krasnodar after prosecutors banned his gig. Husky is known for his songs mocking authorities and police brutality.
(AP, 11/22/18)
2018 Nov 21, Russian Colonel-General Igor Korobov (62), the head of the military intelligence agency that the West has blamed for a string of brazen attacks died, after "a serious and long illness".
(Reuters, 11/22/18)
2018 Nov 21, In Somalia the US Africa Command launched two new strikes that killed six fighters and destroyed a weapons cache near Harardere. The US has now carried out 35 airstrikes this year against al-Shabab, Africa's deadliest Islamic extremist group.
(AP, 11/22/18)
2018 Nov 21, South Korea said it will dissolve a foundation funded by Japan to compensate South Korean women who were forced to work in Japan's World War II military brothels. The widely expected decision, if carried out, would effectively kill a controversial 2015 agreement to settle a decades-long impasse over the sexual slavery issue. Japan still hasn't acknowledged legal responsibility for atrocities during its colonial occupation of the Korean Peninsula from 1910 to 1945.
(AP, 11/21/18)
2018 Nov 21, A Turkish court sentenced 74 people, including soldiers, to life in prison for their role in the July 2016 attempted coup. Three men, accused of being members of the PKK, were jailed for life for a March 2016 car bombing that killed 36 people and wounded 344 in a crowded transport hub in Ankara.
(Reuters, 11/21/18)
2018 Nov 21, A United Arab Emirates court sentenced British student Matthew Hedges (31) to life in jail on spying charges, prompting a "shocked" Britain to warn of repercussions for relations with its longstanding Gulf ally. Hedges had been researching the UAE's foreign and internal security policies after the Arab Spring revolutions of 2011.
(AP, 11/21/18)
2018 Nov 21, Save the Children said that a conservative estimate based on UN data showed 84,700 children suffering from severe acute malnutrition may have died between April 2015 and October 2018 in Yemen as a Western-backed Arab alliance battled the Iran-aligned Houthi movement that holds the capital Sanaa.
(Reuters, 11/21/18)
2018 Nov 22, President Donald Trump threatened to close the US border with Mexico for an undisclosed period of time if his administration determines that its southern ally has lost "control" on its side.
(AP, 11/22/18)
2018 Nov 22, US Ambassador Kenneth Ward told a meeting of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) at The Hague that Iran had failed to report a production facility for the filling of aerial bombs and maintains a program to obtain banned toxic munitions.
(Reuters, 11/22/18)
2018 Nov 22, In Alabama a gunman shot another man (18) during a fight at the Riverchase Galleria in Hoover. Emantic Bradford (21), who had a legal permit to carry a gun, was fatally shot by a police officer. Police later said that it was unlikely that Bradford had done the initial shooting. A forensic examination showed that Bradford was shot three times in the back side of his body.
(SFC, 11/24/18, p.A8)(SFC, 11/26/18, p.A4)(SFC, 12/4/18, p.A6)
2018 Nov 22, In northern California rain helped boost containment for the Camp Fire to 95%.
(SFC, 11/22/18, p.A13)
2018 Nov 22, In Colorado Kelsey Berreth (29) was last seen in a grocery store near Colorado Springs. It was later reported that she had been beaten to death with a baseball bat. On Dec. 21 Patrick Frazee (32), her fiance, was arrested at his home in Florissant and charged with first-degree murder.
(SFC, 12/22/18, p.A5)(SFC, 2/21/19, p.A6)
2018 Nov 22, In northeastern Indiana three people were killed and two others critically injured during a possible home invasion late this Thanksgiving day in Fort Wayne. Suspect Kameron Joyner (22) was arrested the next day.
(SFC, 11/24/18, p.A6)
2018 Nov 22, Several hundred Albanian protesters scuffled with police as they tried to force their way into Parliament to protest against a government decision to demolish their buildings for a new road.
(AP, 11/22/18)
2018 Nov 22, The Austria-based Int'l. Biathlon Union said nine biathletes from Kazakhstan have been suspended on suspicion of doping, including the country's entire women's Olympic team.
(AP, 11/22/18)
2018 Nov 22, Britain and the European Union said they agreed a draft text setting out a close post-Brexit relationship.
(Reuters, 11/22/18)
2018 Nov 22, The nonprofit organization Shelter reported that the number of homeless people in Britain is increasing steadily and has reached 320,000 across England and Wales.
(SFC, 11/23/18, p.A2)
2018 Nov 22, China rejected a US government report that accuses Beijing of stepping up efforts to steal technology ahead of a meeting between Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping.
(AP, 11/22/18)
2018 Nov 22, In China Dolce&Gabbana goods disappeared from Chinese e-commerce sites as the fallout grew over remarks insulting to China that were apparently made by two of its Instagram accounts.
(AP, 11/22/18)
2018 Nov 22, In northeastern China a car plowed into a crowd of children outside a primary school, killing five people and injuring 18 in the coastal city of Huludao, Liaoning province. The driver was taken into custody. All but two of the injured were children.
(AP, 11/22/18)
2018 Nov 22, France said it had imposed sanctions, including travel bans, on 18 Saudi citizens linked to the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi and warned that more could follow depending on results of the current investigation.
(Reuters, 11/22/18)
2018 Nov 22, A German teenager (15) was convicted of murder for killing a 14-year-old girl in a case that was seized upon by far-right groups, who falsely claimed that the perpetrator was a migrant. The German-born boy had reportedly planned the March 3 murder of schoolmate Keira G. (14) in advance.
(AP, 11/22/18)
2018 Nov 22, A Greek court convicted and sentenced six of the nine suspects in the fatal beating of American tourist Bakari Henderson at an island resort in July 2017, finding them guilty of reduced charges in a move that angered the victim's parents.
(AP, 11/22/18)
2018 Nov 22, India approved the building of a new border entry point and road connecting the northern state of Punjab to the border with arch rival Pakistan, making it quicker and easier for Sikh pilgrims to visit a holy site.
(Reuters, 11/22/18)
2018 Nov 22, Iranian media reported that the country has implemented a measure allowing officials to waive rules relating to stamping visas in foreigners' passports.
(AP, 11/22/18)
2018 Nov 22, In Japan Nissan board members voted unanimously to sack Carlos Ghosn as chairman, a spectacular fall from grace for the once-revered boss who was stripped of the role while languishing in a Japanese jail. Ghosn stood accused of under-reporting his income by millions of dollars and a host of other financial irregularities.
(AFP, 11/22/18)
2018 Nov 22, In Mali Amadou Koufa, one of the most prominent jihadist leaders in the country, was killed late today in a raid by French forces. The operation killed about 30 Islamist militants.
(Reuters, 11/24/18)
2018 Nov 22, In Nepal a bus packed with people returning from a village fair drove off a mountain highway, killing 16 people and injuring 20 others.
(AP, 11/22/18)
2018 Nov 22, In southeastern Niger seven local employees of a French drilling firm and a government official were killed when suspected Boko Haram gunmen stormed the compound where they were sleeping in the Diffa region near the Lake Chad basin.
(AFP, 11/22/18)
2018 Nov 22, Nigerian security sources said attacks blamed on Islamic State West Africa have killed around 100 soldiers in northeast Nigeria since Nov. 18.
(Reuters, 11/22/18)
2018 Nov 22, In Pakistan a bomb targeting Haqqani network militants in their hideout in the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan killed three people, including two militants. No group claimed responsibility for the blast.
(Reuters, 11/22/18)
2018 Nov 22, Hamas published photos of six men and two women who it said were involved in the botched Nov. 11 Israeli undercover raid into the Gaza Strip and appealed for details about them.
(Reuters, 11/22/18)
2018 Nov 22, Poland introduced temporary border checks of people entering the country, to ensure peace during a global climate summit that it is hosting next month.
(AP, 11/22/18)
2018 Nov 22, Portuguese police in riot gear broke up a picket line of striking stevedores in the port of Setubal to clear the way for strikebreakers hired to resume shipments of cars made at a nearby Volkswagen plant nearby. Thousands of cars have piled up at the port and at the Volkswagen Autoeuropa plant since the strike began on Nov. 5, forcing the manufacturer to cancel seven shipments.
(Reuters, 11/22/18)
2018 Nov 22, Tunisian civil servants staged the largest general strike in five years after their powerful trade union failed to secure wage hikes in tense negotiations with the government.
(AFP, 11/22/18)
2018 Nov 22, A Turkish newspaper reported that CIA director Gina Haspel signaled to Turkish officials last month that the agency had a recording of a call in which Saudi Arabia's crown prince gave instructions to "silence" Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
(Reuters, 11/22/18)
2018 Nov 22, United Nations envoy Martin Griffiths met Yemen's rebel chief to nail down details of peace talks expected in December, a day before a planned visit to the battleground port city of Hodeida.
(AFP, 11/22/18)
2018 Nov 23, In southern California the body of Christopher Ludwig (59) was found near a hiking trail in Laguna Niguel, Orange County. His son Maximilian Ludwig was soon arrested on suspicion of murder.
(SFC, 11/27/18, p.A6)
2018 Nov 23, In Afghanistan an explosion ripped through a mosque inside an army base in the country's volatile eastern Khost province as prayers were drawing to a close, killing 27 soldiers and wounding 57.
(AP, 11/23/18)
2018 Nov 23, Bosnian prosecutors said police have arrested an Islamist militant for terrorism offences. A Balkan news service said the man was believed to assisted a 2011 attack on the US Embassy in Sarajevo.
(Reuters, 11/23/18)
2018 Nov 23, Nicolas Roeg (b.1928), the prominent British film director known for making provocative films and working with rock stars Mick Jagger and David Bowie over a six-decade career, died. His films included "Performance" (1970), "Walkabout" (1971), "Don't Look Now" (1973), "The Man Who Fell to Earth" (1976), "Bad Timing" (1980), "Eureka" (1983), "Insignificance" (1985), "Track 29" (1988) and "The Witches" (1990).
(AP, 11/24/18)(SFC, 11/27/18, p.C2)
2018 Nov 23, Cameroon's military said it has killed at least 43 armed separatists over the last 24 hours in the North West region.
(SFC, 11/24/18, p.A2)
2018 Nov 23, In China a man (20) wielding a weapon killed one student and wounded 11 at a technical institute in southwestern Yunnan province.
(AP, 11/23/18)
2018 Nov 23, In northeastern China a blast late today at a factory that made industrial machinery killed two people and injured 57 others. It also knocked down 15 houses and damaged 355 others in Jilin province.
(AP, 11/23/18)
2018 Nov 23, China reported its first cases of swine fever in Beijing. Xiamen Airlines announced it was suspending the use of pork in inflight meals.
(SSFC, 11/25/18, p.A9)
2018 Nov 23, The co-founders of Dolce&Gabbana apologized in a video on Chinese social media after promotional videos seen as racist and subsequent Instagram messages stoked a furor in one of the world's largest markets for luxury goods.
(AP, 11/23/18)
2018 Nov 23, Two Colombian soldiers were killed and another two wounded along the country's border with Venezuela in a bomb attack blamed by the military on rebels from the National Liberation Army.
(AFP, 11/23/18)
2018 Nov 23, Congo's two leading opposition parties announced that they are joining forces for a run at the presidency after withdrawing from a wider pact to support a single contender to take on President Joseph Kabila's chosen candidate. Felix Tshisekedi with Congo's most prominent opposition party said he will represent his party as well as that of Vital Kamerhe.
(AP, 11/23/18)
2018 Nov 23, Ecuador officials said it will cost $550 million to respond to the influx of Venezuelan migrants.
(SSFC, 11/25/18, p.A4)
2018 Nov 23, Berlin prosecutors said Hans Werner H. (95) has been charged with more than 36,000 counts of being an accessory to murder on allegations that he served as a guard at the Nazis' Mauthausen concentration camp from 1944 to 1945.
(AP, 11/23/18)
2018 Nov 23, The 170 member states of the Paris-based Bureau International des Expositions chose Japan's Osaka to host the 2025 World Expo, beating out cities in Russia and Azerbaijan for an event expected to draw millions of visitors.
(AP, 11/23/18)
2018 Nov 23, Indian security forces killed six suspected insurgents in a fierce exchange of gunfire early today in the Indian portion of disputed Kashmir.
(AP, 11/23/18)
2018 Nov 23, The Iranian judiciary’s website Mizan reported that Iran's Revolutionary Guards have detained a Saudi Arabian fishing boat and arrested its crew.
(AP, 11/23/18)
2018 Nov 23, A judicial source said human bones found at the Vatican's embassy in Rome belong to a male who died more than 50 years ago, dispelling speculation they might solve one of Italy's most enduring mysteries: the 1980s vanishing of two teenage girls.
(AP, 11/23/18)
2018 Nov 23, Kosovo police arrested three ethnic Serbs, including two police officers, early today on suspicion of involvement in the killing earlier this year of a leading Serb politician in the north of the country.
(AP, 11/23/18)
2018 Nov 23, In Libya gunmen raided a town deep in the southern desert, killing nine people and kidnapping several others in the oasis town of Tazerbo, north of Kufra.
(Reuters, 11/24/18)
2018 Nov 23, One week after taking power, the new government of the Maldives says it has no idea how much it owes China, which has led a construction spree in the tiny Indian Ocean nation, but fears the debts run up in the past five years could be unsustainable.
(Reuters, 11/23/18)
2018 Nov 23, In Mexico the mayor of Tijuana declared a humanitarian crisis in his border city and said that he has asked the United Nations for aid to deal with the approximately 5,000 Central American migrants who have arrived.
(AP, 11/23/18)
2018 Nov 23, In northern Mozambique 12 people were killed in a suspected Islamist attack, with thousands of villagers fleeing the area into neighboring Tanzania.
(AFP, 11/25/18)
2018 Nov 23, In Pakistan armed separatists stormed the Chinese Consulate in the southern port city of Karachi, triggering an intense hour-long shootout during which two civilians, two police officers and all three assailants were killed. Four suspects, who allegedly facilitated three attackers, were soon arrested in Karachi and other Sindh province towns. The attack was later claimed by Baluch separatists who have long accused the federal government of unfairly exploiting the oil and mineral-rich region.
(AP, 11/23/18)(AP, 11/24/18)(AP, 11/25/18)
2018 Nov 23, Saudi Arabia dismissed as "baseless" reports that detained activists, including women, faced sexual harassment and torture during interrogation.
(AP, 11/23/18)
2018 Nov 23, A South Korean court ruled that the government must pay 80 million won ($70,700) to three men who were enslaved on salt farms in remote islands off the country's southwest coast for several years.
(AP, 11/23/18)
2018 Nov 23, Spain's National Court said it has agreed to extradite to Venezuela Adrian Velasquez Figueroa, a former bodyguard of the country's late leader Hugo Chavez, to face charges of corruption and money-laundering. The court had previously ruled that his wife, Claudia Diaz, a one-time Chavez nurse, should also be extradited on the same charges.
(AP, 11/23/18)
2018 Nov 23, Unions in Britain said they would stage protests at five sites to complain about safety conditions. In Germany, workers walked off the job at Amazon distribution centers in Rheinberg and Bad Hersfeld as part of a years-long push for higher pay. In Spain Labor groups representing workers at Amazon said that around 90 percent of workers at a logistics depot near Madrid joined a walkout.
(AP, 11/23/18)
2018 Nov 23, Lawmakers in Sri Lanka opposed to disputed PM Mahinda Rajapaksa won control of a key committee setting Parliament's agenda during a vote that dealt a severe blow to his leadership.
(AP, 11/23/18)
2018 Nov 23, In Syria gunmen in a rebel-held northwestern province shot and killed Raed Fares, a prominent anti-government journalist who was also a sharp critic of Islamist militants.
(AP, 11/23/18)
2018 Nov 23, In eastern Syria around 500 IS fighters burst out of the fog shrouding an area near the border with Iraq to launch a deadly assault. At least 61 jihadists and 51 civilians, mostly their relatives, died in the violence along with 92 fighters from the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
(AFP, 11/24/18)(AFP, 11/26/18)
2018 Nov 23, The UN migration agency said at least 631 African migrants have died trying to reach Spain so far this year, nearly three times more than in all of 2017.
(Reuters, 11/23/18)
2018 Nov 23, Pope Francis named the Vatican's top sex abuse investigator and a close US ally to an organizing committee for a February abuse prevention summit.
(AP, 11/23/18)
2018 Nov 23, In Zimbabwe a small plane en route to the popular tourist site of Victoria Falls crashed in Masvingo killing four people from Finland.
(AP, 11/24/18)
2018 Nov 24, The Washington Post reported that the administration of US President Donald Trump has won support from the Mexican president-elect's team for a plan dubbed "Remain in Mexico." Mexico's incoming government denied the report.
(AP, 11/25/18)
2018 Nov 24, In northern California three more bodies were discovered in the area burned by the Camp Fire, which was now 98 percent contained. 475 people were still reported missing.
(SSFC, 11/25/18, p.A18)
2018 Nov 24, Ricky Jay (b.1946), noted American magician, author and actor, died at his home in Los Angeles. His acting credits included the films "The Prestige" (2006), "The Spanish Prisoner" (1997), "Mystery Men" (1999), "Heist" (2001), "Boogie Nights" (1997), "Tomorrow Never Dies" (1997), "House of Games" (1987", and "Magnolia" (1999), as well as the HBO series "Deadwood" (2004-2006).
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricky_Jay)(SFC, 11/27/18, p.C2)
2018 Nov 24, In Utah police Officer David Romrell (31) died after he was intentionally struck by a driver while responding to a burglary call in Salt Lake City. Car driver Felix Anthony Calata was fatally shot by police and an accomplice was arrested.
(SFC, 11/26/18, p.A4)
2018 Nov 24, In Afghanistan US Army Sgt. Leandro A.S. Jasso (25) was killed, bringing the US combat death toll this year to eight. Two Afghan soldiers died when their helicopter made an "emergency landing" in the southern Kandahar province due to a technical problem. In Kabul a senior religious scholar was shot and killed. No one immediately claimed the killing of Abdul Basir Haqqani, but police arrested a man with a pistol near the scene of the shooting.
(Reuters, 11/24/18)(AP, 11/24/18)(SFC, 11/26/18, p.A4)
2018 Nov 24, Bahrainis voted in a parliamentary election from which opposition groups have been barred, in a crackdown on dissent in the small Sunni-led, Western-allied kingdom.
(Reuters, 11/24/18)
2018 Nov 24, Congo DRC ministers in the outgoing government of Joseph Kabila awarded themselves "golden-handshake" benefits in two decrees, that safeguarded lifetime cash payments. The decrees will benefit 71 ex-ministers, 11 former deputy ministers and two government secretaries, along with "personalities who carry out duties equivalent in rank to members of the government in the cabinet of the president of the republic and the cabinet of the prime minister. The two decrees were published in the official government gazette on December 15.
(AP, 2/1/19)
2018 Nov 24, In Ethiopia seven employees of Indian company Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services (IL&FS) were taken hostage by local staff due to non-payment of salaries by the debt-laden firm. The Indian government took control of IL&FS in October after it defaulted on some of its debt. On Dec. 1 Two of the 7 employees were reported released.
(Reuters, 12/1/18)
2018 Nov 24, The European Union removed the last major obstacle to sealing an agreement on Brexit after Spain said it had reached a deal with Britain over Gibraltar on the eve of an EU summit.
(AP, 11/24/18)
2018 Nov 24, French police firing tear gas and using water cannon clashed with protesters in Paris who are angry over rising fuel costs and President Emmanuel Macron's economic policies, the second weekend of "yellow vest" protests across the country.
(Reuters, 11/24/18)
2018 Nov 24, Gabon authorities said they have banned an opposition party from state media for three months over statements about the health of President Omar Bongo, who has been in a Saudi hospital for a month.
(AFP, 11/24/18)
2018 Nov 24, In southern India at least 25 people, many of them schoolchildren, were killed when a speeding bus fell into a canal in Karnataka state.
(AP, 11/24/18)
2018 Nov 24, Malaysian authorities said office of former Malaysian premier Najib Razak ordered changes to a 2016 audit report of scandal-plagued state fund 1MDB, including removing mention of financier Low Taek Jho's presence at a board meeting.
(Reuters, 11/25/18)
2018 Nov 24, In southeastern Niger about 50 unidentified armed men kidnapped 15 girls overnight in the Diffa region.
(Reuters, 11/24/18)
2018 Nov 24, Police in Pakistan said they have arrested some 300 supporters of a detained radical Islamic cleric who disrupted daily life with nationwide rallies following the acquittal of a Christian woman sentenced to death for blasphemy. Supporters of the Tehreek-e-Labbaik party were picked up in sweeps across Punjab province following the arrest overnight of its leader, Khadim Hussain Rizvi.
(AP, 11/24/18)
2018 Nov 24, South Korea said that the United Nations Security Council granted an exemption to sanctions that will allow surveys on North Korean railroad sections the Koreas want to connect with the South.
(AP, 11/24/18)
2018 Nov 24, Spanish police said they have arrested 79 people suspected of producing and distributing child pornography on the Internet an operation that started in 2016.
(AP, 11/24/18)
2018 Nov 24, In Syria government shelling killed three children and two women in the rebel-held Idlib province, where Russia and Turkey agreed on a buffer zone.
(Reuters, 11/24/18)
2018 Nov 24, In Syria an alleged chemical attack late today was carried out by "terrorist groups positioned in Aleppo countryside" that fired shells containing toxic gases on three neighborhoods in Syria's largest city. Government shelling in Idlib province killed at least seven civilians.
(AP, 11/25/18)(SSFC, 11/25/18, p.A6)
2018 Nov 24, In Syria coalition raids overnight killed 17 civilians, including five children, in an IS-pocket in the eastern province of Deir Ezzor. 27 IS jihadists were also reported killed in clashes and air strikes over the last 24 hours.
(AFP, 11/24/18)
2018 Nov 24, Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen resigned as head of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party after the party was handed a major defeat in local elections seen as a referendum on the administration of the island's independence-leaning president amid growing economic and political pressure from China.
(AP, 11/24/18)
2018 Nov 24, In Uganda the MV Templa, a boat on a routine pleasure cruise and full of mostly youthful revelers, overturned and sank this evening in Lake Victoria. The vessel was believed to be overcrowded with nearly 100 passengers. At least 27 people were rescued overnight. Divers retrieved 31 bodies and were expected to find more in the capsized vessel.
(AP, 11/25/18)
2018 Nov 25, In southern California the US Customs and Border Protection Agency temporarily shut down the San Ysidro border crossing and fired tear gas to push back migrants from the border fence. Hundreds of people tried to evade a Mexican police blockade and ran toward the border crossing that leads into San Diego.
(SFC, 11/26/18, p.A4)
2018 Nov 25, Two San Diego teenagers and a Mexican youth were found shot dead at an apartment complex in Tijuana. Christopher Alexis Gomez (17), Juan Suarez-Ojeda (18) and Mexican youth Angel Said Robles (17) were headed to a barbecue on Nov. 23 in Ensenada, south of Tijuana, and were supposed to return that night. The three teens were reportedly tortured before they were shot.
(AP, 11/30/18)
2018 Nov 25, In northern California firefighters said the Camp Fire in Butte County is now 100 percent contained. The death toll stood at 88 and 296 people were still reported missing.
(SFC, 11/26/18, p.A1)(SFC, 11/27/18, p.A9)
2018 Nov 25, In Florida a bicyclist died and another was critically injured after a car crashed into a group of 14 cyclists on a state road in Davie. The driver rep[orted that the sun was in her eyes.
(SFC, 11/26/18, p.A4)
2018 Nov 25, A winter storm blanketed much of the US central Midwest. Some 1200 flights were reported canceled.
(SFC, 11/26/18, p.A4)
2018 Nov 25, In Afghanistan hundreds of demonstrators in Shi'ite areas of Kabul and Bamyan province protested against the arrest of Alipur, an ethnic Hazara militia commander.
(Reuters, 11/25/18)
2018 Nov 25, In western Afghanistan a Taliban ambush of a police convoy killed 20 policemen while 10 troops died in an insurgent attack on an army checkpoint in Farah province. In northern Faryab province the Taliban attacked an army check point in Qaisar district, killing 10 troops.
(AP, 11/26/18)
2018 Nov 25, Bahrain said it will hold a second round of voting for 31 of 40 seats in parliament next week, in an election from which opposition groups have been barred.
(Reuters, 11/25/18)
2018 Nov 25, Chadian President Idriss Deby met with Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem, the first such visit by a leader of the central African nation which severed bilateral ties in 1972.
(Reuters, 11/25/18)
2018 Nov 25, Egypt's highest appeal court upheld death sentences against nine defendants convicted for their involvement in the 2015 assassination of Hisham Barakat, the country's chief prosecutor.
(AP, 11/25/18)
2018 Nov 25, European Union leaders finally sealed a Brexit deal, saying the package agreed with PM Theresa May was the best Britain will get in a warning to the British parliament not to reject it.
(Reuters, 11/25/18)
2018 Nov 25, French Senate employee Benoit Quennedey, suspected of spying for North Korea, was detained. Quennedey has traveled to the Koreas in his role as the head of the French-Korean Friendship Association, and wrote a book and essays about North Korea.
(AP, 11/27/18)
2018 Nov 25, French economy minister Bruno Le Maire said Renault had launched an internal audit into Ghosn's pay. Nissan's former chairman Carlos Ghosn has denied allegations of financial misconduct, claiming he had no intention of making false reports.
(AFP, 11/25/18)
2018 Nov 25, In northern India tens of thousands of Hindus gathered in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh state, and renewed calls to build a Hindu temple on a site where a 16th century mosque was attacked and demolished by Hindu hard-liners in 1992, sparking deadly Hindu-Muslim violence.
(AFP, 11/25/18)
2018 Nov 25, In Indian-controlled Kashmir six rebels and an army soldier were killed in a gunbattle, sparking violent protests by residents seeking an end to Indian rule over the disputed region and leaving a teenage boy dead and 20 people injured.
(AP, 11/25/18)
2018 Nov 25, Iraq's health ministry said least 21 people have died and tens of thousands displaced by heavy rains that have battered the country over two days.
(AFP, 11/25/18)
2018 Nov 25, Israeli police overnight arrested Adnan Gheith, the Palestinian governor of Jerusalem, for the second time in as many months after an investigation related to a land sale.
(AFP, 11/25/18)
2018 Nov 25, The Jordanian army killed four drug smugglers seeking to cross into the kingdom from Syria's southeastern desert border area.
(Reuters, 11/25/18)
2018 Nov 25, Tens of thousands of Romanians braved hours of cold weather Sunday for the blessing of a grandiose Orthodox cathedral consecrated to mark 100 years since modern-day Romania was created in the aftermath of World War I. Romanian King Carol I passed a law for the cathedral to be built in 1884, but two world wars and decades of communism meant it never happened. Building work began on the neo-Byzantine structure in 2010.
(AP, 11/25/18)
2018 Nov 25, Russia stopped three Ukrainian navy vessels from entering the Sea of Azov via the Kerch Strait by placing a huge cargo ship beneath a Russian-controlled bridge, with officials from both countries accusing the other of provocative behavior. A bilateral treaty gives both countries the right to use the sea, which lies between them and is linked by the narrow Kerch Strait to the Black Sea. Russian coast guards opened fire on three Ukrainian ships near the Kerch Strait and then seized them. Three Ukrainian sailors were wounded and 24 were detained.
(Reuters, 11/25/18)(Reuters, 11/26/18)
2018 Nov 25, Slovakia's PM Peter Pellegrini said his country will not support the UN pact on the treatment of migrants worldwide.
(Reuters, 11/25/18)
2018 Nov 25, In Spain tens of thousands of protesters, many wearing purple, marched through Madrid and other cities to mark the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.
(Reuters, 11/25/18)
2018 Nov 25, Sri Lanka's President Maithripala Sirisena assured non-interference in ongoing investigations into abductions, killings of journalists and other crimes allegedly committed by those connected to the new prime minister and his Cabinet. Sirisena said he would not reinstate Ranil Wickremesinghe as prime minister even if he was able to prove his majority in parliament.
(AP, 11/25/18)(Reuters, 11/25/18)
2018 Nov 25, Syrian officials said more than 100 people were treated at hospitals for a suspected poison gas attack the previous evening in the northern city of Aleppo that Damascus and Moscow blamed on rebels. Russian warplanes attacked rebel-held areas in northern Syria for the first time in weeks.
(AP, 11/25/18)
2018 Nov 25, Voters in Taiwan passed a referendum asking that marriage be restricted to one man and one woman, a setback to LGBT couples hoping their island will be the first place in Asia to let same-sex couples share child custody and insurance benefits.
(AP, 11/25/18)
2018 Nov 25, In Yemen a Saudi-led military coalition resumed air strikes against rebel supply lines around Hodeida, two days after a UN envoy visited the lifeline port city.
(AFP, 11/25/18)
2018 Nov 25, In Yemen a suspected US drone strike killed six alleged al-Qaida militants in the country's southwest.
(AP, 11/26/18)
2018 Nov 26, US prosecutors working for special counsel Robert Mueller said Paul Manafort had repeatedly lied to federal investigators in breach of a plea agreement he signed two months ago.
(SFC, 11/27/18, p.A12)
2018 Nov 26, Five int'l. charities urged the US to halt all military support for the Saudi-led coalition fighting Yemen's Shiite rebels, saying the move would save millions of lives.
(SFC, 11/27/18, p.A2)
2018 Nov 26, San Francisco State Univ. said alumni George and Judy Marcus are donating $26.8 million, the largest gift in campus history.
(SFC, 11/27/18, p.C1)
2018 Nov 26, In the SF Bay Area Google said it has purchased the former site of LinkedIn's Mountain View headquarters, the 12-building Britannia Shoreline Technology Park, for $1 billion.
(SFC, 11/27/18, p.D1)
2018 Nov 26, American marine cartoonist Stephen Hillenburg (57), creator of SpongeBob Square Pants (1999), died of Lou Gehrig's disease in San Marino, Ca.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Hillenburg)(SFC, 11/28/18, p.C5)
2018 Nov 26, Detroit-based General Motors said it will lay off 14,700 factory and white-collar workers in North America and put five plants up for possible closure as it restructures to cut costs and focus more on autonomous and electric vehicles.
(AP, 11/26/18)
2018 Nov 26, A NASA spacecraft designed to burrow beneath the surface of Mars landed on the red planet Monday after a six-month, 300 million-mile (482 million-km) journey and a perilous, six-minute descent through the rose-hued atmosphere.
(AP, 11/26/18)
2018 Nov 26, In Afghanistan minority Shiites took to the streets in Kabul for the second day to protest the arrest of a local militia commander.
(AP, 11/26/18)
2018 Nov 26, Human Rights Watch asked Argentina to use a war crimes clause in its constitution to investigate any involvement by Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in possible crimes against humanity in Yemen and Khashoggi's murder.
(Reuters, 11/28/18)
2018 Nov 26, Trains stopped running across Austria as last-minute pay negotiations failed to avert a planned two-hour strike, disrupting travel for 100,000 travelers in Europe.
(Reuters, 11/26/18)
2018 Nov 26, In Bangladesh Rohingya refugees from Myanmar began a protest demanding that Bangladesh recognize their ethnicity as Rohingya and that officials and aid agencies stop sharing their family information with Myanmar.
(Reuters, 11/26/18)
2018 Nov 26, Socialite, codebreaker, British government minister and bon vivant Jean Barker (b.1922), better known by her title, Baroness Trumpington, died.
(AP, 11/27/18)
2018 Nov 26, Police in Cambodia arrested more than 200 Chinese citizens accused of defrauding people in China over the internet.
(AP, 11/26/18)
2018 Nov 26, Chile said it is returning a second planeload of Haitian immigrants to their native country and will make use of the return flight from the Caribbean island to bring home Chileans stranded in crisis-stricken Venezuela.
(Reuters, 11/26/18)
2018 Nov 26, Chinese researcher He Jiankui of Shenzhen claimed that he helped make the world's first genetically edited babies, twin girls born this month, whose DNA he said he altered with a powerful new tool capable of rewriting the very blueprint of life. He said his goal was not to cure or prevent an inherited disease, but to try to bestow a trait that few people naturally have — an ability to resist possible future infection with HIV, the AIDS virus.
(AP, 11/26/18)
2018 Nov 26, The WHO said Congo last week began the first-ever trial to test the effectiveness and safety of four experimental Ebola drugs, the first time scientists have directly compared such treatments.
(AP, 11/26/18)
2018 Nov 26, The French government unveiled a planned bill to invest 13.4 billion euros ($15.2 billion) by 2022 aimed to develop the rail network, car-pooling, electric cars and unmanned shuttles. The government also said it has dropped plans that would have eased the introduction of urban tolls amid nationwide protests against rising fuel costs.
(AP, 11/26/18)(Reuters, 11/26/18)
2018 Nov 26, In northern Greece four migrants were killed late today by a train near the land border with Turkey. Blankets were found by the lines at the point of impact, suggesting that the migrants had wrapped up for sleep.
(AP, 11/28/18)
2018 Nov 26, Israeli police arrested 32 Palestinians in east Jerusalem, accusing them of illegally working with Palestinian security services.
(AP, 11/26/18)
2018 Nov 26, Italian police said they have detained five Egyptians accused of smuggling a boatload of 264 migrants from Libya to Sicily.
(AP, 11/26/18)
2018 Nov 26, Italian filmmaker Bernardo Bertolucci (b.1941), one of cinema's most talented directors, died of cancer at his home in Rome.
(AFP, 11/26/18)
2018 Nov 26, Japanese police said they found six bodies believed to be members of a family in a farmhouse in a remote mountain village, and the body of a seventh person who jumped or fell from a nearby bridge.
(AP, 11/26/18)
2018 Nov 26, Japanese police arrested 11 Chinese nationals in northern Japan for allegedly working at a construction site without passports or proper visas. Officials looked for 46 other Chinese who disappeared from the construction site after the arrests.
(AP, 12/3/18)
2018 Nov 26, Latvia's Pres. Raimonds Vejonis nominated Aldis Gobzems from the populist party KPV LV as prime minister and gave him two weeks to form a cabinet and secure majority support in parliament following an inconclusive election last month.
(Reuters, 11/26/18)
2018 Nov 26, In Lebanon British radio presenter Gavin Ford (53), who hosted one of Lebanon's most popular shows, was killed during a robbery at his home in Beit Meri. Two Syrians, born in 1991 and 1995, were soon arrested and confessed to his killing.
(AFP, 11/29/18)
2018 Nov 26, In Malaysia 21 people were arrested over rioting that broke out amid a dispute over the relocation of an Indian temple outside Kuala Lumpur. 12 people were reported injured, one critically.
(AP, 11/27/18)
2018 Nov 26, The Maldives Supreme Court canceled former president Mohamed Nasheed’s 13-year jail sentence after a review of the controversial terrorism conviction.
(Reuters, 11/26/18)
2018 Nov 26, Maldives' new finance minister said that China is executing infrastructure projects at vastly higher prices than originally proposed but the island nation cannot get out of its commitments now.
(Reuters, 11/26/18)
2018 Nov 26, The incoming Mexican government said voters over the weekend have approved all ten pet projects of President-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in a referendum questioned because of low voter turnout.
(Reuters, 11/26/18)
2018 Nov 26, North Korea's ceremonial leader Kim Yong Nam arrived in Caracas and was expected to meet with socialist Venezuelan Pres. Nicolas Maduro the next day.
(Reuters, 11/27/18)
2018 Nov 26, A Palestinian rammed his car into a group of Israeli soldiers in the West Bank before being shot and killed.
(AP, 11/26/18)
2018 Nov 26, State-owned Qatar Airways said it will add more flights to Iran from January, just weeks after the United States re-imposed sanctions aimed at crippling Tehran's economy.
(Reuters, 11/26/18)
2018 Nov 26, Saudi energy giant Aramco said it has signed 31 agreements and memoranda of understandings worth $27.5 billion with local and international suppliers.
(AFP, 11/26/18)
2018 Nov 26, Somalia was hit by two violent attacks, one killing Islamic cleric Sheikh Abdiweli Ali Elmi and 17 of his followers for playing music and a second killing at least six people in a car bomb blast in Mogadishu.
(AP, 11/26/18)
2018 Nov 26, South Africa's President Cyril Ramaphosa signed into law the national minimum wage bill, part of efforts by the government to tackle wage inequality in Africa's most industrialized economy. The National Minimum Wage Act sets South Africa's minimum wage at 20 rand ($1.45) an hour, equal to 3,500 rand per month.
(Reuters, 11/26/18)
2018 Nov 26, George Soros's Open Society Foundation said it would cease operations in Turkey, days after President Tayyip Erdogan accused the billionaire philanthropist of trying to divide and destroy nations.
(Reuters, 11/26/18)
2018 Nov 26, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko halved his proposal for martial law in the country to 30 days, an apparent concession to opponents, effective from 9 am on November 28.
(Reuters, 11/26/18)
2018 Nov 26, Ukraine's biggest state-run bank said an arbitration court in Paris has ruled that Russia must pay $1.3 billion in damages for property seized in the annexation of Crimea.
(AP, 11/26/18)
2018 Nov 26, UNESCO said Korean wrestling was added to a list of "Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity" on the basis of an application by the two Koreas.
(AP, 11/26/18)
2018 Nov 26, The United Arab Emirates pardoned and released British academic Matthew Hedges (31), jailed for life on spying charges, granting a request for clemency after showing a video of him purportedly confessing to membership of the UK's MI6 intelligence service. The UAE president issued the pardon as part of a mass clemency of more than 700 prisoners to mark the country's National Day.
(Reuters, 11/26/18)
2018 Nov 27, US President Donald Trump intensified his attacks on the special counsel probing possible collusion between Russia and his 2016 electoral campaign, after prosecutors said his former campaign chairman lied to investigators.
(AFP, 11/27/18)
2018 Nov 27, US President Donald Trump said he would "totally be willing" to shut down the federal government unless Congress authorized $5 billion to fund his long-promised wall along the US border with Mexico.
(Reuters, 11/28/18)
2018 Nov 27 The US State Department said Hungary denied a US request to extradite suspected Russian arms dealers Vladimir Lyubishin Sr. and Vladimir Lyubishin Jr. and sent the men to Russia, where it is unclear whether they will face trial.
(Reuters, 11/27/18)
2018 Nov 27, In northern California the number of missing in the Butte County Car Fire dropped to 158 as the death toll remained at 88. On Dec. 3 the number of missing was lowered to 24.
(SFC, 11/28/18, p.A6)(SFC, 12/4/18, p.C1)
2018 Nov 27, In Chicago lawyers for Neringa Venckiene (47), a former Lithuania judge, asked the Chicago-based 7th US Circuit Court of Appeals to delay her extradition to Lithuania until her US asylum application is processed. She faced charges that include reporting a false crime linked to her claims a ring of influential pedophiles exists in Lithuania.
(AP, 11/27/18)
2018 Nov 27, In Louisiana Jeannot Franco Plessy (49), a New Orleans pastor's wife, was run over and killed by her own car during a carjacking. Three teeagers were arrested on Dec. 2.
(SFC, 12/4/18, p.A6)
2018 Nov 27, In Boston MS-13 gang member Edwin Gonzalez (23) was sentenced to life in prison for his role in two killings in which teenage victims were lured to their deaths via social media. He was sentenced following a conviction on racketeering charges that included his participation in the September 2015 murder of a 15-year-old boy and the January 2016 murder of a 16-year-old boy.
(AP, 11/28/18)
2018 Nov 27, In Mississippi Rep. US Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith won a divisive state runoff over Mike Espy. The runoff was rocked by a video in which Hyde-Smith said of a supporter: "If he invited me to a public hanging, I'd be on the front row."
(SFC, 11/28/18, p.A4)
2018 Nov 27, Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani made an investment pitch at a two-day UN conference in Geneva, describing the business opportunities and challenges in a country where millions are displaced or close to starvation.
(Reuters, 11/27/18)
2018 Nov 27, In central Afghanistan a roadside bomb blast killed three US service members and wounded three others near Ghazni. At least 11 US service members have now died in Afghanistan this year. On Dec. 2 a 4th soldier died from his wounds.
(Reuters, 11/27/18)(SFC, 12/4/18, p.A6)
2018 Nov 27, In Afghanistan a US airstrike hit a house late today during military operations in Helmand province. At least 30 Afghan civilians including women and 16 children were among the dead.
(Reuters, 11/28/18)
2018 Nov 27, Britain's Information Commissioner's Office said it fined Uber 385,000 pounds ($491,000) and Dutch officials imposed a 600,000-euro ($679,000) fine for failing to protect customers' data during a cyberattack in 2016.
(AP, 11/27/18)
2018 Nov 27, Shenzhen Harmonicare Women and Children's Hospital, the Chinese hospital linked to a controversial experiment purporting to have created the world's first genetically-edited babies, denied its involvement.
(AFP, 11/27/18)
2018 Nov 27, Congolese opposition scion Felix Tshisekedi (55) returned home to Kinshasa greeted by tens of thousands of supporters as he kicked off his campaign to replace longtime president and foe Joseph Kabila in December elections.
(AFP, 11/27/18)
2018 Nov 27, In Costa Rica Carla Stefaniak of south Florida went missing during a vacation to celebrate her 36th birthday. On Dec. 3 authorities said they've found a body behind an AirBnB villa where she was staying. Officials soon identified her using fingerprints and arrested Bismark Espinosa Martinez (32), a guard at the Villa Buena Vista resort near the capital, after he contradicted himself in statements to police. On Feb 17, 2020, Espinoza Martinez was convicted of killing her. He was sentenced to 16 years in prison.
(AP, 12/4/18)(AP, 12/5/18)(SFC, 2/19/20, p.A2)
2018 Nov 27, Ethiopia's PM Abiy Ahmed met members of 81 opposition parties to discuss ways of reforming the electoral system.
(Reuters, 11/27/18)
2018 Nov 27, The European Court of Human Rights issued a fresh rebuke to the Kremlin, ruling that Russia's continued ban on LGBT rallies is discriminatory and represents a violation of human rights.
(AP, 11/27/18)
2018 Nov 27, President Emmanuel Macron said France would reduce the share of nuclear in the power mix to 50 percent by 2035, down from 75 percent today, rather than the total phasing out planned by neighbor Germany.
(Reuters, 11/27/18)
2018 Nov 27, In Germany Sergej Wenergold (29), who launched a shrapnel bomb attack on the team bus of football club Borussia Dortmund in April 2017 to make money on the club's shares diving, was sentenced to 14 years in jail.
(AFP, 11/27/18)
2018 Nov 27, In Iran Sunni cleric Abdolghafour Jamalzai, who had worked to reconcile Sunnis and Shiites, was shot and killed in the town of Gorgan.
(AP, 11/27/18)
2018 Nov 27, A few thousand Kosovo Serbs people rallied in the divided town of Mitrovica demanding that the government abolish a 100 percent tax it has slapped on all goods imported from Serbia.
(AP, 11/27/18)
2018 Nov 27, A Lebanese Cabinet minister said some Syrian refugees who have returned home from Lebanon have been killed, detained or forced to join the military, leading to a slowdown in the return of Syrians residing in Lebanon. So far about 12,000 Syrian refugees have returned home since June. The refugee count in Lebanon was now about 940,000.
(AP, 11/27/18)
2018 Nov 27, In Malaysia four Finnish tourists, arrested last week for distributing Christian materials in public places on a resort island, were deported home.
(AP, 11/28/18)
2018 Nov 27, Mexico's Foreign Ministry announced that Pres. Enrique Pena Nieto would bestow the Mexican Order of the Aztec Eagle, the nation's highest honor for foreigners, to Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of Pres. Trump, for his role in pushing through a free-trade deal between Mexico and the US.
(SFC, 11/29/18, p.A7)
2018 Nov 27, Niger's health minister said Niger has ordered the closure of two centers run by British charity Marie Stopes International on grounds it was illegally performing abortions. Niger allows abortion only in cases where the pregnancy endangers the mother's life.
(AFP, 11/27/18)
2018 Nov 27, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte accepted the resignation of his adviser on peace talks with insurgents and sacked two other officials due to corruption in an anti-poverty program created for insurgency-hit areas.
(AP, 11/27/18)
2018 Nov 27, Poland's anti-corruption officers detained Marek Chrzanowski, the former head of a financial regulatory body, who resigned recently after a media report he sought a bribe.
(AP, 11/27/18)
2018 Nov 27, Russia's TASS news agency reported that a court in Russian-annexed Crimea ordered the first of 24 Ukrainian navy sailors captured by Russia to be detained for two months.
(Reuters, 11/27/18)
2018 Nov 27, Slovenia said it has appointed Major General Alenka Ermenc as chief of the army, making her the only woman in charge of a NATO country's military.
(Reuters, 11/27/18)
2018 Nov 27, South Korea's top public prosecutor apologized over what he described as a botched investigation into the enslavement and mistreatment of thousands of people at a vagrants' facility in the 1970s and 1980s. In 1989 Park In-keun, the owner of the now-closed Brothers Home, was acquitted from serious charges amid an obvious cover-up orchestrated at the highest levels of government.
(AP, 11/27/18)(SFC, 4/18/20, p.A2)
2018 Nov 27, Sri Lankan lawmakers supporting disputed PM Mahinda Rajapaksa boycotted Parliament for a second day, accusing the speaker of bias during a political crisis that has engulfed the island nation for nearly a month.
(AP, 11/27/18)
2018 Nov 27, Sweden's Center Party said it would consider accepting Social Democrat Stefan Lofven as prime minister if he meets their policy demands, including lower taxes.
(Reuters, 11/27/18)
2018 Nov 27, A local official said Syrian workers have exhumed more than 500 bodies from one of the largest mass graves near the northern city of Raqqa, once the capital of the Islamic State group's self-styled caliphate, and are still uncovering remains. So far 516 bodies believed to be of Islamic State fighters and civilians have been exhumed.
(AP, 11/27/18)
2018 Nov 27, Thailand detained soccer player Hakeem al-Araibi, who held refugee status in Australia, upon his entry at Bangkok's airport on a holiday with his wife. He was held legally following a request from Bahrain's government. He had fled Bahrain four years ago.
(AP, 12/7/18)
2018 Nov 27, Hundreds of Tunisian protesters marched through Tunis in opposition to a planned visit by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, urging justice over the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
(AFP, 11/27/18)
2018 Nov 27, UN agencies said asylum seekers at the Mexican border fleeing violence or persecution are entitled to lodge claims in the United States to obtain sanctuary there in a fresh attempt to shield migrants from tough US immigration policies.
(Reuters, 11/27/18)
2018 Nov 27, The United Nations environment office warned that the gap is widening between current greenhouse gas emissions and the levels needed to stop catastrophic global warming. It said in order to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 F) this century, emissions need to drop 55 percent by 2030 compared to 2017 levels.
(AP, 11/27/18)
2018 Nov 28, The US Justice Dept. charged Iranian hackers Faramarz Shahi Savandi (34) and Mohammad Mehdi Shah Mansouri (27) in connection with a multimillion-dollar extortion scheme with ransomware starting in January 2016.
(SFC, 11/29/18, p.A6)
2018 Nov 28, US authorities said five inmates in the Carolinas had been indicted for extorting more than half a million dollars from military personnel across the country, using illegal cell phones to pose as underage women on dating sites.
(SFC, 11/29/18, p.A7)
2018 Nov 28, A Pew Research Center study reported that the number of undocumented migrants living in the US has fallen to 10.7 million, the lowest since 2004. Pew attributed the decline to a big drop in undocumented Mexicans. The number of undocumented immigrants in the US peaked in 2007 at an estimated 12.2 million people.
(AFP, 11/28/18)
2018 Nov 28, In Afghanistan 16 Taliban fighters were killed as Afghan government forces battled insurgents in southern Helmand province overnight. Insurgents staged a coordinated attack against security forces in Kabul when a suicide bomber detonated his explosives and fighters engaged them in a gun battle. The Taliban attack targeted the Kabul offices of British security company G4S Risk Management Group. Five of its staffers were killed, including a British national. A 6th person was also killed.
(AP, 11/28/18)(AP, 11/29/18)
2018 Nov 28, Large swaths of northeast Australia endured unprecedented fire danger with 138 wildfires across Queensland state forcing schools to be closed and thousands of homes to be evacuated.
(AP, 11/28/18)
2018 Nov 28, A British court rejected an extradition request from Turkey for exiled businessman Akin Ipek (54) to face terrorism-funding, fraud and other charges, saying he faced a real risk of ill-treatment should he be returned.
(Reuters, 11/28/18)
2018 Nov 28, Chile's Pres. Sebastian Pinera signed a measure that lets people over the age of 14 change their name and gender in official records.
(SFC, 11/29/18, p.A2)
2018 Nov 28, Chinese scientist He Jiankui, who claims to have created the world's first genetically-edited babies, defended the highly controversial procedure, but announced a halt to the trial following an international outcry.
(AFP, 11/28/18)
2018 Nov 28, In northeastern China an explosion outside a chemical plant early today killed at least 22 people and destroyed scores of vehicles in Zhangjiakou city.
(AP, 11/28/18)
2018 Nov 28, The EU's second highest court upheld a decision by the European Union to recover money from far-right politician Marine Le Pen, delivering the former French presidential candidate a second legal setback this year.
(Reuters, 11/28/18)
2018 Nov 28, Georgians voted in the second round of a presidential election seen as a crucial test for the increasingly unpopular ruling party and watched closely by Russia and the West. French-born former foreign minister Salome Zurabishvili (66) won nearly 60 percent of the vote.
(AFP, 11/28/18)(AP, 11/29/18)
2018 Nov 28, In Greece train and island ferry services were suspended and most Athens public transport was idle as the country's biggest labor union held a strike against persisting austerity measures.
(AP, 11/28/18)
2018 Nov 28, In Greece a Syrian man was killed overnight and six more people injured when a car used by a smuggling gang that was crammed with nine people crashed on a northern highway near the town of Kavala.
(AP, 11/28/18)
2018 Nov 28, The US ambassador to Israel called on Palestinians to free Issam Akel, an American-Palestinian, who was detained two months ago for "selling land to a Jew", apparently violating a long-standing Palestinian ban on selling land to Israelis.
(Reuters, 11/28/18)
2018 Nov 28, Lebanon's army detained around 400 Syrians in raids on refugee camps in the eastern Bekaa valley, mostly for overstaying their residence permits.
(AFP, 11/29/18)
2018 Nov 28, Mexico's human rights commission blasted the government's investigation of the 2014 disappearance of 43 students for a long list of failures, adding the remains of 19 unidentified people were found in a trash dump linked to the case.
(Reuters, 11/29/18)
2018 Nov 28, Nigeria's military revealed a death toll of 39 from five attacks by extremists on soldiers between Nov. 2 and Nov. 18.
(SFC, 11/29/18, p.A2)
2018 Nov 28, At least 15 Nigerian news organizations joined forces on the CrossCheck Nigeria project to fight misinformation ahead of February's elections in a collaborative first as the country's main political parties trade accusations of fabrication and exaggeration.
(AFP, 11/28/18)
2018 Nov 28, Pakistan's PM Imran Khan attended a groundbreaking ceremony at the Kartarpur corridor for the first visa-free border crossing with India that will allow Sikh pilgrims to easily visit their shrines on each side of the border.
(AP, 11/28/18)
2018 Nov 28, President Vladimir Putin said that Russia had no choice but to cut its dependency on dollars to conduct trade, after becoming the target of increasingly severe US sanctions.
(AFP, 11/28/18)
2018 Nov 28, President Vladimir Putin insisted that Russian forces had the right to seize three Ukrainian ships at the weekend, as Kiev lashed out at Moscow for failing to release its sailors.
(AFP, 11/28/18)
2018 Nov 28, Moscow's latest tourist attraction, a cable car over the Moskva River, was shut the day after it opened because of what the operator said was a cyberattack.
(Reuters, 11/29/18)
2018 Nov 28, Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman landed in Buenos Aires for the G20 summit of industrialized nations.
(Reuters, 11/28/18)
2018 Nov 28, A Sri Lankan court ordered the detention of Chief of Defense Staff Admiral Ravindra Wijegunaratne, the country's top military officer, for investigation in connection with the abduction and disappearance of 11 young people, including ethnic minority Tamils, during the country's civil war. Wijegunaratne has been accused of giving refuge to former navy Lieutenant Commander Chandana Prasad Hettiarachchi, who is the main suspect in the abduction of the 11 young people in 2008-2009. They are believed to have been murdered while being held for ransom.
(AP, 11/28/18)
2018 Nov 28, In Switzerland Afghanistan's President Ashraf Ghani announced a 12-person team for prospective peace talks with the Taliban. Top diplomats from Russia, the United States and the European Union united in support for Ghani's efforts to stabilize his war-battered nation.
(AFP, 11/28/18)(AP, 11/28/18)
2018 Nov 28, In northeastern Thailand a man was killed by a wild elephant after his speeding car hit the animal near Khao Yai National Park.
(AP, 11/29/18)
2018 Nov 28, In northwest Turkey a large concrete block fell during the construction of a highway viaduct, killing one worker and trapping two others beneath it near the town of Gebze, Kocaeli province.
(AP, 11/28/18)
2018 Nov 28, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko signed an act introducing martial law after Russia's seizure of three of Kiev's navy vessels sparked the worst crisis in years between the neighbors.
(AFP, 11/28/18)
2018 Nov 29, President Donald Trump headed to Argentina for a fractious weekend of G20 summitry boasting that his trade war with China had injected billions into the US economy.
(AFP, 11/29/18)
2018 Nov 29, It was reported that the Trump administration has granted nearly 3,000 requests that could exempt Chinese-made metal products from tariffs enacted in March.
(SFC, 11/29/18, p.A4)
2018 Nov 29, In Arizona US Marshall Ryan White (41) was shot and killed while serving a warrant in Tucson. Ryan Schlesinger (26) was arrested after an hours long standoff.
(SFC, 12/1/18, p.A6)
2018 Nov 29, In southern California an attempt to smuggle immigrants into the country illegally ended with three people dead and eight seriously injured in Campo, San Diego County.
(AP, 12/1/18)(SFC, 12/1/18, p.A6)
2018 Nov 29, It was reported that Puerto Rico's largest public university has paid the US government $1.7 million as part of a settlement after the institution was accused of misusing grant money.
(AP, 11/29/18)
2018 Nov 29, In Brazil Rio de Janeiro Gov. Luiz Fernando Pezao was arrested for allegedly taking about $10 million in bribes since 2007, adding to a string of corruption arrests of senior political figures.
(AP, 11/29/18)
2018 Nov 29, Hundreds of Bulgarian coal miners and energy workers protested to demand government guarantees that their jobs will be preserved amid bids by the European Union to close mines and tackle climate change. 150,000 jobs were reportedly at risk.
(AP, 11/29/18)
2018 Nov 29, In Burkina Faso several thousand people took the streets of Ouagadougou as workers downed tools in a nationwide strike over higher fuel prices.
(AFP, 11/29/18)
2018 Nov 29, Canada announced targeted sanctions against 17 Saudi nationals it said were linked to the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul last month.
(AFP, 11/29/18)
2018 Nov 29, Top leaders from Chad, Nigeria, Niger and Cameroon held talks in N'Djamena (Chad) to discuss the recent escalation of attacks by Boko Haram jihadists in the Lake Chad area.
(AFP, 11/29/18)
2018 Nov 29, China's government ordered a halt to work by a medical team that claimed to have helped make the world's first gene-edited babies, as a group of leading scientists declared that it's still too soon to try to make permanent changes to DNA that can be inherited by future generations.
(AP, 11/29/18)
2018 Nov 29, China said it has assembled a standby force of thousands of United Nations peacekeepers, furthering its leading role in the global body's efforts to tamp down conflicts worldwide.
(AP, 11/29/18)
2018 Nov 29, It was reported that China has called upon all electric vehicle manufacturers in China to report the precise location of their customer's cars to the Chinese government.
(AP, 11/29/18)
2018 Nov 29, Gabon's President Ali Bongo (59) arrived in Morocco to convalesce after a month's treatment at a Saudi hospital for an illness that has not been officially revealed.
(AP, 11/29/18)
2018 Nov 29, Grigol Vashadze, Georgia's defeated opposition candidate for the presidency, said he did not recognize the victory of his ruling party rival and called for peaceful protests on Dec. 2.
(Reuters, 11/29/18)
2018 Nov 29, In Germany some 170 police officers, investigators and prosecutors raided the offices of Deutsche Bank on the suspicion bank employees helped clients set up offshore companies in tax havens to launder hundreds of millions of euros.
(AP, 11/29/18)
2018 Nov 29, Hundreds of schoolchildren took part in rival protests in Greece over the country's name deal with Macedonia aimed at ending a three-decade dispute but which has sparked controversy.
(AFP, 11/29/18)
2018 Nov 29, A Honduran court found seven people guilty of participating in the 2016 murder of indigenous and environmental rights activist Berta Caceres, while acquitting one suspect in a case that has drawn international attention.
(AP, 12/8/18)
2018 Nov 29, Indian police said they have arrested nearly two dozen people on suspicion of defrauding people around the world by sending fake pop-up messages warning them that their computers were infected with a virus and offering to fix the problem at a price. Those arrested over the last two days posed as representatives of Microsoft and other companies and used their logos.
(AP, 11/29/18)
2018 Nov 29, An Israeli court extended the remand of Adnan Gheith, the Palestinian governor of Jerusalem, for three days following his Nov. 25 arrest in connection with an investigation related to a land sale.
(AFP, 11/29/18)
2018 Nov 29, Up to 90 pilot whales beached themselves at Hanson Bay on the Chatham Islands of New Zealand. 51 died by the next day, less than a week after 145 pilot whales and nine pigmy whales perished in two other strandings.
(SFC, 12/1/18, p.A2)
2018 Nov 29, Pakistan's recently elected PM Imran Khan said his government will introduce a new law that will reward whistleblowers who help authorities identify corrupt politicians, bureaucrats and private citizens who stash money in Pakistan and in foreign banks.
(AP, 11/29/18)
2018 Nov 29, A Philippine court found three police officers guilty of killing a student they alleged was a drug dealer. Kian Loyd delos Santos (17) was killed during a raid in Caloocan city's slums in the Manila metropolis last year. The court sentenced officers Arnel Oares, Jeremias Pereda and Jerwin Cruz, to be imprisoned for up to 40 years without parole, although they can appeal.
(AP, 11/29/18)
2018 Nov 29, Portugal's parliament approved in the final reading the minority Socialist government's 2019 budget bill that aims to nearly eliminate the deficit in an election year, further reducing Portugal's debt burden, still one of Europe's heaviest. PM Antonio Costa announced that his fiscal consolidation policies will allow the early repayment of the remaining part of bailout loans provided by the International Monetary Fund by the end of this year.
(Reuters, 11/29/18)
2018 Nov 29, Police in Russia's fourth-largest city of Yekaterinburg seized children's paintings over what they consider to be depictions of gay love. A high school drawing competition on the subject of tolerance had featured several drawings which depicted same-sex couples.
(AP, 11/29/18)
2018 Nov 29, South Korea's top court ordered Japanese company Mitsubishi Heavy Industries to financially compensate 10 Koreans for forced labor during Tokyo's 1910-45 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula, in the second such ruling in a month that again drew quick, vehement protests from Japan.
(AP, 11/29/18)
2018 Nov 29, South Korea sent about 50 tons of insecticide to North Korea to help stop a pine tree disease from spreading.
(AP, 11/29/18)
2018 Nov 29, In Spain thousands of Catalan civil servants joined strikes and ongoing protests by students and health workers to demand more funding and better working conditions.
(AP, 11/29/18)
2018 Nov 29, Sri Lankan lawmakers approved a motion barring disputed PM Mahinda Rajapaksa from using state funds after he lost two no-confidence votes, in an escalation of the country's political crisis.
(AP, 11/29/18)
2018 Nov 29, Sri Lanka penned two multi-million dollar contracts with Chinese firms for a port upgrade project in the middle of a political hiatus that has raised doubts over the legitimacy of the government and the legality of the deals.
(Reuters, 11/29/18)
2018 Nov 29, The Syrian National Coalition said that Leila Shuweikani, a Syrian-American woman detained two years, ago died on Dec. 28 shortly after being detained and that she was tortured. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said it has documented 16,065 persons who were killed in government detention centers.
(AP, 11/29/18)
2018 Nov 29, An investigation by the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) of its widely-praised refugee program in Uganda said it has found corruption costing millions of dollars and misconduct.
(Reuters, 11/29/18)
2018 Nov 29, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko accused Russia's Vladimir Putin of wanting to annex his entire country and called for NATO to deploy warships to a sea shared by the two nations. Ukrainian border guards said all non-Ukrainians will be barred from crossing into the Russia-occupied Crimean peninsula by land after martial law went into effect.
(Reuters, 11/29/18)(AP, 11/29/18)
2018 Nov 29, Ukraine's infrastructure minister, Volodymyr Omelyan, said two Ukrainian Azov Sea ports, Berdyansk and Mariupol, are effectively under blockade by Russia as vessels are being barred from leaving and entering.
(Reuters, 11/29/18)
2018 Nov 29, In Zimbabwe Several thousand anti-government demonstrators marched through the capital Harare, closely watched by armed police in the first rally since a deadly crackdown on an election protest in August.
(AFP, 11/29/18)
2018 Nov 30, US Pres. Donald Trump signed a trade pact (the USMCA) with Mexico and Canada at a ceremony with Canadian PM Justin Trudeau Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
(AP, 12/1/18)
2018 Nov 30, George H.W. Bush (94), the 41st president of the United States, died in Houston.
(AP, 12/1/18)
2018 Nov 30, George Higginbotham, a former Justice Department official, admitted his role in a multimillion-dollar effort to try to get the United States to drop its investigation into a money laundering and bribery scheme that pilfered billions from a Malaysian investment fund.
(AP, 12/1/18)
2018 Nov 30, In Alaska magnitude 7.0 and 5.7 earthquakes hit the Anchorage area. Buildings shook and roads buckled, butr no deaths were reported.
(SFC, 12/1/18, p.A7)
2018 Nov 30, In southern California Los Angeles teacher Marston Riley (64) was charged with a misdemeanor count of corporal injury to a child. A video posted last month showed Riley scuffling with a student who had repeatedly called him a racial slur.
(SFC, 12/3/18, p.A5)
2018 Nov 30, In the SF Bay Area Quora, a question and answer website based in Mountain View, discovered a data breach that reportedly affected 100 milliuon users.
(SFC, 12/5/18, p.D1)
2018 Nov 30, In southern Indiana a small jet crashed with no survivors after taking off from Clark County Airport. Three people were believed to have been aboard.
(SFC, 12/1/18, p.A6)
2018 Nov 30, At the American Health Summit in Washington DC former NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced a $50 million donation to help ten states fight the nation's opioid epidemic.
(SFC, 12/1/18, p.A8)
2018 Nov 30, The Marriott Int'l. hotel chain said that the database of its Starwood reservation system had been hacked and that the personal details of up to 500 million guests going back to 2014 had been compromised.
(SFC, 12/1/18, p.D1)
2018 Nov 30, G7 nations called Russia's seizure of three Ukrainian ships off Moscow-annexed Crimea unjustified and demanded the release of the 24 sailors, saying the standoff had "dangerously raised tensions".
(AFP, 11/30/18)
2018 Nov 30, The Pan-American Health Organization reported a big jump in measles cases in the Americas this year, with Brazil surpassing crisis-hit Venezuela as the nation with the most confirmed cases.
(AP, 12/1/18)
2018 Nov 30, In Argentina thousands of demonstrators gathered in Buenos Aires to march against the G20's economic policies as the world's leading industrialized nations opened their annual summit in the Argentine capital.
(Reuters, 11/30/18)
2018 Nov 30, In Argentina Russian President Vladimir Putin reportedly briefed his US counterpart Donald Trump on the Ukraine crisis as the leaders met briefly at a G20 summit dinner.
(AFP, 12/2/18)
2018 Nov 30, Thousands of Australian students skipped school to join nationwide protests demanding government action on climate change.
(AFP, 11/30/18)
2018 Nov 30, Belgian police fired water cannon and teargas in central Brussels to drive back protesters inspired by France's "yellow vest" anti-tax movement who hurled rocks at the prime minister's office.
(Reuters, 11/30/18)
2018 Nov 30, A Bosnian appeals court acquitted Naser Oric, the wartime commander of Srebrenica who was accused of committing atrocities during the 1992-95 Balkan conflict.
(AP, 11/30/18)
2018 Nov 30, Britain unveiled four agreements signed with Spain as part of the Brexit withdrawal deal that provide for unprecedented cooperation between Madrid and Gibraltar.
(AFP, 11/30/18)
2018 Nov 30, British government minister Sam Gyimah quit late today over PM Theresa May's "naive" Brexit plan, dealing her another blow in her fight to pass it through parliament.
(AFP, 12/1/18)
2018 Nov 30, UNICEF reported that thousands of children in the Central African Rep. are trapped in armed groups with many suffering sexual violence. Thousands were reported going hungry and one in four have fled their homes as a result of interreligious and intercommunal fighting.
(SFC, 12/1/18, p.A4)
2018 Nov 30, China said on it had lodged "stern representations" with the United States after the U.S. Navy sailed a ship through the contested South China Sea, passing near islands claimed by China.
(Reuters, 11/30/18)
2018 Nov 30, Denmark's right-wing minority government secured the necessary backing from its populist ally, the Danish People's Party, to be able to pass its 2019 budget.
(Reuters, 11/30/18)
2018 Nov 30, Hundreds of women took part in a race in Cairo to campaign for an end to violence against women and push for acceptance of women running in public spaces.
(Reuters, 11/30/18)
2018 Nov 30, French President Emmanuel Macron told Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Europeans will insist on international experts being part of the investigations into a Saudi journalist's murder.
(Reuters, 11/30/18)
2018 Nov 30, A Greek court acquitted 21 people accused of raiding prospective gold mining facilities that some see as a welcome foreign investment but many local residents strongly oppose on environmental grounds. About 40 masked people attacked the facilities at Skouries in the Halkidiki peninsula in northern Greece in February 2013.
(AP, 11/30/18)
2018 Nov 30, In India thousands of farmers marched to the Parliament in New Delhi demanding higher prices for their produce and a government waiver on their farm loans to alleviate hardships.
(AP, 11/30/18)
2018 Nov 30, Italy's national anti-Mafia prosecutor, Federico Cafiero de Raho, said police have arrested 30 suspected mobsters in a sweep against the Foggia mafiosi, the country's so-called "fourth Mafia".
(AP, 11/30/18)
2018 Nov 30, A Japanese court approved a 10-day extension of the detention of former Nissan chairman Carlos Ghosn.
(AP, 11/30/18)
2018 Nov 30, A Jordanian man attacked two Israeli port workers with a hammer seriously wounding them in the Israeli Red Sea resort of Eilat. The assailant was detained for questioning and police said they suspect the motive was terrorism.
(AP, 11/30/18)
2018 Nov 30, Lebanon's caretaker finance minister and the World Bank jointly called for the formation of a new government after half a year of political stalemate, saying a new administration was needed to halt "confusion" over the economy.
(Reuters, 11/30/18)
2018 Nov 30, Montenegrin police arrested Nebojsa Medojevic, a lawmaker and a prominent opposition leader, after a high court ordered he serve a two-month jail sentence passed in March for refusing to testify about high-level corruption.
(Reuters, 11/30/18)
2018 Nov 30, In the Netherlands a rotating roster of preachers continued to lead a non-stop, round-the-clock service at a small Protestant chapel in The Hague in an attempt to shield a family of Armenian asylum-seekers from deportation. The Tamrazyan family has been living in the Netherlands for nearly nine years, as their asylum application and various appeals proceeded slowly through the courts. The Council of State, the country's highest administrative court, has ruled they must return to their home country, which is considered safe by the Dutch government.
(AP, 11/30/18)
2018 Nov 30, Romanian health authorities temporarily closed a maternity hospital in the capital after 13 babies born there recently were diagnosed with antibiotic-resistant Staphylococcus aureus.
(AP, 11/30/18)
2018 Nov 30, In eastern Slovakia five people, including four children, were killed in a house fire in the town of Richnava.
(AP, 11/30/18)
2018 Nov 30, In Somalia a US military air strike killed nine militants targeting al Shabaab in Lebede, as part of its operations to support the government's efforts to weaken the militant group.
(Reuters, 12/2/18)
2018 Nov 30, South Africa's High Court rejected a legal challenge brought by a group representing white farmers against President Cyril Ramaphosa's plans for land expropriation without compensation.
(Reuters, 11/30/18)
2018 Nov 30, A South Korean train rolled into North Korea for the first time in a decade as the countries began joint surveys on northern railway sections they hope someday to connect with the South.
(AP, 11/30/18)
2018 Nov 30, Spanish police said they have arrested art dealer Oswaldo Aulestia (72), accused of selling fake works by Picasso, Dali, Warhol and other 20th century masters to unsuspecting US buyers, and evading arrest for years.
(Reuters, 11/30/18)
2018 Nov 30, Sri Lanka's parliament voted to halt payment of ministers' salaries and travel expenses, but it remained unclear how the move would impact the disputed government of PM Mahinda Rajapaksa whose ministers boycotted the vote.
(Reuters, 11/30/18)
2018 Nov 30, Swiss-based FIFA's ethics committee said it has imposed a four-year ban on Manuel Dende, former president of the Sao Tomean Football Association, for accepting a bribe, reportedly from former presidential candidate Mohamed bin Hammam. Dende was also fined 75,000 Swiss francs ($75,000).
(AP, 11/30/18)
2018 Nov 30, Syrian state news said new air strikes on al-Shafa killed around 30, bringing the total killed this week in strikes on the Islamic State pocket to around 45.
(Reuters, 11/30/18)
2018 Nov 30, Tunisia's interior ministry said authorities have arrested 12 suspected members of the Islamic State group and seized bomb making materials since a suicide attack last month.
(AFP, 11/30/18)
2018 Nov 30, A Turkish court ruled that the former leader of Turkey's pro-Kurdish opposition remain in prison, after top EU officials last week called for the politician's swift release.
(Reuters, 11/30/18)
2018 Nov 30, Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko said his country has received 500 million euros ($568 million) in assistance from the European Commission.
(Reuters, 11/30/18)
2018 Nov 30, Ukraine banned Russian men of combat age from entering the country, a move introduced under martial law after Russia fired on and captured three Ukrainian naval ships off Crimea last weekend.
(Reuters, 11/30/18)
2018 Nov 30, Ukraine's state security service raided the residence of a senior Russian-backed Orthodox priest, who heads one of the country's holiest sites, citing a clause in the criminal code relating to whipping up religious hatred. Metropolitan Pavel, heads the Kiev Pechersk Lavra, one of Ukraine's most famous monasteries and a tourist site where mummified monks rest in labyrinthine underground caves.
(Reuters, 11/30/18)
2018 Nov 30, The United Nations said it had helped hundreds of Central Americans who travelled with migrant caravans towards the US to return to their home countries.
(AFP, 11/30/18)
2018 Nov 30, The Vatican announced the approval by the European Payments Council to bring the Vatican into the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA). This allows the Vatican bank to have its own IBAN code, the unique numerical identifier that facilitates wire transfers between banks.
(AP, 11/30/18)
2018 Nov 30, A court in northern Vietnam jailed two former police generals for protecting a multimillion-dollar online gambling ring as the Communist government steps up its crackdown on graft. Former national police chief Phan Van Vinh and former head of hi-tech crimes police department Nguyen Thanh Hoa were sentenced to nine and 10 years respectively.
(AP, 11/30/18)
2018 Nov 30, In Vietnam Huynh Thuc Vy (33), founder of the organization Vietnamese Women for Human Rights, was sentenced to two years and nine months in prison for spraying paint on Vietnamese flags and posting a photo of them on Facebook.
(Reuters, 11/30/18)
2018 Nov 30, In Yemen fighting erupted in the east and south of the Red Sea port city of Hodeida. Huthi rebels on their television channel referred to an exchange of tank fire. Intermittent clashes continued into the next day.
(AP, 12/1/18)
2018 Nov, In Australia two conjoined girls from Bhutan were separated by a team of 25 surgeons, nurses and anesthetists in an operation at Melbourne's Royal Children's Hospital that lasted almost six hours. Twenty-month-old Nima and Dawa returned to Bhutan after a 22-hour flight from Melbourne with their mother, four months after their operation.
(AP, 3/7/19)
2018 Nov, An Ecuadorean court authorized the extradition of wood pellet salesman Paul Ceglia, who faced US charges of mail fraud and wire fraud over allegations he forged documents to extort Facebook and Zuckerberg. Ceglia had sued Zuckerberg in 2010 saying he had signed a contract in 2003 while studying at Harvard University that gave him half of the planned social network site that would become Facebook. In April, 2019, Ceglia requested asylum in Ecuador.
(Reuters, 4/12/19)
2018 Nov, In South Africa VBS, a regional bank that catered to poorer customers, collapsed. The bank was left in ruins after 53 people stole $130 million deposited by individuals. South Africa's central bank was forced to step in and guaranteed $7,300 per retail depositor through a competing bank.
(AFP, 3/9/19)
2018 Nov, A UN-backed study was published saying the area of Mexico that illegally farms opium poppies had grown by more than one-fifth this year, to an area the size of Philadelphia.
(AP, 2/6/19)
2018 Dec 1, US President Donald Trump said he will soon notify Congress that he plans to end the NAFTA agreement with Mexico and Canada in favor of a new regional trade deal, setting up a potential clash on Capitol Hill.
(AFP, 12/2/18)
2018 Dec 1, In Los Angeles Deontay Wilder and Tyson Fury (30) battled to a controversial split-decision draw in their WBC heavyweight title showdown, triggering immediate demands from both camps for a rematch.
(AFP, 12/2/18)
2018 Dec 1, In Los Angeles Jarrett Hurd (28) of Maryland stopped Britain's Jason Welborn in the fourth round to retain his WBA, IBF and IBO light middleweight titles.
(AP, 12/2/18)
2018 Dec 1, In San Francisco hundreds of people gathered at the National AIDS Memorial Grove in Golden Gate Park for the 25th Annual World AIDS Day.
(SSFC, 12/2/18, p.A16)
2018 Dec 1, In Louisiana the Democratic Governors Assoc. meeting in New Orleans selected Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo as its new chairwoman.
(SSFC, 12/2/18, p.A10)
2018 Dec 1, Vice Admiral Scott Stearney, a Chicago native and the commander of the US Navy's Bahrain-based 5th Fleet, was found dead at his residence in Bahrain. No foul play was suspected.
(AP, 12/2/18)
2018 Dec 1, In Afghanistan Abdul Manan, a top commander of the Taliban, was killed in the southern province of Helmand in a joint operation by Afghan and US Special Forces. He was killed along with 29 others by an air strike while he was meeting local commanders and fighters in the Nawzad district.
(Reuters, 12/2/18)
2018 Dec 1, In Argentina European officials said that G20 nations had agreed to commit to reforming the World Trade Organization in a preliminary draft of the communique due to be released at the end of a two-day meeting of the bloc. G20 leaders of the world's largest economic powers agreed to overhaul the global body that regulates trade disputes, but they faced resistance from President Donald Trump over the Paris accord on climate change.
(Reuters, 12/1/18)(AP, 12/2/18)
2018 Dec 1, In Argentina President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed to halt additional tariffs in a deal that keeps their trade war from escalating as the two sides try again to bridge their differences with fresh talks aimed at reaching an agreement within 90 days.
(Reuters, 12/2/18)
2018 Dec 1, In Argentina Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan demanded that Saudi Arabia extradite suspects in the killing in Istanbul of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, taking to task the kingdom's crown prince who was basking in his quick return to the world stage at the G20.
(AFP, 12/1/18)
2018 Dec 1, The Bristol-based disciplinary panel of the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association, founded in 1968, handed long bans to two Chinese snooker players for fixing matches in one of the sport's biggest corruption scandals.
(http://tinyurl.com/ya85vruc)(AP, 12/1/18)
2018 Dec 1, Canada detained Huawei Technologies executive Meng Wanzhou in Vancouver. Wanzhou faced possible extradition to the United States where she is suspected of trying to evade US trade curbs on Iran.
(AP, 12/6/18)
2018 Dec 1, In Canada Oleksandr Gvozdyk (31) of Ukraine knocked out Canadian Adonis Stevenson with 13 seconds remaining in the 11th round to capture the World Boxing Council light heavyweight championship in Quebec City.
(AFP, 12/2/18)
2018 Dec 1, Billionaire Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis faced renewed pressure over his business dealings after an EU legal document said he has a conflict of interest due to links to agribusiness companies that received European funds. A legal opinion, dated Nov. 19, said "the situation of Mr Babis qualifies as a conflict of interest," because he could "influence" decisions on the use of EU funds of which companies linked to him had benefited.
(Reuters, 12/1/18)
2018 Dec 1, In France police and anti-government protesters clashed near the Champs-Elysees and in other parts of central Paris. Paris police arrested 412 people during the worst clashes for years in the capital. 378 remained in custody.
(AFP, 12/1/18)(AP, 12/2/18)
2018 Dec 1, In Germany thousands of people marched in Berlin to demand that Germany make a quick exit from using coal-fired energy. This and a simultaneous event in the western city of Cologne were organized by environmental groups.
(AP, 12/1/18)
2018 Dec 1, In Indonesia about 300 West Papuan demonstrators calling for independence for the restive Indonesian region faced off with counter protesters in Surabaya, the country's second-largest city and capital of East Java province.
(AP, 12/1/18)
2018 Dec 1, Iran's navy launched a domestically made destroyer, which state media said has radar-evading stealth properties.
(AP, 12/1/18)
2018 Dec 1, Iran's state media reported that a revolutionary court has sentenced Hengameh Shahidi (43), a female pro-reform journalist, to a nearly 13-year prison term over security charges.
(AP, 12/1/18)
2018 Dec 1, Controversial Islamic preacher Zakir Naik (53), wanted in his home country of India, said he has not broken any Indian law and was being targeted by the "enemies of Islam," in a rare public speech in Malaysia where he has sought refuge. Naik faced charges in India of money laundering and hate speech.
(Reuters, 12/2/18)
2018 Dec 1, Veteran leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador assumed the Mexican presidency vowing to champion the poor and contain business elites he says have conspired with politicians for years to fuel corruption and lawlessness.
(AP, 12/1/18)
2018 Dec 1, In New Zealand Grace Millane (22), a British tourist, was last seen entering a central Auckland hotel with a 26-year-old man. The man was arrested on Dec 8 and police planned to charge him with murder. Millane, from Wickford in Essex, was on a round-the-world trip when she was allegedly strangled during rough sex at an apartment in Auckland. A suitcase containing her remains was found in a shallow grave in a forested area of the Waitakere ranges a week later on December 9.
(AP, 12/8/18)(The Telegraph, 11/6/19)
2018 Dec 1, A North Korean soldier fled across a heavily fortified border to defect to South Korea.
(AP, 12/1/18)
2018 Dec 1, Pakistan's Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry said that Tehreek-e-Labbaik party chief Khadim Hussain Rizvi and two other leaders have been booked under treason and terrorism charges. This came after violent rallies followed the Oct 31 acquittal of Asia Bibi, who had been charged with blasphemy in 2010. Rizvi and 3,000 followers were initially arrested under pre-emptive laws last week.
{Pakistan}
(AP, 12/1/18)(SFC, 12/3/18, p.A2)
2018 Dec 1, Pakistani security forces said they have killed Hakim Khan, a local Taliban commander, who had taken six people hostage in the country's northwest. Security forces rescued all the hostages safely in an operation in the Daraban area of Dera Ismail Khan overnight.
(AP, 12/1/18)
2018 Dec 1, Tens of thousands of Romanians turned out to celebrate 100 years since their nation became a modern-day state, and some noted current concerns about the rule of law and the state of democracy in the Balkan nation.
(AP, 12/1/18)
2018 Dec 1, Doctors Without Borders said a "dramatic increase" in sexual violence occurred in South Sudan over 10 days, between Nov. 19 and Nov. 29, as 125 women and girls walked to a food distribution site in Bentiu in Unity state. The women and girls were raped, whipped and clubbed in attacks so shocking that some aid workers in South Sudan said they are left speechless.
(AP, 12/1/18)
2018 Dec 1, In Spain jailed Catalan separatist leaders Jordi Sanchez and Jordi Turull, awaiting trial for their role in the region's failed bid to secede from Spain, said they were starting a hunger strike to protest over their treatment by Spanish courts.
(Reuters, 12/1/18)
2018 Dec 1, Sri Lanka slashed a tax on sugary drinks in a controversial reversal of an anti-diabetes policy that attracted immediate criticism. Health campaigners and a former minister condemned the move as damaging the fight against obesity and diabetes among young people.
(AFP, 12/1/18)
2018 Dec 1, Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko said Russia is building up its land forces and weapons along the border as German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned Russia not to block Ukrainian ports in the Sea of Azov.
(AP, 12/1/18)
2018 Dec 2, In Belgium tens of thousands of marchers took to the streets of Brussels asking politicians to fight harder to assure a greener future and to mark the start of the UN climate summit in Poland.
(AFP, 12/2/18)
2018 Dec 2, French President Emmanuel Macron led a crisis meeting after a day of riots in Paris by anti-government protesters left hundreds injured nationwide and widespread destruction around the capital.
(AFP, 12/2/18)
2018 Dec 2, Thousands of Georgians protested in the capital Tbilisi against the result of the country's presidential election, as defeated candidate Grigol Vashadze said opposition parties would challenge the outcome in court.
(AP, 12/2/18)
2018 Dec 2, Germany's Development Minister Gerd Mueller said his country will unveil an initiative at UN talks on climate change this week to attract more private investment in projects in Africa and elsewhere.
(Reuters, 12/2/18)
2018 Dec 2, In Indonesia tens of thousands of Muslims held a rally in Jakarta led by hardline groups who had agitated to remove the city's Christian governor, underscoring the growing influence of Islamist groups ahead of elections in 2019.
(Reuters, 12/2/18)
2018 Dec 2, In Indonesia 24 workers were killed when gunmen stormed a government bridge construction project in a remote mountainous village in Nduga district of Papua province. Eight other workers on the trans Papua highway fled to the nearby house of a local parliament member. An armed group came a day later and killed seven of them.
(AP, 12/4/18)(AP, 3/8/19)
2018 Dec 2, Iran said it would continue missile tests to build up its defenses and denied this was in breach of UN resolutions following US allegations that Tehran had tested a new missile capable of carrying multiple warheads.
(Reuters, 12/2/18)
2018 Dec 2, Israeli police recommended that PM Benjamin Netanyahu be indicted for bribery and fraud. It was the third such police recommendation against the four-term veteran, who has consistently denied any wrongdoing.
(Reuters, 12/2/18)
2018 Dec 2, An Israeli court ruled that the Palestinians' Jerusalem governor, Adnan Ghaith, could leave custody on bail and on condition he not enter the West Bank for two weeks.
(AP, 12/2/18)
2018 Dec 2, Wiam Wahhab, a pro-Syrian Lebanese politician, urged calm after one of his aides was killed by gunfire during a police attempt to bring him in for questioning over accusations of stirring civil strife.
(Reuters, 12/2/18)
2018 Dec 2, Eleven migrants who were stranded on a Spanish fishing boat for more than a week after being rescued off Libya were brought to Malta, which had agreed with Madrid that this was only a temporary solution dictated by "humanitarian reasons", and they would be taken to Spain in due course.
(Reuters, 12/2/18)
2018 Dec 2, In Poland delegates from nearly 200 nations began two weeks of talks in Katowice to tackle deep political divisions at the most important UN meeting on global warming since the landmark 2015 Paris deal to shift away from fossil fuels.
(Reuters, 12/2/18)
2018 Dec 2, Saudi dissident Omar Abdulaziz filed a lawsuit in Tel Aviv against an Israeli surveillance company, claiming its sophisticated spyware targeted him and helped lead to the killing of his friend, Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
(AP, 12/3/18)
2018 Dec 2, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman arrived in Mauritania, resuming a tour of Arab countries after attending the G20 summit in Argentina.
(Reuters, 12/2/18)
2018 Dec 2, Voters went to the polls in Spain's Andalusia region in a first electoral test for PM Pedro Sanchez, whose minority government has struggled to pass a budget since taking office last summer. The anti-migrant, anti-feminist and euro skeptic Vox party won 12 seats in the 109-member parliament of Andalusia dealing a major setback to the ruling Socialists.
(Reuters, 12/2/18)(AP, 12/3/18)
2018 Dec 2, In southeastern Syria the US-led coalition targeted Abu al-Umarayn and several other Islamic State militants. Al-Umarayn was involved in the 2014 beheading of American aid worker Peter Kassig.
(SFC, 12/4/18, p.A2)
2018 Dec 2, It was reported that authorities in the Houthi-held Yemeni capital Sanaa are sterilizing water supplies at wells, distribution networks and houses to help stem the world's worst outbreak of cholera. UNICEF said more than 250,000 cases of cholera have been recorded in Yemen since the beginning of 2018, with 358 associated deaths.
(Reuters, 12/2/18)
2018 Dec 3, A new leak website, Distributed Denial of Secrets, made its debut wrestling with what to make available to the public, an illustration of the difficulty of balancing full transparency with respect for privacy in an age of mass disclosures. The site's founders eventually decided to pull from its public collection the haul from the Ashley Madison site along with more than a dozen other leaks.
(AP, 12/3/18)
2018 Dec 3, In Arkansas a charter bus overturned on I-30 near Benton. One child was killed and 45 people were injured.
(SFC, 12/4/18, p.A12)
2018 Dec 3, Algeria's President Abdelaziz Bouteflika (81) called off a meeting with visiting Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman because of ill health, the national news agency APS reported. The prince held talks instead with PM Ahmed Ouyahia.
(AP, 12/3/18)
2018 Dec 3, In Bangladesh an alliance of opposition parties accused the Election Commission (EC) of being biased in favor of the ruling Awami League Party after it rejected nearly a quarter of the candidates the alliance nominated for elections on Dec. 30.
(Reuters, 12/3/18)
2018 Dec 3, Supporters of a second referendum on Brexit from all of Britain's main political parties handed in a petition with more than one million signatures to PM Theresa May's Downing Street residence.
(AFP, 12/3/18)
2018 Dec 3, In London three-time Wimbledon champion Boris Becker dropped his claim of diplomatic immunity from bankruptcy proceedings because of his role as a sporting ambassador for the Central African Republic. The sale of Becker's belongings, worth an estimated £200,000 (224,000 euros, $255,000) will now go ahead.
(AFP, 12/3/18)
2018 Dec 3, The British government announced that 48 US students have been awarded the 2019 Marshall Scholarship, the largest class of scholars in the program's 65-year history.
(AP, 12/3/18)
2018 Dec 3, UN official Michel Forst called on the Colombian government to step up measures to protect human rights defenders following an upsurge in the number murdered since the signing of a peace agreement with former FARC guerrillas.
(AFP, 12/4/18)
2018 Dec 3, The Czech spy agency BIS said it's "obvious" that Russia was behind cyberattacks against the country's foreign ministry, calling them the most serious case of cyberespionage to hit the European country.
(AP, 12/3/18)
2018 Dec 3, Egypt opened its first international weapons fair, an event that organizers hope will project a message to the world that the country is secure and stable.
(AP, 12/3/18)
2018 Dec 3, In France anti-government protesters gained new allies as paramedics and students joined ongoing rallies while PM Macron met with political rivals in a bid to ease the anger following riots that rocked Paris.
(AP, 12/3/18)
2018 Dec 3, German police said the body of a missing 17-year-old girl has been found at a shelter for homeless people and others in western Germany and a resident has been detained. The girl's parents had reported her missing on Nov. 30 from her home in a neighboring region.
(AP, 12/3/18)
2018 Dec 3, The Central European University (CEU), founded by billionaire George Soros, said it had been forced out of Hungary in "an arbitrary eviction" that violated academic freedom, and it confirmed plans to open a new campus in Austria.
(Reuters, 12/3/18)
2018 Dec 3, In India a senior policeman and another man were killed in violent protests over a dead cow in Uttar Pradesh state.
(Reuters, 12/3/18)
2018 Dec 3, Indian authorities said two men accused of trying to molest a woman (20) in northern India set her on fire two days later after she lodged a complaint with police. Her suspected attackers have been arrested and three policemen suspended for dereliction of duties.
(Reuters, 12/3/18)
2018 Dec 3, A Jordanian security source said around 28,000 Syrians have returned home from Jordan since the border between the two Arab countries was reopened in mid-October.
(AFP, 12/3/18)
2018 Dec 3, A Soyuz rocket carrying Russian, American and Canadian astronauts took off from Kazakhstan and reached orbit, the first manned mission since a failed launch in October.
(AFP, 12/3/18)
2018 Dec 3, Mexico's newly inaugurated Pres. Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador hit the ground running with his pledge to govern as a common man and end decades of secrecy, heavy security and luxury enjoyed by past presidents.
(AP, 12/3/18)
2018 Dec 3, A Hamas-controlled military court sentenced six Palestinians to death for allegedly collaborating with Israel.
(AP, 12/3/18)
2018 Dec 3, In Poland UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres issued a dramatic appeal to world leaders to take the threat of global warming seriously and to act boldly to avert a catastrophic rise in temperatures before the end of the century. Nations facing imminent environmental disaster called on rich polluters to help them back from the brink.
(AP, 12/3/18)(AFP, 12/3/18)
2018 Dec 3, Qatar announced it will withdraw from OPEC in January, a rebuke of the Saudi-dominated cartel as the kingdom's boycott of Doha continues unabated and a crucial meeting of the group looms this week. This would make Qatar the first Middle East nation to leave the cartel since its founding in 1960.
(AP, 12/3/18)
2018 Dec 3, A Sri Lankan court ordered disputed PM Mahinda Rajapaksa and his ministers to refrain from carrying out their duties as it hears an appeal against them.
(AP, 12/3/18)
2018 Dec 3, A Swedish appeals court found Jean-Claude Arnault, the man at the center of a sex scandal that forced the postponement of this year's Nobel Prize in Literature, guilty of an additional rape and increased his prison term.
(Reuters, 12/3/18)
2018 Dec 3, Ukraine's president announced a partial call-up of reservists for training amid tensions with Russia, saying that the country needs to beef up its defenses to counter the threat of a Russian invasion.
(AP, 12/3/18)
2018 Dec 3, Ukrainian police searched the homes of Russian Orthodox priests and Russian Orthodox churches in several cities, stepping up pressure as Kiev pushes for the creation of an independent Ukrainian church.
(AP, 12/3/18)
2018 Dec 3, The UN World Intellectual Property Organization said China has issued the most international patent applications for an eighth straight year, showing the country's heft in intellectual property amid US President Donald Trump's accusation that the growing Asia power steals it.
(AP, 12/3/18)
2018 Dec 3, A UN chartered flight flew 50 wounded rebels along with their escorts out of the Yemeni capital Sanaa for medical treatment, a critical step towards bringing warring parties to planned UN-brokered negotiations in Sweden.
(AFP, 12/3/18)
2018 Dec 3, It was reported that Uruguay has rejected an asylum request by former Peruvian President Alan Garcia, who sought protection in the country's consulate after a judge retained his passport as part of a corruption probe.
(AP, 12/3/18)
2018 Dec 3, The Vatican expressed concern over the status of Jerusalem as Pope Francis and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas held their first meeting since the United States stirred international anxiety by moving its embassy there. The Vatican reaffirmed its longstanding call for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
(Reuters, 12/3/18)(AP, 12/3/18)
2018 Dec 4, In Washington DC a sentencing recommendation late today from Russia probe head Robert Mueller, that Flynn spend no time in jail, explained that the retired three-star general had given "substantial assistance" to his and other secret, high-level investigations.
(AFP, 12/5/18)
2018 Dec 4, US federal authorities announced a raft of conspiracy and tax fraud charges against four men in the first US prosecution related to the so-called Panama Papers.
(SFC, 12/5/18, p.A4)
2018 Dec 4, The US Department of Agriculture says a unit of Brazil's JBS is now recalling a total of more than 12 million pounds of raw beef that was shipped around the country because it may be contaminated with salmonella. JBS Tolleson in Arizona already recalled about 7 million pounds of beef in October.
(AP, 12/4/18)
2018 Dec 4, In the SF Bay Area Damani Chadly (17) was shot dead and a friend (19) wounded in a marijauna sale gone wrong in Fremont. Police took Christian Lucas Kelling into custody on Dec. 12 after finding him in Pflugerville, Texas.
(SFC, 12/20/18, p.C6)
2018 Dec 4, Texas executed Joseph Garcia (47), a member of the "Texas 7" gang of escaped prisoners, for the fatal shooting of a Dallas police officer on Christmas Eve in 2000. He was the 22nd inmate put to death in the US this year and the 12th in Texas.
(SFC, 12/5/18, p.A4)
2018 Dec 4, The DJIA fell about 800 points on trade jitters over a potential US-China trade war.
(SFC, 12/5/18, p.A1)
2018 Dec 4, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani ordered an investigation after the Guardian reported that members of the national women's soccer team were sexually and physically abused by men from the country's football federation.
(AP, 12/4/18)
2018 Dec 4, In Armenia an Su-25 two-seat combat jet crashed during a regular training mission. The Su-25 is a twin-engine ground attack aircraft designed in the Soviet Union in the 1970s.
(AP, 12/4/18)
2018 Dec 4, Austrian police found 22 asylum-seekers from Iraq and Syria in a Romanian-registered van near the country's eastern border.
(AP, 12/5/18)
2018 Dec 4, Brazil's Supreme Court said it had authorized a federal investigation into allegations that Onyx Lorenzoni, the incoming chief of staff for far-right President-elect Jair Bolsonaro, had taken illegal campaign donations.
(Reuters, 12/4/18)
2018 Dec 4, Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived in Portugal or a two-day visit to boost economic ties, despite concern in some EU capitals over China's growing influence across the continent.
(AFP, 12/4/18)
2018 Dec 4, An Egyptian survivor said 15 migrants have died in a boat off the Libyan coast after spending 12 days at sea without food or water. Only 10 migrants from the capsized boat survived.
(AP, 12/4/18)
2018 Dec 4, A senior European Union legal adviser said Britain had the right to withdraw its Brexit notice, opening a new front in a battle over PM Theresa May's plans to leave the bloc, which could be rejected in parliament next week.
(Reuters, 12/4/18)
2018 Dec 4, French PM Edouard Philippe announced in a live televised address that the planned increases set for January would be postponed until summer. Demonstrations continued around the country.
(AP, 12/4/18)
2018 Dec 4, Germany's top human rights official said she has been denied entry to China's Xinjiang region, where the UN estimates that up to one million Muslims are being held in detention camps.
(AFP, 12/5/18)
2018 Dec 4, Authorities in northern India said they have arrested four people for their alleged involvement in an attack on police over rumors of cow slaughter that left two people dead, including a police official, a day earlier. A case was filed against 28 people who allegedly set a police outpost on fire and killed a local police inspector.
(AP, 12/4/18)
2018 Dec 4, Angry Iraqi lawmakers disrupted a parliamentary session meant to include a vote on the remainder of PM Adel Abdul Mahdi's cabinet, banging tables and shouting "illegitimate" in opposition to his proposed candidates.
(Reuters, 12/4/18)
2018 Dec 4, Israel said it had launched an operation to "expose and thwart" cross-border attack tunnels from Lebanon dug by the Iran-backed Lebanese movement Hezbollah.
(AP, 12/4/18)
2018 Dec 4, Israeli troops killed a Palestinian man early today during a military operation in the West Bank city of Tulkarem. Tulkarem governor Isam Abu Baker said that Mohammed Habali (22) was shot in the head "without posing any threat to the soldiers".
(AP, 12/4/18)
2018 Dec 4, Thousands of Israeli women protested against domestic violence in a nationwide strike, calling for more action and state funding to deal with the problem.
(AFP, 12/4/18)
2018 Dec 4, It was reported that Italy's health minister Giulia Grillo has removed 30 doctors and scientists from the ministry's public health advisory committee as part of the "government of change" promised by the 5-Star Movement and League, which opposes the previous Democratic Party-led government's move to increase the number of mandatory vaccinations to 10.
(AP, 12/4/18)
2018 Dec 4, Italian police arrested new Mafia boss Settimino Mineo and dozens of other suspects in a major swoop against a resurgent Cosa Nostra.
(AFP, 12/4/18)
2018 Dec 4, In northwestern Pakistan gunmen opened fire overnight on a vehicle in Peshawar carrying local TV journalist Noor-ul-Hassan, killing him and wounding his cameraman.
(AP, 12/4/18)
2018 Dec 4, Poland's PM Mateusz Morawieck said the country, which has some of Europe's most polluted cities, will invest between 3-4 billion euros ($3.4-$ 4.5 billion) in low-emissions public transport.
(AP, 12/4/18)
2018 Dec 4, In Poland negotiators at the UN climate talks got down to the nitty-gritty task of finalizing the rules for the 2015 Paris accord, a landmark agreement by countries three years ago to curb global warming. Five international banks pledged to use the billions at their disposal to steer clients away from businesses that emit large amounts of greenhouse gases.
(AP, 12/4/18)
2018 Dec 4, Serbia sought support from allies Russia and China in opposing the formation of a Kosovo army, warning that a military in its former province could lead to renewed clashes in the Balkans.
(AP, 12/4/18)
2018 Dec 4, Doctors in Sierra Leone's public hospitals began a strike to protest against low wages and poor working conditions. Nurses said they may follow suit.
(Reuters, 12/5/18)
2018 Dec 4, Singapore said it has lodged a "strong protest" with Malaysia over its plan to extend the limits of a port in Malaysia's southern-most state, saying it encroached into the territorial waters of the city-state.
(Reuters, 12/4/18)
2018 Dec 4, Slovakia's general prosecutor ordered the release of 12 Greenpeace activists who were detained last week after climbing a tower during a protest at a coal mine that supplies one of the country's most polluting power plants. The order overturned the decision of a Slovak court on Dec. 2 to keep the activists in custody until trial.
(Reuters, 12/4/18)
2018 Dec 4, Syria's President Bashar Assad received North Korea's foreign minister Ri Yong Ho, who said his country and Syria face the same "enemy" and called for increased cooperation between them. Assad responded by identifying the United States as a hostile country to Syria and North Korea.
(AP, 12/4/18)
2018 Dec 4, In Thailand Islam's guiding council introduced new regulations requiring that marriages of children under age 17 be approved by a religious committee.
(AP, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 4, A Turkish appeals court has upheld the terror propaganda conviction of Selahattin Demirtas, the former head of Turkey's pro-Kurdish opposition party.
(AP, 12/4/18)
2018 Dec 4, Ukraine said it had resumed grain shipments from the Azov Sea, blocked for around 10 days after a military standoff with Russia in the Kerch Strait off Crimea.
(Reuters, 12/4/18)
2018 Dec 4, The UN said it was seeking $738 million in 2019 to help neighboring countries cope with the inflow of millions of Venezuelan refugees and migrants, who have "no prospect for return in the short to medium term".
(Reuters, 12/4/18)
2018 Dec 4, The UN warned of a "severe increase" in Yemen's hunger rate and cautioned the situation would deteriorate further in 2019, when four million more people are expected to need food aid.
(AFP, 12/4/18)
2018 Dec 4, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro arrived in Russia, looking for support amid a spiraling economic crisis.
(AP, 12/4/18)
2018 Dec 4, A Houthi delegation left for Sweden for UN-sponsored Yemen peace talks, the first since 2016, as Western nations pressed for an end to the war and the United Nations warned of a looming economic disaster.
(Reuters, 12/4/18)
2018 Dec 5, US President Donald Trump urged OPEC members not to slash production at their upcoming meeting, saying global oil prices should remain low.
(AFP, 12/5/18)
2018 Dec 5, In Washington DC international dignitaries gathered with US leaders at the funeral service for George H.W. Bush.
(AP, 12/5/18)
2018 Dec 5, In the SF Bay Area San Quentin prison officials called an emergency meeting to discuss a possible connection between contraband illegal drugs and the unexplained recent deaths of two Death Row inmates.
(SFC, 12/6/18, p.A1)
2018 Dec 5, In the SF Bay Area Berkeley street poet Julia Vinograd (74), widely known as the Bubble Lady of Telegraph Avenue, died in an Oakland hospital. Her work included 68 collections of verse.
(SSFC, 12/9/18, p.C11)
2018 Dec 5, Afghanistan appointed its first woman to a senior post at the Interior Ministry, naming Hosna Jalil as deputy for policy and strategic affairs.
(AP, 12/5/18)
2018 Dec 5, The Albanian government gave in to demands from students and canceled a double charge for repeated exams but said it could do nothing about the level of tuition fees because these are set by the individual institutions, which are partially self-supporting. Students said they would continue the protest until all their demands were fulfilled.
(AP, 12/6/18)
2018 Dec 5, The Australia-based Institute for Economics and Peace recorded nearly 19,000 deaths last year in its annual Global Terrorism Index. That is a decrease of 27 percent from a year earlier and down 44 percent from a peak in 2014.
(AP, 12/5/18)
2018 Dec 5, Bosnia's prosecutors office said Dragoljub Kunarac (58), a Bosnian Serb ex-commander who was jailed for 28 years by the UN war crimes tribunal for rape and enslavement in Bosnia's war of the 1990s, has now been indicted over the killing of Muslim civilians.
(Reuters, 12/5/18)
2018 Dec 5, Britain's High Court has ruled that Deliveroo riders do not have the right to collective bargaining, the latest in a series of rulings as U.K. courts grappled with the rise of the so-called "gig economy".
(AP, 12/5/18)
2018 Dec 5, Bulgaria's government confirmed that it would not join the United Nations pact for better regulating worldwide migration, set to be adopted later this month.
(AFP, 12/5/18)
2018 Dec 5, Bulgarian authorities said they have seized a huge amount of weapons and munitions during police raids in the capital Sofia and a small village in central Bulgaria.
(AP, 12/5/18)
2018 Dec 5, Cambodian officials said 32 Cambodian women who were charged with human trafficking for serving as surrogate mothers have been provisionally released from detention after agreeing to keep the babies rather than giving them up as originally planned.
(AP, 12/5/18)
2018 Dec 5, China issued an upbeat but vague promise to carry out a tariff cease-fire with Washington but gave no details that might dispel confusion about what Presidents Xi Jinping and Donald Trump agreed to in Argentina.
(AP, 12/5/18)
2018 Dec 5, It was reported that Croatia is suffering a severe labor shortage, most glaringly in its booming seaside tourist resorts, that is compounding obstacles to economic growth and dimming hopes of catching up to more developed EU peers.
(Reuters, 12/5/18)
2018 Dec 5, In northern Cyprus at least four people were killed in flooding late today as hail and rain hammered the island.
(Reuters, 12/6/18)
2018 Dec 5, An Egyptian court sentenced five people, including Mohammed Badie the head of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood group, to life in prison on charges related to inciting violence and supporting militants.
(AP, 12/5/18)
2018 Dec 5, EU diplomatic chief Federica Mogherini urged Russia and the US to save a Cold War arms control treaty after Washington issued a 60-day ultimatum to Moscow.
(AFP, 12/5/18)
2018 Dec 5, Police arrested dozens of suspected mobsters in Europe and South America in dubbed "Operation Pollina," a huge international swoop targeting Italy's notorious 'Ndrangheta mafia clan. Police seized four tons of cocaine, 120 kilos of ecstasy and two million euros (dollars) in cash across Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and Suriname.
(AFP, 12/5/18)
2018 Dec 5, It was reported that Pinna nobilis, a giant species of clam only found in the Mediterranean Sea, was in danger of extinction due to a mysterious parasite. The mollusk has been the EU's list of protected species for decades.
(SFC, 12/5/18, p.A2)
2018 Dec 5, French trade unions and farmers pledged to join nationwide protests against President Emmanuel Macron, as concessions by the government failed to stem the momentum of the most violent demonstrations France has seen in decades.
(AP, 12/5/18)
2018 Dec 5, A Paris court of appeal approved an extradition request by Burkina Faso's government for the brother of ex-Burkinabe president Blaise Compaore.
(Reuters, 12/5/18)
2018 Dec 5, Greece intercepted a Syrian ship sailing for Libya. The Noka was escorted to Heraklion port on the Greek island on Dec. 8, where the authorities unloaded its entire cargo and found about six tons of processed cannabis and 3 million super-strength "Captagon" amphetamine pills worth more than 100 million euros ($113 million).
(Reuters, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 5, An Indian court remanded to custody British businessman Christian Michel accused of paying bribes to Indian officials to win a helicopter deal for Anglo-Italian firm AgustaWestland, following a rare extradition.
(Reuters, 12/5/18)
2018 Dec 5, Italy was informed by North Korea that acting ambassador Jo Song Gil and his wife had left the North Korean embassy in Rome on Nov. 10 and that their daughter (17) had been repatriated on Nov. 14.
(Reuters, 2/20/19)
2018 Dec 5, In Luxembourg Xavier Bettel started his second term as prime minister, leading a coalition of his liberals along with Socialists and Greens.
(AP, 12/5/18)
2018 Dec 5, In central Mali 15 civilians from the Fulani community were killed when armed men from a rival ethnic group attacked their village.
(Reuters, 12/8/18)
2018 Dec 5, Mexico's new Pres. Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said he will take a three-year break from awarding new oil exploration contracts in order to judge the results of contracts already awarded.
(AP, 12/5/18)
2018 Dec 5, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador took aim at the finances of the powerful Jalisco cartel in what a top anti-money laundering official said was the opening salvo in the fight to stop criminal gangs from flourishing with impunity.
(Reuters, 12/7/18)
2018 Dec 5, NATO's foreign ministers meeting in Brussels reaffirmed their commitment to stay the course for security in Afghanistan despite mounting Afghan casualties and the slow pace of peace moves.
(AP, 12/5/18)
2018 Dec 5, NATO gave Bosnia-Herzegovina the green light to take a major step forward on its path toward joining the world's biggest military alliance, despite Bosnian Serb objections to membership.
(AP, 12/5/18)
2018 Dec 5, Young Nepalis created a map of the Dead Sea with used plastic bags in a bid to set a new international record and raise awareness about the vast volumes polluting the world's oceans.
(AFP, 12/5/18)
2018 Dec 5, Portugal and China signed a memorandum of understanding on cooperation within China's modern Silk Road initiative, with special emphasis on transport connections and energy during a 24-hour state visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping.
(AP, 12/5/18)
2018 Dec 5, Russian President Vladimir Putin voiced support for Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro as he visited Moscow seeking financial assistance for the socialist country's collapsing economy.
(AFP, 12/5/18)
2018 Dec 5, Russia warned authorities in Cyprus not to allow the US military to deploy on their territory, saying such a move would draw a Russian reaction and result in "dangerous and destabilizing consequences" for the Mediterranean island.
(Reuters, 12/5/18)
2018 Dec 5, Serbia's PM Ana Brnabic warned that the formation of a Kosovo army could trigger Serbia's armed intervention in the former province.
(AP, 12/5/18)
2018 Dec 5, Slovakia's PM Peter Pellegrini said his country has expelled a Russian diplomat after discovering he was a spy working under diplomatic cover.
(AP, 12/5/18)
2018 Dec 5, Somali commandos backed by US forces raided two al-Shabab checkpoints overnight at which the extremists extort money from commercial vehicles, killing several fighters.
(AP, 12/5/18)
2018 Dec 5, A Spanish regional court confirmed a controversial ruling that cleared five men of gang-raping an 18-year-old woman during Pamplona's 2016 San Fermin festival, a case which led to protests across Spain over chauvinism and sexual abuse. The Navarra court confirmed nine-year prison sentences for the men.
(Reuters, 12/5/18)
2018 Dec 5, The Swiss government chose Ueli Maurer (68) of the anti-immigration Swiss People's Party to become president in 2019. Parliament also elected Viola Amherd of the centrist Christian Democratic Party and Karin Keller-Sutter of the center-right Radical-Liberal Party as two new members of the council, bringing the number of female members to three.
(AP, 12/5/18)
2018 Dec 5, Togo's government banned a series of planned opposition protests on security grounds, saying the marches posed a security risk.
(AFP, 12/6/18)
2018 Dec 5, A Turkish court issued arrest warrants for two suspects close to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman over the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, increasing pressure on the kingdom's de facto leader.
(AFP, 12/5/18)
2018 Dec 5, The UN secretary-general's envoy for Western Sahara met with foreign ministers from Algeria, Morocco and Mauritania plus leaders of the Polisario Front in Geneva over the future of the Morocco-annexed territory.
(AP, 12/5/18)
2018 Dec 5, The Vatican launched an investigation into a small Chilean religious order of nuns after some sisters denounced sexual abuse at the hands of priests and mistreatment by their superiors.
(AP, 12/7/18)
2018 Dec 6, It was reported that the Trump administration has separated 81 migrant children from their families at the US-Mexico border since the June executive order that stopped the general practice amid a crackdown on illegal crossings.
(AP, 12/6/18)
2018 Dec 6, A girl (7) from Guatemala was found near Lordsburg, New Mexico, by US Border Patrol agents. Jackeline Caal was in custody for about eight hours before she began having seizures. Emergency medical technicians discovered the girl's fever was 105.7 degrees Fahrenheit (40.9 degrees Celsius), and she was airlifted to an El Paso, Texas, hospital, where she later died. The girl was traveling with a group of 163 people, who approached agents to turn themselves in.
(AP, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 6, It was reported that a North Carolina court has struck down more legislation Republicans approved for their lame-duck governor's signature to erode powers of an incoming Democrat.
(SFC, 12/6/18, p.A6)
2018 Dec 6, Tennessee inmate David Earl Miller (61) was executed in an electric chair for the 1981 killing of Lee Standifer (23), a mentally handicapped woman. He was the 2nd person to choose the electric chair over lethal injection in the past month.
(SFC, 12/7/18, p.A6)
2018 Dec 6, An Australian appeal court overturned a conviction against Adelaide Archbishop Philip Wilson (68), the most senior Roman Catholic cleric ever found guilty of covering up child sex abuse.
(AP, 12/6/18)
2018 Dec 6, OPEC countries were gathered in Austria to find a way to support the falling price of oil, with analysts predicting the cartel and key ally Russia would agree to cut production by at least 1 million barrels per day.
(AP, 12/6/18)
2018 Dec 6, In Bolivia Jorge Roca Suarez (67), one of South America's leading drug traffickers in the 1980s who served 28 years in prison in the United States before returning to Bolivia earlier this year, fled a medical clinic where he was receiving treatment.
(AP, 12/9/18)
2018 Dec 6, It was reported that Britain will suspend its top tier investor visas, which require 2 million pounds ($2.55 million) in investment, as part of a drive to crack down on organized crime and money laundering.
(Reuters, 12/6/18)
2018 Dec 6, China demanded Canada release a Huawei Technologies executive who was arrested in Vancouver on Dec. 1. Huawei's chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, faced possible extradition to the United States on suspicion of trying to evade US trade curbs on Iran.
(AP, 12/6/18)
2018 Dec 6, Chile's Constitutional Court threw out a regulation that prohibited some private hospitals and clinics from refusing to perform legal abortions.
(AP, 12/7/18)
2018 Dec 6, In eastern CongoDRC suspected militiamen killed at least 18 civilians, near the town of Beni, the epicenter of an Ebola outbreak. Congo's health ministry announced 13 new confirmed cases.
(Reuters, 12/7/18)
2018 Dec 6, Cuba began offering its citizens full internet access for mobile phones over its 3G network.
(SFC, 12/6/18, p.A5)
2018 Dec 6, Dominican authorities called on the Coast Guard for assistance when seven of 28 migrants went missing after a boat capsized southeast of the Dominican Republic. They were believed to be Dominicans who were headed east to Puerto Rico.
(AP, 12/7/18)
2018 Dec 6, The 28-nation EU's interior ministers approved a declaration recognizing a common definition of anti-Semitism and acknowledging Jewish concerns given the prevalence of attacks in recent years.
(AP, 12/6/18)
2018 Dec 6, The European Union and France said their total investment in development funding aimed at preventing terrorism in the G5 African Sahel countries (Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, and Niger) would rise to 1.3 billion euros ($1.5 billion), as the region struggles with jihadism and lawlessness.
(AFP, 12/6/18)
2018 Dec 6, France's PM Edouard Philippe said he was open to new measures to benefit workers on the lowest salaries, as the government scrambled to head off another round of 'yellow vest' protests in Paris this weekend.
(Reuters, 12/6/18)
2018 Dec 6, Around 200 French high schools were blocked or disrupted by students protesting a raft of education overhauls, on a fourth day of action called to coincide with anti-government demonstrations which have rocked the country in recent weeks.
(AFP, 12/6/18)
2018 Dec 6, In France aid groups Doctors Without Borders and SOS Mediterranee said they have been forced to end the migrant rescue operations of the Aquarius ship in the Mediterranean Sea.
(AP, 12/7/18)
2018 Dec 6, Demonstrators in Greece threw firebombs and pelted police with rocks as marches on the 10th anniversary of the fatal police shooting of a teenager degenerated into violence.
(AP, 12/6/18)
2018 Dec 6, In southeastern Iran a suicide car bombing followed by an armed assault killed at least two policemen and wounding 42 people outside police headquarters in the port city of Chabahar. The city lies in Sistan-Baluchistan province which has long been a flashpoint, with Pakistan-based Baluchi separatists and Sunni Muslim extremists carrying out cross-border attacks targeting the Shiite authorities. Security forces soon detained 10 people suspected of links to the attack.
(AFP, 12/6/18)(Reuters, 12/6/18)(AP, 12/8/18)(Reuters, 12/9/18)
2018 Dec 6, A US F/A-18 Hornet fighter jet and a KC-130 Hercules refueling aircraft collided during training off Japan's coast. One of two crew members recovered was dead and five others remain missing.
(AP, 12/6/18)
2018 Dec 6, A Dutch court gave the go-ahead for a cull of hundreds of red deer in a nature reserve north of Amsterdam, in a wildlife management case that has sparked fierce opposition from animal rights activists.
(AP, 12/6/18)
2018 Dec 6, In Pakistan hundreds of supporters of opposition leader, Shahbaz Sharif, clashed with police in the eastern city of Lahore, leaving dozens of protesters hurt. The violence erupted when riot police used batons to prevent Sharif's supporters from reaching an anti-graft tribunal.
(AP, 12/6/18)
2018 Dec 6, It was reported that Pakistan is kicking out 18 international charities after rejecting their final appeal to stay in the country. The majority of the shuttered aid groups are US-based, while the rest are from Britain and the European Union.
(AP, 12/6/18)
2018 Dec 6, A Palestinian court extended the detention of hunger-striking Palestinian-American activist Suha Jbara, a US citizen born in Panama, who claims she was tortured in captivity.
(AP, 12/6/18)
2018 Dec 6, Philippine immigration authorities said they have arrested an American Roman Catholic priest accused of sexually assaulting altar boys was arrested in a church in Naval town on the island province of Biliran. Rev. Kenneth Bernard Hendricks (77) has been indicted in Ohio for alleged illicit sexual conduct in the Philippines.
(AP, 12/6/18)
2018 Dec 6, A Polish court ruled that Lech Walesa, the anti-communist dissident and former president of Poland, must apologize to Jaroslaw Kaczynsk, the head of Poland's ruling party in a slander case.
(AP, 12/6/18)
2018 Dec 6, A Rwandan court found dissident politician Diane Rwigara (37) not guilty of forgery and inciting insurrection, charges that saw her imprisoned for over a year and highlighted a crackdown on opposition in the country.
(AFP, 12/6/18)
2018 Dec 6, In northern Sudan three miners were killed in Qabqaba when a gold mine they were working at collapsed. 10 others were trapped underground.
(AP, 12/7/18)
2018 Dec 6, Meeting in Sweden Yemen's warring sides agreed to free thousands of prisoners, in what a UN mediator called a hopeful start to the first peace talks in years to end a war that has pushed millions of people on the verge of starvation.
(AP, 12/6/18)
2018 Dec 6, In Geneva two days of UN talks on Western Sahara ended with all sides promising to meet again for a similar "round table" in the first quarter of 2019, UN envoy Horst Koehler told reporters after the meeting ended unexpectedly early.
(Reuters, 12/6/18)
2018 Dec 6, A Syrian Democratic Forces commander said the US-backed Syrian fighters (SDF) had managed to break into the pocket and wrest part of its main town from IS in the eastern province of Deir Ezzor. Over the last 3 days 34 jihadists including three suicide bombers, and 17 SDF fighters have been killed in the fighting.
(AFP, 12/6/18)
2018 Dec 6, Turkish journalist Kamil Demirkaya, accused by Turkey of terrorism, said he has applied for political asylum in Romania after Turkey sought his extradition.
(AP, 12/6/18)
2018 Dec 6, The Ukrainian parliament voted to withdraw from a wide-ranging treaty on friendship with Russia, the latest step in escalating tensions between the two neighbors.
(AP, 12/6/18)
2018 Dec 6, UAE-based global port operator DP World says it has acquired Danish logistics firm Unifeeder for $748 million, about 660 million euros, helping the Dubai-owned company expand its foothold through the largest feeder and shortsea network in Europe.
(AP, 12/6/18)
2018 Dec 6, The UN's human rights office said Burundi's government has asked it to leave, months after the outgoing UN rights chief called the country one of the "most prolific slaughterhouses of humans in recent times".
(AP, 12/6/18)
2018 Dec 6, The UN World Food Program said a survey of food security in Yemen has found more than 15 million people are in a "crisis" or "emergency" situation and that number could hit 20 million without sustained food aid.
(Reuters, 12/6/18)
2018 Dec 6, In Venezuela former baseball major league players Luis Valbuena (33) and Jose Castillo (37) were killed in a car crash as they were heading to the city of Barquisimeto after a game in Caracas.
(AP, 12/7/18)
2018 Dec 7, US Pres. Donald Trump announced his nomination of State Dept. spokeswoman Heather Nauert to be the next US ambassador to the UN. Trump also said he will nominate William Barr to serve as attorney general. Barr had already served as attorney general (1991-1993) under the late Pres. George H.W. Bush.
(SFC, 12/8/18, p.A7)
2018 Dec 7, In southern California CHP Officer Robert stephano (44) was arrested on suspicion of sexual misconduct with two teenage girls. Investigators say he had solicited minors for sex as far back as 2010.
(SSFC, 12/9/18, p.A8)
2018 Dec 7, Court filings from prosecutors in New York and special counsel Robert Mueller's office laid out previously undisclosed contacts between Trump associates and Russian intermediaries and suggested the Kremlin aimed early on to influence Trump and his campaign by playing to both his political aspirations and his personal business interests.
(AP, 12/8/18)
2018 Dec 7, In western Afghanistan the Taliban staged a coordinated attack overnight on two Afghan army outposts in Herat province, killing 14 Afghan soldiers and taking 21 captive.
(AP, 12/7/18)
2018 Dec 7, ABC News reported that a 28-year-old Australian man will spend five months in prison for brutally killing a kangaroo in an attack filmed and posted on social media. Ricky Ian Swan was one of four men charged in September with using weapons to torture and kill two kangaroos.
(Reuters, 12/8/18)
2018 Dec 7, Meeting in Austria OPEC and non-OPEC countries agreed to cut oil production 1.2 million barrels a day in January for 6 months. Oil prices spiked sharply higher in response.
(AP, 12/7/18)
2018 Dec 7, In northeastern Brazil at least 12 people were killed, including six policemen, in an early morning shootout between police and bank robbers on the main street in Milagres, Ceará state.
(Reuters, 12/7/18)
2018 Dec 7, British teenager George Duke-Cohan (19) was jailed for three years after his bogus bomb threats led to school evacuations and an airport security incident.
(AP, 12/7/18)
2018 Dec 7, Former Colombian President Belisario Betancur (95) died in Bogota. He had attempted to broker peace with leftist rebels during his 1982-1986 administration.
(Reuters, 12/7/18)
2018 Dec 7, CongoDRC officials said authorities have arrested a Congolese colonel who failed to disclose that he had met with two UN experts just two days before the March 2017 killings of American Michael Sharp and Swedish national Zaida Catalan.
(AP, 12/7/18)
2018 Dec 7, Police in Croatia said they have detained 13 people suspected of smuggling migrants who are trying to reach Western Europe through the Balkans.
(AP, 12/7/18)
2018 Dec 7, In Cuba Decree 349, which was published in July, theoretically came into force. It gave government inspectors the right to shut down exhibits and performances deemed to violate Cuba's revolutionary values and to confiscate artists' belongings. The government said it would seek artists' backing for how it will be implemented, a move those who had protested against the decree hailed as a victory.
(Reuters, 12/8/18)
2018 Dec 7, Pete Shelley (63), the lead singer and songwriter with influential British pop punk band the "Buzzcocks", died at his home in Estonia. The band helped create the New Wave genre, fusing punk's energy with a more melodic sound.
(AP, 12/7/18)
2018 Dec 7, The head of the Czech Republic's counter-intelligence service said his agency broke a Russian spying network earlier this year and completely paralyzed its activities.
(AP, 12/7/18)
2018 Dec 7, Germany's Christian Democrats elected Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer (56) to replace Angela Merkel as party leader, a decision that moves her into pole position to succeed Europe's most influential leader as chancellor.
(Reuters, 12/7/18)
2018 Dec 7, Rebels in Indonesia's troubled Papua province demanded that the government hold negotiations on self-determination for the province and warned of more attacks.
(AP, 12/7/18)
2018 Dec 7, Mexico's Supreme Court suspended a new law that cuts public sector pay, freezing it until the tribunal has made a definitive ruling on the legislation, and dealing a blow to President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.
(Reuters, 12/8/18)
2018 Dec 7, A Myanmar court jailed three activists for defaming the military during anti-war protests, amid growing concern about a clamp-down on civil society. Lum Zawng, Nang Pu, and Zau Jat were sentenced to six months in prison and fined $320 each..
(Reuters, 12/7/18)
2018 Dec 7, Pakistan's PM Imran Khan said his country will no longer act as a hired gun in someone else's war, striking a note of defiance against US demands for Islamabad to do more in the battle against militancy.
(AFP, 12/7/18)
2018 Dec 7, In Portugal a walkout by rail workers over pay disrupted train services amid a spate of strikes by government employees.
(AP, 12/7/18)
2018 Dec 7, Qatar paid the salaries of nearly 30,000 Gazan civil servants, delighting the impoverished workers but angering some in the deeply divided Palestinian leadership who balked at the intervention of a foreign power.
(Reuters, 12/7/18)
2018 Dec 7, Romania's President Klaus Iohannis refused to appoint two ministers, saying the government is run by a "criminal" through intermediaries.
(AP, 12/7/18)
2018 Dec 7, Russia's Pres. Vladimir Putin held Kremlin talks with Greek PM Alexis Tsipras and overcome a rift over the expulsions of diplomats that have strained their traditionally friendly ties.
(AP, 12/7/18)
2018 Dec 7, Prosecutors in Slovenia said they have filed charges against right-wing politician Andrej Sisko, who was shown leading a paramilitary group in a video circulating on social media.
(AP, 12/7/18)
2018 Dec 7, In South Korea a former military intelligence chief was found dead in a suspected suicide. Former Defense Security Command head Lee Jae-su was being investigated by state prosecutors for allegedly ordering the illegal surveillance of families of people killed in a 2014 ferry sinking.
(AP, 12/7/18)
2018 Dec 7, South Korean prosecutors charged four people with illegally importing North Korean coal via Russia in violation of UN sanctions.
(AP, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 7, Rath Rott Mony (47), a Cambodian labor activist, was arrested in Bangkok as he attempted to travel to the Netherlands with his family after helping produce a sex-trafficking documentary for the Russia Today channel in October. Cambodia has dismissed the documentary as fake.
(Reuters, 12/7/18)
2018 Dec 7, Turkey and the United States agreed to speed up efforts to put in place an agreement on Syria's Manbij by the end of the year.
(Reuters, 12/7/18)
2018 Dec 7, In southern Turkey an employee fired shots in a municipality building in Cukurova, Adana province, killing two of his colleagues. The gunman was reportedly motivated by a "personal" feud between the employees.
(AP, 12/7/18)
2018 Dec 8, President Donald Trump announced that he wants Gen. Mark Milley, a battle-hardened commander who oversaw troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, to be the nation's next top military adviser.
(AP, 12/8/18)
2018 Dec 8, The US Justice Dept. said Pres. Donald Trump directed illegal payments to buy the silence of two women whose claims of extra-marital affairs threatened his presidential campaign.
(SSFC, 12/9/18, p.A8)
2018 Dec 8, US customs officials found 70 live finches inside har rollers at NY's JFK Int'l. Airport. A passenger from Guyana had the birds in a duffel bag to participate in singing contests.
(SFC, 12/14/18, p.A6)
2018 Dec 8, In Afghanistan a civilian vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb, killing three civilians in western Herat province. In northern Kunduz province, at least four Taliban insurgents were killed by their own bomb. In eastern Nangarhar province, three members of the Islamic State group were arrested during a military operation in Bahsud district. The Taliban attacked an army checkpoint late today in the western Farah province, killing at least eight Afghan soldiers. Another 10 soldiers were abducted in the attack. Three insurgents were killed and four others were wounded.
(AP, 12/8/18)(AP, 12/9/18)
2018 Dec 8, In Albania public university students protesting in Tirana turned down offers to negotiate with the government, saying their demands must be met first. Dec. 8 is considered a national holiday in Albania, marking the date in 1990 when a student protest brought down the communist regime.
(AP, 12/8/18)
2018 Dec 8, Australian school children led thousands of demonstrators nationwide calling for a halt on plans for Indian mining firm Adani to construct a controversial coal mine in the country's northeast.
(AFP, 12/8/18)
2018 Dec 8, Belgian police fired tear gas and water cannons at some 400 yellow-vested protesters calling for the resignation of PM Charles Michel after they tried to breach a riot barricade.
(AP, 12/8/18)
2018 Dec 8, In Bolivia two buses crashed head-on on a highway in the Andes Mountains, leaving at least 17 people dead and 10 injured.
(AP, 12/9/18)
2018 Dec 8, In Brazil José Bernardo da Silva and Rodrigo Celestino, members of Brazil's landless activist group MST, were killed late today in a rural area in the northeast state of Paraíba.
(AP, 12/9/18)
2018 Dec 8, In Brazil ten women on the Globo TV network accused self-styled spiritual healer Joao Teixeira de Faria, known as John of God, of sexually abusing them at a clinic in the central-western state of Goias.
(AP, 12/9/18)
2018 Dec 8, Authorities in Brazil said two more people have died after bank robbers attempted to carry out heists in Ceara state, bringing the death toll to 14. The dead included six hostages executed by the criminal group.
(AP, 12/8/18)(SFC, 12/10/18, p.A2)
2018 Dec 8, In Brazil a major oil leak in Rio de Janeiro was caused by fuel thieves who punctured a pipeline in the Guanabara Bay. About 15,850 gallons (60,000 liters) were released into the bay.
(AP, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 8, In Canada right-wing protesters opposed to joining a UN pact for better regulating worldwide migration clashed with pro-immigration groups in the biting cold outside parliament in Ottawa.
(AFP, 12/8/18)
2018 Dec 8, China warned Canada that there would be severe consequences if it did not immediately release Meng Wanzhou, Huawei Technologies Co Ltd's chief financial officer, calling the case "extremely nasty".
(Reuters, 12/8/18)
2018 Dec 8, China launched a Long March 3B rocket carrying a lunar probe from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in Sichuan Province. It hoped to land the spacecraft on the largely unexplored far side of the moon.
(AP, 12/8/18)
2018 Dec 8, Egypt said police have killed two gunmen who carried out a Nov. 2 attack on a bus carrying Christians in Minya governorate to the south of Cairo.
(AP, 12/8/18)
2018 Dec 8, French riot police fired tear gas and water cannon in Paris, trying to stop thousands of yellow-vested protesters from converging on the presidential palace to express their anger at high taxes and French President Emmanuel Macron. Yellow-vested protesters blocked the border with Italy near the town of Ventimiglia causing a 6-km (nearly 4-mile) backup of traffic in both directions. Some 125,000 yellow vests took to the streets with a bevy of demands related to high living costs and a sense that Pres. Macron favors the elite and is trying to modernize the French economy too fast. Running battles between protesters and police left at least 71 injured in Paris and caused widespread damage in cities around the country.
(AP, 12/8/18)(AP, 12/9/18)
2018 Dec 8, Hungarian trade unions protested a government plan to raise workers' allowable overtime from 250 to 400 hours a year and the relaxing of other labor rules meant to offset Hungary's growing labor shortage.
(AP, 12/8/18)
2018 Dec 8, Italian Deputy PM Matteo Salvini filled one of Rome's main squares with tens of thousands of flag-waving supporters in a rally that underscored the growing predominance of his rightist League party.
(Reuters, 12/8/18)
2018 Dec 8, In Italy six people, including five young teenagers, were crushed to death early today following a stampede when a walkway leading out of the Lanterna Azzurra nightclub in the town of Corinaldo collapsed. Witnesses reported seeing a hooded man spray a substance like pepper spray or tear gas into the crowd, triggering a panicked rush to the emergency exits.
(AP, 12/8/18)
2018 Dec 8, Japanese lawmakers approved government-proposed legislation allowing hundreds of thousands of foreign laborers to live and work in a country that has long resisted accepting outsiders.
(AP, 12/8/18)
2018 Dec 8, In Indian-controlled Kashmir at least 12 people were killed and 18 others injured after a bus fell into a rocky gorge along a mountainous road near southern Poonch town.
(AP, 12/8/18)
2018 Dec 8, In Malaysia tens of thousands of Muslims rallied in Kuala Lumpur against any attempt to strip the ethnic Malay majority of its privileges, in the first massive street gathering since PM Mahathir Mohamad's alliance won a historic vote in May.
(AP, 12/8/18)
2018 Dec 8, Mexico's Pres. Lopez Obrador accused Supreme Court judges of looking after their own pocketbooks: "They themselves decide that they are going to keep receiving exaggerated, stratospheric salaries - salaries of up to 600,000 pesos ($29,000) a month - those who impart justice." Obrador repeated one of his favorite mantras: "There can't be a rich government with a poor people".
(AP, 12/9/18)
2018 Dec 8, In Pakistan a blast late today targeted a religious gathering of an ethnic party and wounded six people in the southern port city of Karachi.
(AP, 12/9/18)
2018 Dec 8, In southern Poland thousands of people from around the world marched through Katowice, the city that's hosting this year's UN climate talks, demanding that their governments take tougher action to curb global warming.
(AP, 12/8/18)
2018 Dec 8, In Russia Lyudmila Alexeyeva (91), the founder of Russia's oldest human rights group, died in hospital in Moscow.
(Reuters, 12/8/18)
2018 Dec 8, Serbs took to the streets after thugs beat an opposition leader with brass knuckles, briefly knocking him unconscious and injuring his two associates. Images of Left party leader Borko Stefanovic with a bloody head and shirt alarmed citizens who thought the days of political violence were behind them.
(AP, 2/23/19)
2018 Dec 9, Nick Ayers, the chief of staff to US VP Mike Pence, confirmed that he will not step in to replace John Kelly, the chief of staff for Pres. Donald Trump, who planned to leave by year's end.
(SFC, 12/10/18, p.A6)
2018 Dec 9, In Indiana Breanna Rouhselang (17) and her fetus died after being stabbed by Aaron Trejo (16) in Mishawaka following an argument over her pregnancy. Trejo said she had waited too long to tell him she was pregnant ad it was too late to get an abortion.
(SFC, 12/11/18, p.A5)
2018 Dec 9, Afghan authorities announced the suspension of the head of the soccer federation and five other senior officials amid allegations of sexual and physical abuse of female athletes.
(AP, 12/9/18)
2018 Dec 9, In Algeria the Roman Catholic Church beatified 19 Christians killed in a civil war in the 1990s including seven Trappist monks who were beheaded at their monastery by Islamist militants.
(Reuters, 12/9/18)
2018 Dec 9, Armenians cast ballots in an early parliamentary election that is expected to further consolidate the power of PM Nikol Pashinian (43). Allies of PM Pashinian won an overwhelming majority of seats in the country's early parliamentary election.
(AP, 12/9/18)(AP, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 9, The Australian government called for Hakeem al-Araibi, an Australian-based refugee soccer player, to be immediately released from detention in Thailand.
(AP, 12/9/18)
2018 Dec 9, China summoned the US ambassador to Beijing to protest the detention of Meng Wanzhou, an executive of Chinese electronics giant Huawei, in Canada at Washington's behest and demanded Washington cancel an order for her arrest.
(AP, 12/9/18)
2018 Dec 9, In China at least 80 churchgoers and seminary students from the Early Rain Covenant Church were taken away late today in the southwestern city of Chengdu. The church was operating outside the government's official Protestant organization. The government requires that Protestants worship only in churches recognized and regulated by the Three-Self Patriotic Movement.
(AP, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 9, In India dozens of Hindu monks and tens of thousands of followers, gathered under the banner of groups linked to PM Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalist party, urged the Indian government to help build a temple on the ruins of a 16th-century mosque, torn down in 1992, in the northern town of Ayodhya.
(Reuters, 12/9/18)
2018 Dec 9, Gerald Cotton (30), the CEO of Canadian cryptocurrency exchange QuadrigaCX, died of complications from Crohn's disease while traveling to an orphanage in India. He was the only person who knew the security keys and passwords needed to access at least $250 million in client accounts.
(SFC, 2/7/19, p.D2)
2018 Dec 9, In Iran's judiciary said fast-track courts set up in Iran to fight economic crime have jailed 30 men for up to 20 years each, as the country faces renewed US sanctions and a public outcry against profiteering and corruption.
(Reuters, 12/9/18)
2018 Dec 9, Iran state media said Australian-based academic has been detained on charges of trying to "infiltrate" Iranian institutions. Hosseini-Chavoshi, a population expert, is affiliated with the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health.
(Reuters, 12/9/18)
2018 Dec 9, The Israeli military said it has opened an investigation into the death of a 22-year-old Palestinian man in the West Bank after a video surfaced appearing to show him being shot in the back. A Dec. 4 video showed Mohammed Habali walking in an alleyway holding a stick when he is shot from behind and falls down on his face.
(AP, 12/9/18)
2018 Dec 9, In Kashmir Indian troops killed three rebels on the outskirts of Srinagar, ending a nearly 18-hour-long gunbattle. Mudasir Rashid Parray (14) and Saqib Bilal Sheikh (17) were killed in the gunbattle.
(AP, 12/9/18)(AP, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 9, In southwestern Libya an armed group seized the Sharara oilfield, one of the country's largest oilfields. The National Oil Corporation (NOC) declared a state of force majeure at the Akakus-operated field.
(AFP, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 9, New Zealand police said they found a body they believe to be that of missing British tourist Grace Millane (22), who went missing on Dec 1. The body was in a forested area about 10 meters (33 feet) from the side of the road in the Waitakere Ranges near Auckland.
(AP, 12/9/18)
2018 Dec 9, A Palestinian opened fire at a group of Israelis standing at a bus stop next to a Jewish settlement near Ramallah, wounding six people, one - a pregnant woman - critically, in a drive-by shooting.
(Reuters, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 9, Peruvians began voting in a referendum on a raft of political and judicial reforms introduced by the new government of Pres. Martin Vizcarra aimed at stamping out corruption and cronyism in one of Latin America's most promising economies. Peruvians overwhelmingly approved a government overhaul that among other things sends all members of Congress packing by 2021. Three of the four constitutional reforms proposed by Pres. Vizcarra were approved by nearly 80 percent of voters.
(Reuters, 12/9/18)(AFP, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 9, At least two Rwandan soldiers were killed in an attack by rebels who had crossed the border from the Democratic Republic of Congo.
(AFP, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 9, In Somalia the head of the parliament's administration said he had filed a motion with the speaker of parliament to impeach the country's president, Mohamed Abdullahi, but the grounds for the move were unclear.
(Reuters, 12/9/18)
2018 Dec 9, In Saudi Arabia a summit of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) opened. Kuwait's Emir, Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber al-Sabah, called for an end to media campaigns in the region which threatened the unity of the Gulf. Qatar's Sheikh Tamim sent Sultan bin Saad al-Muraikhi, minister of state for foreign affairs, to represent the country.
(AP, 12/9/18)(Reuters, 12/9/18)
2018 Dec 9, In Sudan at least seven local government officials were killed in a helicopter crash in eastern al-Qadarif state.
(AP, 12/9/18)
2018 Dec 9, The UN's humanitarian office said that 369 trucks will carry one month's worth of supplies to Syria. It's the first cross-border aid shipment since the Syrian government recaptured a trade crossing with Jordan from Syrian rebels and reopened it in October.
(AP, 12/9/18)
2018 Dec 10, US tire company Goodyear announced it will no longer continue production in Venezuela as economic conditions in the South American nation continue to deteriorate.
(AP, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 10, In California Kaiser therapists began a 5-day statewide strike to protest long wait times for patients seeking appointments for mental health conditions.
(SFC, 12/11/18, p.D1)
2018 Dec 10, Miami-Dade librarian Jamie Humet (47) was killed after leaving an ATM. In 2020 Miami Gardens police arrested suspect Sean Fortune (19) on charges of second-degree murder and armed robbery.
(Miami Herald, 11/24/20)
2018 Dec 10, In Ohio five children, including 1-year-old twins, died in a house fire in Youngstown.
(SFC, 12/11/18, p.A5)
2018 Dec 10, Bangladesh's telecoms regulator shut down dozens of online news portals for several hours, citing security reasons. An official said 58 sites were found to be not registered with the information ministry and therefore their content was being examined ahead of a parliamentary election later this month.
(Reuters, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 10, Brazil's incoming foreign relations minister said Brazil will pull out of a United Nations pact on dealing with rising migration, joining the United States and a growing number of countries in rejecting the agreement.
(Reuters, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 10, British PM Theresa May postponed Parliament's vote on her Brexit divorce deal with the European Union, acknowledging that lawmakers would have rejected it by a "significant margin." May said she would seek "assurances" from the EU and bring the Brexit deal back to Parliament, but did not set a new date for the vote.
(AP, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 10, A British court handed charismatic Indian tycoon Vijay Mallya a substantial setback by ruling he should be extradited to India to face financial fraud allegations.
(AP, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 10, China detained entrepreneur Michael Spavor and former diplomat Michael Kovrig on suspicion of "engaging in activities that endanger the national security". Kovrig, a Chinese-speaking expert, had served as a Canadian diplomat in Beijing, Hong Kong and at the United Nations.
(AFP, 12/11/18)(AP, 12/13/18)
2018 Dec 10, In eastern CongoDRC suspected ADF militiamen killed nine civilians in a fresh late night attack in the town of Oicha, in the Beni region.
(AP, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 10, Croatia has unveiled a monument to late leader Franjo Tudjman, who led the country to independence from the former Yugoslavia but has also been criticized for his nationalist policies. This marked the 19th anniversary of Tudjman's death.
(AP, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 10, The EU voiced alarm as a survey showed nine of 10 European Jews believe anti-Semitism has worsened in the last five years, calling it a "canary in the coal mine".
(AFP, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 10, EU security commissioner Julian King alleged that Russia launched a year-long fake news campaign about Kiev's and NATO's plans for the Azov Sea before seizing three Ukrainian ships and their crew there.
(AFP, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 10, The EU blacklisted nine locals involved in last month's rebel elections in east Ukraine, but was unlikely to heed swiftly Kiev's call for more reprisals against Moscow over the latest flare-up of tensions in the Azov Sea.
(Reuters, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 10, French President Emmanuel Macron announced measures to help low-income families and so end the "yellow vest" protests. Economists soon estimated that the cost of the sweeteners could reach 11 billion euros ($12.5 billion) -- a blowout for a country already struggling to meet EU budget rules.
(AFP, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 10, In Germany Thomas K. (37) was sentenced in Duesseldorf state court to six years in prison. He had fought for the Taliban in Afghanistan from 2013-2018 and was convicted of membership in a terrorist organization.
(AP, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 10, In Germany a four-hour strike affected more than 1,400 trains nationwide, hitting long-distance traffic and also metro rail systems in Berlin, Munich, Hannover and Frankfurt. The EVG labor union called the so-called "warning strike" to put pressure on Deutsche Bahn after wage negotiations broke off on Dec. 8 without an agreement.
(AP, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 10, In Hong Kong a runaway school bus with no one aboard accelerated downhill and plowed into pedestrians, killing two people and injuring a dozen others.
(AP, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 10, Reserve Bank of India Gov. Urjit Patel resigned amid a growing split between the Indian government and the independent monetary policy authority. The government of PM Narendra Modi has disagreed with some of the central bank's decisions under Patel, including a move to restrict lending by debt-ridden banks.
(AP, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 10, Iraq began removing cement walls from areas surrounding the capital's most fortified enclave, opening parts of the so-called Green Zone to traffic in a symbolic move coinciding with nationwide celebrations marking the anniversary of the country's costly victory over the Islamic State group.
(AP, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 10, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu said Oman will let Israeli planes fly through its airspace. The permission however provides Israel with little immediate practical use since its planes cannot fly over Oman's neighbor Saudi Arabia.
(AFP, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 10, Israeli soldiers raided the offices of Palestinian news agency Wafa in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah. They withdrew from the agency's office after they took copies of security camera footage.
(Reuters, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 10, Israel became a full member of the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force (FATF), a global financial watchdog on money laundering and terror financing, after having previously been blacklisted by the organization.
(AFP, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 10, Prosecutors in Japan charged Nissan Motor Co.'s former chairman Carlos Ghosn, executive Greg Kelly and the automaker itself for allegedly violating financial laws by underreporting income.
(AP, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 10, A Kenyan court charged senior officials from the state-run oil pipeline and others from the state health insurance fund for abuse of office and economic crimes that led to the loss of billions of shillings from the two institutions.
(Reuters, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 10, Latvia's Pres. Raimonds Vejonis said he had withdrawn his nomination of Aldis Gobzems of the populist KPV LV party as prime minister after Gobzems failed to secure majority support for his proposed cabinet.
(Reuters, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 10, In Morocco a United Nations conference in Marrakesh adopted a migration pact in front of leaders and representatives from around 150 countries, despite a string of withdrawals driven by anti-immigrant populism.
(AFP, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 10, In Norway Nobel laureates Denis Mukwege of CongoDRC and Nadia Murad of Iraq called on the world to protect victims of wartime sexual violence in their Peace Prize acceptance speeches, slamming indifference to the plight of women and children in conflict.
(AFP, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 10, In Poland protesters disturbed a US-sponsored event promoting fossil fuels on the sidelines of the UN climate change talks, saying attempts to rebrand coal as a potentially "clean" energy source were misleading.
(Reuters, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 10, Puerto Rico's governor signed a bill to overhaul the US territory's tax laws in a bid to help workers and some business owners amid a 12-year recession.
(AP, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 10, Romanian authorities said the number of babies diagnosed with antibiotic-resistant Staphylococcus aureus at a maternity hospital in Bucharest has risen to 39.
(AP, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 10, In Romania men from three cars clambered onto a moving truck and looted laptops and other electrical equipment worth 50,000 euros ($70,000). Police soon detained seven men suspected of previously committing similar thefts.
(AP, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 10, In Russia Mikhail Popkov (54), a former police officer jailed for murdering 22 women, received a second life sentence for the murder of 56 more people, making him one of modern Russia's deadliest serial killers. He has been dubbed the "maniac of Angarsk" after his home city in Siberia.
(Reuters, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 10, Syria's army announced the demobilization of officers who have completed five years of compulsory service, the second such move in recent months as fighting abates in the civil war.
(AFP, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 10, In Syria the Kurdish-led SDF pushed deeper into Hajin, the Islamic State's last remaining stronghold, and took full control of an abandoned hospital on the edge of town.
(SFC, 12/11/18, p.A4)
2018 Dec 10, Pope Francis accepted the resignation of Indian Bishop Prasad Gallela (56) of Cuddapah who, according to news reports, was accused of misappropriating church funds to support a secret family.
(AP, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 10, Delegations from Yemen's warring sides discussed expanding a shaky truce in the key port city of Hodeida, however neither side appeared ready to agree on initial draft proposals at the UN sponsored talks in Sweden.
(AP, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 11, US Pres. Donald Trump clashed angrily with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi on funding for a border wall in an Oval Office meeting carried live on television.
(AFP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 11, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo added mainly Muslim Pakistan to the US list of "countries of particular concern", which have violated religious freedoms or tolerated abuses against religious groups.
(Reuters, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 11, The US returned three bells to the Philippines that were seized in 1901 from the town of Balangiga following a rebel attack on an American garrison. US troops were ordered to kill every male citizen ten or older and capable of bearing arms to avenge the death of 48 US soldiers.
(SFC, 12/12/18, p.A2)
2018 Dec 11, Time magazine named a group of journalists, including a slain Saudi Arabian writer Jamal Khashoggi, as its "Person of the Year," in a cover story headlined "The Guardians and the War on Truth." Also named were Philippine journalist Maria Ressa, Reuters reporters Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo -- currently imprisoned in Myanmar -- and the staff of the Capital Gazette in the US city of Annapolis, including five members killed in a June shooting.
(Reuters, 12/11/18)(AFP, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 11, In Los Angeles a federal judge ordered porn star Stormy Daniels to pay Pres. Trump nearly $293,000 for his attorney's fees and another $1000 in sanctions after her defamation suit against the president was dismissed.
(SFC, 12/12/18, p.A5)
2018 Dec 11, North Carolina reported three deaths after melting snow from a winter storm in several southern states transformed to ice.
(SFC, 12/12/18, p.A7)
2018 Dec 11, Texas executed Alvin Braziel Jr. for the 1993 robbery and slaying of Douglas White (27), who was attacked as he and his wife walked on a jogging trail.
(SFC, 12/12/18, p.A5)
2018 Dec 11, Thousands of Albanian university students took to Tirana's streets for their biggest show of strength yet in a protest movement demanding lower tuition fees and more investment in public education.
(AFP, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 11, In Argentina a court sentenced former Ford Motor Co. executives Pedro Muller and Hector Francisco Sibilla to prison for crimes against humanity committed during the country's 1976-1983 military dictatorship.
(SFC, 12/12/18, p.A2)
2018 Dec 11, An Australian court sentenced a Sydney teenager (18) to at least 12 years in prison for planning an attack inspired by the Islamic State group in 2016.
(AP, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 11, An Australian court found Cardinal George Pell (77), one of the highest ranking Vatican officials and a former top adviser to Pope Francis, guilty on five charges of child sexual offences committed more than two decades ago against 13-year-old boys. The verdict was only made public on Feb. 26, 2019.
(Reuters, 2/26/19)
2018 Dec 11, In southern Brazil a man opened fire at the Metropolitan Cathedral in Campinas killing four people and wounding four more before taking a bullet in the ribs and then shooting himself in the head.
(SFC, 12/12/18, p.A2)
2018 Dec 11, Six Cambodian union leaders each received suspended 2 1/2-year prison terms in connection with labor protests in January, 2014, in which four garment workers were killed and around 20 others hurt.
(AP, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 11, In Canada Meng Wanzhou (46) a top executive of Chinese telecoms giant Huawei Technologies Co Ltd was granted bail by court, 10 days after her arrest in Vancouver at the request of US authorities sparked a diplomatic dispute. US President Donald Trump said he would intervene in the US Justice Department's case against Meng if it would serve national security interests or help close a trade deal with China.
(Reuters, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 11, China's economy czar and US trade envoys discussed plans for talks on a tariff battle, indicating negotiations are going ahead despite tension over the arrest of a Chinese tech executive.
(AP, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 11, In CongoDRC two supporters of opposition candidate Martin Fayulu were killed and 43 hurt as he went for a rally in Lubumbashi.
(AFP, 12/13/18)
2018 Dec 11, Traders in Cairo said Egyptian authorities have unofficially restricted the sale of "yellow vests," signaling fears of possible protests inspired by those in France.
(AFP, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 11, In France a man killed three people in a gun attack on a Christmas market in Strasbourg and escaped the scene. 12 other people were wounded. He was soon identified as Strasbourg-born Cherif Chekatt (29), was known to have been religiously radicalized while in jail, and was on an intelligence services watch list as a potential security risk.
(Reuters, 12/12/18)(SFC, 12/12/18, p.A4)
2018 Dec 11, India's ruling party lost power in three key states, dealing PM Narendra Modi his biggest defeat since he took office in 2014 and boosting the opposition ahead of national polls next year. The opposition Congress party was a clear winner in Chhattisgarh state, and fell one seat short of a majority in both Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh.
(Reuters, 12/11/18)(AP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 11, Iran's Arman daily reported that human rights lawyers Ghasem Sholeh-Saadi and Arash Keikhosravi have been sentenced to six years in prison for taking part in an "illegal gathering" and one year for "propaganda" against the ruling system. Lawyer Mohammad Najafi was sentenced to 10 years for "conveying information to a hostile country" through interviews with foreign media, two years for insulting the supreme leader and one year for publicity in support of opposition groups.
(AP, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 11, Israel said it had uncovered another Hezbollah "attack tunnel" infiltrating its territory from Lebanon -- the third since it started a search and destroy operation along the border last week.
(AP, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 11, Israeli forces shot and killed a Palestinian man in the West Bank city of Hebron after he attempted to ram his car into them. In the northern West Bank another Palestinian drove his car toward Israeli forces, who opened fire and arrested the driver.
(AP, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 11, Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, arrived in Israel for a two-day visit that has prompted criticism over his far-right policies and anti-migration views.
(AP, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 11, Rome's longstanding garbage problems turned into an emergency after a huge fire at the Salaria waste disposal plant blanketed the Eternal City in smoke and forced authorities to scramble to find alternative facilities to treat the capital's trash.
(AP, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 11, A Tokyo court ruled that Nissan Motor Co.'s former chairman, Carlos Ghosn, and another executive will remain in custody through Dec. 20, more than a month after their arrest. Their detention could continue for months more under the Japanese legal system.
(AP, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 11, In Kashmir rebels fighting against Indian rule attacked a police post, killing four officers in the southern Shopian area.
(AP, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 11, In central Mexico seven people were killed in a fireworks accident in the community of Fuentezuelas, Queretaro state. Improperly stored fireworks were accidentally ignited as a procession celebrating the Virgin of Guadalupe neared a chapel.
(AP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 11, New Zealand's government passed a law that will make medical marijuana widely available for thousands of patients over time.
(AP, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 11, Pakistan's anti-graft body said it has arrested a senior politician from former PM Nawaz Sharif's party over links to a multimillion-dollar housing scam. Khawaja Saad Rafique and his brother, who is also accused in the case, were arrested in Lahore after a court refused to extend their bail.
(AP, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 11, President Vladimir Putin said it was unclear to him why a Russian woman, Maria Butina, had been detained in the United States and accused of being a Russian agent because his intelligence chiefs had told him they knew nothing about her.
(Reuters, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 11, The Russian military said that nearly 114,000 Syrian refugees have been repatriated this year, a fraction of the estimated 6 million who have fled since the start of the conflict.
(AP, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 11, Thailand's military government lifted a ban on political activities it imposed when it seized power in a coup more than four years ago, an action taken in preparation for elections promised for early next year.
(AP, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 11, A Thai court ruled that soccer player Hakeem al-Araibi, who holds refugee status in Australia, can be held for 60 days pending the completion of an extradition request by Bahrain. In 2014 Bahrain sentenced him in absentia to 10 years in prison for vandalizing a police station, a charge he denies.
(AP, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 11, In northern Turkey a police officer angered that his request for a transfer was rejected fired shots at his superiors inside a police station in Rize, killing the local police chief and wounding two other officers.
(AP, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 11, Yemen's Houthi movement and the Saudi-backed government exchanged lists of some 15,000 prisoners for a swap agreed as a confidence-building measure at the start of UN-sponsored peace talks in Sweden.
(Reuters, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 12, Michael Cohen (52), Donald Trump's former devoted lawyer and fizer, was sentenced to three years in prison, for lying about business deals related to dt, for lying about business deals related to Donald Trump.
(SFC, 12/13/18, p.A6)
2018 Dec 12, The New York Times reported that US investigators believe that Chinese intelligence was behind the massive hack of data on some 500 million guests of hotel giant Marriott.
(AFP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, The Wall Street Journal reported that a revised plan would play down China's bid to dominate manufacturing, and allow more outside competition.
(AP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, In Texas three police officers were wounded while serving a family violence warrant in Houston. Suspect Daniel Trevino was found dead hours later of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
(SFC, 12/13/18, p.A6)
2018 Dec 12, Afghan provincial officials said government forces have abandoned the Shebkoh district of Farah province, leaving the area to Taliban insurgents after the government failed to resupply dozens of troops stationed there.
(Reuters, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, In Antarctica two technicians performing maintenance at the US research McMurdo Station died while working on a building that houses a generator for a nearby radio transmitter.
(AP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, Argentina's foreign minister said his crisis-ridden country desperately needed international investment, as he began a two-day visit to one of the world's richest nations, Qatar.
(AFP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, British Conservative lawmakers forced a no-confidence vote in PM Theresa May, throwing UK politics deeper into crisis and Brexit further into doubt. May won the vote after promising lawmakers privately that she would quit before Britain's next national election, which is scheduled for 2022.
(Reuters, 12/12/18)(AP, 12/13/18)
2018 Dec 12, China's police confirmed they have arrested award-winning photographer Lu Guang, who went missing in November while travelling in Xinjiang.
(AP, 12/13/18)
2018 Dec 12, In CongoDRC police fired teargas and live bullets for a second day to disperse supporters of opposition presidential candidate Martin Fayulu, killing three people in the town of Kalemie in the southeastern Katanga region.
(Reuters, 12/12/18)(AFP, 12/12/18)(AFP, 12/13/18)
2018 Dec 12, Egypt released blogger and journalist Wael Abbas, known for standing up against police violence, after nearly seven months in detention. Abbas has been posting about police violence, torture and corruption on social media for more than a decade.
(AFP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, In Egypt Coptic father Imad Kamal Sadeq (49) and his son, David (21), were killed at a construction site by a security police officer in Minya province.
(Reuters, 12/13/18)
2018 Dec 12, Eight European Union nations (Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Sweden and the United Kingdom) underlined their commitment to the Iran nuclear deal while urging Tehran to stop its "destabilizing regional activities" especially the launch of ballistic missiles.
(AP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, In France a cousin of jailed Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov accepted the European Parliament's Sakharov human rights prize on his behalf, saying the director remained committed to winning the release of all "political prisoners" in Russia.
(AFP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, A top French appeals court overturned the suspended prison terms handed to activists Cedric Herrou and Pierre-Alain Mannoni for helping migrants who entered the country illegally. The Cour de Cassation, France's court of final appeal, sent the case back to the Lyon appeals' court, which is expected to void the case.
(AFP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, France arrested Patrice-Edouard Ngaissona, a member of Africa's top footballing body, on war crimes charges in the Central African Republic.
(AFP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, In Hungary rare scenes of chaos gripped the parliament as it passed a controversial judicial reform, as well as labor legislation that critics call a "slave law".
(AFP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, Hungary passed a law to set up courts overseen directly by the justice minister, a move critics said would allow political interference in judicial matters and further undermine the rule of law.
(AP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, In India Isha Ambani, the Ivy League-educated daughter of industrialist Mukesh Ambani, thought to be India's richest man, married Anand Piramal, whose father is industrialist Ajay Piramal, thought to be worth $10 billion.
(AP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, In Iran social media activist Vahid Sayyadi Nasiri, on hunger strike since October 13, 2018 to protest the denial of his right to counsel and inhumane prison conditions, died at the Shahid Beheshti Hospital in Qom.
(Reuters, 12/16/18)
2018 Dec 12, In Baghdad Nobel laureate and former jihadist captive Nadia Murad (25) called on Iraq to create a special team to investigate the fate of other members of her Yazidi minority kidnapped by the Islamic State group.
(AFP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, Israeli forces late today killed Salah Barghouti, a Palestinian suspect wanted in the drive-by shooting on Dec. 9 at a West Bank bus stop.
(AP, 12/13/18)
2018 Dec 12, Italy's PM Giuseppe Conte told the European Commission he was lowering next year's target to 2.04 percent of gross domestic product from 2.4 percent to avoid disciplinary action by Brussels.
(Reuters, 12/13/18)
2018 Dec 12, In northeastern Mali several dozen civilians were shot dead by gunmen who raided an area near the border with Niger. Jihadists on motorcycles killed at least 42 people in a series of attacks on their nomadic camps over the last 24 hours in the eastern Menaka region.
(AFP, 12/13/18)(SFC, 12/14/18, p.A2)
2018 Dec 12, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador signed an initiative that would cancel the controversial education reforms of his predecessor.
(AP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, In Myanmar several dozen journalists and activists held a rally in Yangon to mark the anniversary of the arrest of two reporters for the Reuters news agency who are among a group of journalists being honored by Time magazine as its "Person of the Year".
(AP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, In the Netherlands Sarah Papenheim (21), a native of Minnesota, was fatally stabbed at her home in an apartment building near Erasmus University, where she had been studying since 2016. A suspect (23) was arrested the same day.
(AP, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 12, Nigerian opposition candidate Atiku Abubakar signed an election peace accord, a day after his absence from the official signing ceremony raised concerns about the conduct of the February 2019 vote.
(Reuters, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, Dozens of North and South Korean soldiers crossed over the world's most heavily armed border as they inspected the sites of their rival's front-line guard posts to verify they'd been removed.
(AP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, Hundreds of Gazans attended the funeral of Ahmed Abu Abed, a four-year-old boy who died after being hit by Israeli shrapnel at a border protest last week.
(Reuters, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, The Philippine Congress approved a request by the president to extend martial law in the country's volatile south by a year due to continuing threats by Islamic State group-linked militants and communist insurgents.
(AP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, In Romania dozens of people protested against poor air quality in Bucharest, which recently was ranked one of Europe's most traffic-congested cities.
(AP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, In Saudi Arabia representatives from Egypt, Djibouti, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen and Jordan gathered in Riyadh to discuss an alliance of the six countries bordering the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. No final agreement was reached.
(AP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, Slovak Defense Minister Peter Gajdos signed the contract to buy 14 F-16 military jets from Lockheed Martin as it seeks to replace Soviet-era jets.
(AP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, Sri Lanka's former prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe won a confidence vote in Parliament receiving 117 votes in favor in the 225-member legislative body. His October sacking by President Maithripala Sirisena precipitated a political crisis.
(AP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, Sweden said it was freezing its support to UNAIDS until executive director Michel Sidibe is removed. An expert report has blasted the agency's leadership for systematically failing to address bullying, abuse and sexual harassment.
(AFP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, In Thailand a local policeman was arrested for allegedly shooting and killing Malik Djamel, a French man, at a shopping plaza in Bangkok. Police said Senior Sgt.-Maj. Kantapong Huadsri had confessed to killing the man over an argument involving a woman, but that the dispute was not a love triangle.
(AP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, The Vatican said Pope Francis has removed from his group of close advisers two cardinals hit by sexual abuse scandals, including his economy minister, Australian George Pell (77). The other member removed from the so called C-9 is Francisco Javier Errázuriz (85) of Chile.
(Reuters, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 12, Sources said Yemen's warring parties agreed to reopen Sanaa airport in the Houthi-held capital, as Western nations pressed the two sides to accept confidence-building steps before the end of UN-led peace talks in Sweden.
(Reuters, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 13, The Trump administration announced a sharp refocus of its Africa strategy to counter what it called the "predatory" practices of China and Russia, which are "deliberately and aggressively targeting their investments in the region to gain a competitive advantage".
(AP, 12/13/18)
2018 Dec 13, The US Senate delivered an unusual rebuke of Pres. Donald Trump's response to the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi In back-to-back votes against Saudi Arabia, and signaled new skepticism from Capitol Hill toward the longtime ally.
(AP, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 13, A wave of hoax emailed bomb threats demanding bitcoin payment caused worry but no damage in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
(Reuters, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 13, Timothy May (b.1951), an early advocate for guarding the privacy of internet users, died at his home in Santa Cruz County, Ca. In 1988 May authored the one-page Crypto Anarchist Manifesto and in 1992 co-founded the Cypherpunks with John Gilmore and Eric Hughes.
(SFC, 12/23/18, p.C9)
2018 Dec 13, Cleveland-based Rock & Roll Hall of Fame organizers announced that pop icon Janet Jackson, angst rockers Radiohead and post-punk innovators The Cure earned spots in its Class of 2019. Stevie Nicks, already an inductee with her band Fleetwood Mac, was now also honored as a solo artist. British heavy metal group Def Leppard, pop experimentalists Roxy Music and English psychedelic rock harmonists The Zombies round out the list of artists.
(AFP, 12/13/18)
2018 Dec 13, Nancy Wilson (81), a Grammy-winning singer who performed everything from jazz ballads to pop songs during a career spanning decades, died in California.
(AFP, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 13, The Virgin Galactic tourism spaceship Unity climbed to 51 miles above the Mohave Desert reaching the boundary of space in a test flight followed by a gliding descent.
(SFC, 12/14/18, p.D1)
2018 Dec 13, Apple announced plans to build a $1 billion campus in Austin, Texas.
(SFC, 12/14/18, p.D1)
2018 Dec 13, In northeastern Afghanistan an assault on Taliban positions in Kunar province, which included US air strikes, killed at least 20 insurgents, contradicting Taliban claims of civilian casualties. In southern Helmand province, a US drone strike killed four suspected insurgents.
(AP, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 13, Brazil's president-elect Jair Bolsonaro faced growing scrutiny as a government financial crime unit questioned payments made to his son and wife that totaled more than $300,000.
(AFP, 12/13/18)
2018 Dec 13, In Brazil Justice Luiz Fux ordered the arrest of Cesare Battisti, an Italian communist militant convicted of murder in his home country. The president would have the final word over his extradition to Italy. Battisti escaped from an Italian prison in 1981 while awaiting trial on four counts of murder allegedly committed when he was a member of the Armed Proletarians for Communism.
(AP, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 13, British PM Theresa May pleaded with EU leaders for concessions that might save her Brexit deal, while playing down hopes of a swift breakthrough.
(AFP, 12/13/18)
2018 Dec 13, Cambodia's Parliament passed legislation that could allow the lifting of a five-year ban on political activity by some top opposition politicians.
(AP, 12/13/18)
2018 Dec 13, Cambodian authorities seized more than 3 tons of rare African ivory hidden inside an abandoned shipping container, the country's largest haul of elephant tusks in the last four years. The ivory was sent from Mozambique.
(AP, 12/15/18)
2018 Dec 13, China confirmed that it has detained two Canadian men, raising the stakes in a three-way dispute over a Chinese technology executive facing possible extradition from Canada to the United States.
(AP, 12/13/18)
2018 Dec 13, At a ceremony in Beijing, China Wanda Group and the Yanan city government agreed to start work on a 12 billion yuan ($1.74 billion) sprawling complex for patriotic tourists to visit a site where the ruling Communist Party's traces its revolutionary roots in northwestern Shaanxi province.
(Reuters, 12/15/18)
2018 Dec 13, In CongoDRC an early-morning fire in Kinshasa destroyed nearly 80 percent of the capital city's voting machines just 10 days before the presidential election.
(AFP, 12/13/18)
2018 Dec 13, In CongoDRC a teenager was shot dead in the central Kasai region as party faithful gathered ahead of a rally by Felix Tshisekedi of the UDPS, one of the leading opposition candidates.
(AP, 12/13/18)
2018 Dec 13, Egyptian authorities arrested a camel driver and a woman accused of having helped two Danes scale the Great Pyramid of Giza to take a video and naked photograph, sparking outrage in the country. The woman had put the pair into contact with the camel driver who took them to the site illegally at night on November 29 for 4,000 Egyptian pounds ($225, 200 euros). Photographer Andreas Hvid appears to scale the 4,500-year-old tomb on the outskirts of Cairo with a woman who is later seen removing her top. The video "Climbing the Great Pyramid of Giza" was posted on YouTube on December 8.
(AP, 12/13/18)
2018 Dec 13, In southern Ethiopia heavy fighting broke out between Somalis and Oromos in Moyale. Over the next two days at least 21 people were killed and 61 wounded.
(Reuters, 12/15/18)
2018 Dec 13, The European Central Bank said it is ending the massive stimulus program that helped nurse the eurozone economy back to health over the past four years.
(AP, 12/13/18)
2018 Dec 13, The EU's lawmaking body condemned Egyptian authorities for human rights abuses and urged them to lift restrictions on free speech and assembly, halt mass trials and stop sentencing minors to death, and release political prisoners.
(AP, 12/13/18)
2018 Dec 13, Europe's top human rights body urged Moldova to stop "intimidation and violence" against prisoners allegedly carried out by other detainees with the tacit agreement of prison management.
(AP, 12/13/18)
2018 Dec 13, In France gunman Cherif Chekatt (29) was killed by police in the Neudorf neighborhood of Strasbourg after a two-day manhunt.
(Reuters, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 13, The Paris prosecutor's office said a fifth person has been arrested and placed in custody in connection with the investigation into the Dec. 11 shooting near Strasbourg's Christmas market.
(AP, 12/13/18)
2018 Dec 13, In southern France a sixth "yellow vest" protester was killed after being hit by a truck at a road where activists staged a blockade, as the protest movement showed no signs of abating.
(AP, 12/13/18)
2018 Dec 13, In Germany three women were stabbed and wounded in Nuremberg. Police investigated whether the incidents were connected. A German man (38) was arrested on Dec. 15 in connection with the stabbing.
(AP, 12/14/18)(AP, 12/16/18)
2018 Dec 13, In northern Greece three men died and three were injured after a car carrying migrants crashed and caught fire in Kavala.
(AP, 12/13/18)
2018 Dec 13, In northeastern India at least 15 young miners went missing and were feared dead following the collapse of a shaft and flooding of a coal mine they were digging illegally in the state of Meghalaya. Three weeks later rescuers trying to reach the miners struggled to pump out water from the 370-foot-deep pit, further dimming their chances of survival. On Jan. 26 rescuers located a second body from the site of a "rat-hole" mining accident, two days after recovering the first body.
(AP, 12/14/18)(Reuters, 1/4/19)(Reuters, 1/26/19)
2018 Dec 13, Israeli security forces in Nablus tracked down and killed Ashraf Naalweh, a Palestinian accused of killing two Israelis in October. A Palestinian gunman got out of a car and opened fire at a bus stop outside a West Bank settlement, killing two Israeli soldiers before speeding away. Hours later, the army said it shot and killed a Palestinian man who attempted to ram his car into soldiers on a West Bank road. A Palestinian assailant stabbed two officers in Jerusalem's Old City, wounding them lightly. Officers opened fire on the attacker (26) and he was killed.
(AP, 12/13/18)
2018 Dec 13, Japan's space agency says more than 200 photos taken by the two small Minerva II-1 rovers on Ryugu asteroid show no signs of a smooth area for the planned touchdown of a spacecraft early next year.
(AP, 12/13/18)
2018 Dec 13, A court in Kenya convicted ex-senior police officer Nahashon Mutua of murder in the death of Martin Koome, a suspect taken into custody in 2013, in what rights groups welcomed as a further step toward curbing years of police brutality.
(Reuters, 12/13/18)
2018 Dec 13, A group of Israelis beat up a Palestinian bus driver, Nidal Sake, near a West Bank settlement.
(AP, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 13, In Poland dozens of nations threatened with catastrophe from unchecked climate change warned they "face extinction" without immediate action to rein in mankind's emissions, as UN climate talks limped towards their conclusion.
(AFP, 12/13/18)
2018 Dec 13, Somalia's Internal Security Ministry arrested Mukhtar Robow, accusing him of bringing Islamist militants and weapons back to Baidoa, the capital of South West region. At least 10 people were killed in the clashes. Robow's spokesman later said he was beaten by Ethiopian troops, who are part of the African Union peacekeeping force in Somalia, in the course of his arrest.
(Reuters, 12/13/18)(Reuters, 12/14/18)(Reuters, 12/15/18)
2018 Dec 13, A South African court ruled that former president Jacob Zuma must pay back state funds and cover his own costs, leaving him facing massive legal bills as he fights graft charges.
(AFP, 12/13/18)
2018 Dec 13, South Africa issued an arrest warrant for Zimbabwe's former first lady Grace Mugabe over the alleged assault of a model in a luxury Johannesburg hotel in 2017. Police sought Interpol's help to enforce the warrant.
(Reuters, 12/19/18)
2018 Dec 13, Sri Lanka's Supreme Court ruled unanimously that President Maithripala Sirisena's order to dissolve Parliament and hold new elections was unconstitutional.
(AP, 12/13/18)
2018 Dec 13, Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) commander-in-chief Mazloum Kobani said that at least 5,000 IS fighters remain holed up in the pocket of territory including Hajin and that they had decided to fight to the death.
(AP, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 13, In Turkey nine people were killed and nearly 90 injured after a high-speed train crashed into a locomotive in Ankara. Three employees of the railway authority were arrested on Dec. 17 for their role in the accident.
(AFP, 12/13/18)(SFC, 12/18/18, p.A2)
2018 Dec 13, United Nations human rights experts expressed concern over recent rollbacks of women's rights in Poland, especially those regarding reproductive health and societal roles.
(AFP, 12/13/18)
2018 Dec 13, Scandal-plagued UNAIDS head Michel Sidibe offered to resign in June, following an expert report that said his "defective leadership" had plunged the agency into crisis.
(AFP, 12/13/18)
2018 Dec 13, Yemen's warring parties agreed to cease fighting for the Houthi-held port city of Hodeidah and withdraw their troops. The Houthis have agreed in principle on a UN's role in Sanaa airport, a spokesman for the armed movement said in Sweden. The UN role would include carrying out safety and inspection checks at the airport.
(Reuters, 12/13/18)
2018 Dec 14, US Pres. Donald Trump picked budget director Mick Mulvaney to be his next chief of staff.
(SFC, 12/15/18, p.A6)
2018 Dec 14, The Wall Street Journal reported that Chinese hackers have breached US Navy contractors to steal a raft of information, including missile plans, through what some officials describe as some of the most debilitating cyber campaigns linked to Beijing.
(Reuters, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 14, The California Air Resources Board required all state buses to be emission free by 20140. New rules prohibited the purchase of any new gas or diesel-powered public transit buses by 2029.
(SFC, 12/17/18, p.C1)
2018 Dec 14, In Florida Gabino Peralta-Saucedo (43) of Michoacan, an organizer for multiple Mexican drug cartels, pleaded guilty to a conspiracy charge for his role in smuggling thousands of kilograms of cocaine from Mexico into the United States.
(AP, 12/15/18)
2018 Dec 14, In Hawaii ten Indonesian fishermen, who were arrested and charged with attempting to smuggle shark fins, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge that they attempted to export the fins. A judge sentenced them to time they already served in jail.
(AP, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 14, In Texas federal Judge Reed O'Connor ruled that the US health care law known as Obamacare is unconstitutional -- a ruling that opposition Democrats vowed to appeal. On Dec. 30 O'Connor stayed his ruling to allow for appeals.
(AFP, 12/15/18)(SFC, 12/31/18, p.A5)
2018 Dec 14, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker signed a sweeping package of Republican-written legislation that restricts early voting and weakens the incoming Democratic governor and attormey general.
(SFC, 12/15/18, p.A8)
2018 Dec 14, CBS pledged to give $20 million to 16 organizations dedicated to eliminating sexual harassment in the workplace.
(SFC, 12/15/18, p.A6)
2018 Dec 14, Brazil launched the first of five navy attack submarines it is building under a $7.6-billion technology-sharing deal struck with France.
(AFP, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 14, British PM Theresa May left the EU summit exactly as she had arrived -- promising talks to extract reassuring words from EU leaders to help her sell the Brexit deal back home.
(AFP, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 14, Cameroon released nearly 300 people who were arrested in connection with the anglophone crisis, a day after being pardoned by President Paul Biya.
(AFP, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 14, China announced a 90-day suspension of tariff hikes on $126 billion of US cars, trucks and auto parts following its cease-fire in a trade battle with Washington that threatens global economic growth.
(AP, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 14, Chinese President Xi Jinping declared an "overwhelming victory" in his fight against graft within the ruling Chinese Communist Party, while still vowing that the campaign to weed out deep-seated corruption will continue, state media reported.
(Reuters, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 14, A Chinese court jailed for 17 years businessman Zhang Tianming, who ran a 100 billion yuan pyramid scheme and organized a rare street protest in Beijing against police investigations into his activities. Nine other staff from his company, Shenzhen-based Shan Xin Hui, were also found guilty.
(Reuters, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 14, Egypt's state news agency said the Arab Parliament has urged the Arab League to reinstate Syria's membership, which was suspended seven years ago.
(Reuters, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 14, EU leaders, except for Britain, took a step toward deeper euro zone integration to help prevent future crises, but deep disagreement over some key elements of the plan left issues like a euro zone budget or a deposit guarantee mechanism unresolved.
(Reuters, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 14, EU leaders called for urgent action to combat fake news on the Internet at a summit, saying more needed to be done to safeguard next year's EU election against disinformation.
(Reuters, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 14, It was reported that scientists in Finland have developed what they believe is the world's first vaccine to protect bees against disease, raising hopes for tackling the drastic decline in insect numbers which could cause a global food crisis.
(AFP, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 14, President Emmanuel Macron called for a return to calm in France after nearly a month of protests by the 'yellow vest' movement against his government's policies which have hit growth and caused widespread disruption.
(Reuters, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 14, In France a fourth person died following the Dec. 11 attack in Strasbourg.
(AP, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 14, A Berlin court said the insolvency administrator for bankrupt airline Air Berlin has sued its former largest shareholder, UAE-based airline Etihad, for 2 billion euros ($2.26 billion) in damages.
(AP, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 14, An Indonesian official vowed to do more to combat human trafficking after an investigation by the Associated Press revealed that scores of trafficked girls have quietly disappeared from one of the nation's poorest regions.
(AP, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 14, Israeli forces arrested dozens of Hamas activists in the West Bank as the army intensified a crackdown in response to a pair of deadly shootings believed to have been carried out by Hamas militants. An Israeli soldier was severely wounded by a Palestinian assailant who attacked him with a rock, while Israeli soldiers clashed with Palestinian demonstrators outside Ramallah. Palestinian Mahmoud Nakhla (18) was shot in the abdomen and died in Ramallah.
(AP, 12/14/18)(SFC, 12/15/18, p.A2)
2018 Dec 14, Japan's central government started main reclamation work at a disputed US military base relocation site on the southern island of Okinawa despite fierce local opposition.
(AP, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 14, Kosovo passed laws to build an army, asserting its statehood in a US-backed move that has angered Serbia, which does not recognize the former province's independence.
(AFP, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 14, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador announced a $5.7-billion, two-year plan to revamp the country's health care system for the poor.
(AP, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 14, The Amsterdam Appeals Court confirmed the maximum 10 years and eight months sentence imposed in March last year on the man identified by Dutch authorities as Aydin C., who was convicted of fraud and blackmail via the internet for the online abuse.
(AP, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 14, Nicaraguan authorities said they had seized the assets of 10 blacklisted organizations, dealing another blow to civil society after months of protests against President Daniel Ortega that were met with a heavy-handed crackdown.
(Reuters, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 14, In Nicaragua nine police officers armed with rifles entered the offices of an opposition daily late today and started pushing people, beating others and making fun of reporters after journalist Carlos Fernando Chamorro challenged them to take on his media outlet without a search warrant in his online daily Confidencial and news broadcasts Esta Semana and Esta Noche.
(AFP, 12/15/18)
2018 Dec 14, The Nigerian military accused United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) staff of spying for Islamist militants in northeast Nigeria, and suspended the agency's activities there. A new military statement hours later lifted a suspension of UNICEF's work in the extremist-threatened northeast. The reversal came after an emergency meeting with UNICEF representatives.
(Reuters, 12/14/18)(AP, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 14, In southwestern Pakistan six security officials were killed and 14 others wounded in an attack when their convoy came under heavy firing in a mountainous area near the border with Iran. Some 30 militants attacked the Frontier Corps convoy. Four attackers were killed in the shootout.
(Reuters, 12/14/18)(AP, 12/16/18)
2018 Dec 14, A Philippine court found 66 alleged members of the Abu Sayyaf guilty of kidnapping dozens of students, teachers and a Catholic priest in the south in 2000, in the largest single conviction involving the brutal Muslim militant group.
(AP, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 14, In Poland a group of small islands and countries, particularly vulnerable to global warming threatened to block agreement at UN climate talks unless their demands are met. Former Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed, head of the Alliance of Small Island States, said "we are deeply unhappy with the way the talks are going".
(AP, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 14, A Romanian court rejected a request by Turkey to extradite Kamil Demirkaya, a Turkish journalist it accuses of terrorism, after prosecutors said the case was political.
(AP, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 14, In Somalia lawmaker Abdishakur Bule was killed in Baidoa in cross fire between security forces and supporters of former al Shabaab leader Mukhtar Robow.
(Reuters, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 14, Spain's government announced a plan to spend 7.3 billion euros ($8.2 billion) over the next 10 years on improving its military defense capabilities.
(AP, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 14, Spanish prosecutors charged pop music star Shakira with tax evasion, alleging she failed to pay more than 14.5 million euros ($16.3 million) between 2012 and 2014. Shakira listed the Bahamas as her official residence for tax purposes while living in Spain.
(AP, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 14, Sri Lanka's Supreme Court rejected PM Mahinda Rajapaksa's bid for an injunction on a lower court's order that barred him and his cabinet from carrying out their roles in government. Rajapaksa planned to resign the next day.
(Reuters, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 14, In eastern Syria Kurdish-led forces seized the Islamic State's main hub of Hajin, a milestone in a massive and costly US-backed operation to eradicate the jihadists from Deir Ezzor province.
(AFP, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 14, Syrian Kurdish parties said that Turkish threats to attack northern Syria amounted to a "declaration of war" and urged world powers to prevent an assault on the region.
(Reuters, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 14, The Turkish military said it had killed eight militants from the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in air strikes targeting the Zap, Hakurk and Haftanin regions of northern Iraq.
(Reuters, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 14, A Huthi rebel delegation returned to Yemen's insurgent-controlled capital of Sanaa after wrapping up an initial round of breakthrough UN-brokered peace talks in Sweden.
(AFP, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 15, Pres. Donald Trump said Interior Sec. Ryan Zinke will be leaving the administration by the year's end. Zinke faced federal investigations into his travel, political activity and potential conflicts of interest.
(SSFC, 12/16/18, p.A10)
2018 Dec 15, In Maryland Nadia Dominique Morgan (35), an award-winning Johns Hopkins rheumatologist, was killed in a hit-and-run involving three vehicles. Jason William Hines (31) was later in connection with the fatal hit-and-run.
(AP, 12/17/18)
2018 Dec 15, The foreign ministers of Afghanistan, Pakistan and China met in Kabul to discuss trade, development and ways to end Afghanistan's 17-year war.
(AP, 12/15/18)
2018 Dec 15, Australia's PM Scott Morrison said his country now formally recognizes West Jerusalem as Israel's capital, reversing decades of Middle East policy, but will not move its embassy there immediately. The Palestinian leadership described as "irresponsible" Australia's recognition of west Jerusalem as Israel's capital, saying it violated international law.
(Reuters, 12/15/18)(AFP, 12/15/18)
2018 Dec 15, In Bangladesh barrister Mahabub Uddin Khokon, a candidate for the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), was wounded with shotgun pellets by a senior police officer in Noakhali, a mostly-rural district in the country's southeast. He was reportedly out canvassing for votes along with hundreds of supporters, of whom about 40 were also injured.
(Reuters, 12/28/18)
2018 Dec 15, A fire at the Chester Zoo in northwest England killed insects, frogs, fish and small birds in an enclosure devoted to exotic tropical habitats.
(AP, 12/16/18)
2018 Dec 15, In China a coal mine accident in the southwestern city of Chongqing killed seven workers and injured three.
(Reuters, 12/15/18)
2018 Dec 15, The security court in Comoros handed down life sentences with hard labor to four senior opposition figures and lengthy jail terms to several others for plotting against the state. Former vice-president Djaffar Said Ahmed Hassane, who has taken refuge in Tanzania, was among those sentenced to forced labor. Colonel Ibrahim Salim, a former head of the army, was one of those jailed.
(AFP, 12/16/18)
2018 Dec 15, It was reported that harsh weather conditions and tight police border controls have stopped thousands of migrants from attempting to cross into Croatia at the EU's Balkan frontier, leaving them stuck in impoverished Bosnia until spring.
(Reuters, 12/15/18)
2018 Dec 15, A military court in Ethiopia jailed 66 soldiers for between five and 14 years for marching on PM Abiy Ahmed's palace in October, ruling they had broken military ethics.
(Reuters, 12/15/18)
2018 Dec 15, Former Ethiopian president Girma Woldegiorgis died, two weeks short of his 95th birthday. He was president of Ethiopia for twelve years between 2001 to 2013, a largely ceremonial role.
(AFP, 12/15/18)
2018 Dec 15, In France groups of defiant "yellow vest" demonstrators faced off with tens of thousands of police around the country, but their numbers were sharply lower on a fifth and decisive weekend for the anti-government movement. Around 66,000 protesters turned out again on the fifth round of anti-government demonstrations, which sprung up over fuel tax hikes last month.
(AFP, 12/15/18)(AFP, 12/16/18)
2018 Dec 15, In southern India police arrested three people after at least 11 died of suspected food poisoning following a ceremony to celebrate the construction of a new Hindu temple in Karnataka state. Laboratory tests later showed the presence of monocrotophos, a pesticide which attacks the nerves, in food and vomit samples.
(AP, 12/15/18)(AP, 12/18/18)
2018 Dec 15, Israeli forces in Ramallah demolished the home of Islam Abu Hmaid, a Palestinian charged with killing a soldier during an Israeli raid in the West Bank earlier this year.
(AP, 12/15/18)
2018 Dec 15, In Kashmir seven civilians died and dozens were injured when Indian security forces opened fire at people protesting the killing of three militants in a gun battle in a village in Pulwama district. The gunfight also left three armed rebels and a soldier dead. The separatist group Hurriyat Conference called for a three-day strike and protests across Kashmir.
(Reuters, 12/15/18)(AFP, 12/15/18)
2018 Dec 15, Police in the Maldives questioned Yameen Abdul Gayoom, the country's defeated former strongman president, over complaints of alleged illegal financial transactions, a day after they froze bank accounts with millions of dollars.
(AP, 12/15/18)
2018 Dec 15, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador detailed plans to "rescue" the national oil industry by boosting crude production at the state-owned oil company by 45 percent before 2025.
(AP, 12/16/18)
2018 Dec 15, Nicaraguan police beat at least seven journalists with batons, including one of the country's best known editors, in an escalating crackdown on independent media in the aftermath of protests against President Daniel Ortega.
(Reuters, 12/15/18)
2018 Dec 15, In Nigeria leaders of countries in the Lake Chad region met to give fresh impetus to their fight against Boko Haram. Benin, the Central African Republic, Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria will hold a follow-up to a November gathering in Chad to tackle a surge in Boko Haram attacks in the restive region.
(AFP, 12/15/18)
2018 Dec 15, In Paraguay Carlos Eduardo Sales Cardoso (aka Capile), the leader of the Brazilian criminal organization Pure Third Command, was captured in Asuncion and will be expelled from the country.
(AP, 12/16/18)
2018 Dec 15, In Poland nearly 200 countries at the United Nations talks in Katowice saved the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement from disintegration by agreeing a package of guidelines for its implementation. It deferred rules on carbon credits and lacked any firm commitment to strengthen countries' emissions cut targets by 2020, when the agreement comes into force.
(Reuters, 12/16/18)
2018 Dec 15, In Portugal four people died when a helicopter in the country's medical emergency service crashed in the Serra de Pias hills east of Porto.
(AP, 12/16/18)
2018 Dec 15, Qatar called for a new regional alliance following the failure of the four-decade-old Gulf Cooperation Council to resolve an 18-month rift between the emirate and its neighbors.
(AFP, 12/15/18)
2018 Dec 15, Somalia saw a third day of protests over the arrest of Muhktar Robow, the former No. 2 leader of the al-Shabab extremist group, who has been a leading candidate for a regional presidency. Officials said at least eight people have been killed so far as angry supporters take to the streets and clash with police.
(AP, 12/15/18)
2018 Dec 15, In Somalia the US military's Africa Command (Africom) carried out four air strikes with Somali partners, killing 34 militants.
(Reuters, 12/17/18)
2018 Dec 15, Sri Lanka's disputed PM Mahinda Rajapaksa announced that he would step aside, paving the way for his sacked predecessor to regain the position.
(AP, 12/15/18)
2018 Dec 15, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople welcomed the creation of an Orthodox church in Ukraine independent of Moscow and invited its leader to Istanbul to receive official confirmation of its status.
(AFP, 12/16/18)
2018 Dec 15, Ukraine chose the leader of a new national church, marking an historic split from Russia which its leaders see as vital to the country's security and independence. President Petro Poroshenko said Metropolitan Epifaniy, of the Kiev Patriarchate church, had been chosen as head of the new church.
(Reuters, 12/15/18)
2018 Dec 15, A Ukrainian air force pilot died when his Sukhoi Su-27 fighter jet crashed while attempting to land at a base in the northern region of Zhytomyr.
(AP, 12/15/18)
2018 Dec 15, Zimbabwe's President Emmerson Mnangagwa pledged to reform his party and promote democracy in his closing address to the ruling ZANU PF party's annual conference.
(AFP, 12/15/18)
2018 Dec 16, US Badger CEO John Anton said that his company would halt shipment from Hetian Taida Apparel while it investigates reports of sportswear being manufactured at an internment camp in China's Xingiang region.
(SFC, 12/19/18, p.A4)
2018 Dec 16, In Florida Coast Guard Petty Officer First Class John Presnar (44) shot and killed his wife and their 7-year-old son and critically wounded their daughter (8) before killing himself following an argument at their home south of Miami.
(SFC, 12/17/18, p.A6)
2018 Dec 16, It was reported that Boston's Museum of Fine Arts has received what museum officials are calling a transformative gift of nearly 200 pieces of Chinese art that have been in the same family for six generations. The gift from Wan-go H. C. Weng is the largest and most significant gift of Chinese art in museum history.
(AP, 12/16/18)
2018 Dec 16, Belgium police deployed teargas and water cannon after scuffles broke out in Brussels as thousands of people answered a call by far-right groups to reject a UN migration pact.
(AFP, 12/16/18)
2018 Dec 16, In Brazil Joao Teixeira de Faria (76), better known as "Joao de Deus" or "John of God," was arrested after women came forward in Brazilian media and to police to allege he sexually forced himself on them on pretext of "curing" them of ailments. Police conducted raids on properties linked to Faria and found handguns, gemstones and -- hidden behind a false panel in a wardrobe -- a suitcase containing the equivalent of $300,000 in cash.
(AFP, 12/23/18)
2018 Dec 16, In CongoDRC at least one person was killed and over 80 injured in clashes between supporters of rival candidates in Tshikapa, a city in the central Kasai region, just days ahead of a crucial presidential election.
(AFP, 12/17/18)
2018 Dec 16, In France yellow vest protesters occupied dozens of traffic roundabouts across the country even as their movement for economic justice appeared to be losing momentum on the fifth straight weekend of protests.
(AP, 12/16/18)
2018 Dec 16, Georgia's incoming President Salome Zurabishvili vowed to reconcile political divisions and deepen ties with NATO and Europe at Sunday's inauguration that opposition protesters were blocked from reaching.
(Reuters, 12/16/18)
2018 Dec 16, Thousands of Hungarians protested in Budapest against a new labor law and what they see as the increasingly authoritarian rule of right-wing nationalist PM Viktor Orban.
(Reuters, 12/16/18)
2018 Dec 16, In India a New Delhi security guard allegedly raped a three-year-old girl after luring her with sweets. The girl was hospitalized and her suspected attacker was soon arrested.
(Reuters, 12/17/18)
2018 Dec 16, In Indonesia Mount Soputan, located on the northern part of Sulawesi island, erupted twice. Local residents were urged to avoid activities near the mountain.
(AP, 12/16/18)
2018 Dec 16, In Iran the appointment of Kambiz Mehdizadeh, President Hassan Rouhani's son-in-law, as head of Iran's geological survey led to the resignation of Jafar Sargheyni, head of the mining section in the industries ministry. It was reported that the appointment has renewed accusations of nepotism.
(AFP, 12/16/18)
2018 Dec 16, Iranian authorities detained an unspecified number of steel mill workers after five weeks of protests over delays in salaries in Khuzestan province.
(AP, 12/17/18)
2018 Dec 16, In Iran a website of the Revolutionary Guard reported that Gen. Ghodratollah Mansouri, a vetran of the 1980s Iran-Iraq war, accidentally shot himself in the head while cleaning a his pistol.
(SFC, 12/17/18, p.A2)
2018 Dec 16, Iraqis laid the cornerstone in rebuilding Mosul's Al-Nuri mosque and leaning minaret, national emblems destroyed last year in the ferocious battle against the Islamic State group.
(AFP, 12/16/18)
2018 Dec 16, The Israeli military said it has exposed a fourth Hezbollah attack tunnel dug from Lebanon.
(AP, 12/16/18)
2018 Dec 16, In northern Japan 42 people were injured in an explosion at a bar in Sapporo.
(Reuters, 12/16/18)
2018 Dec 16, In Kashmir a security clampdown and a strike sponsored by separatists fighting against Indian rule shut most of the Indian-administered state.
(AP, 12/16/18)
2018 Dec 16, In western Kenya five people were killed in a village after residents resisted the arrest of a suspect in a domestic abuse case. A policeman was soon arrested in connection with the deaths.
(AP, 12/17/18)
2018 Dec 16, Hundreds of Lebanese took to the streets to protest against a political stalemate that has prevented the formation of a new government seven months after elections.
(AP, 12/16/18)
2018 Dec 16, North Korea condemned the US administration for stepping up sanctions and pressure on the nuclear-armed country, warning of a return to "exchanges of fire" and that disarming Pyongyang could be blocked forever.
(Reuters, 12/16/18)
2018 Dec 16, It was reported that Pakistan's army chief has approved death sentences for 15 people convicted by military courts of involvement in attacks that killed 32 security forces and two civilians.
(AP, 12/16/18)
2018 Dec 16, In southern Romania Anca Pop (34), a Romanian-Canadian singer-songwriter, died after her car plunged into the Danube River.
(AP, 12/18/18)
2018 Dec 16, Russians living in the far eastern region of Primorsky Krai elected a Kremlin-backed candidate for governor on Sunday after a previous election was thrown out due to voting fraud. Oleg Kozhemyako won 61.4 percent of the votes after 95 percent of the ballots had been counted.
(AP, 12/16/18)
2018 Dec 16, At least two Rwandan civilians were reported killed and eight injured when attackers set fire to three passenger vehicles in the southern Nyamagabe district, which borders Burundi.
(AP, 12/16/18)
2018 Dec 16, In southern Serbia a bus skidded off the road and overturned amid wintry weather, killing three people and injuring 32 others.
(AP, 12/16/18)
2018 Dec 16, In Somalia the US military's Africa Command (Africom) carried out two air strikes with Somali partners, killing 28 militants.
(Reuters, 12/17/18)
2018 Dec 16, In Spain dozens of animal rights activists stripped naked and covered themselves in fake blood in Barcelona in a protest against the use of fur and leather.
(Reuters, 12/16/18)
2018 Dec 16, Sri Lanka's president reappointed Ranil Wickremesinghe as prime minister, nearly two months after firing him and setting off a long political stalemate in the South Asian island nation.
(AP, 12/16/18)
2018 Dec 16, In Switzerland a tour bus on its way to Germany crashed, killing one person and injuring 44 others.
(AP, 12/16/18)
2018 Dec 16, In Syria a car bomb killed at least eight people including four civilians near a pro-Turkey rebel post in the northern city of Afrin.
(AFP, 12/16/18)
2018 Dec 16, In Yemen clashes shook Hodeida after air strikes and deadly fighting on the outskirts overnight. At least 12 were killed and 25 others wounded from both sides.
(AFP, 12/16/18)(SFC, 12/17/18, p.A2)
2018 Dec 17, US plane maker Boeing and Brazil's Embraer said they have approved the terms of a partnership to create a joint venture now worth $5.26 billion -- more than when they first announced it in July.
(AFP, 12/17/18)
2018 Dec 17, The Taliban held "another" meeting with US officials, this time in the United Arab Emirates and also involving Saudi, Pakistani and Emirati representatives in the latest attempt to bring a negotiated end to Afghanistan's 17-year war.
(AP, 12/17/18)
2018 Dec 17, Penny Marshall (b.1943), co-star of the "Laverne and Shirley" sitcom (1976-1983), died at her home in Los Angeles. Following the sitcom whe went on to direct such films as "A League of Their Own" (1992), "Renaissance Man" (1994), "The Preacher's Wife" (1996) and "Riding in Cars With Boys" (2001).
(SFC, 12/19/18, p.C3)(SFC, 12/21/18, p.E2)
2018 Dec 17, Two Chicago police officers were fatally struck by a train as they investigated a report of gunshots on the city's far South Side.
(SFC, 12/18/18, p.A6)
2018 Dec 17, Google said it will spend more than $1 billion to build a new office complex in NYC allowing it to double its current 7,000 now employed there.
(SFC, 12/18/18, p.D2)
2018 Dec 17, Astronomers announced the discovery of the farthest known object in our solar system. The cosmic body, located about 11 billion miles away, was nicknamed "Farout".
(SFC, 12/18/18, p.A6)
2018 Dec 17, The head of Albania's top court was removed after he failed to account for his income. The nine-member court is currently unable to function as eight of its judges have been removed from duty in the vetting process. Albania is vetting some 800 judges and prosecutors to root out bribery and ensure they are independent from politics.
(AP, 12/17/18)
2018 Dec 17, Bangladesh's main opposition group promised to remove curbs on free speech and the media and to rein in the police if it unseats PM Sheikh Hasina from her decade-long rule in this month's national election.
(Reuters, 12/17/18)
2018 Dec 17, A Belgian court ruled that a Roman Catholic priest cannot use the secrecy of confession as a defense when it convicted a clergyman in Bruges of failing to seek help for a man who went on to commit suicide. The court handed Alexan der Stroobandt a suspended one month jail term and ordered him to pay the widow a symbolic euro in damages.
(Reuters, 12/17/18)
2018 Dec 17, In Brazil a fire began late today in the low-income Educandos neighborhood of Manaus and was extinguished several hours later. At least 600 wooden houses were destroyed.
(AP, 12/18/18)
2018 Dec 17, Britain's PM Theresa May warned MPs against supporting a second Brexit referendum, as calls mounted for a public vote to break the political impasse over the deal she has struck with the EU.
(AFP, 12/17/18)
2018 Dec 17, Cambodia's PM Hun Sen inaugurated the 400-megawatt Lower Sesan II hydropower dam in the northeastern province of Stung Treng. It was built over four years at a cost of nearly $800 million and is a joint venture of China's Hydrolancang International Energy, which has a 51 percent stake.
(AP, 12/17/18)
2018 Dec 17, China and the United States clashed again over their respective trade policies at the WTO in Geneva as the two countries are tried to iron out their differences so further US tariffs are not imposed on Chinese goods.
(AP, 12/17/18)
2018 Dec 17, In China the wife of detained Chinese lawyer Wang Quanzhang and three supporters shaved their heads and attempted to submit to a Beijing court a petition protesting her husband's indefinite detention.
(AFP, 12/17/18)
2018 Dec 17, Colombia's armed forces rescued Melissa Martinez Garcia (34), a relative of late Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez who won the 1982 Nobel Prize for literature. She was seized at the end of August by a group of armed men who intercepted her vehicle near the northern city of Santa Marta. They demanded a ransom of $5 million for her release.
(Reuters, 12/17/18)
2018 Dec 17, Colombia's ELN Marxist guerrilla group announced a Christmas ceasefire as peace talks with the country's government have been on hold since August.
(AFP, 12/17/18)
2018 Dec 17, In Colombia six men were shot dead by unidentified gunmen in a rural area of Mapiripan, southeastern Meta province, an area known for cocaine trafficking.
(Reuters, 12/18/18)
2018 Dec 17, The Czech Rep.'s National Cyber and Information Security Agency warned that the hardware and software made by Huawei and another Chinese telecommunications company, ZTE, pose a security threat.
(AP, 12/18/18)
2018 Dec 17, In Egypt two roadside bombs hit a police convoy in northern Sinai, killing two conscripts. The bombs struck two armored vehicles that were part of a convoy on a search-and-destroy mission in an area west of Rafah.
(AP, 12/17/18)
2018 Dec 17, In Egypt a German man (18) went missing before he was due to take a domestic flight from Luxor to Cairo, where he planned to visit his grandfather.
(AP, 1/7/19)
2018 Dec 17, France's Alliance police labor union urged the government to invest in rebuilding the country's police forces and called for a work slowdown to protest planned cuts in the national police budget.
(AP, 12/17/18)
2018 Dec 17, In France two people weredetained as part of the terrorism investigation in the Dec. 11 attack that killed five people. They were suspected of provinding the firearm used by Cherif Chekatt.
(SFC, 12/18/18, p.A4)
2018 Dec 17, German authorities said five Frankfurt police officers are under investigation over allegations they shared far-right images, videos and texts in a chat group with one another.
(AP, 12/17/18)
2018 Dec 17, In Greece a bomb blast early today damaged a building in Athens housing the headquarters of the private radio and television network Skai, but there were no casualties.
(AFP, 12/17/18)
2018 Dec 17, In Hungary security forces physically ejected opposition lawmakers from the headquarters of the state broadcaster MTVA in Budapest early today. A group of 10 lawmakers had entered the building, insisting on the right to read five demands live on air, including the revocation of a new labor law, passed last week in parliament.
(AP, 12/17/18)
2018 Dec 17, PM Narendra Modi said India will give financial assistance of $1.4 billion to the Maldives, the biggest aid yet to the Indian Ocean island nation that is grappling with debt from a Chinese building spree.
(Reuters, 12/17/18)
2018 Dec 17, An Indian court jailed for life Sajjan Kumar, a leader of the main opposition Congress party, for his role in anti-Sikh riots that erupted after the 1984 murder of the then prime minister, Indira Gandhi, and killed nearly 3,000 people.
(Reuters, 12/17/18)
2018 Dec 17, In India at least six people died and 129 others were injured in a fire that broke out in the five-story government-run ESIC Kamgar Hospital in the suburban Andheri area of Mumbai. The death toll soon rose to eight.
(AP, 12/17/18)(AP, 12/18/18)
2018 Dec 17, The Israeli military partially demolished the home of Ashraf Naalweh, a Palestinian accused of killing two Israelis in an attack two months ago. Israeli troops killed Naalweh in an arrest raid last week after a two-month manhunt.
(AP, 12/17/18)
2018 Dec 17, Lebanese soldiers went on alert after Israeli troops rolled out barbed wire along the border, as tensions remained high two weeks after Israel launched an operation to identify and destroy Hezbollah tunnels.
(AP, 12/17/18)
2018 Dec 17, Malaysia filed criminal charges against Goldman Sachs and two former executives for their role in the alleged multibillion-dollar ransacking of state investment fund 1MDB.
(AP, 12/17/18)
2018 Dec 17, In Morocco two Scandinavian women were found dead in the High Atlas mountains. Hikers Louisa Vesterager Jespersen (24) of Denmark and Maren Ueland (28) of Norway were found dead with cuts to their necks. One suspect was arrested the next day and other suspects were being sought. On Dec. 20 authorities arrested three more suspects.
(AFP, 12/18/18)(AP, 12/20/18)
2018 Dec 17, In Myanmar Private Aung Kyaw Thet went missing after his patrol was fired on from the Bangladesh side of the border. His body was found on Dec. 21 with gunshot wounds in his face, arm and leg. The identity of the attackers was unknown and police were still investigating
(Reuters, 12/23/18)
2018 Dec 17, Pakistan's foreign ministry spokesman, Mohammad Faisal, said that Indian national Hamid Nehal Ansari is being repatriated to New Delhi after serving a three-year prison sentence for spying.
(AP, 12/17/18)
2018 Dec 17, Poland's Pres. Andrzej Duda, an ally of the governing Law and Justice (PiS) party, signed into law amendments to contentious legislation that will allow some Supreme Court judges to remain in their posts after having been forced into early retirement.
(AP, 12/18/18)
2018 Dec 17, Russia said it had built new barracks for troops on a disputed chain of islands near Japan and would build more facilities for armored vehicles, a move likely to anger Tokyo after it urged Moscow to reduce its military activity there.
(Reuters, 12/17/18)
2018 Dec 17, Serbia reported that two men have frozen to death as a cold spell throughout the Balkan region slowed down traffic, disrupted power supplies and closed down schools in some areas.
(AP, 12/17/18)
2018 Dec 17, The Sierra Leone health ministry said late today it had agreed a timeline with doctors to respond to their demands, announcing the agreement in a statement signed by the heads of two doctors' associations.
(Reuters, 12/18/18)
2018 Dec 17, In Singapore a gay man won the right to adopt a child he fathered via a surrogate in the United States, in a landmark court ruling for the conservative city-state.
(AFP, 12/17/18)
2018 Dec 17, Switzerland and Britain signed an agreement guaranteeing that flights between the two countries can continue uninterrupted even if London opts to leave the European Union without a deal with Brussels.
(AFP, 12/17/18)
2018 Dec 17, In Thailand Catriona Gray (24) of the Philippines was named Miss Universe 2018 in the 67th competition held in Bangkok, besting contestants from 93 other countries
(AP, 12/17/18)
2018 Dec 17, In Thailand Sului Piew (2), a son of migrant workers from Myanmar, went missing when he went out to play near the sugarcane plantation where his parents work. A 3-year-old friend told her parents that she saw Sului being abducted. Piew's body was found on Dec. 25 in a sugarcane plantation a few miles from where he disappeared.
(AP, 12/24/18)(AP, 12/26/18)
2018 Dec 17, The United Nations and the Palestinian Authority appealed for $350 million in aid for Palestinians next year, saying much more was needed but they had to be realistic after a year of funding cuts.
(Reuters, 12/17/18)
2018 Dec 17, The Vatican's criminal tribunal convicted Italian builder Angelo Proietti of using his accounts in the Vatican bank to launder money, and sentenced him to 2½ years in prison. The decision was announced on Dec. 27. This marked the first time the Vatican court had handed down a money-laundering verdict since the city state criminalized the offense in 2010 as part of its financial reform efforts.
(AP, 12/27/18)
2018 Dec 18, US President Donald Trump took a swipe at America's tech giants, accusing them of having a liberal bias, and claiming Twitter was making it more difficult to follow his account.
(AFP, 12/18/18)
2018 Dec 18, US Pres. Donald Trump signed a one page memorandum launching the Pentagon's new Space Command. The program was estimated to cost over $800 million over the next five years.
(SFC, 12/19/18, p.A7)
2018 Dec 18, The Trump administration moved to officially ban bump stocks, which allow semiautomatic weapons to fire rapidly, and has made them illegal to possess beginning in late March.
(SFC, 12/19/18, p.A7)
2018 Dec 18, The United States pledged $5.8 billion in aid and investment for strengthening government and economic development in Central America and another $4.8 billion in development aid for southern Mexico.
(SFC, 12/19/18, p.A4)
2018 Dec 18, The US government said that it is reviewing reports of forced labor at a Chinese internment camp where ethnic minorities are sewing clothes that have been shipped to the US market.
(AP, 12/19/18)
2018 Dec 18, Arizona's Republican Gov. Doug Ducey named Rep. Martha McSally to replace US Sen. Jon Kyl in the US Senate seat that belonged to Sen. John McCain.
(SFC, 12/19/18, p.A6)
2018 Dec 18, A US federal judge in NYC ruled that a 1974 state ban on nunchucks is unconstitutional under the Second Amendment.
(SFC, 12/19/18, p.A6)
2018 Dec 18, The New York attorney general's office said the Donald J, Trump Foundation has agreed to close following a court decision that allowed a lawsuit against the foundation to proceed.
(SFC, 12/19/18, p.A6)
2018 Dec 18, The New York Times reported late today that hackers had broken into the EU's diplomatic communications for years, downloading cables that showed worries about the Trump administration, struggles to deal with Russia and China, and the threat of Iran reviving its nuclear program.
(Reuters, 12/19/18)
2018 Dec 18, The Washington-based Fulbright Association said its 2018 prize for international understanding will go to German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
(AP, 12/18/18)
2018 Dec 18, World oil prices tumbled to strike the lowest levels in more than a year, hit by fears over the outlook for the global economy.
(AFP, 12/18/18)
2018 Dec 18, In Austria European officials and companies met with African leaders in Vienna for talks intended as a springboard to increase investment in Africa.
(AP, 12/18/18)
2018 Dec 18, British ministers agreed to make no-deal Brexit planning "an operational priority" amid continued opposition to PM Theresa's May draft divorce deal, just 14 weeks before the country leaves the EU.
(AFP, 12/18/18)
2018 Dec 18, Cameroon's military killed seven suspected English-speaking separatist rebels in overnight fighting in Bamenda in the North West region. The government said that at least 1,200 people have died in the violence since January, which started after Nigeria detained and extradited separatist leader Julius Ayuk Tabe and 46 other alleged separatists to Cameroon.
(AP, 12/18/18)
2018 Dec 18, President Xi Jinping repeated China's commitment to a multilateral trading system and further opening of its economy.
(AP, 12/18/18)
2018 Dec 18, The chairman of Huawei challenged the US and other governments to provide evidence for claims the Chinese tech giant is a security risk as the company launched a public relations effort to defuse fears that threaten its role in next-generation communications.
(AP, 12/18/18)
2018 Dec 18, The Czech Republic's PM Andrej Babis ordered his government office to stop using mobile phones by Chinese telecoms company Huawei.
(AP, 12/18/18)
2018 Dec 18, French "yellow vest" protesters caused transport chaos after occupying highway toll booths and setting some of them on fire.
(Reuters, 12/18/18)
2018 Dec 18, A German court convicted a man of unauthorized dealing in firearms over the sale in 2016 of weapons that he advertised as being usable to "shoot down asylum-seekers." Mario R. (35) was sentenced to two years and 10 months in prison and was confiscated 99,100 euros ($112,287) in proceeds.
(AP, 12/18/18)
2018 Dec 18, Israel's PM Benjamin Netanyahu said more than 130 Palestinians have been arrested in recent days in Israel's search for a suspect wanted in a deadly West Bank shooting.
(AP, 12/18/18)
2018 Dec 18, Libyan customs seized a consignment of arms which arrived from Turkey at Khoms port. A day earlier a cargo of 2.5 million Turkish-made bullets was seized at the same port. The UN last June extended an arms embargo on Libya for another year.
(Reuters, 12/22/18)
2018 Dec 18, Lithuanian lawmakers voted to buy a floating liquefied natural gas terminal that has been providing gas to the Baltic nation as it tries to reduce its reliance on Russian energy. The vessel is estimated to cost some 308 million euros ($349 million). Lithuania plans to buy it by 2025.
(AP, 12/18/18)
2018 Dec 18, Mexico's Pres. Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said his new government is increasing minimum wages across the country by 16 percent and doubling the minimum wage in a narrow stretch of territory along the border with the US. The minimum is currently equivalent to $4.40 per day, and will rise to $5.10 in January.
(AP, 12/18/18)
2018 Dec 18, In the Netherlands an appeals court has upheld a ban on a Dutch arm of the Bandidos Motorcycle Club, agreeing with a lower court's conclusion that the biker gang forms a threat to public order.
(AP, 12/18/18)
2018 Dec 18, The Dutch Supreme Court upheld the war crimes conviction of timber dealer Guus Kouwenhoven, who was found guilty last year of selling arms to former Liberian leader Charles Taylor, and of complicity in war crimes committed by Taylor's forces in Liberia and Guinea from 2000 to 2003.
(AP, 12/18/18)
2018 Dec 18, In the Netherlands Humeyra Ergincanli (16) was shot dead in front of fellow students in her high school's bicycle shed. Suspect Bekir E. (31) was arrested shortly after the shooting at the Rotterdam Design College.
(AP, 12/18/18)(AP, 12/21/18)
2018 Dec 18, North Korea's main state newspaper warned of the "negative impact" from mobile phones use around the world, as both legal and illicit communications devices proliferate in the isolated country.
(Reuters, 12/18/18)
2018 Dec 18, Russia said it has cut its military flights in Syria from more than 100 per day to fewer than four a week, in another sign the country's conflict is winding down.
(AFP, 12/18/18)
2018 Dec 18, Sierra Leone doctors returned to work, ending a 13-day strike over pay and conditions that paralyzed hospitals nationwide.
(Reuters, 12/18/18)
2018 Dec 18, South Korean fire department officials said that three teenage boys were presumed dead and seven other boys were being treated for injuries after they were found unconscious at a motel in the seaside town of Gangneung.
(AP, 12/18/18)
2018 Dec 18, South Sudan's National Security Service forced several officials assessing the country's new peace deal to strip and face "inhuman" treatment. Four East African monitors were blindfolded, bound, kicked and robbed of money and a wedding ring. The men were stripped to their underwear and the woman was stripped naked. All were released five hours later.
(AP, 12/19/18)
2018 Dec 18, Meeting in Geneva the foreign ministers of Iran, Russia and Turkey said that a new Syrian Constitutional Committee should convene early next year, kicking off a viable political peace process.
(Reuters, 12/18/18)
2018 Dec 18, Pope Francis announced a shakeup of the Vatican's communications operations, replacing the longtime editor of the Holy See newspaper and naming a prominent Italian journalist to coordinate the editorial line of all Vatican media.
(AP, 12/18/18)
2018 Dec 18, Vietnam's state media reported the arrest of Do Van Khanh, a former senior executive of a state-owned oil company, for "abusing power to appropriate property".
(Reuters, 12/18/18)
2018 Dec 18, A Zimbabwean inquiry said the military's use of live bullets to quell post-election violence earlier this year was "disproportionate and unjustified".
(Reuters, 12/18/18)
2018 Dec 19, President Donald Trump declared victory against the militant group in Syria and hinted that a withdrawal could be imminent.
(Reuters, 12/19/18)
2018 Dec 19, The US Treasury Dept. sanctioned 15 Russians over hacking, interference in US elections and a nerve agent attack in England.
(SFC, 12/20/18, p.A6)
2018 Dec 19, US stocks fell after the Federal Reserve raised interest rates for a 4th time this year to a range of 2.25 to 2.5 percent. The market finished at its lowest point since September 2017. The DJIA fell to 23,323.
(SFC, 12/20/18, p.D1)
2018 Dec 19, An annual report by the NY-based Committee to Protect Journalists said the number of journalists killed worldwide in retaliation for their work nearly doubled this year. It found that 34 journalists were killed in retaliation for their work as of Dec. 14, while at least 53 were killed overall.
(AP, 12/19/18)
2018 Dec 19, The robotic arm of the Mars Insight lander removed a seismometer from the spacecraft deck and set it on the ground to monitor earthquakes.
(SFC, 12/21/18, p.A8)
2018 Dec 19, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan issued a blistering report about clergy sexual abuse, saying the Catholic dioceses of the state have not released the names of at least 500 clergy accused of sexually abusing children.
(SFC, 12/20/18, p.A6)
2018 Dec 19, The Baltimore Sun reported that Clarence Shipley Jr. (47) was exonerated and released this week after being imprisoned for 27 years for the 1991 death of Kevin Smith (29) in a false witness testimony. New witnesses identified the killer as a man who died in 2005.
(SFC, 12/20/18, p.A6)
2018 Dec 19, Facebook announced its third and biggest purge of military-linked accounts in Myanmar, where critics have charged that the social network did too little to block inflammatory material that fueled communal hatred and violence, particularly against the country's Muslim Rohingya minority.
(AP, 12/19/18)
2018 Dec 19, Albania's Foreign Ministry said two Iranian diplomats had been expelled for "violating their diplomatic status" following talks with other countries, including Israel.
(AP, 12/20/18)
2018 Dec 19, It was reported that Britain's GlaxoSmithKline and US-based Pfizer are merging their health care divisions, creating a market leader in "over the counter" health care products like pain relievers and vitamins with combined sales of 9.8 billion pounds ($12.7 billion). GSK will own 68 percent of the joint venture.
(AP, 12/19/18)
2018 Dec 19, Britain's Financial Conduct Authority said Santander's UK banking division has been fined £32.8 million for failing to process accounts and investments of deceased customers.
(AFP, 12/19/18)
2018 Dec 19, A Canadian government official said third Canadian has been detained in China but the incident does not appear to be linked to the arrest of two other citizens over the last week.
(Reuters, 12/19/18)
2018 Dec 19, The Norwegian Refugee Council said that more than 430,000 people have fled violence in Cameroon's restive English-speaking regions and are hiding in rural areas with few resources.
(AP, 12/19/18)
2018 Dec 19, In CongoDRC Andre Kimbuta, the governor Kinshasa, cancelled all political rallies in the capital for the 21 candidates vying for the presidency in the Dec. 23 elections.
(AP, 12/19/18)
2018 Dec 19, In Cyprus Jordan's foreign affairs minister said his country is seeking closer ties with Greece and Cyprus as part of a strategy to bolster regional peace and security and promote economic cooperation.
(AP, 12/19/18)
2018 Dec 19, It was reported that ten former employees of the Estonian branch of Danske Bank have been detained in connection with a probe into a major money laundering scandal that allegedly involved money from Russia and former Soviet states.
(AP, 12/19/18)
2018 Dec 19, The European Union said it is investigating a cyber hack of its diplomatic communications, allegedly by Chinese hackers, that revealed EU concern about US Donald Trump, Russia and Iran.
(Reuters, 12/19/18)
2018 Dec 19, The EU moved closer to banning single-use straws, plates, cutlery and cotton swabs after officials from EU member states and the European Parliament said they're following recommendations by its executive branch designed to reduce marine pollution.
(AP, 12/19/18)
2018 Dec 19, France's human rights ombudsman reported that undocumented migrants living in makeshift camps in northern France have been subjected to an "unprecedented" violation of their basic rights over the past three years.
(AFP, 12/19/18)
2018 Dec 19, Chancellor Angela Merkel's cabinet passed new immigration laws to make it easier for lower-skilled foreigners to seek work in Germany and offer rejected asylum seekers who can't be deported a path to residency.
(Reuters, 12/19/18)
2018 Dec 19, German weekly Der Spiegel said Claas Relotius (33), one of its star reporters, has left the publication after committing journalistic fraud "on a grand scale" over a number of years. He resigned after admitting to inventing interviews.
(AP, 12/19/18)
2018 Dec 19, The Greek Supreme Court ordered the extradition to France of Russian Alexander Vinnik, who headed the Bitcoin exchange BTC-e, on suspicion of money laundering.
(AFP, 12/19/18)
2018 Dec 19, In India Swaroop Raj (35), an assistant vice president at Genpact India, committed suicide following accusations of sexual misconduct.
(http://tinyurl.com/ya8cj4a2)(Reuters, 12/21/18)
2018 Dec 19, Italian PM Giuseppe Conte heralded a budget deal with the European Commission, saying the long-awaited accord allowed his government to honor its main commitments and boost the economy.
(Reuters, 12/19/18)
2018 Dec 19, SoftBank Group Corp.'s Japanese mobile subsidiary suffered a bitter debut on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, slumping 15 percent, hurt by a recent service outage and concerns about the use of parts from Chinese telecom giant Huawei.
(AP, 12/19/18)
2018 Dec 19, Kuwait's Supreme Constitutional Court paved the way for two convicted lawmakers to be deprived of their seats by stripping parliament's final say in a politically stormy case.
(Reuters, 12/19/18)
2018 Dec 19, Police in Lithuania said one Russian and several Lithuanians have been detained, suspected of being part of a ring spying for Russia. Those arrested included Valery Ivanov, a former anti-independence leader in the early 1990s, and Algirdas Paleckis, a former lawmaker and leader of the Lithuania's Socialist People's Front.
(AP, 12/19/18)
2018 Dec 19, Madagascar voted in a two-man contest between former presidents Andry Rajoelina and Marc Ravalomanana, who have waited years to come face-to-face in a fiercely personal battle for power in the Indian Ocean island.
(AFP, 12/19/18)
2018 Dec 19, It was reported that Nepal's government has stopped eight Italian contractors from leaving the Himalayan country in an effort to complete a critical but much delayed water supply project for the capital.
(AP, 12/19/18)
2018 Dec 19, In the southern Philippines communist guerrillas abducted two soldiers and at least a dozen militiamen and seized several rifles in an attack on an army base near Sibagat town, Agusan del Sur province.
(AP, 12/19/18)
2018 Dec 19, Romanian stocks dived after the government unveiled a surprise package to slash the budget deficit by raising 10 billion lei ($2.45 billion) of extra revenue, including through a tax on banks.
(AP, 12/19/18)
2018 Dec 19, Russia's top domestic security agency said it has killed suspected members of the Islamic State group plotting a terror attack. FSB commandos tracked down the IS members in the city of Stavropol in southwestern Russia.
(AP, 12/19/18)
2018 Dec 19, In Somalia lawmakers in the volatile South West state elected Abdiasis Hassan Mohamed, the federal government's preferred candidate, as its leader after Mukhtar Robow, a popular former al Shabaab leader, was barred from running in the vote seen as test of the country's political progress.
(Reuters, 12/19/18)
2018 Dec 19, The UN's World Food Program (WFP) said it will cut food aid next year to about 190,000 poor Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank due a shortage of funds.
(Reuters, 12/19/18)
2018 Dec 19, Vatican officials said Pope Francis has accepted the resignation of Los Angeles auxiliary bishop, Monsignor Alexander Salazar (69), following allegations of misconduct with a minor in the 1990s.
(SFC, 12/20/18, p.A4)
2018 Dec 19, In Yemen the Saudi-led coalition bombed the air base next to Sanaa's international airport as a local cease-fire held around the Red Sea port city of Hodeida.
(AP, 12/19/18)
2018 Dec 20, US Defense Sec. James Mattis resigned in protest of Pres. Donald Trump's decision to withdraw US forces from Syria and his rejection of int'l. alliances.
(SFC, 12/21/18, p.A6)
2018 Dec 20, The United States told the UN Security Council that it was committed to the "permanent destruction" of Islamic State in Syria and would "use all instruments of our national power" to push for the withdrawal of Iranian-backed forces in the country.
(Reuters, 12/20/18)
2018 Dec 20, The US Justice Department charged two Chinese citizens with carrying out an extensive hacking campaign to steal data from US companies. Court papers filed in Manhattan federal court alleged the hackers were able to breach the computers of more than 45 entities in 12 states. Prosecutors said Zhu Hua and Zhang Shillong were acting on behalf of China's main intelligence agency.
(AP, 12/20/18)
2018 Dec 20, A report by the US Commission on Civil Rights said that funding for Native American tribes are woefully inadequate.
(SFC, 12/21/18, p.A6)
2018 Dec 20, San Francisco police displayed high-end loot and announced the take-down of a major criminal enterprise. An 8-month investigation yielded 40 fugitive suspects, 12 of who were arrested in SF and Daly City.
(SFC, 12/21/18, p.C1)
2018 Dec 20, In Atlanta, Georgia, four people were killed in a business jet crash. They included Wei Chen, founder and CEO of Memphis-based Sunshine Enterprise Inc., and three co-workers.
(AP, 12/21/18)
2018 Dec 20, Tobacco giant Atria announced that it will invest $12.8 billion to acquire a 35 percent stake in Juul, a San Francisco-based vaping company.
(SFC, 12/21/18, p.A1)
2018 Dec 20, A Facebook official said the company is shutting down a series of fake news sites spreading false information about the Bangladesh opposition days before national elections.
(AP, 12/20/18)
2018 Dec 20, Drones flying near London’s Gatwick airport grounded flights for at least 15 hours, causing chaos for tens of thousands of Christmas travelers in what authorities said was a reckless attempt to cripple Britain’s second busiest airport.
(Reuters, 12/20/18)
2018 Dec 20, Britain's Office for National Statistics estimated that nearly 600 homeless people in England and Wales died the last year -- a 24 percent rise over the past five years.
(AP, 12/20/18)
2018 Dec 20, Britain, Germany and France, three of the United States' main allies in the war against the Islamic State group, reacted with alarm to President Donald Trump's decision to pull US troops out of Syria. Analysts said the US decision to pull troops out of eastern Syria will leave the Kurds exposed to Turkish military threats and forced to cooperate with Damascus.
(AFP, 12/20/18)
2018 Dec 20, The eldest son of Cambodian PM Hun Sen joined the inner circle of his father's ruling Cambodian People's Party, bolstering speculation he is being groomed to succeed to the premiership. Lt. Gen. Hun Manet (41) was boosted from the 865-member Central Committee of the ruling Cambodian People's Party to its 37-member Standing Committee.
(AP, 12/20/18)
2018 Dec 20, The Chinese government lashed out at recent US media reports about forced labor of mostly ethnic Muslim detainees in its western Xinjiang region.
(AP, 12/20/18)
2018 Dec 20, It was reported that authorities in Langfang, a city in China's Hebei province, have issued a ban on all Christmas displays on streets and stores.
(SFC, 12/20/18, p.A2)
2018 Dec 20, The Democratic Republic of Congo's election board postponed a presidential vote scheduled for Dec. 23 by one week until Dec. 30 after a fire destroyed voting materials.
(Reuters, 12/20/18)
2018 Dec 20, Congo's health minister said the second-deadliest Ebola outbreak in history is "certainly" expected to continue for another three or four months. So far there have been 549 Ebola cases in the outbreak that was declared on Aug. 1, including 501 confirmed cases. There have been 278 confirmed deaths.
(AP, 12/20/18)
2018 Dec 20, A Congolese cargo plane went missing after delivering materials for a presidential election to Tshikapa. The plane crashed and it was not clear how many people were on board.
(Reuters, 12/21/18)
2018 Dec 20, In the Czech Rep. an explosion at the CSM mine near the town of Karvina killed 13 men. 12 of the dead were Polish nationals while one was Czech.
(AP, 12/21/18)
2018 Dec 20, In Egypt 43 NGO workers, including at least 15 Americans, were cleared by a court in a case concerning the work of groups promoting democracy in the country. A lower court convicted the 43 in 2013.
(AP, 12/20/18)
2018 Dec 20, Egypt said its security forces have killed eight militants and detained four more who planned attacks on minority Christians during the upcoming holiday season.
(AP, 12/20/18)
2018 Dec 20, The French government said the death toll linked to the anti-government "yellow vest" protests has risen to nine, as demonstrators kept up major disruptions of road traffic.
(Reuters, 12/20/18)
2018 Dec 20, France said it will keep troops in northern Syria for now because Islamic State militants have not been wiped out, contrary to the US view, and has started talks with the United States on the conditions and calendar of its withdrawal.
(Reuters, 12/20/18)
2018 Dec 20, Germany's top appeal court partially overturned the conviction of former Rwandan rebel group leader Ignace Murwanashyaka for abetting war crimes in CongoDRC, citing a lack of evidence and referring it to a different court.
(Reuters, 12/20/18)
2018 Dec 20, Hungary's Pres. Janos Ader said he has signed into law disputed amendments to labor rules which greatly increase overtime hours employers can request from workers.
(AP, 12/20/18)
2018 Dec 20, An Indian schoolgirl (15) died in a Delhi hospital of severe burns after two men set fire to her on a busy street earlier this week in the tourist city of Agra.
(Reuters, 12/21/18)
2018 Dec 20, The Israeli military shot dead a Palestinian car passenger in the West Bank after it broke through a checkpoint. The dead passenger was identified as Qasim Abbasi (17) from east Jerusalem.
(AP, 12/21/18)
2018 Dec 20, In Italy police in Rome searched the Tiber River for twin 6-month-old sisters after recovering the body of their mother.
(AP, 12/20/18)
2018 Dec 20, Three astronauts returned to Earth after more than six months aboard the International Space Station. A Russian Soyuz capsule with NASA's Serena Aunon-Chancellor, Russian Sergey Prokopyev and German astronaut Alexander Gerst of the European Space Agency landed on the snow-covered steppes in Kazakhstan.
(AP, 12/20/18)
2018 Dec 20, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said that the armed forces would build a new airport he plans for Mexico City at a military air base in the town of Santa Lucia north of the capital.
(Reuters, 12/20/18)
2018 Dec 20, Mexico's foreign ministry said that it would allow some non-Mexican migrants back into the country temporarily for humanitarian reasons while they have their US immigration status processed.
(Reuters, 12/20/18)
2018 Dec 20, North Korea said it will never unilaterally give up its nuclear weapons unless the United States first removes what Pyongyang called a nuclear threat.
(AP, 12/20/18)
2018 Dec 20, Vladimir Putin took over 60 questions from a hall of journalists, speaking on everything from rap to pensions to the prospect of taking over the world. Putin said the West was trying to hold back an increasingly powerful Russia.
(AFP, 12/20/18)
2018 Dec 20, Spain's Supreme Court ruled that the captain and the insurer of the Prestige oil tanker must pay more than 1.5 billion euros ($1.7 billion) in compensation for Spain's biggest environmental disaster, when the vessel sank in 2002.
(AP, 12/20/18)
2018 Dec 20, In Spain four jailed Catalan separatist leaders, incarcerated since October 2017 ahead of a trial for their involvement in a push by the region for independence, called off their hunger strike after 20 days.
(Reuters, 12/20/18)
2018 Dec 20, Spain's Maritime Rescue Services found 11 dead migrants in a boat off the country's southern coast and rescued 33 other passengers.
(SFC, 12/21/18, p.A2)
2018 Dec 20, In Sudan anti-government street protests broke out for the second consecutive day in a string of cities, including the capital Khartoum where police used tear gas to disperse protesters. The protests have been sparked by a steep rise in the price of bread and shortages of basic food items and fuel. Angry protesters torched the headquarters of President Omar al-Bashir's National Congress Party in Atbara and set fire to its offices in two other locations. At least nine people were killed in two days of unrest, six in the eastern city of Gadaref, two in Karima north of Khartoum and one in Barbar, also north of the capital. Student demonstrator Moayed Ahmad Mahmoud was killed in Al-Qadarif.
(AP, 12/20/18)(AFP, 12/20/18)(Reuters, 12/21/18)
2018 Dec 20, Togo held elections. President Faure Gnassingbe's party won most seats in parliamentary elections, according to provisional results, in polls overshadowed by pre-ballot clashes and an opposition boycott. The 14-party opposition coalition, C-14, refuse to take part, condemning the playing field as skewed.
(AFP, 12/24/18)
2018 Dec 20, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Iranian counterpart Hassan Rouhani met in Ankara and vowed to work closer to end the fighting in Syria.
(AFP, 12/20/18)
2018 Dec 20, In Ukraine about 1,000 Orthodox believers rallied outside parliament to protest its demand that they change their church's name to reflect its ties to Moscow.
(AP, 12/20/18)
2018 Dec 20, The UN said the "overwhelming majority" of women and older girls who passed through Libya as migrants reported being gang-raped by traffickers or having witnessed others taken away to be sexually abused in a report based on hundreds of interviews.
(AP, 12/20/18)
2018 Dec 20, Uzbek imam Fazliddin Parpiyev, who ran into trouble for urging President Shavkat Mirziyoyev to lift a school headscarf ban, said he has left the mainly Muslim nation due to pressure from security services.
(Reuters, 12/20/18)
2018 Dec 21, US President Donald Trump threatened a "very long" federal work stoppage unless Democrats agree to his border wall demands. More than 800,000 federal workers faced furloughs or work without pay if a resolution was not reached by midnight.
(AFP, 12/21/18)(SFC, 12/21/18, p.A7)
2018 Dec 21, A US official said President Donald Trump has decided to pull about 7,000 troops from Afghanistan. The Afghan presidency brushed off concerns the drawdown would affect security.
(AFP, 12/21/18)
2018 Dec 21, The US State Department said the US has granted Iraq a 90-day Iran sanctions waiver to allow it to continue to import electricity from Tehran.
(AP, 12/21/18)
2018 Dec 21, Brett McGurk, the US envoy to the global coalition fighting the Islamic State group, submitted his resignation in protest over President Donald Trump's abrupt decision to withdraw US troops from Syria.
(AP, 12/23/18)
2018 Dec 21, US Federal prosecutors said that Hongjin Tan (35), a Chinese national employed by an Oklahoma petroleum company, has been charged with stealing trade secrets from his unnamed US-based employer that operates a research facility in the Tulsa area.
(AP, 12/22/18)
2018 Dec 21, The US State Department said the United States will provide an additional $10 million in military financing to Ukraine to bolster its navy after Russia captured three Ukrainian vessels at sea last month.
(Reuters, 12/22/18)
2018 Dec 21, The Trump administration formally scrapped an Obama-era policy from that was meant to curb racial discrimination in schools but that became tangled in a national debate over school safety. The 2014 policy had urged not to suspend, expel or report students to police except as a last resort.
(SFC, 12/23/18, p.A10)
2018 Dec 21, Another day of big losses left the US market with its worst week in more than seven years. The Dow Jones Industrial Average sank 414.23 points, or 1.8 percent, to 22,445.37.
(AP, 12/21/18)
2018 Dec 21, The California Public Utilities Commission approved a bid by Zoox of Foster City to offer rides to the public in self-driving cars, but with a trained test driver at the wheel ready to take over. This was the state's first approval of a robot-taxi.
(SFC, 12/22/18, p.D1)
2018 Dec 21, In Colorado three men stole about $800,000 worth of diamond-encased jewelry from a display case in the Little Nell hotel in Aspen.
(SFC, 12/26/18, p.A6)
2018 Dec 21, In Indiana John Miller (59) was sentenced to 80 years in prison for the 1988 abduction, rape and killing of April Tinsley (8) of Fort Wayne.
(SFC, 12/22/18, p.A5)
2018 Dec 21, Minnesota prosecutors said Chinese billionaire Richard Liu will not face charges over an Aug. 31 rape accusation by a Chinese woman studying in Minnesota because they could not prove his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
(AP, 12/22/18)
2018 Dec 21, It was reported that Cargill, Bunge and other global traders have halted food supply deals with Iran because new US sanctions have paralyzed banking systems required to secure payments.
(AP, 12/21/18)
2018 Dec 21, In Austria one person died and another was seriously injured after a shooting in the center of Vienna. The suspected shooter escaped in a car. Police soon detained both a witness and a man who was wounded in the shooting at a Viennese restaurant that left another man (32) dead. Police said it appeared the dispute was over illegal drug deals.
(AFP, 12/21/18)(AP, 12/23/18)
2018 Dec 21, Belgium's King Philippe accepted the resignation of PM Charles Michel, but asked him to stay on at the head of a caretaker government until elections in May.
(SFC, 12/22/18, p.A2)
2018 Dec 21, British police arrested two people late today over the suspected "criminal use of drones" at London's Gatwick Airport. A damaged drone was soon found near the airfield perimeter. On Dec. 23 Paul Gait (47) and his wife Elaine Kirk (54), arrested over the drone disruption, were released without charge.
(AFP, 12/22/18)(AFP, 12/23/18)(SFC, 12/23/18, p.A4)
2018 Dec 21, Britain's Beefeater guards at the Tower of London switched their traditional red uniforms for yellow vests as they went on strike with staff at other historic sites over pensions.
(AFP, 12/22/18)
2018 Dec 21, China called the US arrogant and selfish after two Chinese citizens were charged with stealing American trade secrets and other sensitive information on behalf of Beijing's main intelligence agency.
(AP, 12/21/18)
2018 Dec 21, It was reported that schools in southern China are using chip-powered "smart" school uniforms to track their students in a bid to tackle truancy and boost attendance.
(AFP, 12/21/18)
2018 Dec 21, In Colombia Walter Arizala, a former leftist rebel who terrorized residents of southern Colombia after abandoning the country's peace process to plunge headlong into drug trafficking, was killed during an operation after a months-long, US-backed manhunt that followed the kidnapping and murder of three Ecuadorian press workers in the turbulent border area.
(AP, 12/22/18)
2018 Dec 21, The EU slapped asset freezes and travel bans on seven more people accused of human rights violations against the Rohingya minority in Myanmar. This brings to 14 the total number of people in Myanmar under EU sanctions for such abuses.
(AP, 12/21/18)
2018 Dec 21, Europol said that police in Spain, Italy and Argentina took part in an operation that broke up an international cocaine-trafficking gang. Almost 50 suspects were arrested.
(AP, 12/21/18)
2018 Dec 21, French authorities confirmed the arrest of a suspected extremist linked to the 2015 attack on Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine that killed 12 people. French media reported that French citizen Peter Cherif, also known as Abu Hamza, had been arrested in Djibouti.
(AP, 12/21/18)
2018 Dec 21, In Guyana a lawmaker from the ruling coalition voted late today with the opposition for a no-confidence motion, bringing down the administration of President David Granger and forcing fresh elections by March.
(AP, 12/22/18)
2018 Dec 21, In Hungary at least 5,000 demonstrators took to the streets of the Budapest late today, as rightwing nationalist PM Viktor Orban dismissed a wave of protests against a new labor reform as "hysterical shouting".
(AFP, 12/21/18)
2018 Dec 21, Indian police arrested 126 people working for a allegedly fake call center making up to $50,000 a day by duping US citizens.
(AFP, 12/21/18)
2018 Dec 21, In India boulders crashed down on Indian workers who were widening a mountainous road leading to a Hindu temple in the Himalayas, killing seven of them in Uttarakhand state.
(AP, 12/21/18)
2018 Dec 21, Indonesia said it has finalized the transfer of majority control over a giant gold and copper mine from US company Freeport-McMoRan.
(AP, 12/21/18)
2018 Dec 21, In Indonesia hundreds of Muslims held a rally outside the Chinese embassy in Jakarta to protest against the treatment of members of the mostly Muslim ethnic Uighur minority in China's far western Xinjiang region.
(Reuters, 12/21/18)
2018 Dec 21, Japan's Cabinet approved a record 5.26 trillion yen ($47 billion) defense budget as the country seeks to bolster its arms capability by increasingly buying advanced US weapons.
(AP, 12/21/18)
2018 Dec 21, Prosecutors in Japan accused Carlos Ghosn of a breach of trust causing Nissan a financial loss of more than 1.8 billion yen ($16 million).
(AP, 12/21/18)
2018 Dec 21, Mexico's foreign minister Marcelo Ebrard said his government would not deport people seeking asylum, a day after the country said it would accept some migrants returned from the United States while their asylum requests are being processed.
(Reuters, 12/21/18)
2018 Dec 21, Moroccan authorities said nine more people have been arrested for connections to the four initial suspects in the Dec. 17 killing of two Scandinavian university students in a remote corner of the Atlas Mountains.
(AP, 12/21/18)
2018 Dec 21, The Myanmar military announced a more than four-month cessation of its activities in northern areas where it is fighting ethnic minority insurgents, in what appeared to be a rare conciliatory move aimed at kick-starting peace talks.
(Reuters, 12/21/18)
2018 Dec 21, Nicaraguan authorities late today raided the offices of a critical television station and shut it down, a week after raiding the offices of non-governmental groups and a newspaper. 100% Noticias station director Miguel Mora was detained.
(AP, 12/21/18)
2018 Dec 21, Pakistan reportedly opened fire in the Keran sector of Kashmir, killing two Indian army officers.
(AP, 12/22/18)
2018 Dec 21, In northwestern Pakistan the bodies of two men and two women, 18 to 21 years old were found near their remote mountain village. The four cousins were reportedly shot dead over "family honor" on the orders of a village council. Police soon arrested one man involved in the killings and searched for others.
(AP, 12/23/18)
2018 Dec 21, Three Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire during protests along the Gaza-Israel frontier, including Mohammed Jahjouh (16). A 4th Palestinian, Ayman Shehr (18), died of his wounds the next day.
(AP, 12/22/18)
2018 Dec 21, In Portugal a few hundred "yellow vest" protesters demanding lower taxes and inspired by riots in Paris took to the streets across the country in an attempt to stop traffic.
(Reuters, 12/21/18)
2018 Dec 21, In Romania visiting Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz suggested that foreign companies could pull out of Romania after the government unveiled a surprise plan to levy extra taxes on banks and energy companies.
(AP, 12/21/18)
2018 Dec 21, A Russian court charged one of the Kremlin's most vocal foreign critics, British financier and human rights activist William Browder, with creating an international criminal syndicate. The court called for his extradition to Russia and a two-month period of arrest.
(AP, 12/21/18)
2018 Dec 21, In southern Serbia a train slammed into a bus carrying mostly high school students, killing five people and injuring 30 near the city of Nis. The number of dead in the crash later rose to seven.
(AP, 12/21/18)(AP, 1/3/19)
2018 Dec 21, Spanish PM Pedro Sanchez decreed a 22 percent rise in the minimum wage, the biggest in four decades, and a move that could strengthen his grip on power but defies warnings that it could worsen unemployment.
(Reuters, 12/21/18)
2018 Dec 21, In Spain Catalan pro-independence groups blocked roads and clashed with baton-wielding police in protests against a Spanish government cabinet meeting in Barcelona branded a provocation by separatists.
(AFP, 12/21/18)
2018 Dec 21, In Sudan protests over the rising cost of bread broke out in Khartoum and its twin city Omdurman.
(AFP, 12/21/18)
2018 Dec 21, In Syria the Islamic State launched an attack in the southeast against the US-backed SDF militia, employing car bombs and dozens of militants.
(AP, 12/21/18)
2018 Dec 21, The UAE government via its state-run news agency said the government-owned Abu Dhabi Fund for Development will deposit the $3 billion in State Bank of Pakistan in the coming days.
(AP, 12/21/18)
2018 Dec 22, An air of chaos enveloped Washington as the US government kicked off the holidays by partially shutting down, following the failure of leaders to pass a federal spending bill as negotiations stalled over Donald Trump's demand for money to build a US-Mexico border wall.
(AFP, 12/22/18)
2018 Dec 22, Human rights groups along with current and former soccer players on called on FIFA and the Australian government to intervene to stop the extradition of Hakeem al-Araibi, a Melbourne-based refugee and semi-professional soccer player, from Thailand to Bahrain.
(AP, 12/22/18)
2018 Dec 22, Balkan leaders from Bulgaria, Greece and Serbia gathered in the Serbian capital of Belgrade as part of a regular regional initiative to foster cooperation on an array of issues such as migration and trade.
(AP, 12/22/18)
2018 Dec 22, The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) said authorities closed its website last week when they shut 54 news portals and websites for what they claimed were security reasons, just days before the December 30 polls.
(AFP, 12/22/18)
2018 Dec 22, A Brazilian court shot down a fresh injunction by a judge over a plan by plane makers Boeing of the US and Embraer of Brazil to create a $5.26-billion joint venture.
(AP, 12/22/18)
2018 Dec 22, Paddy Ashdown (b.1941), the face of centrist politics in Britain for more than a decade died after being treated for cancer. The one-time marine commando stood down in 1999 and went on to become the United Nations high representative and European Union special representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina.
(Reuters, 12/23/18)
2018 Dec 22, Canadian PM Justin Trudeau made a surprise holiday visit to Mali to see troops on a UN peacekeeping mission. Trudeau also met with Mali's PM Soumeylou Boubeye Maiga to discuss relations between the two countries.
(AP, 12/23/18)
2018 Dec 22, In eastern CongoDRC rebels attacked the city of Beni late today, killing five civilians and wounding eight others. The ADF militia from Uganda was blamed.
(AP, 12/23/18)
2018 Dec 22, Cuban lawmakers unanimously approved a revised draft of a new constitution that retains the island's one-party socialist system but reflects its socio-economic opening since the fall of the Soviet Union.
(Reuters, 12/23/18)
2018 Dec 22, Dr. Jiko Luveni (72), the first female speaker of Fiji's Parliament, died. She was re-elected in last month's general election and retained the role of speaker.
(AP, 12/23/18)
2018 Dec 22, French President Emmanuel Macron traveled to Chad for a two-day visit to meet with French soldiers deployed in the Sahel region with Operation Barkhane amid persistent extremist threats.
(AP, 12/22/18)
2018 Dec 22, French "yellow vests" turned out in smaller numbers for a sixth Saturday of protests in cities and border points, as a fatal road accident brought the death toll to 10 since the movement began last month.
(AFP, 12/22/18)
2018 Dec 22, In Indonesia a deadly tsunami struck in the dark, without warning, killing at least 222 people late today along the Sunda Strait. The disaster followed an eruption and possible landslide on the volcanic island of Anak Krakatau. The death toll soon climbed to 430, with at least 159 missing and more than 1,400 injured.
(AP, 12/23/18)(AP, 12/24/18)(Reuters, 12/26/18)
2018 Dec 22, Iran's state TV reported the execution by lynching of Hamid Reza Bagheri Derain, a businessman convicted of fraud, bribery and embezzlement.
(Reuters, 12/22/18)
2018 Dec 22, In Israel Holocaust survivor Simcha Rotem (94) died. He was among the last known Jewish fighters from the 1943 Warsaw ghetto uprising against the Nazis.
(AP, 12/23/18)
2018 Dec 22, Italy's far-right Interior Minister Matteo Salvini said Italian ports were closed to hundreds of migrants rescued off Libya after a mother and newborn baby were evacuated to Malta. A day earlier Proactiva Open Arms rescued more than 300 migrants from three vessels in difficulty.
(AFP, 12/22/18)
2018 Dec 22, In Kashmir a gunbattle between Indian troops and rebels early today left six militants dead and triggered a new round of anti-India protests in the disputed Himalayan region.
(AP, 12/22/18)
2018 Dec 22, Libya and Turkey agreed to open an urgent joint investigation into a consignment of arms which arrived from Turkey and was seized On Dec. 18 at the Khoms port. The consignment contained 3,000 Turkish-made pistols, as well as some other pistols, hunting rifles and ammunition.
(Reuters, 12/22/18)
2018 Dec 22, In Madagascar former president Andry Rajoelina was set to return to power as partial election results gave him a clear lead over his predecessor Marc Ravalomanana, who has alleged the vote count was fraudulent.
(AFP, 12/22/18)
2018 Dec 22, Palestinian Pres. Mahmud Abbas said he intended to dissolve the Palestinian Legislative Council after a court decision that ordered the move and elections to be held within six months.
(AFP, 12/23/18)
2018 Dec 22, Russia's state-controlled Rosatom corporation said that Reactor No. 1 at the Leningrad nuclear power plant has been shut down as planned. It said it will take until 2023 to fully unload its uranium fuel. Launched in 1973, the reactor became the first unit of the RBMK-1000 type to be built in the Soviet Union. A reactor of the same type exploded in Chernobyl in April 1986.
(AP, 12/22/18)
2018 Dec 22, In Russia nine construction workers were trapped inside a burning potash mine in the Perm region near the Ural Mountains. Rescuers soon found the nine construction workers dead in the mine operated by potash maker Uralkali.
(AP, 12/22/18)(Reuters, 12/23/18)
2018 Dec 22, Saudi Prince Talal bin Abdul Aziz (87), a half-brother of King Salman, died. He was known as a tireless advocate of reform, sometimes in defiance of the royal family.
(AFP, 12/22/18)
2018 Dec 22, In Serbia thousands of protesters marched in Belgrade for the third week in a row against what they say is a crackdown by the government of President Aleksandar Vucic on opposition parties and the media.
(AFP, 12/22/18)
2018 Dec 22, In Somalia at least 13 people were killed and 17 wounded in a car bomb attack claimed by al Qaeda-linked group al Shabaab close to the president's residence in Mogadishu. The death toll from a double car-bomb attack soon rose to 26.
(Reuters, 12/22/18)(AP, 12/24/18)
2018 Dec 22, In Spain multiple people picked the top winning Gordo number, spreading the 680 million euros ($773 million) distributed for it to 46 of the country's 50 provinces.
(AP, 12/22/18)
2018 Dec 22, In Sudan protests over worsening economic conditions resumed for a fourth consecutive day. Activists reported that authorities rounded up more than a dozen politicians from a leftist opposition coalition. Main opposition leader Sadiq al-Mahdi blamed "armed repression" for the death of 22 people in days of protests, although officials gave a lower death toll.
(AP, 12/22/18)(AFP, 12/22/18)
2018 Dec 22, In Turkey thousands of protesters took to the streets in Istanbul to demonstrate against the rising cost of living and crippling inflation. The protest was organized by the KESK, a confederation of public service workers unions.
(AFP, 12/22/18)
2018 Dec 22, Turkey's Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu said nearly 300,000 Syrians have returned to their country following Turkey's two cross-border operations in northern Syria.
(Reuters, 12/22/18)
2018 Dec 22, Ukraine's president signed a bill that orders the Ukrainian Orthodox Church to change its name to reflect its ties to Moscow.
(AP, 12/22/18)
2018 Dec 22, UN monitors arrived in Yemen to oversee a fragile ceasefire in the rebel-held city of Hodeida, the latest push to secure peace in the devastated country.
(AFP, 12/22/18)
2018 Dec 22, The Vatican announced that Pope Francis has given the homeless of Rome a Christmas gift of a new clinic in St. Peter's Square where they can get free medical help.
(Reuters, 12/22/18)
2018 Dec 22, Venezuela's navy "intercepted" a ship exploring for oil on behalf of Exxon Mobil Corp in Guyanese waters. An Exxon spokeswoman said seismic explorations in the western portion of Guyana's Stabroek Block "have been paused until they can be safely continued," and that the vessel was operating in Guyana's exclusive economic zone.
(Reuters, 12/23/18)
2018 Dec 23, US Pres. Donald Trump said deputy defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan will take over as acting secretary on Jan. 1, pushing out Pentagon Chief Jim Mattis two months earlier than planned.
(SFC, 12/24/18, p.A5)
2018 Dec 23, SpaceX launched the US Air Force's most powerful GPS satellite ever constructed. This was the company's 21st and final launch of the year.
(SFC, 12/24/18, p.A4)
2018 Dec 23, It was reported that three major banks have stopped offering mortgages for homes in San Francisco at the former Hunters Point Naval Shipyard due to unresolved questions about the safety of the land. The 75-acre site is adjacent to America's largest Superfund site, where hundreds of acres were contaminated with radioactive materials spread by the navy during the Cold War.
(SFC, 12/23/18, p.A1)
2018 Dec 23, Afghan Pres. Ashraf Ghani appointed hard-line opponents of neighboring Pakistan to two top security posts, potentially complicating US efforts to revive peace talks with the Taliban ahead of next summer's withdrawal of 7,000 American troops.
(AP, 12/23/18)
2018 Dec 23, The Burundi army said it opposed a request by the African Union that it withdraw 1,000 soldiers serving in an African peacekeeping force in Somalia by Feb. 28.
(AFP, 12/23/18)
2018 Dec 23, Speaking on a visit to Chad, French Pres. Emmanuel Macron insisted that France will make no cuts to its military despite domestic budget tightening.
(AP, 12/23/18)
2018 Dec 23, Egypt said its security forces have killed 14 militants in separate shootouts in the city of el-Arish in the turbulent north of the Sinai Peninsula. The government statement did not say when the shooting happened or provide other details.
(AP, 12/23/18)
2018 Dec 23, Fugitive extremist Peter Cherif, who recently was arrested in the former French colony of Djibouti and expelled to France, was immediately taken into custody and charged upon his arrival at Paris' Charles de Gaulle Airport.
(AP, 12/23/18)
2018 Dec 23, The Italian Senate approved a national budget law early today that was tweaked after the European Union objected to plans by Italy's populist government to satisfy expensive campaign promises with a large deficit.
(AP, 12/23/18)
2018 Dec 23, A Japanese court approved prosecutors' request to keep Nissan's former chairman Carlos Ghosn in detention for another 10 days.
(AP, 12/23/18)
2018 Dec 23, Hundreds of Lebanese protested against deteriorating economic conditions, with some briefly scuffling with army troops, as public anger mounted against politicians deadlocked over forming a new government since May.
(AP, 12/23/18)
2018 Dec 23, Libyan authorities exhumed the bodies of 34 Ethiopian Christians from a mass grave. They had been executed in Libya by Islamic State (IS) in 2015. A video posted on social media in April 2015 appeared to show IS militants shooting and beheading the Christians, who were wearing orange jumpsuits, on a beach.
(Reuters, 12/24/18)
2018 Dec 23, In Slovenia human remains were found near a popular hiking place at Iski Vintgar gorge. They were later confirmed as those of a Jonathan Luskin of Wisconsin, who was reported missing to Slovenian authorities on July 25.
(AP, 12/29/18)
2018 Dec 23, In Sudan fresh protests against bread price hikes hit two cities. An umbrella coalition of professional unions said doctors will go on an indefinite strike in the first of a series of work stoppages amid protests calling on the country's longtime autocratic leader, President Omar Bashir, to step down.
(AFP, 12/23/18)(AP, 12/23/18)
2018 Dec 23, A UN team led by a Dutch officer arrived at Hodeida to monitor a cease-fire that went into force in the Red Sea port city where Yemen's civil war rivals been fighting for months.
(AP, 12/23/18)
2018 Dec 24, The US defense department said outgoing Defense Secretary James Mattis has signed the order for the withdrawal of the US forces from Syria.
(Reuters, 12/24/18)
2018 Dec 24, A US federal judge ordered North Korea to pay $501 million in a wrongful death suit filed by the parents of Otto Warmbier, an American college student who died in 2017 shortly after being released from that country.
(AFP, 12/25/18)
2018 Dec 24, In Afghanistan a suicide bomber exploded his car outside a building housing the government's department for martyrs and disabled persons in Kabul. Militants then stormed a government building, taking civilians hostage as they fought a gun battle against soldiers. Three militants were killed. Gunmen in a nearby building exchanged fire with security forces. The death toll soon climbed to 43.
(AP, 12/24/18)(Reuters, 12/24/18)(Reuters, 12/25/18)
2018 Dec 24, In Australia some 3,000 people were evacuated from a 36-story Sydney high-rise when cracking was heard and an internal support wall failed at the newly opened Opal Tower overlooking Olympic Park.
(AP, 12/25/18)
2018 Dec 24, It was reported that Britain has banned third-party sales of puppies and kittens to protect the animals from exploitation.
(AP, 12/24/18)
2018 Dec 24, It was reported that British academic publisher Taylor and Francis has dropped more than 80 journals from its offerings in China at the government's request, including the Asian Studies Review which had content deemed "inappropriate" by authorities.
(Reuters, 12/24/18)
2018 Dec 24, In Cameroon armed English-speaking separatists attacked a French-speaking town, killing one person, kidnapping 15 others and burning 86 homes over the last 24 hours in the restive North West region.
(AP, 12/25/18)
2018 Dec 24, Environmental groups said than 1.6 million people have signed an online petition to take the French state to court for not doing enough to fight climate change.
(AP, 12/24/18)
2018 Dec 24, In Sicily lava and ash spewed from a new fracture on the active Mt. Etna volcano amid an unusually high level of seismic activity.
(AP, 12/24/18)
2018 Dec 24, Journalists in Liberia sounded the alarm on press freedom after two ministers mounted an attack on a paper that ran an article about alleged top-level corruption.
(AFP, 12/24/18)
2018 Dec 24, In Mexico Martha Erika Alonso, the governor of the state of Puebla, and her husband, Senator Rafael Moreno Valle, were killed in a helicopter crash. Two pilots and an assistant to the senator also died in the crash.
(AFP, 12/25/18)
2018 Dec 24, Moroccan security sources said 19 people have been arrested in the wake of the Dec. 17 murder of two Scandinavian women in the Atlas Mountains.
(Reuters, 12/24/18)
2018 Dec 24, Nigeria said it has resolved a dispute with Africa's largest mobile operator over $8.13 billion (6.96 billion euros) which it accused MTN of illegally repatriating to South Africa.
(AFP, 12/24/18)
2018 Dec 24, In Nigeria 14 military and police personnel were killed in an ambush by Boko Haram exstremists outside Damaturu town in Yobe state.
(SFC, 12/26/18, p.A2)
2018 Dec 24, In Pakistan an anti-graft tribunal sentenced former PM Nawaz Sharif to seven years in prison for corruption, drawing criticism from his party, which said the decision was a "black stain" on the justice system. He can appeal the verdict, under which he was also fined $25 million for not disclosing how his family set up the Al-Azizia Steel Mills when he was exiled to Saudi Arabia in 1999.
(AP, 12/24/18)
2018 Dec 24, In Somalia al Shabaab member Abdikadir Abukar was executed. He was the mastermind of militant car bombs that killed 26 people and injured nearly 40 others in Mogadishu in 2017.
(Reuters, 12/24/18)
2018 Dec 24, South Korea said it will fine BMW 11.2 billion won ($9.9 million) and file a criminal complaint against the company with state prosecutors over an allegedly botched response to dozens of engine fires reported in the country. BMW has apologized and recalled some 172,000 vehicles of 65 different models in July and October over the fires.
(AP, 12/24/18)
2018 Dec 24, Sri Lanka's finance ministry said that it will present next year's full budget in February after the parliament approved a 1.77-trillion-rupee ($9.39 billion) stopgap measure to cover public expenditures over the first four months of 2019, averting a government shutdown January 1.
(AP, 12/24/18)
2018 Dec 24, Doctors in Sudan went on strike, feeding into deadly protests against bread prices that represent one of the biggest challenges President Omar al-Bashir has faced in nearly three decades in power.
(AFP, 12/24/18)
2018 Dec 24, In Tunisia police fired tear gas at dozens of people who took to the streets late today in the city of Kasserine, setting tires ablaze and blocking the main street. Journalist Abdel Razaq Zorgi (32) died after setting himself on fire in the protest over harsh living conditions.
(AFP, 12/25/18)
2018 Dec 24, The United Arab Emirates said Princess Sheikha Latifa bint Mohammed al-Maktoum, the daughter of Dubai’s ruler, was at home and living with her family. The UAE foreign ministry said that on 15th December 2018, Mary Robinson, former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and former President of Ireland, had met with Her Highness Sheikha Latifa in Dubai.
(Reuters, 12/24/18)
2018 Dec 25, In Afghanistan a suicide bomber disguised as a beggar killed six people in a wealthy subdivision of the southern city of Kandahar. Aslam Baloch, one of the leaders of the Baluch Liberation Army, and five of his associates were killed in the blast. The separatist leader was blamed for masterminding last month's attack on a Chinese Consulate in Pakistan.
(AP, 12/26/18)(AP, 12/27/18)
2018 Dec 25, Bangladesh opposition parties said police have arrested more than 10,500 opposition activists in a crackdown ahead of elections this week.
(AFP, 12/25/18)
2018 Dec 25, Tensions soared in the Serb-run part of Bosnia after police detained Davor Dragicevic, a man whose quest for truth in the March death of his son has sparked months of anti-government protests. Several other people also were detained, including Dragicevic's ex-wife and some opposition politicians. Dragicevic and a regional parliamentary deputy who was also detained, were released the next day.
(AP, 12/25/18)(Reuters, 12/26/18)
2018 Dec 25, In southeastern China eight people were killed after a hijacker with a knife drove a bus into pedestrians in Longyan city, Fujian province. 22 others were reported injured. The attacker was captured.
(AP, 12/26/18)
2018 Dec 25, In China a blast at a chemical plant in northwestern Xinjiang autonomous region killed three people and severely injured six.
(Reuters, 12/25/18)
2018 Dec 25, In CongoDRC at least 27 people were dead after a bus and a truck collided overnight about 200 km southwest of Kinshasa.
(AP, 12/25/18)
2018 Dec 25, Opposition candidates in this weekend's presidential election in Democratic Republic of Congo demanded that the electoral board deactivate SIM cards in voting machines to prevent the electronic transmission of results.
(Reuters, 12/25/18)
2018 Dec 25, In India many Delhi residents were forced to spend Christmas indoors as air quality remained at "severe to emergency" levels for a fourth day, in the capital's worst smog crisis this year.
(Reuters, 12/25/18)
2018 Dec 25, In India a woman (42) attacked her alleged stalker (25) and cut off his genitals before rushing him to a Mumbai hospital to save his life. The woman and her two alleged acquaintances were taken into police custody as investigations continued.
(Reuters, 12/27/18)
2018 Dec 25, Iran's President Hassan Rouhani presented a $47 billion state budget with increased spending on lower income groups, saying US sanctions would affect people's lives and economic growth but not bring the government to its knees.
(Reuters, 12/25/18)
2018 Dec 25, In Iran a bus overturned at Azad University in Tehran, killing seven students and injuring 28.
(AP, 12/25/18)
2018 Dec 25, In Iraq at least two people were killed and 11 wounded by a car bomb in the northern city of Tal Afar. Islamic State soon claimed responsibility for the attack.
(Reuters, 12/25/18)
2018 Dec 25, Israel's Parliament late today unanimously approved a law to permit exports of medical marijuana, allowing Israel to tap the lucrative global market. The law empowers police to supervise licensing and still needed Cabinet approval.
(AP, 12/26/18)
2018 Dec 25, In Israel Palestinian PM Rami Hamdallah's convoy was hit with a number of stones as he was returning home after attending Christmas Eve mass in Bethlehem.
(AFP, 1/3/19)
2018 Dec 25, In northwest Italy two 57-year-old French tourists were found dead of carbon monoxide poisoning in a two-room house in Monterosso Grana, a small mountain town near Cuneo.
(AP, 12/25/18)
2018 Dec 25, In Italy Marcello Bruzzese (51), the brother of a turncoat from an 'ndrangheta crime clan family, was gunned down by two masked attackers near his home in the Adriatic beach town of Pesaro.
(AP, 12/26/18)
2018 Dec 25, In Japan Nissan Motor Co. executive Greg Kelly was released from detention after being granted bail over the alleged underreporting of his boss Carlos Ghosn's pay.
(AP, 12/25/18)
2018 Dec 25, In Libya suicide attackers stormed the foreign ministry in Tripoli, killing at least three people including a senior civil servant. The Islamic State jihadist group (IS) was accused of responsibility.
(AFP, 12/25/18)
2018 Dec 25, New Zealand athlete William "Bill" Baillie (84), who in 1963 set world records in the now obscure 20,000-meter and one-hour running events, died.
(AP, 12/27/18)
2018 Dec 25, In Pakistan assailants killed former lawmaker Ali Raza Abidi outside his home in Karachi.
(AP, 12/28/18)
2018 Dec 25, In Poland six people died late today in a fire at a small wooden building sometimes used by the homeless in an outlying district of Warsaw.
(AP, 12/26/18)
2018 Dec 25, In Sudan police used tear gas and fired in the air to disperse thousands of protesters attempting to march on the presidential palace to demand that Pres. Omar Bashir step down. at least 22 protesters were wounded during protests. 22 protesters were reported killed over the weekend in anti-government demonstrations.
(AP, 12/25/18)(AP, 12/26/18)
2018 Dec 25, Syrian air defenses reportedly destroyed 14 of 16 Israeli missiles launched against unspecified targets near Damascus.
(Reuters, 12/26/18)
2018 Dec 25, The US-led coalition said its attacks in Syria during the week of Dec. 16-22, including air strikes and "coordinated fires," had destroyed logistics facilities and staging areas used by Islamic State.
(Reuters, 12/25/18)
2018 Dec 25, Thailand's legislature agreed to amend the country's drug law to allow the licensed medical use of marijuana, as well as kratom, a locally grown plant traditionally used as a stimulant and painkiller. The changes become law when published in the Royal Gazette.
(AP, 12/25/18)
2018 Dec 25, In northern Thailand two South Korean tourists died after the golf cart they were riding fell into the Nan river.
(AP, 12/27/18)
2018 Dec 25, In Turkey Max Zirngast (29), an Austrian freelance writer, was released from a prison but barred from leaving the country. Zirngast was jailed in September after Turkey accused him and two others of "membership in an armed terrorist organization." On Sept. 11, 2019, Zirngast confirmed his acquittal.
(AP, 12/25/18)(AP, 9/11/19)
2018 Dec 26, Pres. Donald Trump slipped into Iraq to greet US service members and show that his norm-busting presidency would hew at least to this tradition. He did not meet Iraqi officials while there but spoke on the phone with PM Adel Abdul-Mahdi.
(AP, 12/27/18)
2018 Dec 26, US Customs and Border Protection ordered medical checks on every child in its custody after Agustin Gomez (8) of Guatemala died a day earlier, marking the second death of an immigrant child in the agency's care this month.
(AP, 12/26/18)
2018 Dec 26, The Dow Jones industrial average jumped more than 1,000 points, its biggest point gain ever, as Wall Street had its best day in 10 years.
(SFC, 12/27/18, p.D1)
2018 Dec 26, In central California police Cpl. Ronil Singh (33) was shot and killed a few minutes after radioing in that he was pulling over a gray pickup truck that had no license plate in Newman. Gustavo Perez Arriaga was captured in Bakersfield on Dec. 28 after a manhunt following Singh's killing. Seven other people were soon arrested on suspicion of helping Perez Arriaga, including his girlfriend and two of his brothers. On Nov. 5, 2020, Paulo Virgen Mendoza, a Mexican immigrant in the country illegally, admitted to shooting Singh.
(AP, 12/27/18)(AP, 12/29/18)(AP, 11/5/20)
2018 Dec 26, Al Hinkle (b.1926), an original member of the Beat Generation, died in Los Gatos, Ca. He was a friend of Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassidy and accompanied them on their 1949 cross-country road trip that became the focus of Kerouac's "On the Road" (1957).
(SSFC, 12/30/18, DB p.50)
2018 Dec 26, Nancy Grace Roman (b.1925), NASA's first chief of astronomy, died in Germantown, Maryland. She took part in the development of the cosmic Background Explorer, launched in 1989, and oversaw the early development of the Hubble Space Telescope, launched in 1990.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Roman)(SFC, 1/2/19, p.C5)
2018 Dec 26, Colin O'Brady (33) of Portland, Oregon, completed a 932-mile trek across Antarctica to become the first prson to traverse the continent without any assistance.
(SFC, 12/28/18, p.A4)
2018 Dec 26, Albania's Defense Ministry said it has extended for a year its navy's participation in the search-and-rescue operations of the EU border control force Frontex.
(AP, 12/26/18)
2018 Dec 26, Albania's government said it has fulfilled the demands of public university students, who boycotted classes for more than two weeks this month.
(AP, 12/26/18)
2018 Dec 26, Argentine police said an Argentine woman kidnapped 32 years ago as a teenager has been found alive and well in Bolivia following a joint investigation between the two countries. Police liberated the woman (45) and her son.
(AFP, 12/26/18)
2018 Dec 26, Sister Wendy Beckett (b.1930), a nun who became a BBC art critic star (1991-1996), died in East Harling, England. Her work included 15 books on art and religion and another ten of poetry and meditations.
(SFC, 12/27/18, p.C4)
2018 Dec 26, In Burkina Faso gunmen late today killed 10 gendarmes in Loroni village near the Malian border.
(Reuters, 12/28/18)
2018 Dec 26, Chinese police detained Qiu Zhanxuan, a well-known Marxist, at Peking University as he went to attend a memorial for the 125th anniversary of Mao Zedong's birthday that he organized.
(AP, 12/26/18)
2018 Dec 26, CongoDRC's national electoral commission (CENI) said an Ebola outbreak - the second-worst in history - was behind the postponement of voting until March in the eastern cities of Beni and Butembo and surrounding areas. It cited ethnic violence for the same delay in the western city of Yumbi.
(Reuters, 12/26/18)
2018 Dec 26, Eritrea partially closed two border crossings with Ethiopia that opened this year after the former East African rivals made peace and restored relations. Only Ethiopians faced the restrictions.
(AP, 12/28/18)
2018 Dec 26, A legal source said French judges have dropped their long-running investigation into the deadly 1994 attack on former Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana, which sparked the country's genocide.
(AFP, 12/26/18)
2018 Dec 26, Sea-Watch 3, a private rescue boat operated by a German humanitarian group, continued its appeal for a safe port. It has tweeted that 33 migrants were rescued from waters off Libya on Dec. 22.
(AP, 12/26/18)
2018 Dec 26, Israel's army said it had located a fifth Hezbollah attack tunnel crossing into its territory from Lebanon and destroyed it with explosives.
(AFP, 12/26/18)
2018 Dec 26, It was reported that Israeli authorities have advanced plans for nearly 2,200 settlement homes in the occupied West Bank.
(AFP, 12/26/18)
2018 Dec 26, An Israeli official confirmed overnight attacks on several targets in Syria involved in Iranian arms transfers to the Hezbollah militant group.
(SFC, 12/27/18, p.A2)
2018 Dec 26, Japan announced that it is leaving the International Whaling Commission to resume commercial hunts for the animals for the first time in 30 years, but said it would no longer go to the Antarctic for its much-criticized annual killings.
(AP, 12/26/18)
2018 Dec 26, In Nigeria militants attacked a military base late today in Baga, in eastern Borno state. 10 people were killed and clashes were continued as the militants tried to capture the town. The attacks in the Baga-Kawa area caused more than 6,357 people to flee east into Chad and some 20,000 others to flee to safety within Nigeria.
(Reuters, 12/28/18)(Reuters, 1/18/19)
2018 Dec 26, North and South Korea broke ground on an ambitious project to modernize North Korean railways and roads and connect them with the South, but without progress in nuclear negotiations, regular trains won't be crossing the border anytime soon.
(AP, 12/26/18)
2018 Dec 26, Pakistani journalists, who have taken on military dictators and been beaten and jailed in the pursuit of a free press, said they now face a form of censorship that is more subtle but no less chilling, one spearheaded by the security services.
(AP, 12/26/18)
2018 Dec 26, It was reported that Qatar has airlifted 24 armored vehicles to Mali, in a move it said would help the countries of the African Sahel region combat terrorism.
(Reuters, 12/26/18)
2018 Dec 26, The Russian government approved a draft bill allowing the country to produce crops used in medicinal narcotics, saying this would reduce its dependence on foreign states that have imposed sanctions against it.
(Reuters, 12/26/18)
2018 Dec 26, Russian blogger Alexander Valov, critical of the authorities in Sochi, was sentenced to six years in prison. He was charged earlier this year with extorting money from federal lawmaker Yuri Napso.
(Reuters, 12/26/18)
2018 Dec 26, Russia's Kommersant newspaper reported that a Russian court has sentenced Igor Kiyashko, a Ukrainian lawyer, to eight years in a maximum security prison for espionage and trying to illegally obtain and export military goods.
(Reuters, 12/26/18)
2018 Dec 26, A magnitude 4.8 earthquake triggered by Mount Etna's eruption jolted eastern Sicily before dawn, injuring at least 10 people.
(Reuters, 12/26/18)
2018 Dec 26, In northern Syria torrential rains washed away hundreds of tents in camps sheltering displaced Syrians as residents pleaded for help.
(AFP, 12/28/18)
2018 Dec 26, Tunisian authorities said 18 people have been arrested during protests that erupted after the death of a journalist who set himself on fire to protest economic problems in the North African nation.
(AP, 12/26/18)
2018 Dec 26, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko announced an end to the 30-day martial law imposed after Russia seized Ukrainian ships in the Black Sea.
(AP, 12/26/18)
2018 Dec 27, In Brazil Gen. Walter Souza Braga Netto, the man in charge of military intervention into Rio de Janeiro's public security, called the operation an unmitigated success with all its objectives reached. The operation officially ends Dec. 31.
(AP, 12/27/18)
2018 Dec 27, China's former deputy intelligence chief was sentenced to life in prison for corruption. Ma Jian was found guilty of crimes including accepting bribes and insider trading. He was also ordered to pay more than 50 million yuan ($7.26 million) in penalties.
(AP, 12/27/18)
2018 Dec 27, Security forces in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo fired live rounds and tear gas to scatter demonstrators who burned tires and attacked Ebola centers in protest at their exclusion from the presidential election. 24 patients fled an Ebola treatment center in Beni when it came under attack by people protesting the cancellation of Sunday's presidential election in the eastern city.
(Reuters, 12/27/18)
2018 Dec 27, Egyptian authorities released Amal Fathy, a prominent activist who had criticized the government and decried sexual harassment, after more than seven months of detention.
(AP, 12/27/18)
2018 Dec 27, In Egypt a German man (23) was detained at Cairo airport. On Jan. 7 German news agency dpa reported that he still had not been heard from.
(AP, 1/7/19)
2018 Dec 27, French conglomerate Vinci said it had bought control of Gatwick airport, Britain's second-busiest, for nearly three billion pounds only months before Brexit.
(AFP, 12/27/18)
2018 Dec 27, German authorities said customs officials in the Hamburg area destroyed nine tons of drugs last week with an estimated total street value of about 520 million euros ($592 million).
(AP, 12/27/18)
2018 Dec 27, In southern Iceland an SUV carrying seven members of a British family plunged off a high bridge, killing three people and critically injuring four others.
(AP, 12/27/18)
2018 Dec 27, India's lower house of Parliament approved a bill to implement the Supreme Court's ruling that found the Muslim practice of instant divorce was unconstitutional.
(AP, 12/27/18)
2018 Dec 27, Iraqi lawmakers demanded US forces leave the country in the wake of a surprise visit by President Donald Trump that politicians denounced as arrogant and a violation of Iraqi sovereignty.
(AP, 12/27/18)
2018 Dec 27, Former Israeli armed forces chief Benny Gantz, who opinion polls show poses the toughest challenge to PM Benjamin Netanyahu's bid for reelection next year, formally established the Israel Resilience Party.
(Reuters, 12/27/18)
2018 Dec 27, In southern Libya a Chadian armed group attacked a military camp of forces loyal to General Khalifa Haftar, killing one and injuring 13 others near Traghen, about 400 km north of the border with Chad.
(Reuters, 12/27/18)
2018 Dec 27, The Madagascar electoral commission said former president Andry Rajoelina (44) has beaten his rival and predecessor Marc Ravalomanana in the Dec. 19 election beset by allegations of fraud from both sides. Results showed that Rajoelina had won 55.66 percent of the vote against 44.34 percent for Ravalomanana.
(AFP, 12/27/18)(AFP, 12/29/18)
2018 Dec 27, In Mongolia some 25 thousand people took to the streets to protest against corruption in the top echelons of politics, braving temperatures that dropped below minus 20 degrees Celsius in the capital, Ulaanbaatar.
(Reuters, 12/27/18)
2018 Dec 27, In southwestern Niger a French air raid mounted by French and Nigerian fighters and Tiger attack helicopters struck" jihadists gathered near Tongo Tongo. Some 15 suspected jihadists were reported killed.
(AFP, 12/30/18)
2018 Dec 27, Pakistan announced a travel ban on former President Asif Ali Zardari and 171 other individuals while authorities complete an investigation into alleged money laundering.
(AP, 12/27/18)
2018 Dec 27, Saudi Arabia's King Salman ordered a sweeping government reshuffle, replacing key security and political figures including the foreign minister, as the kingdom grapples with the international fallout over critic Jamal Khashoggi's murder.
(AFP, 12/27/18)
2018 Dec 27, A network of Sudanese journalists went on strike in the wake of deadly protests sparked by a hike in bread prices, while opposition groups called for further rallies.
(AFP, 12/27/18)
2018 Dec 27, The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 11,500 people have fled the Islamic State group's last stronghold in eastern Syria since Kurdish-led forces broke IS defenses and took the jihadists' main hub of Hajin two weeks ago.
(AFP, 12/27/18)
2018 Dec 27, Thousands of Taiwanese, taking a page from France's yellow vest movement, protested for the third time in a week to demand lower taxes and the fair handling of tax disputes.
(AP, 12/27/18)
2018 Dec 27, It was reported that Thailand investigators have found Gen. Prawit Wongsuwan, the deputy prime minister, innocent of failing to declare assets a year after he was discovered to have several luxury watches that would have been out of reach of his government salary.
(AP, 12/27/18)
2018 Dec 27, In Tunisia protesters clashed with police for a third consecutive night in six different towns including Kasserine, where journalist Abderrazak Zorgui set himself ablaze earlier this week.
(AP, 12/27/18)
2018 Dec 27, Turkey detained Adnan Sutcu (56) of Germany shortly after his arrival in Ankara to attend his mother's funeral. He was barred from leaving Turkey after the authorities accused him of supporting a terrorist organization on social media.
(Reuters, 12/31/18)
2018 Dec 27, The United Arab Emirates reopened its embassy in Damascus, the latest sign of efforts to bring the Syrian government back into the Arab fold.
(AFP, 12/27/18)
2018 Dec 27, In Venezuela a magnitude 5.5 earthquake jolted people from their sleep early today, forcing residents in the capital to evacuate buildings in their pajamas before sunrise. There were no immediate reports of casualties.
(AP, 12/27/18)
2018 Dec 28, Pres. Donald Trump threatened to close the southern US border and cut off aid to Central America if Congress refuses to fund a border wall.
(SFC, 12/29/18, p.A5)
2018 Dec 28, Wells Fargo agreed to pay $575 million to resolve investigations by all 50 US states and Washington, DC, related to unauthorized accounts in customers' names. More than a quarter of the settlement will go to the state of California.
(SFC, 12/29/18, p.D1)
2018 Dec 28, Afghanistan's attorney general slapped a travel ban on five top football officials, hours after graphic details emerged of alleged sexual and physical abuse against members of the women's national team.
(AFP, 12/28/18)
2018 Dec 28, Albania's PM Edi Rama shuffled his Cabinet in response to a students' protest and complaints of corruption and inefficiency from the opposition.
(AP, 12/28/18)
2018 Dec 28, Bangladesh's telecoms regulator ordered mobile operators to shut down high-speed mobile internet services until midnight Dec 29, the day of a national election, to prevent rumors and propaganda surrounding the vote.
(Reuters, 12/29/18)
2018 Dec 28, In Brazil Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu hailed what he said would be a "new era" in ties with "great power" Brazil ahead of meeting with the Latin America's country's incoming far-right leader, Jair Bolsonaro.
(AFP, 12/28/18)
2018 Dec 28, In Britain three men were found guilty of murdering five people in an explosion as part of a plot to claim over 300,000 pounds ($380,000) from an insurance policy. Arkan Ali, Hawkar Hassan and Aram Kurd were convicted in Leicester Crown Court for an arson attack in February.
(AP, 12/28/18)
2018 Dec 28, British music retailer HMV (His Master's Voice), which was launched by English composer Edward Elgar in 1921 and helped propel the Beatles to fame, collapsed into administration as consumers switch to digital streaming in droves.
(AFP, 12/28/18)
2018 Dec 28, A Canadian teacher detained in China over a problem with her work permit returned home. Albertan Sarah McIver was arrested earlier this month for issues related to her teaching job.
(AP, 12/29/18)
2018 Dec 28, Chinese police detained a group of students who protested against a crackdown on the Peking University Marxist Society.
(Reuters, 12/28/18)
2018 Dec 28, In CongoDRC protests flared for a second straight day in eastern cities in response to the decision to cancel voting in Beni and Butembo in the east and Yumbi in the west. New polling showed opposition candidate Martin Fayulu favored to win the Dec. 30 elections.
(AP, 12/28/18)
2018 Dec 28, It was reported that cash-strapped Cuba plans fresh austerity measures and will pressure the sluggish bureaucracy to tighten its belt and cut red tape to address weak growth, falling export earnings and rising debt.
(Reuters, 12/28/18)
2018 Dec 28, Ecuador's government banned most fireworks in the Galapagos archipelago due to damage caused to the islands' wildlife from the sounds of explosions, including heart problems and nervous stress.
(AP, 12/28/18)
2018 Dec 28, In Egypt a roadside bomb hit a tourist bus near the Giza Pyramids, killing three Vietnamese and their Egyptian guide.
(AP, 12/29/18)
2018 Dec 28, In India a top official at Purvanchal University urged his students to "murder" fellow students if confronted instead of complaining to him, amid a wave of violence being reported from across Uttar Pradesh where the school is based.
(Reuters, 12/30/18)
2018 Dec 28, It was reported that steep price drops in India in recent weeks for onions and potatoes have badly hit the rural economy in large states.
(Reuters, 12/28/18)
2018 Dec 28, Indonesia's disaster agency said that 426 people died in the Dec. 22 Sunda Strait tsunami. That was slightly lower than previously announced due to some victims being recorded twice. It said 23 are missing and more than 40,000 displaced.
(AP, 12/28/18)
2018 Dec 28, Israeli fire killed Karam Fayyad (26) during protests on the border east of the city of Khan Yunis. Witnesses said Fayyad had Down syndrome. An Israeli aircraft hit a Hamas position in the Gaza Strip late today in response to the first fire from the territory since a November flare-up.
(AFP, 12/29/18)(SFC, 12/29/18, p.A2)
2018 Dec 28, Amos Oz (b.1939), celebrated Israeli novelist and passionate peace advocate, died of cancer. His stirring memoir "A Tale of Love and Darkness" (2002) became a worldwide bestseller.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amos_Oz)(AFP, 12/28/18)
2018 Dec 28, Mexican authorities confirmed the kidnap-murder of a medical student who was the daughter of a Cuernavaca university administrator. The woman was reported missing Dec. 13 and her body was later discovered in Yautepec. Two suspects were reported detained in Cuernavaca.
(AP, 12/29/18)
2018 Dec 28, In Mexico 7 children died in a house fire in the poor Iztapalapa neighborhood of Mexico City.
(AP, 12/29/18)
2018 Dec 28, Shehu Shagari (93), Nigeria's second president (1978-1983), died. His civilian tenure was sandwiched between two military rulers in an era rocked by coups.
(AP, 12/29/18)
2018 Dec 28, Pakistan's army chief, Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa, approved death sentences for 22 militants convicted by military courts of involvement in attacks that killed 176 security forces and civilians in recent years.
(AP, 12/28/18)
2018 Dec 28, Russia's FSB state security service detained an American citizen suspected of spying in Moscow. This was only announced on Dec. 31. The English-language service of TASS news agency then named him as Paul Whelan (48). The Canadian-born former US Marine with triple UK, US and Irish citizenship, was charged with espionage. His lawyer Vladimir Zherebenkov later said Whelan was handed a USB drive containing state secrets but he had thought it was information about Russian culture. Whelan denied the charge. If found guilty he could face up to 20 years in jail.
(AP, 12/28/18)(AFP, 12/28/18)(Reuters, 5/24/19)
2018 Dec 28, Syrian troops deployed in support of Kurdish forces around Manbij, a strategic northern city, in a shift of alliances hastened by last week's announcement of a US military withdrawal. The deployment creates a regime buffer arching across northern Syria that fully separates the Turkish army and its proxies from the Kurds.
(AFP, 12/28/18)
2018 Dec 28, In southern Thailand four people in Narathiwat were wounded by one of several bombs suspected of being planted by the Muslim insurgents. There was a shootout between security forces and suspected insurgents who attacked a defense outpost at a small rural village.
(AP, 12/29/18)
2018 Dec 28, Venezuela launched a complaint at the World Trade Organization to challenge US sanctions, saying that a ban on travel by blacklisted individuals and trade restrictions break WTO rules.
(Reuters, 1/8/19)
2018 Dec 29, The United States detained Russian citizen Dmitry Makarenko (b.1979) on the Northern Mariana Islands, a US commonwealth in the Pacific Ocean. He was soon transferred to Florida. Makarenko was accused in June 2017 by federal prosecutors of conspiring with another man, Vladimir Nevidomy, to export defense articles including night-vision scopes from the United States to Russia without US approval. Court papers showed Nevidomy pleaded guilty in the case in June 2018 and was sentenced to 26 months in prison with three years of supervised release.
(Reuters, 1/5/19)
2018 Dec 29, In Arizona an incapacitated woman (29) with significant intellectual disabilities at the Hacienda Health-Care facility gave birth following a sexual assault. Nathan Sutherland, a nurse whose DNA police said matches a sample from the baby, later pleaded not guilty to charges of rape.
(SFC, 1/14/19, p.A4)(SFC, 1/21/19, p.A4)(SSFC, 2/10/19, p.A8)
2018 Dec 29, In Missouri police in St. Louis identified Richard Darren Emery (46) as the shooter in the overnight killing of his girlfriend (39), her two children and her mother.
(SSFC, 12/30/18, p.A9)
2018 Dec 29, In Nevada a woman skipped out on a $35 manicure and used a stolen car to run over and kill manicurist Ngoc Nguyen (51) in Las Vegas. Krystal Whipple (21) was arrested on Jan. 11, 2019, in Glendale, Arizona, by a team of fugitive hunters. In 2020 Whipple pleaded guilty and faced up to 25 years in prison.
(SFC, 1/12/19, p.A6)(SFC, 12/8/20, p.A5)
2018 Dec 29, Australia said it stripped Neil Prakash, a suspected militant held in Turkey, of citizenship because he fought for the Islamic State group. He became the 12th person to be stripped of Australian citizenship because of militant links, based on a 2007 law.
(AP, 12/29/18)
2018 Dec 29, Brazil's far-right President-elect Jair Bolsonaro said he plans to issue a decree allowing all Brazilians without criminal records to own firearms, welcome news to many core supporters who want him to loosen Brazil's strict gun laws.
(Reuters, 12/29/18)
2018 Dec 29, A Chinese court ordered a retrial of a Canadian citizen on drug smuggling charges after prosecutors said his sentence of 15 years was too light. Robert Lloyd Schellenberg had lodged an appeal after being handed a 15 year sentence on Nov. 20 in the northeastern city of Dalian.
(Reuters, 12/29/18)
(AP, 12/29/18)
2018 Dec 29, Colombian Foreign Minister Carlos Holmes Trujillo said in a video message that there was intelligence indicating "credible" plans to target the right-wing Pres. Ivan Duque, who took office in August. He said three Venezuelans were arrested in recent days with "weapons of war".
(Reuters, 12/30/18)
2018 Dec 29, Egypt's Interior Ministry said security forces have killed 40 suspected militants in three separate incidents in North Sinai and Giza.
(Reuters, 12/29/18)
2018 Dec 29, In France yellow vest protesters marched on the headquarters of leading broadcasters, as small groups turned out in Paris and around the country despite waning momentum for their movement. Police fired tear gas at the demonstrators in Paris.
(AP, 12/29/18)(AFP, 12/29/18)
2018 Dec 29, In India a police officer was stoned to death during violent protests in Ghazipur, Uttar Pradesh state.
(Reuters, 12/30/18)
2018 Dec 29, In Italy the city officials of Venice passed a budget bill that will allow charging all visitors to the city a new tax to help cover the costs of keeping the tourist-thronged historic city clean and safe.
(AFP, 12/31/18)
2018 Dec 29, In Israel Education Minister Naftali Bennett and Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked announced that they are forming a new party to run in April elections, hoping to present a hard-line alternative to PM Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud Party.
(AP, 12/30/18)
2018 Dec 29, In Kashmir anti-India protests and clashes erupted after a gunbattle between militants and government forces killed four rebels in the Pulwama area.
(AP, 12/29/18)
2018 Dec 29, Lebanon's finance minister said the heavily indebted country is in a state of economic crisis and warned it faces becoming a financial crisis, as politicians struggle to form a new government.
(Reuters, 12/30/18)
2018 Dec 29, In Madagascar some two thousand opposition supporters took to the streets in Antananarivo to protest against the victory of ex-president Andry Rajoelina in last week's elections.
(AP, 12/29/18)
2018 Dec 29, The Mexican military assumed control of policing in three municipalities of the central state of Morelos (Cuernavaca, Jiutepec and Yautepec), and conducted a review of their firearms, munitions, personnel and equipment.
(AP, 12/29/18)
2018 Dec 29, Dutch police on horseback broke up a "Yellow Vest" protest in The Hague and arrested eight people after the demonstration turned violent.
(AP, 12/29/18)
2018 Dec 29, In the southern Philippines a magnitude 7.2 undersea earthquake struck off Davao Oriental province, prompting people to scramble out of shopping malls and buildings and authorities to warn villagers to stay away from beaches in case of a tsunami. The death toll from the storm eventually rose to 126. Authorities said landslides caused by torrential rain were the top cause.
(AP, 12/29/18)(AFP, 1/6/19)
2018 Dec 29, In Serbia thousands of people protested for a fourth consecutive week over what they say has been a stifling of democratic freedoms under President Aleksandar Vucic.
(AP, 12/29/18)
2018 Dec 29 South Africa arrested Manuel Chang, the former Mozambican finance minister, at the Johannesburg airport. A US indictment alleged that Chang and others violated US anti-corruption laws in a $2 billion loan scandal that plunged Mozambique into financial crisis.
(AP, 1/9/19)
2018 Dec 29, In southern Thailand violence presumed to have been carried out by Muslim separatists continued for the fourth day in a row, with three paramilitary soldiers wounded and a female civilian shot dead in Pattani province.
(AP, 12/29/18)
2018 Dec 29, Yemen's Houthi forces said they have started to redeploy overnight from the port of the Red Sea city of Hodeidah as part of a UN-sponsored peace agreement signed in Sweden earlier this month. The government denied this, saying it was a ploy by the rebels to maintain control. Under the deal, international monitors are to be deployed in Hodeidah and a Redeployment Coordination Committee (RCC) including both sides, chaired by Cammaert, will oversee implementation.
(Reuters, 12/29/18)(AP, 12/30/18)
2018 Dec 30, A senior US Republican senator said Pres. Donald Trump had promised to stay in Syria to finish the job of defeating the Islamic State group, also known as ISIS.
(AFP, 12/31/18)
2018 Dec 30, In North Carolina a lion killed Alexandra Black (22) after it got loose from a locked space at a wildlife conservatory in Burlington. The lion was killed after attempts to tranquilize it failed.
(SFC, 12/31/18, p.A5)
2018 Dec 30, In Texas a driver fired several shots into a car carrying a family, killing Jazmine Barnes (7) and wounding the child's mother in the Houston area. A tip implicated two black men in a case of mistaken identity. Suspect Eric Black Jr. was arrested on Jan. 5 during a traffic stop. Black and Larry Woodruffe (24) were soon charged with capital murder.
(SFC, 1/2/19, p.A4)(SFC, 1/8/19, p.A6)(SFC, 1/9/19, p.A6)
2018 Dec 30, Bangladesh voters went to the polls to decide whether to give PM Sheikh Hasina a third consecutive term, in an election seen as a referendum on what critics call Hasina's increasingly authoritarian tendencies. Opposition leader Kamal Hossain said a few hours after voting ended that about 100 candidates from the alliance had withdrawn from their races during the day amid allegations of vote rigging. Hasina's ruling alliance won 288 out of 300 parliamentary seats in the general election. Transparency International later said its investigation into the Bangladesh election found irregularities at 47 of the 50 constituencies surveyed, including fake votes, ballot stuffing, and voters and opposition polling agents barred from entering polling centers.
(AP, 12/30/18)(Reuters, 12/30/18)(AP, 12/31/18)(Reuters, 1/24/19)
2018 Dec 30, CongoDRC struggled with hundreds of reports of malfunctioning voting machines, missing voters' lists, vote-buying and other problems. The election in Beni ended on time, and the vote-counting began. Officially, voting in Beni and Butembo was to take place in March, months after Congo inaugurates its new president in mid-January.
(AP, 12/30/18)
2018 Dec 30, In Germany an 18-year-old driver trying to evade a highway patrol crashed into a stationary vehicle near Heppenheim, killing a woman (39) and injuring her son (10).
(AP, 12/31/18)
2018 Dec 30, In western Germany Edgar Hilsenrath (92), a German-Jewish writer whose fictional account of the Holocaust from the perspective of a Nazi perpetrator became a best-seller, died. His first novel, "Night," recounting the horrors of trying to survive in a Jewish ghetto, was published in 1954. His 1971 novel "The Nazi and the Barber," a grotesque story about an SS member who pretends to be Jewish after the war to escape prosecution, sold millions of copies worldwide.
(AP, 1/1/19)
2018 Dec 30, Hundreds of Iranian students held protests for a second day, calling for university officials to resign over the Dec. 25 bus crash that killed 10.
(AFP, 12/30/18)
2018 Dec 30, In Mexico Maria Asuncion Torres Cruz, an alderwoman-elect, was shot and killed outside her home in Mazatepec, Morelos stae, by a hooded man.
(SFC, 1/1/18, p.A2)
2018 Dec 30, Five Nigerien and five Nigerian" troops and 11 enemy fighters were killed over the last 24 hours in an operation launched against gangs in the Maradi region.
(AFP, 12/31/18)
2018 Dec 30, Philippine authorities said least 22 people died from a storm that swept through the central islands at the weekend, with rescue operations under way in flood-inundated communities.
(AFP, 12/30/18)
2018 Dec 30, Russia's Defence Ministry said it will deploy in 2019 the S-350 Vityaz new generation short-to-mid range surface-to-air defence missile complex, in a long-planned move to replace its ageing S-300 system.
(Reuters, 12/30/18)
2018 Dec 30, In Sudan an umbrella of independent professional unions called on people to march on the presidential palace in Khartoum, to demand that autocratic President Omar Bashir step down. Bashir told police to abstain from using excessive force against anti-government demonstrators as the UN called for a probe into deaths during the violent protests. At least 19 people have been killed since December 19.
(AP, 12/30/18)(AFP, 12/30/18)
2018 Dec 30, Syria's state news agency said President Bashar Assad has authorized Iraqi forces to attack the Islamic State group inside Syria without waiting for permission from authorities in Damascus.
(AP, 12/30/18)
2018 Dec 31, The International Federation of Journalists said in an annual report that 94 journalists and media workers died in targeted killings, bomb attacks and conflict crossfire this year, 12 more than in 2017.
(AP, 12/31/18)
2018 Dec 31, In Ohio Devaughn Gibson (23), DelVaunte Johnson (19) and Toshon Banks (21) were all shot dead after a row outside an Airbnb rental in Cleveland. On August 29, 2019, Tevin Biles-Thomas, the brother of Olympic gold medalist Simone Biles, was arrested in Georgia and charged with murder in the shooting.
(The Independent, 8/30/19)(SFC, 8/31/19, p.A7)
2018 Dec 31, Afghan special forces launched a new offensive against the Islamic State group in eastern Nangarhar province, killing 27 militants. Meanwhile, Taliban attacks in the north killed 15 members of the country's security forces.
(AP, 1/1/19)
2018 Dec 31, Bahraini prominent activist Nabeel Rajab lost his appeal and was handed down a five-year jail term. He had been jailed for criticizing his country's rulers on social media.
(AFP, 12/31/18)
2018 Dec 31, The mayor of the northwestern Bosnian town of Banja Luka canceled New Year celebrations for security reasons after protesters demanding the truth about a student's death prevented a public concert taking place the previous evening.
(Reuters, 12/31/18)
2018 Dec 31, British police arrested 39 people early today on suspicion of attempted murder following a stabbing in west London.
(AP, 12/31/18)
2018 Dec 31, In Britain a triple stabbing at a Manchester railway station on New Year's Eve injured three people. It was soon treated as "a terrorist investigation." Counter-terrorism police arrested a 25-year-old man.
(AFP, 1/1/19)
2018 Dec 31, Burkina Faso said it is declaring a state of emergency in provinces grappling with jihadist violence. Gunmen on motorbikes attacked the village of Yirgou in Barsalogo district, killing seven people, including the village chief.
(AP, 12/31/18)(Reuters, 1/4/19)
2018 Dec 31, Dubai's stock market ended 2018 with a 25-percent annual loss, the worst year since the global financial crisis a decade ago, as the real estate and tourism sectors struggled.
(AFP, 12/31/18)
2018 Dec 31, In Egypt Amal Fathi (34), arrested in May over a video she posted online in which she spoke out against sexual harassment, lost her appeal and was handed a two-year prison term, as well as a fine of 10,000 Egyptian pounds ($560).
(AFP, 12/31/18)
2018 Dec 31, A French court authorized Central Africa Republic soccer executive and alleged militia leader Patrice-Edouard Ngaissona to be handed over to the Hague war crimes tribunal.
(Reuters, 12/31/18)
2018 Dec 31, Indian troops fired at Pakistani forces across the two countries' line of control in the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir, killing a woman and wounding nine civilians.
(AP, 12/31/18)
2018 Dec 31, In Indonesia rescuers recovered six more bodies buried under tons of mud from a landslide that crashed onto a hilly village on the main island of Java, bringing the death toll to 15. At least 20 people were missing after landslides during heavy rain buried 30 houses in Sukabumi regency, West Java.
(AP, 1/1/19)(Reuters, 1/1/19)
2018 Dec 31, In Iran security forces clashed with students in Tehran in the third day of protests over a deadly bus crash, adding to officials' fears that rising public unrest could threaten national security.
(Reuters, 12/31/18)
2018 Dec 31, Iran's intelligence ministry said it had arrested 11 "economic disruptors" who misappropriated some $400 million earmarked for essential goods and smuggled the money out of the country.
(AFP, 12/31/18)
2018 Dec 31, Iraqi fighter jets struck an Islamic State position inside Syria, a day after the Syrian government authorized its neighbor to target the militants at will.
(AP, 12/31/18)
2018 Dec 31, An Israeli court sentenced Palestinian Jamil Tamimi (59) to 18 years imprisonment for stabbing to death Hannah Bladon (21), a British woman in Jerusalem on April 14, 2017. A plea bargain acknowledged that Tamimi is mentally ill.
(Reuters, 12/31/18)
2018 Dec 31, Italy's ruling 5-Star Movement expelled four parliamentarians from the party in an effort to instill discipline in its ranks. The decision means the ruling coalition, made up of 5-Star and the League, has just 167 seats in the 320-seat Senate.
(Reuters, 12/31/18)
2018 Dec 31, The self-styled Libyan National Army freed 19 people who were kidnapped by Islamic State group militants during attacks in central Libya.
(AP, 1/1/19)
2018 Dec 31, A Palestinian court sentenced Issam Akel (55) from east Jerusalem to life in prison with hard labor for trying to sell property in the Old City to an Israeli group.
(AP, 12/31/18)
2018 Dec 31, A Panamanian car carrier heading from Japan to Hawaii caught fire. Nearby merchant vessels rescued 16 crew members. Three were found dead in the water and two were missing.
(SFC, 1/3/19, p.A6)
2018 Dec 31, Peru's attorney general dismissed a team investigating the far-reaching Odebrecht corruption scandal, setting off street protests in cities across the country.
(AP, 12/31/18)
2018 Dec 31, in the southern Philippines a remotely controlled bomb, blamed by security forces on a small pro-Islamic State militant group, killed two people and wounded dozens at a shopping mall in Cotabato city.
(AP, 12/31/18)
2018 Dec 31, A Russian apartment block partially collapsed in an explosion, killing at least four people in Magnitogorsk. Russian rescue crews soon pulled two more bodies from the rubble of a collapsed apartment building, bringing the death toll to nine. By Jan. 2 the number of confirmed dead rose to 22 and 19 remained missing. The number of dead from the gas explosion jumped to 39 on Jan. 3 as rescuers finished searching for bodies in the rubble of the partially collapsed building.
(Reuters, 12/31/18)(AP, 1/1/19)(AP, 1/2/19)(AFP, 1/3/19)
2018 Dec 31, Spanish police said they have seized 3.25 metric tons (3.64 short tons) of hashish in two operations against drug trafficking across the Strait of Gibraltar. Police made 42 arrests and broke up what they believed to be one of most important drug smuggling gangs operating between Spain and North Africa.
(AP, 12/31/18)
2018 Dec 31, Sudanese riot police fired tear gas at demonstrators in Khartoum, dispersing protesters who had planned to march on the presidential palace following deadly anti-government rallies. President Omar al-Bashir ordered an investigation into "recent events" after two weeks of violent protests against his 29-year autocratic rule, as he seeks to placate popular anger over worsening economic conditions. Al-Bashir sought to defuse the anger, promising better days ahead and pledging more "transparency, effectiveness and justice in all our national institutions" in an address to the nation marking the anniversary of Sudan's independence 63 years ago.
(AFP, 12/31/18)(AP, 1/1/19)
2018 Dec 31, The UAE's Federal Supreme Court upheld a 10-year sentence for human rights activist Ahmed Mansoor (49).
(AFP, 12/31/18)
2018 Dec 31, The UN food agency threatened to suspend some aid shipments to Yemen if the Houthi rebels do not investigate and stop theft and fraud in food distribution. The suspension would affect some 3 million people.
(AP, 12/31/18)
2018 Dec 31, The Vatican spokesman and his deputy resigned over disagreements on strategy, ending a year of upheaval in the Holy See's communications structure.
(Reuters, 12/31/18)
2018 Dec 31, Zambian President Edgar Lungu sacked the army commander and his deputy, a rare firing of the top military brass in the country.
(AFP, 12/31/18)
2018 Dec, In Belgium Sanda Dia (20) died in a hospital after he was forced to drink excessive amounts of alcohol, fish oil, and made to sit in freezing water during a vicious hazing to enter the elite student fraternity called Reuzegom. In 2021 All eighteen students accused of playing a role in the death of the Black student were ordered to stand trial.
(AP, 8/5/21)
2018 Dec, Chinese police arrested five former Huawei employees over WeChat discussions of claims the company violated sanctions against Iran. This was only made public in 2020.
(Engadget, 4/26/20)
2018 Dec, In western Congo DRC at least 535 men, women and children from the Banunu community were killed in attack