Timeline 2020 January - March
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2020 Jan 1, New US federal rules came into effect requiring most types of newly sold light bulbs to emit at least 45 lumens of light for each watt of electricity they burn.
(SFC, 1/1/20, p.C2)
2020 Jan 1, New or higher registration fees went into effect for electric vehicle owners in at least eight US states. For the first time, a majority of US states will impose special fees on gas-free cars, SUVs and trucks.
(AP, 12/29/19)
2020 Jan 1, California's landmark gig-work law, AB5, took effect amid a swirl of controversy and escalating challenges.
(SFC, 1/1/20, p.A1)
2020 Jan 1, In California a new law took effect requiring new homes to have rooftop solar panels, better insulation and air filtration systems.
(SFC, 12/26/19, p.A1)
2020 Jan 1, In southern California the 131st Rose Parade in Pasadena drew hundreds of thousands of spectators on New Year's Day.
(AP, 1/1/20)
2020 Jan 1, Nick Gordon (30), the man found liable in the 2015 death of ex-partner Bobbi Kristina Brown (22), died in Florida of a suspected overdose.
(http://tinyurl.com/ttfdlob)(SFC, 1/2/20, p.A4)
2020 Jan 1, In Illinois the sale of marijuana for recreational purposes became legal to the delight of pot fans. Illinois already allowed medical marijuana, but it is now the 11th state to allow its use and sale for recreational purposes.
(AP, 1/1/20)
2020 Jan 1, In Montana two snowmobilers were killed in an avalanche in the Dinah Lake area.
(SFC, 1/3/20, p.A5)
2020 Jan 1, More than 92,000 Jewish people congregated at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey to celebrate the reading of the entire Talmud in an event called Siyum HaShas, drawing a significant security presence after recent anti-Semitic attacks in the area.
(AP, 1/1/20)
2020 Jan 1, Drug makers including Bristol-Myers Squibb Co, Gilead Sciences Inc, and Biogen Inc hiked US list prices on more than 50 drugs, bringing total New Year's Day drug price increases to more than 250.
(Reuters, 1/1/20)
2020 Jan 1, Australia deployed military ships and aircraft to help communities ravaged by apocalyptic wildfires that have left at least 17 people dead nationwide and sent thousands of residents and holidaymakers fleeing to the shoreline.
(AP, 1/1/20)
2020 Jan 1, Egyptian police raided the parents' home of journalist Mohamed el-Garhy, known for his critical views of the government, and arrested his brother.
(AP, 1/2/20)
2020 Jan 1, In western Germany a fire at the Krefeld zoo in the first minutes of 2020 killed more than 30 animals, including apes, monkeys, bats and birds. Police said the fire may have been caused by sky lanterns launched to celebrate the new year.
(AP, 1/1/20)
2020 Jan 1, Hong Kong began 2020 with a familiar sight: Tear gas, fires, vandalism and roadblocks in busy downtown areas as protesters vowed to maintain their fight for more democracy and less Chinese control. Police detained about 400 people on charges including illegal assembly and possession of offensive weapons after the huge rally.
(Bloomberg, 1/1/20)(The Guardian, 1/2/20)
2020 Jan 1, In Indonesia at least nine people were killed as monsoon rains and rising rivers submerged at least 90 neighborhoods in Jakarta. The city has been rapidly sinking due to uncontrolled extraction of groundwater.
(SFC, 1/2/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 1, Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei strongly condemned deadly US strikes on Iraq and warned his country was ready to confront threats after US President Donald Trump issued one against the Islamic republic.
(AFP, 1/1/20)
2020 Jan 1, In Iraq US troops fired tear gas and rubber bullets at protesters who descended on the US Embassy in Baghdad for a second time. Pro-Iran demonstrators left the besieged US embassy in Baghdad after the Hashed al-Shaabi paramilitary force ordered them to withdraw a day after their dramatic incursion.
(The Week, 1/1/20)(AFP, 1/1/20)
2020 Jan 1, Kim Jong Un declared he was no longer bound by his pledge to halt major missile tests and would soon debut a “new strategic weapon," adding to President Donald Trump’s foreign policy concerns in a politically charged election year.
(Bloomberg, 1/1/20)
2020 Jan 1, Tens of thousands of Palestinians took to the streets in Gaza to mark the 55th anniversary of President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah movement.
(AP, 1/1/20)
2020 Jan 1, Syrian government forces shelled a rebel-held village in the country's northwest, hitting a school and killing at least six people in Idlib province. A car bombing in the town of Suluk, controlled by Turkey-backed opposition fighters, killed three people.
(AP, 1/1/20)
2020 Jan 1, United Nations shipping agency the International Maritime Organization (IMO) banned ships from using fuels with a sulphur content above 0.5%, compared with 3.5% previously, in the biggest shake up for the oil and shipping industries in decades.
(Reuters, 1/22/20)
2020 Jan 1, Yemeni rebels released six Saudi prisoners, a rebel official said, after the kingdom two months ago released over 100 rebels, known as Houthis.
(AP, 1/1/20)
2020 Jan 2, Former Obama housing secretary Julián Castro, the only Latino in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary race, ended his campaign for the presidency.
(AP, 1/2/20)
2020 Jan 2, An unsuccessful US strike on a high-ranking Iranian military commander took place in Yemen on the same night a US drone strike killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad. The strike targeted Abdul Reza Shahla'i, a key Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force commander, at his compound in Yemen.
(ABC News, 1/10/20)
2020 Jan 2, US spiritualist author Marianne Williamson laid off her entire campaign staff amid rumors she was close to ending her campaign.
(AP, 1/3/20)
2020 Jan 2, The owners and operators of GirlsDoPorn, a San Diego-based porn website, must pay $12.7 million after a judge found them liable for fraud and breach of contract for lying to women about how their explicit videos would be distributed.
(AP, 1/3/20)
2020 Jan 2, Razer Inc said it is leading a consortium of companies that has applied for a online bank license in Singapore, joining the race to shake up the city state's financial sector. Razer Inc. is a global gaming hardware manufacturing company, as well as an esports and financial services provider established in 2005 in San Diego, California, by Singaporean entrepreneur Min-Liang Tan and Robert Krakoff.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Razer_Inc.)(AP, 1/2/20)
2020 Jan 2, Britain's Greggs launched a vegan version of its popular steak bake, aiming to capitalize on the success of the meatless sausage roll that has boosted the baker's profits and helped fuel an 80% rise in its share price last year.
(Reuters, 1/2/20)
2020 Jan 2, Thousands of tourists fled Australia's wildfire-ravaged eastern coast ahead of worsening conditions as the military started to evacuate people trapped on the shore further south. Authorities said 381 homes had been destroyed on the New South Wales southern coast this week and at least eight people have died this week in the state and neighboring Victoria.
(AP, 1/2/20)
2020 Jan 2, Austria's conservative People’s Party and the environmentalist Greens laid out their policy blueprint for their new coalition under Chancellor Sebastian Kurz (33), who’s expected to be sworn in for a second term next week.
(Bloomberg, 1/2/20)
2020 Jan 2, Denmark said it sourced 47% of its electricity consumption from wind power last year, a new record boosted by steep cost reductions and improved offshore technology.
(Reuters, 1/2/20)
2020 Jan 2, Denmark-based Novo Nordisk said it would offer free, one-time supply of insulin to people in immediate need and at risk of rationing the medication, the rising price of which has attracted fierce criticism from lawmakers and regulators.
(Reuters, 1/2/20)
2020 Jan 2, Elite Iraqi troops deployed to secure the US embassy, a day after a pro-Iran mob laid siege to it in dramatic scenes that overshadowed months of anti-government grassroots protests.
(AFP, 1/2/20)
2020 Jan 2, In Kenya four people were killed in two ambushes in which passenger buses were fired on by gunmen suspected to be Islamic extremists in the country's eastern coastal area.
(AP, 1/2/20)
2020 Jan 2, Interpol issued a wanted notice for former Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn, who jumped bail in Japan and fled to Lebanon.
(SFC, 1/3/20, p.A4)
2020 Jan 2, Authorities in eastern Poland said H5N8 bird flu is responsible for the deaths of at least 25,000 turkeys in poultry farms. Authorities planned to cull tens of thousands of birds in the Lubartow area near the Belarus and Ukraine border.
(SFC, 1/3/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 2, In Serbia a crowd targeted the Montenegro's unguarded embassy in Belgrade during a protest of a religious rights law adopted by Montenegro's parliament last month.
(SFC, 1/4/20, p.A4)
2020 Jan 2, In South Korea the Mr. Trot reality TV show, an audition show for singers who perform trot music, began airing. It was the male version of the popular Miss Trot. By the end of the year Mr. Trot was the highest rated show in cable television history of South Korea. Trot music emerged in the early 20th century and blends traditional Korean music with elements of the Japanese and popular songs of the era. A "Mr. Trot" film followed later this year.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Trot)(Econ., 11/7/20, p.35)
2020 Jan 2, A Sudanese military plane crashed in the western Darfur region, killing all 16 people on board including two women and two children.
(AP, 1/3/20)
2020 Jan 2, Taiwan's top military official, Gen. Shen Yi-ming (62), was among eight people killed in an air force helicopter crash in mountainous terrain outside Taipei. Five others survived.
(AP, 1/2/20)(SFC, 1/4/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 3, A United States airstrike early today killed Revolutionary Guards commander Qasem Soleimani (62) in Baghdad as well as Iraqi militia commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis. Five Guards were killed in total as well as five members of Iraq's Hashed al-Shaabi paramilitary force. The UN and a host of world leaders, including several in Europe, Russia, and Turkey condemned the US drone strike that killed Soleimani. Iranian leaders promised a "forceful revenge" against the US and Iraqi leaders said the strike violated its sovereignty and international laws. US media reported the strike the evening of Jan. 2.
(ABC News, 1/3/20)(AFP, 1/3/20)(Business Insider, 1/3/20)
2020 Jan 3, President Trump said the killing of Iran’s top general, carried out by a US drone strike in Baghdad, was long overdue.
(Yahoo News, 1/3/20)
2020 Jan 3, President Donald Trump delivered a typical bombastic and at times vicious stump speech this evening at a Miami megachurch for his first campaign event of 2020. Trump declared his belief that God supports his agenda and pledged to bring prayer to public schools.
(ABC News, 1/3/20)(Yahoo News, 1/3/20)(Reuters, 1/3/20)
2020 Jan 3, A US federal judge ruled that Lev Parnas, an associate of President Donald Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, can provide additional records sought by the House impeachment investigators, including the contents of his cell phone.
(ABC News, 1/3/20)
2020 Jan 3, Leaders of the United Methodist Church, the 2nd largest Protestant denomination in the US, announced a plan that would formally split the church after years of division over same-sex marriage. A new "traditionalist Methodist" denomination would be created and would continue to ban same sex marriage.
(SFC, 1/4/20, p.A6)
2020 Jan 3, In Alaska Shishaldin Volcano in the Aleutian Islands, one of Alaska’s most active volcanoes, shot a cloud of ash more than 5 miles high, triggering a warning to aviators and putting on a show that was captured in satellite imagery.
(Reuters, 1/3/20)
2020 Jan 3, In Mississippi a 3rd inmate was killed at the State Penitentiary at Parchman. He became the fifth inmate to be killed in the state since Dec. 29 in what was described as a feud between gangs.
(SFC, 1/4/20, p.A6)
2020 Jan 3, It was reported that Missouri’s two biggest cities saw a jump in homicides in 2019, and if that wasn’t bad enough, an alarming number of killers got away with it. St. Louis had 194 killings last year, eight more than in 2018. Kansas City’s homicide total rose by 10, to 148.
(AP, 1/3/20)
2020 Jan 3, In Australia one of the largest evacuations in the country's history was under way as more than 200 fires burned across the country. The navy evacuated hundreds of people from Mallacoota, cut off for days by the wild fires. Victoria premier declared a disaster across much of the eastern part of the state. Ten deaths have been confirmed in Victoria and New South
Wales with 28 reported missing in Victoria.
(SFC, 1/4/20, p.A4)
2020 Jan 3, Belarus suspended its oil exports after Moscow stopped supplying crude until contracts for this year are drawn up. A day later Belarus reached an agreement for limited oil supplies to ensure refinery operations for January.
(SFC, 1/4/20, p.A2)(SSFC, 1/5/20, p.A4)
2020 Jan 3, In Cambodia a building under construction collapsed in the coastal province of Kep, killing at least four workers. The death toll soon rose to 36.
(SFC, 1/4/20, p.A2)(SFC, 1/6/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 3, In China the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission said 44 people have been diagnosed with pneumonia, the cause of which is unknown. That’s up from 27 three days earlier. Eleven people were in serious condition.
(Bloomberg, 1/4/20)
2020 Jan 3, In France one man was killed and two other people seriously injured in a knife attack by an unidentified assailant in the Paris suburb of Villejuif. Police shot dead the assailant.
(The Telegraph, 1/3/20)
2020 Jan 3, In India more that 1,000 members of the LGBTQ community, rights groups and their supporters marched through New Delhi to protest a new citizenship law that excludes Muslims. Opposition parties say the Modi government is trying to consolidate its Hindu base.
(SFC, 1/4/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 3, In Indonesia the death toll from floods in Jakarta rose to 43 as rescuers found more bodies amid receding floodwaters.
(AP, 1/3/20)
2020 Jan 3, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei appointed Qassem Soleimani's deputy, Maj. Gen. Esmail Ghaani as the new commander of the Revolutionary Guard's Quds Force, part of the 125,000-strong Revolutionary Guard.
(AP, 1/4/20)
2020 Jan 3, American oil workers began fleeing Iraq, as fears grew of war between the United States and Iran.
(NY Times, 1/4/20)
2020 Jan 4, The White House sent Congress a formal notification under the War Powers Act of the drone strike ordered by President Donald Trump that killed Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani a day earlier. Trump warned that America would target 52 sites "important to Iran & Iranian culture" and hit them "very fast and very hard" if American personnel or assets were attacked.
(NY Times, 1/5/20)(AFP, 1/5/20)
2020 Jan 4, Demonstrators chanting "no war on Iran" rallied in Washington, New York and across the US to protest the assassination of a top Iranian military commander in a US drone strike.
(AFP, 1/4/20)
2020 Jan 4, John Baldessari (88), California artist, died in his sleep. In 2010 he was cited as "arguably America's most influential Conceptual artist".
(SFC, 1/10/20, p.C2)
2020 Jan 4, In Florida a pair of Chinese nationals attending the University of Michigan were arrested on a charge of entering a US Naval property for the purpose of photographing defense installations.
(Miami Herald, 1/7/20)
2020 Jan 4, Wildfires raged in Australia, choking the sky with smoke, forcing thousands to flee and prompting the US to send more fire personnel to help battle the blazes.
(Good Morning America, 1/4/20)
2020 Jan 4, Members of Austria's Green party voted to join a new government led by conservative former Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, clearing the final hurdle for a previously untested left-right alliance at the national level.
(AP, 1/4/20)
2020 Jan 4, Austria's foreign ministry said it is facing a serious cyberattack, possibly from a foreign country.
(Reuters, 1/5/20)
2020 Jan 4, In northwestern Burkina Faso at least 14 civilians, mostly students, died after their bus hit an explosive device on the way back from a school break.
(AP, 1/4/20)
2020 Jan 4, In France a businessman returned from a holiday break to find his collection of 19 top watches, including 11 Rolexes, had been swiped from a safe with police blaming “professional" criminals. Over the weekend burglars reportedly swiped more than €1 million (£850,000) worth of Rolex watches and other prestige timepieces in Paris.
(The Telegraph, 1/6/20)
2020 Jan 4, Indonesian officials said landslides and floods triggered by torrential downpours have left at least 60 people dead in and around Jakarta, as rescuers struggled to search for people apparently buried under tons of mud.
(AP, 1/4/20)
2020 Jan 4, In Iran US and Israeli flags were set alight in Tehran as thousands mourned the loss of top military commander Qasem Soleimani, a day after he was killed by American forces.
(AP, 1/4/20)
2020 Jan 4, Iraq's PM Adel Abdel Mahdi attended a mourning procession in Baghdad for Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani and Iraqi paramilitary chief Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis. They were killed along with eight others in a precision US drone strike a day earlier as they drove away from Baghdad international airport in two vehicles.
(AFP, 1/4/20)
2020 Jan 4, A volley of missiles appeared to target the US’s embassy and one of its bases in Iraq late today, sparking fears an Iran-backed militia had begun taking revenge for the killing of its commander and Iran’s top general.
(The Telegraph, 1/5/20)
2020 Jan 4, In Libya an airstrike hit a military academy used by the Tripoli-allied militias late today in the Hadaba area. The death toll climbed to at least 30 people, most of them military trainees. Evidence later indicated the cadets were hit by a Chinese Blue Arrow 7 missile and that the UAE had supplied and operated the drones that were stationed at the al-Khadim air base.
(AP, 1/5/20)(BBC, 8/28/20)
2020 Jan 4, In northern Mexico an American family returning to the US after a visit to San Luis Potosi came under attack late today in Tamaulipas state just south of Texas. Gunmen killed a boy (13) and wounded three others.
(SFC, 1/7/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 4, It was reported that NATO has suspended ongoing efforts to fight Isis in Iraq amid demands by Iran and its allies for revenge against the US following the assassination of an Iranian leader by American forces.
(The Independent, 1/4/20)
2020 Jan 4, The Russian government published a plan to adapt the economy and population to climate change, aiming to mitigate damage but also "use the advantages" of warmer temperatures.
(AFP, 1/5/20)
2020 Jan 4, Spanish human rights groups called for an investigation into potential human rights violations by Spanish authorities after the alleged expulsion of 42 migrants to Morocco without due process.
(AP, 1/4/20)
2020 Jan 4, It was reported that police authorities in Spain believe that a crackdown on criminal biker gangs in northern Europe could be behind a crime wave that saw 24 murders in the Costa del Sol province of Malaga over the last year.
(The Telegraph, 1/4/20)
2020 Jan 4, Sudanese activists said tribal clashes in eastern Sudan have killed at least nine people over the past two days. Security forces were deployed in Port Sudan to help contain the clashes between the Bani Amer tribe and the displaced Nuba tribe.
(AP, 1/4/20)
2020 Jan 5, At the 77th Golden Globe Awards World War One movie "1917" and "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood," set in 1960s Tinseltown, won the top movie prizes at the Golden Globes on a night packed with upsets and hot-button issues at the start of Hollywood's awards season.
(Reuters, 1/6/20)
2020 Jan 5, It was reported that the Trump administration has built up the biggest backlog of unfunded toxic Superfund cleanup projects in at least 15 years.
(SSFC, 1/5/20, p.A10)
2020 Jan 5, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that the House would vote this week on a resolution meant to limit President Donald Trump's war powers.
(Business Insider, 1/5/20)
2020 Jan 5, At least five people were killed and dozens were injured in a crash early today involving multiple vehicles on the Pennsylvania Turnpike.
(AP, 1/5/20)
2020 Jan 5, It was reported that wildfires that have been ravaging swaths of Australia have burned through one-third of Kangaroo Island, killing a father and his son and leaving behind a scorched wasteland and a devastated community. The fires have killed thousands of koalas and kangaroos, and also have raised questions about whether any members of a mouse-like marsupial species that carries its young in a pouch have survived.
(AP, 1/5/20)
2020 Jan 5- 2020 Jan 17, In China hundreds of patients were appearing in hospitals not just in Wuhan but across the country with symptoms of the coronavirus.
(AP, 4/14/20)
2020 Jan 5, Croatians voted in an election that may oust the president as frustration over corruption and ambitions for deeper integration in the EU may rebalance politics in the bloc’s newest member. Incumbent Kolinda Grabar Kitarovic faced former PM Zoran Milanovic. Croatians shot down President Kolinda Grabar Kitarovic’s bid for a second term. Zoran Milanovic, who ran the government from 2011 to 2015, won 52.7% of votes.
(Bloomberg, 1/5/20)
2020 Jan 5, In India masked assailants beat students and teachers with sticks on the campus of a prestigious university in New Delhi, injuring more than 20 people in an attack opposition lawmakers are trying to link to the government.
(AP, 1/6/20)
2020 Jan 5, Black-clad mourners packed Iran's second city Mashhad as the remains of top general Qasem Soleimani were paraded through the streets after he was killed in a US strike. Iran announced that it will no longer abide by the limits contained in the 2015 nuclear deal.
(AFP, 1/5/20)(SFC, 1/6/20, p.A5)
2020 Jan 5, Iraq's Parliament called for the expulsion of US forces from the country in reaction to the American drone attack that killed a top Iranian general, raising the prospect of a troop withdrawal that could cripple the battle against the Islamic State group and allow a resurgence of the extremists.
(AP, 1/5/20)
2020 Jan 5, Canndoc, an Israeli producer of medical grade cannabis, received a shipment of 250 kilos of dried whole cannabis flowers that it says will help alleviate a local shortage. It came from Canada's Tilray's production plant in Portugal.
(Reuters, 1/5/20)
2020 Jan 5, In northern Italy a drunken driver plowed into a group of young German tourists, killing six people and injuring 11 others in the Alto Adige region. A 28-year-old man from the nearby town of Chienes, was arrested on suspicion of highway manslaughter and injury.
(AP, 1/5/20)
2020 Jan 5, In Kenya al-Shabab extremists overran a key military base early today used by US counterterror forces. One US service member and two American Department of Defense contractors were killed in the attack on the Manda Bay Airfield. Five US aircraft, including fixed-wing and helicopters, were destroyed and one damaged in the hours-long assault at the airfield in coastal Lamu county. Kenyan police arrested three suspected terrorists who tried to force their way into a British training camp in Laikipia County. In September a military court in Somalia sentenced militant Islamist Farhan Mohamud Hassan to life in prison for his role in the attack.
(AP, 1/5/20)(AP, 1/6/20)(SFC, 1/7/20, p.A4)(BBC, 9/16/20)
2020 Jan 5, In Lebanon Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah said the US army will "pay the price" for killing top Iranian general Qasem Soleimani and a senior Iraqi commander in a drone strike.
(AFP, 1/5/20)
2020 Jan 5, Venezuela's authoritarian leader Nicolas Maduro moved to consolidate his grip on power by taking control of the National Assembly and blocking the re-election of Juan Guaido as the opposition's leader.
(SFC, 1/6/20, p.A4)
2020 Jan 6, The US government launched a pilot program to collect DNA from people in immigration custody and submit it to the FBI, with plans to expand nationwide.
(AP, 1/6/20)
2020 Jan 6, Kelly Loeffler (49), a wealthy Republican donor and businesswoman, was sworn in as Georgia's new US senator, replacing former Sen. Johnny Isakson (75), who resigned in December amid poor health. She has pledged $20 million of her own fortune to win the seat in November.
(The Week, 1/7/20)
2020 Jan 6, In Wyoming gunners contracted by Grand Teton National Park began culling about 100 goats that threatened the park's bighorn sheep herd.
(SFC, 1/6/20, p.A6)
2020 Jan 6, American Airlines Group Inc said it had reached a confidential agreement with Boeing Co to address damages the airline incurred in 2019 due to the ongoing grounding of its fleet of Boeing 737 MAX aircraft.
(Reuters, 1/6/20)
2020 Jan 6, Borden Dairy Co., one of the oldest and largest milk producers in the United States, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, citing a dropping demand for cow's milk, rising costs for raw milk, and its own debt and pension obligations.
(The Week, 1/7/20)
2020 Jan 6, Facebook said it is beefing up its policies for removing videos that have been edited of synthesized in ways that aren't apparent to the average person. FB said it is beefing manipulated videos known as deepfakes, the false but realistic clips created with artificial intelligence and sophisticated tools.
(SFC, 1/8/20, p.D1)
2020 Jan 6, Ikea confirmed that it had agreed to pay $46 million to the parents of a 2-year-old California boy, Jozef Dudek, who was killed when one of the giant furniture company's dressers toppled over onto him in 2017.
(The Week, 1/7/20)
2020 Jan 6, British authorities sentenced Reynhard Sinaga (36) to 30 years in prison following his conviction for sexual offenses against 48 men. He was described as the most prolific rapist in British legal history. Sinaga had arrived in Britain from Indonesia in 2007 on a student visa and received two degrees from the Univ. of Manchester.
(SFC, 1/7/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 6, Chinese President Xi Jinping lauded Kiribati for “standing on the right side of history" during his first meeting with the Pacific island nation's leader since it severed ties with Taiwan.
(AP, 1/6/20)
2020 Jan 6, A Scandinavian woman said she was forced by Cypriot police to withdraw a rape claim or face arrest in 1998, in a striking parallel to the case of a British teenager who was allegedly gang raped on the Mediterranean island.
(The Telegraph, 1/6/20)
2020 Jan 6, Downtown Tehran was brought to a standstill as mourners flooded the Iranian capital to pay an emotional homage to Qasem Soleimani, the "heroic" general killed in a US strike.
(AFP, 1/6/20)
2020 Jan 6, A 5.8-magnitude quake hit Puerto Rico before dawn, unleashing small landslides, causing power outages and severely cracking some homes.
(AP, 1/6/20)
2020 Jan 6, Thailand opened its first full-time clinic specializing in traditional and alternative cannabis-based medicine, as part of a move by the government towards developing a medicinal cannabis industry.
(Reuters, 1/6/20)
2020 Jan 6, UAE PM Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum said tourist visas to the United Arab Emirates will be valid for five years, part of a campaign to lure holiday makers to Gulf countries. The visas were previously valid for 30 to 90 days.
(Bloomberg, 1/6/20)
2020 Jan 7, President Trump met with Greek PM Kyriakos Mitsotakis at the White House. A major focus of the visit was to get the word out that Greece is open for business for American investors and convey that the country has reduced regulatory red tape.
(CBS News, 1/7/20)
2020 Jan 6, In southern California Christopher Bathum, the founder of a Los Angeles sober-living facility pleaded no contest to 14 felony counts of grand theft, insurance fraud, identity theft and money laundering. He faced 20 years in prison for running a $175 million phony health care billing scheme.
(AP, 1/6/20)
2020 Jan 7, US Representative Duncan Hunter, a leading California Republican who pleaded guilty last month to a federal corruption charge of conspiracy to misuse campaign funds, announced that he would resign from office effective Jan. 13.
(Reuters, 1/7/20)
2020 Jan 7, Authorities said three Los Angeles Police Department officers have been suspended for falsely classifying people as gang members in an effort to boost the department's statistics.
(ABC News, 1/7/20)
2020 Jan 7, Neil Peart (67), drummer for the Canadian band Rush, died in Santa Monica, Ca.
(SFC, 1/13/20, p.C3)
2020 Jan 7, CNN settled with Kentucky teenager Nick Sandmann who sued the network for defamation over its coverage of his encounter with a Native American at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington a year ago. The Jan. 18, 2019 encounter was captured in photos and on video and went viral, generating widespread media coverage.
(Reuters, 1/7/20)
2020 Jan 7, Apellis Pharmaceuticals Inc said its experimental drug for a blood disorder showed greater improvement in patients' hemoglobin levels than market leader Alexion Pharmaceuticals Inc's Soliris.
(AP, 1/7/20)
2020 Jan 7, In Canada Philip Grandine, a former Toronto pastor was sentenced in a Toronto courtroom nearly a year after jurors found him guilty of manslaughter in the 2011 drowning of his wife Anna Grandine. He faced nearly 12 years in prison.
(AP, 1/7/20)
2020 Jan 7, A Cypriot court handed a four-month suspended sentence to a 19-year-old British woman who was found guilty of public mischief after authorities said she made up claims that she was raped by up to a dozen Israelis.
(AP, 1/7/20)
2020 Jan 7, In France the lifeless body of a young African stowaway was found in the landing gear of an Air France flight from Ivory Coast.
(SFC, 1/9/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 7, In India a death warrant was issued for the four men convicted of the 2012 gang rape and murder of a young woman on a New Delhi bus that galvanized protests and brought attention to the country's sexual violence epidemic.
(The Telegraph, 1/7/20)
2020 Jan 7, Iran's parliament unanimously voted to classify the entire US military and Department of Defense as terrorist organizations.
(Business Insider, 1/7/20)
2020 Jan 7, Iran's foreign minister said he has been informed by UN chief Antonio Guterres that Washington has denied him a visa for a trip to UN headquarters in New York.
(AFP, 1/7/20)
2020 Jan 7, In Iran a stampede crushed to death dozens of mourners in the city of Kerman, the hometown of Qasem Soleimani, as his solemn funeral procession turned tragic when crowds overwhelmed the streets. The crush claimed more than 50 lives and forced the postponement of the general's burial.
(AFP, 1/7/20)
2020 Jan 7, It was reported that Iran has dropped espionage charges that had been laid against Fariba Adelkhah, an Iranian-French academic, detained in the Islamic republic since last year. She still faced two other charges: spreading "propaganda against the political system" of the Islamic republic; and "conspiracy against national security".
(AFP, 1/7/20)
2020 Jan 7, Iraqi armed factions called for an urgent meeting to face "the war against the resistance," after a US strike on Baghdad last week killed top Iranian and Iraqi commanders.
(AFP, 1/7/20)
2020 Jan 7, In Kenya four small children were shot dead early today while trying to take refuge from the latest al-Shabab extremist attack in eastern Garissa county. Police officers on patrol killed two attackers in the early morning assault near the village of Saretho.
(AP, 1/7/20)
2020 Jan 7, Puerto Rico's string of tremors continued as a magnitude 6.4 earthquake knocked out power and left at least one person dead. Damages from this quake were later estimated at $110 million.
(The Week, 1/7/20)(SSFC, 1/12/20, p.A7)
2020 Jan 7, Russian President Vladimir Putin traveled to Syria to meet with President Bashar Assad and other officials.
(AP, 1/7/20)
2020 Jan 7, It was reported that Saudi Arabia's largest and longest debt saga, fueled by a feud that has split one of its richest families, could be nearing a resolution after a court approved about $14 billion in claims related to the 2009 collapse of two business empires.
(Reuters, 1/7/20)
2020 Jan 7, Spain's Socialist leader Pedro Sanchez won a no-confidence vote (167-165) allowing him to form a new leftist coalition government and end almost a year of political limbo.
(SFC, 1/8/20, p.A4)
2020 Jan 7, In Venezuela Juan Guaido forced his way back into the National Assembly to open a new legislative session. Now Venezuela has two presidents, three legislatures (two congresses, one overarching constituent assembly) and no clue as to how to proceed.
(Bloomberg, 1/8/20)
2020 Jan 8, The Trump administration said it was too late to renew the effort to push through a decades-old proposed amendment to the US Constitution that would ensure American women have equal rights to men. Virginia could, under the theory proposed by supporters of the amendment, become the 38th state as it is expected to vote this year. The Democratic-controlled House Judiciary Committee voted in November to approve a measure that would retroactively remove the ratification deadline.
(Reuters, 1/8/20)
2020 Jan 8, The United States imposed sanctions on South Sudan's First Vice President Taban Deng Gai, citing his involvement in serious human rights abuses.
(AP, 1/8/20)
2020 Jan 8, California Governor Gavin Newsom decided against calling a special election to fill the seat US Representative Duncan Hunter will leave vacant in Congress next week when he resigns following his conviction in a federal corruption scandal.
(Reuters, 1/8/20)
2020 Jan 8, A Los Angeles County Superior Court judge ruled that AB%, the state's new gig-work law, does not apply to truck drivers because it is preempted by federal law.
(SFC, 1/10/20, p.D1)
2020 Jan 8, Buck Henry (89), American writer and actor, died in Los Angeles. He wrote the screenplays for "The Graduate" (1967), "Candy" (1968) and "Catch-22" (1970). He also wrote the romantic comedies "The Owl and the Pussycat" (1970) and "What's Up Doc?" (1972).
(SFC, 1/10/20, p.A8)
2020 Jan 8, Republican Senators Mike Lee of Utah and Rand Paul of Kentucky excoriated a briefing from top Trump administration officials on the targeted drone strike that led to the death of Qassem Soleimani, the leader of Iran's elite Quds Force.
(CBS News, 1/8/20)
2020 Jan 8, The Montana Supreme Court reversed a $35 million judgment against the Jehovah's Witnesses for not reporting a girl's sexual abuse to authorities. The court said in its 7-0 decision that the Jehovah's Witnesses fall under an exemption to that law in this case. The ruling overturned a 2018 verdict awarding compensatory and punitive damages to the woman who was abused as a child in the mid-2000s by a member of the Thompson Falls Jehovah's Witness congregation.
(AP, 1/8/20)
2020 Jan 8, In Ohio David Dorbish Jr. (17) pleaded guilty in a court in Youngstown to hoax phone calls to authorities in a half-dozen states. Charges included making terroristic threats, making false alarms, identity fraud and telecommunications harassment.
(AP, 1/9/20)
2020 Jan 8, A Mexican man died after slitting his own throat on the Pharr-Reynosa International Bridge across the Rio Grande when he was denied entry to the US.
(The Independent, 1/9/20)
2020 Jan 8, An Afghan military helicopter crashed in the country's western Farah province, killing the two pilots on board.
(AP, 1/8/20)
2020 Jan 8, In Afghanistan a drone attack carried out by US forces in Herat province targeted a splinter Taliban group. The strike killed the commander of a Taliban splinter group, known as Mullah Nangyalia, along with 15 other militants and at least 10 civilians.
(AP, 1/22/20)
2020 Jan 8, The Duke and Duchess of Sussex announced that they intend to divide their time between North America and the UK to carve out a "progressive new role" and step back from their senior positions.
(Reuters, 1/9/20)
2020 Jan 8, A Chinese court jailed the founder of a local traditional Chinese medicine firm for running a pyramid scheme, after the death of a young girl with cancer was linked to the company in an online article that sparked anger on social media. Shu Yuhui, founder and chairman of Quanjian Nature Medicine Technology Development, was sentenced to nine years in prison and fined 50 million yuan ($7.2 million).
(Reuters, 1/8/20)
2020 Jan 8, China's agriculture ministry said an H5N6 avian flu virus outbreak has been detected in swans in the western region of Xinjiang.
(AP, 1/8/20)
2020 Jan 8, The World Health Organization (WHO) said a cluster of more than 50 pneumonia cases in China's central city of Wuhan may be due to a newly emerging member of the family of viruses that caused the deadly SARS and MERS outbreaks.
(Reuters, 1/8/20)
2020 Jan 8, Cyprus approved a request from the US authorities via the American embassy in Nicosia to temporarily deploy on the eastern Mediterranean island a rapid response unit to evacuate personnel working in US diplomatic missions in the region, as well as US citizens, if the need arises.
(Bloomberg, 1/8/20)
2020 Jan 8, Researchers in Germany said a review of fatal encephalitis cases in the state of Bavaria has found that more than twice as many as previously known were tied to a rare animal-borne virus. Borna disease virus 1, or BoDV-1, is normally found in horses, sheep and other mammals. It was first identified as the cause of severe human encephalitis in 2018.
(AP, 1/8/20)
2020 Jan 8, Guinea's opposition parties said they will not participate in legislative elections in February and will press to have them delayed if the president does not withdraw a bid to seek another term.
(AP, 1/8/20)
2020 Jan 8, Hong Kong's security chief said police have seized more than 3,700 mobile phones used by protesters in the last several months of protest. More than 6,000 people have been arrested since protests against a proposed extradition bill erupted last June.
(Business Insider, 1/8/20)
2020 Jan 8, The World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) said India has reported an outbreak of the highly contagious H5N1 bird flu virus on a poultry farm in the central state of Chhattisgarh.
(Reuters, 1/8/20)
2020 Jan 8, Iran launched more than a dozen ballistic missiles early today at US military and coalition forces in Iraq. There were no casualties in the rocket barrage. Tehran said the strikes are revenge for the attack which killed its most important military leader, Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani. 17 missiles were aimed at the Al-Assad airbase in Anbar province. Another five missiles were aimed at an airbase in Irbil. No one was harmed in the strikes. President Donald Trump addressed the nation from the White House, de-escalating the crisis with Iran.
(Reuters, 1/8/20)
2020 Jan 8, In Iran everyone aboard the Boeing 737-800 flown by Ukraine International Airlines was killed after it came down shortly after it departed from Imam Khomeini International Airport in Tehran. 63 Canadians were killed in the crash of Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752. There were three British people on board, as well as citizens from six other countries. The majority of those on the plane were Iranians and Canadians, and many were students.
(The Telegraph, 1/8/20)(AFP, 1/8/20)(AFP, 1/12/20)
2020 Jan 8, Libya's Gen. Khalifa Hifter traveled to Rome on a previously unannounced visit to meet with Italian Premier Giuseppe Conte.
(AP, 1/8/20)
2020 Jan 8, Libya’s UN-supported government welcomed Russian and Turkish calls for a ceasefire in the country’s ongoing civil war, though its rivals appeared cool to the intervention and refrained from endorsing the idea.
(AP, 1/8/20)
2020 Jan 8, Audio clips revealed by Malaysian anti-graft officials indicated that former PM Najib Razak allegedly sought help from the United Arab Emirates' crown prince to fake evidence to cover up for the 1MDB scandal.
(Reuters, 1/8/20)
2020 Jan 8, The Philippine government ordered the mandatory evacuation of Filipino workers from Iraq and Iran due to hostilities between the US and Iran. Filipino workers were also urged to leave Lebanon.
(SFC, 1/9/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 8, In Serbia thousands of people protested in Belgrade against the alleged suppression of religious and other rights of Serb minorities in neighboring countries, answering a call to action by the Serbian Orthodox Church.
(AP, 1/8/20)
2020 Jan 8, In Somalia a car bomb exploded at a checkpoint in Mogadishu, killing three people and wounding six others. The bomb attached to the vehicle was remotely detonated.
(AP, 1/8/20)
2020 Jan 8, In northeastern Syria four Turkish soldiers were killed in a car bombing attack today while they were conducting road checks.
(AP, 1/9/20)
2020 Jan 8, Turkey and Russia called for a Jan. 12 cease-fire in war-torn Libya while European Union officials intensified diplomatic efforts to cool tensions in the North African nation by holding talks with its prime minister.
(AP, 1/8/20)
2020 Jan 8, Ugandan police arrested pop star turned opposition leader Bobi Wine, aka Robert Kyagulanyi, after preventing him from holding a meeting with his supporters.
(AP, 1/8/20)
2020 Jan 9, The Trump administration unveiled a plan to speed permitting for major infrastructure projects like oil pipelines, road expansions and bridges, one of the biggest deregulatory actions of the president's tenure.
(Reuters, 1/9/20)
2020 Jan 9, It was reported that an analysis of Commerce Department data showed that tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump to restructure the United States' top trade relationships have cost American companies $46 billion since February 2018, and US exports of goods hit by retaliatory tariffs have fallen sharply. Seasonally adjusted US Commerce data released on Jan. 7 showed the overall US trade deficit narrowed to a more than three-year low in November.
(Reuters, 1/9/20)
2020 Jan 9, The mayor of Los Angeles wrote a letter to the Trump administration formally requesting federal assistance with the growing numbers of homeless on the city's streets. The letter showed he and Housing Secretary Ben Carson have had negotiations on the issue.
(Reuters, 1/10/20)
2020 Jan 9, Chicago authorities captured a coyote late today after two reported attacks by wild canines on humans in the city, including a 6-year-old boy who was bitten in the head. DNA tests would confirm if this was the animal involved in either of the attacks.
(AP, 1/10/20)
2020 Jan 9, In New York a helicopter crash in Silver Spring Township killed pilot Mark Croce (58) and developer Michael Capriotto (63).
(SFC, 1/11/20, p.A6)
2020 Jan 9, A North Dakota man who allegedly told a neighbor he had a bomb and indicated he would harm anyone who tried to enter his condominium died after he was shot by tactical officers in an exchange of gunfire.
(AP, 1/10/20)
2020 Jan 9, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc said its experimental treatment for a very rare genetic bone disorder showed a nearly 90% reduction in new lesions compared to placebo, in a mid-stage study.
(Reuters, 1/9/20)
2020 Jan 9, In Abkhazia hundreds of protesters besieged the office of regional leader Raul Khadzhimba to demand his resignation. Demonstrators claimed widespread irregularities in his re-election as president last September.
(SFC, 1/10/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 9, Britain's PM Boris Johnson urged Iran's President Hassan Rouhani to end the confrontation with the US and underlined Britain's commitments to Tehran's nuclear agreement.
(The Telegraph, 1/9/20)
2020 Jan 9, Britain's parliament gave finally approve to Brexit, allowing the traumatized country to become the first to leave the European Union on January 31.
(SFC, 1/10/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 9, Chinese state media reported that a preliminary investigation into viral pneumonia illnesses sickening dozens of people in and around the country has identified the possible cause as a new type of coronavirus.
(SFC, 1/10/20, p.A3)
2020 Jan 9, Officials from Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan concluded a two-day meeting in Addis Ababa, without reaching an agreement on technical issues related to the construction of the $4.6 billion Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Blue Nile.
(AP, 1/10/20)
2020 Jan 9, In northern Iran a bus plunged into a ravine early today, killing 19 people and injuring 24 in Mazandaran province.
(AP, 1/9/20)
2020 Jan 9, The Israeli the Justice Ministry confirmed that a psychiatric panel has determined that Malka Leifer, a woman facing dozens of sex-abuse charges in Australia, is fit to stand trial for extradition.
(AP, 1/9/20)
2020 Jan 9, In northern Lebanon protesters closed a major road late today, triggering scuffles with Lebanese troops that left more than a dozen soldiers injured.
(AP, 1/10/20)
2020 Jan 9, Niger's defense ministry said a large assault on its military left at least 25 soldiers dead along with 63 jihadists in the town of Chinagodrar on the border with Mali. The death toll soon rose to at least 89, making it the most deadly attack of its kind in years in the nation.
(SFC, 1/11/20, p.A2)(AP, 1/13/20)
2020 Jan 9, In the Philippines a mammoth crowed of barefoot Filipinos began the annual procession of the wooden Black Nazarene in Manila.
(SFC, 1/10/20, p.A3)
2020 Jan 9, In Slovenia a nearly 26-foot wooden statue mocking US President Donald Trump was burned to the ground. Police were looking for the arsonist.
(AP, 1/9/20)(SFC, 1/10/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 9, Spain's Supreme Court ruled that Oriol Junqueras, an imprisoned Catalan politician, must remain behind bars despite a Europen court ruling that his election to the European Parliament gave him immunity.
(SFC, 1/10/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 9, Sudan’s PM Abdalla Hamdok, accompanied by United Nations officials, embarked on a peace mission to a rebel stronghold, in a major step toward government efforts to end the country’s long-running civil conflicts.
(AP, 1/9/20)
2020 Jan 9, In Thailand a masked assailant killed three people, including a boy (2) in a shooting spree late today at a shopping mall in Lopburi province.
(SFC, 1/11/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 9, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky announced a day of national mourning, promising to find the "truth" about the crash of a Ukrainian airliner in Iran which killed all 176 on board.
(AFP, 1/9/20)
2020 Jan 9, The World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) said Poland recorded 55 outbreaks of African swine fever in wild boar near the German border last month, in a sign the deadly virus is spreading near one of the European Union's biggest pork exporters.
(Reuters, 1/9/20)
2020 Jan 10, The Trump administration imposed new sanctions on Iran, including penalties on the country’s metals and some senior leaders, following Tehran’s attack on US military bases.
(AP, 1/10/20)
2020 Jan 10, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the US believes it is "likely" Iran shot down the Ukrainian passenger plane that crashed this week in Iran, killing all 176 on board.
(AP, 1/10/20)
2020 Jan 10, The United States rejected a request by Iraq's caretaker PM Adel Abdel Mahdi to send a delegation to start preparations to pull out its 5,200 troops in the country.
(AFP, 1/10/20)
2020 Jan 10, Cryptocurrency expert Virgil Griffith (36), charged with violating economic sanctions against North Korea, was released on $1 million bond despite federal prosecutors' concerns he might flee the United States before trial. Griffith was placed on house arrest with electronic monitoring at his parents' home outside Tuscaloosa, Alabama. He is known for creating WikiScanner, a tool that aimed to unmask people who anonymously edited entries in Wikipedia.
(AP, 1/10/20)
2020 Jan 10, In Florida the 1968 Ford Mustang GT that Steve McQueen drove in the classic car chase from the movie "Bullitt," one of the most famed cars from American cinema, sold for $3.4 million at auction.
(Reuters, 1/11/20)
2020 Jan 10, In Illinois accountant Sultan Issa (46) pleaded guilty to embezzling millions of dollars from a trustee of the Art Institute of Chicago, using the money to finance a luxurious lifestyle that included the purchase of yachts and homes. Issa admitted to stealing a total of at least $65 million over seven years.
(AP, 1/10/20)
2020 Jan 10, In Nevada Margaret Rudin (76), a socialite antiques shop owner dubbed the “black widow" while she was a fugitive ahead of her 2001 trial, left a women’s prison after winning parole from her 20-years-to-life sentence for the killing of real estate mogul Ron Rudin. The 64-year-old prominent Las Vegas real estate developer had disappeared in December 1994. Fishermen stumbled across his skull and some charred bones a month later near the shoreline of a Colorado River reservoir about 45 miles (72 kilometers) outside Las Vegas.
(AP, 1/10/20)
2020 Jan 10, Governor Greg Abbott of Texas became the first governor in the United States to refuse to accept refugees under an executive order requiring local jurisdictions to actively opt in to the federal resettlement program.
(Reuters, 1/10/20)
2020 Jan 10, It was reported that Boeing Co's ousted chief executive officer, Dennis Muilenburg, is leaving the company with $62 million in compensation and pension benefits but will receive no severance pay in the wake of the 737 MAX crisis.
(Reuters, 1/10/20)
2020 Jan 10, Boeing Co's biggest supplier, Spirit AeroSystems Holdings Inc, said it plans to lay off more than 20% of the workforce at its Wichita-Kansas base as it grapples with halted production and uncertainty over when 737 MAX jets will return to service.
(Reuters, 1/10/20)
2020 Jan 10, Wisconsin political activist Jeremy Ryan (31), accused of trying to buy a lethal dose of a radioactive substance online, pleaded guilty to one count of receiving a nuclear material. His attorneys said he had cancer and intended to use the material to kill himself.
(AP, 1/10/20)
2020 Jan 10, In southeastern Australia two wildfires merged to form a massive 1.58 million-acre inferno in the Snowy Mountains region near Tumbarumba. A man suffered serious burns protecting a home, in a night of treacherous conditions during the nation’s unprecedented wildfire crisis.
(AP, 1/10/20)(SSFC, 1/12/20, p.A4)
2020 Jan 10, Authorities in Britain formally requested the extradition of Anne Sacoolas, the wife of an American diplomat, who was charged in the death of a British teenager.
(ABC News, 1/11/20)
2020 Jan 10, Canada's Department of Justice said Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou, arrested in Vancouver in late 2018, could be extradited to the United States, because her offense is a crime in both countries.
(AFP, 1/11/20)
2020 Jan 10, Canada lowered the number of its citizens killed in the Jan. 8 crash of a jetliner in Iran from 63 to 57.
(AFP, 1/10/20)
2020 Jan 10, India's top court ordered the government to review all restrictions in Indian-controlled Kashmir, saying the measures amount to an abuse of power.
(SFC, 1/11/20, p.A5)
2020 Jan 10, In Iraq thousands took to the streets in the Iraq's Shia-majority south, including the main protest hotspots of Diwaniyah, Nasiriyah, Basra and the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala, reviving a months-long protest movement against the government.
(The Telegraph, 1/10/20)
2020 Jan 10, In Iraq Ahmed Abdul Samad, a Dijlah TV reporter, and Safaa Ghali, his cameraman, were found shot and killed in a car parked near a police station in Basra. In 2021 Iraq’s supreme court sentenced former police officer Hamza Kadhim al-Aidani to death by hanging for the killing. The case then went to a higher court, which can either confirm the death penalty, hand down a lesser sentence or call for a retrial.
(AP, 11/1/21)
2020 Jan 10, In Lebanon at least one person was injured in Beirut during protests calling for the resignation of the city's mayor and governor over alleged corruption within the municipality. The protesters were attacked by men who support the two local officials.
(AP, 1/10/20)
2020 Jan 10, In Lesotho first lady Maesaiah Thabane fled the country to escape arrest in connection with the 2017 killing of PM Thomas Thabane's former wife, Lipolelo. On Feb. 4 Maesaiah returned and handed herself over to police.
(SFC, 2/5/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 10, In northern Mexico at least two people were reported to have been killed and six injured after an 11-year-old boy entered a school with two handguns and opened fire in the city of Torreón, Coahuila state. Police said the shooter had killed himself.
(AP, 1/10/20)
2020 Jan 10, Oman's Sultan Qaboos (79), the Middle East's longest-ruling monarch, died after years of an undisclosed illness.
(AFP, 1/10/20)
2020 Jan 10, Syrian warplanes bombed a major rebel stronghold in the country's northwest, less than 24 hours after a cease-fire went into effect there. Unidentified planes struck targets in Syria near the border with Iraq, killing eight Iran-backed Iraqi militiamen. Iraqi officials said the strike was most likely carried out by Israeli warplanes, but offered no evidence.
(AP, 1/10/20)
2020 Jan 10, The UNHCR confirmed that two Eritrean asylum-seekers were shot dead in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, days after the refugee agency pressed them to leave its facility citing overcrowding.
(AP, 1/11/20)
2020 Jan 10, The United Nations said seven countries -- Lebanon, Yemen, Venezuela, Central African Republic, Gambia, Lesotho and Tonga -- have fallen behind in their financial contributions and would not be able to in the 74th session of the General Assembly.
(AFP, 1/11/20)
2020 Jan 11, Severe storms sweeping across southern portions of the US and up into the Midwest were blamed in the deaths of at least 11 people, including two first responders, as high winds, tornadoes and unrelenting rain battered large swaths of the country. Hundreds of thousands of people were left without power from Texas to Ohio, parts of highways were closed in Oklahoma and Arkansas due to flooding and hundreds of flights were canceled at Chicago's international airports.
(AP, 1/11/20)
2020 Jan 11, It was reported that Mercy High School, one of San Francisco's last all-girls Catholic high schools, will close its doors in June. The school was founded in 1952 and its building in the Park-Merced district was completed in 1954.
(SFC, 1/11/20, p.C4)
2020 Jan 11, It was reported that Bonny Doon Vineyard, founded in California in 1981 by Randall Grahm, has been acquired by WarRoom Ventures, the parent company of Lapis Luna Wines.
(SFC, 1/11/20, p.D1)
2020 Jan 11, A single-engine Cessna 182 crashed in southern Montana. Authorities the following day recovered the bodies of four people from the wreckage.
(AP, 1/13/20)
2020 Jan 11, In New Hampshire a lawsuit filed in Merrimack County Superior Court alleged that more than two dozen men and women were physically, sexually and emotionally abused as children at a state-run youth detention center from 1982 to 2014.
(AP, 1/11/20)
2020 Jan 11, In southern Afghanistan two US service members were killed when their vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb in Kandahar province.
(SFC, 1/13/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 11, In Cambodia thousands of striking workers of NagaWorld hotel and casino complex, a Hong Kong-listed casino company, returned to their jobs after winning wage increases and the reinstatement of a suspended union leader in a rare labor victory.
(Reuters, 1/11/20)
2020 Jan 11, In China health authorities said a 61-year-old man has died from pneumonia in the central city of Wuhan after an outbreak of a yet to be identified virus while seven others are in critical condition. A total of 41 people have been diagnosed with the pathogen.
(Reuters, 1/11/20)
2020 Jan 11, A Chinese lab published the coronavirus genome on a virology website. This prompted Chinese health officials to release the genetic map. Even then, China stalled for at least two weeks more on giving WHO the details it needed.
(AP, 6/1/20)
2020 Jan 11, China officially opened operations of the world's largest radio telescope, which it will use for space research and help in the hunt for extraterrestrial life. The Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope, or FAST, is the size of 30 football fields and has been hewed out of a mountain in the southwestern province of Guizhou.
(Reuters, 1/11/20)
2020 Jan 11, In northern Croatia a fire engulfed part of a nursing home early today, killing at least six people in the village of Andrasevac.
(AP, 1/11/20)
2020 Jan 11, German Chancellor Angela Merkel arrived in Moscow for talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin amid growing tensions in the Middle East and elsewhere.
(AP, 1/11/20)
2020 Jan 11, Greece's coast guard said 12 migrants have been found dead in the Ionian Sea and 21 others have been rescued after their boat took in water and sank. Searchers looked for more survivors.
(AP, 1/11/20)
2020 Jan 11, Iran's Revolutionary Guard acknowledged that it accidentally shot down the Ukrainian jetliner that crashed earlier this week, killing all 176 people aboard, after the government had repeatedly denied Western accusations and mounting evidence that it was responsible. Brigadier General Amirali Hajizadeh said the missile operator who fired on the plane did so independently because of communications "jamming." Protesters gathered and criticized the government demanding the country's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei step down.
(AP, 1/11/20)(AFP, 1/11/20)(The Week, 1/12/20)
2020 Jan 11, Kimia Alizadeh (21), the sole woman to ever have won a medal at the Olympics for the country of Iran, announced that she has defected from the country and moved to Europe.
(Good Morning America, 1/12/20)
2020 Jan 11, Italy’s Premier Giuseppe Conte met with the UN-recognized Libyan PM Fayez Serraj, days after Italy botched an attempt to broker a truce to end the latest fighting in Libya.
(AP, 1/11/20)
2020 Jan 11, Lebanon said it "regrets" being among seven countries stripped by the United Nations of voting privileges in the General Assembly for failing to pay their dues.
(AFP, 1/11/20)
2020 Jan 11, Robert Abela was set to become Malta’s prime minister after being elected leader of the ruling party. He is seen as a continuity leader in the wake of a scandal over the murder of an investigative journalist.
(The Telegraph, 1/12/20)
2020 Jan 11, In Mexico activists placed hundreds of painted-red women's shoes on Mexico City's main square to call attention to gender-based violence. On average ten women and girls are slain each day in the country with less than 10% of the cases solved.
(SFC, 1/13/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 11, Northern Ireland's government reopened for the first time in three years after rival parties rallied around a new power-sharing agreement that can help the volatile province handle the pressures of Brexit.
(AFP, 1/10/20)
2020 Jan 11, Oman's new ruler, Sultan Haitham bin Tariq Al Said, vowed to uphold his predecessor's foreign policy approach, which steered the Arab country through choppy Persian Gulf waters by balancing close relations with both the US and Iran.
(AP, 1/10/20)
2020 Jan 11, In Poland Judges from across Europe, many of them dressed in their judicial robes, marched silently in Warsaw in a show of solidarity with Polish peers who are protesting a bill that would allow the government to fire judges who issue rulings officials don't like.
(AP, 1/11/20)
2020 Jan 11, A magnitude 5.9 earthquake hit Puerto Rico causing extensive damage along the island's southern coast. This followed recent quakes including a magnitude 6.4 quake on Jan. 7.
(SSFC, 1/12/20, p.A7)
2020 Jan 11, Russia's President Vladimir Putin pushed for a ceasefire in Libya as he held talks with some of the countries that support the warring sides in the North African nation.
(Bloomberg, 1/11/20)
2020 Jan 11, Syrian government warplanes struck several rebel-held areas in the country's northwest, killing at least 10 people and wounding dozens in Idlib province.
(AP, 1/11/20)
2020 Jan 11, The president of Taiwan, Tsai Ing-wen, won reelection with a record-breaking 8 million votes, a major victory over Beijing’s concerted campaign of lies and propaganda meant to support her opponent, Han Kuo-yu.
(Reuters, 1/11/20)
2020 Jan 12, The Trump administration tried to amplify voices of dissent in Iran by suggesting that the Islamic Republic is under internal threat after denying and then admitting it shot down a Ukrainian passenger plane.
(AP, 1/12/20)
2020 Jan 12, In New Jersey a massive fire engulfed many buildings in Bound Brook late today, causing more than 100 residents to be evacuated and leaving around 3,000 people without power.
(Reuters, 1/13/20)
2020 Jan 12, Roger Scruton (75), one of Britain’s most prominent conservative philosophers, died after a six-month battle with cancer. Scruton was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2016 for services to philosophy, teaching and public education. His more than 50 books on morality, politics, culture and aesthetics included “The Meaning of Conservatism," “The Aesthetics of Architecture" and “England: An Elegy".
(AP, 1/13/20)
2020 Jan 12, Ethiopia's PM Abiy Ahmed asked South Africa's president to intervene in his country's dispute with Egypt over a massive dam project on the Nile River, set to be Africa’s largest hydraulic dam.
(AP, 1/12/20)
2020 Jan 12, In Hong Kong more than 1,000 people attended a rally to urge people and governments abroad to support the city's pro-democracy movement and oppose China's ruling Communist Party.
(SFC, 1/13/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 12, Indonesia and the United Arab Emirates affirmed deeper economic ties during a visit by Indonesian President Joko Widodo in which he sought billions of dollars to finance his country's infrastructure and energy projects.
(AP, 1/13/20)
2020 Jan 12, Iran's security forces deployed in large numbers across the capital, expecting more protests after its Revolutionary Guard admitted to accidentally shooting down a passenger plane at a time of soaring tensions with the United States.
(AP, 1/12/20)
2020 Jan 12, In Iraq eight rockets were launched at the Balad joint airbase, which sits around 50 miles north of Baghdad. At least four Iraqi soldiers were reportedly wounded. It was not clear who was behind the attack.
(Business Insider, 1/13/20)
2020 Jan 12, Libya's Government of National Accord (GNA) agreed to a ceasefire urged by Moscow and Ankara, several hours after rival strongman Khalifa Haftar announced a cessation of hostilities. Meeting in Moscow Libya's rival governments considered a draft document spelling out details of a truce proposed jointly by Russia and Turkey.
(AFP, 1/12/20)(AP, 1/13/20)
2020 Jan 12, World leaders traveled to Oman to meet the country's new sultan, named just a day earlier after the death of the nation's longtime ruler Sultan Qaboos bin Said. British PM Boris Johnson and Prince Charles were among those who arrived in Muscat to meet Sultan Haitham bin Tariq Al Said. Leaders from Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Abu Dhabi and Yemen also visited. Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif traveled to Muscat as well to meet Sultan Haitham.
(AP, 1/12/20)
2020 Jan 12, In the Philippines clouds of ash from the Taal volcano reached Manila, 65 km (40 miles) to the north, forcing the shutdown of the country's main airport, with more than 500 flights canceled. Tens of thousands of people fled through heavy ash and frightening tremors, and authorities made plans to evacuate hundreds of thousands more for fear of a bigger eruption.
(AP, 1/12/20)
2020 Jan 12, State-owned oil company Saudi Aramco said it had exercised its "greenshoe option" to sell an additional 450 million shares, raising the size of its initial public offering (IPO) to a record $29.4 billion.
(Reuters, 1/12/20)
2020 Jan 12, In Thailand thousands of anti-government demonstrators took part in "Run Against Dictatorship" in Bangkok in the country's biggest political rally in years.
(SFC, 1/13/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 13, It was reported that President Donald Trump authorized the US military strike against Iranian military and intelligence leader Qassem Soleimani in June, 2019, seven months before it was carried out. The new revelations significantly undermine the administration's claim that Soleimani needed to be killed because he posed an "imminent threat" to American lives in the region.
(Business Insider, 1/13/20)
2020 Jan 13, A US federal judge ruled that the Trump administration's ongoing separations of families at the US-Mexico border based on parents' criminal history or health exclusions are being carried out with proper discretion.
(Reuters, 1/14/20)
2020 Jan 13, Former US Treasury Department employee Natalie May Edwards pleaded guilty to leaking confidential documents relating to former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and others to a reporter from digital media company BuzzFeed.
(Reuters, 1/13/20)
2020 Jan 13, It was reported that the US is sending 21 Saudi cadets back to Saudi Arabia. Many of the cadets had contact with child pornography and possessed jihadist or anti-American material. This followed the shooting last month in which Saudi 2nd Lt. Mohammed Alshamrani opened fire at the Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Fl., killing three US soldiers before he was killed by a sheriff's deputy.
(SFC, 1/14/20, p.A5)
2020 Jan 13, Former Insys Vice President of Managed Markets Michael Gurry was sentenced to nearly three years in prison as part of the first federal case meant to hold an opioids manufacturer criminally accountable for the ongoing epidemic in the country.
(ABC News, 1/13/20)
2020 Jan 13, George Nader, a wealthy Lebanese-American political campaign bundler for Hillary Clinton and frequent guest in President Trump's White House in the first few months of his administration, pleaded guilty to child exploitation charges in federal court in Alexandria, Va.
(The Week, 1/14/20)
2020 Jan 13, In Colorado a man was arrested after allegedly stabbing eight people in and around downtown Colorado Springs early today. Police said the attacks were apparently carried out at random.
(AP, 1/13/20)
2020 Jan 13, Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., announced that he is suspending his presidential campaign. Booker said multiple factors had contributed to his conclusion that he had no chance to win the Democratic nomination.
(Yahoo News, 1/13/20)
2020 Jan 13, In North Carolina William Todd Chamberlain (46), a former US Army Green Beret, pleaded guilty to his role in a conspiracy to steal money from the government that was meant to support the armed forces' mission in Afghanistan. Prosecutors said Chamberlain and four other members of the 3rd Special Forces Group based at Fort Bragg, NC, stole about $200,000 while deployed to Afghanistan in 2009 and 2010.
(AP, 1/14/20)
2020 Jan 13, Deionna Young (26), a former manager at an Oklahoma Arby's restaurant, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to two decades in prison. She was charged with fatally shooting a customer who she said spit on her.
(AP, 1/15/20)
2020 Jan 13, Acasti Pharma Inc said its krill oil-derived drug had failed to beat placebo by a large margin in reducing a type of fat found in blood that increases the risk of heart diseases, sending its shares spiraling down nearly 67%.
(Reuters, 1/13/20)
2020 Jan 13, Biogen Inc said it has agreed to buy an early-stage experimental treatment from Pfizer Inc that it aims to test in patients with Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. Under the deal, Pfizer will get $75 million upfront and will be eligible for $635 million in potential milestone payments.
(AP, 1/13/20)
2020 Jan 13, It was reported that at least 54 people have been killed by the combination of heavy snowfall, brutal cold and severe flooding in Afghanistan and Pakistan. A deadly winter storm brought severe impacts to millions of people from parts of the Arabian Peninsula to Pakistan beginning late last week and through the weekend.
(AP, 1/13/20)
2020 Jan 13, China said it prevented the head of Human Rights Watch from entering Hong Kong because of the group's support for the territory's ongoing protest movement.
(SFC, 1/14/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 13, In China at least six people were killed and 16 injured after a city bus crashed through the road and into a sinkhole in the city of Xining.
(ABC News, 1/14/20)
2020 Jan 13, In Egypt Mustafa Kassem (65), an American citizen detained in Cairo in August 2013 while visiting family in Egypt, died after more than six years in Egyptian custody. Kassem had been on a liquid-only hunger strike on and off for years before stopping the liquids last week.
(The Week, 1/14/20)
2020 Jan 13, In France Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont took his seat as a member of the European Parliament in Strasbourg despite facing an arrest warrant against him in Spain.
(AP, 1/13/20)
2020 Jan 13, Hungary's National Food Chain Safety Authority reported that the H5N8 strain of bird flu has been found at a large turkey farm. NEBIH said more than 50,000 birds, would have to be culled and other precautionary measures implemented to contain the spread of the infection.
(Reuters, 1/13/20)
2020 Jan 13, India's Supreme Court directed the government's crime fighting agency to seize local assets of JPMorgan in relation to some transactions the bank engaged in with a local real estate company in 2010.
(Reuters, 1/13/20)
2020 Jan 13, Israeli police said they had raided a cult-like group in an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of Jerusalem in which dozens of women and children were being held and abused under extreme “slavery" conditions.
(AP, 1/13/20)
2020 Jan 13, In eastern Kenya al-Shabab extremists killed three people in an assault early today in Kamuthe town, Garissa county. This was its fifth attack in thirteen days.
(AP, 1/13/20)
2020 Jan 13, In Panama seven villagers were slain by “The New Light of God" religious cult, while 14 more were rescued the next day by police who found them bound and beaten in a temple in El Terrón. Nine villagers were soon arrested and charged with murder.
(AP, 1/19/20)
2020 Jan 13, In Poland a new outbreak of pathogenic H5N8 bird flu was reported, with around 6,000 geese set to be exterminated.
(Reuters, 1/13/20)
2020 Jan 13, Talks in Moscow about bringing an end to Libya's long-running civil war failed to reach a solution and adjourned for the night.
(AP, 1/13/20)
2020 Jan 13, In Slovakia hired assassin Miroslav Marcek pleaded guilty to the murders of investigative journalist Jan Kuciak and his fiancee Martina Kusnirova in Feb., 2018. Three other defendants, including suspected mastermind Marian Kocner, pleaded not guilty.
(SFC, 1/14/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 13, The WHO said that Thai officials have reported that a traveler from the Chinese city of Wuhan has been hospitalized in Thailand with a recently identified new type of coronavirus. The report galvanized leaders in Beijing into recognizing the possible pandemic before them.
(AP, 1/13/20)(AP, 4/14/20)
2020 Jan 14, President Trump used part of his campaign rally in Milwaukee to defend his decision to authorize an airstrike that killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani. Trump has alleged that Soleimani was plotting "imminent attacks" against the US, but has offered no evidence.
(The Week, 1/14/20)
2020 Jan 14, US Democratic presidential hopefuls gathered in Iowa for the seventh debate. Six candidates vying for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination took the stage this evening in Des Moines, Iowa, for their last debate before the Iowa caucuses kick off the primary season in less than three weeks.
(Reuters, 1/14/20)(NY Times, 1/15/20)
2020 Jan 14, In Los Angeles Michael Avenatti, the brash former attorney for the porn actress Stormy Daniels, was arrested for allegedly violating bail by committing multiple state and federal crimes while awaiting trial in two states.
(AP, 1/15/20)
2020 Jan 14, In southern California Delta Airlines Flight 89 enroute to China turned back to Los Angeles Int'l. Airport minutes after takeoff and dumped fuel that fell on fie elementary schools. The FAA soon promised an investigation.
(SFC, 1/16/20, p.A7)
2020 Jan 14, In Texas an ROTC student (16) mistakenly shot and killed a fellow student in their Houston area high school before fleeing the building. The shooter was soon arrested.
(SFC, 1/16/20, p.A5)
2020 Jan 14, A Wisconsin appeals court put on hold an order to immediately remove up to 209,000 names from the state's voter registration polls.
(SFC, 1/15/20, p.A5)
2020 Jan 14, BlackRock Inc chief Laurence Fink told companies to tackle climate change or face his wrath.
(Reuters, 1/14/20)
2020 Jan 14, Amazon.com Inc founder Jeff Bezos arrived in India for a 3-day visit, as thousands of small traders across 300 cities planned protests, claiming the firm is distorting local retail market.
(Reuters, 1/14/20)
2020 Jan 14, Officials said severe winter weather has claimed more lives as avalanches triggered by heavy snowfall killed 55 people in Pakistan-administered Kashmir. 15 deaths in neighboring Afghanistan raised the death toll to 39 in weather-related incidents since Jan. 12.
(AP, 1/14/20)
2020 Jan 14, Britain, France and Germany triggered a dispute resolution mechanism under the already tattered 2015 nuclear deal, prompting Iran to warn them of unspecified "consequences".
(AFP, 1/14/20)
2020 Jan 14, Egyptian police raided the Cairo office of Turkey's state-run news agency late today and detained four of its staff members. Egyptian security forces shut down the agency's security camera and internet and searched the premise overnight
(AP, 1/15/20)
2020 Jan 14, An Egyptian fighter jet crashed in the Sinai Peninsula where the country's forces have been battling militants and that the pilot was killed. The Islamic State group said in a posting online that its fighters had hit the F-16 jet with a missile near the town of Shabana.
(AP, 1/15/20)
2020 Jan 14, The European Court of Human Rights ruled that that a Russian trial judge’s refusal to “allow the defense to examine prosecution and defense witnesses and to submit important expert or exculpatory evidence" violated Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s rights and those of his former business partner Platon Lebedev during their second trial in 2009 and 2010. The Russian businessman had spent nearly a decade in prison in Russia on what he said were politically motivated charges by the Kremlin.
(Bloomberg, 1/14/20)
2020 Jan 14, French movie director Christophe Ruggia was taken into custody over allegations that he sexually assaulted a teenage girl who was cast in one of his movies nearly two decades ago. Actress Adele Haenel, who is now 31, has alleged that Ruggia assaulted and harassed her between 2001 and 2004 after she was cast in a Ruggia-directed movie called "Les Diables".
(Reuters, 1/14/20)
2020 Jan 14, France's Cannes Film Festival announced that writer-director Spike Lee has been tapped to serve as the 2020 edition's jury president.
(Good Morning America, 1/14/20)
2020 Jan 14, Germany launched an 86 billion euro ($95 billion) plan to modernize and expand its creaky railway system, a move billed as an effort to make transportation greener.
(Bloomberg, 1/14/20)
2020 Jan 14, Iran declared British ambassador Robert Macaire "persona non grata," calling for him to be expelled for his alleged role in recent anti-government protests. A judiciary spokesman said Macaire had played a “provocative role" when he attended a vigil at the weekend for passengers killed in the passenger jet crash last week.
(The Telegraph, 1/14/20)
2020 Jan 14, Iran announced its first arrests over the accidental shooting down of a Ukrainian passenger jet, as protesters vented their anger over the catastrophic blunder for a fourth consecutive day.
(AP, 1/14/20)
2020 Jan 14, It was reported that Iran’s constitutional watchdog has barred thousands of people from running in next month's parliamentary elections, including 90 current lawmakers, most of whom are accused of corruption. The reformist newspaper Etemad said that most of those rejected were reformist and moderate candidates.
(AP, 1/14/20)
2020 Jan 14, Iranian media reported that flooding in the south has killed at least three people and left hundreds of villages cut off following days of heavy rainfall.
(AP, 1/14/20)
2020 Jan 14, Ireland's PM Leo Varadkar ended weeks of speculation about the timing of the election when he formally requested that the president dissolve the current parliament. Ireland will go to the polls on February 8.
(AP, 1/14/20)
2020 Jan 14, Kosovo prosecutors filed terrorism charges against an Albanian woman and a man for allegedly joining the Islamic State group in Syria. In April, they were part of a group of 110 Kosovo citizens repatriated from Syria.
(AP, 1/14/20)
2020 Jan 14, Lebanese protesters returned to the streets, blocking several roads around the capital, Beirut, and other areas of the country in renewed rallies against a ruling elite they say has failed to address the economy's downward spiral.
(AP, 1/14/20)
2020 Jan 14, The International Organization for Migration said almost 1,000 people trying to flee Libya by boat have been intercepted and returned to the conflict-ravaged country by its coast guard during the first two weeks of the new year.
(AP, 1/14/20)
2020 Jan 14, In Mexico Homero Gomez, a rural leader who fought to conserve the wintering grounds of monarch butterflies, went missing in Michoacan state. His body was found Jan. 29.
(SFC, 1/31/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 14, In the Philippines the Taal volcano near Manila spewed lava into the sky and trembled constantly Tuesday, possibly portending a bigger and more dangerous eruption, as tens of thousands of people fled villages darkened and blanketed by heavy ash.
(AP, 1/14/20)
2020 Jan 14, Russia sought to downplay the collapse of talks that sought to secure a cease-fire in Libya after the country's rival leaders left Moscow without reaching an agreement.
(AP, 1/14/20)
2020 Jan 14, South Korean President Moon Jae-in faced a barrage of questions about purges of prosecutors looking into corruption in his administration, in the latest sign that the scandals could weigh on upcoming national elections.
(Bloomberg, 1/14/20)
2020 Jan 14, A Sudanese official said that security forces have contained an armed protest from within the security apparatus, amid reports of unrest.
(AP, 1/14/20)
2020 Jan 14, It was reported that UN sanctions experts are warning people not to attend a cryptocurrency conference in North Korea in February, flagging it as a likely sanctions violation, according to a confidential report due to be submitted to the UN Security Council later this month.
(Reuters, 1/14/20)
2020 Jan 15, US President Donald Trump and Chinese Vice Premier Liu He signed an initial trade deal to roll back some tariffs and see China boost purchases of US goods and services, defusing an 18-month conflict between the world's two largest economies.
(Reuters, 1/15/20)
2020 Jan 15, US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi named Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff and Judiciary Chair Rep. Jerrold Nadler as prosecutors for Trump's Senate trial.
(AP, 1/15/20)
2020 Jan 15, US CDC researchers in late May announced that the first US coronavirus infection to be identified was a traveler, a Washington state man who returned this day from Wuhan, China, and sought help at a clinic on Jan. 19.
(AP, 5/29/20)
2020 Jan 15, Ahmadreza Mohammadi-Doostdar (39), a dual US-Iranian citizen, and Majid Ghorbani (60), an Iranian citizen and resident of California, were sentenced to prison terms of 38 months and 30 months, respectively for conducting surveillance on behalf of Iran's government.
(Good Morning America, 1/16/20)
2020 Jan 15, Four coastal Louisiana tribes and one in Alaska that say the US government violated their human rights by failing to take action on climate change have submitted a formal complaint to the United Nations in Switzerland.
(AP, 1/17/20)
2020 Jan 15, A US federal judge in Maryland agreed to block the Trump administration from enforcing an executive order allowing state local government officials to reject refugees from resettling in their jurisdictions.
(SFC, 1/16/20, p.A6)
2020 Jan 15, Texas inmate John Gardner (64) was executed for the January 2005 fatal shooting of his wife, who had had feared she would never get out of her marriage alive. Gardner had a history of violence against women.
(AP, 1/16/20)
2020 Jan 15, Virginia became the 38th state to approve the Equal Rights Amendment, first proposed in 1923. The deadline for the ERA had expired in 1982 and the measure was expected to be tied up in courts for years.
(SFC, 1/16/20, p.A6)
2020 Jan 15, The S&P 500 and the Dow Jones indexes set new record highs on a positive tone around trade talks with China from Trump administration officials ahead of the signing of an initial deal later in the day.
(Reuters, 1/15/20)
2020 Jan 15, US House of Representatives Jenniffer Gonzalez said Puerto Rico will be allowed access to $8.2 billion in delayed disaster-aid funding by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).
(Reuters, 1/15/20)
2020 Jan 15, Virginia Governor Ralph Northam said he plans to declare a temporary emergency banning all guns and weapons from the area around the Capitol in Richmond ahead of a major gun rights demonstration set for January 20.
(Reuters, 1/15/20)
2020 Jan 15, Officials said search teams aided by Pakistani troops pulled out 21 more bodies from homes destroyed by this week's avalanches in the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir, raising the overall death toll due to severe winter weather to 160 for Pakistan and Afghanistan.
(AP, 1/15/20)
2020 Jan 15, China blasted a report from Human Rights Watch that accused it of constructing a surveillance state at home while seeking to silence critics abroad.
(AP, 1/15/20)
2020 Jan 15, Li Qun, the head of the China CDC’s emergency center, told Chinese state television that “The risk of sustained human-to-human transmission is low," in response to increasing cases of the coronavirus.
(AP, 4/14/20)
2020 Jan 15, Croatian police urged citizens in the capital, Zagreb, to use public transport and avoid bikes or scooters in response to dangerous levels of smog. Serbia's government called an urgent meeting to address the problem, shortly after a peak in weekend air pollution levels prompted emergency measures in Bosnia's capital, Sarajevo.
(AP, 1/15/20)
2020 Jan 15, Deutsche Telekom said it was founding a fiber-optic networks joint venture with regional utility EWE that aims to connect more than 1.5 million German households after winning antitrust approval for the deal to go ahead.
(Reuters, 1/15/20)
2020 Jan 15, In Honduras hundreds of migrants started walking and hitching rides from the city of Pedro Sul in a bid to from a caravan to reach the US.
(SFC, 1/16/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 15, Hungary's National Food Chain Safety Authority (NEBIH) said a second outbreak of H5N8 bird flu has been found at a large duck farm in the eastern part of the country.
(Reuters, 1/15/20)
2020 Jan 15, Iran's Pres. Hassan Rouhani slammed the disqualification of thousands of people, including 90 current lawmakers, from running in upcoming parliamentary elections. The Guardian Council has barred more than 9,000 from the over 14,000 people who had registered to run.
(AP, 1/15/20)
2020 Jan 15, Researchers announced the successful creation of another embryo of the nearly extinct northern white rhino. The last two females, hosted in Kenya, provided the eggs.
(SFC, 1/16/20, p.A4)
2020 Jan 15, Kosovo’s Pres. Hashim Thaci denounced what he called “an international amnesty" for Serbia’s crimes in the 1998-1999 war.
(AP, 1/15/20)
2020 Jan 15, Lebanese security forces said they have arrested 59 people, following clashes overnight outside the central bank as angry protesters vented their fury against the country's ruling elite and the worsening financial crisis.
(AP, 1/15/20)
2020 Jan 15, Mozambique's President Filipe Nyusi (60) was sworn in for a second and final term after five turbulent years in office amid two armed insurgencies.
(AP, 1/15/20)
2020 Jan 15, It was reported that Pakistan has arrested Piran Ditta Khan (71) in the 2005 killing of Sharon Beshenivsky (38), a British police officer who was gunned down as she responded to a robbery in the city of Bradford in 2005. Six men were later arrested in Britain but Khan, who was suspected of being the armed gang's organizer, had fled abroad.
(AP, 1/15/20)
2020 Jan 15, The World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) said Romania has reported an outbreak of the highly pathogenic H5N8 bird flu virus on a farm in the northern part of the country, the first such outbreak in nearly three years.
(Reuters, 1/15/20)
2020 Jan 15, Russia's government resigned in a shock announcement after President Vladimir Putin proposed a shake-up of the constitution. The announcement came after Putin used his annual state of the nation address to call for a nationwide vote on a package of constitutional reforms. The changes would transfer more authority to parliament, including the power to choose the prime minister and senior cabinet members.
(AFP, 1/15/20)
2020 Jan 15, Serbia's state Tanjug news agency said the country has seen an outbreak of the pig disease African swine fever (ASF) in wild boars in the east of the country, close to the country's borders with Bulgaria and Romania.
(Reuters, 1/15/20)
2020 Jan 15, Sudan reopened its airspace after an armed revolt from within its security forces shut down the capital’s airport for hours and left at least two people dead.
(AP, 1/15/20)
2020 Jan 15, The Swiss-based World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said last year was the second-hottest year since records began, adding that heat was likely to lead to more extreme weather events like the Australian bushfires in 2020 and beyond.
(Reuters, 1/15/20)
2020 Jan 15, In Syria government warplanes struck a vegetable market and industrial area in Idlib city, killing at least 15 people.
(SFC, 1/16/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 15, Turkish airstrikes inside Iraq targeting members of an outlawed Kurdish rebel group killed at least four minority Yazidi fighters allied with the rebels.
(AP, 1/16/20)
2020 Jan 15, Pope Francis tapped Italian lawyer Francesca Di Giovanni (66) to be the first woman to hold a management position in the Vatican’s Secretariat of State.
(AP, 1/15/20)
2020 Jan 16, The US Senate opened the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump, with House Democrats reading the formal charges in the chamber ahead of the swearing in of all 100 senators as jurors for only the third trial to remove a president in US history. House prosecutors formally recited the charges under presiding Chief Justice John Roberts.
(AP, 1/16/20)(AP, 1/17/20)
2020 Jan 16, After months of wrangling, US lawmakers ratified the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), brokered at the behest of President Donald Trump to replace the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
(Reuters, 1/17/20)
2020 Jan 16, The US Government Accountability Office said in a report that the White House violated federal law in withholding security assistance to Ukraine, an action at the center of President Donald Trump's impeachment.
(AP, 1/16/20)
2020 Jan 16, It was reported that Donald Trump threatened the UK last week with a 25 per cent tariff on its cars unless the British government officially accused Iran of breaking the 2015 nuclear deal, it has been reported.
(The Independent, 1/16/20)
2020 Jan 16, The FBI arrested three men suspected of being members of The Base, a neo-Nazi hate group, who had weapons and discussed traveling to a pro-gun rally in Richmond, Va., next week.
(SFC, 1/17/20, p.A8)
2020 Jan 16, Inmate Jonathan Watson (41) clubbed two men in the head at the California Substance Abuse Treatment Facility and State Prison in the central city of Corcoran. Prisoner David Bobb (48) died that day. Graham De Luis-Conti (62) died three days later at a hospital. Both were serving life sentences for aggravated sexual assault of a child under 14.
(AP, 2/20/20)
2020 Jan 16, A South Carolina judge sentenced a woman to 25 years in prison after she admitted to poisoning her husband by inserting eye drops into his drinking water. Lana Clayton (53) pleaded guilty in a York County courthouse to voluntary manslaughter and tampering with food or drugs charges related to the July 21, 2018, killing of Steven Clayton.
(ABC News, 1/16/20)
2020 Jan 16, Tesla announced it is opening a new design center in China and is already recruiting talent to help make "Chinese-style" cars.
(Good Morning America, 1/16/20)
2020 Jan 16, In Abu Dhabi a bus and a truck collided on a major road, killing six people and injuring 19.
(AP, 1/16/20)
2020 Jan 16, Taliban officials said they have given the US envoy their offer for a temporary cease-fire in Afghanistan that would last between seven and 10 days.
(AP, 1/16/20)
2020 Jan 16, It was reported that foul tasting and smelling tap water has been running for more than a week in dozens of neighborhoods in Rio de Janeiro. The local O Globo newspaper has reported a spike in cases of diarrhea, gastroenteritis and vomiting in Rio's west zone.
(SFC, 1/16/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 16, In China officials in Wuhan and elsewhere under new orders finally got CDC-approved testing kits and a green light to start confirming new cases. Across the country, dozens of reported cases then began to surface, in some cases among patients who were infected earlier but had not yet been tested.
(AP, 4/14/20)
2020 Jan 16, Cyprus, Greece, Israel, Italy, Jordan and Palestine established a bloc called the East Mediterranean Gas Forum.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EastMed_Gas_Forum) (Econ., 8/22/20, p.50)
2020 Jan 16, Egyptian authorities released four people, including two Egyptian journalists, arrested in a police raid on the Cairo bureau of Turkey's state-run news agency.
(AP, 1/16/20)
2020 Jan 16, President Emmanuel Macron said in a speech to the French military that France has deployed a radar system on the eastern coast of Saudi Arabia to beef up its ally's defenses after missile attacks on the kingdom's oil infrastructure in September.
(Reuters, 1/17/20)
2020 Jan 16, Germany's foreign minister said Libyan strongman General Khalifa Haftar has agreed to abide by a ceasefire and said he was ready to participate in an international conference in Berlin on Jan. 19.
(The Telegraph, 1/16/20)
2020 Jan 16, Greek authorities found more than a ton of processed cannabis camouflaged among a shipment of date paste headed by sea from Lebanon to Libya.
(AP, 1/23/20)
2020 Jan 16, Guatemalan police accompanied by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents swept up the majority of some 300 migrants and returned them to the Honduran border. At another border point some 600 migrants rested at a shelter after crossing the frontier earlier in the day and encountering no resistance.
(SFC, 1/17/20, p.A5)
2020 Jan 16, Eight Indonesians were abducted in Malaysian waters in Sabah. Three were released, while the remaining five were probably brought by their captors to the southern Philippine province of Sulu.
(AP, 1/19/20)
2020 Jan 16, Iran accused European governments of sacrificing a troubled 2015 nuclear deal to avoid trade reprisals from US President Donald Trump who has spent nearly two years trying to scupper it. Pres. Hassan Rouhani declared that his country is now enriching more uranium than it was before agreeing to a nuclear accord with world powers in 2015.
(AFP, 1/16/20)(The Telegraph, 1/16/20)
2020 Jan 16, The governments of countries that lost citizens when Iran shot down a Ukrainian airliner demanded that Tehran accept “full responsibility" and pay compensation to the victims’ families. The victims included 57 Canadian citizens as well as 11 Ukrainians, 17 people from Sweden, four Afghans and four British citizens, as well as Iranians.
(AP, 1/16/20)
2020 Jan 16, Israeli advocacy group Ir Amim said 104 housing units were demolished in 2019, compared() to 72 units in 2018. The 44% spike also ends what had been a decline in demolitions between 2016 and 2018.
(AP, 1/16/20)
2020 Jan 16, An Israeli attack helicopter struck a Hamas target in the northern Gaza Strip late today in response to the launch of incendiary balloons into Israeli territory earlier in the day.
(AP, 1/16/20)
2020 Jan 16, Japan recorded its first case of the coronavirus.
(Econ., 5/23/20, p.28)
2020 Jan 16, Lebanese protesters decried security forces' use of violence during rallies over the past two days, including attacks on journalists and the detention of over 100 people.
(AP, 1/16/20)
2020 Jan 16, Russia's Pres. Vladimir Putin signed an order formally appointing Mikhail Mishustin (b.1966), head of the Federal Tax Service, as prime minister after lawmakers in the lower house of parliament voted overwhelming to confirm his candidacy, with 383 in favor and none against.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Mishustin)(Bloomberg, 1/16/20)
2020 Jan 16, Jaime Botin (83), part of the Santander banking dynasty, was convicted by a court in Madrid and fined $57.9 million for trying to smuggle Picasso's "Head of a Young Woman" painting out of the country in 2015. The Spanish billionaire was sentenced to 18 months in jail. On Feb. 4 the sentence against Botin was raised to three years instead of 18 months. His fine was raised to $101 million.
(CBS News, 1/17/20)(SFC, 2/5/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 16, In northern Syria a car bombing late today killed three Turkish soldiers in a Turkish-controlled area. No group immediately claimed responsibility for the bombing.
(AP, 1/17/20)
2020 Jan 16, Ukrainian police said they have opened an investigation into the possibility that US ambassador Marie Yovanovitch came under illegal surveillance by an unknown party before she was recalled from her post in May.
(AP, 1/16/20)
2020 Jan 16, Military officials said Yemeni separatists and forces loyal to the country's UN-recognized government, whose deadly infighting erupted last summer, are pulling back from the key southern city of Zinjibar under a Saudi-brokered deal.
(AP, 1/16/20)
2020 Jan 17, The Trump administration took another step toward dismantling Michelle Obama's school nutrition guidelines, proposing a new rule that could lead to more pizza and fries and less fruit and a smaller variety of vegetables on school menus.
(AP, 1/17/20)
2020 Jan 17, The Trump administration imposed sanctions on Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Gen. Hassan Shahvarpour for directing a massacre of nearly 150 demonstrators in southwestern Iran in November.
(AP, 1/17/20)
2020 Jan 17, The Trump administration granted Chevron a special license to keep drilling oil in Venezuela despite a ban on American companies doing business with Pres. Nicolas Maduro's socialist government.
(SSFC, 1/19/20, p.A4)
2020 Jan 17, The Pentagon announced new restrictions and controls on all international military students at American bases, including barring them from having privately owned firearms on base, in response to a shooting by a Saudi trainee in December that killed three sailors in Florida. The Pentagon issued a memo giving the Navy and other military services conditional approval to resume training of Saudi Arabian nationals in the US. It said non-classroom training can resume once the military services have met certain conditions, including implementing a prohibition on the possession — on or off US military property — of privately owned firearms and ammunition by international military students and their families.
(AP, 1/17/20)(AP, 1/21/20)
2020 Jan 17, Navy Capt. John R. Nettleton, a former commander of the US Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, was convicted of interfering with an investigation into the death of a civilian with whom the commander had fought and argued over his alleged affair with the man's wife.
(AP, 1/17/20)
2020 Jan 17, The US military said 11 troops were treated for concussion after Iran launched a rocket attack at the Al-Asad air base in western Iraq on Jan. 8, despite initially saying no service members had been hurt.
(The Independent, 1/17/20)
2020 Jan 17, US federal authorities turned to a new tactic in the escalating conflict over New York City's so-called sanctuary policies, issuing four “immigration subpoenas" to the city for information about inmates wanted for deportation.
(AP, 1/18/20)
2020 Jan 17, Terence Hallinan (83), former San Francisco supervisor (1988-1995) and district attorney (1995-2003) died.
(SFC, 1/18/20, p.A1)
2020 Jan 17, Former New York GOP Rep. Chris Collins was sentenced to two years in federal prison on charges of insider trading and lying to the FBI.
(The Week, 1/18/20)
2020 Jan 17, In Texas Marc Strickland (18) died at a hospital in Dallas. He was shot Jan. 11 inside a gymnasium during a game between Kimball and South Oak Cliff high schools. A 15-year-old boy who was charged with aggravated assault after surrendering to police the day after the shooting now faced a murder charge.
(AP, 1/19/20)
2020 Jan 17, In Utah a boy armed with a gun killed three children and a woman inside a home in Grantsville, then accompanied a fifth victim to a hospital, where he was arrested.
(AP, 1/18/20)
2020 Jan 17, It was reported that the most serious outbreak of locusts in 25 years is spreading across East Africa and posing an unprecedented threat to food security in some of the world’s most vulnerable countries. Authorities said unusual climate conditions are partly to blame. The outbreak has affected parts of Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia and Sudan.
(AP, 1/17/20)
2020 Jan 17, It was reported that the Suez Canal has suffered an invasion of non-native species, including toxic jellyfish and aggressive lionfish. The influx has increased significantly since Egypt doubled its capacity in 2015 with the opening of the "New Suez Canal".
(SFC, 1/17/20, p.A6)
2020 Jan 17, It was reported that Brazil’s government plans to push abstinence-based sex education to help cut teenage pregnancy rates, in a controversial move inspired by an evangelical Christian pressure group and Donald Trump’s policy in the US.
(The Guardian, 1/17/20)
2020 Jan 17, Leaders of native tribes in Brazil issued a rallying call to protect the Amazon rainforest and its indigenous people from what they called the "genocide, ethnocide and ecocide" planned by the country's far-right President Jair Bolsonaro.
(Reuters, 1/18/20)
2020 Jan 17, Chinese President Xi Jinping touched down in Myanmar's capital on a state visit aimed at buttressing the embattled government of Aung San Suu Kyi and driving through multi-billion-dollar infrastructure deals.
(AFP, 1/17/20)
2020 Jan 17, Danish drugmaker Novo Nordisk said its new diabetes pill, Rybelsus, will be covered by Express Scripts Holding Co, one of the largest US pharmacy benefit managers.
(Reuters, 1/17/20)
2020 Jan 17, A new report by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) from the United Nations indicates that the Commonwealth of Dominica was the fastest growing economy in the entire Latin America and the Caribbean region in 2019.
(PRNewswire, 1/18/20)
2020 Jan 17, The head of the European Union’s border agency said the number of migrants entering Europe from Turkey rose significantly last year as people fleeing strife in Syria and Afghanistan flooded into the country and then set out for Greece.
(AP, 1/17/20)
2020 Jan 17, Greece warned it may try to block any Libyan peace deal that doesn’t resolve a dispute over regional maritime borders, as PM Kyriakos Mitsotakis met with military commander Khalifa Haftar ahead of a Berlin conference on the country’s future. Haftar held talks in Athens two days ahead of a peace conference in Berlin, which he and the head of Tripoli's UN-recognized government Fayez al-Sarraj are expected to attend.
(AP, 1/17/20)(AFP, 1/17/20)
2020 Jan 17, Iran's soccer federation said it has been told it will not be hosting any international matches on Iranian soil.
(AP, 1/17/20)
2020 Jan 17, Two protesters were killed and over a dozen wounded in central Baghdad in renewed violence between anti-government demonstrators and Iraqi security forces.
(AP, 1/17/20)
2020 Jan 17, Hundreds of Jordanians demonstrated in downtown Amman, calling on the government to cancel an agreement in which Israel began pumping natural gas to the kingdom this year.
(AP, 1/17/20)
2020 Jan 17, Samherji, the Icelandic fishing company at the center of Namibia's biggest corruption scandal, announced that it is withdrawing from the southwest African nation.
(Reuters, 1/18/20)
2020 Jan 17, Seven trekkers, including four South Koreans, went missing in Nepal's northwest Himalayan region after an avalanche hit their trail.
(Reuters, 1/18/20)
2020 Jan 17, Spain's Balearic Islands regional government, based in Palma de Mallorca, passed a law prohibiting the organization and promotion of pub crawls and publicity promoting of alcohol sales by means of “open bars" and “happy hours".
(AP, 1/17/20)
2020 Jan 17, Swedish activist Greta Thunberg (17) and a crowd of some 10,000 protesters marched in the Swiss city of Lausanne before many of them head to Davos next week to challenge political and business leaders to combat the climate crisis.
(Reuters, 1/17/20)
2020 Jan 17, Ukraine PM Oleksiy Honcharuk tendered his resignation after he was heard on a leaked recording criticizing his boss’s grasp of the economy. The move was seen as a formality and a pledge of loyalty. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy rejected the offer.
(Bloomberg, 1/17/20)(SFC, 1/18/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 18, Thousands gathered in cities across the USA as part of the nationwide Women's March rallies focused on issues such as climate change, pay equity, reproductive rights and immigration.
(AP, 1/18/20)
2020 Jan 18, Florida authorities arrested suspect Robert Eugene Koehler (60), a registered sex offender from Palm Bay. He is believed to be the notorious Pillowcase Rapist who raped more than 40 women in South Florida between 1981 and 1986.
(Miami Herald, 1/20/20)(Insider, 1/24/20)
2020 Jan 18, In Missouri church and civic leaders said nearly $13 million in medical debt was wiped out for 11,108 families in the St. Louis area with money raised by more than a dozen United Church of Christ congregations and the Deaconess Foundation.
(SSFC, 1/19/20, p.A9)
2020 Jan 18, New Mexico Sunday school teacher Sasha Krause (27) was reported missing. Her body was found a month later cold and stiff, with a bullet wound to the back of her head in a forest clearing outside Flagstaff. Mark Gooch (21), a US Air Force airman stationed near Phoenix was later arrested. He pleaded not guilty to murder and other charges.
(AP, 5/28/20)
2020 Jan 18, In Pennsylvania Delbert Orr Africa, a member of the Move 9 group who has been imprisoned for 42 years for a crime he says he did not commit, was released from prison. He is the eighth of the nine Move members – five men and four women – to be released or to have died while in prison. The nine were arrested and sentenced to 30 years to life following a dramatic police siege of their communal home in Philadelphia which culminated with a shootout on 8 August 1978.
(The Guardian, 1/18/20)
2020 Jan 18, The airport and businesses remained closed in the capital of Newfoundland in Atlantic Canada in the wake of a massive winter blizzard that buried cars in snow drifts and caused an avalanche in one neighborhood.
(Reuters, 1/18/20)
2020 Jan 18, China and neighboring Myanmar agreed to expedite several projects designated as part of the pan-Eurasia Belt and Road Initiative in a sign of growing ties between both countries.
(AP, 1/18/20)
2020 Jan 18, Chinese health authorities said they had discovered four more cases of pneumonia following an outbreak of what is believed to be a new coronavirus strain in the central city of Wuhan, raising concerns that the disease could spread further.
(Reuters, 1/18/20)
2020 Jan 18, In Lebanon police fired volleys of tear gas and rubber bullets in Beirut to disperse thousands of protesters amid some of the worst rioting since demonstrations against the country's ruling elite erupted three months ago. More than 150 people were injured.
(AP, 1/18/20)
2020 Jan 18, A fire engulfed a protest camp in central Beirut this evening, burning tents and sending plumes of smoke into the air, as security forces faced off against protesters near parliament.
(Reuters, 1/18/20)
2020 Jan 18, Forces loyal to Libyan military strongman Khalifa Haftar blocked oil exports from the war-ravaged country's main ports, raising the stakes on the eve of an international summit aimed at bringing peace to the North African nation.
(AFP, 1/18/20)
2020 Jan 18, Forces loyal to Libyan military strongman Khalifa Haftar blocked oil exports from the war-ravaged country's main ports, raising the stakes on the eve of an international summit aimed at bringing peace to the North African nation.
(AP, 1/18/20)
2020 Jan 18, More than a thousand Central American migrants surged onto a bridge spanning the Suchiate River between southern Mexico and Guatemala as Mexican National Guardsmen attempted to impede their journey north.
(AP, 1/18/20)
2020 Jan 18, In northeast Nigeria heavily armed jihadists have carried out an "extremely violent" attack on a vital aid facility housing UN workers. One soldier and four assailants died in the ensuing gunfight.
(AFP, 1/20/20)
2020 Jan 18, In the Philippines soldiers clashed with Abu Sayyaf members in Sulare island in Parang town, in Sulu, killing one militant and destroying a speed boat believed to have been used in a recent kidnapping of Indonesian fishermen.
(Reuters, 1/19/20)
2020 Jan 18, People in a southern Puerto Rico city discovered a warehouse filled with water, cots and other unused emergency supplies, then set off a social media uproar when they broke in to retrieve goods as the area struggles to recover from a strong earthquake. The emergency supplies had been piled in the warehouse since Hurricane Maria battered Puerto Rico in September 2017. Gov. Wanda Vázquez quickly fired the director of the island's emergency management agency.
(AP, 1/18/20)
2020 Jan 18, Somalia police said at least two people were killed and more than 20 others wounded when a suicide car bomber targeted a construction site along a highway outside Mogadishu.
(AP, 1/18/20)
2020 Jan 18, In Yemen ballistic missiles fired by Houthi rebels smashed into a mosque in the training camp in the central province of Marib late today, killing at least 79 troops and wounding 81 others during evening prayers. The death toll from the missile attack soon climbed to at least 111 troops.
(AP, 1/19/20)(AP, 1/20/20)
2020 Jan 19, Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg pledged to narrow the wealth gap between black and white Americans by boosting black ownership of homes and businesses and investing in poor neighborhoods.
(Reuters, 1/19/20)
2020 Jan 19, The San Francisco 49ers beat the Green Bay Packers 34-20 at Levi Stadium in Santa Clara, Ca. The NFC win put the 49ers into this year's Super Bowl.
(SFC, 1/20/20, p.A1)
2020 Jan 19, A southern California driver intentionally rammed a Toyota Prius with six teenage boys inside, killing three and injuring three others before fleeing late today in Temescal Valley, Riverside County. Anurag Chandra (42) of Corona was arrested a short time later in a neighborhood near the crash site.
(AP, 1/20/20)
2020 Jan 19, Elon Musk's SpaceX simulated a successful emergency landing off the coast of Cape Canaveral in Florida in a dramatic test of a crucial abort system on an unmanned astronaut capsule, laying the foundation for its mission to fly NASA astronauts for the first time.
(Reuters, 1/19/20)
2020 Jan 19, Hawaii handyman Jaroslav “Jerry" Hanel stabbed his landlord and killed two officers before the house he and two women were believed to be inside burned. They were presumed dead. Hanel had a history of run-ins with police and neighbors and faced eviction.
(AP, 1/19/20)
2020 Jan 19, In Texas two people were killed and at least five injured when a gunman opened fire at a concert on the San Antonio River Walk.
(SFC, 1/21/20, p.A5)
2020 Jan 19, In 2021 data from a CDC study showed that the coronavirus virus may have been circulating in the US well before the first COVID-19 case was diagnosed on this day. Data pointed to the presence of the virus in the country as early as December 2019.
(Reuters, 6/15/21)
2020 Jan 19, China's state planner said the country is stepping up restrictions on the production, sale and use of single-use plastic products, as it seeks to tackle one of the country's biggest environmental problems.
(Reuters, 1/19/20)
2020 Jan 19, Chinese authorities and the World Health Organization (WHO) said a new strain of coronavirus is behind the outbreak of pneumonia in the central city of Wuhan, which has erupted just ahead of the Lunar New Year, the country's biggest festival. As of today there were 65 confirmed cases of patients with pneumonia caused by the new strain of coronavirus.
(Reuters, 1/19/20)
2020 Jan 19, In the Czech Republic a fire swept through an asylum for the mentally ill, killing eight male patients in the northwestern town of Vejprty.
(AP, 1/19/20)
2020 Jan 19, Participants at a Berlin summit agreed to respect a much-violated arms embargo in Libya, halt military support to the warring parties and push them to reach a full cease-fire. The summit was quickly overshadowed by a fresh crisis over oil. There were reports of ongoing fighting on the frontlines south of Tripoli and Western leaders appeared downbeat on the prospects of putting the ceasefire agreement into force. It was later revealed that at least five cargo planes filled with weapons from the UAE and Russia were bound for Libya as global leaders posed for a group picture.
(AP, 1/20/20)(The Telegraph, 1/20/20)(SFC, 9/4/20, p.A4)
2020 Jan 19, In Hong Kong clashes broke out between protesters and police, cutting short a rally after thousands had gathered at a park to call for electoral reforms and a boycott of the Chinese Communist Party. Ventus Lau, the rally's organizer, was arrested in the evening for allegedly breaching the authorities' conditions for the rally and repeatedly obstructing officers.
(AP, 1/19/20)
2020 Jan 19, In Indonesia a footbridge packed with people on Sumatra Island broke. Nine bodies were pulled from the water as far as 12 miles from the bridge. One boy (14) remained missing.
(SFC, 1/21/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 19, In Iraq protests escalated across the south and Baghdad as demonstrators sealed off streets with burning tires in outrage at the government's slow pace of reform. At least 27 people were left wounded.
(AFP, 1/19/20)(SFC, 1/20/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 19, Israel's military said it has begun construction of an underground defense system along its northern frontier with Lebanon to protect against cross-border tunnels. the construction would all be on the Israeli side of the border and that United Nations peacekeepers along the frontier had been notified.
(AP, 1/19/20)
2020 Jan 19, In Italy hundreds of people in small rowing boats protested in front of Venice's St Mark's Square to denounce what they say is a proliferation of motor boats that have crowded the waters of the lagoon city.
(Reuters, 1/19/20)
2020 Jan 19, Jordan's parliament approved a draft law to ban imports of Israeli gas to the country just days after they started under a multibillion-dollar deal struck in 2016 which is opposed by much of the population. The government has previously said it was a deal between companies rather than a political matter.
(Reuters, 1/19/20)
2020 Jan 19, In Lebanon dozens of anti-government protesters gathered in Beirut, as security forces braced for more rioting after a night of violence left hundreds wounded.
(AP, 1/19/20)
2020 Jan 19, It was reported that police in Mexico have found 14 sets of skeletal human remains in seven clandestine burial pits on islands in a reservoir of southern Oaxaca state.
(SSFC, 1/19/20, p.A4)
2020 Jan 19, Libya's National Oil Corporation (NOC) said it is cutting production at the El Sharara and El Feel oilfields after forces under the command of Khalifa Haftar's Libyan National Army (LNA) shut a pipeline from the fields.
(Reuters, 1/19/20)
2020 Jan 19, Dutch police detained four suspects following a suspected failed attempt to break one or more prisoners out of a prison.
(AP, 1/19/20)
2020 Jan 19, In Paraguay at least 75 inmates, including members of Brazil's most powerful gang, escaped from a prison in the city of Pedro Juan Caballero after digging a tunnel in an operation that prison officials were believed to have been aware. The director of the prison was fired along with six other prison officials.
(Reuters, 1/19/20)
2020 Jan 19, In Russia eight people were detained by police at a march in Moscow commemorating the 2009 killing of human rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov and reporter Anastasia Baburova. A Russian nationalist was sentenced to life in prison for the killings.
(AP, 1/19/20)
2020 Jan 19, South Africa's Communication Workers Union (CWU) said it is angered by Telkom's plan to cut up to 3,000 workers and called for an urgent meeting with the ruling party and the minister of communication.
(Reuters, 1/19/20)
2020 Jan 19, In South Korea Lotte Group founder Shin Kyuk-ho (98) died. He started manufacturing chewing gum in 1948 in Japan and built the business into South Korea's No.5 conglomerate with interests ranging from retail to chemicals.
(Reuters, 1/19/20)
2020 Jan 19, Turkey called for the European Union to end what it said was the bloc's prejudice against Turkish Cypriots, defending its launch of a fresh round of hydrocarbons drilling off the Mediterranean island.
(Reuters, 1/19/20)
2020 Jan 19, Two Ukrainian soldiers were killed and 10 wounded this weekend in the eastern Donbass region.
(AP, 1/20/20)
2020 Jan 19, In Yemen Iran-aligned Huthi rebels, who control the capital Sanaa and most of the north, banned the use of new banknotes printed by the central bank in Aden which is run by the internationally recognized government. This soon sent the riyal crashing, aggravating a humanitarian crisis that has already driven millions to the brink of famine after five years of conflict.
(AFP, 1/28/20)
2020 Jan 20, The US marked the legacy of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. with tributes recalling his past struggles for racial equality.
(AP, 1/20/20)
2020 Jan 20, Charles Fry (b.1927), co-founder of Fry's Food Stores, died in Arizona. He and his brother started the food chain in 1955 in Richmond, Ca., and expanded it to 42 stores before it was purchased by Dillons in 1972. He helped his sons found Fry's Electronics in 1985.
(SFC, 1/24/20, p.C5)
2020 Jan 20, In New Hampshire a coyote attacked a pair of dogs, bit a woman and skirmished with a vehicle before being killed by a father defending his family.
(AP, 1/21/20)
2020 Jan 20, In Virginia thousands of gun-rights activists, some brandishing their military-style rifles, crowded the streets surrounding Richmond's Capitol building to protest plans by the state's Democratic leadership to pass gun-control legislation.
(AP, 1/20/20)
2020 Jan 20, In Australia a hail storm hit Canberra damaging buildings, homes and cars, and caused flash flooding. Recent rains have helped but have not extinguished major fires in New South Wales and Victoria states.
(SFC, 1/21/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 20, In Brazil 26 inmates escaped from a prison in the northwestern state of Acre early today, with all but one remaining at large.
(Reuters, 1/20/20)
2020 Jan 20, Chinese President Xi Jinping said the country would curb the spread of an outbreak of pneumonia caused by a new coronavirus. A leading Chinese epidemiologist, Zhong Nanshan, announced for the first time that the virus was transmissible from person to person on national television, a development that raises the possibility that it could spread more quickly and widely.
(AP, 1/20/20)(AP, 4/14/20)
2020 Jan 20, China repeated its call for Canada to release detained Huawei Technologies Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou as soon as possible, ahead of the executive's first extradition hearing later in the day.
(Reuters, 1/20/20)
2020 Jan 20, In Ethiopia at least three people were killed and more than 100 others injured when a wooden stand erected for the colorful Epiphany celebration collapsed in Gondar.
(AP, 1/20/20)
2020 Jan 20, France and Malaysia said Malaysia has shipped 43 illegal plastic waste containers back to France as part of a crackdown on illegal trafficking of waste.
(Reuters, 1/20/20)
2020 Jan 20, In France some subway workers in Paris ended their walkouts after six weeks of transport strikes. 5 of 16 lines were still disrupted.
(SFC, 1/21/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 20, Two Iraqi police officers were killed and dozens of protesters were wounded in Baghdad and other cities in clashes with security forces as anti-government unrest resumed after a lull of several weeks. A gunshot wound killed one protester, while a second died after being struck in the head by a tear gas canister. A third later succumbed to his injuries.
(AP, 1/20/20)
(The Telegraph, 1/20/20)(AP, 1/20/20)
2020 Jan 20, Kosovo and Serbia agreed to launch direct commercial flights after a two-decade interval in a deal mediated by the United States in an attempt to push the two former foes closer to normalizing relations.
(Reuters, 1/20/20)
2020 Jan 20, Some 3,000 Central American migrants made another attempt to walk across the border bridge into Mexico, in a new test of US President Donald Trump's “Central America" strategy to keep them away from the US border. Hundreds of Mexican National Guard troops deployed to the bridge and the banks of shallow Suchiate River that divides the country from Guatemala.
(AP, 1/20/20)
2020 Jan 20, In Nigeria Islamic militants killed a Christian pastor who had appealed for help life in a video just days earlier. Rev. Lawan Andimi was abducted earlier this month when Boko Haram militants attacked the Michika local government area, where he was the chairman of a local chapter of the Christian Association of Nigeria.
(AP, 2/22/20)
2020 Jan 20, The populist Progress Party pulled out of Norway's center-right governing coalition over the decision to repatriate an Islamic State group-linked woman and her two children from a detention camp in Syria. PM Erna Solberg said she would continue with a minority government comprised of three coalition partners.
(AP, 1/20/20)
2020 Jan 20, Russian President Vladimir Putin submitted to parliament a package of constitutional amendments widely seen as an attempt to secure his grip on power well after his current term ends in 2024.
(AP, 1/20/20)
2020 Jan 20, In Russia a heating pipe burst in a small hotel in the central city of Perm, flooding rooms with boiling water that killed five people and left six others injured. The plumbing explosion left 20 buildings, including a hospital, a school and a kindergarten, without heat or hot water in the middle of winter.
(AP, 1/20/20)
2020 Jan 20, Slovakia said it has detected its second case of the highly pathogenic H5N8 bird flu virus at a farm in the west of the country.
(Reuters, 1/20/20)
2020 Jan 20, In Spain three people were left dead in strong winds, heavy snowfall and low temperatures from Storm Gloria's sweep over the last 24 hours prompting five provinces to go on top emergency alert.
(Reuters, 1/20/20)(AP, 1/20/20)
2020 Jan 20, It was reported that Sri Lanka's president has decided that tens of thousands of people still missing from the country's quarter-century civil war will be formally declared dead and death certificates will be issued.
(AP, 1/20/20)
2020 Jan 20, Turkey's largest telecoms group said it had been hit by a cyber attack that led to problems with internet access, but did not specify who was carrying out the attack. It said the strike had targeted its DNS addresses. Internet access was soon restored.
(Reuters, 1/20/20)
2020 Jan 20, The World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) said Ukraine has reported an outbreak of the highly pathogenic H5 bird flu on a farm in the west-central part of the country, the first of such outbreak in nearly three years. The outbreak killed 4,856 birds out of a flock of 98,000 in Vinnitsa. The rest of the flock was slaughtered.
(Reuters, 1/20/20)
2020 Jan 21, In a marathon session that began at 1 p.m. and lasted nearly 13 hours into the early morning, the Republican-led Senate rejected all 11 Democratic-proposed amendments en route to approving the rules for the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump.
(Good Morning America, 1/22/20)
2020 Jan 21, Alex Azar 52), the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, appeared on Fox News to report the latest on the coronavirus as it ravaged China. The lawyer and former drug industry executive assured Americans the US government was prepared. Shortly after his televised comments, Azar tapped a trusted aide with minimal public health experience to lead the agency’s day-to-day response to COVID-19. The aide, Brian Harrison, had joined the department after running a dog-breeding business for six years.
(Reuters, 4/22/20)
2020 Jan 21, In Alabama Landon Durham (16) allegedly stabbed his mother and 13-year-old twin brothers to death before going to school in Munford as if it were a normal day. Durham was apprehended the next morning at a grocery store approximately seven miles outside Gadsden.
(The Independent, 1/23/20)
2020 Jan 21, San Francisco-based Cruise unveiled a robot taxi called Origin. Cruise said it could be manufactured at half the cost of conventional electric SUVs.
(SFC, 1/23/20, p.D1)
2020 Jan 21, Mississippi authorities two of the inmates beaten to death inside the troubled Parchman Farm Penitentiary were killed in a fight with other inmates.
(SFC, 1/22/20, p.A4)
2020 Jan 21, Iranian student Shahab Dehghani, attending college in Boston, was denied entry to the US and ordered to immediately fly back to his native country, despite a court order temporarily staying his removal.
(AP, 1/21/20)
2020 Jan 21, A federal appeals court threw out part of former New York Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver's corruption conviction and ordered that he be resentenced, citing errors in his trial judge's jury instructions. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan voided Silver's conviction on three counts, and upheld his conviction on four counts. Silver had been sentenced in July 2018 to seven years in prison.
(Reuters, 1/21/20)
2020 Jan 21, A North Carolina appeals court upheld the legality of a legislative session Republicans quickly called in December 2016 to push through laws that weakened the power of incoming Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper.
(AP, 1/21/20)
2020 Jan 21, Bangladesh's High Court asked authorities to shut down 231 factories surrounding the highly polluted Buriganga River in Dhaka.
(SFC, 1/22/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 21, Brazil's right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro said he will create an "Amazon Council" to protect and ensure the "sustainable development" of the world's largest rainforest, following intense criticism of his environmental policies.
(Reuters, 1/21/20)
2020 Jan 21, PM Boris Johnson's government suffered a fourth defeat on its Brexit legislation when members of parliament's upper chamber voted to ensure protections for child refugees after Britain leaves the European Union.
(Reuters, 1/21/20)
2020 Jan 21, Britain's Sainsbury said it plans to cut hundreds of management jobs as it seeks to bring its main supermarket operation and its Argos general merchandise arm closer together.
(Reuters, 1/21/20)
2020 Jan 21, China sentenced the former president of Interpol, Meng Hongwei (66), to 13 years and six months in prison on charges of accepting more than $2 million in bribes. His wife, Grace Meng, is now suing Interpol, accusing it of failing to protect him from arrest in China and failing to look after his family.
(AP, 1/21/20)
2020 Jan 21, European Union lawmakers backed measures to clamp down on abuse of EU pet passports by criminals and gangs that illegally trade cats and dogs.
(Reuters, 1/21/20)
2020 Jan 21, In France protesting workers cut power to thousands of Parisians in an outage that lasted two hours.
(SFC, 1/22/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 21, Iran's ISNA News Agency reported that lawmaker Ahmad Hamzeh, who represents Iran's Kerman province, has offered to pay a $3 million reward to "whoever kills Trump" in a speech to the country's parliament.
(AP, 1/21/20)
2020 Jan 21, Iran acknowledged that its armed forces fired two Russian anti-aircraft missiles at a Ukrainian jetliner that crashed after taking off from Tehran's main airport on January 8, killing all 176 people on board.
(AP, 1/21/20)
2020 Jan 21, Iraqi riot police opened fire amid clashes with anti-government protesters on a central Baghdad highway, killing one person and wounding over a dozen others. Female activist and paramedic Janat Madhi (49) was killed in Basra late today by unidentified assailants.
(AP, 1/21/20)(AFP, 1/23/20)
2020 Jan 21, In Iraq three French citizens and an Iraqi, aid workers for a French Christian charity, failed to show up for a scheduled meeting and have not been heard from since.
(AP, 1/24/20)
2020 Jan 21, A South Korean announced that its anti-piracy unit has temporarily expanded its mission to the Strait of Hormuz, a vital global oil route at the center of soaring tensions between Iran and the United States.
(AP, 1/21/20)
2020 Jan 21, Spain's government formally declared a "climate emergency," proposing measures to tackle climate change that include mandatory low-emission zones in big cities.
(Reuters, 1/21/20)
2020 Jan 21, A winter storm lashed much of Spain for a third day, leaving 200,000 people without electricity, schools closed and roads blocked by snow as it killed four people.
(AP, 1/21/20)
2020 Jan 21, In Switzerland US Pres. Trump (73) announced the United States would join an initiative to plant one trillion trees, but dismissed "perennial prophets of doom" on climate change in his keynote address. Activist Greta Thunberg (17) responded by saying planting trees was not enough to address climate change.
(AP, 1/21/20)
2020 Jan 21, In northern Syria Russian-led air strikes killed at least 18 people in the northwest where a major government offensive to clear out rebels has sent tens of thousands of people fleeing toward the border with Turkey. One strike on the rebel-held village of Kfar Taal killed at least nine people, including an entire family.
(Reuters, 1/21/20)(AP, 1/21/20)
2020 Jan 21, A UN human rights panel ruled for the first time that people fleeing the effects of climate change may be entitled to claim asylum, even as it dismissed an individual plaintiff's case against his deportation from New Zealand.
(AP, 1/21/20)
2020 Jan 21, The UN said rising numbers of children in Guatemala are going hungry as drought linked to climate change reduces food harvests, fueling child malnutrition rates.
(Reuters, 1/21/20)
2020 Jan 21, A UN-backed Conference on Disarmament opened in Geneva. The United States urged China to join trilateral nuclear arms talks with Moscow, calling Beijing's secrecy around growing stockpiles a "serious threat to strategic stability".
(Reuters, 1/21/20)
2020 Jan 22, The Trump administration announced new regulations barring Iranian investors and business people from entering or staying in the United States on certain types of visas effective Jan. 23.
(AP, 1/22/20)
2020 Jan 22, The Republican-controlled US Senate heard opening arguments in President Donald Trump's impeachment trial, beginning several days of argument on whether to remove Trump from office.
(Reuters, 1/22/20)
2020 Jan 22, The US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approved Kinder Morgan Inc's Dec. 13 request to start construction of its proposed Lockridge natural gas pipeline in the Permian basin in West Texas.
(Reuters, 1/22/20)
2020 Jan 22, The Environmental Working Group (EWG) reported that the contamination of US drinking water with man-made "forever chemicals" is far worse than previously estimated with some of the highest levels found in Miami, Philadelphia and New Orleans. The chemicals, resistant to breaking down in the environment, are known as perfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS.
(AP, 1/22/20)
2020 Jan 22, US House prosecutors faced fidgeting senators as they rolled out their case against President Donald Trump, the trial's previous session having lasted a fatigue-inducing 13 hours. Pres. Trump sent 120-plus tweets that included trial commentary and criticism.
(AP, 1/22/20)
2020 Jan 22, A senior US official said on China has failed to send home North Korean workers by a December 22 deadline in violation of a 2017 United Nations resolution. The United States has estimated Pyongyang was earning more than $500 million a year from nearly 100,000 workers abroad, of which some 50,000 were in China and 30,000 in Russia.
(Reuters, 1/22/20)
2020 Jan 22, Utah became the US 19th state to ban the practice of conversion therapy for LGBTQ children.
(SFC, 1/23/20, p.A6)
2020 Jan 22, In Washington state several people in a dispute opened fire, killing a woman, in the busiest part of downtown Seattle at the height of the evening commute. Two men involved in the shooting were later arrested in Las Vegas. A 3rd suspect injured in the shooting was located by police in a Seattle hospital.
(AP, 1/22/20)(SFC, 2/3/20, p.A8)
2020 Jan 22, The lower house of Britain's parliament overturned changes made by the upper house to the legislation needed to ratify the country's divorce agreement with the EU.
(Reuters, 1/22/20)
2020 Jan 22, Terry Jones (77), one of the British Monty Python comedy team and director of religious satire "Life of Brian", died after a long battle with dementia.
(Reuters, 1/22/20)
2020 Jan 22, Burundi's government approved draft legislation to make Pres. Pierre Nkurunziza "Paramount Leader, Champion of Patriotism and Leadership Core," as his troubled third term nears an end.
(SFC, 1/23/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 22, Deaths from China's new virus rose to 17 with more than 540 cases confirmed, increasing fears of contagion from an infection suspected to originate from illegally-traded wildlife. A patient infected with the new coronavirus died in Hebei province, marking the first confirmed death outside Hubei province where the outbreak began. This raised the death toll from the outbreak to 18.
(Reuters, 1/22/20)(Reuters, 1/23/20)
2020 Jan 22, Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan started US-monitored talks in Khartoum to try hammer out a draft deal to resolve their dispute over a Nile dam that Ethiopia is constructing.
(AP, 1/22/20)
2020 Jan 22, French finance minister Bruno Le Maire said France and the United States have brokered a truce in their bilateral row over digital taxation but still have to hammer out how talks for a global deal should proceed.
(Reuters, 1/22/20)
2020 Jan 22, In Germany a Berlin court convicted two German men of murder in the fatal shooting of a 25-year-old Polish woman. The woman was found fatally injured in a Berlin driveway in December 2018. The two men were sentenced to life imprisonment.
(AP, 1/22/20)
2020 Jan 22, Greece's merchant marine ministry said eight crew members of a Greek-flagged tanker ship have been freed more than 20 days after being kidnapped by gunmen off the coast of Cameroon. Pirates hade kidnapped the crew on Dec. 31 from the Happy Lady tanker, which had been lying at anchor two nautical miles (2.3 miles, 3.7 km) outside the port of Limboh.
(AP, 1/22/20)
2020 Jan 22, In southwestern Iran masked gunmen ambushed and killed Abdolhossein Mojaddami, the local head of the Basij paramilitary security force. He was an associate of Iran's top general recently killed in an American drone strike in Baghdad.
(AP, 1/22/20)
2020 Jan 22, Japan-based Toyota Motor Corp said it is recalling 361,000 older vehicles worldwide for potentially defective air bag inflators. A day earlier Honda Motor Co said it will recall 2.7 million older US vehicles in North America for the same type of Takata inflator that Toyota is also recalling.
(AP, 1/22/20)
2020 Jan 22, A Kosovo court convicted eight ethnic Albanian men of preparing terrorist acts and trying to destabilize the country's constitutional order. The court in Pristina handed out prison terms ranging from 2 to 12 years to eight members of the so-called People’s Eye group.
(AP, 1/22/20)
2020 Jan 22, Lebanon's new government held its first meeting, a day after it was formed following a three-month political vacuum, with the prime minister saying his Cabinet will adopt financial and economic methods different than those of previous governments.
(AP, 1/22/20)
2020 Jan 22, In Libya the only functioning airport in Tripoli reopened after coming under attack, despite a tenuous truce that world powers have pushed warring parties to respect. Authorities at Mitiga airport said six Grad missiles had crashed into the tarmac.
(AP, 1/22/20)
2020 Jan 22, North Korea banned foreign tourists to guard against the spread of a new virus from China.
(AP, 1/22/20)
2020 Jan 22, It was reported that Saudi Arabia’s de-facto ruler, known as MBS, started a hacking process by sending the Amazon.com Inc. chief Jeff Bezos a WhatsApp message containing hidden malware, which gave the Saudis access to the billionaire’s phone. The message to Bezos in May, 2018, preceded the grisly murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, by five months.
(Bloomberg, 1/22/20)
2020 Jan 22, South Korea's first known transgender soldier pleaded to be allowed to continue serving after the military decided to discharge her for undergoing gender reassignment surgery. Tank driver Byun Hui-su, held a news conference at which she asked military leaders to reconsider their decision and let her serve as a female soldier.
(AP, 1/22/20)
2020 Jan 22, In South Sudan suspected Misseriya tribesmen killed at least 29 people, at least some of whom burned to death in their homes, in an attack on a village in the disputed Abyei border region. The death toll from the attack soon rose to at least 32 people.
(Reuters, 1/22/20)(AP, 1/23/20)
2020 Jan 22, In Switzerland top NGOs including Greenpeace and Amnesty International called for the $1.1 billion sale of the .org internet domain to a private company to be blocked, saying it could do "irreparable harm." The directors of 10 leading NGOs published an open letter at the World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting in Davos urging ISOC and ICANN, the internet's governing authority, to stop the sale.
(Reuters, 1/22/20)
2020 Jan 23, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists announced its symbolic “doomsday clock" has moved forward to 100 seconds to midnight, the closest to catastrophe that the scientists have judged the world to be at any point since its creation in 1947, at the outset of the cold war.
(The Guardian, 1/23/20)
2020 Jan 23, The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention raised its travel alert for the coronavirus outbreak to a level 3, recommending people avoid all nonessential travel to Wuhan, China. The outbreak has now killed 18 and infected nearly 600 people globally.
(Reuters, 1/23/20)
2020 Jan 23, The US State Department pulled all non-emergency American personnel and their family out of Hubei province, and issued a travel warning urging people not to visit there.
(AP, 1/24/20)
2020 Jan 23, The Trump administration finalized a rule to pare back the types of waterways protected from pollution under federal law, a move intended to ease burdens on industries like agriculture and mining. Industry groups praised the move while environmental groups criticized it.
(Reuters, 1/23/20)
2020 Jan 23, President Donald Trump's administration rolled out a new rule that aims to limit "birth tourism" by women who enter the United States on tourist visas with the intention of obtaining citizenship for their babies born on American soil.
(Reuters, 1/23/20)
2020 Jan 23, The United States barred Iranians from entering the country on trade and investment visas. The US sanctioned four companies that it says have traded hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Iranian petroleum and petrochemicals in its latest effort to clamp down on the Islamic Republic’s revenue sources.
(Reuters, 1/23/20)(Bloomberg, 1/23/20)
2020 Jan 23, Democratic House prosecutors made an expansive case at Donald Trump's impeachment trial that he abused power like no other president in history, swept up by a “completely bogus" Ukraine theory pushed by attorney Rudy Giuliani.
(AP, 1/23/20)
2020 Jan 23, The US denied an extradition request for Anne Sacoolas, the wife of an American diplomat who police say fatally struck a British teenager with her car as he was walking on the side of the road last August.
(ABC News, 1/23/20)
2020 Jan 23, US federal regulators slapped a $17.5 million fine on former Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf for his role in the bank's sales practices scandal. Five other former Wells Fargo executives were also sued for a combined total of $37.5 million for their rolls in the bank's poor practices.
(SFC, 1/24/20, p.D1)
2020 Jan 23, Jim Lehrer (85), former host of the PBS "NewsHour" died in Washington, DC. From 1988 to 2012 Lehrer moderated 11 presidential debates.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Lehrer)(SFC, 1/24/20, p.A7)
2020 Jan 23, Clayton Christensen (b.1952), a professor at Harvard Business School and author of "The Innovator's Dilemma" (1997), died in Boston.
(SFC, 1/27/20, p.D1)
2020 Jan 23, In New York a federal judge sentenced Libyan militant Mustafa al-Imam to more than 19 years in prison for his role in the Sept. 11, 2012, Benghazi attacks that killed four Americans. The attacks killed Ambassador Chris Stevens, communications specialist Sean Smith and security officers Tyrone Snowden Woods and Glen Anthony Doherty.
(AP, 1/23/20)
2020 Jan 23, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt banned sate-funded travel to California in response to a similar 2018 ban by California after Oklahoma passed a law that allowed adoption agencies to deny placement services to same-sex parents.
(SFC, 1/24/20, p.A6)
2020 Jan 23, US financier and philanthropist George Soros pledged one billion dollars for a new university network project to battle the erosion of civil society in a world increasingly ruled by "would-be and actual dictators" and beset by climate change.
(AFP, 1/23/20)
2020 Jan 23, The Blue Cross Blue Shield Association (BCBSA) and 18 Blue Cross Blue Shield health insurers said they are working with Civica Rx, a non-profit formed two years ago to try to increase competition for hospital-based generic drugs. The group said it is investing $55 million in a venture that aims to offer cheaper prices to their members on generic drugs that currently have little or no competition.
(Reuters, 1/23/20)
2020 Jan 23, Top diplomats from Libya's neighboring countries and beyond met in Algiers amid intensifying international efforts to end the conflict tearing apart the oil-rich country.
(AP, 1/23/20)
2020 Jan 23, In Australia three American crew members were killed when a C-130 Hercules aerial water tanker crashed while battling wildfires in the Snowy Monaro region of New South Wales.
(AP, 1/23/20)
2020 Jan 23, Queen Elizabeth II gave her formal assent for Britain to end its decades-long involvement in the EU and seek a more independent but uncertain future at the end of the month. Britain's Brexit bill became law.
(AFP, 1/23/20)(SFC, 1/24/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 23, British supermarket group Morrisons said it plans to cut 3,000 management jobs as part of a workforce restructuring that will create 7,000 frontline jobs in its stores.
(Reuters, 1/23/20)
2020 Jan 23, Chinese authorities moved to lock down three cities with a combined population of more than 18 million in an unprecedented effort to contain the deadly new virus that has sickened hundreds of people and spread to other parts of the world during the busy Lunar New Year travel period. The train station and airport in Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak, were shut down, and ferry, subway and bus service was halted. Similar measures would take effect the following day in the nearby cities of Huanggang and Ezhou. Wuhan underwent a 76-day lockdown. The virus death toll in Wuhan ended in mid-May with 3,869 fatalities.
(AP, 1/23/20)(Econ., 9/19/20, p.42)
2020 Jan 23, In Denmark an eight-meter copper statue by Jens Galschioet, entitled "Pillar of Shame," was erected in front of parliament in central Copenhagen to express solidarity with pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong.
(Reuters, 1/23/20)
2020 Jan 23, In central Germany a school bus crashed early today, killing two children and leaving five others seriously injured near the village of Berka, Thuringia state.
(AP, 1/23/20)
2020 Jan 23, Greece's migration and asylum minister said the “anxiety and indignation" of Greek island residents living at the forefront of a migration crisis are justified. Residents and business owners on the islands of Lesbos, Chios and Samos have held two days of protests and went on strike to demand that the government tackle severe overcrowding at migrant camps that are all grossly over capacity.
(AP, 1/23/20)
2020 Jan 23, A Greek high court rejected Russian bitcoin fraud suspect Alexander Vinnik's final appeal against his extradition to France, ending a more than two-year legal tug-of-war between three countries seeking to put him on trial.
(AP, 1/23/20)
2020 Jan 23, Hundreds of students gathered in Basra to protest against recent killings. An Iraqi demonstrator was shot dead in the southern city of Basra overnight. This week's violence brings to 470 the overall death toll since protests erupted in October.
(AFP, 1/23/20)
2020 Jan 23, Madagascar's national disaster office said floods across the island have killed at least 12 people this week, with 18 missing, after unseasonably heavy rain. The death toll was soon raised to 26 with 15 people still missing.
(Reuters, 1/23/20)(SFC, 1/25/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 23, Russian President Vladimir Putin inaugurated a bronze monument, named "Memorial Candle," in the heart of Jerusalem commemorating the citizens and defenders of Leningrad during the 1941-1944 Nazi siege of the city.
(AFP, 1/23/20)
2020 Jan 23, Dozens of world leaders gathered in Jerusalem for the largest-ever gathering focused on commemorating the Holocaust and combating rising modern-day anti-Semitism.
(AP, 1/23/20)
2020 Jan 23, At The Hague the International Court of Justice ordered Myanmar take all measures in its power to prevent genocide against the Rohingya.
(AP, 1/23/20)
2020 Jan 23, Russian lawmakers unanimously approved a sweeping constitutional reform bill put forward by President Vladimir Putin in its first reading, after less than two hours of debate.
(AFP, 1/23/20)
2020 Jan 23, Sweden's top military commander, Gen. Micael Byden, said a man who duped the Swedish military for 18 years by using forged credentials and who even worked at NATO headquarters and was a contact for Russia's security services did not divulge any secret information that could harm Sweden's security.
(AP, 1/23/20)
2020 Jan 23, Sweden's supreme court ruled in favor of Sami control of hunting and fishing permits citing government records going back to the 16th century which recognized Sami rights in exchange for taxes (paid in fur). The Sami people, indigenous to northern Sweden, number about 20,000.
(Econ., 5/23/20, p.41)
2020 Jan 23, Striking junior doctors at Zimbabwe's state hospitals planned to end a four-month strike after accepting an offer from a telecoms billionaire to pay them a monthly allowance of about $300 for six months. Strive Masiyiwa, through his philanthropic arm Higher Life Foundation, last November set up a 100 million Zimbabwe dollar ($5.9 million) fund for the striking doctors. Negotiations with the government continued.
(Reuters, 1/23/20)
2020 Jan 24, The Trump administration said that California cannot require health insurers to cover abortions and threatened to cut some federal healthcare funds unless it pulls that requirement. The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued a notice that the state is violating a federal law called the Weldon Amendment.
(Reuters, 1/24/20)
2020 Jan 24, President Trump became the first president to attend the annual March for Life in Washington, DC, where he delivered a speech aimed at shoring up his support among evangelical voters.
(Yahoo News, 1/24/20)
2020 Jan 24, The Pentagon said that 34 US troops were diagnosed with traumatic brain injuries suffered in this month's Iranian missile strike on an Iraqi air base, and that half of the troops have returned to their military duties.
(AP, 1/24/20)
2020 Jan 24, An attorney said that Lev Parnas, an associate of Rudy Giuliani, has provided congressional investigators with a recording of President Donald Trump saying he wanted to get rid of the US ambassador to Ukraine, whose ouster emerged as an issue in the president’s impeachment.
(AP, 1/24/20)
2020 Jan 24, A federal judge overseeing the bankruptcy case of Purdue Pharma set a June 30 deadline to file a claim against the company. That includes governments, entities such as hospitals and, for the first time, individuals who have personal injury claims.
(AP, 1/24/20)
2020 Jan 24, The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed a second US case of the new coronavirus from China in a Chicago woman, and said as many as 63 potential cases were being investigated as the sometimes deadly illness continues to spread around the globe.
(Reuters, 1/24/20)
2020 Jan 24, Jeff Carpoff (49) and Paulette Carpoff (46), the husband-and-wife owners of DC Solar, pleaded guilty to involvement in an estimated $912 million Ponzi scheme. Their California solar company caused Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc to take a $377 million charge last year.
(Reuters, 1/24/20)
2020 Jan 24, A snow plow struck and killed two pedestrians in Kansas after a winter storm coated parts of the Midwest with snow.
(AP, 1/24/20)
2020 Jan 24, Former California Congressman Pete Stark (88) died at his home in Maryland. He created the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA), passed by Congress in 1985. He also supported LGBTQ rights and was the first openly atheist member of Congress.
(SFC, 1/25/20, p.C1)
2020 Jan 24, Wes Wilson (82), a San Francisco artist who helped define the visual style of the psychedelic rock era, died at his home in Missouri.
(SFC, 1/31/20, p.C5)
2020 Jan 24, In Boston John Kapoor (76), founder of Arizona-based Insys Therapeutics, was ordered to spend 5½ years in prison for orchestrating a bribery and kickback scheme that helpd fuel the opioids crisis.
(SFC, 1/25/20, p.A5)
2020 Jan 24, In New York City Ivan Reyes Arzate, a former Mexican federal police commander, was arrested for allegedly accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes from Mexican drug cartels to help them send cocaine into the United States, in a case linked to imprisoned drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman.
(Reuters, 1/24/20)
2020 Jan 24, Ahmad Khan Rahami (Rahimi), an Afghan-born American suspect jailed for 2016 bombings in New York and New Jersey, was sentenced to an additional life term for a shootout with police in Linden, NJ, as he attempted to avoid arrest in 2016.
(SFC, 1/25/20, p.A5)
2020 Jan 24, In Texas two people died after a massive explosion leveled a warehouse at Watson Grinding and Manufacturing in Houston, damaging nearby buildings and homes and rousing frightened people from their sleep miles away.
(AP, 1/24/20)
2020 Jan 24, Bolivia suspended diplomatic relations with Cuba. The next day the Havana accused Bolivia's interim government of having sought to sabotage bilateral ties ever since it took power last year, partly under pressure from the Trump administration.
(Reuters, 1/25/20)
2020 Jan 24, London's Metropolitan Police said they will use facial recognition cameras to scan the faces of passersby to see if they are criminals, in a move that critics slammed as a massive expansion of surveillance.
(Business Insider, 1/24/20)
2020 Jan 24, Bulgarian Foreign Minister Ekaterina Zaharieva said Sofia was likely to expel two Russian diplomats who prosecutors suspect were involved in spying.
(Reuters, 1/24/20)
2020 Jan 24, China announced that it is swiftly building a 1,000-bed hospital dedicated to patients infected with a new virus that has killed 26 people, sickened hundreds and prompted unprecedented lockdowns of cities during the country's most important holiday.
(AP, 1/24/20)
2020 Jan 24, More airports began to screen passengers arriving from China amid growing concerns over the outbreak of a new virus there that has already killed more than two dozen people and sickened hundreds.
(AP, 1/24/20)
2020 Jan 24, In Germany six people were killed and several were injured in a shooting in the southwestern town of Rot am See. Police arrested a German national (26) and believed the shooting was a result of a family dispute.
(AP, 1/24/20)(SFC, 1/25/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 24, Guatemala's new president, Alejandro Giammattei, declared a state of alert in a gang-plagued municipality on the outskirts of Guatemala City, part of a new crime-fighting strategy.
(Reuters, 1/24/20)
2020 Jan 24, Thousands of Iraqis rallied at two central Baghdad intersections after a prominent cleric called for a "million strong" protest against the American military presence, following the recent US killing of an Iranian general and an Iraqi militia chief.
(Reuters, 1/24/20)
2020 Jan 24, In Kenya Griffin Insurance, the country's first digital-only car insurance company, released its flagship mobile application. The company was founded and run by Jihan Abass (26), a former sugar trader and one of a handful of women in the business.
(Reuters, 1/24/20)
2020 Jan 24, An official in Kathmandu said a Nepali student home from China tested positive for the new coronavirus, making it the first confirmed case in the Himalayan nation.
(Reuters, 1/24/20)
2020 Jan 24, Sudan and a major rebel group signed a preliminary deal on political and security arrangements, paving the way for eventual reconciliation through ongoing talks. The deal signed in neighboring South Sudan grants special status to two regions, South Kordofan and Blue Nile, which are under the control of the rebels.
(Reuters, 1/24/20)
2020 Jan 24, In Syria a US soldier died while conducting routine-clearing operations in Deir ez Zor province.
(SFC, 1/27/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 24, In eastern Turkey a magnitude 6.8 earthquake struck Elazig province late today. 18 people were killed in Elazig and four in neighboring Malatya. The death toll soon rose to 41 people with hundreds injured.
(AP, 1/25/20)(AP, 1/26/20)(AP, 1/27/20)(SFC, 1/28/20, p.A4)
2020 Jan 24, UN deputy chief Amina Mohammed said there is an “alarming" crisis in education, pointing to the 258 million children under the age of 17 who are not going to school — and only 49 percent completing secondary education.
(AP, 1/25/20)
2020 Jan 24, In Venezuela a woman (49) reportedly escaped after 31 years of captivity when captor Matias Salazar (56) left a set of keys behind. She sought help at a branch of a state-run women’s advocacy agency. Salazar was later arrested in the city of Maracay.
(The Independent, 2/12/20)
2020 Jan 25, President Donald Trump's lawyers opened their impeachment trial defense in a rare Saturday session by accusing Democrats of striving to overturn the results of the 2016 election, saying the Democrats' investigations into his dealings with Ukraine were not a fact-finding mission but a politically motivated effort to drive him from the White House.
(AP, 1/25/20)
2020 Jan 25, In San Francisco thousands marched down Market Street in the 16th annual Walk for Life West Coast.
(SSFC, 1/26/20, p.A10)
2020 Jan 25, Space astronauts plugged a leak in the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer outside the Int'l. Space Station. The cosmic ray detector was shut down last year for the repair work.
(SSFC, 1/26/20, p.A6)
2020 Jan 25, In Afghanistan a hand grenade attack on a wedding ceremony wounded at least 20 people in Khost province.
(SFC, 1/27/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 25, Armenia's PM Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan called for environmental protesters to end their 18-month-old blockade of the Amulsar gold mine, owned by Anglo-American mining firm Lydian International, saying the protest was not in the national interest.
(Reuters, 1/25/20)
2020 Jan 25, Australia declared its first confirmed case of the Wuhan coronavirus in the state of Victoria, with the patient hospitalized in a stable condition in a suburb of Melbourne.
(Reuters, 1/25/20)
2020 Jan 25, Brazilian authorities said flooding and landslides following heavy rains in the southeast have killed at least 30 people.
(SSFC, 1/26/20, p.A4)
2020 Jan 25, Brazilian miner Vale SA raised the emergency level at the Sul Inferior dam at its Gongo Soco mine in Barão de Cocais, in the southern state of Minas Gerais, after heavy rainfall eroded the structure's reservoir.
(Reuters, 1/26/20)
2020 Jan 25, Suspected Islamic extremists attacked a busy market in Burkina Faso and killed as many as 50 people in Soum province.
(http://tinyurl.com/vx8vv9x)(SFC, 1/29/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 25, China's President Xi Jinping called the accelerating spread of a new virus a grave situation, as cities from the outbreak's epicenter in central China to Hong Kong scrambled to stop the spread of an illness that has infected more than 1,200 people and killed 41.
(AP, 1/25/20)
2020 Jan 25, Fashion retailer H&M said that data security breaches found at its German unit were unacceptable and it was cooperating with the local data protection supervisory authority in its investigation into the matter.
(Reuters, 1/25/20)
2020 Jan 25, In India a building that was being expanded in New Delhi collapsed killing five people, including four students. Eight other students were injured.
(SSFC, 1/26/20, p.A4)
2020 Jan 25, Iraqi security forces set fire to anti-government protest tents in the country's south early today, hours after cleric Muqtada al-Sadr withdrew his support, and re-opened key public squares in Baghdad that had been occupied by demonstrators for months. Iraq cracked down on anti-government protesters who have been occupying key public squares for months, leaving four demonstrators dead.
(AP, 1/25/20)(SSFC, 1/26/20, p.A5)
2020 Jan 25, Israeli aircraft struck several sites for Gaza militants late today in response to incendiary balloons launched from the Palestinian enclave.
(AP, 1/26/20)
2020 Jan 25, Limited mobile data services and internet was temporarily restored in Jammu and Kashmir, ending nearly a six month communications lockdown. Access was limited to about 300 "whitelisted" websites and internet speed remained low. The decision will be reviewed on Jan. 31.
(Reuters, 1/25/20)
2020 Jan 25, Japan said it has confirmed a third case of infection by China's coronavirus.
(AP, 1/25/20)
2020 Jan 25, It was reported that worst outbreak of desert locusts in Kenya in 70 years has seen hundreds of millions of the bugs swarm into the country from Somalia and Ethiopia. Those two countries have not had an infestation like this in a quarter-century.
(AP, 1/25/20)
2020 Jan 25, Libya's national oil company said the closure of major oil fields and production facilities has resulted in losses of more than $255 million in the six-day period ending Jan. 23.
(AP, 1/25/20)
2020 Jan 25, In Myanmar two women, one pregnant, were killed and seven other people injured after Myanmar troops shelled a Rohingya village in Rakhine state.
(Reuters, 1/25/20)
2020 Jan 25, Pope Francis met Iraqi Pres. Barham Salih and the two agreed that the country's sovereignty must be respected, following attacks on Iraqi territory this month by the United States and Iran.
(Reuters, 1/25/20)
2020 Jan 25, In eastern Yemen a US drone strike destroyed a building in Marib province housing al-Qaida militants and killed top al-Qaida leader Qassim al-Rimi.
(AP, 2/1/20)
2020 Jan 26, The biggest names in the US music industry were honored at the 62nd Annual Grammy Awards. Billie Eilish took home all four of the night’s biggest awards: best new artist, album of the year for "When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?" and both song of the year and record of the year for her hit "Bad Guy."
(Good Morning America, 1/27/20)
2020 Jan 26, US officials said five people in the United States, all of whom recently traveled from Wuhan, China, have been diagnosed with the new coronavirus.
(Reuters, 1/27/20)
2020 Jan 26, Bob Shane (85), the last original member of the Kingston Trio, died near his home in Phoenix. Shane, Nick Reynolds and David Guard had formed the SF Bay Area folk group in 1957.
(SFC, 1/30/20, p.C6)
2020 Jan 26, In southern California basketball legend Kobe Bryant (41) and his daughter (13) died along with seven others in a helicopter crash outside Los Angeles.
(Reuters, 1/27/20)
2020 Jan 26, In Louisiana two-barge towing vessels collided on the Mississippi River near Luling. One vessel sank and three crew members were left missing.
(SFC, 1/28/20, p.A7)
2020 Jan 26, In New York three people, including a boy (10), were shot and killed while sitting in their own home early today during a home invasion in Newburgh that authorities are now suspecting was a targeted attack.
(Good Morning America, 1/27/20)
2020 Jan 26, Afghan forces used ground attacks and air strikes in multiple operations against the Taliban during the last 24 hours, killing 51 fighters in an escalation that signaled renewed deadlock in peace talks.
(Reuters, 1/26/20)
2020 Jan 26, Australia Day celebrations saw thousands of people flock to beaches and music festivals, but festivities were clouded by the tragedy of bushfires which have killed 33 and destroyed hundreds of homes.
(Reuters, 1/26/20)
2020 Jan 26, Britain unveiled a new 50 pence coin minted to mark the country's departure from the European Union, which bears the inscription "Peace, prosperity and friendship with all nations" and the Brexit date of 31 January 2020.
(Reuters, 1/26/20)
2020 Jan 26, China banned wildlife trade nationwide in markets, supermarkets, restaurants, and e-commerce platforms due to the coronavirus outbreak. The new viral illness accelerated its spread with 56 deaths so far and a total of 1,975 infections.
(Reuters, 1/26/20)(AP, 1/26/20)
2020 Jan 26, The German military resumed training Iraqi troops in the country's Kurdish north, about three weeks after it was suspended following the US killing of a top Iranian general in Baghdad. The Bundeswehr has about 90 soldiers in Irbil. Germany's training mission in central Iraq is still suspended.
(AP, 1/26/20)
2020 Jan 26, A group of Hong Kong protesters set alight the lobby of a newly built residential building that authorities planned to use as a quarantine facility, as public fears in the financial hub about the coronavirus outbreak intensified. Anger grew towards government plans to convert the building into a quarantine zone as the number of confirmed cases in the city climbed to six.
(Reuters, 1/26/20)
2020 Jan 26, In India hundreds of thousands protested across the country against a citizenship bill that many fear is discriminatory against the minority Muslim community. The protests took place as India celebrated Republic Day, in commemoration of the day the Indian constitution came into effect.
(Reuters, 1/26/20)
2020 Jan 26, In Iraq hundreds of anti-government protesters flooded the streets Baghdad and southern provinces, defying cleric Muqtada al-Sadr who recently withdrew his support from the popular movement. Security forces in Baghdad killed one protester.
(AP, 1/26/20)(SFC, 1/27/20, p.A4)
2020 Jan 26, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu headed to Washington to meet Pres. Donald Trump for the unveiling of a much-anticipated plan to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
(SFC, 1/27/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 26, Israel's Interior Ministry said that it will now allow Israelis to travel to Saudi Arabia for religious or business visits. In the past, such visits required special permission from the government.
(AP, 1/26/20)
2020 Jan 26, Italian voters thwarted right-wing opposition leader Matteo Salvini's hopes of turning an election in a key northern region into a springboard for regaining national power. The center-left Democrats' incumbent won 51.4% of the vote for the governorship of the prosperous Emilia-Romagna region.
(AP, 1/27/20)
2020 Jan 26, Japan confirmed a fourth case of infection by China's coronavirus.
(Reuters, 1/26/20)
2020 Jan 26, In Libya fighting erupted as the country's east-based forces advanced toward the strategic western city of Misrata. The UN mission to Libya slammed ongoing violations of a UN Security Council arms embargo, despite commitments made a week ago at an international summit in Berlin. It said numerous flights had landed in Libyan airports over the last 10 days, providing both sides with "advanced weapons, armored vehicles, advisers and fighters".
(AP, 1/26/20)(AFP, 1/26/20)
2020 Jan 26, In Mali armed men attacked an army camp near the border with Mauritania, killing 19 soldiers in Sokolo in the Segou region.
(AP, 1/26/20)
2020 Jan 26, Dutch PM Mark Rutte apologized for the failure of officials in the Nazi-occupied country during World War II to do more to prevent the deportation and murder of just over 100,000 Jews.
(AP, 1/26/20)
2020 Jan 26, Syrian government forces reached the outskirts of Maaret al-Numan, a key rebel-held town, part of a weekslong offensive into the country's last rebel stronghold. A truck packed with explosives blew up in the city of Azaz in northern Syria, killing one person and wounding a number of others.
(AP, 1/26/20)(Reuters, 1/26/20)
2020 Jan 26, The health minister in Thailand, the country with the most confirmed cases outside China of the new coronavirus, called an emergency meeting with the transport and tourism ministries amid rising public discontent over the government's handling of the illness.
(Reuters, 1/26/20)
2020 Jan 27, A US federal appeals court ruled that a 2016 Arizona law that bars anyone but a family member or caregiver from returning early ballots for another person violates the Voting Rights Act and the Constitution.
(AP, 1/27/20)
2020 Jan 27, In Alabama a fire consumed at least 35 vessels docked along the Tennessee River early today. At least eight people were killed.
(AP, 1/27/20)(SFC, 1/28/20, p.A8)
2020 Jan 27, In California FBI and Yolo County officials announced the arrest of Paul Allen Perez (57), an inmate at Kern Valley State Prison, on suspicion of slaying five of his infant children between 1992 and 2001.
(SFC, 1/28/20, p.C1)
2020 Jan 27, FBI agents in San Francisco arrested Public Works Director Mohammed Nuru and restaurateur Nick Bovis following a public corruption probe. A federal complaint for wire fraud was unsealed the next day.
(SFC, 1/29/20, p.A1)
2020 Jan 27, In Maryland William Green (43), a Black man, was fatally shot six times by police while his hands were cuffed behind his back in a patrol car. Officer Michael Owen was arrested the following day and fired from the Prince George’s County Police Department. He has been charged with second-degree murder. On Sept. 28 it was reported that Green's family will receive $20m, among one of the largest settlement payments involving a person killed by police.
(The Independent, 9/28/20)
2020 Jan 27, General Motors said it is spending $2.2 billion to refurbish a Detroit factory so that it can build the company's first electric pickup in 2021, followed by a self-driving shuttle for GM's Cruise autonomous vehicle unit.
(SFC, 1/28/20, p.D1)
2020 Jan 27, During his first state address Mississippi’s governor, Tate Reeves, pledged to move towards closing unit 29 of the notorious Parchman penitentiary. He had toured the facility last week.
(The Guardian, 1/29/20)
2020 Jan 27, Utah Sen. Mitt Romney told reporters that he thinks new revelations from former Trump national security adviser John Bolton will increase the number of Republican senators who will vote in favor of calling at least Bolton to testify in the Senate impeachment trial.
(Reuters, 1/27/20)
2020 Jan 27, Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers signed an executive order creating what he promised would be a non-partisan commission to draw new legislative maps for next year for the Legislature to consider.
(SFC, 1/28/20, p.A7)
2020 Jan 27, In Afghanistan the Taliban said it had shot down a small US military plane in the central province of Ghazni, killing all personnel on board. US officials said there were no indications so far that the plane had been brought down by enemy activity.
(Reuters, 1/27/20)
2020 Jan 27, In northern Afghanistan Taliban militants attacked a police base late today, killing 11, possibly with help from at least one of the policemen inside.
(AP, 1/27/20)
2020 Jan 27, The death toll from the coronavirus outbreak in China rose to 81 and a small number of cases linked to people who travelled from Wuhan were confirmed in more than 10 countries. US stocks fell more than 1% as investors worried about the economic fallout of the fast-spreading coronavirus outbreak in China that has prompted the country to extend the Lunar New Year holidays and businesses to close some operations.
(Reuters, 1/27/20)
2020 Jan 27, A Croatian army helicopter plunged into the Adriatic Sea, killing one crew member. A search was underway for one other crew member.
(AP, 1/27/20)
2020 Jan 27, An Egyptian court sentenced 37 people to jail terms including life imprisonment for joining or supporting Islamic State's Sinai Province affiliate. A Cairo criminal court sentenced eight defendants to life terms and 29 to terms ranging from one to 15 years.
(Reuters, 1/27/20)
2020 Jan 27, Iran's President Hassan Rouhani warned of threats to the Islamic republic's "democracy and national sovereignty", after a body dominated by his ultra-conservative rivals disqualified thousands of candidates, weeks before elections.
(AFP, 1/27/20)
2020 Jan 27, The Islamic State group vowed in an audio message released today that the extremists will start a new phase of attacks that will focus on Israel and blasted the US administration's plan to resolve the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
(AP, 1/27/20)
2020 Jan 27, Lebanese lawmakers passed a controversial state budget for 2020 that aims to tackle the country's crippling financial crisis, as angry protesters threw stones at security forces massed outside the Parliament.
(AP, 1/27/20)
2020 Jan 27, Prosecutors in the Mauritania detained and charged 10 young men after a video presented as a "gay marriage" surfaced. Homosexuality is outlawed in the country. Police later determined the gathering was a birthday party.
(http://tinyurl.com/src6hjy)(SFC, 1/31/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 27, In Pakistan Manzoor Pashteen, leader of the Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement (PTM), which has campaigned against military excesses during anti-terrorism operations, was arrested in the northwestern city of Peshawar. Authorities detained two lawmakers belonging to a rights movement as they and hundreds of supporters across the country gathered to protest the arrest of their leader on charges of sedition.
(Reuters, 1/28/20)
2020 Jan 27, In Poland survivors of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp gathered for commemorations marking the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the camp by the Soviet army.
(AP, 1/27/20)
2020 Jan 27, Portugal said an int'l. drug operation involving authorites from six countries captured a yacht carrying almost two metric tons of cocaine in the middle of an Atlantic storm. Street value was said to be $77 million.
(SFC, 1/28/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 27, The Stockholm Int'l. Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said China is the 2nd largest arms producer in the world behind the United States.
(SFC, 1/28/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 27, Bombs planted underwater off Syria's coast exploded, damaging oil facilities used to pump oil into one of Syria's two petroleum refineries. Oil production in Syria is down to around 24,000 barrels a day, covering only a fraction of domestic needs.
(AP, 1/27/20)
2020 Jan 27, Ennahda, the biggest party in Tunisia's parliament, rejected the idea of a government that excludes other parties, adding that it was ready to contest another election.
(Reuters, 1/27/20)
2020 Jan 27, Three senior Western security officials said sweeping cyberattacks targeting governments and other organizations in Europe and the Middle East are believed to be the work of hackers acting in the interests of the Turkish government.
(Reuters, 1/27/20)
2020 Jan 27, It was reported that an ally of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has hired Washington lobbyist Robert Stryk’s Sonoran Policy Group, whose business has boomed under the Trump administration, as part of a $12.5 million effort to ease sanctions and reset bilateral relations as the US-backed campaign to oust the socialist leader stalls. Days later US law firm Foley & Lardner, hired for $12.5 million by a top official in Nicolás Maduro's government, decided to dump the controversial Venezuelan client amid a major outcry by critics.
(AP, 1/28/20)(AP, 1/31/20)
2020 Jan 27, Venezuelan special police detained a fugitive Colombian former senator who had illegally crossed the border. Aida Merlano, a former Conservative senator who was imprisoned last year for vote buying, made her theatrical escape in October.
(Reuters, 1/28/20)
2020 Jan 27, Yemeni officials and tribal leaders said a drastic escalation in fighting between the Saudi-led military coalition and Houthi rebels has killed and wounded hundreds of people over the past week.
(AP, 1/27/20)
2020 Jan 28, Lawyers for President Donald Trump wrapped up their arguments urging acquittal in his US Senate trial as Democrats ramped up their calls for former national security adviser John Bolton to testify about explosive allegations regarding Trump's role in a pressure campaign targeting Ukraine.
(Reuters, 1/28/20)
2020 Jan 28, The US Congressional Budget Office in its annual report said that the US budget is likely to burst through the $1 trillion mark this year despite a healthy economy. In 2012 former Pres. Barack Obama capped four consecutive years of $1 trillion-plus budget deficits.
(SFC, 1/29/20, p.D1)
2020 Jan 28, The Pentagon raised to 50 the number of US service members who suffered traumatic brain injuries in Iran's Jan. 8 missile on an Iraqi air base, the third time the number of injuries has been increased.
(AP, 1/28/20)
2020 Jan 28, San Francisco electronic health records company Practice Fusion agreed to pay $145 million to resolve charges that it took kickbacks from an opioid maker that used the company's software to prod doctors to prescribe more opioid panikillers to patients. Practice Fusion was acquired by Chicago-based Allscripts in 2018 for $100 million.
(SFC, 1/29/20, p.A1)
2020 Jan 28, In Illinois three people and a dog were killed in a small plane crash in a residential area southeast of Springfield.
(Good Morning America, 1/29/20)
2020 Jan 28, Charles Lieber (60), the chair of Harvard's chemistry and chemical biology department, was arrested on charges of lying to the US Defense Department about his involvement with the Chinese government to recruit foreign researchers into the controversial Thousand Talents Plan.
(Business Insider, 1/29/20)
2020 Jan 28, Mississippi officials announced late today that another inmate has died in the state's prison system, marking the 13th state prisoner death since late December.
(AP, 1/29/20)
2020 Jan 28, In Afghanistan the Taliban carried out attacks late today on security checkpoints in the northern province of Kunduz. 15 members of the Afghan army were reported killed.
(Reuters, 1/29/20)
2020 Jan 28, Britain gave the green light to a limited role for Chinese telecoms giant Huawei in the country's 5G network, in a decision it said was necessary for developing its future digital economy but one that left the United States "disappointed" after it called for a total ban.
(AFP, 1/28/20)
2020 Jan 28, The European Union added seven Russian-backed officials in Crimea to its sanctions blacklist for organizing local elections in the peninsula last year.
(Reuters, 1/28/20)
2020 Jan 28, French police clashed with firefighters protesting in Paris against their working conditions and demanding more pay.
(Reuters, 1/28/20)
2020 Jan 28, A German court ruled that a hostel situated on the grounds of the North Korean embassy in Berlin must close as its operation breaches sanctions aimed at stopping the flow of hard currency to Pyongyang.
(Reuters, 1/28/20)
2020 Jan 28, Germany-based Adidas said it will launch new fabrics made from recycled polyester and marine plastic waste and expand the product lines that use them after the success of shoes made with the Parley for the Oceans initiative.
(Reuters, 1/28/20)
2020 Jan 28, It was reported that most major railway stations in India will use facial recognition to fight crime by the end of 2020. Digital rights campaigners warned the move could breach people's privacy in the absence of stringent laws.
(Reuters, 1/28/20)
2020 Jan 28, North Korea said it will impose a one-month quarantine on all foreigners arriving from China in a bid to prevent the spread of a new coronavirus. The new strain of virus has killed at least 106 people in China and infected more than 4,500.
(Reuters, 1/28/20)
2020 Jan 28, Norway's national economic crime unit (Okokrim) raided the local office of international shipping company Teekay Offshore on suspicion of illegally exporting waste. The company said a vessel had been sent to an Indian yard in 2018 for recycling in full compliance with the requirements and standards of the Hong Kong convention.
(Reuters, 1/30/20)
2020 Jan 28, Thousands of Palestinians protested in Gaza City ahead of the Trump administration's announcement of its peace plan, which is expected to strongly favor Israel.
(AP, 1/28/20)
2020 Jan 28, Puerto Rico opened only 20% of its public schools following a strong earthquake that delayed the start of classes by nearly three weeks as fears linger over the safety of students.
(AP, 1/28/20)
2020 Jan 28, Qatar’s ruler Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani appointed Khalid bin Khalifa Al Thani, a close aide, as the country’s new prime minister after the resignation of Abdullah bin Nasser Al Thani, who had held the position since the emir came to power in June 2013.
(Bloomberg, 1/28/20)
2020 Jan 28, A team overseeing SAA's bankruptcy protected restructuring said that cash-strapped state carrier South African Airways (SAA) will receive 3.5 billion rand ($244 million) of emergency funding from the Development Bank of Southern Africa.
(Reuters, 1/28/20)
2020 Jan 28, Syrian government forces entered Maaret al-Numan, a key rebel-held town in in Idlib province, after surrounding it on three sides, sending thousands of people fleeing to safety in areas farther north.
(AP, 1/28/20)
2020 Jan 28, The UN's WHO said China has agreed that the World Health Organization can send international experts there "as soon as possible" to increase understanding of a new coronavirus and guide the global response to the outbreak.
(Reuters, 1/28/20)
2020 Jan 28, The UN reported that hundreds of children in the Sahel were killed, maimed or forcibly separated from their parents last year as the jihadist conflict continued to rage across the region.
(AFP, 1/28/20)
2020 Jan 28, The UN refugee agency reported that tribal clashes in Sudan’s West Darfur province forced more than 11,000 people to flee into neighboring Chad over the past month.
(AP, 1/28/20)
2020 Jan 28, The UN food agency said that one of its warehouses in the Houthi-controlled part of Yemen had been looted. WFP said 127.5 tons (over 115,000 kg) of aid were stolen in the northern province of Hajja.
(AP, 1/28/20)
2020 Jan 29, President Donald Trump signed the new North American trade agreement, the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), replacing NAFTA.
(Reuters, 1/29/20)
2020 Jan 29, A memo by Peter Navarro, President Trump’s trade adviser, warned that failing to contain a coronavirus outbreak could cost the US trillions of dollars and put millions of Americans at risk of illness or death. This was not made public until April 7.
(NY Times, 4/7/20)
2020 Jan 29, US senators posed written inquiries that led to pointed, back-and-forth debate as Trump’s legal team and House Democratic prosecutors pressed their respective cases.
(AP, 1/30/20)
2020 Jan 29, US authorities announced the discovery of the longest smuggling tunnel ever found on the Southwest border, stretching more than three-quarters of a mile from an industrial site in Tijuana, Mexico, to the San Diego area.
(AP, 1/29/20)
2020 Jan 29, It was reported that the US has deployed its first low-yield Trident nuclear warhead on a submarine that is currently patrolling the Atlantic Ocean, in what arms control advocates warn is a dangerous step towards making a nuclear launch more likely.
(The Guardian, 1/30/20)
2020 Jan 29, Illinois, Nevada and Virginia, the last three states to pass the Equal Rights Amendment, sued the archivist of the US government, demanding that an amendment to the US Constitution guaranteeing equal rights for women be declared valid.
(Reuters, 1/30/20)
2020 Jan 29, It was reported that Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc has agreed to sell its newspaper business to Lee Enterprises Inc for $140 million in cash, abandoning an industry the billionaire investor had long defended even as its financial prospects deteriorated.
(Reuters, 1/29/20)
2020 Jan 29, American Airlines said it is suspending two routes to China, citing "significant decline in demand for travel to and from China."
(Good Morning America, 1/29/20)
2020 Jan 29, US-based Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd said it had canceled three trips scheduled in February, after consultation with health authorities over the spread of coronavirus that has killed more than 100 people and infected thousands in China.
(Reuters, 1/29/20)
2020 Jan 29, Bangladesh officials said authorities in partnership with the United Nations will expand educational programs for hundreds of thousands of Muslim Rohingya children living in refugee camps who are currently receiving only basic lessons.
(AP, 1/29/20)
2020 Jan 29, Boris Johnson’s UK government said it will take the troubled Northern Rail franchise back into state ownership from March 1, in the latest sign that his Conservative administration is willing to intervene in the running of ailing private companies.
(Bloomberg, 1/29/20)
2020 Jan 29, The BBC said it will axe 450 jobs from its news division in a cost-saving plan that will result in cuts at the World Service and its 5Live radio station and in fewer reports being made by analysis show Newsnight.
(Reuters, 1/29/20)
2020 Jan 29, British Airways announced that it has suspended all flights to and from mainland China "with immediate effect," as the country struggles to contain the outbreak of the new coronavirus.
(Good Morning America, 1/29/20)
2020 Jan 29, It was reported that suspected Islamic extremists attacked a busy market in Burkina Faso over the weekend and killed as many as 50 people.
(SFC, 1/28/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 29, In China the number of confirmed coronavirus cases jumped to 5,974, surpassing the 5,327 in mainland China during the SARS outbreak in 2002-2003. The death toll rose to 132.
(AP, 1/29/20)
2020 Jan 29, French President Emmanuel Macron accused Turkey of breaching an agreement to halt foreign interference in Libya by sending warships and mercenaries to the country.
(AP, 1/29/20)
2020 Jan 29, Islam Alloush, whose real name is Majdi Ne'mah, was arrested in Marseille and days later handed preliminary charges linked to his activities in Syria. The one-time spokesman for the Syrian rebel faction the Army of Islam had arrived in the country on a short-term visa.
(AP, 2/6/20)
2020 Jan 29, Germany-based Lufthansa said it is suspending its own, Swiss and Austrian Airlines flights to and from China until Feb. 9.
(Reuters, 1/29/20)
2020 Jan 29, Indonesia's disaster agency said landslides and floods from torrential monsoon rains killed at least seven people on Sumatra island.
(SFC, 1/30/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 29, Palestinians in Lebanese refugee camps staged strikes, protests and sit-ins a day after US President Donald trump revealed the long-awaited details of a plan for ending the Israel-Palestinian conflict, denouncing it as ridiculously lop-sided and saying it gives them no rights.
(AP, 1/29/20)
2020 Jan 29, Philippines' Pres. Rodrigo Duterte ordered all members of his Cabinet not to travel to the United States after Washington blacklisted, Sen. Ronal dela Rosa, his former national police chief over the government's drug war.
(SFC, 1/31/20, p.A6)
2020 Jan 29, Russia arrested five former police officers on suspicion of planting drugs last year on Ivan Golunov, a prominent journalist, to frame him.
(Reuters, 1/29/20)
2020 Jan 29, Syrian government forces captured town of Maaret al-Numan in Idlib province, one of the largest and most strategic rebel-held towns in the country's northwest.
(AP, 1/29/20)
2020 Jan 29, In northwestern Syria warplanes struck a town late today in a rebel-held enclave, killing at least 10 people, including some who were fleeing the attack. The attack was believed to have been carried out by Russian warplanes. The Russian Defense Ministry rejected claims it was behind the attack.
(AP, 1/30/20)
2020 Jan 29, Tanzania’s national carrier said it will have to postpone its maiden flights from commercial capital Dar es Salaam to China, citing concerns over the spread of a coronavirus that has killed 133 people.
(Reuters, 1/29/20)
2020 Jan 29, UAE officials said a family of four Chinese tourists in the United Arab Emirates became the first cases in the Mideast of the new Chinese coronavirus. The family from Wuhan, the epicenter of the viral outbreak, entered the UAE on Jan. 16.
(AP, 1/29/20)
2020 Jan 29, UNICEF said a six-ton shipment of respiratory masks and protective suits for health care workers landed in China today for distribution in Wuhan, the epicenter of a spreading coronavirus outbreak.
(Reuters, 1/29/20)
2020 Jan 30, US officials said the United States will allow Russian, Chinese and European firms to continue work at Iranian nuclear sites to make it harder for Iran to develop a nuclear weapon, but will impose sanctions on its nuclear entity and top official.
(Reuters, 1/30/20)
2020 Jan 30, The Pentagon confirmed late today that a total of 64 US service members have been diagnosed with mild traumatic brain injuries in the wake of the Iranian missile attack on US forces in Iraq earlier this month.
(Business Insider, 1/30/20)
2020 Jan 30, The American Postal Workers Union (APWU) announced that its executive board has endorsed US Senator Bernie Sanders to be the Democratic presidential nominee on behalf of its 200,000 members nationwide.
(Reuters, 1/30/20)
2020 Jan 30, Fotis Dulos (52), a Connecticut man charged with murdering his wife who went missing amid a contentious divorce case, died in New York City following an apparent suicide attempt. The body of Jennifer Dulos has not been found despite extensive searches. On March 2 a Connecticut judge decided to drop the murder and kidnapping case against the late Fotis Dulos over the objections of his attorney, who said he wished to pursue a trial to prove that his client did not kill his estranged wife.
(AP, 1/30/20)(NBC News, 3/4/20)
2020 Jan 30, In Pennsylvania a boy (4) apparently shot himself with a gun found in the home of his father Edward Williams (28). Williams told police that robbers had invaded the house. He was soon charged with involuntary manslaughter.
(SSFC, 2/1/20, p.A8)
2020 Jan 30, Biogen Inc said it was preparing for the launch of its experimental treatment for Alzheimer's as the drugmaker races to become the first to bring a treatment for the memory-robbing disease to market.
(Reuters, 1/30/20)
2020 Jan 30, Eli Lilly and Co posted a higher-than-expected fourth-quarter profit on strong demand for diabetes drug Trulicity and psoriasis treatment Taltz, helping ease investor concerns over the impact of fierce competition for its growth products.
(Reuters, 1/30/20)
2020 Jan 30, A San Diego judge ordered Johnson & Johnson to pay nearly $344 million in penalties for deceptively marketing pelvic mesh devices for women.
(SFC, 1/31/20, p.A7)
2020 Jan 30, NASA pulled the plug on the Spitzer Space Telescope after it spent 16 years scanning the universe with infrared eyes. It had been designed to last 2½ to 5 years.
(SFC, 1/30/20, p.A6)
2020 Jan 30, A Burundian court jailed four journalists for 2-1/2 years for offences including undermining state security in a ruling criticized by Amnesty International as a sad day for press freedom in the central African country.
(Reuters, 1/30/20)
2020 Jan 30, China raised the death toll from the coronavirus to 170 and more countries reported infections from a new virus, including some spread locally, as foreign evacuees from China's worst-hit region returned home to medical tests and even isolation.
(AP, 1/30/20)
2020 Jan 30, In eastern Congo DRC rebels of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) killed at least 36 people in overnight attacks on villages in Beni territory.
(SFC, 1/31/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 30, Egyptian prosecutors said a 12-year-old girl died this week in southern Egypt after her parents brought her to a doctor who performed female genital mutilation, a criminal practice that remains widespread in the region. Egypt's public prosecutor ordered the arrests of her parents and the physician who preformed the procedure.
(AP, 1/31/20)
2020 Jan 30, Ethiopian Airlines said that its flights to China are operating normally, hours after its passenger call center told Reuters that all flights were suspended.
(Reuters, 1/30/20)
2020 Jan 30, In France Imran Aliev (44), a blogger from Chechnya vocally opposed to both Vladimir Putin and Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, died after his throat was cut in Lille. Aliev's traveling companion disappeared shortly after the murder. French police later said they believe the murder was "politically motivated".
(AP, 2/6/20)
2020 Jan 30, Berlin’s legislature backed measures including a five-year rent freeze, more than six months after they were proposed by the left-leaning administration. A property boom has caused rents to double over the past decade.
(Bloomberg, 1/30/20)
2020 Jan 30, Amnesty International criticized Greece's plans to deploy a floating barrier as a way to prevent migrants from reaching the Greek islands from nearby Turkey.
(AP, 1/30/20)
2020 Jan 30, Tokyo prosecutors issued an arrest warrant for Nissan's former chairman Carlos Ghosn, who skipped bail while awaiting trial in Japan. Prosecutors also issued arest warrants for three Americans they say planned and helped Ghosn escape.
(SFC, 1/31/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 30, State news agency Petra said Jordan has signed a new 4-year, $1.3 billion program with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
(Reuters, 1/30/20)
2020 Jan 30, Kenya's high court said the government could go ahead with a new digital ID scheme, as long as it brought in stronger regulations and did not use it to collect citizens' DNA and geo-location data.
(Reuters, 1/31/20)
2020 Jan 30, The UN's refugee agency in Libya announced it is suspending its operations at a jam-packed migrant facility over safety concerns as deadly fighting near the capital intensifies.
(AP, 1/30/20)
2020 Jan 30, Brexit cleared its final formal hurdle as the 27 European Union member states that Britain will leave behind approved the withdrawal agreement reached last October after more than three years of tortuous negotiations.
(Reuters, 1/30/20)
2020 Jan 30, North Korea said it is intensifying efforts to prevent the spread of a new virus from China into the isolated country by blocking tourists, reducing flights and mobilizing more screening efforts.
(AP, 1/30/20)
2020 Jan 30, Russia said it is closing its land border with China, effective tomorrow, similar to steps taken by Mongolia and North Korea, to guard against a new viral outbreak.
(AP, 1/30/20)
2020 Jan 30, Naama Issachar, a US-Israeli woman jailed for drug trafficking in Russia, was released and flew out with Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu after she was pardoned by President Vladimir Putin.
(AFP, 1/30/20)
2020 Jan 30, Cash-strapped state carrier South African Airways (SAA) said it would "cancel and consolidate selected flights" to lower costs, days after it received a 3.5 billion rand ($244 million) government bailout to ease a mounting cash-flow crunch.
(Reuters, 1/30/20)
2020 Jan 30, In Sweden two thieves stole items from the Couleur art gallery in Stockholm that included 10 to 12 table-size bronze sculptures by Spanish artist Salvador Dali.
(SFC, 1/31/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 30, Swiss authorities announced that they had processed a pilot transaction through the Swiss Humanitarian Trade Arrangement (SHTA), a new payment channel that intends to ease the sale of food and medicine to Iran by Swiss companies.
(Bloomberg, 2/3/20)
2020 Jan 30, The UN said the worst locust outbreak that parts of East Africa have seen in 70 years needs some $76 million to help control and the money is “required by, actually, now".
(AP, 1/30/20)
2020 Jan 30, The UN Security Council called for an immediate end to a “significant" escalation in fighting in Yemen between Houthi Shiite rebels and the Saudi-led military coalition supporting the government.
(AP, 1/30/20)
2020 Jan 30, The World Health Organization (WHO) declared a global public health emergency over the spread of the Wuhan coronavirus, citing the potential of the virus to spread to countries not prepared to deal with the contagion.
(South China Morning Post, 1/31/20)
2020 Jan 31, The Trump administration declared a public health emergency and announced series of steps to halt the spread of the novel coronavirus, which has stricken China and spread to countries around the world.
(Bloomberg, 1/31/20)
2020 Jan 31, The Trump administration announced that it was restricting immigrants from six additional countries that officials said failed to meet minimum security standards, as part of an election-year push to further clamp down immigration. Immigrants from Kyrgyzstan, Myanmar, Eritrea, Nigeria, Sudan and Tanzania will face new restrictions in obtaining certain visas to come to the United States.
(AP, 1/3120)
2020 Jan 31, President Donald Trump canceled an Obama-era prohibition on the use of anti-personnel landmines outside of the Korean peninsula. With potential future conflict with China and Russia in mind, the new policy specified no geographic limits on landmine use, declaring that the weapons offer an important war-fighting capability.
(AP, 1/31/20)
2020 Jan 31, The US Senate rejected by a slim margin calling witnesses to the impeachment trial of President Trump, setting up a final vote to end the proceedings. Utah Senator Mitt Romney joined fellow moderate Susan Collins as the only ones among the 53 Republican senators in the 100-seat chamber to support voting for witnesses. This left Democrats still short of the US Senate majority required and paving the way for Trump's swift acquittal.
(Yahoo News, 1/31/20)(Reuters, 1/31/20)
2020 Jan 31, The Treasury deleted Chinese tanker company COSCO Shipping Tanker (Dalian) Co from its sanctions list but continued to blacklist a second unit - COSCO Shipping Tanker (Dalian) Seaman & Ship Management Co Ltd.
(Reuters, 2/1/20)
2020 Jan 31, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited Belarus and said that the United States is willing and able to provide Belarus with 100% of its oil and gas, taking a slap at Russia which recently cut off supplies. Russia stopped supplying oil to Belarus after Dec. 31. The two nations had failed to renegotiate an agreed oil price for this year during drawn-out negotiations on deepening the integration of their economies.
(AP, 2/1/20)
2020 Jan 31, The Trump administration said it will not allow California to collect a key health care tax on managed care organizations. The decision could cost the state nearly $2 billion a year for low-income benefits.
(SFC, 1/31/20, p.A6)
2020 Jan 31, A US federal judge in Illinois stripped Iyman Faris of his naturalized US citizenship, siding with the government in the case of a Pakistan-born man convicted more than 15 years ago of plotting to destroy New York's Brooklyn Bridge. Faris was sentenced in 2003 for aiding and abetting al-Qaida by scoping out the bridge as part of a plot to cut through cables that support it.
(AP, 2/5/20)
2020 Jan 31, SF Bay Area's Santa Clara County reported its first coronavirus case.
(SSFC, 3/22/20, p.A12)
2020 Jan 31, Aspiring Chicago rapper Qaw’mane Wilson (30), who posted a video on YouTube of himself throwing thousands of dollars that he inherited from his mother to his “fans," was sentenced to 99 years in prison for her 2012 murder-for-hire killing. A Cook County judge also sentenced the convicted gunman, Eugene Spencer, to 100 years.
(AP, 2/3/20)
2020 Jan 31, In Maryland Coast Guard Lt. Christopher Hasson (50) was sentenced to more than 13 years in prison for firearms and drug offenses. The judge said he believed Hasson was preparing to carry out a "mass casualty assault" to act out his white nationalist views.
(SSFC, 2/1/20, p.A12)
2020 Jan 31, Baltimore restaurant owner Jean Agbodjogbe, who developed a financial relationship with a Kuwaiti royal, was found guilty of defrauding Alia Salem Al-Sabah and was ordered to pay her more than $8 million.
(AP, 2/5/20)
2020 Jan 31, Fifty North Atlantic right whales were spotted south of Nantucket Island. The US federal government asked Atlantic Ocean vessels to slow down in the area as only about 400 right wales are left in the world.
(SFC, 2/6/20, p.A5)
2020 Jan 31, A drug designed to minimize the frequency and severity of a child's allergic reaction to peanuts was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Palforzia, made by Aimmune Therapeutics, Inc. (AIMT) comes with a potential cost of around $4,200 per year.
(http://tinyurl.com/rrxfogy)
2020 Jan 31, Eli Lilly and Co priced its acute migraine treatment at $640 for a pack of eight pills and said it will be made available in pharmacies in the next few days.
(Reuters, 1/31/20)
2020 Jan 31, The Australian capital region declared a state of emergency because of an out-of-control forest fire burning erratically to its south.
(AP, 1/31/20)
2020 Jan 31, A court in Belgium acquitted three doctors of charges of manslaughter by poison in a case seen as a key test of the nation's euthanasia laws. Tine Nys (38), a patient with mental health problems, died in 2010.
(SFC, 1/31/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 31, The United Kingdom left the European Union with a mixture of joy, anger and indifference, casting off into the unknown in one of the biggest blows yet to Europe's attempt to forge unity from the ruins of World War Two.
(Reuters, 1/31/20)
2020 Jan 31, It was reported that British PM Boris Johnson is preparing to impose full customs and border checks on all European goods entering the UK after Brexit, in an attempt to ramp up pressure on the bloc in trade talks. Thousands of pro-Brexit supporters in central London erupted in cheers, sent balloons into the sky and sang "Rule Britannia", as Britain left the European Union.
(Reuters, 2/1/20)(AFP, 2/1/20)
2020 Jan 31, China counted 9,692 confirmed cases of coronavirus with a death toll of 213, including 43 new fatalities. The United States drew China's wrath with a travel warning while businesses struggled with supply problems from the coronavirus epidemic that has killed 213 people and been declared a global emergency.
(AP, 1/31/20)(Reuters, 1/31/20)
2020 Jan 31, French prosecutors said that European plane maker Airbus bribed public officials and hid the payments as part of a pattern of corruption that led to a record $4 billion bribery settlement with France, Britain and the United States.
(Reuters, 1/31/20)
2020 Jan 31, Guatemala said it is imposing travel restrictions on people who have recently been in China to prevent the new coronavirus entering the Central American country.
(Reuters, 1/31/20)
2020 Jan 31, An Indian diplomat said two Indian sailors were killed and two remain missing after the Zoya 1 oil tanker caught fire earlier this week off the UAE's sheikhdom of Sharjah.
(AP, 1/31/20)
2020 Jan 31, Indonesia deported US journalist Philip Jacobson who has written stories about environmental destruction in Indonesia after being arrested over alleged visa violations.
(Reuters, 1/31/20)
2020 Jan 31, The Iranian government banned flights to and from China. An analysis of flight tracking data by BBC Arabic later found that Mahan Air, a privately owned airline, flew between Iran and China 157 times between early February and March.
(The Telegraph, 5/5/20)
2020 Jan 31, In Iraq at least 11 demonstrators were wounded by security forces firing tear gas canisters to disperse crowds. Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani reiterated his condemnation of the use of force against anti-government protesters. Radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr called for his followers to return to the street, one week after he withdrew support for anti-government demonstrators camped out in Baghdad's Tahrir Square.
(AP, 1/31/20)
2020 Jan 31, In Nigeria More than 1,000 motorcycle taxi drivers marched to the gates of the Lagos state legislature to protest against a measure that will bar them from much of the traffic-choked commercial capital.
(Reuters, 1/31/20)
2020 Jan 31, Palestinians held demonstrations across the region to protest President Donald Trump's Middle East initiative, while militants in the Gaza Strip fired rockets and mortar rounds at Israel, drawing retaliatory strikes.
(AP, 1/31/20)
2020 Jan 31, Poland signed a $4.6 billion deal with the US for the purchase of 32 of its advanced F-35 fighter jets to enhance air defence on NATO's eastern flank.
(SFC, 1/31/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 31, Sweden reported its first confirmed case of coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/3/20)
2020 Jan 31, It was reported that Ugandan doctors are giving new mothers artificial intelligence-enabled devices to remotely monitor their health in a first-of-its-kind study aiming to curb thousands of preventable maternal deaths across Africa.
(Reuters, 1/31/20)
2020 Jan 31, Vietnam Airlines said it will suspend its flights to destinations in China from next week over coronavirus concerns.
(Reuters, 1/31/20)
2020 Jan 31, Advocacy group Save the Children warned that half of nearly 400,000 displaced people in the Syrian government's two-month-long offensive on the country's last rebel-held region are children, calling it a wave of displacement unlike anything seen before in the war.
(AP, 1/31/20)
2020 Jan 31, The UN Security Council approved a slight relaxation of the arms embargo on the Central African Republic, an issue that has been a source of friction between France and Russia. It allows the CAR to acquire military vehicles mounted with up to 14.5mm weapons, provided the United Nations is notified ahead of time.
(AFP, 2/1/20)
2020 Jan 31, A UN report said Yemen's Huthi rebels are in possession of new weapons similar to those produced in Iran in potential violation of a UN arms embargo.
(AFP, 1/31/20)
2020 Jan, US Census Bureau computer servers were exploited during a cybersecurity attack, but it didn't involve the 2020 census, and hackers' attempts to keep access to the system were unsuccessful. This was only made public in 2021.
(AP, 8/18/21)
2020 Jan, Michael John Helterbrand (25) was arested with two other men in Georgia(US) for conspiring to kill members of an anti-fascist group. They were members of the Base, a violent white supremacist group.
(SFC, 4/25/20, p.A3)
2020 Jan, New Jersey became the 2nd US state to adopt legislation outlawing all nicotine vaping liquids other than those flavored to taste like tobacco.
(SFC, 2/20/20, p.A5)
2020 Jan, In Afghanistan Mark R. Frerichs, a Navy veteran turned contractor, disappeared late this month. The Taliban later said they were not holding Frerichs.
(AP, 5/9/20)
2020 Jan, Behdad Esfahbod (38), a prominent Canadian Iranian software engineer at Facebook, visited his family and was arrested by Revolutionary Guard intelligence agents on the streets of Tehran, held in solitary confinement for seven days and psychologically tortured into promising to cooperate, which he never did. In August Esfahbod made his story public.
(AP, 8/22/20)
2020 Jan, In China a Beijing court ruled in favor of Gao Moumou, a product director for e-commerce firm Dangdang. She had been fired in 2018 three months after undergoing gender reassignment surgery. She was the first transgender person to win a job discrimination case in China.
(Econ., 8/1/20, p.34)
2020 Jan, The International Maritime Organization banned the use of high-sulfur "bunker oil," a variety processed in Mexico's outmoded refineries.
(Econ., 5/23/20, p.24)
2020 Jan, The Federated States of Micronesia banned entry to travelers late this month from countries with confirmed cases of the coronavirus.
(Econ, 3/21/20, p.34)
2020 Jan, Russia successfully test-launched its Tsirkon (Zircon) hypersonic cruise missile from a military vessel for the first time early this month.
(Reuters, 2/27/20)
2020 Jan, In Sri Lanka a government ministerial order said the national anthem may now only be sung in Sinhalese and no longer in Tamil.
(Econ., 3/7/20, p.35)
2020 Feb 1, In Florida gunfire erupted after a funeral in Riviera Beach, killing a teenager (15) and a man and leaving one other person wounded.
(AP, 2/1/20)
2020 Feb 1, Juan Guaido, Venezuela’s opposition leader, rallied supporters in Miami and met with US Senator Marco Rubio, who’s played a key role in shaping US policy on the South American country.
(Bloomberg, 2/1/20)
2020 Feb 1, In Mississippi inmate Jesus Garcia (39) was was found dead in his cell at the Wilkinson Vounty Correctional Facility operated by the private Management and Training Corp. This brought the total dead in the state prison system to at least 15 since late December.
(SFC, 2/4/20, p.A5)
2020 Feb 1, It was reported that Philip Elvin Riehl's suspected $60 million scheme "targeted members of the Mennonite and Amish communities in Pennsylvania and elsewhere and is one of the largest Pennsylvania-based alleged Ponzi schemes in history".
(USA Today, 2/1/20)
2020 Feb 1, Delta Air Lines said it will accelerate the suspension of flights in and out of China from the United States after the White House said it was imposing new restrictions on visitors starting on February 2.
(Reuters, 2/1/20)
2020 Feb 1, Australia banned all arrivals from China due to the coronavirus.
(Econ, 3/21/20, p.35)
2020 Feb 1, Austria, Germany, and Slovenia confirmed they would not extradite their nationals to the UK during the 11-month transition period which starts tomorrow.
(Business Insider, 2/1/20)
2020 Feb 1, In Burkina Faso gunmen killed at leat 18 civilians in an attack on the northern village of Lamdamol.
(SFC, 2/4/20, p.A2)
2020 Feb 1, China’s death toll from a new virus rose to 259 and the number of confirmed cases in China rose to 11,791. A World Health Organization official said other governments need to prepare for "domestic outbreak control" if the disease spreads in their countries. At least 24 countries have reported cases since China informed WHO about the new virus in late December. The WHO counted 2,115 new cases.
(AP, 2/1/20)(Econ., 7/4/20, p.10)
2020 Feb 1, An Egyptian court referred the death sentences of 37 defendants, including one of the country’s most high-profile militants, to Egypt’s top religious authority for a non-binding opinion on whether they can be executed on terrorism-related charges.
(AP, 2/1/20)
2020 Feb 1, Indian Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman unveiled the budget for fiscal 2020/21, vowing to boost income of Indians and their purchasing power, in a bid to revive domestic economic growth. India raised taxes on imports of goods such as electronic items, toys and furniture, aiming to give impetus to domestic manufacturing.
(Reuters, 2/1/20)
2020 Feb 1, Indonesian officials said that around 250 of its nationals being evacuated from China's Hubei province, the center of the coronavirus epidemic, will be quarantined in its Natuna Islands military base.
(Reuters, 2/1/20)
2020 Feb 1, Former Iraqi communications minister Mohammed Allawi (66) was named prime minister-designate by rival factions after weeks of political deadlock.
(AP, 2/1/20)
2020 Feb 1, Japan moved to contain the economic impact of a coronavirus outbreak originating in China as strict new measures aimed at limiting the spread of the virus, including targeting foreign visitors, came into effect. Japan had 17 confirmed cases as of Jan. 31, including some without symptoms.
(Reuters, 2/1/20)
2020 Feb 1, In Mexico the body of Raul Hernandez, a tour guide who worked at a famous butterfly reserve, was found beaten and with a head injury about 8km from the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve. Hernandez was reported missing by his family on 27 January after he left his home in the town of San Pedro Libertad.
(The Independent, 2/2/20)
2020 Feb 1, It was reported that Exxon Mobil Corp and Total have asked Mozambique to send more troops to guard their operations in the far north after a surge of attacks by Islamist militants.
(Reuters, 2/1/20)
2020 Feb 1, Nigeria's government said it has created a committee to address the issues that led to a suspension of US immigrant visas to its citizens.
(Reuters, 2/1/20)
2020 Feb 1, Nigerian authorities bannd two-and three-wheeled motor bike taxis. Drivers asked "How do we feed our families?"
(Econ, 3/14/20, p.36)
2020 Feb 1, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said the Palestinian Authority has cut security ties with both Israel and the US in a speech at an Arab League meeting in Cairo in which he denounced the White House plan for ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
(Reuters, 2/1/20)
2020 Feb 1, Three Philippine airlines cancelled flights to China, joining many others around the world that have done the same, after health officials confirmed the Philippines' first case of coronavirus.
(Reuters, 2/1/20)
2020 Feb 1, Russia's aerospace defence forces began evacuating Russian citizens from China due to the coronavirus outbreak.
(Reuters, 2/1/20)
2020 Feb 1, Syria's government started rationing subsidized food like rice and sugar with smart cards, in the latest measure to address an economic crisis in the war-torn country.
(AFP, 2/1/20)
2020 Feb 1, Insurgents attacked pro-Syrian government forces west of Aleppo with three car bombs, in an intensification of fighting in the northwest following government gains this week.
(Reuters, 2/1/20)
2020 Feb 1, In Tanzania twenty people died and a dozen others were injured in a stampede during a church meeting in the northern city of Moshi.
(Reuters, 2/2/20)
2020 Feb 2, The average ticket price for today's showdown between the Kansas City Chiefs and the San Francisco 49ers hit $5,828 on StubHub, the second-highest price seen for the Super Bowl over the last 10 years.
(AP, 2/2/20)
2020 Feb 2, President Donald Trump used a Super Bowl pregame interview to rail against Democrats, accusing them of hatred and offering schoolyard insults about his potential 2020 rivals. Trump congratulated the state of Kansas and did not mention Missouri, where the Chiefs play their home games at Missouri-based Arrowhead Stadium. The Kansas City Chiefs' won over the San Francisco 49ers 31-20.
(AP, 2/2/20)(SFC, 2/3/20, p.A1)
2020 Feb 2, The US military command in South Korea instituted a 14-day self quarantine for any troops who recently traveled to China, adding that an outbreak in that country of a new coronavirus could harm military readiness.
(Reuters, 2/1/20)
2020 Feb 2, The average ticket price for today's showdown between the Kansas City Chiefs and the San Francisco 49ers hit $5,828 on StubHub, the second-highest price seen for the Super Bowl over the last 10 years.
(AP, 2/2/20)
2020 Feb 2, California health officials said they had confirmed 11 cases of the new, fast-spreading coronavirus in the United States, with one in Santa Clara County and two more in San Benito County.
(Reuters, 2/2/20)
2020 Feb 2, Punxsutawney Phil, Pennsylvania's most famous groundhog, declared: “Spring will be early, it's a certainty".
(AP, 2/2/20)
2020 Feb 2, In Wisconsin Black police Officer Joseph Mensah fatally shot Black teenager Alvin Cole (17) outside a suburban Milwaukee mall. In October a prosecutor said the officer would not be charged because he had reasonable belief that deadly force was necessary.
(AP, 10/7/20)
2020 Feb 2, In Australia dozens of homes were destroyed overnight in New South Wales and around Canberra.
(SFC, 2/3/20, p.A3)
2020 Feb 2, The UK’s departure from the European Union this weekend led to a reallocation of 27 of the country’s 73 seats in the EU assembly among 14 member nations.
(Bloomberg, 2/2/20)
2020 Feb 2, London police officers shot and killed a suspect after at least two people were stabbed in what authorities investigated as a terror attack. The suspect was soon identified as recently released convict Sudesh Amman (20).
(AP, 2/2/20)(SFC, 2/3/20, p.A7)
2020 Feb 2, Chinese health authorities released updated figures of 361 deaths and 17,205 confirmed cases from the newly identified coronavirus. The incubation period is so long that people may not know where or when they picked it up. Based on the first 425 confirmed cases in China, each infection led to 2.2 others on average.
(Reuters, 2/3/20)(AP, 2/2/20)
2020 Feb 2, In Egypt suspected Islamic militants blew up a natural gas pipeline in the restive norther part of Sinai Peninsula.
(AP, 2/3/20)
2020 Feb 2, France said it will deploy 600 additional soldiers in the African Sahel region to combat extremists, raising the amount of troops there to 5,100.
(AP, 2/2/20)
2020 Feb 2, In western Germany more than 100 environmentalist activists occupied the site of the yet-to-be commissioned Datteln 4 coal fired power plant to protest against carbon emissions from coal burning.
(Reuters, 2/2/20)
2020 Feb 2, In Iraq hundreds of anti-government demonstrators rejected Mohammed Allawi as the new prime minister-designate. Demonstrators have long swore they would not accept a candidate chosen by Iraq's establishment. Populist cleric Moqtada al-Sadr urged his followers to help security forces clear roads blocked during months of sit-in protests.
(AP, 2/2/20)(Reuters, 2/2/20)
2020 Feb 2, Kosovo’s two biggest parties reached a deal to create a new government almost four months after the Balkan country held snap elections following the prime minister's resignation. Albin Kurti (44), leader of the leftist Vetevendosje (Self Determination) party, said he would become prime minister under the deal and work with the center-right Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK) and other groups.
(Reuters, 2/2/20)
2020 Feb 2, In Lebanon more than 200 Lebanese and Palestinians held a protest near the US Embassy in Beirut against a White House plan for ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
(AP, 2/2/20)
2020 Feb 2, The Philippines recorded the first death outside China from the new coronavirus, as countries around the world evacuated hundreds of their citizens from the infection zone and Chinese authorities completed a new, rapidly constructed 1,000-bed hospital for victims of the outbreak.
(AP, 2/2/20)
2020 Feb 2, The Philippines's Department of Agriculture said blood samples taken from pigs in a southern province tested positive for the African swine fever virus.
(Reuters, 2/2/20)
2020 Feb 2, In Somalia a US air strike struck a home in the Middle Juba region as a family sat down for dinner. One girl (18) was reported killed and three people injured. On July 28 the US military acknowledged killing a civilian and wounding three others with an airstrike in Somalia. The original report on the airstrike said one member of the al-Shabab extremist group was killed in the vicinity of Jilib.
(SFC, 4/2/20, p.A2)(AP, 7/28/20)
2020 Feb 2, In Syria airstrikes on a rebel-held village in the northwest killed at least seven people, A large Turkish military convoy rumbled into rebel-held areas of northwest Syria.
(AP, 2/2/20)
2020 Feb 2, Vietnam Airlines and Vietjet Air resumed flights to Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macau, after the Hanoi government eased restrictions over virus concerns.
(Reuters, 2/2/20)
2020 Feb 3, It was reported that the US military has deployed a new addition to its nuclear arsenal — a long-range missile armed with a nuclear warhead of reduced destructive power. The so-called low-yield missile joins other, more powerful weapons aboard stealthy submarines prowling the oceans.
(AP, 2/3/20)
2020 Feb 3, In California a gunman killed a 51-year-old woman from Colombia and wounded five others before dawn on a packed Greyhound bus traveling from Los Angeles to San Francisco. Highway patrol officers found the suspect a few minutes later and detained him. Anthony Devonte Williams (33) of Capitol Heights, Maryland, was arrested after passengers managed to disarm him and get him off the bus.
(AP, 2/3/20)(AP, 2/4/20)
2020 Feb 3, Iowa held its first-in-the-nation caucus on presidential candidates.
(AP, 2/4/20)
2020 Feb 3, In Oklahoma City a truck slammed into members of the Moore High School cross-country team. One student was killed and another died the following day. Authorities said the truck was driven by man whose son was killed in a traffic crash over the weekend. Max Leroy Townsend (57) was being held in the Cleveland County jail on charges of first-degree manslaughter and six counts of failure to stop and render aid. A third student died on Feb 15.
(AP, 2/4/20)(SFC, 2/17/20, p.A6)
2020 Feb 3, In Texas two women were killed and a child was wounded in a shooting at a Texas A&M University-Commerce dormitory.
(AP, 2/4/20)
2020 Feb 3, Britain and the EU laid down their red lines for post-Brexit trade talks, offering contrasting visions for their future relationship that raise the prospect of clashes to come.
(AFP, 2/3/20)
2020 Feb 3, China accused the United States of whipping up panic over a fast-spreading coronavirus with travel restrictions and evacuations as Chinese stocks plunged on the first day back from the extended Lunar New Year holiday.
(Reuters, 2/3/20)
2020 Feb 3, In China the first patients arrived at a 1,000-bed hospital built in 10 days as part of China's sweeping efforts to fight a new virus that is causing global alarm. A woman (36) in the northern municipality of Tianjin was detained by police after "deliberately concealing" her contact with someone from a coronavirus-stricken area. Authorities reported 425 deaths and 20,438 confirmed cases. At least 180 cases have been confirmed outside China.
(AP, 2/3/20)(Reuters, 2/3/20)(SFC, 2/4/20, p.A3)
2020 Feb 3, Denmark's security service said three members of the Iran-based Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahwaz have been arrested and suspected of spying for a Saudi intelligence service. The suspected spying took place for six years from 2012.
(AP, 2/3/20)
2020 Feb 3, Emmanuel Macron arrived in Warsaw for the first visit to Poland by a French head of state in six years. He sought to mend relations strained by his criticism of Poland’s controversial overhaul of the judiciary and its rejection of a deal with Airbus in 2016.
(Bloomberg, 2/3/20)
2020 Feb 3, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu arrived in Uganda, saying his country is "returning to Africa in a big way" and urging the East African country to open an embassy in Jerusalem.
(AP, 2/3/20)
2020 Feb 3, Israel’s Channel 13 TV reported that PM Netanyahu was pushing to have the US recognize Moroccan sovereignty over the Western Sahara, which Morocco seized after colonial power Spain pulled out in 1975, in a step that isn’t internationally recognized.
(Bloomberg, 2/6/20)
2020 Feb 3, Malawi's Constitutional court nullified the results of last year's presidential election citing widespread irregularities. The court said a new vote will be held within 150 days. Supporters of President Peter Mutharika had reportedly used Tipp-Ex to alter vote tallies.
(SFC, 2/4/20, p.A2)(Econ, 4/25/20, p.50)
2020 Feb 3, It was reported that Nepal will count LGBT+ people for the first time in its next census, scheduled for June 2021, a move that campaigners said could help sexual minorities gain better access to education and health schemes.
(Reuters, 2/3/20)
2020 Feb 3, Pakistan, a close Chinese ally, said it was resuming air travel to China after a three-day suspension.
(Reuters, 2/3/20)
2020 Feb 3, Sudan’s military leader, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, met with Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu in Uganda and agreed to work toward normalizing relations, in what would be a historic step for the Arab League member that’s never officially recognized the Jewish state.
(Bloomberg, 2/4/20)
2020 Feb 3, Syrian troops captured the village of Nairab, reaching another highway that links the coastal city of Latakia with Aleppo. Syria's state news agency SANA said government forces were chasing insurgents and that four Turkish soldiers were killed and nine wounded triggering a Turkish retaliation. It claimed there were no casualties among Syrian troops.
(AP, 2/3/20)
2020 Feb 3, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Turkish artillery have hit some 46 targets in Syria and Turkish warplanes were also involved. He claimed that there were between 30 and 35 casualties on the Syrian side but offered no evidence. Turkish troops shelled Syrian army positions in three provinces, reportedly killing eight soldiers in Idlib, three in Latakia province and two in the Hama region. Syrian activists said airstrikes in the country's northern, rebel-held region killed at least nine civilians.
(AP, 2/3/20)
2020 Feb 3, Eight Yemeni children in critical need of medical care were evacuated with their families from the rebel-held capital Sanaa, in what the United Nations hopes will be the first of more mercy flights. They were flown to Egypt and Jordan for specialized care.
(AFP, 2/3/20)(SFC, 2/4/20, p.A2)
2020 Feb 4, President Donald Trump, on the eve of his likely acquittal in the Senate impeachment trial, delivered his third State of the Union address. The "great American comeback" President Donald Trump claimed in his speech drew on falsehoods about US energy supremacy, health care and the economy as well as distortions about his predecessor's record. Trump awarded conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
(AP, 2/4/20)(NY Times, 2/4/20)
2020 Feb 4, The US Treasury said the United States and Japan have signed an agreement to jointly encourage more private investment in energy and infrastructure projects.
(Reuters, 2/4/20)
2020 Feb 4, The United States and the British dependency of Jersey said they have agreed with Nigeria to repatriate more than $300 million in funds stolen by former military ruler General Sani Abacha. Corruption watchdog Transparency International estimates he stole as much as $5 billion of public money from 1993-1998.
(AP, 2/4/20)
2020 Feb 4, The US Department of Health and Human Services said it was partnering with Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc to develop a treatment for the coronavirus, making the drugmaker the latest to join the race to develop a therapy.
(Reuters, 2/4/20)
2020 Feb 4, In Arizona court hearings began for an Iraqi man living in metro Phoenix accused of leading an al-Qaida group that authorities say killed two police officers in 2006 on the streets of Fallujah in attacks carried out by masked men. Ali Yousif Ahmed Al-Nouri (42) was arrested last week in Arizona as part of an extradition request made by the Iraqi government.
(AP, 2/3/20)
2020 Feb 4, Miami-based Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd said has canceled eight cruises out of China through March 4 in response to the coronavirus outbreak.
(AP, 2/4/20)
2020 Feb 4, Iowa's coveted position as the first-in-the-nation nominating contest faces its most daunting challenge in decades in light of problems that kept the state Democratic Party from reporting results. The Iowa Democratic Party blamed a “coding issue in the reporting system" that it said has since been fixed. Partial results showed Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, with a narrow lead over Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.
(AP, 2/4/20)
2020 Feb 4, Cincinnati-based Macy's Inc said it plans to close 125 of its least productive stores over the next three years to tackle slowing mall traffic and will slash more than 2,000 corporate jobs as a part of a cost-savings effort.
(Reuters, 2/5/20)
2020 Feb 4, In Saudi Arabia the Middle Eastern respiratory syndrome (MERS) caimed another victim, bringing the total to 858.
(https://tinyurl.com/cgn6qfp)(Econ., 5/2/20, p.65)
2020 Feb 4, Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune pardoned more than 3,000 prisoners serving sentences less than six months as he seeks to win support after months of political turmoil.
(Reuters, 2/4/20)
2020 Feb 4, PM Boris Johnson formally launched the UN COP26 process in London with a pledge to bring forward the UK’s target to end the sale of new petrol and diesel cars by five years to 2035, in a bid to cut greenhouse gas pollution. COP26 is the abbreviated name of the 26th session of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. COP26 will be held in Glasgow in November.
(Bloomberg, 2/4/20)(AFP, 2/4/20)
2020 Feb 4, Bulgaria's President Rumen Radev accused the center-right government of PM Boyko Borissov of endangering the survival of the state through its failure to tackle endemic corruption.
(AP, 2/4/20)
2020 Feb 4, Officials in the Chinese city of Macao asked its 41 casinos to close for half a month to help the stop the coronavirus.
(SFC, 2/5/20, p.A3)
2020 Feb 4, The EU rejected US President Donald Trump’s proposal for securing peace in the Middle East and expressed concern about Israel’s plans to annex more Palestinian land.
(AP, 2/4/20)
2020 Feb 4, A German appeals court rejected a Jewish man's bid to force the removal of a 700-year-old anti-Semitic statue from Town Church in Wittenberg where Martin Luther once preached. The sculpture depicts people identifiable as Jews suckling on the teats of a sow, while a rabbi lifts the animal’s tail.
(AP, 2/4/20)
2020 Feb 4, Hong Kong hospitals cut services as thousands of medical workers went on strike for a second day to demand the border with mainland China be shut completely, as a new virus caused its first death in the semi-autonomous territory and authorities feared it was spreading locally. The fast-spreading outbreak has killed 490 people with 24,324 confirmed cases.
(AP, 2/4/20)(Reuters, 2/4/20)(SFC, 2/5/20, p.A3)
2020 Feb 4, Iran upheld the death sentence given to Amir Rahimpour, an Iranian national, found guilty of working for US intelligence.
(Bloomberg, 2/4/20)
2020 Feb 4, In Kenya Daniel arap Moi (95), a former schoolteacher who became Kenya’s longest-serving president (1978-2002), died. He led the East African nation through years of repression and economic turmoil fueled by runaway corruption.
(AP, 2/4/20)
2020 Feb 4, In Lebanon a military investigative judge charged Amer Fakhoury (57), a Lebanese-American man, with murder and torture of Lebanese citizens, crimes he allegedly committed during Israel's occupation of southern Lebanon. The prison, run by the so-called South Lebanon Army, was abandoned after Israeli forces pulled out of southern Lebanon in 2000, ending an 18-year occupation.
(AP, 2/4/20)
2020 Feb 4, Cease-fire talks officially began in Geneva between the Libya's warring sides.
(AP, 2/4/20)
2020 Feb 4, In the Maldives three foreigners were stabbed in a suburb of Male. Muslim militants claimed responsibility.
(Econ, 3/21/20, p.36)
2020 Feb 4, Nigeria said it has eased its visa rules in an effort to boost trade and tourism as an African trade agreement promoting freer movement of goods and services comes into effect.
(Reuters, 2/4/20)
2020 Feb 4, The World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) said Saudi Arabia has reported an outbreak of the highly pathogenic H5N8 bird flu virus on a poultry farm.
(AP, 2/4/20)
2020 Feb 4, A judge in South Africa issued an arrest warrant for former president Jacob Zuma for failing to appear in court on a corruption case.
(SFC, 2/5/20, p.A2)
2020 Feb 4, Syrian government forces advanced north under the cover of airstrikes reaching areas that have been held by insurgents for eight years. The bombardment forced more people to flee for safety in areas close to the Turkish border.
(AP, 2/4/20)
2020 Feb 4, It was reported that Syrian militants affiliated with groups such as al-Qaida and the Islamic State group were being sent by Turkey to fight on behalf of the UN-supported government in Libya.
(AP, 2/4/20)
2020 Feb 4, Turkey's Pres. Recep Tayyip Erdogan said his country won't allow Syrian forces to gain additional territory in a northern Syrian province, a day after clashes between Turkish and Syrian forces killed soldiers on both sides.
(AP, 2/4/20)
2020 Feb 4, The World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) said Vietnam has reported an outbreak of highly pathogenic H5N6 bird flu in a village in the northern part of the country.
(AP, 2/4/20)
2020 Feb 4, In Yemen Iran-backed Houthi rebels released dozens of Egyptian fishermen after detaining them for weeks on charges of trespassing into territorial waters.
(AP, 2/4/20)
2020 Feb 5, Senate Republicans voted to acquit Trump of abuse of power for pressing Ukraine to investigate political rival Joe Biden, a contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, and of obstructing a congressional investigation of the matter. The acquittal was Trump's biggest victory yet over his Democratic foes in Congress.
(Reuters, 2/6/20)
2020 Feb 5, A US federal judge prohibited US immigration authorities from relying on databases deemed faulty to ask law enforcement agencies to hold people in custody, a setback for the Trump administration that threatens to hamper how it carries out arrests. The ruling applies only to the Central District of California, where state law already sharply limits the extent to which state and local law enforcement agencies can honor requests from ICE. But the district encompasses ICE's Pacific Enforcement Response Center in Laguna Niguel, which makes requests around-the-clock to law enforcement agencies in 42 states and two US territories.
(AP, 2/7/20)
2020 Feb 5, The US Department of Homeland Security said hat it would no longer let New York residents enroll in its “trusted traveler" programs because of a new state law that blocked federal immigration officials from accessing motor vehicle records.
(AP, 2/6/20)
2020 Feb 5, FBI Director Chris Wray said that Russia is engaged in “information warfare" heading into the 2020 presidential election. He said law enforcement has not seen ongoing efforts by Russia to target America's election infrastructure. Wray also told the House Judiciary Committee that the threat of far-right domestic violent extremism has risen to a "national threat priority" for 2020, posing a "steady threat of violence and economic harm" to the US.
(AP, 2/5/20)(The Independent, 2/7/20)
2020 Feb 5, Human Rights Watch reported that at least 138 people deported from the US to El Salvador in recent years were subsequently killed.
(SFC, 2/6/20, p.A2)
2020 Feb 5, Merck & Co Inc said it will spin off its women's health, biosimilar drugs and older products into a separate publicly traded company as it tightens its focus on growth drivers like cancer drug Keytruda and vaccines.
(Reuters, 2/5/20)
2020 Feb 5, American film star Kirk Douglas (b.1916) died. His films included "The Strange Loves of Martha Ivers" (1946), "Champion) (1949), "The Bad and the Beautiful" (1952), "Lust for Life" (1956), "Spartacus" (1960) and "Lonely Are the Brave" (1962). His autobiography was titled "The Ragman's Son" (1988).
(SFC, 2/6/20, p.C3)
2020 Feb 5, Cyprus said it is preparing new legislation to curb the large number of sham marriages that are being conducted to help individuals obtain residency permits and potentially easier access to the European Union.
(AP, 2/5/20)
2020 Feb 5, At least two people died in Slovakia and the Czech Republic as strong winds, heavy rain and snow battered central and eastern Europe.
(AP, 2/5/20)
2020 Feb 5, In Germany Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party lined up with the far right Alternative for Germany (AfD) for the first time ever to elect a state leader in Thuringia, throwing the country’s political establishment into disarray.
(AP, 2/5/20)
2020 Feb 5, German Chancellor Angela Merkel arrived in South Africa to discuss trade, investment and energy issues with Berlin's largest trading partner in Africa.
(AP, 2/5/20)
2020 Feb 5, German sportswear company Adidas said it was temporarily shutting a "considerable" number of its stores in China due to the coronavirus outbreak.
(Reuters, 2/5/20)
2020 Feb 5, Senior Iraqi military officials said its government has told the military not to seek assistance from the US-led coalition in operations against the Islamic State group.
(AP, 2/5/20)
2020 Feb 5, In southern Iraq at least eight anti-government protesters were shot dead and 52 were wounded in clashes in Najaf with followers of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
(AP, 2/6/20)(AP, 2/10/20)
2020 Feb 5, Israeli forces shot and killed a Palestinian (17) during clashes with demonstrators in the West Bank, the first death since tensions rose following the release of President Donald Trump's Mideast plan.
(AP, 2/5/20)
2020 Feb 5, Organizers said Italian fashion house Prada is helping to fund a United Nations program that will enlist high school students from 10 cities to spread awareness about how humans impact the world's oceans.
(AP, 2/5/20)
2020 Feb 5, It was reported that at least 10 people aboard a cruise ship moored in Japan have tested positive for the novel coronavirus. The Diamond Princess will remain under quarantine in Yokohama with everyone on board for at least 14 days. Three more cruise ship passengers were soon diagnosed with the virus in Japan for a total of 64 on board the ship.
(Good Morning America, 2/5/20)(AP, 2/7/20)
2020 Feb 5, In the Netherlands the University of Maastricht disclosed that it had paid hackers a ransom of 30 bitcoin -- at the time worth 200,000 euros ($220,000) -- to unblock its computer systems, including email and computers, after an attack that unfolded on Dec. 24.
(Reuters, 2/5/20)
2020 Feb 5, Aid groups in Syria said cold weather, disease and a lack of shelter and medicine threatened hundreds of thousands of civilians as they fled fighting in Idlib province, in one of the biggest upheavals of the country's nine-year civil war.
(Reuters, 2/5/20)
2020 Feb 5, Turkey's Pres. Recep Tayyip Erdogan threatened to use force against Syrian government forces if they don't pull back to an earlier cease-fire line in northern Syria by the end of the month.
(AP, 2/5/20)
2020 Feb 5, In eastern Turkey successive avalanches over the last 24 hours killed at least 38 people and trapped dozens more. The death toll soon climbed to 41. The double avalanche left 84 people injured.
(AP, 2/5/20)(AP, 2/6/20)
2020 Feb 5, In Turkey a Pegasus Boeing 737 skidded off a runway in Istanbul and broke apart while landing in bad weather. Three people were killed and 179 injured.
(SFC, 2/6/20, p.A2)(SSFC, 2/9/20, p.A3)
2020 Feb 5, It was reported that Pope Francis has defrocked the Argentine priest, Roberto Juan Yannuzzi, after a four-year investigation determined he had sex with adults under his authority, absolved them of the sin during confession and otherwise abused his power. The pope’s decision was made public this week in a statement by the archbishop of La Plata, Argentina.
(AP, 2/5/20)
2020 Feb 5, In Zimbabwe some 20 miners were trapped underground after a mine shaft collapsed. At least two bodies were recovered.
(AP, 2/6/20)
2020 Feb 6, US President Donald Trump met with Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta, who came to the White House with a warning: Africa is not a battlefield for proxy disputes with countries such as China.
(AP, 2/6/20)
2020 Feb 6, It was reported that the US Treasury Department has complied with Republican Senators’ requests for highly sensitive and closely-held financial records about Hunter Biden and his associates and turned over “‘evidence’ of questionable origin" to them, according to a leading Democrat on one of the committees conducting the investigation.
(Yahoo News, 2/6/20)
2020 Feb 6, A US safety regulator said it has allowed SoftBank Group-backed autonomous vehicle startup Nuro Inc to temporarily deploy up to 5,000 low-speed electric delivery vehicles without human controls like mirrors and steering wheels.
(Reuters, 2/6/20)
2020 Feb 6, The FBI identified China as the biggest law enforcement threat to the United States, and its director said Beijing was seeking to steal American technology by "any means necessary".
(Reuters, 2/6/20)
2020 Feb 6, A US citizen (60) died from the coronavirus in Wuhan, China. It was the first known American death from the illness, and was likely to add to diplomatic frictions over Beijing’s response to the epidemic.
(NY Times, 2/8/20)
2020 Feb 6, A female (57) resident of Santa Clara County, Calif., died of the coronavirus, making this the earliest known victims of the pandemic in the United States. A 2nd resident (69) died on Feb. 17 and a 3rd (70) on March 6. On April 21 county health officials and the CDC said that the presence of the disease Covid-19 was determined by tissue samples from autopsies.
(https://tinyurl.com/ybvnqykd)(AP, 4/22/20)(SFC, 4/23/20, p.A7)
2020 Feb 6, In Indiana four young people were fatally shot in Indianapolis late today in an apparent targeted attack.
(SFC, 2/7/20, p.A6)
2020 Feb 6, Tom Perez, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, called for a “recanvass" of the results of the Iowa caucuses, saying it was needed to “assure public confidence" after three days of technical issues and delays. New results late today showed former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg leading Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders by two state delegate equivalents out of 2,152 counted.
(AP, 2/6/20)
2020 Feb 6, Peter Rockwell (83), whose famous father's iconic images graced the covers of the Saturday Evening Post and who became a noted artist in his own right, died in Danvers, Mass.
(AP, 2/15/20)
2020 Feb 6, Author Roger Kahn (92), perhaps best known for his 1972 best-selling book "The Boys of Summer," died in New York. The book nostalgically romanticized the Brooklyn Dodgers of a bygone era.
(Reuters, 2/7/20)
2020 Feb 6, In North Carolina Durham County sheriff’s deputies charged a record 18 people with soliciting prostitution, targeting the customers in a new fight against human trafficking. Deputies used the internet to arrange meetings with men at a local hotel and then arrested them there.
(Charlotte Observer, 2/7/20)
2020 Feb 6, Lynn Evands Mand (95), lead singer of the Chordettes, died in Ohio. The group became popular for their recording of "Mr Sandman" (1954) and "Lollipop" (1958) among other songs.
(SSFC, 3/1/20, p.B9)
2020 Feb 6, NASA astronaut Christina Koch, who has spent nearly 11 months in orbit on the longest spaceflight by a woman, landed safely in Kazakhstan along with along with station Commander Luca Parmitano of the European Space Agency and the Russian space agency Roscosmos' Alexander Skvortsov.
(AP, 2/6/20)
2020 Feb 6, Severe weather left one dead in Alabama as more than six dozen damaging storms are reported in the South from Louisiana to Tennessee -- including 12 reported tornadoes in Mississippi alone.
(Good Morning America, 2/6/20)
2020 Feb 6, In southwestern Alaska a pilot and four passengers were killed in a commuter plane crash.
(SFC, 2/8/20, p.A6)
2020 Feb 6, Eric Eoin Marques (34), a man who spent years fighting his extradition from Ireland to the US, pleaded guilty in a Maryland courtroom to operating a web hosting service that allowed users to anonymously access more than 1 million files of child pornography.
(AP, 2/6/20)
2020 Feb 6, Texas executed Abel Ochoa (47). The man had been convicted for shooting and killing his 29-year-old wife and his two daughters, as well as his father-in-law and sister-in-law shortly after smoking crack in 2002.
(Reuters, 2/6/20)(SFC, 2/7/20, p.A6)
2020 Feb 6, Corteva Inc said it will stop producing the agricultural pesticide chlorpyrifos by the end of the year, removing the world's largest manufacturer of a chemical that has been linked to low birth weight, reduced IQ and attention disorders in children. Corteva was spun off last year after a merger of Dow Chemical and Dupont.
(Reuters, 2/6/20)
2020 Feb 6, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc said it is ramping up efforts to develop a set of coronavirus treatments, which could be available for testing or use in some patients within a few months.
(AP, 2/6/20)
2020 Feb 6, Chinese President Xi Jinping declared a "people's war" against the fast-spreading coronavirus. Chinese health authorities reported 563 deaths and another sharp jump in the number of confirmed cases to 28,018. Outside mainland China, at least 260 cases have been confirmed. China finished building a second new hospital to isolate and treat patients of the virus.
(Reuters, 2/6/20)(AP, 2/6/20)
2020 Feb 6, In Colombia inmate Jhon Jairo Velasquez Vasquez, aka Popeye, died. He had worked for drug kingpin Pablo Escobar and said he participated in some 300 murders.
(Reuters, 2/6/20)
2020 Feb 6, In southern Egypt 13 people were killed and seven injured when a bus and a truck collided on a highway in Aswan province.
(AP, 2/6/20)
2020 Feb 6, Thomas Kemmerich, the premier of Germany's Thuringia state, stepped down and called for snap elections, barely 24 hours after he was elected with the help of far-right AfD lawmakers in a vote Angela Merkel called "unforgivable".
(AFP, 2/6/20)
2020 Feb 6, Greek officials said they have detected their first case of African swine fever at a breeding farm in the north of the country this week. African swine fever is harmless to humans but it is highly contagious and deadly in pigs. It has spread from Africa to Europe and Asia and has already killed hundreds of millions of pigs, affecting global meat markets.
(Reuters, 2/6/20)
2020 Feb 6, Greek police arrested seven people and searched for two others on suspicion of planning or carrying out attacks on migrants on the island of Lesbos.
(SFC, 2/8/20, p.A2)
2020 Feb 6, Israel carried out airstrikes near Damascus early today, wounding eight soldiers. An opposition war monitoring group said the strikes targeted army positions as well as Iran-backed fighters, killing 23.
(AP, 2/6/20)
2020 Feb 6, Israeli forces killed two Palestinians in clashes in the occupied West Bank and a third in Jerusalem after he opened fire at police, hours after a car-ramming attack elsewhere in the city wounded 12 Israeli soldiers.
(AP, 2/6/20)
2020 Feb 6, In northern Italy a high-speed passenger train derailed killing two railway workers and injuring 28 other people as its engine broke off and careened into a work vehicle on an adjacent track on the Milan-Bologna line.
(SFC, 2/7/20, p.A2)
2020 Feb 6, Russia said it has begun checking the body temperature of officials and reporters attending events involving President Vladimir Putin due to coronavirus fears.
(AFP, 2/6/20)
2020 Feb 6, Saudi Arabia barred its citizens and residents of the kingdom from traveling to China amid the new virus outbreak.
(AP, 2/6/20)
2020 Feb 6, Amnesty International said Saudi Arabia has used a secretive court established to try terrorism cases as "a weapon of repression" to imprison peaceful critics, activists, journalists, clerics and minority Muslim Shiites, including some who were sentenced to death and executed.
(AP, 2/6/20)
2020 Feb 6, Turkey sent more reinforcements into northwestern Syria, setting up new positions in an attempt to stop a Syrian government offensive on the last rebel stronghold in the war-torn country.
(AP, 2/6/20)
2020 Feb 7, Pres. Donald Trump ousted Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, the decorated soldier and national security aide who played a central role in the Democrats' impeachment case. Next came word that Gordon Sondland, Trump's ambassador to the European Union, also was out.
(AP, 2/7/20)
2020 Feb 7, Former Secretary of the Navy Richard V. Spencer endorsed Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg, making him the first high-level former Trump administration official to back a Democratic hopeful in the 2020 election.
(Reuters, 2/7/20)
2020 Feb 7, More than 300,000 homes and businesses were without power early today as a weather system blamed for five deaths in the South moved into the northeastern United States. Authorities confirmed five storm-related fatalities, in Alabama, South Carolina, North Carolina and Tennessee.
(AP, 2/7/20)
2020 Feb 7, A judge in Boston ordered Douglas Hodge (62) of Laguna Beach to spend nine months in federal prison for paying bribes to get four of his children into the Univ. of Southern California and Georgetown as fake athletic recruits. Hodge onece served as the head of Pimco, a bond management company.
(SFC, 2/8/20, p.A6)
2020 Feb 7, Vance Pearson, a former senior official of the United Auto Workers based in St. Louis, pleaded guilty to a corruption scheme that used union cash for vacation villas, golf, cigars and booze.
(SFC, 2/10/20, p.A5)
2020 Feb 7, In New Hampshire a Democratic presidential debate was held ahead or the upcoming primary in the state. Joe Biden had a strong moment during the debate when he called on the audience to “stand and give Col. Vindman a show of how much we supported him," adding that Trump “should be pinning a medal on Vindman and not on Rush Limbaugh".
(AP, 2/8/20)(Yahoo News, 2/7/20)
2020 Feb 7, It was reported that the US Air Force had 84 suicides among active-duty members last year, up from 60 the year before.
(AP, 2/7/20)
2020 Feb 7, The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said the Esperanza base on the northern tip of the Antarctic peninsula has recorded a temperature of 18.3 degrees Celsius (64.94 degrees Fahrenheit), the highest on record.
(Reuters, 2/7/20)
2020 Feb 7, Heavy rains lashed parts of the wildfire and drought-stricken Australian east coast, bringing some flooding in Sydney and relief to firefighters still dealing with dozens of blazes in New South Wales. There were still 42 fires burning in the state, with 17 of those not contained.
(AP, 2/7/20)
2020 Feb 7, Government data showed that aggressive deforestation is starting earlier this year in Brazil's Amazon rainforest, with destruction doubling in January compared with a year ago.
(AP, 2/7/20)
2020 Feb 7, It was reported that Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has signed into law quarantine rules for Brazilians who will be brought back from the Chinese city of Wuhan, the epicenter of a coronavirus outbreak.
(AP, 2/7/20)
2020 Feb 7, Shamima Begum (20), a UK woman who as a teenager ran away to join the Islamic State group in 2015, lost a legal challenge Friday aimed at restoring her citizenship, which was revoked on national security grounds.
(AP, 2/7/20)
2020 Feb 7, China confirmed 31,161 cases and 636 deaths on the mainland. Dr. Li Wenliang (34) died overnight due to the coronavirus at Wuhan Central Hospital. Police in December had reprimanded eight doctors including ophthalmologist Li for warning friends on social media about the emerging threat.
(AP, 2/7/20)
2020 Feb 7, Independent scientists questioned research that suggested that the outbreak of coronavirus disease spreading from China might have passed from bats to humans through the illegal traffic of pangolins. South China Agricultural University had led the research.
(Reuters, 2/7/20)
2020 Feb 7, Egypt freed pro-democracy activist Ramy Sayed (31). He had spent over four years in prison and rose to local prominence as one of the faces of the country's 2011 uprising.
(AP, 2/7/20)
2020 Feb 7, Egyptian police arrested Patrick George Zaki (27), an activist, researcher and vocal critic of President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi's government.
(AP, 2/9/20)
2020 Feb 7, French President Emmanuel Macron called for European nations to play a more direct role in halting a new nuclear arms race, saying they "cannot remain spectators" against a threat to the continent's collective security.
(AFP, 2/7/20)
2020 Feb 7, French air strikes killed 20 militants in the Sahel region where Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso meet. Earlier in the week commando operations killed about ten others in the border area.
(SSFC, 2/9/20, p.A3)
2020 Feb 7, Iraq's Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani called for security forces to protect anti-government protesters in a sermon, after weeks of violence in Baghdad and southern Iraq, and amid seething tensions between demonstrators and followers of cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
(AP, 2/7/20)
2020 Feb 7, The director of Israeli crossings informed all exporters and all relevant parties that all Palestinian agriculture products would be banned from export to world markets through the Jordanian crossing starting Feb. 9.
(Reuters, 2/8/20)
2020 Feb 7, The head of Ivory Coast's cotton and cashew council said production of cashews fell 17% to 634,641 tons in 2019 after as much as 200,000 tons were smuggled out of the country.
(Reuters, 2/7/20)
2020 Feb 7, In southern Kazakhstan ethnic clashes between ethnic Kazakhs and Dungans, a minority group with Chinese roots, left eight people dead. The total number of casualties soon rose to 10. Dozens of people were detained as police established their roles in the incident.
(AP, 2/9/20)
2020 Feb 7, Norway, western Europe's largest oil and gas producer, announced it was increasing its ambition to cut carbon emissions and would put an implementation plan before parliament later this year.
(Reuters, 2/7/20)
2020 Feb 7, President Vladimir Putin ordered payments to be made to Russian World War II veterans in Russia and the Baltic States as well as to those who were held in Nazi concentration camps. The one-time payments of 50,000 rubles to 75,000 rubles ($790-$1,200) will also go to the widows or widowers of veterans in Russia as well as Russian citizens in Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.
(AP, 2/7/20)
2020 Feb 7, Airat Khairullin, a member of the lower house of the Russian parliament, was killed in a helicopter crash in Tatarstan, about 850 km (500 miles) east of Moscow. Two survivors suffered serious injuries.
(AP, 2/7/20)
2020 Feb 7, In South Africa Tazne van Wyk (7) went missing. Her body was found two weeks later after her suspected murderer led police to the storm drain where he said he had disposed of it. The suspect, a violent multiple offender had been released on parole. He was in prison for the kidnapping and murder of another child.
(BBC, 3/22/20)
2020 Feb 7, Sudan reached a settlement with families of the victims of the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen, as part of its campaign to persuade the US to remove its designation as a state sponsor of terrorism. The settlement for about $30 million would be split between the families of the 17 sailors killed.
(Bloomberg, 2/13/20)
2020 Feb 7, Tunisia fired Moncef Baati, its ambassador to the UN, accusing him of failing to consult the foreign ministry on key issues that diplomatic sources said included Washington's controversial Middle East peace plan.
(AFP, 2/7/20)
2020 Feb 7, Several Turkish armored vehicles and tanks entered rebel-controlled northwestern Syria, the latest reinforcements sent in by Ankara amid a Syrian government offensive that this week brought the two countries' troops into a rare direct confrontation.
(AP, 2/7/20)
2020 Feb 7, The UN said people are fleeing a surge of attacks in northern Mozambique where witnesses have described beheadings, mass kidnappings and villages burned to the ground.
(Reuters, 2/7/20)
2020 Feb 7, A UN poverty expert said Spain is depriving its poor of basic rights, even as its businesses recover from the economic crisis.
(AP, 2/7/20)
2020 Feb 8, In Washington DC police escorted more than 100 members of the Patriot Front, a white nationalist group, on a march through the National Mall. Metropolitan Police said the march occurred without incident or arrests.
(Reuters, 2/8/20)
2020 Feb 8, In San Francisco a shooting Haight-Ashbury neighborhood involved an off-duty FBI agent and an adult male, who was hospitalized. The agent was not hurt.
(AP, 2/9/20)
2020 Feb 8, Robert Conrad (b.1935), American film and TV star, died in Malibu, Ca. His TV work included the series "The Wild Wild West" (1965-1970), "Baa Baa Black Sheep" (1976) and "The Black Sheep Squadron" (1977). His films included "Young Dillinger" (1966) and "Jungle All the Way" (1996).
(SFC, 2/12/20, p.C5)
2020 Feb 8, In eastern Afghanistan two US soldiers were killed and six wounded in a so-called insider attack in Nangarhar province late today. One Afghan National Army member was also killed.
(AP, 2/8/20)
2020 Feb 8, Australian authorities declared the Currowan Fire south of Sydney was finally out after destroying more than 300 homes and razing 500,000 hectares (1.2 million acres) over two-and-a-half months. A deluge in eastern parts of the country drenched deadly fires and helped ease a crippling drought.
(AP, 2/10/20)
2020 Feb 8, China's city of Wuhan, at the center of the coronavirus outbreak, opened another makeshift hospital, providing 1,500 beds.
(Reuters, 2/8/20)
2020 Feb 8, The World Health Organization (WHO) said the death toll in mainland China has risen to 723, looking likely to pass the 774 deaths recorded globally during the 2002-2003 outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). A total of 34,546 cases were reported on the mainland. The virus has spread to 27 countries and regions, based on official reports, infecting more than 330 people.
(Reuters, 2/8/20)(AP, 2/8/20)
2020 Feb 8, France said it is closing two schools and tried to reassure vacationers in the Alps after five British citizens, including a 9-year-old child, contracted the new virus from China at a French ski resort.
(AP, 2/8/20)
2020 Feb 8, Germany's ruling coalition called for fresh elections in the eastern state of Thuringia, whose pro-business premier stepped down only two days after being helped into the job with votes from the far right.
(Reuters, 2/8/20)
2020 Feb 8, Voters in New Delhi began voting in a state election seen as a test of Indian PM Narendra Modi's popularity following months of deadly anti-government protests over a new citizenship law.
(Reuters, 2/8/20)
2020 Feb 8, Iran said it has repelled a cyberattack that disrupted the country's internet services for an hour.
(AFP, 2/8/20)
2020 Feb 8, Irish voters cast their ballots with PM Leo Varadkar hoping to secure a new term on the back of his Brexit strategy. Polls put his Fine Gael party behind rivals Sinn Fein and Fianna Fail. Irish Republican Army-linked party Fianna Fail received 22.2% of the votes. Fine Gael, the party of incumbent Prime Minister Leo Varadkar, got 20.9%.
(AFP, 2/8/20)(Bloomberg, 2/9/20)(AP, 2/10/20)
2020 Feb 8, Libya’s warring sides ended several days of UN-brokered talks in Cairo without reaching a deal to consolidate a provisional cease-fire in and around the capital.
(AP, 2/9/20)
2020 Feb 8, North Korea failed to stage a parade in central Pyongyang, the 72nd anniversary of the founding of the country’s armed forces. This appeared to be a sign of the regime's fear of the coronavirus spreading from China.
(AP, 2/10/20)
2020 Feb 8, In Poland thousands of people rallied in Warsaw to show support for the country's right-wing leadership as it overhauls the justice system to put it under government control.
(SSFC, 2/9/20, p.A3)
2020 Feb 8, Syrian government forces captured new areas from insurgents in their efforts to control a key highway in the northwest, as Turkey sent more reinforcements into the war-torn country.
(AP, 2/8/20)
2020 Feb 8, In northeastern Thailand a soldier shot multiple people and was holed up in a shopping mall in Nakhon Ratchasima. The suspect was identified as Sgt. Jakrapanth Thomma. It took Thai police sharpshooters 16 hours to Thomma and end the crisis that left 29 dead.
(https://tinyurl.com/yacu34x5)(AP, 2/8/20)(AP, 2/9/20)(Econ., 5/9/20, p.29)
2020 Feb 8, Turkmen President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov (62) named his son Serdar (38) as minister of industry and construction. Serdar is likely to oversee the ambitious project of building a new capital from scratch for the central Ahal province, which he used to head.
(Reuters, 2/8/20)
2020 Feb 8, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy asked Pope Francis for help to win the release of prisoners of war held by Russia and Russian-backed separatists.
(Reuters, 2/8/20)
2020 Feb 9, In Hollywood "Parasite," a suspenseful South Korean film, became the first non-English movie to win best picture. It also won the Oscar for best international film, original screenplay and best director. Joaquin Phoenix and Renee Zellweger picked up the Oscars for best actor and actress. Brad Pitt and Laura Dern won the supporting actor and actress categories.
(Good Morning America, 2/10/20)
2020 Feb 9, A report released by Recorded Future, a Cambridge, Mass., said North Korea has vastly expanded its use of the internet in ways that enable its leader, Kim Jong Un, to evade a “maximum pressure" US sanctions campaign and turn to new forms of cybercrime to prop up his government.
(AP, 2/10/20)
2020 Feb 9, In New York City a gunman walked into a police station in the Bronx and started shooting early today, wounding an officer just hours after he shot a different officer in a patrol van. The suspect was taken into custody.
(AP, 2/9/20)
2020 Feb 9, Amazon.com Inc said it is pulling out of this month's Mobile World Congress because of the coronavirus outbreak, in another blow to one of the telecom industry's biggest gatherings which attracts over 100,000 visitors to Barcelona. The GSMA telecoms industry association said the Feb. 24-27 event will go ahead as planned.
(AP, 2/9/20)
2020 Feb 9, In Florida Europe and NASA's Solar Orbiter was launched at Cape Canaveral late today to capture the first pictures of the sun's elusive poles.
(SFC, 2/11/20, p.A8)
2020 Feb 9, An attack on an Algerian military barracks near the country's border with Mali killed one soldier and the driver of a vehicle rigged with explosives. The Islamic State soon claimed responsibility.
(Reuters, 2/11/20)
2020 Feb 9, Azerbaijan voters chose a new parliament in an early election after a short and low-key campaign.
(AP, 2/9/20)
2020 Feb 9, Storm Ciara battered the UK and northern Europe with hurricane-force winds and heavy rains, halting flights and trains and producing heaving seas that closed down ports.
(AP, 2/9/20)
2020 Feb 9, In Cameroon a surge of violence derailed voting in English-speaking regions because residents were too scared to cast ballots in legislative and municipal elections after militant separatists kidnapped scores of candidates and threatened violence.
(AP, 2/9/20)
2020 Feb 9, China raised the death toll from its coronavirus outbreak to 811. Total confirmed coronavirus cases in China stood at 37,198.
(Reuters, 2/9/20)
2020 Feb 9, El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele marched into the National Assembly with soldiers to demand that lawmakers pass a languishing request for security loans.
(Bloomberg, 5/15/20)
2020 Feb 9, In India the regional Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) party held a rally in Mumbai to support a citizenship law introduced by PM Narendra Modi last year that has triggered nationwide protests.
(Reuters, 2/9/20)
2020 Feb 9, Indian-held Kashmir was hit by a general strike called by the separatist Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) to mark the anniversary of the death of Afzal Guru, a Kashmiri man who was executed for his part in an attack on India's parliament in 2001.
(Reuters, 2/9/20)
2020 Feb 9, An Iranian rocket failed to put a communications satellite into orbit today, the latest setback for a program the US claims helps Tehran advance its ballistic missile program.
(AP, 2/9/20)
2020 Feb 9, In Ireland Fine Gael and Fianna Fail ruled out governing with Sinn Fein, the former political wing of the IRA, which presented itself as a left-wing alternative to the centrist consensus which has largely dominated government since the foundation of the state in the 19/20s.
(Bloomberg, 2/9/20)
2020 Feb 9, The Israeli military blocked Palestinian agricultural exports in the latest escalation of a months-long trade war that comes amid fears of renewed violence as well.
(AP, 2/9/20)
2020 Feb 9, Libya's Azzawiya Oil Refining Company said that it was forced to stop refining operations due to a lack of crude supplies and no inventory. Oil output in Libya has fallen sharply since Jan. 18 because of a blockade of ports and fields by groups loyal to eastern-based commander Khalifa Haftar.
(Reuters, 2/9/20)
2020 Feb 9, A dinghy carrying migrants left Garabulli, Libya, and soon disappeared. All aboard were presumed drowning.
(AP, 3/6/20)
2020 Feb 9, Thousands of people marched in Morocco's capital to protest US President Donald Trump's peace plan for the Mideast and to oppose what they see as the Moroccan government's lenient position toward it.
(AP, 2/9/20)
2020 Feb 9, Hundreds of Myanmar nationalists rallied in the country's commercial capital in a show of support for the military, amid tensions between the civilian government and the army ahead of elections expected later this year.
(Reuters, 2/9/20)
2020 Feb 9, The Philippines confirmed that African swine fever infections had spread in the south of the country, which accounts for nearly a third of the nation's 12.8 million pig herd.
(Reuters, 2/9/20)
2020 Feb 9, Spain's National Center for Microbiology confirmed the country's second case of new coronavirus, after tests on one of four people suspected of having the virus in Mallorca came back positive. The other three were negative.
(Reuters, 2/9/20)
2020 Feb 9, A Swiss referendum cleared the way for the country to close a loophole in lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights by extending anti-racism laws to cover sexual orientation. Voters supported outlawing antigay discrimination 63.1% to 36.9%.
(Reuters, 2/9/20)(SFC, 2/10/20, p.A2)
2020 Feb 9, Syria's military vowed to keep up its campaign to regain control of the whole country, days after capturing large chunks of territory from the last rebel holdout in the northwest.
(AP, 2/9/20)
2020 Feb 9, Locusts began to arrive in Uganda, reaching a village near the Kenyan border as a new swarm in northern Somalia threatened more than 10 million people across the region with a severe hunger crisis.
(AP, 2/9/20)
2020 Feb 9, The United Arab Emirates restored mail services to Qatar, frozen for more than two years amid a diplomatic rift, after a regional meeting attended by both Gulf states and the United Nations’ postal agency.
(Bloomberg, 2/10/20)
2020 Feb 10, President Donald Trump's $4.8 trillion budget plan for the coming fiscal year drew a prompt rejection from congressional Democrats, who said it betrayed his promise to protect popular health and safety-net programs.
(AP, 2/10/20)
2020 Feb 10, President Donald Trump again downplayed the severity of head injuries suffered by US troops during the Jan. 8 Iranian missile attack, as the injury total rose to 109.
(AP, 2/11/20)
2020 Feb 10, The Department of Justice unveiled charges against four members of China's military for allegedly hacking into the credit agency Equifax and stealing the personal information of millions of Americans in 2017. The four charged are Wu Zhiyong, Wang Qian, Xu Ke and Liu Lei, all of whom are members of the 54th Research Institute, a part of China's People's Liberation Army. Equifax settled a class action lawsuit over the breach for more than $700 million in 2019.
(CBS News, 2/10/20)
2020 Feb 10, Maryland unveiled statues of abolitionists Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass in the Old House Chamber, the room where slavery was abolished in Maryland in 1864.
(AP, 2/10/20)
2020 Feb 10, In Mississippi William Bynum Jr. (57), the president of Jackson State Univ., resigned after he was arrested over the weekend in a prostitution sting in Clinton.
(SFC, 2/11/20, p.A5)
2020 Feb 10, In South Carolina Faye Swetlik (6) vanished as she played outside her home in Cayce. On Feb 13 authorities said she was found dead. Coty Scott Taylor (30) was found dead in Faye's neighborhood of Churchill Heights.
(ABC News, 2/13/20)(Yahoo News, 2/14/20)
2020 Feb 10, In Washington state the Seattle City Council voted 7-0 to ban residential evictions for the months of December, January and February. The ruling would not apply to landlords owning four housing units or less.
(SFC, 2/12/20, p.A6)
2020 Feb 10, Arm Ltd, a semiconductor technology firm owned by SoftBank Group, unveiled a chip technology aimed at putting artificial intelligence functions on tiny devices such as sensors designed to detect patterns in human speech or other streams of data.
(Reuters, 2/10/20)
2020 Feb 10, Brazil authorized its national public security force to support efforts to fight deforestation in the Amazon, amid worries that 2020 could see another surge in destruction of the world's largest rainforest.
(Reuters, 2/10/20)
2020 Feb 10, Officially, much of China got back to work, but there were few signs of activity on the streets of the capital, Beijing, as the new coronavirus has now killed 909 people and sickened 40,235. An advance World Health Organization team of medical experts arrived in China to help investigate the coronavirus outbreak.
(AP, 2/10/20)(Reuters, 2/10/20)
2020 Feb 10, Defense Minister Carlos Holmes Trujillo said Colombia hopes this year to eradicate 130,000 hectares (321,237 acres) of coca, the base ingredient in cocaine.
(Reuters, 2/10/20)
2020 Feb 10, Egypt freed detained labor activist Kamal Khalil, who criticized the government and spent about five months in detention. He will have to report at least once a week to the police.
(AP, 2/11/20)
2020 Feb 10, A storm battered Europe with hurricane-force winds and heavy rains, killing at least six people and causing severe travel disruptions as it moved eastward across the continent and bore down on Germany.
(AP, 2/10/20)
2020 Feb 10, Finland's paper workers union agreed a pay deal with the forestry industry association, ending a two week strike that halted production of one of the country's main exports.
(Reuters, 2/10/20)
2020 Feb 10, In France dozens of climate activists invaded US asset manager BlackRock's office in central Paris, calling for the fund to pull out of fossil fuel investments.
(Reuters, 2/10/20)
2020 Feb 10, Chancellor Angela Merkel said she regretted today's decision of her protegee Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer not to stand as their party's candidate for the chancellorship in Germany's next federal election.
(Reuters, 2/10/20)
2020 Feb 10, Iraqi security forces shot and killed at least one protester in the country's south, as the five-month anti-government protest movement entered a critical stage.
(AP, 2/10/20)
2020 Feb 10, A cybersecurity expert said a security breach in an app used by Israel's ruling conservative party has exposed the personal information of nearly 6.5 million Israelis to hackers.
(AP, 2/10/20)
2020 Feb 10, An Israeli court sentenced Raed Salah, head of the outlawed northern branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel, to 28 months in prison for “inciting to terror" in a series of speeches he made after a deadly attack in 2017 on Israeli police at a contested Jerusalem holy site.
(AP, 2/10/20)
2020 Feb 10, Japan launched a second complaint at the World Trade Organization over support South Korea gives its shipbuilding industry, intensifying a wider dispute between the two Asian countries.
(Reuters, 2/10/20)
2020 Feb 10, The Philippine government moved to end the franchise of the country's leading broadcast network for allegedly broadcasting for a fee. ABS-CBN has been critical of the leadership of Pres. Rodrigo Duterte.
(SFC, 2/11/20, p.A3)
2020 Feb 10, Russian law enforcement officers in Siberia detained Vadim Kutsenko, an adherent of the Jehovah's Witnesses, late today and drove him to a secluded area where they reportedly beat his head and legs, put him in a chokehold and used a taser on him. Kutsenko was suspected of helping to organize the Jehovah's Witnesses' activities in Chita.
(AP, 2/14/20)
2020 Feb 10, South Sudan President Salva Kiir was named the top “spoiler of peace" in a new award that seeks to shame him and others into taking serious steps to end bloody conflict in the world's youngest country. A Uganda-based group, Atrocities Watch Africa, cited Kiir and others for their roles in the conflict that also has displaced at least 2 million people.
(AP, 2/10/20)
2020 Feb 10, In Syria six Turkish soldiers were killed and seven were wounded when Syrian government forces shelled the Taftanaz air base in Idlib. Four Syrian rebels were also killed in the shelling. The exchange of fire came even as a Russian delegation arrived in Ankara for a second round of talks to discuss the fighting in Syria.
(AP, 2/10/20)
2020 Feb 10, The United Nations said it is to test drones equipped with mapping sensors and atomizers to spray pesticides in parts of east Africa battling an invasion of desert locusts that are ravaging crops and exacerbating a hunger crisis.
(Reuters, 2/10/20)
2020 Feb 10, A confidential United Nations report disclosed that. North Korea stepped up its exports of illegal coal shipments in 2019, with most of those deliveries headed for China.
(Bloomberg, 2/10/20)
2020 Feb 11, The US State Dept. said it has authorized the voluntary departure of US government employees and their family members from Hong Kong in light of the outbreak of a deadly coronavirus.
(Reuters, 2/11/20)
2020 Feb 11, The US defense agency responsible for secure White House communications said in a letter that Social Security numbers and other personal data in its network may have been compromised in a data breach that occurred between May and July 2019 in a system hosted by the Defense Information Systems Agency.
(Reuters, 2/20/20)
2020 Feb 11, The US Justice Department reduced its recommendation for the duration of Roger Stone’s sentence, a reversal that followed a Trump tweet criticizing prosecutors’ initial recommendation as too harsh. The four lawyers who prosecuted Stone quit the case after the Justice Department overruled them and said it would take the extraordinary step of lowering the amount of prison time it would seek for President Donald Trump’s longtime ally and confidant.
(Bloomberg, 2/12/20)(AP, 2/11/20)
2020 Feb 11, Tracy Reynolds (45) of Alamosa, Colorado, was arrested at the Tampa, Florida, airport, where she was trying to board a flight to Mexico. Izhak Cohen (53) was arrested in Hadera, Israel, and prosecutors said they will seek his extradition to the US. They were charged with laundering millions of dollars that came from a high-end prostitution operation that started in 2012.
(AP, 2/16/20)
2020 Feb 11, A federal judge in New York approved the merger of T-Mobile and Sprint in a controversial decision, siding with the telecom giants over a coalition of state attorney generals who were suing to block two of the largest wireless carriers in the US from combining.
(Good Morning America, 2/11/20)
2020 Feb 11, In New York Christian Pacheco (42) was released from prison. In 1996 he was convicted of cutting the throat of Lemuel Cruz in 1995 on the testimony of the bar's bouncer. Despite the confession from another man 16 years ago, it took more than a decade for Pacheco to be freed. In soon proceeded to sue New York for $100 million.
(https://tinyurl.com/w226e5h)(CBS, 2/20/20)
2020 Feb 11, The US Attorney's Office in Philadelphia said five men have been arrested and charged with trying to trade in Iranian oil in violation of US trade sanctions.
(AP, 2/11/20)
2020 Feb 11, New Hampshire held its presidential primary. Bernie Sanders won 25.7% of the Democratic primary vote, to Pete Buttigieg’s 24.4%. Amy Klobuchar was third with 19.8% and Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden trailed in single digits.
(AP, 2/11/20)(Bloomberg, 2/12/20)
2020 Feb 11, Entrepreneur Andrew Yang said he is ending the presidential campaign he built on the promise of a universal basic income of $1,000 a month for every American over 18.
(Bloomberg, 2/11/20)
2020 Feb 11, Actor Jussie Smollett was indicted for a second time on charges of lying to police about a racist and anti-gay attack he allegedly staged on himself last year in downtown Chicago.
(AP, 2/11/20)
2020 Feb 11, In NYC ex-convict Lawrence “Larry" Ray (60), accused of bilking several college students out of nearly $1 million and forcing some into prostitution or unpaid labor, was arrested on extortion and sex trafficking charges. Ray had allegedly turned his daughter’s university dormitory into a “cult" and forced one student into sex work.
(AP, 2/11/20)(The Independent, 2/12/20)
2020 Feb 11, Virginia lawmakers passed measures that would give cities and counties the autonomy to "remove, relocate,contextualize, cover or alter" Confederate monuments. The vote was largely along party lines in the Democrat-led House and Senate.
(SFC, 2/13/20, p.A6)
2020 Feb 11, The International Atomic Agency (IEA) reported that global carbon dioxide emissions stopped growing last year, despite the global economy experiencing a marked increase in size.
(AP, 2/11/20)
2020 Feb 11, In Afghanistan a suicide bomber targeting a military academy in Kabul killed at least six people, including two civilians and four military personnel.
(Good Morning America, 2/11/20)
2020 Feb 11, An overcrowded boat carrying about 138 Rohingya refugees from Bangladeshi camps sank in the Bay of Bengal, leaving at least 15 confirmed dead, mostly women.
(AP, 2/11/20)
2020 Feb 11, Britain's PM Boris Johnson committed tens of billions of pounds for a controversial new high speed rail line linking London with cities to the north, despite soaring costs and mounting anger from his own Conservative Party colleagues.
(Bloomberg, 2/11/20)
2020 Feb 11, China reported 42,708 confirmed cases, including 1,017 deaths. More than 300 cases were also reported in at least 24 other countries. Franco-British biotech company Novacyt said it can offer a coronavirus test that is faster than rival methods by focusing on a narrow sequence of DNA coding.
(Reuters, 2/11/20)
2020 Feb 11, Postnord, a post and logistics company owned by Denmark and Sweden, said it would no longer accept packages going to China, citing limited freight capacity in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak.
(Reuters, 2/11/20)
2020 Feb 11, Egypt’s fast-growing population hit 100 million people, presenting a pressing problem for an already overburdened country with limited resources.
(AP, 2/11/20)
2020 Feb 11, In Georgia Gigi Ugulava, one of the leaders of the European Georgia party, was sentenced by the Supreme Court to 38 months in jail on charges of misusing public funds while mayor of Tbilisi, his second conviction on similar charges.
(Reuters, 2/12/20)
2020 Feb 11, German and Swiss media reported that US and German intelligence services raked in the top secret communications of governments around the world for decades through their hidden control of a top encryption company Crypto AG, US. The Swiss company was secretly owned by the US Central Intelligence Agency together with Germany's BND Federal Intelligence Service, who rigged Crypto's equipment to be able to easily break the codes and read the government’s messages.
(AFP, 2/11/20)
2020 Feb 11, Iran taunted the United States on the 41st anniversary of the ouster of its ally the shah, as huge crowds gathered to mark the historic occasion.
(AFP, 2/11/20)
2020 Feb 11, Iraq's capital of Baghdad awoke to see their city covered in snow. The last time the capital saw snow was in 2008.
(AP, 2/11/20)
2020 Feb 11, In northern Israel vandals slashed the tires of dozens of vehicles in an Arab village and spray painted slogans on buildings warning of Jewish-Arab “assimilation".
(AP, 2/11/20)
2020 Feb 11 Japan's Mitsubishi Aircraft Corp unannounced commitments from customers to buy hundreds of its SpaceJet M100 regional jets, but its first focus is on certifying its larger introductory model, the M90.
(Reuters, 2/11/20)
2020 Feb 11, Lebanese security forces fired tear gas to disperse thousands of protesters near the parliament building in Beirut, where the new Cabinet was expanding on its policy statement ahead of a confidence vote by lawmakers.
(AP, 2/11/20)
2020 Feb 11, In Mexico the body of Fatima Cecilia Aldrighett (7) was discovered wrapped in a bag in a rural area in the suburbs of Mexico City. Her family had been forced to wait hours to submit a missing person report by investigators after Fatima was taken from school.
(The Independent, 2/18/20)
2020 Feb 11, Nepali officials said millions of its citizens who work overseas will be given mandatory safety training before departure. About 1,000 out of an estimated 4 million Nepali migrants die abroad each year, mainly in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Malaysia where most work as domestics and in construction.
(Reuters, 2/11/20)
2020 Feb 11, Two women tied the knot in Northern Ireland’s first same-sex wedding, after the region became the last part of the United Kingdom to legalize gay marriage.
(AP, 2/11/20)
2020 Feb 11, Northern Irish police arrested Paul McIntyre (52) for the murder of journalist Lyra McKee in Londonderry on April 19, 2019. The killing sparked outrage in the British-run province.
(Reuters, 2/12/20)(SFC, 2/14/20, p.A2)
2020 Feb 11, Thousands of Palestinians demonstrated against the US peace plan. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas appeared before the UN Security Council and angrily rejected US President Donald Trump's Middle East peace proposal as a gift to Israel and unacceptable to Palestinians.
(AFP, 2/11/20)(Reuters, 2/11/20)
2020 Feb 11, The Philippines notified the United States it would end a major security pact allowing American forces to train in the country, in the most serious threat under President Rodrigo Duterte to their 69-year treaty alliance. The termination would take effect after 180 days unless both sides agree to keep it.
(AP, 2/11/20)
2020 Feb 11, In South Africa Joseph Shabalala (78), the founder of the South African multi-Grammy-Award-winning music group Ladysmith Black Mambazo, died in Pretoria. the choral group, founded in 1964, shot to world acclaim collaborating with Paul Simon on the “Graceland" album and many other artists.
(AP, 2/11/20)
2020 Feb 11, A top Sudanese official said the country's transitional authorities and rebel groups have agreed to hand over officials wanted by the ICC, presumably referring to long-time autocrat Omar al-Bashir, who is wanted for war crimes including mass killings in Darfur.
(AP, 2/11/20)
2020 Feb 11, Rebels in northern Syria rebels shot down a Syrian military helicopter, killing its crew members in a fiery crash, while the government kept up its relentless bombing campaign on the opposition-held region, with an airstrike in which seven civilians died.
(AP, 2/11/20)
2020 Feb 11, The UN's World Health Organization convened outside experts to fast-track promising tests, drugs and vaccines to help slow the outbreak of a new virus that emerged in China that has killed more than 1,000 people and spread to two dozen other countries. The coronavirus is now called COVID-19.
(AP, 2/11/20)(ABC News, 2/11/20)
2020 Feb 12, US Pres. Donald Trump congratulated Attorney Gen'l. William Barr for lowering the Justice Department's sentencing recommendation for Roger Stone, a friend of the president.
(SFC, 2/13/20, p.A5)
2020 Feb 12, Attorney General William Barr agreed to testify before the House Judiciary Committee next month, appearing for the first time before the panel as questions swirl about whether he intervened in the case of a longtime ally of President Donald Trump.
(AP, 2/12/20)
2020 Feb 12, The US Senate voted 51-45 to limit President Trump from pursuing military action in Iran without congressional approval. Trump will likely veto the bill, and the Senate won't have the votes to overturn it.
(The Week, 2/12/20)
2020 Feb 12, The US Anti-Defamation League reported that Incidents of white supremacist propaganda distributed across the nation jumped by more than 120% between 2018 and last year, making 2019 the second straight year that the circulation of propaganda material has more than doubled.
(AP, 2/12/20)
2020 Feb 12, Chairman Troy Price of the Iowa Democratic Party announced his resignation after a disastrous caucus process beset by technical glitches led to a dayslong delay in reporting the results, inconsistencies in the numbers and no clear winner.
(AP, 2/13/20)
2020 Feb 12, Winners of the Dan David Prize were announced. The Israel-based Dan David Prize gives $1 million prizes in three categories each year, past, present and future. Secretary of the Smithsonian Lonnie G. Bunch III and Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, a professor of Jewish studies won in the "past" category. Women's health rights advocate Debora Diniz and feminist scholar Gita Sen split the prize in the “present" category. Demis Hassabis, founder of artificial intelligence company DeepMind, and Amnon Shashua, founder of Mobileye, an Intel company that develops technology for self-driving vehicles, split the “future" prize.
(AP, 2/12/20)
2020 Feb 12, Britain's Foreign Office said it was putting the annual $6.1 million contribution to the Commonwealth Secretariat on hold following accusations cronyism.
(SFC, 2/13/20, p.A2)
2020 Feb 12, BP set one of the oil sector's most ambitious targets for curbing carbon emissions as new chief executive Bernard Looney began the biggest revamp in its 111-year history.
(Reuters, 2/12/20)
2020 Feb 12, China's leadership touted "positive results" from efforts to contain the new coronavirus epidemic but warned it still faced a "large-scale war" against the outbreak. The death toll rose to 1,113, while more than 44,600 people had been infected by the newly named COVID-19 virus.
(AFP, 2/12/20)
2020 Feb 12, The European Union and the United States urged Georgia to reinforce democracy after opposition leader Gigi Ugulava was jailed for a second time in a case activists say is politically motivated.
(Reuters, 2/12/20)
2020 Feb 12, Human Rights Watch warned that Italy is endangering migrants by renewing support for the Libyan coast guard, which blocks their flight and sends them back to squalid detention centers in the North African country. About 5,000 migrants are languishing in dozens of filthy Libyan centers, where rape, torture and other abuses run rampant.
(AP, 2/12/20)
2020 Feb 12, Italian senators voted to lift immunity for far-right leader Matteo Salvini, opening the way for a potentially career-ending trial over accusations he illegally detained migrants at sea last year.
(Reuters, 2/12/20)
2020 Feb 12, Japanese police confirmed the arrest of a mother-and-son duo for allegedly making more than 3,200 no-show hotel cancellations, costing the hotels $1 million while collecting reward points worth $22,000.
(AFP, 2/12/20)
2020 Feb 12, It was reported that automaker Nissan it is suing former chair and CEO Carlos Ghosn in Japan for 10 billion yen, or $90 million, saying it's seeking to recover damages from his alleged financial misconduct and fraud.
(The Week, 2/12/20)
2020 Feb 12, Chitetsu Watanabe, a Japanese man with a sweet tooth who believes in smiles, become the world's oldest male at 112 years and 344 days old. The oldest living person is also Japanese, Kane Tanaka, a 117-year-old woman.
(AP, 2/12/20)
2020 Feb 12, It was reported that Kosovo's PM Albin Kurti and cabinet ministers will accept a halving of their salaries in an attempt to demonstrate that the new government plans to tackle wage inequality.
(Reuters, 2/12/20)
2020 Feb 12, A Pakistani court handed down a five-year prison sentence to radical cleric Hafiz Saaed for terrorism financing. The court charged that his charities are fronts for the militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba. The US has a $10 million bounty on Saaed for his role in the 2008 Mumbai attacks that killed 166 people.
(SFC, 2/13/20, p.A2)
2020 Feb 12, It was reported that two Russian women who were kept in isolation for possible inflection by a new virus say they fled from their Russian hospitals this month because of uncooperative doctors, poor conditions and fear they would become infected.
(AP, 2/12/20)
2020 Feb 12, Viktor Sviridov, a former top Russian prison official reportedly suffering from advanced cancer, killed himself in court with a shot to the chest, shortly after getting a three-year sentence for extortion.
(Reuters, 2/12/20)
2020 Feb 12, This year's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, was cancelled by trade show organizer GSMA due to coronavirus concerns.
(SFC, 2/13/20, p.D1)
2020 Feb 12, In northeastern Syria a civilian was killed and another was wounded in a rare clash between American troops and a group of government supporters who tried to block a US convoy driving through a village.
(AP, 2/12/20)
2020 Feb 12, The UN human rights office issued a report on companies it said have business ties to Israeli settlements in the West Bank, a long-delayed move likely to draw the ire of Israel and its main ally the United States. It said 94 of the companies were domiciled in Israel and 18 in six other states.
(Reuters, 2/12/20)
2020 Feb 12, A research study of global laws said slavery is not a crime in almost half the countries in the world. More than 40 million people are held in modern slavery, which includes forced labor and forced marriage, according to estimates by the International Labor Organization and the anti-slavery group the Walk Free Foundation.
(AP, 2/12/20)
2020 Feb 12, The UN Security Council endorsed a 55-point road map for ending the war in Libya and condemned the recent increase in violence in the oil-rich North African country.
(AP, 2/12/20)
2020 Feb 13, It was reported that Pro-Trump groups raised more than $60 million in January and have more than $200 million on hand for this year's general election, shattering fundraising records on the path toward a goal of raising $1 billion this cycle.
(AP, 2/13/20)
2020 Feb 13, The US House of Representatives passed a bill to write women's rights into the US Constitution. The ERA Amendment still faced passage in the Senate.
(SFC, 2/14/20, p.A1)
2020 Feb 13, US officials reported the 15th case of coronavirus in the United States, saying the patient was among those who had been evacuated from Wuhan, China, and placed under federal quarantine at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas.
(Reuters, 2/13/20)
2020 Feb 13, The United States added to its series of charges against China's Huawei Technologies, accusing the Chinese telecoms giant of stealing intellectual property from six US companies and covering up its involvement in projects in North Korea.
(South China Morning Post, 2/14/20)
2020 Feb 13, The US Government Accountability Office said it is opening a review of Pres. Donald Trump's $28 billion bailout for farmers harmed by his trade war amid allegations that the money was mismanaged and allocated unfairly. The program began in 2018 as a $12 billion effort to mitigate losses for farmers as a result of Trump's trade war.
(SSFC, 2/16/20, p.A12)
2020 Feb 13, The Pentagon announced that Defense Sec. Mark Esper has approved shifting $3.8 billion in funds that Congress had previously authorized F-35 fighter aircraft and other military programs for Donald Trump's border wall.
(SFC, 2/15/20, p.A5)
2020 Feb 13, Conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh drew bipartisan criticism for saying the country won't elect Pete Buttigieg president because he's been “kissing his husband" on stage after debates.
(AP, 2/13/20)
2020 Feb 13, Los Angeles County District Attorney Jackie Lacey announced that her office has asked the court to dismiss nearly 66,000 marijuana convictions going back decades, CBS LA reported. In a news conference, Lacey called it the largest such undertaking in state history.
(CBS News, 2/13/20)
2020 Feb 13, Ricky Davis was ordered released from custody in Placerville, near Sacramento, after authorities used extended DNA links developed through publicly available genealogical websites to build a family tree that led to the arrest of a new suspect in the killing of his housemate. Davis had spent about 15 years in prison after being wrongfully convicted in the case.
(The Guardian, 2/14/20)
2020 Feb 13, In New York City the privately held McClatchy, publisher of the Miami Herald, the Sacramento Bee and other newspapers, filed for bankruptcy protection. McClatchy said its 30 newsrooms in 14 states dould continue operating as usual during the case.
(SFC, 2/14/20, p.D3)
2020 Feb 13, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt said the state would resume Death Row executions using a three-drug lethal injection protocol.
(SFC, 2/14/20, p.A6)
2020 Feb 13, LabCorp said it has begun work on developing its own test for the coronavirus that has killed over 1,300 in China.
(Reuters, 2/13/20)
2020 Feb 13, It was reported that wildlife officials in Kentucky are continuing to roundup invasive carp on Kentucky Lake as part of a 15-year battle to halt the advance of the invasive fish.
(SFC, 2/13/20, p.A6)
2020 Feb 13, Tesla Inc announced plans to raise $2 billion in a 2.65 million stock offering. Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk will buy up to $10 million in shares, while board member and Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison will purchase up to $1 million worth of Tesla shares.
(Reuters, 2/13/20)
2020 Feb 13, In Afghanistan an air strike killed a senior Taliban commander and eight others in northern Balkh province. The Taliban's Mujahid said the insurgents had killed six Afghan soldiers, including two officers, in an attack on a checkpoint in northern Kunduz province.
(Reuters, 2/14/20)
2020 Feb 13, In Afghanistan avalanches in central Daykundi province killed at least 21 people. At least 50 house were destroyed in the slides.
(SFC, 2/15/20, p.A2)
2020 Feb 13, British Finance Minister Sajid Javid resigned just weeks before the publication of the government's annual budget, in a shock move provoked by PM Boris Johnson's attempts to shake up his cabinet after Brexit.
(AFP, 2/13/20)
2020 Feb 13, The cruise ship MS Westerdam, stranded at sea for about two weeks after being refused entry by four Asian governments because of virus fears, finally docked in Cambodia. No cases of the COVID-19 viral illness have been confirmed among its 1,455 passengers and 802 crew members.
(AP, 2/13/20)
2020 Feb 13, Diplomats and experts said China is dragging its heels in accepting help on the ground from international health specialists. China has recorded 48,206 cases of a new coronavirus, now known as SARS-CoV-2. The death toll in Hubei province, which includes Wuhan, leapt by a record 242 to 1,310, with a sharp rise in confirmed cases after the adoption of new methodology for diagnosis. China's Communist Party fired several senior officials in Hubei province, the center of the new coronavirus outbreak.
(Reuters, 2/13/20)(The Week, 2/13/20)
2020 Feb 13, Confirmed cases of the COVID-19 virus in mainland China rose to 63,851 by the end of today, up 5,090 from the previous day. The death toll rose 121 to 1,380.
(AP, 2/13/20)
2020 Feb 13, Ethiopian lawmakers approved a controversial law aimed at curbing hate speech and disinformation, especially online, just months ahead of a major election.
(SFC, 2/14/20, p.A2)
2020 Feb 13, In Haiti a fire outside Port-au-Prince killed 13 children and two adult caretakers at a home run by the US-based Church of Bible Understanding.
(SFC, 2/15/20, p.A2)(AP, 4/23/20)
2020 Feb 13, Indian environmentalist Rajendra Kumar Pachauri (79) died after recent heart surgery. He led the Intergovernmental panel on Climate change from 2002-2015. Under his leadership a UN climate change panel shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.
(AP, 2/14/20)(SSFC, 2/16/20, p.B10)
2020 Feb 13, Iran began its week-long parliamentary election campaign ahead of the Feb. 21 vote.
(Reuters, 2/13/20)
2020 Feb 13, Rome police arrested Beverly McCallum (59) overnight after she and her teenage son checked into a Rome hotel on the northwest outskirts of the Italian capital. The American woman was wanted in the 2002 death of her husband, whose remains were so badly burned they weren’t identified for more than a decade. Husband Robert Caraballo was beaten and suffocated, and his body was dumped and burned in a blueberry patch in western Michigan.
(AP, 2/13/20)
2020 Feb 13, Japan announced its first death from a new virus from China, hours after confirming 44 more cases on a cruise ship quarantined near Tokyo as fears of the spreading disease mount in the country. The Diamond Princess, which is still carrying nearly 3,500 passengers and crew members, now has 218 people infected with the virus out of 713 tested since it entered Yokohama Port on Feb. 3.
(AP, 2/13/20)
2020 Feb 13, Libya’s eastern-based forces indiscriminately shelled residential neighborhoods around the capital, killing one woman and wounding at least four civilians.
(AP, 2/13/20)
2020 Feb 13, In Myanmar at least 19 children were wounded when at a primary school was hit by shelling in Rakhine state. A military spokesman put the number of wounded at 20, and blamed the insurgents for the attack.
(Reuters, 2/13/20)
2020 Feb 13, NATO said the Iraqi government has given it the green light to stay in the country, weeks after Iraq demanded foreign forces leave the country over the US killing of Iran’s top general near the Baghdad airport.
(AP, 2/13/20)
2020 Feb 14, US President Donald Trump said he has "the legal right" to interfere in criminal cases, capping a tumultuous week that raised questions about whether he is eroding the independence of the US legal system.
(Reuters, 2/14/20)
2020 Feb 14, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the United States has blacklisted Sri Lanka's army chief, Shavendra Silva, for human rights violations including extrajudicial killings during the last phase of the country's civil war in 2009.
(Reuters, 2/14/20)
2020 Feb 14, A senior US official said the United States and the Taliban have reached a truce agreement that will take effect “very soon" and could lead to withdrawals of American troops from Afghanistan.
(AP, 2/14/20)
2020 Feb 14, It was reported that Washington has begun following through on threats to squeeze Baghdad's fragile economy with delays to crucial cash deliveries and shortened sanctions waivers. Every month or so, Iraq's Central Bank flies in $1 billion to $2 billion in cash from the Federal Reserve in New York, where all its oil revenues are kept, to pay for official and commercial transactions.
(AFP, 2/14/20)
2020 Feb 14, Federal prosecutors declined to charge former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, closing an investigation into whether the longtime target of President Donald Trump's ire lied to federal officials about his involvement in a news media disclosure.
(AP, 2/14/20)
2020 Feb 14, It was reported that the Food and Drug Administration and the DEA have approved Eli Lilly’s Reyvow (lasmiditan) as the first oral medication of its class to treat acute migraines and bothersome symptoms in adults with or without aura (visual or sensory sensations before a migraine).
(ABC News, 2/15/20)
2020 Feb 14, It was reported that the Trump administration pulled funding in its 2021 budget for Stars and Stripes, the US military news organization that has published a daily newspaper continuously since World War II for troops stationed around the world. Mark Esper explained the rationale behind the decision to withhold approximately $15.5 million in funding for Stars and Stripes "because we need to invest that money, as we did with many, many other programs, into higher-priority issues."
(Yahoo News, 2/15/20)
2020 Feb 14, Michael Avenatti, who represented porn star Stormy Daniels in her case against President Trump and once mulled a 2020 presidential run, has been found guilty of trying to extort Nike. He had allegedly demanded that Nike pay him up to $25 million or he would hold a press conference revealing damaging information about the company.
(The Week, 2/14/20)
2020 Feb 14, The Alaska Supreme Court cleared the way for a campaign seeking to oust the state's embattled governor to proceed with plans to collect enough signatures to place a recall initiative on the 2020 ballot. A lower-court judge had ruled that allegations of misconduct lodged against Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy met the legal requirements for placing a recall question on this year's election ballot.
(Reuters, 2/14/20)
2020 Feb 14, Palm Beach County judge sentenced Chinese tourist Lu Jing (56) to an additional six months in Palm Beach County Jail after a seven-member jury convicted Lu On Feb. 12 of a misdemeanor charge of resisting arrest without violence for resisting an officer at President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago.
(Miami Herald, 2/14/20)
2020 Feb 14, It was reported that 8 Many High School basketball players were arrested in Many, Louisiana after police investigated Snapchat footage of a group sexually assaulting a high school student. The arrests were made after a video of a sexual assault on another student circulated on the social media app Snapchat.
(Reuters, 2/14/20)
2020 Feb 14, Matvey Natanzon (51), Russian-born Israeli backgammon player, died. He moved to Buffalo, New York as a teenager and graduated from the New York State University at Buffalo in 1991 with a degree in accounting. In 2007 Natanzon, known as Falafel, was named the number one backgammon player in the world by an unscientifically compiled peer-audited review known as Giants of Backgammon.
(https://voiceofbackgammon.com/falafel/)(Econ, 3/21/20, p.78)
2020 Feb 14, In Virginia Levianthan "Levi" Henry Norwood (17) went missing after police were called to his home and found his mother (34) and brother (6) dead. Norwood was later found at a Target near Durham, North Carolina, allegedly shoplifting hair dye, clothes and a backpack.
(ABC News, 2/16/20)
2020 Feb 14, Fiat Chrysler said it had temporarily halted production at its Serbian plant, the first such suspension by an automaker in Europe in response to the coronavirus outbreak in China.
(Reuters, 2/14/20)
2020 Feb 14, It was reported that the Howard G. Buffett Foundation has committed to spending $200 million over the next few years to transform the impoverished community of Tibu, Colombia, into a model of comprehensive state building.
(SFC, 2/14/20, p.A3)
2020 Feb 14, In Afghanistan an air strike in Nangarhar province killed at least eight people, all believed to be civilians, following US statements a day earlier that there had been a breakthrough in peace talks.
(Reuters, 2/14/20)
2020 Feb 14, A ship carrying migrants set off from Algeria and disappeared. All aboard were presumed drowning.
(AP, 3/6/20)
2020 Feb 14, Burundi’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission said it has found 6,032 bodies in six mass graves in Karusi Province, the largest finding since the government launched a nationwide excavation in January. So far Burundi has mapped over 4,000 mass graves across the country and identified more than 142,000 victims of violence. A civil war, which killed 300,000 people, ended in 2005.
(Reuters, 2/15/20)
2020 Feb 14, In Cameroon up to 22 civilians, 14 of them children, died in a restive anglophone region. The army later said fuel exploded in an exchange of gunfire with anglophone separatists and caused a fire in the village of Ntumbo. The army had previously denied any involvement in the deaths.
(AFP, 2/17/20)
2020 Feb 14, Zeng Yixin, vice minister of China's National Health Commission, told reporters that 1,716 medical workers have tested positive for the newly discovered virus, known officially as COVID-19, and six of them have died.
(ABC News, 2/15/20)
2020 Feb 14, Police in Costa Rica found almost 5,800 kg of cocaine in a shipping container, leading to the country’s biggest ever drug seizure. A Costa Rican man (46) with no previous criminal convictions was arrested in connection to the drug haul.
(The Independent, 2/16/20)
2020 Feb 14, Egypt's Health Ministry confirmed the first case of the new virus in the North African country.
(AP, 2/14/20)
2020 Feb 14, European Union governments were presented with a compromise over the bloc’s budget for the next seven years, which is unlikely to satisfy any of the warring camps and sets the stage for a clash between poorer and richer member states on Feb. 20. EU Council President Charles Michel proposed that governments commit 1.095 trillion euros ($1.2 trillion) to a joint pot for the period between 2021 and 2027.
(Bloomberg, 2/14/20)
2020 Feb 14, German officials said police have detained 12 men on suspicion of involvement in a far-right group that allegedly planned attacks against politicians and minorities.
(SFC, 2/15/20, p.A2)
2020 Feb 14, Kosovo and Serbia signed US-brokered deals on restoring railway and highway links. The deals were signed during an international security conference in Munich, Germany.
(AP, 2/14/20)
2020 Feb 14, Paraguay health officials said that deaths from dengue fever increased to 16 in the South American country's worst outbreak of the disease in the last decade, severely straining its health system.
(Reuters, 2/14/20)
2020 Feb 14, It was reported that oil operations in South Sudan are the dirtiest and poorest managed on the planet. Reports have shown that contamination from drilling could be causing severe health problems with mercury levels seven times what is permissible under US Environmental Protection Agency standards.
(SFC, 2/14/20, p.A4)
2020 Feb 14, Another Syrian government helicopter was shot down and its crew killed in the northwest, where a military offensive against opposition fighters was unfolding.
(AP, 2/14/20)
2020 Feb 14, In Thailand villagers along the Mekong River asked a court in Bangkok to slow down Thai purchases of electricity from a hydropower dam in Laos, which they say has harmed their livelihoods since it began operation last year. The start of its full commercial operation last year coincided with parts of the Mekong River drying to a trickle.
(Reuters, 2/14/20)
2020 Feb 14, Yemen's Huthi rebels said they have dropped a threat to impose a tax on aid, in a significant step towards resolving a crisis that has jeopardized the world's biggest humanitarian operation.
(AFP, 2/14/20)
2020 Feb 14, In Yemen a Saudi warplane was shot down over in northern Al-Jawf province while providing air support to government forces fighting the country’s rebels. Two Saudi officers ejected from the plane before it crashed in northern Al-Jawf province, but that the rebels opened fire at them. Their fate was unclear.
(AFP, 2/15/20)(AFP, 2/16/20)
2020 Feb 15, It was reported that the Trump administration is deploying law enforcement tactical units from the southern border as part of a supercharged arrest operation in sanctuary cities across the country, an escalation in the president’s battle against localities that refuse to participate in immigration enforcement.
(NY Times, 2/15/20)
2020 Feb 15, The US Federal Aviation Administration said that American civilian flights can resume operations over much of the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman region, loosening restrictions announced five weeks ago amid heightened tensions between the US and Iran.
(AP, 2/15/20)
2020 Feb 15, It was reported that the Bureau of Land Management has announced plans to fund 11,000 miles (17,703 km) of strategic fuel breaks in Idaho, Oregon, Washington, California, Nevada and Utah in an effort to help control wildfires.
(AP, 2/15/20)
2020 Feb 15, In southern California Dr. Amie Harwick, a sex therapist and former fiancee of Drew Carey, was killed after being thrown over the third floor balcony of her Hollywood Hills apartment. Suspect Gareth Pursehouse (41), a former boyfriend of Harwick’s, was soon arrested on suspicion of murder. Pursehouse later pleaded not guilty.
(USA Today, 2/17/20)(SFC, 4/18/20, p.A3)
2020 Feb 15, In Colorado two died after being caught in a weekend avalanche about ten miles north of Vail. Their bodies were recovered the next day.
(AP, 2/16/20)
2020 Feb 15, American writer A.E. Hotchner (102) died at his home in Westport, Conn. His books included "Papa Hemingway" (1966), "King of the Hill" (1972) and "Paul and Me" (2008).
(SFC, 2/17/20, p.C3)
2020 Feb 15, Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves declared a state of emergency amid predictions that a river running in the area around the state capital of Jackson could burst its banks and spark widespread flooding.
(AP, 2/16/20)
2020 Feb 15, Northrop Grumman launched its Cygnus capsule from the Virginia seashore. The nearly 4-ton shipment should arrive at the orbiting lab on Feb. 18.
(AP, 2/16/20)
2020 Feb 15, In Afghanistan gunmen shot dead nine homeless drug users in Kabul, shining a light on chronic drug abuse in the world's biggest producer of opium but a rare incident of apparently coordinated violence against addicts.
(Reuters, 2/16/20)
2020 Feb 15, Bosnian police scuffled with hundreds of migrants who tried to break out of an overcrowded camp during a protest over conditions at the facility and their treatment by authorities in nearby Croatia.
(Reuters, 2/15/20)
2020 Feb 15, British rescuers found a body in rough seas following an extensive search off the coast of southeast England, as the UK faced a second straight weekend of wild winter weather and flooding. The body of a second man was pulled from the sea in the afternoon. The fourth named storm of the season, dubbed Dennis by Britain's Met Office weather service, was expected to deepen through the weekend.
(AP, 2/15/20)
2020 Feb 15, Caroline Flack (b.1979), English television and radio presenter, was found dead at her London apartment. In August a coroner ruled that she had killed herself while facing an assault trial she feared would end her career.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caroline_Flack)(SFC, 8/7/20, p.A2)
2020 Feb 15, China reported 143 virus deaths and a dip in new cases. China reported 2,641 new cases in the 24 hours through midnight Feb. 14, raising its total to 66,492. Mainland China’s death toll rose to 1,523.
(AP, 2/15/20)
2020 Feb 15, Chinese authorities arrested a prominent rights activist and legal scholar who had called on President Xi Jinping to step down over his handling of crises including the coronavirus outbreak. Xu Zhiyong had been on the run since December after attending a gathering in the southern city of Xiamen which focused on discussion of human rights in China.
(Reuters, 2/17/20)
2020 Feb 15, China waived tolls on all highways.
(Econ, 3/14/20, p.32)
2020 Feb 15, An Egyptian court rejected the appeal of activist and researcher Patrick George Zaki (28), a vocal critic of President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi’s government, to be released from detention. Zaki had arrived in Cairo last week on what was supposed to be a brief visit home.
(AP, 2/15/20)
2020 Feb 15, An Egyptian court sentenced Raouf Boutros-Ghali, the brother of a former finance minister, to 30 years after his conviction in two separate cases of trafficking antiquities out of the country. The court also sentenced three others, including Italian ex-honorary consul to Egypt Ladislav Skakal, to 15 years in prison and a 1 million Egyptian pound fine (more than $63,000) each.
(AP, 2/15/20)
2020 Feb 15, European aerospace group Airbus said it deeply regretted the US decision to increase tariffs on aircraft imported from the European Union and said it would hurt US airlines and their customers.
(Reuters, 2/15/20)
2020 Feb 15, French authorities said an 80-year-old Chinese tourist infected with the coronavirus has died in France, the first fatality in Europe and the fourth outside mainland China from the epidemic.
(AP, 2/15/20)
2020 Feb 15, In Germany several thousand people demonstrated in Erfurt, capital of Thuringia state, where far-right lawmakers last week helped install a new state premier.
(AP, 2/15/20)
2020 Feb 15, In Hong Kong hundreds of anti-government protesters marched in multiple neighborhoods against government plans to potentially turn some buildings into coronavirus quarantine centers, demanding full closure of the mainland China border.
(Reuters, 2/15/20)
2020 Feb 15, Israeli police shot Malik Eissa (9) in the face just after he had gotten off a school bus in east Jerusalem. He was hospitalized after being struck by a non-lethal munition and later lost vision in the eye following surgeries. In December Israeli authorities cleared police of any wrongdoing in the case.
(AP, 2/20/20)(AP, 12/6/20)
Feb 15, Malaysia said an 83-year-old American passenger on the Westerdam cruise ship that docked in Cambodia has tested positive for the new coronavirus. The woman had taken a flight to Malaysia a day earlier from Cambodia.
(Reuters, 2/15/20)
2020 Feb 15, South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir said he was cutting the number of states from 32 to 10, unlocking a stalled peace deal and paving the way for the formation of a long- awaited unity government.
(Reuters, 2/15/20)
2020 Feb 15, Syrian troops began clearing barricades from the main highway between Damascus and Aleppo after recovering full control of the road in a Russian-backed offensive.
(Reuters, 2/15/20)
2020 Feb 15, President Tayyip Erdogan said the transfer of the main opposition party's 28% stake in Turkey's largest listed lender Isbank to the state would not be delayed.
(AP, 2/15/20)
2020 Feb 15, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said he plans to hold local elections across the country, including in breakaway areas in eastern Ukraine. He said the polls, set for October, must be held under Ukrainian law.
(Bloomberg, 2/15/20)
2020 Feb 15, In Yemen insurgents reported multiple coalition air strikes in the Huthi-controlled area where a Saudi plane went down the previous evening as local residents gathered near the wreckage. The attack in Al-Jawf took the lives of 19 children (eight boys and 11 girls) and injured another 18 (nine boys and another nine girls).
(AP, 2/15/20)(Reuters, 2/15/20)(AFP, 2/15/20)(AP, 2/18/20)(AFP, 2/20/20)
2020 Feb 16, More than 100 former US federal prosecutors and Justice Dept. officials called on Attorney Gen'l. William Barr to resign following his intervention last week to lower the Justice Dept.'s sentencing recommendation for Pres. Trump's longtime friend Roger Stone.
(SFC, 2/17/20, p.A7)
2020 Feb 16, Larry Tesler (b.1945), American computer scientist who worked in the field of human–computer interaction, died at his Portola Valley home. Tesler worked at Xerox PARC, Apple, Amazon, and Yahoo!
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Tesler)(SFC, 2/25/20, p.D2
2020 Feb 16, New York City police and prosecutors announced that Rashaun Weaver (14) has been charged with murder in the fatal stabbing of Tessa Majors, a Barnard freshman who was killed in December 2019 in Morningside Park.
(ABC News, 2/15/20)
2020 Feb 16, In Texas an implosion failed to bring down the core of former 11-story, Affiliated Computer Services building in Dallas. A wrecking ball continued the demolition of the "Leaning Tower of Dallas" on Feb 24.
(SFC, 2/25/20, p.A5)
2020 Feb 16, In Wisconsin the bodies of a woman (26) and her two young daughters were found in a Milwaukee garage more than a week after they were reported missing. The bodies were found after police interviewed the woman's boyfriend (25), who had been arrested in Tennessee on a fugitive from justice warrant.
(AP, 2/17/20)
2020 Feb 16, Police in Azerbaijan detained three opposition party leaders and more than 100 activists before they were due to take part in a protest against the results of last week's national election, which have been questioned by international observers.
(Reuters, 2/16/20)
2020 Feb 16, Storm Dennis roared across Britain with high winds and heavy rains, prompting authorities to issue a record number of flood warnings and alerts for England and a rare “red warning" for extremely life-threatening flooding in Wales.
(AP, 2/16/20)
2020 Feb 16, In Burkina Faso gunmen killed 24 civilians, including a church pastor, and kidnapped three others. It was the latest attack against a religious leader in the increasingly unstable West African nation.
(AP, 2/17/20)
2020 Feb 16, China reported a drop in new virus cases for the third straight day. Its latest figures showed 68,500 cases and 1,665 deaths due to the COVID-19 virus, most of the in Hubei province. The National Health Commission reported 2,009 new cases and 142 deaths.
(AP, 2/16/20)(Reuters, 2/16/20)
2020 Feb 16, The Dominican Republic was forced to suspend municipal elections across the country following problems with electronic voting systems.
(SFC, 2/18/20, p.A2)
2020 Feb 16, Egypt’s chief prosecutor denied allegations that the police tortured George Zaki, a human rights activist and vocal critic of President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi.
(AP, 2/16/20)
2020 Feb 16, Germany and the UN, which co-hosted a Jan. 19 Berlin summit, gathered foreign ministers and other officials from a dozen countries on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference to try to bolster a drive to cut off outside military support for Libya's warring parties.
(AP, 2/16/20)
2020 Feb 16, The Israeli military said it has thwarted an attempt by the Hamas militant group to hack soldiers' phones by posing as young, attractive women on social media, striking up friendships and persuading them into downloading malware.
(AP, 2/16/20)
2020 Feb 16, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia started trial oil production from the jointly-operated Wafra and Khafji oilfields. Trial production from the two fields in the Neutral Zone will increase gradually till it reaches its normal levels.
(Reuters, 2/16/20)
2020 Feb 16, Syrian troops consolidated the government's hold over the key Aleppo province, capturing over 30 villages and hamlets in the western countryside in a single day. Authorities uncovered a mass grave containing nearly 70 bodies in eastern Ghouta, an area outside of the capital that rebel fighters lost control of in April 2018.
(AP, 2/17/20)
2020 Feb 16, Taiwan's health minister said a man has died from the coronavirus, marking the first such death on the island since the epidemic spread from mainland China.
(Reuters, 2/16/20)
2020 Feb 16, The UN said Yemen’s warring sides have agreed to implement a long-delayed and major prisoner swap, in a sign that talks to end the disastrous war between the country's internationally recognized government and its Houthi rebels could be making progress.
(AP, 2/15/20)
2020 Feb 17, Two charter flights carrying cruise ship passengers from Japan landed at military bases in California and Texas overnight, starting the clock on a quarantine period to ensure passengers don't have the new virus that's been spreading in Asia.
(AP, 2/17/20)
2020 Feb 17, It was reported that police in Long Beach, California., have arrested three teenagers suspected of killing two people and wounding ten others in seven shootings since November.
(SFC, 2/17/20, p.A6)
2020 Feb 17, In Florida Hector Alejandro Cabrera Fuentes was arrested after being recruited by a Russian official last year. Russian intelligence had recruited the Mexican citizen to track down the whereabouts of an FBI informant in Miami who previously provided the US government with information on Russian operations.
(The Daily Beast, 2/18/20)
2020 Feb 17, Cleveland Browns offensive tackle Greg Robinson (27) was arrested in El Paso, Texas, along side his former teammate Quan Bray, a receiver he played with at Auburn University who is now in the Canadian Football League. Police said they found 157 pounds of marijuana in Robinson's rental car.
(AP, 2/20/20)
2020 Feb 17, Texas-based Pier 1 Imports filed for bankruptcy. On May 19 it filed a motion for an orderly wind-down of the company’s retail operations as soon as possible after store locations are able to reopen amid the coronavirus pandemic.
(SFC, 5/20/20, p.C1)
2020 Feb 17, Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam's push to ban the sale of assault weapons failed after members of his own party balked at the proposal. Four moderate Democrats joined Republicans in a committee vote, rejecting legislation that would have prohibited the sale of certain semiautomatic firearms.
(The Independent, 2/17/20)
2020 Feb 17, Biotechnology company Novacyt said that it had launched a 'CE-Mark' molecular test to help detect the coronavirus afflicting China, marking a step forward in Novacyt's plans to commercialize a product for the virus.
(Reuters, 2/17/20)
2020 Feb 17, The UK said it will spend 1.2 billion pounds ($1.6 billion) on developing the most powerful weather and climate supercomputer in the world. Britain issued severe flood alerts, warning of life-threatening danger after Storm Dennis dumped weeks' worth of rain in some places. One woman swept away by the floodwaters was feared dead.
(Bloomberg, 2/17/20)(AP, 2/17/20)
2020 Feb 17, Bulgaria's food safety agency authorities reported an outbreak of the H5N8 bird flu virus on a duck farm in the southern town of Rakovski. The agency said all 5,830 ducks at the farm will be culled.
(AP, 2/17/20)
2020 Feb 17, China's health authorities reported 2,048 new cases of the virus and 105 more deaths. Another 10,844 people have recovered from COVID-19, a disease caused by the new coronavirus, and have been discharged from hospitals. The death toll reached 1,770 with 70,548 cases. Another 1,200 doctors and nurses from China's military began arriving in Wuhan, the latest contingent sent to help shore up the city's overwhelmed health care system.
(AP, 2/17/20)
2020 Feb 17, A Chinese professor said doctors in Shanghai are using infusions of blood plasma from people who have recovered from the coronavirus to treat those still battling the infection, reporting some encouraging preliminary results.
(Reuters, 2/17/20)
2020 Feb 17, The European Union agreed to deploy warships to enforce an arms embargo on Libya in a move that underscores the increasing importance the bloc places on geopolitics as it seeks to defuse the conflict ravaging a major African oil producer.
(Bloomberg, 2/17/20)
2020 Feb 17, Greece acted to placate locals incensed over government plans to build new migrant detention centers on outlying islands, saying it was open to a compromise on their location.
(Reuters, 2/17/20)
2020 Feb 17, India's top court ordered the federal government to grant permanent commission and command positions to female officers in the army on par with men.
(SFC, 2/18/20, p.A4)
2020 Feb 17, Japanese officials confirmed 99 more people were infected by the new virus aboard the quarantined cruise ship Diamond Princess, bringing the total to 454.
(AP, 2/17/20)
2020 Feb 17, In Pakistan a suicide bombing killed eight people and wounded 16 others in the restive Baluchistan province, when it struck an Islamist rally in Quetta, the regional capital.
(AP, 2/17/20)
2020 Feb 17, Russia said that plans by the United States to deploy weapons in space would deal an irreversible blow to the current security balance in space, the RIA news agency cited the foreign ministry as saying.
(Reuters, 2/17/20)
2020 Feb 17, In Rwanda popular singer Kizito Mihigo (38), who was jailed on charges of plotting to kill the country's president but later pardoned, was found dead in a police cell. Authorities said it was suicide.
(AP, 2/17/20)
2020 Feb 17, South Korea's Hyundai Engineering & Construction Co Ltd said it has resolved a dispute with the Chilean government over a $740 million suspension bridge in a deal that had required it to "give up its rights" in various areas. The company said it has given ground on unspecified areas to allow the stalled project to get back on track.
(Reuters, 2/17/20)
2020 Feb 17, Syria praised its troops for rapidly taking over rebel-controlled territory in the country's northwest, vowing to continue to chase armed groups "wherever they are." Airstrikes on Darat Izza, a town still in opposition hands in Aleppo, put two health facilities out of service.
(AP, 2/17/20)
2020 Feb 17, Thailand's army agreed to transfer management control of 160,000 hectares of commercial land to the finance ministry in a drive to reform its business practices after a soldier went on a shooting spree over a property deal gone sour.
(Reuters, 2/17/20)
2020 Feb 17, The UAE’s regulatory watchdog gave long-awaited approval to the operator of the Barakah reactor, nudging the Emirates to the brink of membership in an elite club of 30 countries that make nuclear power. This is Arab world’s first commercial nuclear power plant.
(Bloomberg, 2/17/20)
2020 Feb 18, The Trump administration announced significant new sanctions targeting Rosneft, Russia’s largest oil company, for helping Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro circumvent US sanctions.
(Miami Herald, 2/18/20)
2020 Feb 18, President Donald Trump tweeted that Stone's recent conviction for witness tampering and lying to Congress “should be thrown out".
(AP, 2/18/20)
2020 Feb 18, President Donald Trump went on a clemency blitz, commuting the 14-year prison sentence of former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich and pardoning former NYPD commissioner Bernie Kerik, among a long list of others. Trump also told reporters that he has pardoned financier Michael Milken, who pleaded guilty for violating US securities laws and served two years in prison in the early 1990s. Trump also pardoned Edward DeBartolo Jr. (73), the former San Francisco 49ers owner, convicted in 1998 in a gambling fraud scandal.
(AP, 2/19/20)(SFC, 2/19/20, p.C1)
2020 Feb 18, Calling himself “the chief law enforcement officer of the country," Pres. Trump renewed his attacks on the criminal justice system, demanded a new trial for his friend Roger Stone, and granted clemency to several white-collar criminals.
(NY Times, 2/19/20)
2020 Feb 18, The Trump administration said that it will waive federal contracting laws to speed construction of a wall at the US-Mexico border. The 10 waived laws include requirements for having open competition, justifying selections and receiving all bonding from a contractor before any work can begin.
(AP, 2/18/20)
2020 Feb 18, It was announced that billionaire Mike Bloomberg has qualified for the Feb 19 Democratic presidential debate in Nevada, marking the first time he’ll stand alongside the rivals he has so far avoided by bypassing the early voting states and using his personal fortune to define himself through television ads.
(AP, 2/18/20)
2020 Feb 18, The Boy Scouts of America, barraged with sex-abuse lawsuits, filed for bankruptcy protection in Delaware in hopes of working out a potentially mammoth victim compensation plan that will allow the 110-year-old organization to carry on.
(AP, 2/18/20)
2020 Feb 18, Los Angeles city and county officials announced a new strategy to speed the process of getting homeless people into permanent housing. The new “Housing Central Command," modeled on the federal government’s response to natural disasters, overhauled how agencies work together in addressing the growing number of people living on the street.
(AP, 2/18/20)
2020 Feb 18, In central California a blaze at a public library in Porterville, allegedly started by two 13-year-old boys, left two firefighters dead.
(AP, 2/20/20)
2020 Feb 18, Florida authorities busted a ring of Miami burglars they say used Instagram and high-tech surveillance to target wealthy marks. Police said the ringleader was Xandi Garcia (30), currently jailed on a separate case.
(Miami Herald, 2/18/20)
2020 Feb 18, In southern Florida the Brightline train, which operates between Miami and West Palm Beach, struck a car at an intersection in Pompano Beach. One person was confirmed dead.
(AP, 2/18/20)
2020 Feb 18, Massachusetts Rep. David Nangle, D-Lowell, was arrested by the FBI and the IRS on charges of bank fraud, wire fraud, filing false tax returns and lying to a bank. Nangle had reportedly frequented casinos throughout New England, accumulating so much gambling debt that he turned to campaign funds to keep himself financially afloat.
(ABC News, 2/18/20)
2020 Feb 18, A Venezuelan teenager (18) was forced back to Mexico by US government authorities in Brownsville who denied her claims that she was fleeing political repression and violence, even after they accepted the same claims from her father.
(AP, 2/19/20)
2020 Feb 18, Afghanistan's election commission announced that Ashraf Ghani has won a 2nd term as president with 50.64% of the Sept. 28, 2019, vote. Opponent Abdullah Abdullah won 30.52% and refused to accept the results. The Taliban also rejected Ghani's win.
(SFC, 2/19/20, p.A2)
2020 Feb 18, The British Meat Processors Association (BMPA) said British producers will not be able to export processed meat like sausages and burgers to Europe after Brexit unless they get a specific European Union health certificate which currently does not exist.
(Reuters, 2/18/20)
2020 Feb 18, Cambodian health authorities said that 409 of the 2,257 passengers and crew of the Westerdam had left Cambodia for their homes scattered across the globe. The rest remain in hotels in Phnom Penh, the capital, or on the ship. After hundreds of passengers had earlier disembarked, one soon tested positive for the coronavirus.
(NY Times, 2/18/20)
2020 Feb 18, Canada's PM Justin Trudeau called for patience and dialog as indigenous-rights protests that have brought rail traffic to a halt across the country dragged on.
(Bloomberg, 2/18/20)
2020 Feb 18, A study by the Tax Justice Network said British overseas territory the Cayman Islands, the United States and Switzerland do most to help the globe's richest citizens hide and launder money.
(Reuters, 2/18/20)
2020 Feb 18, China reported 1,886 new cases and 98 more deaths. That raised the number of deaths in mainland China to 1,868 and the total number of confirmed cases to 72,436. China reported the death of Dr. Liu Zhiming (51), the man who mobilized all the resources of his hospital in Wuhan's Wuchang district to deal with the thousands of sick people arriving daily.
(AP, 2/18/20)
2020 Feb 18, French President Emmanuel Macron announced measures intended to counter Islamic extremism in France by giving the government more authority over the schooling of children, the financing of mosques and the training of imams.
(AP, 2/18/20)
2020 Feb 18, French drugmaker Sanofi said it is working with a US government agency to develop a vaccine against the new coronavirus from China, saying it could have a candidate ready for clinical trials within a year.
(Reuters, 2/18/20)
2020 Feb 18, It was reported that India has hastily built a half-km (1,640-foot) brick wall in Gujarat state ahead of a visit by US President Donald Trump, with critics saying it was built to block the view of a slum area inhabited by more than 2,000 people.
(AP, 2/18/20)
2020 Feb 18, Iran said it has sentenced eight environmental activists, including an Iranian who reportedly also has British and American citizenship, to prison sentences ranging from four to 10 years on charges of spying for the United States and acting against Iran's national security.
(Reuters, 2/18/20)
2020 Feb 18, Iran said it has had to reduce oil production projects because of a lack of funds as income from oil exports has decreased.
(AP, 2/18/20)
2020 Feb 18, Israel said it will provide hundreds of additional work permits for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, in a new step aimed at solidifying an informal cease-fire with the Hamas militant group.
(AP, 2/18/20)
2020 Feb 18, A Tel Aviv court ordered Facebook Inc to unblock the private account of a worker at Israeli surveillance company NSO Group. Similar rulings were expected for other employees in the coming days. Facebook's messaging service WhatsApp had accused the Israeli firm of helping government spies break into the phones of about 1,400 users in a hacking spree targeting diplomats, political dissidents, journalists and senior government officials across the globe.
(Reuters, 2/18/20)
2020 Feb 18, Japan, announced that 88 more cases of the virus were confirmed aboard a quarantined cruise ship, the Diamond Princess, bringing the total to 542 among the 3,700 initially on board.
(AP, 2/18/20)
2020 Feb 18, Libya’s warring sides resumed UN-brokered talks in Geneva aimed at salvaging a fragile cease-fire in the North African country, even as eastern Libyan forces stepped up their attacks on the Libyan capital, hitting its port.
(AP, 2/18/20)
2020 Feb 18, A report by Doctors Without Borders (MSF) found 80% of migrants waiting in Nuevo Laredo, under the Trump administration’s so-called Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), to have been abducted by the mafia, and 45% to have suffered violence or violation.
(The Guardian, 2/18/20)
2020 Feb 18, It was reported that thousands of people in the Netherlands have signed a petition objecting to the construction of an airport in Portugal that could threaten the black-tailed godwit, the Dutch national bird.
(Reuters, 2/18/20)
2020 Feb 18, Vladislav Surkov (55), the Kremlin's chief ideologue and pointman on relations with Ukraine and Moscow-backed separatists, was dismissed late today. He was for many years viewed as one of Russia's most powerful men. Surkov later said that he stepped down because of a shift in the Kremlin course on the Ukrainian conflict.
(AFP, 2/19/20)(AP, 2/26/20)
2020 Feb 18, Spain's cabinet voted to ban employers from dismissing workers due to illness, the first step in a planned overhaul of the country's 2012 labor reform.
(Reuters, 2/18/20)
2020 Feb 18, Officials said the worst locust outbreak that parts of East Africa have seen in 70 years has reached South Sudan, a country where roughly half the population already faces hunger after years of civil war.
(AP, 2/18/20)
2020 Feb 18, Turkey said it will deploy more troops to Syria's Idlib region and retaliate against attacks by government forces there, even as Ankara continues to discuss the situation with Moscow.
(Reuters, 2/18/20)
2020 Feb 18, In Turkey nine people, including prominent philanthropist Osman Kavala (63), were acquitted of trying to overthrow the government by force. They had faced trial for participating in the 2013 Taksim Square protests. Arrests warrants were lifted for seven other defendants.
(SFC, 2/19/20, p.A3)
2020 Feb 18, The UN issued a scathing report that accused Haitian police of not protecting an impoverished neighborhood from corrupt officers and gang leaders they say shot at people and set fire to homes and cars in a recent three-day attack.
(AP, 2/18/20)
2020 Feb 18, Vatican police raided the home and office of a senior Catholic Church official, seizing documents and computers in the latest phase of an investigation into the purchase of luxury London real estate.
(Reuters, 2/18/20)
2020 Feb 18, It was reported that Yemen’s Houthi rebels have blocked half of the United Nations’ aid delivery programs in the war-torn country — a strong-arm tactic to force the agency to give them greater control over the massive humanitarian campaign, along with a cut of billions of dollars in foreign assistance.
(AP, 2/18/20)
2020 Feb 19, President Trump confirmed that he is appointing Richard Grenell, the US ambassador to Germany, as acting director of national intelligence. Current acting DNI Joseph Maguire, who would have had to step down by March 12 because he lacked Senate confirmation, was reportedly blindsided by the news. Grenell has no real intelligence experience and has never run a large bureaucracy.
(The Week, 2/19/20)
2020 Feb 19, The US military said that Tehran continues to deliver weapons to Yemen's Huthi rebels, following a second interception in less than three months of what Washington said were Iranian arms.
(AFP, 2/20/20)
2020 Feb 19, Figures released by the Environmental Protection Agency indicated that the Trump administration completed the fewest cleanups of toxic Superfund sites last year than any administration since the program’s first years in the 1980s.
(AP, 2/19/20)
2020 Feb 19, The US designated five Chinese media companies as “foreign missions," a decision that reflects the Trump administration’s view that the communist party of Xi Jinping is imposing increasingly draconian government-control over news services.
(Bloomberg, 2/19/20)
2020 Feb 19, In southern California rapper Pop Smoke (20), born as Bashar Barakah Jackson, was fatally shot by intruders during a break-in at a Hollywood Hills home.
(SFC, 2/20/20, p.A5)
2020 Feb 19, A 3-judge panel of the 11th US Circuit court of Appeals upheld a preliminary injuction against a Florida law that barred felons who served their time from registering to vote because they have failed to pay all fines and fees stemming from their cases.
(SFC, 2/20/20, p.A7)
2020 Feb 19, Rod Blagojevich returned home to Chicago, shaking hands and signing autographs after President Donald Trump cut short the 14-year prison sentence handed to the former Illinois governor for political corruption.
(AP, 2/19/20)
2020 Feb 19, In Nevada Democrats savaged New York billionaire Mike Bloomberg and raised pointed questions about Bernie Sanders' take-no-prisoners politics during a contentious debate that threatened to further muddy the party's urgent quest to defeat President Donald Trump.
(AP, 2/19/20)
2020 Feb 19, In Australia a mother and her three children died in a car fire after Rowan Baxter (42), her estranged husband and the children's father, allegedly doused his family with gas before setting the car alight. Baxter was found dead near the scene, reportedly after stabbing himself..
(AP, 2/19/20)
2020 Feb 19, Boris Johnson’s government unveiled plans to end what it called Britain's dependence on “cheap low-skilled labor" and deliver on its pledge to halt freedom of movement from the European Union after Brexit.
(Bloomberg, 2/19/20)
2020 Feb 19, China's President Xi Jinping called for greater protection of medical staff fighting the new coronavirus after the deaths of prominent doctors sparked national anger at the government's handling of the outbreak. 1,716 medical workers have been confirmed as infected. Mainland China reported 1,749 new cases and 136 additional deaths. The death toll from the virus jumped past 2,000, while 74,185 cases of infection have been confirmed on the mainland. Inspectors in protective suits went door-to-door in the epicenter of the viral outbreak to try to find every infected person in an epidemic that is showing signs of waning as new cases fell for a second straight day.
(AFP, 2/19/20)(AP, 2/19/20)
2020 Feb 19, French PM Edouard Philippe said that the Fessenheim nuclear reactor will be shut down at the end of June.
(SFC, 2/20/20, p.A2)
2020 Feb 19, In Germany a massacre in the Frankfurt suburb of Hanau erupted late today at two hookah bars. The shooting left 11 people dead, including Tobias Rathjen, the suspected gunman. Investigators said a video the suspect posted online allegedly expressed right-wing conspiracy theories.
(ABC News, 2/20/20)(Econ., 2/29/20, p.40)
2020 Feb 19, Two people in Iran tested positive for the deadly new coronavirus, in the Islamic republic's first cases of the disease.
(AFP, 2/19/20)
2020 Feb 19, Authorities in northern Italy arrested the captain of a Lebanese-flagged cargo ship on suspicion of international arms trafficking while they investigate if the vessel transported tanks, rockets and other weapons from Turkey to Libya.
(AP, 2/19/20)
2020 Feb 19, Libya's Khalifa Hifter, commander of the eastern-based forces, was in Moscow and met with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.
(AP, 2/19/20)
2020 Feb 19, Pakistani officials said soybean dust from shipping containers, not toxic gas from a gas leak, was responsible for the recent deaths of 14 people in the southern port city of Karachi.
(AP, 2/19/20)
2020 Feb 19, Palestinian Salah Zakarna (17) was shot and killed in overnight clashes between Palestinian forces and local gunmen in the West Bank. It was unclear who shot him.
(AP, 2/19/20)
2020 Feb 19, Sri Lanka's PM Mahinda Rajapaksa said that the government has decided to withdraw from co-sponsorship of a 2015 UN Human Rights Council resolution calling for the investigation of allegations of war crimes committed during the island nation's long civil war. Rajapaksa said the resolution has enabled other countries to blame members of Sri Lanka's armed forces for being human rights violators.
(AP, 2/19/20)
2020 Feb 19, Sweden's Riksbank said it had begun testing an e-krona, taking the country a step closer to the creation of the world's first central bank digital currency (CBDC).
(Reuters, 2/20/20)
2020 Feb 19, A Syrian passenger jet landed in Aleppo from Damascus, marking the resumption of domestic flights between the two cities for the first time since 2012. The government's onslaught continued nearby with airstrikes reported in several rebel-held towns and villages.
(AP, 2/19/20)
2020 Feb 19, Turkey's Pres. Recep Tayyip Erdogan criticized the European Union’s decision to launch a maritime effort focused on enforcing the U.N arms embargo around Libya.
(AP, 2/19/20)
2020 Feb 19, A UN-backed report said children and adolescents are being bombarded with ads on social media promoting harmful products from fast food to tobacco and alcohol.
(Reuters, 2/19/20)
2020 Feb 19, In Yemen a landmine explosion killed six guards of the Yemeni defense minister and wounded eight others in the central province of Marib, the latest casualties of unmarked landmines that litter the war-torn country.
(AP, 2/19/20)
2020 Feb 20, The US said it has sanctioned members of an Iranian government agency that it says rigs elections in the country by disqualifying candidates who don’t echo the political ideology of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
(Bloomberg, 2/20/20)
2020 Feb 20, US federal authorities in Atlanta announced the launch of Operation Crystal Shield to target methamphetamine transportation hubs around the country. Seven other hub cities included Dallas, El Paso, Houston, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Phoenix and St. Louis.
(SFC, 2/21/20, p.A6)
2020 Feb 20, Trump loyalist Roger Stone was sentenced to 40 months in prison for lying to Congress, tampering with a witness and obstructing a House investigation.
(SFC, 2/21/20, p.A6)
2020 Feb 20, California lawmakers apologized for the Lagislature's role in advancing discrimination against Japanese Americans and their incarceration during WW II.
(SFC, 2/21/20, p.C2)
2020 Feb 20, The Univ. of Southern California announced that it was making tuition free for students from families with an annual income of $80,000 or less starting this fall.
(SFC, 2/21/20, p.A6)
2020 Feb 20, Police in Orlando, Fla., found four people dead after receiving a report that some of the family members had not been seen since last week. A US Customs and Border Protection officer had allegedly shot and killed his wife and two children at their home before turning the gun on himself.
(AP, 2/21/20)
2020 Feb 20, Florida's Legislature passed a bill requiring girls under the age of 18 to get parent's permission before having an abortion. In some cases a judge may grant a waiver. Gov. Ron DeSantis was expected to sign.
(SFC, 2/22/20, p.A6)
2020 Feb 20, In Idaho one person was killed and three were injured in a shooting at an apartment complex for senior citizens in Boise. The suspect also died.
(SFC, 2/22/20, p.A6)
2020 Feb 20, Lori Vallow (46), a woman wanted by authorities in Idaho in connection to the disappearance of her two children, was arrested in Hawaii. Her children, Tylee Ryan (17) and her adopted son Joshua "JJ" Vallow (7), have been missing since September.
(ABC News, 2/21/20)
2020 Feb 20, In Tennessee convicted murderer Nicholas Sutton (58) was electrocuted at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville.
(SFC, 2/21/20, p.A6)
2020 Feb 20, Morgan Stanley announced that it would buy E-Trade, an online discount brokerage, for about $13 billion.
(SFC, 2/21/20, p.D1)
2020 Feb 20, In Australia a train from Sydney to Melbourne derailed killing two people on board.
(SFC, 2/21/20, p.A2)
2020 Feb 20, In London Daniel Horton (29) stabbed muezzin Raafat Maglad (70) in the neck at the London Central Mosque. Horton was soon charged with grevious bodily harm.
(SSFC, 2/23/20, p.A4)
2020 Feb 20, Canada hosted members of the Lima Group regional bloc (Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru and St Lucia). The bloc said the world needs to stop the humanitarian crisis in Venezuela, hit by political conflict and a collapsing economy.
(Reuters, 2/20/20)
2020 Feb 20, China said it was helping its downstream neighbors cope with a prolonged drought by releasing more water from its dams on the Mekong River, adding it would consider sharing information on hydrology to provide further assistance in the future. The drought over the past year has severely hurt farming and fishing in Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam.
(Reuters, 2/20/20)
2020 Feb 20, The number of new cases in China declined again, to 394, a notable shift from the 1,749 figure released a day earlier. Another 114 deaths in China were linked to the virus. The statistics came after yet another change in how cases are counted.
(AP, 2/20/20)
2020 Feb 20, The World Health Organization chided the international community for not stepping up enough to finance the battle to contain the novel coronavirus that has shut down many parts of China and killed more than 2,000 people.
(South China Morning Post, 2/21/20)
2020 Feb 20, An Egyptian court overturned a decision to release prominent activist Alaa Abdel Fattah (38), who has been detained for nearly five months without trial over what his family says are unjust charges.
(AP, 2/20/20)
2020 Feb 20, France's hard-left unions brought workers back onto the streets in protest against President Emmanuel Macron's pension reform, but numbers were low as the fight to derail the project shifted to parliament.
(Reuters, 2/20/20)
2020 Feb 20, In southern India a bus collided with a truck killing at least 19 people near Avanashi, Tamil Nadu state.
(SFC, 2/21/20, p.A2)
2020 Feb 20, Iran said that three more people have been infected with the new virus that originated in central China, following an announcement the day before that two people had died of the illness caused by the virus in the city of Qom.
(AP, 2/20/20)
2020 Feb 20, Iraqi Airways suspended flight service to neighboring Iran as a protective measure against the coronavirus outbreak.
(Reuters, 2/20/20)
2020 Feb 20, In Italy bulldozers started work demolishing a crime-riddled, crumbling housing estate on the outskirts of Naples, notorious for its links to the local mafia. The housing project, known as the "Sails of Scampia", was built in the 1960s and 1970s and became synonymous with poverty and violence in Italy's underdeveloped south as clan warfare raged through its narrow corridors and bleak stairways.
(Reuters, 2/20/20)
2020 Feb 20, The first case of coronavirus was confirmed in Lebanon after a woman arriving from Iran was found to be positive.
(Reuters, 2/21/20)(AP, 4/1/20)
2020 Feb 20, In Portugal hundreds of people, old and young, protested outside parliament on against proposed bills that would legalize euthanasia. Parliament voted in favor of allowing euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide for terminally ill people.
(Reuters, 2/20/20)(SFC, 2/21/20, p.A2)
2020 Feb 20, It was reported that the tiny archipelago of Seychelles is battling what officials say are the world's highest rates of heroin addiction. Government figures showed that nearly 5,000 people were hooked, equivalent to nearly 10 percent of the national workforce.
(AFP, 2/20/20)
2020 Feb 20, South Korea reported its first death from the new virus while the mayor of a southeastern city urged its 2.5 million people to stay inside as infections linked to a church congregation spiked. The Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed 22 additional cases of the virus, raising the total in South Korea to 104.
(AP, 2/20/20)
2020 Feb 20, South Sudan’s rival leaders announced they have agreed to form a coalition government just two days before the deadline, a breakthrough after months of delays and a major step in the emergence from a five-year civil war that killed nearly 400,000 people in the world’s youngest nation.
(AP, 2/20/20)
2020 Feb 20, An airstrike in northwestern Syria reportedly killed two Turkish soldiers, following a large-scale attack by Ankara-backed opposition forces that targeted Syrian government troops. A Turkish Defense Ministry statement said as many as 50 Syrian government soldiers were killed and that five tanks, two armored personnel carriers and other equipment were destroyed.
(AP, 2/20/20)
2020 Feb 20, A UN rights probe said South Sudan's government forces and other armed groups have "deliberately starved" civilians by denying aid access and displacing communities.
(AFP, 2/20/20)
2020 Feb 20, The UN said estimated 170,000 of the 900,000 civilians forced from their homes in a massive wave of displacement in northwestern Syria are living out in the open.
(AFP, 2/20/20)
2020 Feb 20, The UN envoy for Haiti said the political impasse that has paralyzed Haiti is sending its economy deeper into recession, with 4.6 million people needing humanitarian aid with no immediate end in sight.
(AP, 2/20/20)
2020 Feb 20, The UN migration agency said a rubber dinghy packed with 91 migrants that set out from Libyan shores in hopes of reaching Europe has apparently gone missing in the Mediterranean.
(AP, 2/20/20)
2020 Feb 20, Police in Zambia said they have arrested 16 people suspected of being behind a spate of attacks that began in December in which people have been sprayed with poisonous substances and some have died.
(Reuters, 2/20/20)
2020 Feb 21, US President Donald Trump said on Twitter that the idea that Russia wants him to win re-election was "another misinformation campaign" launched by Democrats.
(AP, 2/21/20)
2020 Feb 21, Richard Grenell’s tenure as the top US intelligence official may be short-lived, but he wasted no time starting to shape his team of advisers, ousting his office’s No. 2 official — a longtime intelligence officer — and bringing in an expert on Trump conspiracy theories to help lead the agency.
(NY Times, 2/22/20)
2020 Feb 21, The US Pentagon said number of US troops who sustained traumatic brain injury when Iran launched missiles at their base in Iraq on the night of January 7-8 has risen to 110.
(AFP, 2/21/20)
2020 Feb 21, Mike Bloomberg said he’d free three women from confidentiality agreements that bar them from speaking publicly about sexual harassment or discrimination suits filed against him over the last three decades. He also said his company, Bloomberg LP, will no longer use such agreements “to resolve claims of sexual harassment or misconduct going forward".
(AP, 2/21/20)
2020 Feb 21, In Arizona three high school students were killed near Pima when a van went off a highway on the way back from a drag racing event.
(SFC, 2/25/20, p.A5)
2020 Feb 21, Costa Mesa, California, won a battle against the state, at least temporarily, when a judge halted the transfer of people diagnosed with the coronavirus to its community for a quarantine site.
(AP, 2/22/20)
2020 Feb 21, In Florida Lyuyou Liao (27), a Chinese national, pleaded guilty to taking photographs of a Naval Air Station in the Florida Keys. He faced up to one year in prison.
(SFC, 2/24/20, p.A5)
2020 Feb 21, In Boston Xiaoning Sui (49), a Chinese citizen living in British Columbia, pleaded guilty to to paying $400,000 to get her son into UCLA as a fake soccer recruit.
(SSFC, 2/23/20, p.A7)
2020 Feb 21, Boeing Co said it has found debris in the fuel tanks of dozens of undelivered 737 MAX jets amid ongoing inspections as the Chicago-based plane maker struggles to restore the trust of airlines and the wider public in the grounded fleet.
(Reuters, 2/22/20)
2020 Feb 21, Danish drugmaker Lundbeck said the US Food and Drug Administration has approved its migraine prevention therapy, which the drugmaker acquired through its near $2 billion deal for Alder BioPharmaceuticals in 2019. Vyepti, also known as eptinezumab, inhibits calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP), which plays a key role in causing migraine pain.
(Reuters, 2/21/20)
2020 Feb 21, Several thousand Algerians demonstrated to mark the first anniversary of protests that ousted President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, demanding the removal of allies of the former leader who are still in power and more steps towards democracy.
(Reuters, 2/21/20)
2020 Feb 21, Jorge Todesca, (73), the man who restored the credibility of Argentina’s statistics after years of data manipulation, died. In 2011, Argentina’s commerce secretariat fined Todesca 500,000 pesos (about $120,000 at the time) for publishing his own inflation index due to the lack of credibility of official data. The fine was overturned in court.
(Bloomberg, 2/21/20)
2020 Feb 21, In Australia, two people who had been evacuated from a virus-wracked cruise ship off Japan tested positive for mild cases of the COVID-19 illness.
(AFP, 2/21/20)
2020 Feb 21, British entrepreneur Richard Branson (69) heralded his first cruise ship "Scarlet Lady" as targeting a younger generation of holidaymakers with a range of attractions that he believes will outweigh any fears around coronavirus.
(Reuters, 2/21/20)
2020 Feb 21, China reported 118 more deaths from the COVID-19 virus, raising the toll to 2,236, most of them in Hubei. China tallied 889 new cases. Two correctional facilities in east China reported cases, with 200 prisoners and seven guards testing positive at Rencheng prison in Shandong province. Another 34 cases were found at a prison in Zhejiang province.
(AFP, 2/21/20)
2020 Feb 21, A small group of desert locusts entered Congo, marking the first time the voracious insects have been seen in the Central African country since 1944. Locusts, carried in part by the wind, arrived on the western shore of Lake Albert near the town of Bunia. Kenya, Somalia and Uganda also have been battling locust swarms, which can reach the size of major cities.
(AP, 2/25/20)
2020 Feb 21, In Indonesia at least six students in the province of Yogyakarta were killed and five more were missing after a tidal surge swept them away during a school trip.
(AP, 2/21/20)
2020 Feb 21, Iran went to the polls for a general election that conservatives are expected to dominate amid voter apathy after an economic slump, multiple crises and the disqualification of thousands of candidates.
(AFP, 2/21/20)
2020 Feb 21, An Iranian health ministry official said the coronavirus has spread to several cities in the country. Health authorities reported two more deaths from the new virus that emerged in China and said the fatalities were from among 13 new confirmed cases of the virus.
(Reuters, 2/21/20)(AP, 2/21/20)
2020 Feb 21, Financial Action Taskforce placed Iran on its blacklist. FATF had urged the Islamic Republic to either enact terrorist financing conventions or see its reprieve from the blacklist lifted and some countermeasures imposed.
(Reuters, 2/21/20)
2020 Feb 21, An Israeli doctor said one of the 11 Israelis who were flown home after being quarantined on a cruise ship in Japan has tested positive for the new virus that emerged in China late last year, the first case to be reported inside the country. Another four Israelis were hospitalized in Japan after testing positive for the virus.
(AP, 2/21/20)
2020 Feb 21, Italian authorities announced that a cluster of 16 coronavirus cases had been detected around Codogno, a small town in Lombardy. By the next day the number was up to 60 and five elderly people had died.
(Econ., 2/29/20, p.13)
2020 Feb 21, In Kazakhstan Democratic Party activist and filmmaker Zhanbolat Mamay was one of dozens of activists who were detained ahead of demonstrations set for the next day. Mamay was arrested and sentenced to three days' detention for calling for the unsanctioned rally.
(https://tinyurl.com/ybufxdk7)(Econ., 2/29/20, p.29)
2020 Feb 21, Libya’s security chief called on the US to set up a base in the North African country to counter Russia’s expanding influence in Africa.
(AP, 2/22/20)
2020 Feb 21, Myanmar's army said in a statement it would hold more court-martials over alleged abuses against Rohingya Muslims, after a government-appointed commission said soldiers committed war crimes against the minority.
(Reuters, 2/21/20)
2020 Feb 21, Financial Action Task Force (FATF), an international financial watchdog, placed Myanmar on its money-laundering watchlist, urging the country at the heart of Asia's illicit drug-producing "Golden Triangle" to boost its efforts to seize crime proceeds.
(AP, 2/21/20)
2020 Feb 21, A New Zealand man was sentenced to life in prison for murdering British backpacker Grace Millane (22) in December, 2018.
(AP, 2/21/20)
2020 Feb 21, A Western tour company said North Korea has called off its Pyongyang Marathon scheduled for April after imposing a border lockdown and travel curbs to prevent a coronavirus outbreak.
(Reuters, 2/21/20)
2020 Feb 21, In Puerto Rico former DEA agent Jose Irizarry (46) and his wife were arrested at their home near San Juan, as part of a 19-count federal indictment that accused Irizarry of “secretly using his position and his special access to information" to divert millions in drug proceeds from control of the Drug Enforcement Administration.
(AP, 2/21/20)
2020 Feb 21, South Korea's government banned major rallies in its capital and declared a health emergency in its fourth largest city as 100 new virus cases were reported, bringing the country's total to 204.
(AP, 2/21/20)
2020 Feb 21, In southern Spain thousands of farmers took to the streets of Murcia, blocking streets with tractors and tossing vegetables to the ground in protest at low food prices and precarious working conditions.
(Reuters, 2/21/20)
2020 Feb 21, A Thai court dissolved a high-profile opposition political party, the Future Forward Party, ruling that it illegally took a 191.2 million baht ($6.04 million) loan from its billionaire leader. The court also banned party leader Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit, heir to an auto parts fortune, and 15 other party executive board members from politics for 10 years.
(Reuters, 2/21/20)
2020 Feb 21, The United Arab Emirates said it had registered two new coronavirus cases, bringing the total number of people diagnosed with the virus in the Gulf Arab state to 11.
(Reuters, 2/21/20)
2020 Feb 21, It was reported that a top official for Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro's government has hired Washington law firm Amsterdam & Partners, that also represents Turkey, taking over from another legal team that backed out last month following an outcry from critics who accused it of collaborating with a repressive regime. Lawyer Bob Amsterdam declined to comment on the nature of work for Maduro’s Inspector General Reinaldo Muñoz, other than saying it would focus on sanctions and human rights issues.
(AP, 2/22/20)
2020 Feb 21, Vietnam's state media said seven people have been charged with the deaths of 39 Vietnamese migrants who bodies were found in a trailer near London last Oct. 23.
(SFC, 2/22/20, p.A2)
2020 Feb 22, The US Dept. of Justice confirmed that Mexico has extradited Ruben Oseguera, son of Nemesio Oseguera, the leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, to face drug distribution charges.
(SFC, 2/22/20, p.A2)
2020 Feb 22, In California self-styled daredevil “Mad" Mike Hughes (64) died after the homemade rocket crashed on private property near Barstow.
(AP, 2/23/20)
2020 Feb 22, In southern California a charter bus swerved on a rain-slicked highway and rolled down an embankment, killing three people and injuring 18 others in Pala Mesa.
(AP, 2/22/20)
2020 Feb 22, In Hawaii a single-engine plane crashed at Dillingham Airfiled northwest of Honolulu. Two people were killed.
(SFC, 2/24/20, p.A5)
2020 Feb 22, In Louisiana a man was struck and killed by a Mardi Gras float during a raucous night street parade in New Orleans, becoming the second person in days killed along a parade route during this year's Carnival season.
(AP, 2/23/20)
2020 Feb 22, Nevada Democrats hosted hundreds of caucuses, the third contest in the state-by-state presidential nominating process. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders won his second straight contest with a convincing 47% victory in Nevada. Former VP Joe Biden finished a distant second with 19%.
(Reuters, 2/22/20)
2020 Feb 22, In New York a leadership dispute within the Cayuga Indian Nation took a stunning turn when nation leader Clint Halftown sent bulldozers to demolish a working daycare center, store, schoolhouse and other buildings controlled by tribe members who oppose his authority. The anti-Halftown Unity Council in 2014 claimed control of some of the buildings that were destroyed.
(AP, 2/25/20)
2020 Feb 22, Taliban fighters and Afghan security forces clashed in parts of Afghanistan, a day after a week-long "reduction in violence" was announced, but the incidents did not spark immediate alarm on either side.
(Reuters, 2/22/20)
2020 Feb 22, A UN report said Afghanistan passed a grim milestone with more than 100,000 civilians killed or hurt in the last 10 years since the international body began documenting casualties in a war that has raged for 18 years.
(AP, 2/22/20)
2020 Feb 22, In southern Albania two migrants were killed in a car crash and seven others were injured when their vehicle plummeted off a cliff. The four-wheel drive vehicle was illegally transporting the nine migrants. The driver (28) was arrested and charged with illegal migrant trafficking and traffic violations.
(AP, 2/22/20)
2020 Feb 22, Brazil's famed Carnival kicked off in earnest, as millions of scantily-clad revelers poured into the streets, many of whom took the opportunity to parody or otherwise comment on the nation's deeply polarized political climate.
(Reuters, 2/22/20)
2020 Feb 22, Bulgarian authorities identified three Russians who have been charged in absentia over the 2015 attempted poisoning of Emilian Gebrev, the owner of an arms factory, his son and a company employee. Suspects Sergei Pavlov, Sergei Fedotov and Georgy Gorshkov were believed to be residents of Moscow.
(SSFC, 2/23/20, p.A4)
2020 Feb 22, In China 397 new cases of coronavirus were reported nationwide and another 109 people died. The outbreak of the new COVID-19 strain has claimed 2,345 lives on the mainland and infected more than 76,000 people, with cases in more than 25 countries. State media said President Xi Jinping has written a letter thanking the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for committing up to $100 million for the global response to the outbreak.
(AFP, 2/22/20) (AP, 2/22/20)
2020 Feb 22, In China woman traveled by car to a relative’s home in Beijing after being released from Wuhan Women’s Prison, a facility stricken by an outbreak affecting more than 250 people. Her coronavirus infection was disclosed by local officials on Feb. 26.
(AP, 2/27/20)
2020 Feb 22, Hundreds of Dominicans took to the streets in fresh protests after the abrupt suspension of municipal elections that unleashed a political crisis months before the Caribbean island votes for a new president. Dominicans will vote for a new president on May 17.
(Reuters, 2/22/20)
2020 Feb 22, An Egyptian court acquitted the two sons of ousted President Hosni Mubarak on charges of stock market manipulation, the latest in a series of trials of Mubarak’s family since the 2011 uprising that toppled the longtime autocrat after nearly three decades in power.
(AP, 2/22/20)
2020 Feb 22, Egyptian prosecutors extended the detention of Patrick George Zaki, an activist and vocal critic of President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi. Prosecutors renewed Zaki’s detention for another 15 days.
(AP, 2/22/20)
2020 Feb 22, India, the world's second-biggest gold consumer, said it has discovered gold fields with reserves of over 3,000 tons in northern Uttar Pradesh's Sonbhadra district.
(Reuters, 2/22/20)
2020 Feb 22, Conservatives in Iran took a lead as the first results of parliamentary elections came in, boosted by a predicted low turnout following the disqualification of nearly half the candidates. Hardliners won a majority in parliamentary elections. The official turnout was 42.5%, the lowest in the history of the Islamic Republic.
(AFP, 2/22/20)(Bloomberg, 2/23/20)
2020 Feb 22, Iranian authorities reported one more death among 10 new cases of the coronavirus. Iran ordered the closure of schools and universities in two cities hit by the virus outbreak that has killed five people, the most outside the Far East. 28 cases in total have been confirmed.
(AP, 2/22/20)
2020 Feb 22, Iran's hardline Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) detained journalist Mohammad Mosaed and said his social media posts constituted "crimes." Mosaed had posted criticism both of Iran's lack of readiness, and its response when the coronavirus hit in January.
(Insider, 4/2/20)
2020 Feb 22, Israeli police officers shot and killed a man after he allegedly tried to stab a soldier outside Jerusalem’s Old City.
(AP, 2/22/20)
2020 Feb 22, Israeli and Palestinian authorities sought to quell fears of a potential local outbreak of the coronavirus after learning that South Korean pilgrims who had toured some of the holy land's most popular sites were later found to be carrying the virus.
(Reuters, 2/22/20)
2020 Feb 22, A dozen towns in northern Italy effectively went into lockdown after the deaths of two people infected with the new virus from China and a growing cluster of cases with no direct links to the origin of the outbreak abroad. Secondary coronavirus contagions prompted local authorities in the Lombardy and Veneto regions to order schools, businesses, and restaurants closed, and to cancel sporting events and Masses. Hundreds of residents and workers who came into contact with an estimated 54 people confirmed infected in Italy were in isolation pending test results. Two people infected with the virus have died.
(AP, 2/22/20)
2020 Feb 22, Kazakh police detained dozens of opposition supporters who staged public protests against the government. Around 200 people were detained as two opposition groups called for anti-government demonstrations in the oil-rich country.
(https://tinyurl.com/ybufxdk7)(Reuters, 2/22/20)
2020 Feb 22, In Saudi Arabia finance ministers and central bankers of the world's 20 biggest economies (G20) began a 2-day discussion on top global economic challenges in Riyadh, focusing on the growth outlook and new rules to tax global digital companies. Diplomats said the US is against mentioning climate change in the communique of the world's financial leaders.
(Reuters, 2/22/20)
2020 Feb 22, Serbia received a sophisticated anti-aircraft system from Russia, despite possible US sanctions against the Balkan state, which is formally seeking European Union membership. The Pantsir S1 air-defense system was purchased after suggestions from Russian President Vladimir Putin.
(AP, 2/23/20)
2020 Feb 22, In southern Somalia Bashir Mohamed Mahamoud, head of al Shabaab's operations, was killed in an American air strike in the Sakow district of the Jubba region.
(Reuters, 3/8/20)
2020 Feb 22, A South Korean Air flight with 188 passengers that landed at Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion airport was taxied away from the allotted terminal while authorities allowed only 11 Israelis to enter the country. The next day the plane returned to South Korea with the rest of the passengers.
(AP, 2/23/20)
2020 Feb 22, South Korea reported an eight-fold jump in viral infections with 433 cases mostly linked to a church and a hospital.
(AP, 2/22/20)
2020 Feb 22, South Sudan's opposition leader Riek Machar was sworn in as deputy to Pres. Salva Kiir.
(SSFC, 2/23/20, p.A4)
2020 Feb 22, Togo held a presidential election that is likely to result in incumbent President Faure Gnassingbe winning a fourth term despite years of calls by the political opposition for new leadership. Gnassingbe enacted a law last year that limits presidents to two five-year terms. However, the law was not retroactive so his previous three terms are not counted in his limit.
(AP, 2/22/20)
2020 Feb 22, Turkey said a member of its military was killed in Syria's Idlib region in a bomb attack by Syrian government forces, the sixteenth soldier killed there so far this month.
(Reuters, 2/22/20)
2020 Feb 23, President Donald Trump accused Representative Adam Schiff of leaking classified information on Russian interference in the 2020 US election to hurt Democratic presidential front-runner Bernie Sanders.
(Reuters, 2/23/20)
2020 Feb 23, In Georgia (US) Ahmaud Arbery (25) was shot and killed while jogging in Savannah. Two white men said they suspected he had committed a recent burglary.
(SFC, 5/7/20, p.A4)
2020 Feb 23, The satirical Belgian carnival parade in Aalst, decried by Israel's foreign minister as "hateful" went, ahead despite being withdrawn from the United Nation's list of recognized cultural events over accusations of racism and anti-Semitism.
(AP, 2/23/20)
2020 Feb 23, Four passengers tested positive for coronavirus in England after being evacuated from the Diamond Princess cruise ship in Japan. This brought the total number of cases in the UK to thirteen.
(Reuters, 2/23/20)
2020 Feb 23, Mainland China reported 648 new coronavirus infections for a total of 76,936. The daily death toll fell slightly to 97. In all, 2,442 people have died in the country from COVID-19.
(AP, 2/23/20)
2020 Feb 23, Egypt’s top appeals court upheld a 10-year jail term for the head of the country’s customs authority who was convicted of corruption. Abdel-Azim was arrested in June 2018, while taking bribes from an unnamed businessman.
(AP, 2/23/20)
2020 Feb 23, Berlin began freezing the rents of 1.5 million apartments for the next five years in a controversial move to control the exploding costs that have forced many to move outside Germany's capital city.
(AP, 2/23/20)
2020 Feb 23, Haitian police officers exchanged gunfire for hours with soldiers of the newly reconstituted army outside the national palace, in a dangerous escalation of protests over police pay and working conditions.
(AP, 2/23/20)
2020 Feb 23, In Hungary more than 2,000 people, including Roma families and civil groups, marched to parliament to protest against the government's refusal to pay compensation to Roma children who had been unlawfully segregated in a school in eastern Hungary.
(Reuters, 2/23/20)
2020 Feb 23, In India police used tear gas to disperse large crowds in New Delhi in the latest eruption of violence at protests over a new citizenship law. The protest comes just a day before US President Donald Trump begins a two-day visit to India.
(Reuters, 2/23/20)
2020 Feb 23, Iran’s health ministry raised the death toll from the new coronavirus to eight, with 43 confirmed cases.
(Reuters, 2/23/20)
2020 Feb 23, In Iraq one protester was shot dead and at least six wounded in renewed violence between anti-government demonstrators and security forces in central Baghdad.
(AP, 2/23/20)
2020 Feb 23, The Israeli military said it shot two Palestinian militants trying to place an explosive device along the border with Gaza, one of whom was reportedly killed.
(AP, 2/23/20)
2020 Feb 23, Israel struck multiple targets near the Syrian capital late today, killing two members of a Palestinian militant faction and triggering anti-aircraft fire from the country's air defenses that shook Damascus.
(AP, 2/23/20)
2020 Feb 23, Italian authorities stepped up measures to ban public gatherings, including stopping Venice's famed carnival events, which have drawn tens of thousands of revelers to a region that is now in the heart of the outbreak. Nearly all of the known cases, including three deaths, were clustered in the north, at least 25 of them in the Veneto region. Italy reported more than 150 confirmed cases, a sharp increase from fewer than five last week. Officials locked down at least 10 towns in the northern region of Lombardy, affecting at least 50,000 people.
(AP, 2/23/20)(Reuters, 2/23/20)(NY Times, 2/24/20)
2020 Feb 23, In Japan a third passenger from the virus-infected Diamond Princess cruise ship died. Japan's health ministry announced 57 more cases of infections from the ship, including 55 crew members still on board and two passengers who had infected roommates and are in a prolonged quarantine at a government facility. Japan has confirmed a total of 838 cases and four deaths from the virus.
(Reuters, 2/23/20)(AP, 2/23/20)
2020 Feb 23, Forces loyal to Libyan eastern-based commander Khalifa Haftar said they had killed 16 Turkish soldiers in recent weeks, a day after Turkey acknowledged it had lost several "martyrs" in combat in the north African country.
(Reuters, 2/23/20)
2020 Feb 23, Namibia shipped 25 tons of beef to Philadelphia. This was the first ever export of red meat from Africa to the US. The shipment was duty-free under the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) signed in 2000.
(https://tinyurl.com/yafxqycx)(Econ., 2/29/20, p.39)
2020 Feb 23, Pakistan temporarily closed its borders with Iran, which announced a weeklong closing of schools, universities and cultural centers. The outbreak has killed at least 12 people in Iran, according to state television, the largest number of deaths outside China.
(NY Times, 2/24/20)
2020 Feb 23, The Saudi-led coalition said it launched air raids targeting ballistic missile and drone depots in Yemen's capital of the Iran-backed Huthis, two days after the rebels fired missiles into the kingdom.
(AFP, 2/23/20)
2020 Feb 23, In Saudi Arabia finance leaders of the world's top 20 economies wrapped up their two-day meeting in Riyadh, a session that was dominated by growing concern over the widening fallout from the coronavirus outbreak. In a draft G20 communique the finance leaders clung to their upbeat projection of a modest pick-up in global growth despite the outbreak.
(Reuters, 2/23/20)
2020 Feb 23, South Korea raised its infectious disease alert to its highest level due to the coronavirus outbreak. South Korea announced 169 more cases of the new virus, bringing the country’s total more than 760. The country also reported three more fatalities, raising its death toll to six.
(Reuters, 2/23/20)(AP, 2/23/20)(NY Times, 2/24/20)
2020 Feb 23, South Korean health authorities said that 18 of the 39 South Koreans from the southeastern region who had made a group pilgrimage to sites in Israel later tested positive for the virus.
(AP, 2/23/20)
2020 Feb 23, In Syria several Turkish troops were wounded in Idlib province after pro-Damascus forces targeted a Turkish military convoy with heavy artillery, prompting it to retreat northwards.
(Reuters, 2/23/20)
2020 Feb 23, Turkey closed its border with Iran due to the number of coronavirus cases in its eastern neighbor.
(AP, 2/23/20)
2020 Feb 23, In Turkey nine people were killed in Van province in a magnitude 5.7 earthquake that struck western Iran early today. Iran’s official IRNA news agency said the earthquake affected 43 villages in the mountainous Qotour area. 75 people were reported injured.
(AP, 2/23/20)
2020 Feb 24, US Pres. Donald Trump began a two-day visit to India today, attending a rally of more than 100,000 people at a cricket stadium in the western city of Ahmedabad. More than 100,000 people packed the world's largest cricket stadium to welcome Trump. In New Delhi at least seven were killed, including a police officer, and nearly 100 others reportedly injured in clashes between hundreds of supporters and opponents of the new Indian citizenship.
(NY Times, 2/24/20)(AP, 2/24/20)(AP, 2/25/20)
2020 Feb 24, The US Supreme Court threw out a court order to seize assests belonging to the Roman Catholic archdiocese of San Juan, Puerto Rico, to pay pension benefits for Catholic school teachers, due to lack of authority.
(SFC, 2/25/20, p.A5)
2020 Feb 24, The 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals upheld rules that bar taxpayer-funded family-planning clinics from referring women for abortions. The court had already allowed the administration's changes to start taking effect while the government appealed those rulings.
(AP, 2/24/20)
2020 Feb 24, The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell by more than 950 points at the open, erasing all gains for the blue-chip index for the year, after a spike in the number of reported cases of coronavirus fueled fears that the epidemic would have a serious impact on global economic growth.
(NBC News, 2/24/20)
2020 Feb 24, Clive Cussler (b.1931), American author and maritime adventurer, died at his home in Scottsdale, Arizona. His books reached the New York Times best-seller list more than 20 times. They included "The Mediterranean Caper" (1973) and "Raise the Titanic" (1976).
(SFC, 2/28/20, p.C4)
2020 Feb 24, Diana Serra Cary (101), child star of silent films, died in Gustine, Ca. In 1921 Century Studio cast the 2½-year-old as Baby Peggy, opposite Brownie the Wonder Dog. Her films included "Playmates (1921), "Miles of Smiles" (1923), "Helen's Babies" (1924) and "Captain January" (1924). In 1996 she authored "Whatever Happened to Baby Peggy: The Autobiography of Hollywood's pioneer Child Star." She also authored "Jackie Coogan: The World's Boy King: A Biography of Hollywwod's Legendary Child Star" (2003).
(SFC, 2/26/20, p.C5)
2020 Feb 24, In Florida Gerald Nicolas (65) of Sarasota, who faced 50 child porn charges, died early today when he ran out in a front of a semi-truck on Interstate 75.
(Miami Herald, 2/24/20)
2020 Feb 24, In Florida Ron and Charlene Esserman established The Esserman Family Fund for Investigative Journalism at the Miami Foundation. Their gift will help fund an annual top prize of $10,000 and two $1,000 honorable mention prizes for South Florida's “best accountability" reporting. The gift will also support a $50,000 annual, yearlong investigative reporting fellowship for young reporters at the Miami Herald.
(AP, 2/25/20)
2020 Feb 24, Firefighters from federal and New Jersey agencies battled a forest fire for a second day in a popular hiking area that is crossed by the Appalachian Trail and a major interstate highway.
(AP, 2/24/20)
2020 Feb 24, A New York City jury reached a verdict in the rape trial of Harvey Weinstein (67). He was found guilty of criminal sexual assault and of rape in the third degree. He was found not guilty of the more serious charges of predatory sexual assault and of rape in the first degree.
(CBS News, 2/24/20)
2020 Feb 24, Three people convicted of covering up the slaying of a Virginia teenager whose body was dismembered and burned were sentenced to prison. Megan Metzger was 19 years old in 2018 when she was shot in the face during a gathering in Spotsylvania County.
(AP, 2/25/20)
2020 Feb 24, NASA scientists said the InSight lander, which touched down on the surface of Mars in November 2018 to begin the first mission to study the planet's deep interior, has since detected around 450 marsquakes, most of modest strength.
(Reuters, 2/24/20)
2020 Feb 24, Katherine Johnson (101), a mathematician who calculated rocket trajectories and earth orbits for NASA’s early space missions, died in Virginia. She was portrayed in the 2016 hit film “Hidden Figures," about pioneering black female aerospace workers.
(AP, 2/24/20)(Econ., 2/29/20, p.74)
2020 Feb 24, It was reported that there are some 4,600 Bitcoin ATM machines operating in the US, up from four in 2014.
(SFC, 2/24/20, p.D1)
2020 Feb 24, Afghanistan's minister of public health said one of three suspected cases had been confirmed in the Western province of Herat.
(NBC News, 2/24/20)
2020 Feb 24, The captain of the Stellar Banner cargo ship ran his vessel agound of the coast of Brazil to prevent it from sinking. Days later oil was detected leaking from the partially submerged ship. The ship was carrying iron ore destined for China.
(SSFC, 3/1/20, p.A4)
2020 Feb 24, Bulgaria's food safety agency authorities reported two new outbreaks of the highly pathogenic H5N8 bird flu in the southern part of the Balkan country.
(Reuters, 2/24/20)
2020 Feb 24, In eastern Canada police moved in morning to clear a rail blockade by an indigenous group that had been stopping freight and passenger traffic for more than two weeks on one of the country's busiest lines. The Tyendinaga Mohawk campaigners had barricaded the line in solidarity with a British Columbia aboriginal band seeking to stop construction of a gas pipeline over its land.
(Reuters, 2/24/20)
2020 Feb 24, In Canada Ashley Noelle Arzaga (24) died in the stabbing at a massage parlor in Toronto. Another woman and a man were also injured. A 17-year-old boy was arrested and charged with murder and attempted murder. Police later determined that this crime was in fact one in which the accused was inspired by the ideologically motivated violent extremist movement commonly known as incel: involuntary celibacy, a misogynistic online victimhood cult whose members believe they are actively being denied sex by women who have been seduced by more attractive men.
(The Independent, 5/20/20)
2020 Feb 24, Chinese authorities announced 409 new confirmed cases of the coronavirus, bringing the total number of confirmed cases to 77,150. The number of coronavirus deaths was reported at 2592. Large parts of China relaxed curbs on transport and movement of people as reported new cases of the coronavirus outside the worst-hit province fell to the lowest in a month.
(NBC News, 2/24/20)(Reuters, 2/24/20)
2020 Feb 24, Colombia said it will create a special military unit to protect its national parks and step up operations against illegal armed groups who burn vegetation to clear space to plant coca.
(Reuters, 2/24/20)
2020 Feb 24, Croatia's Pres. Zoran Milanovic condemned the burning of an effigy of two men and a child at a festival weeks after the country's highest court ruled that same-sex couples could foster children. Croatia legalized gay sex in 1977, but the country remains deeply conservative.
(Reuters, 2/24/20)
2020 Feb 24, In the Czech Republic the Prague city council agreed to change the name of the Pod Kastany square in the northern Bubenec neighborhood after Boris Nemtsov, a former Russian deputy prime minister and later opposition leader who was shot dead on a bridge near the Kremlin in February 2015.
(Bloomberg, 2/24/20)
2020 Feb 24, Heavy rains pummeled the Egyptian capital of Cairo and other parts of the country, causing massive traffic jams and flooding on many key roads.
(AP, 2/24/20)
2020 Feb 24, In Germany at least 52 people were hurt when the driver of a silver Mercedes station wagon drove into a carnival procession in Volkmarsen. A German man (29) was soon arrested in connection with the attack.
(Business Insider, 2/25/20)
2020 Feb 24, In Greece protests group on three eastern islands began setting up roadblocks aimed at stopping the government from building new migrant detention centers.
(SFC, 2/25/20, p.A2)
2020 Feb 24, Iran's government vowed to be transparent after being accused of covering up the deadliest coronavirus outbreak outside China. The coronavirus death toll jumped by four to 12, by far the highest outside China. There were 47 confirmed cases.
(AFP, 2/24/20)(NBC News, 2/24/20)
2020 Feb 24, Iraq's health ministry said local health officials in the Shi'ite city of Najaf have detected the first case of coronavirus in the country, an Iranian theology student.
(Reuters, 2/24/20)
2020 Feb 24, Italy recorded a 6th coronavirus death as it became the worst-hit country in Europe, bringing the total number of cases across the country to 219. Police manned checkpoints around quarantined towns in the north and residents stocked up on food as the country became the focal point of the outbreak in Europe and fears of its cross-border spread.
(Reuters, 2/24/20)(AP, 2/24/20)
2020 Feb 24, The UN mission in Libya said that the country’s warring sides had agreed to turn a shaky cease-fire into a formal deal, stirring modest hopes after weeks of sporadic violence that derailed negotiations.
(AP, 2/24/20)
2020 Feb 24, Malaysia's King Sultan Abdullah Sultan Ahmad Shah accepted PM Mahathir Mohamad's shocking resignation but reappointed him as interim leader following the collapse of the ruling alliance in a major political upheaval less than two years after its historic election victory.
(AP, 2/24/20)
2020 Feb 24, Mauritania joined the 47-nation UN Human Rights Council for the first time as the Council's 2020 session opened in Geneva. Biram Dah Abeid, the leader of a Mauritanian anti-slavery group, called on UN members to pressure Mauritania, the last country in the world to abolish slavery, to end the practice as it joined the body responsible for promoting and protecting human rights around the world.
(Reuters, 2/26/20)
2020 Feb 24, Mongolia's National Emergency Commission halted all flights from South Korea and will block entry through its borders until March 2 as it steps up its efforts to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
(Reuters, 2/24/20)
2020 Feb 24, Gaza militants resumed their intense bombardment of southern Israel, with some rockets slipping through Israel's Iron Dome defense system and one landing in the yard of a kindergarten. The Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad said it had ended its "military response" against Israel after two days of Gaza rockets and Israeli air strikes.
(AP, 2/24/20)(Reuters, 2/24/20)
2020 Feb 24, Romania's top court overturned President Klaus Iohannis's re-nomination of ousted Liberal Party leader Ludovic Orban as prime minister, potentially derailing plans to trigger an early parliamentary election.
(Reuters, 2/24/20)
2020 Feb 24, In Somalia a US military airstrike killed a worker for a telecom company on the outskirts of the rebel-held town of Jilib. US Africa Command and Somalia’s government said the airstrike killed a member of the al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab extremist group. But officials at Hormuud said the airstrike killed their local manager in Jilib.
(AP, 2/25/20)
2020 Feb 24, In South Africa the Commission for Gender Equality (CGE) reported that dozens of HIV-positive South African women have been sterilized without consent or after being pressured to agree just before giving birth, sometimes being told while in pain on their way to the operating theater.
(Reuters, 2/24/20)
2020 Feb 24, South Korea reported 833 confirmed cases with 8 dead. Health officials reported 231 new cases of COVID-19. A military spokesperson said there were 13 confirmed COVID-19 cases among the troops.
(NBC News, 2/24/20)
2020 Feb 24, Prominent Tanzanian journalist Erick Kabendera, arrested in July, was released after pleading guilty of tax evasion and money laundering in a case critics had said was politically motivated.
(Reuters, 2/24/20)
2020 Feb 24, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres issued a “call to action" to countries, businesses and all people to help renew and revive human rights across the globe, laying out a seven-point plan amid concerns about climate change, conflict and repression.
(AP, 2/24/20)
2020 Feb 24, A study from the UN's World Food Program said one of every three people in Venezuela is struggling to put enough food on the table to meet minimum nutrition requirements.
(SFC, 2/25/20, p.A2)
2020 Feb 25, US President Donald Trump, speaking in India, said the US stock market will crash if he loses the election this year.
(Reuters, 2/25/20)
2020 Feb 25, It was reported that the Trump administration is turning to federal courts to force state and local officials to turn over records about immigrants in custody in a novel effort to circumvent so-called "sanctuary" policies.
(Reuters, 2/25/20)
2020 Feb 25, The US Supreme Court ruled 5-4 barring a lawsuit against a Border Patrol agent for fatally shooting a 15-year-old Mexican boy in 2010 on Mexican soil from across the border in Texas, refusing to open the door for foreign nationals to pursue civil rights cases in American courts in such incidents.
(Reuters, 2/25/20)
2020 Feb 25, The US Center for Disease Control warned the American public to prepare for an outbreak of the disease, which has spawned more than 80,000 cases around the world but relatively few so far in the US.
(AP, 2/26/20)
2020 Feb 25, Michelle Janavs (49), the heiress to the Hot Pockets fortune, was sentenced to five months in prison after admitting to paying bribes to a fixer who promised to get her two daughters into the University of Southern California.
(The Week, 2/25/20)
2020 Feb 25, In Chicago a shooting at a crowded convenience store left a young nursing student killed and four other people wounded. Jaya Beemon (18) was pronounced dead at a hospital after she was hit in the neck while apparently buying snacks. In December a 15-year-old boy has been charged with murder.
(AP, 12/17/20)
2020 Feb 25, In North Carolina Democratic rivals held a critical debate ahead of the state's primary that could dramatically reshape the race. Bernie Sanders labeled Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu a "reactionary racist" and said he'd consider reversing President Donald Trump's move of the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
(AP, 2/25/20)(AP, 2/26/20)
2020 Feb 25, New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed a red-flag gun bill that will allow state district courts to order the temporary surrender of firearms, and she urged sheriffs to resign if they still refuse to enforce it.
(AP, 2/25/20)
2020 Feb 25, In Washington state Amazon opened its first cashier-less supermarket in Seattle, the latest sign that Amazon is serious about shaking up the $800 billion grocery industry.
(AP, 2/25/20)
2020 Feb 25, American Airlines Group Inc said it has signed a strategic partnership deal with Qatar Airways and is reviving its codeshare agreement.
(Reuters, 2/25/20)
2020 Feb 25, Robert Iger (b.1951) announced he would step down as CEO of The Walt Disney Company effective immediately, naming Bob Chapek, chairman of Disney Parks, Experiences and Products, as his successor, making him the 7th CEO in the company's history. Iger had led Disney since 2005.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Iger)
2020 Feb 25, Tesco, Britain's biggest supermarket chain, opened its first high street cashless store, marking a shift among shoppers to electronic payments from coins and notes.
(Reuters, 2/25/20)
2020 Feb 25, Generic drugmaker Mallinckrodt, based in England, said it has a tentative $1.6 billion deal to settle lawsuits over its role in the US opioid crisis.
(SFC, 2/26/20, p.A5)
2020 Feb 25, It was reported that at least 24 people were killed in clashes between Burundi police and unidentified militants in the outskirts of Bujumbura.
(Bloomberg, 2/25/20)
2020 Feb 25, In Canada protesters in Ontario and Quebec erected new rail blockades in solidarity with opponents of the Coastal GasLink pipeline project in British Columbia.
(SFC, 2/26/20, p.A2)
2020 Feb 25, Mainland China had 406 new confirmed cases of coronavirus infections, down from 508 cases a day earlier. The death toll from the outbreak reached 2,715, up by 52 from the previous day.
(Reuters, 2/26/20)
2020 Feb 25, In eastern China the Ningbo Intermediate People's Court announced that Gui Minhai, a Hong Kong-based Swedish man who sold gossipy books about Chinese leaders, has been sentenced to ten years in prison and that he would not appeal.
(SFC, 2/26/20, p.A4)
2020 Feb 25, Former Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak (b.1928) died. He was the autocratic face of stability in the Middle East for nearly 30 years before being forced from power in the 2011 Arab Spring uprising.
(AP, 2/25/20)
2020 Feb 25, In France Asia Bibi, a Christian woman from Pakistan, received her diploma as a Citizen of Honor of the city of Paris, a title awarded her in 2015. She had spent eight years on death row in Pakistan on charges of blasphemy. Bibi said she will request asylum in France.
(SFC, 2/26/20, p.A2)
2020 Feb 25, Iran said its coronavirus outbreak, the deadliest outside China, has infected the country's deputy health minister. The health ministry confirmed three new deaths and 34 new infections, bringing the overall tally to 15 deaths and 95 cases.
(AFP, 2/25/20)
2020 Feb 25, In Iraq religious officials closed down the Imam Ali mausoleum in Najaf, allowing visitors access only to its surroundings due to the coronavirus outbreak. The health ministry advised against non-essential travel to Najaf and urged citizens to refrain from holding large gatherings.
(AP, 2/25/20)
2020 Feb 25, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu said he was advancing settlement construction in a contentious open area of the West Bank. The move was seen as a bid by Netanyahu to secure electoral support from West Bank settlers.
(AP, 2/25/20)
2020 Feb 25, Japan's ANA Holdings Inc said it will buy 15 Boeing Co 787 Dreamliners worth $5 billion at list prices, the first commercial order announcement for the US plane maker this year as it wrestles with the grounding of the smaller 737 MAX.
(Reuters, 2/25/20)
2020 Feb 25, In Kazakhstan activist Dulat Agadil died in a jail cell, a day after police took him in on charges of contempt of court and insulting a judge. Authorities, including Pres. Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, said his death was caused by acute cardiovascular failure.
(AP, 3/1/20)
2020 Feb 25, Libya's National Oil Corporation said financial losses over a protracted blockade of its vital oil fields and ports have rapidly swelled, surpassing $2 billion.
(AP, 2/25/20)
2020 Feb 25, In Mali three Irish soldiers were injured in a roadside bomb attack on a multinational convoy of UN peacekeepers about 80 km (50 miles) northeast of the city of Gao.
(AP, 2/26/20)
2020 Feb 25, Spain responded to weeks of protests by farmers by announcing steps to support prices for their goods. The government said it will prohibit sales of agricultural products below cost price by decree.
(Bloomberg, 2/25/20)
2020 Feb 25, In northwestern Syrian an airstrike on a rebel-held city struck a school in Idlib, killing three people.
(AP, 2/25/20)
2020 Feb 25, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said two Turkish soldiers have been killed in fighting in Libya and defended Ankara's move to also send Syrian opposition fighters to the North African country.
(AP, 2/25/20)
2020 Feb 25, The United Arab Emirates became the latest to clamp down on Iran, halting all passenger and cargo flights to and from the country due to the coronavirus outbreak, a similar move to other nearby countries including Armenia, Kuwait, Iraq and Turkey.
(AP, 2/25/20)
2020 Feb 25, The UN Security Council renewed its sanctions regime on Yemen for another year, after tense negotiations between Britain and Russia, which threatened to veto any mention, even implicit, of Iran.
(AFP, 2/25/20)
2020 Feb 26, US Pres. Donald Trump announced he was putting Vice President Mike Pence in charge of the effort to stem the spread of the coronavirus in the US.
(Yahoo News, 2/26/20)
2020 Feb 26, The USA stepped up travel advisories for Iran, Italy and Mongolia, warning of the risks of coronavirus or disruptions related to efforts to control the disease's spread.
(Reuters, 2/26/20)
2020 Feb 26, US officials said the first clinical trial in the US of a possible coronavirus treatment is underway in Nebraska and is eventually expected to include 400 patients at 50 locations around the world. At least two patient studies are already underway in China, including the other study involving remdesivir, which is made by Gilead Sciences.
(AP, 2/26/20)
2020 Feb 26, The United States declared Iraqi Shiite paramilitary leader Ahmad al-Hamidawi, secretary general of armed faction Kataib Hezbollah, to be a terrorist after a series of rocket attacks, vowing to step up pressure on his ally Iran.
(AFP, 2/26/20)
2020 Feb 26, The United States granted a license to allow for certain humanitarian trade transactions with Iran's sanctioned central bank, a move it said was in step with the formalization of a Swiss humanitarian aid channel.
(Reuters, 2/27/20)
2020 Feb 26, The US House of Representatives approved legislation designating lynching as a hate crime under federal law. The bill was named after Emmet Till, sixty-five years after the 14-year-old was lynched in Mississippi.
(AP, 2/26/20)
2020 Feb 26, US health officials said a new coronavirus case in California, a resident of Solano County, could be the first in the US that has no known connection to travel abroad or another known case, a possible sign the virus is spreading in a US community. The patient was brought to UC Davis Medical Center from another Northern California hospital on Feb. 19, but it was four days before the CDC heeded a request to test the patient for COVID-19.
(AP, 2/27/20)
2020 Feb 26, US federal prosecutors said a subsidiary of utility operator NiSource Inc has agreed to pay $53 million and plead guilty to breaking federal Pipeline Safety Act and to resolve an investigation into catastrophic gas explosions in three Massachusetts communities in September, 2018.
(Reuters, 2/26/20)(SFC, 2/27/20, p.A5)
2020 Feb 26, Biogen Inc. began hosting a two-day leadership meeting in Boston. About 175 executives gathered for a buffet dinner and cocktails at the Marriott Long Wharf overlooking Boston Harbor. On March 2 the company’s chief medical officer sent an email informing everyone who attended the leadership meeting that some people had fallen ill and telling them to contact a health care provider if they felt sick. At least 99 employees and their contacts became ill with the coronavirus.
(NY Times, 4/13/20)
2020 Feb 26, New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, the Senate Democratic leader, unveiled an $8.5 billion request to respond to the coronavirus outbreak, more than triple Pres. Trump's request.
(AP, 2/26/20)
2020 Feb 26, John Denton (26), a former neo-Nazi leader in Texas, was arrested and charges with a series of phony bomb threats made in Virginia.
(SFC, 2/27/20, p.A5)
2020 Feb 26, An employee in the US Citizenship and Immigration Services office in Seattle developed flu-like symptoms after visiting a nursing home in Kirkland, Washington. On March 3 the US Department of Homeland Security closed its field office in Seattle.
(Bloomberg, 3/3/20)
2020 Feb 26, In Wisconsin Anthony Ferril (51), a Molson Coors Beverage Co employee, shot ande killed five co-workers before taking his own life at the company's beer-brewing complex in Milwaukee.
(Reuters, 2/27/20)(SFC, 2/28/20, p.A6)
2020 Feb 26, Algeria and Greece reported their first cases of the coronavirus.
(Reuters, 2/26/20)
2020 Feb 26, Bahrain's number of coronavirus infections rose to 26.
(Reuters, 2/26/20)
2020 Feb 26, Brazil confirmed the first case of coronavirus in Latin America, a man in Sao Paulo who returned recently from Italy. The disease reached the Amazon region by mid-March.
(Reuters, 2/26/20)(Reuters, 4/10/20)
2020 Feb 26, Brazil's Environment Ministry reported the firing of two senior climate officials, leaving the posts vacant at a time when the country is under growing scrutiny for the greenhouse gases released by clearing the Amazon rainforest. The right-wing government of President Jair Bolsonaro had already reduced the emphasis on climate change within the ministry, turning a vice-minister-level role on climate change into a directorship.
(Reuters, 2/27/20)
2020 Feb 26, A second person died in France overnight as health officials tried to find out how the college teacher, who had not visited any country with a known outbreak, had caught the new coronavirus disease.
(Reuters, 2/26/20)
2020 Feb 26, In Germany two people tested positive for coronavirus, taking the total to 18. Officials said a German couple who contracted the coronavirus had taken part in local carnival celebrations and also visited the Netherlands in the 10 days before they were diagnosed.
(Reuters, 2/26/20)
2020 Feb 26, Germany's highest court overturned a ban on medically assisted suicide.
(SFC, 2/27/20, p.A2)
2020 Feb 26, Hong Kong's government proposed a cash handout of 10,000 Hong Kong dollars ($1,282) to residents to boost the city’s flagging economy.
(https://tinyurl.com/wbsaxn6)(Econ, 3/21/20, p.21)
2020 Feb 26, Indian authorities said at least 24 people were killed and 189 injured in three days of clashes in New Delhi that coincided with President Donald Trump's first state visit to India, with the death toll expected to rise as hospitals continue to take in the wounded. The 72-hour clash between Hindus and Muslims left at least 40 dead and hundreds injured.
(AP, 2/26/20)(AP, 2/28/20)
2020 Feb 26, Iranian cyberpolice announced the arrests of 24 people accused of online rumor-mongering about the spread of a coronavirus outbreak that has claimed 19 lives in the country. The health ministry announced four more deaths and 44 new infections, including in six previously unaffected provinces. This brought the total to 139 cases.
(AFP, 2/26/20)
2020 Feb 26, Iraq announced sweeping measures late today to try to contain the spread of the coronavirus, ordering the closure of schools and universities, cafes, cinemas and other public spaces until March 7. Iraq also banned travel to or from some of the worst affected countries.
(AFP, 2/27/20)
2020 Feb 26, OurCrowd, a leading Israeli venture capital firm, said it has hired the Trump administration's former Mideast envoy Jason Greenblatt as a business developer for the region.
(AP, 2/26/20)
2020 Feb 26, Italy become a frontline in the global outbreak of the coronavirus, with over 370 cases and 12 deaths.
(Reuters, 2/26/20)
2020 Feb 26, Italy's Enel said it agreed on the need to provide the country with an ultrabroadband network, after Economy Minister Roberto Gualtieri urged parties involved in the plan to find an agreement.
(Reuters, 2/26/20)
2020 Feb 26, Japanese PM Shinzo Abe called for sports and cultural events to be scrapped or curtailed for two weeks as domestic cases of coronavirus increased to 175.
(Reuters, 2/26/20)
2020 Feb 26, Kuwait's coronavirus cases rose to 25 after 13 more cases were confirmed.
(Reuters, 2/26/20)
2020 Feb 26, Rival Libyan politicians met for UN-sponsored political talks in Geneva aimed at ending the latest round of fighting over the country's capital, Tripoli.
(AP, 2/26/20)
2020 Feb 26, North Macedonia said it has confirmed its first case of the coronavirus infection, diagnosed in a woman who recently arrived from Italy.
(Reuters, 2/26/20)
2020 Feb 26, Pakistan said it has detected its first two cases of the coronavirus.
(AFP, 2/26/20)
2020 Feb 26, Philippine Pres. Rodrigo Duterte said Filipino forces can fight insurgents and Muslim extremists without american military help.
(SFC, 2/27/20, p.A4)
2020 Feb 26, The International Monetary Fund said it had secured sufficient financing to provide $334 million in debt relief to Somalia, a milestone the bank said brought it one step closer to a decision on forgiveness of most of Somalia's $5.3 billion in debt.
(Reuters, 2/26/20)
2020 Feb 26, In South Korea the coronavirus has infected 1,260 people. 20 South Korean soldiers and one American have tested positive.
(AP, 2/26/20)(Reuters, 2/26/20)
2020 Feb 26, Spain’s PM Pedro Sánchez and Quim Torra, the leader of Catalonia, opened formal talks in hopes of resolving the festering political crisis provoked by the region’s separatist movement.
(AP, 2/26/20)
2020 Feb 26, Thailand reported three new cases of coronavirus, taking its total tally to 40.
(AP, 2/26/20)
2020 Feb 26, World health officials said the coronavirus illness had now spread to 37 counties. The WHO reported that the number of new cases reported outside China exceeded the number of new cases in China for the first time.
(AP, 2/26/20)
2020 Feb 27, A US federal agency confirmed that a government whistleblower has filed a complaint alleging that some federal workers did not have the necessary protective gear or training when they were deployed to help Americans evacuated from China during the coronavirus outbreak.
(AP, 2/27/20)
2020 Feb 27, US federal officials issued new rules allowing more people to be tested for the coronavirus.
(SFC, 2/28/20, p.A1)
2020 Feb 27, A US government survey said about 4 in 10 American adults are obese, and nearly 1 in 10 is severely so.
(SFC, 2/28/20, p.A7)
2020 Feb 27, The US Food and Drug Administration approved Biohaven Pharmaceutical Holding Co Ltd's oral pill for relieving pain after the onset of migraine headaches.
(Reuters, 2/28/20)
2020 Feb 27, In Alabama Dannielle Nicole Martin (32) and grandmother, Vickie Seale Higgenbotham (58) were given maximum sentences of 20 years in prison after pleading guilty to aggravated child abuse. The 13-year-old boy had been found naked and chained to a door.
(AP, 2/28/20)
2020 Feb 27, California officials reported that the state's snowpack is just 46% of normal.
(SFC, 2/28/20, p.C1)
2020 Feb 27, The Iowa Democratic Party released updated results of the Iowa caucuses after the completion of a recount requested by the campaigns of Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg. In the new results, Buttigieg had 562.954 state delegate equivalents and Sanders had 562.021 state delegate equivalents out of 2,151 counted.
(AP, 2/27/20)
2020 Feb 27, In Maryland Catherine Pugh (69), the disgraced former mayor of Baltimore, was sentenced to three years in federal prison for arranging fraudulent sales of her self-published children’s books to nonprofits and foundations to promote her political career and fund her run for the city’s highest office.
(AP, 2/28/20)
2020 Feb 27, A federal judge struck down two Ohio state policies that stopped some refugees and children of immigrants from getting driver's licenses.
(SFC, 2/28/20, p.A5)
2020 Feb 27, Wall Street's main indexes tumbled, putting them more than 10% below record highs set earlier this month.
(Reuters, 2/27/20)
2020 Feb 27, Oil prices fell for a fifth straight day, plunging to their lowest levels since January 2019 as more new coronavirus cases outside China fanned fears that a pandemic could slow the global economy.
(Reuters, 2/27/20)
2020 Feb 27, Scientists reported the discovery of the biggest explosion seen in the universe, originating from a super-massive black hole in the Ophiuchus cluster of thousands of galaxies 390 million light-years away. The explosion was so large it carved out a crater in the hot gas that could hold 15 Milky Ways. The first hint of this giant explosion actually came in 2016.
(AP, 2/28/20)
2020 Feb 27, An African Union official said African leaders have decided to work on deploying 3,000 troops to West Africa’s troubled Sahel region as extremist attacks surged. Over the last year more than 2,600 people have been killed and more than half a million displaced in Burkina Faso alone.
(AP, 2/27/20)(SFC, 2/28/20, p.A3)
2020 Feb 27, The British Court of Appeal ruled that a plan to build a third runway at London's Heathrow Airport was unlawful because it violated Britain's commitments to climate change.
(SFC, 2/28/20, p.A2)
2020 Feb 27, China said the number of new deaths stood at 29, the lowest daily rate since Jan. 28 and reported 433 new cases. The coronavirus has now killed 2,744 people in the country, mostly in the central province of Hubei.
(Reuters, 2/27/20)
2020 Feb 27, China-BASED Huawei announced that it will build its first European manufacturing plant in France, as the Chinese telecom giant seeks to ease worldwide concerns stoked by US charges that Beijing could use its equipment for spying.
(Reuters, 2/27/20)
2020 Feb 27, Top supplier Godrej Agrovet Ltd said a false rumor that the coronavirus can be spread by chickens has slashed Indian poultry sales by almost 50%.
(Reuters, 2/27/20)
2020 Feb 27, It was reported that the coronavirus has killed 26 people in Iran, the highest toll outside of China where it originated. Many of the over 240 confirmed cases in the region have links to Iran, including dozens in Kuwait and Bahrain, six in Iraq and two in Lebanon.
(AP, 2/27/20)
2020 Feb 27, Iraq announced the first confirmed case of coronavirus in Baghdad, taking nationwide infections to six and raising concerns about the capacity of the dilapidated health system to respond.
(AFP, 2/27/20)
2020 Feb 27, Israel's Supreme Court ruled against a 2018 surrogacy law that critics said discriminated against same-sex couples and which sparked uproar in the LGBT community when it was passed.
(AP, 2/27/20)
2020 Feb 27, Japan's PM Shinzo Abe told all schools to close until April to help contain the spread of the coronavirus.
(Econ., 3/7/20, p.36)
2020 Feb 27, A Japanese woman tested positive for coronavirus for a second time as the number of confirmed cases in Japan, excluding the 704 on the quarantined cruise liner, rose above 190. The death toll rose to eight after another death was reported in Hokkaido.
(Reuters, 2/27/20)
2020 Feb 27, Kosovo said it will gradually lift tariffs on Serbian imports, a step toward easing a standoff between the neighbors that Donald Trump’s envoy to the region criticized as insufficient.
(Bloomberg, 2/28/20)
2020 Feb 27, In Kuwait confirmed cases of coronavirus rose to 43.
(AP, 2/27/20)
2020 Feb 27, Lebanon confirmed the country's third case of coronavirus, after a man arriving from Iran on Feb. 24 tested positive.
(Reuters, 2/27/20)
2020 Feb 27, Libya's UN-backed government says 21 civilians have been killed, including at least 13 children, since Jan. 9 casting doubt on a fragile cease-fire the Tripoli-based government and rival factions in the east agreed last month to observe.
(AP, 2/27/20)
2020 Feb 27, Malawi became the latest country in southern African to relax laws against growing and selling cannabis, making it legal for use in the production of medicines and hemp fibers used in industry.
(Reuters, 2/27/20)
2020 Feb 27, It was reported that North Korea has postponed the new school term to prevent the spread of the new coronavirus.
(AFP, 2/27/20)
2020 Feb 27, Russian state television said Turkish military specialists in Syria's Idlib region were using shoulder-fired missiles to try to shoot down Russian and Syrian military aircraft.
(Reuters, 2/27/20)
2020 Feb 27, Saudi Arabia banned pilgrims from visiting Islam's holiest sites as the number of deaths jumped in neighboring Iran. Japan and Iraq ordered the closure of schools. Saudi Arabia made the unprecedented decision to halt the umrah pilgrimage amid the global outbreak of the coronavirus. The lesser umrah pilgrimage can be performed year-round. Nearly 20 million Muslims undertake the umrah pilgrimage each year, including more than 7 million foreign travelers.
(AFP, 2/27/20) (Good Morning America, 2/27/20)
2020 Feb 27, South Korea reported 334 additional cases of the new coronavirus.
(Reuters, 2/27/20)
2020 Feb 27, In northwestern Syria Turkey-backed Syrian opposition fighters retook the strategic town of Saraqeb from government forces, cutting a key highway just days after the government reopened it for the first time since 2012. Syrian state media said President Bashar Assad's forces made major gains to the south controlling almost the entire southern part of Idlib province after capturing more than 20 villages. Violence in Idlib province left three more Turkish soldiers dead, raising the number of Turkish troops killed in Syria this month to 21.
(AP, 2/27/20)
2020 Feb 27, In southern Syria an Israeli drone fired a missile at a car, killing one person,. An opposition war monitor said the man targeted was an anti-Israel operative. Quneitra Gov. Humam Dibyat identified the person killed as Adel Tawil and said he worked at a police station and was targeted while returning home from work.
(AP, 2/27/20)
2020 Feb 27, In northwestern Syria at least 33 Turkish military personnel were killed in an attack late today, and more than 30 others were injured. The deaths followed a precision strike on a two-storey building in the village of Balioun.
(The Guardian, 2/28/20)
2020 Feb 27, In Tunisia Elyes Fakhfakh (b.1972) began serving as prime minister.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elyes_Fakhfakh)(Econ., 8/15/20, p.41)
2020 Feb 27, In the past 24 hours, the WHO recorded seven nations that announced their first cases of the novel coronavirus: Brazil, Georgia, Greece, North Macedonia, Norway, Pakistan and Romania.
(Good Morning America, 2/27/20)
2020 Feb 28, US Pres. Donald Trump accused Democrats of exaggerating the danger of the coronavirus in order to destroy his presidency.
(SFC, 2/29/20, p.A5)
2020 Feb 28, President Donald Trump picked Rep. John Ratcliffe again to be the nation's top intelligence official, just months after abruptly ending an earlier effort to install him amid bipartisan criticism that the Texas Republican was unqualified for the post.
(AP, 2/28/20)
2020 Feb 28, A US federal appeals court found a central pillar of the Trump administration’s immigration agenda legally invalid, ruling that asylum-seekers must be allowed into the United States while their cases weave through US immigration courts. The court stayed its decision in order to allow the government time to appeal the ruling.
(NY Times, 2/29/20)
2020 Feb 28, The number of coronavirus cases in the United States was confirmed at 62. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also confirmed that four more patients tested positive for the virus in California, Oregon and Washington states.
(Good Morning America, 2/29/20)
2020 Feb 28, The US Justice Department announced that France-based Sanofi SA has agreed to pay $11.85 million to resolve US allegations that it used a charity that helps cover Medicare patients' out-of-pocket drug costs as a means to pay them kickbacks to use a high-priced multiple sclerosis drug.
(Reuters, 2/28/20)
2020 Feb 28, The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted 3-2 to adopt rules to auction a key band spectrum for wireless use that includes up to $9.7 billion in potential incentive payments to satellite companies.
(Reuters, 2/28/20)
2020 Feb 28, In northern California a man went on a rampage at a mental health and rehab center in Carmichael fatally stabbing two people. Martin Raymond lackey-Garcia (39) was booked for investigation of murder.
(SFC, 3/2/20, p.A6)
2020 Feb 28, Joe Coulombe (b.1930), founder of the Trader Joe's grocery stores, died. He opened his first store in Pasadena, Ca., in 1967. He sold the chain to German retailer Aldi in 1979 but remianed CEO until 1988.
(SSFC, 3/1/20, p.A9)
2020 Feb 28, St. Louis police officer Nathaniel Hendren (30), accused of accidentally killing a female colleague while playing a variation of Russian roulette, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to seven years in prison. He was accused of fatally shooting Katlyn Alix (24), also a St. Louis police officer, at his home in January 2019 while he was supposed to be on duty elsewhere.
(AP, 2/28/20)
2020 Feb 28, In New York the embattled Roman Catholic Diocese of Buffalo filed for bankruptcy protection, taking another major step in its effort to recover from a clergy misconduct scandal that‘s been the basis for hundreds of lawsuits, Vatican intervention and the resignation of its bishop.
(AP, 2/28/20)
2020 Feb 28, Apple Inc agreed to pay up to $500 million to settle litigation accusing it of quietly slowing down older iPhones as it launched new models, to induce owners to buy replacement phones or batteries. The settlement calls for Apple to pay consumers $25 per iPhone, which may be adjusted up or down depending on how many iPhones are eligible, with a minimum total payout of $310 million. This still required approval by US District Judge Edward Davila in San Jose.
(Reuters, 3/2/20)
2020 Feb 28, Geneva-based Trafigura, a global commodities trader, said it had formed a joint venture with US refiner Phillips 66 to build a major deepwater port in Texas capable of handling supertankers, ditching its own competing project.
(Reuters, 2/28/20)
2020 Feb 28, Freeman Dyson (b.1923), English-born American theoretical physicist and mathematician, died in New Jersey. He is known for his work in quantum electrodynamics, solid-state physics, astronomy and nuclear engineering.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeman_Dyson)(Econ, 3/14/20, p.74)
2020 Feb 28, The list of countries hit by the COVID-19 illness edged toward 60 as Azerbaijan, Belarus, Lithuania, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Nigeria reported their first cases.
(AP, 2/28/20)
2020 Feb 28, Brazil confirmed its first case of the new coronavirus. The disease reached the Amazon region by mid-March.
(Reuters, 4/10/20)
2020 Feb 28, China's death toll from the coronavirus reached 2,788, up 44. Cases climbed to 78,824, up 327.
(Bloomberg, 2/28/20)
2020 Feb 28, In Congo DRC General Delphin Kahimbi, the country's top army spy, died following media reports that he was being investigated for allegedly seeking to destabilize the country. His wife said he had suffered a heart attack. President Felix Tshisekedi later said his death was apparently due to hanging.
(Reuters, 3/7/20)
2020 Feb 28, Cyprus' interior minister accused Turkey of deliberately channeling migrants for months to the ethnically-divided island's Greek Cypriot south to change the composition of its population.
(AP, 2/28/20)
2020 Feb 28, A Czech court convicted imam Samer Shehadeh, a former Prague Muslim leader, of being part of a terror group and financing terrorism, sentencing him to 10 years in prison. Two other people in the same case were convicted of terror charges in absentia by Prague’s Municipal Court. One received a prison term of 11 years and the other was given a term of six years.
(AP, 2/28/20)
2020 Feb 28, In France a major fire was reported ongoing in the area of the Gare de Lyon railway station in southeastern Paris.
(Reuters, 2/28/20)
2020 Feb 28, Hong Kong Hong Kong media tycoon and a prominent democracy advocate Jimmy Lai (72), who has long denounced as a traitor by Chinese state media, was among activists swept up in a fresh wave of arrests in the Asian financial hub. Lai was arrested on suspicion of participating in an unlawful assembly last year and intimidating a reporter in 2017. He was soon given police bail.
(Bloomberg, 2/28/20)
2020 Feb 28, Iran reported eight new deaths from coronavirus, raising its toll to 34. The health ministry said 143 cases had been detected over the past 24 hours, increasing the total of confirmed infections to 388. At least seven officials in the country have tested positive for the coronavirus.
(AFP, 2/28/20)(The Week, 2/28/20)
2020 Feb 28, In Iran a fire erupted in a residential building in the city of Qom before dawn, killing at least five people, including a 2-year-old, and injuring 38.
(AP, 2/28/20)
2020 Feb 28, Italy reported that four more people have died from coronavirus, bringing the total to 21, while the number of those testing positive for the illness jumped to 821.
(AP, 2/28/20)
2020 Feb 28, Mexico said a man (35) has been confirmed as the first coronavirus case in the country. The man had taken a trip to Italy in February. Mexican health officials confirmed three coronavirus cases, all with mild symptoms and likely from the same source.
(Bloomberg, 2/28/20)
2020 Feb 28, New Zealand health officials said the country had its first case of the new coronavirus, a person in their 60s who recently returned from Iran.
(AP, 2/28/20)
2020 Feb 28, A Polish woman (32) suspected of being the head of a Polish drug trafficking group based in Krakow was arrested in Slovakia after a joint operation by Polish, Hungarian and Slovakian security forces. Police said the woman had reorganized the gang in 2017 by recruiting members of the KS Cracovia soccer team's extremist fans to engage in international drug trafficking.
(Reuters, 3/1/20)
2020 Feb 28, In Russia Moscow's deputy mayor said 88 foreign nationals will be deported for allegedly violating quarantine measures imposed on them as a precaution against the coronavirus.
(AP, 2/28/20)
2020 Feb 28, In Somalia 11 people were killed over the last 24 hours in fighting between national forces and the Ahlu Sunnah Wal Jama'a (ASWJ) militia, a group of moderate Sufi Muslims which pushed al Shabaab out of its territory.
(Reuters, 3/2/20)
2020 Feb 28, South Korea confirmed 256 more cases, bringing total to 2,022, doubling in two days and raising alarm about the worst outbreak outside of neighboring China.
(Bloomberg, 2/28/20)
2020 Feb 28, Spain's High Court denied a US extradition request for former Venezuelan minister Javier Alvarado Ochoa in connection with an investigation into money-laundering. It said it had refused extradition because the US warrant was based on alleged crimes also under investigation in Spain, and because Alvarado Ochoa also holds Spanish citizenship.
(AP, 2/28/20)
2020 Feb 28, In northwest Syria Lebanon's militant Hezbollah group lost at least eight fighters in skirmishes with insurgents and airstrikes by Turkey's air force. 48 Syrian soldiers have also been killed in the last 48 hours in Turkish bombardments and drone attacks in the region.
(AP, 2/29/20)
2020 Feb 28, Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said his country's borders with Europe were open, making good on a longstanding threat to let refugees into the continent as thousands of migrants gathered at the frontier with Greece.
(AP, 2/29/20)
2020 Feb 28, Refugees in Turkey headed towards European frontiers after an official declared that borders had been thrown open, a response to the escalating war in Syria. Greece began to forcibly turn back migrants.
(Reuters, 2/28/20)(Econ., 3/7/20, p.47)
2020 Feb 29, The United States signed a peace agreement with Taliban militants aimed at bringing an end to 18 years of bloodshed in Afghanistan that began after 9/11 and allowing US troops to return home from America's longest war. The historic deal was signed by chief negotiators from the two sides in the Qatari capital of Doha. The Trump administration negotiated a withdrawal agreement with the Taliban that excluded the Afghan government, freed 5,000 imprisoned Taliban soldiers and set a date certain of May 1, 2021, for the final withdrawal.
(AP, 2/29/20)(https://tinyurl.com/fhasuvhb)
2020 Feb 29, US health officials reported three more cases of the new coronavirus transmitted to people who did not travel overseas or come in contact with anyone known to be ill. The first US coronavirus-related death was reported in Washington State.
(AFP, 2/29/20)(The Daily Beast, 2/29/20)
2020 Feb 29, In New Mexico Antonio Valenzuela (40) was choked to death by a police officer after he fled from a traffic stop in Las Cruces. The officer can be heard on police camera footage saying, “I’m going to [expletive] choke you out, bro" as he chased Valenzuela. In August his family agreed to a $6.5 million settlement with the city which agreed to ban all choke holds.
(https://tinyurl.com/yba7zg2x) (SFC, 8/120/20, p.A4)
2020 Feb 29, In South Carolina Joe Biden won 60% of the votes cast by non-white voters, dominating a crowded Democratic field among a group that made up more than half of the electorate. Bernie Sanders won roughly 14% of African American voters, while billionaire Tom Steyer won 15% and dropped out of the race..
(AP, 2/29/20)
2020 Feb 29, Azerbaijan said it had closed its border with Iran for two weeks to prevent the spread of coronavirus, after the death toll in Iran rose to 43, the highest number outside of China.
(Reuters, 2/29/20)
2020 Feb 29, It was reported that Philip Rutnam, one of the UK’s most senior civil servants, quit his job at the government department responsible for policing, counter-terrorism and immigration over what he claims was an orchestrated campaign against him.
(Bloomberg, 2/29/20)
2020 Feb 29, The number of people infected with coronavirus in the United Kingdom rose to 23, after three more patients tested positive.
(Reuters, 2/29/20)
2020 Feb 29, China reported 47 more coronavirus deaths and 427 new infections.
(AFP, 2/29/20)
2020 Feb 29, In Cyprus dozens of people pushed aside police barriers to protest the closing of a crossing point in the medieval core of the capital of ethnically divided island. There have been no confirmed cases of the coronavirus found so far on either side of the divide.
(AP, 2/29/20)
2020 Feb 29, Ecuador said it has confirmed the first case of a fast-spreading new coronavirus. The patient had arrived in Ecuador on Feb. 14 on a direct flight from Madrid without showing any symptoms, but soon felt ill and went to a hospital where she was diagnosed with the coronavirus.
(Reuters, 2/29/20)
2020 Feb 29, French PM Edouard Philippe said the government would push its contested pension reform through parliament by decree, avoiding the need for a vote after the opposition filed more than 40,000 amendments to the draft law.
(Reuters, 2/29/20)
2020 Feb 29, France said it is banning all indoor public gatherings of more than 5,000 people to slow the spread of coronavirus cases and recommending that people no longer greet each other with kisses.
(AP, 2/29/20)
2020 Feb 29, In southeastern France tens of thousands of people rallied for the independence of Spain's Catalonia region. Holding the event on French territory allowed former regional president Carles Puigdemont to attend.
(SSFC, 3/1/20, p.A4)
2020 Feb 29, Guinea-Bissau had two presidents and two prime ministers as of today, after Umaro Cissoko Embalo, the inaugurated winner of December's election, swore in a new premier, but parliament appointed a rival interim president.
(Reuters, 2/29/20)
2020 Feb 29, Hong Kong police fired tear gas to disperse hundreds of black-clad protesters, some armed with petrol bombs, during a rally to mark six months since the authorities stormed a subway station and arrested demonstrators.
(AP, 2/29/20)
2020 Feb 29, In Indonesia members of the West Papua Liberation Army attacked security forces near the world's largest gold mine in Papua province . Two security personnel and four rebels were killed at the Grasberg copper and gold mine.
(SFC, 3/4/20, p.A2)(SSFC, 4/12/20, p.A4)
2020 Feb 29, Iran reported a surge in new coronavirus cases as the number of deaths jumped to 43 among 593 cases, but it dismissed as "rumors" a report the real toll was much higher.
(AFP, 2/29/20)
2020 Feb 29, In Japan a man in his 70s died on the northernmost island of Hokkaido late today after testing positive for COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. The man's death marked the sixth fatality from COVID-19 in Japan, excluding six deaths among those aboard the cruise ship Diamond Princess.
(AP, 3/1/20)
2020 Feb 29, Lebanon's health ministry said that three new cases of coronavirus had been confirmed, bringing the total number of cases in the country to seven.
(Reuters, 2/29/20)
2020 Feb 29, Luxembourg abolished fares for trains, trams and buses in what the government said was a bid to tackle road congestion and pollution, as well as supporting low earners. Travelers can still pay for first class, at a cost of 660 euros a year.
(Reuters, 2/29/20)
2020 Feb 29, Malay nationalist Muhyiddin Yassin (72) heard news that the king had picked him as prime minister over Mahathir Mohamad (94), the outspoken leader who has dominated Malaysian politics for decades. Most of Bersatu and a faction of the PKR jumped ship, siding with UMNO and an Islamic party, PAS, to form a new government with Muhyiddin Yassin of Bersatu as its head.
(Reuters, 3/1/20)(Econ., 9/26/20, p.40)
2020 Feb 29, In Montenegro thousands of people, led by Serbian Orthodox Church clerics, marched peacefully through the Podgorica in protest against a law they fear will be used to target the church's assets and status.
(Reuters, 2/29/20)
2020 Feb 29, In Myanmar at least five ethnic Rohingya were killed and several injured after troops clashed with insurgents in the conflict-torn western state of Rakhine.
(Reuters, 3/1/20)
2020 Feb 29, Pakistan confirmed two more cases of coronavirus, bringing the total number of positive cases to four since Feb 26, when the first two cases were reported in the country.
(Reuters, 2/29/20)
2020 Feb 29, In Russia thousands rallied in central Moscow to call on President Vladimir Putin not to stay in power indefinitely, in the first major protest by the Russian opposition since the Kremlin chief announced controversial plans to change the constitution. Thousands of people marched on a central Moscow boulevard in remembrance of opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, who was gunned down five years ago while walking on a bridge adjacent to the Kremlin.
(AFP, 2/29/20)(AP, 2/29/20)
2020 Feb 29, In Slovakia the center-right Ordinary People party, led by Igor Matovic, captured 25% of a parliamentary vote.
(SFC, 5/1/20, p.A2)
2020 Feb 29, South Korea reported its biggest surge in new coronavirus cases with 3,150 infections as 813 more patients were reported. Three women in the Daegu area died of the illness, taking the national toll to 17.
(AFP, 2/29/20)
2020 Feb 29, Spain's total number of active coronavirus cases rose to 49. Authorities said an Italian national staying at a hotel in Tenerife, which has been placed on lockdown after four cases of the coronavirus were detected, has tested positive for the virus. This brought the total number of active cases in the Canary Islands to six.
(AP, 2/29/20)
2020 Feb 29, The UN migration organization reported at least 13,000 people had massed on Turkey’s land border, the vast majority apparently from Afghanistan.
(AP, 3/1/20)
2020 Feb 29, Yemeni gunmen entered a port in the southern city of Aden and prevented a tanker from offloading a diesel cargo because the importing company is affiliated with the government.
(AP, 2/29/20)
2020 Feb, Easterday Ranches of Pasco, Wa., filed for bankruptcy shortly after it was sued by Tyson Foods. Over the course of a decade, rancher Cody Easterday lost money every year trading corn and cattle futures in his personal and business accounts. In 2021 Easterday (49) pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud that cost Tyson and another, unnamed company $244 million.
(Bloomberg, 4/6/21)
2020 Feb, General Motors pulled its car production out of Thailand.
(Economist, 4/4/20, p.29)
2020 Feb, In Cyprus 96 flamingos were found dead over the last two months in the Larnaca Salt Lake wetlands as a result of lead poisoning. In 2021 Conservationists in Cyprus urged authorities to expand a hunting ban throughout a coastal salt lake network amid concerns that migrating flamingos could potentially swallow lethal quantities of lead shotgun pellets.
(AP, 2/21/21)
2020 Feb, India signed a $3.5 billion arms deal with the US.
(Econ., 6/20/20, p.30)
2020 Feb, In central Mali tribesmen attacked Ogossogou, an ethnic Peuhl village. 35 people were killed.
(Econ., 8/22/20, p.10)
2020 Feb, The India-based Adani conglomerate completed a $450 million sale of 25% of its Mumbai power operations to Qatar's government. It also received a $900 million investment in a 37% stake in its gas operations by Total, a French oil giant.
(Econ., 7/4/20, p.55)
2020 Feb, Turkish drones destroyed dozens of Syrian tanks in a two-day killing spree.
(Econ., 9/12/20, p.70)
2020 Mar 1, President Donald Trump said travelers from countries at high risk of coronavirus would be screened before boarding and upon arrival, without specifying which countries. New cases were reported in the Chicago area and Rhode Island. To date, more than 86,500 cases have been confirmed. Outside of China, it has spread to 53 countries, with more than 6,500 cases and more than 100 deaths. Globally, the illness has killed nearly 3,000 people.
(Reuters, 3/1/20)(Reuters, 3/1/20)
2020 Mar 1, It was reported that The United States will give Zambia a new one year bilateral grant of $389 million for AIDS relief starting in October after Congressional approval.
(AP, 3/1/20)
2020 Mar 1, A US federal judge ruled that Ken Cuccinelli was unlawfully appointed to lead the US Citizenship and Immigration Services agency and, as a result, lacked authority to give asylum seekers less time to prepare for initial screening interviews.
(AP, 3/1/20)
2020 Mar 1, Pete Buttigieg (38), the former mayor of Indiana's fourth largest city, formally suspended his White House bid late today.
(AP, 3/1/20)
2020 Mar 1, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo's office confirmed the state's first coronavirus case late today, in a woman in her late thirties who recently travelled to Iran.
(The Independent, 3/1/20)
2020 Mar 1, Jack Welch (b.1935), former head of General Electric (1981-2001), died in Manhattan.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Welch)(Econ., 3/7/20, p.57)
2020 Mar 1, A second person died of coronavirus in the northwestern US state of Washington as number of infections passed 75.
(AFP, 3/2/20)(Reuters, 3/2/20)
2020 Mar 1, In Wyoming at least three people were killed and 30 others injured on I-80 amid snowy conditions.
(SFC, 3/3/20, p.A4)
2020 Mar 1, Afghanistan's Pres. Ashraf Ghani said that he will not free thousands of Taliban prisoners ahead of all-Afghan power-sharing talks set for next week, publicly disagreeing with a timetable for a speedy prisoner release laid out just a day earlier in a US-Taliban peace agreement.
(AP, 3/1/20)
2020 Mar 1, A report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) said more than 80,000 Uighurs were shipped out of Xinjiang provice from 2017-2019 to take jobs in factories across China under conditions that "strongly suggest forced labor." China has acknowledged a scheme called "Xinjiang Aid" to reduce poverty in the province.
(Econ., 3/7/20, p.38)
2020 Mar 1, Britain announced a jump in coronavirus cases, with 12 new infections taking the total to 35.
(AP, 3/1/20)
2020 Mar 1, Mainland China reported the biggest daily rise in coronavirus cases since Feb. 22. A total of 2,870 people have died in mainland China and 79,824 have been infected by the virus.
(Reuters, 3/1/20)
2020 Mar 1, France now has 100 confirmed cases. Of those, two have died. Louvre workers who guard Leonardo da Vinci's “Mona Lisa" and other masterpieces walked off the job, fearful of being contaminated by the museum’s flow of tourists from around the world.
(Reuters, 3/1/20)(AP, 3/4/20)
2020 Mar 1, Germany's Robert Koch Institute for disease control said the number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany has jumped to 117 from 66.
(Reuters, 3/1/20)
2020 Mar 1, Greek army and police patrols using tear gas and stun grenades to thwart attempts overnight by thousands to push into the country. Thousands of migrants and refugees massed at Turkey's western frontier, trying to enter Greece by land and sea after Turkey said its borders were open to those hoping to head to Europe.
(AP, 3/1/20)
2020 Mar 1, Iran's health ministry raised the nationwide death toll from the new coronavirus to 54 as the number of confirmed infected cases jumped overnight by more than half to 978 people.
(AP, 3/1/20)
2020 Mar 1, Ireland, Luxembourg and Qatar reported their first cases of the coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/1/20)
2020 Mar 1, Italy reported 1,694 positive cases of coronavirus and 34 deaths.
(AFP, 3/2/20)
2020 Mar 1, Kazakhstan police detained dozens of opposition supporters who took to the streets after the death of an anti-government activist in a detention center.
(Reuters, 3/1/20)
2020 Mar 1, Malaysia arrested a man (35) and started investigating three others for social media posts that insult the king and threaten public order.
(AP, 3/1/20)
2020 Mar 1, In Nicaragua Ernesto Cardenal (95), the renowned poet and Roman Catholic cleric who became a symbol of revolutionary verse in Nicaragua and around Latin America, died. His 1984 suspension from the priesthood by St. John Paul II lasted over three decades.
(AP, 3/1/20)(Econ., 3/7/20, p.82)
2020 Mar 1, In Poland several dozen activists protested in front of a Warsaw church guarded by police as Catholic Archbishop Marek Jedraszewski, criticized for his anti-LGBT language, celebrated mass.
(Reuters, 3/1/20)
2020 Mar 1, In Saudi Arabia the 2nd Riyadh International Humanitarian Forum opened in Riyadh.
(PRNewswire, 3/1/20)
2020 Mar 1, In South Africa hundreds of foreign migrants were removed from central Cape Town by authorities following a months-long stand-off. The group had lost their court bid to compel the government to fly them to what they said would be safer countries.
(AP, 3/1/20)
2020 Mar 1, In South Korea the number of coronavirus cases is now at 3,736 with 21 deaths tied to the Shincheonji religious sect. The founder of the sect and 11 others have just been charged with murder.
(The Daily Beast, 3/1/20)(Reuters, 3/1/20)
2020 Mar 1, In Syria, Turkish troops shot down two Syrian warplanes after the Syrian military downed a Turkish drone. Syrian state media said the Syrian army has so far downed three Turkish drones that Ankara had been using extensively to hit Syrian army locations and air bases.
(AP, 3/1/20)(Reuters, 3/1/20)
2020 Mar 1, Tajikistan voted in a parliamentary election that will produce a legislature loyal to President Imomali Rakhmon (67) who has run the ex-Soviet Central Asian nation for a quarter of a century.
(Reuters, 3/1/20)
2020 Mar 1, Uruguay, with a population of 3.4 million, shifted to the right with the inauguration of conservative Luis Lacalle Pou (46) as president after 15 years of left-wing rule.
(AP, 3/1/20)(SFC, 3/2/20, p.A2)
2020 Mar 1, Officials on both sides of the conflict said Yemen’s Houthi rebels have wrested control of the strategic northern city of Hazm, a major blow to the internationally recognized government backed by Saudi Arabia.
(AP, 3/1/20)
2020 Mar 2, US State Department officials told reporters that starting March 13, five Chinese state- and party-owned media companies will be allowed to employ a combined 100 Chinese citizens, a 40% cut from current levels. On Feb. 20, China’s foreign ministry took the unusual action of revoking the press credentials of three Wall Street Journal reporters, prompting their expulsion.
(Bloomberg, 3/3/20)(Econ., 3/7/20, p.24)
2020 Mar 2, The US Department of Justice announced that two Chinese nationals have been indicted in the District of Columbia on two counts related to operating a money laundering business. The two Chinese allegedly laundered cryptocurrency stolen by North Korean hackers between December 2017 and April 2019, helping to hide the stolen currency from police. The US sued to gain control of cryptocurrency accounts North Korea allegedly used to steal more than $250 million from Bitcoin and Ether exchanges in 2018.
(Reuters, 3/3/20)(Bloomberg, 3/3/20)
2020 Mar 2, The US Supreme Court threw out a lower court's ruling that had let the family of a slain 16-year-old Mexican boy pursue a civil rights lawsuit against a US Border Patrol agent who shot the teenager in 2012 from across the border in Arizona.
(Reuters, 3/2/20)
2020 Mar 2, US health authorities urged all baby boomers to get a one-time hepatitis C test because that age group appeared at particularly high risk. The US Preventive Services Task Force said that hepatitis C is on the rise because of the opioid crisis, prompting the recommendation to expand testing.
(AP, 3/2/20)
2020 Mar 2, In California the number of coronavirus cases in the Bay Area were confirmed at 26 with 43 cases statewide.
(SFC, 3/3/20, p.A1)
2020 Mar 2, In Missouri Jeremy Garnier (48) of St. Louis was arrested after he threatened to bomb and kill people while dressed as the Batman villain the Joker.
(SFC, 3/6/20, p.A5)
2020 Mar 2, In Pennsylvania the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia filed for Bankruptcy seeking protection from debt brought by construction efforts.
(SFC, 3/3/20, p.A4)
2020 Mar 2, Washington state health authorities said six people have died from coronavirus. Researchers said earlier that the virus may have been circulating for weeks undetected in the state.
(AP, 3/2/20)
2020 Mar 2, Gilead Sciences Inc said it would buy Forty Seven Inc for $4.9 billion in cash, adding an experimental treatment that targets blood cancer to its portfolio of oncology drugs.
(Reuters, 3/2/20)
2020 Mar 2, Andorra, Armenia, Czech Republic, Dominican Republic, Iceland and Indonesia confirmed their first cases of coronavirus.
(AP, 3/2/20)
2020 Mar 2, The death toll from the new coronavirus epidemic surpassed 3,000 as more people died in China, Iran and the US and Europe raised its state of alert. The virus has now infected more than 89,000, spread to over 60 countries and threatens to cause a global economic slowdown.
(AP, 3/2/20)
2020 Mar 2, Australian health officials said that a woman and a male doctor have contracted coronavirus, becoming the first cases of community transmissions in the country.
(AP, 3/2/20)
2020 Mar 2, Britain's Foreign Office said Germany, France and the UK have offered a 5 million-euro ($5.6 million) package to Iran to help fight coronavirus in the country.
(Reuters, 3/2/20)
2020 Mar 2, Chilean President Sebastian Pinera signed a law that strengthens existing legislation against femicide, expanding the definition to include the killing of non-married partners and boosting penalties for killing pregnant women and minors.
(Reuters, 3/2/20)
2020 Mar 2, It was reported that more than 180 children in Chile have been held in preventive detention – some for up to four months – for their participation in the wave of social unrest which have rocked the country since October.
(The Guardian, 3/2/20)
2020 Mar 2, China reported 42 more deaths due to coronavirus, all in central Hubei province, putting death toll in China to 2,912. The National Health Commission reported 202 new infections, the lowest daily rise since late January, bringing the nationwide total over 80,000.
(AFP, 3/2/20)
2020 Mar 2, China’s UN ambassador said that North Korea is suffering “negatively" from the coronavirus and called for greater flexibility from the United States and other countries on lifting sanctions against the country.
(AP, 3/2/20)
2020 Mar 2, Ecuador confirmed five cases in patients who all had direct contact with an elderly woman who brought the virus to the Andean country from Spain.
(Reuters, 3/2/20)
2020 Mar 2, An Egyptian court sentenced to death 37 defendants, including Hisham el-Ashmawi, one of the country’s most high-profile militants, following their conviction of terrorism-related charges. The court also sentenced 61 defendants to life in prison, and 85 others got sentences ranging from 15 to 5 years in prison. The verdicts can be appealed.
(AP, 3/2/20)
2020 Mar 2, The EU's executive said Albania and North Macedonia have done enough to merit starting negotiations to join the European Union.
(Reuters, 3/2/20)
2020 Mar 2, EU Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides said: "As of this morning, we have 2,100 confirmed cases in 18 EU member states and we have 38 citizens who have lost their lives".
(AP, 3/2/20)
2020 Mar 2, In Germany the number of novel coronavirus cases rose to 150, up from 129 the previous day, with Berlin reporting its first infection.
(AP, 3/2/20)
2020 Mar 2, A child died when a boat full of migrants heading to a Greek island capsized, part of a wave of thousands trying to push through Greece's land and sea borders after Turkey declared the way was open for migrants and refugees to enter Europe. Over the last two days some 1,200 migrants arrived on Lesbos, already overcrowded with migrants.
(AP, 3/2/20)(Econ., 3/7/20, p.48)
2020 Mar 2, A Guatemalan court sentenced Pedro Muadi, the former president of the country's congress, to more than 30 years in prison for acts of corruption.
(AP, 3/2/20)
2020 Mar 2, Guyana held elections to decide who oversees an oil boom set to transform the poor South American country, which faces a test of whether it can sustainably manage a sudden influx of natural resource wealth. Irfaan Ali (39), a former housing minister from the opposition People's Progressive Party (PPP), sought to unseat incumbent President David Granger (74), whose five-year tenure has coincided with the discovery of billions of barrels of crude offshore by a consortium led by Exxon Mobil Corp. The oil was set to provide a significant economic boon in the country of fewer than 800,000. On March 13 the election commission declared that Granger (74) had won the vote. On March 13 the election commission declared that Granger (74) had won the vote. A drawn out recount followed.
(Reuters, 3/2/20)(SFC, 3/16/20, p.A3)(Econ., 8/8/20, p.27)
2020 Mar 2, Indian lawmakers pushed and shoved each other in parliament after opposition parties demanded the resignation of interior minister Amit Shah over the handling of deadly riots triggered by a citizenship law that excludes Muslims. Officials said the death toll in the capital from riots last week between Hindus and Muslims rose to 46, a day after false rumors of new violence led to panicked calls to police in many parts of the city.
(Reuters, 3/2/20)(AP, 3/2/20)
2020 Mar 2, India reported three new cases of coronavirus, including an Italian national in the western Indian state of Rajasthan.
(AP, 3/3/20)
2020 Mar 2, Iran reported 12 more deaths due to the coronavirus, raising the country's toll to 66. Iran reported more than 500 new cases, raising its total number of infections to 1,501. Mohammad Mirmohammadi (71) of Iran's Expediency Council died in a Tehran hospital after contracting the COVID-19 coronavirus. A team from the World Health Organization (WHO) arrived in Tehran to support the country's response to the coronavirus outbreak.
(AFP, 3/2/20)(The Week, 3/2/20)(Reuters, 3/2/20)
2020 Mar 2, Iraq faced more political gridlock after prime minister-designate Mohammed Allawi withdrew overnight, accusing lawmakers of obstructing his attempt to form a government.
(AFP, 3/2/20)
2020 Mar 2, Israel held its third parliamentary elections in under 12 months as PM Benjamin Netanyahu faced off against former army chief Benny Gantz. The Netanyahu-led alliance stood to capture 59 of parliament’s 120 seats, following a four-seat gain by Likud, versus 54 for the general’s camp.
(AP, 3/2/20)(3, 3/3/20)
2020 Mar 2, Experts said Italy's economy performed woefully in 2019 and is set to do even worse this year due to the coronavirus, with the threat of recession looming large.
(AFP, 3/2/20)
2020 Mar 2, Five more cases were confirmed in Japan's northern island of Hokkaido, taking the island's total tally to 77.
(AP, 3/2/20)
2020 Mar 2, Kyrgyz riot police used tear gas, stun grenades and water cannon to disperse hundreds of anti-government protesters who approached the government headquarters in the capital Bishkek. Some 2,000 protesters rallied on Bishkek's central square earlier in the day to demand the release of Sadyr Zhaparov, a former adviser to ex-president Kurmanbek Bakiyev.
(AP, 3/2/20)
2020 Mar 2, Malaysia's new prime minister Muhyiddin Yassin said his government will focus on efforts stamp out corruption and abuse of power.
(Reuters, 3/2/20)
2020 Mar 2, Nigerian stocks fell as authorities contacted around 100 people who may have been exposed to an Italian man who is the country's first coronavirus patient.
(Reuters, 3/2/20)
2020 Mar 2, North Korea launched two short-range projectiles off its east coast in the country’s first weapons test in three months.
(AP, 3/2/20)
2020 Mar 2, Qatar's health ministry said that medical tests had revealed four new cases of coronavirus infection in the country.
(Reuters, 3/2/20)
2020 Mar 2, Saudi Arabia confirmed its first case of coronavirus after one its citizens who had returned from COVID-19 hotspot Iran tested positive.
(AFP, 3/2/20)
2020 Mar 2, Fighting erupted in south Somalia between the national army and regional forces, amid deepening divisions that help Islamist insurgents and may exacerbate regional frictions.
(Reuters, 3/2/20)
2020 Mar 2, South Korea reported 599 new cases of coronavirus, raising its total to 4,355. The death toll rose to 26. South Korea sought murder charges against leaders of Shincheonji Church, to which most of South Korea's cases have been traced.
(Reuters, 3/2/20)
2020 Mar 2, Spain's confirmed cases of coronavirus rose to around 120 from 81 the day before.
(Reuters, 3/2/20)
2020 Mar 2, Sweden's Transport Agency said it had temporarily suspended IranAir from conducting flights to and from Sweden due to the outbreak of the coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/2/20)
2020 Mar 2, Investigators for the UN-backed Human Rights Council said that they had found evidence of war crimes in Syria committed by nearly all sides in the conflict during the second half of last year and into January.
(AP, 3/2/20)
2020 Mar 2, The United Nation's refugee agency said that Greece had no right to stop accepting asylum applications as Athens struggled with a sudden increase of arrivals at its border of Middle East refugees and migrants from Turkey.
(Reuters, 3/2/20)
2020 Mar 3, US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said G7 finance ministers and central bank governors have agreed to "do everything possible" to limit harm from the fast-spreading coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/3/20)
2020 Mar 3, The US Supreme Court widened the ability of states to use criminal laws against illegal immigrants and other people who do not have work authorization in the United States in a ruling involving identity theft prosecutions in Kansas.
(Reuters, 3/3/20)
2020 Mar 3, The US Federal Reserve cut interest rates half a point in an emergency move designed to shield the world's largest economy from the impact of the coronavirus. It was the Fed's first emergency rate cut since 2008 at the height of the financial crisis. The yield on the ten-year Treasury bond fell below 1% for the first time ever.
(Reuters, 3/3/20)(Econ., 3/7/20, p.66)
2020 Mar 3, A high-level Trump administration official traveled up to the border with Syria's last rebel stronghold in a show of support for Turkey and its armed Syrian opposition groups' fight against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad and to highlight relief efforts for the nearly 1 million people who have fled recent fighting.
(ABC News, 3/3/20)
2020 Mar 3, US officials said there are now at least 120 confirmed cases in the US. Nine deaths have all been all in the Seattle area. Two cases were reported in New Hampshire.
(NY Times, 3/4/20)(Good Morning America, 3/4/20)
2020 Mar 3, Super Tuesday voting got underway in the US. Deadly storms that spawned tornadoes and heavy rains left treacherous conditions in at least two of the 14 states where residents were voting.
(AP, 3/3/20)
2020 Mar 3, Joe Biden reclaimed his perch as the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, setting up a potentially nasty showdown with Bernie Sanders over whether a centrist or a progressive should take on Donald Trump. Bernie Sanders won Super Tuesday's biggest prize, taking California on a night he sought to blunt the momentum of a suddenly surging Joe Biden in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination.
(Bloomberg, 3/4/20)(AP, 3/3/20)
2020 Mar 2, In Arizona a 6-year-old was found dead at a home in Flagstaff. The child was kept in a closet with his brother as punishment for "stealing food." The mother, father and grandmother were soon charged with murder and child abuse after admitting that they were kept in a closet most of the time and were not let outside of the home.
(AP, 3/4/20)
2020 Mar 3, In Illinois three people died when a single-engine Cessna 172 crashed in Lincoln.
(SFC, 3/4/20, p.A5)
2020 Mar 3, New York reported its 2nd case of coronavirus after Westchester County man tested positive. About 100 people nationwide have tested positive for the virus.
(Bloomberg, 3/3/20)(Reuters, 3/3/20)
2020 Mar 3, Tornadoes ripped across Tennessee early today, shredding at least 40 buildings. Of 25 killed by the twisters, 18 were Putnam County residents. Twisters caused severe damage in downtown Nashville. Days later three people remained unaccounted for Putnam County.
(AP, 3/3/20)(Reuters, 3/3/20)(Good Morning America, 3/4/20)
2020 Mar 3, In Washington state Manuel Ellis, a black man, yelled out "I can't breathe" and died in Tacoma police custody. A medical examiner’s report later said he died from respiratory arrest, hypoxia (when the body is deprived of adequate oxygen supply at the tissue level) and physical restraint. Police said officers had seen him banging on the window of another vehicle. On June 4 Victoria Woodards, the mayor of Tacoma, called for four police officers involved in the case to be fired and prosecuted. In 2021 Officers Christopher Burbank and Matthew Collins were charged with second-degree murder, and Officer Timothy Rankine was charged with first-degree manslaughter.
(ABC News, 6/5/20)(AP, 5/28/21)
2020 Mar 3, Chevron Corp said it would keep its spending in check and return up to $80 billion to shareholders over the next five years, with Chief Executive Mike Wirth making the case that his company is the oil major best able to produce oil and generate profits at the lowest cost.
(Reuters, 3/3/20)
2020 Mar 3, US laboratory equipment maker Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. agreed to buy Qiagen NV, a Dutch maker of tests for diseases including cancer and the new coronavirus, for about 9 billion euros ($10 billion) in the biggest health-care acquisition so far this year.
(Bloomberg, 3/3/20)
2020 Mar 3, Five Afghan policemen died in a Taliban attack on a security checkpoint near a copper mine, a day after the insurgents decided to resume operations against local forces. Taliban forces conducted 43 attacks on Afghan troops in Helmand. At least two police officers were killed and one other wounded in the Washir district of southern Helmand province. At least 15 soldiers were killed in Kunduz province.
(Reuters, 3/3/20)(AP, 3/4/20)(Econ., 3/7/20, p.35)
2020 Mar 3, The Australian Associated Press said it was closing after 85 years, blaming a decline in subscribers and free distribution of news content on digital platforms. AAP's more than 170 journalists will cease operations by June 26.
(SFC, 3/4/20, p.A2)
2020 Mar 3, Belgium’s federal public health service said they had found five new cases after conducting tests the previous night. All of the patients had been traveling in the north of Italy.
(Bloomberg, 3/3/20)
2020 Mar 3, A new report said deforestation of lands occupied by isolated indigenous tribes in the Brazilian Amazon more than doubled between July 2019 and July 2018 to the highest rate in more than a decade.
(Reuters, 3/3/20)
2020 Mar 3, China's death toll from coronavirus reached 2,943, with more than 75 deaths elsewhere as 77 other countries and territories have reported the respiratory disease. More than 90,000 cases of the new coronavirus have been reported globally.
(Reuters, 3/3/20)
2020 Mar 3, Germany said the number of confirmed cases has risen to 188. The virus has spread to 13 of the country’s 16 federal states.
(AP, 3/3/20)
2020 Mar 3, India, the world's main supplier of generic drugs, said it has restricted the export of 26 pharmaceutical ingredients and the medicines made from them, including paracetamol, as the coronavirus outbreak plays havoc with supply chains. The government said it had detected "high viral load" in six people who had been in contact with a patient who contracted the coronavirus in the capital New Delhi. 24 people who had come in contact with the Italian tourist have been moved to a separate facility for testing. They included 21 Italians and three Indians.
(Reuters, 3/3/20)
2020 Mar 3, Indonesia's Mount Merapi, the most active of the country's 500 volcanoes, erupted spewing pyroclastic material and sending as 19,680 feet.
(SFC, 3/4/20, p.A2)
2020 Mar 3, Infections rose again in Iran, where more officials were diagnosed. Iran reported 835 new confirmed cases, taking the total to 2,336. The death toll climbed to 77 from 66, while 435 patients have recovered. Eight percent of Iran's parliament, 23 out of 290 members, has been infected with the coronavirus. At least seven government officials also have it, including one of Iran's vice presidents.
(Bloomberg, 3/3/20)(Business Insider, 3/3/20)
2020 Mar 3, Japan’s tally of coronavirus cases approached the 1,000 mark.
(Bloomberg, 3/3/20)
2020 Mar 3, In Mexico a boat from a conservation group carrying government inspectors was attacked while monitoring a near-extinct porpoise species in a protected zone of Mexico’s Gulf of California.
(Reuters, 3/4/20)
2020 Mar 3, A Pakistani court gave the go-ahead to the country's largest women's rights event but told organizers to ensure participants adhere to "decency and moral values." The Aurat March, using the Urdu word for women, has been attended by tens of thousands over the last two years to mark International Women's Day on March 8.
(Reuters, 3/3/20)
2020 Mar 3, A Moscow court ruled that the city's facial recognition system does not violate the privacy of its citizens, a blow to activists who had hoped to ban the technology's use.
(Reuters, 3/3/20)
2020 Mar 3, Russia's main opposition leader Alexei Navalny (43) said that authorities had frozen all of his bank accounts and those of his family, including his elderly parents.
(AP, 3/3/20)
2020 Mar 3, South Korea’s health ministry reported 374 more cases of the novel coronavirus, taking the country’s tally to 5,186.
(Bloomberg, 3/3/20)
2020 Mar 3, Spain’s tally of coronavirus rose 32% to 150.
(Bloomberg, 3/3/20)
2020 Mar 3, Spain's left-wing government approved a bill that would qualify all non-consensual sex as rape, acting on a pre-election promise to strengthen laws in defence of women's rights. The draft law faced months of debate in parliament.
(Reuters, 3/3/20)
2020 Mar 3, The Spanish government approved the extradition of Venezuela's former military intelligence chief Hugo Carvajal to the US where he faces charges of drug and weapon trafficking.
(Reuters, 3/3/20)
2020 Mar 3, Sweden said it has nine new confirmed cases of coronavirus infections, taking the total to 24.
(AP, 3/3/20)
2020 Mar 3, Swiss-based Roche said it has won US breakthrough therapy status for Esbriet for interstitial lung disease (uILD), as it aimed to lift disappointing revenue by boosting the number of conditions for which it can be used.
(AP, 3/3/20)
2020 Mar 3, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused Greek authorities of inhumanely treating migrants trying to cross the border, claiming that two people were killed by Greek security forces a day earlier while another was seriously wounded. Greece denied the accusation.
(Bloomberg, 3/3/20)
2020 Mar 3, Turkey shot down a Syrian fighter jet in Syria's Idlib province, marking the third such incident in as many days, as steady clashes between the two national armies continued over a Russia-backed Syrian government offensive near the Turkish border. State-run Syrian media said troops shot down a Turkish drone.
(AP, 3/3/20)
2020 Mar 3, UAE major international airline Emirates said it is asking staff to take unpaid leave for up to a month at a time due to the rapidly spreading coronavirus that has led to flight cancellations around the world.
(Reuters, 3/3/20)
2020 Mar 3, UN watchdog IAEA, policing Iran's nuclear deal with major powers, admonished Tehran for failing to provide access to two undeclared locations or fully answer its questions about past activities there and at a previously known site. The IAEA said Iran has nearly tripled its stockpile of enriched uranium since last November.
(Reuters, 3/3/20)(SFC, 3/4/20, p.A3)
2020 Mar 3, The World Health Organization (WHO) said that the last patient being treated for Ebola in Democratic Republic of Congo was discharged today, bringing the 19-month-old outbreak closer than ever to an end.
(Reuters, 3/3/20)
2020 Mar 4, The US conducted its first airstrike against Taliban forces in Afghanistan since signing an ambitious peace deal with the militant group. The attack was to counter a Taliban assault on Afghan government forces in Nahr-e Saraj in the southern Helmand province.
(AP, 3/4/20)
2020 Mar 4, US federal health officials announced new testing criteria for coronavirus, requiring only a doctor’s agreement. But it’s unclear whether there are enough tests for everybody who’ll want one.
(NY Times, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 4, The US Food and Drug Administration banned electrical stimulation devices (ESDs) used in curbing self-injurious or aggressive behavior, citing substantial risks of illness or injury to patients.
(Reuters, 3/4/20)
2020 Mar 4, California's Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency over the COVID-19 virus, opening the way for federal aid, after the death of a man in Placer County, near Sacramento, who had been on an earlier sailing of the ship in February. This was the nation's first coronavirus death outside of Washington state and brought the US death toll to 11. California now had 53 confirmed cases.
(AP, 3/5/20)(Good Morning America, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 4, Anthony Levandowski, a former Google and Uber engineer, filed for bankruptcy in San Francisco following a court order for him to pay $179 million to Google over a contract dispute. Levandowski had left Google to form Otto a self-driging truck startup and then sold Otto to Uber for $600 million.
(SFC, 3/6/20, p.D1)
2020 Mar 4, In Florida veteran airline mechanic Abdul-Majeed Marouf Ahmed Alani (60) was sentenced to three years in prison for sabotaging an American Airlines jetliner with 150 people aboard in a bid to earn overtime fixing the plane.
(AP, 3/4/20)
2020 Mar 4, A US federal judge invalidated Michigan's Medicaid work requirements.
(SFC, 3/5/20, p.A4)
2020 Mar 4, New York's Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced that the four new cases of coronavirus, bringing the state's total number of confirmed cases to six, were all linked to a Westchester County-based lawyer.
(Reuters, 3/4/20)
2020 Mar 4, Billionaire Mike Bloomberg ended his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination and endorsed former Vice President Joe Biden.
(AP, 3/4/20)
2020 Mar 4, Tennessee reported its first confirmed case of the novel coronavirus.
(Good Morning America, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 4, Texas confirmed its first case of the novel coronavirus man in a man who recently traveled abroad.
(AP, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 4, In Britain the number of confirmed coronavirus cases rose to 87 in the biggest daily jump since it was first detected in the country.
(Reuters, 3/4/20)(Econ., 3/7/20, p.53)
2020 Mar 4, China reported 139 new coronavirus cases, bringing the total number of cases to 80,409. The death toll reached 2,981.
(Business Insider, 3/4/20)(Reuters, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 4, China said it has approved the use of Swiss drugmaker Roche's anti-inflammation drug Actemra for patients who develop severe complications from the coronavirus as it urgently hunts for new ways to combat the deadly infection that is spreading worldwide.
(Reuters, 3/4/20)
2020 Mar 4, Egypt executed Hisham el-Ashmawi, one of its most high-profile militant leaders, after his conviction for his role in planning scores of deadly attacks against the country's security forces. El-Ashmawi had been convicted in 14 crimes including a 2014 ambush that killed 22 Egyptian military border guards near the border with Libya, and the 2013 assassination attempt against the interior minister at the time, Mohammed Ibrahim.
(AP, 3/4/20)
2020 Mar 4, The European Commission unveiled plans for its first climate law, which will act as the basis for the EU's aim to make the 27-country bloc climate neutral by 2050.
(SFC, 3/5/20, p.A2)
2020 Mar 4, Germany ordered the closure of all schools and universities until March 15.
(Econ., 3/7/20, p.48)
2020 Mar 4, Germany-based Lufthansa said it has cut its flight capacity in a move equivalent to grounding almost a fifth of its fleet, response to the coronavirus epidemic.
(AP, 3/4/20)
2020 Mar 4, India lifted some restrictions on internet access in Kashmir, including allowing access to social media websites for the first time since the restive Himalayan region was locked down and its autonomy revoked in August.
(Reuters, 3/4/20)
2020 Mar 4, Iran reported 15 new deaths from COVID-19 and 586 additional cases, bringing the overall toll to 92 dead and 2,922 infected.. President Hassan Rouhani dismissed a US offer to help the Islamic republic fight its coronavirus outbreak, charging that "vicious" American sanctions are depriving the country of medicine. Iran canceled Friday prayers in major cities.
(AFP, 3/4/20)(AP, 3/4/20)
2020 Mar 4, Amnesty International accused the Iranian security forces of killing 23 children, mostly with live ammunition, during a November crackdown on anti-government protests.
(AP, 3/4/20)
2020 Mar 4, Iraq said a Muslim cleric (70) died today from the novel coronavirus, the first death from the outbreak in a country where 31 people have been infected. Health authorities announced the country's first two deaths from the new coronavirus, one in the capital Baghdad and the other in the autonomous Kurdish region.
(AFP, 3/4/20)(AFP, 3/4/20)
2020 Mar 4, Israel ordered travelers arriving from Germany, France, Spain, Austria and Switzerland to go into home quarantine over coronavirus concerns. The Health Ministry also ordered all international conferences in Israel cancelled and banned gatherings of more than 5,000 participants.
(Reuters, 3/4/20)
2020 Mar 4, The death toll in Italy soared to 79, with more than 2,500 people infected. A government source said Italy is to close all schools and universities starting March 5 to try to contain its worsening coronavirus outbreak.
(AFP, 3/4/20)(Reuters, 3/4/20)
2020 Mar 4, Fiat Chrysler defied fears over Italy's coronavirus outbreak to showcase an electric version of its 500 city car, as it strives to catch up with rivals in low-emissions driving while heading into a merger with Peugeot maker PSA.
(Reuters, 3/4/20)
2020 Mar 4, Japan's government opened part of Futaba, the last town that had been off limits due to radiation since the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011.
(SFC, 3/5/20, p.A3)
2020 Mar 4, Lebanon has 15 cases confirmed of coronavirus since Feb. 21 after infected travelers arrived from Iran. The outbreak was expected to grow, challenging hard-hit medical facilities.
(Reuters, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 4, In Libya the only civilian airport in Tripoli came under direct attack late today by eastern-based opposition forces. There were no reports of causalities.
(AP, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 4, North Korea's Kim Jong Un sent South Korean President Moon Jae-in a letter expressing condolences over the coronavirus outbreak. This was the North Korean leader’s first public overture to his counterpart in more than four months.
(Bloomberg, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 4, It was reported that Palestinians have launched protests in the occupied West Bank after Israeli bulldozers began clearing land in what villagers fear is an attempt to confiscate it for future Jewish settlements.
(Reuters, 3/4/20)
2020 Mar 4, The Philippines said it is resuming aid talks with Western countries it had rebuked just months earlier for backing a UN resolution to review human rights abuses under President Rodrigo Duterte's rule.
(AFP, 3/4/20)
2020 Mar 4, Saudi Arabia banned its citizens and other residents of the kingdom from performing the pilgrimage in Mecca due to the coronavirus. Saudi Arabia said its second coronavirus case for a Saudi national came from Iran through Bahrain.
(AP, 3/4/20)(Reuters, 3/4/20)
2020 Mar 4, South Korea reported 516 new coronavirus cases. It now had had more than 5,600 cases and 32 deaths.
(Business Insider, 3/4/20)
2020 Mar 4, In Sweden 16 new cases of the coronavirus were confirmed in Stockholm, taking the total number of cases in Sweden to 52.
(AP, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 4, In northwestern Syria two more Turkish soldiers were killed in a Syrian government attack, as steady clashes between the two national armies continued to rack up casualties. Nine Syrian soldiers were also reported killed in Turkish drone attacks in the area.
(AP, 3/4/20)
2020 Mar 4, In Turkey a fistfight erupted in parliament during a speech by opposition lawmaker Engin Ozkoc, who earlier accused President Tayyip Erdogan of disrespecting Turkish soldiers who died in Syria.
(Reuters, 3/4/20)
2020 Mar 4, A man (43) was shot dead as he tried to cross from Turkey into Greece. Five others were treated for gunshot wounds. Greece dismissed reports of the shooting as "fake news".
(Reuters, 4/3/20)
2020 Mar 4, A Ugandan court sent independent filmmaker Moses Bwayo to jail after he was accused of singing subversive songs while producing a documentary about a pop star seeking to unseat the long-serving president.
(Reuters, 3/4/20)
2020 Mar 5, President Donald Trump said he would withhold money from so-called sanctuary jurisdictions after a US court ruled that his administration could block federal law enforcement funds to states and cities that do not cooperate with federal immigration authorities. On Feb. 26, the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan ruled in favor of the administration and said the funding cuts were valid. But three other federal appeals courts have ruled against blocking such funds, setting up a possible appeal to the US Supreme Court.
(Reuters, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 5, The US State Department raised its Haiti travel advisory to Level 4: Do Not Travel, in the wake of what Haiti National Police have described as a “spectacular rise" in kidnappings for ransom, along with other violent crimes including car jackings and robberies, carried out mostly by armed criminal gangs.
(Miami Herald, 3/8/20)
2020 Mar 5, It was reported that six US military individuals in South Korea have tested positive for COVID-19.
(AP, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 5, Alabama put an inmate to death for the 2004 slayings of three police officers who were shot by another man at a suspected drug house. Nathaniel Woods received a lethal injection at the state prison in Atmore. Woods had been convicted as an accomplice of the gunman, Kerry Spencer. Both were convicted of capital murder and sentenced to die.
(CBS News, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 5, California's Gov. Gavin Newsom said a ship with suspected links to two coronavirus cases, one fatal, was being held off the coast of San Francisco until everyone on board could be tested. At least 21 people on the ship had symptoms. The cases included guests who were on the previous Grand Princess voyage from Feb. 11 to 21.
(NY Times, 3/5/20)(Good Morning America, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 5, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who electrified progressives with her “plan for everything" and strong message of economic populism, dropped out of the Democratic presidential race.
(AP, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 5, New Jersey confirmed its first case of coronavirus, a man (32) who had been hospitalized just across the Hudson River from New York City.
(Bloomberg, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 5, New York officials reported 11 new positive cases of coronavirus in Westchester County, bringing the state's total count to 24, with 21 of those in in Westchester County and four in New York City.
(Good Morning America, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 5, Houston officials confirmed the first three cases of coronavirus in Harris County, the nation's third-largest county.
(AP, 3/6/20)
2020 Mar 5, A Texas woman was convicted of stabbing and beheading her 5-year-old daughter in 2017. Krystle Concepcion Villanuev (27) was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
(Miami Herald, 3/6/20)
2020 Mar 5, In Washington state at least 39 new coronavirus cases have been reported in the Seattle area. A man in his 60s died, the ninth fatality associated with the outbreak at a Seattle area nursing home.
(AP, 3/5/20)(AP, 3/7/20)
2020 Mar 5, In Vienna OPEC members agreed to cut oil output by an extra 1.5 million barrels per day (bpd) in the second quarter of 2020 to support prices that have been hit by the coronavirus outbreak, but made its action conditional on Russia and others joining in. Russia and Kazakhstan, both members of the broader and informal group known as OPEC+, said they had not yet agreed to a deeper cut.
(Reuters, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 5, Brazil confirmed eight cases of the new coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/6/20)
2020 Mar 5, Britain's HSBC sent more than 100 staff home after a worker tested positive for coronavirus, the first known case at a major company in London. Britain counted 90 cases.
(AP, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 5, It was reported that a British judge has ruled that Dubai's ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum (70) ordered the abduction of two of his daughters and orchestrated a campaign of intimidation against Princess Haya (45), his former wife.
(Reuters, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 5, Bulgaria declared a nationwide influenza epidemic to deal with the rapid rise of type B flu cases. All schools in the Black Sea state of 7 million were closed to March 11.
(Reuters, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 5, Scientists in China studying the outbreak say they have found that two main strains of the virus are circulating in humans and causing infections.
(Reuters, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 5, Egypt reopened Djoser's Step Pyramid, the first pyramid ever built, after a 14-year restoration costing nearly $6.6 million.
(Reuters, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 5, The EU's highest court said changes by Hungary to its law on higher education, which effectively forced a university founded by George Soros to leave the country, were not in line with EU law.
(SFC, 3/6/20, p.A2)
2020 Mar 5, It was reported that France has 377 confirmed cases of coronavirus and reported two more deaths, bringing the total to six.
(Reuters, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 5, Germany's new coronavirus cases jumped by 109 in a day, to 349.
(AP, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 5, Iran reported 15 new deaths from the novel coronavirus, raising the national toll to 107, and said it would keep schools and universities closed until early April. 3513 people in Iran have now been infected with the coronavirus.
(AFP, 3/5/20)(Reuters, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 5, Iran announced it would put checkpoints in place to limit travel between major cities, hoping to stem the spread of the coronavirus. Hossein Sheikholeslam, an adviser to Iran's foreign minister, died from coronavirus.
(AP, 3/6/20)(AFP, 3/6/20)
2020 Mar 5, Israeli military forces demolished the homes of two Palestinians accused of being behind a deadly blast in the West Bank last year. Israel says Walid Hanatsheh and Yazan Mughamis were part of a cell that carried out the attack in August, which killed Israeli Rina Shnerb (17) and injured her father and brother as they hiked down to a spring in the occupied West Bank.
(AP, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 5, Israeli warplanes fired missiles early today toward military positions in central Syria. State news agency SANA said all were shot down by Syrian air defenses before reaching their targets.
(AP, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 5, In Italy the death toll from an outbreak of coronavirus in the northern region of Lombardy, which has borne the brunt of a nationwide contagion, has risen over the past day to 98 from 73.
(AP, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 5, Ivory Coast’s President Alassane Ouattara said that he will not run for re-election in October, ending speculation that he would try for a third term.
(AP, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 5, In Japan confirmed infections of coronavirus rose to 1,036.
(AP, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 5, In Palestine at least nine people were killed and 60 injured when a bakery fire spread through a crowded market in a refugee camp in the Gaza Strip.
(Reuters, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 5, In Peru Javier Perez de Cuellar (100), former UN secretary general (1981-1991) known for his peace-making efforts including brokering a ceasefire in the Iran-Iraq war, died.
(AP, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 5, Portugal's flag carrier TAP said it has cancelled a total of around 1,000 flights this month and next due to a fall in demand over concerns about the spreading coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 5, In Russia an agreement on a ceasefire in Syria was announced after a six-hour meeting between the Turkish and Russian presidents in Moscow. The deal essentially froze the conflict lines and did not force Syrian President Bashar Assad's forces to roll back military gains made in the past three months.
(AP, 3/6/20)
2020 Mar 5, South Africa confirmed its first case of coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 5, South Korea reported 760 new coronavirus cases. South Korea confirmed 6,088 coronavirus cases, with a death toll of 37.
(Reuters, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 5, Spanish health authorities said they had identified as many as 193 coronavirus cases, including three children. Spain reported its first death two days earlier from the outbreak in Valencia.
(Reuters, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 5, In Switzerland a woman (74) became the first local person to die from the novel coronavirus.
(AP, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 5, In northwestern Syria an airstrike on a rebel-held village hit a poultry farm where several displaced families were sheltering, killing at least 15 people including children. Activists blamed Russian warplanes for the strike on Maaret Musreen village.
(AP, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 5, Thailand reported four new cases of coronavirus, bringing its total to 47 since January.
(Reuters, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 5, Turkey announced that another Turkish soldier was killed in an attack in Idlib, Syria, raising the number of Turkish soldiers killed in the past 36 hours to three.
(AP, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 5, Turkey said it would deploy special forces along its land border with Greece to prevent Greek authorities pushing back people trying to cross into Europe, after Turkey declared its previously guarded gateways to Europe open.
(AP, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 5, A new UN study said nearly 90 percent of the world's population holds some prejudice against women.
(AFP, 3/6/20)
2020 Mar 5, The UN said a British UN employee is one of the four people who have tested positive for the novel coronavirus in Senegal.
(AFP, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 6, Pres. Donald Trump signed an $8.3 billion measure to help tackle the coronavirus outbreak that has killed 14 people in the US and infected more than 200.
(AP, 3/6/20)(Reuters, 3/6/20)
2020 Mar 6, US President Donald Trump announced he had made a major staff overhaul, replacing his acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney with Republican Rep. Mark Meadows. Trump said Mulvaney would become the US special envoy for Northern Ireland.
(AP, 3/6/20)
2020 Mar 6, The US State Department raised its alert level for travel to Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan. Neither country has reported many cases but both border Iran, which has been hard hit by the coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/6/20)
2020 Mar 6, The United States ordered Beijing Shiji Information Technology to divest entirely from mobile hotel property firm StayNTouch, with President Donald Trump saying in an order that its acquisition of the Maryland-based company may threaten national security.
(Reuters, 3/6/20)
2020 Mar 6, The Grand Princess cruise ship, with 3,500 aboard, remained docked 70 miles off the coast of San Francisco as health officials await results from dozens of coronavirus tests. Samples were collected from 45 people currently on board who were showing symptoms. At least 19 passengers and two crew members on Carnival Corp.’s Grand Princess, currently off the coast of California, have tested positive for the coronavirus virus.
(AP, 3/6/20)(SFC, 3/6/20, p.A9)(Bloomberg, 3/7/20)
2020 Mar 6, In the SF Bay Area Santa Clara County reported 24 cases of coronavirus.
(SSFC, 3/8/20, p.A1)
2020 Mar 6, Florida health officials confirmed the state’s first two deaths from coronavirus as well the first pair of cases in the Miami metropolitan area.
(AP, 3/7/20)
2020 Mar 6, Kentucky reported its first coronavirus case.
(Bloomberg, 3/7/20)
2020 Mar 6, Nebraska reported its first coronavirus case.
(Bloomberg, 3/7/20)
2020 Mar 6, Jazz pianist McCoy Tyner died at his home in New Jersey. His more than 80 albums included "A Love Supreme" (1965), recorded with the John Coltrane Quartet.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCoy_Tyner)(SFC, 3/9/20, p.C3)
2020 Mar 6, The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in New York doubled to 22. More than 2,700 people were isolated at home.
(NY Times, 3/6/20)
2020 Mar 6, Tennessee officials believed that remains found on property belonging to family member of Megan Boswell in Blountville, are that of Evelyn Boswell, the 15-month-old girl last seen in December but only reported as missing in February. Megan Boswell (18) was charged on Feb. 25 with one count of false reporting. Evelyn’s grandmother, Angela Boswell, and another man William McCloud, were arrested and charged with possession of stolen property on Feb. 20.
(ABC News, 3/6/20)
2020 Mar 6, Utah confirmed its first coronavirus case.
(Good Morning America, 3/7/20)
2020 Mar 6, In Washington state two Microsoft employees have been diagnosed with the novel coronavirus. Facebook announced it is closing its Seattle office until March 9 after a contractor tested positive for the virus.
(Good Morning America, 3/6/20)
2020 Mar 6, In the US the number of cases passed 230 people scattered across 18 states. The new coronavirus hit a milestone, infecting more than 100,000 people worldwide as it wove itself deeper into the daily lives of millions, infecting the powerful, the unprotected poor and the vast masses in between.
(AP, 3/6/20)
2020 Mar 6, US drugmaker Biogen Inc said three of its employees tested positive for the coronavirus after attending a meeting in Boston last week, and that their condition was improving under medical care.
(Reuters, 3/6/20)
2020 Mar 6, Boeing's proposal to leave wiring bundles in place on the grounded 737 MAX failed to get the backing of US aviation regulators, potentially delaying the plane's return to service.
(Reuters, 3/9/20)
2020 Mar 6, SpaceX successfully lunched a Falcon rocket from Cape canaveral with 4,300 pounds of supplies for the Int'l. Space Station. The booster landed for a 50th successful touchdown.
(SSFC, 3/8/20, p.A9)
2020 Mar 6, In Afghanistan gunmen opened fire at a ceremony in Kabul attended by prominent political leaders, killing at least 32 people and wounding dozens more before the two attackers were slain by police.
(AP, 3/6/20)
2020 Mar 6, In Belgium the number of confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus more than doubled to 109 after 59 new patients tested positive.
(Good Morning America, 3/6/20)
2020 Mar 6, An American tourist became the 1st confirmed case in Bhutan.
(Good Morning America, 3/6/20)
2020 Mar 6, Gilbert Khoo, a seafood salesman in the UK, received a two-year suspended sentence for six offenses related to the transport of $7 million worth of endangered eels.
(Business Insider, 3/8/20)
2020 Mar 6, Cameroon announced its first coronavirus infection.
(AP, 3/6/20)
2020 Mar 6, China reported 143 new cases, the same as a day earlier and about one-third what the country was seeing a week ago. Health authorities said the northwestern Chinese province of Gansu has confirmed 17 new coronavirus cases imported from Iran, bringing the total imported cases to 28.
(AP, 3/6/20)(Reuters, 3/6/20)
2020 Mar 6, Egyptian officials said 12 people from a Nile cruise ship have tested positive for the novel coronavirus.
(AP, 3/6/20)
2020 Mar 6, Ghana's President Nana Akufo-Addo set the tone for new rules due to coronavirus, warning everybody to improve personal hygiene and avoid crowds, at the celebrations of Ghana's 63rd independence anniversary. He ostentatiously kept both his hands resolutely behind his back when he arrived at the ceremony to greet those seated on the dais.
(BBC, 3/25/20)
2020 Mar 6, Clashes between Greek riot police and migrants attempting to cross the border from Turkey erupted anew as European Union foreign ministers took aim at what they called “Turkey's use of migratory pressure for political purposes".
(AP, 3/6/20)
2020 Mar 6, Four cases of the coronavirus have been identified in Hungary thus far, including a pair of Iranian students who recently visited their homeland.
(AP, 3/6/20)
2020 Mar 6, India braced for a potential explosion of coronavirus cases as authorities rushed to trace, test and quarantine contacts of 31 people confirmed to have the disease.
(AP, 3/6/20)
2020 Mar 6, Iran announced that the new coronavirus has killed 124 people amid 4,747 confirmed cases. The virus now was in all of Iran's 31 provinces.
(AP, 3/6/20)
2020 Mar 6, Iraq said it will halt border trade with Iran and Kuwait between March 8 and 15 to curb the spread of the coronavirus.
(AP, 3/7/20)
2020 Mar 6, In Ireland more than 60 staff at a hospital were asked to self-isolate after the country's first community transmission of coronavirus was found there.
(AP, 3/6/20)
2020 Mar 6, In Italy at least 3,296 people have been infected with the coronavirus. The death reached at least 148.
(Good Morning America, 3/6/20)(Reuters, 3/6/20)
2020 Mar 6, Japanese carmaker Nissan said it is pushing on with plans to build its new Qashqai sports utility vehicle at its British factory despite warnings over Brexit. Nissan announced a 52-million pound investment in a new press line at the site.
(Reuters, 3/6/20)
2020 Mar 6, In Japan confirmed coronavirus infections rose to 1,057.
(Reuters, 3/6/20)
2020 Mar 6, Liberia suspended the licenses of all fuel importers, including France's Total, to conduct performance reviews after some of the companies overdrew from reserves in state-run facilities, leading to gasoline shortages.
(Reuters, 3/6/20)
2020 Mar 6, Mexico's bishops said the Vatican had suspended a clerical sex abuse fact-finding and assistance mission to Mexico due to the spreading coronavirus in Italy and now the Vatican.
(AP, 3/6/20)
2020 Mar 6, The Netherlands reported its first coronavirus death.
(AP, 3/6/20)
2020 Mar 6, Peru announced its first coronavirus infection.
(AP, 3/6/20)
2020 Mar 6, Poland's Pres. Andrzej Duda signed a bill earmarking nearly $510 million to fund public television and radio. The broadcast outlets have become mouthpieces for the country's far-right government.
(https://tinyurl.com/r4htf6s)(SSFC, 3/8/20, p.A4)
2020 Mar 6, Serbia announced its first coronavirus infection.
(AP, 3/6/20)
2020 Mar 6, Slovakia announced its first coronavirus infection.
(AP, 3/6/20)
2020 Mar 6, South Korea reported 505 additional cases, down from a high of 851 on March 3. The US military confirmed its seventh case among those stationed there.
(AP, 3/6/20)(Reuters, 3/6/20)
2020 Mar 6, Spain confirmed its fifth coronavirus death, with 365 confirmed cases.
(Reuters, 3/6/20)
2020 Mar 6, Switzerland reported 130 new confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus, bringing the national total to 210.
(Good Morning America, 3/6/20)
2020 Mar 6, In northwestern Syria a cease-fire deal brokered by Turkey and Russia took hold in Idlib province. Farhad Dabirian, a commander with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, was killed near Damascus.
(AP, 3/6/20)(AP, 3/7/20)
2020 Mar 6, Togo confirmed its first case of coronavirus, bringing the number of countries in sub-Saharan Africa hit by the epidemic to five.
(Reuters, 3/6/20)
2020 Mar 6, In Tunisia two suicide bombers blew themselves up near the US Embassy on the outskirts of Tunis, killing a police officer and wounding four others.
(AP, 3/6/20)
2020 Mar 6, Pope Francis accepted the resignation of Lyon Cardinal Philippe Barbarin (69), who was convicted and then acquitted of covering up for a pedophile priest in a case that fueled a reckoning over clergy sexual abuse in France.
(AP, 3/6/20)
2020 Mar 6, Vatican City confirmed its first coronavirus case, but did not say who was infected.
(AP, 3/6/20)
2020 Mar 7, President Donald Trump hosted Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro for dinner at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, where the two leaders discussed the US-led effort to oust Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
(Bloomberg, 3/8/20)
2020 Mar 7, The number of Americans diagnosed with novel coronavirus is now at least 424, according to a case count by Johns Hopkins Univ. At least 19 people have died in the US in Washington state, California and Florida. There were now more than 101,000 infected worldwide and more than 3,400 deaths.
(Good Morning America, 3/7/20)(AP, 3/8/20)
2020 Mar 7, A US Navy sailor stationed at the Naval Support Activity Naples tested positive for novel coronavirus, marking the first positive cause of a US service member in Europe.
(Good Morning America, 3/7/20)
2020 Mar 7, Grand Princess Capt. John Smith told passengers that the ship hit by the new coronavirus is headed to the port of Oakland, Ca. The ship carrying more than 3,500 people from 54 countries was expected to dock on March 9. Passengers were quarantined at Travis Air Force Base and many were released on a staggered basis from March 9 to March 13. Two-thirds of the 858 passengers at the base had declined testing. On March 20 seven of the tested passengers were reported positive for the virus.
(AP, 3/8/20)(SSFC, 3/22/20, p.A1)
2020 Mar 7, Hawaii Gov. David Ige said a patient who had traveled aboard a Grand Princess cruise ship in early February became Hawaii's first case of the coronavirus.
(Good Morning America, 3/8/20)
2020 Mar 7, Argentina's Ministry of Health said a 64-year-old man has died as a result of the new coronavirus, the first such death in Latin America.
(AP, 3/7/20)
2020 Mar 7, In China about 70 people were trapped in a collapsed hotel in the city of Quanzhou, in southeastern Fujian Province. The collapsed hotel was used for coronavirus quarantine. 23 people were reported rescued. 23 remained trapped after the collapse of the hotel. 20 people died in the collapse. On March 9 a boy and his mother were rescued. A man was rescued after being trapped for 69 hours. Nine people remained missing.
(Reuters, 3/7/20)(Reuters, 3/8/20)(SFC, 3/11/20, p.A2)(SFC, 3/12/20, p.A2)
2020 Mar 7, Chile said it now had seven confirmed coronavirus cases, up from five.
(AP, 3/7/20)
2020 Mar 7, Costa Rica's Health Ministry confirmed four new cases of coronavirus, in addition to that of a case involving an American woman announced a day earlier. Her husband was among the new cases.
(AP, 3/7/20)
2020 Mar 7, Cyprus riot police used pepper spray to thwart Turkish Cypriot protesters trying to shove their way through a barricaded crossing point in the heart of the ethnically divided island nation's capital.
(AP, 3/7/20)
2020 Mar 7, In Egypt about 150 tourists and local crew were quarantined on a cruise ship on the Nile river. Officials said coronavirus had been detected in 45 people, including foreign tourists, after a Nile River cruise ship reached the southern city of Luxor.
(AP, 3/7/20)(Reuters, 3/8/20)
2020 Mar 7, In France a member of the lower house was diagnosed with the virus and hospitalized. The Health Ministry said that two more people had died from the coronavirus, bringing the total death toll to 11 people. France has now 716 confirmed cases of coronavirus.
(AP, 3/7/20)(Reuters, 3/7/20)
2020 Mar 7, Georgia reported a total of 12 cases in the country, 10 linked to Italy, which has Europe's worst outbreak, and the other two linked to Iran. Georgia reported its first case of coronavirus in the end of February.
(AP, 3/7/20)
2020 Mar 7, Germany’s confirmed coronavirus infections rose to 684 from 534 a day earlier.
(AP, 3/7/20)
2020 Mar 7, In Guyana a protester was shot dead as demonstrators took to the streets after opposition leaders and international observers accused the government of David Granger of rigging this week's presidential election.
(Reuters, 3/7/20)
2020 Mar 7, In Hungary the number of confirmed coronavirus patients increased to five since the first infections were announced on March 4. The government canceled a rally planned for the March 15 national holiday in central Budapest.
(AP, 3/7/20)
2020 Mar 7, In Iran lawmaker Fatemeh Rahbar (55) died from the coronavirus, the first fatality among 23 infected members of parliament. The death toll from the virus increased to 145 as the number of diagnosed cases grew to 5,823.
(AFP, 3/7/20)
2020 Mar 7, People were not permitted to leave or enter Bethlehem, as per a decision made by Israeli and Palestinian authorities after 17 cases of novel coronavirus were confirmed in the city in the last 48 hours. 14 American citizens were being tested and have been quarantined in the Angles hotel in the city of Bethlehem for now.
(Good Morning America, 3/7/20)
2020 Mar 7, In Italy the number of fatalities due to the coronavirus were up 36 to 233, with infections growing to 8,883. Cases have now been confirmed in each of the country's 20 regions, with deaths recorded in eight of them.
(Reuters, 3/7/20)
2020 Mar 7, Kuwait recorded 3 new cases of the coronavirus, bringing its infection tally to 61.
(AP, 3/7/20)
2020 Mar 7, Lebanon's PM Hassan Diab said the government will suspend payment on $1.2 billion in loans, marking the country's first-ever default on its sovereign debt.
(SSFC, 3/8/20, p.A4)
2020 Mar 7, Malta reported its first case of coronavirus.
(Bloomberg, 3/7/20)
2020 Mar 7, Mexico reported seven instances of coronavirus, up from six.
(Reuters, 3/8/20)
2020 Mar 7, Paraguay reported its first case of coronavirus.
(AP, 3/7/20)
2020 Mar 7, Peru announced five new cases of COVID-19 infection, raising the country's total to six.
(AP, 3/7/20)
2020 Mar 7, The Philippines health department reported the country’s sixth infection. President Rodrigo Duterte agreed to declare a state of national public health emergency after a local transmission of coronavirus.
(Bloomberg, 3/7/20)
2020 Mar 7, In the Philippines a regional commander said troops have killed at least 14 Muslim militants aligned with the Islamic State in Maguindanao province. The Islamic State group claimed militants killed 43 soldiers, but that claim was denied.
(AP, 3/8/20)
2020 Mar 7, Qatar reported its 12th case of coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/7/20)
2020 Mar 7, It was reported that Saudi Arabia has detained three senior Saudi princes including Prince Ahmed bin Abdulaziz, the younger brother of King Salman, and Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, the king's nephew, for allegedly planning a coup.
(AP, 3/7/20)
2020 Mar 7, South Korea's coronavirus cases jumped above 7,000, up by 448 from the previous day. The death toll rose by two to 46.
(Reuters, 3/7/20)
2020 Mar 7, Spain identified 93 new coronavirus cases, bringing its total to 441.
(AP, 3/7/20)
2020 Mar 7, Spanish police said they have arrested 89 people suspected of belionging to a crime ring that smuggled both migrants and hashish from North Africa to the mainland.
(SSFC, 3/8/20, p.A4)
2020 Mar 7, Syria's Interior Minister Mohammed Khaled Rahmoun said at least 26 Iraqis were among those killed in a Syrian highway accident, in which a fuel truck collided with passenger buses and other cars. Local officials said at least 32 were killed and 77 injured.
(AP, 3/8/20)
2020 Mar 7, Ugandans celebrated the Mara Mara peace festival. It drew inspiration from the African Union's declaration of 2020 as the year for “silencing the guns" on a continent that has long faced violence ranging from civil war to ethnic rivalries and rebel insurgencies.
(AP, 3/8/20)
2020 Mar 7, In the UAE The number of coronavirus cases rose to 45 from 30.
(Reuters, 3/7/20)
2020 Mar 7, Uzbekistan said it will become an observer in the Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) before deciding if it wants to become a full member of the trade bloc.
(Reuters, 3/7/20)
2020 Mar 7, In Vietnam all air crew and ground staff working on a Vietnam Airlines’ flight from London to Hanoi on March 1 were being quarantined after a passenger tested positive for coronavirus. The Ministry of Health confirmed three new coronavirus cases, raising the number in the country to 20.
(AP, 3/7/20)(Reuters, 3/7/20)
2020 Mar 8, Americans advance their clocks for daylight saving time.
(Good Morning America, 3/8/20)
2020 Mar 8, Kamala Harris endorsed Joe Biden and said she would "do everything in my power'' to help elect him, becoming the latest dropout from the Democratic race for president to line up behind the former vice president in his battle with Bernie Sanders for the nomination. Vermont senator Bernie Sanders countered with his own major endorsement, announcing that civil rights icon Jesse Jackson was formally backing him.
(AP, 3/8/20)
2020 Mar 8, Women filled the streets of the world's largest cities to protest gender violence and inequality on International Women’s Day.
(AP, 3/9/20)
2020 Mar 8, In the SF Bay Area ten new coronavirus cases were reported, five each in Contra Costa and Santa Clara counties. This brought the total in Santa clara to 37.
(SFC, 3/9/20, p.A6)
2020 Mar 8, In Atlanta, Georgia, a fatal shooting over a parking spot outside an upscale mall left Thuan Nguyen (31) dead. Police soon identified Ricky James LaFargue (19), who was not yet arrested, as the shooter.
(SFC, 3/18/20, p.A4)
2020 Mar 8, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds said three cases of COVID-19 have been identified in the state.
(AP, 3/8/20)
2020 Mar 8, In Maryland a 13-year-old boy was killed and four other children, including two 12-year-olds, were wounded when several assailants let loose a barrage of gunfire on a group of young people exiting a dance party in suburban Baltimore.
(ABC News, 3/9/20)
2020 Mar 8, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said the number of people in his state to test positive for coronavirus has increased to 105.
(Good Morning America, 3/8/20)
2020 Mar 8, In Texas four people were dead as a result of a suspected murder-suicide early this morning in Fort Bend County.
(Good Morning America, 3/8/20)
2020 Mar 8, Vermont announced its first presumptive case of the coronavirus.
(Good Morning America, 3/8/20)
2020 Mar 8, The Rev. Darius L. Swann (95), whose challenge to the notion of segregated public schools helped spark the use of busing to integrate schools across the country, died at his Virginia home. In 1964 Swann wrote a letter to the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board, asking that his son James be allowed to attend Seversville School, two blocks from his home. In 1971 the US Supreme Court upheld court-ordered busing in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school district, clearing the way for the use of busing as a means of desegregation.
(AP, 3/25/20)
2020 Mar 8, In Afghanistan unknown gunmen shot and killed three people in Kabul, including a member of eastern Logar province's provincial council.
(Reuters, 3/8/20)
2020 Mar 8, In the Austrian alps six people were killed in two separate avalanches.
(SFC, 3/9/20, p.A2)
2020 Mar 8, Bangladesh reported its first case of coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/8/20)
2020 Mar 8, Bulgaria reported its first case of coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/8/20)
2020 Mar 8, Belgium's health ministry said the number of coronavirus cases in the country had reached 200. It said the virus had started to circulate locally among the Belgian population.
(Reuters, 3/8/20)
2020 Mar 8, In Cameroon armed separatists attacked a village in the western French-speaking region, killing at least seven people in the village of Galim.
(AP, 3/8/20)
2020 Mar 8, China reported 40 new confirmed cases of coronavirus infections, down from 44 cases a day earlier, and the lowest number since the health authority started publishing nationwide data on January 20.
(Reuters, 3/9/20)
2020 Mar 8, In France Max von Sydow (90), the tall, blond Swedish actor who brought gravitas to arthouse dramas, horror movies and Hollywood blockbusters, died. His films included "The Seventh Seal" (1957), "Wild Strawberries" (1957), "Through a Glass Darkly" (1961), "Winter Light" (1963) "Shame" (1968) and "The Exorcist" (1973).
(Reuters, 3/9/20)
2020 Mar 8, Hong Kong recorded its third coronavirus death.
(Reuters, 3/8/20)
2020 Mar 8, In India Rana Kapoor, CEO and co-founder of Yes Bank, was arrested and formally charge with money laundering and corruption.
(Econ, 3/14/20, p.60)
2020 Mar 8, Indonesia confirmed that two more people had tested positive for the coronavirus, taking the total of confirmed cases in the country to six.
(Reuters, 3/8/20)
2020 Mar 8, Iran said 194 people had died from coronavirus and 6,566 were now infected. IranAir stopped all flights to European destinations.
(Reuters, 3/8/20)
2020 Mar 8, In Iraq two US service members were killed by “enemy forces" while advising and accompanying Iraqi security forces.
(AP, 3/9/20)
2020 Mar 8, Italy imposed a virtual lockdown across a swathe of its wealthy north, including the financial capital Milan, in a drastic new attempt to try to contain the coronavirus outbreak. Deaths due to the infectious virus risen, by 36 to 233. Of the 5,883 Italians originally infected, 589 have fully recovered.
(Reuters, 3/8/20)
2020 Mar 8, Tensions in Italy's overcrowded prisons erupted over new coronavirus containment measures, with riots in at least two dozen lock-ups and the deaths of six inmates who broke into an infirmary and overdosed on methadone. With 7,375 infected and 366 deaths, Italy has more virus cases than any country outside Asia.
(AP, 3/9/20)
2020 Mar 8, Police in Kyrgyzstan detained dozens of women's rights activists shortly after journalists witnessed the protesters being attacked by masked men.
(AP, 3/8/20)
2020 Mar 8, The Maldives reported its first case of coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/8/20)
2020 Mar 8, Moldova reported its first case of coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/8/20)
2020 Mar 8, In the Netherlands the families of people killed when a missile shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine in 2014 set out 298 white chairs outside the Russian Embassy in a silent protest against Moscow’s lack of cooperation in the investigation into the downing of the passenger jet.
(AP, 3/8/20)
2020 Mar 8, Moscow city authorities threatened prison terms of up to five years for people failing to self-isolate in their homes for two weeks after visiting countries hit hard by the coronavirus outbreak.
(Reuters, 3/8/20)
2020 Mar 8, Saudi Arabia said it has imposed a temporary lockdown on the eastern Qatif province, an oil-producing region and home to a large Shi'ite Muslim population, to prevent the spread of coronavirus after 11 people there were infected.
(AP, 3/8/20)
2020 Mar 8, South Korea's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported 272 new coronavirus cases, for a total of 7,313 in the country. Two further deaths took the toll to 50.
(Reuters, 3/8/20)
2020 Mar 8, In Spain a large feminist march was allowed to go ahead despite the coronavirus pandemic.
(Econ, 3/21/20, p.46)
2020 Mar 8, Dozens of Thai lawmakers from a prominent opposition party that was dissolved last month said they will join a new party together to keep their parliamentary seats. 55 members of parliament of the disbanded party will be officially joining an existing party called Move Forward Party together next week.
(Reuters, 3/8/20)
2020 Mar 8, Turkish riot police fired tear gas to disperse thousands of demonstrators who, in defiance of a government ban, tried to march along Istanbul's main pedestrian street to mark International Women's Day.
(AP, 3/9/20)
2020 Mar 8, Pope Francis delivered his Sunday blessing over the internet from inside the Vatican instead of from a window to stop crowds gathering during Italy's coronavirus outbreak.
(Reuters, 3/8/20)
2020 Mar 8, Vietnam's coronavirus cases jumped to 29.
(Reuters, 3/8/20)
2020 Mar 9, President Trump attempted to dismiss coronavirus fears with a misleading tweet comparing the virus causing the global health crisis to the seasonal flu. His tweet came after trading on the New York Stock Exchange was temporarily halted as stocks plunged more than 2,000 points, a 7 percent drop that triggered an automatic pause. Trump blamed the "Fake News Media" and Democrats for conspiring "to inflame the Coronavirus situation" and wrongly suggested that the common flu was more dangerous.
(AP, 3/9/20)(Econ, 3/14/20, p.18)
2020 Mar 9, The US military said it has begun withdrawing troops from Afghanistan. Forces would be reduced to 8,600 from 13,000 over the next 135 days.
(AP, 3/10/20)(SFC, 3/10/20, p.A3)
2020 Mar 9, A US federal judge held Iran responsible for the kidnapping of former FBI agent Robert Levinson, entering a default judgement against the regime on the 13th anniversary of his disappearance.
(AP, 3/9/20)
2020 Mar 9, The US Census Bureau made a soft launch of the 2020 census website, making its form available online.
(AP, 3/10/20)
2020 Mar 9, Led Zeppelin persuaded a US appeals court to reinstate a jury verdict that it did not steal the opening guitar riff for "Stairway to Heaven" from an obscure song written four years earlier.
(Reuters, 3/9/20)
2020 Mar 9, The US Department of Health and Human Services said it would contribute $699,000 to speed up Hologic Inc's development of a coronavirus diagnostic test.
(Reuters, 3/9/20)
2020 Mar 9, Federal and state officials in California prepared to receive thousands of people from a cruise ship that has been idling off the coast of San Francisco with at least 21 people aboard infected with the coronavirus. Fences were installed at an 11-acre site at the Port of Oakland as authorities readied flights and buses to whisk the passengers aboard the ship to military bases or their home countries for a 14-day quarantine. Officials in Santa Clara imposed a ban on mass gatherings of more than 1,000 people for the next three weeks to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
(AP, 3/9/20)(SFC, 3/10/20, p.A1)
2020 Mar 9, Mitch Englander (49), a former Los Angeles city councilman, surrendered to FBI agents following charges that obstructed an investigation into whether he took thousands of dollars, female escort services and other gifts from businessmen invloved in major developments.
(SFC, 3/10/20, p.A4)
2020 Mar 9, Mark Kempic, the prsident of Columbia Gas of Massachusetts, entered a gulity plea on behalf of the company responsible for a blast that tore through three towns in the Merrimack Valley in September 2018, killing one person and damaging dozens of homes.. The company will pay a $53 million fine for violating the Pipeline Safety Act.
(SFC, 3/10/20, p.A4)
2020 Mar 9, In Minnesota Issam Hamade pleaded guilty in federal court to one count of conspiracy to violate US export laws. He was charged with conspiring to export drone parts and technology from the US to Iranian-backed Hezbollah militia in Lebanon.
(AP, 3/10/20)
2020 Mar 9, A New York jury found former CIA employee Joshua Schulte, accused of giving classified data to WikiLeaks, guilty of making false statements to investigators and contempt of court, but failed to reach a verdict on the central accusations in the case, a significant setback for federal prosecutors.
(Reuters, 3/9/20)
2020 Mar 9, The Seattle-area nursing home at the epicenter of one of the biggest coronavirus outbreaks in the United States said it had no kits to test 65 employees showing symptoms of the respiratory illness that has killed at least 13 patients at the long-term care center.
(Reuters, 3/9/20)
2020 Mar 9, In the US 554 cases of coronavirus have been confirmed, with 21 reported deaths. Worldwide more than 110,000 people have tested positive for the disease and more than 3,800 people with the virus have died, most of them in China.
(AP, 3/9/20)(Benzinga, 3/9/20)
2020 Mar 9, The DJIA lost 2014 points to close at 23,851, its biggest one-day loss.
(SFC, 3/10/20, p.D1)
2020 Mar 9, The cryptocurrency market saw $26 billion erased from its market capitalization over the last 24 hours.
(Benzinga, 3/9/20)
2020 Mar 9, GlaxoSmithKline PLC's unit ViiV Healthcare said its two-drug regimen to treat HIV was as effective in patients given the treatment every two months, as when administered once a month. The US Food and Drug Administration in December declined to approve the once-monthly treatment, Cabenuva, questioning the treatment's chemistry, manufacturing and controls process, but not its safety.
(Reuters, 3/9/20)
2020 Mar 9, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani was sworn in for a second term but his main rival refused to recognize the inauguration and held his own swearing-in ceremony as a rival president.
(Reuters, 3/9/20)
2020 Mar 9, Argentine farmers began a four-day strike to protest the government's hike on export taxes for soybeans and its byproducts, though shipments were not impacted in the major global food exporter.
(Reuters, 3/9/20)
2020 Mar 9, Belgium’s health ministry said the number of coronavirus cases in the country had reached 239, while it decided to limit tests to seriously ill patients and healthcare professionals due to shortages of reagents.
(Reuters, 3/9/20)
2020 Mar 9, In Britain a sixth person in the UK has died from coronavirus. There were 319 confirmed cases.
(Reuters, 3/9/20)(AP, 3/10/20)
2020 Mar 9, Canada recorded its first coronavirus death.
(Reuters, 3/10/20)
2020 Mar 9, Mainland China reported 19 new cases as of today, down from 40 cases a day earlier. Total confirmed cases in mainland China stood at 80,754. Hubei province, center of the outbreak, reported no new locally transmitted coronavirus cases for a second day.
(AP, 3/9/20)(Reuters, 3/10/20)
2020 Mar 9, An Egyptian court sentenced a train engineer to 15 years in prison for his conviction on charges of manslaughter and damaging public property stemming from a deadly locomotive crash in February, 2019, at main train station in Cairo. An argument between engineers Emad Fathy and Ayman el-Shahat led to the unleashing of a speeding, unmanned locomotive that slammed into a barrier in Cairo's busy Ramses station, killing 31 people and injuring 17.
(AP, 3/10/20)
2020 Mar 9, In Egypt there were 59 confirmed coronavirus cases, including one fatality.
(AP, 3/10/20)
2020 Mar 9, An EU spokeswoman said a first case of coronavirus has been detected among staff at the European Commission.
(Reuters, 3/9/20)
2020 Mar 9, Germany reported its first two deaths due to the coronavirus. The number of cases in Germany more than doubled to over 1,100 in the last few days, putting pressure on the government to act.
(Bloomberg, 3/9/20)
2020 Mar 9, Iran reported 43 new deaths from the novel coronavirus in the past 24 hours, bringing the overall toll to 237 dead. 595 new cases were confirmed across the country, bringing the overall number of confirmed cases to 7,161. Iran temporarily released about 70,000 prisoners because of the coronavirus.
(AFP, 3/9/20)(Reuters, 3/9/20)
2020 Mar 9, Italy went under a national lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic.
(Econ., 6/20/20, p.11)
2020 Mar 9, In Mexico untold thousands of women stayed home from work and school as part of a strike billed as "A Day Without Women." a day after an unprecedented number of them filled the streets to protest rampant gender violence on Int'l. Women's Day.
(SFC, 3/10/20, p.A2)
2020 Mar 9, In the Netherlands the number of people infected with the new coronavirus increased to 321, up from 264 a day earlier.
(Reuters, 3/9/20)
2020 Mar 9, In Nigeria the emir of Kano, a former central bank governor and critic of Pres. Buhari's economic policies, was ousted for showing "insubordination" to local authorities.
(Econ, 3/14/20, p.36)
2020 Mar 9, North Korea fired what appeared to be three short-range ballistic missiles off its eastern coast, raising regional security concerns as world leaders battle the spread of the coronavirus.
(AP, 3/9/20)
2020 Mar 9, A special North Korean flight believed to be carrying dozens of diplomats and other foreigners arrived in Russia's Far East, as the North tightens a lockdown intended to fend off the coronavirus.
(AP, 3/9/20)
2020 Mar 9, Panama confirmed its first coronavirus case.
(Reuters, 3/10/20)
2020 Mar 9, Hamas criticized the secretive criminal trials in Saudi Arabia of dozens of members and supporters of the militant Palestinian group.
(AP, 3/9/20)
2020 Mar 9, Crude oil prices tumbled by as much as a third after Saudi Arabia launched a price war with Russia, sending investors already spooked by the coronavirus outbreak fleeing for the safety of bonds and the Japanese yen.
(Reuters, 3/9/20)
2020 Mar 9, Saudi Arabia's health ministry said it has detected five new cases, bringing the total to 20.
(Reuters, 3/10/20)
2020 Mar 9, South Korea reported 165 new coronavirus cases, bringing the national tally to 7,478, while the death toll rose by one to 51.
(Reuters, 3/9/20)
2020 Mar 9, South Korea-based Daily NK reported that around 200 North Korean soldiers from several branches of the military have died from symptoms that may have been caused by the novel coronavirus (COVID-19).
(https://tinyurl.com/r85wkr7)(Daily NK, 3/12/20)
2020 Mar 9, In Spain schools were closed in the town of Labastida near Vitoria in the Basque country after nearly 150 cases of coronavirus were identified in the region. The country has reported 999 cases in all, most of them in two areas around Madrid and around Vitoria.
(Reuters, 3/9/20)
2020 Mar 9, Sudanese PM Abdalla Hamdok escaped an assassination attempt which his government branded an attack on the revolution that unseated the North African nation’s veteran dictator last year.
(Bloomberg, 3/9/20)
2020 Mar 9, Sweden's Stockholm region reported a jump in confirmed coronavirus cases to 207, an increase of 60 since yesterday.
(AP, 3/10/20)
2020 Mar 9, In Turkey Selcuk Mizrakli, the ousted mayor of the mainly Kurdish Diyarbakir province, was sentenced to more than nine years in prison for membership of a terrorist organization.
(Reuters, 3/9/20)
2020 Mar 9, The UN adopted a stripped-down political declaration on women's rights that seeks to preserve gains under threat but does not advocate new ways to ensure progress toward equality. The adopted text follows the main lines of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action of 1995, which sought to promote women's emancipation and advancement around the world.
(AFP, 3/9/20)
2020 Mar 9, Yemen’s army said it wrested control of several northern towns from the Iran-backed Houthi rebels, a step toward reversing the rebels’ rapid gains in the strategic area.
(AP, 3/9/20)
2020 Mar 10, Retired four-star Gen. Jack Keane (77) received the nation's highest civilian honor at a White House ceremony hosted by President Donald Trump, who called the Army veteran a “visionary," a “brilliant strategist" and a “fearless patriot".
(AP, 3/11/20)
2020 Mar 10, In the US a total of 761 confirmed cases of the coronavirus were confirmed nationwide as well as 27 deaths. The number of people infected with the coronavirus topped 116,000 across the world as the outbreak spread to more countries, causing greater economic damage.
(AP, 3/10/20)(Reuters, 3/10/20)
2020 Mar 10, Iowa health officials announced that five more eastern Iowa residents have tested positive for new coronavirus. The new cases brought the total number of Iowa infections to 13.
(AP, 3/10/20)
2020 Mar 10, Five US states (Michigan, Washington, Missouri, Mississippi and Idaho) held Democratic primaries, while North Dakota held a caucus. 352 delegates were up for grabs.
(AP, 3/10/20)
2020 Mar 10, In Wisconsin Adam Roth of Waukesha stabbed four of his family members, two of them fatally. In December Roth (36) was found not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect in the attack.
(https://tinyurl.com/y8gzsp5k)(AP, 12/15/20)
2020 Mar 10, Australia's coronavirus cases rose overnight to 100 from 80.
(AP, 3/10/20)
2020 Mar 10, Bosnia's autonomous Serb region said it will shut all schools and universities and ban large public gatherings from March 11 until March 30 to help stem the spread of coronavirus.
(AP, 3/10/20)
2020 Mar 10, Brunei said six people had tested positive a day after it reported its first case of coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/10/20)
2020 Mar 10, China's President Xi Jinping’ made his first trip to the COVID-19 epicenter of Wuhan as parts of the nation appeared to be returning to normal.
(AP, 3/10/20)
2020 Mar 10, China launched cellphone-based health codes. All people in China must install a cellphone app and register their personal health information.
(https://tinyurl.com/t7ygmtm)
2020 Mar 10, Congo DRC reported its first case of coronavirus.
(AP, 3/10/20)
2020 Mar 10, The Czech Republic, which has reported 40 cases of coronavirus, said it will suspend schools other than universities from March 11, and ban events hosting more than 100 people.
(AP, 3/10/20)
2020 Mar 10, An Egyptian court sentenced Zyad el-Elaimy, a prominent human rights lawyer and former lawmaker, to a year in prison for his conviction on charges that rights advocates have decried as baseless and politically motivated.
(AP, 3/10/20)
2020 Mar 10, German Chancellor Angela Merkel met Libyan military commander Khalifa Hifter in Berlin in a bid to advance efforts to secure a lasting cease-fire in Libya.
(AP, 3/10/20)
2020 Mar 10, In India Hindus threw colored powder and sprayed water in massive celebrations of the festival of Holi, but the enthusiasm was subdued compared to previous years because of fears of the new virus. The number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the country rose to 47.
(AP, 3/10/20)
2020 Mar 10, In Iran the coronavirus outbreak killed 54 more people and pushed the nation's death toll to 291. This was an 18% increase in deaths from the day before and 12% more confirmed cases. Health ministry spokesperson Kianoush Jahanpour said there were 8,042 confirmed cases. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said doctors and nurses who die combating the new coronavirus will be recognized as “martyrs" like slain soldiers. State-run media said a rumor circulating in Iran that alcohol can treat coronavirus has so far led to 37 deaths and sent 270 people to the hospital after being poisoned by bootleg alcohol.
(AP, 3/10/20)(Reuters, 3/11/20)
2020 Mar 10, It was reported that the coronavirus outbreak in Israel, largely contained, began to gain pace in recent days, with a total of 58 cases diagnosed as of today. 26 confirmed cases have been reported in the Palestinian Territories.
(AP, 3/10/20)
2020 Mar 10, Italy entered its first day under a nationwide lockdown after a government decree extended restrictions on movement from the hard-hit north to the rest of the country. Italy counted 9,172 cases and 463 deaths. The number of dead from riots in Italy's overcrowded prisons over measures imposed to contain the coronavirus rose to 12.
(AP, 3/10/20)(Reuters, 3/10/20)
2020 Mar 10, Kosovo's government approved the 2020 budget after the small Balkan country held a snap election in October and elected the government after months of negotiations.
(Reuters, 3/10/20)
2020 Mar 10, Lebanon reported its first death due to coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/10/20)
2020 Mar 10, Mongolia reported its first case of coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/10/20)
2020 Mar 10, Morocco's health ministry confirmed the country's first death from coronavirus in Casablanca, as its overall number of new infections rose to three.
(Reuters, 3/10/20)
2020 Mar 10, Dutch health authorities took action to contain an outbreak of the coronavirus in a southern province, where a large group of employees at hospitals tested positive for the illness. The number of confirmed coronavirus cases had risen by 61 to 382. One more person had died, taking the number of deaths so far to four.
(AP, 3/10/20)
2020 Mar 10, Norway-based Equinor reported the oil industry's first coronavirus infection on an offshore installation, highlighting the challenge in preventing contamination for thousands of workers living in the close quarters on rigs and platforms.
(Reuters, 3/11/20)
2020 Mar 10, Poland has reported 17 coronavirus cases so far and has announced the cancellation of all large-scale events.
(Reuters, 3/10/20)
2020 Mar 10, Russian President Vladimir Putin laid out a path to staying in power after 2024, as lawmakers approved sweeping reforms to the constitution.
(AFP, 3/10/20)
2020 Mar 10, Singapore started charging visitors for coronavirus treatment after it reported new imported cases from neighboring Indonesia.
(Reuters, 3/10/20)
2020 Mar 10, In Somalia a US air strike aimed at Islamist militants reportedly killed six civilians in a mini bus. US Africa Command said the strike near Janaale town had killed "five terrorists.
(Reuters, 3/11/20)
2020 Mar 10, A South African court cleared Pres. Cyril Ramaphosa of allegations that he misled parliament about the funding of his campaign to become leader of the ruling ANC party.
(SFC, 3/11/20, p.A2)
2020 Mar 10, The Spanish parliament’s lower house canceled its activities for a week after a far-right Vox party member tested positive as coronavirus cases in the country surged to 1,600. Health authorities said known coronavirus cases in the capital region had risen to 1,024 from 782. Authorities have reported 47 deaths, 31 of them in Madrid.
(AP, 3/10/20)(Reuters, 3/11/20)
2020 Mar 10, Taiwan began to airlift almost 500 of its residents from Wuhan. Another 500 Taiwanese will for now remain stuck in the central Chinese city.
(Bloomberg, 3/10/20)
2020 Mar 10, UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet said that “apparently systematic" human rights violations in North Korean detention centers, including sexual violence against women and girls, could amount to crimes against humanity.
(AP, 3/10/20)
2020 Mar 10, Petteri Taalas, the head of the UN weather agency, said last year was the second warmest on record, the past decade was the hottest in human history and January was the warmest January since 1850.
(AP, 3/10/20)
2020 Mar 10, In Venezuela a protest called by opposition leader Jaun Guaido against the Maduro government drew only several thousand supporters in Caracas.
(SFC, 3/13/20, p.A4)
2020 Mar 10, The World Meteorological Association released its annual State of the Global Climate Report. The organization projected that 22 million people were displaced by extreme weather last year, up from 17.2 million the year before.
(Bloomberg, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 11, US Pres. Trump announced a proclamation barring most foreign nationals who had recently been in Europe from entering the US. The ban, to begin at midnight March 13, won't apply to Americans trying to return home, or to citizens of the UK. The ban applied to countries in the Schengen Area: Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. Countries around the world began closing borders to foreign travelers. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued its strongest travel warning, urging Americans to avoid all "nonessential travel" to Europe. The Pentagon suspended travel to several coronavirus-hit countries for 60 days, affecting all service members, employees, and their families.
(The Week, 3/12/20)(AP, 3/12/20)(NY Times, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 11, The US Congress gave its final approval to a bid to restrain President Donald Trump from attacking Iran, a sign of lawmakers' alarm after soaring tensions. The resolution was virtually certain to be vetoed by Trump.
(AFP, 3/12/20)
2020 Mar 11, The NBA suspended its season after a player tested positive for the virus. Separately, the NCAA announced that its men’s and women’s Division I basketball tournaments would be played without spectators.
(NY Times, 3/12/20)
2020 Mar 11, The US reported 1,039 cases of confirmed coronavirus, the eighth-highest in the world. The death toll reached 31. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) confirmed that three of its officers who work at the Mineta San Jose International Airport have tested positive for the novel coronavirus. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said the virus outbreak in the US was only going to get worse. A new report said the new coronavirus can live in the air for several hours and on some surfaces for as long as two to three days. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported 987 cases of the coronavirus, an increase of 291 from its previous count, and said that the number of deaths had risen by 4 to 29. The CDC figures did not necessarily reflect cases reported by individual states.
(Good Morning America, 3/11/20)(AP, 3/11/20)(Reuters, 3/11/20)
2020 Mar 11, The US imposed sanctions on Zimbabwe's state security minister and its ambassador to Tanzania, accusing them of human rights abuses, including directing an attack on peaceful protestors.
(Reuters, 3/11/20)
2020 Mar 11, A US Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to continue making asylum-seekers wait in Mexico for their US court hearings.
(AP, 3/11/20)
2020 Mar 11, Chelsea Manning's legal team said that the former intelligence analyst tried to take her own life today, but was transported to a hospital where she is recovering.
(AP, 3/11/20)
2020 Mar 11, US stock indexes dropped sharply after attempting a rebound in the previous session, on skepticism around President Donald Trump's stimulus plan to combat the coronavirus outbreak.
(AP, 3/11/20)
2020 Mar 11, The US state of Georgia has 23 confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus so far.
(AP, 3/11/20)
2020 Mar 11, In NYC Harvey Weinstein was sentenced to 23 years in prison, two weeks after a jury convicted him of sexual assault and rape.
(Business Insider, 3/11/20)
2020 Mar 11, In South Dakota the Oglala Sioux Tribe announced that a referndum to legalize madical and recreational marijuana on the Pine Ridge Reservation has passed. A proposal to allow alcohol in the tribe's casino failed.
(SFC, 3/12/20, p.A5)
2020 Mar 11, Researchers said they used the planet-hunting ESPRESSO instrument on the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Chile to observe a planet called WASP-76b located about 640 light years from Earth. It is nearly twice the size of Jupiter, our solar system's largest planet. Weather on the planet had a 100 percent chance of the most outrageous rain imaginable, droplets of scalding hot liquid iron.
(Reuters, 3/11/20)
2020 Mar 11, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani issued a decree promising to release 1,500 Taliban prisoners as a goodwill gesture to get intra-Afghan negotiations started.
(AP, 3/11/20)
2020 Mar 11, Albania announced its first virus-related death.
(AP, 3/11/20)
2020 Mar 11, Bahrain authorities said their number of confirmed cases have spiked by nearly 70% to 189 confirmed cases. The 77 new cases were all on a returning flight of Bahraini evacuees from Iran.
(AP, 3/11/20)
2020 Mar 11, Belgium announced its first virus-related death.
(AP, 3/11/20)
2020 Mar 11, Britain announced a $39-billion war chest to soften the economic impact of the coronavirus after the Bank of England cut interest rates.
(Reuters, 3/11/20)
2020 Mar 11, Bulgaria announced its first virus-related death.
(AP, 3/11/20)
2020 Mar 11, China announced that key companies can resume work in coronavirus-hit Wuhan. The coronavirus has now killed over 3,100 and infected nearly 81,000 in the country. Beijing ordered people arriving in the city from any country to go into 14-day quarantine as China reported an increase in imported coronavirus cases, threatening its progress against the epidemic.
(AFP, 3/11/20)
2020 Mar 11, Denmark went under a national lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic.
(Econ., 6/20/20, p.11)
2020 Mar 11, Germany reported 1,622 confirmed cases of coronavirus, making it the seventh-highest national total in the global outbreak. Chancellor Angela Merkel warned that up to 70 percent of the country's population, roughly 58 million people, could contract the virus.
(Good Morning America, 3/11/20)
2020 Mar 11, India suspended most visas in a bid to halt the spread of the coronavirus.
(AP, 3/12/20)
2020 Mar 11, In Iran the death toll in the Islamic Republic from the outbreak rose by 62 to 354. The semiofficial Fars news agency reported that Vice President Eshaq Jahangiri and two other Cabinet members have contracted the new coronavirus.
(AP, 3/11/20)
2020 Mar 11, In Iraq an attack killed three servicemen, including two Americans, at the Camp Taji base housing coalition forces. Usbat al-Theyireen soon claimed responsibility.
(AP, 3/12/20)(Econ, 4/11/20, p.38)
2020 Mar 11, Italy's PM Giuseppe Conte earmarked $28.3 billion to ease the economic impact from the coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/11/20)
2020 Mar 11, Kenyan officials said a white female giraffe and her 7-month-old calf have been killed by poachers. About 110,000 giraffes remained in Africa.
(SFC, 3/12/20, p.A2)
2020 Mar 11, Kuwait reported over 70 confirmed cases of the new coronavirus and announced that it would close down all work and business for two weeks beginning March 12.
(AP, 3/11/20)
2020 Mar 11, Lebanon suspended flights from countries hit hardest by the novel coronavirus after announcing its second death from the pandemic in two days.
(AFP, 3/11/20)
2020 Mar 11, Malta banned travel with Germany, France, Spain and Switzerland to try to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. Malta so far had six confirmed virus cases, all involving people who had visited Italy.
(Reuters, 3/11/20)
2020 Mar 11, Palestinian Mohammed Hamayel (15) was shot in the head by a live bullet during confrontations with Israeli soldiers in the village of Beita near the West Bank city of Nablus and died in a hospital shortly after.
(AP, 3/11/20)
2020 Mar 11, Myanmar's parliament rejected a proposed constitutional amendment that would have allowed the country's de facto leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, to officially become president.
(AP, 3/11/20)
2020 Mar 11, Poland, which has confirmed 25 coronavirus cases, shut schools, banned large social events and closed cinemas, museums and other cultural sites, following similar measures by other countries in the region including the Czech Republic and Romania.
(AP, 3/11/20)
2020 Mar 11, Qatar said it has recorded 238 new coronavirus cases among individuals already under quarantine in one residential compound, taking the country's total tally to 262.
(Reuters, 3/11/20)
2020 Mar 11, Serbia canceled campaign events for the country’s April 26 parliamentary election in an effort to prevent the further spread of the coronavirus after the number of cases in the Balkan state more than doubled overnight to 12.
(AP, 3/11/20)
2020 Mar 11, Slovak police said 13 local judges and five other people linked to the main suspect in the case of a slain investigative journalist have been detained and charged with corruption and obstruction of justice.
(AP, 3/11/20)
2020 Mar 11, South Korea confirmed a total of 114 coronavirus infections, taking the country's total to 7,869. A new cluster of infections was discovered in a call center office building in Seoul.
(AP, 3/12/20)(Econ, 3/14/20, p.48)
2020 Mar 11, In Spain, the number of coronavirus cases surged past the 2,000-mark.
(AP, 3/11/20)
2020 Mar 11, Sweden announced its first virus-related death.
(AP, 3/11/20)
2020 Mar 11, The World Health Organization declared the virus a pandemic, a term that it had avoided using for fear that countries would give up on containment efforts. Confirmed cases stood at 125,000. Reported deaths were under 5,000.
(NY Times, 3/12/20)(SFC, 3/11/21, p.A5)
2020 Mar 12, The US now had at least 1,323 cases of coronavirus, the eighth-highest number of cases worldwide. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported about 1,260 US coronavirus illnesses. The number trailed independent researchers, who are adding reports from individual states more quickly. Globally, there have been over 126,000 confirmed cases with over 4,600 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering.
(Good Morning America, 3/12/20)(AP, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 12, A US federal judge ordered the release of former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, who has been incarcerated since May for refusing to testify to a grand jury investigating WikiLeaks.
(SFC, 3/13/20, p.A5)
2020 Mar 12, The US military repatriated what may be the remains of service personnel who were lost in action in Burma during WWII. More than 72,000 Americans in all remain unaccounted for from WWII, more than 7,800 from the Korean war and 1,585 from the conflict in Vietnam.
(SFC, 3/13/20, p.A2)
2020 Mar 12, The Walt Disney Co said it will close its theme parks in California and Florida and its resort in Paris from this weekend through the end of the month due to the global outbreak of coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 12, California's Gov. Gavin Newsom announced new restrictions on public gatherings, saying that they must now be limited to no more than 250 people, while smaller events can proceed only if the organizers can implement social distancing of 6 feet per person. About 200 people in California have tested positive so far for coronavirus.
(Good Morning America, 3/12/20)(SFC, 3/13/20, p.A1)
2020 Mar 12, John Christopher Colletti (35) was arrested at the Prairie Band Casino and Resort in Mayetta, Kansas, accused of attempting to steal $20,000 (£15,667) from an advance kiosk. The FBI later said he had used a prosthetic face mask to pose as an elderly gambler, in order to steal nearly $100,00 (£78,332) from the MGM Grand.
(The Independent, 7/24/20)
2020 Mar 12, It was reported that LaSalle Management LLC, private prison in northeast Louisiana, must pay a total of $177,500 to five former inmates of that prison whose faces were pepper-sprayed while they were handcuffed and kneeling in 2016.
(AP, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 12, In Maryland tactical unit members were serving a “high-risk" search warrant around 4:30 a.m. when one of the unit's officers fatally shot Duncan Socrates Lemp (21). Police detectives recovered three rifles and two handguns from the home. An attorney for the man’s family said Lemp was asleep in his bedroom when police opened fire from outside his house. Strangers on the internet later hailed Lemp as a martyr for their anti-government movement.
(AP, 3/13/20)(AP, 10/22/20)
2020 Mar 12, In New York City a female diplomat from the Philippines mission to the United Nations tested positive for coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/12/20)
2020 Mar 12, The national guard arrived in New Rochelle, New York, to maintain a containment zone just 25 miles outside of New York City.
(Good Morning America, 3/12/20)
2020 Mar 12, US Major League Soccer said it's suspending the season for 30 days due to the coronavirus, effective immediately.
(Good Morning America, 3/12/20)
2020 Mar 12, Princess Cruises announced that it's voluntarily stopping global operations of its 18 cruise ships for two months.
(Good Morning America, 3/12/20)
2020 Mar 12, Global stocks plunged into a bear market and oil slumped further after stimulus efforts from the European Central Bank failed to calm investors alarmed by US moves overnight to restrict travel from Europe over the spread of the coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/12/20)
2020 Mar 12, Researchers crunched data on changes in dozens of ecosystems to conclude that Caribbean coral reefs could collapse in 15 years while the Amazon rainforest could die back within 50 years. The finding was questioned by some experts.
(Reuters, 3/12/20)
2020 Mar 12, Algeria's president ordered all schools closed immediately after the North African country saw its first death from the virus. Algeria has 25 cases so far.
(AP, 3/12/20)
2020 Mar 12, Argentina's Pres. Alberto Fernandez shut down borders, business and transport by decree to slow the spread of the coronavirus. The central bank was printing money to keep the government going with inflation was already at 50%
(Econ, 4/25/20, p.23)
2020 Mar 12, Austria's 25,000 police officers were told they were not allowed to take any vacation at least until the end of April, a measure aimed at having enough officers to ensure order.
(AP, 3/12/20)
2020 Mar 12, Azerbaijan reported its first death from the coronavirus outbreak, an Azeri woman who was quarantined after returning from Iran.
(Reuters, 3/12/20)
2020 Mar 12, Michel Roux (b.1941), the French-born chef who had a profound influence on elevating Britain's dining habits, died in England. Roux and his brother, Albert, are widely credited with revolutionizing Britain's staid and old-fashioned culinary scene, notably with their opening of Le Gavroche in London in 1967.
(AP, 3/12/20)(Econ, 3/28/20, p.78)
2020 Mar 12, Canadian authorities confirmed that PM Justin Trudeau's wife Sophie Gregoire Trudeau has tested positive for the COVID-19, following her visit to the United Kingdom. At least 117 cases of the novel coronavirus have been confirmed in Canada with one death.
(Benzinga, 3/12/20)
2020 Mar 12, In China Ren Zhiqiang, a member of China's ruling Communist Party and a former top executive of state-controlled property developer Huayuan Real Estate Group, went missing. The influential former property executive had called President Xi Jinping a "clown" over a speech he made last month about the government's efforts to battle the coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 12, Expedition operators on Mount Everest said that Chinese mountaineering officials will not allow spring climbs from their side of the mountain due to fears of the coronavirus. The number of cases worldwide has surpassed 120,000.
(AP, 3/12/20)
2020 Mar 12, In Egypt thunderstorms packing heavy rains and lightning caused widespread flooding across the country, killing at least five people and injuring five others.
(AP, 3/12/20)
2020 Mar 12, El Salvador announced a national lockdown as it reported three confirmed cases of the coronavirus.
(Econ, 4/11/20, p.24)
2020 Mar 12, A Finnish court jailed in a custody hearing Gibril Ealoghima Massaquoi (50), a Sierra Leone man suspected of committing serious war crimes and crimes against humanity from 1999 through 2003 during Liberia's bloody second civil war. Massaquoi has lived in Finland for more than 10 years.
(AP, 3/12/20)
2020 Mar 12, Gabon confirmed its first coronavirus case.
(Reuters, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 12, Germany's domestic intelligence agency formally classified a radical faction within the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, know as "The Wing," as a right-wing extremist movement.
(SFC, 3/13/20, p.A3)
2020 Mar 12, Ghana confirmed their first coronavirus case.
(Reuters, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 12, Iran said it had asked last week for an emergency $5 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund to help fight the spread of a new virus that's swept across the country, infecting more than 10,000 people and killing hundreds. The Health Ministry said 75 people had died in the past 24 hours and more than 1,000 new cases of infection had been confirmed, pushing the death toll to 429 and confirmed cases to 10,075.
(AP, 3/12/20)
2020 Mar 12, Ireland's PM Leo Varadkar ordered the country into partial lock down, shutting schools, colleges and daycare, banning mass gatherings and telling people to stay apart.
(Bloomberg, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 12, Italy's Premier Giuseppe Conte ordered restaurants, cafes and retail shops closed after imposing a nationwide lockdown on personal movement. Jewelry and clothing shops that on Tuesday and Wednesday had posted signs urging customers to queue up out the door a meter (3.3 feet) apart were closed until further notice. Supermarkets, pharmacies and outdoor markets were still open.
(AP, 3/12/20)
2020 Mar 12, It was reported that a supercomputer, donated by Britain and based in Kenya, is boosting efforts in East Africa to control a locust outbreak that raises what the UN food agency calls "an unprecedented threat" to the region's food security. The UN recently raised its aid appeal relating to locusts to $138 million, up from $76 million, saying the need for more help is urgent. Experts have warned that if the number of locusts is unchecked they could grow 500 times by June, when drier weather is expected in East Africa.
(AP, 3/12/20)
2020 Mar 12, The government of Netherlands announced a ban on gatherings of more than 100 people, told companies to encourage employees to work from home and said anyone with flu-like symptoms should stay home.
(AP, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 12, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte announced strict immigration curbs and a halt on domestic land, sea and air travel to and from Manila, in what he called a "lockdown" of the capital to arrest the spread of coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/12/20)
2020 Mar 12, A Russian court fined BBC World News and one of its senior journalists for failing to correctly label content unsuitable for children and failing to submit content to a state archive, the Interfax news agency reported.
(Reuters, 3/12/20)
2020 Mar 12, South Africa reported 17 confirmed coronavirus infections, including its first transmitted locally. Across Africa, 12 of the continent's 54 countries have registered COVID-19 cases, the most recent being Ivory Coast announcing one case.
(AP, 3/12/20)
2020 Mar 12, South Korea reported fewer than 120 new coronavirus cases, but authorities warned that a new cluster in Seoul could see the infection spread in the capital.
(AFP, 3/12/20)
2020 Mar 12, Sudan's first death from the coronavirus was of a man who had visited the United Arab Emirates in the first week of March.
(Reuters, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 12, In northeastern Syria a car bomb exploded at a checkpoint manned by Turkey-backed opposition fighters killing at least four people. Turkey blamed Kurdish militants.
(AP, 3/12/20)
2020 Mar 12, The UN Security Council voted unanimously to extend the mandate of the UN peacekeeping mission in South Sudan, welcoming “encouraging developments" toward peace and a reduction in political violence by the warring parties after six years of civil war.
(AP, 3/12/20)
2020 Mar 12, Vietnam's coronavirus cases rose to 44.
(Reuters, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, Pres. Donald Trump declared the coronavirus outbreak a national emergency, freeing up money and resources to fight it, and threw his support behind a congressional aid package. Trump said “I don't take responsibility at all" for the slow rollout of testing. Trump said that major cruise lines including Royal Caribbean would suspend cruises for 30 days at his request after repeated transmission of coronavirus among passengers at sea.
(AP, 3/14/20)(Reuters, 3/14/20)
2020 Mar 13, A US federal government plan to combat the coronavirus warned policymakers that a pandemic “will last 18 months or longer" and could include “multiple waves," resulting in widespread shortages that would strain consumers and the nation’s health care system.
(NY Times, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 13, The Dow Jones Industrial Average rallied nearly 2000 points, its biggest point gain ever, after Pres. Donald Trump declared the coronavirus pandemic a national emergency.
(SFC, 3/14/20, p.D1)
2020 Mar 13, President Donald Trump's administration announced it is awarding $1.3 million to two companies trying to develop rapid COVID-19 tests that could detect whether a person is positive for the new coronavirus within an hour. The Department of Health and Human Services said it is awarding $679,000 to DiaSorin Molecular, of Cypress, California, and $598,000 to QIAGEN, of Germantown, Maryland, to accelerate development of their tests.
(AP, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, US officials said inmates at all 122 federal correctional facilities across the country will no longer be allowed visits from family, friends or attorneys for the next 30 days, in response to the threat of the coronavirus.
(AP, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc's coronavirus test, which would allow the firm to increase capacity to 1.4 million tests a week.
(Reuters, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said that the New York State Department of Health can authorize certain laboratories to begin testing for the coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, The US Federal Reserve launched a wave of $37 billion of Treasury security purchases under the enhanced market liquidity measures it announced a day earlier to address volatile conditions in the government bond market caused by the coronavirus outbreak.
(Reuters, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, In California nearly 1.5 million students have been told to stay home for up to four weeks as public and private school shit down across the state to combat the coronavirus.
(SFC, 3/14/20, p.A1)
2020 Mar 13, San Francisco's Mayor London breed banned nonessential gatherings of more than 100 people due to the coronavirus outbreak.
(SFC, 3/14/20, p.A1)
2020 Mar 13, In Florida Andrew Gillum (40), who in 2018 came within 34,000 votes of becoming the state's governor, was discovered by police at a South Beach hotel early today in a room with bags of possible crystal meth and in the company of a man who appeared to have overdosed on drugs. No arrests were made.
(Miami Herald, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, A Chicago jury convicted Shomari Legghett (46) of first-degree murder in the Feb. 13, 2018, shooting death of police Cmdr. Paul Bauer (53).
(AP, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, In Kentucky Breonna Taylor (26), decorated Emergency Medical Technician (EMT), was shot at least eight times by police officers in her apartment by Louisville police officers. Officials later said that police were executing a drug warrant. The aspiring nurse's boyfriend Kenneth Walker was inside the apartment with her when police purportedly attempted to enter without announcement. Mr Walker, who is a licensed gun owner, is said to have fired shots at officers when they attempted to enter.
(The Independent, 5/12/20)
2020 Mar 13, Louisiana's Gov. John Bel Edwards postponed the state's presidential primaries due to fears of the coronavirus, making it the first state to push back its election because of the outbreak. He delayed the April 4 primary until June 20.
(AP, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, In Boston David Sidoo, a former Canadian Football League player, pleaded guilty to participating in a college admissions cheating scheme by hiring someone to take the SATs in place of his two sons. His plea deal called for 90 days in prison and a fine of $250,000.
(SFC, 3/14/20, p.A5)
2020 Mar 13, New York state opened its first drive-through coronavirus test site, following a similar experiment in Seattle.
(Reuters, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 13, In NYC all United Nations staff at its headquarters were told o work from home for at least three weeks due to the coronavirus outbreak unless it was essential for them to be present.
(AFP, 3/14/20)
2020 Mar 13, US federal prosecutors hit R&B singer R. Kelly with more criminal charges in a revised indictment filed in NYC. Charges included the singer of having unprotected sex with a girl in 2015 without disclosing he had herpes.
(SSFC, 3/15/20, p.A5)
2020 Mar 13, In Pennsylvania Philadelphia police Cpl. James O'Connor (46) was shot and killed early today as he served a homicide warrant at a home. Several people were arrested including the subject of the warrant, Hassan Elliott, a fugitive wanted in a robbery and slaying last year not far from the scene.
(AP, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, Apple Inc said it will close all its retail stores outside Greater China until March 27, to minimize risk of coronavirus transmission.
(Reuters, 3/14/20)
2020 Mar 13, More than 134,500 people have been infected globally by the coronavirus and over 4,900 have died, according to a Reuters tally of government announcements.
(Reuters, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, Australia warned citizens the coronavirus pandemic is now so widespread that they should reconsider all foreign travel, as the government stepped up measures to slow the spread of the disease.
(AFP, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, Austria said will introduce border checks with Switzerland and ban flight connections with France, Spain and Switzerland from March 16 to slow the rapidly spreading coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, Belarus said it has recorded 27 people infected with coronavirus, six more than a day before.
(Reuters, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, In Bosnia Muslim men Jasmin Keserovic and Senad Kasupovic were charged with terrorism offences, over accusations they fought for Islamic State. The men were part of a group of seven flown back to Bosnia from Syria in December, along with 18 women and children.
(Reuters, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, Brazil's federal audit court suspended late today an increase of 20 billion reais ($4.1 billion) to social assistance for elderly and disabled people.
(Reuters, 3/14/20)
2020 Mar 13, Britain's number of confirmed coronavirus cases rose to 590. Ten people have died.
(Reuters, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, The Bulgarian parliament voted unanimously to declare a state of emergency until April 13 as the number of confirmed cases in the country more than tripled to 23.
(Reuters, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, Cambodia recorded two new cases of the coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/14/20)
2020 Mar 13, China's death toll due to the coronavirus rose by 13. The Mainland had 11 new confirmed cases. The country now has 80,824 confirmed coronavirus cases. Wuhan city reported five new cases. The death toll touched 3,176.
(AP, 3/13/20)(Reuters, 3/14/20)(Bloomberg, 3/14/20)
2020 Mar 13, Chinese billionaire and Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma said he will donate 500,000 coronavirus testing kits and 1 million masks to the United States and urged international cooperation to fight the health crisis.
(Reuters, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, Costa Rica, which has reported 22 cases, ordered all university classes suspended.
(Reuters, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, Ecuador suspended large events and shut its schools as it confirmed 15 cases of the coronavirus.
(Econ, 4/11/20, p.24)
2020 Mar 13, In Egypt thunderstorms and flooding around Egypt entered a second day, interrupting daily life in much of the country, including Cairo. The death toll soon rose to 21.
(AP, 3/13/20)(SSFC, 3/15/20, p.A3)
2020 Mar 13, Ethiopia confirmed its first case of coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, Finland, France, Germany, Luxembourg and Portugal agreed to take in at least 1,600 migrant children in Greece traveling without their parents.
(SSFC, 3/15/20, p.A3)
2020 Mar 13, In France the death toll from coronavirus rose to 61.
(Reuters, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, Germany recorded 3,062 confirmed cases of the coronavirus, with five deaths. The German government unleashed the biggest economic aid package in the country's post-war history, offering companies "unlimited" credit to keep them afloat during the coronavirus crisis.
(Reuters, 3/14/20)(AFP, 3/13/20)0
2020 Mar 13, In Greece Katerina Sakellaropoulou (63) was formally sworn in as the country's first female president.
(SFC, 3/14/20, p.A4)
2020 Mar 13, Greece said it will close all its museums and archaeological sites, including the entire Acropolis that looms over Athens, until the end of the month due to the impact of the coronavirus. Greece had 117 confirmed cases and one fatality.
(AP, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, In Hong Kong a man (80) became the fourth patient to die from coronavirus.
(AP, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, The Icelandic government said it would ban public gatherings of 100 or more people and that secondary schools and universities would close for four weeks to curb the spread of the coronavirus outbreak. So far, 117 cases of coronavirus infections have been confirmed in the country.
(Reuters, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, Indian authorities ordered the release of Kashmir's most prominent politician, Farooq Abdullah, one of dozens of leaders held since August, when the federal government withdrew the troubled region's autonomy.
(Reuters, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, Two Indian states ordered the closure of public buildings, malls, cinemas and bars in several major cities, with Mumbai and Bengaluru subject to differing restrictions, after the country reported its first death from the coronavirus. India had 74 confirmed cases of the virus.
(Reuters, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, Iran announced that the new coronavirus has claimed another 85 lives, the highest single-day death toll in one of the world's worst affected countries. This brought to 514 the overall number of deaths in the country. The total number of patients has reached 11,364 cases. Iran said security forces will clear the streets nationwide within 24 hours so all citizens can be checked for coronavirus.
(AFP, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, Iraq's military said five security force members and a civilian were killed early today in a barrage of US airstrikes launched hours after a rocket attack killed and wounded American and British servicemen at a base north of Baghdad. Iraq's military said the strikes killed three Iraqi army commandos and two federal police officers.
(AP, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, Irish nationalists in Northern Ireland's government called for the closure of schools to mirror measures across the border in the Republic of Ireland, putting them at odds with their pro-British power-sharing partners. Northern Ireland currently has 20 confirmed cases of COVID-19 compared with 70 in the Republic of Ireland, where the population is around two and a half times bigger.
(Reuters, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, In Israel 126 cases of the disease have been reported and another 35 in the occupied West Bank. Muslims gathered in smaller-than-usual numbers at al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem after religious authorities decided to keep Islam's third holiest site open for prayers but enact health measures to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, Italy's death toll from the coronavirus epidemic shot past 1,000 as the economic impact worsened. The total number of infections rose to 15,113.
(Reuters, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, In Japan total coronavirus infections rose to 1,380.
(Reuters, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, Kazakhstan confirmed first coronavirus cases.
(Reuters, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, Kenya confirmed East Africa's first case of coronavirus, a woman who had returned to the capital Nairobi from the United States.
(Reuters, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, The Bank of Mauritius said it will offer 5 billion rupees ($131.06 million) in liquidity support to businesses, through commercial banks, to cushion businesses from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
(Reuters, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, Mexico has so far confirmed 15 cases of coronavirus with no deaths. Deputy health secretary Hugo Lopez-Gatell said Mexico would consider mechanisms to control the flow of people entering Mexico from the US in an effort to limit coronavirus, if necessary.
(AP, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, Nepal's government announced that it was suspending climbing permits for Mt. Everest and all other peaks in the country due to concern over the spread of the coronavirus.
(SFC, 3/14/20, p.A2)
2020 Mar 13, In the Netherlands new coronavirus infections reached 804, with 10 deaths. Dutch shoppers stockpiled toilet paper, pasta and canned goods as worries about the coronavirus outbreak spread. The price of tulips for export stalled at zero due to the coronavirus pandemic. Growers ended up dumping some 400 million flowers.
(Reuters, 3/13/20)(SFC, 4/23/20, p.C2)
2020 Mar 13, Pakistan said it will shut all land borders and limit international flights for 15 days to halt the spread of coronavirus. Pakistan has reported 21 cases of the virus but no deaths.
(AP, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, Poland reported its first death from coronavirus. So far, 47 cases have been confirmed in the country.
(Reuters, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, Saudi Arabia detected 17 new coronavirus cases, 11 of whom were Egyptians.
(Reuters, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, In Slovenia Janez Jansa (b.1958) became prime minister for a third time.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janez_Jan%C5%A1a)(Econ., 7/6/20, p.45)
2020 Mar 13, South Korea recorded 110 new coronavirus cases, compared with 114 a day earlier, taking the national tally to 7,979, with the death toll rising by five to 72 as of late today.
(AP, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, In Spain the number of coronavirus cases jumped to 4,209 from 3,004 a day earlier, as the disease spread mostly in Madrid, the Basque Country and La Rioja regions. The death toll from the epidemic has increased to 120 from 84 the previous day. In the Madrid region said the number of cases rose to 2,078.
(AP, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, Thailand reported five new coronavirus cases, bringing the total to 75.
(Reuters, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, Turkey said a second patient has been diagnosed with the coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, A UN report said allegations of sexual abuse and exploitation in UN peacekeeping and political missions rose significantly in 2019, with allegations against civilian personnel nearly doubling.
(AP, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, Uruguay's new Pres. Luis Lacalle Pou declared an emergency due to the coronavirus pandemic and shut down borders.
(Econ., 6/20/20, p.26)
2020 Mar 14, US Vice President Mike Pence said that new travel bans would be implemented on the United Kingdom and Ireland as the novel coronavirus pandemic spreads.
(The Daily Beast, 3/14/20)
2020 Mar 14, In the SF Bay Area 27 new coronavirus cases were reported, with 12 in Santa Clara County, 6 in San Mateo County, 5 in SF and 4 in Contra costa County. SF banned al most all hospital visitors as part of tis effort to fight the coronavirus pandemic.
(SSFC, 3/15/20, p.A12)
2020 Mar 14, New York state reported 100 new cases, pushing the total to 524,. Gov. Andrew Cuomo said accelerated testing will lead to a rapid rise in total infections. Nationwide, more than 2,000 people have been infected and 48 have died. A Reuters count said some 145,594 people have been infected by the coronavirus across the world and 5,419 have died.
(Bloomberg, 3/14/20)(Reuters, 3/14/20)
2020 Mar 14, New York City reported its first fatality from the coronavirus.
(Bloomberg, 3/14/20)
2020 Mar 14, The Central African Republic confirmed its first coronavirus case.
(Reuters, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 14, Colombia's Pres. Ivan Duque closed the country's borders to foreigners, including some 55,000 a day, mostly shoppers, who came from Venezuela.
(Econ., 5/2/20, p.24)
2020 Mar 14, The Dominican Republic said it will suspend all flights from Europe and the arrival of all cruise ships for a month in order to prevent the spread of coronavirus. So far 11 cases of coronavirus have been detected.
(Reuters, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 14, Egypt said it will suspend schools and universities for two weeks starting March 15 amid to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. The country has so far registered 93 cases of the new coronavirus, with two fatalities.
(Reuters, 3/14/20)
2020 Mar 14, Eswatini (formerly Swaziland), a small African nation on South Africa’s eastern border, confirmed its first coronavirus case.
(Bloomberg, 3/14/20)
2020 Mar 14, The French government published an official decree banning all non-essential gatherings, but hundreds of protesters, some wearing protective masks, began convening outside the Montparnasse train station, chanting anti-Macron slogans. Thousands of security forces fanned out across central Paris as anti-government "Yellow Vest" protesters defied a ban on mass gatherings aimed at preventing the spread of coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/14/20)
2020 Mar 14, Greece said it would suspend all flights that were still operating to and from Italy, after reporting two more fatalities from a coronavirus infection, raising the total number of deaths in the country to three. Greece had 190 confirmed cases of coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/14/20)
2020 Mar 14, Indonesia reported that Transport Minister Budi Karya Sumadi has been hospitalized in Jakarta after he contracted coronavirus. Indonesia reported 27 more coronavirus cases, bringing the total number of confirmed infection to 96 with five deaths.
(Reuters, 3/14/20)
2020 Mar 14, Iran said the coronavirus outbreak has killed another 97 people, pushing the death toll in the country to 611. Iran has reported 12,729 cases in total.
(AP, 3/14/20)
2020 Mar 14, In Iraq dozens of rockets slammed into an Iraqi base north of Baghdad wounding 3 American and 2 Iraqi troops. Iraq's military said that 33 Katyusha rockets had been launched on Taji base north of Baghdad which houses US-led coalition troops.
(AP, 3/14/20)(Reuters, 3/14/20)
2020 Mar 14, Authorities in Iraq's northern Kurdish region imposed a 48-hour curfew in the cities of Irbil and Sulaimaniyah that began overnight. The region has reported 27 cases, including one fatality from the COVID-19 illness caused by the virus.
(AP, 3/14/20)
2020 Mar 14, Italy reported more than 21,000 cases of coronavirus and 1,441 deaths, the second most heavily affected country after China.
(Reuters, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 14, It was reported that 9 players in Italy’s top soccer league, Serie A, have tested positive for the coronavirus. Games have been suspended until at least April 3. Italian supercar maker Ferrari said it will suspend production at the Maranello and Modena plants until March 27. Volkswagen AG’s Lamborghini has also suspended production in Italy until March 25.
(Bloomberg, 3/14/20)
2020 Mar 14, In Kuwait, four more people have been infected with the virus, bringing the number of coronavirus cases to 104.
(Bloomberg, 3/14/20)
2020 Mar 14, Lebanon's unemployment was thought to be as high as 25%. An estimated 40% of the people were now poor.
(Econ, 3/14/20, p.38)
2020 Mar 14, Malaysia reported 41 new infections, the biggest one-day jump so far, for a total of 238. The new cases bring the total number of infected people in the country to 238.
(Reuters, 3/14/20)
2020 Mar 14, In Mali Canadian Edith Blais and Italian Luca Tacchetto were freed in good health. They had been kidnapped on December 15, 2018, in Burkina Faso.
(AP, 3/14/20)
2020 Mar 14, Mauritania, in northwest Africa, confirmed its first coronavirus case.
(Bloomberg, 3/14/20)
2020 Mar 14, Morocco confirmed 9 new coronavirus cases bringing the total number of infected people to 17. Morocco has suspended all football matches, closed all schools, halted flights with 9 countries and cancelled gatherings of more than 50 people.
(AP, 3/14/20)
2020 Mar 14, Dutch health authorities said the number of confirmed coronavirus infections in the Netherlands has risen by 155 to 959. The number of deaths rose by 2 to a total of 12.
(Reuters, 3/14/20)
2020 Mar 14, New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern said that everyone entering the country from midnight March 15 must self isolate for 14 days in an effort to contain the spread of the new coronavirus. New Zealand had six confirmed cases and no recorded deaths.
(Reuters, 3/14/20)
2020 Mar 14, Romania's lawmakers approved the new cabinet of PM Ludovioc Orban, ending more than a month of political wrangling.
(Reuters, 3/16/20)
2020 Mar 14, Russian Pres. Vladimir Putin signed a law on constitutional changes that could keep him in power for another 16 years. The step must still be approved in a nationwide vote. Police detained around 50 people in Moscow protesting against plans to change the constitution.
(AP, 3/14/20)(Reuters, 3/14/20)
2020 Mar 14, Russia’s PM Mikhail Mishustin signed orders to close the land borders with Poland and Norway for most foreign citizens from March 15.
(Bloomberg, 3/14/20)
2020 Mar 14, Rwanda reported its first coronavirus case beecoming the 19th African nation to report the presence of the virus.
(Reuters, 3/14/20)
2020 Mar 14, Saudi Arabia said it would halt all flights to the kingdom for two weeks beginning March 15.
(AP, 3/14/20)
2020 Mar 14, Seychelles confirmed its first coronavirus case.
(Reuters, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 14, Spain recorded 5,753 coronavirus cases, up by a third from a day earlier. Spain said it will impose a nationwide lockdown beginning March 16 for two weeks as part of a state of emergency due to the virus. Car production at a Renault-Nissan plant in Barcelona has been stopped because of supply-chain disruptions due to the virus.
(Reuters, 3/14/20)(Bloomberg, 3/14/20)
2020 Mar 14, The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights at least 384,000 people have died in Syria, including more than 116,000 civilians, since the war began in March 2011.
(AFP, 3/14/20)
2020 Mar 15, Joe Biden promised to choose a woman as his vice president should he win the Democratic presidential nomination. He made the pledge on stage with rival Bernie Sanders in the first debate held without a live audience because of concerns over the coronavirus. Sanders said he would also likely choose a woman.
(Bloomberg, 3/16/20)
2020 Mar 15, US officials recorded nearly 3,000 cases of coronavirus with 63 deaths, up from 58 a day earlier. Globally more than 162,000 were infected and over 6,400 have died. The US Navy said a sailor aboard a warship ship has tested positive for the coronavirus for the first time. The only state not reporting cases is West Virginia. Cases neared 160,000 worldwide, as deaths top 6,000. Several countries cautioned that fewer tests are being performed as more people fall ill. A US Army soldier tested positive for the coronavirus, marking the first US Army case in Europe.
(NY Times, 3/15/20)(Bloomberg, 3/15/20)(Reuters, 3/16/20)
2020 Mar 15, The US Federal Reserve slashing its benchmark rate back to a record low slashing it by a full percentage point to a range between zero and 0.25%. Global markets slumped. The Fed also said it would buy $700 billion in Treasury and mortgage bonds.
(AP, 3/15/20)(AP, 3/16/20)
2020 Mar 15, The Peace Corps told its volunteers around the world that it is suspending all operations globally and evacuating all volunteers in light of the spread of the new coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/16/20)
2020 Mar 15, California's Gov. Gavin Newsom announced new state measure to combat the coronavirus, urging that bars close and restaurants reduce capacity. Newsom also asked all state residents 65 and older to isolate themselves at home.
(SFC, 3/16/20, p.A1)
2020 Mar 15, In the SF Bay Area Santa Clara's health officer confirmed 114 cases of coronavirus, the most of any county in the state and about 30% of the cases statewide.
(SFC, 3/16/20, p.A1)
2020 Mar 15, In Georgia seven people were dead after a shooting incident initially reported as a murder-suicide in Moncure, Chatham County. The victims included the suspected shooter.
(Charlotte Observer, 3/16/20)
2020 Mar 15, In Missouri 5 people including a police officer and a gunman died in a shooting at a Springfield gas station after gunman Joaquin Roman (31) went inside and opened fire.
(Reuters, 3/16/20)(SFC, 3/17/20, p.A4)
2020 Mar 15, New Jersey reported its second death from the coronavirus, The state has 69 positive tests, up from 50 the day before.
(Bloomberg, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 15, New York's Governor Andrew Cuomo said two state Assembly members, Helene Weinstein and Charles Barron, have tested positive for Covid-19. The state reported 729 confirmed cases, an increase of 69. There have been three deaths.
(Bloomberg, 3/15/20)(The Independent, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 15, NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a decision to close city schools through at least April 20. Hours later the mayor also took aim at the city's nightlife, saying he would sign an order on March 16 limiting the city's 27,000 restaurants and bars to takeout and delivery only effective on the morning of March 17.
(AP, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 15, US sportswear giant Nike Inc said it is closing all of its stores in the United States and several other countries to limit the spread of the coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 15, Several African countries closed borders, canceled flights and imposed strict entry and quarantine requirements to contain the spread of the new coronavirus, which has a foothold in 26 nations on the continent as cases keep rising. Cases have now been reported in Algeria, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Rep., Congo Brazzaville, Congo DRC, Egypt, and Equatorial Guinea, eSwatini, Ethiopia, Gabon, Ghana, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Mauritania, Morocco, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Seychelles, South Africa, Sudan, Togo, Tunisia.
(Reuters, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 15, In Australia's New South Wales, the country’s most populous state, reported 22 new cases taking the totally tally to 134. Eight new cases of coronavirus were confirmed in the state of Victoria, bringing the total number of cases in that state to 57. Australia said it will impose 14-day self-isolation on international travelers arriving from midnight and ban cruise ships from foreign ports for 30 days.
(Bloomberg, 3/15/20)(Reuters, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 15, In Austria the number of confirmed coronavirus cases jumped to 800, from 602 a day earlier.
(AP, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 15, Belgium’s health ministry reported 197 new cases, bringing the total of confirmed infections to 886.
(Bloomberg, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 15, The British government announced England will join a growing list of countries offering HIV-prevention pill to all those at high risk of catching the virus. More than 100,000 people were estimated to be living with HIV in the UK in 2018.
(Reuters, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 15, Airlines called on the British government to help ensure their survival during the coronavirus crisis after the US extended restrictions on European travelers to include Britain.
(Reuters, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 15, PM Boyko Borissov said Bulgaria will raise the salaries of all medics involved in treating coronavirus patients by 1000 levs ($566) per month as it steps up measures to contain the fast-spreading infection. Confirmed cases had almost doubled to 43 with two deaths.
(Reuters, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 15, In Cameroon a passenger arriving from Brussels was whisked to a hospital and diagnosed inside four hours as the country's fourth case of coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/17/20)
2020 Mar 15, Cambodia said French national travelling from Paris via Singapore to Phnom Penh has been infected with the coronavirus, bringing the country's tally of cases to eight.
(Reuters, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 15, In the Central African Rep. a UN peacekeeper from Burundi was killed when troops were trying to stop an attack in Grimari in the center of the country that began when anti-Balaka fighters under the command of Dimitri Ayoloma opened fire on the homes of the mayor and a regional official.
(AP, 3/16/20)
2020 Mar 15, China reported 16 new confirmed cases of coronavirus bringing its total to 80,860. Beijing said it will quarantine all travelers from overseas, including Chinese citizens, at designated locations for 14 days as the government shifts its focus to limiting imported coronavirus cases.
(AP, 3/15/20)(Reuters, 3/16/20)
2020 Mar 15, Denmark's government told private companies struggling with drastic measures to curb the spread of coronavirus that it would cover 75% of employees' salaries, if they promised not to cut staff.
(Reuters, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 15, Ethiopia has now recorded four coronavirus cases.
(Reuters, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 15, Finland had a total of 240 coronavirus cases.
(Bloomberg, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 15, French voters went to the polls in the first round of elections to choose mayors and tens of thousands of local officials.
(SSFC, 3/15/20, p.A3)
2020 Mar 15, Georgia's government said it will temporarily shut its border with Russia for travelers from March 16 in a bid to stop the spread of the coronavirus. Georgia had 30 cases of coronavirus, the highest number in the South Caucasus region.
(Reuters, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 15, Germany's Health Ministry confirmed a report in newspaper Welt am Sonntag, which said President Donald Trump had offered funds to lure the company CureVac to the United States, and the German government was making counter-offers to tempt it to stay.
(Reuters, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 15, Guatemala logged its first fatality from the coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/16/20)
2020 Mar 15, In Guyana a team from the 15-nation Caribbean Community arrived to supervise a recount of the March 2 elections. Incumbent Pres. David Granger had agreed to the recount. A local court soon blocked the recount.
(SFC, 3/16/20, p.A2)(SFC, 3/19/20, p.A2)
2020 Mar 15, India reported that the number of coronavirus infections had risen to 107, an increase of 23 from the day before.
(Reuters, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 15, Indonesia reported 21 new coronavirus infections, bringing the total number of confirmed cases to 117.
(Reuters, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 15, Iran's Health Ministry added another 113 deaths and 1,209 new confirmed cases of the COVID-19 infection. It said the outbreak has claimed 724. Some 13,938 people have been infected across the country.
(AFP, 3/15/20)(Bloomberg, 3/15/20)(Reuters, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 15, Israel's Pres. Reuven Rivlin said he has decided to give opposition leader Benny Gants the first opportunity to form a new government. PM Benjamin Netanyahu proposed a six-month "emergency government" to confront the coronavirus crisis and end a political deadlock after the country's third inconclusive election in less than a year. Israel delayed PM Benjamin Netanyahu's corruption trial for two months due to the coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/15/20)(Reuters, 3/16/20)(SFC, 3/16/20, p.A4)
2020 Mar 15, Italy recorded 368 more deaths from the coronavirus. It had 24,747 cases and 1,809 deaths.
(Reuters, 3/16/20)
2020 Mar 15, In Japan the number of coronavirus infections rose to 1,484, increasing by a faster pace than the previous day. The total number of infections included 697 from the Diamond Princess cruise ship and 14 returnees on charter flights from China.
(Reuters, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 15, Jordan confirmed 12 new coronavirus cases.
(Reuters, 3/16/20)
2020 Mar 15, Kenya has now recorded three coronavirus cases.
(Reuters, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 15, Lebanon's Health Ministry said that it had recorded 99 cases of coronavirus. Pres. Michel Aoun called for citizens to work from home and avoid socializing to prevent the spread of the virus.
(Reuters, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 15, Libya’s coast guard intercepted over 400 Europe-bound migrants off the country’s Mediterranean coast and returned them to the capital of Tripoli over the past 24 hours.
(AP, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 15, Malaysia confirmed 190 new coronavirus cases, pushing its overall total to 428, the most in Southeast Asia.
(Bloomberg, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 15, Mexican officials said the number of monarch butterflies that reached their winter resting grounds decreased by about 53% this year. The population covered only 6.9 acres, down from 15 acres a year earlier.
(SFC, 3/16/20, p.A2)
2020 Mar 15, In the Netherlands the number of deaths rose by eight to 20, while confirmed cases increased by 176 to 1,135.
(AP, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 15, Niger's army reportedly killed at least 50 Boko Haram Islamist extremists during an overnight attack on the eastern Toumour military post.
(SFC, 3/18/20, p.A2)
2020 Mar 15, In Nigeria a pipeline explosion killed at least 15 people and destroyed about 50 buildings after a fire broke out in a suburb of Lagos.
(Reuters, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 15, Peru's Pres. Martin Vizcarra imposed a lockdown and quarantine as his country reported 71 cases of the coronavirus.
(Economist, 4/4/20, p.26)
2020 Mar 15, The Philippines recorded 4 additional coronavirus deaths and 29 new cases, bringing the domestic tally of infections to 140, as authorities placed the entire capital Manila under "community quarantine" for about a month.
(Reuters, 3/15/20)(Reuters, 3/16/20)
2020 Mar 15, Poland’s coronavirus cases rose to 111 cases with three deaths. The count was rising as the nation is now testing all those who are in quarantine.
(Bloomberg, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 15, Singapore confirmed 14 new cases of the novel coronavirus, marking the biggest daily increase of the infection in the city-state. Nine of the cases were imported. Singapore has confirmed a total 226 cases of the virus so far, with 105 having fully recovered.
(Reuters, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 15, Slovakia reported 54 coronavirus cases, an increase of 10.
(Bloomberg, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 15, South Africa reported its first local transmission of coronavirus, increasing the number of cases to 62. President Cyril Ramaphosa introduced social-distancing and declared a national state of disaster to combat the spread of the coronavirus as his counterparts in sub-Saharan Africa took similar steps to curb the threat in a region that accounts for only 1% of global health-care spending.
(BBC, 3/16/20)(AP, 3/16/20)(Econ, 4/18/20, p.33)
2020 Mar 15, South Korea reported 76 new coronavirus cases in 24 hours, an all-time low since Feb. 20, when the country saw a surge of over 500 in four days. The country’s total tally stands at 8,162 with a total of 75 deaths.
(Bloomberg, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 15, Spain’s diagnosed cases of the coronavirus jumped 35% to 7,753 and the death toll rose by 152 to 288. Ford Motors said it would shut its Spanish plant in the eastern region of Valencia for one week starting tomorrow after three employees tested positive for coronavirus.
(Bloomberg, 3/15/20)(Reuters, 3/15/20)(Reuters, 3/16/20)
2020 Mar 15, In Switzerland coronavirus infections jumped by nearly 1,000 cases in 24 hours to 2,200 and 14 deaths were recorded from the virus across the country.
(AFP, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 15, Syria's brutal conflict entered its 10th year with President Bashar al-Assad's regime consolidating its hold over a war-wracked country where foreign powers are flexing their muscle. In the northwest Turkish and Russian troops began joint patrols on the key M4 highway. Rebel provocations forced Russia and Turkey to cut short their first joint patrol.
(AFP, 3/15/20)(AP, 3/15/20)(Reuters, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 15, Thailand reported 32 new cases of the coronavirus in the largest daily jump in infections since the outbreak began, bringing its total tally to 114.
(Reuters, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 15, Turkey said thousands of Muslims returning to home from a pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia were being taken into quarantine due to concerns about the spread of the coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 15, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro wrote to the IMF asking for a $5bn loan to fight COVID-19.
(Econ, 3/21/20, p.30)
2020 Mar 15, Vietnam's health ministry said all passengers coming from or through China, South Korea, the UK and Schengen countries will be quarantined and tested for coronavirus. Vietnam reported 37 new coronavirus cases over the past week, taking the tally to 53.
(Reuters, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 16, The US Department of Commerce's Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) added 24 companies and individuals to the Entity List for posing a risk to US national security and foreign policy interests. They included nine entities in Pakistan that are associated with the country's missile technology program, six from Iran, five from the United Arab Emirates, two from China, and two from Russia.
(Benzinga, 3/16/20)
2020 Mar 16, US federal prosecutors said that they were moving to drop charges against two Russian companies accused of funding a social media campaign to influence US voters in the 2016 presidential election. The companies, Concord Management and Consulting and Concord Catering, were among three companies and 13 individuals then-Special Counsel Robert Mueller charged with conspiracy to spread disinformation on social media, one of the main indictments that came out of his team's two-year Russia investigation.
(AP, 3/17/20)
2020 Mar 16, US surgeon general Dr. Jerome Adams said that the number of coronavirus cases in the US has reached the level that Italy recorded two weeks ago, a sign that infections are expected to rise as the government steps up testing and financial markets continue to fall. The coronavirus has killed at least 67 people in the US with at least 3,774 confirmed cases.
(AP, 3/16/20)(Good Morning America, 3/16/20)
2020 Mar 16, The US Supreme Court announced that it is postponing arguments for late March and early April because of the coronavirus, including fights over subpoenas for President Donald Trump’s financial records.
(Reuters, 3/16/20)
2020 Mar 16, The US stock market took its sharpest dive since the Black Monday crash of 1987 as President Trump warned the coronavirus pandemic could drag the economy into a recession. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell by 12.9 percent. The S&P 500 lost 12 percent and is now nearly 30 percent below its record high, set less than a month ago.
(The Week, 3/17/20)
2020 Mar 16, San Francisco area leaders told seven million people in six counties to "shelter in place." Other localities ordered restaurants, bars, and other public gathering spots to shut their doors. The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in the US jumped past 4,600, with at least 85 deaths.
(The Week, 3/17/20)
2020 Mar 16, Maryland said it will shut down all bars, restaurants, theaters and gyms beginning at 5 p.m. Drive through, carryout and delivery food services will still be allowed.
(Good Morning America, 3/16/20)
2020 Mar 16, Many US states began announcing they'd be shutting movie theaters, bars, restaurants museums and all non-essential business. Michigan announced that all bars and restaurants must close to dine-in customers, due to the coronavirus.
(AP, 3/17/20)
2020 Mar 16, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) ordered the state's health department to keep all polling places closed to prevent the coronavirus from spreading among voters and poll workers in the March 17 primary elections.
(AP, 3/17/20)
2020 Mar 16, In Utah gas station owner Lev Dermen was found guilty by a jury on 10 counts that included money laundering and mail fraud. Dermen and polygamists Jacob and Isiah Kingston had filed false claims for over $1 billion in refundable renewable fuel tax credits. Jacob Kingston testified against Dermen at the trial. The Kingstons and two other family members accepted plea deals this year.
(https://tinyurl.com/cj3r3hm9)(SFC, 6/23/21, p.B3)
2020 Mar 16, In Washington state the first participant in a clinical trial for a vaccine to protect against the new coronavirus received an experimental dose. Washington state said it will shutter its entertainment venues and recreational facilities and limit restaurants to delivery and take-out. The ban will not apply to grocery stores and pharmacies.
(AP, 3/16/20)(Good Morning America, 3/16/20)
2020 Mar 16, Joe Biden was declared the winner of last week's Democratic presidential primary in Washington state, giving him victories in five out of six states that voted March 10.
(AP, 3/16/20)
2020 Mar 16, Amazon said it would try to hire 100,000 people across the US to help meet a surge in purchases by customers shopping more online to avoid going out as the coronavirus spreads.
(The Week, 3/17/20)
2020 Mar 16, NASA said Greenland and Antarctica are losing ice six times faster than they were in the 1990s.
(The Week, 3/17/20)
2020 Mar 16, Globally more than 174,000 coronavirus cases were reported with more than 6,700 deaths. Global stocks fell sharply after central bank moves to shore up economic growth failed to dispel investor's fears over virus controls that are shutting global business and travel.
(Good Morning America, 3/16/20)(AP, 3/16/20)
2020 Mar 16, In western Afghanistan dozens of patients held in isolation, including at least one confirmed to have the coronavirus, escaped from a quarantine facility after breaking windows and attacking hospital staff in Herat province. The 38 people who escaped had all recently returned from Iran. Afghanistan has so far confirmed 21 cases of the coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/16/20)
2020 Mar 16, Armenia's government announced a state of emergency for one month to slow the spread of the coronavirus. An April 5 referendum on constitutional reforms was postponed.
(Reuters, 3/16/20)
2020 Mar 16, Australia's capital and 2nd most populous state declared states of emergency after the national death toll from the coronavirus rose to five with nearly 300 cases in total.
(Reuters, 3/16/20)
2020 Mar 16, Austria's government said it will allocate 2 billion euros for loan guarantees on top of a 4-billion-euro aid fund to buffer the economy from the damage of coronavirus, as the number of confirmed cases in the country rose to 1,018.
(Reuters, 3/16/20)
2020 Mar 16, Benin, Liberia, Somalia and Tanzania became the latest African countries to report cases of coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/16/20)
2020 Mar 16, Bosnia's autonomous Bosniak-Croat Federation declared a state of disaster, which will enable it to introduce emergency measures to halt the spread of the coronavirus. Bosnia has reported 24 cases of the new virus so far, 20 of them in the country's other autonomous region, the Serb Republic.
(Reuters, 3/16/20)
2020 Mar 16, In Brazil local media reported that as many as 1,000 inmates had fled four jails ahead of a planned lockdown of the facilities over the coronavirus pandemic.
(Reuters, 3/17/20)
2020 Mar 16, Britain's PM Boris Johnson advised people to avoid all unnecessary contact due to coronavirus pandemic.
(Econ., 6/20/20, p.46)
2020 Mar 16, Britain's Fred Olsen Cruise Lines wrote in a statement that its cruise ship Braemar, that was turned away from several ports in the Caribbean after five passengers were confirmed to have the new coronavirus, has set sail to Cuba which is allowing it to dock.
(Reuters, 3/16/20)
2020 Mar 16, Germany's federal and state governments agreed sweeping rules shutting everything from non-essential shops to bars, clubs, theatres, museums, brothels and churches in order to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/16/20)
2020 Mar 16, In Greece a migrant juvenile died in a fire inside the Mora camp on the island of Lesbos.
(SFC, 3/17/20, p.A2)
2020 Mar 16, Iran's health ministry said the death toll from the new coronavirus has reached 853 with 129 new deaths in the past 24 hours. 1,053 new confirmed cases were reported. Iran closed four key Shiite pilgrimage sites to stop a coronavirus outbreak that has killed over 850 people out of nearly 15,000 cases recorded in the Islamic republic.
(Reuters, 3/16/20)(AFP, 3/16/20)
2020 Mar 16, In Iraq two rockets struck a training base south of Baghdad where US-led coalition troops and NATO trainers were present.
(AP, 3/17/20)
2020 Mar 16, Israel swore in its newly elected parliament under stringent restrictions because of the coronavirus outbreak. Pres. Reuvin Rivlin called for unity and compromise from the two leaders, saying the Israeli people “are in need of rest, we are in need of healing" after three parliamentary elections in under a year.
(AP, 3/16/20)
2020 Mar 16, Israel government authorized Shin Bet, the internal security service, and the police to use their technical knowledge to track and access the mobile phones of those who have been infected with the coronavirus.
(Econ, 3/28/20, p.16)
2020 Mar 16, In northern Italy the death toll from an outbreak of coronavirus in Lombardy rose by 202 over the past day to 1,420 from 1,218. Italy's total death toll reached 1,809, a 25 percent increase over the day before.
(Reuters, 3/16/20)(NY Times, 3/17/20)
2020 Mar 16, Japan's health ministry said it has identified 15 clusters of coronavirus infections around the country.
(Reuters, 3/16/20)
2020 Mar 16, In Japan Kyushu Electric Power Co., the opeator of a nuclear power plant in Kagoshima, was forced to shut a down one of its reactors because of failure to meet a deadline for adding anti-terror safety measures.
(SFC, 3/17/20, p.A2)
2020 Mar 16, Lebanon's Military Court of Appeals ordered the release of Amer Fakhoury because more than 10 years had passed since he allegedly tortured prisoners at a jail run by the so-called South Lebanon Army militia.
(AP, 3/17/20)
2020 Mar 16, Malaysia reported a daily jump of 125 cases to 553. 338 of Malaysia's cases have been linked to the religious gathering at a mosque in Kuala Lumpur between Feb. 28 and March 1. PM Muhyiddin Yassin said Malaysia it will shut its borders to travelers, restrict internal movement, close schools and universities and order most businesses to shut after its number of coronavirus cases climbed to the highest in Southeast Asia.
(Reuters, 3/16/20)
2020 Mar 16, The government of the Philippines imposed "Enhanced Community Quarantine (ECQ) across the island of Luzon, home to Manila and about half of the country's 107 million people.
(Econ., 7/11/20, p.30)
2020 Mar 16, In the Philippines the farm minister said an outbreak of avian flu has been detected in a quail farm in the northern Nueva Ecija province. Tests showed the presence of the highly infectious H5N6 subtype of the influenza A virus.
(Reuters, 3/16/20)
2020 Mar 16, Russia's Constitutional Court approved a law on constitutional amendments that could allow Vladimir Putin to remain in power for another 16 years.
(AP, 3/16/20)
2020 Mar 16, Senegalese President Macky Sall declared a national state of disaster and canceled the country’s most important religious festival due to take place later this month following a surge in cases to 26 from 10.
(Bloomberg, 3/16/20)
2020 Mar 16, Somalia's first coronavirus case was announced. Somalia ranked 194th of 195 countries in the Johns Hopkins Global Health Security Index for 2019 and scored zero in several areas, including emergency preparedness, emergency response, infection control practices and health care access.
(AP, 3/29/20)
2020 Mar 16, South Korea reported 74 new coronavirus cases bringing its total to 8,236.
(Reuters, 3/16/20)
2020 Mar 16, Switzerland's region of Geneva declared a "state of necessity" due to the coronavirus global pandemic, shutting bars and restaurants and limiting gatherings to just five people.
(AFP, 3/16/20)
2020 Mar 16, Venezuela's capital of Caracas woke to quiet streets and military checkpoints on the first day of a quarantine ordered by President Nicolas Maduro to combat the coronavirus. The country has confirmed 17 cases of the virus and no deaths.
(Reuters, 3/16/20)
2020 Mar 17, The Trump administration called for $1 trillion in spending, including $250 billion for direct payments to Americans, as the federal government prepares to fight the coronavirus pandemic and an almost certain recession.
(NY Times, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 17, The US Federal Reserve said it would reinstate a funding facility used during the 2008 financial crisis to get credit directly to businesses and households as fears over a liquidity crunch due to the coronavirus have grown in recent days.
(Reuters, 3/17/20)
2020 Mar 17, Former US vice president Joe Biden easily defeated Bernie Sanders in Arizona, Florida and Illinois state primaries.
(AP, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 17, Former California Republican Rep. Duncan Hunter was sentenced to 11 months in prison after pleading guilty to stealing campaign funds and spending the money on everything from outings with friends to his daughter's birthday party. On August 24 his wife was sentenced to eight months of home confinement after agreeing to testify against her husband.
(Miami Herald, 3/17/20)(SFC, 8/25/20, p.A4)
2020 Mar 17, San Francisco's Mayor London Breed announced plans to ban commercial evictions for small and medium-sized businesses impacted by the coronavirus. City officials said canabis businesses may remain open as non-essential businesses were told to shut down.
(SFC, 3/18/20, p.B5)
2020 Mar 17, In the SF Bay Area Xuehua "Edward" Peng (56) of Hayward was sentenced to four years in federal prison for smuggling purported national security information to China for more than two years.
(SFC, 3/18/20, p.B1)
2020 Mar 17, Jerry Slick (b.1939), drummer and founder of the San Francisco-based Great Society rock band, died in his Mill Valley, Ca., home. He founded the band with his wife Grace Slick in 1965. Grace Slick joined the Jefferson Airplane in 1966 and Jerry moved on as a cinematographer and filmmaker.
(SSFC, 3/29/20, p.B8)
2020 Mar 17, In Florida Colombian brothers Pedro Nel Rincon-Castillo (53) and Omar Rincon-Castillo (50) were sentenced to about 20 years and 17-1/2 years, respectively, on cocaine-trafficking charges by a federal judge in Fort Lauderdale.
(AP, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 17, In Michigan a Wayne County jury convicted Devon Kareem Robinson (19) of first-degree premeditated murder, assault with intent to murder and felony firearm in the May 2019 killings of Alunte Davis (21), Timothy Blancher (20) and Paris Cameron (20). Police believed the victims were targeted for their sexual orientation.
(AP, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 17, New York state closed all schools for two weeks. The state has 1,374 cases of coronavirus and 12 people have died. The US had 5,124 cases of coronavirus with 96 deaths.
(AP, 3/17/20)(https://ncov2019.live/)
2020 Mar 17, It was reported that a TSA officer at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport has tested positive for COVID-19. This marked the 8th TSA officer to test positive for COVID-19. The other cases were in California, Florida and Georgia.
(Good Morning America, 3/17/20)
2020 Mar 17, Ohio's primary, planned for today, was cancelled. Governor Mike DeWine postponed his state's primary until June 2 because of the growing coronavirus crisis.
(Reuters, 3/17/20)
2020 Mar 17, Texas confirmed its first death due to coronavirus.
(The Independent, 3/17/20)
2020 Mar 17, West Virginia reported its first confirmed coronavirus infection. There are now known coronavirus cases in all 50 US states.
(NY Times, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 17, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc said it had identified hundreds of antibodies that could treat or prevent the coronavirus and was preparing to begin clinical trials by early summer, sending the drugmaker's shares up nearly 12%.
(Reuters, 3/17/20)
2020 Mar 17, Brazil's government called for a state of emergency to loosen fiscal rules as it faced challenges from the coronavirus pandemic and oil price war. Brazil reported its first death due to the virus and closed its border to Venezuelans for an initial 15 days, citing strains on the public health system and what its president described as Venezuela's inability to respond.
(Reuters, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 17, Brazil's Sao Paulo state prison authority said more than 500 prisoners have been recaptured who fled four jails ahead of a planned lockdown of the facilities over the coronavirus pandemic. Local officials had cancelled temporary leaves because of fears that prisoners could bring the new coronavirus back with them.
(AP, 3/17/20)(SFC, 3/18/20, p.A2)
2020 Mar 17, Britain's health ministry said cases of coronavirus rose 26% to 1,950 from 1,543 the day before. The National Health Service (NHS) announced plans to cancel all routine surgery for three months and to send home as many patients as possible to free up staff and beds to deal with the spread of the coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/17/20)
2020 Mar 17, The BBC reported that Hashem Abedi, the brother of the bomber who blew himself up at the end of an Ariana Grande concert in the English city of Manchester in May 2017, has been found guilty of murdering the 22 victims.
(Reuters, 3/17/20)
2020 Mar 17, Bulgaria banned all foreign and domestic holiday trips until April 13 as part of efforts to contain the spread of the coronavirus. The Balkan country had 81 confirmed cases of the new virus and two deaths.
(Reuters, 3/17/20)
2020 Mar 17, In Bulgaria investigative journalist Slavi Angelov, editor-in-chief of the weekly 168 Hours, was attacked by unknown assailants and hospitalized in Sofia with serious injuries.
(SFC, 3/19/20, p.A2)(https://tinyurl.com/rrjhy5u)
2020 Mar 17, Canadian PM Justin Trudeau said his government would provide financial support to people during the coronavirus outbreak as he urged them to stay at home to slow the spread of COVI0D-19.
(Reuters, 3/17/20)
2020 Mar 17, It was reported that Chad is repaying Angola a debt of $100m (£82m) with cattle. More than 1,000 cows have arrived by ship in Luanda as the first payment.
(BBC, 3/17/20)
2020 Mar 17, The Chinese Foreign Ministry said that it was revoking the press credentials for American journalists from three newspapers, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post, requiring them to return their media passes within 10 days and essentially expelling them from the country. All three US media outlets have reported politically sensitive stories in China, a long-term taboo with the Chinese Communist Party.
(AP, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 17, Chinese doctors reported that Avigan (favipiravir), a drug used against influenza in Japan, led to clinical improvements in coronavirus patients.
(Econ, 3/21/20, p.18)
2020 Mar 17, Croatia's government proposed to postpone tax payments for at least three months and make loans available to struggling business in response to the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic. Croatia has so far reported 65 cases of coronavirus. Four people have recovered and no one has yet died from COVID-19.
(Reuters, 3/17/20)
2020 Mar 17, Egypt, which has 166 confirmed cases of the new virus including four fatalities, announced the lockdown of the Red Sea province that includes the popular resort town of Hurghada. Egypt lowered the price of natural gas for industrial use to $4.5 per mmbtu and cut a tax on dividends for companies listed on its stock exchange to 5% in an attempt to soften the impact of the spread of the coronavirus on the economy.
(AP, 3/17/20)(Reuters, 3/17/20)
2020 Mar 17, European Union leaders agreed to restrict most travel into the continent in an unprecedented move aimed at slowing down the spread of a deadly coronavirus and mitigating its effects on the bloc. Europe logged 10,560 new COVID-19 infections, with 3,590 of the cases diagnosed in Italy.
(Bloomberg, 3/17/20)(Business Insider, 3/17/20)
2020 Mar 17, French President Emmanuel Macron declared "war" on Covid-19 with a raft of measures to keep citizens in lock-down mode, including a ban on non-essential travel, just a few days after ordering business closures and shutting schools.
(Bloomberg, 3/17/20)
2020 Mar 17, Indian authorities expanded the population eligible for testing to health care workers with symptoms who are treating patients with severe respiratory illnesses. Authorities have confirmed 126 cases linked to foreign travel or direct contact with someone who caught the disease abroad. Indian authorities said that they would not widely expand testing for the virus, despite mounting criticism from some experts that the limited tests could mask the true toll of the disease in the world's second most populous country.
(AP, 3/17/20)
2020 Mar 17, Iran issued its most dire warning yet about the outbreak of the new coronavirus ravaging the country, suggesting “millions" could die in the Islamic Republic if the public keeps traveling and ignoring health guidance. Health Ministry spokesman Kianoush Jahanpour said the virus had killed 135 more people to raise the total to 988 amid over 16,000 cases. In efforts to curb the spread of the virus, Iran has released 85,000 prisoners on temporary leave.
(AP, 3/17/20)
2020 Mar 17, Iran temporarily released Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe (41), a British-Iranian woman serving a five-year prison term in Tehran for sedition, from jail for two weeks. Nazanin had warned last month that was in danger of contracting the new coronavirus inside Evin Prison.
(AFP, 3/17/20)
2020 Mar 17, Iraq's President Barham Saleh named Adnan al-Zurfi, a former governor of the city of Najaf, as prime minister-designate, following weeks of political infighting.
(AP, 3/17/20)
2020 Mar 17, Peace Now, an Israeli monitoring group that opposes West Bank settlements, said that Israel's average annual construction rate has risen 25% since President Donald Trump took office in 2017.
(AP, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 17, Official data in Italy showed that 31,506 people have been confirmed as positive for the coronavirus. The official death toll passed 2,500.
(AP, 3/18/20)(Reuters, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 17, A Lebanese military judge appealed a verdict by the military tribunal that ordered the release of Amer Fakhoury, a Lebanese-American held since September on charges of working for an Israeli-backed militia two decades ago. Lebanon released Amer Fakhoury (57) on March 19.
(AP, 3/17/20)(AP, 3/19/20)
2020 Mar 17, The Lithuanian parliament voted to the raise borrowing limit by 4.5 billion euros, and to allow the government to borrow over the limit to fight effects of the coronavirus. Lithuania had 22 cases of coronavirus with no deaths.
(Reuters, 3/17/20)(https://ncov2019.live/)
2020 Mar 17, A Moroccan court handed a four-month suspended sentence and a 500 dirham fine to Moroccan journalist and rights activist Omar Radi (33) on charges of insulting a judge on Twitter, in a case that outraged advocates of free speech in the country.
(Reuters, 3/17/20)
2020 Mar 17, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un acknowledged that his country lacks modern medical facilities and called for urgent improvements.
(AP, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 17, Pakistani PM Imran Khan declared that there would be no national lockdown to block the spread of the coronavirus.
(Econ, 3/28/20, p.36)
2020 Mar 17, In Peru miners halted operations and girded for extended supply chain disruptions in neighboring Chile as governments tightened curbs due to coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 17, Qatari authorities announced the closure of several square km of the industrial area in the capital Doha, which also contains labor camps and other housing units, due to the coronavirus. Qatar relies on about 2 million migrant workers for the bulk of its labor force.
(Reuters, 3/19/20)
2020 Mar 17, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a vote on changes to the constitution which could allow him to extend his rule to be held next month as planned, but warned it could be delayed if the coronavirus situation worsens.
(AP, 3/17/20)
2020 Mar 17, Senegal has recorded 27 cases of coronavirus. Medical staff said they had received limited protective equipment beyond extra gloves and masks.
(Reuters, 3/17/20)
2020 Mar 17, In South Africa Lt Col Leroy Brewer, a top rhino poaching investigator, was driving to work when he was shot dead by gunmen with high-caliber weapons. He died on the spot.
(AP, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 17, South Africa's national ports operator Transnet said it is holding the cruise liner, MV AidAmira, and a cargo vessel off Cape Town's port limits after a crew member onboard one of the vessels showed signs of coronavirus. The MV Aidamira, with 1,240 passengers and 486 crew on board, had returned to Cape Town from Namibia’s Walvis Bay.
(Reuters, 3/17/20)(BBC, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 17, Spanish PM Pedro Sanchez announced a package of measures worth a total 200 billion euros ($219 billion), between loans, credit guarantees, benefits and direct aid, to mitigate the impact of the coronavirus epidemic on the economy.
(Reuters, 3/17/20)
2020 Mar 17, It was reported that Spain's King Felipe VI has renounced any future personal inheritance he could receive from his father, King Emirat Jaun Carlos I, over the alleged financial irregularities involving the former monarch. Felipe (52) was also strippimng Juan Carlos of his annual stipend.
(SFC, 3/17/20, p.A2)
2020 Mar 17, In southern Thailand bombers attacked a major government office as hundreds of local officials and Muslim clerics met to discuss fighting COVID-19. At least 20 people were reported hurt.
(SFC, 3/18/20, p.A2)
2020 Mar 17, Ukrainian shops, restaurants and transport shut down as the country tightened restrictions to contain the spread of the coronavirus. Police arrested five people suspected of trying to rob 100,000 surgical masks at gunpoint in Kiev.
(AP, 3/17/20)
2020 Mar 17, The United Nations and nine countries called on Libya's warring parties to cease hostilities to allow health authorities to fight against the new coronavirus.
(AFP, 3/17/20)
2020 Mar 17, The UN refugee agency and the International Organization for Migration announced a temporary pause in refugee resettlement to slow the spread of the new coronavirus. That led the US to pause its admissions until at least April 6.
(The Week, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 17, Yemeni officials said heavy fighting between pro-government forces and Shiite rebels killed more than three dozen people in the previous 24 hours. Houthi officials said the Saudi-led coalition had carried out at least 15 airstrikes against their fighters.
(AP, 3/17/20)
2020 Mar 18, US Pres. Donald Trump announced that Canada and the US have agreed to temporarily close their shared border to nonessential travel in the wakre of the coronavirus pandemic.
(SFC, 3/19/20, p.A6)
2020 Mar 18, The Trump administration asked Congress for $500 billion for direct payments to taxpayers and $500 billion in loans for businesses, as the federal government ramped up its efforts to address the fallout from the coronavirus epidemic. Pres. Donald Trump tapped his authority under the 70-year-old Defense Production Act to give the government more power to steer production by private companies and try to overcome shortages in masks, ventilators and other supplies. Trump described himself as a “wartime president" fighting an invisible enemy.
(NY Times, 3/19/20)(AP, 3/19/20)
2020 Mar 18, Wall Street resumed a steep slide while bond markets rushed to price in the sheer scale of government support programs and handouts announced over the past 24 hours, all aimed at softening the economic shock of coronavirus. Stocks tumbled more than 5%. The DJIA erased virtually all its gains since Pres. Trump's 2017 inauguration.
(Reuters, 3/18/20)(SFC, 3/19/20, p.C1)
2020 Mar 18, The US federal government gave taxpayers an extra 90 days to pay their federal taxes and announced that it won't pursue foreclosures of evictions on government guaranteed mortgages for at least 60 days.
(SFC, 3/19/20, p.C1)
2020 Mar 18, The US now has more than 5,800 confirmed cases of coronavirus with at least 115 deaths. The virus has now infected over 205,000 and killed over 8,700 in 164 nations.
{USA, COVID-19}
(Good Morning America)(Reuters, 3/18/20)(Bloomberg, 3/19/20)
2020 Mar 18, In Alaska Thomas Waerner of Norway arrived first at the finish line in Nome to win the Iditirod Trail Sled Dog Race.
(SSFC, 3/22/20, p.A5)
2020 Mar 18, California's Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an executive order sending $100 million to local governments for shelter support and emergency housing to help slow the spread of coronavirus among the homeless population. Another $50 million will be used to buy trailers and lease hotel and motel rooms to quarantine homeless people showing symptoms of COVID-19.
(SFC, 3/19/20, p.A5)
2020 Mar 18, Hawaii officials said two cruise ships won't be allowed to disembark in Honolulu after being turned away by other ports, even with no positive cases of coronavirus on either vessel.
(AP, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 18, Nevada shut down all non-essential businesses, including the Las Vegas casinos at the heart of the state's economy, due to the coronavirus pandemic.
(AP, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 18, South Carolina's Supreme Court overturned the attempted murder conviction of Michael Juan Smith, a Bloods gang member who in 2013 shot and critically injured first-year University of South Carolina student Martha Childress. Smith, sentenced to 40 years in state prison, will now get a new trial.
(Charlotte Observer, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 18, In South Texas an immigrant (27) from Honduras was found dead at a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement fsamily detention center. This was the ninth death to occur in ICE custody since last October.
(SFC, 3/19/20, p.A4)
2020 Mar 18, In Texas Apollo 15 astronaut Al Worden (88), who circled the moon alone in 1971 while his two crewmates test-drove the first lunar rover, died at a rehab center in Houston.
(AP, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 18, A 5.7-magnitude earthquake shook Salt Lake City and its suburbs early today, sending spooked residents fleeing their homes, knocking out power for tens of thousands and closing the city's airport.
(AP, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 18, It was announced that Pixar animation pioneers Pat Hanrahan and Ed Catmulls are this year's winners of the $1 million Turing Award.
(SFC, 3/19/20, p.C1)
2020 Mar 18, Honda Motor Co said it is temporarily halting production in North America for six days because of the anticipated decline in auto sales due to the coronavirus outbreak and will reduce production by about 40,000 vehicles.
(Reuters, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 18, JPMorgan Chase & Co said that it has committed $50 million to funds and community groups that are providing food, support and medical supplies for people hurt by the coronavirus in the United States, Europe and Asia.
(Reuters, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 18, A new report said a tiny fossil skull nicknamed "Wonderchicken" may be the oldest known fossil from this group. A skull of partridge-sized bird, named Asteriornis maastrichtensis, was found in Belgium and said to be some 66.7 to 66.8 million years old. It lived just before the asteroid impact that's blamed for killing off many species, most notably the giant dinosaurs.
(AP, 3/18/20)(Reuters, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 18, Bangladesh reported its first coronavirus death.
(Reuters, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 18, Belgium imposed a lockdown from midday until April 5 due to the coronavirus pandemic.
(Reuters, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 18, Burkina Faso reported its second death from COVID-19.
(AP, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 18, Chile's president declared a 90-day state of catastrophe due to the coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 18, Djibouti confirmed its first coronavirus case.
(Reuters, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 18, Catherine Hamlin (b.1924), Australian obstetrician and gynaecologist, died in Ethiopia. She and her husband, Reginald Hamlin, co-founded the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital. The Hamlins, together with the hospital staff, have treated more than 60,000 women to date for obstetric fistula.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_Hamlin)(Econ, 4/11/20, p.70)
2020 Mar 18, The EU banned nonessential travel from the rest of the world into 26 member nations for 30 days due to the coronavirus pandemic.
(NY Times, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 18, In France several hundred Amazon workers protested at one of its sites, calling on the online retailer to cease operations or make it easier for employees loath to work during the coronavirus outbreak to stay away.
(Reuters, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 18, Gambia announced its first coronavirus case.
(AP, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 18, Mitterteich, Bavaria, became the first German town to impose a curfew to slow the spread of the coronavirus. The curfew will last until April 2. Citizens there were still allowed to buy groceries, go to work and visit the doctor.
(Reuters, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 18, Clashes broke out on the Greek border with Turkey before dawn, after about 500 migrants attempted to break down a border fence and enter Greece.
(AP, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 18, Hungarian PM Viktor Orban announced a blanket moratorium on loan repayments for all companies and private borrowers until the end of the year to limit the economic fallout from the spread of the coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 18, Indonesia's death toll jumped from five to 19. Thousands of Muslim pilgrims from across Asia gathered at Gowa, just two weeks after a similar event in Malaysia caused more than 500 infections.
(Reuters, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 18, Iran's government said another 147 people have died from the coronavirus raising the total to 1,135 people out of 17,361 cases since it first emerged in the Islamic republic a month ago. President Hassan Rouhani defended the response of his administration, which has yet to impose a lockdown. Food markets were still packed with shoppers and highways were crowded with traffic as families traveled between cities ahead of the March 20 Persian New Year.
(AP, 3/18/20)(AFP, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 18, Italy reported nearly 500 new deaths from the novel coronavirus, the highest one-day official toll of any nation. Italy added 4,207 new cases.
(AFP, 3/18/20)(Econ, 3/21/20, p.9)
2020 Mar 18, In Libya five women were killed late today and five others were wounded, including a child, when their houses were shelled near Tripoli.
(AP, 3/19/20)
2020 Mar 18, Malaysia warned of "a tsunami" of cases if people did not follow new restrictions as infections surged across Southeast Asia.
(Reuters, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 18, Mexico reported its first death from the coronavirus.
(AP, 3/20/20)
2020 Mar 18, Moldova reported its first death due to the coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 18, Morocco asked citizens not to leave their homes except to buy essential goods, seek medical treatment or go to work, as a precautionary measure.
(AP, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 18, In the Netherlands organizers of the Eurovision song contest said it will not take place this year due to the global coronavirus outbreak. The Netherlands was to host the 2020 contest after Dutch singer-songwriter Duncan Laurence won in 2019 with a song called "Arcade".
(AP, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 18, New Zealand lawmakers passed a landmark bill that treats abortion as a health issue rather than a crime.
(SFC, 3/19/20, p.A3)
2020 Mar 18, Pakistani security forces raided a militant hideout in North Waziristan, triggering a shootout that killed four soldiers and seven militants.
(SFC, 3/19/20, p.A2)
2020 Mar 18, Russia's Kremlin Guard said it has closed Bolshevik revolutionary Vladimir Lenin's tomb on Moscow's Red Square to the public amid coronavirus fears. Russia has reported 147 cases of the virus so far and no deaths.
(Reuters, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 18, Saudi Arabia suspended work in most of the private sector for 15 days and directed businesses to implement work-from-home policies due to the coronavirus pandemic.
(Reuters, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 18, In South Africa the number of people that tested positive for coronavirus rose to 116 from 85 the day before. 14 of those hadn’t traveled outside the country. South Africa stepped up travel bans as the virus continued to spread at a rapid pace.
(Bloomberg, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 18, Switzerland extended border controls and suspended the issue of Schengen and national visas for three months due to coronavirus pandemic.
(AP, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 18, Taiwan said it would ban entry for most foreigners as its coronavirus tally rose by 23 to 100, most of them imported.
(AP, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 18, Turkey reported its first death due to the coronavirus. President Tayyip Erdogan advised his people not to leave home unless necessary for three weeks and to minimize social contact until the threat of coronavirus recedes, but did not instruct people to stay away from work.
(Reuters, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 18, The UAE stopped Friday sermons to help stop the spread of the coronavirus.
(Econ, 3/21/20, p.43)
2020 Mar 18, A Vietnam court jailed Sung A Sinh and Lau A Lenh, from the Hmong ethnic minority, for life after finding them guilty of attempting to overthrow the state and set up a state of their own in northern Dien Bien province in 2018-2019. Twelve other people were also sentenced in the case to terms of up to 20 years.
(Reuters, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 18, Wales closed its schools due to the coronavirus pandemic. Scotland and Wales soon followed.
(Econ, 3/21/20, p.17)
2020 Mar 18, Zambia confirmed its first coronavirus case.
(Reuters, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 19, The US Federal Reserve opened the taps for central banks in nine new countries to access dollars in hopes of preventing the coronavirus epidemic from causing a global economic rout. There were now 9,415 diagnosed cases in the US with at least 153 people deaths, according to an ABC News' count.
(AP, 3/19/20)(Good Morning America, 3/19/20)
2020 Mar 19, The US slapped sanctions on five companies based in the United Arab Emirates for allegedly shipping oil from Iran in defiance of Pres. Donald Trump's unilateral sanctions.
(AP, 3/19/20)
2020 Mar 19, The US Pentagon tested an unarmed hypersonic weapon in Hawaii, as both China and Russia develop similar military and defense capabilities. The Department of Defense called the test of the hypersonic glide body a success.
(Reuters, 3/20/20)
2020 Mar 19, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden won the support of Representative Tulsi Gabbard, who ended her presidential campaign.
(NY Times, 3/20/20)
2020 Mar 19, California's Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered his state’s 40 million residents to stay at home as much as possible in coming weeks, citing a model that suggests more than half of the state’s population could become infected with the coronavirus in the next two months.
(NY Times, 3/20/20)
2020 Mar 19, US authorities seized a large haul of drugs, including methamphetamine, opioids and cocaine, being smuggled from Mexico to California from a cross-border tunnel equipped with ventilation, lighting and an underground rail system. The 2,000-foot tunnel connected warehouses in Tijuana and San Diego.
(AP, 4/1/20)(SFC, 4/1/20, p.A4)
2020 Mar 19, Anthony Levandowski, a former Google and Uber engineer, pleaded guilty to stealing trade secrets from Google. Levandowski had left Google to form Otto a self-driging truck startup and then sold Otto to Uber for $600 million.
(SFC, 3/21/20, p.C1)
2020 Mar 19, In Minnesota Pakistani Dr. Muhammad Masood (28), a former Mayo Clinic research coordinator, was arrested at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport on a terrorism charge, after prosecutors say he told paid FBI informants that he had pledged his allegiance to the Islamic State group and wanted to carry out lone wolf attacks in the US.
(AP, 3/20/20)
2020 Mar 19, In Texas cars lined up for more than a mile outside a Houston hospital as the nation's fourth-largest city began drive-thru testing for the coronavirus, but officials warned they don't have enough kits or protective gear to meet demand.
(AP, 3/19/20)
2020 Mar 19, General Electric's healthcare unit said it will hire more people and increase the number of shifts as it races to produce ventilators round-the-clock to meet the surge in demand caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
(Reuters, 3/19/20)
2020 Mar 19, In Afghanistan at least 27 security personnel were killed when a military base was stormed in the southern province of Zabul.
(Reuters, 3/20/20)
2020 Mar 19, African finance ministers held a virtual conference to discuss how to deal with the social and economic impacts of the pandemic on African nations. Days later a statement by the UN Economic Commission for Africa said they called for a $100 billion stimulus package, including a suspension of debt service payments, to help the continent combat coronavirus.
(AP, 3/23/20)
2020 Mar 19 More African countries closed their borders as the coronavirus’ local spread threatened to turn the continent of 1.3 billion people into an alarming new front for the pandemic. Senegal closed its airspace. Angola and Cameroon shut air, land and sea borders. Rwanda blocked all commercial flights for a month. The island nation of Mauritius closed its border after announcing its first case.
(AP, 3/19/20)
2020 Mar 19, In Australia about 2,700 passengers disembarked in Sidney from the cruise ship Ruby Princess. More than 600 cases of the coronavirus and 15 deaths were later linked to the ship. About 200 crew members later showed symptoms of the virus.
(SFC, 4/10/20, p.A4)
2020 Mar 19, Hundreds of Bahraini pilgrims were reported stranded in Iran, the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak in the Middle East. Bahrain struggled to evacuate its citizens from the country with which it has no diplomatic ties.
(AP, 3/19/20)
2020 Mar 19, It was reported that banks in Bosnia's autonomous Bosniak-Croat Federation have agreed to grant a delay of at least three months on loan repayments for businesses and individuals hit by the coronavirus health crisis.
(Reuters, 3/19/20)
2020 Mar 19, Brazil's confirmed cases of coronavirus surged past 600.
(AP, 3/20/20)
2020 Mar 19, Chad confirmed its first coronavirus case.
(Reuters, 3/20/20)
2020 Mar 19, Wuhan, China, the former epicenter that initially suffered thousands of coronavirus cases a day, and its surrounding province had no new cases to report.
(AP, 3/19/20)
2020 Mar 19, Beijing authorities announced that the number of Chinese cellphone users dropped by 21 million in the past three months.
(https://tinyurl.com/yxyge2m6)
2020 Mar 19, In Egypt Laila Soueif, the mother of prominent activist Alaa Abdel Fattah (38), was released from detention after her arrest the previous day for staging a protest demanding that prisoners be released amid the coronavirus pandemic.
(AP, 3/20/20)
2020 Mar 19, EU analysis said Russian state media and news outlets supporting President Vladimir Putin are waging a fake news campaign aimed at undermining public confidence in the ability of European health care systems to cope with the coronavirus.
(AP, 3/19/20)
2020 May 19, French forces in Mali captured Islamic State group commander, Mohamed Mrabat. The veteran jihadist had a senior role in the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS) group.
(BBC, 6/6/20)
2020 Mar 19, Authorities in Germany conducted raids in 10 states at premises linked to a group accused of pursuing a mix of anti-government and racist ideology. around 400 police officers had seized firearms, propaganda material and small amounts of drugs during the raids on the homes of 21 leading members of the United German Peoples and Tribes group.
(AP, 3/19/20)
2020 Mar 19, Germany said it has lifted export bans on medical equipment which were issued earlier this month to avoid shortages of masks, goggles and gloves in the face of the coronavirus pandemic.
(Reuters, 3/19/20)
2020 Mar 19, The Greek government ordered hotels across the country toclose from March 23 until April 30th to help stem the spread of the coronavirus.
(Econ, 4/11/20, p.42)
2020 Mar 19, Greek police arrested 11 people and seized grenade launchers and other weapons in raids against suspected members of the Revolutionary people's Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C), a far-left Turkish armed group.
(SFC, 3/21/20, p.A2)
2020 Mar 19, Haiti declared a state of emergency, closing its borders and imposing a curfew, after the country's first two cases of coronavirus were detected.
(Reuters, 3/20/20)
2020 Mar 19, Indian PM Narendra Modi appealed to citizens to observe a self-curfew on March 22 as part of a trial-run to test social isolation to curb the spread of the coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/19/20)
2020 Mar 19, Indonesia reported six more deaths due to coronavirus for a total of 25, the most in Southeast Asia, and its biggest daily jump of 82 cases to 309. The government halted a mass congregation of nearly 9,000 Muslim pilgrims and began quarantining them and checking their health to prevent the further spread of the coronavirus amid a spike in cases. The four-day gathering at a boarding school in a rural area in south Sulawesi province was organized by a Muslim missionary movement, Jamaat Tabligh, and was not approved by authorities.
(AP, 3/19/20)
2020 Mar 19, Iranian authorities announced 149 new deaths from the novel coronavirus, raising the toll to 1,284 in a country that is one of the worst hit by the pandemic. A total of 18,407 people have contracted the disease in Iran, with 1,046 new cases confirmed in the last 24 hours.
(AP, 3/19/20)
2020 Mar 19, It was reported that Iran has granted a medical furlough to Michael White, a US Navy veteran who has been imprisoned for more than a year.
(AP, 3/19/20)
2020 Mar 19, Israel's attorney general approved for the first time the use of a generic version of a patent-protected drug to treat coronavirus patients. The anti-viral drug Kaletra, produced by AbbVie Inc, is a treatment for HIV but Israel's Health Ministry found it could be a possible treatment for COVID-19 and a preliminary permit for the drug was issued.
(Reuters, 3/19/20)
2020 Mar 19, Italy's country-wide death toll stood at 3,405, the highest in the world.
(Reuters, 3/20/20)
2020 Mar 19, Mexico confirmed 164 cases of coronavirus, up from just over 40 a week ago. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and his government have said a shutdown of the country would disproportionately hurt poor people and also be a psychological weight on all Mexicans.
(AP, 3/20/20)
2020 Mar 19, It was reported that Prince Albert of Monaco has tested positive for coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/19/20)
2020 Mar 19, Moroccan authorities said local police have arrested at least a dozen people for spreading rumors about the coronavirus, including a woman who used her YouTube channel to say the disease did not exist.
(Reuters, 3/19/20)
2020 Mar 19, Dutch health authorities said the number of local confirmed cases of coronavirus has risen by 409 to a total of 2,460, with 18 new deaths raising the total death toll to 76.
(Reuters, 3/19/20)
2020 Mar 19, Niger confirmed its first coronavirus case.
(Reuters, 3/20/20)
2020 Mar 19, Palestinians defied their government's call to cease work in Israeli settlements over coronavirus concerns, saying bringing money home to their families came first. 529 cases of infection have been confirmed in Israel, and nearly 50 in the occupied West Bank.
(Reuters, 3/19/20)
2020 Mar 19, It was reported that Poland has suspended work at a coronavirus testing laboratory in Warsaw after one of its employees tested positive for the virus, effectively sending 17 staff into quarantine. Poland has confirmed 325 coronavirus cases and five deaths to date.
(Reuters, 3/19/20)
2020 Mar 19, Qatar has recorded 452 cases of the coronavirus, the highest number among the six Gulf Arab states that have reported a total of more than 1,200.
(AP, 3/19/20)
2020 Mar 19, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping discussed the coronavirus by phone and agreed to deepen cooperation on developing pharmaceuticals. Russia announced its first coronavirus death. It has reported 147 confirmed coronavirus cases, but many Russians believe the real total is far higher.
(Reuters, 3/19/20)(NY Times, 3/19/20)
2020 Mar 19, Top Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny urged Russians to boycott a vote on constitutional changes backed by President Vladimir Putin, slamming plans to hold it during the pandemic.
(AFP, 3/19/20)
2020 Mar 19, Russia has reported just 199 coronavirus cases and some doctors have questioned how far the official data reflects reality. A reported sharp increase in pneumonia cases in Moscow and contradictory information around the issue fueled fears about the accuracy of official coronavirus data which remains much lower than many European countries.
(Reuters, 3/19/20)
2020 Mar 19, In Russia riot police stormed a protesters' makeshift command post near a radioactive waste. More than 60 people were detained. Activists in Moscow vowed to persist with their campaign against plans to bulldoze a highway through the waste site.
(SFC, 3/21/20, p.A2)
2020 Mar 19, Saudi Arabia said the government will cut spending by 5%, or about $13.3 billion, to offset the impact of plunging oil prices and the effects of the new coronavirus on its economic outlook and deficit. The kingdom has reported a total of 238 coronavirus cases identified so far.
(AP, 3/19/20)
2020 Mar 19, South African authorities announced they would erect a fence along its border with Zimbabwe to prevent illegal immigrants from entering and spreading the coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/19/20)
2020 Mar 19, Spanish authorities promised to take special measures to prevent more deaths from the coronavirus epidemic in nursing homes after cases of mass contagion swelled the death toll to 767, 209 more than the previous day. Total cases were up by a quarter to 17,149.
(Reuters, 3/19/20)
2020 Mar 19, In Syria two Turkish soldiers were killed Thursday in a rocket attack in northwestern Idlib province.
(AP, 3/19/20)
2020 Mar 19, It was reported that Venezuelan utilities have hiked fees and the government plans to raise taxes, as the economy deteriorates further due to the spread of coronavirus and the crash in global oil prices adds to the strain on public coffers. Venezuela has reported 36 coronavirus cases so far.
(Reuters, 3/19/20)
2020 Mar 20, US Pres. Donald Trump announced an effective closure of the US border with Mexico, prohibiting most travel except for trade in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.
(SFC, 3/21/20, p.A4)
2020 Mar 20, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said the US government is moving its tax filing day from April 15 to July 15, amid the coronavirus crisis afflicting the country.
(Reuters, 3/20/20)
2020 Mar 20, In the US 132 state and national groups backing open-government policies released a joint statement urging officials at all levels of government to “not retrench" from their duties for public involvement because of the coronavirus.
(AP, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 20, The COVID-19 respiratory illness caused by the virus has killed at least 200 people in the United States and infected nearly 13,900. The death toll from the global pandemic surpassed 10,000 people worldwide with more than 245,000 people infected.
(Reuters, 3/20/20)(AP, 3/20/20)
2020 Mar 20, The US military disclosed that some 2,600 US military personnel, including civilians, are currently in self-isolation in Europe after being identified as people of concern during the coronavirus outbreak.
(Reuters, 3/20/20)
2020 Mar 20, The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said it had temporarily closed the air traffic control tower at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York and shuttered part of the Indianapolis Air Route Traffic Control Center for cleaning after workers tested positive for the coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/20/20)
2020 Mar 20, A US federal judge approved the extradition of Adem Kostjerevac, a St. Louis County man, to Bosnia, where he faces a war crime charge. The government of Bosnia-Herzegovina has accused Kostjerevac of raping a pregnant Serbian prisoner in 1992. The final decision on extradition is up to the US Secretary of State.
(AP, 3/23/20)
2020 Mar 20, It was reported that Senator Richard Burr, Republican of North Carolina and chairman of the Intelligence Committee, sold hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of stock before the markets plunged. Three other senators — Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California; James Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma; and Kelly Loeffler, Republican of Georgia — also sold major holdings, according to disclosure records.
(NY Times, 3/20/20)
2020 Mar 20, Mike Bloomberg's campaign announced that Bloomberg will transfer $18 million to the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and several of the field offices from his 2020 presidential bid to state parties.
(Reuters, 3/20/20)
2020 Mar 20, In Arizona Melissa Valenzuela (34) was reported missing by her family. She was last seen three days prior. Her body was found on March 23, and the death was ruled a homicide. On April 24 Nadine Chavez, Mercedes Gomez, Christina Gomez and Melissa Servin were arrested in Mesa in connection to the disappearance and death of Valenzuela.
(NBC News, 4/30/20)
2020 Mar 20, Investigations by the American Guild of Musical Artists and Los Angeles Opera found sexual harassment charges against famed tenor Placido Domingo (79) to be credible. The union said Domingo has resigned and will pay $500,000 to sexual harassment eradication programs and a fund that helps opera employees in cirsis.
(SFC, 3/21/20, p.A4)
2020 Mar 20, American country singer Kenny Rogers (81) died in Sandy Springs, Georgia. During his six-decade, genre-hopping career, Rogers released 65 albums and sold more than 165 million records.
(Reuters, 3/21/20)(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenny_Rogers)
2020 Mar 20, In Florida the remains of Gannon Stauch (11), a Colorado boy missing since Jan. 27, were found nearly 1,400 miles away from his home, confirming his family's worst fears. The discovery led Colorado's El Paso County District Attorney's Office to file nine additional charges against his stepmother, Letecia Stauch, who was arrested for Gannon's murder on March 2 in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.
(ABC News, 3/20/20)
2020 Mar 20, In Indiana the bodies of Felina Lewis (35) and her two daughters were recovered after two vehicles were swept off a roadway overnight and into a creek following torrential rainfall. The body of a 3rd sibling was recovered the next day. Six people were presumed to have drowned in the tragedy.
(SSFC, 3/22/20, p.A5)(https://tinyurl.com/uorcnse)
2020 Mar 20, In Iowa Jacqueline Rambert (26) of Chicago was sentenced to up to 50 years in prison on charges stemming from the beating death of her son (5). She had testified against her former boyfriend, Tre Henderson, who was convicted on Feb. 13 of first-degree murder and other crimes.
(SFC, 3/25/20, p.A4)
2020 Mar 20, NYC reported 5,151 infections as of this morning out of 17,041 nationwide and 7,102 in New York state. The virus has caused 29 deaths in NYC.
(AP, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 20, Google's google.com/covid19 went live on the web late today offering education, prevention and local resources related to the novel coronavirus.
(AP, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 20, JPMorgan Chase & Co said it would give "front line employees," workers who are staffing branches and call centers through the coronavirus pandemic, a sweetener for their efforts: a one-time $1,000 bonus.
(Reuters, 3/20/20)
2020 Mar 20, Lyft Inc told drivers they could sign up for delivery services for healthcare, government services and groceries as ride-hailing demand plummeted during the rapid spread of coronavirus in the United States.
(Reuters, 3/20/20)
2020 Mar 20, GlaxoSmithKline's HIV treatments division said it has received approval for its long-acting HIV injection from Canada's healthcare regulator, in a major win for the British drugmaker after a US rejection late last year.
(Reuters, 3/20/20)
2020 Mar 20, Albania passed measures totaling $370 million in its budget to soften the blow from the coronavirus crisis, including $25 million for the health sector, which is expected to deal with more cases than the 70 confirmed so far.
(Reuters, 3/20/20)
2020 Mar 20, Algerian protesters called off their weekly anti-government demonstrations for the first time in more than a year to reduce the spread of coronavirus. The country has recorded at least 10 deaths and 90 confirmed virus cases.
(BBC, 3/20/20)
2020 Mar 20, Argentina went into full lockdown mode, with streets in Buenos Aires largely deserted, while workers and school kids in the capital logged on remotely to offices, classrooms and even digital dancing lessons, after a mandatory quarantine was imposed. Argentina has so far registered 128 confirmed cases of coronavirus, with three deaths.
(Reuters, 3/20/20)
2020 Mar 20, In Belgium the number of confirmed coronavirus cases rose by 558, or 25%, to 2,815.
(Bloomberg, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 20, Britain ordered the closure of pubs and restaurants to slow the spread of the coronavirus. This came weeks after similar measures by the rest of Europe.
(Econ, 3/28/20, p.51)
2020 Mar 20, Bulgaria's parliament voted to allow the military to help implement measures to curb the coronavirus, with a mandate to use physical force if absolutely necessary.
(Reuters, 3/20/20)
2020 Mar 20, China's imported cases of coronavirus rose to a record 228.
(Reuters, 3/20/20)
2020 Mar 20, Cuba banned all tourist arrivals, confined vulnerable groups, shut down educational facilities and suspended interprovincial public transport asit recorded 21 confirmed cases of the coronavirus.
(Econ, 4/25/20, p.26)
2020 Mar 20, The Central Bank of eSwatini (formerly Swaziland) decided to cut its main lending rate by 100 basis points to 5.5%, citing global and domestic economic developments, including the impact of coronavirus. The country has one confirmed case of COVID-19.
(Reuters, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 20, Finland recorded its first death from coronavirus. It has 521 confirmed cases, though it was only testing severely ill people and health-care professionals.
(Bloomberg, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 20, Experts at the UN declared Finland to be the world's happiest nation for the third year running. The US fell to No. 18.
(AFP, 3/20/20) (NY Times, 3/20/20)
2020 Mar 20, France sent security forces into train stations to prevent people from traveling to their vacation homes, potentially carrying the coronavirus to the countryside or beaches where medical facilities are less robust.
(AP, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 20, In Guinea opposition groups demonstrated against a March 21 referendum that could allow Pres. Alpha Conde to stay longer in power. The vote would also choose 14 National Assembly members. Guinea has reported tow cases of the coronavirus.
(SFC, 3/21/20, p.A2)
2020 Mar 20, In India four men sentenced to death for the gruesome gang rape and murder of a woman on a New Delhi bus in 2012 were hanged. The case exposed the scope of sexual violence in India and prompted horrified Indians to demand swift justice.
(AP, 3/20/20)
2020 Mar 20, India expanded the criteria for people who should be tested for coronavirus, as the world’s second-most populous nation aims to limit the outbreak locally.
(Bloomberg, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 20, Jakarta, Indonesia, declared a state of emergency due to the coronavirus pandemic. Indonesia had 369 confirmed cases and 32 deaths. Jakarta, a city of 10 million people, had 215 confirmed infections and 18 deaths.
(Reuters, 3/20/20)
2020 Mar 20, Iran said that coronavirus has killed 149 more people in the Islamic republic, raising the country's official death toll from the disease to 1,433. 1,237 more cases have been confirmed over the past 24 hours and 19,644 people are now known to have been infected.
(AP, 3/20/20)
2020 Mar 20, In Iraq virus cases continued to rise, with 13 dead among 192 confirmed infected. The economic fallout from the coronavirus coupled with a sudden drop in oil prices threatened to catapult the country into an unprecedented crisis.
(AP, 3/20/20)
2020 Mar 20, Israel recorded its first death from the coronavirus.
(AP, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 20, In Italy the death toll from an outbreak of coronavirus in the northern region of Lombardy, which has borne the brunt of a nationwide contagion, rose by around 380 in a day to some 2,550.
(AP, 3/20/20)
2020 Mar 20, Lebanon's health ministry said it has recorded 163 infections from coronavirus so far. Experts warned Lebanon's healthcare system may be ill-prepared, as dollar shortages have for months drained it of critical supplies.
(Reuters, 3/20/20)
2020 Mar 20, Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard said that Mexico will allow the United States to return to Mexico Central American migrants caught trying to enter the United States illegally at the US-Mexico border. However, Mexico will not permit the United States to send back migrants detained on the joint frontier who are not Mexican or Central American.
(Reuters, 3/20/20)
2020 Mar 20, North Macedonia Pres. Stevo Pendarovski signed a final accession document required for the country to become the next member of NATO.
(SFC, 3/21/20, p.A2)
2020 Mar 20, In Pakistan seven miners were killed and three injured in a blast inside a coal mine in Baluchistan province.
(SFC, 3/21/20, p.A2)
2020 Mar 20, Poland's prosecutor's office said Nearly half a million liters of confiscated vodka and rectified spirit will be sent to Polish public institutions in need of disinfectant amid the coronavirus outbreak.
(Reuters, 3/20/20)
2020 Mar 20, South Africa said coronavirus cases have jumped to 202, the most in the sub-Saharan region, while the continent's busiest airport said foreigners cannot disembark. State-owned South African Airways suspended all international flights until June.
(AP, 3/20/20)
2020 Mar 20, Spanish authorities said they would turn a Madrid conference center into a giant makeshift military hospital for thousands of coronavirus patients, as Europe's second-worst outbreak claimed another 235 lives. With nearly 20,000 cases, Spain overtook Iran to become the world's third hardest-hit country by the pandemic after China and Italy. The Madrid region accounts for 628 deaths and 7,165 cases.
(Reuters, 3/20/20)
2020 Mar 20, Mosques in Sri Lanka were shut indefinitely due to the coronavirus pandemic, and the island was set to impose a countrywide curfew over the weekend.
(Reuters, 3/20/20)
2020 Mar 20, The Bank of Thailand held a special meeting and cut its key interest rate by 25 basis points to 0.75%.
(Economist, 4/4/20, p.29)
2020 Mar 20, Turkey's death toll due to the coronavirus rose to nine with a total of 670 cases.
(Reuters, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, US coronavirus infections exceeded 17,000, fatalities top 220. Worldwide cases topped 260,000 with more than 10,000 dead.
(Bloomberg, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, SF Bay Area's Santa Clara County reported 263 coronavirus cases and 8 deaths, the highest in the region. The Bay Area accounted for nearly half of the state's 1,286 cases.
(SSFC, 3/22/20, p.A12)
2020 Mar 21, Primaries scheduled for Georgia, Maryland, Indiana, Connecticut and Kentucky were all reported postponed to May or June due to the coronavirus pandemic.
(AP, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, Illinois residents began sheltering in place following orders by Gov. J.B. Pritzker restricting movement to combat the coronavirus. Illinois had five deaths from coronavirus with hundreds more testing positive across 22 counties. Similar shelter-in-place actions were taken by governors in Connecticut and Nevada.
(Bloomberg, 3/21/20)(SFC, 3/21/20, p.A5)
2020 Mar 21, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy said he will sign an executive order requiring all “nonessential" businesses closed to help slow the spread of the coronavirus.
(Bloomberg, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said there are now 10,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the state, an increase of 3,000 in the last 24 hours.
(Good Morning America, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said the city will be closing all non-essential businesses from March 22 to curb the spread of the coronavirus outbreak. NYC reported at least 38 people testing positive at the notorious Rikers Island complex and nearby facilities, more than half of them incarcerated men. Another 58 were being monitored in the prison's contagious disease and quarantine units. It was reported that an inmate at a federal jail in NYC has tested positive for coronavirus, marking the first confirmed case in the US federal prison system.
(AP, 3/21/20)(Good Morning America, 3/21/20)(AP, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, In Texas Ramiro Hernandez Ibarra of Mexico (42) died while being held pending his deportation. He was the 10th person to die in ICE custody since October.
(SFC, 3/24/20, p.A4)
2020 Mar 21, Amazon.com Inc said it is raising overtime pay for associates working in its US warehouses, as the world's largest online retailer tries to meet the rapidly growing demand for online shopping from consumers stuck at home during the coronavirus outbreak.
(Reuters, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, Albania's government deployed the army to enforce a strict 40-hour curfew starting today to fight the coronavirus after people widely flouted previous measures aimed at stemming its spread. So far, 76 people have tested positive for the coronavirus with two deaths.
(Reuters, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, Angola reported its first two Covid-19 cases.
(AP, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, Bolivia has so far confirmed 16 cases of coronavirus. Senators approved a motion this week that promotes use of the traditional medicine, which has long played a role for indigenous communities in the country.
(Reuters, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, Bosnia reported its first coronavirus death. The country has so far reported 90 cases.
(Reuters, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, Britain told people who were panic-buying and hoarding food due to the coronavirus outbreak to calm down, pointing to a video on social media showing an exhausted nurse driven to tears by finding shelves bare after her shift.
(Reuters, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, Bulgaria's main Orthodox Church urged Christians to stay away from churches and pray at home as the Balkan country tightens restrictive measures to contain the spread of coronavirus. The country has reported 142 cases, with three deaths.
(Reuters, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, A Burkina Faso spokesman said 4 government ministers have tested positive for the coronavirus, as the number of reported cases rose to 64 from 40, the highest in West Africa. Two new deaths were reported.
(Reuters, 3/21/20)(AP, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, In Colombia a prison riot in Bogota left 24 inmates dead. On Nov. 24 Human Rights Watch reported that most of the prisoners killed were shot to death intentionally.
(SFC, 11/25/20, p.A4)
2020 Mar 21, Congo DRC reported its first coronavirus death.
(AP, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, East Timor reported its first case of coronavirus. The Ministry of Health said that the case was from someone who had just returned from abroad.
(Reuters, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, Egypt's Coptic Orthodox Church ordered all its churches to shut their doors and suspend masses for two weeks over coronavirus fears. Egypt so far registered 285 confirmed coronavirus cases including eight deaths.
(Reuters, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, LVMH, the world's biggest luxury goods group, said it is ordering 40 million health masks from a Chinese supplier to help France cope with the coronavirus outbreak.
(Reuters, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, In Greece 598 migrants, arrested while crossing to three Greek islands from the Turkish coast, arrived at a facility in northern Greece where they were required to remain pending deportation.
(AP, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, In India thousands of poor city migrants whose livelihoods have collapsed due to India's coronavirus measures headed back to their villages, raising fears that the exodus could carry the virus to the countryside. About one fifth of India's 271 confirmed coronavirus cases has been reported in the western state of Maharashtra. So far, India has registered four deaths due to the virus.
(AP, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, In eastern India 17 policemen were killed and 14 others injured in an attack by Maoist rebels in Bihar state.
(SFC, 3/23/20, p.A2)
2020 Mar 21, Indonesia confirmed 81 new coronavirus cases and 6 more deaths, bringing the total number of cases to 450 and deaths to 38.
(AP, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani urged the US public to call on their government to remove sanctions against the Islamic Republic amid the coronavirus outbreak. The death toll from the coronavirus reached 1,556 after the country reported a further 123 fatalities in the past 24 hours. Iran stood at 20,610 cases after 966 new infections were confirmed over the past day.
(Bloomberg, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, Iran released French scholar Roland Marchal in a prisoner exchange between France and the Islamic Republic. France released Iranian engineer Jalal Rouhollahnejad in the exchange. The swap came after some 85,000 prisoners in Iran were released on furlough following a major outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic in the country, where it has so far killed more than 1,500 people.
(Bloomberg, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, Italy reported 793 coronavirus deaths, raising the total to 4,825.
(Bloomberg, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, In Jordan air raid sirens echoed across Amman to mark the start of a three-day curfew, the latest mass lockdown in the Middle East aimed at containing the coronavirus.
(AP, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, Luxembourg coronavirus cases rose to 670 from 484 and deaths to eight.
(Bloomberg, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, Malaysia's Health Ministry reported five more deaths and 153 new infections. Coronavirus cases jumped to 1,183 with eight deaths. Officials warned of a spike next week as they track down people who attended a large religious gathering linked to most of the cases.
(Reuters, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, Mauritius recorded its first coronavirus death as case numbers rose to 14.
(Reuters, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, Mexico confirmed its second death as medical experts worry that Latin America is unprepared for a larger outbreak.
(Bloomberg, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, A Mexican navy helicopter crashed during an anti-kidnapping operation in Veracruz state. One police officer was killed and 10 military personnel injured.
(SFC, 3/23/20, p.A2)
2020 Mar 21, In the Netherlands, coronavirus fatalities increased by 30 to 136. The total number of cases is 3,631.
(Bloomberg, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, Nigeria announced it is closing airports as of March 23 to all incoming international flights for one month due to the coronavirus pandemic.
(AP, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, In Nigeria Boko Haram extremists killed at least 50 government soldiers in an ambush hear Goneri village, Yobe state.
(SFC, 3/25/20, p.A2)
2020 Mar 21, North Korea fired what appeared to be two short-range ballistic missiles off its east coast, the latest in a series of such launches by Pyongyang.
(AFP, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, North Macedonia's first victim died of the coronavirus. The country has registered 114 cases of people infected with the virus.
(Reuters, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 21, Pakistan suspended all international flights for two weeks to limit the spread of coronavirus. The country reported its third coronavirus death, with confirmed cases rising to 534.
(Reuters, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, Peru reported its first coronavirus fatalities.
(AP, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, The Philippines' health ministry reported 45 more confirmed cases of coronavirus, bringing today's tally to 77. Confirmed cases in the Philippines now totaled 307 and 19 dead.
(Reuters, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, Portuguese coronavirus cases increased 25% to 1,280, with 12 deaths.
(Bloomberg, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, Russia's largest carmaker Avtovaz reported the first two cases of the coronavirus among its workers. Russia has so far reported 253 cases of the virus and one death, and has introduced a raft of economic and social measures to limit its spread.
(Reuters, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, Saudi Arabia announced 48 new coronavirus cases, bringing the total to 392, with five of the new infections being healthcare workers in Riyadh.
(Good Morning America, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 21, In Serbia a fire in a residential building in Belgrade killed six people.
(SSFC, 3/22/20, p.A4)
2020 Mar 21, Singapore reported 47 new cases of coronavirus, which were mainly imported, taking the city-state's tally to 432 infections. Singapore reported its first two coronavirus deaths.
(Reuters, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, In Slovakia a 4-party coaltion government was sworn in under PM Igor Matovic.
(SFC, 5/1/20, p.A2)
2020 Mar 21, South Africa, which has the most cases in sub-Saharan Africa, confirmed 38 new coronavirus cases, taking its total to 240.
(Reuters, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, Deaths from the coronavirus in Spain jumped 32% to 1,326, a week after the country went into a national lockdown to try to slow the spread of the disease. Total cases reached 24,926. The Health Ministry reported 324 new deaths and 4,946 new cases.
(Bloomberg, 3/21/20)(Good Morning America, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, Sri Lanka's government closed all bars and liquor shops. Police arrested 30 people from various parts of the country for violating curfew, adding the curfew has been imposed till the morning of March. Sri Lanka has reported 72 confirmed coronavirus cases.
(Reuters, 3/21/20)(Econ, 4/25/20, p.28)
2020 Mar 21, In Sri Lanka one prisoner was killed and four others wounded when guards opened fire during a protest at the Anuradhapura prison.
(SSFC, 3/22/20, p.A4)
2020 Mar 21, Switzerland reported 6,100 coronavirus infections, some 25% more than a day earlier, and 56 deaths.
(Reuters, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, Taiwan reported 18 new coronavirus cases, all imported from people coming from countries including the United States, Britain, South Africa and Indonesia or those having contact with them, bring the total number of infected to 153.
(Reuters, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, Thailand’s capital imposed a partial shutdown from March 22 after novel coronavirus cases surged past 400 with a rising number of people in critical condition.
(Bloomberg, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, Turkey extended measures against the coronavirus, suspended flights with 46 more countries and banning picnics and barbecues, as the number of cases has roughly doubled every day for a week.
(AP, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, Ukraine further restricted the use of public transport in its capital Kiev as it battles to prevent the spread of coronavirus. Ukraine has reported 41 cases of the virus and three deaths.
(Reuters, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, Vietnam's coronavirus cases rose to 94 with no deaths. The government said it will bar entry for all foreigners from March 22, except for special cases, as the country seeks to contain the spread of the virus.
(Reuters, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 22, US Pres. Donald Trump said he’s ordered the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to ship mobile hospital centers to the hard-hit states of Washington, California and New York.
(AP, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said the lockdown affecting large segments of the American public to try to curb the spread of the coronavirus is likely to last 10 to 12 weeks, or until early June. US coronavirus infections reached 26,747. The global number of coronavirus cases doubled in a week to 311,000.
(Reuters, 3/22/20)(Bloomberg, 3/22/20)(Good Morning America, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, It was reported that the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has stepped up a fight last week with its largest swoop against the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) on US soil, arresting more than 600 people accused of being linked to its sprawling criminal network. Last month the DEA arrested the daughter of cartel leader Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes (53), aka El Mencho, in Washington and extradited his son from Mexico to the US.
(Reuters, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, Hawaii's Gov. David Ige instituted a mandatory 14-day self-quarantine starting March 26 of all people traveling to the state as part of efforts to fight the spread of coronavirus. Hawaii announced 11 new cases of the virus bringing the state's total to 48.
(SFC, 3/23/20, p.A5)
2020 Mar 22, It was reported that Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has tested positive for COVID-19. He is the first member of the US Senate to be infected. Paul, an eye surgeon, went into quarantine after learning his results.
(AP, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, In West Virginia an infection cluster of coronavirus began with a single case at the Morgantown nursing home. Eight staffers and 21 residents soon tested positive for the virus.
(SFC, 3/28/20, p.A5)
2020 Mar 22, The Niagara Gazette reported that former Hollywood producer and convicted rapist Harvey Weinstein has tested positive for the COVID-19 coronavirus.
(The Week, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, Abkhazia, a breakaway region of the Georgian republic, held a presidential election to replace Raul Khadzhimba, the leader who stepped down in January under pressure from the opposition. With a population of about 250,000, Abkhazia is recognized as a sovereign state only by Russia and a handful of other countries.
(Reuters, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, Afghanistan reported its first coronavirus death. The war-ravaged country reported 10 new cases raising to 34 the number of confirmed cases.
(AP, 3/22/20)(Reuters, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, Albania said it will suspend all commercial flights to and from the country from midnight, allowing only flag carrier Air Albania to fly to Turkey and operate humanitarian flights. There have been 76 coronavirus cases in Albania and two deaths.
(Reuters, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, Australia said it will enforce more stringent controls to slow the spread of the coronavirus, closing pubs, casinos, restaurants and other venues from March 23 after the number of infections in the nation surged past 1,000.
(Bloomberg, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, Brazil's health ministry statistics showed 1,546 confirmed cases, up from 234 cases a week before. The respiratory disease caused by the virus has killed 25 people.
(Reuters, 3/23/20)
2020 Mar 22, Britain warned it will impose tighter restrictions if citizens fail to follow government calls to stop non-essential travel and gatherings to curb the spread of the coronavirus. The UK reported 281 total deaths due to COVID-19. The government said there are 5,683 confirmed cases, with London hardest hit.
(Bloomberg, 3/22/20)(Reuters, 3/22/20)(Reuters, 3/23/20)
2020 Mar 22, Bulgarian President Rumen Radev partially vetoed a state of emergency law intended to limit the spread of the coronavirus, saying some of the measures would create more problems than solutions.
(Reuters, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, Cambodia reported 31 new cases of coronavirus, 29 of them among French tourists, bringing the total number of infections recorded in the country to 84. Two Cambodians who were infected had been tour guides accompanying the tourists.
(Reuters, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, The Canadian Olympic Committee said it won't send athletes to the Tokyo Games unless they're postponed for a year.
(AP, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, China reported 46 new cases of coronavirus, the fourth straight day with an increase, with all but one of those imported from overseas.
(Reuters, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, The South China Morning Post reported that as many as a third of the people who test positive for the coronavirus may show delayed symptoms or none at all.
(Bloomberg, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, It was reported that Colombian authorities were trying to quell riots in several jails across the country amid fears that the coronavirus could spread in overcrowded conditions. 23 prisoners died and another 83 were injured in a riot and attempted escape attempt at the La Modelo jail in Bogota. Colombia has confirmed 231 cases of coronavirus.
(Bloomberg, 3/22/20)(SFC, 3/23/20, p.A2)
2020 Mar 22, In Croatia a strong earthquake in Zagreb caused panic, the evacuation of hospitals and widespread damage including to the capital's iconic cathedral. One person was killed and at least 27 injured.
(AP, 3/22/20)(SFC, 3/24/20, p.A2)
2020 Mar 22, The number of coronavirus cases in the Czech Republic has risen to 1,047 as of this morning. The Czech Rep. recorded its first COVID-19 death. A year later almost 25,000 were dead.
(Reuters, 3/22/20)(SFC, 3/23/21, p.A4)
2020 Mar 22, Dubai's state-owned Emirates, one of the world's biggest long-haul airlines, said it would stop nearly all passenger flights this week and cut staff wages by as much as half because of the coronavirus impact on travel demand.
(Reuters, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, Dubai canceled the Dubai World Cup, the world's richest purse in horse racing, until 2021.
(AP, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, In Ethiopia a cargo flight containing more than 6 million medical items arrived in Addis Ababa. The supplies from Jack Ma, the founder of China's e-commerce giant Alibaba, will be distributed to African countries in need of supplies to battle the spreading COVID-19 pandemic.
(AP, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, In France fatalities due to coronavirus rise to 562. An emergency room doctor in Northern France died from Covid-19, the first medic to die in that country.
(Bloomberg, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, Germany received the green light from EU regulators for subsidized loans to companies hit by the coronavirus pandemic. Germany tightened curbs on social interaction, including a ban on public meetings of more than two people for at least the next two weeks, to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
(Bloomberg, 3/22/20)(Reuters, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, Guinea held a constitutional referendum that opponents of President Alpha Conde fear could allow him to govern for 12 more years. An opposition boycott all but ensured the new basic law will be approved when results are announced in the coming days. With the first two cases of the COVID-19 disease recorded in the country, some polling stations required voters to wash their hands before casting their ballot. On March 27 Guinea’s electoral commission said nearly 92% of voters supported the proposal, which would keep a two-term limit on presidencies, but increase the length of each term from five years to six.
(Reuters, 3/22/20)(AP, 3/28/20)
2020 Mar 22, India suspended passenger train services across the country until March 31 as the government sought to curb the spread of the coronavirus outbreak. Freight services will continue. coronavirus cases rose to 341, while the country confirmed its fifth death from the virus.
(AP, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, Iran's supreme leader refused US assistance to fight the new coronavirus, citing an unfounded conspiracy theory claiming the virus could be man-made by America. His comments came as Iran confirmed over 21,600 cases amid 1,685 reported deaths, The total number of cases in Iran stood at 21,638 people, with 1,028 new cases added over the past day. Iran imposed a two-week closure on major shopping malls and centers across the country. Pharmacies, supermarkets, groceries and bakeries will remain open.
(Bloomberg, 3/22/20)(AP, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, Iraq has reported 20 coronavirus fatalities among 233 confirmed cases. Iraq's government has extended a curfew on travel in and out of Baghdad until March 28 as part of strict measures to prevent the virus from spreading.
(AP, 3/22/20)(Reuters, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, In Israel new rules prohibiting most Israelis from leaving their homes for the next seven days took effect as the number of confirmed coronavirus cases soared to 945. The Health Minsitry has reported one death.
(Bloomberg, 3/22/20)(AP, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, Italy was rocked by its deadliest day as the coronavirus prompted industry shutdown. The death toll from the coronavirus in the northern region of Lombardy, which has borne the brunt of Italy's contagion, has risen by around 360 in a day to more than 3,450. Italy's coronavirus infections continued to soar, with 59,000 cases and 5,476 deaths.
(Bloomberg, 3/22/20)(Reuters, 3/22/20)(AP, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, Fifty-two medics from Cuba arrived in Italy to assist with the coronavirus pandemic.
(Economist, 4/4/20, p.25)
2020 Mar 22, Japan's Oita prefecture confirmed two new coronavirus infections at a medical center, bringing the total at the facility to 14 and making it a suspected cluster.
(Reuters, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, Japan's Olympics organizers were reported to be drawing up plans for possible delay, even as the government says a postponement is not an option.
(Reuters, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, Japan-based Toyota Motor Corp said it would suspend production on one of its vehicle production lines at a plant near its headquarters through March 25, after a second plant worker tested positive for the COVID-19 virus.
(Reuters, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, Kosovo reported the country's first victim of the coronavirus. The country has registered 31 cases of people infected with the virus.
(Reuters, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, In Lebanon unknown assailants shot dead Antoine Hayek, a former member of an Israeli-backed Lebanese militia, inside his grocery store in the southern village of Mieh Mieh, near the port city of Sidon. Hayek had been a warden at a prison run by the South Lebanon Army militia during Israel's 18-year occupation of southern Lebanon, which ended in 2000.
(AP, 3/23/20)
2020 Mar 22, Malta said it is closing all non-essential shops and services to stop the spread of coronavirus. The number of confirmed virus cases in the country rose to 90 with 17 cases reported overnight.
(Reuters, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, In Mexico the mayor of Mexico City shut bars and banned large gatherings to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
(Econ, 3/28/20, p.32)
2020 Mar 22, In Pakistan Dr Osama Riaz, who screened suspected coronavirus patients, died after testing positive for the coronavirus, highlighting the danger to physicians who have threatened to strike unless access to protection equipment improves. Pakistan has reported three deaths and 658 patients infected with the coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, The Palestinian Authority, which governs parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, announced a 14-day curfew, ordering everyone to stay at home except for security forces, medics and food sellers. It also closed all major roads. The PA has reported 59 coronavirus cases. Authorities in Gaza confirmed the enclave's first two coronavirus cases overnight in returnees who had come from Pakistan.
(AP, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, The Netherlands reported 573 more coronavirus virus cases for a total of 4,203 with 179 deaths.
(AP, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, North Korea reported that President Donald Trump has sent a personal letter to leader Kim Jong Un, seeking to maintain good relations and offering cooperation in fighting the coronavirus pandemic.
(AP, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, Portuguese authorities began the coronavirus testing and repatriation process for 1,338 passengers aboard the MSC Fantasia cruise ship en route from Brazil that docked in Lisbon after its other European stopovers were canceled.
(Reuters, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, The Romanian government confirmed the first death in the country due to coronavirus.
(AP, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, In Russia small-scale protests against Vladimir Putin's plans to amend the Russian constitution so he can run for president again in 2024 took place in several medium-sized cities. Protests were called off in Moscow and St. Petersburg due to measures imposed to contain the spread of coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, The Russian military started sending medical help to Italy in order to help it battle the new coronavirus after receiving an order from Pres. Vladimir Putin following a conversation a day earlier with Italian PM Giuseppe Conte. Russia itself has reported 306 cases of the virus, most of them in Moscow, and one coronavirus-related death.
(Reuters, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, Rwanda began a two-week lockdown, restricting travel between towns and cities and asking people to stay indoors. The East African nation has 41 confirmed Covid-19 cases.
(https://allafrica.com/stories/202003260464.html)
2020 Mar 22, South Africa-based Standard Bank said it will give a payment holiday to small businesses and full-time students in a bid to ease financial pressures on its customers as COVID-19 spread across the country. South Africa has confirmed 240 cases of the virus so far.
(Reuters, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, The South African Maritime Safety Authority (SAMSA) said around 1,240 German passengers stranded in Cape Town after their MV AidAmira cruise ship was quarantined for almost a week due to a coronavirus scare had either begun their journey home or would do so in the next day.
(Reuters, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, South Korea reported 98 new coronavirus cases, bringing the total to 8,897. The number of deaths rose by two to 104.
(Bloomberg, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, Spain's death toll from coronavirus soared to 1,720 from 1,326 the day before. The one-day rise in deaths of 394 was higher than the previous day's increase of 324.
(Reuters, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, In Switzerland, 7,014 people tested positive for coronavirus, up from 6,113 a day earlier. Four more patients died, bringing the total to 60.
(Bloomberg, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, Syrian President Bashar Assad granted amnesty and reduced sentences for all crimes committed before today, while also offering amnesty to military deserters who turn themselves in within the next few months.
(AP, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, Syria reported its first case of the coronavirus.
(Econ, 3/28/20, p.44)
2020 Mar 22, Taiwan announced 16 new confirmed cases of coronavirus with 13 of them imported. The number of total confirmed cases rose to 169. Taiwan said it will suspend transit of international passengers through its airports from March 24 to April 7.
(AP, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, Thailand reported 188 more coronavirus cases, the highest daily increase so far, bringing the total to 599.
(Reuters, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, Coronavirus cases in Turkey soared as countries across the Middle East imposed new restrictions on movement of people, shut public places and rolled out measures to protect businesses. Turkey now has 947 confirmed cases of the virus, with 21 deaths.
(Bloomberg, 3/22/20)(Good Morning America, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, Uzbekistan ordered all companies in Tashkent to switch to remote working and made protective masks mandatory in all major cities in order to prevent the spread of coronavirus. The country has confirmed 43 cases of the disease and has already closed its borders.
(AP, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, Vietnam closed its borders to all foreigners. This made it more difficult for rat catchers in Cambodia's rice fields to market their catch in Vietnam.
(https://tinyurl.com/u22tj88u)(Econ., 1/2/21, p.26)
2020 Mar 22, Zimbabwe journalist Zororo Makamba (30) became the country's first coronavirus casualty. He had undergone surgery last November to remove a tumor from under his lung and was in recovery.
(BBC, 3/28/20)
2020 Mar 23, President Trump said major disaster declarations were underway for California, New York and Washington, the three states hardest hit by the coronavirus. With more than 15,000 confirmed cases.
(NY Times, 3/23/20)
2020 Mar 23, President Donald Trump said he was considering how to restart business life when a 15-day shutdown ends next week, even as the highly contagious virus spreads rapidly and poorly equipped hospitals struggle with a wave of deadly cases.
(Reuters, 3/24/20)
2020 Mar 23, The US Federal Reserve announced a second wave of initiatives, including buying an unlimited amount of bonds to keep borrowing costs low and setting up programs to ensure credit flows to corporations and state and local governments. The ship had docked in Japan on Feb. 5 and was placed under quarantine for more than two weeks.
(Bloomberg, 3/23/20)
2020 Mar 23, The US Supreme Court limited the rights of criminal defendants, declaring that states can bar them from using the so-called insanity defense in a ruling involving a Kansas man sentenced to death for killing four members of his family.
(Reuters, 3/23/20)
2020 Mar 23, A report released by the US Centers for Disease Control said traces of the coronavirus remained inside cabins of the Diamond Princess for more than two weeks after the cruise ship was vacated. The ship had docked in Japan on Feb. 5 and was placed under quarantine for more than two weeks.
(Good Morning America, 3/24/20)
2020 Mar 23, California's Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauje suspended all jury trials in the state for two months to help prevent the spread of coronavirus.
(SFC, 3/25/20, p.A8)
2020 Mar 23, It was reported that Pacific Gas & Electric has agreed to plead guilty to 84 involuntary manslaughter counts in connection with the 2018 Camp Fire, the most destructive wildfire in California's history.
(Reuters, 3/23/20)
2020 Mar 23, Hawaii Gov. David Ige signed a proclamation late today, ordering the entire state to stay at home and work from home, starting Wednesday after midnight and lasting through the end of April.
(Good Morning America, 3/24/20)
2020 Mar 23, Governors of Michigan, Massachusetts, West Virginia and Wisconsin implemented stay-at-home policies. Worldwide cases of coronavirus top 372,000 and 16,000 dead.
(Bloomberg, 3/23/20)
2020 Mar 23, In New York as of this morning, there have been at least 33,018 cases of coronavirus confirmed by lab tests and 428 deaths, according to a New York Times database. New York State now accounted for roughly 5 percent of the world’s total tally.
(NY Times, 3/23/20)
2020 Mar 23, In Oklahoma Jerry Drake Varnell (26) was sentenced to 25 years in prison after being convicted of trying to blow up an Oklahoma City bank in August 2017 with a massive vehicle bomb. The FBI had learned of Varnell's plan and an undercover agent posed as someone who could help construct the bomb, but instead provided inert materials.
(AP, 3/23/20)
2020 Mar 23, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said that an order issued over the weekend by Gov. Greg Abbott barred “any type of abortion that is not medically necessary to preserve the life or health of the mother".
(AP, 3/23/20)
2020 Mar 23, In Washington state 14 escaped from the Yakima County Jail. Eight were soon captured and six were still on the loose.
(NBC News, 3/24/20)
2020 Mar 23, Boeing Co. said it is temporarily shuttering its Seattle-area factories, compounding hurdles for a company already reeling from the grounding of its top-selling plane. The shutdown will begin March 25 and last 14 days.
(Bloomberg, 3/23/20)
2020 Mar 23, Ford Motor Co it has decided to temporarily halt vehicle and engine production at its factories in India, South Africa, Thailand and Vietnam in response to the growing impact of the coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/23/20)
2020 Mar 23, Australia’s parliament rushed through more than A$80 billion ($46.3 billion) in fiscal stimulus for the coronavirus-stricken economy at a special sitting in Canberra. Cases of coronavirus reached 1,709 as at 3 p.m., up 313 since 3 p.m. the day before.
(Reuters, 3/23/20)
2020 Mar 23, Austria said it is mobilizing its military reservists for the first time since World War Two, asking them to fight the coronavirus outbreak by helping with food supplies, medical support and police operations. Austria has reported nearly 4,000 cases with 21 deaths so far.
(Reuters, 3/23/20)
2020 Mar 23, PM Boris Johnson brought Britain into alignment with lockdowns across Europe, closing all nonessential shops and requiring people to stay in their homes, except for trips for food or medicine due to the coronavirus pandemic.
(NY Times, 3/24/20)(Economist, 4/4/20, p.41)
2020 Mar 23, Scientists at Britain's Oxford University said they have started a clinical trial to investigate the effects of an HIV medicine and a steroid drug in UK patients admitted to hospital with COVID-19 caused by the new coronavirus. It will test AbbVie's Kaletra: a combination of lopinavir and ritonavir which is normally used to treat the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) that causes AIDS - and the steroid dexamethasone, which is used to reduce inflammation in a wide range of conditions.
(Reuters, 3/23/20)
2020 Mar 23, Bulgaria's parliament agreed to cancel some parts of a law that establishes a state of emergency to limit the spread of the coronavirus after the president wielded his veto citing concerns about its impact on the economy and on free speech. Bulgaria had 190 confirmed cases of the coronavirus and three deaths.
(Reuters, 3/23/20)
2020 Mar 23, Cambodia reported three new coronavirus cases, bringing the total to 87.
(Reuters, 3/23/20)
2020 Mar 23, Boko Haram Islamist militants killed more than 92 Chadian soldiers in attack on an island in Lake Chad.
(BBC, 3/25/20)(SFC, 4/11/20, p.A2)
2020 Mar 23, Egypt has reported around coronavirus 330 cases and 16 deaths. Tens of thousands of people working in the major tourist destinations of Luxor, Hurghada and Sharm el-Sheikh, along with 300 families in the Nile Delta, have been ordered into 14-day quarantine.
(AP, 3/23/20)
2020 Mar 23, The European Union said it will send 20 million euros in humanitarian aid to Iran, which is subject to US sanctions, to help alleviate the coronavirus, and will also support Tehran's request for IMF financial help.
(Reuters, 3/23/20)
2020 Mar 23, Germany barred public gatherings of more than two people, except for families, and Chancellor Angela Merkel said she was going into isolation because her doctor had tested positive for the virus. Germany signed off on taking on billions in new debt as part of an unprecedented package totaling more than 750 billion euros ($800 billion) to cushion the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic.
(NY Times, 3/23/20)(Bloomberg, 3/23/20)
2020 Mar 23, Greece's largest carrier Aegean Airlines said it will suspend all of its international flights from March 26 to April 30 as a result of the spread of the coronavirus and flight restrictions.
(Reuters, 3/23/20)
2020 Mar 23, Iran announced 127 new deaths from the novel coronavirus, raising the official toll to 1,812 in one of the worst hit countries.
(AFP, 3/23/20)
2020 Mar 23, Iraq’s Health Ministry has reported 23 fatalities among 266 confirmed coronavirus cases.
(AP, 3/23/20)
2020 Mar 23, In Italy the death toll from an outbreak of coronavirus in the northern region of Lombardy has risen by around 320 in a day to more than 3,770. Unions in the Lombardy region announced strikes to protect the health of their workers, saying a government decree temporarily shutting businesses due to the coronavirus emergency contained too many loopholes and exceptions.
(AP, 3/23/20)(Reuters, 3/23/20)
2020 Mar 23, Italy's number of new Covid-19 cases dropped to a five-day low. Italian health authorities announced 4,789 new cases in the last 24 hours. The number of coronavirus cases in Italy has risen to 63,927 " compared to 81,093 in mainland China. In total, 6,077 people have died in Italy due to Covid-19, including 601 who died in the last 24 hours, a decline from the weekend.
(South China Morning Post, 3/24/20)
2020 Mar 23, Japan's PM Shinzo Abe suggested that the Summer Olympics in Tokyo might need to be postponed, hours after Canada and Australia threatened to boycott the Games.
(NY Times, 3/23/20)
2020 Mar 23, Jordan said it would extend a curfew indefinitely, with supermarkets and other stores closed, and deliver food across the country to try to rein in the coronavirus. Jordan has reported 112 coronavirus cases and six deaths.
(Reuters, 3/23/20)(AP, 3/23/20)
2020 Mar 23, Lebanon's Finance Minsitry said that it will stop paying all maturing Eurobonds in foreign currencies amid a crippling economic and financial crisis. Lebanon defaulted when it failed to make a payment of $1.2 billion on a hard-currency bond. PM Hassan Diabestimated an $83 billion loss in the banking sector.
(SFC, 3/24/20, p.A2)(Econ., 11/7/20, p.66)
2020 Mar 23, In Libya at least five civilians were killed, including two members of the same family, by heavy shelling in Tripoli.
(AP, 3/23/20)
2020 Mar 23, In Mexico unidentified gunmen killed Isaac Medardo Herrera, a lawyer and activist who defended the rural Los Venados tract against development near Cuernavaca.
(SFC, 3/25/20, p.A2)
2020 Mar 23, In northern Mozambique militants staged an overnight attack on Mocimboa de Praia, taking a military base and raising their flag. The transport hub is near what may be Africa's largest ever gas project.
(AP, 3/23/20)(Economist, 4/4/20, p.9)
2020 Mar 23, Myanmar's government designated the Arakan Army as a terrorist organization and blocked access to several news websites that reported on conflicts in Rakhine and Chin states.
(Econ, 4/18/20, p.26)
2020 Mar 23, In the Netherlands the number of confirmed coronavirus infections increased by 13% from a day earlier and 34 more people died. There were 545 new infections, taking the total to 4,749 with 213 deaths.
(Reuters, 3/23/20)
2020 Mar 23, In northeastern Nigeria around government 70 soldiers were killed in an Islamist militant ambush in the village of Gorgi, Borno state. 47 soldiers were killed in a Boko Haram ambush on a convoy that had left the north-eastern city of Maiduguri carrying ammunition.
(Reuters, 3/24/20)(BBC, 3/25/20)
2020 Mar 23, Norway's foreign ministry said the UN will create a fund to support the treatment of coronavirus patients worldwide. Almost 340,000 people have been infected by the novel coronavirus across the world and more than 14,500 have died.
(AP, 3/23/20)
2020 Mar 23, A court in southern Poland convicted three Polish men of terrorism charges related to the torching of a Hungarian center in Ukraine in February 2018. The group's leader, Michal Prokopowicz (29) was given a three-year prison term. Tomasz Szymkowiak (23) was sentenced to two years in prison. Both had pleaded not guilty. Adrian Marglewski (26) cooperated with investigators and was given two years of supervised release and 40 hours of community service.
(AP, 3/24/20)
2020 Mar 23, Russian PM Mikhail Mishustin gave the authorities five days to develop a system that would track and notify people who have come in contact with any known carriers of coronavirus. The system would simultaneously notify special regional headquarters set up to fight the pandemic.
(The Daily Beast, 3/24/20)
2020 Mar 23, Saudi Arabia announced overnight that an evening curfew would go into effect starting today from 7 p.m. to 6 a.m. for 21 days.
(AP, 3/23/20)
2020 Mar 23, In Scotland an Edinburgh jury acquitted former leader Alex Salmond (65) of sex crimes involving allegations from nine women.
(SFC, 3/24/20, p.A2)
2020 Mar 23, Singapore reported its biggest one-day jump in coronavirus infections with 54 new cases, of which 48 were imported.
(Bloomberg, 3/23/20)
2020 Mar 23, South Africa's coronavirus cases jumped to 402, up 128 from the day before. South Africa has not registered a death from the disease.
(AP, 3/23/20)
2020 Mar 23, Syrians rushed to stock up on food and fuel amid fears that authorities would resort to even stricter measures after reporting the first coronavirus infection in the country, where the healthcare system has been decimated by nearly a decade of civil war. An open-ended curfew went into effect in parts of northern and eastern Syria, which are controlled by a Kurdish-led civilian administration.
(AP, 3/23/20)
2020 Mar 23, Amnesty Int'l. said new conscripts in Thailand military are physically, sexually and mentally abused with some cases amounting to torture.
(SFC, 3/24/20, p.A2)
2020 Mar 23, Tunisia's President Kais Saied ordered the army to deploy in the streets to force people to respect a lockdown imposed to halt the spread of coronavirus. Tunisia has 89 confirmed cases of the virus.
(Reuters, 3/23/20)
2020 Mar 23, Istanbul's Grand Bazaar, one of the largest and oldest covered markets in the world, closed in a bid to stop the spread of the coronavirus pandemic. It dated back to 1455 and is often regarded as one of the first shopping malls.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Bazaar,_Istanbul)(https://tinyurl.com/ychn4qdy)
2020 Mar 23, The United Arab Emirates, home to the world's busiest international airport in Dubai, announced it was suspending all passenger flights and the transit of airline passengers in the country for two weeks to stymie the spread of the new coronavirus.
(AP, 3/23/20)
2020 Mar 23, Vietnam's PM Nguyen Xuan Phuc said next 10-15 days will be decisive in Vietnam's fight against the coronavirus. There were now 122 cases, according to the health ministry, and no reported deaths.
(Reuters, 3/23/20)
2020 Mar 24, Senior Pentagon leaders said that the fast-spreading coronavirus outbreak that has hit the United States could continue for months and the military would continue to support efforts to counter it for as long as needed. More than 42,000 people in the United States have contracted COVID-19, and at least 620 have died.
(Reuters, 3/24/20)
2020 Mar 24, Governors across the US rejected President Donald Trump's new accelerated timeline for reopening the US economy, as they continued to impose more restrictions on travel and public life in an attempt to curb the spread of the coronavirus.
(AP, 3/24/20)
2020 Mar 24, The US State Department said it was cutting $1 billion to Afghanistan this year, and potentially another $1 billion in 2021, after rival Afghan leaders failed to support a unified government. It’s a condition that US diplomats consider crucial for peace talks.
(NY Times, 3/24/20)
2020 Mar 24, The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said it had awarded $100 million to 1,381 health centers across the nation to bolster their response to the coronavirus pandemic.
(Reuters, 3/24/20)
2020 Mar 24, The US Olympic and Paralympic Committee joined growing demands to postpone the Tokyo Olympics.
(NY Times, 3/24/20)
2020 Mar 24, Wall Street bounced from three-year lows on hopes of a major fiscal stimulus to blunt the economic damage from the coronavirus. The dollar fell broadly, sliding for a second consecutive day after the US Federal Reserve stepped up measures to shield an economy reeling from emergency restrictions on commerce to fight the coronavirus. The DJIA rose 2,2112.98, its biggest point gain in history, to 20,704.91 as Congress and the White House neared a deal to inject almost $2 trillion of aid into the economy ravaged by the coronavirus.
(AP, 3/24/20)(Reuters, 3/24/20)(SFC, 3/25/20, p.C1)
2020 Mar 24, Colorado repealed its seldom-used death penalty, becoming the 22nd state to eliminate capital punishment.
(NY Times, 3/24/20)
2020 Mar 24, Terrence McNally (81), a Tony-winning playwright, librettist and screenwriter, died in Florida from complications of the COVID-19 coronavirus. His work included "Kiss of the Spider Woman" (1993), "Love! Valour! Compassion!" (1995) and "Master Class" (1996).
(SFC, 3/25/20, p.B3)
2020 Mar 24, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said New York state now has over 25,000 diagnosed cases of coronavirus, including over 14,900 in New York City.
(AP, 3/24/20)
2020 Mar 24, Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro laid to rest a diplomatic spat with China in a call with President Xi Jinping, with the two agreeing to work together to fight coronavirus as Brazil's largest city went into lockdown. In a televised speech Bolsonaro urged local governments to abandon "scorched-earth" strategies of closing schools and shops, and blasted the media for spreading "the sensation of fear".
(Reuters, 3/24/20)(Econ, 3/28/20, p.29)
2020 Mar 24, New York-based Human Rights Watch said Cambodia has arrested 17 people since late January for sharing information about the coronavirus in Cambodia, including four members or supporters of the dissolved opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP).
(Reuters, 3/24/20)
2020 Mar 24, Canadian banks followed US heavyweights in offering one-time bonuses and extra paid days off to customer-service employees who are required to work in branches and call centers amid the coronavirus crisis.
(Reuters, 3/24/20)
2020 Mar 24, It was reported that death squads in Colombia are taking advantage of coronavirus lockdowns to murder rural activists. The virus has now claimed three lives in Colombia amid 277 confirmed cases.
(The Guardian, 3/24/20)
2020 Mar 24, Egyptian PM Moustafa Madbouly said Egypt will impose a two-week nightly curfew in an effort to stop the spread of the new coronavirus.
(AP, 3/24/20)
2020 Mar 24, Ethiopian PM Abiy Ahmed called on G-20 leaders to assist Africa with $150 billion in emergency funding and write off or convert debts of low-income countries.
(Bloomberg, 3/24/20)
2020 Mar 24, European affairs ministers agreed to allow Albania and North Macedonia to begin EU membership talks.
(SFC, 3/25/20, p.A3)
2020 Mar 24, The healthcare unit of French industrial gases company Air Liquide said it was ramping up production of ventilators needed by hospitals to deal with the coronavirus outbreak. France has recorded 1,100 coronavirus deaths and 22,302 cases.
(Reuters, 3/24/20)(AFP, 3/25/20)
2020 Mar 24, In France Manu Dibango (86), a Cameroonian-born saxophonist, died with the coronavirus. He had gained international fame with his 1972 song "Soul Makossa".
(SFC, 3/25/20, p.A2)
2020 Mar 24, In Germany Bjoern Hoecke and Andreas Kalbitz, the leading figures of the radical Wing faction of the far-right Alternative for Germany party, agreed to disband. The head of the domestic intelligence agency in Thuringia called the agreement a smoke screen.
(SFC, 3/26/20, p.A2)
2020 Mar 24, German hospitals with spare capacity welcomed their first coronavirus patients from Italy. Germany had 27,000 confirmed coronavirus cases but only 114 deaths.
(Reuters, 3/24/20)
2020 Mar 24, India's PM Narendra Modi decreed that the country of 1.3 billion will go on lockdown for 21 days.
(AP, 3/24/20)
2020 Mar 24, Iran announced 122 new deaths from the novel coronavirus, raising the official toll to 1,934 in one of the world's worst hit countries. A record 1,762 new cases have been confirmed in Iran over the past 24 hours. 24,811 people are now known to have been infected.
(AP, 3/24/20)
2020 Mar 24, Israel appeared on the verge of a constitutional crisis as top members of Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud urged their party colleague and parliament speaker to defy a Supreme Court order to hold an election for his successor.
(AP, 3/24/20)
2020 Mar 24, In Italy the death toll from an outbreak of coronavirus in the northern region of Lombardy rose by around 400 in a day to more than 4,175. The number of cases in the region, which includes Milan, increased by some 1,940 to roughly 30,700. Italy suffered the most coronavirus deaths with 6,820, out of 69,176 declared infections. This was its second-deadliest day, dashing hopes the death toll is declining.
(Reuters, 3/24/20)(AFP, 3/24/20)(Bloomberg, 3/25/20)
2020 Mar 24, Japan’s NHK public television reported that PM Shinzo Abe will propose a one-year postponement for the Tokyo Olympics during talks with IOC President Thomas Bach.
(AP, 3/24/20)
2020 Mar 24, Libya reported its first case of coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/25/20)
2020 Mar 24, Mozambican immigration officers found 64 dead bodies in a shipping container on the back of a lorry that had crossed into Mozambique from Malawi. There were 14 survivors.
(BBC, 3/24/20)
2020 Mar 24, Netherlands saw the number of deaths rise by 63 to 276. The national tally of confirmed COVID-19 cases increased by 17% to 5,560.
(Good Morning America, 3/25/20)
2020 Mar 24, Pakistani PM Imran Khan announced a 1trn rupee ($7bn) support package, cutting fuel prices and earmarking money for the poor as a national lockdown continued due to the coronavirus pandemic.
(Econ, 3/28/20, p.36)
2020 Mar 24, Russia has so far reported 495 cases of the coronavirus. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said the outbreak in the capital was much worse than official figures showed.
(Reuters, 3/24/20)
2020 Mar 24, Sierra Leone declared a 12-month state of emergency to help deal with the spread of the coronavirus., despite not having a single confirmed case.
(https://tinyurl.com/yd9vww62)(Econ, 3/28/20, p.41)
2020 Mar 24, In South Africa coronavirus cases leapt to 554, the most of any country in Africa. 43 of Africa's 54 countries now have cases, with the total at 1,788. Thirteen countries have reported 58 deaths.
(AP, 3/24/20)
2020 Mar 24, In South Korea police revealed the identity of a man accused of running a range of porn channels on a Telegram chat app. Cho Jumin (24) had charged up to 30,000 subscribers between $200 and $1,200, most of which was collected in bitcoin, for access to his "nth rooms".
(Econ, 3/28/20, p.34)
2020 Mar 24, Spain announced a record daily rise of 6,584 new coronavirus infections, bringing the overall total to 39,673. The number of deaths also jumped by a record number of 514 to 2,696. The Defense Ministry said army troops disinfecting nursing homes have found some residents living in squalor among the infectious bodies of people that authorities suspect have died from the new coronavirus. Spain's health ministry reported 514 deaths from the novel coronavirus in the past 24 hours.
(AP, 3/24/20)(Good Morning America, 3/24/20)
2020 Mar 24, Switzerland's Federal Office of Public Health said the country has nearly 9,000 confirmed coronavirus infections and 90 deaths.
(Reuters, 3/24/20)
2020 Mar 24, Thailand PM Prayuth Chan-ocha announced that his cabinet has agreed to declare a state of emergency to implement stricter measures to control the spread of the novel coronavirus. The one-month state of emergency takes effect March 26. There were just under 900 diagnosed cases of the virus in the country.
(Good Morning America, 3/24/20)
2020 Mar 24, The UN top envoy for Syria called for a nationwide ceasefire to allow for a better response to the threat of the novel coronavirus. The government in Damascus has so far only reported one case of COVID-19.
(AFP, 3/24/20)
2020 Mar 24, Forces from Yemen's Houthi movement blocked a UN-chartered ship carrying representatives of the internationally recognized government from leaving Hodeidah port. The UN has been holding meetings between the warring parties on board the ship for months.
(Reuters, 3/24/20)
2020 Mar 25, The US Justice Department announced federal charges against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his top deputies for crimes related to narco-terrorism, money laundering and drug trafficking.
(CBS News, 3/25/20)
2020 Mar 25, US lawmakers finally agreed on a mammoth economic relief package, buoying stock markets around the world. President Donald Trump said he wants to see the country get back to business in a matter of weeks, over the objections of public health experts. The US Senate unanimously approved the “Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act’’ (CARES Act), a bi-partisan bill to provide financial relief to individuals and businesses impacted by the coronavirus. The aid measure would send direct payments of $1,200 to Americans earning up to $75,000, substantially expand help for the jobless, and provide hundreds of billions of dollars in loans to businesses affected by the pandemic.
(AP, 3/25/20)(NY Times, 3/26/20)
2020 Mar 25, US coronavirus infections continued to climb rapidly and passed the 55,000 mark, with deaths approaching 800. More than 438,000 people worldwide have been infected and the number of dead closed in on 20,000.
(AP, 3/25/20)(Good Morning America, 3/25/20)
2020 Mar 25, US Navy and Marine Corps service members in Guam were ordered to break their own quarantine to set up makeshift shelters for US troops coming off a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, where an outbreak of the novel coronavirus was rapidly spreading within the hulls of the ship.
(The Daily Beast, 3/26/20)
2020 Mar 25, The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said it would extend its prior conditional regulatory relief from disclosure requirements for public companies affected by the coronavirus outbreak.
(Reuters, 3/25/20)
2020 Mar 25, A US federal judge ordered the US Army Corps of Engineers to conduct a full environmental review of the Dakota Access pipeline, nearly three years after it began carrying oil in June, 2017.
(SFC, 3/26/20, p.A3)
2020 Mar 25, Arizona State University engineering professor Junseok Chae was reported missing after he didn't return home from work. His body was found in July the Northwest Regional Landfill in Surprise, Arizona. Two teenagers, extradited from Louisiana, were booked on suspicion of murder.
(NBC News, 7/24/20)
2020 Mar 25, California reported 2,998 confirmed cases of the coronavirus.
(Econ, 3/28/20, p.30)
2020 Mar 25, Officials in six San Francisco Bay Area counties said school will remain closed until May 4 due to the coronavirus pandemic.
(SFC, 3/26/20, p.B1)
2020 Mar 25, Louisiana reported 827 confirmedcases of coronavirus.
(SFC, 3/27/20, p.A5)
2020 Mar 25, Miami, Wisconsin, Vermont joined a growing list of places where residents must stay home. At least 23 states have enacted policies to close nonessential businesses in an effort to slow the spread of novel coronavirus on US soil.
(Good Morning America, 3/25/20)
2020 Mar 25, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz ordered state residents in nonessential jobs to stay at home.
(SFC, 3/26/20, p.A5)
2020 Mar 25, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said his state's infections are doubling every three days, threatening to swamp the available intensive care units. The state has 26,000 infections and more than 200 deaths. At least 192 of those fatalities have occurred in NYC.
(AP, 3/25/20)(Good Morning America, 3/25/20)
2020 Mar 25, New York state issued a directive to send recovering coronavirus patients to already vulnerable nursing homes. The directive said no resident shall be denied re-admission or admission to a nursing home solely based on confirmed or suspected COVID-19. On May 10 Gov. Andrew Cuomo reversed the directive, which had been intended to help free up hospital beds for the sickest patients as cases surged.
(AP, 5/21/20)
2020 Mar 25, Pennsylvania lawmakers voted to delay the state's primary election to June 2 due to the coronavirus pandemic.
(SFC, 3/26/20, p.A5)
2020 Mar 25, CVS Health said its pharmacy benefit management (PBM) unit was working to set up measures against the hoarding of malaria drug hydroxychloroquine, which is being tested as a potential treatment for the coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/25/20)
2020 Mar 25, In Afghanistan a lone Islamic State gunman rampaged through a Sikh house of worship in the heart of Kabul, killing 25 worshippers and wounding eight. Pakistani national Aslam Farooqi, aka Abdullah Orakzai, was arrested in April for his involvement in the attack.
(AP, 3/25/20)(SSFC, 4/12/20, p.A4)
2020 Mar 25, Bolivia issued a decree establishing a lockdown due to the coronavirus. The decree criminalized individuals who incite noncompliance and misinform or cause uncertainty to the population.
(Econ., 5/16/20, p.26)
2020 Mar 25, The Botswana Energy Regulatory Authority (BERA) said Botswana Power Corporation (BPC) will increase electricity tariffs by 22% from April 1, in a bid to boost revenues for the loss-making state utility.
(Reuters, 3/25/20)
2020 Mar 25, Brazil recorded more than 2,500 cases of coronavirus and 59 deaths.
(AP, 3/26/20)
2020 Mar 25, Britain passed the Coronavirus Act, granting the government emergency powers to handle the COVID-19 pandemic.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronavirus_Act_2020)(Econ., 7/6/20, p.46)
2020 Mar 25, It was reported that nearly half a million people in Britain have filed welfare benefit claims in the past nine days, a sign of how the government's shutdown of much of the economy to slow the spread of coronavirus is hitting incomes.
(Reuters, 3/25/20)
2020 Mar 25, Britain’s Prince Charles (71) of Wales became the latest high-profile infection of a pandemic that has infiltrated all walks of life and paralyzed a continent.
(AP, 3/25/20)
2020 Mar 25, Bulgaria imposed a temporary entry ban on trucks from more than 65 countries that plan to pass through the Balkan state en route to Turkey, after Turkey imposed stringent coronavirus restrictions on truck drivers.
(Reuters, 3/25/20)
2020 Mar 25, China's Hubei province, where the outbreak was first spotted late last year, started lifting its lockdown.
(AP, 3/25/20)
2020 Mar 25, In Egypt a trailer-truck smashed into multiple cars stopped on a freeway late today, killing 15 people and injuring a dozen in Cairo.
(AP, 3/25/20)
2020 Mar 25, France said it is pulling out its military forces from Iraq as its forces are increasingly called upon to help fight the coronavirus at home.
(AP, 3/25/20)
2020 Mar 25, Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government secured emergency spending, unlocking a historic rescue package designed to cushion the blow of the coronavirus pandemic. The Bundesrat, or upper house of parliament, will vote on March 27.
(Bloomberg, 3/25/20)
2020 Mar 25, In Germany some 32,705 patients have been confirmed with the coronavirus, up from 28,942 a day earlier. So far 154 have died, compared with 118 a day earlier.
(Bloomberg, 3/25/20)
2020 Mar 25, Hungary said it has banned the commercial export of hydroxychloroquine sulfate, an ingredient used in drugs for coronavirus treatment in several countries.
(Reuters, 3/25/20)
2020 Mar 25, India began a 21-day lockdown. PM Narendra Modi warned that if he didn't act now, the coronavirus could set the world's largest democracy back decades. Everything but essential services like supermarkets were closed. India has reported only about 512 cases because of limited testing. At least 9 deaths have been reported.
(AP, 3/24/20)(AP, 3/25/20)
2020 Mar 25, India said it had banned the export of hydroxychloroquine and formulations of the malaria drug while experts test its efficacy in helping treat patients infected with coronavirus.
(AP, 3/25/20)
2020 Mar 25, Iran said it will ban intercity travel within days as it finally gets tough with the coronavirus that has killed more than 2,000 people in one of the world's deadliest outbreaks.
(AFP, 3/25/20)
2020 Mar 25, In Iran US Navy veteran Michael White was hospitalized in a ward for coronavirus patients and has experienced fever, fatigue, a cough and shortness of breath since his furlough last week. White was requesting a humanitarian evacuation to the United States for medical treatment.
(AP, 3/25/20)
2020 Mar 25, Israel's Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein abruptly resigned, dealing a blow to PM Benjamin Netanyahu and deepening the country's political turmoil as the embattled leader tries to cling to power amid a fast-spreading outbreak of the coronavirus and a looming corruption trial.
(AP, 3/25/20)
2020 Mar 25, In Kosovo a majority of deputies in the parliament voted to snuff out the government of Albin Kurti, a radical reformer, ostensibly over a declaration of a state of emergency owing to covid-19.
(Economist, 4/4/20, p.41)
2020 Mar 25, Clashes between rival Libyan forces for control of Tripoli escalated as militias allied with the UN-supported government based in the country's capital launched an offensive on a military base held by their rivals.
(AP, 3/25/20)
2020 Mar 25, In Mali unidentified gunmen kidnapped Soumaila Cisse and members of his campaign team in an area controlled by extremists groups linked to al-Qaida. Cisse's bodyguard died of injuries sustained during the abduction.
(https://tinyurl.com/vnvbsw2)(SFC, 3/27/20, p.A2)
2020 Mar 25, Mexico's state of Baha California reported 16 confirmed cases of the coronavirus.
(Econ, 3/28/20, p.30)
2020 Mar 25, Air Namibia said that all domestic and inter-African flights will be suspended effective March 27 until April 20. The airline said it will remain available to offer charter flights for humanitarian purposes, as well as airlifts of pharmaceutical supplies and consumables.
(Reuters, 3/25/20)
2020 Mar 25, In the Netherlands the number of confirmed coronavirus cases rose by 852 to 6,412. Deaths rose by 80 to 356.
(Reuters, 3/25/20)
2020 Mar 25, The Financial Times reported that North Korean officials have sought urgent help from international contacts to increase coronavirus testing in a nation that could see its dilapidated health care system be crushed by an outbreak.
(Bloomberg, 3/25/20)
2020 Mar 25, Communist guerrillas in the Philippines said they would observe a cease-fire in compliance with the UN chief's call for a global halt in armed clashes during the coronavirus pandemic. By the end of April the NPA said they would not extend the ceasefire and would return to violence.
(AP, 3/25/20)(Econ., 6/20/20, p.50)
2020 Mar 25, Romania's Pres. Klaus Iohannis said his government will postpone monthly loan repayments for a period of up to 9 months to help domestic borrowers hit by the coronavirus crisis. Romania reported 144 new infections to an overall of 906 cases and 13 deaths.
(Reuters, 3/25/20)
2020 Mar 25, Russian President Vladimir Putin said he was postponing a nationwide vote on constitutional changes that would allow him to extend his rule due to the worsening situation with coronavirus. Russian authorities reported 163 more virus cases in the country since the day before, bringing the national total to 658.
(AP, 3/25/20)
2020 Mar 25, Human Rights Watch reported that Saudi military forces have committed grave abuses against civilians in an eastern province of Yemen over the past year, including torture, forced disappearances and arbitrary detention.
(AP, 3/25/20)
2020 Mar 25, In South Africa the coronavirus caseload rose past 700 as the country got ready to go on lockdown on March 27.
(AP, 3/25/20)
2020 Mar 25, Spain suffered its deadliest day since the outbreak of the coronavirus. The total number of fatalities surged by 738 to 3,434.
(Bloomberg, 3/25/20)
2020 Mar 25, Sudan’s defense minister, Gen. Gamal al-Din Omar (60), died of a heart attack while on an official visit to neighboring South Sudan.
(AP, 3/25/20)
2020 Mar 25, The Swiss government said it was expanding its border controls to include all countries in the Schengen open border zone to help protect people from coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/25/20)
2020 Mar 25, Switzerland said it has introduced temporary restrictions on the export of protective equipment to head off shortages among medical staff and others fighting the coronavirus outbreak.
(Reuters, 3/25/20)
2020 Mar 25, Taiwan reported 235 cases of the coronavirus and just two deaths.
(Econ, 3/28/20, p.35)
2020 Mar 25, Turkish officials said prosecutors have formally charged two former aides of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and 18 other Saudi nationals over the 2018 killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.
(AP, 3/25/20)
2020 Mar 25, Cliver Alcalá, a retired Venezuelan army general, publicly revealed details of a plot to kidnap Pres. Maduro.
(Econ., 5/16/20, p.17)
2020 Mar 25, Vietnam's health ministry reported an additional seven coronavirus cases, taking the country's tally to 141, though it reported no deaths.
(Reuters, 3/25/20)
2020 Mar 25, Zimbabwe's public hospital doctors and nurses went on strike over a lack of protective gear as the coronavirus begins to spread in a country whose health system has almost collapsed.
(AP, 3/25/20)
2020 Mar 26, President Trump said he planned to label different areas as “high risk, medium risk or low risk," as part of guidelines to help states determine quarantine and distancing measures. He also reiterated his desire to start opening up parts of the country soon.
(NY Times, 3/27/20)
2020 Mar 26, The US State Department announced rewards for information leading to the arrest or conviction of various Venezuelan nationals, including President Nicolas Maduro who Washington aims to push out of power.
(Reuters, 3/26/20)
2020 Mar 26, The US military said it has decided it will stop providing some of the more granular data about coronavirus infections within its ranks, citing concern that the information might be used by adversaries as the virus spreads.
(Reuters, 3/26/20)
2020 Mar 26, The US Labor Dept. reported that a record 3.8 million American filed for first-time unemployment last week.
(SFC, 3/27/20, p.A1)
2020 Mar 26, The newly established US Space Force launched its first national security satellite from Cape Canaveral. The nearly $1 billion satellite is the sixth and final one in the US military's Advanced Extrememly High Frequency series.
(SFC, 3/27/20, p.A3)
2020 Mar 26, The US Environmental Protection Agency relaxed pollution rules, allowing power plants, factories and other facilities to monitor themselves for an undetermined period.
(NY Times, 3/27/20)
2020 Mar 26, In the United States deaths due to the coronavirus passed 1,050. The number of US coronavirus infections climbed above 82,000, surpassing the national tallies of China and Italy. The global death toll from the virus climbed past 21,000 and the number of infections has surpassed 472,000.
(AP, 3/26/20)(The Telegraph, 3/27/20)
2020 Mar 26, In the SF Bay Area confirrmed cases of coronavirus topped 1,400 with at least 32 deaths.
(SFC, 3/27/20, p.A1)
2020 Mar 26, Lee Guittar (b.1931), former editor-publisher of the San Francisco Examiner, died at his home in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. He was involved in the 1990 launch of We/Mbl, a short-lived partnership between Hearst and Izvestia to publish a daily newspaper in both English and Russian to be circulated in both countries.
(SFC, 3/30/20, p.B2)
2020 Mar 26, As of today anyone arriving in Hawaii was required to undergo a mandatory 14-day self-quarantine to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
(SFC, 3/30/20, p.A4)
2020 Mar 26, Louisiana reported the number of coronavirus cases in the state leapt 28% overnight. Louisiana has surpassed 2,300 people known to be infected, with 86 residents dead.
(AP, 3/27/20)
2020 Mar 26, NY state Gov. Andrew Cuomo said his state has become the nation's epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic. Cuomo says Congress' $2 trillion stimulus bill has "failed to meet the governmental need." New York has seen 385 deaths from COVID-19 and that number is expected to continue to rise.
(AP, 3/26/20)
2020 Mar 26, Scientists announced the discovery of Dineobellator notohesperus, a two-legged meat-eater that was relatively small - around 7 feet (2 meters) long and 3 feet (1 meter) tall at the hi
Return to home
2020 Jan 1, New US federal rules came into effect requiring most types of newly sold light bulbs to emit at least 45 lumens of light for each watt of electricity they burn.
(SFC, 1/1/20, p.C2)
2020 Jan 1, New or higher registration fees went into effect for electric vehicle owners in at least eight US states. For the first time, a majority of US states will impose special fees on gas-free cars, SUVs and trucks.
(AP, 12/29/19)
2020 Jan 1, California's landmark gig-work law, AB5, took effect amid a swirl of controversy and escalating challenges.
(SFC, 1/1/20, p.A1)
2020 Jan 1, In California a new law took effect requiring new homes to have rooftop solar panels, better insulation and air filtration systems.
(SFC, 12/26/19, p.A1)
2020 Jan 1, In southern California the 131st Rose Parade in Pasadena drew hundreds of thousands of spectators on New Year's Day.
(AP, 1/1/20)
2020 Jan 1, Nick Gordon (30), the man found liable in the 2015 death of ex-partner Bobbi Kristina Brown (22), died in Florida of a suspected overdose.
(http://tinyurl.com/ttfdlob)(SFC, 1/2/20, p.A4)
2020 Jan 1, In Illinois the sale of marijuana for recreational purposes became legal to the delight of pot fans. Illinois already allowed medical marijuana, but it is now the 11th state to allow its use and sale for recreational purposes.
(AP, 1/1/20)
2020 Jan 1, In Montana two snowmobilers were killed in an avalanche in the Dinah Lake area.
(SFC, 1/3/20, p.A5)
2020 Jan 1, More than 92,000 Jewish people congregated at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey to celebrate the reading of the entire Talmud in an event called Siyum HaShas, drawing a significant security presence after recent anti-Semitic attacks in the area.
(AP, 1/1/20)
2020 Jan 1, Drug makers including Bristol-Myers Squibb Co, Gilead Sciences Inc, and Biogen Inc hiked US list prices on more than 50 drugs, bringing total New Year's Day drug price increases to more than 250.
(Reuters, 1/1/20)
2020 Jan 1, Australia deployed military ships and aircraft to help communities ravaged by apocalyptic wildfires that have left at least 17 people dead nationwide and sent thousands of residents and holidaymakers fleeing to the shoreline.
(AP, 1/1/20)
2020 Jan 1, Egyptian police raided the parents' home of journalist Mohamed el-Garhy, known for his critical views of the government, and arrested his brother.
(AP, 1/2/20)
2020 Jan 1, In western Germany a fire at the Krefeld zoo in the first minutes of 2020 killed more than 30 animals, including apes, monkeys, bats and birds. Police said the fire may have been caused by sky lanterns launched to celebrate the new year.
(AP, 1/1/20)
2020 Jan 1, Hong Kong began 2020 with a familiar sight: Tear gas, fires, vandalism and roadblocks in busy downtown areas as protesters vowed to maintain their fight for more democracy and less Chinese control. Police detained about 400 people on charges including illegal assembly and possession of offensive weapons after the huge rally.
(Bloomberg, 1/1/20)(The Guardian, 1/2/20)
2020 Jan 1, In Indonesia at least nine people were killed as monsoon rains and rising rivers submerged at least 90 neighborhoods in Jakarta. The city has been rapidly sinking due to uncontrolled extraction of groundwater.
(SFC, 1/2/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 1, Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei strongly condemned deadly US strikes on Iraq and warned his country was ready to confront threats after US President Donald Trump issued one against the Islamic republic.
(AFP, 1/1/20)
2020 Jan 1, In Iraq US troops fired tear gas and rubber bullets at protesters who descended on the US Embassy in Baghdad for a second time. Pro-Iran demonstrators left the besieged US embassy in Baghdad after the Hashed al-Shaabi paramilitary force ordered them to withdraw a day after their dramatic incursion.
(The Week, 1/1/20)(AFP, 1/1/20)
2020 Jan 1, Kim Jong Un declared he was no longer bound by his pledge to halt major missile tests and would soon debut a “new strategic weapon," adding to President Donald Trump’s foreign policy concerns in a politically charged election year.
(Bloomberg, 1/1/20)
2020 Jan 1, Tens of thousands of Palestinians took to the streets in Gaza to mark the 55th anniversary of President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah movement.
(AP, 1/1/20)
2020 Jan 1, Syrian government forces shelled a rebel-held village in the country's northwest, hitting a school and killing at least six people in Idlib province. A car bombing in the town of Suluk, controlled by Turkey-backed opposition fighters, killed three people.
(AP, 1/1/20)
2020 Jan 1, United Nations shipping agency the International Maritime Organization (IMO) banned ships from using fuels with a sulphur content above 0.5%, compared with 3.5% previously, in the biggest shake up for the oil and shipping industries in decades.
(Reuters, 1/22/20)
2020 Jan 1, Yemeni rebels released six Saudi prisoners, a rebel official said, after the kingdom two months ago released over 100 rebels, known as Houthis.
(AP, 1/1/20)
2020 Jan 2, Former Obama housing secretary Julián Castro, the only Latino in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary race, ended his campaign for the presidency.
(AP, 1/2/20)
2020 Jan 2, An unsuccessful US strike on a high-ranking Iranian military commander took place in Yemen on the same night a US drone strike killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad. The strike targeted Abdul Reza Shahla'i, a key Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force commander, at his compound in Yemen.
(ABC News, 1/10/20)
2020 Jan 2, US spiritualist author Marianne Williamson laid off her entire campaign staff amid rumors she was close to ending her campaign.
(AP, 1/3/20)
2020 Jan 2, The owners and operators of GirlsDoPorn, a San Diego-based porn website, must pay $12.7 million after a judge found them liable for fraud and breach of contract for lying to women about how their explicit videos would be distributed.
(AP, 1/3/20)
2020 Jan 2, Razer Inc said it is leading a consortium of companies that has applied for a online bank license in Singapore, joining the race to shake up the city state's financial sector. Razer Inc. is a global gaming hardware manufacturing company, as well as an esports and financial services provider established in 2005 in San Diego, California, by Singaporean entrepreneur Min-Liang Tan and Robert Krakoff.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Razer_Inc.)(AP, 1/2/20)
2020 Jan 2, Britain's Greggs launched a vegan version of its popular steak bake, aiming to capitalize on the success of the meatless sausage roll that has boosted the baker's profits and helped fuel an 80% rise in its share price last year.
(Reuters, 1/2/20)
2020 Jan 2, Thousands of tourists fled Australia's wildfire-ravaged eastern coast ahead of worsening conditions as the military started to evacuate people trapped on the shore further south. Authorities said 381 homes had been destroyed on the New South Wales southern coast this week and at least eight people have died this week in the state and neighboring Victoria.
(AP, 1/2/20)
2020 Jan 2, Austria's conservative People’s Party and the environmentalist Greens laid out their policy blueprint for their new coalition under Chancellor Sebastian Kurz (33), who’s expected to be sworn in for a second term next week.
(Bloomberg, 1/2/20)
2020 Jan 2, Denmark said it sourced 47% of its electricity consumption from wind power last year, a new record boosted by steep cost reductions and improved offshore technology.
(Reuters, 1/2/20)
2020 Jan 2, Denmark-based Novo Nordisk said it would offer free, one-time supply of insulin to people in immediate need and at risk of rationing the medication, the rising price of which has attracted fierce criticism from lawmakers and regulators.
(Reuters, 1/2/20)
2020 Jan 2, Elite Iraqi troops deployed to secure the US embassy, a day after a pro-Iran mob laid siege to it in dramatic scenes that overshadowed months of anti-government grassroots protests.
(AFP, 1/2/20)
2020 Jan 2, In Kenya four people were killed in two ambushes in which passenger buses were fired on by gunmen suspected to be Islamic extremists in the country's eastern coastal area.
(AP, 1/2/20)
2020 Jan 2, Interpol issued a wanted notice for former Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn, who jumped bail in Japan and fled to Lebanon.
(SFC, 1/3/20, p.A4)
2020 Jan 2, Authorities in eastern Poland said H5N8 bird flu is responsible for the deaths of at least 25,000 turkeys in poultry farms. Authorities planned to cull tens of thousands of birds in the Lubartow area near the Belarus and Ukraine border.
(SFC, 1/3/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 2, In Serbia a crowd targeted the Montenegro's unguarded embassy in Belgrade during a protest of a religious rights law adopted by Montenegro's parliament last month.
(SFC, 1/4/20, p.A4)
2020 Jan 2, In South Korea the Mr. Trot reality TV show, an audition show for singers who perform trot music, began airing. It was the male version of the popular Miss Trot. By the end of the year Mr. Trot was the highest rated show in cable television history of South Korea. Trot music emerged in the early 20th century and blends traditional Korean music with elements of the Japanese and popular songs of the era. A "Mr. Trot" film followed later this year.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Trot)(Econ., 11/7/20, p.35)
2020 Jan 2, A Sudanese military plane crashed in the western Darfur region, killing all 16 people on board including two women and two children.
(AP, 1/3/20)
2020 Jan 2, Taiwan's top military official, Gen. Shen Yi-ming (62), was among eight people killed in an air force helicopter crash in mountainous terrain outside Taipei. Five others survived.
(AP, 1/2/20)(SFC, 1/4/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 3, A United States airstrike early today killed Revolutionary Guards commander Qasem Soleimani (62) in Baghdad as well as Iraqi militia commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis. Five Guards were killed in total as well as five members of Iraq's Hashed al-Shaabi paramilitary force. The UN and a host of world leaders, including several in Europe, Russia, and Turkey condemned the US drone strike that killed Soleimani. Iranian leaders promised a "forceful revenge" against the US and Iraqi leaders said the strike violated its sovereignty and international laws. US media reported the strike the evening of Jan. 2.
(ABC News, 1/3/20)(AFP, 1/3/20)(Business Insider, 1/3/20)
2020 Jan 3, President Trump said the killing of Iran’s top general, carried out by a US drone strike in Baghdad, was long overdue.
(Yahoo News, 1/3/20)
2020 Jan 3, President Donald Trump delivered a typical bombastic and at times vicious stump speech this evening at a Miami megachurch for his first campaign event of 2020. Trump declared his belief that God supports his agenda and pledged to bring prayer to public schools.
(ABC News, 1/3/20)(Yahoo News, 1/3/20)(Reuters, 1/3/20)
2020 Jan 3, A US federal judge ruled that Lev Parnas, an associate of President Donald Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, can provide additional records sought by the House impeachment investigators, including the contents of his cell phone.
(ABC News, 1/3/20)
2020 Jan 3, Leaders of the United Methodist Church, the 2nd largest Protestant denomination in the US, announced a plan that would formally split the church after years of division over same-sex marriage. A new "traditionalist Methodist" denomination would be created and would continue to ban same sex marriage.
(SFC, 1/4/20, p.A6)
2020 Jan 3, In Alaska Shishaldin Volcano in the Aleutian Islands, one of Alaska’s most active volcanoes, shot a cloud of ash more than 5 miles high, triggering a warning to aviators and putting on a show that was captured in satellite imagery.
(Reuters, 1/3/20)
2020 Jan 3, In Mississippi a 3rd inmate was killed at the State Penitentiary at Parchman. He became the fifth inmate to be killed in the state since Dec. 29 in what was described as a feud between gangs.
(SFC, 1/4/20, p.A6)
2020 Jan 3, It was reported that Missouri’s two biggest cities saw a jump in homicides in 2019, and if that wasn’t bad enough, an alarming number of killers got away with it. St. Louis had 194 killings last year, eight more than in 2018. Kansas City’s homicide total rose by 10, to 148.
(AP, 1/3/20)
2020 Jan 3, In Australia one of the largest evacuations in the country's history was under way as more than 200 fires burned across the country. The navy evacuated hundreds of people from Mallacoota, cut off for days by the wild fires. Victoria premier declared a disaster across much of the eastern part of the state. Ten deaths have been confirmed in Victoria and New South
Wales with 28 reported missing in Victoria.
(SFC, 1/4/20, p.A4)
2020 Jan 3, Belarus suspended its oil exports after Moscow stopped supplying crude until contracts for this year are drawn up. A day later Belarus reached an agreement for limited oil supplies to ensure refinery operations for January.
(SFC, 1/4/20, p.A2)(SSFC, 1/5/20, p.A4)
2020 Jan 3, In Cambodia a building under construction collapsed in the coastal province of Kep, killing at least four workers. The death toll soon rose to 36.
(SFC, 1/4/20, p.A2)(SFC, 1/6/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 3, In China the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission said 44 people have been diagnosed with pneumonia, the cause of which is unknown. That’s up from 27 three days earlier. Eleven people were in serious condition.
(Bloomberg, 1/4/20)
2020 Jan 3, In France one man was killed and two other people seriously injured in a knife attack by an unidentified assailant in the Paris suburb of Villejuif. Police shot dead the assailant.
(The Telegraph, 1/3/20)
2020 Jan 3, In India more that 1,000 members of the LGBTQ community, rights groups and their supporters marched through New Delhi to protest a new citizenship law that excludes Muslims. Opposition parties say the Modi government is trying to consolidate its Hindu base.
(SFC, 1/4/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 3, In Indonesia the death toll from floods in Jakarta rose to 43 as rescuers found more bodies amid receding floodwaters.
(AP, 1/3/20)
2020 Jan 3, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei appointed Qassem Soleimani's deputy, Maj. Gen. Esmail Ghaani as the new commander of the Revolutionary Guard's Quds Force, part of the 125,000-strong Revolutionary Guard.
(AP, 1/4/20)
2020 Jan 3, American oil workers began fleeing Iraq, as fears grew of war between the United States and Iran.
(NY Times, 1/4/20)
2020 Jan 4, The White House sent Congress a formal notification under the War Powers Act of the drone strike ordered by President Donald Trump that killed Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani a day earlier. Trump warned that America would target 52 sites "important to Iran & Iranian culture" and hit them "very fast and very hard" if American personnel or assets were attacked.
(NY Times, 1/5/20)(AFP, 1/5/20)
2020 Jan 4, Demonstrators chanting "no war on Iran" rallied in Washington, New York and across the US to protest the assassination of a top Iranian military commander in a US drone strike.
(AFP, 1/4/20)
2020 Jan 4, John Baldessari (88), California artist, died in his sleep. In 2010 he was cited as "arguably America's most influential Conceptual artist".
(SFC, 1/10/20, p.C2)
2020 Jan 4, In Florida a pair of Chinese nationals attending the University of Michigan were arrested on a charge of entering a US Naval property for the purpose of photographing defense installations.
(Miami Herald, 1/7/20)
2020 Jan 4, Wildfires raged in Australia, choking the sky with smoke, forcing thousands to flee and prompting the US to send more fire personnel to help battle the blazes.
(Good Morning America, 1/4/20)
2020 Jan 4, Members of Austria's Green party voted to join a new government led by conservative former Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, clearing the final hurdle for a previously untested left-right alliance at the national level.
(AP, 1/4/20)
2020 Jan 4, Austria's foreign ministry said it is facing a serious cyberattack, possibly from a foreign country.
(Reuters, 1/5/20)
2020 Jan 4, In northwestern Burkina Faso at least 14 civilians, mostly students, died after their bus hit an explosive device on the way back from a school break.
(AP, 1/4/20)
2020 Jan 4, In France a businessman returned from a holiday break to find his collection of 19 top watches, including 11 Rolexes, had been swiped from a safe with police blaming “professional" criminals. Over the weekend burglars reportedly swiped more than €1 million (£850,000) worth of Rolex watches and other prestige timepieces in Paris.
(The Telegraph, 1/6/20)
2020 Jan 4, Indonesian officials said landslides and floods triggered by torrential downpours have left at least 60 people dead in and around Jakarta, as rescuers struggled to search for people apparently buried under tons of mud.
(AP, 1/4/20)
2020 Jan 4, In Iran US and Israeli flags were set alight in Tehran as thousands mourned the loss of top military commander Qasem Soleimani, a day after he was killed by American forces.
(AP, 1/4/20)
2020 Jan 4, Iraq's PM Adel Abdel Mahdi attended a mourning procession in Baghdad for Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani and Iraqi paramilitary chief Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis. They were killed along with eight others in a precision US drone strike a day earlier as they drove away from Baghdad international airport in two vehicles.
(AFP, 1/4/20)
2020 Jan 4, A volley of missiles appeared to target the US’s embassy and one of its bases in Iraq late today, sparking fears an Iran-backed militia had begun taking revenge for the killing of its commander and Iran’s top general.
(The Telegraph, 1/5/20)
2020 Jan 4, In Libya an airstrike hit a military academy used by the Tripoli-allied militias late today in the Hadaba area. The death toll climbed to at least 30 people, most of them military trainees. Evidence later indicated the cadets were hit by a Chinese Blue Arrow 7 missile and that the UAE had supplied and operated the drones that were stationed at the al-Khadim air base.
(AP, 1/5/20)(BBC, 8/28/20)
2020 Jan 4, In northern Mexico an American family returning to the US after a visit to San Luis Potosi came under attack late today in Tamaulipas state just south of Texas. Gunmen killed a boy (13) and wounded three others.
(SFC, 1/7/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 4, It was reported that NATO has suspended ongoing efforts to fight Isis in Iraq amid demands by Iran and its allies for revenge against the US following the assassination of an Iranian leader by American forces.
(The Independent, 1/4/20)
2020 Jan 4, The Russian government published a plan to adapt the economy and population to climate change, aiming to mitigate damage but also "use the advantages" of warmer temperatures.
(AFP, 1/5/20)
2020 Jan 4, Spanish human rights groups called for an investigation into potential human rights violations by Spanish authorities after the alleged expulsion of 42 migrants to Morocco without due process.
(AP, 1/4/20)
2020 Jan 4, It was reported that police authorities in Spain believe that a crackdown on criminal biker gangs in northern Europe could be behind a crime wave that saw 24 murders in the Costa del Sol province of Malaga over the last year.
(The Telegraph, 1/4/20)
2020 Jan 4, Sudanese activists said tribal clashes in eastern Sudan have killed at least nine people over the past two days. Security forces were deployed in Port Sudan to help contain the clashes between the Bani Amer tribe and the displaced Nuba tribe.
(AP, 1/4/20)
2020 Jan 5, At the 77th Golden Globe Awards World War One movie "1917" and "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood," set in 1960s Tinseltown, won the top movie prizes at the Golden Globes on a night packed with upsets and hot-button issues at the start of Hollywood's awards season.
(Reuters, 1/6/20)
2020 Jan 5, It was reported that the Trump administration has built up the biggest backlog of unfunded toxic Superfund cleanup projects in at least 15 years.
(SSFC, 1/5/20, p.A10)
2020 Jan 5, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that the House would vote this week on a resolution meant to limit President Donald Trump's war powers.
(Business Insider, 1/5/20)
2020 Jan 5, At least five people were killed and dozens were injured in a crash early today involving multiple vehicles on the Pennsylvania Turnpike.
(AP, 1/5/20)
2020 Jan 5, It was reported that wildfires that have been ravaging swaths of Australia have burned through one-third of Kangaroo Island, killing a father and his son and leaving behind a scorched wasteland and a devastated community. The fires have killed thousands of koalas and kangaroos, and also have raised questions about whether any members of a mouse-like marsupial species that carries its young in a pouch have survived.
(AP, 1/5/20)
2020 Jan 5- 2020 Jan 17, In China hundreds of patients were appearing in hospitals not just in Wuhan but across the country with symptoms of the coronavirus.
(AP, 4/14/20)
2020 Jan 5, Croatians voted in an election that may oust the president as frustration over corruption and ambitions for deeper integration in the EU may rebalance politics in the bloc’s newest member. Incumbent Kolinda Grabar Kitarovic faced former PM Zoran Milanovic. Croatians shot down President Kolinda Grabar Kitarovic’s bid for a second term. Zoran Milanovic, who ran the government from 2011 to 2015, won 52.7% of votes.
(Bloomberg, 1/5/20)
2020 Jan 5, In India masked assailants beat students and teachers with sticks on the campus of a prestigious university in New Delhi, injuring more than 20 people in an attack opposition lawmakers are trying to link to the government.
(AP, 1/6/20)
2020 Jan 5, Black-clad mourners packed Iran's second city Mashhad as the remains of top general Qasem Soleimani were paraded through the streets after he was killed in a US strike. Iran announced that it will no longer abide by the limits contained in the 2015 nuclear deal.
(AFP, 1/5/20)(SFC, 1/6/20, p.A5)
2020 Jan 5, Iraq's Parliament called for the expulsion of US forces from the country in reaction to the American drone attack that killed a top Iranian general, raising the prospect of a troop withdrawal that could cripple the battle against the Islamic State group and allow a resurgence of the extremists.
(AP, 1/5/20)
2020 Jan 5, Canndoc, an Israeli producer of medical grade cannabis, received a shipment of 250 kilos of dried whole cannabis flowers that it says will help alleviate a local shortage. It came from Canada's Tilray's production plant in Portugal.
(Reuters, 1/5/20)
2020 Jan 5, In northern Italy a drunken driver plowed into a group of young German tourists, killing six people and injuring 11 others in the Alto Adige region. A 28-year-old man from the nearby town of Chienes, was arrested on suspicion of highway manslaughter and injury.
(AP, 1/5/20)
2020 Jan 5, In Kenya al-Shabab extremists overran a key military base early today used by US counterterror forces. One US service member and two American Department of Defense contractors were killed in the attack on the Manda Bay Airfield. Five US aircraft, including fixed-wing and helicopters, were destroyed and one damaged in the hours-long assault at the airfield in coastal Lamu county. Kenyan police arrested three suspected terrorists who tried to force their way into a British training camp in Laikipia County. In September a military court in Somalia sentenced militant Islamist Farhan Mohamud Hassan to life in prison for his role in the attack.
(AP, 1/5/20)(AP, 1/6/20)(SFC, 1/7/20, p.A4)(BBC, 9/16/20)
2020 Jan 5, In Lebanon Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah said the US army will "pay the price" for killing top Iranian general Qasem Soleimani and a senior Iraqi commander in a drone strike.
(AFP, 1/5/20)
2020 Jan 5, Venezuela's authoritarian leader Nicolas Maduro moved to consolidate his grip on power by taking control of the National Assembly and blocking the re-election of Juan Guaido as the opposition's leader.
(SFC, 1/6/20, p.A4)
2020 Jan 6, The US government launched a pilot program to collect DNA from people in immigration custody and submit it to the FBI, with plans to expand nationwide.
(AP, 1/6/20)
2020 Jan 6, Kelly Loeffler (49), a wealthy Republican donor and businesswoman, was sworn in as Georgia's new US senator, replacing former Sen. Johnny Isakson (75), who resigned in December amid poor health. She has pledged $20 million of her own fortune to win the seat in November.
(The Week, 1/7/20)
2020 Jan 6, In Wyoming gunners contracted by Grand Teton National Park began culling about 100 goats that threatened the park's bighorn sheep herd.
(SFC, 1/6/20, p.A6)
2020 Jan 6, American Airlines Group Inc said it had reached a confidential agreement with Boeing Co to address damages the airline incurred in 2019 due to the ongoing grounding of its fleet of Boeing 737 MAX aircraft.
(Reuters, 1/6/20)
2020 Jan 6, Borden Dairy Co., one of the oldest and largest milk producers in the United States, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, citing a dropping demand for cow's milk, rising costs for raw milk, and its own debt and pension obligations.
(The Week, 1/7/20)
2020 Jan 6, Facebook said it is beefing up its policies for removing videos that have been edited of synthesized in ways that aren't apparent to the average person. FB said it is beefing manipulated videos known as deepfakes, the false but realistic clips created with artificial intelligence and sophisticated tools.
(SFC, 1/8/20, p.D1)
2020 Jan 6, Ikea confirmed that it had agreed to pay $46 million to the parents of a 2-year-old California boy, Jozef Dudek, who was killed when one of the giant furniture company's dressers toppled over onto him in 2017.
(The Week, 1/7/20)
2020 Jan 6, British authorities sentenced Reynhard Sinaga (36) to 30 years in prison following his conviction for sexual offenses against 48 men. He was described as the most prolific rapist in British legal history. Sinaga had arrived in Britain from Indonesia in 2007 on a student visa and received two degrees from the Univ. of Manchester.
(SFC, 1/7/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 6, Chinese President Xi Jinping lauded Kiribati for “standing on the right side of history" during his first meeting with the Pacific island nation's leader since it severed ties with Taiwan.
(AP, 1/6/20)
2020 Jan 6, A Scandinavian woman said she was forced by Cypriot police to withdraw a rape claim or face arrest in 1998, in a striking parallel to the case of a British teenager who was allegedly gang raped on the Mediterranean island.
(The Telegraph, 1/6/20)
2020 Jan 6, Downtown Tehran was brought to a standstill as mourners flooded the Iranian capital to pay an emotional homage to Qasem Soleimani, the "heroic" general killed in a US strike.
(AFP, 1/6/20)
2020 Jan 6, A 5.8-magnitude quake hit Puerto Rico before dawn, unleashing small landslides, causing power outages and severely cracking some homes.
(AP, 1/6/20)
2020 Jan 6, Thailand opened its first full-time clinic specializing in traditional and alternative cannabis-based medicine, as part of a move by the government towards developing a medicinal cannabis industry.
(Reuters, 1/6/20)
2020 Jan 6, UAE PM Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum said tourist visas to the United Arab Emirates will be valid for five years, part of a campaign to lure holiday makers to Gulf countries. The visas were previously valid for 30 to 90 days.
(Bloomberg, 1/6/20)
2020 Jan 7, President Trump met with Greek PM Kyriakos Mitsotakis at the White House. A major focus of the visit was to get the word out that Greece is open for business for American investors and convey that the country has reduced regulatory red tape.
(CBS News, 1/7/20)
2020 Jan 6, In southern California Christopher Bathum, the founder of a Los Angeles sober-living facility pleaded no contest to 14 felony counts of grand theft, insurance fraud, identity theft and money laundering. He faced 20 years in prison for running a $175 million phony health care billing scheme.
(AP, 1/6/20)
2020 Jan 7, US Representative Duncan Hunter, a leading California Republican who pleaded guilty last month to a federal corruption charge of conspiracy to misuse campaign funds, announced that he would resign from office effective Jan. 13.
(Reuters, 1/7/20)
2020 Jan 7, Authorities said three Los Angeles Police Department officers have been suspended for falsely classifying people as gang members in an effort to boost the department's statistics.
(ABC News, 1/7/20)
2020 Jan 7, Neil Peart (67), drummer for the Canadian band Rush, died in Santa Monica, Ca.
(SFC, 1/13/20, p.C3)
2020 Jan 7, CNN settled with Kentucky teenager Nick Sandmann who sued the network for defamation over its coverage of his encounter with a Native American at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington a year ago. The Jan. 18, 2019 encounter was captured in photos and on video and went viral, generating widespread media coverage.
(Reuters, 1/7/20)
2020 Jan 7, Apellis Pharmaceuticals Inc said its experimental drug for a blood disorder showed greater improvement in patients' hemoglobin levels than market leader Alexion Pharmaceuticals Inc's Soliris.
(AP, 1/7/20)
2020 Jan 7, In Canada Philip Grandine, a former Toronto pastor was sentenced in a Toronto courtroom nearly a year after jurors found him guilty of manslaughter in the 2011 drowning of his wife Anna Grandine. He faced nearly 12 years in prison.
(AP, 1/7/20)
2020 Jan 7, A Cypriot court handed a four-month suspended sentence to a 19-year-old British woman who was found guilty of public mischief after authorities said she made up claims that she was raped by up to a dozen Israelis.
(AP, 1/7/20)
2020 Jan 7, In France the lifeless body of a young African stowaway was found in the landing gear of an Air France flight from Ivory Coast.
(SFC, 1/9/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 7, In India a death warrant was issued for the four men convicted of the 2012 gang rape and murder of a young woman on a New Delhi bus that galvanized protests and brought attention to the country's sexual violence epidemic.
(The Telegraph, 1/7/20)
2020 Jan 7, Iran's parliament unanimously voted to classify the entire US military and Department of Defense as terrorist organizations.
(Business Insider, 1/7/20)
2020 Jan 7, Iran's foreign minister said he has been informed by UN chief Antonio Guterres that Washington has denied him a visa for a trip to UN headquarters in New York.
(AFP, 1/7/20)
2020 Jan 7, In Iran a stampede crushed to death dozens of mourners in the city of Kerman, the hometown of Qasem Soleimani, as his solemn funeral procession turned tragic when crowds overwhelmed the streets. The crush claimed more than 50 lives and forced the postponement of the general's burial.
(AFP, 1/7/20)
2020 Jan 7, It was reported that Iran has dropped espionage charges that had been laid against Fariba Adelkhah, an Iranian-French academic, detained in the Islamic republic since last year. She still faced two other charges: spreading "propaganda against the political system" of the Islamic republic; and "conspiracy against national security".
(AFP, 1/7/20)
2020 Jan 7, Iraqi armed factions called for an urgent meeting to face "the war against the resistance," after a US strike on Baghdad last week killed top Iranian and Iraqi commanders.
(AFP, 1/7/20)
2020 Jan 7, In Kenya four small children were shot dead early today while trying to take refuge from the latest al-Shabab extremist attack in eastern Garissa county. Police officers on patrol killed two attackers in the early morning assault near the village of Saretho.
(AP, 1/7/20)
2020 Jan 7, Puerto Rico's string of tremors continued as a magnitude 6.4 earthquake knocked out power and left at least one person dead. Damages from this quake were later estimated at $110 million.
(The Week, 1/7/20)(SSFC, 1/12/20, p.A7)
2020 Jan 7, Russian President Vladimir Putin traveled to Syria to meet with President Bashar Assad and other officials.
(AP, 1/7/20)
2020 Jan 7, It was reported that Saudi Arabia's largest and longest debt saga, fueled by a feud that has split one of its richest families, could be nearing a resolution after a court approved about $14 billion in claims related to the 2009 collapse of two business empires.
(Reuters, 1/7/20)
2020 Jan 7, Spain's Socialist leader Pedro Sanchez won a no-confidence vote (167-165) allowing him to form a new leftist coalition government and end almost a year of political limbo.
(SFC, 1/8/20, p.A4)
2020 Jan 7, In Venezuela Juan Guaido forced his way back into the National Assembly to open a new legislative session. Now Venezuela has two presidents, three legislatures (two congresses, one overarching constituent assembly) and no clue as to how to proceed.
(Bloomberg, 1/8/20)
2020 Jan 8, The Trump administration said it was too late to renew the effort to push through a decades-old proposed amendment to the US Constitution that would ensure American women have equal rights to men. Virginia could, under the theory proposed by supporters of the amendment, become the 38th state as it is expected to vote this year. The Democratic-controlled House Judiciary Committee voted in November to approve a measure that would retroactively remove the ratification deadline.
(Reuters, 1/8/20)
2020 Jan 8, The United States imposed sanctions on South Sudan's First Vice President Taban Deng Gai, citing his involvement in serious human rights abuses.
(AP, 1/8/20)
2020 Jan 8, California Governor Gavin Newsom decided against calling a special election to fill the seat US Representative Duncan Hunter will leave vacant in Congress next week when he resigns following his conviction in a federal corruption scandal.
(Reuters, 1/8/20)
2020 Jan 8, A Los Angeles County Superior Court judge ruled that AB%, the state's new gig-work law, does not apply to truck drivers because it is preempted by federal law.
(SFC, 1/10/20, p.D1)
2020 Jan 8, Buck Henry (89), American writer and actor, died in Los Angeles. He wrote the screenplays for "The Graduate" (1967), "Candy" (1968) and "Catch-22" (1970). He also wrote the romantic comedies "The Owl and the Pussycat" (1970) and "What's Up Doc?" (1972).
(SFC, 1/10/20, p.A8)
2020 Jan 8, Republican Senators Mike Lee of Utah and Rand Paul of Kentucky excoriated a briefing from top Trump administration officials on the targeted drone strike that led to the death of Qassem Soleimani, the leader of Iran's elite Quds Force.
(CBS News, 1/8/20)
2020 Jan 8, The Montana Supreme Court reversed a $35 million judgment against the Jehovah's Witnesses for not reporting a girl's sexual abuse to authorities. The court said in its 7-0 decision that the Jehovah's Witnesses fall under an exemption to that law in this case. The ruling overturned a 2018 verdict awarding compensatory and punitive damages to the woman who was abused as a child in the mid-2000s by a member of the Thompson Falls Jehovah's Witness congregation.
(AP, 1/8/20)
2020 Jan 8, In Ohio David Dorbish Jr. (17) pleaded guilty in a court in Youngstown to hoax phone calls to authorities in a half-dozen states. Charges included making terroristic threats, making false alarms, identity fraud and telecommunications harassment.
(AP, 1/9/20)
2020 Jan 8, A Mexican man died after slitting his own throat on the Pharr-Reynosa International Bridge across the Rio Grande when he was denied entry to the US.
(The Independent, 1/9/20)
2020 Jan 8, An Afghan military helicopter crashed in the country's western Farah province, killing the two pilots on board.
(AP, 1/8/20)
2020 Jan 8, In Afghanistan a drone attack carried out by US forces in Herat province targeted a splinter Taliban group. The strike killed the commander of a Taliban splinter group, known as Mullah Nangyalia, along with 15 other militants and at least 10 civilians.
(AP, 1/22/20)
2020 Jan 8, The Duke and Duchess of Sussex announced that they intend to divide their time between North America and the UK to carve out a "progressive new role" and step back from their senior positions.
(Reuters, 1/9/20)
2020 Jan 8, A Chinese court jailed the founder of a local traditional Chinese medicine firm for running a pyramid scheme, after the death of a young girl with cancer was linked to the company in an online article that sparked anger on social media. Shu Yuhui, founder and chairman of Quanjian Nature Medicine Technology Development, was sentenced to nine years in prison and fined 50 million yuan ($7.2 million).
(Reuters, 1/8/20)
2020 Jan 8, China's agriculture ministry said an H5N6 avian flu virus outbreak has been detected in swans in the western region of Xinjiang.
(AP, 1/8/20)
2020 Jan 8, The World Health Organization (WHO) said a cluster of more than 50 pneumonia cases in China's central city of Wuhan may be due to a newly emerging member of the family of viruses that caused the deadly SARS and MERS outbreaks.
(Reuters, 1/8/20)
2020 Jan 8, Cyprus approved a request from the US authorities via the American embassy in Nicosia to temporarily deploy on the eastern Mediterranean island a rapid response unit to evacuate personnel working in US diplomatic missions in the region, as well as US citizens, if the need arises.
(Bloomberg, 1/8/20)
2020 Jan 8, Researchers in Germany said a review of fatal encephalitis cases in the state of Bavaria has found that more than twice as many as previously known were tied to a rare animal-borne virus. Borna disease virus 1, or BoDV-1, is normally found in horses, sheep and other mammals. It was first identified as the cause of severe human encephalitis in 2018.
(AP, 1/8/20)
2020 Jan 8, Guinea's opposition parties said they will not participate in legislative elections in February and will press to have them delayed if the president does not withdraw a bid to seek another term.
(AP, 1/8/20)
2020 Jan 8, Hong Kong's security chief said police have seized more than 3,700 mobile phones used by protesters in the last several months of protest. More than 6,000 people have been arrested since protests against a proposed extradition bill erupted last June.
(Business Insider, 1/8/20)
2020 Jan 8, The World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) said India has reported an outbreak of the highly contagious H5N1 bird flu virus on a poultry farm in the central state of Chhattisgarh.
(Reuters, 1/8/20)
2020 Jan 8, Iran launched more than a dozen ballistic missiles early today at US military and coalition forces in Iraq. There were no casualties in the rocket barrage. Tehran said the strikes are revenge for the attack which killed its most important military leader, Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani. 17 missiles were aimed at the Al-Assad airbase in Anbar province. Another five missiles were aimed at an airbase in Irbil. No one was harmed in the strikes. President Donald Trump addressed the nation from the White House, de-escalating the crisis with Iran.
(Reuters, 1/8/20)
2020 Jan 8, In Iran everyone aboard the Boeing 737-800 flown by Ukraine International Airlines was killed after it came down shortly after it departed from Imam Khomeini International Airport in Tehran. 63 Canadians were killed in the crash of Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752. There were three British people on board, as well as citizens from six other countries. The majority of those on the plane were Iranians and Canadians, and many were students.
(The Telegraph, 1/8/20)(AFP, 1/8/20)(AFP, 1/12/20)
2020 Jan 8, Libya's Gen. Khalifa Hifter traveled to Rome on a previously unannounced visit to meet with Italian Premier Giuseppe Conte.
(AP, 1/8/20)
2020 Jan 8, Libya’s UN-supported government welcomed Russian and Turkish calls for a ceasefire in the country’s ongoing civil war, though its rivals appeared cool to the intervention and refrained from endorsing the idea.
(AP, 1/8/20)
2020 Jan 8, Audio clips revealed by Malaysian anti-graft officials indicated that former PM Najib Razak allegedly sought help from the United Arab Emirates' crown prince to fake evidence to cover up for the 1MDB scandal.
(Reuters, 1/8/20)
2020 Jan 8, The Philippine government ordered the mandatory evacuation of Filipino workers from Iraq and Iran due to hostilities between the US and Iran. Filipino workers were also urged to leave Lebanon.
(SFC, 1/9/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 8, In Serbia thousands of people protested in Belgrade against the alleged suppression of religious and other rights of Serb minorities in neighboring countries, answering a call to action by the Serbian Orthodox Church.
(AP, 1/8/20)
2020 Jan 8, In Somalia a car bomb exploded at a checkpoint in Mogadishu, killing three people and wounding six others. The bomb attached to the vehicle was remotely detonated.
(AP, 1/8/20)
2020 Jan 8, In northeastern Syria four Turkish soldiers were killed in a car bombing attack today while they were conducting road checks.
(AP, 1/9/20)
2020 Jan 8, Turkey and Russia called for a Jan. 12 cease-fire in war-torn Libya while European Union officials intensified diplomatic efforts to cool tensions in the North African nation by holding talks with its prime minister.
(AP, 1/8/20)
2020 Jan 8, Ugandan police arrested pop star turned opposition leader Bobi Wine, aka Robert Kyagulanyi, after preventing him from holding a meeting with his supporters.
(AP, 1/8/20)
2020 Jan 9, The Trump administration unveiled a plan to speed permitting for major infrastructure projects like oil pipelines, road expansions and bridges, one of the biggest deregulatory actions of the president's tenure.
(Reuters, 1/9/20)
2020 Jan 9, It was reported that an analysis of Commerce Department data showed that tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump to restructure the United States' top trade relationships have cost American companies $46 billion since February 2018, and US exports of goods hit by retaliatory tariffs have fallen sharply. Seasonally adjusted US Commerce data released on Jan. 7 showed the overall US trade deficit narrowed to a more than three-year low in November.
(Reuters, 1/9/20)
2020 Jan 9, The mayor of Los Angeles wrote a letter to the Trump administration formally requesting federal assistance with the growing numbers of homeless on the city's streets. The letter showed he and Housing Secretary Ben Carson have had negotiations on the issue.
(Reuters, 1/10/20)
2020 Jan 9, Chicago authorities captured a coyote late today after two reported attacks by wild canines on humans in the city, including a 6-year-old boy who was bitten in the head. DNA tests would confirm if this was the animal involved in either of the attacks.
(AP, 1/10/20)
2020 Jan 9, In New York a helicopter crash in Silver Spring Township killed pilot Mark Croce (58) and developer Michael Capriotto (63).
(SFC, 1/11/20, p.A6)
2020 Jan 9, A North Dakota man who allegedly told a neighbor he had a bomb and indicated he would harm anyone who tried to enter his condominium died after he was shot by tactical officers in an exchange of gunfire.
(AP, 1/10/20)
2020 Jan 9, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc said its experimental treatment for a very rare genetic bone disorder showed a nearly 90% reduction in new lesions compared to placebo, in a mid-stage study.
(Reuters, 1/9/20)
2020 Jan 9, In Abkhazia hundreds of protesters besieged the office of regional leader Raul Khadzhimba to demand his resignation. Demonstrators claimed widespread irregularities in his re-election as president last September.
(SFC, 1/10/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 9, Britain's PM Boris Johnson urged Iran's President Hassan Rouhani to end the confrontation with the US and underlined Britain's commitments to Tehran's nuclear agreement.
(The Telegraph, 1/9/20)
2020 Jan 9, Britain's parliament gave finally approve to Brexit, allowing the traumatized country to become the first to leave the European Union on January 31.
(SFC, 1/10/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 9, Chinese state media reported that a preliminary investigation into viral pneumonia illnesses sickening dozens of people in and around the country has identified the possible cause as a new type of coronavirus.
(SFC, 1/10/20, p.A3)
2020 Jan 9, Officials from Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan concluded a two-day meeting in Addis Ababa, without reaching an agreement on technical issues related to the construction of the $4.6 billion Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Blue Nile.
(AP, 1/10/20)
2020 Jan 9, In northern Iran a bus plunged into a ravine early today, killing 19 people and injuring 24 in Mazandaran province.
(AP, 1/9/20)
2020 Jan 9, The Israeli the Justice Ministry confirmed that a psychiatric panel has determined that Malka Leifer, a woman facing dozens of sex-abuse charges in Australia, is fit to stand trial for extradition.
(AP, 1/9/20)
2020 Jan 9, In northern Lebanon protesters closed a major road late today, triggering scuffles with Lebanese troops that left more than a dozen soldiers injured.
(AP, 1/10/20)
2020 Jan 9, Niger's defense ministry said a large assault on its military left at least 25 soldiers dead along with 63 jihadists in the town of Chinagodrar on the border with Mali. The death toll soon rose to at least 89, making it the most deadly attack of its kind in years in the nation.
(SFC, 1/11/20, p.A2)(AP, 1/13/20)
2020 Jan 9, In the Philippines a mammoth crowed of barefoot Filipinos began the annual procession of the wooden Black Nazarene in Manila.
(SFC, 1/10/20, p.A3)
2020 Jan 9, In Slovenia a nearly 26-foot wooden statue mocking US President Donald Trump was burned to the ground. Police were looking for the arsonist.
(AP, 1/9/20)(SFC, 1/10/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 9, Spain's Supreme Court ruled that Oriol Junqueras, an imprisoned Catalan politician, must remain behind bars despite a Europen court ruling that his election to the European Parliament gave him immunity.
(SFC, 1/10/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 9, Sudan’s PM Abdalla Hamdok, accompanied by United Nations officials, embarked on a peace mission to a rebel stronghold, in a major step toward government efforts to end the country’s long-running civil conflicts.
(AP, 1/9/20)
2020 Jan 9, In Thailand a masked assailant killed three people, including a boy (2) in a shooting spree late today at a shopping mall in Lopburi province.
(SFC, 1/11/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 9, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky announced a day of national mourning, promising to find the "truth" about the crash of a Ukrainian airliner in Iran which killed all 176 on board.
(AFP, 1/9/20)
2020 Jan 9, The World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) said Poland recorded 55 outbreaks of African swine fever in wild boar near the German border last month, in a sign the deadly virus is spreading near one of the European Union's biggest pork exporters.
(Reuters, 1/9/20)
2020 Jan 10, The Trump administration imposed new sanctions on Iran, including penalties on the country’s metals and some senior leaders, following Tehran’s attack on US military bases.
(AP, 1/10/20)
2020 Jan 10, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the US believes it is "likely" Iran shot down the Ukrainian passenger plane that crashed this week in Iran, killing all 176 on board.
(AP, 1/10/20)
2020 Jan 10, The United States rejected a request by Iraq's caretaker PM Adel Abdel Mahdi to send a delegation to start preparations to pull out its 5,200 troops in the country.
(AFP, 1/10/20)
2020 Jan 10, Cryptocurrency expert Virgil Griffith (36), charged with violating economic sanctions against North Korea, was released on $1 million bond despite federal prosecutors' concerns he might flee the United States before trial. Griffith was placed on house arrest with electronic monitoring at his parents' home outside Tuscaloosa, Alabama. He is known for creating WikiScanner, a tool that aimed to unmask people who anonymously edited entries in Wikipedia.
(AP, 1/10/20)
2020 Jan 10, In Florida the 1968 Ford Mustang GT that Steve McQueen drove in the classic car chase from the movie "Bullitt," one of the most famed cars from American cinema, sold for $3.4 million at auction.
(Reuters, 1/11/20)
2020 Jan 10, In Illinois accountant Sultan Issa (46) pleaded guilty to embezzling millions of dollars from a trustee of the Art Institute of Chicago, using the money to finance a luxurious lifestyle that included the purchase of yachts and homes. Issa admitted to stealing a total of at least $65 million over seven years.
(AP, 1/10/20)
2020 Jan 10, In Nevada Margaret Rudin (76), a socialite antiques shop owner dubbed the “black widow" while she was a fugitive ahead of her 2001 trial, left a women’s prison after winning parole from her 20-years-to-life sentence for the killing of real estate mogul Ron Rudin. The 64-year-old prominent Las Vegas real estate developer had disappeared in December 1994. Fishermen stumbled across his skull and some charred bones a month later near the shoreline of a Colorado River reservoir about 45 miles (72 kilometers) outside Las Vegas.
(AP, 1/10/20)
2020 Jan 10, Governor Greg Abbott of Texas became the first governor in the United States to refuse to accept refugees under an executive order requiring local jurisdictions to actively opt in to the federal resettlement program.
(Reuters, 1/10/20)
2020 Jan 10, It was reported that Boeing Co's ousted chief executive officer, Dennis Muilenburg, is leaving the company with $62 million in compensation and pension benefits but will receive no severance pay in the wake of the 737 MAX crisis.
(Reuters, 1/10/20)
2020 Jan 10, Boeing Co's biggest supplier, Spirit AeroSystems Holdings Inc, said it plans to lay off more than 20% of the workforce at its Wichita-Kansas base as it grapples with halted production and uncertainty over when 737 MAX jets will return to service.
(Reuters, 1/10/20)
2020 Jan 10, Wisconsin political activist Jeremy Ryan (31), accused of trying to buy a lethal dose of a radioactive substance online, pleaded guilty to one count of receiving a nuclear material. His attorneys said he had cancer and intended to use the material to kill himself.
(AP, 1/10/20)
2020 Jan 10, In southeastern Australia two wildfires merged to form a massive 1.58 million-acre inferno in the Snowy Mountains region near Tumbarumba. A man suffered serious burns protecting a home, in a night of treacherous conditions during the nation’s unprecedented wildfire crisis.
(AP, 1/10/20)(SSFC, 1/12/20, p.A4)
2020 Jan 10, Authorities in Britain formally requested the extradition of Anne Sacoolas, the wife of an American diplomat, who was charged in the death of a British teenager.
(ABC News, 1/11/20)
2020 Jan 10, Canada's Department of Justice said Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou, arrested in Vancouver in late 2018, could be extradited to the United States, because her offense is a crime in both countries.
(AFP, 1/11/20)
2020 Jan 10, Canada lowered the number of its citizens killed in the Jan. 8 crash of a jetliner in Iran from 63 to 57.
(AFP, 1/10/20)
2020 Jan 10, India's top court ordered the government to review all restrictions in Indian-controlled Kashmir, saying the measures amount to an abuse of power.
(SFC, 1/11/20, p.A5)
2020 Jan 10, In Iraq thousands took to the streets in the Iraq's Shia-majority south, including the main protest hotspots of Diwaniyah, Nasiriyah, Basra and the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala, reviving a months-long protest movement against the government.
(The Telegraph, 1/10/20)
2020 Jan 10, In Iraq Ahmed Abdul Samad, a Dijlah TV reporter, and Safaa Ghali, his cameraman, were found shot and killed in a car parked near a police station in Basra. In 2021 Iraq’s supreme court sentenced former police officer Hamza Kadhim al-Aidani to death by hanging for the killing. The case then went to a higher court, which can either confirm the death penalty, hand down a lesser sentence or call for a retrial.
(AP, 11/1/21)
2020 Jan 10, In Lebanon at least one person was injured in Beirut during protests calling for the resignation of the city's mayor and governor over alleged corruption within the municipality. The protesters were attacked by men who support the two local officials.
(AP, 1/10/20)
2020 Jan 10, In Lesotho first lady Maesaiah Thabane fled the country to escape arrest in connection with the 2017 killing of PM Thomas Thabane's former wife, Lipolelo. On Feb. 4 Maesaiah returned and handed herself over to police.
(SFC, 2/5/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 10, In northern Mexico at least two people were reported to have been killed and six injured after an 11-year-old boy entered a school with two handguns and opened fire in the city of Torreón, Coahuila state. Police said the shooter had killed himself.
(AP, 1/10/20)
2020 Jan 10, Oman's Sultan Qaboos (79), the Middle East's longest-ruling monarch, died after years of an undisclosed illness.
(AFP, 1/10/20)
2020 Jan 10, Syrian warplanes bombed a major rebel stronghold in the country's northwest, less than 24 hours after a cease-fire went into effect there. Unidentified planes struck targets in Syria near the border with Iraq, killing eight Iran-backed Iraqi militiamen. Iraqi officials said the strike was most likely carried out by Israeli warplanes, but offered no evidence.
(AP, 1/10/20)
2020 Jan 10, The UNHCR confirmed that two Eritrean asylum-seekers were shot dead in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, days after the refugee agency pressed them to leave its facility citing overcrowding.
(AP, 1/11/20)
2020 Jan 10, The United Nations said seven countries -- Lebanon, Yemen, Venezuela, Central African Republic, Gambia, Lesotho and Tonga -- have fallen behind in their financial contributions and would not be able to in the 74th session of the General Assembly.
(AFP, 1/11/20)
2020 Jan 11, Severe storms sweeping across southern portions of the US and up into the Midwest were blamed in the deaths of at least 11 people, including two first responders, as high winds, tornadoes and unrelenting rain battered large swaths of the country. Hundreds of thousands of people were left without power from Texas to Ohio, parts of highways were closed in Oklahoma and Arkansas due to flooding and hundreds of flights were canceled at Chicago's international airports.
(AP, 1/11/20)
2020 Jan 11, It was reported that Mercy High School, one of San Francisco's last all-girls Catholic high schools, will close its doors in June. The school was founded in 1952 and its building in the Park-Merced district was completed in 1954.
(SFC, 1/11/20, p.C4)
2020 Jan 11, It was reported that Bonny Doon Vineyard, founded in California in 1981 by Randall Grahm, has been acquired by WarRoom Ventures, the parent company of Lapis Luna Wines.
(SFC, 1/11/20, p.D1)
2020 Jan 11, A single-engine Cessna 182 crashed in southern Montana. Authorities the following day recovered the bodies of four people from the wreckage.
(AP, 1/13/20)
2020 Jan 11, In New Hampshire a lawsuit filed in Merrimack County Superior Court alleged that more than two dozen men and women were physically, sexually and emotionally abused as children at a state-run youth detention center from 1982 to 2014.
(AP, 1/11/20)
2020 Jan 11, In southern Afghanistan two US service members were killed when their vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb in Kandahar province.
(SFC, 1/13/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 11, In Cambodia thousands of striking workers of NagaWorld hotel and casino complex, a Hong Kong-listed casino company, returned to their jobs after winning wage increases and the reinstatement of a suspended union leader in a rare labor victory.
(Reuters, 1/11/20)
2020 Jan 11, In China health authorities said a 61-year-old man has died from pneumonia in the central city of Wuhan after an outbreak of a yet to be identified virus while seven others are in critical condition. A total of 41 people have been diagnosed with the pathogen.
(Reuters, 1/11/20)
2020 Jan 11, A Chinese lab published the coronavirus genome on a virology website. This prompted Chinese health officials to release the genetic map. Even then, China stalled for at least two weeks more on giving WHO the details it needed.
(AP, 6/1/20)
2020 Jan 11, China officially opened operations of the world's largest radio telescope, which it will use for space research and help in the hunt for extraterrestrial life. The Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope, or FAST, is the size of 30 football fields and has been hewed out of a mountain in the southwestern province of Guizhou.
(Reuters, 1/11/20)
2020 Jan 11, In northern Croatia a fire engulfed part of a nursing home early today, killing at least six people in the village of Andrasevac.
(AP, 1/11/20)
2020 Jan 11, German Chancellor Angela Merkel arrived in Moscow for talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin amid growing tensions in the Middle East and elsewhere.
(AP, 1/11/20)
2020 Jan 11, Greece's coast guard said 12 migrants have been found dead in the Ionian Sea and 21 others have been rescued after their boat took in water and sank. Searchers looked for more survivors.
(AP, 1/11/20)
2020 Jan 11, Iran's Revolutionary Guard acknowledged that it accidentally shot down the Ukrainian jetliner that crashed earlier this week, killing all 176 people aboard, after the government had repeatedly denied Western accusations and mounting evidence that it was responsible. Brigadier General Amirali Hajizadeh said the missile operator who fired on the plane did so independently because of communications "jamming." Protesters gathered and criticized the government demanding the country's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei step down.
(AP, 1/11/20)(AFP, 1/11/20)(The Week, 1/12/20)
2020 Jan 11, Kimia Alizadeh (21), the sole woman to ever have won a medal at the Olympics for the country of Iran, announced that she has defected from the country and moved to Europe.
(Good Morning America, 1/12/20)
2020 Jan 11, Italy’s Premier Giuseppe Conte met with the UN-recognized Libyan PM Fayez Serraj, days after Italy botched an attempt to broker a truce to end the latest fighting in Libya.
(AP, 1/11/20)
2020 Jan 11, Lebanon said it "regrets" being among seven countries stripped by the United Nations of voting privileges in the General Assembly for failing to pay their dues.
(AFP, 1/11/20)
2020 Jan 11, Robert Abela was set to become Malta’s prime minister after being elected leader of the ruling party. He is seen as a continuity leader in the wake of a scandal over the murder of an investigative journalist.
(The Telegraph, 1/12/20)
2020 Jan 11, In Mexico activists placed hundreds of painted-red women's shoes on Mexico City's main square to call attention to gender-based violence. On average ten women and girls are slain each day in the country with less than 10% of the cases solved.
(SFC, 1/13/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 11, Northern Ireland's government reopened for the first time in three years after rival parties rallied around a new power-sharing agreement that can help the volatile province handle the pressures of Brexit.
(AFP, 1/10/20)
2020 Jan 11, Oman's new ruler, Sultan Haitham bin Tariq Al Said, vowed to uphold his predecessor's foreign policy approach, which steered the Arab country through choppy Persian Gulf waters by balancing close relations with both the US and Iran.
(AP, 1/10/20)
2020 Jan 11, In Poland Judges from across Europe, many of them dressed in their judicial robes, marched silently in Warsaw in a show of solidarity with Polish peers who are protesting a bill that would allow the government to fire judges who issue rulings officials don't like.
(AP, 1/11/20)
2020 Jan 11, A magnitude 5.9 earthquake hit Puerto Rico causing extensive damage along the island's southern coast. This followed recent quakes including a magnitude 6.4 quake on Jan. 7.
(SSFC, 1/12/20, p.A7)
2020 Jan 11, Russia's President Vladimir Putin pushed for a ceasefire in Libya as he held talks with some of the countries that support the warring sides in the North African nation.
(Bloomberg, 1/11/20)
2020 Jan 11, Syrian government warplanes struck several rebel-held areas in the country's northwest, killing at least 10 people and wounding dozens in Idlib province.
(AP, 1/11/20)
2020 Jan 11, The president of Taiwan, Tsai Ing-wen, won reelection with a record-breaking 8 million votes, a major victory over Beijing’s concerted campaign of lies and propaganda meant to support her opponent, Han Kuo-yu.
(Reuters, 1/11/20)
2020 Jan 12, The Trump administration tried to amplify voices of dissent in Iran by suggesting that the Islamic Republic is under internal threat after denying and then admitting it shot down a Ukrainian passenger plane.
(AP, 1/12/20)
2020 Jan 12, In New Jersey a massive fire engulfed many buildings in Bound Brook late today, causing more than 100 residents to be evacuated and leaving around 3,000 people without power.
(Reuters, 1/13/20)
2020 Jan 12, Roger Scruton (75), one of Britain’s most prominent conservative philosophers, died after a six-month battle with cancer. Scruton was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2016 for services to philosophy, teaching and public education. His more than 50 books on morality, politics, culture and aesthetics included “The Meaning of Conservatism," “The Aesthetics of Architecture" and “England: An Elegy".
(AP, 1/13/20)
2020 Jan 12, Ethiopia's PM Abiy Ahmed asked South Africa's president to intervene in his country's dispute with Egypt over a massive dam project on the Nile River, set to be Africa’s largest hydraulic dam.
(AP, 1/12/20)
2020 Jan 12, In Hong Kong more than 1,000 people attended a rally to urge people and governments abroad to support the city's pro-democracy movement and oppose China's ruling Communist Party.
(SFC, 1/13/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 12, Indonesia and the United Arab Emirates affirmed deeper economic ties during a visit by Indonesian President Joko Widodo in which he sought billions of dollars to finance his country's infrastructure and energy projects.
(AP, 1/13/20)
2020 Jan 12, Iran's security forces deployed in large numbers across the capital, expecting more protests after its Revolutionary Guard admitted to accidentally shooting down a passenger plane at a time of soaring tensions with the United States.
(AP, 1/12/20)
2020 Jan 12, In Iraq eight rockets were launched at the Balad joint airbase, which sits around 50 miles north of Baghdad. At least four Iraqi soldiers were reportedly wounded. It was not clear who was behind the attack.
(Business Insider, 1/13/20)
2020 Jan 12, Libya's Government of National Accord (GNA) agreed to a ceasefire urged by Moscow and Ankara, several hours after rival strongman Khalifa Haftar announced a cessation of hostilities. Meeting in Moscow Libya's rival governments considered a draft document spelling out details of a truce proposed jointly by Russia and Turkey.
(AFP, 1/12/20)(AP, 1/13/20)
2020 Jan 12, World leaders traveled to Oman to meet the country's new sultan, named just a day earlier after the death of the nation's longtime ruler Sultan Qaboos bin Said. British PM Boris Johnson and Prince Charles were among those who arrived in Muscat to meet Sultan Haitham bin Tariq Al Said. Leaders from Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Abu Dhabi and Yemen also visited. Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif traveled to Muscat as well to meet Sultan Haitham.
(AP, 1/12/20)
2020 Jan 12, In the Philippines clouds of ash from the Taal volcano reached Manila, 65 km (40 miles) to the north, forcing the shutdown of the country's main airport, with more than 500 flights canceled. Tens of thousands of people fled through heavy ash and frightening tremors, and authorities made plans to evacuate hundreds of thousands more for fear of a bigger eruption.
(AP, 1/12/20)
2020 Jan 12, State-owned oil company Saudi Aramco said it had exercised its "greenshoe option" to sell an additional 450 million shares, raising the size of its initial public offering (IPO) to a record $29.4 billion.
(Reuters, 1/12/20)
2020 Jan 12, In Thailand thousands of anti-government demonstrators took part in "Run Against Dictatorship" in Bangkok in the country's biggest political rally in years.
(SFC, 1/13/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 13, It was reported that President Donald Trump authorized the US military strike against Iranian military and intelligence leader Qassem Soleimani in June, 2019, seven months before it was carried out. The new revelations significantly undermine the administration's claim that Soleimani needed to be killed because he posed an "imminent threat" to American lives in the region.
(Business Insider, 1/13/20)
2020 Jan 13, A US federal judge ruled that the Trump administration's ongoing separations of families at the US-Mexico border based on parents' criminal history or health exclusions are being carried out with proper discretion.
(Reuters, 1/14/20)
2020 Jan 13, Former US Treasury Department employee Natalie May Edwards pleaded guilty to leaking confidential documents relating to former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and others to a reporter from digital media company BuzzFeed.
(Reuters, 1/13/20)
2020 Jan 13, It was reported that the US is sending 21 Saudi cadets back to Saudi Arabia. Many of the cadets had contact with child pornography and possessed jihadist or anti-American material. This followed the shooting last month in which Saudi 2nd Lt. Mohammed Alshamrani opened fire at the Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Fl., killing three US soldiers before he was killed by a sheriff's deputy.
(SFC, 1/14/20, p.A5)
2020 Jan 13, Former Insys Vice President of Managed Markets Michael Gurry was sentenced to nearly three years in prison as part of the first federal case meant to hold an opioids manufacturer criminally accountable for the ongoing epidemic in the country.
(ABC News, 1/13/20)
2020 Jan 13, George Nader, a wealthy Lebanese-American political campaign bundler for Hillary Clinton and frequent guest in President Trump's White House in the first few months of his administration, pleaded guilty to child exploitation charges in federal court in Alexandria, Va.
(The Week, 1/14/20)
2020 Jan 13, In Colorado a man was arrested after allegedly stabbing eight people in and around downtown Colorado Springs early today. Police said the attacks were apparently carried out at random.
(AP, 1/13/20)
2020 Jan 13, Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., announced that he is suspending his presidential campaign. Booker said multiple factors had contributed to his conclusion that he had no chance to win the Democratic nomination.
(Yahoo News, 1/13/20)
2020 Jan 13, In North Carolina William Todd Chamberlain (46), a former US Army Green Beret, pleaded guilty to his role in a conspiracy to steal money from the government that was meant to support the armed forces' mission in Afghanistan. Prosecutors said Chamberlain and four other members of the 3rd Special Forces Group based at Fort Bragg, NC, stole about $200,000 while deployed to Afghanistan in 2009 and 2010.
(AP, 1/14/20)
2020 Jan 13, Deionna Young (26), a former manager at an Oklahoma Arby's restaurant, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to two decades in prison. She was charged with fatally shooting a customer who she said spit on her.
(AP, 1/15/20)
2020 Jan 13, Acasti Pharma Inc said its krill oil-derived drug had failed to beat placebo by a large margin in reducing a type of fat found in blood that increases the risk of heart diseases, sending its shares spiraling down nearly 67%.
(Reuters, 1/13/20)
2020 Jan 13, Biogen Inc said it has agreed to buy an early-stage experimental treatment from Pfizer Inc that it aims to test in patients with Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. Under the deal, Pfizer will get $75 million upfront and will be eligible for $635 million in potential milestone payments.
(AP, 1/13/20)
2020 Jan 13, It was reported that at least 54 people have been killed by the combination of heavy snowfall, brutal cold and severe flooding in Afghanistan and Pakistan. A deadly winter storm brought severe impacts to millions of people from parts of the Arabian Peninsula to Pakistan beginning late last week and through the weekend.
(AP, 1/13/20)
2020 Jan 13, China said it prevented the head of Human Rights Watch from entering Hong Kong because of the group's support for the territory's ongoing protest movement.
(SFC, 1/14/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 13, In China at least six people were killed and 16 injured after a city bus crashed through the road and into a sinkhole in the city of Xining.
(ABC News, 1/14/20)
2020 Jan 13, In Egypt Mustafa Kassem (65), an American citizen detained in Cairo in August 2013 while visiting family in Egypt, died after more than six years in Egyptian custody. Kassem had been on a liquid-only hunger strike on and off for years before stopping the liquids last week.
(The Week, 1/14/20)
2020 Jan 13, In France Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont took his seat as a member of the European Parliament in Strasbourg despite facing an arrest warrant against him in Spain.
(AP, 1/13/20)
2020 Jan 13, Hungary's National Food Chain Safety Authority reported that the H5N8 strain of bird flu has been found at a large turkey farm. NEBIH said more than 50,000 birds, would have to be culled and other precautionary measures implemented to contain the spread of the infection.
(Reuters, 1/13/20)
2020 Jan 13, India's Supreme Court directed the government's crime fighting agency to seize local assets of JPMorgan in relation to some transactions the bank engaged in with a local real estate company in 2010.
(Reuters, 1/13/20)
2020 Jan 13, Israeli police said they had raided a cult-like group in an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of Jerusalem in which dozens of women and children were being held and abused under extreme “slavery" conditions.
(AP, 1/13/20)
2020 Jan 13, In eastern Kenya al-Shabab extremists killed three people in an assault early today in Kamuthe town, Garissa county. This was its fifth attack in thirteen days.
(AP, 1/13/20)
2020 Jan 13, In Panama seven villagers were slain by “The New Light of God" religious cult, while 14 more were rescued the next day by police who found them bound and beaten in a temple in El Terrón. Nine villagers were soon arrested and charged with murder.
(AP, 1/19/20)
2020 Jan 13, In Poland a new outbreak of pathogenic H5N8 bird flu was reported, with around 6,000 geese set to be exterminated.
(Reuters, 1/13/20)
2020 Jan 13, Talks in Moscow about bringing an end to Libya's long-running civil war failed to reach a solution and adjourned for the night.
(AP, 1/13/20)
2020 Jan 13, In Slovakia hired assassin Miroslav Marcek pleaded guilty to the murders of investigative journalist Jan Kuciak and his fiancee Martina Kusnirova in Feb., 2018. Three other defendants, including suspected mastermind Marian Kocner, pleaded not guilty.
(SFC, 1/14/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 13, The WHO said that Thai officials have reported that a traveler from the Chinese city of Wuhan has been hospitalized in Thailand with a recently identified new type of coronavirus. The report galvanized leaders in Beijing into recognizing the possible pandemic before them.
(AP, 1/13/20)(AP, 4/14/20)
2020 Jan 14, President Trump used part of his campaign rally in Milwaukee to defend his decision to authorize an airstrike that killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani. Trump has alleged that Soleimani was plotting "imminent attacks" against the US, but has offered no evidence.
(The Week, 1/14/20)
2020 Jan 14, US Democratic presidential hopefuls gathered in Iowa for the seventh debate. Six candidates vying for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination took the stage this evening in Des Moines, Iowa, for their last debate before the Iowa caucuses kick off the primary season in less than three weeks.
(Reuters, 1/14/20)(NY Times, 1/15/20)
2020 Jan 14, In Los Angeles Michael Avenatti, the brash former attorney for the porn actress Stormy Daniels, was arrested for allegedly violating bail by committing multiple state and federal crimes while awaiting trial in two states.
(AP, 1/15/20)
2020 Jan 14, In southern California Delta Airlines Flight 89 enroute to China turned back to Los Angeles Int'l. Airport minutes after takeoff and dumped fuel that fell on fie elementary schools. The FAA soon promised an investigation.
(SFC, 1/16/20, p.A7)
2020 Jan 14, In Texas an ROTC student (16) mistakenly shot and killed a fellow student in their Houston area high school before fleeing the building. The shooter was soon arrested.
(SFC, 1/16/20, p.A5)
2020 Jan 14, A Wisconsin appeals court put on hold an order to immediately remove up to 209,000 names from the state's voter registration polls.
(SFC, 1/15/20, p.A5)
2020 Jan 14, BlackRock Inc chief Laurence Fink told companies to tackle climate change or face his wrath.
(Reuters, 1/14/20)
2020 Jan 14, Amazon.com Inc founder Jeff Bezos arrived in India for a 3-day visit, as thousands of small traders across 300 cities planned protests, claiming the firm is distorting local retail market.
(Reuters, 1/14/20)
2020 Jan 14, Officials said severe winter weather has claimed more lives as avalanches triggered by heavy snowfall killed 55 people in Pakistan-administered Kashmir. 15 deaths in neighboring Afghanistan raised the death toll to 39 in weather-related incidents since Jan. 12.
(AP, 1/14/20)
2020 Jan 14, Britain, France and Germany triggered a dispute resolution mechanism under the already tattered 2015 nuclear deal, prompting Iran to warn them of unspecified "consequences".
(AFP, 1/14/20)
2020 Jan 14, Egyptian police raided the Cairo office of Turkey's state-run news agency late today and detained four of its staff members. Egyptian security forces shut down the agency's security camera and internet and searched the premise overnight
(AP, 1/15/20)
2020 Jan 14, An Egyptian fighter jet crashed in the Sinai Peninsula where the country's forces have been battling militants and that the pilot was killed. The Islamic State group said in a posting online that its fighters had hit the F-16 jet with a missile near the town of Shabana.
(AP, 1/15/20)
2020 Jan 14, The European Court of Human Rights ruled that that a Russian trial judge’s refusal to “allow the defense to examine prosecution and defense witnesses and to submit important expert or exculpatory evidence" violated Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s rights and those of his former business partner Platon Lebedev during their second trial in 2009 and 2010. The Russian businessman had spent nearly a decade in prison in Russia on what he said were politically motivated charges by the Kremlin.
(Bloomberg, 1/14/20)
2020 Jan 14, French movie director Christophe Ruggia was taken into custody over allegations that he sexually assaulted a teenage girl who was cast in one of his movies nearly two decades ago. Actress Adele Haenel, who is now 31, has alleged that Ruggia assaulted and harassed her between 2001 and 2004 after she was cast in a Ruggia-directed movie called "Les Diables".
(Reuters, 1/14/20)
2020 Jan 14, France's Cannes Film Festival announced that writer-director Spike Lee has been tapped to serve as the 2020 edition's jury president.
(Good Morning America, 1/14/20)
2020 Jan 14, Germany launched an 86 billion euro ($95 billion) plan to modernize and expand its creaky railway system, a move billed as an effort to make transportation greener.
(Bloomberg, 1/14/20)
2020 Jan 14, Iran declared British ambassador Robert Macaire "persona non grata," calling for him to be expelled for his alleged role in recent anti-government protests. A judiciary spokesman said Macaire had played a “provocative role" when he attended a vigil at the weekend for passengers killed in the passenger jet crash last week.
(The Telegraph, 1/14/20)
2020 Jan 14, Iran announced its first arrests over the accidental shooting down of a Ukrainian passenger jet, as protesters vented their anger over the catastrophic blunder for a fourth consecutive day.
(AP, 1/14/20)
2020 Jan 14, It was reported that Iran’s constitutional watchdog has barred thousands of people from running in next month's parliamentary elections, including 90 current lawmakers, most of whom are accused of corruption. The reformist newspaper Etemad said that most of those rejected were reformist and moderate candidates.
(AP, 1/14/20)
2020 Jan 14, Iranian media reported that flooding in the south has killed at least three people and left hundreds of villages cut off following days of heavy rainfall.
(AP, 1/14/20)
2020 Jan 14, Ireland's PM Leo Varadkar ended weeks of speculation about the timing of the election when he formally requested that the president dissolve the current parliament. Ireland will go to the polls on February 8.
(AP, 1/14/20)
2020 Jan 14, Kosovo prosecutors filed terrorism charges against an Albanian woman and a man for allegedly joining the Islamic State group in Syria. In April, they were part of a group of 110 Kosovo citizens repatriated from Syria.
(AP, 1/14/20)
2020 Jan 14, Lebanese protesters returned to the streets, blocking several roads around the capital, Beirut, and other areas of the country in renewed rallies against a ruling elite they say has failed to address the economy's downward spiral.
(AP, 1/14/20)
2020 Jan 14, The International Organization for Migration said almost 1,000 people trying to flee Libya by boat have been intercepted and returned to the conflict-ravaged country by its coast guard during the first two weeks of the new year.
(AP, 1/14/20)
2020 Jan 14, In Mexico Homero Gomez, a rural leader who fought to conserve the wintering grounds of monarch butterflies, went missing in Michoacan state. His body was found Jan. 29.
(SFC, 1/31/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 14, In the Philippines the Taal volcano near Manila spewed lava into the sky and trembled constantly Tuesday, possibly portending a bigger and more dangerous eruption, as tens of thousands of people fled villages darkened and blanketed by heavy ash.
(AP, 1/14/20)
2020 Jan 14, Russia sought to downplay the collapse of talks that sought to secure a cease-fire in Libya after the country's rival leaders left Moscow without reaching an agreement.
(AP, 1/14/20)
2020 Jan 14, South Korean President Moon Jae-in faced a barrage of questions about purges of prosecutors looking into corruption in his administration, in the latest sign that the scandals could weigh on upcoming national elections.
(Bloomberg, 1/14/20)
2020 Jan 14, A Sudanese official said that security forces have contained an armed protest from within the security apparatus, amid reports of unrest.
(AP, 1/14/20)
2020 Jan 14, It was reported that UN sanctions experts are warning people not to attend a cryptocurrency conference in North Korea in February, flagging it as a likely sanctions violation, according to a confidential report due to be submitted to the UN Security Council later this month.
(Reuters, 1/14/20)
2020 Jan 15, US President Donald Trump and Chinese Vice Premier Liu He signed an initial trade deal to roll back some tariffs and see China boost purchases of US goods and services, defusing an 18-month conflict between the world's two largest economies.
(Reuters, 1/15/20)
2020 Jan 15, US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi named Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff and Judiciary Chair Rep. Jerrold Nadler as prosecutors for Trump's Senate trial.
(AP, 1/15/20)
2020 Jan 15, US CDC researchers in late May announced that the first US coronavirus infection to be identified was a traveler, a Washington state man who returned this day from Wuhan, China, and sought help at a clinic on Jan. 19.
(AP, 5/29/20)
2020 Jan 15, Ahmadreza Mohammadi-Doostdar (39), a dual US-Iranian citizen, and Majid Ghorbani (60), an Iranian citizen and resident of California, were sentenced to prison terms of 38 months and 30 months, respectively for conducting surveillance on behalf of Iran's government.
(Good Morning America, 1/16/20)
2020 Jan 15, Four coastal Louisiana tribes and one in Alaska that say the US government violated their human rights by failing to take action on climate change have submitted a formal complaint to the United Nations in Switzerland.
(AP, 1/17/20)
2020 Jan 15, A US federal judge in Maryland agreed to block the Trump administration from enforcing an executive order allowing state local government officials to reject refugees from resettling in their jurisdictions.
(SFC, 1/16/20, p.A6)
2020 Jan 15, Texas inmate John Gardner (64) was executed for the January 2005 fatal shooting of his wife, who had had feared she would never get out of her marriage alive. Gardner had a history of violence against women.
(AP, 1/16/20)
2020 Jan 15, Virginia became the 38th state to approve the Equal Rights Amendment, first proposed in 1923. The deadline for the ERA had expired in 1982 and the measure was expected to be tied up in courts for years.
(SFC, 1/16/20, p.A6)
2020 Jan 15, The S&P 500 and the Dow Jones indexes set new record highs on a positive tone around trade talks with China from Trump administration officials ahead of the signing of an initial deal later in the day.
(Reuters, 1/15/20)
2020 Jan 15, US House of Representatives Jenniffer Gonzalez said Puerto Rico will be allowed access to $8.2 billion in delayed disaster-aid funding by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).
(Reuters, 1/15/20)
2020 Jan 15, Virginia Governor Ralph Northam said he plans to declare a temporary emergency banning all guns and weapons from the area around the Capitol in Richmond ahead of a major gun rights demonstration set for January 20.
(Reuters, 1/15/20)
2020 Jan 15, Officials said search teams aided by Pakistani troops pulled out 21 more bodies from homes destroyed by this week's avalanches in the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir, raising the overall death toll due to severe winter weather to 160 for Pakistan and Afghanistan.
(AP, 1/15/20)
2020 Jan 15, China blasted a report from Human Rights Watch that accused it of constructing a surveillance state at home while seeking to silence critics abroad.
(AP, 1/15/20)
2020 Jan 15, Li Qun, the head of the China CDC’s emergency center, told Chinese state television that “The risk of sustained human-to-human transmission is low," in response to increasing cases of the coronavirus.
(AP, 4/14/20)
2020 Jan 15, Croatian police urged citizens in the capital, Zagreb, to use public transport and avoid bikes or scooters in response to dangerous levels of smog. Serbia's government called an urgent meeting to address the problem, shortly after a peak in weekend air pollution levels prompted emergency measures in Bosnia's capital, Sarajevo.
(AP, 1/15/20)
2020 Jan 15, Deutsche Telekom said it was founding a fiber-optic networks joint venture with regional utility EWE that aims to connect more than 1.5 million German households after winning antitrust approval for the deal to go ahead.
(Reuters, 1/15/20)
2020 Jan 15, In Honduras hundreds of migrants started walking and hitching rides from the city of Pedro Sul in a bid to from a caravan to reach the US.
(SFC, 1/16/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 15, Hungary's National Food Chain Safety Authority (NEBIH) said a second outbreak of H5N8 bird flu has been found at a large duck farm in the eastern part of the country.
(Reuters, 1/15/20)
2020 Jan 15, Iran's Pres. Hassan Rouhani slammed the disqualification of thousands of people, including 90 current lawmakers, from running in upcoming parliamentary elections. The Guardian Council has barred more than 9,000 from the over 14,000 people who had registered to run.
(AP, 1/15/20)
2020 Jan 15, Researchers announced the successful creation of another embryo of the nearly extinct northern white rhino. The last two females, hosted in Kenya, provided the eggs.
(SFC, 1/16/20, p.A4)
2020 Jan 15, Kosovo’s Pres. Hashim Thaci denounced what he called “an international amnesty" for Serbia’s crimes in the 1998-1999 war.
(AP, 1/15/20)
2020 Jan 15, Lebanese security forces said they have arrested 59 people, following clashes overnight outside the central bank as angry protesters vented their fury against the country's ruling elite and the worsening financial crisis.
(AP, 1/15/20)
2020 Jan 15, Mozambique's President Filipe Nyusi (60) was sworn in for a second and final term after five turbulent years in office amid two armed insurgencies.
(AP, 1/15/20)
2020 Jan 15, It was reported that Pakistan has arrested Piran Ditta Khan (71) in the 2005 killing of Sharon Beshenivsky (38), a British police officer who was gunned down as she responded to a robbery in the city of Bradford in 2005. Six men were later arrested in Britain but Khan, who was suspected of being the armed gang's organizer, had fled abroad.
(AP, 1/15/20)
2020 Jan 15, The World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) said Romania has reported an outbreak of the highly pathogenic H5N8 bird flu virus on a farm in the northern part of the country, the first such outbreak in nearly three years.
(Reuters, 1/15/20)
2020 Jan 15, Russia's government resigned in a shock announcement after President Vladimir Putin proposed a shake-up of the constitution. The announcement came after Putin used his annual state of the nation address to call for a nationwide vote on a package of constitutional reforms. The changes would transfer more authority to parliament, including the power to choose the prime minister and senior cabinet members.
(AFP, 1/15/20)
2020 Jan 15, Serbia's state Tanjug news agency said the country has seen an outbreak of the pig disease African swine fever (ASF) in wild boars in the east of the country, close to the country's borders with Bulgaria and Romania.
(Reuters, 1/15/20)
2020 Jan 15, Sudan reopened its airspace after an armed revolt from within its security forces shut down the capital’s airport for hours and left at least two people dead.
(AP, 1/15/20)
2020 Jan 15, The Swiss-based World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said last year was the second-hottest year since records began, adding that heat was likely to lead to more extreme weather events like the Australian bushfires in 2020 and beyond.
(Reuters, 1/15/20)
2020 Jan 15, In Syria government warplanes struck a vegetable market and industrial area in Idlib city, killing at least 15 people.
(SFC, 1/16/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 15, Turkish airstrikes inside Iraq targeting members of an outlawed Kurdish rebel group killed at least four minority Yazidi fighters allied with the rebels.
(AP, 1/16/20)
2020 Jan 15, Pope Francis tapped Italian lawyer Francesca Di Giovanni (66) to be the first woman to hold a management position in the Vatican’s Secretariat of State.
(AP, 1/15/20)
2020 Jan 16, The US Senate opened the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump, with House Democrats reading the formal charges in the chamber ahead of the swearing in of all 100 senators as jurors for only the third trial to remove a president in US history. House prosecutors formally recited the charges under presiding Chief Justice John Roberts.
(AP, 1/16/20)(AP, 1/17/20)
2020 Jan 16, After months of wrangling, US lawmakers ratified the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), brokered at the behest of President Donald Trump to replace the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
(Reuters, 1/17/20)
2020 Jan 16, The US Government Accountability Office said in a report that the White House violated federal law in withholding security assistance to Ukraine, an action at the center of President Donald Trump's impeachment.
(AP, 1/16/20)
2020 Jan 16, It was reported that Donald Trump threatened the UK last week with a 25 per cent tariff on its cars unless the British government officially accused Iran of breaking the 2015 nuclear deal, it has been reported.
(The Independent, 1/16/20)
2020 Jan 16, The FBI arrested three men suspected of being members of The Base, a neo-Nazi hate group, who had weapons and discussed traveling to a pro-gun rally in Richmond, Va., next week.
(SFC, 1/17/20, p.A8)
2020 Jan 16, Inmate Jonathan Watson (41) clubbed two men in the head at the California Substance Abuse Treatment Facility and State Prison in the central city of Corcoran. Prisoner David Bobb (48) died that day. Graham De Luis-Conti (62) died three days later at a hospital. Both were serving life sentences for aggravated sexual assault of a child under 14.
(AP, 2/20/20)
2020 Jan 16, A South Carolina judge sentenced a woman to 25 years in prison after she admitted to poisoning her husband by inserting eye drops into his drinking water. Lana Clayton (53) pleaded guilty in a York County courthouse to voluntary manslaughter and tampering with food or drugs charges related to the July 21, 2018, killing of Steven Clayton.
(ABC News, 1/16/20)
2020 Jan 16, Tesla announced it is opening a new design center in China and is already recruiting talent to help make "Chinese-style" cars.
(Good Morning America, 1/16/20)
2020 Jan 16, In Abu Dhabi a bus and a truck collided on a major road, killing six people and injuring 19.
(AP, 1/16/20)
2020 Jan 16, Taliban officials said they have given the US envoy their offer for a temporary cease-fire in Afghanistan that would last between seven and 10 days.
(AP, 1/16/20)
2020 Jan 16, It was reported that foul tasting and smelling tap water has been running for more than a week in dozens of neighborhoods in Rio de Janeiro. The local O Globo newspaper has reported a spike in cases of diarrhea, gastroenteritis and vomiting in Rio's west zone.
(SFC, 1/16/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 16, In China officials in Wuhan and elsewhere under new orders finally got CDC-approved testing kits and a green light to start confirming new cases. Across the country, dozens of reported cases then began to surface, in some cases among patients who were infected earlier but had not yet been tested.
(AP, 4/14/20)
2020 Jan 16, Cyprus, Greece, Israel, Italy, Jordan and Palestine established a bloc called the East Mediterranean Gas Forum.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EastMed_Gas_Forum) (Econ., 8/22/20, p.50)
2020 Jan 16, Egyptian authorities released four people, including two Egyptian journalists, arrested in a police raid on the Cairo bureau of Turkey's state-run news agency.
(AP, 1/16/20)
2020 Jan 16, President Emmanuel Macron said in a speech to the French military that France has deployed a radar system on the eastern coast of Saudi Arabia to beef up its ally's defenses after missile attacks on the kingdom's oil infrastructure in September.
(Reuters, 1/17/20)
2020 Jan 16, Germany's foreign minister said Libyan strongman General Khalifa Haftar has agreed to abide by a ceasefire and said he was ready to participate in an international conference in Berlin on Jan. 19.
(The Telegraph, 1/16/20)
2020 Jan 16, Greek authorities found more than a ton of processed cannabis camouflaged among a shipment of date paste headed by sea from Lebanon to Libya.
(AP, 1/23/20)
2020 Jan 16, Guatemalan police accompanied by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents swept up the majority of some 300 migrants and returned them to the Honduran border. At another border point some 600 migrants rested at a shelter after crossing the frontier earlier in the day and encountering no resistance.
(SFC, 1/17/20, p.A5)
2020 Jan 16, Eight Indonesians were abducted in Malaysian waters in Sabah. Three were released, while the remaining five were probably brought by their captors to the southern Philippine province of Sulu.
(AP, 1/19/20)
2020 Jan 16, Iran accused European governments of sacrificing a troubled 2015 nuclear deal to avoid trade reprisals from US President Donald Trump who has spent nearly two years trying to scupper it. Pres. Hassan Rouhani declared that his country is now enriching more uranium than it was before agreeing to a nuclear accord with world powers in 2015.
(AFP, 1/16/20)(The Telegraph, 1/16/20)
2020 Jan 16, The governments of countries that lost citizens when Iran shot down a Ukrainian airliner demanded that Tehran accept “full responsibility" and pay compensation to the victims’ families. The victims included 57 Canadian citizens as well as 11 Ukrainians, 17 people from Sweden, four Afghans and four British citizens, as well as Iranians.
(AP, 1/16/20)
2020 Jan 16, Israeli advocacy group Ir Amim said 104 housing units were demolished in 2019, compared() to 72 units in 2018. The 44% spike also ends what had been a decline in demolitions between 2016 and 2018.
(AP, 1/16/20)
2020 Jan 16, An Israeli attack helicopter struck a Hamas target in the northern Gaza Strip late today in response to the launch of incendiary balloons into Israeli territory earlier in the day.
(AP, 1/16/20)
2020 Jan 16, Japan recorded its first case of the coronavirus.
(Econ., 5/23/20, p.28)
2020 Jan 16, Lebanese protesters decried security forces' use of violence during rallies over the past two days, including attacks on journalists and the detention of over 100 people.
(AP, 1/16/20)
2020 Jan 16, Russia's Pres. Vladimir Putin signed an order formally appointing Mikhail Mishustin (b.1966), head of the Federal Tax Service, as prime minister after lawmakers in the lower house of parliament voted overwhelming to confirm his candidacy, with 383 in favor and none against.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Mishustin)(Bloomberg, 1/16/20)
2020 Jan 16, Jaime Botin (83), part of the Santander banking dynasty, was convicted by a court in Madrid and fined $57.9 million for trying to smuggle Picasso's "Head of a Young Woman" painting out of the country in 2015. The Spanish billionaire was sentenced to 18 months in jail. On Feb. 4 the sentence against Botin was raised to three years instead of 18 months. His fine was raised to $101 million.
(CBS News, 1/17/20)(SFC, 2/5/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 16, In northern Syria a car bombing late today killed three Turkish soldiers in a Turkish-controlled area. No group immediately claimed responsibility for the bombing.
(AP, 1/17/20)
2020 Jan 16, Ukrainian police said they have opened an investigation into the possibility that US ambassador Marie Yovanovitch came under illegal surveillance by an unknown party before she was recalled from her post in May.
(AP, 1/16/20)
2020 Jan 16, Military officials said Yemeni separatists and forces loyal to the country's UN-recognized government, whose deadly infighting erupted last summer, are pulling back from the key southern city of Zinjibar under a Saudi-brokered deal.
(AP, 1/16/20)
2020 Jan 17, The Trump administration took another step toward dismantling Michelle Obama's school nutrition guidelines, proposing a new rule that could lead to more pizza and fries and less fruit and a smaller variety of vegetables on school menus.
(AP, 1/17/20)
2020 Jan 17, The Trump administration imposed sanctions on Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Gen. Hassan Shahvarpour for directing a massacre of nearly 150 demonstrators in southwestern Iran in November.
(AP, 1/17/20)
2020 Jan 17, The Trump administration granted Chevron a special license to keep drilling oil in Venezuela despite a ban on American companies doing business with Pres. Nicolas Maduro's socialist government.
(SSFC, 1/19/20, p.A4)
2020 Jan 17, The Pentagon announced new restrictions and controls on all international military students at American bases, including barring them from having privately owned firearms on base, in response to a shooting by a Saudi trainee in December that killed three sailors in Florida. The Pentagon issued a memo giving the Navy and other military services conditional approval to resume training of Saudi Arabian nationals in the US. It said non-classroom training can resume once the military services have met certain conditions, including implementing a prohibition on the possession — on or off US military property — of privately owned firearms and ammunition by international military students and their families.
(AP, 1/17/20)(AP, 1/21/20)
2020 Jan 17, Navy Capt. John R. Nettleton, a former commander of the US Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, was convicted of interfering with an investigation into the death of a civilian with whom the commander had fought and argued over his alleged affair with the man's wife.
(AP, 1/17/20)
2020 Jan 17, The US military said 11 troops were treated for concussion after Iran launched a rocket attack at the Al-Asad air base in western Iraq on Jan. 8, despite initially saying no service members had been hurt.
(The Independent, 1/17/20)
2020 Jan 17, US federal authorities turned to a new tactic in the escalating conflict over New York City's so-called sanctuary policies, issuing four “immigration subpoenas" to the city for information about inmates wanted for deportation.
(AP, 1/18/20)
2020 Jan 17, Terence Hallinan (83), former San Francisco supervisor (1988-1995) and district attorney (1995-2003) died.
(SFC, 1/18/20, p.A1)
2020 Jan 17, Former New York GOP Rep. Chris Collins was sentenced to two years in federal prison on charges of insider trading and lying to the FBI.
(The Week, 1/18/20)
2020 Jan 17, In Texas Marc Strickland (18) died at a hospital in Dallas. He was shot Jan. 11 inside a gymnasium during a game between Kimball and South Oak Cliff high schools. A 15-year-old boy who was charged with aggravated assault after surrendering to police the day after the shooting now faced a murder charge.
(AP, 1/19/20)
2020 Jan 17, In Utah a boy armed with a gun killed three children and a woman inside a home in Grantsville, then accompanied a fifth victim to a hospital, where he was arrested.
(AP, 1/18/20)
2020 Jan 17, It was reported that the most serious outbreak of locusts in 25 years is spreading across East Africa and posing an unprecedented threat to food security in some of the world’s most vulnerable countries. Authorities said unusual climate conditions are partly to blame. The outbreak has affected parts of Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia and Sudan.
(AP, 1/17/20)
2020 Jan 17, It was reported that the Suez Canal has suffered an invasion of non-native species, including toxic jellyfish and aggressive lionfish. The influx has increased significantly since Egypt doubled its capacity in 2015 with the opening of the "New Suez Canal".
(SFC, 1/17/20, p.A6)
2020 Jan 17, It was reported that Brazil’s government plans to push abstinence-based sex education to help cut teenage pregnancy rates, in a controversial move inspired by an evangelical Christian pressure group and Donald Trump’s policy in the US.
(The Guardian, 1/17/20)
2020 Jan 17, Leaders of native tribes in Brazil issued a rallying call to protect the Amazon rainforest and its indigenous people from what they called the "genocide, ethnocide and ecocide" planned by the country's far-right President Jair Bolsonaro.
(Reuters, 1/18/20)
2020 Jan 17, Chinese President Xi Jinping touched down in Myanmar's capital on a state visit aimed at buttressing the embattled government of Aung San Suu Kyi and driving through multi-billion-dollar infrastructure deals.
(AFP, 1/17/20)
2020 Jan 17, Danish drugmaker Novo Nordisk said its new diabetes pill, Rybelsus, will be covered by Express Scripts Holding Co, one of the largest US pharmacy benefit managers.
(Reuters, 1/17/20)
2020 Jan 17, A new report by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) from the United Nations indicates that the Commonwealth of Dominica was the fastest growing economy in the entire Latin America and the Caribbean region in 2019.
(PRNewswire, 1/18/20)
2020 Jan 17, The head of the European Union’s border agency said the number of migrants entering Europe from Turkey rose significantly last year as people fleeing strife in Syria and Afghanistan flooded into the country and then set out for Greece.
(AP, 1/17/20)
2020 Jan 17, Greece warned it may try to block any Libyan peace deal that doesn’t resolve a dispute over regional maritime borders, as PM Kyriakos Mitsotakis met with military commander Khalifa Haftar ahead of a Berlin conference on the country’s future. Haftar held talks in Athens two days ahead of a peace conference in Berlin, which he and the head of Tripoli's UN-recognized government Fayez al-Sarraj are expected to attend.
(AP, 1/17/20)(AFP, 1/17/20)
2020 Jan 17, Iran's soccer federation said it has been told it will not be hosting any international matches on Iranian soil.
(AP, 1/17/20)
2020 Jan 17, Two protesters were killed and over a dozen wounded in central Baghdad in renewed violence between anti-government demonstrators and Iraqi security forces.
(AP, 1/17/20)
2020 Jan 17, Hundreds of Jordanians demonstrated in downtown Amman, calling on the government to cancel an agreement in which Israel began pumping natural gas to the kingdom this year.
(AP, 1/17/20)
2020 Jan 17, Samherji, the Icelandic fishing company at the center of Namibia's biggest corruption scandal, announced that it is withdrawing from the southwest African nation.
(Reuters, 1/18/20)
2020 Jan 17, Seven trekkers, including four South Koreans, went missing in Nepal's northwest Himalayan region after an avalanche hit their trail.
(Reuters, 1/18/20)
2020 Jan 17, Spain's Balearic Islands regional government, based in Palma de Mallorca, passed a law prohibiting the organization and promotion of pub crawls and publicity promoting of alcohol sales by means of “open bars" and “happy hours".
(AP, 1/17/20)
2020 Jan 17, Swedish activist Greta Thunberg (17) and a crowd of some 10,000 protesters marched in the Swiss city of Lausanne before many of them head to Davos next week to challenge political and business leaders to combat the climate crisis.
(Reuters, 1/17/20)
2020 Jan 17, Ukraine PM Oleksiy Honcharuk tendered his resignation after he was heard on a leaked recording criticizing his boss’s grasp of the economy. The move was seen as a formality and a pledge of loyalty. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy rejected the offer.
(Bloomberg, 1/17/20)(SFC, 1/18/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 18, Thousands gathered in cities across the USA as part of the nationwide Women's March rallies focused on issues such as climate change, pay equity, reproductive rights and immigration.
(AP, 1/18/20)
2020 Jan 18, Florida authorities arrested suspect Robert Eugene Koehler (60), a registered sex offender from Palm Bay. He is believed to be the notorious Pillowcase Rapist who raped more than 40 women in South Florida between 1981 and 1986.
(Miami Herald, 1/20/20)(Insider, 1/24/20)
2020 Jan 18, In Missouri church and civic leaders said nearly $13 million in medical debt was wiped out for 11,108 families in the St. Louis area with money raised by more than a dozen United Church of Christ congregations and the Deaconess Foundation.
(SSFC, 1/19/20, p.A9)
2020 Jan 18, New Mexico Sunday school teacher Sasha Krause (27) was reported missing. Her body was found a month later cold and stiff, with a bullet wound to the back of her head in a forest clearing outside Flagstaff. Mark Gooch (21), a US Air Force airman stationed near Phoenix was later arrested. He pleaded not guilty to murder and other charges.
(AP, 5/28/20)
2020 Jan 18, In Pennsylvania Delbert Orr Africa, a member of the Move 9 group who has been imprisoned for 42 years for a crime he says he did not commit, was released from prison. He is the eighth of the nine Move members – five men and four women – to be released or to have died while in prison. The nine were arrested and sentenced to 30 years to life following a dramatic police siege of their communal home in Philadelphia which culminated with a shootout on 8 August 1978.
(The Guardian, 1/18/20)
2020 Jan 18, The airport and businesses remained closed in the capital of Newfoundland in Atlantic Canada in the wake of a massive winter blizzard that buried cars in snow drifts and caused an avalanche in one neighborhood.
(Reuters, 1/18/20)
2020 Jan 18, China and neighboring Myanmar agreed to expedite several projects designated as part of the pan-Eurasia Belt and Road Initiative in a sign of growing ties between both countries.
(AP, 1/18/20)
2020 Jan 18, Chinese health authorities said they had discovered four more cases of pneumonia following an outbreak of what is believed to be a new coronavirus strain in the central city of Wuhan, raising concerns that the disease could spread further.
(Reuters, 1/18/20)
2020 Jan 18, In Lebanon police fired volleys of tear gas and rubber bullets in Beirut to disperse thousands of protesters amid some of the worst rioting since demonstrations against the country's ruling elite erupted three months ago. More than 150 people were injured.
(AP, 1/18/20)
2020 Jan 18, A fire engulfed a protest camp in central Beirut this evening, burning tents and sending plumes of smoke into the air, as security forces faced off against protesters near parliament.
(Reuters, 1/18/20)
2020 Jan 18, Forces loyal to Libyan military strongman Khalifa Haftar blocked oil exports from the war-ravaged country's main ports, raising the stakes on the eve of an international summit aimed at bringing peace to the North African nation.
(AFP, 1/18/20)
2020 Jan 18, Forces loyal to Libyan military strongman Khalifa Haftar blocked oil exports from the war-ravaged country's main ports, raising the stakes on the eve of an international summit aimed at bringing peace to the North African nation.
(AP, 1/18/20)
2020 Jan 18, More than a thousand Central American migrants surged onto a bridge spanning the Suchiate River between southern Mexico and Guatemala as Mexican National Guardsmen attempted to impede their journey north.
(AP, 1/18/20)
2020 Jan 18, In northeast Nigeria heavily armed jihadists have carried out an "extremely violent" attack on a vital aid facility housing UN workers. One soldier and four assailants died in the ensuing gunfight.
(AFP, 1/20/20)
2020 Jan 18, In the Philippines soldiers clashed with Abu Sayyaf members in Sulare island in Parang town, in Sulu, killing one militant and destroying a speed boat believed to have been used in a recent kidnapping of Indonesian fishermen.
(Reuters, 1/19/20)
2020 Jan 18, People in a southern Puerto Rico city discovered a warehouse filled with water, cots and other unused emergency supplies, then set off a social media uproar when they broke in to retrieve goods as the area struggles to recover from a strong earthquake. The emergency supplies had been piled in the warehouse since Hurricane Maria battered Puerto Rico in September 2017. Gov. Wanda Vázquez quickly fired the director of the island's emergency management agency.
(AP, 1/18/20)
2020 Jan 18, Somalia police said at least two people were killed and more than 20 others wounded when a suicide car bomber targeted a construction site along a highway outside Mogadishu.
(AP, 1/18/20)
2020 Jan 18, In Yemen ballistic missiles fired by Houthi rebels smashed into a mosque in the training camp in the central province of Marib late today, killing at least 79 troops and wounding 81 others during evening prayers. The death toll from the missile attack soon climbed to at least 111 troops.
(AP, 1/19/20)(AP, 1/20/20)
2020 Jan 19, Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg pledged to narrow the wealth gap between black and white Americans by boosting black ownership of homes and businesses and investing in poor neighborhoods.
(Reuters, 1/19/20)
2020 Jan 19, The San Francisco 49ers beat the Green Bay Packers 34-20 at Levi Stadium in Santa Clara, Ca. The NFC win put the 49ers into this year's Super Bowl.
(SFC, 1/20/20, p.A1)
2020 Jan 19, A southern California driver intentionally rammed a Toyota Prius with six teenage boys inside, killing three and injuring three others before fleeing late today in Temescal Valley, Riverside County. Anurag Chandra (42) of Corona was arrested a short time later in a neighborhood near the crash site.
(AP, 1/20/20)
2020 Jan 19, Elon Musk's SpaceX simulated a successful emergency landing off the coast of Cape Canaveral in Florida in a dramatic test of a crucial abort system on an unmanned astronaut capsule, laying the foundation for its mission to fly NASA astronauts for the first time.
(Reuters, 1/19/20)
2020 Jan 19, Hawaii handyman Jaroslav “Jerry" Hanel stabbed his landlord and killed two officers before the house he and two women were believed to be inside burned. They were presumed dead. Hanel had a history of run-ins with police and neighbors and faced eviction.
(AP, 1/19/20)
2020 Jan 19, In Texas two people were killed and at least five injured when a gunman opened fire at a concert on the San Antonio River Walk.
(SFC, 1/21/20, p.A5)
2020 Jan 19, In 2021 data from a CDC study showed that the coronavirus virus may have been circulating in the US well before the first COVID-19 case was diagnosed on this day. Data pointed to the presence of the virus in the country as early as December 2019.
(Reuters, 6/15/21)
2020 Jan 19, China's state planner said the country is stepping up restrictions on the production, sale and use of single-use plastic products, as it seeks to tackle one of the country's biggest environmental problems.
(Reuters, 1/19/20)
2020 Jan 19, Chinese authorities and the World Health Organization (WHO) said a new strain of coronavirus is behind the outbreak of pneumonia in the central city of Wuhan, which has erupted just ahead of the Lunar New Year, the country's biggest festival. As of today there were 65 confirmed cases of patients with pneumonia caused by the new strain of coronavirus.
(Reuters, 1/19/20)
2020 Jan 19, In the Czech Republic a fire swept through an asylum for the mentally ill, killing eight male patients in the northwestern town of Vejprty.
(AP, 1/19/20)
2020 Jan 19, Participants at a Berlin summit agreed to respect a much-violated arms embargo in Libya, halt military support to the warring parties and push them to reach a full cease-fire. The summit was quickly overshadowed by a fresh crisis over oil. There were reports of ongoing fighting on the frontlines south of Tripoli and Western leaders appeared downbeat on the prospects of putting the ceasefire agreement into force. It was later revealed that at least five cargo planes filled with weapons from the UAE and Russia were bound for Libya as global leaders posed for a group picture.
(AP, 1/20/20)(The Telegraph, 1/20/20)(SFC, 9/4/20, p.A4)
2020 Jan 19, In Hong Kong clashes broke out between protesters and police, cutting short a rally after thousands had gathered at a park to call for electoral reforms and a boycott of the Chinese Communist Party. Ventus Lau, the rally's organizer, was arrested in the evening for allegedly breaching the authorities' conditions for the rally and repeatedly obstructing officers.
(AP, 1/19/20)
2020 Jan 19, In Indonesia a footbridge packed with people on Sumatra Island broke. Nine bodies were pulled from the water as far as 12 miles from the bridge. One boy (14) remained missing.
(SFC, 1/21/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 19, In Iraq protests escalated across the south and Baghdad as demonstrators sealed off streets with burning tires in outrage at the government's slow pace of reform. At least 27 people were left wounded.
(AFP, 1/19/20)(SFC, 1/20/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 19, Israel's military said it has begun construction of an underground defense system along its northern frontier with Lebanon to protect against cross-border tunnels. the construction would all be on the Israeli side of the border and that United Nations peacekeepers along the frontier had been notified.
(AP, 1/19/20)
2020 Jan 19, In Italy hundreds of people in small rowing boats protested in front of Venice's St Mark's Square to denounce what they say is a proliferation of motor boats that have crowded the waters of the lagoon city.
(Reuters, 1/19/20)
2020 Jan 19, Jordan's parliament approved a draft law to ban imports of Israeli gas to the country just days after they started under a multibillion-dollar deal struck in 2016 which is opposed by much of the population. The government has previously said it was a deal between companies rather than a political matter.
(Reuters, 1/19/20)
2020 Jan 19, In Lebanon dozens of anti-government protesters gathered in Beirut, as security forces braced for more rioting after a night of violence left hundreds wounded.
(AP, 1/19/20)
2020 Jan 19, It was reported that police in Mexico have found 14 sets of skeletal human remains in seven clandestine burial pits on islands in a reservoir of southern Oaxaca state.
(SSFC, 1/19/20, p.A4)
2020 Jan 19, Libya's National Oil Corporation (NOC) said it is cutting production at the El Sharara and El Feel oilfields after forces under the command of Khalifa Haftar's Libyan National Army (LNA) shut a pipeline from the fields.
(Reuters, 1/19/20)
2020 Jan 19, Dutch police detained four suspects following a suspected failed attempt to break one or more prisoners out of a prison.
(AP, 1/19/20)
2020 Jan 19, In Paraguay at least 75 inmates, including members of Brazil's most powerful gang, escaped from a prison in the city of Pedro Juan Caballero after digging a tunnel in an operation that prison officials were believed to have been aware. The director of the prison was fired along with six other prison officials.
(Reuters, 1/19/20)
2020 Jan 19, In Russia eight people were detained by police at a march in Moscow commemorating the 2009 killing of human rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov and reporter Anastasia Baburova. A Russian nationalist was sentenced to life in prison for the killings.
(AP, 1/19/20)
2020 Jan 19, South Africa's Communication Workers Union (CWU) said it is angered by Telkom's plan to cut up to 3,000 workers and called for an urgent meeting with the ruling party and the minister of communication.
(Reuters, 1/19/20)
2020 Jan 19, In South Korea Lotte Group founder Shin Kyuk-ho (98) died. He started manufacturing chewing gum in 1948 in Japan and built the business into South Korea's No.5 conglomerate with interests ranging from retail to chemicals.
(Reuters, 1/19/20)
2020 Jan 19, Turkey called for the European Union to end what it said was the bloc's prejudice against Turkish Cypriots, defending its launch of a fresh round of hydrocarbons drilling off the Mediterranean island.
(Reuters, 1/19/20)
2020 Jan 19, Two Ukrainian soldiers were killed and 10 wounded this weekend in the eastern Donbass region.
(AP, 1/20/20)
2020 Jan 19, In Yemen Iran-aligned Huthi rebels, who control the capital Sanaa and most of the north, banned the use of new banknotes printed by the central bank in Aden which is run by the internationally recognized government. This soon sent the riyal crashing, aggravating a humanitarian crisis that has already driven millions to the brink of famine after five years of conflict.
(AFP, 1/28/20)
2020 Jan 20, The US marked the legacy of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. with tributes recalling his past struggles for racial equality.
(AP, 1/20/20)
2020 Jan 20, Charles Fry (b.1927), co-founder of Fry's Food Stores, died in Arizona. He and his brother started the food chain in 1955 in Richmond, Ca., and expanded it to 42 stores before it was purchased by Dillons in 1972. He helped his sons found Fry's Electronics in 1985.
(SFC, 1/24/20, p.C5)
2020 Jan 20, In New Hampshire a coyote attacked a pair of dogs, bit a woman and skirmished with a vehicle before being killed by a father defending his family.
(AP, 1/21/20)
2020 Jan 20, In Virginia thousands of gun-rights activists, some brandishing their military-style rifles, crowded the streets surrounding Richmond's Capitol building to protest plans by the state's Democratic leadership to pass gun-control legislation.
(AP, 1/20/20)
2020 Jan 20, In Australia a hail storm hit Canberra damaging buildings, homes and cars, and caused flash flooding. Recent rains have helped but have not extinguished major fires in New South Wales and Victoria states.
(SFC, 1/21/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 20, In Brazil 26 inmates escaped from a prison in the northwestern state of Acre early today, with all but one remaining at large.
(Reuters, 1/20/20)
2020 Jan 20, Chinese President Xi Jinping said the country would curb the spread of an outbreak of pneumonia caused by a new coronavirus. A leading Chinese epidemiologist, Zhong Nanshan, announced for the first time that the virus was transmissible from person to person on national television, a development that raises the possibility that it could spread more quickly and widely.
(AP, 1/20/20)(AP, 4/14/20)
2020 Jan 20, China repeated its call for Canada to release detained Huawei Technologies Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou as soon as possible, ahead of the executive's first extradition hearing later in the day.
(Reuters, 1/20/20)
2020 Jan 20, In Ethiopia at least three people were killed and more than 100 others injured when a wooden stand erected for the colorful Epiphany celebration collapsed in Gondar.
(AP, 1/20/20)
2020 Jan 20, France and Malaysia said Malaysia has shipped 43 illegal plastic waste containers back to France as part of a crackdown on illegal trafficking of waste.
(Reuters, 1/20/20)
2020 Jan 20, In France some subway workers in Paris ended their walkouts after six weeks of transport strikes. 5 of 16 lines were still disrupted.
(SFC, 1/21/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 20, Two Iraqi police officers were killed and dozens of protesters were wounded in Baghdad and other cities in clashes with security forces as anti-government unrest resumed after a lull of several weeks. A gunshot wound killed one protester, while a second died after being struck in the head by a tear gas canister. A third later succumbed to his injuries.
(AP, 1/20/20)
(The Telegraph, 1/20/20)(AP, 1/20/20)
2020 Jan 20, Kosovo and Serbia agreed to launch direct commercial flights after a two-decade interval in a deal mediated by the United States in an attempt to push the two former foes closer to normalizing relations.
(Reuters, 1/20/20)
2020 Jan 20, Some 3,000 Central American migrants made another attempt to walk across the border bridge into Mexico, in a new test of US President Donald Trump's “Central America" strategy to keep them away from the US border. Hundreds of Mexican National Guard troops deployed to the bridge and the banks of shallow Suchiate River that divides the country from Guatemala.
(AP, 1/20/20)
2020 Jan 20, In Nigeria Islamic militants killed a Christian pastor who had appealed for help life in a video just days earlier. Rev. Lawan Andimi was abducted earlier this month when Boko Haram militants attacked the Michika local government area, where he was the chairman of a local chapter of the Christian Association of Nigeria.
(AP, 2/22/20)
2020 Jan 20, The populist Progress Party pulled out of Norway's center-right governing coalition over the decision to repatriate an Islamic State group-linked woman and her two children from a detention camp in Syria. PM Erna Solberg said she would continue with a minority government comprised of three coalition partners.
(AP, 1/20/20)
2020 Jan 20, Russian President Vladimir Putin submitted to parliament a package of constitutional amendments widely seen as an attempt to secure his grip on power well after his current term ends in 2024.
(AP, 1/20/20)
2020 Jan 20, In Russia a heating pipe burst in a small hotel in the central city of Perm, flooding rooms with boiling water that killed five people and left six others injured. The plumbing explosion left 20 buildings, including a hospital, a school and a kindergarten, without heat or hot water in the middle of winter.
(AP, 1/20/20)
2020 Jan 20, Slovakia said it has detected its second case of the highly pathogenic H5N8 bird flu virus at a farm in the west of the country.
(Reuters, 1/20/20)
2020 Jan 20, In Spain three people were left dead in strong winds, heavy snowfall and low temperatures from Storm Gloria's sweep over the last 24 hours prompting five provinces to go on top emergency alert.
(Reuters, 1/20/20)(AP, 1/20/20)
2020 Jan 20, It was reported that Sri Lanka's president has decided that tens of thousands of people still missing from the country's quarter-century civil war will be formally declared dead and death certificates will be issued.
(AP, 1/20/20)
2020 Jan 20, Turkey's largest telecoms group said it had been hit by a cyber attack that led to problems with internet access, but did not specify who was carrying out the attack. It said the strike had targeted its DNS addresses. Internet access was soon restored.
(Reuters, 1/20/20)
2020 Jan 20, The World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) said Ukraine has reported an outbreak of the highly pathogenic H5 bird flu on a farm in the west-central part of the country, the first of such outbreak in nearly three years. The outbreak killed 4,856 birds out of a flock of 98,000 in Vinnitsa. The rest of the flock was slaughtered.
(Reuters, 1/20/20)
2020 Jan 21, In a marathon session that began at 1 p.m. and lasted nearly 13 hours into the early morning, the Republican-led Senate rejected all 11 Democratic-proposed amendments en route to approving the rules for the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump.
(Good Morning America, 1/22/20)
2020 Jan 21, Alex Azar 52), the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, appeared on Fox News to report the latest on the coronavirus as it ravaged China. The lawyer and former drug industry executive assured Americans the US government was prepared. Shortly after his televised comments, Azar tapped a trusted aide with minimal public health experience to lead the agency’s day-to-day response to COVID-19. The aide, Brian Harrison, had joined the department after running a dog-breeding business for six years.
(Reuters, 4/22/20)
2020 Jan 21, In Alabama Landon Durham (16) allegedly stabbed his mother and 13-year-old twin brothers to death before going to school in Munford as if it were a normal day. Durham was apprehended the next morning at a grocery store approximately seven miles outside Gadsden.
(The Independent, 1/23/20)
2020 Jan 21, San Francisco-based Cruise unveiled a robot taxi called Origin. Cruise said it could be manufactured at half the cost of conventional electric SUVs.
(SFC, 1/23/20, p.D1)
2020 Jan 21, Mississippi authorities two of the inmates beaten to death inside the troubled Parchman Farm Penitentiary were killed in a fight with other inmates.
(SFC, 1/22/20, p.A4)
2020 Jan 21, Iranian student Shahab Dehghani, attending college in Boston, was denied entry to the US and ordered to immediately fly back to his native country, despite a court order temporarily staying his removal.
(AP, 1/21/20)
2020 Jan 21, A federal appeals court threw out part of former New York Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver's corruption conviction and ordered that he be resentenced, citing errors in his trial judge's jury instructions. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan voided Silver's conviction on three counts, and upheld his conviction on four counts. Silver had been sentenced in July 2018 to seven years in prison.
(Reuters, 1/21/20)
2020 Jan 21, A North Carolina appeals court upheld the legality of a legislative session Republicans quickly called in December 2016 to push through laws that weakened the power of incoming Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper.
(AP, 1/21/20)
2020 Jan 21, Bangladesh's High Court asked authorities to shut down 231 factories surrounding the highly polluted Buriganga River in Dhaka.
(SFC, 1/22/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 21, Brazil's right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro said he will create an "Amazon Council" to protect and ensure the "sustainable development" of the world's largest rainforest, following intense criticism of his environmental policies.
(Reuters, 1/21/20)
2020 Jan 21, PM Boris Johnson's government suffered a fourth defeat on its Brexit legislation when members of parliament's upper chamber voted to ensure protections for child refugees after Britain leaves the European Union.
(Reuters, 1/21/20)
2020 Jan 21, Britain's Sainsbury said it plans to cut hundreds of management jobs as it seeks to bring its main supermarket operation and its Argos general merchandise arm closer together.
(Reuters, 1/21/20)
2020 Jan 21, China sentenced the former president of Interpol, Meng Hongwei (66), to 13 years and six months in prison on charges of accepting more than $2 million in bribes. His wife, Grace Meng, is now suing Interpol, accusing it of failing to protect him from arrest in China and failing to look after his family.
(AP, 1/21/20)
2020 Jan 21, European Union lawmakers backed measures to clamp down on abuse of EU pet passports by criminals and gangs that illegally trade cats and dogs.
(Reuters, 1/21/20)
2020 Jan 21, In France protesting workers cut power to thousands of Parisians in an outage that lasted two hours.
(SFC, 1/22/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 21, Iran's ISNA News Agency reported that lawmaker Ahmad Hamzeh, who represents Iran's Kerman province, has offered to pay a $3 million reward to "whoever kills Trump" in a speech to the country's parliament.
(AP, 1/21/20)
2020 Jan 21, Iran acknowledged that its armed forces fired two Russian anti-aircraft missiles at a Ukrainian jetliner that crashed after taking off from Tehran's main airport on January 8, killing all 176 people on board.
(AP, 1/21/20)
2020 Jan 21, Iraqi riot police opened fire amid clashes with anti-government protesters on a central Baghdad highway, killing one person and wounding over a dozen others. Female activist and paramedic Janat Madhi (49) was killed in Basra late today by unidentified assailants.
(AP, 1/21/20)(AFP, 1/23/20)
2020 Jan 21, In Iraq three French citizens and an Iraqi, aid workers for a French Christian charity, failed to show up for a scheduled meeting and have not been heard from since.
(AP, 1/24/20)
2020 Jan 21, A South Korean announced that its anti-piracy unit has temporarily expanded its mission to the Strait of Hormuz, a vital global oil route at the center of soaring tensions between Iran and the United States.
(AP, 1/21/20)
2020 Jan 21, Spain's government formally declared a "climate emergency," proposing measures to tackle climate change that include mandatory low-emission zones in big cities.
(Reuters, 1/21/20)
2020 Jan 21, A winter storm lashed much of Spain for a third day, leaving 200,000 people without electricity, schools closed and roads blocked by snow as it killed four people.
(AP, 1/21/20)
2020 Jan 21, In Switzerland US Pres. Trump (73) announced the United States would join an initiative to plant one trillion trees, but dismissed "perennial prophets of doom" on climate change in his keynote address. Activist Greta Thunberg (17) responded by saying planting trees was not enough to address climate change.
(AP, 1/21/20)
2020 Jan 21, In northern Syria Russian-led air strikes killed at least 18 people in the northwest where a major government offensive to clear out rebels has sent tens of thousands of people fleeing toward the border with Turkey. One strike on the rebel-held village of Kfar Taal killed at least nine people, including an entire family.
(Reuters, 1/21/20)(AP, 1/21/20)
2020 Jan 21, A UN human rights panel ruled for the first time that people fleeing the effects of climate change may be entitled to claim asylum, even as it dismissed an individual plaintiff's case against his deportation from New Zealand.
(AP, 1/21/20)
2020 Jan 21, The UN said rising numbers of children in Guatemala are going hungry as drought linked to climate change reduces food harvests, fueling child malnutrition rates.
(Reuters, 1/21/20)
2020 Jan 21, A UN-backed Conference on Disarmament opened in Geneva. The United States urged China to join trilateral nuclear arms talks with Moscow, calling Beijing's secrecy around growing stockpiles a "serious threat to strategic stability".
(Reuters, 1/21/20)
2020 Jan 22, The Trump administration announced new regulations barring Iranian investors and business people from entering or staying in the United States on certain types of visas effective Jan. 23.
(AP, 1/22/20)
2020 Jan 22, The Republican-controlled US Senate heard opening arguments in President Donald Trump's impeachment trial, beginning several days of argument on whether to remove Trump from office.
(Reuters, 1/22/20)
2020 Jan 22, The US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approved Kinder Morgan Inc's Dec. 13 request to start construction of its proposed Lockridge natural gas pipeline in the Permian basin in West Texas.
(Reuters, 1/22/20)
2020 Jan 22, The Environmental Working Group (EWG) reported that the contamination of US drinking water with man-made "forever chemicals" is far worse than previously estimated with some of the highest levels found in Miami, Philadelphia and New Orleans. The chemicals, resistant to breaking down in the environment, are known as perfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS.
(AP, 1/22/20)
2020 Jan 22, US House prosecutors faced fidgeting senators as they rolled out their case against President Donald Trump, the trial's previous session having lasted a fatigue-inducing 13 hours. Pres. Trump sent 120-plus tweets that included trial commentary and criticism.
(AP, 1/22/20)
2020 Jan 22, A senior US official said on China has failed to send home North Korean workers by a December 22 deadline in violation of a 2017 United Nations resolution. The United States has estimated Pyongyang was earning more than $500 million a year from nearly 100,000 workers abroad, of which some 50,000 were in China and 30,000 in Russia.
(Reuters, 1/22/20)
2020 Jan 22, Utah became the US 19th state to ban the practice of conversion therapy for LGBTQ children.
(SFC, 1/23/20, p.A6)
2020 Jan 22, In Washington state several people in a dispute opened fire, killing a woman, in the busiest part of downtown Seattle at the height of the evening commute. Two men involved in the shooting were later arrested in Las Vegas. A 3rd suspect injured in the shooting was located by police in a Seattle hospital.
(AP, 1/22/20)(SFC, 2/3/20, p.A8)
2020 Jan 22, The lower house of Britain's parliament overturned changes made by the upper house to the legislation needed to ratify the country's divorce agreement with the EU.
(Reuters, 1/22/20)
2020 Jan 22, Terry Jones (77), one of the British Monty Python comedy team and director of religious satire "Life of Brian", died after a long battle with dementia.
(Reuters, 1/22/20)
2020 Jan 22, Burundi's government approved draft legislation to make Pres. Pierre Nkurunziza "Paramount Leader, Champion of Patriotism and Leadership Core," as his troubled third term nears an end.
(SFC, 1/23/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 22, Deaths from China's new virus rose to 17 with more than 540 cases confirmed, increasing fears of contagion from an infection suspected to originate from illegally-traded wildlife. A patient infected with the new coronavirus died in Hebei province, marking the first confirmed death outside Hubei province where the outbreak began. This raised the death toll from the outbreak to 18.
(Reuters, 1/22/20)(Reuters, 1/23/20)
2020 Jan 22, Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan started US-monitored talks in Khartoum to try hammer out a draft deal to resolve their dispute over a Nile dam that Ethiopia is constructing.
(AP, 1/22/20)
2020 Jan 22, French finance minister Bruno Le Maire said France and the United States have brokered a truce in their bilateral row over digital taxation but still have to hammer out how talks for a global deal should proceed.
(Reuters, 1/22/20)
2020 Jan 22, In Germany a Berlin court convicted two German men of murder in the fatal shooting of a 25-year-old Polish woman. The woman was found fatally injured in a Berlin driveway in December 2018. The two men were sentenced to life imprisonment.
(AP, 1/22/20)
2020 Jan 22, Greece's merchant marine ministry said eight crew members of a Greek-flagged tanker ship have been freed more than 20 days after being kidnapped by gunmen off the coast of Cameroon. Pirates hade kidnapped the crew on Dec. 31 from the Happy Lady tanker, which had been lying at anchor two nautical miles (2.3 miles, 3.7 km) outside the port of Limboh.
(AP, 1/22/20)
2020 Jan 22, In southwestern Iran masked gunmen ambushed and killed Abdolhossein Mojaddami, the local head of the Basij paramilitary security force. He was an associate of Iran's top general recently killed in an American drone strike in Baghdad.
(AP, 1/22/20)
2020 Jan 22, Japan-based Toyota Motor Corp said it is recalling 361,000 older vehicles worldwide for potentially defective air bag inflators. A day earlier Honda Motor Co said it will recall 2.7 million older US vehicles in North America for the same type of Takata inflator that Toyota is also recalling.
(AP, 1/22/20)
2020 Jan 22, A Kosovo court convicted eight ethnic Albanian men of preparing terrorist acts and trying to destabilize the country's constitutional order. The court in Pristina handed out prison terms ranging from 2 to 12 years to eight members of the so-called People’s Eye group.
(AP, 1/22/20)
2020 Jan 22, Lebanon's new government held its first meeting, a day after it was formed following a three-month political vacuum, with the prime minister saying his Cabinet will adopt financial and economic methods different than those of previous governments.
(AP, 1/22/20)
2020 Jan 22, In Libya the only functioning airport in Tripoli reopened after coming under attack, despite a tenuous truce that world powers have pushed warring parties to respect. Authorities at Mitiga airport said six Grad missiles had crashed into the tarmac.
(AP, 1/22/20)
2020 Jan 22, North Korea banned foreign tourists to guard against the spread of a new virus from China.
(AP, 1/22/20)
2020 Jan 22, It was reported that Saudi Arabia’s de-facto ruler, known as MBS, started a hacking process by sending the Amazon.com Inc. chief Jeff Bezos a WhatsApp message containing hidden malware, which gave the Saudis access to the billionaire’s phone. The message to Bezos in May, 2018, preceded the grisly murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, by five months.
(Bloomberg, 1/22/20)
2020 Jan 22, South Korea's first known transgender soldier pleaded to be allowed to continue serving after the military decided to discharge her for undergoing gender reassignment surgery. Tank driver Byun Hui-su, held a news conference at which she asked military leaders to reconsider their decision and let her serve as a female soldier.
(AP, 1/22/20)
2020 Jan 22, In South Sudan suspected Misseriya tribesmen killed at least 29 people, at least some of whom burned to death in their homes, in an attack on a village in the disputed Abyei border region. The death toll from the attack soon rose to at least 32 people.
(Reuters, 1/22/20)(AP, 1/23/20)
2020 Jan 22, In Switzerland top NGOs including Greenpeace and Amnesty International called for the $1.1 billion sale of the .org internet domain to a private company to be blocked, saying it could do "irreparable harm." The directors of 10 leading NGOs published an open letter at the World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting in Davos urging ISOC and ICANN, the internet's governing authority, to stop the sale.
(Reuters, 1/22/20)
2020 Jan 23, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists announced its symbolic “doomsday clock" has moved forward to 100 seconds to midnight, the closest to catastrophe that the scientists have judged the world to be at any point since its creation in 1947, at the outset of the cold war.
(The Guardian, 1/23/20)
2020 Jan 23, The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention raised its travel alert for the coronavirus outbreak to a level 3, recommending people avoid all nonessential travel to Wuhan, China. The outbreak has now killed 18 and infected nearly 600 people globally.
(Reuters, 1/23/20)
2020 Jan 23, The US State Department pulled all non-emergency American personnel and their family out of Hubei province, and issued a travel warning urging people not to visit there.
(AP, 1/24/20)
2020 Jan 23, The Trump administration finalized a rule to pare back the types of waterways protected from pollution under federal law, a move intended to ease burdens on industries like agriculture and mining. Industry groups praised the move while environmental groups criticized it.
(Reuters, 1/23/20)
2020 Jan 23, President Donald Trump's administration rolled out a new rule that aims to limit "birth tourism" by women who enter the United States on tourist visas with the intention of obtaining citizenship for their babies born on American soil.
(Reuters, 1/23/20)
2020 Jan 23, The United States barred Iranians from entering the country on trade and investment visas. The US sanctioned four companies that it says have traded hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Iranian petroleum and petrochemicals in its latest effort to clamp down on the Islamic Republic’s revenue sources.
(Reuters, 1/23/20)(Bloomberg, 1/23/20)
2020 Jan 23, Democratic House prosecutors made an expansive case at Donald Trump's impeachment trial that he abused power like no other president in history, swept up by a “completely bogus" Ukraine theory pushed by attorney Rudy Giuliani.
(AP, 1/23/20)
2020 Jan 23, The US denied an extradition request for Anne Sacoolas, the wife of an American diplomat who police say fatally struck a British teenager with her car as he was walking on the side of the road last August.
(ABC News, 1/23/20)
2020 Jan 23, US federal regulators slapped a $17.5 million fine on former Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf for his role in the bank's sales practices scandal. Five other former Wells Fargo executives were also sued for a combined total of $37.5 million for their rolls in the bank's poor practices.
(SFC, 1/24/20, p.D1)
2020 Jan 23, Jim Lehrer (85), former host of the PBS "NewsHour" died in Washington, DC. From 1988 to 2012 Lehrer moderated 11 presidential debates.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Lehrer)(SFC, 1/24/20, p.A7)
2020 Jan 23, Clayton Christensen (b.1952), a professor at Harvard Business School and author of "The Innovator's Dilemma" (1997), died in Boston.
(SFC, 1/27/20, p.D1)
2020 Jan 23, In New York a federal judge sentenced Libyan militant Mustafa al-Imam to more than 19 years in prison for his role in the Sept. 11, 2012, Benghazi attacks that killed four Americans. The attacks killed Ambassador Chris Stevens, communications specialist Sean Smith and security officers Tyrone Snowden Woods and Glen Anthony Doherty.
(AP, 1/23/20)
2020 Jan 23, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt banned sate-funded travel to California in response to a similar 2018 ban by California after Oklahoma passed a law that allowed adoption agencies to deny placement services to same-sex parents.
(SFC, 1/24/20, p.A6)
2020 Jan 23, US financier and philanthropist George Soros pledged one billion dollars for a new university network project to battle the erosion of civil society in a world increasingly ruled by "would-be and actual dictators" and beset by climate change.
(AFP, 1/23/20)
2020 Jan 23, The Blue Cross Blue Shield Association (BCBSA) and 18 Blue Cross Blue Shield health insurers said they are working with Civica Rx, a non-profit formed two years ago to try to increase competition for hospital-based generic drugs. The group said it is investing $55 million in a venture that aims to offer cheaper prices to their members on generic drugs that currently have little or no competition.
(Reuters, 1/23/20)
2020 Jan 23, Top diplomats from Libya's neighboring countries and beyond met in Algiers amid intensifying international efforts to end the conflict tearing apart the oil-rich country.
(AP, 1/23/20)
2020 Jan 23, In Australia three American crew members were killed when a C-130 Hercules aerial water tanker crashed while battling wildfires in the Snowy Monaro region of New South Wales.
(AP, 1/23/20)
2020 Jan 23, Queen Elizabeth II gave her formal assent for Britain to end its decades-long involvement in the EU and seek a more independent but uncertain future at the end of the month. Britain's Brexit bill became law.
(AFP, 1/23/20)(SFC, 1/24/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 23, British supermarket group Morrisons said it plans to cut 3,000 management jobs as part of a workforce restructuring that will create 7,000 frontline jobs in its stores.
(Reuters, 1/23/20)
2020 Jan 23, Chinese authorities moved to lock down three cities with a combined population of more than 18 million in an unprecedented effort to contain the deadly new virus that has sickened hundreds of people and spread to other parts of the world during the busy Lunar New Year travel period. The train station and airport in Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak, were shut down, and ferry, subway and bus service was halted. Similar measures would take effect the following day in the nearby cities of Huanggang and Ezhou. Wuhan underwent a 76-day lockdown. The virus death toll in Wuhan ended in mid-May with 3,869 fatalities.
(AP, 1/23/20)(Econ., 9/19/20, p.42)
2020 Jan 23, In Denmark an eight-meter copper statue by Jens Galschioet, entitled "Pillar of Shame," was erected in front of parliament in central Copenhagen to express solidarity with pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong.
(Reuters, 1/23/20)
2020 Jan 23, In central Germany a school bus crashed early today, killing two children and leaving five others seriously injured near the village of Berka, Thuringia state.
(AP, 1/23/20)
2020 Jan 23, Greece's migration and asylum minister said the “anxiety and indignation" of Greek island residents living at the forefront of a migration crisis are justified. Residents and business owners on the islands of Lesbos, Chios and Samos have held two days of protests and went on strike to demand that the government tackle severe overcrowding at migrant camps that are all grossly over capacity.
(AP, 1/23/20)
2020 Jan 23, A Greek high court rejected Russian bitcoin fraud suspect Alexander Vinnik's final appeal against his extradition to France, ending a more than two-year legal tug-of-war between three countries seeking to put him on trial.
(AP, 1/23/20)
2020 Jan 23, Hundreds of students gathered in Basra to protest against recent killings. An Iraqi demonstrator was shot dead in the southern city of Basra overnight. This week's violence brings to 470 the overall death toll since protests erupted in October.
(AFP, 1/23/20)
2020 Jan 23, Madagascar's national disaster office said floods across the island have killed at least 12 people this week, with 18 missing, after unseasonably heavy rain. The death toll was soon raised to 26 with 15 people still missing.
(Reuters, 1/23/20)(SFC, 1/25/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 23, Russian President Vladimir Putin inaugurated a bronze monument, named "Memorial Candle," in the heart of Jerusalem commemorating the citizens and defenders of Leningrad during the 1941-1944 Nazi siege of the city.
(AFP, 1/23/20)
2020 Jan 23, Dozens of world leaders gathered in Jerusalem for the largest-ever gathering focused on commemorating the Holocaust and combating rising modern-day anti-Semitism.
(AP, 1/23/20)
2020 Jan 23, At The Hague the International Court of Justice ordered Myanmar take all measures in its power to prevent genocide against the Rohingya.
(AP, 1/23/20)
2020 Jan 23, Russian lawmakers unanimously approved a sweeping constitutional reform bill put forward by President Vladimir Putin in its first reading, after less than two hours of debate.
(AFP, 1/23/20)
2020 Jan 23, Sweden's top military commander, Gen. Micael Byden, said a man who duped the Swedish military for 18 years by using forged credentials and who even worked at NATO headquarters and was a contact for Russia's security services did not divulge any secret information that could harm Sweden's security.
(AP, 1/23/20)
2020 Jan 23, Sweden's supreme court ruled in favor of Sami control of hunting and fishing permits citing government records going back to the 16th century which recognized Sami rights in exchange for taxes (paid in fur). The Sami people, indigenous to northern Sweden, number about 20,000.
(Econ., 5/23/20, p.41)
2020 Jan 23, Striking junior doctors at Zimbabwe's state hospitals planned to end a four-month strike after accepting an offer from a telecoms billionaire to pay them a monthly allowance of about $300 for six months. Strive Masiyiwa, through his philanthropic arm Higher Life Foundation, last November set up a 100 million Zimbabwe dollar ($5.9 million) fund for the striking doctors. Negotiations with the government continued.
(Reuters, 1/23/20)
2020 Jan 24, The Trump administration said that California cannot require health insurers to cover abortions and threatened to cut some federal healthcare funds unless it pulls that requirement. The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued a notice that the state is violating a federal law called the Weldon Amendment.
(Reuters, 1/24/20)
2020 Jan 24, President Trump became the first president to attend the annual March for Life in Washington, DC, where he delivered a speech aimed at shoring up his support among evangelical voters.
(Yahoo News, 1/24/20)
2020 Jan 24, The Pentagon said that 34 US troops were diagnosed with traumatic brain injuries suffered in this month's Iranian missile strike on an Iraqi air base, and that half of the troops have returned to their military duties.
(AP, 1/24/20)
2020 Jan 24, An attorney said that Lev Parnas, an associate of Rudy Giuliani, has provided congressional investigators with a recording of President Donald Trump saying he wanted to get rid of the US ambassador to Ukraine, whose ouster emerged as an issue in the president’s impeachment.
(AP, 1/24/20)
2020 Jan 24, A federal judge overseeing the bankruptcy case of Purdue Pharma set a June 30 deadline to file a claim against the company. That includes governments, entities such as hospitals and, for the first time, individuals who have personal injury claims.
(AP, 1/24/20)
2020 Jan 24, The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed a second US case of the new coronavirus from China in a Chicago woman, and said as many as 63 potential cases were being investigated as the sometimes deadly illness continues to spread around the globe.
(Reuters, 1/24/20)
2020 Jan 24, Jeff Carpoff (49) and Paulette Carpoff (46), the husband-and-wife owners of DC Solar, pleaded guilty to involvement in an estimated $912 million Ponzi scheme. Their California solar company caused Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc to take a $377 million charge last year.
(Reuters, 1/24/20)
2020 Jan 24, A snow plow struck and killed two pedestrians in Kansas after a winter storm coated parts of the Midwest with snow.
(AP, 1/24/20)
2020 Jan 24, Former California Congressman Pete Stark (88) died at his home in Maryland. He created the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA), passed by Congress in 1985. He also supported LGBTQ rights and was the first openly atheist member of Congress.
(SFC, 1/25/20, p.C1)
2020 Jan 24, Wes Wilson (82), a San Francisco artist who helped define the visual style of the psychedelic rock era, died at his home in Missouri.
(SFC, 1/31/20, p.C5)
2020 Jan 24, In Boston John Kapoor (76), founder of Arizona-based Insys Therapeutics, was ordered to spend 5½ years in prison for orchestrating a bribery and kickback scheme that helpd fuel the opioids crisis.
(SFC, 1/25/20, p.A5)
2020 Jan 24, In New York City Ivan Reyes Arzate, a former Mexican federal police commander, was arrested for allegedly accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes from Mexican drug cartels to help them send cocaine into the United States, in a case linked to imprisoned drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman.
(Reuters, 1/24/20)
2020 Jan 24, Ahmad Khan Rahami (Rahimi), an Afghan-born American suspect jailed for 2016 bombings in New York and New Jersey, was sentenced to an additional life term for a shootout with police in Linden, NJ, as he attempted to avoid arrest in 2016.
(SFC, 1/25/20, p.A5)
2020 Jan 24, In Texas two people died after a massive explosion leveled a warehouse at Watson Grinding and Manufacturing in Houston, damaging nearby buildings and homes and rousing frightened people from their sleep miles away.
(AP, 1/24/20)
2020 Jan 24, Bolivia suspended diplomatic relations with Cuba. The next day the Havana accused Bolivia's interim government of having sought to sabotage bilateral ties ever since it took power last year, partly under pressure from the Trump administration.
(Reuters, 1/25/20)
2020 Jan 24, London's Metropolitan Police said they will use facial recognition cameras to scan the faces of passersby to see if they are criminals, in a move that critics slammed as a massive expansion of surveillance.
(Business Insider, 1/24/20)
2020 Jan 24, Bulgarian Foreign Minister Ekaterina Zaharieva said Sofia was likely to expel two Russian diplomats who prosecutors suspect were involved in spying.
(Reuters, 1/24/20)
2020 Jan 24, China announced that it is swiftly building a 1,000-bed hospital dedicated to patients infected with a new virus that has killed 26 people, sickened hundreds and prompted unprecedented lockdowns of cities during the country's most important holiday.
(AP, 1/24/20)
2020 Jan 24, More airports began to screen passengers arriving from China amid growing concerns over the outbreak of a new virus there that has already killed more than two dozen people and sickened hundreds.
(AP, 1/24/20)
2020 Jan 24, In Germany six people were killed and several were injured in a shooting in the southwestern town of Rot am See. Police arrested a German national (26) and believed the shooting was a result of a family dispute.
(AP, 1/24/20)(SFC, 1/25/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 24, Guatemala's new president, Alejandro Giammattei, declared a state of alert in a gang-plagued municipality on the outskirts of Guatemala City, part of a new crime-fighting strategy.
(Reuters, 1/24/20)
2020 Jan 24, Thousands of Iraqis rallied at two central Baghdad intersections after a prominent cleric called for a "million strong" protest against the American military presence, following the recent US killing of an Iranian general and an Iraqi militia chief.
(Reuters, 1/24/20)
2020 Jan 24, In Kenya Griffin Insurance, the country's first digital-only car insurance company, released its flagship mobile application. The company was founded and run by Jihan Abass (26), a former sugar trader and one of a handful of women in the business.
(Reuters, 1/24/20)
2020 Jan 24, An official in Kathmandu said a Nepali student home from China tested positive for the new coronavirus, making it the first confirmed case in the Himalayan nation.
(Reuters, 1/24/20)
2020 Jan 24, Sudan and a major rebel group signed a preliminary deal on political and security arrangements, paving the way for eventual reconciliation through ongoing talks. The deal signed in neighboring South Sudan grants special status to two regions, South Kordofan and Blue Nile, which are under the control of the rebels.
(Reuters, 1/24/20)
2020 Jan 24, In Syria a US soldier died while conducting routine-clearing operations in Deir ez Zor province.
(SFC, 1/27/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 24, In eastern Turkey a magnitude 6.8 earthquake struck Elazig province late today. 18 people were killed in Elazig and four in neighboring Malatya. The death toll soon rose to 41 people with hundreds injured.
(AP, 1/25/20)(AP, 1/26/20)(AP, 1/27/20)(SFC, 1/28/20, p.A4)
2020 Jan 24, UN deputy chief Amina Mohammed said there is an “alarming" crisis in education, pointing to the 258 million children under the age of 17 who are not going to school — and only 49 percent completing secondary education.
(AP, 1/25/20)
2020 Jan 24, In Venezuela a woman (49) reportedly escaped after 31 years of captivity when captor Matias Salazar (56) left a set of keys behind. She sought help at a branch of a state-run women’s advocacy agency. Salazar was later arrested in the city of Maracay.
(The Independent, 2/12/20)
2020 Jan 25, President Donald Trump's lawyers opened their impeachment trial defense in a rare Saturday session by accusing Democrats of striving to overturn the results of the 2016 election, saying the Democrats' investigations into his dealings with Ukraine were not a fact-finding mission but a politically motivated effort to drive him from the White House.
(AP, 1/25/20)
2020 Jan 25, In San Francisco thousands marched down Market Street in the 16th annual Walk for Life West Coast.
(SSFC, 1/26/20, p.A10)
2020 Jan 25, Space astronauts plugged a leak in the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer outside the Int'l. Space Station. The cosmic ray detector was shut down last year for the repair work.
(SSFC, 1/26/20, p.A6)
2020 Jan 25, In Afghanistan a hand grenade attack on a wedding ceremony wounded at least 20 people in Khost province.
(SFC, 1/27/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 25, Armenia's PM Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan called for environmental protesters to end their 18-month-old blockade of the Amulsar gold mine, owned by Anglo-American mining firm Lydian International, saying the protest was not in the national interest.
(Reuters, 1/25/20)
2020 Jan 25, Australia declared its first confirmed case of the Wuhan coronavirus in the state of Victoria, with the patient hospitalized in a stable condition in a suburb of Melbourne.
(Reuters, 1/25/20)
2020 Jan 25, Brazilian authorities said flooding and landslides following heavy rains in the southeast have killed at least 30 people.
(SSFC, 1/26/20, p.A4)
2020 Jan 25, Brazilian miner Vale SA raised the emergency level at the Sul Inferior dam at its Gongo Soco mine in Barão de Cocais, in the southern state of Minas Gerais, after heavy rainfall eroded the structure's reservoir.
(Reuters, 1/26/20)
2020 Jan 25, Suspected Islamic extremists attacked a busy market in Burkina Faso and killed as many as 50 people in Soum province.
(http://tinyurl.com/vx8vv9x)(SFC, 1/29/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 25, China's President Xi Jinping called the accelerating spread of a new virus a grave situation, as cities from the outbreak's epicenter in central China to Hong Kong scrambled to stop the spread of an illness that has infected more than 1,200 people and killed 41.
(AP, 1/25/20)
2020 Jan 25, Fashion retailer H&M said that data security breaches found at its German unit were unacceptable and it was cooperating with the local data protection supervisory authority in its investigation into the matter.
(Reuters, 1/25/20)
2020 Jan 25, In India a building that was being expanded in New Delhi collapsed killing five people, including four students. Eight other students were injured.
(SSFC, 1/26/20, p.A4)
2020 Jan 25, Iraqi security forces set fire to anti-government protest tents in the country's south early today, hours after cleric Muqtada al-Sadr withdrew his support, and re-opened key public squares in Baghdad that had been occupied by demonstrators for months. Iraq cracked down on anti-government protesters who have been occupying key public squares for months, leaving four demonstrators dead.
(AP, 1/25/20)(SSFC, 1/26/20, p.A5)
2020 Jan 25, Israeli aircraft struck several sites for Gaza militants late today in response to incendiary balloons launched from the Palestinian enclave.
(AP, 1/26/20)
2020 Jan 25, Limited mobile data services and internet was temporarily restored in Jammu and Kashmir, ending nearly a six month communications lockdown. Access was limited to about 300 "whitelisted" websites and internet speed remained low. The decision will be reviewed on Jan. 31.
(Reuters, 1/25/20)
2020 Jan 25, Japan said it has confirmed a third case of infection by China's coronavirus.
(AP, 1/25/20)
2020 Jan 25, It was reported that worst outbreak of desert locusts in Kenya in 70 years has seen hundreds of millions of the bugs swarm into the country from Somalia and Ethiopia. Those two countries have not had an infestation like this in a quarter-century.
(AP, 1/25/20)
2020 Jan 25, Libya's national oil company said the closure of major oil fields and production facilities has resulted in losses of more than $255 million in the six-day period ending Jan. 23.
(AP, 1/25/20)
2020 Jan 25, In Myanmar two women, one pregnant, were killed and seven other people injured after Myanmar troops shelled a Rohingya village in Rakhine state.
(Reuters, 1/25/20)
2020 Jan 25, Pope Francis met Iraqi Pres. Barham Salih and the two agreed that the country's sovereignty must be respected, following attacks on Iraqi territory this month by the United States and Iran.
(Reuters, 1/25/20)
2020 Jan 25, In eastern Yemen a US drone strike destroyed a building in Marib province housing al-Qaida militants and killed top al-Qaida leader Qassim al-Rimi.
(AP, 2/1/20)
2020 Jan 26, The biggest names in the US music industry were honored at the 62nd Annual Grammy Awards. Billie Eilish took home all four of the night’s biggest awards: best new artist, album of the year for "When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?" and both song of the year and record of the year for her hit "Bad Guy."
(Good Morning America, 1/27/20)
2020 Jan 26, US officials said five people in the United States, all of whom recently traveled from Wuhan, China, have been diagnosed with the new coronavirus.
(Reuters, 1/27/20)
2020 Jan 26, Bob Shane (85), the last original member of the Kingston Trio, died near his home in Phoenix. Shane, Nick Reynolds and David Guard had formed the SF Bay Area folk group in 1957.
(SFC, 1/30/20, p.C6)
2020 Jan 26, In southern California basketball legend Kobe Bryant (41) and his daughter (13) died along with seven others in a helicopter crash outside Los Angeles.
(Reuters, 1/27/20)
2020 Jan 26, In Louisiana two-barge towing vessels collided on the Mississippi River near Luling. One vessel sank and three crew members were left missing.
(SFC, 1/28/20, p.A7)
2020 Jan 26, In New York three people, including a boy (10), were shot and killed while sitting in their own home early today during a home invasion in Newburgh that authorities are now suspecting was a targeted attack.
(Good Morning America, 1/27/20)
2020 Jan 26, Afghan forces used ground attacks and air strikes in multiple operations against the Taliban during the last 24 hours, killing 51 fighters in an escalation that signaled renewed deadlock in peace talks.
(Reuters, 1/26/20)
2020 Jan 26, Australia Day celebrations saw thousands of people flock to beaches and music festivals, but festivities were clouded by the tragedy of bushfires which have killed 33 and destroyed hundreds of homes.
(Reuters, 1/26/20)
2020 Jan 26, Britain unveiled a new 50 pence coin minted to mark the country's departure from the European Union, which bears the inscription "Peace, prosperity and friendship with all nations" and the Brexit date of 31 January 2020.
(Reuters, 1/26/20)
2020 Jan 26, China banned wildlife trade nationwide in markets, supermarkets, restaurants, and e-commerce platforms due to the coronavirus outbreak. The new viral illness accelerated its spread with 56 deaths so far and a total of 1,975 infections.
(Reuters, 1/26/20)(AP, 1/26/20)
2020 Jan 26, The German military resumed training Iraqi troops in the country's Kurdish north, about three weeks after it was suspended following the US killing of a top Iranian general in Baghdad. The Bundeswehr has about 90 soldiers in Irbil. Germany's training mission in central Iraq is still suspended.
(AP, 1/26/20)
2020 Jan 26, A group of Hong Kong protesters set alight the lobby of a newly built residential building that authorities planned to use as a quarantine facility, as public fears in the financial hub about the coronavirus outbreak intensified. Anger grew towards government plans to convert the building into a quarantine zone as the number of confirmed cases in the city climbed to six.
(Reuters, 1/26/20)
2020 Jan 26, In India hundreds of thousands protested across the country against a citizenship bill that many fear is discriminatory against the minority Muslim community. The protests took place as India celebrated Republic Day, in commemoration of the day the Indian constitution came into effect.
(Reuters, 1/26/20)
2020 Jan 26, In Iraq hundreds of anti-government protesters flooded the streets Baghdad and southern provinces, defying cleric Muqtada al-Sadr who recently withdrew his support from the popular movement. Security forces in Baghdad killed one protester.
(AP, 1/26/20)(SFC, 1/27/20, p.A4)
2020 Jan 26, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu headed to Washington to meet Pres. Donald Trump for the unveiling of a much-anticipated plan to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
(SFC, 1/27/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 26, Israel's Interior Ministry said that it will now allow Israelis to travel to Saudi Arabia for religious or business visits. In the past, such visits required special permission from the government.
(AP, 1/26/20)
2020 Jan 26, Italian voters thwarted right-wing opposition leader Matteo Salvini's hopes of turning an election in a key northern region into a springboard for regaining national power. The center-left Democrats' incumbent won 51.4% of the vote for the governorship of the prosperous Emilia-Romagna region.
(AP, 1/27/20)
2020 Jan 26, Japan confirmed a fourth case of infection by China's coronavirus.
(Reuters, 1/26/20)
2020 Jan 26, In Libya fighting erupted as the country's east-based forces advanced toward the strategic western city of Misrata. The UN mission to Libya slammed ongoing violations of a UN Security Council arms embargo, despite commitments made a week ago at an international summit in Berlin. It said numerous flights had landed in Libyan airports over the last 10 days, providing both sides with "advanced weapons, armored vehicles, advisers and fighters".
(AP, 1/26/20)(AFP, 1/26/20)
2020 Jan 26, In Mali armed men attacked an army camp near the border with Mauritania, killing 19 soldiers in Sokolo in the Segou region.
(AP, 1/26/20)
2020 Jan 26, Dutch PM Mark Rutte apologized for the failure of officials in the Nazi-occupied country during World War II to do more to prevent the deportation and murder of just over 100,000 Jews.
(AP, 1/26/20)
2020 Jan 26, Syrian government forces reached the outskirts of Maaret al-Numan, a key rebel-held town, part of a weekslong offensive into the country's last rebel stronghold. A truck packed with explosives blew up in the city of Azaz in northern Syria, killing one person and wounding a number of others.
(AP, 1/26/20)(Reuters, 1/26/20)
2020 Jan 26, The health minister in Thailand, the country with the most confirmed cases outside China of the new coronavirus, called an emergency meeting with the transport and tourism ministries amid rising public discontent over the government's handling of the illness.
(Reuters, 1/26/20)
2020 Jan 27, A US federal appeals court ruled that a 2016 Arizona law that bars anyone but a family member or caregiver from returning early ballots for another person violates the Voting Rights Act and the Constitution.
(AP, 1/27/20)
2020 Jan 27, In Alabama a fire consumed at least 35 vessels docked along the Tennessee River early today. At least eight people were killed.
(AP, 1/27/20)(SFC, 1/28/20, p.A8)
2020 Jan 27, In California FBI and Yolo County officials announced the arrest of Paul Allen Perez (57), an inmate at Kern Valley State Prison, on suspicion of slaying five of his infant children between 1992 and 2001.
(SFC, 1/28/20, p.C1)
2020 Jan 27, FBI agents in San Francisco arrested Public Works Director Mohammed Nuru and restaurateur Nick Bovis following a public corruption probe. A federal complaint for wire fraud was unsealed the next day.
(SFC, 1/29/20, p.A1)
2020 Jan 27, In Maryland William Green (43), a Black man, was fatally shot six times by police while his hands were cuffed behind his back in a patrol car. Officer Michael Owen was arrested the following day and fired from the Prince George’s County Police Department. He has been charged with second-degree murder. On Sept. 28 it was reported that Green's family will receive $20m, among one of the largest settlement payments involving a person killed by police.
(The Independent, 9/28/20)
2020 Jan 27, General Motors said it is spending $2.2 billion to refurbish a Detroit factory so that it can build the company's first electric pickup in 2021, followed by a self-driving shuttle for GM's Cruise autonomous vehicle unit.
(SFC, 1/28/20, p.D1)
2020 Jan 27, During his first state address Mississippi’s governor, Tate Reeves, pledged to move towards closing unit 29 of the notorious Parchman penitentiary. He had toured the facility last week.
(The Guardian, 1/29/20)
2020 Jan 27, Utah Sen. Mitt Romney told reporters that he thinks new revelations from former Trump national security adviser John Bolton will increase the number of Republican senators who will vote in favor of calling at least Bolton to testify in the Senate impeachment trial.
(Reuters, 1/27/20)
2020 Jan 27, Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers signed an executive order creating what he promised would be a non-partisan commission to draw new legislative maps for next year for the Legislature to consider.
(SFC, 1/28/20, p.A7)
2020 Jan 27, In Afghanistan the Taliban said it had shot down a small US military plane in the central province of Ghazni, killing all personnel on board. US officials said there were no indications so far that the plane had been brought down by enemy activity.
(Reuters, 1/27/20)
2020 Jan 27, In northern Afghanistan Taliban militants attacked a police base late today, killing 11, possibly with help from at least one of the policemen inside.
(AP, 1/27/20)
2020 Jan 27, The death toll from the coronavirus outbreak in China rose to 81 and a small number of cases linked to people who travelled from Wuhan were confirmed in more than 10 countries. US stocks fell more than 1% as investors worried about the economic fallout of the fast-spreading coronavirus outbreak in China that has prompted the country to extend the Lunar New Year holidays and businesses to close some operations.
(Reuters, 1/27/20)
2020 Jan 27, A Croatian army helicopter plunged into the Adriatic Sea, killing one crew member. A search was underway for one other crew member.
(AP, 1/27/20)
2020 Jan 27, An Egyptian court sentenced 37 people to jail terms including life imprisonment for joining or supporting Islamic State's Sinai Province affiliate. A Cairo criminal court sentenced eight defendants to life terms and 29 to terms ranging from one to 15 years.
(Reuters, 1/27/20)
2020 Jan 27, Iran's President Hassan Rouhani warned of threats to the Islamic republic's "democracy and national sovereignty", after a body dominated by his ultra-conservative rivals disqualified thousands of candidates, weeks before elections.
(AFP, 1/27/20)
2020 Jan 27, The Islamic State group vowed in an audio message released today that the extremists will start a new phase of attacks that will focus on Israel and blasted the US administration's plan to resolve the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
(AP, 1/27/20)
2020 Jan 27, Lebanese lawmakers passed a controversial state budget for 2020 that aims to tackle the country's crippling financial crisis, as angry protesters threw stones at security forces massed outside the Parliament.
(AP, 1/27/20)
2020 Jan 27, Prosecutors in the Mauritania detained and charged 10 young men after a video presented as a "gay marriage" surfaced. Homosexuality is outlawed in the country. Police later determined the gathering was a birthday party.
(http://tinyurl.com/src6hjy)(SFC, 1/31/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 27, In Pakistan Manzoor Pashteen, leader of the Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement (PTM), which has campaigned against military excesses during anti-terrorism operations, was arrested in the northwestern city of Peshawar. Authorities detained two lawmakers belonging to a rights movement as they and hundreds of supporters across the country gathered to protest the arrest of their leader on charges of sedition.
(Reuters, 1/28/20)
2020 Jan 27, In Poland survivors of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp gathered for commemorations marking the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the camp by the Soviet army.
(AP, 1/27/20)
2020 Jan 27, Portugal said an int'l. drug operation involving authorites from six countries captured a yacht carrying almost two metric tons of cocaine in the middle of an Atlantic storm. Street value was said to be $77 million.
(SFC, 1/28/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 27, The Stockholm Int'l. Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said China is the 2nd largest arms producer in the world behind the United States.
(SFC, 1/28/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 27, Bombs planted underwater off Syria's coast exploded, damaging oil facilities used to pump oil into one of Syria's two petroleum refineries. Oil production in Syria is down to around 24,000 barrels a day, covering only a fraction of domestic needs.
(AP, 1/27/20)
2020 Jan 27, Ennahda, the biggest party in Tunisia's parliament, rejected the idea of a government that excludes other parties, adding that it was ready to contest another election.
(Reuters, 1/27/20)
2020 Jan 27, Three senior Western security officials said sweeping cyberattacks targeting governments and other organizations in Europe and the Middle East are believed to be the work of hackers acting in the interests of the Turkish government.
(Reuters, 1/27/20)
2020 Jan 27, It was reported that an ally of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has hired Washington lobbyist Robert Stryk’s Sonoran Policy Group, whose business has boomed under the Trump administration, as part of a $12.5 million effort to ease sanctions and reset bilateral relations as the US-backed campaign to oust the socialist leader stalls. Days later US law firm Foley & Lardner, hired for $12.5 million by a top official in Nicolás Maduro's government, decided to dump the controversial Venezuelan client amid a major outcry by critics.
(AP, 1/28/20)(AP, 1/31/20)
2020 Jan 27, Venezuelan special police detained a fugitive Colombian former senator who had illegally crossed the border. Aida Merlano, a former Conservative senator who was imprisoned last year for vote buying, made her theatrical escape in October.
(Reuters, 1/28/20)
2020 Jan 27, Yemeni officials and tribal leaders said a drastic escalation in fighting between the Saudi-led military coalition and Houthi rebels has killed and wounded hundreds of people over the past week.
(AP, 1/27/20)
2020 Jan 28, Lawyers for President Donald Trump wrapped up their arguments urging acquittal in his US Senate trial as Democrats ramped up their calls for former national security adviser John Bolton to testify about explosive allegations regarding Trump's role in a pressure campaign targeting Ukraine.
(Reuters, 1/28/20)
2020 Jan 28, The US Congressional Budget Office in its annual report said that the US budget is likely to burst through the $1 trillion mark this year despite a healthy economy. In 2012 former Pres. Barack Obama capped four consecutive years of $1 trillion-plus budget deficits.
(SFC, 1/29/20, p.D1)
2020 Jan 28, The Pentagon raised to 50 the number of US service members who suffered traumatic brain injuries in Iran's Jan. 8 missile on an Iraqi air base, the third time the number of injuries has been increased.
(AP, 1/28/20)
2020 Jan 28, San Francisco electronic health records company Practice Fusion agreed to pay $145 million to resolve charges that it took kickbacks from an opioid maker that used the company's software to prod doctors to prescribe more opioid panikillers to patients. Practice Fusion was acquired by Chicago-based Allscripts in 2018 for $100 million.
(SFC, 1/29/20, p.A1)
2020 Jan 28, In Illinois three people and a dog were killed in a small plane crash in a residential area southeast of Springfield.
(Good Morning America, 1/29/20)
2020 Jan 28, Charles Lieber (60), the chair of Harvard's chemistry and chemical biology department, was arrested on charges of lying to the US Defense Department about his involvement with the Chinese government to recruit foreign researchers into the controversial Thousand Talents Plan.
(Business Insider, 1/29/20)
2020 Jan 28, Mississippi officials announced late today that another inmate has died in the state's prison system, marking the 13th state prisoner death since late December.
(AP, 1/29/20)
2020 Jan 28, In Afghanistan the Taliban carried out attacks late today on security checkpoints in the northern province of Kunduz. 15 members of the Afghan army were reported killed.
(Reuters, 1/29/20)
2020 Jan 28, Britain gave the green light to a limited role for Chinese telecoms giant Huawei in the country's 5G network, in a decision it said was necessary for developing its future digital economy but one that left the United States "disappointed" after it called for a total ban.
(AFP, 1/28/20)
2020 Jan 28, The European Union added seven Russian-backed officials in Crimea to its sanctions blacklist for organizing local elections in the peninsula last year.
(Reuters, 1/28/20)
2020 Jan 28, French police clashed with firefighters protesting in Paris against their working conditions and demanding more pay.
(Reuters, 1/28/20)
2020 Jan 28, A German court ruled that a hostel situated on the grounds of the North Korean embassy in Berlin must close as its operation breaches sanctions aimed at stopping the flow of hard currency to Pyongyang.
(Reuters, 1/28/20)
2020 Jan 28, Germany-based Adidas said it will launch new fabrics made from recycled polyester and marine plastic waste and expand the product lines that use them after the success of shoes made with the Parley for the Oceans initiative.
(Reuters, 1/28/20)
2020 Jan 28, It was reported that most major railway stations in India will use facial recognition to fight crime by the end of 2020. Digital rights campaigners warned the move could breach people's privacy in the absence of stringent laws.
(Reuters, 1/28/20)
2020 Jan 28, North Korea said it will impose a one-month quarantine on all foreigners arriving from China in a bid to prevent the spread of a new coronavirus. The new strain of virus has killed at least 106 people in China and infected more than 4,500.
(Reuters, 1/28/20)
2020 Jan 28, Norway's national economic crime unit (Okokrim) raided the local office of international shipping company Teekay Offshore on suspicion of illegally exporting waste. The company said a vessel had been sent to an Indian yard in 2018 for recycling in full compliance with the requirements and standards of the Hong Kong convention.
(Reuters, 1/30/20)
2020 Jan 28, Thousands of Palestinians protested in Gaza City ahead of the Trump administration's announcement of its peace plan, which is expected to strongly favor Israel.
(AP, 1/28/20)
2020 Jan 28, Puerto Rico opened only 20% of its public schools following a strong earthquake that delayed the start of classes by nearly three weeks as fears linger over the safety of students.
(AP, 1/28/20)
2020 Jan 28, Qatar’s ruler Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani appointed Khalid bin Khalifa Al Thani, a close aide, as the country’s new prime minister after the resignation of Abdullah bin Nasser Al Thani, who had held the position since the emir came to power in June 2013.
(Bloomberg, 1/28/20)
2020 Jan 28, A team overseeing SAA's bankruptcy protected restructuring said that cash-strapped state carrier South African Airways (SAA) will receive 3.5 billion rand ($244 million) of emergency funding from the Development Bank of Southern Africa.
(Reuters, 1/28/20)
2020 Jan 28, Syrian government forces entered Maaret al-Numan, a key rebel-held town in in Idlib province, after surrounding it on three sides, sending thousands of people fleeing to safety in areas farther north.
(AP, 1/28/20)
2020 Jan 28, The UN's WHO said China has agreed that the World Health Organization can send international experts there "as soon as possible" to increase understanding of a new coronavirus and guide the global response to the outbreak.
(Reuters, 1/28/20)
2020 Jan 28, The UN reported that hundreds of children in the Sahel were killed, maimed or forcibly separated from their parents last year as the jihadist conflict continued to rage across the region.
(AFP, 1/28/20)
2020 Jan 28, The UN refugee agency reported that tribal clashes in Sudan’s West Darfur province forced more than 11,000 people to flee into neighboring Chad over the past month.
(AP, 1/28/20)
2020 Jan 28, The UN food agency said that one of its warehouses in the Houthi-controlled part of Yemen had been looted. WFP said 127.5 tons (over 115,000 kg) of aid were stolen in the northern province of Hajja.
(AP, 1/28/20)
2020 Jan 29, President Donald Trump signed the new North American trade agreement, the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), replacing NAFTA.
(Reuters, 1/29/20)
2020 Jan 29, A memo by Peter Navarro, President Trump’s trade adviser, warned that failing to contain a coronavirus outbreak could cost the US trillions of dollars and put millions of Americans at risk of illness or death. This was not made public until April 7.
(NY Times, 4/7/20)
2020 Jan 29, US senators posed written inquiries that led to pointed, back-and-forth debate as Trump’s legal team and House Democratic prosecutors pressed their respective cases.
(AP, 1/30/20)
2020 Jan 29, US authorities announced the discovery of the longest smuggling tunnel ever found on the Southwest border, stretching more than three-quarters of a mile from an industrial site in Tijuana, Mexico, to the San Diego area.
(AP, 1/29/20)
2020 Jan 29, It was reported that the US has deployed its first low-yield Trident nuclear warhead on a submarine that is currently patrolling the Atlantic Ocean, in what arms control advocates warn is a dangerous step towards making a nuclear launch more likely.
(The Guardian, 1/30/20)
2020 Jan 29, Illinois, Nevada and Virginia, the last three states to pass the Equal Rights Amendment, sued the archivist of the US government, demanding that an amendment to the US Constitution guaranteeing equal rights for women be declared valid.
(Reuters, 1/30/20)
2020 Jan 29, It was reported that Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc has agreed to sell its newspaper business to Lee Enterprises Inc for $140 million in cash, abandoning an industry the billionaire investor had long defended even as its financial prospects deteriorated.
(Reuters, 1/29/20)
2020 Jan 29, American Airlines said it is suspending two routes to China, citing "significant decline in demand for travel to and from China."
(Good Morning America, 1/29/20)
2020 Jan 29, US-based Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd said it had canceled three trips scheduled in February, after consultation with health authorities over the spread of coronavirus that has killed more than 100 people and infected thousands in China.
(Reuters, 1/29/20)
2020 Jan 29, Bangladesh officials said authorities in partnership with the United Nations will expand educational programs for hundreds of thousands of Muslim Rohingya children living in refugee camps who are currently receiving only basic lessons.
(AP, 1/29/20)
2020 Jan 29, Boris Johnson’s UK government said it will take the troubled Northern Rail franchise back into state ownership from March 1, in the latest sign that his Conservative administration is willing to intervene in the running of ailing private companies.
(Bloomberg, 1/29/20)
2020 Jan 29, The BBC said it will axe 450 jobs from its news division in a cost-saving plan that will result in cuts at the World Service and its 5Live radio station and in fewer reports being made by analysis show Newsnight.
(Reuters, 1/29/20)
2020 Jan 29, British Airways announced that it has suspended all flights to and from mainland China "with immediate effect," as the country struggles to contain the outbreak of the new coronavirus.
(Good Morning America, 1/29/20)
2020 Jan 29, It was reported that suspected Islamic extremists attacked a busy market in Burkina Faso over the weekend and killed as many as 50 people.
(SFC, 1/28/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 29, In China the number of confirmed coronavirus cases jumped to 5,974, surpassing the 5,327 in mainland China during the SARS outbreak in 2002-2003. The death toll rose to 132.
(AP, 1/29/20)
2020 Jan 29, French President Emmanuel Macron accused Turkey of breaching an agreement to halt foreign interference in Libya by sending warships and mercenaries to the country.
(AP, 1/29/20)
2020 Jan 29, Islam Alloush, whose real name is Majdi Ne'mah, was arrested in Marseille and days later handed preliminary charges linked to his activities in Syria. The one-time spokesman for the Syrian rebel faction the Army of Islam had arrived in the country on a short-term visa.
(AP, 2/6/20)
2020 Jan 29, Germany-based Lufthansa said it is suspending its own, Swiss and Austrian Airlines flights to and from China until Feb. 9.
(Reuters, 1/29/20)
2020 Jan 29, Indonesia's disaster agency said landslides and floods from torrential monsoon rains killed at least seven people on Sumatra island.
(SFC, 1/30/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 29, Palestinians in Lebanese refugee camps staged strikes, protests and sit-ins a day after US President Donald trump revealed the long-awaited details of a plan for ending the Israel-Palestinian conflict, denouncing it as ridiculously lop-sided and saying it gives them no rights.
(AP, 1/29/20)
2020 Jan 29, Philippines' Pres. Rodrigo Duterte ordered all members of his Cabinet not to travel to the United States after Washington blacklisted, Sen. Ronal dela Rosa, his former national police chief over the government's drug war.
(SFC, 1/31/20, p.A6)
2020 Jan 29, Russia arrested five former police officers on suspicion of planting drugs last year on Ivan Golunov, a prominent journalist, to frame him.
(Reuters, 1/29/20)
2020 Jan 29, Syrian government forces captured town of Maaret al-Numan in Idlib province, one of the largest and most strategic rebel-held towns in the country's northwest.
(AP, 1/29/20)
2020 Jan 29, In northwestern Syria warplanes struck a town late today in a rebel-held enclave, killing at least 10 people, including some who were fleeing the attack. The attack was believed to have been carried out by Russian warplanes. The Russian Defense Ministry rejected claims it was behind the attack.
(AP, 1/30/20)
2020 Jan 29, Tanzania’s national carrier said it will have to postpone its maiden flights from commercial capital Dar es Salaam to China, citing concerns over the spread of a coronavirus that has killed 133 people.
(Reuters, 1/29/20)
2020 Jan 29, UAE officials said a family of four Chinese tourists in the United Arab Emirates became the first cases in the Mideast of the new Chinese coronavirus. The family from Wuhan, the epicenter of the viral outbreak, entered the UAE on Jan. 16.
(AP, 1/29/20)
2020 Jan 29, UNICEF said a six-ton shipment of respiratory masks and protective suits for health care workers landed in China today for distribution in Wuhan, the epicenter of a spreading coronavirus outbreak.
(Reuters, 1/29/20)
2020 Jan 30, US officials said the United States will allow Russian, Chinese and European firms to continue work at Iranian nuclear sites to make it harder for Iran to develop a nuclear weapon, but will impose sanctions on its nuclear entity and top official.
(Reuters, 1/30/20)
2020 Jan 30, The Pentagon confirmed late today that a total of 64 US service members have been diagnosed with mild traumatic brain injuries in the wake of the Iranian missile attack on US forces in Iraq earlier this month.
(Business Insider, 1/30/20)
2020 Jan 30, The American Postal Workers Union (APWU) announced that its executive board has endorsed US Senator Bernie Sanders to be the Democratic presidential nominee on behalf of its 200,000 members nationwide.
(Reuters, 1/30/20)
2020 Jan 30, Fotis Dulos (52), a Connecticut man charged with murdering his wife who went missing amid a contentious divorce case, died in New York City following an apparent suicide attempt. The body of Jennifer Dulos has not been found despite extensive searches. On March 2 a Connecticut judge decided to drop the murder and kidnapping case against the late Fotis Dulos over the objections of his attorney, who said he wished to pursue a trial to prove that his client did not kill his estranged wife.
(AP, 1/30/20)(NBC News, 3/4/20)
2020 Jan 30, In Pennsylvania a boy (4) apparently shot himself with a gun found in the home of his father Edward Williams (28). Williams told police that robbers had invaded the house. He was soon charged with involuntary manslaughter.
(SSFC, 2/1/20, p.A8)
2020 Jan 30, Biogen Inc said it was preparing for the launch of its experimental treatment for Alzheimer's as the drugmaker races to become the first to bring a treatment for the memory-robbing disease to market.
(Reuters, 1/30/20)
2020 Jan 30, Eli Lilly and Co posted a higher-than-expected fourth-quarter profit on strong demand for diabetes drug Trulicity and psoriasis treatment Taltz, helping ease investor concerns over the impact of fierce competition for its growth products.
(Reuters, 1/30/20)
2020 Jan 30, A San Diego judge ordered Johnson & Johnson to pay nearly $344 million in penalties for deceptively marketing pelvic mesh devices for women.
(SFC, 1/31/20, p.A7)
2020 Jan 30, NASA pulled the plug on the Spitzer Space Telescope after it spent 16 years scanning the universe with infrared eyes. It had been designed to last 2½ to 5 years.
(SFC, 1/30/20, p.A6)
2020 Jan 30, A Burundian court jailed four journalists for 2-1/2 years for offences including undermining state security in a ruling criticized by Amnesty International as a sad day for press freedom in the central African country.
(Reuters, 1/30/20)
2020 Jan 30, China raised the death toll from the coronavirus to 170 and more countries reported infections from a new virus, including some spread locally, as foreign evacuees from China's worst-hit region returned home to medical tests and even isolation.
(AP, 1/30/20)
2020 Jan 30, In eastern Congo DRC rebels of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) killed at least 36 people in overnight attacks on villages in Beni territory.
(SFC, 1/31/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 30, Egyptian prosecutors said a 12-year-old girl died this week in southern Egypt after her parents brought her to a doctor who performed female genital mutilation, a criminal practice that remains widespread in the region. Egypt's public prosecutor ordered the arrests of her parents and the physician who preformed the procedure.
(AP, 1/31/20)
2020 Jan 30, Ethiopian Airlines said that its flights to China are operating normally, hours after its passenger call center told Reuters that all flights were suspended.
(Reuters, 1/30/20)
2020 Jan 30, In France Imran Aliev (44), a blogger from Chechnya vocally opposed to both Vladimir Putin and Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, died after his throat was cut in Lille. Aliev's traveling companion disappeared shortly after the murder. French police later said they believe the murder was "politically motivated".
(AP, 2/6/20)
2020 Jan 30, Berlin’s legislature backed measures including a five-year rent freeze, more than six months after they were proposed by the left-leaning administration. A property boom has caused rents to double over the past decade.
(Bloomberg, 1/30/20)
2020 Jan 30, Amnesty International criticized Greece's plans to deploy a floating barrier as a way to prevent migrants from reaching the Greek islands from nearby Turkey.
(AP, 1/30/20)
2020 Jan 30, Tokyo prosecutors issued an arrest warrant for Nissan's former chairman Carlos Ghosn, who skipped bail while awaiting trial in Japan. Prosecutors also issued arest warrants for three Americans they say planned and helped Ghosn escape.
(SFC, 1/31/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 30, State news agency Petra said Jordan has signed a new 4-year, $1.3 billion program with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
(Reuters, 1/30/20)
2020 Jan 30, Kenya's high court said the government could go ahead with a new digital ID scheme, as long as it brought in stronger regulations and did not use it to collect citizens' DNA and geo-location data.
(Reuters, 1/31/20)
2020 Jan 30, The UN's refugee agency in Libya announced it is suspending its operations at a jam-packed migrant facility over safety concerns as deadly fighting near the capital intensifies.
(AP, 1/30/20)
2020 Jan 30, Brexit cleared its final formal hurdle as the 27 European Union member states that Britain will leave behind approved the withdrawal agreement reached last October after more than three years of tortuous negotiations.
(Reuters, 1/30/20)
2020 Jan 30, North Korea said it is intensifying efforts to prevent the spread of a new virus from China into the isolated country by blocking tourists, reducing flights and mobilizing more screening efforts.
(AP, 1/30/20)
2020 Jan 30, Russia said it is closing its land border with China, effective tomorrow, similar to steps taken by Mongolia and North Korea, to guard against a new viral outbreak.
(AP, 1/30/20)
2020 Jan 30, Naama Issachar, a US-Israeli woman jailed for drug trafficking in Russia, was released and flew out with Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu after she was pardoned by President Vladimir Putin.
(AFP, 1/30/20)
2020 Jan 30, Cash-strapped state carrier South African Airways (SAA) said it would "cancel and consolidate selected flights" to lower costs, days after it received a 3.5 billion rand ($244 million) government bailout to ease a mounting cash-flow crunch.
(Reuters, 1/30/20)
2020 Jan 30, In Sweden two thieves stole items from the Couleur art gallery in Stockholm that included 10 to 12 table-size bronze sculptures by Spanish artist Salvador Dali.
(SFC, 1/31/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 30, Swiss authorities announced that they had processed a pilot transaction through the Swiss Humanitarian Trade Arrangement (SHTA), a new payment channel that intends to ease the sale of food and medicine to Iran by Swiss companies.
(Bloomberg, 2/3/20)
2020 Jan 30, The UN said the worst locust outbreak that parts of East Africa have seen in 70 years needs some $76 million to help control and the money is “required by, actually, now".
(AP, 1/30/20)
2020 Jan 30, The UN Security Council called for an immediate end to a “significant" escalation in fighting in Yemen between Houthi Shiite rebels and the Saudi-led military coalition supporting the government.
(AP, 1/30/20)
2020 Jan 30, The World Health Organization (WHO) declared a global public health emergency over the spread of the Wuhan coronavirus, citing the potential of the virus to spread to countries not prepared to deal with the contagion.
(South China Morning Post, 1/31/20)
2020 Jan 31, The Trump administration declared a public health emergency and announced series of steps to halt the spread of the novel coronavirus, which has stricken China and spread to countries around the world.
(Bloomberg, 1/31/20)
2020 Jan 31, The Trump administration announced that it was restricting immigrants from six additional countries that officials said failed to meet minimum security standards, as part of an election-year push to further clamp down immigration. Immigrants from Kyrgyzstan, Myanmar, Eritrea, Nigeria, Sudan and Tanzania will face new restrictions in obtaining certain visas to come to the United States.
(AP, 1/3120)
2020 Jan 31, President Donald Trump canceled an Obama-era prohibition on the use of anti-personnel landmines outside of the Korean peninsula. With potential future conflict with China and Russia in mind, the new policy specified no geographic limits on landmine use, declaring that the weapons offer an important war-fighting capability.
(AP, 1/31/20)
2020 Jan 31, The US Senate rejected by a slim margin calling witnesses to the impeachment trial of President Trump, setting up a final vote to end the proceedings. Utah Senator Mitt Romney joined fellow moderate Susan Collins as the only ones among the 53 Republican senators in the 100-seat chamber to support voting for witnesses. This left Democrats still short of the US Senate majority required and paving the way for Trump's swift acquittal.
(Yahoo News, 1/31/20)(Reuters, 1/31/20)
2020 Jan 31, The Treasury deleted Chinese tanker company COSCO Shipping Tanker (Dalian) Co from its sanctions list but continued to blacklist a second unit - COSCO Shipping Tanker (Dalian) Seaman & Ship Management Co Ltd.
(Reuters, 2/1/20)
2020 Jan 31, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited Belarus and said that the United States is willing and able to provide Belarus with 100% of its oil and gas, taking a slap at Russia which recently cut off supplies. Russia stopped supplying oil to Belarus after Dec. 31. The two nations had failed to renegotiate an agreed oil price for this year during drawn-out negotiations on deepening the integration of their economies.
(AP, 2/1/20)
2020 Jan 31, The Trump administration said it will not allow California to collect a key health care tax on managed care organizations. The decision could cost the state nearly $2 billion a year for low-income benefits.
(SFC, 1/31/20, p.A6)
2020 Jan 31, A US federal judge in Illinois stripped Iyman Faris of his naturalized US citizenship, siding with the government in the case of a Pakistan-born man convicted more than 15 years ago of plotting to destroy New York's Brooklyn Bridge. Faris was sentenced in 2003 for aiding and abetting al-Qaida by scoping out the bridge as part of a plot to cut through cables that support it.
(AP, 2/5/20)
2020 Jan 31, SF Bay Area's Santa Clara County reported its first coronavirus case.
(SSFC, 3/22/20, p.A12)
2020 Jan 31, Aspiring Chicago rapper Qaw’mane Wilson (30), who posted a video on YouTube of himself throwing thousands of dollars that he inherited from his mother to his “fans," was sentenced to 99 years in prison for her 2012 murder-for-hire killing. A Cook County judge also sentenced the convicted gunman, Eugene Spencer, to 100 years.
(AP, 2/3/20)
2020 Jan 31, In Maryland Coast Guard Lt. Christopher Hasson (50) was sentenced to more than 13 years in prison for firearms and drug offenses. The judge said he believed Hasson was preparing to carry out a "mass casualty assault" to act out his white nationalist views.
(SSFC, 2/1/20, p.A12)
2020 Jan 31, Baltimore restaurant owner Jean Agbodjogbe, who developed a financial relationship with a Kuwaiti royal, was found guilty of defrauding Alia Salem Al-Sabah and was ordered to pay her more than $8 million.
(AP, 2/5/20)
2020 Jan 31, Fifty North Atlantic right whales were spotted south of Nantucket Island. The US federal government asked Atlantic Ocean vessels to slow down in the area as only about 400 right wales are left in the world.
(SFC, 2/6/20, p.A5)
2020 Jan 31, A drug designed to minimize the frequency and severity of a child's allergic reaction to peanuts was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Palforzia, made by Aimmune Therapeutics, Inc. (AIMT) comes with a potential cost of around $4,200 per year.
(http://tinyurl.com/rrxfogy)
2020 Jan 31, Eli Lilly and Co priced its acute migraine treatment at $640 for a pack of eight pills and said it will be made available in pharmacies in the next few days.
(Reuters, 1/31/20)
2020 Jan 31, The Australian capital region declared a state of emergency because of an out-of-control forest fire burning erratically to its south.
(AP, 1/31/20)
2020 Jan 31, A court in Belgium acquitted three doctors of charges of manslaughter by poison in a case seen as a key test of the nation's euthanasia laws. Tine Nys (38), a patient with mental health problems, died in 2010.
(SFC, 1/31/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 31, The United Kingdom left the European Union with a mixture of joy, anger and indifference, casting off into the unknown in one of the biggest blows yet to Europe's attempt to forge unity from the ruins of World War Two.
(Reuters, 1/31/20)
2020 Jan 31, It was reported that British PM Boris Johnson is preparing to impose full customs and border checks on all European goods entering the UK after Brexit, in an attempt to ramp up pressure on the bloc in trade talks. Thousands of pro-Brexit supporters in central London erupted in cheers, sent balloons into the sky and sang "Rule Britannia", as Britain left the European Union.
(Reuters, 2/1/20)(AFP, 2/1/20)
2020 Jan 31, China counted 9,692 confirmed cases of coronavirus with a death toll of 213, including 43 new fatalities. The United States drew China's wrath with a travel warning while businesses struggled with supply problems from the coronavirus epidemic that has killed 213 people and been declared a global emergency.
(AP, 1/31/20)(Reuters, 1/31/20)
2020 Jan 31, French prosecutors said that European plane maker Airbus bribed public officials and hid the payments as part of a pattern of corruption that led to a record $4 billion bribery settlement with France, Britain and the United States.
(Reuters, 1/31/20)
2020 Jan 31, Guatemala said it is imposing travel restrictions on people who have recently been in China to prevent the new coronavirus entering the Central American country.
(Reuters, 1/31/20)
2020 Jan 31, An Indian diplomat said two Indian sailors were killed and two remain missing after the Zoya 1 oil tanker caught fire earlier this week off the UAE's sheikhdom of Sharjah.
(AP, 1/31/20)
2020 Jan 31, Indonesia deported US journalist Philip Jacobson who has written stories about environmental destruction in Indonesia after being arrested over alleged visa violations.
(Reuters, 1/31/20)
2020 Jan 31, The Iranian government banned flights to and from China. An analysis of flight tracking data by BBC Arabic later found that Mahan Air, a privately owned airline, flew between Iran and China 157 times between early February and March.
(The Telegraph, 5/5/20)
2020 Jan 31, In Iraq at least 11 demonstrators were wounded by security forces firing tear gas canisters to disperse crowds. Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani reiterated his condemnation of the use of force against anti-government protesters. Radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr called for his followers to return to the street, one week after he withdrew support for anti-government demonstrators camped out in Baghdad's Tahrir Square.
(AP, 1/31/20)
2020 Jan 31, In Nigeria More than 1,000 motorcycle taxi drivers marched to the gates of the Lagos state legislature to protest against a measure that will bar them from much of the traffic-choked commercial capital.
(Reuters, 1/31/20)
2020 Jan 31, Palestinians held demonstrations across the region to protest President Donald Trump's Middle East initiative, while militants in the Gaza Strip fired rockets and mortar rounds at Israel, drawing retaliatory strikes.
(AP, 1/31/20)
2020 Jan 31, Poland signed a $4.6 billion deal with the US for the purchase of 32 of its advanced F-35 fighter jets to enhance air defence on NATO's eastern flank.
(SFC, 1/31/20, p.A2)
2020 Jan 31, Sweden reported its first confirmed case of coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/3/20)
2020 Jan 31, It was reported that Ugandan doctors are giving new mothers artificial intelligence-enabled devices to remotely monitor their health in a first-of-its-kind study aiming to curb thousands of preventable maternal deaths across Africa.
(Reuters, 1/31/20)
2020 Jan 31, Vietnam Airlines said it will suspend its flights to destinations in China from next week over coronavirus concerns.
(Reuters, 1/31/20)
2020 Jan 31, Advocacy group Save the Children warned that half of nearly 400,000 displaced people in the Syrian government's two-month-long offensive on the country's last rebel-held region are children, calling it a wave of displacement unlike anything seen before in the war.
(AP, 1/31/20)
2020 Jan 31, The UN Security Council approved a slight relaxation of the arms embargo on the Central African Republic, an issue that has been a source of friction between France and Russia. It allows the CAR to acquire military vehicles mounted with up to 14.5mm weapons, provided the United Nations is notified ahead of time.
(AFP, 2/1/20)
2020 Jan 31, A UN report said Yemen's Huthi rebels are in possession of new weapons similar to those produced in Iran in potential violation of a UN arms embargo.
(AFP, 1/31/20)
2020 Jan, US Census Bureau computer servers were exploited during a cybersecurity attack, but it didn't involve the 2020 census, and hackers' attempts to keep access to the system were unsuccessful. This was only made public in 2021.
(AP, 8/18/21)
2020 Jan, Michael John Helterbrand (25) was arested with two other men in Georgia(US) for conspiring to kill members of an anti-fascist group. They were members of the Base, a violent white supremacist group.
(SFC, 4/25/20, p.A3)
2020 Jan, New Jersey became the 2nd US state to adopt legislation outlawing all nicotine vaping liquids other than those flavored to taste like tobacco.
(SFC, 2/20/20, p.A5)
2020 Jan, In Afghanistan Mark R. Frerichs, a Navy veteran turned contractor, disappeared late this month. The Taliban later said they were not holding Frerichs.
(AP, 5/9/20)
2020 Jan, Behdad Esfahbod (38), a prominent Canadian Iranian software engineer at Facebook, visited his family and was arrested by Revolutionary Guard intelligence agents on the streets of Tehran, held in solitary confinement for seven days and psychologically tortured into promising to cooperate, which he never did. In August Esfahbod made his story public.
(AP, 8/22/20)
2020 Jan, In China a Beijing court ruled in favor of Gao Moumou, a product director for e-commerce firm Dangdang. She had been fired in 2018 three months after undergoing gender reassignment surgery. She was the first transgender person to win a job discrimination case in China.
(Econ., 8/1/20, p.34)
2020 Jan, The International Maritime Organization banned the use of high-sulfur "bunker oil," a variety processed in Mexico's outmoded refineries.
(Econ., 5/23/20, p.24)
2020 Jan, The Federated States of Micronesia banned entry to travelers late this month from countries with confirmed cases of the coronavirus.
(Econ, 3/21/20, p.34)
2020 Jan, Russia successfully test-launched its Tsirkon (Zircon) hypersonic cruise missile from a military vessel for the first time early this month.
(Reuters, 2/27/20)
2020 Jan, In Sri Lanka a government ministerial order said the national anthem may now only be sung in Sinhalese and no longer in Tamil.
(Econ., 3/7/20, p.35)
2020 Feb 1, In Florida gunfire erupted after a funeral in Riviera Beach, killing a teenager (15) and a man and leaving one other person wounded.
(AP, 2/1/20)
2020 Feb 1, Juan Guaido, Venezuela’s opposition leader, rallied supporters in Miami and met with US Senator Marco Rubio, who’s played a key role in shaping US policy on the South American country.
(Bloomberg, 2/1/20)
2020 Feb 1, In Mississippi inmate Jesus Garcia (39) was was found dead in his cell at the Wilkinson Vounty Correctional Facility operated by the private Management and Training Corp. This brought the total dead in the state prison system to at least 15 since late December.
(SFC, 2/4/20, p.A5)
2020 Feb 1, It was reported that Philip Elvin Riehl's suspected $60 million scheme "targeted members of the Mennonite and Amish communities in Pennsylvania and elsewhere and is one of the largest Pennsylvania-based alleged Ponzi schemes in history".
(USA Today, 2/1/20)
2020 Feb 1, Delta Air Lines said it will accelerate the suspension of flights in and out of China from the United States after the White House said it was imposing new restrictions on visitors starting on February 2.
(Reuters, 2/1/20)
2020 Feb 1, Australia banned all arrivals from China due to the coronavirus.
(Econ, 3/21/20, p.35)
2020 Feb 1, Austria, Germany, and Slovenia confirmed they would not extradite their nationals to the UK during the 11-month transition period which starts tomorrow.
(Business Insider, 2/1/20)
2020 Feb 1, In Burkina Faso gunmen killed at leat 18 civilians in an attack on the northern village of Lamdamol.
(SFC, 2/4/20, p.A2)
2020 Feb 1, China’s death toll from a new virus rose to 259 and the number of confirmed cases in China rose to 11,791. A World Health Organization official said other governments need to prepare for "domestic outbreak control" if the disease spreads in their countries. At least 24 countries have reported cases since China informed WHO about the new virus in late December. The WHO counted 2,115 new cases.
(AP, 2/1/20)(Econ., 7/4/20, p.10)
2020 Feb 1, An Egyptian court referred the death sentences of 37 defendants, including one of the country’s most high-profile militants, to Egypt’s top religious authority for a non-binding opinion on whether they can be executed on terrorism-related charges.
(AP, 2/1/20)
2020 Feb 1, Indian Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman unveiled the budget for fiscal 2020/21, vowing to boost income of Indians and their purchasing power, in a bid to revive domestic economic growth. India raised taxes on imports of goods such as electronic items, toys and furniture, aiming to give impetus to domestic manufacturing.
(Reuters, 2/1/20)
2020 Feb 1, Indonesian officials said that around 250 of its nationals being evacuated from China's Hubei province, the center of the coronavirus epidemic, will be quarantined in its Natuna Islands military base.
(Reuters, 2/1/20)
2020 Feb 1, Former Iraqi communications minister Mohammed Allawi (66) was named prime minister-designate by rival factions after weeks of political deadlock.
(AP, 2/1/20)
2020 Feb 1, Japan moved to contain the economic impact of a coronavirus outbreak originating in China as strict new measures aimed at limiting the spread of the virus, including targeting foreign visitors, came into effect. Japan had 17 confirmed cases as of Jan. 31, including some without symptoms.
(Reuters, 2/1/20)
2020 Feb 1, In Mexico the body of Raul Hernandez, a tour guide who worked at a famous butterfly reserve, was found beaten and with a head injury about 8km from the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve. Hernandez was reported missing by his family on 27 January after he left his home in the town of San Pedro Libertad.
(The Independent, 2/2/20)
2020 Feb 1, It was reported that Exxon Mobil Corp and Total have asked Mozambique to send more troops to guard their operations in the far north after a surge of attacks by Islamist militants.
(Reuters, 2/1/20)
2020 Feb 1, Nigeria's government said it has created a committee to address the issues that led to a suspension of US immigrant visas to its citizens.
(Reuters, 2/1/20)
2020 Feb 1, Nigerian authorities bannd two-and three-wheeled motor bike taxis. Drivers asked "How do we feed our families?"
(Econ, 3/14/20, p.36)
2020 Feb 1, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said the Palestinian Authority has cut security ties with both Israel and the US in a speech at an Arab League meeting in Cairo in which he denounced the White House plan for ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
(Reuters, 2/1/20)
2020 Feb 1, Three Philippine airlines cancelled flights to China, joining many others around the world that have done the same, after health officials confirmed the Philippines' first case of coronavirus.
(Reuters, 2/1/20)
2020 Feb 1, Russia's aerospace defence forces began evacuating Russian citizens from China due to the coronavirus outbreak.
(Reuters, 2/1/20)
2020 Feb 1, Syria's government started rationing subsidized food like rice and sugar with smart cards, in the latest measure to address an economic crisis in the war-torn country.
(AFP, 2/1/20)
2020 Feb 1, Insurgents attacked pro-Syrian government forces west of Aleppo with three car bombs, in an intensification of fighting in the northwest following government gains this week.
(Reuters, 2/1/20)
2020 Feb 1, In Tanzania twenty people died and a dozen others were injured in a stampede during a church meeting in the northern city of Moshi.
(Reuters, 2/2/20)
2020 Feb 2, The average ticket price for today's showdown between the Kansas City Chiefs and the San Francisco 49ers hit $5,828 on StubHub, the second-highest price seen for the Super Bowl over the last 10 years.
(AP, 2/2/20)
2020 Feb 2, President Donald Trump used a Super Bowl pregame interview to rail against Democrats, accusing them of hatred and offering schoolyard insults about his potential 2020 rivals. Trump congratulated the state of Kansas and did not mention Missouri, where the Chiefs play their home games at Missouri-based Arrowhead Stadium. The Kansas City Chiefs' won over the San Francisco 49ers 31-20.
(AP, 2/2/20)(SFC, 2/3/20, p.A1)
2020 Feb 2, The US military command in South Korea instituted a 14-day self quarantine for any troops who recently traveled to China, adding that an outbreak in that country of a new coronavirus could harm military readiness.
(Reuters, 2/1/20)
2020 Feb 2, The average ticket price for today's showdown between the Kansas City Chiefs and the San Francisco 49ers hit $5,828 on StubHub, the second-highest price seen for the Super Bowl over the last 10 years.
(AP, 2/2/20)
2020 Feb 2, California health officials said they had confirmed 11 cases of the new, fast-spreading coronavirus in the United States, with one in Santa Clara County and two more in San Benito County.
(Reuters, 2/2/20)
2020 Feb 2, Punxsutawney Phil, Pennsylvania's most famous groundhog, declared: “Spring will be early, it's a certainty".
(AP, 2/2/20)
2020 Feb 2, In Wisconsin Black police Officer Joseph Mensah fatally shot Black teenager Alvin Cole (17) outside a suburban Milwaukee mall. In October a prosecutor said the officer would not be charged because he had reasonable belief that deadly force was necessary.
(AP, 10/7/20)
2020 Feb 2, In Australia dozens of homes were destroyed overnight in New South Wales and around Canberra.
(SFC, 2/3/20, p.A3)
2020 Feb 2, The UK’s departure from the European Union this weekend led to a reallocation of 27 of the country’s 73 seats in the EU assembly among 14 member nations.
(Bloomberg, 2/2/20)
2020 Feb 2, London police officers shot and killed a suspect after at least two people were stabbed in what authorities investigated as a terror attack. The suspect was soon identified as recently released convict Sudesh Amman (20).
(AP, 2/2/20)(SFC, 2/3/20, p.A7)
2020 Feb 2, Chinese health authorities released updated figures of 361 deaths and 17,205 confirmed cases from the newly identified coronavirus. The incubation period is so long that people may not know where or when they picked it up. Based on the first 425 confirmed cases in China, each infection led to 2.2 others on average.
(Reuters, 2/3/20)(AP, 2/2/20)
2020 Feb 2, In Egypt suspected Islamic militants blew up a natural gas pipeline in the restive norther part of Sinai Peninsula.
(AP, 2/3/20)
2020 Feb 2, France said it will deploy 600 additional soldiers in the African Sahel region to combat extremists, raising the amount of troops there to 5,100.
(AP, 2/2/20)
2020 Feb 2, In western Germany more than 100 environmentalist activists occupied the site of the yet-to-be commissioned Datteln 4 coal fired power plant to protest against carbon emissions from coal burning.
(Reuters, 2/2/20)
2020 Feb 2, In Iraq hundreds of anti-government demonstrators rejected Mohammed Allawi as the new prime minister-designate. Demonstrators have long swore they would not accept a candidate chosen by Iraq's establishment. Populist cleric Moqtada al-Sadr urged his followers to help security forces clear roads blocked during months of sit-in protests.
(AP, 2/2/20)(Reuters, 2/2/20)
2020 Feb 2, Kosovo’s two biggest parties reached a deal to create a new government almost four months after the Balkan country held snap elections following the prime minister's resignation. Albin Kurti (44), leader of the leftist Vetevendosje (Self Determination) party, said he would become prime minister under the deal and work with the center-right Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK) and other groups.
(Reuters, 2/2/20)
2020 Feb 2, In Lebanon more than 200 Lebanese and Palestinians held a protest near the US Embassy in Beirut against a White House plan for ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
(AP, 2/2/20)
2020 Feb 2, The Philippines recorded the first death outside China from the new coronavirus, as countries around the world evacuated hundreds of their citizens from the infection zone and Chinese authorities completed a new, rapidly constructed 1,000-bed hospital for victims of the outbreak.
(AP, 2/2/20)
2020 Feb 2, The Philippines's Department of Agriculture said blood samples taken from pigs in a southern province tested positive for the African swine fever virus.
(Reuters, 2/2/20)
2020 Feb 2, In Somalia a US air strike struck a home in the Middle Juba region as a family sat down for dinner. One girl (18) was reported killed and three people injured. On July 28 the US military acknowledged killing a civilian and wounding three others with an airstrike in Somalia. The original report on the airstrike said one member of the al-Shabab extremist group was killed in the vicinity of Jilib.
(SFC, 4/2/20, p.A2)(AP, 7/28/20)
2020 Feb 2, In Syria airstrikes on a rebel-held village in the northwest killed at least seven people, A large Turkish military convoy rumbled into rebel-held areas of northwest Syria.
(AP, 2/2/20)
2020 Feb 2, Vietnam Airlines and Vietjet Air resumed flights to Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macau, after the Hanoi government eased restrictions over virus concerns.
(Reuters, 2/2/20)
2020 Feb 3, It was reported that the US military has deployed a new addition to its nuclear arsenal — a long-range missile armed with a nuclear warhead of reduced destructive power. The so-called low-yield missile joins other, more powerful weapons aboard stealthy submarines prowling the oceans.
(AP, 2/3/20)
2020 Feb 3, In California a gunman killed a 51-year-old woman from Colombia and wounded five others before dawn on a packed Greyhound bus traveling from Los Angeles to San Francisco. Highway patrol officers found the suspect a few minutes later and detained him. Anthony Devonte Williams (33) of Capitol Heights, Maryland, was arrested after passengers managed to disarm him and get him off the bus.
(AP, 2/3/20)(AP, 2/4/20)
2020 Feb 3, Iowa held its first-in-the-nation caucus on presidential candidates.
(AP, 2/4/20)
2020 Feb 3, In Oklahoma City a truck slammed into members of the Moore High School cross-country team. One student was killed and another died the following day. Authorities said the truck was driven by man whose son was killed in a traffic crash over the weekend. Max Leroy Townsend (57) was being held in the Cleveland County jail on charges of first-degree manslaughter and six counts of failure to stop and render aid. A third student died on Feb 15.
(AP, 2/4/20)(SFC, 2/17/20, p.A6)
2020 Feb 3, In Texas two women were killed and a child was wounded in a shooting at a Texas A&M University-Commerce dormitory.
(AP, 2/4/20)
2020 Feb 3, Britain and the EU laid down their red lines for post-Brexit trade talks, offering contrasting visions for their future relationship that raise the prospect of clashes to come.
(AFP, 2/3/20)
2020 Feb 3, China accused the United States of whipping up panic over a fast-spreading coronavirus with travel restrictions and evacuations as Chinese stocks plunged on the first day back from the extended Lunar New Year holiday.
(Reuters, 2/3/20)
2020 Feb 3, In China the first patients arrived at a 1,000-bed hospital built in 10 days as part of China's sweeping efforts to fight a new virus that is causing global alarm. A woman (36) in the northern municipality of Tianjin was detained by police after "deliberately concealing" her contact with someone from a coronavirus-stricken area. Authorities reported 425 deaths and 20,438 confirmed cases. At least 180 cases have been confirmed outside China.
(AP, 2/3/20)(Reuters, 2/3/20)(SFC, 2/4/20, p.A3)
2020 Feb 3, Denmark's security service said three members of the Iran-based Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahwaz have been arrested and suspected of spying for a Saudi intelligence service. The suspected spying took place for six years from 2012.
(AP, 2/3/20)
2020 Feb 3, Emmanuel Macron arrived in Warsaw for the first visit to Poland by a French head of state in six years. He sought to mend relations strained by his criticism of Poland’s controversial overhaul of the judiciary and its rejection of a deal with Airbus in 2016.
(Bloomberg, 2/3/20)
2020 Feb 3, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu arrived in Uganda, saying his country is "returning to Africa in a big way" and urging the East African country to open an embassy in Jerusalem.
(AP, 2/3/20)
2020 Feb 3, Israel’s Channel 13 TV reported that PM Netanyahu was pushing to have the US recognize Moroccan sovereignty over the Western Sahara, which Morocco seized after colonial power Spain pulled out in 1975, in a step that isn’t internationally recognized.
(Bloomberg, 2/6/20)
2020 Feb 3, Malawi's Constitutional court nullified the results of last year's presidential election citing widespread irregularities. The court said a new vote will be held within 150 days. Supporters of President Peter Mutharika had reportedly used Tipp-Ex to alter vote tallies.
(SFC, 2/4/20, p.A2)(Econ, 4/25/20, p.50)
2020 Feb 3, It was reported that Nepal will count LGBT+ people for the first time in its next census, scheduled for June 2021, a move that campaigners said could help sexual minorities gain better access to education and health schemes.
(Reuters, 2/3/20)
2020 Feb 3, Pakistan, a close Chinese ally, said it was resuming air travel to China after a three-day suspension.
(Reuters, 2/3/20)
2020 Feb 3, Sudan’s military leader, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, met with Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu in Uganda and agreed to work toward normalizing relations, in what would be a historic step for the Arab League member that’s never officially recognized the Jewish state.
(Bloomberg, 2/4/20)
2020 Feb 3, Syrian troops captured the village of Nairab, reaching another highway that links the coastal city of Latakia with Aleppo. Syria's state news agency SANA said government forces were chasing insurgents and that four Turkish soldiers were killed and nine wounded triggering a Turkish retaliation. It claimed there were no casualties among Syrian troops.
(AP, 2/3/20)
2020 Feb 3, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Turkish artillery have hit some 46 targets in Syria and Turkish warplanes were also involved. He claimed that there were between 30 and 35 casualties on the Syrian side but offered no evidence. Turkish troops shelled Syrian army positions in three provinces, reportedly killing eight soldiers in Idlib, three in Latakia province and two in the Hama region. Syrian activists said airstrikes in the country's northern, rebel-held region killed at least nine civilians.
(AP, 2/3/20)
2020 Feb 3, Eight Yemeni children in critical need of medical care were evacuated with their families from the rebel-held capital Sanaa, in what the United Nations hopes will be the first of more mercy flights. They were flown to Egypt and Jordan for specialized care.
(AFP, 2/3/20)(SFC, 2/4/20, p.A2)
2020 Feb 4, President Donald Trump, on the eve of his likely acquittal in the Senate impeachment trial, delivered his third State of the Union address. The "great American comeback" President Donald Trump claimed in his speech drew on falsehoods about US energy supremacy, health care and the economy as well as distortions about his predecessor's record. Trump awarded conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
(AP, 2/4/20)(NY Times, 2/4/20)
2020 Feb 4, The US Treasury said the United States and Japan have signed an agreement to jointly encourage more private investment in energy and infrastructure projects.
(Reuters, 2/4/20)
2020 Feb 4, The United States and the British dependency of Jersey said they have agreed with Nigeria to repatriate more than $300 million in funds stolen by former military ruler General Sani Abacha. Corruption watchdog Transparency International estimates he stole as much as $5 billion of public money from 1993-1998.
(AP, 2/4/20)
2020 Feb 4, The US Department of Health and Human Services said it was partnering with Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc to develop a treatment for the coronavirus, making the drugmaker the latest to join the race to develop a therapy.
(Reuters, 2/4/20)
2020 Feb 4, In Arizona court hearings began for an Iraqi man living in metro Phoenix accused of leading an al-Qaida group that authorities say killed two police officers in 2006 on the streets of Fallujah in attacks carried out by masked men. Ali Yousif Ahmed Al-Nouri (42) was arrested last week in Arizona as part of an extradition request made by the Iraqi government.
(AP, 2/3/20)
2020 Feb 4, Miami-based Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd said has canceled eight cruises out of China through March 4 in response to the coronavirus outbreak.
(AP, 2/4/20)
2020 Feb 4, Iowa's coveted position as the first-in-the-nation nominating contest faces its most daunting challenge in decades in light of problems that kept the state Democratic Party from reporting results. The Iowa Democratic Party blamed a “coding issue in the reporting system" that it said has since been fixed. Partial results showed Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, with a narrow lead over Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.
(AP, 2/4/20)
2020 Feb 4, Cincinnati-based Macy's Inc said it plans to close 125 of its least productive stores over the next three years to tackle slowing mall traffic and will slash more than 2,000 corporate jobs as a part of a cost-savings effort.
(Reuters, 2/5/20)
2020 Feb 4, In Saudi Arabia the Middle Eastern respiratory syndrome (MERS) caimed another victim, bringing the total to 858.
(https://tinyurl.com/cgn6qfp)(Econ., 5/2/20, p.65)
2020 Feb 4, Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune pardoned more than 3,000 prisoners serving sentences less than six months as he seeks to win support after months of political turmoil.
(Reuters, 2/4/20)
2020 Feb 4, PM Boris Johnson formally launched the UN COP26 process in London with a pledge to bring forward the UK’s target to end the sale of new petrol and diesel cars by five years to 2035, in a bid to cut greenhouse gas pollution. COP26 is the abbreviated name of the 26th session of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. COP26 will be held in Glasgow in November.
(Bloomberg, 2/4/20)(AFP, 2/4/20)
2020 Feb 4, Bulgaria's President Rumen Radev accused the center-right government of PM Boyko Borissov of endangering the survival of the state through its failure to tackle endemic corruption.
(AP, 2/4/20)
2020 Feb 4, Officials in the Chinese city of Macao asked its 41 casinos to close for half a month to help the stop the coronavirus.
(SFC, 2/5/20, p.A3)
2020 Feb 4, The EU rejected US President Donald Trump’s proposal for securing peace in the Middle East and expressed concern about Israel’s plans to annex more Palestinian land.
(AP, 2/4/20)
2020 Feb 4, A German appeals court rejected a Jewish man's bid to force the removal of a 700-year-old anti-Semitic statue from Town Church in Wittenberg where Martin Luther once preached. The sculpture depicts people identifiable as Jews suckling on the teats of a sow, while a rabbi lifts the animal’s tail.
(AP, 2/4/20)
2020 Feb 4, Hong Kong hospitals cut services as thousands of medical workers went on strike for a second day to demand the border with mainland China be shut completely, as a new virus caused its first death in the semi-autonomous territory and authorities feared it was spreading locally. The fast-spreading outbreak has killed 490 people with 24,324 confirmed cases.
(AP, 2/4/20)(Reuters, 2/4/20)(SFC, 2/5/20, p.A3)
2020 Feb 4, Iran upheld the death sentence given to Amir Rahimpour, an Iranian national, found guilty of working for US intelligence.
(Bloomberg, 2/4/20)
2020 Feb 4, In Kenya Daniel arap Moi (95), a former schoolteacher who became Kenya’s longest-serving president (1978-2002), died. He led the East African nation through years of repression and economic turmoil fueled by runaway corruption.
(AP, 2/4/20)
2020 Feb 4, In Lebanon a military investigative judge charged Amer Fakhoury (57), a Lebanese-American man, with murder and torture of Lebanese citizens, crimes he allegedly committed during Israel's occupation of southern Lebanon. The prison, run by the so-called South Lebanon Army, was abandoned after Israeli forces pulled out of southern Lebanon in 2000, ending an 18-year occupation.
(AP, 2/4/20)
2020 Feb 4, Cease-fire talks officially began in Geneva between the Libya's warring sides.
(AP, 2/4/20)
2020 Feb 4, In the Maldives three foreigners were stabbed in a suburb of Male. Muslim militants claimed responsibility.
(Econ, 3/21/20, p.36)
2020 Feb 4, Nigeria said it has eased its visa rules in an effort to boost trade and tourism as an African trade agreement promoting freer movement of goods and services comes into effect.
(Reuters, 2/4/20)
2020 Feb 4, The World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) said Saudi Arabia has reported an outbreak of the highly pathogenic H5N8 bird flu virus on a poultry farm.
(AP, 2/4/20)
2020 Feb 4, A judge in South Africa issued an arrest warrant for former president Jacob Zuma for failing to appear in court on a corruption case.
(SFC, 2/5/20, p.A2)
2020 Feb 4, Syrian government forces advanced north under the cover of airstrikes reaching areas that have been held by insurgents for eight years. The bombardment forced more people to flee for safety in areas close to the Turkish border.
(AP, 2/4/20)
2020 Feb 4, It was reported that Syrian militants affiliated with groups such as al-Qaida and the Islamic State group were being sent by Turkey to fight on behalf of the UN-supported government in Libya.
(AP, 2/4/20)
2020 Feb 4, Turkey's Pres. Recep Tayyip Erdogan said his country won't allow Syrian forces to gain additional territory in a northern Syrian province, a day after clashes between Turkish and Syrian forces killed soldiers on both sides.
(AP, 2/4/20)
2020 Feb 4, The World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) said Vietnam has reported an outbreak of highly pathogenic H5N6 bird flu in a village in the northern part of the country.
(AP, 2/4/20)
2020 Feb 4, In Yemen Iran-backed Houthi rebels released dozens of Egyptian fishermen after detaining them for weeks on charges of trespassing into territorial waters.
(AP, 2/4/20)
2020 Feb 5, Senate Republicans voted to acquit Trump of abuse of power for pressing Ukraine to investigate political rival Joe Biden, a contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, and of obstructing a congressional investigation of the matter. The acquittal was Trump's biggest victory yet over his Democratic foes in Congress.
(Reuters, 2/6/20)
2020 Feb 5, A US federal judge prohibited US immigration authorities from relying on databases deemed faulty to ask law enforcement agencies to hold people in custody, a setback for the Trump administration that threatens to hamper how it carries out arrests. The ruling applies only to the Central District of California, where state law already sharply limits the extent to which state and local law enforcement agencies can honor requests from ICE. But the district encompasses ICE's Pacific Enforcement Response Center in Laguna Niguel, which makes requests around-the-clock to law enforcement agencies in 42 states and two US territories.
(AP, 2/7/20)
2020 Feb 5, The US Department of Homeland Security said hat it would no longer let New York residents enroll in its “trusted traveler" programs because of a new state law that blocked federal immigration officials from accessing motor vehicle records.
(AP, 2/6/20)
2020 Feb 5, FBI Director Chris Wray said that Russia is engaged in “information warfare" heading into the 2020 presidential election. He said law enforcement has not seen ongoing efforts by Russia to target America's election infrastructure. Wray also told the House Judiciary Committee that the threat of far-right domestic violent extremism has risen to a "national threat priority" for 2020, posing a "steady threat of violence and economic harm" to the US.
(AP, 2/5/20)(The Independent, 2/7/20)
2020 Feb 5, Human Rights Watch reported that at least 138 people deported from the US to El Salvador in recent years were subsequently killed.
(SFC, 2/6/20, p.A2)
2020 Feb 5, Merck & Co Inc said it will spin off its women's health, biosimilar drugs and older products into a separate publicly traded company as it tightens its focus on growth drivers like cancer drug Keytruda and vaccines.
(Reuters, 2/5/20)
2020 Feb 5, American film star Kirk Douglas (b.1916) died. His films included "The Strange Loves of Martha Ivers" (1946), "Champion) (1949), "The Bad and the Beautiful" (1952), "Lust for Life" (1956), "Spartacus" (1960) and "Lonely Are the Brave" (1962). His autobiography was titled "The Ragman's Son" (1988).
(SFC, 2/6/20, p.C3)
2020 Feb 5, Cyprus said it is preparing new legislation to curb the large number of sham marriages that are being conducted to help individuals obtain residency permits and potentially easier access to the European Union.
(AP, 2/5/20)
2020 Feb 5, At least two people died in Slovakia and the Czech Republic as strong winds, heavy rain and snow battered central and eastern Europe.
(AP, 2/5/20)
2020 Feb 5, In Germany Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party lined up with the far right Alternative for Germany (AfD) for the first time ever to elect a state leader in Thuringia, throwing the country’s political establishment into disarray.
(AP, 2/5/20)
2020 Feb 5, German Chancellor Angela Merkel arrived in South Africa to discuss trade, investment and energy issues with Berlin's largest trading partner in Africa.
(AP, 2/5/20)
2020 Feb 5, German sportswear company Adidas said it was temporarily shutting a "considerable" number of its stores in China due to the coronavirus outbreak.
(Reuters, 2/5/20)
2020 Feb 5, Senior Iraqi military officials said its government has told the military not to seek assistance from the US-led coalition in operations against the Islamic State group.
(AP, 2/5/20)
2020 Feb 5, In southern Iraq at least eight anti-government protesters were shot dead and 52 were wounded in clashes in Najaf with followers of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
(AP, 2/6/20)(AP, 2/10/20)
2020 Feb 5, Israeli forces shot and killed a Palestinian (17) during clashes with demonstrators in the West Bank, the first death since tensions rose following the release of President Donald Trump's Mideast plan.
(AP, 2/5/20)
2020 Feb 5, Organizers said Italian fashion house Prada is helping to fund a United Nations program that will enlist high school students from 10 cities to spread awareness about how humans impact the world's oceans.
(AP, 2/5/20)
2020 Feb 5, It was reported that at least 10 people aboard a cruise ship moored in Japan have tested positive for the novel coronavirus. The Diamond Princess will remain under quarantine in Yokohama with everyone on board for at least 14 days. Three more cruise ship passengers were soon diagnosed with the virus in Japan for a total of 64 on board the ship.
(Good Morning America, 2/5/20)(AP, 2/7/20)
2020 Feb 5, In the Netherlands the University of Maastricht disclosed that it had paid hackers a ransom of 30 bitcoin -- at the time worth 200,000 euros ($220,000) -- to unblock its computer systems, including email and computers, after an attack that unfolded on Dec. 24.
(Reuters, 2/5/20)
2020 Feb 5, Aid groups in Syria said cold weather, disease and a lack of shelter and medicine threatened hundreds of thousands of civilians as they fled fighting in Idlib province, in one of the biggest upheavals of the country's nine-year civil war.
(Reuters, 2/5/20)
2020 Feb 5, Turkey's Pres. Recep Tayyip Erdogan threatened to use force against Syrian government forces if they don't pull back to an earlier cease-fire line in northern Syria by the end of the month.
(AP, 2/5/20)
2020 Feb 5, In eastern Turkey successive avalanches over the last 24 hours killed at least 38 people and trapped dozens more. The death toll soon climbed to 41. The double avalanche left 84 people injured.
(AP, 2/5/20)(AP, 2/6/20)
2020 Feb 5, In Turkey a Pegasus Boeing 737 skidded off a runway in Istanbul and broke apart while landing in bad weather. Three people were killed and 179 injured.
(SFC, 2/6/20, p.A2)(SSFC, 2/9/20, p.A3)
2020 Feb 5, It was reported that Pope Francis has defrocked the Argentine priest, Roberto Juan Yannuzzi, after a four-year investigation determined he had sex with adults under his authority, absolved them of the sin during confession and otherwise abused his power. The pope’s decision was made public this week in a statement by the archbishop of La Plata, Argentina.
(AP, 2/5/20)
2020 Feb 5, In Zimbabwe some 20 miners were trapped underground after a mine shaft collapsed. At least two bodies were recovered.
(AP, 2/6/20)
2020 Feb 6, US President Donald Trump met with Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta, who came to the White House with a warning: Africa is not a battlefield for proxy disputes with countries such as China.
(AP, 2/6/20)
2020 Feb 6, It was reported that the US Treasury Department has complied with Republican Senators’ requests for highly sensitive and closely-held financial records about Hunter Biden and his associates and turned over “‘evidence’ of questionable origin" to them, according to a leading Democrat on one of the committees conducting the investigation.
(Yahoo News, 2/6/20)
2020 Feb 6, A US safety regulator said it has allowed SoftBank Group-backed autonomous vehicle startup Nuro Inc to temporarily deploy up to 5,000 low-speed electric delivery vehicles without human controls like mirrors and steering wheels.
(Reuters, 2/6/20)
2020 Feb 6, The FBI identified China as the biggest law enforcement threat to the United States, and its director said Beijing was seeking to steal American technology by "any means necessary".
(Reuters, 2/6/20)
2020 Feb 6, A US citizen (60) died from the coronavirus in Wuhan, China. It was the first known American death from the illness, and was likely to add to diplomatic frictions over Beijing’s response to the epidemic.
(NY Times, 2/8/20)
2020 Feb 6, A female (57) resident of Santa Clara County, Calif., died of the coronavirus, making this the earliest known victims of the pandemic in the United States. A 2nd resident (69) died on Feb. 17 and a 3rd (70) on March 6. On April 21 county health officials and the CDC said that the presence of the disease Covid-19 was determined by tissue samples from autopsies.
(https://tinyurl.com/ybvnqykd)(AP, 4/22/20)(SFC, 4/23/20, p.A7)
2020 Feb 6, In Indiana four young people were fatally shot in Indianapolis late today in an apparent targeted attack.
(SFC, 2/7/20, p.A6)
2020 Feb 6, Tom Perez, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, called for a “recanvass" of the results of the Iowa caucuses, saying it was needed to “assure public confidence" after three days of technical issues and delays. New results late today showed former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg leading Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders by two state delegate equivalents out of 2,152 counted.
(AP, 2/6/20)
2020 Feb 6, Peter Rockwell (83), whose famous father's iconic images graced the covers of the Saturday Evening Post and who became a noted artist in his own right, died in Danvers, Mass.
(AP, 2/15/20)
2020 Feb 6, Author Roger Kahn (92), perhaps best known for his 1972 best-selling book "The Boys of Summer," died in New York. The book nostalgically romanticized the Brooklyn Dodgers of a bygone era.
(Reuters, 2/7/20)
2020 Feb 6, In North Carolina Durham County sheriff’s deputies charged a record 18 people with soliciting prostitution, targeting the customers in a new fight against human trafficking. Deputies used the internet to arrange meetings with men at a local hotel and then arrested them there.
(Charlotte Observer, 2/7/20)
2020 Feb 6, Lynn Evands Mand (95), lead singer of the Chordettes, died in Ohio. The group became popular for their recording of "Mr Sandman" (1954) and "Lollipop" (1958) among other songs.
(SSFC, 3/1/20, p.B9)
2020 Feb 6, NASA astronaut Christina Koch, who has spent nearly 11 months in orbit on the longest spaceflight by a woman, landed safely in Kazakhstan along with along with station Commander Luca Parmitano of the European Space Agency and the Russian space agency Roscosmos' Alexander Skvortsov.
(AP, 2/6/20)
2020 Feb 6, Severe weather left one dead in Alabama as more than six dozen damaging storms are reported in the South from Louisiana to Tennessee -- including 12 reported tornadoes in Mississippi alone.
(Good Morning America, 2/6/20)
2020 Feb 6, In southwestern Alaska a pilot and four passengers were killed in a commuter plane crash.
(SFC, 2/8/20, p.A6)
2020 Feb 6, Eric Eoin Marques (34), a man who spent years fighting his extradition from Ireland to the US, pleaded guilty in a Maryland courtroom to operating a web hosting service that allowed users to anonymously access more than 1 million files of child pornography.
(AP, 2/6/20)
2020 Feb 6, Texas executed Abel Ochoa (47). The man had been convicted for shooting and killing his 29-year-old wife and his two daughters, as well as his father-in-law and sister-in-law shortly after smoking crack in 2002.
(Reuters, 2/6/20)(SFC, 2/7/20, p.A6)
2020 Feb 6, Corteva Inc said it will stop producing the agricultural pesticide chlorpyrifos by the end of the year, removing the world's largest manufacturer of a chemical that has been linked to low birth weight, reduced IQ and attention disorders in children. Corteva was spun off last year after a merger of Dow Chemical and Dupont.
(Reuters, 2/6/20)
2020 Feb 6, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc said it is ramping up efforts to develop a set of coronavirus treatments, which could be available for testing or use in some patients within a few months.
(AP, 2/6/20)
2020 Feb 6, Chinese President Xi Jinping declared a "people's war" against the fast-spreading coronavirus. Chinese health authorities reported 563 deaths and another sharp jump in the number of confirmed cases to 28,018. Outside mainland China, at least 260 cases have been confirmed. China finished building a second new hospital to isolate and treat patients of the virus.
(Reuters, 2/6/20)(AP, 2/6/20)
2020 Feb 6, In Colombia inmate Jhon Jairo Velasquez Vasquez, aka Popeye, died. He had worked for drug kingpin Pablo Escobar and said he participated in some 300 murders.
(Reuters, 2/6/20)
2020 Feb 6, In southern Egypt 13 people were killed and seven injured when a bus and a truck collided on a highway in Aswan province.
(AP, 2/6/20)
2020 Feb 6, Thomas Kemmerich, the premier of Germany's Thuringia state, stepped down and called for snap elections, barely 24 hours after he was elected with the help of far-right AfD lawmakers in a vote Angela Merkel called "unforgivable".
(AFP, 2/6/20)
2020 Feb 6, Greek officials said they have detected their first case of African swine fever at a breeding farm in the north of the country this week. African swine fever is harmless to humans but it is highly contagious and deadly in pigs. It has spread from Africa to Europe and Asia and has already killed hundreds of millions of pigs, affecting global meat markets.
(Reuters, 2/6/20)
2020 Feb 6, Greek police arrested seven people and searched for two others on suspicion of planning or carrying out attacks on migrants on the island of Lesbos.
(SFC, 2/8/20, p.A2)
2020 Feb 6, Israel carried out airstrikes near Damascus early today, wounding eight soldiers. An opposition war monitoring group said the strikes targeted army positions as well as Iran-backed fighters, killing 23.
(AP, 2/6/20)
2020 Feb 6, Israeli forces killed two Palestinians in clashes in the occupied West Bank and a third in Jerusalem after he opened fire at police, hours after a car-ramming attack elsewhere in the city wounded 12 Israeli soldiers.
(AP, 2/6/20)
2020 Feb 6, In northern Italy a high-speed passenger train derailed killing two railway workers and injuring 28 other people as its engine broke off and careened into a work vehicle on an adjacent track on the Milan-Bologna line.
(SFC, 2/7/20, p.A2)
2020 Feb 6, Russia said it has begun checking the body temperature of officials and reporters attending events involving President Vladimir Putin due to coronavirus fears.
(AFP, 2/6/20)
2020 Feb 6, Saudi Arabia barred its citizens and residents of the kingdom from traveling to China amid the new virus outbreak.
(AP, 2/6/20)
2020 Feb 6, Amnesty International said Saudi Arabia has used a secretive court established to try terrorism cases as "a weapon of repression" to imprison peaceful critics, activists, journalists, clerics and minority Muslim Shiites, including some who were sentenced to death and executed.
(AP, 2/6/20)
2020 Feb 6, Turkey sent more reinforcements into northwestern Syria, setting up new positions in an attempt to stop a Syrian government offensive on the last rebel stronghold in the war-torn country.
(AP, 2/6/20)
2020 Feb 7, Pres. Donald Trump ousted Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, the decorated soldier and national security aide who played a central role in the Democrats' impeachment case. Next came word that Gordon Sondland, Trump's ambassador to the European Union, also was out.
(AP, 2/7/20)
2020 Feb 7, Former Secretary of the Navy Richard V. Spencer endorsed Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg, making him the first high-level former Trump administration official to back a Democratic hopeful in the 2020 election.
(Reuters, 2/7/20)
2020 Feb 7, More than 300,000 homes and businesses were without power early today as a weather system blamed for five deaths in the South moved into the northeastern United States. Authorities confirmed five storm-related fatalities, in Alabama, South Carolina, North Carolina and Tennessee.
(AP, 2/7/20)
2020 Feb 7, A judge in Boston ordered Douglas Hodge (62) of Laguna Beach to spend nine months in federal prison for paying bribes to get four of his children into the Univ. of Southern California and Georgetown as fake athletic recruits. Hodge onece served as the head of Pimco, a bond management company.
(SFC, 2/8/20, p.A6)
2020 Feb 7, Vance Pearson, a former senior official of the United Auto Workers based in St. Louis, pleaded guilty to a corruption scheme that used union cash for vacation villas, golf, cigars and booze.
(SFC, 2/10/20, p.A5)
2020 Feb 7, In New Hampshire a Democratic presidential debate was held ahead or the upcoming primary in the state. Joe Biden had a strong moment during the debate when he called on the audience to “stand and give Col. Vindman a show of how much we supported him," adding that Trump “should be pinning a medal on Vindman and not on Rush Limbaugh".
(AP, 2/8/20)(Yahoo News, 2/7/20)
2020 Feb 7, It was reported that the US Air Force had 84 suicides among active-duty members last year, up from 60 the year before.
(AP, 2/7/20)
2020 Feb 7, The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said the Esperanza base on the northern tip of the Antarctic peninsula has recorded a temperature of 18.3 degrees Celsius (64.94 degrees Fahrenheit), the highest on record.
(Reuters, 2/7/20)
2020 Feb 7, Heavy rains lashed parts of the wildfire and drought-stricken Australian east coast, bringing some flooding in Sydney and relief to firefighters still dealing with dozens of blazes in New South Wales. There were still 42 fires burning in the state, with 17 of those not contained.
(AP, 2/7/20)
2020 Feb 7, Government data showed that aggressive deforestation is starting earlier this year in Brazil's Amazon rainforest, with destruction doubling in January compared with a year ago.
(AP, 2/7/20)
2020 Feb 7, It was reported that Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has signed into law quarantine rules for Brazilians who will be brought back from the Chinese city of Wuhan, the epicenter of a coronavirus outbreak.
(AP, 2/7/20)
2020 Feb 7, Shamima Begum (20), a UK woman who as a teenager ran away to join the Islamic State group in 2015, lost a legal challenge Friday aimed at restoring her citizenship, which was revoked on national security grounds.
(AP, 2/7/20)
2020 Feb 7, China confirmed 31,161 cases and 636 deaths on the mainland. Dr. Li Wenliang (34) died overnight due to the coronavirus at Wuhan Central Hospital. Police in December had reprimanded eight doctors including ophthalmologist Li for warning friends on social media about the emerging threat.
(AP, 2/7/20)
2020 Feb 7, Independent scientists questioned research that suggested that the outbreak of coronavirus disease spreading from China might have passed from bats to humans through the illegal traffic of pangolins. South China Agricultural University had led the research.
(Reuters, 2/7/20)
2020 Feb 7, Egypt freed pro-democracy activist Ramy Sayed (31). He had spent over four years in prison and rose to local prominence as one of the faces of the country's 2011 uprising.
(AP, 2/7/20)
2020 Feb 7, Egyptian police arrested Patrick George Zaki (27), an activist, researcher and vocal critic of President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi's government.
(AP, 2/9/20)
2020 Feb 7, French President Emmanuel Macron called for European nations to play a more direct role in halting a new nuclear arms race, saying they "cannot remain spectators" against a threat to the continent's collective security.
(AFP, 2/7/20)
2020 Feb 7, French air strikes killed 20 militants in the Sahel region where Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso meet. Earlier in the week commando operations killed about ten others in the border area.
(SSFC, 2/9/20, p.A3)
2020 Feb 7, Iraq's Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani called for security forces to protect anti-government protesters in a sermon, after weeks of violence in Baghdad and southern Iraq, and amid seething tensions between demonstrators and followers of cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
(AP, 2/7/20)
2020 Feb 7, The director of Israeli crossings informed all exporters and all relevant parties that all Palestinian agriculture products would be banned from export to world markets through the Jordanian crossing starting Feb. 9.
(Reuters, 2/8/20)
2020 Feb 7, The head of Ivory Coast's cotton and cashew council said production of cashews fell 17% to 634,641 tons in 2019 after as much as 200,000 tons were smuggled out of the country.
(Reuters, 2/7/20)
2020 Feb 7, In southern Kazakhstan ethnic clashes between ethnic Kazakhs and Dungans, a minority group with Chinese roots, left eight people dead. The total number of casualties soon rose to 10. Dozens of people were detained as police established their roles in the incident.
(AP, 2/9/20)
2020 Feb 7, Norway, western Europe's largest oil and gas producer, announced it was increasing its ambition to cut carbon emissions and would put an implementation plan before parliament later this year.
(Reuters, 2/7/20)
2020 Feb 7, President Vladimir Putin ordered payments to be made to Russian World War II veterans in Russia and the Baltic States as well as to those who were held in Nazi concentration camps. The one-time payments of 50,000 rubles to 75,000 rubles ($790-$1,200) will also go to the widows or widowers of veterans in Russia as well as Russian citizens in Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.
(AP, 2/7/20)
2020 Feb 7, Airat Khairullin, a member of the lower house of the Russian parliament, was killed in a helicopter crash in Tatarstan, about 850 km (500 miles) east of Moscow. Two survivors suffered serious injuries.
(AP, 2/7/20)
2020 Feb 7, In South Africa Tazne van Wyk (7) went missing. Her body was found two weeks later after her suspected murderer led police to the storm drain where he said he had disposed of it. The suspect, a violent multiple offender had been released on parole. He was in prison for the kidnapping and murder of another child.
(BBC, 3/22/20)
2020 Feb 7, Sudan reached a settlement with families of the victims of the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen, as part of its campaign to persuade the US to remove its designation as a state sponsor of terrorism. The settlement for about $30 million would be split between the families of the 17 sailors killed.
(Bloomberg, 2/13/20)
2020 Feb 7, Tunisia fired Moncef Baati, its ambassador to the UN, accusing him of failing to consult the foreign ministry on key issues that diplomatic sources said included Washington's controversial Middle East peace plan.
(AFP, 2/7/20)
2020 Feb 7, Several Turkish armored vehicles and tanks entered rebel-controlled northwestern Syria, the latest reinforcements sent in by Ankara amid a Syrian government offensive that this week brought the two countries' troops into a rare direct confrontation.
(AP, 2/7/20)
2020 Feb 7, The UN said people are fleeing a surge of attacks in northern Mozambique where witnesses have described beheadings, mass kidnappings and villages burned to the ground.
(Reuters, 2/7/20)
2020 Feb 7, A UN poverty expert said Spain is depriving its poor of basic rights, even as its businesses recover from the economic crisis.
(AP, 2/7/20)
2020 Feb 8, In Washington DC police escorted more than 100 members of the Patriot Front, a white nationalist group, on a march through the National Mall. Metropolitan Police said the march occurred without incident or arrests.
(Reuters, 2/8/20)
2020 Feb 8, In San Francisco a shooting Haight-Ashbury neighborhood involved an off-duty FBI agent and an adult male, who was hospitalized. The agent was not hurt.
(AP, 2/9/20)
2020 Feb 8, Robert Conrad (b.1935), American film and TV star, died in Malibu, Ca. His TV work included the series "The Wild Wild West" (1965-1970), "Baa Baa Black Sheep" (1976) and "The Black Sheep Squadron" (1977). His films included "Young Dillinger" (1966) and "Jungle All the Way" (1996).
(SFC, 2/12/20, p.C5)
2020 Feb 8, In eastern Afghanistan two US soldiers were killed and six wounded in a so-called insider attack in Nangarhar province late today. One Afghan National Army member was also killed.
(AP, 2/8/20)
2020 Feb 8, Australian authorities declared the Currowan Fire south of Sydney was finally out after destroying more than 300 homes and razing 500,000 hectares (1.2 million acres) over two-and-a-half months. A deluge in eastern parts of the country drenched deadly fires and helped ease a crippling drought.
(AP, 2/10/20)
2020 Feb 8, China's city of Wuhan, at the center of the coronavirus outbreak, opened another makeshift hospital, providing 1,500 beds.
(Reuters, 2/8/20)
2020 Feb 8, The World Health Organization (WHO) said the death toll in mainland China has risen to 723, looking likely to pass the 774 deaths recorded globally during the 2002-2003 outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). A total of 34,546 cases were reported on the mainland. The virus has spread to 27 countries and regions, based on official reports, infecting more than 330 people.
(Reuters, 2/8/20)(AP, 2/8/20)
2020 Feb 8, France said it is closing two schools and tried to reassure vacationers in the Alps after five British citizens, including a 9-year-old child, contracted the new virus from China at a French ski resort.
(AP, 2/8/20)
2020 Feb 8, Germany's ruling coalition called for fresh elections in the eastern state of Thuringia, whose pro-business premier stepped down only two days after being helped into the job with votes from the far right.
(Reuters, 2/8/20)
2020 Feb 8, Voters in New Delhi began voting in a state election seen as a test of Indian PM Narendra Modi's popularity following months of deadly anti-government protests over a new citizenship law.
(Reuters, 2/8/20)
2020 Feb 8, Iran said it has repelled a cyberattack that disrupted the country's internet services for an hour.
(AFP, 2/8/20)
2020 Feb 8, Irish voters cast their ballots with PM Leo Varadkar hoping to secure a new term on the back of his Brexit strategy. Polls put his Fine Gael party behind rivals Sinn Fein and Fianna Fail. Irish Republican Army-linked party Fianna Fail received 22.2% of the votes. Fine Gael, the party of incumbent Prime Minister Leo Varadkar, got 20.9%.
(AFP, 2/8/20)(Bloomberg, 2/9/20)(AP, 2/10/20)
2020 Feb 8, Libya’s warring sides ended several days of UN-brokered talks in Cairo without reaching a deal to consolidate a provisional cease-fire in and around the capital.
(AP, 2/9/20)
2020 Feb 8, North Korea failed to stage a parade in central Pyongyang, the 72nd anniversary of the founding of the country’s armed forces. This appeared to be a sign of the regime's fear of the coronavirus spreading from China.
(AP, 2/10/20)
2020 Feb 8, In Poland thousands of people rallied in Warsaw to show support for the country's right-wing leadership as it overhauls the justice system to put it under government control.
(SSFC, 2/9/20, p.A3)
2020 Feb 8, Syrian government forces captured new areas from insurgents in their efforts to control a key highway in the northwest, as Turkey sent more reinforcements into the war-torn country.
(AP, 2/8/20)
2020 Feb 8, In northeastern Thailand a soldier shot multiple people and was holed up in a shopping mall in Nakhon Ratchasima. The suspect was identified as Sgt. Jakrapanth Thomma. It took Thai police sharpshooters 16 hours to Thomma and end the crisis that left 29 dead.
(https://tinyurl.com/yacu34x5)(AP, 2/8/20)(AP, 2/9/20)(Econ., 5/9/20, p.29)
2020 Feb 8, Turkmen President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov (62) named his son Serdar (38) as minister of industry and construction. Serdar is likely to oversee the ambitious project of building a new capital from scratch for the central Ahal province, which he used to head.
(Reuters, 2/8/20)
2020 Feb 8, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy asked Pope Francis for help to win the release of prisoners of war held by Russia and Russian-backed separatists.
(Reuters, 2/8/20)
2020 Feb 9, In Hollywood "Parasite," a suspenseful South Korean film, became the first non-English movie to win best picture. It also won the Oscar for best international film, original screenplay and best director. Joaquin Phoenix and Renee Zellweger picked up the Oscars for best actor and actress. Brad Pitt and Laura Dern won the supporting actor and actress categories.
(Good Morning America, 2/10/20)
2020 Feb 9, A report released by Recorded Future, a Cambridge, Mass., said North Korea has vastly expanded its use of the internet in ways that enable its leader, Kim Jong Un, to evade a “maximum pressure" US sanctions campaign and turn to new forms of cybercrime to prop up his government.
(AP, 2/10/20)
2020 Feb 9, In New York City a gunman walked into a police station in the Bronx and started shooting early today, wounding an officer just hours after he shot a different officer in a patrol van. The suspect was taken into custody.
(AP, 2/9/20)
2020 Feb 9, Amazon.com Inc said it is pulling out of this month's Mobile World Congress because of the coronavirus outbreak, in another blow to one of the telecom industry's biggest gatherings which attracts over 100,000 visitors to Barcelona. The GSMA telecoms industry association said the Feb. 24-27 event will go ahead as planned.
(AP, 2/9/20)
2020 Feb 9, In Florida Europe and NASA's Solar Orbiter was launched at Cape Canaveral late today to capture the first pictures of the sun's elusive poles.
(SFC, 2/11/20, p.A8)
2020 Feb 9, An attack on an Algerian military barracks near the country's border with Mali killed one soldier and the driver of a vehicle rigged with explosives. The Islamic State soon claimed responsibility.
(Reuters, 2/11/20)
2020 Feb 9, Azerbaijan voters chose a new parliament in an early election after a short and low-key campaign.
(AP, 2/9/20)
2020 Feb 9, Storm Ciara battered the UK and northern Europe with hurricane-force winds and heavy rains, halting flights and trains and producing heaving seas that closed down ports.
(AP, 2/9/20)
2020 Feb 9, In Cameroon a surge of violence derailed voting in English-speaking regions because residents were too scared to cast ballots in legislative and municipal elections after militant separatists kidnapped scores of candidates and threatened violence.
(AP, 2/9/20)
2020 Feb 9, China raised the death toll from its coronavirus outbreak to 811. Total confirmed coronavirus cases in China stood at 37,198.
(Reuters, 2/9/20)
2020 Feb 9, El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele marched into the National Assembly with soldiers to demand that lawmakers pass a languishing request for security loans.
(Bloomberg, 5/15/20)
2020 Feb 9, In India the regional Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) party held a rally in Mumbai to support a citizenship law introduced by PM Narendra Modi last year that has triggered nationwide protests.
(Reuters, 2/9/20)
2020 Feb 9, Indian-held Kashmir was hit by a general strike called by the separatist Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) to mark the anniversary of the death of Afzal Guru, a Kashmiri man who was executed for his part in an attack on India's parliament in 2001.
(Reuters, 2/9/20)
2020 Feb 9, An Iranian rocket failed to put a communications satellite into orbit today, the latest setback for a program the US claims helps Tehran advance its ballistic missile program.
(AP, 2/9/20)
2020 Feb 9, In Ireland Fine Gael and Fianna Fail ruled out governing with Sinn Fein, the former political wing of the IRA, which presented itself as a left-wing alternative to the centrist consensus which has largely dominated government since the foundation of the state in the 19/20s.
(Bloomberg, 2/9/20)
2020 Feb 9, The Israeli military blocked Palestinian agricultural exports in the latest escalation of a months-long trade war that comes amid fears of renewed violence as well.
(AP, 2/9/20)
2020 Feb 9, Libya's Azzawiya Oil Refining Company said that it was forced to stop refining operations due to a lack of crude supplies and no inventory. Oil output in Libya has fallen sharply since Jan. 18 because of a blockade of ports and fields by groups loyal to eastern-based commander Khalifa Haftar.
(Reuters, 2/9/20)
2020 Feb 9, A dinghy carrying migrants left Garabulli, Libya, and soon disappeared. All aboard were presumed drowning.
(AP, 3/6/20)
2020 Feb 9, Thousands of people marched in Morocco's capital to protest US President Donald Trump's peace plan for the Mideast and to oppose what they see as the Moroccan government's lenient position toward it.
(AP, 2/9/20)
2020 Feb 9, Hundreds of Myanmar nationalists rallied in the country's commercial capital in a show of support for the military, amid tensions between the civilian government and the army ahead of elections expected later this year.
(Reuters, 2/9/20)
2020 Feb 9, The Philippines confirmed that African swine fever infections had spread in the south of the country, which accounts for nearly a third of the nation's 12.8 million pig herd.
(Reuters, 2/9/20)
2020 Feb 9, Spain's National Center for Microbiology confirmed the country's second case of new coronavirus, after tests on one of four people suspected of having the virus in Mallorca came back positive. The other three were negative.
(Reuters, 2/9/20)
2020 Feb 9, A Swiss referendum cleared the way for the country to close a loophole in lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights by extending anti-racism laws to cover sexual orientation. Voters supported outlawing antigay discrimination 63.1% to 36.9%.
(Reuters, 2/9/20)(SFC, 2/10/20, p.A2)
2020 Feb 9, Syria's military vowed to keep up its campaign to regain control of the whole country, days after capturing large chunks of territory from the last rebel holdout in the northwest.
(AP, 2/9/20)
2020 Feb 9, Locusts began to arrive in Uganda, reaching a village near the Kenyan border as a new swarm in northern Somalia threatened more than 10 million people across the region with a severe hunger crisis.
(AP, 2/9/20)
2020 Feb 9, The United Arab Emirates restored mail services to Qatar, frozen for more than two years amid a diplomatic rift, after a regional meeting attended by both Gulf states and the United Nations’ postal agency.
(Bloomberg, 2/10/20)
2020 Feb 10, President Donald Trump's $4.8 trillion budget plan for the coming fiscal year drew a prompt rejection from congressional Democrats, who said it betrayed his promise to protect popular health and safety-net programs.
(AP, 2/10/20)
2020 Feb 10, President Donald Trump again downplayed the severity of head injuries suffered by US troops during the Jan. 8 Iranian missile attack, as the injury total rose to 109.
(AP, 2/11/20)
2020 Feb 10, The Department of Justice unveiled charges against four members of China's military for allegedly hacking into the credit agency Equifax and stealing the personal information of millions of Americans in 2017. The four charged are Wu Zhiyong, Wang Qian, Xu Ke and Liu Lei, all of whom are members of the 54th Research Institute, a part of China's People's Liberation Army. Equifax settled a class action lawsuit over the breach for more than $700 million in 2019.
(CBS News, 2/10/20)
2020 Feb 10, Maryland unveiled statues of abolitionists Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass in the Old House Chamber, the room where slavery was abolished in Maryland in 1864.
(AP, 2/10/20)
2020 Feb 10, In Mississippi William Bynum Jr. (57), the president of Jackson State Univ., resigned after he was arrested over the weekend in a prostitution sting in Clinton.
(SFC, 2/11/20, p.A5)
2020 Feb 10, In South Carolina Faye Swetlik (6) vanished as she played outside her home in Cayce. On Feb 13 authorities said she was found dead. Coty Scott Taylor (30) was found dead in Faye's neighborhood of Churchill Heights.
(ABC News, 2/13/20)(Yahoo News, 2/14/20)
2020 Feb 10, In Washington state the Seattle City Council voted 7-0 to ban residential evictions for the months of December, January and February. The ruling would not apply to landlords owning four housing units or less.
(SFC, 2/12/20, p.A6)
2020 Feb 10, Arm Ltd, a semiconductor technology firm owned by SoftBank Group, unveiled a chip technology aimed at putting artificial intelligence functions on tiny devices such as sensors designed to detect patterns in human speech or other streams of data.
(Reuters, 2/10/20)
2020 Feb 10, Brazil authorized its national public security force to support efforts to fight deforestation in the Amazon, amid worries that 2020 could see another surge in destruction of the world's largest rainforest.
(Reuters, 2/10/20)
2020 Feb 10, Officially, much of China got back to work, but there were few signs of activity on the streets of the capital, Beijing, as the new coronavirus has now killed 909 people and sickened 40,235. An advance World Health Organization team of medical experts arrived in China to help investigate the coronavirus outbreak.
(AP, 2/10/20)(Reuters, 2/10/20)
2020 Feb 10, Defense Minister Carlos Holmes Trujillo said Colombia hopes this year to eradicate 130,000 hectares (321,237 acres) of coca, the base ingredient in cocaine.
(Reuters, 2/10/20)
2020 Feb 10, Egypt freed detained labor activist Kamal Khalil, who criticized the government and spent about five months in detention. He will have to report at least once a week to the police.
(AP, 2/11/20)
2020 Feb 10, A storm battered Europe with hurricane-force winds and heavy rains, killing at least six people and causing severe travel disruptions as it moved eastward across the continent and bore down on Germany.
(AP, 2/10/20)
2020 Feb 10, Finland's paper workers union agreed a pay deal with the forestry industry association, ending a two week strike that halted production of one of the country's main exports.
(Reuters, 2/10/20)
2020 Feb 10, In France dozens of climate activists invaded US asset manager BlackRock's office in central Paris, calling for the fund to pull out of fossil fuel investments.
(Reuters, 2/10/20)
2020 Feb 10, Chancellor Angela Merkel said she regretted today's decision of her protegee Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer not to stand as their party's candidate for the chancellorship in Germany's next federal election.
(Reuters, 2/10/20)
2020 Feb 10, Iraqi security forces shot and killed at least one protester in the country's south, as the five-month anti-government protest movement entered a critical stage.
(AP, 2/10/20)
2020 Feb 10, A cybersecurity expert said a security breach in an app used by Israel's ruling conservative party has exposed the personal information of nearly 6.5 million Israelis to hackers.
(AP, 2/10/20)
2020 Feb 10, An Israeli court sentenced Raed Salah, head of the outlawed northern branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel, to 28 months in prison for “inciting to terror" in a series of speeches he made after a deadly attack in 2017 on Israeli police at a contested Jerusalem holy site.
(AP, 2/10/20)
2020 Feb 10, Japan launched a second complaint at the World Trade Organization over support South Korea gives its shipbuilding industry, intensifying a wider dispute between the two Asian countries.
(Reuters, 2/10/20)
2020 Feb 10, The Philippine government moved to end the franchise of the country's leading broadcast network for allegedly broadcasting for a fee. ABS-CBN has been critical of the leadership of Pres. Rodrigo Duterte.
(SFC, 2/11/20, p.A3)
2020 Feb 10, Russian law enforcement officers in Siberia detained Vadim Kutsenko, an adherent of the Jehovah's Witnesses, late today and drove him to a secluded area where they reportedly beat his head and legs, put him in a chokehold and used a taser on him. Kutsenko was suspected of helping to organize the Jehovah's Witnesses' activities in Chita.
(AP, 2/14/20)
2020 Feb 10, South Sudan President Salva Kiir was named the top “spoiler of peace" in a new award that seeks to shame him and others into taking serious steps to end bloody conflict in the world's youngest country. A Uganda-based group, Atrocities Watch Africa, cited Kiir and others for their roles in the conflict that also has displaced at least 2 million people.
(AP, 2/10/20)
2020 Feb 10, In Syria six Turkish soldiers were killed and seven were wounded when Syrian government forces shelled the Taftanaz air base in Idlib. Four Syrian rebels were also killed in the shelling. The exchange of fire came even as a Russian delegation arrived in Ankara for a second round of talks to discuss the fighting in Syria.
(AP, 2/10/20)
2020 Feb 10, The United Nations said it is to test drones equipped with mapping sensors and atomizers to spray pesticides in parts of east Africa battling an invasion of desert locusts that are ravaging crops and exacerbating a hunger crisis.
(Reuters, 2/10/20)
2020 Feb 10, A confidential United Nations report disclosed that. North Korea stepped up its exports of illegal coal shipments in 2019, with most of those deliveries headed for China.
(Bloomberg, 2/10/20)
2020 Feb 11, The US State Dept. said it has authorized the voluntary departure of US government employees and their family members from Hong Kong in light of the outbreak of a deadly coronavirus.
(Reuters, 2/11/20)
2020 Feb 11, The US defense agency responsible for secure White House communications said in a letter that Social Security numbers and other personal data in its network may have been compromised in a data breach that occurred between May and July 2019 in a system hosted by the Defense Information Systems Agency.
(Reuters, 2/20/20)
2020 Feb 11, The US Justice Department reduced its recommendation for the duration of Roger Stone’s sentence, a reversal that followed a Trump tweet criticizing prosecutors’ initial recommendation as too harsh. The four lawyers who prosecuted Stone quit the case after the Justice Department overruled them and said it would take the extraordinary step of lowering the amount of prison time it would seek for President Donald Trump’s longtime ally and confidant.
(Bloomberg, 2/12/20)(AP, 2/11/20)
2020 Feb 11, Tracy Reynolds (45) of Alamosa, Colorado, was arrested at the Tampa, Florida, airport, where she was trying to board a flight to Mexico. Izhak Cohen (53) was arrested in Hadera, Israel, and prosecutors said they will seek his extradition to the US. They were charged with laundering millions of dollars that came from a high-end prostitution operation that started in 2012.
(AP, 2/16/20)
2020 Feb 11, A federal judge in New York approved the merger of T-Mobile and Sprint in a controversial decision, siding with the telecom giants over a coalition of state attorney generals who were suing to block two of the largest wireless carriers in the US from combining.
(Good Morning America, 2/11/20)
2020 Feb 11, In New York Christian Pacheco (42) was released from prison. In 1996 he was convicted of cutting the throat of Lemuel Cruz in 1995 on the testimony of the bar's bouncer. Despite the confession from another man 16 years ago, it took more than a decade for Pacheco to be freed. In soon proceeded to sue New York for $100 million.
(https://tinyurl.com/w226e5h)(CBS, 2/20/20)
2020 Feb 11, The US Attorney's Office in Philadelphia said five men have been arrested and charged with trying to trade in Iranian oil in violation of US trade sanctions.
(AP, 2/11/20)
2020 Feb 11, New Hampshire held its presidential primary. Bernie Sanders won 25.7% of the Democratic primary vote, to Pete Buttigieg’s 24.4%. Amy Klobuchar was third with 19.8% and Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden trailed in single digits.
(AP, 2/11/20)(Bloomberg, 2/12/20)
2020 Feb 11, Entrepreneur Andrew Yang said he is ending the presidential campaign he built on the promise of a universal basic income of $1,000 a month for every American over 18.
(Bloomberg, 2/11/20)
2020 Feb 11, Actor Jussie Smollett was indicted for a second time on charges of lying to police about a racist and anti-gay attack he allegedly staged on himself last year in downtown Chicago.
(AP, 2/11/20)
2020 Feb 11, In NYC ex-convict Lawrence “Larry" Ray (60), accused of bilking several college students out of nearly $1 million and forcing some into prostitution or unpaid labor, was arrested on extortion and sex trafficking charges. Ray had allegedly turned his daughter’s university dormitory into a “cult" and forced one student into sex work.
(AP, 2/11/20)(The Independent, 2/12/20)
2020 Feb 11, Virginia lawmakers passed measures that would give cities and counties the autonomy to "remove, relocate,contextualize, cover or alter" Confederate monuments. The vote was largely along party lines in the Democrat-led House and Senate.
(SFC, 2/13/20, p.A6)
2020 Feb 11, The International Atomic Agency (IEA) reported that global carbon dioxide emissions stopped growing last year, despite the global economy experiencing a marked increase in size.
(AP, 2/11/20)
2020 Feb 11, In Afghanistan a suicide bomber targeting a military academy in Kabul killed at least six people, including two civilians and four military personnel.
(Good Morning America, 2/11/20)
2020 Feb 11, An overcrowded boat carrying about 138 Rohingya refugees from Bangladeshi camps sank in the Bay of Bengal, leaving at least 15 confirmed dead, mostly women.
(AP, 2/11/20)
2020 Feb 11, Britain's PM Boris Johnson committed tens of billions of pounds for a controversial new high speed rail line linking London with cities to the north, despite soaring costs and mounting anger from his own Conservative Party colleagues.
(Bloomberg, 2/11/20)
2020 Feb 11, China reported 42,708 confirmed cases, including 1,017 deaths. More than 300 cases were also reported in at least 24 other countries. Franco-British biotech company Novacyt said it can offer a coronavirus test that is faster than rival methods by focusing on a narrow sequence of DNA coding.
(Reuters, 2/11/20)
2020 Feb 11, Postnord, a post and logistics company owned by Denmark and Sweden, said it would no longer accept packages going to China, citing limited freight capacity in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak.
(Reuters, 2/11/20)
2020 Feb 11, Egypt’s fast-growing population hit 100 million people, presenting a pressing problem for an already overburdened country with limited resources.
(AP, 2/11/20)
2020 Feb 11, In Georgia Gigi Ugulava, one of the leaders of the European Georgia party, was sentenced by the Supreme Court to 38 months in jail on charges of misusing public funds while mayor of Tbilisi, his second conviction on similar charges.
(Reuters, 2/12/20)
2020 Feb 11, German and Swiss media reported that US and German intelligence services raked in the top secret communications of governments around the world for decades through their hidden control of a top encryption company Crypto AG, US. The Swiss company was secretly owned by the US Central Intelligence Agency together with Germany's BND Federal Intelligence Service, who rigged Crypto's equipment to be able to easily break the codes and read the government’s messages.
(AFP, 2/11/20)
2020 Feb 11, Iran taunted the United States on the 41st anniversary of the ouster of its ally the shah, as huge crowds gathered to mark the historic occasion.
(AFP, 2/11/20)
2020 Feb 11, Iraq's capital of Baghdad awoke to see their city covered in snow. The last time the capital saw snow was in 2008.
(AP, 2/11/20)
2020 Feb 11, In northern Israel vandals slashed the tires of dozens of vehicles in an Arab village and spray painted slogans on buildings warning of Jewish-Arab “assimilation".
(AP, 2/11/20)
2020 Feb 11 Japan's Mitsubishi Aircraft Corp unannounced commitments from customers to buy hundreds of its SpaceJet M100 regional jets, but its first focus is on certifying its larger introductory model, the M90.
(Reuters, 2/11/20)
2020 Feb 11, Lebanese security forces fired tear gas to disperse thousands of protesters near the parliament building in Beirut, where the new Cabinet was expanding on its policy statement ahead of a confidence vote by lawmakers.
(AP, 2/11/20)
2020 Feb 11, In Mexico the body of Fatima Cecilia Aldrighett (7) was discovered wrapped in a bag in a rural area in the suburbs of Mexico City. Her family had been forced to wait hours to submit a missing person report by investigators after Fatima was taken from school.
(The Independent, 2/18/20)
2020 Feb 11, Nepali officials said millions of its citizens who work overseas will be given mandatory safety training before departure. About 1,000 out of an estimated 4 million Nepali migrants die abroad each year, mainly in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Malaysia where most work as domestics and in construction.
(Reuters, 2/11/20)
2020 Feb 11, Two women tied the knot in Northern Ireland’s first same-sex wedding, after the region became the last part of the United Kingdom to legalize gay marriage.
(AP, 2/11/20)
2020 Feb 11, Northern Irish police arrested Paul McIntyre (52) for the murder of journalist Lyra McKee in Londonderry on April 19, 2019. The killing sparked outrage in the British-run province.
(Reuters, 2/12/20)(SFC, 2/14/20, p.A2)
2020 Feb 11, Thousands of Palestinians demonstrated against the US peace plan. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas appeared before the UN Security Council and angrily rejected US President Donald Trump's Middle East peace proposal as a gift to Israel and unacceptable to Palestinians.
(AFP, 2/11/20)(Reuters, 2/11/20)
2020 Feb 11, The Philippines notified the United States it would end a major security pact allowing American forces to train in the country, in the most serious threat under President Rodrigo Duterte to their 69-year treaty alliance. The termination would take effect after 180 days unless both sides agree to keep it.
(AP, 2/11/20)
2020 Feb 11, In South Africa Joseph Shabalala (78), the founder of the South African multi-Grammy-Award-winning music group Ladysmith Black Mambazo, died in Pretoria. the choral group, founded in 1964, shot to world acclaim collaborating with Paul Simon on the “Graceland" album and many other artists.
(AP, 2/11/20)
2020 Feb 11, A top Sudanese official said the country's transitional authorities and rebel groups have agreed to hand over officials wanted by the ICC, presumably referring to long-time autocrat Omar al-Bashir, who is wanted for war crimes including mass killings in Darfur.
(AP, 2/11/20)
2020 Feb 11, Rebels in northern Syria rebels shot down a Syrian military helicopter, killing its crew members in a fiery crash, while the government kept up its relentless bombing campaign on the opposition-held region, with an airstrike in which seven civilians died.
(AP, 2/11/20)
2020 Feb 11, The UN's World Health Organization convened outside experts to fast-track promising tests, drugs and vaccines to help slow the outbreak of a new virus that emerged in China that has killed more than 1,000 people and spread to two dozen other countries. The coronavirus is now called COVID-19.
(AP, 2/11/20)(ABC News, 2/11/20)
2020 Feb 12, US Pres. Donald Trump congratulated Attorney Gen'l. William Barr for lowering the Justice Department's sentencing recommendation for Roger Stone, a friend of the president.
(SFC, 2/13/20, p.A5)
2020 Feb 12, Attorney General William Barr agreed to testify before the House Judiciary Committee next month, appearing for the first time before the panel as questions swirl about whether he intervened in the case of a longtime ally of President Donald Trump.
(AP, 2/12/20)
2020 Feb 12, The US Senate voted 51-45 to limit President Trump from pursuing military action in Iran without congressional approval. Trump will likely veto the bill, and the Senate won't have the votes to overturn it.
(The Week, 2/12/20)
2020 Feb 12, The US Anti-Defamation League reported that Incidents of white supremacist propaganda distributed across the nation jumped by more than 120% between 2018 and last year, making 2019 the second straight year that the circulation of propaganda material has more than doubled.
(AP, 2/12/20)
2020 Feb 12, Chairman Troy Price of the Iowa Democratic Party announced his resignation after a disastrous caucus process beset by technical glitches led to a dayslong delay in reporting the results, inconsistencies in the numbers and no clear winner.
(AP, 2/13/20)
2020 Feb 12, Winners of the Dan David Prize were announced. The Israel-based Dan David Prize gives $1 million prizes in three categories each year, past, present and future. Secretary of the Smithsonian Lonnie G. Bunch III and Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, a professor of Jewish studies won in the "past" category. Women's health rights advocate Debora Diniz and feminist scholar Gita Sen split the prize in the “present" category. Demis Hassabis, founder of artificial intelligence company DeepMind, and Amnon Shashua, founder of Mobileye, an Intel company that develops technology for self-driving vehicles, split the “future" prize.
(AP, 2/12/20)
2020 Feb 12, Britain's Foreign Office said it was putting the annual $6.1 million contribution to the Commonwealth Secretariat on hold following accusations cronyism.
(SFC, 2/13/20, p.A2)
2020 Feb 12, BP set one of the oil sector's most ambitious targets for curbing carbon emissions as new chief executive Bernard Looney began the biggest revamp in its 111-year history.
(Reuters, 2/12/20)
2020 Feb 12, China's leadership touted "positive results" from efforts to contain the new coronavirus epidemic but warned it still faced a "large-scale war" against the outbreak. The death toll rose to 1,113, while more than 44,600 people had been infected by the newly named COVID-19 virus.
(AFP, 2/12/20)
2020 Feb 12, The European Union and the United States urged Georgia to reinforce democracy after opposition leader Gigi Ugulava was jailed for a second time in a case activists say is politically motivated.
(Reuters, 2/12/20)
2020 Feb 12, Human Rights Watch warned that Italy is endangering migrants by renewing support for the Libyan coast guard, which blocks their flight and sends them back to squalid detention centers in the North African country. About 5,000 migrants are languishing in dozens of filthy Libyan centers, where rape, torture and other abuses run rampant.
(AP, 2/12/20)
2020 Feb 12, Italian senators voted to lift immunity for far-right leader Matteo Salvini, opening the way for a potentially career-ending trial over accusations he illegally detained migrants at sea last year.
(Reuters, 2/12/20)
2020 Feb 12, Japanese police confirmed the arrest of a mother-and-son duo for allegedly making more than 3,200 no-show hotel cancellations, costing the hotels $1 million while collecting reward points worth $22,000.
(AFP, 2/12/20)
2020 Feb 12, It was reported that automaker Nissan it is suing former chair and CEO Carlos Ghosn in Japan for 10 billion yen, or $90 million, saying it's seeking to recover damages from his alleged financial misconduct and fraud.
(The Week, 2/12/20)
2020 Feb 12, Chitetsu Watanabe, a Japanese man with a sweet tooth who believes in smiles, become the world's oldest male at 112 years and 344 days old. The oldest living person is also Japanese, Kane Tanaka, a 117-year-old woman.
(AP, 2/12/20)
2020 Feb 12, It was reported that Kosovo's PM Albin Kurti and cabinet ministers will accept a halving of their salaries in an attempt to demonstrate that the new government plans to tackle wage inequality.
(Reuters, 2/12/20)
2020 Feb 12, A Pakistani court handed down a five-year prison sentence to radical cleric Hafiz Saaed for terrorism financing. The court charged that his charities are fronts for the militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba. The US has a $10 million bounty on Saaed for his role in the 2008 Mumbai attacks that killed 166 people.
(SFC, 2/13/20, p.A2)
2020 Feb 12, It was reported that two Russian women who were kept in isolation for possible inflection by a new virus say they fled from their Russian hospitals this month because of uncooperative doctors, poor conditions and fear they would become infected.
(AP, 2/12/20)
2020 Feb 12, Viktor Sviridov, a former top Russian prison official reportedly suffering from advanced cancer, killed himself in court with a shot to the chest, shortly after getting a three-year sentence for extortion.
(Reuters, 2/12/20)
2020 Feb 12, This year's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, was cancelled by trade show organizer GSMA due to coronavirus concerns.
(SFC, 2/13/20, p.D1)
2020 Feb 12, In northeastern Syria a civilian was killed and another was wounded in a rare clash between American troops and a group of government supporters who tried to block a US convoy driving through a village.
(AP, 2/12/20)
2020 Feb 12, The UN human rights office issued a report on companies it said have business ties to Israeli settlements in the West Bank, a long-delayed move likely to draw the ire of Israel and its main ally the United States. It said 94 of the companies were domiciled in Israel and 18 in six other states.
(Reuters, 2/12/20)
2020 Feb 12, A research study of global laws said slavery is not a crime in almost half the countries in the world. More than 40 million people are held in modern slavery, which includes forced labor and forced marriage, according to estimates by the International Labor Organization and the anti-slavery group the Walk Free Foundation.
(AP, 2/12/20)
2020 Feb 12, The UN Security Council endorsed a 55-point road map for ending the war in Libya and condemned the recent increase in violence in the oil-rich North African country.
(AP, 2/12/20)
2020 Feb 13, It was reported that Pro-Trump groups raised more than $60 million in January and have more than $200 million on hand for this year's general election, shattering fundraising records on the path toward a goal of raising $1 billion this cycle.
(AP, 2/13/20)
2020 Feb 13, The US House of Representatives passed a bill to write women's rights into the US Constitution. The ERA Amendment still faced passage in the Senate.
(SFC, 2/14/20, p.A1)
2020 Feb 13, US officials reported the 15th case of coronavirus in the United States, saying the patient was among those who had been evacuated from Wuhan, China, and placed under federal quarantine at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas.
(Reuters, 2/13/20)
2020 Feb 13, The United States added to its series of charges against China's Huawei Technologies, accusing the Chinese telecoms giant of stealing intellectual property from six US companies and covering up its involvement in projects in North Korea.
(South China Morning Post, 2/14/20)
2020 Feb 13, The US Government Accountability Office said it is opening a review of Pres. Donald Trump's $28 billion bailout for farmers harmed by his trade war amid allegations that the money was mismanaged and allocated unfairly. The program began in 2018 as a $12 billion effort to mitigate losses for farmers as a result of Trump's trade war.
(SSFC, 2/16/20, p.A12)
2020 Feb 13, The Pentagon announced that Defense Sec. Mark Esper has approved shifting $3.8 billion in funds that Congress had previously authorized F-35 fighter aircraft and other military programs for Donald Trump's border wall.
(SFC, 2/15/20, p.A5)
2020 Feb 13, Conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh drew bipartisan criticism for saying the country won't elect Pete Buttigieg president because he's been “kissing his husband" on stage after debates.
(AP, 2/13/20)
2020 Feb 13, Los Angeles County District Attorney Jackie Lacey announced that her office has asked the court to dismiss nearly 66,000 marijuana convictions going back decades, CBS LA reported. In a news conference, Lacey called it the largest such undertaking in state history.
(CBS News, 2/13/20)
2020 Feb 13, Ricky Davis was ordered released from custody in Placerville, near Sacramento, after authorities used extended DNA links developed through publicly available genealogical websites to build a family tree that led to the arrest of a new suspect in the killing of his housemate. Davis had spent about 15 years in prison after being wrongfully convicted in the case.
(The Guardian, 2/14/20)
2020 Feb 13, In New York City the privately held McClatchy, publisher of the Miami Herald, the Sacramento Bee and other newspapers, filed for bankruptcy protection. McClatchy said its 30 newsrooms in 14 states dould continue operating as usual during the case.
(SFC, 2/14/20, p.D3)
2020 Feb 13, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt said the state would resume Death Row executions using a three-drug lethal injection protocol.
(SFC, 2/14/20, p.A6)
2020 Feb 13, LabCorp said it has begun work on developing its own test for the coronavirus that has killed over 1,300 in China.
(Reuters, 2/13/20)
2020 Feb 13, It was reported that wildlife officials in Kentucky are continuing to roundup invasive carp on Kentucky Lake as part of a 15-year battle to halt the advance of the invasive fish.
(SFC, 2/13/20, p.A6)
2020 Feb 13, Tesla Inc announced plans to raise $2 billion in a 2.65 million stock offering. Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk will buy up to $10 million in shares, while board member and Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison will purchase up to $1 million worth of Tesla shares.
(Reuters, 2/13/20)
2020 Feb 13, In Afghanistan an air strike killed a senior Taliban commander and eight others in northern Balkh province. The Taliban's Mujahid said the insurgents had killed six Afghan soldiers, including two officers, in an attack on a checkpoint in northern Kunduz province.
(Reuters, 2/14/20)
2020 Feb 13, In Afghanistan avalanches in central Daykundi province killed at least 21 people. At least 50 house were destroyed in the slides.
(SFC, 2/15/20, p.A2)
2020 Feb 13, British Finance Minister Sajid Javid resigned just weeks before the publication of the government's annual budget, in a shock move provoked by PM Boris Johnson's attempts to shake up his cabinet after Brexit.
(AFP, 2/13/20)
2020 Feb 13, The cruise ship MS Westerdam, stranded at sea for about two weeks after being refused entry by four Asian governments because of virus fears, finally docked in Cambodia. No cases of the COVID-19 viral illness have been confirmed among its 1,455 passengers and 802 crew members.
(AP, 2/13/20)
2020 Feb 13, Diplomats and experts said China is dragging its heels in accepting help on the ground from international health specialists. China has recorded 48,206 cases of a new coronavirus, now known as SARS-CoV-2. The death toll in Hubei province, which includes Wuhan, leapt by a record 242 to 1,310, with a sharp rise in confirmed cases after the adoption of new methodology for diagnosis. China's Communist Party fired several senior officials in Hubei province, the center of the new coronavirus outbreak.
(Reuters, 2/13/20)(The Week, 2/13/20)
2020 Feb 13, Confirmed cases of the COVID-19 virus in mainland China rose to 63,851 by the end of today, up 5,090 from the previous day. The death toll rose 121 to 1,380.
(AP, 2/13/20)
2020 Feb 13, Ethiopian lawmakers approved a controversial law aimed at curbing hate speech and disinformation, especially online, just months ahead of a major election.
(SFC, 2/14/20, p.A2)
2020 Feb 13, In Haiti a fire outside Port-au-Prince killed 13 children and two adult caretakers at a home run by the US-based Church of Bible Understanding.
(SFC, 2/15/20, p.A2)(AP, 4/23/20)
2020 Feb 13, Indian environmentalist Rajendra Kumar Pachauri (79) died after recent heart surgery. He led the Intergovernmental panel on Climate change from 2002-2015. Under his leadership a UN climate change panel shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.
(AP, 2/14/20)(SSFC, 2/16/20, p.B10)
2020 Feb 13, Iran began its week-long parliamentary election campaign ahead of the Feb. 21 vote.
(Reuters, 2/13/20)
2020 Feb 13, Rome police arrested Beverly McCallum (59) overnight after she and her teenage son checked into a Rome hotel on the northwest outskirts of the Italian capital. The American woman was wanted in the 2002 death of her husband, whose remains were so badly burned they weren’t identified for more than a decade. Husband Robert Caraballo was beaten and suffocated, and his body was dumped and burned in a blueberry patch in western Michigan.
(AP, 2/13/20)
2020 Feb 13, Japan announced its first death from a new virus from China, hours after confirming 44 more cases on a cruise ship quarantined near Tokyo as fears of the spreading disease mount in the country. The Diamond Princess, which is still carrying nearly 3,500 passengers and crew members, now has 218 people infected with the virus out of 713 tested since it entered Yokohama Port on Feb. 3.
(AP, 2/13/20)
2020 Feb 13, Libya’s eastern-based forces indiscriminately shelled residential neighborhoods around the capital, killing one woman and wounding at least four civilians.
(AP, 2/13/20)
2020 Feb 13, In Myanmar at least 19 children were wounded when at a primary school was hit by shelling in Rakhine state. A military spokesman put the number of wounded at 20, and blamed the insurgents for the attack.
(Reuters, 2/13/20)
2020 Feb 13, NATO said the Iraqi government has given it the green light to stay in the country, weeks after Iraq demanded foreign forces leave the country over the US killing of Iran’s top general near the Baghdad airport.
(AP, 2/13/20)
2020 Feb 14, US President Donald Trump said he has "the legal right" to interfere in criminal cases, capping a tumultuous week that raised questions about whether he is eroding the independence of the US legal system.
(Reuters, 2/14/20)
2020 Feb 14, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the United States has blacklisted Sri Lanka's army chief, Shavendra Silva, for human rights violations including extrajudicial killings during the last phase of the country's civil war in 2009.
(Reuters, 2/14/20)
2020 Feb 14, A senior US official said the United States and the Taliban have reached a truce agreement that will take effect “very soon" and could lead to withdrawals of American troops from Afghanistan.
(AP, 2/14/20)
2020 Feb 14, It was reported that Washington has begun following through on threats to squeeze Baghdad's fragile economy with delays to crucial cash deliveries and shortened sanctions waivers. Every month or so, Iraq's Central Bank flies in $1 billion to $2 billion in cash from the Federal Reserve in New York, where all its oil revenues are kept, to pay for official and commercial transactions.
(AFP, 2/14/20)
2020 Feb 14, Federal prosecutors declined to charge former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, closing an investigation into whether the longtime target of President Donald Trump's ire lied to federal officials about his involvement in a news media disclosure.
(AP, 2/14/20)
2020 Feb 14, It was reported that the Food and Drug Administration and the DEA have approved Eli Lilly’s Reyvow (lasmiditan) as the first oral medication of its class to treat acute migraines and bothersome symptoms in adults with or without aura (visual or sensory sensations before a migraine).
(ABC News, 2/15/20)
2020 Feb 14, It was reported that the Trump administration pulled funding in its 2021 budget for Stars and Stripes, the US military news organization that has published a daily newspaper continuously since World War II for troops stationed around the world. Mark Esper explained the rationale behind the decision to withhold approximately $15.5 million in funding for Stars and Stripes "because we need to invest that money, as we did with many, many other programs, into higher-priority issues."
(Yahoo News, 2/15/20)
2020 Feb 14, Michael Avenatti, who represented porn star Stormy Daniels in her case against President Trump and once mulled a 2020 presidential run, has been found guilty of trying to extort Nike. He had allegedly demanded that Nike pay him up to $25 million or he would hold a press conference revealing damaging information about the company.
(The Week, 2/14/20)
2020 Feb 14, The Alaska Supreme Court cleared the way for a campaign seeking to oust the state's embattled governor to proceed with plans to collect enough signatures to place a recall initiative on the 2020 ballot. A lower-court judge had ruled that allegations of misconduct lodged against Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy met the legal requirements for placing a recall question on this year's election ballot.
(Reuters, 2/14/20)
2020 Feb 14, Palm Beach County judge sentenced Chinese tourist Lu Jing (56) to an additional six months in Palm Beach County Jail after a seven-member jury convicted Lu On Feb. 12 of a misdemeanor charge of resisting arrest without violence for resisting an officer at President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago.
(Miami Herald, 2/14/20)
2020 Feb 14, It was reported that 8 Many High School basketball players were arrested in Many, Louisiana after police investigated Snapchat footage of a group sexually assaulting a high school student. The arrests were made after a video of a sexual assault on another student circulated on the social media app Snapchat.
(Reuters, 2/14/20)
2020 Feb 14, Matvey Natanzon (51), Russian-born Israeli backgammon player, died. He moved to Buffalo, New York as a teenager and graduated from the New York State University at Buffalo in 1991 with a degree in accounting. In 2007 Natanzon, known as Falafel, was named the number one backgammon player in the world by an unscientifically compiled peer-audited review known as Giants of Backgammon.
(https://voiceofbackgammon.com/falafel/)(Econ, 3/21/20, p.78)
2020 Feb 14, In Virginia Levianthan "Levi" Henry Norwood (17) went missing after police were called to his home and found his mother (34) and brother (6) dead. Norwood was later found at a Target near Durham, North Carolina, allegedly shoplifting hair dye, clothes and a backpack.
(ABC News, 2/16/20)
2020 Feb 14, Fiat Chrysler said it had temporarily halted production at its Serbian plant, the first such suspension by an automaker in Europe in response to the coronavirus outbreak in China.
(Reuters, 2/14/20)
2020 Feb 14, It was reported that the Howard G. Buffett Foundation has committed to spending $200 million over the next few years to transform the impoverished community of Tibu, Colombia, into a model of comprehensive state building.
(SFC, 2/14/20, p.A3)
2020 Feb 14, In Afghanistan an air strike in Nangarhar province killed at least eight people, all believed to be civilians, following US statements a day earlier that there had been a breakthrough in peace talks.
(Reuters, 2/14/20)
2020 Feb 14, A ship carrying migrants set off from Algeria and disappeared. All aboard were presumed drowning.
(AP, 3/6/20)
2020 Feb 14, Burundi’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission said it has found 6,032 bodies in six mass graves in Karusi Province, the largest finding since the government launched a nationwide excavation in January. So far Burundi has mapped over 4,000 mass graves across the country and identified more than 142,000 victims of violence. A civil war, which killed 300,000 people, ended in 2005.
(Reuters, 2/15/20)
2020 Feb 14, In Cameroon up to 22 civilians, 14 of them children, died in a restive anglophone region. The army later said fuel exploded in an exchange of gunfire with anglophone separatists and caused a fire in the village of Ntumbo. The army had previously denied any involvement in the deaths.
(AFP, 2/17/20)
2020 Feb 14, Zeng Yixin, vice minister of China's National Health Commission, told reporters that 1,716 medical workers have tested positive for the newly discovered virus, known officially as COVID-19, and six of them have died.
(ABC News, 2/15/20)
2020 Feb 14, Police in Costa Rica found almost 5,800 kg of cocaine in a shipping container, leading to the country’s biggest ever drug seizure. A Costa Rican man (46) with no previous criminal convictions was arrested in connection to the drug haul.
(The Independent, 2/16/20)
2020 Feb 14, Egypt's Health Ministry confirmed the first case of the new virus in the North African country.
(AP, 2/14/20)
2020 Feb 14, European Union governments were presented with a compromise over the bloc’s budget for the next seven years, which is unlikely to satisfy any of the warring camps and sets the stage for a clash between poorer and richer member states on Feb. 20. EU Council President Charles Michel proposed that governments commit 1.095 trillion euros ($1.2 trillion) to a joint pot for the period between 2021 and 2027.
(Bloomberg, 2/14/20)
2020 Feb 14, German officials said police have detained 12 men on suspicion of involvement in a far-right group that allegedly planned attacks against politicians and minorities.
(SFC, 2/15/20, p.A2)
2020 Feb 14, Kosovo and Serbia signed US-brokered deals on restoring railway and highway links. The deals were signed during an international security conference in Munich, Germany.
(AP, 2/14/20)
2020 Feb 14, Paraguay health officials said that deaths from dengue fever increased to 16 in the South American country's worst outbreak of the disease in the last decade, severely straining its health system.
(Reuters, 2/14/20)
2020 Feb 14, It was reported that oil operations in South Sudan are the dirtiest and poorest managed on the planet. Reports have shown that contamination from drilling could be causing severe health problems with mercury levels seven times what is permissible under US Environmental Protection Agency standards.
(SFC, 2/14/20, p.A4)
2020 Feb 14, Another Syrian government helicopter was shot down and its crew killed in the northwest, where a military offensive against opposition fighters was unfolding.
(AP, 2/14/20)
2020 Feb 14, In Thailand villagers along the Mekong River asked a court in Bangkok to slow down Thai purchases of electricity from a hydropower dam in Laos, which they say has harmed their livelihoods since it began operation last year. The start of its full commercial operation last year coincided with parts of the Mekong River drying to a trickle.
(Reuters, 2/14/20)
2020 Feb 14, Yemen's Huthi rebels said they have dropped a threat to impose a tax on aid, in a significant step towards resolving a crisis that has jeopardized the world's biggest humanitarian operation.
(AFP, 2/14/20)
2020 Feb 14, In Yemen a Saudi warplane was shot down over in northern Al-Jawf province while providing air support to government forces fighting the country’s rebels. Two Saudi officers ejected from the plane before it crashed in northern Al-Jawf province, but that the rebels opened fire at them. Their fate was unclear.
(AFP, 2/15/20)(AFP, 2/16/20)
2020 Feb 15, It was reported that the Trump administration is deploying law enforcement tactical units from the southern border as part of a supercharged arrest operation in sanctuary cities across the country, an escalation in the president’s battle against localities that refuse to participate in immigration enforcement.
(NY Times, 2/15/20)
2020 Feb 15, The US Federal Aviation Administration said that American civilian flights can resume operations over much of the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman region, loosening restrictions announced five weeks ago amid heightened tensions between the US and Iran.
(AP, 2/15/20)
2020 Feb 15, It was reported that the Bureau of Land Management has announced plans to fund 11,000 miles (17,703 km) of strategic fuel breaks in Idaho, Oregon, Washington, California, Nevada and Utah in an effort to help control wildfires.
(AP, 2/15/20)
2020 Feb 15, In southern California Dr. Amie Harwick, a sex therapist and former fiancee of Drew Carey, was killed after being thrown over the third floor balcony of her Hollywood Hills apartment. Suspect Gareth Pursehouse (41), a former boyfriend of Harwick’s, was soon arrested on suspicion of murder. Pursehouse later pleaded not guilty.
(USA Today, 2/17/20)(SFC, 4/18/20, p.A3)
2020 Feb 15, In Colorado two died after being caught in a weekend avalanche about ten miles north of Vail. Their bodies were recovered the next day.
(AP, 2/16/20)
2020 Feb 15, American writer A.E. Hotchner (102) died at his home in Westport, Conn. His books included "Papa Hemingway" (1966), "King of the Hill" (1972) and "Paul and Me" (2008).
(SFC, 2/17/20, p.C3)
2020 Feb 15, Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves declared a state of emergency amid predictions that a river running in the area around the state capital of Jackson could burst its banks and spark widespread flooding.
(AP, 2/16/20)
2020 Feb 15, Northrop Grumman launched its Cygnus capsule from the Virginia seashore. The nearly 4-ton shipment should arrive at the orbiting lab on Feb. 18.
(AP, 2/16/20)
2020 Feb 15, In Afghanistan gunmen shot dead nine homeless drug users in Kabul, shining a light on chronic drug abuse in the world's biggest producer of opium but a rare incident of apparently coordinated violence against addicts.
(Reuters, 2/16/20)
2020 Feb 15, Bosnian police scuffled with hundreds of migrants who tried to break out of an overcrowded camp during a protest over conditions at the facility and their treatment by authorities in nearby Croatia.
(Reuters, 2/15/20)
2020 Feb 15, British rescuers found a body in rough seas following an extensive search off the coast of southeast England, as the UK faced a second straight weekend of wild winter weather and flooding. The body of a second man was pulled from the sea in the afternoon. The fourth named storm of the season, dubbed Dennis by Britain's Met Office weather service, was expected to deepen through the weekend.
(AP, 2/15/20)
2020 Feb 15, Caroline Flack (b.1979), English television and radio presenter, was found dead at her London apartment. In August a coroner ruled that she had killed herself while facing an assault trial she feared would end her career.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caroline_Flack)(SFC, 8/7/20, p.A2)
2020 Feb 15, China reported 143 virus deaths and a dip in new cases. China reported 2,641 new cases in the 24 hours through midnight Feb. 14, raising its total to 66,492. Mainland China’s death toll rose to 1,523.
(AP, 2/15/20)
2020 Feb 15, Chinese authorities arrested a prominent rights activist and legal scholar who had called on President Xi Jinping to step down over his handling of crises including the coronavirus outbreak. Xu Zhiyong had been on the run since December after attending a gathering in the southern city of Xiamen which focused on discussion of human rights in China.
(Reuters, 2/17/20)
2020 Feb 15, China waived tolls on all highways.
(Econ, 3/14/20, p.32)
2020 Feb 15, An Egyptian court rejected the appeal of activist and researcher Patrick George Zaki (28), a vocal critic of President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi’s government, to be released from detention. Zaki had arrived in Cairo last week on what was supposed to be a brief visit home.
(AP, 2/15/20)
2020 Feb 15, An Egyptian court sentenced Raouf Boutros-Ghali, the brother of a former finance minister, to 30 years after his conviction in two separate cases of trafficking antiquities out of the country. The court also sentenced three others, including Italian ex-honorary consul to Egypt Ladislav Skakal, to 15 years in prison and a 1 million Egyptian pound fine (more than $63,000) each.
(AP, 2/15/20)
2020 Feb 15, European aerospace group Airbus said it deeply regretted the US decision to increase tariffs on aircraft imported from the European Union and said it would hurt US airlines and their customers.
(Reuters, 2/15/20)
2020 Feb 15, French authorities said an 80-year-old Chinese tourist infected with the coronavirus has died in France, the first fatality in Europe and the fourth outside mainland China from the epidemic.
(AP, 2/15/20)
2020 Feb 15, In Germany several thousand people demonstrated in Erfurt, capital of Thuringia state, where far-right lawmakers last week helped install a new state premier.
(AP, 2/15/20)
2020 Feb 15, In Hong Kong hundreds of anti-government protesters marched in multiple neighborhoods against government plans to potentially turn some buildings into coronavirus quarantine centers, demanding full closure of the mainland China border.
(Reuters, 2/15/20)
2020 Feb 15, Israeli police shot Malik Eissa (9) in the face just after he had gotten off a school bus in east Jerusalem. He was hospitalized after being struck by a non-lethal munition and later lost vision in the eye following surgeries. In December Israeli authorities cleared police of any wrongdoing in the case.
(AP, 2/20/20)(AP, 12/6/20)
Feb 15, Malaysia said an 83-year-old American passenger on the Westerdam cruise ship that docked in Cambodia has tested positive for the new coronavirus. The woman had taken a flight to Malaysia a day earlier from Cambodia.
(Reuters, 2/15/20)
2020 Feb 15, South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir said he was cutting the number of states from 32 to 10, unlocking a stalled peace deal and paving the way for the formation of a long- awaited unity government.
(Reuters, 2/15/20)
2020 Feb 15, Syrian troops began clearing barricades from the main highway between Damascus and Aleppo after recovering full control of the road in a Russian-backed offensive.
(Reuters, 2/15/20)
2020 Feb 15, President Tayyip Erdogan said the transfer of the main opposition party's 28% stake in Turkey's largest listed lender Isbank to the state would not be delayed.
(AP, 2/15/20)
2020 Feb 15, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said he plans to hold local elections across the country, including in breakaway areas in eastern Ukraine. He said the polls, set for October, must be held under Ukrainian law.
(Bloomberg, 2/15/20)
2020 Feb 15, In Yemen insurgents reported multiple coalition air strikes in the Huthi-controlled area where a Saudi plane went down the previous evening as local residents gathered near the wreckage. The attack in Al-Jawf took the lives of 19 children (eight boys and 11 girls) and injured another 18 (nine boys and another nine girls).
(AP, 2/15/20)(Reuters, 2/15/20)(AFP, 2/15/20)(AP, 2/18/20)(AFP, 2/20/20)
2020 Feb 16, More than 100 former US federal prosecutors and Justice Dept. officials called on Attorney Gen'l. William Barr to resign following his intervention last week to lower the Justice Dept.'s sentencing recommendation for Pres. Trump's longtime friend Roger Stone.
(SFC, 2/17/20, p.A7)
2020 Feb 16, Larry Tesler (b.1945), American computer scientist who worked in the field of human–computer interaction, died at his Portola Valley home. Tesler worked at Xerox PARC, Apple, Amazon, and Yahoo!
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Tesler)(SFC, 2/25/20, p.D2
2020 Feb 16, New York City police and prosecutors announced that Rashaun Weaver (14) has been charged with murder in the fatal stabbing of Tessa Majors, a Barnard freshman who was killed in December 2019 in Morningside Park.
(ABC News, 2/15/20)
2020 Feb 16, In Texas an implosion failed to bring down the core of former 11-story, Affiliated Computer Services building in Dallas. A wrecking ball continued the demolition of the "Leaning Tower of Dallas" on Feb 24.
(SFC, 2/25/20, p.A5)
2020 Feb 16, In Wisconsin the bodies of a woman (26) and her two young daughters were found in a Milwaukee garage more than a week after they were reported missing. The bodies were found after police interviewed the woman's boyfriend (25), who had been arrested in Tennessee on a fugitive from justice warrant.
(AP, 2/17/20)
2020 Feb 16, Police in Azerbaijan detained three opposition party leaders and more than 100 activists before they were due to take part in a protest against the results of last week's national election, which have been questioned by international observers.
(Reuters, 2/16/20)
2020 Feb 16, Storm Dennis roared across Britain with high winds and heavy rains, prompting authorities to issue a record number of flood warnings and alerts for England and a rare “red warning" for extremely life-threatening flooding in Wales.
(AP, 2/16/20)
2020 Feb 16, In Burkina Faso gunmen killed 24 civilians, including a church pastor, and kidnapped three others. It was the latest attack against a religious leader in the increasingly unstable West African nation.
(AP, 2/17/20)
2020 Feb 16, China reported a drop in new virus cases for the third straight day. Its latest figures showed 68,500 cases and 1,665 deaths due to the COVID-19 virus, most of the in Hubei province. The National Health Commission reported 2,009 new cases and 142 deaths.
(AP, 2/16/20)(Reuters, 2/16/20)
2020 Feb 16, The Dominican Republic was forced to suspend municipal elections across the country following problems with electronic voting systems.
(SFC, 2/18/20, p.A2)
2020 Feb 16, Egypt’s chief prosecutor denied allegations that the police tortured George Zaki, a human rights activist and vocal critic of President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi.
(AP, 2/16/20)
2020 Feb 16, Germany and the UN, which co-hosted a Jan. 19 Berlin summit, gathered foreign ministers and other officials from a dozen countries on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference to try to bolster a drive to cut off outside military support for Libya's warring parties.
(AP, 2/16/20)
2020 Feb 16, The Israeli military said it has thwarted an attempt by the Hamas militant group to hack soldiers' phones by posing as young, attractive women on social media, striking up friendships and persuading them into downloading malware.
(AP, 2/16/20)
2020 Feb 16, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia started trial oil production from the jointly-operated Wafra and Khafji oilfields. Trial production from the two fields in the Neutral Zone will increase gradually till it reaches its normal levels.
(Reuters, 2/16/20)
2020 Feb 16, Syrian troops consolidated the government's hold over the key Aleppo province, capturing over 30 villages and hamlets in the western countryside in a single day. Authorities uncovered a mass grave containing nearly 70 bodies in eastern Ghouta, an area outside of the capital that rebel fighters lost control of in April 2018.
(AP, 2/17/20)
2020 Feb 16, Taiwan's health minister said a man has died from the coronavirus, marking the first such death on the island since the epidemic spread from mainland China.
(Reuters, 2/16/20)
2020 Feb 16, The UN said Yemen’s warring sides have agreed to implement a long-delayed and major prisoner swap, in a sign that talks to end the disastrous war between the country's internationally recognized government and its Houthi rebels could be making progress.
(AP, 2/15/20)
2020 Feb 17, Two charter flights carrying cruise ship passengers from Japan landed at military bases in California and Texas overnight, starting the clock on a quarantine period to ensure passengers don't have the new virus that's been spreading in Asia.
(AP, 2/17/20)
2020 Feb 17, It was reported that police in Long Beach, California., have arrested three teenagers suspected of killing two people and wounding ten others in seven shootings since November.
(SFC, 2/17/20, p.A6)
2020 Feb 17, In Florida Hector Alejandro Cabrera Fuentes was arrested after being recruited by a Russian official last year. Russian intelligence had recruited the Mexican citizen to track down the whereabouts of an FBI informant in Miami who previously provided the US government with information on Russian operations.
(The Daily Beast, 2/18/20)
2020 Feb 17, Cleveland Browns offensive tackle Greg Robinson (27) was arrested in El Paso, Texas, along side his former teammate Quan Bray, a receiver he played with at Auburn University who is now in the Canadian Football League. Police said they found 157 pounds of marijuana in Robinson's rental car.
(AP, 2/20/20)
2020 Feb 17, Texas-based Pier 1 Imports filed for bankruptcy. On May 19 it filed a motion for an orderly wind-down of the company’s retail operations as soon as possible after store locations are able to reopen amid the coronavirus pandemic.
(SFC, 5/20/20, p.C1)
2020 Feb 17, Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam's push to ban the sale of assault weapons failed after members of his own party balked at the proposal. Four moderate Democrats joined Republicans in a committee vote, rejecting legislation that would have prohibited the sale of certain semiautomatic firearms.
(The Independent, 2/17/20)
2020 Feb 17, Biotechnology company Novacyt said that it had launched a 'CE-Mark' molecular test to help detect the coronavirus afflicting China, marking a step forward in Novacyt's plans to commercialize a product for the virus.
(Reuters, 2/17/20)
2020 Feb 17, The UK said it will spend 1.2 billion pounds ($1.6 billion) on developing the most powerful weather and climate supercomputer in the world. Britain issued severe flood alerts, warning of life-threatening danger after Storm Dennis dumped weeks' worth of rain in some places. One woman swept away by the floodwaters was feared dead.
(Bloomberg, 2/17/20)(AP, 2/17/20)
2020 Feb 17, Bulgaria's food safety agency authorities reported an outbreak of the H5N8 bird flu virus on a duck farm in the southern town of Rakovski. The agency said all 5,830 ducks at the farm will be culled.
(AP, 2/17/20)
2020 Feb 17, China's health authorities reported 2,048 new cases of the virus and 105 more deaths. Another 10,844 people have recovered from COVID-19, a disease caused by the new coronavirus, and have been discharged from hospitals. The death toll reached 1,770 with 70,548 cases. Another 1,200 doctors and nurses from China's military began arriving in Wuhan, the latest contingent sent to help shore up the city's overwhelmed health care system.
(AP, 2/17/20)
2020 Feb 17, A Chinese professor said doctors in Shanghai are using infusions of blood plasma from people who have recovered from the coronavirus to treat those still battling the infection, reporting some encouraging preliminary results.
(Reuters, 2/17/20)
2020 Feb 17, The European Union agreed to deploy warships to enforce an arms embargo on Libya in a move that underscores the increasing importance the bloc places on geopolitics as it seeks to defuse the conflict ravaging a major African oil producer.
(Bloomberg, 2/17/20)
2020 Feb 17, Greece acted to placate locals incensed over government plans to build new migrant detention centers on outlying islands, saying it was open to a compromise on their location.
(Reuters, 2/17/20)
2020 Feb 17, India's top court ordered the federal government to grant permanent commission and command positions to female officers in the army on par with men.
(SFC, 2/18/20, p.A4)
2020 Feb 17, Japanese officials confirmed 99 more people were infected by the new virus aboard the quarantined cruise ship Diamond Princess, bringing the total to 454.
(AP, 2/17/20)
2020 Feb 17, In Pakistan a suicide bombing killed eight people and wounded 16 others in the restive Baluchistan province, when it struck an Islamist rally in Quetta, the regional capital.
(AP, 2/17/20)
2020 Feb 17, Russia said that plans by the United States to deploy weapons in space would deal an irreversible blow to the current security balance in space, the RIA news agency cited the foreign ministry as saying.
(Reuters, 2/17/20)
2020 Feb 17, In Rwanda popular singer Kizito Mihigo (38), who was jailed on charges of plotting to kill the country's president but later pardoned, was found dead in a police cell. Authorities said it was suicide.
(AP, 2/17/20)
2020 Feb 17, South Korea's Hyundai Engineering & Construction Co Ltd said it has resolved a dispute with the Chilean government over a $740 million suspension bridge in a deal that had required it to "give up its rights" in various areas. The company said it has given ground on unspecified areas to allow the stalled project to get back on track.
(Reuters, 2/17/20)
2020 Feb 17, Syria praised its troops for rapidly taking over rebel-controlled territory in the country's northwest, vowing to continue to chase armed groups "wherever they are." Airstrikes on Darat Izza, a town still in opposition hands in Aleppo, put two health facilities out of service.
(AP, 2/17/20)
2020 Feb 17, Thailand's army agreed to transfer management control of 160,000 hectares of commercial land to the finance ministry in a drive to reform its business practices after a soldier went on a shooting spree over a property deal gone sour.
(Reuters, 2/17/20)
2020 Feb 17, The UAE’s regulatory watchdog gave long-awaited approval to the operator of the Barakah reactor, nudging the Emirates to the brink of membership in an elite club of 30 countries that make nuclear power. This is Arab world’s first commercial nuclear power plant.
(Bloomberg, 2/17/20)
2020 Feb 18, The Trump administration announced significant new sanctions targeting Rosneft, Russia’s largest oil company, for helping Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro circumvent US sanctions.
(Miami Herald, 2/18/20)
2020 Feb 18, President Donald Trump tweeted that Stone's recent conviction for witness tampering and lying to Congress “should be thrown out".
(AP, 2/18/20)
2020 Feb 18, President Donald Trump went on a clemency blitz, commuting the 14-year prison sentence of former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich and pardoning former NYPD commissioner Bernie Kerik, among a long list of others. Trump also told reporters that he has pardoned financier Michael Milken, who pleaded guilty for violating US securities laws and served two years in prison in the early 1990s. Trump also pardoned Edward DeBartolo Jr. (73), the former San Francisco 49ers owner, convicted in 1998 in a gambling fraud scandal.
(AP, 2/19/20)(SFC, 2/19/20, p.C1)
2020 Feb 18, Calling himself “the chief law enforcement officer of the country," Pres. Trump renewed his attacks on the criminal justice system, demanded a new trial for his friend Roger Stone, and granted clemency to several white-collar criminals.
(NY Times, 2/19/20)
2020 Feb 18, The Trump administration said that it will waive federal contracting laws to speed construction of a wall at the US-Mexico border. The 10 waived laws include requirements for having open competition, justifying selections and receiving all bonding from a contractor before any work can begin.
(AP, 2/18/20)
2020 Feb 18, It was announced that billionaire Mike Bloomberg has qualified for the Feb 19 Democratic presidential debate in Nevada, marking the first time he’ll stand alongside the rivals he has so far avoided by bypassing the early voting states and using his personal fortune to define himself through television ads.
(AP, 2/18/20)
2020 Feb 18, The Boy Scouts of America, barraged with sex-abuse lawsuits, filed for bankruptcy protection in Delaware in hopes of working out a potentially mammoth victim compensation plan that will allow the 110-year-old organization to carry on.
(AP, 2/18/20)
2020 Feb 18, Los Angeles city and county officials announced a new strategy to speed the process of getting homeless people into permanent housing. The new “Housing Central Command," modeled on the federal government’s response to natural disasters, overhauled how agencies work together in addressing the growing number of people living on the street.
(AP, 2/18/20)
2020 Feb 18, In central California a blaze at a public library in Porterville, allegedly started by two 13-year-old boys, left two firefighters dead.
(AP, 2/20/20)
2020 Feb 18, Florida authorities busted a ring of Miami burglars they say used Instagram and high-tech surveillance to target wealthy marks. Police said the ringleader was Xandi Garcia (30), currently jailed on a separate case.
(Miami Herald, 2/18/20)
2020 Feb 18, In southern Florida the Brightline train, which operates between Miami and West Palm Beach, struck a car at an intersection in Pompano Beach. One person was confirmed dead.
(AP, 2/18/20)
2020 Feb 18, Massachusetts Rep. David Nangle, D-Lowell, was arrested by the FBI and the IRS on charges of bank fraud, wire fraud, filing false tax returns and lying to a bank. Nangle had reportedly frequented casinos throughout New England, accumulating so much gambling debt that he turned to campaign funds to keep himself financially afloat.
(ABC News, 2/18/20)
2020 Feb 18, A Venezuelan teenager (18) was forced back to Mexico by US government authorities in Brownsville who denied her claims that she was fleeing political repression and violence, even after they accepted the same claims from her father.
(AP, 2/19/20)
2020 Feb 18, Afghanistan's election commission announced that Ashraf Ghani has won a 2nd term as president with 50.64% of the Sept. 28, 2019, vote. Opponent Abdullah Abdullah won 30.52% and refused to accept the results. The Taliban also rejected Ghani's win.
(SFC, 2/19/20, p.A2)
2020 Feb 18, The British Meat Processors Association (BMPA) said British producers will not be able to export processed meat like sausages and burgers to Europe after Brexit unless they get a specific European Union health certificate which currently does not exist.
(Reuters, 2/18/20)
2020 Feb 18, Cambodian health authorities said that 409 of the 2,257 passengers and crew of the Westerdam had left Cambodia for their homes scattered across the globe. The rest remain in hotels in Phnom Penh, the capital, or on the ship. After hundreds of passengers had earlier disembarked, one soon tested positive for the coronavirus.
(NY Times, 2/18/20)
2020 Feb 18, Canada's PM Justin Trudeau called for patience and dialog as indigenous-rights protests that have brought rail traffic to a halt across the country dragged on.
(Bloomberg, 2/18/20)
2020 Feb 18, A study by the Tax Justice Network said British overseas territory the Cayman Islands, the United States and Switzerland do most to help the globe's richest citizens hide and launder money.
(Reuters, 2/18/20)
2020 Feb 18, China reported 1,886 new cases and 98 more deaths. That raised the number of deaths in mainland China to 1,868 and the total number of confirmed cases to 72,436. China reported the death of Dr. Liu Zhiming (51), the man who mobilized all the resources of his hospital in Wuhan's Wuchang district to deal with the thousands of sick people arriving daily.
(AP, 2/18/20)
2020 Feb 18, French President Emmanuel Macron announced measures intended to counter Islamic extremism in France by giving the government more authority over the schooling of children, the financing of mosques and the training of imams.
(AP, 2/18/20)
2020 Feb 18, French drugmaker Sanofi said it is working with a US government agency to develop a vaccine against the new coronavirus from China, saying it could have a candidate ready for clinical trials within a year.
(Reuters, 2/18/20)
2020 Feb 18, It was reported that India has hastily built a half-km (1,640-foot) brick wall in Gujarat state ahead of a visit by US President Donald Trump, with critics saying it was built to block the view of a slum area inhabited by more than 2,000 people.
(AP, 2/18/20)
2020 Feb 18, Iran said it has sentenced eight environmental activists, including an Iranian who reportedly also has British and American citizenship, to prison sentences ranging from four to 10 years on charges of spying for the United States and acting against Iran's national security.
(Reuters, 2/18/20)
2020 Feb 18, Iran said it has had to reduce oil production projects because of a lack of funds as income from oil exports has decreased.
(AP, 2/18/20)
2020 Feb 18, Israel said it will provide hundreds of additional work permits for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, in a new step aimed at solidifying an informal cease-fire with the Hamas militant group.
(AP, 2/18/20)
2020 Feb 18, A Tel Aviv court ordered Facebook Inc to unblock the private account of a worker at Israeli surveillance company NSO Group. Similar rulings were expected for other employees in the coming days. Facebook's messaging service WhatsApp had accused the Israeli firm of helping government spies break into the phones of about 1,400 users in a hacking spree targeting diplomats, political dissidents, journalists and senior government officials across the globe.
(Reuters, 2/18/20)
2020 Feb 18, Japan, announced that 88 more cases of the virus were confirmed aboard a quarantined cruise ship, the Diamond Princess, bringing the total to 542 among the 3,700 initially on board.
(AP, 2/18/20)
2020 Feb 18, Libya’s warring sides resumed UN-brokered talks in Geneva aimed at salvaging a fragile cease-fire in the North African country, even as eastern Libyan forces stepped up their attacks on the Libyan capital, hitting its port.
(AP, 2/18/20)
2020 Feb 18, A report by Doctors Without Borders (MSF) found 80% of migrants waiting in Nuevo Laredo, under the Trump administration’s so-called Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), to have been abducted by the mafia, and 45% to have suffered violence or violation.
(The Guardian, 2/18/20)
2020 Feb 18, It was reported that thousands of people in the Netherlands have signed a petition objecting to the construction of an airport in Portugal that could threaten the black-tailed godwit, the Dutch national bird.
(Reuters, 2/18/20)
2020 Feb 18, Vladislav Surkov (55), the Kremlin's chief ideologue and pointman on relations with Ukraine and Moscow-backed separatists, was dismissed late today. He was for many years viewed as one of Russia's most powerful men. Surkov later said that he stepped down because of a shift in the Kremlin course on the Ukrainian conflict.
(AFP, 2/19/20)(AP, 2/26/20)
2020 Feb 18, Spain's cabinet voted to ban employers from dismissing workers due to illness, the first step in a planned overhaul of the country's 2012 labor reform.
(Reuters, 2/18/20)
2020 Feb 18, Officials said the worst locust outbreak that parts of East Africa have seen in 70 years has reached South Sudan, a country where roughly half the population already faces hunger after years of civil war.
(AP, 2/18/20)
2020 Feb 18, Turkey said it will deploy more troops to Syria's Idlib region and retaliate against attacks by government forces there, even as Ankara continues to discuss the situation with Moscow.
(Reuters, 2/18/20)
2020 Feb 18, In Turkey nine people, including prominent philanthropist Osman Kavala (63), were acquitted of trying to overthrow the government by force. They had faced trial for participating in the 2013 Taksim Square protests. Arrests warrants were lifted for seven other defendants.
(SFC, 2/19/20, p.A3)
2020 Feb 18, The UN issued a scathing report that accused Haitian police of not protecting an impoverished neighborhood from corrupt officers and gang leaders they say shot at people and set fire to homes and cars in a recent three-day attack.
(AP, 2/18/20)
2020 Feb 18, Vatican police raided the home and office of a senior Catholic Church official, seizing documents and computers in the latest phase of an investigation into the purchase of luxury London real estate.
(Reuters, 2/18/20)
2020 Feb 18, It was reported that Yemen’s Houthi rebels have blocked half of the United Nations’ aid delivery programs in the war-torn country — a strong-arm tactic to force the agency to give them greater control over the massive humanitarian campaign, along with a cut of billions of dollars in foreign assistance.
(AP, 2/18/20)
2020 Feb 19, President Trump confirmed that he is appointing Richard Grenell, the US ambassador to Germany, as acting director of national intelligence. Current acting DNI Joseph Maguire, who would have had to step down by March 12 because he lacked Senate confirmation, was reportedly blindsided by the news. Grenell has no real intelligence experience and has never run a large bureaucracy.
(The Week, 2/19/20)
2020 Feb 19, The US military said that Tehran continues to deliver weapons to Yemen's Huthi rebels, following a second interception in less than three months of what Washington said were Iranian arms.
(AFP, 2/20/20)
2020 Feb 19, Figures released by the Environmental Protection Agency indicated that the Trump administration completed the fewest cleanups of toxic Superfund sites last year than any administration since the program’s first years in the 1980s.
(AP, 2/19/20)
2020 Feb 19, The US designated five Chinese media companies as “foreign missions," a decision that reflects the Trump administration’s view that the communist party of Xi Jinping is imposing increasingly draconian government-control over news services.
(Bloomberg, 2/19/20)
2020 Feb 19, In southern California rapper Pop Smoke (20), born as Bashar Barakah Jackson, was fatally shot by intruders during a break-in at a Hollywood Hills home.
(SFC, 2/20/20, p.A5)
2020 Feb 19, A 3-judge panel of the 11th US Circuit court of Appeals upheld a preliminary injuction against a Florida law that barred felons who served their time from registering to vote because they have failed to pay all fines and fees stemming from their cases.
(SFC, 2/20/20, p.A7)
2020 Feb 19, Rod Blagojevich returned home to Chicago, shaking hands and signing autographs after President Donald Trump cut short the 14-year prison sentence handed to the former Illinois governor for political corruption.
(AP, 2/19/20)
2020 Feb 19, In Nevada Democrats savaged New York billionaire Mike Bloomberg and raised pointed questions about Bernie Sanders' take-no-prisoners politics during a contentious debate that threatened to further muddy the party's urgent quest to defeat President Donald Trump.
(AP, 2/19/20)
2020 Feb 19, In Australia a mother and her three children died in a car fire after Rowan Baxter (42), her estranged husband and the children's father, allegedly doused his family with gas before setting the car alight. Baxter was found dead near the scene, reportedly after stabbing himself..
(AP, 2/19/20)
2020 Feb 19, Boris Johnson’s government unveiled plans to end what it called Britain's dependence on “cheap low-skilled labor" and deliver on its pledge to halt freedom of movement from the European Union after Brexit.
(Bloomberg, 2/19/20)
2020 Feb 19, China's President Xi Jinping called for greater protection of medical staff fighting the new coronavirus after the deaths of prominent doctors sparked national anger at the government's handling of the outbreak. 1,716 medical workers have been confirmed as infected. Mainland China reported 1,749 new cases and 136 additional deaths. The death toll from the virus jumped past 2,000, while 74,185 cases of infection have been confirmed on the mainland. Inspectors in protective suits went door-to-door in the epicenter of the viral outbreak to try to find every infected person in an epidemic that is showing signs of waning as new cases fell for a second straight day.
(AFP, 2/19/20)(AP, 2/19/20)
2020 Feb 19, French PM Edouard Philippe said that the Fessenheim nuclear reactor will be shut down at the end of June.
(SFC, 2/20/20, p.A2)
2020 Feb 19, In Germany a massacre in the Frankfurt suburb of Hanau erupted late today at two hookah bars. The shooting left 11 people dead, including Tobias Rathjen, the suspected gunman. Investigators said a video the suspect posted online allegedly expressed right-wing conspiracy theories.
(ABC News, 2/20/20)(Econ., 2/29/20, p.40)
2020 Feb 19, Two people in Iran tested positive for the deadly new coronavirus, in the Islamic republic's first cases of the disease.
(AFP, 2/19/20)
2020 Feb 19, Authorities in northern Italy arrested the captain of a Lebanese-flagged cargo ship on suspicion of international arms trafficking while they investigate if the vessel transported tanks, rockets and other weapons from Turkey to Libya.
(AP, 2/19/20)
2020 Feb 19, Libya's Khalifa Hifter, commander of the eastern-based forces, was in Moscow and met with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.
(AP, 2/19/20)
2020 Feb 19, Pakistani officials said soybean dust from shipping containers, not toxic gas from a gas leak, was responsible for the recent deaths of 14 people in the southern port city of Karachi.
(AP, 2/19/20)
2020 Feb 19, Palestinian Salah Zakarna (17) was shot and killed in overnight clashes between Palestinian forces and local gunmen in the West Bank. It was unclear who shot him.
(AP, 2/19/20)
2020 Feb 19, Sri Lanka's PM Mahinda Rajapaksa said that the government has decided to withdraw from co-sponsorship of a 2015 UN Human Rights Council resolution calling for the investigation of allegations of war crimes committed during the island nation's long civil war. Rajapaksa said the resolution has enabled other countries to blame members of Sri Lanka's armed forces for being human rights violators.
(AP, 2/19/20)
2020 Feb 19, Sweden's Riksbank said it had begun testing an e-krona, taking the country a step closer to the creation of the world's first central bank digital currency (CBDC).
(Reuters, 2/20/20)
2020 Feb 19, A Syrian passenger jet landed in Aleppo from Damascus, marking the resumption of domestic flights between the two cities for the first time since 2012. The government's onslaught continued nearby with airstrikes reported in several rebel-held towns and villages.
(AP, 2/19/20)
2020 Feb 19, Turkey's Pres. Recep Tayyip Erdogan criticized the European Union’s decision to launch a maritime effort focused on enforcing the U.N arms embargo around Libya.
(AP, 2/19/20)
2020 Feb 19, A UN-backed report said children and adolescents are being bombarded with ads on social media promoting harmful products from fast food to tobacco and alcohol.
(Reuters, 2/19/20)
2020 Feb 19, In Yemen a landmine explosion killed six guards of the Yemeni defense minister and wounded eight others in the central province of Marib, the latest casualties of unmarked landmines that litter the war-torn country.
(AP, 2/19/20)
2020 Feb 20, The US said it has sanctioned members of an Iranian government agency that it says rigs elections in the country by disqualifying candidates who don’t echo the political ideology of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
(Bloomberg, 2/20/20)
2020 Feb 20, US federal authorities in Atlanta announced the launch of Operation Crystal Shield to target methamphetamine transportation hubs around the country. Seven other hub cities included Dallas, El Paso, Houston, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Phoenix and St. Louis.
(SFC, 2/21/20, p.A6)
2020 Feb 20, Trump loyalist Roger Stone was sentenced to 40 months in prison for lying to Congress, tampering with a witness and obstructing a House investigation.
(SFC, 2/21/20, p.A6)
2020 Feb 20, California lawmakers apologized for the Lagislature's role in advancing discrimination against Japanese Americans and their incarceration during WW II.
(SFC, 2/21/20, p.C2)
2020 Feb 20, The Univ. of Southern California announced that it was making tuition free for students from families with an annual income of $80,000 or less starting this fall.
(SFC, 2/21/20, p.A6)
2020 Feb 20, Police in Orlando, Fla., found four people dead after receiving a report that some of the family members had not been seen since last week. A US Customs and Border Protection officer had allegedly shot and killed his wife and two children at their home before turning the gun on himself.
(AP, 2/21/20)
2020 Feb 20, Florida's Legislature passed a bill requiring girls under the age of 18 to get parent's permission before having an abortion. In some cases a judge may grant a waiver. Gov. Ron DeSantis was expected to sign.
(SFC, 2/22/20, p.A6)
2020 Feb 20, In Idaho one person was killed and three were injured in a shooting at an apartment complex for senior citizens in Boise. The suspect also died.
(SFC, 2/22/20, p.A6)
2020 Feb 20, Lori Vallow (46), a woman wanted by authorities in Idaho in connection to the disappearance of her two children, was arrested in Hawaii. Her children, Tylee Ryan (17) and her adopted son Joshua "JJ" Vallow (7), have been missing since September.
(ABC News, 2/21/20)
2020 Feb 20, In Tennessee convicted murderer Nicholas Sutton (58) was electrocuted at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville.
(SFC, 2/21/20, p.A6)
2020 Feb 20, Morgan Stanley announced that it would buy E-Trade, an online discount brokerage, for about $13 billion.
(SFC, 2/21/20, p.D1)
2020 Feb 20, In Australia a train from Sydney to Melbourne derailed killing two people on board.
(SFC, 2/21/20, p.A2)
2020 Feb 20, In London Daniel Horton (29) stabbed muezzin Raafat Maglad (70) in the neck at the London Central Mosque. Horton was soon charged with grevious bodily harm.
(SSFC, 2/23/20, p.A4)
2020 Feb 20, Canada hosted members of the Lima Group regional bloc (Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru and St Lucia). The bloc said the world needs to stop the humanitarian crisis in Venezuela, hit by political conflict and a collapsing economy.
(Reuters, 2/20/20)
2020 Feb 20, China said it was helping its downstream neighbors cope with a prolonged drought by releasing more water from its dams on the Mekong River, adding it would consider sharing information on hydrology to provide further assistance in the future. The drought over the past year has severely hurt farming and fishing in Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam.
(Reuters, 2/20/20)
2020 Feb 20, The number of new cases in China declined again, to 394, a notable shift from the 1,749 figure released a day earlier. Another 114 deaths in China were linked to the virus. The statistics came after yet another change in how cases are counted.
(AP, 2/20/20)
2020 Feb 20, The World Health Organization chided the international community for not stepping up enough to finance the battle to contain the novel coronavirus that has shut down many parts of China and killed more than 2,000 people.
(South China Morning Post, 2/21/20)
2020 Feb 20, An Egyptian court overturned a decision to release prominent activist Alaa Abdel Fattah (38), who has been detained for nearly five months without trial over what his family says are unjust charges.
(AP, 2/20/20)
2020 Feb 20, France's hard-left unions brought workers back onto the streets in protest against President Emmanuel Macron's pension reform, but numbers were low as the fight to derail the project shifted to parliament.
(Reuters, 2/20/20)
2020 Feb 20, In southern India a bus collided with a truck killing at least 19 people near Avanashi, Tamil Nadu state.
(SFC, 2/21/20, p.A2)
2020 Feb 20, Iran said that three more people have been infected with the new virus that originated in central China, following an announcement the day before that two people had died of the illness caused by the virus in the city of Qom.
(AP, 2/20/20)
2020 Feb 20, Iraqi Airways suspended flight service to neighboring Iran as a protective measure against the coronavirus outbreak.
(Reuters, 2/20/20)
2020 Feb 20, In Italy bulldozers started work demolishing a crime-riddled, crumbling housing estate on the outskirts of Naples, notorious for its links to the local mafia. The housing project, known as the "Sails of Scampia", was built in the 1960s and 1970s and became synonymous with poverty and violence in Italy's underdeveloped south as clan warfare raged through its narrow corridors and bleak stairways.
(Reuters, 2/20/20)
2020 Feb 20, The first case of coronavirus was confirmed in Lebanon after a woman arriving from Iran was found to be positive.
(Reuters, 2/21/20)(AP, 4/1/20)
2020 Feb 20, In Portugal hundreds of people, old and young, protested outside parliament on against proposed bills that would legalize euthanasia. Parliament voted in favor of allowing euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide for terminally ill people.
(Reuters, 2/20/20)(SFC, 2/21/20, p.A2)
2020 Feb 20, It was reported that the tiny archipelago of Seychelles is battling what officials say are the world's highest rates of heroin addiction. Government figures showed that nearly 5,000 people were hooked, equivalent to nearly 10 percent of the national workforce.
(AFP, 2/20/20)
2020 Feb 20, South Korea reported its first death from the new virus while the mayor of a southeastern city urged its 2.5 million people to stay inside as infections linked to a church congregation spiked. The Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed 22 additional cases of the virus, raising the total in South Korea to 104.
(AP, 2/20/20)
2020 Feb 20, South Sudan’s rival leaders announced they have agreed to form a coalition government just two days before the deadline, a breakthrough after months of delays and a major step in the emergence from a five-year civil war that killed nearly 400,000 people in the world’s youngest nation.
(AP, 2/20/20)
2020 Feb 20, An airstrike in northwestern Syria reportedly killed two Turkish soldiers, following a large-scale attack by Ankara-backed opposition forces that targeted Syrian government troops. A Turkish Defense Ministry statement said as many as 50 Syrian government soldiers were killed and that five tanks, two armored personnel carriers and other equipment were destroyed.
(AP, 2/20/20)
2020 Feb 20, A UN rights probe said South Sudan's government forces and other armed groups have "deliberately starved" civilians by denying aid access and displacing communities.
(AFP, 2/20/20)
2020 Feb 20, The UN said estimated 170,000 of the 900,000 civilians forced from their homes in a massive wave of displacement in northwestern Syria are living out in the open.
(AFP, 2/20/20)
2020 Feb 20, The UN envoy for Haiti said the political impasse that has paralyzed Haiti is sending its economy deeper into recession, with 4.6 million people needing humanitarian aid with no immediate end in sight.
(AP, 2/20/20)
2020 Feb 20, The UN migration agency said a rubber dinghy packed with 91 migrants that set out from Libyan shores in hopes of reaching Europe has apparently gone missing in the Mediterranean.
(AP, 2/20/20)
2020 Feb 20, Police in Zambia said they have arrested 16 people suspected of being behind a spate of attacks that began in December in which people have been sprayed with poisonous substances and some have died.
(Reuters, 2/20/20)
2020 Feb 21, US President Donald Trump said on Twitter that the idea that Russia wants him to win re-election was "another misinformation campaign" launched by Democrats.
(AP, 2/21/20)
2020 Feb 21, Richard Grenell’s tenure as the top US intelligence official may be short-lived, but he wasted no time starting to shape his team of advisers, ousting his office’s No. 2 official — a longtime intelligence officer — and bringing in an expert on Trump conspiracy theories to help lead the agency.
(NY Times, 2/22/20)
2020 Feb 21, The US Pentagon said number of US troops who sustained traumatic brain injury when Iran launched missiles at their base in Iraq on the night of January 7-8 has risen to 110.
(AFP, 2/21/20)
2020 Feb 21, Mike Bloomberg said he’d free three women from confidentiality agreements that bar them from speaking publicly about sexual harassment or discrimination suits filed against him over the last three decades. He also said his company, Bloomberg LP, will no longer use such agreements “to resolve claims of sexual harassment or misconduct going forward".
(AP, 2/21/20)
2020 Feb 21, In Arizona three high school students were killed near Pima when a van went off a highway on the way back from a drag racing event.
(SFC, 2/25/20, p.A5)
2020 Feb 21, Costa Mesa, California, won a battle against the state, at least temporarily, when a judge halted the transfer of people diagnosed with the coronavirus to its community for a quarantine site.
(AP, 2/22/20)
2020 Feb 21, In Florida Lyuyou Liao (27), a Chinese national, pleaded guilty to taking photographs of a Naval Air Station in the Florida Keys. He faced up to one year in prison.
(SFC, 2/24/20, p.A5)
2020 Feb 21, In Boston Xiaoning Sui (49), a Chinese citizen living in British Columbia, pleaded guilty to to paying $400,000 to get her son into UCLA as a fake soccer recruit.
(SSFC, 2/23/20, p.A7)
2020 Feb 21, Boeing Co said it has found debris in the fuel tanks of dozens of undelivered 737 MAX jets amid ongoing inspections as the Chicago-based plane maker struggles to restore the trust of airlines and the wider public in the grounded fleet.
(Reuters, 2/22/20)
2020 Feb 21, Danish drugmaker Lundbeck said the US Food and Drug Administration has approved its migraine prevention therapy, which the drugmaker acquired through its near $2 billion deal for Alder BioPharmaceuticals in 2019. Vyepti, also known as eptinezumab, inhibits calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP), which plays a key role in causing migraine pain.
(Reuters, 2/21/20)
2020 Feb 21, Several thousand Algerians demonstrated to mark the first anniversary of protests that ousted President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, demanding the removal of allies of the former leader who are still in power and more steps towards democracy.
(Reuters, 2/21/20)
2020 Feb 21, Jorge Todesca, (73), the man who restored the credibility of Argentina’s statistics after years of data manipulation, died. In 2011, Argentina’s commerce secretariat fined Todesca 500,000 pesos (about $120,000 at the time) for publishing his own inflation index due to the lack of credibility of official data. The fine was overturned in court.
(Bloomberg, 2/21/20)
2020 Feb 21, In Australia, two people who had been evacuated from a virus-wracked cruise ship off Japan tested positive for mild cases of the COVID-19 illness.
(AFP, 2/21/20)
2020 Feb 21, British entrepreneur Richard Branson (69) heralded his first cruise ship "Scarlet Lady" as targeting a younger generation of holidaymakers with a range of attractions that he believes will outweigh any fears around coronavirus.
(Reuters, 2/21/20)
2020 Feb 21, China reported 118 more deaths from the COVID-19 virus, raising the toll to 2,236, most of them in Hubei. China tallied 889 new cases. Two correctional facilities in east China reported cases, with 200 prisoners and seven guards testing positive at Rencheng prison in Shandong province. Another 34 cases were found at a prison in Zhejiang province.
(AFP, 2/21/20)
2020 Feb 21, A small group of desert locusts entered Congo, marking the first time the voracious insects have been seen in the Central African country since 1944. Locusts, carried in part by the wind, arrived on the western shore of Lake Albert near the town of Bunia. Kenya, Somalia and Uganda also have been battling locust swarms, which can reach the size of major cities.
(AP, 2/25/20)
2020 Feb 21, In Indonesia at least six students in the province of Yogyakarta were killed and five more were missing after a tidal surge swept them away during a school trip.
(AP, 2/21/20)
2020 Feb 21, Iran went to the polls for a general election that conservatives are expected to dominate amid voter apathy after an economic slump, multiple crises and the disqualification of thousands of candidates.
(AFP, 2/21/20)
2020 Feb 21, An Iranian health ministry official said the coronavirus has spread to several cities in the country. Health authorities reported two more deaths from the new virus that emerged in China and said the fatalities were from among 13 new confirmed cases of the virus.
(Reuters, 2/21/20)(AP, 2/21/20)
2020 Feb 21, Financial Action Taskforce placed Iran on its blacklist. FATF had urged the Islamic Republic to either enact terrorist financing conventions or see its reprieve from the blacklist lifted and some countermeasures imposed.
(Reuters, 2/21/20)
2020 Feb 21, An Israeli doctor said one of the 11 Israelis who were flown home after being quarantined on a cruise ship in Japan has tested positive for the new virus that emerged in China late last year, the first case to be reported inside the country. Another four Israelis were hospitalized in Japan after testing positive for the virus.
(AP, 2/21/20)
2020 Feb 21, Italian authorities announced that a cluster of 16 coronavirus cases had been detected around Codogno, a small town in Lombardy. By the next day the number was up to 60 and five elderly people had died.
(Econ., 2/29/20, p.13)
2020 Feb 21, In Kazakhstan Democratic Party activist and filmmaker Zhanbolat Mamay was one of dozens of activists who were detained ahead of demonstrations set for the next day. Mamay was arrested and sentenced to three days' detention for calling for the unsanctioned rally.
(https://tinyurl.com/ybufxdk7)(Econ., 2/29/20, p.29)
2020 Feb 21, Libya’s security chief called on the US to set up a base in the North African country to counter Russia’s expanding influence in Africa.
(AP, 2/22/20)
2020 Feb 21, Myanmar's army said in a statement it would hold more court-martials over alleged abuses against Rohingya Muslims, after a government-appointed commission said soldiers committed war crimes against the minority.
(Reuters, 2/21/20)
2020 Feb 21, Financial Action Task Force (FATF), an international financial watchdog, placed Myanmar on its money-laundering watchlist, urging the country at the heart of Asia's illicit drug-producing "Golden Triangle" to boost its efforts to seize crime proceeds.
(AP, 2/21/20)
2020 Feb 21, A New Zealand man was sentenced to life in prison for murdering British backpacker Grace Millane (22) in December, 2018.
(AP, 2/21/20)
2020 Feb 21, A Western tour company said North Korea has called off its Pyongyang Marathon scheduled for April after imposing a border lockdown and travel curbs to prevent a coronavirus outbreak.
(Reuters, 2/21/20)
2020 Feb 21, In Puerto Rico former DEA agent Jose Irizarry (46) and his wife were arrested at their home near San Juan, as part of a 19-count federal indictment that accused Irizarry of “secretly using his position and his special access to information" to divert millions in drug proceeds from control of the Drug Enforcement Administration.
(AP, 2/21/20)
2020 Feb 21, South Korea's government banned major rallies in its capital and declared a health emergency in its fourth largest city as 100 new virus cases were reported, bringing the country's total to 204.
(AP, 2/21/20)
2020 Feb 21, In southern Spain thousands of farmers took to the streets of Murcia, blocking streets with tractors and tossing vegetables to the ground in protest at low food prices and precarious working conditions.
(Reuters, 2/21/20)
2020 Feb 21, A Thai court dissolved a high-profile opposition political party, the Future Forward Party, ruling that it illegally took a 191.2 million baht ($6.04 million) loan from its billionaire leader. The court also banned party leader Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit, heir to an auto parts fortune, and 15 other party executive board members from politics for 10 years.
(Reuters, 2/21/20)
2020 Feb 21, The United Arab Emirates said it had registered two new coronavirus cases, bringing the total number of people diagnosed with the virus in the Gulf Arab state to 11.
(Reuters, 2/21/20)
2020 Feb 21, It was reported that a top official for Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro's government has hired Washington law firm Amsterdam & Partners, that also represents Turkey, taking over from another legal team that backed out last month following an outcry from critics who accused it of collaborating with a repressive regime. Lawyer Bob Amsterdam declined to comment on the nature of work for Maduro’s Inspector General Reinaldo Muñoz, other than saying it would focus on sanctions and human rights issues.
(AP, 2/22/20)
2020 Feb 21, Vietnam's state media said seven people have been charged with the deaths of 39 Vietnamese migrants who bodies were found in a trailer near London last Oct. 23.
(SFC, 2/22/20, p.A2)
2020 Feb 22, The US Dept. of Justice confirmed that Mexico has extradited Ruben Oseguera, son of Nemesio Oseguera, the leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, to face drug distribution charges.
(SFC, 2/22/20, p.A2)
2020 Feb 22, In California self-styled daredevil “Mad" Mike Hughes (64) died after the homemade rocket crashed on private property near Barstow.
(AP, 2/23/20)
2020 Feb 22, In southern California a charter bus swerved on a rain-slicked highway and rolled down an embankment, killing three people and injuring 18 others in Pala Mesa.
(AP, 2/22/20)
2020 Feb 22, In Hawaii a single-engine plane crashed at Dillingham Airfiled northwest of Honolulu. Two people were killed.
(SFC, 2/24/20, p.A5)
2020 Feb 22, In Louisiana a man was struck and killed by a Mardi Gras float during a raucous night street parade in New Orleans, becoming the second person in days killed along a parade route during this year's Carnival season.
(AP, 2/23/20)
2020 Feb 22, Nevada Democrats hosted hundreds of caucuses, the third contest in the state-by-state presidential nominating process. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders won his second straight contest with a convincing 47% victory in Nevada. Former VP Joe Biden finished a distant second with 19%.
(Reuters, 2/22/20)
2020 Feb 22, In New York a leadership dispute within the Cayuga Indian Nation took a stunning turn when nation leader Clint Halftown sent bulldozers to demolish a working daycare center, store, schoolhouse and other buildings controlled by tribe members who oppose his authority. The anti-Halftown Unity Council in 2014 claimed control of some of the buildings that were destroyed.
(AP, 2/25/20)
2020 Feb 22, Taliban fighters and Afghan security forces clashed in parts of Afghanistan, a day after a week-long "reduction in violence" was announced, but the incidents did not spark immediate alarm on either side.
(Reuters, 2/22/20)
2020 Feb 22, A UN report said Afghanistan passed a grim milestone with more than 100,000 civilians killed or hurt in the last 10 years since the international body began documenting casualties in a war that has raged for 18 years.
(AP, 2/22/20)
2020 Feb 22, In southern Albania two migrants were killed in a car crash and seven others were injured when their vehicle plummeted off a cliff. The four-wheel drive vehicle was illegally transporting the nine migrants. The driver (28) was arrested and charged with illegal migrant trafficking and traffic violations.
(AP, 2/22/20)
2020 Feb 22, Brazil's famed Carnival kicked off in earnest, as millions of scantily-clad revelers poured into the streets, many of whom took the opportunity to parody or otherwise comment on the nation's deeply polarized political climate.
(Reuters, 2/22/20)
2020 Feb 22, Bulgarian authorities identified three Russians who have been charged in absentia over the 2015 attempted poisoning of Emilian Gebrev, the owner of an arms factory, his son and a company employee. Suspects Sergei Pavlov, Sergei Fedotov and Georgy Gorshkov were believed to be residents of Moscow.
(SSFC, 2/23/20, p.A4)
2020 Feb 22, In China 397 new cases of coronavirus were reported nationwide and another 109 people died. The outbreak of the new COVID-19 strain has claimed 2,345 lives on the mainland and infected more than 76,000 people, with cases in more than 25 countries. State media said President Xi Jinping has written a letter thanking the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for committing up to $100 million for the global response to the outbreak.
(AFP, 2/22/20) (AP, 2/22/20)
2020 Feb 22, In China woman traveled by car to a relative’s home in Beijing after being released from Wuhan Women’s Prison, a facility stricken by an outbreak affecting more than 250 people. Her coronavirus infection was disclosed by local officials on Feb. 26.
(AP, 2/27/20)
2020 Feb 22, Hundreds of Dominicans took to the streets in fresh protests after the abrupt suspension of municipal elections that unleashed a political crisis months before the Caribbean island votes for a new president. Dominicans will vote for a new president on May 17.
(Reuters, 2/22/20)
2020 Feb 22, An Egyptian court acquitted the two sons of ousted President Hosni Mubarak on charges of stock market manipulation, the latest in a series of trials of Mubarak’s family since the 2011 uprising that toppled the longtime autocrat after nearly three decades in power.
(AP, 2/22/20)
2020 Feb 22, Egyptian prosecutors extended the detention of Patrick George Zaki, an activist and vocal critic of President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi. Prosecutors renewed Zaki’s detention for another 15 days.
(AP, 2/22/20)
2020 Feb 22, India, the world's second-biggest gold consumer, said it has discovered gold fields with reserves of over 3,000 tons in northern Uttar Pradesh's Sonbhadra district.
(Reuters, 2/22/20)
2020 Feb 22, Conservatives in Iran took a lead as the first results of parliamentary elections came in, boosted by a predicted low turnout following the disqualification of nearly half the candidates. Hardliners won a majority in parliamentary elections. The official turnout was 42.5%, the lowest in the history of the Islamic Republic.
(AFP, 2/22/20)(Bloomberg, 2/23/20)
2020 Feb 22, Iranian authorities reported one more death among 10 new cases of the coronavirus. Iran ordered the closure of schools and universities in two cities hit by the virus outbreak that has killed five people, the most outside the Far East. 28 cases in total have been confirmed.
(AP, 2/22/20)
2020 Feb 22, Iran's hardline Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) detained journalist Mohammad Mosaed and said his social media posts constituted "crimes." Mosaed had posted criticism both of Iran's lack of readiness, and its response when the coronavirus hit in January.
(Insider, 4/2/20)
2020 Feb 22, Israeli police officers shot and killed a man after he allegedly tried to stab a soldier outside Jerusalem’s Old City.
(AP, 2/22/20)
2020 Feb 22, Israeli and Palestinian authorities sought to quell fears of a potential local outbreak of the coronavirus after learning that South Korean pilgrims who had toured some of the holy land's most popular sites were later found to be carrying the virus.
(Reuters, 2/22/20)
2020 Feb 22, A dozen towns in northern Italy effectively went into lockdown after the deaths of two people infected with the new virus from China and a growing cluster of cases with no direct links to the origin of the outbreak abroad. Secondary coronavirus contagions prompted local authorities in the Lombardy and Veneto regions to order schools, businesses, and restaurants closed, and to cancel sporting events and Masses. Hundreds of residents and workers who came into contact with an estimated 54 people confirmed infected in Italy were in isolation pending test results. Two people infected with the virus have died.
(AP, 2/22/20)
2020 Feb 22, Kazakh police detained dozens of opposition supporters who staged public protests against the government. Around 200 people were detained as two opposition groups called for anti-government demonstrations in the oil-rich country.
(https://tinyurl.com/ybufxdk7)(Reuters, 2/22/20)
2020 Feb 22, In Saudi Arabia finance ministers and central bankers of the world's 20 biggest economies (G20) began a 2-day discussion on top global economic challenges in Riyadh, focusing on the growth outlook and new rules to tax global digital companies. Diplomats said the US is against mentioning climate change in the communique of the world's financial leaders.
(Reuters, 2/22/20)
2020 Feb 22, Serbia received a sophisticated anti-aircraft system from Russia, despite possible US sanctions against the Balkan state, which is formally seeking European Union membership. The Pantsir S1 air-defense system was purchased after suggestions from Russian President Vladimir Putin.
(AP, 2/23/20)
2020 Feb 22, In southern Somalia Bashir Mohamed Mahamoud, head of al Shabaab's operations, was killed in an American air strike in the Sakow district of the Jubba region.
(Reuters, 3/8/20)
2020 Feb 22, A South Korean Air flight with 188 passengers that landed at Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion airport was taxied away from the allotted terminal while authorities allowed only 11 Israelis to enter the country. The next day the plane returned to South Korea with the rest of the passengers.
(AP, 2/23/20)
2020 Feb 22, South Korea reported an eight-fold jump in viral infections with 433 cases mostly linked to a church and a hospital.
(AP, 2/22/20)
2020 Feb 22, South Sudan's opposition leader Riek Machar was sworn in as deputy to Pres. Salva Kiir.
(SSFC, 2/23/20, p.A4)
2020 Feb 22, Togo held a presidential election that is likely to result in incumbent President Faure Gnassingbe winning a fourth term despite years of calls by the political opposition for new leadership. Gnassingbe enacted a law last year that limits presidents to two five-year terms. However, the law was not retroactive so his previous three terms are not counted in his limit.
(AP, 2/22/20)
2020 Feb 22, Turkey said a member of its military was killed in Syria's Idlib region in a bomb attack by Syrian government forces, the sixteenth soldier killed there so far this month.
(Reuters, 2/22/20)
2020 Feb 23, President Donald Trump accused Representative Adam Schiff of leaking classified information on Russian interference in the 2020 US election to hurt Democratic presidential front-runner Bernie Sanders.
(Reuters, 2/23/20)
2020 Feb 23, In Georgia (US) Ahmaud Arbery (25) was shot and killed while jogging in Savannah. Two white men said they suspected he had committed a recent burglary.
(SFC, 5/7/20, p.A4)
2020 Feb 23, The satirical Belgian carnival parade in Aalst, decried by Israel's foreign minister as "hateful" went, ahead despite being withdrawn from the United Nation's list of recognized cultural events over accusations of racism and anti-Semitism.
(AP, 2/23/20)
2020 Feb 23, Four passengers tested positive for coronavirus in England after being evacuated from the Diamond Princess cruise ship in Japan. This brought the total number of cases in the UK to thirteen.
(Reuters, 2/23/20)
2020 Feb 23, Mainland China reported 648 new coronavirus infections for a total of 76,936. The daily death toll fell slightly to 97. In all, 2,442 people have died in the country from COVID-19.
(AP, 2/23/20)
2020 Feb 23, Egypt’s top appeals court upheld a 10-year jail term for the head of the country’s customs authority who was convicted of corruption. Abdel-Azim was arrested in June 2018, while taking bribes from an unnamed businessman.
(AP, 2/23/20)
2020 Feb 23, Berlin began freezing the rents of 1.5 million apartments for the next five years in a controversial move to control the exploding costs that have forced many to move outside Germany's capital city.
(AP, 2/23/20)
2020 Feb 23, Haitian police officers exchanged gunfire for hours with soldiers of the newly reconstituted army outside the national palace, in a dangerous escalation of protests over police pay and working conditions.
(AP, 2/23/20)
2020 Feb 23, In Hungary more than 2,000 people, including Roma families and civil groups, marched to parliament to protest against the government's refusal to pay compensation to Roma children who had been unlawfully segregated in a school in eastern Hungary.
(Reuters, 2/23/20)
2020 Feb 23, In India police used tear gas to disperse large crowds in New Delhi in the latest eruption of violence at protests over a new citizenship law. The protest comes just a day before US President Donald Trump begins a two-day visit to India.
(Reuters, 2/23/20)
2020 Feb 23, Iran’s health ministry raised the death toll from the new coronavirus to eight, with 43 confirmed cases.
(Reuters, 2/23/20)
2020 Feb 23, In Iraq one protester was shot dead and at least six wounded in renewed violence between anti-government demonstrators and security forces in central Baghdad.
(AP, 2/23/20)
2020 Feb 23, The Israeli military said it shot two Palestinian militants trying to place an explosive device along the border with Gaza, one of whom was reportedly killed.
(AP, 2/23/20)
2020 Feb 23, Israel struck multiple targets near the Syrian capital late today, killing two members of a Palestinian militant faction and triggering anti-aircraft fire from the country's air defenses that shook Damascus.
(AP, 2/23/20)
2020 Feb 23, Italian authorities stepped up measures to ban public gatherings, including stopping Venice's famed carnival events, which have drawn tens of thousands of revelers to a region that is now in the heart of the outbreak. Nearly all of the known cases, including three deaths, were clustered in the north, at least 25 of them in the Veneto region. Italy reported more than 150 confirmed cases, a sharp increase from fewer than five last week. Officials locked down at least 10 towns in the northern region of Lombardy, affecting at least 50,000 people.
(AP, 2/23/20)(Reuters, 2/23/20)(NY Times, 2/24/20)
2020 Feb 23, In Japan a third passenger from the virus-infected Diamond Princess cruise ship died. Japan's health ministry announced 57 more cases of infections from the ship, including 55 crew members still on board and two passengers who had infected roommates and are in a prolonged quarantine at a government facility. Japan has confirmed a total of 838 cases and four deaths from the virus.
(Reuters, 2/23/20)(AP, 2/23/20)
2020 Feb 23, Forces loyal to Libyan eastern-based commander Khalifa Haftar said they had killed 16 Turkish soldiers in recent weeks, a day after Turkey acknowledged it had lost several "martyrs" in combat in the north African country.
(Reuters, 2/23/20)
2020 Feb 23, Namibia shipped 25 tons of beef to Philadelphia. This was the first ever export of red meat from Africa to the US. The shipment was duty-free under the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) signed in 2000.
(https://tinyurl.com/yafxqycx)(Econ., 2/29/20, p.39)
2020 Feb 23, Pakistan temporarily closed its borders with Iran, which announced a weeklong closing of schools, universities and cultural centers. The outbreak has killed at least 12 people in Iran, according to state television, the largest number of deaths outside China.
(NY Times, 2/24/20)
2020 Feb 23, The Saudi-led coalition said it launched air raids targeting ballistic missile and drone depots in Yemen's capital of the Iran-backed Huthis, two days after the rebels fired missiles into the kingdom.
(AFP, 2/23/20)
2020 Feb 23, In Saudi Arabia finance leaders of the world's top 20 economies wrapped up their two-day meeting in Riyadh, a session that was dominated by growing concern over the widening fallout from the coronavirus outbreak. In a draft G20 communique the finance leaders clung to their upbeat projection of a modest pick-up in global growth despite the outbreak.
(Reuters, 2/23/20)
2020 Feb 23, South Korea raised its infectious disease alert to its highest level due to the coronavirus outbreak. South Korea announced 169 more cases of the new virus, bringing the country’s total more than 760. The country also reported three more fatalities, raising its death toll to six.
(Reuters, 2/23/20)(AP, 2/23/20)(NY Times, 2/24/20)
2020 Feb 23, South Korean health authorities said that 18 of the 39 South Koreans from the southeastern region who had made a group pilgrimage to sites in Israel later tested positive for the virus.
(AP, 2/23/20)
2020 Feb 23, In Syria several Turkish troops were wounded in Idlib province after pro-Damascus forces targeted a Turkish military convoy with heavy artillery, prompting it to retreat northwards.
(Reuters, 2/23/20)
2020 Feb 23, Turkey closed its border with Iran due to the number of coronavirus cases in its eastern neighbor.
(AP, 2/23/20)
2020 Feb 23, In Turkey nine people were killed in Van province in a magnitude 5.7 earthquake that struck western Iran early today. Iran’s official IRNA news agency said the earthquake affected 43 villages in the mountainous Qotour area. 75 people were reported injured.
(AP, 2/23/20)
2020 Feb 24, US Pres. Donald Trump began a two-day visit to India today, attending a rally of more than 100,000 people at a cricket stadium in the western city of Ahmedabad. More than 100,000 people packed the world's largest cricket stadium to welcome Trump. In New Delhi at least seven were killed, including a police officer, and nearly 100 others reportedly injured in clashes between hundreds of supporters and opponents of the new Indian citizenship.
(NY Times, 2/24/20)(AP, 2/24/20)(AP, 2/25/20)
2020 Feb 24, The US Supreme Court threw out a court order to seize assests belonging to the Roman Catholic archdiocese of San Juan, Puerto Rico, to pay pension benefits for Catholic school teachers, due to lack of authority.
(SFC, 2/25/20, p.A5)
2020 Feb 24, The 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals upheld rules that bar taxpayer-funded family-planning clinics from referring women for abortions. The court had already allowed the administration's changes to start taking effect while the government appealed those rulings.
(AP, 2/24/20)
2020 Feb 24, The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell by more than 950 points at the open, erasing all gains for the blue-chip index for the year, after a spike in the number of reported cases of coronavirus fueled fears that the epidemic would have a serious impact on global economic growth.
(NBC News, 2/24/20)
2020 Feb 24, Clive Cussler (b.1931), American author and maritime adventurer, died at his home in Scottsdale, Arizona. His books reached the New York Times best-seller list more than 20 times. They included "The Mediterranean Caper" (1973) and "Raise the Titanic" (1976).
(SFC, 2/28/20, p.C4)
2020 Feb 24, Diana Serra Cary (101), child star of silent films, died in Gustine, Ca. In 1921 Century Studio cast the 2½-year-old as Baby Peggy, opposite Brownie the Wonder Dog. Her films included "Playmates (1921), "Miles of Smiles" (1923), "Helen's Babies" (1924) and "Captain January" (1924). In 1996 she authored "Whatever Happened to Baby Peggy: The Autobiography of Hollywood's pioneer Child Star." She also authored "Jackie Coogan: The World's Boy King: A Biography of Hollywwod's Legendary Child Star" (2003).
(SFC, 2/26/20, p.C5)
2020 Feb 24, In Florida Gerald Nicolas (65) of Sarasota, who faced 50 child porn charges, died early today when he ran out in a front of a semi-truck on Interstate 75.
(Miami Herald, 2/24/20)
2020 Feb 24, In Florida Ron and Charlene Esserman established The Esserman Family Fund for Investigative Journalism at the Miami Foundation. Their gift will help fund an annual top prize of $10,000 and two $1,000 honorable mention prizes for South Florida's “best accountability" reporting. The gift will also support a $50,000 annual, yearlong investigative reporting fellowship for young reporters at the Miami Herald.
(AP, 2/25/20)
2020 Feb 24, Firefighters from federal and New Jersey agencies battled a forest fire for a second day in a popular hiking area that is crossed by the Appalachian Trail and a major interstate highway.
(AP, 2/24/20)
2020 Feb 24, A New York City jury reached a verdict in the rape trial of Harvey Weinstein (67). He was found guilty of criminal sexual assault and of rape in the third degree. He was found not guilty of the more serious charges of predatory sexual assault and of rape in the first degree.
(CBS News, 2/24/20)
2020 Feb 24, Three people convicted of covering up the slaying of a Virginia teenager whose body was dismembered and burned were sentenced to prison. Megan Metzger was 19 years old in 2018 when she was shot in the face during a gathering in Spotsylvania County.
(AP, 2/25/20)
2020 Feb 24, NASA scientists said the InSight lander, which touched down on the surface of Mars in November 2018 to begin the first mission to study the planet's deep interior, has since detected around 450 marsquakes, most of modest strength.
(Reuters, 2/24/20)
2020 Feb 24, Katherine Johnson (101), a mathematician who calculated rocket trajectories and earth orbits for NASA’s early space missions, died in Virginia. She was portrayed in the 2016 hit film “Hidden Figures," about pioneering black female aerospace workers.
(AP, 2/24/20)(Econ., 2/29/20, p.74)
2020 Feb 24, It was reported that there are some 4,600 Bitcoin ATM machines operating in the US, up from four in 2014.
(SFC, 2/24/20, p.D1)
2020 Feb 24, Afghanistan's minister of public health said one of three suspected cases had been confirmed in the Western province of Herat.
(NBC News, 2/24/20)
2020 Feb 24, The captain of the Stellar Banner cargo ship ran his vessel agound of the coast of Brazil to prevent it from sinking. Days later oil was detected leaking from the partially submerged ship. The ship was carrying iron ore destined for China.
(SSFC, 3/1/20, p.A4)
2020 Feb 24, Bulgaria's food safety agency authorities reported two new outbreaks of the highly pathogenic H5N8 bird flu in the southern part of the Balkan country.
(Reuters, 2/24/20)
2020 Feb 24, In eastern Canada police moved in morning to clear a rail blockade by an indigenous group that had been stopping freight and passenger traffic for more than two weeks on one of the country's busiest lines. The Tyendinaga Mohawk campaigners had barricaded the line in solidarity with a British Columbia aboriginal band seeking to stop construction of a gas pipeline over its land.
(Reuters, 2/24/20)
2020 Feb 24, In Canada Ashley Noelle Arzaga (24) died in the stabbing at a massage parlor in Toronto. Another woman and a man were also injured. A 17-year-old boy was arrested and charged with murder and attempted murder. Police later determined that this crime was in fact one in which the accused was inspired by the ideologically motivated violent extremist movement commonly known as incel: involuntary celibacy, a misogynistic online victimhood cult whose members believe they are actively being denied sex by women who have been seduced by more attractive men.
(The Independent, 5/20/20)
2020 Feb 24, Chinese authorities announced 409 new confirmed cases of the coronavirus, bringing the total number of confirmed cases to 77,150. The number of coronavirus deaths was reported at 2592. Large parts of China relaxed curbs on transport and movement of people as reported new cases of the coronavirus outside the worst-hit province fell to the lowest in a month.
(NBC News, 2/24/20)(Reuters, 2/24/20)
2020 Feb 24, Colombia said it will create a special military unit to protect its national parks and step up operations against illegal armed groups who burn vegetation to clear space to plant coca.
(Reuters, 2/24/20)
2020 Feb 24, Croatia's Pres. Zoran Milanovic condemned the burning of an effigy of two men and a child at a festival weeks after the country's highest court ruled that same-sex couples could foster children. Croatia legalized gay sex in 1977, but the country remains deeply conservative.
(Reuters, 2/24/20)
2020 Feb 24, In the Czech Republic the Prague city council agreed to change the name of the Pod Kastany square in the northern Bubenec neighborhood after Boris Nemtsov, a former Russian deputy prime minister and later opposition leader who was shot dead on a bridge near the Kremlin in February 2015.
(Bloomberg, 2/24/20)
2020 Feb 24, Heavy rains pummeled the Egyptian capital of Cairo and other parts of the country, causing massive traffic jams and flooding on many key roads.
(AP, 2/24/20)
2020 Feb 24, In Germany at least 52 people were hurt when the driver of a silver Mercedes station wagon drove into a carnival procession in Volkmarsen. A German man (29) was soon arrested in connection with the attack.
(Business Insider, 2/25/20)
2020 Feb 24, In Greece protests group on three eastern islands began setting up roadblocks aimed at stopping the government from building new migrant detention centers.
(SFC, 2/25/20, p.A2)
2020 Feb 24, Iran's government vowed to be transparent after being accused of covering up the deadliest coronavirus outbreak outside China. The coronavirus death toll jumped by four to 12, by far the highest outside China. There were 47 confirmed cases.
(AFP, 2/24/20)(NBC News, 2/24/20)
2020 Feb 24, Iraq's health ministry said local health officials in the Shi'ite city of Najaf have detected the first case of coronavirus in the country, an Iranian theology student.
(Reuters, 2/24/20)
2020 Feb 24, Italy recorded a 6th coronavirus death as it became the worst-hit country in Europe, bringing the total number of cases across the country to 219. Police manned checkpoints around quarantined towns in the north and residents stocked up on food as the country became the focal point of the outbreak in Europe and fears of its cross-border spread.
(Reuters, 2/24/20)(AP, 2/24/20)
2020 Feb 24, The UN mission in Libya said that the country’s warring sides had agreed to turn a shaky cease-fire into a formal deal, stirring modest hopes after weeks of sporadic violence that derailed negotiations.
(AP, 2/24/20)
2020 Feb 24, Malaysia's King Sultan Abdullah Sultan Ahmad Shah accepted PM Mahathir Mohamad's shocking resignation but reappointed him as interim leader following the collapse of the ruling alliance in a major political upheaval less than two years after its historic election victory.
(AP, 2/24/20)
2020 Feb 24, Mauritania joined the 47-nation UN Human Rights Council for the first time as the Council's 2020 session opened in Geneva. Biram Dah Abeid, the leader of a Mauritanian anti-slavery group, called on UN members to pressure Mauritania, the last country in the world to abolish slavery, to end the practice as it joined the body responsible for promoting and protecting human rights around the world.
(Reuters, 2/26/20)
2020 Feb 24, Mongolia's National Emergency Commission halted all flights from South Korea and will block entry through its borders until March 2 as it steps up its efforts to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
(Reuters, 2/24/20)
2020 Feb 24, Gaza militants resumed their intense bombardment of southern Israel, with some rockets slipping through Israel's Iron Dome defense system and one landing in the yard of a kindergarten. The Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad said it had ended its "military response" against Israel after two days of Gaza rockets and Israeli air strikes.
(AP, 2/24/20)(Reuters, 2/24/20)
2020 Feb 24, Romania's top court overturned President Klaus Iohannis's re-nomination of ousted Liberal Party leader Ludovic Orban as prime minister, potentially derailing plans to trigger an early parliamentary election.
(Reuters, 2/24/20)
2020 Feb 24, In Somalia a US military airstrike killed a worker for a telecom company on the outskirts of the rebel-held town of Jilib. US Africa Command and Somalia’s government said the airstrike killed a member of the al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab extremist group. But officials at Hormuud said the airstrike killed their local manager in Jilib.
(AP, 2/25/20)
2020 Feb 24, In South Africa the Commission for Gender Equality (CGE) reported that dozens of HIV-positive South African women have been sterilized without consent or after being pressured to agree just before giving birth, sometimes being told while in pain on their way to the operating theater.
(Reuters, 2/24/20)
2020 Feb 24, South Korea reported 833 confirmed cases with 8 dead. Health officials reported 231 new cases of COVID-19. A military spokesperson said there were 13 confirmed COVID-19 cases among the troops.
(NBC News, 2/24/20)
2020 Feb 24, Prominent Tanzanian journalist Erick Kabendera, arrested in July, was released after pleading guilty of tax evasion and money laundering in a case critics had said was politically motivated.
(Reuters, 2/24/20)
2020 Feb 24, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres issued a “call to action" to countries, businesses and all people to help renew and revive human rights across the globe, laying out a seven-point plan amid concerns about climate change, conflict and repression.
(AP, 2/24/20)
2020 Feb 24, A study from the UN's World Food Program said one of every three people in Venezuela is struggling to put enough food on the table to meet minimum nutrition requirements.
(SFC, 2/25/20, p.A2)
2020 Feb 25, US President Donald Trump, speaking in India, said the US stock market will crash if he loses the election this year.
(Reuters, 2/25/20)
2020 Feb 25, It was reported that the Trump administration is turning to federal courts to force state and local officials to turn over records about immigrants in custody in a novel effort to circumvent so-called "sanctuary" policies.
(Reuters, 2/25/20)
2020 Feb 25, The US Supreme Court ruled 5-4 barring a lawsuit against a Border Patrol agent for fatally shooting a 15-year-old Mexican boy in 2010 on Mexican soil from across the border in Texas, refusing to open the door for foreign nationals to pursue civil rights cases in American courts in such incidents.
(Reuters, 2/25/20)
2020 Feb 25, The US Center for Disease Control warned the American public to prepare for an outbreak of the disease, which has spawned more than 80,000 cases around the world but relatively few so far in the US.
(AP, 2/26/20)
2020 Feb 25, Michelle Janavs (49), the heiress to the Hot Pockets fortune, was sentenced to five months in prison after admitting to paying bribes to a fixer who promised to get her two daughters into the University of Southern California.
(The Week, 2/25/20)
2020 Feb 25, In Chicago a shooting at a crowded convenience store left a young nursing student killed and four other people wounded. Jaya Beemon (18) was pronounced dead at a hospital after she was hit in the neck while apparently buying snacks. In December a 15-year-old boy has been charged with murder.
(AP, 12/17/20)
2020 Feb 25, In North Carolina Democratic rivals held a critical debate ahead of the state's primary that could dramatically reshape the race. Bernie Sanders labeled Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu a "reactionary racist" and said he'd consider reversing President Donald Trump's move of the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
(AP, 2/25/20)(AP, 2/26/20)
2020 Feb 25, New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed a red-flag gun bill that will allow state district courts to order the temporary surrender of firearms, and she urged sheriffs to resign if they still refuse to enforce it.
(AP, 2/25/20)
2020 Feb 25, In Washington state Amazon opened its first cashier-less supermarket in Seattle, the latest sign that Amazon is serious about shaking up the $800 billion grocery industry.
(AP, 2/25/20)
2020 Feb 25, American Airlines Group Inc said it has signed a strategic partnership deal with Qatar Airways and is reviving its codeshare agreement.
(Reuters, 2/25/20)
2020 Feb 25, Robert Iger (b.1951) announced he would step down as CEO of The Walt Disney Company effective immediately, naming Bob Chapek, chairman of Disney Parks, Experiences and Products, as his successor, making him the 7th CEO in the company's history. Iger had led Disney since 2005.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Iger)
2020 Feb 25, Tesco, Britain's biggest supermarket chain, opened its first high street cashless store, marking a shift among shoppers to electronic payments from coins and notes.
(Reuters, 2/25/20)
2020 Feb 25, Generic drugmaker Mallinckrodt, based in England, said it has a tentative $1.6 billion deal to settle lawsuits over its role in the US opioid crisis.
(SFC, 2/26/20, p.A5)
2020 Feb 25, It was reported that at least 24 people were killed in clashes between Burundi police and unidentified militants in the outskirts of Bujumbura.
(Bloomberg, 2/25/20)
2020 Feb 25, In Canada protesters in Ontario and Quebec erected new rail blockades in solidarity with opponents of the Coastal GasLink pipeline project in British Columbia.
(SFC, 2/26/20, p.A2)
2020 Feb 25, Mainland China had 406 new confirmed cases of coronavirus infections, down from 508 cases a day earlier. The death toll from the outbreak reached 2,715, up by 52 from the previous day.
(Reuters, 2/26/20)
2020 Feb 25, In eastern China the Ningbo Intermediate People's Court announced that Gui Minhai, a Hong Kong-based Swedish man who sold gossipy books about Chinese leaders, has been sentenced to ten years in prison and that he would not appeal.
(SFC, 2/26/20, p.A4)
2020 Feb 25, Former Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak (b.1928) died. He was the autocratic face of stability in the Middle East for nearly 30 years before being forced from power in the 2011 Arab Spring uprising.
(AP, 2/25/20)
2020 Feb 25, In France Asia Bibi, a Christian woman from Pakistan, received her diploma as a Citizen of Honor of the city of Paris, a title awarded her in 2015. She had spent eight years on death row in Pakistan on charges of blasphemy. Bibi said she will request asylum in France.
(SFC, 2/26/20, p.A2)
2020 Feb 25, Iran said its coronavirus outbreak, the deadliest outside China, has infected the country's deputy health minister. The health ministry confirmed three new deaths and 34 new infections, bringing the overall tally to 15 deaths and 95 cases.
(AFP, 2/25/20)
2020 Feb 25, In Iraq religious officials closed down the Imam Ali mausoleum in Najaf, allowing visitors access only to its surroundings due to the coronavirus outbreak. The health ministry advised against non-essential travel to Najaf and urged citizens to refrain from holding large gatherings.
(AP, 2/25/20)
2020 Feb 25, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu said he was advancing settlement construction in a contentious open area of the West Bank. The move was seen as a bid by Netanyahu to secure electoral support from West Bank settlers.
(AP, 2/25/20)
2020 Feb 25, Japan's ANA Holdings Inc said it will buy 15 Boeing Co 787 Dreamliners worth $5 billion at list prices, the first commercial order announcement for the US plane maker this year as it wrestles with the grounding of the smaller 737 MAX.
(Reuters, 2/25/20)
2020 Feb 25, In Kazakhstan activist Dulat Agadil died in a jail cell, a day after police took him in on charges of contempt of court and insulting a judge. Authorities, including Pres. Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, said his death was caused by acute cardiovascular failure.
(AP, 3/1/20)
2020 Feb 25, Libya's National Oil Corporation said financial losses over a protracted blockade of its vital oil fields and ports have rapidly swelled, surpassing $2 billion.
(AP, 2/25/20)
2020 Feb 25, In Mali three Irish soldiers were injured in a roadside bomb attack on a multinational convoy of UN peacekeepers about 80 km (50 miles) northeast of the city of Gao.
(AP, 2/26/20)
2020 Feb 25, Spain responded to weeks of protests by farmers by announcing steps to support prices for their goods. The government said it will prohibit sales of agricultural products below cost price by decree.
(Bloomberg, 2/25/20)
2020 Feb 25, In northwestern Syrian an airstrike on a rebel-held city struck a school in Idlib, killing three people.
(AP, 2/25/20)
2020 Feb 25, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said two Turkish soldiers have been killed in fighting in Libya and defended Ankara's move to also send Syrian opposition fighters to the North African country.
(AP, 2/25/20)
2020 Feb 25, The United Arab Emirates became the latest to clamp down on Iran, halting all passenger and cargo flights to and from the country due to the coronavirus outbreak, a similar move to other nearby countries including Armenia, Kuwait, Iraq and Turkey.
(AP, 2/25/20)
2020 Feb 25, The UN Security Council renewed its sanctions regime on Yemen for another year, after tense negotiations between Britain and Russia, which threatened to veto any mention, even implicit, of Iran.
(AFP, 2/25/20)
2020 Feb 26, US Pres. Donald Trump announced he was putting Vice President Mike Pence in charge of the effort to stem the spread of the coronavirus in the US.
(Yahoo News, 2/26/20)
2020 Feb 26, The USA stepped up travel advisories for Iran, Italy and Mongolia, warning of the risks of coronavirus or disruptions related to efforts to control the disease's spread.
(Reuters, 2/26/20)
2020 Feb 26, US officials said the first clinical trial in the US of a possible coronavirus treatment is underway in Nebraska and is eventually expected to include 400 patients at 50 locations around the world. At least two patient studies are already underway in China, including the other study involving remdesivir, which is made by Gilead Sciences.
(AP, 2/26/20)
2020 Feb 26, The United States declared Iraqi Shiite paramilitary leader Ahmad al-Hamidawi, secretary general of armed faction Kataib Hezbollah, to be a terrorist after a series of rocket attacks, vowing to step up pressure on his ally Iran.
(AFP, 2/26/20)
2020 Feb 26, The United States granted a license to allow for certain humanitarian trade transactions with Iran's sanctioned central bank, a move it said was in step with the formalization of a Swiss humanitarian aid channel.
(Reuters, 2/27/20)
2020 Feb 26, The US House of Representatives approved legislation designating lynching as a hate crime under federal law. The bill was named after Emmet Till, sixty-five years after the 14-year-old was lynched in Mississippi.
(AP, 2/26/20)
2020 Feb 26, US health officials said a new coronavirus case in California, a resident of Solano County, could be the first in the US that has no known connection to travel abroad or another known case, a possible sign the virus is spreading in a US community. The patient was brought to UC Davis Medical Center from another Northern California hospital on Feb. 19, but it was four days before the CDC heeded a request to test the patient for COVID-19.
(AP, 2/27/20)
2020 Feb 26, US federal prosecutors said a subsidiary of utility operator NiSource Inc has agreed to pay $53 million and plead guilty to breaking federal Pipeline Safety Act and to resolve an investigation into catastrophic gas explosions in three Massachusetts communities in September, 2018.
(Reuters, 2/26/20)(SFC, 2/27/20, p.A5)
2020 Feb 26, Biogen Inc. began hosting a two-day leadership meeting in Boston. About 175 executives gathered for a buffet dinner and cocktails at the Marriott Long Wharf overlooking Boston Harbor. On March 2 the company’s chief medical officer sent an email informing everyone who attended the leadership meeting that some people had fallen ill and telling them to contact a health care provider if they felt sick. At least 99 employees and their contacts became ill with the coronavirus.
(NY Times, 4/13/20)
2020 Feb 26, New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, the Senate Democratic leader, unveiled an $8.5 billion request to respond to the coronavirus outbreak, more than triple Pres. Trump's request.
(AP, 2/26/20)
2020 Feb 26, John Denton (26), a former neo-Nazi leader in Texas, was arrested and charges with a series of phony bomb threats made in Virginia.
(SFC, 2/27/20, p.A5)
2020 Feb 26, An employee in the US Citizenship and Immigration Services office in Seattle developed flu-like symptoms after visiting a nursing home in Kirkland, Washington. On March 3 the US Department of Homeland Security closed its field office in Seattle.
(Bloomberg, 3/3/20)
2020 Feb 26, In Wisconsin Anthony Ferril (51), a Molson Coors Beverage Co employee, shot ande killed five co-workers before taking his own life at the company's beer-brewing complex in Milwaukee.
(Reuters, 2/27/20)(SFC, 2/28/20, p.A6)
2020 Feb 26, Algeria and Greece reported their first cases of the coronavirus.
(Reuters, 2/26/20)
2020 Feb 26, Bahrain's number of coronavirus infections rose to 26.
(Reuters, 2/26/20)
2020 Feb 26, Brazil confirmed the first case of coronavirus in Latin America, a man in Sao Paulo who returned recently from Italy. The disease reached the Amazon region by mid-March.
(Reuters, 2/26/20)(Reuters, 4/10/20)
2020 Feb 26, Brazil's Environment Ministry reported the firing of two senior climate officials, leaving the posts vacant at a time when the country is under growing scrutiny for the greenhouse gases released by clearing the Amazon rainforest. The right-wing government of President Jair Bolsonaro had already reduced the emphasis on climate change within the ministry, turning a vice-minister-level role on climate change into a directorship.
(Reuters, 2/27/20)
2020 Feb 26, A second person died in France overnight as health officials tried to find out how the college teacher, who had not visited any country with a known outbreak, had caught the new coronavirus disease.
(Reuters, 2/26/20)
2020 Feb 26, In Germany two people tested positive for coronavirus, taking the total to 18. Officials said a German couple who contracted the coronavirus had taken part in local carnival celebrations and also visited the Netherlands in the 10 days before they were diagnosed.
(Reuters, 2/26/20)
2020 Feb 26, Germany's highest court overturned a ban on medically assisted suicide.
(SFC, 2/27/20, p.A2)
2020 Feb 26, Hong Kong's government proposed a cash handout of 10,000 Hong Kong dollars ($1,282) to residents to boost the city’s flagging economy.
(https://tinyurl.com/wbsaxn6)(Econ, 3/21/20, p.21)
2020 Feb 26, Indian authorities said at least 24 people were killed and 189 injured in three days of clashes in New Delhi that coincided with President Donald Trump's first state visit to India, with the death toll expected to rise as hospitals continue to take in the wounded. The 72-hour clash between Hindus and Muslims left at least 40 dead and hundreds injured.
(AP, 2/26/20)(AP, 2/28/20)
2020 Feb 26, Iranian cyberpolice announced the arrests of 24 people accused of online rumor-mongering about the spread of a coronavirus outbreak that has claimed 19 lives in the country. The health ministry announced four more deaths and 44 new infections, including in six previously unaffected provinces. This brought the total to 139 cases.
(AFP, 2/26/20)
2020 Feb 26, Iraq announced sweeping measures late today to try to contain the spread of the coronavirus, ordering the closure of schools and universities, cafes, cinemas and other public spaces until March 7. Iraq also banned travel to or from some of the worst affected countries.
(AFP, 2/27/20)
2020 Feb 26, OurCrowd, a leading Israeli venture capital firm, said it has hired the Trump administration's former Mideast envoy Jason Greenblatt as a business developer for the region.
(AP, 2/26/20)
2020 Feb 26, Italy become a frontline in the global outbreak of the coronavirus, with over 370 cases and 12 deaths.
(Reuters, 2/26/20)
2020 Feb 26, Italy's Enel said it agreed on the need to provide the country with an ultrabroadband network, after Economy Minister Roberto Gualtieri urged parties involved in the plan to find an agreement.
(Reuters, 2/26/20)
2020 Feb 26, Japanese PM Shinzo Abe called for sports and cultural events to be scrapped or curtailed for two weeks as domestic cases of coronavirus increased to 175.
(Reuters, 2/26/20)
2020 Feb 26, Kuwait's coronavirus cases rose to 25 after 13 more cases were confirmed.
(Reuters, 2/26/20)
2020 Feb 26, Rival Libyan politicians met for UN-sponsored political talks in Geneva aimed at ending the latest round of fighting over the country's capital, Tripoli.
(AP, 2/26/20)
2020 Feb 26, North Macedonia said it has confirmed its first case of the coronavirus infection, diagnosed in a woman who recently arrived from Italy.
(Reuters, 2/26/20)
2020 Feb 26, Pakistan said it has detected its first two cases of the coronavirus.
(AFP, 2/26/20)
2020 Feb 26, Philippine Pres. Rodrigo Duterte said Filipino forces can fight insurgents and Muslim extremists without american military help.
(SFC, 2/27/20, p.A4)
2020 Feb 26, The International Monetary Fund said it had secured sufficient financing to provide $334 million in debt relief to Somalia, a milestone the bank said brought it one step closer to a decision on forgiveness of most of Somalia's $5.3 billion in debt.
(Reuters, 2/26/20)
2020 Feb 26, In South Korea the coronavirus has infected 1,260 people. 20 South Korean soldiers and one American have tested positive.
(AP, 2/26/20)(Reuters, 2/26/20)
2020 Feb 26, Spain’s PM Pedro Sánchez and Quim Torra, the leader of Catalonia, opened formal talks in hopes of resolving the festering political crisis provoked by the region’s separatist movement.
(AP, 2/26/20)
2020 Feb 26, Thailand reported three new cases of coronavirus, taking its total tally to 40.
(AP, 2/26/20)
2020 Feb 26, World health officials said the coronavirus illness had now spread to 37 counties. The WHO reported that the number of new cases reported outside China exceeded the number of new cases in China for the first time.
(AP, 2/26/20)
2020 Feb 27, A US federal agency confirmed that a government whistleblower has filed a complaint alleging that some federal workers did not have the necessary protective gear or training when they were deployed to help Americans evacuated from China during the coronavirus outbreak.
(AP, 2/27/20)
2020 Feb 27, US federal officials issued new rules allowing more people to be tested for the coronavirus.
(SFC, 2/28/20, p.A1)
2020 Feb 27, A US government survey said about 4 in 10 American adults are obese, and nearly 1 in 10 is severely so.
(SFC, 2/28/20, p.A7)
2020 Feb 27, The US Food and Drug Administration approved Biohaven Pharmaceutical Holding Co Ltd's oral pill for relieving pain after the onset of migraine headaches.
(Reuters, 2/28/20)
2020 Feb 27, In Alabama Dannielle Nicole Martin (32) and grandmother, Vickie Seale Higgenbotham (58) were given maximum sentences of 20 years in prison after pleading guilty to aggravated child abuse. The 13-year-old boy had been found naked and chained to a door.
(AP, 2/28/20)
2020 Feb 27, California officials reported that the state's snowpack is just 46% of normal.
(SFC, 2/28/20, p.C1)
2020 Feb 27, The Iowa Democratic Party released updated results of the Iowa caucuses after the completion of a recount requested by the campaigns of Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg. In the new results, Buttigieg had 562.954 state delegate equivalents and Sanders had 562.021 state delegate equivalents out of 2,151 counted.
(AP, 2/27/20)
2020 Feb 27, In Maryland Catherine Pugh (69), the disgraced former mayor of Baltimore, was sentenced to three years in federal prison for arranging fraudulent sales of her self-published children’s books to nonprofits and foundations to promote her political career and fund her run for the city’s highest office.
(AP, 2/28/20)
2020 Feb 27, A federal judge struck down two Ohio state policies that stopped some refugees and children of immigrants from getting driver's licenses.
(SFC, 2/28/20, p.A5)
2020 Feb 27, Wall Street's main indexes tumbled, putting them more than 10% below record highs set earlier this month.
(Reuters, 2/27/20)
2020 Feb 27, Oil prices fell for a fifth straight day, plunging to their lowest levels since January 2019 as more new coronavirus cases outside China fanned fears that a pandemic could slow the global economy.
(Reuters, 2/27/20)
2020 Feb 27, Scientists reported the discovery of the biggest explosion seen in the universe, originating from a super-massive black hole in the Ophiuchus cluster of thousands of galaxies 390 million light-years away. The explosion was so large it carved out a crater in the hot gas that could hold 15 Milky Ways. The first hint of this giant explosion actually came in 2016.
(AP, 2/28/20)
2020 Feb 27, An African Union official said African leaders have decided to work on deploying 3,000 troops to West Africa’s troubled Sahel region as extremist attacks surged. Over the last year more than 2,600 people have been killed and more than half a million displaced in Burkina Faso alone.
(AP, 2/27/20)(SFC, 2/28/20, p.A3)
2020 Feb 27, The British Court of Appeal ruled that a plan to build a third runway at London's Heathrow Airport was unlawful because it violated Britain's commitments to climate change.
(SFC, 2/28/20, p.A2)
2020 Feb 27, China said the number of new deaths stood at 29, the lowest daily rate since Jan. 28 and reported 433 new cases. The coronavirus has now killed 2,744 people in the country, mostly in the central province of Hubei.
(Reuters, 2/27/20)
2020 Feb 27, China-BASED Huawei announced that it will build its first European manufacturing plant in France, as the Chinese telecom giant seeks to ease worldwide concerns stoked by US charges that Beijing could use its equipment for spying.
(Reuters, 2/27/20)
2020 Feb 27, Top supplier Godrej Agrovet Ltd said a false rumor that the coronavirus can be spread by chickens has slashed Indian poultry sales by almost 50%.
(Reuters, 2/27/20)
2020 Feb 27, It was reported that the coronavirus has killed 26 people in Iran, the highest toll outside of China where it originated. Many of the over 240 confirmed cases in the region have links to Iran, including dozens in Kuwait and Bahrain, six in Iraq and two in Lebanon.
(AP, 2/27/20)
2020 Feb 27, Iraq announced the first confirmed case of coronavirus in Baghdad, taking nationwide infections to six and raising concerns about the capacity of the dilapidated health system to respond.
(AFP, 2/27/20)
2020 Feb 27, Israel's Supreme Court ruled against a 2018 surrogacy law that critics said discriminated against same-sex couples and which sparked uproar in the LGBT community when it was passed.
(AP, 2/27/20)
2020 Feb 27, Japan's PM Shinzo Abe told all schools to close until April to help contain the spread of the coronavirus.
(Econ., 3/7/20, p.36)
2020 Feb 27, A Japanese woman tested positive for coronavirus for a second time as the number of confirmed cases in Japan, excluding the 704 on the quarantined cruise liner, rose above 190. The death toll rose to eight after another death was reported in Hokkaido.
(Reuters, 2/27/20)
2020 Feb 27, Kosovo said it will gradually lift tariffs on Serbian imports, a step toward easing a standoff between the neighbors that Donald Trump’s envoy to the region criticized as insufficient.
(Bloomberg, 2/28/20)
2020 Feb 27, In Kuwait confirmed cases of coronavirus rose to 43.
(AP, 2/27/20)
2020 Feb 27, Lebanon confirmed the country's third case of coronavirus, after a man arriving from Iran on Feb. 24 tested positive.
(Reuters, 2/27/20)
2020 Feb 27, Libya's UN-backed government says 21 civilians have been killed, including at least 13 children, since Jan. 9 casting doubt on a fragile cease-fire the Tripoli-based government and rival factions in the east agreed last month to observe.
(AP, 2/27/20)
2020 Feb 27, Malawi became the latest country in southern African to relax laws against growing and selling cannabis, making it legal for use in the production of medicines and hemp fibers used in industry.
(Reuters, 2/27/20)
2020 Feb 27, It was reported that North Korea has postponed the new school term to prevent the spread of the new coronavirus.
(AFP, 2/27/20)
2020 Feb 27, Russian state television said Turkish military specialists in Syria's Idlib region were using shoulder-fired missiles to try to shoot down Russian and Syrian military aircraft.
(Reuters, 2/27/20)
2020 Feb 27, Saudi Arabia banned pilgrims from visiting Islam's holiest sites as the number of deaths jumped in neighboring Iran. Japan and Iraq ordered the closure of schools. Saudi Arabia made the unprecedented decision to halt the umrah pilgrimage amid the global outbreak of the coronavirus. The lesser umrah pilgrimage can be performed year-round. Nearly 20 million Muslims undertake the umrah pilgrimage each year, including more than 7 million foreign travelers.
(AFP, 2/27/20) (Good Morning America, 2/27/20)
2020 Feb 27, South Korea reported 334 additional cases of the new coronavirus.
(Reuters, 2/27/20)
2020 Feb 27, In northwestern Syria Turkey-backed Syrian opposition fighters retook the strategic town of Saraqeb from government forces, cutting a key highway just days after the government reopened it for the first time since 2012. Syrian state media said President Bashar Assad's forces made major gains to the south controlling almost the entire southern part of Idlib province after capturing more than 20 villages. Violence in Idlib province left three more Turkish soldiers dead, raising the number of Turkish troops killed in Syria this month to 21.
(AP, 2/27/20)
2020 Feb 27, In southern Syria an Israeli drone fired a missile at a car, killing one person,. An opposition war monitor said the man targeted was an anti-Israel operative. Quneitra Gov. Humam Dibyat identified the person killed as Adel Tawil and said he worked at a police station and was targeted while returning home from work.
(AP, 2/27/20)
2020 Feb 27, In northwestern Syria at least 33 Turkish military personnel were killed in an attack late today, and more than 30 others were injured. The deaths followed a precision strike on a two-storey building in the village of Balioun.
(The Guardian, 2/28/20)
2020 Feb 27, In Tunisia Elyes Fakhfakh (b.1972) began serving as prime minister.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elyes_Fakhfakh)(Econ., 8/15/20, p.41)
2020 Feb 27, In the past 24 hours, the WHO recorded seven nations that announced their first cases of the novel coronavirus: Brazil, Georgia, Greece, North Macedonia, Norway, Pakistan and Romania.
(Good Morning America, 2/27/20)
2020 Feb 28, US Pres. Donald Trump accused Democrats of exaggerating the danger of the coronavirus in order to destroy his presidency.
(SFC, 2/29/20, p.A5)
2020 Feb 28, President Donald Trump picked Rep. John Ratcliffe again to be the nation's top intelligence official, just months after abruptly ending an earlier effort to install him amid bipartisan criticism that the Texas Republican was unqualified for the post.
(AP, 2/28/20)
2020 Feb 28, A US federal appeals court found a central pillar of the Trump administration’s immigration agenda legally invalid, ruling that asylum-seekers must be allowed into the United States while their cases weave through US immigration courts. The court stayed its decision in order to allow the government time to appeal the ruling.
(NY Times, 2/29/20)
2020 Feb 28, The number of coronavirus cases in the United States was confirmed at 62. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also confirmed that four more patients tested positive for the virus in California, Oregon and Washington states.
(Good Morning America, 2/29/20)
2020 Feb 28, The US Justice Department announced that France-based Sanofi SA has agreed to pay $11.85 million to resolve US allegations that it used a charity that helps cover Medicare patients' out-of-pocket drug costs as a means to pay them kickbacks to use a high-priced multiple sclerosis drug.
(Reuters, 2/28/20)
2020 Feb 28, The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted 3-2 to adopt rules to auction a key band spectrum for wireless use that includes up to $9.7 billion in potential incentive payments to satellite companies.
(Reuters, 2/28/20)
2020 Feb 28, In northern California a man went on a rampage at a mental health and rehab center in Carmichael fatally stabbing two people. Martin Raymond lackey-Garcia (39) was booked for investigation of murder.
(SFC, 3/2/20, p.A6)
2020 Feb 28, Joe Coulombe (b.1930), founder of the Trader Joe's grocery stores, died. He opened his first store in Pasadena, Ca., in 1967. He sold the chain to German retailer Aldi in 1979 but remianed CEO until 1988.
(SSFC, 3/1/20, p.A9)
2020 Feb 28, St. Louis police officer Nathaniel Hendren (30), accused of accidentally killing a female colleague while playing a variation of Russian roulette, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to seven years in prison. He was accused of fatally shooting Katlyn Alix (24), also a St. Louis police officer, at his home in January 2019 while he was supposed to be on duty elsewhere.
(AP, 2/28/20)
2020 Feb 28, In New York the embattled Roman Catholic Diocese of Buffalo filed for bankruptcy protection, taking another major step in its effort to recover from a clergy misconduct scandal that‘s been the basis for hundreds of lawsuits, Vatican intervention and the resignation of its bishop.
(AP, 2/28/20)
2020 Feb 28, Apple Inc agreed to pay up to $500 million to settle litigation accusing it of quietly slowing down older iPhones as it launched new models, to induce owners to buy replacement phones or batteries. The settlement calls for Apple to pay consumers $25 per iPhone, which may be adjusted up or down depending on how many iPhones are eligible, with a minimum total payout of $310 million. This still required approval by US District Judge Edward Davila in San Jose.
(Reuters, 3/2/20)
2020 Feb 28, Geneva-based Trafigura, a global commodities trader, said it had formed a joint venture with US refiner Phillips 66 to build a major deepwater port in Texas capable of handling supertankers, ditching its own competing project.
(Reuters, 2/28/20)
2020 Feb 28, Freeman Dyson (b.1923), English-born American theoretical physicist and mathematician, died in New Jersey. He is known for his work in quantum electrodynamics, solid-state physics, astronomy and nuclear engineering.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeman_Dyson)(Econ, 3/14/20, p.74)
2020 Feb 28, The list of countries hit by the COVID-19 illness edged toward 60 as Azerbaijan, Belarus, Lithuania, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Nigeria reported their first cases.
(AP, 2/28/20)
2020 Feb 28, Brazil confirmed its first case of the new coronavirus. The disease reached the Amazon region by mid-March.
(Reuters, 4/10/20)
2020 Feb 28, China's death toll from the coronavirus reached 2,788, up 44. Cases climbed to 78,824, up 327.
(Bloomberg, 2/28/20)
2020 Feb 28, In Congo DRC General Delphin Kahimbi, the country's top army spy, died following media reports that he was being investigated for allegedly seeking to destabilize the country. His wife said he had suffered a heart attack. President Felix Tshisekedi later said his death was apparently due to hanging.
(Reuters, 3/7/20)
2020 Feb 28, Cyprus' interior minister accused Turkey of deliberately channeling migrants for months to the ethnically-divided island's Greek Cypriot south to change the composition of its population.
(AP, 2/28/20)
2020 Feb 28, A Czech court convicted imam Samer Shehadeh, a former Prague Muslim leader, of being part of a terror group and financing terrorism, sentencing him to 10 years in prison. Two other people in the same case were convicted of terror charges in absentia by Prague’s Municipal Court. One received a prison term of 11 years and the other was given a term of six years.
(AP, 2/28/20)
2020 Feb 28, In France a major fire was reported ongoing in the area of the Gare de Lyon railway station in southeastern Paris.
(Reuters, 2/28/20)
2020 Feb 28, Hong Kong Hong Kong media tycoon and a prominent democracy advocate Jimmy Lai (72), who has long denounced as a traitor by Chinese state media, was among activists swept up in a fresh wave of arrests in the Asian financial hub. Lai was arrested on suspicion of participating in an unlawful assembly last year and intimidating a reporter in 2017. He was soon given police bail.
(Bloomberg, 2/28/20)
2020 Feb 28, Iran reported eight new deaths from coronavirus, raising its toll to 34. The health ministry said 143 cases had been detected over the past 24 hours, increasing the total of confirmed infections to 388. At least seven officials in the country have tested positive for the coronavirus.
(AFP, 2/28/20)(The Week, 2/28/20)
2020 Feb 28, In Iran a fire erupted in a residential building in the city of Qom before dawn, killing at least five people, including a 2-year-old, and injuring 38.
(AP, 2/28/20)
2020 Feb 28, Italy reported that four more people have died from coronavirus, bringing the total to 21, while the number of those testing positive for the illness jumped to 821.
(AP, 2/28/20)
2020 Feb 28, Mexico said a man (35) has been confirmed as the first coronavirus case in the country. The man had taken a trip to Italy in February. Mexican health officials confirmed three coronavirus cases, all with mild symptoms and likely from the same source.
(Bloomberg, 2/28/20)
2020 Feb 28, New Zealand health officials said the country had its first case of the new coronavirus, a person in their 60s who recently returned from Iran.
(AP, 2/28/20)
2020 Feb 28, A Polish woman (32) suspected of being the head of a Polish drug trafficking group based in Krakow was arrested in Slovakia after a joint operation by Polish, Hungarian and Slovakian security forces. Police said the woman had reorganized the gang in 2017 by recruiting members of the KS Cracovia soccer team's extremist fans to engage in international drug trafficking.
(Reuters, 3/1/20)
2020 Feb 28, In Russia Moscow's deputy mayor said 88 foreign nationals will be deported for allegedly violating quarantine measures imposed on them as a precaution against the coronavirus.
(AP, 2/28/20)
2020 Feb 28, In Somalia 11 people were killed over the last 24 hours in fighting between national forces and the Ahlu Sunnah Wal Jama'a (ASWJ) militia, a group of moderate Sufi Muslims which pushed al Shabaab out of its territory.
(Reuters, 3/2/20)
2020 Feb 28, South Korea confirmed 256 more cases, bringing total to 2,022, doubling in two days and raising alarm about the worst outbreak outside of neighboring China.
(Bloomberg, 2/28/20)
2020 Feb 28, Spain's High Court denied a US extradition request for former Venezuelan minister Javier Alvarado Ochoa in connection with an investigation into money-laundering. It said it had refused extradition because the US warrant was based on alleged crimes also under investigation in Spain, and because Alvarado Ochoa also holds Spanish citizenship.
(AP, 2/28/20)
2020 Feb 28, In northwest Syria Lebanon's militant Hezbollah group lost at least eight fighters in skirmishes with insurgents and airstrikes by Turkey's air force. 48 Syrian soldiers have also been killed in the last 48 hours in Turkish bombardments and drone attacks in the region.
(AP, 2/29/20)
2020 Feb 28, Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said his country's borders with Europe were open, making good on a longstanding threat to let refugees into the continent as thousands of migrants gathered at the frontier with Greece.
(AP, 2/29/20)
2020 Feb 28, Refugees in Turkey headed towards European frontiers after an official declared that borders had been thrown open, a response to the escalating war in Syria. Greece began to forcibly turn back migrants.
(Reuters, 2/28/20)(Econ., 3/7/20, p.47)
2020 Feb 29, The United States signed a peace agreement with Taliban militants aimed at bringing an end to 18 years of bloodshed in Afghanistan that began after 9/11 and allowing US troops to return home from America's longest war. The historic deal was signed by chief negotiators from the two sides in the Qatari capital of Doha. The Trump administration negotiated a withdrawal agreement with the Taliban that excluded the Afghan government, freed 5,000 imprisoned Taliban soldiers and set a date certain of May 1, 2021, for the final withdrawal.
(AP, 2/29/20)(https://tinyurl.com/fhasuvhb)
2020 Feb 29, US health officials reported three more cases of the new coronavirus transmitted to people who did not travel overseas or come in contact with anyone known to be ill. The first US coronavirus-related death was reported in Washington State.
(AFP, 2/29/20)(The Daily Beast, 2/29/20)
2020 Feb 29, In New Mexico Antonio Valenzuela (40) was choked to death by a police officer after he fled from a traffic stop in Las Cruces. The officer can be heard on police camera footage saying, “I’m going to [expletive] choke you out, bro" as he chased Valenzuela. In August his family agreed to a $6.5 million settlement with the city which agreed to ban all choke holds.
(https://tinyurl.com/yba7zg2x) (SFC, 8/120/20, p.A4)
2020 Feb 29, In South Carolina Joe Biden won 60% of the votes cast by non-white voters, dominating a crowded Democratic field among a group that made up more than half of the electorate. Bernie Sanders won roughly 14% of African American voters, while billionaire Tom Steyer won 15% and dropped out of the race..
(AP, 2/29/20)
2020 Feb 29, Azerbaijan said it had closed its border with Iran for two weeks to prevent the spread of coronavirus, after the death toll in Iran rose to 43, the highest number outside of China.
(Reuters, 2/29/20)
2020 Feb 29, It was reported that Philip Rutnam, one of the UK’s most senior civil servants, quit his job at the government department responsible for policing, counter-terrorism and immigration over what he claims was an orchestrated campaign against him.
(Bloomberg, 2/29/20)
2020 Feb 29, The number of people infected with coronavirus in the United Kingdom rose to 23, after three more patients tested positive.
(Reuters, 2/29/20)
2020 Feb 29, China reported 47 more coronavirus deaths and 427 new infections.
(AFP, 2/29/20)
2020 Feb 29, In Cyprus dozens of people pushed aside police barriers to protest the closing of a crossing point in the medieval core of the capital of ethnically divided island. There have been no confirmed cases of the coronavirus found so far on either side of the divide.
(AP, 2/29/20)
2020 Feb 29, Ecuador said it has confirmed the first case of a fast-spreading new coronavirus. The patient had arrived in Ecuador on Feb. 14 on a direct flight from Madrid without showing any symptoms, but soon felt ill and went to a hospital where she was diagnosed with the coronavirus.
(Reuters, 2/29/20)
2020 Feb 29, French PM Edouard Philippe said the government would push its contested pension reform through parliament by decree, avoiding the need for a vote after the opposition filed more than 40,000 amendments to the draft law.
(Reuters, 2/29/20)
2020 Feb 29, France said it is banning all indoor public gatherings of more than 5,000 people to slow the spread of coronavirus cases and recommending that people no longer greet each other with kisses.
(AP, 2/29/20)
2020 Feb 29, In southeastern France tens of thousands of people rallied for the independence of Spain's Catalonia region. Holding the event on French territory allowed former regional president Carles Puigdemont to attend.
(SSFC, 3/1/20, p.A4)
2020 Feb 29, Guinea-Bissau had two presidents and two prime ministers as of today, after Umaro Cissoko Embalo, the inaugurated winner of December's election, swore in a new premier, but parliament appointed a rival interim president.
(Reuters, 2/29/20)
2020 Feb 29, Hong Kong police fired tear gas to disperse hundreds of black-clad protesters, some armed with petrol bombs, during a rally to mark six months since the authorities stormed a subway station and arrested demonstrators.
(AP, 2/29/20)
2020 Feb 29, In Indonesia members of the West Papua Liberation Army attacked security forces near the world's largest gold mine in Papua province . Two security personnel and four rebels were killed at the Grasberg copper and gold mine.
(SFC, 3/4/20, p.A2)(SSFC, 4/12/20, p.A4)
2020 Feb 29, Iran reported a surge in new coronavirus cases as the number of deaths jumped to 43 among 593 cases, but it dismissed as "rumors" a report the real toll was much higher.
(AFP, 2/29/20)
2020 Feb 29, In Japan a man in his 70s died on the northernmost island of Hokkaido late today after testing positive for COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. The man's death marked the sixth fatality from COVID-19 in Japan, excluding six deaths among those aboard the cruise ship Diamond Princess.
(AP, 3/1/20)
2020 Feb 29, Lebanon's health ministry said that three new cases of coronavirus had been confirmed, bringing the total number of cases in the country to seven.
(Reuters, 2/29/20)
2020 Feb 29, Luxembourg abolished fares for trains, trams and buses in what the government said was a bid to tackle road congestion and pollution, as well as supporting low earners. Travelers can still pay for first class, at a cost of 660 euros a year.
(Reuters, 2/29/20)
2020 Feb 29, Malay nationalist Muhyiddin Yassin (72) heard news that the king had picked him as prime minister over Mahathir Mohamad (94), the outspoken leader who has dominated Malaysian politics for decades. Most of Bersatu and a faction of the PKR jumped ship, siding with UMNO and an Islamic party, PAS, to form a new government with Muhyiddin Yassin of Bersatu as its head.
(Reuters, 3/1/20)(Econ., 9/26/20, p.40)
2020 Feb 29, In Montenegro thousands of people, led by Serbian Orthodox Church clerics, marched peacefully through the Podgorica in protest against a law they fear will be used to target the church's assets and status.
(Reuters, 2/29/20)
2020 Feb 29, In Myanmar at least five ethnic Rohingya were killed and several injured after troops clashed with insurgents in the conflict-torn western state of Rakhine.
(Reuters, 3/1/20)
2020 Feb 29, Pakistan confirmed two more cases of coronavirus, bringing the total number of positive cases to four since Feb 26, when the first two cases were reported in the country.
(Reuters, 2/29/20)
2020 Feb 29, In Russia thousands rallied in central Moscow to call on President Vladimir Putin not to stay in power indefinitely, in the first major protest by the Russian opposition since the Kremlin chief announced controversial plans to change the constitution. Thousands of people marched on a central Moscow boulevard in remembrance of opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, who was gunned down five years ago while walking on a bridge adjacent to the Kremlin.
(AFP, 2/29/20)(AP, 2/29/20)
2020 Feb 29, In Slovakia the center-right Ordinary People party, led by Igor Matovic, captured 25% of a parliamentary vote.
(SFC, 5/1/20, p.A2)
2020 Feb 29, South Korea reported its biggest surge in new coronavirus cases with 3,150 infections as 813 more patients were reported. Three women in the Daegu area died of the illness, taking the national toll to 17.
(AFP, 2/29/20)
2020 Feb 29, Spain's total number of active coronavirus cases rose to 49. Authorities said an Italian national staying at a hotel in Tenerife, which has been placed on lockdown after four cases of the coronavirus were detected, has tested positive for the virus. This brought the total number of active cases in the Canary Islands to six.
(AP, 2/29/20)
2020 Feb 29, The UN migration organization reported at least 13,000 people had massed on Turkey’s land border, the vast majority apparently from Afghanistan.
(AP, 3/1/20)
2020 Feb 29, Yemeni gunmen entered a port in the southern city of Aden and prevented a tanker from offloading a diesel cargo because the importing company is affiliated with the government.
(AP, 2/29/20)
2020 Feb, Easterday Ranches of Pasco, Wa., filed for bankruptcy shortly after it was sued by Tyson Foods. Over the course of a decade, rancher Cody Easterday lost money every year trading corn and cattle futures in his personal and business accounts. In 2021 Easterday (49) pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud that cost Tyson and another, unnamed company $244 million.
(Bloomberg, 4/6/21)
2020 Feb, General Motors pulled its car production out of Thailand.
(Economist, 4/4/20, p.29)
2020 Feb, In Cyprus 96 flamingos were found dead over the last two months in the Larnaca Salt Lake wetlands as a result of lead poisoning. In 2021 Conservationists in Cyprus urged authorities to expand a hunting ban throughout a coastal salt lake network amid concerns that migrating flamingos could potentially swallow lethal quantities of lead shotgun pellets.
(AP, 2/21/21)
2020 Feb, India signed a $3.5 billion arms deal with the US.
(Econ., 6/20/20, p.30)
2020 Feb, In central Mali tribesmen attacked Ogossogou, an ethnic Peuhl village. 35 people were killed.
(Econ., 8/22/20, p.10)
2020 Feb, The India-based Adani conglomerate completed a $450 million sale of 25% of its Mumbai power operations to Qatar's government. It also received a $900 million investment in a 37% stake in its gas operations by Total, a French oil giant.
(Econ., 7/4/20, p.55)
2020 Feb, Turkish drones destroyed dozens of Syrian tanks in a two-day killing spree.
(Econ., 9/12/20, p.70)
2020 Mar 1, President Donald Trump said travelers from countries at high risk of coronavirus would be screened before boarding and upon arrival, without specifying which countries. New cases were reported in the Chicago area and Rhode Island. To date, more than 86,500 cases have been confirmed. Outside of China, it has spread to 53 countries, with more than 6,500 cases and more than 100 deaths. Globally, the illness has killed nearly 3,000 people.
(Reuters, 3/1/20)(Reuters, 3/1/20)
2020 Mar 1, It was reported that The United States will give Zambia a new one year bilateral grant of $389 million for AIDS relief starting in October after Congressional approval.
(AP, 3/1/20)
2020 Mar 1, A US federal judge ruled that Ken Cuccinelli was unlawfully appointed to lead the US Citizenship and Immigration Services agency and, as a result, lacked authority to give asylum seekers less time to prepare for initial screening interviews.
(AP, 3/1/20)
2020 Mar 1, Pete Buttigieg (38), the former mayor of Indiana's fourth largest city, formally suspended his White House bid late today.
(AP, 3/1/20)
2020 Mar 1, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo's office confirmed the state's first coronavirus case late today, in a woman in her late thirties who recently travelled to Iran.
(The Independent, 3/1/20)
2020 Mar 1, Jack Welch (b.1935), former head of General Electric (1981-2001), died in Manhattan.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Welch)(Econ., 3/7/20, p.57)
2020 Mar 1, A second person died of coronavirus in the northwestern US state of Washington as number of infections passed 75.
(AFP, 3/2/20)(Reuters, 3/2/20)
2020 Mar 1, In Wyoming at least three people were killed and 30 others injured on I-80 amid snowy conditions.
(SFC, 3/3/20, p.A4)
2020 Mar 1, Afghanistan's Pres. Ashraf Ghani said that he will not free thousands of Taliban prisoners ahead of all-Afghan power-sharing talks set for next week, publicly disagreeing with a timetable for a speedy prisoner release laid out just a day earlier in a US-Taliban peace agreement.
(AP, 3/1/20)
2020 Mar 1, A report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) said more than 80,000 Uighurs were shipped out of Xinjiang provice from 2017-2019 to take jobs in factories across China under conditions that "strongly suggest forced labor." China has acknowledged a scheme called "Xinjiang Aid" to reduce poverty in the province.
(Econ., 3/7/20, p.38)
2020 Mar 1, Britain announced a jump in coronavirus cases, with 12 new infections taking the total to 35.
(AP, 3/1/20)
2020 Mar 1, Mainland China reported the biggest daily rise in coronavirus cases since Feb. 22. A total of 2,870 people have died in mainland China and 79,824 have been infected by the virus.
(Reuters, 3/1/20)
2020 Mar 1, France now has 100 confirmed cases. Of those, two have died. Louvre workers who guard Leonardo da Vinci's “Mona Lisa" and other masterpieces walked off the job, fearful of being contaminated by the museum’s flow of tourists from around the world.
(Reuters, 3/1/20)(AP, 3/4/20)
2020 Mar 1, Germany's Robert Koch Institute for disease control said the number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany has jumped to 117 from 66.
(Reuters, 3/1/20)
2020 Mar 1, Greek army and police patrols using tear gas and stun grenades to thwart attempts overnight by thousands to push into the country. Thousands of migrants and refugees massed at Turkey's western frontier, trying to enter Greece by land and sea after Turkey said its borders were open to those hoping to head to Europe.
(AP, 3/1/20)
2020 Mar 1, Iran's health ministry raised the nationwide death toll from the new coronavirus to 54 as the number of confirmed infected cases jumped overnight by more than half to 978 people.
(AP, 3/1/20)
2020 Mar 1, Ireland, Luxembourg and Qatar reported their first cases of the coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/1/20)
2020 Mar 1, Italy reported 1,694 positive cases of coronavirus and 34 deaths.
(AFP, 3/2/20)
2020 Mar 1, Kazakhstan police detained dozens of opposition supporters who took to the streets after the death of an anti-government activist in a detention center.
(Reuters, 3/1/20)
2020 Mar 1, Malaysia arrested a man (35) and started investigating three others for social media posts that insult the king and threaten public order.
(AP, 3/1/20)
2020 Mar 1, In Nicaragua Ernesto Cardenal (95), the renowned poet and Roman Catholic cleric who became a symbol of revolutionary verse in Nicaragua and around Latin America, died. His 1984 suspension from the priesthood by St. John Paul II lasted over three decades.
(AP, 3/1/20)(Econ., 3/7/20, p.82)
2020 Mar 1, In Poland several dozen activists protested in front of a Warsaw church guarded by police as Catholic Archbishop Marek Jedraszewski, criticized for his anti-LGBT language, celebrated mass.
(Reuters, 3/1/20)
2020 Mar 1, In Saudi Arabia the 2nd Riyadh International Humanitarian Forum opened in Riyadh.
(PRNewswire, 3/1/20)
2020 Mar 1, In South Africa hundreds of foreign migrants were removed from central Cape Town by authorities following a months-long stand-off. The group had lost their court bid to compel the government to fly them to what they said would be safer countries.
(AP, 3/1/20)
2020 Mar 1, In South Korea the number of coronavirus cases is now at 3,736 with 21 deaths tied to the Shincheonji religious sect. The founder of the sect and 11 others have just been charged with murder.
(The Daily Beast, 3/1/20)(Reuters, 3/1/20)
2020 Mar 1, In Syria, Turkish troops shot down two Syrian warplanes after the Syrian military downed a Turkish drone. Syrian state media said the Syrian army has so far downed three Turkish drones that Ankara had been using extensively to hit Syrian army locations and air bases.
(AP, 3/1/20)(Reuters, 3/1/20)
2020 Mar 1, Tajikistan voted in a parliamentary election that will produce a legislature loyal to President Imomali Rakhmon (67) who has run the ex-Soviet Central Asian nation for a quarter of a century.
(Reuters, 3/1/20)
2020 Mar 1, Uruguay, with a population of 3.4 million, shifted to the right with the inauguration of conservative Luis Lacalle Pou (46) as president after 15 years of left-wing rule.
(AP, 3/1/20)(SFC, 3/2/20, p.A2)
2020 Mar 1, Officials on both sides of the conflict said Yemen’s Houthi rebels have wrested control of the strategic northern city of Hazm, a major blow to the internationally recognized government backed by Saudi Arabia.
(AP, 3/1/20)
2020 Mar 2, US State Department officials told reporters that starting March 13, five Chinese state- and party-owned media companies will be allowed to employ a combined 100 Chinese citizens, a 40% cut from current levels. On Feb. 20, China’s foreign ministry took the unusual action of revoking the press credentials of three Wall Street Journal reporters, prompting their expulsion.
(Bloomberg, 3/3/20)(Econ., 3/7/20, p.24)
2020 Mar 2, The US Department of Justice announced that two Chinese nationals have been indicted in the District of Columbia on two counts related to operating a money laundering business. The two Chinese allegedly laundered cryptocurrency stolen by North Korean hackers between December 2017 and April 2019, helping to hide the stolen currency from police. The US sued to gain control of cryptocurrency accounts North Korea allegedly used to steal more than $250 million from Bitcoin and Ether exchanges in 2018.
(Reuters, 3/3/20)(Bloomberg, 3/3/20)
2020 Mar 2, The US Supreme Court threw out a lower court's ruling that had let the family of a slain 16-year-old Mexican boy pursue a civil rights lawsuit against a US Border Patrol agent who shot the teenager in 2012 from across the border in Arizona.
(Reuters, 3/2/20)
2020 Mar 2, US health authorities urged all baby boomers to get a one-time hepatitis C test because that age group appeared at particularly high risk. The US Preventive Services Task Force said that hepatitis C is on the rise because of the opioid crisis, prompting the recommendation to expand testing.
(AP, 3/2/20)
2020 Mar 2, In California the number of coronavirus cases in the Bay Area were confirmed at 26 with 43 cases statewide.
(SFC, 3/3/20, p.A1)
2020 Mar 2, In Missouri Jeremy Garnier (48) of St. Louis was arrested after he threatened to bomb and kill people while dressed as the Batman villain the Joker.
(SFC, 3/6/20, p.A5)
2020 Mar 2, In Pennsylvania the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia filed for Bankruptcy seeking protection from debt brought by construction efforts.
(SFC, 3/3/20, p.A4)
2020 Mar 2, Washington state health authorities said six people have died from coronavirus. Researchers said earlier that the virus may have been circulating for weeks undetected in the state.
(AP, 3/2/20)
2020 Mar 2, Gilead Sciences Inc said it would buy Forty Seven Inc for $4.9 billion in cash, adding an experimental treatment that targets blood cancer to its portfolio of oncology drugs.
(Reuters, 3/2/20)
2020 Mar 2, Andorra, Armenia, Czech Republic, Dominican Republic, Iceland and Indonesia confirmed their first cases of coronavirus.
(AP, 3/2/20)
2020 Mar 2, The death toll from the new coronavirus epidemic surpassed 3,000 as more people died in China, Iran and the US and Europe raised its state of alert. The virus has now infected more than 89,000, spread to over 60 countries and threatens to cause a global economic slowdown.
(AP, 3/2/20)
2020 Mar 2, Australian health officials said that a woman and a male doctor have contracted coronavirus, becoming the first cases of community transmissions in the country.
(AP, 3/2/20)
2020 Mar 2, Britain's Foreign Office said Germany, France and the UK have offered a 5 million-euro ($5.6 million) package to Iran to help fight coronavirus in the country.
(Reuters, 3/2/20)
2020 Mar 2, Chilean President Sebastian Pinera signed a law that strengthens existing legislation against femicide, expanding the definition to include the killing of non-married partners and boosting penalties for killing pregnant women and minors.
(Reuters, 3/2/20)
2020 Mar 2, It was reported that more than 180 children in Chile have been held in preventive detention – some for up to four months – for their participation in the wave of social unrest which have rocked the country since October.
(The Guardian, 3/2/20)
2020 Mar 2, China reported 42 more deaths due to coronavirus, all in central Hubei province, putting death toll in China to 2,912. The National Health Commission reported 202 new infections, the lowest daily rise since late January, bringing the nationwide total over 80,000.
(AFP, 3/2/20)
2020 Mar 2, China’s UN ambassador said that North Korea is suffering “negatively" from the coronavirus and called for greater flexibility from the United States and other countries on lifting sanctions against the country.
(AP, 3/2/20)
2020 Mar 2, Ecuador confirmed five cases in patients who all had direct contact with an elderly woman who brought the virus to the Andean country from Spain.
(Reuters, 3/2/20)
2020 Mar 2, An Egyptian court sentenced to death 37 defendants, including Hisham el-Ashmawi, one of the country’s most high-profile militants, following their conviction of terrorism-related charges. The court also sentenced 61 defendants to life in prison, and 85 others got sentences ranging from 15 to 5 years in prison. The verdicts can be appealed.
(AP, 3/2/20)
2020 Mar 2, The EU's executive said Albania and North Macedonia have done enough to merit starting negotiations to join the European Union.
(Reuters, 3/2/20)
2020 Mar 2, EU Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides said: "As of this morning, we have 2,100 confirmed cases in 18 EU member states and we have 38 citizens who have lost their lives".
(AP, 3/2/20)
2020 Mar 2, In Germany the number of novel coronavirus cases rose to 150, up from 129 the previous day, with Berlin reporting its first infection.
(AP, 3/2/20)
2020 Mar 2, A child died when a boat full of migrants heading to a Greek island capsized, part of a wave of thousands trying to push through Greece's land and sea borders after Turkey declared the way was open for migrants and refugees to enter Europe. Over the last two days some 1,200 migrants arrived on Lesbos, already overcrowded with migrants.
(AP, 3/2/20)(Econ., 3/7/20, p.48)
2020 Mar 2, A Guatemalan court sentenced Pedro Muadi, the former president of the country's congress, to more than 30 years in prison for acts of corruption.
(AP, 3/2/20)
2020 Mar 2, Guyana held elections to decide who oversees an oil boom set to transform the poor South American country, which faces a test of whether it can sustainably manage a sudden influx of natural resource wealth. Irfaan Ali (39), a former housing minister from the opposition People's Progressive Party (PPP), sought to unseat incumbent President David Granger (74), whose five-year tenure has coincided with the discovery of billions of barrels of crude offshore by a consortium led by Exxon Mobil Corp. The oil was set to provide a significant economic boon in the country of fewer than 800,000. On March 13 the election commission declared that Granger (74) had won the vote. On March 13 the election commission declared that Granger (74) had won the vote. A drawn out recount followed.
(Reuters, 3/2/20)(SFC, 3/16/20, p.A3)(Econ., 8/8/20, p.27)
2020 Mar 2, Indian lawmakers pushed and shoved each other in parliament after opposition parties demanded the resignation of interior minister Amit Shah over the handling of deadly riots triggered by a citizenship law that excludes Muslims. Officials said the death toll in the capital from riots last week between Hindus and Muslims rose to 46, a day after false rumors of new violence led to panicked calls to police in many parts of the city.
(Reuters, 3/2/20)(AP, 3/2/20)
2020 Mar 2, India reported three new cases of coronavirus, including an Italian national in the western Indian state of Rajasthan.
(AP, 3/3/20)
2020 Mar 2, Iran reported 12 more deaths due to the coronavirus, raising the country's toll to 66. Iran reported more than 500 new cases, raising its total number of infections to 1,501. Mohammad Mirmohammadi (71) of Iran's Expediency Council died in a Tehran hospital after contracting the COVID-19 coronavirus. A team from the World Health Organization (WHO) arrived in Tehran to support the country's response to the coronavirus outbreak.
(AFP, 3/2/20)(The Week, 3/2/20)(Reuters, 3/2/20)
2020 Mar 2, Iraq faced more political gridlock after prime minister-designate Mohammed Allawi withdrew overnight, accusing lawmakers of obstructing his attempt to form a government.
(AFP, 3/2/20)
2020 Mar 2, Israel held its third parliamentary elections in under 12 months as PM Benjamin Netanyahu faced off against former army chief Benny Gantz. The Netanyahu-led alliance stood to capture 59 of parliament’s 120 seats, following a four-seat gain by Likud, versus 54 for the general’s camp.
(AP, 3/2/20)(3, 3/3/20)
2020 Mar 2, Experts said Italy's economy performed woefully in 2019 and is set to do even worse this year due to the coronavirus, with the threat of recession looming large.
(AFP, 3/2/20)
2020 Mar 2, Five more cases were confirmed in Japan's northern island of Hokkaido, taking the island's total tally to 77.
(AP, 3/2/20)
2020 Mar 2, Kyrgyz riot police used tear gas, stun grenades and water cannon to disperse hundreds of anti-government protesters who approached the government headquarters in the capital Bishkek. Some 2,000 protesters rallied on Bishkek's central square earlier in the day to demand the release of Sadyr Zhaparov, a former adviser to ex-president Kurmanbek Bakiyev.
(AP, 3/2/20)
2020 Mar 2, Malaysia's new prime minister Muhyiddin Yassin said his government will focus on efforts stamp out corruption and abuse of power.
(Reuters, 3/2/20)
2020 Mar 2, Nigerian stocks fell as authorities contacted around 100 people who may have been exposed to an Italian man who is the country's first coronavirus patient.
(Reuters, 3/2/20)
2020 Mar 2, North Korea launched two short-range projectiles off its east coast in the country’s first weapons test in three months.
(AP, 3/2/20)
2020 Mar 2, Qatar's health ministry said that medical tests had revealed four new cases of coronavirus infection in the country.
(Reuters, 3/2/20)
2020 Mar 2, Saudi Arabia confirmed its first case of coronavirus after one its citizens who had returned from COVID-19 hotspot Iran tested positive.
(AFP, 3/2/20)
2020 Mar 2, Fighting erupted in south Somalia between the national army and regional forces, amid deepening divisions that help Islamist insurgents and may exacerbate regional frictions.
(Reuters, 3/2/20)
2020 Mar 2, South Korea reported 599 new cases of coronavirus, raising its total to 4,355. The death toll rose to 26. South Korea sought murder charges against leaders of Shincheonji Church, to which most of South Korea's cases have been traced.
(Reuters, 3/2/20)
2020 Mar 2, Spain's confirmed cases of coronavirus rose to around 120 from 81 the day before.
(Reuters, 3/2/20)
2020 Mar 2, Sweden's Transport Agency said it had temporarily suspended IranAir from conducting flights to and from Sweden due to the outbreak of the coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/2/20)
2020 Mar 2, Investigators for the UN-backed Human Rights Council said that they had found evidence of war crimes in Syria committed by nearly all sides in the conflict during the second half of last year and into January.
(AP, 3/2/20)
2020 Mar 2, The United Nation's refugee agency said that Greece had no right to stop accepting asylum applications as Athens struggled with a sudden increase of arrivals at its border of Middle East refugees and migrants from Turkey.
(Reuters, 3/2/20)
2020 Mar 3, US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said G7 finance ministers and central bank governors have agreed to "do everything possible" to limit harm from the fast-spreading coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/3/20)
2020 Mar 3, The US Supreme Court widened the ability of states to use criminal laws against illegal immigrants and other people who do not have work authorization in the United States in a ruling involving identity theft prosecutions in Kansas.
(Reuters, 3/3/20)
2020 Mar 3, The US Federal Reserve cut interest rates half a point in an emergency move designed to shield the world's largest economy from the impact of the coronavirus. It was the Fed's first emergency rate cut since 2008 at the height of the financial crisis. The yield on the ten-year Treasury bond fell below 1% for the first time ever.
(Reuters, 3/3/20)(Econ., 3/7/20, p.66)
2020 Mar 3, A high-level Trump administration official traveled up to the border with Syria's last rebel stronghold in a show of support for Turkey and its armed Syrian opposition groups' fight against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad and to highlight relief efforts for the nearly 1 million people who have fled recent fighting.
(ABC News, 3/3/20)
2020 Mar 3, US officials said there are now at least 120 confirmed cases in the US. Nine deaths have all been all in the Seattle area. Two cases were reported in New Hampshire.
(NY Times, 3/4/20)(Good Morning America, 3/4/20)
2020 Mar 3, Super Tuesday voting got underway in the US. Deadly storms that spawned tornadoes and heavy rains left treacherous conditions in at least two of the 14 states where residents were voting.
(AP, 3/3/20)
2020 Mar 3, Joe Biden reclaimed his perch as the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, setting up a potentially nasty showdown with Bernie Sanders over whether a centrist or a progressive should take on Donald Trump. Bernie Sanders won Super Tuesday's biggest prize, taking California on a night he sought to blunt the momentum of a suddenly surging Joe Biden in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination.
(Bloomberg, 3/4/20)(AP, 3/3/20)
2020 Mar 2, In Arizona a 6-year-old was found dead at a home in Flagstaff. The child was kept in a closet with his brother as punishment for "stealing food." The mother, father and grandmother were soon charged with murder and child abuse after admitting that they were kept in a closet most of the time and were not let outside of the home.
(AP, 3/4/20)
2020 Mar 3, In Illinois three people died when a single-engine Cessna 172 crashed in Lincoln.
(SFC, 3/4/20, p.A5)
2020 Mar 3, New York reported its 2nd case of coronavirus after Westchester County man tested positive. About 100 people nationwide have tested positive for the virus.
(Bloomberg, 3/3/20)(Reuters, 3/3/20)
2020 Mar 3, Tornadoes ripped across Tennessee early today, shredding at least 40 buildings. Of 25 killed by the twisters, 18 were Putnam County residents. Twisters caused severe damage in downtown Nashville. Days later three people remained unaccounted for Putnam County.
(AP, 3/3/20)(Reuters, 3/3/20)(Good Morning America, 3/4/20)
2020 Mar 3, In Washington state Manuel Ellis, a black man, yelled out "I can't breathe" and died in Tacoma police custody. A medical examiner’s report later said he died from respiratory arrest, hypoxia (when the body is deprived of adequate oxygen supply at the tissue level) and physical restraint. Police said officers had seen him banging on the window of another vehicle. On June 4 Victoria Woodards, the mayor of Tacoma, called for four police officers involved in the case to be fired and prosecuted. In 2021 Officers Christopher Burbank and Matthew Collins were charged with second-degree murder, and Officer Timothy Rankine was charged with first-degree manslaughter.
(ABC News, 6/5/20)(AP, 5/28/21)
2020 Mar 3, Chevron Corp said it would keep its spending in check and return up to $80 billion to shareholders over the next five years, with Chief Executive Mike Wirth making the case that his company is the oil major best able to produce oil and generate profits at the lowest cost.
(Reuters, 3/3/20)
2020 Mar 3, US laboratory equipment maker Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. agreed to buy Qiagen NV, a Dutch maker of tests for diseases including cancer and the new coronavirus, for about 9 billion euros ($10 billion) in the biggest health-care acquisition so far this year.
(Bloomberg, 3/3/20)
2020 Mar 3, Five Afghan policemen died in a Taliban attack on a security checkpoint near a copper mine, a day after the insurgents decided to resume operations against local forces. Taliban forces conducted 43 attacks on Afghan troops in Helmand. At least two police officers were killed and one other wounded in the Washir district of southern Helmand province. At least 15 soldiers were killed in Kunduz province.
(Reuters, 3/3/20)(AP, 3/4/20)(Econ., 3/7/20, p.35)
2020 Mar 3, The Australian Associated Press said it was closing after 85 years, blaming a decline in subscribers and free distribution of news content on digital platforms. AAP's more than 170 journalists will cease operations by June 26.
(SFC, 3/4/20, p.A2)
2020 Mar 3, Belgium’s federal public health service said they had found five new cases after conducting tests the previous night. All of the patients had been traveling in the north of Italy.
(Bloomberg, 3/3/20)
2020 Mar 3, A new report said deforestation of lands occupied by isolated indigenous tribes in the Brazilian Amazon more than doubled between July 2019 and July 2018 to the highest rate in more than a decade.
(Reuters, 3/3/20)
2020 Mar 3, China's death toll from coronavirus reached 2,943, with more than 75 deaths elsewhere as 77 other countries and territories have reported the respiratory disease. More than 90,000 cases of the new coronavirus have been reported globally.
(Reuters, 3/3/20)
2020 Mar 3, Germany said the number of confirmed cases has risen to 188. The virus has spread to 13 of the country’s 16 federal states.
(AP, 3/3/20)
2020 Mar 3, India, the world's main supplier of generic drugs, said it has restricted the export of 26 pharmaceutical ingredients and the medicines made from them, including paracetamol, as the coronavirus outbreak plays havoc with supply chains. The government said it had detected "high viral load" in six people who had been in contact with a patient who contracted the coronavirus in the capital New Delhi. 24 people who had come in contact with the Italian tourist have been moved to a separate facility for testing. They included 21 Italians and three Indians.
(Reuters, 3/3/20)
2020 Mar 3, Indonesia's Mount Merapi, the most active of the country's 500 volcanoes, erupted spewing pyroclastic material and sending as 19,680 feet.
(SFC, 3/4/20, p.A2)
2020 Mar 3, Infections rose again in Iran, where more officials were diagnosed. Iran reported 835 new confirmed cases, taking the total to 2,336. The death toll climbed to 77 from 66, while 435 patients have recovered. Eight percent of Iran's parliament, 23 out of 290 members, has been infected with the coronavirus. At least seven government officials also have it, including one of Iran's vice presidents.
(Bloomberg, 3/3/20)(Business Insider, 3/3/20)
2020 Mar 3, Japan’s tally of coronavirus cases approached the 1,000 mark.
(Bloomberg, 3/3/20)
2020 Mar 3, In Mexico a boat from a conservation group carrying government inspectors was attacked while monitoring a near-extinct porpoise species in a protected zone of Mexico’s Gulf of California.
(Reuters, 3/4/20)
2020 Mar 3, A Pakistani court gave the go-ahead to the country's largest women's rights event but told organizers to ensure participants adhere to "decency and moral values." The Aurat March, using the Urdu word for women, has been attended by tens of thousands over the last two years to mark International Women's Day on March 8.
(Reuters, 3/3/20)
2020 Mar 3, A Moscow court ruled that the city's facial recognition system does not violate the privacy of its citizens, a blow to activists who had hoped to ban the technology's use.
(Reuters, 3/3/20)
2020 Mar 3, Russia's main opposition leader Alexei Navalny (43) said that authorities had frozen all of his bank accounts and those of his family, including his elderly parents.
(AP, 3/3/20)
2020 Mar 3, South Korea’s health ministry reported 374 more cases of the novel coronavirus, taking the country’s tally to 5,186.
(Bloomberg, 3/3/20)
2020 Mar 3, Spain’s tally of coronavirus rose 32% to 150.
(Bloomberg, 3/3/20)
2020 Mar 3, Spain's left-wing government approved a bill that would qualify all non-consensual sex as rape, acting on a pre-election promise to strengthen laws in defence of women's rights. The draft law faced months of debate in parliament.
(Reuters, 3/3/20)
2020 Mar 3, The Spanish government approved the extradition of Venezuela's former military intelligence chief Hugo Carvajal to the US where he faces charges of drug and weapon trafficking.
(Reuters, 3/3/20)
2020 Mar 3, Sweden said it has nine new confirmed cases of coronavirus infections, taking the total to 24.
(AP, 3/3/20)
2020 Mar 3, Swiss-based Roche said it has won US breakthrough therapy status for Esbriet for interstitial lung disease (uILD), as it aimed to lift disappointing revenue by boosting the number of conditions for which it can be used.
(AP, 3/3/20)
2020 Mar 3, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused Greek authorities of inhumanely treating migrants trying to cross the border, claiming that two people were killed by Greek security forces a day earlier while another was seriously wounded. Greece denied the accusation.
(Bloomberg, 3/3/20)
2020 Mar 3, Turkey shot down a Syrian fighter jet in Syria's Idlib province, marking the third such incident in as many days, as steady clashes between the two national armies continued over a Russia-backed Syrian government offensive near the Turkish border. State-run Syrian media said troops shot down a Turkish drone.
(AP, 3/3/20)
2020 Mar 3, UAE major international airline Emirates said it is asking staff to take unpaid leave for up to a month at a time due to the rapidly spreading coronavirus that has led to flight cancellations around the world.
(Reuters, 3/3/20)
2020 Mar 3, UN watchdog IAEA, policing Iran's nuclear deal with major powers, admonished Tehran for failing to provide access to two undeclared locations or fully answer its questions about past activities there and at a previously known site. The IAEA said Iran has nearly tripled its stockpile of enriched uranium since last November.
(Reuters, 3/3/20)(SFC, 3/4/20, p.A3)
2020 Mar 3, The World Health Organization (WHO) said that the last patient being treated for Ebola in Democratic Republic of Congo was discharged today, bringing the 19-month-old outbreak closer than ever to an end.
(Reuters, 3/3/20)
2020 Mar 4, The US conducted its first airstrike against Taliban forces in Afghanistan since signing an ambitious peace deal with the militant group. The attack was to counter a Taliban assault on Afghan government forces in Nahr-e Saraj in the southern Helmand province.
(AP, 3/4/20)
2020 Mar 4, US federal health officials announced new testing criteria for coronavirus, requiring only a doctor’s agreement. But it’s unclear whether there are enough tests for everybody who’ll want one.
(NY Times, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 4, The US Food and Drug Administration banned electrical stimulation devices (ESDs) used in curbing self-injurious or aggressive behavior, citing substantial risks of illness or injury to patients.
(Reuters, 3/4/20)
2020 Mar 4, California's Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency over the COVID-19 virus, opening the way for federal aid, after the death of a man in Placer County, near Sacramento, who had been on an earlier sailing of the ship in February. This was the nation's first coronavirus death outside of Washington state and brought the US death toll to 11. California now had 53 confirmed cases.
(AP, 3/5/20)(Good Morning America, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 4, Anthony Levandowski, a former Google and Uber engineer, filed for bankruptcy in San Francisco following a court order for him to pay $179 million to Google over a contract dispute. Levandowski had left Google to form Otto a self-driging truck startup and then sold Otto to Uber for $600 million.
(SFC, 3/6/20, p.D1)
2020 Mar 4, In Florida veteran airline mechanic Abdul-Majeed Marouf Ahmed Alani (60) was sentenced to three years in prison for sabotaging an American Airlines jetliner with 150 people aboard in a bid to earn overtime fixing the plane.
(AP, 3/4/20)
2020 Mar 4, A US federal judge invalidated Michigan's Medicaid work requirements.
(SFC, 3/5/20, p.A4)
2020 Mar 4, New York's Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced that the four new cases of coronavirus, bringing the state's total number of confirmed cases to six, were all linked to a Westchester County-based lawyer.
(Reuters, 3/4/20)
2020 Mar 4, Billionaire Mike Bloomberg ended his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination and endorsed former Vice President Joe Biden.
(AP, 3/4/20)
2020 Mar 4, Tennessee reported its first confirmed case of the novel coronavirus.
(Good Morning America, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 4, Texas confirmed its first case of the novel coronavirus man in a man who recently traveled abroad.
(AP, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 4, In Britain the number of confirmed coronavirus cases rose to 87 in the biggest daily jump since it was first detected in the country.
(Reuters, 3/4/20)(Econ., 3/7/20, p.53)
2020 Mar 4, China reported 139 new coronavirus cases, bringing the total number of cases to 80,409. The death toll reached 2,981.
(Business Insider, 3/4/20)(Reuters, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 4, China said it has approved the use of Swiss drugmaker Roche's anti-inflammation drug Actemra for patients who develop severe complications from the coronavirus as it urgently hunts for new ways to combat the deadly infection that is spreading worldwide.
(Reuters, 3/4/20)
2020 Mar 4, Egypt executed Hisham el-Ashmawi, one of its most high-profile militant leaders, after his conviction for his role in planning scores of deadly attacks against the country's security forces. El-Ashmawi had been convicted in 14 crimes including a 2014 ambush that killed 22 Egyptian military border guards near the border with Libya, and the 2013 assassination attempt against the interior minister at the time, Mohammed Ibrahim.
(AP, 3/4/20)
2020 Mar 4, The European Commission unveiled plans for its first climate law, which will act as the basis for the EU's aim to make the 27-country bloc climate neutral by 2050.
(SFC, 3/5/20, p.A2)
2020 Mar 4, Germany ordered the closure of all schools and universities until March 15.
(Econ., 3/7/20, p.48)
2020 Mar 4, Germany-based Lufthansa said it has cut its flight capacity in a move equivalent to grounding almost a fifth of its fleet, response to the coronavirus epidemic.
(AP, 3/4/20)
2020 Mar 4, India lifted some restrictions on internet access in Kashmir, including allowing access to social media websites for the first time since the restive Himalayan region was locked down and its autonomy revoked in August.
(Reuters, 3/4/20)
2020 Mar 4, Iran reported 15 new deaths from COVID-19 and 586 additional cases, bringing the overall toll to 92 dead and 2,922 infected.. President Hassan Rouhani dismissed a US offer to help the Islamic republic fight its coronavirus outbreak, charging that "vicious" American sanctions are depriving the country of medicine. Iran canceled Friday prayers in major cities.
(AFP, 3/4/20)(AP, 3/4/20)
2020 Mar 4, Amnesty International accused the Iranian security forces of killing 23 children, mostly with live ammunition, during a November crackdown on anti-government protests.
(AP, 3/4/20)
2020 Mar 4, Iraq said a Muslim cleric (70) died today from the novel coronavirus, the first death from the outbreak in a country where 31 people have been infected. Health authorities announced the country's first two deaths from the new coronavirus, one in the capital Baghdad and the other in the autonomous Kurdish region.
(AFP, 3/4/20)(AFP, 3/4/20)
2020 Mar 4, Israel ordered travelers arriving from Germany, France, Spain, Austria and Switzerland to go into home quarantine over coronavirus concerns. The Health Ministry also ordered all international conferences in Israel cancelled and banned gatherings of more than 5,000 participants.
(Reuters, 3/4/20)
2020 Mar 4, The death toll in Italy soared to 79, with more than 2,500 people infected. A government source said Italy is to close all schools and universities starting March 5 to try to contain its worsening coronavirus outbreak.
(AFP, 3/4/20)(Reuters, 3/4/20)
2020 Mar 4, Fiat Chrysler defied fears over Italy's coronavirus outbreak to showcase an electric version of its 500 city car, as it strives to catch up with rivals in low-emissions driving while heading into a merger with Peugeot maker PSA.
(Reuters, 3/4/20)
2020 Mar 4, Japan's government opened part of Futaba, the last town that had been off limits due to radiation since the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011.
(SFC, 3/5/20, p.A3)
2020 Mar 4, Lebanon has 15 cases confirmed of coronavirus since Feb. 21 after infected travelers arrived from Iran. The outbreak was expected to grow, challenging hard-hit medical facilities.
(Reuters, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 4, In Libya the only civilian airport in Tripoli came under direct attack late today by eastern-based opposition forces. There were no reports of causalities.
(AP, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 4, North Korea's Kim Jong Un sent South Korean President Moon Jae-in a letter expressing condolences over the coronavirus outbreak. This was the North Korean leader’s first public overture to his counterpart in more than four months.
(Bloomberg, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 4, It was reported that Palestinians have launched protests in the occupied West Bank after Israeli bulldozers began clearing land in what villagers fear is an attempt to confiscate it for future Jewish settlements.
(Reuters, 3/4/20)
2020 Mar 4, The Philippines said it is resuming aid talks with Western countries it had rebuked just months earlier for backing a UN resolution to review human rights abuses under President Rodrigo Duterte's rule.
(AFP, 3/4/20)
2020 Mar 4, Saudi Arabia banned its citizens and other residents of the kingdom from performing the pilgrimage in Mecca due to the coronavirus. Saudi Arabia said its second coronavirus case for a Saudi national came from Iran through Bahrain.
(AP, 3/4/20)(Reuters, 3/4/20)
2020 Mar 4, South Korea reported 516 new coronavirus cases. It now had had more than 5,600 cases and 32 deaths.
(Business Insider, 3/4/20)
2020 Mar 4, In Sweden 16 new cases of the coronavirus were confirmed in Stockholm, taking the total number of cases in Sweden to 52.
(AP, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 4, In northwestern Syria two more Turkish soldiers were killed in a Syrian government attack, as steady clashes between the two national armies continued to rack up casualties. Nine Syrian soldiers were also reported killed in Turkish drone attacks in the area.
(AP, 3/4/20)
2020 Mar 4, In Turkey a fistfight erupted in parliament during a speech by opposition lawmaker Engin Ozkoc, who earlier accused President Tayyip Erdogan of disrespecting Turkish soldiers who died in Syria.
(Reuters, 3/4/20)
2020 Mar 4, A man (43) was shot dead as he tried to cross from Turkey into Greece. Five others were treated for gunshot wounds. Greece dismissed reports of the shooting as "fake news".
(Reuters, 4/3/20)
2020 Mar 4, A Ugandan court sent independent filmmaker Moses Bwayo to jail after he was accused of singing subversive songs while producing a documentary about a pop star seeking to unseat the long-serving president.
(Reuters, 3/4/20)
2020 Mar 5, President Donald Trump said he would withhold money from so-called sanctuary jurisdictions after a US court ruled that his administration could block federal law enforcement funds to states and cities that do not cooperate with federal immigration authorities. On Feb. 26, the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan ruled in favor of the administration and said the funding cuts were valid. But three other federal appeals courts have ruled against blocking such funds, setting up a possible appeal to the US Supreme Court.
(Reuters, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 5, The US State Department raised its Haiti travel advisory to Level 4: Do Not Travel, in the wake of what Haiti National Police have described as a “spectacular rise" in kidnappings for ransom, along with other violent crimes including car jackings and robberies, carried out mostly by armed criminal gangs.
(Miami Herald, 3/8/20)
2020 Mar 5, It was reported that six US military individuals in South Korea have tested positive for COVID-19.
(AP, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 5, Alabama put an inmate to death for the 2004 slayings of three police officers who were shot by another man at a suspected drug house. Nathaniel Woods received a lethal injection at the state prison in Atmore. Woods had been convicted as an accomplice of the gunman, Kerry Spencer. Both were convicted of capital murder and sentenced to die.
(CBS News, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 5, California's Gov. Gavin Newsom said a ship with suspected links to two coronavirus cases, one fatal, was being held off the coast of San Francisco until everyone on board could be tested. At least 21 people on the ship had symptoms. The cases included guests who were on the previous Grand Princess voyage from Feb. 11 to 21.
(NY Times, 3/5/20)(Good Morning America, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 5, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who electrified progressives with her “plan for everything" and strong message of economic populism, dropped out of the Democratic presidential race.
(AP, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 5, New Jersey confirmed its first case of coronavirus, a man (32) who had been hospitalized just across the Hudson River from New York City.
(Bloomberg, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 5, New York officials reported 11 new positive cases of coronavirus in Westchester County, bringing the state's total count to 24, with 21 of those in in Westchester County and four in New York City.
(Good Morning America, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 5, Houston officials confirmed the first three cases of coronavirus in Harris County, the nation's third-largest county.
(AP, 3/6/20)
2020 Mar 5, A Texas woman was convicted of stabbing and beheading her 5-year-old daughter in 2017. Krystle Concepcion Villanuev (27) was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
(Miami Herald, 3/6/20)
2020 Mar 5, In Washington state at least 39 new coronavirus cases have been reported in the Seattle area. A man in his 60s died, the ninth fatality associated with the outbreak at a Seattle area nursing home.
(AP, 3/5/20)(AP, 3/7/20)
2020 Mar 5, In Vienna OPEC members agreed to cut oil output by an extra 1.5 million barrels per day (bpd) in the second quarter of 2020 to support prices that have been hit by the coronavirus outbreak, but made its action conditional on Russia and others joining in. Russia and Kazakhstan, both members of the broader and informal group known as OPEC+, said they had not yet agreed to a deeper cut.
(Reuters, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 5, Brazil confirmed eight cases of the new coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/6/20)
2020 Mar 5, Britain's HSBC sent more than 100 staff home after a worker tested positive for coronavirus, the first known case at a major company in London. Britain counted 90 cases.
(AP, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 5, It was reported that a British judge has ruled that Dubai's ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum (70) ordered the abduction of two of his daughters and orchestrated a campaign of intimidation against Princess Haya (45), his former wife.
(Reuters, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 5, Bulgaria declared a nationwide influenza epidemic to deal with the rapid rise of type B flu cases. All schools in the Black Sea state of 7 million were closed to March 11.
(Reuters, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 5, Scientists in China studying the outbreak say they have found that two main strains of the virus are circulating in humans and causing infections.
(Reuters, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 5, Egypt reopened Djoser's Step Pyramid, the first pyramid ever built, after a 14-year restoration costing nearly $6.6 million.
(Reuters, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 5, The EU's highest court said changes by Hungary to its law on higher education, which effectively forced a university founded by George Soros to leave the country, were not in line with EU law.
(SFC, 3/6/20, p.A2)
2020 Mar 5, It was reported that France has 377 confirmed cases of coronavirus and reported two more deaths, bringing the total to six.
(Reuters, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 5, Germany's new coronavirus cases jumped by 109 in a day, to 349.
(AP, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 5, Iran reported 15 new deaths from the novel coronavirus, raising the national toll to 107, and said it would keep schools and universities closed until early April. 3513 people in Iran have now been infected with the coronavirus.
(AFP, 3/5/20)(Reuters, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 5, Iran announced it would put checkpoints in place to limit travel between major cities, hoping to stem the spread of the coronavirus. Hossein Sheikholeslam, an adviser to Iran's foreign minister, died from coronavirus.
(AP, 3/6/20)(AFP, 3/6/20)
2020 Mar 5, Israeli military forces demolished the homes of two Palestinians accused of being behind a deadly blast in the West Bank last year. Israel says Walid Hanatsheh and Yazan Mughamis were part of a cell that carried out the attack in August, which killed Israeli Rina Shnerb (17) and injured her father and brother as they hiked down to a spring in the occupied West Bank.
(AP, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 5, Israeli warplanes fired missiles early today toward military positions in central Syria. State news agency SANA said all were shot down by Syrian air defenses before reaching their targets.
(AP, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 5, In Italy the death toll from an outbreak of coronavirus in the northern region of Lombardy, which has borne the brunt of a nationwide contagion, has risen over the past day to 98 from 73.
(AP, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 5, Ivory Coast’s President Alassane Ouattara said that he will not run for re-election in October, ending speculation that he would try for a third term.
(AP, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 5, In Japan confirmed infections of coronavirus rose to 1,036.
(AP, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 5, In Palestine at least nine people were killed and 60 injured when a bakery fire spread through a crowded market in a refugee camp in the Gaza Strip.
(Reuters, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 5, In Peru Javier Perez de Cuellar (100), former UN secretary general (1981-1991) known for his peace-making efforts including brokering a ceasefire in the Iran-Iraq war, died.
(AP, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 5, Portugal's flag carrier TAP said it has cancelled a total of around 1,000 flights this month and next due to a fall in demand over concerns about the spreading coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 5, In Russia an agreement on a ceasefire in Syria was announced after a six-hour meeting between the Turkish and Russian presidents in Moscow. The deal essentially froze the conflict lines and did not force Syrian President Bashar Assad's forces to roll back military gains made in the past three months.
(AP, 3/6/20)
2020 Mar 5, South Africa confirmed its first case of coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 5, South Korea reported 760 new coronavirus cases. South Korea confirmed 6,088 coronavirus cases, with a death toll of 37.
(Reuters, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 5, Spanish health authorities said they had identified as many as 193 coronavirus cases, including three children. Spain reported its first death two days earlier from the outbreak in Valencia.
(Reuters, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 5, In Switzerland a woman (74) became the first local person to die from the novel coronavirus.
(AP, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 5, In northwestern Syria an airstrike on a rebel-held village hit a poultry farm where several displaced families were sheltering, killing at least 15 people including children. Activists blamed Russian warplanes for the strike on Maaret Musreen village.
(AP, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 5, Thailand reported four new cases of coronavirus, bringing its total to 47 since January.
(Reuters, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 5, Turkey announced that another Turkish soldier was killed in an attack in Idlib, Syria, raising the number of Turkish soldiers killed in the past 36 hours to three.
(AP, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 5, Turkey said it would deploy special forces along its land border with Greece to prevent Greek authorities pushing back people trying to cross into Europe, after Turkey declared its previously guarded gateways to Europe open.
(AP, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 5, A new UN study said nearly 90 percent of the world's population holds some prejudice against women.
(AFP, 3/6/20)
2020 Mar 5, The UN said a British UN employee is one of the four people who have tested positive for the novel coronavirus in Senegal.
(AFP, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 6, Pres. Donald Trump signed an $8.3 billion measure to help tackle the coronavirus outbreak that has killed 14 people in the US and infected more than 200.
(AP, 3/6/20)(Reuters, 3/6/20)
2020 Mar 6, US President Donald Trump announced he had made a major staff overhaul, replacing his acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney with Republican Rep. Mark Meadows. Trump said Mulvaney would become the US special envoy for Northern Ireland.
(AP, 3/6/20)
2020 Mar 6, The US State Department raised its alert level for travel to Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan. Neither country has reported many cases but both border Iran, which has been hard hit by the coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/6/20)
2020 Mar 6, The United States ordered Beijing Shiji Information Technology to divest entirely from mobile hotel property firm StayNTouch, with President Donald Trump saying in an order that its acquisition of the Maryland-based company may threaten national security.
(Reuters, 3/6/20)
2020 Mar 6, The Grand Princess cruise ship, with 3,500 aboard, remained docked 70 miles off the coast of San Francisco as health officials await results from dozens of coronavirus tests. Samples were collected from 45 people currently on board who were showing symptoms. At least 19 passengers and two crew members on Carnival Corp.’s Grand Princess, currently off the coast of California, have tested positive for the coronavirus virus.
(AP, 3/6/20)(SFC, 3/6/20, p.A9)(Bloomberg, 3/7/20)
2020 Mar 6, In the SF Bay Area Santa Clara County reported 24 cases of coronavirus.
(SSFC, 3/8/20, p.A1)
2020 Mar 6, Florida health officials confirmed the state’s first two deaths from coronavirus as well the first pair of cases in the Miami metropolitan area.
(AP, 3/7/20)
2020 Mar 6, Kentucky reported its first coronavirus case.
(Bloomberg, 3/7/20)
2020 Mar 6, Nebraska reported its first coronavirus case.
(Bloomberg, 3/7/20)
2020 Mar 6, Jazz pianist McCoy Tyner died at his home in New Jersey. His more than 80 albums included "A Love Supreme" (1965), recorded with the John Coltrane Quartet.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCoy_Tyner)(SFC, 3/9/20, p.C3)
2020 Mar 6, The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in New York doubled to 22. More than 2,700 people were isolated at home.
(NY Times, 3/6/20)
2020 Mar 6, Tennessee officials believed that remains found on property belonging to family member of Megan Boswell in Blountville, are that of Evelyn Boswell, the 15-month-old girl last seen in December but only reported as missing in February. Megan Boswell (18) was charged on Feb. 25 with one count of false reporting. Evelyn’s grandmother, Angela Boswell, and another man William McCloud, were arrested and charged with possession of stolen property on Feb. 20.
(ABC News, 3/6/20)
2020 Mar 6, Utah confirmed its first coronavirus case.
(Good Morning America, 3/7/20)
2020 Mar 6, In Washington state two Microsoft employees have been diagnosed with the novel coronavirus. Facebook announced it is closing its Seattle office until March 9 after a contractor tested positive for the virus.
(Good Morning America, 3/6/20)
2020 Mar 6, In the US the number of cases passed 230 people scattered across 18 states. The new coronavirus hit a milestone, infecting more than 100,000 people worldwide as it wove itself deeper into the daily lives of millions, infecting the powerful, the unprotected poor and the vast masses in between.
(AP, 3/6/20)
2020 Mar 6, US drugmaker Biogen Inc said three of its employees tested positive for the coronavirus after attending a meeting in Boston last week, and that their condition was improving under medical care.
(Reuters, 3/6/20)
2020 Mar 6, Boeing's proposal to leave wiring bundles in place on the grounded 737 MAX failed to get the backing of US aviation regulators, potentially delaying the plane's return to service.
(Reuters, 3/9/20)
2020 Mar 6, SpaceX successfully lunched a Falcon rocket from Cape canaveral with 4,300 pounds of supplies for the Int'l. Space Station. The booster landed for a 50th successful touchdown.
(SSFC, 3/8/20, p.A9)
2020 Mar 6, In Afghanistan gunmen opened fire at a ceremony in Kabul attended by prominent political leaders, killing at least 32 people and wounding dozens more before the two attackers were slain by police.
(AP, 3/6/20)
2020 Mar 6, In Belgium the number of confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus more than doubled to 109 after 59 new patients tested positive.
(Good Morning America, 3/6/20)
2020 Mar 6, An American tourist became the 1st confirmed case in Bhutan.
(Good Morning America, 3/6/20)
2020 Mar 6, Gilbert Khoo, a seafood salesman in the UK, received a two-year suspended sentence for six offenses related to the transport of $7 million worth of endangered eels.
(Business Insider, 3/8/20)
2020 Mar 6, Cameroon announced its first coronavirus infection.
(AP, 3/6/20)
2020 Mar 6, China reported 143 new cases, the same as a day earlier and about one-third what the country was seeing a week ago. Health authorities said the northwestern Chinese province of Gansu has confirmed 17 new coronavirus cases imported from Iran, bringing the total imported cases to 28.
(AP, 3/6/20)(Reuters, 3/6/20)
2020 Mar 6, Egyptian officials said 12 people from a Nile cruise ship have tested positive for the novel coronavirus.
(AP, 3/6/20)
2020 Mar 6, Ghana's President Nana Akufo-Addo set the tone for new rules due to coronavirus, warning everybody to improve personal hygiene and avoid crowds, at the celebrations of Ghana's 63rd independence anniversary. He ostentatiously kept both his hands resolutely behind his back when he arrived at the ceremony to greet those seated on the dais.
(BBC, 3/25/20)
2020 Mar 6, Clashes between Greek riot police and migrants attempting to cross the border from Turkey erupted anew as European Union foreign ministers took aim at what they called “Turkey's use of migratory pressure for political purposes".
(AP, 3/6/20)
2020 Mar 6, Four cases of the coronavirus have been identified in Hungary thus far, including a pair of Iranian students who recently visited their homeland.
(AP, 3/6/20)
2020 Mar 6, India braced for a potential explosion of coronavirus cases as authorities rushed to trace, test and quarantine contacts of 31 people confirmed to have the disease.
(AP, 3/6/20)
2020 Mar 6, Iran announced that the new coronavirus has killed 124 people amid 4,747 confirmed cases. The virus now was in all of Iran's 31 provinces.
(AP, 3/6/20)
2020 Mar 6, Iraq said it will halt border trade with Iran and Kuwait between March 8 and 15 to curb the spread of the coronavirus.
(AP, 3/7/20)
2020 Mar 6, In Ireland more than 60 staff at a hospital were asked to self-isolate after the country's first community transmission of coronavirus was found there.
(AP, 3/6/20)
2020 Mar 6, In Italy at least 3,296 people have been infected with the coronavirus. The death reached at least 148.
(Good Morning America, 3/6/20)(Reuters, 3/6/20)
2020 Mar 6, Japanese carmaker Nissan said it is pushing on with plans to build its new Qashqai sports utility vehicle at its British factory despite warnings over Brexit. Nissan announced a 52-million pound investment in a new press line at the site.
(Reuters, 3/6/20)
2020 Mar 6, In Japan confirmed coronavirus infections rose to 1,057.
(Reuters, 3/6/20)
2020 Mar 6, Liberia suspended the licenses of all fuel importers, including France's Total, to conduct performance reviews after some of the companies overdrew from reserves in state-run facilities, leading to gasoline shortages.
(Reuters, 3/6/20)
2020 Mar 6, Mexico's bishops said the Vatican had suspended a clerical sex abuse fact-finding and assistance mission to Mexico due to the spreading coronavirus in Italy and now the Vatican.
(AP, 3/6/20)
2020 Mar 6, The Netherlands reported its first coronavirus death.
(AP, 3/6/20)
2020 Mar 6, Peru announced its first coronavirus infection.
(AP, 3/6/20)
2020 Mar 6, Poland's Pres. Andrzej Duda signed a bill earmarking nearly $510 million to fund public television and radio. The broadcast outlets have become mouthpieces for the country's far-right government.
(https://tinyurl.com/r4htf6s)(SSFC, 3/8/20, p.A4)
2020 Mar 6, Serbia announced its first coronavirus infection.
(AP, 3/6/20)
2020 Mar 6, Slovakia announced its first coronavirus infection.
(AP, 3/6/20)
2020 Mar 6, South Korea reported 505 additional cases, down from a high of 851 on March 3. The US military confirmed its seventh case among those stationed there.
(AP, 3/6/20)(Reuters, 3/6/20)
2020 Mar 6, Spain confirmed its fifth coronavirus death, with 365 confirmed cases.
(Reuters, 3/6/20)
2020 Mar 6, Switzerland reported 130 new confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus, bringing the national total to 210.
(Good Morning America, 3/6/20)
2020 Mar 6, In northwestern Syria a cease-fire deal brokered by Turkey and Russia took hold in Idlib province. Farhad Dabirian, a commander with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, was killed near Damascus.
(AP, 3/6/20)(AP, 3/7/20)
2020 Mar 6, Togo confirmed its first case of coronavirus, bringing the number of countries in sub-Saharan Africa hit by the epidemic to five.
(Reuters, 3/6/20)
2020 Mar 6, In Tunisia two suicide bombers blew themselves up near the US Embassy on the outskirts of Tunis, killing a police officer and wounding four others.
(AP, 3/6/20)
2020 Mar 6, Pope Francis accepted the resignation of Lyon Cardinal Philippe Barbarin (69), who was convicted and then acquitted of covering up for a pedophile priest in a case that fueled a reckoning over clergy sexual abuse in France.
(AP, 3/6/20)
2020 Mar 6, Vatican City confirmed its first coronavirus case, but did not say who was infected.
(AP, 3/6/20)
2020 Mar 7, President Donald Trump hosted Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro for dinner at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, where the two leaders discussed the US-led effort to oust Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
(Bloomberg, 3/8/20)
2020 Mar 7, The number of Americans diagnosed with novel coronavirus is now at least 424, according to a case count by Johns Hopkins Univ. At least 19 people have died in the US in Washington state, California and Florida. There were now more than 101,000 infected worldwide and more than 3,400 deaths.
(Good Morning America, 3/7/20)(AP, 3/8/20)
2020 Mar 7, A US Navy sailor stationed at the Naval Support Activity Naples tested positive for novel coronavirus, marking the first positive cause of a US service member in Europe.
(Good Morning America, 3/7/20)
2020 Mar 7, Grand Princess Capt. John Smith told passengers that the ship hit by the new coronavirus is headed to the port of Oakland, Ca. The ship carrying more than 3,500 people from 54 countries was expected to dock on March 9. Passengers were quarantined at Travis Air Force Base and many were released on a staggered basis from March 9 to March 13. Two-thirds of the 858 passengers at the base had declined testing. On March 20 seven of the tested passengers were reported positive for the virus.
(AP, 3/8/20)(SSFC, 3/22/20, p.A1)
2020 Mar 7, Hawaii Gov. David Ige said a patient who had traveled aboard a Grand Princess cruise ship in early February became Hawaii's first case of the coronavirus.
(Good Morning America, 3/8/20)
2020 Mar 7, Argentina's Ministry of Health said a 64-year-old man has died as a result of the new coronavirus, the first such death in Latin America.
(AP, 3/7/20)
2020 Mar 7, In China about 70 people were trapped in a collapsed hotel in the city of Quanzhou, in southeastern Fujian Province. The collapsed hotel was used for coronavirus quarantine. 23 people were reported rescued. 23 remained trapped after the collapse of the hotel. 20 people died in the collapse. On March 9 a boy and his mother were rescued. A man was rescued after being trapped for 69 hours. Nine people remained missing.
(Reuters, 3/7/20)(Reuters, 3/8/20)(SFC, 3/11/20, p.A2)(SFC, 3/12/20, p.A2)
2020 Mar 7, Chile said it now had seven confirmed coronavirus cases, up from five.
(AP, 3/7/20)
2020 Mar 7, Costa Rica's Health Ministry confirmed four new cases of coronavirus, in addition to that of a case involving an American woman announced a day earlier. Her husband was among the new cases.
(AP, 3/7/20)
2020 Mar 7, Cyprus riot police used pepper spray to thwart Turkish Cypriot protesters trying to shove their way through a barricaded crossing point in the heart of the ethnically divided island nation's capital.
(AP, 3/7/20)
2020 Mar 7, In Egypt about 150 tourists and local crew were quarantined on a cruise ship on the Nile river. Officials said coronavirus had been detected in 45 people, including foreign tourists, after a Nile River cruise ship reached the southern city of Luxor.
(AP, 3/7/20)(Reuters, 3/8/20)
2020 Mar 7, In France a member of the lower house was diagnosed with the virus and hospitalized. The Health Ministry said that two more people had died from the coronavirus, bringing the total death toll to 11 people. France has now 716 confirmed cases of coronavirus.
(AP, 3/7/20)(Reuters, 3/7/20)
2020 Mar 7, Georgia reported a total of 12 cases in the country, 10 linked to Italy, which has Europe's worst outbreak, and the other two linked to Iran. Georgia reported its first case of coronavirus in the end of February.
(AP, 3/7/20)
2020 Mar 7, Germany’s confirmed coronavirus infections rose to 684 from 534 a day earlier.
(AP, 3/7/20)
2020 Mar 7, In Guyana a protester was shot dead as demonstrators took to the streets after opposition leaders and international observers accused the government of David Granger of rigging this week's presidential election.
(Reuters, 3/7/20)
2020 Mar 7, In Hungary the number of confirmed coronavirus patients increased to five since the first infections were announced on March 4. The government canceled a rally planned for the March 15 national holiday in central Budapest.
(AP, 3/7/20)
2020 Mar 7, In Iran lawmaker Fatemeh Rahbar (55) died from the coronavirus, the first fatality among 23 infected members of parliament. The death toll from the virus increased to 145 as the number of diagnosed cases grew to 5,823.
(AFP, 3/7/20)
2020 Mar 7, People were not permitted to leave or enter Bethlehem, as per a decision made by Israeli and Palestinian authorities after 17 cases of novel coronavirus were confirmed in the city in the last 48 hours. 14 American citizens were being tested and have been quarantined in the Angles hotel in the city of Bethlehem for now.
(Good Morning America, 3/7/20)
2020 Mar 7, In Italy the number of fatalities due to the coronavirus were up 36 to 233, with infections growing to 8,883. Cases have now been confirmed in each of the country's 20 regions, with deaths recorded in eight of them.
(Reuters, 3/7/20)
2020 Mar 7, Kuwait recorded 3 new cases of the coronavirus, bringing its infection tally to 61.
(AP, 3/7/20)
2020 Mar 7, Lebanon's PM Hassan Diab said the government will suspend payment on $1.2 billion in loans, marking the country's first-ever default on its sovereign debt.
(SSFC, 3/8/20, p.A4)
2020 Mar 7, Malta reported its first case of coronavirus.
(Bloomberg, 3/7/20)
2020 Mar 7, Mexico reported seven instances of coronavirus, up from six.
(Reuters, 3/8/20)
2020 Mar 7, Paraguay reported its first case of coronavirus.
(AP, 3/7/20)
2020 Mar 7, Peru announced five new cases of COVID-19 infection, raising the country's total to six.
(AP, 3/7/20)
2020 Mar 7, The Philippines health department reported the country’s sixth infection. President Rodrigo Duterte agreed to declare a state of national public health emergency after a local transmission of coronavirus.
(Bloomberg, 3/7/20)
2020 Mar 7, In the Philippines a regional commander said troops have killed at least 14 Muslim militants aligned with the Islamic State in Maguindanao province. The Islamic State group claimed militants killed 43 soldiers, but that claim was denied.
(AP, 3/8/20)
2020 Mar 7, Qatar reported its 12th case of coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/7/20)
2020 Mar 7, It was reported that Saudi Arabia has detained three senior Saudi princes including Prince Ahmed bin Abdulaziz, the younger brother of King Salman, and Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, the king's nephew, for allegedly planning a coup.
(AP, 3/7/20)
2020 Mar 7, South Korea's coronavirus cases jumped above 7,000, up by 448 from the previous day. The death toll rose by two to 46.
(Reuters, 3/7/20)
2020 Mar 7, Spain identified 93 new coronavirus cases, bringing its total to 441.
(AP, 3/7/20)
2020 Mar 7, Spanish police said they have arrested 89 people suspected of belionging to a crime ring that smuggled both migrants and hashish from North Africa to the mainland.
(SSFC, 3/8/20, p.A4)
2020 Mar 7, Syria's Interior Minister Mohammed Khaled Rahmoun said at least 26 Iraqis were among those killed in a Syrian highway accident, in which a fuel truck collided with passenger buses and other cars. Local officials said at least 32 were killed and 77 injured.
(AP, 3/8/20)
2020 Mar 7, Ugandans celebrated the Mara Mara peace festival. It drew inspiration from the African Union's declaration of 2020 as the year for “silencing the guns" on a continent that has long faced violence ranging from civil war to ethnic rivalries and rebel insurgencies.
(AP, 3/8/20)
2020 Mar 7, In the UAE The number of coronavirus cases rose to 45 from 30.
(Reuters, 3/7/20)
2020 Mar 7, Uzbekistan said it will become an observer in the Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) before deciding if it wants to become a full member of the trade bloc.
(Reuters, 3/7/20)
2020 Mar 7, In Vietnam all air crew and ground staff working on a Vietnam Airlines’ flight from London to Hanoi on March 1 were being quarantined after a passenger tested positive for coronavirus. The Ministry of Health confirmed three new coronavirus cases, raising the number in the country to 20.
(AP, 3/7/20)(Reuters, 3/7/20)
2020 Mar 8, Americans advance their clocks for daylight saving time.
(Good Morning America, 3/8/20)
2020 Mar 8, Kamala Harris endorsed Joe Biden and said she would "do everything in my power'' to help elect him, becoming the latest dropout from the Democratic race for president to line up behind the former vice president in his battle with Bernie Sanders for the nomination. Vermont senator Bernie Sanders countered with his own major endorsement, announcing that civil rights icon Jesse Jackson was formally backing him.
(AP, 3/8/20)
2020 Mar 8, Women filled the streets of the world's largest cities to protest gender violence and inequality on International Women’s Day.
(AP, 3/9/20)
2020 Mar 8, In the SF Bay Area ten new coronavirus cases were reported, five each in Contra Costa and Santa Clara counties. This brought the total in Santa clara to 37.
(SFC, 3/9/20, p.A6)
2020 Mar 8, In Atlanta, Georgia, a fatal shooting over a parking spot outside an upscale mall left Thuan Nguyen (31) dead. Police soon identified Ricky James LaFargue (19), who was not yet arrested, as the shooter.
(SFC, 3/18/20, p.A4)
2020 Mar 8, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds said three cases of COVID-19 have been identified in the state.
(AP, 3/8/20)
2020 Mar 8, In Maryland a 13-year-old boy was killed and four other children, including two 12-year-olds, were wounded when several assailants let loose a barrage of gunfire on a group of young people exiting a dance party in suburban Baltimore.
(ABC News, 3/9/20)
2020 Mar 8, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said the number of people in his state to test positive for coronavirus has increased to 105.
(Good Morning America, 3/8/20)
2020 Mar 8, In Texas four people were dead as a result of a suspected murder-suicide early this morning in Fort Bend County.
(Good Morning America, 3/8/20)
2020 Mar 8, Vermont announced its first presumptive case of the coronavirus.
(Good Morning America, 3/8/20)
2020 Mar 8, The Rev. Darius L. Swann (95), whose challenge to the notion of segregated public schools helped spark the use of busing to integrate schools across the country, died at his Virginia home. In 1964 Swann wrote a letter to the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board, asking that his son James be allowed to attend Seversville School, two blocks from his home. In 1971 the US Supreme Court upheld court-ordered busing in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school district, clearing the way for the use of busing as a means of desegregation.
(AP, 3/25/20)
2020 Mar 8, In Afghanistan unknown gunmen shot and killed three people in Kabul, including a member of eastern Logar province's provincial council.
(Reuters, 3/8/20)
2020 Mar 8, In the Austrian alps six people were killed in two separate avalanches.
(SFC, 3/9/20, p.A2)
2020 Mar 8, Bangladesh reported its first case of coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/8/20)
2020 Mar 8, Bulgaria reported its first case of coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/8/20)
2020 Mar 8, Belgium's health ministry said the number of coronavirus cases in the country had reached 200. It said the virus had started to circulate locally among the Belgian population.
(Reuters, 3/8/20)
2020 Mar 8, In Cameroon armed separatists attacked a village in the western French-speaking region, killing at least seven people in the village of Galim.
(AP, 3/8/20)
2020 Mar 8, China reported 40 new confirmed cases of coronavirus infections, down from 44 cases a day earlier, and the lowest number since the health authority started publishing nationwide data on January 20.
(Reuters, 3/9/20)
2020 Mar 8, In France Max von Sydow (90), the tall, blond Swedish actor who brought gravitas to arthouse dramas, horror movies and Hollywood blockbusters, died. His films included "The Seventh Seal" (1957), "Wild Strawberries" (1957), "Through a Glass Darkly" (1961), "Winter Light" (1963) "Shame" (1968) and "The Exorcist" (1973).
(Reuters, 3/9/20)
2020 Mar 8, Hong Kong recorded its third coronavirus death.
(Reuters, 3/8/20)
2020 Mar 8, In India Rana Kapoor, CEO and co-founder of Yes Bank, was arrested and formally charge with money laundering and corruption.
(Econ, 3/14/20, p.60)
2020 Mar 8, Indonesia confirmed that two more people had tested positive for the coronavirus, taking the total of confirmed cases in the country to six.
(Reuters, 3/8/20)
2020 Mar 8, Iran said 194 people had died from coronavirus and 6,566 were now infected. IranAir stopped all flights to European destinations.
(Reuters, 3/8/20)
2020 Mar 8, In Iraq two US service members were killed by “enemy forces" while advising and accompanying Iraqi security forces.
(AP, 3/9/20)
2020 Mar 8, Italy imposed a virtual lockdown across a swathe of its wealthy north, including the financial capital Milan, in a drastic new attempt to try to contain the coronavirus outbreak. Deaths due to the infectious virus risen, by 36 to 233. Of the 5,883 Italians originally infected, 589 have fully recovered.
(Reuters, 3/8/20)
2020 Mar 8, Tensions in Italy's overcrowded prisons erupted over new coronavirus containment measures, with riots in at least two dozen lock-ups and the deaths of six inmates who broke into an infirmary and overdosed on methadone. With 7,375 infected and 366 deaths, Italy has more virus cases than any country outside Asia.
(AP, 3/9/20)
2020 Mar 8, Police in Kyrgyzstan detained dozens of women's rights activists shortly after journalists witnessed the protesters being attacked by masked men.
(AP, 3/8/20)
2020 Mar 8, The Maldives reported its first case of coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/8/20)
2020 Mar 8, Moldova reported its first case of coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/8/20)
2020 Mar 8, In the Netherlands the families of people killed when a missile shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine in 2014 set out 298 white chairs outside the Russian Embassy in a silent protest against Moscow’s lack of cooperation in the investigation into the downing of the passenger jet.
(AP, 3/8/20)
2020 Mar 8, Moscow city authorities threatened prison terms of up to five years for people failing to self-isolate in their homes for two weeks after visiting countries hit hard by the coronavirus outbreak.
(Reuters, 3/8/20)
2020 Mar 8, Saudi Arabia said it has imposed a temporary lockdown on the eastern Qatif province, an oil-producing region and home to a large Shi'ite Muslim population, to prevent the spread of coronavirus after 11 people there were infected.
(AP, 3/8/20)
2020 Mar 8, South Korea's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported 272 new coronavirus cases, for a total of 7,313 in the country. Two further deaths took the toll to 50.
(Reuters, 3/8/20)
2020 Mar 8, In Spain a large feminist march was allowed to go ahead despite the coronavirus pandemic.
(Econ, 3/21/20, p.46)
2020 Mar 8, Dozens of Thai lawmakers from a prominent opposition party that was dissolved last month said they will join a new party together to keep their parliamentary seats. 55 members of parliament of the disbanded party will be officially joining an existing party called Move Forward Party together next week.
(Reuters, 3/8/20)
2020 Mar 8, Turkish riot police fired tear gas to disperse thousands of demonstrators who, in defiance of a government ban, tried to march along Istanbul's main pedestrian street to mark International Women's Day.
(AP, 3/9/20)
2020 Mar 8, Pope Francis delivered his Sunday blessing over the internet from inside the Vatican instead of from a window to stop crowds gathering during Italy's coronavirus outbreak.
(Reuters, 3/8/20)
2020 Mar 8, Vietnam's coronavirus cases jumped to 29.
(Reuters, 3/8/20)
2020 Mar 9, President Trump attempted to dismiss coronavirus fears with a misleading tweet comparing the virus causing the global health crisis to the seasonal flu. His tweet came after trading on the New York Stock Exchange was temporarily halted as stocks plunged more than 2,000 points, a 7 percent drop that triggered an automatic pause. Trump blamed the "Fake News Media" and Democrats for conspiring "to inflame the Coronavirus situation" and wrongly suggested that the common flu was more dangerous.
(AP, 3/9/20)(Econ, 3/14/20, p.18)
2020 Mar 9, The US military said it has begun withdrawing troops from Afghanistan. Forces would be reduced to 8,600 from 13,000 over the next 135 days.
(AP, 3/10/20)(SFC, 3/10/20, p.A3)
2020 Mar 9, A US federal judge held Iran responsible for the kidnapping of former FBI agent Robert Levinson, entering a default judgement against the regime on the 13th anniversary of his disappearance.
(AP, 3/9/20)
2020 Mar 9, The US Census Bureau made a soft launch of the 2020 census website, making its form available online.
(AP, 3/10/20)
2020 Mar 9, Led Zeppelin persuaded a US appeals court to reinstate a jury verdict that it did not steal the opening guitar riff for "Stairway to Heaven" from an obscure song written four years earlier.
(Reuters, 3/9/20)
2020 Mar 9, The US Department of Health and Human Services said it would contribute $699,000 to speed up Hologic Inc's development of a coronavirus diagnostic test.
(Reuters, 3/9/20)
2020 Mar 9, Federal and state officials in California prepared to receive thousands of people from a cruise ship that has been idling off the coast of San Francisco with at least 21 people aboard infected with the coronavirus. Fences were installed at an 11-acre site at the Port of Oakland as authorities readied flights and buses to whisk the passengers aboard the ship to military bases or their home countries for a 14-day quarantine. Officials in Santa Clara imposed a ban on mass gatherings of more than 1,000 people for the next three weeks to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
(AP, 3/9/20)(SFC, 3/10/20, p.A1)
2020 Mar 9, Mitch Englander (49), a former Los Angeles city councilman, surrendered to FBI agents following charges that obstructed an investigation into whether he took thousands of dollars, female escort services and other gifts from businessmen invloved in major developments.
(SFC, 3/10/20, p.A4)
2020 Mar 9, Mark Kempic, the prsident of Columbia Gas of Massachusetts, entered a gulity plea on behalf of the company responsible for a blast that tore through three towns in the Merrimack Valley in September 2018, killing one person and damaging dozens of homes.. The company will pay a $53 million fine for violating the Pipeline Safety Act.
(SFC, 3/10/20, p.A4)
2020 Mar 9, In Minnesota Issam Hamade pleaded guilty in federal court to one count of conspiracy to violate US export laws. He was charged with conspiring to export drone parts and technology from the US to Iranian-backed Hezbollah militia in Lebanon.
(AP, 3/10/20)
2020 Mar 9, A New York jury found former CIA employee Joshua Schulte, accused of giving classified data to WikiLeaks, guilty of making false statements to investigators and contempt of court, but failed to reach a verdict on the central accusations in the case, a significant setback for federal prosecutors.
(Reuters, 3/9/20)
2020 Mar 9, The Seattle-area nursing home at the epicenter of one of the biggest coronavirus outbreaks in the United States said it had no kits to test 65 employees showing symptoms of the respiratory illness that has killed at least 13 patients at the long-term care center.
(Reuters, 3/9/20)
2020 Mar 9, In the US 554 cases of coronavirus have been confirmed, with 21 reported deaths. Worldwide more than 110,000 people have tested positive for the disease and more than 3,800 people with the virus have died, most of them in China.
(AP, 3/9/20)(Benzinga, 3/9/20)
2020 Mar 9, The DJIA lost 2014 points to close at 23,851, its biggest one-day loss.
(SFC, 3/10/20, p.D1)
2020 Mar 9, The cryptocurrency market saw $26 billion erased from its market capitalization over the last 24 hours.
(Benzinga, 3/9/20)
2020 Mar 9, GlaxoSmithKline PLC's unit ViiV Healthcare said its two-drug regimen to treat HIV was as effective in patients given the treatment every two months, as when administered once a month. The US Food and Drug Administration in December declined to approve the once-monthly treatment, Cabenuva, questioning the treatment's chemistry, manufacturing and controls process, but not its safety.
(Reuters, 3/9/20)
2020 Mar 9, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani was sworn in for a second term but his main rival refused to recognize the inauguration and held his own swearing-in ceremony as a rival president.
(Reuters, 3/9/20)
2020 Mar 9, Argentine farmers began a four-day strike to protest the government's hike on export taxes for soybeans and its byproducts, though shipments were not impacted in the major global food exporter.
(Reuters, 3/9/20)
2020 Mar 9, Belgium’s health ministry said the number of coronavirus cases in the country had reached 239, while it decided to limit tests to seriously ill patients and healthcare professionals due to shortages of reagents.
(Reuters, 3/9/20)
2020 Mar 9, In Britain a sixth person in the UK has died from coronavirus. There were 319 confirmed cases.
(Reuters, 3/9/20)(AP, 3/10/20)
2020 Mar 9, Canada recorded its first coronavirus death.
(Reuters, 3/10/20)
2020 Mar 9, Mainland China reported 19 new cases as of today, down from 40 cases a day earlier. Total confirmed cases in mainland China stood at 80,754. Hubei province, center of the outbreak, reported no new locally transmitted coronavirus cases for a second day.
(AP, 3/9/20)(Reuters, 3/10/20)
2020 Mar 9, An Egyptian court sentenced a train engineer to 15 years in prison for his conviction on charges of manslaughter and damaging public property stemming from a deadly locomotive crash in February, 2019, at main train station in Cairo. An argument between engineers Emad Fathy and Ayman el-Shahat led to the unleashing of a speeding, unmanned locomotive that slammed into a barrier in Cairo's busy Ramses station, killing 31 people and injuring 17.
(AP, 3/10/20)
2020 Mar 9, In Egypt there were 59 confirmed coronavirus cases, including one fatality.
(AP, 3/10/20)
2020 Mar 9, An EU spokeswoman said a first case of coronavirus has been detected among staff at the European Commission.
(Reuters, 3/9/20)
2020 Mar 9, Germany reported its first two deaths due to the coronavirus. The number of cases in Germany more than doubled to over 1,100 in the last few days, putting pressure on the government to act.
(Bloomberg, 3/9/20)
2020 Mar 9, Iran reported 43 new deaths from the novel coronavirus in the past 24 hours, bringing the overall toll to 237 dead. 595 new cases were confirmed across the country, bringing the overall number of confirmed cases to 7,161. Iran temporarily released about 70,000 prisoners because of the coronavirus.
(AFP, 3/9/20)(Reuters, 3/9/20)
2020 Mar 9, Italy went under a national lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic.
(Econ., 6/20/20, p.11)
2020 Mar 9, In Mexico untold thousands of women stayed home from work and school as part of a strike billed as "A Day Without Women." a day after an unprecedented number of them filled the streets to protest rampant gender violence on Int'l. Women's Day.
(SFC, 3/10/20, p.A2)
2020 Mar 9, In the Netherlands the number of people infected with the new coronavirus increased to 321, up from 264 a day earlier.
(Reuters, 3/9/20)
2020 Mar 9, In Nigeria the emir of Kano, a former central bank governor and critic of Pres. Buhari's economic policies, was ousted for showing "insubordination" to local authorities.
(Econ, 3/14/20, p.36)
2020 Mar 9, North Korea fired what appeared to be three short-range ballistic missiles off its eastern coast, raising regional security concerns as world leaders battle the spread of the coronavirus.
(AP, 3/9/20)
2020 Mar 9, A special North Korean flight believed to be carrying dozens of diplomats and other foreigners arrived in Russia's Far East, as the North tightens a lockdown intended to fend off the coronavirus.
(AP, 3/9/20)
2020 Mar 9, Panama confirmed its first coronavirus case.
(Reuters, 3/10/20)
2020 Mar 9, Hamas criticized the secretive criminal trials in Saudi Arabia of dozens of members and supporters of the militant Palestinian group.
(AP, 3/9/20)
2020 Mar 9, Crude oil prices tumbled by as much as a third after Saudi Arabia launched a price war with Russia, sending investors already spooked by the coronavirus outbreak fleeing for the safety of bonds and the Japanese yen.
(Reuters, 3/9/20)
2020 Mar 9, Saudi Arabia's health ministry said it has detected five new cases, bringing the total to 20.
(Reuters, 3/10/20)
2020 Mar 9, South Korea reported 165 new coronavirus cases, bringing the national tally to 7,478, while the death toll rose by one to 51.
(Reuters, 3/9/20)
2020 Mar 9, South Korea-based Daily NK reported that around 200 North Korean soldiers from several branches of the military have died from symptoms that may have been caused by the novel coronavirus (COVID-19).
(https://tinyurl.com/r85wkr7)(Daily NK, 3/12/20)
2020 Mar 9, In Spain schools were closed in the town of Labastida near Vitoria in the Basque country after nearly 150 cases of coronavirus were identified in the region. The country has reported 999 cases in all, most of them in two areas around Madrid and around Vitoria.
(Reuters, 3/9/20)
2020 Mar 9, Sudanese PM Abdalla Hamdok escaped an assassination attempt which his government branded an attack on the revolution that unseated the North African nation’s veteran dictator last year.
(Bloomberg, 3/9/20)
2020 Mar 9, Sweden's Stockholm region reported a jump in confirmed coronavirus cases to 207, an increase of 60 since yesterday.
(AP, 3/10/20)
2020 Mar 9, In Turkey Selcuk Mizrakli, the ousted mayor of the mainly Kurdish Diyarbakir province, was sentenced to more than nine years in prison for membership of a terrorist organization.
(Reuters, 3/9/20)
2020 Mar 9, The UN adopted a stripped-down political declaration on women's rights that seeks to preserve gains under threat but does not advocate new ways to ensure progress toward equality. The adopted text follows the main lines of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action of 1995, which sought to promote women's emancipation and advancement around the world.
(AFP, 3/9/20)
2020 Mar 9, Yemen’s army said it wrested control of several northern towns from the Iran-backed Houthi rebels, a step toward reversing the rebels’ rapid gains in the strategic area.
(AP, 3/9/20)
2020 Mar 10, Retired four-star Gen. Jack Keane (77) received the nation's highest civilian honor at a White House ceremony hosted by President Donald Trump, who called the Army veteran a “visionary," a “brilliant strategist" and a “fearless patriot".
(AP, 3/11/20)
2020 Mar 10, In the US a total of 761 confirmed cases of the coronavirus were confirmed nationwide as well as 27 deaths. The number of people infected with the coronavirus topped 116,000 across the world as the outbreak spread to more countries, causing greater economic damage.
(AP, 3/10/20)(Reuters, 3/10/20)
2020 Mar 10, Iowa health officials announced that five more eastern Iowa residents have tested positive for new coronavirus. The new cases brought the total number of Iowa infections to 13.
(AP, 3/10/20)
2020 Mar 10, Five US states (Michigan, Washington, Missouri, Mississippi and Idaho) held Democratic primaries, while North Dakota held a caucus. 352 delegates were up for grabs.
(AP, 3/10/20)
2020 Mar 10, In Wisconsin Adam Roth of Waukesha stabbed four of his family members, two of them fatally. In December Roth (36) was found not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect in the attack.
(https://tinyurl.com/y8gzsp5k)(AP, 12/15/20)
2020 Mar 10, Australia's coronavirus cases rose overnight to 100 from 80.
(AP, 3/10/20)
2020 Mar 10, Bosnia's autonomous Serb region said it will shut all schools and universities and ban large public gatherings from March 11 until March 30 to help stem the spread of coronavirus.
(AP, 3/10/20)
2020 Mar 10, Brunei said six people had tested positive a day after it reported its first case of coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/10/20)
2020 Mar 10, China's President Xi Jinping’ made his first trip to the COVID-19 epicenter of Wuhan as parts of the nation appeared to be returning to normal.
(AP, 3/10/20)
2020 Mar 10, China launched cellphone-based health codes. All people in China must install a cellphone app and register their personal health information.
(https://tinyurl.com/t7ygmtm)
2020 Mar 10, Congo DRC reported its first case of coronavirus.
(AP, 3/10/20)
2020 Mar 10, The Czech Republic, which has reported 40 cases of coronavirus, said it will suspend schools other than universities from March 11, and ban events hosting more than 100 people.
(AP, 3/10/20)
2020 Mar 10, An Egyptian court sentenced Zyad el-Elaimy, a prominent human rights lawyer and former lawmaker, to a year in prison for his conviction on charges that rights advocates have decried as baseless and politically motivated.
(AP, 3/10/20)
2020 Mar 10, German Chancellor Angela Merkel met Libyan military commander Khalifa Hifter in Berlin in a bid to advance efforts to secure a lasting cease-fire in Libya.
(AP, 3/10/20)
2020 Mar 10, In India Hindus threw colored powder and sprayed water in massive celebrations of the festival of Holi, but the enthusiasm was subdued compared to previous years because of fears of the new virus. The number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the country rose to 47.
(AP, 3/10/20)
2020 Mar 10, In Iran the coronavirus outbreak killed 54 more people and pushed the nation's death toll to 291. This was an 18% increase in deaths from the day before and 12% more confirmed cases. Health ministry spokesperson Kianoush Jahanpour said there were 8,042 confirmed cases. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said doctors and nurses who die combating the new coronavirus will be recognized as “martyrs" like slain soldiers. State-run media said a rumor circulating in Iran that alcohol can treat coronavirus has so far led to 37 deaths and sent 270 people to the hospital after being poisoned by bootleg alcohol.
(AP, 3/10/20)(Reuters, 3/11/20)
2020 Mar 10, It was reported that the coronavirus outbreak in Israel, largely contained, began to gain pace in recent days, with a total of 58 cases diagnosed as of today. 26 confirmed cases have been reported in the Palestinian Territories.
(AP, 3/10/20)
2020 Mar 10, Italy entered its first day under a nationwide lockdown after a government decree extended restrictions on movement from the hard-hit north to the rest of the country. Italy counted 9,172 cases and 463 deaths. The number of dead from riots in Italy's overcrowded prisons over measures imposed to contain the coronavirus rose to 12.
(AP, 3/10/20)(Reuters, 3/10/20)
2020 Mar 10, Kosovo's government approved the 2020 budget after the small Balkan country held a snap election in October and elected the government after months of negotiations.
(Reuters, 3/10/20)
2020 Mar 10, Lebanon reported its first death due to coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/10/20)
2020 Mar 10, Mongolia reported its first case of coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/10/20)
2020 Mar 10, Morocco's health ministry confirmed the country's first death from coronavirus in Casablanca, as its overall number of new infections rose to three.
(Reuters, 3/10/20)
2020 Mar 10, Dutch health authorities took action to contain an outbreak of the coronavirus in a southern province, where a large group of employees at hospitals tested positive for the illness. The number of confirmed coronavirus cases had risen by 61 to 382. One more person had died, taking the number of deaths so far to four.
(AP, 3/10/20)
2020 Mar 10, Norway-based Equinor reported the oil industry's first coronavirus infection on an offshore installation, highlighting the challenge in preventing contamination for thousands of workers living in the close quarters on rigs and platforms.
(Reuters, 3/11/20)
2020 Mar 10, Poland has reported 17 coronavirus cases so far and has announced the cancellation of all large-scale events.
(Reuters, 3/10/20)
2020 Mar 10, Russian President Vladimir Putin laid out a path to staying in power after 2024, as lawmakers approved sweeping reforms to the constitution.
(AFP, 3/10/20)
2020 Mar 10, Singapore started charging visitors for coronavirus treatment after it reported new imported cases from neighboring Indonesia.
(Reuters, 3/10/20)
2020 Mar 10, In Somalia a US air strike aimed at Islamist militants reportedly killed six civilians in a mini bus. US Africa Command said the strike near Janaale town had killed "five terrorists.
(Reuters, 3/11/20)
2020 Mar 10, A South African court cleared Pres. Cyril Ramaphosa of allegations that he misled parliament about the funding of his campaign to become leader of the ruling ANC party.
(SFC, 3/11/20, p.A2)
2020 Mar 10, The Spanish parliament’s lower house canceled its activities for a week after a far-right Vox party member tested positive as coronavirus cases in the country surged to 1,600. Health authorities said known coronavirus cases in the capital region had risen to 1,024 from 782. Authorities have reported 47 deaths, 31 of them in Madrid.
(AP, 3/10/20)(Reuters, 3/11/20)
2020 Mar 10, Taiwan began to airlift almost 500 of its residents from Wuhan. Another 500 Taiwanese will for now remain stuck in the central Chinese city.
(Bloomberg, 3/10/20)
2020 Mar 10, UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet said that “apparently systematic" human rights violations in North Korean detention centers, including sexual violence against women and girls, could amount to crimes against humanity.
(AP, 3/10/20)
2020 Mar 10, Petteri Taalas, the head of the UN weather agency, said last year was the second warmest on record, the past decade was the hottest in human history and January was the warmest January since 1850.
(AP, 3/10/20)
2020 Mar 10, In Venezuela a protest called by opposition leader Jaun Guaido against the Maduro government drew only several thousand supporters in Caracas.
(SFC, 3/13/20, p.A4)
2020 Mar 10, The World Meteorological Association released its annual State of the Global Climate Report. The organization projected that 22 million people were displaced by extreme weather last year, up from 17.2 million the year before.
(Bloomberg, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 11, US Pres. Trump announced a proclamation barring most foreign nationals who had recently been in Europe from entering the US. The ban, to begin at midnight March 13, won't apply to Americans trying to return home, or to citizens of the UK. The ban applied to countries in the Schengen Area: Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. Countries around the world began closing borders to foreign travelers. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued its strongest travel warning, urging Americans to avoid all "nonessential travel" to Europe. The Pentagon suspended travel to several coronavirus-hit countries for 60 days, affecting all service members, employees, and their families.
(The Week, 3/12/20)(AP, 3/12/20)(NY Times, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 11, The US Congress gave its final approval to a bid to restrain President Donald Trump from attacking Iran, a sign of lawmakers' alarm after soaring tensions. The resolution was virtually certain to be vetoed by Trump.
(AFP, 3/12/20)
2020 Mar 11, The NBA suspended its season after a player tested positive for the virus. Separately, the NCAA announced that its men’s and women’s Division I basketball tournaments would be played without spectators.
(NY Times, 3/12/20)
2020 Mar 11, The US reported 1,039 cases of confirmed coronavirus, the eighth-highest in the world. The death toll reached 31. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) confirmed that three of its officers who work at the Mineta San Jose International Airport have tested positive for the novel coronavirus. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said the virus outbreak in the US was only going to get worse. A new report said the new coronavirus can live in the air for several hours and on some surfaces for as long as two to three days. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported 987 cases of the coronavirus, an increase of 291 from its previous count, and said that the number of deaths had risen by 4 to 29. The CDC figures did not necessarily reflect cases reported by individual states.
(Good Morning America, 3/11/20)(AP, 3/11/20)(Reuters, 3/11/20)
2020 Mar 11, The US imposed sanctions on Zimbabwe's state security minister and its ambassador to Tanzania, accusing them of human rights abuses, including directing an attack on peaceful protestors.
(Reuters, 3/11/20)
2020 Mar 11, A US Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to continue making asylum-seekers wait in Mexico for their US court hearings.
(AP, 3/11/20)
2020 Mar 11, Chelsea Manning's legal team said that the former intelligence analyst tried to take her own life today, but was transported to a hospital where she is recovering.
(AP, 3/11/20)
2020 Mar 11, US stock indexes dropped sharply after attempting a rebound in the previous session, on skepticism around President Donald Trump's stimulus plan to combat the coronavirus outbreak.
(AP, 3/11/20)
2020 Mar 11, The US state of Georgia has 23 confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus so far.
(AP, 3/11/20)
2020 Mar 11, In NYC Harvey Weinstein was sentenced to 23 years in prison, two weeks after a jury convicted him of sexual assault and rape.
(Business Insider, 3/11/20)
2020 Mar 11, In South Dakota the Oglala Sioux Tribe announced that a referndum to legalize madical and recreational marijuana on the Pine Ridge Reservation has passed. A proposal to allow alcohol in the tribe's casino failed.
(SFC, 3/12/20, p.A5)
2020 Mar 11, Researchers said they used the planet-hunting ESPRESSO instrument on the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Chile to observe a planet called WASP-76b located about 640 light years from Earth. It is nearly twice the size of Jupiter, our solar system's largest planet. Weather on the planet had a 100 percent chance of the most outrageous rain imaginable, droplets of scalding hot liquid iron.
(Reuters, 3/11/20)
2020 Mar 11, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani issued a decree promising to release 1,500 Taliban prisoners as a goodwill gesture to get intra-Afghan negotiations started.
(AP, 3/11/20)
2020 Mar 11, Albania announced its first virus-related death.
(AP, 3/11/20)
2020 Mar 11, Bahrain authorities said their number of confirmed cases have spiked by nearly 70% to 189 confirmed cases. The 77 new cases were all on a returning flight of Bahraini evacuees from Iran.
(AP, 3/11/20)
2020 Mar 11, Belgium announced its first virus-related death.
(AP, 3/11/20)
2020 Mar 11, Britain announced a $39-billion war chest to soften the economic impact of the coronavirus after the Bank of England cut interest rates.
(Reuters, 3/11/20)
2020 Mar 11, Bulgaria announced its first virus-related death.
(AP, 3/11/20)
2020 Mar 11, China announced that key companies can resume work in coronavirus-hit Wuhan. The coronavirus has now killed over 3,100 and infected nearly 81,000 in the country. Beijing ordered people arriving in the city from any country to go into 14-day quarantine as China reported an increase in imported coronavirus cases, threatening its progress against the epidemic.
(AFP, 3/11/20)
2020 Mar 11, Denmark went under a national lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic.
(Econ., 6/20/20, p.11)
2020 Mar 11, Germany reported 1,622 confirmed cases of coronavirus, making it the seventh-highest national total in the global outbreak. Chancellor Angela Merkel warned that up to 70 percent of the country's population, roughly 58 million people, could contract the virus.
(Good Morning America, 3/11/20)
2020 Mar 11, India suspended most visas in a bid to halt the spread of the coronavirus.
(AP, 3/12/20)
2020 Mar 11, In Iran the death toll in the Islamic Republic from the outbreak rose by 62 to 354. The semiofficial Fars news agency reported that Vice President Eshaq Jahangiri and two other Cabinet members have contracted the new coronavirus.
(AP, 3/11/20)
2020 Mar 11, In Iraq an attack killed three servicemen, including two Americans, at the Camp Taji base housing coalition forces. Usbat al-Theyireen soon claimed responsibility.
(AP, 3/12/20)(Econ, 4/11/20, p.38)
2020 Mar 11, Italy's PM Giuseppe Conte earmarked $28.3 billion to ease the economic impact from the coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/11/20)
2020 Mar 11, Kenyan officials said a white female giraffe and her 7-month-old calf have been killed by poachers. About 110,000 giraffes remained in Africa.
(SFC, 3/12/20, p.A2)
2020 Mar 11, Kuwait reported over 70 confirmed cases of the new coronavirus and announced that it would close down all work and business for two weeks beginning March 12.
(AP, 3/11/20)
2020 Mar 11, Lebanon suspended flights from countries hit hardest by the novel coronavirus after announcing its second death from the pandemic in two days.
(AFP, 3/11/20)
2020 Mar 11, Malta banned travel with Germany, France, Spain and Switzerland to try to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. Malta so far had six confirmed virus cases, all involving people who had visited Italy.
(Reuters, 3/11/20)
2020 Mar 11, Palestinian Mohammed Hamayel (15) was shot in the head by a live bullet during confrontations with Israeli soldiers in the village of Beita near the West Bank city of Nablus and died in a hospital shortly after.
(AP, 3/11/20)
2020 Mar 11, Myanmar's parliament rejected a proposed constitutional amendment that would have allowed the country's de facto leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, to officially become president.
(AP, 3/11/20)
2020 Mar 11, Poland, which has confirmed 25 coronavirus cases, shut schools, banned large social events and closed cinemas, museums and other cultural sites, following similar measures by other countries in the region including the Czech Republic and Romania.
(AP, 3/11/20)
2020 Mar 11, Qatar said it has recorded 238 new coronavirus cases among individuals already under quarantine in one residential compound, taking the country's total tally to 262.
(Reuters, 3/11/20)
2020 Mar 11, Serbia canceled campaign events for the country’s April 26 parliamentary election in an effort to prevent the further spread of the coronavirus after the number of cases in the Balkan state more than doubled overnight to 12.
(AP, 3/11/20)
2020 Mar 11, Slovak police said 13 local judges and five other people linked to the main suspect in the case of a slain investigative journalist have been detained and charged with corruption and obstruction of justice.
(AP, 3/11/20)
2020 Mar 11, South Korea confirmed a total of 114 coronavirus infections, taking the country's total to 7,869. A new cluster of infections was discovered in a call center office building in Seoul.
(AP, 3/12/20)(Econ, 3/14/20, p.48)
2020 Mar 11, In Spain, the number of coronavirus cases surged past the 2,000-mark.
(AP, 3/11/20)
2020 Mar 11, Sweden announced its first virus-related death.
(AP, 3/11/20)
2020 Mar 11, The World Health Organization declared the virus a pandemic, a term that it had avoided using for fear that countries would give up on containment efforts. Confirmed cases stood at 125,000. Reported deaths were under 5,000.
(NY Times, 3/12/20)(SFC, 3/11/21, p.A5)
2020 Mar 12, The US now had at least 1,323 cases of coronavirus, the eighth-highest number of cases worldwide. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported about 1,260 US coronavirus illnesses. The number trailed independent researchers, who are adding reports from individual states more quickly. Globally, there have been over 126,000 confirmed cases with over 4,600 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering.
(Good Morning America, 3/12/20)(AP, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 12, A US federal judge ordered the release of former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, who has been incarcerated since May for refusing to testify to a grand jury investigating WikiLeaks.
(SFC, 3/13/20, p.A5)
2020 Mar 12, The US military repatriated what may be the remains of service personnel who were lost in action in Burma during WWII. More than 72,000 Americans in all remain unaccounted for from WWII, more than 7,800 from the Korean war and 1,585 from the conflict in Vietnam.
(SFC, 3/13/20, p.A2)
2020 Mar 12, The Walt Disney Co said it will close its theme parks in California and Florida and its resort in Paris from this weekend through the end of the month due to the global outbreak of coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 12, California's Gov. Gavin Newsom announced new restrictions on public gatherings, saying that they must now be limited to no more than 250 people, while smaller events can proceed only if the organizers can implement social distancing of 6 feet per person. About 200 people in California have tested positive so far for coronavirus.
(Good Morning America, 3/12/20)(SFC, 3/13/20, p.A1)
2020 Mar 12, John Christopher Colletti (35) was arrested at the Prairie Band Casino and Resort in Mayetta, Kansas, accused of attempting to steal $20,000 (£15,667) from an advance kiosk. The FBI later said he had used a prosthetic face mask to pose as an elderly gambler, in order to steal nearly $100,00 (£78,332) from the MGM Grand.
(The Independent, 7/24/20)
2020 Mar 12, It was reported that LaSalle Management LLC, private prison in northeast Louisiana, must pay a total of $177,500 to five former inmates of that prison whose faces were pepper-sprayed while they were handcuffed and kneeling in 2016.
(AP, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 12, In Maryland tactical unit members were serving a “high-risk" search warrant around 4:30 a.m. when one of the unit's officers fatally shot Duncan Socrates Lemp (21). Police detectives recovered three rifles and two handguns from the home. An attorney for the man’s family said Lemp was asleep in his bedroom when police opened fire from outside his house. Strangers on the internet later hailed Lemp as a martyr for their anti-government movement.
(AP, 3/13/20)(AP, 10/22/20)
2020 Mar 12, In New York City a female diplomat from the Philippines mission to the United Nations tested positive for coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/12/20)
2020 Mar 12, The national guard arrived in New Rochelle, New York, to maintain a containment zone just 25 miles outside of New York City.
(Good Morning America, 3/12/20)
2020 Mar 12, US Major League Soccer said it's suspending the season for 30 days due to the coronavirus, effective immediately.
(Good Morning America, 3/12/20)
2020 Mar 12, Princess Cruises announced that it's voluntarily stopping global operations of its 18 cruise ships for two months.
(Good Morning America, 3/12/20)
2020 Mar 12, Global stocks plunged into a bear market and oil slumped further after stimulus efforts from the European Central Bank failed to calm investors alarmed by US moves overnight to restrict travel from Europe over the spread of the coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/12/20)
2020 Mar 12, Researchers crunched data on changes in dozens of ecosystems to conclude that Caribbean coral reefs could collapse in 15 years while the Amazon rainforest could die back within 50 years. The finding was questioned by some experts.
(Reuters, 3/12/20)
2020 Mar 12, Algeria's president ordered all schools closed immediately after the North African country saw its first death from the virus. Algeria has 25 cases so far.
(AP, 3/12/20)
2020 Mar 12, Argentina's Pres. Alberto Fernandez shut down borders, business and transport by decree to slow the spread of the coronavirus. The central bank was printing money to keep the government going with inflation was already at 50%
(Econ, 4/25/20, p.23)
2020 Mar 12, Austria's 25,000 police officers were told they were not allowed to take any vacation at least until the end of April, a measure aimed at having enough officers to ensure order.
(AP, 3/12/20)
2020 Mar 12, Azerbaijan reported its first death from the coronavirus outbreak, an Azeri woman who was quarantined after returning from Iran.
(Reuters, 3/12/20)
2020 Mar 12, Michel Roux (b.1941), the French-born chef who had a profound influence on elevating Britain's dining habits, died in England. Roux and his brother, Albert, are widely credited with revolutionizing Britain's staid and old-fashioned culinary scene, notably with their opening of Le Gavroche in London in 1967.
(AP, 3/12/20)(Econ, 3/28/20, p.78)
2020 Mar 12, Canadian authorities confirmed that PM Justin Trudeau's wife Sophie Gregoire Trudeau has tested positive for the COVID-19, following her visit to the United Kingdom. At least 117 cases of the novel coronavirus have been confirmed in Canada with one death.
(Benzinga, 3/12/20)
2020 Mar 12, In China Ren Zhiqiang, a member of China's ruling Communist Party and a former top executive of state-controlled property developer Huayuan Real Estate Group, went missing. The influential former property executive had called President Xi Jinping a "clown" over a speech he made last month about the government's efforts to battle the coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 12, Expedition operators on Mount Everest said that Chinese mountaineering officials will not allow spring climbs from their side of the mountain due to fears of the coronavirus. The number of cases worldwide has surpassed 120,000.
(AP, 3/12/20)
2020 Mar 12, In Egypt thunderstorms packing heavy rains and lightning caused widespread flooding across the country, killing at least five people and injuring five others.
(AP, 3/12/20)
2020 Mar 12, El Salvador announced a national lockdown as it reported three confirmed cases of the coronavirus.
(Econ, 4/11/20, p.24)
2020 Mar 12, A Finnish court jailed in a custody hearing Gibril Ealoghima Massaquoi (50), a Sierra Leone man suspected of committing serious war crimes and crimes against humanity from 1999 through 2003 during Liberia's bloody second civil war. Massaquoi has lived in Finland for more than 10 years.
(AP, 3/12/20)
2020 Mar 12, Gabon confirmed its first coronavirus case.
(Reuters, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 12, Germany's domestic intelligence agency formally classified a radical faction within the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, know as "The Wing," as a right-wing extremist movement.
(SFC, 3/13/20, p.A3)
2020 Mar 12, Ghana confirmed their first coronavirus case.
(Reuters, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 12, Iran said it had asked last week for an emergency $5 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund to help fight the spread of a new virus that's swept across the country, infecting more than 10,000 people and killing hundreds. The Health Ministry said 75 people had died in the past 24 hours and more than 1,000 new cases of infection had been confirmed, pushing the death toll to 429 and confirmed cases to 10,075.
(AP, 3/12/20)
2020 Mar 12, Ireland's PM Leo Varadkar ordered the country into partial lock down, shutting schools, colleges and daycare, banning mass gatherings and telling people to stay apart.
(Bloomberg, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 12, Italy's Premier Giuseppe Conte ordered restaurants, cafes and retail shops closed after imposing a nationwide lockdown on personal movement. Jewelry and clothing shops that on Tuesday and Wednesday had posted signs urging customers to queue up out the door a meter (3.3 feet) apart were closed until further notice. Supermarkets, pharmacies and outdoor markets were still open.
(AP, 3/12/20)
2020 Mar 12, It was reported that a supercomputer, donated by Britain and based in Kenya, is boosting efforts in East Africa to control a locust outbreak that raises what the UN food agency calls "an unprecedented threat" to the region's food security. The UN recently raised its aid appeal relating to locusts to $138 million, up from $76 million, saying the need for more help is urgent. Experts have warned that if the number of locusts is unchecked they could grow 500 times by June, when drier weather is expected in East Africa.
(AP, 3/12/20)
2020 Mar 12, The government of Netherlands announced a ban on gatherings of more than 100 people, told companies to encourage employees to work from home and said anyone with flu-like symptoms should stay home.
(AP, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 12, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte announced strict immigration curbs and a halt on domestic land, sea and air travel to and from Manila, in what he called a "lockdown" of the capital to arrest the spread of coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/12/20)
2020 Mar 12, A Russian court fined BBC World News and one of its senior journalists for failing to correctly label content unsuitable for children and failing to submit content to a state archive, the Interfax news agency reported.
(Reuters, 3/12/20)
2020 Mar 12, South Africa reported 17 confirmed coronavirus infections, including its first transmitted locally. Across Africa, 12 of the continent's 54 countries have registered COVID-19 cases, the most recent being Ivory Coast announcing one case.
(AP, 3/12/20)
2020 Mar 12, South Korea reported fewer than 120 new coronavirus cases, but authorities warned that a new cluster in Seoul could see the infection spread in the capital.
(AFP, 3/12/20)
2020 Mar 12, Sudan's first death from the coronavirus was of a man who had visited the United Arab Emirates in the first week of March.
(Reuters, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 12, In northeastern Syria a car bomb exploded at a checkpoint manned by Turkey-backed opposition fighters killing at least four people. Turkey blamed Kurdish militants.
(AP, 3/12/20)
2020 Mar 12, The UN Security Council voted unanimously to extend the mandate of the UN peacekeeping mission in South Sudan, welcoming “encouraging developments" toward peace and a reduction in political violence by the warring parties after six years of civil war.
(AP, 3/12/20)
2020 Mar 12, Vietnam's coronavirus cases rose to 44.
(Reuters, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, Pres. Donald Trump declared the coronavirus outbreak a national emergency, freeing up money and resources to fight it, and threw his support behind a congressional aid package. Trump said “I don't take responsibility at all" for the slow rollout of testing. Trump said that major cruise lines including Royal Caribbean would suspend cruises for 30 days at his request after repeated transmission of coronavirus among passengers at sea.
(AP, 3/14/20)(Reuters, 3/14/20)
2020 Mar 13, A US federal government plan to combat the coronavirus warned policymakers that a pandemic “will last 18 months or longer" and could include “multiple waves," resulting in widespread shortages that would strain consumers and the nation’s health care system.
(NY Times, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 13, The Dow Jones Industrial Average rallied nearly 2000 points, its biggest point gain ever, after Pres. Donald Trump declared the coronavirus pandemic a national emergency.
(SFC, 3/14/20, p.D1)
2020 Mar 13, President Donald Trump's administration announced it is awarding $1.3 million to two companies trying to develop rapid COVID-19 tests that could detect whether a person is positive for the new coronavirus within an hour. The Department of Health and Human Services said it is awarding $679,000 to DiaSorin Molecular, of Cypress, California, and $598,000 to QIAGEN, of Germantown, Maryland, to accelerate development of their tests.
(AP, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, US officials said inmates at all 122 federal correctional facilities across the country will no longer be allowed visits from family, friends or attorneys for the next 30 days, in response to the threat of the coronavirus.
(AP, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc's coronavirus test, which would allow the firm to increase capacity to 1.4 million tests a week.
(Reuters, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said that the New York State Department of Health can authorize certain laboratories to begin testing for the coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, The US Federal Reserve launched a wave of $37 billion of Treasury security purchases under the enhanced market liquidity measures it announced a day earlier to address volatile conditions in the government bond market caused by the coronavirus outbreak.
(Reuters, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, In California nearly 1.5 million students have been told to stay home for up to four weeks as public and private school shit down across the state to combat the coronavirus.
(SFC, 3/14/20, p.A1)
2020 Mar 13, San Francisco's Mayor London breed banned nonessential gatherings of more than 100 people due to the coronavirus outbreak.
(SFC, 3/14/20, p.A1)
2020 Mar 13, In Florida Andrew Gillum (40), who in 2018 came within 34,000 votes of becoming the state's governor, was discovered by police at a South Beach hotel early today in a room with bags of possible crystal meth and in the company of a man who appeared to have overdosed on drugs. No arrests were made.
(Miami Herald, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, A Chicago jury convicted Shomari Legghett (46) of first-degree murder in the Feb. 13, 2018, shooting death of police Cmdr. Paul Bauer (53).
(AP, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, In Kentucky Breonna Taylor (26), decorated Emergency Medical Technician (EMT), was shot at least eight times by police officers in her apartment by Louisville police officers. Officials later said that police were executing a drug warrant. The aspiring nurse's boyfriend Kenneth Walker was inside the apartment with her when police purportedly attempted to enter without announcement. Mr Walker, who is a licensed gun owner, is said to have fired shots at officers when they attempted to enter.
(The Independent, 5/12/20)
2020 Mar 13, Louisiana's Gov. John Bel Edwards postponed the state's presidential primaries due to fears of the coronavirus, making it the first state to push back its election because of the outbreak. He delayed the April 4 primary until June 20.
(AP, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, In Boston David Sidoo, a former Canadian Football League player, pleaded guilty to participating in a college admissions cheating scheme by hiring someone to take the SATs in place of his two sons. His plea deal called for 90 days in prison and a fine of $250,000.
(SFC, 3/14/20, p.A5)
2020 Mar 13, New York state opened its first drive-through coronavirus test site, following a similar experiment in Seattle.
(Reuters, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 13, In NYC all United Nations staff at its headquarters were told o work from home for at least three weeks due to the coronavirus outbreak unless it was essential for them to be present.
(AFP, 3/14/20)
2020 Mar 13, US federal prosecutors hit R&B singer R. Kelly with more criminal charges in a revised indictment filed in NYC. Charges included the singer of having unprotected sex with a girl in 2015 without disclosing he had herpes.
(SSFC, 3/15/20, p.A5)
2020 Mar 13, In Pennsylvania Philadelphia police Cpl. James O'Connor (46) was shot and killed early today as he served a homicide warrant at a home. Several people were arrested including the subject of the warrant, Hassan Elliott, a fugitive wanted in a robbery and slaying last year not far from the scene.
(AP, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, Apple Inc said it will close all its retail stores outside Greater China until March 27, to minimize risk of coronavirus transmission.
(Reuters, 3/14/20)
2020 Mar 13, More than 134,500 people have been infected globally by the coronavirus and over 4,900 have died, according to a Reuters tally of government announcements.
(Reuters, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, Australia warned citizens the coronavirus pandemic is now so widespread that they should reconsider all foreign travel, as the government stepped up measures to slow the spread of the disease.
(AFP, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, Austria said will introduce border checks with Switzerland and ban flight connections with France, Spain and Switzerland from March 16 to slow the rapidly spreading coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, Belarus said it has recorded 27 people infected with coronavirus, six more than a day before.
(Reuters, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, In Bosnia Muslim men Jasmin Keserovic and Senad Kasupovic were charged with terrorism offences, over accusations they fought for Islamic State. The men were part of a group of seven flown back to Bosnia from Syria in December, along with 18 women and children.
(Reuters, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, Brazil's federal audit court suspended late today an increase of 20 billion reais ($4.1 billion) to social assistance for elderly and disabled people.
(Reuters, 3/14/20)
2020 Mar 13, Britain's number of confirmed coronavirus cases rose to 590. Ten people have died.
(Reuters, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, The Bulgarian parliament voted unanimously to declare a state of emergency until April 13 as the number of confirmed cases in the country more than tripled to 23.
(Reuters, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, Cambodia recorded two new cases of the coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/14/20)
2020 Mar 13, China's death toll due to the coronavirus rose by 13. The Mainland had 11 new confirmed cases. The country now has 80,824 confirmed coronavirus cases. Wuhan city reported five new cases. The death toll touched 3,176.
(AP, 3/13/20)(Reuters, 3/14/20)(Bloomberg, 3/14/20)
2020 Mar 13, Chinese billionaire and Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma said he will donate 500,000 coronavirus testing kits and 1 million masks to the United States and urged international cooperation to fight the health crisis.
(Reuters, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, Costa Rica, which has reported 22 cases, ordered all university classes suspended.
(Reuters, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, Ecuador suspended large events and shut its schools as it confirmed 15 cases of the coronavirus.
(Econ, 4/11/20, p.24)
2020 Mar 13, In Egypt thunderstorms and flooding around Egypt entered a second day, interrupting daily life in much of the country, including Cairo. The death toll soon rose to 21.
(AP, 3/13/20)(SSFC, 3/15/20, p.A3)
2020 Mar 13, Ethiopia confirmed its first case of coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, Finland, France, Germany, Luxembourg and Portugal agreed to take in at least 1,600 migrant children in Greece traveling without their parents.
(SSFC, 3/15/20, p.A3)
2020 Mar 13, In France the death toll from coronavirus rose to 61.
(Reuters, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, Germany recorded 3,062 confirmed cases of the coronavirus, with five deaths. The German government unleashed the biggest economic aid package in the country's post-war history, offering companies "unlimited" credit to keep them afloat during the coronavirus crisis.
(Reuters, 3/14/20)(AFP, 3/13/20)0
2020 Mar 13, In Greece Katerina Sakellaropoulou (63) was formally sworn in as the country's first female president.
(SFC, 3/14/20, p.A4)
2020 Mar 13, Greece said it will close all its museums and archaeological sites, including the entire Acropolis that looms over Athens, until the end of the month due to the impact of the coronavirus. Greece had 117 confirmed cases and one fatality.
(AP, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, In Hong Kong a man (80) became the fourth patient to die from coronavirus.
(AP, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, The Icelandic government said it would ban public gatherings of 100 or more people and that secondary schools and universities would close for four weeks to curb the spread of the coronavirus outbreak. So far, 117 cases of coronavirus infections have been confirmed in the country.
(Reuters, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, Indian authorities ordered the release of Kashmir's most prominent politician, Farooq Abdullah, one of dozens of leaders held since August, when the federal government withdrew the troubled region's autonomy.
(Reuters, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, Two Indian states ordered the closure of public buildings, malls, cinemas and bars in several major cities, with Mumbai and Bengaluru subject to differing restrictions, after the country reported its first death from the coronavirus. India had 74 confirmed cases of the virus.
(Reuters, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, Iran announced that the new coronavirus has claimed another 85 lives, the highest single-day death toll in one of the world's worst affected countries. This brought to 514 the overall number of deaths in the country. The total number of patients has reached 11,364 cases. Iran said security forces will clear the streets nationwide within 24 hours so all citizens can be checked for coronavirus.
(AFP, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, Iraq's military said five security force members and a civilian were killed early today in a barrage of US airstrikes launched hours after a rocket attack killed and wounded American and British servicemen at a base north of Baghdad. Iraq's military said the strikes killed three Iraqi army commandos and two federal police officers.
(AP, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, Irish nationalists in Northern Ireland's government called for the closure of schools to mirror measures across the border in the Republic of Ireland, putting them at odds with their pro-British power-sharing partners. Northern Ireland currently has 20 confirmed cases of COVID-19 compared with 70 in the Republic of Ireland, where the population is around two and a half times bigger.
(Reuters, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, In Israel 126 cases of the disease have been reported and another 35 in the occupied West Bank. Muslims gathered in smaller-than-usual numbers at al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem after religious authorities decided to keep Islam's third holiest site open for prayers but enact health measures to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, Italy's death toll from the coronavirus epidemic shot past 1,000 as the economic impact worsened. The total number of infections rose to 15,113.
(Reuters, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, In Japan total coronavirus infections rose to 1,380.
(Reuters, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, Kazakhstan confirmed first coronavirus cases.
(Reuters, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, Kenya confirmed East Africa's first case of coronavirus, a woman who had returned to the capital Nairobi from the United States.
(Reuters, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, The Bank of Mauritius said it will offer 5 billion rupees ($131.06 million) in liquidity support to businesses, through commercial banks, to cushion businesses from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
(Reuters, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, Mexico has so far confirmed 15 cases of coronavirus with no deaths. Deputy health secretary Hugo Lopez-Gatell said Mexico would consider mechanisms to control the flow of people entering Mexico from the US in an effort to limit coronavirus, if necessary.
(AP, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, Nepal's government announced that it was suspending climbing permits for Mt. Everest and all other peaks in the country due to concern over the spread of the coronavirus.
(SFC, 3/14/20, p.A2)
2020 Mar 13, In the Netherlands new coronavirus infections reached 804, with 10 deaths. Dutch shoppers stockpiled toilet paper, pasta and canned goods as worries about the coronavirus outbreak spread. The price of tulips for export stalled at zero due to the coronavirus pandemic. Growers ended up dumping some 400 million flowers.
(Reuters, 3/13/20)(SFC, 4/23/20, p.C2)
2020 Mar 13, Pakistan said it will shut all land borders and limit international flights for 15 days to halt the spread of coronavirus. Pakistan has reported 21 cases of the virus but no deaths.
(AP, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, Poland reported its first death from coronavirus. So far, 47 cases have been confirmed in the country.
(Reuters, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, Saudi Arabia detected 17 new coronavirus cases, 11 of whom were Egyptians.
(Reuters, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, In Slovenia Janez Jansa (b.1958) became prime minister for a third time.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janez_Jan%C5%A1a)(Econ., 7/6/20, p.45)
2020 Mar 13, South Korea recorded 110 new coronavirus cases, compared with 114 a day earlier, taking the national tally to 7,979, with the death toll rising by five to 72 as of late today.
(AP, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, In Spain the number of coronavirus cases jumped to 4,209 from 3,004 a day earlier, as the disease spread mostly in Madrid, the Basque Country and La Rioja regions. The death toll from the epidemic has increased to 120 from 84 the previous day. In the Madrid region said the number of cases rose to 2,078.
(AP, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, Thailand reported five new coronavirus cases, bringing the total to 75.
(Reuters, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, Turkey said a second patient has been diagnosed with the coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, A UN report said allegations of sexual abuse and exploitation in UN peacekeeping and political missions rose significantly in 2019, with allegations against civilian personnel nearly doubling.
(AP, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, Uruguay's new Pres. Luis Lacalle Pou declared an emergency due to the coronavirus pandemic and shut down borders.
(Econ., 6/20/20, p.26)
2020 Mar 14, US Vice President Mike Pence said that new travel bans would be implemented on the United Kingdom and Ireland as the novel coronavirus pandemic spreads.
(The Daily Beast, 3/14/20)
2020 Mar 14, In the SF Bay Area 27 new coronavirus cases were reported, with 12 in Santa Clara County, 6 in San Mateo County, 5 in SF and 4 in Contra costa County. SF banned al most all hospital visitors as part of tis effort to fight the coronavirus pandemic.
(SSFC, 3/15/20, p.A12)
2020 Mar 14, New York state reported 100 new cases, pushing the total to 524,. Gov. Andrew Cuomo said accelerated testing will lead to a rapid rise in total infections. Nationwide, more than 2,000 people have been infected and 48 have died. A Reuters count said some 145,594 people have been infected by the coronavirus across the world and 5,419 have died.
(Bloomberg, 3/14/20)(Reuters, 3/14/20)
2020 Mar 14, New York City reported its first fatality from the coronavirus.
(Bloomberg, 3/14/20)
2020 Mar 14, The Central African Republic confirmed its first coronavirus case.
(Reuters, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 14, Colombia's Pres. Ivan Duque closed the country's borders to foreigners, including some 55,000 a day, mostly shoppers, who came from Venezuela.
(Econ., 5/2/20, p.24)
2020 Mar 14, The Dominican Republic said it will suspend all flights from Europe and the arrival of all cruise ships for a month in order to prevent the spread of coronavirus. So far 11 cases of coronavirus have been detected.
(Reuters, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 14, Egypt said it will suspend schools and universities for two weeks starting March 15 amid to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. The country has so far registered 93 cases of the new coronavirus, with two fatalities.
(Reuters, 3/14/20)
2020 Mar 14, Eswatini (formerly Swaziland), a small African nation on South Africa’s eastern border, confirmed its first coronavirus case.
(Bloomberg, 3/14/20)
2020 Mar 14, The French government published an official decree banning all non-essential gatherings, but hundreds of protesters, some wearing protective masks, began convening outside the Montparnasse train station, chanting anti-Macron slogans. Thousands of security forces fanned out across central Paris as anti-government "Yellow Vest" protesters defied a ban on mass gatherings aimed at preventing the spread of coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/14/20)
2020 Mar 14, Greece said it would suspend all flights that were still operating to and from Italy, after reporting two more fatalities from a coronavirus infection, raising the total number of deaths in the country to three. Greece had 190 confirmed cases of coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/14/20)
2020 Mar 14, Indonesia reported that Transport Minister Budi Karya Sumadi has been hospitalized in Jakarta after he contracted coronavirus. Indonesia reported 27 more coronavirus cases, bringing the total number of confirmed infection to 96 with five deaths.
(Reuters, 3/14/20)
2020 Mar 14, Iran said the coronavirus outbreak has killed another 97 people, pushing the death toll in the country to 611. Iran has reported 12,729 cases in total.
(AP, 3/14/20)
2020 Mar 14, In Iraq dozens of rockets slammed into an Iraqi base north of Baghdad wounding 3 American and 2 Iraqi troops. Iraq's military said that 33 Katyusha rockets had been launched on Taji base north of Baghdad which houses US-led coalition troops.
(AP, 3/14/20)(Reuters, 3/14/20)
2020 Mar 14, Authorities in Iraq's northern Kurdish region imposed a 48-hour curfew in the cities of Irbil and Sulaimaniyah that began overnight. The region has reported 27 cases, including one fatality from the COVID-19 illness caused by the virus.
(AP, 3/14/20)
2020 Mar 14, Italy reported more than 21,000 cases of coronavirus and 1,441 deaths, the second most heavily affected country after China.
(Reuters, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 14, It was reported that 9 players in Italy’s top soccer league, Serie A, have tested positive for the coronavirus. Games have been suspended until at least April 3. Italian supercar maker Ferrari said it will suspend production at the Maranello and Modena plants until March 27. Volkswagen AG’s Lamborghini has also suspended production in Italy until March 25.
(Bloomberg, 3/14/20)
2020 Mar 14, In Kuwait, four more people have been infected with the virus, bringing the number of coronavirus cases to 104.
(Bloomberg, 3/14/20)
2020 Mar 14, Lebanon's unemployment was thought to be as high as 25%. An estimated 40% of the people were now poor.
(Econ, 3/14/20, p.38)
2020 Mar 14, Malaysia reported 41 new infections, the biggest one-day jump so far, for a total of 238. The new cases bring the total number of infected people in the country to 238.
(Reuters, 3/14/20)
2020 Mar 14, In Mali Canadian Edith Blais and Italian Luca Tacchetto were freed in good health. They had been kidnapped on December 15, 2018, in Burkina Faso.
(AP, 3/14/20)
2020 Mar 14, Mauritania, in northwest Africa, confirmed its first coronavirus case.
(Bloomberg, 3/14/20)
2020 Mar 14, Morocco confirmed 9 new coronavirus cases bringing the total number of infected people to 17. Morocco has suspended all football matches, closed all schools, halted flights with 9 countries and cancelled gatherings of more than 50 people.
(AP, 3/14/20)
2020 Mar 14, Dutch health authorities said the number of confirmed coronavirus infections in the Netherlands has risen by 155 to 959. The number of deaths rose by 2 to a total of 12.
(Reuters, 3/14/20)
2020 Mar 14, New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern said that everyone entering the country from midnight March 15 must self isolate for 14 days in an effort to contain the spread of the new coronavirus. New Zealand had six confirmed cases and no recorded deaths.
(Reuters, 3/14/20)
2020 Mar 14, Romania's lawmakers approved the new cabinet of PM Ludovioc Orban, ending more than a month of political wrangling.
(Reuters, 3/16/20)
2020 Mar 14, Russian Pres. Vladimir Putin signed a law on constitutional changes that could keep him in power for another 16 years. The step must still be approved in a nationwide vote. Police detained around 50 people in Moscow protesting against plans to change the constitution.
(AP, 3/14/20)(Reuters, 3/14/20)
2020 Mar 14, Russia’s PM Mikhail Mishustin signed orders to close the land borders with Poland and Norway for most foreign citizens from March 15.
(Bloomberg, 3/14/20)
2020 Mar 14, Rwanda reported its first coronavirus case beecoming the 19th African nation to report the presence of the virus.
(Reuters, 3/14/20)
2020 Mar 14, Saudi Arabia said it would halt all flights to the kingdom for two weeks beginning March 15.
(AP, 3/14/20)
2020 Mar 14, Seychelles confirmed its first coronavirus case.
(Reuters, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 14, Spain recorded 5,753 coronavirus cases, up by a third from a day earlier. Spain said it will impose a nationwide lockdown beginning March 16 for two weeks as part of a state of emergency due to the virus. Car production at a Renault-Nissan plant in Barcelona has been stopped because of supply-chain disruptions due to the virus.
(Reuters, 3/14/20)(Bloomberg, 3/14/20)
2020 Mar 14, The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights at least 384,000 people have died in Syria, including more than 116,000 civilians, since the war began in March 2011.
(AFP, 3/14/20)
2020 Mar 15, Joe Biden promised to choose a woman as his vice president should he win the Democratic presidential nomination. He made the pledge on stage with rival Bernie Sanders in the first debate held without a live audience because of concerns over the coronavirus. Sanders said he would also likely choose a woman.
(Bloomberg, 3/16/20)
2020 Mar 15, US officials recorded nearly 3,000 cases of coronavirus with 63 deaths, up from 58 a day earlier. Globally more than 162,000 were infected and over 6,400 have died. The US Navy said a sailor aboard a warship ship has tested positive for the coronavirus for the first time. The only state not reporting cases is West Virginia. Cases neared 160,000 worldwide, as deaths top 6,000. Several countries cautioned that fewer tests are being performed as more people fall ill. A US Army soldier tested positive for the coronavirus, marking the first US Army case in Europe.
(NY Times, 3/15/20)(Bloomberg, 3/15/20)(Reuters, 3/16/20)
2020 Mar 15, The US Federal Reserve slashing its benchmark rate back to a record low slashing it by a full percentage point to a range between zero and 0.25%. Global markets slumped. The Fed also said it would buy $700 billion in Treasury and mortgage bonds.
(AP, 3/15/20)(AP, 3/16/20)
2020 Mar 15, The Peace Corps told its volunteers around the world that it is suspending all operations globally and evacuating all volunteers in light of the spread of the new coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/16/20)
2020 Mar 15, California's Gov. Gavin Newsom announced new state measure to combat the coronavirus, urging that bars close and restaurants reduce capacity. Newsom also asked all state residents 65 and older to isolate themselves at home.
(SFC, 3/16/20, p.A1)
2020 Mar 15, In the SF Bay Area Santa Clara's health officer confirmed 114 cases of coronavirus, the most of any county in the state and about 30% of the cases statewide.
(SFC, 3/16/20, p.A1)
2020 Mar 15, In Georgia seven people were dead after a shooting incident initially reported as a murder-suicide in Moncure, Chatham County. The victims included the suspected shooter.
(Charlotte Observer, 3/16/20)
2020 Mar 15, In Missouri 5 people including a police officer and a gunman died in a shooting at a Springfield gas station after gunman Joaquin Roman (31) went inside and opened fire.
(Reuters, 3/16/20)(SFC, 3/17/20, p.A4)
2020 Mar 15, New Jersey reported its second death from the coronavirus, The state has 69 positive tests, up from 50 the day before.
(Bloomberg, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 15, New York's Governor Andrew Cuomo said two state Assembly members, Helene Weinstein and Charles Barron, have tested positive for Covid-19. The state reported 729 confirmed cases, an increase of 69. There have been three deaths.
(Bloomberg, 3/15/20)(The Independent, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 15, NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a decision to close city schools through at least April 20. Hours later the mayor also took aim at the city's nightlife, saying he would sign an order on March 16 limiting the city's 27,000 restaurants and bars to takeout and delivery only effective on the morning of March 17.
(AP, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 15, US sportswear giant Nike Inc said it is closing all of its stores in the United States and several other countries to limit the spread of the coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 15, Several African countries closed borders, canceled flights and imposed strict entry and quarantine requirements to contain the spread of the new coronavirus, which has a foothold in 26 nations on the continent as cases keep rising. Cases have now been reported in Algeria, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Rep., Congo Brazzaville, Congo DRC, Egypt, and Equatorial Guinea, eSwatini, Ethiopia, Gabon, Ghana, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Mauritania, Morocco, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Seychelles, South Africa, Sudan, Togo, Tunisia.
(Reuters, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 15, In Australia's New South Wales, the country’s most populous state, reported 22 new cases taking the totally tally to 134. Eight new cases of coronavirus were confirmed in the state of Victoria, bringing the total number of cases in that state to 57. Australia said it will impose 14-day self-isolation on international travelers arriving from midnight and ban cruise ships from foreign ports for 30 days.
(Bloomberg, 3/15/20)(Reuters, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 15, In Austria the number of confirmed coronavirus cases jumped to 800, from 602 a day earlier.
(AP, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 15, Belgium’s health ministry reported 197 new cases, bringing the total of confirmed infections to 886.
(Bloomberg, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 15, The British government announced England will join a growing list of countries offering HIV-prevention pill to all those at high risk of catching the virus. More than 100,000 people were estimated to be living with HIV in the UK in 2018.
(Reuters, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 15, Airlines called on the British government to help ensure their survival during the coronavirus crisis after the US extended restrictions on European travelers to include Britain.
(Reuters, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 15, PM Boyko Borissov said Bulgaria will raise the salaries of all medics involved in treating coronavirus patients by 1000 levs ($566) per month as it steps up measures to contain the fast-spreading infection. Confirmed cases had almost doubled to 43 with two deaths.
(Reuters, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 15, In Cameroon a passenger arriving from Brussels was whisked to a hospital and diagnosed inside four hours as the country's fourth case of coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/17/20)
2020 Mar 15, Cambodia said French national travelling from Paris via Singapore to Phnom Penh has been infected with the coronavirus, bringing the country's tally of cases to eight.
(Reuters, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 15, In the Central African Rep. a UN peacekeeper from Burundi was killed when troops were trying to stop an attack in Grimari in the center of the country that began when anti-Balaka fighters under the command of Dimitri Ayoloma opened fire on the homes of the mayor and a regional official.
(AP, 3/16/20)
2020 Mar 15, China reported 16 new confirmed cases of coronavirus bringing its total to 80,860. Beijing said it will quarantine all travelers from overseas, including Chinese citizens, at designated locations for 14 days as the government shifts its focus to limiting imported coronavirus cases.
(AP, 3/15/20)(Reuters, 3/16/20)
2020 Mar 15, Denmark's government told private companies struggling with drastic measures to curb the spread of coronavirus that it would cover 75% of employees' salaries, if they promised not to cut staff.
(Reuters, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 15, Ethiopia has now recorded four coronavirus cases.
(Reuters, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 15, Finland had a total of 240 coronavirus cases.
(Bloomberg, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 15, French voters went to the polls in the first round of elections to choose mayors and tens of thousands of local officials.
(SSFC, 3/15/20, p.A3)
2020 Mar 15, Georgia's government said it will temporarily shut its border with Russia for travelers from March 16 in a bid to stop the spread of the coronavirus. Georgia had 30 cases of coronavirus, the highest number in the South Caucasus region.
(Reuters, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 15, Germany's Health Ministry confirmed a report in newspaper Welt am Sonntag, which said President Donald Trump had offered funds to lure the company CureVac to the United States, and the German government was making counter-offers to tempt it to stay.
(Reuters, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 15, Guatemala logged its first fatality from the coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/16/20)
2020 Mar 15, In Guyana a team from the 15-nation Caribbean Community arrived to supervise a recount of the March 2 elections. Incumbent Pres. David Granger had agreed to the recount. A local court soon blocked the recount.
(SFC, 3/16/20, p.A2)(SFC, 3/19/20, p.A2)
2020 Mar 15, India reported that the number of coronavirus infections had risen to 107, an increase of 23 from the day before.
(Reuters, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 15, Indonesia reported 21 new coronavirus infections, bringing the total number of confirmed cases to 117.
(Reuters, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 15, Iran's Health Ministry added another 113 deaths and 1,209 new confirmed cases of the COVID-19 infection. It said the outbreak has claimed 724. Some 13,938 people have been infected across the country.
(AFP, 3/15/20)(Bloomberg, 3/15/20)(Reuters, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 15, Israel's Pres. Reuven Rivlin said he has decided to give opposition leader Benny Gants the first opportunity to form a new government. PM Benjamin Netanyahu proposed a six-month "emergency government" to confront the coronavirus crisis and end a political deadlock after the country's third inconclusive election in less than a year. Israel delayed PM Benjamin Netanyahu's corruption trial for two months due to the coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/15/20)(Reuters, 3/16/20)(SFC, 3/16/20, p.A4)
2020 Mar 15, Italy recorded 368 more deaths from the coronavirus. It had 24,747 cases and 1,809 deaths.
(Reuters, 3/16/20)
2020 Mar 15, In Japan the number of coronavirus infections rose to 1,484, increasing by a faster pace than the previous day. The total number of infections included 697 from the Diamond Princess cruise ship and 14 returnees on charter flights from China.
(Reuters, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 15, Jordan confirmed 12 new coronavirus cases.
(Reuters, 3/16/20)
2020 Mar 15, Kenya has now recorded three coronavirus cases.
(Reuters, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 15, Lebanon's Health Ministry said that it had recorded 99 cases of coronavirus. Pres. Michel Aoun called for citizens to work from home and avoid socializing to prevent the spread of the virus.
(Reuters, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 15, Libya’s coast guard intercepted over 400 Europe-bound migrants off the country’s Mediterranean coast and returned them to the capital of Tripoli over the past 24 hours.
(AP, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 15, Malaysia confirmed 190 new coronavirus cases, pushing its overall total to 428, the most in Southeast Asia.
(Bloomberg, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 15, Mexican officials said the number of monarch butterflies that reached their winter resting grounds decreased by about 53% this year. The population covered only 6.9 acres, down from 15 acres a year earlier.
(SFC, 3/16/20, p.A2)
2020 Mar 15, In the Netherlands the number of deaths rose by eight to 20, while confirmed cases increased by 176 to 1,135.
(AP, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 15, Niger's army reportedly killed at least 50 Boko Haram Islamist extremists during an overnight attack on the eastern Toumour military post.
(SFC, 3/18/20, p.A2)
2020 Mar 15, In Nigeria a pipeline explosion killed at least 15 people and destroyed about 50 buildings after a fire broke out in a suburb of Lagos.
(Reuters, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 15, Peru's Pres. Martin Vizcarra imposed a lockdown and quarantine as his country reported 71 cases of the coronavirus.
(Economist, 4/4/20, p.26)
2020 Mar 15, The Philippines recorded 4 additional coronavirus deaths and 29 new cases, bringing the domestic tally of infections to 140, as authorities placed the entire capital Manila under "community quarantine" for about a month.
(Reuters, 3/15/20)(Reuters, 3/16/20)
2020 Mar 15, Poland’s coronavirus cases rose to 111 cases with three deaths. The count was rising as the nation is now testing all those who are in quarantine.
(Bloomberg, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 15, Singapore confirmed 14 new cases of the novel coronavirus, marking the biggest daily increase of the infection in the city-state. Nine of the cases were imported. Singapore has confirmed a total 226 cases of the virus so far, with 105 having fully recovered.
(Reuters, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 15, Slovakia reported 54 coronavirus cases, an increase of 10.
(Bloomberg, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 15, South Africa reported its first local transmission of coronavirus, increasing the number of cases to 62. President Cyril Ramaphosa introduced social-distancing and declared a national state of disaster to combat the spread of the coronavirus as his counterparts in sub-Saharan Africa took similar steps to curb the threat in a region that accounts for only 1% of global health-care spending.
(BBC, 3/16/20)(AP, 3/16/20)(Econ, 4/18/20, p.33)
2020 Mar 15, South Korea reported 76 new coronavirus cases in 24 hours, an all-time low since Feb. 20, when the country saw a surge of over 500 in four days. The country’s total tally stands at 8,162 with a total of 75 deaths.
(Bloomberg, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 15, Spain’s diagnosed cases of the coronavirus jumped 35% to 7,753 and the death toll rose by 152 to 288. Ford Motors said it would shut its Spanish plant in the eastern region of Valencia for one week starting tomorrow after three employees tested positive for coronavirus.
(Bloomberg, 3/15/20)(Reuters, 3/15/20)(Reuters, 3/16/20)
2020 Mar 15, In Switzerland coronavirus infections jumped by nearly 1,000 cases in 24 hours to 2,200 and 14 deaths were recorded from the virus across the country.
(AFP, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 15, Syria's brutal conflict entered its 10th year with President Bashar al-Assad's regime consolidating its hold over a war-wracked country where foreign powers are flexing their muscle. In the northwest Turkish and Russian troops began joint patrols on the key M4 highway. Rebel provocations forced Russia and Turkey to cut short their first joint patrol.
(AFP, 3/15/20)(AP, 3/15/20)(Reuters, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 15, Thailand reported 32 new cases of the coronavirus in the largest daily jump in infections since the outbreak began, bringing its total tally to 114.
(Reuters, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 15, Turkey said thousands of Muslims returning to home from a pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia were being taken into quarantine due to concerns about the spread of the coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 15, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro wrote to the IMF asking for a $5bn loan to fight COVID-19.
(Econ, 3/21/20, p.30)
2020 Mar 15, Vietnam's health ministry said all passengers coming from or through China, South Korea, the UK and Schengen countries will be quarantined and tested for coronavirus. Vietnam reported 37 new coronavirus cases over the past week, taking the tally to 53.
(Reuters, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 16, The US Department of Commerce's Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) added 24 companies and individuals to the Entity List for posing a risk to US national security and foreign policy interests. They included nine entities in Pakistan that are associated with the country's missile technology program, six from Iran, five from the United Arab Emirates, two from China, and two from Russia.
(Benzinga, 3/16/20)
2020 Mar 16, US federal prosecutors said that they were moving to drop charges against two Russian companies accused of funding a social media campaign to influence US voters in the 2016 presidential election. The companies, Concord Management and Consulting and Concord Catering, were among three companies and 13 individuals then-Special Counsel Robert Mueller charged with conspiracy to spread disinformation on social media, one of the main indictments that came out of his team's two-year Russia investigation.
(AP, 3/17/20)
2020 Mar 16, US surgeon general Dr. Jerome Adams said that the number of coronavirus cases in the US has reached the level that Italy recorded two weeks ago, a sign that infections are expected to rise as the government steps up testing and financial markets continue to fall. The coronavirus has killed at least 67 people in the US with at least 3,774 confirmed cases.
(AP, 3/16/20)(Good Morning America, 3/16/20)
2020 Mar 16, The US Supreme Court announced that it is postponing arguments for late March and early April because of the coronavirus, including fights over subpoenas for President Donald Trump’s financial records.
(Reuters, 3/16/20)
2020 Mar 16, The US stock market took its sharpest dive since the Black Monday crash of 1987 as President Trump warned the coronavirus pandemic could drag the economy into a recession. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell by 12.9 percent. The S&P 500 lost 12 percent and is now nearly 30 percent below its record high, set less than a month ago.
(The Week, 3/17/20)
2020 Mar 16, San Francisco area leaders told seven million people in six counties to "shelter in place." Other localities ordered restaurants, bars, and other public gathering spots to shut their doors. The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in the US jumped past 4,600, with at least 85 deaths.
(The Week, 3/17/20)
2020 Mar 16, Maryland said it will shut down all bars, restaurants, theaters and gyms beginning at 5 p.m. Drive through, carryout and delivery food services will still be allowed.
(Good Morning America, 3/16/20)
2020 Mar 16, Many US states began announcing they'd be shutting movie theaters, bars, restaurants museums and all non-essential business. Michigan announced that all bars and restaurants must close to dine-in customers, due to the coronavirus.
(AP, 3/17/20)
2020 Mar 16, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) ordered the state's health department to keep all polling places closed to prevent the coronavirus from spreading among voters and poll workers in the March 17 primary elections.
(AP, 3/17/20)
2020 Mar 16, In Utah gas station owner Lev Dermen was found guilty by a jury on 10 counts that included money laundering and mail fraud. Dermen and polygamists Jacob and Isiah Kingston had filed false claims for over $1 billion in refundable renewable fuel tax credits. Jacob Kingston testified against Dermen at the trial. The Kingstons and two other family members accepted plea deals this year.
(https://tinyurl.com/cj3r3hm9)(SFC, 6/23/21, p.B3)
2020 Mar 16, In Washington state the first participant in a clinical trial for a vaccine to protect against the new coronavirus received an experimental dose. Washington state said it will shutter its entertainment venues and recreational facilities and limit restaurants to delivery and take-out. The ban will not apply to grocery stores and pharmacies.
(AP, 3/16/20)(Good Morning America, 3/16/20)
2020 Mar 16, Joe Biden was declared the winner of last week's Democratic presidential primary in Washington state, giving him victories in five out of six states that voted March 10.
(AP, 3/16/20)
2020 Mar 16, Amazon said it would try to hire 100,000 people across the US to help meet a surge in purchases by customers shopping more online to avoid going out as the coronavirus spreads.
(The Week, 3/17/20)
2020 Mar 16, NASA said Greenland and Antarctica are losing ice six times faster than they were in the 1990s.
(The Week, 3/17/20)
2020 Mar 16, Globally more than 174,000 coronavirus cases were reported with more than 6,700 deaths. Global stocks fell sharply after central bank moves to shore up economic growth failed to dispel investor's fears over virus controls that are shutting global business and travel.
(Good Morning America, 3/16/20)(AP, 3/16/20)
2020 Mar 16, In western Afghanistan dozens of patients held in isolation, including at least one confirmed to have the coronavirus, escaped from a quarantine facility after breaking windows and attacking hospital staff in Herat province. The 38 people who escaped had all recently returned from Iran. Afghanistan has so far confirmed 21 cases of the coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/16/20)
2020 Mar 16, Armenia's government announced a state of emergency for one month to slow the spread of the coronavirus. An April 5 referendum on constitutional reforms was postponed.
(Reuters, 3/16/20)
2020 Mar 16, Australia's capital and 2nd most populous state declared states of emergency after the national death toll from the coronavirus rose to five with nearly 300 cases in total.
(Reuters, 3/16/20)
2020 Mar 16, Austria's government said it will allocate 2 billion euros for loan guarantees on top of a 4-billion-euro aid fund to buffer the economy from the damage of coronavirus, as the number of confirmed cases in the country rose to 1,018.
(Reuters, 3/16/20)
2020 Mar 16, Benin, Liberia, Somalia and Tanzania became the latest African countries to report cases of coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/16/20)
2020 Mar 16, Bosnia's autonomous Bosniak-Croat Federation declared a state of disaster, which will enable it to introduce emergency measures to halt the spread of the coronavirus. Bosnia has reported 24 cases of the new virus so far, 20 of them in the country's other autonomous region, the Serb Republic.
(Reuters, 3/16/20)
2020 Mar 16, In Brazil local media reported that as many as 1,000 inmates had fled four jails ahead of a planned lockdown of the facilities over the coronavirus pandemic.
(Reuters, 3/17/20)
2020 Mar 16, Britain's PM Boris Johnson advised people to avoid all unnecessary contact due to coronavirus pandemic.
(Econ., 6/20/20, p.46)
2020 Mar 16, Britain's Fred Olsen Cruise Lines wrote in a statement that its cruise ship Braemar, that was turned away from several ports in the Caribbean after five passengers were confirmed to have the new coronavirus, has set sail to Cuba which is allowing it to dock.
(Reuters, 3/16/20)
2020 Mar 16, Germany's federal and state governments agreed sweeping rules shutting everything from non-essential shops to bars, clubs, theatres, museums, brothels and churches in order to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/16/20)
2020 Mar 16, In Greece a migrant juvenile died in a fire inside the Mora camp on the island of Lesbos.
(SFC, 3/17/20, p.A2)
2020 Mar 16, Iran's health ministry said the death toll from the new coronavirus has reached 853 with 129 new deaths in the past 24 hours. 1,053 new confirmed cases were reported. Iran closed four key Shiite pilgrimage sites to stop a coronavirus outbreak that has killed over 850 people out of nearly 15,000 cases recorded in the Islamic republic.
(Reuters, 3/16/20)(AFP, 3/16/20)
2020 Mar 16, In Iraq two rockets struck a training base south of Baghdad where US-led coalition troops and NATO trainers were present.
(AP, 3/17/20)
2020 Mar 16, Israel swore in its newly elected parliament under stringent restrictions because of the coronavirus outbreak. Pres. Reuvin Rivlin called for unity and compromise from the two leaders, saying the Israeli people “are in need of rest, we are in need of healing" after three parliamentary elections in under a year.
(AP, 3/16/20)
2020 Mar 16, Israel government authorized Shin Bet, the internal security service, and the police to use their technical knowledge to track and access the mobile phones of those who have been infected with the coronavirus.
(Econ, 3/28/20, p.16)
2020 Mar 16, In northern Italy the death toll from an outbreak of coronavirus in Lombardy rose by 202 over the past day to 1,420 from 1,218. Italy's total death toll reached 1,809, a 25 percent increase over the day before.
(Reuters, 3/16/20)(NY Times, 3/17/20)
2020 Mar 16, Japan's health ministry said it has identified 15 clusters of coronavirus infections around the country.
(Reuters, 3/16/20)
2020 Mar 16, In Japan Kyushu Electric Power Co., the opeator of a nuclear power plant in Kagoshima, was forced to shut a down one of its reactors because of failure to meet a deadline for adding anti-terror safety measures.
(SFC, 3/17/20, p.A2)
2020 Mar 16, Lebanon's Military Court of Appeals ordered the release of Amer Fakhoury because more than 10 years had passed since he allegedly tortured prisoners at a jail run by the so-called South Lebanon Army militia.
(AP, 3/17/20)
2020 Mar 16, Malaysia reported a daily jump of 125 cases to 553. 338 of Malaysia's cases have been linked to the religious gathering at a mosque in Kuala Lumpur between Feb. 28 and March 1. PM Muhyiddin Yassin said Malaysia it will shut its borders to travelers, restrict internal movement, close schools and universities and order most businesses to shut after its number of coronavirus cases climbed to the highest in Southeast Asia.
(Reuters, 3/16/20)
2020 Mar 16, The government of the Philippines imposed "Enhanced Community Quarantine (ECQ) across the island of Luzon, home to Manila and about half of the country's 107 million people.
(Econ., 7/11/20, p.30)
2020 Mar 16, In the Philippines the farm minister said an outbreak of avian flu has been detected in a quail farm in the northern Nueva Ecija province. Tests showed the presence of the highly infectious H5N6 subtype of the influenza A virus.
(Reuters, 3/16/20)
2020 Mar 16, Russia's Constitutional Court approved a law on constitutional amendments that could allow Vladimir Putin to remain in power for another 16 years.
(AP, 3/16/20)
2020 Mar 16, Senegalese President Macky Sall declared a national state of disaster and canceled the country’s most important religious festival due to take place later this month following a surge in cases to 26 from 10.
(Bloomberg, 3/16/20)
2020 Mar 16, Somalia's first coronavirus case was announced. Somalia ranked 194th of 195 countries in the Johns Hopkins Global Health Security Index for 2019 and scored zero in several areas, including emergency preparedness, emergency response, infection control practices and health care access.
(AP, 3/29/20)
2020 Mar 16, South Korea reported 74 new coronavirus cases bringing its total to 8,236.
(Reuters, 3/16/20)
2020 Mar 16, Switzerland's region of Geneva declared a "state of necessity" due to the coronavirus global pandemic, shutting bars and restaurants and limiting gatherings to just five people.
(AFP, 3/16/20)
2020 Mar 16, Venezuela's capital of Caracas woke to quiet streets and military checkpoints on the first day of a quarantine ordered by President Nicolas Maduro to combat the coronavirus. The country has confirmed 17 cases of the virus and no deaths.
(Reuters, 3/16/20)
2020 Mar 17, The Trump administration called for $1 trillion in spending, including $250 billion for direct payments to Americans, as the federal government prepares to fight the coronavirus pandemic and an almost certain recession.
(NY Times, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 17, The US Federal Reserve said it would reinstate a funding facility used during the 2008 financial crisis to get credit directly to businesses and households as fears over a liquidity crunch due to the coronavirus have grown in recent days.
(Reuters, 3/17/20)
2020 Mar 17, Former US vice president Joe Biden easily defeated Bernie Sanders in Arizona, Florida and Illinois state primaries.
(AP, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 17, Former California Republican Rep. Duncan Hunter was sentenced to 11 months in prison after pleading guilty to stealing campaign funds and spending the money on everything from outings with friends to his daughter's birthday party. On August 24 his wife was sentenced to eight months of home confinement after agreeing to testify against her husband.
(Miami Herald, 3/17/20)(SFC, 8/25/20, p.A4)
2020 Mar 17, San Francisco's Mayor London Breed announced plans to ban commercial evictions for small and medium-sized businesses impacted by the coronavirus. City officials said canabis businesses may remain open as non-essential businesses were told to shut down.
(SFC, 3/18/20, p.B5)
2020 Mar 17, In the SF Bay Area Xuehua "Edward" Peng (56) of Hayward was sentenced to four years in federal prison for smuggling purported national security information to China for more than two years.
(SFC, 3/18/20, p.B1)
2020 Mar 17, Jerry Slick (b.1939), drummer and founder of the San Francisco-based Great Society rock band, died in his Mill Valley, Ca., home. He founded the band with his wife Grace Slick in 1965. Grace Slick joined the Jefferson Airplane in 1966 and Jerry moved on as a cinematographer and filmmaker.
(SSFC, 3/29/20, p.B8)
2020 Mar 17, In Florida Colombian brothers Pedro Nel Rincon-Castillo (53) and Omar Rincon-Castillo (50) were sentenced to about 20 years and 17-1/2 years, respectively, on cocaine-trafficking charges by a federal judge in Fort Lauderdale.
(AP, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 17, In Michigan a Wayne County jury convicted Devon Kareem Robinson (19) of first-degree premeditated murder, assault with intent to murder and felony firearm in the May 2019 killings of Alunte Davis (21), Timothy Blancher (20) and Paris Cameron (20). Police believed the victims were targeted for their sexual orientation.
(AP, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 17, New York state closed all schools for two weeks. The state has 1,374 cases of coronavirus and 12 people have died. The US had 5,124 cases of coronavirus with 96 deaths.
(AP, 3/17/20)(https://ncov2019.live/)
2020 Mar 17, It was reported that a TSA officer at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport has tested positive for COVID-19. This marked the 8th TSA officer to test positive for COVID-19. The other cases were in California, Florida and Georgia.
(Good Morning America, 3/17/20)
2020 Mar 17, Ohio's primary, planned for today, was cancelled. Governor Mike DeWine postponed his state's primary until June 2 because of the growing coronavirus crisis.
(Reuters, 3/17/20)
2020 Mar 17, Texas confirmed its first death due to coronavirus.
(The Independent, 3/17/20)
2020 Mar 17, West Virginia reported its first confirmed coronavirus infection. There are now known coronavirus cases in all 50 US states.
(NY Times, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 17, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc said it had identified hundreds of antibodies that could treat or prevent the coronavirus and was preparing to begin clinical trials by early summer, sending the drugmaker's shares up nearly 12%.
(Reuters, 3/17/20)
2020 Mar 17, Brazil's government called for a state of emergency to loosen fiscal rules as it faced challenges from the coronavirus pandemic and oil price war. Brazil reported its first death due to the virus and closed its border to Venezuelans for an initial 15 days, citing strains on the public health system and what its president described as Venezuela's inability to respond.
(Reuters, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 17, Brazil's Sao Paulo state prison authority said more than 500 prisoners have been recaptured who fled four jails ahead of a planned lockdown of the facilities over the coronavirus pandemic. Local officials had cancelled temporary leaves because of fears that prisoners could bring the new coronavirus back with them.
(AP, 3/17/20)(SFC, 3/18/20, p.A2)
2020 Mar 17, Britain's health ministry said cases of coronavirus rose 26% to 1,950 from 1,543 the day before. The National Health Service (NHS) announced plans to cancel all routine surgery for three months and to send home as many patients as possible to free up staff and beds to deal with the spread of the coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/17/20)
2020 Mar 17, The BBC reported that Hashem Abedi, the brother of the bomber who blew himself up at the end of an Ariana Grande concert in the English city of Manchester in May 2017, has been found guilty of murdering the 22 victims.
(Reuters, 3/17/20)
2020 Mar 17, Bulgaria banned all foreign and domestic holiday trips until April 13 as part of efforts to contain the spread of the coronavirus. The Balkan country had 81 confirmed cases of the new virus and two deaths.
(Reuters, 3/17/20)
2020 Mar 17, In Bulgaria investigative journalist Slavi Angelov, editor-in-chief of the weekly 168 Hours, was attacked by unknown assailants and hospitalized in Sofia with serious injuries.
(SFC, 3/19/20, p.A2)(https://tinyurl.com/rrjhy5u)
2020 Mar 17, Canadian PM Justin Trudeau said his government would provide financial support to people during the coronavirus outbreak as he urged them to stay at home to slow the spread of COVI0D-19.
(Reuters, 3/17/20)
2020 Mar 17, It was reported that Chad is repaying Angola a debt of $100m (£82m) with cattle. More than 1,000 cows have arrived by ship in Luanda as the first payment.
(BBC, 3/17/20)
2020 Mar 17, The Chinese Foreign Ministry said that it was revoking the press credentials for American journalists from three newspapers, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post, requiring them to return their media passes within 10 days and essentially expelling them from the country. All three US media outlets have reported politically sensitive stories in China, a long-term taboo with the Chinese Communist Party.
(AP, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 17, Chinese doctors reported that Avigan (favipiravir), a drug used against influenza in Japan, led to clinical improvements in coronavirus patients.
(Econ, 3/21/20, p.18)
2020 Mar 17, Croatia's government proposed to postpone tax payments for at least three months and make loans available to struggling business in response to the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic. Croatia has so far reported 65 cases of coronavirus. Four people have recovered and no one has yet died from COVID-19.
(Reuters, 3/17/20)
2020 Mar 17, Egypt, which has 166 confirmed cases of the new virus including four fatalities, announced the lockdown of the Red Sea province that includes the popular resort town of Hurghada. Egypt lowered the price of natural gas for industrial use to $4.5 per mmbtu and cut a tax on dividends for companies listed on its stock exchange to 5% in an attempt to soften the impact of the spread of the coronavirus on the economy.
(AP, 3/17/20)(Reuters, 3/17/20)
2020 Mar 17, European Union leaders agreed to restrict most travel into the continent in an unprecedented move aimed at slowing down the spread of a deadly coronavirus and mitigating its effects on the bloc. Europe logged 10,560 new COVID-19 infections, with 3,590 of the cases diagnosed in Italy.
(Bloomberg, 3/17/20)(Business Insider, 3/17/20)
2020 Mar 17, French President Emmanuel Macron declared "war" on Covid-19 with a raft of measures to keep citizens in lock-down mode, including a ban on non-essential travel, just a few days after ordering business closures and shutting schools.
(Bloomberg, 3/17/20)
2020 Mar 17, Indian authorities expanded the population eligible for testing to health care workers with symptoms who are treating patients with severe respiratory illnesses. Authorities have confirmed 126 cases linked to foreign travel or direct contact with someone who caught the disease abroad. Indian authorities said that they would not widely expand testing for the virus, despite mounting criticism from some experts that the limited tests could mask the true toll of the disease in the world's second most populous country.
(AP, 3/17/20)
2020 Mar 17, Iran issued its most dire warning yet about the outbreak of the new coronavirus ravaging the country, suggesting “millions" could die in the Islamic Republic if the public keeps traveling and ignoring health guidance. Health Ministry spokesman Kianoush Jahanpour said the virus had killed 135 more people to raise the total to 988 amid over 16,000 cases. In efforts to curb the spread of the virus, Iran has released 85,000 prisoners on temporary leave.
(AP, 3/17/20)
2020 Mar 17, Iran temporarily released Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe (41), a British-Iranian woman serving a five-year prison term in Tehran for sedition, from jail for two weeks. Nazanin had warned last month that was in danger of contracting the new coronavirus inside Evin Prison.
(AFP, 3/17/20)
2020 Mar 17, Iraq's President Barham Saleh named Adnan al-Zurfi, a former governor of the city of Najaf, as prime minister-designate, following weeks of political infighting.
(AP, 3/17/20)
2020 Mar 17, Peace Now, an Israeli monitoring group that opposes West Bank settlements, said that Israel's average annual construction rate has risen 25% since President Donald Trump took office in 2017.
(AP, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 17, Official data in Italy showed that 31,506 people have been confirmed as positive for the coronavirus. The official death toll passed 2,500.
(AP, 3/18/20)(Reuters, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 17, A Lebanese military judge appealed a verdict by the military tribunal that ordered the release of Amer Fakhoury, a Lebanese-American held since September on charges of working for an Israeli-backed militia two decades ago. Lebanon released Amer Fakhoury (57) on March 19.
(AP, 3/17/20)(AP, 3/19/20)
2020 Mar 17, The Lithuanian parliament voted to the raise borrowing limit by 4.5 billion euros, and to allow the government to borrow over the limit to fight effects of the coronavirus. Lithuania had 22 cases of coronavirus with no deaths.
(Reuters, 3/17/20)(https://ncov2019.live/)
2020 Mar 17, A Moroccan court handed a four-month suspended sentence and a 500 dirham fine to Moroccan journalist and rights activist Omar Radi (33) on charges of insulting a judge on Twitter, in a case that outraged advocates of free speech in the country.
(Reuters, 3/17/20)
2020 Mar 17, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un acknowledged that his country lacks modern medical facilities and called for urgent improvements.
(AP, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 17, Pakistani PM Imran Khan declared that there would be no national lockdown to block the spread of the coronavirus.
(Econ, 3/28/20, p.36)
2020 Mar 17, In Peru miners halted operations and girded for extended supply chain disruptions in neighboring Chile as governments tightened curbs due to coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 17, Qatari authorities announced the closure of several square km of the industrial area in the capital Doha, which also contains labor camps and other housing units, due to the coronavirus. Qatar relies on about 2 million migrant workers for the bulk of its labor force.
(Reuters, 3/19/20)
2020 Mar 17, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a vote on changes to the constitution which could allow him to extend his rule to be held next month as planned, but warned it could be delayed if the coronavirus situation worsens.
(AP, 3/17/20)
2020 Mar 17, Senegal has recorded 27 cases of coronavirus. Medical staff said they had received limited protective equipment beyond extra gloves and masks.
(Reuters, 3/17/20)
2020 Mar 17, In South Africa Lt Col Leroy Brewer, a top rhino poaching investigator, was driving to work when he was shot dead by gunmen with high-caliber weapons. He died on the spot.
(AP, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 17, South Africa's national ports operator Transnet said it is holding the cruise liner, MV AidAmira, and a cargo vessel off Cape Town's port limits after a crew member onboard one of the vessels showed signs of coronavirus. The MV Aidamira, with 1,240 passengers and 486 crew on board, had returned to Cape Town from Namibia’s Walvis Bay.
(Reuters, 3/17/20)(BBC, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 17, Spanish PM Pedro Sanchez announced a package of measures worth a total 200 billion euros ($219 billion), between loans, credit guarantees, benefits and direct aid, to mitigate the impact of the coronavirus epidemic on the economy.
(Reuters, 3/17/20)
2020 Mar 17, It was reported that Spain's King Felipe VI has renounced any future personal inheritance he could receive from his father, King Emirat Jaun Carlos I, over the alleged financial irregularities involving the former monarch. Felipe (52) was also strippimng Juan Carlos of his annual stipend.
(SFC, 3/17/20, p.A2)
2020 Mar 17, In southern Thailand bombers attacked a major government office as hundreds of local officials and Muslim clerics met to discuss fighting COVID-19. At least 20 people were reported hurt.
(SFC, 3/18/20, p.A2)
2020 Mar 17, Ukrainian shops, restaurants and transport shut down as the country tightened restrictions to contain the spread of the coronavirus. Police arrested five people suspected of trying to rob 100,000 surgical masks at gunpoint in Kiev.
(AP, 3/17/20)
2020 Mar 17, The United Nations and nine countries called on Libya's warring parties to cease hostilities to allow health authorities to fight against the new coronavirus.
(AFP, 3/17/20)
2020 Mar 17, The UN refugee agency and the International Organization for Migration announced a temporary pause in refugee resettlement to slow the spread of the new coronavirus. That led the US to pause its admissions until at least April 6.
(The Week, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 17, Yemeni officials said heavy fighting between pro-government forces and Shiite rebels killed more than three dozen people in the previous 24 hours. Houthi officials said the Saudi-led coalition had carried out at least 15 airstrikes against their fighters.
(AP, 3/17/20)
2020 Mar 18, US Pres. Donald Trump announced that Canada and the US have agreed to temporarily close their shared border to nonessential travel in the wakre of the coronavirus pandemic.
(SFC, 3/19/20, p.A6)
2020 Mar 18, The Trump administration asked Congress for $500 billion for direct payments to taxpayers and $500 billion in loans for businesses, as the federal government ramped up its efforts to address the fallout from the coronavirus epidemic. Pres. Donald Trump tapped his authority under the 70-year-old Defense Production Act to give the government more power to steer production by private companies and try to overcome shortages in masks, ventilators and other supplies. Trump described himself as a “wartime president" fighting an invisible enemy.
(NY Times, 3/19/20)(AP, 3/19/20)
2020 Mar 18, Wall Street resumed a steep slide while bond markets rushed to price in the sheer scale of government support programs and handouts announced over the past 24 hours, all aimed at softening the economic shock of coronavirus. Stocks tumbled more than 5%. The DJIA erased virtually all its gains since Pres. Trump's 2017 inauguration.
(Reuters, 3/18/20)(SFC, 3/19/20, p.C1)
2020 Mar 18, The US federal government gave taxpayers an extra 90 days to pay their federal taxes and announced that it won't pursue foreclosures of evictions on government guaranteed mortgages for at least 60 days.
(SFC, 3/19/20, p.C1)
2020 Mar 18, The US now has more than 5,800 confirmed cases of coronavirus with at least 115 deaths. The virus has now infected over 205,000 and killed over 8,700 in 164 nations.
{USA, COVID-19}
(Good Morning America)(Reuters, 3/18/20)(Bloomberg, 3/19/20)
2020 Mar 18, In Alaska Thomas Waerner of Norway arrived first at the finish line in Nome to win the Iditirod Trail Sled Dog Race.
(SSFC, 3/22/20, p.A5)
2020 Mar 18, California's Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an executive order sending $100 million to local governments for shelter support and emergency housing to help slow the spread of coronavirus among the homeless population. Another $50 million will be used to buy trailers and lease hotel and motel rooms to quarantine homeless people showing symptoms of COVID-19.
(SFC, 3/19/20, p.A5)
2020 Mar 18, Hawaii officials said two cruise ships won't be allowed to disembark in Honolulu after being turned away by other ports, even with no positive cases of coronavirus on either vessel.
(AP, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 18, Nevada shut down all non-essential businesses, including the Las Vegas casinos at the heart of the state's economy, due to the coronavirus pandemic.
(AP, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 18, South Carolina's Supreme Court overturned the attempted murder conviction of Michael Juan Smith, a Bloods gang member who in 2013 shot and critically injured first-year University of South Carolina student Martha Childress. Smith, sentenced to 40 years in state prison, will now get a new trial.
(Charlotte Observer, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 18, In South Texas an immigrant (27) from Honduras was found dead at a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement fsamily detention center. This was the ninth death to occur in ICE custody since last October.
(SFC, 3/19/20, p.A4)
2020 Mar 18, In Texas Apollo 15 astronaut Al Worden (88), who circled the moon alone in 1971 while his two crewmates test-drove the first lunar rover, died at a rehab center in Houston.
(AP, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 18, A 5.7-magnitude earthquake shook Salt Lake City and its suburbs early today, sending spooked residents fleeing their homes, knocking out power for tens of thousands and closing the city's airport.
(AP, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 18, It was announced that Pixar animation pioneers Pat Hanrahan and Ed Catmulls are this year's winners of the $1 million Turing Award.
(SFC, 3/19/20, p.C1)
2020 Mar 18, Honda Motor Co said it is temporarily halting production in North America for six days because of the anticipated decline in auto sales due to the coronavirus outbreak and will reduce production by about 40,000 vehicles.
(Reuters, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 18, JPMorgan Chase & Co said that it has committed $50 million to funds and community groups that are providing food, support and medical supplies for people hurt by the coronavirus in the United States, Europe and Asia.
(Reuters, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 18, A new report said a tiny fossil skull nicknamed "Wonderchicken" may be the oldest known fossil from this group. A skull of partridge-sized bird, named Asteriornis maastrichtensis, was found in Belgium and said to be some 66.7 to 66.8 million years old. It lived just before the asteroid impact that's blamed for killing off many species, most notably the giant dinosaurs.
(AP, 3/18/20)(Reuters, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 18, Bangladesh reported its first coronavirus death.
(Reuters, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 18, Belgium imposed a lockdown from midday until April 5 due to the coronavirus pandemic.
(Reuters, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 18, Burkina Faso reported its second death from COVID-19.
(AP, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 18, Chile's president declared a 90-day state of catastrophe due to the coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 18, Djibouti confirmed its first coronavirus case.
(Reuters, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 18, Catherine Hamlin (b.1924), Australian obstetrician and gynaecologist, died in Ethiopia. She and her husband, Reginald Hamlin, co-founded the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital. The Hamlins, together with the hospital staff, have treated more than 60,000 women to date for obstetric fistula.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_Hamlin)(Econ, 4/11/20, p.70)
2020 Mar 18, The EU banned nonessential travel from the rest of the world into 26 member nations for 30 days due to the coronavirus pandemic.
(NY Times, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 18, In France several hundred Amazon workers protested at one of its sites, calling on the online retailer to cease operations or make it easier for employees loath to work during the coronavirus outbreak to stay away.
(Reuters, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 18, Gambia announced its first coronavirus case.
(AP, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 18, Mitterteich, Bavaria, became the first German town to impose a curfew to slow the spread of the coronavirus. The curfew will last until April 2. Citizens there were still allowed to buy groceries, go to work and visit the doctor.
(Reuters, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 18, Clashes broke out on the Greek border with Turkey before dawn, after about 500 migrants attempted to break down a border fence and enter Greece.
(AP, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 18, Hungarian PM Viktor Orban announced a blanket moratorium on loan repayments for all companies and private borrowers until the end of the year to limit the economic fallout from the spread of the coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 18, Indonesia's death toll jumped from five to 19. Thousands of Muslim pilgrims from across Asia gathered at Gowa, just two weeks after a similar event in Malaysia caused more than 500 infections.
(Reuters, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 18, Iran's government said another 147 people have died from the coronavirus raising the total to 1,135 people out of 17,361 cases since it first emerged in the Islamic republic a month ago. President Hassan Rouhani defended the response of his administration, which has yet to impose a lockdown. Food markets were still packed with shoppers and highways were crowded with traffic as families traveled between cities ahead of the March 20 Persian New Year.
(AP, 3/18/20)(AFP, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 18, Italy reported nearly 500 new deaths from the novel coronavirus, the highest one-day official toll of any nation. Italy added 4,207 new cases.
(AFP, 3/18/20)(Econ, 3/21/20, p.9)
2020 Mar 18, In Libya five women were killed late today and five others were wounded, including a child, when their houses were shelled near Tripoli.
(AP, 3/19/20)
2020 Mar 18, Malaysia warned of "a tsunami" of cases if people did not follow new restrictions as infections surged across Southeast Asia.
(Reuters, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 18, Mexico reported its first death from the coronavirus.
(AP, 3/20/20)
2020 Mar 18, Moldova reported its first death due to the coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 18, Morocco asked citizens not to leave their homes except to buy essential goods, seek medical treatment or go to work, as a precautionary measure.
(AP, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 18, In the Netherlands organizers of the Eurovision song contest said it will not take place this year due to the global coronavirus outbreak. The Netherlands was to host the 2020 contest after Dutch singer-songwriter Duncan Laurence won in 2019 with a song called "Arcade".
(AP, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 18, New Zealand lawmakers passed a landmark bill that treats abortion as a health issue rather than a crime.
(SFC, 3/19/20, p.A3)
2020 Mar 18, Pakistani security forces raided a militant hideout in North Waziristan, triggering a shootout that killed four soldiers and seven militants.
(SFC, 3/19/20, p.A2)
2020 Mar 18, Russia's Kremlin Guard said it has closed Bolshevik revolutionary Vladimir Lenin's tomb on Moscow's Red Square to the public amid coronavirus fears. Russia has reported 147 cases of the virus so far and no deaths.
(Reuters, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 18, Saudi Arabia suspended work in most of the private sector for 15 days and directed businesses to implement work-from-home policies due to the coronavirus pandemic.
(Reuters, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 18, In South Africa the number of people that tested positive for coronavirus rose to 116 from 85 the day before. 14 of those hadn’t traveled outside the country. South Africa stepped up travel bans as the virus continued to spread at a rapid pace.
(Bloomberg, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 18, Switzerland extended border controls and suspended the issue of Schengen and national visas for three months due to coronavirus pandemic.
(AP, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 18, Taiwan said it would ban entry for most foreigners as its coronavirus tally rose by 23 to 100, most of them imported.
(AP, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 18, Turkey reported its first death due to the coronavirus. President Tayyip Erdogan advised his people not to leave home unless necessary for three weeks and to minimize social contact until the threat of coronavirus recedes, but did not instruct people to stay away from work.
(Reuters, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 18, The UAE stopped Friday sermons to help stop the spread of the coronavirus.
(Econ, 3/21/20, p.43)
2020 Mar 18, A Vietnam court jailed Sung A Sinh and Lau A Lenh, from the Hmong ethnic minority, for life after finding them guilty of attempting to overthrow the state and set up a state of their own in northern Dien Bien province in 2018-2019. Twelve other people were also sentenced in the case to terms of up to 20 years.
(Reuters, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 18, Wales closed its schools due to the coronavirus pandemic. Scotland and Wales soon followed.
(Econ, 3/21/20, p.17)
2020 Mar 18, Zambia confirmed its first coronavirus case.
(Reuters, 3/18/20)
2020 Mar 19, The US Federal Reserve opened the taps for central banks in nine new countries to access dollars in hopes of preventing the coronavirus epidemic from causing a global economic rout. There were now 9,415 diagnosed cases in the US with at least 153 people deaths, according to an ABC News' count.
(AP, 3/19/20)(Good Morning America, 3/19/20)
2020 Mar 19, The US slapped sanctions on five companies based in the United Arab Emirates for allegedly shipping oil from Iran in defiance of Pres. Donald Trump's unilateral sanctions.
(AP, 3/19/20)
2020 Mar 19, The US Pentagon tested an unarmed hypersonic weapon in Hawaii, as both China and Russia develop similar military and defense capabilities. The Department of Defense called the test of the hypersonic glide body a success.
(Reuters, 3/20/20)
2020 Mar 19, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden won the support of Representative Tulsi Gabbard, who ended her presidential campaign.
(NY Times, 3/20/20)
2020 Mar 19, California's Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered his state’s 40 million residents to stay at home as much as possible in coming weeks, citing a model that suggests more than half of the state’s population could become infected with the coronavirus in the next two months.
(NY Times, 3/20/20)
2020 Mar 19, US authorities seized a large haul of drugs, including methamphetamine, opioids and cocaine, being smuggled from Mexico to California from a cross-border tunnel equipped with ventilation, lighting and an underground rail system. The 2,000-foot tunnel connected warehouses in Tijuana and San Diego.
(AP, 4/1/20)(SFC, 4/1/20, p.A4)
2020 Mar 19, Anthony Levandowski, a former Google and Uber engineer, pleaded guilty to stealing trade secrets from Google. Levandowski had left Google to form Otto a self-driging truck startup and then sold Otto to Uber for $600 million.
(SFC, 3/21/20, p.C1)
2020 Mar 19, In Minnesota Pakistani Dr. Muhammad Masood (28), a former Mayo Clinic research coordinator, was arrested at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport on a terrorism charge, after prosecutors say he told paid FBI informants that he had pledged his allegiance to the Islamic State group and wanted to carry out lone wolf attacks in the US.
(AP, 3/20/20)
2020 Mar 19, In Texas cars lined up for more than a mile outside a Houston hospital as the nation's fourth-largest city began drive-thru testing for the coronavirus, but officials warned they don't have enough kits or protective gear to meet demand.
(AP, 3/19/20)
2020 Mar 19, General Electric's healthcare unit said it will hire more people and increase the number of shifts as it races to produce ventilators round-the-clock to meet the surge in demand caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
(Reuters, 3/19/20)
2020 Mar 19, In Afghanistan at least 27 security personnel were killed when a military base was stormed in the southern province of Zabul.
(Reuters, 3/20/20)
2020 Mar 19, African finance ministers held a virtual conference to discuss how to deal with the social and economic impacts of the pandemic on African nations. Days later a statement by the UN Economic Commission for Africa said they called for a $100 billion stimulus package, including a suspension of debt service payments, to help the continent combat coronavirus.
(AP, 3/23/20)
2020 Mar 19 More African countries closed their borders as the coronavirus’ local spread threatened to turn the continent of 1.3 billion people into an alarming new front for the pandemic. Senegal closed its airspace. Angola and Cameroon shut air, land and sea borders. Rwanda blocked all commercial flights for a month. The island nation of Mauritius closed its border after announcing its first case.
(AP, 3/19/20)
2020 Mar 19, In Australia about 2,700 passengers disembarked in Sidney from the cruise ship Ruby Princess. More than 600 cases of the coronavirus and 15 deaths were later linked to the ship. About 200 crew members later showed symptoms of the virus.
(SFC, 4/10/20, p.A4)
2020 Mar 19, Hundreds of Bahraini pilgrims were reported stranded in Iran, the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak in the Middle East. Bahrain struggled to evacuate its citizens from the country with which it has no diplomatic ties.
(AP, 3/19/20)
2020 Mar 19, It was reported that banks in Bosnia's autonomous Bosniak-Croat Federation have agreed to grant a delay of at least three months on loan repayments for businesses and individuals hit by the coronavirus health crisis.
(Reuters, 3/19/20)
2020 Mar 19, Brazil's confirmed cases of coronavirus surged past 600.
(AP, 3/20/20)
2020 Mar 19, Chad confirmed its first coronavirus case.
(Reuters, 3/20/20)
2020 Mar 19, Wuhan, China, the former epicenter that initially suffered thousands of coronavirus cases a day, and its surrounding province had no new cases to report.
(AP, 3/19/20)
2020 Mar 19, Beijing authorities announced that the number of Chinese cellphone users dropped by 21 million in the past three months.
(https://tinyurl.com/yxyge2m6)
2020 Mar 19, In Egypt Laila Soueif, the mother of prominent activist Alaa Abdel Fattah (38), was released from detention after her arrest the previous day for staging a protest demanding that prisoners be released amid the coronavirus pandemic.
(AP, 3/20/20)
2020 Mar 19, EU analysis said Russian state media and news outlets supporting President Vladimir Putin are waging a fake news campaign aimed at undermining public confidence in the ability of European health care systems to cope with the coronavirus.
(AP, 3/19/20)
2020 May 19, French forces in Mali captured Islamic State group commander, Mohamed Mrabat. The veteran jihadist had a senior role in the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS) group.
(BBC, 6/6/20)
2020 Mar 19, Authorities in Germany conducted raids in 10 states at premises linked to a group accused of pursuing a mix of anti-government and racist ideology. around 400 police officers had seized firearms, propaganda material and small amounts of drugs during the raids on the homes of 21 leading members of the United German Peoples and Tribes group.
(AP, 3/19/20)
2020 Mar 19, Germany said it has lifted export bans on medical equipment which were issued earlier this month to avoid shortages of masks, goggles and gloves in the face of the coronavirus pandemic.
(Reuters, 3/19/20)
2020 Mar 19, The Greek government ordered hotels across the country toclose from March 23 until April 30th to help stem the spread of the coronavirus.
(Econ, 4/11/20, p.42)
2020 Mar 19, Greek police arrested 11 people and seized grenade launchers and other weapons in raids against suspected members of the Revolutionary people's Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C), a far-left Turkish armed group.
(SFC, 3/21/20, p.A2)
2020 Mar 19, Haiti declared a state of emergency, closing its borders and imposing a curfew, after the country's first two cases of coronavirus were detected.
(Reuters, 3/20/20)
2020 Mar 19, Indian PM Narendra Modi appealed to citizens to observe a self-curfew on March 22 as part of a trial-run to test social isolation to curb the spread of the coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/19/20)
2020 Mar 19, Indonesia reported six more deaths due to coronavirus for a total of 25, the most in Southeast Asia, and its biggest daily jump of 82 cases to 309. The government halted a mass congregation of nearly 9,000 Muslim pilgrims and began quarantining them and checking their health to prevent the further spread of the coronavirus amid a spike in cases. The four-day gathering at a boarding school in a rural area in south Sulawesi province was organized by a Muslim missionary movement, Jamaat Tabligh, and was not approved by authorities.
(AP, 3/19/20)
2020 Mar 19, Iranian authorities announced 149 new deaths from the novel coronavirus, raising the toll to 1,284 in a country that is one of the worst hit by the pandemic. A total of 18,407 people have contracted the disease in Iran, with 1,046 new cases confirmed in the last 24 hours.
(AP, 3/19/20)
2020 Mar 19, It was reported that Iran has granted a medical furlough to Michael White, a US Navy veteran who has been imprisoned for more than a year.
(AP, 3/19/20)
2020 Mar 19, Israel's attorney general approved for the first time the use of a generic version of a patent-protected drug to treat coronavirus patients. The anti-viral drug Kaletra, produced by AbbVie Inc, is a treatment for HIV but Israel's Health Ministry found it could be a possible treatment for COVID-19 and a preliminary permit for the drug was issued.
(Reuters, 3/19/20)
2020 Mar 19, Italy's country-wide death toll stood at 3,405, the highest in the world.
(Reuters, 3/20/20)
2020 Mar 19, Mexico confirmed 164 cases of coronavirus, up from just over 40 a week ago. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and his government have said a shutdown of the country would disproportionately hurt poor people and also be a psychological weight on all Mexicans.
(AP, 3/20/20)
2020 Mar 19, It was reported that Prince Albert of Monaco has tested positive for coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/19/20)
2020 Mar 19, Moroccan authorities said local police have arrested at least a dozen people for spreading rumors about the coronavirus, including a woman who used her YouTube channel to say the disease did not exist.
(Reuters, 3/19/20)
2020 Mar 19, Dutch health authorities said the number of local confirmed cases of coronavirus has risen by 409 to a total of 2,460, with 18 new deaths raising the total death toll to 76.
(Reuters, 3/19/20)
2020 Mar 19, Niger confirmed its first coronavirus case.
(Reuters, 3/20/20)
2020 Mar 19, Palestinians defied their government's call to cease work in Israeli settlements over coronavirus concerns, saying bringing money home to their families came first. 529 cases of infection have been confirmed in Israel, and nearly 50 in the occupied West Bank.
(Reuters, 3/19/20)
2020 Mar 19, It was reported that Poland has suspended work at a coronavirus testing laboratory in Warsaw after one of its employees tested positive for the virus, effectively sending 17 staff into quarantine. Poland has confirmed 325 coronavirus cases and five deaths to date.
(Reuters, 3/19/20)
2020 Mar 19, Qatar has recorded 452 cases of the coronavirus, the highest number among the six Gulf Arab states that have reported a total of more than 1,200.
(AP, 3/19/20)
2020 Mar 19, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping discussed the coronavirus by phone and agreed to deepen cooperation on developing pharmaceuticals. Russia announced its first coronavirus death. It has reported 147 confirmed coronavirus cases, but many Russians believe the real total is far higher.
(Reuters, 3/19/20)(NY Times, 3/19/20)
2020 Mar 19, Top Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny urged Russians to boycott a vote on constitutional changes backed by President Vladimir Putin, slamming plans to hold it during the pandemic.
(AFP, 3/19/20)
2020 Mar 19, Russia has reported just 199 coronavirus cases and some doctors have questioned how far the official data reflects reality. A reported sharp increase in pneumonia cases in Moscow and contradictory information around the issue fueled fears about the accuracy of official coronavirus data which remains much lower than many European countries.
(Reuters, 3/19/20)
2020 Mar 19, In Russia riot police stormed a protesters' makeshift command post near a radioactive waste. More than 60 people were detained. Activists in Moscow vowed to persist with their campaign against plans to bulldoze a highway through the waste site.
(SFC, 3/21/20, p.A2)
2020 Mar 19, Saudi Arabia said the government will cut spending by 5%, or about $13.3 billion, to offset the impact of plunging oil prices and the effects of the new coronavirus on its economic outlook and deficit. The kingdom has reported a total of 238 coronavirus cases identified so far.
(AP, 3/19/20)
2020 Mar 19, South African authorities announced they would erect a fence along its border with Zimbabwe to prevent illegal immigrants from entering and spreading the coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/19/20)
2020 Mar 19, Spanish authorities promised to take special measures to prevent more deaths from the coronavirus epidemic in nursing homes after cases of mass contagion swelled the death toll to 767, 209 more than the previous day. Total cases were up by a quarter to 17,149.
(Reuters, 3/19/20)
2020 Mar 19, In Syria two Turkish soldiers were killed Thursday in a rocket attack in northwestern Idlib province.
(AP, 3/19/20)
2020 Mar 19, It was reported that Venezuelan utilities have hiked fees and the government plans to raise taxes, as the economy deteriorates further due to the spread of coronavirus and the crash in global oil prices adds to the strain on public coffers. Venezuela has reported 36 coronavirus cases so far.
(Reuters, 3/19/20)
2020 Mar 20, US Pres. Donald Trump announced an effective closure of the US border with Mexico, prohibiting most travel except for trade in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.
(SFC, 3/21/20, p.A4)
2020 Mar 20, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said the US government is moving its tax filing day from April 15 to July 15, amid the coronavirus crisis afflicting the country.
(Reuters, 3/20/20)
2020 Mar 20, In the US 132 state and national groups backing open-government policies released a joint statement urging officials at all levels of government to “not retrench" from their duties for public involvement because of the coronavirus.
(AP, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 20, The COVID-19 respiratory illness caused by the virus has killed at least 200 people in the United States and infected nearly 13,900. The death toll from the global pandemic surpassed 10,000 people worldwide with more than 245,000 people infected.
(Reuters, 3/20/20)(AP, 3/20/20)
2020 Mar 20, The US military disclosed that some 2,600 US military personnel, including civilians, are currently in self-isolation in Europe after being identified as people of concern during the coronavirus outbreak.
(Reuters, 3/20/20)
2020 Mar 20, The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said it had temporarily closed the air traffic control tower at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York and shuttered part of the Indianapolis Air Route Traffic Control Center for cleaning after workers tested positive for the coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/20/20)
2020 Mar 20, A US federal judge approved the extradition of Adem Kostjerevac, a St. Louis County man, to Bosnia, where he faces a war crime charge. The government of Bosnia-Herzegovina has accused Kostjerevac of raping a pregnant Serbian prisoner in 1992. The final decision on extradition is up to the US Secretary of State.
(AP, 3/23/20)
2020 Mar 20, It was reported that Senator Richard Burr, Republican of North Carolina and chairman of the Intelligence Committee, sold hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of stock before the markets plunged. Three other senators — Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California; James Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma; and Kelly Loeffler, Republican of Georgia — also sold major holdings, according to disclosure records.
(NY Times, 3/20/20)
2020 Mar 20, Mike Bloomberg's campaign announced that Bloomberg will transfer $18 million to the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and several of the field offices from his 2020 presidential bid to state parties.
(Reuters, 3/20/20)
2020 Mar 20, In Arizona Melissa Valenzuela (34) was reported missing by her family. She was last seen three days prior. Her body was found on March 23, and the death was ruled a homicide. On April 24 Nadine Chavez, Mercedes Gomez, Christina Gomez and Melissa Servin were arrested in Mesa in connection to the disappearance and death of Valenzuela.
(NBC News, 4/30/20)
2020 Mar 20, Investigations by the American Guild of Musical Artists and Los Angeles Opera found sexual harassment charges against famed tenor Placido Domingo (79) to be credible. The union said Domingo has resigned and will pay $500,000 to sexual harassment eradication programs and a fund that helps opera employees in cirsis.
(SFC, 3/21/20, p.A4)
2020 Mar 20, American country singer Kenny Rogers (81) died in Sandy Springs, Georgia. During his six-decade, genre-hopping career, Rogers released 65 albums and sold more than 165 million records.
(Reuters, 3/21/20)(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenny_Rogers)
2020 Mar 20, In Florida the remains of Gannon Stauch (11), a Colorado boy missing since Jan. 27, were found nearly 1,400 miles away from his home, confirming his family's worst fears. The discovery led Colorado's El Paso County District Attorney's Office to file nine additional charges against his stepmother, Letecia Stauch, who was arrested for Gannon's murder on March 2 in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.
(ABC News, 3/20/20)
2020 Mar 20, In Indiana the bodies of Felina Lewis (35) and her two daughters were recovered after two vehicles were swept off a roadway overnight and into a creek following torrential rainfall. The body of a 3rd sibling was recovered the next day. Six people were presumed to have drowned in the tragedy.
(SSFC, 3/22/20, p.A5)(https://tinyurl.com/uorcnse)
2020 Mar 20, In Iowa Jacqueline Rambert (26) of Chicago was sentenced to up to 50 years in prison on charges stemming from the beating death of her son (5). She had testified against her former boyfriend, Tre Henderson, who was convicted on Feb. 13 of first-degree murder and other crimes.
(SFC, 3/25/20, p.A4)
2020 Mar 20, NYC reported 5,151 infections as of this morning out of 17,041 nationwide and 7,102 in New York state. The virus has caused 29 deaths in NYC.
(AP, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 20, Google's google.com/covid19 went live on the web late today offering education, prevention and local resources related to the novel coronavirus.
(AP, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 20, JPMorgan Chase & Co said it would give "front line employees," workers who are staffing branches and call centers through the coronavirus pandemic, a sweetener for their efforts: a one-time $1,000 bonus.
(Reuters, 3/20/20)
2020 Mar 20, Lyft Inc told drivers they could sign up for delivery services for healthcare, government services and groceries as ride-hailing demand plummeted during the rapid spread of coronavirus in the United States.
(Reuters, 3/20/20)
2020 Mar 20, GlaxoSmithKline's HIV treatments division said it has received approval for its long-acting HIV injection from Canada's healthcare regulator, in a major win for the British drugmaker after a US rejection late last year.
(Reuters, 3/20/20)
2020 Mar 20, Albania passed measures totaling $370 million in its budget to soften the blow from the coronavirus crisis, including $25 million for the health sector, which is expected to deal with more cases than the 70 confirmed so far.
(Reuters, 3/20/20)
2020 Mar 20, Algerian protesters called off their weekly anti-government demonstrations for the first time in more than a year to reduce the spread of coronavirus. The country has recorded at least 10 deaths and 90 confirmed virus cases.
(BBC, 3/20/20)
2020 Mar 20, Argentina went into full lockdown mode, with streets in Buenos Aires largely deserted, while workers and school kids in the capital logged on remotely to offices, classrooms and even digital dancing lessons, after a mandatory quarantine was imposed. Argentina has so far registered 128 confirmed cases of coronavirus, with three deaths.
(Reuters, 3/20/20)
2020 Mar 20, In Belgium the number of confirmed coronavirus cases rose by 558, or 25%, to 2,815.
(Bloomberg, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 20, Britain ordered the closure of pubs and restaurants to slow the spread of the coronavirus. This came weeks after similar measures by the rest of Europe.
(Econ, 3/28/20, p.51)
2020 Mar 20, Bulgaria's parliament voted to allow the military to help implement measures to curb the coronavirus, with a mandate to use physical force if absolutely necessary.
(Reuters, 3/20/20)
2020 Mar 20, China's imported cases of coronavirus rose to a record 228.
(Reuters, 3/20/20)
2020 Mar 20, Cuba banned all tourist arrivals, confined vulnerable groups, shut down educational facilities and suspended interprovincial public transport asit recorded 21 confirmed cases of the coronavirus.
(Econ, 4/25/20, p.26)
2020 Mar 20, The Central Bank of eSwatini (formerly Swaziland) decided to cut its main lending rate by 100 basis points to 5.5%, citing global and domestic economic developments, including the impact of coronavirus. The country has one confirmed case of COVID-19.
(Reuters, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 20, Finland recorded its first death from coronavirus. It has 521 confirmed cases, though it was only testing severely ill people and health-care professionals.
(Bloomberg, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 20, Experts at the UN declared Finland to be the world's happiest nation for the third year running. The US fell to No. 18.
(AFP, 3/20/20) (NY Times, 3/20/20)
2020 Mar 20, France sent security forces into train stations to prevent people from traveling to their vacation homes, potentially carrying the coronavirus to the countryside or beaches where medical facilities are less robust.
(AP, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 20, In Guinea opposition groups demonstrated against a March 21 referendum that could allow Pres. Alpha Conde to stay longer in power. The vote would also choose 14 National Assembly members. Guinea has reported tow cases of the coronavirus.
(SFC, 3/21/20, p.A2)
2020 Mar 20, In India four men sentenced to death for the gruesome gang rape and murder of a woman on a New Delhi bus in 2012 were hanged. The case exposed the scope of sexual violence in India and prompted horrified Indians to demand swift justice.
(AP, 3/20/20)
2020 Mar 20, India expanded the criteria for people who should be tested for coronavirus, as the world’s second-most populous nation aims to limit the outbreak locally.
(Bloomberg, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 20, Jakarta, Indonesia, declared a state of emergency due to the coronavirus pandemic. Indonesia had 369 confirmed cases and 32 deaths. Jakarta, a city of 10 million people, had 215 confirmed infections and 18 deaths.
(Reuters, 3/20/20)
2020 Mar 20, Iran said that coronavirus has killed 149 more people in the Islamic republic, raising the country's official death toll from the disease to 1,433. 1,237 more cases have been confirmed over the past 24 hours and 19,644 people are now known to have been infected.
(AP, 3/20/20)
2020 Mar 20, In Iraq virus cases continued to rise, with 13 dead among 192 confirmed infected. The economic fallout from the coronavirus coupled with a sudden drop in oil prices threatened to catapult the country into an unprecedented crisis.
(AP, 3/20/20)
2020 Mar 20, Israel recorded its first death from the coronavirus.
(AP, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 20, In Italy the death toll from an outbreak of coronavirus in the northern region of Lombardy, which has borne the brunt of a nationwide contagion, rose by around 380 in a day to some 2,550.
(AP, 3/20/20)
2020 Mar 20, Lebanon's health ministry said it has recorded 163 infections from coronavirus so far. Experts warned Lebanon's healthcare system may be ill-prepared, as dollar shortages have for months drained it of critical supplies.
(Reuters, 3/20/20)
2020 Mar 20, Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard said that Mexico will allow the United States to return to Mexico Central American migrants caught trying to enter the United States illegally at the US-Mexico border. However, Mexico will not permit the United States to send back migrants detained on the joint frontier who are not Mexican or Central American.
(Reuters, 3/20/20)
2020 Mar 20, North Macedonia Pres. Stevo Pendarovski signed a final accession document required for the country to become the next member of NATO.
(SFC, 3/21/20, p.A2)
2020 Mar 20, In Pakistan seven miners were killed and three injured in a blast inside a coal mine in Baluchistan province.
(SFC, 3/21/20, p.A2)
2020 Mar 20, Poland's prosecutor's office said Nearly half a million liters of confiscated vodka and rectified spirit will be sent to Polish public institutions in need of disinfectant amid the coronavirus outbreak.
(Reuters, 3/20/20)
2020 Mar 20, South Africa said coronavirus cases have jumped to 202, the most in the sub-Saharan region, while the continent's busiest airport said foreigners cannot disembark. State-owned South African Airways suspended all international flights until June.
(AP, 3/20/20)
2020 Mar 20, Spanish authorities said they would turn a Madrid conference center into a giant makeshift military hospital for thousands of coronavirus patients, as Europe's second-worst outbreak claimed another 235 lives. With nearly 20,000 cases, Spain overtook Iran to become the world's third hardest-hit country by the pandemic after China and Italy. The Madrid region accounts for 628 deaths and 7,165 cases.
(Reuters, 3/20/20)
2020 Mar 20, Mosques in Sri Lanka were shut indefinitely due to the coronavirus pandemic, and the island was set to impose a countrywide curfew over the weekend.
(Reuters, 3/20/20)
2020 Mar 20, The Bank of Thailand held a special meeting and cut its key interest rate by 25 basis points to 0.75%.
(Economist, 4/4/20, p.29)
2020 Mar 20, Turkey's death toll due to the coronavirus rose to nine with a total of 670 cases.
(Reuters, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, US coronavirus infections exceeded 17,000, fatalities top 220. Worldwide cases topped 260,000 with more than 10,000 dead.
(Bloomberg, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, SF Bay Area's Santa Clara County reported 263 coronavirus cases and 8 deaths, the highest in the region. The Bay Area accounted for nearly half of the state's 1,286 cases.
(SSFC, 3/22/20, p.A12)
2020 Mar 21, Primaries scheduled for Georgia, Maryland, Indiana, Connecticut and Kentucky were all reported postponed to May or June due to the coronavirus pandemic.
(AP, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, Illinois residents began sheltering in place following orders by Gov. J.B. Pritzker restricting movement to combat the coronavirus. Illinois had five deaths from coronavirus with hundreds more testing positive across 22 counties. Similar shelter-in-place actions were taken by governors in Connecticut and Nevada.
(Bloomberg, 3/21/20)(SFC, 3/21/20, p.A5)
2020 Mar 21, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy said he will sign an executive order requiring all “nonessential" businesses closed to help slow the spread of the coronavirus.
(Bloomberg, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said there are now 10,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the state, an increase of 3,000 in the last 24 hours.
(Good Morning America, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said the city will be closing all non-essential businesses from March 22 to curb the spread of the coronavirus outbreak. NYC reported at least 38 people testing positive at the notorious Rikers Island complex and nearby facilities, more than half of them incarcerated men. Another 58 were being monitored in the prison's contagious disease and quarantine units. It was reported that an inmate at a federal jail in NYC has tested positive for coronavirus, marking the first confirmed case in the US federal prison system.
(AP, 3/21/20)(Good Morning America, 3/21/20)(AP, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, In Texas Ramiro Hernandez Ibarra of Mexico (42) died while being held pending his deportation. He was the 10th person to die in ICE custody since October.
(SFC, 3/24/20, p.A4)
2020 Mar 21, Amazon.com Inc said it is raising overtime pay for associates working in its US warehouses, as the world's largest online retailer tries to meet the rapidly growing demand for online shopping from consumers stuck at home during the coronavirus outbreak.
(Reuters, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, Albania's government deployed the army to enforce a strict 40-hour curfew starting today to fight the coronavirus after people widely flouted previous measures aimed at stemming its spread. So far, 76 people have tested positive for the coronavirus with two deaths.
(Reuters, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, Angola reported its first two Covid-19 cases.
(AP, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, Bolivia has so far confirmed 16 cases of coronavirus. Senators approved a motion this week that promotes use of the traditional medicine, which has long played a role for indigenous communities in the country.
(Reuters, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, Bosnia reported its first coronavirus death. The country has so far reported 90 cases.
(Reuters, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, Britain told people who were panic-buying and hoarding food due to the coronavirus outbreak to calm down, pointing to a video on social media showing an exhausted nurse driven to tears by finding shelves bare after her shift.
(Reuters, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, Bulgaria's main Orthodox Church urged Christians to stay away from churches and pray at home as the Balkan country tightens restrictive measures to contain the spread of coronavirus. The country has reported 142 cases, with three deaths.
(Reuters, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, A Burkina Faso spokesman said 4 government ministers have tested positive for the coronavirus, as the number of reported cases rose to 64 from 40, the highest in West Africa. Two new deaths were reported.
(Reuters, 3/21/20)(AP, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, In Colombia a prison riot in Bogota left 24 inmates dead. On Nov. 24 Human Rights Watch reported that most of the prisoners killed were shot to death intentionally.
(SFC, 11/25/20, p.A4)
2020 Mar 21, Congo DRC reported its first coronavirus death.
(AP, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, East Timor reported its first case of coronavirus. The Ministry of Health said that the case was from someone who had just returned from abroad.
(Reuters, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, Egypt's Coptic Orthodox Church ordered all its churches to shut their doors and suspend masses for two weeks over coronavirus fears. Egypt so far registered 285 confirmed coronavirus cases including eight deaths.
(Reuters, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, LVMH, the world's biggest luxury goods group, said it is ordering 40 million health masks from a Chinese supplier to help France cope with the coronavirus outbreak.
(Reuters, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, In Greece 598 migrants, arrested while crossing to three Greek islands from the Turkish coast, arrived at a facility in northern Greece where they were required to remain pending deportation.
(AP, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, In India thousands of poor city migrants whose livelihoods have collapsed due to India's coronavirus measures headed back to their villages, raising fears that the exodus could carry the virus to the countryside. About one fifth of India's 271 confirmed coronavirus cases has been reported in the western state of Maharashtra. So far, India has registered four deaths due to the virus.
(AP, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, In eastern India 17 policemen were killed and 14 others injured in an attack by Maoist rebels in Bihar state.
(SFC, 3/23/20, p.A2)
2020 Mar 21, Indonesia confirmed 81 new coronavirus cases and 6 more deaths, bringing the total number of cases to 450 and deaths to 38.
(AP, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani urged the US public to call on their government to remove sanctions against the Islamic Republic amid the coronavirus outbreak. The death toll from the coronavirus reached 1,556 after the country reported a further 123 fatalities in the past 24 hours. Iran stood at 20,610 cases after 966 new infections were confirmed over the past day.
(Bloomberg, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, Iran released French scholar Roland Marchal in a prisoner exchange between France and the Islamic Republic. France released Iranian engineer Jalal Rouhollahnejad in the exchange. The swap came after some 85,000 prisoners in Iran were released on furlough following a major outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic in the country, where it has so far killed more than 1,500 people.
(Bloomberg, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, Italy reported 793 coronavirus deaths, raising the total to 4,825.
(Bloomberg, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, In Jordan air raid sirens echoed across Amman to mark the start of a three-day curfew, the latest mass lockdown in the Middle East aimed at containing the coronavirus.
(AP, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, Luxembourg coronavirus cases rose to 670 from 484 and deaths to eight.
(Bloomberg, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, Malaysia's Health Ministry reported five more deaths and 153 new infections. Coronavirus cases jumped to 1,183 with eight deaths. Officials warned of a spike next week as they track down people who attended a large religious gathering linked to most of the cases.
(Reuters, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, Mauritius recorded its first coronavirus death as case numbers rose to 14.
(Reuters, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, Mexico confirmed its second death as medical experts worry that Latin America is unprepared for a larger outbreak.
(Bloomberg, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, A Mexican navy helicopter crashed during an anti-kidnapping operation in Veracruz state. One police officer was killed and 10 military personnel injured.
(SFC, 3/23/20, p.A2)
2020 Mar 21, In the Netherlands, coronavirus fatalities increased by 30 to 136. The total number of cases is 3,631.
(Bloomberg, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, Nigeria announced it is closing airports as of March 23 to all incoming international flights for one month due to the coronavirus pandemic.
(AP, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, In Nigeria Boko Haram extremists killed at least 50 government soldiers in an ambush hear Goneri village, Yobe state.
(SFC, 3/25/20, p.A2)
2020 Mar 21, North Korea fired what appeared to be two short-range ballistic missiles off its east coast, the latest in a series of such launches by Pyongyang.
(AFP, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, North Macedonia's first victim died of the coronavirus. The country has registered 114 cases of people infected with the virus.
(Reuters, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 21, Pakistan suspended all international flights for two weeks to limit the spread of coronavirus. The country reported its third coronavirus death, with confirmed cases rising to 534.
(Reuters, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, Peru reported its first coronavirus fatalities.
(AP, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, The Philippines' health ministry reported 45 more confirmed cases of coronavirus, bringing today's tally to 77. Confirmed cases in the Philippines now totaled 307 and 19 dead.
(Reuters, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, Portuguese coronavirus cases increased 25% to 1,280, with 12 deaths.
(Bloomberg, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, Russia's largest carmaker Avtovaz reported the first two cases of the coronavirus among its workers. Russia has so far reported 253 cases of the virus and one death, and has introduced a raft of economic and social measures to limit its spread.
(Reuters, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, Saudi Arabia announced 48 new coronavirus cases, bringing the total to 392, with five of the new infections being healthcare workers in Riyadh.
(Good Morning America, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 21, In Serbia a fire in a residential building in Belgrade killed six people.
(SSFC, 3/22/20, p.A4)
2020 Mar 21, Singapore reported 47 new cases of coronavirus, which were mainly imported, taking the city-state's tally to 432 infections. Singapore reported its first two coronavirus deaths.
(Reuters, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, In Slovakia a 4-party coaltion government was sworn in under PM Igor Matovic.
(SFC, 5/1/20, p.A2)
2020 Mar 21, South Africa, which has the most cases in sub-Saharan Africa, confirmed 38 new coronavirus cases, taking its total to 240.
(Reuters, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, Deaths from the coronavirus in Spain jumped 32% to 1,326, a week after the country went into a national lockdown to try to slow the spread of the disease. Total cases reached 24,926. The Health Ministry reported 324 new deaths and 4,946 new cases.
(Bloomberg, 3/21/20)(Good Morning America, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, Sri Lanka's government closed all bars and liquor shops. Police arrested 30 people from various parts of the country for violating curfew, adding the curfew has been imposed till the morning of March. Sri Lanka has reported 72 confirmed coronavirus cases.
(Reuters, 3/21/20)(Econ, 4/25/20, p.28)
2020 Mar 21, In Sri Lanka one prisoner was killed and four others wounded when guards opened fire during a protest at the Anuradhapura prison.
(SSFC, 3/22/20, p.A4)
2020 Mar 21, Switzerland reported 6,100 coronavirus infections, some 25% more than a day earlier, and 56 deaths.
(Reuters, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, Taiwan reported 18 new coronavirus cases, all imported from people coming from countries including the United States, Britain, South Africa and Indonesia or those having contact with them, bring the total number of infected to 153.
(Reuters, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, Thailand’s capital imposed a partial shutdown from March 22 after novel coronavirus cases surged past 400 with a rising number of people in critical condition.
(Bloomberg, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, Turkey extended measures against the coronavirus, suspended flights with 46 more countries and banning picnics and barbecues, as the number of cases has roughly doubled every day for a week.
(AP, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, Ukraine further restricted the use of public transport in its capital Kiev as it battles to prevent the spread of coronavirus. Ukraine has reported 41 cases of the virus and three deaths.
(Reuters, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 21, Vietnam's coronavirus cases rose to 94 with no deaths. The government said it will bar entry for all foreigners from March 22, except for special cases, as the country seeks to contain the spread of the virus.
(Reuters, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 22, US Pres. Donald Trump said he’s ordered the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to ship mobile hospital centers to the hard-hit states of Washington, California and New York.
(AP, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said the lockdown affecting large segments of the American public to try to curb the spread of the coronavirus is likely to last 10 to 12 weeks, or until early June. US coronavirus infections reached 26,747. The global number of coronavirus cases doubled in a week to 311,000.
(Reuters, 3/22/20)(Bloomberg, 3/22/20)(Good Morning America, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, It was reported that the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has stepped up a fight last week with its largest swoop against the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) on US soil, arresting more than 600 people accused of being linked to its sprawling criminal network. Last month the DEA arrested the daughter of cartel leader Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes (53), aka El Mencho, in Washington and extradited his son from Mexico to the US.
(Reuters, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, Hawaii's Gov. David Ige instituted a mandatory 14-day self-quarantine starting March 26 of all people traveling to the state as part of efforts to fight the spread of coronavirus. Hawaii announced 11 new cases of the virus bringing the state's total to 48.
(SFC, 3/23/20, p.A5)
2020 Mar 22, It was reported that Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has tested positive for COVID-19. He is the first member of the US Senate to be infected. Paul, an eye surgeon, went into quarantine after learning his results.
(AP, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, In West Virginia an infection cluster of coronavirus began with a single case at the Morgantown nursing home. Eight staffers and 21 residents soon tested positive for the virus.
(SFC, 3/28/20, p.A5)
2020 Mar 22, The Niagara Gazette reported that former Hollywood producer and convicted rapist Harvey Weinstein has tested positive for the COVID-19 coronavirus.
(The Week, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, Abkhazia, a breakaway region of the Georgian republic, held a presidential election to replace Raul Khadzhimba, the leader who stepped down in January under pressure from the opposition. With a population of about 250,000, Abkhazia is recognized as a sovereign state only by Russia and a handful of other countries.
(Reuters, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, Afghanistan reported its first coronavirus death. The war-ravaged country reported 10 new cases raising to 34 the number of confirmed cases.
(AP, 3/22/20)(Reuters, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, Albania said it will suspend all commercial flights to and from the country from midnight, allowing only flag carrier Air Albania to fly to Turkey and operate humanitarian flights. There have been 76 coronavirus cases in Albania and two deaths.
(Reuters, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, Australia said it will enforce more stringent controls to slow the spread of the coronavirus, closing pubs, casinos, restaurants and other venues from March 23 after the number of infections in the nation surged past 1,000.
(Bloomberg, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, Brazil's health ministry statistics showed 1,546 confirmed cases, up from 234 cases a week before. The respiratory disease caused by the virus has killed 25 people.
(Reuters, 3/23/20)
2020 Mar 22, Britain warned it will impose tighter restrictions if citizens fail to follow government calls to stop non-essential travel and gatherings to curb the spread of the coronavirus. The UK reported 281 total deaths due to COVID-19. The government said there are 5,683 confirmed cases, with London hardest hit.
(Bloomberg, 3/22/20)(Reuters, 3/22/20)(Reuters, 3/23/20)
2020 Mar 22, Bulgarian President Rumen Radev partially vetoed a state of emergency law intended to limit the spread of the coronavirus, saying some of the measures would create more problems than solutions.
(Reuters, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, Cambodia reported 31 new cases of coronavirus, 29 of them among French tourists, bringing the total number of infections recorded in the country to 84. Two Cambodians who were infected had been tour guides accompanying the tourists.
(Reuters, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, The Canadian Olympic Committee said it won't send athletes to the Tokyo Games unless they're postponed for a year.
(AP, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, China reported 46 new cases of coronavirus, the fourth straight day with an increase, with all but one of those imported from overseas.
(Reuters, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, The South China Morning Post reported that as many as a third of the people who test positive for the coronavirus may show delayed symptoms or none at all.
(Bloomberg, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, It was reported that Colombian authorities were trying to quell riots in several jails across the country amid fears that the coronavirus could spread in overcrowded conditions. 23 prisoners died and another 83 were injured in a riot and attempted escape attempt at the La Modelo jail in Bogota. Colombia has confirmed 231 cases of coronavirus.
(Bloomberg, 3/22/20)(SFC, 3/23/20, p.A2)
2020 Mar 22, In Croatia a strong earthquake in Zagreb caused panic, the evacuation of hospitals and widespread damage including to the capital's iconic cathedral. One person was killed and at least 27 injured.
(AP, 3/22/20)(SFC, 3/24/20, p.A2)
2020 Mar 22, The number of coronavirus cases in the Czech Republic has risen to 1,047 as of this morning. The Czech Rep. recorded its first COVID-19 death. A year later almost 25,000 were dead.
(Reuters, 3/22/20)(SFC, 3/23/21, p.A4)
2020 Mar 22, Dubai's state-owned Emirates, one of the world's biggest long-haul airlines, said it would stop nearly all passenger flights this week and cut staff wages by as much as half because of the coronavirus impact on travel demand.
(Reuters, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, Dubai canceled the Dubai World Cup, the world's richest purse in horse racing, until 2021.
(AP, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, In Ethiopia a cargo flight containing more than 6 million medical items arrived in Addis Ababa. The supplies from Jack Ma, the founder of China's e-commerce giant Alibaba, will be distributed to African countries in need of supplies to battle the spreading COVID-19 pandemic.
(AP, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, In France fatalities due to coronavirus rise to 562. An emergency room doctor in Northern France died from Covid-19, the first medic to die in that country.
(Bloomberg, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, Germany received the green light from EU regulators for subsidized loans to companies hit by the coronavirus pandemic. Germany tightened curbs on social interaction, including a ban on public meetings of more than two people for at least the next two weeks, to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
(Bloomberg, 3/22/20)(Reuters, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, Guinea held a constitutional referendum that opponents of President Alpha Conde fear could allow him to govern for 12 more years. An opposition boycott all but ensured the new basic law will be approved when results are announced in the coming days. With the first two cases of the COVID-19 disease recorded in the country, some polling stations required voters to wash their hands before casting their ballot. On March 27 Guinea’s electoral commission said nearly 92% of voters supported the proposal, which would keep a two-term limit on presidencies, but increase the length of each term from five years to six.
(Reuters, 3/22/20)(AP, 3/28/20)
2020 Mar 22, India suspended passenger train services across the country until March 31 as the government sought to curb the spread of the coronavirus outbreak. Freight services will continue. coronavirus cases rose to 341, while the country confirmed its fifth death from the virus.
(AP, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, Iran's supreme leader refused US assistance to fight the new coronavirus, citing an unfounded conspiracy theory claiming the virus could be man-made by America. His comments came as Iran confirmed over 21,600 cases amid 1,685 reported deaths, The total number of cases in Iran stood at 21,638 people, with 1,028 new cases added over the past day. Iran imposed a two-week closure on major shopping malls and centers across the country. Pharmacies, supermarkets, groceries and bakeries will remain open.
(Bloomberg, 3/22/20)(AP, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, Iraq has reported 20 coronavirus fatalities among 233 confirmed cases. Iraq's government has extended a curfew on travel in and out of Baghdad until March 28 as part of strict measures to prevent the virus from spreading.
(AP, 3/22/20)(Reuters, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, In Israel new rules prohibiting most Israelis from leaving their homes for the next seven days took effect as the number of confirmed coronavirus cases soared to 945. The Health Minsitry has reported one death.
(Bloomberg, 3/22/20)(AP, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, Italy was rocked by its deadliest day as the coronavirus prompted industry shutdown. The death toll from the coronavirus in the northern region of Lombardy, which has borne the brunt of Italy's contagion, has risen by around 360 in a day to more than 3,450. Italy's coronavirus infections continued to soar, with 59,000 cases and 5,476 deaths.
(Bloomberg, 3/22/20)(Reuters, 3/22/20)(AP, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, Fifty-two medics from Cuba arrived in Italy to assist with the coronavirus pandemic.
(Economist, 4/4/20, p.25)
2020 Mar 22, Japan's Oita prefecture confirmed two new coronavirus infections at a medical center, bringing the total at the facility to 14 and making it a suspected cluster.
(Reuters, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, Japan's Olympics organizers were reported to be drawing up plans for possible delay, even as the government says a postponement is not an option.
(Reuters, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, Japan-based Toyota Motor Corp said it would suspend production on one of its vehicle production lines at a plant near its headquarters through March 25, after a second plant worker tested positive for the COVID-19 virus.
(Reuters, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, Kosovo reported the country's first victim of the coronavirus. The country has registered 31 cases of people infected with the virus.
(Reuters, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, In Lebanon unknown assailants shot dead Antoine Hayek, a former member of an Israeli-backed Lebanese militia, inside his grocery store in the southern village of Mieh Mieh, near the port city of Sidon. Hayek had been a warden at a prison run by the South Lebanon Army militia during Israel's 18-year occupation of southern Lebanon, which ended in 2000.
(AP, 3/23/20)
2020 Mar 22, Malta said it is closing all non-essential shops and services to stop the spread of coronavirus. The number of confirmed virus cases in the country rose to 90 with 17 cases reported overnight.
(Reuters, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, In Mexico the mayor of Mexico City shut bars and banned large gatherings to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
(Econ, 3/28/20, p.32)
2020 Mar 22, In Pakistan Dr Osama Riaz, who screened suspected coronavirus patients, died after testing positive for the coronavirus, highlighting the danger to physicians who have threatened to strike unless access to protection equipment improves. Pakistan has reported three deaths and 658 patients infected with the coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, The Palestinian Authority, which governs parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, announced a 14-day curfew, ordering everyone to stay at home except for security forces, medics and food sellers. It also closed all major roads. The PA has reported 59 coronavirus cases. Authorities in Gaza confirmed the enclave's first two coronavirus cases overnight in returnees who had come from Pakistan.
(AP, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, The Netherlands reported 573 more coronavirus virus cases for a total of 4,203 with 179 deaths.
(AP, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, North Korea reported that President Donald Trump has sent a personal letter to leader Kim Jong Un, seeking to maintain good relations and offering cooperation in fighting the coronavirus pandemic.
(AP, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, Portuguese authorities began the coronavirus testing and repatriation process for 1,338 passengers aboard the MSC Fantasia cruise ship en route from Brazil that docked in Lisbon after its other European stopovers were canceled.
(Reuters, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, The Romanian government confirmed the first death in the country due to coronavirus.
(AP, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, In Russia small-scale protests against Vladimir Putin's plans to amend the Russian constitution so he can run for president again in 2024 took place in several medium-sized cities. Protests were called off in Moscow and St. Petersburg due to measures imposed to contain the spread of coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, The Russian military started sending medical help to Italy in order to help it battle the new coronavirus after receiving an order from Pres. Vladimir Putin following a conversation a day earlier with Italian PM Giuseppe Conte. Russia itself has reported 306 cases of the virus, most of them in Moscow, and one coronavirus-related death.
(Reuters, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, Rwanda began a two-week lockdown, restricting travel between towns and cities and asking people to stay indoors. The East African nation has 41 confirmed Covid-19 cases.
(https://allafrica.com/stories/202003260464.html)
2020 Mar 22, South Africa-based Standard Bank said it will give a payment holiday to small businesses and full-time students in a bid to ease financial pressures on its customers as COVID-19 spread across the country. South Africa has confirmed 240 cases of the virus so far.
(Reuters, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, The South African Maritime Safety Authority (SAMSA) said around 1,240 German passengers stranded in Cape Town after their MV AidAmira cruise ship was quarantined for almost a week due to a coronavirus scare had either begun their journey home or would do so in the next day.
(Reuters, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, South Korea reported 98 new coronavirus cases, bringing the total to 8,897. The number of deaths rose by two to 104.
(Bloomberg, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, Spain's death toll from coronavirus soared to 1,720 from 1,326 the day before. The one-day rise in deaths of 394 was higher than the previous day's increase of 324.
(Reuters, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, In Switzerland, 7,014 people tested positive for coronavirus, up from 6,113 a day earlier. Four more patients died, bringing the total to 60.
(Bloomberg, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, Syrian President Bashar Assad granted amnesty and reduced sentences for all crimes committed before today, while also offering amnesty to military deserters who turn themselves in within the next few months.
(AP, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, Syria reported its first case of the coronavirus.
(Econ, 3/28/20, p.44)
2020 Mar 22, Taiwan announced 16 new confirmed cases of coronavirus with 13 of them imported. The number of total confirmed cases rose to 169. Taiwan said it will suspend transit of international passengers through its airports from March 24 to April 7.
(AP, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, Thailand reported 188 more coronavirus cases, the highest daily increase so far, bringing the total to 599.
(Reuters, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, Coronavirus cases in Turkey soared as countries across the Middle East imposed new restrictions on movement of people, shut public places and rolled out measures to protect businesses. Turkey now has 947 confirmed cases of the virus, with 21 deaths.
(Bloomberg, 3/22/20)(Good Morning America, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, Uzbekistan ordered all companies in Tashkent to switch to remote working and made protective masks mandatory in all major cities in order to prevent the spread of coronavirus. The country has confirmed 43 cases of the disease and has already closed its borders.
(AP, 3/22/20)
2020 Mar 22, Vietnam closed its borders to all foreigners. This made it more difficult for rat catchers in Cambodia's rice fields to market their catch in Vietnam.
(https://tinyurl.com/u22tj88u)(Econ., 1/2/21, p.26)
2020 Mar 22, Zimbabwe journalist Zororo Makamba (30) became the country's first coronavirus casualty. He had undergone surgery last November to remove a tumor from under his lung and was in recovery.
(BBC, 3/28/20)
2020 Mar 23, President Trump said major disaster declarations were underway for California, New York and Washington, the three states hardest hit by the coronavirus. With more than 15,000 confirmed cases.
(NY Times, 3/23/20)
2020 Mar 23, President Donald Trump said he was considering how to restart business life when a 15-day shutdown ends next week, even as the highly contagious virus spreads rapidly and poorly equipped hospitals struggle with a wave of deadly cases.
(Reuters, 3/24/20)
2020 Mar 23, The US Federal Reserve announced a second wave of initiatives, including buying an unlimited amount of bonds to keep borrowing costs low and setting up programs to ensure credit flows to corporations and state and local governments. The ship had docked in Japan on Feb. 5 and was placed under quarantine for more than two weeks.
(Bloomberg, 3/23/20)
2020 Mar 23, The US Supreme Court limited the rights of criminal defendants, declaring that states can bar them from using the so-called insanity defense in a ruling involving a Kansas man sentenced to death for killing four members of his family.
(Reuters, 3/23/20)
2020 Mar 23, A report released by the US Centers for Disease Control said traces of the coronavirus remained inside cabins of the Diamond Princess for more than two weeks after the cruise ship was vacated. The ship had docked in Japan on Feb. 5 and was placed under quarantine for more than two weeks.
(Good Morning America, 3/24/20)
2020 Mar 23, California's Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauje suspended all jury trials in the state for two months to help prevent the spread of coronavirus.
(SFC, 3/25/20, p.A8)
2020 Mar 23, It was reported that Pacific Gas & Electric has agreed to plead guilty to 84 involuntary manslaughter counts in connection with the 2018 Camp Fire, the most destructive wildfire in California's history.
(Reuters, 3/23/20)
2020 Mar 23, Hawaii Gov. David Ige signed a proclamation late today, ordering the entire state to stay at home and work from home, starting Wednesday after midnight and lasting through the end of April.
(Good Morning America, 3/24/20)
2020 Mar 23, Governors of Michigan, Massachusetts, West Virginia and Wisconsin implemented stay-at-home policies. Worldwide cases of coronavirus top 372,000 and 16,000 dead.
(Bloomberg, 3/23/20)
2020 Mar 23, In New York as of this morning, there have been at least 33,018 cases of coronavirus confirmed by lab tests and 428 deaths, according to a New York Times database. New York State now accounted for roughly 5 percent of the world’s total tally.
(NY Times, 3/23/20)
2020 Mar 23, In Oklahoma Jerry Drake Varnell (26) was sentenced to 25 years in prison after being convicted of trying to blow up an Oklahoma City bank in August 2017 with a massive vehicle bomb. The FBI had learned of Varnell's plan and an undercover agent posed as someone who could help construct the bomb, but instead provided inert materials.
(AP, 3/23/20)
2020 Mar 23, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said that an order issued over the weekend by Gov. Greg Abbott barred “any type of abortion that is not medically necessary to preserve the life or health of the mother".
(AP, 3/23/20)
2020 Mar 23, In Washington state 14 escaped from the Yakima County Jail. Eight were soon captured and six were still on the loose.
(NBC News, 3/24/20)
2020 Mar 23, Boeing Co. said it is temporarily shuttering its Seattle-area factories, compounding hurdles for a company already reeling from the grounding of its top-selling plane. The shutdown will begin March 25 and last 14 days.
(Bloomberg, 3/23/20)
2020 Mar 23, Ford Motor Co it has decided to temporarily halt vehicle and engine production at its factories in India, South Africa, Thailand and Vietnam in response to the growing impact of the coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/23/20)
2020 Mar 23, Australia’s parliament rushed through more than A$80 billion ($46.3 billion) in fiscal stimulus for the coronavirus-stricken economy at a special sitting in Canberra. Cases of coronavirus reached 1,709 as at 3 p.m., up 313 since 3 p.m. the day before.
(Reuters, 3/23/20)
2020 Mar 23, Austria said it is mobilizing its military reservists for the first time since World War Two, asking them to fight the coronavirus outbreak by helping with food supplies, medical support and police operations. Austria has reported nearly 4,000 cases with 21 deaths so far.
(Reuters, 3/23/20)
2020 Mar 23, PM Boris Johnson brought Britain into alignment with lockdowns across Europe, closing all nonessential shops and requiring people to stay in their homes, except for trips for food or medicine due to the coronavirus pandemic.
(NY Times, 3/24/20)(Economist, 4/4/20, p.41)
2020 Mar 23, Scientists at Britain's Oxford University said they have started a clinical trial to investigate the effects of an HIV medicine and a steroid drug in UK patients admitted to hospital with COVID-19 caused by the new coronavirus. It will test AbbVie's Kaletra: a combination of lopinavir and ritonavir which is normally used to treat the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) that causes AIDS - and the steroid dexamethasone, which is used to reduce inflammation in a wide range of conditions.
(Reuters, 3/23/20)
2020 Mar 23, Bulgaria's parliament agreed to cancel some parts of a law that establishes a state of emergency to limit the spread of the coronavirus after the president wielded his veto citing concerns about its impact on the economy and on free speech. Bulgaria had 190 confirmed cases of the coronavirus and three deaths.
(Reuters, 3/23/20)
2020 Mar 23, Cambodia reported three new coronavirus cases, bringing the total to 87.
(Reuters, 3/23/20)
2020 Mar 23, Boko Haram Islamist militants killed more than 92 Chadian soldiers in attack on an island in Lake Chad.
(BBC, 3/25/20)(SFC, 4/11/20, p.A2)
2020 Mar 23, Egypt has reported around coronavirus 330 cases and 16 deaths. Tens of thousands of people working in the major tourist destinations of Luxor, Hurghada and Sharm el-Sheikh, along with 300 families in the Nile Delta, have been ordered into 14-day quarantine.
(AP, 3/23/20)
2020 Mar 23, The European Union said it will send 20 million euros in humanitarian aid to Iran, which is subject to US sanctions, to help alleviate the coronavirus, and will also support Tehran's request for IMF financial help.
(Reuters, 3/23/20)
2020 Mar 23, Germany barred public gatherings of more than two people, except for families, and Chancellor Angela Merkel said she was going into isolation because her doctor had tested positive for the virus. Germany signed off on taking on billions in new debt as part of an unprecedented package totaling more than 750 billion euros ($800 billion) to cushion the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic.
(NY Times, 3/23/20)(Bloomberg, 3/23/20)
2020 Mar 23, Greece's largest carrier Aegean Airlines said it will suspend all of its international flights from March 26 to April 30 as a result of the spread of the coronavirus and flight restrictions.
(Reuters, 3/23/20)
2020 Mar 23, Iran announced 127 new deaths from the novel coronavirus, raising the official toll to 1,812 in one of the worst hit countries.
(AFP, 3/23/20)
2020 Mar 23, Iraq’s Health Ministry has reported 23 fatalities among 266 confirmed coronavirus cases.
(AP, 3/23/20)
2020 Mar 23, In Italy the death toll from an outbreak of coronavirus in the northern region of Lombardy has risen by around 320 in a day to more than 3,770. Unions in the Lombardy region announced strikes to protect the health of their workers, saying a government decree temporarily shutting businesses due to the coronavirus emergency contained too many loopholes and exceptions.
(AP, 3/23/20)(Reuters, 3/23/20)
2020 Mar 23, Italy's number of new Covid-19 cases dropped to a five-day low. Italian health authorities announced 4,789 new cases in the last 24 hours. The number of coronavirus cases in Italy has risen to 63,927 " compared to 81,093 in mainland China. In total, 6,077 people have died in Italy due to Covid-19, including 601 who died in the last 24 hours, a decline from the weekend.
(South China Morning Post, 3/24/20)
2020 Mar 23, Japan's PM Shinzo Abe suggested that the Summer Olympics in Tokyo might need to be postponed, hours after Canada and Australia threatened to boycott the Games.
(NY Times, 3/23/20)
2020 Mar 23, Jordan said it would extend a curfew indefinitely, with supermarkets and other stores closed, and deliver food across the country to try to rein in the coronavirus. Jordan has reported 112 coronavirus cases and six deaths.
(Reuters, 3/23/20)(AP, 3/23/20)
2020 Mar 23, Lebanon's Finance Minsitry said that it will stop paying all maturing Eurobonds in foreign currencies amid a crippling economic and financial crisis. Lebanon defaulted when it failed to make a payment of $1.2 billion on a hard-currency bond. PM Hassan Diabestimated an $83 billion loss in the banking sector.
(SFC, 3/24/20, p.A2)(Econ., 11/7/20, p.66)
2020 Mar 23, In Libya at least five civilians were killed, including two members of the same family, by heavy shelling in Tripoli.
(AP, 3/23/20)
2020 Mar 23, In Mexico unidentified gunmen killed Isaac Medardo Herrera, a lawyer and activist who defended the rural Los Venados tract against development near Cuernavaca.
(SFC, 3/25/20, p.A2)
2020 Mar 23, In northern Mozambique militants staged an overnight attack on Mocimboa de Praia, taking a military base and raising their flag. The transport hub is near what may be Africa's largest ever gas project.
(AP, 3/23/20)(Economist, 4/4/20, p.9)
2020 Mar 23, Myanmar's government designated the Arakan Army as a terrorist organization and blocked access to several news websites that reported on conflicts in Rakhine and Chin states.
(Econ, 4/18/20, p.26)
2020 Mar 23, In the Netherlands the number of confirmed coronavirus infections increased by 13% from a day earlier and 34 more people died. There were 545 new infections, taking the total to 4,749 with 213 deaths.
(Reuters, 3/23/20)
2020 Mar 23, In northeastern Nigeria around government 70 soldiers were killed in an Islamist militant ambush in the village of Gorgi, Borno state. 47 soldiers were killed in a Boko Haram ambush on a convoy that had left the north-eastern city of Maiduguri carrying ammunition.
(Reuters, 3/24/20)(BBC, 3/25/20)
2020 Mar 23, Norway's foreign ministry said the UN will create a fund to support the treatment of coronavirus patients worldwide. Almost 340,000 people have been infected by the novel coronavirus across the world and more than 14,500 have died.
(AP, 3/23/20)
2020 Mar 23, A court in southern Poland convicted three Polish men of terrorism charges related to the torching of a Hungarian center in Ukraine in February 2018. The group's leader, Michal Prokopowicz (29) was given a three-year prison term. Tomasz Szymkowiak (23) was sentenced to two years in prison. Both had pleaded not guilty. Adrian Marglewski (26) cooperated with investigators and was given two years of supervised release and 40 hours of community service.
(AP, 3/24/20)
2020 Mar 23, Russian PM Mikhail Mishustin gave the authorities five days to develop a system that would track and notify people who have come in contact with any known carriers of coronavirus. The system would simultaneously notify special regional headquarters set up to fight the pandemic.
(The Daily Beast, 3/24/20)
2020 Mar 23, Saudi Arabia announced overnight that an evening curfew would go into effect starting today from 7 p.m. to 6 a.m. for 21 days.
(AP, 3/23/20)
2020 Mar 23, In Scotland an Edinburgh jury acquitted former leader Alex Salmond (65) of sex crimes involving allegations from nine women.
(SFC, 3/24/20, p.A2)
2020 Mar 23, Singapore reported its biggest one-day jump in coronavirus infections with 54 new cases, of which 48 were imported.
(Bloomberg, 3/23/20)
2020 Mar 23, South Africa's coronavirus cases jumped to 402, up 128 from the day before. South Africa has not registered a death from the disease.
(AP, 3/23/20)
2020 Mar 23, Syrians rushed to stock up on food and fuel amid fears that authorities would resort to even stricter measures after reporting the first coronavirus infection in the country, where the healthcare system has been decimated by nearly a decade of civil war. An open-ended curfew went into effect in parts of northern and eastern Syria, which are controlled by a Kurdish-led civilian administration.
(AP, 3/23/20)
2020 Mar 23, Amnesty Int'l. said new conscripts in Thailand military are physically, sexually and mentally abused with some cases amounting to torture.
(SFC, 3/24/20, p.A2)
2020 Mar 23, Tunisia's President Kais Saied ordered the army to deploy in the streets to force people to respect a lockdown imposed to halt the spread of coronavirus. Tunisia has 89 confirmed cases of the virus.
(Reuters, 3/23/20)
2020 Mar 23, Istanbul's Grand Bazaar, one of the largest and oldest covered markets in the world, closed in a bid to stop the spread of the coronavirus pandemic. It dated back to 1455 and is often regarded as one of the first shopping malls.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Bazaar,_Istanbul)(https://tinyurl.com/ychn4qdy)
2020 Mar 23, The United Arab Emirates, home to the world's busiest international airport in Dubai, announced it was suspending all passenger flights and the transit of airline passengers in the country for two weeks to stymie the spread of the new coronavirus.
(AP, 3/23/20)
2020 Mar 23, Vietnam's PM Nguyen Xuan Phuc said next 10-15 days will be decisive in Vietnam's fight against the coronavirus. There were now 122 cases, according to the health ministry, and no reported deaths.
(Reuters, 3/23/20)
2020 Mar 24, Senior Pentagon leaders said that the fast-spreading coronavirus outbreak that has hit the United States could continue for months and the military would continue to support efforts to counter it for as long as needed. More than 42,000 people in the United States have contracted COVID-19, and at least 620 have died.
(Reuters, 3/24/20)
2020 Mar 24, Governors across the US rejected President Donald Trump's new accelerated timeline for reopening the US economy, as they continued to impose more restrictions on travel and public life in an attempt to curb the spread of the coronavirus.
(AP, 3/24/20)
2020 Mar 24, The US State Department said it was cutting $1 billion to Afghanistan this year, and potentially another $1 billion in 2021, after rival Afghan leaders failed to support a unified government. It’s a condition that US diplomats consider crucial for peace talks.
(NY Times, 3/24/20)
2020 Mar 24, The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said it had awarded $100 million to 1,381 health centers across the nation to bolster their response to the coronavirus pandemic.
(Reuters, 3/24/20)
2020 Mar 24, The US Olympic and Paralympic Committee joined growing demands to postpone the Tokyo Olympics.
(NY Times, 3/24/20)
2020 Mar 24, Wall Street bounced from three-year lows on hopes of a major fiscal stimulus to blunt the economic damage from the coronavirus. The dollar fell broadly, sliding for a second consecutive day after the US Federal Reserve stepped up measures to shield an economy reeling from emergency restrictions on commerce to fight the coronavirus. The DJIA rose 2,2112.98, its biggest point gain in history, to 20,704.91 as Congress and the White House neared a deal to inject almost $2 trillion of aid into the economy ravaged by the coronavirus.
(AP, 3/24/20)(Reuters, 3/24/20)(SFC, 3/25/20, p.C1)
2020 Mar 24, Colorado repealed its seldom-used death penalty, becoming the 22nd state to eliminate capital punishment.
(NY Times, 3/24/20)
2020 Mar 24, Terrence McNally (81), a Tony-winning playwright, librettist and screenwriter, died in Florida from complications of the COVID-19 coronavirus. His work included "Kiss of the Spider Woman" (1993), "Love! Valour! Compassion!" (1995) and "Master Class" (1996).
(SFC, 3/25/20, p.B3)
2020 Mar 24, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said New York state now has over 25,000 diagnosed cases of coronavirus, including over 14,900 in New York City.
(AP, 3/24/20)
2020 Mar 24, Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro laid to rest a diplomatic spat with China in a call with President Xi Jinping, with the two agreeing to work together to fight coronavirus as Brazil's largest city went into lockdown. In a televised speech Bolsonaro urged local governments to abandon "scorched-earth" strategies of closing schools and shops, and blasted the media for spreading "the sensation of fear".
(Reuters, 3/24/20)(Econ, 3/28/20, p.29)
2020 Mar 24, New York-based Human Rights Watch said Cambodia has arrested 17 people since late January for sharing information about the coronavirus in Cambodia, including four members or supporters of the dissolved opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP).
(Reuters, 3/24/20)
2020 Mar 24, Canadian banks followed US heavyweights in offering one-time bonuses and extra paid days off to customer-service employees who are required to work in branches and call centers amid the coronavirus crisis.
(Reuters, 3/24/20)
2020 Mar 24, It was reported that death squads in Colombia are taking advantage of coronavirus lockdowns to murder rural activists. The virus has now claimed three lives in Colombia amid 277 confirmed cases.
(The Guardian, 3/24/20)
2020 Mar 24, Egyptian PM Moustafa Madbouly said Egypt will impose a two-week nightly curfew in an effort to stop the spread of the new coronavirus.
(AP, 3/24/20)
2020 Mar 24, Ethiopian PM Abiy Ahmed called on G-20 leaders to assist Africa with $150 billion in emergency funding and write off or convert debts of low-income countries.
(Bloomberg, 3/24/20)
2020 Mar 24, European affairs ministers agreed to allow Albania and North Macedonia to begin EU membership talks.
(SFC, 3/25/20, p.A3)
2020 Mar 24, The healthcare unit of French industrial gases company Air Liquide said it was ramping up production of ventilators needed by hospitals to deal with the coronavirus outbreak. France has recorded 1,100 coronavirus deaths and 22,302 cases.
(Reuters, 3/24/20)(AFP, 3/25/20)
2020 Mar 24, In France Manu Dibango (86), a Cameroonian-born saxophonist, died with the coronavirus. He had gained international fame with his 1972 song "Soul Makossa".
(SFC, 3/25/20, p.A2)
2020 Mar 24, In Germany Bjoern Hoecke and Andreas Kalbitz, the leading figures of the radical Wing faction of the far-right Alternative for Germany party, agreed to disband. The head of the domestic intelligence agency in Thuringia called the agreement a smoke screen.
(SFC, 3/26/20, p.A2)
2020 Mar 24, German hospitals with spare capacity welcomed their first coronavirus patients from Italy. Germany had 27,000 confirmed coronavirus cases but only 114 deaths.
(Reuters, 3/24/20)
2020 Mar 24, India's PM Narendra Modi decreed that the country of 1.3 billion will go on lockdown for 21 days.
(AP, 3/24/20)
2020 Mar 24, Iran announced 122 new deaths from the novel coronavirus, raising the official toll to 1,934 in one of the world's worst hit countries. A record 1,762 new cases have been confirmed in Iran over the past 24 hours. 24,811 people are now known to have been infected.
(AP, 3/24/20)
2020 Mar 24, Israel appeared on the verge of a constitutional crisis as top members of Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud urged their party colleague and parliament speaker to defy a Supreme Court order to hold an election for his successor.
(AP, 3/24/20)
2020 Mar 24, In Italy the death toll from an outbreak of coronavirus in the northern region of Lombardy rose by around 400 in a day to more than 4,175. The number of cases in the region, which includes Milan, increased by some 1,940 to roughly 30,700. Italy suffered the most coronavirus deaths with 6,820, out of 69,176 declared infections. This was its second-deadliest day, dashing hopes the death toll is declining.
(Reuters, 3/24/20)(AFP, 3/24/20)(Bloomberg, 3/25/20)
2020 Mar 24, Japan’s NHK public television reported that PM Shinzo Abe will propose a one-year postponement for the Tokyo Olympics during talks with IOC President Thomas Bach.
(AP, 3/24/20)
2020 Mar 24, Libya reported its first case of coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/25/20)
2020 Mar 24, Mozambican immigration officers found 64 dead bodies in a shipping container on the back of a lorry that had crossed into Mozambique from Malawi. There were 14 survivors.
(BBC, 3/24/20)
2020 Mar 24, Netherlands saw the number of deaths rise by 63 to 276. The national tally of confirmed COVID-19 cases increased by 17% to 5,560.
(Good Morning America, 3/25/20)
2020 Mar 24, Pakistani PM Imran Khan announced a 1trn rupee ($7bn) support package, cutting fuel prices and earmarking money for the poor as a national lockdown continued due to the coronavirus pandemic.
(Econ, 3/28/20, p.36)
2020 Mar 24, Russia has so far reported 495 cases of the coronavirus. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said the outbreak in the capital was much worse than official figures showed.
(Reuters, 3/24/20)
2020 Mar 24, Sierra Leone declared a 12-month state of emergency to help deal with the spread of the coronavirus., despite not having a single confirmed case.
(https://tinyurl.com/yd9vww62)(Econ, 3/28/20, p.41)
2020 Mar 24, In South Africa coronavirus cases leapt to 554, the most of any country in Africa. 43 of Africa's 54 countries now have cases, with the total at 1,788. Thirteen countries have reported 58 deaths.
(AP, 3/24/20)
2020 Mar 24, In South Korea police revealed the identity of a man accused of running a range of porn channels on a Telegram chat app. Cho Jumin (24) had charged up to 30,000 subscribers between $200 and $1,200, most of which was collected in bitcoin, for access to his "nth rooms".
(Econ, 3/28/20, p.34)
2020 Mar 24, Spain announced a record daily rise of 6,584 new coronavirus infections, bringing the overall total to 39,673. The number of deaths also jumped by a record number of 514 to 2,696. The Defense Ministry said army troops disinfecting nursing homes have found some residents living in squalor among the infectious bodies of people that authorities suspect have died from the new coronavirus. Spain's health ministry reported 514 deaths from the novel coronavirus in the past 24 hours.
(AP, 3/24/20)(Good Morning America, 3/24/20)
2020 Mar 24, Switzerland's Federal Office of Public Health said the country has nearly 9,000 confirmed coronavirus infections and 90 deaths.
(Reuters, 3/24/20)
2020 Mar 24, Thailand PM Prayuth Chan-ocha announced that his cabinet has agreed to declare a state of emergency to implement stricter measures to control the spread of the novel coronavirus. The one-month state of emergency takes effect March 26. There were just under 900 diagnosed cases of the virus in the country.
(Good Morning America, 3/24/20)
2020 Mar 24, The UN top envoy for Syria called for a nationwide ceasefire to allow for a better response to the threat of the novel coronavirus. The government in Damascus has so far only reported one case of COVID-19.
(AFP, 3/24/20)
2020 Mar 24, Forces from Yemen's Houthi movement blocked a UN-chartered ship carrying representatives of the internationally recognized government from leaving Hodeidah port. The UN has been holding meetings between the warring parties on board the ship for months.
(Reuters, 3/24/20)
2020 Mar 25, The US Justice Department announced federal charges against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his top deputies for crimes related to narco-terrorism, money laundering and drug trafficking.
(CBS News, 3/25/20)
2020 Mar 25, US lawmakers finally agreed on a mammoth economic relief package, buoying stock markets around the world. President Donald Trump said he wants to see the country get back to business in a matter of weeks, over the objections of public health experts. The US Senate unanimously approved the “Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act’’ (CARES Act), a bi-partisan bill to provide financial relief to individuals and businesses impacted by the coronavirus. The aid measure would send direct payments of $1,200 to Americans earning up to $75,000, substantially expand help for the jobless, and provide hundreds of billions of dollars in loans to businesses affected by the pandemic.
(AP, 3/25/20)(NY Times, 3/26/20)
2020 Mar 25, US coronavirus infections continued to climb rapidly and passed the 55,000 mark, with deaths approaching 800. More than 438,000 people worldwide have been infected and the number of dead closed in on 20,000.
(AP, 3/25/20)(Good Morning America, 3/25/20)
2020 Mar 25, US Navy and Marine Corps service members in Guam were ordered to break their own quarantine to set up makeshift shelters for US troops coming off a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, where an outbreak of the novel coronavirus was rapidly spreading within the hulls of the ship.
(The Daily Beast, 3/26/20)
2020 Mar 25, The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said it would extend its prior conditional regulatory relief from disclosure requirements for public companies affected by the coronavirus outbreak.
(Reuters, 3/25/20)
2020 Mar 25, A US federal judge ordered the US Army Corps of Engineers to conduct a full environmental review of the Dakota Access pipeline, nearly three years after it began carrying oil in June, 2017.
(SFC, 3/26/20, p.A3)
2020 Mar 25, Arizona State University engineering professor Junseok Chae was reported missing after he didn't return home from work. His body was found in July the Northwest Regional Landfill in Surprise, Arizona. Two teenagers, extradited from Louisiana, were booked on suspicion of murder.
(NBC News, 7/24/20)
2020 Mar 25, California reported 2,998 confirmed cases of the coronavirus.
(Econ, 3/28/20, p.30)
2020 Mar 25, Officials in six San Francisco Bay Area counties said school will remain closed until May 4 due to the coronavirus pandemic.
(SFC, 3/26/20, p.B1)
2020 Mar 25, Louisiana reported 827 confirmedcases of coronavirus.
(SFC, 3/27/20, p.A5)
2020 Mar 25, Miami, Wisconsin, Vermont joined a growing list of places where residents must stay home. At least 23 states have enacted policies to close nonessential businesses in an effort to slow the spread of novel coronavirus on US soil.
(Good Morning America, 3/25/20)
2020 Mar 25, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz ordered state residents in nonessential jobs to stay at home.
(SFC, 3/26/20, p.A5)
2020 Mar 25, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said his state's infections are doubling every three days, threatening to swamp the available intensive care units. The state has 26,000 infections and more than 200 deaths. At least 192 of those fatalities have occurred in NYC.
(AP, 3/25/20)(Good Morning America, 3/25/20)
2020 Mar 25, New York state issued a directive to send recovering coronavirus patients to already vulnerable nursing homes. The directive said no resident shall be denied re-admission or admission to a nursing home solely based on confirmed or suspected COVID-19. On May 10 Gov. Andrew Cuomo reversed the directive, which had been intended to help free up hospital beds for the sickest patients as cases surged.
(AP, 5/21/20)
2020 Mar 25, Pennsylvania lawmakers voted to delay the state's primary election to June 2 due to the coronavirus pandemic.
(SFC, 3/26/20, p.A5)
2020 Mar 25, CVS Health said its pharmacy benefit management (PBM) unit was working to set up measures against the hoarding of malaria drug hydroxychloroquine, which is being tested as a potential treatment for the coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/25/20)
2020 Mar 25, In Afghanistan a lone Islamic State gunman rampaged through a Sikh house of worship in the heart of Kabul, killing 25 worshippers and wounding eight. Pakistani national Aslam Farooqi, aka Abdullah Orakzai, was arrested in April for his involvement in the attack.
(AP, 3/25/20)(SSFC, 4/12/20, p.A4)
2020 Mar 25, Bolivia issued a decree establishing a lockdown due to the coronavirus. The decree criminalized individuals who incite noncompliance and misinform or cause uncertainty to the population.
(Econ., 5/16/20, p.26)
2020 Mar 25, The Botswana Energy Regulatory Authority (BERA) said Botswana Power Corporation (BPC) will increase electricity tariffs by 22% from April 1, in a bid to boost revenues for the loss-making state utility.
(Reuters, 3/25/20)
2020 Mar 25, Brazil recorded more than 2,500 cases of coronavirus and 59 deaths.
(AP, 3/26/20)
2020 Mar 25, Britain passed the Coronavirus Act, granting the government emergency powers to handle the COVID-19 pandemic.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronavirus_Act_2020)(Econ., 7/6/20, p.46)
2020 Mar 25, It was reported that nearly half a million people in Britain have filed welfare benefit claims in the past nine days, a sign of how the government's shutdown of much of the economy to slow the spread of coronavirus is hitting incomes.
(Reuters, 3/25/20)
2020 Mar 25, Britain’s Prince Charles (71) of Wales became the latest high-profile infection of a pandemic that has infiltrated all walks of life and paralyzed a continent.
(AP, 3/25/20)
2020 Mar 25, Bulgaria imposed a temporary entry ban on trucks from more than 65 countries that plan to pass through the Balkan state en route to Turkey, after Turkey imposed stringent coronavirus restrictions on truck drivers.
(Reuters, 3/25/20)
2020 Mar 25, China's Hubei province, where the outbreak was first spotted late last year, started lifting its lockdown.
(AP, 3/25/20)
2020 Mar 25, In Egypt a trailer-truck smashed into multiple cars stopped on a freeway late today, killing 15 people and injuring a dozen in Cairo.
(AP, 3/25/20)
2020 Mar 25, France said it is pulling out its military forces from Iraq as its forces are increasingly called upon to help fight the coronavirus at home.
(AP, 3/25/20)
2020 Mar 25, Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government secured emergency spending, unlocking a historic rescue package designed to cushion the blow of the coronavirus pandemic. The Bundesrat, or upper house of parliament, will vote on March 27.
(Bloomberg, 3/25/20)
2020 Mar 25, In Germany some 32,705 patients have been confirmed with the coronavirus, up from 28,942 a day earlier. So far 154 have died, compared with 118 a day earlier.
(Bloomberg, 3/25/20)
2020 Mar 25, Hungary said it has banned the commercial export of hydroxychloroquine sulfate, an ingredient used in drugs for coronavirus treatment in several countries.
(Reuters, 3/25/20)
2020 Mar 25, India began a 21-day lockdown. PM Narendra Modi warned that if he didn't act now, the coronavirus could set the world's largest democracy back decades. Everything but essential services like supermarkets were closed. India has reported only about 512 cases because of limited testing. At least 9 deaths have been reported.
(AP, 3/24/20)(AP, 3/25/20)
2020 Mar 25, India said it had banned the export of hydroxychloroquine and formulations of the malaria drug while experts test its efficacy in helping treat patients infected with coronavirus.
(AP, 3/25/20)
2020 Mar 25, Iran said it will ban intercity travel within days as it finally gets tough with the coronavirus that has killed more than 2,000 people in one of the world's deadliest outbreaks.
(AFP, 3/25/20)
2020 Mar 25, In Iran US Navy veteran Michael White was hospitalized in a ward for coronavirus patients and has experienced fever, fatigue, a cough and shortness of breath since his furlough last week. White was requesting a humanitarian evacuation to the United States for medical treatment.
(AP, 3/25/20)
2020 Mar 25, Israel's Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein abruptly resigned, dealing a blow to PM Benjamin Netanyahu and deepening the country's political turmoil as the embattled leader tries to cling to power amid a fast-spreading outbreak of the coronavirus and a looming corruption trial.
(AP, 3/25/20)
2020 Mar 25, In Kosovo a majority of deputies in the parliament voted to snuff out the government of Albin Kurti, a radical reformer, ostensibly over a declaration of a state of emergency owing to covid-19.
(Economist, 4/4/20, p.41)
2020 Mar 25, Clashes between rival Libyan forces for control of Tripoli escalated as militias allied with the UN-supported government based in the country's capital launched an offensive on a military base held by their rivals.
(AP, 3/25/20)
2020 Mar 25, In Mali unidentified gunmen kidnapped Soumaila Cisse and members of his campaign team in an area controlled by extremists groups linked to al-Qaida. Cisse's bodyguard died of injuries sustained during the abduction.
(https://tinyurl.com/vnvbsw2)(SFC, 3/27/20, p.A2)
2020 Mar 25, Mexico's state of Baha California reported 16 confirmed cases of the coronavirus.
(Econ, 3/28/20, p.30)
2020 Mar 25, Air Namibia said that all domestic and inter-African flights will be suspended effective March 27 until April 20. The airline said it will remain available to offer charter flights for humanitarian purposes, as well as airlifts of pharmaceutical supplies and consumables.
(Reuters, 3/25/20)
2020 Mar 25, In the Netherlands the number of confirmed coronavirus cases rose by 852 to 6,412. Deaths rose by 80 to 356.
(Reuters, 3/25/20)
2020 Mar 25, The Financial Times reported that North Korean officials have sought urgent help from international contacts to increase coronavirus testing in a nation that could see its dilapidated health care system be crushed by an outbreak.
(Bloomberg, 3/25/20)
2020 Mar 25, Communist guerrillas in the Philippines said they would observe a cease-fire in compliance with the UN chief's call for a global halt in armed clashes during the coronavirus pandemic. By the end of April the NPA said they would not extend the ceasefire and would return to violence.
(AP, 3/25/20)(Econ., 6/20/20, p.50)
2020 Mar 25, Romania's Pres. Klaus Iohannis said his government will postpone monthly loan repayments for a period of up to 9 months to help domestic borrowers hit by the coronavirus crisis. Romania reported 144 new infections to an overall of 906 cases and 13 deaths.
(Reuters, 3/25/20)
2020 Mar 25, Russian President Vladimir Putin said he was postponing a nationwide vote on constitutional changes that would allow him to extend his rule due to the worsening situation with coronavirus. Russian authorities reported 163 more virus cases in the country since the day before, bringing the national total to 658.
(AP, 3/25/20)
2020 Mar 25, Human Rights Watch reported that Saudi military forces have committed grave abuses against civilians in an eastern province of Yemen over the past year, including torture, forced disappearances and arbitrary detention.
(AP, 3/25/20)
2020 Mar 25, In South Africa the coronavirus caseload rose past 700 as the country got ready to go on lockdown on March 27.
(AP, 3/25/20)
2020 Mar 25, Spain suffered its deadliest day since the outbreak of the coronavirus. The total number of fatalities surged by 738 to 3,434.
(Bloomberg, 3/25/20)
2020 Mar 25, Sudan’s defense minister, Gen. Gamal al-Din Omar (60), died of a heart attack while on an official visit to neighboring South Sudan.
(AP, 3/25/20)
2020 Mar 25, The Swiss government said it was expanding its border controls to include all countries in the Schengen open border zone to help protect people from coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/25/20)
2020 Mar 25, Switzerland said it has introduced temporary restrictions on the export of protective equipment to head off shortages among medical staff and others fighting the coronavirus outbreak.
(Reuters, 3/25/20)
2020 Mar 25, Taiwan reported 235 cases of the coronavirus and just two deaths.
(Econ, 3/28/20, p.35)
2020 Mar 25, Turkish officials said prosecutors have formally charged two former aides of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and 18 other Saudi nationals over the 2018 killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.
(AP, 3/25/20)
2020 Mar 25, Cliver Alcalá, a retired Venezuelan army general, publicly revealed details of a plot to kidnap Pres. Maduro.
(Econ., 5/16/20, p.17)
2020 Mar 25, Vietnam's health ministry reported an additional seven coronavirus cases, taking the country's tally to 141, though it reported no deaths.
(Reuters, 3/25/20)
2020 Mar 25, Zimbabwe's public hospital doctors and nurses went on strike over a lack of protective gear as the coronavirus begins to spread in a country whose health system has almost collapsed.
(AP, 3/25/20)
2020 Mar 26, President Trump said he planned to label different areas as “high risk, medium risk or low risk," as part of guidelines to help states determine quarantine and distancing measures. He also reiterated his desire to start opening up parts of the country soon.
(NY Times, 3/27/20)
2020 Mar 26, The US State Department announced rewards for information leading to the arrest or conviction of various Venezuelan nationals, including President Nicolas Maduro who Washington aims to push out of power.
(Reuters, 3/26/20)
2020 Mar 26, The US military said it has decided it will stop providing some of the more granular data about coronavirus infections within its ranks, citing concern that the information might be used by adversaries as the virus spreads.
(Reuters, 3/26/20)
2020 Mar 26, The US Labor Dept. reported that a record 3.8 million American filed for first-time unemployment last week.
(SFC, 3/27/20, p.A1)
2020 Mar 26, The newly established US Space Force launched its first national security satellite from Cape Canaveral. The nearly $1 billion satellite is the sixth and final one in the US military's Advanced Extrememly High Frequency series.
(SFC, 3/27/20, p.A3)
2020 Mar 26, The US Environmental Protection Agency relaxed pollution rules, allowing power plants, factories and other facilities to monitor themselves for an undetermined period.
(NY Times, 3/27/20)
2020 Mar 26, In the United States deaths due to the coronavirus passed 1,050. The number of US coronavirus infections climbed above 82,000, surpassing the national tallies of China and Italy. The global death toll from the virus climbed past 21,000 and the number of infections has surpassed 472,000.
(AP, 3/26/20)(The Telegraph, 3/27/20)
2020 Mar 26, In the SF Bay Area confirrmed cases of coronavirus topped 1,400 with at least 32 deaths.
(SFC, 3/27/20, p.A1)
2020 Mar 26, Lee Guittar (b.1931), former editor-publisher of the San Francisco Examiner, died at his home in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. He was involved in the 1990 launch of We/Mbl, a short-lived partnership between Hearst and Izvestia to publish a daily newspaper in both English and Russian to be circulated in both countries.
(SFC, 3/30/20, p.B2)
2020 Mar 26, As of today anyone arriving in Hawaii was required to undergo a mandatory 14-day self-quarantine to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
(SFC, 3/30/20, p.A4)
2020 Mar 26, Louisiana reported the number of coronavirus cases in the state leapt 28% overnight. Louisiana has surpassed 2,300 people known to be infected, with 86 residents dead.
(AP, 3/27/20)
2020 Mar 26, NY state Gov. Andrew Cuomo said his state has become the nation's epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic. Cuomo says Congress' $2 trillion stimulus bill has "failed to meet the governmental need." New York has seen 385 deaths from COVID-19 and that number is expected to continue to rise.
(AP, 3/26/20)
2020 Mar 26, Scientists announced the discovery of Dineobellator notohesperus, a two-legged meat-eater that was relatively small - around 7 feet (2 meters) long and 3 feet (1 meter) tall at the hi