Timeline 2021 April - June
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2021 Apr 1, The US Supreme Court allowed the Federal Communication Commission to loosen local media ownership restrictions, handing a victory to broadcasters in a ruling that could facilitate industry consolidation as consumers increasingly move online.
(Reuters, 4/1/21)
2021 Apr 1, US Major League Baseball began. Most teams played for Game 1 of what is expected to be a full 162-game season.
(NY Times, 4/2/21)
2021 Apr 1, California to date had 3,645,574 cases of coronavirus and 58,821 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 422,717 cases and 5,926 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 30,535,374 with the death toll at 553,084.
(sfist.com, 4/1/21)
2021 Apr 1, Denver-based Frontier Airline and its private owners hoped to raise $570 million before costs from their IPO after pricing 30 million shares at $19.
(AP, 4/1/21)
2021 Apr 1, Apple Inc Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook became the latest corporate leader to speak out against the state of Georgia's new voting restrictions, which many critics say targets Blacks and other racial minorities.
(Reuters, 4/1/21)
2021 Apr 1, Kansas's statewide mask mandate came to an end under a new law that makes it more difficult for health officials to keep COVID-19 precautions in place.
(SFC, 4/2/21, p.A6)
2021 Apr 1, In a unanimous ruling, the Massachusetts Supreme Court expanded the definition of the term adultery to apply to a spouse engaged in same-sex infidelity.
(AP, 4/2/21)
2021 Apr 1, It was reported that infections and hospitalizations in Michigan have risen sharply in recent weeks, giving it more recent cases per capita than any other state. Officials blamed a more contagious variant and a premature return to prepandemic behaviors. Officials confirmed the state's first case of a variant identified in Brazil.
(NY Times, 4/1/21)(SFC, 4/2/21, p.A6)
2021 Apr 1, In Texas seven sheriff’s officers in Collin County were fired in connection with the March 14 death of Marvin D. Scott III, a 26-year-old Black man who died after being restrained at the county jail.
(https://tinyurl.com/9js5y7s4)(NY Times, 4/1/21)
2021 Apr 1, Virginia’s Supreme Court ruled that the city of Charlottesville could remove statues of two Confederate generals.
(NY Times, 4/1/21)
2021 Apr 1, A new study found that American farmers are using smaller amounts of better targeted pesticides, but these are harming pollinators, aquatic insects and some plants far more than decades ago.
(AP, 4/1/21)
2021 Apr 1, In Afghanistan the Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the killing of a policewoman in eastern Nangarhar province earlier today. The statement said that she was working with the “apostate" Afghan security services.
(AP, 4/2/21)
2021 Apr 1, UK charity Oxfam said it has suspended two members of staff in the Democratic Republic of Congo over allegations of sexual exploitation and bullying.
(BBC, 4/1/21)
2021 Apr 1, Chile said it will close its borders for the month of April to slow the spread of the coronavirus and stop the influx of its variants, as cases continue to soar despite one of the world's fastest vaccination rates.
(Reuters, 4/1/21)
2021 Apr 1, It was reported that a wave of African swine fever outbreaks this year has wiped out at least 20% of the breeding herd in northern China.
(Reuters, 4/1/21)
2021 Apr 1, Ecuadorean President Lenin Moreno declared a 30-day state of exception in eight of the country's 24 provinces, which includes a curfew, due to a spike in coronavirus infections and associated deaths. Ecuador has more than 330,000 infections and 16,877 deaths confirmed and probable by COVID-19.
(Reuters, 4/2/21)
2021 Apr 1, It was reported that the European Union has asked India to allow it to buy 10 million doses of AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine from Serum Institute of India.
(Reuters, 4/1/21)
2021 Apr 1, France's PM Jean Castex defended new nationwide measures to combat a resurgent coronavirus in France that include closing schools for at least three weeks and putting in place a month-long domestic travel ban.
(AP, 4/1/21)
2021 Apr 1, Germany’s disease control agency reported 24,300 newly confirmed cases in the past day, and 201 deaths. Chancellor Angela Merkel called on citizens to help ease the strain on nurses and doctors caring for the rising number of COVID-19 patients by respecting pandemic rules over Easter.
(AP, 4/1/21)
2021 Apr 1, Seven of Hong Kong’s veteran pro-democracy leaders were found guilty of unauthorized assembly, a verdict seen by their supporters as a severe assault on the freedom of speech and other civil liberties that once were core to the city’s identity.
(NY Times, 4/1/21)
2021 Apr 1, Italy reported 501 coronavirus-related deaths against 467 the day before, while the daily tally of new infections decreased to 23,649 from 23,904.
(Reuters, 4/1/21)
2021 Apr 1, Japan designated Osaka and two other areas for new virus control steps as infections there rise less than four months before the Tokyo Olympics.
(SFC, 4/2/21, p.A6)
2021 Apr 1, The OPEC oil cartel and allied countries said that they have decided to add gradually add back some 2 million barrels per barrel per day of oil production from May to July, moving cautiously in pace with the recovery of the global economy from the COVID-19 pandemic.
(AP, 4/1/21)
2021 Apr 1, Russia’s embassy in North Korea said the country is suffering severe shortages of medicines and necessary goods amid the coronavirus pandemic. It said fewer than 290 foreigners remain in Pyongyang.
(AP, 4/1/21)
2021 Apr 1, Slovakia's Pres. Zuzana Caputova appointed a new Cabinet under PM Eduard Heger following the resignation of PM Igor Matovic's government.
(SFC, 5/5/21, p.A6)
2021 Apr 1, It was reported that South Africa's health regulator has approved Johnson & Johnson's COVID-19 vaccine, paving the way for large-scale deliveries of the shot the government has put at the heart of its immunization plans.
(Reuters, 4/1/21)
2021 Apr 1, Spain’s Madrid region halted COVID-19 vaccinations at health centers for four days so medical staff can rest over the Easter holiday, despite pleas from the national government not to halt the fight against surging infections.
(AP, 4/1/21)
2021 Apr 1, In Tunisia a female suicide bomber killed herself and her baby during counterterrorism operations in a mountainous zone in struggling interior provinces. Two other Islamic extremists were killed in the security operations in Kasserine province.
(AP, 4/2/21)
2021 Apr 1, The UN Security Council late today strongly condemned the use of violence against peaceful protesters in Myanmar.
(AP, 4/2/21)
2021 Apr 1, Vietnam appealed to diplomats from the United States, European Union and Japan to help it secure supplies of COVID-19 vaccines, as part of efforts to acquire the 150 million doses needed to cover its adult population.
(Reuters, 4/2/21)
2021 Apr 2, President Biden spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for the first time since taking office as US and NATO officials warned of a Russian military buildup near eastern Ukraine.
(Axios, 4/2/21)
2021 Apr 2, The United States and Iran said that they would begin negotiations through intermediaries next week to try to get both countries back into an accord limiting Iran’s nuclear program.
(AP, 4/2/21)
2021 Apr 2, Pres. Joe Biden lifted sanctions imposed by Donald Trump on two top officials of the Int'l. Criminal Court.
(SSFC, 4/4/21, p.A6)
2021 Apr 2, US Capitol Police officer William Evans, an 18-year veteran of the force, died following an attack at the Capitol building this afternoon. A second officer was injured. Noah Green (25) rammed his car into two officers before hitting a barricade. Green then exited the vehicle with a knife and lunged at an officer. An officer then shot the suspect, who died at a hospital.
(NBC News, 4/2/21)(SFC, 4/6/21, p.A4)
2021 Apr 2, The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention gave people who are fully vaccinated against COVID-19 the green light to travel within the US without getting tested or self-quarantining.
(The Week, 4/3/21)
2021 Apr 2, Rob Manfred, commissioner of Major League Baseball, pulled the 2021 All-Star Game out of suburban Atlanta in a rebuke over a new Georgia voting law that critics say will disenfranchise Black voters.
(NY Times, 4/2/21)
2021 Apr 2, California set the stage for a literal stage-setting that could see resumption of NBA games and live entertainment performances in most counties beginning April 15.
(AP, 4/2/21)
2021 Apr 2, California to date had 3,652,111 cases of coronavirus and 59,210 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 423,294 cases and 5,948 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 30,602,678 with the death toll at 553,979.
(sfist.com, 4/2/21)
2021 Apr 2, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) announced an executive order prohibiting government entities in the state from issuing COVID-19 vaccine "passports" or "other standardized documentation for the purpose of certifying an individual's COVID-19 status to a third party." DeSantis argued that vaccinations are private information.
(NBC News, 4/2/21)
2021 Apr 2, In Afghanistan roadside bombs killed at least five civilians and wounded seven others.
(AP, 4/2/21)
2021 Apr 2, Britain's Department for Transport said the number of countries on its “red list" will reach 39 when the latest restrictions take effect in England beginning April 9. International arrivals will be banned from four more countries — Bangladesh, Kenya, Pakistan and the Philippines — amid concerns over new virus variants.
(AP, 4/2/21)
2021 Apr 2, Mainland China reported 26 new COVID-19 cases, up from nine a day earlier. Officials in the country's southwest linked a local outbreak to Myanmar. The border city of Ruili began a 5-day drive to vaccinate its entire population of 300,000 people. 16 cases have been confirmed there since March 30.
(Reuters, 4/3/21)(SFC, 4/3/21, p.A4)
2021 Apr 2, Medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said a new measles outbreak has flared up in the Democratic Republic of Congo just eight months after authorities declared an end to the worst known outbreak in the country's history.
(Reuters, 4/2/21)
2021 Apr 2, The G7 group of leading economic powers condemned the killing of civilians, sexual and gender based violence, indiscriminate shelling and the forced displacement of residents of Tigray and Eritrean refugees.
(BBC, 4/2/21)
2021 Apr 2, German-based Giesecke+Devrient (G+D), which supplies raw materials, supplies and system components for making Myanmar's kyat banknotes, said it was suspending all deliveries to the state-owned security printer, Security Print Works.
(AP, 4/2/21)
2021 Apr 2, Italy reported 481 coronavirus-related deaths against 501 the day before, while the daily tally of new infections decreased to 21,932 from 23,649. Italy has registered 110,328 deaths linked to COVID-19 since its outbreak emerged in February last year.
(Reuters, 4/2/21)
2021 Apr 2, In Japan 446 new infections were reported in Tokyo. In Osaka, a record 666 cases were reported.
(Reuters, 4/3/21)
2021 Apr 2, Kenya ordered an immediate suspension on private importations of vaccines citing fears that it may lead to counterfeit inoculations getting into the country. Kenya's government said the country's positivity rate jumped from 2.6% at the end of January to 19.1% on April 2.
(AP, 4/3/21)
2021 Apr 2, A fierce attack on a UN peacekeeping base in northern Mali killed four peacekeepers from Chad and at least 23 attackers, and injured another 34 peacekeepers.
(https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/04/1088982)
2021 Apr 2, Myanmar's wireless broadband internet services were shut down by order of the military. Protesters continued to defy the threat of lethal violence to oppose the junta's takeover.
(AP, 4/2/21)
2021 Apr 2, The Netherlands temporarily suspended use of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine for people under 60 following the death of a woman who had received a shot.
(Reuters, 4/2/21)
2021 Apr 2, Niger's Mohamed Bazoum (61) was sworn in as president after failed coup. His main rival, Mahamane Ousmane, has rejected the election result and claimed there was fraud.
(AP, 4/2/21)
2021 Apr 2, In Northern Ireland 27 police officers were injured and eight people were arrested during riots late today in Belfast and Londonderry. Police said they came under “sustained attack" from a large group of young people throwing stones, bottles and fireworks. Tensions have flared as some members of Northern Ireland's legislature sought to censure two dozen politicians from the Irish republican Sinn Fein party who attended the June funeral of Bobby Storey, a former head of intelligence for the Irish Republican Army.
(AP, 4/4/21)
2021 Apr 2, Russian human rights activists released a report that chronicles alleged war crimes and violations of international humanitarian law during the 10-year conflict in Syria.
(AP, 4/2/21)
2021 Apr 2, In Russia a Moscow court fined Twitter for not taking down calls encouraging minors to take part in unauthorized rallies. The court ordered Twitter to pay fines adding up to about $117.000.
(SFC, 4/3/21, p.B2)
2021 Apr 2, A South Korean bank said it has temporary closed its branch in Yangon and was considering bringing its South Korean employees back home after security forces fatally shot one of its Myanmar employees.
(AP, 4/2/21)
2021 Apr 2, Syria’s Kurdish-led forces ended a five-day sweep inside a sprawling camp in the country's northeast housing families and supporters of the Islamic State group. They arrested 125 extremists, including those blamed for dozens of crimes in recent months in al-Hol.
(AP, 4/2/21)
2021 Apr 2, A train derailed in Taiwan, killing 48 people and injured at least 198 others. A truck had slid down onto the tracks from a nearby construction site on the mountainous coast of eastern Hualien county. The unmanned truck’s emergency brake was not properly engaged.
(AP, 4/4/21)
2021 Apr 2, Turkey began administering Pfizer and BioNTech's COVID-19 shots, introducing a second vaccine in its campaign that began in mid-January, as new cases reached record highs.
(Reuters, 4/2/21)
2021 Apr 3, Supporters of Donald Trump who thought they were sending a single donation were charged over and over by his campaign operation. A Times investigation found that the charges were part of an intentional scheme to boost revenue to Mr. Trump’s struggling presidential campaign.
(NY Times, 4/3/21)
2021 Apr 3, Business Insider reported that phone numbers and personal information of half a million Facebook users may have been stolen and posted online. The breach reportedly took place in 2019 because of a software vulnerability.
(SSFC, 4/4/21, p.A12)
2021 Apr 3, As of March 13, the B.1.1.7 coronavirus variant, which walloped Britain and is wreaking havoc on Europe, accounted for about 27 percent of new cases in the US, up from just 1 percent in early February.
(NY Times, 4/3/21)
2021 Apr 3, California to date had 3,652,911 cases of coronavirus and 59,210 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 423,630 cases and 5,950 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 30,668,826 with the death toll at 554,779.
(sfist.com, 4/3/21)
2021 Apr 3, An Asian woman was stabbed to death in a “random" attack whilst walking her dogs in California, but detectives are not investigating it as a hate crime. Ke Chieh Meng (64) was found in the La Sierra neighborhood of the city of Riverside, outside Los Angeles. She was taken to hospital and treated for wounds to her stomach, but died of her injuries. Police arrested a 23-year-old transient woman on suspicion of murder.
(AP, 4/5/21)
2021 Apr 3, It was reported that Amazon.com Inc has apologized to US Representative Mark Pocan, admitting to scoring an "own goal" in its initial denial of his suggestion that its drivers were sometimes forced to urinate in bottles during their delivery rounds.
(Reuters, 4/3/21)
2021 Apr 3, Argentina's Pres. Alberto Fernandez tested positive for COVID-19 with mild symptoms. He had received doses of Russia's Sputnik V vaccine on Jan. 21 and Feb. 11.
(SFC, 4/5/21, p.A5)
2021 Apr 3, Australia said it will continue its inoculation program with AstraZeneca PLC, after a blood clotting case raised concern about the safety of the vaccine.
(Reuters, 4/3/21)
2021 Apr 3, Australian fashion icon Carla Zampatti (78), known for elegant designs and efforts to empower women over more than half a century, died after a fall in Sydney.
(AP, 4/3/21)
2021 Apr 3, Canada's Ontario province entered a 4-week shutdown because of a 3rd surge of coronavirus infections fueled by more contagious virus variants.
(SSFC, 4/4/21, p.A9)
2021 Apr 3, Mainland China reported 21 new COVID-19 cases, down from 26 cases a day earlier.
(Reuters, 4/3/21)
2021 Apr 3, In Dubai videos and photographs depicting over a dozen naked women, lined up on a balcony while being filmed in Dubai’s upscale Marina neighborhood in broad daylight, splashed across social media. Police soon arrested a group of people on charges of public debauchery. Police in Dubai soon arrested 11 Ukrainian women and a Russian man for their involvement in the nude photo shoot.
(AP, 4/4/21)(AP, 4/6/21)
2021 Apr 3, The Suez Canal Authority announced that all 422 ships stranded by the previously grounded Ever Given have passed through the canal, ending the backlog caused by the container ship getting stuck horizontally in March.
(BBC, 4/3/21)
2021 Apr 3, Egypt, Ethiopia, Sudan resumed talks on a giant dam Ethiopia is building on the Nile River’s main tributary.
(AP, 4/3/21)
2021 Apr 3, The Ethiopian Foreign Ministry said Eritrean forces have started withdrawing from Ethiopia's Tigray region.
(Reuters, 4/4/21)
2021 Apr 3, France reported that 5,273 people were in intensive care units (ICU) for COVID-19, a rise of 19 from the previous day, as the country entered its third national lockdown to help combat the pandemic. French hospitals have brought in extra staff for the Easter holiday weekend to cope with growing numbers of virus patients, while travelers converged on train stations and highways to flee big cities before new nationwide restrictions take hold.
(AP, 4/3/21)(Reuters, 4/3/21)
2021 Apr 3, At least 22 members of Indian security forces were killed by Maoist fighters in the tribal-dominated Chhattisgarh state during an anti-insurgency operation. The death toll was the heaviest for Indian security forces battling the far-left guerrillas since 2017.
(Reuters, 4/4/21)
2021 Apr 3, Prince Hamzah, the half-brother of Jordan's King Abdullah II, said he has been placed under house arrest and accused the country's “ruling system" of incompetence and corruption, exposing a rare rift within the ruling monarchy of a close Western ally.
(AP, 4/3/21)
2021 Apr 3, The death toll in Myanmar continued to mount as security forces opened fired on anti-coup protesters amid the military's months-long crackdown on dissent. Security forces killed at least two people and injured seven others as they opened fire on protesters in Monywa.
(AP, 4/3/21)
2021 Apr 3, The Philippines reported 12,576 new coronavirus infections, putting further strain on the healthcare system. President Rodrigo Duterte extended a strict lockdown in the capital region and adjacent provinces by at least one week to try to contain a renewed surge in infections.
(Reuters, 4/3/21)
2021 Apr 3, It was reported that the Russian government has approved extending an agreement on cooperation in space with the United States until December 2030.
(Reuters, 4/3/21)
2021 Apr 3, In Somalia simultaneous large explosions were heard in and around two army bases, with the military confirming at least nine of its people killed but asserting “heavy losses" among the attackers. The al-Shabab extremist group claimed responsibility.
(AP, 4/3/21)
2021 Apr 3, Syria's government said primary schools around Syria will close down indefinitely next week amid a severe increase of coronavirus cases in the war-torn country, while universities will suspend classes for only two weeks and high schools will remain open.
(AP, 4/3/21)
2021 Apr 3, In Thailand at least three people were killed when a 3-story house collapsed in Bangkok following a fire. An unknown number of people were still trapped under the rubble.
(SSFC, 4/4/21, p.A8)
2021 Apr 3, Ukraine said it has approved China's Sinovac vaccine to fight the coronavirus pandemic, after the country recorded a record rise in new COVID-19 cases for the second day in a row.
(Reuters, 4/3/21)
2021 Apr 4, "Godzilla vs. Kong" muscled its way to a pandemic-era box office record, giving Hollywood studios and theater owners alike hope that people are ready to return to the movies after a year of watching Netflix at home.
(Variety.com, 4/4/21)
2021 Apr 4, Stanford claimed the NCAA women’s basketball championship with a win over Arizona, 54-53. It’s the team’s first title since 1992.
(NY Times, 4/4/21)
2021 Apr 4, California to date had 3,654,128 cases of coronavirus and 59,243 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 424,091 cases and 5,951 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 30,681,592 with the death toll at 554,813.
(sfist.com, 4/4/21)
2021 Apr 4, In Chicago at least seven people were shot to death on Easter Sunday in separate attacks across the city.
(Chicago Tribune, 4/5/21)
2021 Apr 4, Australians celebrated Easter Sunday in a relatively unrestricted manner as the country reported no new locally acquired coronavirus cases.
(Reuters, 4/4/21)
2021 Apr 4, In Bangladesh a ferry sank late today after being hit by a cargo ship in the Shitalakkhya River. 25 bodies were soon recovered and nine people remained missing.
(SFC, 4/6/21, p.A4)
2021 Apr 4, Bulgarians voted in a parliamentary election widely seen as a referendum on the country's center-right PM Boyko Borissov (61) after months of anti-government protests and amid a surge in coronavirus infections. With 72% of ballots counted, the ruling GERB party had 25.8% of the vote.
(AP, 4/4/21)(AP, 4/5/21)
2021 Apr 4, The European Union called for the departure of all foreign forces and mercenaries from Libya, describing it as a “precondition" for a return to stability in the war-torn country.
(AP, 4/4/21)
2021 Apr 4, The French city of Sarcelles, north of Paris, was among those whose vaccination center stayed open Easter Sunday, amid mushrooming infections and demand.
(AP, 4/4/21)
2021 Apr 4, Germany announced plans to allow people vaccinated against Covid-19 certain privileges over their unvaccinated peers, in a significant step towards introducing so-called "vaccine passports".
(The Telegraph, 4/4/21)
2021 Apr 4, India reported 93,249 new cases in the last 24 hours. Maharashtra state, which accounts for less than a tenth of India's population, accounted for a record 49,447 new cases. PM Narendra Modi chaired a high-level meeting to review the COVID-19 situation and vaccination program.
(Reuters, 4/4/21)
2021 Apr 4, In eastern Indonesia landslides and flash floods from torrential rains killed at least 140 people and displaced thousands across several islands. Dozens were still missing.
(AP, 4/4/21)(SFC, 4/8/21, p.A3)
2021 Apr 4, Robert A. Mundell (88), a Nobel Prize-winning economist, died at his home near Siena, Italy. He was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1999 “for his analysis of monetary and fiscal policy under different exchange rate regimes and his analysis of optimum currency areas".
(NY Times, 4/5/21)
2021 Apr 4, Japanese public broadcaster NHK said around 70% of coronavirus patients tested at a Tokyo hospital last month carried a mutation known for reducing vaccine protection. The E484K mutation, nicknamed "Eek" by some scientists, was found in 10 of 14 people who tested positive for the virus at Tokyo Medical and Dental University Medical Hospital in March.
(Reuters, 4/4/21)
2021 Apr 4, Jordan's Deputy PM Ayman Safadi said that King Abdullah's half-brother and former heir Prince Hamza had liaised with foreign parties over a plot to destabilize the country and had been under investigation for some time.
(Reuters, 4/4/21)
2021 Apr 4, More than 100,000 doses of Russia's Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine arrived at Tripoli's Mitiga airport, the first shipment to reach Libya.
(Reuters, 4/4/21)
2021 Apr 4, In Myanmar demonstrators took to the streets holding painted eggs. Security forces opened fire on protesters in Pyinmana killing at least one person.
(SFC, 4/5/21, p.A2)
2021 Apr 4, New Zealand hunters resumed their annual tradition of shooting invasive rabbits over the Easter weekend after a 4-year break. 11,968 rabbits were shot in the fundraising event that began more than 25 years ago.
(SSFC, 4/11/21, p.A18)
2021 Apr 4, In Sicily the irresistible call of a lavish Easter feast landed prominent mobster Giuseppe Calvaruso (44) behind bars after authorities arrested him as he was returning to the Mediterranean island from Brazil to celebrate with family.
(The Telegraph, 4/5/21)
2021 Apr 4, Singaporean blogger Leong Sze Hian said he had raised S$133,000 ($98,840) via crowdfunding on social media to cover damages he was ordered to pay PM Lee Hsien Loong in a defamation case filed by the city-state's leader. In 2018 Hian shared on Facebook an online news article that linked the premier to a financial scandal at Malaysia's state fund 1MDB.
(Reuters, 4/4/21)
2021 Apr 4, Spaniards lined up for shots on Easter Sunday in Barcelona and other points around the country, but Madrid halted vaccinations at local health centers to give staff a break.
(AP, 4/4/21)
2021 Apr 4, In Sri Lanka Caroline Jurie, who won Mrs. Sri Lanka in 2019 and went on to win the Mrs. World title, took the crown from 2021 winner Pushpika De Silva. Jurie claimed De Silva couldn't win Mrs. Sri Lanka because she was divorced. Police soon arrested Jurie after she allegedly injured another contestant during the Mrs. Sri Lanka beauty pageant.
(CBS News, 4/8/21)
2021 Apr 4, Pope Francis urged countries in his Easter message to quicken distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, particularly to the world's poor, and called armed conflict and military spending during a pandemic "scandalous".
(Reuters, 4/4/21)
2021 Apr 5, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen urged the adoption of a minimum global corporate income tax, an effort to offset any disadvantages that might arise from the Biden administration's proposed increase in the US corporate tax rate.
(AP, 4/5/21)
2021 Apr 5, A White House official said the US government's removal of AstraZeneca PLC's COVID-19 shot production from Emergent BioSolutions Inc's Baltimore manufacturing facility does not suggest it has any concerns about the vaccine's safety or effectiveness and will not impact its output of doses. The US Department of Health and Human Services ordered Johnson & Johnson to take charge of production at Emergent and for Emergent to stop making AstraZeneca's shots after the contract manufacturer made an error that ruined 15 million J&J COVID-19 vaccine doses.
(Reuters, 4/5/21)
2021 Apr 5, A nonpartisan US Senate official ruled that Democrats can pass multiple bills over the next two years with a straight Senate majority rather than a filibuster-proof 60 votes.
(NY Times, 4/6/21)
2021 Apr 5, The US Supreme Court brought an end to a legal fight over former President Donald Trump's effort to block critics from following his now-frozen Twitter account, deciding the dispute was moot and throwing out a lower court's decision that found he had violated constitutional free speech rights.
(Reuters, 4/5/21)
2021 Apr 5, The US Supreme Court handed Alphabet Inc's Google a major victory, ruling 6-2 that its use of Oracle Corp's software code to build the Android operating system that runs most of the world's smartphones did not violate federal copyright law.
(Reuters, 4/5/21)
2021 Apr 5, It was announced that novelist James McBride, former US poet laureate Natasha Trethewey and science fiction great Samuel R. Delaney are among this year's winners of Anisfield-Wolf awards for books that confront racism and help promote diversity. The Anisfield-Wolf awards were founded in 1935 and are managed by the nonprofit Cleveland Foundation.
(AP, 4/5/21)
2021 Apr 5, Strong economic data boosted the Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 to record highs. The Dow gained 1.1 percent to close at 33,527. The S&P 500 rose by 1.4 percent, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq jumped by 1.7 percent.
(Reuters, 4/5/21)
2021 Apr 5, Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas broke with other Republicans and vetoed a bill that would have banned some medications and surgery for transgender minors.
(NY Times, 4/5/21)
2021 Apr 5, California to date had 3,656,939 cases of coronavirus and 59,293 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 424,657 cases and 5,975 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 30,775,094 with the death toll at 555,381.
(sfist.com, 4/5/21)
2021 Apr 5, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) said that he would not resign from Congress in the face of allegations that he "slept with" a 17-year-old girl.
(AP, 4/5/21)
2021 Apr 5, It was reported that Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte has tested positive for COVID-19 a few days after receiving his first dose of a coronavirus vaccine.
(AP, 4/6/21)
2021 Apr 5, Texas-based Baylor Univ. won its first men’s college basketball championship, handing Gonzaga its first loss of the season, 86 to 70.
(NY Times, 4/5/21)
2021 Apr 5, In Texas six people were found dead in an apparent murder-suicide in a suburban Dallas home.
(SFC, 4/7/21, p.A4)
2021 Apr 5, Bangladesh began a one-week lockdown to curb the spread of the coronavirus.
(SFC, 4/5/21, p.A5)
2021 Apr 5, The UN mission in Bosnia called for urgent action to stop violent pushbacks and collective expulsions of refugees, asylum-seekers and migrants along the Croatian border following an incident last week involving 50 “visibly exhausted" men. The men said they had their cellphones, money and belongings taken away when they tried to cross the border and that they were beaten with sticks back into Bosnia.
(AP, 4/5/21)
2021 Apr 5, East Timor received its first batch of coronavirus vaccine, arranged by the global vaccine sharing scheme COVAX. The former Portuguese colony has detected 714 cases of the coronavirus, most of which it said were imported, and no casualty so far.
(Reuters, 4/5/21)
2021 Apr 5, It was reported that authorities in Ghana are trying to find out what has caused more than 60 dead dolphins to wash up on several beaches.
(BBC, 4/5/21)
2021 Apr 5, Retail stores across most of Greece were allowed to reopen despite an ongoing surge in COVID-19 infections, as the country battles to emerge from deep recession.
(AP, 4/5/21)
2021 Apr 5, India reported a record rise in COVID-19 infections, becoming the second country after the United States to post more than 100,000 new cases in a day, as politicians stage massive election rallies raising fears of further spreading the virus.
(Reuters, 4/5/21)
2021 Apr 5, India's Cadila Healthcare Ltd said it has sought approval from local regulators to use Pegylated Interferon alpha-2b, a Hepatitis C drug, as a treatment for COVID-19 following promising interim results from a late-stage trial.
(Reuters, 4/5/21)
2021 Apr 5, Iran's state TV announced that authorities arrested several people on charges of spying for Israel and other nations.
(AP, 4/5/21)
2021 Apr 5, In southwestern Iran a man (50) shot to death his 9-year-old son and seven relatives of his two wives before killing himself in the city of Ahvaz.
(AP, 4/5/21)
2021 Apr 5, Japan's Subaru Corp said that the automaker will shut its Yajima plant between April 10 and 27 due to a chip shortage, affecting 10,000 vehicles.
(Reuters, 4/5/21)
2021 Apr 5, Jordan's estranged Prince Hamza said in a voice recording released today that he would disobey orders by the army not to communicate with the outside world after he was put under house arrest and accused of trying to destabilize the country. Prince Hamzah issued a statement hours after mediation, saying he was committed to the constitution.
(Reuters, 4/5/21)(BBC, 4/5/21)
2021 Apr 5, Mozambique's military said it has regained full control of the coastal town of Palma, more than a week after it was raided by militant Islamists.
(AP, 4/5/21)
2021 Apr 5, The Eemslift Hendrika, a Netherlands-registered special ship designed to carry boats on its deck, went adrift in an area where the North Sea and Norwegian Sea meet, some 40-50 km (25-31 miles) off the shore and the city of Alesund. The crew of 12 was evacuated to shore by helicopter after the ship sent a distress call following a power outage in its main engine in heavy seas.
(AP, 4/7/21)
2021 Apr 5, In Nigeria 1,844 inmates escaped from a prison after it was attacked by gunmen in the south-eastern town of Owerri, Imo state.
(BBC, 4/5/21)
2021 Apr 5, Police and politicians in Northern Ireland appealed for calm after a third night of violence that saw Protestant youths start fires and pelt officers with bricks and gasoline bombs.
(AP, 4/5/21)
2021 Apr 5, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law allowing him to potentially hold onto power until 2036, a move that formalizes constitutional changes endorsed in last year's popular vote.
(AP, 4/5/21)
2021 Apr 5, Russia said it would extend a punitive slowdown of Twitter until May 15 though it acknowledged the US social media company had speeded up deletion of banned content.
(Reuters, 4/5/21)
2021 Apr 5, Spain reported 2,247 new cases and 85 deaths. In total, there’s been 3.3 million cases and more than 75,000 confirmed deaths.
(AP, 4/6/21)
2021 Apr 5, The Sudanese doctors’ committee in West Darfur said at least 18 people were killed and 54 wounded in clashes this weekend between Arabs and non-Arabs. Clashes continued today.
(AP, 4/5/21)
2021 Apr 5, Turkish authorities detained 10 former admirals after a group of 103 retired top navy officers issued a midnight statement that government officials tied to Turkey’s history of military coups. The retired naval officers had signed a statement declaring their commitment to the 1936 international treaty that regulates shipping through the Bosporus and Dardanelles straits.
(AP, 4/5/21)
2021 Apr 5, The UN said a fierce attack on a UN peacekeeping base in northern Mali last week killed four peacekeepers and at least 23 attackers, and injured another 34 peacekeepers.
(AP, 4/6/21)
2021 Apr 5, Venezuela's main academies of medicine and science urged renewed efforts to vaccinate the South American nation's population against the coronavirus amid a spike in infections that has led the government to extend lockdown measures. Venezuela reported 15 deaths and 1,786 new infections, the highest since the start of the pandemic. It has reported 166,123 cases and 1,662 associated deaths.
(Reuters, 4/5/21)
2021 Apr 6, Washington and Iran began indirect talks in Vienna aimed at salvaging the nuclear deal.
(The Telegraph, 4/6/21)
2021 Apr 6, The Arkansas legislature, which Republicans control, overrode the Republican governor’s veto and enacted a law banning some medications and surgeries for transgender people under 18.
(AP, 4/7/21)
2021 Apr 6, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) announced that his state aimed to fully reopen its economy on June 15, saying it was time to start "planning for our lives post-pandemic".
(AP, 4/6/21)
2021 Apr 6, California to date had 3,660,561 cases of coronavirus and 59,424 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 425,109 cases and 5,989 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 30,843,737 with the death toll at 556,486.
(sfist.com, 4/6/21)
2021 Apr 6, Florida, Michigan, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania together reported 44% of the nation's new COVID-19 infections, or nearly 197,500 new cases, in the latest available seven-day period.
(AP, 4/6/21)
2021 Apr 6, It was reported that Florida's Democratic US Representative Alcee Hastings (84) has died, further narrowing the party's majority in the lower chamber of Congress.
(Reuters, 4/6/21)
2021 Apr 6, In Maryland Navy hospital corpsman Fantahun Girma Woldesenbet (38) was killed at the Fort Detrick military base after shooting two people at Riverside Technical Park in Frederick.
(NBC News, 4/6/21)
2021 Apr 6, Jazz saxophonist Sonny Simmons (87) died in New York.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonny_Simmons)(SSFC, 5/9/21, p.F1)
2021 Apr 6, Wyoming's Republican Gov. Mark Gordon signed a law creating a $1.2 million fund for an initiative that marks the latest attempt by state leaders to help coal in the state that accounts for the bulk of US coal production, which is down by half since 2008.
(AP, 5/2/21)
2021 Apr 6, Intel Corp introduced its newest flagship data center microprocessor, hoping its in-house manufacturing operations will help it navigate a chip shortage to better compete against rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc's (AMD) faster chips.
(Reuters, 4/6/21)
2021 Apr 6, New research suggested the protection the Moderna vaccine gives against COVID-19 lasts for at least six months.
(AP, 4/6/21)
2021 Apr 6, Taco Bell said it wants to hire at least 5,000 employees in one day, and is adding benefits for some general managers to sweeten the pot as restaurants struggle to hire enough workers to keep up with a surge in sales amid a broader US economic recovery.
(Reuters, 4/6/21)
2021 Apr 6, ComicConnect.com, an online auction and consignment company, said the issue of Action Comics #1 (1938), the comic book that introduced Superman to the world, went for $3.25 million in a private sale.
(AP, 4/6/21)
2021 Apr 6, It was reported that Yahoo, which is owned by Verizon Media, will be shutting down its question-and-answer service and deleting its archives on May 4.
(NY Times, 4/6/21)
2021 Apr 6, YouTube said about 1.6 million views on YouTube out of every 1 billion are of a video that violates its content policies, about even with a year ago.
(Reuters, 4/6/21)
2021 Apr 6, Brazil reported 4,195 COVID-19 fatalities bringing the total to 336,947. Cases surged by 86, 979 over the past 24 hours pushing that total to 13.1 million.
(SFC, 4/7/21, p.A5)
2021 Apr 6, More than 1,000 Bosnians marched in the capital Sarajevo demanding government resignation over poor handling of the coronavirus pandemic. Bosnia has had among the highest death rates in Europe, with nearly 7,000 dead in the country of 3.3 million.
(AP, 4/6/21)
2021 Apr 6, PM Justin Trudeau said Canada's hospitalizations are surging, intensive care beds are filling up and COVID-19 variants are spreading as a third wave of the pandemic sweeps across much of the country.
(Reuters, 4/6/21)
2021 Apr 6, It was reported that Cyprus is getting protected status for its prized halloumi, giving its producers the sole right to sell the rubbery cheese in the European Union. The protected designation of origin (PDO) status will come into effect from October.
(Reuters, 4/6/21)
2021 Apr 6, Egypt’s Foreign Ministry said the latest round of talks over Ethiopia’s massive dam project failed to make progress after Addis Abba rejected a Sudanese proposal to include international mediators.
(AP, 4/6/21)
2021 Apr 6, The European Union's top officials met with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara. The visit came after EU leaders agreed to offer Turkey new incentives despite ongoing concerns about the country's backslide on democratic and human rights, and its energy ambitions in the Mediterranean Sea.
(AP, 4/6/21)
2021 Apr 6, In Germany Hans Küng (93), a Roman Catholic theologian, died at his home in Tübingen. He was an early colleague and friend of the future Pope Benedict XVI but later fell foul of the Vatican for challenging church doctrine and became a vocal critic of the pontiff.
(AP, 4/6/21)
2021 Apr 6, An Iranian prosecutor said ten officials have been indicted over the 2020 military shootdown of a Ukrainian passenger plane that killed 176 people.
(AP, 4/6/21)
2021 Apr 6, Israel’s Pres. Reuven Rivlin handed PM Benjamin Netanyahu the difficult task of trying to form a government from the country’s splintered parliament, giving the embattled leader a chance to prolong his lengthy term in office while he stands trial on corruption charges.
(AP, 4/6/21)
2021 Apr 6, Israeli troops shot and killed a Palestinian man early today at a temporary vehicle checkpoint in the occupied West Bank near Jerusalem. The man's wife, who was in the car with him and was wounded by the gunfire, said the couple followed the soldiers' instructions and posed no threat.
(AP, 4/6/21)
2021 Apr 6, An apparent Israeli mine attack damaged an Iranian military vessel in the Red Sea, an escalation of recent skirmishes.
(NY Times, 4/7/21)
2021 Apr 6, Italy's Premier Mario Draghi visited Libya and held talks with PM Abdul Hamid Dbeibah. This was Draghi's first trip abroad since taking office.
(AP, 4/6/21)
2021 Apr 6, In Italy restaurant owners and others angry at having their businesses shut for weeks due to pandemic lockdown measures clashed with police during a protest outside Parliament in Rome.
(AP, 4/6/21)
2021 Apr 6, It was reported that Japan has extended its own sanctions against North Korea for another two years as Pyongyang continues to develop its nuclear weapons without any progress in resolving the abductions of Japanese nationals.
(AP, 4/6/21)
2021 Apr 6, Myanmar police and soldiers arrested Zarganar (60), the country's best-known comedian, as the government continued to crack down on people they accuse of helping incite nationwide protests.
(SFC, 4/7/21, p.A4)
2021 Apr 6, Dutch police arrested a suspect in the theft last year of two valuable paintings by Vincent van Gogh and Frans Hals from different museums. The paintings remained missing.
(AP, 4/6/21)
2021 Apr 6, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un acknowledged his country was facing the “worst-ever situation" as he addressed thousands of grassroots members of his ruling party during a major political conference in Pyongyang.
(AP, 4/7/21)
2021 Apr 6, Pakistan reported 103 deaths from COVID-19, one of the highest single-day fatalities since January.
(AP, 4/6/21)
2021 Apr 6, In Russia a number of supporters of Alexei Navalny were detained outside his penal colony east of Moscow after they demanded access to the jailed Kremlin critic, who is on hunger strike demanding proper medical treatment.
(The Telegraph, 4/6/21)
2021 Apr 6, The Sri Lankan government lifted the one-year restrictions imposed on Sri Lankans, allowing entry into the country without prior approval but requiring quarantine. Sri Lanka has registered 93,595 total cases and 586 confirmed deaths.
(AP, 4/6/21)
2021 Apr 6, Tanzania's new Pres. Samia Suluhu Hassan said she will form a technical committee to advise her about the scope of COVID-19 infections in the country and how to respond to the pandemic.
(AP, 4/6/21)
2021 Apr 6, It was reported that Trinidad and Tobago PM Keith Rowley has tested positive for the coronavirus. The country has reported more than 8,000 coronavirus cases and 145 confirmed deaths.
(AP, 4/6/21)
2021 Apr 6, Ukraine’s military said that two of its servicemen were killed within 24 hours in the country's east, where Ukrainian forces have been fighting Russian-backed separatists since 2014 and where tensions have intensified in recent weeks.
(AP, 4/6/21)
2021 Apr 6, Two UN agencies warned that over 27 million people in Congo are suffering from acute hunger, a record high representing almost one-third of the conflict-wracked African nation’s estimated population of 87 million.
(AP, 4/6/21)
2021 Apr 6, The UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) said it plans to reduce troop numbers by seven percent this year, due to a drop in violence in the conflict-torn country.
(AP, 4/6/21)
2021 Apr 6, The UN said at least 56 people have been killed in four days of violence in Sudan's West Darfur region. Gunfire was reported in the city of El Geneina as people fled into Chad.
(AFP, 4/6/21)
2021 Apr 7, The Biden administration said that 25 million more stimulus payments worth a total of $36 billion had been sent out to Americans from the $1.9 trillion pandemic relief legislation.
(Reuters, 4/7/21)
2021 Apr 7, The Biden administration announced it would provide $235 million in US aid to the Palestinians, restarting funding for the United Nations agency supporting refugees and restoring other assistance cut off by then-President Donald Trump..
(Reuters, 4/7/21)
2021 Apr 7, US lawyers working to reunite migrant families that the Trump administration separated said they still could not find the parents of 445 children.
(NY Times, 4/7/21)
2021 Apr 7, The US National Institutes of Health said it had begun a mid-stage study to determine the risk of allergic reactions to COVID-19 vaccines made by Moderna Inc and Pfizer Inc.
(Reuters, 4/7/21)
2021 Apr 7, California to date had 3,661,898 cases of coronavirus and 59,483 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 425,465 cases and 5,994 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 30,920,837 with the death toll at 559,086.
(sfist.com, 4/7/21)
2021 Apr 7, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, signed a bill to expand voting rights. The state has a Republican legislature and a Democratic governor.
(AP, 4/7/21)
2021 Apr 7, In South Carolina Dr. Robert Lesslie, his wife and two of their grandchildren were among six people who were fatally shot in a home late today. Adams also killed two air-conditioning technicians working at the home. The next morning suspect Phillip Adams, a former NFL player, was found at a home near the shootings in the city of Rock Hill and was thought to have killed himself. The posthumous brain examination Adams revealed that he had an “unusually severe" form of C.T.E., a degenerative brain disease found in athletes and others with a history of repeated hits to the head.
(NY Times, 4/8/21)(Charlotte Observer, 4/8/21)(NY Times, 12/14/21)
2021 Apr 7, United Parcel Service said it has agreed to buy 10 electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft from Vermont-based startup Beta Technologies to speed up deliveries in small markets. The first 10 planes will start arriving in 2024.
(Reuters, 4/7/21)
2021 Apr 7, Scientists announced that evidence is mounting that the tiny subatomic muon seems to be disobeying the known laws of physics, a finding that would open a vast and tantalizing hole in our understanding of the universe.
(AP, 4/8/21)
2021 Apr 7, G20 finance officials agreed on a proposal to boost the resources of the International Monetary Fund by $650 billion as a way to provide more support to vulnerable countries struggling to deal with a global pandemic.
(AP, 4/7/21)
2021 Apr 7, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro said there would be “no national lockdown," ignoring growing calls from health experts a day after the nation saw its highest number of COVID-19 deaths in 24 hours since the pandemic began.
(AP, 4/7/21)
2021 Apr 7, Britain's Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunization (JCVI) said Britain should not give Oxford/AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine to under 30s where possible, due to a very rare side effect of blood clots in the brain.
(Reuters, 4/7/21)
2021 Apr 7, It was reported that HSBC is moving more than 1,200 staff in Britain to permanent working from home contracts, in one of the strongest indications yet of how banks are locking in changes to employees' work patterns as a result of the pandemic to cut costs.
(Reuters, 4/7/21)
2021 Apr 7, Cambodia said it is shutting its most popular tourist destination, the centuries-old Angkor temple complex, to visitors for two weeks to help curb the country’s coronavirus outbreak.
(AP, 4/8/21)
2021 Apr 7, It was reported that 21 players on the NHL’s Vancouver Canucks — nearly the whole team — have tested positive for COVID-19. Ontario Premier Doug Ford announced a plan to have mobile vaccine clinics target COVID-19 "hotspots" and high-risk worksites.
(NY Times, 4/7/21)(Reuters, 4/11/21)
2021 Apr 7, European and British medicine regulators said they had found possible links between AstraZeneca's coronavirus vaccine and reports of very rare cases of brain blood clots, in a setback for inoculation campaigns. An official said that the European drug regulator has received reports of 169 cases of a rare brain blood clot in people who received AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine, as the agency continued to stress that the benefits of the vaccination outweigh the risks.
(Reuters, 4/7/21)
2021 Apr 7, Kits for self-administered coronavirus tests began arriving in Greek pharmacies, with residents entitled to one a week free of charge as part of efforts to tackle a surge of coronavirus cases and hospitalizations.
(AP, 4/7/21)
2021 Apr 7, In Hungary shops and services were allowed to reopen after 2.5 million people received a first dose of a coronavirus vaccine, a benchmark the government set for when a gradual reopening could take place. Doctors questioned the government's decision to lift some lockdown restriction.
(AP, 4/8/21)
2021 Apr 7, Iran shattered its daily record for new infections for the second consecutive day as cases soared to 20,954, a worrisome trend after more than a year of the country battling the worst outbreak in the Middle East.
(AP, 4/7/21)
2021 Apr 7, Iraq’s PM Mustafa al-Kadhimi asked Iran's leaders to rein in Iran-backed militias in Iraq and in a strongly worded message to Tehran, suggested he would confront the factions.
(AP, 4/7/21)
2021 Apr 7, Iraq recorded 8,331 new virus cases within a 24-hour period, the highest figure since the ministry began keeping records at the onset of the pandemic last year.
(AP, 4/9/21)
2021 Apr 7, Italy reported 627 coronavirus-related deaths against 421 the day before, while the daily tally of new infections rose to 13,708 from 7,767 the day before.
(Reuters, 4/7/21)
2021 Apr 7, Doctors in Japan performed the world's first successful transplant of lung tissue from living donors to a patient with severe lung damage from COVID-19.
(SFC, 4/9/21, p.A6)
2021 Apr 7, Moroccan authorities decided to enforce a night-time curfew during the holy month of Ramadan because of a recent rise in COVID-19 cases, as scientists announced the discovery of a new, local variant of the virus.
(AP, 4/7/21)
2021 Apr 7, Myanmar security forces stormed the town of Kalay in the northwest where some residents had used homemade hunting rifles to form a self-defense force. Security forces killed at least 11 civilians and injured many others.
(AP, 4/8/21)
2021 Apr 7, Philippine health authorities allowed the use of Sinovac's COVID-19 vaccine for some senior citizens after initially limiting coverage to people aged 18-59 years, as the country battles one of Asia's worst coronavirus outbreaks.
(Reuters, 4/7/21)
2021 Apr 7, Russia’s foreign minister said Moscow and Islamabad will boost ties in the fight against terrorism, with Russia providing unspecified military equipment to Pakistan and the two holding joint exercises at sea and in the mountains.
(AP, 4/7/21)
2021 Apr 7, A lawyer for imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny (44), who has complained of serious back and leg pain in custody, said doctors have found him to be suffering from two spinal hernias.
(AP, 4/7/21)
2021 Apr 7, President Paul Kagame of Rwanda praised a new French report documenting France's role in the 1994 genocide as “a good thing," welcoming efforts in Paris to “move forward with a good understanding of what happened" 27 years after the massacres that shocked the world.
(AP, 4/7/21)
2021 Apr 7, Authorities in several Spanish regions ratcheted up COVID-19 restrictions to rein in a rising infection rate and prevent it from evolving into a fourth wave of contagion.
(Reuters, 4/7/21)
2021 Apr 7, The death toll from tribal violence that erupted over the weekend in Sudan's Darfur region climbed to 87 as a local medical group also reported attacks on healthcare workers in the area.
(AP, 4/7/21)
2021 Apr 7, The Swedish Medical Products Agency said the benefits of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine outweighed the risks after the EU drug regulator said it had found a possible link between the shot and rare blood clots.
(Reuters, 4/7/21)
2021 Apr 7, Tunisia said it is extending its nighttime curfew by three hours and tightening other restrictions ahead of Ramadan following an uptick of COVID-19 infections. The measure will apply from 7pm until 5am, from April 9 until at least April 30.
(AP, 4/8/21)
2021 Apr 7, A Turkish Air Force aerobatic jet crashed in central Turkey, killing its pilot.
(AP, 4/7/21)
2021 Apr 8, President Joe Biden and his Attorney General Merrick Garland announced limited measures to tackle gun violence in the United States, in what the White House described as a first step to curb mass shootings, community bloodshed and suicides.
(Reuters, 4/8/21)
2021 Apr 8, California to date had 3,666,689 cases of coronavirus and 59,733 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 425,940 cases and 6,008 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 31,002,247 with the death toll at 560,116.
(sfist.com, 4/8/21)
2021 Apr 8, In the SF Bay Area two dead whales washed ashore, joining two more that were discovered dead in area beaches since March 31. Of the four animals, two died from blunt force trauma from ship strikes.
(Reuters, 4/10/21)
2021 Apr 8, Bill Bonham (b.1949), improv artist and pitchman for Round Table Pizza, died at his home in San Francisco.
(SFC, 4/17/21, p.F1)
2021 Apr 8, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) announced that his state would sue the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to demand it let cruise ships that are vital to the tourist economy start operating again.
(The Week, 4/9/21)
2021 Apr 8, It was reported that New Jersey and women incarcerated in the state's only women's prison have reached a nearly $21 million settlement over longstanding allegations of abuse and harassment at the facility.
(AP, 4/8/21)
2021 Apr 8, It was reported that New York will offer one-time payments of up to $15,600 to undocumented immigrants who lost work during the pandemic and could not get unemployment benefits.
(NY Times, 4/8/21)
2021 Apr 8, In Texas Larry Winston (27) of Iola opened fire at a cabinet-making company where he worked, killing one person and wounding five others before shooting and wounding a state trooper. Bollin was arrested and charged with murder.
(SFC, 4/10/21, p.A4)
2021 Apr 8, General Motors and Ford said they would halt production or extend shutdowns already in place at several North American automobile plants due to an ongoing shortage of semiconductor chips.
(The Week, 4/9/21)
2021 Apr 8, The American author John Naisbitt (92) died at his home on Lake Woerthersee, Austria. His 1982 bestselling book “Megatrends: Ten New Directions Transforming Our Lives" was published in dozens of countries. He also founded the Naisbitt China Institute, a research institution studying the transformation of China and gave many lectures on future studies.
(AP, 4/10/21)
2021 Apr 8, Australia and the Philippines limited use of AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine, while the Africa Union dropped plans to buy the shot, dealing further blows to the company's hopes to deliver a vaccine for the world.
(Reuters, 4/8/21)
2021 Apr 8, Digital cash called DCash, created by Barbados-based fintech company Bitt, became available in St. Lucia, Antigua and Barbuda, Grenada and St. Kitts and Nevis.
(SFC, 4/9/21, p.B2)
2021 Apr 8, In Benin two people were killed in the town of Savè, when security forces broke up a protest just days ahead of presidential elections. Another six people suffered gunshot wounds.
(BBC, 4/11/21)
2021 Apr 8, It was reported that the UK's COVID-19 vaccination program is beginning to break the link between infection and serious illness or death. Britain's death toll from the pandemic is the highest in Europe at over 127,000.
(AP, 4/8/21)
2021 Apr 8, A senior leader of Egypt's outlawed Muslim Brotherhood group was convicted on terror charges and sentenced to life in prison. A Cairo court found Mahmoud Ezzat (76), the acting supreme guide of the country's oldest Islamist organization, guilty of terror acts that followed the 2013 military overthrow of Egypt's first democratically elected president, Mohammed Morsi.
(AP, 4/8/21)
2021 Apr 8, The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) accepted the Czech Republic's position on mandatory vaccinations for children rebuffing parents' complaints that the government violated their rights.
(Reuters, 4/8/21)
2021 Apr 8, India’s PM Narendra Modi received his second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine as the country hit another peak with 126,789 new cases reported in the past 24 hours.
(AP, 4/8/21)
2021 Apr 8, Iran hit a new coronavirus infection record for the third straight day, reporting 22,586 new cases as the country grapples with a severe spike following the Persian New Year holiday.
(AP, 4/8/21)
2021 Apr 8, Israel reportedly carried out a missile attack near the Damascus and its southern suburbs early today that wounded four soldiers.
(AP, 4/8/21)
2021 Apr 8, Israel's top court upheld a Cabinet minister's decision to temporarily block Oded Goldreich, a prominent academic, from receiving the country's highest honor after he called on the EU to halt funding for an Israeli university located in the occupied West Bank.
(AP, 4/8/21)
2021 Apr 8, Israel said it would formally reject the International Criminal Court's decision to launch a probe into potential war crimes against the Palestinians, denying that it has committed such crimes and saying the court lacks the jurisdiction to investigate.
(AP, 4/8/21)
2021 Apr 8, In Libya a shooting at the overwhelmed al-Mabani Collection and Return Center for migrants in Tripoli left one migrant dead and two others injured.
(AP, 4/10/21)
2021 Apr 8, Jihadi rebels in Mali kidnapped French journalist Olivier Dubois while he was working in the northern city of Gao. A video was released on May 5 that shows Dubois saying he was kidnapped by the al-Qaida-linked group JNIM.
(AP, 5/5/21)
2021 Apr 8, An information blackout under Myanmar's military junta worsened as fiber broadband service, the last legal way for ordinary people to access the internet, became intermittently inaccessible on several networks.
(AP, 4/8/21)
2021 Apr 8, Leaders in Northern Ireland called for calm and an end to the unrest that has rocked the country for nearly a week. Police used water cannons and riot gear to try and break up riots between rival unionist and nationalist gangs as they briefly smashed open the peace wall dividing the Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods.
(Axios, 4/8/21)(AP, 4/9/21)
2021 Apr 8, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un called for waging another “arduous march" to fight severe economic difficulties, for the first time comparing them to a 1990s famine that killed hundreds of thousands, while speaking to lower-level Workers' Party of Korea members.
(AP, 4/9/21)
2021 Apr 8, Russia called on Slovakia to return hundreds of thousands of doses of the Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine, citing contract violations, in an escalating row between the two countries after a Slovak watchdog raised doubts about the shot. Slovakia imported 200,000 doses of Sputnik V last month, despite a lack of EU regulatory approval.
(Reuters, 4/8/21)
2021 Apr 8, Naspers' Dutch-listed subsidiary Prosus NV sold a 2% stake in the Chinese gaming and social media giant in the world's largest-ever block trade, reducing its stake to 28.9%. Investors in Naspers Ltd, a South African multinational consumer Internet company, said they want proceeds from a $14.7 billion stake sale in its Tencent Holdings investment to go towards blockbuster acquisitions or a share buyback.
(Reuters, 4/8/21)
2021 Apr 8, In Sudan the death toll from tribal violence in the restive Darfur region climbed to 132 as looting continued.
(AP, 4/8/21)
2021 Apr 8, Syria received a planeload from the United Arab Emirates with food items and medical aid to help the war-torn country in its fight against the spread of the coronavirus.
(AP, 4/8/21)
2021 Apr 8, Syrian government forces fired a missile at a civilian vehicle in a rebel-held village in the country's northwest, killing seven people, including three children from the same family.
(AP, 4/9/21)
2021 Apr 8, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that the use of improvised explosive devices is increasing as conflicts become more urbanized and armed groups proliferate, and he urged nations to work together to curb the threat from those weapons as well as land mines and other remnants of war.
(AP, 4/8/21)
2021 Apr 9, US President Joe Biden proposed $14 billion in spending on initiatives to fight climate change in the 2022 budget, including large cash injections for environmental regulation and science research.
(Reuters, 4/9/21)
2021 Apr 9, President Biden created a 36-member bipartisan commission to spend the next six months examining the possibility of adding seats to the Supreme Court and imposing term limits for justices.
(The Week, 4/10/21)
2021 Apr 9, The US House Ethics Committee announced it would launch an investigation into Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and the allegations that he violated sex trafficking laws.
(The Week, 4/10/21)
2021 Apr 9, Efforts to unionize Amazon.com warehouse workers in Alabama were defeated by a more than 2-to-1 margin in a major win for the online retailer, but the union trying to organize workers said it will challenge the results, citing election interference. The final tally was 1,798 "no" votes and 738 "yes" votes.
(Reuters, 4/9/21)(NY Times, 4/9/21)
2021 Apr 9, The US Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that California can’t enforce coronavirus-related restrictions that have limited home-based religious worship including Bible studies and prayer meetings.
(AP, 4/9/21)
2021 Apr 9, California to date had 3,666,689 cases of coronavirus and 59,733 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 426,498 cases and 6,042 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 31,023,288 with the death toll at 560,315.
(sfist.com, 4/9/21)
2021 Apr 9, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear signed a partial ban on no-knock warrants after months of demonstrations set off by the fatal shooting of Breonna Taylor in her home during a botched police raid last year.
(AP, 4/9/21)
2021 Apr 9, The Navajo Nation issued a stay-at-home order for the weekend after reporting 26 more confirmed COVID-19 cases. The current death toll stood at 1,260.
(AP, 4/9/21)
2021 Apr 9, In NYC the famed amusement parks of Coney Island reopened under reduced capacity after being shuttered last year due to the coronavirus.
(SFC, 4/10/21, p.A7)
2021 Apr 9, Former Attorney General Ramsey Clark (93) died at his Manhattan home. He had served in the role for two-years in former President Lyndon Johnson's administration and filed the first lawsuit to force a school district to desegregate or else lose its federal aid just days after taking office.
(NY Times, 4/10/21)
2021 Apr 9, Grammy-nominated rapper DMX (50), born as Earl Simmons, died of cardiac arrest at his home in White Plains, NY. His first five albums all debuted at No. 1 on Billboard charts. DMX starred in the 1998 film "Belly" and appeared in 2000's "Romeo Must Die" with Jet Li and Aaliyah. He also starred in 2001's "Exit Wounds" with Steven Seagal and 2003's "Cradle 2 the Grave" with Li.
(AP, 4/9/21)
2021 Apr 9, Airlines pulled dozens of Boeing Max 737s out of service for inspections after the aircraft maker told them about a possible electrical problem, the latest setback for plane.
(AP, 4/9/21)
2021 Apr 9, It was reported that Uber Technologies Inc and Lyft Inc are spending millions of dollars to provide drivers with access to COVID-19 vaccines and offering tens of millions of free or discounted rides to vaccination sites for people in communities that lack access to transportation and healthcare services.
(Reuters, 4/9/21)
2021 Apr 9, The World Bank Group said it will have committed $2 billion in financing by the end of April for vaccine purchases, development and manufacturing and is working with more than 40 countries on this effort.
(Reuters, 4/9/21)
2021 Apr 9, Australia said that it has finalized a deal to buy an extra 20 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine as it rapidly pivots away from its earlier plan to rely mainly on the AstraZeneca vaccine.
(AP, 4/9/21)
2021 Apr 9, Prince Philip (99), Queen Elizabeth's husband for more than seven decades, died. He helped to modernize the British monarchy and steer the royal family through repeated crises.
(Reuters, 4/9/21)
2021 Apr 9, Britain said it had given 545,511 COVID vaccine doses on April 8, the highest daily total since April 1, while a further 60 people had died within 28 days of a positive test for the disease, raising this death toll to 127,040.
(Reuters, 4/9/21)
2021 Apr 9, Djibouti Pres. Ismail Omar Guelleh (73) won a 5th term as president.
(SSFC, 4/11/21, p.A7)
2021 Apr 9, French health officials said that people under 55 who received a first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine should get other vaccines for their second shot because of an extremely rare risk of a blood clotting disorder.
(AP, 4/9/21)
2021 Apr 9, Iran freed the MT Hankuk Chemi, a South Korean oil tanker it had held for months amid a dispute over billions of dollars seized by Seoul. The seizure was widely seen as an attempt to pressure Seoul to release some $7 billion in Iranian assets tied up in South Korean banks amid heavy American sanctions on Iran.
(AP, 4/9/21)
2021 Apr 9, A video began circulating online showing Israeli police punching Ofer Cassif, a member of parliament, and wrestling him to the ground at a protest against planned evictions in east Jerusalem. Cassif was taking part in a weekly protest in the mostly Palestinian neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, where rights groups say dozens of people are at risk of being evicted after a long court battle with Jewish settler groups.
(AP, 4/9/21)
2021 Apr 9, Security forces in Myanmar cracked down heavily again on protesters against the military's seizure of power, even as the ruling junta downplayed reports of state violence. At least 82 people were killed in Bago, about 100 km (60 miles) northeast of Yangon. An attack by government troops and police began before dawn and continued sporadically until after dark.
(AP, 4/9/21)(Axios, 4/10/21)
2021 Apr 9, Ousted Myanmar lawmakers urged the UN Security Council to take action against the military over a Feb. 1 coup as an independent think tank warned the 15 council members that the Asian state was on the brink of collapse. The US ambassador to the UN urged the international community to take “concrete action" against the military in Myanmar including an arms embargo and sanctions against its holding companies and those who profit from them.
(Reuters, 4/9/21)(AP, 4/9/21)
2021 Apr 9, Pakistani police said they found a mass grave containing the bodies of 16 coal miners who went missing in the country's northwest in 2011 and were believed abducted by militants.
(AP, 4/9/21)
2021 Apr 9, Puerto Rico said it would close all private and public schools for two weeks amid a surge in coronavirus cases.
(SFC, 4/10/21, p.A7)
2021 Apr 9, Russia said it fears the resumption of full-scale fighting in eastern Ukraine and could take steps to protect civilians there, a stark warning that comes amid a Russian troop buildup along the border.
(AP, 4/9/21)
2021 Apr 9, Samoa held elections. The upstart party of Fiame Naomi Mata'afa (64) tied the party of PM Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi. An independent candidate soon backed Mata'afa, who was scheduled to be sworn in as prime minister on May 24.
(SFC, 5/22/21, p.A3)
2021 Apr 9, In the eastern Caribbean the La Soufriere volcano erupted on St. Vincent following evacuation orders for some 16,000 people living in the red zone near the volcano.
(SFC, 4/10/21, p.A4)
2021 Apr 9, Thailand reported 559 new coronavirus infections, following increases of 405 and 334 new cases the previous two days.
(SFC, 4/10/21, p.A7)
2021 Apr 9, The image-sharing platform Pinterest appointed a legal representative in Turkey becoming the latest social media company to comply with a controversial social media law.
(AP, 4/9/21)
2021 Apr 10, Director Chloé Zhao won the top prize at the 73rd annual Directors Guild of America Awards for Nomadland. She is only the second woman, and the first woman of color, to earn the DGA award.
(The Week, 4/11/21)
2021 Apr 10, California to date had 3,670,264 cases of coronavirus and 59,910 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 427,341 cases and 6,052 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 31,085,251 with the death toll at 561,074.
(sfist.com, 4/10/21)
2021 Apr 10, In Florida former President Donald Trump staked his claim to the Republican Party in a closed-door speech to donors at his Mar-a-Lago resort, casting his populist policies and attack-dog politics as the key to future Republican success.
(AP, 4/10/21)
2021 Apr 10, Maryland lawmakers, overriding Gov. Larry Hogan’s vetoes, voted to limit police officers’ use of force, restrict the use of no-knock warrants and repeal the nation’s first Bill of Rights for law enforcement, taking sweeping action to address police violence after nationwide demonstrations following the death of George Floyd.
(NY Times, 4/10/21)
2021 Apr 10, Bitcoin rose above $60,000 to approach record highs, breaking out of a two-week tight range and propelled by talk of constrained new supplies against evidence of wider adoption. On March 13 Bitcoin hit a record $61,781.83 on Bitstamp exchange, just after US President Joe Biden signed his $1.9 trillion fiscal stimulus package into law.
(Reuters, 4/10/21)
2021 Apr 10, Gao Fu, the director of the Chinese Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said China's COVID-19 vaccines do not have very high protection rates.
(AP, 4/11/21)
2021 Apr 10, China's antitrust regulator doled out a record 18.2 billion yuan fine, about 12% of the company's fiscal 2020 net income, to e-commerce giant Alibaba.
(Bloomberg, 4/10/21)
2021 Apr 10, China's corruption watchdog called on online video-sharing platforms to take action against "mukbang" shows, in which people livestream themselves eating - or drinking - excessively, saying such content encourages food waste. Mukbang videos originated in South Korea and have become increasingly popular in China.
(Reuters, 4/10/21)
2021 Apr 10, French lawmakers voted late today to abolish domestic flights on routes than can be covered by train in under two-and-a-half hours, as the government seeks to lower carbon emissions even as the air travel industry reels from the global pandemic.
(Reuters, 4/11/21)
2021 Apr 10, In Indonesia a magnitude 6.0 earthquake killed at least eight people, injured 23 others and damaged more than 300 buildings on the main island of Java.
(AP, 4/10/21)
2021 Apr 10, Iran said it has begun mechanical tests on its newest advanced nuclear centrifuge, even as the five world powers that remain in a foundering 2015 nuclear deal with Iran attempt to bring the US back into the agreement.
(AP, 4/10/21)
2021 Apr 10, Iran began a 10-day lockdown amid a fourth wave of coronavirus infections, a worrisome trend after more than a year of the country battling the Middle East's worst outbreak.
(AP, 4/10/21)
2021 Apr 10, Italy reported 344 coronavirus-related deaths against 718 the day before, while the daily tally of new infections fell to 17,567 from 18,938 the day before. Italy has registered 113,923 deaths linked to COVID-19 since its outbreak emerged in February last year.
(Reuters, 4/10/21)
2021 Apr 10, Libya's new unity government launched a long-delayed COVID-19 vaccination program after receiving some 160,000 vaccine doses over the past week, with PM Abdulhamid Dbeibeh receiving his jab on live television.
(Reuters, 4/10/21)
2021 Apr 10, In Myanmar an estimated 60 civilians were killed overnight outside of Yangon, Myanmar, as protests against the military's Feb. 1 coup continued across the country. The AAPP and Myanmar Now news outlet said that 82 people were killed during the protest.
(The Week, 4/10/21)(Reuters, 4/10/21)
2021 Apr 10, In Romania marchers took to the streets of Bucharest to protest restrictive measures to fight the spread of COVID-19 even as new daily infections passed the milestone of 1 million confirmed COVID-19 cases. Romania has so far recorded 25,006 coronavirus deaths.
(AP, 4/10/21)
2021 Apr 10, A New York Times analysis of mortality data shows deaths in Russia during the pandemic last year were 28 percent higher than normal — an increase in mortality greater than in the United States and most countries in Europe.
(NY Times, 4/10/21)
2021 Apr 10, Saudi Arabia executed three soldiers it accused of committing “high treason," without elaborating on which enemy the kingdom believed the men aided.
(AP, 4/10/21)
2021 Apr 10, Protesters in Serbia rallied demanding that the government protect the environment in a Balkan nation that has seen record levels of air pollution and scores of other ecological problems following decades of neglect.
(AP, 4/10/21)
2021 Apr 10, In Somalia a suicide bomber detonated his explosives outside a cafe in the city of Baidoa, killing at least four people and wounding more than six others. The al-Qaida linked group al-Shabab claimed responsibility.
(AP, 4/10/21)
2021 Apr 10, Thailand said it plans to install 10,000 field-hospital beds in Bangkok, as the country strains to cope with a third wave of COVID-19 infections.
(Reuters, 4/10/21)
2021 Apr 10, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with Turkey’s Pres. Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s for discussions on bilateral relations.
(AP, 4/10/21)
2021 Apr 10, The United Arab Emirates named the next two astronauts in its space program, including the country's first female astronaut.
(AP, 4/10/21)
2021 Apr 11, California to date had 3,673,398 cases of coronavirus and 60,015 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 427,667 cases and 6,052 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 31,156,128 with the death toll at 561,811.
(sfist.com, 4/11/21)
2021 Apr 11, In Augusta, Georgia, Hideki Matsuyama (29) won The Masters, becoming the first Japanese man to win one of golf’s major titles.
(NY Times, 4/11/21)
2021 Apr 11, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan urged the Biden administration to ship extra vaccine doses to the state, where coronavirus cases are surging.
(AP, 4/12/21)
2021 Apr 11, In Minnesota Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old Black man, died after a police officer shot him during a traffic stop in a Minneapolis suburb. Hundreds of people took to the streets to protest. Police later said Officer Kim Potter fired her gun by accident, thinking it was her Taser.
(AP, 4/12/21)(NY Times, 4/13/21)
2021 Apr 11, Windsor, Virginia, officials announced that police officer Joe Gutierrez had been fired after an investigation into a traffic stop in which Gutierrez and another officer, Daniel Crocker, held an Army second lieutenant at gunpoint and pepper-sprayed him.
(The Week, 4/12/21)
2021 Apr 11, Greenpeace said it has uncovered widespread use of illegal driftnets in the northwest Indian Ocean, decimating marine life in what is one of the world's most ecologically vulnerable fishing grounds.
(Reuters, 4/11/21)
2021 Apr 11, Benin held presidential elections. President Talon, who had promised to leave office after a single term, sought a 2nd term.
(BBC, 4/11/21)
2021 Apr 11, Nomadland director Chloé Zhao continued her award sweep when she became the first woman of color to win the best director prize at the annual British Academy Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) awards.
(CBS News, 4/11/21)
2021 Apr 11, Bulgarian PM Boyko Borissov said the EU was negotiating a new contract with Pfizer-BioNTech at a price of 19.5 euros ($23.22) per dose. The new contract would cover variants, meaning that the companies would offer enhanced shots if mutations of the coronavirus became prevalent.
(AP, 4/12/21)
2021 Apr 11, It was reported that Canada's Telesat is racing to launch a low-earth-orbit (LEO) satellite constellation to provide high-speed global broadband from space, pitting the satellite communications firm founded in 1969 against trailblazing billionaires, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos.
(Reuters, 4/11/21)
2021 Apr 11, Chad held presidential elections. President Idriss Deby was expected to win a sixth term. Most prominent opposition leaders have withdrawn from the race, alleging attacks by the security forces.
(AP, 4/11/21)
2021 Apr 11, Chinese health authorities reported 10 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 22 asymptomatic cases, bringing the country's total to 90,410, while the death toll remained unchanged at 4,636. The National Health Commission said China has administered 164.47 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines.
(Reuters, 4/11/21)
2021 Apr 11, Ecuador held runoff presidential elections. Former banker Guillermo Lasso won by half a percentage point over Andres Arauz, a protégé of former Pres. Rafael Correa.
(SFC, 4/13/21, p.A2)
2021 Apr 11, An Egyptian court convicted Ahmed Bassam Zaki, a former student at an elite university, of attempted rape and drug possession, sentencing him to eight years imprisonment atop a previous punishment for other sexual misconduct convictions.
(AP, 4/11/21)
2021 Apr 11, India banned the export of anti-viral drug Remdesivir and its active pharmaceutical ingredients as demand rocketed due to a record surge in COVID-19 infections, leading to a crippling shortages in many parts.
(Reuters, 4/11/21)
2021 Apr 11, In Indian-controlled Kashmir government forces killed five suspected rebels in two gunfights overnight. A former police officer was also killed in a separate attack.
(SFC, 4/12/21, p.A4)
2021 Apr 11, A "suspicious" blackout struck Iran's underground Natanz nuclear facility. Iran said that a problem with the electrical distribution grid of the Natanz site had caused an incident. The country's nuclear chief Ali Akbar Salehi said the accident was the result of a "terrorist" act.
(AP, 4/11/21)
2021 Apr 11, Iran reported its highest single-day death toll from COVID-19 this year, bringing the country’s total deaths in the pandemic to nearly 64,500. Iran recorded 258 new deaths in the last 24 hours.
(AP, 4/11/21)
2021 Apr 11, Italy reported 331 coronavirus-related deaths against 344 the day before. The daily tally of new infections fell to 15,746 from 17,567 the day before.
(Reuters, 4/11/21)
2021 Apr 12, Japan said it had decided to gradually release tons of treated wastewater from the ruined Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant into the ocean.
(SFC, 4/13/21, p.A4)
2021 Apr 11, Mexican ruling party state candidate Felix Salgado, accused of rape, said he will not allow elections in his home state of Guerrero unless he is allowed to run. Salgado has had his candidacy canceled by regulatory authorities on other grounds.
(AP, 4/11/21)
2021 Apr 11, The Myanmar military’s bloody crackdown on the nationwide resistance to its rule showed no sign of easing, with a human rights group reporting that the death toll across the country had passed 700.
(NY Times, 4/12/21)
2021 Apr 11, South Korean authorities said they will move ahead with a coronavirus vaccination drive this week, after deciding to continue using AstraZeneca PLC's vaccine for all eligible people 30 years old or over.
(Reuters, 4/11/21)
2021 Apr 11, South Korean battery makers, LG Energy Solution and SK Innovation, reached an agreement to settle disputes over electric-vehicle technology.
(Reuters, 4/11/21)
2021 Apr 11, Spanish authorities said that they had recovered the bodies of four migrants from a boat along with 19 survivors who had taken the treacherous route from West Africa to the Canary Islands.
(AP, 4/11/21)
2021 Apr 11, Tanzania, Uganda and French oil company Total signed agreements on building a heated pipeline to carry crude oil from western Uganda to the Indian Ocean coast. Construction of the pipeline, which would be the world’s longest at 897 miles, is expected to begin this year.
(AP, 4/11/21)
2021 Apr 11, Thailand reported 967 new COVID-19 cases, its biggest daily jump, but no new deaths as the country deals with a third wave of infections and a highly contagious variant.
(Reuters, 4/11/21)
2021 Apr 11, The Ukrainian military said that a soldier was killed and another seriously wounded in artillery fire from Russia-backed separatist rebels.
(AP, 4/11/21)
2021 Apr 12, The Biden administration announced that it has reached deals with Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala to increase border enforcement, aiming to reduce migrant flows.
(AP, 4/12/21)
2021 Apr 12, The White House said it was prepared to send additional therapeutic treatments to the state of Michigan, which is experiencing a troubling number of COVID-19 cases, but did not promise more vaccine as the state has sought.
(Reuters, 4/12/21)
2021 Apr 12, The US Treasury Dept. said the government's budget deficit has surged to an all-time high of $1.7 trillion.
(SFC, 4/13/21, p.B2)
2021 Apr 12, San Francisco-based Salesforce.com said it would start allowing vaccinated employees to return to some of its offices, making it one of the first major US corporations to give vaccinated workers preferential treatment over those who have not taken the shot.
(Reuters, 4/12/21)
2021 Apr 12, A Los Angeles grand jury indicted former movie producer Harvey Weinstein (67) on four counts each of forcible rape and forcible oral copulation, two counts of sexual battery, and one count of sexual penetration by force.
(The Week, 4/13/21)
2021 Apr 12, California to date had 3,675,956 cases of coronavirus and 60,076 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 428,533 cases and 6,068 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 31,202,818 with the death toll at 562,096.
(sfist.com, 4/12/21)
2021 Apr 12, It was reported that Will Smith and director Antoine Fuqua have pulled production of their runaway slave drama “Emancipation" from Georgia over the state's recently enacted law restricting voting access.
(AP, 4/12/21)
2021 Apr 12, Hawaii's Gov. David Ige issued another emergency proclamation in response to the coronavirus pandemic that extends the statewide eviction moratorium until June 8.
(SFC, 4/13/21, p.A5)
2021 Apr 12, New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed legislation that will legalize recreational marijuana use and sales in the state, making it the seventh since last November to do so.
(AP, 4/12/21)
2021 Apr 12, New York's state pension fund said it is restricting investment in six Canadian oil sands companies because they have not shown they are prepared for a transition to a low-carbon future.
(Reuters, 4/12/21)
2021 Apr 12, In Ohio Miles Jackson (27) was fatally shot at Mount Carmel St. Ann’s Hospital in Westerville. The incident involved officers from Westerville and Columbus.
(NBC News, 4/15/21)
2021 Apr 12, In Tennessee gunfire started when police responded to a report that an armed student was in a school bathroom. A teenage boy was killed during the shooting at the Austin-East Magnet High School in Knoxville,. A police officer was also wounded.
(NBC News, 4/13/21)
2021 Apr 12, Cybersecurity company KnowBe4 Inc, backed by private-equity firm KKR & Co and funds affiliated with Goldman Sachs, said it was aiming for a valuation of up to $3 billion in its initial public offering in the United States. Florida-headquartered KnowBe4 was founded in 2010 by serial entrepreneur and cybersecurity expert Stu Sjouwerma.
(AP, 4/12/21)
2021 Apr 12, Uber Technologies Inc, PayPal Holdings Inc and Walgreens Inc said they have launched an $11 million fund to provide free ride-hail trips to US COVID-19 vaccination sites for people who lack access to transportation.
(Reuters, 4/12/21)
2021 Apr 12, Shops, outdoor dining, gyms and hairdressers reopened across England for the first time in months.
(NY Times, 4/12/21)
2021 Apr 12, UK trial results showed that treating COVID-19 patients at home with a commonly-used inhaled asthma drug called budesonide can speed up their recovery.
(AP, 4/12/21)
2021 Apr 12, Chinese regulators ordered Ant Group, a financial affiliate of e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding, to become a financial holding company to ease financial oversight amid stepped up scrutiny of technology firms.
(AP, 4/12/21)
2021 Apr 12, China's agriculture ministry said that the highly pathogenic H5N6 avian flu had been found in wild birds in the northeastern province of Liaoning, marking the first confirmed cases of the strain in the country this year.
(Reuters, 4/12/21)
2021 Apr 12, The Czech Republic, one of the European Union’s hardest-hit countries took its first steps toward easing of its tight lockdown. Health experts, however, warned that the relaxation was going too far as infection and death rates still remained at dangerously high levels.
(AP, 4/12/21)
2021 Apr 12, The International Organization for Migrants said 34 migrants returning from Yemen have died after their boat capsized off the Horn of Africa nation of Djibouti.
(AP, 4/12/21)
2021 Apr 12, Dubai said that US self-driving car company Cruise will become the first to operate autonomous taxis and ride-hailing services in the UAE city of more than three million people.
(AP, 4/12/21)
2021 Apr 12, Egyptian authorities impounded the Ever Given, the massive cargo vessel that blocked the Suez Canal last month, amid a financial dispute with its owner. A judicial official said the canal authority demanded at least $900 million.
(AP, 4/13/21)
2021 Apr 12, The European Union said it has imposed sanctions on eight Iranian militia commanders and police chiefs, including the head of the elite Revolutionary Guards, over a deadly crackdown in November 2019.
(Reuters, 4/12/21)
2021 Apr 12, In France police hunted for a gunman who opened fire near a hospital in the wealthy 16th district of Paris, killing one person and injuring another.
(AP, 4/12/21)
2021 Apr 12, India reported 168,912 new infections, inching past Brazil, with a total of 13.53 million cases. India is now the second-most affected country after the United States that is grappling with 31.2 million cases. The western state of Maharashtra, home to India's financial capital Mumbai, has been the worst hit in the pandemic, accounting for about a quarter of the country's 13.5 million case load.
(Reuters, 4/12/21)
2021 Apr 12, Iran accused arch-foe Israel of sabotaging its key Natanz nuclear site a day earlier and vowed revenge in the latest episode of a long-running covert war.
(Reuters, 4/12/21)
2021 Apr 12, Japan said it had decided to gradually release tons of treated wastewater from the ruined Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant into the ocean.
(SFC, 4/13/21, p.A4)
2021 Apr 12, Lebanon’s outgoing minister of public works said that he has signed a decree that would increase the area claimed by the Mediterranean country in a maritime border dispute with Israel. The decree would formally extend Lebanon’s claims by 1,430 square km (550 square miles). The decree still required the signatures of the defense minister, prime minister and president to go into effect.
(AP, 4/12/21)
2021 Apr 12, Spain said it will initially prioritize people aged between 70 and 79 for vaccination with coronavirus shots produced by Johnson & Johnson's Janssen unit, which are due to start arriving this week.
(Reuters, 4/12/21)
2021 Apr 12, In the eastern Caribbean the La Soufriere volcano erupted again on St. Vincent.
(SFC, 4/13/21, p.A2)
2021 Apr 12, UN Secretary-General Antonio Gutierrez said in a report that the COVID-19 pandemic led to a spike in gender-based violence last year and combatants continued to use sexual violence “as a cruel tactic of war" and political repression. The report focused on 18 countries and listed 52 parties “credibly suspected" of responsibility “for patterns of rape or other forms of sexual violence".
(AP, 4/12/21)
2021 Apr 13, President Joe Biden spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin, directly raising concerns about the Russian military buildup on Ukraine's border.
(AP, 4/13/21)
2021 Apr 13, US officials said President Joe Biden has decided to leave American troops in Afghanistan beyond the May 1 deadline negotiated with the Taliban by the Trump administration, and has set the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks as the new goal.
(AP, 4/13/21)
2021 Apr 13, US Defense Sec. Lloyd Austin announced that he is expanding the US military presence in Germany by 500 troops and has stopped planning for large-scale troop cuts ordered by the Trump administration.
(SFC, 4/14/21, p.A2)
2021 Apr 13, The US recommended a “pause" in using the single-dose Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine to investigate reports of rare but potentially dangerous blood clots. Six US women between 18 and 48 developed blood clots within two weeks of receiving vaccine shots. One of the six died, and another was in critical condition.. Johnson & Johnson said it is delaying the rollout of its coronavirus vaccine in Europe amid the US probe.
(AP, 4/13/21)(NY Times, 4/13/21)
2021 Apr 13, A letter by Senators Ron Wyden, of Oregon, and Martin Heinrich, of New Mexico, warned top US intelligence officials that an unspecified "bulk collection" program was operating "entirely outside the statutory framework that Congress and the public believe govern this collection." The letter to Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines and CIA Director William Burns was made public on Feb. 11, 2022. It partially redacted and lacked several key details.
(Reuters, 2/11/22)
2021 Apr 13, The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention extended its eviction moratorium through the end of June to help slow the spread of the coronavirus.
(SFC, 4/14/21, p.A4)
2021 Apr 13, It was reported that the US intelligence community has put China at the top of its annual report of national security threats, warning of Beijing's struggle to realize "an epochal geopolitical shift", including increased air and naval operations in Asia intended to assert its control in contested areas.
(South China Morning Post, 4/14/21)
2021 Apr 13, California to date had 3,680,559 cases of coronavirus and 60,076 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 428,604 cases and 6,068 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 31,273,951 with the death toll at 562,655.
(sfist.com, 4/13/21)
2021 Apr 13, A dozen people were missing after the commercial platform boat Secor Power capsized in the Gulf of Mexico near Louisiana in a storm this afternoon. Six people were rescued and one crew member was found dead. Over the next days 3 more bodies were found. Rescuers continued to search for nine missing.
(NY Times, 4/14/21)(SFC, 4/15/21, p.A3)(AP, 4/18/21)
2021 Apr 13, In Maryland Peyton Ham (16), holding a replica gun and a knife, was killed following an armed stand-off with a state trooper in Leonardtown.
(The Independent, 4/14/21)
2021 Apr 13, In Minnesota Kim Potter, the officer who shot Daunte Wright in Brooklyn Center, resigned, as has the city’s police chief.
(NY Times, 4/13/21)
2021 Apr 13, Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte issued an executive order banning the development or use of vaccine passports.
(SFC, 4/14/21, p.A4)
2021 Apr 13, Helen Weaver (89), who fell in love with Jack Kerouac months before “On the Road" rocketed him into the literary stratosphere, died on April 13 at her home in Woodstock, NY. She made a record of their romance in “The Awakener: A Memoir of Kerouac and the Fifties" (2009).
(NY Times, 4/26/21)
2021 Apr 13, A federal appeals court in Cincinnati ruled (9-7) that Ohio can enforce a 2017 law banning abortions when medical tests show that a fetus has Down syndrome.
(Reuters, 4/13/21)
2021 Apr 13, A coalition of 310 businesses, investment funds and utilities representing about 6 million workers in the US released a letter calling for the administration to commit to reducing emissions to at least 50% below 2005 levels by 2030.
(Axios, 4/13/21)
2021 Apr 13, Blockchain technology firm ConsenSys said it had raised $65 million from major banks and financial services firms including J.P. Morgan, Mastercard Inc and UBS Group AG to fund its growth and global expansion.
(Reuters, 4/13/21)
2021 Apr 13, SambaNova Systems, a Silicon Valley startup that makes semiconductors for artificial intelligence related computation work, said it has raised $676 million in a funding round led by SoftBank Group Corp's Vision Fund 2.
(Reuters, 4/13/21)
2021 Apr 13, Belgium said will continue COVID-19 vaccinations with the Johnson & Johnson jab for the moment.
(Reuters, 4/13/21)
2021 Apr 13, Britain began offering coronavirus vaccinations to anyone over 45 after hitting its target of giving at last one dose to everyone over 50 by the middle of April.
(AP, 4/13/21)
2021 Apr 13, London-based Reuters news service promoted Alessandra Galloni to be its new editor-in-chief, making her the first woman to take that role in the company's 170-year history. Reuters employs some 2,500 journalists in 200 locations around the world as part of the larger Thomson Reuters Corp.
(AP, 4/13/21)
2021 Apr 13, PM Justin Trudeau said the progress Canada has made against COVID-19 is being threatened by the spread of more contagious and dangerous virus variants.
(Reuters, 4/13/21)
2021 Apr 13, Egyptian authorities released Khaled Dawoud, an activist known for his outspoken criticism of the government, after he spent more than a year and a half in pre-trial detention.
(AP, 4/13/21)
2021 Apr 13, In Egypt a bus overturned while trying to pass a truck on a highway, causing a collision that killed at least 20 people and injured three others in the southern province of Assiut.
(AP, 4/13/21)
2021 Apr 13, It was reported that 20 EU states are refusing to guarantee that suspected criminals who are citizens of their country can be extradited to the UK, reflecting the fact that Brexit means the UK is no longer part of the European Arrest Warrant.
(AP, 4/14/21)
2021 Apr 13, France suspended all flights from Brazil amid mounting fears over the P.1 variant of the coronavirus that has been sweeping across Brazil.
(SFC, 4/14/21, p.A4)
2021 Apr 13, Guatemala's Congress refused to appoint a graft-fighting judge as president of the Constitutional Court, a move critics say could set back the fight against corruption.
(Reuters, 4/13/21)
2021 Apr 13, Hong Kong’s pro-democracy media tycoon Jimmy Lai (72) told his staff in a letter from jail that “freedom of speech is a dangerous job" and to “stand tall" just days before he is sentenced in two cases against him.
(The Telegraph, 4/13/21)
2021 Apr 13, Iran said it will start enriching uranium at 60 percent purity, higher than ever before, following the attack on its Natanz nuclear facility.
(NBC News, 4/13/21)
2021 Apr 13, Italy reported 476 coronavirus-related deaths against 358 the day before, while the daily tally of new infections rose to 13,447 from 9,789.
(Reuters, 4/13/21)
2021 Apr 13, In Niger at least 20 children died after they became trapped in a fire at a school in the Pays Bas district of Niamey.
(AP, 4/14/21)
2021 Apr 13, A North Macedonian court convicted the country’s former intelligence chief and three more ex-officials of abuse of power over a surveillance equipment procurement deal, and sentenced them to between five and 15 years in prison.
(AP, 4/13/21)
2021 Apr 13, Imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny said he was suing his prison for withholding the Quran, which he intended to study while serving time in a prison outside Moscow.
(AP, 4/13/21)
2021 Apr 13, Russia unsuccessfully tried for the first time to prevent Kosovo’s representative from speaking at the UN Security Council with the country’s flag in the background, saying the majority of council members don’t recognize its independence from Serbia.
(AP, 4/13/21)
2021 Apr 13, Leaders of volcano-wracked St. Vincent said that water is running short as heavy ash contaminates supplies.
(AP, 4/13/21)
2021 Apr 13, South Africa's Supreme Court denied state funding for former Pres. Jacob Zuma in an upcoming corruption trial and ordered him to pay back an estimated $2 million in lawyers' charges that he has received over the years.
(SFC, 4/14/21, p.A3)
2021 Apr 13, The rate of new COVID-19 infections in Sweden jumped to the second-highest in Europe after land-locked San Marino. The Scandinavian country, which has shunned lockdowns throughout the pandemic, faced a third wave of cases.
(Reuters, 4/13/21)
2021 Apr 13, President Bashar Assad sacked the governor of war-ravaged Syria’s Central Bank amid a crash in the currency in recent months. The UN estimates that nearly 80% of Syrians live under the poverty line.
(AP, 4/13/21)
2021 Apr 13, In northeast Syria a 10-day curfew in areas controlled by US-backed Kurdish fighters went into effect in an attempt to try limit the spread of coronavirus.
(AP, 4/13/21)
2021 Apr 13, Thailand recorded a 3rd day in a row with more than 900 coronavirus cases. Total infections reached 34,575 with 97 deaths.
(SFC, 4/14/21, p.A4)
2021 Apr 13, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan announced several new restrictions and a "partial closure" for the first two weeks of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan to curb surging coronavirus infections.
(Reuters, 4/13/21)
2021 Apr 13, The United Nations' health agency urged countries to suspend the sale of live animals captured from the wild in food markets. The World Health Organization recommended it as an emergency measure, saying wild animals are a leading source of emerging infectious diseases like the coronavirus.
(CBS News, 4/13/21)
2021 Apr 13, The UN World Food Program said almost one million people are facing severe hunger in northern Mozambique where hundreds of thousands of people have been forced to flee a jihadist insurgency.
(AP, 4/13/21)
2021 Apr 14, Hundreds of leaders from Amazon, Google, BlackRock, Starbucks, and other high-profile companies signed a statement expressing opposition to legislation proposed or adopted in several states seeking to make voting harder. The statement was printed in an advertisement in The New York Times.
(The Week, 4/15/21)
2021 Apr 14, California to date had 3,683,199 cases of coronavirus and 60,200 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 429,463 cases and 6,110 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 31,419,303 with the death toll at 564,301.
(sfist.com, 4/15/21)
2021 Apr 14, Minnesota police Officer Kim Potter was arrested and charged with second-degree manslaughter following three nights of protests over the killing.
(NY Times, 4/14/21)
2021 Apr 14, The southeastern Missouri city of Charleston agreed to pay $500,000 to settle its part in a lawsuit brought by the family of Tory Sanders, a Black man who died in jail in 2017 after having his neck pinned down for several minutes by the knee of a white sheriff.
(AP, 4/15/21)
2021 Apr 14, It was reported that Florida is moving to close the leaky Piney Point wastewater reservoir that poured millions of gallons into Tampa Bay while threatening to burst open earlier this month. The reservoir contains phosphogypsum stacks, leftover from phosphate mined for fertilizer.
(SFC, 4/14/21, p.A3)
2021 Apr 14, Bernie Madoff (82), a Wall Street financier disgraced after he admitted to one of the biggest frauds in US financial history, died at the Federal Medical Center in Butner, North Carolina.
(AP, 4/14/21)
2021 Apr 14, A Texas police officer was shot multiple times during a traffic stop in Burleson early today. Three suspects fled the scene. The officer was hospitalized in stable condition.
(AP, 4/14/21)
2021 Apr 14, The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled that the administration of Gov. Tony Evers does not have the authority to issue capacity limits on bars, restaurants and other businesses without the approval of the Legislature.
(SFC, 4/15/21, p.A4)
2021 Apr 14, Shares of Alkami Technology Inc surged 38% in their US stock market debut, giving the US banking software provider a market capitalization of $3.43 billion. Alkami sold six million shares in the IPO.
(Reuters, 4/14/21)
2021 Apr 14, San Francisco-based Coinbase stock was indicated to open at $360 per share, up 44% from a reference price of $250 per share, making its implied value around three times that of exchange operator Nasdaq. Coinbase began trading at $381 a share.
(Reuters, 4/14/21)(NY Times, 4/14/21)
2021 Apr 14, Instagram launched a small global test where users can choose whether to hide like counts on their own posts or other people's posts.
(Reuters, 4/14/21)
2021 Apr 14, Scorpion, an internet marketing services provider, said has raised $100 million in funds from investment firm Bregal Sagemount to expand its technology and customer offerings. Utah-based Scorpion recently acquired CanlRank, a software company that uses artificial intelligence to provide customers with locally relevant search engine optimization (SEO) insights, for an undisclosed sum.
(Reuters, 4/14/21)
2021 Apr 14, Uber Technologies Inc said it had signed deals with three new transit agencies to provide routing and matching technology for their public transportation fleets, the company's latest foray into the transit space.
(AP, 4/14/21)
2021 Apr 14, NATO members pledged to leave Afghanistan “together" as 750 British soldiers are set to leave the country along with American troops on September 11.
(The Telegraph, 4/14/21)
2021 Apr 14, Brazil's city of Sao Paulo warned its ability to care for seriously ill COVID-19 patients was on the verge of collapse as it ran perilously low on key drugs.
(AP, 4/14/21)
2021 Apr 14, It was reported that several Chinese feminist channels on Douban, a popular social networking forum in China, were abruptly shut this week, triggering online anger and prompting calls for women to "stick together".
(Reuters, 4/14/21)
2021 Apr 14, Finland said people aged under 65 who got a first dose of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 shot may get a different vaccine for their second dose, as authorities warned about delays to the country's roll-out.
(Reuters, 4/14/21)
2021 Apr 14, France said it will use Johnson & Johnson's COVID-19 vaccine as planned despite its suspension in the United States. France had received a first shipment of 200,000 doses.
(Reuters, 4/14/21)
2021 Apr 14, Iran's supreme leader dismissed initial offers being made at talks in Vienna aimed at saving Tehran's tattered nuclear deal with world powers.
(AP, 4/14/21)
2021 Apr 14, Italy reported 469 coronavirus-related deaths against 476 the day before, while the daily tally of new infections rose to 16,168 from 13,447. Healthcare management in the Lombardy region said there was a growing reluctance amongst residents to accept AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine because of safety fears.
(Reuters, 4/14/21)
2021 Apr 14, Russian authorities levied criminal charges against four young editors of the online DOXA student magazine that had coverage of about nationwide protests supporting jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
(SFC, 4/15/21, p.A3)
2021 Apr 14, Somalia’s Pres. Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed extended his own term in office by two years, drawing condemnation from the United States and other allies who viewed it as a naked power grab. Mohamed said the two-year extension would allow him to introduce a one-person, one-vote system.
(NY Times, 4/14/21)
2021 Apr 14, Sweden's Health Agency said it would pause plans to start vaccinations using Johnson & Johnson's COVID-19 vaccine following reports of rare blood clots similar to those reported for the AstraZeneca shot.
(Reuters, 4/14/21)
2021 Apr 14, Syria rejected as fabricated the results of an investigation by the OPCW that a Syrian air force military helicopter dropped a chlorine cylinder on the northern town of Saraqeb on Feb 4, 2018.
(SFC, 4/15/21, p.A3)
2021 Apr 14, Thailand confirmed 1,335 new cases of the coronavirus, taking the total to 35,910, with 97 deaths.
(AP, 4/14/21)
2021 Apr 14, Turkey's Competition Board said it had fined Google more than 296 million lira ($36.65 million) for abusing its dominant position in the search engine services area.
(Reuters, 4/14/21)
2021 Apr 14, The UAE-based Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Center said it is partnering with Japan’s ispace company to send a rover to the moon on an unmanned spacecraft by 2022, rather than 2024. The “Rashid" rover, named after Dubai’s ruling family, will deploy to the moon using ispace's lunar lander.
(AP, 4/14/21)
2021 Apr 14, A UN report said nearly half of women in 57 developing countries are denied the right to decide whether to have sex with their partners, use contraception or seek health care.
(AP, 4/14/21)
2021 Apr 15, The United States announced economic sanctions against Russia and the expulsion of 10 diplomats in retaliation for what Washington says is the Kremlin's US election interference, a massive cyber attack and other hostile activity. The White House said in a statement that Russia's foreign intelligence service, known as the SVR, was responsible for the SolarWinds hack, which led to the compromise of nine federal agencies and hundreds of private sector companies.
(The Telegraph, 4/15/21)(Reuters, 4/15/21)
2021 Apr 15, The Biden administration revealed that that Konstantin Kilimnik, an associate of former President Donald Trump's campaign chairman Paul Manafort, passed along Trump campaign polling data to Russian intelligence services in 2016.
(NY Times, 4/15/21)
2021 Apr 15, California and NASA, with the backing of billionaire Michael Bloomberg, unveiled a $100 million effort to pinpoint large emissions of greenhouse gases from individual sources like power plants and oil refineries from space.
(Reuters, 4/15/21)
2021 Apr 15, California to date had 3,686,484 cases of coronavirus and 60,412 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 429,948 cases and 6,122 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 31,491,453 with the death toll at 565,254.
(sfist.com, 4/15/21)
2021 Apr 15, A gunman killed at least eight people at a FedEx warehouse on the grounds of the Indianapolis International Airport late today. Police said the gunman killed himself. At least five other people had been hospitalized with injuries, including one in critical condition. The suspected shooter was soon identified as Brandon Scott Hole (19).
(NY Times, 4/16/21)(AP, 4/17/21)
2021 Apr 15, Vartan Gregorian, the noted scholar and philanthropic leader who led the Carnegie Corporation of New York since 1997, died after being hospitalized for stomach pain.
(AP, 4/16/21)
2021 Apr 15, In Montana a backcountry guide who was fishing just west of Yellowstone National Park was fatally attacked by a large grizzly bear that might have been protecting a food source.
(NY Times, 4/19/21)
2021 Apr 15, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said people will "likely" need to get a COVID-19 vaccine booster dose within 12 months after they've been fully vaccinated.
(AP, 4/16/21)
2021 Apr 15, Medical device maker Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc said it would acquire contract researcher PPD Inc for $17.4 billion as it looks to add more muscle to its pharmaceutical services business.
(Reuters, 4/15/21)
2021 Apr 15, Toyota said it is recalling nearly 280,000 Venza SUVs in the US because a wiring problem can stop the side air bags from inflating in a crash. The recall covers Venzas from the 2009 through 2015 model years.
(AP, 4/15/21)
2021 Apr 15, Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC) called on Facebook Inc Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg to not create a version of photo-sharing app Instagram for children who are under 13, as it would put them at "great risk".
(Reuters, 4/15/21)
2021 Apr 15, An emergency shipment of sedatives needed to intubate severely ill COVID-19 patients arrived in Brazil late today from China. Brazil has recorded a total of 365,444 coronavirus deaths, second only to the US, and 13,746,681 confirmed COVID-19 cases.
(Reuters, 4/16/21)
2021 Apr 15, Britain reported 2,672 new COVID cases, up slightly from 2,491 a day earlier but taking the fall over the last seven days to almost 7% compared with a week earlier.
(Reuters, 4/15/21)
2021 Apr 15, It was reported that nearly 15,000 anonymous accounts of sexual misconduct, including harassment, groping, and rape, have been shared online by students from schools across the U.K.
(CBS News, 4/15/21)
2021 Apr 15, In Cambodia a 2-week lockdown began in Phnom Penh under orders from PM Hun Sen. Cambodia has so far confirmed 4,874 coronavirus cases and 35 deaths.
(SFC, 4/16/21, p.A8)
2021 Apr 15, In China the third dust storm in about five weeks shrouded Beijing in a yellow haze and caused air quality to deteriorate once again. The dust storm that occurred in the middle of March was the deadliest of the three so far this year. At least 10 deaths occurred in Mongolia and hundreds of people became disoriented trying to locate cattle that had gone missing.
(AccuWeather, 4/17/21)
2021 Apr 15, Chinese automaker Geely, owner of Volvo Cars, launched a high-end electric vehicle (EV) brand named Zeekr, targeting China's growing appetite for premium EVs that has boosted sales for Tesla and Chinese peer Nio.
(Reuters, 4/15/21)
2021 Apr 15, Denmark charged three members of an Iranian separatist group, the Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahwaz, with financing and promoting terror in Iran with an unnamed Saudi intelligence service.
(AP, 4/15/21)
2021 Apr 15, Amnesty International said Eritrean soldiers remain in Ethiopia’s embattled Tigray region and are killing civilians weeks after Ethiopia said the soldiers would leave. Deadly fighting continued in several parts of Tigray.
(AP, 4/15/21)
2021 Apr 15, It was reported that the European Union has agreed to impose sanctions on another 10 individuals linked to the Feb. 1 coup in Myanmar and to target two businesses run by the armed forces for the first time in protest at the military takeover.
(Reuters, 4/15/21)
2021 Apr 15, France reported 300 new deaths due to the coronavirus bringing its total to 100,077. France became the 3rd EU country, after Britain and Italy, to pass the 100,000 mark.
(SFC, 4/16/21, p.A8)
2021 Apr 15, India's two largest cities, New Delhi and Mumbai, imposed stringent restrictions on movement as new infections in the country shot past 200,000 amid a devastating surge that is straining a fragile health system.
(AP, 4/15/21)
2021 Apr 15, Iran said it has finalized a deal with Russia to purchase 60 million doses of Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine.
(AP, 4/15/21)
2021 Apr 15, In Iraq an explosion rocked a market in east Baghdad's Sadr City, killing one person and injuring 12 others. Separately, a rocket attack targeting a Turkish military base in northern Iraq's Bashiqa region killed one Turkish soldier and wounded a child in a nearby village.
(AP, 4/15/21)
2021 Apr 15, Nissan Motor Co said it will slash production at several factories in Japan next month due to a global shortage of semiconductors.
(AP, 4/15/21)
2021 Apr 15, The Lebanese judge leading the investigation into last year’s massive blast at Beirut’s port ordered the release of six people, including security officers, who had been detained for months.
(AP, 4/15/21)
2021 Apr 15, Romania's centrist government approved a United States-backed bill that effectively bars China and Huawei from taking part in development of its 5G network.
(Reuters, 4/15/21)
2021 Apr 15, A Russian court convicted Lyubov Sobol, a top associate of imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny, of trespassing and handed her a suspended sentence of one-year community service for trying to gain entry into the apartment of a relative of the alleged security operative believed to be involved in Navalny's poisoning.
(SFC, 4/16/21, p.A4)
2021 Apr 15, Saudi Arabia's Jizan University, near the country's border with Yemen, caught fire early today after the kingdom's air defenses intercepted a barrage of ballistic missiles and bomb-laden drones. There were no immediate reports of injuries.
(AP, 4/15/21)
2021 Apr 15, Ukraine's top diplomat asked for stronger Western backing, saying “words of support aren't enough" amid escalating tensions in the country’s east and a Russian troop buildup across the border.
(AP, 4/15/21)
2021 Apr 15, The UN humanitarian chief warned that the world’s largest humanitarian crisis in Yemen is getting even worse with the COVID-19 pandemic “roaring back" in recent weeks as the Arab world’s poorest country faces a large-scale famine.
(AP, 4/15/21)
2021 Apr 15, Venezuela said it has received a batch of 50,000 doses of Russia's Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine. Venezuela has reported 178,094 cases of coronavirus and 1,834 deaths, according to official figures.
(AP, 4/15/21)
2021 Apr 16, The Biden administration said it will invest $1.7 billion to help states and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention fight COVID-19 variants that are rapidly spreading across the United States.
(Reuters, 4/16/21)
2021 Apr 16, President Biden welcomed Japanese PM Yoshihide Suga at the White House, his first face-to-face meeting with a foreign leader and a clear signal to an increasingly aggressive China about the shared commitment to strategic cooperation between the US and Japan.
(LA Times, 4/16/21)
2021 Apr 16, President Joe Biden stuck with his predecessor’s historically low cap of 15,000 refugees for this year and instead moved to accelerate admissions, triggering an outcry from resettlement agencies and even Biden allies that he was backpedaling on a key promise.
(AP, 4/16/21)
2021 Apr 16, US Attorney General Merrick Garland rescinded a Trump-era memo that curtailed the use of consent decrees that federal prosecutors have used in sweeping investigations of police departments.
(AP, 4/16/21)
2021 Apr 16, US Interior Secretary Deb Haaland revoked a series of Trump administration orders that promoted fossil fuel development on public lands and waters, and issued a separate directive that prioritizes climate change in agency decisions.
(AP, 4/16/21)
2021 Apr 16, A US memorial to the dead of WWI opened in Pershing Park, Washington DC.
(SFC, 4/17/21, p.A4)
2021 Apr 16, Jon Schaffer, a founding member of the far-right group the Oath Keepers, pleaded guilty to charges stemming from his participation in the riot at the Capitol building on Jan. 6. He is the first Capitol riot suspect to plead guilty.
(Washington Post, 4/17/21)
2021 Apr 16, The United States said it is imposing visa restrictions on “those believed to be responsible for, or complicit in, undermining the democratic process in Uganda,“ including during the election in January and the campaign period.
(AP, 4/16/21)
2021 Apr 16, NASA announced that SpaceX's Starship vehicle will serve as the agency's lunar lander for its Artemis Program, which is focused on returning humans to the moon later this decade.
(NASA, 4/17/21)
2021 Apr 16, California to date had 3,689,359 cases of coronavirus and 60,527 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 430,378 cases and 6,140 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 31,565,262 with the death toll at 566,088.
(sfist.com, 4/16/21)
2021 Apr 16, Charles Geschke (81), a co-founder of software company Adobe Inc., died in Los Altos, Ca.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Geschke)
2021 Apr 16, More than 1,000 people gathered in Chicago's Logan Square Park and marched through the surrounding area in remembrance of Adam Toledo, a 13-year-old Latino boy who was shot and killed by a police officer on March 29.
(NY Times, 4/17/21)
2021 Apr 16, Actor Felix Silla (b.1937) died in Los Vegas following a battle with cancer. Silla had starred as the hairy Cousin Itt on the TV series "The Addams Family" (1964-1966) and a robot on "Buck Rogers in the 25th Century" (1979-1981).
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_Silla)(SFC, 4/19/21, p.B4)
2021 Apr 16, New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu announced that the state was lifting its mask mandate. He credited success in vaccinations for keeping deaths low.
(SFC, 4/17/21, p.A6)
2021 Apr 16, It was reported that nearly 38% of New Mexico's adults are now fully vaccinated and that more than 57% of adults have now received at least one vaccine dose.
(SFC, 4/16/21, p.A8)
2021 Apr 16, In Oregon protesters smashed windows, burglarized businesses and set multiple fires after police fatally shot a man earlier in the day. Four people were arrested.
(SFC, 4/17/21, p.A7)
2021 Apr 16, Ole Anthony (82), a former Air Force intelligence specialist and Texas political operative, died at a house in Dallas that he shared with several members of his organization, the Trinity Foundation. He found Jesus in 1972, built a following among the down-and-out of east Dallas, and then used that movement to take down a rogue’s gallery of unscrupulous televangelists and faith healers.
(NY Times, 4/27/21)
2021 Apr 16, Australia reported its first fatality from blood clots in a recipient of AstraZeneca's (AZN.L) Covid-19 shot. It was the third case of the rare blood clots appearing in people who have been administered the vaccine in the country.
(The Telegraph, 4/17/21)
2021 Apr 16, Bangladesh recorded 4,417 new coronavirus cases raising that total to 711,779. 101 new deaths raised that total to 10,182.
(SFC, 4/17/21, p.A6)
2021 Apr 16, Britain gave out 119,306 first vaccine doses and 485,421 second doses. A further 35 people died from the virus within 28 days of a positive test, and 2,206 people tested positive.
(Reuters, 4/17/21)
2021 Apr 16, Helen McCrory, the English actress who played Narcissa Malfoy in the “Harry Potter" franchise and Polly Gray in “Peaky Blinders," died at her home after a battle with cancer.
(The Week, 4/17/21)
2021 Apr 16, Chinese President Xi Jinping called for closer cooperation on combating global change as he held a video meeting with the leaders of Germany and France.
(AP, 4/16/21)
2021 Apr 16, Raúl Castro confirmed he will step down from his role as leader of Cuba's ruling Communist Party.
(NY Times, 4/16/21)
2021 Apr 16, Guatemala said it will restrict entry to visitors who have recently been to Brazil, the United Kingdom and South Africa in an effort to control a jump in coronavirus cases. Confirmed cases reached 210,667.
(The Telegraph, 4/17/21)
2021 Apr 16, A Hong Kong court sentenced a group of the city's most prominent pro-democracy activists to up to 18 months in prison for organizing a massive unauthorized protest in August 2019 that drew an estimated 1.7 million people. Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai (73) was jailed for 12 months. Four others were jailed for between eight and 18 months.
(AP, 4/16/21)(The Telegraph, 4/16/21)
2021 Apr 16, The CEO of the Serum Institute of India, the world’s largest maker of vaccines, asked President Biden to lift a US export embargo on raw materials for vaccines, saying it is hampering vaccine production in other parts of the world.
(AP, 4/16/21)
2021 Apr 16, Iran said it has begun 60% uranium enrichment at its Natanz plant, days after an explosion at the site that Tehran blamed on Israel.
(Reuters, 4/16/21)
2021 Apr 16, In Iraq Khodeir Majid (64), a video producer and cameraman for The Associated Press for over 17 years, died of complications due to the coronavirus.
(AP, 4/16/21)
2021 Apr 16, Israeli aircraft early today hit three facilities belonging to Hamas, the militant group ruling Gaza. The airstrikes targeted a weapons manufacturing site, a tunnel for arms smuggling and a training site. This followed the firing of a projectile from the Gaza Strip last evening. The Israeli military said Palestinian militants fired a rocket from Gaza into the country’s south, the second incident in 24 hours. In response, Israeli fighter jets and helicopters hit five sites of the militant Hamas group.
(AP, 4/16/21)
2021 Apr 16, Mexican health authorities said that 14 of the country's roughly 2,600 townships have refused to allow vaccination teams to administer anti-coronavirus doses there. A convoy transporting vaccines came under an armed attack in Michoacan state.
(The Telegraph, 4/17/21)
2021 Apr 16, Pakistan briefly blocked access to all social media after days of violent anti-French protests across the country by radical Islamists opposed to cartoons they consider blasphemous.
(AP, 4/16/21)
2021 Apr 16, Portugal officially reported 553 new COVID-19 cases and 4 deaths nationwide. A day earlier there were no COVID-19 deaths in Lisbon for the first time since August.
(AP, 4/16/21)
2021 Apr 16, Russia said it will expel 10 US diplomats and blacklist eight US officials in response to new sanctions from the Biden administration.
(The Week, 4/17/21)
2021 Apr 16, Imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who has been on hunger strike since March 31, described threats to force-feed him, using “straitjacket and other pleasures," in a message from behind bars.
(AP, 4/16/21)
2021 Apr 16, South Africa took the first step in its mass vaccination campaign by starting online registrations for the elderly to receive shots beginning next month.
(AP, 4/16/21)
2021 Apr 16, An estimated 40 people were aboard a boat which sank off the coast of Sfax, eastern Tunisia. Navy divers recovered another body the next day from the migrant boat, bringing to 22 the number of known dead, including nine women and a baby.
(AP, 4/17/21)
2021 Apr 16, Turkey's Central Bank banned the use of cryptocurrencies and crypto assets for purchases from April 30, citing "irreparable" damage and transaction risks.
(Reuters, 4/28/21)
2021 Apr 16, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy arrived in Paris for talks with French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel amid his country's growing tensions with neighboring Russia, which has deployed troops near its border with Ukraine.
(AP, 4/16/21)
2021 Apr 16, UN agencies said that tens of thousands of Nigerians are fleeing deadly attacks by armed groups and the continuing clashes between the rebels and national forces in the country's troubled northeastern Borno state. Up to 65,000 people were on the move.
(AP, 4/16/21)
2021 Apr 16, The UN Security Council unanimously approved Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ recent proposal for up to 60 monitors to join an existing political mission in Libya.
(AP, 4/16/21)
2021 Apr 17, President Joe Biden said he will raise the cap on the number of refugees admitted this year to the United States, a day after he drew criticism from Democratic lawmakers for agreeing to keep the historically low figure in place.
(Reuters, 4/17/21)
2021 Apr 17, US safety regulators warned people with kids and pets to immediately stop using a treadmill made by Peloton after one child died and others were injured.
(AP, 4/17/21)
2021 Apr 17, The global death toll from COVID-19 eclipsed 3 million.
(AP, 4/17/21)
2021 Apr 17, California to date had 3,690,969 cases of coronavirus and 60,580 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 430,411 cases and 6,140 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 31,573,791 with the death toll at 566,359.
(sfist.com, 4/17/21)
2021 Apr 17, Al Young (b.1939), named California poet laureate in 2005, died at a private care facility in Concord, Ca.
(SSFC, 4/25/21, p.F9)
2021 Apr 17, It was reported that 27 paintings by three generations of Wyeths have been donated to Maine's Farnsworth Art Museum, thanks to the late Betsy Wyeth.
(AP, 4/17/21)
2021 Apr 17, In Nebraska Trequez Swift (21) was shot and killed at the Westroads Mall in Omaha. Suspect Makhi Woolridge-Jones (16) was arrested the next day.
(SFC, 4/19/21, p.A4)
2021 Apr 17, Thelma Sutcliffe, of Omaha, became America’s oldest living person and seventh-oldest in the world when Hester Ford, a 115-year-old woman, died in North Carolina.
(AP, 4/28/21)
2021 Apr 17, In Texas a car crash left two dead. Local police said it appeared to have occurred with no one in the driver's seat. The 2019 Tesla Model S was reportedly traveling at a high speed, when it failed to negotiate a curve.
(Reuters, 4/19/21)
2021 Apr 17, Public Health England reported that 73 cases of the B.1.617 variant, which was first discovered in India, had been found, while a further four cases were identified in Scotland.
(The Telegraph, 4/17/21)
2021 Apr 17, Canada reported a second case of rare blood clots with low platelets after immunization with AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine in a week, while it said it still recommended the use of the shot.
(Reuters, 4/17/21)
2021 Apr 17, In Chad clashes took place late today in the northern province of Kanem. The rebel column from Libya was reportedly decimated. The US State Department ordered non-essential diplomats at its embassy to leave the African nation due to potential insurgent attacks on the capital. The rebel group, known as the Front for Change and Concord in Chad, said the next day that it was pressing ahead.
(AP, 4/18/21)
2021 Apr 17, Czech police identified Ruslan Tabarov from Tajikistan and Nicolaj Popa, a Moldovan citizen, as players in the huge explosion that tore apart an ammunitions storage depot in a forest in the Czech Republic on 16 October 2014. The same two men had traveled to the UK in March 2018 under the names Ruslan Boshirov and Alexander Petrov. Both were caught on CCTV at Salisbury and identified by the Metropolitan Police as suspects in smearing Novichok nerve agent on the door handle of the house of former GRU officer Sergei Skripal.
(BBC, 4/18/21)
2021 Apr 17, France said it will order a strict 10-day quarantine for all travelers coming from Brazil starting April 24 in a bid to prevent the spread of a coronavirus variant.
(Reuters, 4/17/21)
2021 Apr 17, French automaker Renault said it will seek to generate more than 1 billion euros ($1.20 billion) in sales from the so-called "circular economy" by turning its Flins factory outside Paris into a research, recycling and repair center.
(Reuters, 4/17/21)
2021 Apr 17, India reported 234,692 new coronavirus cases. New Delhi went into a weekend lockdown. Capital Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said New Delhi has registered at least 24,000 fresh coronavirus cases in 24 hours and faces a "grim" battle against a new pandemic wave with shortages of oxygen and drugs.
(The Telegraph, 4/17/21)
2021 Apr 17, Iran named Reza Karimi (43) as a suspect in the attack on its Natanz nuclear facility that damaged centrifuges there, saying he had fled the country “hours before" the sabotage happened.
(AP, 4/17/21)
2021 Apr 17, Italy reported 310 coronavirus-related deaths against 429 the day before. The daily tally of new infections edged down to 15,370 from 15,943.
(Reuters, 4/17/21)
2021 Apr 17, In Kenya thousands of motorists and passengers were stuck in traffic for hours after police blocked major roads in Nairobi, to enforce a Covid curfew to battle infections. Kenya has confirmed more than 151,000 cases of the virus and just over 2,400 deaths.
(BBC, 4/18/21)
2021 Apr 17, Myanmar's junta released 23,184 prisoners from jails across the country under a New Year amnesty. Few if any democracy activists arrested since a Feb. 1 coup were thought to be among them.
(Reuters, 4/17/21)
2021 Apr 17, Russia’s main security agency said it has arrested two Belarusians who it said were preparing a plot to overthrow Belarus’ government and kill authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko. Aleksandr Feduta and Yuras Zyankovich were handed over to Belarus.
(AP, 4/17/21)
2021 Apr 17, A Soyuz space capsule returned from the Int'l. Space Station to the steppes of Kazakhstan with NASA's Kate Rubins and Russians Sergey Ryzhikov and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov. The three had arrived at the ISS last October 14.
(SFC, 4/17/21, p.A7)
2021 Apr 17, In South Africa a suspected poacher was trampled and killed by a herd of elephants at Kruger National Park. The deceased man and his accomplices were fleeing from park rangers when they unexpectedly encountered a breeding herd of elephants.
(CBS News, 4/19/21)
2021 Apr 17, Thailand reported 1,547 new coronavirus cases and two additional deaths, amid a third wave of infections in the Southeast Asian country. New restrictions were announced for the next two weeks.
(The Telegraph, 4/17/21)(SFC, 4/17/21, p.A9)
2021 Apr 17, Tunisia announced the closure of all schools until April 30, as well as restrictions on movement, to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus.
(The Telegraph, 4/17/21)
2021 Apr 17, It was reported that Zimbabwe has begun releasing about 3,000 prisoners under a presidential amnesty aimed at easing congestion to reduce the threat of COVID-19 in the country’s overcrowded jails. Zimbabwe’s prisons have a capacity of 17,000 prisoners but held about 22,000 before the amnesty declared by President Emmerson Mnangagwa.
(AP, 4/17/21)
2021 Apr 18, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the United States' top infectious disease expert, said that he does not believe the COVID-19 vaccine developed by Johnson & Johnson will be taken out of circulation altogether.
(NBC News, 4/18/21)
2021 Apr 18, It was reported that a national US opinion poll, conducted on April 15-16, found that 63% of adults supported term or age limits for Supreme Court justices.
(Reuters, 4/18/21)
2021 Apr 18, California to date had 3,692,733 cases of coronavirus and 60,644 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 431,161 cases and 6,142 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 31,640,808 with the death toll at 567,032.
(sfist.com, 4/18/21)
2021 Apr 18, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) said that she would not implement new COVID-19 lockdown restrictions in response to spiking infections because Republicans sued her last year, calling such moves unconstitutional.
(The Week, 4/19/21)
2021 Apr 18, In Texas gunfire left two women and a man dead shortly before noon in the parking lot of an apartment complex in Austin. Police identified the shooter as ex-sheriff's deputy Stephen Nicholas Broderick (41). Broderick was arrested that next day.
(AP, 4/19/21)(Reuters, 4/19/21)
2021 Apr 18, In Wisconsin a suspect reportedly was asked to leave a bar in Kenosha and returned with a gun, firing shots inside and outside the tavern, killing three people. A suspect was soon arrested.
(AP, 4/19/21)
2021 Apr 18, In Egypt a passenger train derailed at the city of Banha, Qalioubia province, just north of Cairo, killing 11 people and injuring 98.
(Reuters, 4/19/21)
2021 Apr 18, France said it is imposing entry restrictions on travelers from four countries — Argentina, Chile, South Africa and Brazil — in hopes of keeping out especially contagious coronavirus variants.
(AP, 4/18/21)
2021 Apr 18, It was reported that France's National Center for Scientific Research has calculated that Earth receives about 14 tons of micrometeorites each day.
(SSFC, 4/18/21, p.B8)
2021 Apr 18, Iran's daily coronavirus death toll climbed over 400 for the first time in months, as the country battles a post-holiday infection surge. Health authorities recorded 405 fatalities from the virus, pushing the total death toll to 66,732.
(AP, 4/18/21)
2021 Apr 18, Mary Lou McDonald, the leader of Sinn Fein, apologized for the 1979 assassination of Louis Mountbatten, an uncle of Prince Philip. Sinn Fein was once the political wing of the underground Irish Republican Army.
(AP, 4/18/21)
2021 Apr 18, Israel lifted its outdoor mask mandate, while schools fully reopened for the first time since September.
(NY Times, 4/18/21)
2021 Apr 18, Russia expelled 20 Czech diplomats in an escalating diplomatic clash with the Czech Republic. Moscow was retaliating for Czech allegations that two Russian spies suspected of the nerve-agent poisoning of a former Russian agent in the United Kingdom were behind a 2014 explosion that killed two people at a Czech ammunition depot.
(Reuters, 4/19/21)
2021 Apr 18, Activists for imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny called for massive protests in the heart of Moscow and St. Petersburg as Navalny’s health reportedly is deteriorating severely while on hunger strike.
(AP, 4/18/21)
2021 Apr 18, South African authorities said a wildfire is raging out of control on the slopes of Table Mountain above the city of Cape Town. The fire destroyed the Reading Room at the Univ. of Cape Town's 200-year-old Jagger Library. The historic Mostert's Mill, built in 1796 and the oldest surviving windmill in South Africa, was destroyed.
(BBC, 4/18/21)(AP, 4/19/21)
2021 Apr 18, Officials in Yemen said fighting between forces of the internationally recognized government and Houthi rebels raged in the provinces of Marib and Taiz, killing at least 70 fighters on both sides.
(AP, 4/18/21)
2021 Apr 19, The US House passed a resolution to condemn China's government and Hong Kong's regional legislature for "the continued violation of rights and freedoms" in a near-unanimous vote.
(Axios, 4/19/21)
2021 Apr 19, NASA's miniature robot helicopter Ingenuity performed a successful takeoff and landing on Mars early today, achieving the first powered, controlled flight by an aircraft over the surface of another planet.
(Reuters, 4/19/21)
2021 Apr 19, In the SF Bay Area Mario Arenales Gonzalez (26) became unresponsive while in handcuffs and police officers quickly began chest compressions. Gonzalez died in a hospital later that day. On April 26 police in Alameda County released footage of Gonzalez after officers pinned him for five minutes.
(NY Times, 4/27/21)
2021 Apr 19, California to date had 3,695,410 cases of coronavirus and 60,675 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 431,821 cases and 6,147 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 31,733,410 with the death toll at 567,666.
(sfist.com, 4/19/21)
2021 Apr 19, Florida Gov. Gov. Ron DeSantis signed HB 1, an anti-riot law. On Sept. 9 a federal judge ruled the law unconstitutional and that it cannot be enforced.
(https://tinyurl.com/289xb8pt)
2021 Apr 19, In Michigan rocker Ted Nugent revealed he was in agony after testing positive for coronavirus — months after he said the virus was “not a real pandemic." Nugent, a supporter of ex-President Donald Trump, previously called the pandemic a scam and has railed against public health restrictions.
(AP, 4/19/21)
2021 Apr 19, In Manhattan Roya Rahmani, the Afghan ambassador to the US, accepted a collection of 33 artifacts seized from a New York-based art dealer.
(SFC, 4/23/21, p.A4)
2021 Apr 19, In Ohio Yu Zhou (51), a former researcher at a children’s hospital, was sentenced to 33 months in prison for conspiring to steal trade secrets and sell them in China. His wife Li Chen (48) received a 30-month prison sentence in February. The pair had conducted research in separate laboratories at Nationwide Children’s Hospital’s Research Institute in Columbus, each for ten years.
(AP, 4/20/21)
2021 Apr 19, Walter Mondale (93), a Minnesota minister’s son who became a senator and Jimmy Carter’s vice president before losing the 1984 presidential election to Ronald Reagan, died at his home in Minneapolis.
(NY Times, 4/20/21)
2021 Apr 19, Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers and Taiwan-based Foxconn Technology Group, the world's largest electronics maker, announced a new deal with reduced tax breaks for a scaled back manufacturing facility.
(AP, 4/19/21)
2021 Apr 19, CVS Health Corp said it would offer three over-the-counter COVID-19 tests at its drugstores as well as online, expanding access to home testing in the United States.
(Reuters, 4/19/21)
2021 Apr 19, Britain imposed a travel ban on most visitors from India as PM Boris Johnson called off a trip to New Delhi. The UK has recorded 103 cases of a new virus variant, B.1.617, first identified in India.
(AP, 4/19/21)
2021 Apr 19, Chad's military claimed that it has killed some 300 rebels advancing on the capital, N'Djamena, as the government deployed tanks and other armed vehicles in the city's streets.
(AP, 4/19/21)
2021 Apr 19, Human Rights Watch said China is arbitrarily detaining up to 1 million people in China's Xinjiang state. HRW detailed a policy of mass incarceration, torture, disappearances, and cultural erasure in Xinjiang.
(Business Insider, 4/19/21)
2021 Apr 19, Egypt's Interior Ministry said police killed three suspected militants allegedly involved in the slaying of a Coptic Christian man kidnapped more than five months ago in a restive part of Sinai Peninsula.
(AP, 4/19/21)
2021 Apr 19, The European Union estimated that 150,000 Russian troops have already amassed for the biggest military buildup ever near Ukraine's borders and that it will only take “a spark" to set off a confrontation.
(AP, 4/19/21)
2021 Apr 19, The French government said it is introducing one of Europe’s first Covid-19 vaccine passport initiatives.
(NY Times, 4/21/21)
2021 Apr 19, Greece lifted quarantine restrictions for travelers from most European countries, as well as Israel and the United States as it prepares to reopen tourism services next month despite an ongoing emergency in pandemic-related hospital care.
(AP, 4/19/21)
2021 Apr 19, A Greek Coast Guard spokesman said that a Greek cargo ship traveling to Colombia from Egypt had been quarantined off Crete after a 55-year-old Filipino sailor was found dead in his cabin and others tested positive for the coronavirus.
(AP, 4/21/21)
2021 Apr 19, India reported 273,810 new infections, its highest daily rise since the start of the pandemic. It has now reported more than 15 million infections, second only to the US. India's Health Ministry also reported 1,619 deaths from COVID-19 in the past 24 hours, pushing the toll over 178,769. New Delhi imposed a weekend lockdown to prevent the collapse of the capital's health system amid an explosive surge in coronavirus cases.
(AP, 4/19/21)(SFC, 4/20/21, p.A6)
2021 Apr 19, In Indonesia visiting Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif discussed trade and economic issues in a meeting in Jakarta with Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi.
(AP, 4/19/21)
2021 Apr 19, Indonesia approved private research of COVID-19 vaccine candidate Nusantara that is backed by a former health minister, after recently saying a mid-stage trial for it could not proceed amid safety and data integrity issues.
(Reuters, 4/20/21)
2021 Apr 19, PM Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel has signed a deal to buy millions of doses of COVID-19 vaccinations from Pfizer through 2022.
(AP, 4/19/21)
2021 Apr 19, Libya's National Oil Corporation said it had interrupted crude oil production and exportation from Marsa Al Hariga port, citing the Central Bank of Libya’s refusal to pay out money set aside for the oil sector for several months.
(AP, 4/22/21)
2021 Apr 19, Myanmar security forces used violence against demonstrators who sought to celebrate last week's formation of a shadow government to serve as an alternative to the military junta that has held power since a February coup. One person was reported killed in Irrawaddy in addition one person killed there a day earlier.
(SFC, 4/20/21, p.A4)
2021 Apr 19, A Namibian court refused to issue a gay man emergency travel documents so that he can bring home his twin daughters from South Africa where they were born by surrogate. The authorities say Phillip Lühl must show genetic proof that he is their father before they can travel.
(BBC, 4/19/21)
2021 Apr 19, Typhoon Surigae approached the Philippines prompting the evacuation of more than 100,000 people and leaving one person day.
(SFC, 4/20/21, p.A4)
2021 Apr 19, Russia's prison service said opposition leader Alexei Navalny has been transferred to a hospital in another penal colony, one day after his doctor warned that the jailed Putin critic "could die at any moment".
(Axios, 4/19/21)
2021 Apr 19, A Russian military airstrike killed about 200 militants in eastern Syria. Russian warplanes hit two militant hideouts northeast of Palmyra.
(AP, 4/19/21)
2021 Apr 19, Rwanda in a 600-page report said that France “did nothing to stop" the massacres, in April and May 1994, and in the years after the genocide tried to cover up its role and even offered protection to some perpetrators.
(AP, 4/19/21)
2021 Apr 19, Spain said it will study the effects of mixing different coronavirus vaccines, responding to shifting guidelines on the safety of the AstraZeneca's shot.
(Reuters, 4/19/21)
2021 Apr 19, St. Vincent and the Grenadines' PM Ralph Gonsalves made a heartfelt plea to the international community to help his country recover from a volcanic eruption that has displaced 20,000 people.
(AP, 4/20/21)
2021 Apr 19, Sudan abolished a 1958 law on boycotting Israel, part of efforts to establish normal ties with the Jewish state. There are at least 6,000 Sudanese in Israel.
(AP, 4/19/21)
2021 Apr 19, Michel Kilo (81), an exiled veteran Syrian opposition figure, died of complications from COVID-19 in a hospital in Paris where he lived. Kilo was a strong supporter of protests that erupted against Assad’s government in 2011 and was among leading figures who worked to develop a political framework for the opposition movement.
(AP, 4/19/21)
2021 Apr 19, It was reported that Turkey’s Interior Ministry has launched a probe into six more municipalities in connection with an alleged human smuggling scheme where Turkish citizens wanting to migrate to Europe were, in exchange for a fee, issued special state passports allowing them visa-free travel.
(AP, 4/19/21)
2021 Apr 19, In Turkey deaths from COVID-19 hit a record 341 despite more than 20 million vaccines having been administered. A recent surge has brought active infections to a peak equivalent to nearly 1% of working age people.
(Reuters, 4/20/21)
2021 Apr 19, A UN report said 2020 was one of the three hottest years on record, marked by wildfires, droughts, floods and melting glaciers. 2020 was ranked alongside 2016 and 2019 despite cooling La Niña conditions.
(Reuters, 4/19/21)
2021 Apr 19, The food assistance agency of the United Nations announced that it will begin operations in Venezuela after reaching an agreement with the nation’s government.
(AP, 4/19/21)
2021 Apr 20, The Biden administration announced an increase in the number of temporary seasonal workers who will be allowed to work in the US this year as the economy recovers.
(SFC, 4/21/21, p.B2)
2021 Apr 20, The White House endorsed a bill to make the District of Columbia a state. The House of Representatives will vote on it soon.
(NY Times, 4/21/21)
2021 Apr 20, The US Southern Command said all but eight of the detainees at Guantánamo Bay have received their first dose of a Covid-19 vaccine.
(NY Times, 4/21/21)
2021 Apr 20, Nigerian influencer Ramon Abbas (37), also known as Hushpuppi, pleaded guilty to money laundering in a US court. The court records were only unsealed in late July.
(BBC, 7/29/21)
2021 Apr 20, California to date had 3,698,507 cases of coronavirus and 60,761 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 432,296 cases and 6,159 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 31,786,856 with the death toll at 568,416.
(sfist.com, 4/20/21)
2021 Apr 20, It was reported that a group of religious leaders is calling for a boycott of Georgia-based Home Depot, saying the home improvement giant hasn't done enough to oppose the state's new voting laws.
(AP, 4/20/21)
2021 Apr 20, Rossanna Delgado (37), a mother of two who worked as driver for the ride-share app, Lyft, was last seen alive on CCTV footage in DeKalb County, Georgia. Four days later her remains were found burnt and cut up in a cabin woods in Cherry Log. On June 26 an 8th suspect was arrested in Mexico for her murder. Three suspects remained at large.
(The Independent, 7/5/21)(Fox News, 7/5/21)
2021 Apr 20, Yet a jury in Minneapolis convicted Derek Chauvin (45) of second-degree murder (as well as two other charges) for killing George Floyd last May.
(NY Times, 4/21/21)
2021 Apr 20, Tempest Storm (93), one of the most celebrated strippers of midcentury burlesque, died at her home in Las Vegas.
(NY Times, 4/21/21)
2021 Apr 20, Three Brooklyn men were arrested and accused of stealing more than $30 million in cash and other valuables from safe deposit boxes in banks across Europe. A grand jury indictment charged Val Cooper (56), Alex Levin (52), and Garri Smith (49), with money laundering conspiracy and violations of the Travel Act after a string of alleged thefts between March 2015 and October 2019 at banks in Ukraine, Russia, North Macedonia, Moldova, Latvia, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and France.
(NBC News, 4/23/21)
2021 Apr 20, Police in Columbus, Ohio, fatally shot Ma’Khia Bryant (16), just moments before Derek Chauvin was found guilty of murdering George Floyd. Officers were answering an emergency-911 call from someone who reported an attempted stabbing. An autopsy later revealed that Bryant was shot four times.
(The Guardian, 4/21/21)(The Grio, 8/19/21)
2021 Apr 20, Utah-based IT company Ivanti said in a statement that the hackers in China took advantage of the flaw in its Pulse Connect Secure suite of virtual private networking devices to break into the systems of "a very limited number of customers." A fix for the issue would not be available until early May. It was later reported that dozens of other high-value entities, not yet named, were also targeted as part of the breach of Pulse Secure, which is used by many companies and governments for secure remote access to their networks.
(Reuters, 4/20/21)(AP, 6/14/21)
2021 Apr 20, Big jumps in sales of prescription drugs and medical devices helped Johnson & Johnson boost its first-quarter profit nearly 7%, blowing past Wall Street forecasts. The healthcare giant raised its financial forecasts for 2021.
(AP, 4/20/21)
2021 Apr 20, Subaru said it is recalling nearly 875,000 cars and SUVs in the US because the engines can stall or a rear suspension part can fall off. The stalling recall covers more than 466,000 Crosstrek SUVs from 2018 and 2019 and Impreza cars from 2017 through 2019.
(AP, 4/20/21)
2021 Apr 20, Tesla apologized to Chinese consumers for not addressing a complaint in a timely way, and said it would launch a review of its service operations in the world's biggest auto market. A day earlier a disgruntled customer had clambered on top of a Tesla at the auto show in protest over the company's handling of her complaints about malfunctioning brakes.
(Reuters, 4/21/21)
2021 Apr 20, Albania signed a contract with a Swiss-based consortium to build a 104 million-euro ($125 million) new international airport.
(AP, 4/20/21)
2021 Apr 20, Britain lifted travel restrictions on truckers that were imposed to avoid border chaos after the country’s economic split from the European Union at the end of last year.
(AP, 4/20/21)
2021 Apr 20, A court in Quebec, Canada, upheld a 2019 law barring public sector employees from wearing religious symbols while at work. The law applies to Muslim headscarves, Jewish skullcaps, Sikh turbans and Catholic crosses, among other symbols.
(SFC, 4/21/21, p.A2)
2021 Apr 20, Chad's President Idriss Déby (68) died of his injuries following clashes with rebels in the north of the country at the weekend. The announcement came a day after provisional election results projected he would win a sixth term in office. A military council led by Déby's son, Mahamat Idriss Déby Itnoa (37), will govern for the next 18 months.
(BBC, 4/20/21)
2021 Apr 20, China’s government rejected accusations of abuses in the Xinjiang region after a human rights group appealed for a UN investigation into possible crimes against humanity.
(AP, 4/20/21)
2021 Apr 20, Plans for a European soccer superleague collapsed spectacularly as the project’s six Premier League clubs — half of the Super League’s founding members — walked away from the plan only two days after it was announced.
(NY Times, 4/21/21)
2021 Apr 20, Armin Laschet (60), the governor of Germany’s most populous state, won a bruising power struggle to become the candidate of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s center-right bloc for chancellor in the September election.
(AP, 4/20/21)
2021 Apr 20, Hong Kong police said a 19-year-old university student, identified by his family name, Wong, has been arrested in connection to a phone scam that defrauded a Hong Kong woman (90) of $32.8 million. Callers had said they were investigators from mainland China.
(NY Times, 4/21/21)
2021 Apr 20, It was reported that regional rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran held a first round of direct talks earlier this month in Iraq, signaling a possible de-escalation following years of animosity.
(AP, 4/20/21)
2021 Apr 20, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (67) received the AstraZeneca shot against COVID-19, urging trust in vaccines after several countries limited the use of AstraZeneca due to suspected links to rare blood clots.
(Reuters, 4/20/21)
2021 Apr 20, Russia announced that it was closing the airspace over parts of Crimea and the Black Sea, saying the areas had been "declared temporarily dangerous for aircraft flights".
(CBS News, 4/21/21)
2021 Apr 20, Russian police detained several allies of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny and raided two of his regional offices, a protest monitoring group said, a day before his supporters plan to stage mass protests over his deteriorating health in jail.
(Reuters, 4/20/21)
2021 Apr 20, The Swedish Health Agency said citizens under 65 who have had one shot of AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine will be given a different vaccine for their second dose.
(Reuters, 4/20/21)
2021 Apr 20, Syrian government-allied fighters killed a Kurdish security officer in an attack late today on a checkpoint, in Qamishl, a city the two groups share control of.
(AP, 4/21/21)
2021 Apr 20, A group of 46 nations called on member states of the global chemical weapons watchdog (OPCW) to diplomatically rebuke Syria for using toxic gas and nerve agents in the country's decade-long civil war.
(AP, 4/20/21)
2021 Apr 20, The UN announced that it is seeking $29.2 million to help St. Vincent recover from ongoing volcanic eruptions.
(AP, 4/20/21)
2021 Apr 20, Yemen's COVID-19 vaccination campaign began in government-held areas three weeks after the first shipment from the global COVAX vaccine-sharing scheme arrived in the war-torn country.
(Reuters, 4/20/21)
2021 Apr 21, US Attorney General Merrick Garland said the Justice Department is launching a civil investigation of the Minneapolis Police Department to determine whether it "engages in a pattern or practice of unconstitutional or unlawful policing".
(NY Times, 4/21/21)
2021 Apr 21, US regulators said that the Emergent Biosciences Baltimore factory, contracted to make Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine, was dirty, didn’t follow proper manufacturing procedures and had poorly trained staff, resulting in contamination of material that was going to be put in the shots.
(AP, 4/21/21)
2021 Apr 21, It was reported that the US State Department has added about 100 countries this week to its "Level Four: Do Not Travel" advisory list, putting the United Kingdom, Canada, France, Mexico, Germany and others on the list, citing a "very high level of COVID-19".
(Reuters, 4/21/21)
2021 Apr 21, California's Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a drought emergency for Sonoma and Mendocino counties, but resisted a call for a statewide emergency for now.
(SFC, 4/22/21, p.B1)
2021 Apr 21, California to date had 3,699,503 cases of coronavirus and 60,768 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 432,621 cases and 6,163 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 31,808,533 with the death toll at 568,572.
(sfist.com, 4/21/21)
2021 Apr 21, Missouri state’s House of Representatives voted 153-0 to expel legislator Rick Roeber after an investigation by fellow lawmakers concluded that he had physically and sexually abused his children.
(NY Times, 4/21/21)
2021 Apr 21, Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. announced that his office would stop prosecuting prostitution. A New York judge agreed to dismiss thousands of prostitution-related offenses dating to the 1970s at the request of the Manhattan district attorney.
(NY Times, 4/21/21)(AP, 4/21/21)
2021 Apr 21, North Carolina police shot and killed Andrew Brown Jr. (42), a Black man, as deputy sheriffs tried to serve a drug-related search and arrest warrant. Brown tried to drive away, but was shot dead in his car. An independent autopsy later showed he was shot five times and died from a 'kill shot' to his head as he tried to drive away.
(SFC, 4/23/21, p.A7)(Reuters, 4/27/21)
2021 Apr 21, In Virginia Isaiah Brown (32) survived more than six rounds fired at him and was in a hospital "fighting for his life. Body camera video showed a deputy shooting the Black man, who was holding a cordless phone. Brown had just received a ride home by the same law enforcement officer.
(AP, 4/24/21)
2021 Apr 21, Johnson & Johnson said that it would resume the rollout of its coronavirus vaccine in Europe after the EU’s drug regulator said that a warning should be added to the product indicating a possible link to rare blood clots, but that the shot’s benefits outweigh the risks.
(NY Times, 4/21/21)
2021 Apr 21, Pfizer confirmed that fake doses of the vaccine Pfizer developed with BioNTech have been found in Mexico and Poland.
(WSJ, 4/21/21)
2021 Apr 21, The 27th bi-annual Iberoamerican Summit opened in Andorra with representatives of 22 countries meeting, mostly virtually. A final declaration was expected to call for universal and equitable access to coronavirus vaccines.
(SFC, 4/22/21, p.A4)
2021 Apr 21, Australia cancelled two deals struck by its state of Victoria with China on Beijing's flagship Belt and Road Initiative, prompting the Chinese embassy in Canberra to warn that already tense bilateral ties were bound to worsen.
(Reuters, 4/21/21)
2021 Apr 21, A Canadian judge granted Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou’s request to delay the final leg in her extradition hearings, days before they were set to begin.
(AP, 4/21/21)
2021 Apr 21, It was reported that researchers in China are testing the safety and efficacy of mixing two different Covid-19 shots amid questions over the effectiveness of Chinese-made coronavirus vaccines.
(NY Times, 4/21/21)
2021 Apr 21, The EU reached a tentative climate deal that is intended to make the 27-nation bloc climate-neutral by 2050, with member states and parliament agreeing on new carbon emissions targets on the eve of a virtual summit hosted by US President Joe Biden.
(AP, 4/21/21)
2021 Apr 21, German's lower house of parliament approved a proposal by Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government to mandate uniform restrictions in areas where the coronavirus is spreading too quickly.
(AP, 4/21/21)
2021 Apr 21, A German woman, Nurten J. (35), accused of joining the Islamic State group in Syria after traveling there with her young daughter, was convicted of participating in a terrorist organization and other offenses.
(AP, 4/21/21)
2021 Apr 21, Guatemalan prosecutors requested that former President Jimmy Morales be stripped of his immunity so he can be prosecuted for violating the mandate of the United Nations-backed anti-corruption mission then working in the country. Morales, who led Guatemala from 2016 to 2020, has immunity because after his term he immediately became a representative to the Central American Parliament.
(AP, 4/21/21)
2021 Apr 21, In Haiti Roman Catholic institutions including schools and universities closed across the country in a three-day protest to demand the release of five priests, two nuns and two other people kidnapped more than a week ago.
(AP, 4/21/21)
2021 Apr 21, India’s Health Ministry reported 295,041 new cases with 2,023 deaths, taking total fatalities to 182,553. 22 COVID-19 patients on ventilators died in a hospital in Nashik, Maharashtra state, when their oxygen supply was interrupted by a leak in a supply line.
(AP, 4/21/21)
2021 Apr 21, Unknown gunmen suspected of terrorism killed two members of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard. Guard members also killed two gunmen and wounded several of their accomplices late today near Kurdish town of Marivan.
(AP, 4/22/21)
2021 Apr 21, In Pakistan five people were killed and about a dozen wounded in a suicide bombing in the parking lot of the Serena hotel, in the southwestern city of Quetta. The Pakistani Taliban, or Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, said it targeted a meeting of Pakistani and foreign officials. The Chinese ambassador was in Quetta at the time of the attack.
(AP, 4/22/21)
2021 Apr 21, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced new social support measures for families with children and hinted at more tax changes, saying the corporate sector was on course for record profits this year. Putin also said he wanted Russia to reach collective COVID-19 immunity by the autumn and called on Russians to get vaccinated against the new coronavirus.
(AP, 4/21/21)(Reuters, 4/21/21)
2021 Apr 21, Russian police rounded up scores of protesters as allies of hunger-striking Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny staged nationwide protests over his failing health in jail. Security forces arrested more than 1,700 people.
(Reuters, 4/21/21)(Reuters, 4/22/21)
2021 Apr 21, It was reported that Saudi Arabia's daily coronavirus cases have soared to 1,070 infections. Total confirmed cases have reached 407,000 and 6,846 confirmed deaths.
(SFC, 4/21/21, p.A5)
2021 Apr 21, A South Korean court rejected a claim by victims of Japanese wartime sexual slavery and their relatives who sought compensation from Japan's government.
(SFC, 4/22/21, p.A2)
2021 Apr 21, President Bashar Assad formally announced he will run for reelection in war-torn Syria, and was expected to win a fourth seven-year term in the largely symbolic May 26 vote.
(AP, 4/21/21)
2021 Apr 21, Syria's last rebel-held enclave received its first batch of COVID-19 vaccines with a refrigerated truck offloading over 50,000 UN-secured jabs in the overcrowded province.
(AP, 4/21/21)
2021 Apr 21, It was reported that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has signed a law allowing to call up reservists for military service without announcing a mobilization.
(AP, 4/21/21)
2021 Apr 21, It was reported that the Pacific archipelago of Vanuatu has paused outbound travel from its main island after a body that washed ashore tested positive for the coronavirus. The body, identified as a Filipino man, was found last week after a tanker ship leaving the capital, Port Vila, reported one of its crew members missing.
(NY Times, 4/21/21)
2021 Apr 22, President Biden announced on Earth Day that the United States intends to cut planet-warming emissions nearly in half by the end of the decade, a target that would require Americans to transform the way they drive, heat their homes and manufacture goods. The new greenhouse gas emissions targeted a reduction of 50% to 52% below 2005 levels by 2030.
(NY Times, 4/22/21)
2021 Apr 22, The United States, Norway and Britain joined forces with companies including Amazon and Nestle to launch a project aimed at protecting the world's tropical forests.
(Reuters, 4/22/21)
2021 Apr 22, It was reported that President Biden will seek new taxes on the rich, including a near doubling of the capital gains tax for people earning more than $1 million a year, to pay for the next phase in his $4 trillion plan to reshape the American economy.
(NY Times, 4/22/21)
2021 Apr 22, The US House voted along party lines to grant statehood to Washington, DC, as Democrats moved to use their congressional majority to accomplish a long-held goal that has become a central plank in the party’s push to expand voting rights and address racial inequity.
(NY Times, 4/22/21)
2021 Apr 22, The US Senate overwhelmingly passed a bill that would help combat the rise of hate crimes against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. A similar bill in the House is expected to be considered in May.
(AP, 4/22/21)
2021 Apr 22, The US Supreme Court ruled 6-3 along liberal-conservative lines against a Mississippi inmate sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for fatally stabbing his grandfather when the defendant was 15 years old.
(AP, 4/22/21)
2021 Apr 22, Advocacy groups announced the settlement of a suit against the US Census Bureau. Undocumented immigrants, whom former Pres. Donald Trump tried to exclude from the census, will now be included in the population count that determines congressional representation for the next decade.
(SFC, 4/23/21, p.A10)
2021 Apr 22, NASA’s little Mars helicopter aced its second test flight, soaring even higher and longer than before.
(AP, 4/22/21)
2021 Apr 22, In downtown San Diego Travis Sarreshsteh (32) shot and killed one person and then walked another block and opened fire again wounding four people. Sarreshsteh was arrested after bystanders tackled him.
(SFC, 4/24/21, p.A3)
2021 Apr 22, California to date had 3,701,695 cases of coronavirus and 60,881 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 433,006 cases and 6,172 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 31,928,507 with the death toll at 570,321.
(sfist.com, 4/22/21)
2021 Apr 22, Gregory Edward Jacobs (57), known as Shock G, the frontman for the influential hip-hop group Digital Underground, was found dead at a hotel in Tampa, Fla. Digital Underground had a string of hits in the early 1990s and introduced its audience to a little-known rapper named Tupac Shakur.
(NY Times, 4/23/21)
2021 Apr 22, In NYC Akayed Ullah (31), a Bangladeshi man convicted of setting off a pipe bomb during rush hour in Times Square on Dec. 11, 2017, was sentenced to life plus 30 years in prison. Four people were injured in the explosion.
(Reuters, 4/22/21)
2021 Apr 22, Gov. Jay Inslee (D) announced during a press conference that Washington state has entered its fourth wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.
(Axios, 4/24/21)
2021 Apr 22, Amarin Corporation plc today announced that the Britain's Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has granted a Marketing Authorization for VAZKEPA (icosapent ethyl) as a treatment to reduce the risk of cardiovascular events in high cardiovascular risk statin-treated adult patients who have elevated triglycerides and either established cardiovascular disease or diabetes, and at least one additional cardiovascular risk factor.
(Global Newswire, 4/22/21)
2021 Apr 22, It was reported that Algerian author Said Djabelkhir (53) has been sentenced to three years in prison for offending Islam. Mr Djabelkhir has written two books on Islam in which he suggested that parts of the Quran, such as the story of Noah's Ark, might not be literally true and criticized practices including the marriage of young girls in some Muslim societies.
(BBC, 4/22/21)
2021 Apr 22, Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro shifted his tone on preservation of the Amazon rainforest at the US-led climate summit, exhibiting willingness to step up commitment even as many critics continue doubting his credibility.
(AP, 4/22/21)
2021 Apr 22, The British government and the Commonwealth War Graves Commission apologized after an investigation found that at least 161,000 mostly Africans and Indians who died fighting for the British Empire during WWI weren't properly honored due to pervasive racism.
(SFC, 4/23/21, p.A5)
2021 Apr 22, British lawmakers approved a parliamentary motion declaring that China's policies against its Uyghur minority population in the far western Xinjiang region amounted to genocide and crimes against humanity.
(AP, 4/22/21)
2021 Apr 22, The Czech Republic ordered more Russian diplomats to leave the country, further escalating a dispute between the two nations over the alleged involvement of Russian spies in a massive ammunition depot explosion in 2014.
(AP, 4/22/21)
2021 Apr 22, India confirmed a record 314,835 new COVID-19 cases nationwide over the previous 24 hours, the highest one-day case count any country has seen during the coronavirus pandemic.
(BBC, 4/22/21)
2021 Apr 22, Indonesian navy ships searched for a submarine, the diesel-powered KRI Nanggala 402, that likely sank too deep to retrieve, making survival chances for the 53 people on board slim. Authorities said oxygen in the submarine would run out by early April 24.
(AP, 4/22/21)
2021 Apr 22, Iran is now reporting its highest-ever new coronavirus case numbers — more than 25,000 a day. Its daily death toll has surged to around 400, still below the grim record of 486 it reached in November.
(AP, 4/22/21)
2021 Apr 22, The Israeli military struck back at Syria after a missile from the country triggered air raid sirens near the Dimona nuclear reactor as it landed in southern Israel.
(AFP, 4/22/21)
2021 Apr 22, Italy reported 360 coronavirus-related deaths against 364 the day before, while the daily tally of new infections rose to 16,232 from 13,844.
(Reuters, 4/22/21)
2021 Apr 22, Laos locked down its capital Vientiane and closed international borders to most traffic after identifying a COVID-19 cluster connected its neighbor Thailand. 28 new cases were confirmed a day earlier bringing the country's total to 88.
(SFC, 4/23/21, p.A8)
2021 Apr 22, A capsized rubber boat, which was initially carrying around 130 people, was spotted in the Mediterranean Sea northeast of the Libyan capital, Tripoli. The aid vessel did not find any survivors, but could see at least ten bodies near the wreck.
(AP, 4/23/21)
2021 Apr 22, Norway said it will lend all of its 216,000 doses of AstraZeneca to neighboring Sweden and Iceland as long as its own government regulator has paused the use of the vaccine.
(AP, 4/22/21)
2021 Apr 22, Russia's Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said that massive military exercises near the border with Ukraine had been completed, and that he had ordered troops to return to their permanent bases by May 1. Shoigu also said that they should leave their weapons behind in western Russia for another exercise later this year.
(AP, 4/22/21)
2021 Apr 22, Sweden said it will postpone a tentative plan to ease some COVID-19 restrictions, due to the ongoing high levels of new infections. Sweden registered 7,736 new COVID-19 cases today and 19 new deaths, taking the total deaths to 13,882.
(Reuters, 4/22/21)
2021 Apr 22, The Syrian government received a batch of 203,000 COVID-19 vaccines, part of a push to speed up a sluggish inoculation process in the war-torn country.
(AP, 4/22/21)
2021 Apr 22, Turkish prosecutors launched an investigation into the Thodex cryptocurrency exchange over allegations it may have defrauded some 390,000 investors of an estimated $2 billion. Thodex owner Faruk Ozer was believed to have fled to Albania.
(SFC, 4/23/21, p.B2)
2021 Apr 22, The United Nations said food insecurity is rising sharply in Myanmar in the wake of the military coup and deepening financial crisis with millions more people expected to go hungry in coming months.
(Reuters, 4/22/21)
2021 Apr 23, The US CDC and FDA lifted the recommended pause on use of Johnson & Johnson’s coronavirus vaccine, saying the benefits of the shot outweigh the risk of a rare blood clot disorder.
(Axios, 4/24/21)
2021 Apr 23, SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida carrying two American, one Japanese and one French astronaut to the International Space Station.
(NY Times, 4/23/21)
2021 Apr 23, California's Gov. Gavin Newsom directed the state to stop issuing permits for oil fracking by January 2024 and to draw up plans to end all fossil-fuel drilling in the state by 2045.
(SFC, 4/24/21, p.A1)
2021 Apr 23, California to date had 3,710,854 cases of coronavirus and 61,005 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 433,500 cases and 6,203 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 31,972,888 with the death toll at 571,001.
(sfist.com, 4/23/21)
2021 Apr 23, Dan Kaminsky (42), a computer whiz who helped develop technology to protect the backbone of the internet, died at his home in San Francisco.
(SSFC, 5/2/21, p.F8)
2021 Apr 23, Bob Fass (87), who for more than 50 years hosted an anarchic and influential radio show on New York’s countercultural FM station WBAI that mixed political conversation, avant-garde music, serendipitous encounters and outright agitation, died in Monroe, N.C., where he lived in recent years.
(NY Times, 4/25/21)
2021 Apr 23, It was reported that Brazil’s COVID-19 vaccination program is being put at risk by people failing to show up for their second shot, with 1.5 million people missing appointments for the follow-up dose needed to maximize protection. A recent real-world study from Chile found that the Sinovac Biotech COVID-19 vaccine, which has accounted for some 80% of Brazil's program, is just 16% effective after one shot.
(Reuters, 4/23/21)
2021 Apr 23, It was reported that Judges have quashed the convictions of 39 former postmasters after the UK's most widespread miscarriage of justice.
(BBC, 4/23/21)
2021 Apr 23, Britain recorded 2,678 new cases of COVID-19, a drop on 2,729 recorded the previous day, while a further 40 people had died within 28 days of a positive COVID-19 test.
(Reuters, 4/23/21)
2021 Apr 23, Bulgaria said veterinary authorities will cull 40,000 laying hens in the southeastern village of Krivo Pole after a bird flu outbreak was confirmed at an industrial farm there, the fifth since the start of the year.
(Reuters, 4/23/21)
2021 Apr 23, Canada's Supreme Court ruled that the descendants of the US-based Sinixt nation maintained ancestral land rights even after members moved south in the 19th century, a landmark decision that ends a decade-long legal dispute.
(Reuters, 4/23/21)
2021 Apr 23, A spokesperson for the Xinjiang region called accusations of genocide “counter to the facts" as China came under more pressure this week over its treatment of the Uyghur ethnic group in the remote border area.
(AP, 4/23/21)
2021 Apr 23, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania ordered the expulsion of a total of four Russian diplomats as an act of solidarity with the Czech Republic, where scores of diplomats have been expelled over the alleged involvement of Russian spies in a massive ammunition depot explosion in 2014.
(AP, 4/23/21)
2021 Apr 23, The European Medicines Agency said that people who have received a first dose of AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine should get the second one too, despite the rare risk of blood clots that have been linked to the shot.
(AP, 4/23/21)
2021 Apr 23, France became the first rich country to donate COVID-19 vaccines to a developing nation through the UN's jab rollout program for low- and middle-income countries, shipping more than 100,000 doses to Mauritania. President Emmanuel Macron said France will step up vaccine donations to the international COVAX vaccine program in the coming months with a donation of 500,000 shots, including from suppliers other than AstraZeneca.
(AP, 4/23/21)(Reuters, 4/23/21)
2021 Apr 23, In France a Tunisian-born resident (37), later identified as Djamel G. (37), fatally stabbed a police official near the Rambouillet chateau outside of Paris before being shot and killed by other officers. Four people, including the suspect's father, were soon detained in a terrorism investigation.
(SFC, 4/24/21, p.A3)(SSFC, 4/25/21, p.A10)
2021 Apr 23, LVMH CEO Bernard Arnault and Tod’s founder Diego Dalle Valle further cemented their 20-year friendship with a deal for the French group to increase its stake in the Italian luxury goods maker.
(AP, 4/23/21)
2021 Apr 23, A Berlin court convicted Zeynep G. (34), of membership in the Islamic State group over her time spent in territory controlled by the extremist group in Syria and sentenced her to two years and 10 months in prison. However, it ordered her released on condition that she reports to authorities.
(AP, 4/23/21)
2021 Apr 23, A police official said Greek authorities are investigating 68 deaths at a nursing home on the island of Crete after relatives raised concerns about ill-treatment and the reported cause of death.
(Reuters, 4/23/21)
2021 Apr 23, It was reported that Hungary's government is walking back two controversial pieces of legislation that targeted foreign universities and civil society groups after they were struck down by the European Union's top court.
(AP, 4/23/21)
2021 Apr 23, India set a global record in daily infections for a second straight day with 332,730. India has recorded 2,263 deaths in the past 24 hours for a total of 186,920. Thirteen people died when an oxygen-fed fire ripped through a coronavirus ward on the outskirts of Mumbai. India put oxygen tankers on special express trains as major hospitals in New Delhi begged on social media for more supplies to save COVID-19 patients.
(AP, 4/23/21)(SFC, 4/24/21, p.A4)
2021 Apr 23, India's Cadila Healthcare said it has started producing its potential COVID-19 vaccine for which it will seek emergency use authorisation in May or June, its managing director told Reuters, with an aim to make up to 240 million doses a year.
(Reuters, 4/23/21)
2021 Apr 23, Italy reported 342 coronavirus-related deaths against 360 the day before. The daily tally of new infections fell to 14,761 from 16,232.
(Reuters, 4/23/21)
2021 Apr 23, Malaysian artist Fahmi Reza was detained by police late today for allegedly insulting the country's queen by making a Spotify playlist that mocked comments on the queen's Instagram account.
(Reuters, 4/23/21)
2021 Apr 23, Protesters against Myanmar’s military coup returned to the streets of downtown Yangon, defiantly chanting their opposition to the army’s seizure of power as the junta chief prepared to attend a meeting of Southeast Asian leaders on the country’s crisis.
(AP, 4/23/21)
2021 Apr 23, Norway said it will offer those who have received a dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine against COVID-19 to take an injection from an mRNA vaccine as their second dose.
(Reuters, 4/23/21)
2021 Apr 23, Pakistan reported 144 coronavirus deaths in the last 24 hours. Total cases reached 784,108 and 16,842 deaths. PM Imran Khan summoned troops to help police implement social distancing rules.
(SFC, 4/24/21, p.A4)
2021 Apr 23, Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip fired some three dozen rockets into Israel late today. Israel launched air strikes on the Gaza Strip in response to the rocket attacks, as tensions in Jerusalem spilled over into the worst round of cross-border violence in months.
(AP, 4/23/21)(NBC News, 4/24/21)
2021 Apr 23, The Kremlin announced that President Vladimir Putin has signed a decree allowing the country to limit the number of Russians employed at embassies of countries determined to be unfriendly, or to ban their employment entirely.
(AP, 4/24/21)
2021 Apr 23, The Kremlin said Russia plans to resume direct flights to Egypt’s Red Sea resort towns after the 2015 downing of a Russian airliner over the Sinai Peninsula. In 2017, it started flying to Cairo again, but direct trips to the two Red Sea resort towns have remained halted.
(AP, 4/23/21)
2021 Apr 23, Jailed Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny (44) said that he had decided to end his 24-day hunger strike after being warned by his doctors that continuing it would put his life at serious risk.
(CBS News, 4/23/21)
2021 Apr 23, It was reported that Saudi Arabia will ban Lebanese fruits and vegetables entering the kingdom or passing through it because those shipments have been increasingly used to smuggle drugs. The ban will begin April 25.
(AP, 4/23/21)
2021 Apr 23, In Zimbabwe an air force helicopter crashed into a house killing three crew members and a child at the crash site.
(AP, 4/23/21)
2021 Apr 24, US President Biden recognized the killing of 1.5 million Armenians as genocide on the 106th anniversary of a brutal campaign by the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I. He equated the violence with the scale of those committed in Nazi-occupied Europe, Cambodia and Rwanda.
(NY Times, 4/25/21)
2021 Apr 24, Several US states resumed use of the one-shot Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine following a green light from federal health officials.
(AP, 4/24/21)
2021 Apr 24, Alaska Airlines banned Alaska state Senator Lora Reinbold for refusing to follow mask requirements. Reinbold has been a vocal opponent to COVID-19 mitigation measures.
(AP, 4/25/21)
2021 Apr 24, A four-astronaut team arrived at the International Space Station aboard the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule Endeavour.
(Reuters, 4/24/21)
2021 Apr 24, California to date had 3,705,952 cases of coronavirus and 61,054 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 433,563 cases and 6,203 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 32,022,974 with the death toll at 571,547.
(sfist.com, 4/24/21)
2021 Apr 24, In the US state of Georgia six women were killed and ten others injured in an interstate crash that left a passenger van engulfed in flames and rolled on its side. The driver of the van was soon arrested and charged with six counts of homicide.
(AP, 4/25/21)(SFC, 4/29/21, p.A4)
2021 Apr 24, Belarus sate news reported that President Alexander Lukashenko said he will sign a decree allowing the transfer of presidential power to the security council if he were to become unable to perform his duties.
(Reuters, 4/24/21)
2021 Apr 24, China announced that its first Mars rover will be named Zhurong after a traditional fire god. The rover is aboard the Tianwen-1 probe that arrived in Mars orbit on Feb. 24 and is due to land in May to look for evidence of life.
(AP, 4/24/21)
2021 Apr 24, China reported 13 new COVID-19 cases, up from nine cases a day earlier. The number of new asymptomatic cases, which China does not classify as confirmed cases, rose to 14 from 12 a day earlier.
(Reuters, 4/25/21)
2021 Apr 24, Costa Rica registered 1,830 new COVID-19 infections, its highest daily increase since the start of the pandemic.
(AP, 4/25/21)
2021 Apr 24, Fifteen people in France emerged from a scientific experiment to say that time seemed to pass more slowly in their cavernous underground abode, where they were deprived of clocks, light and news for 40 days as part of the Deep Time project.
(AP, 4/24/21)
2021 Apr 24, In France Alber Elbaz (59), the former creative director at French fashion house Lanvin, died from COVID-19.
(Reuters, 4/25/21)
2021 Apr 24, Overwhelmed hospitals in India begged for oxygen supplies as the country's coronavirus infections soared again overnight in a "tsunami" of disease, setting a new world record for cases for the third consecutive day. The number of cases across the country rose overnight by 346,786, for a total of 16.6 million cases, including 189,544 deaths. COVID-19 deaths rose by 2,624 over the past 24 hours, the highest daily rate for the country so far.
(Reuters, 4/24/21)
2021 Apr 24, It was reported that members of Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guard shot dead three militants and dismantled their cell in eastern Iran near the border with Afghanistan.
(AP, 4/24/21)
2021 Apr 24, Iran banned all flights to and from India and Pakistan to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
(Axios, 4/24/21)
2021 Apr 24, In Iraq a fire broke out in a Baghdad hospital that cares for coronavirus patients after oxygen cylinders reportedly exploded late today. At least 82 people were killed. The death toll was expected to rise as more patients who suffered severe burns succumbed to their injuries.
(AP, 4/24/21)(NY Times, 4/25/21)
2021 Apr 24, Firefighters in Northern Ireland spent a second day batting fires across difficult terrain on the Mourne Mountains.
(AP, 4/24/21)
2021 Apr 24, Pakistan reported 157 coronavirus deaths, its highest toll in a single day. Overall fatalities rose to 16,999 and total cases to 790,016.
(SSFC, 4/25/21, p.A11)
2021 Apr 24, Papua New Guinea (PNG) officials reported three new COVID-19 related deaths, bringing the country's total deaths to 102. The official number of coronavirus infections in the nation of 8.8 million people rose to 10,602, with 52 new cases.
(Reuters, 4/24/21)
2021 Apr 24, South Korea said it has signed a contract with Pfizer Inc to purchase an additional 40 million doses of its COVID-19 vaccine amid fears of spiking infections at home.
(Reuters, 4/24/21)
2021 Apr 24, The Syrian government received the first batch of Chinese COVID-19 vaccines, a gift of 150,000 jabs to Damascus. The Syrian government has registered nearly 22,000 infection cases, including over 1,500 deaths in areas under its control.
(AP, 4/24/21)
2021 Apr 24, Thailand's capital Bangkok ordered the closure of public venues and sports premises after the country reported a record daily rise in coronavirus cases and deaths amid a third wave of infections. The closures, effective from April 26 until May 9, apply to venues including public parks, gyms, swimming pools, meeting halls, internet shops, daycares centers, sports fields, museums and libraries.
(Reuters, 4/24/21)
2021 Apr 24, Turkish authorities blocked the onshore bank accounts of Vebitcoin and detained four people as part of an investigation into the cryptocurrency exchange platform. A day earlier Vebitcoin announced that it stopped all of its activities citing financial strains.
(Reuters, 4/24/21)
2021 Apr 24, Zanzibar's authorities halted all sea activities, including fishing and transport, until further notice as a tropical storm approaches the Tanzanian islands.
(BBC, 4/24/21)
2021 Apr 25, The commander of foreign forces in Afghanistan, US Army General Scott Miller, said an orderly withdrawal of foreign forces and the handing over of military bases and equipment to the Afghan forces had begun.
(Reuters, 4/25/21)
2021 Apr 25, “Nomadland" was the night’s big winner, taking home Oscars for best picture, best actress for Frances McDormand and best director for Chloé Zhao, the first woman of color to win the award. Anthony Hopkins (83) won best actor for his role in “The Father." South Korean film icon Youn Yuh-jung won for best supporting actress.
(NY Times, 4/26/21)(Reuters, 4/25/21)
2021 Apr 25, California to date had 3,706,272 cases of coronavirus and 61,096 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 433,858 cases and 6,209 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 32,063,938 with the death toll at 572,109.
(sfist.com, 4/25/21)
2021 Apr 25, William T. Wiley (83), founder of the San Francisco Bay Area Funk art movement, died at Marin General Hosp.
(SSFC, 5/2/21, p.F1)
2021 Apr 25, Albanians voted in a parliamentary election amid the pandemic, opposition allegations of official corruption and a bitter rivalry between the country's two largest political parties. The Socialist Party (PS) of PM Edi Rama sought a third term, while Lulzim Basha's Democratic Party (PD) wants a return to power eight years after losing an election. Preliminary results the next day showed the ruling Socialist Party ahead.
(AP, 4/25/21)(Reuters, 4/25/21)(AP, 4/26/21)
2021 Apr 25, Armenian PM Nikol Pashinyan, who was swept to power in pro-democracy protests in 2018, resigned triggering an early election to try overcome criticism over his handling of last year's conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh.
(Reuters, 4/25/21)
2021 Apr 25, A seabed mining robot being tested on the Pacific Ocean floor at a depth of more than 4 km (13,000 ft) became detached. The Patania II, a 25-ton mining robot prototype belonging to Belgium-based Global Sea Mineral Resources (GSR), was meant to collect the potato-sized nodules rich in cobalt and other battery metals that pepper the seabed. A recovery operation reconnected it and brought it back to surface late on April 29.
(Reuters, 4/28/21)(Reuters, 4/30/21)
2021 Apr 25, In Canada a mansion of Pornhub founder Feras Antoon went up in flames. The property, in Montreal's Ahuntsic-Cartierville neighborhood, was under construction and was listed for sale at nearly $20 million.
(Business Insider, 4/27/21)
2021 Apr 25, In northern Chad rebels said they are ready to observe a ceasefire and to discuss a political settlement after the battlefield death of Pres. Idriss Deby last week. The Front for Change and Concord in Chad (FACT) came over the northern border from Libya on April 11 calling for an end to Deby's 30-year rule. Chad's ruling military council rejected the offer.
(Reuters, 4/25/21)(BBC, 4/25/21)
2021 Apr 25, Czech President Milos Zeman said the idea that Russian spies caused a 2014 ammunition dump explosion in the central European country was just one of two theories and the possibility it was an accident should not be ruled out.
(AP, 4/25/21)
2021 Apr 25, In El Salvador Zashy Zuley del Cid Velásquez (27), a transgender woman, was shot dead in San Miguel.
(AP, 6/5/21)
2021 Apr 25, It was reported that the death toll in clashes this month between Ethiopia's two largest ethnic groups, the Oromo and Amhara, in the northern Amhara region may be as high as 200, up from previous reports of at least 50.
(Reuters, 4/25/21)
2021 Apr 25, In France crowds gathered in Paris and other French cities to denounce a ruling by France’s highest court that Kobili Traoré, the killer of Jewish woman Sarah Halimi (65) in 2017, was not criminally responsible and therefore could not go on trial. Under French law, people cannot be held criminally responsible for actions committed while fully losing their judgment or self-control due to a psychiatric disorder. Traoré used to smoke heavy quantities of cannabis.
(AP, 4/25/21)
2021 Apr 25, India set a 4th global daily record of new coronavirus infections, spurred by an insidious new variant that emerged here. The 349,691 confirmed infections over the past day brought India’s total to more than 16.9 million cases.
(AP, 4/25/21)
2021 Apr 25, Italy joined other countries by imposing restrictions on travel from India to avert the spread of the B.1.617 coronavirus variant.
(AP, 4/25/21)
2021 Apr 25, Lebanese troops aborted an attempt early today to smuggle 69 Syrian migrants to the Mediterranean island of Cyprus. The smuggler who took money from the migrants to take them to Cyprus was arrested.
(AP, 4/25/21)
2021 Apr 25, Nepal, which shares a long porous border with India, reported 3,032 new coronavirus infections, the highest daily surge recorded this year.
(Reuters, 4/26/21)
2021 Apr 25, In North Macedonia thousands of opposition supporters protested in Skopje demanding retrials and freedom for more than a dozen former conservative government officials convicted for their roles in a mob invasion of parliament in 2017.
(AP, 4/25/21)
2021 Apr 25, In Somalia gunfire erupted across Mogadishu as security forces loyal to the president clashed with units that appeared to have sided with his rivals, stoking fears that Somalia’s simmering political crisis is spilling over into violence.
(NY Times, 4/25/21)
2021 Apr 25, Switzerland said it has confirmed the first case of an Indian variant of COVID-19 in a person who entered Switzerland via a European country in late march.
(Reuters, 4/25/21)
2021 Apr 25, Thai authorities stepped up travel restrictions and other measures to combat a rapidly spreading third wave of COVID-19 infections as the country logged 11 deaths, a daily record. A new outbreak driven by the highly transmissible B.1.1.7 variant has resulted in over 24,000 cases and 46 deaths in just 25 days.
(Reuters, 4/25/21)
2021 Apr 26, US officials said Pres. Joe Biden intends to make up to 60 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine available to other countries, so long as federal regulators deem the doses safe.
(NY Times, 4/26/21)
2021 Apr 26, The US Agriculture Department announced that it will continue through the summer a payments program that replaced school meals because the pandemic left many children with virtual classes.
(AP, 4/26/21)
2021 Apr 26, The US Census Bureau will released the data that determines whether states gain or lose congressional seats and Electoral College votes, setting the stage for a pitched battle over redistricting that could reshape political power in Washington for a decade.
(AP, 4/26/21)
2021 Apr 26, The US State Department announced in a statement that foreign students from China, Iran, Brazil and South Africa will be exempt from pandemic travel bans and will be allowed back into the US as long as they have proper visas.
(Axios, 4/27/21)
2021 Apr 26, The US military ship Firebolt fired warning shots after three vessels from Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy (IRGCN) came close to it and another American patrol boat in the Gulf.
(Reuters, 4/27/21)
2021 Apr 26, State offices were closed in Alabama and Mississippi for Confederate Memorial Day.
(AP, 4/26/21)
2021 Apr 26, California to date had 3,708,127 cases of coronavirus and 61,107 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 434,229 cases and 6,209 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 32,106,885 with the death toll at 572,549.
(sfist.com, 4/26/21)
2021 Apr 26, The Washington DC police department said that its computer network was breached and that the Babuk Group, a Russian-speaking ransomware syndicate, claimed to have stolen sensitive data.
(SFC, 4/27/21, p.A3)
2021 Apr 26, Psychologist Arthur Staats died at his home in Oahu. He developed "time-outs" for unruly kids. His books included "Learning, Language and Cognition" (1968) and "Marvelous Learning Animal" (2012).
(SSFC, 6/6/21, p.F7)
2021 Apr 26, Sotheby's announced that Kanye West's so-called “Grammy Worn" Nike Air Yeezy 1 fetched $1.8 in a private sale. It was acquired by RARES, a sneaker investment marketplace. The sale marked the highest publicly recorded price for a sneaker sale and the first pair of sneakers to top $1 million.
(AP, 4/26/21)
2021 Apr 26, It was reported that US electric vehicle (EV) maker Tesla Inc plans to add facilities at its Shanghai factory to repair and reproduce key components such as electric motors and battery cells.
(Reuters, 4/26/21)
2021 Apr 26, Brazil’s health authority rejected Russia’s Covid vaccine even though scientific research suggests it is safe and effective.
(NY Times, 4/26/21)
2021 Apr 26, In Burkina Faso two Spanish journalists were killed. They were part of an anti-poaching patrol that was ambushed by gunmen near Pama Reserve. An Irish national was also reported killed Two soldiers wounded in the ambush said the attack had been launched by jihadists who had outnumbered the 15-person patrol. In northern Burkina Faso an attack by gunmen killed at least 18 people and severely injured one in Yattakou village.
(BBC, 4/27/21)(AP, 4/29/21)
2021 Apr 26, Cyprus returned to lockdown mode for two weeks as infections increased despite a ramped-up vaccination program.
(SFC, 4/26/21, p.A7)
2021 Apr 26, Danish Lutheran priest Thomas Gotthard (44) was charged with murdering his wife, even though her body has never been found. Maria Gotthard (43) left the couple’s home in Frederikssund, northwest of Copenhagen, last Oct. 26, in a depressed state of mind. Thomas was detained after investigators found hydrochloric acid and caustic soda in the couple’s home.
(AP, 4/26/21)
2021 Apr 26, Egyptian authorities executed nine men convicted of murder in an attack on a police station in 2013. The assault resulted in the deaths of 15 people, including 11 police.
(AP, 4/26/21)
2021 Apr 26, The French energy firm Total announced hat it has halted all operations on its $20 billion investment in a liquified natural gas project in northern Mozambique as a result of the extremist rebel insurgency there..
(AP, 4/26/21)
2021 Apr 26, India reported another 2,812 deaths, with roughly 117 Indians succumbing to the disease every hour, setting another record for new coronavirus infections for a fifth day in a row at more than 350,000. Officials said the city of Bengaluru, home to the technology operations of hundreds of global companies, will enter a two-week lockdown for 14 days.
(AP, 4/26/21)(Reuters, 4/26/21)
2021 Apr 26, It was reported that Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, an Iranian-British woman long held in Tehran, has been sentenced to another year in prison on a charge of spreading “propaganda against the system" for participating in a protest in front of the Iranian Embassy in London in 2009.
(AP, 4/26/21)
2021 Apr 26, Iran registered its highest single-day death toll from COVID-19, bringing the total number of fatalities to over 70,000 in the country hardest hit by the coronavirus in the region. 496 new deaths were tallied over the last 24 hours as well as 21,026 more confirmed cases.
(AP, 4/26/21)
2021 Apr 26, Delek Drilling, owned by the Israeli billionaire Yitzhak Tshuva, said that it signed a memorandum of understanding with Mubadala Petroleum, part of a conglomerate owned by the government of Abu Dhabi.
(AP, 4/26/21)
2021 Apr 26, In Israel dozens of members of a polygamous, vegan sect received deportation orders from the government, despite much of the community having received permanent residency in 2003 under arrangements with Israel. The African Hebrew Israelites began arriving in Israel in 1969, following Ben Carter, a Chicago steelworker who renamed himself Ben Ammi Ben Israel and claimed to be God’s representative on earth.
(AP, 4/26/21)
2021 Apr 26, It was reported that all driving test examiners have been suspended across Ivory Coast while the government "cleans up" the sector.
(BBc, 4/26/21)
2021 Apr 26, In Japan private sector advisers to PM Yoshihide Suga warned that Japan's birth rate is declining at a faster pace amid the coronavirus crisis, saying that society should have a "sense of crisis" about it.
(Reuters, 4/26/21)
2021 Apr 26, Lebanon called on Saudi Arabia to reconsider its decision to ban Lebanese produce from entering the oil-rich kingdom over a drug smuggling case. Officials vowed to investigate and institute strict new measures.
(AP, 4/26/21)
2021 Apr 26, Protesters in Myanmar’s largest city braved potential violence by security forces to demonstrate against February’s military coup, showing their resolve to continue their resistance two days after Southeast Asian leaders met to address the country’s crisis.
(AP, 4/26/21)
2021 Apr 26, Norwegian PM Erna Solberg (60) received her first dose of a vaccine against COVID-19. Four other cabinet ministers were also vaccinated.
(Reuters, 4/26/21)
2021 Apr 26, The Philippines' Dept. of Health reported 8,929 new coronavirus infections, bringing the country's total to 1,006,428 including 16,853 deaths.
(SFC, 4/27/21, p.A4)
2021 Apr 26, Portugal reported no coronavirus-related deaths in the last 24 hours for the first time in nearly nine months as the country emerges from a two-month lockdown.
(Reuters, 4/26/21)
2021 Apr 26, Russian authorities ordered the offices of imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny to suspend their activities pending a court ruling on whether they should be outlawed as an extremist group.
(AP, 4/26/21)
2021 Apr 26, Russian pharmaceutical firm Pharmasyntez said it was ready to ship up to 1 million packs of the remdesivir antiviral drug to India by end-May to help fight a surge in COVID-19 cases there, once it has received the approval of Russia's government.
(Reuters, 4/26/21)
2021 Apr 26, Officials in northern Spain’s Pamplona called off the famed San Fermín bull-running festival for the second year in a row because of the coronavirus pandemic.
(AP, 4/26/21)
2021 Apr 26, Spanish authorities rescued three people and recovered the bodies of 24 who had died in a shipwreck.
(SFC, 5/5/21, p.A3)
2021 Apr 26, A leading Syrian rights group called on the international community to reject next month’s presidential elections because they will take place under the rule of President Bashar Assad, who is implicated in war crimes.
(AP, 4/26/21)
2021 Apr 26, Thailand's government slapped restrictions on travel from India and closed more venues in Bangkok, even as it came under fire for not doing enough to contain a spike in infections.
(Reuters, 4/26/21)
2021 Apr 26, In Turkey a small group of protestors gathered outside the American consulate in Istanbul to protest US President Joe Biden’s decision to call the Ottoman Empire's mass deportations and killings of Armenians a century ago a “genocide".
(AP, 4/26/21)
2021 Apr 26, Turkey reported 37,312 new coronavirus cases and 353 deaths. The total death toll now stood at 38,711. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan ordered a national lockdown for three weeks as of April 29, closing nonessential businesses and sending all students home.
(NY Times, 4/27/21)(SFC, 4/28/21, p.A6)
2021 Apr 26, Ukraine's Pres. Volodymyr Zelenskyy unveiled a new nuclear waste repository at Chernobyl, the site of the world’s worst nuclear disaster that unfolded exactly 35 years ago.
(AP, 4/26/21)
2021 Apr 26, UN experts, in an 81-page report, warned that political, military and ethnic divisions in South Sudan are widening, leading to multiple violent incidents between the main signatories to last year’s cease-fire, the possibility of renewed war, and nearly 100,000 people facing “famine-like conditions".
(AP, 4/26/21)
2021 Apr 26, Yemen's Iran-aligned Houthi movement launched a drone attack early today on a military base in the southern Saudi city of Khamis Mushait.
(Reuters, 4/26/21)
2021 Apr 27, President Joe Biden signed an executive order to increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour for federal contractors, providing a pay bump to hundreds of thousands of workers.
(AP, 4/27/21)
2021 Apr 27, The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) said it had voted to approve a SpaceX plan to deploy Starlink satellites at a lower earth orbit as part of the company's push to offer space-based broadband internet service.
(Reuters, 4/27/21)
2021 Apr 27, The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that vaccinated people can be maskless outside, except in crowds.
(NY Times, 4/28/21)
2021 Apr 27, The Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that designers of 3-D "ghost guns" may post their plans online without seeking permission from the State Dept.
(SFC, 4/28/21, p.A7)
2021 Apr 27, It was reported that organizers of the recall effort against California Gov. Gavin Newsom have collected enough valid signatures to qualify for the ballot.
(AP, 4/27/21)
2021 Apr 27, In southern California Los Angeles police fatally shot a man suspected of going on a rampage shooting several people, killing 2 of them.
(SFC, 4/28/21, p.A4)
2021 Apr 27, California to date had 3,710,117 cases of coronavirus and 61,130 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 434,739 cases and 6,226 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 32,168,304 with the death toll at 573,316. California's Dept. of Public Health said it has recorded 1,379 cases of coronavirus infections in people who were fully vaccinated.
(sfist.com, 4/27/21)(SFC, 4/28/21, p.A9)
2021 Apr 27, The Idaho House approved legislation allowing the state to hire private contractors and expand methods to kill wolves roaming the state. The measure could cut the wolf population by 90%.
(SFC, 4/29/21, p.A5)
2021 Apr 27, In Mississippi US Drug Enforcement Administration Agent Harold Duane Poole shot and killed a mentally ill neighbor just minutes after calling law enforcement to report the man was trespassing on his land. Poole quietly returned to work as a supervisor in the DEA office a half-hour’s drive north in Jackson after a grand jury this spring declined to indict him.
(AP, 8/10/22)
2021 Apr 27, Missouri reported 524 newly confirmed coronavirus cases bringing the state total to 500,071. New deaths numbered 37 bringing that total to 8,732.
(SFC, 4/28/21, p.A6)
2021 Apr 27, New Jersey serial killer Richard Cottingham (74) pleaded guilty to killing Mary Ann Pryor (17) and Lorraine Marie Kelly (16) in August, 1974. Cottingham has claimed he was responsible for up to 100 deaths, but authorities have linked to only 11 so far.
(SFC, 4/28/21, p.A3)
2021 Apr 27, Seth Andrew (42), who served as a senior adviser in President Barack Obama’s second term in the Office of Educational Technology, was arrested in New York. He was charged by federal prosecutors with stealing $218,000 from a charter school network he founded and using the money to get a lower rate on a mortgage for a Manhattan apartment.
(Bloomberg, 4/27/21)
2021 Apr 27, In Texas Grand Prairie police closed down a $500,000 cockfighting operation after seizing almost 300 roosters, hens and chicks.
(Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 4/30/21)
2021 Apr 27, Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz led a $220 million investment in Current at a valuation of $2.2 billion, which will be used to expand its product portfolio, including cryptocurrencies.
(Reuters, 4/27/21)
2021 Apr 27, It was reported that Mastercard Inc and US cryptocurrency exchange Gemini will launch the first credit card that gives users digital currency "rewards" on purchases this year, deepening the involvement of major payment firms in the emerging asset class.
(Reuters, 4/27/21)
2021 Apr 27, Merck & Co Inc said it had partnered with five Indian generic drugmakers, including Cipla Ltd and Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd, to expand production and access to its experimental COVID-19 drug.
(Reuters, 4/27/21)
2021 Apr 27, W.W. Norton said in a memo to its staff that it will permanently take Blake Bailey’s biography of Philip Roth out of print, following allegations that Mr. Bailey sexually assaulted multiple women and behaved inappropriately toward his students when he was an eighth grade English teacher. Norton said it is permanently putting out of print our editions of ‘Philip Roth: The Biography’ and ‘The Splendid Things We Planned,’ Blake Bailey’s 2014 memoir.
(NY Times, 4/27/21)
2021 Apr 27, In Chad thousands of people protested and two people were killed in demonstrations against the rule of a transitional military council headed by the son of the late President Idriss Deby Itno, who was killed last week.
(AP, 4/27/21)
2021 Apr 27, Chile, which has designated pregnant women a COVID-19 vaccination priority, began issuing Pfizer doses to pregnant women with underlying health issues in their second or third trimesters.
(Reuters, 4/28/21)
2021 Apr 27, Scientists said they have switched on a new telescope at the European Southern Observatory as part of an effort to create an automated network for spotting asteroids that might pose a risk to Earth. The La Silla Observatory in Chile, known as TBT2, will work together with a twin in Cebreros, Spain, to test whether the same object in space can be detected with one device and then tracked by another.
(AP, 4/27/21)
2021 Apr 27, China, the world's biggest coal user, said the fossil fuel will play a less dominant role in its energy mix and that, despite plans to build new coal-fired power plants, the country won't use it on a wide scale.
(AP, 4/27/21)
2021 Apr 27, Egypt's Tourism and Antiquities Ministry said archeologists unearthed 110 burial tombs at an ancient site in a Nile Delta province. They include 68 oval-shaped tombs dating back to the Predynastic Period that spanned from 6000-3150 BC.
(AP, 4/27/21)
2021 Apr 27, The European Parliament ratified the Brexit trade deal by a large majority in what Boris Johnson called the "final step" of years of negotiations over the UK leaving the EU.
(AP, 4/28/21)
2021 Apr 27, France and Germany laid out plans for billions in spending from the EU's recovery fund aimed at fighting climate change and boosting the use of digital technology.
(SFC, 4/28/21, p.A6)
2021 Apr 27, Hungary's parliament voted to transfer state assets worth billions of dollars into foundations that will control many of the country's public universities and cultural institutions, a move opposition figures have decried as a theft of public funds.
(AP, 4/27/21)
2021 Apr 27, India reported 2,771 new coronavirus deaths. 323,144 new infections raised that total of more than 17.6 million.
(SFC, 4/28/21, p.A6)
2021 Apr 27, Iran reported coronavirus 462 deaths. Some 70,532 people have died out of 2.4 million cases. Iran said it has found three suspected cases of the coronavirus variant discovered in South Africa.
(Reuters, 4/27/21)
2021 Apr 27, The Israeli military said it shot down a drone belonging to Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group that entered Israeli airspace.
(AP, 4/27/21)
2021 Apr 27, Italy reported 373 coronavirus-related deaths against 301 the day before, while the daily tally of new infections rose to 10,404 from 8,444.
(Reuters, 4/27/21)
2021 Apr 27, Toyota subsidiary Woven Planet Holdings said it has acquired the self-driving division of American ride-hailing company Lyft for $550 million.
(SFC, 4/28/21, p.B2)
2021 Apr 27, Kazakhstan launched its own, domestically-developed vaccine for mass inoculations against COVID-19, starting with popular locations such as shopping malls. The QazVac vaccine is delivered in two shots with a three-week interval. Kazakhstan has reported over 360,000 COVID-19 cases with 4,381 deaths since the global pandemic began.
(Reuters, 4/27/21)
2021 Apr 27, The Karen National Union (KNU), Myanmar's oldest rebel group, said its fighters had taken the army camp on the west bank of the Salween river. Myanmar's military launched air strikes on a village and outpost near the Thai border, after Karen insurgents attacked the army post in some of the worst clashes since a Feb. 1 coup.
(AP, 4/27/21)
2021 Apr 27, Russia's Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) said it had fined Apple $12 million for alleged abuse of its dominance in the mobile applications market. Apple said it "respectfully disagreed" with the FAS ruling and that it would appeal it.
(Reuters, 4/27/21)
2021 Apr 27, It was reported that some Russians who have taken COVID-19 antibody tests and found their antibodies have fallen are having third and fourth shots of the Sputnik V vaccine, but researchers in the country suggest they are unnecessary.
(Reuters, 4/27/21)
2021 Apr 27, A remotely piloted boat packed with explosives targeted the Saudi port of Yanbu in the Red Sea, with the blast sending black smoke into the sky off the coast. Saudi Arabia claimed to have intercepted and destroyed the attack boat.
(AP, 4/27/21)
2021 Apr 27, Somalia's Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, better known by his nickname Farmajo, said he will no longer seek a two-year extension to his term in office and moved to ease tensions in Mogadishu, by calling for fresh presidential polls..
(BBC, 4/28/21)
2021 Apr 27, Sri Lanka's Cabinet approved a proposed ban on wearing full-face veils including Muslim burqas in public, citing national security grounds, despite a UN expert's comment that it would violate international law.
(AP, 4/27/21)
2021 Apr 27, Sweden's Health Agency said the number of new COVID-19 cases in Sweden has decreased in the past week, but infections are still at a high level and it is too early to say whether the trend will continue. Sweden registered 45 new deaths, taking the total to 13,968.
(Reuters, 4/27/21)
2021 Apr 27, The UN Security Council demanded that all combatants protect schools, hospitals, power grids, water supplies and other infrastructure, unanimously adopting a resolution that focused for the first time on the destruction of critical civilian requirements in conflicts from Syria and Afghanistan to South Sudan and Ukraine.
(AP, 4/27/21)
2021 Apr 27, The United Nations and NGOs said that a record 29 million people need humanitarian assistance in the Sahel, noting "unparalleled" insecurity and hunger across six countries in the war-torn African region.
(AFP, 4/27/21)
2021 Apr 28, Pres. Joe Biden in his first address to Congress touted his administration's accomplishments in his first 100 days in office and called on legislators to invest in infrastructure, education, child care and science, calling them programs that “propel us into the future" and would allow the US to win a competition with China. Biden’s plans add up to more than $4 trillion in spending.
(NY Times, 4/29/21)
2021 Apr 28, The US Senate voted to effectively reinstate an Obama-era regulation designed to clamp down on emissions of methane, a powerful, climate-warming pollutant that will have to be controlled to meet President Biden’s ambitious climate change promises. Three Republican senators — Susan Collins of Maine, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Rob Portman of Ohio — joined Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents to vote for the measure.
(NY Times, 4/28/21)
2021 Apr 28, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the WHO Foundation and corporate, religious, and world leaders launched a new mass fundraising campaign, Go Give One, aiming to inspire 50 million people around the world to make small donations to Covax. The campaign will contribute to the $3 billion in Covax funding.
(AP, 4/28/21)
2021 Apr 28, Government data published by the green group Environmental Integrity Project showed that 13 US oil refineries released the cancer-causing chemical benzene in concentrations that exceeded federal limits last year, three more than in 2019.
(Reuters, 4/28/21)
2021 Apr 28, California to date had 3,712,762 cases of coronavirus and 61,197 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 434,951 cases and 6,229 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 32,225,012 with the death toll at 574,280.
(sfist.com, 4/28/21)
2021 Apr 28, Amy Carlson (45), founder of "Love Has Won" and known as “Mother God" by her followers, was found dead in a home in the small town of Moffat, Colorado. Ms Carlson’s followers believe she could communicate with angels and that she was leading them to a great awakening.
(The Independent, 5/13/21)
2021 Apr 28, Former astronaut Michael Collins (90) died at a hospice facility in Naples, Fla. On July 20, 1969, he piloted the Apollo 11 spacecraft 60 miles above Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin as they became the first humans to walk on the moon.
(NY Times, 4/28/21)
2021 Apr 28, Chicago authorities released body-camera and surveillance video showing a foot chase that ended when a police officer fatally shot Anthony Alvarez (22) early on March 31.
(The Week, 4/29/21)
2021 Apr 28, In North Carolina two sheriff's deputies died after an hours long standoff in Boone. The suspected shooter and two others were found dead inside the home after the standoff ended.
(AP, 4/29/21)
2021 Apr 28, Scientists reported that the world's 220,000 mountain glaciers have lost more than 328 billion tons of ice and snow per year since 2015.
(SFC, 4/29/21, p.A7)
2021 Apr 28, Uber Technologies Inc said it was launching new features in its app to allow US customers to book COVID-19 vaccine appointments and reserve rental cars.
(Reuters, 4/28/21)
2021 Apr 28, In Australia Richard Pusey (42), speeding driver, was sentenced to 10 months in prison for offenses including what a judge described as the "heartless, cruel and disgraceful" filming of four dead and dying police officers who had just been hit by a truck on a freeway.
(AP, 4/28/21)
2021 Apr 28, In China a man (41) was hospitalized in Jiangsu province and soon diagnosed with the H10N3 strain of bird flu. This was thought to be the world's first human case of H10N3.
(SFC, 6/2/21, p.A4)
2021 Apr 28, Dubai police said they arrested 10 suspects in a massive knife fight that killed three people, a relatively rare outburst of violence in the Gulf Arab sheikdom.
(AP, 4/28/21)
2021 Apr 28, Ioannis Lagos, a Greek far-right member of the European Parliament, refused to be extradited from Belgium to Greece to serve a 13-year prison sentence for being a high-ranking member of a criminal organization. On May 7 the Brussels prosecutor’s office said Lagos may be extradited. Lagos had until May 10 to appeal the decision.
(AP, 4/28/21)(AP, 5/7/21)
2021 Apr 28, In France 7 Italians convicted of left-wing domestic terrorist crimes in the 1970s and 1980s, were arrested at their homes. They including five former members of Italy's Red Brigades. All 7 men had fled before they could be imprisoned.
(SFC, 4/29/21, p.A5)
2021 Apr 28, The Netherlands began relaxing its lockdown even as infection rates remained stubbornly high.
(SFC, 4/29/21, p.A4)
2021 Apr 28, Arlene Foster announced her resignation as leader of the DUP and First Minister of Northern Ireland in the face of mounting discontent among her party. She said she will leave her DUP role on May 28 and resign as First Minister at the end of June.
(AP, 4/28/21)
2021 Apr 28, North Macedonia authorities said police have broken up a major criminal ring of drug, weapons and ammunition traffickers and arrested nine people, including a police officer.
(AP, 4/28/21)
2021 Apr 28, Slovakia's health ministry said doses of Russia's Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine sent to Slovakia in March will have to be kept in storage for at least another month, after Moscow asked for some doses to be sent back for testing.
(Reuters, 4/28/21)
2021 Apr 28, South Africa resumed giving the Johnson & Johnson vaccine to health care workers after a more than two-week pause in the use of the only COVID-19 inoculation in the country.
(AP, 4/28/21)
2021 Apr 28, Turkish warplanes continued to strike suspected Kurdish militant targets in northern Iraq, while commando troops conducted a search and sweep operation, as the military pressed ahead with its latest incursion into the neighboring region.
(AP, 4/28/21)
2021 Apr 28, Turkey said it has signed a deal for 50 million doses of Russia's Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine which will start arriving next month.
(Reuters, 4/28/21)
2021 Apr 28, Police in Turkey arrested a close aide of killed Islamic State group leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in Istanbul. The Afghan national, only identified by the codename Basim, was detained in the Atasehir district on the city’s Asian side.
(AP, 5/2/21)
2021 Apr 28, Pope Francis responded to reports of poor governance and moral failings in the Ecuadorian diocese of Riobamba by not only accepting the resignation of the retiring bishop but that of his heir apparent as well.
(AP, 4/28/21)
2021 Apr 28, Vietnam warned against mass gatherings ahead of long public holidays this weekend and said it would speed up its vaccine rollout amid a worsening coronavirus situation among its neighbors. Vietnam has tallied 2,865 cases, with only 35 deaths reported since the pandemic began, one of the best records in Asia.
(Reuters, 4/28/21)
2021 Apr 28, The UN General Assembly approved a resolution expressing solidarity and support for St. Vincent and urging continued financial help for the eastern Caribbean island as it deals with volcanic eruptions.
(AP, 4/28/21)
2021 Apr 29, The US Senate overwhelmingly approved a $35 billion measure to clean up the nation’s water systems, offering a brief moment of bipartisan cooperation amid deep divisions between the two parties over President Biden’s much larger ambitions for a multitrillion-dollar infrastructure package.
(NY Times, 4/29/21)
2021 Apr 29, US prosecutors said that German software giant SAP will pay more than $8 million in penalties in acknowledging that it illegally exported its products to Iran.
(AP, 4/29/21)
2021 Apr 29, The US Supreme Court bolstered the efforts of some long-term immigrants to avoid deportation in a ruling that faulted the federal government for improperly notifying a man who came to the United States illegally from Guatemala to appear for a removal hearing.
(Reuters, 4/29/21)
2021 Apr 29, Federal agents in Arkansas arrested former reality TV personality Josh Duggar. Josh is eldest child in the Duggar family, which was featured on TLC’s “19 Kids and Counting" until the show was canceled after he admitted to sexually abusing underage girls. The following day he was charged with receiving and possessing child pornography. Duggar pleaded not guilty to both charges. On Dec. 9, 2021, Duggar was convicted of downloading and possessing child pornography.
(NY Daily News, 4/30/21)(NBC News, 5/1/21)(SFC, 12/10/21, p.A6)
2021 Apr 29, The Los Angeles Police Department said five suspects have been arrested in the February 25 shooting attack and robbery of Ryan Fischer who was walking Lady Gaga's dogs.
(CBS News, 4/30/21)(SFC, 12/7/22, p.A15)
2021 Apr 29, California to date had 3,713,791 cases of coronavirus and 61,240 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 435,320 cases and 6,248 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 32,282,063 with the death toll at 575,052.
(sfist.com, 4/29/21)
2021 Apr 29, Republicans in the Florida Legislature passed an election overhaul bill that is set to usher in a host of voting restrictions in one of the most critical battleground states in the country, adding to the national push by G.O.P. state lawmakers to reduce voting access.
(NY Times, 4/29/21)
2021 Apr 29, In New York the Indian Point Energy Center permanently stopped producing nuclear power. The plant, 25 miles north of NYC, has been called a threat to millions living in the region.
(SFC, 4/30/21, p.A4)
2021 Apr 29, Brazil became the 2nd country to top 400,000 COVID-19 deaths. Brazil announced another 3,001, bringing that total to 401,186.
(SFC, 4/30/21, p.A6)
2021 Apr 29, Rebels seeking to overthrow Chad's new transitional government claimed to have shot down a military helicopter. The junta in power warned political opponents not to renew protests after violent demonstrations earlier in the week left at least six people dead.
(AP, 4/29/21)
2021 Apr 29, Chinese financial watchdogs summoned 13 internet platforms engaged in finance business, including heavyweights Tencent and ByteDance, to order them to strengthen compliance with regulations.
(Reuters, 4/29/21)
2021 Apr 29, China launched the main module of its first permanent space station that will host astronauts long term. The Tianhe, or “Heavenly Harmony," module blasted into space atop a Long March 5B rocket from the Wenchang Launch Center on the southern island province of Hainan. The first stage of the rocket went into orbit and was expected to fall back to Earth on May 8 at an unknow location.
(AP, 4/29/21)(USA Today, 5/6/21)
2021 Apr 29, The upper house of Czech Parliament approved changes in the electoral law requested by the country’s highest court that ruled the previous legislation discriminated against small political parties. The lower house had approved the changes earlier in April.
(AP, 4/29/21)
2021 Apr 29, The Czech drugs regulator said it lacked the documentation needed to fully assess Russia's COVID-19 vaccine for possible use, drawing a rebuke from Moscow amid a separate, heated dispute over spying allegations.
(Reuters, 4/29/21)
2021 Apr 29, The Greek Ombudsman called on the government to respond to detailed allegations of so-called pushbacks that deny migrants their right to apply for international protection. Greek authorities have repeatedly denied claims that security forces are involved in summary deportations.
(AP, 4/29/21)
2021 Apr 29, India's health ministry reported 379,257 new coronavirus infections, the latest in a series of global single-day records set during the country's devastating second wave of COVID-19. India also confirmed another 3,645 COVID-19 deaths, the most it has seen in a single day since the pandemic started.
(Reuters, 4/29/21)
2021 Apr 29, Italy hit its target of administering 500,000 COVID-19 vaccinations in a single day.
(Reuters, 4/30/21)
2021 Apr 29, Kurdish-led authorities in northeastern Syria announced they will extend a partial lockdown for another week amid a surge in coronavirus cases. An international aid group warned of oxygen shortages in the neglected region of the war-ravaged country.
(AP, 4/29/21)
2021 Apr 29, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan traded blame for cross-border shelling and clashes that left at least one person dead.
(SFC, 4/30/21, p.A4)
2021 Apr 29, It was reported that Lithuanian artist Erikas Malisauskas has raised over $6,000 for LGBT groups by selling a digital collage of homophobic messages that were sent to a member of parliament who champions gay rights causes.
(Reuters, 4/29/21)
2021 Apr 29, The Dutch privacy watchdog said it has fined the eastern city of Enschede for tracking people using mobile phone Wi-Fi signals in a system used to measure crowds. The city's municipality said it is appealing the ruling and 600,000-euro ($730,000) fine.
(AP, 4/29/21)
2021 Apr 29, Pakistan said it has purchased 13 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine from three Chinese companies. Total deaths crossed 17,680 with over 150 deaths today and 5,480 coronavirus cases adding to a total of 815,711.
(Reuters, 4/29/21)
2021 Apr 29, Russian developers of the Sputnik V vaccine against COVID-19 said that they were suing Brazilian regulator Anvisa for defamation, accusing it of having knowingly spread false information without testing their product.
(Reuters, 4/29/21)
2021 Apr 29, Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) reported that 16 suspects from a Ukrainian far-right neo-Nazi group known as “Maniacs. Cult of Killers" (M.K.U.) were arrested in connection with a plot to carry out violent attacks in nine of the country’s southern and northern cities.
(The Daily Beast, 4/30/21)
2021 Apr 29, A Moscow judge upheld the defamation conviction against opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
(The Week, 4/30/21)
2021 Apr 29, The UN Security Council held an informal meeting focusing on the repatriation of more than 20,000 foreign fighters and mercenaries from Libya.
(AP, 4/29/21)
2021 Apr 29, The UN World Food Program (WFP) warned that persistent drought in southern Madagascar has left hundreds of thousands of people on the brink of famine and stoked acute malnutrition among children.
(AP, 4/29/21)
2021 Apr 29, Pope Francis set a $48 gift cap for all Vatican employees and issued tough new anti-corruption regulations that require Vatican cardinals and managers to periodically declare they are investing only in funds consistent with Catholic doctrine and aren't under criminal investigation or stashing money in tax havens.
(AP, 4/29/21)(SFC, 4/30/21, p.A4)
2021 Apr 29, Vietnam said it had detected its first locally transmitted cases of the coronavirus in 35 days, as authorities ordered tighter surveillance to prevent a new outbreak.
(Reuters, 4/29/21)
2021 Apr 29, In Yemen a land mine explosion near the strategic port city of Hodeida killed three children and wounded another three and their mother.
(AP, 4/30/21)
2021 Apr 30, Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy ended the state's disaster declaration for COVID-19, saying the decree is no longer necessary.
(SFC, 5/3/21, p.A5)
2021 Apr 30, Disneyland reopened and New York’s mayor predicted the big city will be up and running again at full strength by July 1, as the number of Americans fully vaccinated against COVID-19 closed in on 100 million.
(AP, 4/30/21)
2021 Apr 30, California to date had 3,715,436 cases of coronavirus and 61,317 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 435,608 cases and 6,263 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 32,341,678 with the death toll at 575,876.
(sfist.com, 4/30/21)
2021 Apr 30, Eli Broad (87), a billionaire entrepreneur turned philanthropist and art collector, died in Los Angeles. He made his fortune in real estate and insurance and played an outsized role in shaping the art and cultural scene of Los Angeles.
(Reuters, 4/30/21)
2021 Apr 30, A Colorado woman (39) died in an apparent black bear attack near the town of Durango, marking just the fourth fatal mauling in the state since record-keeping began in 1960.
(Reuters, 5/1/21)
2021 Apr 30, Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte signed a bill requiring people to have gender reassignment surgery before changing the sex marker on the girth certificates.
(AP, 4/30/21)
2021 Apr 30, Oregon and Washington states reported a surge COVID-19 cases triggering a fresh wave of shutdowns.
(SFC, 4/30/21, p.A8)
2021 Apr 30, In Texas 97 undocumented people were found in a single house in Houston. Federal charges were soon filed against five people for their alleged roles in a human smuggling operation.
(AP, 5/4/21)
2021 Apr 30, Ingenuity, NASA’s little Mars helicopter and the first powered aircraft to soar at another planet, aced its fourth flight.
(AP, 4/30/21)
2021 Apr 30, In eastern Afghanistan a suicide truck bombing struck a guest house killing 27 people with as many as 90 others wounded in Pul-e-Alam, Logar province.
(AP, 4/30/21)(NY Times, 5/1/21)
2021 Apr 30, Chinese leader Xi Jinping offered additional assistance to India in battling the coronavirus outbreak ravaging the country, putting aside a simmering rivalry and tensions along their disputed border.
(AP, 4/30/21)
2021 Apr 30, Costa Rica announced new restrictions following a surge in coronavirus infections. Costa Rica has confirmed more than 248,000 infections and 3,200 deaths.
(SFC, 4/30/21, p.A4)
2021 Apr 30, It was reported that Ethiopia has swept up thousands of Tigrayans into detention centers across the country on accusations that they are traitors.
(SFC, 4/30/21, p.A4)
2021 Apr 30, It was reported that Germany has agreed to return to Nigeria priceless artefacts that were stolen during the colonization of Africa.
(BBC, 4/30/21)
2021 Apr 30, India reported 3,498 deaths in the last 24 hours, bringing the total to 208,330. With 386,452 new cases, India now has reported more than 18.7 million since the pandemic began.
(AP, 4/30/21)
2021 Apr 30, In Israel a stampede early today at a mountainside religious celebration left 45 people dead and scores more injured. An estimated 100,000 ultra-Orthodox Jews had gathered on Mount Meron to celebrate the holiday, Lag b’Omer, to dance and make bonfires around the tomb of a prominent rabbi from antiquity.
(NY Times, 4/30/21)(AP, 5/2/21)
2021 Apr 30, Italy reported 263 coronavirus-related deaths against 288 the day before. The daily tally of new infections fell to 13,446 from 14,320.
(Reuters, 4/30/21)
2021 Apr 30, Mexico's congress voted to impeach Francisco Garcia Cabeza de Vaca, the governor of Tamaulipas state and a member of the opposition National Action Party, on charges of tax evasion, money laundering and organized crime. The legislature of cartel-plagued Tamaulipas state voted not to recognize the action. In May a judge issued an arrest warrant for the governor.
(SSFC, 5/2/21, p.A6)(SFC, 5/21/21, p.A5)
2021 Apr 30, Niger's military intercepted a group of suspected extremists late today, killing at least 24 who were preparing to attack Baibangou, a village about 100 km (62 miles) north of the capital, Niamey.
(AP, 5/3/21)
2021 Apr 30, In Nigeria Auwalu Daudawa, a notorious gang leader behind the abduction of more than 300 students in December, was killed by a rival gang in a forest near the border with Katsina.
(BBC, 5/1/21)
2021 Apr 30, North Macedonia received a shipment of 200,000 doses of the Chinese-made Sinopharm vaccine following major delays in the country’s start-and-stop coronavirus immunization program.
(AP, 4/30/21)
2021 Apr 30, Norway said it will extend the time between first and second doses of COVID-19 vaccines to 12 from six weeks for most adults under the age of 65 in order to reach its first vaccination target sooner than planned.
(Reuters, 4/30/21)
2021 Apr 30, In Russia Ivan Pavlov, the lead lawyer defending Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, was arrested for disclosing details of a law enforcement investigation unconnected to Navalny. Pavlov was soon released but barred from using the phone of the internet.
(SFC, 5/1/21, p.A3)
2021 Apr 30, South Korean activist Park Sang-hak said he launched 500,000 propaganda leaflets by balloon into North Korea this week. A law that punishes anti-Pyongyang leafleting with up to three years in prison or a fine of 30 million won ($27,040) took effect last month.
(AP, 4/30/21)
2021 Apr 30, Spain said it is extending the gap between the first and second doses of AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine to 16 weeks for people aged under 60.
(Reuters, 4/30/21)
2021 Apr 30, The UN said more than 700 people have been arrested in Chad following this week's demonstrations against the new military government led by the son of slain Pres. Idriss Deby Itno.
(SFC, 5/1/21, p.A3)
2021 Apr 30, The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that armed conflict and insecurity in large areas of Myanmar are impeding its operations there. A UN report said political turmoil and disruptions following the coup in Myanmar could undo years of progress and double the number of its people living in poverty to nearly half the population.
(AP, 4/30/21)
2021 Apr 30, The UN Security Council again demanded the restoration of democracy in Myanmar and the release of all detainees including Aung San Suu Kyi and strongly backed calls by Southeast Asian nations for an immediate cessation of violence and talks as a first step toward a solution following the Feb. 1 military coup.
(AP, 4/30/21)
2021 Apr 30, The World Health Organization (WHO) listed Moderna's coronavirus vaccine for emergency use.
(Axios, 5/1/21)
2021 Apr, A hacking group believed to have links to the Chinese government penetrated NYC's Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s computer systems. The intrusion appeared to have done little, if any, damage.
(NY Times, 6/2/21)
2021 Apr, In Brazil deforestation this month rose 43% over the same month in 2020, to 224 square miles.
(SFC, 5/10/21, p.A4)
2021 Apr, British fund manager Ruffer Investment Management exited its bitcoin bet with a $1.1 billion profit amid worries over risk after quick gains in the cryptocurrency's price.
(Reuters, 6/8/21)
2021 Apr, In China Sattar Sawut, an Uyghur official who headed the Xinjiang Education Department, was sentenced to death. The court said he led a separatist group to create textbooks filled with ethnic hatred, violence and religious extremism that caused people to carry out violent acts in ethnic clashes in 2009.
(AP, 1/31/22)
2021 Apr, German police arrested four members of a gang suspected to be behind one of the world's biggest child abuse image websites with more than 400,000 members worldwide. Three of the arrested men were accused of operating Boystown, a platform for distributing indecent images and video of children. A 4th man arrested in Paraguay was due to be extradited to Frankfurt.
(AP, 5/3/21)
2021 Apr, Hungary signed a strategic agreement with the Shanghai-based Fudan University on opening a campus in Budapest by 2024. It would be the school's only foreign outpost, and the first Chinese university campus in the 27-nation European Union.
(AP, 5/1/21)
2021 Apr, Bashir ally Abdelbasit Hamza was jailed 10 years on corruption charges and sent to the Khartoum prison where former president Bashir is being held. A task force said Hamza had assets worth up to $1.2 billion in his name.
(Reuters, 9/23/21)
2021 May 1, It was reported that the US Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has extended a requirement that passengers on planes, trains and buses wear face masks. The rule was set to expire May 11 but will run through Sept. 13.
(AP, 5/1/21)
2021 May 1, A cyberattack caused the Alaska Court System to disconnect most of its operations from the internet, an act expected to block electronic court filings, disrupt online payments and prevent hearings from taking place by videoconference for several days. Only a "handful" of about 3,000 court system computers were affected.
(Tribune Publ., 5/2/21)
2021 May 1, California to date had 3,717,403 cases of coronavirus and 61,417 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 435,734 cases and 6,263 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 32,359,517 with the death toll at 576,402.
(sfist.com, 5/1/21)
2021 May 1, In Chicago Elijah Rule Hill Prince (28) was arrested covered in blood, telling officers that it was the "blood of peasants." He was accused of biting off chunks of a couple’s ears and gouging their eyes.
(Fox News, 5/6/21)
2021 May 1, Medina Spirit won the Kentucky Derby, giving his trainer, Bob Baffert, a record seventh victory in the famed horse race. Medina Spirit failed a drug test after the race. It was the fifth failed test in a year for Bob Baffert, the horse’s hall-of-fame trainer. The colt cannot be disqualified until a second sample, collected at the same time as the first, confirms the result in a test expected in the coming weeks.
(NY Times, 5/1/21)(NY Times, 5/9/21)
2021 May 1, Actress Olympia Dukakis (89) died at her home in Manhattan. Her first screen appearance came in 1962, on the television series “Dr. Kildare." Her first movie role was an uncredited one as a psychiatric patient in “Lilith" (1964). She often played world-weary characters in films including “Moonstruck" (1987) and “Steel Magnolias" (1989).
(NY Times, 5/1/21)
2021 May 1, Portland protests on May Day devolved into a riot late today when about 100 people engaged in "autonomous demonstrations" near an ICE facility and police made at least six arrests, including for one individual who allegedly was menacing officers with a knife.
(Fox News, 5/2/21)
2021 May 1, Seattle Police announced the arrests of at least 14 people after unpermitted demonstrations marking May Day descended into violent confrontations stemming from a group dressed in black that traveled around the city’s downtown area towards the Cal Anderson Park.
(Fox News, 5/1/21)
2021 May 1, In Wisconsin Bruce Pofahl (62) opened fire at a restaurant in the Oneida Casino in Green Bay killing two people and wounding another. Police responding to the scene fatally shot Pofahl, who had been fired from the restaurant.
(SFC, 5/3/21, p.A6)(SFC, 5/4/21, p.A3)
2021 May 1, Berkshire Hathaway Inc defended its $8 billion proposal to build natural gas plants in Texas to help reduce the threat of devastating blackouts such as those in February.
(Reuters, 5/1/21)
2021 May 1, Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc said its results are rebounding from the worst effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and that it has extended its aggressive stock repurchases with $6.6 billion of new buybacks.
(Reuters, 5/1/21)
2021 May 1, In Vienna high-ranking diplomats from China, Germany, France, Russia and Britain made progress at talks focused on bringing the US back into their landmark nuclear deal with Iran, but said they need more work and time to bring about a future agreement.
(AP, 5/1/21)
2021 May 1, Police in Belgium detained 132 people who took part in an illegal party in a Brussels park to protest COVID-19 restrictions.
(AP, 5/2/21)
2021 May 1, China began a five-day holiday for international labor day. Workers and union leaders around the world dusted off bullhorns and flags that had stayed furled during coronavirus lockdowns for boisterous May Day marches.
(AP, 5/1/21)
2021 May 1, China's main internet watchdog, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), said it has found that 33 mobile phone apps have broken data privacy rules by collecting data without consent, among other issues.
(Reuters, 5/3/21)
2021 May 1, In eastern CongoDRC senior Muslim cleric Sheikh Ali Amini was shot dead while praying in the main mosque in Beni city. The cleric was a strong critic of Islamic militancy in the region. His attack came on the heels of attacks in villages for days that left 19 dead.
(AP, 5/2/21)
2021 May 1, In Germany one of more than 20 May Day rallies in Berlin erupted in violence leaving at least 93 police officers injured and 354 protesters detained.
(SFC, 5/3/21, p.A4)
2021 May 1, Hungary loosened several COVID-19 restrictions for people with government-issued immunity cards, the latest in a series of reopening measures that have followed an ambitious vaccination campaign.
(AP, 5/1/21)
2021 May 1, India set yet another daily global record with 401,993 new cases, taking its tally to more than 19.1 million. Another 3,523 people died in the past 24 hours, raising the overall deaths to 211,853. In western India a fire in a COVID-19 hospital ward killed 18 patients early today. India opened vaccinations to all adults.
(AP, 5/1/21)(SSFC, 5/2/21, p.A7)
2021 May 1, Workers in Indonesia marked international labor day with significantly less-attended marches due to coronavirus restrictions, but thousands still vented their anger at a new law they say harms their rights and welfare.
(AP, 5/1/21)
2021 May 1, Jordan recorded 704 cases of COVID-19 with 35 deaths, bringing the total cases detected in the kingdom to 712,077 with 8,871 deaths. Jordan's health ministry said three cases of the Indian COVID-19 variant have been detected in people who had not travelled.
(Reuters, 5/1/21)
2021 May 1, Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta loosened infection-control measures after the number of coronavirus cases in the country dropped from an early spring surge.
(AP, 5/1/21)
2021 May 1, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan agreed to withdraw troops from their borders following an outburst of intense fighting that killed about 40 people.
(SSFC, 5/2/21, p.A6)
2021 May 1, The Netherlands postponed a further easing of lockdown measures until at least May 18 as COVID-19 infections remain high and hospitals are struggling with large numbers of coronavirus patients.
(Reuters, 5/1/21)
2021 May 1, In Niger an ambush on a military patrol near the border with Mali killed 16 Niger soldiers and left one missing.
(AP, 5/3/21)
2021 May 1, Pakistan reported 146 more daily coronavirus deaths. The number reported brings the country's overall death toll in the pandemic to 17,957.
(AP, 5/1/21)
2021 May 1, The Philippines received its first batch of Russia's Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine. With nearly 1.05 million infections and 17,354 deaths, the Philippines is battling one of the worst COVID-19 outbreaks in Asia.
(AP, 5/1/21)
2021 May 1, In Somalia the controversial two-year term extension for Pres. Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed evaporated after intense public pressure as the lower house of parliament approved his request to instead support efforts to organize the country’s long-delayed national election.
(AP, 5/1/21)
2021 May 1, A COVID-19 vaccine campaign kicked off in Syria’s last rebel-held enclave, with a 45-year-old front-line nurse becoming the first to receive a UN-secured jab.
(AP, 5/1/21)
2021 May 1, Ukraine said it has signed a contract with Pfizer for an additional 10 million doses of its coronavirus vaccine, brining the total number of doses to 20 million.
(AP, 5/1/21)
2021 May 1, In Yemen security officials said floods have swept through parts of the country amid heavy seasonal rains, leaving at least 13 people dead, including two children.
(AP, 5/1/21)
2021 May 2, In southern California at least three people were killed and more than two dozen were hospitalized after a small cabin cruiser capsized and appeared to have broken apart off Point Loma.
(The Week, 5/3/21)(Reuters, 8/20/21)
2021 May 2, California to date had 3,718,778 cases of coronavirus and 61,513 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 436,080 cases and 6,276 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 32,399,512 with the death toll at 576,797.
(sfist.com, 5/2/21)
2021 May 2, SpaceX safely returned four astronauts from the International Space Station off the coast of Panama City, Florida, making the first US crew splashdown in darkness since the Apollo 8 moonshot.
(AP, 5/2/21)
2021 May 2, It was reported that the Earth's axis is being shifted due to human activities causing the climate emergency. The redistribution of water resources started in the 1990s as global heating began to melt glaciers sending much of the runoff into the oceans.
(SSFC, 5/2/21, p.A16)
2021 May 2, In Afghanistan gasoline tanker trucks burst into flames in Kabul overnight, killing at least seven people and starting large fires that caused power cuts to some parts of the capital.
(Reuters, 5/2/21)
2021 May 2, Dubai's budget carrier flydubai reported a loss of $194 million in 2020 as revenue fell by more than 50% in what it described as one of the toughest years in the aviation industry.
(AP, 5/2/21)
2021 May 2, Prominent German philosopher Juergen Habermas (91) said he will not accept the high-priced Sheikh Zayed Book Award from the United Arab Emirates, reversing an earlier decision.
(AP, 5/2/21)
2021 May 2, A New Delhi court said it would start punishing public officials for failing to deliver a steady supply of oxygen and other materials needed to save lives during India's devastating coronavirus outbreak.
(AP, 5/2/21)
2021 May 2, In India prominent government critic Mamata Banerjee won a third term as the chief minister of West Bengal with a strong majority of 216 seats in the 294-seat assembly.
(The Guardian, 5/2/21)
2021 May 2, An unnamed Iranian official claimed that a deal had been finalized where Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe would be released as soon as the UK repays a 1970s-era arms debt. He also claimed that Tehran and Washington have agreed on a deal to swap prisoners and to release Iranian funds held in the United States. The US promptly dismissed the reports as false. UK Foreign Office minister James Cleverly suggested this was deliberate misinformation.
(The Telegraph, 5/2/21)(The Telegraph, 5/3/21)
2021 May 2, Gunmen in a passing car opened fire at Israelis standing at a major intersection in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, injuring three of them. The assailants reportedly escaped in a car with Palestinian license plates.
(AP, 5/2/21)
2021 May 2, Lebanese authorities said they have arrested two brothers suspected of smuggling drugs in pomegranate shipments to Saudi Arabia, leading the kingdom to ban Lebanese fruits and vegetables.
(AP, 5/2/21)
2021 May 2, At least 11 people drowned when a rubber dinghy carrying two dozen Europe-bound migrants capsized off Libya.
(AP, 5/2/21)
2021 May 2, Malaysia said it has detected its first case of a highly infectious coronavirus variant first identified in India, days after imposing a ban on flights from India.
(Reuters, 5/2/21)
2021 May 2, North Korea warned the United States will face “a very grave situation" because President Joe Biden “made a big blunder" in his recent speech by calling the North a security threat and revealing his intent to maintain a hostile policy against it.
(AP, 5/2/21)
2021 May 2, Syrian President Bashar Assad issued a decree granting amnesty and reducing sentences for several categories of crime committed before May 2.
(AP, 5/2/21)
2021 May 2, Thailand's Health Ministry reported 1,940 new coronavirus cases, while deaths hit 21 for a second day, the highest daily number of fatalities since the pandemic began.
(Reuters, 5/2/21)
2021 May 3, Pres. Joe Biden formally raised the nation's cap on refugee admissions to 62,500 this year, weeks after facing bipartisan blowback for his delay in replacing the record-low ceiling set by former Pres. Donald Trump. The Biden administration said that four families separated at the Mexican border during the Trump presidency will be reunited in the US this week
(AP, 5/3/21)(SFC, 5/4/21, p.A5)
2021 May 3, President Joe Biden traveled to coastal Virginia to promote how his proposals to spend $4 trillion for infrastructure and families will help the US education system.
(Reuters, 5/3/21)
2021 May 3, Prominent Asian-American business leaders launched a $250 million initiative to support an array of Asian American and Pacific Islander causes, vowing to create a national infrastructure for a community that has faced an increasing number of racial attacks. The Asian American Foundation will invest its initial funding in three key areas: anti-hate programs, education, and data and research.
(Reuters, 5/3/21)
2021 May 3, California to date had 3,722,178 cases of coronavirus and 61,593 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 436,797 cases and 6,288 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 32,469,628 with the death toll at 577,491.
(sfist.com, 5/3/21)
2021 May 3, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis moved to suspend all remaining COVID-19 restrictions imposed by communities across his state, signing into law freshly passed legislation giving him sweeping powers to invalidate local emergency measures put in place during the pandemic.
(AP, 5/3/21)
2021 May 3, In Maryland Efraim Gordon (31), an Israeli man visiting relatives in Baltimore, was shot multiple times in what police said appeared to be a robbery. William Clinton III (18) and a 16-year-old and a 17-year-old were soon arrested and charged with first-degree murder.
(AP, 6/5/21)
2021 May 3, In Michigan Detroit city councilman Gabe Leland (38), who was under indictment for federal corruption charges since 2018, resigned from office and admitted in court to accepting an illegal cash campaign contribution.
(AP, 5/3/21)
2021 May 3, Tornado watches and warnings were issued from Oklahoma to the Carolinas, and the severe weather was blamed for at least one death.
(NY Times, 5/3/21)
2021 May 3, Texas lawyer Jamie Balagia (65), known as the “DWI Dude," was sentenced to 188 months in federal prison for falsely promising Colombian drug traffickers he'd get their charges reduced or dismissed in exchange for cash. Balagia's two co-defendants in the case previously pleaded guilty and are serving federal prison sentences.
(AP, 5/4/21)
2021 May 3, Bill and Melinda Gates said they are divorcing, raising questions about the future of their philanthropic foundation.
(NY Times, 5/3/21)
2021 May 3, Payments firm Flywire Corp made its paperwork for a US listing public and revealed a 38% surge in revenue in the latest quarter as it benefits from strong remote working trends due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Boston-based company was founded in 2011 and focuses on payments in the education, healthcare and travel sectors.
(Reuters, 5/3/21)
2021 May 3, Verizon said it will sell Verizon Media, which consists of the once-pioneering tech platforms AOL and Yahoo, to Apollo Global Management in a $5 billion deal. Verizon said that it will keep a 10% stake in the new company, which will be called Yahoo.
(AP, 5/3/21)
2021 May 3, In Bangladesh a speedboat carrying about 30 passengers overturned after hitting a cargo vessel leaving at least 26 people dead.
(SFC, 5/4/21, p.A3)
2021 May 3, In eastern Burkina Faso suspected jihadists killed around 30 people in the village of Kodyel, Komandjari province. Militants reportedly targeted the village, whose residents were mainly from the Gurma community, because residents had joined the militia.
(BBC, 5/3/21)
2021 May 3, In Colombia, tens of thousands of people protested against pandemic-induced poverty and inequality. The protests began on April 28, and by today at least 18 civilians and one police officer, Jesús Solano, had died.
(NY Times, 5/3/21)
2021 May 3, CongoDRC's Ministry of Public Health declared an end to the latest Ebola outbreak that began Feb. 7 in the town of Butembo.
(SFC, 5/4/21, p.A3)
2021 May 3, It was reported that Denmark has removed the single-dose Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 shot from its vaccination program to investigate reports of rare but potentially dangerous blood clots. Denmark has already taken the AstraZeneca shot out of its vaccination program for the same reason. Both the J&J and AstraZeneca shots are made with similar technology.
(AP, 5/3/21)
2021 May 3, France reopened secondary and high schools and lifted a ban on domestic travel as part of the government's plan to gradually reopen the country as virus infections have started decreasing.
(SFC, 5/4/21, p.A4)
2021 May 3, Bavarian officials canceled Oktoberfest festivities for a second year in a row due to concerns over the spread of COVID-19, saying there are too many risks in hosting the celebrations.
(AP, 5/3/21)
2021 May 3, Cafes and restaurants reopened in Greece for sit-down service for the first time in nearly six months, as the country began easing coronavirus-related restrictions with a view to opening the vital tourism industry in the summer.
(AP, 5/3/21)
2021 May 3, In India at least 10 people died over the last 24 hours after a hospital ran out of oxygen in Karnataka state.
(NY Times, 5/3/21)
2021 May 3, Israeli settlers attacked the Palestinian village of Jaloud in the occupied West Bank overnight, setting brush fires and hurling stones in an apparent revenge attack following a drive-by shooting.
(AP, 5/3/21)
2021 May 3, In Mexico at least 23 people, including children, died after a subway overpass collapsed late today in Mexico City. The death toll soon rose to 26 with 33 people hospitalized.
(NY Times, 5/4/21)(SSFC, 5/9/21, p.A9)
2021 May 3, In Mexico the bullet-ridden body of online journalist Benjamín Morales Hernández was found on a highway. He ran an online community news site called Noticias Xonoidag, that covering local community events in the border town of Sonoyta. The site sometimes reported on police and crime in a region where drug cartels frequently operate.
(AP, 5/8/21)
2021 May 3, In northern Myanmar the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) claimed to have shot down a government military helicopter during heavy fighting in Momauk township.
(SFC, 5/4/21, p.A2)
2021 May 3, Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte (76) received his first dose of Sinopharm's vaccine against COVID-19 to encourage reluctant Filipinos to get inoculated and help stop the spread of the virus.
(Reuters, 5/3/21)
2021 May 3, Saudi Arabia's King Salman appointed a new economy minister and named his eldest living son as a special adviser in a series of royal decrees.
(AP, 5/3/21)
2021 May 3, Thailand reported a new daily record of 31 coronavirus deaths, as the Southeast Asian country grapples with a third wave of infections.
(Reuters, 5/3/21)
2021 May 3, In northern Thailand Jason Matthew Balzer reportedly fled his home in the Nan province after his wife, Pitchaporn Kidchob (32), disappeared. Police soon began hunting the American fugitive after the disappearance of his wife, who was four months pregnant, after finding his mattress stained with blood.
(AP, 5/6/21)
2021 May 4, President Joe Biden issued a proclamation on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons Awareness Day. He has promised to bolster resources to address the crisis and better consult with tribes to hold perpetrators accountable and keep communities safe.
(AP, 5/4/21)
2021 May 4, San Francisco advanced into the least restrictive tier of California's color-coded reopening system, allowing most businesses to expand capacity. Mayor London Breed said the changes will take effect under yellow-tier guidelines on May 6.
(SFC, 5/5/21, p.A1)
2021 May 4, In San Francisco two women were hospitalized after they were stabbed at a bus stop on Market Street in the latest attacks against Asian Americans nationwide since the start of the pandemic. Police soon arrested a 54-year-old man after they obtained an image of the suspect and recognized him from prior encounters.
(The Guardian, 5/6/21)
2021 May 4, California to date had 3,723,265 cases of coronavirus and 61,619 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 438,243 cases and 6,310 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 32,507,113 with the death toll at 578,319.
(sfist.com, 5/4/21)
2021 May 4, It was reported that former New York Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (77) has been released from a federal prison on furlough while he awaits potential placement to home confinement.
(AP, 5/4/21)
2021 May 4, In Tennessee a woman died when a tree fell on her home as storms moved through the large swaths of the southern US.
(SFC, 5/5/21, p.A5)
2021 May 4, HP, Microsoft and other businesses called for expanded voter access in Texas, and a group of Houston executives criticized Republican-backed voting bills in the state Legislature.
(NY Times, 5/4/21)
2021 May 4, The top international official in Bosnia warned that ethnic Serb leaders are making a concerted effort to split the country, or failing that to roll back many reforms achieved during the last 25 years, and he called for “a decisive stand" to stop any division.
(AP, 5/4/21)
2021 May 4, Two former British paratroopers accused of the 1972 murder of Joe McCann (24), an Official IRA leader in Belfast, were formally acquitted after the veterans’ trial collapsed. A judge ruled that evidence implicating the former soldiers was not admissible and prosecutors said they would not offer further evidence at the trial.
(AP, 5/4/21)
2021 May 4, Sotheby's said it would accept bitcoin and ethereum as payment for Banksy's iconic artwork "Love is in the Air", a first for a physical art auction and the latest sign of growing mainstream acceptance of cryptocurrencies.
(Reuters, 5/4/21)
2021 May 4, Britain and India signed an accord on migration and mobility, as they look to deepen economic, cultural and other ties following the UK's departure from the EU.
(Reuters, 5/4/21)
2021 May 4, Foreign ministers from the Group of Seven wealthy industrialized nations gathered in London - their first face-to-face meeting in more than two years - to grapple with threats to health, prosperity and democracy.
(AP, 5/4/21)
2021 May 4, Egypt confirmed that it is buying another 30 Rafale fighter jets from France, building up its fleet of the advanced warplane to 54, second only to the French air force.
(AP, 5/4/21)
2021 May 4, Eritrea’s Pres. Isaias Afwerki arrived in Khartoum for talks with Sudanese officials amid tensions over a longtime border dispute between Sudan and Ethiopia. He was received by Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan, head of Sudan's ruling sovereign council.
(AP, 5/4/21)
2021 May 4, India's official count of coronavirus cases surpassed 20 million, nearly doubling in the past three months, while deaths officially have passed 220,000.
(AP, 5/4/21)
2021 May 4, India's government said 8 Asiatic lions at a zoo in Hyderabad have contracted the coronavirus, adding that there was no evidence that animals could transmit the disease to humans. The Nehru Zoological Park has now been closed.
(AP, 5/4/21)
2021 May 4, India said it will allow foreign mobile carriers to carry out 5G trials with equipment makers, but did not name China's Huawei among the participants.
(Reuters, 5/5/21)
2021 May 4, Iranian police started investigating the death of a Swiss diplomat who died after reportedly falling from a high rise in Tehran.
(AP, 5/4/21)
2021 May 4, Iran's semi-official Tasnim news agency reported that police arrested 16 men and women at a mixed-gender party in the northeastern province of Khorasan Razavi. The 16 were detained while they were dancing at a party. Such parties are illegal under Iranian law.
(AP, 5/4/21)
2021 May 4, Israel's PM Benjamin Netanyahu failed to form a new government by today's midnight deadline, putting his political future in jeopardy as he stands trial on corruption charges and prolonging a political deadlock that has only worsened after four elections in two years.
(NY Times, 5/5/21)
2021 May 4, Italy reported 305 coronavirus-related deaths against 256 the day before, while the daily tally of new infections rose to 9,116 from 5,948.
(AP, 5/4/21)
2021 May 4, Lebanon and Israel resumed indirect talks with US mediation over their disputed maritime border.
(AP, 5/4/21)
2021 May 4, In Morocco Halima Cissé of Mali (25) gave birth to nine babies - two more than doctors had detected during scans. A year later the five girls and four boys, born by Caesarean section, were doing well.
(BBC, 5/5/21)(BBC, 5/4/22)
2021 May 4, Nepal halted domestic flights due to spiking cases of the coronavirus. Int'l. flights would cease on May 6.
(SFC, 5/4/21, p.A4)
2021 May 4, A Dutch court convicted five teens for their involvement in the fatal beating last year of a 73-year-old man in what they described as a “pedophile hunt." The youths were given sentences ranging from six months to a year in juvenile detention.
(AP, 5/4/21)
2021 May 4, A 30-year-old Norwegian woman who was repatriated by Norway from a refugee camp in Syria because her son was sick was sentenced to 3 1/2 years in prison by an Oslo court for participating in the Islamic State group.
(AP, 5/4/21)
2021 May 4, In Qatar Malcolm Bidali, a Kenyan security guard, was arrested and faced charges after writing compelling, anonymous accounts of being a low-paid worker there. He found himself targeted by a phishing attack that could have revealed his location just before his arrest.
(AP, 5/30/21)
2021 May 4, Mohammed Deif, the shadowy leader of the armed wing of the Islamic militant group Hamas, issued his first public statement in nearly seven years, warning Israel it will pay a “heavy price" if it evicts Palestinians from their homes in east Jerusalem.
(AP, 5/5/21)
2021 May 4, The Seychelles, which has fully vaccinated over 60% of its population against Covid-19, said it is bringing back restrictions amid a rise in cases.
(BBC, 5/5/21)
2021 May 4, Sicily said it will start offering COVID-19 vaccines to people over 50 to speed up its inoculation program which is being hampered by a reluctant older population who fear potentially severe side effects. Five people in Sicily have died after receiving the AstraZeneca vaccine.
(AP, 5/4/21)
2021 May 4, Madrid residents voted in droves for a new regional assembly in an election that tests the depths of resistance to virus lockdown measures and the divide between left-wing and right-wing parties.
(AP, 5/4/21)
2021 May 4, Thailand launched a campaign to vaccinate 50,000 people living in a crowded river-side district of the capital Bangkok, as the country tries to contain a third wave of coronavirus infections. Thailand reported 1,763 new coronavirus cases and 27 deaths, bringing the total to 72,788 cases and 303 fatalities since the pandemic began.
(Reuters, 5/4/21)
2021 May 5, The Biden administration blocked a Trump-era rule that would have made it easier to classify gig workers who work for companies like Uber and Lyft as independent contractors instead of employees, signaling a potential policy shift toward greater worker protections.
(Reuters, 5/5/21)
2021 May 5, The Biden administration came out in support of waiving intellectual property protections for coronavirus vaccines, siding with international efforts to bolster production amid concerns about vaccine access in developing nations. Pharmaceutical companies reacted angrily, saying it would hamper future vaccine development and do little to increase short-term supply.
(NY Times, 5/6/21)
2021 May 5, California to date had 3,725,371 cases of coronavirus and 61,678 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 438,523 cases and 6,319 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 32,555,496 with the death toll at 579,249.
(sfist.com, 5/6/21)
2021 May 5, Lucinda Franks (74), a widely published writer and investigative journalist who was the first woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for national reporting, died in Hopewell Junction, NY.
(NY Times, 5/6/21)
2021 May 5, The South Carolina House voted to add a firing squad to the state's execution methods amid a lack of lethal-injection drugs.
(SFC, 5/7/21, p.A4)
2021 May 5, In Texas SpaceX launched and successfully landed its futuristic Starship.
(SFC, 5/6/21, p.A4)
2021 May 5, Blue Origin, billionaire Jeff Bezos' rocket company, said it is targeting July 20 for its first suborbital sightseeing trip on its New Shepard spacecraft, a landmark moment in a competition to usher in a new era of private commercial space travel. Blue Origin said it will offer one seat on the first flight to the winning bidder of an online auction, the proceeds of which will be donated to the space firm's foundation.
(Reuters, 5/5/21)
2021 May 5, Meme-based virtual currency Dogecoin soared to an all-time high, extending its 2021 rally to become the fourth-biggest digital coin. Dogecoins are now cumulatively worth $88 billion, compared to bitcoin's $1 trillion and ethereum's $391 billion.
(Reuters, 5/5/21)
2021 May 5, Facebook Inc's oversight board upheld the company's suspension of former US President Donald Trump but said the company was wrong to make the suspension indefinite and gave it six months to determine a "proportionate response".
(Reuters, 5/5/21)
2021 May 5, Peloton Interactive Inc announced a recall of its treadmills, reversing course just weeks after saying there was "no reason" to stop using the exercise machines despite reports of multiple injuries and the death of a child in an accident.
(Reuters, 5/5/21)
2021 May 5, Canada said it is authorizing the use of Pfizer Inc's COVID-19 vaccine for use in children from 12 to 15, the first dose to be allowed for people that young.
(AP, 5/5/21)
2021 May 5, China said it was concerned that India had not allowed Chinese companies to conduct 5G trials in the country.
(AP, 5/5/21)
2021 May 5, Mass anti-government protests unfolded across Colombia, topping off a week of unrest that has left at least 24 people dead.
(The Guardian, 5/6/21)
2021 May 5, Egyptian and Turkish officials met for talks aiming to reset ties between the two regional powers after years of enmity.
(AP, 5/5/21)
2021 May 5, President Emmanuel Macron marked the bicentenary of the death of Napoleon Bonaparte, the warrior and emperor who famously bequeathed to France its civil code but whose legacy is today tarnished in the eyes of some for reinstating slavery.
(AP, 5/5/21)
2021 May 5, Germany and the World Health Organization (WHO) announced the creation of a new global hub in Berlin for gathering data on pandemics.
(Reuters, 5/5/21)
2021 May 5, Germany's constitutional court dismissed emergency appeals against the government's decision to impose night curfews in areas with high COVID-19 infections as some regions are eyeing a loosening of lockdown restrictions.
(Reuters, 5/5/21)
2021 May 5, The German government banned Ansaar International, a Muslim organization that it accused of supporting "terrorism globally with its donations." More than 1,000 police officers raided buildings and office spaces across Germany and confiscated about 150,000 euros ($180,000).
(AP, 5/5/21)
2021 May 5, India gave emergency use authorization for a COVID-19 antibody drug cocktail developed by Roche and Regeneron, expanding its arsenal of drugs to battle a massive second wave of infections.
(Reuters, 5/5/21)
2021 May 5, Israel's military and the Shin Bet security service arrested Palestinian suspect Muntasser Shalaby (44) in a weekend drive-by shooting in the West Bank that left one Israeli dead and two injured.
(AP, 5/6/21)
2021 May 5, In Italy two American men were found guilty of murder and sentenced to life in prison for the street-corner killing of an Italian military police officer on an early summer morning, when the two young San Francisco natives were vacationing in Rome. A jury found Finnegan Elder (21) and Gabriel Natale Hjorth (20) guilty of the 2019 murder of Deputy Brig. Mario Cerciello Rega.
(NY Times, 5/5/21)
2021 May 5, Malaysia imposed movement restrictions in the capital Kuala Lumpur due to a rising number of COVID-19 infections, adding to lockdowns that have been implemented across the country. Malaysia reported 3,744 new infections and has now seen a total of 424,376 cases.
(Reuters, 5/5/21)
2021 May 5, It was reported that Myanmar’s security forces are arresting and forcibly disappearing thousands of people, especially boys and young men, in a sweeping bid to break the back of a three-month uprising against a military takeover.
(AP, 5/5/21)
2021 May 5, Syrian state media reported that Israel fired missiles toward northwest Syria early today, killing one person and wounding six.
(AP, 5/5/21)
2021 May 5, More than 200 global organizations urged the UN Security Council to impose an arms embargo on Myanmar, saying the time for statements has passed and immediate action is needed to help protect peaceful protesters against military rule and other opponents of the junta.
(AP, 5/5/21)
2021 May 6, The US Federal Election Commission said that it had formally dropped a case looking into whether former President Donald J. Trump violated election law with a payment of $130,000 shortly before the 2016 election to a pornographic-film actress by his personal lawyer at the time, Michael D. Cohen. Mr. Cohen has served time in prison, but Mr. Trump has not faced legal consequences for the payment.
(NY Times, 5/7/21)
2021 May 6, Alabama lawmakers dropped their resistance to medical marijuana and sent legislation for GOP Gov. Kay Ivey to sign.
(SFC, 5/8/21, p.A6)
2021 May 6, California to date had 3,726,939 cases of coronavirus and 61,744 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 438,875 cases and 6,333 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 32,601,576 with the death toll at 580,025.
(sfist.com, 5/6/21)
2021 May 6, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, with great fanfare, signed his state’s new voting bill, which passed last week.
(NY Times, 5/7/21)
2021 May 6, In Idaho a sixth-grade girl brought a gun to her middle school in Rigby, shot and wounded two students and a custodian and then was disarmed by a teacher.
(AP, 5/6/21)
2021 May 6, Ohio introduced a new omnibus voting bill that would further limit drop boxes in the state, limit ballot collection processes and reduce early in-person voting by one day, while also making improvements to access such as an online absentee ballot request portal and automatic registration at motor vehicle offices.
(NY Times, 5/7/21)
2021 May 6, Republican-led Legislature in Texas pressed ahead with its own far-reaching bill that would make it one of the most difficult states in the nation in which to cast a ballot.
(NY Times, 5/7/21)
2021 May 6, Twitter said that it had suspended an account relaying posts from former President Donald Trump's new blog, on the grounds that it violated the company's rules against sidestepping its bans.
(The Week, 5/7/21)
2021 May 6, In Afghanistan gunmen in Kandahar killed former TV presenter Nimat Rawan.
(SFC, 5/7/21, p.A4)
2021 May 6, In Brazil a police raid on a drug gang in a poor Rio de Janeiro neighborhood left 28 people dead in the deadliest operation ever carried out by the security forces in the city.
(Reuters, 5/7/21)
2021 May 6, British PM Boris Johnson said that two Royal Navy vessels would remain off the British Channel island of Jersey amid an escalating row with France over post-Brexit fishing rights. Brussels rallied behind France in an escalating row over post-Brexit fishing rights.
(Reuters, 5/6/21)(The Telegraph, 5/6/21)
2021 May 6, PM Boris Johnson's Conservatives scored a stunning election victory in an opposition stronghold, after Britain held its first major ballot box test since Brexit and the coronavirus crisis.
(AFP, 5/7/21)
2021 May 6, UK government figures showed that alcohol-related deaths in England and Wales jumped by a fifth last year to reach their highest level in two decades.
(AP, 5/6/21)
2021 May 6, Britain recorded a further 2,613 cases of COVID-19 in the last 24 hours, and 13 deaths.
(Reuters, 5/6/21)
2021 May 6, Cyprus unveiled a phased rollback of COVID-19 lockdown restrictions over the next month, including a shortened curfew and a reopening of all schools next week.
(AP, 5/6/21)
2021 May 6, Egyptian and Turkish officials concluded two days of talks in Cairo aimed at resetting ties between the two regional powers. In a joint statement, both sides vowed to evaluate the outcome of their first round of consultations before agreeing on the next move.
(AP, 5/6/21)
2021 May 6, Germany rejected a US proposal to waive patent protection for COVID-19 vaccines, saying the greatest constraints on production were not intellectual property but increasing capacity and ensuring quality.
(Reuters, 5/6/21)
2021 May 6, In Hong Kong prominent pro-democracy activist Joshua Wong was sentenced to ten months of additional jail time for participating in an unauthorized vigil to commemorate the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown.
(SFC, 5/7/21, p.A4)
2021 May 6, India's government agreed to provide more medical oxygen to hospitals in New Delhi under order by the Supreme Court.
(SFC, 5/7/21, p.A5)
2021 May 6, Italy reported 258 coronavirus-related deaths against 267 the day before, while the daily tally of new infections rose to 11,807 from 10,585.
(Reuters, 5/6/21)
2021 May 6, The Int'l. Criminal Court jailed a former Ugandan child soldier to 25 years in prison for crimes including murder, rape and torture. Dominic Ongwen (45) had grown to become a commander in the notorious Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebel group.
(BBC, 5/6/21)
2021 May 6, It was reported that the government of Malawi has ordered thousands of refugees who have integrated into society to move to the country's only overcrowded Dzaleka refugee camp.
(BBC, 5/6/21)
2021 May 6, In the Maldives an explosion critically wounded former Pres. Mohamed Nasheed (53) and wounded four others. Islamic extremists were blamed. Nasheed was soon flown to Germany for care. Over the next two weeks four suspects were arrested.
(SSFC, 5/9/21, p.A9)(SFC, 5/22/21, p.A4)
2021 May 6, Nepal reported 9,070 new confirmed cases, compared to 298 a month ago.
(AP, 5/7/21)
2021 May 6, It was reported that Dutch researchers have trained bees, which have an unusually keen sense of smell, to identify samples infected with COVID-19, a finding they said could cut waiting times for test results to just seconds. The technique of "insect sniffing" was effectively tested by the US Dept. of Defence to detect explosives and toxins in the 1990s.
(AP, 5/6/21)
2021 May 6, It was reported that Qatar's public prosecutor has ordered the arrest of the finance minister in order to question him over alleged abuse of power and misuse of public funds in the energy-rich state. Ali Sharif al-Emadi has served finance minister since 2013.
(AP, 5/6/21)
2021 May 6, Russian authorities gave regulatory approval to a single-dose version of the country's Sputnik V vaccine, arguing that the move could accelerate the process of achieving herd immunity against the coronavirus. Russia started human trials of Sputnik Light, identical to the first dose of the two-dose Sputnik V, in January. The studies remained ongoing.
(AP, 5/6/21)
2021 May 6, Somalia said it has resumed diplomatic ties with neighboring Kenya after severing relations late last year.
(AP, 5/6/21)
2021 May 6, South Korean police raided the office of activist Park Sang-hak, who said he had floated hundreds of thousands of propaganda leaflets toward North Korea by balloon in defiance of a contentious new law that bans such activities.
(AP, 5/6/21)
2021 May 6, The UN said industry could cheaply and easily slash humanity's methane emissions by at least 30 percent in a decade, adding that such cuts would slow global warming and prevent hundreds of thousands of deaths.
(AFP, 5/6/21)
2021 May 6, The UN announced it has released $65 million for humanitarian aid in Ethiopia, including $40 million for the Tigray region where a military operation launched in November has escalated into a war in which widespread atrocities are reported and thousands have been killed.
(AP, 5/6/21)
2021 May 6, The UN disarmament chief reported the discovery of an undeclared chemical warfare agent at a Syrian site to a Security Council meeting where the US and its Western allies clashed with Russia over international findings that Syria has used chemical weapons.
(AP, 5/6/21)
2021 May 7, The US Treasury Department said it has allocated an additional $21.6 billion for rental assistance under President Joe Biden's coronavirus rescue package, adding new rules aimed at assisting more renters directly.
(Reuters, 5/7/21)
2021 May 7, The White House released its first batch of records disclosing visits by official guests, returning to a practice set by the Obama administration but ditched by Donald Trump.
(Reuters, 5/7/21)
2021 May 7, The Washington Post said the Trump Justice Department secretly seized the phone records of three Washington Post reporters who covered the federal investigation into ties between Russia and Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. The records sought covered the period of April 15, 2017, to July 31, 2017.
(AP, 5/7/21)
2021 May 7, The S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrials hit record highs, while the technology-heavy Nasdaq index jumped 1% after weak US jobs data eased worries about the Federal Reserve reducing its massive stimulus program anytime soon.
(Reuters, 5/7/21)
2021 May 7, Alabama jurors convicted police Officer William Darby of murder in the 2018 shooting of Jeffrey Parker, who was threatening to kill himself as he held a gun to his own head.
(SFC, 5/8/21, p.A4)
2021 May 7, In California the South Coast Air Quality Management District board approved rules that would curb diesel emissions from thousands of trucks that ferry goods from the growing number of warehouses in the region run by Amazon and other companies.
(SSFC, 5/9/21, p.A8)
2021 May 7, A Southern California man was arrested on federal charges after federal authorities say he fraudulently obtained millions of dollars in coronavirus relief to buy luxurious cars, take lavish vacations and cover personal expenses. Mustafa Qadiri (38) of Irvine obtained about $5 million in Payment Protection Program money after claiming to own four businesses in nearby Newport Beach, none of which are in business.
(USA Today, 5/10/21)
2021 May 7, Paul Van Doren (b.1930), co-founder of the Vans company, died. His iconic Southern California sneakers were beloved by skateboarders and became an international success.
(AP, 5/7/21)
2021 May 7, California to date had 3,729,459 cases of coronavirus and 61,838 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 439,300 cases and 6,339 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 32,640,373 with the death toll at 580,776.
(sfist.com, 5/7/21)
2021 May 7, It was reported that Evanston, Illinois, plans to pay reparations to eligible Black residents for past racist housing practices. Grants of $25,000 would be provided this year for down payments, repairs or existing mortgages.
(SFC, 5/7/21, p.A4)
2021 May 7, Four former Minneapolis police officers faced federal civil rights charges for their role in the arrest and murder of George Floyd, according to court documents unsealed today, showing the Justice Department's tougher stance in such cases.
(Reuters, 5/7/21)
2021 May 7, Spencer Silver (80), research chemist at 3M and the inventor of Post-it Notes, died at his home in St. Paul, Minn. He patented the adhesive (technically called acrylate copolymer microspheres) in 1972.
(AP, 5/14/21)
2021 May 7, Daniel Kamensky (48), the New York hedge fund founder who predicted he might "go to jail" for corrupting the sale of some assets during the bankruptcy of Neiman Marcus, was sentenced to six months in prison.
(AP, 5/7/21)
2021 May 7, Chad Salsman, a Pennsylvania district attorney who had cast the sex case against him as a pack of “vicious lies." pleaded guilty to pressuring clients for sex when he was a defense attorney and then coercing them to keep quiet about it.
(AP, 5/7/21)
2021 May 7, Colonial Pipeline shut down its 5,500 miles of pipeline, which it says carries 45 percent of the US East Coast’s fuel supplies, in an effort to contain A ransomware attack. Colonial Pipeline, based in Alpharetta, Ga., is owned by several American and foreign companies and investment firms, including Koch Industries and Royal Dutch Shell. It was later reported that Colonial Pipeline paid nearly $5 million to Eastern European hackers soon after the crippling cyberattack.
(NY Times, 5/8/21)(Bloomberg, 5/8/21)(Reuters, 5/13/21)
2021 May 7, Novavax Inc said the distribution of its COVID-19 vaccine in Japan is expected to begin in late 2021 or early 2022 and continue for the near-term, predicting the need for protection against variants in the future. Takeda Pharmaceutical Co, Japan's biggest drugmaker, is helping bring the vaccine to the domestic market.
(Reuters, 5/7/21)
2021 May 7, Pfizer Inc and German partner BioNTech SA said they have filed for a full US approval for their COVID-19 vaccine, which is now authorized only for emergency use.
(Reuters, 5/7/21)
2021 May 7, In Austria the fourth round of talks between world powers on Iran's nuclear program opened in Vienna.
(AFP, 5/7/21)
2021 May 7, In El Salvador the bodies of Jacquelinne Palomo Lima (26), her mother and brother were found along with another 14 corpses discovered in a mass grave behind the home of Hugo Osorio (51), a former police officer. Investigators later said there could be up to 40 bodies in several graves on the property.
(Reuters, 7/19/21)
2021 May 7, EU leaders met in Portugal for wo days of in-person talks.
(SFC, 5/8/21, p.A7)
2021 May 7, French authorities announced that Jersey fishermen will be banned from landing their catch at three ports in response to the row over post-Brexit fishing rights.
(AP, 5/7/21)
2021 May 7, Pressure on the French hospital system from the COVID-19 epidemic eased for the fourth day in row and the number of virus deaths in hospitals was down again compared to a week ago. France reported 226 new coronavirus deaths in hospitals, from 219 a day earlier.
(Reuters, 5/7/21)
2021 May 7, In Germany the Saxony intelligence agency classified the anti-immigration group PEGIDA as a “proven extremist movement." It said the Patriotic Europeans against the Islamization of the West, had turned into an anti-constitutional movement in recent years.
(AP, 5/7/21)
2021 May 7, India reported another record daily rise in coronavirus cases, bringing total new cases for the week to 1.57 million, as its vaccination rate fell dramatically due to a lack of supplies and transport problems.
(Reuters, 5/7/21)
2021 May 7, Israeli troops shot and killed two Palestinians and wounded a third after the men opened fire on a base in the occupied West Bank. At least 178 Palestinians were injured in clashes with Israeli police in Jerusalem.
(AP, 5/7/21)(Reuters, 5/8/21)
2021 May 7, Italy reported 207 coronavirus-related deaths against 258 the day before, while the daily tally of new infections fell to 10,554 from 11,807.
(Reuters, 5/7/21)
2021 May 7, Nepalese Sherpa guide Kami Rita scaled Mount Everest for the 25th time, breaking his own record for the most ascents of the world's highest peak.
(SFC, 5/8/21, p.A4)
2021 May 7, Doctors in Nepal warned of a major crisis as daily coronavirus cases hit a record and hospitals were running out of beds and oxygen.
(AP, 5/7/21)
2021 May 7, In Nigeria a night of violence left at least seven police officers dead in oil-rich Rivers State. A day earlier gunmen killed two police officers during an attack on another police station in nearby Anambra state.
(BBC, 5/8/21)
2021 May 7, Amnesty International announced that it would restore jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny's status as a "prisoner of conscience," apologizing to Navalny and Russian activists for revoking the designation in February.
(Axios, 5/7/21)
2021 May 7, In Russia Alexander Murakhovsky, who was promoted to become minister of health of the Omsk Region days after he publicly refuted claims that someone had tried to kill Vladimir Putin’s most public foe, went hunting on a four-wheeler and has not been seen since. The doctor reappeared on May 10 after being reported missing.
(The Daily Beast, 5/9/21)(Reuters, 5/10/21)
2021 May 7, Scotland held parliamentary elections. The governing Scottish National Party was on course to win its fourth straight term in office. Final results of the local elections showed that the SNP won 64 of the 129 seats in the Edinburgh-based Scottish Parliament, one seat short of securing an overall majority.
(AP, 5/8/21)(AP, 5/9/21)
2021 May 7, It was reported that South Africa will end its captive lion industry. The move would outlaw "canned hunting" and sale of their bones as well as popular tourist experiences like petting cubs. Wild lion hunts were not affected and would continue under strict controls.
(SFC, 5/7/21, p.A3)
2021 May 7, Vietnam's health ministry reported its first death in a patient who received AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine shot, as the country battled a new outbreak. A female health worker (35) died from allergic reaction known as anaphylaxis. The health ministry reported 47 new infections, raising the total number of cases in the country to 3,137, with 35 deaths.
(Reuters, 5/7/21)
2021 May 7, The World Health Organization gave emergency use authorization to a COVID-19 vaccine manufactured by China's Sinopharm, potentially paving the way for millions of the doses to reach needy countries through a UN-backed program rolling out coronavirus vaccines.
(AP, 5/7/21)
2021 May 8, Tesla CEO Elon Musk hosted the latest episode of Saturday Night Live. Musk revealed he has Asperger's syndrome, reportedly marking the first time he has spoken publicly about the diagnosis. His appearance on the show also led to a tumble for his favorite cryptocurrency, Dogecoin.
(CNN, 5/9/21)
2021 May 8, California to date had 3,731,562 cases of coronavirus and 61,882 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 439,347 cases and 6,339 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 32,653,055 with the death toll at 580,905.
(sfist.com, 5/8/21)
2021 May 8, In Delaware Pierre S. “Pete" du Pont IV (86), a former Delaware governor and congressman who sought the Republican presidential nomination in 1988, died.
(AP, 5/9/21)
2021 May 8, Helmut Jahn (81), a German-born architect, died in a traffic accident near the horse farm where he lived, in St. Charles, Ill. He designed buildings around the world but was most influential in his adopted hometown, Chicago, where he conceived of an extravagant downtown home to state government and the United Airlines terminal at O’Hare International Airport.
(NY Times, 5/10/21)
2021 May 8, Eula Hall (93), social worker, counselor, psychiatrist, died at her home in Craynor, Ky. She started a health care clinic and offered other services in chronically underserved eastern Kentucky. Kiran Bhatraju authored “Mud Creek Medicine" (2013), a biography of Mrs. Hall.
(NY Times, 5/16/21)
2021 May 8, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) granted posthumous pardons for 34 Black victims of lynchings in the state between 1854 and 1933, making him the first governor to issue a systematic pardon of all known lynching victims in any state.
(Washington Post, 5/8/21)
2021 May 8, In Maryland four people were killed and one person was injured this morning after a large fire and a police shooting in Baltimore County.
(NBC News, 5/8/21)
2021 May 8, In Afghanistan powerful explosions outside a high school in Kabul killed at least 50 people and wounded scores more, many of them teenage girls leaving class. The bombing occurred in the Dasht-e-Barchi neighborhood, where many residents are of the ethnic Hazara minority, a mostly Shiite group that has been targeted by Islamic State loyalists in the past.
(NY Times, 5/9/21)(AP, 5/9/21)
2021 May 8, Bangladesh said it has detected its first case of a highly infectious coronavirus variant first identified in India, weeks after it sealed its borders with its neighbor.
(Reuters, 5/8/21)
2021 May 8, In Canada Pastor Artur Pawlowski, the head of Calgary’s Street Church in Alberta, and his brother, Dawid Pawlowski, were arrested and charged with "organizing an illegal in-person gathering." A video of the pastor went viral last month for ordering out police who showed up to his church on Easter weekend.
(Fox News, 5/9/21)
2021 May 8, Congo’s Pres. Felix Tshisekedi, the current head of the African Union, met with Egyptian and Sudanese officials amid international and regional efforts to relaunch negotiations over Ethiopia’s disputed dam on the Nile River’s main tributary.
(AP, 5/8/21)
2021 May 8, El Salvador police arrested Hugo Ernesto Osorio Chávez (51) in relation to the deaths of a 57-year-old woman and her 26-year-old daughter. He confessed to the killings. Police soon began searching his garden site in Chalchuapa, in the far west of the country. The remains of at least 24 different people were soon removed from the site. Police said the site may contain as many as 40 bodies.
(The Telegraph, 5/21/21)
2021 May 8, Egypt said it will require all visitors arriving from "countries where variants of the virus have appeared" to take a rapid COVID-19 test upon arrival.
(Reuters, 5/8/21)
2021 May 8, In Guinea at least 15 people were killed by a landslide at a clandestine gold mine in the north-eastern Siguiri region.
(BBC, 5/9/21)
2021 May 8, India reported its highest ever single-day COVID-19 death toll, as cases continued to rise and states imposed stricter lockdowns. The health ministry reported 4,187 fatalities over the past 24 hours, taking the overall death toll close to 240,000.
(Reuters, 5/8/21)
2021 May 8, Unrest continued in Jerusalem late today as Israeli police again cracked down on Palestinians protesting Israel's plans for potentially evicting Palestinian families from their homes in east Jerusalem.
(BBC, 5/9/21)
2021 May 8, Italy reported 224 coronavirus-related deaths against 207 the day before. The daily tally of new infections fell to 10,176 from 10,554.
(Reuters, 5/8/21)
2021 May 8, Myanmar's state-controlled media reported that the military junta has branded the National Unity Government, a terrorist group. The rival opposition operates under cover.
(Reuters, 5/9/21)
2021 May 8, Pakistan received its first supply of COVID-19 vaccines through the UN-backed COVAX initiative, over 1.2 million doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine. Researchers said a coronavirus variant first discovered in the UK now accounts for up to 70% of COVID-19 infections across Pakistan.
(AP, 5/8/21)(Reuters, 5/8/21)
2021 May 9, The United States Navy announced that it seized a major arms shipment in the Arabian Sea that was apparently headed into the hands of Yemen's Houthi rebels.
(AP, 5/9/21)
2021 May 9, California to date had 3,732,672 cases of coronavirus and 61,937 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 439,689 cases and 6,344 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 32,696,162 with the death toll at 581,651.
(sfist.com, 5/9/21)
2021 May 9, A shooting at a birthday party in Colorado Springs early today left six people and the gunman dead. The gunman, soon identified as Teodoro Macias (28), was a boyfriend of one of the female victims and had killed himself. Macias reportedly opened fire because he had not been invited to the party.
(NY Times, 5/9/21)(SFC, 5/10/21, p.A7)(SFC, 5/12/21, p.A5)
2021 May 9, In South Carolina police officers fatally shot Jeffrey Mark Murray (62) minutes after he killed bicyclist David “Whit" Oliver (44) during an argument near a park in Greenville.
(AP, 5/10/21)
2021 May 9, A total of 1,770 new cases of COVID-19 were recorded in the United Kingdom, with the seven-day total of 14,659 cases down by 4.3% compared with the previous seven days.
(Reuters, 5/9/21)
2021 May 9, The military in Chad claimed victory against northern rebels following weeks of fighting. A victory parade took place through the streets of the capital, N'Djamena.
(BBC, 5/9/21)
2021 May 9, China's Long March 5B rocket crashed back to Earth this morning, landing in the Indian Ocean just west of the Maldives.
(The Week, 5/9/21)
2021 May 9, Egyptian authorities executed a defrocked monk convicted of the 2018 killing of Bishop Epiphanius, an abbot at St. Macarius Monastery north of Cairo.
(AP, 5/9/21)
2021 May 9, In France thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of Paris and other cities to call for more ambitious measures in the fight against climate change.
(AP, 5/9/21)
2021 May 9, It was reported that Germany's powerful Catholic progressives are openly defying a recent Holy See pronouncement that priests cannot bless same-sex unions by offering such blessings at services in about 100 different churches all over the country this week.
(AP, 5/9/21)
2021 May 9, India reported 403,738 confirmed cases, including 4,092 deaths. Overall, India has over 22 million confirmed infections and 240,000 deaths. Experts say both figures are undercounts. India said it will recruit hundreds of former army medics to support its overwhelmed healthcare system.
(AP, 5/9/21)(Reuters, 5/9/21)
2021 May 9, Ehab Wazni, an activist who took part in anti-government protests that swept Iraq in October 2019, was shot overnight outside his home by unknown assailants. Protesters set fire to trailers belonging to Iran’s consulate in Karbala amid widespread anger over the killing.
(AP, 5/10/21)
2021 May 9, In Israel thousands of Muslim worshippers skirmished anew with police at the gates of the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem's Old City. Police gave the go-ahead to tomorrow's annual Jerusalem Day parade, a flag-waving display of Israeli claims to all of the contested city, despite days of unrest and soaring Israeli-Palestinian tensions.
(AP, 5/9/21)
2021 May 9, More than 1,200 migrants in several decrepit, overcrowded fishing boats reached the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa in a span of 12 hours, as human traffickers exploited calm seas and warm weather to launch multiple vessels.
(AP, 5/9/21)
2021 May 9, At least five people, including a woman and a child, drowned when a boat carrying at least 45 Europe-bound migrants capsized off Libya.
(AP, 5/10/21)
2021 May 9, Pakistan reported 118 more deaths and 3,785 new cases of COVID-19. Total deaths now totaled nearly 19,000.
(SFC, 5/10/21, p.A7)
2021 May 9, In southwest Pakistan gunmen in two separate attacks ambushed vehicles carrying paramilitary troops, killing at least three soldiers and wounding five others before fleeing.
(AP, 5/10/21)
2021 May 9, President Vladimir Putin vowed Russia will "firmly" defend national interests and denounced the return of "Russophobia", as the country marked the 76th anniversary of victory in World War II.
(AFP, 5/9/21)
2021 May 9, A Slovakia health ministry spokeswoman said a Hungarian lab has confirmed that the first batch of Russia's Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccines sent to Slovakia were satisfactory and the government would discuss the next steps with Russia.
(Reuters, 5/9/21)
2021 May 9, In Somalia at least six people were killed when a suicide bomber attacked a police station late today in Mogadishu.
(SFC, 5/11/21, p.A3)
2021 May 9, It was reported that South Sudan's Pres. Salva Kiir has dissolved parliament, paving the way for the appointment of MPs from opposing sides in the country's five-year civil war.
(BBC, 5/9/21)
2021 May 9, Exhilarated Spaniards chanting "freedom" danced in streets and partied on beaches as a COVID-19 curfew ended in most of the country, but others feared it was too soon to let go. Spain has suffered 78,792 coronavirus deaths and 3.6 million cases. But infection rates have fallen and vaccinations are progressing fast, enabling most of the 17 regions to scrap the curfew. The Balearic Islands, the Canary Islands, Navarra and Valencia continued curfews.
(Reuters, 5/9/21)
2021 May 9, Sudanese authorities deported around three dozen Ethiopian peacekeepers, working on the UN mission in Darfur, to a refugee camp. The troops are among 120 Ethiopian forces from the Tigrayan ethnic group, who have sought asylum in Sudan.
(AP, 5/9/21)
2021 May 10, A US Coast Guard ship fired about 30 warning shots after 13 vessels from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy (IRGCN) came close to it and other American Navy vessels in the Strait of Hormuz.
(AP, 5/10/21)
2021 May 10, The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorized Pfizer’s Covid vaccine for 12- to 15-year-olds.
(AP, 5/11/21)
2021 May 10, The US government's auto safety agency said it is investigating multiple complaints about steering failures that could affect more than 1.1 million Honda Accord sedans. The probe covers Accords from the 2013 through 2015 model years.
(AP, 5/10/21)
2021 May 10, A news release issued in the name of the cyber group DarkSide, suspected of masterminding the hack of a major US pipeline company threatening the East Coast's fuel supplies, said their goal was to make money and not create problems for society.
(Reuters, 5/10/21)
2021 May 10, US health secretary Xavier Becerra said gay and transgender people will be protected against sex discrimination in healthcare.
(AP, 5/10/21)
2021 May 10, California Gov. Gavin Newsom expanded a drought emergency to a large swath of the nation's most populous state while seeking more than $6 billion in multiyear water spending as one of the warmest, driest springs on record threatens another severe wildfire season across the American West.
(AP, 5/10/21)
2021 May 10, In California detective Luca Benedetti was killed in San Luis Obispo as officers went to an apartment on Camellia Court to serve a warrant for possible stolen property related to recent commercial burglaries.
(NBC News, 5/12/21)
2021 May 10, California to date had 3,734,550 cases of coronavirus and 61,968 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 440,024 cases and 6,346 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 32,741,875 with the death toll at 582,133.
(sfist.com, 5/10/21)
2021 May 10, It was reported that genetically modified mosquitoes have been released for the first time in the United States, taking flight in the Florida Keys in a pilot program intended to reduce the spread of deadly diseases such as dengue, yellow fever and the Zika virus.
(Reuters, 5/10/21)
2021 May 10, Georgia's Gov. Brian Kemp signed a repeal of the state's 1863 citizen's arrest law. It still allows business owners to detain suspected thieves.
(SFC, 5/11/21, p.A3)
2021 May 10, Benson Hill said it is going public by merging with a blank-check firm backed by alternative asset manager Magnetar Capital, giving the plant-growing technology company an enterprise value of about $1.35 billion.
(Reuters, 5/10/21)
2021 May 10, Eli Lilly and Co said it had signed licensing agreements with three Indian generic drugmakers to expand the availability of its arthritis drug baricitinib in the country for treating COVID-19 patients.
(Reuters, 5/10/21)
2021 May 10, Inovio Pharmaceuticals Inc said its COVID-19 vaccine candidate was safe, well-tolerated and produced immune response against the new coronavirus in a mid-stage clinical trial.
(Reuters, 5/10/21)
2021 May 10, Self-driving tech company Pony.ai, backed by Toyota Motor Corp, said its next-generation technology for robotaxis will be using lidars made by Luminar Technologies, Inc. Pony.ai is an autonomous vehicle technology company co-located in Silicon Valley, Beijing and Guangzhou.
(AP, 5/10/21)
2021 May 10, Albania’s PM Edi Rama expressed his determination to remove President Ilir Meta from his post, claiming he has embarrassed the country. Rama’s Socialist Party has accused Meta of violating the constitution by taking political sides in an election last month.
(AP, 5/10/21)
2021 May 10, Afghanistan's Taliban announced a three-day cease-fire for the Eid-al-Fitr holiday this week marking the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Hours later a bus in southern Zabul province struck a roadside mine killing 11 people. At least 24 more people on the bus were injured.
(AP, 5/10/21)
2021 May 10, The United Kingdom's chief medical officers agreed to lower the COVID alert level to 3, which means the epidemic is in general circulation, from 4, which means transmission is high or rising exponentially.
(Reuters, 5/10/21)
2021 May 10, Public Health England said data from the rollout of AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine shows one dose of the shot results in 80% less risk of death from the disease.
(Reuters, 5/10/21)
2021 May 10, It was reported that across much of China authorities were encouraging women to have more children, but that in the far western region of Xinjiang women were being forced to have fewer children, as they tightened their grip on Muslim ethnic minorities.
(NY Times, 5/10/21)
2021 May 10, The Czech Republic massively relaxed its coronavirus restrictions as the hard-hit nation paid its respects to the country's nearly 30,000 dead.
(AP, 5/10/21)
2021 May 10, Egypt's Eva Pharma signed an agreement to provide India with 300,000 doses of remdesivir, used in the treatment of COVID-19. Eva Pharma, a generic drugmaker established in 1997, said in June 2020 it had received a license from Gilead Sciences Inc to make remdesivir in Egypt and distribute it in 127 countries.
(Reuters, 5/10/21)
2021 May 10, UK Club, an insurer of the container ship that blocked the Suez Canal in March, said a reduced compensation claim made by the Egyptian authorities for almost $600 million to free the vessel and cover related losses was still "exceptionally large".
(Reuters, 5/10/21)
2021 May 10, In Germany a fruit logistics company in Erding, near Munich, called police to report that workers had discovered at least 4.5 kg (almost 10 pounds) of cocaine in organic waste bins. Police determined that the drugs had been dumped there a day earlier by subcontractors who gave no thought to the “foreign objects" they found wrapped in tape inside the banana crates before discarding them. The crates had been shipped from Ecuador via the Netherlands.
(AP, 5/25/21)
2021 May 10, Greece reopened junior and high schools for in-person classes as the country continues to ease coronavirus related restrictions.
(SFC, 5/11/21, p.A4)
2021 May 10, Iran confirmed publicly for the first time that it is in talks with its regional arch rival Saudi Arabia, saying it would do what it could to resolve issues between them.
(Reuters, 5/10/21)
2021 May 10, The Israeli police raided the Aqsa Mosque, one of Islam’s holiest sites, after days of protests there. At least 330 Palestinians and 21 Israeli officers were injured. In response, Hamas militants fired rockets at Jerusalem that caused no injuries.
(NY Times, 5/11/21)
2021 May 10, Several hundred more migrants reached the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa before dawn, swelling to past 2,100 the number of arrivals in around 24 hours.
(AP, 5/10/21)
2021 May 10, Italy reported 198 coronavirus-related deaths against 139 the day before. The daily tally of new infections fell to 5,080 from 8,292.
(Reuters, 5/10/21)
2021 May 10, Malaysia imposed a new nationwide lockdown, as the country grapples with a surge in coronavirus cases and highly infectious variants that the government said are testing its health system.
(Reuters, 5/10/21)
2021 May 10, Nepal's PM Khadga Prasad Oli was pushed out of office following two splits in his ruling party.
(SFC, 5/14/21, p.A4)
2021 May 10, In Portugal a court sentenced three immigration inspectors to between nine and seven years in prison for the 2020 killing of Ihor Homeniu, a Ukrainian immigrant, who was in custody at Lisbon airport.
(AP, 5/10/21)
2021 May 10, Qatar’s ruling emir visited Saudi Arabia for the first time since signing a declaration with the kingdom and other Arab Gulf states to ease a years-long rift and end an embargo that had frayed ties among important US allies and security partners.
(AP, 5/10/21)
2021 May 10, Romanian authorities confiscated 1,452 kg (3,200 pounds) of heroin at a Black Sea port in one of the biggest seizures of the drug in the European Union in recent years. The heroin allegedly came from Iran.
(AP, 5/20/21)
2021 May 10, It was reported that Sudan is struggling to provide hospital beds, drugs and medical oxygen to COVID-19 patients hit by a third wave of infections that is straining the country's patchy healthcare system beyond what it can cope with. Sudan has recorded 33,000 cases and over 2,600 deaths since the start of the pandemic, but officials say the real numbers are likely to be much higher given low rates of testing.
(Reuters, 5/10/21)
2021 May 10, Thailand started deploying a canine virus-detecting squad in hopes of quickly identifying people with COVID-19 as the country faces a surge in cases, with clusters at construction sites, crowded slum communities and large markets.
(AP, 5/21/21)
2021 May 10, The head of a UN team investigating atrocities in Iraq announced it has found “clear and compelling evidence" that Islamic State extremists committed genocide against the Yazidi minority in 2014 and said the militant group successfully developed chemical weapons and used mustard gas.
(AP, 5/10/21)
2021 May 11, The Biden administration said that it would issue a regulation allowing undocumented students access to some of the $36 billion in emergency stimulus aid flowing to colleges.
(NY Times, 5/11/21)
2021 May 11, The Biden administration said it would approve the nation's first major offshore wind farm. It said the Vineyard Wind project off the coast of Massachusetts will create enough electricity to power 400,000 homes in New England.
(Reuters, 5/11/21)
2021 May 11, The US Treasury Department imposed sanctions on Ali Daher, the chief of Hezbollah's Central Finance Unit, and six other Lebanese nationals it said were connected to the Iran-backed militant Hezbollah movement and its financial firm, Al-Qard al-Hassan (AQAH).
(Reuters, 5/11/21)
2021 May 11, US environmental regulators issued an emergency fuel waiver to help alleviate any shortages in reformulated gasoline in the Mid-Atlantic states as supplies tighten five days after a cyberattack shuttered the nation's biggest pipeline.
(Reuters, 5/11/21)
2021 May 11, Arizona Republicans passed a law that will sharply limit the distribution of mail ballots through a widely popular early voting list, the latest measure in a conservative push to restrict voting across the country.
(NY Times, 5/11/21)
2021 May 11, In California police Officer Jimmy Inn was killed in Stockton while responding to a domestic violence call. The suspect, who has not been identified, was killed by another officer.
(NBC News, 5/12/21)
2021 May 11, California to date had 3,735,737 cases of coronavirus and 61,975 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 440,395 cases and 6,353 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 32,773,387 with the death toll at 582,791.
(sfist.com, 5/11/21)
2021 May 11, Nutrition expert Shakuntala Haraksingh Thilsted (71) was named the recipient of the World Food Prize. She pioneered innovative ways of raising fish rich in micronutrients and fatty acids and incorporating them into diets in developing countries. The foundation that awards the $250,000 prize is based in Des Moines, Iowa.
(AP, 5/11/21)
2021 May 11, In Michigan former UAW leader Dennis Williams (68) was sentenced to 21 months in prison for corruption. Williams led the UAW from 2014-2018.
(SFC, 5/12/21, p.A5)
2021 May 11, In Tennessee three soldiers stationed at Fort Campbell were arrested by federal agents early today in connection to the transfer of dozens of firearms to Chicago associates after guns recovered from the March 26 scene of a mass shooting in the city were linked back to an illegal firearms pipeline.
(Fox News, 5/12/21)
2021 May 11, It was reported that the small US manufacturers that rushed to produce face masks over the past year are now stuck with hundreds of millions of unsold face coverings because China is flooding the market with below-cost masks, and most may not survive the end of the pandemic.
(Reuters, 5/11/21)
2021 May 11, Doctors reported that a gene therapy that makes use of an unlikely helper, the AIDS virus, gave a working immune system to 48 babies and toddlers who were born without one.
(AP, 5/11/21)
2021 May 11, Ebay Inc allowed the sale of non-fungible tokens for digital collectibles like trading cards, images or video clips on its platform, the first e-commerce company to tap into the recent frenzy around NFTs.
(Reuters, 5/11/21)
2021 May 11, Mythic, a startup making artificial intelligence chips for use in gadgets such as smart home devices or security cameras, said it raised $70 million in its latest round of funding. The Redwood City, California-based chip maker started in 2012, uses analog technology for its chips rather than digital.
(Reuters, 5/11/21)
2021 May 11, In Afghanistan the Taliban gained control of Nirkh district headquarters in Maidan Wardak province.
(SFC, 5/12/21, p.A5)
2021 May 11, The Australian government released a big-spending economic plan for the next fiscal year that includes hefty investments in defense and national security as relations with China worsen.
(AP, 5/11/21)
2021 May 11, A new analysis by an Australian think tank said Xinjiang in far western China had the sharpest known decline in birthrates between 2017 and 2019 of any territory in recent history.
(AP, 5/11/21)
2021 May 11, Bosnian police arrested Sena Hamzabegovic (61) on suspicion of financially supporting her husband and other Bosnians who joined Islamic fighters in Syria and Iraq.
(AP, 5/12/21)
2021 May 11, Brazilian states halted vaccination of pregnant women after a death in Rio de Janeiro led health regulator Anvisa to warn against the use of AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine for expecting mothers.
(AP, 5/11/21)
2021 May 11, British PM Boris Johnson promised to tackle inequality and "level up" the country with a post-pandemic raft of laws presented by Queen Elizabeth to parliament.
(Reuters, 5/11/21)
2021 May 11, The British government announced contentious plans to toughen election voting rules by requiring photo identification at polling stations, a move it says will protect the democratic system against electoral fraud.
(AP, 5/12/21)
2021 May 11, Bulgaria moved to quell a political crisis by appointing a retired general as interim prime minister until an election is held in July. Stefan Yanev (61) will lead a caretaker government whose main task will be to restore stability.
(AP, 5/11/21)
2021 May 11, Egypt announced plans to widen and deepen the southern part of the Suez Canal where a hulking vessel ran aground and closed off the crucial waterway in March.
(AP, 5/11/21)
2021 May 11, Egyptian prosecutors said they have shelved their months-long investigation into an alleged 2014 gang rape of a 17-year-old girl by young men from wealthy families at a luxury Cairo hotel, ordering the release of all suspects for lack of evidence.
(AP, 5/12/21)
2021 May 11, It was reported that France has lifted a ban on Jersey fishermen landing their catch after the Channel Island granted a two-month delay to the controversial post-Brexit fishing licenses.
(The Telegraph, 5/11/21)
2021 May 11, India confirmed nearly 390,000 new coronavirus cases including 3,876 deaths. Bodies have been retrieved floating in the Ganges River in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh states..
(SFC, 5/12/21, p.A7)
2021 May 11, The Israeli military said it has assassinated Samih al-Mamluk, a senior commander of the Islamic Jihad militant group in Gaza. Other senior militants in the organization were also killed in the same strike. The militant group vowed retaliation. Over the last 24 hours Gaza militants have fired hundreds of rockets toward Israel. Israeli airstrikes overnight killed 24 people, including nine children. Israel struck 130 targets of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad groups killing 15 people.
(AP, 5/11/21)(SFC, 5/11/21, p.A2)(SFC, 5/12/21, p.A2)
2021 May 11, Israeli police fired tear gas and stun grenades after mourners started throwing stones at officers during the funeral of an Arab man allegedly killed by a Jewish resident in central Israel.
(AP, 5/11/21)
2021 May 11, At least 10 bodies of Europe-bound migrants washed up ashore in western Libya, after two shipwrecks this week left some 30 people presumed drowned.
(AP, 5/11/21)
2021 May 11, Nepal reported 9,483 new coronavirus and 225 deaths. Authorities extended a lockdown in Kathmandu and surrounding districts until May 27. Total cases now numbered 413,111 with 4,084 deaths.
(SFC, 5/12/21, p.A7)
2021 May 11, In Russia a gunman (19) attacked a school in the city of Kazan and killed seven students and one teacher, while leaving 21 other people hospitalized. President Vladimir Putin ordered the Russian Federal Service of National Guard Troops to start working on new gun regulations following the shooting.
(AP, 5/11/21)
2021 May 11, In Sudan two protesters were killed when security forces dispersed a demonstration late today in Khartoum. Protesters were demanding justice for those killed in June, 2019, violence.
(AP, 5/11/21)
2021 May 11, Pope Francis formally created a new lay ministry to encourage greater participation of secular women and men in the teaching of the Catholic faith, especially in places where priests are in short supply.
(AP, 5/11/21)
2021 May 11, The UN Security Council voted unanimously to extend the mandate of the nearly 3,700-strong peacekeeping force in the disputed Abyei region on the Sudan-South Sudan border until Nov. 15.
(AP, 5/11/21)
2021 May 11, The World Health Organization said it was reviewing coronavirus data from Seychelles after the health ministry said more than a third of people who tested positive for COVID-19 in the past week had been fully vaccinated. The total number of confirmed cases in Seychelles since the pandemic began is less than 8,200.
(Reuters, 5/11/21)
2021 May 12, US House Republicans ousted Rep. Liz Cheney from her post as the chamber’s No. 3 GOP leader, punishing her after she repeatedly rebuked former President Donald Trump for his false claims of election fraud and his role in inciting the Jan. 6 Capitol attack.
(AP, 5/12/21)
2021 May 12, The US reversed a ban on US investments in Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi Corp. that was imposed under former President Donald Trump. A US court filing said that the US Department of Defense will remove Xiaomi from the blacklist after the two parties reached an agreement.
(AP, 5/13/21)
2021 May 12, Drivers in the US Southeast formed lines to fill up tanks from the dwindling number of retail gas stations with fuel to sell, disregarding government pleas for people not to hoard supplies as the shutdown of the main regional fuel pipeline entered its sixth day.
(AP, 5/12/21)
2021 May 12, COVID-19 deaths in the US have tumbled to an average of around 600 per day, the lowest level in 10 months, with the number of lives lost dropping to single digits in well over half the states and hitting zero on some days.
(AP, 5/12/21)
2021 May 12, The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it had identified 28 cases of serious, potentially life-threatening cases of blood clotting, among the more than 8.7 million people who had received the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine.
(Reuters, 5/12/21)
2021 May 12, California to date had 3,737,289 cases of coronavirus and 62,100 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 440,728 cases and 6,420 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 32,813,656 with the death toll at 583,646.
(sfist.com, 5/12/21)
2021 May 12, A US federal judge approved a $577 million settlement in a lawsuit over underfunding at Maryland's four historically Black colleges and universities.
(SFC, 5/14/21, p.A6)
2021 May 12, Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio announced that the state would give five people $1 million each in return for having been vaccinated as part of a weekly lottery program.
(NY Times, 5/12/21)
2021 May 12, Elon Musk, Tesla’s chief executive, said Tesla had suspended accepting Bitcoin because of concern about the energy consumed by computers crunching the calculations that underpin the currency.
(AP, 5/12/21)
2021 May 12, Australia tapped Moderna Inc for 25 million COVID-19 vaccine doses, as it tries to speed up vaccination in people under 50 after deciding against AstraZeneca, whose jab has been linked to rare blood clots.
(Reuters, 5/12/21)
2021 May 12, In Belarus Alexander Burakov, a freelance correspondent for Deutsche Welle, was arrested while waiting with other journalists for access to the trial of six people charged with mass unrest. On May 15 he was sentenced to 20 days in jail for taking part in an “unauthorized event".
(AP, 5/15/21)
2021 May 12, The British government said that former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic will serve his life sentence for war crimes in a UK prison.
(AP, 5/12/21)
2021 May 12, It was reported that two transgender women in Cameroon have been sentenced to five years in jail for contravening homosexuality laws. Trans celebrity Shakiro, a YouTuber who highlights the problems Cameroon's banned LGBT community faces and her friend Patricia have been in detention since February after their arrest at a restaurant.
(AP, 5/12/21)
2021 May 12, The Canadian Environmental Protection Act (CEPA) gave the federal government the authority to regulate plastic products to keep them out of incinerators, landfills and the environment, including a national ban on single-use plastic items, such as checkout bags, take-out containers, straws, stirrers, cutlery and six-pack rings.
(Global Newswire, 5/12/21)
2021 May 12, Human rights groups and Western nations met and demanded unfettered access for UN human rights experts to China's Xinjiang region. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken condemned China for “crimes against humanity and genocide against Muslim Uyghurs" during the release of an annual report on international religious freedom.
(AP, 5/13/21)
2021 May 12, In Egypt fire broke out in an intensive care unit of a hospital in the Nile Delta city of Kafr el-Sheikh, leaving at least two patients dead.
(AP, 5/12/21)
2021 May 12, Judges at the EU's General Court annulled a ruling by the European Commission that a tax deal between Amazon and Luxembourg's government amounted to illegal state support.
(AP, 5/12/21)
2021 May 12, The German government adopted an ambitious plan to reduce the country's greenhouse gas emissions to ‘net zero’ by 2045, five years earlier and with deeper cuts than previously planned.
(AP, 5/12/21)
2021 May 12, The German government passed a new law making hate-motivated insults a criminal offence that can be punished with a monetary fine or prison of up to two years.
(AP, 5/12/21)
2021 May 12, The German government agreed to let travelers who have been vaccinated against COVID-19 or recovered from infection avoid testing and quarantine when entering the country, unless they come from areas where variants of concern are prevalent.
(AP, 5/12/21)
2021 May 12, Israeli police said they arrested nearly 400 people allegedly “involved in riots and disturbances" across the country.
(AP, 5/12/21)
2021 May 12, Myanmar sentenced online reporter Min Nyo (51) to three years in prison under a recently revised provision in the Penal Code.
(SFC, 5/14/21, p.A6)
2021 May 12, In Nepal climbers Puwei Liu (55) from California and Abdul Waraich of Switzerland (41) died of altitude sickness.
(SFC, 5/14/21, p.A4)
2021 May 12, RIA news cited Deputy Prime Minister Tatiana Golikova saying Russia has vaccinated over 14 million people against COVID-19 so far with at least one dose.
(AP, 5/12/21)
2021 May 12, It was reported that Russia has experienced production problems with its Sputnik V vaccine. Sputnik is unusual in that its two required doses are different and not interchangeable.
(SFC, 5/12/21, p.A7)
2021 May 12, The tiny Republic of San Marino, landlocked inside Italy, announced the launch of a vaccine tourism program, offering the Russian-made Sputnik V COVID-19 shot to visitors from May 17.
(Reuters, 5/12/21)
2021 May 12, Slovakia's health minister says he plans to keep AstraZeneca in the country's vaccine arsenal, speaking a day after the country suspended use of the shots after a recipient died.
(AP, 5/12/21)
2021 May 12, The UN's atomic watchdog (IAEA) said Iran has enriched uranium to slightly higher purity than previously thought due to “fluctuations" in the process.
(AP, 5/12/21)
2021 May 12, The UN Security Council called for an immediate halt to fighting in Yemen, saying that only a lasting cease-fire and political settlement can end the six-year conflict in the Arab world's poorest nation and the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
(AP, 5/12/21)
2021 May 13, The Biden administration said it is releasing $7.4 billion to bolster the nation's healthcare workforce amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and to prepare for future epidemics and health challenges.
(Reuters, 5/13/21)
2021 May 13, US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that ransom should not be paid by companies that are the victims of cyber attacks like the one suffered by Colonial Pipeline. Bloomberg News has reported that Colonial Pipeline paid nearly $5 million to Eastern European hackers following the cyberattack that shut operations of the largest fuel pipeline network in the United States. Colonial Pipeline moved some of the first millions of gallons of motor fuels.
(Reuters, 5/13/21)
2021 May 13, It was reported that 124 retired US generals and admirals have published an open letter suggesting that Joe Biden was not legitimately elected as President and questioning his fitness for office.
(The Telegraph, 5/13/21)
2021 May 13, The US Justice Department announced that a Marine Corps officer, Maj. Christopher Warnagiris, had been arrested for participating in the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol. Warnagiris (40) was the first active-duty service member to be charged over the deadly attack on the Capitol by supporters of former President Donald Trump who were trying to prevent Congress from certifying President Biden's election victory.
(The Week, 5/14/21)
2021 May 13, The police department in Washington DC suffered a massive leak of internal information after refusing to meet the blackmail demands of the Babuk group, a Russian-speaking ransomware syndicate.
(AP, 5/13/21)
2021 May 13, The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said fully vaccinated people could stop wearing masks in most settings, including crowded indoor gatherings.
(NY Times, 5/14/21)
2021 May 13, Authorities shut down the heavily traveled Hernando de Soto Bridge over the Mississippi River indefinitely to repair a break in a critical beam. An inspector who spotted the crack immediately called 911 saying: "We need to get people off the bridge immediately!" The Interstate 40 bridge runs between Arkansas and Memphis, Tennessee.
(AP, 5/13/21)
2021 May 13, California to date had 3,738,730 cases of coronavirus and 62,145 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 441,014 cases and 6,474 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 32,819,878 with the death toll at 583,779.
(sfist.com, 5/13/21)
2021 May 13, Missouri Gov. Mike Parson dropped plans to expand the state's Medicaid health care program to thousands of low-income adults after the Republican-led Legislature refused to provide funding for the voter-approved measure. He noted that the state's $35 billion budget approved by lawmakers last week didn't provide the funding he had requested for an expansion of Medicaid.
(AP, 5/13/21)
2021 May 13, Philadelphia's top health official was compelled to resign after the city's mayor learned partial human remains from the 1985 bombing of the headquarters of a Black organization had been cremated and disposed of without notifying family members.
(AP, 5/13/21)
2021 May 13, Amazon.com Inc said it will give $100 more to new hires with proof of COVID-19 vaccination, the world's largest e-commerce retailer, as part of its plan to employ 75,000 workers for fulfillment and logistics operations.
(Reuters, 5/13/21)
2021 May 13, CureVac and GlaxoSmithKline said their second-generation COVID-19 vaccine, designed to protect against coronavirus variants, produced a high level of immune response in a trial in rats.
(Reuters, 5/13/21)
2021 May 13, Delta Air Lines said it will require all new hires in the United States to be vaccinated against COVID-19, one of the first major companies to issue such a mandate.
(Reuters, 5/14/21)
2021 May 13, Google said it has won a deal to provide cloud services to Elon Musk's SpaceX, which has launched a slew of Starlink satellites, to provide high-speed internet.
(Reuters, 5/13/21)
2021 May 13, McDonald's Corp announced a 10% average hourly pay raise at the nearly 660 US restaurants it operates, joining the industry's scramble to lure workers back into kitchens and dining rooms as pandemic restrictions ease. Under the new pay scale, entry-level crew will make at least $11 to 17 per hour, and shift managers will earn at least $15 to $20 an hour.
(Reuters, 5/13/21)
2021 May 13, Britain reported 11 new deaths from COVID-19 within 28 days of a positive test and a further 2,657 cases of the disease, up from 2,284 new cases the day before and the biggest daily increase since April 27.
(Reuters, 5/13/21)
2021 May 13, Muslim leaders from China's Xinjiang region rejected Western allegations that China is suppressing religious freedom, speaking at a reception for foreign diplomats and media at the end of the holy month of Ramadan.
(AP, 5/13/21)
2021 May 13, In CongoDRC police used tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse thousands of people who gathered outside the Martyrs' Stadium in Kinshasa for the Islamic holiday of Eid al-Fitr. 41 people were arrested at the scene in clashes fuelled by a leadership dispute between two camps within the Muslim community. Twenty-nine people were soon sentenced to death, however the death penalty is no longer applied in DR Congo and those found guilty will serve life sentences instead.
(BBC, 5/15/21)
2021 May 13, Germany's leading Jewish group sharply condemned protests in front of a synagogue in the western city of Gelsenkirchen. Several other German cities including Berlin, Hamburg and Hannover have seen anti-Israeli protests over the past few days.
(AP, 5/13/21)
2021 May 13, India recorded more than 4,000 COVID-19 deaths for a second day in a row, while infections stayed below 400,000 for a fourth day, though the virus has become rampant in rural areas where cases can go unreported due to a lack of testing.
(Reuters, 5/13/21)
2021 May 13, Israel deployed tanks and troops to the Gaza border. Israel carried out more airstrikes against Hamas targets in Gaza, where the death toll rose to 83 people since the fighting began early this week. Hamas sent a heavy barrage of rockets deep into Israel. Gaza’s Health Ministry said the death toll has climbed to 87 Palestinians, including 18 children and eight women. Seven people have been killed in Israel. Israeli military later opened an investigation into an artillery bombardment that killed six Palestinian civilians.
(NY Times, 5/13/21)(AP, 5/13/21)(BBC, 5/13/21)(AP, 8/10/21)
2021 May 13, Kenya MP Moses Kuria told the BBC he received a $1,000 (£700) bribe in parliament last year to back the appointment of the majority leader, as he was summoned to appear before the house speaker for alleging some politicians received about $1,000 to vote for the constitutional amendment bill known as the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI).
(AP, 5/13/21)
2021 May 13, Five High Court judges in Kenya blocked a government-backed plan to make fundamental changes to the country's constitution. The judges said the constitution amendment bill, popularly referred to as the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI), was irregular, illegal and unconstitutional.
(BBC, 5/14/21)
2021 May 13, In Kenya Bashir Mohamed Mohamud (36), an American investor of Somali origin, was by unknown assailants as he drove from a mall in Nairobi's wealthy Lavington neighborhood. His body was found with torture wounds days after he went missing. His family later asked Kenya's director of public prosecutions to run a separate investigation from one being done by police.
(AP, 5/29/21)
2021 May 13, Myanmar's junta imposed martial law in Mindat and then stepped up attacks on what it called "armed terrorists".
(Reuters, 5/14/21)
2021 May 13, Singapore's health ministry reported 24 locally transmitted COVID-19 cases, the highest daily number since mid-September, with 17 of the new cases linked to a cluster at Chang Airport.
(Reuters, 5/13/21)
2021 May 13, South Korea's Hyundai Motor Group said it planned to invest $7.4 billion in the United States by 2025 to produce electric vehicles, enhance production and further its investment in smart mobility solutions.
(Reuters, 5/13/21)
2021 May 13, Sri Lanka began a 3-day travel ban throughout the country in an effort to contain rapidly increasing COVID-19 cases.
(SFC, 5/14/21, p.A7)
2021 May 13, Thailand announced a daily record in new cases after nearly 3,000 inmates in two jails were infected, among them a leader of anti-government protests held while awaiting trial for insulting the king.
(Reuters, 5/13/21)
2021 May 13, Viktor Medvedchuk (66), a top Ukrainian opposition politician with close links to Russian Pres. Vladimir Putin, was placed under house arrest, days after being charged with treason.
(AP, 5/14/21)
2021 May 14, Pres. Joe Biden cancelled Donald Trump's planned National Garden of American Heroes and revoked Trump's executive orders aimed at social media companies' moderation policies.
(SSFC, 5/16/21, p.A6)
2021 May 14, Some 140 civil society and faith leaders from the US, Afghanistan and other countries “dedicated to the education and rights of women in Afghanistan" asked US President Joe Biden to call for a UN peacekeeping force “to ensure that the cost of US military withdrawal from Afghanistan is not paid for in the lives of schoolgirls."
(AP, 7/15/21)
2021 May 14, It was reported that the Biden administration has granted oil refiner Citgo Petroleum a Jones Act shipping waiver allowing it to move fuel between US ports on a foreign flagged vessel, making it the second company to secure one this week.
(Reuters, 5/14/21)
2021 May 14, Abedemi Rufai, a Nigerian state government official, was arrested at New York’s John F. Kennedy airport as he prepared to fly first class back to Nigeria. An FBI hunt through his Google accounts revealed stolen bank, credit card and tax information on Americans as well as money transfers and emails showing dozens of false unemployment claims in seven states that paid out $350,000.
(https://tinyurl.com/29wsvpes)(NBC News, 8/15/21)
2021 May 14, Republicans vaulted NY Rep. Elise Stefanik (36) into the ranks of House leadership, electing an ardent Donald Trump defender in hopes of calming their searing civil war over the deposed Rep. Liz Cheney's unremitting combat with the former president.
(AP, 5/14/21)
2021 May 14, A federal appeals court upheld a $25 million judgment and trial verdict finding Bayer's Roundup caused a California resident's non-Hodgkin lymphoma, dealing a blow to the chemical company's hopes of limiting its legal risk over the weed-killer.
(Reuters, 5/14/21)
2021 May 14, The Underground Railroad, a 10-part series, was released on Amazon Prime Video. "Moonlight" director Barry Jenkins switched to the small screen for the adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel.
(AP, 5/10/21)
2021 May 14, Liberal mega-donor George Soros reportedly directed $1 million to an activist group attempting to defund the police as violent crime surged in major urban centers across the nation. Soros sent the money via his Color Of Change PAC. The organization describes itself as "the nation’s largest online racial justice organization".
(Fox News, 7/24/21)
2021 May 14, California's Gov. Gavin Newsom unveiled a $267.8 billion revised budget plan, nearly 18% larger than his initial January proposal.
(SFC, 5/15/21, p.A7)
2021 May 14, It was reported that the water crisis along the California-Oregon border went from dire to catastrophic this week as federal regulators shut off irrigation water to farmers from a critical reservoir and said they would not send extra water to dying salmon downstream or to a half-dozen wildlife refuges that harbor millions of migrating birds each year.
(AP, 5/14/21)
2021 May 14, California's Vandenberg Air Force Base was renamed Vandenberg Space Force Base. The base was initially established in 1941 as Camp Cooke, an Army garrison for tank, infantry and artillery training.
(SSFC, 5/16/21, p.A6)
2021 May 14, California to date had 3,740,458 cases of coronavirus and 62,239 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 440,765 cases and 6,487 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 32,889,955 with the death toll at 585,195.
(sfist.com, 5/14/21)
2021 May 14, Joel Greenberg, a former Florida tax collector and Rep. Matt Gaetz's (R-Fla.) former confidant, agreed to cooperate with prosecutors and admitted to sex trafficking a minor.
(NY Times, 5/14/21)
2021 May 14, A jury in a North Carolina federal civil rights case awarded $75 million to two black, intellectually disabled half brothers who spent decades behind bars after being wrongfully convicted in the 1983 rape and murder of an 11-year-old girl.
(The Telegraph, 5/16/21)
2021 May 14, In Ohio the attorney for the city of Columbus said it the family of Andre Hill, a Black man fatally shot by police last Dec. 22, will receive a $10 million settlement.
(SFC, 5/15/21, p.A4)
2021 May 14, It was reported that Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, a Republican, signed legislation this week that adds a day to in-person early voting in the state and an extra hour to Saturday early voting, and it also makes changes to ensure mail-in ballots are received in time to be counted.
(AP, 5/14/21)
2021 May 14, South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster signed into law a bill that forces death row inmates for now to choose between the electric chair or a newly formed firing squad in hopes the state can restart executions after an involuntary 10-year pause.
(AP, 5/17/21)
2021 May 14, South Carolina officials released hours of police body-camera footage, which shows a Charleston County sheriff's deputy repeatedly tasing Jamal Sutherland, a 31-year-old Black man, before he died in custody in January.
(NBC News, 5/14/21)
2021 May 14, General Mills said it is acquiring Tyson Foods' animal treat business for $1.2 billion in cash.
(AP, 5/14/21)
2021 May 14, Walmart, Sam's Club, Costco, Trader Joe's, and Publix were among the first major retailers to announce that shoppers fully vaccinated against COVID-19 would no longer have to wear masks in their stores, unless required by state or local law.
(USA Today, 5/14/21)
2021 May 14, In Afghanistan a bomb ripped through a mosque in northern Kabul during Friday prayers, killing 12 worshippers, and wounding 15.
(AP, 5/14/21)
2021 May 14, Armenia's PM Nikol Pashinyan said he has asked Russian President Vladimir Putin for military assistance amid simmering tensions with Azerbaijan in the wake of an armed conflict over the Nagorno-Karabakh region.
(AP, 5/14/21)
2021 May 14, Britain's health ministry said the estimated reproduction "R" rate in England edged up to between 0.8 and 1.1, and it is less clear that the epidemic is still shrinking compared to last week.
(AP, 5/14/21)
2021 May 14, It was reported that Greyhound Canada is permanently cutting all bus routes across the country after nearly a century of service. All services were temporarily suspended a year ago due to a sharp decline in passengers amid the first wave of the coronavirus. American affiliate Greyhound Lines will continue to operated cross-border routes to Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver once the border reopens.
(SFC, 5/14/21, p.A6)
2021 May 14, In central and eastern China back-to-back tornadoes killed 12 people and left more than 300 others injured.
(AP, 5/15/21)
2021 May 14, Mainland China reported 14 new COVID-19 cases, up from seven cases a day earlier.
(Reuters, 5/14/21)
2021 May 14, It was reported that Denmark this week began digging up millions of culled mink buried six months ago because of concerns that the mass graves could contaminate drinking water and a nearby bathing lake.
(Reuters, 5/14/21)
2021 May 14, A German court officially declared billionaire Karl-Erivan Haub dead, more than three years after the head of retail group Tengelmann went missing in the Swiss Alps. He was last seen on the morning of April 7, 2018, as he headed up a mountain lift with skis and a daypack.
(AP, 5/14/21)
2021 May 14, Indian drugmaker Dr. Reddy's Laboratories Ltd said it expects to get 36 million doses of Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine in the next couple of months under its contract with Russia's sovereign wealth fund.
(AP, 5/14/21)
2021 May 14, Ireland's health service shut down its IT systems after being targeted in a ransomware attack by what it called “international criminals".
(AP, 5/14/21)
2021 May 14, Israel launched an intense air and ground assault on the Gaza Strip early today, pounding targets with warplanes, artillery and tank fire in the largest single operation of a four-day conflict with Palestinian militants. Israeli aircraft leveled a multistory building housing a bank affiliated with the Hamas militant group in Gaza City. It was the third Hamas bank destroyed in Israeli airstrikes in this week's deadly escalation and fighting. The death toll in Gaza from the fighting rose to 122 killed, including 31 children and 20 women.
(NY Times, 5/14/21)(AP, 5/14/21)
2021 May 14, It was reported that Italy's hopes of producing its own COVID-19 vaccine have been thrown into doubt after the state audit court rejected a plan to pump public funds into local biotech company ReiThera.
(Reuters, 5/14/21)
2021 May 14, Italy's Health Minister signed an ordnance allowing quarantine-free visits with proof of a negative virus test starting on May 16.
(SFC, 5/15/21, p.A5)
2021 May 14, Japan further expanded a coronavirus state of emergency from six areas, including Tokyo, to nine, as Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga repeated his determination to hold the Olympics in just over two months.
(AP, 5/14/21)
2021 May 14, In Myanmar at least 20 government soldiers were killed as an estimated 1,000 insurgents attacked a convoy near Mindat. In 2022 Kaung Thu Win, a captain who defected in December, offered a rare first-hand account of intensified fighting in Chin state.
(Reuters, 2/11/22)
2021 May 14, Edwin Poots, the new leader of Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), pledged to unite the bickering strands of unionism to fight the Brexit deal and thus lay the foundations for keeping Northern Ireland in the United Kingdom.
(AP, 5/14/21)
2021 May 14, In the Philippines Pres. Rodrigo Duterte eased the coronavirus lockdown for Manila and four adjacent provinces, allowing essential businesses and tourist destinations to expand operations.
(SFC, 5/15/21, p.A5)
2021 May 14, In Poland the foreign ministers of Europe's four Visegrad countries (Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Poland) discussed cooperation to boost national economies and tourism after the pandemic and announced free travel between the Czech Republic and Hungary for those vaccinated against COVID-19.
(AP, 5/14/21)
2021 May 14, A judge in Sicily dismissed a case against right-wing leader Matteo Salvini for keeping rescued migrants on board a coast guard ship in 2019, saying no crime had been committed.
(AP, 5/14/21)
2021 May 14, Singapore further tightened social distancing restrictions. New coronavirus cases have risen to 71 in the last week from 48 a week earlier. Singapore has reported 61,4505 cases and 31 deaths since the pandemic started.
(SFC, 5/15/21, p.A5)
2021 May 14, Thai PM Prayuth Chan-ocha promised a UN special envoy that he will not force back people fleeing violence in neighboring Myanmar, where the military ousted a democratically elected government in February.
(AP, 5/14/21)
2021 May 14, Turkish company Karpowership, that provides electricity to Lebanon from two power barges, shut down its operations over delayed payments. The move is expected to increase outages in the crisis-hit Mediterranean country.
(AP, 5/14/21)
2021 May 14, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said foreign fighters and mercenaries remain in Libya in violation of last October’s cease-fire agreement and called for their withdrawal and an end to violations of the U.N. arms embargo.
(AP, 5/14/21)
2021 May 14, The regional UN humanitarian coordinator said more than 10,000 Palestinians in Gaza have fled their homes since fighting began earlier this week.
(AP, 5/14/21)
2021 May 15, California-based Rocket Lab attempted launch of satellites from its facility in New Zealand failed. The rocket was carrying two Earth-observation satellites for BlackSky, a global monitoring company.
(AP, 5/15/21)
2021 May 15, California to date had 3,741,960 cases of coronavirus and 62,293 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 440,923 cases and 6,487 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 32,913,784 with the death toll at 585,571.
(sfist.com, 5/15/21)
2021 May 15, In Maryland Rombauer won the Preakness, ending a controversial Triple Crown bid by Medina Spirit, who failed a drug test after the Kentucky Derby.
(NY Times, 5/15/21)
2021 May 15, Elected officials in the Minneapolis suburb of Brooklyn Center, where a police officer fatally shot Daunte Wright during a traffic stop in April, approved a resolution that puts the city on track to major changes to its policing practices. Adopting the resolution commits the city to change, though it is not a final action.
(AP, 5/16/21)
2021 May 15, Tim Duncan, Kevin Garnett, and the late Kobe Bryant were inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts.
(AP, 5/16/21)
2021 May 15, Portland, Oregon, Mayor Ted Wheeler said he was grateful for the White House’s "support" after President Biden reversed a Trump administration order that allowed federal agents to intervene in the city's riots last summer.
(Fox News, 5/16/21)
2021 May 15, The Colonial Pipeline resumed full operations, eight days after it was shut down by a ransomware attack.
(NY Times, 5/15/21)
2021 May 15, Britain deployed public health officials, supported by the army, to distribute coronavirus tests door-to-door in two northern England towns in an effort to contain a fast-spreading variant that threatens plans to lift all lockdown restrictions next month.
(AP, 5/15/21)
2021 May 15, The China National Space Administration successfully landed its Zhurong rover on Mars.
(South China Morning Post, 5/15/21)
2021 May 15, Ethiopia again delayed its national election after some opposition parties said they wouldn’t take part and as conflict in the country’s Tigray region means no vote is being held there.
(AP, 5/15/21)
2021 May 15, French riot police fired tear gas and used water cannons in Paris as protesters supporting Palestinians in the Gaza Strip defied a ban on marching in the French capital.
(AP, 5/15/21)
2021 May 15, Greece extended a lockdown on the island of Kalymnos for a week as COVID-19 infections there remained high.
(Reuters, 5/15/21)
2021 May 15, India reported its smallest daily increase in coronavirus infections in nearly three weeks, with deaths still near the 4,000-mark. Federal health officials said cases and fatalities are rapidly stabilizing in this wave of the pandemic.
(Reuters, 5/15/21)
2021 May 15, Israel destroyed a 12-storey tower block in Gaza housing the offices of the US-based Associated Press and other news media, saying the building was also used by the Islamist militant group Hamas. Violence continued early today when an Israeli air raid in Gaza City killed at least 10 Palestinians, reportedly mostly children, in a refugee camp. More than 130 people have been killed in Gaza, as well as eight people in Israel, since the violence began.
(AP, 5/15/21)(Reuters, 5/15/21)
2021 May 15, New Italian research said COVID-19 infections in adults of all ages fell by 80% five weeks after a first dose of Pfizer, Moderna or AstraZeneca vaccine.
(Reuters, 5/15/21)
2021 May 15, Myanmar's army battled local militia fighters in the northwestern town of Mindat to try to quell a rebellion that has sprung up to oppose the junta which seized power in the Southeast Asian country in February.
(Reuters, 5/15/21)
2021 May 15, Poles celebrated early today the reopening of bars and restaurants as the government dropped a requirement for people to cover their faces outdoors.
(SSFC, 5/16/21, p.A10)
2021 May 15, The Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) said Venezuela has approved for use Russia's single-shot Sputnik Light COVID-19 vaccine.
(Reuters, 5/15/21)
2021 May 15, Taiwan raised its coronavirus alert level in the capital, Taipei, and the surrounding city, bringing curbs for a period of two weeks that will shut many venues and restrict gatherings in the wake of 180 new domestic infections.
(Reuters, 5/15/21)
2021 May 15, Turkey reported 11,472 new coronavirus cases. The overall confirmed death toll was 44,537.
(SFC, 5/17/21, p.A7)
2021 May 16, It was reported that Majid Khan (41), a detainee at Guantanamo Bay, has agreed to a deal intended to lead to his release in the next few years in return for giving up the right to question the CIA in court about its torture program. Khan has pleaded guilty to serving as a courier for al-Qaida. Nine of 40 detainees have been approved for transfer to other countries.
(SSFC, 5/16/21, p.A7)(SFC, 5/17/21, p.A4)
2021 May 16, In Alabama a man suspected in two morning murders in Birmingham shot four police officers who were executing a search warrant on an apartment where they believed he was hiding. The officers returned fire, killing the unidentified man. The shootings appeared related to an altercation over a dog.
(CNN, 5/16/21)
2021 May 16, California to date had 3,743,084 cases of coronavirus and 62,318 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 440,979 cases and 6,487 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 32,927,943 with the death toll at 585,768.
(sfist.com, 5/16/21)
2021 May 16, In Florida Andrea Meza of Mexico was crowned Miss Universe. Last year's ceremony was canceled due to the pandemic.
(AP, 5/17/21)
2021 May 16, It was reported that AT&T is in advanced talks to create a new company that would merge its media business, including CNN, with Discovery Inc.
(NY Times, 5/16/21)
2021 May 16, In Iowa about 47 train cars derailed near Sibley. Several cars carried hazardous materials and firefighters worked to extinguish flames under a local evacuation order.
(SFC, 5/17/21, p.A4)
2021 May 16, It was reported that Microsoft board members concluded the software giant's founder, Bill Gates, should step down from its board last year during an investigation into an allegedly inappropriate relationship with a female Microsoft employee.
(WSJ, 5/16/21)
2021 May 16, It was reported that greenhouse gases have shrunk the stratosphere by 1,300 feet since the 1980s and that without cuts to emission the high layer of Earth's atmosphere will likely shrink 3,300 more feet by 2080.
(SSFC, 5/16/21, p.B8)
2021 May 16, It was reported that Covid-19 is ravaging Brazil and that experts are working to understand why it appears to be killing babies and small children at an unusually high rate.
(NY Times, 5/16/21)
2021 May 16, Cyclone Tauktae headed for southwestern India. Heavy rains and flooding have already killed at least six people.
(AP, 5/16/21)
2021 May 16, India's Health Ministry reported 311,170 confirmed cases in the past 24 hours, down from 326,098 a day earlier. Some Indian states said they would extend COVID-19 lockdowns. The pandemic has killed more than 270,000 people in the country.
(AP, 5/16/21)(Reuters, 5/16/21)
2021 May 16, Indonesia said it has suspended distribution of a batch of AstraZeneca's coronavirus vaccine to run tests for sterility and toxicity following the death of a 22-year-old man a day after immunization.
(Reuters, 5/16/21)
2021 May 16, The Israeli security cabinet decided to continue the Gaza operation. Israeli officials said a cease-fire is not on the table right now. Israeli bombing in Gaza City killed at least 33 people, including 12 women and eight children, and wounded 50 others. Israel said it has killed 75 Palestinian militants, primarily Hamas operatives, and accuses the group of using civilians as human shields.
(Axios, 5/16/21)(NY Times, 5/16/21)
2021 May 16, In Israel at least two people were killed and more than 150 injured when a bleacher collapsed at an unfinished ultra-Orthodox synagogue in the West Bank.
(AP, 5/16/21)
2021 May 16, International pressure to bring an end to the raging conflict between Israel and Hamas militants mounted, even as local health officials said an Israeli airstrike in Gaza overnight killed at least 33 people, the single deadliest attack of the current hostilities. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for an immediate end to fighting.
(NY Times, 5/16/21)(Reuters, 5/16/21)(BBC, 5/16/21)
2021 May 16, Mongolian authorities reported 541 new coronavirus cases and 2 deaths in the last 24 hours. Restrictions continued to ease following a 4-week lockdown that ended on May 8.
(SFC, 5/17/21, p.A7)
2021 May 16, It was reported that fission reactions appear to be occurring in an inaccessible chamber of Ukraine's Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Scientists could not say whether the slow rise in neutron emissions will fizzle out or increase.
(SSFC, 5/16/21, p.B8)
2021 May 16, Pope Francis at a special Mass for the Myanmar community in Italy said the people of Myanmar must not despair in the face of evil or allow themselves to be divided.
(Reuters, 5/16/21)
2021 May 17, US Pres. Joe Biden expressed support for a cease-fire between Israel and Gaza's militant Hamas rulers in a call to PM Benjamin Netanyahu, but stopped short of demanding an immediate stop to the eight days of Israeli airstrikes and Hamas rocket barrages.
(SFC, 5/17/21, p.A3)
2021 May 17, A US State Department report said allies of Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, including his Cabinet chief, have been included in a list of senior officials in Central America deemed corrupt.
(AP, 5/17/21)
2021 May 17, The US Supreme Court ruled that police can't enter someone's home without a warrant except in an emergency.
(SFC, 5/20/21, p.B3)
2021 May 17, About 1,000 Los Angeles residents remained under evacuation orders as firefighters protected canyon homes from a smoky wildfire that churned through vegetation that hasn't burned in half a century. The wildfire broke out late May 14 in the Santa Monica Mountains and grew rapidly. One arson subject was detained the previous day.
(AP, 5/17/21)(SFC, 5/17/21, p.A4)
2021 May 17, California to date had 3,744,061 cases of coronavirus and 62,334 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 441,328 cases and 6,497 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 32,993,038 with the death toll at 586,330.
(sfist.com, 5/17/21)
2021 May 17, Joel Greenberg, a former associate of Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), pleaded guilty to six criminal charges, including sex trafficking a 17-year-old girl and wire fraud.
(Axios, 5/17/21)
2021 May 17, It was reported that Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline’s potential COVID-19 vaccine triggered strong immune responses in all adult age groups in preliminary trials, boosting optimism the shot may join the fight against the pandemic this year.
(AP, 5/17/21)
2021 May 17, Parler, the social media app popular with right-wing US conservatives’, returned to Apple Inc’s App Store, after Apple had debarred it following the Jan. 6 US Capitol riot.
(Reuters, 5/17/21)
2021 May 17, Thousands of UK pubs and restaurants opened for indoor service for the first time since early January. PM Boris Johnson sounded a cautious tone, warning about a more contagious COVID-19 variant that threatens reopening plans.
(AP, 5/17/21)
2021 May 17, British vacationers began arriving in large numbers in southern Portugal for the first time in more than a year, after governments in the two countries eased their COVID-19 pandemic travel restrictions.
(AP, 5/17/21)
2021 May 17, China renewed calls for the US to play a constructive role in ending the conflict in Gaza and stop blocking efforts at the UN to demand an end to the bloodshed.
(AP, 5/17/21)
2021 May 17, Darwin’s Arch, a famous, photo-friendly rock formation in the remote Galápagos Islands, collapsed because of natural erosion.
(NY Times, 5/18/21)
2021 May 17, The European Union and the United States decided to temporarily suspend measures at the heart of a steel tariff dispute that is seen as one of the major trade issues dividing the two sides.
(AP, 5/17/21)
2021 May 17, The French government said some of France's most sensitive state and corporate data can be safely stored using the cloud computing technology developed by Alphabet's Google and Microsoft, if it is licensed to French companies.
(Reuters, 5/17/21)
2021 May 17, In Hong Kong Next Digital Ltd shares were suspended after authorities froze assets of its jailed owner Jimmy Lai under a new national security law in Hong Kong, while the tycoon pleaded guilty to taking part in an illegal protest in October 2019.
(Reuters, 5/17/21)
2021 May 17, Indian authorities moved over 200,000 people from their homes in the state of Gujarat to safety and shut ports and major airports as the most powerful cyclone in more than two decades roared up the west coast. Cyclone Tauktae has already killed at least 16 people.
(Reuters, 5/17/21)
2021 May 17, Cyclone Tauktae, the most powerful storm to hit western India in more than two decades, packed sustained winds of up to 210 km (130 miles) per hour when it came ashore in Gujarat state. Six people were killed Maharashtra state.
(AP, 5/18/21)
2021 May 17, It was reported that the Irish health service expects to spend tens of millions of euros rebuilding its IT systems from a cyber attack which is set to cause significant disruption to diagnostic services into next week.
(Reuters, 5/17/21)
2021 May 17, Israeli warplanes unleashed a fierce air bombardment on Gaza City before dawn as Hamas militants in the coastal enclave continued to target towns in southern Israel with barrages of rockets, bringing the conflict into a second, grinding week of bloodshed and destruction.
(NY Times, 5/17/21)
2021 May 17, In Israel Yigal Yehoshua (56) died several days after being pelted with rocks during clashes between Arabs and Jews in the mixed city of Lod. In June eight Arab suspects were arrested in relation to Yehoshua's death.
(AP, 6/20/21)
2021 May 17, Poland's biggest power plant experienced a network failure that affected grids across Europe. The Belchatow plant provides up to 20% of Poland's energy.
(SFC, 5/18/21, p.A2)
2021 May 17, Vaccinated Saudis will now be allowed to leave the kingdom for the first time in more than a year as the country eases a ban on international travel aimed at containing the spread of the coronavirus and its new variants.
(AP, 5/17/21)
2021 May 17, In Slovenia Serbia and Kosovo clashed at a summit of Western Balkan nations over state border changes, a thorny issue in a region that is still recuperating from bloody civil wars in the 1990s.
(AP, 5/17/21)
2021 May 17, Two Catalan separatist parties said they have reached an initial agreement to form a regional government in northeastern Spain, ending a three-month stalemate since elections were held.
(AP, 5/17/21)
2021 May 17, Sudan announced the resignation of the country’s chief prosecutor and the firing of the top judge, without giving any reasons for the changes.
(AP, 5/17/21)
2021 May 17, More than 50 migrants drowned off the coast of Tunisia, while 33 others were rescued by workers from an oil platform.
(SFC, 5/18/21, p.A2)
2021 May 17, In Turkey Muharrem Ince (56), a politician who once ran as a presidential challenger to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, formed the new Memleket Partisi (Homeland Party), months after he broke away from Turkey’s main opposition party.
(AP, 5/17/21)
2021 May 18, It was reported that the Biden administration will waive sanctions on the corporate entity and CEO overseeing the construction of Russia’s Nord Stream 2 pipeline into Germany.
(Axios, 5/18/21)
2021 May 18, The Biden administration restored citizenship rights to children born abroad to married same-sex couples from the United States.
(SFC, 5/18/21, p.A5)
2021 May 18, A US House of Representatives Oversight Committee staff reported that drugmaker AbbVie exploits the US patent system to push up prices for its Humira rheumatoid arthritis drug and Imbruvica, a cancer drug.
(AP, 5/18/21)
2021 May 18, California to date had 3,746,039 cases of coronavirus and 62,392 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 441,460 cases and 6,508 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 32,996,503 with the death toll at 587,196.
(sfist.com, 5/18/21)
2021 May 18, Charles Grodin, the versatile actor familiar from “Same Time, Next Year" on Broadway, popular movies like “The Heartbreak Kid," “Midnight Run" and “Beethoven" and numerous television appearances, died at his home in Wilton, Conn.
(NY Times, 5/18/21)
2021 May 18, Donald J. Trump and his family came under increasing pressure from New York investigators after the attorney general’s office said it was working alongside the Manhattan district attorney in an ongoing criminal fraud investigation.
(NY Times, 5/18/21)
2021 May 18, North Carolina prosecutors said sheriff's deputies were justified in fatally shooting Andrew Brown Jr., a Black man, during an attempted arrest last April 21 and no charges will be filed against law enforcement. Brown was shot five times and that his immediate cause of death was a penetrating gunshot wound of the head.
(NBC News, 5/18/21)
2021 May 18, Tennessee's Gov. Bill Lee signed a law barring doctors from giving hormone treatments to transgender minors before puberty. Experts said they knew of no doctors in the state who did so.
(NY Times, 5/20/21)
2021 May 18, Gov. Jay Inslee signed 12 bills into law that include bans on chokeholds and no-knock warrants, making Washington the latest state to pass sweeping police reforms.
(NY Times, 5/19/21)
2021 May 18, Amazon said that it will extend its ban on police use of its face-recognition technology beyond the one-year pause it announced last year.
(SFC, 5/18/21, p.B2)
2021 May 18, Bank of America Corp said it plans to raise its minimum wage for US workers to $25 an hour by 2025, the latest in a series of major employers promising more pay to workers after a year of pandemic risks.
(Reuters, 5/18/21)
2021 May 18, Drugmaker Bristol Myers Squibb said it will pay biotech firm Agenus Inc up to $1.38 billion to exclusively develop and commercialize its experimental cancer drug, AGEN1777.
(Reuters, 5/18/21)
2021 May 18, American electric-vehicle maker Fisker Inc said it had signed an agreement with UK-based Onto, an electric-car subscription service, to deliver up to 700 vehicles in 2023.
(Reuters, 5/18/21)
2021 May 18, Argentina reported 745 coronavirus deaths and 35,543 new infections. The country has recorded more than 71,000 total confirmed deaths.
(SFC, 5/120/21, p.A5)
2021 May 18, Belarusian authorities made the Tut.by news site unavailable to readers and raided its offices and the homes of some staff members. Officials maintained that the news site, arguably the most popular one in Belarus, violated media laws by publishing content on behalf of BYSOL, a foundation that helps victims of political repression but lacks proper state registration.
(AP, 5/21/21)
2021 May 18, In northern Burkina Faso suspected Islamic extremists attacked a baptism party near the town of Tin-Akoff, killing at least 15 people and sending terrified civilians fleeing.
(AP, 5/19/21)
2021 May 18, Chad’s deputy foreign minister warned the UN Security Council that mercenaries and foreign fighters from Libya are crossing into the Sahel, threatening to undermine gains in fighting terrorism by five West African nations and plunge the region into violence that will be difficult to control.
(AP, 5/18/21)
2021 May 18, A leading international rights group urged Egyptian authorities to release Hoda Abdel Hamid, who was arrested last month apparently over publishing a letter from her imprisoned son, Abdelrahman al-Showeikh (29), in which he claims he was tortured and sexually assaulted behind bars.
(AP, 5/18/21)
2021 May 18, France's presidency called for a resolution at the United Nations Security Council to stop the fighting between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza.
(Reuters, 5/18/21)
2021 May 18, In France more than 20 heads of state and government from Africa held talks in Paris with the heads of international organizations on how to revive the continent's economy, which the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted deeply.
(AP, 5/18/21)
2021 May 18, Air France-KLM said it is sending into the air what it calls its first long-haul flight with sustainable aviation fuel. The plane is said to be using petroleum mixed with a synthetic jet fuel derived from waste cooking oils.
(AP, 5/18/21)
2021 May 18, German prosecutors said a businessman suspected of helping Russia purchase sophisticated machinery in breach of arms export rules has been detained in Leipzig.
(AP, 5/18/21)
2021 May 18, The Greek island of Corfu welcomed its first cruise ship of the new season, hoping much awaited tourists will help salvage losses incurred during 2020 due to the coronavirus.
(Reuters, 5/18/21)
2021 May 18, The Serum Institute of India, the world’s largest maker of vaccines, announced that it expects to resume exporting coronavirus vaccines by the end of 2021.
(AP, 5/18/21)
2021 May 18, The Indian navy worked to rescue crew members from a sunken barge and a second cargo vessel that was adrift off the coast of Mumbai after a deadly cyclone struck the western coast. The navy said it has rescued 184 people. 55 people remained missing.
(AP, 5/18/21)(SFC, 5/20/21, p.A4)
2021 May 18, Square, a San Francisco payments company led by Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, launched its services in Ireland in its first eurozone foray.
(Reuters, 5/18/21)
2021 May 18, Dozens of Israeli jets launched more than 100 missiles into the Gaza Strip overnight as the fighting entered its second week and hours after President Joe Biden said he would support a cease-fire in the conflict.
(NBC News, 5/18/21)
2021 May 18, In Israel Jana Kiswani (16) was standing just outside the front gate of her home in the flashpoint neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah when a police officer ordered her, her brother and father to go into their house. Kiswani was shot in the back with a rubber-coated bullet and was hospitalized with a broken vertebra. The officer involved in the shooting in east Jerusalem was later suspended pending an investigation.
(AP, 5/26/21)
2021 May 18, Kosovo authorities said police have seized a record 400 kg (880 pounds) of cocaine that originated in Brazil, and arrested 7 people suspected of drug trafficking offenses.
(AP, 5/18/21)
2021 May 18, Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum opened a new exhibition that takes unflinching look at slavery. The exhibit tells the story of slavery by drilling down into the personal stories of 10 people, ranging from enslaved workers to a wealthy Amsterdam woman.
(AP, 5/18/21)
2021 May 18, Nigerian authorities said some $5.8m (£4.2m) recovered by UK agencies that was stolen by a Nigerian former governor and laundered in Britain have now been returned to Nigeria. Former Delta state Governor James Ibori was convicted of money laundering in the UK in 2012.
(BBC, 5/18/21)
2021 May 18, North Macedonia said it is expelling a Russian diplomat from the country, but authorities didn't give any explanation for the decision.
(AP, 5/18/21)
2021 May 18, Hundreds of thousands of Palestinian citizens of Israel stopped work for the day, as did other Palestinians across the occupied West Bank and in Gaza, protesting violence against Arab Israelis, the unfolding Israeli military campaign targeting Hamas militants in Gaza and the looming eviction of several families from their homes in East Jerusalem.
(NY Times, 5/18/21)
2021 May 18, Spain deployed its military to the Moroccan border as thousands of migrants jumped fences or swam onto European soil for the second day in a row after Rabat loosened border controls amid a deepening diplomatic spat.
(AP, 5/18/21)
2021 May 18, The United Arab Emirates said it will offer booster shots to those who received the Chinese state-backed Sinopharm vaccine six months after vaccination. Last month, China’s top disease control official, in a rare acknowledgement, said current vaccines offer low protection against the coronavirus.
(AP, 5/18/21)
2021 May 19, The United States said it opposes a proposed UN Security Council resolution calling for a cease-fire in the conflict between Israel and Gaza’s Hamas rulers, reiterating that it could interfere with the Biden administration’s efforts to end the hostilities.
(AP, 5/19/21)
2021 May 19, The US House voted to create a commission to investigate the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, with 35 Republicans voting in favor. But Mitch McConnell, minority leader in the Senate, said he opposed it.
(NY Times, 5/19/21)
2021 May 19, The United States sanctioned former Albanian PM Sali Berisha (76), barring him from entering the country after being accused of involvement in “significant corruption".
(AP, 5/19/21)
2021 May 19, The US global coordinator on COVID said the United States will donate a significant number of COVID-19 vaccines through the World Health Organization's COVAX scheme for distributing doses to poorer countries.
(AP, 5/19/21)
2021 May 19, US broadcaster Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) filed a legal case at the European Court of Human Rights to challenge the "foreign agent" label imposed on it by Russian authorities.
(Reuters, 5/19/21)
2021 May 19, California to date had 3,746,224 cases of coronavirus and 62,400 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 441,727 cases and 6,512 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 33,016,539 with the death toll at 587,640.
(sfist.com, 5/19/21)
2021 May 19, In central Illinois police Officer Chris Oberheim (44) died after being shot by a suspect in a domestic disturbance, who was also killed in an exchange of gunfire that left a 2nd officer wounded in Champaign.
(SFC, 5/20/21, p.A4)
2021 May 19, The husband of the mayor of Rochester, NY, was arrested after police said they discovered drugs and guns in searches of his car and home. Mayor Lovely Warren’s husband, Timothy Granison (42), was accused of being part of a midlevel cocaine trafficking ring.
(NY Times, 5/21/21)
2021 May 19, In NYC one laborer was killed and another seriouysly injured when their elevator dropped from the top of a five-story building under renovation at 20 Bruckner Boulevard. in the Bronx. Over the last two years two other laborers had died at the site.
(NY Times, 5/30/22)
2021 May 19, Texas executed Quintin Jones (41), the state’s first execution in 10 months. Jones was convicted of fatally beating his great aunt (83) more than two decades ago.
(AP, 5/20/21)(SFC, 5/20/21, p.A4)
2021 May 19, Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed into law a "fetal heartbeat" abortion bill that bans the procedure after about six weeks of pregnancy and grants citizens the right to sue doctors who perform abortions past that point.
(AP, 5/19/21)
2021 May 19, Heavy rain kept pounding parts of Texas and Arkansas before moving over Louisiana, adding to the misery for people whose homes and cars were flooded by an earlier drenching.
(AP, 5/19/21)
2021 May 19, Lee Evans (74), the Black American runner who won two gold medals at the racially charged 1968 Summer Olympic Games in Mexico City, died. At a presentation ceremony he wore a Black Panther-style beret and raised his fist to protest racism in the US.
(AP, 5/20/21)
2021 May 19, Blue Origin, billionaire Jeff Bezos' rocket company, disclosed $2 million as the current highest bid for a seat on its New Shepard spacecraft after the startup closed the first phase of its auction. The rocket company is targeting July 20 for its first suborbital sightseeing trip on its spacecraft.
(Reuters, 5/19/21)
2021 May 19, Microsoft Corp said it is pulling the plug on its once omnipresent browser, Internet Explorer, next year as it prepares to battle market leader Chrome with its slicker Edge browser.
(AP, 5/20/21)
2021 May 19, Wells Fargo & Co said its investment institute is planning to evaluate and onboard an actively managed cryptocurrency strategy for its wealthy clients, the latest move by a major US. bank toward accepting digital currencies.
(AP, 5/19/21)
2021 May 19, In Afghanistan roadside bombings in southern and central Afghanistan killed 13 people, including nine members of one family. Meanwhile, militants stopped a bus in western Afghanistan, ordered three men, ethnic Hazaras, to get out and shot and killed them.
(AP, 5/20/21)
2021 May 19, Chinese leader Xi Jinping and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin joined in a videoconference to initiate a series of nuclear energy projects, an event intended to display warming ties between two nations that have paired-up as the chief geopolitical rivals to the US.
(AP, 5/19/21)
2021 May 19, The EU took a step toward relaxing travel rules for tourists from outside the 27-nation bloc when EU ambassadors agreed on measures to allow in fully vaccinated visitors.
(AP, 5/19/21)
2021 May 19, French police officers held a huge demonstration outside parliament to press for a law that protects the protectors who are feeling vulnerable to attacks, angry and useless.
(AP, 5/19/21)
2021 May 19, Police in Germany raided sites in seven states as authorities announced a ban on three groups linked to the Lebanese militant organization Hezbollah.
(AP, 5/19/21)
2021 May 19, The Art Basel contemporary art fair opened in Hong Kong, offering a combination of physical and virtual shows as many art collectors and curators were not able to travel to the city because of COVID-19 restrictions.
(Reuters, 5/19/21)
2021 May 19, India reported more coronavirus deaths in a single day than any other country at any time during the pandemic. The Health Ministry reported a record 4,529 deaths in the past 24 hours, driving India's confirmed fatalities to 283,248. It also reported 267,334 new infections.
(AP, 5/19/21)
2021 May 19, It was reported that health authorities in Malawi have incinerated 19,610 expired doses of the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine, saying it will reassure the public that any vaccines they do get are safe.
(BBC, 5/19/21)
2021 May 19, In Nigeria reports began to emerge that Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau had detonated a suicide vest while besieged by rival ISWAP fighters in his forest stronghold.
(SFC, 5/22/21, p.A2)
2021 May 19, The Russian parliament's lower house voted to withdraw from an international treaty allowing surveillance flights over military facilities following the US departure from the pact. The Russian exit from the Open Skies Treaty is yet to be endorsed by the upper house of parliament and needs to be signed by President Vladimir Putin to take effect.
(AP, 5/19/21)
2021 May 19, A United Nations report said roughly a sixth of the planet’s land and freshwater area now lies within protected or conservation areas.
(AP, 5/19/21)
2021 May 20, The Biden administration announced that it will stop using immigration detention facilities in Massachusetts and Georgia that are the subject of abuse allegations.
(AP, 5/20/21)
2021 May 20, Pres. Joe Biden signed a bill addressing hate crimes against Asian-Americans.
(NY Times, 5/20/21)
2021 May 20, The US Treasury Department offered to accept a global minimum corporate tax rate of at least 15%, significantly below its proposed 21% minimum for US multinational firms.
(Reuters, 5/21/21)
2021 May 20, The DOJ said federal law enforcement officers have seized nearly 70 protected big cats from Jeffrey and Lauren Lowe's Thackerville, Oklahoma, Tiger King Park.
(CBS News, 5/21/21)
2021 May 20, US Senator Bernie Sanders introduced a resolution blocking a $735 million weapons sale to Israel, mirroring a symbolic action by the House of Representatives in response to conflict between Israel and Gaza's Hamas leaders.
(Reuters, 5/20/21)
2021 May 20, California's Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill 7 allowing projects of more than $15 million to apply for an expedited revue under the California Environmental Quality Act.
(SFC, 5/21/21, p.B4)
2021 May 20, California state air-pollution regulators approved rules requiring ride-hailing services to phase out their use of gas-powered cars over the next decade.
(SFC, 5/22/21, p.B1)
2021 May 20, California to date had 3,749,023 cases of coronavirus and 62,490 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 442,113 cases and 6,538 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 33,055,614 with the death toll at 588,528.
(sfist.com, 5/20/21)
2021 May 20, Jane Goodall (b.1934), the conservationist renowned for her expertise on chimpanzees and her globe-spanning advocacy of environmental causes, was named as this year’s winner of the prestigious Templeton Prize, honoring individuals whose life’s work embodies a fusion of science and spirituality.
(AP, 5/20/21)
2021 May 20, Brazilian pharmaceutical company União Quimica said it has completed production of its first batch of the Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine with active ingredients and technology supplied by Russia.
(Reuters, 5/20/21)
2021 May 20, Britain announced plans to bring the national rail network back under government control, reversing one of the most controversial elements of the privatization drive carried out by the Conservative governments of the 1980s and ’90s.
(AP, 5/20/21)
2021 May 20, British drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline said it has sold its entire stake in Innoviva back to the US-based biopharmaceutical company for about $392 million, as it simplifies operations ahead of a split into two businesses.
(Reuters, 5/20/21)
2021 May 20, China said it is providing COVID-19 vaccines to nearly 40 African countries.
(SFC, 5/21/21, p.A6)
2021 May 20, It was reported that soaring international food and shipping prices and low domestic production are further squeezing import-dependent Cuba’s ability to feed its people.
(Reuters, 5/20/21)
2021 May 20, Ethiopia expelled Simon Marks, an Irish journalist working for The New York Times, dealing a new blow to press freedom in a country as the government fights a grinding war in the northern region of Tigray.
(NY Times, 5/20/21)
2021 May 20, The European Parliament voted overwhelmingly to freeze efforts to ratify a landmark investment deal with China until Beijing lifts sanctions imposed in retaliation for the EU's condemnation of China's human rights abuses.
(Axios, 5/20/21)
2021 May 20, A French appeal court ruled that around 2,700 victims of a breast implant scandal are entitled to compensation. The court said that German company TUV Rheinland committed negligence by certifying them as safe.
(AP, 5/20/21)
2021 May 20, Officials said India has ordered tighter surveillance of a rare fungal disease hitting COVID-19 patients, piling pressure on hospitals struggling with the world's highest number of daily infections of the novel coronavirus. Mucormycosis, or "black fungus" usually infects people whose immune system has been compromised.
(Reuters, 5/20/21)
2021 May 20, Israeli airstrikes on Gaza and rocket attacks by Hamas on Israel eased overnight. Officials on both sides expressed optimism that a cease-fire could come within days.
(NY Times, 5/20/21)
2021 May 20, It was reported that Kazakhstan is rolling out an app which it hopes will limit the spread of COVID-19 by restricting people's access to places such as bars, cinemas and airports based on their vaccination and infection risk status.
(Reuters, 5/20/21)
2021 May 20, Groups of angry Lebanese pelted buses and cars carrying Syrians expatriates and refugees heading to the Syrian Embassy in Beirut with stones and sticks, outraged over what they perceive as an organized vote for President Bashar Assad.
(AP, 5/20/21)
2021 May 20, Malaysia reported a new daily record in coronavirus infections and deaths. It recorded COVID-19 fatalities, a record toll for the third day this week, while its 6,806 new cases was the second straight day of record infections.
(Reuters, 5/20/21)
2021 May 20, Samoa's incoming PM Fiame Naomi Mata'afa announced that she would cancel a $100 million wharf development backed by China.
(SFC, 5/22/21, p.A3)
2021 May 20, South Korea said it will conduct a clinical trial that mixes COVID-19 vaccine doses developed by AstraZeneca Plc with those from Pfizer Inc and others.
(Reuters, 5/20/21)
2021 May 20, In Sri Lanka a fire broke out aboard the ship MV X-Press cargo ship, carrying 1,486 containers. Debris soon spilled into the ocean and began polluting the nation's beaches.
(SFC, 6/2/21, p.A2)
2021 May 20, It was reported that a district of northern Thailand has launched a raffle campaign for inoculated residents to win a live cow per week for the rest of the year, in a bid to boost the local COVID-19 vaccination drive.
(Reuters, 5/20/21)
2021 May 20, The World Health Organization's regional director said COVID-19 vaccines currently being deployed in the fight against the pandemic in Europe appear able to protect against all variants that are circulating and causing concern.
(Reuters, 5/20/21)
2021 May 21, President Joe Biden awarded the Medal of Honor, the country's highest military recognition, to retired Army Colonel Ralph Puckett (94) for acts of “gallantry and intrepidity above and beyond the call of duty" during the Korean War.
(NBC News, 5/21/21)
2021 May 21, Pres. Joe Biden welcomed South Korea's Pres. Moon Jae-in. Both leaders agreed to work closely toward denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.
(SFC, 5/22/21, p.A2)
2021 May 21, Pres. Joe Biden said he won't allow the Dept. of Justice to seize journalists' phone records and emails calling the practice "wrong".
(SSFC, 5/23/21, p.A9)
2021 May 21, It was reported that the Biden administration has cut its proposed infrastructure plan from $2.25 trillion to $1.7 trillion in a gesture of compromise between the White House and congressional Republicans.
(The Week, 5/22/21)
2021 May 21, The United States Department of Agriculture said that it will begin making loan forgiveness payments in June to thousands of minority farmers as part of the Biden administration’s $4 billion debt relief program.
(NY Times, 5/21/21)
2021 May 21, In Alabama thousands of revelers in Mobile marched in a Mardi Gras style parade, dubbed Tardi Gras, as COVID-19 hospitalizations and vaccinations ebbed.
(SFC, 5/24/21, p.A4)
2021 May 21, California to date had 3,749,921 cases of coronavirus and 62,529 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 442,350 cases and 6,540 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 33,082,423 with the death toll at 589,204.
(sfist.com, 5/21/21)
2021 May 21, Kansas City Southern abandoned its agreement to be acquired by Canadian Pacific, choosing instead a competing bid from Canadian National Railway with a bigger price tag, but also greater regulatory risks.
(AP, 5/21/21)
2021 May 21, Louisiana State Police released all body camera footage related to the violent 2019 arrest of Ronald Greene, a Black man who died in custody.
(AP, 5/22/21)
2021 May 21, A medical center in Louisiana said it has identified the state's first two cases of a COVID-19 variant first identified in India. Variants from Brazil and the UK have already shown up in the state.
(SSFC, 5/23/21, p.A7)
2021 May 21, Start-up low-cost US airline Breeze Airways said it would begin service next week, focusing on flights between smaller US cities that don't have direct service from larger carriers.
(AP, 5/21/21)
2021 May 21, American pharmaceutical company Pfizer and German company BioNTech pledged to deliver 2 billion doses of their COVID-19 vaccine to middle- and low-income countries over the next 18 months, amid international calls for more vaccine solidarity.
(AP, 5/21/21)
2021 May 21, It was reported that Brussels has persuaded Washington to ease restrictions on exports of materials needed by German biotech firm CureVac to make its experimental COVID-19 vaccine.
(Reuters, 5/21/21)
2021 May 21, It was reported that the Group of Seven (G7) rich countries have agreed to stop international funding for the construction of coal-fired power stations that emit carbon.
(Reuters, 5/21/21)
2021 May 21, The International Monetary Fund (IMF) unveiled a $50 billion proposal to end the COVID-19 pandemic by vaccinating at least 40% of the population in all countries by the end of 2021 and at least 60% by the first half of 2022.
(Reuters, 5/21/21)
2021 May 21, China's President Xi Jinping pledged an additional $3 billion in aid over the next three years to help developing countries recover from the coronavirus pandemic, and proposed setting up an international forum on vaccine cooperation.
(Reuters, 5/21/21)
2021 May 21, China-based biotech firm Beigene Ltd, said its cancer therapy, tislelizumab, in combination with chemotherapy met the main goal of helping patients live longer by preventing the disease from progressing in a late-stage study.
(Reuters, 5/21/21)
2021 May 21, A strong, shallow earthquake shook southwestern China near the border with Myanmar, killing at least three people and injuring more than two dozen.
(AP, 5/21/21)
2021 May 21, It was reported that a judge in Colombia has sentenced three Venezuelan men to six years in prison for helping organize the so-called Operation Gideon, an ill-conceived plot to remove Pres. Nicolas Maduro involving former American Green Berets.
(SFC, 5/21/21, p.A5)
2021 May 21, An Egyptian-mediated cease-fire between Israel and Hamas went into effect after 11 days of fighting that killed 254 people in Gaza and 12 people in Israel. Hamas had fired more than 4,000 rockets toward Israel.
(AP, 5/21/21)(SFC, 7/28/21, p.A2)(SFC, 2/4/22, p.A4)
2021 May 21, Scientists from the European Space Agency said a 1,668 square-mile iceberg, dubbed A-76, broke off Antarctica earlier this month. Scientists said it could take several years for it to break up and melt away.
(SFC, 5/22/21, p.A4)
2021 May 21, European Union’s top court ordered Poland to immediately stop extracting brown coal at the Turow mine, which is on the border with the Czech Republic and Germany.
(AP, 5/21/21)
2021 May 21, Europe's medicines regulator said the second shot of the COVID-19 vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford must not be given to anyone who has had blood clots with low blood platelets after receiving the first.
(Reuters, 5/21/21)
2021 May 21, The European Union's drug regulator said a COVID-19 antibody treatment developed by GlaxoSmithKline and Vir Biotechnology can be used to treat patients who are at risk of severe disease and do not need supplemental oxygen.
(Reuters, 5/21/21)
2021 May 21, India-based Mylab Discovery Solutions said it has the capacity to ramp up production of its at-home COVID-19 test kits to 100 million units per week over the next few months based on demand.
(Reuters, 5/21/21)
2021 May 21, Italy's government revived hopes of producing the country's own COVID-19 vaccine when it said it was ready to finance the ReiThera project despite a court ruling rejecting a plan to pump public funds into the local biotech company.
(Reuters, 5/21/21)
2021 May 21, The head of Myanmar’s military-appointed state election commission said that his agency will consider dissolving Aung San Suu Kyi's former ruling party for alleged involvement in electoral fraud and having its leaders charged with treason.
(AP, 5/21/21)
2021 May 21, Nigeria's army chief, Lt-Gen Ibrahim Attahiru, was killed in a plane crash in the north-western state of Kaduna. Ten other officers, including the plane's crew also died.
(BBC, 5/22/21)
2021 May 21, In southwestern Pakistan a roadside bomb went off in Chaman near a vehicle carrying a local leader of an Islamist political party killing seven people.
(SFC, 5/22/21, p.A4)
2021 May 21, The UN humanitarian agency urged heavy punishments for aid workers and others who committed sex abuses during the Ebola epidemic in eastern Congo, saying it has launched a hotline to receive complaints from victims.
(AP, 5/21/21)
2021 May 21, The WHO said official tolls showing the number of deaths directly or indirectly attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic are likely to be a "significant undercount." 6-8 million people may have died so far.
(Reuters, 5/21/21)
2021 May 22, The Department of Homeland Security announced that the Biden administration will grant temporary protected status to tens of thousands of Haitian immigrants living in the United States without legal status.
(CBS News, 5/22/21)
2021 May 22, A US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advisory group said some teenagers and young adults who received COVID-19 vaccines experienced heart inflammation, recommending further study of the rare condition.
(Reuters, 5/22/21)
2021 May 22, CNN said it has "parted ways" with former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.). Santorum had recently come under fire for comments he made about Native Americans during a speech to a conservative youth group in April: "We birthed a nation from nothing. I mean, there was nothing here."
(CNN, 5/22/21)
2021 May 22, California to date had 3,750,465 cases of coronavirus and 62,543 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 442,388 cases and 6,541 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 33,088,187 with the death toll at 589,289.
(sfist.com, 5/23/21)
2021 May 22, At least two people were killed and 12 others wounded in a mass shooting at a family house party in Cumberland County, New Jersey. Kevin K Dawkins (36) was soon arrested on weapons offenses.
(AP, 5/23/21)(AP, 5/24/21)
2021 May 22, Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc, British billionaire Sir Richard Branson's private spaceship company, completed its first manned space flight from its new home port in New Mexico. Branson founded the company in 2004 and this is the third time his company reported reaching space.
(Reuters, 5/22/21)
2021 May 22, In South Carolina more than a dozen people were shot late today at an unauthorized concert in North Charleston. One girl (14) was killed.
(SFC, 5/24/21, p.A6)
2021 May 22, It was reported that West Virginia lost a higher percentage of its residents than any other state in the nation. From 2010 to 2020, the population dropped 3.2%, or about 59,000 people. Because of that, West Virginia was one of only seven states to lose a congressional seat following the 2020 census.
(AP, 5/22/21)
2021 May 22, Albania's Pres. Ilir Meta offered public support to former PM Sali Berisha, who was sanctioned by the United States this week for corruption.
(AP, 5/22/21)
2021 May 22, Argentina imposed its first strict coronavirus lockdown of the year due to surging levels of infections and a soaring death toll.
(SFC, 5/22/21, p.A4)
2021 May 22, Animal rights protesters blockaded four McDonald's distribution centers in the UK in an attempt to get the burger chain to commit to becoming fully plant-based by 2025.
(AP, 5/22/21)
2021 May 22, Beijing's space administration said China's remote-controlled Zhurong rover drove down the ramp of its landing capsule and onto the Martian surface.
(AP, 5/22/21)
2021 May 22, In central China a magnitude 7.3 earthquake collapsed a bridge and caused other damage early today in Qinghai province.
(AP, 5/22/21)
2021 May 22, Yuan Longping (91), a Chinese scientist who developed higher-yield rice varieties that helped feed people around the world, died at a hospital in the southern city of Changsha.
(AP, 5/22/21)
2021 May 22, In northwestern China 21 people died during a 62-mile mountain race in the Yellow River Stone Forest after extreme weather struck the region.
(CNN, 5/22/21)
2021 May 22, In CongoDRC Mount Nyiragongo erupted. Tens of thousands of people fled the eastern city of Goma late today when lava began to spew from the flanks of the volcano. At least 32 people were killed amid chaos in Goma. Residents of Buhene returned early the next day to find that their homes had been swallowed by a river of lava, about half a mile wide. Nearly 500,000 people were left without clean drinking water after the volcano erupted.
(NY Times, 5/23/21)(AP, 5/23/21)(AP, 5/24/21)(SSFC, 5/30/21, p.B8)(BBC, 6/2/21)
2021 May 22, It was reported that Croatia has widely reopened its stunning Adriatic coastline for foreign tourists, becoming one of the first European countries to drop most of its pandemic measures.
(AP, 5/22/21)
2021 May 22, Egyptian mediators held talks to firm up an Israel-Hamas cease-fire as people in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip began to assess the damage from 11 days of intense Israeli bombardment. A 130-truck convoy carrying urgent humanitarian aid headed to Gaza.
(AP, 5/22/21)
2021 May 22, In India COVID-19 deaths rose by 4,194 and infections were spreading in rural areas where public health services are scarce and already overstretched. Government data showed 257,299 new cases.
(Reuters, 5/22/21)
2021 May 22, It was reported that more than 125,000 school teachers in Myanmar have been suspended by the military authorities for joining a civil disobedience movement to oppose the military coup in February.
(Reuters, 5/22/21)
2021 May 22, In Nepal climbing guide Lukas Furtenbach said a coronavirus outbreak on Mount Everest has infected at least 100 climbers and support staff.
(AP, 5/22/21)
2021 May 22, Twenty six nations competed in the final of the Eurovision song contest in the Netherlands, vying for votes in the world's most popular live music event, which returns after being cancelled last year due to the pandemic. Maneskin won the Eurovision Song Contest. Their song “Zitti E Buoni" beat 25 other acts from across Europe to bring the title home for Italy. France came in second, and Switzerland came in third.
(NY Times, 5/22/21)(Reuters, 5/22/21)
2021 May 22, It was reported that North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un recently banned mullets and other "non-socialist" haircuts – as well as skinny jeans – over fears the fashions would lead to capitalistic urges among the closed-off nation’s young people.
(Fox News, 5/22/21)
2021 May 22, Officials in the Philippines said they investigating reports that some people have been illegally selling COVID-19 shots or their vaccine slots for financial gain, as they reminded the public the vaccines are free.
(Reuters, 5/22/21)
2021 May 22, Firefighters in central Poland said 13 units are fighting flames that have engulfed a conveyer belt at Poland’s largest brown coal mine in Belchatow.
(AP, 5/22/21)
2021 May 22, Samoa's appointed head of state Va'aletoa Sualauvi II announced that he was suspending parliament, two days before it was scheduled to swear in Fiame Naomi Mata'afa.
(SSFC, 5/23/21, p.A8)
2021 May 23, Phil Mickelson (50) became the oldest golfer to win a major title with his victory at the P.G.A. Championship.
(NY Times, 5/24/21)
2021 May 23, California to date had 3,750,825 cases of coronavirus and 62,571 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 442,534 cases and 6,544 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 33,106,232 with the death toll at 589,740.
(sfist.com, 5/23/21)
2021 May 23, Eric Carle (91), the artist and author who created that creature in his book “The Very Hungry Caterpillar," died at his summer studio in Northampton, Mass.
(NY Times, 5/27/21)
2021 May 23, It was reported that Rhode Island has become the eighth US state where 70 percent of the adult population has received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. Connecticut, Hawaii, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, and Vermont also have reached the milestone.
(NY Times, 5/24/21)
2021 May 23, A Ryanair tourist flight from Athens to Vilnius was forced to land in Belarus by a MiG-29 fighter jet after a bogus bomb threat so authorities could arrest Roman Protasevich (26), a journalist opponent of hardman president Lukashenko.
(https://tinyurl.com/nzjefv5m)
2021 May 23, Paulo Mendes da Rocha (92), an architect known for a muscular style called Brazilian Brutalism, died at a hospital in São Paulo. Mr. Mendes da Rocha was awarded the Pritzker Prize in 2006, architecture’s highest honor. He was only the second Brazilian to win the prize, after the Rio-born Oscar Niemeyer, who collaborated on the United Nations building in New York City and won in 1988.
(NY Times, 6/26/21)
2021 May 23, Iran’s parliament speaker said that international inspectors may no longer access surveillance images of the Islamic Republic’s nuclear sites, escalating tensions amid diplomatic efforts in Vienna to save Tehran's atomic accord with world powers.
(AP, 5/23/21)
2021 May 23, Israel reopened its borders to foreign tourists after a fall in COVID-19 infections but said it would take time for visitors to start arriving and to revive the tourism industry.
(Reuters, 5/23/21)
2021 May 23, In northern Italy 14 people were killed after a cable car fell to the ground near the summit of a mountain overlooking the Piedmont region's Lake Maggiore.
(AP, 5/23/21)
2021 May 23, Lithuanian prosecutors launched a criminal investigation into the forced diversion of a RyanAir flight en route to Vilnius, Lithuania's capital, to Minsk, Belarus, where police arrested prominent dissident journalist Raman Pratasevich.
(Reuters, 5/23/21)
2021 May 23, Mexico's health ministry registered 50 new confirmed deaths from COVID-19, the lowest daily increase reported from the pandemic in over a year. The ministry also reported 1,274 new COVID-19 infections, lifting the total to 2,396,604. Separate government data has suggested the death toll could be at least 60% above the confirmed figure.
(Reuters, 5/23/21)
2021 May 23, Pakistan's federal authorities reported a decrease in COVID-19 deaths and new cases and decided to reopen tourist resorts and schools but only for those who have either tested negative or got vaccinated. Sindh province has opted to keep schools closed for another two weeks.
(SFC, 5/24/21, p.A4)
2021 May 23, A government official said Thailand has ordered strict controls on the movement of cattle and buffaloes after an outbreak of a virus that causes lumps to form on the animals' skin and can reduce milk production.
(Reuters, 5/23/21)
2021 May 24, Alabama's Gov. Kay Ivey signed legislation banning vaccine passports in the state. No penalties were specified for violations.
(SFC, 5/25/21, p.A4)
2021 May 24, California to date had 3,752,039 cases of coronavirus and 62,600 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 442,835 cases and 6,544 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 33,140,137 with the death toll at 590,184.
(sfist.com, 5/24/21)
2021 May 24, Florida became the first state to regulate how companies like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter moderate speech online, by imposing fines on social media companies that permanently bar political candidates in the state.
(NY Times, 5/24/21)
2021 May 24, Chicago police said at least 38 people have been shot since 5 p.m. May 21, eight of them fatally.
(Chicago Tribune, 5/24/21)
2021 May 24, Missouri's Republican Gov. Mike Parson appointed Judge Robin Ransom to be the first Black woman to serve on the state's Supreme Court.
(SFC, 5/25/21, p.A3)
2021 May 24, In South Carolina police arrested Tyler Terry, a suspect wanted in the killing of four people, following a weeklong manhunt.
(SFC, 5/25/21, p.A3)
2021 May 24, Cryptocurrencies rebounded, reclaiming ground lost during a bout of weekend selling that was fuelled by further signs of a Chinese crackdown on the emerging sector.
(Reuters, 5/24/21)
2021 May 24, A team of scientists announced that they had partially restored the sight of a blind man by building light-catching proteins in one of his eyes. Their report, which appeared in the journal Nature Medicine, is the first published study to describe the successful use of this treatment.
(NY Times, 5/24/21)
2021 May 24, Uber Technologies Inc and rival Lyft Inc launched COVID-19 vaccine ride programs in partnership with the White House, offering Americans free rides or discounts for their trips to and from a vaccination site.
(Reuters, 5/24/21)
2021 May 24, Britain barred Belarus’s national airline and instructed UK aircraft to avoid Belarussian airspace after a Ryanair passenger jet was forced to land in Minsk.
(AP, 5/24/21)
2021 May 24, The Chinese government offered to urgently send COVID-19 vaccines and medical experts to Taiwan to help it battle a sharp rise in coronavirus infections, but drew a swift and angry response from Taipei. Taiwan is dealing with a spike in COVID-19 cases and is rapidly running out of vaccines. Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen accused China of blocking a deal with Germany's BioNTech SE for COVID-19 vaccines, after Beijing offered the shots to the island via a Chinese company just as Taiwan was dealing with a rise in domestic infections.
(Reuters, 5/24/21)(Reuters, 1/30/22)
2021 May 24, In Ethiopia the Tsehaye and Adi Wonfito camps, host to some 12,000 people displaced by the Tigray conflict, were raided by soldiers who suspected the camps had been infiltrated by fighters from the Tigray Peoples Liberation Front. At least 200 displaced people were arrested in the raids.
(AP, 5/27/21)
2021 May 24, Western outrage grew and the European Union threatened more sanctions over the forced diversion of a plane to Belarus in order to arrest opposition journalist Raman Pratasevich. The dramatic gambit apparently ordered by the country’s authoritarian president to suppress dissent was denounced as piracy, a hijacking and terrorism.
(AP, 5/24/21)
2021 May 24, Indian government leaders appealed to farmers to call off a mass protest this week for fear it could prove a viral "super-spreader" event as the country's overall death toll from COVID-19 crossed 300,000. The Health Ministry reported 4,454 new deaths in the last 24 hours, bringing total fatalities to 303,720.
(Reuters, 5/24/21)(SFC, 5/25/21, p.A4)
2021 May 24, Iran agreed to preserve surveillance footage from its nuclear sites for another month, extending a temporary arrangement with the United Nations’ atomic watchdog agency (IAEA) that is seen as essential to eventually salvaging the 2015 nuclear deal.
(The Telegraph, 5/24/21)
2021 May 24, An Israeli soldier and a civilian were stabbed near a light rail station in east Jerusalem before the assailant was shot and killed by police, who described it as a terrorist attack.
(AP, 5/24/21)
2021 May 24, Japan mobilized military doctors and nurses to give elderly people vaccine shots in Tokyo and Osaka, two months before hosting the Olympics.
(SFC, 5/25/21, p.A4)
2021 May 24, Mutinous soldiers arrested Mali's transitional President Bah N’Daw and PM Moctar Ouane hours after a government reshuffle left out two members of the junta that had seized power in a coup nine months earlier.
(AP, 5/25/21)
2021 May 24, Malta said it has vaccinated 70% of its adult population with at least one COVID-19 shot, becoming the first EU country to achieve so-called herd immunity.
(Reuters, 5/24/21)
2021 May 24, In Myanmar Daniel Fenster (37), a US citizen and managing editor of Frontier Myanmar, one of the country's top independent news sites, was detained at the main international gateway in Yangon while preparing to fly to Malaysia. Consular officers from the US Embassy in Yangon soon sought to visit Fenster, but were not allowed access. Fenster was soon charged with incitement — spreading inflammatory information — an offense for which he could be sentenced to up to three years’ imprisonment.
(Reuters, 5/28/21)(Reuters, 9/20/21)
2021 May 24, In Oman scattered protests over layoffs and poor economic conditions drew a massive police presence in at least two cities in the sultanate, with protesters throwing stones at one point and police firing tear gas.
(AP, 5/24/21)
2021 May 24, Peru's police said that at least 18 people have been killed by suspected Shining Path rebels in Vizcata de Ene. The military said there were 14 victims.
(SFC, 5/25/21, p.A3)
2021 May 24, Officials in Poland defied an injunction by the top EU court that ordered the immediate closure of a major brown coal mine, saying it would shake the nation’s energy system and lead to the layoff of thousands of employees.
(AP, 5/24/21)
2021 May 24, Samoa's incoming PM Fiame Naomi Mata'afa's party (FAST) held its own swearing in ceremony after being locked out of the Parliament House.
(SFC, 5/22/21, p.A3)
2021 May 24, Riiid Inc, a South Korean AI tutorial startup, said it raised $175 million from SoftBank Group Corp's Vision Fund 2 as it looks to shake up the world of standardized testing, and take its technology to public schools.
(Reuters, 5/24/21)
2021 May 24, It was reported that Spanish police have arrested Robert Mark Benson (64), a British former Navy sailor, on suspicion of running a "highly professional" drugs trafficking operation with links across Europe.
(The Telegraph, 5/24/21)
2021 May 24, A Sudanese court sentenced to death a paramilitary officer charged with killing a demonstrator during a deadly breakup of a protest camp in the capital, Khartoum, two years ago. Hanafy Abdel-Shakour, was one of over 120 people killed during the brutal crackdown on demonstrators in Khartoum and elsewhere in Sudan in June, 2019.
(AP, 5/24/21)
2021 May 24, The World Bank said it has allocated $2 billion to cash-stripped Sudan as the transitional government has struggled to address the county’s decades-long economic woes.
(AP, 5/24/21)
2021 May 24, Sweden said it will donate 3 million doses vaccine to the COVAX facility in 2021, up from a previous pledge of 1 million doses.
(Reuters, 5/25/21)
2021 May 24, Thailand said it will extend the gap between the first and second doses of AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine to 16 weeks, in an effort to inoculate more people faster.
(Reuters, 5/24/21)
2021 May 24, Pope Francis challenged the Vatican’s own media employees to essentially justify their continued work, asking them how many people actually consume their news in a critique of the office that costs the Holy See more than all its embassies around the world combined.
(AP, 5/24/21)
2021 May 24, In southern Yemen an aid worker suffered mortal wounds when he was apparently caught in crossfire. Oxfam worker Fathi al-Zurigi died the next day.
(AP, 5/26/21)
2021 May 25, Secretary of State Tony Blinken announced that the US would be reopening the Consulate General in Jerusalem that handled relations with the Palestinians but was shut down by the Trump administration.
(Axios, 5/25/21)
2021 May 25, The US Federal Aviation Administration said it has downgraded Mexico's aviation safety rating after finding that the country does not meet standards set by a United Nations aviation group.
(AP, 5/25/21)
2021 May 25, California to date had 3,753,215 cases of coronavirus and 62,614 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 442,972 cases and 6,545 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 33,145,906 with the death toll at 590,758.
(sfist.com, 5/25/21)
2021 May 25, In Florida one person was killed and no other survivors were found after a firefighting helicopter with four people aboard crashed during a training exercise in Leesburg.
(Reuters, 5/26/21)
2021 May 25, New York prosecutors convened a special grand jury to consider evidence in a criminal investigation into former Pres. Donald Trump's business dealings.
(SFC, 5/26/21, p.A4)
2021 May 25, Portland, Oregon, police declared a riot on the anniversary of the death of George Floyd during a night when law enforcement made several arrests following windows being smashed and fires set as people marched through the city.
(The Independent, 5/26/21)
2021 May 25, Former US Senator John Warner (94) of Virginia, who at times clashed with fellow Republicans during his three decades in office, died in Alexandria, Va., of heart failure.
(Reuters, 5/26/21)
2021 May 25, A US federal judge dismissed an indictment against Steve Bannon, former chief strategist to President Donald Trump, that accused him of taking part in a scheme to defraud donors to a crowdfunding campaign to build a wall along the southern border. District Judge Analisa Torres dismissed the indictment against Bannon based on his presidential pardon.
(CBS News, 5/26/21)
2021 May 25, Moderna said its COVID-19 vaccine was shown to be effective in adolescents aged 12-17 and showed no new or major safety problems in a clinical trial.
(Reuters, 5/25/21)
2021 May 25, Australia's city of Melbourne increased pandemic restrictions after identifying a cluster from someone infected in quarantine. Restrictions will apply until June 4.
(SFC, 5/26/21, p.A5)
2021 May 25, In Austria world powers opened a fifth round of talks with Iran aimed at bringing the United States back into the landmark 2015 nuclear deal meant to prevent the Islamic Republic from obtaining an atomic bomb.
(AP, 5/25/21)
2021 May 25, Belarus’ isolation deepened as commercial planes avoided its airspace, the European Union worked up new sanctions, and a senior UN official said he was concerned for the welfare of Raman Pratasevich, the opposition journalist arrested in Minsk after his plane was diverted there. The UN human rights watchdog demanded that Belarus release Protasevich.
(AP, 5/25/21)(Reuters, 5/25/21)
2021 May 25, It was reported that mafia drug baron Rocco Morabito, nicknamed the King of Cocaine, has been arrested in Brazil after more than two decades on the run. Italy’s second most wanted fugitive is now expected to be extradited to Italy, where he was convicted in absentia of drug trafficking and mafia association and sentenced to 30 years in prison.
(The Telegraph, 5/25/21)
2021 May 25, Britain's Arm Ltd deepened its rivalry with Intel Corp by releasing a batch of new chip technology aimed at grabbing more market share among laptop computers.
(Reuters, 5/25/21)
2021 May 25, EU leaders agreed to donate at least 100 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines to poorer nations by the end of the year as supplies steadily rise across Europe.
(AP, 5/25/21)
2021 May 25, Europe's top human rights court ruled that British mass surveillance and intelligence-gathering practices breached human rights laws, in a partial victory for civil rights groups that had challenged the practices exposed by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.
(AP, 5/25/21)
2021 May 25, Tens of thousands of people were evacuated from low-lying areas of two Indian states and moved to shelters to escape Cyclone Yaas barreling toward the eastern coast.
(AP, 5/25/21)
2021 May 25, Hundreds of Iraqis took to the streets in Baghdad to protest what they say is the impunity of those behind a rising number of targeted killings of prominent activists and journalists.
(AP, 5/25/21)
2021 May 25, Israeli defence electronics specialist Elbit Systems reported higher quarterly profit and said it expects its night-vision business and other acquired operations to prosper as global defence spending continues to rise.
(Reuters, 5/25/21)
2021 May 25, Malaysia reported a record 7,289 new coronavirus infections. Confirmed deaths have spiked to more than 2,300.
(SFC, 5/26/21, p.A5)
2021 May 25, Mali’s former coup leader Assimi Goita took control of the West African country again after firing the president and prime minister of the transitional government following their announcement of a cabinet reshuffle without his permission. Goita pledged to go ahead with holding new elections in 2022 as previously promised.
(AP, 5/25/21)
2021 May 25, The Russian military said it has deployed three nuclear-capable long-range bombers to its base in Syria, a move that could strengthen Moscow's military foothold in the Mediterranean.
(AP, 5/25/21)
2021 May 25, Russia shipped a generic version of the remdesivir antiviral drug called Remdeform to India as part of its humanitarian aid contributions to the South Asian country which is fighting a surge in COVID-19 cases.
(Reuters, 5/25/21)
2021 May 25, Russia's consumer health watchdog in the Yakutia region said that all employers must organize COVID-19 vaccines for their employees in a bid to speed up inoculation there.
(Reuters, 5/25/21)
2021 May 25, Somalia’s foreign minister told the UN Security Council that an agreement has been reached between the federal government and regional states that will lead to long-delayed national elections.
(AP, 5/25/21)
2021 May 25, Spain's state-owned Correos Espana issued a set of four stamps in different skin-colored tones on the anniversary of George Floyd's death in Minnesota. The "Equality Stamps" stirred backlash as they were priced by skin color with the darker stamps priced lower than the lighter ones.
(SFC, 5/29/21, p.A3)
2021 May 25, Vietnam widened lockdown measures in its industrialized north to combat its biggest COVID-19 outbreak so far, as authorities reported a daily record in new cases that was more than double the previous high.
(Reuters, 5/25/21)
2021 May 26, President Joe Biden ordered US intelligence officials to “redouble" their efforts to investigate the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, including any possibility the trail might lead to a Chinese laboratory.
(AP, 5/26/21)
2021 May 26, The Biden administration defended a huge Trump-era oil and gas project in the North Slope of Alaska designed to produce more than 100,000 barrels of oil a day for the next 30 years, despite President Biden’s pledge to pivot the country away from fossil fuels.
(NY Times, 5/26/21)
2021 May 26, US President Joe Biden called for a ceasefire in Ethiopia's conflict in the northern region of Tigray. Biden also highlighted the possibility of famine.
(BBC, 5/27/21)
2021 May 26, It was reported that scores of Romanians, who are part of the Roma ethnic minority, have crossed the US-Mexico border in south Texas in recent weeks to seek asylum.
(Reuters, 5/26/21)
2021 May 26, A shooting at a maintenance and dispatch center for the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority in San Jose, Calif., left 10 people dead, including the gunman, and others injured. Officials identified the gunman as Samuel James Cassidy (57), a maintenance worker who had been with the V.T.A. for at least a decade. Police later found 22,000 rounds of ammunition at Cassidy's home In 2022 relatives of 8 of the 9 people shot reached an $8 million settlement with the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority.
(NY Times, 5/26/21)(SFC, 5/29/21, p.A1)(SFC, 11/14/22, p.A4)
2021 May 26, California to date had 3,754,579 cases of coronavirus and 62,660 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 443,330 cases and 6,549 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 33,189,877 with the death toll at 591,941.
(sfist.com, 5/26/21)
2021 May 26, Jerome Hellman (b.1928), who produced “Midnight Cowboy" (1969), the only X-rated film ever to win the best picture Academy Award, died at his home in South Egremont, Mass. He solidified his reputation with other tough-minded dramas, like the Oscar-winning “Coming Home" (1978).
(NY Times, 6/3/21)
2021 May 26, It was reported that beef prices are surging worldwide, taking meat off the menu in steak-loving Buenos Aires and spoiling summer barbecues in the United States as Chinese imports rise and the cost of feeding cattle soars.
(Reuters, 5/26/21)
2021 May 26, Amazon announced that it is buying MGM for $8.45 billion, adding Rocky, James Bond and more to its Prime video streaming service.
(NY Times, 5/26/21)
2021 May 26, Ford Motor Co outlined plans to boost spending on its electrification efforts by more than a third and said it aims to have 40% of its global volume be all electric by 2030, sending shares up 6.5% to a near five-year high.
(Reuters, 5/26/21)
2021 May 26, Belgium suspended the use of the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine for people under age 41 following the death of a person who had received the shot.
(AP, 5/26/21)
2021 May 26, China's ambassador to Nepal said China will provide 1 million doses of a COVID-19 vaccine to Nepal, as authorities in the Himalayan country scrambled to secure shots amid a surge in infections that has overwhelmed its rickety health system.
(Reuters, 5/26/21)
2021 May 26, France declared a mandatory quarantine period for people coming from Britain due to the increasing prevalence there of a highly contagious coronavirus variant first detected in India.
(Reuters, 5/26/21)
2021 May 26, President Hassan Rouhani said Iran has banned the energy-intensive mining of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin for nearly 4 months, as the country faces major power blackouts in many cities.
(Reuters, 5/26/21)
2021 May 26, In Iraq tensions mounted in Baghdad after the arrest on terrorism charges of militia commander Qassim Mahmoud Musleh, prompting a dangerous showdown by the detainee's paramilitary supporters and the Iraqi government. Musleh was released on June 9 due to insufficient evidence.
(AP, 5/26/21)(AP, 6/9/21)
2021 May 26, In Nigeria scores of people were missing feared dead after a boat carrying about 180 broke in two and sank in the Niger River. Most passengers were women and children traveling from Niger state to neighboring Kebbi state. Authorities later confirmed that at least 60 people died in the boat accident. 83 missing passengers were also feared dead.
(BBC, 5/27/21)(AP, 5/28/21)
2021 May 26, A Dutch court ordered Royal Dutch Shell to cut its carbon emissions by net 45% by 2030 compared to 2019 levels in a landmark case brought by climate activism groups, which hailed the decision as a victory for the planet.
(AP, 5/26/21)
2021 May 26, CEO Jacob Schram said low-cost carrier Norwegian Air Shuttle “has been saved," adding it had “written history" as the ailing airline had struggled with fallout from the coronavirus pandemic and a debt restructuring plan.
(AP, 5/26/21)
2021 May 26, Police in Oman fired tear gas at demonstrators in Sohar amid unrest over the sultanate's floundering economy and mass layoffs.
(AP, 5/26/21)
2021 May 26, Pakistan opened up its coronavirus vaccination campaign to everyone aged 19 or older as it scrambles to protect more of its 220 million people.
(Reuters, 5/26/21)
2021 May 26, Yehiyeh Sinwar, Hamas’ leader in the Gaza Strip, said 80 militants were killed during the 11-day war with Israel that ended last week, providing the group’s first official tally for losses sustained in the fighting. Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry has put the number of Palestinians killed in the Israeli offensive this month at 254, including 66 children, 39 women, and 17 people above the age of 60.
(AP, 5/26/21)
2021 May 26, It was reported that a legal appeal by former US Marine Trevor Reed, who is serving a jail term in Russia, was postponed after he tested positive for COVID-19 on May 23.
(Reuters, 5/26/21)
2021 May 26, Slovakia became the 2nd EU country to authorized use of the Russian-made Sputnik V vaccine, which has not yet been approved by the EU's drug regulator.
(SFC, 5/27/21, p.A5)
2021 May 26, Jacob Zuma, the former South African president, pleaded not guilty in a corruption trial involving a $5bn (£3bn) arms deal from the 1990s.
(AP, 5/26/21)
2021 May 26, Sudan’s transitional government and the main rebel group kicked off a new round of peace talks, the latest effort to end a decades-long conflict in the East African country.
(AP, 5/26/21)
2021 May 26, Switzerland said "no deal" to Brussels’ freedom of movement demands and pulled out of seven years of tortured trade negotiations with the European Union.
(The Telegraph, 5/27/21)
2021 May 26, Syrians in government-held areas of the war-torn country headed to polling stations to vote in a presidential election guaranteed to give President Bashar Assad a fourth seven-year term. Assad was re-elected in a reported landslide following an election described as illegitimate and a sham by the West and his opposition.
(AP, 5/26/21)(AP, 5/27/21)
2021 May 26, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said a series of severe allegations made against members of his entourage by a fugitive mafia boss were a plot against Turkey, and vowed to fight criminal gangs.
(AP, 5/26/21)
2021 May 26, Yemeni officials demanded answers after an Associated Press report highlighted a mysterious air base being built on a Yemeni island in one of the world's crucial maritime chokepoints. The runway on Mayun Island allows whoever controls it to project power into the strait and easily launch airstrikes into mainland Yemen. Military officials said the UAE is building the runway.
(AP, 5/26/21)
2021 May 27, The US EPA reversed a Trump era policy and restored a rule that grants states and native American tribes authority to block pipelines and other energy projects that can pollute waterways.
(SFC, 5/28/21, p.A4)
2021 May 27, US federal officials said Boeing will pay at least $17 million and take steps to fix production problems on its 737 jets including the Max planes built between 2015 and 2019.
(SFC, 5/28/21, p.B2)
2021 May 27, Microsoft Corporation disclosed that hackers linked to Russia’s main intelligence agency surreptitiously seized an email system used by the State Department’s international aid agency to burrow into the computer networks of human rights groups and other organizations of the sort that have been critical of President Vladimir V. Putin.
(NY Times, 5/28/21)
2021 May 27, California's Gov. Gavin Newsom announced financial incentives totaling $116.5 million to boost the number of people getting coronavirus vaccinations.
(SFC, 5/28/21, p.A1)
2021 May 27, California to date had 3,756,303 cases of coronavirus and 62,702 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 443,561 cases and 6,573 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 33,213,320 with the death toll at 593,156.
(sfist.com, 5/28/21)
2021 May 27, A boat filled with migrants from Cuba overturned near the Florida Keys. The US Coast Guard rescued 8 people. Two bodies were recovered and ten people remained missing.
(SFC, 5/29/21, p.A3)
2021 May 27, Idaho's Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin issued an executive order banning mask mandates in schools and public buildings while GOP Gov. Brad Little was out of state. Gov. Little repealed her order the next day.
(SFC, 5/29/21, p.A4)
2021 May 27, The New York City Council voted overwhelmingly to increase a housing subsidy in hopes of making thousands of apartments affordable to people who are homeless or facing eviction.
(NY Times, 5/27/21)
2021 May 27, The World Organization for Animal Health recognized four additional Brazilian states as free of foot-and-mouth disease without the need for vaccinations.
(Reuters, 5/27/21)
2021 May 27, GlaxoSmithKline of Britain and Sanofi of France launched a large trial for another potential COVID-19 vaccine.
(SFC, 5/28/21, p.A5)
2021 May 27, It was reported that tens of thousands of people have been evacuated from the city of Goma in the Democratic Republic of Congo over fears of another volcanic eruption.
(BBC, 5/27/21)
2021 May 27, Egyptian Pres. Abdel Fattah el-Sissi held talks with Pres. Ismail Omar Guelleh in Djibouti as part of Egyptian diplomatic attempts to build more African alliances amid an ongoing water dispute with Ethiopia.
(AP, 5/27/21)
2021 May 27, The EU called on Iran to review a case of Narges Mohammadi, a prominent female human rights activist, who was sentenced to 30 months in prison and 80 lashes on charges of protesting against the killing of protesters during the country's 2019 unrest.
(AP, 5/27/21)
2021 May 27, President Emmanuel Macron of France began a 2-day visit to Rwanda and said his country had “a duty to confront history and to recognize its part of the suffering it inflicted on the Rwandan people".
(NY Times, 5/27/21)
2021 May 27, Germany and Norway inaugurated a new undersea cable that directly links the two countries' electricity networks, a project that has been described as a key step in Europe's effort to shift away from fossil fuels to renewable energy.
(AP, 5/27/21)
2021 May 27, Hong Kong's legislature passed a bill amending electoral laws that drastically reduces the public's ability to vote and increases the number of pro-Beijing lawmakers making decisions for the city.
(SFC, 5/28/21, p.A2)
2021 May 27, Carla Fracci (84), former prima ballerina at La Scalla, died at her home in Milan.
(SFC, 5/29/21, p.F1)
2021 May 27, Samir Sfeir, a Lebanese singer and composer known for his strong opinions, arrived in Beirut after a 50-day detention in Saudi Arabia because of opinions expressed online in support of Lebanon’s president and his ally the Iran-backed Hezbollah.
(AP, 5/28/21)
2021 May 27, Mali's former junta leader Col Assimi Goïta declared himself the country's transitional president after stripping interim President Bah Ndaw and PM Moctar Ouane of their powers.. The two ousted leaders were freed from military detention.
(BBC, 5/27/21)
2021 May 27, Namibian media said Germany has agreed to fund projects worth more than a billion euros over 30 years to atone for its role in genocide and property seizures in its-then colony more than a century ago.
(Reuters, 5/27/21)
2021 May 27, Russia blocked at least two European planes from landing in Moscow because they planned to avoid Belarusian airspace.
(Axios, 5/27/21)
2021 May 27, Russia said it has signed an agreement to supply the UN children's fund UNICEF with enough doses of its Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine for 110 million people.
(Reuters, 5/27/21)
2021 May 27, Russia's Supreme Court rejected a lawsuit from US company Gilead Sciences that challenged a Russian government decision to let a Russian firm develop and market the anti-COVID-19 drug remdesivir without Gilead's consent.
(Reuters, 5/27/21)
2021 May 27, A Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen acknowledged having equipment on an island in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait where a mysterious air base is now under construction.
(AP, 5/27/21)
2021 May 27, A Spanish court imposed prison sentences ranging from 8 to 53 years on the three surviving members of an extremist Islamist cell that killed 16 people and injured 140 others in two consecutive attacks in and near Barcelona on August 17, 2017.
(AP, 5/27/21)
2021 May 27, Thailand said it is ramping up efforts to curb trade in wildlife to help reduce the risk of future pandemics, though it was unclear whether that would mean an end to all sales of exotic species in the wildlife trafficking hub.
(AP, 5/27/21)
2021 May 27, The UN launched an emergency appeal for $95 million for Gaza for the next three months to meet immediate humanitarian needs and repairs to key facilities destroyed or damaged during the recent conflict between Israel and Gaza’s militant Hamas rulers.
(AP, 5/27/21)
2021 May 27, The United Nations Human Rights Council agreed to establish a commission of inquiry to investigate possible "violations of international humanitarian law" during the recent fighting between Israel and Hamas.
(Axios, 5/27/21)
2021 May 28, US Senate Republicans blocked the creation of a bipartisan panel to investigate the deadly Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, displaying continuing party loyalty to former President Donald Trump. The vote was 54-35, six short of the 60 needed, to take up a House-passed bill that would have formed an independent 10-member commission evenly split between the two parties.
(AP, 5/28/21)
2021 May 28, The Biden administration announced new crackdowns against Belarus as punishment for forcing down a Ryanair flight to arrest an opposition journalist.
(Axios, 5/28/21)
2021 May 28, The US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) said US companies can mandate that employees in a workplace must be vaccinated against COVID-19.
(Reuters, 5/28/21)
2021 May 28, The US FDA approved Amgen's drug Lumakras to treat non-small cell lung cancer with the mutation in patients who have worsened after initial treatment with at least one other drug. Lumakras will cost $17,900 per month, though most patients will pay less.
(SSFC, 5/30/21, p.A12)
2021 May 28, Bitcoin slumped to its lowest this week, taking losses sparked by a growing crackdown in China and environmental concerns to almost 40% so far this month.
(Reuters, 5/28/21)
2021 May 28, The Alaska Supreme Court upheld the legality of a state law that allows young Alaskans to face trial as adults for misdemeanor drunken-driving crimes.
(Tribune Publ., 6/2/21)
2021 May 28, California to date had 3,761,672 cases of coronavirus and 62,872 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 443,747 cases and 6,590 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 33,237,543 with the death toll at 593,881.
(sfist.com, 5/29/21)
2021 May 28, It was reported that Texas-based Exxon Mobil's three largest refineries - two in Texas and one in Louisiana - are the nation's top three emitters of small particulate matter.
(Reuters, 5/28/21)
2021 May 28, It was reported that about 500 Belarusian farm workers recruited under a Government visa scheme to help Britain bring in its summer harvest are trapped in Belarus by the flight hijack crisis.
(The Telegraph, 5/28/21)
2021 May 28, In Belize Superintendent Henry Jemmott was found dead early today of a single gunshot wound to the head. Jasmine Hartin, who is married to the son of Lord Michael Ashcroft, was reportedly socializing with Jemmott before he was killed. Ms Hartin was soon charged with manslaughter by negligence in connection with Jemmott's death. Hartin was granted bail on June 9 of about $15,000.
(The Daily Beast, 5/29/21)(The Independent, 6/1/21)(Washington Examiner, 6/10/21)
2021 May 28, The UK authorized for use the single-dose vaccine made by Johnson & Johnson amid growing concerns about a rise in new infections as the variant of the virus first identified in India spreads around the country.
(AP, 5/28/21)
2021 May 28, Chinese President Xi Jinping called for accelerated efforts in building China into a leader in science and technology and achieving sci-tech self-reliance and self-strengthening at higher levels.
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=P0905Iip5JA)
2021 May 28, Colombia's Pres. Ivan Duque announced the deployment of military forces to the city of Cali. At least 13 people died in Cali, the epicenter of demonstrations across the country. The next day Mayor Jorge Ivan Ospina said many of those deaths may have been linked to protests. More than 40 people have been killed and 2,200 civilians and police injured since the protests started on April 28.
(Reuters, 5/29/21)(SSFC, 5/30/21, p.A6)
2021 May 28, The Danish government presented its digital coronavirus passport enabling people to travel abroad or, in Denmark, go to the hairdresser, a tattoo parlor, dine inside a restaurant or wherever else it is needed.
(AP, 5/28/21)
2021 May 28, The European Medicines Agency recommended that the use of the coronavirus vaccine made by Pfizer and BioNTech be expanded to children ages 12 to 15, a decision that offers younger and less at-risk populations across the continent access to a COVID-19 shot for the first time.
(AP, 5/28/21)
2021 May 28, In western France a man with severe schizophrenia, who had been on a watch list for Islamic radicalism, stabbed a police officer at her station and shot two other officers before police killed him in the Nantes suburb of La Chapelle-sur-Erdre.
(AP, 5/28/21)
2021 May 28, Germany formally recognized and said it would ask for forgiveness for the early 20th century genocide of the Herero and Nama people in present-day Namibia.
(Axios, 5/28/21)
2021 May 28, Hong Kong authorities sentenced 10 pro-democracy politicians and activists, including media mogul Jimmy Lai, to an extra 14-18 months in prison over a 2019 protest.
(Axios, 5/28/21)
2021 May 28, Hungary said it has identified two cases of the coronavirus variant first detected in India. An especially lethal third wave has been easing after an aggressive vaccination campaign.
(Reuters, 5/28/21)
2021 May 28, Indonesian authorities released two oil tankers — the Iranian-flagged MT Horse and Panamanian-flagged MT Freya — after a four-month detention for illegally transferring oil in Indonesian waters.
(AP, 5/29/21)
2021 May 28, Several hundred Indonesians protested what they called American support for Israel outside the US Embassy and the UN mission in Jakarta.
(AP, 5/28/21)
2021 May 28, Malaysia's PM Muhyiddin Yassin announced a near-total lockdown in the country for two weeks to contain a worsening coronavirus outbreak.
(SFC, 5/29/21, p.A4)
2021 May 28, Mali's constitutional court named the leader of the country's military coup, Colonel Assimi Goïta, as its transitional president.
(BBC, 5/28/21)
2021 May 28, A Palestinian man was shot and killed by Israeli troops during a protest against settlement expansion near the town of Beita in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
(AP, 5/28/21)
2021 May 28, Russia's Pres. Vladimir Putin met with Belarus dictator Alexander Lukashenko in the Black Sea resort of Sochi. Lukashenko pressed a briefcase of mysterious documents onto Putin, saying it contained everything he needed to know about what “really happened" with the forced landing of Ryanair flight in Minsk.
(The Telegraph, 5/28/21)
2021 May 28, Five former Russian police officers were convicted on charges of fabricating evidence in the 2019 drug arrest of Ivan Golunov, a prominent investigative journalist. The court sentenced the former officers, who have been in custody since their January 2020 arrests, to prison terms of five to 12 years and ordered them to pay Golunov damages.
(AP, 5/28/21)
2021 May 28, Moscow's deputy ambassador to the United Nations said six hundred Russian soldiers requested by the Central African Republic this month are "unarmed instructors".
(AFP, 5/28/21)
2021 May 28, Spain's Environment Ministry said the Iberian lynx population in Portugal and Spain rose above 1,000 last year after 414 cubs were born under a joint breeding program, in a major leap towards conserving the endangered species.
(Reuters, 5/28/21)
2021 May 28, The Swiss government blamed the state intelligence leadership for concealing that Swiss company Crypto AG had for decades sold encryption devices as a front for the US and German spy agencies, insisting the cabinet itself had remained in the dark.
(Reuters, 5/28/21)
2021 May 28, Industry sources said a rapidly spreading COVID-19 outbreak has left factories operating below capacity in Vietnam's industrial northern provinces, where suppliers for Apple, Samsung and other global tech firms are located.
(Reuters, 5/28/21)
2021 May 29, Hollywood actor Steven Seagal, a long-time admirer of Russian President Vladimir Putin and a Russian citizen since 2016, received a party membership card of an alliance named Just Russia - Patriots - For Truth. The party was formed earlier this year, when three leftist parties, all of which support Putin, merged into one.
(Reuters, 5/30/21)
2021 May 29, California to date had 3,762,295 cases of coronavirus and 62,900 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 443,801 cases and 6,593 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 33,242,777 with the death toll at 594,019.
(sfist.com, 5/30/21)
2021 May 29, Gavin MacLeod (90), who played a wise-cracking news writer on the classic 1970s US sitcom "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" and the hospitable cruise ship captain on "The Love Boat," died in Palm Desert, Ca.
(Reuters, 5/29/21)
2021 May 29, It was reported that a group of 117 healthcare workers at a Texas hospital filed a lawsuit in state court against their employer's mandate requiring all staff to get COVID-19 vaccinations. On June 12 US District Judge Lynn Hughes of Houston deemed lead plaintiff Jennifer Bridges’ contention that the vaccines are “experimental and dangerous" to be false and otherwise irrelevant.
(AP, 5/30/21)(AP, 6/13/21)
2021 May 29, Grammy-winning singer B.J. Thomas (78) died at his home in Arlington, Texas. His songs included "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head" (1969) and "Hey Won't You Play" (1975). The Raindrops song was written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David for the film "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" (1969).
(SFC, 5/31/21, p.B5)
2021 May 29, In northern Utah one man died and another man suffered severe burns when their single-engine aircraft crashed this morning near the Powder Mountain area near Eden.
(AP, 5/29/21)
2021 May 29, In Bangladesh Habib Talukder (50), a notorious poacher accused of killing at least 70 endangered Bengal tigers, was caught after evading arrest for 20 years.
(The Telegraph, 6/1/21)
2021 May 29, The head of Belarusian national airline Belavia condemned as "despicable" the decision by numerous EU countries to impose airspace restrictions on the carrier following the forced landing of a passenger jet in Minsk.
(Reuters, 5/29/21)
2021 May 29, In Belgium thousands of protesters angry at pandemic-related restrictions marched to European Union headquarters in Brussels and had minor tussles with police over their unauthorized gathering.
(AP, 5/29/21)
2021 May 29, British PM Boris Johnson and his fiancée Carrie Symonds married in a small private ceremony in London.
(AP, 5/30/21)
2021 May 29, In Canada the remains of 215 children, some as young as 3 years old, have been found buried on the site of what was once the country's largest Indigenous residential school. The Kamloops in British Columbia school operated between 1890 and 1969, when the federal government took over operations from the Catholic Church and operated it as a day school until it closed in 1978.
(AP, 5/29/21)
2021 May 29, China's southern city of Guangzhou shut down a neighborhood and ordered its residents to stay home for door-to-door coronavirus testing following a surge in infections. The city has reported 20 new cases in the last week.
(SFC, 5/31/21, p.A5)
2021 May 29, China successfully launched an automated cargo resupply spacecraft to rendezvous with an orbiting module, in the second of a series of missions needed to complete its first permanent space station. Tianzhou-2 is the second of 11 missions needed to complete China's first self-developed space station around 2022.
(Reuters, 5/29/21)
2021 May 29, It was reported that Congo-Brazzaville's President Denis Sassou-Nguesso has appointed his son Denis-Christel as a cabinet minister - a move that has revived media speculation that he has a dynastic succession in mind.
(BBC, 5/29/21)
2021 May 29, An Egyptian court adjourned the case of a hulking cargo vessel that blocked the Suez Canal for nearly a week earlier this year. The move is to allow more time for negotiations aiming at resolving a financial dispute between the Suez Canal Authority and the vessel’s owner.
(AP, 5/29/21)
2021 May 29, An Ethiopian national working for an Italian charity was killed in the war-hit Tigray region after he was “hit by a stray bullet." He is the ninth aid worker reported killed in Tigray since fighting broke out there nearly seven months ago.
(AP, 6/1/21)
2021 May 29, Lebanon’s health authorities launched a COVID-19 vaccination “marathon" to speed up inoculations around the country, including areas where turnout has so far been low.
(AP, 5/29/21)
2021 May 29, In Nigeria kidnappers released the remaining 14 students who had been held captive after being abducted last month from a northern university.
(Reuters, 5/29/21)
2021 May 29, North Korea's KCNA reported that more than 700 orphans had volunteered to work on cooperative farms, an iron and steel complex, and in forestry, among other areas. According to a 2020 US State Department report on human rights practices, in some cases children ages 16 and 17 were enrolled in military-style construction brigades for 10-year periods and subjected to long working hours and hazardous work.
(Reuters, 5/29/21)
2021 May 29, In Switzerland activists from the group Doctors For Extinction Rebellion, concerned about the effects on public health of environmental degradation, marched on the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva, demanding health authorities make climate change and biodiversity loss their top priorities.
(Reuters, 5/29/21)
2021 May 29, Syria was among 12 WHO member states that were chosen to appoint new members for the 34-member board in an assembly vote that faced no debate or opposition. The appointment of Syria sparked outrage in opposition-held Idlib province.
(AP, 5/31/21)
2021 May 29, Vietnam's health minister said they discovered a new coronavirus variant that’s a hybrid of strains first found in India and the UK. In the last few weeks, Vietnam has confirmed more than 3,500 new cases and 12 deaths, increasing the country’s total death toll to 47.
(AP, 5/29/21)
2021 May 30, California to date had 3,763,398 cases of coronavirus and 62,922 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 444,084 cases and 6,602 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 33,253,008 with the death toll at 594,324.
(sfist.com, 5/31/21)
2021 May 30, In Florida assailants opened fire on a crowd outside a concert early today, killing two people and wounding more than 20 at the El Mula Banquet Hall near Hialeah.
(Reuters, 5/30/21)
2021 May 30, After an overnight debate, the Texas state Senate voted along party lines to pass the bill, whose provisions include limiting early hours to cast ballots, banning drive-through polling sites and placing new requirements on voters. Texas Democrats walked out of the State Legislature late today to block a bill restricting voter access. Republicans vowed to revive it.
(Reuters, 5/30/21)(NY Times, 6/1/21)
2021 May 30, Afghanistan shutdown all of its public and private universities and schools for at least two weeks following a surge in coronavirus cases.
(SSFC, 5/30/21, p.A7)
2021 May 30, It was reported that farmers in Australia's New South Wales state were being threatened by an unprecedented mouse plague. The state government has ordered 1,320 gallons of the banned poison Bromadiolone from India.
(SFC, 5/29/21, p.A8)
2021 May 30, Australia's Victoria state reported five new local COVID-19 cases, including in a worker at a Melbourne aged care facility where not all of the residents have been vaccinated.
(Reuters, 5/30/21)
2021 May 30, In Belarus Aliaksei Shota, an editor for the popular Internet news site Hrodna.life, was detained amid a crackdown on independent journalists and opponents of authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko. A bus carrying unidentified men pulled up outside Shota’s residence and seized him.
(AP, 5/30/21)
2021 May 30, An automated spacecraft docked with China's new space station carrying fuel and supplies for its future crew. The Tianzhou-2 spacecraft reached the Tianhe station eight hours after blasting off from Hainan.
(AP, 5/30/21)
2021 May 30, Cypriots voted to elect a new parliament, with opinion polls suggesting that the country’s two main parties will hemorrhage support as disenchanted voters seek out alternatives among a number of smaller parties.
(AP, 5/30/21)
2021 May 30, More than 10,000 people attended an anti-US rally in Ethiopia's capital, Addis Ababa, to denounce President Joe Biden's policy on the conflict in the country's northern region of Tigray. Other rallies denouncing the US were also held in other cities including Diredawa, Harar and Gambella.
(BBC, 5/30/21)
2021 May 30, India reported its lowest daily rise in new coronavirus infections in 46 days at 165,553 cases during the previous 24 hours, while deaths rose by 3,460.
(Reuters, 5/30/21)
2021 May 30, In Israel Naftali Bennett, leader of the small hardline Yamina party and a former ally of PM Benjamin Netanyahu, said he would seek to form a coalition government with the Israeli leader's opponents, taking a major step toward ending the rule of the longtime premier.
(AP, 5/30/21)
2021 May 30, It was reported that American tire manufacturer Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co is facing accusations of unpaid wages, unlawful overtime and threats to foreign workers at its Malaysian factory.
(Reuters, 5/31/21)
2021 May 30, In New Zealand hundreds of people were evacuated overnight and many more face the risk of abandoning their homes in the Canterbury region as heavy rains raised water levels and caused widespread flooding.
(Reuters, 5/30/21)
2021 May 30, In Nigeria gunmen seized an unknown number of students from the school in the town of Tegina. A teacher told the BBC that 150 students were missing, while other reports put the figure at about 200.
(BBC, 5/31/21)
2021 May 30, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa announced that his country will return to stricter lockdown measures in the face of a sharp rise in COVID-19 cases that indicate the virus is “surging again" in Africa's worst-affected nation.
(AP, 5/30/21)
2021 May 30, The International Criminal Court’s prosecutor urged Sudan’s transitional government to hand over suspects wanted for war crimes and genocide in the Darfur conflict.
(AP, 5/30/21)
2021 May 30, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet called for investigations into the deaths of anti-government protesters in Cali, Colombia, following violent clashes between protesters and the military.
(AP, 5/30/21)
2021 May 30, Vietnam said business hub Ho Chi Minh City will begin social distancing measures for 15 days starting from May 31 in an effort to curb the spread of COVID-19.
(AP, 5/30/21)
2021 May 31, California to date had 3,763,415 cases of coronavirus and 62,926 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 444,097 cases and 6,602 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 33,260,464 with the death toll at 594,461.
(sfist.com, 6/1/21)
2021 May 31, Texas rapper Lil Loaded (20), born as Dashawn Robertson, died by suicide. He won viral success with a 2019 single and was facing a manslaughter charge in a fatal shooting last year. Robertson's 2019 song "6locc 6a6y" was awarded a gold certification last week by the Recording Industry Association of America.
(AP, 6/1/21)
2021 May 31, Virginia Tech football player freshman linebacker Isimemen Etute (18) punched and stomped his Tinder match Jerry Smith (40) to death after learning he was a man. Etute was immediately suspended from the football team and Virginia Tech, where he majored in human development, and was soon charged with second-degree murder.
(NBC News, 6/11/21)
2021 May 31, It was reported that Eli Lilly and Co's antibody drug combination has received an emergency use approval in India for the treatment of mild-to-moderate COVID-19, bolstering the country's arsenal of medicines to tackle a devastating second wave of the pandemic.
(AP, 5/31/21)
2021 May 31, Officials from around the globe began three weeks of grueling climate talks that will involve grappling with a number of thorny political issues without the benefit of face-to-face meetings, due to pandemic restrictions.
(AP, 5/31/21)
2021 May 31, The NATO military alliance said it is restricting access to its headquarters for a group of Belarus officials in the wake of Minsk’s decision to divert a Ryanair passenger plane to arrest a dissident journalist earlier this month.
(AP, 5/31/21)
2021 May 31, China’s ruling Communist Party said it will ease birth limits to allow all couples to have three children instead of two in hopes of slowing the rapid aging of its population, which is adding to strains on the economy and society.
(AP, 5/31/21)
2021 May 31, In eastern CongoDRC attacks on two villages overnight in Ituri province left at least 49 people dead.
(SFC, 5/31/21, p.A4)
2021 May 31, Two suspects were arrested in Germany and Slovakia in raids on a group accused of smuggling Vietnamese into Germany and other European countries for large fees that they had to work off in massage parlors, brothels and other places. Police found 13 people who were in Germany illegally during the raids in several parts of Germany.
(AP, 5/31/21)
2021 May 31, In Iran a Chinese man was arrested in Kashan for posting videos on social media of his intimate conversations with Iranian women.
(AP, 6/1/21)
2021 May 31, It was reported that at least 34 candidates in Mexico have been murdered since campaigning started on 6 April, while dozens more have been targeted and attacked. Authorities have logged 398 threats or attacks on candidates ahead of the June 6 elections.
(The Guardian, 5/31/21)
2021 May 31, North Korea said the US allowing South Korea to build more powerful missiles was an example of the US’s hostile policy against the North, warning that it could lead to an “acute and instable situation" on the Korean Peninsula.
(AP, 5/31/21)
2021 May 31, Nikolai Patrushev, the secretary of Russia's presidential Security Council, said that a revised version of Russia's national security strategy says that it may use forceful methods to respond to unfriendly actions by foreign countries.
(AP, 5/31/21)
2021 May 31, The Russian military said it will form 20 new units in the country's west this year to counter what it claims is a growing threat from NATO.
(AP, 5/31/21)
2021 May 31, Imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny asked a court to halt the hourly nighttime checks he has been subjected to in his penal colony.
(AP, 5/31/21)
2021 May 31, Russia began production of the Aurus Senat luxury sedan car promoted by Pres. Vladimir Putin. Its most basic available features will cost 18 million rubles ($245,000).
(Reuters, 5/31/21)
2021 May 31, Somaliland held elections. People there hoped that the elections will boost the breakaway republic's chances of gaining international recognition as an independent state.
(BBC, 5/31/21)
2021 May 31, Swiss-based Nestle said it was working on updating its nutrition and health strategy after the Financial Times reported an internal document at the food giant described a large portion of its food and drinks as unhealthy.
(Reuters, 5/31/21)
2021 May 31, Turkey’s state-run news agency said Turkish agents have captured Selahaddin Gulen, a nephew of US-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, in an overseas operation and have brought him to Turkey where he faces prosecution.
(AP, 5/31/21)
2021 May 31, The BBC Africa Eye documentary "Three Killings in Kampala" was released. It presented evidence that Ugandan security forces fired indiscriminately at passers-by during a crackdown in November 2020. The editor of the Daily Monito, one of Uganda's biggest newspapers, was soon summoned for questioning by police after reporting findings from the BBC investigation into last year's police killings. Tony Glencross, the managing director of Nation Media Group, which owns the newspaper, was also summoned.
(BBC, 6/3/21)
2021 May 31, UNICEF said a severe acute childhood malnutrition is expected to more than double this year in Haiti as the country struggles with the coronavirus pandemic, a spike in violence and dwindling resources.
(AP, 5/31/21)
2021 May 31, The UN children agency said that the bodies of three children, who apparently were among Europe-bound migrants drowned in the Mediterranean Sea off Libya, washed ashore last week in the North African country.
(AP, 5/31/21)
2021 May 31, A Yemeni port worker died at the country's Red Sea port of Hodeida after he was hit by a container being offloaded from a vessel.
(AP, 6/1/21)
2021 May, In eSwatini law student Thabani Nkomonye's body was found outside the city of Manzini. Police said he was a victim of a car accident, but students alleged the police were involved in his death. Demonstrations erupted in response.
(AP, 6/29/21)
2021 Jun 1, President Biden visited Oklahoma and met with survivors of the 1921 attack in the Greenwood section of Tulsa, one of the worst outbreaks of racist violence in American history. “My fellow Americans, this was not a riot," Mr. Biden said, as people in the crowd rose to their feet. “This was a massacre".
(NY Times, 6/2/21)
2021 Jun 1, The Biden administration suspended oil drilling leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
(NY Times, 6/1/21)
2021 Jun 1, The Biden administration gave Chevron Corp. and several other American companies six more months to wind down their operations in Venezuela.
(SFC, 6/2/21, p.B2)
2021 Jun 1, The US Supreme Court endorsed Native American tribal police powers, backing the authority of a tribal officer in Montana to stop and search a non-Native American motorist on a public road on reservation land.
(Reuters, 6/1/21)
2021 Jun 1, The US Supreme Court declined to hear Johnson & Johnson's bid to overturn a $2.12 billion damages award to women who blamed their ovarian cancer on asbestos in the company's baby powder and other talc products.
(AP, 6/1/21)
2021 Jun 1, An off-duty Los Angeles County firefighter fatally shot a fellow firefighter and wounded another at their small community fire station in Agua Dulce before going to his nearby home, setting it on fire and apparently killing himself.
(AP, 6/1/21)
2021 Jun 1, California to date had 3,764,162 cases of coronavirus and 62,935 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 444,352 cases and 6,608 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 33,284,140 with the death toll at 595,181.
(sfist.com, 6/2/21)
2021 Jun 1, Ron DeSantis, Florida’s Republican governor, signed a bill banning transgender female student-athletes from competing in women’s sports.
(NY Times, 6/1/21)
2021 Jun 1, In Iowa a judge accepted the guilty plea of Jennifer Woodley (40), the former CEO of Make-A-Wish Iowa, who pleaded guilty last week to charges of embezzling tens of thousands of dollars from the charity that supports sick children and their families. Woodley's embezzlement totaled nearly $41,000, but restitution has not yet been set.
(AP, 6/2/21)
2021 Jun 1, Alkermes Plc said the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had approved its treatment, Lybalvi, for schizophrenia and bipolar I disorder.
(AP, 6/1/21)
2021 Jun 1, Amazon said that it will stop testing jobseekers for marijuana.
(AP, 6/1/21)
2021 Jun 1, Exabeam, a Silicon Valley startup that helps companies automate the analysis and monitoring of their cybersecurity data, said it raised $200 million in its latest round of funding which valued the company at $2.4 billion.
(Reuters, 6/1/21)
2021 Jun 1, The US confirmed that a cyberattack on Brazil-based JBS, the world’s largest meat processor, forced the shutdown of nine beef plants in the United States, and disrupted production at poultry and pork plants.
(NY Times, 6/1/21)(SFC, 6/2/21, p.B2)
2021 Jun 1, Moderna Inc filed for full US approval of its COVID-19 vaccine, which is currently only authorized for emergency use in the country, becoming the second drugmaker to seek a broader regulatory nod.
(Reuters, 6/1/21)
2021 Jun 1, Belarusian political activist Stepan Latypov (41) stabbed himself in the neck on the first day of his trial and was rushed to hospital. Following surgery Latypov was returned to prison.
(CBS News, 6/2/21)
2021 Jun 1, It was reported that Silicon Catalyst, an incubator of startup companies, has chosen Britain as the site of its first European operation.
(Reuters, 6/1/21)
2021 Jun 1, The World Health Organization (WHO) said it has approved a COVID-19 vaccine made by drugmaker Sinovac Biotech for emergency use listing, paving the way for a second Chinese shot to be used in poor countries.
(Reuters, 6/1/21)
2021 Jun 1, Representatives of the EU's 27 nations and the European Parliament agreed to a deal requiring large companies in the EU to reveal how much tax they paid in which country.
(AP, 6/2/21)
2021 Jun 1, Germany's foreign minister rejected the idea of delivering weapons to Ukraine after the country's president indicated that he would like military help from Berlin.
(AP, 6/1/21)
2021 Jun 1, Germany's public health agency lowered the coronavirus risk level to "high" from "very high" for the first time in 2021, reflecting a fall in the number of new infections.
(Reuters, 6/1/21)
2021 Jun 1, An Iranian F-5 fighter jet developed a “technical problem" that killed both of the aircraft's pilots in Dezful.
(AP, 6/1/21)
2021 Jun 1, In Israel Isaac Herzog, a veteran politician and the scion of a prominent Israeli family, was elected president, a largely ceremonial role that is meant to serve as the nation’s moral compass and promote unity.
(AP, 6/1/21)
2021 Jun 1, The World Bank said Lebanon’s severe economic and financial crisis is likely to rank as one of the worst the world has seen in more than 150 years.
(AP, 6/1/21)
2021 Jun 1, In Myanmar no more than a quarter of the country's more than 12 million pupils enrolled for the new school year amid a protest boycott against military rule and in the wake of a series of bombings.
(Reuters, 6/2/21)
2021 Jun 1, New Zealand announced that is was the latest country to sign a space agreement with NASA. New Zealand became the 11th signatory to the Artemis Accords.
(SFC, 6/2/21, p.A3)
2021 Jun 1, Nigeria's Pres. Buhari referred on Twitter to the 1967-70 Nigerian Civil War and to treating "those misbehaving today" in "the language they will understand." Twitter soon removed the statement for breaching the site's rules.
(BBC, 6/5/21)
2021 Jun 1, It was reported that Sicilian mafia boss Giovanni Brusca (64), known as “the pig" and “the people-slayer," has been released early from prison, prompting outrage from his victims’ relatives. He was notorious for having detonated the huge roadside bomb that blew up a crusading anti-mafia prosecutor, Giovanni Falcone, in 1992, and had a child dissolved in acid as revenge against an informant.
(The Telegraph, 6/1/21)
2021 Jun 1, South Korea's Yonhap news agency said North Korea's ruling party has amended its rules to create a de facto second-in-command under leader Kim Jong Un as he looks to revamp domestic politics.
(Reuters, 6/1/21)
2021 Jun 1, Swiss-based Novartis said it has signed a collaboration agreement and option to acquire Cellerys, a Zurich-based startup conducting research on a therapy to fight multiple sclerosis (MS).
(Reuters, 6/1/21)
2021 Jun 1, In Uganda gunmen attacked and wounded Transport Minister and former army commander, Gen Katumba Wamala, killing his daughter and driver.
(BBC, 6/1/21)
2021 Jun 1, The UN Foundation announced today that top global brands H&M and Banana Republic are once again partnering with UN Free & Equal for Pride Month this June to raise awareness and funds in support of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) equality worldwide.
(PR Newswire, 6/1/21)
2021 Jun 1, The UN said more than 90 percent of people in Ethiopia's war-torn Tigray region need emergency food aid, as it appealed for over $200 million to scale up its response.
(AP, 6/1/21)
2021 Jun 1, It was reported that Pope Francis has changed church law to explicitly criminalize the sexual abuse of adults by priests who abuse their authority, and to say that laypeople who hold church office can be sanctioned for similar sex crimes. The new provisions, released today after 14 years of study, were contained in the revised criminal law section of the Vatican’s Code of Canon Law.
(AP, 6/1/21)
2021 Jun 2, President Biden announced programs to pick up the US vaccination rate, including free child care and sports tickets.
(NY Times, 6/3/21)
2021 Jun 2, US federal authorities said a ring of Venezuelans who live in South Florida and Mexico have stolen more than $800,000 in US government stimulus checks from people who lost their jobs or struggled financially during the COVID-19 pandemic.
(AP, 6/2/21)
2021 Jun 2, California to date had 3,765,995 cases of coronavirus and 63,002 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 444,492 cases and 6,609 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 33,306,775 with the death toll at 595,818.
(sfist.com, 6/3/21)
2021 Jun 2, Churchill Downs suspended Bob Baffert, a seven-time winner of the Kentucky Derby and the most recognizable figure in the sport, from entering horses at the racetrack in Louisville for two years. This followed the confirmation of Medina Spirit’s positive drug test after the Kentucky Derby, setting the stage for the colt trained by Bob Baffert to be the second horse in the 147-year history of the race to be disqualified as its winner because of a failed drug test.
(AP, 6/2/21)
2021 Jun 2, It was reported that Democrat Melanie Stansbury handily won a special election in New Mexico, keeping a US House of Representatives seat in the hands of her party.
(Reuters, 6/2/21)
2021 Jun 2, A jury in Oklahoma recommended a death sentence for an alleged serial killer who was convicted of kidnapping a woman from a car wash and killing her more than 20 years ago. William Lewis Reece, who was convicted last week of first-degree murder for the 1997 kidnapping and killing of Tiffany Johnston (19). Formal sentencing was set for Aug. 19.
(AP, 6/3/21)
2021 Jun 2, Etsy Inc, e-commerce platforms for handmade goods and vintage items, said it would buy Generation-Z focused fashion resale company Depop for $1.63 billion, seeking to attract younger shoppers and bolster its position in a booming market in vintage or used clothing.
(Reuters, 6/2/21)
2021 Jun 2, It was reported that Tesla Inc has dropped radar sensors from its semi-autonomous driving system, Autopilot, raising concerns over the safety of the camera-only version, Tesla Vision.
(Reuters, 6/2/21)
2021 Jun 2, Britain and the European Union agreed the first ever annual deal on the management of shared fish stocks after Brexit. It must still be approved by EU governments.
(The Telegraph, 6/2/21)
2021 Jun 2, China National Pharmaceutical Group (Sinopharm) said it has the capacity to provide more than 1 billion COVID-19 vaccine doses to the world beyond China in the second half of this year.
(Reuters, 6/2/21)
2021 Jun 2, China's Huawei Technologies launched its Harmony operating system for smartphones, looking to recover from US sanctions that have hobbled its handset business.
(AP, 6/2/21)
2021 Jun 2, A herd of 15 wild elephants was approaching the city of Kunming, the capital of southwest China's Yunnan province, defying attempts to redirect them after a journey of several hundred kilometers from forests to the south.
(Reuters, 6/2/21)
2021 Jun 2, The European Union unveiled plans to revamp Europe’s ID check-free travel area after national coronavirus restrictions placed new strains on tourism, travel and business throughout the bloc over the last year.
(AP, 6/2/21)
2021 Jun 2, Iran's largest navy ship, known as the Kharg, caught on fire and sunk in the Gulf of Oman. No casualties were reported.
(Axios, 6/2/21)
2021 Jun 2, In Iran a fire, caused by a leak in two waste tanks, erupted late today at the state-owned Tondgooyan Petrochemical Co. to the south of Tehran. It was extinguished after more than 20 hours.
(AP, 6/3/21)
2021 Jun 2, Japan's PM Yoshihide Suga announced an additional $800 million contribution to the UN-backed initiative to provide COVID-19 vaccines to poor countries, a four-fold increase of Japanese funding for the COVAX program.
(AP, 6/2/21)
2021 Jun 2, A Russian court sent Andrei Pivovarov, the head of the Open Russia movement that has just disbanded itself, to jail pending a probe, as authorities continue to crack down on dissent ahead of September's parliamentary election.
(AP, 6/2/21)
2021 Jun 2, It was reported that Russia has administered at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine to more than 18 million people, around 12% of the population.
(Reuters, 6/2/21)
2021 Jun 2, Siam Bioscience and AstraZeneca said they would soon provide Thailand with 1.8 million doses of locally manufactured COVID-19 vaccine, the first of multiple batches this month, just days away from the launch of the country's vaccination drive.
(Reuters, 6/2/21)
2021 Jun 2, A UN-backed tribunal investigating the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese PM Rafik Hariri said it is facing a severe funding crisis and will not be able to operate beyond July without immediate assistance.
(AP, 6/2/21)
2021 Jun 2, The UN said Iran and the Central African Republic are in arrears on paying their dues to the UN operating budget and will lose their voting rights in the 193-member General Assembly.
(AP, 6/2/21)
2021 Jun 2, It was reported that coronavirus cases have surged in Uruguay. The country has reported more than 280,000 cases and more than 4,000 deaths since the pandemic began.
(SFC, 6/2/21, p.A5)
2021 Jun 3, Pres. Joe Biden issued a new executive order barring Americans from investing in Chinese firms that are linked to the country’s military or that sell surveillance technology used to repress dissent or religious minorities, both inside and outside China.
(NY Times, 6/3/21)
2021 Jun 3, The White House announced that President Joe Biden plans to allocate 75% of unused COVID-19 vaccines through the UN-backed COVAX global vaccine sharing program.
(AP, 6/3/21)
2021 Jun 3, The White House warned corporate executives and business leaders to step up security measures to protect against ransomware attacks after intrusions disrupted operations at a meatpacking company and a southeastern oil pipeline.
(Reuters, 6/3/21)
2021 Jun 3, The US Ambassador to the UN announced nearly $240 million in humanitarian funding to support the people of Syria, Syrian refugees and countries hosting them, and called for access through international crossings to allow the delivery of aid.
(AP, 6/3/21)
2021 Jun 3, The US Supreme Court narrowed the reach of a federal computer fraud law that seeks to address hacking and other cybercrimes, siding with a former Georgia police officer who was convicted of violating the measure after using his patrol-car computer to access a law enforcement database for license plate information in exchange for money.
(CBS News, 6/3/21)
2021 Jun 3, The US Academy of American Poets announced more than $1 million in grants for 23 local and state laureates.
(AP, 6/3/21)
2021 Jun 3, It was reported that California's more than 1,500 reservoirs are 50% lower than they should be this time of year.
(AP, 6/3/21)
2021 Jun 3, California to date had 3,766,071 cases of coronavirus and 63,002 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 444,761 cases and 6,609 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 33,326,054 with the death toll at 596,401.
(sfist.com, 6/4/21)
2021 Jun 3, Criminal lawyer F. Lee Bailey (87) died in Atlanta. He had invited juries into the twilight zone of reasonable doubt in defense of Patricia Hearst, O.J. Simpson, the Boston Strangler, the army commander at the My Lai Massacre in Vietnam and other notorious cases.
(NY Times, 6/3/21)
2021 Jun 3, In Minnesota Winston Smith (32) was shot by deputies from Ramsey and Hennepin counties on the top floor of a parking garage in Minneapolis as US marshals were attempting to arrest him on a warrant for a felony firearms violation. Protests soon followed.
(AP, 6/5/21)
2021 Jun 3, It was reported that a group of eight large companies, including tech and entertainment heavy hitters such as Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Salesforce, Disney and Netflix, are joining environmental groups and the UN to devise ways to scale funding for climate solutions. The collective will be called the Business Alliance to Scale Climate Solutions (BASCS), and will serve as a knowledge-sharing network that has the potential to accelerate companies' emissions reduction efforts.
(Axios, 6/3/21)
2021 Jun 3, Bristol Myers Squibb Co was sued for $6.4 billion for allegedly delaying its Breyanzi cancer drug to avoid payments to shareholders of the former Celgene Corp, which the drugmaker bought in 2019.
(Reuters, 6/3/21)
2021 Jun 3, The US Consumer Product Safety Commission said Fisher-Price is recalling its 4-in-1 Rock ‘n Glide Soother, a baby sleep product, after it was linked to reports of four infant deaths.
(NY Times, 6/6/21)
2021 Jun 3, Twitter Inc said it will roll out a new subscription product initially in Australia and Canada called Twitter Blue, which will let paying users edit their tweets before posting and change the color theme of their app.
(Reuters, 6/3/21)
2021 Jun 3, United Airlines said that it plans to buy 15 jets from Boom Supersonic with an option for 35 more once the start-up company designs a plane that flies faster than the speed of sound while meeting safety and environmental standards.
(AP, 6/3/21)
2021 Jun 3, It was reported that the younger generation of critically endangered North Atlantic right whales are on average about three feet (one meter) shorter than whales were 20 years.
(AP, 6/3/21)
2021 Jun 3, It was reported that Bahrain has begun offering a booster shot of the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine for some people, six months after they received two shots of China's Sinopharm vaccine.
(AP, 6/3/21)
2021 Jun 3, In Belarus a video appeared on state TV of dissident activist Raman Pratasevich (26) in which he repented for his opposition activities. The Belarusian opposition quickly called the confession coerced.
(SFC, 6/5/21, p.A2)
2021 Jun 3, Britain said that it is removing Portugal from its list of COVID-safe travel destinations, meaning thousands of UK residents currently on vacation there face the prospect of 10 days' quarantine on return.
(AP, 6/3/21)
2021 Jun 3, Workers at Britain’s largest grocery chain won the latest round in their equal pay lawsuit, when the European Union’s Court of Justice ruled that more favorable EU rules governing comparisons between men and women apply to the case.
(AP, 6/3/21)
2021 Jun 3, Alok Sharma, Britain's climate tsar, urged companies to join the United Nations' "Race to Zero" campaign and commit to science-based emissions-reduction targets, ahead of global climate talks in November.
(Reuters, 6/3/21)
2021 Jun 3, Public Health England said the Delta variant of concern first identified in India is now dominant in Britain and might have an increased risk of hospitalization compared to the Alpha variant. There were 5,472 new cases of the Delta variant reported in latest weekly figures.
(Reuters, 6/3/21)
2021 Jun 3, Chinese social media platform WeChat published a list of activities and "violations" it is banning in a bid to clean up its livestreaming service, including "indecent" nose-picking and spanking games.
(Reuters, 6/3/21)
2021 Jun 3, It was reported that three Uyghurs who fled from China to Turkey have described forced abortions and torture by Chinese authorities in China’s far western Xinjiang region, ahead of giving video-link testimony to a people’s tribunal in London that is investigating if Beijing’s actions against ethnic Uyghurs amount to genocide.
(AP, 6/3/21)
2021 Jun 3, Danish lawmakers voted in favor of Denmark establishing a refugee reception center in a third country that is likely to be in Africa, a move that could be a first step toward moving the country's asylum screening process outside of Europe.
(AP, 6/3/21)
2021 Jun 3, Denmark said it has withdrawn permission for a planned pipeline that was designed to bring Norwegian gas to Poland, citing the need to assess if the project would harm the habitats of certain mice and bat species. Baltic Pipe was designed to bring Norway’s offshore natural gas from the North Sea through Denmark to Poland.
(AP, 6/4/21)
2021 Jun 3, In Egypt a fire broke out at a juvenile detention center in Cairo, killing at least six children.
(AP, 6/3/21)
2021 Jun 3, France said it is halting joint military operations with Mali over last week's coup in the West African country. It said the suspension would continue until it received guarantees about a return to civilian rule in Mali.
(BBC, 6/3/21)
2021 Jun 3, French asset management Amundi chief investment officer Pascal Blanque said cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin are a "farce" and a symptom of bubbles forming in financial markets.
(AP, 6/3/21)
2021 Jun 3, Asylum-seekers in Greece lined up to get their coronavirus shots as authorities began rolling out vaccinations in migrant camps.
(Reuters, 6/3/21)
2021 Jun 3, In Iraq a gas cylinder explosion at a crowded restaurant in a northwestern Baghdad neighborhood killed three people and injured 16.
(AP, 6/3/21)
2021 Jun 3, In Israel opposition leader Yair Lapid and his main coalition partner, Naftali Bennett, declared that they had reached a deal to form a new government and muster a majority in the 120-member Knesset.
(SFC, 6/4/21, p.A2)
2021 Jun 3, It was reported that Mexican officials have raised the country's confirmed COVID-19 death toll by 4,272 to a total of 227,840. A government analysis of excess deaths related to COVID-19 now stands at over 348,750.
(SFC, 6/3/21, p.A5)
2021 Jun 3, The Philippine Department of Health concluded its response to a polio outbreak after no cases were detected for 16 months following a massive immunization campaign and surveillance.
(AP, 6/11/21)
2021 Jun 3, Russia said it will completely remove the US dollar from its rainy day fund, a move intended to counter American pressure two weeks before a summit of the two countries' leaders.
(AP, 6/3/21)
2021 Jun 3, South Korea's state-run Korea Development Institute think tank said North Korea has been identified as experiencing a food crisis, with many households experiencing undernourishment or minimal levels of nutrition.
(The Telegraph, 6/3/21)
2021 Jun 3, Spain’s PM Pedro Sánchez was in the Libyan capital of Tripoli to reopen his country’s embassy and show support for Libya’s new interim authorities entrusted with leading the nation out of years of civil war.
(AP, 6/3/21)
2021 Jun 3, In Sudan protesters took to the streets in Khartoum and elsewhere across the country amid tight security, demanding justice for the victims of a 2019 crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators.
(AP, 6/3/21)
2021 Jun 3, The World Health Organization said COVID-19 vaccine shipments have ground to “a near halt" in Africa while virus cases have spiked 20% over the last two weeks.
(AP, 6/3/21)
2021 Jun 3, The head of the international chemical weapons watchdog told the UN Security Council that its experts have investigated 77 allegations against Syria, and concluded that in 17 cases chemical weapons were likely or definitely used.
(AP, 6/3/21)
2021 Jun 4, The Biden administration said it will revise or reverse a slate of Trump-era actions that rolled back protections for endangered or threatened species.
(Axios, 6/4/21)
2021 Jun 4, It was reported that in the last weeks of the Trump administration and continuing under President Joe Biden, the Justice Department fought a secret legal battle to obtain the email logs of four New York Times reporters in a hunt for their sources.
(NY Times, 6/5/21)
2021 Jun 4, A US State Department spokesman said the US is shipping one million doses of Johnson & Johnson's one-shot COVID-19 vaccine to South Korea.
(Reuters, 6/4/21)
2021 Jun 4, The US FDA approved Wegovy, a higher-dose version of Novo Nordisk's diabetes drug, for long-term weight management.
(SSFC, 6/6/21, p.A6)
2021 Jun 4, It was reported that the US health regulator has authorized a lower dose of Regeneron Pharmaceutical's COVID-19 antibody cocktail that can be given by injection, a move that could ease logistical challenges stemming from administering a higher dose intravenously.
(Reuters, 6/4/21)
2021 Jun 4, It was reported that JPMorgan Chase & Co will resume making political donations to US lawmakers but will not give to Republican members of Congress who voted to overturn President Joe Biden's election victory.
(Reuters, 6/4/21)
2021 Jun 4, A US federal judge overturned California’s three-decade-old ban on assault weapons, ruling that it violates the constitutional right to bear arms. Judge Roger Benitez of San Diego stayed it for 30 days to give state Attorney General Rob Bonta time to appeal. California first restricted assault weapons in 1989, with multiple updates to the law since then.
(AP, 6/4/21)
2021 Jun 4, California to date had 3,767,159 cases of coronavirus and 63,055 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 444,962 cases and 6,621 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 33,340,762 with the death toll at 596,969.
(sfist.com, 6/5/21)
2021 Jun 4, In California two San Diego police officers were killed after their car was struck by a driver going the wrong way on I-5. The female driver of the civic was also killed.
(SFC, 6/5/21, p.A3)
2021 Jun 4, Clarence Williams III (81), the reflectively intense actor who starred as Linc Hayes, a young, hip undercover police officer on ABC’s “The Mod Squad," died in Los Angeles.
(NY Times, 6/6/21)
2021 Jun 4, Actress Karla Burns (66), the first Black performer to win a Laurence Olivier Award, died in Wichita, Kan. She had won the award, Britain’s highest stage honor, in 1991 for her portrayal of the riverboat cook Queenie in “Show Boat".
(NY Times, 6/14/21)
2021 Jun 4, In Kentucky William S. Evans III pleaded guilty in federal court in Lexington to one charge of commodities fraud and one charge of wire fraud in a case in which investors claim he took at least $16.8 million from them.
(Lexington Herald-Leader, 6/7/21)
2021 Jun 4, Douglas S. Cramer, TV producer, died at his home on Martha’s Vineyard, Mass. He produced some of the most successful television shows of the 20th century, many — including “The Love Boat" and “Dynasty" — in partnership with Aaron Spelling, and used his substantial wealth to become a leading art collector.
(NY Times, 6/8/21)
2021 Jun 4, The head of an American Legion post in Ohio stepped down amid criticism following the decision of Memorial Day ceremony organizers to turn off a retired US Army officer's microphone while he was speaking about how freed Black slaves honored fallen soldiers just after the Civil War.
(AP, 6/4/21)
2021 Jun 4, An Afghan airstrike targeting Taliban fighters inside an abandoned army base killed at least 20 people in Helmand province. The Taliban said there were 30 fatalities and that all were civilians.
(SFC, 6/5/21, p.A3)
2021 Jun 4, The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) said it and the European Union have concluded the world's first bloc-to-bloc air transport agreement, to allow their airlines to easier expand services to and within the respective regions.
(Reuters, 6/4/21)
2021 Jun 4, Britain's health ministry said the estimated reproduction "R" number in England remains at over 1 and the epidemic could be growing by as much as 3% each day. Britain's medicines regulator said it had approved the COVID-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech for use on 12- to 15-year-olds.
(Reuters, 6/4/21)
2021 Jun 4, The UK announced a post-Brexit trade deal with Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein.
(BBC, 6/4/21)
2021 Jun 4, In northern Burkina Faso armed men killed 14 people late today in the village of Tadaryat.
(BBC, 6/5/21)(Axios, 6/5/21)(BBC, 6/6/21)
2021 Jun 4, Denmark’s Parliament voted in favor of building Lynetteholmen, a 20-billion-kroner ($3.3 billion) artificial island in Copenhagen, that will house at least 35,000 people who will be connected to downtown by a harbor tunnel and a subway line.
(AP, 6/4/21)
2021 Jun 4, The European Union submitted a plan to the World Trade Organization that it believes will more effectively broaden supply of COVID-19 vaccines than the intellectual property (IP) rights waiver backed by the United States.
(Reuters, 6/4/21)
2021 Jun 4, Cardinal Reinhard Marx, a leading German cardinal and confidant of Pope Francis, offered to resign over the Catholic Church's “catastrophic" mishandling of clergy sexual abuse cases, declaring that the scandals had brought the church to “a dead end".
(AP, 6/4/21)
2021 Jun 4, India reported another 1342,364 coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours in a declining trend. The nation's total cases neared 28.6 million.
(SFC, 6/5/21, p.A4)
2021 Jun 4, Italy reported 73 coronavirus-related deaths against 59 the day before, while the daily tally of new infections rose to 2,557 from 1,968. Italy has registered 126,415 deaths linked to COVID-19 since its outbreak emerged in February last year.
(Reuters, 6/4/21)
2021 Jun 4, Mexican officials said they will use 1 million US doses of the Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine to inoculate people along the border.
(SFC, 6/5/21, p.A4)
2021 Jun 4, Nigeria's government said it was suspending Twitter operations in the country "indefinitely." The move by the government came just days after a tweet by President Muhammadu Buhari was removed for breaching the site's rules, though no mention of this was made in its statement.
(BBC, 6/5/21)
2021 Jun 4, Pakistan has started producing the single dose Chinese CanSinoBio COVID-19 vaccine to be able to deliver 3 million doses a month. An initial batch of 118,000 doses of the vaccine was ready to be delivered to the government.
(Reuters, 6/4/21)
2021 Jun 4, President Vladimir Putin said that suggestions the Russian state was linked to high profile ransomware attacks in the United States were absurd and an attempt to stir trouble ahead of his summit this month with US President Joe Biden.
(Reuters, 6/4/21)
2021 Jun 4, Richard Ernst (b.1933), Swiss chemist who won the Nobel Prize in 1991 for his work on nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), died in Winterthur, Switzerland.
(SSFC, 6/20/21, p.F1)
2021 Jun 4, Venezuela said it has reached a deal to purchase doses of Russia's EpiVacCorona vaccine, as well as manufacture the inoculation locally.
(Reuters, 6/5/21)
2021 Jun 5, The US Department of Justice said that it would no longer seek source information from reporters in leak investigations after recent revelations that former President Donald Trump's administration had secretly obtained phone and email records from a number of journalists.
(Reuters, 6/5/21)
2021 Jun 5, A joint statement by G7 finance ministers said it would tackle tax avoidance by "the largest and most profitable multinational enterprises." The G7 agreed to back a minimum global corporate tax rate of at least 15%. Companies will also have to pay more tax in the countries where they make sales.
(Reuters, 6/5/21)
2021 Jun 5, California to date had 3,768,442 cases of coronavirus and 63,101 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 444,994 cases and 6,621 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 33,347,989 with the death toll at 597,030.
(sfist.com, 6/6/21)
2021 Jun 5, Essential Quality won the Belmont Stakes, edging out Hot Rod Charlie. He paid $4.60 on a $2 bet to win. Rombauer, the Preakness winner, finished third.
(NY Times, 6/5/21)
2021 Jun 5, The Diocese of Buffalo, NY, announced that three priests have been placed on leave in response to claims in a lawsuit filed last month that they sexually abused a boy in the 1990s.
(Tribune Publ., 6/6/21)
2021 Jun 5, Former President Donald Trump sharply attacked US infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci over his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, demanded reparations from China and denounced an investigation into his finances in a speech in North Carolina.
(Reuters, 6/5/21)
2021 Jun 5, Leonard Crow Dog (78), a Native American who played a key role in the 1973 occupation of Wounded Knee in South Dakota, died in Rapid City, South Dakota. He had fought to preserve the ancient traditions of his tribe, the Sicangu Lakota.
(SFC, 6/25/21, p.B7)
2021 Jun 5, In northwestern Afghanistan a minivan carrying civilian passengers was hit by a roadside bomb killing at least 11 passengers in Badghis province.
(SFC, 6/7/21, p.A4)
2021 Jun 5, In northern Burkina Faso armed men killed 160 people, mostly children, in an attack on Solhan village. It was later reported that the civilians were killed by an armed group comprising “mostly 12- to 14-year-olds".
(BBC, 6/5/21)(Axios, 6/5/21)(BBC, 6/6/21)(AP, 6/28/21)
2021 Jun 5, In China authorities in the southern industrial hub of Guangzhou imposed more restrictions on business and social activity, seeking to curb the spread of COVID-19 cases. China reported 24 new coronavirus cases on the mainland for June 4, unchanged from a day earlier.
(Reuters, 6/5/21)
2021 Jun 5, El Salvador President Nayib Bukele (39) announced in a recorded message played at a Bitcoin conference in Miami that next week he will send proposed legislation to the country's congress that would make the cryptocurrency legal tender in the Central American nation's
(AP, 6/6/21)
2021 Jun 5, In Germany Berlin police said 13 journalists were detained early today while reporting on a protest by environmentalist against the construction of a highway in the capital.
(AP, 6/5/21)
2021 Jun 5, Hong Kong activist Chow Hang Tung was released on bail, a day after she was detained on suspicion of promoting an unauthorized assembly to commemorate the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown on pro-democracy activists in Beijing.
(Reuters, 6/5/21)
2021 Jun 5, Some of India's states began easing lockdown restrictions as coronavirus infections subside, with the world's second most-populous nation logging its lowest daily case count in nearly two months.
(Reuters, 6/5/21)
2021 Jun 5, Italian media said customs police on the Mediterranean island of Sardinia issued fines of up to 3,000 euros ($3,600) to 41 people who in recent days tried to leave the island with a total of 100 kg (220 pounds) of sand, seashells and beach rocks.
(AP, 6/5/21)
2021 Jun 5, Italy reported 57 coronavirus-related deaths against 73 the day before. The daily tally of new infections decreased to 2,436 from 2,557.
(Reuters, 6/5/21)
2021 Jun 5, Police in Nicaragua detained Arturo Cruz Sequeira, another leading opposition politician and potential presidential candidate, the latest in a series of moves by President Daniel Ortega that prevent candidates from running against him in his third consecutive re-election bid.
(AP, 6/5/21)
2021 Jun 5, In Nigeria Temitope Balogun Joshua (57), one of Africa’s most popular televangelists, died. The pastor, known as T.B. Joshua, was founder of the mega church Synagogue Church Of All Nations, or SCOAN, which also runs the Emmanuel Television Station in Lagos.
(AP, 6/6/21)
2021 Jun 5, The Kurdish-led administration in Syria's northeast handed over to the Netherlands a Dutch woman, her two young sons, and a Dutch girl, who lived in a camp for families of alleged Islamic State militants.
(AP, 6/5/21)
2021 Jun 5, Turkey’s president promised to rescue the Marmara Sea from an outbreak of “sea snot" that is alarming marine biologists and environmentalists. Pres. Erdogan said untreated waste dumped into the Marmara Sea and climate change had caused the sea snot bloom.
(AP, 6/5/21)
2021 Jun 5, In Yemen a ballistic missile fired by Houthi rebels killed at least 17 people, including a 5-year-old girl, in the government-held city of Marib.
(AP, 6/5/21)
2021 Jun 6, US officials ratcheted up pressure on companies and foreign adversaries to fight cybercriminals, and said President Joe Biden is considering all options, including a military response, to counter the growing threat.
(Reuters, 6/6/21)
2021 Jun 6, Floyd Mayweather Jr. (44) did not knock out Logan Paul (26) but easily controlled their eight-round exhibition fight that turned a meme bout into a bankable pay-per-view spectacle.
(NY Times, 6/7/21)
2021 Jun 6, California to date had 3,769,510 cases of coronavirus. The SF Bay Area had 445,315 cases and 6,621 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 33,359,073 with the death toll at 597,523.
(sfist.com, 6/7/21)
2021 Jun 6, Taliban fighters stormed the Qaisar district of northern Faryab province, killing and wounding dozens of Afghan security forces. A powerful car bomb targeting a police headquarters in the Khas Balkh district of Balkh province killed at least four people and wounded 50 more including civilians.
(AP, 6/7/21)
2021 Jun 6, It was reported that inmates in Belarus prisons, jailed for joining demonstrations against Pres. Alexander Lukashenko, have had yellow tags sewn onto their clothes to single them out for particularly harsh prison conditions.
(SSFC, 6/6/21, p.A3)
2021 Jun 6, Britain’s health secretary says the delta variant, which is fast becoming the dominant coronavirus variant in the UK, is 40% more transmissible compared to the country’s existing strains.
(AP, 6/6/21)
2021 Jun 6, In Canada a black truck mounted a kerb and struck five members of the family in the city of London, Ontario, before speeding away from the scene. The Muslim family’s nine-year-old son was the only survivor. Nathaniel Veltman (20) of London, Ontario, was soon arrested and charged with four counts of murder and one count of attempted murder.
(The Independent, 6/8/21)
2021 Jun 6, French Health Minister Olivier Veran said that France has multiple clusters of the variant, first identified in India, notably in the southwest Landes region.
(AP, 6/6/21)
2021 Jun 6, In France several ceremonies were being held to commemorate the 77th anniversary of D-Day, the decisive 1944 assault that led to the liberation of France and western Europe from Nazi control, and honor those who fell.
(AP, 6/6/21)
2021 Jun 6, Voters in Saxony-Anhalt went to the polls to elect a new state assembly in what is seen as the last big test for Germany's political parties before a national election in September. Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union won the election with 37.1% of the vote, far ahead of the far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, with 20.8%.
(AP, 6/6/21)
2021 Jun 6, India reported 114,460 new coronavirus infections, the lowest in two months, while the death toll increased by 2,677, as parts of the country prepared to ease movement restrictions.
(Reuters, 6/6/21)
2021 Jun 6, In Israel Avi Har-Even (84), former headed Israel’s space agency (1995-2004), died of injuries sustained during riots that erupted across the country last month.
(AP, 6/7/21)
2021 Jun 6, Mexico held local elections. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s party and its allies appeared poised to maintain their majority in Mexico's lower chamber of the congress, but fell short of a supermajority. A severed head placed in a box was tossed at a voting station and a plastic bag full of human remains was found at a nearby polling booth in the border city Tijuana, during what is being termed as Mexico’s bloodiest mid-term elections in recent years. At least 102 people killed during the campaign.
(AP, 6/6/21)(The Independent, 6/7/21)(NY Times, 8/3/21)
2021 Jun 6, In northern Mexico the bodies of two miners were pulled from a small coal mine in the border state of Coahuila, bringing to three the number confirmed dead in the flood and partial collapse of the shaft. Three miners remain missing.
(AP, 6/6/21)
2021 Jun 6, Peruvian voters chose between Pedro Castillo and Keiko Fujimori, two polarizing populist candidates, in a presidential runoff held as the coronavirus pandemic continues to batter the Andean country and festering anger has led to fears of more political stability. Peru's key mining regions overwhelming supported socialist Pedro Castillo. At the end of the official count, Castillo was 44,058 votes ahead of Fujimori.
(AP, 6/6/21)(Reuters, 6/11/21)(Reuters, 6/16/21)
2021 Jun 6, Dmitry Gudkov, a well-known Russian opposition politician, said that he has left the country for Ukraine. He was held in police custody for two days last week in a criminal investigation. Gudkov said he believes the investigation was aimed at preventing him from running for the national parliament this year.
(AP, 6/6/21)
2021 Jun 6, Tribal clashes erupted between Arabs and non-Arabs in Sudan’s western Darfur region, killing at least 36 people.
(AP, 6/7/21)
2021 Jun 7, The US Department of Justice announced that the federal government has recovered millions of dollars in cryptocurrency paid in ransom to cybercriminals whose attack prompted the shutdown of the country's largest fuel pipeline and gas shortages across the southeastern US last month. The DOJ traced 63.7 of the 75 Bitcoins — some $2.3 million of the $4.3 million — that Colonial Pipeline had paid to the hackers.
(CBS News, 6/8/21)(NY Times, 6/9/21)
2021 Jun 7, US federal prosecutors announced that Ohio-based Contech Engineered Solutions has pleaded guilty to conspiring to rig bids and defraud the N.C. Department of Transportation and agreed to pay a criminal fine of $7 million and pay $1,533,988 in restitution to NCDOT.
(Raleigh News&Observer, 6/8/21)
2021 Jun 7, A unanimous Supreme Court ruled that thousands of people living in the US for humanitarian reasons are ineligible to apply to become permanent residents. There are 400,000 people from 12 countries with TPS status.
(AP, 6/7/21)
2021 Jun 7, The US Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge by a men's rights group to the national requirement that men, but not women, register for the military draft at age 18. Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor issued a statement noting that a commission set up by Congress last year recommended ending the male-only draft and that Congress could act on it.
(Reuters, 6/7/21)
2021 Jun 7, The US FDA approved Aduhelm (aducanumab), made by Biogen, for the treatment of Alzheimer’s, a debilitating disease affecting 6.2 million Americans. Aduhelm was approved using the accelerated approval pathway, which can be used for a drug for a serious or life-threatening illness that provides a meaningful therapeutic advantage over existing treatments.
(https://tinyurl.com/26j7avdb)
2021 Jun 7, Total US COVID-19 cases reached over 33,378,279 with the death toll at 597,949.
(sfist.com, 6/8/21)
2021 Jun 7, US regulators approved Biogen Inc's aducanumab as the first treatment to address an underlying cause of Alzheimer's disease despite controversy over mixed clinical trial results for the drug.
(Reuters, 6/7/21)
2021 Jun 7, In Minnesota police made mass arrests as hundreds of protesters chanting "Stop Line 3!" and "Water is life!" gathered at the headwaters of the Mississippi vowing to stop Canada-based Enbridge Energy's plan to rebuilt the Line 3 pipeline that carries oil from Alberta to Wisconsin.
(SFC, 6/8/21, p.A4)
2021 Jun 7, Republican Missouri Governor Mike Parson said that addressing the clemency petition to release a man imprisoned for over 40 years who prosecutors now maintain is innocent simply isn’t “a priority." Kevin Strickland, now 62, was convicted by an all-white jury of a Kansas City triple murder in April 1978. The only two eyewitnesses in the case have both recanted and advocated for his release. On Nov. 23, 2021, a judge ruled that be released.
(The Grio, 6/11/21)(SFC, 11/24/21, p.A4)
2021 Jun 7, South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster ended a coronavirus state of emergency and maintained that parents alone should decide if children wear masks in schools. Cases soon soared from 150 a day to more than 5,000.
(SFC, 9/21/21, p.A5)
2021 Jun 7, In South Carolina Alex Murdaugh (53), a fourth-generation lawyer, told a dispatcher that he had returned home to find the bodies of his wife and son lying near a dog kennel on the family’s secluded estate. At the time he was killed, Paul Murdaugh (22) had been facing charges of boating under the influence after he was accused of driving a boat into a bridge, killing Mallory Beach, a 19-year-old passenger, after a night of drinking In 2022 police indicted Mr. Murdaugh for the murders.
(NY Times, 7/13/22)
2021 Jun 7, Vermont Gov. Phil Scott signed legislation that requires all registered voters in the state to receive mail-in ballots. The move counters Republican efforts in other states to restrict voting rights.
(SFC, 6/8/21, p.A4)
2021 Jun 7, General Motors Co said it plans to offer $15 per month subscriptions for its Onstar Guardian security services to anyone in the US or Canada who wants to download a smartphone app, expanding beyond owners of GM vehicles in a step to generate recurring revenue.
(AP, 6/7/21)
2021 Jun 7, Scientists reported that the annual peak of global heat-trapping CO2 in the air has reached another dangerous milestone: 50% higher than when the industrial age began.
(AP, 6/7/21)
2021 Jun 7, Afghan government officials said at least 150 Afghan troops have been killed or injured in the last 24 hours in a surge of attacks by Taliban militants as foreign forces withdraw. The Taliban seized Shahrak district of western Ghor province and forced Afghan troops to retreat to nearby villages after a heavy firefight.
(AP, 6/7/21)
2021 Jun 7, The Bank of England said that payments with 'stablecoins' - a form of cryptocurrency usually pegged to a traditional currency - should be regulated in the same way as payments handled by banks if they start to become widely used.
(Reuters, 6/7/21)
2021 Jun 7, It was reported that deforestation in Brazil's Amazon jumped 41% last month compared to the same month a year earlier.
(SFC, 6/7/21, p.A2)
2021 Jun 7, Bulgaria’s interim PM Stefan Yanev urged the government to redouble its efforts to fight endemic graft, calling for changes in prosecutors' offices, the judiciary and all law enforcement agencies.
(AP, 6/7/21)
2021 Jun 7, The head of an independent commission said the Cyprus government continued for at least four years to unlawfully issue passports to relatives of wealthy investors under an investment-for-citizenship program, despite warnings by the Attorney-General that this could be in breach of the law.
(AP, 6/7/21)
2021 Jun 7, Egypt received 500,000 doses of China's Sinovac coronavirus vaccine, as the health ministry said local production of the Chinese vaccine will start in mid-June.
(Reuters, 6/7/21)
2021 Jun 7, Eritrea’s foreign minister blamed US administrations that supported the Tigray People’s Liberation Movement for the last 20 years for the current war in northern Ethiopia's Tigray region, saying that blaming Eritrea for the fighting was unfounded.
(AP, 6/7/21)
2021 Jun 7, The French national financial prosecutor’s office said it has opened a preliminary investigation into the actions of Lebanon’s central bank governor involving potential money laundering.
(AP, 6/7/21)
2021 Jun 7, German officials said police conducted raids targeting people suspected of involvement in organized crime, as part of a larger international bust coordinated by Europol.
(AP, 6/7/21)
2021 Jun 7, In Germany Robert Bosch opened a 1 billion euro ($1.2 billion) chip plant near Dresden, a record investment by the leading automotive supplier as it stakes a claim to equipping the latest electric and self-driving cars.
(Reuters, 6/7/21)
2021 Jun 7, Greece designated neighboring Turkey as a safe country in which to seek international protection for the majority of asylum-seekers departing its shores for Greece.
(AP, 6/7/21)
2021 Jun 7, PM Narendra Modi said India will provide free COVID-19 vaccines to all adults, in an effort to rein in a pandemic that has killed hundreds of thousands and led to the world's second-highest tally of infections.
(Reuters, 6/7/21)
2021 Jun 7, Ali Akbar Mohtashamipour (74), a Shiite cleric, died of the coronavirus. As Iran's ambassador to Syria he helped found the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and lost his right hand to a book bombing reportedly carried out by Israel.
(AP, 6/7/21)
2021 Jun 7, Israeli police blocked a planned procession by Jewish ultranationalists through parts of Jerusalem's Old City, following warnings that it could reignite tensions that led to a punishing 11-day war with Gaza's militant Hamas rulers last month.
(AP, 6/7/21)
2021 Jun 7, Italy reported 65 coronavirus-related deaths against 51 the day before. The daily tally of new infections fell to 1,273 from 2,275.
(Reuters, 6/7/21)
2021 Jun 7, Venetians breathed a sigh of relief as the lagoon city finally moved into a low-risk COVID-19 "white zone", meaning most pandemic restrictions were lifted and a nightly curfew scrapped.
(Reuters, 6/7/21)
2021 Jun 7, In Japan the southernmost prefecture of Okinawa began closing schools to contain coronavirus infections. Gov. Denny Tamaki said primary and secondary schools will be closed until June 20.
(SFC, 6/8/21, p.A5)
2021 Jun 7, Lithuania says Belarus could be behind a recent migrant influx and claimed that Belarus border guards have been covering the tracks of the migrants. Lukashenko has warned that Belarus could retaliate against the latest EU sanctions by loosening border controls against Western-bound illegal migration and drug trafficking.
(AP, 6/7/21)
2021 Jun 7, Mali’s coup leader Col. Assimi Goita was sworn as president of a transitional government, solidifying his grip on power in the West African nation after carrying out his second coup d’etat in nine months.
(AP, 6/7/21)
2021 Jun 7, Norway said it will shorten the interval between COVID-19 vaccine doses to nine weeks from the current 12 weeks, thus speeding up the inoculation process.
(Reuters, 6/7/21)
2021 Jun 7, In Pakistan two express trains collided early today, killing at least 51 passengers and injuring 100 others in the southern province of Sindh.
(NY Times, 6/7/21)(SFC, 6/8/21, p.A4)
2021 Jun 7, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a bill to withdraw from an international treaty allowing surveillance flights over military facilities, following the US exit from the pact.
(AP, 6/7/21)
2021 Jun 7, The head of Russia's space agency suggested Moscow would withdraw from the International Space Station in 2025 unless Washington lifted sanctions on the space sector that were hampering Russian satellite launches.
(Reuters, 6/7/21)
2021 Jun 7, Slovakia became the European Union's second country to start inoculating people with the Russian-made Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine, after months of rows over the shot that has yet to be approved by European regulators.
(Reuters, 6/7/21)
2021 Jun 7, Spain jumpstarted its summer tourism season by welcoming vaccinated visitors from most countries as well as European tourists who can prove they are not infected with coronavirus. It also reopened its ports to cruise ship stops.
(AP, 6/7/21)
2021 Jun 7, It was reported that Swiss-based Novartis plans to seek approvals in the US and Europe later this year following improved survival in men with advanced prostate cancer from an experimental drug that delivers radiation directly to tumor cells.
(SFC, 6/7/21, p.A7)
2021 Jun 7, The UN Security Council strongly condemned violations of human rights and international humanitarian law in the Central African Republic and warned that attacks on United Nations peacekeepers there may constitute war crimes.
(AP, 6/7/21)
2021 Jun 7, Foreign Minister Abdulla Shahid of the Maldives won election as the next president of the UN General Assembly.
(AP, 6/8/21)
2021 Jun 8, The US Senate overwhelmingly passed a bipartisan bill to fund technology and manufacturing to counter China.
(NY Times, 6/8/21)
2021 Jun 8, A US Senate report examining the security failures surrounding the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol said missed intelligence, poor planning and multiple layers of bureaucracy led to the violent siege.
(AP, 6/9/21)
2021 Jun 8, Former US president Donald Trump has praised Nigeria's government for banning Twitter after it deleted President Muhammadu Buhari's post for breaching its rules.
(BBC, 6/9/21)
2021 Jun 8, A problem at SF-based Fastly meant internet users couldn't connect to a host of popular websites early today including The New York Times, the Guardian, Twitch, Reddit and the British government's homepage.
(AP, 6/9/21)
2021 Jun 8, Hawaii's Gov. David Ige said: "The ocean is our great connector," before signing into law nine bills strengthening protections and enforcement against illegal and unsustainable fishing practices on World Oceans Day. June has been designated the UN World Oceans Month.
(Tribune Publ., 6/9/21)
2021 Jun 8, The nonprofit investigative journalism organization ProPublica reported that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos paid no income tax in 2007 and 2011. Tesla founder Elon Musk’s income tax bill came to zero in 2018. And financier George Soros went three straight years without paying federal income tax.
(AP, 6/8/21)
2021 Jun 8, Law enforcement agencies said criminal gangs divulged plans for moving drug shipments and carrying out killings on a secure messaging system secretly run by the FBI, as they unveiled a global sting operation they said dealt an “unprecedented blow" to organized crime in countries around the world. The Trojan Shield operation led to police raids in 16 nations. More than 800 suspects were arrested and more than 32 tons of drugs were seized.
(AP, 6/8/21)
2021 Jun 8, A 1933 Double Eagle gold coin sold for $19.5 million at auction in New York, setting a new world record price for any coin.
(AP, 6/8/21)
2021 Jun 8, It was reported that Google has bowed to pressure from rivals and will let them compete for free to be the default search engines on Android devices in Europe, widening a pledge to EU antitrust regulators two years ago.
(Reuters, 6/8/21)
2021 Jun 8, Honeywell International Inc and quantum computer software startup Cambridge Quantum Computing (CQC) announced they will form a joint venture, integrating Honeywell’s quantum computer unit with the software maker.
(AP, 6/8/21)
2021 Jun 8, Inovio Pharmaceuticals Inc expanded its partnership with Advaccine Biopharmaceuticals to conduct a late-stage trial of its COVID-19 vaccine candidate, expected to start in the summer.
(Reuters, 6/8/21)
2021 Jun 8, Venture-backed startup Relativity Space, which aims to build the world's first fleet of 3D-printed rockets, said it has raised $650 million from a raft of new investors including BlackRock, hedge fund Soroban Capital, and the actor Jared Leto.
(Reuters, 6/8/21)
2021 Jun 8, In Afghanistan an armed attack late today on staff members of a British-American charity left at least ten people dead. The Islamic State claimed responsibility.
(SFC, 6/10/21, p.A2)
2021 Jun 8, Belarus' authoritarian president Alexander Lukashenko signed a law that threatens demonstrators with years in prison — the latest move in a relentless crackdown on protests against his rule.
(AP, 6/8/21)
2021 Jun 8, At least five Egyptians were abducted by Islamic State militants in the restive northern part of the Sinai Peninsula.
(AP, 6/8/21)
2021 Jun 8, El Salvador's Legislative Assembly approved legislation making the bitcoin cryptocurrency legal tender in the country, the first country to do so. The US dollar will continue to be the currency of reference.
(SFC, 6/10/21, p.B2)
2021 Jun 8, It was reported that in the past week, nine Haitian police stations have been attacked, at least 15 weapons stolen and a police inspector killed. Another seven officers have died in metropolitan Port-au-Prince amid violent clashes between warring gangs.
(Miami Herald, 6/8/21)
2021 Jun 8, Malaysia went mobile with its mass immunization drive, with the rollout of the first of 40 vaccine trucks set to hit the highways in the coming months.
(Reuters, 6/8/21)
2021 Jun 8, Nepal resumed is stalled coronavirus campaign with 1 million doses given by China.
(SFC, 6/9/21, p.A5)
2021 Jun 8, It was reported that lawmaker Paul Givan (39) is to become the new first minister of Northern Ireland, replacing Arlene Foster, who had been in post since 2015 and through the Brexit dramas of the past few years. The new ministers will take up their posts on June 14.
(AP, 6/8/21)
2021 Jun 8, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa put his health minister, Zweli Mkhize, on special leave, after allegations that his department irregularly awarded COVID-19-related contracts to a communications company controlled by his former associates.
(Reuters, 6/8/21)
2021 Jun 8, In Switzerland the daughter of jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny accepted a human rights award on her father's behalf for his courage in facing down President Vladimir Putin’s government.
(AP, 6/8/21)
2021 Jun 8, Dozens of displaced people in rebel-held northwest Syria protested efforts by Damascus and its allies to end humanitarian aid crossing from Turkey into the impoverished war-ravaged enclave.
(AP, 6/8/21)
2021 Jun 8, Ukraine registered 535 new COVID-19 cases, the lowest daily number of infections over the previous 24 hours for nearly a year and the ministry said infection rates declined for eight consecutive weeks.
(Reuters, 6/9/21)
2021 Jun 8, The UN Security Council gave its unanimous backing to Secretary-General Antonio Guterres for a second term.
(AP, 6/8/21)
2021 Jun 8, UN appeals judges upheld the conviction of former Bosnian Serb military chief Ratko Mladic (79) for genocide and other offenses during Bosnia’s 1992-95 war and confirmed his life sentence.
(AP, 6/8/21)
2021 Jun 8, The UN General Assembly approved a declaration calling for urgent action to end AIDS by 2030, noting “with alarm" that the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated inequalities and pushed access to AIDS medicines, treatments and diagnosis further off track.
(AP, 6/8/21)
2021 Jun 9, US officials said the White House has dropped Trump-era executive orders that attempted to ban the popular apps TikTok and WeChat and will conduct its own review aimed at identifying national security risks with software applications tied to China.
(AP, 6/9/21)
2021 Jun 9, The US Treasury Dept. slapped sanctions on the daughter of Nicaragua's Pres. Daniel Ortega and a top army official, a day after the arrests of two more potential opposition candidates for the Nov. 7 presidential elections.
(SFC, 6/10/21, p.A4)
2021 Jun 9, It was reported that the White House plans to send 500 million Pfizer shots to about 100 countries over the next year.
(NY Times, 6/9/21)
2021 Jun 9, The US Census Bureau announced guidelines for how a controversial statistical method will be applied to the numbers used for drawing congressional and legislative districts. The method is meant to protect the privacy of people who participated in the 2020 census, though critics have claimed it favors confidentiality at the expense of accurate numbers.
(AP, 6/9/21)
2021 Jun 9, Total US COVID-19 cases reached over 33,394,843 with the death toll at 598,402.
(sfist.com, 6/10/21)
2021 Jun 9, Mohamed Haji (28) of Lansing, Michigan, and two co-defendants pleaded guilty in federal court to conspiring to provide material support to the Islamic State. Muse Muse and Mohamud Muse admitted to the same offense in January 2020.
(Washington Examiner, 6/10/21)
2021 Jun 9, A federal appeals court panel blocked Missouri from enforcing a sweeping 2019 state abortion law that bans procedures at or after eight weeks of pregnancy.
(SFC, 6/10/21, p.A4)
2021 Jun 9, Aubrey Trail of Nebraska was sentenced to death for the murder and mutilation of Tinder date Sydney Loofe (24) in 2017 after she refused to engage in group sex and fraud.
(The Independent, 6/10/21)
2021 Jun 9, Merck & Co Inc said the US government has agreed to pay about $1.2 billion for 1.7 million courses of its experimental COVID-19 treatment, if it is proven to work in an ongoing large trial and authorized by US regulators. The treatment course being tested in the trial is an oral dose given every 12 hours for five days.
(AP, 6/9/21)
2021 Jun 9, Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc said the US Food and Drug Administration has approved the expanded use of its Trikafta cocktail therapy to treat cystic fibrosis (CF) in children aged 6 to 11, making it the first approved treatment for CF in the age group. The treatment is currently priced at $311,503 per year.
(Reuters, 6/9/21)
2021 Jun 9, Fastly, the SF-based company hit by a major outage that caused many of the world's top websites to go offline briefly this week, blamed the problem on a software bug that was triggered when a customer changed a setting.
(AP, 6/9/21)
2021 Jun 9, Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya called for the creation of an international tribunal to investigate and prosecute crimes reportedly committed by the government and its longtime authoritarian leader, Alexander Lukashenko.
(AP, 6/9/21)
2021 Jun 9, In Bahrain hundreds of people held a rare protest over the death of a prisoner from the coronavirus despite being vaccinated months earlier by the island kingdom. Barakat had received the Chinese vaccine Sinopharm.
(AP, 6/10/21)
2021 Jun 9, Brazil-based JBS, the world’s largest meat processor, said that it paid an $11 million ransom in Bitcoin to the hackers behind an attack that forced the shutdown last week of all the company’s US beef plants and disrupted operations at poultry and pork plants. The FBI said last week that it believed REvil, a Russian-based group that is one of the most prolific ransomware organizations, was responsible for the attack.
(NY Times, 6/9/21)
2021 Jun 9, A prominent UK epidemiologist said the Delta coronavirus variant of concern, first identified in India, is believed to be 60% more transmissible than the Alpha variant which was previously dominant in Britain.
(AP, 6/9/21)
2021 Jun 9, TC Energy, the Canadian pipeline company that had long sought to build the Keystone XL pipeline, announced that it had terminated the embattled project, which would have carried petroleum from Canadian tar sands to Nebraska.
(NY Times, 6/9/21)
2021 Jun 9, Chinese President Xi Jinping ended a three-day tour of the northwestern province of Qinghai by stressing its importance for maintaining order in neighboring Xinjiang and Tibet.
(South China Morning Post, 6/10/21)
2021 Jun 9, China's agriculture ministry said it had confirmed an outbreak of H5N8 avian influenza in wild birds at a nature reserve in the northwestern province of Shaanxi. The outbreak sickened and killed 4,249 birds.
(Reuters, 6/9/21)
2021 Jun 9, Chinese food delivery giant Meituan said it aimed to hire 60,000 new employees in 2021 as the company expands into new areas of businesses such as group community buying.
(Reuters, 6/9/21)
2021 Jun 9, Human Rights Watch accused police officers in Colombia of responsibility for the deaths of 20 people and other violent actions against protesters during recent civil unrest, including sexual abuse, beatings and arbitrary detentions.
(Reuters, 6/9/21)
2021 Jun 9, EU antitrust regulators said the market dominance of Amazon's Alexa, Apple's Siri and Alphabet's Google Assistant has triggered concerns of potential anti-competitive practices.
(Reuters, 6/9/21)
2021 Jun 9, A top European Union court annulled the EU's approval of 550 million euros ($670 million) in state aid for German airline Condor, backing a challenge by budget carrier Ryanair but suspending the application of the ruling because of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
(AP, 6/9/21)
2021 Jun 9, EU lawmakers endorsed a new travel certificate that will allow people to move between European countries without having to Quarantine or undergo coronavirus tests.
(SFC, 6/10/21, p.A5)
2021 Jun 9, Germany-based Volkswagen said that former CEO Martin Winterkorn has agreed to pay 11.2 million euros ($13.6 million) in compensation for what the company called his failure to quickly get to the bottom of the scandal over diesel engines rigged to cheat on emissions tests.
(AP, 6/9/21)
2021 Jun 9, In Germany dozens of workers gathered outside of one of Berlin's most-celebrated startups, the grocery delivery company Gorillas, to protest the firing hours earlier of a colleague.
(AP, 6/13/21)
2021 Jun 9, German architect Gottfried Boehm (101) died. He was famous for his concrete brutalist-style church buildings.
(AP, 6/10/21)
2021 Jun 9, McDonald's was forced to briefly shut some outlets in Indonesia when the launch of a limited edition meal inspired by K-pop group BTS sparked frenzied excitement and fears of coronavirus contagion.
(AP, 6/11/21)
2021 Jun 9, Israeli troops shot and killed three Palestinians, including two security officers, in a shootout that erupted in the occupied West Bank town of Jenin during what appeared to be an overnight Israeli arrest raid.
(AP, 6/9/21)
2021 Jun 9, Mongolia held presidential elections. Early results showed former PM Ukhnaa Khurelsukh, chairman of the ruling Mongolian People's Party, winning by a large margin.
(SFC, 6/10/21, p.A2)
2021 Jun 9, It was reported that Nicaraguan police have detained five prominent opposition figures in two days, accelerating a slide toward one-party rule.
(NY Times, 6/9/21)
2021 Jun 9, Pakistani police arrested Mufti Sardar Ali Haqqani, after a video of him went viral on social media, in which he threatens Nobel Laureate Malala Yousafzai over her recent comments about marriage.
(AP, 6/10/21)
2021 Jun 9, A Russian court designated Aleksei A. Navalny’s political movement as an extremist network.
(NY Times, 6/9/21)
2021 Jun 9, Russia reported 10,407 new coronavirus cases in the last 24 hours. Authorities in Moscow said they would step up enforcement of rules requiring people to wear medical masks and gloves in indoor public spaces due to a rising number of COVID-19 cases.
(AP, 6/9/21)
2021 Jun 9, It was reported that a microscopic organism has wriggled back to life and reproduced asexually after lying frozen in the vast permafrost lands of northeastern Siberia for 24,000 years. Russian scientists found the tiny bdelloid rotifer in soil, dated from between 23,960 and 24,485 years ago, taken from the river Alazeya in Russia's far north region of Yakutia.
(Reuters, 6/9/21)
2021 Jun 9, A UN expert said at least one-quarter of the people in Myanmar's smallest state have been forced to flee their homes because of combat with the military junta that seized power in February. He called for international pressure on the junta to deprive it of the resources.
(AP, 6/9/21)
2021 Jun 9, It was reported that Gosiame Thamara Sithole, a South African woman, has given birth to 10 babies in what would be a new world record. An official inquiry later found the story to be fake. The 37-year-old is now being held under the mental health act for observation and will be provided with support.
(BBC, 6/9/21)(BBC, 6/23/21)
2021 Jun 9, A report released by the International Labour Organization and the UN Children’s Fund said the number of children in child labor has risen to 160 million globally, an uptick of 8.4 million over the past four years.
(Axios, 6/9/21)
2021 Jun 9, A UN official said that a high-level UN-led committee that focuses on rapid responses to humanitarian crises estimates that some 350,000 people in Ethiopia’s embattled Tigray region are facing famine conditions.
(AP, 6/9/21)
2021 Jun 10, President Joe Biden and British PM Boris Johnson met for the first time, looking to highlight their nations' famed “special relationship" but doing so against a backdrop of differences both political and personal. Biden and Johnson signed a new version of the 80-year old “Atlantic Charter," using their first meeting to redefine the Western alliance and accentuate what they said was a growing divide between battered democracies and their autocratic rivals, led by Russia and China.
(AP, 6/10/21)(NY Times, 6/11/21)
2021 Jun 10, The US leveled sanctions against a Yemeni network that it claims was cooperating with Iran's Revolutionary Guard to illicitly transfer tens of millions of dollars to Yemen's Houthi rebels.
(AP, 6/10/21)
2021 Jun 10, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told Congress that the US military has already begun conducting combat operations and surveillance in Afghanistan from outside the country's borders.
(AP, 6/10/21)
2021 Jun 10, In Washington, DC, Emma Coronel Aispuro (31), the wife of Mexican drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, pleaded guilty to charges related to helping her husband run his international drug trafficking ring.
(The Independent, 6/10/21)
2021 Jun 10, Total US COVID-19 cases reached over 33,415,911 with the death toll at 598,342.
(sfist.com, 6/11/21)
2021 Jun 10, It was reported that a group of 37 Baltimore businesses have signed on to a letter threatening to withhold tax payments from the city until it improves policing and other services.
(Washington Examiner, 6/10/21)
2021 Jun 10, Former United Auto Workers (UAW) President Gary Jones was sentenced to 28 months in federal prison and will be forced to repay thousands of dollars after he pleaded guilty to two counts of conspiracy in 2020 for plotting to steal $1.5 million in union dues.
(AP, 6/10/21)
2021 Jun 10, Johnson & Johnson said the US Food and Drug Administration has extended the shelf life of its single-shot COVID-19 vaccine from three months to four-and-a-half months, as millions of unused doses nationwide near expiration.
(Reuters, 6/10/21)
2021 Jun 10, Verizon Business launched its first commercially available private 5G network in the US to offer businesses and government departments high-speed indoor or outdoor connectivity.
(Reuters, 6/10/21)
2021 Jun 10, In Britain Mee Kuen Chong (67) was last seen in the Wembley area of London and was reported missing the next day. She was found headless in the woods near Bennett Road in Salcombe, Devon County on June 27.
(Nextshark, 7/6/21)
2021 Jun 10, Canada's top privacy released a report that says the Canadian federal police force broke the law when they used facial recognition software. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) said in February 2020 that for four months they had been using Clearview AI, a US-based facial recognition software company.
(AP, 6/10/21)
2021 Jun 10, Chile announced a full lockdown of Santiago and surrounding municipalities as COVID-19 cases remain high and available hospital beds hit low levels.
(SFC, 6/11/21, p.A4)
2021 Jun 10, President Emmanuel Macron said France is to scale down counter-terrorism operations in the Sahel region of West Africa after eight years. French forces have been operating in Mali, Chad, Mauritania, Niger, and Burkina Faso to fight militants.
(BBC, 6/10/21)
2021 Jun 10, Germany started rolling out a digital vaccination pass that can be used across Europe as the continent is gets ready for the key summer travel season.
(AP, 6/10/21)
2021 Jun 10, In the Netherlands a group of lawyers presented a dossier of evidence to prosecutors at the Int'l. Criminal Court (ICC) that they say establishes jurisdiction for the global tribunal to investigate allegations that Chinese authorities are involved in grave crimes targeting Uighurs.
(SFC, 6/11/21, p.A2)
2021 Jun 10, Prosus NV, the Dutch investor with a 28.9% share of Chinese software giant Tencent, said it expected full-year earnings per share to have nearly doubled in the past year, after a strong performance during the coronavirus crisis. Prosus is majority-owned by Naspers of South Africa.
(Reuters, 6/10/21)
2021 Jun 10, The Swiss National Bank and the Bank of France said they will trial Europe's first cross-border central bank digital currency payments, a move that will be a first for two of the world's top currencies.
(Reuters, 6/10/21)
2021 Jun 10, Human Rights Watch warned that millions of Syrians risk losing access to lifesaving aid, including food and COVID-19 vaccines, if Russia manages to block at the UN Security Council the use of the last remaining cross-border corridor for UN aid into rebel-held northwestern Syria.
(AP, 6/10/21)
2021 Jun 10, Pope Francis refused to let German Cardinal Reinhard Marx resign over the sex abuse scandal in the church, but said a process of reform was necessary and that every bishop must take responsibility for the “catastrophe" of the crisis.
(AP, 6/10/21)
2021 Jun 10, The UN Food Agency said food imports costs across the world are expected to surge to record levels this year, piling pressure on many of the poorest countries whose economies have already been ravaged by the COVID-19 pandemic.
(Reuters, 6/10/21)
2021 Jun 10, Yemen's Iran-backed rebels fires missiles on the central city of Marib, killing at least eight people and wounding as many as 27.
(AP, 6/10/21)
2021 Jun 11, The Biden administration said that it has dismantled a Trump-era government agency to help victims of crimes committed by immigrants, a move that symbolizes President Joe Biden's rejection of former Pres. Donald Trump's repeated efforts to link immigrants to crime.
(AP, 6/11/21)
2021 Jun 11, The Pentagon announced plans to send Ukraine $150 million in military assistance that will include counter-artillery radar, counter-drone technology and electronic warfare equipment.
(Reuters, 6/12/21)
2021 Jun 11, It was reported that the US Food & Drug Administration has asked Johnson & Johnson to discard 60 million doses of its COVID-19 vaccine manufactured at the problem-plagued Baltimore factory of Emergent BioSolutions Inc.
(Reuters, 6/11/21)
2021 Jun 11, The NY Times won a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of the coronavirus pandemic. The Star Tribune of Minneapolis won the award for its “authoritative and nuanced" coverage of the murder of George Floyd. A special citation went to Darnella Frazier, the young woman who took out her cellphone to record the killing of George Floyd. She was recognized for the video that spurred a global reckoning with police brutality.
(NY Times, 6/11/21)
2021 Jun 11, Jessica Johanna Oseguera Gonzalez (34), the daughter of alleged Mexican cartel boss Nemesio Ruben Oseguera Cervantes, aka "El Mencho," was sentenced to 30 months in prison. She had pleaded guilty in March to violating the Kingpin Act, which prohibits Americans from having financial dealings with companies that aid narcotics traffickers.
(Fox News, 6/12/21)
2021 Jun 11, Total US COVID-19 cases reached over 33,429,301 with the death toll at 599,182.
(sfist.com, 6/12/21)
2021 Jun 11, Illinois lifted all capacity limits on bars, restaurants and other venues. More than 68% of state residents, 18 or older, have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.
(SFC, 6/12/21, p.A4)
2021 Jun 11, Nevada's Gov. Steve Sisolak signed a law that would make his state the first to vote in the 2024 presidential primary.
(SFC, 6/12/21, p.A5)
2021 Jun 11, British PM Boris Johnson greeted leaders from the Group of Seven nations and the European Union on a wooden boardwalk on the freshly raked sand of Carbis Bay to open the G-7 summit. G7 leaders were in broad agreement about the need to continue supporting their economies with fiscal stimulus after the ravages of the COVID-19 pandemic.
(AP, 6/11/21)(Reuters, 6/11/21)
2021 Jun 11, Canada said it will share up to 100 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines with countries in need, though a portion of this has already been announced.
(Reuters, 6/11/21)
2021 Jun 11, In Canada thousands of people marched in support of a Muslim family run over and killed by Nathaniel Veltman (20) driving a pick-up truck on June 6 in an attack the police described as a hate crime.
(AP, 6/11/21)
2021 Jun 11, China reported 35 new coronavirus cases in the mainland, up from 22 a day earlier. China totaled 91,394 confirmed infections. Its death toll stood unchanged at 4,636.
(Reuters, 6/11/21)
2021 Jun 11, China's National Space Administration released four pictures showing the upper stage of the Zhurong rover and lander bearing small national flags and the view from the rover before it rolled off its platform on Mars.
(AP, 6/11/21)
2021 Jun 11, CongoDRC reported 254 new Covid-19 infections, mostly in the capital, Kinshasa, along with three deaths. Since the outbreak began, about 35,000 infections and 834 have officially been recorded in DR Congo.
(BBC, 6/13/21)
2021 Jun 11, It was reported that EU fishermen have been granted the right to "plunder" UK waters of red mullet, scallops and lobster after Britain failed to set limits on the amount that can be caught in a post-Brexit agreement.
(The Telegraph, 6/11/21)
2021 Jun 11, The European Medicines Agency (EMA) approved a new manufacturing site in France for the production of Moderna Inc's COVID-19 vaccine.
(Reuters, 6/11/21)
2021 Jun 11, Hong Kong's government said it would begin blocking the distribution of films that are deemed to undermine national security.
(SFC, 6/12/21, p.A2)
2021 Jun 11, India added 91,702 new coronavirus cases pushing its total to nearly 29.3 million. 3,403 fatalities were reported in the last 24 hours. Bihar state increased its death toll to more than 9,429 from 5,424 after the discovery of thousands of unreported cases.
(SFC, 6/12/21, p.A4)
2021 Jun 11, Iran regained its UN General Assembly vote after it made a minimum dues payment, while denouncing the United States for sanctions that had blocked billions in funds.
(Axios, 6/11/21)
2021 Jun 11, Pharmacies across Lebanon shuttered their doors for a two-day strike in protest of severe supply shortages, as motorists seeking fuel queued for hours outside petrol stations since the crack of dawn.
(AP, 6/11/21)
2021 Jun 11, Malaysia's government extended a two-week national lockdown, due to end on June 14, for another two weeks as daily coronavirus infections remained above 6,000.
(SFC, 6/12/21, p.A4)
2021 Jun 11, In Mexico two gunmen fired 10 to 15 shots at a Cancún beach before escaping across the water. The two victims died and an American tourist was wounded. The victims were reportedly street vendors who sold craft items to tourists. Many such vendors also work as drug dealers, selling marijuana and cocaine to visitors.
(The Independent, 6/15/21)
2021 Jun 11, In southwestern Pakistan a bus carrying pilgrims overturned killing at least 20 people.
(SFC, 6/12/21, p.A3)
2021 Jun 11, Palestinian teenager Mohammed Hamayel (15) was killed by Israeli fire during clashes between protesters and Israeli troops in the occupied West Bank.
(AP, 6/11/21)
2021 Jun 11, Russia reported 12,505 new coronavirus cases in the last 24 hours, its highest number of daily infections since late February, taking the national tally to 5,180,454 since the pandemic began.
(Reuters, 6/11/21)
2021 Jun 11, South Africa said it has finalized an extradition treaty with the UAE that would allow it to bring back members of an Indian family accused of involvement in high-level state corruption to face trial. Brothers Ajay, Atul and Rajesh Gupta are believed to be living in Dubai.
(AP, 6/11/21)
2021 Jun 11, Swedish health officials warned of worrying local outbreaks of the COVID delta variant and urged people to get vaccinated to avoid a fourth wave of the pandemic.
(Reuters, 6/11/21)
2021 Jun 11, McDonald's Corp, the world's largest burger chain, said that a data breach in South Korea and Taiwan has exposed some customer and employee information, making it the latest global company to be targeted by cybercriminals. McDonald's said its day-to-day operations were not affected and that a ransom was not involved.
(Reuters, 6/11/21)
2021 Jun 11, UN humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock said there is famine in northern Ethiopia after the release of a UN-backed analysis of the situation.
(BBC, 6/11/21)
2021 Jun 11, UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet warned of a military buildup in parts of Myanmar and rising violence, with the army using heavy weapons against armed groups as well as civilian targets, including Christian churches.
(AP, 6/11/21)
2021 Jun 11, The UN elected five countries to join the powerful 15-member UN Security Council with no suspense because all were unopposed -- Brazil, the UAE, Albania, Ghana and Gabon.
(AP, 6/11/21)
2021 Jun 11, The UN General Assembly approved the nomination of Costa Rican economist Rebecca Grynspan to head the UN agency promoting trade and development, the first woman and Central American to lead the Geneva-based organization.
(AP, 6/11/21)
2021 Jun 11, The Vatican took steps to better regulate lay religious movements by imposing term limits on their leaders and requiring internal elections to be representative of their memberships.
(AP, 6/11/21)
2021 Jun 11, In Yemen an explosion in the southern province of Abyan killed at least five separatist troops and wounded six people, including civilians.
(AP, 6/11/21)
2021 Jun 12, President Joe Biden announced that he would designate Pulse nightclub, where 49 people were gunned down five years ago, a national memorial, as he again called on Congress to pass gun control legislation.
(Fox News, 6/12/21)
2021 Jun 12, Total US COVID-19 cases reached over 33,438,322 with the death toll at 599,182.
(sfist.com, 6/13/21)
2021 Jun 12, Missouri Gov. Mike Parson signed a new law that would ban state police from enforcing federal gun laws. On June 16 US Justice Dept. officials pointed out that federal law trumps state law under the US Constitution's Supremacy Clause.
(SFC, 6/18/21, p.A4)
2021 Jun 12, In Texas a gunman opened fire in the busy bar and nightclub district of Austin early today, injuring 14 people. Police soon arrested one suspect and searched for a second following the mass shooting. Douglas John Kantor, (25), a tourist from New York and one of the 14 people wounded, died the next day from his injuries. The 2nd suspect (17) was arrested on June 14. On June 24 police arrested De'ondre White (19) into custody on a murder warrant. Charges against the two juveniles arrested earlier were dropped.
(Reuters, 6/14/21)(SFC, 6/14/21, p.A3)(SFC, 6/15/21, p.A4)(SFC, 6/26/21, p.A4)
2021 Jun 12, An auction for an 11-minute ride into space with Amazon founder Jeff Bizos and his brother Mark ended with a $28 million bid. The Blue Origin's New Shephard rocket will launch on July 20 from Van Horn, Texas.
(SSFC, 6/13/21, p.A8)
2021 Jun 12, Algeria held a parliamentary election that was boycotted by an influential protest movement and regarded by many with skepticism. For the first time in an Algerian election women made up half of the candidates.
(AP, 6/12/21)
2021 Jun 12, In Argentina Walter Klug Rivera, an ex-colonel convicted of human rights violations during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, was arrested in Buenos Aires after fleeing from neighboring Chile.
(The Independent, 6/14/21)
2021 Jun 12, Australia's Victoria state, which emerged from a strict lockdown earlier this week, recorded one new community case of COVID-19. The outbreak, which triggered the two-week snap lockdown late last month, has now seen 91 cases since May 24.
(Reuters, 6/12/21)
2021 Jun 12, Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro led thousands of motorcyclist supporters through the streets of Sao Paulo — and got hit with a fine for failure to wear a mask in violation of local pandemic restrictions.
(AP, 6/12/21)
2021 Jun 12, Mainland China reported 34 new COVID-19 cases, down from 35 cases a day earlier. The Delta variant was spreading in southeastern China, and doctors said that the infected are getting sicker, and faster.
(Reuters, 6/12/21)(NY Times, 6/12/21)
2021 Jun 12, Dubai Health Authority (DHA) said about two-thirds of people eligible for inoculation against COVID-19 have now received two doses of the vaccine in Dubai, the tourist and business hub of the United Arab Emirates.
(Reuters, 6/13/21)
2021 Jun 12, Hong Kong democracy activist Agnes Chow was released from prison on the second anniversary of the city's huge democracy rallies, with police out in force and protests now all but banned.
(The Telegraph, 6/12/21)
2021 Jun 12, Talks between Iran and global powers restarted with the goal of trying to restore a landmark agreement to contain Iranian nuclear development that the Trump administration abandoned in 2018.
(AP, 6/12/21)
2021 Jun 12, In Israel a private security guard at a checkpoint near Jerusalem shot and killed a woman (28) who allegedly planned to carry out a stabbing attack.
(AP, 6/12/21)
2021 Jun 12, Nigeria's President Muhammadu Buhari admitted that he has failed to end insecurity in the country, a promise he made when he was elected in 2015.
(AP, 6/12/21)
2021 Jun 12, Moscow's mayor effectively declared a public holiday for all of next week to combat a surge in COVID-19 cases. Sergei Sobyanin said it would not affect organizations that maintain the Russian capital's infrastructure, the military, and other strategically important enterprises.
(Reuters, 6/12/21)
2021 Jun 12, Alexander Gintsbur, the scientist who led the development of the Sputnik V vaccine, said Russia has tested a nasal spray form of its COVID-19 vaccine that is suitable for children aged 8-12, and plans to launch the new product in September.
(AP, 6/12/21)
2021 Jun 12, Missiles hit a hospital in a northern Syrian town controlled by Turkey-backed fighters, killing at least 15 people, including two medical staff, and putting the facility out of service. The governor’s office blamed the attack on Syrian Kurdish groups. The head of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, Mazloum Abadi, denied his forces were behind the attack.
(AP, 6/12/21)(AP, 6/13/21)
2021 Jun 12, Vietnam said it has approved the COVID-19 vaccine jointly made by Pfizer and BioNTech for domestic emergency use. Vietnam, with a population of around 98 million, has recorded a total of 10,241 coronavirus cases, with 58 deaths, since the pandemic began.
(Reuters, 6/12/21)
2021 Jun 13, US Pres. Joe Biden and other Western leaders concluded the G7 summit with a joint declaration criticizing the Chinese and Russian governments. G7 leaders demanded that Russia take action and investigate the use of chemical weapons within its territory and hold accountable those behind ransomware attacks and other cyber crimes.
(NY Times, 6/13/21)(Axios, 6/13/21)
2021 Jun 13, Total US COVID-19 cases reached over 33,459,210 with the death toll at 599,736.
(sfist.com, 6/14/21)
2021 Jun 13, Actor Ned Beatty died at his home in Los Angeles. His prolific acting career spanned more than four decades and earned an Oscar nomination for his role in “Network" and gave a cringe-inducing performance as a weekend outdoorsman assaulted by backwoods brutes in "Deliverance".
(NY Times, 6/14/21)
2021 Jun 13, Family lawyers said the family of Alton Sterling, a Black man who was shot and killed by a white police officer outside a convenience store in Baton Rouge, La., on July 5, 2016, has reached a $4.5 million settlement with the city.
(NY Times, 6/14/21)
2021 Jun 13, In Minnesota a woman was killed and three others injured after a car was driven into a crowd of anti-police brutality protesters in Minneapolis. Several people intervened, pulling the suspect from the car and restraining him until police arrested him.
(The Guardian, 6/14/21)
2021 Jun 13, In Ohio Eric Cole (42) was shot by an unknown assailant late today and was laying in the street, bleeding, in the 1400 block of South Center Boulevard before he was struck by a Springfield Police Division cruiser. Cole died from his injuries the next day.
(Tribune Publ., 7/1/21)
2021 Jun 13, In South Carolina Shamar Jackson (7) died after he was mauled by dogs while walking in his neighborhood with his brother in Marion County.
(NBC News, 6/16/21)
2021 Jun 13, GB News launched on British television this evening with the aim of giving a voice “to those who feel sidelined or silenced." Chairman Andrew Neil denied it will be the British equivalent of Fox News.
(AP, 6/14/21)
2021 Jun 13, In central China at least 12 people were killed and 39 seriously injured after a gas line explosion tore through a residential neighborhood in Shiyan city, Hubei province.
(AP, 6/13/21)
2021 Jun 13, Novak Djokovic won the French Open to claim his 19th major tennis title — one short of the record, shared by Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal.
(NY Times, 6/13/21)
2021 Jun 13, Authorities in India reported 80,834 new COVID-19 infections over the previous 24 hours, the lowest daily tally in more than two months.
(AP, 6/13/21)
2021 Jun 13, In northeast India Ziona Chana (76), the head of a local Christian sect that allows polygamy, died in Mizoram state. He had 39 wives and 94 children and was said to be the head of the world's largest family.
(Reuters, 6/14/21)
2021 Jun 13, Finland held local elections.
(AP, 6/13/21)
2021 Jun 13, Israeli lawmakers voted to remove PM Benjamin Netanyahu from power, replacing the country’s longest-serving leader with the head of a fragile alliance formed from eight ideologically diffuse parties. Parliament voted to approve a coalition government, ousting Benjamin Netanyahu as prime minister after 12 years and replacing him with Naftali Bennett, the head of a small right-wing party.
(NY Times, 6/13/21)
2021 Jun 13, The prosecutor of Jordan's state security court filed sedition and incitement charges against two confidants of King Abdullah II’s half-brother Hamzah, marking the latest step in a rare, intrigue-filled palace drama that has rattled the Western-backed kingdom.
(AP, 6/13/21)
2021 Jun 13, Lebanon’s currency hit a new low, as the country's economic and political crisis worsened with no apparent solutions in the near future.
(AP, 6/13/21)
2021 Jun 13, In the Philippines government troops killed four Abu Sayyaf militants in Sulu province. The dead included Injam Yada, a commander blamed for beheadings.
(SFC, 6/14/21, p.A3)
2021 Jun 13, Russian authorities confirmed 14,723 cases nationwide, the largest one-day total since Feb. 13. Moscow reported 7,704 new infections, the most in a single day since Dec. 24. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said that anyone over 18 who receives the first of a two-dose COVID-19 vaccine from June 14 until July 11 would now be automatically entered into a draw to win a car.
(Reuters, 6/13/21)
2021 Jun 13, Exit polls indicated that Swiss voters appear to have narrowly rejected a proposed “carbon dioxide law" that would have hiked fees and taxes on fuels that produce greenhouse gases.
(AP, 6/13/21)
2021 Jun 13, A boat capsized off the coast of war-torn Yemen and some 200 migrants, mostly from the Horn of Africa, were missing.
(AP, 6/14/21)
2021 Jun 14, US Pres. Joe Biden attended his first NATO summit as president. Biden and European officials took aim at China for a second day, concluding their NATO summit with a warning about Beijing’s growing military strength.
(NY Times, 6/14/21)
2021 Jun 14, It was reported that John Demers, the top national security official with the Department of Justice, is resigning amid repeated revelations that the department secretly seized records from House Democrats and members of the media.
(Washington Examiner, 6/14/21)
2021 Jun 14, US officials announced a one-year ban on importing dogs from more than 100 countries. The ban is in response to the alarming number of dogs bought from foreign countries that arrived in the US with false rabies vaccination certificates over the past year.
(NPR, 6/14/21)
2021 Jun 14, Total US COVID-19 cases reached over 33,464,566 with the death toll at 599,813.
(sfist.com, 6/15/21)
2021 Jun 14, Ruben Andre Garcia (31), a porn actor and producer who recruited young women under false pretenses to appear in videos for San Diego-based website GirlsDoPorn.com, was sentenced to 20 years in custody in connection with his pleas to federal sex-trafficking and conspiracy charges.
(https://tinyurl.com/vpbup8eh)(USA Today, 6/21/21)
2021 Jun 14, The Minnesota Court of Appeals affirmed a state regulator's decision that there is sufficient need for Enbridge Inc to replace its Line 3 pipeline.
(Reuters, 6/14/21)
2021 Jun 14, Ohio-based Lordstown Motors Corp announced the sudden departure of its chief executive and finance head, just days after the electric truck maker warned that it may not have enough money to stay in business over the next year, sending shares down more than 20%.
(Reuters, 6/14/21)
2021 Jun 14, Vermont lifted its remaining pandemic restrictions after becoming the first US state to have given a shot to 80 percent of eligible residents.
(NY Times, 6/14/21)
2021 Jun 14, Novavax Inc said its COVID-19 vaccine was more than 90% effective, including against a variety of concerning variants of the coronavirus in a large, late-stage US-based clinical trial.
(Reuters, 6/14/21)
2021 Jun 14, It was reported that Britain's GlaxoSmithKline Plc has agreed to pay up to $2 billion to Boston-based iTeos Therapeutics Inc to develop and sell a potential cancer treatment together.
(Reuters, 6/14/21)
2021 Jun 14, England delayed its full reopening by a month, to late July, because of a surge in coronavirus cases.
(NY Times, 6/14/21)
2021 Jun 14, It was reported that China has deployed a fleet of drones in the city of Guangzhou to keep people indoors and remind those going out to wear masks. The city has seen a flare-up of the more infectious delta variant of the coronavirus.
(SFC, 6/14/21, p.A4)
2021 Jun 14, Egypt’s highest criminal court upheld the death sentence for 12 people involved in a 2013 protest by Islamists, including leaders of the now outlawed Muslim Brotherhood. The Court of Cassation also overturned death sentences for 31 others in the same case, giving them life imprisonment instead.
(AP, 6/14/21)
2021 Jun 14, Iran’s state TV reported that the country has approved an emergency use of its first domestically developed coronavirus vaccine that could bring the hardest-hit country in the Middle East closer to inoculating its citizens against COVID-19.
(AP, 6/14/21)
2021 Jun 14, In Japan an American father and son pleaded guilty in Japan to helping Carlos Ghosn, the former Nissan chief facing fraud charges, to flee that country in 2019. Michael Taylor (60), a former Green Beret, and his son Peter Maxwell Taylor (28), appeared in the same Tokyo courthouse where Mr. Ghosn had been expected to stand trial before his daring escape to Lebanon in December 2019.
(NY Times, 6/14/21)
2021 Jun 14, It was reported that Security officials under NATO command have approached Qatar to secure a base that can be used to train Afghan special forces as part of a strategic commitment after foreign forces withdraw from Afghanistan.
(Reuters, 6/14/21)
2021 Jun 14, Nigerian jihadists of the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) freed 10 hostages including seven local aid workers, two of them employed by the United Nations, after weeks of mediation.
(AFP, 6/16/21)
2021 Jun 14, Oman officials said coronavirus infections are surging. Health officials warned that hospitals now face an acute shortage of beds amid a lagging vaccine rollout, the spread of highly transmissible variants and relaxed movement restrictions.
(AP, 6/14/21)
2021 Jun 14, Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte extended partial coronavirus curbs in the capital and nearby provinces until end-June, but placed more areas under tighter quarantine measures because of rising infections and high hospital occupancy. With more than 1.3 million COVID-19 cases and nearly 23,000 deaths, the Philippines has the second highest number of infections and casualties in Southeast Asia, next to Indonesia.
(Reuters, 6/14/21)
2021 Jun 14, Romania reported its lowest number of daily coronavirus infections in more than a year with just 50 new cases.
(SFC, 6/15/21, p.A5)
2021 Jun 14, South Africa’s COVID-19 vaccine rollout was hit by further delays as it will have to discard at least 2 million Johnson & Johnson vaccines produced in the country. The vaccines were found by the US Food and Drug Administration to be unsuitable for use due to possible contamination of their ingredients at a Baltimore plant.
(AP, 6/14/21)
2021 Jun 14, Tariq Saleh, a militia leader and nephew of Yemen's late strongman president, acknowledged that his Emirati-backed troops are stationed on an island in a crucial maritime chokepoint where a mysterious air base is now under construction.
(AP, 6/15/21)
2021 Jun 14, It was reported that Zambia, with a population of about 18 million people, has a cumulative total of nearly 108,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19, including 1,348 deaths.
(AP, 6/14/21)
2021 Jun 15, The US and the EU reached a deal to end their long-running dispute over subsidies to Boeing and Airbus. This will mean the phase-out of billions in punitive tariffs and ease trans-Atlantic tensions.
(SFC, 6/16/21, p.B2)
2021 Jun 15, A federal judge in Louisiana blocked the Biden administration’s suspension of new oil and gas leases on federal lands and waters, saying that the power to pause offshore oil and gas leases “lies solely with Congress" because it was the legislative branch that originally made federal lands and waters available for leasing..
(AP, 6/15/21)
2021 Jun 15, Total US COVID-19 cases reached over 33,476,053. The US death toll topped 600,000.
(sfist.com, 6/16/21)(SFC, 6/16/21, p.A4)
2021 Jun 15, California officially reopened with most pandemic restrictions lifted. Nearly 47% of all state residents were now vaccinated. California and New York lifted virtually all restrictions on gatherings. Officials made the move after more than 70 percent of adults in both states had received a first dose of the coronavirus vaccine.
(SFC, 6/15/21, p.A1)(NY Times, 6/15/21)
2021 Jun 15, California state regulators issued a directive targeting 4,3000 "junior" water rights holders between Fresno county and the Oregon border, forcing them to turn to sources of water other than surface supplies.
(SFC, 6/16/21, p.A1)
2021 Jun 15, In Chicago four people died and four were believed to be injured after a second mass shooting in a matter of days.
(The Independent, 6/16/21)
2021 Jun 15, It was reported that MacKenzie Scott, the former wife of Jeff Bezos, has made a new round of grants, to 286 organizations. Her net worth, which Forbes estimates at $60 billion, keeps rising, thanks to Amazon stock.
(NY Times, 6/15/21)
2021 Jun 15, Oprah Winfrey's next book club pick is a debut novel set in Georgia at the end of the Civil War: Nathan Harris' “The Sweetness of Water." Harris (29) has said he wanted to show what it was like in the South after slaves were emancipated.
(AP, 6/15/21)
2021 Jun 15, Winners were announced for the annual Goldman Environmental Prize. The six winners included: Sharon Lavigne (68) of Louisiana, who successfully fought the opening of a Chinese chemical plant in St. James Parish; Liz Chicaje Churay (38) of Peru, for helping establish a new national park; Maida Bilal (39) of Bosnia-Herzegovina, for creating an environmental group to protest proposed hydropower dams on the Kruscica River; Kimiko Hirata of Japan, for fighting off construction of new coal power plants following the country's 2011 earthquake and nuclear plant meltdown; Gloria Majiga-Kamoto (30) of Malawi, for bringing pressure on the government to uphold a ban on thin plastics; and Thai Van Nguyen (39) of Vietnam, for work to protect pangolins, trafficked for use in traditional Chinese and Vietnamese medicine.
(SFC, 6/15/21, p.B5)
2021 Jun 15, Group messaging app IRL, short for in real life, said it raised $170 million in a funding round led by SoftBank Group Corp’s Vision Fund 2 that valued the company at $1.17 billion. Launched in June 2019, SF-based IRL said it has over 12 million monthly active users.
(Reuters, 6/15/21)
2021 Jun 15, IBM unveiled one of Europe's most powerful quantum computers in Germany, boosting the country's efforts to stay in the race for what's considered a key technology of the future. IBM already has more than 30 such computers in the US.
(AP, 6/15/21)
2021 Jun 15, Sage Therapeutics said zuranolone, its experimental depression drug, showed significant improvement in symptoms compared to placebo in a late-stage study.
(AP, 6/15/21)
2021 Jun 15, In eastern Afghanistan gunmen targeted an anti-polio drive killing at least five members of two vaccination teams in separate attacks. At least four team members were wounded.
(SFC, 6/16/21, p.A2)
2021 Jun 15, Australia and Britain announced that they have agreed a trade deal - the first negotiated from scratch post-Brexit.
(Reuters, 6/14/21)
2021 Jun 15, Ethiopia’s UN ambassador said that Eritrean troops who have been fighting with his country’s forces in a war against the Tigray region’s fugitive leaders “will definitely leave soon," a move that would be welcomed by many.
(AP, 6/15/21)
2021 Jun 15, A French court ordered IKEA to pay $1.3 million in fines and damages over a campaign to spy on union representatives, employees and some unhappy customers.
(SFC, 6/16/21, p.B2)
2021 Jun 15, France began giving COVID jab to 12-year-olds. The government has made people from 12 years upwards eligible for the COVID-19 vaccination, provided they have parental consent.
(Reuters, 6/15/21)
2021 Jun 15, Italy reported 63 coronavirus-related deaths against 36 the day before. The daily tally of new infections rose to 1,255 from 907.
(Reuters, 6/15/21)
2021 Jun 15, Mexico received 1.3 million doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine donated by the US. Officials planned to vaccinate anyone over 18 in four cities along the border to boost vaccination rates there.
(SFC, 6/16/21, p.A4)
2021 Jun 15, The Karenni National Defence Force (KNDF), a militia group in Myanmar's conflict-torn Kayah State, announced a halt to attacks on military targets, after appeals from local communities to cease fighting that had damaged homes and displaced more than 100,000 people.
(Reuters, 6/15/21)
2021 Jun 15, Nicaragua's police arrested Luis Rivas Anduray, the general manager of Banco de Produccion SA. He was the 16th person arrested since late May for allegedly committing crimes against the state. Most of the others were presidential candidates or opposition party leaders.
(SFC, 6/17/21, p.A4)
2021 Jun 15, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un warned about possible food shortages and urged the country to brace for extended COVID-19 restrictions as he opened a major political conference to discuss national efforts to salvage a broken economy.
(AP, 6/15/21)
2021 Jun 15, Oman announced that its doctors have detected mucormycosis, a potentially fatal fungal infection afflicting some coronavirus patients, the first such known cases on the Arabian Peninsula as the sultanate faces a surge in COVID-19 infections that has swamped its hospitals.
(AP, 6/15/21)
2021 Jun 15, Pakistan reported that roughly 3 million people have been vaccinated, less than 2% of the population. New measures to encourage vaccination included blocking people's cell phone services in two provinces and suspending the salaries of some government employees who have not been vaccinated.
(SFC, 6/16/21, p.A4)
2021 Jun 15, In Russia Catherine Serou (34) a US citizen and former Marine studying at a university in Nizhny Novgorod, disappeared after leaving her house in a suburb of the city and entering an unknown vehicle. Local police on June 19 announced that her body was found. Suspect Alexander Popov, born in 1977 with prior convictions, was arrested on suspicion of abducting and murdering her an hour before Serou's body was found.
(Axios, 6/19/21)(Fox News, 6/23/21)
2021 Jun 15, Saudi Arabia executed Mustafa bin Hashim bin Isa al-Darwish (26). He was convicted on charges stemming from his participation in an anti-government rebellion by minority Shiites. He was detained in 2015 for alleged participation in riots between 2011 and 2012.
(AP, 6/15/21)
2021 Jun 15, An appeals court in Slovakia dismissed a lower court's acquittal of a businessman accused of masterminding the 2018 slayings of an investigative journalist and his fiancée. The case will return to the Specialized Criminal Court in Pezinok, which ruled in September to clear businessman Marian Kocner and one co-defendant of murder.
(AP, 6/15/21)
2021 Jun 15, In Somalia a suicide bomber killed at least 10 people at an army training camp in Mogadishu.
(BBC, 6/15/21)
2021 Jun 15, Officials said Sri Lanka's government is seeking help from the UN and other countries in assessing the environmental damage caused by a fire on a container ship carrying chemicals that is sinking off its capital. The 12-day fire on the MV X-Press Pearl ravaged the vessel, destroyed most of its cargo and caused severe pollution in the ocean and along a long stretch of the island nation’s famed beaches.
(AP, 6/15/21)
2021 Jun 15, Sudan and the PLM-N, the country's main rebel group, agreed to end negotiations and conduct further consultations over their disputed points.
(AP, 6/15/21)
2021 Jun 15, A UNICEF report said escalating gang violence has pushed nearly 8,500 women and children from their homes in Haiti’s capital in the past two weeks.
(AP, 6/15/21)
2021 Jun 16, President Joe Biden finished his summit in Geneva with Russia's Pres. Putin with few of the "deliverables" — concrete outcomes — that diplomatic negotiators obsess over. The two leaders mostly agreed to set up a process for lower-level aides to keep talking about key issues. Biden and Putin agreed to return their respective ambassadors to Washington and Moscow in a bid to improve badly deteriorated diplomatic relations between their countries.
(AP, 6/16/21)(NBC News, 6/17/21)
2021 Jun 16, US special envoy for climate John Kerry said the United States is planning to increase funding to Egypt to help it convert to solar energy and move away from fossil fuels.
(AP, 6/16/21)
2021 Jun 16, The US Education Department said that transgender students were protected under Title IX, a law that prohibits sex-based discrimination in federally funded schools, reversing a Trump-era policy that effectively had said the opposite.
(NY Times, 6/16/21)
2021 Jun 16, The US Education Department said that it is erasing student debt for 18,000 borrowers who attended the for-profit college ITT Technical Institute that closed in 2016 following sanctions for exaggerating claims about its graduation success.
(SFC, 6/17/21, p.A4)
2021 Jun 16, Total US COVID-19 cases reached over 33,487,415 with the death toll at 600,313.
(sfist.com, 6/17/21)
2021 Jun 16, In San Francisco Anh Taylor (94) was stabbed multiple times during an unprovoked attack. Suspect Daniel Cauich (35) was arrested less than two hours later.
(Washington Examiner, 6/17/21)
2021 Jun 16, Merle Smith Jr. (b.1944), the first Black cadet to graduate from the US Coast Guard Academy, died in Connecticut. During the Vietnam War he was the first Black officer to command a US warship in close quarters combat.
(SSFC, 6/26/21, p.F8)
2021 Jun 16, Fifty officers who serve on a specialized crowd control unit in Portland, Oregon, who have responded to the city’s ongoing, often violent protests, voted to resign en masse after criminal charges were filed a day earlier against a team member. Officer Cody Budworth, was indicted, accused of fourth-degree assault stemming from a baton strike against a protester last summer.
(AP, 6/17/21)(SFC, 6/18/21, p.A4)
2021 Jun 16, South Carolina's Supreme Court blocked the planned execution of two inmates by electrocution, saying they cannot be put to death until they truly have the choice of the firing squad option set out in the state's newly revised capital punishment law.
(SFC, 6/17/21, p.A4)
2021 Jun 16, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law a bill allowing people to carry concealed handguns without any permit, joining 20 other states that already have such measures.
(Reuters, 6/17/21)
2021 Jun 16, Moderna said the US government has bought another 200 million doses of its COVID-19 vaccine, including an option to buy experimental shots that may be in development.
(Reuters, 6/16/21)
2021 Jun 16, Royal Caribbean Group said it would delay the inaugural sailing of its Odyssey of the Seas cruise liner by nearly a month after 8 crew members tested positive for COVID-19.
(Reuters, 6/16/21)
2021 Jun 16, A US hospital in Rhode Island gave the first infusion of an expensive, controversial new Alzheimer's drug from Biogen Inc before Medicare had even said what it will pay for. Mark Archambault (70) was the first patient treated with the drug, Aduhelm, outside of a clinical trial.
(Reuters, 6/16/21)
2021 Jun 16, Self-driving truck technology company TuSimple Holdings Inc said it will open a new Texas facility that will enable it to put trucks to work hauling freight on the roads of the southeastern US states within six months.
(Reuters, 6/16/21)
2021 Jun 16, Astronauts ventured out on a spacewalk to outfit the International Space Station with powerful, new solar panels to handle the growing electrical demands from upcoming visitors.
(AP, 6/16/21)
2021 Jun 16, Britain's government said it will require COVID-19 vaccinations for nursing home workers in England, arguing that the need to protect vulnerable residents outweighed employees' right to choose whether to get the jab.
(AP, 6/16/21)
2021 Jun 16, A junior finance minister said Britain's government said it will extend until March 2022 a ban on evictions of businesses that stopped paying rent due to the coronavirus crisis.
(Reuters, 6/16/21)
2021 Jun 16, British lawyer Karim Khan was sworn in as the new chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Court, pledging to reach out to nations that are not members of the court in his quest to end impunity for atrocities and to try to hold trials in countries where crimes are committed.
(AP, 6/16/21)
2021 Jun 16, China's government said the No. 1 reactor of the Taishan Nuclear Power Plant in Guangdong had five broken fuel rods but that no radioactivity had leaked.
(SFC, 6/17/21, p.A4)
2021 Jun 16, As of today Ethiopia has seen 274,346 confirmed Covid cases and 4,250 deaths.
(BBC, 6/17/21)
2021 Jun 16, EU members agreed to add the US to the list of countries for which they should gradually remove restrictions on non-essential travel. The recommendation is non-binding, and national governments have authority to require test results or vaccination records and to set other entry conditions.
(AP, 6/16/21)
2021 Jun 16, France eased several COVID-19 restrictions, with authorities saying it's no longer always mandatory to wear masks outdoors and halting an 8-month nightly coronavirus curfew this weekend.
(AP, 6/16/21)
2021 Jun 16, It was reported that Germany's finance minister has ordered the purchase of data on Germans with assets in Dubai as part of efforts to combat tax evasion, following similar purchases by regional authorities of data from Switzerland in the past decade.
(AP, 6/16/21)
2021 Jun 16, The German company CureVac delivered disappointing preliminary results from a clinical trial of its Covid-19 vaccine, dimming hopes that it could help fill the world’s great need.
(NY Times, 6/16/21)
2021 Jun 16, Hundreds of Hong Kong police officers raided the newsroom of Mr. Lai’s defiantly pro-democracy newspaper, Apple Daily, scrutinized journalists’ computers, arrested top editors, froze company accounts and warned readers not to repost some of its articles online.
(NY Times, 6/16/21)
2021 Jun 16, India's Health Ministry reported 62,224 new infections over the past 24 hours as well as 2,542 more deaths, raising total fatalities to 379, 573.
(SFC, 6/17/21, p.A3)
2021 Jun 16, In Iran Shahram Safari, a Kurdish freelance reporter, was sentenced to three months in prison by a municipal court in Kermanshah for reporting on the true extent of the country's COVID-19 outbreak.
(Insider, 7/7/21)
2021 Jun 16, The Israeli military conducted airstrikes in the Gaza Strip early today, after officials said that the militant group Hamas had sent incendiary balloons into southern Israel from Gaza. The Israeli military said it is reining in a controversial practice of conducting late-night raids of Palestinian homes in the West Bank aimed at gathering information about the houses and their inhabitants.
(NY Times, 6/15/21)(AP, 6/16/21)
2021 Jun 16, Palestinian woman Mai Afaneh (28) was shot and killed by Israeli troops, allegedly after carrying out an attempted car-ramming attack.
(AP, 6/16/21)
2021 Jun 16, Moscow made coronavirus vaccines mandatory for people working in retail, education and other service sectors, part of an effort to boost the country's low immunization rates as COVID-19 cases continue to soar. The surrounding Moscow region, the Siberian region of Kemerovo and the Far East region of Sakhalin promptly followed.
(AP, 6/17/21)
2021 Jun 16, Spain Princess of Asturias award in the International Aid category went to the Campaign for Female Education (CAMFED), a consortium of non-profit groups that aims to reduce poverty in Africa through educating more girls and empowering women.
(AP, 6/16/21)
2021 Jun 16, Ukrainian police said they have uncovered a ring of computer hackers responsible for cyberattacks that targeted universities in the United States and firms in South Korea, causing half a billion dollars in damage. Ukraine's cyber police announced they had arrested six people involved with Cl0p, and seized a number of computers, cars and about 5 million Ukrainian hryvnia ($185,000) in cash.
(AP, 6/16/21)(NBC News, 6/16/21)
2021 Jun 16, Vietnam reported 423 new coronavirus cases, the highest number of new infections reported since the start of its latest outbreak late in April. Vietnam has recorded 11,635 infections overall and 61 fatalities.
(Reuters, 6/16/21)
2021 Jun 17, President Joe Biden signed a bill that was passed by Congress to set aside Juneteenth, or June 19th, as a federal holiday. Union Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger and his troops arrived at Galveston on June 19, 1865, with news that the war had ended and that the enslaved were now free. The next year, the now-free people started celebrating Juneteenth in Galveston.
(AP, 6/17/21)
2021 Jun 17, The US Supreme Court embraced religious rights over LGBT rights by ruling 9-0 in favor of a Catholic Church-affiliated agency that sued after Philadelphia refused to place children for foster care with the organization because it barred same-sex couples from applying to become foster parents.
(Reuters, 6/17/21)
2021 Jun 17, Total US COVID-19 cases reached over 33,500,304 with the death toll at 600,676.
(sfist.com, 6/18/21)
2021 Jun 17, In Arizona a gunman opened fire on vehicles and pedestrians for 90 minutes across suburban Phoenix, leaving one person dead and dozens others injured. Police soon arrested Ashin Tricarico (19) of the town of Surprise. He allegedly told police he believed people were after him in the wake of a separate shooting he was involved in while working at a restaurant last month.
(https://tinyurl.com/443hc6aa)(SFC, 6/19/21, p.A3)
2021 Jun 17, California and Texas urged consumers to conserve energy this week to reduce stress on the grid and avoid outages as homes and businesses crank up air conditioners to escape a scorching heatwave blanketing the US Southwest.
(Reuters, 6/17/21)
2021 Jun 17, Carol Easton (87), American arts biographer, died at her home in Venice, Ca. Her books included ""Straight Ahead: The Story of Stan Kenton" (1973), "The Search for Sam Goldwyn" (1976), "Jacqueline du Pré: A Biography" (1989) and "No Intermissions: The Life Story of Agnes de Mille" (1996).
(SSFC, 7/25/21, p.F7)
2021 Jun 17, In Georgia a Holly Springs police officer died this morning after a car dragged him during a traffic stop. The driver of the vehicle, Ansy Dolce (29) of Cherokee County, was shot and killed by an officer in the incident.
(NBC News, 6/17/21)
2021 Jun 17, After more than 18 years in prison and two decades spent without being formally declared innocent of the charges against him, Charles Fain (72) received compensation. He received a declaration of innocence from the state of Idaho last week.
(AP, 6/18/21)
2021 Jun 17, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker announced that the state will offer $7 million in cash prizes and $3 million in scholarships through a new lottery open to all residents who have received at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose.
(SFC, 6/18/21, p.A5)
2021 Jun 17, A patch of virtual land in the blockchain-based online world Decentraland sold for more than $900,000, in a record purchase for the platform. The purchase was made using MANA, Decentraland's own cryptocurrency. The land cost 1,295,000 MANA, which was worth $913,228.2 at the time of sale. Decentraland is a user-owned, Ethereum-based virtual world where you can play, explore, and interact with games and activities.
(https://tinyurl.com/2z4y4chj)(Reuters, 6/18/21)
2021 Jun 17, US electric vehicle startup Canoo said it would build an assembly plant in Oklahoma that was scheduled to open in 2023 and until then would use VDL Nedcar in Netherlands as its contract manufacturer.
(Reuters, 6/17/21)
2021 Jun 17, US medical equipment maker Danaher Corp said it would buy privately held biotech company Aldevron in an all-cash deal for about $9.6 billion, snapping up a supplier to COVID-19 vaccine maker Moderna Inc.
(AP, 6/17/21)
2021 Jun 17, Three weeks of online international climate talks ended with no breakthroughs made on key issues.
(AP, 6/17/21)
2021 Jun 17, The US Embassy in Kabul went into lockdown citing a surge in coronavirus cases.
(SFC, 6/18/21, p.A5)
2021 Jun 17, A UK-US trade deal suspended Scotch whisky tariffs for five years.
(SFC, 6/18/21, p.B2)
2021 Jun 17, Britain's medicine regulator extended the emergency use approval (EUA) for Innova's lateral flow COVID-19 tests, saying it was satisfied with a review of the tests after its US counterpart issued a warning about them.
(Reuters, 6/17/21)
2021 Jun 17, Britain reported its biggest daily rise in new cases of COVID-19 since Feb. 19. Government figures showed 11,007 new infections, up from 9,055 the day before.
(Reuters, 6/17/21)
2021 Jun 17, Three Chinese astronauts docked in space to help build a rival to the International Space Station.
(NY Times, 6/17/21)
2021 Jun 17, Germany-based Lufthansa said it will allow passengers to use new digital COVID-19 vaccination certificates at check-in for their flights.
(Reuters, 6/17/21)
2021 Jun 17, In Lebanon shops, government offices, businesses and banks shuttered their doors as part of a general strike to protest deteriorating economic conditions and press for a government to deal with the worsening political and economic crises.
(AP, 6/17/21)
2021 Jun 17, Nepal reported 2,607 new coronavirus cases along with 39 deaths. The health minister said Nepal has significantly reduced coronavirus infections after its worst outbreak, which overwhelmed the country’s medical system, but is in desperate need of vaccines.
(AP, 6/17/21)
2021 Jun 17, The Northern Ireland Assembly confirmed Paul Givan as first minister. Michelle O'Neill of Sinn Fein was reappointed deputy first minister.
(SFC, 6/18/21, p.A2)
2021 Jun 17, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un ordered his government to be prepared for both dialogue and confrontation with the Biden administration — but more for confrontation.
(AP, 6/18/21)
2021 Jun 17, Palestinian teenager Ahmad Shamsa (15) died of a gunshot wound after being shot a day earlier by Israeli troops in the occupied West Bank during a protest against a settlement outpost. He was the fourth demonstrator to be killed since the outpost was established last month.
(AP, 6/17/21)
2021 Jun 17, Russian President Vladimir Putin praised the outcome of his summit with US President Joe Biden and called him an astute and shrewd negotiator.
(AP, 6/17/21)
2021 Jun 17, Moscow's Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said the COVID-19 situation was unexpectedly and rapidly deteriorating, and that the city was probably facing new coronavirus variants that were more aggressive and infectious.
(AP, 6/17/21)
2021 Jun 17, A doctor in Somalia's semi-autonomous region of Puntland said that between five and 10 of his Covid patients were dying because of a lack of oxygen almost every day. In Somalia up to 25 people were dying each day in one hospital because of a lack of oxygen.
(BBC, 6/17/21)
2021 Jun 17, A migrant boat believed to be carrying 45 passengers capsized late today near Spain’s Canary Islands. 41 people, including 19 women and seven children, were rescued. Three adults and boy were drowned.
(AP, 6/18/21)
2021 Jun 17, In Sri Lanka the Singapore-flagged MV X-Press Pearl ship sank off the country's main port and nearly a month after the vessel caught fire.
(AP, 6/18/21)
2021 Jun 17, In western Turkey a gunman killed Deniz Poyraz, a female party employee, during an attack on the office of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party in Izmir province. A former health worker was detained.
(AP, 6/17/21)
2021 Jun 17, Kenneth Kaunda (97), Zambia's first president (1964-1991) and a key figure in its independence struggle, died.
(BBC, 6/17/21)
2021 Jun 18, The DJIA fell 1% after Federal Reserve official James Bullard said inflation was stronger than anticipated and it would take the central bank several meetings to figure out how to pare back stimulus.
(Reuters, 6/18/21)
2021 Jun 18, Total US COVID-19 cases reached over 33,510,835 with the death toll at 600,970.
(sfist.com, 6/19/21)
2021 Jun 18, The US Southwest baked under an unrelenting heatwave for a fifth day, putting power systems to the test as more records were expected to be broken before a moderating trend sets in next week. The National Weather Service issued excessive heat warnings for five states - California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona and part of Colorado.
(Reuters, 6/18/21)
2021 Jun 18, It was reported that a years-long aerial survey commissioned by California air-quality regulators found "super-emitter" landfills accounted for 43% the measured emissions of the potent greenhouse gas methane - outpacing the fossil-fuel and agricultural sectors.
(AP, 6/18/21)
2021 Jun 18, The Orlando Police Department announced the arrest of 53 fentanyl dealers in a 9-month investigation they named, "Operation Good Call".
(Fox News, 6/19/21)
2021 Jun 18, Oregon authorities searched for suspect Oen Nicholson (30) accused in a deadly hit-and-run and two fatal shootings. Police later found Charles Nicholson (83) dead inside a travel trailer in the same RV park where the hit-and-run occurred.
(Fox News, 6/20/21)
2021 Jun 18, It was reported that more than a quarter-million allegedly illegal marijuana plants were seized and destroyed in the span of a week from eight properties across two Southern Oregon counties.
(Tribune Publ., 6/18/21)
2021 Jun 18, A Fort Bliss, Texas, soldier was convicted at an Army court-martial hearing of sexually assaulting a fellow soldier and another unnamed woman. Pfc. Christian Alvarado was sentenced by a military judge to 18 years and three months in prison.
(Fox News, 6/18/21)
2021 Jun 18, Argentine laboratory Richmond said that it had produced almost half a million doses of the Russian Sputnik V vaccine against the coronavirus, the first made in the country.
(Reuters, 6/18/21)
2021 Jun 18, A former Australian spy was convicted over his unconfirmed role as a whistleblower who revealed an espionage operation against the government of East Timor in 2004. The Canberra court registry listed him as "Witness K".
(AP, 6/19/21)
2021 Jun 18, In Belgium a school undergoing construction work collapsed in the city of Antwerp, killing five workers and injuring nine others.
(AP, 6/20/21)
2021 Jun 18, Canadian officials said border restrictions will be extended with the US until July 21 as Canada works to get a higher percentage of its citizens fully vaccinated.
(SFC, 6/19/21, p.A4)
2021 Jun 18, China reported 30 new confirmed COVID-19 cases on the mainland for today, up from 23 infections a day earlier. Total confirmed COVID-19 cases in mainland China stood at 91,564 at the end of today, with the death toll unchanged at 4,636.
(Reuters, 6/19/21)
2021 Jun 18, Iran held presidential elections. Many Iranians boycotted the election after top officials disqualified most viable candidates except one. Hardliner Ebrahim Raisi (60) was the favorite to succeed Hassan Rouhani. Raisi is under US sanctions for alleged involvement in executions of political prisoners decades ago. Raisi secured a landslide victory after a contest marked by voter apathy over economic hardships and political restrictions.
(Reuters, 6/18/21)(Reuters, 6/19/21)
2021 Jun 18, In Myanmar at least two explosions rocked a neighborhood in Yangon killing two people and destroying a military truck.
(SFC, 6/19/21, p.A3)
2021 Jun 18, Namibian traditional leader, Vekuii Rukoro, the paramount chief of the OvaHererero people, died of COVID-19. He had led international legal battles to bring Germany to pay reparations for its genocide in the southern African country.
(AP, 6/18/21)
2021 Jun 18, It was reported that Nigeria's Central Bank is preparing a digital currency pilot that could launch as early as the end of this year.
(AP, 6/18/21)
2021 Jun 18, Poland's de facto leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski said top Polish government officials have been hit by a far-reaching cyber attack conducted from Russian territory.
(Reuters, 6/18/21)
2021 Jun 18, Moscow recorded more than 9,000 new coronavirus cases, over half the national total. The city has had to reintroduce curbs that had been scrapped, including ordering bars and restaurants to shut by 11 p.m.
(Reuters, 6/18/21)
2021 Jun 18, Spain's BBVA said it was launching a bitcoin trading service for private banking clients in Switzerland interested in digital asset investment.
(Reuters, 6/18/21)
2021 Jun 18, A Swiss court found Alieu Kosiah (46) guilty of war crimes. He became the first Liberian to be convicted over the country's civil war (1989-2003). He was sentenced to 20 years for crimes including murder and rape.
(AP, 6/18/21)
2021 Jun 18, Turkey's inoculations passed the 40 million mark and 40% of adults had had at least one dose.
(Reuters, 6/18/21)
2021 Jun 18, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was appointed for a second-five year-term by the 193-member UN General Assembly.
(Reuters, 6/18/21)
2021 Jun 18, The World Health Organization's chief scientist said the Delta variant of COVID-19, first identified in India, is becoming the globally dominant variant of the disease.
(Reuters, 6/18/21)
2021 Jun 18, In Yemen Houthi forces launched attacks on several frontline areas in the outskirts of Marib. The fighting led to casualties among Yemeni government forces.
(AP, 6/20/21)
2021 Jun 19, Total US COVID-19 cases reached over 33,520,411 with the death toll at 600,970.
(sfist.com, 6/20/21)
2021 Jun 19, Tropical Storm Claudette dumped heavy rain across the US Gulf Coast from Louisiana to Florida as it chugged inland, triggering flash floods and tornado warnings along its soggy course across the Southeast. Tropical storm warnings were in effect for parts of Louisiana, Alabama, and Florida. Claudette left 14 dead as the storm continued to batter and flood parts of the US Southeast as it moved toward the Atlantic Coast and a predicted re-strengthening. A suspected tornado demolished or badly damaged at least 50 homes near the Alabama towns of Brewton and East Brewton.
(SFC, 6/19/21, p.A5)(USA Today, 6/20/21)(AP, 6/20/21)(SSFC, 6/26/21, p.B8)
2021 Jun 19, In the SF Bay Area a shooting near a Juneteenth celebration in Oakland this evening left at least one person dead and several others wounded. Two armed men seen running from the scene were arrested.
(Fox News, 6/19/21)
2021 Jun 19, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis (D) signed three gun reform bills into law. The legislation expands firearm background checks, creates a dedicated office for gun violence prevention and allows municipalities to have even stricter gun laws than the state.
(Axios, 6/19/21)
2021 Jun 19, In Florida one person died and another was injured after a pickup truck ran into a crowd of spectators at a Pride parade in Fort Lauderdale.
(Reuters, 6/19/21)
2021 Jun 19, Anti-government activist Ammon Bundy came out with his first videos announcing his campaign to become governor of Idaho.
(AP, 6/19/21)
2021 Jun 19, In Michigan a 19-year-old woman was killed after allegedly exchanging gunfire with a police officer near a Juneteenth parade in Flint.
(NBC News, 6/19/21)
2021 Jun 19, Afghanistan received 900 oxygen cylinders from Iran, part of 3,800 that Iran has promised to deliver to Kabul, as a 3rd wave of COVID-19 worsens in the country.
(SSFC, 6/20/21, p.A14)
2021 Jun 19, Australia's largest state New South Wales (NSW) recorded two locally acquired coronavirus cases, as concerns grow over the further spread of infections amid an increase in exposure sites.
(Reuters, 6/19/21)
2021 Jun 19, Brazil's death toll from COVID-19 soared past 500,000. Experts warned that the outbreak may worsen due to delayed vaccinations and the government's refusal to back social distancing measures. Thousands gathered in Rio de Janeiro, waving flags reading “Get out Bolsonaro." Other marchers hoisted posters reading: "500 thousand deaths. It’s his fault".
(Reuters, 6/19/21)(AP, 6/20/21)
2021 Jun 19, Cambodia reported 20 deaths from COVID-19, a record for a single day, as the country detected its first Delta variant cases and authorities urged people to be vigilant. The outbreak has caused infections to climb to 42,052 cases with 414 deaths.
(Reuters, 6/19/21)
2021 Jun 19, The airport in China's southern city of Shenzhen said that anyone entering the premises must show a negative virus test taken within 48 hours before entry.
(AP, 6/19/21)
2021 Jun 19, Dozens of human rights advocates briefly blocked Croatia’s border with Bosnia to protest the European Union’s migration policies.
(AP, 6/19/21)
2021 Jun 19, In the Czech Rep. a Roma man died in Teplice after a Czech police officer responding to a call over an altercation knelt on his neck. On June 23 the Council of Europe demanded a thorough and independent investigation into the death.
(AP, 6/23/21)
2021 Jun 19, A tenth of Denmark's nurses, around 5,400, went on strike after union members voted against a pay deal that their union leadership had approved.
(https://tinyurl.com/nknued8s)(Reuters, 7/12/21)
2021 Jun 19, It was reported that Guinea has declared an end to an Ebola outbreak that emerged in February and killed 12 people.
(AP, 6/19/21)
2021 Jun 19, India reported 60,753 new COVID-19 cases and 1,647 deaths over the past 24 hours. The central government urged states to be careful in reopening from COVID-19 lockdowns to prevent a resurgence of infections in the hard-hit country.
(Reuters, 6/19/21)
2021 Jun 19, A boat collision killed an Italian couple who were also out on Lake Garda for an evening of relaxation. On March 21, 2022, a court in northern Italy convicted two German men of manslaughter for a boat collision. Prosecutors alleged that the tourists from Munich were drunk and speeding in the boat.
(AP, 3/21/22)
2021 Jun 19, Myanmar’s Foreign Ministry rejected a UN General Assembly resolution calling for an arms embargo against the Southeast Asian nation and condemning the military's February seizure of power.
(AP, 6/19/21)
2021 Jun 19, In Myanmar supporters of detained leader Aung San Suu Kyi wore flowers in their hair and paraded with them at street demonstrations as she marked her 76th birthday locked up by the generals who overthrew her.
(Reuters, 6/19/21)
2021 Jun 19, In Peru supporters of socialist Pedro Castillo and conservative Keiko Fujimori took to the streets by the thousands, as tensions rose over the result of the June 6 presidential election.
(Reuters, 6/19/21)
2021 Jun 19, It was reported that the Philippine government has signed a supply agreement for 40 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer Inc and BioNTech SE in its biggest coronavirus vaccine deal to date.
(Reuters, 6/19/21)
2021 Jun 19, A member of Uganda's Olympic squad became the first to test positive for Covid-19 on arrival in Japan for the competition due to start on 23 July. The unnamed Ugandan was part of a nine-member squad that had been fully vaccinated.
(BBC, 6/20/21)
2021 Jun 19, The UN representative in Sri Lanka said the sinking of a container ship that caught fire while transporting chemicals off the capital Colombo has caused “a significant damage to the planet" by releasing hazardous substances into the ecosystem.
(AP, 6/19/21)
2021 Jun 20, Total US COVID-19 cases reached over 33,539,482 with the death toll at 601,796.
(sfist.com, 6/21/21)
2021 Jun 20, In southern California Jon Rahm (26) won the US Open at Torrey Pines by a single stroke in a dramatic finish.
(NY Times, 6/20/21)
2021 Jun 20, A tornado swept through Chicago's western suburbs late today, damaging more than 100 homes and injuring several people. It was packing 140 mph (225 kph) winds when it hit the heavily populated area.
(AP, 6/22/21)
2021 Jun 20, Richard A. Balsimo (34) of St. Paul, was reported missing by his family. On Aug. 16 Jacob C. Johnson (35) of Superior, Wis., was charged in Cook County District Court with second-degree intentional murder in connection with the death of Balsimo. Johnson was charged with firing the gunshots that killed Balsimo, whose body was then dismembered and dropped into the waters of Lake Superior off the northernmost reaches of Minnesota's shoreline.
(Minneapolis Star Tribune, 8/17/21)
2021 Jun 20, In Afghanistan the Taliban seized the entrance of Kunduz before dispersing throughout its neighborhoods. Taliban fighters also appeared at the entrance of Maimana, the capital of Faryab Province, before moving into the city’s periphery.
(NY Times, 6/20/21)
2021 Jun 20, Armenia held parliamentary elections. PM Nikol Pashinyan called the early election, seeking to assuage public anger over the peace deal he signed in November with Azerbaijan that triggered months of protests demanding his resignation. The party of acting PM Nikol Pashinyan won the snap elections.
(AP, 6/20/21)
2021 Jun 20, Top diplomats in Vienna said further progress had been made at a 6th round of talks between Iran and global powers to try to negotiate and restore a landmark 2015 agreement to contain Iranian nuclear development that was later abandoned by the Trump administration. Iran will continue talks aimed at reviving a nuclear deal during its transition to a new government.
(AP, 6/20/21)(Bloomberg, 6/20/21)
2021 Jun 20, Belgian police found the body of Jurgen Conings (46), a fugitive soldier who went missing a month ago with a stash of weapons after threatening a virologist and his family.
(Reuters, 6/20/21)
2021 Jun 20, China's National Health Commission announced that more than one billion doses of COVID-19 vaccine have been administered in the country.
(SFC, 6/21/21, p.A4)
2021 Jun 20, French voters went to the polls in regional elections that will test the appeal of far-right leader Marine Le Pen's softened image less than a year before the next presidential election with a record low turnout expected. Exit polls showed that the far right performed worse than predicted in the regional elections and the center-right made a comeback while the vote as a whole was impacted by a high abstention rate.
(Reuters, 6/20/21)
2021 Jun 20, Tokyo reported 376 cases of Covid and one death, 72 more than a week ago.
(BBC, 6/20/21)
2021 Jun 20, Libya’s interim authorities reopened the Mediterranean coastal highway linking the country’s long-divided eastern and western cities, in the latest bid to reunite the territories after years of civil war.
(AP, 6/20/21)
2021 Jun 20, Nicaraguan police arrested journalist Miguel Mora late today for alleged crimes against the state, similar to the announced charges against others arrested during the past month. Mora was previously arrested in December 2018 and held for nearly six months before being released.
(AP, 6/21/21)
2021 Jun 20, In Portugal preliminary data showed that over half the new COVID-19 cases being reported in the Lisbon region are of the more infectious Delta coronavirus variant, as authorities scrambled to curb a worrying spike in infections. Portugal posted over 1,000 new COVID-19 cases for the fourth straight day.
(Reuters, 6/20/21)
2021 Jun 20, The South African government said that stones found in a village last month are not diamonds but quartz. A cattle herder first uncovered the stones in KwaZulu-Natal province. This prompted thousands to rush to KwaHlathi village, more than 300km (186 miles) south-east of Johannesburg.
(BBC, 6/20/21)
2021 Jun 20, Taiwan welcomed 2.5 million COVID-19 vaccine doses from the US as help from a true friend. The new doses will more than double the number of vaccines that have come to the island, including 1.24 million AstraZeneca Plc shots donated by Japan this month.
(Reuters, 6/20/21)
2021 Jun 20, It was reported that Uganda is strengthening its lockdown measures to try to stem a surge in coronavirus infections. The new measures, including closed shops in downtown Kampala, will last 42 days.
(SSFC, 6/20/21, p.A14)
2021 Jun 20, Vietnam said it has received a shipment of 500,000 Sinopharm vaccine doses donated by China, as the country ramped up inoculations to battle against a more widespread outbreak.
(Reuters, 6/20/21)
2021 Jun 20, In Yemen Saudi-led coalition airstrikes responded to attacks by Houthi forces in the outskirts of Marib.
(AP, 6/20/21)
2021 Jun 21, The Biden administration announced that it is extending for another year a more than decade old executive order declaring a national emergency over the nuclear threat from North Korea.
(Axios, 6/21/21)
2021 Jun 21, The White House laid out a plan to share 55 million US COVID-19 vaccine doses globally, with roughly 75 percent of the doses allocated to Latin America and the Caribbean, Asia and Africa through the COVAX international vaccine-sharing program.
(AP, 6/21/21)
2021 Jun 21, The United States imposed sanctions on more than a dozen Belarusian individuals and entities, joining Britain, Canada and the European Union in applying pressure for human rights abuses and the erosion of democracy.
(Reuters, 6/21/21)
2021 Jun 21, A US federal judge dismissed most claims filed by activists and civil liberties groups who accused the Trump administration of violating the civil rights of protesters who were forcefully removed last June by police before then-President Donald Trump walked to a church near the White House for a photo op.
(AP, 6/21/21)
2021 Jun 21, In a unanimous ruling the US Supreme Court said that the NCAA, which governs college sports, could not prohibit student-athletes from receiving modest, education-related payments.
(NY Times, 6/22/21)
2021 Jun 21, Carl Nassib of the Las Vegas Raiders became the first active N.F.L. player to publicly say he is gay. “I finally feel comfortable enough to get it off my chest," he said.
(AP, 6/22/21)
2021 Jun 21, Total US COVID-19 cases reached over 33,553,434 with the death toll at 602,069.
(sfist.com, 6/22/21)
2021 Jun 21, In Massachusetts the Town Council of Amherst voted 12-1 to create a fund to pay reparations to Black residents.
(SFC, 6/25/21, p.A7)
2021 Jun 21, In Missouri 3 people were killed and four others were injured in a shooting in St. Louis.
(NBC News, 6/22/21)
2021 Jun 21, Bitcoin tumbled almost 10% as recent volatility in the cryptocurrency market showed no signs of dampening down, with market players citing jitters over China's expanding crackdown on bitcoin mining in thin liquidity for the losses.
(Reuters, 6/21/21)
2021 Jun 21, CNH Industrial said it expects its $2.1 billion purchase of South Dakota based Raven Industries Inc. will give it an edge in innovating autonomous technology in agriculture vehicles. The Italian-American agriculture vehicle manufacturer said it has acquired 100% of the capital stock of Raven Industries for $58 per share.
(AP, 6/21/21)
2021 Jun 21, Gilead Sciences Inc said an analysis showed its antiviral remdesivir reduced mortality rates in hospitalized patients with COVID-19 and increased the likelihood of being discharged by day 28 after a five-day course of the treatment.
(Reuters, 6/21/21)
2021 Jun 21, GlaxoSmithKline Plc and Vir Biotechnology said final results from a late-stage study of their monoclonal antibody confirmed it significantly reduced hospitalization and death among high-risk COVID-19 patients when given early in the disease.
(Reuters, 6/21/21)
2021 Jun 21, Intel Corp said it will work with India's Reliance Jio to develop 5G networking technology.
(Reuters, 6/21/21)
2021 Jun 21, Argentina and Mexico recalled their ambassadors to Nicaragua for consultations, a day after President Daniel Ortega's government arrested yet another presidential contender ahead of the Nov. 7 elections.
(AP, 6/21/21)
2021 Jun 19, Sazgin Baran Korkmaz, a Turkish businessman, was arrested in Austria by the US Justice Dept. in connection with a biodiesel fraud scheme operated by a Utah business that stole nearly $500 million in government funds. Korkmaz was suspected of laundering over $133 million through bank accounts he controlled in Turkey and Luxembourg.
(SFC, 6/23/21, p.B3)
2021 Jun 21, It was reported that Brazil's new "Bolsa Familia" welfare payments to the poor will average below 300 reais ($59.50) a month. The revamped nationwide program is expected to come into effect in December this year or early next year, and average payments are certain to be increased from the current 190 reais a month.
(Reuters, 6/21/21)
2021 Jun 21, Dozens of people ignored advice not to travel to Stonehenge for the annual summer solstice celebrations, which were cancelled today due to coronavirus concerns.
(AP, 6/21/21)
2021 Jun 21, China's central bank said it had recently summoned some banks and payment firms, including China Construction Bank and Alipay, urging them to crack down harder on cryptocurrency trading.
(Reuters, 6/21/21)
2021 Jun 21, China's manufacturing hub of Dongguan in Guangdong province launched mass coronavirus testing and cordoned off communities, after the city detected its first infections of a flare-up in the province.
(Reuters, 6/21/21)
2021 Jun 21, Cuba said its three-shot Abdala vaccine against the coronavirus had proved 92.28% effective in last-stage clinical trials.
(Reuters, 6/21/21)
2021 Jun 21, Ethiopians voted in key elections amid rising tensions and a conflict in the northern Tigray region. The vote has been postponed in Tigray, where the army has been fighting a local force since November. PM Abiy Ahmed said he was working with the Eritrean troops to get them to leave but said he would not "push them out".
(AP, 6/21/21)(BBC, 6/22/21)
2021 Jun 21, A German trade union called on workers at seven Amazon warehouses to go on a 3-day strike over better pay and working conditions to coincide with the global Prime Day promotion.
(AP, 6/21/21)
2021 Jun 21, Hong Kong’s embattled pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily reported that its board of directors has asked authorities to unfreeze some assets so it can pay salaries and avoid labor violations, and that the board will meet again on June 25 to decide if the newspaper will cease operations.
(AP, 6/21/21)
2021 Jun 21, President-elect Ebrahim Raisi backed talks between Iran and six world powers to revive a 2015 nuclear deal but flatly rejected meeting US President Joe Biden.
(Reuters, 6/21/21)
2021 Jun 21, India registered 53,256 new coronavirus infections and 1,422 deaths in the last 24 hours, its lowest numbers in nearly three months.
(SFC, 6/22/21, p.A4)
2021 Jun 21, Indonesia's health authorities announced the country's largest one-day jump in new coronavirus infections. 14,536 were reported with 294 deaths.
(SFC, 6/22/21, p.A4)
2021 Jun 21, Italy reported 21 coronavirus-related deaths against 17 the day before. The daily tally of new infections fell to 495 from 881. Italy has registered 127,291 deaths linked to COVID-19 since its outbreak emerged in February last year, the second-highest toll in Europe after Britain and the eight-highest in the world. The country has reported 4.25 million cases to date.
(Reuters, 6/21/21)
2021 Jun 21, The Atomic Energy Organization of Iran said its sole nuclear power plant is experiencing an emergency shutdown due to a "technical fault".
(Business Insider, 6/21/21)
2021 Jun 21, Israel eased some restrictions on the Gaza Strip that have threatened a fragile cease-fire. Hamas, however, said the move was really Israel's attempt to pressure the militant group into making concessions.
(AP, 6/21/21)
2021 Jun 21, The Israeli military said it has successfully tested an airborne high-power laser that can shoot down drones, technology it hopes to deploy on a larger scale in the coming years.
(AP, 6/21/21)
2021 Jun 21, Demonstrators blocked a highway connecting Lebanon and Syria with burned tires and metal bars, protesting a decision by Lebanese authorities aimed at curbing smuggling into Syria.
(AP, 6/21/21)
2021 Jun 21, Myanmar's junta-controlled health ministry reported 595 cases of COVID-19 as daily infections hit the highest since the army seized power in a coup that prompted many medical workers to abandon the health service and anti-coronavirus program.
(Reuters, 6/21/21)
2021 Jun 21, The Palestinian Authority arrested Issa Amro, a prominent activist, and held him overnight after he criticized its policies in a series of online posts and accused it of arresting another individual for political reasons.
(AP, 6/22/21)
2021 Jun 21, Philippine Pres. Rodrigo Duterte threatened to order the arrest of Filipinos who refuse COVID-19 vaccinations and told them to leave the country if they would not cooperated with efforts to end the public health emergency.
(SFC, 6/23/21, p.A5)
2021 Jun 21, Russia's President Vladimir Putin warned that the coronavirus situation in some regions was getting worse as authorities began promoting the idea of regular revaccinations to try to halt a surge in new cases.
(Reuters, 6/21/21)
2021 Jun 21, Spain's PM Pedro Sanchez announced his intention to pardon nine jailed Catalan separatists who were convicted of sedition in 2019 by the Supreme Court for their role in the region's failed independence bid in 2017.
(Reuters, 6/21/21)
2021 Jun 21, Syrian government forces and insurgent groups exchanged shell fire in northwestern Syria that killed at least 10 people, the vast majority of them in rebel-held areas.
(AP, 6/21/21)
2021 Jun 21, Thailand's health minister said Japan's government would donate some AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines, as the Southeast Asian country seeks to shore-up supplies after some early delays in its vaccinations.
(Reuters, 6/21/21)
2021 Jun 21, The World Health Organization (WHO) said that it is setting up a technology transfer hub for producing mRNA COVID-19 vaccines in South Africa, which could start manufacturing doses in 9 to 12 months.
(Reuters, 6/21/21)
2021 Jun 22, US Senate Republicans filibustered Democrats’ sweeping voting-rights bill. All 50 Democrats voted to advance it; all 50 Republicans voted no. Republicans blocked the "For The People Act," an attempt by Democrats to rewrite an election and voting law. Republicans said it would infringe on states' authority.
(NY Times, 6/22/21)(SFC, 6/.23/21, p.A6)
2021 Jun 22, The US Justice Department said American authorities seized 33 of Iran’s state-linked news website domains they accused of spreading disinformation. Three other seized websites were operated by the Iraqi Shiite paramilitary group, Kata'ib Hizballah, which more than a decade ago was designated a foreign terrorist organization.
(AP, 6/22/21)
2021 Jun 22, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced that he supports changes to the military justice system in cases of sexual assault.
(Axios, 6/22/21)
2021 Jun 22, Total US COVID-19 cases reached over 33,553,434 with the death toll at 602,069.
(sfist.com, 6/23/21)
2021 Jun 22, San Francisco's Board of Supervisors voted to extend a city eviction moratorium for another six months mirroring state protections.
(SFC, 6/24/21, p.B1)
2021 Jun 22, Former Idaho Rep. John O. Green was sentenced to federal prison for six months after being found guilty last year of a felony charge of conspiracy to defraud the federal government.
(Tribune Publ., 6/25/21)
2021 Jun 22, New Mexico State Police discovered 10 crates full of marijuana, edibles and psychedelic mushrooms in a semi tractor-trailer at the Gallup port of entry. Roderick Piffero (57) and Erik Weisenseel (41) were each charged with trafficking controlled substances.
(Albuquerque Journal, 7/24/21)
2021 Jun 22, New York state held primary mayoral elections. Eric Adams ran for mayor of New York City on a message intensely focused on issues of public safety. With 82 percent of the results in, Mr. Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, was the first choice of 31.6 percent of those who voted in person or during the early voting period.
(NY Times, 6/23/21)
2021 Jun 22, Tobacco company Philip Morris will relocate its corporate headquarters from New York City to southwest Connecticut, bringing 200 jobs.
(AP, 6/22/21)
2021 Jun 22, A tornado struck North Carolina’s coast overnight, killing three people and injuring 10 others.
(AP, 6/22/21)
2021 Jun 22, The Cincinnati-based Procter & Gamble Co. announced that it will send a pair of Tide detergent and stain removal experiments to the space station later this year and next, all part of the galactic battle against soiled and sweaty clothes.
(AP, 6/22/21)
2021 Jun 22, In Texas more than 150 staff members at a Houston-area hospital were fired or resigned for not following a policy that requires employees to be vaccinated against Covid-19.
(AP, 6/22/21)
2021 Jun 22, Bitcoin fell below $30,000 for the first time since January as China intensified its crackdown on cryptocurrency.
(SFC, 6/23/21, p.B2)
2021 Jun 22, SiFive Inc released a new computing chip design that aims to challenge Arm Ltd's dominance in smartphone chips and said it would pair with Intel Corp's factories to make the design available to hardware makers.
(AP, 6/22/21)
2021 Jun 22, The Abu Dhabi health authority's phone application showed updated criteria for vaccine access, saying visitors to the capital could now get the COVID-19 shot by presenting their passports. On June 24 Abu Dhabi announced that it will not allow tourists flying into the emirate to receive coronavirus vaccines.
(AP, 6/22/21)(AP, 6/24/21)
2021 Jun 22, In Afghanistan government soldiers recaptured two districts in Balkh and nearby Baghlan provinces during an overnight battles that reportedly left 80 Taliban fighters dead.
(SFC, 6/23/21, p.A3)
2021 Jun 22, Belarus' authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko warned that his country will not try to stem a flow of illegal migrants to the European Union.
(AP, 6/23/21)
2021 Jun 22, Canada and 40 other countries urged China to allow “immediate, meaningful and unfettered access" so independent observers can visit its western Xinjiang region, while a Chinese envoy demanded that Canadian authorities “stop violations of human rights" at home.
(AP, 6/22/21)
2021 Jun 22, Dubai’s state-owned sovereign wealth fund announced a net loss of $5.1 billion over the past year. It marks the first loss in years for the investment arm of Dubai government.
(AP, 6/22/21)
2021 Jun 22, In Ethiopia dozens of people were reportedly killed or injured after Ethiopia's air force bombed a market in the northern region of Tigray.
(BBC, 6/23/21)
2021 Jun 22, It was reported that Gabon has become the first African country to receive payment for reducing carbon emissions by protecting its rainforest. he UN-backed Central African Forest Initiative (Cafi) has handed over $17m (£12m) - the first tranche of a $150m deal struck in 2019. Norway, through Cafi, has paid Gabon $17m based on a formula relating to the number of tons of carbon that would otherwise have been released.
(BBC, 6/22/21)
2021 Jun 22, Germany and the UN brought together representatives of Libya with powers that have interests in the country at a conference which aims for progress toward securing elections in the North African nation and the removal of foreign fighters.
(Reuters, 6/22/21)(AP, 6/23/21)
2021 Jun 22, Germany's national rail operator announced plans to reopen 20 stretches of railway around the country that have been closed over the years, a move intended to help get more people and freight on trains as the country steps up efforts to fight climate change.
(AP, 6/22/21)
2021 Jun 22, A leading Italian newspaper reported that the Vatican has formally opposed a proposed Italian law expanding anti-discrimination protections to the LGBT community.
(AP, 6/22/21)
2021 Jun 22, Italy reported 31 coronavirus-related deaths against 21 the day before. The daily tally of new infections rose to 835 from 495.
(Reuters, 6/22/21)
2021 Jun 22, Lebanon’s economy ministry raised the price of subsidized bread for the fifth time in a year as the country’s multiple crises worsen with no resolution in sight. Lebanon is grappling with the worst economic and financial crisis in its modern history.
(AP, 6/22/21)
2021 Jun 22, Aid group Doctors Without Borders said it is suspending activities in two overcrowded Libyan detention centers in Tripoli due to increased violence, abuse and ill treatment of migrants and refugees held there by Libyan authorities.
(AP, 6/22/21)
2021 Jun 22, Lithuania's government said it will donate 20,000 doses of AstraZeneca Plc COVID-19 vaccine to Taiwan, after angering China in March by saying it would open a trade representative office on the island this year. Taiwan had given Lithuania 100,000 medical-grade face masks last year when the coronavirus pandemic was spreading around the world.
(Reuters, 6/22/21)
2021 Jun 22, In Myanmar at least eight people were killed in a shootout in Mandalay between security forces and militants opposed to army rule.
(SFC, 6/23/21, p.A2)
2021 Jun 22, International criticism of Nicaragua's government grew after another night of arrests in Managua. 59 countries at the UN Human Rights Council signed onto a statement expressing concern over arbitrary arrests and the restriction of fundamental rights.
(AP, 6/22/21)
2021 Jun 22, Poland's government said it has evidence linking a recent cyberattack on thousands of email and social media accounts of politicians, public figures and other Poles to Russia's secret services.
(SFC, 6/23/21, p.A4)
2021 Jun 22, The Kremlin said people who were not vaccinated or did not have immunity would be unable to work in all workplaces in Russia, which reported the most confirmed coronavirus-related deaths in a single day since February.
(Reuters, 6/22/21)
2021 Jun 22, Nine Catalan separatist leaders jailed for sedition were eyeing freedom, after Spain’s Cabinet pardoned them in the hope of starting what PM Pedro Sánchez called a much-needed reconciliation in the country’s restive northeast.
(AP, 6/22/21)
2021 Jun 22, The International Monetary Fund announced a US$1.4 billion debt relief package for Sudan, a step in helping the country as it tries to rejoin the global economy after years of isolation.
(AP, 6/23/21)
2021 Jun 22, Switzerland said children between 12 and 15 years old could be vaccinated against COVID-19 with the shot from Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech.
(Reuters, 6/22/21)
2021 Jun 22, Turkey kicked off Phase III trials for its COVID-19 vaccine, named "Turkovac" by President Tayyip Erdogan who said the shot should be available for use by the end of the year.
(Reuters, 6/22/21)
2021 Jun 22, The UN World Food Program (WFP) warned that some 41 million people worldwide are at imminent risk of famine.
(Reuters, 6/22/21)
2021 Jun 22, The United Nations said the Great Barrier Reef has suffered such extensive damage that it should be listed as "in danger." The warning prompted an immediate rejection from the Australian government.
(CBS News, 6/22/21)
2021 Jun 22, A UN human rights expert said Eritrea now has "effective control" of parts of Ethiopia's Tigray region. Mohamed Abdelsalam Babiker called for troops to withdraw and for a prompt investigation into abuses, including the abduction of refugees.
(AP, 6/22/21)
2021 Jun 23, In response to rising gun violence, President Biden said states could use federal stimulus money to fund the police, as Democrats seek to show urgency on crime.
(NY Times, 6/24/21)
2021 Jun 23, The White House said that the United States would send three million doses of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine to Brazil, where virus cases and fatalities are surging again, with a death toll above 500,000.
(NY Times, 6/23/21)
2021 Jun 23, The United States, Britain and France accused Russian mercenaries of operating alongside Central African Republic forces and committing human rights violations against civilians and obstructing UN peacekeeping. The charges were immediately denied by Russia which denounced the Western nations for engaging in an “anti-Russia political hit job." Russia has troops in CAR training its military at the invitation of the government.
(AP, 6/24/21)
2021 Jun 23, The US Supreme Court tightened the reins on organized labor, citing property rights in reviving a bid by two fruit companies to block a decades-old California regulation that let union organizers enter agricultural properties without an employer's consent.
(Reuters, 6/23/21)
2021 Jun 23, The US Supreme Court ruled 8-1 in favor of a Pennsylvania teenager who sued after a profane social media post got her banished from her high school's cheerleading squad in a closely watched free speech case, but it declined to outright ban public schools from regulating off-campus speech.
(Reuters, 6/23/21)
2021 Jun 23, A group of doctors advising the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said rare cases of heart inflammation in adolescents and young adults is likely linked to vaccination with the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 shots.
(Reuters, 6/23/21)
2021 Jun 23, Total US COVID-19 cases reached over 33,567,044 with the death toll at 602,504.
(sfist.com, 6/24/21)
2021 Jun 23, It was reported that San Francisco city workers will be required to be vaccinated against the coronavirus when a vaccine receives full federal approval.
(AP, 6/24/21)
2021 Jun 23, The Miami, Florida, city commission passed unanimously an ordnance making it a crime to stand within 20 feet (about six meters) of officers with the “intent to impede, provoke or harass" them. Critics believed the law emboldened officers to arrest bystanders using their phones to film police on duty. On August 19 the police department announced that it had suspended the law last month following a series a controversial arrests.
(AP, 8/21/21)
2021 Jun 23, It was reported that Missouri is seeing an alarming rise in cases because of a combination of the fast-spreading delta variant and stubborn resistance among many people to getting vaccinated.
(AP, 6/23/21)
2021 Jun 23, The billionaire investor Warren Buffett (90) said he is resigning as a trustee of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and has donated half his wealth to philanthropy since pledging 15 years ago to give away his fortune from running Berkshire Hathaway Inc.
(Reuters, 6/23/21)
2021 Jun 23, Britain-based GSK set out plans to turn its consumer healthcare business into a separately listed company, aiming to strengthen drug development at its pharmaceuticals business with an 8 billion pound ($11 billion) windfall.
(Reuters, 6/23/21)
2021 Jun 23, In Egypt the owners and insurers of the giant container ship that blocked the Suez Canal for nearly a week earlier this year said they have reached an agreement in principle over their dispute with canal authorities.
(AP, 6/23/21)
2021 Jun 23, Germany's Cabinet approved plans for a 2022 budget that foresee an increase in new debt as spending on health and fighting climate change rise.
(AP, 6/23/21)
2021 Jun 23, Amnesty International said that the practice of migrant pushbacks in Greece has become so bad that even people who have applied for asylum and been in the country for some time are being summarily picked up and deported.
(AP, 6/23/21)
2021 Jun 23, Greek priest Theofylaktos Komvos (37), who allegedly used drugs and hid cocaine beneath his cassock, flung acid in the faces of bishops during a disciplinary hearing for drug abuse in Athens.
(The Telegraph, 6/24/21)
2021 Jun 23, Iran's state TV reported that authorities have thwarted what they called a "sabotage attack" targeting a civilian nuclear facility.
(SFC, 6/24/21, p.A2)
2021 Jun 23, In northwestern Iran two reporters were killed and 21 others injured when a bus overturned in West Azarbaijan province.
(AP, 6/23/21)
2021 Jun 23, An Israeli defense ministry body advanced plans for 31 West Bank settlement construction projects, the first such move under the country’s new government.
(AP, 6/23/21)
2021 Jun 23, Tokyo reported 619 new coronavirus cases, up from the last seven-day average of 405. Japan has hit the remarkable benchmark of 1 million vaccines a day. But with the Olympics set to start in less than a month only a small portion of the country has been vaccinated.
(AP, 6/24/21)
2021 Jun 23, A Lebanese prosecutor ordered the release of junior port employees who were detained after last year’s deadly massive blast at Beirut’s port. A request to release senior employees was rejected.
(AP, 6/23/21)
2021 Jun 23, North Korea’s foreign minister said his country is not even considering a resumption of stalled nuclear talks with the United States, dismissing hopes expressed by US and South Korean officials for a quick resumption of negotiations.
(AP, 6/23/21)
2021 Jun 23, In Pakistan a car bombing in Lahore killed three people and wounded 25. Days later police had five suspects in custody in connection with the blast. Investigators found evidence of involvement of the Indian secret service in the attack.
(AP, 6/26/21)
2021 Jun 23, In Portugal coronavirus cases rose by 1,497, the biggest jump since February 20. Most of the cases were in Lisbon where more than 60% of cases are of the more infectious Delta coronavirus variant.
(Reuters, 6/23/21)
2021 Jun 23, In Russia deaths related to COVID-19 spiked in major cities amid a surge in new cases that authorities have blamed on the new Delta variant, and restrictions seeking to curb the virus' spread were strengthened. Russia's coronavirus task force reported 548 coronavirus-related deaths in the last 24 hours, the most confirmed in a single day since February, with 88 in Moscow and 93 in St Petersburg respectively, a record in both cities.
(Reuters, 6/23/21)
2021 Jun 23, Spain’s National Court approved the extradition of detained antivirus software entrepreneur John McAfee to the United States, where he is wanted on tax-related criminal charges that carry a prison sentence of up to 30 years. McAfee (75) died of suspected suicide in a prison, after a Spanish court said he could be extradited to the US on tax-evasion charges.
(AP, 6/23/21)(SFC, 6/24/21, p.B4)
2021 Jun 23, Ukraine said it has registered its first two cases of the more infectious Delta variant of the coronavirus. Ukraine has been among the European countries most affected by the pandemic, with around 2.23 million COVID-19 cases and 52,123 deaths.
(Reuters, 6/23/21)
2021 Jun 23, The UN General Assembly, for the 29th time, voted overwhelmingly in support of a resolution that calls for the US to lift its embargo against Cuba. This time the pleading focused on the devastating impact of the economic blockade during the COVID-19 pandemic.
(AP, 6/23/21)
2021 Jun 23, Yemen's Houthi rebels claimed they brought down two US-made drones this week over central Marib province. The US military said it wasn't aware of any lost drones in the Mideast and added that it did not operate any aircraft above Marib.
(AP, 6/24/21)
2021 Jun 24, It was reported that the Biden administration plans to evacuate tens of thousands of Afghan interpreters and others who worked with US forces during the war while their applications for US entry are processed. Officials said roughly 650 US troops are expected to remain in Afghanistan to provide security for diplomats after the main American military force completes its withdrawal, which is set to be largely done in the next two weeks.
(AP, 6/24/21)
2021 Jun 24, The Biden administration said it will halt shipments from China-based Hoshine Silicon Industry Co. Ltd., a producer of material used to make solar panels, as part of a broader effort to halt commerce tied to China's repressive campaign against Uighurs and other minorities.
(SFC, 6/25/21, p.B2)
2021 Jun 24, The United States and Germany launched a new initiative to stem an alarming rise in antisemitism and Holocaust denial around the world.
(AP, 6/24/21)
2021 Jun 24, The delta variant of the coronavirus in the US now represented 20% of infections, and health officials said it could become the country’s dominant type as well.
(AP, 6/24/21)
2021 Jun 24, Total US COVID-19 cases reached over 33,580,588 with the death toll at 602,900.
(sfist.com, 6/25/21)
2021 Jun 24, In Florida the sudden collapse of a condominium left at least 5 people dead and 156 unaccounted for in a wing of the Champlain Towers South in Surfside. It was later reported that a consultant had warned three years earlier that there was evidence of "major structural damage" to the concrete slab below the pool deck and abundant cracking and crumbling in the underground parking garage. 98 people were killled. In 2022 a judge gave final approval to a $1.02 billion settlement.
(NY Times, 6/24/21)(AP, 6/25/21)(NY Times, 6/27/21)(SFC, 6/24/22, p.A8)
2021 Jun 24, Kentucky's Gov. Andy Beshear signed an order allowing the state's college athletes — including players on the nationally renowned Kentucky and Louisville men's basketball teams — to make money through the use of their name, image or likeness.
(AP, 6/24/21)
2021 Jun 24, The council in Lexington, Kentucky's second-largest city, voted to ban the use of “no-knock" warrants, joining Breonna Taylor's hometown in taking action to halt the controversial warrants.
(AP, 6/25/21)
2021 Jun 24, Stephen Dunn (b.1939), a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet (2001), died at his home in Frostburg, Md.
(SSFC, 6/26/21, p.F8)
2021 Jun 24, Rudy Giuliani's law license in New York state was suspended, as a state appeals court found he had lied in arguing that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from his client, former US President Donald Trump.
(Reuters, 6/24/21)
2021 Jun 24, In Oregon rioters in Portland vandalized a police cruiser and pepper-sprayed an officer hours after a fatal law enforcement shooting in the city.
(Washington Examiner, 6/25/21)
2021 Jun 24, The Philadelphia school board unanimously voted to adopt a “welcoming sanctuary schools" resolution, promising more training for staff on how to respond to Immigrations and Custom Enforcement officials and assuring immigrant students and families they will be safe from immigration authorities while at school or school activities.
(AP, 6/25/21)
2021 Jun 24, Curtis Crosland (60) of Philadelphia was cleared of murder and released from prison after 34 years by evidence that was suppressed by investigators. Crosland had been convicted for the 1984 murder of South Philadelphia store owner Il Man Heo and sentenced to life in prison. Three eyewitnesses to the robbery had said he was not the killer.
(The Grio, 6/25/21)
2021 Jun 24, In Texas a US Air Force Academy cadet was one of two people killed in the crash of a small plane south of Fort Worth.
(AP, 6/26/21)
2021 Jun 24, Eli Lilly and Co said it will seek accelerated approval from the US health regulator this year for its Alzheimer's candidate, weeks after a rival drug from Biogen Inc won the agency's endorsement using the same regulatory pathway.
(Reuters, 6/24/21)
2021 Jun 24, Meatpacker JBS SA said it will give away beef, pork and chicken for the next year to 50 US families that participate in company-sponsored vaccination clinics over the coming weeks.
(AP, 6/24/21)
2021 Jun 24, Microsoft unveiled the next generation of its Windows software, called Windows 11, that has a new Start Menu and other features. It is expected to become available later this year on new computers and other devices and as a free update for those with Windows 10.
(AP, 6/24/21)
2021 Jun 24, Top health officials said Africa is facing a devastating resurgence of COVID-19 infections whose peak will surpass that of earlier waves as the continent's countries struggle to vaccinate even a small percentage of the population. Africa has more than 5.2 million confirmed virus cases including more than 139,000 deaths.
(AP, 6/24/21)
2021 Jun 24, In Australia a cluster of highly contagious delta variant coronavirus cases in Sydney grew to 36. The cluster spread from a Sydney airport limousine driver who tested positive last week. He was not vaccinated, reportedly did not wear a mask and is suspected to have been infected while transporting a foreign air crew.
(AP, 6/24/21)
2021 Jun 24, It was reported that Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro has asked supermarkets to lower prices of staple foods and his economy minister suggested homeless people could live off restaurant leftovers. It marked a sharp contrast from days earlier, when both boasted their policies had restored the economy to pre-pandemic levels.
(AP, 6/24/21)
2021 Jun 24, British mobile operator EE said it was bringing back mobile roaming charges in the European Union for new and upgrading customers from next January, wiping out a benefit that has saved tourists and business travelers millions of pounds since the charges were abolished in 2017.
(Reuters, 6/24/21)
2021 Jun 24, Researchers at Oxford University said they have developed a method to predict the efficacy of new COVID-19 vaccines based on a blood test, potentially offering a short-cut around massive clinical trials that are increasingly difficult to conduct.
(Reuters, 6/24/21)
2021 Jun 24, In Canada an Indigenous group said the remains of as many as 751 people, mainly children, had been found in unmarked graves on the site of a former boarding school in Saskatchewan.
(NY Times, 6/24/21)
2021 Jun 24, In the Czech Rep. a rare tornado believed to be the most devastating twister in the country’s modern history tore through the country’s south east late today, killing at least five people and injuring hundreds.
(AP, 6/25/21)
2021 Jun 24, Cyprus said it wants the European Union’s border agency Frontex to step in and prevent the flow of migrant arrivals from Turkey that authorities say have stretched the eastern Mediterranean island nation’s asylum system to its limits.
(AP, 6/24/21)
2021 Jun 24, The European Union slapped economic sanctions on Belarus in response to what the EU called the “escalation of serious human rights violations" including the detention of journalist Raman Pratasevich.
(AP, 6/24/21)
2021 Jun 24, European lawmakers approved a climate law making the bloc's commitment to reach climate neutrality by 2050.
(SFC, 6/25/21, p.A4)
2021 Jun 24, France and Germany’s call for European Union summit talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin were blocked late today after fierce opposition from Poland and the Baltic countries.
(The Telegraph, 6/24/21)
2021 Jun 24, Honduras opened its embassy in contested Jerusalem, becoming the fourth country to follow the US move under former President Donald Trump to relocate its chief diplomatic mission in Israel from Tel Aviv.
(AP, 6/24/21)
2021 Jun 24, Israel announced a further easing of its blockade on Gaza, saying it would expand the coastal territory's fishing zone and allow the import of raw materials for “essential civilian factories".
(AP, 6/24/21)
2021 Jun 24, Scientists reported that bones found in an Israeli quarry are from a branch of the human evolutionary tree and are 120,000 to 140,000 years old. The fragments of a skull, lower jaw bone and tooth were uncovered in Nesher Ramla in 2010. Researchers determined that the fossils likely came from a hominin group closely related to Neanderthals and sharing many of their features, such as the shape of the lower jaw.
(AP, 6/24/21)
2021 Jun 24, Clare Peploe (79), film director and screenwriter, died in Rome. Her films included "High Season " (1987), "Rough Magic" (1995" and "Triumph of Love" (2001). Her husband, Bernardo Bertolucci, had died in 2018.
(SFC, 7/12/21, p.B5)
2021 Jun 24, Morocco and the United Nations inaugurated a UN office in Rabat for counter-terrorism and training in Africa, that's seeing increasing extremist violence.
(AP, 6/24/21)
2021 Jun 24, Nizar Banat, an outspoken critic of the Palestinian Authority, died after Palestinian security forces arrested him and beat him with baton. He was a candidate in parliamentary elections called off earlier this year. Hundreds took to the streets in protest after word spread of Banat's death.
(AP, 6/24/21)
2021 Jun 24, Former Philippine President Benigno Aquino III (61) died of kidney disease arising from diabetes. Aquino led the country from 2010 to 2016.
(AP, 6/25/21)
2021 Jun 24, In Portugal new coronavirus cases rose by 1,556, the biggest jump since late February, when the country of just over 10 million people was still under lockdown. In total, Portugal has recorded 869,879 cases and 17,079 deaths.
(Reuters, 6/24/21)
2021 Jun 24, Singapore said it expects to almost double the number of doses of coronavirus vaccines it administers each day to 80,000 from this weekend and might later ease restrictions on gatherings and travel for those inoculated.
(Reuters, 6/24/21)
2021 Jun 24, Sri Lanka's President Gotabhaya Rajapaksa pardoned a former lawmaker who had been condemned for an election-related killing. Duminda Silva, widely seen as a favorite of Sri Lanka's ruling Rajapaksa family, had been serving a death sentence over the killing of a rival lawmaker from his own party in an election-related attack about 10 years ago.
(AP, 6/25/21)
2021 Jun 24, In Thailand pro-democracy protesters took to the streets of Bangkok, marking the anniversary of the overthrow of the country's absolute monarchy by renewing their demands that the government step down.
(SFC, 6/25/21, p.A2)
2021 Jun 24, A government advisor said Tunisia it is seeing a significant increase in COVID-19 cases, with intensive care wards almost full.
(Reuters, 6/24/21)
2021 Jun 24, The United Nations accused Israel of flagrantly violating international law by expanding settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, saying settlements are illegal and urging the country’s new government to halt their enlargement immediately.
(AP, 6/24/21)
2021 Jun 25, US President Joe Biden designated the Pulse gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, a national memorial, honoring the site where a mass shooting killed 49 people.
(Reuters, 6/25/21)
2021 Jun 25, The US House of Representatives voted 229-191 to nullify the Trump administration's 2020 rollback of regulations to curb the emissions of greenhouse gas methane from oil and gas infrastructure, following a similar move by the Senate in April.
(Reuters, 6/25/21)
2021 Jun 25, The US Justice Department filed a lawsuit challenging a Georgia election law that imposes new limits on voting, saying that it infringes on the rights of Black voters.
(Reuters, 6/25/21)
2021 Jun 25, The US Supreme Court ruled that federal COVID-19 relief funds can go to specially created corporations for Native Alaskans even though they are not officially recognized as tribal governments.
(Reuters, 6/25/21)
2021 Jun 25, It was reported that the US Dept. of Agriculture has begun spraying the pesticide diflubenzuron to kill grasshopper nymphs in Montana. A 2021 grasshopper "hazard map" showed densities of at least 15 insects per square yard in large areas of Montana, Wyoming, Oregon and portions of Idaho, Arizona ,Colorado and Nebraska.
(SFC, 6/25/21, p.A8)
2021 Jun 25, Total US COVID-19 cases reached over 33,592,712 with the death toll at 603,211.
(sfist.com, 6/26/21)
2021 Jun 25, California's Gov. Gavin Newsom and state lawmakers announced a deal to shield struggling tenants from eviction for three more months and attempt to pay off all the rent lower-income residents missed during the coronavirus pandemic.
(SFC, 6/25/21, p.A1)
2021 Jun 25, In Minnesota former Minneapolis police Officer Derek Chauvin was sentenced to 22.5 years in prison for the murder of George Floyd. With good behavior, Chauvin could get out on parole after serving two-thirds of his sentence, or about 15 years.
(AP, 6/26/21)
2021 Jun 25, International Seafarers Day. More than 15 months into the coronavirus pandemic, tens of thousands of seafarers vital to the global shipping industry remain stranded at sea or in ports, unable to leave their ships or get to new assignments due to global travel restrictions.
(AP, 6/25/21)
2021 Jun 25, Britain's Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) banned Binance, one of the world's biggest crypto exchanges, from conducting any regulated activity in Britain as regulators across the world bolster oversight of the crypto sector.
(Reuters, 6/28/21)
2021 Jun 25, Health authorities in Denmark said that COVID-19 vaccines from AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson would remain excluded from the country's vaccine roll-out following a review of new safety data.
(Reuters, 6/25/21)
2021 Jun 25, In Ethiopia three aid workers employed by Doctors without borders were found dead a day after they had disappeared in the Tigray region. Their bullet-riddled bodies were sprawled on a dusty roadside near their burned-out vehicle. In 2022 It was reported that Col. Tadesse Bekele, of the Ethiopian military’s 31st Division, ordered soldiers to fire on the vehicle.
(SSFC, 6/27/21, p.A5)(NY Times, 3/17/22)
2021 Jun 25, European Union leaders greenlighted plans to give Turkey another 3 billion euros ($3.6 billion) over the next few years to provide fresh assistance to Syrian refugees on its territory and to help the country boost border controls.
(AP, 6/25/21)
2021 Jun 25, Europe's medicines regulator said it had approved the production of Johnson & Johnson's single-dose COVID-19 vaccine at an additional site in Italy, as it looks to speed up the supply of the shot in the European Union.
(Reuters, 6/25/21)
2021 Jun 25, In Germany a Somali man (24) killed three people and severely injured several others with a long knife in Wuerzburg before he was shot and arrested.
(SFC, 6/25/21, p.A4)
2021 Jun 25, Indonesia and the United States broke ground on a new $3.5 million maritime training center in the strategic area of Batam, in the Riau Islands.
(Reuters, 6/26/21)
2021 Jun 25, Iranian officials said the death toll from Covid-19 rose by 115 over the last 24 hours, putting the country’s total at 83,588 since the pandemic broke out last year. State TV reported that supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has received the first coronavirus vaccine developed by the Islamic Republic.
(AP, 6/25/21)
2021 Jun 25, In Israel tens of thousands of people attended a Pride parade in Tel Aviv in one of the largest public gatherings in Israel since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic.
(AP, 6/25/21)
2021 Jun 25, Italian PM Mario Draghi, speaking at the end of an EU summit, said China's anti-COVID vaccine did not fully work and questioned whether Russia's Sputnik jab would ever get approval from European regulators.
(Reuters, 6/25/21)
2021 Jun 25, Italy’s culture minister formally announced the completion of work to shore-up and restore the underground section of the Colosseum. The bill was footed by Tod’s, the shoe and luxury goods maker headed by Diego Della Valle.
(AP, 6/25/21)
2021 Jun 25, Italy's national health institute ISS said the Delta coronavirus variant and its sibling Kappa have surged in Italy in the past month, accounting for nearly 17% of total COVID-19 cases.
(Reuters, 6/25/21)
2021 Jun 25, In northern Mali 12 German troops and a Belgian soldier serving in the UN peacekeeping mission were wounded in a vehicle bomb attack in the Gao region.
(AP, 6/25/21)
2021 Jun 25, Mexico reported that the bullet-riddled bodies of 18 men were found in a remote area of Zacatecas state following an apparent shootout between gunmen from the Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels.
(SSFC, 6/27/21, p.A6)
2021 Jun 25, Hundreds of Palestinians protested against President Mahmoud Abbas after Friday prayers at the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem a day after an outspoken critic died in the custody of Palestinian security forces.
(AP, 6/25/21)
2021 Jun 25, It was reported that a rapid resurgence of COVID-19 is slamming South Africa's largest city, Johannesburg, and threatens to overwhelm its hospitals.
(AP, 6/25/21)
2021 Jun 25, In Sri Lanka about 150 death row inmates went on a hunger strike to demand their sentences be commuted after Sri Lanka's president, a day earlier, pardoned a former lawmaker who had been condemned for an election-related killing.
(AP, 6/25/21)
2021 Jun 25, Tanzania's President Samia Suluhu Hassan urged the public not to ignore a third wave of COVID-19, after her predecessor, the late John Magufuli, alarmed the world with his skeptical approach to the pandemic.
(AP, 6/25/21)
2021 Jun 25, Ukraine obliged visitors from countries affected by the COVID-19 Delta variant take a mandatory antigen test in a bid to prevent the spread of the new infections.
(Reuters, 6/25/21)
2021 Jun 25, Uzbekistan said it will limit entry into the capital city of Tashkent and curtail the activity of hospitality venues after a surge in COVID-19 cases. As of June 24 the number of new cases had reached 476 a day. Uzbekistan has registered a total of 108,184 COVID-19 cases and 725 deaths since pandemic began.
(Reuters, 6/25/21)
2021 Jun 26, US President Joe Biden withdrew his threat to veto a $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill unless a separate Democratic spending plan also passes Congress, saying that was never his intent.
(Reuters, 6/26/21)
2021 Jun 26, The United States estimated that up to 900,000 people in Ethiopia’s Tigray region now face famine conditions amid a deadly conflict, even as the prime minister says there is “no hunger" there.
(AP, 6/26/21)
2021 Jun 26, Total US COVID-19 cases reached over 33,606,021 with the death toll at 603,605.
(sfist.com, 6/27/21)
2021 Jun 26, A historic heat wave baked the US Pacific Northwest where temperatures pushed into the triple digits as local officials warned residents to take precautions while power companies asked users to conserve energy.
(Reuters, 6/26/21)
2021 Jun 26, Celebrity Edge, the first cruise ship to leave a US port since the coronavirus pandemic brought the industry to a 15-month standstill, set sail from Fort Lauderdale with nearly all vaccinated passengers on board.
(AP, 6/26/21)
2021 Jun 26, In Massachusetts Ramona Cooper (60) a staff sergeant in the Air Force, David Green (68), a retired state trooper, were shot multiple times this afternoon by Nathan Allen (28), after he crashed a box truck stolen from a piping and drain company into a home in Winthrop. Allen died at the scene after exchanging gunfire with a Winthrop police sergeant. Investigators found "troubling" anti-Semitic and racist statements in his writings.
(CBS News, 6/28/21)
2021 Jun 26, In the Detroit area 6 inches (15 cm) of rain poured down over the last 24 hours. This was the most at one time in 80 years. The volume of water moved faster than it could be pumped out or pushed through sewers to water treatment plants. Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer soon declared a state of emergency for the city and surrounding Wayne County.
(AP, 7/10/21)
2021 Jun 26, Minnesota’s top Democratic and Republican lawmakers reached agreement on the highlights of a public safety bill that includes police accountability measures.
(AP, 6/27/21)
2021 Jun 26, In New Mexico a pilot and two couples died after a hot air balloon they were riding in struck a power line and crashed onto a busy street in Albuquerque. It was later reported that pilot Nicholas Meleski had marijuana and cocaine in his system.
(AP, 6/27/21)(AP, 9/22/21)
2021 Jun 26, New York state's attorney general’s office said Johnson & Johnson will pay New York $230 million under a settlement that ensures it will get out of the opioid business in the US.
(NY Times, 6/26/21)
2021 Jun 26, It was reported that US Border Patrol agents from the Niagara Falls Station have seized a quarter of a million dollars worth of pot in Whirlpool State Park.
(Tribune Publ., 6/26/21)
2021 Jun 26, Australian officials introduced a strict two-week lockdown for all of greater Sydney as an outbreak of the Delta variant spreads rapidly.
(NY Times, 6/26/21)
2021 Jun 26, The UK recorded its highest daily number of coronavirus infections since early February, raising questions over whether England will be able to end lockdown restrictions next month as planned.
(NY Times, 6/26/21)
2021 Jun 26, China said that it provides vaccines to other countries with no political conditions attached, responding to a story by The Associated Press saying China pressured Ukraine into withdrawing from a multi-country statement on human rights in China’s Xinjiang region by threatening to withhold a COVID-19 vaccine shipment.
(AP, 6/26/21)
2021 Jun 26, Chinese authorities said Tesla is recalling about 285,000 electric vehicles in China because the cruise-control function can be activated accidentally and cause cars to accelerate suddenly, creating a safety hazard.
(AP, 6/26/21)
2021 Jun 26, Klaus Zellmer, Volkswagen board member for sales, said the carmaker will stop selling combustion engines cars in Europe by 2035 as it shifts to electric vehicles, but later in the United States and China.
(Reuters, 6/26/21)
2021 Jun 26, Thousands of members of Iraq’s umbrella of mostly Shiite militias known as Popular Mobilization Forces marched in a parade, the largest show of strength since the founding of the controversial paramilitary group. PM Mustafa al-Kadhimi, officially the country's commander-in-chief, presided over the parade. The PMF was established after a 2014 call to arms by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani to defeat militants from the Islamic State group.
(AP, 6/26/21)
2021 Jun 26, In Italy outdoor farm work under the afternoon sun on particularly hot days was banned in a southern Italian region following the recent death of a migrant who felt ill while toiling in a field and collapsed.
(AP, 6/27/21)
2021 Jun 26, It was reported that as many as 50 people are missing after setting out on three-hour car trips this year between Mexico's industrial hub of Monterrey and the border city of Nuevo Laredo on a well-traveled stretch of road local media have dubbed “the highway of death".
(AP, 6/26/21)
2021 Jun 26, Angry demonstrators clashed with Palestinian security forces for a third day during a protest in the West Bank over the death of an outspoken critic of the Palestinian Authority who died while in custody.
(AP, 6/26/21)
2021 Jun 26, Russia's national coronavirus task force said that 619 people died over the past day, the most since Dec. 24. More than a third of the new infections were in Moscow.
(AP, 6/26/21)
2021 Jun 26, Spaniards were allowed to ditch their face masks for a walk in the park or a trip to the beach for the first time in more than a year, but some people were in no rush to dispense with their facial protection against COVID-19.
(Reuters, 6/26/21)
2021 Jun 26, Sudan said it will surrender former officials who are wanted for alleged war crimes in the Darfur region to the International Criminal Court (ICC).
(BBC, 6/27/21)
2021 Jun 26, Taiwan reported its first domestically transmitted case of the highly contagious Delta variant of the coronavirus, tightening controls in a southern part of the island where the cases have occurred.
(Reuters, 6/26/21)
2021 Jun 26, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan took the first step in the construction of a ship canal skirting Istanbul that the government says will ease marine traffic in the Bosporus Strait. Erdogan, in a bridge ground-breaking ceremony in Sazlidere, said the $15 billion project would be completed within six years.
(AP, 6/26/21)
2021 Jun 26, The UN World Food Program said southern Madagascar is in the throes of back-to-back droughts that are pushing 400,000 people toward starvation, and have already caused deaths from severe hunger.
(AP, 6/26/21)
2021 Jun 27, Total US COVID-19 cases reached over 33,623,808 with the death toll at 603,968.
(sfist.com, 6/28/21)
2021 Jun 27, In Florida the death toll rose to nine as searchers continued work to find more than 150 missing residents at the collapsed Champlain Towers South in Surfside.
(Reuters, 6/27/21)
2021 Jun 27, In Oregon the temperature reached 112 degrees at Portland International Airport. It was the highest temperature recorded there since historical records began in 1940.
(NY Times, 6/27/21)
2021 Jun 27, Australia lowered its projections for population and economic growth over the next 40 years due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
(Reuters, 6/27/21)
2021 Jun 27, In CongoDRC a suicide bomber detonated his explosives at a busy intersection in Beni. Another explosion rocked a Catholic church. Neither bomb killed any civilians, but the government closed major gathering spaces for two days and imposed restrictions on public meetings as a precaution against further explosions. The Islamic State soon claimed responsibility.
(AP, 6/28/21)(AP, 6/29/21)
2021 Jun 27, Egypt's Pres. Abdel Fattah el-Sissi arrived in Baghdad on a first official visit by an Egyptian head of state to the country in over 30 years, for tripartite talks with Jordan and Iraq to deepen economic and security cooperation.
(AP, 6/27/21)
2021 Jun 27, France held regional elections. In a record low turnout President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist party was decimated and Marine Le Pen’s far-right party failed, upending expectations that the presidential race in 10 months will be a showdown between the two politicians.
(AP, 6/28/21)
2021 Jun 27, Indian officials said they suspected that explosive-laden drones were used to attack an air base in Kashmir. Anti-Indian rebels were suspected.
(SFC, 6/28/21, p.A3)
2021 Jun 27, Lebanese troops deployed in the northern city of Tripoli early today taking positions around major state institutions after a night of protests and riots against worsening living conditions left several protesters and 10 soldiers injured.
(AP, 6/27/21)
2021 Jun 27, New Zealand said it will extend the COVID-19 alert level in the capital Wellington for two days, as authorities said there is still a risk from an Australian tourist who tested positive for the coronavirus after visiting the city last weekend.
(Reuters, 6/27/21)
2021 Jun 27, In Nigeria Nnamdi Kanu, the leader of a separatist group that wants a breakaway state in eastern Nigeria, was arrested. His movement, the Indigenous People of Biafra (Ipob), has been labelled as a terrorist organization by the Nigerian authorities.
(BBC, 6/29/21)
2021 Jun 27, Pakistan’s foreign minister said that violence and lawlessness could reign in Afghanistan after the United States' withdrawal, and that Pakistan would shut its border to the country if the Taliban takes control of it.
(AP, 6/27/21)
2021 Jun 27, Rights groups said Saudi women’s rights campaigners Samar Badawi and Nassima al-Sada have been released from prison, three years after a sweeping crackdown by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman targeting female activists who'd peacefully advocated for greater freedoms.
(AP, 6/27/21)
2021 Jun 27, Somalia's semi-autonomous state of Puntland executed 21 men after they were convicted of being members of the Islamist militant group al-Shabab. As the executions were being carried out, al-Shabab fighters stormed the town of Wisil in the Mudug region. There are some reports that at least 20 soldiers were killed when an army base was attacked.
(AP, 6/27/21)
2021 Jun 27, South Africa reported more than 15,000 new coronavirus cases including 122 deaths. Total fatalities approached 60,000.
(SFC, 6/29/21, p.A4)
2021 Jun 27, Thailand reported 3,995 confirmed coronavirus cases and 42 deaths in the last 24 hours. Officials announced a ban on indoor dining, the closure of construction sites and the sealing off of workers' quarters in Bangkok and nine provinces for 30 days.
(SFC, 6/28/21, p.A4)
2021 Jun 28, President Joe Biden sought to assure Israel that he would not tolerate a nuclear Iran as he met with outgoing Israeli President Reuven Rivlin amid a major shakeup in Israeli politics and growing angst in Tel Aviv over the US administration's effort to reenter the Iran nuclear deal.
(AP, 6/28/21)
2021 Jun 28, The United States carried out airstrikes early today in Iraq and Syria against two Iranian-backed militias that the Pentagon said had conducted drone strikes against American personnel in Iraq in recent weeks. Pro-Iran Iraqi paramilitary groups said four members of the Kataeb Sayyid al-Shuhada militia were killed in the attack.
(NY Times, 6/28/21)(The Telegraph, 6/28/21)
2021 Jun 28, The United States and other nations in a joint statement reiterated their call for immediate nation-wide ceasefire in Syria and unimpeded delivery of aid to the war-torn country.
(Reuters, 6/28/21)
2021 Jun 28, US Education Sec. Miguel Cardona said Puerto Rico will receive nearly $4 billion in federal education pandemic relief funds to help boost the territory's fight against COVID-19.
(SFC, 6/29/21, p.A4)
2021 Jun 28, Total US COVID-19 cases reached over 33,627,131 with the death toll at 603,979.
(sfist.com, 6/29/21)
2021 Jun 28, In Florida two additional bodies were found at the collapsed condo in Surfside, raising the count of confirmed dead to 11. That leaves 150 people still unaccounted for in the community just outside Miami.
(AP, 6/28/21)
2021 Jun 28, Hot weather continued in the northwest US with Seattle reporting 108 degrees Fahrenheit and 116 in Portland, Ore.
(SFC, 6/29/21, p.A7)
2021 Jun 28, It was reported that E-cigarette maker Juul Labs Inc has agreed to pay $40 million to North Carolina to settle a lawsuit by the state accusing it of marketing its products to minors.
(Reuters, 6/28/21)
2021 Jun 28, Australia was battling to contain several COVID-19 clusters around the country in what some experts have described as the nation’s most dangerous stage of the pandemic since the earliest days. Coronavirus cases in Sydney grew by 18 and now stand at 130. It is the worst outbreak the city has seen since last year. Other states across Australia also reported a handful of new cases, threatening the nation’s successful control of a virus.
(AP, 6/28/21)(NY Times, 6/28/21)
2021 Jun 28, Belarus retaliated to the European Union sanctions by halting cooperation on stemming illegal migration and denying entry to EU officials.
(AP, 6/28/21)
2021 Jun 28, It was reported that Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro is sending troops back to the Amazon to bolster policing against logging and other illegal land clearance, acting amid international criticism of a surge in deforestation and just two months after withdrawing a similar military mission.
(AP, 6/28/21)
2021 Jun 28, Brazilian health regulator Anvisa canceled a request for emergency use authorization for the COVID-19 vaccine developed by China's CanSino Biologics Inc after the laboratory cut ties with its Brazilian representative.
(Reuters, 6/29/21)
2021 Jun 28, An Oxford study said a mixed schedule of vaccines where a shot of Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine is given four weeks after an AstraZeneca shot will produce better immune responses than giving another dose of AstraZeneca.
(AP, 6/28/21)
2021 Jun 28, In China amid celebrations over the centenary of the ruling Communist Party a lavish celebration at Beijing’s Olympic stadium emphasized China’s rise to economic and political prominence following reforms enacted more than 40 years ago.
(AP, 6/28/21)
2021 Jun 28, The leaders of China and Russia hailed increasingly close ties between their countries and announced the extension of a 20-year-old friendship treaty, a show of unity amid their tensions with the West.
(AP, 6/28/21)
2021 Jun 28, In Ethiopia Tigrayan fighters took control of the regional capital, Mekelle. Soldiers from Eritrea withdrew from three key towns in the Tigray region. Ethiopian forces retreated and Ethiopia’s government declared an immediate, unilateral cease-fire.
(NY Times, 6/29/21)(AP, 6/29/21)
2021 Jun 28, Top telecoms executives called for a total overhaul of Europe's regulatory framework, using the platform of the Mobile World Congress to amplify their demands for unified oversight across the 27-nation bloc.
(Reuters, 6/28/21)
2021 Jun 28, It was reported that a growing coronavirus outbreak in Fiji is stretching the health system and devastating the economy. It has even prompted the government to offer jobless people tools and cash to become farmers.
(AP, 6/28/21)
2021 Jun 28, A French court convicted and fined Franco Lollia, a Black rights activist, for defacing a statue he sees as an insult to democracy and to the descendants of slaves. In June 2020, the French activist had painted and sprayed “State Negrophobia" in red paint on a statue of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, a 17th-century royal minister who helped write rules governing slaves in French overseas colonies.
(AP, 6/28/21)
2021 Jun 28, France's top administrative court definitively banned the use of glue trapping to hunt birds, a technique that was denounced by animal protection groups as barbaric and endangering some species.
(AP, 6/28/21)
2021 Jun 28, Deutsche Telekom said it has successfully tested software-based mobile network technology using high-capacity antennas, a potential alternative to existing network suppliers that could give mobile firms more flexibility and cut costs.
(Reuters, 6/28/21)
2021 Jun 28, PM Kyriakos Mitsotakis said that starting July 15 Greece will give 150 euros in credit to citizens under age 26 to get vaccinated.
(SFC, 6/29/21, p.A4)
2021 Jun 28, Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo announced that his government will administer COVID-19 vaccines for children as young as 12 after the country’s Food and Drug Monitoring Agency green-lighted emergency use of the Sinovac vaccine for children.
(AP, 6/28/21)
2021 Jun 28, Iraq's Electricity Minister Majed Mahdi Hantoosh submitted his resignation amid popular and political pressure over repeated power outages across the country. Provinces across the country’s south shortened working hours citing extreme heat.
(AP, 6/29/21)
2021 Jun 28, It was reported that police in Kuwait have arrested a resident, an Egyptian man, for posting a video online in which he rants about bad weather and dust storms. The arrest underscored the country’s restrictions on expression and drew criticism on social media over his detention.
(AP, 6/28/21)
2021 Jun 28, Poland’s Catholic Church listed 292 clergymen who are alleged to have abused over 300 boys and girls from 1958 though 2020, in its latest report on the sexual abuse of minors.
(AP, 6/28/21)
2021 Jun 28, In Portugal the number of coronavirus patients in hospital surpassed 500 for the first time since early April. The surging COVID-19 delta variant has prompted it to put the United Kingdom on its red list for travel, speed up vaccinations in Lisbon and cancel school classes in the southern Algarve region, its main tourist destination.
(AP, 6/28/21)
2021 Jun 28, The Kremlin strongly rejected the claims that Russian military instructors in the Central African Republic have been involved in killing civilians and looting homes.
(AP, 6/28/21)
2021 Jun 28, Russia reported 21,650 new coronavirus infections, including 7,246 in Moscow, and 611 deaths related to COVID-19 across the country. Under new rules customers had to start showing QR-codes to get their coffees in Moscow.
(AP, 6/28/21)
2021 Jun 28, It was reported that Saudi Arabian veterinary services company MAS has signed an agreement with Argentine biotechnology company Biogenesis Bago to set up the country's first animal vaccine manufacturing plant with investments worth $60 million.
(Reuters, 6/28/21)
2021 Jun 28, In Spain the Mobile World Congress trade fair kicked off in Barcelona with scaled-back attendance and beefed-up health and safety measures.
(AP, 6/28/21)
2021 Jun 28, It was reported that Swedish PM Stefan Lofven is resigning after losing a confidence vote last week and he called on the country’s parliament today to try to form a new government instead of holding an early election.
(AP, 6/28/21)
2021 Jun 28, Ukraine and NATO launched Black Sea drills that will involve dozens of warships, an exercise that follows last week's incident with a British destroyer off Crimea.
(AP, 6/28/21)
2021 Jun 28, A UN envoy said shipments of Qatari-funded fuel into the Gaza Strip will resume for the first time since last month's 11-day war between Israel and Gaza's militant Hamas ruler.
(AP, 6/28/21)
2021 Jun 28, Amnesty International said Zambia is on “the brink of a human rights crisis," alleging that President Edgar Lungu is using repressive tactics to win another term in elections set for Aug. 12.
(AP, 6/28/21)
2021 Jun 29, The US Supreme Court, in a 5-to-4 vote, kept a federal moratorium on evictions in place.
(NY Times, 6/30/21)
2021 Jun 29, The US Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in favor of a consortium of energy companies including Enbridge Inc seeking to seize land owned by New Jersey to build a federally approved natural gas pipeline despite the state's objections. Hurdles remained for the $1 billion project.
(Reuters, 6/29/21)
2021 Jun 29, Total US COVID-19 cases reached over 33,642,146 with the death toll at 604,179.
(sfist.com, 6/30/21)
2021 Jun 29, In California the San Jose City Council voted unanimously to require firearms owners to buy insurance and pay fees to relieve taxpayers of the costs of responding to gun violence.
(SFC, 7/1/21, p.B1)
2021 Jun 29, Richard Branson’s Virgin Orbit delivered satellites from three countries into space over the Pacific near the Channel Islands, its second rocket launch from a plane this year.
(AP, 6/30/21)
2021 Jun 29, Elizabeth Martínez (95), feminist, writer and community activist, died in San Francisco. She helped organize the Chicana movement, which sought to empower people, like her, who were of Mexican descent and born in the United States.
(NY Times, 6/29/21)
2021 Jun 29, Royal Caribbean International said it would require unvaccinated guests over 12 years of age traveling from Florida to show proof of insurance that covers COVID-19 related medical expenses, quarantine and evacuation. The new policy comes after two unvaccinated teenagers tested positive on its Adventure of the Seas ship last week and two others were infected on Celebrity Millennium earlier this month.
(Reuters, 6/29/21)
2021 Jun 29, In Florida four more bodies were found late today in the rubble of a collapsed condo tower, raising the death toll in the disaster to 16 people.
(AP, 6/30/21)
2021 Jun 29, Delia Fiallo (96), the Cuban-born television writer known throughout Latin America as the “mother of the telenovela," died at her home in Coral Gables, Fla.
(AP, 7/4/21)
2021 Jun 29, It was reported that New Jersey’s prison system will begin housing inmates based on gender identity, the result of a 2019 lawsuit filed by a transgender woman who said she was forced to live in men’s prisons for a year and a half. The new policy goes into effect July 1.
(AP, 6/29/21)
2021 Jun 29, Brian Shelton (64) became the first patient to receive an infusion of lab-grown cells that produce insulin. The trial led by Vertex Pharmaceuticals appeared to cure his Type 1 diabetes. The treatment is not intended as a treatment for the more common Type 2 diabetes.
(NY Times, 11/28/21)
2021 Jun 29, Donald Rumsfeld (88), former US defense secretary, died at his home in Taos, NM. He served as defense secretary for two Republican presidents, Gerald Ford (1975-1977) and George W. Bush (2001-2006). He was an architect of the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
(NY Times, 7/1/21)
2021 Jun 29, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem announced that she will join a growing list of Republican governors sending law enforcement officers to the US border with Mexico.
(AP, 6/29/21)
2021 Jun 29, It was reported that about a dozen deaths in Washington and Oregon may be tied to an intense heat wave that brought scorching temperatures to the Northwest and caused one power utility to impose rolling blackouts amid heavy demand. In Spokane the temperature reached a record 109 degrees.
(AP, 6/29/21)(SFC, 6/30/21, p.A6)
2021 Jun 29, MediWound Ltd said the US drug regulator declined to approve its topical burn treatment, NexoBrid, sending its shares tumbling nearly 32% in early trading.
(Reuters, 6/29/21)
2021 Jun 29, Walmart said that it will start selling private-label analog insulin this week at a deep discount to branded insulin vials and pens, as it seeks to drive growth at its healthcare business.
(Reuters, 6/29/21)
2021 Jun 29, Eswatini's acting PM Themba Masuku denied that King Mswati III (53) has fled to South Africa following clashes between the security forces and demonstrators. The government ordered all businesses to close by 3:30 p.m. and a strict curfew to have all residents off the streets from 6 p.m. to 5 a.m. Schools were told to close immediately.
(AP, 6/29/21)
2021 Jun 29, Greece's government said it will allow people fully vaccinated against the coronavirus inside restaurants without masks, as part of measures to boost inoculation rates.
(Reuters, 6/29/21)
2021 Jun 29, In Indonesia a ferry with more than 50 people sank near Bali, killing at least six people. 44 people were rescued.
(SFC, 6/30/21, p.A3)
2021 Jun 29, Iran halted its crucial supply of power to Iraq, fueling fears of protests amid instability following the resignation of Iraq's electricity minister.
(AP, 6/29/21)
2021 Jun 29, Ireland lifted restrictions on giving AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine to adults aged under 50 and reduced the recommended gap between doses from eight weeks to four.
(Reuters, 6/29/21)
2021 Jun 29, Israeli mobile adtech firm ironSource went public on the New York Stock Exchange after closing its merger with a blank-check company backed by US private equity firm Thoma Bravo.
(Reuters, 6/29/21)
2021 Jun 29, Italy reported 42 coronavirus-related deaths against 28 the day before. The daily tally of new infections rose to 679 from 389.
(Reuters, 6/29/21)
2021 Jun 29, In Japan former Green Beret Michael Taylor and his son apologized in Tokyo court over their charges of helping Nissan's former chairman, Carlos Ghosn, avoid bail and escape to Lebanon. Japanese prosecutors allege they were paid the equivalent of more than $1 million for their support.
(Washington Examiner, 6/29/21)
2021 Jun 29, Lebanon's energy ministry increased gasoline and fuel prices by 35%, a move that could lead to a sharp increase in prices of most commodities in the crisis-hit country.
(AP, 6/29/21)
2021 Jun 29, Malta said it will introduce tighter COVID-19 rules on June 30, banning British visitors who are not fully vaccinated in an effort to prevent the spread of the Delta variant of the coronavirus.
(Reuters, 6/29/21)
2021 Jun 29, Researchers said the military takeover in Myanmar has given the junta full control of the country’s lucrative and conflict-ridden jade mining, providing it with profits and leverage for consolidating power.
(AP, 6/29/21)
2021 Jun 29, The Dutch health council said children as young as 12 should be offered the Pfizer-BioNTech's COVID-19 vaccine, the injection which was authorized for use on children from the age of 12 by the European Commission in May.
(Reuters, 6/29/21)
2021 Jun 29, North Korea's leader Kim Jong-un said that lapses in his country’s anti-pandemic campaign have caused a “great crisis" that threatened “grave consequences." Mr. Kim to convened a meeting of the Political Bureau of his ruling Workers’ Party, during which he reshuffled the top party leadership.
(NY Times, 6/29/21)
2021 Jun 29, A Russian court ordered the arrest in absentia of Ivan Zhdanov, an ally of jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny. Zhdanov was the director of Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation which has been declared "extremist" and in effect outlawed by the authorities.
(Reuters, 6/29/21)
2021 Jun 29, Russian authorities raided the apartments of several investigative journalists of the Proekt investigative online outlet and their family members. The outlet had promised to release an investigation into Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev and his alleged wealth.
(SFC, 6/30/21, p.A3)
2021 Jun 29, The Kremlin said Russia will fail to vaccinate 60% of its population against COVID-19 by the autumn as planned due to sluggish demand for the shots, after the country recorded its highest number of daily deaths from the virus.
(AP, 6/29/21)
2021 Jun 29, RIA News said Russia's Sputnik V vaccine is around 90% effective against the Delta variant of coronavirus. RIA cited Denis Logunov, the deputy director of the Gamaleya Institute that developed the vaccine. Authorities reported 652 new coronavirus deaths. Russia has reported nearly 5.5 million cases in the pandemic and 134,545 deaths.
(Reuters, 6/29/21)(SFC, 6/30/21, p.A4)
2021 Jun 29, South Africa's former President Jacob Zuma was sentenced to 15 months in jail by the country's highest court. The sentence comes after the Constitutional Court found him guilty of contempt for defying its order to appear at an inquiry into corruption while he was president.
(BBC, 6/29/21)
2021 Jun 29, It was reported that Barcelona-based startup Novameat is using its 3D printing technology to manufacture vegetarian "steaks" that it hopes will reach the mass market next year.
(Reuters, 6/29/21)
2021 Jun 29, Yoon Suk Yeol, South Korea’s former top prosecutor, launched a bid to run in next year’s presidential election Tuesday, vowing to unseat the current liberal government that he once worked for and that he also investigated for possible corruption.
(AP, 6/29/21)
2021 Jun 29, The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund announced that Sudan has met the initial criteria for over $50 billion in foreign debt relief.
(AP, 6/30/21)
2021 Jun 29, Togo's government said it has culled hundreds of birds, quarantined a poultry farm, closed a local bird market and banned the movement of poultry following an outbreak of the highly pathogenic H5N1 avian flu.
(Reuters, 6/29/21)
2021 Jun 29, The UN Security Council held its first formal public meeting on cybersecurity, addressing the growing threat of hacks to countries' key infrastructure.
(AFP, 6/29/21)
2021 Jun 29, In Yemen Houthi rebels fired two missiles in the latest attack in the government-held city of Marib, killing at least three people, including a child.
(AP, 6/29/21)
2021 Jun 30, President Biden said that he would raise the pay of federal firefighters, calling the current wage, around $13 an hour, “ridiculously low".
(NY Times, 6/30/21)
2021 Jun 30, The US House voted, largely along party lines, to create a special committee to investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
(NY Times, 7/1/21)
2021 Jun 30, US NCAA officials voted to let players profit from their names and images.
(SFC, 7/1/21, p.A1)
2021 Jun 30, Total US COVID-19 cases reached over 33,664,768 with the death toll at 604,714.
(sfist.com, 7/1/21)
2021 Jun 30, A US federal judge on blocked a new Indiana law that would require doctors to tell women undergoing drug-induced abortions about a disputed treatment for potentially stopping the abortion process.
(AP, 6/30/21)
2021 Jun 30, It was reported that patients in southwestern Missouri were being turned away from an overwhelmed hospital amid a surge in cases. Large swaths of residents in the region had not been vaccinated.
(SFC, 6/30/21, p.A4)
2021 Jun 30, A New York grand jury indicted the Trump Organization and Alan Weisselberg, a top executive, in a tax investigation over “fringe benefits" handed out at the company.
(NY Times, 7/1/21)
2021 Jun 30, Bill Cosby (83) was released from prison after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned his 2018 conviction for sexual assault. Mr. Cosby had served three years of a three- to 10-year sentence at a maximum-security prison outside Philadelphia when the court ruled that a “non-prosecution agreement" with a previous prosecutor meant that Mr. Cosby should not have been charged in the case.
(NY Times, 7/1/21)
2021 Jun 30, It was reported that Galaxy Interactive, the venture capital division of billionaire crypto investor Mike Novogratz's Galaxy Digital, has taken a lead investor role in virtual real estate developer Republic Realm. US-based Republic Realm, set up in March 2021, earlier this month bought a plot of virtual land in blockchain-based online world Decentraland for $900,000.
(Reuters, 6/30/21)
2021 Jun 30, Microsoft Corp and AT&T Inc said that the carrier will run core parts of its 5G wireless network on Microsoft's cloud computing platform.
(Reuters, 6/30/21)
2021 Jun 30, Scientists said a newly discovered white dwarf, named ZTF J1901+1458, is 35% more massive than our sun yet boasts a petite diameter only a bit larger than Earth's moon. Two stars separately evolved into white dwarfs at the end of their life cycles, then spiraled toward one another and merged into a single entity. It is located relatively nearby in our Milky Way galaxy, about 130 light years from Earth.
(Reuters, 6/30/21)
2021 Jun 30, The UK recorded a further 26,068 cases of COVID-19, the highest daily figure since January 29 and sending the seven day-tally up 70% on the week before.
(Reuters, 6/30/21)
2021 Jun 30, A Canadian Indigenous group said a search near, using ground-penetrating radar has found 182 human remains in unmarked graves at a site near a former Catholic Church-run residential school that housed Indigenous children taken from their families near Cranbrook, British Columbia.
(AP, 6/30/21)
2021 Jun 30, In western Canada roughly 1,000 residents of Lytton fled their homes late today as a wildfire approached. The fire near Lytton, BC, soon grew to 32,000 square miles (83,000 square km) and left at least two people dead.
(AP, 7/3/21)
2021 Jun 30, The EU and the UK agreed not to let a fight over the transport of chilled meats from Britain to Northern Ireland sputter out of control for the moment and further damage already fraught relations. They delayed for three months some post-Brexit trade checks that were to go into effect tomorrow.
(AP, 6/30/21)
2021 Jun 30, In France world leaders, philanthropists and organizations pledged at least $40 billion at an international conference in Paris to boost gender equality, as women and girls worldwide have been deeply affected by the consequences of the pandemic.
(AP, 7/1/21)
2021 Jun 30, The Indonesian airline Garuda started administering free coronavirus vaccinations to holidaymakers and travelers, part of efforts to reduce the impact of the virus in one of Asia's worst-affected countries.
(AP, 6/30/21)
2021 Jun 30, It was reported that thousands of workers in Iran’s vast energy industry have gone on strike over the past week to press demands for better wages and conditions at oil facilities.
(AP, 6/30/21)
2021 Jun 30, In Iraq a bomb exploded in a busy Baghdad market, wounding at least 15 people in the Maridi market area of Sadr City.
(AP, 6/30/21)
2021 Jun 30, It was reported that Israel has reached a compromise with Jewish settlers who rapidly established Eviatar, an unauthorized outpost in the occupied West Bank last month.
(AP, 6/30/21)
2021 Jun 30, Gunmen took to the streets in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli, firing in the air and at times throwing stones at soldiers amid rising anger at power cuts, fuel shortages and soaring prices.
(AP, 6/30/21)
2021 Jun 30, Namibia's President Hage Geingob said his country is facing a "dark and somber moment" as coronavirus deaths and cases rapidly increase. Mr Geingob said that 513 Namibians had died from the virus in the last 15 days.
(BBC, 6/30/21)
2021 Jun 30, A Dutch court ruled in favor of Inmarsat in a dispute over the use of 5G bandwidth in the Netherlands, ordering the government to suspend a decision to reserve the bandwidth for telecommunications as of Sept. 1, 2022.
(Reuters, 6/30/21)
2021 Jun 30, North Macedonia’s parliament formally adopted legislation to make the country's section of the Shar Mountains an extensive national park.
(AP, 7/1/21)
2021 Jun 30, Coronavirus cases in Portugal jumped by 2,362 in the past 24 hours, the biggest increase since mid-February.
(AP, 6/30/21)
2021 Jun 30, Russia’s UN ambassador called a proposal to reopen a border crossing from Iraq to Syria’s northeast for delivering humanitarian aid “a non-starter." He also refused to say what will happen to the only crossing now in operation, from Turkey to the country’s rebel-held northwest.
(AP, 6/30/21)
2021 Jun 30, Russia reported 21,042 new COVID-19 infections and 669 deaths. Pres. Vladimir Putin revealed that he had received the domestically developed Sputnik V vaccine earlier this year, stressing the importance of getting vaccinated amid a surge of new infections and deaths.
(AP, 6/30/21)
2021 Jun 30, A group of global finance institutions led by the World Bank's International Finance Corporation (IFC) said they would help to facilitate an increase in vaccine manufacturing know-how in Africa by partnering with South African pharmaceutical company Aspen Pharmacare.
(Reuters, 6/30/21)
2021 Jun 30, The chef José Andrés (51) and his World Central Kitchen were awarded the prestigious Spanish Princess of Asturias Awards for their international relief work promoting healthy food.
(AP, 6/30/21)
2021 Jun 30, Sweden's Volvo Cars laid out an extensive road map to becoming a fully electric car maker by 2030, including plans to sell 600,000 battery electric vehicles at mid-decade and build a European battery gigafactory in 2026.
(Reuters, 6/30/21)
2021 Jun 30, Switzerland said it will give 4 million doses of AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine that it has reserved to the vaccine-sharing program COVAX, to help address a massive discrepancy in shots for the developing world.
(Reuters, 6/30/21)
2021 Jun 30, Tunisia has reported more than 14,000 virus-related deaths amid its population of 12 million since the pandemic began, with more than 400 infections per 100,000 people in four regions. Over the past month, confirmed virus infections in Tunisia have reached the highest daily levels since the pandemic began, but the vaccination rate remains low.
(AP, 6/30/21)
2021 Jun 30, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres appealed to US President Joe Biden's administration to lift or waive all sanctions on Iran as agreed under a 2015 deal aimed at stopping Tehran from developing a nuclear weapon.
(Reuters, 6/30/21)
2021 Jun 30, A UN court convicted Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic, former allies of late Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, of aiding and abetting crimes committed by Serb paramilitaries in a Bosnian town in 1992. Each was sentenced to 12 years' imprisonment. The judgment can be appealed.
(AP, 6/30/21)
2021 Jun 30, The WHO declared China free of malaria after a seven-decade campaign against the disease.
(SFC, 7/1/21, p.A3)
2021 Jun 30, The WHO said Africa has recorded a 39% increase in new coronavirus cases in the week of June 14-20. Africa has recorded over 5.3 million coronavirus cases. The delta variant has been detected in at least 14 African countries.
(SFC, 7/1/21, p.A4)
2021 Jun 30, Human Rights Watch accused Yemen’s Houthi rebels of prosecuting a female actor and model on charges of committing an indecent act and drug possession in a case “marred with irregularities and abuse". Intisar al-Hammadi (20) was detained in Sanaa in February along with three others.
(AP, 6/30/21)
2021 Jun, US border officials encountered a total of 188,829 migrants at the southern border, the largest monthly number in recent history.
(NY Times, 7/18/21)
2021 Jun, California became the first state to adopt a universal school lunch program.
(AP, 7/19/21)
2021 Jun, Chad received 100,000 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine under the United Nations-backed COVAX program. Five weeks later, 94,000 doses remained unused.
(NY Times, 8/2/21)
2021 Jun, The European Public Prosecutor’s Office, or EPPO, began work. Its aim is to independently investigate crimes against the EU budget, like corruption and cross-border tax fraud. Slovenia, which holds the high-profile EU presidency, was alone among the 22 countries taking part that refused to name prosecutors to the agency. In November two prosecutors from Slovenia were appointed.
(AP, 11/24/21)
2021 Jun, Nicaragua authorities arrested former Gen. Hugo Torres (d.2022), former Sandinista guerrilla Dora Maria Tellez and other leaders of the Democratic Renovation Union on the grounds of undermining national security.
(Reuters, 2/13/22)
2021 Jun, In Tunisia Abir Moussi (47), the outspoken leader of the opposition Al-Dustur al-Hurr party, was slapped and kicked as she was filming a parliamentary session on her mobile phone. The perpetrators were two male members of parliament from an Islamist coalition.
(BBC, 7/17/21)
2021 Jun-2022 Sep, In South Sudan at least 440 civilians lost their lives in "widescale" killings by rival groups in Tambura county, 18 injured and 74 abducted, according to a UN report made public in 2022.
(AFP, 3/1/22)
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2021 Apr 1, The US Supreme Court allowed the Federal Communication Commission to loosen local media ownership restrictions, handing a victory to broadcasters in a ruling that could facilitate industry consolidation as consumers increasingly move online.
(Reuters, 4/1/21)
2021 Apr 1, US Major League Baseball began. Most teams played for Game 1 of what is expected to be a full 162-game season.
(NY Times, 4/2/21)
2021 Apr 1, California to date had 3,645,574 cases of coronavirus and 58,821 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 422,717 cases and 5,926 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 30,535,374 with the death toll at 553,084.
(sfist.com, 4/1/21)
2021 Apr 1, Denver-based Frontier Airline and its private owners hoped to raise $570 million before costs from their IPO after pricing 30 million shares at $19.
(AP, 4/1/21)
2021 Apr 1, Apple Inc Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook became the latest corporate leader to speak out against the state of Georgia's new voting restrictions, which many critics say targets Blacks and other racial minorities.
(Reuters, 4/1/21)
2021 Apr 1, Kansas's statewide mask mandate came to an end under a new law that makes it more difficult for health officials to keep COVID-19 precautions in place.
(SFC, 4/2/21, p.A6)
2021 Apr 1, In a unanimous ruling, the Massachusetts Supreme Court expanded the definition of the term adultery to apply to a spouse engaged in same-sex infidelity.
(AP, 4/2/21)
2021 Apr 1, It was reported that infections and hospitalizations in Michigan have risen sharply in recent weeks, giving it more recent cases per capita than any other state. Officials blamed a more contagious variant and a premature return to prepandemic behaviors. Officials confirmed the state's first case of a variant identified in Brazil.
(NY Times, 4/1/21)(SFC, 4/2/21, p.A6)
2021 Apr 1, In Texas seven sheriff’s officers in Collin County were fired in connection with the March 14 death of Marvin D. Scott III, a 26-year-old Black man who died after being restrained at the county jail.
(https://tinyurl.com/9js5y7s4)(NY Times, 4/1/21)
2021 Apr 1, Virginia’s Supreme Court ruled that the city of Charlottesville could remove statues of two Confederate generals.
(NY Times, 4/1/21)
2021 Apr 1, A new study found that American farmers are using smaller amounts of better targeted pesticides, but these are harming pollinators, aquatic insects and some plants far more than decades ago.
(AP, 4/1/21)
2021 Apr 1, In Afghanistan the Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the killing of a policewoman in eastern Nangarhar province earlier today. The statement said that she was working with the “apostate" Afghan security services.
(AP, 4/2/21)
2021 Apr 1, UK charity Oxfam said it has suspended two members of staff in the Democratic Republic of Congo over allegations of sexual exploitation and bullying.
(BBC, 4/1/21)
2021 Apr 1, Chile said it will close its borders for the month of April to slow the spread of the coronavirus and stop the influx of its variants, as cases continue to soar despite one of the world's fastest vaccination rates.
(Reuters, 4/1/21)
2021 Apr 1, It was reported that a wave of African swine fever outbreaks this year has wiped out at least 20% of the breeding herd in northern China.
(Reuters, 4/1/21)
2021 Apr 1, Ecuadorean President Lenin Moreno declared a 30-day state of exception in eight of the country's 24 provinces, which includes a curfew, due to a spike in coronavirus infections and associated deaths. Ecuador has more than 330,000 infections and 16,877 deaths confirmed and probable by COVID-19.
(Reuters, 4/2/21)
2021 Apr 1, It was reported that the European Union has asked India to allow it to buy 10 million doses of AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine from Serum Institute of India.
(Reuters, 4/1/21)
2021 Apr 1, France's PM Jean Castex defended new nationwide measures to combat a resurgent coronavirus in France that include closing schools for at least three weeks and putting in place a month-long domestic travel ban.
(AP, 4/1/21)
2021 Apr 1, Germany’s disease control agency reported 24,300 newly confirmed cases in the past day, and 201 deaths. Chancellor Angela Merkel called on citizens to help ease the strain on nurses and doctors caring for the rising number of COVID-19 patients by respecting pandemic rules over Easter.
(AP, 4/1/21)
2021 Apr 1, Seven of Hong Kong’s veteran pro-democracy leaders were found guilty of unauthorized assembly, a verdict seen by their supporters as a severe assault on the freedom of speech and other civil liberties that once were core to the city’s identity.
(NY Times, 4/1/21)
2021 Apr 1, Italy reported 501 coronavirus-related deaths against 467 the day before, while the daily tally of new infections decreased to 23,649 from 23,904.
(Reuters, 4/1/21)
2021 Apr 1, Japan designated Osaka and two other areas for new virus control steps as infections there rise less than four months before the Tokyo Olympics.
(SFC, 4/2/21, p.A6)
2021 Apr 1, The OPEC oil cartel and allied countries said that they have decided to add gradually add back some 2 million barrels per barrel per day of oil production from May to July, moving cautiously in pace with the recovery of the global economy from the COVID-19 pandemic.
(AP, 4/1/21)
2021 Apr 1, Russia’s embassy in North Korea said the country is suffering severe shortages of medicines and necessary goods amid the coronavirus pandemic. It said fewer than 290 foreigners remain in Pyongyang.
(AP, 4/1/21)
2021 Apr 1, Slovakia's Pres. Zuzana Caputova appointed a new Cabinet under PM Eduard Heger following the resignation of PM Igor Matovic's government.
(SFC, 5/5/21, p.A6)
2021 Apr 1, It was reported that South Africa's health regulator has approved Johnson & Johnson's COVID-19 vaccine, paving the way for large-scale deliveries of the shot the government has put at the heart of its immunization plans.
(Reuters, 4/1/21)
2021 Apr 1, Spain’s Madrid region halted COVID-19 vaccinations at health centers for four days so medical staff can rest over the Easter holiday, despite pleas from the national government not to halt the fight against surging infections.
(AP, 4/1/21)
2021 Apr 1, In Tunisia a female suicide bomber killed herself and her baby during counterterrorism operations in a mountainous zone in struggling interior provinces. Two other Islamic extremists were killed in the security operations in Kasserine province.
(AP, 4/2/21)
2021 Apr 1, The UN Security Council late today strongly condemned the use of violence against peaceful protesters in Myanmar.
(AP, 4/2/21)
2021 Apr 1, Vietnam appealed to diplomats from the United States, European Union and Japan to help it secure supplies of COVID-19 vaccines, as part of efforts to acquire the 150 million doses needed to cover its adult population.
(Reuters, 4/2/21)
2021 Apr 2, President Biden spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for the first time since taking office as US and NATO officials warned of a Russian military buildup near eastern Ukraine.
(Axios, 4/2/21)
2021 Apr 2, The United States and Iran said that they would begin negotiations through intermediaries next week to try to get both countries back into an accord limiting Iran’s nuclear program.
(AP, 4/2/21)
2021 Apr 2, Pres. Joe Biden lifted sanctions imposed by Donald Trump on two top officials of the Int'l. Criminal Court.
(SSFC, 4/4/21, p.A6)
2021 Apr 2, US Capitol Police officer William Evans, an 18-year veteran of the force, died following an attack at the Capitol building this afternoon. A second officer was injured. Noah Green (25) rammed his car into two officers before hitting a barricade. Green then exited the vehicle with a knife and lunged at an officer. An officer then shot the suspect, who died at a hospital.
(NBC News, 4/2/21)(SFC, 4/6/21, p.A4)
2021 Apr 2, The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention gave people who are fully vaccinated against COVID-19 the green light to travel within the US without getting tested or self-quarantining.
(The Week, 4/3/21)
2021 Apr 2, Rob Manfred, commissioner of Major League Baseball, pulled the 2021 All-Star Game out of suburban Atlanta in a rebuke over a new Georgia voting law that critics say will disenfranchise Black voters.
(NY Times, 4/2/21)
2021 Apr 2, California set the stage for a literal stage-setting that could see resumption of NBA games and live entertainment performances in most counties beginning April 15.
(AP, 4/2/21)
2021 Apr 2, California to date had 3,652,111 cases of coronavirus and 59,210 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 423,294 cases and 5,948 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 30,602,678 with the death toll at 553,979.
(sfist.com, 4/2/21)
2021 Apr 2, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) announced an executive order prohibiting government entities in the state from issuing COVID-19 vaccine "passports" or "other standardized documentation for the purpose of certifying an individual's COVID-19 status to a third party." DeSantis argued that vaccinations are private information.
(NBC News, 4/2/21)
2021 Apr 2, In Afghanistan roadside bombs killed at least five civilians and wounded seven others.
(AP, 4/2/21)
2021 Apr 2, Britain's Department for Transport said the number of countries on its “red list" will reach 39 when the latest restrictions take effect in England beginning April 9. International arrivals will be banned from four more countries — Bangladesh, Kenya, Pakistan and the Philippines — amid concerns over new virus variants.
(AP, 4/2/21)
2021 Apr 2, Mainland China reported 26 new COVID-19 cases, up from nine a day earlier. Officials in the country's southwest linked a local outbreak to Myanmar. The border city of Ruili began a 5-day drive to vaccinate its entire population of 300,000 people. 16 cases have been confirmed there since March 30.
(Reuters, 4/3/21)(SFC, 4/3/21, p.A4)
2021 Apr 2, Medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said a new measles outbreak has flared up in the Democratic Republic of Congo just eight months after authorities declared an end to the worst known outbreak in the country's history.
(Reuters, 4/2/21)
2021 Apr 2, The G7 group of leading economic powers condemned the killing of civilians, sexual and gender based violence, indiscriminate shelling and the forced displacement of residents of Tigray and Eritrean refugees.
(BBC, 4/2/21)
2021 Apr 2, German-based Giesecke+Devrient (G+D), which supplies raw materials, supplies and system components for making Myanmar's kyat banknotes, said it was suspending all deliveries to the state-owned security printer, Security Print Works.
(AP, 4/2/21)
2021 Apr 2, Italy reported 481 coronavirus-related deaths against 501 the day before, while the daily tally of new infections decreased to 21,932 from 23,649. Italy has registered 110,328 deaths linked to COVID-19 since its outbreak emerged in February last year.
(Reuters, 4/2/21)
2021 Apr 2, In Japan 446 new infections were reported in Tokyo. In Osaka, a record 666 cases were reported.
(Reuters, 4/3/21)
2021 Apr 2, Kenya ordered an immediate suspension on private importations of vaccines citing fears that it may lead to counterfeit inoculations getting into the country. Kenya's government said the country's positivity rate jumped from 2.6% at the end of January to 19.1% on April 2.
(AP, 4/3/21)
2021 Apr 2, A fierce attack on a UN peacekeeping base in northern Mali killed four peacekeepers from Chad and at least 23 attackers, and injured another 34 peacekeepers.
(https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/04/1088982)
2021 Apr 2, Myanmar's wireless broadband internet services were shut down by order of the military. Protesters continued to defy the threat of lethal violence to oppose the junta's takeover.
(AP, 4/2/21)
2021 Apr 2, The Netherlands temporarily suspended use of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine for people under 60 following the death of a woman who had received a shot.
(Reuters, 4/2/21)
2021 Apr 2, Niger's Mohamed Bazoum (61) was sworn in as president after failed coup. His main rival, Mahamane Ousmane, has rejected the election result and claimed there was fraud.
(AP, 4/2/21)
2021 Apr 2, In Northern Ireland 27 police officers were injured and eight people were arrested during riots late today in Belfast and Londonderry. Police said they came under “sustained attack" from a large group of young people throwing stones, bottles and fireworks. Tensions have flared as some members of Northern Ireland's legislature sought to censure two dozen politicians from the Irish republican Sinn Fein party who attended the June funeral of Bobby Storey, a former head of intelligence for the Irish Republican Army.
(AP, 4/4/21)
2021 Apr 2, Russian human rights activists released a report that chronicles alleged war crimes and violations of international humanitarian law during the 10-year conflict in Syria.
(AP, 4/2/21)
2021 Apr 2, In Russia a Moscow court fined Twitter for not taking down calls encouraging minors to take part in unauthorized rallies. The court ordered Twitter to pay fines adding up to about $117.000.
(SFC, 4/3/21, p.B2)
2021 Apr 2, A South Korean bank said it has temporary closed its branch in Yangon and was considering bringing its South Korean employees back home after security forces fatally shot one of its Myanmar employees.
(AP, 4/2/21)
2021 Apr 2, Syria’s Kurdish-led forces ended a five-day sweep inside a sprawling camp in the country's northeast housing families and supporters of the Islamic State group. They arrested 125 extremists, including those blamed for dozens of crimes in recent months in al-Hol.
(AP, 4/2/21)
2021 Apr 2, A train derailed in Taiwan, killing 48 people and injured at least 198 others. A truck had slid down onto the tracks from a nearby construction site on the mountainous coast of eastern Hualien county. The unmanned truck’s emergency brake was not properly engaged.
(AP, 4/4/21)
2021 Apr 2, Turkey began administering Pfizer and BioNTech's COVID-19 shots, introducing a second vaccine in its campaign that began in mid-January, as new cases reached record highs.
(Reuters, 4/2/21)
2021 Apr 3, Supporters of Donald Trump who thought they were sending a single donation were charged over and over by his campaign operation. A Times investigation found that the charges were part of an intentional scheme to boost revenue to Mr. Trump’s struggling presidential campaign.
(NY Times, 4/3/21)
2021 Apr 3, Business Insider reported that phone numbers and personal information of half a million Facebook users may have been stolen and posted online. The breach reportedly took place in 2019 because of a software vulnerability.
(SSFC, 4/4/21, p.A12)
2021 Apr 3, As of March 13, the B.1.1.7 coronavirus variant, which walloped Britain and is wreaking havoc on Europe, accounted for about 27 percent of new cases in the US, up from just 1 percent in early February.
(NY Times, 4/3/21)
2021 Apr 3, California to date had 3,652,911 cases of coronavirus and 59,210 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 423,630 cases and 5,950 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 30,668,826 with the death toll at 554,779.
(sfist.com, 4/3/21)
2021 Apr 3, An Asian woman was stabbed to death in a “random" attack whilst walking her dogs in California, but detectives are not investigating it as a hate crime. Ke Chieh Meng (64) was found in the La Sierra neighborhood of the city of Riverside, outside Los Angeles. She was taken to hospital and treated for wounds to her stomach, but died of her injuries. Police arrested a 23-year-old transient woman on suspicion of murder.
(AP, 4/5/21)
2021 Apr 3, It was reported that Amazon.com Inc has apologized to US Representative Mark Pocan, admitting to scoring an "own goal" in its initial denial of his suggestion that its drivers were sometimes forced to urinate in bottles during their delivery rounds.
(Reuters, 4/3/21)
2021 Apr 3, Argentina's Pres. Alberto Fernandez tested positive for COVID-19 with mild symptoms. He had received doses of Russia's Sputnik V vaccine on Jan. 21 and Feb. 11.
(SFC, 4/5/21, p.A5)
2021 Apr 3, Australia said it will continue its inoculation program with AstraZeneca PLC, after a blood clotting case raised concern about the safety of the vaccine.
(Reuters, 4/3/21)
2021 Apr 3, Australian fashion icon Carla Zampatti (78), known for elegant designs and efforts to empower women over more than half a century, died after a fall in Sydney.
(AP, 4/3/21)
2021 Apr 3, Canada's Ontario province entered a 4-week shutdown because of a 3rd surge of coronavirus infections fueled by more contagious virus variants.
(SSFC, 4/4/21, p.A9)
2021 Apr 3, Mainland China reported 21 new COVID-19 cases, down from 26 cases a day earlier.
(Reuters, 4/3/21)
2021 Apr 3, In Dubai videos and photographs depicting over a dozen naked women, lined up on a balcony while being filmed in Dubai’s upscale Marina neighborhood in broad daylight, splashed across social media. Police soon arrested a group of people on charges of public debauchery. Police in Dubai soon arrested 11 Ukrainian women and a Russian man for their involvement in the nude photo shoot.
(AP, 4/4/21)(AP, 4/6/21)
2021 Apr 3, The Suez Canal Authority announced that all 422 ships stranded by the previously grounded Ever Given have passed through the canal, ending the backlog caused by the container ship getting stuck horizontally in March.
(BBC, 4/3/21)
2021 Apr 3, Egypt, Ethiopia, Sudan resumed talks on a giant dam Ethiopia is building on the Nile River’s main tributary.
(AP, 4/3/21)
2021 Apr 3, The Ethiopian Foreign Ministry said Eritrean forces have started withdrawing from Ethiopia's Tigray region.
(Reuters, 4/4/21)
2021 Apr 3, France reported that 5,273 people were in intensive care units (ICU) for COVID-19, a rise of 19 from the previous day, as the country entered its third national lockdown to help combat the pandemic. French hospitals have brought in extra staff for the Easter holiday weekend to cope with growing numbers of virus patients, while travelers converged on train stations and highways to flee big cities before new nationwide restrictions take hold.
(AP, 4/3/21)(Reuters, 4/3/21)
2021 Apr 3, At least 22 members of Indian security forces were killed by Maoist fighters in the tribal-dominated Chhattisgarh state during an anti-insurgency operation. The death toll was the heaviest for Indian security forces battling the far-left guerrillas since 2017.
(Reuters, 4/4/21)
2021 Apr 3, Prince Hamzah, the half-brother of Jordan's King Abdullah II, said he has been placed under house arrest and accused the country's “ruling system" of incompetence and corruption, exposing a rare rift within the ruling monarchy of a close Western ally.
(AP, 4/3/21)
2021 Apr 3, The death toll in Myanmar continued to mount as security forces opened fired on anti-coup protesters amid the military's months-long crackdown on dissent. Security forces killed at least two people and injured seven others as they opened fire on protesters in Monywa.
(AP, 4/3/21)
2021 Apr 3, The Philippines reported 12,576 new coronavirus infections, putting further strain on the healthcare system. President Rodrigo Duterte extended a strict lockdown in the capital region and adjacent provinces by at least one week to try to contain a renewed surge in infections.
(Reuters, 4/3/21)
2021 Apr 3, It was reported that the Russian government has approved extending an agreement on cooperation in space with the United States until December 2030.
(Reuters, 4/3/21)
2021 Apr 3, In Somalia simultaneous large explosions were heard in and around two army bases, with the military confirming at least nine of its people killed but asserting “heavy losses" among the attackers. The al-Shabab extremist group claimed responsibility.
(AP, 4/3/21)
2021 Apr 3, Syria's government said primary schools around Syria will close down indefinitely next week amid a severe increase of coronavirus cases in the war-torn country, while universities will suspend classes for only two weeks and high schools will remain open.
(AP, 4/3/21)
2021 Apr 3, In Thailand at least three people were killed when a 3-story house collapsed in Bangkok following a fire. An unknown number of people were still trapped under the rubble.
(SSFC, 4/4/21, p.A8)
2021 Apr 3, Ukraine said it has approved China's Sinovac vaccine to fight the coronavirus pandemic, after the country recorded a record rise in new COVID-19 cases for the second day in a row.
(Reuters, 4/3/21)
2021 Apr 4, "Godzilla vs. Kong" muscled its way to a pandemic-era box office record, giving Hollywood studios and theater owners alike hope that people are ready to return to the movies after a year of watching Netflix at home.
(Variety.com, 4/4/21)
2021 Apr 4, Stanford claimed the NCAA women’s basketball championship with a win over Arizona, 54-53. It’s the team’s first title since 1992.
(NY Times, 4/4/21)
2021 Apr 4, California to date had 3,654,128 cases of coronavirus and 59,243 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 424,091 cases and 5,951 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 30,681,592 with the death toll at 554,813.
(sfist.com, 4/4/21)
2021 Apr 4, In Chicago at least seven people were shot to death on Easter Sunday in separate attacks across the city.
(Chicago Tribune, 4/5/21)
2021 Apr 4, Australians celebrated Easter Sunday in a relatively unrestricted manner as the country reported no new locally acquired coronavirus cases.
(Reuters, 4/4/21)
2021 Apr 4, In Bangladesh a ferry sank late today after being hit by a cargo ship in the Shitalakkhya River. 25 bodies were soon recovered and nine people remained missing.
(SFC, 4/6/21, p.A4)
2021 Apr 4, Bulgarians voted in a parliamentary election widely seen as a referendum on the country's center-right PM Boyko Borissov (61) after months of anti-government protests and amid a surge in coronavirus infections. With 72% of ballots counted, the ruling GERB party had 25.8% of the vote.
(AP, 4/4/21)(AP, 4/5/21)
2021 Apr 4, The European Union called for the departure of all foreign forces and mercenaries from Libya, describing it as a “precondition" for a return to stability in the war-torn country.
(AP, 4/4/21)
2021 Apr 4, The French city of Sarcelles, north of Paris, was among those whose vaccination center stayed open Easter Sunday, amid mushrooming infections and demand.
(AP, 4/4/21)
2021 Apr 4, Germany announced plans to allow people vaccinated against Covid-19 certain privileges over their unvaccinated peers, in a significant step towards introducing so-called "vaccine passports".
(The Telegraph, 4/4/21)
2021 Apr 4, India reported 93,249 new cases in the last 24 hours. Maharashtra state, which accounts for less than a tenth of India's population, accounted for a record 49,447 new cases. PM Narendra Modi chaired a high-level meeting to review the COVID-19 situation and vaccination program.
(Reuters, 4/4/21)
2021 Apr 4, In eastern Indonesia landslides and flash floods from torrential rains killed at least 140 people and displaced thousands across several islands. Dozens were still missing.
(AP, 4/4/21)(SFC, 4/8/21, p.A3)
2021 Apr 4, Robert A. Mundell (88), a Nobel Prize-winning economist, died at his home near Siena, Italy. He was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1999 “for his analysis of monetary and fiscal policy under different exchange rate regimes and his analysis of optimum currency areas".
(NY Times, 4/5/21)
2021 Apr 4, Japanese public broadcaster NHK said around 70% of coronavirus patients tested at a Tokyo hospital last month carried a mutation known for reducing vaccine protection. The E484K mutation, nicknamed "Eek" by some scientists, was found in 10 of 14 people who tested positive for the virus at Tokyo Medical and Dental University Medical Hospital in March.
(Reuters, 4/4/21)
2021 Apr 4, Jordan's Deputy PM Ayman Safadi said that King Abdullah's half-brother and former heir Prince Hamza had liaised with foreign parties over a plot to destabilize the country and had been under investigation for some time.
(Reuters, 4/4/21)
2021 Apr 4, More than 100,000 doses of Russia's Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine arrived at Tripoli's Mitiga airport, the first shipment to reach Libya.
(Reuters, 4/4/21)
2021 Apr 4, In Myanmar demonstrators took to the streets holding painted eggs. Security forces opened fire on protesters in Pyinmana killing at least one person.
(SFC, 4/5/21, p.A2)
2021 Apr 4, New Zealand hunters resumed their annual tradition of shooting invasive rabbits over the Easter weekend after a 4-year break. 11,968 rabbits were shot in the fundraising event that began more than 25 years ago.
(SSFC, 4/11/21, p.A18)
2021 Apr 4, In Sicily the irresistible call of a lavish Easter feast landed prominent mobster Giuseppe Calvaruso (44) behind bars after authorities arrested him as he was returning to the Mediterranean island from Brazil to celebrate with family.
(The Telegraph, 4/5/21)
2021 Apr 4, Singaporean blogger Leong Sze Hian said he had raised S$133,000 ($98,840) via crowdfunding on social media to cover damages he was ordered to pay PM Lee Hsien Loong in a defamation case filed by the city-state's leader. In 2018 Hian shared on Facebook an online news article that linked the premier to a financial scandal at Malaysia's state fund 1MDB.
(Reuters, 4/4/21)
2021 Apr 4, Spaniards lined up for shots on Easter Sunday in Barcelona and other points around the country, but Madrid halted vaccinations at local health centers to give staff a break.
(AP, 4/4/21)
2021 Apr 4, In Sri Lanka Caroline Jurie, who won Mrs. Sri Lanka in 2019 and went on to win the Mrs. World title, took the crown from 2021 winner Pushpika De Silva. Jurie claimed De Silva couldn't win Mrs. Sri Lanka because she was divorced. Police soon arrested Jurie after she allegedly injured another contestant during the Mrs. Sri Lanka beauty pageant.
(CBS News, 4/8/21)
2021 Apr 4, Pope Francis urged countries in his Easter message to quicken distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, particularly to the world's poor, and called armed conflict and military spending during a pandemic "scandalous".
(Reuters, 4/4/21)
2021 Apr 5, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen urged the adoption of a minimum global corporate income tax, an effort to offset any disadvantages that might arise from the Biden administration's proposed increase in the US corporate tax rate.
(AP, 4/5/21)
2021 Apr 5, A White House official said the US government's removal of AstraZeneca PLC's COVID-19 shot production from Emergent BioSolutions Inc's Baltimore manufacturing facility does not suggest it has any concerns about the vaccine's safety or effectiveness and will not impact its output of doses. The US Department of Health and Human Services ordered Johnson & Johnson to take charge of production at Emergent and for Emergent to stop making AstraZeneca's shots after the contract manufacturer made an error that ruined 15 million J&J COVID-19 vaccine doses.
(Reuters, 4/5/21)
2021 Apr 5, A nonpartisan US Senate official ruled that Democrats can pass multiple bills over the next two years with a straight Senate majority rather than a filibuster-proof 60 votes.
(NY Times, 4/6/21)
2021 Apr 5, The US Supreme Court brought an end to a legal fight over former President Donald Trump's effort to block critics from following his now-frozen Twitter account, deciding the dispute was moot and throwing out a lower court's decision that found he had violated constitutional free speech rights.
(Reuters, 4/5/21)
2021 Apr 5, The US Supreme Court handed Alphabet Inc's Google a major victory, ruling 6-2 that its use of Oracle Corp's software code to build the Android operating system that runs most of the world's smartphones did not violate federal copyright law.
(Reuters, 4/5/21)
2021 Apr 5, It was announced that novelist James McBride, former US poet laureate Natasha Trethewey and science fiction great Samuel R. Delaney are among this year's winners of Anisfield-Wolf awards for books that confront racism and help promote diversity. The Anisfield-Wolf awards were founded in 1935 and are managed by the nonprofit Cleveland Foundation.
(AP, 4/5/21)
2021 Apr 5, Strong economic data boosted the Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 to record highs. The Dow gained 1.1 percent to close at 33,527. The S&P 500 rose by 1.4 percent, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq jumped by 1.7 percent.
(Reuters, 4/5/21)
2021 Apr 5, Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas broke with other Republicans and vetoed a bill that would have banned some medications and surgery for transgender minors.
(NY Times, 4/5/21)
2021 Apr 5, California to date had 3,656,939 cases of coronavirus and 59,293 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 424,657 cases and 5,975 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 30,775,094 with the death toll at 555,381.
(sfist.com, 4/5/21)
2021 Apr 5, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) said that he would not resign from Congress in the face of allegations that he "slept with" a 17-year-old girl.
(AP, 4/5/21)
2021 Apr 5, It was reported that Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte has tested positive for COVID-19 a few days after receiving his first dose of a coronavirus vaccine.
(AP, 4/6/21)
2021 Apr 5, Texas-based Baylor Univ. won its first men’s college basketball championship, handing Gonzaga its first loss of the season, 86 to 70.
(NY Times, 4/5/21)
2021 Apr 5, In Texas six people were found dead in an apparent murder-suicide in a suburban Dallas home.
(SFC, 4/7/21, p.A4)
2021 Apr 5, Bangladesh began a one-week lockdown to curb the spread of the coronavirus.
(SFC, 4/5/21, p.A5)
2021 Apr 5, The UN mission in Bosnia called for urgent action to stop violent pushbacks and collective expulsions of refugees, asylum-seekers and migrants along the Croatian border following an incident last week involving 50 “visibly exhausted" men. The men said they had their cellphones, money and belongings taken away when they tried to cross the border and that they were beaten with sticks back into Bosnia.
(AP, 4/5/21)
2021 Apr 5, East Timor received its first batch of coronavirus vaccine, arranged by the global vaccine sharing scheme COVAX. The former Portuguese colony has detected 714 cases of the coronavirus, most of which it said were imported, and no casualty so far.
(Reuters, 4/5/21)
2021 Apr 5, It was reported that authorities in Ghana are trying to find out what has caused more than 60 dead dolphins to wash up on several beaches.
(BBC, 4/5/21)
2021 Apr 5, Retail stores across most of Greece were allowed to reopen despite an ongoing surge in COVID-19 infections, as the country battles to emerge from deep recession.
(AP, 4/5/21)
2021 Apr 5, India reported a record rise in COVID-19 infections, becoming the second country after the United States to post more than 100,000 new cases in a day, as politicians stage massive election rallies raising fears of further spreading the virus.
(Reuters, 4/5/21)
2021 Apr 5, India's Cadila Healthcare Ltd said it has sought approval from local regulators to use Pegylated Interferon alpha-2b, a Hepatitis C drug, as a treatment for COVID-19 following promising interim results from a late-stage trial.
(Reuters, 4/5/21)
2021 Apr 5, Iran's state TV announced that authorities arrested several people on charges of spying for Israel and other nations.
(AP, 4/5/21)
2021 Apr 5, In southwestern Iran a man (50) shot to death his 9-year-old son and seven relatives of his two wives before killing himself in the city of Ahvaz.
(AP, 4/5/21)
2021 Apr 5, Japan's Subaru Corp said that the automaker will shut its Yajima plant between April 10 and 27 due to a chip shortage, affecting 10,000 vehicles.
(Reuters, 4/5/21)
2021 Apr 5, Jordan's estranged Prince Hamza said in a voice recording released today that he would disobey orders by the army not to communicate with the outside world after he was put under house arrest and accused of trying to destabilize the country. Prince Hamzah issued a statement hours after mediation, saying he was committed to the constitution.
(Reuters, 4/5/21)(BBC, 4/5/21)
2021 Apr 5, Mozambique's military said it has regained full control of the coastal town of Palma, more than a week after it was raided by militant Islamists.
(AP, 4/5/21)
2021 Apr 5, The Eemslift Hendrika, a Netherlands-registered special ship designed to carry boats on its deck, went adrift in an area where the North Sea and Norwegian Sea meet, some 40-50 km (25-31 miles) off the shore and the city of Alesund. The crew of 12 was evacuated to shore by helicopter after the ship sent a distress call following a power outage in its main engine in heavy seas.
(AP, 4/7/21)
2021 Apr 5, In Nigeria 1,844 inmates escaped from a prison after it was attacked by gunmen in the south-eastern town of Owerri, Imo state.
(BBC, 4/5/21)
2021 Apr 5, Police and politicians in Northern Ireland appealed for calm after a third night of violence that saw Protestant youths start fires and pelt officers with bricks and gasoline bombs.
(AP, 4/5/21)
2021 Apr 5, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law allowing him to potentially hold onto power until 2036, a move that formalizes constitutional changes endorsed in last year's popular vote.
(AP, 4/5/21)
2021 Apr 5, Russia said it would extend a punitive slowdown of Twitter until May 15 though it acknowledged the US social media company had speeded up deletion of banned content.
(Reuters, 4/5/21)
2021 Apr 5, Spain reported 2,247 new cases and 85 deaths. In total, there’s been 3.3 million cases and more than 75,000 confirmed deaths.
(AP, 4/6/21)
2021 Apr 5, The Sudanese doctors’ committee in West Darfur said at least 18 people were killed and 54 wounded in clashes this weekend between Arabs and non-Arabs. Clashes continued today.
(AP, 4/5/21)
2021 Apr 5, Turkish authorities detained 10 former admirals after a group of 103 retired top navy officers issued a midnight statement that government officials tied to Turkey’s history of military coups. The retired naval officers had signed a statement declaring their commitment to the 1936 international treaty that regulates shipping through the Bosporus and Dardanelles straits.
(AP, 4/5/21)
2021 Apr 5, The UN said a fierce attack on a UN peacekeeping base in northern Mali last week killed four peacekeepers and at least 23 attackers, and injured another 34 peacekeepers.
(AP, 4/6/21)
2021 Apr 5, Venezuela's main academies of medicine and science urged renewed efforts to vaccinate the South American nation's population against the coronavirus amid a spike in infections that has led the government to extend lockdown measures. Venezuela reported 15 deaths and 1,786 new infections, the highest since the start of the pandemic. It has reported 166,123 cases and 1,662 associated deaths.
(Reuters, 4/5/21)
2021 Apr 6, Washington and Iran began indirect talks in Vienna aimed at salvaging the nuclear deal.
(The Telegraph, 4/6/21)
2021 Apr 6, The Arkansas legislature, which Republicans control, overrode the Republican governor’s veto and enacted a law banning some medications and surgeries for transgender people under 18.
(AP, 4/7/21)
2021 Apr 6, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) announced that his state aimed to fully reopen its economy on June 15, saying it was time to start "planning for our lives post-pandemic".
(AP, 4/6/21)
2021 Apr 6, California to date had 3,660,561 cases of coronavirus and 59,424 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 425,109 cases and 5,989 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 30,843,737 with the death toll at 556,486.
(sfist.com, 4/6/21)
2021 Apr 6, Florida, Michigan, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania together reported 44% of the nation's new COVID-19 infections, or nearly 197,500 new cases, in the latest available seven-day period.
(AP, 4/6/21)
2021 Apr 6, It was reported that Florida's Democratic US Representative Alcee Hastings (84) has died, further narrowing the party's majority in the lower chamber of Congress.
(Reuters, 4/6/21)
2021 Apr 6, In Maryland Navy hospital corpsman Fantahun Girma Woldesenbet (38) was killed at the Fort Detrick military base after shooting two people at Riverside Technical Park in Frederick.
(NBC News, 4/6/21)
2021 Apr 6, Jazz saxophonist Sonny Simmons (87) died in New York.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonny_Simmons)(SSFC, 5/9/21, p.F1)
2021 Apr 6, Wyoming's Republican Gov. Mark Gordon signed a law creating a $1.2 million fund for an initiative that marks the latest attempt by state leaders to help coal in the state that accounts for the bulk of US coal production, which is down by half since 2008.
(AP, 5/2/21)
2021 Apr 6, Intel Corp introduced its newest flagship data center microprocessor, hoping its in-house manufacturing operations will help it navigate a chip shortage to better compete against rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc's (AMD) faster chips.
(Reuters, 4/6/21)
2021 Apr 6, New research suggested the protection the Moderna vaccine gives against COVID-19 lasts for at least six months.
(AP, 4/6/21)
2021 Apr 6, Taco Bell said it wants to hire at least 5,000 employees in one day, and is adding benefits for some general managers to sweeten the pot as restaurants struggle to hire enough workers to keep up with a surge in sales amid a broader US economic recovery.
(Reuters, 4/6/21)
2021 Apr 6, ComicConnect.com, an online auction and consignment company, said the issue of Action Comics #1 (1938), the comic book that introduced Superman to the world, went for $3.25 million in a private sale.
(AP, 4/6/21)
2021 Apr 6, It was reported that Yahoo, which is owned by Verizon Media, will be shutting down its question-and-answer service and deleting its archives on May 4.
(NY Times, 4/6/21)
2021 Apr 6, YouTube said about 1.6 million views on YouTube out of every 1 billion are of a video that violates its content policies, about even with a year ago.
(Reuters, 4/6/21)
2021 Apr 6, Brazil reported 4,195 COVID-19 fatalities bringing the total to 336,947. Cases surged by 86, 979 over the past 24 hours pushing that total to 13.1 million.
(SFC, 4/7/21, p.A5)
2021 Apr 6, More than 1,000 Bosnians marched in the capital Sarajevo demanding government resignation over poor handling of the coronavirus pandemic. Bosnia has had among the highest death rates in Europe, with nearly 7,000 dead in the country of 3.3 million.
(AP, 4/6/21)
2021 Apr 6, PM Justin Trudeau said Canada's hospitalizations are surging, intensive care beds are filling up and COVID-19 variants are spreading as a third wave of the pandemic sweeps across much of the country.
(Reuters, 4/6/21)
2021 Apr 6, It was reported that Cyprus is getting protected status for its prized halloumi, giving its producers the sole right to sell the rubbery cheese in the European Union. The protected designation of origin (PDO) status will come into effect from October.
(Reuters, 4/6/21)
2021 Apr 6, Egypt’s Foreign Ministry said the latest round of talks over Ethiopia’s massive dam project failed to make progress after Addis Abba rejected a Sudanese proposal to include international mediators.
(AP, 4/6/21)
2021 Apr 6, The European Union's top officials met with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara. The visit came after EU leaders agreed to offer Turkey new incentives despite ongoing concerns about the country's backslide on democratic and human rights, and its energy ambitions in the Mediterranean Sea.
(AP, 4/6/21)
2021 Apr 6, In Germany Hans Küng (93), a Roman Catholic theologian, died at his home in Tübingen. He was an early colleague and friend of the future Pope Benedict XVI but later fell foul of the Vatican for challenging church doctrine and became a vocal critic of the pontiff.
(AP, 4/6/21)
2021 Apr 6, An Iranian prosecutor said ten officials have been indicted over the 2020 military shootdown of a Ukrainian passenger plane that killed 176 people.
(AP, 4/6/21)
2021 Apr 6, Israel’s Pres. Reuven Rivlin handed PM Benjamin Netanyahu the difficult task of trying to form a government from the country’s splintered parliament, giving the embattled leader a chance to prolong his lengthy term in office while he stands trial on corruption charges.
(AP, 4/6/21)
2021 Apr 6, Israeli troops shot and killed a Palestinian man early today at a temporary vehicle checkpoint in the occupied West Bank near Jerusalem. The man's wife, who was in the car with him and was wounded by the gunfire, said the couple followed the soldiers' instructions and posed no threat.
(AP, 4/6/21)
2021 Apr 6, An apparent Israeli mine attack damaged an Iranian military vessel in the Red Sea, an escalation of recent skirmishes.
(NY Times, 4/7/21)
2021 Apr 6, Italy's Premier Mario Draghi visited Libya and held talks with PM Abdul Hamid Dbeibah. This was Draghi's first trip abroad since taking office.
(AP, 4/6/21)
2021 Apr 6, In Italy restaurant owners and others angry at having their businesses shut for weeks due to pandemic lockdown measures clashed with police during a protest outside Parliament in Rome.
(AP, 4/6/21)
2021 Apr 6, It was reported that Japan has extended its own sanctions against North Korea for another two years as Pyongyang continues to develop its nuclear weapons without any progress in resolving the abductions of Japanese nationals.
(AP, 4/6/21)
2021 Apr 6, Myanmar police and soldiers arrested Zarganar (60), the country's best-known comedian, as the government continued to crack down on people they accuse of helping incite nationwide protests.
(SFC, 4/7/21, p.A4)
2021 Apr 6, Dutch police arrested a suspect in the theft last year of two valuable paintings by Vincent van Gogh and Frans Hals from different museums. The paintings remained missing.
(AP, 4/6/21)
2021 Apr 6, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un acknowledged his country was facing the “worst-ever situation" as he addressed thousands of grassroots members of his ruling party during a major political conference in Pyongyang.
(AP, 4/7/21)
2021 Apr 6, Pakistan reported 103 deaths from COVID-19, one of the highest single-day fatalities since January.
(AP, 4/6/21)
2021 Apr 6, In Russia a number of supporters of Alexei Navalny were detained outside his penal colony east of Moscow after they demanded access to the jailed Kremlin critic, who is on hunger strike demanding proper medical treatment.
(The Telegraph, 4/6/21)
2021 Apr 6, The Sri Lankan government lifted the one-year restrictions imposed on Sri Lankans, allowing entry into the country without prior approval but requiring quarantine. Sri Lanka has registered 93,595 total cases and 586 confirmed deaths.
(AP, 4/6/21)
2021 Apr 6, Tanzania's new Pres. Samia Suluhu Hassan said she will form a technical committee to advise her about the scope of COVID-19 infections in the country and how to respond to the pandemic.
(AP, 4/6/21)
2021 Apr 6, It was reported that Trinidad and Tobago PM Keith Rowley has tested positive for the coronavirus. The country has reported more than 8,000 coronavirus cases and 145 confirmed deaths.
(AP, 4/6/21)
2021 Apr 6, Ukraine’s military said that two of its servicemen were killed within 24 hours in the country's east, where Ukrainian forces have been fighting Russian-backed separatists since 2014 and where tensions have intensified in recent weeks.
(AP, 4/6/21)
2021 Apr 6, Two UN agencies warned that over 27 million people in Congo are suffering from acute hunger, a record high representing almost one-third of the conflict-wracked African nation’s estimated population of 87 million.
(AP, 4/6/21)
2021 Apr 6, The UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) said it plans to reduce troop numbers by seven percent this year, due to a drop in violence in the conflict-torn country.
(AP, 4/6/21)
2021 Apr 6, The UN said at least 56 people have been killed in four days of violence in Sudan's West Darfur region. Gunfire was reported in the city of El Geneina as people fled into Chad.
(AFP, 4/6/21)
2021 Apr 7, The Biden administration said that 25 million more stimulus payments worth a total of $36 billion had been sent out to Americans from the $1.9 trillion pandemic relief legislation.
(Reuters, 4/7/21)
2021 Apr 7, The Biden administration announced it would provide $235 million in US aid to the Palestinians, restarting funding for the United Nations agency supporting refugees and restoring other assistance cut off by then-President Donald Trump..
(Reuters, 4/7/21)
2021 Apr 7, US lawyers working to reunite migrant families that the Trump administration separated said they still could not find the parents of 445 children.
(NY Times, 4/7/21)
2021 Apr 7, The US National Institutes of Health said it had begun a mid-stage study to determine the risk of allergic reactions to COVID-19 vaccines made by Moderna Inc and Pfizer Inc.
(Reuters, 4/7/21)
2021 Apr 7, California to date had 3,661,898 cases of coronavirus and 59,483 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 425,465 cases and 5,994 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 30,920,837 with the death toll at 559,086.
(sfist.com, 4/7/21)
2021 Apr 7, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, signed a bill to expand voting rights. The state has a Republican legislature and a Democratic governor.
(AP, 4/7/21)
2021 Apr 7, In South Carolina Dr. Robert Lesslie, his wife and two of their grandchildren were among six people who were fatally shot in a home late today. Adams also killed two air-conditioning technicians working at the home. The next morning suspect Phillip Adams, a former NFL player, was found at a home near the shootings in the city of Rock Hill and was thought to have killed himself. The posthumous brain examination Adams revealed that he had an “unusually severe" form of C.T.E., a degenerative brain disease found in athletes and others with a history of repeated hits to the head.
(NY Times, 4/8/21)(Charlotte Observer, 4/8/21)(NY Times, 12/14/21)
2021 Apr 7, United Parcel Service said it has agreed to buy 10 electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft from Vermont-based startup Beta Technologies to speed up deliveries in small markets. The first 10 planes will start arriving in 2024.
(Reuters, 4/7/21)
2021 Apr 7, Scientists announced that evidence is mounting that the tiny subatomic muon seems to be disobeying the known laws of physics, a finding that would open a vast and tantalizing hole in our understanding of the universe.
(AP, 4/8/21)
2021 Apr 7, G20 finance officials agreed on a proposal to boost the resources of the International Monetary Fund by $650 billion as a way to provide more support to vulnerable countries struggling to deal with a global pandemic.
(AP, 4/7/21)
2021 Apr 7, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro said there would be “no national lockdown," ignoring growing calls from health experts a day after the nation saw its highest number of COVID-19 deaths in 24 hours since the pandemic began.
(AP, 4/7/21)
2021 Apr 7, Britain's Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunization (JCVI) said Britain should not give Oxford/AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine to under 30s where possible, due to a very rare side effect of blood clots in the brain.
(Reuters, 4/7/21)
2021 Apr 7, It was reported that HSBC is moving more than 1,200 staff in Britain to permanent working from home contracts, in one of the strongest indications yet of how banks are locking in changes to employees' work patterns as a result of the pandemic to cut costs.
(Reuters, 4/7/21)
2021 Apr 7, Cambodia said it is shutting its most popular tourist destination, the centuries-old Angkor temple complex, to visitors for two weeks to help curb the country’s coronavirus outbreak.
(AP, 4/8/21)
2021 Apr 7, It was reported that 21 players on the NHL’s Vancouver Canucks — nearly the whole team — have tested positive for COVID-19. Ontario Premier Doug Ford announced a plan to have mobile vaccine clinics target COVID-19 "hotspots" and high-risk worksites.
(NY Times, 4/7/21)(Reuters, 4/11/21)
2021 Apr 7, European and British medicine regulators said they had found possible links between AstraZeneca's coronavirus vaccine and reports of very rare cases of brain blood clots, in a setback for inoculation campaigns. An official said that the European drug regulator has received reports of 169 cases of a rare brain blood clot in people who received AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine, as the agency continued to stress that the benefits of the vaccination outweigh the risks.
(Reuters, 4/7/21)
2021 Apr 7, Kits for self-administered coronavirus tests began arriving in Greek pharmacies, with residents entitled to one a week free of charge as part of efforts to tackle a surge of coronavirus cases and hospitalizations.
(AP, 4/7/21)
2021 Apr 7, In Hungary shops and services were allowed to reopen after 2.5 million people received a first dose of a coronavirus vaccine, a benchmark the government set for when a gradual reopening could take place. Doctors questioned the government's decision to lift some lockdown restriction.
(AP, 4/8/21)
2021 Apr 7, Iran shattered its daily record for new infections for the second consecutive day as cases soared to 20,954, a worrisome trend after more than a year of the country battling the worst outbreak in the Middle East.
(AP, 4/7/21)
2021 Apr 7, Iraq’s PM Mustafa al-Kadhimi asked Iran's leaders to rein in Iran-backed militias in Iraq and in a strongly worded message to Tehran, suggested he would confront the factions.
(AP, 4/7/21)
2021 Apr 7, Iraq recorded 8,331 new virus cases within a 24-hour period, the highest figure since the ministry began keeping records at the onset of the pandemic last year.
(AP, 4/9/21)
2021 Apr 7, Italy reported 627 coronavirus-related deaths against 421 the day before, while the daily tally of new infections rose to 13,708 from 7,767 the day before.
(Reuters, 4/7/21)
2021 Apr 7, Doctors in Japan performed the world's first successful transplant of lung tissue from living donors to a patient with severe lung damage from COVID-19.
(SFC, 4/9/21, p.A6)
2021 Apr 7, Moroccan authorities decided to enforce a night-time curfew during the holy month of Ramadan because of a recent rise in COVID-19 cases, as scientists announced the discovery of a new, local variant of the virus.
(AP, 4/7/21)
2021 Apr 7, Myanmar security forces stormed the town of Kalay in the northwest where some residents had used homemade hunting rifles to form a self-defense force. Security forces killed at least 11 civilians and injured many others.
(AP, 4/8/21)
2021 Apr 7, Philippine health authorities allowed the use of Sinovac's COVID-19 vaccine for some senior citizens after initially limiting coverage to people aged 18-59 years, as the country battles one of Asia's worst coronavirus outbreaks.
(Reuters, 4/7/21)
2021 Apr 7, Russia’s foreign minister said Moscow and Islamabad will boost ties in the fight against terrorism, with Russia providing unspecified military equipment to Pakistan and the two holding joint exercises at sea and in the mountains.
(AP, 4/7/21)
2021 Apr 7, A lawyer for imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny (44), who has complained of serious back and leg pain in custody, said doctors have found him to be suffering from two spinal hernias.
(AP, 4/7/21)
2021 Apr 7, President Paul Kagame of Rwanda praised a new French report documenting France's role in the 1994 genocide as “a good thing," welcoming efforts in Paris to “move forward with a good understanding of what happened" 27 years after the massacres that shocked the world.
(AP, 4/7/21)
2021 Apr 7, Authorities in several Spanish regions ratcheted up COVID-19 restrictions to rein in a rising infection rate and prevent it from evolving into a fourth wave of contagion.
(Reuters, 4/7/21)
2021 Apr 7, The death toll from tribal violence that erupted over the weekend in Sudan's Darfur region climbed to 87 as a local medical group also reported attacks on healthcare workers in the area.
(AP, 4/7/21)
2021 Apr 7, The Swedish Medical Products Agency said the benefits of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine outweighed the risks after the EU drug regulator said it had found a possible link between the shot and rare blood clots.
(Reuters, 4/7/21)
2021 Apr 7, Tunisia said it is extending its nighttime curfew by three hours and tightening other restrictions ahead of Ramadan following an uptick of COVID-19 infections. The measure will apply from 7pm until 5am, from April 9 until at least April 30.
(AP, 4/8/21)
2021 Apr 7, A Turkish Air Force aerobatic jet crashed in central Turkey, killing its pilot.
(AP, 4/7/21)
2021 Apr 8, President Joe Biden and his Attorney General Merrick Garland announced limited measures to tackle gun violence in the United States, in what the White House described as a first step to curb mass shootings, community bloodshed and suicides.
(Reuters, 4/8/21)
2021 Apr 8, California to date had 3,666,689 cases of coronavirus and 59,733 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 425,940 cases and 6,008 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 31,002,247 with the death toll at 560,116.
(sfist.com, 4/8/21)
2021 Apr 8, In the SF Bay Area two dead whales washed ashore, joining two more that were discovered dead in area beaches since March 31. Of the four animals, two died from blunt force trauma from ship strikes.
(Reuters, 4/10/21)
2021 Apr 8, Bill Bonham (b.1949), improv artist and pitchman for Round Table Pizza, died at his home in San Francisco.
(SFC, 4/17/21, p.F1)
2021 Apr 8, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) announced that his state would sue the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to demand it let cruise ships that are vital to the tourist economy start operating again.
(The Week, 4/9/21)
2021 Apr 8, It was reported that New Jersey and women incarcerated in the state's only women's prison have reached a nearly $21 million settlement over longstanding allegations of abuse and harassment at the facility.
(AP, 4/8/21)
2021 Apr 8, It was reported that New York will offer one-time payments of up to $15,600 to undocumented immigrants who lost work during the pandemic and could not get unemployment benefits.
(NY Times, 4/8/21)
2021 Apr 8, In Texas Larry Winston (27) of Iola opened fire at a cabinet-making company where he worked, killing one person and wounding five others before shooting and wounding a state trooper. Bollin was arrested and charged with murder.
(SFC, 4/10/21, p.A4)
2021 Apr 8, General Motors and Ford said they would halt production or extend shutdowns already in place at several North American automobile plants due to an ongoing shortage of semiconductor chips.
(The Week, 4/9/21)
2021 Apr 8, The American author John Naisbitt (92) died at his home on Lake Woerthersee, Austria. His 1982 bestselling book “Megatrends: Ten New Directions Transforming Our Lives" was published in dozens of countries. He also founded the Naisbitt China Institute, a research institution studying the transformation of China and gave many lectures on future studies.
(AP, 4/10/21)
2021 Apr 8, Australia and the Philippines limited use of AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine, while the Africa Union dropped plans to buy the shot, dealing further blows to the company's hopes to deliver a vaccine for the world.
(Reuters, 4/8/21)
2021 Apr 8, Digital cash called DCash, created by Barbados-based fintech company Bitt, became available in St. Lucia, Antigua and Barbuda, Grenada and St. Kitts and Nevis.
(SFC, 4/9/21, p.B2)
2021 Apr 8, In Benin two people were killed in the town of Savè, when security forces broke up a protest just days ahead of presidential elections. Another six people suffered gunshot wounds.
(BBC, 4/11/21)
2021 Apr 8, It was reported that the UK's COVID-19 vaccination program is beginning to break the link between infection and serious illness or death. Britain's death toll from the pandemic is the highest in Europe at over 127,000.
(AP, 4/8/21)
2021 Apr 8, A senior leader of Egypt's outlawed Muslim Brotherhood group was convicted on terror charges and sentenced to life in prison. A Cairo court found Mahmoud Ezzat (76), the acting supreme guide of the country's oldest Islamist organization, guilty of terror acts that followed the 2013 military overthrow of Egypt's first democratically elected president, Mohammed Morsi.
(AP, 4/8/21)
2021 Apr 8, The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) accepted the Czech Republic's position on mandatory vaccinations for children rebuffing parents' complaints that the government violated their rights.
(Reuters, 4/8/21)
2021 Apr 8, India’s PM Narendra Modi received his second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine as the country hit another peak with 126,789 new cases reported in the past 24 hours.
(AP, 4/8/21)
2021 Apr 8, Iran hit a new coronavirus infection record for the third straight day, reporting 22,586 new cases as the country grapples with a severe spike following the Persian New Year holiday.
(AP, 4/8/21)
2021 Apr 8, Israel reportedly carried out a missile attack near the Damascus and its southern suburbs early today that wounded four soldiers.
(AP, 4/8/21)
2021 Apr 8, Israel's top court upheld a Cabinet minister's decision to temporarily block Oded Goldreich, a prominent academic, from receiving the country's highest honor after he called on the EU to halt funding for an Israeli university located in the occupied West Bank.
(AP, 4/8/21)
2021 Apr 8, Israel said it would formally reject the International Criminal Court's decision to launch a probe into potential war crimes against the Palestinians, denying that it has committed such crimes and saying the court lacks the jurisdiction to investigate.
(AP, 4/8/21)
2021 Apr 8, In Libya a shooting at the overwhelmed al-Mabani Collection and Return Center for migrants in Tripoli left one migrant dead and two others injured.
(AP, 4/10/21)
2021 Apr 8, Jihadi rebels in Mali kidnapped French journalist Olivier Dubois while he was working in the northern city of Gao. A video was released on May 5 that shows Dubois saying he was kidnapped by the al-Qaida-linked group JNIM.
(AP, 5/5/21)
2021 Apr 8, An information blackout under Myanmar's military junta worsened as fiber broadband service, the last legal way for ordinary people to access the internet, became intermittently inaccessible on several networks.
(AP, 4/8/21)
2021 Apr 8, Leaders in Northern Ireland called for calm and an end to the unrest that has rocked the country for nearly a week. Police used water cannons and riot gear to try and break up riots between rival unionist and nationalist gangs as they briefly smashed open the peace wall dividing the Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods.
(Axios, 4/8/21)(AP, 4/9/21)
2021 Apr 8, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un called for waging another “arduous march" to fight severe economic difficulties, for the first time comparing them to a 1990s famine that killed hundreds of thousands, while speaking to lower-level Workers' Party of Korea members.
(AP, 4/9/21)
2021 Apr 8, Russia called on Slovakia to return hundreds of thousands of doses of the Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine, citing contract violations, in an escalating row between the two countries after a Slovak watchdog raised doubts about the shot. Slovakia imported 200,000 doses of Sputnik V last month, despite a lack of EU regulatory approval.
(Reuters, 4/8/21)
2021 Apr 8, Naspers' Dutch-listed subsidiary Prosus NV sold a 2% stake in the Chinese gaming and social media giant in the world's largest-ever block trade, reducing its stake to 28.9%. Investors in Naspers Ltd, a South African multinational consumer Internet company, said they want proceeds from a $14.7 billion stake sale in its Tencent Holdings investment to go towards blockbuster acquisitions or a share buyback.
(Reuters, 4/8/21)
2021 Apr 8, In Sudan the death toll from tribal violence in the restive Darfur region climbed to 132 as looting continued.
(AP, 4/8/21)
2021 Apr 8, Syria received a planeload from the United Arab Emirates with food items and medical aid to help the war-torn country in its fight against the spread of the coronavirus.
(AP, 4/8/21)
2021 Apr 8, Syrian government forces fired a missile at a civilian vehicle in a rebel-held village in the country's northwest, killing seven people, including three children from the same family.
(AP, 4/9/21)
2021 Apr 8, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that the use of improvised explosive devices is increasing as conflicts become more urbanized and armed groups proliferate, and he urged nations to work together to curb the threat from those weapons as well as land mines and other remnants of war.
(AP, 4/8/21)
2021 Apr 9, US President Joe Biden proposed $14 billion in spending on initiatives to fight climate change in the 2022 budget, including large cash injections for environmental regulation and science research.
(Reuters, 4/9/21)
2021 Apr 9, President Biden created a 36-member bipartisan commission to spend the next six months examining the possibility of adding seats to the Supreme Court and imposing term limits for justices.
(The Week, 4/10/21)
2021 Apr 9, The US House Ethics Committee announced it would launch an investigation into Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and the allegations that he violated sex trafficking laws.
(The Week, 4/10/21)
2021 Apr 9, Efforts to unionize Amazon.com warehouse workers in Alabama were defeated by a more than 2-to-1 margin in a major win for the online retailer, but the union trying to organize workers said it will challenge the results, citing election interference. The final tally was 1,798 "no" votes and 738 "yes" votes.
(Reuters, 4/9/21)(NY Times, 4/9/21)
2021 Apr 9, The US Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that California can’t enforce coronavirus-related restrictions that have limited home-based religious worship including Bible studies and prayer meetings.
(AP, 4/9/21)
2021 Apr 9, California to date had 3,666,689 cases of coronavirus and 59,733 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 426,498 cases and 6,042 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 31,023,288 with the death toll at 560,315.
(sfist.com, 4/9/21)
2021 Apr 9, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear signed a partial ban on no-knock warrants after months of demonstrations set off by the fatal shooting of Breonna Taylor in her home during a botched police raid last year.
(AP, 4/9/21)
2021 Apr 9, The Navajo Nation issued a stay-at-home order for the weekend after reporting 26 more confirmed COVID-19 cases. The current death toll stood at 1,260.
(AP, 4/9/21)
2021 Apr 9, In NYC the famed amusement parks of Coney Island reopened under reduced capacity after being shuttered last year due to the coronavirus.
(SFC, 4/10/21, p.A7)
2021 Apr 9, Former Attorney General Ramsey Clark (93) died at his Manhattan home. He had served in the role for two-years in former President Lyndon Johnson's administration and filed the first lawsuit to force a school district to desegregate or else lose its federal aid just days after taking office.
(NY Times, 4/10/21)
2021 Apr 9, Grammy-nominated rapper DMX (50), born as Earl Simmons, died of cardiac arrest at his home in White Plains, NY. His first five albums all debuted at No. 1 on Billboard charts. DMX starred in the 1998 film "Belly" and appeared in 2000's "Romeo Must Die" with Jet Li and Aaliyah. He also starred in 2001's "Exit Wounds" with Steven Seagal and 2003's "Cradle 2 the Grave" with Li.
(AP, 4/9/21)
2021 Apr 9, Airlines pulled dozens of Boeing Max 737s out of service for inspections after the aircraft maker told them about a possible electrical problem, the latest setback for plane.
(AP, 4/9/21)
2021 Apr 9, It was reported that Uber Technologies Inc and Lyft Inc are spending millions of dollars to provide drivers with access to COVID-19 vaccines and offering tens of millions of free or discounted rides to vaccination sites for people in communities that lack access to transportation and healthcare services.
(Reuters, 4/9/21)
2021 Apr 9, The World Bank Group said it will have committed $2 billion in financing by the end of April for vaccine purchases, development and manufacturing and is working with more than 40 countries on this effort.
(Reuters, 4/9/21)
2021 Apr 9, Australia said that it has finalized a deal to buy an extra 20 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine as it rapidly pivots away from its earlier plan to rely mainly on the AstraZeneca vaccine.
(AP, 4/9/21)
2021 Apr 9, Prince Philip (99), Queen Elizabeth's husband for more than seven decades, died. He helped to modernize the British monarchy and steer the royal family through repeated crises.
(Reuters, 4/9/21)
2021 Apr 9, Britain said it had given 545,511 COVID vaccine doses on April 8, the highest daily total since April 1, while a further 60 people had died within 28 days of a positive test for the disease, raising this death toll to 127,040.
(Reuters, 4/9/21)
2021 Apr 9, Djibouti Pres. Ismail Omar Guelleh (73) won a 5th term as president.
(SSFC, 4/11/21, p.A7)
2021 Apr 9, French health officials said that people under 55 who received a first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine should get other vaccines for their second shot because of an extremely rare risk of a blood clotting disorder.
(AP, 4/9/21)
2021 Apr 9, Iran freed the MT Hankuk Chemi, a South Korean oil tanker it had held for months amid a dispute over billions of dollars seized by Seoul. The seizure was widely seen as an attempt to pressure Seoul to release some $7 billion in Iranian assets tied up in South Korean banks amid heavy American sanctions on Iran.
(AP, 4/9/21)
2021 Apr 9, A video began circulating online showing Israeli police punching Ofer Cassif, a member of parliament, and wrestling him to the ground at a protest against planned evictions in east Jerusalem. Cassif was taking part in a weekly protest in the mostly Palestinian neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, where rights groups say dozens of people are at risk of being evicted after a long court battle with Jewish settler groups.
(AP, 4/9/21)
2021 Apr 9, Security forces in Myanmar cracked down heavily again on protesters against the military's seizure of power, even as the ruling junta downplayed reports of state violence. At least 82 people were killed in Bago, about 100 km (60 miles) northeast of Yangon. An attack by government troops and police began before dawn and continued sporadically until after dark.
(AP, 4/9/21)(Axios, 4/10/21)
2021 Apr 9, Ousted Myanmar lawmakers urged the UN Security Council to take action against the military over a Feb. 1 coup as an independent think tank warned the 15 council members that the Asian state was on the brink of collapse. The US ambassador to the UN urged the international community to take “concrete action" against the military in Myanmar including an arms embargo and sanctions against its holding companies and those who profit from them.
(Reuters, 4/9/21)(AP, 4/9/21)
2021 Apr 9, Pakistani police said they found a mass grave containing the bodies of 16 coal miners who went missing in the country's northwest in 2011 and were believed abducted by militants.
(AP, 4/9/21)
2021 Apr 9, Puerto Rico said it would close all private and public schools for two weeks amid a surge in coronavirus cases.
(SFC, 4/10/21, p.A7)
2021 Apr 9, Russia said it fears the resumption of full-scale fighting in eastern Ukraine and could take steps to protect civilians there, a stark warning that comes amid a Russian troop buildup along the border.
(AP, 4/9/21)
2021 Apr 9, Samoa held elections. The upstart party of Fiame Naomi Mata'afa (64) tied the party of PM Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi. An independent candidate soon backed Mata'afa, who was scheduled to be sworn in as prime minister on May 24.
(SFC, 5/22/21, p.A3)
2021 Apr 9, In the eastern Caribbean the La Soufriere volcano erupted on St. Vincent following evacuation orders for some 16,000 people living in the red zone near the volcano.
(SFC, 4/10/21, p.A4)
2021 Apr 9, Thailand reported 559 new coronavirus infections, following increases of 405 and 334 new cases the previous two days.
(SFC, 4/10/21, p.A7)
2021 Apr 9, The image-sharing platform Pinterest appointed a legal representative in Turkey becoming the latest social media company to comply with a controversial social media law.
(AP, 4/9/21)
2021 Apr 10, Director Chloé Zhao won the top prize at the 73rd annual Directors Guild of America Awards for Nomadland. She is only the second woman, and the first woman of color, to earn the DGA award.
(The Week, 4/11/21)
2021 Apr 10, California to date had 3,670,264 cases of coronavirus and 59,910 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 427,341 cases and 6,052 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 31,085,251 with the death toll at 561,074.
(sfist.com, 4/10/21)
2021 Apr 10, In Florida former President Donald Trump staked his claim to the Republican Party in a closed-door speech to donors at his Mar-a-Lago resort, casting his populist policies and attack-dog politics as the key to future Republican success.
(AP, 4/10/21)
2021 Apr 10, Maryland lawmakers, overriding Gov. Larry Hogan’s vetoes, voted to limit police officers’ use of force, restrict the use of no-knock warrants and repeal the nation’s first Bill of Rights for law enforcement, taking sweeping action to address police violence after nationwide demonstrations following the death of George Floyd.
(NY Times, 4/10/21)
2021 Apr 10, Bitcoin rose above $60,000 to approach record highs, breaking out of a two-week tight range and propelled by talk of constrained new supplies against evidence of wider adoption. On March 13 Bitcoin hit a record $61,781.83 on Bitstamp exchange, just after US President Joe Biden signed his $1.9 trillion fiscal stimulus package into law.
(Reuters, 4/10/21)
2021 Apr 10, Gao Fu, the director of the Chinese Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said China's COVID-19 vaccines do not have very high protection rates.
(AP, 4/11/21)
2021 Apr 10, China's antitrust regulator doled out a record 18.2 billion yuan fine, about 12% of the company's fiscal 2020 net income, to e-commerce giant Alibaba.
(Bloomberg, 4/10/21)
2021 Apr 10, China's corruption watchdog called on online video-sharing platforms to take action against "mukbang" shows, in which people livestream themselves eating - or drinking - excessively, saying such content encourages food waste. Mukbang videos originated in South Korea and have become increasingly popular in China.
(Reuters, 4/10/21)
2021 Apr 10, French lawmakers voted late today to abolish domestic flights on routes than can be covered by train in under two-and-a-half hours, as the government seeks to lower carbon emissions even as the air travel industry reels from the global pandemic.
(Reuters, 4/11/21)
2021 Apr 10, In Indonesia a magnitude 6.0 earthquake killed at least eight people, injured 23 others and damaged more than 300 buildings on the main island of Java.
(AP, 4/10/21)
2021 Apr 10, Iran said it has begun mechanical tests on its newest advanced nuclear centrifuge, even as the five world powers that remain in a foundering 2015 nuclear deal with Iran attempt to bring the US back into the agreement.
(AP, 4/10/21)
2021 Apr 10, Iran began a 10-day lockdown amid a fourth wave of coronavirus infections, a worrisome trend after more than a year of the country battling the Middle East's worst outbreak.
(AP, 4/10/21)
2021 Apr 10, Italy reported 344 coronavirus-related deaths against 718 the day before, while the daily tally of new infections fell to 17,567 from 18,938 the day before. Italy has registered 113,923 deaths linked to COVID-19 since its outbreak emerged in February last year.
(Reuters, 4/10/21)
2021 Apr 10, Libya's new unity government launched a long-delayed COVID-19 vaccination program after receiving some 160,000 vaccine doses over the past week, with PM Abdulhamid Dbeibeh receiving his jab on live television.
(Reuters, 4/10/21)
2021 Apr 10, In Myanmar an estimated 60 civilians were killed overnight outside of Yangon, Myanmar, as protests against the military's Feb. 1 coup continued across the country. The AAPP and Myanmar Now news outlet said that 82 people were killed during the protest.
(The Week, 4/10/21)(Reuters, 4/10/21)
2021 Apr 10, In Romania marchers took to the streets of Bucharest to protest restrictive measures to fight the spread of COVID-19 even as new daily infections passed the milestone of 1 million confirmed COVID-19 cases. Romania has so far recorded 25,006 coronavirus deaths.
(AP, 4/10/21)
2021 Apr 10, A New York Times analysis of mortality data shows deaths in Russia during the pandemic last year were 28 percent higher than normal — an increase in mortality greater than in the United States and most countries in Europe.
(NY Times, 4/10/21)
2021 Apr 10, Saudi Arabia executed three soldiers it accused of committing “high treason," without elaborating on which enemy the kingdom believed the men aided.
(AP, 4/10/21)
2021 Apr 10, Protesters in Serbia rallied demanding that the government protect the environment in a Balkan nation that has seen record levels of air pollution and scores of other ecological problems following decades of neglect.
(AP, 4/10/21)
2021 Apr 10, In Somalia a suicide bomber detonated his explosives outside a cafe in the city of Baidoa, killing at least four people and wounding more than six others. The al-Qaida linked group al-Shabab claimed responsibility.
(AP, 4/10/21)
2021 Apr 10, Thailand said it plans to install 10,000 field-hospital beds in Bangkok, as the country strains to cope with a third wave of COVID-19 infections.
(Reuters, 4/10/21)
2021 Apr 10, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with Turkey’s Pres. Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s for discussions on bilateral relations.
(AP, 4/10/21)
2021 Apr 10, The United Arab Emirates named the next two astronauts in its space program, including the country's first female astronaut.
(AP, 4/10/21)
2021 Apr 11, California to date had 3,673,398 cases of coronavirus and 60,015 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 427,667 cases and 6,052 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 31,156,128 with the death toll at 561,811.
(sfist.com, 4/11/21)
2021 Apr 11, In Augusta, Georgia, Hideki Matsuyama (29) won The Masters, becoming the first Japanese man to win one of golf’s major titles.
(NY Times, 4/11/21)
2021 Apr 11, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan urged the Biden administration to ship extra vaccine doses to the state, where coronavirus cases are surging.
(AP, 4/12/21)
2021 Apr 11, In Minnesota Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old Black man, died after a police officer shot him during a traffic stop in a Minneapolis suburb. Hundreds of people took to the streets to protest. Police later said Officer Kim Potter fired her gun by accident, thinking it was her Taser.
(AP, 4/12/21)(NY Times, 4/13/21)
2021 Apr 11, Windsor, Virginia, officials announced that police officer Joe Gutierrez had been fired after an investigation into a traffic stop in which Gutierrez and another officer, Daniel Crocker, held an Army second lieutenant at gunpoint and pepper-sprayed him.
(The Week, 4/12/21)
2021 Apr 11, Greenpeace said it has uncovered widespread use of illegal driftnets in the northwest Indian Ocean, decimating marine life in what is one of the world's most ecologically vulnerable fishing grounds.
(Reuters, 4/11/21)
2021 Apr 11, Benin held presidential elections. President Talon, who had promised to leave office after a single term, sought a 2nd term.
(BBC, 4/11/21)
2021 Apr 11, Nomadland director Chloé Zhao continued her award sweep when she became the first woman of color to win the best director prize at the annual British Academy Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) awards.
(CBS News, 4/11/21)
2021 Apr 11, Bulgarian PM Boyko Borissov said the EU was negotiating a new contract with Pfizer-BioNTech at a price of 19.5 euros ($23.22) per dose. The new contract would cover variants, meaning that the companies would offer enhanced shots if mutations of the coronavirus became prevalent.
(AP, 4/12/21)
2021 Apr 11, It was reported that Canada's Telesat is racing to launch a low-earth-orbit (LEO) satellite constellation to provide high-speed global broadband from space, pitting the satellite communications firm founded in 1969 against trailblazing billionaires, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos.
(Reuters, 4/11/21)
2021 Apr 11, Chad held presidential elections. President Idriss Deby was expected to win a sixth term. Most prominent opposition leaders have withdrawn from the race, alleging attacks by the security forces.
(AP, 4/11/21)
2021 Apr 11, Chinese health authorities reported 10 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 22 asymptomatic cases, bringing the country's total to 90,410, while the death toll remained unchanged at 4,636. The National Health Commission said China has administered 164.47 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines.
(Reuters, 4/11/21)
2021 Apr 11, Ecuador held runoff presidential elections. Former banker Guillermo Lasso won by half a percentage point over Andres Arauz, a protégé of former Pres. Rafael Correa.
(SFC, 4/13/21, p.A2)
2021 Apr 11, An Egyptian court convicted Ahmed Bassam Zaki, a former student at an elite university, of attempted rape and drug possession, sentencing him to eight years imprisonment atop a previous punishment for other sexual misconduct convictions.
(AP, 4/11/21)
2021 Apr 11, India banned the export of anti-viral drug Remdesivir and its active pharmaceutical ingredients as demand rocketed due to a record surge in COVID-19 infections, leading to a crippling shortages in many parts.
(Reuters, 4/11/21)
2021 Apr 11, In Indian-controlled Kashmir government forces killed five suspected rebels in two gunfights overnight. A former police officer was also killed in a separate attack.
(SFC, 4/12/21, p.A4)
2021 Apr 11, A "suspicious" blackout struck Iran's underground Natanz nuclear facility. Iran said that a problem with the electrical distribution grid of the Natanz site had caused an incident. The country's nuclear chief Ali Akbar Salehi said the accident was the result of a "terrorist" act.
(AP, 4/11/21)
2021 Apr 11, Iran reported its highest single-day death toll from COVID-19 this year, bringing the country’s total deaths in the pandemic to nearly 64,500. Iran recorded 258 new deaths in the last 24 hours.
(AP, 4/11/21)
2021 Apr 11, Italy reported 331 coronavirus-related deaths against 344 the day before. The daily tally of new infections fell to 15,746 from 17,567 the day before.
(Reuters, 4/11/21)
2021 Apr 12, Japan said it had decided to gradually release tons of treated wastewater from the ruined Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant into the ocean.
(SFC, 4/13/21, p.A4)
2021 Apr 11, Mexican ruling party state candidate Felix Salgado, accused of rape, said he will not allow elections in his home state of Guerrero unless he is allowed to run. Salgado has had his candidacy canceled by regulatory authorities on other grounds.
(AP, 4/11/21)
2021 Apr 11, The Myanmar military’s bloody crackdown on the nationwide resistance to its rule showed no sign of easing, with a human rights group reporting that the death toll across the country had passed 700.
(NY Times, 4/12/21)
2021 Apr 11, South Korean authorities said they will move ahead with a coronavirus vaccination drive this week, after deciding to continue using AstraZeneca PLC's vaccine for all eligible people 30 years old or over.
(Reuters, 4/11/21)
2021 Apr 11, South Korean battery makers, LG Energy Solution and SK Innovation, reached an agreement to settle disputes over electric-vehicle technology.
(Reuters, 4/11/21)
2021 Apr 11, Spanish authorities said that they had recovered the bodies of four migrants from a boat along with 19 survivors who had taken the treacherous route from West Africa to the Canary Islands.
(AP, 4/11/21)
2021 Apr 11, Tanzania, Uganda and French oil company Total signed agreements on building a heated pipeline to carry crude oil from western Uganda to the Indian Ocean coast. Construction of the pipeline, which would be the world’s longest at 897 miles, is expected to begin this year.
(AP, 4/11/21)
2021 Apr 11, Thailand reported 967 new COVID-19 cases, its biggest daily jump, but no new deaths as the country deals with a third wave of infections and a highly contagious variant.
(Reuters, 4/11/21)
2021 Apr 11, The Ukrainian military said that a soldier was killed and another seriously wounded in artillery fire from Russia-backed separatist rebels.
(AP, 4/11/21)
2021 Apr 12, The Biden administration announced that it has reached deals with Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala to increase border enforcement, aiming to reduce migrant flows.
(AP, 4/12/21)
2021 Apr 12, The White House said it was prepared to send additional therapeutic treatments to the state of Michigan, which is experiencing a troubling number of COVID-19 cases, but did not promise more vaccine as the state has sought.
(Reuters, 4/12/21)
2021 Apr 12, The US Treasury Dept. said the government's budget deficit has surged to an all-time high of $1.7 trillion.
(SFC, 4/13/21, p.B2)
2021 Apr 12, San Francisco-based Salesforce.com said it would start allowing vaccinated employees to return to some of its offices, making it one of the first major US corporations to give vaccinated workers preferential treatment over those who have not taken the shot.
(Reuters, 4/12/21)
2021 Apr 12, A Los Angeles grand jury indicted former movie producer Harvey Weinstein (67) on four counts each of forcible rape and forcible oral copulation, two counts of sexual battery, and one count of sexual penetration by force.
(The Week, 4/13/21)
2021 Apr 12, California to date had 3,675,956 cases of coronavirus and 60,076 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 428,533 cases and 6,068 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 31,202,818 with the death toll at 562,096.
(sfist.com, 4/12/21)
2021 Apr 12, It was reported that Will Smith and director Antoine Fuqua have pulled production of their runaway slave drama “Emancipation" from Georgia over the state's recently enacted law restricting voting access.
(AP, 4/12/21)
2021 Apr 12, Hawaii's Gov. David Ige issued another emergency proclamation in response to the coronavirus pandemic that extends the statewide eviction moratorium until June 8.
(SFC, 4/13/21, p.A5)
2021 Apr 12, New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed legislation that will legalize recreational marijuana use and sales in the state, making it the seventh since last November to do so.
(AP, 4/12/21)
2021 Apr 12, New York's state pension fund said it is restricting investment in six Canadian oil sands companies because they have not shown they are prepared for a transition to a low-carbon future.
(Reuters, 4/12/21)
2021 Apr 12, In Ohio Miles Jackson (27) was fatally shot at Mount Carmel St. Ann’s Hospital in Westerville. The incident involved officers from Westerville and Columbus.
(NBC News, 4/15/21)
2021 Apr 12, In Tennessee gunfire started when police responded to a report that an armed student was in a school bathroom. A teenage boy was killed during the shooting at the Austin-East Magnet High School in Knoxville,. A police officer was also wounded.
(NBC News, 4/13/21)
2021 Apr 12, Cybersecurity company KnowBe4 Inc, backed by private-equity firm KKR & Co and funds affiliated with Goldman Sachs, said it was aiming for a valuation of up to $3 billion in its initial public offering in the United States. Florida-headquartered KnowBe4 was founded in 2010 by serial entrepreneur and cybersecurity expert Stu Sjouwerma.
(AP, 4/12/21)
2021 Apr 12, Uber Technologies Inc, PayPal Holdings Inc and Walgreens Inc said they have launched an $11 million fund to provide free ride-hail trips to US COVID-19 vaccination sites for people who lack access to transportation.
(Reuters, 4/12/21)
2021 Apr 12, Shops, outdoor dining, gyms and hairdressers reopened across England for the first time in months.
(NY Times, 4/12/21)
2021 Apr 12, UK trial results showed that treating COVID-19 patients at home with a commonly-used inhaled asthma drug called budesonide can speed up their recovery.
(AP, 4/12/21)
2021 Apr 12, Chinese regulators ordered Ant Group, a financial affiliate of e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding, to become a financial holding company to ease financial oversight amid stepped up scrutiny of technology firms.
(AP, 4/12/21)
2021 Apr 12, China's agriculture ministry said that the highly pathogenic H5N6 avian flu had been found in wild birds in the northeastern province of Liaoning, marking the first confirmed cases of the strain in the country this year.
(Reuters, 4/12/21)
2021 Apr 12, The Czech Republic, one of the European Union’s hardest-hit countries took its first steps toward easing of its tight lockdown. Health experts, however, warned that the relaxation was going too far as infection and death rates still remained at dangerously high levels.
(AP, 4/12/21)
2021 Apr 12, The International Organization for Migrants said 34 migrants returning from Yemen have died after their boat capsized off the Horn of Africa nation of Djibouti.
(AP, 4/12/21)
2021 Apr 12, Dubai said that US self-driving car company Cruise will become the first to operate autonomous taxis and ride-hailing services in the UAE city of more than three million people.
(AP, 4/12/21)
2021 Apr 12, Egyptian authorities impounded the Ever Given, the massive cargo vessel that blocked the Suez Canal last month, amid a financial dispute with its owner. A judicial official said the canal authority demanded at least $900 million.
(AP, 4/13/21)
2021 Apr 12, The European Union said it has imposed sanctions on eight Iranian militia commanders and police chiefs, including the head of the elite Revolutionary Guards, over a deadly crackdown in November 2019.
(Reuters, 4/12/21)
2021 Apr 12, In France police hunted for a gunman who opened fire near a hospital in the wealthy 16th district of Paris, killing one person and injuring another.
(AP, 4/12/21)
2021 Apr 12, India reported 168,912 new infections, inching past Brazil, with a total of 13.53 million cases. India is now the second-most affected country after the United States that is grappling with 31.2 million cases. The western state of Maharashtra, home to India's financial capital Mumbai, has been the worst hit in the pandemic, accounting for about a quarter of the country's 13.5 million case load.
(Reuters, 4/12/21)
2021 Apr 12, Iran accused arch-foe Israel of sabotaging its key Natanz nuclear site a day earlier and vowed revenge in the latest episode of a long-running covert war.
(Reuters, 4/12/21)
2021 Apr 12, Japan said it had decided to gradually release tons of treated wastewater from the ruined Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant into the ocean.
(SFC, 4/13/21, p.A4)
2021 Apr 12, Lebanon’s outgoing minister of public works said that he has signed a decree that would increase the area claimed by the Mediterranean country in a maritime border dispute with Israel. The decree would formally extend Lebanon’s claims by 1,430 square km (550 square miles). The decree still required the signatures of the defense minister, prime minister and president to go into effect.
(AP, 4/12/21)
2021 Apr 12, Spain said it will initially prioritize people aged between 70 and 79 for vaccination with coronavirus shots produced by Johnson & Johnson's Janssen unit, which are due to start arriving this week.
(Reuters, 4/12/21)
2021 Apr 12, In the eastern Caribbean the La Soufriere volcano erupted again on St. Vincent.
(SFC, 4/13/21, p.A2)
2021 Apr 12, UN Secretary-General Antonio Gutierrez said in a report that the COVID-19 pandemic led to a spike in gender-based violence last year and combatants continued to use sexual violence “as a cruel tactic of war" and political repression. The report focused on 18 countries and listed 52 parties “credibly suspected" of responsibility “for patterns of rape or other forms of sexual violence".
(AP, 4/12/21)
2021 Apr 13, President Joe Biden spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin, directly raising concerns about the Russian military buildup on Ukraine's border.
(AP, 4/13/21)
2021 Apr 13, US officials said President Joe Biden has decided to leave American troops in Afghanistan beyond the May 1 deadline negotiated with the Taliban by the Trump administration, and has set the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks as the new goal.
(AP, 4/13/21)
2021 Apr 13, US Defense Sec. Lloyd Austin announced that he is expanding the US military presence in Germany by 500 troops and has stopped planning for large-scale troop cuts ordered by the Trump administration.
(SFC, 4/14/21, p.A2)
2021 Apr 13, The US recommended a “pause" in using the single-dose Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine to investigate reports of rare but potentially dangerous blood clots. Six US women between 18 and 48 developed blood clots within two weeks of receiving vaccine shots. One of the six died, and another was in critical condition.. Johnson & Johnson said it is delaying the rollout of its coronavirus vaccine in Europe amid the US probe.
(AP, 4/13/21)(NY Times, 4/13/21)
2021 Apr 13, A letter by Senators Ron Wyden, of Oregon, and Martin Heinrich, of New Mexico, warned top US intelligence officials that an unspecified "bulk collection" program was operating "entirely outside the statutory framework that Congress and the public believe govern this collection." The letter to Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines and CIA Director William Burns was made public on Feb. 11, 2022. It partially redacted and lacked several key details.
(Reuters, 2/11/22)
2021 Apr 13, The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention extended its eviction moratorium through the end of June to help slow the spread of the coronavirus.
(SFC, 4/14/21, p.A4)
2021 Apr 13, It was reported that the US intelligence community has put China at the top of its annual report of national security threats, warning of Beijing's struggle to realize "an epochal geopolitical shift", including increased air and naval operations in Asia intended to assert its control in contested areas.
(South China Morning Post, 4/14/21)
2021 Apr 13, California to date had 3,680,559 cases of coronavirus and 60,076 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 428,604 cases and 6,068 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 31,273,951 with the death toll at 562,655.
(sfist.com, 4/13/21)
2021 Apr 13, A dozen people were missing after the commercial platform boat Secor Power capsized in the Gulf of Mexico near Louisiana in a storm this afternoon. Six people were rescued and one crew member was found dead. Over the next days 3 more bodies were found. Rescuers continued to search for nine missing.
(NY Times, 4/14/21)(SFC, 4/15/21, p.A3)(AP, 4/18/21)
2021 Apr 13, In Maryland Peyton Ham (16), holding a replica gun and a knife, was killed following an armed stand-off with a state trooper in Leonardtown.
(The Independent, 4/14/21)
2021 Apr 13, In Minnesota Kim Potter, the officer who shot Daunte Wright in Brooklyn Center, resigned, as has the city’s police chief.
(NY Times, 4/13/21)
2021 Apr 13, Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte issued an executive order banning the development or use of vaccine passports.
(SFC, 4/14/21, p.A4)
2021 Apr 13, Helen Weaver (89), who fell in love with Jack Kerouac months before “On the Road" rocketed him into the literary stratosphere, died on April 13 at her home in Woodstock, NY. She made a record of their romance in “The Awakener: A Memoir of Kerouac and the Fifties" (2009).
(NY Times, 4/26/21)
2021 Apr 13, A federal appeals court in Cincinnati ruled (9-7) that Ohio can enforce a 2017 law banning abortions when medical tests show that a fetus has Down syndrome.
(Reuters, 4/13/21)
2021 Apr 13, A coalition of 310 businesses, investment funds and utilities representing about 6 million workers in the US released a letter calling for the administration to commit to reducing emissions to at least 50% below 2005 levels by 2030.
(Axios, 4/13/21)
2021 Apr 13, Blockchain technology firm ConsenSys said it had raised $65 million from major banks and financial services firms including J.P. Morgan, Mastercard Inc and UBS Group AG to fund its growth and global expansion.
(Reuters, 4/13/21)
2021 Apr 13, SambaNova Systems, a Silicon Valley startup that makes semiconductors for artificial intelligence related computation work, said it has raised $676 million in a funding round led by SoftBank Group Corp's Vision Fund 2.
(Reuters, 4/13/21)
2021 Apr 13, Belgium said will continue COVID-19 vaccinations with the Johnson & Johnson jab for the moment.
(Reuters, 4/13/21)
2021 Apr 13, Britain began offering coronavirus vaccinations to anyone over 45 after hitting its target of giving at last one dose to everyone over 50 by the middle of April.
(AP, 4/13/21)
2021 Apr 13, London-based Reuters news service promoted Alessandra Galloni to be its new editor-in-chief, making her the first woman to take that role in the company's 170-year history. Reuters employs some 2,500 journalists in 200 locations around the world as part of the larger Thomson Reuters Corp.
(AP, 4/13/21)
2021 Apr 13, PM Justin Trudeau said the progress Canada has made against COVID-19 is being threatened by the spread of more contagious and dangerous virus variants.
(Reuters, 4/13/21)
2021 Apr 13, Egyptian authorities released Khaled Dawoud, an activist known for his outspoken criticism of the government, after he spent more than a year and a half in pre-trial detention.
(AP, 4/13/21)
2021 Apr 13, In Egypt a bus overturned while trying to pass a truck on a highway, causing a collision that killed at least 20 people and injured three others in the southern province of Assiut.
(AP, 4/13/21)
2021 Apr 13, It was reported that 20 EU states are refusing to guarantee that suspected criminals who are citizens of their country can be extradited to the UK, reflecting the fact that Brexit means the UK is no longer part of the European Arrest Warrant.
(AP, 4/14/21)
2021 Apr 13, France suspended all flights from Brazil amid mounting fears over the P.1 variant of the coronavirus that has been sweeping across Brazil.
(SFC, 4/14/21, p.A4)
2021 Apr 13, Guatemala's Congress refused to appoint a graft-fighting judge as president of the Constitutional Court, a move critics say could set back the fight against corruption.
(Reuters, 4/13/21)
2021 Apr 13, Hong Kong’s pro-democracy media tycoon Jimmy Lai (72) told his staff in a letter from jail that “freedom of speech is a dangerous job" and to “stand tall" just days before he is sentenced in two cases against him.
(The Telegraph, 4/13/21)
2021 Apr 13, Iran said it will start enriching uranium at 60 percent purity, higher than ever before, following the attack on its Natanz nuclear facility.
(NBC News, 4/13/21)
2021 Apr 13, Italy reported 476 coronavirus-related deaths against 358 the day before, while the daily tally of new infections rose to 13,447 from 9,789.
(Reuters, 4/13/21)
2021 Apr 13, In Niger at least 20 children died after they became trapped in a fire at a school in the Pays Bas district of Niamey.
(AP, 4/14/21)
2021 Apr 13, A North Macedonian court convicted the country’s former intelligence chief and three more ex-officials of abuse of power over a surveillance equipment procurement deal, and sentenced them to between five and 15 years in prison.
(AP, 4/13/21)
2021 Apr 13, Imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny said he was suing his prison for withholding the Quran, which he intended to study while serving time in a prison outside Moscow.
(AP, 4/13/21)
2021 Apr 13, Russia unsuccessfully tried for the first time to prevent Kosovo’s representative from speaking at the UN Security Council with the country’s flag in the background, saying the majority of council members don’t recognize its independence from Serbia.
(AP, 4/13/21)
2021 Apr 13, Leaders of volcano-wracked St. Vincent said that water is running short as heavy ash contaminates supplies.
(AP, 4/13/21)
2021 Apr 13, South Africa's Supreme Court denied state funding for former Pres. Jacob Zuma in an upcoming corruption trial and ordered him to pay back an estimated $2 million in lawyers' charges that he has received over the years.
(SFC, 4/14/21, p.A3)
2021 Apr 13, The rate of new COVID-19 infections in Sweden jumped to the second-highest in Europe after land-locked San Marino. The Scandinavian country, which has shunned lockdowns throughout the pandemic, faced a third wave of cases.
(Reuters, 4/13/21)
2021 Apr 13, President Bashar Assad sacked the governor of war-ravaged Syria’s Central Bank amid a crash in the currency in recent months. The UN estimates that nearly 80% of Syrians live under the poverty line.
(AP, 4/13/21)
2021 Apr 13, In northeast Syria a 10-day curfew in areas controlled by US-backed Kurdish fighters went into effect in an attempt to try limit the spread of coronavirus.
(AP, 4/13/21)
2021 Apr 13, Thailand recorded a 3rd day in a row with more than 900 coronavirus cases. Total infections reached 34,575 with 97 deaths.
(SFC, 4/14/21, p.A4)
2021 Apr 13, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan announced several new restrictions and a "partial closure" for the first two weeks of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan to curb surging coronavirus infections.
(Reuters, 4/13/21)
2021 Apr 13, The United Nations' health agency urged countries to suspend the sale of live animals captured from the wild in food markets. The World Health Organization recommended it as an emergency measure, saying wild animals are a leading source of emerging infectious diseases like the coronavirus.
(CBS News, 4/13/21)
2021 Apr 13, The UN World Food Program said almost one million people are facing severe hunger in northern Mozambique where hundreds of thousands of people have been forced to flee a jihadist insurgency.
(AP, 4/13/21)
2021 Apr 14, Hundreds of leaders from Amazon, Google, BlackRock, Starbucks, and other high-profile companies signed a statement expressing opposition to legislation proposed or adopted in several states seeking to make voting harder. The statement was printed in an advertisement in The New York Times.
(The Week, 4/15/21)
2021 Apr 14, California to date had 3,683,199 cases of coronavirus and 60,200 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 429,463 cases and 6,110 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 31,419,303 with the death toll at 564,301.
(sfist.com, 4/15/21)
2021 Apr 14, Minnesota police Officer Kim Potter was arrested and charged with second-degree manslaughter following three nights of protests over the killing.
(NY Times, 4/14/21)
2021 Apr 14, The southeastern Missouri city of Charleston agreed to pay $500,000 to settle its part in a lawsuit brought by the family of Tory Sanders, a Black man who died in jail in 2017 after having his neck pinned down for several minutes by the knee of a white sheriff.
(AP, 4/15/21)
2021 Apr 14, It was reported that Florida is moving to close the leaky Piney Point wastewater reservoir that poured millions of gallons into Tampa Bay while threatening to burst open earlier this month. The reservoir contains phosphogypsum stacks, leftover from phosphate mined for fertilizer.
(SFC, 4/14/21, p.A3)
2021 Apr 14, Bernie Madoff (82), a Wall Street financier disgraced after he admitted to one of the biggest frauds in US financial history, died at the Federal Medical Center in Butner, North Carolina.
(AP, 4/14/21)
2021 Apr 14, A Texas police officer was shot multiple times during a traffic stop in Burleson early today. Three suspects fled the scene. The officer was hospitalized in stable condition.
(AP, 4/14/21)
2021 Apr 14, The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled that the administration of Gov. Tony Evers does not have the authority to issue capacity limits on bars, restaurants and other businesses without the approval of the Legislature.
(SFC, 4/15/21, p.A4)
2021 Apr 14, Shares of Alkami Technology Inc surged 38% in their US stock market debut, giving the US banking software provider a market capitalization of $3.43 billion. Alkami sold six million shares in the IPO.
(Reuters, 4/14/21)
2021 Apr 14, San Francisco-based Coinbase stock was indicated to open at $360 per share, up 44% from a reference price of $250 per share, making its implied value around three times that of exchange operator Nasdaq. Coinbase began trading at $381 a share.
(Reuters, 4/14/21)(NY Times, 4/14/21)
2021 Apr 14, Instagram launched a small global test where users can choose whether to hide like counts on their own posts or other people's posts.
(Reuters, 4/14/21)
2021 Apr 14, Scorpion, an internet marketing services provider, said has raised $100 million in funds from investment firm Bregal Sagemount to expand its technology and customer offerings. Utah-based Scorpion recently acquired CanlRank, a software company that uses artificial intelligence to provide customers with locally relevant search engine optimization (SEO) insights, for an undisclosed sum.
(Reuters, 4/14/21)
2021 Apr 14, Uber Technologies Inc said it had signed deals with three new transit agencies to provide routing and matching technology for their public transportation fleets, the company's latest foray into the transit space.
(AP, 4/14/21)
2021 Apr 14, NATO members pledged to leave Afghanistan “together" as 750 British soldiers are set to leave the country along with American troops on September 11.
(The Telegraph, 4/14/21)
2021 Apr 14, Brazil's city of Sao Paulo warned its ability to care for seriously ill COVID-19 patients was on the verge of collapse as it ran perilously low on key drugs.
(AP, 4/14/21)
2021 Apr 14, It was reported that several Chinese feminist channels on Douban, a popular social networking forum in China, were abruptly shut this week, triggering online anger and prompting calls for women to "stick together".
(Reuters, 4/14/21)
2021 Apr 14, Finland said people aged under 65 who got a first dose of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 shot may get a different vaccine for their second dose, as authorities warned about delays to the country's roll-out.
(Reuters, 4/14/21)
2021 Apr 14, France said it will use Johnson & Johnson's COVID-19 vaccine as planned despite its suspension in the United States. France had received a first shipment of 200,000 doses.
(Reuters, 4/14/21)
2021 Apr 14, Iran's supreme leader dismissed initial offers being made at talks in Vienna aimed at saving Tehran's tattered nuclear deal with world powers.
(AP, 4/14/21)
2021 Apr 14, Italy reported 469 coronavirus-related deaths against 476 the day before, while the daily tally of new infections rose to 16,168 from 13,447. Healthcare management in the Lombardy region said there was a growing reluctance amongst residents to accept AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine because of safety fears.
(Reuters, 4/14/21)
2021 Apr 14, Russian authorities levied criminal charges against four young editors of the online DOXA student magazine that had coverage of about nationwide protests supporting jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
(SFC, 4/15/21, p.A3)
2021 Apr 14, Somalia’s Pres. Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed extended his own term in office by two years, drawing condemnation from the United States and other allies who viewed it as a naked power grab. Mohamed said the two-year extension would allow him to introduce a one-person, one-vote system.
(NY Times, 4/14/21)
2021 Apr 14, Sweden's Health Agency said it would pause plans to start vaccinations using Johnson & Johnson's COVID-19 vaccine following reports of rare blood clots similar to those reported for the AstraZeneca shot.
(Reuters, 4/14/21)
2021 Apr 14, Syria rejected as fabricated the results of an investigation by the OPCW that a Syrian air force military helicopter dropped a chlorine cylinder on the northern town of Saraqeb on Feb 4, 2018.
(SFC, 4/15/21, p.A3)
2021 Apr 14, Thailand confirmed 1,335 new cases of the coronavirus, taking the total to 35,910, with 97 deaths.
(AP, 4/14/21)
2021 Apr 14, Turkey's Competition Board said it had fined Google more than 296 million lira ($36.65 million) for abusing its dominant position in the search engine services area.
(Reuters, 4/14/21)
2021 Apr 14, The UAE-based Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Center said it is partnering with Japan’s ispace company to send a rover to the moon on an unmanned spacecraft by 2022, rather than 2024. The “Rashid" rover, named after Dubai’s ruling family, will deploy to the moon using ispace's lunar lander.
(AP, 4/14/21)
2021 Apr 14, A UN report said nearly half of women in 57 developing countries are denied the right to decide whether to have sex with their partners, use contraception or seek health care.
(AP, 4/14/21)
2021 Apr 15, The United States announced economic sanctions against Russia and the expulsion of 10 diplomats in retaliation for what Washington says is the Kremlin's US election interference, a massive cyber attack and other hostile activity. The White House said in a statement that Russia's foreign intelligence service, known as the SVR, was responsible for the SolarWinds hack, which led to the compromise of nine federal agencies and hundreds of private sector companies.
(The Telegraph, 4/15/21)(Reuters, 4/15/21)
2021 Apr 15, The Biden administration revealed that that Konstantin Kilimnik, an associate of former President Donald Trump's campaign chairman Paul Manafort, passed along Trump campaign polling data to Russian intelligence services in 2016.
(NY Times, 4/15/21)
2021 Apr 15, California and NASA, with the backing of billionaire Michael Bloomberg, unveiled a $100 million effort to pinpoint large emissions of greenhouse gases from individual sources like power plants and oil refineries from space.
(Reuters, 4/15/21)
2021 Apr 15, California to date had 3,686,484 cases of coronavirus and 60,412 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 429,948 cases and 6,122 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 31,491,453 with the death toll at 565,254.
(sfist.com, 4/15/21)
2021 Apr 15, A gunman killed at least eight people at a FedEx warehouse on the grounds of the Indianapolis International Airport late today. Police said the gunman killed himself. At least five other people had been hospitalized with injuries, including one in critical condition. The suspected shooter was soon identified as Brandon Scott Hole (19).
(NY Times, 4/16/21)(AP, 4/17/21)
2021 Apr 15, Vartan Gregorian, the noted scholar and philanthropic leader who led the Carnegie Corporation of New York since 1997, died after being hospitalized for stomach pain.
(AP, 4/16/21)
2021 Apr 15, In Montana a backcountry guide who was fishing just west of Yellowstone National Park was fatally attacked by a large grizzly bear that might have been protecting a food source.
(NY Times, 4/19/21)
2021 Apr 15, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said people will "likely" need to get a COVID-19 vaccine booster dose within 12 months after they've been fully vaccinated.
(AP, 4/16/21)
2021 Apr 15, Medical device maker Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc said it would acquire contract researcher PPD Inc for $17.4 billion as it looks to add more muscle to its pharmaceutical services business.
(Reuters, 4/15/21)
2021 Apr 15, Toyota said it is recalling nearly 280,000 Venza SUVs in the US because a wiring problem can stop the side air bags from inflating in a crash. The recall covers Venzas from the 2009 through 2015 model years.
(AP, 4/15/21)
2021 Apr 15, Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC) called on Facebook Inc Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg to not create a version of photo-sharing app Instagram for children who are under 13, as it would put them at "great risk".
(Reuters, 4/15/21)
2021 Apr 15, An emergency shipment of sedatives needed to intubate severely ill COVID-19 patients arrived in Brazil late today from China. Brazil has recorded a total of 365,444 coronavirus deaths, second only to the US, and 13,746,681 confirmed COVID-19 cases.
(Reuters, 4/16/21)
2021 Apr 15, Britain reported 2,672 new COVID cases, up slightly from 2,491 a day earlier but taking the fall over the last seven days to almost 7% compared with a week earlier.
(Reuters, 4/15/21)
2021 Apr 15, It was reported that nearly 15,000 anonymous accounts of sexual misconduct, including harassment, groping, and rape, have been shared online by students from schools across the U.K.
(CBS News, 4/15/21)
2021 Apr 15, In Cambodia a 2-week lockdown began in Phnom Penh under orders from PM Hun Sen. Cambodia has so far confirmed 4,874 coronavirus cases and 35 deaths.
(SFC, 4/16/21, p.A8)
2021 Apr 15, In China the third dust storm in about five weeks shrouded Beijing in a yellow haze and caused air quality to deteriorate once again. The dust storm that occurred in the middle of March was the deadliest of the three so far this year. At least 10 deaths occurred in Mongolia and hundreds of people became disoriented trying to locate cattle that had gone missing.
(AccuWeather, 4/17/21)
2021 Apr 15, Chinese automaker Geely, owner of Volvo Cars, launched a high-end electric vehicle (EV) brand named Zeekr, targeting China's growing appetite for premium EVs that has boosted sales for Tesla and Chinese peer Nio.
(Reuters, 4/15/21)
2021 Apr 15, Denmark charged three members of an Iranian separatist group, the Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahwaz, with financing and promoting terror in Iran with an unnamed Saudi intelligence service.
(AP, 4/15/21)
2021 Apr 15, Amnesty International said Eritrean soldiers remain in Ethiopia’s embattled Tigray region and are killing civilians weeks after Ethiopia said the soldiers would leave. Deadly fighting continued in several parts of Tigray.
(AP, 4/15/21)
2021 Apr 15, It was reported that the European Union has agreed to impose sanctions on another 10 individuals linked to the Feb. 1 coup in Myanmar and to target two businesses run by the armed forces for the first time in protest at the military takeover.
(Reuters, 4/15/21)
2021 Apr 15, France reported 300 new deaths due to the coronavirus bringing its total to 100,077. France became the 3rd EU country, after Britain and Italy, to pass the 100,000 mark.
(SFC, 4/16/21, p.A8)
2021 Apr 15, India's two largest cities, New Delhi and Mumbai, imposed stringent restrictions on movement as new infections in the country shot past 200,000 amid a devastating surge that is straining a fragile health system.
(AP, 4/15/21)
2021 Apr 15, Iran said it has finalized a deal with Russia to purchase 60 million doses of Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine.
(AP, 4/15/21)
2021 Apr 15, In Iraq an explosion rocked a market in east Baghdad's Sadr City, killing one person and injuring 12 others. Separately, a rocket attack targeting a Turkish military base in northern Iraq's Bashiqa region killed one Turkish soldier and wounded a child in a nearby village.
(AP, 4/15/21)
2021 Apr 15, Nissan Motor Co said it will slash production at several factories in Japan next month due to a global shortage of semiconductors.
(AP, 4/15/21)
2021 Apr 15, The Lebanese judge leading the investigation into last year’s massive blast at Beirut’s port ordered the release of six people, including security officers, who had been detained for months.
(AP, 4/15/21)
2021 Apr 15, Romania's centrist government approved a United States-backed bill that effectively bars China and Huawei from taking part in development of its 5G network.
(Reuters, 4/15/21)
2021 Apr 15, A Russian court convicted Lyubov Sobol, a top associate of imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny, of trespassing and handed her a suspended sentence of one-year community service for trying to gain entry into the apartment of a relative of the alleged security operative believed to be involved in Navalny's poisoning.
(SFC, 4/16/21, p.A4)
2021 Apr 15, Saudi Arabia's Jizan University, near the country's border with Yemen, caught fire early today after the kingdom's air defenses intercepted a barrage of ballistic missiles and bomb-laden drones. There were no immediate reports of injuries.
(AP, 4/15/21)
2021 Apr 15, Ukraine's top diplomat asked for stronger Western backing, saying “words of support aren't enough" amid escalating tensions in the country’s east and a Russian troop buildup across the border.
(AP, 4/15/21)
2021 Apr 15, The UN humanitarian chief warned that the world’s largest humanitarian crisis in Yemen is getting even worse with the COVID-19 pandemic “roaring back" in recent weeks as the Arab world’s poorest country faces a large-scale famine.
(AP, 4/15/21)
2021 Apr 15, Venezuela said it has received a batch of 50,000 doses of Russia's Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine. Venezuela has reported 178,094 cases of coronavirus and 1,834 deaths, according to official figures.
(AP, 4/15/21)
2021 Apr 16, The Biden administration said it will invest $1.7 billion to help states and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention fight COVID-19 variants that are rapidly spreading across the United States.
(Reuters, 4/16/21)
2021 Apr 16, President Biden welcomed Japanese PM Yoshihide Suga at the White House, his first face-to-face meeting with a foreign leader and a clear signal to an increasingly aggressive China about the shared commitment to strategic cooperation between the US and Japan.
(LA Times, 4/16/21)
2021 Apr 16, President Joe Biden stuck with his predecessor’s historically low cap of 15,000 refugees for this year and instead moved to accelerate admissions, triggering an outcry from resettlement agencies and even Biden allies that he was backpedaling on a key promise.
(AP, 4/16/21)
2021 Apr 16, US Attorney General Merrick Garland rescinded a Trump-era memo that curtailed the use of consent decrees that federal prosecutors have used in sweeping investigations of police departments.
(AP, 4/16/21)
2021 Apr 16, US Interior Secretary Deb Haaland revoked a series of Trump administration orders that promoted fossil fuel development on public lands and waters, and issued a separate directive that prioritizes climate change in agency decisions.
(AP, 4/16/21)
2021 Apr 16, A US memorial to the dead of WWI opened in Pershing Park, Washington DC.
(SFC, 4/17/21, p.A4)
2021 Apr 16, Jon Schaffer, a founding member of the far-right group the Oath Keepers, pleaded guilty to charges stemming from his participation in the riot at the Capitol building on Jan. 6. He is the first Capitol riot suspect to plead guilty.
(Washington Post, 4/17/21)
2021 Apr 16, The United States said it is imposing visa restrictions on “those believed to be responsible for, or complicit in, undermining the democratic process in Uganda,“ including during the election in January and the campaign period.
(AP, 4/16/21)
2021 Apr 16, NASA announced that SpaceX's Starship vehicle will serve as the agency's lunar lander for its Artemis Program, which is focused on returning humans to the moon later this decade.
(NASA, 4/17/21)
2021 Apr 16, California to date had 3,689,359 cases of coronavirus and 60,527 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 430,378 cases and 6,140 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 31,565,262 with the death toll at 566,088.
(sfist.com, 4/16/21)
2021 Apr 16, Charles Geschke (81), a co-founder of software company Adobe Inc., died in Los Altos, Ca.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Geschke)
2021 Apr 16, More than 1,000 people gathered in Chicago's Logan Square Park and marched through the surrounding area in remembrance of Adam Toledo, a 13-year-old Latino boy who was shot and killed by a police officer on March 29.
(NY Times, 4/17/21)
2021 Apr 16, Actor Felix Silla (b.1937) died in Los Vegas following a battle with cancer. Silla had starred as the hairy Cousin Itt on the TV series "The Addams Family" (1964-1966) and a robot on "Buck Rogers in the 25th Century" (1979-1981).
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_Silla)(SFC, 4/19/21, p.B4)
2021 Apr 16, New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu announced that the state was lifting its mask mandate. He credited success in vaccinations for keeping deaths low.
(SFC, 4/17/21, p.A6)
2021 Apr 16, It was reported that nearly 38% of New Mexico's adults are now fully vaccinated and that more than 57% of adults have now received at least one vaccine dose.
(SFC, 4/16/21, p.A8)
2021 Apr 16, In Oregon protesters smashed windows, burglarized businesses and set multiple fires after police fatally shot a man earlier in the day. Four people were arrested.
(SFC, 4/17/21, p.A7)
2021 Apr 16, Ole Anthony (82), a former Air Force intelligence specialist and Texas political operative, died at a house in Dallas that he shared with several members of his organization, the Trinity Foundation. He found Jesus in 1972, built a following among the down-and-out of east Dallas, and then used that movement to take down a rogue’s gallery of unscrupulous televangelists and faith healers.
(NY Times, 4/27/21)
2021 Apr 16, Australia reported its first fatality from blood clots in a recipient of AstraZeneca's (AZN.L) Covid-19 shot. It was the third case of the rare blood clots appearing in people who have been administered the vaccine in the country.
(The Telegraph, 4/17/21)
2021 Apr 16, Bangladesh recorded 4,417 new coronavirus cases raising that total to 711,779. 101 new deaths raised that total to 10,182.
(SFC, 4/17/21, p.A6)
2021 Apr 16, Britain gave out 119,306 first vaccine doses and 485,421 second doses. A further 35 people died from the virus within 28 days of a positive test, and 2,206 people tested positive.
(Reuters, 4/17/21)
2021 Apr 16, Helen McCrory, the English actress who played Narcissa Malfoy in the “Harry Potter" franchise and Polly Gray in “Peaky Blinders," died at her home after a battle with cancer.
(The Week, 4/17/21)
2021 Apr 16, Chinese President Xi Jinping called for closer cooperation on combating global change as he held a video meeting with the leaders of Germany and France.
(AP, 4/16/21)
2021 Apr 16, Raúl Castro confirmed he will step down from his role as leader of Cuba's ruling Communist Party.
(NY Times, 4/16/21)
2021 Apr 16, Guatemala said it will restrict entry to visitors who have recently been to Brazil, the United Kingdom and South Africa in an effort to control a jump in coronavirus cases. Confirmed cases reached 210,667.
(The Telegraph, 4/17/21)
2021 Apr 16, A Hong Kong court sentenced a group of the city's most prominent pro-democracy activists to up to 18 months in prison for organizing a massive unauthorized protest in August 2019 that drew an estimated 1.7 million people. Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai (73) was jailed for 12 months. Four others were jailed for between eight and 18 months.
(AP, 4/16/21)(The Telegraph, 4/16/21)
2021 Apr 16, The CEO of the Serum Institute of India, the world’s largest maker of vaccines, asked President Biden to lift a US export embargo on raw materials for vaccines, saying it is hampering vaccine production in other parts of the world.
(AP, 4/16/21)
2021 Apr 16, Iran said it has begun 60% uranium enrichment at its Natanz plant, days after an explosion at the site that Tehran blamed on Israel.
(Reuters, 4/16/21)
2021 Apr 16, In Iraq Khodeir Majid (64), a video producer and cameraman for The Associated Press for over 17 years, died of complications due to the coronavirus.
(AP, 4/16/21)
2021 Apr 16, Israeli aircraft early today hit three facilities belonging to Hamas, the militant group ruling Gaza. The airstrikes targeted a weapons manufacturing site, a tunnel for arms smuggling and a training site. This followed the firing of a projectile from the Gaza Strip last evening. The Israeli military said Palestinian militants fired a rocket from Gaza into the country’s south, the second incident in 24 hours. In response, Israeli fighter jets and helicopters hit five sites of the militant Hamas group.
(AP, 4/16/21)
2021 Apr 16, Mexican health authorities said that 14 of the country's roughly 2,600 townships have refused to allow vaccination teams to administer anti-coronavirus doses there. A convoy transporting vaccines came under an armed attack in Michoacan state.
(The Telegraph, 4/17/21)
2021 Apr 16, Pakistan briefly blocked access to all social media after days of violent anti-French protests across the country by radical Islamists opposed to cartoons they consider blasphemous.
(AP, 4/16/21)
2021 Apr 16, Portugal officially reported 553 new COVID-19 cases and 4 deaths nationwide. A day earlier there were no COVID-19 deaths in Lisbon for the first time since August.
(AP, 4/16/21)
2021 Apr 16, Russia said it will expel 10 US diplomats and blacklist eight US officials in response to new sanctions from the Biden administration.
(The Week, 4/17/21)
2021 Apr 16, Imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who has been on hunger strike since March 31, described threats to force-feed him, using “straitjacket and other pleasures," in a message from behind bars.
(AP, 4/16/21)
2021 Apr 16, South Africa took the first step in its mass vaccination campaign by starting online registrations for the elderly to receive shots beginning next month.
(AP, 4/16/21)
2021 Apr 16, An estimated 40 people were aboard a boat which sank off the coast of Sfax, eastern Tunisia. Navy divers recovered another body the next day from the migrant boat, bringing to 22 the number of known dead, including nine women and a baby.
(AP, 4/17/21)
2021 Apr 16, Turkey's Central Bank banned the use of cryptocurrencies and crypto assets for purchases from April 30, citing "irreparable" damage and transaction risks.
(Reuters, 4/28/21)
2021 Apr 16, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy arrived in Paris for talks with French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel amid his country's growing tensions with neighboring Russia, which has deployed troops near its border with Ukraine.
(AP, 4/16/21)
2021 Apr 16, UN agencies said that tens of thousands of Nigerians are fleeing deadly attacks by armed groups and the continuing clashes between the rebels and national forces in the country's troubled northeastern Borno state. Up to 65,000 people were on the move.
(AP, 4/16/21)
2021 Apr 16, The UN Security Council unanimously approved Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ recent proposal for up to 60 monitors to join an existing political mission in Libya.
(AP, 4/16/21)
2021 Apr 17, President Joe Biden said he will raise the cap on the number of refugees admitted this year to the United States, a day after he drew criticism from Democratic lawmakers for agreeing to keep the historically low figure in place.
(Reuters, 4/17/21)
2021 Apr 17, US safety regulators warned people with kids and pets to immediately stop using a treadmill made by Peloton after one child died and others were injured.
(AP, 4/17/21)
2021 Apr 17, The global death toll from COVID-19 eclipsed 3 million.
(AP, 4/17/21)
2021 Apr 17, California to date had 3,690,969 cases of coronavirus and 60,580 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 430,411 cases and 6,140 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 31,573,791 with the death toll at 566,359.
(sfist.com, 4/17/21)
2021 Apr 17, Al Young (b.1939), named California poet laureate in 2005, died at a private care facility in Concord, Ca.
(SSFC, 4/25/21, p.F9)
2021 Apr 17, It was reported that 27 paintings by three generations of Wyeths have been donated to Maine's Farnsworth Art Museum, thanks to the late Betsy Wyeth.
(AP, 4/17/21)
2021 Apr 17, In Nebraska Trequez Swift (21) was shot and killed at the Westroads Mall in Omaha. Suspect Makhi Woolridge-Jones (16) was arrested the next day.
(SFC, 4/19/21, p.A4)
2021 Apr 17, Thelma Sutcliffe, of Omaha, became America’s oldest living person and seventh-oldest in the world when Hester Ford, a 115-year-old woman, died in North Carolina.
(AP, 4/28/21)
2021 Apr 17, In Texas a car crash left two dead. Local police said it appeared to have occurred with no one in the driver's seat. The 2019 Tesla Model S was reportedly traveling at a high speed, when it failed to negotiate a curve.
(Reuters, 4/19/21)
2021 Apr 17, Public Health England reported that 73 cases of the B.1.617 variant, which was first discovered in India, had been found, while a further four cases were identified in Scotland.
(The Telegraph, 4/17/21)
2021 Apr 17, Canada reported a second case of rare blood clots with low platelets after immunization with AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine in a week, while it said it still recommended the use of the shot.
(Reuters, 4/17/21)
2021 Apr 17, In Chad clashes took place late today in the northern province of Kanem. The rebel column from Libya was reportedly decimated. The US State Department ordered non-essential diplomats at its embassy to leave the African nation due to potential insurgent attacks on the capital. The rebel group, known as the Front for Change and Concord in Chad, said the next day that it was pressing ahead.
(AP, 4/18/21)
2021 Apr 17, Czech police identified Ruslan Tabarov from Tajikistan and Nicolaj Popa, a Moldovan citizen, as players in the huge explosion that tore apart an ammunitions storage depot in a forest in the Czech Republic on 16 October 2014. The same two men had traveled to the UK in March 2018 under the names Ruslan Boshirov and Alexander Petrov. Both were caught on CCTV at Salisbury and identified by the Metropolitan Police as suspects in smearing Novichok nerve agent on the door handle of the house of former GRU officer Sergei Skripal.
(BBC, 4/18/21)
2021 Apr 17, France said it will order a strict 10-day quarantine for all travelers coming from Brazil starting April 24 in a bid to prevent the spread of a coronavirus variant.
(Reuters, 4/17/21)
2021 Apr 17, French automaker Renault said it will seek to generate more than 1 billion euros ($1.20 billion) in sales from the so-called "circular economy" by turning its Flins factory outside Paris into a research, recycling and repair center.
(Reuters, 4/17/21)
2021 Apr 17, India reported 234,692 new coronavirus cases. New Delhi went into a weekend lockdown. Capital Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said New Delhi has registered at least 24,000 fresh coronavirus cases in 24 hours and faces a "grim" battle against a new pandemic wave with shortages of oxygen and drugs.
(The Telegraph, 4/17/21)
2021 Apr 17, Iran named Reza Karimi (43) as a suspect in the attack on its Natanz nuclear facility that damaged centrifuges there, saying he had fled the country “hours before" the sabotage happened.
(AP, 4/17/21)
2021 Apr 17, Italy reported 310 coronavirus-related deaths against 429 the day before. The daily tally of new infections edged down to 15,370 from 15,943.
(Reuters, 4/17/21)
2021 Apr 17, In Kenya thousands of motorists and passengers were stuck in traffic for hours after police blocked major roads in Nairobi, to enforce a Covid curfew to battle infections. Kenya has confirmed more than 151,000 cases of the virus and just over 2,400 deaths.
(BBC, 4/18/21)
2021 Apr 17, Myanmar's junta released 23,184 prisoners from jails across the country under a New Year amnesty. Few if any democracy activists arrested since a Feb. 1 coup were thought to be among them.
(Reuters, 4/17/21)
2021 Apr 17, Russia’s main security agency said it has arrested two Belarusians who it said were preparing a plot to overthrow Belarus’ government and kill authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko. Aleksandr Feduta and Yuras Zyankovich were handed over to Belarus.
(AP, 4/17/21)
2021 Apr 17, A Soyuz space capsule returned from the Int'l. Space Station to the steppes of Kazakhstan with NASA's Kate Rubins and Russians Sergey Ryzhikov and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov. The three had arrived at the ISS last October 14.
(SFC, 4/17/21, p.A7)
2021 Apr 17, In South Africa a suspected poacher was trampled and killed by a herd of elephants at Kruger National Park. The deceased man and his accomplices were fleeing from park rangers when they unexpectedly encountered a breeding herd of elephants.
(CBS News, 4/19/21)
2021 Apr 17, Thailand reported 1,547 new coronavirus cases and two additional deaths, amid a third wave of infections in the Southeast Asian country. New restrictions were announced for the next two weeks.
(The Telegraph, 4/17/21)(SFC, 4/17/21, p.A9)
2021 Apr 17, Tunisia announced the closure of all schools until April 30, as well as restrictions on movement, to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus.
(The Telegraph, 4/17/21)
2021 Apr 17, It was reported that Zimbabwe has begun releasing about 3,000 prisoners under a presidential amnesty aimed at easing congestion to reduce the threat of COVID-19 in the country’s overcrowded jails. Zimbabwe’s prisons have a capacity of 17,000 prisoners but held about 22,000 before the amnesty declared by President Emmerson Mnangagwa.
(AP, 4/17/21)
2021 Apr 18, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the United States' top infectious disease expert, said that he does not believe the COVID-19 vaccine developed by Johnson & Johnson will be taken out of circulation altogether.
(NBC News, 4/18/21)
2021 Apr 18, It was reported that a national US opinion poll, conducted on April 15-16, found that 63% of adults supported term or age limits for Supreme Court justices.
(Reuters, 4/18/21)
2021 Apr 18, California to date had 3,692,733 cases of coronavirus and 60,644 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 431,161 cases and 6,142 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 31,640,808 with the death toll at 567,032.
(sfist.com, 4/18/21)
2021 Apr 18, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) said that she would not implement new COVID-19 lockdown restrictions in response to spiking infections because Republicans sued her last year, calling such moves unconstitutional.
(The Week, 4/19/21)
2021 Apr 18, In Texas gunfire left two women and a man dead shortly before noon in the parking lot of an apartment complex in Austin. Police identified the shooter as ex-sheriff's deputy Stephen Nicholas Broderick (41). Broderick was arrested that next day.
(AP, 4/19/21)(Reuters, 4/19/21)
2021 Apr 18, In Wisconsin a suspect reportedly was asked to leave a bar in Kenosha and returned with a gun, firing shots inside and outside the tavern, killing three people. A suspect was soon arrested.
(AP, 4/19/21)
2021 Apr 18, In Egypt a passenger train derailed at the city of Banha, Qalioubia province, just north of Cairo, killing 11 people and injuring 98.
(Reuters, 4/19/21)
2021 Apr 18, France said it is imposing entry restrictions on travelers from four countries — Argentina, Chile, South Africa and Brazil — in hopes of keeping out especially contagious coronavirus variants.
(AP, 4/18/21)
2021 Apr 18, It was reported that France's National Center for Scientific Research has calculated that Earth receives about 14 tons of micrometeorites each day.
(SSFC, 4/18/21, p.B8)
2021 Apr 18, Iran's daily coronavirus death toll climbed over 400 for the first time in months, as the country battles a post-holiday infection surge. Health authorities recorded 405 fatalities from the virus, pushing the total death toll to 66,732.
(AP, 4/18/21)
2021 Apr 18, Mary Lou McDonald, the leader of Sinn Fein, apologized for the 1979 assassination of Louis Mountbatten, an uncle of Prince Philip. Sinn Fein was once the political wing of the underground Irish Republican Army.
(AP, 4/18/21)
2021 Apr 18, Israel lifted its outdoor mask mandate, while schools fully reopened for the first time since September.
(NY Times, 4/18/21)
2021 Apr 18, Russia expelled 20 Czech diplomats in an escalating diplomatic clash with the Czech Republic. Moscow was retaliating for Czech allegations that two Russian spies suspected of the nerve-agent poisoning of a former Russian agent in the United Kingdom were behind a 2014 explosion that killed two people at a Czech ammunition depot.
(Reuters, 4/19/21)
2021 Apr 18, Activists for imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny called for massive protests in the heart of Moscow and St. Petersburg as Navalny’s health reportedly is deteriorating severely while on hunger strike.
(AP, 4/18/21)
2021 Apr 18, South African authorities said a wildfire is raging out of control on the slopes of Table Mountain above the city of Cape Town. The fire destroyed the Reading Room at the Univ. of Cape Town's 200-year-old Jagger Library. The historic Mostert's Mill, built in 1796 and the oldest surviving windmill in South Africa, was destroyed.
(BBC, 4/18/21)(AP, 4/19/21)
2021 Apr 18, Officials in Yemen said fighting between forces of the internationally recognized government and Houthi rebels raged in the provinces of Marib and Taiz, killing at least 70 fighters on both sides.
(AP, 4/18/21)
2021 Apr 19, The US House passed a resolution to condemn China's government and Hong Kong's regional legislature for "the continued violation of rights and freedoms" in a near-unanimous vote.
(Axios, 4/19/21)
2021 Apr 19, NASA's miniature robot helicopter Ingenuity performed a successful takeoff and landing on Mars early today, achieving the first powered, controlled flight by an aircraft over the surface of another planet.
(Reuters, 4/19/21)
2021 Apr 19, In the SF Bay Area Mario Arenales Gonzalez (26) became unresponsive while in handcuffs and police officers quickly began chest compressions. Gonzalez died in a hospital later that day. On April 26 police in Alameda County released footage of Gonzalez after officers pinned him for five minutes.
(NY Times, 4/27/21)
2021 Apr 19, California to date had 3,695,410 cases of coronavirus and 60,675 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 431,821 cases and 6,147 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 31,733,410 with the death toll at 567,666.
(sfist.com, 4/19/21)
2021 Apr 19, Florida Gov. Gov. Ron DeSantis signed HB 1, an anti-riot law. On Sept. 9 a federal judge ruled the law unconstitutional and that it cannot be enforced.
(https://tinyurl.com/289xb8pt)
2021 Apr 19, In Michigan rocker Ted Nugent revealed he was in agony after testing positive for coronavirus — months after he said the virus was “not a real pandemic." Nugent, a supporter of ex-President Donald Trump, previously called the pandemic a scam and has railed against public health restrictions.
(AP, 4/19/21)
2021 Apr 19, In Manhattan Roya Rahmani, the Afghan ambassador to the US, accepted a collection of 33 artifacts seized from a New York-based art dealer.
(SFC, 4/23/21, p.A4)
2021 Apr 19, In Ohio Yu Zhou (51), a former researcher at a children’s hospital, was sentenced to 33 months in prison for conspiring to steal trade secrets and sell them in China. His wife Li Chen (48) received a 30-month prison sentence in February. The pair had conducted research in separate laboratories at Nationwide Children’s Hospital’s Research Institute in Columbus, each for ten years.
(AP, 4/20/21)
2021 Apr 19, Walter Mondale (93), a Minnesota minister’s son who became a senator and Jimmy Carter’s vice president before losing the 1984 presidential election to Ronald Reagan, died at his home in Minneapolis.
(NY Times, 4/20/21)
2021 Apr 19, Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers and Taiwan-based Foxconn Technology Group, the world's largest electronics maker, announced a new deal with reduced tax breaks for a scaled back manufacturing facility.
(AP, 4/19/21)
2021 Apr 19, CVS Health Corp said it would offer three over-the-counter COVID-19 tests at its drugstores as well as online, expanding access to home testing in the United States.
(Reuters, 4/19/21)
2021 Apr 19, Britain imposed a travel ban on most visitors from India as PM Boris Johnson called off a trip to New Delhi. The UK has recorded 103 cases of a new virus variant, B.1.617, first identified in India.
(AP, 4/19/21)
2021 Apr 19, Chad's military claimed that it has killed some 300 rebels advancing on the capital, N'Djamena, as the government deployed tanks and other armed vehicles in the city's streets.
(AP, 4/19/21)
2021 Apr 19, Human Rights Watch said China is arbitrarily detaining up to 1 million people in China's Xinjiang state. HRW detailed a policy of mass incarceration, torture, disappearances, and cultural erasure in Xinjiang.
(Business Insider, 4/19/21)
2021 Apr 19, Egypt's Interior Ministry said police killed three suspected militants allegedly involved in the slaying of a Coptic Christian man kidnapped more than five months ago in a restive part of Sinai Peninsula.
(AP, 4/19/21)
2021 Apr 19, The European Union estimated that 150,000 Russian troops have already amassed for the biggest military buildup ever near Ukraine's borders and that it will only take “a spark" to set off a confrontation.
(AP, 4/19/21)
2021 Apr 19, The French government said it is introducing one of Europe’s first Covid-19 vaccine passport initiatives.
(NY Times, 4/21/21)
2021 Apr 19, Greece lifted quarantine restrictions for travelers from most European countries, as well as Israel and the United States as it prepares to reopen tourism services next month despite an ongoing emergency in pandemic-related hospital care.
(AP, 4/19/21)
2021 Apr 19, A Greek Coast Guard spokesman said that a Greek cargo ship traveling to Colombia from Egypt had been quarantined off Crete after a 55-year-old Filipino sailor was found dead in his cabin and others tested positive for the coronavirus.
(AP, 4/21/21)
2021 Apr 19, India reported 273,810 new infections, its highest daily rise since the start of the pandemic. It has now reported more than 15 million infections, second only to the US. India's Health Ministry also reported 1,619 deaths from COVID-19 in the past 24 hours, pushing the toll over 178,769. New Delhi imposed a weekend lockdown to prevent the collapse of the capital's health system amid an explosive surge in coronavirus cases.
(AP, 4/19/21)(SFC, 4/20/21, p.A6)
2021 Apr 19, In Indonesia visiting Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif discussed trade and economic issues in a meeting in Jakarta with Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi.
(AP, 4/19/21)
2021 Apr 19, Indonesia approved private research of COVID-19 vaccine candidate Nusantara that is backed by a former health minister, after recently saying a mid-stage trial for it could not proceed amid safety and data integrity issues.
(Reuters, 4/20/21)
2021 Apr 19, PM Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel has signed a deal to buy millions of doses of COVID-19 vaccinations from Pfizer through 2022.
(AP, 4/19/21)
2021 Apr 19, Libya's National Oil Corporation said it had interrupted crude oil production and exportation from Marsa Al Hariga port, citing the Central Bank of Libya’s refusal to pay out money set aside for the oil sector for several months.
(AP, 4/22/21)
2021 Apr 19, Myanmar security forces used violence against demonstrators who sought to celebrate last week's formation of a shadow government to serve as an alternative to the military junta that has held power since a February coup. One person was reported killed in Irrawaddy in addition one person killed there a day earlier.
(SFC, 4/20/21, p.A4)
2021 Apr 19, A Namibian court refused to issue a gay man emergency travel documents so that he can bring home his twin daughters from South Africa where they were born by surrogate. The authorities say Phillip Lühl must show genetic proof that he is their father before they can travel.
(BBC, 4/19/21)
2021 Apr 19, Typhoon Surigae approached the Philippines prompting the evacuation of more than 100,000 people and leaving one person day.
(SFC, 4/20/21, p.A4)
2021 Apr 19, Russia's prison service said opposition leader Alexei Navalny has been transferred to a hospital in another penal colony, one day after his doctor warned that the jailed Putin critic "could die at any moment".
(Axios, 4/19/21)
2021 Apr 19, A Russian military airstrike killed about 200 militants in eastern Syria. Russian warplanes hit two militant hideouts northeast of Palmyra.
(AP, 4/19/21)
2021 Apr 19, Rwanda in a 600-page report said that France “did nothing to stop" the massacres, in April and May 1994, and in the years after the genocide tried to cover up its role and even offered protection to some perpetrators.
(AP, 4/19/21)
2021 Apr 19, Spain said it will study the effects of mixing different coronavirus vaccines, responding to shifting guidelines on the safety of the AstraZeneca's shot.
(Reuters, 4/19/21)
2021 Apr 19, St. Vincent and the Grenadines' PM Ralph Gonsalves made a heartfelt plea to the international community to help his country recover from a volcanic eruption that has displaced 20,000 people.
(AP, 4/20/21)
2021 Apr 19, Sudan abolished a 1958 law on boycotting Israel, part of efforts to establish normal ties with the Jewish state. There are at least 6,000 Sudanese in Israel.
(AP, 4/19/21)
2021 Apr 19, Michel Kilo (81), an exiled veteran Syrian opposition figure, died of complications from COVID-19 in a hospital in Paris where he lived. Kilo was a strong supporter of protests that erupted against Assad’s government in 2011 and was among leading figures who worked to develop a political framework for the opposition movement.
(AP, 4/19/21)
2021 Apr 19, It was reported that Turkey’s Interior Ministry has launched a probe into six more municipalities in connection with an alleged human smuggling scheme where Turkish citizens wanting to migrate to Europe were, in exchange for a fee, issued special state passports allowing them visa-free travel.
(AP, 4/19/21)
2021 Apr 19, In Turkey deaths from COVID-19 hit a record 341 despite more than 20 million vaccines having been administered. A recent surge has brought active infections to a peak equivalent to nearly 1% of working age people.
(Reuters, 4/20/21)
2021 Apr 19, A UN report said 2020 was one of the three hottest years on record, marked by wildfires, droughts, floods and melting glaciers. 2020 was ranked alongside 2016 and 2019 despite cooling La Niña conditions.
(Reuters, 4/19/21)
2021 Apr 19, The food assistance agency of the United Nations announced that it will begin operations in Venezuela after reaching an agreement with the nation’s government.
(AP, 4/19/21)
2021 Apr 20, The Biden administration announced an increase in the number of temporary seasonal workers who will be allowed to work in the US this year as the economy recovers.
(SFC, 4/21/21, p.B2)
2021 Apr 20, The White House endorsed a bill to make the District of Columbia a state. The House of Representatives will vote on it soon.
(NY Times, 4/21/21)
2021 Apr 20, The US Southern Command said all but eight of the detainees at Guantánamo Bay have received their first dose of a Covid-19 vaccine.
(NY Times, 4/21/21)
2021 Apr 20, Nigerian influencer Ramon Abbas (37), also known as Hushpuppi, pleaded guilty to money laundering in a US court. The court records were only unsealed in late July.
(BBC, 7/29/21)
2021 Apr 20, California to date had 3,698,507 cases of coronavirus and 60,761 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 432,296 cases and 6,159 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 31,786,856 with the death toll at 568,416.
(sfist.com, 4/20/21)
2021 Apr 20, It was reported that a group of religious leaders is calling for a boycott of Georgia-based Home Depot, saying the home improvement giant hasn't done enough to oppose the state's new voting laws.
(AP, 4/20/21)
2021 Apr 20, Rossanna Delgado (37), a mother of two who worked as driver for the ride-share app, Lyft, was last seen alive on CCTV footage in DeKalb County, Georgia. Four days later her remains were found burnt and cut up in a cabin woods in Cherry Log. On June 26 an 8th suspect was arrested in Mexico for her murder. Three suspects remained at large.
(The Independent, 7/5/21)(Fox News, 7/5/21)
2021 Apr 20, Yet a jury in Minneapolis convicted Derek Chauvin (45) of second-degree murder (as well as two other charges) for killing George Floyd last May.
(NY Times, 4/21/21)
2021 Apr 20, Tempest Storm (93), one of the most celebrated strippers of midcentury burlesque, died at her home in Las Vegas.
(NY Times, 4/21/21)
2021 Apr 20, Three Brooklyn men were arrested and accused of stealing more than $30 million in cash and other valuables from safe deposit boxes in banks across Europe. A grand jury indictment charged Val Cooper (56), Alex Levin (52), and Garri Smith (49), with money laundering conspiracy and violations of the Travel Act after a string of alleged thefts between March 2015 and October 2019 at banks in Ukraine, Russia, North Macedonia, Moldova, Latvia, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and France.
(NBC News, 4/23/21)
2021 Apr 20, Police in Columbus, Ohio, fatally shot Ma’Khia Bryant (16), just moments before Derek Chauvin was found guilty of murdering George Floyd. Officers were answering an emergency-911 call from someone who reported an attempted stabbing. An autopsy later revealed that Bryant was shot four times.
(The Guardian, 4/21/21)(The Grio, 8/19/21)
2021 Apr 20, Utah-based IT company Ivanti said in a statement that the hackers in China took advantage of the flaw in its Pulse Connect Secure suite of virtual private networking devices to break into the systems of "a very limited number of customers." A fix for the issue would not be available until early May. It was later reported that dozens of other high-value entities, not yet named, were also targeted as part of the breach of Pulse Secure, which is used by many companies and governments for secure remote access to their networks.
(Reuters, 4/20/21)(AP, 6/14/21)
2021 Apr 20, Big jumps in sales of prescription drugs and medical devices helped Johnson & Johnson boost its first-quarter profit nearly 7%, blowing past Wall Street forecasts. The healthcare giant raised its financial forecasts for 2021.
(AP, 4/20/21)
2021 Apr 20, Subaru said it is recalling nearly 875,000 cars and SUVs in the US because the engines can stall or a rear suspension part can fall off. The stalling recall covers more than 466,000 Crosstrek SUVs from 2018 and 2019 and Impreza cars from 2017 through 2019.
(AP, 4/20/21)
2021 Apr 20, Tesla apologized to Chinese consumers for not addressing a complaint in a timely way, and said it would launch a review of its service operations in the world's biggest auto market. A day earlier a disgruntled customer had clambered on top of a Tesla at the auto show in protest over the company's handling of her complaints about malfunctioning brakes.
(Reuters, 4/21/21)
2021 Apr 20, Albania signed a contract with a Swiss-based consortium to build a 104 million-euro ($125 million) new international airport.
(AP, 4/20/21)
2021 Apr 20, Britain lifted travel restrictions on truckers that were imposed to avoid border chaos after the country’s economic split from the European Union at the end of last year.
(AP, 4/20/21)
2021 Apr 20, A court in Quebec, Canada, upheld a 2019 law barring public sector employees from wearing religious symbols while at work. The law applies to Muslim headscarves, Jewish skullcaps, Sikh turbans and Catholic crosses, among other symbols.
(SFC, 4/21/21, p.A2)
2021 Apr 20, Chad's President Idriss Déby (68) died of his injuries following clashes with rebels in the north of the country at the weekend. The announcement came a day after provisional election results projected he would win a sixth term in office. A military council led by Déby's son, Mahamat Idriss Déby Itnoa (37), will govern for the next 18 months.
(BBC, 4/20/21)
2021 Apr 20, China’s government rejected accusations of abuses in the Xinjiang region after a human rights group appealed for a UN investigation into possible crimes against humanity.
(AP, 4/20/21)
2021 Apr 20, Plans for a European soccer superleague collapsed spectacularly as the project’s six Premier League clubs — half of the Super League’s founding members — walked away from the plan only two days after it was announced.
(NY Times, 4/21/21)
2021 Apr 20, Armin Laschet (60), the governor of Germany’s most populous state, won a bruising power struggle to become the candidate of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s center-right bloc for chancellor in the September election.
(AP, 4/20/21)
2021 Apr 20, Hong Kong police said a 19-year-old university student, identified by his family name, Wong, has been arrested in connection to a phone scam that defrauded a Hong Kong woman (90) of $32.8 million. Callers had said they were investigators from mainland China.
(NY Times, 4/21/21)
2021 Apr 20, It was reported that regional rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran held a first round of direct talks earlier this month in Iraq, signaling a possible de-escalation following years of animosity.
(AP, 4/20/21)
2021 Apr 20, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (67) received the AstraZeneca shot against COVID-19, urging trust in vaccines after several countries limited the use of AstraZeneca due to suspected links to rare blood clots.
(Reuters, 4/20/21)
2021 Apr 20, Russia announced that it was closing the airspace over parts of Crimea and the Black Sea, saying the areas had been "declared temporarily dangerous for aircraft flights".
(CBS News, 4/21/21)
2021 Apr 20, Russian police detained several allies of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny and raided two of his regional offices, a protest monitoring group said, a day before his supporters plan to stage mass protests over his deteriorating health in jail.
(Reuters, 4/20/21)
2021 Apr 20, The Swedish Health Agency said citizens under 65 who have had one shot of AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine will be given a different vaccine for their second dose.
(Reuters, 4/20/21)
2021 Apr 20, Syrian government-allied fighters killed a Kurdish security officer in an attack late today on a checkpoint, in Qamishl, a city the two groups share control of.
(AP, 4/21/21)
2021 Apr 20, A group of 46 nations called on member states of the global chemical weapons watchdog (OPCW) to diplomatically rebuke Syria for using toxic gas and nerve agents in the country's decade-long civil war.
(AP, 4/20/21)
2021 Apr 20, The UN announced that it is seeking $29.2 million to help St. Vincent recover from ongoing volcanic eruptions.
(AP, 4/20/21)
2021 Apr 20, Yemen's COVID-19 vaccination campaign began in government-held areas three weeks after the first shipment from the global COVAX vaccine-sharing scheme arrived in the war-torn country.
(Reuters, 4/20/21)
2021 Apr 21, US Attorney General Merrick Garland said the Justice Department is launching a civil investigation of the Minneapolis Police Department to determine whether it "engages in a pattern or practice of unconstitutional or unlawful policing".
(NY Times, 4/21/21)
2021 Apr 21, US regulators said that the Emergent Biosciences Baltimore factory, contracted to make Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine, was dirty, didn’t follow proper manufacturing procedures and had poorly trained staff, resulting in contamination of material that was going to be put in the shots.
(AP, 4/21/21)
2021 Apr 21, It was reported that the US State Department has added about 100 countries this week to its "Level Four: Do Not Travel" advisory list, putting the United Kingdom, Canada, France, Mexico, Germany and others on the list, citing a "very high level of COVID-19".
(Reuters, 4/21/21)
2021 Apr 21, California's Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a drought emergency for Sonoma and Mendocino counties, but resisted a call for a statewide emergency for now.
(SFC, 4/22/21, p.B1)
2021 Apr 21, California to date had 3,699,503 cases of coronavirus and 60,768 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 432,621 cases and 6,163 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 31,808,533 with the death toll at 568,572.
(sfist.com, 4/21/21)
2021 Apr 21, Missouri state’s House of Representatives voted 153-0 to expel legislator Rick Roeber after an investigation by fellow lawmakers concluded that he had physically and sexually abused his children.
(NY Times, 4/21/21)
2021 Apr 21, Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. announced that his office would stop prosecuting prostitution. A New York judge agreed to dismiss thousands of prostitution-related offenses dating to the 1970s at the request of the Manhattan district attorney.
(NY Times, 4/21/21)(AP, 4/21/21)
2021 Apr 21, North Carolina police shot and killed Andrew Brown Jr. (42), a Black man, as deputy sheriffs tried to serve a drug-related search and arrest warrant. Brown tried to drive away, but was shot dead in his car. An independent autopsy later showed he was shot five times and died from a 'kill shot' to his head as he tried to drive away.
(SFC, 4/23/21, p.A7)(Reuters, 4/27/21)
2021 Apr 21, In Virginia Isaiah Brown (32) survived more than six rounds fired at him and was in a hospital "fighting for his life. Body camera video showed a deputy shooting the Black man, who was holding a cordless phone. Brown had just received a ride home by the same law enforcement officer.
(AP, 4/24/21)
2021 Apr 21, Johnson & Johnson said that it would resume the rollout of its coronavirus vaccine in Europe after the EU’s drug regulator said that a warning should be added to the product indicating a possible link to rare blood clots, but that the shot’s benefits outweigh the risks.
(NY Times, 4/21/21)
2021 Apr 21, Pfizer confirmed that fake doses of the vaccine Pfizer developed with BioNTech have been found in Mexico and Poland.
(WSJ, 4/21/21)
2021 Apr 21, The 27th bi-annual Iberoamerican Summit opened in Andorra with representatives of 22 countries meeting, mostly virtually. A final declaration was expected to call for universal and equitable access to coronavirus vaccines.
(SFC, 4/22/21, p.A4)
2021 Apr 21, Australia cancelled two deals struck by its state of Victoria with China on Beijing's flagship Belt and Road Initiative, prompting the Chinese embassy in Canberra to warn that already tense bilateral ties were bound to worsen.
(Reuters, 4/21/21)
2021 Apr 21, A Canadian judge granted Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou’s request to delay the final leg in her extradition hearings, days before they were set to begin.
(AP, 4/21/21)
2021 Apr 21, It was reported that researchers in China are testing the safety and efficacy of mixing two different Covid-19 shots amid questions over the effectiveness of Chinese-made coronavirus vaccines.
(NY Times, 4/21/21)
2021 Apr 21, The EU reached a tentative climate deal that is intended to make the 27-nation bloc climate-neutral by 2050, with member states and parliament agreeing on new carbon emissions targets on the eve of a virtual summit hosted by US President Joe Biden.
(AP, 4/21/21)
2021 Apr 21, German's lower house of parliament approved a proposal by Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government to mandate uniform restrictions in areas where the coronavirus is spreading too quickly.
(AP, 4/21/21)
2021 Apr 21, A German woman, Nurten J. (35), accused of joining the Islamic State group in Syria after traveling there with her young daughter, was convicted of participating in a terrorist organization and other offenses.
(AP, 4/21/21)
2021 Apr 21, Guatemalan prosecutors requested that former President Jimmy Morales be stripped of his immunity so he can be prosecuted for violating the mandate of the United Nations-backed anti-corruption mission then working in the country. Morales, who led Guatemala from 2016 to 2020, has immunity because after his term he immediately became a representative to the Central American Parliament.
(AP, 4/21/21)
2021 Apr 21, In Haiti Roman Catholic institutions including schools and universities closed across the country in a three-day protest to demand the release of five priests, two nuns and two other people kidnapped more than a week ago.
(AP, 4/21/21)
2021 Apr 21, India’s Health Ministry reported 295,041 new cases with 2,023 deaths, taking total fatalities to 182,553. 22 COVID-19 patients on ventilators died in a hospital in Nashik, Maharashtra state, when their oxygen supply was interrupted by a leak in a supply line.
(AP, 4/21/21)
2021 Apr 21, Unknown gunmen suspected of terrorism killed two members of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard. Guard members also killed two gunmen and wounded several of their accomplices late today near Kurdish town of Marivan.
(AP, 4/22/21)
2021 Apr 21, In Pakistan five people were killed and about a dozen wounded in a suicide bombing in the parking lot of the Serena hotel, in the southwestern city of Quetta. The Pakistani Taliban, or Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, said it targeted a meeting of Pakistani and foreign officials. The Chinese ambassador was in Quetta at the time of the attack.
(AP, 4/22/21)
2021 Apr 21, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced new social support measures for families with children and hinted at more tax changes, saying the corporate sector was on course for record profits this year. Putin also said he wanted Russia to reach collective COVID-19 immunity by the autumn and called on Russians to get vaccinated against the new coronavirus.
(AP, 4/21/21)(Reuters, 4/21/21)
2021 Apr 21, Russian police rounded up scores of protesters as allies of hunger-striking Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny staged nationwide protests over his failing health in jail. Security forces arrested more than 1,700 people.
(Reuters, 4/21/21)(Reuters, 4/22/21)
2021 Apr 21, It was reported that Saudi Arabia's daily coronavirus cases have soared to 1,070 infections. Total confirmed cases have reached 407,000 and 6,846 confirmed deaths.
(SFC, 4/21/21, p.A5)
2021 Apr 21, A South Korean court rejected a claim by victims of Japanese wartime sexual slavery and their relatives who sought compensation from Japan's government.
(SFC, 4/22/21, p.A2)
2021 Apr 21, President Bashar Assad formally announced he will run for reelection in war-torn Syria, and was expected to win a fourth seven-year term in the largely symbolic May 26 vote.
(AP, 4/21/21)
2021 Apr 21, Syria's last rebel-held enclave received its first batch of COVID-19 vaccines with a refrigerated truck offloading over 50,000 UN-secured jabs in the overcrowded province.
(AP, 4/21/21)
2021 Apr 21, It was reported that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has signed a law allowing to call up reservists for military service without announcing a mobilization.
(AP, 4/21/21)
2021 Apr 21, It was reported that the Pacific archipelago of Vanuatu has paused outbound travel from its main island after a body that washed ashore tested positive for the coronavirus. The body, identified as a Filipino man, was found last week after a tanker ship leaving the capital, Port Vila, reported one of its crew members missing.
(NY Times, 4/21/21)
2021 Apr 22, President Biden announced on Earth Day that the United States intends to cut planet-warming emissions nearly in half by the end of the decade, a target that would require Americans to transform the way they drive, heat their homes and manufacture goods. The new greenhouse gas emissions targeted a reduction of 50% to 52% below 2005 levels by 2030.
(NY Times, 4/22/21)
2021 Apr 22, The United States, Norway and Britain joined forces with companies including Amazon and Nestle to launch a project aimed at protecting the world's tropical forests.
(Reuters, 4/22/21)
2021 Apr 22, It was reported that President Biden will seek new taxes on the rich, including a near doubling of the capital gains tax for people earning more than $1 million a year, to pay for the next phase in his $4 trillion plan to reshape the American economy.
(NY Times, 4/22/21)
2021 Apr 22, The US House voted along party lines to grant statehood to Washington, DC, as Democrats moved to use their congressional majority to accomplish a long-held goal that has become a central plank in the party’s push to expand voting rights and address racial inequity.
(NY Times, 4/22/21)
2021 Apr 22, The US Senate overwhelmingly passed a bill that would help combat the rise of hate crimes against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. A similar bill in the House is expected to be considered in May.
(AP, 4/22/21)
2021 Apr 22, The US Supreme Court ruled 6-3 along liberal-conservative lines against a Mississippi inmate sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for fatally stabbing his grandfather when the defendant was 15 years old.
(AP, 4/22/21)
2021 Apr 22, Advocacy groups announced the settlement of a suit against the US Census Bureau. Undocumented immigrants, whom former Pres. Donald Trump tried to exclude from the census, will now be included in the population count that determines congressional representation for the next decade.
(SFC, 4/23/21, p.A10)
2021 Apr 22, NASA’s little Mars helicopter aced its second test flight, soaring even higher and longer than before.
(AP, 4/22/21)
2021 Apr 22, In downtown San Diego Travis Sarreshsteh (32) shot and killed one person and then walked another block and opened fire again wounding four people. Sarreshsteh was arrested after bystanders tackled him.
(SFC, 4/24/21, p.A3)
2021 Apr 22, California to date had 3,701,695 cases of coronavirus and 60,881 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 433,006 cases and 6,172 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 31,928,507 with the death toll at 570,321.
(sfist.com, 4/22/21)
2021 Apr 22, Gregory Edward Jacobs (57), known as Shock G, the frontman for the influential hip-hop group Digital Underground, was found dead at a hotel in Tampa, Fla. Digital Underground had a string of hits in the early 1990s and introduced its audience to a little-known rapper named Tupac Shakur.
(NY Times, 4/23/21)
2021 Apr 22, In NYC Akayed Ullah (31), a Bangladeshi man convicted of setting off a pipe bomb during rush hour in Times Square on Dec. 11, 2017, was sentenced to life plus 30 years in prison. Four people were injured in the explosion.
(Reuters, 4/22/21)
2021 Apr 22, Gov. Jay Inslee (D) announced during a press conference that Washington state has entered its fourth wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.
(Axios, 4/24/21)
2021 Apr 22, Amarin Corporation plc today announced that the Britain's Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has granted a Marketing Authorization for VAZKEPA (icosapent ethyl) as a treatment to reduce the risk of cardiovascular events in high cardiovascular risk statin-treated adult patients who have elevated triglycerides and either established cardiovascular disease or diabetes, and at least one additional cardiovascular risk factor.
(Global Newswire, 4/22/21)
2021 Apr 22, It was reported that Algerian author Said Djabelkhir (53) has been sentenced to three years in prison for offending Islam. Mr Djabelkhir has written two books on Islam in which he suggested that parts of the Quran, such as the story of Noah's Ark, might not be literally true and criticized practices including the marriage of young girls in some Muslim societies.
(BBC, 4/22/21)
2021 Apr 22, Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro shifted his tone on preservation of the Amazon rainforest at the US-led climate summit, exhibiting willingness to step up commitment even as many critics continue doubting his credibility.
(AP, 4/22/21)
2021 Apr 22, The British government and the Commonwealth War Graves Commission apologized after an investigation found that at least 161,000 mostly Africans and Indians who died fighting for the British Empire during WWI weren't properly honored due to pervasive racism.
(SFC, 4/23/21, p.A5)
2021 Apr 22, British lawmakers approved a parliamentary motion declaring that China's policies against its Uyghur minority population in the far western Xinjiang region amounted to genocide and crimes against humanity.
(AP, 4/22/21)
2021 Apr 22, The Czech Republic ordered more Russian diplomats to leave the country, further escalating a dispute between the two nations over the alleged involvement of Russian spies in a massive ammunition depot explosion in 2014.
(AP, 4/22/21)
2021 Apr 22, India confirmed a record 314,835 new COVID-19 cases nationwide over the previous 24 hours, the highest one-day case count any country has seen during the coronavirus pandemic.
(BBC, 4/22/21)
2021 Apr 22, Indonesian navy ships searched for a submarine, the diesel-powered KRI Nanggala 402, that likely sank too deep to retrieve, making survival chances for the 53 people on board slim. Authorities said oxygen in the submarine would run out by early April 24.
(AP, 4/22/21)
2021 Apr 22, Iran is now reporting its highest-ever new coronavirus case numbers — more than 25,000 a day. Its daily death toll has surged to around 400, still below the grim record of 486 it reached in November.
(AP, 4/22/21)
2021 Apr 22, The Israeli military struck back at Syria after a missile from the country triggered air raid sirens near the Dimona nuclear reactor as it landed in southern Israel.
(AFP, 4/22/21)
2021 Apr 22, Italy reported 360 coronavirus-related deaths against 364 the day before, while the daily tally of new infections rose to 16,232 from 13,844.
(Reuters, 4/22/21)
2021 Apr 22, Laos locked down its capital Vientiane and closed international borders to most traffic after identifying a COVID-19 cluster connected its neighbor Thailand. 28 new cases were confirmed a day earlier bringing the country's total to 88.
(SFC, 4/23/21, p.A8)
2021 Apr 22, A capsized rubber boat, which was initially carrying around 130 people, was spotted in the Mediterranean Sea northeast of the Libyan capital, Tripoli. The aid vessel did not find any survivors, but could see at least ten bodies near the wreck.
(AP, 4/23/21)
2021 Apr 22, Norway said it will lend all of its 216,000 doses of AstraZeneca to neighboring Sweden and Iceland as long as its own government regulator has paused the use of the vaccine.
(AP, 4/22/21)
2021 Apr 22, Russia's Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said that massive military exercises near the border with Ukraine had been completed, and that he had ordered troops to return to their permanent bases by May 1. Shoigu also said that they should leave their weapons behind in western Russia for another exercise later this year.
(AP, 4/22/21)
2021 Apr 22, Sweden said it will postpone a tentative plan to ease some COVID-19 restrictions, due to the ongoing high levels of new infections. Sweden registered 7,736 new COVID-19 cases today and 19 new deaths, taking the total deaths to 13,882.
(Reuters, 4/22/21)
2021 Apr 22, The Syrian government received a batch of 203,000 COVID-19 vaccines, part of a push to speed up a sluggish inoculation process in the war-torn country.
(AP, 4/22/21)
2021 Apr 22, Turkish prosecutors launched an investigation into the Thodex cryptocurrency exchange over allegations it may have defrauded some 390,000 investors of an estimated $2 billion. Thodex owner Faruk Ozer was believed to have fled to Albania.
(SFC, 4/23/21, p.B2)
2021 Apr 22, The United Nations said food insecurity is rising sharply in Myanmar in the wake of the military coup and deepening financial crisis with millions more people expected to go hungry in coming months.
(Reuters, 4/22/21)
2021 Apr 23, The US CDC and FDA lifted the recommended pause on use of Johnson & Johnson’s coronavirus vaccine, saying the benefits of the shot outweigh the risk of a rare blood clot disorder.
(Axios, 4/24/21)
2021 Apr 23, SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida carrying two American, one Japanese and one French astronaut to the International Space Station.
(NY Times, 4/23/21)
2021 Apr 23, California's Gov. Gavin Newsom directed the state to stop issuing permits for oil fracking by January 2024 and to draw up plans to end all fossil-fuel drilling in the state by 2045.
(SFC, 4/24/21, p.A1)
2021 Apr 23, California to date had 3,710,854 cases of coronavirus and 61,005 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 433,500 cases and 6,203 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 31,972,888 with the death toll at 571,001.
(sfist.com, 4/23/21)
2021 Apr 23, Dan Kaminsky (42), a computer whiz who helped develop technology to protect the backbone of the internet, died at his home in San Francisco.
(SSFC, 5/2/21, p.F8)
2021 Apr 23, Bob Fass (87), who for more than 50 years hosted an anarchic and influential radio show on New York’s countercultural FM station WBAI that mixed political conversation, avant-garde music, serendipitous encounters and outright agitation, died in Monroe, N.C., where he lived in recent years.
(NY Times, 4/25/21)
2021 Apr 23, It was reported that Brazil’s COVID-19 vaccination program is being put at risk by people failing to show up for their second shot, with 1.5 million people missing appointments for the follow-up dose needed to maximize protection. A recent real-world study from Chile found that the Sinovac Biotech COVID-19 vaccine, which has accounted for some 80% of Brazil's program, is just 16% effective after one shot.
(Reuters, 4/23/21)
2021 Apr 23, It was reported that Judges have quashed the convictions of 39 former postmasters after the UK's most widespread miscarriage of justice.
(BBC, 4/23/21)
2021 Apr 23, Britain recorded 2,678 new cases of COVID-19, a drop on 2,729 recorded the previous day, while a further 40 people had died within 28 days of a positive COVID-19 test.
(Reuters, 4/23/21)
2021 Apr 23, Bulgaria said veterinary authorities will cull 40,000 laying hens in the southeastern village of Krivo Pole after a bird flu outbreak was confirmed at an industrial farm there, the fifth since the start of the year.
(Reuters, 4/23/21)
2021 Apr 23, Canada's Supreme Court ruled that the descendants of the US-based Sinixt nation maintained ancestral land rights even after members moved south in the 19th century, a landmark decision that ends a decade-long legal dispute.
(Reuters, 4/23/21)
2021 Apr 23, A spokesperson for the Xinjiang region called accusations of genocide “counter to the facts" as China came under more pressure this week over its treatment of the Uyghur ethnic group in the remote border area.
(AP, 4/23/21)
2021 Apr 23, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania ordered the expulsion of a total of four Russian diplomats as an act of solidarity with the Czech Republic, where scores of diplomats have been expelled over the alleged involvement of Russian spies in a massive ammunition depot explosion in 2014.
(AP, 4/23/21)
2021 Apr 23, The European Medicines Agency said that people who have received a first dose of AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine should get the second one too, despite the rare risk of blood clots that have been linked to the shot.
(AP, 4/23/21)
2021 Apr 23, France became the first rich country to donate COVID-19 vaccines to a developing nation through the UN's jab rollout program for low- and middle-income countries, shipping more than 100,000 doses to Mauritania. President Emmanuel Macron said France will step up vaccine donations to the international COVAX vaccine program in the coming months with a donation of 500,000 shots, including from suppliers other than AstraZeneca.
(AP, 4/23/21)(Reuters, 4/23/21)
2021 Apr 23, In France a Tunisian-born resident (37), later identified as Djamel G. (37), fatally stabbed a police official near the Rambouillet chateau outside of Paris before being shot and killed by other officers. Four people, including the suspect's father, were soon detained in a terrorism investigation.
(SFC, 4/24/21, p.A3)(SSFC, 4/25/21, p.A10)
2021 Apr 23, LVMH CEO Bernard Arnault and Tod’s founder Diego Dalle Valle further cemented their 20-year friendship with a deal for the French group to increase its stake in the Italian luxury goods maker.
(AP, 4/23/21)
2021 Apr 23, A Berlin court convicted Zeynep G. (34), of membership in the Islamic State group over her time spent in territory controlled by the extremist group in Syria and sentenced her to two years and 10 months in prison. However, it ordered her released on condition that she reports to authorities.
(AP, 4/23/21)
2021 Apr 23, A police official said Greek authorities are investigating 68 deaths at a nursing home on the island of Crete after relatives raised concerns about ill-treatment and the reported cause of death.
(Reuters, 4/23/21)
2021 Apr 23, It was reported that Hungary's government is walking back two controversial pieces of legislation that targeted foreign universities and civil society groups after they were struck down by the European Union's top court.
(AP, 4/23/21)
2021 Apr 23, India set a global record in daily infections for a second straight day with 332,730. India has recorded 2,263 deaths in the past 24 hours for a total of 186,920. Thirteen people died when an oxygen-fed fire ripped through a coronavirus ward on the outskirts of Mumbai. India put oxygen tankers on special express trains as major hospitals in New Delhi begged on social media for more supplies to save COVID-19 patients.
(AP, 4/23/21)(SFC, 4/24/21, p.A4)
2021 Apr 23, India's Cadila Healthcare said it has started producing its potential COVID-19 vaccine for which it will seek emergency use authorisation in May or June, its managing director told Reuters, with an aim to make up to 240 million doses a year.
(Reuters, 4/23/21)
2021 Apr 23, Italy reported 342 coronavirus-related deaths against 360 the day before. The daily tally of new infections fell to 14,761 from 16,232.
(Reuters, 4/23/21)
2021 Apr 23, Malaysian artist Fahmi Reza was detained by police late today for allegedly insulting the country's queen by making a Spotify playlist that mocked comments on the queen's Instagram account.
(Reuters, 4/23/21)
2021 Apr 23, Protesters against Myanmar’s military coup returned to the streets of downtown Yangon, defiantly chanting their opposition to the army’s seizure of power as the junta chief prepared to attend a meeting of Southeast Asian leaders on the country’s crisis.
(AP, 4/23/21)
2021 Apr 23, Norway said it will offer those who have received a dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine against COVID-19 to take an injection from an mRNA vaccine as their second dose.
(Reuters, 4/23/21)
2021 Apr 23, Pakistan reported 144 coronavirus deaths in the last 24 hours. Total cases reached 784,108 and 16,842 deaths. PM Imran Khan summoned troops to help police implement social distancing rules.
(SFC, 4/24/21, p.A4)
2021 Apr 23, Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip fired some three dozen rockets into Israel late today. Israel launched air strikes on the Gaza Strip in response to the rocket attacks, as tensions in Jerusalem spilled over into the worst round of cross-border violence in months.
(AP, 4/23/21)(NBC News, 4/24/21)
2021 Apr 23, The Kremlin announced that President Vladimir Putin has signed a decree allowing the country to limit the number of Russians employed at embassies of countries determined to be unfriendly, or to ban their employment entirely.
(AP, 4/24/21)
2021 Apr 23, The Kremlin said Russia plans to resume direct flights to Egypt’s Red Sea resort towns after the 2015 downing of a Russian airliner over the Sinai Peninsula. In 2017, it started flying to Cairo again, but direct trips to the two Red Sea resort towns have remained halted.
(AP, 4/23/21)
2021 Apr 23, Jailed Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny (44) said that he had decided to end his 24-day hunger strike after being warned by his doctors that continuing it would put his life at serious risk.
(CBS News, 4/23/21)
2021 Apr 23, It was reported that Saudi Arabia will ban Lebanese fruits and vegetables entering the kingdom or passing through it because those shipments have been increasingly used to smuggle drugs. The ban will begin April 25.
(AP, 4/23/21)
2021 Apr 23, In Zimbabwe an air force helicopter crashed into a house killing three crew members and a child at the crash site.
(AP, 4/23/21)
2021 Apr 24, US President Biden recognized the killing of 1.5 million Armenians as genocide on the 106th anniversary of a brutal campaign by the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I. He equated the violence with the scale of those committed in Nazi-occupied Europe, Cambodia and Rwanda.
(NY Times, 4/25/21)
2021 Apr 24, Several US states resumed use of the one-shot Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine following a green light from federal health officials.
(AP, 4/24/21)
2021 Apr 24, Alaska Airlines banned Alaska state Senator Lora Reinbold for refusing to follow mask requirements. Reinbold has been a vocal opponent to COVID-19 mitigation measures.
(AP, 4/25/21)
2021 Apr 24, A four-astronaut team arrived at the International Space Station aboard the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule Endeavour.
(Reuters, 4/24/21)
2021 Apr 24, California to date had 3,705,952 cases of coronavirus and 61,054 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 433,563 cases and 6,203 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 32,022,974 with the death toll at 571,547.
(sfist.com, 4/24/21)
2021 Apr 24, In the US state of Georgia six women were killed and ten others injured in an interstate crash that left a passenger van engulfed in flames and rolled on its side. The driver of the van was soon arrested and charged with six counts of homicide.
(AP, 4/25/21)(SFC, 4/29/21, p.A4)
2021 Apr 24, Belarus sate news reported that President Alexander Lukashenko said he will sign a decree allowing the transfer of presidential power to the security council if he were to become unable to perform his duties.
(Reuters, 4/24/21)
2021 Apr 24, China announced that its first Mars rover will be named Zhurong after a traditional fire god. The rover is aboard the Tianwen-1 probe that arrived in Mars orbit on Feb. 24 and is due to land in May to look for evidence of life.
(AP, 4/24/21)
2021 Apr 24, China reported 13 new COVID-19 cases, up from nine cases a day earlier. The number of new asymptomatic cases, which China does not classify as confirmed cases, rose to 14 from 12 a day earlier.
(Reuters, 4/25/21)
2021 Apr 24, Costa Rica registered 1,830 new COVID-19 infections, its highest daily increase since the start of the pandemic.
(AP, 4/25/21)
2021 Apr 24, Fifteen people in France emerged from a scientific experiment to say that time seemed to pass more slowly in their cavernous underground abode, where they were deprived of clocks, light and news for 40 days as part of the Deep Time project.
(AP, 4/24/21)
2021 Apr 24, In France Alber Elbaz (59), the former creative director at French fashion house Lanvin, died from COVID-19.
(Reuters, 4/25/21)
2021 Apr 24, Overwhelmed hospitals in India begged for oxygen supplies as the country's coronavirus infections soared again overnight in a "tsunami" of disease, setting a new world record for cases for the third consecutive day. The number of cases across the country rose overnight by 346,786, for a total of 16.6 million cases, including 189,544 deaths. COVID-19 deaths rose by 2,624 over the past 24 hours, the highest daily rate for the country so far.
(Reuters, 4/24/21)
2021 Apr 24, It was reported that members of Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guard shot dead three militants and dismantled their cell in eastern Iran near the border with Afghanistan.
(AP, 4/24/21)
2021 Apr 24, Iran banned all flights to and from India and Pakistan to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
(Axios, 4/24/21)
2021 Apr 24, In Iraq a fire broke out in a Baghdad hospital that cares for coronavirus patients after oxygen cylinders reportedly exploded late today. At least 82 people were killed. The death toll was expected to rise as more patients who suffered severe burns succumbed to their injuries.
(AP, 4/24/21)(NY Times, 4/25/21)
2021 Apr 24, Firefighters in Northern Ireland spent a second day batting fires across difficult terrain on the Mourne Mountains.
(AP, 4/24/21)
2021 Apr 24, Pakistan reported 157 coronavirus deaths, its highest toll in a single day. Overall fatalities rose to 16,999 and total cases to 790,016.
(SSFC, 4/25/21, p.A11)
2021 Apr 24, Papua New Guinea (PNG) officials reported three new COVID-19 related deaths, bringing the country's total deaths to 102. The official number of coronavirus infections in the nation of 8.8 million people rose to 10,602, with 52 new cases.
(Reuters, 4/24/21)
2021 Apr 24, South Korea said it has signed a contract with Pfizer Inc to purchase an additional 40 million doses of its COVID-19 vaccine amid fears of spiking infections at home.
(Reuters, 4/24/21)
2021 Apr 24, The Syrian government received the first batch of Chinese COVID-19 vaccines, a gift of 150,000 jabs to Damascus. The Syrian government has registered nearly 22,000 infection cases, including over 1,500 deaths in areas under its control.
(AP, 4/24/21)
2021 Apr 24, Thailand's capital Bangkok ordered the closure of public venues and sports premises after the country reported a record daily rise in coronavirus cases and deaths amid a third wave of infections. The closures, effective from April 26 until May 9, apply to venues including public parks, gyms, swimming pools, meeting halls, internet shops, daycares centers, sports fields, museums and libraries.
(Reuters, 4/24/21)
2021 Apr 24, Turkish authorities blocked the onshore bank accounts of Vebitcoin and detained four people as part of an investigation into the cryptocurrency exchange platform. A day earlier Vebitcoin announced that it stopped all of its activities citing financial strains.
(Reuters, 4/24/21)
2021 Apr 24, Zanzibar's authorities halted all sea activities, including fishing and transport, until further notice as a tropical storm approaches the Tanzanian islands.
(BBC, 4/24/21)
2021 Apr 25, The commander of foreign forces in Afghanistan, US Army General Scott Miller, said an orderly withdrawal of foreign forces and the handing over of military bases and equipment to the Afghan forces had begun.
(Reuters, 4/25/21)
2021 Apr 25, “Nomadland" was the night’s big winner, taking home Oscars for best picture, best actress for Frances McDormand and best director for Chloé Zhao, the first woman of color to win the award. Anthony Hopkins (83) won best actor for his role in “The Father." South Korean film icon Youn Yuh-jung won for best supporting actress.
(NY Times, 4/26/21)(Reuters, 4/25/21)
2021 Apr 25, California to date had 3,706,272 cases of coronavirus and 61,096 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 433,858 cases and 6,209 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 32,063,938 with the death toll at 572,109.
(sfist.com, 4/25/21)
2021 Apr 25, William T. Wiley (83), founder of the San Francisco Bay Area Funk art movement, died at Marin General Hosp.
(SSFC, 5/2/21, p.F1)
2021 Apr 25, Albanians voted in a parliamentary election amid the pandemic, opposition allegations of official corruption and a bitter rivalry between the country's two largest political parties. The Socialist Party (PS) of PM Edi Rama sought a third term, while Lulzim Basha's Democratic Party (PD) wants a return to power eight years after losing an election. Preliminary results the next day showed the ruling Socialist Party ahead.
(AP, 4/25/21)(Reuters, 4/25/21)(AP, 4/26/21)
2021 Apr 25, Armenian PM Nikol Pashinyan, who was swept to power in pro-democracy protests in 2018, resigned triggering an early election to try overcome criticism over his handling of last year's conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh.
(Reuters, 4/25/21)
2021 Apr 25, A seabed mining robot being tested on the Pacific Ocean floor at a depth of more than 4 km (13,000 ft) became detached. The Patania II, a 25-ton mining robot prototype belonging to Belgium-based Global Sea Mineral Resources (GSR), was meant to collect the potato-sized nodules rich in cobalt and other battery metals that pepper the seabed. A recovery operation reconnected it and brought it back to surface late on April 29.
(Reuters, 4/28/21)(Reuters, 4/30/21)
2021 Apr 25, In Canada a mansion of Pornhub founder Feras Antoon went up in flames. The property, in Montreal's Ahuntsic-Cartierville neighborhood, was under construction and was listed for sale at nearly $20 million.
(Business Insider, 4/27/21)
2021 Apr 25, In northern Chad rebels said they are ready to observe a ceasefire and to discuss a political settlement after the battlefield death of Pres. Idriss Deby last week. The Front for Change and Concord in Chad (FACT) came over the northern border from Libya on April 11 calling for an end to Deby's 30-year rule. Chad's ruling military council rejected the offer.
(Reuters, 4/25/21)(BBC, 4/25/21)
2021 Apr 25, Czech President Milos Zeman said the idea that Russian spies caused a 2014 ammunition dump explosion in the central European country was just one of two theories and the possibility it was an accident should not be ruled out.
(AP, 4/25/21)
2021 Apr 25, In El Salvador Zashy Zuley del Cid Velásquez (27), a transgender woman, was shot dead in San Miguel.
(AP, 6/5/21)
2021 Apr 25, It was reported that the death toll in clashes this month between Ethiopia's two largest ethnic groups, the Oromo and Amhara, in the northern Amhara region may be as high as 200, up from previous reports of at least 50.
(Reuters, 4/25/21)
2021 Apr 25, In France crowds gathered in Paris and other French cities to denounce a ruling by France’s highest court that Kobili Traoré, the killer of Jewish woman Sarah Halimi (65) in 2017, was not criminally responsible and therefore could not go on trial. Under French law, people cannot be held criminally responsible for actions committed while fully losing their judgment or self-control due to a psychiatric disorder. Traoré used to smoke heavy quantities of cannabis.
(AP, 4/25/21)
2021 Apr 25, India set a 4th global daily record of new coronavirus infections, spurred by an insidious new variant that emerged here. The 349,691 confirmed infections over the past day brought India’s total to more than 16.9 million cases.
(AP, 4/25/21)
2021 Apr 25, Italy joined other countries by imposing restrictions on travel from India to avert the spread of the B.1.617 coronavirus variant.
(AP, 4/25/21)
2021 Apr 25, Lebanese troops aborted an attempt early today to smuggle 69 Syrian migrants to the Mediterranean island of Cyprus. The smuggler who took money from the migrants to take them to Cyprus was arrested.
(AP, 4/25/21)
2021 Apr 25, Nepal, which shares a long porous border with India, reported 3,032 new coronavirus infections, the highest daily surge recorded this year.
(Reuters, 4/26/21)
2021 Apr 25, In North Macedonia thousands of opposition supporters protested in Skopje demanding retrials and freedom for more than a dozen former conservative government officials convicted for their roles in a mob invasion of parliament in 2017.
(AP, 4/25/21)
2021 Apr 25, In Somalia gunfire erupted across Mogadishu as security forces loyal to the president clashed with units that appeared to have sided with his rivals, stoking fears that Somalia’s simmering political crisis is spilling over into violence.
(NY Times, 4/25/21)
2021 Apr 25, Switzerland said it has confirmed the first case of an Indian variant of COVID-19 in a person who entered Switzerland via a European country in late march.
(Reuters, 4/25/21)
2021 Apr 25, Thai authorities stepped up travel restrictions and other measures to combat a rapidly spreading third wave of COVID-19 infections as the country logged 11 deaths, a daily record. A new outbreak driven by the highly transmissible B.1.1.7 variant has resulted in over 24,000 cases and 46 deaths in just 25 days.
(Reuters, 4/25/21)
2021 Apr 26, US officials said Pres. Joe Biden intends to make up to 60 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine available to other countries, so long as federal regulators deem the doses safe.
(NY Times, 4/26/21)
2021 Apr 26, The US Agriculture Department announced that it will continue through the summer a payments program that replaced school meals because the pandemic left many children with virtual classes.
(AP, 4/26/21)
2021 Apr 26, The US Census Bureau will released the data that determines whether states gain or lose congressional seats and Electoral College votes, setting the stage for a pitched battle over redistricting that could reshape political power in Washington for a decade.
(AP, 4/26/21)
2021 Apr 26, The US State Department announced in a statement that foreign students from China, Iran, Brazil and South Africa will be exempt from pandemic travel bans and will be allowed back into the US as long as they have proper visas.
(Axios, 4/27/21)
2021 Apr 26, The US military ship Firebolt fired warning shots after three vessels from Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy (IRGCN) came close to it and another American patrol boat in the Gulf.
(Reuters, 4/27/21)
2021 Apr 26, State offices were closed in Alabama and Mississippi for Confederate Memorial Day.
(AP, 4/26/21)
2021 Apr 26, California to date had 3,708,127 cases of coronavirus and 61,107 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 434,229 cases and 6,209 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 32,106,885 with the death toll at 572,549.
(sfist.com, 4/26/21)
2021 Apr 26, The Washington DC police department said that its computer network was breached and that the Babuk Group, a Russian-speaking ransomware syndicate, claimed to have stolen sensitive data.
(SFC, 4/27/21, p.A3)
2021 Apr 26, Psychologist Arthur Staats died at his home in Oahu. He developed "time-outs" for unruly kids. His books included "Learning, Language and Cognition" (1968) and "Marvelous Learning Animal" (2012).
(SSFC, 6/6/21, p.F7)
2021 Apr 26, Sotheby's announced that Kanye West's so-called “Grammy Worn" Nike Air Yeezy 1 fetched $1.8 in a private sale. It was acquired by RARES, a sneaker investment marketplace. The sale marked the highest publicly recorded price for a sneaker sale and the first pair of sneakers to top $1 million.
(AP, 4/26/21)
2021 Apr 26, It was reported that US electric vehicle (EV) maker Tesla Inc plans to add facilities at its Shanghai factory to repair and reproduce key components such as electric motors and battery cells.
(Reuters, 4/26/21)
2021 Apr 26, Brazil’s health authority rejected Russia’s Covid vaccine even though scientific research suggests it is safe and effective.
(NY Times, 4/26/21)
2021 Apr 26, In Burkina Faso two Spanish journalists were killed. They were part of an anti-poaching patrol that was ambushed by gunmen near Pama Reserve. An Irish national was also reported killed Two soldiers wounded in the ambush said the attack had been launched by jihadists who had outnumbered the 15-person patrol. In northern Burkina Faso an attack by gunmen killed at least 18 people and severely injured one in Yattakou village.
(BBC, 4/27/21)(AP, 4/29/21)
2021 Apr 26, Cyprus returned to lockdown mode for two weeks as infections increased despite a ramped-up vaccination program.
(SFC, 4/26/21, p.A7)
2021 Apr 26, Danish Lutheran priest Thomas Gotthard (44) was charged with murdering his wife, even though her body has never been found. Maria Gotthard (43) left the couple’s home in Frederikssund, northwest of Copenhagen, last Oct. 26, in a depressed state of mind. Thomas was detained after investigators found hydrochloric acid and caustic soda in the couple’s home.
(AP, 4/26/21)
2021 Apr 26, Egyptian authorities executed nine men convicted of murder in an attack on a police station in 2013. The assault resulted in the deaths of 15 people, including 11 police.
(AP, 4/26/21)
2021 Apr 26, The French energy firm Total announced hat it has halted all operations on its $20 billion investment in a liquified natural gas project in northern Mozambique as a result of the extremist rebel insurgency there..
(AP, 4/26/21)
2021 Apr 26, India reported another 2,812 deaths, with roughly 117 Indians succumbing to the disease every hour, setting another record for new coronavirus infections for a fifth day in a row at more than 350,000. Officials said the city of Bengaluru, home to the technology operations of hundreds of global companies, will enter a two-week lockdown for 14 days.
(AP, 4/26/21)(Reuters, 4/26/21)
2021 Apr 26, It was reported that Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, an Iranian-British woman long held in Tehran, has been sentenced to another year in prison on a charge of spreading “propaganda against the system" for participating in a protest in front of the Iranian Embassy in London in 2009.
(AP, 4/26/21)
2021 Apr 26, Iran registered its highest single-day death toll from COVID-19, bringing the total number of fatalities to over 70,000 in the country hardest hit by the coronavirus in the region. 496 new deaths were tallied over the last 24 hours as well as 21,026 more confirmed cases.
(AP, 4/26/21)
2021 Apr 26, Delek Drilling, owned by the Israeli billionaire Yitzhak Tshuva, said that it signed a memorandum of understanding with Mubadala Petroleum, part of a conglomerate owned by the government of Abu Dhabi.
(AP, 4/26/21)
2021 Apr 26, In Israel dozens of members of a polygamous, vegan sect received deportation orders from the government, despite much of the community having received permanent residency in 2003 under arrangements with Israel. The African Hebrew Israelites began arriving in Israel in 1969, following Ben Carter, a Chicago steelworker who renamed himself Ben Ammi Ben Israel and claimed to be God’s representative on earth.
(AP, 4/26/21)
2021 Apr 26, It was reported that all driving test examiners have been suspended across Ivory Coast while the government "cleans up" the sector.
(BBc, 4/26/21)
2021 Apr 26, In Japan private sector advisers to PM Yoshihide Suga warned that Japan's birth rate is declining at a faster pace amid the coronavirus crisis, saying that society should have a "sense of crisis" about it.
(Reuters, 4/26/21)
2021 Apr 26, Lebanon called on Saudi Arabia to reconsider its decision to ban Lebanese produce from entering the oil-rich kingdom over a drug smuggling case. Officials vowed to investigate and institute strict new measures.
(AP, 4/26/21)
2021 Apr 26, Protesters in Myanmar’s largest city braved potential violence by security forces to demonstrate against February’s military coup, showing their resolve to continue their resistance two days after Southeast Asian leaders met to address the country’s crisis.
(AP, 4/26/21)
2021 Apr 26, Norwegian PM Erna Solberg (60) received her first dose of a vaccine against COVID-19. Four other cabinet ministers were also vaccinated.
(Reuters, 4/26/21)
2021 Apr 26, The Philippines' Dept. of Health reported 8,929 new coronavirus infections, bringing the country's total to 1,006,428 including 16,853 deaths.
(SFC, 4/27/21, p.A4)
2021 Apr 26, Portugal reported no coronavirus-related deaths in the last 24 hours for the first time in nearly nine months as the country emerges from a two-month lockdown.
(Reuters, 4/26/21)
2021 Apr 26, Russian authorities ordered the offices of imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny to suspend their activities pending a court ruling on whether they should be outlawed as an extremist group.
(AP, 4/26/21)
2021 Apr 26, Russian pharmaceutical firm Pharmasyntez said it was ready to ship up to 1 million packs of the remdesivir antiviral drug to India by end-May to help fight a surge in COVID-19 cases there, once it has received the approval of Russia's government.
(Reuters, 4/26/21)
2021 Apr 26, Officials in northern Spain’s Pamplona called off the famed San Fermín bull-running festival for the second year in a row because of the coronavirus pandemic.
(AP, 4/26/21)
2021 Apr 26, Spanish authorities rescued three people and recovered the bodies of 24 who had died in a shipwreck.
(SFC, 5/5/21, p.A3)
2021 Apr 26, A leading Syrian rights group called on the international community to reject next month’s presidential elections because they will take place under the rule of President Bashar Assad, who is implicated in war crimes.
(AP, 4/26/21)
2021 Apr 26, Thailand's government slapped restrictions on travel from India and closed more venues in Bangkok, even as it came under fire for not doing enough to contain a spike in infections.
(Reuters, 4/26/21)
2021 Apr 26, In Turkey a small group of protestors gathered outside the American consulate in Istanbul to protest US President Joe Biden’s decision to call the Ottoman Empire's mass deportations and killings of Armenians a century ago a “genocide".
(AP, 4/26/21)
2021 Apr 26, Turkey reported 37,312 new coronavirus cases and 353 deaths. The total death toll now stood at 38,711. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan ordered a national lockdown for three weeks as of April 29, closing nonessential businesses and sending all students home.
(NY Times, 4/27/21)(SFC, 4/28/21, p.A6)
2021 Apr 26, Ukraine's Pres. Volodymyr Zelenskyy unveiled a new nuclear waste repository at Chernobyl, the site of the world’s worst nuclear disaster that unfolded exactly 35 years ago.
(AP, 4/26/21)
2021 Apr 26, UN experts, in an 81-page report, warned that political, military and ethnic divisions in South Sudan are widening, leading to multiple violent incidents between the main signatories to last year’s cease-fire, the possibility of renewed war, and nearly 100,000 people facing “famine-like conditions".
(AP, 4/26/21)
2021 Apr 26, Yemen's Iran-aligned Houthi movement launched a drone attack early today on a military base in the southern Saudi city of Khamis Mushait.
(Reuters, 4/26/21)
2021 Apr 27, President Joe Biden signed an executive order to increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour for federal contractors, providing a pay bump to hundreds of thousands of workers.
(AP, 4/27/21)
2021 Apr 27, The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) said it had voted to approve a SpaceX plan to deploy Starlink satellites at a lower earth orbit as part of the company's push to offer space-based broadband internet service.
(Reuters, 4/27/21)
2021 Apr 27, The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that vaccinated people can be maskless outside, except in crowds.
(NY Times, 4/28/21)
2021 Apr 27, The Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that designers of 3-D "ghost guns" may post their plans online without seeking permission from the State Dept.
(SFC, 4/28/21, p.A7)
2021 Apr 27, It was reported that organizers of the recall effort against California Gov. Gavin Newsom have collected enough valid signatures to qualify for the ballot.
(AP, 4/27/21)
2021 Apr 27, In southern California Los Angeles police fatally shot a man suspected of going on a rampage shooting several people, killing 2 of them.
(SFC, 4/28/21, p.A4)
2021 Apr 27, California to date had 3,710,117 cases of coronavirus and 61,130 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 434,739 cases and 6,226 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 32,168,304 with the death toll at 573,316. California's Dept. of Public Health said it has recorded 1,379 cases of coronavirus infections in people who were fully vaccinated.
(sfist.com, 4/27/21)(SFC, 4/28/21, p.A9)
2021 Apr 27, The Idaho House approved legislation allowing the state to hire private contractors and expand methods to kill wolves roaming the state. The measure could cut the wolf population by 90%.
(SFC, 4/29/21, p.A5)
2021 Apr 27, In Mississippi US Drug Enforcement Administration Agent Harold Duane Poole shot and killed a mentally ill neighbor just minutes after calling law enforcement to report the man was trespassing on his land. Poole quietly returned to work as a supervisor in the DEA office a half-hour’s drive north in Jackson after a grand jury this spring declined to indict him.
(AP, 8/10/22)
2021 Apr 27, Missouri reported 524 newly confirmed coronavirus cases bringing the state total to 500,071. New deaths numbered 37 bringing that total to 8,732.
(SFC, 4/28/21, p.A6)
2021 Apr 27, New Jersey serial killer Richard Cottingham (74) pleaded guilty to killing Mary Ann Pryor (17) and Lorraine Marie Kelly (16) in August, 1974. Cottingham has claimed he was responsible for up to 100 deaths, but authorities have linked to only 11 so far.
(SFC, 4/28/21, p.A3)
2021 Apr 27, Seth Andrew (42), who served as a senior adviser in President Barack Obama’s second term in the Office of Educational Technology, was arrested in New York. He was charged by federal prosecutors with stealing $218,000 from a charter school network he founded and using the money to get a lower rate on a mortgage for a Manhattan apartment.
(Bloomberg, 4/27/21)
2021 Apr 27, In Texas Grand Prairie police closed down a $500,000 cockfighting operation after seizing almost 300 roosters, hens and chicks.
(Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 4/30/21)
2021 Apr 27, Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz led a $220 million investment in Current at a valuation of $2.2 billion, which will be used to expand its product portfolio, including cryptocurrencies.
(Reuters, 4/27/21)
2021 Apr 27, It was reported that Mastercard Inc and US cryptocurrency exchange Gemini will launch the first credit card that gives users digital currency "rewards" on purchases this year, deepening the involvement of major payment firms in the emerging asset class.
(Reuters, 4/27/21)
2021 Apr 27, Merck & Co Inc said it had partnered with five Indian generic drugmakers, including Cipla Ltd and Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd, to expand production and access to its experimental COVID-19 drug.
(Reuters, 4/27/21)
2021 Apr 27, W.W. Norton said in a memo to its staff that it will permanently take Blake Bailey’s biography of Philip Roth out of print, following allegations that Mr. Bailey sexually assaulted multiple women and behaved inappropriately toward his students when he was an eighth grade English teacher. Norton said it is permanently putting out of print our editions of ‘Philip Roth: The Biography’ and ‘The Splendid Things We Planned,’ Blake Bailey’s 2014 memoir.
(NY Times, 4/27/21)
2021 Apr 27, In Chad thousands of people protested and two people were killed in demonstrations against the rule of a transitional military council headed by the son of the late President Idriss Deby Itno, who was killed last week.
(AP, 4/27/21)
2021 Apr 27, Chile, which has designated pregnant women a COVID-19 vaccination priority, began issuing Pfizer doses to pregnant women with underlying health issues in their second or third trimesters.
(Reuters, 4/28/21)
2021 Apr 27, Scientists said they have switched on a new telescope at the European Southern Observatory as part of an effort to create an automated network for spotting asteroids that might pose a risk to Earth. The La Silla Observatory in Chile, known as TBT2, will work together with a twin in Cebreros, Spain, to test whether the same object in space can be detected with one device and then tracked by another.
(AP, 4/27/21)
2021 Apr 27, China, the world's biggest coal user, said the fossil fuel will play a less dominant role in its energy mix and that, despite plans to build new coal-fired power plants, the country won't use it on a wide scale.
(AP, 4/27/21)
2021 Apr 27, Egypt's Tourism and Antiquities Ministry said archeologists unearthed 110 burial tombs at an ancient site in a Nile Delta province. They include 68 oval-shaped tombs dating back to the Predynastic Period that spanned from 6000-3150 BC.
(AP, 4/27/21)
2021 Apr 27, The European Parliament ratified the Brexit trade deal by a large majority in what Boris Johnson called the "final step" of years of negotiations over the UK leaving the EU.
(AP, 4/28/21)
2021 Apr 27, France and Germany laid out plans for billions in spending from the EU's recovery fund aimed at fighting climate change and boosting the use of digital technology.
(SFC, 4/28/21, p.A6)
2021 Apr 27, Hungary's parliament voted to transfer state assets worth billions of dollars into foundations that will control many of the country's public universities and cultural institutions, a move opposition figures have decried as a theft of public funds.
(AP, 4/27/21)
2021 Apr 27, India reported 2,771 new coronavirus deaths. 323,144 new infections raised that total of more than 17.6 million.
(SFC, 4/28/21, p.A6)
2021 Apr 27, Iran reported coronavirus 462 deaths. Some 70,532 people have died out of 2.4 million cases. Iran said it has found three suspected cases of the coronavirus variant discovered in South Africa.
(Reuters, 4/27/21)
2021 Apr 27, The Israeli military said it shot down a drone belonging to Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group that entered Israeli airspace.
(AP, 4/27/21)
2021 Apr 27, Italy reported 373 coronavirus-related deaths against 301 the day before, while the daily tally of new infections rose to 10,404 from 8,444.
(Reuters, 4/27/21)
2021 Apr 27, Toyota subsidiary Woven Planet Holdings said it has acquired the self-driving division of American ride-hailing company Lyft for $550 million.
(SFC, 4/28/21, p.B2)
2021 Apr 27, Kazakhstan launched its own, domestically-developed vaccine for mass inoculations against COVID-19, starting with popular locations such as shopping malls. The QazVac vaccine is delivered in two shots with a three-week interval. Kazakhstan has reported over 360,000 COVID-19 cases with 4,381 deaths since the global pandemic began.
(Reuters, 4/27/21)
2021 Apr 27, The Karen National Union (KNU), Myanmar's oldest rebel group, said its fighters had taken the army camp on the west bank of the Salween river. Myanmar's military launched air strikes on a village and outpost near the Thai border, after Karen insurgents attacked the army post in some of the worst clashes since a Feb. 1 coup.
(AP, 4/27/21)
2021 Apr 27, Russia's Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) said it had fined Apple $12 million for alleged abuse of its dominance in the mobile applications market. Apple said it "respectfully disagreed" with the FAS ruling and that it would appeal it.
(Reuters, 4/27/21)
2021 Apr 27, It was reported that some Russians who have taken COVID-19 antibody tests and found their antibodies have fallen are having third and fourth shots of the Sputnik V vaccine, but researchers in the country suggest they are unnecessary.
(Reuters, 4/27/21)
2021 Apr 27, A remotely piloted boat packed with explosives targeted the Saudi port of Yanbu in the Red Sea, with the blast sending black smoke into the sky off the coast. Saudi Arabia claimed to have intercepted and destroyed the attack boat.
(AP, 4/27/21)
2021 Apr 27, Somalia's Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, better known by his nickname Farmajo, said he will no longer seek a two-year extension to his term in office and moved to ease tensions in Mogadishu, by calling for fresh presidential polls..
(BBC, 4/28/21)
2021 Apr 27, Sri Lanka's Cabinet approved a proposed ban on wearing full-face veils including Muslim burqas in public, citing national security grounds, despite a UN expert's comment that it would violate international law.
(AP, 4/27/21)
2021 Apr 27, Sweden's Health Agency said the number of new COVID-19 cases in Sweden has decreased in the past week, but infections are still at a high level and it is too early to say whether the trend will continue. Sweden registered 45 new deaths, taking the total to 13,968.
(Reuters, 4/27/21)
2021 Apr 27, The UN Security Council demanded that all combatants protect schools, hospitals, power grids, water supplies and other infrastructure, unanimously adopting a resolution that focused for the first time on the destruction of critical civilian requirements in conflicts from Syria and Afghanistan to South Sudan and Ukraine.
(AP, 4/27/21)
2021 Apr 27, The United Nations and NGOs said that a record 29 million people need humanitarian assistance in the Sahel, noting "unparalleled" insecurity and hunger across six countries in the war-torn African region.
(AFP, 4/27/21)
2021 Apr 28, Pres. Joe Biden in his first address to Congress touted his administration's accomplishments in his first 100 days in office and called on legislators to invest in infrastructure, education, child care and science, calling them programs that “propel us into the future" and would allow the US to win a competition with China. Biden’s plans add up to more than $4 trillion in spending.
(NY Times, 4/29/21)
2021 Apr 28, The US Senate voted to effectively reinstate an Obama-era regulation designed to clamp down on emissions of methane, a powerful, climate-warming pollutant that will have to be controlled to meet President Biden’s ambitious climate change promises. Three Republican senators — Susan Collins of Maine, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Rob Portman of Ohio — joined Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents to vote for the measure.
(NY Times, 4/28/21)
2021 Apr 28, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the WHO Foundation and corporate, religious, and world leaders launched a new mass fundraising campaign, Go Give One, aiming to inspire 50 million people around the world to make small donations to Covax. The campaign will contribute to the $3 billion in Covax funding.
(AP, 4/28/21)
2021 Apr 28, Government data published by the green group Environmental Integrity Project showed that 13 US oil refineries released the cancer-causing chemical benzene in concentrations that exceeded federal limits last year, three more than in 2019.
(Reuters, 4/28/21)
2021 Apr 28, California to date had 3,712,762 cases of coronavirus and 61,197 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 434,951 cases and 6,229 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 32,225,012 with the death toll at 574,280.
(sfist.com, 4/28/21)
2021 Apr 28, Amy Carlson (45), founder of "Love Has Won" and known as “Mother God" by her followers, was found dead in a home in the small town of Moffat, Colorado. Ms Carlson’s followers believe she could communicate with angels and that she was leading them to a great awakening.
(The Independent, 5/13/21)
2021 Apr 28, Former astronaut Michael Collins (90) died at a hospice facility in Naples, Fla. On July 20, 1969, he piloted the Apollo 11 spacecraft 60 miles above Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin as they became the first humans to walk on the moon.
(NY Times, 4/28/21)
2021 Apr 28, Chicago authorities released body-camera and surveillance video showing a foot chase that ended when a police officer fatally shot Anthony Alvarez (22) early on March 31.
(The Week, 4/29/21)
2021 Apr 28, In North Carolina two sheriff's deputies died after an hours long standoff in Boone. The suspected shooter and two others were found dead inside the home after the standoff ended.
(AP, 4/29/21)
2021 Apr 28, Scientists reported that the world's 220,000 mountain glaciers have lost more than 328 billion tons of ice and snow per year since 2015.
(SFC, 4/29/21, p.A7)
2021 Apr 28, Uber Technologies Inc said it was launching new features in its app to allow US customers to book COVID-19 vaccine appointments and reserve rental cars.
(Reuters, 4/28/21)
2021 Apr 28, In Australia Richard Pusey (42), speeding driver, was sentenced to 10 months in prison for offenses including what a judge described as the "heartless, cruel and disgraceful" filming of four dead and dying police officers who had just been hit by a truck on a freeway.
(AP, 4/28/21)
2021 Apr 28, In China a man (41) was hospitalized in Jiangsu province and soon diagnosed with the H10N3 strain of bird flu. This was thought to be the world's first human case of H10N3.
(SFC, 6/2/21, p.A4)
2021 Apr 28, Dubai police said they arrested 10 suspects in a massive knife fight that killed three people, a relatively rare outburst of violence in the Gulf Arab sheikdom.
(AP, 4/28/21)
2021 Apr 28, Ioannis Lagos, a Greek far-right member of the European Parliament, refused to be extradited from Belgium to Greece to serve a 13-year prison sentence for being a high-ranking member of a criminal organization. On May 7 the Brussels prosecutor’s office said Lagos may be extradited. Lagos had until May 10 to appeal the decision.
(AP, 4/28/21)(AP, 5/7/21)
2021 Apr 28, In France 7 Italians convicted of left-wing domestic terrorist crimes in the 1970s and 1980s, were arrested at their homes. They including five former members of Italy's Red Brigades. All 7 men had fled before they could be imprisoned.
(SFC, 4/29/21, p.A5)
2021 Apr 28, The Netherlands began relaxing its lockdown even as infection rates remained stubbornly high.
(SFC, 4/29/21, p.A4)
2021 Apr 28, Arlene Foster announced her resignation as leader of the DUP and First Minister of Northern Ireland in the face of mounting discontent among her party. She said she will leave her DUP role on May 28 and resign as First Minister at the end of June.
(AP, 4/28/21)
2021 Apr 28, North Macedonia authorities said police have broken up a major criminal ring of drug, weapons and ammunition traffickers and arrested nine people, including a police officer.
(AP, 4/28/21)
2021 Apr 28, Slovakia's health ministry said doses of Russia's Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine sent to Slovakia in March will have to be kept in storage for at least another month, after Moscow asked for some doses to be sent back for testing.
(Reuters, 4/28/21)
2021 Apr 28, South Africa resumed giving the Johnson & Johnson vaccine to health care workers after a more than two-week pause in the use of the only COVID-19 inoculation in the country.
(AP, 4/28/21)
2021 Apr 28, Turkish warplanes continued to strike suspected Kurdish militant targets in northern Iraq, while commando troops conducted a search and sweep operation, as the military pressed ahead with its latest incursion into the neighboring region.
(AP, 4/28/21)
2021 Apr 28, Turkey said it has signed a deal for 50 million doses of Russia's Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine which will start arriving next month.
(Reuters, 4/28/21)
2021 Apr 28, Police in Turkey arrested a close aide of killed Islamic State group leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in Istanbul. The Afghan national, only identified by the codename Basim, was detained in the Atasehir district on the city’s Asian side.
(AP, 5/2/21)
2021 Apr 28, Pope Francis responded to reports of poor governance and moral failings in the Ecuadorian diocese of Riobamba by not only accepting the resignation of the retiring bishop but that of his heir apparent as well.
(AP, 4/28/21)
2021 Apr 28, Vietnam warned against mass gatherings ahead of long public holidays this weekend and said it would speed up its vaccine rollout amid a worsening coronavirus situation among its neighbors. Vietnam has tallied 2,865 cases, with only 35 deaths reported since the pandemic began, one of the best records in Asia.
(Reuters, 4/28/21)
2021 Apr 28, The UN General Assembly approved a resolution expressing solidarity and support for St. Vincent and urging continued financial help for the eastern Caribbean island as it deals with volcanic eruptions.
(AP, 4/28/21)
2021 Apr 29, The US Senate overwhelmingly approved a $35 billion measure to clean up the nation’s water systems, offering a brief moment of bipartisan cooperation amid deep divisions between the two parties over President Biden’s much larger ambitions for a multitrillion-dollar infrastructure package.
(NY Times, 4/29/21)
2021 Apr 29, US prosecutors said that German software giant SAP will pay more than $8 million in penalties in acknowledging that it illegally exported its products to Iran.
(AP, 4/29/21)
2021 Apr 29, The US Supreme Court bolstered the efforts of some long-term immigrants to avoid deportation in a ruling that faulted the federal government for improperly notifying a man who came to the United States illegally from Guatemala to appear for a removal hearing.
(Reuters, 4/29/21)
2021 Apr 29, Federal agents in Arkansas arrested former reality TV personality Josh Duggar. Josh is eldest child in the Duggar family, which was featured on TLC’s “19 Kids and Counting" until the show was canceled after he admitted to sexually abusing underage girls. The following day he was charged with receiving and possessing child pornography. Duggar pleaded not guilty to both charges. On Dec. 9, 2021, Duggar was convicted of downloading and possessing child pornography.
(NY Daily News, 4/30/21)(NBC News, 5/1/21)(SFC, 12/10/21, p.A6)
2021 Apr 29, The Los Angeles Police Department said five suspects have been arrested in the February 25 shooting attack and robbery of Ryan Fischer who was walking Lady Gaga's dogs.
(CBS News, 4/30/21)(SFC, 12/7/22, p.A15)
2021 Apr 29, California to date had 3,713,791 cases of coronavirus and 61,240 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 435,320 cases and 6,248 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 32,282,063 with the death toll at 575,052.
(sfist.com, 4/29/21)
2021 Apr 29, Republicans in the Florida Legislature passed an election overhaul bill that is set to usher in a host of voting restrictions in one of the most critical battleground states in the country, adding to the national push by G.O.P. state lawmakers to reduce voting access.
(NY Times, 4/29/21)
2021 Apr 29, In New York the Indian Point Energy Center permanently stopped producing nuclear power. The plant, 25 miles north of NYC, has been called a threat to millions living in the region.
(SFC, 4/30/21, p.A4)
2021 Apr 29, Brazil became the 2nd country to top 400,000 COVID-19 deaths. Brazil announced another 3,001, bringing that total to 401,186.
(SFC, 4/30/21, p.A6)
2021 Apr 29, Rebels seeking to overthrow Chad's new transitional government claimed to have shot down a military helicopter. The junta in power warned political opponents not to renew protests after violent demonstrations earlier in the week left at least six people dead.
(AP, 4/29/21)
2021 Apr 29, Chinese financial watchdogs summoned 13 internet platforms engaged in finance business, including heavyweights Tencent and ByteDance, to order them to strengthen compliance with regulations.
(Reuters, 4/29/21)
2021 Apr 29, China launched the main module of its first permanent space station that will host astronauts long term. The Tianhe, or “Heavenly Harmony," module blasted into space atop a Long March 5B rocket from the Wenchang Launch Center on the southern island province of Hainan. The first stage of the rocket went into orbit and was expected to fall back to Earth on May 8 at an unknow location.
(AP, 4/29/21)(USA Today, 5/6/21)
2021 Apr 29, The upper house of Czech Parliament approved changes in the electoral law requested by the country’s highest court that ruled the previous legislation discriminated against small political parties. The lower house had approved the changes earlier in April.
(AP, 4/29/21)
2021 Apr 29, The Czech drugs regulator said it lacked the documentation needed to fully assess Russia's COVID-19 vaccine for possible use, drawing a rebuke from Moscow amid a separate, heated dispute over spying allegations.
(Reuters, 4/29/21)
2021 Apr 29, The Greek Ombudsman called on the government to respond to detailed allegations of so-called pushbacks that deny migrants their right to apply for international protection. Greek authorities have repeatedly denied claims that security forces are involved in summary deportations.
(AP, 4/29/21)
2021 Apr 29, India's health ministry reported 379,257 new coronavirus infections, the latest in a series of global single-day records set during the country's devastating second wave of COVID-19. India also confirmed another 3,645 COVID-19 deaths, the most it has seen in a single day since the pandemic started.
(Reuters, 4/29/21)
2021 Apr 29, Italy hit its target of administering 500,000 COVID-19 vaccinations in a single day.
(Reuters, 4/30/21)
2021 Apr 29, Kurdish-led authorities in northeastern Syria announced they will extend a partial lockdown for another week amid a surge in coronavirus cases. An international aid group warned of oxygen shortages in the neglected region of the war-ravaged country.
(AP, 4/29/21)
2021 Apr 29, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan traded blame for cross-border shelling and clashes that left at least one person dead.
(SFC, 4/30/21, p.A4)
2021 Apr 29, It was reported that Lithuanian artist Erikas Malisauskas has raised over $6,000 for LGBT groups by selling a digital collage of homophobic messages that were sent to a member of parliament who champions gay rights causes.
(Reuters, 4/29/21)
2021 Apr 29, The Dutch privacy watchdog said it has fined the eastern city of Enschede for tracking people using mobile phone Wi-Fi signals in a system used to measure crowds. The city's municipality said it is appealing the ruling and 600,000-euro ($730,000) fine.
(AP, 4/29/21)
2021 Apr 29, Pakistan said it has purchased 13 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine from three Chinese companies. Total deaths crossed 17,680 with over 150 deaths today and 5,480 coronavirus cases adding to a total of 815,711.
(Reuters, 4/29/21)
2021 Apr 29, Russian developers of the Sputnik V vaccine against COVID-19 said that they were suing Brazilian regulator Anvisa for defamation, accusing it of having knowingly spread false information without testing their product.
(Reuters, 4/29/21)
2021 Apr 29, Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) reported that 16 suspects from a Ukrainian far-right neo-Nazi group known as “Maniacs. Cult of Killers" (M.K.U.) were arrested in connection with a plot to carry out violent attacks in nine of the country’s southern and northern cities.
(The Daily Beast, 4/30/21)
2021 Apr 29, A Moscow judge upheld the defamation conviction against opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
(The Week, 4/30/21)
2021 Apr 29, The UN Security Council held an informal meeting focusing on the repatriation of more than 20,000 foreign fighters and mercenaries from Libya.
(AP, 4/29/21)
2021 Apr 29, The UN World Food Program (WFP) warned that persistent drought in southern Madagascar has left hundreds of thousands of people on the brink of famine and stoked acute malnutrition among children.
(AP, 4/29/21)
2021 Apr 29, Pope Francis set a $48 gift cap for all Vatican employees and issued tough new anti-corruption regulations that require Vatican cardinals and managers to periodically declare they are investing only in funds consistent with Catholic doctrine and aren't under criminal investigation or stashing money in tax havens.
(AP, 4/29/21)(SFC, 4/30/21, p.A4)
2021 Apr 29, Vietnam said it had detected its first locally transmitted cases of the coronavirus in 35 days, as authorities ordered tighter surveillance to prevent a new outbreak.
(Reuters, 4/29/21)
2021 Apr 29, In Yemen a land mine explosion near the strategic port city of Hodeida killed three children and wounded another three and their mother.
(AP, 4/30/21)
2021 Apr 30, Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy ended the state's disaster declaration for COVID-19, saying the decree is no longer necessary.
(SFC, 5/3/21, p.A5)
2021 Apr 30, Disneyland reopened and New York’s mayor predicted the big city will be up and running again at full strength by July 1, as the number of Americans fully vaccinated against COVID-19 closed in on 100 million.
(AP, 4/30/21)
2021 Apr 30, California to date had 3,715,436 cases of coronavirus and 61,317 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 435,608 cases and 6,263 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 32,341,678 with the death toll at 575,876.
(sfist.com, 4/30/21)
2021 Apr 30, Eli Broad (87), a billionaire entrepreneur turned philanthropist and art collector, died in Los Angeles. He made his fortune in real estate and insurance and played an outsized role in shaping the art and cultural scene of Los Angeles.
(Reuters, 4/30/21)
2021 Apr 30, A Colorado woman (39) died in an apparent black bear attack near the town of Durango, marking just the fourth fatal mauling in the state since record-keeping began in 1960.
(Reuters, 5/1/21)
2021 Apr 30, Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte signed a bill requiring people to have gender reassignment surgery before changing the sex marker on the girth certificates.
(AP, 4/30/21)
2021 Apr 30, Oregon and Washington states reported a surge COVID-19 cases triggering a fresh wave of shutdowns.
(SFC, 4/30/21, p.A8)
2021 Apr 30, In Texas 97 undocumented people were found in a single house in Houston. Federal charges were soon filed against five people for their alleged roles in a human smuggling operation.
(AP, 5/4/21)
2021 Apr 30, Ingenuity, NASA’s little Mars helicopter and the first powered aircraft to soar at another planet, aced its fourth flight.
(AP, 4/30/21)
2021 Apr 30, In eastern Afghanistan a suicide truck bombing struck a guest house killing 27 people with as many as 90 others wounded in Pul-e-Alam, Logar province.
(AP, 4/30/21)(NY Times, 5/1/21)
2021 Apr 30, Chinese leader Xi Jinping offered additional assistance to India in battling the coronavirus outbreak ravaging the country, putting aside a simmering rivalry and tensions along their disputed border.
(AP, 4/30/21)
2021 Apr 30, Costa Rica announced new restrictions following a surge in coronavirus infections. Costa Rica has confirmed more than 248,000 infections and 3,200 deaths.
(SFC, 4/30/21, p.A4)
2021 Apr 30, It was reported that Ethiopia has swept up thousands of Tigrayans into detention centers across the country on accusations that they are traitors.
(SFC, 4/30/21, p.A4)
2021 Apr 30, It was reported that Germany has agreed to return to Nigeria priceless artefacts that were stolen during the colonization of Africa.
(BBC, 4/30/21)
2021 Apr 30, India reported 3,498 deaths in the last 24 hours, bringing the total to 208,330. With 386,452 new cases, India now has reported more than 18.7 million since the pandemic began.
(AP, 4/30/21)
2021 Apr 30, In Israel a stampede early today at a mountainside religious celebration left 45 people dead and scores more injured. An estimated 100,000 ultra-Orthodox Jews had gathered on Mount Meron to celebrate the holiday, Lag b’Omer, to dance and make bonfires around the tomb of a prominent rabbi from antiquity.
(NY Times, 4/30/21)(AP, 5/2/21)
2021 Apr 30, Italy reported 263 coronavirus-related deaths against 288 the day before. The daily tally of new infections fell to 13,446 from 14,320.
(Reuters, 4/30/21)
2021 Apr 30, Mexico's congress voted to impeach Francisco Garcia Cabeza de Vaca, the governor of Tamaulipas state and a member of the opposition National Action Party, on charges of tax evasion, money laundering and organized crime. The legislature of cartel-plagued Tamaulipas state voted not to recognize the action. In May a judge issued an arrest warrant for the governor.
(SSFC, 5/2/21, p.A6)(SFC, 5/21/21, p.A5)
2021 Apr 30, Niger's military intercepted a group of suspected extremists late today, killing at least 24 who were preparing to attack Baibangou, a village about 100 km (62 miles) north of the capital, Niamey.
(AP, 5/3/21)
2021 Apr 30, In Nigeria Auwalu Daudawa, a notorious gang leader behind the abduction of more than 300 students in December, was killed by a rival gang in a forest near the border with Katsina.
(BBC, 5/1/21)
2021 Apr 30, North Macedonia received a shipment of 200,000 doses of the Chinese-made Sinopharm vaccine following major delays in the country’s start-and-stop coronavirus immunization program.
(AP, 4/30/21)
2021 Apr 30, Norway said it will extend the time between first and second doses of COVID-19 vaccines to 12 from six weeks for most adults under the age of 65 in order to reach its first vaccination target sooner than planned.
(Reuters, 4/30/21)
2021 Apr 30, In Russia Ivan Pavlov, the lead lawyer defending Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, was arrested for disclosing details of a law enforcement investigation unconnected to Navalny. Pavlov was soon released but barred from using the phone of the internet.
(SFC, 5/1/21, p.A3)
2021 Apr 30, South Korean activist Park Sang-hak said he launched 500,000 propaganda leaflets by balloon into North Korea this week. A law that punishes anti-Pyongyang leafleting with up to three years in prison or a fine of 30 million won ($27,040) took effect last month.
(AP, 4/30/21)
2021 Apr 30, Spain said it is extending the gap between the first and second doses of AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine to 16 weeks for people aged under 60.
(Reuters, 4/30/21)
2021 Apr 30, The UN said more than 700 people have been arrested in Chad following this week's demonstrations against the new military government led by the son of slain Pres. Idriss Deby Itno.
(SFC, 5/1/21, p.A3)
2021 Apr 30, The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that armed conflict and insecurity in large areas of Myanmar are impeding its operations there. A UN report said political turmoil and disruptions following the coup in Myanmar could undo years of progress and double the number of its people living in poverty to nearly half the population.
(AP, 4/30/21)
2021 Apr 30, The UN Security Council again demanded the restoration of democracy in Myanmar and the release of all detainees including Aung San Suu Kyi and strongly backed calls by Southeast Asian nations for an immediate cessation of violence and talks as a first step toward a solution following the Feb. 1 military coup.
(AP, 4/30/21)
2021 Apr 30, The World Health Organization (WHO) listed Moderna's coronavirus vaccine for emergency use.
(Axios, 5/1/21)
2021 Apr, A hacking group believed to have links to the Chinese government penetrated NYC's Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s computer systems. The intrusion appeared to have done little, if any, damage.
(NY Times, 6/2/21)
2021 Apr, In Brazil deforestation this month rose 43% over the same month in 2020, to 224 square miles.
(SFC, 5/10/21, p.A4)
2021 Apr, British fund manager Ruffer Investment Management exited its bitcoin bet with a $1.1 billion profit amid worries over risk after quick gains in the cryptocurrency's price.
(Reuters, 6/8/21)
2021 Apr, In China Sattar Sawut, an Uyghur official who headed the Xinjiang Education Department, was sentenced to death. The court said he led a separatist group to create textbooks filled with ethnic hatred, violence and religious extremism that caused people to carry out violent acts in ethnic clashes in 2009.
(AP, 1/31/22)
2021 Apr, German police arrested four members of a gang suspected to be behind one of the world's biggest child abuse image websites with more than 400,000 members worldwide. Three of the arrested men were accused of operating Boystown, a platform for distributing indecent images and video of children. A 4th man arrested in Paraguay was due to be extradited to Frankfurt.
(AP, 5/3/21)
2021 Apr, Hungary signed a strategic agreement with the Shanghai-based Fudan University on opening a campus in Budapest by 2024. It would be the school's only foreign outpost, and the first Chinese university campus in the 27-nation European Union.
(AP, 5/1/21)
2021 Apr, Bashir ally Abdelbasit Hamza was jailed 10 years on corruption charges and sent to the Khartoum prison where former president Bashir is being held. A task force said Hamza had assets worth up to $1.2 billion in his name.
(Reuters, 9/23/21)
2021 May 1, It was reported that the US Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has extended a requirement that passengers on planes, trains and buses wear face masks. The rule was set to expire May 11 but will run through Sept. 13.
(AP, 5/1/21)
2021 May 1, A cyberattack caused the Alaska Court System to disconnect most of its operations from the internet, an act expected to block electronic court filings, disrupt online payments and prevent hearings from taking place by videoconference for several days. Only a "handful" of about 3,000 court system computers were affected.
(Tribune Publ., 5/2/21)
2021 May 1, California to date had 3,717,403 cases of coronavirus and 61,417 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 435,734 cases and 6,263 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 32,359,517 with the death toll at 576,402.
(sfist.com, 5/1/21)
2021 May 1, In Chicago Elijah Rule Hill Prince (28) was arrested covered in blood, telling officers that it was the "blood of peasants." He was accused of biting off chunks of a couple’s ears and gouging their eyes.
(Fox News, 5/6/21)
2021 May 1, Medina Spirit won the Kentucky Derby, giving his trainer, Bob Baffert, a record seventh victory in the famed horse race. Medina Spirit failed a drug test after the race. It was the fifth failed test in a year for Bob Baffert, the horse’s hall-of-fame trainer. The colt cannot be disqualified until a second sample, collected at the same time as the first, confirms the result in a test expected in the coming weeks.
(NY Times, 5/1/21)(NY Times, 5/9/21)
2021 May 1, Actress Olympia Dukakis (89) died at her home in Manhattan. Her first screen appearance came in 1962, on the television series “Dr. Kildare." Her first movie role was an uncredited one as a psychiatric patient in “Lilith" (1964). She often played world-weary characters in films including “Moonstruck" (1987) and “Steel Magnolias" (1989).
(NY Times, 5/1/21)
2021 May 1, Portland protests on May Day devolved into a riot late today when about 100 people engaged in "autonomous demonstrations" near an ICE facility and police made at least six arrests, including for one individual who allegedly was menacing officers with a knife.
(Fox News, 5/2/21)
2021 May 1, Seattle Police announced the arrests of at least 14 people after unpermitted demonstrations marking May Day descended into violent confrontations stemming from a group dressed in black that traveled around the city’s downtown area towards the Cal Anderson Park.
(Fox News, 5/1/21)
2021 May 1, In Wisconsin Bruce Pofahl (62) opened fire at a restaurant in the Oneida Casino in Green Bay killing two people and wounding another. Police responding to the scene fatally shot Pofahl, who had been fired from the restaurant.
(SFC, 5/3/21, p.A6)(SFC, 5/4/21, p.A3)
2021 May 1, Berkshire Hathaway Inc defended its $8 billion proposal to build natural gas plants in Texas to help reduce the threat of devastating blackouts such as those in February.
(Reuters, 5/1/21)
2021 May 1, Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc said its results are rebounding from the worst effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and that it has extended its aggressive stock repurchases with $6.6 billion of new buybacks.
(Reuters, 5/1/21)
2021 May 1, In Vienna high-ranking diplomats from China, Germany, France, Russia and Britain made progress at talks focused on bringing the US back into their landmark nuclear deal with Iran, but said they need more work and time to bring about a future agreement.
(AP, 5/1/21)
2021 May 1, Police in Belgium detained 132 people who took part in an illegal party in a Brussels park to protest COVID-19 restrictions.
(AP, 5/2/21)
2021 May 1, China began a five-day holiday for international labor day. Workers and union leaders around the world dusted off bullhorns and flags that had stayed furled during coronavirus lockdowns for boisterous May Day marches.
(AP, 5/1/21)
2021 May 1, China's main internet watchdog, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), said it has found that 33 mobile phone apps have broken data privacy rules by collecting data without consent, among other issues.
(Reuters, 5/3/21)
2021 May 1, In eastern CongoDRC senior Muslim cleric Sheikh Ali Amini was shot dead while praying in the main mosque in Beni city. The cleric was a strong critic of Islamic militancy in the region. His attack came on the heels of attacks in villages for days that left 19 dead.
(AP, 5/2/21)
2021 May 1, In Germany one of more than 20 May Day rallies in Berlin erupted in violence leaving at least 93 police officers injured and 354 protesters detained.
(SFC, 5/3/21, p.A4)
2021 May 1, Hungary loosened several COVID-19 restrictions for people with government-issued immunity cards, the latest in a series of reopening measures that have followed an ambitious vaccination campaign.
(AP, 5/1/21)
2021 May 1, India set yet another daily global record with 401,993 new cases, taking its tally to more than 19.1 million. Another 3,523 people died in the past 24 hours, raising the overall deaths to 211,853. In western India a fire in a COVID-19 hospital ward killed 18 patients early today. India opened vaccinations to all adults.
(AP, 5/1/21)(SSFC, 5/2/21, p.A7)
2021 May 1, Workers in Indonesia marked international labor day with significantly less-attended marches due to coronavirus restrictions, but thousands still vented their anger at a new law they say harms their rights and welfare.
(AP, 5/1/21)
2021 May 1, Jordan recorded 704 cases of COVID-19 with 35 deaths, bringing the total cases detected in the kingdom to 712,077 with 8,871 deaths. Jordan's health ministry said three cases of the Indian COVID-19 variant have been detected in people who had not travelled.
(Reuters, 5/1/21)
2021 May 1, Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta loosened infection-control measures after the number of coronavirus cases in the country dropped from an early spring surge.
(AP, 5/1/21)
2021 May 1, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan agreed to withdraw troops from their borders following an outburst of intense fighting that killed about 40 people.
(SSFC, 5/2/21, p.A6)
2021 May 1, The Netherlands postponed a further easing of lockdown measures until at least May 18 as COVID-19 infections remain high and hospitals are struggling with large numbers of coronavirus patients.
(Reuters, 5/1/21)
2021 May 1, In Niger an ambush on a military patrol near the border with Mali killed 16 Niger soldiers and left one missing.
(AP, 5/3/21)
2021 May 1, Pakistan reported 146 more daily coronavirus deaths. The number reported brings the country's overall death toll in the pandemic to 17,957.
(AP, 5/1/21)
2021 May 1, The Philippines received its first batch of Russia's Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine. With nearly 1.05 million infections and 17,354 deaths, the Philippines is battling one of the worst COVID-19 outbreaks in Asia.
(AP, 5/1/21)
2021 May 1, In Somalia the controversial two-year term extension for Pres. Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed evaporated after intense public pressure as the lower house of parliament approved his request to instead support efforts to organize the country’s long-delayed national election.
(AP, 5/1/21)
2021 May 1, A COVID-19 vaccine campaign kicked off in Syria’s last rebel-held enclave, with a 45-year-old front-line nurse becoming the first to receive a UN-secured jab.
(AP, 5/1/21)
2021 May 1, Ukraine said it has signed a contract with Pfizer for an additional 10 million doses of its coronavirus vaccine, brining the total number of doses to 20 million.
(AP, 5/1/21)
2021 May 1, In Yemen security officials said floods have swept through parts of the country amid heavy seasonal rains, leaving at least 13 people dead, including two children.
(AP, 5/1/21)
2021 May 2, In southern California at least three people were killed and more than two dozen were hospitalized after a small cabin cruiser capsized and appeared to have broken apart off Point Loma.
(The Week, 5/3/21)(Reuters, 8/20/21)
2021 May 2, California to date had 3,718,778 cases of coronavirus and 61,513 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 436,080 cases and 6,276 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 32,399,512 with the death toll at 576,797.
(sfist.com, 5/2/21)
2021 May 2, SpaceX safely returned four astronauts from the International Space Station off the coast of Panama City, Florida, making the first US crew splashdown in darkness since the Apollo 8 moonshot.
(AP, 5/2/21)
2021 May 2, It was reported that the Earth's axis is being shifted due to human activities causing the climate emergency. The redistribution of water resources started in the 1990s as global heating began to melt glaciers sending much of the runoff into the oceans.
(SSFC, 5/2/21, p.A16)
2021 May 2, In Afghanistan gasoline tanker trucks burst into flames in Kabul overnight, killing at least seven people and starting large fires that caused power cuts to some parts of the capital.
(Reuters, 5/2/21)
2021 May 2, Dubai's budget carrier flydubai reported a loss of $194 million in 2020 as revenue fell by more than 50% in what it described as one of the toughest years in the aviation industry.
(AP, 5/2/21)
2021 May 2, Prominent German philosopher Juergen Habermas (91) said he will not accept the high-priced Sheikh Zayed Book Award from the United Arab Emirates, reversing an earlier decision.
(AP, 5/2/21)
2021 May 2, A New Delhi court said it would start punishing public officials for failing to deliver a steady supply of oxygen and other materials needed to save lives during India's devastating coronavirus outbreak.
(AP, 5/2/21)
2021 May 2, In India prominent government critic Mamata Banerjee won a third term as the chief minister of West Bengal with a strong majority of 216 seats in the 294-seat assembly.
(The Guardian, 5/2/21)
2021 May 2, An unnamed Iranian official claimed that a deal had been finalized where Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe would be released as soon as the UK repays a 1970s-era arms debt. He also claimed that Tehran and Washington have agreed on a deal to swap prisoners and to release Iranian funds held in the United States. The US promptly dismissed the reports as false. UK Foreign Office minister James Cleverly suggested this was deliberate misinformation.
(The Telegraph, 5/2/21)(The Telegraph, 5/3/21)
2021 May 2, Gunmen in a passing car opened fire at Israelis standing at a major intersection in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, injuring three of them. The assailants reportedly escaped in a car with Palestinian license plates.
(AP, 5/2/21)
2021 May 2, Lebanese authorities said they have arrested two brothers suspected of smuggling drugs in pomegranate shipments to Saudi Arabia, leading the kingdom to ban Lebanese fruits and vegetables.
(AP, 5/2/21)
2021 May 2, At least 11 people drowned when a rubber dinghy carrying two dozen Europe-bound migrants capsized off Libya.
(AP, 5/2/21)
2021 May 2, Malaysia said it has detected its first case of a highly infectious coronavirus variant first identified in India, days after imposing a ban on flights from India.
(Reuters, 5/2/21)
2021 May 2, North Korea warned the United States will face “a very grave situation" because President Joe Biden “made a big blunder" in his recent speech by calling the North a security threat and revealing his intent to maintain a hostile policy against it.
(AP, 5/2/21)
2021 May 2, Syrian President Bashar Assad issued a decree granting amnesty and reducing sentences for several categories of crime committed before May 2.
(AP, 5/2/21)
2021 May 2, Thailand's Health Ministry reported 1,940 new coronavirus cases, while deaths hit 21 for a second day, the highest daily number of fatalities since the pandemic began.
(Reuters, 5/2/21)
2021 May 3, Pres. Joe Biden formally raised the nation's cap on refugee admissions to 62,500 this year, weeks after facing bipartisan blowback for his delay in replacing the record-low ceiling set by former Pres. Donald Trump. The Biden administration said that four families separated at the Mexican border during the Trump presidency will be reunited in the US this week
(AP, 5/3/21)(SFC, 5/4/21, p.A5)
2021 May 3, President Joe Biden traveled to coastal Virginia to promote how his proposals to spend $4 trillion for infrastructure and families will help the US education system.
(Reuters, 5/3/21)
2021 May 3, Prominent Asian-American business leaders launched a $250 million initiative to support an array of Asian American and Pacific Islander causes, vowing to create a national infrastructure for a community that has faced an increasing number of racial attacks. The Asian American Foundation will invest its initial funding in three key areas: anti-hate programs, education, and data and research.
(Reuters, 5/3/21)
2021 May 3, California to date had 3,722,178 cases of coronavirus and 61,593 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 436,797 cases and 6,288 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 32,469,628 with the death toll at 577,491.
(sfist.com, 5/3/21)
2021 May 3, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis moved to suspend all remaining COVID-19 restrictions imposed by communities across his state, signing into law freshly passed legislation giving him sweeping powers to invalidate local emergency measures put in place during the pandemic.
(AP, 5/3/21)
2021 May 3, In Maryland Efraim Gordon (31), an Israeli man visiting relatives in Baltimore, was shot multiple times in what police said appeared to be a robbery. William Clinton III (18) and a 16-year-old and a 17-year-old were soon arrested and charged with first-degree murder.
(AP, 6/5/21)
2021 May 3, In Michigan Detroit city councilman Gabe Leland (38), who was under indictment for federal corruption charges since 2018, resigned from office and admitted in court to accepting an illegal cash campaign contribution.
(AP, 5/3/21)
2021 May 3, Tornado watches and warnings were issued from Oklahoma to the Carolinas, and the severe weather was blamed for at least one death.
(NY Times, 5/3/21)
2021 May 3, Texas lawyer Jamie Balagia (65), known as the “DWI Dude," was sentenced to 188 months in federal prison for falsely promising Colombian drug traffickers he'd get their charges reduced or dismissed in exchange for cash. Balagia's two co-defendants in the case previously pleaded guilty and are serving federal prison sentences.
(AP, 5/4/21)
2021 May 3, Bill and Melinda Gates said they are divorcing, raising questions about the future of their philanthropic foundation.
(NY Times, 5/3/21)
2021 May 3, Payments firm Flywire Corp made its paperwork for a US listing public and revealed a 38% surge in revenue in the latest quarter as it benefits from strong remote working trends due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Boston-based company was founded in 2011 and focuses on payments in the education, healthcare and travel sectors.
(Reuters, 5/3/21)
2021 May 3, Verizon said it will sell Verizon Media, which consists of the once-pioneering tech platforms AOL and Yahoo, to Apollo Global Management in a $5 billion deal. Verizon said that it will keep a 10% stake in the new company, which will be called Yahoo.
(AP, 5/3/21)
2021 May 3, In Bangladesh a speedboat carrying about 30 passengers overturned after hitting a cargo vessel leaving at least 26 people dead.
(SFC, 5/4/21, p.A3)
2021 May 3, In eastern Burkina Faso suspected jihadists killed around 30 people in the village of Kodyel, Komandjari province. Militants reportedly targeted the village, whose residents were mainly from the Gurma community, because residents had joined the militia.
(BBC, 5/3/21)
2021 May 3, In Colombia, tens of thousands of people protested against pandemic-induced poverty and inequality. The protests began on April 28, and by today at least 18 civilians and one police officer, Jesús Solano, had died.
(NY Times, 5/3/21)
2021 May 3, CongoDRC's Ministry of Public Health declared an end to the latest Ebola outbreak that began Feb. 7 in the town of Butembo.
(SFC, 5/4/21, p.A3)
2021 May 3, It was reported that Denmark has removed the single-dose Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 shot from its vaccination program to investigate reports of rare but potentially dangerous blood clots. Denmark has already taken the AstraZeneca shot out of its vaccination program for the same reason. Both the J&J and AstraZeneca shots are made with similar technology.
(AP, 5/3/21)
2021 May 3, France reopened secondary and high schools and lifted a ban on domestic travel as part of the government's plan to gradually reopen the country as virus infections have started decreasing.
(SFC, 5/4/21, p.A4)
2021 May 3, Bavarian officials canceled Oktoberfest festivities for a second year in a row due to concerns over the spread of COVID-19, saying there are too many risks in hosting the celebrations.
(AP, 5/3/21)
2021 May 3, Cafes and restaurants reopened in Greece for sit-down service for the first time in nearly six months, as the country began easing coronavirus-related restrictions with a view to opening the vital tourism industry in the summer.
(AP, 5/3/21)
2021 May 3, In India at least 10 people died over the last 24 hours after a hospital ran out of oxygen in Karnataka state.
(NY Times, 5/3/21)
2021 May 3, Israeli settlers attacked the Palestinian village of Jaloud in the occupied West Bank overnight, setting brush fires and hurling stones in an apparent revenge attack following a drive-by shooting.
(AP, 5/3/21)
2021 May 3, In Mexico at least 23 people, including children, died after a subway overpass collapsed late today in Mexico City. The death toll soon rose to 26 with 33 people hospitalized.
(NY Times, 5/4/21)(SSFC, 5/9/21, p.A9)
2021 May 3, In Mexico the bullet-ridden body of online journalist Benjamín Morales Hernández was found on a highway. He ran an online community news site called Noticias Xonoidag, that covering local community events in the border town of Sonoyta. The site sometimes reported on police and crime in a region where drug cartels frequently operate.
(AP, 5/8/21)
2021 May 3, In northern Myanmar the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) claimed to have shot down a government military helicopter during heavy fighting in Momauk township.
(SFC, 5/4/21, p.A2)
2021 May 3, Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte (76) received his first dose of Sinopharm's vaccine against COVID-19 to encourage reluctant Filipinos to get inoculated and help stop the spread of the virus.
(Reuters, 5/3/21)
2021 May 3, Saudi Arabia's King Salman appointed a new economy minister and named his eldest living son as a special adviser in a series of royal decrees.
(AP, 5/3/21)
2021 May 3, Thailand reported a new daily record of 31 coronavirus deaths, as the Southeast Asian country grapples with a third wave of infections.
(Reuters, 5/3/21)
2021 May 3, In northern Thailand Jason Matthew Balzer reportedly fled his home in the Nan province after his wife, Pitchaporn Kidchob (32), disappeared. Police soon began hunting the American fugitive after the disappearance of his wife, who was four months pregnant, after finding his mattress stained with blood.
(AP, 5/6/21)
2021 May 4, President Joe Biden issued a proclamation on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons Awareness Day. He has promised to bolster resources to address the crisis and better consult with tribes to hold perpetrators accountable and keep communities safe.
(AP, 5/4/21)
2021 May 4, San Francisco advanced into the least restrictive tier of California's color-coded reopening system, allowing most businesses to expand capacity. Mayor London Breed said the changes will take effect under yellow-tier guidelines on May 6.
(SFC, 5/5/21, p.A1)
2021 May 4, In San Francisco two women were hospitalized after they were stabbed at a bus stop on Market Street in the latest attacks against Asian Americans nationwide since the start of the pandemic. Police soon arrested a 54-year-old man after they obtained an image of the suspect and recognized him from prior encounters.
(The Guardian, 5/6/21)
2021 May 4, California to date had 3,723,265 cases of coronavirus and 61,619 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 438,243 cases and 6,310 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 32,507,113 with the death toll at 578,319.
(sfist.com, 5/4/21)
2021 May 4, It was reported that former New York Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (77) has been released from a federal prison on furlough while he awaits potential placement to home confinement.
(AP, 5/4/21)
2021 May 4, In Tennessee a woman died when a tree fell on her home as storms moved through the large swaths of the southern US.
(SFC, 5/5/21, p.A5)
2021 May 4, HP, Microsoft and other businesses called for expanded voter access in Texas, and a group of Houston executives criticized Republican-backed voting bills in the state Legislature.
(NY Times, 5/4/21)
2021 May 4, The top international official in Bosnia warned that ethnic Serb leaders are making a concerted effort to split the country, or failing that to roll back many reforms achieved during the last 25 years, and he called for “a decisive stand" to stop any division.
(AP, 5/4/21)
2021 May 4, Two former British paratroopers accused of the 1972 murder of Joe McCann (24), an Official IRA leader in Belfast, were formally acquitted after the veterans’ trial collapsed. A judge ruled that evidence implicating the former soldiers was not admissible and prosecutors said they would not offer further evidence at the trial.
(AP, 5/4/21)
2021 May 4, Sotheby's said it would accept bitcoin and ethereum as payment for Banksy's iconic artwork "Love is in the Air", a first for a physical art auction and the latest sign of growing mainstream acceptance of cryptocurrencies.
(Reuters, 5/4/21)
2021 May 4, Britain and India signed an accord on migration and mobility, as they look to deepen economic, cultural and other ties following the UK's departure from the EU.
(Reuters, 5/4/21)
2021 May 4, Foreign ministers from the Group of Seven wealthy industrialized nations gathered in London - their first face-to-face meeting in more than two years - to grapple with threats to health, prosperity and democracy.
(AP, 5/4/21)
2021 May 4, Egypt confirmed that it is buying another 30 Rafale fighter jets from France, building up its fleet of the advanced warplane to 54, second only to the French air force.
(AP, 5/4/21)
2021 May 4, Eritrea’s Pres. Isaias Afwerki arrived in Khartoum for talks with Sudanese officials amid tensions over a longtime border dispute between Sudan and Ethiopia. He was received by Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan, head of Sudan's ruling sovereign council.
(AP, 5/4/21)
2021 May 4, India's official count of coronavirus cases surpassed 20 million, nearly doubling in the past three months, while deaths officially have passed 220,000.
(AP, 5/4/21)
2021 May 4, India's government said 8 Asiatic lions at a zoo in Hyderabad have contracted the coronavirus, adding that there was no evidence that animals could transmit the disease to humans. The Nehru Zoological Park has now been closed.
(AP, 5/4/21)
2021 May 4, India said it will allow foreign mobile carriers to carry out 5G trials with equipment makers, but did not name China's Huawei among the participants.
(Reuters, 5/5/21)
2021 May 4, Iranian police started investigating the death of a Swiss diplomat who died after reportedly falling from a high rise in Tehran.
(AP, 5/4/21)
2021 May 4, Iran's semi-official Tasnim news agency reported that police arrested 16 men and women at a mixed-gender party in the northeastern province of Khorasan Razavi. The 16 were detained while they were dancing at a party. Such parties are illegal under Iranian law.
(AP, 5/4/21)
2021 May 4, Israel's PM Benjamin Netanyahu failed to form a new government by today's midnight deadline, putting his political future in jeopardy as he stands trial on corruption charges and prolonging a political deadlock that has only worsened after four elections in two years.
(NY Times, 5/5/21)
2021 May 4, Italy reported 305 coronavirus-related deaths against 256 the day before, while the daily tally of new infections rose to 9,116 from 5,948.
(AP, 5/4/21)
2021 May 4, Lebanon and Israel resumed indirect talks with US mediation over their disputed maritime border.
(AP, 5/4/21)
2021 May 4, In Morocco Halima Cissé of Mali (25) gave birth to nine babies - two more than doctors had detected during scans. A year later the five girls and four boys, born by Caesarean section, were doing well.
(BBC, 5/5/21)(BBC, 5/4/22)
2021 May 4, Nepal halted domestic flights due to spiking cases of the coronavirus. Int'l. flights would cease on May 6.
(SFC, 5/4/21, p.A4)
2021 May 4, A Dutch court convicted five teens for their involvement in the fatal beating last year of a 73-year-old man in what they described as a “pedophile hunt." The youths were given sentences ranging from six months to a year in juvenile detention.
(AP, 5/4/21)
2021 May 4, A 30-year-old Norwegian woman who was repatriated by Norway from a refugee camp in Syria because her son was sick was sentenced to 3 1/2 years in prison by an Oslo court for participating in the Islamic State group.
(AP, 5/4/21)
2021 May 4, In Qatar Malcolm Bidali, a Kenyan security guard, was arrested and faced charges after writing compelling, anonymous accounts of being a low-paid worker there. He found himself targeted by a phishing attack that could have revealed his location just before his arrest.
(AP, 5/30/21)
2021 May 4, Mohammed Deif, the shadowy leader of the armed wing of the Islamic militant group Hamas, issued his first public statement in nearly seven years, warning Israel it will pay a “heavy price" if it evicts Palestinians from their homes in east Jerusalem.
(AP, 5/5/21)
2021 May 4, The Seychelles, which has fully vaccinated over 60% of its population against Covid-19, said it is bringing back restrictions amid a rise in cases.
(BBC, 5/5/21)
2021 May 4, Sicily said it will start offering COVID-19 vaccines to people over 50 to speed up its inoculation program which is being hampered by a reluctant older population who fear potentially severe side effects. Five people in Sicily have died after receiving the AstraZeneca vaccine.
(AP, 5/4/21)
2021 May 4, Madrid residents voted in droves for a new regional assembly in an election that tests the depths of resistance to virus lockdown measures and the divide between left-wing and right-wing parties.
(AP, 5/4/21)
2021 May 4, Thailand launched a campaign to vaccinate 50,000 people living in a crowded river-side district of the capital Bangkok, as the country tries to contain a third wave of coronavirus infections. Thailand reported 1,763 new coronavirus cases and 27 deaths, bringing the total to 72,788 cases and 303 fatalities since the pandemic began.
(Reuters, 5/4/21)
2021 May 5, The Biden administration blocked a Trump-era rule that would have made it easier to classify gig workers who work for companies like Uber and Lyft as independent contractors instead of employees, signaling a potential policy shift toward greater worker protections.
(Reuters, 5/5/21)
2021 May 5, The Biden administration came out in support of waiving intellectual property protections for coronavirus vaccines, siding with international efforts to bolster production amid concerns about vaccine access in developing nations. Pharmaceutical companies reacted angrily, saying it would hamper future vaccine development and do little to increase short-term supply.
(NY Times, 5/6/21)
2021 May 5, California to date had 3,725,371 cases of coronavirus and 61,678 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 438,523 cases and 6,319 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 32,555,496 with the death toll at 579,249.
(sfist.com, 5/6/21)
2021 May 5, Lucinda Franks (74), a widely published writer and investigative journalist who was the first woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for national reporting, died in Hopewell Junction, NY.
(NY Times, 5/6/21)
2021 May 5, The South Carolina House voted to add a firing squad to the state's execution methods amid a lack of lethal-injection drugs.
(SFC, 5/7/21, p.A4)
2021 May 5, In Texas SpaceX launched and successfully landed its futuristic Starship.
(SFC, 5/6/21, p.A4)
2021 May 5, Blue Origin, billionaire Jeff Bezos' rocket company, said it is targeting July 20 for its first suborbital sightseeing trip on its New Shepard spacecraft, a landmark moment in a competition to usher in a new era of private commercial space travel. Blue Origin said it will offer one seat on the first flight to the winning bidder of an online auction, the proceeds of which will be donated to the space firm's foundation.
(Reuters, 5/5/21)
2021 May 5, Meme-based virtual currency Dogecoin soared to an all-time high, extending its 2021 rally to become the fourth-biggest digital coin. Dogecoins are now cumulatively worth $88 billion, compared to bitcoin's $1 trillion and ethereum's $391 billion.
(Reuters, 5/5/21)
2021 May 5, Facebook Inc's oversight board upheld the company's suspension of former US President Donald Trump but said the company was wrong to make the suspension indefinite and gave it six months to determine a "proportionate response".
(Reuters, 5/5/21)
2021 May 5, Peloton Interactive Inc announced a recall of its treadmills, reversing course just weeks after saying there was "no reason" to stop using the exercise machines despite reports of multiple injuries and the death of a child in an accident.
(Reuters, 5/5/21)
2021 May 5, Canada said it is authorizing the use of Pfizer Inc's COVID-19 vaccine for use in children from 12 to 15, the first dose to be allowed for people that young.
(AP, 5/5/21)
2021 May 5, China said it was concerned that India had not allowed Chinese companies to conduct 5G trials in the country.
(AP, 5/5/21)
2021 May 5, Mass anti-government protests unfolded across Colombia, topping off a week of unrest that has left at least 24 people dead.
(The Guardian, 5/6/21)
2021 May 5, Egyptian and Turkish officials met for talks aiming to reset ties between the two regional powers after years of enmity.
(AP, 5/5/21)
2021 May 5, President Emmanuel Macron marked the bicentenary of the death of Napoleon Bonaparte, the warrior and emperor who famously bequeathed to France its civil code but whose legacy is today tarnished in the eyes of some for reinstating slavery.
(AP, 5/5/21)
2021 May 5, Germany and the World Health Organization (WHO) announced the creation of a new global hub in Berlin for gathering data on pandemics.
(Reuters, 5/5/21)
2021 May 5, Germany's constitutional court dismissed emergency appeals against the government's decision to impose night curfews in areas with high COVID-19 infections as some regions are eyeing a loosening of lockdown restrictions.
(Reuters, 5/5/21)
2021 May 5, The German government banned Ansaar International, a Muslim organization that it accused of supporting "terrorism globally with its donations." More than 1,000 police officers raided buildings and office spaces across Germany and confiscated about 150,000 euros ($180,000).
(AP, 5/5/21)
2021 May 5, India gave emergency use authorization for a COVID-19 antibody drug cocktail developed by Roche and Regeneron, expanding its arsenal of drugs to battle a massive second wave of infections.
(Reuters, 5/5/21)
2021 May 5, Israel's military and the Shin Bet security service arrested Palestinian suspect Muntasser Shalaby (44) in a weekend drive-by shooting in the West Bank that left one Israeli dead and two injured.
(AP, 5/6/21)
2021 May 5, In Italy two American men were found guilty of murder and sentenced to life in prison for the street-corner killing of an Italian military police officer on an early summer morning, when the two young San Francisco natives were vacationing in Rome. A jury found Finnegan Elder (21) and Gabriel Natale Hjorth (20) guilty of the 2019 murder of Deputy Brig. Mario Cerciello Rega.
(NY Times, 5/5/21)
2021 May 5, Malaysia imposed movement restrictions in the capital Kuala Lumpur due to a rising number of COVID-19 infections, adding to lockdowns that have been implemented across the country. Malaysia reported 3,744 new infections and has now seen a total of 424,376 cases.
(Reuters, 5/5/21)
2021 May 5, It was reported that Myanmar’s security forces are arresting and forcibly disappearing thousands of people, especially boys and young men, in a sweeping bid to break the back of a three-month uprising against a military takeover.
(AP, 5/5/21)
2021 May 5, Syrian state media reported that Israel fired missiles toward northwest Syria early today, killing one person and wounding six.
(AP, 5/5/21)
2021 May 5, More than 200 global organizations urged the UN Security Council to impose an arms embargo on Myanmar, saying the time for statements has passed and immediate action is needed to help protect peaceful protesters against military rule and other opponents of the junta.
(AP, 5/5/21)
2021 May 6, The US Federal Election Commission said that it had formally dropped a case looking into whether former President Donald J. Trump violated election law with a payment of $130,000 shortly before the 2016 election to a pornographic-film actress by his personal lawyer at the time, Michael D. Cohen. Mr. Cohen has served time in prison, but Mr. Trump has not faced legal consequences for the payment.
(NY Times, 5/7/21)
2021 May 6, Alabama lawmakers dropped their resistance to medical marijuana and sent legislation for GOP Gov. Kay Ivey to sign.
(SFC, 5/8/21, p.A6)
2021 May 6, California to date had 3,726,939 cases of coronavirus and 61,744 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 438,875 cases and 6,333 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 32,601,576 with the death toll at 580,025.
(sfist.com, 5/6/21)
2021 May 6, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, with great fanfare, signed his state’s new voting bill, which passed last week.
(NY Times, 5/7/21)
2021 May 6, In Idaho a sixth-grade girl brought a gun to her middle school in Rigby, shot and wounded two students and a custodian and then was disarmed by a teacher.
(AP, 5/6/21)
2021 May 6, Ohio introduced a new omnibus voting bill that would further limit drop boxes in the state, limit ballot collection processes and reduce early in-person voting by one day, while also making improvements to access such as an online absentee ballot request portal and automatic registration at motor vehicle offices.
(NY Times, 5/7/21)
2021 May 6, Republican-led Legislature in Texas pressed ahead with its own far-reaching bill that would make it one of the most difficult states in the nation in which to cast a ballot.
(NY Times, 5/7/21)
2021 May 6, Twitter said that it had suspended an account relaying posts from former President Donald Trump's new blog, on the grounds that it violated the company's rules against sidestepping its bans.
(The Week, 5/7/21)
2021 May 6, In Afghanistan gunmen in Kandahar killed former TV presenter Nimat Rawan.
(SFC, 5/7/21, p.A4)
2021 May 6, In Brazil a police raid on a drug gang in a poor Rio de Janeiro neighborhood left 28 people dead in the deadliest operation ever carried out by the security forces in the city.
(Reuters, 5/7/21)
2021 May 6, British PM Boris Johnson said that two Royal Navy vessels would remain off the British Channel island of Jersey amid an escalating row with France over post-Brexit fishing rights. Brussels rallied behind France in an escalating row over post-Brexit fishing rights.
(Reuters, 5/6/21)(The Telegraph, 5/6/21)
2021 May 6, PM Boris Johnson's Conservatives scored a stunning election victory in an opposition stronghold, after Britain held its first major ballot box test since Brexit and the coronavirus crisis.
(AFP, 5/7/21)
2021 May 6, UK government figures showed that alcohol-related deaths in England and Wales jumped by a fifth last year to reach their highest level in two decades.
(AP, 5/6/21)
2021 May 6, Britain recorded a further 2,613 cases of COVID-19 in the last 24 hours, and 13 deaths.
(Reuters, 5/6/21)
2021 May 6, Cyprus unveiled a phased rollback of COVID-19 lockdown restrictions over the next month, including a shortened curfew and a reopening of all schools next week.
(AP, 5/6/21)
2021 May 6, Egyptian and Turkish officials concluded two days of talks in Cairo aimed at resetting ties between the two regional powers. In a joint statement, both sides vowed to evaluate the outcome of their first round of consultations before agreeing on the next move.
(AP, 5/6/21)
2021 May 6, Germany rejected a US proposal to waive patent protection for COVID-19 vaccines, saying the greatest constraints on production were not intellectual property but increasing capacity and ensuring quality.
(Reuters, 5/6/21)
2021 May 6, In Hong Kong prominent pro-democracy activist Joshua Wong was sentenced to ten months of additional jail time for participating in an unauthorized vigil to commemorate the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown.
(SFC, 5/7/21, p.A4)
2021 May 6, India's government agreed to provide more medical oxygen to hospitals in New Delhi under order by the Supreme Court.
(SFC, 5/7/21, p.A5)
2021 May 6, Italy reported 258 coronavirus-related deaths against 267 the day before, while the daily tally of new infections rose to 11,807 from 10,585.
(Reuters, 5/6/21)
2021 May 6, The Int'l. Criminal Court jailed a former Ugandan child soldier to 25 years in prison for crimes including murder, rape and torture. Dominic Ongwen (45) had grown to become a commander in the notorious Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebel group.
(BBC, 5/6/21)
2021 May 6, It was reported that the government of Malawi has ordered thousands of refugees who have integrated into society to move to the country's only overcrowded Dzaleka refugee camp.
(BBC, 5/6/21)
2021 May 6, In the Maldives an explosion critically wounded former Pres. Mohamed Nasheed (53) and wounded four others. Islamic extremists were blamed. Nasheed was soon flown to Germany for care. Over the next two weeks four suspects were arrested.
(SSFC, 5/9/21, p.A9)(SFC, 5/22/21, p.A4)
2021 May 6, Nepal reported 9,070 new confirmed cases, compared to 298 a month ago.
(AP, 5/7/21)
2021 May 6, It was reported that Dutch researchers have trained bees, which have an unusually keen sense of smell, to identify samples infected with COVID-19, a finding they said could cut waiting times for test results to just seconds. The technique of "insect sniffing" was effectively tested by the US Dept. of Defence to detect explosives and toxins in the 1990s.
(AP, 5/6/21)
2021 May 6, It was reported that Qatar's public prosecutor has ordered the arrest of the finance minister in order to question him over alleged abuse of power and misuse of public funds in the energy-rich state. Ali Sharif al-Emadi has served finance minister since 2013.
(AP, 5/6/21)
2021 May 6, Russian authorities gave regulatory approval to a single-dose version of the country's Sputnik V vaccine, arguing that the move could accelerate the process of achieving herd immunity against the coronavirus. Russia started human trials of Sputnik Light, identical to the first dose of the two-dose Sputnik V, in January. The studies remained ongoing.
(AP, 5/6/21)
2021 May 6, Somalia said it has resumed diplomatic ties with neighboring Kenya after severing relations late last year.
(AP, 5/6/21)
2021 May 6, South Korean police raided the office of activist Park Sang-hak, who said he had floated hundreds of thousands of propaganda leaflets toward North Korea by balloon in defiance of a contentious new law that bans such activities.
(AP, 5/6/21)
2021 May 6, The UN said industry could cheaply and easily slash humanity's methane emissions by at least 30 percent in a decade, adding that such cuts would slow global warming and prevent hundreds of thousands of deaths.
(AFP, 5/6/21)
2021 May 6, The UN announced it has released $65 million for humanitarian aid in Ethiopia, including $40 million for the Tigray region where a military operation launched in November has escalated into a war in which widespread atrocities are reported and thousands have been killed.
(AP, 5/6/21)
2021 May 6, The UN disarmament chief reported the discovery of an undeclared chemical warfare agent at a Syrian site to a Security Council meeting where the US and its Western allies clashed with Russia over international findings that Syria has used chemical weapons.
(AP, 5/6/21)
2021 May 7, The US Treasury Department said it has allocated an additional $21.6 billion for rental assistance under President Joe Biden's coronavirus rescue package, adding new rules aimed at assisting more renters directly.
(Reuters, 5/7/21)
2021 May 7, The White House released its first batch of records disclosing visits by official guests, returning to a practice set by the Obama administration but ditched by Donald Trump.
(Reuters, 5/7/21)
2021 May 7, The Washington Post said the Trump Justice Department secretly seized the phone records of three Washington Post reporters who covered the federal investigation into ties between Russia and Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. The records sought covered the period of April 15, 2017, to July 31, 2017.
(AP, 5/7/21)
2021 May 7, The S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrials hit record highs, while the technology-heavy Nasdaq index jumped 1% after weak US jobs data eased worries about the Federal Reserve reducing its massive stimulus program anytime soon.
(Reuters, 5/7/21)
2021 May 7, Alabama jurors convicted police Officer William Darby of murder in the 2018 shooting of Jeffrey Parker, who was threatening to kill himself as he held a gun to his own head.
(SFC, 5/8/21, p.A4)
2021 May 7, In California the South Coast Air Quality Management District board approved rules that would curb diesel emissions from thousands of trucks that ferry goods from the growing number of warehouses in the region run by Amazon and other companies.
(SSFC, 5/9/21, p.A8)
2021 May 7, A Southern California man was arrested on federal charges after federal authorities say he fraudulently obtained millions of dollars in coronavirus relief to buy luxurious cars, take lavish vacations and cover personal expenses. Mustafa Qadiri (38) of Irvine obtained about $5 million in Payment Protection Program money after claiming to own four businesses in nearby Newport Beach, none of which are in business.
(USA Today, 5/10/21)
2021 May 7, Paul Van Doren (b.1930), co-founder of the Vans company, died. His iconic Southern California sneakers were beloved by skateboarders and became an international success.
(AP, 5/7/21)
2021 May 7, California to date had 3,729,459 cases of coronavirus and 61,838 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 439,300 cases and 6,339 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 32,640,373 with the death toll at 580,776.
(sfist.com, 5/7/21)
2021 May 7, It was reported that Evanston, Illinois, plans to pay reparations to eligible Black residents for past racist housing practices. Grants of $25,000 would be provided this year for down payments, repairs or existing mortgages.
(SFC, 5/7/21, p.A4)
2021 May 7, Four former Minneapolis police officers faced federal civil rights charges for their role in the arrest and murder of George Floyd, according to court documents unsealed today, showing the Justice Department's tougher stance in such cases.
(Reuters, 5/7/21)
2021 May 7, Spencer Silver (80), research chemist at 3M and the inventor of Post-it Notes, died at his home in St. Paul, Minn. He patented the adhesive (technically called acrylate copolymer microspheres) in 1972.
(AP, 5/14/21)
2021 May 7, Daniel Kamensky (48), the New York hedge fund founder who predicted he might "go to jail" for corrupting the sale of some assets during the bankruptcy of Neiman Marcus, was sentenced to six months in prison.
(AP, 5/7/21)
2021 May 7, Chad Salsman, a Pennsylvania district attorney who had cast the sex case against him as a pack of “vicious lies." pleaded guilty to pressuring clients for sex when he was a defense attorney and then coercing them to keep quiet about it.
(AP, 5/7/21)
2021 May 7, Colonial Pipeline shut down its 5,500 miles of pipeline, which it says carries 45 percent of the US East Coast’s fuel supplies, in an effort to contain A ransomware attack. Colonial Pipeline, based in Alpharetta, Ga., is owned by several American and foreign companies and investment firms, including Koch Industries and Royal Dutch Shell. It was later reported that Colonial Pipeline paid nearly $5 million to Eastern European hackers soon after the crippling cyberattack.
(NY Times, 5/8/21)(Bloomberg, 5/8/21)(Reuters, 5/13/21)
2021 May 7, Novavax Inc said the distribution of its COVID-19 vaccine in Japan is expected to begin in late 2021 or early 2022 and continue for the near-term, predicting the need for protection against variants in the future. Takeda Pharmaceutical Co, Japan's biggest drugmaker, is helping bring the vaccine to the domestic market.
(Reuters, 5/7/21)
2021 May 7, Pfizer Inc and German partner BioNTech SA said they have filed for a full US approval for their COVID-19 vaccine, which is now authorized only for emergency use.
(Reuters, 5/7/21)
2021 May 7, In Austria the fourth round of talks between world powers on Iran's nuclear program opened in Vienna.
(AFP, 5/7/21)
2021 May 7, In El Salvador the bodies of Jacquelinne Palomo Lima (26), her mother and brother were found along with another 14 corpses discovered in a mass grave behind the home of Hugo Osorio (51), a former police officer. Investigators later said there could be up to 40 bodies in several graves on the property.
(Reuters, 7/19/21)
2021 May 7, EU leaders met in Portugal for wo days of in-person talks.
(SFC, 5/8/21, p.A7)
2021 May 7, French authorities announced that Jersey fishermen will be banned from landing their catch at three ports in response to the row over post-Brexit fishing rights.
(AP, 5/7/21)
2021 May 7, Pressure on the French hospital system from the COVID-19 epidemic eased for the fourth day in row and the number of virus deaths in hospitals was down again compared to a week ago. France reported 226 new coronavirus deaths in hospitals, from 219 a day earlier.
(Reuters, 5/7/21)
2021 May 7, In Germany the Saxony intelligence agency classified the anti-immigration group PEGIDA as a “proven extremist movement." It said the Patriotic Europeans against the Islamization of the West, had turned into an anti-constitutional movement in recent years.
(AP, 5/7/21)
2021 May 7, India reported another record daily rise in coronavirus cases, bringing total new cases for the week to 1.57 million, as its vaccination rate fell dramatically due to a lack of supplies and transport problems.
(Reuters, 5/7/21)
2021 May 7, Israeli troops shot and killed two Palestinians and wounded a third after the men opened fire on a base in the occupied West Bank. At least 178 Palestinians were injured in clashes with Israeli police in Jerusalem.
(AP, 5/7/21)(Reuters, 5/8/21)
2021 May 7, Italy reported 207 coronavirus-related deaths against 258 the day before, while the daily tally of new infections fell to 10,554 from 11,807.
(Reuters, 5/7/21)
2021 May 7, Nepalese Sherpa guide Kami Rita scaled Mount Everest for the 25th time, breaking his own record for the most ascents of the world's highest peak.
(SFC, 5/8/21, p.A4)
2021 May 7, Doctors in Nepal warned of a major crisis as daily coronavirus cases hit a record and hospitals were running out of beds and oxygen.
(AP, 5/7/21)
2021 May 7, In Nigeria a night of violence left at least seven police officers dead in oil-rich Rivers State. A day earlier gunmen killed two police officers during an attack on another police station in nearby Anambra state.
(BBC, 5/8/21)
2021 May 7, Amnesty International announced that it would restore jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny's status as a "prisoner of conscience," apologizing to Navalny and Russian activists for revoking the designation in February.
(Axios, 5/7/21)
2021 May 7, In Russia Alexander Murakhovsky, who was promoted to become minister of health of the Omsk Region days after he publicly refuted claims that someone had tried to kill Vladimir Putin’s most public foe, went hunting on a four-wheeler and has not been seen since. The doctor reappeared on May 10 after being reported missing.
(The Daily Beast, 5/9/21)(Reuters, 5/10/21)
2021 May 7, Scotland held parliamentary elections. The governing Scottish National Party was on course to win its fourth straight term in office. Final results of the local elections showed that the SNP won 64 of the 129 seats in the Edinburgh-based Scottish Parliament, one seat short of securing an overall majority.
(AP, 5/8/21)(AP, 5/9/21)
2021 May 7, It was reported that South Africa will end its captive lion industry. The move would outlaw "canned hunting" and sale of their bones as well as popular tourist experiences like petting cubs. Wild lion hunts were not affected and would continue under strict controls.
(SFC, 5/7/21, p.A3)
2021 May 7, Vietnam's health ministry reported its first death in a patient who received AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine shot, as the country battled a new outbreak. A female health worker (35) died from allergic reaction known as anaphylaxis. The health ministry reported 47 new infections, raising the total number of cases in the country to 3,137, with 35 deaths.
(Reuters, 5/7/21)
2021 May 7, The World Health Organization gave emergency use authorization to a COVID-19 vaccine manufactured by China's Sinopharm, potentially paving the way for millions of the doses to reach needy countries through a UN-backed program rolling out coronavirus vaccines.
(AP, 5/7/21)
2021 May 8, Tesla CEO Elon Musk hosted the latest episode of Saturday Night Live. Musk revealed he has Asperger's syndrome, reportedly marking the first time he has spoken publicly about the diagnosis. His appearance on the show also led to a tumble for his favorite cryptocurrency, Dogecoin.
(CNN, 5/9/21)
2021 May 8, California to date had 3,731,562 cases of coronavirus and 61,882 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 439,347 cases and 6,339 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 32,653,055 with the death toll at 580,905.
(sfist.com, 5/8/21)
2021 May 8, In Delaware Pierre S. “Pete" du Pont IV (86), a former Delaware governor and congressman who sought the Republican presidential nomination in 1988, died.
(AP, 5/9/21)
2021 May 8, Helmut Jahn (81), a German-born architect, died in a traffic accident near the horse farm where he lived, in St. Charles, Ill. He designed buildings around the world but was most influential in his adopted hometown, Chicago, where he conceived of an extravagant downtown home to state government and the United Airlines terminal at O’Hare International Airport.
(NY Times, 5/10/21)
2021 May 8, Eula Hall (93), social worker, counselor, psychiatrist, died at her home in Craynor, Ky. She started a health care clinic and offered other services in chronically underserved eastern Kentucky. Kiran Bhatraju authored “Mud Creek Medicine" (2013), a biography of Mrs. Hall.
(NY Times, 5/16/21)
2021 May 8, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) granted posthumous pardons for 34 Black victims of lynchings in the state between 1854 and 1933, making him the first governor to issue a systematic pardon of all known lynching victims in any state.
(Washington Post, 5/8/21)
2021 May 8, In Maryland four people were killed and one person was injured this morning after a large fire and a police shooting in Baltimore County.
(NBC News, 5/8/21)
2021 May 8, In Afghanistan powerful explosions outside a high school in Kabul killed at least 50 people and wounded scores more, many of them teenage girls leaving class. The bombing occurred in the Dasht-e-Barchi neighborhood, where many residents are of the ethnic Hazara minority, a mostly Shiite group that has been targeted by Islamic State loyalists in the past.
(NY Times, 5/9/21)(AP, 5/9/21)
2021 May 8, Bangladesh said it has detected its first case of a highly infectious coronavirus variant first identified in India, weeks after it sealed its borders with its neighbor.
(Reuters, 5/8/21)
2021 May 8, In Canada Pastor Artur Pawlowski, the head of Calgary’s Street Church in Alberta, and his brother, Dawid Pawlowski, were arrested and charged with "organizing an illegal in-person gathering." A video of the pastor went viral last month for ordering out police who showed up to his church on Easter weekend.
(Fox News, 5/9/21)
2021 May 8, Congo’s Pres. Felix Tshisekedi, the current head of the African Union, met with Egyptian and Sudanese officials amid international and regional efforts to relaunch negotiations over Ethiopia’s disputed dam on the Nile River’s main tributary.
(AP, 5/8/21)
2021 May 8, El Salvador police arrested Hugo Ernesto Osorio Chávez (51) in relation to the deaths of a 57-year-old woman and her 26-year-old daughter. He confessed to the killings. Police soon began searching his garden site in Chalchuapa, in the far west of the country. The remains of at least 24 different people were soon removed from the site. Police said the site may contain as many as 40 bodies.
(The Telegraph, 5/21/21)
2021 May 8, Egypt said it will require all visitors arriving from "countries where variants of the virus have appeared" to take a rapid COVID-19 test upon arrival.
(Reuters, 5/8/21)
2021 May 8, In Guinea at least 15 people were killed by a landslide at a clandestine gold mine in the north-eastern Siguiri region.
(BBC, 5/9/21)
2021 May 8, India reported its highest ever single-day COVID-19 death toll, as cases continued to rise and states imposed stricter lockdowns. The health ministry reported 4,187 fatalities over the past 24 hours, taking the overall death toll close to 240,000.
(Reuters, 5/8/21)
2021 May 8, Unrest continued in Jerusalem late today as Israeli police again cracked down on Palestinians protesting Israel's plans for potentially evicting Palestinian families from their homes in east Jerusalem.
(BBC, 5/9/21)
2021 May 8, Italy reported 224 coronavirus-related deaths against 207 the day before. The daily tally of new infections fell to 10,176 from 10,554.
(Reuters, 5/8/21)
2021 May 8, Myanmar's state-controlled media reported that the military junta has branded the National Unity Government, a terrorist group. The rival opposition operates under cover.
(Reuters, 5/9/21)
2021 May 8, Pakistan received its first supply of COVID-19 vaccines through the UN-backed COVAX initiative, over 1.2 million doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine. Researchers said a coronavirus variant first discovered in the UK now accounts for up to 70% of COVID-19 infections across Pakistan.
(AP, 5/8/21)(Reuters, 5/8/21)
2021 May 9, The United States Navy announced that it seized a major arms shipment in the Arabian Sea that was apparently headed into the hands of Yemen's Houthi rebels.
(AP, 5/9/21)
2021 May 9, California to date had 3,732,672 cases of coronavirus and 61,937 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 439,689 cases and 6,344 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 32,696,162 with the death toll at 581,651.
(sfist.com, 5/9/21)
2021 May 9, A shooting at a birthday party in Colorado Springs early today left six people and the gunman dead. The gunman, soon identified as Teodoro Macias (28), was a boyfriend of one of the female victims and had killed himself. Macias reportedly opened fire because he had not been invited to the party.
(NY Times, 5/9/21)(SFC, 5/10/21, p.A7)(SFC, 5/12/21, p.A5)
2021 May 9, In South Carolina police officers fatally shot Jeffrey Mark Murray (62) minutes after he killed bicyclist David “Whit" Oliver (44) during an argument near a park in Greenville.
(AP, 5/10/21)
2021 May 9, A total of 1,770 new cases of COVID-19 were recorded in the United Kingdom, with the seven-day total of 14,659 cases down by 4.3% compared with the previous seven days.
(Reuters, 5/9/21)
2021 May 9, The military in Chad claimed victory against northern rebels following weeks of fighting. A victory parade took place through the streets of the capital, N'Djamena.
(BBC, 5/9/21)
2021 May 9, China's Long March 5B rocket crashed back to Earth this morning, landing in the Indian Ocean just west of the Maldives.
(The Week, 5/9/21)
2021 May 9, Egyptian authorities executed a defrocked monk convicted of the 2018 killing of Bishop Epiphanius, an abbot at St. Macarius Monastery north of Cairo.
(AP, 5/9/21)
2021 May 9, In France thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of Paris and other cities to call for more ambitious measures in the fight against climate change.
(AP, 5/9/21)
2021 May 9, It was reported that Germany's powerful Catholic progressives are openly defying a recent Holy See pronouncement that priests cannot bless same-sex unions by offering such blessings at services in about 100 different churches all over the country this week.
(AP, 5/9/21)
2021 May 9, India reported 403,738 confirmed cases, including 4,092 deaths. Overall, India has over 22 million confirmed infections and 240,000 deaths. Experts say both figures are undercounts. India said it will recruit hundreds of former army medics to support its overwhelmed healthcare system.
(AP, 5/9/21)(Reuters, 5/9/21)
2021 May 9, Ehab Wazni, an activist who took part in anti-government protests that swept Iraq in October 2019, was shot overnight outside his home by unknown assailants. Protesters set fire to trailers belonging to Iran’s consulate in Karbala amid widespread anger over the killing.
(AP, 5/10/21)
2021 May 9, In Israel thousands of Muslim worshippers skirmished anew with police at the gates of the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem's Old City. Police gave the go-ahead to tomorrow's annual Jerusalem Day parade, a flag-waving display of Israeli claims to all of the contested city, despite days of unrest and soaring Israeli-Palestinian tensions.
(AP, 5/9/21)
2021 May 9, More than 1,200 migrants in several decrepit, overcrowded fishing boats reached the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa in a span of 12 hours, as human traffickers exploited calm seas and warm weather to launch multiple vessels.
(AP, 5/9/21)
2021 May 9, At least five people, including a woman and a child, drowned when a boat carrying at least 45 Europe-bound migrants capsized off Libya.
(AP, 5/10/21)
2021 May 9, Pakistan reported 118 more deaths and 3,785 new cases of COVID-19. Total deaths now totaled nearly 19,000.
(SFC, 5/10/21, p.A7)
2021 May 9, In southwest Pakistan gunmen in two separate attacks ambushed vehicles carrying paramilitary troops, killing at least three soldiers and wounding five others before fleeing.
(AP, 5/10/21)
2021 May 9, President Vladimir Putin vowed Russia will "firmly" defend national interests and denounced the return of "Russophobia", as the country marked the 76th anniversary of victory in World War II.
(AFP, 5/9/21)
2021 May 9, A Slovakia health ministry spokeswoman said a Hungarian lab has confirmed that the first batch of Russia's Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccines sent to Slovakia were satisfactory and the government would discuss the next steps with Russia.
(Reuters, 5/9/21)
2021 May 9, In Somalia at least six people were killed when a suicide bomber attacked a police station late today in Mogadishu.
(SFC, 5/11/21, p.A3)
2021 May 9, It was reported that South Sudan's Pres. Salva Kiir has dissolved parliament, paving the way for the appointment of MPs from opposing sides in the country's five-year civil war.
(BBC, 5/9/21)
2021 May 9, Exhilarated Spaniards chanting "freedom" danced in streets and partied on beaches as a COVID-19 curfew ended in most of the country, but others feared it was too soon to let go. Spain has suffered 78,792 coronavirus deaths and 3.6 million cases. But infection rates have fallen and vaccinations are progressing fast, enabling most of the 17 regions to scrap the curfew. The Balearic Islands, the Canary Islands, Navarra and Valencia continued curfews.
(Reuters, 5/9/21)
2021 May 9, Sudanese authorities deported around three dozen Ethiopian peacekeepers, working on the UN mission in Darfur, to a refugee camp. The troops are among 120 Ethiopian forces from the Tigrayan ethnic group, who have sought asylum in Sudan.
(AP, 5/9/21)
2021 May 10, A US Coast Guard ship fired about 30 warning shots after 13 vessels from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy (IRGCN) came close to it and other American Navy vessels in the Strait of Hormuz.
(AP, 5/10/21)
2021 May 10, The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorized Pfizer’s Covid vaccine for 12- to 15-year-olds.
(AP, 5/11/21)
2021 May 10, The US government's auto safety agency said it is investigating multiple complaints about steering failures that could affect more than 1.1 million Honda Accord sedans. The probe covers Accords from the 2013 through 2015 model years.
(AP, 5/10/21)
2021 May 10, A news release issued in the name of the cyber group DarkSide, suspected of masterminding the hack of a major US pipeline company threatening the East Coast's fuel supplies, said their goal was to make money and not create problems for society.
(Reuters, 5/10/21)
2021 May 10, US health secretary Xavier Becerra said gay and transgender people will be protected against sex discrimination in healthcare.
(AP, 5/10/21)
2021 May 10, California Gov. Gavin Newsom expanded a drought emergency to a large swath of the nation's most populous state while seeking more than $6 billion in multiyear water spending as one of the warmest, driest springs on record threatens another severe wildfire season across the American West.
(AP, 5/10/21)
2021 May 10, In California detective Luca Benedetti was killed in San Luis Obispo as officers went to an apartment on Camellia Court to serve a warrant for possible stolen property related to recent commercial burglaries.
(NBC News, 5/12/21)
2021 May 10, California to date had 3,734,550 cases of coronavirus and 61,968 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 440,024 cases and 6,346 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 32,741,875 with the death toll at 582,133.
(sfist.com, 5/10/21)
2021 May 10, It was reported that genetically modified mosquitoes have been released for the first time in the United States, taking flight in the Florida Keys in a pilot program intended to reduce the spread of deadly diseases such as dengue, yellow fever and the Zika virus.
(Reuters, 5/10/21)
2021 May 10, Georgia's Gov. Brian Kemp signed a repeal of the state's 1863 citizen's arrest law. It still allows business owners to detain suspected thieves.
(SFC, 5/11/21, p.A3)
2021 May 10, Benson Hill said it is going public by merging with a blank-check firm backed by alternative asset manager Magnetar Capital, giving the plant-growing technology company an enterprise value of about $1.35 billion.
(Reuters, 5/10/21)
2021 May 10, Eli Lilly and Co said it had signed licensing agreements with three Indian generic drugmakers to expand the availability of its arthritis drug baricitinib in the country for treating COVID-19 patients.
(Reuters, 5/10/21)
2021 May 10, Inovio Pharmaceuticals Inc said its COVID-19 vaccine candidate was safe, well-tolerated and produced immune response against the new coronavirus in a mid-stage clinical trial.
(Reuters, 5/10/21)
2021 May 10, Self-driving tech company Pony.ai, backed by Toyota Motor Corp, said its next-generation technology for robotaxis will be using lidars made by Luminar Technologies, Inc. Pony.ai is an autonomous vehicle technology company co-located in Silicon Valley, Beijing and Guangzhou.
(AP, 5/10/21)
2021 May 10, Albania’s PM Edi Rama expressed his determination to remove President Ilir Meta from his post, claiming he has embarrassed the country. Rama’s Socialist Party has accused Meta of violating the constitution by taking political sides in an election last month.
(AP, 5/10/21)
2021 May 10, Afghanistan's Taliban announced a three-day cease-fire for the Eid-al-Fitr holiday this week marking the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Hours later a bus in southern Zabul province struck a roadside mine killing 11 people. At least 24 more people on the bus were injured.
(AP, 5/10/21)
2021 May 10, The United Kingdom's chief medical officers agreed to lower the COVID alert level to 3, which means the epidemic is in general circulation, from 4, which means transmission is high or rising exponentially.
(Reuters, 5/10/21)
2021 May 10, Public Health England said data from the rollout of AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine shows one dose of the shot results in 80% less risk of death from the disease.
(Reuters, 5/10/21)
2021 May 10, It was reported that across much of China authorities were encouraging women to have more children, but that in the far western region of Xinjiang women were being forced to have fewer children, as they tightened their grip on Muslim ethnic minorities.
(NY Times, 5/10/21)
2021 May 10, The Czech Republic massively relaxed its coronavirus restrictions as the hard-hit nation paid its respects to the country's nearly 30,000 dead.
(AP, 5/10/21)
2021 May 10, Egypt's Eva Pharma signed an agreement to provide India with 300,000 doses of remdesivir, used in the treatment of COVID-19. Eva Pharma, a generic drugmaker established in 1997, said in June 2020 it had received a license from Gilead Sciences Inc to make remdesivir in Egypt and distribute it in 127 countries.
(Reuters, 5/10/21)
2021 May 10, UK Club, an insurer of the container ship that blocked the Suez Canal in March, said a reduced compensation claim made by the Egyptian authorities for almost $600 million to free the vessel and cover related losses was still "exceptionally large".
(Reuters, 5/10/21)
2021 May 10, In Germany a fruit logistics company in Erding, near Munich, called police to report that workers had discovered at least 4.5 kg (almost 10 pounds) of cocaine in organic waste bins. Police determined that the drugs had been dumped there a day earlier by subcontractors who gave no thought to the “foreign objects" they found wrapped in tape inside the banana crates before discarding them. The crates had been shipped from Ecuador via the Netherlands.
(AP, 5/25/21)
2021 May 10, Greece reopened junior and high schools for in-person classes as the country continues to ease coronavirus related restrictions.
(SFC, 5/11/21, p.A4)
2021 May 10, Iran confirmed publicly for the first time that it is in talks with its regional arch rival Saudi Arabia, saying it would do what it could to resolve issues between them.
(Reuters, 5/10/21)
2021 May 10, The Israeli police raided the Aqsa Mosque, one of Islam’s holiest sites, after days of protests there. At least 330 Palestinians and 21 Israeli officers were injured. In response, Hamas militants fired rockets at Jerusalem that caused no injuries.
(NY Times, 5/11/21)
2021 May 10, Several hundred more migrants reached the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa before dawn, swelling to past 2,100 the number of arrivals in around 24 hours.
(AP, 5/10/21)
2021 May 10, Italy reported 198 coronavirus-related deaths against 139 the day before. The daily tally of new infections fell to 5,080 from 8,292.
(Reuters, 5/10/21)
2021 May 10, Malaysia imposed a new nationwide lockdown, as the country grapples with a surge in coronavirus cases and highly infectious variants that the government said are testing its health system.
(Reuters, 5/10/21)
2021 May 10, Nepal's PM Khadga Prasad Oli was pushed out of office following two splits in his ruling party.
(SFC, 5/14/21, p.A4)
2021 May 10, In Portugal a court sentenced three immigration inspectors to between nine and seven years in prison for the 2020 killing of Ihor Homeniu, a Ukrainian immigrant, who was in custody at Lisbon airport.
(AP, 5/10/21)
2021 May 10, Qatar’s ruling emir visited Saudi Arabia for the first time since signing a declaration with the kingdom and other Arab Gulf states to ease a years-long rift and end an embargo that had frayed ties among important US allies and security partners.
(AP, 5/10/21)
2021 May 10, Romanian authorities confiscated 1,452 kg (3,200 pounds) of heroin at a Black Sea port in one of the biggest seizures of the drug in the European Union in recent years. The heroin allegedly came from Iran.
(AP, 5/20/21)
2021 May 10, It was reported that Sudan is struggling to provide hospital beds, drugs and medical oxygen to COVID-19 patients hit by a third wave of infections that is straining the country's patchy healthcare system beyond what it can cope with. Sudan has recorded 33,000 cases and over 2,600 deaths since the start of the pandemic, but officials say the real numbers are likely to be much higher given low rates of testing.
(Reuters, 5/10/21)
2021 May 10, Thailand started deploying a canine virus-detecting squad in hopes of quickly identifying people with COVID-19 as the country faces a surge in cases, with clusters at construction sites, crowded slum communities and large markets.
(AP, 5/21/21)
2021 May 10, The head of a UN team investigating atrocities in Iraq announced it has found “clear and compelling evidence" that Islamic State extremists committed genocide against the Yazidi minority in 2014 and said the militant group successfully developed chemical weapons and used mustard gas.
(AP, 5/10/21)
2021 May 11, The Biden administration said that it would issue a regulation allowing undocumented students access to some of the $36 billion in emergency stimulus aid flowing to colleges.
(NY Times, 5/11/21)
2021 May 11, The Biden administration said it would approve the nation's first major offshore wind farm. It said the Vineyard Wind project off the coast of Massachusetts will create enough electricity to power 400,000 homes in New England.
(Reuters, 5/11/21)
2021 May 11, The US Treasury Department imposed sanctions on Ali Daher, the chief of Hezbollah's Central Finance Unit, and six other Lebanese nationals it said were connected to the Iran-backed militant Hezbollah movement and its financial firm, Al-Qard al-Hassan (AQAH).
(Reuters, 5/11/21)
2021 May 11, US environmental regulators issued an emergency fuel waiver to help alleviate any shortages in reformulated gasoline in the Mid-Atlantic states as supplies tighten five days after a cyberattack shuttered the nation's biggest pipeline.
(Reuters, 5/11/21)
2021 May 11, Arizona Republicans passed a law that will sharply limit the distribution of mail ballots through a widely popular early voting list, the latest measure in a conservative push to restrict voting across the country.
(NY Times, 5/11/21)
2021 May 11, In California police Officer Jimmy Inn was killed in Stockton while responding to a domestic violence call. The suspect, who has not been identified, was killed by another officer.
(NBC News, 5/12/21)
2021 May 11, California to date had 3,735,737 cases of coronavirus and 61,975 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 440,395 cases and 6,353 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 32,773,387 with the death toll at 582,791.
(sfist.com, 5/11/21)
2021 May 11, Nutrition expert Shakuntala Haraksingh Thilsted (71) was named the recipient of the World Food Prize. She pioneered innovative ways of raising fish rich in micronutrients and fatty acids and incorporating them into diets in developing countries. The foundation that awards the $250,000 prize is based in Des Moines, Iowa.
(AP, 5/11/21)
2021 May 11, In Michigan former UAW leader Dennis Williams (68) was sentenced to 21 months in prison for corruption. Williams led the UAW from 2014-2018.
(SFC, 5/12/21, p.A5)
2021 May 11, In Tennessee three soldiers stationed at Fort Campbell were arrested by federal agents early today in connection to the transfer of dozens of firearms to Chicago associates after guns recovered from the March 26 scene of a mass shooting in the city were linked back to an illegal firearms pipeline.
(Fox News, 5/12/21)
2021 May 11, It was reported that the small US manufacturers that rushed to produce face masks over the past year are now stuck with hundreds of millions of unsold face coverings because China is flooding the market with below-cost masks, and most may not survive the end of the pandemic.
(Reuters, 5/11/21)
2021 May 11, Doctors reported that a gene therapy that makes use of an unlikely helper, the AIDS virus, gave a working immune system to 48 babies and toddlers who were born without one.
(AP, 5/11/21)
2021 May 11, Ebay Inc allowed the sale of non-fungible tokens for digital collectibles like trading cards, images or video clips on its platform, the first e-commerce company to tap into the recent frenzy around NFTs.
(Reuters, 5/11/21)
2021 May 11, Mythic, a startup making artificial intelligence chips for use in gadgets such as smart home devices or security cameras, said it raised $70 million in its latest round of funding. The Redwood City, California-based chip maker started in 2012, uses analog technology for its chips rather than digital.
(Reuters, 5/11/21)
2021 May 11, In Afghanistan the Taliban gained control of Nirkh district headquarters in Maidan Wardak province.
(SFC, 5/12/21, p.A5)
2021 May 11, The Australian government released a big-spending economic plan for the next fiscal year that includes hefty investments in defense and national security as relations with China worsen.
(AP, 5/11/21)
2021 May 11, A new analysis by an Australian think tank said Xinjiang in far western China had the sharpest known decline in birthrates between 2017 and 2019 of any territory in recent history.
(AP, 5/11/21)
2021 May 11, Bosnian police arrested Sena Hamzabegovic (61) on suspicion of financially supporting her husband and other Bosnians who joined Islamic fighters in Syria and Iraq.
(AP, 5/12/21)
2021 May 11, Brazilian states halted vaccination of pregnant women after a death in Rio de Janeiro led health regulator Anvisa to warn against the use of AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine for expecting mothers.
(AP, 5/11/21)
2021 May 11, British PM Boris Johnson promised to tackle inequality and "level up" the country with a post-pandemic raft of laws presented by Queen Elizabeth to parliament.
(Reuters, 5/11/21)
2021 May 11, The British government announced contentious plans to toughen election voting rules by requiring photo identification at polling stations, a move it says will protect the democratic system against electoral fraud.
(AP, 5/12/21)
2021 May 11, Bulgaria moved to quell a political crisis by appointing a retired general as interim prime minister until an election is held in July. Stefan Yanev (61) will lead a caretaker government whose main task will be to restore stability.
(AP, 5/11/21)
2021 May 11, Egypt announced plans to widen and deepen the southern part of the Suez Canal where a hulking vessel ran aground and closed off the crucial waterway in March.
(AP, 5/11/21)
2021 May 11, Egyptian prosecutors said they have shelved their months-long investigation into an alleged 2014 gang rape of a 17-year-old girl by young men from wealthy families at a luxury Cairo hotel, ordering the release of all suspects for lack of evidence.
(AP, 5/12/21)
2021 May 11, It was reported that France has lifted a ban on Jersey fishermen landing their catch after the Channel Island granted a two-month delay to the controversial post-Brexit fishing licenses.
(The Telegraph, 5/11/21)
2021 May 11, India confirmed nearly 390,000 new coronavirus cases including 3,876 deaths. Bodies have been retrieved floating in the Ganges River in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh states..
(SFC, 5/12/21, p.A7)
2021 May 11, The Israeli military said it has assassinated Samih al-Mamluk, a senior commander of the Islamic Jihad militant group in Gaza. Other senior militants in the organization were also killed in the same strike. The militant group vowed retaliation. Over the last 24 hours Gaza militants have fired hundreds of rockets toward Israel. Israeli airstrikes overnight killed 24 people, including nine children. Israel struck 130 targets of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad groups killing 15 people.
(AP, 5/11/21)(SFC, 5/11/21, p.A2)(SFC, 5/12/21, p.A2)
2021 May 11, Israeli police fired tear gas and stun grenades after mourners started throwing stones at officers during the funeral of an Arab man allegedly killed by a Jewish resident in central Israel.
(AP, 5/11/21)
2021 May 11, At least 10 bodies of Europe-bound migrants washed up ashore in western Libya, after two shipwrecks this week left some 30 people presumed drowned.
(AP, 5/11/21)
2021 May 11, Nepal reported 9,483 new coronavirus and 225 deaths. Authorities extended a lockdown in Kathmandu and surrounding districts until May 27. Total cases now numbered 413,111 with 4,084 deaths.
(SFC, 5/12/21, p.A7)
2021 May 11, In Russia a gunman (19) attacked a school in the city of Kazan and killed seven students and one teacher, while leaving 21 other people hospitalized. President Vladimir Putin ordered the Russian Federal Service of National Guard Troops to start working on new gun regulations following the shooting.
(AP, 5/11/21)
2021 May 11, In Sudan two protesters were killed when security forces dispersed a demonstration late today in Khartoum. Protesters were demanding justice for those killed in June, 2019, violence.
(AP, 5/11/21)
2021 May 11, Pope Francis formally created a new lay ministry to encourage greater participation of secular women and men in the teaching of the Catholic faith, especially in places where priests are in short supply.
(AP, 5/11/21)
2021 May 11, The UN Security Council voted unanimously to extend the mandate of the nearly 3,700-strong peacekeeping force in the disputed Abyei region on the Sudan-South Sudan border until Nov. 15.
(AP, 5/11/21)
2021 May 11, The World Health Organization said it was reviewing coronavirus data from Seychelles after the health ministry said more than a third of people who tested positive for COVID-19 in the past week had been fully vaccinated. The total number of confirmed cases in Seychelles since the pandemic began is less than 8,200.
(Reuters, 5/11/21)
2021 May 12, US House Republicans ousted Rep. Liz Cheney from her post as the chamber’s No. 3 GOP leader, punishing her after she repeatedly rebuked former President Donald Trump for his false claims of election fraud and his role in inciting the Jan. 6 Capitol attack.
(AP, 5/12/21)
2021 May 12, The US reversed a ban on US investments in Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi Corp. that was imposed under former President Donald Trump. A US court filing said that the US Department of Defense will remove Xiaomi from the blacklist after the two parties reached an agreement.
(AP, 5/13/21)
2021 May 12, Drivers in the US Southeast formed lines to fill up tanks from the dwindling number of retail gas stations with fuel to sell, disregarding government pleas for people not to hoard supplies as the shutdown of the main regional fuel pipeline entered its sixth day.
(AP, 5/12/21)
2021 May 12, COVID-19 deaths in the US have tumbled to an average of around 600 per day, the lowest level in 10 months, with the number of lives lost dropping to single digits in well over half the states and hitting zero on some days.
(AP, 5/12/21)
2021 May 12, The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it had identified 28 cases of serious, potentially life-threatening cases of blood clotting, among the more than 8.7 million people who had received the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine.
(Reuters, 5/12/21)
2021 May 12, California to date had 3,737,289 cases of coronavirus and 62,100 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 440,728 cases and 6,420 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 32,813,656 with the death toll at 583,646.
(sfist.com, 5/12/21)
2021 May 12, A US federal judge approved a $577 million settlement in a lawsuit over underfunding at Maryland's four historically Black colleges and universities.
(SFC, 5/14/21, p.A6)
2021 May 12, Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio announced that the state would give five people $1 million each in return for having been vaccinated as part of a weekly lottery program.
(NY Times, 5/12/21)
2021 May 12, Elon Musk, Tesla’s chief executive, said Tesla had suspended accepting Bitcoin because of concern about the energy consumed by computers crunching the calculations that underpin the currency.
(AP, 5/12/21)
2021 May 12, Australia tapped Moderna Inc for 25 million COVID-19 vaccine doses, as it tries to speed up vaccination in people under 50 after deciding against AstraZeneca, whose jab has been linked to rare blood clots.
(Reuters, 5/12/21)
2021 May 12, In Belarus Alexander Burakov, a freelance correspondent for Deutsche Welle, was arrested while waiting with other journalists for access to the trial of six people charged with mass unrest. On May 15 he was sentenced to 20 days in jail for taking part in an “unauthorized event".
(AP, 5/15/21)
2021 May 12, The British government said that former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic will serve his life sentence for war crimes in a UK prison.
(AP, 5/12/21)
2021 May 12, It was reported that two transgender women in Cameroon have been sentenced to five years in jail for contravening homosexuality laws. Trans celebrity Shakiro, a YouTuber who highlights the problems Cameroon's banned LGBT community faces and her friend Patricia have been in detention since February after their arrest at a restaurant.
(AP, 5/12/21)
2021 May 12, The Canadian Environmental Protection Act (CEPA) gave the federal government the authority to regulate plastic products to keep them out of incinerators, landfills and the environment, including a national ban on single-use plastic items, such as checkout bags, take-out containers, straws, stirrers, cutlery and six-pack rings.
(Global Newswire, 5/12/21)
2021 May 12, Human rights groups and Western nations met and demanded unfettered access for UN human rights experts to China's Xinjiang region. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken condemned China for “crimes against humanity and genocide against Muslim Uyghurs" during the release of an annual report on international religious freedom.
(AP, 5/13/21)
2021 May 12, In Egypt fire broke out in an intensive care unit of a hospital in the Nile Delta city of Kafr el-Sheikh, leaving at least two patients dead.
(AP, 5/12/21)
2021 May 12, Judges at the EU's General Court annulled a ruling by the European Commission that a tax deal between Amazon and Luxembourg's government amounted to illegal state support.
(AP, 5/12/21)
2021 May 12, The German government adopted an ambitious plan to reduce the country's greenhouse gas emissions to ‘net zero’ by 2045, five years earlier and with deeper cuts than previously planned.
(AP, 5/12/21)
2021 May 12, The German government passed a new law making hate-motivated insults a criminal offence that can be punished with a monetary fine or prison of up to two years.
(AP, 5/12/21)
2021 May 12, The German government agreed to let travelers who have been vaccinated against COVID-19 or recovered from infection avoid testing and quarantine when entering the country, unless they come from areas where variants of concern are prevalent.
(AP, 5/12/21)
2021 May 12, Israeli police said they arrested nearly 400 people allegedly “involved in riots and disturbances" across the country.
(AP, 5/12/21)
2021 May 12, Myanmar sentenced online reporter Min Nyo (51) to three years in prison under a recently revised provision in the Penal Code.
(SFC, 5/14/21, p.A6)
2021 May 12, In Nepal climbers Puwei Liu (55) from California and Abdul Waraich of Switzerland (41) died of altitude sickness.
(SFC, 5/14/21, p.A4)
2021 May 12, RIA news cited Deputy Prime Minister Tatiana Golikova saying Russia has vaccinated over 14 million people against COVID-19 so far with at least one dose.
(AP, 5/12/21)
2021 May 12, It was reported that Russia has experienced production problems with its Sputnik V vaccine. Sputnik is unusual in that its two required doses are different and not interchangeable.
(SFC, 5/12/21, p.A7)
2021 May 12, The tiny Republic of San Marino, landlocked inside Italy, announced the launch of a vaccine tourism program, offering the Russian-made Sputnik V COVID-19 shot to visitors from May 17.
(Reuters, 5/12/21)
2021 May 12, Slovakia's health minister says he plans to keep AstraZeneca in the country's vaccine arsenal, speaking a day after the country suspended use of the shots after a recipient died.
(AP, 5/12/21)
2021 May 12, The UN's atomic watchdog (IAEA) said Iran has enriched uranium to slightly higher purity than previously thought due to “fluctuations" in the process.
(AP, 5/12/21)
2021 May 12, The UN Security Council called for an immediate halt to fighting in Yemen, saying that only a lasting cease-fire and political settlement can end the six-year conflict in the Arab world's poorest nation and the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
(AP, 5/12/21)
2021 May 13, The Biden administration said it is releasing $7.4 billion to bolster the nation's healthcare workforce amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and to prepare for future epidemics and health challenges.
(Reuters, 5/13/21)
2021 May 13, US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that ransom should not be paid by companies that are the victims of cyber attacks like the one suffered by Colonial Pipeline. Bloomberg News has reported that Colonial Pipeline paid nearly $5 million to Eastern European hackers following the cyberattack that shut operations of the largest fuel pipeline network in the United States. Colonial Pipeline moved some of the first millions of gallons of motor fuels.
(Reuters, 5/13/21)
2021 May 13, It was reported that 124 retired US generals and admirals have published an open letter suggesting that Joe Biden was not legitimately elected as President and questioning his fitness for office.
(The Telegraph, 5/13/21)
2021 May 13, The US Justice Department announced that a Marine Corps officer, Maj. Christopher Warnagiris, had been arrested for participating in the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol. Warnagiris (40) was the first active-duty service member to be charged over the deadly attack on the Capitol by supporters of former President Donald Trump who were trying to prevent Congress from certifying President Biden's election victory.
(The Week, 5/14/21)
2021 May 13, The police department in Washington DC suffered a massive leak of internal information after refusing to meet the blackmail demands of the Babuk group, a Russian-speaking ransomware syndicate.
(AP, 5/13/21)
2021 May 13, The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said fully vaccinated people could stop wearing masks in most settings, including crowded indoor gatherings.
(NY Times, 5/14/21)
2021 May 13, Authorities shut down the heavily traveled Hernando de Soto Bridge over the Mississippi River indefinitely to repair a break in a critical beam. An inspector who spotted the crack immediately called 911 saying: "We need to get people off the bridge immediately!" The Interstate 40 bridge runs between Arkansas and Memphis, Tennessee.
(AP, 5/13/21)
2021 May 13, California to date had 3,738,730 cases of coronavirus and 62,145 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 441,014 cases and 6,474 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 32,819,878 with the death toll at 583,779.
(sfist.com, 5/13/21)
2021 May 13, Missouri Gov. Mike Parson dropped plans to expand the state's Medicaid health care program to thousands of low-income adults after the Republican-led Legislature refused to provide funding for the voter-approved measure. He noted that the state's $35 billion budget approved by lawmakers last week didn't provide the funding he had requested for an expansion of Medicaid.
(AP, 5/13/21)
2021 May 13, Philadelphia's top health official was compelled to resign after the city's mayor learned partial human remains from the 1985 bombing of the headquarters of a Black organization had been cremated and disposed of without notifying family members.
(AP, 5/13/21)
2021 May 13, Amazon.com Inc said it will give $100 more to new hires with proof of COVID-19 vaccination, the world's largest e-commerce retailer, as part of its plan to employ 75,000 workers for fulfillment and logistics operations.
(Reuters, 5/13/21)
2021 May 13, CureVac and GlaxoSmithKline said their second-generation COVID-19 vaccine, designed to protect against coronavirus variants, produced a high level of immune response in a trial in rats.
(Reuters, 5/13/21)
2021 May 13, Delta Air Lines said it will require all new hires in the United States to be vaccinated against COVID-19, one of the first major companies to issue such a mandate.
(Reuters, 5/14/21)
2021 May 13, Google said it has won a deal to provide cloud services to Elon Musk's SpaceX, which has launched a slew of Starlink satellites, to provide high-speed internet.
(Reuters, 5/13/21)
2021 May 13, McDonald's Corp announced a 10% average hourly pay raise at the nearly 660 US restaurants it operates, joining the industry's scramble to lure workers back into kitchens and dining rooms as pandemic restrictions ease. Under the new pay scale, entry-level crew will make at least $11 to 17 per hour, and shift managers will earn at least $15 to $20 an hour.
(Reuters, 5/13/21)
2021 May 13, Britain reported 11 new deaths from COVID-19 within 28 days of a positive test and a further 2,657 cases of the disease, up from 2,284 new cases the day before and the biggest daily increase since April 27.
(Reuters, 5/13/21)
2021 May 13, Muslim leaders from China's Xinjiang region rejected Western allegations that China is suppressing religious freedom, speaking at a reception for foreign diplomats and media at the end of the holy month of Ramadan.
(AP, 5/13/21)
2021 May 13, In CongoDRC police used tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse thousands of people who gathered outside the Martyrs' Stadium in Kinshasa for the Islamic holiday of Eid al-Fitr. 41 people were arrested at the scene in clashes fuelled by a leadership dispute between two camps within the Muslim community. Twenty-nine people were soon sentenced to death, however the death penalty is no longer applied in DR Congo and those found guilty will serve life sentences instead.
(BBC, 5/15/21)
2021 May 13, Germany's leading Jewish group sharply condemned protests in front of a synagogue in the western city of Gelsenkirchen. Several other German cities including Berlin, Hamburg and Hannover have seen anti-Israeli protests over the past few days.
(AP, 5/13/21)
2021 May 13, India recorded more than 4,000 COVID-19 deaths for a second day in a row, while infections stayed below 400,000 for a fourth day, though the virus has become rampant in rural areas where cases can go unreported due to a lack of testing.
(Reuters, 5/13/21)
2021 May 13, Israel deployed tanks and troops to the Gaza border. Israel carried out more airstrikes against Hamas targets in Gaza, where the death toll rose to 83 people since the fighting began early this week. Hamas sent a heavy barrage of rockets deep into Israel. Gaza’s Health Ministry said the death toll has climbed to 87 Palestinians, including 18 children and eight women. Seven people have been killed in Israel. Israeli military later opened an investigation into an artillery bombardment that killed six Palestinian civilians.
(NY Times, 5/13/21)(AP, 5/13/21)(BBC, 5/13/21)(AP, 8/10/21)
2021 May 13, Kenya MP Moses Kuria told the BBC he received a $1,000 (£700) bribe in parliament last year to back the appointment of the majority leader, as he was summoned to appear before the house speaker for alleging some politicians received about $1,000 to vote for the constitutional amendment bill known as the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI).
(AP, 5/13/21)
2021 May 13, Five High Court judges in Kenya blocked a government-backed plan to make fundamental changes to the country's constitution. The judges said the constitution amendment bill, popularly referred to as the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI), was irregular, illegal and unconstitutional.
(BBC, 5/14/21)
2021 May 13, In Kenya Bashir Mohamed Mohamud (36), an American investor of Somali origin, was by unknown assailants as he drove from a mall in Nairobi's wealthy Lavington neighborhood. His body was found with torture wounds days after he went missing. His family later asked Kenya's director of public prosecutions to run a separate investigation from one being done by police.
(AP, 5/29/21)
2021 May 13, Myanmar's junta imposed martial law in Mindat and then stepped up attacks on what it called "armed terrorists".
(Reuters, 5/14/21)
2021 May 13, Singapore's health ministry reported 24 locally transmitted COVID-19 cases, the highest daily number since mid-September, with 17 of the new cases linked to a cluster at Chang Airport.
(Reuters, 5/13/21)
2021 May 13, South Korea's Hyundai Motor Group said it planned to invest $7.4 billion in the United States by 2025 to produce electric vehicles, enhance production and further its investment in smart mobility solutions.
(Reuters, 5/13/21)
2021 May 13, Sri Lanka began a 3-day travel ban throughout the country in an effort to contain rapidly increasing COVID-19 cases.
(SFC, 5/14/21, p.A7)
2021 May 13, Thailand announced a daily record in new cases after nearly 3,000 inmates in two jails were infected, among them a leader of anti-government protests held while awaiting trial for insulting the king.
(Reuters, 5/13/21)
2021 May 13, Viktor Medvedchuk (66), a top Ukrainian opposition politician with close links to Russian Pres. Vladimir Putin, was placed under house arrest, days after being charged with treason.
(AP, 5/14/21)
2021 May 14, Pres. Joe Biden cancelled Donald Trump's planned National Garden of American Heroes and revoked Trump's executive orders aimed at social media companies' moderation policies.
(SSFC, 5/16/21, p.A6)
2021 May 14, Some 140 civil society and faith leaders from the US, Afghanistan and other countries “dedicated to the education and rights of women in Afghanistan" asked US President Joe Biden to call for a UN peacekeeping force “to ensure that the cost of US military withdrawal from Afghanistan is not paid for in the lives of schoolgirls."
(AP, 7/15/21)
2021 May 14, It was reported that the Biden administration has granted oil refiner Citgo Petroleum a Jones Act shipping waiver allowing it to move fuel between US ports on a foreign flagged vessel, making it the second company to secure one this week.
(Reuters, 5/14/21)
2021 May 14, Abedemi Rufai, a Nigerian state government official, was arrested at New York’s John F. Kennedy airport as he prepared to fly first class back to Nigeria. An FBI hunt through his Google accounts revealed stolen bank, credit card and tax information on Americans as well as money transfers and emails showing dozens of false unemployment claims in seven states that paid out $350,000.
(https://tinyurl.com/29wsvpes)(NBC News, 8/15/21)
2021 May 14, Republicans vaulted NY Rep. Elise Stefanik (36) into the ranks of House leadership, electing an ardent Donald Trump defender in hopes of calming their searing civil war over the deposed Rep. Liz Cheney's unremitting combat with the former president.
(AP, 5/14/21)
2021 May 14, A federal appeals court upheld a $25 million judgment and trial verdict finding Bayer's Roundup caused a California resident's non-Hodgkin lymphoma, dealing a blow to the chemical company's hopes of limiting its legal risk over the weed-killer.
(Reuters, 5/14/21)
2021 May 14, The Underground Railroad, a 10-part series, was released on Amazon Prime Video. "Moonlight" director Barry Jenkins switched to the small screen for the adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel.
(AP, 5/10/21)
2021 May 14, Liberal mega-donor George Soros reportedly directed $1 million to an activist group attempting to defund the police as violent crime surged in major urban centers across the nation. Soros sent the money via his Color Of Change PAC. The organization describes itself as "the nation’s largest online racial justice organization".
(Fox News, 7/24/21)
2021 May 14, California's Gov. Gavin Newsom unveiled a $267.8 billion revised budget plan, nearly 18% larger than his initial January proposal.
(SFC, 5/15/21, p.A7)
2021 May 14, It was reported that the water crisis along the California-Oregon border went from dire to catastrophic this week as federal regulators shut off irrigation water to farmers from a critical reservoir and said they would not send extra water to dying salmon downstream or to a half-dozen wildlife refuges that harbor millions of migrating birds each year.
(AP, 5/14/21)
2021 May 14, California's Vandenberg Air Force Base was renamed Vandenberg Space Force Base. The base was initially established in 1941 as Camp Cooke, an Army garrison for tank, infantry and artillery training.
(SSFC, 5/16/21, p.A6)
2021 May 14, California to date had 3,740,458 cases of coronavirus and 62,239 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 440,765 cases and 6,487 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 32,889,955 with the death toll at 585,195.
(sfist.com, 5/14/21)
2021 May 14, Joel Greenberg, a former Florida tax collector and Rep. Matt Gaetz's (R-Fla.) former confidant, agreed to cooperate with prosecutors and admitted to sex trafficking a minor.
(NY Times, 5/14/21)
2021 May 14, A jury in a North Carolina federal civil rights case awarded $75 million to two black, intellectually disabled half brothers who spent decades behind bars after being wrongfully convicted in the 1983 rape and murder of an 11-year-old girl.
(The Telegraph, 5/16/21)
2021 May 14, In Ohio the attorney for the city of Columbus said it the family of Andre Hill, a Black man fatally shot by police last Dec. 22, will receive a $10 million settlement.
(SFC, 5/15/21, p.A4)
2021 May 14, It was reported that Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, a Republican, signed legislation this week that adds a day to in-person early voting in the state and an extra hour to Saturday early voting, and it also makes changes to ensure mail-in ballots are received in time to be counted.
(AP, 5/14/21)
2021 May 14, South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster signed into law a bill that forces death row inmates for now to choose between the electric chair or a newly formed firing squad in hopes the state can restart executions after an involuntary 10-year pause.
(AP, 5/17/21)
2021 May 14, South Carolina officials released hours of police body-camera footage, which shows a Charleston County sheriff's deputy repeatedly tasing Jamal Sutherland, a 31-year-old Black man, before he died in custody in January.
(NBC News, 5/14/21)
2021 May 14, General Mills said it is acquiring Tyson Foods' animal treat business for $1.2 billion in cash.
(AP, 5/14/21)
2021 May 14, Walmart, Sam's Club, Costco, Trader Joe's, and Publix were among the first major retailers to announce that shoppers fully vaccinated against COVID-19 would no longer have to wear masks in their stores, unless required by state or local law.
(USA Today, 5/14/21)
2021 May 14, In Afghanistan a bomb ripped through a mosque in northern Kabul during Friday prayers, killing 12 worshippers, and wounding 15.
(AP, 5/14/21)
2021 May 14, Armenia's PM Nikol Pashinyan said he has asked Russian President Vladimir Putin for military assistance amid simmering tensions with Azerbaijan in the wake of an armed conflict over the Nagorno-Karabakh region.
(AP, 5/14/21)
2021 May 14, Britain's health ministry said the estimated reproduction "R" rate in England edged up to between 0.8 and 1.1, and it is less clear that the epidemic is still shrinking compared to last week.
(AP, 5/14/21)
2021 May 14, It was reported that Greyhound Canada is permanently cutting all bus routes across the country after nearly a century of service. All services were temporarily suspended a year ago due to a sharp decline in passengers amid the first wave of the coronavirus. American affiliate Greyhound Lines will continue to operated cross-border routes to Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver once the border reopens.
(SFC, 5/14/21, p.A6)
2021 May 14, In central and eastern China back-to-back tornadoes killed 12 people and left more than 300 others injured.
(AP, 5/15/21)
2021 May 14, Mainland China reported 14 new COVID-19 cases, up from seven cases a day earlier.
(Reuters, 5/14/21)
2021 May 14, It was reported that Denmark this week began digging up millions of culled mink buried six months ago because of concerns that the mass graves could contaminate drinking water and a nearby bathing lake.
(Reuters, 5/14/21)
2021 May 14, A German court officially declared billionaire Karl-Erivan Haub dead, more than three years after the head of retail group Tengelmann went missing in the Swiss Alps. He was last seen on the morning of April 7, 2018, as he headed up a mountain lift with skis and a daypack.
(AP, 5/14/21)
2021 May 14, Indian drugmaker Dr. Reddy's Laboratories Ltd said it expects to get 36 million doses of Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine in the next couple of months under its contract with Russia's sovereign wealth fund.
(AP, 5/14/21)
2021 May 14, Ireland's health service shut down its IT systems after being targeted in a ransomware attack by what it called “international criminals".
(AP, 5/14/21)
2021 May 14, Israel launched an intense air and ground assault on the Gaza Strip early today, pounding targets with warplanes, artillery and tank fire in the largest single operation of a four-day conflict with Palestinian militants. Israeli aircraft leveled a multistory building housing a bank affiliated with the Hamas militant group in Gaza City. It was the third Hamas bank destroyed in Israeli airstrikes in this week's deadly escalation and fighting. The death toll in Gaza from the fighting rose to 122 killed, including 31 children and 20 women.
(NY Times, 5/14/21)(AP, 5/14/21)
2021 May 14, It was reported that Italy's hopes of producing its own COVID-19 vaccine have been thrown into doubt after the state audit court rejected a plan to pump public funds into local biotech company ReiThera.
(Reuters, 5/14/21)
2021 May 14, Italy's Health Minister signed an ordnance allowing quarantine-free visits with proof of a negative virus test starting on May 16.
(SFC, 5/15/21, p.A5)
2021 May 14, Japan further expanded a coronavirus state of emergency from six areas, including Tokyo, to nine, as Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga repeated his determination to hold the Olympics in just over two months.
(AP, 5/14/21)
2021 May 14, In Myanmar at least 20 government soldiers were killed as an estimated 1,000 insurgents attacked a convoy near Mindat. In 2022 Kaung Thu Win, a captain who defected in December, offered a rare first-hand account of intensified fighting in Chin state.
(Reuters, 2/11/22)
2021 May 14, Edwin Poots, the new leader of Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), pledged to unite the bickering strands of unionism to fight the Brexit deal and thus lay the foundations for keeping Northern Ireland in the United Kingdom.
(AP, 5/14/21)
2021 May 14, In the Philippines Pres. Rodrigo Duterte eased the coronavirus lockdown for Manila and four adjacent provinces, allowing essential businesses and tourist destinations to expand operations.
(SFC, 5/15/21, p.A5)
2021 May 14, In Poland the foreign ministers of Europe's four Visegrad countries (Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Poland) discussed cooperation to boost national economies and tourism after the pandemic and announced free travel between the Czech Republic and Hungary for those vaccinated against COVID-19.
(AP, 5/14/21)
2021 May 14, A judge in Sicily dismissed a case against right-wing leader Matteo Salvini for keeping rescued migrants on board a coast guard ship in 2019, saying no crime had been committed.
(AP, 5/14/21)
2021 May 14, Singapore further tightened social distancing restrictions. New coronavirus cases have risen to 71 in the last week from 48 a week earlier. Singapore has reported 61,4505 cases and 31 deaths since the pandemic started.
(SFC, 5/15/21, p.A5)
2021 May 14, Thai PM Prayuth Chan-ocha promised a UN special envoy that he will not force back people fleeing violence in neighboring Myanmar, where the military ousted a democratically elected government in February.
(AP, 5/14/21)
2021 May 14, Turkish company Karpowership, that provides electricity to Lebanon from two power barges, shut down its operations over delayed payments. The move is expected to increase outages in the crisis-hit Mediterranean country.
(AP, 5/14/21)
2021 May 14, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said foreign fighters and mercenaries remain in Libya in violation of last October’s cease-fire agreement and called for their withdrawal and an end to violations of the U.N. arms embargo.
(AP, 5/14/21)
2021 May 14, The regional UN humanitarian coordinator said more than 10,000 Palestinians in Gaza have fled their homes since fighting began earlier this week.
(AP, 5/14/21)
2021 May 15, California-based Rocket Lab attempted launch of satellites from its facility in New Zealand failed. The rocket was carrying two Earth-observation satellites for BlackSky, a global monitoring company.
(AP, 5/15/21)
2021 May 15, California to date had 3,741,960 cases of coronavirus and 62,293 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 440,923 cases and 6,487 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 32,913,784 with the death toll at 585,571.
(sfist.com, 5/15/21)
2021 May 15, In Maryland Rombauer won the Preakness, ending a controversial Triple Crown bid by Medina Spirit, who failed a drug test after the Kentucky Derby.
(NY Times, 5/15/21)
2021 May 15, Elected officials in the Minneapolis suburb of Brooklyn Center, where a police officer fatally shot Daunte Wright during a traffic stop in April, approved a resolution that puts the city on track to major changes to its policing practices. Adopting the resolution commits the city to change, though it is not a final action.
(AP, 5/16/21)
2021 May 15, Tim Duncan, Kevin Garnett, and the late Kobe Bryant were inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts.
(AP, 5/16/21)
2021 May 15, Portland, Oregon, Mayor Ted Wheeler said he was grateful for the White House’s "support" after President Biden reversed a Trump administration order that allowed federal agents to intervene in the city's riots last summer.
(Fox News, 5/16/21)
2021 May 15, The Colonial Pipeline resumed full operations, eight days after it was shut down by a ransomware attack.
(NY Times, 5/15/21)
2021 May 15, Britain deployed public health officials, supported by the army, to distribute coronavirus tests door-to-door in two northern England towns in an effort to contain a fast-spreading variant that threatens plans to lift all lockdown restrictions next month.
(AP, 5/15/21)
2021 May 15, The China National Space Administration successfully landed its Zhurong rover on Mars.
(South China Morning Post, 5/15/21)
2021 May 15, Ethiopia again delayed its national election after some opposition parties said they wouldn’t take part and as conflict in the country’s Tigray region means no vote is being held there.
(AP, 5/15/21)
2021 May 15, French riot police fired tear gas and used water cannons in Paris as protesters supporting Palestinians in the Gaza Strip defied a ban on marching in the French capital.
(AP, 5/15/21)
2021 May 15, Greece extended a lockdown on the island of Kalymnos for a week as COVID-19 infections there remained high.
(Reuters, 5/15/21)
2021 May 15, India reported its smallest daily increase in coronavirus infections in nearly three weeks, with deaths still near the 4,000-mark. Federal health officials said cases and fatalities are rapidly stabilizing in this wave of the pandemic.
(Reuters, 5/15/21)
2021 May 15, Israel destroyed a 12-storey tower block in Gaza housing the offices of the US-based Associated Press and other news media, saying the building was also used by the Islamist militant group Hamas. Violence continued early today when an Israeli air raid in Gaza City killed at least 10 Palestinians, reportedly mostly children, in a refugee camp. More than 130 people have been killed in Gaza, as well as eight people in Israel, since the violence began.
(AP, 5/15/21)(Reuters, 5/15/21)
2021 May 15, New Italian research said COVID-19 infections in adults of all ages fell by 80% five weeks after a first dose of Pfizer, Moderna or AstraZeneca vaccine.
(Reuters, 5/15/21)
2021 May 15, Myanmar's army battled local militia fighters in the northwestern town of Mindat to try to quell a rebellion that has sprung up to oppose the junta which seized power in the Southeast Asian country in February.
(Reuters, 5/15/21)
2021 May 15, Poles celebrated early today the reopening of bars and restaurants as the government dropped a requirement for people to cover their faces outdoors.
(SSFC, 5/16/21, p.A10)
2021 May 15, The Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) said Venezuela has approved for use Russia's single-shot Sputnik Light COVID-19 vaccine.
(Reuters, 5/15/21)
2021 May 15, Taiwan raised its coronavirus alert level in the capital, Taipei, and the surrounding city, bringing curbs for a period of two weeks that will shut many venues and restrict gatherings in the wake of 180 new domestic infections.
(Reuters, 5/15/21)
2021 May 15, Turkey reported 11,472 new coronavirus cases. The overall confirmed death toll was 44,537.
(SFC, 5/17/21, p.A7)
2021 May 16, It was reported that Majid Khan (41), a detainee at Guantanamo Bay, has agreed to a deal intended to lead to his release in the next few years in return for giving up the right to question the CIA in court about its torture program. Khan has pleaded guilty to serving as a courier for al-Qaida. Nine of 40 detainees have been approved for transfer to other countries.
(SSFC, 5/16/21, p.A7)(SFC, 5/17/21, p.A4)
2021 May 16, In Alabama a man suspected in two morning murders in Birmingham shot four police officers who were executing a search warrant on an apartment where they believed he was hiding. The officers returned fire, killing the unidentified man. The shootings appeared related to an altercation over a dog.
(CNN, 5/16/21)
2021 May 16, California to date had 3,743,084 cases of coronavirus and 62,318 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 440,979 cases and 6,487 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 32,927,943 with the death toll at 585,768.
(sfist.com, 5/16/21)
2021 May 16, In Florida Andrea Meza of Mexico was crowned Miss Universe. Last year's ceremony was canceled due to the pandemic.
(AP, 5/17/21)
2021 May 16, It was reported that AT&T is in advanced talks to create a new company that would merge its media business, including CNN, with Discovery Inc.
(NY Times, 5/16/21)
2021 May 16, In Iowa about 47 train cars derailed near Sibley. Several cars carried hazardous materials and firefighters worked to extinguish flames under a local evacuation order.
(SFC, 5/17/21, p.A4)
2021 May 16, It was reported that Microsoft board members concluded the software giant's founder, Bill Gates, should step down from its board last year during an investigation into an allegedly inappropriate relationship with a female Microsoft employee.
(WSJ, 5/16/21)
2021 May 16, It was reported that greenhouse gases have shrunk the stratosphere by 1,300 feet since the 1980s and that without cuts to emission the high layer of Earth's atmosphere will likely shrink 3,300 more feet by 2080.
(SSFC, 5/16/21, p.B8)
2021 May 16, It was reported that Covid-19 is ravaging Brazil and that experts are working to understand why it appears to be killing babies and small children at an unusually high rate.
(NY Times, 5/16/21)
2021 May 16, Cyclone Tauktae headed for southwestern India. Heavy rains and flooding have already killed at least six people.
(AP, 5/16/21)
2021 May 16, India's Health Ministry reported 311,170 confirmed cases in the past 24 hours, down from 326,098 a day earlier. Some Indian states said they would extend COVID-19 lockdowns. The pandemic has killed more than 270,000 people in the country.
(AP, 5/16/21)(Reuters, 5/16/21)
2021 May 16, Indonesia said it has suspended distribution of a batch of AstraZeneca's coronavirus vaccine to run tests for sterility and toxicity following the death of a 22-year-old man a day after immunization.
(Reuters, 5/16/21)
2021 May 16, The Israeli security cabinet decided to continue the Gaza operation. Israeli officials said a cease-fire is not on the table right now. Israeli bombing in Gaza City killed at least 33 people, including 12 women and eight children, and wounded 50 others. Israel said it has killed 75 Palestinian militants, primarily Hamas operatives, and accuses the group of using civilians as human shields.
(Axios, 5/16/21)(NY Times, 5/16/21)
2021 May 16, In Israel at least two people were killed and more than 150 injured when a bleacher collapsed at an unfinished ultra-Orthodox synagogue in the West Bank.
(AP, 5/16/21)
2021 May 16, International pressure to bring an end to the raging conflict between Israel and Hamas militants mounted, even as local health officials said an Israeli airstrike in Gaza overnight killed at least 33 people, the single deadliest attack of the current hostilities. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for an immediate end to fighting.
(NY Times, 5/16/21)(Reuters, 5/16/21)(BBC, 5/16/21)
2021 May 16, Mongolian authorities reported 541 new coronavirus cases and 2 deaths in the last 24 hours. Restrictions continued to ease following a 4-week lockdown that ended on May 8.
(SFC, 5/17/21, p.A7)
2021 May 16, It was reported that fission reactions appear to be occurring in an inaccessible chamber of Ukraine's Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Scientists could not say whether the slow rise in neutron emissions will fizzle out or increase.
(SSFC, 5/16/21, p.B8)
2021 May 16, Pope Francis at a special Mass for the Myanmar community in Italy said the people of Myanmar must not despair in the face of evil or allow themselves to be divided.
(Reuters, 5/16/21)
2021 May 17, US Pres. Joe Biden expressed support for a cease-fire between Israel and Gaza's militant Hamas rulers in a call to PM Benjamin Netanyahu, but stopped short of demanding an immediate stop to the eight days of Israeli airstrikes and Hamas rocket barrages.
(SFC, 5/17/21, p.A3)
2021 May 17, A US State Department report said allies of Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, including his Cabinet chief, have been included in a list of senior officials in Central America deemed corrupt.
(AP, 5/17/21)
2021 May 17, The US Supreme Court ruled that police can't enter someone's home without a warrant except in an emergency.
(SFC, 5/20/21, p.B3)
2021 May 17, About 1,000 Los Angeles residents remained under evacuation orders as firefighters protected canyon homes from a smoky wildfire that churned through vegetation that hasn't burned in half a century. The wildfire broke out late May 14 in the Santa Monica Mountains and grew rapidly. One arson subject was detained the previous day.
(AP, 5/17/21)(SFC, 5/17/21, p.A4)
2021 May 17, California to date had 3,744,061 cases of coronavirus and 62,334 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 441,328 cases and 6,497 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 32,993,038 with the death toll at 586,330.
(sfist.com, 5/17/21)
2021 May 17, Joel Greenberg, a former associate of Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), pleaded guilty to six criminal charges, including sex trafficking a 17-year-old girl and wire fraud.
(Axios, 5/17/21)
2021 May 17, It was reported that Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline’s potential COVID-19 vaccine triggered strong immune responses in all adult age groups in preliminary trials, boosting optimism the shot may join the fight against the pandemic this year.
(AP, 5/17/21)
2021 May 17, Parler, the social media app popular with right-wing US conservatives’, returned to Apple Inc’s App Store, after Apple had debarred it following the Jan. 6 US Capitol riot.
(Reuters, 5/17/21)
2021 May 17, Thousands of UK pubs and restaurants opened for indoor service for the first time since early January. PM Boris Johnson sounded a cautious tone, warning about a more contagious COVID-19 variant that threatens reopening plans.
(AP, 5/17/21)
2021 May 17, British vacationers began arriving in large numbers in southern Portugal for the first time in more than a year, after governments in the two countries eased their COVID-19 pandemic travel restrictions.
(AP, 5/17/21)
2021 May 17, China renewed calls for the US to play a constructive role in ending the conflict in Gaza and stop blocking efforts at the UN to demand an end to the bloodshed.
(AP, 5/17/21)
2021 May 17, Darwin’s Arch, a famous, photo-friendly rock formation in the remote Galápagos Islands, collapsed because of natural erosion.
(NY Times, 5/18/21)
2021 May 17, The European Union and the United States decided to temporarily suspend measures at the heart of a steel tariff dispute that is seen as one of the major trade issues dividing the two sides.
(AP, 5/17/21)
2021 May 17, The French government said some of France's most sensitive state and corporate data can be safely stored using the cloud computing technology developed by Alphabet's Google and Microsoft, if it is licensed to French companies.
(Reuters, 5/17/21)
2021 May 17, In Hong Kong Next Digital Ltd shares were suspended after authorities froze assets of its jailed owner Jimmy Lai under a new national security law in Hong Kong, while the tycoon pleaded guilty to taking part in an illegal protest in October 2019.
(Reuters, 5/17/21)
2021 May 17, Indian authorities moved over 200,000 people from their homes in the state of Gujarat to safety and shut ports and major airports as the most powerful cyclone in more than two decades roared up the west coast. Cyclone Tauktae has already killed at least 16 people.
(Reuters, 5/17/21)
2021 May 17, Cyclone Tauktae, the most powerful storm to hit western India in more than two decades, packed sustained winds of up to 210 km (130 miles) per hour when it came ashore in Gujarat state. Six people were killed Maharashtra state.
(AP, 5/18/21)
2021 May 17, It was reported that the Irish health service expects to spend tens of millions of euros rebuilding its IT systems from a cyber attack which is set to cause significant disruption to diagnostic services into next week.
(Reuters, 5/17/21)
2021 May 17, Israeli warplanes unleashed a fierce air bombardment on Gaza City before dawn as Hamas militants in the coastal enclave continued to target towns in southern Israel with barrages of rockets, bringing the conflict into a second, grinding week of bloodshed and destruction.
(NY Times, 5/17/21)
2021 May 17, In Israel Yigal Yehoshua (56) died several days after being pelted with rocks during clashes between Arabs and Jews in the mixed city of Lod. In June eight Arab suspects were arrested in relation to Yehoshua's death.
(AP, 6/20/21)
2021 May 17, Poland's biggest power plant experienced a network failure that affected grids across Europe. The Belchatow plant provides up to 20% of Poland's energy.
(SFC, 5/18/21, p.A2)
2021 May 17, Vaccinated Saudis will now be allowed to leave the kingdom for the first time in more than a year as the country eases a ban on international travel aimed at containing the spread of the coronavirus and its new variants.
(AP, 5/17/21)
2021 May 17, In Slovenia Serbia and Kosovo clashed at a summit of Western Balkan nations over state border changes, a thorny issue in a region that is still recuperating from bloody civil wars in the 1990s.
(AP, 5/17/21)
2021 May 17, Two Catalan separatist parties said they have reached an initial agreement to form a regional government in northeastern Spain, ending a three-month stalemate since elections were held.
(AP, 5/17/21)
2021 May 17, Sudan announced the resignation of the country’s chief prosecutor and the firing of the top judge, without giving any reasons for the changes.
(AP, 5/17/21)
2021 May 17, More than 50 migrants drowned off the coast of Tunisia, while 33 others were rescued by workers from an oil platform.
(SFC, 5/18/21, p.A2)
2021 May 17, In Turkey Muharrem Ince (56), a politician who once ran as a presidential challenger to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, formed the new Memleket Partisi (Homeland Party), months after he broke away from Turkey’s main opposition party.
(AP, 5/17/21)
2021 May 18, It was reported that the Biden administration will waive sanctions on the corporate entity and CEO overseeing the construction of Russia’s Nord Stream 2 pipeline into Germany.
(Axios, 5/18/21)
2021 May 18, The Biden administration restored citizenship rights to children born abroad to married same-sex couples from the United States.
(SFC, 5/18/21, p.A5)
2021 May 18, A US House of Representatives Oversight Committee staff reported that drugmaker AbbVie exploits the US patent system to push up prices for its Humira rheumatoid arthritis drug and Imbruvica, a cancer drug.
(AP, 5/18/21)
2021 May 18, California to date had 3,746,039 cases of coronavirus and 62,392 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 441,460 cases and 6,508 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 32,996,503 with the death toll at 587,196.
(sfist.com, 5/18/21)
2021 May 18, Charles Grodin, the versatile actor familiar from “Same Time, Next Year" on Broadway, popular movies like “The Heartbreak Kid," “Midnight Run" and “Beethoven" and numerous television appearances, died at his home in Wilton, Conn.
(NY Times, 5/18/21)
2021 May 18, Donald J. Trump and his family came under increasing pressure from New York investigators after the attorney general’s office said it was working alongside the Manhattan district attorney in an ongoing criminal fraud investigation.
(NY Times, 5/18/21)
2021 May 18, North Carolina prosecutors said sheriff's deputies were justified in fatally shooting Andrew Brown Jr., a Black man, during an attempted arrest last April 21 and no charges will be filed against law enforcement. Brown was shot five times and that his immediate cause of death was a penetrating gunshot wound of the head.
(NBC News, 5/18/21)
2021 May 18, Tennessee's Gov. Bill Lee signed a law barring doctors from giving hormone treatments to transgender minors before puberty. Experts said they knew of no doctors in the state who did so.
(NY Times, 5/20/21)
2021 May 18, Gov. Jay Inslee signed 12 bills into law that include bans on chokeholds and no-knock warrants, making Washington the latest state to pass sweeping police reforms.
(NY Times, 5/19/21)
2021 May 18, Amazon said that it will extend its ban on police use of its face-recognition technology beyond the one-year pause it announced last year.
(SFC, 5/18/21, p.B2)
2021 May 18, Bank of America Corp said it plans to raise its minimum wage for US workers to $25 an hour by 2025, the latest in a series of major employers promising more pay to workers after a year of pandemic risks.
(Reuters, 5/18/21)
2021 May 18, Drugmaker Bristol Myers Squibb said it will pay biotech firm Agenus Inc up to $1.38 billion to exclusively develop and commercialize its experimental cancer drug, AGEN1777.
(Reuters, 5/18/21)
2021 May 18, American electric-vehicle maker Fisker Inc said it had signed an agreement with UK-based Onto, an electric-car subscription service, to deliver up to 700 vehicles in 2023.
(Reuters, 5/18/21)
2021 May 18, Argentina reported 745 coronavirus deaths and 35,543 new infections. The country has recorded more than 71,000 total confirmed deaths.
(SFC, 5/120/21, p.A5)
2021 May 18, Belarusian authorities made the Tut.by news site unavailable to readers and raided its offices and the homes of some staff members. Officials maintained that the news site, arguably the most popular one in Belarus, violated media laws by publishing content on behalf of BYSOL, a foundation that helps victims of political repression but lacks proper state registration.
(AP, 5/21/21)
2021 May 18, In northern Burkina Faso suspected Islamic extremists attacked a baptism party near the town of Tin-Akoff, killing at least 15 people and sending terrified civilians fleeing.
(AP, 5/19/21)
2021 May 18, Chad’s deputy foreign minister warned the UN Security Council that mercenaries and foreign fighters from Libya are crossing into the Sahel, threatening to undermine gains in fighting terrorism by five West African nations and plunge the region into violence that will be difficult to control.
(AP, 5/18/21)
2021 May 18, A leading international rights group urged Egyptian authorities to release Hoda Abdel Hamid, who was arrested last month apparently over publishing a letter from her imprisoned son, Abdelrahman al-Showeikh (29), in which he claims he was tortured and sexually assaulted behind bars.
(AP, 5/18/21)
2021 May 18, France's presidency called for a resolution at the United Nations Security Council to stop the fighting between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza.
(Reuters, 5/18/21)
2021 May 18, In France more than 20 heads of state and government from Africa held talks in Paris with the heads of international organizations on how to revive the continent's economy, which the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted deeply.
(AP, 5/18/21)
2021 May 18, Air France-KLM said it is sending into the air what it calls its first long-haul flight with sustainable aviation fuel. The plane is said to be using petroleum mixed with a synthetic jet fuel derived from waste cooking oils.
(AP, 5/18/21)
2021 May 18, German prosecutors said a businessman suspected of helping Russia purchase sophisticated machinery in breach of arms export rules has been detained in Leipzig.
(AP, 5/18/21)
2021 May 18, The Greek island of Corfu welcomed its first cruise ship of the new season, hoping much awaited tourists will help salvage losses incurred during 2020 due to the coronavirus.
(Reuters, 5/18/21)
2021 May 18, The Serum Institute of India, the world’s largest maker of vaccines, announced that it expects to resume exporting coronavirus vaccines by the end of 2021.
(AP, 5/18/21)
2021 May 18, The Indian navy worked to rescue crew members from a sunken barge and a second cargo vessel that was adrift off the coast of Mumbai after a deadly cyclone struck the western coast. The navy said it has rescued 184 people. 55 people remained missing.
(AP, 5/18/21)(SFC, 5/20/21, p.A4)
2021 May 18, Square, a San Francisco payments company led by Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, launched its services in Ireland in its first eurozone foray.
(Reuters, 5/18/21)
2021 May 18, Dozens of Israeli jets launched more than 100 missiles into the Gaza Strip overnight as the fighting entered its second week and hours after President Joe Biden said he would support a cease-fire in the conflict.
(NBC News, 5/18/21)
2021 May 18, In Israel Jana Kiswani (16) was standing just outside the front gate of her home in the flashpoint neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah when a police officer ordered her, her brother and father to go into their house. Kiswani was shot in the back with a rubber-coated bullet and was hospitalized with a broken vertebra. The officer involved in the shooting in east Jerusalem was later suspended pending an investigation.
(AP, 5/26/21)
2021 May 18, Kosovo authorities said police have seized a record 400 kg (880 pounds) of cocaine that originated in Brazil, and arrested 7 people suspected of drug trafficking offenses.
(AP, 5/18/21)
2021 May 18, Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum opened a new exhibition that takes unflinching look at slavery. The exhibit tells the story of slavery by drilling down into the personal stories of 10 people, ranging from enslaved workers to a wealthy Amsterdam woman.
(AP, 5/18/21)
2021 May 18, Nigerian authorities said some $5.8m (£4.2m) recovered by UK agencies that was stolen by a Nigerian former governor and laundered in Britain have now been returned to Nigeria. Former Delta state Governor James Ibori was convicted of money laundering in the UK in 2012.
(BBC, 5/18/21)
2021 May 18, North Macedonia said it is expelling a Russian diplomat from the country, but authorities didn't give any explanation for the decision.
(AP, 5/18/21)
2021 May 18, Hundreds of thousands of Palestinian citizens of Israel stopped work for the day, as did other Palestinians across the occupied West Bank and in Gaza, protesting violence against Arab Israelis, the unfolding Israeli military campaign targeting Hamas militants in Gaza and the looming eviction of several families from their homes in East Jerusalem.
(NY Times, 5/18/21)
2021 May 18, Spain deployed its military to the Moroccan border as thousands of migrants jumped fences or swam onto European soil for the second day in a row after Rabat loosened border controls amid a deepening diplomatic spat.
(AP, 5/18/21)
2021 May 18, The United Arab Emirates said it will offer booster shots to those who received the Chinese state-backed Sinopharm vaccine six months after vaccination. Last month, China’s top disease control official, in a rare acknowledgement, said current vaccines offer low protection against the coronavirus.
(AP, 5/18/21)
2021 May 19, The United States said it opposes a proposed UN Security Council resolution calling for a cease-fire in the conflict between Israel and Gaza’s Hamas rulers, reiterating that it could interfere with the Biden administration’s efforts to end the hostilities.
(AP, 5/19/21)
2021 May 19, The US House voted to create a commission to investigate the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, with 35 Republicans voting in favor. But Mitch McConnell, minority leader in the Senate, said he opposed it.
(NY Times, 5/19/21)
2021 May 19, The United States sanctioned former Albanian PM Sali Berisha (76), barring him from entering the country after being accused of involvement in “significant corruption".
(AP, 5/19/21)
2021 May 19, The US global coordinator on COVID said the United States will donate a significant number of COVID-19 vaccines through the World Health Organization's COVAX scheme for distributing doses to poorer countries.
(AP, 5/19/21)
2021 May 19, US broadcaster Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) filed a legal case at the European Court of Human Rights to challenge the "foreign agent" label imposed on it by Russian authorities.
(Reuters, 5/19/21)
2021 May 19, California to date had 3,746,224 cases of coronavirus and 62,400 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 441,727 cases and 6,512 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 33,016,539 with the death toll at 587,640.
(sfist.com, 5/19/21)
2021 May 19, In central Illinois police Officer Chris Oberheim (44) died after being shot by a suspect in a domestic disturbance, who was also killed in an exchange of gunfire that left a 2nd officer wounded in Champaign.
(SFC, 5/20/21, p.A4)
2021 May 19, The husband of the mayor of Rochester, NY, was arrested after police said they discovered drugs and guns in searches of his car and home. Mayor Lovely Warren’s husband, Timothy Granison (42), was accused of being part of a midlevel cocaine trafficking ring.
(NY Times, 5/21/21)
2021 May 19, In NYC one laborer was killed and another seriouysly injured when their elevator dropped from the top of a five-story building under renovation at 20 Bruckner Boulevard. in the Bronx. Over the last two years two other laborers had died at the site.
(NY Times, 5/30/22)
2021 May 19, Texas executed Quintin Jones (41), the state’s first execution in 10 months. Jones was convicted of fatally beating his great aunt (83) more than two decades ago.
(AP, 5/20/21)(SFC, 5/20/21, p.A4)
2021 May 19, Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed into law a "fetal heartbeat" abortion bill that bans the procedure after about six weeks of pregnancy and grants citizens the right to sue doctors who perform abortions past that point.
(AP, 5/19/21)
2021 May 19, Heavy rain kept pounding parts of Texas and Arkansas before moving over Louisiana, adding to the misery for people whose homes and cars were flooded by an earlier drenching.
(AP, 5/19/21)
2021 May 19, Lee Evans (74), the Black American runner who won two gold medals at the racially charged 1968 Summer Olympic Games in Mexico City, died. At a presentation ceremony he wore a Black Panther-style beret and raised his fist to protest racism in the US.
(AP, 5/20/21)
2021 May 19, Blue Origin, billionaire Jeff Bezos' rocket company, disclosed $2 million as the current highest bid for a seat on its New Shepard spacecraft after the startup closed the first phase of its auction. The rocket company is targeting July 20 for its first suborbital sightseeing trip on its spacecraft.
(Reuters, 5/19/21)
2021 May 19, Microsoft Corp said it is pulling the plug on its once omnipresent browser, Internet Explorer, next year as it prepares to battle market leader Chrome with its slicker Edge browser.
(AP, 5/20/21)
2021 May 19, Wells Fargo & Co said its investment institute is planning to evaluate and onboard an actively managed cryptocurrency strategy for its wealthy clients, the latest move by a major US. bank toward accepting digital currencies.
(AP, 5/19/21)
2021 May 19, In Afghanistan roadside bombings in southern and central Afghanistan killed 13 people, including nine members of one family. Meanwhile, militants stopped a bus in western Afghanistan, ordered three men, ethnic Hazaras, to get out and shot and killed them.
(AP, 5/20/21)
2021 May 19, Chinese leader Xi Jinping and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin joined in a videoconference to initiate a series of nuclear energy projects, an event intended to display warming ties between two nations that have paired-up as the chief geopolitical rivals to the US.
(AP, 5/19/21)
2021 May 19, The EU took a step toward relaxing travel rules for tourists from outside the 27-nation bloc when EU ambassadors agreed on measures to allow in fully vaccinated visitors.
(AP, 5/19/21)
2021 May 19, French police officers held a huge demonstration outside parliament to press for a law that protects the protectors who are feeling vulnerable to attacks, angry and useless.
(AP, 5/19/21)
2021 May 19, Police in Germany raided sites in seven states as authorities announced a ban on three groups linked to the Lebanese militant organization Hezbollah.
(AP, 5/19/21)
2021 May 19, The Art Basel contemporary art fair opened in Hong Kong, offering a combination of physical and virtual shows as many art collectors and curators were not able to travel to the city because of COVID-19 restrictions.
(Reuters, 5/19/21)
2021 May 19, India reported more coronavirus deaths in a single day than any other country at any time during the pandemic. The Health Ministry reported a record 4,529 deaths in the past 24 hours, driving India's confirmed fatalities to 283,248. It also reported 267,334 new infections.
(AP, 5/19/21)
2021 May 19, It was reported that health authorities in Malawi have incinerated 19,610 expired doses of the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine, saying it will reassure the public that any vaccines they do get are safe.
(BBC, 5/19/21)
2021 May 19, In Nigeria reports began to emerge that Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau had detonated a suicide vest while besieged by rival ISWAP fighters in his forest stronghold.
(SFC, 5/22/21, p.A2)
2021 May 19, The Russian parliament's lower house voted to withdraw from an international treaty allowing surveillance flights over military facilities following the US departure from the pact. The Russian exit from the Open Skies Treaty is yet to be endorsed by the upper house of parliament and needs to be signed by President Vladimir Putin to take effect.
(AP, 5/19/21)
2021 May 19, A United Nations report said roughly a sixth of the planet’s land and freshwater area now lies within protected or conservation areas.
(AP, 5/19/21)
2021 May 20, The Biden administration announced that it will stop using immigration detention facilities in Massachusetts and Georgia that are the subject of abuse allegations.
(AP, 5/20/21)
2021 May 20, Pres. Joe Biden signed a bill addressing hate crimes against Asian-Americans.
(NY Times, 5/20/21)
2021 May 20, The US Treasury Department offered to accept a global minimum corporate tax rate of at least 15%, significantly below its proposed 21% minimum for US multinational firms.
(Reuters, 5/21/21)
2021 May 20, The DOJ said federal law enforcement officers have seized nearly 70 protected big cats from Jeffrey and Lauren Lowe's Thackerville, Oklahoma, Tiger King Park.
(CBS News, 5/21/21)
2021 May 20, US Senator Bernie Sanders introduced a resolution blocking a $735 million weapons sale to Israel, mirroring a symbolic action by the House of Representatives in response to conflict between Israel and Gaza's Hamas leaders.
(Reuters, 5/20/21)
2021 May 20, California's Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill 7 allowing projects of more than $15 million to apply for an expedited revue under the California Environmental Quality Act.
(SFC, 5/21/21, p.B4)
2021 May 20, California state air-pollution regulators approved rules requiring ride-hailing services to phase out their use of gas-powered cars over the next decade.
(SFC, 5/22/21, p.B1)
2021 May 20, California to date had 3,749,023 cases of coronavirus and 62,490 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 442,113 cases and 6,538 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 33,055,614 with the death toll at 588,528.
(sfist.com, 5/20/21)
2021 May 20, Jane Goodall (b.1934), the conservationist renowned for her expertise on chimpanzees and her globe-spanning advocacy of environmental causes, was named as this year’s winner of the prestigious Templeton Prize, honoring individuals whose life’s work embodies a fusion of science and spirituality.
(AP, 5/20/21)
2021 May 20, Brazilian pharmaceutical company União Quimica said it has completed production of its first batch of the Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine with active ingredients and technology supplied by Russia.
(Reuters, 5/20/21)
2021 May 20, Britain announced plans to bring the national rail network back under government control, reversing one of the most controversial elements of the privatization drive carried out by the Conservative governments of the 1980s and ’90s.
(AP, 5/20/21)
2021 May 20, British drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline said it has sold its entire stake in Innoviva back to the US-based biopharmaceutical company for about $392 million, as it simplifies operations ahead of a split into two businesses.
(Reuters, 5/20/21)
2021 May 20, China said it is providing COVID-19 vaccines to nearly 40 African countries.
(SFC, 5/21/21, p.A6)
2021 May 20, It was reported that soaring international food and shipping prices and low domestic production are further squeezing import-dependent Cuba’s ability to feed its people.
(Reuters, 5/20/21)
2021 May 20, Ethiopia expelled Simon Marks, an Irish journalist working for The New York Times, dealing a new blow to press freedom in a country as the government fights a grinding war in the northern region of Tigray.
(NY Times, 5/20/21)
2021 May 20, The European Parliament voted overwhelmingly to freeze efforts to ratify a landmark investment deal with China until Beijing lifts sanctions imposed in retaliation for the EU's condemnation of China's human rights abuses.
(Axios, 5/20/21)
2021 May 20, A French appeal court ruled that around 2,700 victims of a breast implant scandal are entitled to compensation. The court said that German company TUV Rheinland committed negligence by certifying them as safe.
(AP, 5/20/21)
2021 May 20, Officials said India has ordered tighter surveillance of a rare fungal disease hitting COVID-19 patients, piling pressure on hospitals struggling with the world's highest number of daily infections of the novel coronavirus. Mucormycosis, or "black fungus" usually infects people whose immune system has been compromised.
(Reuters, 5/20/21)
2021 May 20, Israeli airstrikes on Gaza and rocket attacks by Hamas on Israel eased overnight. Officials on both sides expressed optimism that a cease-fire could come within days.
(NY Times, 5/20/21)
2021 May 20, It was reported that Kazakhstan is rolling out an app which it hopes will limit the spread of COVID-19 by restricting people's access to places such as bars, cinemas and airports based on their vaccination and infection risk status.
(Reuters, 5/20/21)
2021 May 20, Groups of angry Lebanese pelted buses and cars carrying Syrians expatriates and refugees heading to the Syrian Embassy in Beirut with stones and sticks, outraged over what they perceive as an organized vote for President Bashar Assad.
(AP, 5/20/21)
2021 May 20, Malaysia reported a new daily record in coronavirus infections and deaths. It recorded COVID-19 fatalities, a record toll for the third day this week, while its 6,806 new cases was the second straight day of record infections.
(Reuters, 5/20/21)
2021 May 20, Samoa's incoming PM Fiame Naomi Mata'afa announced that she would cancel a $100 million wharf development backed by China.
(SFC, 5/22/21, p.A3)
2021 May 20, South Korea said it will conduct a clinical trial that mixes COVID-19 vaccine doses developed by AstraZeneca Plc with those from Pfizer Inc and others.
(Reuters, 5/20/21)
2021 May 20, In Sri Lanka a fire broke out aboard the ship MV X-Press cargo ship, carrying 1,486 containers. Debris soon spilled into the ocean and began polluting the nation's beaches.
(SFC, 6/2/21, p.A2)
2021 May 20, It was reported that a district of northern Thailand has launched a raffle campaign for inoculated residents to win a live cow per week for the rest of the year, in a bid to boost the local COVID-19 vaccination drive.
(Reuters, 5/20/21)
2021 May 20, The World Health Organization's regional director said COVID-19 vaccines currently being deployed in the fight against the pandemic in Europe appear able to protect against all variants that are circulating and causing concern.
(Reuters, 5/20/21)
2021 May 21, President Joe Biden awarded the Medal of Honor, the country's highest military recognition, to retired Army Colonel Ralph Puckett (94) for acts of “gallantry and intrepidity above and beyond the call of duty" during the Korean War.
(NBC News, 5/21/21)
2021 May 21, Pres. Joe Biden welcomed South Korea's Pres. Moon Jae-in. Both leaders agreed to work closely toward denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.
(SFC, 5/22/21, p.A2)
2021 May 21, Pres. Joe Biden said he won't allow the Dept. of Justice to seize journalists' phone records and emails calling the practice "wrong".
(SSFC, 5/23/21, p.A9)
2021 May 21, It was reported that the Biden administration has cut its proposed infrastructure plan from $2.25 trillion to $1.7 trillion in a gesture of compromise between the White House and congressional Republicans.
(The Week, 5/22/21)
2021 May 21, The United States Department of Agriculture said that it will begin making loan forgiveness payments in June to thousands of minority farmers as part of the Biden administration’s $4 billion debt relief program.
(NY Times, 5/21/21)
2021 May 21, In Alabama thousands of revelers in Mobile marched in a Mardi Gras style parade, dubbed Tardi Gras, as COVID-19 hospitalizations and vaccinations ebbed.
(SFC, 5/24/21, p.A4)
2021 May 21, California to date had 3,749,921 cases of coronavirus and 62,529 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 442,350 cases and 6,540 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 33,082,423 with the death toll at 589,204.
(sfist.com, 5/21/21)
2021 May 21, Kansas City Southern abandoned its agreement to be acquired by Canadian Pacific, choosing instead a competing bid from Canadian National Railway with a bigger price tag, but also greater regulatory risks.
(AP, 5/21/21)
2021 May 21, Louisiana State Police released all body camera footage related to the violent 2019 arrest of Ronald Greene, a Black man who died in custody.
(AP, 5/22/21)
2021 May 21, A medical center in Louisiana said it has identified the state's first two cases of a COVID-19 variant first identified in India. Variants from Brazil and the UK have already shown up in the state.
(SSFC, 5/23/21, p.A7)
2021 May 21, Start-up low-cost US airline Breeze Airways said it would begin service next week, focusing on flights between smaller US cities that don't have direct service from larger carriers.
(AP, 5/21/21)
2021 May 21, American pharmaceutical company Pfizer and German company BioNTech pledged to deliver 2 billion doses of their COVID-19 vaccine to middle- and low-income countries over the next 18 months, amid international calls for more vaccine solidarity.
(AP, 5/21/21)
2021 May 21, It was reported that Brussels has persuaded Washington to ease restrictions on exports of materials needed by German biotech firm CureVac to make its experimental COVID-19 vaccine.
(Reuters, 5/21/21)
2021 May 21, It was reported that the Group of Seven (G7) rich countries have agreed to stop international funding for the construction of coal-fired power stations that emit carbon.
(Reuters, 5/21/21)
2021 May 21, The International Monetary Fund (IMF) unveiled a $50 billion proposal to end the COVID-19 pandemic by vaccinating at least 40% of the population in all countries by the end of 2021 and at least 60% by the first half of 2022.
(Reuters, 5/21/21)
2021 May 21, China's President Xi Jinping pledged an additional $3 billion in aid over the next three years to help developing countries recover from the coronavirus pandemic, and proposed setting up an international forum on vaccine cooperation.
(Reuters, 5/21/21)
2021 May 21, China-based biotech firm Beigene Ltd, said its cancer therapy, tislelizumab, in combination with chemotherapy met the main goal of helping patients live longer by preventing the disease from progressing in a late-stage study.
(Reuters, 5/21/21)
2021 May 21, A strong, shallow earthquake shook southwestern China near the border with Myanmar, killing at least three people and injuring more than two dozen.
(AP, 5/21/21)
2021 May 21, It was reported that a judge in Colombia has sentenced three Venezuelan men to six years in prison for helping organize the so-called Operation Gideon, an ill-conceived plot to remove Pres. Nicolas Maduro involving former American Green Berets.
(SFC, 5/21/21, p.A5)
2021 May 21, An Egyptian-mediated cease-fire between Israel and Hamas went into effect after 11 days of fighting that killed 254 people in Gaza and 12 people in Israel. Hamas had fired more than 4,000 rockets toward Israel.
(AP, 5/21/21)(SFC, 7/28/21, p.A2)(SFC, 2/4/22, p.A4)
2021 May 21, Scientists from the European Space Agency said a 1,668 square-mile iceberg, dubbed A-76, broke off Antarctica earlier this month. Scientists said it could take several years for it to break up and melt away.
(SFC, 5/22/21, p.A4)
2021 May 21, European Union’s top court ordered Poland to immediately stop extracting brown coal at the Turow mine, which is on the border with the Czech Republic and Germany.
(AP, 5/21/21)
2021 May 21, Europe's medicines regulator said the second shot of the COVID-19 vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford must not be given to anyone who has had blood clots with low blood platelets after receiving the first.
(Reuters, 5/21/21)
2021 May 21, The European Union's drug regulator said a COVID-19 antibody treatment developed by GlaxoSmithKline and Vir Biotechnology can be used to treat patients who are at risk of severe disease and do not need supplemental oxygen.
(Reuters, 5/21/21)
2021 May 21, India-based Mylab Discovery Solutions said it has the capacity to ramp up production of its at-home COVID-19 test kits to 100 million units per week over the next few months based on demand.
(Reuters, 5/21/21)
2021 May 21, Italy's government revived hopes of producing the country's own COVID-19 vaccine when it said it was ready to finance the ReiThera project despite a court ruling rejecting a plan to pump public funds into the local biotech company.
(Reuters, 5/21/21)
2021 May 21, The head of Myanmar’s military-appointed state election commission said that his agency will consider dissolving Aung San Suu Kyi's former ruling party for alleged involvement in electoral fraud and having its leaders charged with treason.
(AP, 5/21/21)
2021 May 21, Nigeria's army chief, Lt-Gen Ibrahim Attahiru, was killed in a plane crash in the north-western state of Kaduna. Ten other officers, including the plane's crew also died.
(BBC, 5/22/21)
2021 May 21, In southwestern Pakistan a roadside bomb went off in Chaman near a vehicle carrying a local leader of an Islamist political party killing seven people.
(SFC, 5/22/21, p.A4)
2021 May 21, The UN humanitarian agency urged heavy punishments for aid workers and others who committed sex abuses during the Ebola epidemic in eastern Congo, saying it has launched a hotline to receive complaints from victims.
(AP, 5/21/21)
2021 May 21, The WHO said official tolls showing the number of deaths directly or indirectly attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic are likely to be a "significant undercount." 6-8 million people may have died so far.
(Reuters, 5/21/21)
2021 May 22, The Department of Homeland Security announced that the Biden administration will grant temporary protected status to tens of thousands of Haitian immigrants living in the United States without legal status.
(CBS News, 5/22/21)
2021 May 22, A US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advisory group said some teenagers and young adults who received COVID-19 vaccines experienced heart inflammation, recommending further study of the rare condition.
(Reuters, 5/22/21)
2021 May 22, CNN said it has "parted ways" with former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.). Santorum had recently come under fire for comments he made about Native Americans during a speech to a conservative youth group in April: "We birthed a nation from nothing. I mean, there was nothing here."
(CNN, 5/22/21)
2021 May 22, California to date had 3,750,465 cases of coronavirus and 62,543 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 442,388 cases and 6,541 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 33,088,187 with the death toll at 589,289.
(sfist.com, 5/23/21)
2021 May 22, At least two people were killed and 12 others wounded in a mass shooting at a family house party in Cumberland County, New Jersey. Kevin K Dawkins (36) was soon arrested on weapons offenses.
(AP, 5/23/21)(AP, 5/24/21)
2021 May 22, Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc, British billionaire Sir Richard Branson's private spaceship company, completed its first manned space flight from its new home port in New Mexico. Branson founded the company in 2004 and this is the third time his company reported reaching space.
(Reuters, 5/22/21)
2021 May 22, In South Carolina more than a dozen people were shot late today at an unauthorized concert in North Charleston. One girl (14) was killed.
(SFC, 5/24/21, p.A6)
2021 May 22, It was reported that West Virginia lost a higher percentage of its residents than any other state in the nation. From 2010 to 2020, the population dropped 3.2%, or about 59,000 people. Because of that, West Virginia was one of only seven states to lose a congressional seat following the 2020 census.
(AP, 5/22/21)
2021 May 22, Albania's Pres. Ilir Meta offered public support to former PM Sali Berisha, who was sanctioned by the United States this week for corruption.
(AP, 5/22/21)
2021 May 22, Argentina imposed its first strict coronavirus lockdown of the year due to surging levels of infections and a soaring death toll.
(SFC, 5/22/21, p.A4)
2021 May 22, Animal rights protesters blockaded four McDonald's distribution centers in the UK in an attempt to get the burger chain to commit to becoming fully plant-based by 2025.
(AP, 5/22/21)
2021 May 22, Beijing's space administration said China's remote-controlled Zhurong rover drove down the ramp of its landing capsule and onto the Martian surface.
(AP, 5/22/21)
2021 May 22, In central China a magnitude 7.3 earthquake collapsed a bridge and caused other damage early today in Qinghai province.
(AP, 5/22/21)
2021 May 22, Yuan Longping (91), a Chinese scientist who developed higher-yield rice varieties that helped feed people around the world, died at a hospital in the southern city of Changsha.
(AP, 5/22/21)
2021 May 22, In northwestern China 21 people died during a 62-mile mountain race in the Yellow River Stone Forest after extreme weather struck the region.
(CNN, 5/22/21)
2021 May 22, In CongoDRC Mount Nyiragongo erupted. Tens of thousands of people fled the eastern city of Goma late today when lava began to spew from the flanks of the volcano. At least 32 people were killed amid chaos in Goma. Residents of Buhene returned early the next day to find that their homes had been swallowed by a river of lava, about half a mile wide. Nearly 500,000 people were left without clean drinking water after the volcano erupted.
(NY Times, 5/23/21)(AP, 5/23/21)(AP, 5/24/21)(SSFC, 5/30/21, p.B8)(BBC, 6/2/21)
2021 May 22, It was reported that Croatia has widely reopened its stunning Adriatic coastline for foreign tourists, becoming one of the first European countries to drop most of its pandemic measures.
(AP, 5/22/21)
2021 May 22, Egyptian mediators held talks to firm up an Israel-Hamas cease-fire as people in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip began to assess the damage from 11 days of intense Israeli bombardment. A 130-truck convoy carrying urgent humanitarian aid headed to Gaza.
(AP, 5/22/21)
2021 May 22, In India COVID-19 deaths rose by 4,194 and infections were spreading in rural areas where public health services are scarce and already overstretched. Government data showed 257,299 new cases.
(Reuters, 5/22/21)
2021 May 22, It was reported that more than 125,000 school teachers in Myanmar have been suspended by the military authorities for joining a civil disobedience movement to oppose the military coup in February.
(Reuters, 5/22/21)
2021 May 22, In Nepal climbing guide Lukas Furtenbach said a coronavirus outbreak on Mount Everest has infected at least 100 climbers and support staff.
(AP, 5/22/21)
2021 May 22, Twenty six nations competed in the final of the Eurovision song contest in the Netherlands, vying for votes in the world's most popular live music event, which returns after being cancelled last year due to the pandemic. Maneskin won the Eurovision Song Contest. Their song “Zitti E Buoni" beat 25 other acts from across Europe to bring the title home for Italy. France came in second, and Switzerland came in third.
(NY Times, 5/22/21)(Reuters, 5/22/21)
2021 May 22, It was reported that North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un recently banned mullets and other "non-socialist" haircuts – as well as skinny jeans – over fears the fashions would lead to capitalistic urges among the closed-off nation’s young people.
(Fox News, 5/22/21)
2021 May 22, Officials in the Philippines said they investigating reports that some people have been illegally selling COVID-19 shots or their vaccine slots for financial gain, as they reminded the public the vaccines are free.
(Reuters, 5/22/21)
2021 May 22, Firefighters in central Poland said 13 units are fighting flames that have engulfed a conveyer belt at Poland’s largest brown coal mine in Belchatow.
(AP, 5/22/21)
2021 May 22, Samoa's appointed head of state Va'aletoa Sualauvi II announced that he was suspending parliament, two days before it was scheduled to swear in Fiame Naomi Mata'afa.
(SSFC, 5/23/21, p.A8)
2021 May 23, Phil Mickelson (50) became the oldest golfer to win a major title with his victory at the P.G.A. Championship.
(NY Times, 5/24/21)
2021 May 23, California to date had 3,750,825 cases of coronavirus and 62,571 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 442,534 cases and 6,544 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 33,106,232 with the death toll at 589,740.
(sfist.com, 5/23/21)
2021 May 23, Eric Carle (91), the artist and author who created that creature in his book “The Very Hungry Caterpillar," died at his summer studio in Northampton, Mass.
(NY Times, 5/27/21)
2021 May 23, It was reported that Rhode Island has become the eighth US state where 70 percent of the adult population has received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. Connecticut, Hawaii, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, and Vermont also have reached the milestone.
(NY Times, 5/24/21)
2021 May 23, A Ryanair tourist flight from Athens to Vilnius was forced to land in Belarus by a MiG-29 fighter jet after a bogus bomb threat so authorities could arrest Roman Protasevich (26), a journalist opponent of hardman president Lukashenko.
(https://tinyurl.com/nzjefv5m)
2021 May 23, Paulo Mendes da Rocha (92), an architect known for a muscular style called Brazilian Brutalism, died at a hospital in São Paulo. Mr. Mendes da Rocha was awarded the Pritzker Prize in 2006, architecture’s highest honor. He was only the second Brazilian to win the prize, after the Rio-born Oscar Niemeyer, who collaborated on the United Nations building in New York City and won in 1988.
(NY Times, 6/26/21)
2021 May 23, Iran’s parliament speaker said that international inspectors may no longer access surveillance images of the Islamic Republic’s nuclear sites, escalating tensions amid diplomatic efforts in Vienna to save Tehran's atomic accord with world powers.
(AP, 5/23/21)
2021 May 23, Israel reopened its borders to foreign tourists after a fall in COVID-19 infections but said it would take time for visitors to start arriving and to revive the tourism industry.
(Reuters, 5/23/21)
2021 May 23, In northern Italy 14 people were killed after a cable car fell to the ground near the summit of a mountain overlooking the Piedmont region's Lake Maggiore.
(AP, 5/23/21)
2021 May 23, Lithuanian prosecutors launched a criminal investigation into the forced diversion of a RyanAir flight en route to Vilnius, Lithuania's capital, to Minsk, Belarus, where police arrested prominent dissident journalist Raman Pratasevich.
(Reuters, 5/23/21)
2021 May 23, Mexico's health ministry registered 50 new confirmed deaths from COVID-19, the lowest daily increase reported from the pandemic in over a year. The ministry also reported 1,274 new COVID-19 infections, lifting the total to 2,396,604. Separate government data has suggested the death toll could be at least 60% above the confirmed figure.
(Reuters, 5/23/21)
2021 May 23, Pakistan's federal authorities reported a decrease in COVID-19 deaths and new cases and decided to reopen tourist resorts and schools but only for those who have either tested negative or got vaccinated. Sindh province has opted to keep schools closed for another two weeks.
(SFC, 5/24/21, p.A4)
2021 May 23, A government official said Thailand has ordered strict controls on the movement of cattle and buffaloes after an outbreak of a virus that causes lumps to form on the animals' skin and can reduce milk production.
(Reuters, 5/23/21)
2021 May 24, Alabama's Gov. Kay Ivey signed legislation banning vaccine passports in the state. No penalties were specified for violations.
(SFC, 5/25/21, p.A4)
2021 May 24, California to date had 3,752,039 cases of coronavirus and 62,600 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 442,835 cases and 6,544 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 33,140,137 with the death toll at 590,184.
(sfist.com, 5/24/21)
2021 May 24, Florida became the first state to regulate how companies like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter moderate speech online, by imposing fines on social media companies that permanently bar political candidates in the state.
(NY Times, 5/24/21)
2021 May 24, Chicago police said at least 38 people have been shot since 5 p.m. May 21, eight of them fatally.
(Chicago Tribune, 5/24/21)
2021 May 24, Missouri's Republican Gov. Mike Parson appointed Judge Robin Ransom to be the first Black woman to serve on the state's Supreme Court.
(SFC, 5/25/21, p.A3)
2021 May 24, In South Carolina police arrested Tyler Terry, a suspect wanted in the killing of four people, following a weeklong manhunt.
(SFC, 5/25/21, p.A3)
2021 May 24, Cryptocurrencies rebounded, reclaiming ground lost during a bout of weekend selling that was fuelled by further signs of a Chinese crackdown on the emerging sector.
(Reuters, 5/24/21)
2021 May 24, A team of scientists announced that they had partially restored the sight of a blind man by building light-catching proteins in one of his eyes. Their report, which appeared in the journal Nature Medicine, is the first published study to describe the successful use of this treatment.
(NY Times, 5/24/21)
2021 May 24, Uber Technologies Inc and rival Lyft Inc launched COVID-19 vaccine ride programs in partnership with the White House, offering Americans free rides or discounts for their trips to and from a vaccination site.
(Reuters, 5/24/21)
2021 May 24, Britain barred Belarus’s national airline and instructed UK aircraft to avoid Belarussian airspace after a Ryanair passenger jet was forced to land in Minsk.
(AP, 5/24/21)
2021 May 24, The Chinese government offered to urgently send COVID-19 vaccines and medical experts to Taiwan to help it battle a sharp rise in coronavirus infections, but drew a swift and angry response from Taipei. Taiwan is dealing with a spike in COVID-19 cases and is rapidly running out of vaccines. Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen accused China of blocking a deal with Germany's BioNTech SE for COVID-19 vaccines, after Beijing offered the shots to the island via a Chinese company just as Taiwan was dealing with a rise in domestic infections.
(Reuters, 5/24/21)(Reuters, 1/30/22)
2021 May 24, In Ethiopia the Tsehaye and Adi Wonfito camps, host to some 12,000 people displaced by the Tigray conflict, were raided by soldiers who suspected the camps had been infiltrated by fighters from the Tigray Peoples Liberation Front. At least 200 displaced people were arrested in the raids.
(AP, 5/27/21)
2021 May 24, Western outrage grew and the European Union threatened more sanctions over the forced diversion of a plane to Belarus in order to arrest opposition journalist Raman Pratasevich. The dramatic gambit apparently ordered by the country’s authoritarian president to suppress dissent was denounced as piracy, a hijacking and terrorism.
(AP, 5/24/21)
2021 May 24, Indian government leaders appealed to farmers to call off a mass protest this week for fear it could prove a viral "super-spreader" event as the country's overall death toll from COVID-19 crossed 300,000. The Health Ministry reported 4,454 new deaths in the last 24 hours, bringing total fatalities to 303,720.
(Reuters, 5/24/21)(SFC, 5/25/21, p.A4)
2021 May 24, Iran agreed to preserve surveillance footage from its nuclear sites for another month, extending a temporary arrangement with the United Nations’ atomic watchdog agency (IAEA) that is seen as essential to eventually salvaging the 2015 nuclear deal.
(The Telegraph, 5/24/21)
2021 May 24, An Israeli soldier and a civilian were stabbed near a light rail station in east Jerusalem before the assailant was shot and killed by police, who described it as a terrorist attack.
(AP, 5/24/21)
2021 May 24, Japan mobilized military doctors and nurses to give elderly people vaccine shots in Tokyo and Osaka, two months before hosting the Olympics.
(SFC, 5/25/21, p.A4)
2021 May 24, Mutinous soldiers arrested Mali's transitional President Bah N’Daw and PM Moctar Ouane hours after a government reshuffle left out two members of the junta that had seized power in a coup nine months earlier.
(AP, 5/25/21)
2021 May 24, Malta said it has vaccinated 70% of its adult population with at least one COVID-19 shot, becoming the first EU country to achieve so-called herd immunity.
(Reuters, 5/24/21)
2021 May 24, In Myanmar Daniel Fenster (37), a US citizen and managing editor of Frontier Myanmar, one of the country's top independent news sites, was detained at the main international gateway in Yangon while preparing to fly to Malaysia. Consular officers from the US Embassy in Yangon soon sought to visit Fenster, but were not allowed access. Fenster was soon charged with incitement — spreading inflammatory information — an offense for which he could be sentenced to up to three years’ imprisonment.
(Reuters, 5/28/21)(Reuters, 9/20/21)
2021 May 24, In Oman scattered protests over layoffs and poor economic conditions drew a massive police presence in at least two cities in the sultanate, with protesters throwing stones at one point and police firing tear gas.
(AP, 5/24/21)
2021 May 24, Peru's police said that at least 18 people have been killed by suspected Shining Path rebels in Vizcata de Ene. The military said there were 14 victims.
(SFC, 5/25/21, p.A3)
2021 May 24, Officials in Poland defied an injunction by the top EU court that ordered the immediate closure of a major brown coal mine, saying it would shake the nation’s energy system and lead to the layoff of thousands of employees.
(AP, 5/24/21)
2021 May 24, Samoa's incoming PM Fiame Naomi Mata'afa's party (FAST) held its own swearing in ceremony after being locked out of the Parliament House.
(SFC, 5/22/21, p.A3)
2021 May 24, Riiid Inc, a South Korean AI tutorial startup, said it raised $175 million from SoftBank Group Corp's Vision Fund 2 as it looks to shake up the world of standardized testing, and take its technology to public schools.
(Reuters, 5/24/21)
2021 May 24, It was reported that Spanish police have arrested Robert Mark Benson (64), a British former Navy sailor, on suspicion of running a "highly professional" drugs trafficking operation with links across Europe.
(The Telegraph, 5/24/21)
2021 May 24, A Sudanese court sentenced to death a paramilitary officer charged with killing a demonstrator during a deadly breakup of a protest camp in the capital, Khartoum, two years ago. Hanafy Abdel-Shakour, was one of over 120 people killed during the brutal crackdown on demonstrators in Khartoum and elsewhere in Sudan in June, 2019.
(AP, 5/24/21)
2021 May 24, The World Bank said it has allocated $2 billion to cash-stripped Sudan as the transitional government has struggled to address the county’s decades-long economic woes.
(AP, 5/24/21)
2021 May 24, Sweden said it will donate 3 million doses vaccine to the COVAX facility in 2021, up from a previous pledge of 1 million doses.
(Reuters, 5/25/21)
2021 May 24, Thailand said it will extend the gap between the first and second doses of AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine to 16 weeks, in an effort to inoculate more people faster.
(Reuters, 5/24/21)
2021 May 24, Pope Francis challenged the Vatican’s own media employees to essentially justify their continued work, asking them how many people actually consume their news in a critique of the office that costs the Holy See more than all its embassies around the world combined.
(AP, 5/24/21)
2021 May 24, In southern Yemen an aid worker suffered mortal wounds when he was apparently caught in crossfire. Oxfam worker Fathi al-Zurigi died the next day.
(AP, 5/26/21)
2021 May 25, Secretary of State Tony Blinken announced that the US would be reopening the Consulate General in Jerusalem that handled relations with the Palestinians but was shut down by the Trump administration.
(Axios, 5/25/21)
2021 May 25, The US Federal Aviation Administration said it has downgraded Mexico's aviation safety rating after finding that the country does not meet standards set by a United Nations aviation group.
(AP, 5/25/21)
2021 May 25, California to date had 3,753,215 cases of coronavirus and 62,614 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 442,972 cases and 6,545 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 33,145,906 with the death toll at 590,758.
(sfist.com, 5/25/21)
2021 May 25, In Florida one person was killed and no other survivors were found after a firefighting helicopter with four people aboard crashed during a training exercise in Leesburg.
(Reuters, 5/26/21)
2021 May 25, New York prosecutors convened a special grand jury to consider evidence in a criminal investigation into former Pres. Donald Trump's business dealings.
(SFC, 5/26/21, p.A4)
2021 May 25, Portland, Oregon, police declared a riot on the anniversary of the death of George Floyd during a night when law enforcement made several arrests following windows being smashed and fires set as people marched through the city.
(The Independent, 5/26/21)
2021 May 25, Former US Senator John Warner (94) of Virginia, who at times clashed with fellow Republicans during his three decades in office, died in Alexandria, Va., of heart failure.
(Reuters, 5/26/21)
2021 May 25, A US federal judge dismissed an indictment against Steve Bannon, former chief strategist to President Donald Trump, that accused him of taking part in a scheme to defraud donors to a crowdfunding campaign to build a wall along the southern border. District Judge Analisa Torres dismissed the indictment against Bannon based on his presidential pardon.
(CBS News, 5/26/21)
2021 May 25, Moderna said its COVID-19 vaccine was shown to be effective in adolescents aged 12-17 and showed no new or major safety problems in a clinical trial.
(Reuters, 5/25/21)
2021 May 25, Australia's city of Melbourne increased pandemic restrictions after identifying a cluster from someone infected in quarantine. Restrictions will apply until June 4.
(SFC, 5/26/21, p.A5)
2021 May 25, In Austria world powers opened a fifth round of talks with Iran aimed at bringing the United States back into the landmark 2015 nuclear deal meant to prevent the Islamic Republic from obtaining an atomic bomb.
(AP, 5/25/21)
2021 May 25, Belarus’ isolation deepened as commercial planes avoided its airspace, the European Union worked up new sanctions, and a senior UN official said he was concerned for the welfare of Raman Pratasevich, the opposition journalist arrested in Minsk after his plane was diverted there. The UN human rights watchdog demanded that Belarus release Protasevich.
(AP, 5/25/21)(Reuters, 5/25/21)
2021 May 25, It was reported that mafia drug baron Rocco Morabito, nicknamed the King of Cocaine, has been arrested in Brazil after more than two decades on the run. Italy’s second most wanted fugitive is now expected to be extradited to Italy, where he was convicted in absentia of drug trafficking and mafia association and sentenced to 30 years in prison.
(The Telegraph, 5/25/21)
2021 May 25, Britain's Arm Ltd deepened its rivalry with Intel Corp by releasing a batch of new chip technology aimed at grabbing more market share among laptop computers.
(Reuters, 5/25/21)
2021 May 25, EU leaders agreed to donate at least 100 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines to poorer nations by the end of the year as supplies steadily rise across Europe.
(AP, 5/25/21)
2021 May 25, Europe's top human rights court ruled that British mass surveillance and intelligence-gathering practices breached human rights laws, in a partial victory for civil rights groups that had challenged the practices exposed by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.
(AP, 5/25/21)
2021 May 25, Tens of thousands of people were evacuated from low-lying areas of two Indian states and moved to shelters to escape Cyclone Yaas barreling toward the eastern coast.
(AP, 5/25/21)
2021 May 25, Hundreds of Iraqis took to the streets in Baghdad to protest what they say is the impunity of those behind a rising number of targeted killings of prominent activists and journalists.
(AP, 5/25/21)
2021 May 25, Israeli defence electronics specialist Elbit Systems reported higher quarterly profit and said it expects its night-vision business and other acquired operations to prosper as global defence spending continues to rise.
(Reuters, 5/25/21)
2021 May 25, Malaysia reported a record 7,289 new coronavirus infections. Confirmed deaths have spiked to more than 2,300.
(SFC, 5/26/21, p.A5)
2021 May 25, Mali’s former coup leader Assimi Goita took control of the West African country again after firing the president and prime minister of the transitional government following their announcement of a cabinet reshuffle without his permission. Goita pledged to go ahead with holding new elections in 2022 as previously promised.
(AP, 5/25/21)
2021 May 25, The Russian military said it has deployed three nuclear-capable long-range bombers to its base in Syria, a move that could strengthen Moscow's military foothold in the Mediterranean.
(AP, 5/25/21)
2021 May 25, Russia shipped a generic version of the remdesivir antiviral drug called Remdeform to India as part of its humanitarian aid contributions to the South Asian country which is fighting a surge in COVID-19 cases.
(Reuters, 5/25/21)
2021 May 25, Russia's consumer health watchdog in the Yakutia region said that all employers must organize COVID-19 vaccines for their employees in a bid to speed up inoculation there.
(Reuters, 5/25/21)
2021 May 25, Somalia’s foreign minister told the UN Security Council that an agreement has been reached between the federal government and regional states that will lead to long-delayed national elections.
(AP, 5/25/21)
2021 May 25, Spain's state-owned Correos Espana issued a set of four stamps in different skin-colored tones on the anniversary of George Floyd's death in Minnesota. The "Equality Stamps" stirred backlash as they were priced by skin color with the darker stamps priced lower than the lighter ones.
(SFC, 5/29/21, p.A3)
2021 May 25, Vietnam widened lockdown measures in its industrialized north to combat its biggest COVID-19 outbreak so far, as authorities reported a daily record in new cases that was more than double the previous high.
(Reuters, 5/25/21)
2021 May 26, President Joe Biden ordered US intelligence officials to “redouble" their efforts to investigate the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, including any possibility the trail might lead to a Chinese laboratory.
(AP, 5/26/21)
2021 May 26, The Biden administration defended a huge Trump-era oil and gas project in the North Slope of Alaska designed to produce more than 100,000 barrels of oil a day for the next 30 years, despite President Biden’s pledge to pivot the country away from fossil fuels.
(NY Times, 5/26/21)
2021 May 26, US President Joe Biden called for a ceasefire in Ethiopia's conflict in the northern region of Tigray. Biden also highlighted the possibility of famine.
(BBC, 5/27/21)
2021 May 26, It was reported that scores of Romanians, who are part of the Roma ethnic minority, have crossed the US-Mexico border in south Texas in recent weeks to seek asylum.
(Reuters, 5/26/21)
2021 May 26, A shooting at a maintenance and dispatch center for the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority in San Jose, Calif., left 10 people dead, including the gunman, and others injured. Officials identified the gunman as Samuel James Cassidy (57), a maintenance worker who had been with the V.T.A. for at least a decade. Police later found 22,000 rounds of ammunition at Cassidy's home In 2022 relatives of 8 of the 9 people shot reached an $8 million settlement with the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority.
(NY Times, 5/26/21)(SFC, 5/29/21, p.A1)(SFC, 11/14/22, p.A4)
2021 May 26, California to date had 3,754,579 cases of coronavirus and 62,660 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 443,330 cases and 6,549 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 33,189,877 with the death toll at 591,941.
(sfist.com, 5/26/21)
2021 May 26, Jerome Hellman (b.1928), who produced “Midnight Cowboy" (1969), the only X-rated film ever to win the best picture Academy Award, died at his home in South Egremont, Mass. He solidified his reputation with other tough-minded dramas, like the Oscar-winning “Coming Home" (1978).
(NY Times, 6/3/21)
2021 May 26, It was reported that beef prices are surging worldwide, taking meat off the menu in steak-loving Buenos Aires and spoiling summer barbecues in the United States as Chinese imports rise and the cost of feeding cattle soars.
(Reuters, 5/26/21)
2021 May 26, Amazon announced that it is buying MGM for $8.45 billion, adding Rocky, James Bond and more to its Prime video streaming service.
(NY Times, 5/26/21)
2021 May 26, Ford Motor Co outlined plans to boost spending on its electrification efforts by more than a third and said it aims to have 40% of its global volume be all electric by 2030, sending shares up 6.5% to a near five-year high.
(Reuters, 5/26/21)
2021 May 26, Belgium suspended the use of the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine for people under age 41 following the death of a person who had received the shot.
(AP, 5/26/21)
2021 May 26, China's ambassador to Nepal said China will provide 1 million doses of a COVID-19 vaccine to Nepal, as authorities in the Himalayan country scrambled to secure shots amid a surge in infections that has overwhelmed its rickety health system.
(Reuters, 5/26/21)
2021 May 26, France declared a mandatory quarantine period for people coming from Britain due to the increasing prevalence there of a highly contagious coronavirus variant first detected in India.
(Reuters, 5/26/21)
2021 May 26, President Hassan Rouhani said Iran has banned the energy-intensive mining of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin for nearly 4 months, as the country faces major power blackouts in many cities.
(Reuters, 5/26/21)
2021 May 26, In Iraq tensions mounted in Baghdad after the arrest on terrorism charges of militia commander Qassim Mahmoud Musleh, prompting a dangerous showdown by the detainee's paramilitary supporters and the Iraqi government. Musleh was released on June 9 due to insufficient evidence.
(AP, 5/26/21)(AP, 6/9/21)
2021 May 26, In Nigeria scores of people were missing feared dead after a boat carrying about 180 broke in two and sank in the Niger River. Most passengers were women and children traveling from Niger state to neighboring Kebbi state. Authorities later confirmed that at least 60 people died in the boat accident. 83 missing passengers were also feared dead.
(BBC, 5/27/21)(AP, 5/28/21)
2021 May 26, A Dutch court ordered Royal Dutch Shell to cut its carbon emissions by net 45% by 2030 compared to 2019 levels in a landmark case brought by climate activism groups, which hailed the decision as a victory for the planet.
(AP, 5/26/21)
2021 May 26, CEO Jacob Schram said low-cost carrier Norwegian Air Shuttle “has been saved," adding it had “written history" as the ailing airline had struggled with fallout from the coronavirus pandemic and a debt restructuring plan.
(AP, 5/26/21)
2021 May 26, Police in Oman fired tear gas at demonstrators in Sohar amid unrest over the sultanate's floundering economy and mass layoffs.
(AP, 5/26/21)
2021 May 26, Pakistan opened up its coronavirus vaccination campaign to everyone aged 19 or older as it scrambles to protect more of its 220 million people.
(Reuters, 5/26/21)
2021 May 26, Yehiyeh Sinwar, Hamas’ leader in the Gaza Strip, said 80 militants were killed during the 11-day war with Israel that ended last week, providing the group’s first official tally for losses sustained in the fighting. Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry has put the number of Palestinians killed in the Israeli offensive this month at 254, including 66 children, 39 women, and 17 people above the age of 60.
(AP, 5/26/21)
2021 May 26, It was reported that a legal appeal by former US Marine Trevor Reed, who is serving a jail term in Russia, was postponed after he tested positive for COVID-19 on May 23.
(Reuters, 5/26/21)
2021 May 26, Slovakia became the 2nd EU country to authorized use of the Russian-made Sputnik V vaccine, which has not yet been approved by the EU's drug regulator.
(SFC, 5/27/21, p.A5)
2021 May 26, Jacob Zuma, the former South African president, pleaded not guilty in a corruption trial involving a $5bn (£3bn) arms deal from the 1990s.
(AP, 5/26/21)
2021 May 26, Sudan’s transitional government and the main rebel group kicked off a new round of peace talks, the latest effort to end a decades-long conflict in the East African country.
(AP, 5/26/21)
2021 May 26, Switzerland said "no deal" to Brussels’ freedom of movement demands and pulled out of seven years of tortured trade negotiations with the European Union.
(The Telegraph, 5/27/21)
2021 May 26, Syrians in government-held areas of the war-torn country headed to polling stations to vote in a presidential election guaranteed to give President Bashar Assad a fourth seven-year term. Assad was re-elected in a reported landslide following an election described as illegitimate and a sham by the West and his opposition.
(AP, 5/26/21)(AP, 5/27/21)
2021 May 26, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said a series of severe allegations made against members of his entourage by a fugitive mafia boss were a plot against Turkey, and vowed to fight criminal gangs.
(AP, 5/26/21)
2021 May 26, Yemeni officials demanded answers after an Associated Press report highlighted a mysterious air base being built on a Yemeni island in one of the world's crucial maritime chokepoints. The runway on Mayun Island allows whoever controls it to project power into the strait and easily launch airstrikes into mainland Yemen. Military officials said the UAE is building the runway.
(AP, 5/26/21)
2021 May 27, The US EPA reversed a Trump era policy and restored a rule that grants states and native American tribes authority to block pipelines and other energy projects that can pollute waterways.
(SFC, 5/28/21, p.A4)
2021 May 27, US federal officials said Boeing will pay at least $17 million and take steps to fix production problems on its 737 jets including the Max planes built between 2015 and 2019.
(SFC, 5/28/21, p.B2)
2021 May 27, Microsoft Corporation disclosed that hackers linked to Russia’s main intelligence agency surreptitiously seized an email system used by the State Department’s international aid agency to burrow into the computer networks of human rights groups and other organizations of the sort that have been critical of President Vladimir V. Putin.
(NY Times, 5/28/21)
2021 May 27, California's Gov. Gavin Newsom announced financial incentives totaling $116.5 million to boost the number of people getting coronavirus vaccinations.
(SFC, 5/28/21, p.A1)
2021 May 27, California to date had 3,756,303 cases of coronavirus and 62,702 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 443,561 cases and 6,573 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 33,213,320 with the death toll at 593,156.
(sfist.com, 5/28/21)
2021 May 27, A boat filled with migrants from Cuba overturned near the Florida Keys. The US Coast Guard rescued 8 people. Two bodies were recovered and ten people remained missing.
(SFC, 5/29/21, p.A3)
2021 May 27, Idaho's Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin issued an executive order banning mask mandates in schools and public buildings while GOP Gov. Brad Little was out of state. Gov. Little repealed her order the next day.
(SFC, 5/29/21, p.A4)
2021 May 27, The New York City Council voted overwhelmingly to increase a housing subsidy in hopes of making thousands of apartments affordable to people who are homeless or facing eviction.
(NY Times, 5/27/21)
2021 May 27, The World Organization for Animal Health recognized four additional Brazilian states as free of foot-and-mouth disease without the need for vaccinations.
(Reuters, 5/27/21)
2021 May 27, GlaxoSmithKline of Britain and Sanofi of France launched a large trial for another potential COVID-19 vaccine.
(SFC, 5/28/21, p.A5)
2021 May 27, It was reported that tens of thousands of people have been evacuated from the city of Goma in the Democratic Republic of Congo over fears of another volcanic eruption.
(BBC, 5/27/21)
2021 May 27, Egyptian Pres. Abdel Fattah el-Sissi held talks with Pres. Ismail Omar Guelleh in Djibouti as part of Egyptian diplomatic attempts to build more African alliances amid an ongoing water dispute with Ethiopia.
(AP, 5/27/21)
2021 May 27, The EU called on Iran to review a case of Narges Mohammadi, a prominent female human rights activist, who was sentenced to 30 months in prison and 80 lashes on charges of protesting against the killing of protesters during the country's 2019 unrest.
(AP, 5/27/21)
2021 May 27, President Emmanuel Macron of France began a 2-day visit to Rwanda and said his country had “a duty to confront history and to recognize its part of the suffering it inflicted on the Rwandan people".
(NY Times, 5/27/21)
2021 May 27, Germany and Norway inaugurated a new undersea cable that directly links the two countries' electricity networks, a project that has been described as a key step in Europe's effort to shift away from fossil fuels to renewable energy.
(AP, 5/27/21)
2021 May 27, Hong Kong's legislature passed a bill amending electoral laws that drastically reduces the public's ability to vote and increases the number of pro-Beijing lawmakers making decisions for the city.
(SFC, 5/28/21, p.A2)
2021 May 27, Carla Fracci (84), former prima ballerina at La Scalla, died at her home in Milan.
(SFC, 5/29/21, p.F1)
2021 May 27, Samir Sfeir, a Lebanese singer and composer known for his strong opinions, arrived in Beirut after a 50-day detention in Saudi Arabia because of opinions expressed online in support of Lebanon’s president and his ally the Iran-backed Hezbollah.
(AP, 5/28/21)
2021 May 27, Mali's former junta leader Col Assimi Goïta declared himself the country's transitional president after stripping interim President Bah Ndaw and PM Moctar Ouane of their powers.. The two ousted leaders were freed from military detention.
(BBC, 5/27/21)
2021 May 27, Namibian media said Germany has agreed to fund projects worth more than a billion euros over 30 years to atone for its role in genocide and property seizures in its-then colony more than a century ago.
(Reuters, 5/27/21)
2021 May 27, Russia blocked at least two European planes from landing in Moscow because they planned to avoid Belarusian airspace.
(Axios, 5/27/21)
2021 May 27, Russia said it has signed an agreement to supply the UN children's fund UNICEF with enough doses of its Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine for 110 million people.
(Reuters, 5/27/21)
2021 May 27, Russia's Supreme Court rejected a lawsuit from US company Gilead Sciences that challenged a Russian government decision to let a Russian firm develop and market the anti-COVID-19 drug remdesivir without Gilead's consent.
(Reuters, 5/27/21)
2021 May 27, A Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen acknowledged having equipment on an island in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait where a mysterious air base is now under construction.
(AP, 5/27/21)
2021 May 27, A Spanish court imposed prison sentences ranging from 8 to 53 years on the three surviving members of an extremist Islamist cell that killed 16 people and injured 140 others in two consecutive attacks in and near Barcelona on August 17, 2017.
(AP, 5/27/21)
2021 May 27, Thailand said it is ramping up efforts to curb trade in wildlife to help reduce the risk of future pandemics, though it was unclear whether that would mean an end to all sales of exotic species in the wildlife trafficking hub.
(AP, 5/27/21)
2021 May 27, The UN launched an emergency appeal for $95 million for Gaza for the next three months to meet immediate humanitarian needs and repairs to key facilities destroyed or damaged during the recent conflict between Israel and Gaza’s militant Hamas rulers.
(AP, 5/27/21)
2021 May 27, The United Nations Human Rights Council agreed to establish a commission of inquiry to investigate possible "violations of international humanitarian law" during the recent fighting between Israel and Hamas.
(Axios, 5/27/21)
2021 May 28, US Senate Republicans blocked the creation of a bipartisan panel to investigate the deadly Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, displaying continuing party loyalty to former President Donald Trump. The vote was 54-35, six short of the 60 needed, to take up a House-passed bill that would have formed an independent 10-member commission evenly split between the two parties.
(AP, 5/28/21)
2021 May 28, The Biden administration announced new crackdowns against Belarus as punishment for forcing down a Ryanair flight to arrest an opposition journalist.
(Axios, 5/28/21)
2021 May 28, The US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) said US companies can mandate that employees in a workplace must be vaccinated against COVID-19.
(Reuters, 5/28/21)
2021 May 28, The US FDA approved Amgen's drug Lumakras to treat non-small cell lung cancer with the mutation in patients who have worsened after initial treatment with at least one other drug. Lumakras will cost $17,900 per month, though most patients will pay less.
(SSFC, 5/30/21, p.A12)
2021 May 28, Bitcoin slumped to its lowest this week, taking losses sparked by a growing crackdown in China and environmental concerns to almost 40% so far this month.
(Reuters, 5/28/21)
2021 May 28, The Alaska Supreme Court upheld the legality of a state law that allows young Alaskans to face trial as adults for misdemeanor drunken-driving crimes.
(Tribune Publ., 6/2/21)
2021 May 28, California to date had 3,761,672 cases of coronavirus and 62,872 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 443,747 cases and 6,590 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 33,237,543 with the death toll at 593,881.
(sfist.com, 5/29/21)
2021 May 28, It was reported that Texas-based Exxon Mobil's three largest refineries - two in Texas and one in Louisiana - are the nation's top three emitters of small particulate matter.
(Reuters, 5/28/21)
2021 May 28, It was reported that about 500 Belarusian farm workers recruited under a Government visa scheme to help Britain bring in its summer harvest are trapped in Belarus by the flight hijack crisis.
(The Telegraph, 5/28/21)
2021 May 28, In Belize Superintendent Henry Jemmott was found dead early today of a single gunshot wound to the head. Jasmine Hartin, who is married to the son of Lord Michael Ashcroft, was reportedly socializing with Jemmott before he was killed. Ms Hartin was soon charged with manslaughter by negligence in connection with Jemmott's death. Hartin was granted bail on June 9 of about $15,000.
(The Daily Beast, 5/29/21)(The Independent, 6/1/21)(Washington Examiner, 6/10/21)
2021 May 28, The UK authorized for use the single-dose vaccine made by Johnson & Johnson amid growing concerns about a rise in new infections as the variant of the virus first identified in India spreads around the country.
(AP, 5/28/21)
2021 May 28, Chinese President Xi Jinping called for accelerated efforts in building China into a leader in science and technology and achieving sci-tech self-reliance and self-strengthening at higher levels.
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=P0905Iip5JA)
2021 May 28, Colombia's Pres. Ivan Duque announced the deployment of military forces to the city of Cali. At least 13 people died in Cali, the epicenter of demonstrations across the country. The next day Mayor Jorge Ivan Ospina said many of those deaths may have been linked to protests. More than 40 people have been killed and 2,200 civilians and police injured since the protests started on April 28.
(Reuters, 5/29/21)(SSFC, 5/30/21, p.A6)
2021 May 28, The Danish government presented its digital coronavirus passport enabling people to travel abroad or, in Denmark, go to the hairdresser, a tattoo parlor, dine inside a restaurant or wherever else it is needed.
(AP, 5/28/21)
2021 May 28, The European Medicines Agency recommended that the use of the coronavirus vaccine made by Pfizer and BioNTech be expanded to children ages 12 to 15, a decision that offers younger and less at-risk populations across the continent access to a COVID-19 shot for the first time.
(AP, 5/28/21)
2021 May 28, In western France a man with severe schizophrenia, who had been on a watch list for Islamic radicalism, stabbed a police officer at her station and shot two other officers before police killed him in the Nantes suburb of La Chapelle-sur-Erdre.
(AP, 5/28/21)
2021 May 28, Germany formally recognized and said it would ask for forgiveness for the early 20th century genocide of the Herero and Nama people in present-day Namibia.
(Axios, 5/28/21)
2021 May 28, Hong Kong authorities sentenced 10 pro-democracy politicians and activists, including media mogul Jimmy Lai, to an extra 14-18 months in prison over a 2019 protest.
(Axios, 5/28/21)
2021 May 28, Hungary said it has identified two cases of the coronavirus variant first detected in India. An especially lethal third wave has been easing after an aggressive vaccination campaign.
(Reuters, 5/28/21)
2021 May 28, Indonesian authorities released two oil tankers — the Iranian-flagged MT Horse and Panamanian-flagged MT Freya — after a four-month detention for illegally transferring oil in Indonesian waters.
(AP, 5/29/21)
2021 May 28, Several hundred Indonesians protested what they called American support for Israel outside the US Embassy and the UN mission in Jakarta.
(AP, 5/28/21)
2021 May 28, Malaysia's PM Muhyiddin Yassin announced a near-total lockdown in the country for two weeks to contain a worsening coronavirus outbreak.
(SFC, 5/29/21, p.A4)
2021 May 28, Mali's constitutional court named the leader of the country's military coup, Colonel Assimi Goïta, as its transitional president.
(BBC, 5/28/21)
2021 May 28, A Palestinian man was shot and killed by Israeli troops during a protest against settlement expansion near the town of Beita in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
(AP, 5/28/21)
2021 May 28, Russia's Pres. Vladimir Putin met with Belarus dictator Alexander Lukashenko in the Black Sea resort of Sochi. Lukashenko pressed a briefcase of mysterious documents onto Putin, saying it contained everything he needed to know about what “really happened" with the forced landing of Ryanair flight in Minsk.
(The Telegraph, 5/28/21)
2021 May 28, Five former Russian police officers were convicted on charges of fabricating evidence in the 2019 drug arrest of Ivan Golunov, a prominent investigative journalist. The court sentenced the former officers, who have been in custody since their January 2020 arrests, to prison terms of five to 12 years and ordered them to pay Golunov damages.
(AP, 5/28/21)
2021 May 28, Moscow's deputy ambassador to the United Nations said six hundred Russian soldiers requested by the Central African Republic this month are "unarmed instructors".
(AFP, 5/28/21)
2021 May 28, Spain's Environment Ministry said the Iberian lynx population in Portugal and Spain rose above 1,000 last year after 414 cubs were born under a joint breeding program, in a major leap towards conserving the endangered species.
(Reuters, 5/28/21)
2021 May 28, The Swiss government blamed the state intelligence leadership for concealing that Swiss company Crypto AG had for decades sold encryption devices as a front for the US and German spy agencies, insisting the cabinet itself had remained in the dark.
(Reuters, 5/28/21)
2021 May 28, Industry sources said a rapidly spreading COVID-19 outbreak has left factories operating below capacity in Vietnam's industrial northern provinces, where suppliers for Apple, Samsung and other global tech firms are located.
(Reuters, 5/28/21)
2021 May 29, Hollywood actor Steven Seagal, a long-time admirer of Russian President Vladimir Putin and a Russian citizen since 2016, received a party membership card of an alliance named Just Russia - Patriots - For Truth. The party was formed earlier this year, when three leftist parties, all of which support Putin, merged into one.
(Reuters, 5/30/21)
2021 May 29, California to date had 3,762,295 cases of coronavirus and 62,900 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 443,801 cases and 6,593 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 33,242,777 with the death toll at 594,019.
(sfist.com, 5/30/21)
2021 May 29, Gavin MacLeod (90), who played a wise-cracking news writer on the classic 1970s US sitcom "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" and the hospitable cruise ship captain on "The Love Boat," died in Palm Desert, Ca.
(Reuters, 5/29/21)
2021 May 29, It was reported that a group of 117 healthcare workers at a Texas hospital filed a lawsuit in state court against their employer's mandate requiring all staff to get COVID-19 vaccinations. On June 12 US District Judge Lynn Hughes of Houston deemed lead plaintiff Jennifer Bridges’ contention that the vaccines are “experimental and dangerous" to be false and otherwise irrelevant.
(AP, 5/30/21)(AP, 6/13/21)
2021 May 29, Grammy-winning singer B.J. Thomas (78) died at his home in Arlington, Texas. His songs included "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head" (1969) and "Hey Won't You Play" (1975). The Raindrops song was written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David for the film "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" (1969).
(SFC, 5/31/21, p.B5)
2021 May 29, In northern Utah one man died and another man suffered severe burns when their single-engine aircraft crashed this morning near the Powder Mountain area near Eden.
(AP, 5/29/21)
2021 May 29, In Bangladesh Habib Talukder (50), a notorious poacher accused of killing at least 70 endangered Bengal tigers, was caught after evading arrest for 20 years.
(The Telegraph, 6/1/21)
2021 May 29, The head of Belarusian national airline Belavia condemned as "despicable" the decision by numerous EU countries to impose airspace restrictions on the carrier following the forced landing of a passenger jet in Minsk.
(Reuters, 5/29/21)
2021 May 29, In Belgium thousands of protesters angry at pandemic-related restrictions marched to European Union headquarters in Brussels and had minor tussles with police over their unauthorized gathering.
(AP, 5/29/21)
2021 May 29, British PM Boris Johnson and his fiancée Carrie Symonds married in a small private ceremony in London.
(AP, 5/30/21)
2021 May 29, In Canada the remains of 215 children, some as young as 3 years old, have been found buried on the site of what was once the country's largest Indigenous residential school. The Kamloops in British Columbia school operated between 1890 and 1969, when the federal government took over operations from the Catholic Church and operated it as a day school until it closed in 1978.
(AP, 5/29/21)
2021 May 29, China's southern city of Guangzhou shut down a neighborhood and ordered its residents to stay home for door-to-door coronavirus testing following a surge in infections. The city has reported 20 new cases in the last week.
(SFC, 5/31/21, p.A5)
2021 May 29, China successfully launched an automated cargo resupply spacecraft to rendezvous with an orbiting module, in the second of a series of missions needed to complete its first permanent space station. Tianzhou-2 is the second of 11 missions needed to complete China's first self-developed space station around 2022.
(Reuters, 5/29/21)
2021 May 29, It was reported that Congo-Brazzaville's President Denis Sassou-Nguesso has appointed his son Denis-Christel as a cabinet minister - a move that has revived media speculation that he has a dynastic succession in mind.
(BBC, 5/29/21)
2021 May 29, An Egyptian court adjourned the case of a hulking cargo vessel that blocked the Suez Canal for nearly a week earlier this year. The move is to allow more time for negotiations aiming at resolving a financial dispute between the Suez Canal Authority and the vessel’s owner.
(AP, 5/29/21)
2021 May 29, An Ethiopian national working for an Italian charity was killed in the war-hit Tigray region after he was “hit by a stray bullet." He is the ninth aid worker reported killed in Tigray since fighting broke out there nearly seven months ago.
(AP, 6/1/21)
2021 May 29, Lebanon’s health authorities launched a COVID-19 vaccination “marathon" to speed up inoculations around the country, including areas where turnout has so far been low.
(AP, 5/29/21)
2021 May 29, In Nigeria kidnappers released the remaining 14 students who had been held captive after being abducted last month from a northern university.
(Reuters, 5/29/21)
2021 May 29, North Korea's KCNA reported that more than 700 orphans had volunteered to work on cooperative farms, an iron and steel complex, and in forestry, among other areas. According to a 2020 US State Department report on human rights practices, in some cases children ages 16 and 17 were enrolled in military-style construction brigades for 10-year periods and subjected to long working hours and hazardous work.
(Reuters, 5/29/21)
2021 May 29, In Switzerland activists from the group Doctors For Extinction Rebellion, concerned about the effects on public health of environmental degradation, marched on the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva, demanding health authorities make climate change and biodiversity loss their top priorities.
(Reuters, 5/29/21)
2021 May 29, Syria was among 12 WHO member states that were chosen to appoint new members for the 34-member board in an assembly vote that faced no debate or opposition. The appointment of Syria sparked outrage in opposition-held Idlib province.
(AP, 5/31/21)
2021 May 29, Vietnam's health minister said they discovered a new coronavirus variant that’s a hybrid of strains first found in India and the UK. In the last few weeks, Vietnam has confirmed more than 3,500 new cases and 12 deaths, increasing the country’s total death toll to 47.
(AP, 5/29/21)
2021 May 30, California to date had 3,763,398 cases of coronavirus and 62,922 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 444,084 cases and 6,602 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 33,253,008 with the death toll at 594,324.
(sfist.com, 5/31/21)
2021 May 30, In Florida assailants opened fire on a crowd outside a concert early today, killing two people and wounding more than 20 at the El Mula Banquet Hall near Hialeah.
(Reuters, 5/30/21)
2021 May 30, After an overnight debate, the Texas state Senate voted along party lines to pass the bill, whose provisions include limiting early hours to cast ballots, banning drive-through polling sites and placing new requirements on voters. Texas Democrats walked out of the State Legislature late today to block a bill restricting voter access. Republicans vowed to revive it.
(Reuters, 5/30/21)(NY Times, 6/1/21)
2021 May 30, Afghanistan shutdown all of its public and private universities and schools for at least two weeks following a surge in coronavirus cases.
(SSFC, 5/30/21, p.A7)
2021 May 30, It was reported that farmers in Australia's New South Wales state were being threatened by an unprecedented mouse plague. The state government has ordered 1,320 gallons of the banned poison Bromadiolone from India.
(SFC, 5/29/21, p.A8)
2021 May 30, Australia's Victoria state reported five new local COVID-19 cases, including in a worker at a Melbourne aged care facility where not all of the residents have been vaccinated.
(Reuters, 5/30/21)
2021 May 30, In Belarus Aliaksei Shota, an editor for the popular Internet news site Hrodna.life, was detained amid a crackdown on independent journalists and opponents of authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko. A bus carrying unidentified men pulled up outside Shota’s residence and seized him.
(AP, 5/30/21)
2021 May 30, An automated spacecraft docked with China's new space station carrying fuel and supplies for its future crew. The Tianzhou-2 spacecraft reached the Tianhe station eight hours after blasting off from Hainan.
(AP, 5/30/21)
2021 May 30, Cypriots voted to elect a new parliament, with opinion polls suggesting that the country’s two main parties will hemorrhage support as disenchanted voters seek out alternatives among a number of smaller parties.
(AP, 5/30/21)
2021 May 30, More than 10,000 people attended an anti-US rally in Ethiopia's capital, Addis Ababa, to denounce President Joe Biden's policy on the conflict in the country's northern region of Tigray. Other rallies denouncing the US were also held in other cities including Diredawa, Harar and Gambella.
(BBC, 5/30/21)
2021 May 30, India reported its lowest daily rise in new coronavirus infections in 46 days at 165,553 cases during the previous 24 hours, while deaths rose by 3,460.
(Reuters, 5/30/21)
2021 May 30, In Israel Naftali Bennett, leader of the small hardline Yamina party and a former ally of PM Benjamin Netanyahu, said he would seek to form a coalition government with the Israeli leader's opponents, taking a major step toward ending the rule of the longtime premier.
(AP, 5/30/21)
2021 May 30, It was reported that American tire manufacturer Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co is facing accusations of unpaid wages, unlawful overtime and threats to foreign workers at its Malaysian factory.
(Reuters, 5/31/21)
2021 May 30, In New Zealand hundreds of people were evacuated overnight and many more face the risk of abandoning their homes in the Canterbury region as heavy rains raised water levels and caused widespread flooding.
(Reuters, 5/30/21)
2021 May 30, In Nigeria gunmen seized an unknown number of students from the school in the town of Tegina. A teacher told the BBC that 150 students were missing, while other reports put the figure at about 200.
(BBC, 5/31/21)
2021 May 30, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa announced that his country will return to stricter lockdown measures in the face of a sharp rise in COVID-19 cases that indicate the virus is “surging again" in Africa's worst-affected nation.
(AP, 5/30/21)
2021 May 30, The International Criminal Court’s prosecutor urged Sudan’s transitional government to hand over suspects wanted for war crimes and genocide in the Darfur conflict.
(AP, 5/30/21)
2021 May 30, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet called for investigations into the deaths of anti-government protesters in Cali, Colombia, following violent clashes between protesters and the military.
(AP, 5/30/21)
2021 May 30, Vietnam said business hub Ho Chi Minh City will begin social distancing measures for 15 days starting from May 31 in an effort to curb the spread of COVID-19.
(AP, 5/30/21)
2021 May 31, California to date had 3,763,415 cases of coronavirus and 62,926 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 444,097 cases and 6,602 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 33,260,464 with the death toll at 594,461.
(sfist.com, 6/1/21)
2021 May 31, Texas rapper Lil Loaded (20), born as Dashawn Robertson, died by suicide. He won viral success with a 2019 single and was facing a manslaughter charge in a fatal shooting last year. Robertson's 2019 song "6locc 6a6y" was awarded a gold certification last week by the Recording Industry Association of America.
(AP, 6/1/21)
2021 May 31, Virginia Tech football player freshman linebacker Isimemen Etute (18) punched and stomped his Tinder match Jerry Smith (40) to death after learning he was a man. Etute was immediately suspended from the football team and Virginia Tech, where he majored in human development, and was soon charged with second-degree murder.
(NBC News, 6/11/21)
2021 May 31, It was reported that Eli Lilly and Co's antibody drug combination has received an emergency use approval in India for the treatment of mild-to-moderate COVID-19, bolstering the country's arsenal of medicines to tackle a devastating second wave of the pandemic.
(AP, 5/31/21)
2021 May 31, Officials from around the globe began three weeks of grueling climate talks that will involve grappling with a number of thorny political issues without the benefit of face-to-face meetings, due to pandemic restrictions.
(AP, 5/31/21)
2021 May 31, The NATO military alliance said it is restricting access to its headquarters for a group of Belarus officials in the wake of Minsk’s decision to divert a Ryanair passenger plane to arrest a dissident journalist earlier this month.
(AP, 5/31/21)
2021 May 31, China’s ruling Communist Party said it will ease birth limits to allow all couples to have three children instead of two in hopes of slowing the rapid aging of its population, which is adding to strains on the economy and society.
(AP, 5/31/21)
2021 May 31, In eastern CongoDRC attacks on two villages overnight in Ituri province left at least 49 people dead.
(SFC, 5/31/21, p.A4)
2021 May 31, Two suspects were arrested in Germany and Slovakia in raids on a group accused of smuggling Vietnamese into Germany and other European countries for large fees that they had to work off in massage parlors, brothels and other places. Police found 13 people who were in Germany illegally during the raids in several parts of Germany.
(AP, 5/31/21)
2021 May 31, In Iran a Chinese man was arrested in Kashan for posting videos on social media of his intimate conversations with Iranian women.
(AP, 6/1/21)
2021 May 31, It was reported that at least 34 candidates in Mexico have been murdered since campaigning started on 6 April, while dozens more have been targeted and attacked. Authorities have logged 398 threats or attacks on candidates ahead of the June 6 elections.
(The Guardian, 5/31/21)
2021 May 31, North Korea said the US allowing South Korea to build more powerful missiles was an example of the US’s hostile policy against the North, warning that it could lead to an “acute and instable situation" on the Korean Peninsula.
(AP, 5/31/21)
2021 May 31, Nikolai Patrushev, the secretary of Russia's presidential Security Council, said that a revised version of Russia's national security strategy says that it may use forceful methods to respond to unfriendly actions by foreign countries.
(AP, 5/31/21)
2021 May 31, The Russian military said it will form 20 new units in the country's west this year to counter what it claims is a growing threat from NATO.
(AP, 5/31/21)
2021 May 31, Imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny asked a court to halt the hourly nighttime checks he has been subjected to in his penal colony.
(AP, 5/31/21)
2021 May 31, Russia began production of the Aurus Senat luxury sedan car promoted by Pres. Vladimir Putin. Its most basic available features will cost 18 million rubles ($245,000).
(Reuters, 5/31/21)
2021 May 31, Somaliland held elections. People there hoped that the elections will boost the breakaway republic's chances of gaining international recognition as an independent state.
(BBC, 5/31/21)
2021 May 31, Swiss-based Nestle said it was working on updating its nutrition and health strategy after the Financial Times reported an internal document at the food giant described a large portion of its food and drinks as unhealthy.
(Reuters, 5/31/21)
2021 May 31, Turkey’s state-run news agency said Turkish agents have captured Selahaddin Gulen, a nephew of US-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, in an overseas operation and have brought him to Turkey where he faces prosecution.
(AP, 5/31/21)
2021 May 31, The BBC Africa Eye documentary "Three Killings in Kampala" was released. It presented evidence that Ugandan security forces fired indiscriminately at passers-by during a crackdown in November 2020. The editor of the Daily Monito, one of Uganda's biggest newspapers, was soon summoned for questioning by police after reporting findings from the BBC investigation into last year's police killings. Tony Glencross, the managing director of Nation Media Group, which owns the newspaper, was also summoned.
(BBC, 6/3/21)
2021 May 31, UNICEF said a severe acute childhood malnutrition is expected to more than double this year in Haiti as the country struggles with the coronavirus pandemic, a spike in violence and dwindling resources.
(AP, 5/31/21)
2021 May 31, The UN children agency said that the bodies of three children, who apparently were among Europe-bound migrants drowned in the Mediterranean Sea off Libya, washed ashore last week in the North African country.
(AP, 5/31/21)
2021 May 31, A Yemeni port worker died at the country's Red Sea port of Hodeida after he was hit by a container being offloaded from a vessel.
(AP, 6/1/21)
2021 May, In eSwatini law student Thabani Nkomonye's body was found outside the city of Manzini. Police said he was a victim of a car accident, but students alleged the police were involved in his death. Demonstrations erupted in response.
(AP, 6/29/21)
2021 Jun 1, President Biden visited Oklahoma and met with survivors of the 1921 attack in the Greenwood section of Tulsa, one of the worst outbreaks of racist violence in American history. “My fellow Americans, this was not a riot," Mr. Biden said, as people in the crowd rose to their feet. “This was a massacre".
(NY Times, 6/2/21)
2021 Jun 1, The Biden administration suspended oil drilling leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
(NY Times, 6/1/21)
2021 Jun 1, The Biden administration gave Chevron Corp. and several other American companies six more months to wind down their operations in Venezuela.
(SFC, 6/2/21, p.B2)
2021 Jun 1, The US Supreme Court endorsed Native American tribal police powers, backing the authority of a tribal officer in Montana to stop and search a non-Native American motorist on a public road on reservation land.
(Reuters, 6/1/21)
2021 Jun 1, The US Supreme Court declined to hear Johnson & Johnson's bid to overturn a $2.12 billion damages award to women who blamed their ovarian cancer on asbestos in the company's baby powder and other talc products.
(AP, 6/1/21)
2021 Jun 1, An off-duty Los Angeles County firefighter fatally shot a fellow firefighter and wounded another at their small community fire station in Agua Dulce before going to his nearby home, setting it on fire and apparently killing himself.
(AP, 6/1/21)
2021 Jun 1, California to date had 3,764,162 cases of coronavirus and 62,935 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 444,352 cases and 6,608 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 33,284,140 with the death toll at 595,181.
(sfist.com, 6/2/21)
2021 Jun 1, Ron DeSantis, Florida’s Republican governor, signed a bill banning transgender female student-athletes from competing in women’s sports.
(NY Times, 6/1/21)
2021 Jun 1, In Iowa a judge accepted the guilty plea of Jennifer Woodley (40), the former CEO of Make-A-Wish Iowa, who pleaded guilty last week to charges of embezzling tens of thousands of dollars from the charity that supports sick children and their families. Woodley's embezzlement totaled nearly $41,000, but restitution has not yet been set.
(AP, 6/2/21)
2021 Jun 1, Alkermes Plc said the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had approved its treatment, Lybalvi, for schizophrenia and bipolar I disorder.
(AP, 6/1/21)
2021 Jun 1, Amazon said that it will stop testing jobseekers for marijuana.
(AP, 6/1/21)
2021 Jun 1, Exabeam, a Silicon Valley startup that helps companies automate the analysis and monitoring of their cybersecurity data, said it raised $200 million in its latest round of funding which valued the company at $2.4 billion.
(Reuters, 6/1/21)
2021 Jun 1, The US confirmed that a cyberattack on Brazil-based JBS, the world’s largest meat processor, forced the shutdown of nine beef plants in the United States, and disrupted production at poultry and pork plants.
(NY Times, 6/1/21)(SFC, 6/2/21, p.B2)
2021 Jun 1, Moderna Inc filed for full US approval of its COVID-19 vaccine, which is currently only authorized for emergency use in the country, becoming the second drugmaker to seek a broader regulatory nod.
(Reuters, 6/1/21)
2021 Jun 1, Belarusian political activist Stepan Latypov (41) stabbed himself in the neck on the first day of his trial and was rushed to hospital. Following surgery Latypov was returned to prison.
(CBS News, 6/2/21)
2021 Jun 1, It was reported that Silicon Catalyst, an incubator of startup companies, has chosen Britain as the site of its first European operation.
(Reuters, 6/1/21)
2021 Jun 1, The World Health Organization (WHO) said it has approved a COVID-19 vaccine made by drugmaker Sinovac Biotech for emergency use listing, paving the way for a second Chinese shot to be used in poor countries.
(Reuters, 6/1/21)
2021 Jun 1, Representatives of the EU's 27 nations and the European Parliament agreed to a deal requiring large companies in the EU to reveal how much tax they paid in which country.
(AP, 6/2/21)
2021 Jun 1, Germany's foreign minister rejected the idea of delivering weapons to Ukraine after the country's president indicated that he would like military help from Berlin.
(AP, 6/1/21)
2021 Jun 1, Germany's public health agency lowered the coronavirus risk level to "high" from "very high" for the first time in 2021, reflecting a fall in the number of new infections.
(Reuters, 6/1/21)
2021 Jun 1, An Iranian F-5 fighter jet developed a “technical problem" that killed both of the aircraft's pilots in Dezful.
(AP, 6/1/21)
2021 Jun 1, In Israel Isaac Herzog, a veteran politician and the scion of a prominent Israeli family, was elected president, a largely ceremonial role that is meant to serve as the nation’s moral compass and promote unity.
(AP, 6/1/21)
2021 Jun 1, The World Bank said Lebanon’s severe economic and financial crisis is likely to rank as one of the worst the world has seen in more than 150 years.
(AP, 6/1/21)
2021 Jun 1, In Myanmar no more than a quarter of the country's more than 12 million pupils enrolled for the new school year amid a protest boycott against military rule and in the wake of a series of bombings.
(Reuters, 6/2/21)
2021 Jun 1, New Zealand announced that is was the latest country to sign a space agreement with NASA. New Zealand became the 11th signatory to the Artemis Accords.
(SFC, 6/2/21, p.A3)
2021 Jun 1, Nigeria's Pres. Buhari referred on Twitter to the 1967-70 Nigerian Civil War and to treating "those misbehaving today" in "the language they will understand." Twitter soon removed the statement for breaching the site's rules.
(BBC, 6/5/21)
2021 Jun 1, It was reported that Sicilian mafia boss Giovanni Brusca (64), known as “the pig" and “the people-slayer," has been released early from prison, prompting outrage from his victims’ relatives. He was notorious for having detonated the huge roadside bomb that blew up a crusading anti-mafia prosecutor, Giovanni Falcone, in 1992, and had a child dissolved in acid as revenge against an informant.
(The Telegraph, 6/1/21)
2021 Jun 1, South Korea's Yonhap news agency said North Korea's ruling party has amended its rules to create a de facto second-in-command under leader Kim Jong Un as he looks to revamp domestic politics.
(Reuters, 6/1/21)
2021 Jun 1, Swiss-based Novartis said it has signed a collaboration agreement and option to acquire Cellerys, a Zurich-based startup conducting research on a therapy to fight multiple sclerosis (MS).
(Reuters, 6/1/21)
2021 Jun 1, In Uganda gunmen attacked and wounded Transport Minister and former army commander, Gen Katumba Wamala, killing his daughter and driver.
(BBC, 6/1/21)
2021 Jun 1, The UN Foundation announced today that top global brands H&M and Banana Republic are once again partnering with UN Free & Equal for Pride Month this June to raise awareness and funds in support of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) equality worldwide.
(PR Newswire, 6/1/21)
2021 Jun 1, The UN said more than 90 percent of people in Ethiopia's war-torn Tigray region need emergency food aid, as it appealed for over $200 million to scale up its response.
(AP, 6/1/21)
2021 Jun 1, It was reported that Pope Francis has changed church law to explicitly criminalize the sexual abuse of adults by priests who abuse their authority, and to say that laypeople who hold church office can be sanctioned for similar sex crimes. The new provisions, released today after 14 years of study, were contained in the revised criminal law section of the Vatican’s Code of Canon Law.
(AP, 6/1/21)
2021 Jun 2, President Biden announced programs to pick up the US vaccination rate, including free child care and sports tickets.
(NY Times, 6/3/21)
2021 Jun 2, US federal authorities said a ring of Venezuelans who live in South Florida and Mexico have stolen more than $800,000 in US government stimulus checks from people who lost their jobs or struggled financially during the COVID-19 pandemic.
(AP, 6/2/21)
2021 Jun 2, California to date had 3,765,995 cases of coronavirus and 63,002 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 444,492 cases and 6,609 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 33,306,775 with the death toll at 595,818.
(sfist.com, 6/3/21)
2021 Jun 2, Churchill Downs suspended Bob Baffert, a seven-time winner of the Kentucky Derby and the most recognizable figure in the sport, from entering horses at the racetrack in Louisville for two years. This followed the confirmation of Medina Spirit’s positive drug test after the Kentucky Derby, setting the stage for the colt trained by Bob Baffert to be the second horse in the 147-year history of the race to be disqualified as its winner because of a failed drug test.
(AP, 6/2/21)
2021 Jun 2, It was reported that Democrat Melanie Stansbury handily won a special election in New Mexico, keeping a US House of Representatives seat in the hands of her party.
(Reuters, 6/2/21)
2021 Jun 2, A jury in Oklahoma recommended a death sentence for an alleged serial killer who was convicted of kidnapping a woman from a car wash and killing her more than 20 years ago. William Lewis Reece, who was convicted last week of first-degree murder for the 1997 kidnapping and killing of Tiffany Johnston (19). Formal sentencing was set for Aug. 19.
(AP, 6/3/21)
2021 Jun 2, Etsy Inc, e-commerce platforms for handmade goods and vintage items, said it would buy Generation-Z focused fashion resale company Depop for $1.63 billion, seeking to attract younger shoppers and bolster its position in a booming market in vintage or used clothing.
(Reuters, 6/2/21)
2021 Jun 2, It was reported that Tesla Inc has dropped radar sensors from its semi-autonomous driving system, Autopilot, raising concerns over the safety of the camera-only version, Tesla Vision.
(Reuters, 6/2/21)
2021 Jun 2, Britain and the European Union agreed the first ever annual deal on the management of shared fish stocks after Brexit. It must still be approved by EU governments.
(The Telegraph, 6/2/21)
2021 Jun 2, China National Pharmaceutical Group (Sinopharm) said it has the capacity to provide more than 1 billion COVID-19 vaccine doses to the world beyond China in the second half of this year.
(Reuters, 6/2/21)
2021 Jun 2, China's Huawei Technologies launched its Harmony operating system for smartphones, looking to recover from US sanctions that have hobbled its handset business.
(AP, 6/2/21)
2021 Jun 2, A herd of 15 wild elephants was approaching the city of Kunming, the capital of southwest China's Yunnan province, defying attempts to redirect them after a journey of several hundred kilometers from forests to the south.
(Reuters, 6/2/21)
2021 Jun 2, The European Union unveiled plans to revamp Europe’s ID check-free travel area after national coronavirus restrictions placed new strains on tourism, travel and business throughout the bloc over the last year.
(AP, 6/2/21)
2021 Jun 2, Iran's largest navy ship, known as the Kharg, caught on fire and sunk in the Gulf of Oman. No casualties were reported.
(Axios, 6/2/21)
2021 Jun 2, In Iran a fire, caused by a leak in two waste tanks, erupted late today at the state-owned Tondgooyan Petrochemical Co. to the south of Tehran. It was extinguished after more than 20 hours.
(AP, 6/3/21)
2021 Jun 2, Japan's PM Yoshihide Suga announced an additional $800 million contribution to the UN-backed initiative to provide COVID-19 vaccines to poor countries, a four-fold increase of Japanese funding for the COVAX program.
(AP, 6/2/21)
2021 Jun 2, A Russian court sent Andrei Pivovarov, the head of the Open Russia movement that has just disbanded itself, to jail pending a probe, as authorities continue to crack down on dissent ahead of September's parliamentary election.
(AP, 6/2/21)
2021 Jun 2, It was reported that Russia has administered at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine to more than 18 million people, around 12% of the population.
(Reuters, 6/2/21)
2021 Jun 2, Siam Bioscience and AstraZeneca said they would soon provide Thailand with 1.8 million doses of locally manufactured COVID-19 vaccine, the first of multiple batches this month, just days away from the launch of the country's vaccination drive.
(Reuters, 6/2/21)
2021 Jun 2, A UN-backed tribunal investigating the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese PM Rafik Hariri said it is facing a severe funding crisis and will not be able to operate beyond July without immediate assistance.
(AP, 6/2/21)
2021 Jun 2, The UN said Iran and the Central African Republic are in arrears on paying their dues to the UN operating budget and will lose their voting rights in the 193-member General Assembly.
(AP, 6/2/21)
2021 Jun 2, It was reported that coronavirus cases have surged in Uruguay. The country has reported more than 280,000 cases and more than 4,000 deaths since the pandemic began.
(SFC, 6/2/21, p.A5)
2021 Jun 3, Pres. Joe Biden issued a new executive order barring Americans from investing in Chinese firms that are linked to the country’s military or that sell surveillance technology used to repress dissent or religious minorities, both inside and outside China.
(NY Times, 6/3/21)
2021 Jun 3, The White House announced that President Joe Biden plans to allocate 75% of unused COVID-19 vaccines through the UN-backed COVAX global vaccine sharing program.
(AP, 6/3/21)
2021 Jun 3, The White House warned corporate executives and business leaders to step up security measures to protect against ransomware attacks after intrusions disrupted operations at a meatpacking company and a southeastern oil pipeline.
(Reuters, 6/3/21)
2021 Jun 3, The US Ambassador to the UN announced nearly $240 million in humanitarian funding to support the people of Syria, Syrian refugees and countries hosting them, and called for access through international crossings to allow the delivery of aid.
(AP, 6/3/21)
2021 Jun 3, The US Supreme Court narrowed the reach of a federal computer fraud law that seeks to address hacking and other cybercrimes, siding with a former Georgia police officer who was convicted of violating the measure after using his patrol-car computer to access a law enforcement database for license plate information in exchange for money.
(CBS News, 6/3/21)
2021 Jun 3, The US Academy of American Poets announced more than $1 million in grants for 23 local and state laureates.
(AP, 6/3/21)
2021 Jun 3, It was reported that California's more than 1,500 reservoirs are 50% lower than they should be this time of year.
(AP, 6/3/21)
2021 Jun 3, California to date had 3,766,071 cases of coronavirus and 63,002 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 444,761 cases and 6,609 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 33,326,054 with the death toll at 596,401.
(sfist.com, 6/4/21)
2021 Jun 3, Criminal lawyer F. Lee Bailey (87) died in Atlanta. He had invited juries into the twilight zone of reasonable doubt in defense of Patricia Hearst, O.J. Simpson, the Boston Strangler, the army commander at the My Lai Massacre in Vietnam and other notorious cases.
(NY Times, 6/3/21)
2021 Jun 3, In Minnesota Winston Smith (32) was shot by deputies from Ramsey and Hennepin counties on the top floor of a parking garage in Minneapolis as US marshals were attempting to arrest him on a warrant for a felony firearms violation. Protests soon followed.
(AP, 6/5/21)
2021 Jun 3, It was reported that a group of eight large companies, including tech and entertainment heavy hitters such as Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Salesforce, Disney and Netflix, are joining environmental groups and the UN to devise ways to scale funding for climate solutions. The collective will be called the Business Alliance to Scale Climate Solutions (BASCS), and will serve as a knowledge-sharing network that has the potential to accelerate companies' emissions reduction efforts.
(Axios, 6/3/21)
2021 Jun 3, Bristol Myers Squibb Co was sued for $6.4 billion for allegedly delaying its Breyanzi cancer drug to avoid payments to shareholders of the former Celgene Corp, which the drugmaker bought in 2019.
(Reuters, 6/3/21)
2021 Jun 3, The US Consumer Product Safety Commission said Fisher-Price is recalling its 4-in-1 Rock ‘n Glide Soother, a baby sleep product, after it was linked to reports of four infant deaths.
(NY Times, 6/6/21)
2021 Jun 3, Twitter Inc said it will roll out a new subscription product initially in Australia and Canada called Twitter Blue, which will let paying users edit their tweets before posting and change the color theme of their app.
(Reuters, 6/3/21)
2021 Jun 3, United Airlines said that it plans to buy 15 jets from Boom Supersonic with an option for 35 more once the start-up company designs a plane that flies faster than the speed of sound while meeting safety and environmental standards.
(AP, 6/3/21)
2021 Jun 3, It was reported that the younger generation of critically endangered North Atlantic right whales are on average about three feet (one meter) shorter than whales were 20 years.
(AP, 6/3/21)
2021 Jun 3, It was reported that Bahrain has begun offering a booster shot of the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine for some people, six months after they received two shots of China's Sinopharm vaccine.
(AP, 6/3/21)
2021 Jun 3, In Belarus a video appeared on state TV of dissident activist Raman Pratasevich (26) in which he repented for his opposition activities. The Belarusian opposition quickly called the confession coerced.
(SFC, 6/5/21, p.A2)
2021 Jun 3, Britain said that it is removing Portugal from its list of COVID-safe travel destinations, meaning thousands of UK residents currently on vacation there face the prospect of 10 days' quarantine on return.
(AP, 6/3/21)
2021 Jun 3, Workers at Britain’s largest grocery chain won the latest round in their equal pay lawsuit, when the European Union’s Court of Justice ruled that more favorable EU rules governing comparisons between men and women apply to the case.
(AP, 6/3/21)
2021 Jun 3, Alok Sharma, Britain's climate tsar, urged companies to join the United Nations' "Race to Zero" campaign and commit to science-based emissions-reduction targets, ahead of global climate talks in November.
(Reuters, 6/3/21)
2021 Jun 3, Public Health England said the Delta variant of concern first identified in India is now dominant in Britain and might have an increased risk of hospitalization compared to the Alpha variant. There were 5,472 new cases of the Delta variant reported in latest weekly figures.
(Reuters, 6/3/21)
2021 Jun 3, Chinese social media platform WeChat published a list of activities and "violations" it is banning in a bid to clean up its livestreaming service, including "indecent" nose-picking and spanking games.
(Reuters, 6/3/21)
2021 Jun 3, It was reported that three Uyghurs who fled from China to Turkey have described forced abortions and torture by Chinese authorities in China’s far western Xinjiang region, ahead of giving video-link testimony to a people’s tribunal in London that is investigating if Beijing’s actions against ethnic Uyghurs amount to genocide.
(AP, 6/3/21)
2021 Jun 3, Danish lawmakers voted in favor of Denmark establishing a refugee reception center in a third country that is likely to be in Africa, a move that could be a first step toward moving the country's asylum screening process outside of Europe.
(AP, 6/3/21)
2021 Jun 3, Denmark said it has withdrawn permission for a planned pipeline that was designed to bring Norwegian gas to Poland, citing the need to assess if the project would harm the habitats of certain mice and bat species. Baltic Pipe was designed to bring Norway’s offshore natural gas from the North Sea through Denmark to Poland.
(AP, 6/4/21)
2021 Jun 3, In Egypt a fire broke out at a juvenile detention center in Cairo, killing at least six children.
(AP, 6/3/21)
2021 Jun 3, France said it is halting joint military operations with Mali over last week's coup in the West African country. It said the suspension would continue until it received guarantees about a return to civilian rule in Mali.
(BBC, 6/3/21)
2021 Jun 3, French asset management Amundi chief investment officer Pascal Blanque said cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin are a "farce" and a symptom of bubbles forming in financial markets.
(AP, 6/3/21)
2021 Jun 3, Asylum-seekers in Greece lined up to get their coronavirus shots as authorities began rolling out vaccinations in migrant camps.
(Reuters, 6/3/21)
2021 Jun 3, In Iraq a gas cylinder explosion at a crowded restaurant in a northwestern Baghdad neighborhood killed three people and injured 16.
(AP, 6/3/21)
2021 Jun 3, In Israel opposition leader Yair Lapid and his main coalition partner, Naftali Bennett, declared that they had reached a deal to form a new government and muster a majority in the 120-member Knesset.
(SFC, 6/4/21, p.A2)
2021 Jun 3, It was reported that Mexican officials have raised the country's confirmed COVID-19 death toll by 4,272 to a total of 227,840. A government analysis of excess deaths related to COVID-19 now stands at over 348,750.
(SFC, 6/3/21, p.A5)
2021 Jun 3, The Philippine Department of Health concluded its response to a polio outbreak after no cases were detected for 16 months following a massive immunization campaign and surveillance.
(AP, 6/11/21)
2021 Jun 3, Russia said it will completely remove the US dollar from its rainy day fund, a move intended to counter American pressure two weeks before a summit of the two countries' leaders.
(AP, 6/3/21)
2021 Jun 3, South Korea's state-run Korea Development Institute think tank said North Korea has been identified as experiencing a food crisis, with many households experiencing undernourishment or minimal levels of nutrition.
(The Telegraph, 6/3/21)
2021 Jun 3, Spain’s PM Pedro Sánchez was in the Libyan capital of Tripoli to reopen his country’s embassy and show support for Libya’s new interim authorities entrusted with leading the nation out of years of civil war.
(AP, 6/3/21)
2021 Jun 3, In Sudan protesters took to the streets in Khartoum and elsewhere across the country amid tight security, demanding justice for the victims of a 2019 crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators.
(AP, 6/3/21)
2021 Jun 3, The World Health Organization said COVID-19 vaccine shipments have ground to “a near halt" in Africa while virus cases have spiked 20% over the last two weeks.
(AP, 6/3/21)
2021 Jun 3, The head of the international chemical weapons watchdog told the UN Security Council that its experts have investigated 77 allegations against Syria, and concluded that in 17 cases chemical weapons were likely or definitely used.
(AP, 6/3/21)
2021 Jun 4, The Biden administration said it will revise or reverse a slate of Trump-era actions that rolled back protections for endangered or threatened species.
(Axios, 6/4/21)
2021 Jun 4, It was reported that in the last weeks of the Trump administration and continuing under President Joe Biden, the Justice Department fought a secret legal battle to obtain the email logs of four New York Times reporters in a hunt for their sources.
(NY Times, 6/5/21)
2021 Jun 4, A US State Department spokesman said the US is shipping one million doses of Johnson & Johnson's one-shot COVID-19 vaccine to South Korea.
(Reuters, 6/4/21)
2021 Jun 4, The US FDA approved Wegovy, a higher-dose version of Novo Nordisk's diabetes drug, for long-term weight management.
(SSFC, 6/6/21, p.A6)
2021 Jun 4, It was reported that the US health regulator has authorized a lower dose of Regeneron Pharmaceutical's COVID-19 antibody cocktail that can be given by injection, a move that could ease logistical challenges stemming from administering a higher dose intravenously.
(Reuters, 6/4/21)
2021 Jun 4, It was reported that JPMorgan Chase & Co will resume making political donations to US lawmakers but will not give to Republican members of Congress who voted to overturn President Joe Biden's election victory.
(Reuters, 6/4/21)
2021 Jun 4, A US federal judge overturned California’s three-decade-old ban on assault weapons, ruling that it violates the constitutional right to bear arms. Judge Roger Benitez of San Diego stayed it for 30 days to give state Attorney General Rob Bonta time to appeal. California first restricted assault weapons in 1989, with multiple updates to the law since then.
(AP, 6/4/21)
2021 Jun 4, California to date had 3,767,159 cases of coronavirus and 63,055 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 444,962 cases and 6,621 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 33,340,762 with the death toll at 596,969.
(sfist.com, 6/5/21)
2021 Jun 4, In California two San Diego police officers were killed after their car was struck by a driver going the wrong way on I-5. The female driver of the civic was also killed.
(SFC, 6/5/21, p.A3)
2021 Jun 4, Clarence Williams III (81), the reflectively intense actor who starred as Linc Hayes, a young, hip undercover police officer on ABC’s “The Mod Squad," died in Los Angeles.
(NY Times, 6/6/21)
2021 Jun 4, Actress Karla Burns (66), the first Black performer to win a Laurence Olivier Award, died in Wichita, Kan. She had won the award, Britain’s highest stage honor, in 1991 for her portrayal of the riverboat cook Queenie in “Show Boat".
(NY Times, 6/14/21)
2021 Jun 4, In Kentucky William S. Evans III pleaded guilty in federal court in Lexington to one charge of commodities fraud and one charge of wire fraud in a case in which investors claim he took at least $16.8 million from them.
(Lexington Herald-Leader, 6/7/21)
2021 Jun 4, Douglas S. Cramer, TV producer, died at his home on Martha’s Vineyard, Mass. He produced some of the most successful television shows of the 20th century, many — including “The Love Boat" and “Dynasty" — in partnership with Aaron Spelling, and used his substantial wealth to become a leading art collector.
(NY Times, 6/8/21)
2021 Jun 4, The head of an American Legion post in Ohio stepped down amid criticism following the decision of Memorial Day ceremony organizers to turn off a retired US Army officer's microphone while he was speaking about how freed Black slaves honored fallen soldiers just after the Civil War.
(AP, 6/4/21)
2021 Jun 4, An Afghan airstrike targeting Taliban fighters inside an abandoned army base killed at least 20 people in Helmand province. The Taliban said there were 30 fatalities and that all were civilians.
(SFC, 6/5/21, p.A3)
2021 Jun 4, The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) said it and the European Union have concluded the world's first bloc-to-bloc air transport agreement, to allow their airlines to easier expand services to and within the respective regions.
(Reuters, 6/4/21)
2021 Jun 4, Britain's health ministry said the estimated reproduction "R" number in England remains at over 1 and the epidemic could be growing by as much as 3% each day. Britain's medicines regulator said it had approved the COVID-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech for use on 12- to 15-year-olds.
(Reuters, 6/4/21)
2021 Jun 4, The UK announced a post-Brexit trade deal with Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein.
(BBC, 6/4/21)
2021 Jun 4, In northern Burkina Faso armed men killed 14 people late today in the village of Tadaryat.
(BBC, 6/5/21)(Axios, 6/5/21)(BBC, 6/6/21)
2021 Jun 4, Denmark’s Parliament voted in favor of building Lynetteholmen, a 20-billion-kroner ($3.3 billion) artificial island in Copenhagen, that will house at least 35,000 people who will be connected to downtown by a harbor tunnel and a subway line.
(AP, 6/4/21)
2021 Jun 4, The European Union submitted a plan to the World Trade Organization that it believes will more effectively broaden supply of COVID-19 vaccines than the intellectual property (IP) rights waiver backed by the United States.
(Reuters, 6/4/21)
2021 Jun 4, Cardinal Reinhard Marx, a leading German cardinal and confidant of Pope Francis, offered to resign over the Catholic Church's “catastrophic" mishandling of clergy sexual abuse cases, declaring that the scandals had brought the church to “a dead end".
(AP, 6/4/21)
2021 Jun 4, India reported another 1342,364 coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours in a declining trend. The nation's total cases neared 28.6 million.
(SFC, 6/5/21, p.A4)
2021 Jun 4, Italy reported 73 coronavirus-related deaths against 59 the day before, while the daily tally of new infections rose to 2,557 from 1,968. Italy has registered 126,415 deaths linked to COVID-19 since its outbreak emerged in February last year.
(Reuters, 6/4/21)
2021 Jun 4, Mexican officials said they will use 1 million US doses of the Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine to inoculate people along the border.
(SFC, 6/5/21, p.A4)
2021 Jun 4, Nigeria's government said it was suspending Twitter operations in the country "indefinitely." The move by the government came just days after a tweet by President Muhammadu Buhari was removed for breaching the site's rules, though no mention of this was made in its statement.
(BBC, 6/5/21)
2021 Jun 4, Pakistan has started producing the single dose Chinese CanSinoBio COVID-19 vaccine to be able to deliver 3 million doses a month. An initial batch of 118,000 doses of the vaccine was ready to be delivered to the government.
(Reuters, 6/4/21)
2021 Jun 4, President Vladimir Putin said that suggestions the Russian state was linked to high profile ransomware attacks in the United States were absurd and an attempt to stir trouble ahead of his summit this month with US President Joe Biden.
(Reuters, 6/4/21)
2021 Jun 4, Richard Ernst (b.1933), Swiss chemist who won the Nobel Prize in 1991 for his work on nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), died in Winterthur, Switzerland.
(SSFC, 6/20/21, p.F1)
2021 Jun 4, Venezuela said it has reached a deal to purchase doses of Russia's EpiVacCorona vaccine, as well as manufacture the inoculation locally.
(Reuters, 6/5/21)
2021 Jun 5, The US Department of Justice said that it would no longer seek source information from reporters in leak investigations after recent revelations that former President Donald Trump's administration had secretly obtained phone and email records from a number of journalists.
(Reuters, 6/5/21)
2021 Jun 5, A joint statement by G7 finance ministers said it would tackle tax avoidance by "the largest and most profitable multinational enterprises." The G7 agreed to back a minimum global corporate tax rate of at least 15%. Companies will also have to pay more tax in the countries where they make sales.
(Reuters, 6/5/21)
2021 Jun 5, California to date had 3,768,442 cases of coronavirus and 63,101 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 444,994 cases and 6,621 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 33,347,989 with the death toll at 597,030.
(sfist.com, 6/6/21)
2021 Jun 5, Essential Quality won the Belmont Stakes, edging out Hot Rod Charlie. He paid $4.60 on a $2 bet to win. Rombauer, the Preakness winner, finished third.
(NY Times, 6/5/21)
2021 Jun 5, The Diocese of Buffalo, NY, announced that three priests have been placed on leave in response to claims in a lawsuit filed last month that they sexually abused a boy in the 1990s.
(Tribune Publ., 6/6/21)
2021 Jun 5, Former President Donald Trump sharply attacked US infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci over his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, demanded reparations from China and denounced an investigation into his finances in a speech in North Carolina.
(Reuters, 6/5/21)
2021 Jun 5, Leonard Crow Dog (78), a Native American who played a key role in the 1973 occupation of Wounded Knee in South Dakota, died in Rapid City, South Dakota. He had fought to preserve the ancient traditions of his tribe, the Sicangu Lakota.
(SFC, 6/25/21, p.B7)
2021 Jun 5, In northwestern Afghanistan a minivan carrying civilian passengers was hit by a roadside bomb killing at least 11 passengers in Badghis province.
(SFC, 6/7/21, p.A4)
2021 Jun 5, In northern Burkina Faso armed men killed 160 people, mostly children, in an attack on Solhan village. It was later reported that the civilians were killed by an armed group comprising “mostly 12- to 14-year-olds".
(BBC, 6/5/21)(Axios, 6/5/21)(BBC, 6/6/21)(AP, 6/28/21)
2021 Jun 5, In China authorities in the southern industrial hub of Guangzhou imposed more restrictions on business and social activity, seeking to curb the spread of COVID-19 cases. China reported 24 new coronavirus cases on the mainland for June 4, unchanged from a day earlier.
(Reuters, 6/5/21)
2021 Jun 5, El Salvador President Nayib Bukele (39) announced in a recorded message played at a Bitcoin conference in Miami that next week he will send proposed legislation to the country's congress that would make the cryptocurrency legal tender in the Central American nation's
(AP, 6/6/21)
2021 Jun 5, In Germany Berlin police said 13 journalists were detained early today while reporting on a protest by environmentalist against the construction of a highway in the capital.
(AP, 6/5/21)
2021 Jun 5, Hong Kong activist Chow Hang Tung was released on bail, a day after she was detained on suspicion of promoting an unauthorized assembly to commemorate the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown on pro-democracy activists in Beijing.
(Reuters, 6/5/21)
2021 Jun 5, Some of India's states began easing lockdown restrictions as coronavirus infections subside, with the world's second most-populous nation logging its lowest daily case count in nearly two months.
(Reuters, 6/5/21)
2021 Jun 5, Italian media said customs police on the Mediterranean island of Sardinia issued fines of up to 3,000 euros ($3,600) to 41 people who in recent days tried to leave the island with a total of 100 kg (220 pounds) of sand, seashells and beach rocks.
(AP, 6/5/21)
2021 Jun 5, Italy reported 57 coronavirus-related deaths against 73 the day before. The daily tally of new infections decreased to 2,436 from 2,557.
(Reuters, 6/5/21)
2021 Jun 5, Police in Nicaragua detained Arturo Cruz Sequeira, another leading opposition politician and potential presidential candidate, the latest in a series of moves by President Daniel Ortega that prevent candidates from running against him in his third consecutive re-election bid.
(AP, 6/5/21)
2021 Jun 5, In Nigeria Temitope Balogun Joshua (57), one of Africa’s most popular televangelists, died. The pastor, known as T.B. Joshua, was founder of the mega church Synagogue Church Of All Nations, or SCOAN, which also runs the Emmanuel Television Station in Lagos.
(AP, 6/6/21)
2021 Jun 5, The Kurdish-led administration in Syria's northeast handed over to the Netherlands a Dutch woman, her two young sons, and a Dutch girl, who lived in a camp for families of alleged Islamic State militants.
(AP, 6/5/21)
2021 Jun 5, Turkey’s president promised to rescue the Marmara Sea from an outbreak of “sea snot" that is alarming marine biologists and environmentalists. Pres. Erdogan said untreated waste dumped into the Marmara Sea and climate change had caused the sea snot bloom.
(AP, 6/5/21)
2021 Jun 5, In Yemen a ballistic missile fired by Houthi rebels killed at least 17 people, including a 5-year-old girl, in the government-held city of Marib.
(AP, 6/5/21)
2021 Jun 6, US officials ratcheted up pressure on companies and foreign adversaries to fight cybercriminals, and said President Joe Biden is considering all options, including a military response, to counter the growing threat.
(Reuters, 6/6/21)
2021 Jun 6, Floyd Mayweather Jr. (44) did not knock out Logan Paul (26) but easily controlled their eight-round exhibition fight that turned a meme bout into a bankable pay-per-view spectacle.
(NY Times, 6/7/21)
2021 Jun 6, California to date had 3,769,510 cases of coronavirus. The SF Bay Area had 445,315 cases and 6,621 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 33,359,073 with the death toll at 597,523.
(sfist.com, 6/7/21)
2021 Jun 6, Taliban fighters stormed the Qaisar district of northern Faryab province, killing and wounding dozens of Afghan security forces. A powerful car bomb targeting a police headquarters in the Khas Balkh district of Balkh province killed at least four people and wounded 50 more including civilians.
(AP, 6/7/21)
2021 Jun 6, It was reported that inmates in Belarus prisons, jailed for joining demonstrations against Pres. Alexander Lukashenko, have had yellow tags sewn onto their clothes to single them out for particularly harsh prison conditions.
(SSFC, 6/6/21, p.A3)
2021 Jun 6, Britain’s health secretary says the delta variant, which is fast becoming the dominant coronavirus variant in the UK, is 40% more transmissible compared to the country’s existing strains.
(AP, 6/6/21)
2021 Jun 6, In Canada a black truck mounted a kerb and struck five members of the family in the city of London, Ontario, before speeding away from the scene. The Muslim family’s nine-year-old son was the only survivor. Nathaniel Veltman (20) of London, Ontario, was soon arrested and charged with four counts of murder and one count of attempted murder.
(The Independent, 6/8/21)
2021 Jun 6, French Health Minister Olivier Veran said that France has multiple clusters of the variant, first identified in India, notably in the southwest Landes region.
(AP, 6/6/21)
2021 Jun 6, In France several ceremonies were being held to commemorate the 77th anniversary of D-Day, the decisive 1944 assault that led to the liberation of France and western Europe from Nazi control, and honor those who fell.
(AP, 6/6/21)
2021 Jun 6, Voters in Saxony-Anhalt went to the polls to elect a new state assembly in what is seen as the last big test for Germany's political parties before a national election in September. Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union won the election with 37.1% of the vote, far ahead of the far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, with 20.8%.
(AP, 6/6/21)
2021 Jun 6, India reported 114,460 new coronavirus infections, the lowest in two months, while the death toll increased by 2,677, as parts of the country prepared to ease movement restrictions.
(Reuters, 6/6/21)
2021 Jun 6, In Israel Avi Har-Even (84), former headed Israel’s space agency (1995-2004), died of injuries sustained during riots that erupted across the country last month.
(AP, 6/7/21)
2021 Jun 6, Mexico held local elections. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s party and its allies appeared poised to maintain their majority in Mexico's lower chamber of the congress, but fell short of a supermajority. A severed head placed in a box was tossed at a voting station and a plastic bag full of human remains was found at a nearby polling booth in the border city Tijuana, during what is being termed as Mexico’s bloodiest mid-term elections in recent years. At least 102 people killed during the campaign.
(AP, 6/6/21)(The Independent, 6/7/21)(NY Times, 8/3/21)
2021 Jun 6, In northern Mexico the bodies of two miners were pulled from a small coal mine in the border state of Coahuila, bringing to three the number confirmed dead in the flood and partial collapse of the shaft. Three miners remain missing.
(AP, 6/6/21)
2021 Jun 6, Peruvian voters chose between Pedro Castillo and Keiko Fujimori, two polarizing populist candidates, in a presidential runoff held as the coronavirus pandemic continues to batter the Andean country and festering anger has led to fears of more political stability. Peru's key mining regions overwhelming supported socialist Pedro Castillo. At the end of the official count, Castillo was 44,058 votes ahead of Fujimori.
(AP, 6/6/21)(Reuters, 6/11/21)(Reuters, 6/16/21)
2021 Jun 6, Dmitry Gudkov, a well-known Russian opposition politician, said that he has left the country for Ukraine. He was held in police custody for two days last week in a criminal investigation. Gudkov said he believes the investigation was aimed at preventing him from running for the national parliament this year.
(AP, 6/6/21)
2021 Jun 6, Tribal clashes erupted between Arabs and non-Arabs in Sudan’s western Darfur region, killing at least 36 people.
(AP, 6/7/21)
2021 Jun 7, The US Department of Justice announced that the federal government has recovered millions of dollars in cryptocurrency paid in ransom to cybercriminals whose attack prompted the shutdown of the country's largest fuel pipeline and gas shortages across the southeastern US last month. The DOJ traced 63.7 of the 75 Bitcoins — some $2.3 million of the $4.3 million — that Colonial Pipeline had paid to the hackers.
(CBS News, 6/8/21)(NY Times, 6/9/21)
2021 Jun 7, US federal prosecutors announced that Ohio-based Contech Engineered Solutions has pleaded guilty to conspiring to rig bids and defraud the N.C. Department of Transportation and agreed to pay a criminal fine of $7 million and pay $1,533,988 in restitution to NCDOT.
(Raleigh News&Observer, 6/8/21)
2021 Jun 7, A unanimous Supreme Court ruled that thousands of people living in the US for humanitarian reasons are ineligible to apply to become permanent residents. There are 400,000 people from 12 countries with TPS status.
(AP, 6/7/21)
2021 Jun 7, The US Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge by a men's rights group to the national requirement that men, but not women, register for the military draft at age 18. Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor issued a statement noting that a commission set up by Congress last year recommended ending the male-only draft and that Congress could act on it.
(Reuters, 6/7/21)
2021 Jun 7, The US FDA approved Aduhelm (aducanumab), made by Biogen, for the treatment of Alzheimer’s, a debilitating disease affecting 6.2 million Americans. Aduhelm was approved using the accelerated approval pathway, which can be used for a drug for a serious or life-threatening illness that provides a meaningful therapeutic advantage over existing treatments.
(https://tinyurl.com/26j7avdb)
2021 Jun 7, Total US COVID-19 cases reached over 33,378,279 with the death toll at 597,949.
(sfist.com, 6/8/21)
2021 Jun 7, US regulators approved Biogen Inc's aducanumab as the first treatment to address an underlying cause of Alzheimer's disease despite controversy over mixed clinical trial results for the drug.
(Reuters, 6/7/21)
2021 Jun 7, In Minnesota police made mass arrests as hundreds of protesters chanting "Stop Line 3!" and "Water is life!" gathered at the headwaters of the Mississippi vowing to stop Canada-based Enbridge Energy's plan to rebuilt the Line 3 pipeline that carries oil from Alberta to Wisconsin.
(SFC, 6/8/21, p.A4)
2021 Jun 7, Republican Missouri Governor Mike Parson said that addressing the clemency petition to release a man imprisoned for over 40 years who prosecutors now maintain is innocent simply isn’t “a priority." Kevin Strickland, now 62, was convicted by an all-white jury of a Kansas City triple murder in April 1978. The only two eyewitnesses in the case have both recanted and advocated for his release. On Nov. 23, 2021, a judge ruled that be released.
(The Grio, 6/11/21)(SFC, 11/24/21, p.A4)
2021 Jun 7, South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster ended a coronavirus state of emergency and maintained that parents alone should decide if children wear masks in schools. Cases soon soared from 150 a day to more than 5,000.
(SFC, 9/21/21, p.A5)
2021 Jun 7, In South Carolina Alex Murdaugh (53), a fourth-generation lawyer, told a dispatcher that he had returned home to find the bodies of his wife and son lying near a dog kennel on the family’s secluded estate. At the time he was killed, Paul Murdaugh (22) had been facing charges of boating under the influence after he was accused of driving a boat into a bridge, killing Mallory Beach, a 19-year-old passenger, after a night of drinking In 2022 police indicted Mr. Murdaugh for the murders.
(NY Times, 7/13/22)
2021 Jun 7, Vermont Gov. Phil Scott signed legislation that requires all registered voters in the state to receive mail-in ballots. The move counters Republican efforts in other states to restrict voting rights.
(SFC, 6/8/21, p.A4)
2021 Jun 7, General Motors Co said it plans to offer $15 per month subscriptions for its Onstar Guardian security services to anyone in the US or Canada who wants to download a smartphone app, expanding beyond owners of GM vehicles in a step to generate recurring revenue.
(AP, 6/7/21)
2021 Jun 7, Scientists reported that the annual peak of global heat-trapping CO2 in the air has reached another dangerous milestone: 50% higher than when the industrial age began.
(AP, 6/7/21)
2021 Jun 7, Afghan government officials said at least 150 Afghan troops have been killed or injured in the last 24 hours in a surge of attacks by Taliban militants as foreign forces withdraw. The Taliban seized Shahrak district of western Ghor province and forced Afghan troops to retreat to nearby villages after a heavy firefight.
(AP, 6/7/21)
2021 Jun 7, The Bank of England said that payments with 'stablecoins' - a form of cryptocurrency usually pegged to a traditional currency - should be regulated in the same way as payments handled by banks if they start to become widely used.
(Reuters, 6/7/21)
2021 Jun 7, It was reported that deforestation in Brazil's Amazon jumped 41% last month compared to the same month a year earlier.
(SFC, 6/7/21, p.A2)
2021 Jun 7, Bulgaria’s interim PM Stefan Yanev urged the government to redouble its efforts to fight endemic graft, calling for changes in prosecutors' offices, the judiciary and all law enforcement agencies.
(AP, 6/7/21)
2021 Jun 7, The head of an independent commission said the Cyprus government continued for at least four years to unlawfully issue passports to relatives of wealthy investors under an investment-for-citizenship program, despite warnings by the Attorney-General that this could be in breach of the law.
(AP, 6/7/21)
2021 Jun 7, Egypt received 500,000 doses of China's Sinovac coronavirus vaccine, as the health ministry said local production of the Chinese vaccine will start in mid-June.
(Reuters, 6/7/21)
2021 Jun 7, Eritrea’s foreign minister blamed US administrations that supported the Tigray People’s Liberation Movement for the last 20 years for the current war in northern Ethiopia's Tigray region, saying that blaming Eritrea for the fighting was unfounded.
(AP, 6/7/21)
2021 Jun 7, The French national financial prosecutor’s office said it has opened a preliminary investigation into the actions of Lebanon’s central bank governor involving potential money laundering.
(AP, 6/7/21)
2021 Jun 7, German officials said police conducted raids targeting people suspected of involvement in organized crime, as part of a larger international bust coordinated by Europol.
(AP, 6/7/21)
2021 Jun 7, In Germany Robert Bosch opened a 1 billion euro ($1.2 billion) chip plant near Dresden, a record investment by the leading automotive supplier as it stakes a claim to equipping the latest electric and self-driving cars.
(Reuters, 6/7/21)
2021 Jun 7, Greece designated neighboring Turkey as a safe country in which to seek international protection for the majority of asylum-seekers departing its shores for Greece.
(AP, 6/7/21)
2021 Jun 7, PM Narendra Modi said India will provide free COVID-19 vaccines to all adults, in an effort to rein in a pandemic that has killed hundreds of thousands and led to the world's second-highest tally of infections.
(Reuters, 6/7/21)
2021 Jun 7, Ali Akbar Mohtashamipour (74), a Shiite cleric, died of the coronavirus. As Iran's ambassador to Syria he helped found the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and lost his right hand to a book bombing reportedly carried out by Israel.
(AP, 6/7/21)
2021 Jun 7, Israeli police blocked a planned procession by Jewish ultranationalists through parts of Jerusalem's Old City, following warnings that it could reignite tensions that led to a punishing 11-day war with Gaza's militant Hamas rulers last month.
(AP, 6/7/21)
2021 Jun 7, Italy reported 65 coronavirus-related deaths against 51 the day before. The daily tally of new infections fell to 1,273 from 2,275.
(Reuters, 6/7/21)
2021 Jun 7, Venetians breathed a sigh of relief as the lagoon city finally moved into a low-risk COVID-19 "white zone", meaning most pandemic restrictions were lifted and a nightly curfew scrapped.
(Reuters, 6/7/21)
2021 Jun 7, In Japan the southernmost prefecture of Okinawa began closing schools to contain coronavirus infections. Gov. Denny Tamaki said primary and secondary schools will be closed until June 20.
(SFC, 6/8/21, p.A5)
2021 Jun 7, Lithuania says Belarus could be behind a recent migrant influx and claimed that Belarus border guards have been covering the tracks of the migrants. Lukashenko has warned that Belarus could retaliate against the latest EU sanctions by loosening border controls against Western-bound illegal migration and drug trafficking.
(AP, 6/7/21)
2021 Jun 7, Mali’s coup leader Col. Assimi Goita was sworn as president of a transitional government, solidifying his grip on power in the West African nation after carrying out his second coup d’etat in nine months.
(AP, 6/7/21)
2021 Jun 7, Norway said it will shorten the interval between COVID-19 vaccine doses to nine weeks from the current 12 weeks, thus speeding up the inoculation process.
(Reuters, 6/7/21)
2021 Jun 7, In Pakistan two express trains collided early today, killing at least 51 passengers and injuring 100 others in the southern province of Sindh.
(NY Times, 6/7/21)(SFC, 6/8/21, p.A4)
2021 Jun 7, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a bill to withdraw from an international treaty allowing surveillance flights over military facilities, following the US exit from the pact.
(AP, 6/7/21)
2021 Jun 7, The head of Russia's space agency suggested Moscow would withdraw from the International Space Station in 2025 unless Washington lifted sanctions on the space sector that were hampering Russian satellite launches.
(Reuters, 6/7/21)
2021 Jun 7, Slovakia became the European Union's second country to start inoculating people with the Russian-made Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine, after months of rows over the shot that has yet to be approved by European regulators.
(Reuters, 6/7/21)
2021 Jun 7, Spain jumpstarted its summer tourism season by welcoming vaccinated visitors from most countries as well as European tourists who can prove they are not infected with coronavirus. It also reopened its ports to cruise ship stops.
(AP, 6/7/21)
2021 Jun 7, It was reported that Swiss-based Novartis plans to seek approvals in the US and Europe later this year following improved survival in men with advanced prostate cancer from an experimental drug that delivers radiation directly to tumor cells.
(SFC, 6/7/21, p.A7)
2021 Jun 7, The UN Security Council strongly condemned violations of human rights and international humanitarian law in the Central African Republic and warned that attacks on United Nations peacekeepers there may constitute war crimes.
(AP, 6/7/21)
2021 Jun 7, Foreign Minister Abdulla Shahid of the Maldives won election as the next president of the UN General Assembly.
(AP, 6/8/21)
2021 Jun 8, The US Senate overwhelmingly passed a bipartisan bill to fund technology and manufacturing to counter China.
(NY Times, 6/8/21)
2021 Jun 8, A US Senate report examining the security failures surrounding the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol said missed intelligence, poor planning and multiple layers of bureaucracy led to the violent siege.
(AP, 6/9/21)
2021 Jun 8, Former US president Donald Trump has praised Nigeria's government for banning Twitter after it deleted President Muhammadu Buhari's post for breaching its rules.
(BBC, 6/9/21)
2021 Jun 8, A problem at SF-based Fastly meant internet users couldn't connect to a host of popular websites early today including The New York Times, the Guardian, Twitch, Reddit and the British government's homepage.
(AP, 6/9/21)
2021 Jun 8, Hawaii's Gov. David Ige said: "The ocean is our great connector," before signing into law nine bills strengthening protections and enforcement against illegal and unsustainable fishing practices on World Oceans Day. June has been designated the UN World Oceans Month.
(Tribune Publ., 6/9/21)
2021 Jun 8, The nonprofit investigative journalism organization ProPublica reported that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos paid no income tax in 2007 and 2011. Tesla founder Elon Musk’s income tax bill came to zero in 2018. And financier George Soros went three straight years without paying federal income tax.
(AP, 6/8/21)
2021 Jun 8, Law enforcement agencies said criminal gangs divulged plans for moving drug shipments and carrying out killings on a secure messaging system secretly run by the FBI, as they unveiled a global sting operation they said dealt an “unprecedented blow" to organized crime in countries around the world. The Trojan Shield operation led to police raids in 16 nations. More than 800 suspects were arrested and more than 32 tons of drugs were seized.
(AP, 6/8/21)
2021 Jun 8, A 1933 Double Eagle gold coin sold for $19.5 million at auction in New York, setting a new world record price for any coin.
(AP, 6/8/21)
2021 Jun 8, It was reported that Google has bowed to pressure from rivals and will let them compete for free to be the default search engines on Android devices in Europe, widening a pledge to EU antitrust regulators two years ago.
(Reuters, 6/8/21)
2021 Jun 8, Honeywell International Inc and quantum computer software startup Cambridge Quantum Computing (CQC) announced they will form a joint venture, integrating Honeywell’s quantum computer unit with the software maker.
(AP, 6/8/21)
2021 Jun 8, Inovio Pharmaceuticals Inc expanded its partnership with Advaccine Biopharmaceuticals to conduct a late-stage trial of its COVID-19 vaccine candidate, expected to start in the summer.
(Reuters, 6/8/21)
2021 Jun 8, Venture-backed startup Relativity Space, which aims to build the world's first fleet of 3D-printed rockets, said it has raised $650 million from a raft of new investors including BlackRock, hedge fund Soroban Capital, and the actor Jared Leto.
(Reuters, 6/8/21)
2021 Jun 8, In Afghanistan an armed attack late today on staff members of a British-American charity left at least ten people dead. The Islamic State claimed responsibility.
(SFC, 6/10/21, p.A2)
2021 Jun 8, Belarus' authoritarian president Alexander Lukashenko signed a law that threatens demonstrators with years in prison — the latest move in a relentless crackdown on protests against his rule.
(AP, 6/8/21)
2021 Jun 8, At least five Egyptians were abducted by Islamic State militants in the restive northern part of the Sinai Peninsula.
(AP, 6/8/21)
2021 Jun 8, El Salvador's Legislative Assembly approved legislation making the bitcoin cryptocurrency legal tender in the country, the first country to do so. The US dollar will continue to be the currency of reference.
(SFC, 6/10/21, p.B2)
2021 Jun 8, It was reported that in the past week, nine Haitian police stations have been attacked, at least 15 weapons stolen and a police inspector killed. Another seven officers have died in metropolitan Port-au-Prince amid violent clashes between warring gangs.
(Miami Herald, 6/8/21)
2021 Jun 8, Malaysia went mobile with its mass immunization drive, with the rollout of the first of 40 vaccine trucks set to hit the highways in the coming months.
(Reuters, 6/8/21)
2021 Jun 8, Nepal resumed is stalled coronavirus campaign with 1 million doses given by China.
(SFC, 6/9/21, p.A5)
2021 Jun 8, It was reported that lawmaker Paul Givan (39) is to become the new first minister of Northern Ireland, replacing Arlene Foster, who had been in post since 2015 and through the Brexit dramas of the past few years. The new ministers will take up their posts on June 14.
(AP, 6/8/21)
2021 Jun 8, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa put his health minister, Zweli Mkhize, on special leave, after allegations that his department irregularly awarded COVID-19-related contracts to a communications company controlled by his former associates.
(Reuters, 6/8/21)
2021 Jun 8, In Switzerland the daughter of jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny accepted a human rights award on her father's behalf for his courage in facing down President Vladimir Putin’s government.
(AP, 6/8/21)
2021 Jun 8, Dozens of displaced people in rebel-held northwest Syria protested efforts by Damascus and its allies to end humanitarian aid crossing from Turkey into the impoverished war-ravaged enclave.
(AP, 6/8/21)
2021 Jun 8, Ukraine registered 535 new COVID-19 cases, the lowest daily number of infections over the previous 24 hours for nearly a year and the ministry said infection rates declined for eight consecutive weeks.
(Reuters, 6/9/21)
2021 Jun 8, The UN Security Council gave its unanimous backing to Secretary-General Antonio Guterres for a second term.
(AP, 6/8/21)
2021 Jun 8, UN appeals judges upheld the conviction of former Bosnian Serb military chief Ratko Mladic (79) for genocide and other offenses during Bosnia’s 1992-95 war and confirmed his life sentence.
(AP, 6/8/21)
2021 Jun 8, The UN General Assembly approved a declaration calling for urgent action to end AIDS by 2030, noting “with alarm" that the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated inequalities and pushed access to AIDS medicines, treatments and diagnosis further off track.
(AP, 6/8/21)
2021 Jun 9, US officials said the White House has dropped Trump-era executive orders that attempted to ban the popular apps TikTok and WeChat and will conduct its own review aimed at identifying national security risks with software applications tied to China.
(AP, 6/9/21)
2021 Jun 9, The US Treasury Dept. slapped sanctions on the daughter of Nicaragua's Pres. Daniel Ortega and a top army official, a day after the arrests of two more potential opposition candidates for the Nov. 7 presidential elections.
(SFC, 6/10/21, p.A4)
2021 Jun 9, It was reported that the White House plans to send 500 million Pfizer shots to about 100 countries over the next year.
(NY Times, 6/9/21)
2021 Jun 9, The US Census Bureau announced guidelines for how a controversial statistical method will be applied to the numbers used for drawing congressional and legislative districts. The method is meant to protect the privacy of people who participated in the 2020 census, though critics have claimed it favors confidentiality at the expense of accurate numbers.
(AP, 6/9/21)
2021 Jun 9, Total US COVID-19 cases reached over 33,394,843 with the death toll at 598,402.
(sfist.com, 6/10/21)
2021 Jun 9, Mohamed Haji (28) of Lansing, Michigan, and two co-defendants pleaded guilty in federal court to conspiring to provide material support to the Islamic State. Muse Muse and Mohamud Muse admitted to the same offense in January 2020.
(Washington Examiner, 6/10/21)
2021 Jun 9, A federal appeals court panel blocked Missouri from enforcing a sweeping 2019 state abortion law that bans procedures at or after eight weeks of pregnancy.
(SFC, 6/10/21, p.A4)
2021 Jun 9, Aubrey Trail of Nebraska was sentenced to death for the murder and mutilation of Tinder date Sydney Loofe (24) in 2017 after she refused to engage in group sex and fraud.
(The Independent, 6/10/21)
2021 Jun 9, Merck & Co Inc said the US government has agreed to pay about $1.2 billion for 1.7 million courses of its experimental COVID-19 treatment, if it is proven to work in an ongoing large trial and authorized by US regulators. The treatment course being tested in the trial is an oral dose given every 12 hours for five days.
(AP, 6/9/21)
2021 Jun 9, Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc said the US Food and Drug Administration has approved the expanded use of its Trikafta cocktail therapy to treat cystic fibrosis (CF) in children aged 6 to 11, making it the first approved treatment for CF in the age group. The treatment is currently priced at $311,503 per year.
(Reuters, 6/9/21)
2021 Jun 9, Fastly, the SF-based company hit by a major outage that caused many of the world's top websites to go offline briefly this week, blamed the problem on a software bug that was triggered when a customer changed a setting.
(AP, 6/9/21)
2021 Jun 9, Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya called for the creation of an international tribunal to investigate and prosecute crimes reportedly committed by the government and its longtime authoritarian leader, Alexander Lukashenko.
(AP, 6/9/21)
2021 Jun 9, In Bahrain hundreds of people held a rare protest over the death of a prisoner from the coronavirus despite being vaccinated months earlier by the island kingdom. Barakat had received the Chinese vaccine Sinopharm.
(AP, 6/10/21)
2021 Jun 9, Brazil-based JBS, the world’s largest meat processor, said that it paid an $11 million ransom in Bitcoin to the hackers behind an attack that forced the shutdown last week of all the company’s US beef plants and disrupted operations at poultry and pork plants. The FBI said last week that it believed REvil, a Russian-based group that is one of the most prolific ransomware organizations, was responsible for the attack.
(NY Times, 6/9/21)
2021 Jun 9, A prominent UK epidemiologist said the Delta coronavirus variant of concern, first identified in India, is believed to be 60% more transmissible than the Alpha variant which was previously dominant in Britain.
(AP, 6/9/21)
2021 Jun 9, TC Energy, the Canadian pipeline company that had long sought to build the Keystone XL pipeline, announced that it had terminated the embattled project, which would have carried petroleum from Canadian tar sands to Nebraska.
(NY Times, 6/9/21)
2021 Jun 9, Chinese President Xi Jinping ended a three-day tour of the northwestern province of Qinghai by stressing its importance for maintaining order in neighboring Xinjiang and Tibet.
(South China Morning Post, 6/10/21)
2021 Jun 9, China's agriculture ministry said it had confirmed an outbreak of H5N8 avian influenza in wild birds at a nature reserve in the northwestern province of Shaanxi. The outbreak sickened and killed 4,249 birds.
(Reuters, 6/9/21)
2021 Jun 9, Chinese food delivery giant Meituan said it aimed to hire 60,000 new employees in 2021 as the company expands into new areas of businesses such as group community buying.
(Reuters, 6/9/21)
2021 Jun 9, Human Rights Watch accused police officers in Colombia of responsibility for the deaths of 20 people and other violent actions against protesters during recent civil unrest, including sexual abuse, beatings and arbitrary detentions.
(Reuters, 6/9/21)
2021 Jun 9, EU antitrust regulators said the market dominance of Amazon's Alexa, Apple's Siri and Alphabet's Google Assistant has triggered concerns of potential anti-competitive practices.
(Reuters, 6/9/21)
2021 Jun 9, A top European Union court annulled the EU's approval of 550 million euros ($670 million) in state aid for German airline Condor, backing a challenge by budget carrier Ryanair but suspending the application of the ruling because of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
(AP, 6/9/21)
2021 Jun 9, EU lawmakers endorsed a new travel certificate that will allow people to move between European countries without having to Quarantine or undergo coronavirus tests.
(SFC, 6/10/21, p.A5)
2021 Jun 9, Germany-based Volkswagen said that former CEO Martin Winterkorn has agreed to pay 11.2 million euros ($13.6 million) in compensation for what the company called his failure to quickly get to the bottom of the scandal over diesel engines rigged to cheat on emissions tests.
(AP, 6/9/21)
2021 Jun 9, In Germany dozens of workers gathered outside of one of Berlin's most-celebrated startups, the grocery delivery company Gorillas, to protest the firing hours earlier of a colleague.
(AP, 6/13/21)
2021 Jun 9, German architect Gottfried Boehm (101) died. He was famous for his concrete brutalist-style church buildings.
(AP, 6/10/21)
2021 Jun 9, McDonald's was forced to briefly shut some outlets in Indonesia when the launch of a limited edition meal inspired by K-pop group BTS sparked frenzied excitement and fears of coronavirus contagion.
(AP, 6/11/21)
2021 Jun 9, Israeli troops shot and killed three Palestinians, including two security officers, in a shootout that erupted in the occupied West Bank town of Jenin during what appeared to be an overnight Israeli arrest raid.
(AP, 6/9/21)
2021 Jun 9, Mongolia held presidential elections. Early results showed former PM Ukhnaa Khurelsukh, chairman of the ruling Mongolian People's Party, winning by a large margin.
(SFC, 6/10/21, p.A2)
2021 Jun 9, It was reported that Nicaraguan police have detained five prominent opposition figures in two days, accelerating a slide toward one-party rule.
(NY Times, 6/9/21)
2021 Jun 9, Pakistani police arrested Mufti Sardar Ali Haqqani, after a video of him went viral on social media, in which he threatens Nobel Laureate Malala Yousafzai over her recent comments about marriage.
(AP, 6/10/21)
2021 Jun 9, A Russian court designated Aleksei A. Navalny’s political movement as an extremist network.
(NY Times, 6/9/21)
2021 Jun 9, Russia reported 10,407 new coronavirus cases in the last 24 hours. Authorities in Moscow said they would step up enforcement of rules requiring people to wear medical masks and gloves in indoor public spaces due to a rising number of COVID-19 cases.
(AP, 6/9/21)
2021 Jun 9, It was reported that a microscopic organism has wriggled back to life and reproduced asexually after lying frozen in the vast permafrost lands of northeastern Siberia for 24,000 years. Russian scientists found the tiny bdelloid rotifer in soil, dated from between 23,960 and 24,485 years ago, taken from the river Alazeya in Russia's far north region of Yakutia.
(Reuters, 6/9/21)
2021 Jun 9, A UN expert said at least one-quarter of the people in Myanmar's smallest state have been forced to flee their homes because of combat with the military junta that seized power in February. He called for international pressure on the junta to deprive it of the resources.
(AP, 6/9/21)
2021 Jun 9, It was reported that Gosiame Thamara Sithole, a South African woman, has given birth to 10 babies in what would be a new world record. An official inquiry later found the story to be fake. The 37-year-old is now being held under the mental health act for observation and will be provided with support.
(BBC, 6/9/21)(BBC, 6/23/21)
2021 Jun 9, A report released by the International Labour Organization and the UN Children’s Fund said the number of children in child labor has risen to 160 million globally, an uptick of 8.4 million over the past four years.
(Axios, 6/9/21)
2021 Jun 9, A UN official said that a high-level UN-led committee that focuses on rapid responses to humanitarian crises estimates that some 350,000 people in Ethiopia’s embattled Tigray region are facing famine conditions.
(AP, 6/9/21)
2021 Jun 10, President Joe Biden and British PM Boris Johnson met for the first time, looking to highlight their nations' famed “special relationship" but doing so against a backdrop of differences both political and personal. Biden and Johnson signed a new version of the 80-year old “Atlantic Charter," using their first meeting to redefine the Western alliance and accentuate what they said was a growing divide between battered democracies and their autocratic rivals, led by Russia and China.
(AP, 6/10/21)(NY Times, 6/11/21)
2021 Jun 10, The US leveled sanctions against a Yemeni network that it claims was cooperating with Iran's Revolutionary Guard to illicitly transfer tens of millions of dollars to Yemen's Houthi rebels.
(AP, 6/10/21)
2021 Jun 10, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told Congress that the US military has already begun conducting combat operations and surveillance in Afghanistan from outside the country's borders.
(AP, 6/10/21)
2021 Jun 10, In Washington, DC, Emma Coronel Aispuro (31), the wife of Mexican drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, pleaded guilty to charges related to helping her husband run his international drug trafficking ring.
(The Independent, 6/10/21)
2021 Jun 10, Total US COVID-19 cases reached over 33,415,911 with the death toll at 598,342.
(sfist.com, 6/11/21)
2021 Jun 10, It was reported that a group of 37 Baltimore businesses have signed on to a letter threatening to withhold tax payments from the city until it improves policing and other services.
(Washington Examiner, 6/10/21)
2021 Jun 10, Former United Auto Workers (UAW) President Gary Jones was sentenced to 28 months in federal prison and will be forced to repay thousands of dollars after he pleaded guilty to two counts of conspiracy in 2020 for plotting to steal $1.5 million in union dues.
(AP, 6/10/21)
2021 Jun 10, Johnson & Johnson said the US Food and Drug Administration has extended the shelf life of its single-shot COVID-19 vaccine from three months to four-and-a-half months, as millions of unused doses nationwide near expiration.
(Reuters, 6/10/21)
2021 Jun 10, Verizon Business launched its first commercially available private 5G network in the US to offer businesses and government departments high-speed indoor or outdoor connectivity.
(Reuters, 6/10/21)
2021 Jun 10, In Britain Mee Kuen Chong (67) was last seen in the Wembley area of London and was reported missing the next day. She was found headless in the woods near Bennett Road in Salcombe, Devon County on June 27.
(Nextshark, 7/6/21)
2021 Jun 10, Canada's top privacy released a report that says the Canadian federal police force broke the law when they used facial recognition software. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) said in February 2020 that for four months they had been using Clearview AI, a US-based facial recognition software company.
(AP, 6/10/21)
2021 Jun 10, Chile announced a full lockdown of Santiago and surrounding municipalities as COVID-19 cases remain high and available hospital beds hit low levels.
(SFC, 6/11/21, p.A4)
2021 Jun 10, President Emmanuel Macron said France is to scale down counter-terrorism operations in the Sahel region of West Africa after eight years. French forces have been operating in Mali, Chad, Mauritania, Niger, and Burkina Faso to fight militants.
(BBC, 6/10/21)
2021 Jun 10, Germany started rolling out a digital vaccination pass that can be used across Europe as the continent is gets ready for the key summer travel season.
(AP, 6/10/21)
2021 Jun 10, In the Netherlands a group of lawyers presented a dossier of evidence to prosecutors at the Int'l. Criminal Court (ICC) that they say establishes jurisdiction for the global tribunal to investigate allegations that Chinese authorities are involved in grave crimes targeting Uighurs.
(SFC, 6/11/21, p.A2)
2021 Jun 10, Prosus NV, the Dutch investor with a 28.9% share of Chinese software giant Tencent, said it expected full-year earnings per share to have nearly doubled in the past year, after a strong performance during the coronavirus crisis. Prosus is majority-owned by Naspers of South Africa.
(Reuters, 6/10/21)
2021 Jun 10, The Swiss National Bank and the Bank of France said they will trial Europe's first cross-border central bank digital currency payments, a move that will be a first for two of the world's top currencies.
(Reuters, 6/10/21)
2021 Jun 10, Human Rights Watch warned that millions of Syrians risk losing access to lifesaving aid, including food and COVID-19 vaccines, if Russia manages to block at the UN Security Council the use of the last remaining cross-border corridor for UN aid into rebel-held northwestern Syria.
(AP, 6/10/21)
2021 Jun 10, Pope Francis refused to let German Cardinal Reinhard Marx resign over the sex abuse scandal in the church, but said a process of reform was necessary and that every bishop must take responsibility for the “catastrophe" of the crisis.
(AP, 6/10/21)
2021 Jun 10, The UN Food Agency said food imports costs across the world are expected to surge to record levels this year, piling pressure on many of the poorest countries whose economies have already been ravaged by the COVID-19 pandemic.
(Reuters, 6/10/21)
2021 Jun 10, Yemen's Iran-backed rebels fires missiles on the central city of Marib, killing at least eight people and wounding as many as 27.
(AP, 6/10/21)
2021 Jun 11, The Biden administration said that it has dismantled a Trump-era government agency to help victims of crimes committed by immigrants, a move that symbolizes President Joe Biden's rejection of former Pres. Donald Trump's repeated efforts to link immigrants to crime.
(AP, 6/11/21)
2021 Jun 11, The Pentagon announced plans to send Ukraine $150 million in military assistance that will include counter-artillery radar, counter-drone technology and electronic warfare equipment.
(Reuters, 6/12/21)
2021 Jun 11, It was reported that the US Food & Drug Administration has asked Johnson & Johnson to discard 60 million doses of its COVID-19 vaccine manufactured at the problem-plagued Baltimore factory of Emergent BioSolutions Inc.
(Reuters, 6/11/21)
2021 Jun 11, The NY Times won a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of the coronavirus pandemic. The Star Tribune of Minneapolis won the award for its “authoritative and nuanced" coverage of the murder of George Floyd. A special citation went to Darnella Frazier, the young woman who took out her cellphone to record the killing of George Floyd. She was recognized for the video that spurred a global reckoning with police brutality.
(NY Times, 6/11/21)
2021 Jun 11, Jessica Johanna Oseguera Gonzalez (34), the daughter of alleged Mexican cartel boss Nemesio Ruben Oseguera Cervantes, aka "El Mencho," was sentenced to 30 months in prison. She had pleaded guilty in March to violating the Kingpin Act, which prohibits Americans from having financial dealings with companies that aid narcotics traffickers.
(Fox News, 6/12/21)
2021 Jun 11, Total US COVID-19 cases reached over 33,429,301 with the death toll at 599,182.
(sfist.com, 6/12/21)
2021 Jun 11, Illinois lifted all capacity limits on bars, restaurants and other venues. More than 68% of state residents, 18 or older, have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.
(SFC, 6/12/21, p.A4)
2021 Jun 11, Nevada's Gov. Steve Sisolak signed a law that would make his state the first to vote in the 2024 presidential primary.
(SFC, 6/12/21, p.A5)
2021 Jun 11, British PM Boris Johnson greeted leaders from the Group of Seven nations and the European Union on a wooden boardwalk on the freshly raked sand of Carbis Bay to open the G-7 summit. G7 leaders were in broad agreement about the need to continue supporting their economies with fiscal stimulus after the ravages of the COVID-19 pandemic.
(AP, 6/11/21)(Reuters, 6/11/21)
2021 Jun 11, Canada said it will share up to 100 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines with countries in need, though a portion of this has already been announced.
(Reuters, 6/11/21)
2021 Jun 11, In Canada thousands of people marched in support of a Muslim family run over and killed by Nathaniel Veltman (20) driving a pick-up truck on June 6 in an attack the police described as a hate crime.
(AP, 6/11/21)
2021 Jun 11, China reported 35 new coronavirus cases in the mainland, up from 22 a day earlier. China totaled 91,394 confirmed infections. Its death toll stood unchanged at 4,636.
(Reuters, 6/11/21)
2021 Jun 11, China's National Space Administration released four pictures showing the upper stage of the Zhurong rover and lander bearing small national flags and the view from the rover before it rolled off its platform on Mars.
(AP, 6/11/21)
2021 Jun 11, CongoDRC reported 254 new Covid-19 infections, mostly in the capital, Kinshasa, along with three deaths. Since the outbreak began, about 35,000 infections and 834 have officially been recorded in DR Congo.
(BBC, 6/13/21)
2021 Jun 11, It was reported that EU fishermen have been granted the right to "plunder" UK waters of red mullet, scallops and lobster after Britain failed to set limits on the amount that can be caught in a post-Brexit agreement.
(The Telegraph, 6/11/21)
2021 Jun 11, The European Medicines Agency (EMA) approved a new manufacturing site in France for the production of Moderna Inc's COVID-19 vaccine.
(Reuters, 6/11/21)
2021 Jun 11, Hong Kong's government said it would begin blocking the distribution of films that are deemed to undermine national security.
(SFC, 6/12/21, p.A2)
2021 Jun 11, India added 91,702 new coronavirus cases pushing its total to nearly 29.3 million. 3,403 fatalities were reported in the last 24 hours. Bihar state increased its death toll to more than 9,429 from 5,424 after the discovery of thousands of unreported cases.
(SFC, 6/12/21, p.A4)
2021 Jun 11, Iran regained its UN General Assembly vote after it made a minimum dues payment, while denouncing the United States for sanctions that had blocked billions in funds.
(Axios, 6/11/21)
2021 Jun 11, Pharmacies across Lebanon shuttered their doors for a two-day strike in protest of severe supply shortages, as motorists seeking fuel queued for hours outside petrol stations since the crack of dawn.
(AP, 6/11/21)
2021 Jun 11, Malaysia's government extended a two-week national lockdown, due to end on June 14, for another two weeks as daily coronavirus infections remained above 6,000.
(SFC, 6/12/21, p.A4)
2021 Jun 11, In Mexico two gunmen fired 10 to 15 shots at a Cancún beach before escaping across the water. The two victims died and an American tourist was wounded. The victims were reportedly street vendors who sold craft items to tourists. Many such vendors also work as drug dealers, selling marijuana and cocaine to visitors.
(The Independent, 6/15/21)
2021 Jun 11, In southwestern Pakistan a bus carrying pilgrims overturned killing at least 20 people.
(SFC, 6/12/21, p.A3)
2021 Jun 11, Palestinian teenager Mohammed Hamayel (15) was killed by Israeli fire during clashes between protesters and Israeli troops in the occupied West Bank.
(AP, 6/11/21)
2021 Jun 11, Russia reported 12,505 new coronavirus cases in the last 24 hours, its highest number of daily infections since late February, taking the national tally to 5,180,454 since the pandemic began.
(Reuters, 6/11/21)
2021 Jun 11, South Africa said it has finalized an extradition treaty with the UAE that would allow it to bring back members of an Indian family accused of involvement in high-level state corruption to face trial. Brothers Ajay, Atul and Rajesh Gupta are believed to be living in Dubai.
(AP, 6/11/21)
2021 Jun 11, Swedish health officials warned of worrying local outbreaks of the COVID delta variant and urged people to get vaccinated to avoid a fourth wave of the pandemic.
(Reuters, 6/11/21)
2021 Jun 11, McDonald's Corp, the world's largest burger chain, said that a data breach in South Korea and Taiwan has exposed some customer and employee information, making it the latest global company to be targeted by cybercriminals. McDonald's said its day-to-day operations were not affected and that a ransom was not involved.
(Reuters, 6/11/21)
2021 Jun 11, UN humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock said there is famine in northern Ethiopia after the release of a UN-backed analysis of the situation.
(BBC, 6/11/21)
2021 Jun 11, UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet warned of a military buildup in parts of Myanmar and rising violence, with the army using heavy weapons against armed groups as well as civilian targets, including Christian churches.
(AP, 6/11/21)
2021 Jun 11, The UN elected five countries to join the powerful 15-member UN Security Council with no suspense because all were unopposed -- Brazil, the UAE, Albania, Ghana and Gabon.
(AP, 6/11/21)
2021 Jun 11, The UN General Assembly approved the nomination of Costa Rican economist Rebecca Grynspan to head the UN agency promoting trade and development, the first woman and Central American to lead the Geneva-based organization.
(AP, 6/11/21)
2021 Jun 11, The Vatican took steps to better regulate lay religious movements by imposing term limits on their leaders and requiring internal elections to be representative of their memberships.
(AP, 6/11/21)
2021 Jun 11, In Yemen an explosion in the southern province of Abyan killed at least five separatist troops and wounded six people, including civilians.
(AP, 6/11/21)
2021 Jun 12, President Joe Biden announced that he would designate Pulse nightclub, where 49 people were gunned down five years ago, a national memorial, as he again called on Congress to pass gun control legislation.
(Fox News, 6/12/21)
2021 Jun 12, Total US COVID-19 cases reached over 33,438,322 with the death toll at 599,182.
(sfist.com, 6/13/21)
2021 Jun 12, Missouri Gov. Mike Parson signed a new law that would ban state police from enforcing federal gun laws. On June 16 US Justice Dept. officials pointed out that federal law trumps state law under the US Constitution's Supremacy Clause.
(SFC, 6/18/21, p.A4)
2021 Jun 12, In Texas a gunman opened fire in the busy bar and nightclub district of Austin early today, injuring 14 people. Police soon arrested one suspect and searched for a second following the mass shooting. Douglas John Kantor, (25), a tourist from New York and one of the 14 people wounded, died the next day from his injuries. The 2nd suspect (17) was arrested on June 14. On June 24 police arrested De'ondre White (19) into custody on a murder warrant. Charges against the two juveniles arrested earlier were dropped.
(Reuters, 6/14/21)(SFC, 6/14/21, p.A3)(SFC, 6/15/21, p.A4)(SFC, 6/26/21, p.A4)
2021 Jun 12, An auction for an 11-minute ride into space with Amazon founder Jeff Bizos and his brother Mark ended with a $28 million bid. The Blue Origin's New Shephard rocket will launch on July 20 from Van Horn, Texas.
(SSFC, 6/13/21, p.A8)
2021 Jun 12, Algeria held a parliamentary election that was boycotted by an influential protest movement and regarded by many with skepticism. For the first time in an Algerian election women made up half of the candidates.
(AP, 6/12/21)
2021 Jun 12, In Argentina Walter Klug Rivera, an ex-colonel convicted of human rights violations during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, was arrested in Buenos Aires after fleeing from neighboring Chile.
(The Independent, 6/14/21)
2021 Jun 12, Australia's Victoria state, which emerged from a strict lockdown earlier this week, recorded one new community case of COVID-19. The outbreak, which triggered the two-week snap lockdown late last month, has now seen 91 cases since May 24.
(Reuters, 6/12/21)
2021 Jun 12, Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro led thousands of motorcyclist supporters through the streets of Sao Paulo — and got hit with a fine for failure to wear a mask in violation of local pandemic restrictions.
(AP, 6/12/21)
2021 Jun 12, Mainland China reported 34 new COVID-19 cases, down from 35 cases a day earlier. The Delta variant was spreading in southeastern China, and doctors said that the infected are getting sicker, and faster.
(Reuters, 6/12/21)(NY Times, 6/12/21)
2021 Jun 12, Dubai Health Authority (DHA) said about two-thirds of people eligible for inoculation against COVID-19 have now received two doses of the vaccine in Dubai, the tourist and business hub of the United Arab Emirates.
(Reuters, 6/13/21)
2021 Jun 12, Hong Kong democracy activist Agnes Chow was released from prison on the second anniversary of the city's huge democracy rallies, with police out in force and protests now all but banned.
(The Telegraph, 6/12/21)
2021 Jun 12, Talks between Iran and global powers restarted with the goal of trying to restore a landmark agreement to contain Iranian nuclear development that the Trump administration abandoned in 2018.
(AP, 6/12/21)
2021 Jun 12, In Israel a private security guard at a checkpoint near Jerusalem shot and killed a woman (28) who allegedly planned to carry out a stabbing attack.
(AP, 6/12/21)
2021 Jun 12, Nigeria's President Muhammadu Buhari admitted that he has failed to end insecurity in the country, a promise he made when he was elected in 2015.
(AP, 6/12/21)
2021 Jun 12, Moscow's mayor effectively declared a public holiday for all of next week to combat a surge in COVID-19 cases. Sergei Sobyanin said it would not affect organizations that maintain the Russian capital's infrastructure, the military, and other strategically important enterprises.
(Reuters, 6/12/21)
2021 Jun 12, Alexander Gintsbur, the scientist who led the development of the Sputnik V vaccine, said Russia has tested a nasal spray form of its COVID-19 vaccine that is suitable for children aged 8-12, and plans to launch the new product in September.
(AP, 6/12/21)
2021 Jun 12, Missiles hit a hospital in a northern Syrian town controlled by Turkey-backed fighters, killing at least 15 people, including two medical staff, and putting the facility out of service. The governor’s office blamed the attack on Syrian Kurdish groups. The head of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, Mazloum Abadi, denied his forces were behind the attack.
(AP, 6/12/21)(AP, 6/13/21)
2021 Jun 12, Vietnam said it has approved the COVID-19 vaccine jointly made by Pfizer and BioNTech for domestic emergency use. Vietnam, with a population of around 98 million, has recorded a total of 10,241 coronavirus cases, with 58 deaths, since the pandemic began.
(Reuters, 6/12/21)
2021 Jun 13, US Pres. Joe Biden and other Western leaders concluded the G7 summit with a joint declaration criticizing the Chinese and Russian governments. G7 leaders demanded that Russia take action and investigate the use of chemical weapons within its territory and hold accountable those behind ransomware attacks and other cyber crimes.
(NY Times, 6/13/21)(Axios, 6/13/21)
2021 Jun 13, Total US COVID-19 cases reached over 33,459,210 with the death toll at 599,736.
(sfist.com, 6/14/21)
2021 Jun 13, Actor Ned Beatty died at his home in Los Angeles. His prolific acting career spanned more than four decades and earned an Oscar nomination for his role in “Network" and gave a cringe-inducing performance as a weekend outdoorsman assaulted by backwoods brutes in "Deliverance".
(NY Times, 6/14/21)
2021 Jun 13, Family lawyers said the family of Alton Sterling, a Black man who was shot and killed by a white police officer outside a convenience store in Baton Rouge, La., on July 5, 2016, has reached a $4.5 million settlement with the city.
(NY Times, 6/14/21)
2021 Jun 13, In Minnesota a woman was killed and three others injured after a car was driven into a crowd of anti-police brutality protesters in Minneapolis. Several people intervened, pulling the suspect from the car and restraining him until police arrested him.
(The Guardian, 6/14/21)
2021 Jun 13, In Ohio Eric Cole (42) was shot by an unknown assailant late today and was laying in the street, bleeding, in the 1400 block of South Center Boulevard before he was struck by a Springfield Police Division cruiser. Cole died from his injuries the next day.
(Tribune Publ., 7/1/21)
2021 Jun 13, In South Carolina Shamar Jackson (7) died after he was mauled by dogs while walking in his neighborhood with his brother in Marion County.
(NBC News, 6/16/21)
2021 Jun 13, GB News launched on British television this evening with the aim of giving a voice “to those who feel sidelined or silenced." Chairman Andrew Neil denied it will be the British equivalent of Fox News.
(AP, 6/14/21)
2021 Jun 13, In central China at least 12 people were killed and 39 seriously injured after a gas line explosion tore through a residential neighborhood in Shiyan city, Hubei province.
(AP, 6/13/21)
2021 Jun 13, Novak Djokovic won the French Open to claim his 19th major tennis title — one short of the record, shared by Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal.
(NY Times, 6/13/21)
2021 Jun 13, Authorities in India reported 80,834 new COVID-19 infections over the previous 24 hours, the lowest daily tally in more than two months.
(AP, 6/13/21)
2021 Jun 13, In northeast India Ziona Chana (76), the head of a local Christian sect that allows polygamy, died in Mizoram state. He had 39 wives and 94 children and was said to be the head of the world's largest family.
(Reuters, 6/14/21)
2021 Jun 13, Finland held local elections.
(AP, 6/13/21)
2021 Jun 13, Israeli lawmakers voted to remove PM Benjamin Netanyahu from power, replacing the country’s longest-serving leader with the head of a fragile alliance formed from eight ideologically diffuse parties. Parliament voted to approve a coalition government, ousting Benjamin Netanyahu as prime minister after 12 years and replacing him with Naftali Bennett, the head of a small right-wing party.
(NY Times, 6/13/21)
2021 Jun 13, The prosecutor of Jordan's state security court filed sedition and incitement charges against two confidants of King Abdullah II’s half-brother Hamzah, marking the latest step in a rare, intrigue-filled palace drama that has rattled the Western-backed kingdom.
(AP, 6/13/21)
2021 Jun 13, Lebanon’s currency hit a new low, as the country's economic and political crisis worsened with no apparent solutions in the near future.
(AP, 6/13/21)
2021 Jun 13, In the Philippines government troops killed four Abu Sayyaf militants in Sulu province. The dead included Injam Yada, a commander blamed for beheadings.
(SFC, 6/14/21, p.A3)
2021 Jun 13, Russian authorities confirmed 14,723 cases nationwide, the largest one-day total since Feb. 13. Moscow reported 7,704 new infections, the most in a single day since Dec. 24. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said that anyone over 18 who receives the first of a two-dose COVID-19 vaccine from June 14 until July 11 would now be automatically entered into a draw to win a car.
(Reuters, 6/13/21)
2021 Jun 13, Exit polls indicated that Swiss voters appear to have narrowly rejected a proposed “carbon dioxide law" that would have hiked fees and taxes on fuels that produce greenhouse gases.
(AP, 6/13/21)
2021 Jun 13, A boat capsized off the coast of war-torn Yemen and some 200 migrants, mostly from the Horn of Africa, were missing.
(AP, 6/14/21)
2021 Jun 14, US Pres. Joe Biden attended his first NATO summit as president. Biden and European officials took aim at China for a second day, concluding their NATO summit with a warning about Beijing’s growing military strength.
(NY Times, 6/14/21)
2021 Jun 14, It was reported that John Demers, the top national security official with the Department of Justice, is resigning amid repeated revelations that the department secretly seized records from House Democrats and members of the media.
(Washington Examiner, 6/14/21)
2021 Jun 14, US officials announced a one-year ban on importing dogs from more than 100 countries. The ban is in response to the alarming number of dogs bought from foreign countries that arrived in the US with false rabies vaccination certificates over the past year.
(NPR, 6/14/21)
2021 Jun 14, Total US COVID-19 cases reached over 33,464,566 with the death toll at 599,813.
(sfist.com, 6/15/21)
2021 Jun 14, Ruben Andre Garcia (31), a porn actor and producer who recruited young women under false pretenses to appear in videos for San Diego-based website GirlsDoPorn.com, was sentenced to 20 years in custody in connection with his pleas to federal sex-trafficking and conspiracy charges.
(https://tinyurl.com/vpbup8eh)(USA Today, 6/21/21)
2021 Jun 14, The Minnesota Court of Appeals affirmed a state regulator's decision that there is sufficient need for Enbridge Inc to replace its Line 3 pipeline.
(Reuters, 6/14/21)
2021 Jun 14, Ohio-based Lordstown Motors Corp announced the sudden departure of its chief executive and finance head, just days after the electric truck maker warned that it may not have enough money to stay in business over the next year, sending shares down more than 20%.
(Reuters, 6/14/21)
2021 Jun 14, Vermont lifted its remaining pandemic restrictions after becoming the first US state to have given a shot to 80 percent of eligible residents.
(NY Times, 6/14/21)
2021 Jun 14, Novavax Inc said its COVID-19 vaccine was more than 90% effective, including against a variety of concerning variants of the coronavirus in a large, late-stage US-based clinical trial.
(Reuters, 6/14/21)
2021 Jun 14, It was reported that Britain's GlaxoSmithKline Plc has agreed to pay up to $2 billion to Boston-based iTeos Therapeutics Inc to develop and sell a potential cancer treatment together.
(Reuters, 6/14/21)
2021 Jun 14, England delayed its full reopening by a month, to late July, because of a surge in coronavirus cases.
(NY Times, 6/14/21)
2021 Jun 14, It was reported that China has deployed a fleet of drones in the city of Guangzhou to keep people indoors and remind those going out to wear masks. The city has seen a flare-up of the more infectious delta variant of the coronavirus.
(SFC, 6/14/21, p.A4)
2021 Jun 14, Egypt’s highest criminal court upheld the death sentence for 12 people involved in a 2013 protest by Islamists, including leaders of the now outlawed Muslim Brotherhood. The Court of Cassation also overturned death sentences for 31 others in the same case, giving them life imprisonment instead.
(AP, 6/14/21)
2021 Jun 14, Iran’s state TV reported that the country has approved an emergency use of its first domestically developed coronavirus vaccine that could bring the hardest-hit country in the Middle East closer to inoculating its citizens against COVID-19.
(AP, 6/14/21)
2021 Jun 14, In Japan an American father and son pleaded guilty in Japan to helping Carlos Ghosn, the former Nissan chief facing fraud charges, to flee that country in 2019. Michael Taylor (60), a former Green Beret, and his son Peter Maxwell Taylor (28), appeared in the same Tokyo courthouse where Mr. Ghosn had been expected to stand trial before his daring escape to Lebanon in December 2019.
(NY Times, 6/14/21)
2021 Jun 14, It was reported that Security officials under NATO command have approached Qatar to secure a base that can be used to train Afghan special forces as part of a strategic commitment after foreign forces withdraw from Afghanistan.
(Reuters, 6/14/21)
2021 Jun 14, Nigerian jihadists of the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) freed 10 hostages including seven local aid workers, two of them employed by the United Nations, after weeks of mediation.
(AFP, 6/16/21)
2021 Jun 14, Oman officials said coronavirus infections are surging. Health officials warned that hospitals now face an acute shortage of beds amid a lagging vaccine rollout, the spread of highly transmissible variants and relaxed movement restrictions.
(AP, 6/14/21)
2021 Jun 14, Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte extended partial coronavirus curbs in the capital and nearby provinces until end-June, but placed more areas under tighter quarantine measures because of rising infections and high hospital occupancy. With more than 1.3 million COVID-19 cases and nearly 23,000 deaths, the Philippines has the second highest number of infections and casualties in Southeast Asia, next to Indonesia.
(Reuters, 6/14/21)
2021 Jun 14, Romania reported its lowest number of daily coronavirus infections in more than a year with just 50 new cases.
(SFC, 6/15/21, p.A5)
2021 Jun 14, South Africa’s COVID-19 vaccine rollout was hit by further delays as it will have to discard at least 2 million Johnson & Johnson vaccines produced in the country. The vaccines were found by the US Food and Drug Administration to be unsuitable for use due to possible contamination of their ingredients at a Baltimore plant.
(AP, 6/14/21)
2021 Jun 14, Tariq Saleh, a militia leader and nephew of Yemen's late strongman president, acknowledged that his Emirati-backed troops are stationed on an island in a crucial maritime chokepoint where a mysterious air base is now under construction.
(AP, 6/15/21)
2021 Jun 14, It was reported that Zambia, with a population of about 18 million people, has a cumulative total of nearly 108,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19, including 1,348 deaths.
(AP, 6/14/21)
2021 Jun 15, The US and the EU reached a deal to end their long-running dispute over subsidies to Boeing and Airbus. This will mean the phase-out of billions in punitive tariffs and ease trans-Atlantic tensions.
(SFC, 6/16/21, p.B2)
2021 Jun 15, A federal judge in Louisiana blocked the Biden administration’s suspension of new oil and gas leases on federal lands and waters, saying that the power to pause offshore oil and gas leases “lies solely with Congress" because it was the legislative branch that originally made federal lands and waters available for leasing..
(AP, 6/15/21)
2021 Jun 15, Total US COVID-19 cases reached over 33,476,053. The US death toll topped 600,000.
(sfist.com, 6/16/21)(SFC, 6/16/21, p.A4)
2021 Jun 15, California officially reopened with most pandemic restrictions lifted. Nearly 47% of all state residents were now vaccinated. California and New York lifted virtually all restrictions on gatherings. Officials made the move after more than 70 percent of adults in both states had received a first dose of the coronavirus vaccine.
(SFC, 6/15/21, p.A1)(NY Times, 6/15/21)
2021 Jun 15, California state regulators issued a directive targeting 4,3000 "junior" water rights holders between Fresno county and the Oregon border, forcing them to turn to sources of water other than surface supplies.
(SFC, 6/16/21, p.A1)
2021 Jun 15, In Chicago four people died and four were believed to be injured after a second mass shooting in a matter of days.
(The Independent, 6/16/21)
2021 Jun 15, It was reported that MacKenzie Scott, the former wife of Jeff Bezos, has made a new round of grants, to 286 organizations. Her net worth, which Forbes estimates at $60 billion, keeps rising, thanks to Amazon stock.
(NY Times, 6/15/21)
2021 Jun 15, Oprah Winfrey's next book club pick is a debut novel set in Georgia at the end of the Civil War: Nathan Harris' “The Sweetness of Water." Harris (29) has said he wanted to show what it was like in the South after slaves were emancipated.
(AP, 6/15/21)
2021 Jun 15, Winners were announced for the annual Goldman Environmental Prize. The six winners included: Sharon Lavigne (68) of Louisiana, who successfully fought the opening of a Chinese chemical plant in St. James Parish; Liz Chicaje Churay (38) of Peru, for helping establish a new national park; Maida Bilal (39) of Bosnia-Herzegovina, for creating an environmental group to protest proposed hydropower dams on the Kruscica River; Kimiko Hirata of Japan, for fighting off construction of new coal power plants following the country's 2011 earthquake and nuclear plant meltdown; Gloria Majiga-Kamoto (30) of Malawi, for bringing pressure on the government to uphold a ban on thin plastics; and Thai Van Nguyen (39) of Vietnam, for work to protect pangolins, trafficked for use in traditional Chinese and Vietnamese medicine.
(SFC, 6/15/21, p.B5)
2021 Jun 15, Group messaging app IRL, short for in real life, said it raised $170 million in a funding round led by SoftBank Group Corp’s Vision Fund 2 that valued the company at $1.17 billion. Launched in June 2019, SF-based IRL said it has over 12 million monthly active users.
(Reuters, 6/15/21)
2021 Jun 15, IBM unveiled one of Europe's most powerful quantum computers in Germany, boosting the country's efforts to stay in the race for what's considered a key technology of the future. IBM already has more than 30 such computers in the US.
(AP, 6/15/21)
2021 Jun 15, Sage Therapeutics said zuranolone, its experimental depression drug, showed significant improvement in symptoms compared to placebo in a late-stage study.
(AP, 6/15/21)
2021 Jun 15, In eastern Afghanistan gunmen targeted an anti-polio drive killing at least five members of two vaccination teams in separate attacks. At least four team members were wounded.
(SFC, 6/16/21, p.A2)
2021 Jun 15, Australia and Britain announced that they have agreed a trade deal - the first negotiated from scratch post-Brexit.
(Reuters, 6/14/21)
2021 Jun 15, Ethiopia’s UN ambassador said that Eritrean troops who have been fighting with his country’s forces in a war against the Tigray region’s fugitive leaders “will definitely leave soon," a move that would be welcomed by many.
(AP, 6/15/21)
2021 Jun 15, A French court ordered IKEA to pay $1.3 million in fines and damages over a campaign to spy on union representatives, employees and some unhappy customers.
(SFC, 6/16/21, p.B2)
2021 Jun 15, France began giving COVID jab to 12-year-olds. The government has made people from 12 years upwards eligible for the COVID-19 vaccination, provided they have parental consent.
(Reuters, 6/15/21)
2021 Jun 15, Italy reported 63 coronavirus-related deaths against 36 the day before. The daily tally of new infections rose to 1,255 from 907.
(Reuters, 6/15/21)
2021 Jun 15, Mexico received 1.3 million doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine donated by the US. Officials planned to vaccinate anyone over 18 in four cities along the border to boost vaccination rates there.
(SFC, 6/16/21, p.A4)
2021 Jun 15, The Karenni National Defence Force (KNDF), a militia group in Myanmar's conflict-torn Kayah State, announced a halt to attacks on military targets, after appeals from local communities to cease fighting that had damaged homes and displaced more than 100,000 people.
(Reuters, 6/15/21)
2021 Jun 15, Nicaragua's police arrested Luis Rivas Anduray, the general manager of Banco de Produccion SA. He was the 16th person arrested since late May for allegedly committing crimes against the state. Most of the others were presidential candidates or opposition party leaders.
(SFC, 6/17/21, p.A4)
2021 Jun 15, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un warned about possible food shortages and urged the country to brace for extended COVID-19 restrictions as he opened a major political conference to discuss national efforts to salvage a broken economy.
(AP, 6/15/21)
2021 Jun 15, Oman announced that its doctors have detected mucormycosis, a potentially fatal fungal infection afflicting some coronavirus patients, the first such known cases on the Arabian Peninsula as the sultanate faces a surge in COVID-19 infections that has swamped its hospitals.
(AP, 6/15/21)
2021 Jun 15, Pakistan reported that roughly 3 million people have been vaccinated, less than 2% of the population. New measures to encourage vaccination included blocking people's cell phone services in two provinces and suspending the salaries of some government employees who have not been vaccinated.
(SFC, 6/16/21, p.A4)
2021 Jun 15, In Russia Catherine Serou (34) a US citizen and former Marine studying at a university in Nizhny Novgorod, disappeared after leaving her house in a suburb of the city and entering an unknown vehicle. Local police on June 19 announced that her body was found. Suspect Alexander Popov, born in 1977 with prior convictions, was arrested on suspicion of abducting and murdering her an hour before Serou's body was found.
(Axios, 6/19/21)(Fox News, 6/23/21)
2021 Jun 15, Saudi Arabia executed Mustafa bin Hashim bin Isa al-Darwish (26). He was convicted on charges stemming from his participation in an anti-government rebellion by minority Shiites. He was detained in 2015 for alleged participation in riots between 2011 and 2012.
(AP, 6/15/21)
2021 Jun 15, An appeals court in Slovakia dismissed a lower court's acquittal of a businessman accused of masterminding the 2018 slayings of an investigative journalist and his fiancée. The case will return to the Specialized Criminal Court in Pezinok, which ruled in September to clear businessman Marian Kocner and one co-defendant of murder.
(AP, 6/15/21)
2021 Jun 15, In Somalia a suicide bomber killed at least 10 people at an army training camp in Mogadishu.
(BBC, 6/15/21)
2021 Jun 15, Officials said Sri Lanka's government is seeking help from the UN and other countries in assessing the environmental damage caused by a fire on a container ship carrying chemicals that is sinking off its capital. The 12-day fire on the MV X-Press Pearl ravaged the vessel, destroyed most of its cargo and caused severe pollution in the ocean and along a long stretch of the island nation’s famed beaches.
(AP, 6/15/21)
2021 Jun 15, Sudan and the PLM-N, the country's main rebel group, agreed to end negotiations and conduct further consultations over their disputed points.
(AP, 6/15/21)
2021 Jun 15, A UNICEF report said escalating gang violence has pushed nearly 8,500 women and children from their homes in Haiti’s capital in the past two weeks.
(AP, 6/15/21)
2021 Jun 16, President Joe Biden finished his summit in Geneva with Russia's Pres. Putin with few of the "deliverables" — concrete outcomes — that diplomatic negotiators obsess over. The two leaders mostly agreed to set up a process for lower-level aides to keep talking about key issues. Biden and Putin agreed to return their respective ambassadors to Washington and Moscow in a bid to improve badly deteriorated diplomatic relations between their countries.
(AP, 6/16/21)(NBC News, 6/17/21)
2021 Jun 16, US special envoy for climate John Kerry said the United States is planning to increase funding to Egypt to help it convert to solar energy and move away from fossil fuels.
(AP, 6/16/21)
2021 Jun 16, The US Education Department said that transgender students were protected under Title IX, a law that prohibits sex-based discrimination in federally funded schools, reversing a Trump-era policy that effectively had said the opposite.
(NY Times, 6/16/21)
2021 Jun 16, The US Education Department said that it is erasing student debt for 18,000 borrowers who attended the for-profit college ITT Technical Institute that closed in 2016 following sanctions for exaggerating claims about its graduation success.
(SFC, 6/17/21, p.A4)
2021 Jun 16, Total US COVID-19 cases reached over 33,487,415 with the death toll at 600,313.
(sfist.com, 6/17/21)
2021 Jun 16, In San Francisco Anh Taylor (94) was stabbed multiple times during an unprovoked attack. Suspect Daniel Cauich (35) was arrested less than two hours later.
(Washington Examiner, 6/17/21)
2021 Jun 16, Merle Smith Jr. (b.1944), the first Black cadet to graduate from the US Coast Guard Academy, died in Connecticut. During the Vietnam War he was the first Black officer to command a US warship in close quarters combat.
(SSFC, 6/26/21, p.F8)
2021 Jun 16, Fifty officers who serve on a specialized crowd control unit in Portland, Oregon, who have responded to the city’s ongoing, often violent protests, voted to resign en masse after criminal charges were filed a day earlier against a team member. Officer Cody Budworth, was indicted, accused of fourth-degree assault stemming from a baton strike against a protester last summer.
(AP, 6/17/21)(SFC, 6/18/21, p.A4)
2021 Jun 16, South Carolina's Supreme Court blocked the planned execution of two inmates by electrocution, saying they cannot be put to death until they truly have the choice of the firing squad option set out in the state's newly revised capital punishment law.
(SFC, 6/17/21, p.A4)
2021 Jun 16, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law a bill allowing people to carry concealed handguns without any permit, joining 20 other states that already have such measures.
(Reuters, 6/17/21)
2021 Jun 16, Moderna said the US government has bought another 200 million doses of its COVID-19 vaccine, including an option to buy experimental shots that may be in development.
(Reuters, 6/16/21)
2021 Jun 16, Royal Caribbean Group said it would delay the inaugural sailing of its Odyssey of the Seas cruise liner by nearly a month after 8 crew members tested positive for COVID-19.
(Reuters, 6/16/21)
2021 Jun 16, A US hospital in Rhode Island gave the first infusion of an expensive, controversial new Alzheimer's drug from Biogen Inc before Medicare had even said what it will pay for. Mark Archambault (70) was the first patient treated with the drug, Aduhelm, outside of a clinical trial.
(Reuters, 6/16/21)
2021 Jun 16, Self-driving truck technology company TuSimple Holdings Inc said it will open a new Texas facility that will enable it to put trucks to work hauling freight on the roads of the southeastern US states within six months.
(Reuters, 6/16/21)
2021 Jun 16, Astronauts ventured out on a spacewalk to outfit the International Space Station with powerful, new solar panels to handle the growing electrical demands from upcoming visitors.
(AP, 6/16/21)
2021 Jun 16, Britain's government said it will require COVID-19 vaccinations for nursing home workers in England, arguing that the need to protect vulnerable residents outweighed employees' right to choose whether to get the jab.
(AP, 6/16/21)
2021 Jun 16, A junior finance minister said Britain's government said it will extend until March 2022 a ban on evictions of businesses that stopped paying rent due to the coronavirus crisis.
(Reuters, 6/16/21)
2021 Jun 16, British lawyer Karim Khan was sworn in as the new chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Court, pledging to reach out to nations that are not members of the court in his quest to end impunity for atrocities and to try to hold trials in countries where crimes are committed.
(AP, 6/16/21)
2021 Jun 16, China's government said the No. 1 reactor of the Taishan Nuclear Power Plant in Guangdong had five broken fuel rods but that no radioactivity had leaked.
(SFC, 6/17/21, p.A4)
2021 Jun 16, As of today Ethiopia has seen 274,346 confirmed Covid cases and 4,250 deaths.
(BBC, 6/17/21)
2021 Jun 16, EU members agreed to add the US to the list of countries for which they should gradually remove restrictions on non-essential travel. The recommendation is non-binding, and national governments have authority to require test results or vaccination records and to set other entry conditions.
(AP, 6/16/21)
2021 Jun 16, France eased several COVID-19 restrictions, with authorities saying it's no longer always mandatory to wear masks outdoors and halting an 8-month nightly coronavirus curfew this weekend.
(AP, 6/16/21)
2021 Jun 16, It was reported that Germany's finance minister has ordered the purchase of data on Germans with assets in Dubai as part of efforts to combat tax evasion, following similar purchases by regional authorities of data from Switzerland in the past decade.
(AP, 6/16/21)
2021 Jun 16, The German company CureVac delivered disappointing preliminary results from a clinical trial of its Covid-19 vaccine, dimming hopes that it could help fill the world’s great need.
(NY Times, 6/16/21)
2021 Jun 16, Hundreds of Hong Kong police officers raided the newsroom of Mr. Lai’s defiantly pro-democracy newspaper, Apple Daily, scrutinized journalists’ computers, arrested top editors, froze company accounts and warned readers not to repost some of its articles online.
(NY Times, 6/16/21)
2021 Jun 16, India's Health Ministry reported 62,224 new infections over the past 24 hours as well as 2,542 more deaths, raising total fatalities to 379, 573.
(SFC, 6/17/21, p.A3)
2021 Jun 16, In Iran Shahram Safari, a Kurdish freelance reporter, was sentenced to three months in prison by a municipal court in Kermanshah for reporting on the true extent of the country's COVID-19 outbreak.
(Insider, 7/7/21)
2021 Jun 16, The Israeli military conducted airstrikes in the Gaza Strip early today, after officials said that the militant group Hamas had sent incendiary balloons into southern Israel from Gaza. The Israeli military said it is reining in a controversial practice of conducting late-night raids of Palestinian homes in the West Bank aimed at gathering information about the houses and their inhabitants.
(NY Times, 6/15/21)(AP, 6/16/21)
2021 Jun 16, Palestinian woman Mai Afaneh (28) was shot and killed by Israeli troops, allegedly after carrying out an attempted car-ramming attack.
(AP, 6/16/21)
2021 Jun 16, Moscow made coronavirus vaccines mandatory for people working in retail, education and other service sectors, part of an effort to boost the country's low immunization rates as COVID-19 cases continue to soar. The surrounding Moscow region, the Siberian region of Kemerovo and the Far East region of Sakhalin promptly followed.
(AP, 6/17/21)
2021 Jun 16, Spain Princess of Asturias award in the International Aid category went to the Campaign for Female Education (CAMFED), a consortium of non-profit groups that aims to reduce poverty in Africa through educating more girls and empowering women.
(AP, 6/16/21)
2021 Jun 16, Ukrainian police said they have uncovered a ring of computer hackers responsible for cyberattacks that targeted universities in the United States and firms in South Korea, causing half a billion dollars in damage. Ukraine's cyber police announced they had arrested six people involved with Cl0p, and seized a number of computers, cars and about 5 million Ukrainian hryvnia ($185,000) in cash.
(AP, 6/16/21)(NBC News, 6/16/21)
2021 Jun 16, Vietnam reported 423 new coronavirus cases, the highest number of new infections reported since the start of its latest outbreak late in April. Vietnam has recorded 11,635 infections overall and 61 fatalities.
(Reuters, 6/16/21)
2021 Jun 17, President Joe Biden signed a bill that was passed by Congress to set aside Juneteenth, or June 19th, as a federal holiday. Union Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger and his troops arrived at Galveston on June 19, 1865, with news that the war had ended and that the enslaved were now free. The next year, the now-free people started celebrating Juneteenth in Galveston.
(AP, 6/17/21)
2021 Jun 17, The US Supreme Court embraced religious rights over LGBT rights by ruling 9-0 in favor of a Catholic Church-affiliated agency that sued after Philadelphia refused to place children for foster care with the organization because it barred same-sex couples from applying to become foster parents.
(Reuters, 6/17/21)
2021 Jun 17, Total US COVID-19 cases reached over 33,500,304 with the death toll at 600,676.
(sfist.com, 6/18/21)
2021 Jun 17, In Arizona a gunman opened fire on vehicles and pedestrians for 90 minutes across suburban Phoenix, leaving one person dead and dozens others injured. Police soon arrested Ashin Tricarico (19) of the town of Surprise. He allegedly told police he believed people were after him in the wake of a separate shooting he was involved in while working at a restaurant last month.
(https://tinyurl.com/443hc6aa)(SFC, 6/19/21, p.A3)
2021 Jun 17, California and Texas urged consumers to conserve energy this week to reduce stress on the grid and avoid outages as homes and businesses crank up air conditioners to escape a scorching heatwave blanketing the US Southwest.
(Reuters, 6/17/21)
2021 Jun 17, Carol Easton (87), American arts biographer, died at her home in Venice, Ca. Her books included ""Straight Ahead: The Story of Stan Kenton" (1973), "The Search for Sam Goldwyn" (1976), "Jacqueline du Pré: A Biography" (1989) and "No Intermissions: The Life Story of Agnes de Mille" (1996).
(SSFC, 7/25/21, p.F7)
2021 Jun 17, In Georgia a Holly Springs police officer died this morning after a car dragged him during a traffic stop. The driver of the vehicle, Ansy Dolce (29) of Cherokee County, was shot and killed by an officer in the incident.
(NBC News, 6/17/21)
2021 Jun 17, After more than 18 years in prison and two decades spent without being formally declared innocent of the charges against him, Charles Fain (72) received compensation. He received a declaration of innocence from the state of Idaho last week.
(AP, 6/18/21)
2021 Jun 17, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker announced that the state will offer $7 million in cash prizes and $3 million in scholarships through a new lottery open to all residents who have received at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose.
(SFC, 6/18/21, p.A5)
2021 Jun 17, A patch of virtual land in the blockchain-based online world Decentraland sold for more than $900,000, in a record purchase for the platform. The purchase was made using MANA, Decentraland's own cryptocurrency. The land cost 1,295,000 MANA, which was worth $913,228.2 at the time of sale. Decentraland is a user-owned, Ethereum-based virtual world where you can play, explore, and interact with games and activities.
(https://tinyurl.com/2z4y4chj)(Reuters, 6/18/21)
2021 Jun 17, US electric vehicle startup Canoo said it would build an assembly plant in Oklahoma that was scheduled to open in 2023 and until then would use VDL Nedcar in Netherlands as its contract manufacturer.
(Reuters, 6/17/21)
2021 Jun 17, US medical equipment maker Danaher Corp said it would buy privately held biotech company Aldevron in an all-cash deal for about $9.6 billion, snapping up a supplier to COVID-19 vaccine maker Moderna Inc.
(AP, 6/17/21)
2021 Jun 17, Three weeks of online international climate talks ended with no breakthroughs made on key issues.
(AP, 6/17/21)
2021 Jun 17, The US Embassy in Kabul went into lockdown citing a surge in coronavirus cases.
(SFC, 6/18/21, p.A5)
2021 Jun 17, A UK-US trade deal suspended Scotch whisky tariffs for five years.
(SFC, 6/18/21, p.B2)
2021 Jun 17, Britain's medicine regulator extended the emergency use approval (EUA) for Innova's lateral flow COVID-19 tests, saying it was satisfied with a review of the tests after its US counterpart issued a warning about them.
(Reuters, 6/17/21)
2021 Jun 17, Britain reported its biggest daily rise in new cases of COVID-19 since Feb. 19. Government figures showed 11,007 new infections, up from 9,055 the day before.
(Reuters, 6/17/21)
2021 Jun 17, Three Chinese astronauts docked in space to help build a rival to the International Space Station.
(NY Times, 6/17/21)
2021 Jun 17, Germany-based Lufthansa said it will allow passengers to use new digital COVID-19 vaccination certificates at check-in for their flights.
(Reuters, 6/17/21)
2021 Jun 17, In Lebanon shops, government offices, businesses and banks shuttered their doors as part of a general strike to protest deteriorating economic conditions and press for a government to deal with the worsening political and economic crises.
(AP, 6/17/21)
2021 Jun 17, Nepal reported 2,607 new coronavirus cases along with 39 deaths. The health minister said Nepal has significantly reduced coronavirus infections after its worst outbreak, which overwhelmed the country’s medical system, but is in desperate need of vaccines.
(AP, 6/17/21)
2021 Jun 17, The Northern Ireland Assembly confirmed Paul Givan as first minister. Michelle O'Neill of Sinn Fein was reappointed deputy first minister.
(SFC, 6/18/21, p.A2)
2021 Jun 17, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un ordered his government to be prepared for both dialogue and confrontation with the Biden administration — but more for confrontation.
(AP, 6/18/21)
2021 Jun 17, Palestinian teenager Ahmad Shamsa (15) died of a gunshot wound after being shot a day earlier by Israeli troops in the occupied West Bank during a protest against a settlement outpost. He was the fourth demonstrator to be killed since the outpost was established last month.
(AP, 6/17/21)
2021 Jun 17, Russian President Vladimir Putin praised the outcome of his summit with US President Joe Biden and called him an astute and shrewd negotiator.
(AP, 6/17/21)
2021 Jun 17, Moscow's Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said the COVID-19 situation was unexpectedly and rapidly deteriorating, and that the city was probably facing new coronavirus variants that were more aggressive and infectious.
(AP, 6/17/21)
2021 Jun 17, A doctor in Somalia's semi-autonomous region of Puntland said that between five and 10 of his Covid patients were dying because of a lack of oxygen almost every day. In Somalia up to 25 people were dying each day in one hospital because of a lack of oxygen.
(BBC, 6/17/21)
2021 Jun 17, A migrant boat believed to be carrying 45 passengers capsized late today near Spain’s Canary Islands. 41 people, including 19 women and seven children, were rescued. Three adults and boy were drowned.
(AP, 6/18/21)
2021 Jun 17, In Sri Lanka the Singapore-flagged MV X-Press Pearl ship sank off the country's main port and nearly a month after the vessel caught fire.
(AP, 6/18/21)
2021 Jun 17, In western Turkey a gunman killed Deniz Poyraz, a female party employee, during an attack on the office of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party in Izmir province. A former health worker was detained.
(AP, 6/17/21)
2021 Jun 17, Kenneth Kaunda (97), Zambia's first president (1964-1991) and a key figure in its independence struggle, died.
(BBC, 6/17/21)
2021 Jun 18, The DJIA fell 1% after Federal Reserve official James Bullard said inflation was stronger than anticipated and it would take the central bank several meetings to figure out how to pare back stimulus.
(Reuters, 6/18/21)
2021 Jun 18, Total US COVID-19 cases reached over 33,510,835 with the death toll at 600,970.
(sfist.com, 6/19/21)
2021 Jun 18, The US Southwest baked under an unrelenting heatwave for a fifth day, putting power systems to the test as more records were expected to be broken before a moderating trend sets in next week. The National Weather Service issued excessive heat warnings for five states - California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona and part of Colorado.
(Reuters, 6/18/21)
2021 Jun 18, It was reported that a years-long aerial survey commissioned by California air-quality regulators found "super-emitter" landfills accounted for 43% the measured emissions of the potent greenhouse gas methane - outpacing the fossil-fuel and agricultural sectors.
(AP, 6/18/21)
2021 Jun 18, The Orlando Police Department announced the arrest of 53 fentanyl dealers in a 9-month investigation they named, "Operation Good Call".
(Fox News, 6/19/21)
2021 Jun 18, Oregon authorities searched for suspect Oen Nicholson (30) accused in a deadly hit-and-run and two fatal shootings. Police later found Charles Nicholson (83) dead inside a travel trailer in the same RV park where the hit-and-run occurred.
(Fox News, 6/20/21)
2021 Jun 18, It was reported that more than a quarter-million allegedly illegal marijuana plants were seized and destroyed in the span of a week from eight properties across two Southern Oregon counties.
(Tribune Publ., 6/18/21)
2021 Jun 18, A Fort Bliss, Texas, soldier was convicted at an Army court-martial hearing of sexually assaulting a fellow soldier and another unnamed woman. Pfc. Christian Alvarado was sentenced by a military judge to 18 years and three months in prison.
(Fox News, 6/18/21)
2021 Jun 18, Argentine laboratory Richmond said that it had produced almost half a million doses of the Russian Sputnik V vaccine against the coronavirus, the first made in the country.
(Reuters, 6/18/21)
2021 Jun 18, A former Australian spy was convicted over his unconfirmed role as a whistleblower who revealed an espionage operation against the government of East Timor in 2004. The Canberra court registry listed him as "Witness K".
(AP, 6/19/21)
2021 Jun 18, In Belgium a school undergoing construction work collapsed in the city of Antwerp, killing five workers and injuring nine others.
(AP, 6/20/21)
2021 Jun 18, Canadian officials said border restrictions will be extended with the US until July 21 as Canada works to get a higher percentage of its citizens fully vaccinated.
(SFC, 6/19/21, p.A4)
2021 Jun 18, China reported 30 new confirmed COVID-19 cases on the mainland for today, up from 23 infections a day earlier. Total confirmed COVID-19 cases in mainland China stood at 91,564 at the end of today, with the death toll unchanged at 4,636.
(Reuters, 6/19/21)
2021 Jun 18, Iran held presidential elections. Many Iranians boycotted the election after top officials disqualified most viable candidates except one. Hardliner Ebrahim Raisi (60) was the favorite to succeed Hassan Rouhani. Raisi is under US sanctions for alleged involvement in executions of political prisoners decades ago. Raisi secured a landslide victory after a contest marked by voter apathy over economic hardships and political restrictions.
(Reuters, 6/18/21)(Reuters, 6/19/21)
2021 Jun 18, In Myanmar at least two explosions rocked a neighborhood in Yangon killing two people and destroying a military truck.
(SFC, 6/19/21, p.A3)
2021 Jun 18, Namibian traditional leader, Vekuii Rukoro, the paramount chief of the OvaHererero people, died of COVID-19. He had led international legal battles to bring Germany to pay reparations for its genocide in the southern African country.
(AP, 6/18/21)
2021 Jun 18, It was reported that Nigeria's Central Bank is preparing a digital currency pilot that could launch as early as the end of this year.
(AP, 6/18/21)
2021 Jun 18, Poland's de facto leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski said top Polish government officials have been hit by a far-reaching cyber attack conducted from Russian territory.
(Reuters, 6/18/21)
2021 Jun 18, Moscow recorded more than 9,000 new coronavirus cases, over half the national total. The city has had to reintroduce curbs that had been scrapped, including ordering bars and restaurants to shut by 11 p.m.
(Reuters, 6/18/21)
2021 Jun 18, Spain's BBVA said it was launching a bitcoin trading service for private banking clients in Switzerland interested in digital asset investment.
(Reuters, 6/18/21)
2021 Jun 18, A Swiss court found Alieu Kosiah (46) guilty of war crimes. He became the first Liberian to be convicted over the country's civil war (1989-2003). He was sentenced to 20 years for crimes including murder and rape.
(AP, 6/18/21)
2021 Jun 18, Turkey's inoculations passed the 40 million mark and 40% of adults had had at least one dose.
(Reuters, 6/18/21)
2021 Jun 18, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was appointed for a second-five year-term by the 193-member UN General Assembly.
(Reuters, 6/18/21)
2021 Jun 18, The World Health Organization's chief scientist said the Delta variant of COVID-19, first identified in India, is becoming the globally dominant variant of the disease.
(Reuters, 6/18/21)
2021 Jun 18, In Yemen Houthi forces launched attacks on several frontline areas in the outskirts of Marib. The fighting led to casualties among Yemeni government forces.
(AP, 6/20/21)
2021 Jun 19, Total US COVID-19 cases reached over 33,520,411 with the death toll at 600,970.
(sfist.com, 6/20/21)
2021 Jun 19, Tropical Storm Claudette dumped heavy rain across the US Gulf Coast from Louisiana to Florida as it chugged inland, triggering flash floods and tornado warnings along its soggy course across the Southeast. Tropical storm warnings were in effect for parts of Louisiana, Alabama, and Florida. Claudette left 14 dead as the storm continued to batter and flood parts of the US Southeast as it moved toward the Atlantic Coast and a predicted re-strengthening. A suspected tornado demolished or badly damaged at least 50 homes near the Alabama towns of Brewton and East Brewton.
(SFC, 6/19/21, p.A5)(USA Today, 6/20/21)(AP, 6/20/21)(SSFC, 6/26/21, p.B8)
2021 Jun 19, In the SF Bay Area a shooting near a Juneteenth celebration in Oakland this evening left at least one person dead and several others wounded. Two armed men seen running from the scene were arrested.
(Fox News, 6/19/21)
2021 Jun 19, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis (D) signed three gun reform bills into law. The legislation expands firearm background checks, creates a dedicated office for gun violence prevention and allows municipalities to have even stricter gun laws than the state.
(Axios, 6/19/21)
2021 Jun 19, In Florida one person died and another was injured after a pickup truck ran into a crowd of spectators at a Pride parade in Fort Lauderdale.
(Reuters, 6/19/21)
2021 Jun 19, Anti-government activist Ammon Bundy came out with his first videos announcing his campaign to become governor of Idaho.
(AP, 6/19/21)
2021 Jun 19, In Michigan a 19-year-old woman was killed after allegedly exchanging gunfire with a police officer near a Juneteenth parade in Flint.
(NBC News, 6/19/21)
2021 Jun 19, Afghanistan received 900 oxygen cylinders from Iran, part of 3,800 that Iran has promised to deliver to Kabul, as a 3rd wave of COVID-19 worsens in the country.
(SSFC, 6/20/21, p.A14)
2021 Jun 19, Australia's largest state New South Wales (NSW) recorded two locally acquired coronavirus cases, as concerns grow over the further spread of infections amid an increase in exposure sites.
(Reuters, 6/19/21)
2021 Jun 19, Brazil's death toll from COVID-19 soared past 500,000. Experts warned that the outbreak may worsen due to delayed vaccinations and the government's refusal to back social distancing measures. Thousands gathered in Rio de Janeiro, waving flags reading “Get out Bolsonaro." Other marchers hoisted posters reading: "500 thousand deaths. It’s his fault".
(Reuters, 6/19/21)(AP, 6/20/21)
2021 Jun 19, Cambodia reported 20 deaths from COVID-19, a record for a single day, as the country detected its first Delta variant cases and authorities urged people to be vigilant. The outbreak has caused infections to climb to 42,052 cases with 414 deaths.
(Reuters, 6/19/21)
2021 Jun 19, The airport in China's southern city of Shenzhen said that anyone entering the premises must show a negative virus test taken within 48 hours before entry.
(AP, 6/19/21)
2021 Jun 19, Dozens of human rights advocates briefly blocked Croatia’s border with Bosnia to protest the European Union’s migration policies.
(AP, 6/19/21)
2021 Jun 19, In the Czech Rep. a Roma man died in Teplice after a Czech police officer responding to a call over an altercation knelt on his neck. On June 23 the Council of Europe demanded a thorough and independent investigation into the death.
(AP, 6/23/21)
2021 Jun 19, A tenth of Denmark's nurses, around 5,400, went on strike after union members voted against a pay deal that their union leadership had approved.
(https://tinyurl.com/nknued8s)(Reuters, 7/12/21)
2021 Jun 19, It was reported that Guinea has declared an end to an Ebola outbreak that emerged in February and killed 12 people.
(AP, 6/19/21)
2021 Jun 19, India reported 60,753 new COVID-19 cases and 1,647 deaths over the past 24 hours. The central government urged states to be careful in reopening from COVID-19 lockdowns to prevent a resurgence of infections in the hard-hit country.
(Reuters, 6/19/21)
2021 Jun 19, A boat collision killed an Italian couple who were also out on Lake Garda for an evening of relaxation. On March 21, 2022, a court in northern Italy convicted two German men of manslaughter for a boat collision. Prosecutors alleged that the tourists from Munich were drunk and speeding in the boat.
(AP, 3/21/22)
2021 Jun 19, Myanmar’s Foreign Ministry rejected a UN General Assembly resolution calling for an arms embargo against the Southeast Asian nation and condemning the military's February seizure of power.
(AP, 6/19/21)
2021 Jun 19, In Myanmar supporters of detained leader Aung San Suu Kyi wore flowers in their hair and paraded with them at street demonstrations as she marked her 76th birthday locked up by the generals who overthrew her.
(Reuters, 6/19/21)
2021 Jun 19, In Peru supporters of socialist Pedro Castillo and conservative Keiko Fujimori took to the streets by the thousands, as tensions rose over the result of the June 6 presidential election.
(Reuters, 6/19/21)
2021 Jun 19, It was reported that the Philippine government has signed a supply agreement for 40 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer Inc and BioNTech SE in its biggest coronavirus vaccine deal to date.
(Reuters, 6/19/21)
2021 Jun 19, A member of Uganda's Olympic squad became the first to test positive for Covid-19 on arrival in Japan for the competition due to start on 23 July. The unnamed Ugandan was part of a nine-member squad that had been fully vaccinated.
(BBC, 6/20/21)
2021 Jun 19, The UN representative in Sri Lanka said the sinking of a container ship that caught fire while transporting chemicals off the capital Colombo has caused “a significant damage to the planet" by releasing hazardous substances into the ecosystem.
(AP, 6/19/21)
2021 Jun 20, Total US COVID-19 cases reached over 33,539,482 with the death toll at 601,796.
(sfist.com, 6/21/21)
2021 Jun 20, In southern California Jon Rahm (26) won the US Open at Torrey Pines by a single stroke in a dramatic finish.
(NY Times, 6/20/21)
2021 Jun 20, A tornado swept through Chicago's western suburbs late today, damaging more than 100 homes and injuring several people. It was packing 140 mph (225 kph) winds when it hit the heavily populated area.
(AP, 6/22/21)
2021 Jun 20, Richard A. Balsimo (34) of St. Paul, was reported missing by his family. On Aug. 16 Jacob C. Johnson (35) of Superior, Wis., was charged in Cook County District Court with second-degree intentional murder in connection with the death of Balsimo. Johnson was charged with firing the gunshots that killed Balsimo, whose body was then dismembered and dropped into the waters of Lake Superior off the northernmost reaches of Minnesota's shoreline.
(Minneapolis Star Tribune, 8/17/21)
2021 Jun 20, In Afghanistan the Taliban seized the entrance of Kunduz before dispersing throughout its neighborhoods. Taliban fighters also appeared at the entrance of Maimana, the capital of Faryab Province, before moving into the city’s periphery.
(NY Times, 6/20/21)
2021 Jun 20, Armenia held parliamentary elections. PM Nikol Pashinyan called the early election, seeking to assuage public anger over the peace deal he signed in November with Azerbaijan that triggered months of protests demanding his resignation. The party of acting PM Nikol Pashinyan won the snap elections.
(AP, 6/20/21)
2021 Jun 20, Top diplomats in Vienna said further progress had been made at a 6th round of talks between Iran and global powers to try to negotiate and restore a landmark 2015 agreement to contain Iranian nuclear development that was later abandoned by the Trump administration. Iran will continue talks aimed at reviving a nuclear deal during its transition to a new government.
(AP, 6/20/21)(Bloomberg, 6/20/21)
2021 Jun 20, Belgian police found the body of Jurgen Conings (46), a fugitive soldier who went missing a month ago with a stash of weapons after threatening a virologist and his family.
(Reuters, 6/20/21)
2021 Jun 20, China's National Health Commission announced that more than one billion doses of COVID-19 vaccine have been administered in the country.
(SFC, 6/21/21, p.A4)
2021 Jun 20, French voters went to the polls in regional elections that will test the appeal of far-right leader Marine Le Pen's softened image less than a year before the next presidential election with a record low turnout expected. Exit polls showed that the far right performed worse than predicted in the regional elections and the center-right made a comeback while the vote as a whole was impacted by a high abstention rate.
(Reuters, 6/20/21)
2021 Jun 20, Tokyo reported 376 cases of Covid and one death, 72 more than a week ago.
(BBC, 6/20/21)
2021 Jun 20, Libya’s interim authorities reopened the Mediterranean coastal highway linking the country’s long-divided eastern and western cities, in the latest bid to reunite the territories after years of civil war.
(AP, 6/20/21)
2021 Jun 20, Nicaraguan police arrested journalist Miguel Mora late today for alleged crimes against the state, similar to the announced charges against others arrested during the past month. Mora was previously arrested in December 2018 and held for nearly six months before being released.
(AP, 6/21/21)
2021 Jun 20, In Portugal preliminary data showed that over half the new COVID-19 cases being reported in the Lisbon region are of the more infectious Delta coronavirus variant, as authorities scrambled to curb a worrying spike in infections. Portugal posted over 1,000 new COVID-19 cases for the fourth straight day.
(Reuters, 6/20/21)
2021 Jun 20, The South African government said that stones found in a village last month are not diamonds but quartz. A cattle herder first uncovered the stones in KwaZulu-Natal province. This prompted thousands to rush to KwaHlathi village, more than 300km (186 miles) south-east of Johannesburg.
(BBC, 6/20/21)
2021 Jun 20, Taiwan welcomed 2.5 million COVID-19 vaccine doses from the US as help from a true friend. The new doses will more than double the number of vaccines that have come to the island, including 1.24 million AstraZeneca Plc shots donated by Japan this month.
(Reuters, 6/20/21)
2021 Jun 20, It was reported that Uganda is strengthening its lockdown measures to try to stem a surge in coronavirus infections. The new measures, including closed shops in downtown Kampala, will last 42 days.
(SSFC, 6/20/21, p.A14)
2021 Jun 20, Vietnam said it has received a shipment of 500,000 Sinopharm vaccine doses donated by China, as the country ramped up inoculations to battle against a more widespread outbreak.
(Reuters, 6/20/21)
2021 Jun 20, In Yemen Saudi-led coalition airstrikes responded to attacks by Houthi forces in the outskirts of Marib.
(AP, 6/20/21)
2021 Jun 21, The Biden administration announced that it is extending for another year a more than decade old executive order declaring a national emergency over the nuclear threat from North Korea.
(Axios, 6/21/21)
2021 Jun 21, The White House laid out a plan to share 55 million US COVID-19 vaccine doses globally, with roughly 75 percent of the doses allocated to Latin America and the Caribbean, Asia and Africa through the COVAX international vaccine-sharing program.
(AP, 6/21/21)
2021 Jun 21, The United States imposed sanctions on more than a dozen Belarusian individuals and entities, joining Britain, Canada and the European Union in applying pressure for human rights abuses and the erosion of democracy.
(Reuters, 6/21/21)
2021 Jun 21, A US federal judge dismissed most claims filed by activists and civil liberties groups who accused the Trump administration of violating the civil rights of protesters who were forcefully removed last June by police before then-President Donald Trump walked to a church near the White House for a photo op.
(AP, 6/21/21)
2021 Jun 21, In a unanimous ruling the US Supreme Court said that the NCAA, which governs college sports, could not prohibit student-athletes from receiving modest, education-related payments.
(NY Times, 6/22/21)
2021 Jun 21, Carl Nassib of the Las Vegas Raiders became the first active N.F.L. player to publicly say he is gay. “I finally feel comfortable enough to get it off my chest," he said.
(AP, 6/22/21)
2021 Jun 21, Total US COVID-19 cases reached over 33,553,434 with the death toll at 602,069.
(sfist.com, 6/22/21)
2021 Jun 21, In Massachusetts the Town Council of Amherst voted 12-1 to create a fund to pay reparations to Black residents.
(SFC, 6/25/21, p.A7)
2021 Jun 21, In Missouri 3 people were killed and four others were injured in a shooting in St. Louis.
(NBC News, 6/22/21)
2021 Jun 21, Bitcoin tumbled almost 10% as recent volatility in the cryptocurrency market showed no signs of dampening down, with market players citing jitters over China's expanding crackdown on bitcoin mining in thin liquidity for the losses.
(Reuters, 6/21/21)
2021 Jun 21, CNH Industrial said it expects its $2.1 billion purchase of South Dakota based Raven Industries Inc. will give it an edge in innovating autonomous technology in agriculture vehicles. The Italian-American agriculture vehicle manufacturer said it has acquired 100% of the capital stock of Raven Industries for $58 per share.
(AP, 6/21/21)
2021 Jun 21, Gilead Sciences Inc said an analysis showed its antiviral remdesivir reduced mortality rates in hospitalized patients with COVID-19 and increased the likelihood of being discharged by day 28 after a five-day course of the treatment.
(Reuters, 6/21/21)
2021 Jun 21, GlaxoSmithKline Plc and Vir Biotechnology said final results from a late-stage study of their monoclonal antibody confirmed it significantly reduced hospitalization and death among high-risk COVID-19 patients when given early in the disease.
(Reuters, 6/21/21)
2021 Jun 21, Intel Corp said it will work with India's Reliance Jio to develop 5G networking technology.
(Reuters, 6/21/21)
2021 Jun 21, Argentina and Mexico recalled their ambassadors to Nicaragua for consultations, a day after President Daniel Ortega's government arrested yet another presidential contender ahead of the Nov. 7 elections.
(AP, 6/21/21)
2021 Jun 19, Sazgin Baran Korkmaz, a Turkish businessman, was arrested in Austria by the US Justice Dept. in connection with a biodiesel fraud scheme operated by a Utah business that stole nearly $500 million in government funds. Korkmaz was suspected of laundering over $133 million through bank accounts he controlled in Turkey and Luxembourg.
(SFC, 6/23/21, p.B3)
2021 Jun 21, It was reported that Brazil's new "Bolsa Familia" welfare payments to the poor will average below 300 reais ($59.50) a month. The revamped nationwide program is expected to come into effect in December this year or early next year, and average payments are certain to be increased from the current 190 reais a month.
(Reuters, 6/21/21)
2021 Jun 21, Dozens of people ignored advice not to travel to Stonehenge for the annual summer solstice celebrations, which were cancelled today due to coronavirus concerns.
(AP, 6/21/21)
2021 Jun 21, China's central bank said it had recently summoned some banks and payment firms, including China Construction Bank and Alipay, urging them to crack down harder on cryptocurrency trading.
(Reuters, 6/21/21)
2021 Jun 21, China's manufacturing hub of Dongguan in Guangdong province launched mass coronavirus testing and cordoned off communities, after the city detected its first infections of a flare-up in the province.
(Reuters, 6/21/21)
2021 Jun 21, Cuba said its three-shot Abdala vaccine against the coronavirus had proved 92.28% effective in last-stage clinical trials.
(Reuters, 6/21/21)
2021 Jun 21, Ethiopians voted in key elections amid rising tensions and a conflict in the northern Tigray region. The vote has been postponed in Tigray, where the army has been fighting a local force since November. PM Abiy Ahmed said he was working with the Eritrean troops to get them to leave but said he would not "push them out".
(AP, 6/21/21)(BBC, 6/22/21)
2021 Jun 21, A German trade union called on workers at seven Amazon warehouses to go on a 3-day strike over better pay and working conditions to coincide with the global Prime Day promotion.
(AP, 6/21/21)
2021 Jun 21, Hong Kong’s embattled pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily reported that its board of directors has asked authorities to unfreeze some assets so it can pay salaries and avoid labor violations, and that the board will meet again on June 25 to decide if the newspaper will cease operations.
(AP, 6/21/21)
2021 Jun 21, President-elect Ebrahim Raisi backed talks between Iran and six world powers to revive a 2015 nuclear deal but flatly rejected meeting US President Joe Biden.
(Reuters, 6/21/21)
2021 Jun 21, India registered 53,256 new coronavirus infections and 1,422 deaths in the last 24 hours, its lowest numbers in nearly three months.
(SFC, 6/22/21, p.A4)
2021 Jun 21, Indonesia's health authorities announced the country's largest one-day jump in new coronavirus infections. 14,536 were reported with 294 deaths.
(SFC, 6/22/21, p.A4)
2021 Jun 21, Italy reported 21 coronavirus-related deaths against 17 the day before. The daily tally of new infections fell to 495 from 881. Italy has registered 127,291 deaths linked to COVID-19 since its outbreak emerged in February last year, the second-highest toll in Europe after Britain and the eight-highest in the world. The country has reported 4.25 million cases to date.
(Reuters, 6/21/21)
2021 Jun 21, The Atomic Energy Organization of Iran said its sole nuclear power plant is experiencing an emergency shutdown due to a "technical fault".
(Business Insider, 6/21/21)
2021 Jun 21, Israel eased some restrictions on the Gaza Strip that have threatened a fragile cease-fire. Hamas, however, said the move was really Israel's attempt to pressure the militant group into making concessions.
(AP, 6/21/21)
2021 Jun 21, The Israeli military said it has successfully tested an airborne high-power laser that can shoot down drones, technology it hopes to deploy on a larger scale in the coming years.
(AP, 6/21/21)
2021 Jun 21, Demonstrators blocked a highway connecting Lebanon and Syria with burned tires and metal bars, protesting a decision by Lebanese authorities aimed at curbing smuggling into Syria.
(AP, 6/21/21)
2021 Jun 21, Myanmar's junta-controlled health ministry reported 595 cases of COVID-19 as daily infections hit the highest since the army seized power in a coup that prompted many medical workers to abandon the health service and anti-coronavirus program.
(Reuters, 6/21/21)
2021 Jun 21, The Palestinian Authority arrested Issa Amro, a prominent activist, and held him overnight after he criticized its policies in a series of online posts and accused it of arresting another individual for political reasons.
(AP, 6/22/21)
2021 Jun 21, Philippine Pres. Rodrigo Duterte threatened to order the arrest of Filipinos who refuse COVID-19 vaccinations and told them to leave the country if they would not cooperated with efforts to end the public health emergency.
(SFC, 6/23/21, p.A5)
2021 Jun 21, Russia's President Vladimir Putin warned that the coronavirus situation in some regions was getting worse as authorities began promoting the idea of regular revaccinations to try to halt a surge in new cases.
(Reuters, 6/21/21)
2021 Jun 21, Spain's PM Pedro Sanchez announced his intention to pardon nine jailed Catalan separatists who were convicted of sedition in 2019 by the Supreme Court for their role in the region's failed independence bid in 2017.
(Reuters, 6/21/21)
2021 Jun 21, Syrian government forces and insurgent groups exchanged shell fire in northwestern Syria that killed at least 10 people, the vast majority of them in rebel-held areas.
(AP, 6/21/21)
2021 Jun 21, Thailand's health minister said Japan's government would donate some AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines, as the Southeast Asian country seeks to shore-up supplies after some early delays in its vaccinations.
(Reuters, 6/21/21)
2021 Jun 21, The World Health Organization (WHO) said that it is setting up a technology transfer hub for producing mRNA COVID-19 vaccines in South Africa, which could start manufacturing doses in 9 to 12 months.
(Reuters, 6/21/21)
2021 Jun 22, US Senate Republicans filibustered Democrats’ sweeping voting-rights bill. All 50 Democrats voted to advance it; all 50 Republicans voted no. Republicans blocked the "For The People Act," an attempt by Democrats to rewrite an election and voting law. Republicans said it would infringe on states' authority.
(NY Times, 6/22/21)(SFC, 6/.23/21, p.A6)
2021 Jun 22, The US Justice Department said American authorities seized 33 of Iran’s state-linked news website domains they accused of spreading disinformation. Three other seized websites were operated by the Iraqi Shiite paramilitary group, Kata'ib Hizballah, which more than a decade ago was designated a foreign terrorist organization.
(AP, 6/22/21)
2021 Jun 22, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced that he supports changes to the military justice system in cases of sexual assault.
(Axios, 6/22/21)
2021 Jun 22, Total US COVID-19 cases reached over 33,553,434 with the death toll at 602,069.
(sfist.com, 6/23/21)
2021 Jun 22, San Francisco's Board of Supervisors voted to extend a city eviction moratorium for another six months mirroring state protections.
(SFC, 6/24/21, p.B1)
2021 Jun 22, Former Idaho Rep. John O. Green was sentenced to federal prison for six months after being found guilty last year of a felony charge of conspiracy to defraud the federal government.
(Tribune Publ., 6/25/21)
2021 Jun 22, New Mexico State Police discovered 10 crates full of marijuana, edibles and psychedelic mushrooms in a semi tractor-trailer at the Gallup port of entry. Roderick Piffero (57) and Erik Weisenseel (41) were each charged with trafficking controlled substances.
(Albuquerque Journal, 7/24/21)
2021 Jun 22, New York state held primary mayoral elections. Eric Adams ran for mayor of New York City on a message intensely focused on issues of public safety. With 82 percent of the results in, Mr. Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, was the first choice of 31.6 percent of those who voted in person or during the early voting period.
(NY Times, 6/23/21)
2021 Jun 22, Tobacco company Philip Morris will relocate its corporate headquarters from New York City to southwest Connecticut, bringing 200 jobs.
(AP, 6/22/21)
2021 Jun 22, A tornado struck North Carolina’s coast overnight, killing three people and injuring 10 others.
(AP, 6/22/21)
2021 Jun 22, The Cincinnati-based Procter & Gamble Co. announced that it will send a pair of Tide detergent and stain removal experiments to the space station later this year and next, all part of the galactic battle against soiled and sweaty clothes.
(AP, 6/22/21)
2021 Jun 22, In Texas more than 150 staff members at a Houston-area hospital were fired or resigned for not following a policy that requires employees to be vaccinated against Covid-19.
(AP, 6/22/21)
2021 Jun 22, Bitcoin fell below $30,000 for the first time since January as China intensified its crackdown on cryptocurrency.
(SFC, 6/23/21, p.B2)
2021 Jun 22, SiFive Inc released a new computing chip design that aims to challenge Arm Ltd's dominance in smartphone chips and said it would pair with Intel Corp's factories to make the design available to hardware makers.
(AP, 6/22/21)
2021 Jun 22, The Abu Dhabi health authority's phone application showed updated criteria for vaccine access, saying visitors to the capital could now get the COVID-19 shot by presenting their passports. On June 24 Abu Dhabi announced that it will not allow tourists flying into the emirate to receive coronavirus vaccines.
(AP, 6/22/21)(AP, 6/24/21)
2021 Jun 22, In Afghanistan government soldiers recaptured two districts in Balkh and nearby Baghlan provinces during an overnight battles that reportedly left 80 Taliban fighters dead.
(SFC, 6/23/21, p.A3)
2021 Jun 22, Belarus' authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko warned that his country will not try to stem a flow of illegal migrants to the European Union.
(AP, 6/23/21)
2021 Jun 22, Canada and 40 other countries urged China to allow “immediate, meaningful and unfettered access" so independent observers can visit its western Xinjiang region, while a Chinese envoy demanded that Canadian authorities “stop violations of human rights" at home.
(AP, 6/22/21)
2021 Jun 22, Dubai’s state-owned sovereign wealth fund announced a net loss of $5.1 billion over the past year. It marks the first loss in years for the investment arm of Dubai government.
(AP, 6/22/21)
2021 Jun 22, In Ethiopia dozens of people were reportedly killed or injured after Ethiopia's air force bombed a market in the northern region of Tigray.
(BBC, 6/23/21)
2021 Jun 22, It was reported that Gabon has become the first African country to receive payment for reducing carbon emissions by protecting its rainforest. he UN-backed Central African Forest Initiative (Cafi) has handed over $17m (£12m) - the first tranche of a $150m deal struck in 2019. Norway, through Cafi, has paid Gabon $17m based on a formula relating to the number of tons of carbon that would otherwise have been released.
(BBC, 6/22/21)
2021 Jun 22, Germany and the UN brought together representatives of Libya with powers that have interests in the country at a conference which aims for progress toward securing elections in the North African nation and the removal of foreign fighters.
(Reuters, 6/22/21)(AP, 6/23/21)
2021 Jun 22, Germany's national rail operator announced plans to reopen 20 stretches of railway around the country that have been closed over the years, a move intended to help get more people and freight on trains as the country steps up efforts to fight climate change.
(AP, 6/22/21)
2021 Jun 22, A leading Italian newspaper reported that the Vatican has formally opposed a proposed Italian law expanding anti-discrimination protections to the LGBT community.
(AP, 6/22/21)
2021 Jun 22, Italy reported 31 coronavirus-related deaths against 21 the day before. The daily tally of new infections rose to 835 from 495.
(Reuters, 6/22/21)
2021 Jun 22, Lebanon’s economy ministry raised the price of subsidized bread for the fifth time in a year as the country’s multiple crises worsen with no resolution in sight. Lebanon is grappling with the worst economic and financial crisis in its modern history.
(AP, 6/22/21)
2021 Jun 22, Aid group Doctors Without Borders said it is suspending activities in two overcrowded Libyan detention centers in Tripoli due to increased violence, abuse and ill treatment of migrants and refugees held there by Libyan authorities.
(AP, 6/22/21)
2021 Jun 22, Lithuania's government said it will donate 20,000 doses of AstraZeneca Plc COVID-19 vaccine to Taiwan, after angering China in March by saying it would open a trade representative office on the island this year. Taiwan had given Lithuania 100,000 medical-grade face masks last year when the coronavirus pandemic was spreading around the world.
(Reuters, 6/22/21)
2021 Jun 22, In Myanmar at least eight people were killed in a shootout in Mandalay between security forces and militants opposed to army rule.
(SFC, 6/23/21, p.A2)
2021 Jun 22, International criticism of Nicaragua's government grew after another night of arrests in Managua. 59 countries at the UN Human Rights Council signed onto a statement expressing concern over arbitrary arrests and the restriction of fundamental rights.
(AP, 6/22/21)
2021 Jun 22, Poland's government said it has evidence linking a recent cyberattack on thousands of email and social media accounts of politicians, public figures and other Poles to Russia's secret services.
(SFC, 6/23/21, p.A4)
2021 Jun 22, The Kremlin said people who were not vaccinated or did not have immunity would be unable to work in all workplaces in Russia, which reported the most confirmed coronavirus-related deaths in a single day since February.
(Reuters, 6/22/21)
2021 Jun 22, Nine Catalan separatist leaders jailed for sedition were eyeing freedom, after Spain’s Cabinet pardoned them in the hope of starting what PM Pedro Sánchez called a much-needed reconciliation in the country’s restive northeast.
(AP, 6/22/21)
2021 Jun 22, The International Monetary Fund announced a US$1.4 billion debt relief package for Sudan, a step in helping the country as it tries to rejoin the global economy after years of isolation.
(AP, 6/23/21)
2021 Jun 22, Switzerland said children between 12 and 15 years old could be vaccinated against COVID-19 with the shot from Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech.
(Reuters, 6/22/21)
2021 Jun 22, Turkey kicked off Phase III trials for its COVID-19 vaccine, named "Turkovac" by President Tayyip Erdogan who said the shot should be available for use by the end of the year.
(Reuters, 6/22/21)
2021 Jun 22, The UN World Food Program (WFP) warned that some 41 million people worldwide are at imminent risk of famine.
(Reuters, 6/22/21)
2021 Jun 22, The United Nations said the Great Barrier Reef has suffered such extensive damage that it should be listed as "in danger." The warning prompted an immediate rejection from the Australian government.
(CBS News, 6/22/21)
2021 Jun 22, A UN human rights expert said Eritrea now has "effective control" of parts of Ethiopia's Tigray region. Mohamed Abdelsalam Babiker called for troops to withdraw and for a prompt investigation into abuses, including the abduction of refugees.
(AP, 6/22/21)
2021 Jun 23, In response to rising gun violence, President Biden said states could use federal stimulus money to fund the police, as Democrats seek to show urgency on crime.
(NY Times, 6/24/21)
2021 Jun 23, The White House said that the United States would send three million doses of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine to Brazil, where virus cases and fatalities are surging again, with a death toll above 500,000.
(NY Times, 6/23/21)
2021 Jun 23, The United States, Britain and France accused Russian mercenaries of operating alongside Central African Republic forces and committing human rights violations against civilians and obstructing UN peacekeeping. The charges were immediately denied by Russia which denounced the Western nations for engaging in an “anti-Russia political hit job." Russia has troops in CAR training its military at the invitation of the government.
(AP, 6/24/21)
2021 Jun 23, The US Supreme Court tightened the reins on organized labor, citing property rights in reviving a bid by two fruit companies to block a decades-old California regulation that let union organizers enter agricultural properties without an employer's consent.
(Reuters, 6/23/21)
2021 Jun 23, The US Supreme Court ruled 8-1 in favor of a Pennsylvania teenager who sued after a profane social media post got her banished from her high school's cheerleading squad in a closely watched free speech case, but it declined to outright ban public schools from regulating off-campus speech.
(Reuters, 6/23/21)
2021 Jun 23, A group of doctors advising the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said rare cases of heart inflammation in adolescents and young adults is likely linked to vaccination with the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 shots.
(Reuters, 6/23/21)
2021 Jun 23, Total US COVID-19 cases reached over 33,567,044 with the death toll at 602,504.
(sfist.com, 6/24/21)
2021 Jun 23, It was reported that San Francisco city workers will be required to be vaccinated against the coronavirus when a vaccine receives full federal approval.
(AP, 6/24/21)
2021 Jun 23, The Miami, Florida, city commission passed unanimously an ordnance making it a crime to stand within 20 feet (about six meters) of officers with the “intent to impede, provoke or harass" them. Critics believed the law emboldened officers to arrest bystanders using their phones to film police on duty. On August 19 the police department announced that it had suspended the law last month following a series a controversial arrests.
(AP, 8/21/21)
2021 Jun 23, It was reported that Missouri is seeing an alarming rise in cases because of a combination of the fast-spreading delta variant and stubborn resistance among many people to getting vaccinated.
(AP, 6/23/21)
2021 Jun 23, The billionaire investor Warren Buffett (90) said he is resigning as a trustee of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and has donated half his wealth to philanthropy since pledging 15 years ago to give away his fortune from running Berkshire Hathaway Inc.
(Reuters, 6/23/21)
2021 Jun 23, Britain-based GSK set out plans to turn its consumer healthcare business into a separately listed company, aiming to strengthen drug development at its pharmaceuticals business with an 8 billion pound ($11 billion) windfall.
(Reuters, 6/23/21)
2021 Jun 23, In Egypt the owners and insurers of the giant container ship that blocked the Suez Canal for nearly a week earlier this year said they have reached an agreement in principle over their dispute with canal authorities.
(AP, 6/23/21)
2021 Jun 23, Germany's Cabinet approved plans for a 2022 budget that foresee an increase in new debt as spending on health and fighting climate change rise.
(AP, 6/23/21)
2021 Jun 23, Amnesty International said that the practice of migrant pushbacks in Greece has become so bad that even people who have applied for asylum and been in the country for some time are being summarily picked up and deported.
(AP, 6/23/21)
2021 Jun 23, Greek priest Theofylaktos Komvos (37), who allegedly used drugs and hid cocaine beneath his cassock, flung acid in the faces of bishops during a disciplinary hearing for drug abuse in Athens.
(The Telegraph, 6/24/21)
2021 Jun 23, Iran's state TV reported that authorities have thwarted what they called a "sabotage attack" targeting a civilian nuclear facility.
(SFC, 6/24/21, p.A2)
2021 Jun 23, In northwestern Iran two reporters were killed and 21 others injured when a bus overturned in West Azarbaijan province.
(AP, 6/23/21)
2021 Jun 23, An Israeli defense ministry body advanced plans for 31 West Bank settlement construction projects, the first such move under the country’s new government.
(AP, 6/23/21)
2021 Jun 23, Tokyo reported 619 new coronavirus cases, up from the last seven-day average of 405. Japan has hit the remarkable benchmark of 1 million vaccines a day. But with the Olympics set to start in less than a month only a small portion of the country has been vaccinated.
(AP, 6/24/21)
2021 Jun 23, A Lebanese prosecutor ordered the release of junior port employees who were detained after last year’s deadly massive blast at Beirut’s port. A request to release senior employees was rejected.
(AP, 6/23/21)
2021 Jun 23, North Korea’s foreign minister said his country is not even considering a resumption of stalled nuclear talks with the United States, dismissing hopes expressed by US and South Korean officials for a quick resumption of negotiations.
(AP, 6/23/21)
2021 Jun 23, In Pakistan a car bombing in Lahore killed three people and wounded 25. Days later police had five suspects in custody in connection with the blast. Investigators found evidence of involvement of the Indian secret service in the attack.
(AP, 6/26/21)
2021 Jun 23, In Portugal coronavirus cases rose by 1,497, the biggest jump since February 20. Most of the cases were in Lisbon where more than 60% of cases are of the more infectious Delta coronavirus variant.
(Reuters, 6/23/21)
2021 Jun 23, In Russia deaths related to COVID-19 spiked in major cities amid a surge in new cases that authorities have blamed on the new Delta variant, and restrictions seeking to curb the virus' spread were strengthened. Russia's coronavirus task force reported 548 coronavirus-related deaths in the last 24 hours, the most confirmed in a single day since February, with 88 in Moscow and 93 in St Petersburg respectively, a record in both cities.
(Reuters, 6/23/21)
2021 Jun 23, Spain’s National Court approved the extradition of detained antivirus software entrepreneur John McAfee to the United States, where he is wanted on tax-related criminal charges that carry a prison sentence of up to 30 years. McAfee (75) died of suspected suicide in a prison, after a Spanish court said he could be extradited to the US on tax-evasion charges.
(AP, 6/23/21)(SFC, 6/24/21, p.B4)
2021 Jun 23, Ukraine said it has registered its first two cases of the more infectious Delta variant of the coronavirus. Ukraine has been among the European countries most affected by the pandemic, with around 2.23 million COVID-19 cases and 52,123 deaths.
(Reuters, 6/23/21)
2021 Jun 23, The UN General Assembly, for the 29th time, voted overwhelmingly in support of a resolution that calls for the US to lift its embargo against Cuba. This time the pleading focused on the devastating impact of the economic blockade during the COVID-19 pandemic.
(AP, 6/23/21)
2021 Jun 23, Yemen's Houthi rebels claimed they brought down two US-made drones this week over central Marib province. The US military said it wasn't aware of any lost drones in the Mideast and added that it did not operate any aircraft above Marib.
(AP, 6/24/21)
2021 Jun 24, It was reported that the Biden administration plans to evacuate tens of thousands of Afghan interpreters and others who worked with US forces during the war while their applications for US entry are processed. Officials said roughly 650 US troops are expected to remain in Afghanistan to provide security for diplomats after the main American military force completes its withdrawal, which is set to be largely done in the next two weeks.
(AP, 6/24/21)
2021 Jun 24, The Biden administration said it will halt shipments from China-based Hoshine Silicon Industry Co. Ltd., a producer of material used to make solar panels, as part of a broader effort to halt commerce tied to China's repressive campaign against Uighurs and other minorities.
(SFC, 6/25/21, p.B2)
2021 Jun 24, The United States and Germany launched a new initiative to stem an alarming rise in antisemitism and Holocaust denial around the world.
(AP, 6/24/21)
2021 Jun 24, The delta variant of the coronavirus in the US now represented 20% of infections, and health officials said it could become the country’s dominant type as well.
(AP, 6/24/21)
2021 Jun 24, Total US COVID-19 cases reached over 33,580,588 with the death toll at 602,900.
(sfist.com, 6/25/21)
2021 Jun 24, In Florida the sudden collapse of a condominium left at least 5 people dead and 156 unaccounted for in a wing of the Champlain Towers South in Surfside. It was later reported that a consultant had warned three years earlier that there was evidence of "major structural damage" to the concrete slab below the pool deck and abundant cracking and crumbling in the underground parking garage. 98 people were killled. In 2022 a judge gave final approval to a $1.02 billion settlement.
(NY Times, 6/24/21)(AP, 6/25/21)(NY Times, 6/27/21)(SFC, 6/24/22, p.A8)
2021 Jun 24, Kentucky's Gov. Andy Beshear signed an order allowing the state's college athletes — including players on the nationally renowned Kentucky and Louisville men's basketball teams — to make money through the use of their name, image or likeness.
(AP, 6/24/21)
2021 Jun 24, The council in Lexington, Kentucky's second-largest city, voted to ban the use of “no-knock" warrants, joining Breonna Taylor's hometown in taking action to halt the controversial warrants.
(AP, 6/25/21)
2021 Jun 24, Stephen Dunn (b.1939), a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet (2001), died at his home in Frostburg, Md.
(SSFC, 6/26/21, p.F8)
2021 Jun 24, Rudy Giuliani's law license in New York state was suspended, as a state appeals court found he had lied in arguing that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from his client, former US President Donald Trump.
(Reuters, 6/24/21)
2021 Jun 24, In Oregon rioters in Portland vandalized a police cruiser and pepper-sprayed an officer hours after a fatal law enforcement shooting in the city.
(Washington Examiner, 6/25/21)
2021 Jun 24, The Philadelphia school board unanimously voted to adopt a “welcoming sanctuary schools" resolution, promising more training for staff on how to respond to Immigrations and Custom Enforcement officials and assuring immigrant students and families they will be safe from immigration authorities while at school or school activities.
(AP, 6/25/21)
2021 Jun 24, Curtis Crosland (60) of Philadelphia was cleared of murder and released from prison after 34 years by evidence that was suppressed by investigators. Crosland had been convicted for the 1984 murder of South Philadelphia store owner Il Man Heo and sentenced to life in prison. Three eyewitnesses to the robbery had said he was not the killer.
(The Grio, 6/25/21)
2021 Jun 24, In Texas a US Air Force Academy cadet was one of two people killed in the crash of a small plane south of Fort Worth.
(AP, 6/26/21)
2021 Jun 24, Eli Lilly and Co said it will seek accelerated approval from the US health regulator this year for its Alzheimer's candidate, weeks after a rival drug from Biogen Inc won the agency's endorsement using the same regulatory pathway.
(Reuters, 6/24/21)
2021 Jun 24, Meatpacker JBS SA said it will give away beef, pork and chicken for the next year to 50 US families that participate in company-sponsored vaccination clinics over the coming weeks.
(AP, 6/24/21)
2021 Jun 24, Microsoft unveiled the next generation of its Windows software, called Windows 11, that has a new Start Menu and other features. It is expected to become available later this year on new computers and other devices and as a free update for those with Windows 10.
(AP, 6/24/21)
2021 Jun 24, Top health officials said Africa is facing a devastating resurgence of COVID-19 infections whose peak will surpass that of earlier waves as the continent's countries struggle to vaccinate even a small percentage of the population. Africa has more than 5.2 million confirmed virus cases including more than 139,000 deaths.
(AP, 6/24/21)
2021 Jun 24, In Australia a cluster of highly contagious delta variant coronavirus cases in Sydney grew to 36. The cluster spread from a Sydney airport limousine driver who tested positive last week. He was not vaccinated, reportedly did not wear a mask and is suspected to have been infected while transporting a foreign air crew.
(AP, 6/24/21)
2021 Jun 24, It was reported that Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro has asked supermarkets to lower prices of staple foods and his economy minister suggested homeless people could live off restaurant leftovers. It marked a sharp contrast from days earlier, when both boasted their policies had restored the economy to pre-pandemic levels.
(AP, 6/24/21)
2021 Jun 24, British mobile operator EE said it was bringing back mobile roaming charges in the European Union for new and upgrading customers from next January, wiping out a benefit that has saved tourists and business travelers millions of pounds since the charges were abolished in 2017.
(Reuters, 6/24/21)
2021 Jun 24, Researchers at Oxford University said they have developed a method to predict the efficacy of new COVID-19 vaccines based on a blood test, potentially offering a short-cut around massive clinical trials that are increasingly difficult to conduct.
(Reuters, 6/24/21)
2021 Jun 24, In Canada an Indigenous group said the remains of as many as 751 people, mainly children, had been found in unmarked graves on the site of a former boarding school in Saskatchewan.
(NY Times, 6/24/21)
2021 Jun 24, In the Czech Rep. a rare tornado believed to be the most devastating twister in the country’s modern history tore through the country’s south east late today, killing at least five people and injuring hundreds.
(AP, 6/25/21)
2021 Jun 24, Cyprus said it wants the European Union’s border agency Frontex to step in and prevent the flow of migrant arrivals from Turkey that authorities say have stretched the eastern Mediterranean island nation’s asylum system to its limits.
(AP, 6/24/21)
2021 Jun 24, The European Union slapped economic sanctions on Belarus in response to what the EU called the “escalation of serious human rights violations" including the detention of journalist Raman Pratasevich.
(AP, 6/24/21)
2021 Jun 24, European lawmakers approved a climate law making the bloc's commitment to reach climate neutrality by 2050.
(SFC, 6/25/21, p.A4)
2021 Jun 24, France and Germany’s call for European Union summit talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin were blocked late today after fierce opposition from Poland and the Baltic countries.
(The Telegraph, 6/24/21)
2021 Jun 24, Honduras opened its embassy in contested Jerusalem, becoming the fourth country to follow the US move under former President Donald Trump to relocate its chief diplomatic mission in Israel from Tel Aviv.
(AP, 6/24/21)
2021 Jun 24, Israel announced a further easing of its blockade on Gaza, saying it would expand the coastal territory's fishing zone and allow the import of raw materials for “essential civilian factories".
(AP, 6/24/21)
2021 Jun 24, Scientists reported that bones found in an Israeli quarry are from a branch of the human evolutionary tree and are 120,000 to 140,000 years old. The fragments of a skull, lower jaw bone and tooth were uncovered in Nesher Ramla in 2010. Researchers determined that the fossils likely came from a hominin group closely related to Neanderthals and sharing many of their features, such as the shape of the lower jaw.
(AP, 6/24/21)
2021 Jun 24, Clare Peploe (79), film director and screenwriter, died in Rome. Her films included "High Season " (1987), "Rough Magic" (1995" and "Triumph of Love" (2001). Her husband, Bernardo Bertolucci, had died in 2018.
(SFC, 7/12/21, p.B5)
2021 Jun 24, Morocco and the United Nations inaugurated a UN office in Rabat for counter-terrorism and training in Africa, that's seeing increasing extremist violence.
(AP, 6/24/21)
2021 Jun 24, Nizar Banat, an outspoken critic of the Palestinian Authority, died after Palestinian security forces arrested him and beat him with baton. He was a candidate in parliamentary elections called off earlier this year. Hundreds took to the streets in protest after word spread of Banat's death.
(AP, 6/24/21)
2021 Jun 24, Former Philippine President Benigno Aquino III (61) died of kidney disease arising from diabetes. Aquino led the country from 2010 to 2016.
(AP, 6/25/21)
2021 Jun 24, In Portugal new coronavirus cases rose by 1,556, the biggest jump since late February, when the country of just over 10 million people was still under lockdown. In total, Portugal has recorded 869,879 cases and 17,079 deaths.
(Reuters, 6/24/21)
2021 Jun 24, Singapore said it expects to almost double the number of doses of coronavirus vaccines it administers each day to 80,000 from this weekend and might later ease restrictions on gatherings and travel for those inoculated.
(Reuters, 6/24/21)
2021 Jun 24, Sri Lanka's President Gotabhaya Rajapaksa pardoned a former lawmaker who had been condemned for an election-related killing. Duminda Silva, widely seen as a favorite of Sri Lanka's ruling Rajapaksa family, had been serving a death sentence over the killing of a rival lawmaker from his own party in an election-related attack about 10 years ago.
(AP, 6/25/21)
2021 Jun 24, In Thailand pro-democracy protesters took to the streets of Bangkok, marking the anniversary of the overthrow of the country's absolute monarchy by renewing their demands that the government step down.
(SFC, 6/25/21, p.A2)
2021 Jun 24, A government advisor said Tunisia it is seeing a significant increase in COVID-19 cases, with intensive care wards almost full.
(Reuters, 6/24/21)
2021 Jun 24, The United Nations accused Israel of flagrantly violating international law by expanding settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, saying settlements are illegal and urging the country’s new government to halt their enlargement immediately.
(AP, 6/24/21)
2021 Jun 25, US President Joe Biden designated the Pulse gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, a national memorial, honoring the site where a mass shooting killed 49 people.
(Reuters, 6/25/21)
2021 Jun 25, The US House of Representatives voted 229-191 to nullify the Trump administration's 2020 rollback of regulations to curb the emissions of greenhouse gas methane from oil and gas infrastructure, following a similar move by the Senate in April.
(Reuters, 6/25/21)
2021 Jun 25, The US Justice Department filed a lawsuit challenging a Georgia election law that imposes new limits on voting, saying that it infringes on the rights of Black voters.
(Reuters, 6/25/21)
2021 Jun 25, The US Supreme Court ruled that federal COVID-19 relief funds can go to specially created corporations for Native Alaskans even though they are not officially recognized as tribal governments.
(Reuters, 6/25/21)
2021 Jun 25, It was reported that the US Dept. of Agriculture has begun spraying the pesticide diflubenzuron to kill grasshopper nymphs in Montana. A 2021 grasshopper "hazard map" showed densities of at least 15 insects per square yard in large areas of Montana, Wyoming, Oregon and portions of Idaho, Arizona ,Colorado and Nebraska.
(SFC, 6/25/21, p.A8)
2021 Jun 25, Total US COVID-19 cases reached over 33,592,712 with the death toll at 603,211.
(sfist.com, 6/26/21)
2021 Jun 25, California's Gov. Gavin Newsom and state lawmakers announced a deal to shield struggling tenants from eviction for three more months and attempt to pay off all the rent lower-income residents missed during the coronavirus pandemic.
(SFC, 6/25/21, p.A1)
2021 Jun 25, In Minnesota former Minneapolis police Officer Derek Chauvin was sentenced to 22.5 years in prison for the murder of George Floyd. With good behavior, Chauvin could get out on parole after serving two-thirds of his sentence, or about 15 years.
(AP, 6/26/21)
2021 Jun 25, International Seafarers Day. More than 15 months into the coronavirus pandemic, tens of thousands of seafarers vital to the global shipping industry remain stranded at sea or in ports, unable to leave their ships or get to new assignments due to global travel restrictions.
(AP, 6/25/21)
2021 Jun 25, Britain's Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) banned Binance, one of the world's biggest crypto exchanges, from conducting any regulated activity in Britain as regulators across the world bolster oversight of the crypto sector.
(Reuters, 6/28/21)
2021 Jun 25, Health authorities in Denmark said that COVID-19 vaccines from AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson would remain excluded from the country's vaccine roll-out following a review of new safety data.
(Reuters, 6/25/21)
2021 Jun 25, In Ethiopia three aid workers employed by Doctors without borders were found dead a day after they had disappeared in the Tigray region. Their bullet-riddled bodies were sprawled on a dusty roadside near their burned-out vehicle. In 2022 It was reported that Col. Tadesse Bekele, of the Ethiopian military’s 31st Division, ordered soldiers to fire on the vehicle.
(SSFC, 6/27/21, p.A5)(NY Times, 3/17/22)
2021 Jun 25, European Union leaders greenlighted plans to give Turkey another 3 billion euros ($3.6 billion) over the next few years to provide fresh assistance to Syrian refugees on its territory and to help the country boost border controls.
(AP, 6/25/21)
2021 Jun 25, Europe's medicines regulator said it had approved the production of Johnson & Johnson's single-dose COVID-19 vaccine at an additional site in Italy, as it looks to speed up the supply of the shot in the European Union.
(Reuters, 6/25/21)
2021 Jun 25, In Germany a Somali man (24) killed three people and severely injured several others with a long knife in Wuerzburg before he was shot and arrested.
(SFC, 6/25/21, p.A4)
2021 Jun 25, Indonesia and the United States broke ground on a new $3.5 million maritime training center in the strategic area of Batam, in the Riau Islands.
(Reuters, 6/26/21)
2021 Jun 25, Iranian officials said the death toll from Covid-19 rose by 115 over the last 24 hours, putting the country’s total at 83,588 since the pandemic broke out last year. State TV reported that supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has received the first coronavirus vaccine developed by the Islamic Republic.
(AP, 6/25/21)
2021 Jun 25, In Israel tens of thousands of people attended a Pride parade in Tel Aviv in one of the largest public gatherings in Israel since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic.
(AP, 6/25/21)
2021 Jun 25, Italian PM Mario Draghi, speaking at the end of an EU summit, said China's anti-COVID vaccine did not fully work and questioned whether Russia's Sputnik jab would ever get approval from European regulators.
(Reuters, 6/25/21)
2021 Jun 25, Italy’s culture minister formally announced the completion of work to shore-up and restore the underground section of the Colosseum. The bill was footed by Tod’s, the shoe and luxury goods maker headed by Diego Della Valle.
(AP, 6/25/21)
2021 Jun 25, Italy's national health institute ISS said the Delta coronavirus variant and its sibling Kappa have surged in Italy in the past month, accounting for nearly 17% of total COVID-19 cases.
(Reuters, 6/25/21)
2021 Jun 25, In northern Mali 12 German troops and a Belgian soldier serving in the UN peacekeeping mission were wounded in a vehicle bomb attack in the Gao region.
(AP, 6/25/21)
2021 Jun 25, Mexico reported that the bullet-riddled bodies of 18 men were found in a remote area of Zacatecas state following an apparent shootout between gunmen from the Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels.
(SSFC, 6/27/21, p.A6)
2021 Jun 25, Hundreds of Palestinians protested against President Mahmoud Abbas after Friday prayers at the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem a day after an outspoken critic died in the custody of Palestinian security forces.
(AP, 6/25/21)
2021 Jun 25, It was reported that a rapid resurgence of COVID-19 is slamming South Africa's largest city, Johannesburg, and threatens to overwhelm its hospitals.
(AP, 6/25/21)
2021 Jun 25, In Sri Lanka about 150 death row inmates went on a hunger strike to demand their sentences be commuted after Sri Lanka's president, a day earlier, pardoned a former lawmaker who had been condemned for an election-related killing.
(AP, 6/25/21)
2021 Jun 25, Tanzania's President Samia Suluhu Hassan urged the public not to ignore a third wave of COVID-19, after her predecessor, the late John Magufuli, alarmed the world with his skeptical approach to the pandemic.
(AP, 6/25/21)
2021 Jun 25, Ukraine obliged visitors from countries affected by the COVID-19 Delta variant take a mandatory antigen test in a bid to prevent the spread of the new infections.
(Reuters, 6/25/21)
2021 Jun 25, Uzbekistan said it will limit entry into the capital city of Tashkent and curtail the activity of hospitality venues after a surge in COVID-19 cases. As of June 24 the number of new cases had reached 476 a day. Uzbekistan has registered a total of 108,184 COVID-19 cases and 725 deaths since pandemic began.
(Reuters, 6/25/21)
2021 Jun 26, US President Joe Biden withdrew his threat to veto a $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill unless a separate Democratic spending plan also passes Congress, saying that was never his intent.
(Reuters, 6/26/21)
2021 Jun 26, The United States estimated that up to 900,000 people in Ethiopia’s Tigray region now face famine conditions amid a deadly conflict, even as the prime minister says there is “no hunger" there.
(AP, 6/26/21)
2021 Jun 26, Total US COVID-19 cases reached over 33,606,021 with the death toll at 603,605.
(sfist.com, 6/27/21)
2021 Jun 26, A historic heat wave baked the US Pacific Northwest where temperatures pushed into the triple digits as local officials warned residents to take precautions while power companies asked users to conserve energy.
(Reuters, 6/26/21)
2021 Jun 26, Celebrity Edge, the first cruise ship to leave a US port since the coronavirus pandemic brought the industry to a 15-month standstill, set sail from Fort Lauderdale with nearly all vaccinated passengers on board.
(AP, 6/26/21)
2021 Jun 26, In Massachusetts Ramona Cooper (60) a staff sergeant in the Air Force, David Green (68), a retired state trooper, were shot multiple times this afternoon by Nathan Allen (28), after he crashed a box truck stolen from a piping and drain company into a home in Winthrop. Allen died at the scene after exchanging gunfire with a Winthrop police sergeant. Investigators found "troubling" anti-Semitic and racist statements in his writings.
(CBS News, 6/28/21)
2021 Jun 26, In the Detroit area 6 inches (15 cm) of rain poured down over the last 24 hours. This was the most at one time in 80 years. The volume of water moved faster than it could be pumped out or pushed through sewers to water treatment plants. Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer soon declared a state of emergency for the city and surrounding Wayne County.
(AP, 7/10/21)
2021 Jun 26, Minnesota’s top Democratic and Republican lawmakers reached agreement on the highlights of a public safety bill that includes police accountability measures.
(AP, 6/27/21)
2021 Jun 26, In New Mexico a pilot and two couples died after a hot air balloon they were riding in struck a power line and crashed onto a busy street in Albuquerque. It was later reported that pilot Nicholas Meleski had marijuana and cocaine in his system.
(AP, 6/27/21)(AP, 9/22/21)
2021 Jun 26, New York state's attorney general’s office said Johnson & Johnson will pay New York $230 million under a settlement that ensures it will get out of the opioid business in the US.
(NY Times, 6/26/21)
2021 Jun 26, It was reported that US Border Patrol agents from the Niagara Falls Station have seized a quarter of a million dollars worth of pot in Whirlpool State Park.
(Tribune Publ., 6/26/21)
2021 Jun 26, Australian officials introduced a strict two-week lockdown for all of greater Sydney as an outbreak of the Delta variant spreads rapidly.
(NY Times, 6/26/21)
2021 Jun 26, The UK recorded its highest daily number of coronavirus infections since early February, raising questions over whether England will be able to end lockdown restrictions next month as planned.
(NY Times, 6/26/21)
2021 Jun 26, China said that it provides vaccines to other countries with no political conditions attached, responding to a story by The Associated Press saying China pressured Ukraine into withdrawing from a multi-country statement on human rights in China’s Xinjiang region by threatening to withhold a COVID-19 vaccine shipment.
(AP, 6/26/21)
2021 Jun 26, Chinese authorities said Tesla is recalling about 285,000 electric vehicles in China because the cruise-control function can be activated accidentally and cause cars to accelerate suddenly, creating a safety hazard.
(AP, 6/26/21)
2021 Jun 26, Klaus Zellmer, Volkswagen board member for sales, said the carmaker will stop selling combustion engines cars in Europe by 2035 as it shifts to electric vehicles, but later in the United States and China.
(Reuters, 6/26/21)
2021 Jun 26, Thousands of members of Iraq’s umbrella of mostly Shiite militias known as Popular Mobilization Forces marched in a parade, the largest show of strength since the founding of the controversial paramilitary group. PM Mustafa al-Kadhimi, officially the country's commander-in-chief, presided over the parade. The PMF was established after a 2014 call to arms by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani to defeat militants from the Islamic State group.
(AP, 6/26/21)
2021 Jun 26, In Italy outdoor farm work under the afternoon sun on particularly hot days was banned in a southern Italian region following the recent death of a migrant who felt ill while toiling in a field and collapsed.
(AP, 6/27/21)
2021 Jun 26, It was reported that as many as 50 people are missing after setting out on three-hour car trips this year between Mexico's industrial hub of Monterrey and the border city of Nuevo Laredo on a well-traveled stretch of road local media have dubbed “the highway of death".
(AP, 6/26/21)
2021 Jun 26, Angry demonstrators clashed with Palestinian security forces for a third day during a protest in the West Bank over the death of an outspoken critic of the Palestinian Authority who died while in custody.
(AP, 6/26/21)
2021 Jun 26, Russia's national coronavirus task force said that 619 people died over the past day, the most since Dec. 24. More than a third of the new infections were in Moscow.
(AP, 6/26/21)
2021 Jun 26, Spaniards were allowed to ditch their face masks for a walk in the park or a trip to the beach for the first time in more than a year, but some people were in no rush to dispense with their facial protection against COVID-19.
(Reuters, 6/26/21)
2021 Jun 26, Sudan said it will surrender former officials who are wanted for alleged war crimes in the Darfur region to the International Criminal Court (ICC).
(BBC, 6/27/21)
2021 Jun 26, Taiwan reported its first domestically transmitted case of the highly contagious Delta variant of the coronavirus, tightening controls in a southern part of the island where the cases have occurred.
(Reuters, 6/26/21)
2021 Jun 26, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan took the first step in the construction of a ship canal skirting Istanbul that the government says will ease marine traffic in the Bosporus Strait. Erdogan, in a bridge ground-breaking ceremony in Sazlidere, said the $15 billion project would be completed within six years.
(AP, 6/26/21)
2021 Jun 26, The UN World Food Program said southern Madagascar is in the throes of back-to-back droughts that are pushing 400,000 people toward starvation, and have already caused deaths from severe hunger.
(AP, 6/26/21)
2021 Jun 27, Total US COVID-19 cases reached over 33,623,808 with the death toll at 603,968.
(sfist.com, 6/28/21)
2021 Jun 27, In Florida the death toll rose to nine as searchers continued work to find more than 150 missing residents at the collapsed Champlain Towers South in Surfside.
(Reuters, 6/27/21)
2021 Jun 27, In Oregon the temperature reached 112 degrees at Portland International Airport. It was the highest temperature recorded there since historical records began in 1940.
(NY Times, 6/27/21)
2021 Jun 27, Australia lowered its projections for population and economic growth over the next 40 years due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
(Reuters, 6/27/21)
2021 Jun 27, In CongoDRC a suicide bomber detonated his explosives at a busy intersection in Beni. Another explosion rocked a Catholic church. Neither bomb killed any civilians, but the government closed major gathering spaces for two days and imposed restrictions on public meetings as a precaution against further explosions. The Islamic State soon claimed responsibility.
(AP, 6/28/21)(AP, 6/29/21)
2021 Jun 27, Egypt's Pres. Abdel Fattah el-Sissi arrived in Baghdad on a first official visit by an Egyptian head of state to the country in over 30 years, for tripartite talks with Jordan and Iraq to deepen economic and security cooperation.
(AP, 6/27/21)
2021 Jun 27, France held regional elections. In a record low turnout President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist party was decimated and Marine Le Pen’s far-right party failed, upending expectations that the presidential race in 10 months will be a showdown between the two politicians.
(AP, 6/28/21)
2021 Jun 27, Indian officials said they suspected that explosive-laden drones were used to attack an air base in Kashmir. Anti-Indian rebels were suspected.
(SFC, 6/28/21, p.A3)
2021 Jun 27, Lebanese troops deployed in the northern city of Tripoli early today taking positions around major state institutions after a night of protests and riots against worsening living conditions left several protesters and 10 soldiers injured.
(AP, 6/27/21)
2021 Jun 27, New Zealand said it will extend the COVID-19 alert level in the capital Wellington for two days, as authorities said there is still a risk from an Australian tourist who tested positive for the coronavirus after visiting the city last weekend.
(Reuters, 6/27/21)
2021 Jun 27, In Nigeria Nnamdi Kanu, the leader of a separatist group that wants a breakaway state in eastern Nigeria, was arrested. His movement, the Indigenous People of Biafra (Ipob), has been labelled as a terrorist organization by the Nigerian authorities.
(BBC, 6/29/21)
2021 Jun 27, Pakistan’s foreign minister said that violence and lawlessness could reign in Afghanistan after the United States' withdrawal, and that Pakistan would shut its border to the country if the Taliban takes control of it.
(AP, 6/27/21)
2021 Jun 27, Rights groups said Saudi women’s rights campaigners Samar Badawi and Nassima al-Sada have been released from prison, three years after a sweeping crackdown by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman targeting female activists who'd peacefully advocated for greater freedoms.
(AP, 6/27/21)
2021 Jun 27, Somalia's semi-autonomous state of Puntland executed 21 men after they were convicted of being members of the Islamist militant group al-Shabab. As the executions were being carried out, al-Shabab fighters stormed the town of Wisil in the Mudug region. There are some reports that at least 20 soldiers were killed when an army base was attacked.
(AP, 6/27/21)
2021 Jun 27, South Africa reported more than 15,000 new coronavirus cases including 122 deaths. Total fatalities approached 60,000.
(SFC, 6/29/21, p.A4)
2021 Jun 27, Thailand reported 3,995 confirmed coronavirus cases and 42 deaths in the last 24 hours. Officials announced a ban on indoor dining, the closure of construction sites and the sealing off of workers' quarters in Bangkok and nine provinces for 30 days.
(SFC, 6/28/21, p.A4)
2021 Jun 28, President Joe Biden sought to assure Israel that he would not tolerate a nuclear Iran as he met with outgoing Israeli President Reuven Rivlin amid a major shakeup in Israeli politics and growing angst in Tel Aviv over the US administration's effort to reenter the Iran nuclear deal.
(AP, 6/28/21)
2021 Jun 28, The United States carried out airstrikes early today in Iraq and Syria against two Iranian-backed militias that the Pentagon said had conducted drone strikes against American personnel in Iraq in recent weeks. Pro-Iran Iraqi paramilitary groups said four members of the Kataeb Sayyid al-Shuhada militia were killed in the attack.
(NY Times, 6/28/21)(The Telegraph, 6/28/21)
2021 Jun 28, The United States and other nations in a joint statement reiterated their call for immediate nation-wide ceasefire in Syria and unimpeded delivery of aid to the war-torn country.
(Reuters, 6/28/21)
2021 Jun 28, US Education Sec. Miguel Cardona said Puerto Rico will receive nearly $4 billion in federal education pandemic relief funds to help boost the territory's fight against COVID-19.
(SFC, 6/29/21, p.A4)
2021 Jun 28, Total US COVID-19 cases reached over 33,627,131 with the death toll at 603,979.
(sfist.com, 6/29/21)
2021 Jun 28, In Florida two additional bodies were found at the collapsed condo in Surfside, raising the count of confirmed dead to 11. That leaves 150 people still unaccounted for in the community just outside Miami.
(AP, 6/28/21)
2021 Jun 28, Hot weather continued in the northwest US with Seattle reporting 108 degrees Fahrenheit and 116 in Portland, Ore.
(SFC, 6/29/21, p.A7)
2021 Jun 28, It was reported that E-cigarette maker Juul Labs Inc has agreed to pay $40 million to North Carolina to settle a lawsuit by the state accusing it of marketing its products to minors.
(Reuters, 6/28/21)
2021 Jun 28, Australia was battling to contain several COVID-19 clusters around the country in what some experts have described as the nation’s most dangerous stage of the pandemic since the earliest days. Coronavirus cases in Sydney grew by 18 and now stand at 130. It is the worst outbreak the city has seen since last year. Other states across Australia also reported a handful of new cases, threatening the nation’s successful control of a virus.
(AP, 6/28/21)(NY Times, 6/28/21)
2021 Jun 28, Belarus retaliated to the European Union sanctions by halting cooperation on stemming illegal migration and denying entry to EU officials.
(AP, 6/28/21)
2021 Jun 28, It was reported that Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro is sending troops back to the Amazon to bolster policing against logging and other illegal land clearance, acting amid international criticism of a surge in deforestation and just two months after withdrawing a similar military mission.
(AP, 6/28/21)
2021 Jun 28, Brazilian health regulator Anvisa canceled a request for emergency use authorization for the COVID-19 vaccine developed by China's CanSino Biologics Inc after the laboratory cut ties with its Brazilian representative.
(Reuters, 6/29/21)
2021 Jun 28, An Oxford study said a mixed schedule of vaccines where a shot of Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine is given four weeks after an AstraZeneca shot will produce better immune responses than giving another dose of AstraZeneca.
(AP, 6/28/21)
2021 Jun 28, In China amid celebrations over the centenary of the ruling Communist Party a lavish celebration at Beijing’s Olympic stadium emphasized China’s rise to economic and political prominence following reforms enacted more than 40 years ago.
(AP, 6/28/21)
2021 Jun 28, The leaders of China and Russia hailed increasingly close ties between their countries and announced the extension of a 20-year-old friendship treaty, a show of unity amid their tensions with the West.
(AP, 6/28/21)
2021 Jun 28, In Ethiopia Tigrayan fighters took control of the regional capital, Mekelle. Soldiers from Eritrea withdrew from three key towns in the Tigray region. Ethiopian forces retreated and Ethiopia’s government declared an immediate, unilateral cease-fire.
(NY Times, 6/29/21)(AP, 6/29/21)
2021 Jun 28, Top telecoms executives called for a total overhaul of Europe's regulatory framework, using the platform of the Mobile World Congress to amplify their demands for unified oversight across the 27-nation bloc.
(Reuters, 6/28/21)
2021 Jun 28, It was reported that a growing coronavirus outbreak in Fiji is stretching the health system and devastating the economy. It has even prompted the government to offer jobless people tools and cash to become farmers.
(AP, 6/28/21)
2021 Jun 28, A French court convicted and fined Franco Lollia, a Black rights activist, for defacing a statue he sees as an insult to democracy and to the descendants of slaves. In June 2020, the French activist had painted and sprayed “State Negrophobia" in red paint on a statue of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, a 17th-century royal minister who helped write rules governing slaves in French overseas colonies.
(AP, 6/28/21)
2021 Jun 28, France's top administrative court definitively banned the use of glue trapping to hunt birds, a technique that was denounced by animal protection groups as barbaric and endangering some species.
(AP, 6/28/21)
2021 Jun 28, Deutsche Telekom said it has successfully tested software-based mobile network technology using high-capacity antennas, a potential alternative to existing network suppliers that could give mobile firms more flexibility and cut costs.
(Reuters, 6/28/21)
2021 Jun 28, PM Kyriakos Mitsotakis said that starting July 15 Greece will give 150 euros in credit to citizens under age 26 to get vaccinated.
(SFC, 6/29/21, p.A4)
2021 Jun 28, Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo announced that his government will administer COVID-19 vaccines for children as young as 12 after the country’s Food and Drug Monitoring Agency green-lighted emergency use of the Sinovac vaccine for children.
(AP, 6/28/21)
2021 Jun 28, Iraq's Electricity Minister Majed Mahdi Hantoosh submitted his resignation amid popular and political pressure over repeated power outages across the country. Provinces across the country’s south shortened working hours citing extreme heat.
(AP, 6/29/21)
2021 Jun 28, It was reported that police in Kuwait have arrested a resident, an Egyptian man, for posting a video online in which he rants about bad weather and dust storms. The arrest underscored the country’s restrictions on expression and drew criticism on social media over his detention.
(AP, 6/28/21)
2021 Jun 28, Poland’s Catholic Church listed 292 clergymen who are alleged to have abused over 300 boys and girls from 1958 though 2020, in its latest report on the sexual abuse of minors.
(AP, 6/28/21)
2021 Jun 28, In Portugal the number of coronavirus patients in hospital surpassed 500 for the first time since early April. The surging COVID-19 delta variant has prompted it to put the United Kingdom on its red list for travel, speed up vaccinations in Lisbon and cancel school classes in the southern Algarve region, its main tourist destination.
(AP, 6/28/21)
2021 Jun 28, The Kremlin strongly rejected the claims that Russian military instructors in the Central African Republic have been involved in killing civilians and looting homes.
(AP, 6/28/21)
2021 Jun 28, Russia reported 21,650 new coronavirus infections, including 7,246 in Moscow, and 611 deaths related to COVID-19 across the country. Under new rules customers had to start showing QR-codes to get their coffees in Moscow.
(AP, 6/28/21)
2021 Jun 28, It was reported that Saudi Arabian veterinary services company MAS has signed an agreement with Argentine biotechnology company Biogenesis Bago to set up the country's first animal vaccine manufacturing plant with investments worth $60 million.
(Reuters, 6/28/21)
2021 Jun 28, In Spain the Mobile World Congress trade fair kicked off in Barcelona with scaled-back attendance and beefed-up health and safety measures.
(AP, 6/28/21)
2021 Jun 28, It was reported that Swedish PM Stefan Lofven is resigning after losing a confidence vote last week and he called on the country’s parliament today to try to form a new government instead of holding an early election.
(AP, 6/28/21)
2021 Jun 28, Ukraine and NATO launched Black Sea drills that will involve dozens of warships, an exercise that follows last week's incident with a British destroyer off Crimea.
(AP, 6/28/21)
2021 Jun 28, A UN envoy said shipments of Qatari-funded fuel into the Gaza Strip will resume for the first time since last month's 11-day war between Israel and Gaza's militant Hamas ruler.
(AP, 6/28/21)
2021 Jun 28, Amnesty International said Zambia is on “the brink of a human rights crisis," alleging that President Edgar Lungu is using repressive tactics to win another term in elections set for Aug. 12.
(AP, 6/28/21)
2021 Jun 29, The US Supreme Court, in a 5-to-4 vote, kept a federal moratorium on evictions in place.
(NY Times, 6/30/21)
2021 Jun 29, The US Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in favor of a consortium of energy companies including Enbridge Inc seeking to seize land owned by New Jersey to build a federally approved natural gas pipeline despite the state's objections. Hurdles remained for the $1 billion project.
(Reuters, 6/29/21)
2021 Jun 29, Total US COVID-19 cases reached over 33,642,146 with the death toll at 604,179.
(sfist.com, 6/30/21)
2021 Jun 29, In California the San Jose City Council voted unanimously to require firearms owners to buy insurance and pay fees to relieve taxpayers of the costs of responding to gun violence.
(SFC, 7/1/21, p.B1)
2021 Jun 29, Richard Branson’s Virgin Orbit delivered satellites from three countries into space over the Pacific near the Channel Islands, its second rocket launch from a plane this year.
(AP, 6/30/21)
2021 Jun 29, Elizabeth Martínez (95), feminist, writer and community activist, died in San Francisco. She helped organize the Chicana movement, which sought to empower people, like her, who were of Mexican descent and born in the United States.
(NY Times, 6/29/21)
2021 Jun 29, Royal Caribbean International said it would require unvaccinated guests over 12 years of age traveling from Florida to show proof of insurance that covers COVID-19 related medical expenses, quarantine and evacuation. The new policy comes after two unvaccinated teenagers tested positive on its Adventure of the Seas ship last week and two others were infected on Celebrity Millennium earlier this month.
(Reuters, 6/29/21)
2021 Jun 29, In Florida four more bodies were found late today in the rubble of a collapsed condo tower, raising the death toll in the disaster to 16 people.
(AP, 6/30/21)
2021 Jun 29, Delia Fiallo (96), the Cuban-born television writer known throughout Latin America as the “mother of the telenovela," died at her home in Coral Gables, Fla.
(AP, 7/4/21)
2021 Jun 29, It was reported that New Jersey’s prison system will begin housing inmates based on gender identity, the result of a 2019 lawsuit filed by a transgender woman who said she was forced to live in men’s prisons for a year and a half. The new policy goes into effect July 1.
(AP, 6/29/21)
2021 Jun 29, Brian Shelton (64) became the first patient to receive an infusion of lab-grown cells that produce insulin. The trial led by Vertex Pharmaceuticals appeared to cure his Type 1 diabetes. The treatment is not intended as a treatment for the more common Type 2 diabetes.
(NY Times, 11/28/21)
2021 Jun 29, Donald Rumsfeld (88), former US defense secretary, died at his home in Taos, NM. He served as defense secretary for two Republican presidents, Gerald Ford (1975-1977) and George W. Bush (2001-2006). He was an architect of the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
(NY Times, 7/1/21)
2021 Jun 29, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem announced that she will join a growing list of Republican governors sending law enforcement officers to the US border with Mexico.
(AP, 6/29/21)
2021 Jun 29, It was reported that about a dozen deaths in Washington and Oregon may be tied to an intense heat wave that brought scorching temperatures to the Northwest and caused one power utility to impose rolling blackouts amid heavy demand. In Spokane the temperature reached a record 109 degrees.
(AP, 6/29/21)(SFC, 6/30/21, p.A6)
2021 Jun 29, MediWound Ltd said the US drug regulator declined to approve its topical burn treatment, NexoBrid, sending its shares tumbling nearly 32% in early trading.
(Reuters, 6/29/21)
2021 Jun 29, Walmart said that it will start selling private-label analog insulin this week at a deep discount to branded insulin vials and pens, as it seeks to drive growth at its healthcare business.
(Reuters, 6/29/21)
2021 Jun 29, Eswatini's acting PM Themba Masuku denied that King Mswati III (53) has fled to South Africa following clashes between the security forces and demonstrators. The government ordered all businesses to close by 3:30 p.m. and a strict curfew to have all residents off the streets from 6 p.m. to 5 a.m. Schools were told to close immediately.
(AP, 6/29/21)
2021 Jun 29, Greece's government said it will allow people fully vaccinated against the coronavirus inside restaurants without masks, as part of measures to boost inoculation rates.
(Reuters, 6/29/21)
2021 Jun 29, In Indonesia a ferry with more than 50 people sank near Bali, killing at least six people. 44 people were rescued.
(SFC, 6/30/21, p.A3)
2021 Jun 29, Iran halted its crucial supply of power to Iraq, fueling fears of protests amid instability following the resignation of Iraq's electricity minister.
(AP, 6/29/21)
2021 Jun 29, Ireland lifted restrictions on giving AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine to adults aged under 50 and reduced the recommended gap between doses from eight weeks to four.
(Reuters, 6/29/21)
2021 Jun 29, Israeli mobile adtech firm ironSource went public on the New York Stock Exchange after closing its merger with a blank-check company backed by US private equity firm Thoma Bravo.
(Reuters, 6/29/21)
2021 Jun 29, Italy reported 42 coronavirus-related deaths against 28 the day before. The daily tally of new infections rose to 679 from 389.
(Reuters, 6/29/21)
2021 Jun 29, In Japan former Green Beret Michael Taylor and his son apologized in Tokyo court over their charges of helping Nissan's former chairman, Carlos Ghosn, avoid bail and escape to Lebanon. Japanese prosecutors allege they were paid the equivalent of more than $1 million for their support.
(Washington Examiner, 6/29/21)
2021 Jun 29, Lebanon's energy ministry increased gasoline and fuel prices by 35%, a move that could lead to a sharp increase in prices of most commodities in the crisis-hit country.
(AP, 6/29/21)
2021 Jun 29, Malta said it will introduce tighter COVID-19 rules on June 30, banning British visitors who are not fully vaccinated in an effort to prevent the spread of the Delta variant of the coronavirus.
(Reuters, 6/29/21)
2021 Jun 29, Researchers said the military takeover in Myanmar has given the junta full control of the country’s lucrative and conflict-ridden jade mining, providing it with profits and leverage for consolidating power.
(AP, 6/29/21)
2021 Jun 29, The Dutch health council said children as young as 12 should be offered the Pfizer-BioNTech's COVID-19 vaccine, the injection which was authorized for use on children from the age of 12 by the European Commission in May.
(Reuters, 6/29/21)
2021 Jun 29, North Korea's leader Kim Jong-un said that lapses in his country’s anti-pandemic campaign have caused a “great crisis" that threatened “grave consequences." Mr. Kim to convened a meeting of the Political Bureau of his ruling Workers’ Party, during which he reshuffled the top party leadership.
(NY Times, 6/29/21)
2021 Jun 29, A Russian court ordered the arrest in absentia of Ivan Zhdanov, an ally of jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny. Zhdanov was the director of Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation which has been declared "extremist" and in effect outlawed by the authorities.
(Reuters, 6/29/21)
2021 Jun 29, Russian authorities raided the apartments of several investigative journalists of the Proekt investigative online outlet and their family members. The outlet had promised to release an investigation into Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev and his alleged wealth.
(SFC, 6/30/21, p.A3)
2021 Jun 29, The Kremlin said Russia will fail to vaccinate 60% of its population against COVID-19 by the autumn as planned due to sluggish demand for the shots, after the country recorded its highest number of daily deaths from the virus.
(AP, 6/29/21)
2021 Jun 29, RIA News said Russia's Sputnik V vaccine is around 90% effective against the Delta variant of coronavirus. RIA cited Denis Logunov, the deputy director of the Gamaleya Institute that developed the vaccine. Authorities reported 652 new coronavirus deaths. Russia has reported nearly 5.5 million cases in the pandemic and 134,545 deaths.
(Reuters, 6/29/21)(SFC, 6/30/21, p.A4)
2021 Jun 29, South Africa's former President Jacob Zuma was sentenced to 15 months in jail by the country's highest court. The sentence comes after the Constitutional Court found him guilty of contempt for defying its order to appear at an inquiry into corruption while he was president.
(BBC, 6/29/21)
2021 Jun 29, It was reported that Barcelona-based startup Novameat is using its 3D printing technology to manufacture vegetarian "steaks" that it hopes will reach the mass market next year.
(Reuters, 6/29/21)
2021 Jun 29, Yoon Suk Yeol, South Korea’s former top prosecutor, launched a bid to run in next year’s presidential election Tuesday, vowing to unseat the current liberal government that he once worked for and that he also investigated for possible corruption.
(AP, 6/29/21)
2021 Jun 29, The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund announced that Sudan has met the initial criteria for over $50 billion in foreign debt relief.
(AP, 6/30/21)
2021 Jun 29, Togo's government said it has culled hundreds of birds, quarantined a poultry farm, closed a local bird market and banned the movement of poultry following an outbreak of the highly pathogenic H5N1 avian flu.
(Reuters, 6/29/21)
2021 Jun 29, The UN Security Council held its first formal public meeting on cybersecurity, addressing the growing threat of hacks to countries' key infrastructure.
(AFP, 6/29/21)
2021 Jun 29, In Yemen Houthi rebels fired two missiles in the latest attack in the government-held city of Marib, killing at least three people, including a child.
(AP, 6/29/21)
2021 Jun 30, President Biden said that he would raise the pay of federal firefighters, calling the current wage, around $13 an hour, “ridiculously low".
(NY Times, 6/30/21)
2021 Jun 30, The US House voted, largely along party lines, to create a special committee to investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
(NY Times, 7/1/21)
2021 Jun 30, US NCAA officials voted to let players profit from their names and images.
(SFC, 7/1/21, p.A1)
2021 Jun 30, Total US COVID-19 cases reached over 33,664,768 with the death toll at 604,714.
(sfist.com, 7/1/21)
2021 Jun 30, A US federal judge on blocked a new Indiana law that would require doctors to tell women undergoing drug-induced abortions about a disputed treatment for potentially stopping the abortion process.
(AP, 6/30/21)
2021 Jun 30, It was reported that patients in southwestern Missouri were being turned away from an overwhelmed hospital amid a surge in cases. Large swaths of residents in the region had not been vaccinated.
(SFC, 6/30/21, p.A4)
2021 Jun 30, A New York grand jury indicted the Trump Organization and Alan Weisselberg, a top executive, in a tax investigation over “fringe benefits" handed out at the company.
(NY Times, 7/1/21)
2021 Jun 30, Bill Cosby (83) was released from prison after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned his 2018 conviction for sexual assault. Mr. Cosby had served three years of a three- to 10-year sentence at a maximum-security prison outside Philadelphia when the court ruled that a “non-prosecution agreement" with a previous prosecutor meant that Mr. Cosby should not have been charged in the case.
(NY Times, 7/1/21)
2021 Jun 30, It was reported that Galaxy Interactive, the venture capital division of billionaire crypto investor Mike Novogratz's Galaxy Digital, has taken a lead investor role in virtual real estate developer Republic Realm. US-based Republic Realm, set up in March 2021, earlier this month bought a plot of virtual land in blockchain-based online world Decentraland for $900,000.
(Reuters, 6/30/21)
2021 Jun 30, Microsoft Corp and AT&T Inc said that the carrier will run core parts of its 5G wireless network on Microsoft's cloud computing platform.
(Reuters, 6/30/21)
2021 Jun 30, Scientists said a newly discovered white dwarf, named ZTF J1901+1458, is 35% more massive than our sun yet boasts a petite diameter only a bit larger than Earth's moon. Two stars separately evolved into white dwarfs at the end of their life cycles, then spiraled toward one another and merged into a single entity. It is located relatively nearby in our Milky Way galaxy, about 130 light years from Earth.
(Reuters, 6/30/21)
2021 Jun 30, The UK recorded a further 26,068 cases of COVID-19, the highest daily figure since January 29 and sending the seven day-tally up 70% on the week before.
(Reuters, 6/30/21)
2021 Jun 30, A Canadian Indigenous group said a search near, using ground-penetrating radar has found 182 human remains in unmarked graves at a site near a former Catholic Church-run residential school that housed Indigenous children taken from their families near Cranbrook, British Columbia.
(AP, 6/30/21)
2021 Jun 30, In western Canada roughly 1,000 residents of Lytton fled their homes late today as a wildfire approached. The fire near Lytton, BC, soon grew to 32,000 square miles (83,000 square km) and left at least two people dead.
(AP, 7/3/21)
2021 Jun 30, The EU and the UK agreed not to let a fight over the transport of chilled meats from Britain to Northern Ireland sputter out of control for the moment and further damage already fraught relations. They delayed for three months some post-Brexit trade checks that were to go into effect tomorrow.
(AP, 6/30/21)
2021 Jun 30, In France world leaders, philanthropists and organizations pledged at least $40 billion at an international conference in Paris to boost gender equality, as women and girls worldwide have been deeply affected by the consequences of the pandemic.
(AP, 7/1/21)
2021 Jun 30, The Indonesian airline Garuda started administering free coronavirus vaccinations to holidaymakers and travelers, part of efforts to reduce the impact of the virus in one of Asia's worst-affected countries.
(AP, 6/30/21)
2021 Jun 30, It was reported that thousands of workers in Iran’s vast energy industry have gone on strike over the past week to press demands for better wages and conditions at oil facilities.
(AP, 6/30/21)
2021 Jun 30, In Iraq a bomb exploded in a busy Baghdad market, wounding at least 15 people in the Maridi market area of Sadr City.
(AP, 6/30/21)
2021 Jun 30, It was reported that Israel has reached a compromise with Jewish settlers who rapidly established Eviatar, an unauthorized outpost in the occupied West Bank last month.
(AP, 6/30/21)
2021 Jun 30, Gunmen took to the streets in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli, firing in the air and at times throwing stones at soldiers amid rising anger at power cuts, fuel shortages and soaring prices.
(AP, 6/30/21)
2021 Jun 30, Namibia's President Hage Geingob said his country is facing a "dark and somber moment" as coronavirus deaths and cases rapidly increase. Mr Geingob said that 513 Namibians had died from the virus in the last 15 days.
(BBC, 6/30/21)
2021 Jun 30, A Dutch court ruled in favor of Inmarsat in a dispute over the use of 5G bandwidth in the Netherlands, ordering the government to suspend a decision to reserve the bandwidth for telecommunications as of Sept. 1, 2022.
(Reuters, 6/30/21)
2021 Jun 30, North Macedonia’s parliament formally adopted legislation to make the country's section of the Shar Mountains an extensive national park.
(AP, 7/1/21)
2021 Jun 30, Coronavirus cases in Portugal jumped by 2,362 in the past 24 hours, the biggest increase since mid-February.
(AP, 6/30/21)
2021 Jun 30, Russia’s UN ambassador called a proposal to reopen a border crossing from Iraq to Syria’s northeast for delivering humanitarian aid “a non-starter." He also refused to say what will happen to the only crossing now in operation, from Turkey to the country’s rebel-held northwest.
(AP, 6/30/21)
2021 Jun 30, Russia reported 21,042 new COVID-19 infections and 669 deaths. Pres. Vladimir Putin revealed that he had received the domestically developed Sputnik V vaccine earlier this year, stressing the importance of getting vaccinated amid a surge of new infections and deaths.
(AP, 6/30/21)
2021 Jun 30, A group of global finance institutions led by the World Bank's International Finance Corporation (IFC) said they would help to facilitate an increase in vaccine manufacturing know-how in Africa by partnering with South African pharmaceutical company Aspen Pharmacare.
(Reuters, 6/30/21)
2021 Jun 30, The chef José Andrés (51) and his World Central Kitchen were awarded the prestigious Spanish Princess of Asturias Awards for their international relief work promoting healthy food.
(AP, 6/30/21)
2021 Jun 30, Sweden's Volvo Cars laid out an extensive road map to becoming a fully electric car maker by 2030, including plans to sell 600,000 battery electric vehicles at mid-decade and build a European battery gigafactory in 2026.
(Reuters, 6/30/21)
2021 Jun 30, Switzerland said it will give 4 million doses of AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine that it has reserved to the vaccine-sharing program COVAX, to help address a massive discrepancy in shots for the developing world.
(Reuters, 6/30/21)
2021 Jun 30, Tunisia has reported more than 14,000 virus-related deaths amid its population of 12 million since the pandemic began, with more than 400 infections per 100,000 people in four regions. Over the past month, confirmed virus infections in Tunisia have reached the highest daily levels since the pandemic began, but the vaccination rate remains low.
(AP, 6/30/21)
2021 Jun 30, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres appealed to US President Joe Biden's administration to lift or waive all sanctions on Iran as agreed under a 2015 deal aimed at stopping Tehran from developing a nuclear weapon.
(Reuters, 6/30/21)
2021 Jun 30, A UN court convicted Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic, former allies of late Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, of aiding and abetting crimes committed by Serb paramilitaries in a Bosnian town in 1992. Each was sentenced to 12 years' imprisonment. The judgment can be appealed.
(AP, 6/30/21)
2021 Jun 30, The WHO declared China free of malaria after a seven-decade campaign against the disease.
(SFC, 7/1/21, p.A3)
2021 Jun 30, The WHO said Africa has recorded a 39% increase in new coronavirus cases in the week of June 14-20. Africa has recorded over 5.3 million coronavirus cases. The delta variant has been detected in at least 14 African countries.
(SFC, 7/1/21, p.A4)
2021 Jun 30, Human Rights Watch accused Yemen’s Houthi rebels of prosecuting a female actor and model on charges of committing an indecent act and drug possession in a case “marred with irregularities and abuse". Intisar al-Hammadi (20) was detained in Sanaa in February along with three others.
(AP, 6/30/21)
2021 Jun, US border officials encountered a total of 188,829 migrants at the southern border, the largest monthly number in recent history.
(NY Times, 7/18/21)
2021 Jun, California became the first state to adopt a universal school lunch program.
(AP, 7/19/21)
2021 Jun, Chad received 100,000 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine under the United Nations-backed COVAX program. Five weeks later, 94,000 doses remained unused.
(NY Times, 8/2/21)
2021 Jun, The European Public Prosecutor’s Office, or EPPO, began work. Its aim is to independently investigate crimes against the EU budget, like corruption and cross-border tax fraud. Slovenia, which holds the high-profile EU presidency, was alone among the 22 countries taking part that refused to name prosecutors to the agency. In November two prosecutors from Slovenia were appointed.
(AP, 11/24/21)
2021 Jun, Nicaragua authorities arrested former Gen. Hugo Torres (d.2022), former Sandinista guerrilla Dora Maria Tellez and other leaders of the Democratic Renovation Union on the grounds of undermining national security.
(Reuters, 2/13/22)
2021 Jun, In Tunisia Abir Moussi (47), the outspoken leader of the opposition Al-Dustur al-Hurr party, was slapped and kicked as she was filming a parliamentary session on her mobile phone. The perpetrators were two male members of parliament from an Islamist coalition.
(BBC, 7/17/21)
2021 Jun-2022 Sep, In South Sudan at least 440 civilians lost their lives in "widescale" killings by rival groups in Tambura county, 18 injured and 74 abducted, according to a UN report made public in 2022.
(AFP, 3/1/22)
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