Today in History - February 5
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For Asia History: https://www.asiaobserver.org/category/news/on-this-day-in-asian-history
1428 Feb 5, King Alfonso V ordered Sicily's Jews to convert to Catholicism.
(MC, 2/5/02)
1495 Feb 5, The 1st Lithuanian Russian war ended with the signing of a peace treaty in Moscow.
(LHC, 2/5/03)
1556 Feb 5, Henry II of France and Philip of Spain signed the truce of Vaucelles.
(HN, 2/5/99)
1562 Feb 5, Michael Radvila the Black accepted homage of G. Ketler, Duke of Couronia, to Sigismund August.
(LHC, 2/5/03)
1576 Feb 5, Henry of Navarre renounced Catholicism at Tours.
(MC, 2/5/02)
1631 Feb 5, A ship from Bristol, the Lyon, arrived with provisions for the Massachusetts Bay Colony (Massachusetts Bay Company). Puritan Roger Williams, proponent of religious freedom and later founder of Rhode Island, arrived with his wife in Boston from England and joined the Separatist colony at Plymouth.
(http://tinyurl.com/m6czns)(AP, 2/5/97)(WSJ, 6/21/05, p.D10)(AH, 4/07, p.25)
1644 Feb 5, The 1st US livestock branding law was passed by Connecticut.
(MC, 2/5/02)
1649 Feb 5, The Prince of Wales became king Charles II. Charles II (18), while living in exile at the Hague, was recently informed that his father was beheaded at Whitehall on Jan 30.
(WSJ, 2/28/00, p.A36)(MC, 2/5/02)
1661 Feb 5, Kangxi ascended the throne of China as a child. He was the 1st of three Qing emperors who reigned for 133 years until 1795. Kangxi ruled over China until 1722. The film “Forbidden City: The Great Within," depicts the period. Kangxi was followed by Yongzheng and Qianlong.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kangxi_Emperor)(WSJ, 11/2/95, p.A-12)(Econ, 11/5/05, p.90)
1723 Feb 5, John Witherspoon, Declaration of Independence signer, was born.
(HN, 2/5/99)
1748 Feb 5, Christian Gottlob Neefe, German composer, conductor, tutor of Beethoven, was born.
(MC, 2/5/02)
1762 Feb 5, Martinique, a major French base in the Lesser Antilles of the West Indies, surrendered to the British.
(HN, 2/5/99)
1783 Feb 5, Sweden recognized the independence of the United States.
(AP, 2/5/97)(HN, 2/5/99)
1788 Feb 5, Sir Robert Peel (d.1850), British prime minister through the early 1800s, was born. He founded the Conservative Party and the London Police Force whose officers were called "bobbies."
(HN, 2/5/99)(Econ, 6/30/07, p.93)
1807 Feb 5, Pasquale Paoli (80), Corsican freedom fighter, died.
(MC, 2/5/02)
1811 Feb 5, George, Prince of Wales, was named the Prince Regent due to the insanity of his father, Britain's King George III. George Augustus Frederick became prince regent after his father, George III, slipped permanently into dementia. In 1999 Saul David published "The Prince of Pleasure: The Prince of Wales and the Making of the Regency."
(WSJ, 3/26/99, p.W10)(AP, 2/5/08)
1812 Feb 5, Franz Schneider (74), composer, died.
(MC, 2/5/02)
1816 Feb 5, Gioachino Rossini's Opera "Barber of Seville" premiered in Rome.
(MC, 2/5/02)
1837 Feb 5, Dwight Lyman Moody (d.1899), evangelist, was born. He founded the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. “No man can resolve himself into Heaven."
(AP, 7/26/00)(HN, 2/5/01)
1840 Feb 5, Hiram Stevens Maxim (d.1916), inventor of the automatic single-barrel rifle, was born in Sangerville, Maine. He invented the hair-curling iron, and patented such items as a mousetrap, a locomotive headlight, a method of manufacturing carbon filaments for lamps, and an automatic sprinkling system.
(V.D.-H.K.p.267)(MC, 2/5/02)
1840 Feb 5, In Damascus, Syria, Father Thomas, originally from Sardinia, and the superior of a Franciscan convent at Damascus, disappeared with his servant. 13 prominent Jews were falsely accused of the ritual murder of the Franciscan monk and his servant. The “Damascus Affair" inspired international protests. In 2004 Ronald Florence authored “Blood Libel: The Damascus Affair of 1840."
(SSFC, 6/28/09, p.A8)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damascus_affair)
1846 Feb 5, The first Pacific Coast newspaper, Oregon Spectator, was published.
(HN, 2/5/99)
1848 Feb 5, Belle Starr, Western outlaw, was born.
(HN, 2/5/99)
1861 Feb 5, The kinematoscope was patented by Coleman Sellers in Philadelphia.
(MC, 2/5/02)
1864 Feb 5, Federal forces occupied Jackson, Miss.
(HN, 2/5/99)
1865 Feb 5, Three-day Battle of Hatcher's Run, Va., began.
(HN, 2/5/99)
1870 Feb 5, The 1st motion picture was shown to a theater audience in Philadelphia.
(MC, 2/5/02)
1872 Feb 5, Lafayette Benedict Mendel, biochemist, was born.
(HN, 2/5/01)
1879 Feb 5, Joseph Swan demonstrated a light bulb using carbon glow.
(MC, 2/5/02)
1881 Feb 5, Phoenix, Ariz., was incorporated.
(AP, 2/5/97)
1881 Feb 5, Thomas Carlyle (b.1795), Scottish essayist and historian, died in London.
(www.kirjasto.sci.fi/carlyle.htm)
1887 Feb 5, Verdi's opera "Otello" premiered at La Scala.
(AP, 2/5/97)
1887 Feb 5, Peder Balke (b.1804), Norwegian painter, died. He was known for portraying the nature of Norway in a positive manner and influenced a dramatic and romantic view of Norwegian landscape.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peder_Balke)
1897 Feb 5, The Indiana House of Representatives unanimously passed a measure redefining the area of a circle and the value of pi. The bill died in the state Senate.
(AP, 2/5/97)
1898 Feb 5, Ralph McGill, editor and publisher of the Atlanta Constitution, was born.
(HN, 2/5/01)
1900 Feb 5, Adlai E. Stevenson II, Illinois governor and American diplomat, was born. He twice lost to Dwight Eisenhower for presidency of the United States (1952 and 1956). "All progress has resulted from people who took unpopular positions."
(HN, 2/5/99)(AP, 7/4/9)
1900 Feb 5, The United States and Great Britain signed the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty, giving the United States the right to build a canal in Nicaragua but not to fortify it.
(HN, 2/5/99)
1901 Feb 5, Loop-the-loop centrifugal RR (roller coaster) was patented by Ed Prescot.
(MC, 2/5/02)
1901 Feb 5, J. Pierpont Morgan formed US Steel Corp. [see Feb 25]
(MC, 2/5/02)
1904 Feb 5, The American occupation of Cuba ended.
(MC, 2/5/02)
1906 Feb 5, Actor John Carradine was born in New York City.
(AP, 2/5/06)
1909 Feb 5, Hendrik Baekeland, Belgian-born inventor, presented a paper to the NY chapter of the American Chemical Society entitled: “The Synthesis, Constitution, and Uses of Bakelite."
(ON, 9/05, p.12)
1907 Feb 5, Norton Simon, publishing executive (Simon & Schuster), was born.
(MC, 2/5/02)
1914 Feb 5, Sir Alan Hodgin, English physiologist and biophysicist, was born.
(HN, 2/5/01)
1915 Feb 5, Robert Hofstadter, US atomic physicist, was born.
(MC, 2/5/02)
1916 Feb 5, Enrico Caruso recorded "O Solo Mio" for the Victor Talking Machine Co.
(MC, 2/5/02)
1917 Feb 5, Congress nullified President Woodrow Wilson's veto of the Immigration Act, a law severely curtailing the immigration of Asians. Literacy tests were required.
(AP, 2/5/97)(HN, 2/5/99)
1917 Feb 5, Mexico's constitution was adopted.
(HFA, '96, p.22)(AP, 2/5/97)
1918 Feb 5, The US steamship Tuscania was torpedoed by German submarine U-77 and sank off the coast of Ireland.
(GenIV, Winter 04/05)(www.worldwar1.com/dbc/tuscania.htm)
1918 Feb 5, The Soviets proclaimed the separation of church and state.
(HN, 2/5/99)
1921 Feb 5, John M. Pritchard, conductor, was born in London, England.
(MC, 2/5/02)
1921 Feb 5, The New York Yankee owners released plans for a new Yankee Stadium. Huston and Ruppert had purchased a lumberyard site in the Bronx from William Waldorf Astor for $600,000.
(http://scores.espn.go.com/mlb/recap?gameId=290522110)(http://tinyurl.com/cbg6oh)
1922 Feb 5, The Reader's Digest began publication in Pleasantville, New York. In 1939 it moved to Chappaqua, NY. In 2005 it published its 1,000th issue.
(HN, 2/5/01)(SFC, 7/19/05, p.D6)
1922 Feb 5, William Larned's steel-framed tennis racquet got its first test.
(HN, 2/5/99)
1923 Feb 5, Stephen J. Cannell, TV producer, writer (Rockford Files), was born.
(MC, 2/5/02)
1926 Feb 5, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, longtime New York Times publisher, was born.
(HN, 2/5/01)
1928 Feb 5, William Elliot Griffis, American orientalist, Congregational minister, lecturer, and prolific author, died in Florida.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Elliot_Griffis)
1934 Feb 5, Hank Aaron, American hall of fame baseball player, homerun hitter, was born weighing 12.25 pounds. He broke Babe Ruth’s record in 1974. In 2010 Howard Bryant authored “The Last Hero: A Life of Henry Aaron."
(SSFC, 5/23/10, p.F6)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hank_Aaron)
1937 Feb 5, President Roosevelt proposed increasing the number of Supreme Court justices. Critics charged that he was attempting to "pack" the court.
(AP, 2/5/97)
1938 Feb 5, John Guare, playwright, was born. His work included “The House of Blue Leaves."
(HN, 2/5/01)
1940 Feb 5, Glenn Miller and his orchestra recorded "Tuxedo Junction" for RCA Victor's "Bluebird" label.
(AP, 2/5/99)
1941 Feb 5, The SS Politician wrecked off the coast of the Isle of Eriskay in the Hebrides. It carried some 20,000 cases of whisky, which the natives hid from customs agents. The story was told in the 1947 book “Whisky Galore" by Compton Mackenzie. The book was made into a film in 1949.
(http://heritage.scotsman.com/timelines.cfm?cid=1&id=40422005)
1941 Feb 5, Andrew Barton "Banjo" Paterson (b.1864), Australian poet and journalist, died. He is best known for his song “Waltzing Matilda."
(www.whatsthenumber.com/oz/voice/writers/paterson0.htm)(NG, 8/04, p.29)
1945 Feb 5, American and French troops destroyed German forces in the Colmar Pocket in France.
(HN, 2/5/99)
1945 Feb 5, US troops under General Douglas MacArthur entered Manila ("I have returned!").
(MC, 2/5/02)
1947 Feb 5, The Soviet Union and Great Britain rejected terms for an American trusteeship over Japanese Pacific Isles.
(HN, 2/5/99)
1952 Feb 5, New York adopted the three-colored traffic lights.
(HN, 2/5/99)
1953 Feb 5, "Peter Pan" by Walt Disney opened at Roxy Theater, NYC. [see Feb 11]
(MC, 2/5/02)
1954 Feb 5, A US Air Force C-47 enroute from Fairbanks to Anchorage crashed on Kesugi Ridge near Byers Lake in Alaska. 10 people were killed and 6 survived.
(www.ak-prepared.com/vetaffairs/byerslake.htm)
1954 Feb 5, Carl Eric Wickman, a Swedish immigrant and founder of Greyhound Corp., died in Daytona Beach, Fla.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Wickman)
1957 Feb 5, Joseph Benson Hardaway (b.1895), animation director and voice actor, died. Nicknamed "Bugs," he was instrumental in naming the character "Bugs Bunny" when, while working on the film short "Hare-um, Scare-um," an animator handed him a model sheet of the rabbit character.
(www.findagrave.com/php/famous.php?page=pr&FSctf=170)
1958 Feb 5, Gamel Abdel Nasser was formally nominated to become the first president of the new United Arab Republic. The UAR was formed by the union of Egypt and Syria. Syria withdrew in 1961. Egypt used the UAR name from 1961-1971.
(AP, 2/5/97)(WUD, 1994, p.1555)
1961 Feb 5, The Soviets launched Sputnik V, the heaviest satellite at 7.1 tons.
(HN, 2/5/99)
1961 Feb 5, Anthony G. de Rothschild (73), British philanthropist, died.
(MC, 2/5/02)
1962 Feb 5, French President Charles De Gaulle called for Algeria's independence.
(AP, 2/5/97)
1962 Feb 5, Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn aligned within a 16 degree arc.
(MC, 2/5/02)
1962 Feb 5, Jacques Ibert (71), French composer (Escales), died.
(MC, 2/5/02)
1967 Feb 5, “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour" premiered on CBS TV.
(AP, 2/5/07)
1968 Feb 5, US troops divided Viet Cong at Hue while the Saigon government claimed they would arm loyal citizens. The main assaults at Khe Sanh started.
(HN, 2/5/99)(http://www.knowledgerush.com/kr/encyclopedia/Siege_of_Khe_Sanh/)
1971 Feb 5, Apollo 14 lander Antares landed on Moon. Astronauts Shepard & Mitchell walked on the moon.
(http://www.astronautix.com/flights/apollo14.htm)(HN, 2/5/99)
1972 Feb 5, It was reported that the United States had agreed to sell 42 F-4 Phantom jets to Israel.
(www.historynet.com/tdih0205.htm)
1972 Feb 5, Marianne Moore (b.1887), American poet, died in NYC. Her longest work was the 1923 poem "Marriage." In 1998 her the book: "The Selected letters of Marianne Moore" was edited by Bonnie Costello, Celeste Goodridge and Cristanne Miller. In 2013 Linda Leavell authored “Holding On Upside Down: The Life and Work of Marianne Moore."
(www.csustan.edu/english/reuben/pal/chap7/moore.html)(WSJ, 1/8/98, p.A7)(Econ, 11/23/13, p.83)
1973 Feb 5, Juan Corona was sentenced in Fairfield, Ca., to 25 consecutive life terms for the 25 murders of migrant workers.
(www.trivia-library.com/a/longest-prison-sentences-in-history.htm)
1973 Feb 5, Services were held at Arlington National Cemetery for Army Lt. Col. William B. Nolde, the last American soldier killed before the Vietnam cease-fire.
(AP, 2/5/04)
1974 Feb 5, John Murtha (1932-2010), became Pennsylvania’s Democratic representative following a special House election. He became the first Vietnam veteran to serve in Congress.
(SFC, 2/9/10, p.A6)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Murtha)
1977 Feb 5, Julius Nyerere and Aboud Jumbe set up the Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) party following the merger of the Tanganyika African National Union (TANU) and the Afro-Shirazi Party (ASP), which were the sole operating parties in mainland Tanzania and the semi-autonomous islands of Zanzibar respectively.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chama_Cha_Mapinduzi)(Econ, 10/24/15, p.44)
1981 Feb 5, A military jury in North Carolina convicted Marine Pvt. 1st Class Robert Garwood of collaborating with the enemy while a prisoner of war in Vietnam. Garwood was dishonorably discharged.
(AP, 2/5/06)
1982 Feb 5, Laker Airways, founded in 1966 by Sir Freddie Laker, collapsed owing $351M.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laker_Airways)
1983 Feb 5, Former Nazi Gestapo official Klaus Barbie (1913-1991), expelled from Bolivia, was brought to trial in Lyon, France. He was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.
(AP, 2/5/03)(www.izieu.com/new_page_7.htm)
1985 Feb 5, The US halted a loan to Chile in protest over human rights abuses.
(HN, 2/5/99)
1988 Feb 5, The Arizona House impeached Gov. Evan Mecham, setting the stage for his conviction in the state Senate.
(AP, 2/5/97)(http://politicalgraveyard.com/special/trouble-disgrace.html)
1988 Feb 5, A pair of indictments were unsealed in Florida, accusing Panama's military leader, Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega, of bribery and drug trafficking. Noriega had used Panama to ship cocaine to the US from Colombia taking some $200-$300 million for himself.
(AP, 2/5/97)(Econ 6/3/17, p.82)
1989 Feb 5, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (b.1947) became the 1st NBA player to score 38,000 points.
(www.brainyhistory.com/years/1989.html)
1989 Feb 5, The Soviet Union announced that all but a small rear-guard contingent of its troops had left Afghanistan.
(AP, 2/5/99)
1990 Feb 5, The Nepali Congress passed a resolution officially launching the "country-wide peaceful mass movement." Shortly thereafter, as many as 475 opposition party members, human rights advocates, students, lawyers and journalists were arrested. In a number of incidents, police opened fire indiscriminately into crowds of unarmed demonstrators. Estimates of the number killed range from 50 to several hundred. While the lower figure probably is more accurate, the precise figure may never be known because the police disposed of many of the bodies in secret without conducting inquests.
(www.hrw.org/reports/1990/WR90/ASIA.BOU-07.htm)
1990 Feb 5, Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev told the Communist Party it had to earn the right to rule, instead of treating it as an unchallenged right.
(AP, 2/5/00)
1991 Feb 5, President Bush announced he was sending Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and General Colin L. Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to the Gulf war zone to assess how the US-led offensive was progressing.
(AP, 2/5/01)
1991 Feb 5, A Michigan court barred Dr. Jack Kevorkian from assisting in suicides.
(http://tinyurl.com/e3ynu)
1991 Feb 5, Pedro Arrupe (83), Basque priest and head of the Jesuit order, died.
(www.bc.edu/offices/ministry/justice/arrupe/pedro/)
1992 Feb 5, The US House of Representatives authorized an investigation into whether the 1980 Reagan-Bush campaign conspired with Iran to delay release of the American hostages. The task force investigating the "October Surprise" allegations later said it found no credible evidence of such a conspiracy.
(AP, 2/5/02)
1992 Feb 5, In Northern Ireland Protestant guerrillas shot and killed 5 Catholic men in the Sean Graham betting shop on the Lower Ormeau Road.
(www.nuzhound.com/articles/Irelandclick/arts2002/bookies2-1-02.htm)
1993 Feb 5, Federal judge Kimba Wood, President Clinton's expected choice for attorney general, withdrew from consideration, saying her baby sitter had been an illegal alien for seven years.
(AP, 2/5/97)
1994 Feb 5, White separatist Byron De La Beckwith was convicted in Jackson, Miss., of murdering civil rights leader Medgar Evers in 1963, and was immediately sentenced to life in prison. Beckwith died Jan 21, 2001 at age 80.
(AP, 2/5/01)
1994 Feb 5, Sixty-eight people were killed when a mortar shell exploded in a marketplace in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina.
(WSJ, 6/11/96, p.A14)(SFC,10/16/97, p.A12)(AP, 2/5/99)
1994 Feb 5, Ben Enwonwu (b.1917), Nigeria's most celebrated 20th Century visual artist, died in Lagos.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Enwonwu)(AP, 10/9/20)
1995 Feb 5, The White House and congressional Republicans drew battle lines over President Clinton's $1.61 trillion budget, with Republicans accusing Clinton of "taking a walk" and the administration saying Clinton was cutting the deficit more than any president in history.
(AP, 2/5/00)
1996 Feb 5, John C. Salvi the Third went on trial in Dedham, Massachusetts, in the shooting deaths of two receptionists at abortion clinics. Salvi was later convicted and sentenced to two life terms; he was found dead in his cell in November 1996, an apparent suicide.
(AP, 2/5/01)
1996 Feb 5, Actress Elizabeth Taylor filed for divorce from Larry Fortensky, her seventh husband.
(AP, 2/5/01)
1996 Feb 5, Gianandrea Gavazzeni (86), conductor, died.
(http://tinyurl.com/9jr6h)
1997 Feb 5, U.S. Ambassador to France, Pamela Harriman, died in Paris at age 76.
(SFC, 2/6/97, p.A1)(AP, 2/5/97)
1997 Feb 5, In Algeria rebels killed a family of 9 by hacking off their heads in Benchikao. The government in Algiers began banning parked cars in the city to thwart car bomb attacks.
(SFC, 2/6/97, p.C2)
1997 Feb 5, In Ecuador hundreds of thousands began a 48-hour general strike against Pres. Abdala Bucaram to protests economic austerity, nepotism and corruption.
(SFC, 2/6/97, p.C2)
1997 Feb 5, Three Swiss banks announced that they had put about $70-71 million into an account with the Swiss National Bank to establish a “Humanitarian Fund" for the victims of the Holocaust.
(SFC, 2/6/97, p.C2)(AP, 2/5/97)
1997 Feb 5-1997 Feb 6, In China the Uighers rioted in the province of Xinjiang and reports of deaths varied from 4-300. The fighting was said to have begun after the public execution of 30 young Muslims. Residents said Muslims attacked and killed ethnic Chinese before police quashed the revolt. Authorities said 10 people died and 140 were injured. 12 people were later executed for the uprising.
(USAT, 2/11/97, p.5A)(USAT, 2/12/97, p.8A) (WSJ, 2/11/97, p.A1)(SFC, 7/29/97, p.A10)
1998 Feb 5, Pres. Clinton ordered 2,000 Marines to the Persian Gulf and met with PM Tony Blair of Britain to discuss the possible use of force against Iraq.
(SFC, 2/6/98, p.E2)
1998 Feb 5, Democratic fundraiser Yah Lin "Charlie" Trie pleaded innocent in Washington to charges he'd raised illegal donations to buy influence in high places. Trie pleaded guilty in May 1999 to a felony count and a misdemeanor and was sentenced later that year to four months' home detention and three years' probation.
(AP, 2/5/03)
1998 Feb 5, A federal judge in Los Angeles threw out Charles Keating's state securities fraud conviction for a second time, saying the trial judge had given jurors flawed instructions. In 1999, on the eve of the retrial of the federal case, Keating entered a plea agreement: he admitted to having committed bankruptcy fraud by extracting $1 million from American Financial Corp. while already anticipating the collapse that happened weeks later; in return, the federal prosecutors dropped all other charges against him and his son, Charles Keating III. He was sentenced to the four years he had already served.
(AP, 2/5/99)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Keating)
1998 Feb 5, Susan Brouk (36) and her two children, aged 12 and 9, were found dead in a farm pond in Vichy, Missouri. Two teenagers, Mark Anthony Christenson (Christeson) (18) and Jesse Carter (17), charged in the slaying were arrested in Blythe, California, on Feb 9. Mark Christeson was executed on Jan 31, 2017.
(SFC, 2/11/98, p.A3)(SFC, 2/1/17, p.A6)
1998 Feb 5, In Germany thousands protested the high unemployment rate. It had reached 12.6%, or 4.8 million people.
(SFC, 2/6/98, p.E3)
1998 Feb 5, In India a tractor pulling a trolley full of children crashed into a truck and plunged into a river and killed at least 34 in Madhya Pradesh state.
(SFC, 2/7/98, p.11)
1998 Feb 5, In the Ivory Coast Kevin Leveille (26), a Peace Corp worker from Ventura, Ca., was attacked and killed in Tanda. He had 2 months left in his assigned task of working on water and sanitation problems.
(SFC, 2/7/98, p.11)
1998 Feb 5, In Kenya Pres. Moi imposed a curfew on towns in the Rift Valley where over 100 people have died in ethnic and political violence. Jomo Kenyatta Univ. in Nairobi was closed following a protest against the violence.
(WSJ, 2/6/98, p.A1)
1998 Feb 5, In Sierra Leone fighting began as Nigerian led intervention forces moved to oust the military junta.
(SFC, 2/12/98, p.A12)(SFC, 2/13/98, p.D5)
1999 Feb 5, The Bureau of ATF planned to allow California winemakers to attach new labels promoting the health benefits of wine.
(SFC, 2/5/99, p.A1)
1999 Feb 5, Former heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson was sentenced in Maryland to a year in jail for assaulting two motorists following a traffic accident. He ended up serving 3 1/2 months.
(AP, 2/6/00)
1999 Feb 5, The Dupont Co., based in Wilmington, Del., agreed to a $90 million settlement with environmentalists to abandon plans to mine titanium along the edge of the Okefenokee Swamp in Georgia.
(SFC, 2/6/99, p.A9)
1999 Feb 5, It was reported that Bill and Melinda Gates (Microsoft Corp.) gave $3.3 billion to their foundations, 2.2 billion to the William H. Gates Foundation and 1.1 billion to the Gates Learning Foundation.
(SFC, 2/6/99, p.A2)
1999 Feb 5, In Jordan King Hussein was pronounced clinically dead but his heart continued and his family kept him on life support systems.
(SFC, 2/6/99, p.A1)
1999 Feb 5, Serbian authorities refused to grant re-entry travel documents to Albanian guerrilla members for the peace conference in Paris. The 13 Serbian negotiators appointed by Milosevic said they would not sit down with members of the KLA.
(SFC, 2/6/99, p.A10)
2000 Feb 5, In Angola a military helicopter crashed and 30 people were killed at Lubango. 12 people survived and 3 Catholic nuns were among the dead.
(SFC, 2/8/00, p.A14)
2000 Feb 5, Right-wing leader Joerg Haider told a deeply divided Austria not to worry about international sanctions, saying the new governing coalition that included his Freedom Party would soon prove its democratic credentials to the world.
(AP, 2/5/01)
2000 Feb 5, In Chechnya the Human Rights Watch group said it had documented 22 cases in which Grozny residents were killed by Russian soldiers. Another 14 cases were under investigation. Later reports indicated 82 civilians were killed by Russian mercenaries (kontraktniki).
(SFEC, 2/6/00, p.A25)(SFC, 2/22/00, p.A9)
2000 Feb 5, The Chinese new year 4698.
(SFC, 1/1/00, p.A18)
2000 Feb 5, In Germany a train derailed and ploughed into a house outside of Cologne and 6 people were killed with 20 injured.
(SFEC, 2/6/00, p.A4)
2000 Feb 5, In Iran a mortar attack struck the Golbang publishing house in Tehran near government offices. One person was killed and at least 4 injured. The attack was presumed to be the work of the Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK).
(SFEC, 2/6/00, p.A27)
2000 Feb 5, In Kosovo 41 people, including 11 French soldiers, were injured in during a 2nd day of clashes between peacekeepers and Albanians.
(SFEC, 2/6/00, p.A26)
2001 Feb 5, Flanked by a jumbo refund-check stage prop, President George W. Bush asked Americans to get behind his proposed tax cuts.
(AP, 2/5/02)
2001 Feb 5, Pres. Bush met with Canadian PM Jean Chretien at the White House for a get-acquainted session.
(SFC, 2/6/01, p.A8)
2001 Feb 5, Four disciples of Osama bin Laden went on trial in New York in the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa. The four were convicted and sentenced to life in prison without parole.
(AP, 2/5/02)
2001 Feb 5, California clinched deals for long term power contracts at $60-65 per megawatt hour as federal assistance ended.
(SFC, 2/6/01, p.A1)
2001 Feb 5, Engineering students from the Univ. of British Columbia dangled the body of an old VW from a railing of the Golden Gate Bridge. It hung for 4 hours before officials cut and let it fall into the water.
(SFC, 2/6/01, p.A1)
2001 Feb 5, In Illinois William D. Baker (66), shot and killed 4 employees at the Navistar factory in Melrose Park and then shot and killed himself. He was about to begin serving a 5-month sentence for conspiring to steal engines and parts.
(SFC, 2/6/01, p.A3)
2001 Feb 5, In Ecuador soldiers battled Indians opposed to fuel and public transportation increases. The Red Cross said 4 Indians died.
(WSJ, 2/6/01, p.A1)
2001 Feb 5, In Indonesia supporters of Pres. Wahid demonstrated in East Java, home of the Nahdlatul Ulama, Indonesia’s largest Muslim organization. Some 10,000 set fires to branch offices of the Golkar Party in Situbondo and another 10,000 marched in Surabaya.
(SFC, 2/6/01, p.A9)
2001 Feb 5, It was reported that severe cold and snowstorms in Mongolia threatened to wipe out a 5th of the nation’s livestock and threatened tens of thousands of herders with starvation.
(SFC, 2/5/01, p.A10)
2001 Feb 5, In Russia Pres. Putin dismissed Alexander Gavrin, the energy minister, and ousted Yevgeny Nazdratenko, governor of the Primorye region due to an energy crises that has left thousands without heat.
(SFC, 2/6/01, p.A9)
2001 Feb 5, In Russia a bomb went off in a Moscow subway station and at least 9 people were injured.
(SFC, 2/6/01, p.A10)
2002 Feb 5, Pres. Bush promoted his call for $5.9 billion to be dedicated to bioterrorism preparedness as part of a $38 billion homeland defense.
(SFC, 2/6/02, p.A13)
2002 Feb 5, US officials announced plans to train and arm Colombian troops to protect the key Cano Limon oil pipeline.
(SFC, 2/7/02, p.A12)
2002 Feb 5, A federal grand jury in Alexandria, Va., indicted John Walker Lindh on 10 charges, alleging he was trained by Osama bin Laden's network and then conspired with the Taliban to kill Americans. Lindh later pleaded guilty to lesser offenses and was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison.
(SFC, 2/6/02, p.A1)(AP, 2/5/07)
2002 Feb 5, Committees in both the House and Senate decided to subpoena former Enron Chairman Kenneth Lay to appear to tell what he knew of Enron's complex financial dealings. (Lay did appear, but refused to testify, citing his Fifth Amendment rights.) At a Senate hearing, Deborah Perrotta, a laid-off Enron employee, wept as she described how her retirement savings all but disappeared when the company failed.
(AP, 2/5/07)
2002 Feb 5, In Canada a police raid on the farmstead of Robert and David Pickton in Port Coquitlan, BC, turned up evidence of 2 missing women. Since 1984 at least 50 prostitutes had vanished from the streets of Vancouver. Robert Pickton was arrested Feb 22. In 2003 the murder charges against Pickton rose to 22. Pickton’s trial began Jan 22, 2007, with prosecutors saying the he had confessed to killing 49 women.
(SFC, 2/9/02, p.A9)(SFC, 12/16/03, p.A14)(WSJ, 1/23/06, p.A1)
2002 Feb 5, In Italy the health ministry confirmed the country’s 1st case of mad cow disease.
(SFC, 2/6/02, p.A9)
2002 Feb 5, In Pakistan 2 men associated with the kidnapping of journalist Daniel Pearl were arrested in a Karachi suburb. Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh (28), Islamic militant, turned himself in to Ejah Shah, the home secretary in Punjab province.
(SFC, 2/6/02, p.A14)(SFC, 2/15/02, p.A20)
2002 Feb 5, In Jenin, 3 Palestinians members of the Kameel clan were killed by a mob after a court sentenced them to 15 year jail terms for the murder of another clan member.
(SFC, 2/6/02, p.A9)
2002 Feb 5, In Nigeria troops cracked down on ethnic fighting in Lagos following 3 days of clashes that left over 100 dead.
(WSJ, 2/6/02, p.A1)
2002 Feb 5, In Durban, South Africa, a commuter train collided with a freight train and 18 people were killed.
(SFC, 2/6/02, p.A9)
2003 Feb 5, Secretary of State Colin Powell, made his case that Iraq had defied all demands that it disarm, presented tape recordings, satellite photos and statements from informants that he said was "irrefutable and undeniable" evidence that Saddam Hussein is concealing weapons of mass destruction.
(AP, 2/5/03)(SFC, 2/6/03, p.A1)
2003 Feb 5, Circuit city dismissed some 3,900 highly paid commissioned salespeople to reduce company expenses.
(WSJ, 6/11/03, p.A1)
2003 Feb 5, It was reported that genealogical research in Utah identified a gene that causes depression.
(WSJ, 2/5/03, p.A1)
2003 Feb 5, The World Court ruled that the United States must temporarily stay the execution of three Mexican citizens on U.S. death rows.
(AP, 2/5/03)
2003 Feb 5, Larry LeSueur (93), longtime CBS News radio reporter died in Washington.
(AP, 2/5/04)
2003 Feb 5, The Israeli military demolished the home of a Palestinian militant in the Gaza Strip, killing an elderly woman inside. Israeli troops killed a total of 5 Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
(AP, 2/5/03)(WSJ, 2/7/03, p.A1)
2003 Feb 5, North Korea said that it had reactivated its nuclear facilities and is going ahead with their operation "on a normal footing."
(AP, 2/5/03)
2003 Feb 5, Heavy rains in northern Mozambique caused flooding that left about 100,000 families homeless, swept away thousands of acres of crops and severely damaged roads and bridges.
(AP, 2/6/03)
2004 Feb 5, CIA Director George Tenet acknowledged that US spy agencies may have over-estimated Iraq's illicit weapons capabilities.
(SFC, 2/6/04, p.A1)
2004 Feb 5, A US federal judge ruled that high school football players may skip college and go straight to the pros.
(SFC, 2/6/04, p.A1)
2004 Feb 5, NASA restored communications with the Mars Spirit rover.
(SFC, 2/7/04, p.A3)
2004 Feb 5, In northeastern Afghanistan rival armed factions clashed and a state television report said 20 people were killed.
(AP, 2/7/04)
2004 Feb 5, A lantern festival marking the end of China's Lunar New Year celebrations erupted into a stampede, killing at least 37 people and injuring 15.
(AP, 2/5/04)
2004 Feb 5, At least 21 shellfish hunters, all apparently Chinese nationals, died when they were trapped by fast-rising tides in treacherous Morecambe Bay in northern England. In 2006 Lin Liang Ren (29) was found guilty in the deaths of the shellfish pickers at Warton Sands. Lin's girlfriend, Zhao Xiao Qing (21) and cousin Lin Mu Yong (31) were also convicted of facilitating the deaths. Liangren was sentenced to 14 years in prison. Xiaoqing was sentenced to 2 years and 9 months. Muyong was sentenced to 4 years and 9 months.
(AP, 2/6/04)(AP, 3/24/06)(AFP, 3/28/06)
2004 Feb 5, In Haiti an armed opposition group, led by Butteur Metayer, seized control of Gonaives, Haiti's fourth-largest city, burning a police station, freeing prisoners and leaving at least four people reported dead and 20 wounded in clashes with police.
(AP, 2/5/04)(ST, 3/2/04, p.A3)
2004 Feb 5, U.S. and Iraqi forces captured more than 100 suspected guerrillas in raids across the country, arresting one of Saddam Hussein's intelligence chiefs and another Iraqi believed involved in a suicide bombing last month, a U.S.
(AP, 2/5/04)
2004 Feb 5, Indian soldiers shot and killed 10 suspected Muslim militants in the forests of northern Kashmir.
(AP, 2/5/04)
2004 Feb 5, Latvian Prime Minister Einars Repse announced Thursday that his 14-month-old government was stepping down, saying his Cabinet can't continue working without a majority in parliament.
(AP, 2/5/04)
2004 Feb 5, Pakistan's Pres. Musharraf pardoned Abdul Qadeer Khan after Kahn absolved Islamabad of selling nuclear secrets to Iran.
(WSJ, 2/6/04, p.A1)
2004 Feb 5, Seven Russian servicemen were killed and at least 11 wounded over the last 24 hours in the latest rebel attacks in the breakaway region of Chechnya.
(AP, 2/5/04)
2004 Feb 5, Ugandan rebels attacked a refugee camp in northern Uganda early, killing 54 civilians and two soldiers.
(AP, 2/6/04)
2004 Feb 5, Journalists at Zimbabwe's only independent daily newspaper left their offices after the Supreme Court upheld that it was a crime to work without a government license.
(AP, 2/5/04)(WSJ, 2/5/04, p.A1)
2005 Feb 5, In LA the Actors Guild awarded Jamie Foxx the best actor award for his role as Ray Charles in “Ray." Hilary Swank won the best actress award for her role as a boxer in “Million Dollar Baby." Cate Blanchett and Morgan Freeman won supporting awards.
(SSFC, 2/6/05, p.A2)
2005 Feb 5, Steve Young and Dan Marino were elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
(AP, 2/5/06)
2005 Feb 5, In London Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown said that finance ministers from the Group of Seven (G7) rich nations had for the first time expressed firm willingness to provide as much as 100 percent debt relief for the world's poorest countries. The Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative (HIPC) is a joint initiative of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund that offers debt relief to the world's most impoverished nations which agree to undertake economic reform.
(AP, 2/5/05)
2005 Feb 5, In the Republic of Congo leaders of seven Central African countries signed a landmark treaty to work together to help save the world's second-largest rain forest.
(AP, 2/6/05)
2005 Feb 5, Central bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan said China is committed to revamping its foreign exchange regime and further relaxing its capital account controls.
(Reuters, 2/5/05)
2005 Feb 5, Egyptian police killed two suspected militants wanted in last year's Sinai bombings following clashes in Egypt's Sinai peninsula desert.
(AP, 2/5/05)
2005 Feb 5, Sunni rebels killed three U.S. troops and at least 33 Iraqis in a string of attacks.
(AP, 2/5/05)
2005 Feb 5, In central Japan police found 9 bodies were found in two cars in what appeared to be the country's latest group suicides.
(AP, 2/5/05)
2005 Feb 5, Kuwaiti police and troops in armored personnel carriers used explosives to blast their way into a concrete block home in Sulaibiyah capturing 5 suspected terrorists.
(AP, 2/5/05)
2005 Feb 5, In Mexico assailants staged 3 nearly simultaneous guerrilla-style attacks in Acapulco, killing 3 police officers and a teenage boy a day before a tense gubernatorial election.
(AP, 2/6/05)
2005 Feb 5, The crown prince of Saudi Arabia called for the creation of an international anti-terrorism center to trade information in an effort to prevent attacks.
(AP, 2/5/05)
2005 Feb 5, Togo’s Pres. Gnassingbe Eyadema (69) died of a heart attack. The military quickly announced that his son would replaced him as head of state. The constitution called for the speaker of parliament to succeed the president in the event of his death.
(SSFC, 2/6/05, p.A16)
2005 Feb 5, A Yemeni court overruled earlier rulings and imposed harsher sentences, including a death sentence, on three militants convicted of attacking a French oil tanker and a helicopter carrying U.S. employees of an oil company.
(AP, 2/5/05)
2006 Feb 5, In Detroit, Mich., the Pittsburgh Steelers won the Super Bowl over the Seattle Seahawks 21-10.
(AP, 2/6/06)
2006 Feb 5, Alan Shalleck, writer and director, was beaten and stabbed to death at his Boynton Beach home in West Palm Beach, Fla. He had collaborated with the co-creator of "Curious George" to bring the mischievous monkey to TV and a series of book sequels. In 2007 Rex Ditto (31) pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life in prison for killing. His co-defendant and former lover, Vincent Puglisi (56) was scheduled for trial in early 2008.
(AP, 10/19/07)
2006 Feb 5, Jacob Robida, suspected of an attack at a Massachusetts gay bar, the killing of an Arkansas officer and the slaying of a mother of three, was mortally wounded in a shootout with authorities.
(AP, 2/5/07)
2006 Feb 5, Actor Franklin Cover (“The Jeffersons") died in Englewood, N.J., at age 77.
(AP, 2/5/07)
2006 Feb 5, In Afghanistan 172 Taliban and other Islamist fighters surrendered as part of a government amnesty scheme, vowing to lay down arms and work to rebuild the country.
(AFP, 2/5/06)
2006 Feb 5, In Bangladesh at least 40,000 opposition supporters converged on Dhaka to demand the ouster of the government after a three-day protest march marked by heavy security and the arrest of key activists.
(AP, 2/5/06)
2006 Feb 5, Cambodia's king pardoned exiled opposition leader Sam Rainsy who was sentenced to jail for defamation, in a move officials said was at the request of PM Hun Sen.
(AP, 2/5/06)
2006 Feb 5, Costa Rica held elections and former pres. Oscar Arias was expected to win.
(SSFC, 2/5/06, p.A19)
2006 Feb 5, Iran ended all voluntary cooperation with the UN nuclear watchdog but said it was open to a proposal to enrich Iranian uranium in Russia, softening its earlier response to being reported to the Security Council over fears it wants to produce nuclear arms.
(AP, 2/5/06)
2006 Feb 5, The head of a government watchdog agency said Iraqi authorities issued arrest warrants for Meshaan al-Jiburi, a Sunni Arab member of parliament and his son, Yazin, accusing them of embezzling millions of dollars meant to protect vulnerable oil pipelines.
(AP, 2/5/06)
2006 Feb 5, In Iraq the bullet-riddled bodies of two Shiites were found in the latest round of killings between rival Sunni and Shiite groups.
(AP, 2/5/06)
2006 Feb 5, Israeli aircraft fired three missiles at a building used by militants in Gaza City, killing three people and wounding five.
(AP, 2/5/06)
2006 Feb 5, Israel agreed to make a crucial payment of $54 million in tax and customs revenues to the Palestinians, but officials said future transfers will be halted once Hamas militants form the next Palestinian government.
(AP, 2/5/06)
2006 Feb 5, Thousands of Muslims rampaged in Beirut, setting fire to the Danish Embassy, burning Danish flags and lobbing stones at a Maronite Catholic church as violent protests spread over caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad.
(AP, 2/5/06)
2006 Feb 5, A general strike called by communist rebels to disrupt elections in Nepal forced schools and markets to close, and highways and city streets remained deserted in much of this Himalayan nation.
(AP, 2/5/06)
2006 Feb 5, In southwestern Pakistan a bomb ripped through a passenger bus, killing at least 13 people and wounding 20 others.
(AP, 2/5/06)
2006 Feb 5, Andrea Santoro (60), an Italian Roman Catholic priest, was shot dead in his Santa Maria church by a 16-year-old boy in the Turkish Black Sea city of Trabzon. In 2007 the teen was sentenced to more than 18 years in prison, but was expected to serve only 10.
(AP, 2/5/06)(AP, 10/4/07)
2007 Feb 5, President Bush sent a $2.9 trillion spending plan to a Democratic-controlled Congress, proposing to spend billions more to fight the war in Iraq while squeezing the rest of government to meet his goal of eliminating the deficit in five years.
(AP, 2/5/07)
2007 Feb 5, The US insisted that Nicaragua destroy hundreds of Soviet-made surface-to-air missiles after President Daniel Ortega said the weapons were needed for the country's defense.
(AP, 2/5/07)
2007 Feb 5, NASA astronaut Lisa Nowak was arrested in Orlando, Fla., accused of trying to kidnap a perceived rival for the affections of a space shuttle pilot.
(AP, 2/5/08)
2007 Feb 5, Britain pressed ahead with a cull of 160,000 turkeys after the nation's first outbreak of a deadly strain of bird flu in farmed poultry as Russia and Japan banned British poultry imports.
(Reuters, 2/5/07)
2007 Feb 5, A Cold War-era Soviet submarine that was being towed to Thailand sank off northwestern Denmark. The Soviet Union built more than 200 Whiskey-class submarines during the Cold War, many of which are now being offered for sale by private companies.
(AP, 2/6/07)
2007 Feb 5, In northern Germany 3 men and 3 women were found shot dead in a Chinese restaurant in the early hours in Sittensen. A 7th person died a day later. German police soon arrested two Vietnamese men in connection with the killings.
(AFP, 2/5/07)(AP, 2/6/07)(AP, 2/7/07)
2007 Feb 5, In India a fire gutted a garment factory in eastern India, killing seven workers in Howrah, a suburb of Calcutta.
(AP, 2/5/07)
2007 Feb 5, Violence raked Baghdad as an Iraqi general took charge of the security operation in the capital and Iraqi police and soldiers manned new roadblocks, initial steps indicating the start of the long-anticipated joint operation with American forces to curb sectarian bloodshed. At least 29 people died in bomb and mortar attacks across the city, 15 of them as they waited to refill propane cooking tanks when two car bombs blew up in quick succession in south Baghdad. A soldier killed in a roadside bombing in Basra was the 100th British death attributed to hostile action since the US-led invasion in 2003. A US Marine was killed in fighting in the volatile Anbar province. US forces shot and killed Donald Tolfree of Owosso, Mich., a civilian contract truck driver at Camp Anaconda, the huge air base north of Baghdad.
(AP, 2/5/07)(AP, 2/6/07)(AP, 2/10/07)
2007 Feb 5, China’s president Hu Jintao brought his eight-nation African tour to Namibia, a sparsely populated, mineral-rich desert country that hopes to benefit from an influx of Chinese investment and tourists.
(AP, 2/5/07)
2007 Feb 5, A home-made bomb ripped through a train station in Spain's Basque region. Police said it appeared to have been the work of Basque independence street gangs, rather than armed separatists ETA.
(AP, 2/5/07)
2007 Feb 5, Syria’s President Bashar Assad said cooperation, and negotiations, between Syria and the US could be the "last chance" to avoid full-scale civil war in Iraq.
(AP, 2/5/07)
2007 Feb 5, In Hanoi, Vietnam, international aid experts from the World Bank, UN and other development agencies and 40 nations met for the Third International Roundtable on Managing For Development Results, a four-day conference aimed at making global development efforts more effective.
(AFP, 2/5/07)
2007 Feb 5, Teachers across Zimbabwe began an indefinite industrial action to press for better salaries and better working conditions.
(AFP, 2/5/07)
2008 Feb 5, The US Treasury Dept. said it is imposing financial sanctions against family members of the military-run government of Myanmar and individuals it identified as key members of the financial empire of Tay Za.
(SFC, 2/6/08, p.A7)
2008 Feb 5, Obama won 13 Super Tuesday states; Clinton, eight plus American Samoa. Clinton won California and scored the advantage in delegates, bring her total to 845 to Obama's 765, by the latest accounting. McCain won 9 states. Romney won 7 states. Huckabee said he would press on with his White House candidacy, emboldened by 5 wins in the South.
(AP, 2/6/08)
2008 Feb 5, A US Court of Appeals rejected a decision giving Georgia a quarter of Lake Lanier’s capacity over the coming decades. It said such changes require congressional approval. Alabama and Florida had challenged the initial 2003 agreement.
(WSJ, 2/6/08, p.A10)
2008 Feb 5, Storms swept across southeast US as Super Tuesday primaries were ending. At least 31 people were killed in Tennessee, 13 in Arkansas, 7 in Kentucky and four in Alabama. It was one of the 15 worst tornado death tolls since 1950, and the nation's deadliest barrage of tornadoes since 76 people were killed in Pennsylvania and Ohio on May 31, 1985. The death toll rose to 59.
(AP, 2/6/08)(AP, 2/7/08)(WSJ, 2/8/08, p.A1)
2008 Feb 5, Renewed recession fears followed the release of US service sector data from the Institute of Supply Management. It showed activity moved rapidly into contraction in January.
(FT, 2/5/08)
2008 Feb 5, In southern Afghanistan a roadside bomb hit a US-led coalition vehicle in Helmand province, killing one soldier and wounding two others.
(AP, 2/6/08)
2008 Feb 5, A Bangladesh official said Abdul Kader Mollah, an employee of Titas Gas Distribution Company, the country’s biggest state-owned gas company, allegedly used his position to pocket a colossal 145 million dollars in bribes over 12 years. Mollah at the time earned a mere 100 dollars a month.
(AFP, 2/5/08)
2008 Feb 5, Senior researchers at Britain's International Institute for Strategic Studies warned that "neo-Taliban" groups operating in Pakistan's tribal areas may soon become a global menace.
(AP, 2/5/08)
2008 Feb 5, British scientists said they have created human embryos containing DNA from two women and a man in a procedure that researchers hope might be used one day to produce embryos free of inherited diseases.
(AP, 2/5/08)
2008 Feb 5, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said "final victory" was in sight with transportation returning to normal after the worst winter in decades, but power outages remained a problem for millions. the former communist party boss of Olympic host city Qingdao was sentenced to life in prison for accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes. Du Shicheng was found guilty of taking $870,000 worth of bribes from 2000 to January 2006 while serving as the port city's most powerful official.
(AP, 2/5/08)(AP, 2/6/08)
2008 Feb 5, In Guatemala 5 bus drivers were shot dead, each while driving passengers on different main roads into Guatemala City. 7 more were killed the following day, prompting their colleagues to go on strike for several days.
(Econ, 3/22/08, p.40)
2008 Feb 5, Ching Cheong (58), a Hong Kong journalist charged with spying for Taiwan, was released from prison in mainland China after being detained for nearly three years.
(AP, 2/5/08)
2008 Feb 5, A new Iraqi flag, stripped of the three green stars of Saddam Hussein's toppled Baath party, was hoisted over the Iraqi Cabinet building in a symbolic break with the past nearly five years after the US-led invasion. In Taji, north of Baghdad, a suicide bomber detonated his explosives near the convoy of a sheik working with US forces, killing two of his followers. Those killed were members of the Taji Awakening Council.
(AP, 2/5/08)
2008 Feb 5, An Israeli airstrike in response to Qassam rockets killed 7 Hamas police officers near Khan Yunis. A barrage of rockets followed and battered Sderot less than a half mile from the Gaza fence, seriously wounding a woman just before the arrival of President Shimon Peres.
(AP, 2/5/08)(SFC, 2/6/08, p.A7)(SFC, 2/7/08, p.A4)
2008 Feb 5, In Mozambique one person was killed and 63 were wounded in Maputo when police opened fire in a bid to break up violent protests against increases in bus fares. The local council of Tete said an outbreak of diarrhea in the flood-hit city has claimed the lives of 64 people since early January.
(AP, 2/5/08)(AFP, 2/5/08)
2008 Feb 5, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, a guru to the Beatles who introduced the West to transcendental meditation, died at his home in the Dutch town of Vlodrop.
(AP, 2/6/08)(Econ, 2/16/08, p.95)
2008 Feb 5, In Rwanda Theoneste Niyitegeka, a doctor and one-time possible presidential candidate, was sentenced to 15 years in jail for his role in the country's 1994 genocide.
(AFP, 2/6/08)
2008 Feb 5, Serbia's coalition government was on the verge of collapse over the European Union's plans to send a mission to Kosovo province.
(AP, 2/5/08)
2008 Feb 5, In northeastern Somalia grenade attack killed 21 people and wounded 100 in Bossaso, Puntland.
(AP, 2/6/08)
2008 Feb 5, A South African court sentenced Daniel Geiges (69), a Swiss engineer, for his part in an international nuclear smuggling ring. Geiges was given a 13-year suspended sentence on charges relating to a network run by disgraced Pakistan nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan. Geiges' former boss and co-accused, German engineer Gerhard Wisser was given an 18-year suspended sentenced last year in a plea agreement for his role in the network.
(AP, 2/5/08)
2008 Feb 5, In South Africa 12 patients, including two children, were killed when their minibus overturned en route to a hospital in South Africa's Northern Cape province.
(AP, 2/5/08)
2008 Feb 5, Simba Makoni, a senior member of Zimbabwe's ruling ZANU-PF party, said he would run for president at the March 29 election in the first major internal challenge to Robert Mugabe in 20 years.
(Reuters, 2/5/08)
2008 Feb 5, UN officials said Ethiopia and Bangladesh have offered to jump-start the UN peacekeeping mission in Darfur by loaning it helicopters to fly troops and supplies around the vast region in western Sudan.
(AP, 2/5/08)
2009 Feb 5, New US government data said the number of US workers filing new claims for unemployment benefits jumped to a 26-year high last week pointing to a rapid deterioration in the economy.
(AP, 2/5/09)
2009 Feb 5, In eastern Afghanistan a suicide car bomb struck a convoy of foreign troops.
(AP, 2/5/09)
2009 Feb 5, The Bank of England cut interest rates by a half-point to a record low 1 percent as it fought a deepening recession brought on by the world financial crisis.
(AP, 2/5/09)
2009 Feb 5, British workers voted to end a week-long unofficial strike over the use of foreign labor at a French-owned oil refinery that sparked sympathy protests across Britain.
(AP, 2/5/09)
2009 Feb 5, The British Council said that it has suspended work in Iran because of what it calls intimidation by the authorities there. The British Council reopened its Tehran office in 2001 after a 22-year break following the 1979 Islamic revolution. It said 13,000 Iranians took part in English lessons and other programs it ran in Tehran last year.
(AP, 2/5/09)
2009 Feb 5, A nongovernment organization said the corrupt elite of Cambodia, one of the world's most impoverished nations, has laid the groundwork for siphoning off vast profits from a coming boom in mining and oil exploitation.
(AP, 2/5/09)
2009 Feb 5, China declared an emergency in eight provinces suffering a serious drought that has left nearly 4 million people without proper drinking water and is threatening millions of acres of crops. The government published a plan for the relocation and urbanization of farmers living near the Three Gorges Reservoir. Some 1.4 million farmers would have to move again.
(AP, 2/5/09)(WSJ, 2/7/09, p.A6)
2009 Feb 5, Germany's biggest lender, Deutsche Bank, posted its first annual loss since World War II after a terrible fourth quarter but said it would survive the global meltdown without state aid. Deutsche Bank reported a 2008 loss of $5 billion, including $1.8 billion attributed a group run by Wall Street trader Boaz Weinstein.
(AP, 2/5/09)(WSJ, 2/6/09, p.A1)
2009 Feb 5, The Iraqi election commission said that PM Nouri al-Maliki's party won 38 percent of the votes in Baghdad in the Jan 31 election, followed by allies of anti-US cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and a Sunni party with nine percent each. A suicide bomber blew himself up inside a crowded restaurant in a Kurdish city near the Iranian border, killing at least 12 people.
(AP, 2/5/09)
2009 Feb 5, The Israeli navy intercepted a ship delivering 60 tons of supplies to the Gaza Strip from Lebanon in the latest bid to defy Israel's blockade of the militant-held territory.
(AP, 2/5/09)
2009 Feb 5, In Nigeria a private security official said unidentified gunmen have attacked an oil-industry vessel off the coast of Nigeria and killed its captain.
(AP, 2/5/09)
2009 Feb 5, In central Pakistan a suicide bomber blew himself up near a Shiite mosque in the town of Dera Ghazi Khan, killing 24 people.
(AFP, 2/5/09)(SFC, 2/6/09, p.A3)
2009 Feb 5, Somali pirates said that they were freeing, a Ukrainian ship carrying tanks and other heavy weapons after receiving a $3.2 million ransom. The MV Faina was seized last September 25. The Kenyan government claimed to the cargo, which included 33 Soviet-designed battle tanks.
(AP, 2/5/09)
2009 Feb 5, The South Africa Reserve Bank slashed its benchmark interest rate by a full point to 10.5 percent, following a half-point cut in December, saying inflation is headed downward.
(AFP, 2/5/09)
2009 Feb 5, Sri Lanka's prime minister rejected calls for a cease-fire from donor countries concerned by reports of growing civilian casualties in the South Asian nation's civil war and instead demanded the Tamil Tiger rebels' unconditional surrender.
(AP, 2/5/09)
2009 Feb 5, The Swedish government agreed to scrap a three-decade ban on building new nuclear reactors, saying it needs to avoid producing more greenhouse gases.
(AP, 2/5/09)
2009 Feb 5, Jennifer Figge (56) arrived in Trinidad, exhilarated and exhausted as she touched land this week for the first time in almost a month, becoming the first woman on record to allegedly swim across the Atlantic Ocean. Figge actually swam only a fraction of the 2,100-mile journey. The rest of the time, she rested on her crew's westward-sailing catamaran.
(AP, 2/8/09)(AP, 2/10/09)
2009 Feb 5, Turkey's parliament approved the Kyoto Protocol on cutting greenhouse gas emissions. The parliament voted 243-3 after the Cabinet signed the protocol.
(AP, 2/5/09)
2009 Feb 5, Zimbabwe's parliament passed a constitutional bill to allow a coalition government of President Robert Mugabe and opposition rivals, being set up under a deal to end political and economic crisis.
(Reuters, 2/5/09)
2010 Feb 5, The US White House increased its criticism of Republican Senators following reports that Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama had placed a blanket hold on more than 70 administration nominees in order to secure funding for home-state projects. On Feb 9 Shelby’s office said he will stop blocking Senate confirmation of some 70 nominees.
(SFC, 2/6/10, p.A6)(AP, 2/9/10)
2010 Feb 5, In Alabama a boy (14) was shot by another student inside a middle school in Madison. The victim died at a hospital.
(SFC, 2/6/10, p.A6)
2010 Feb 5, In Pennsylvania about 18,000 people turned out before dawn for the 18th Wing Bowl, an eating competition dubbed the world's biggest, and an annual celebration of Philadelphia's raucous sports-crazed culture.
(Reuters, 2/5/10)
2010 Feb 5, In Afghanistan a bomb planted on a motorcycle ripped through a crowd gathered to watch a dog fight in southern Helmand province, killing three people and wounding more than 30. Afghan border police mistook a group of villagers gathering wood near the Pakistan border as insurgents and opened fire, killing seven civilians. US forces detained Atahullah Wahaab, deputy police chief in Kapisa province, for alleged corruption and links to insurgents.
(AFP, 2/5/10)(AP, 2/6/10)(AFP, 2/7/10)
2010 Feb 5, New Zealand explorers said 5 crates of whisky and brandy belonging to polar explorer Ernest Shackleton have been recovered after being buried for more than 100 years under the Antarctic ice. The excavation of the whisky followed the discovery last month of two blocks of butter in an Antarctic hut used by British explorer Robert Falcon Scott on his doomed 1910-12 expedition.
(AP, 2/5/10)
2010 Feb 5, Defense giant BAE Systems said it had agreed to pay fines of nearly 288 million pounds settle charges brought by Britain's Serious Fraud Office and the US Department of Justice. The fines, 258 million pounds to the DoJ and 30 million pounds to the SFO, related to investigations into BAE deals with countries including Tanzania, the Czech Republic, Romania and South Africa.
(AFP, 2/5/10)
2010 Feb 5, Britain’s chief prosecutor said 4 British lawmakers will face criminal charges and the prospect of jail for alleged shady accounting practices during Britain's 2009 expense claims scandal. A report issued a day earlier into the expense scandal ordered 392 current and former British legislators to repay a total of 1.12 million pounds ($1.7 million).
(AP, 2/5/10)
2010 Feb 5, British actor Ian Carmichael (89) died at his home in northern England. He appeared in a series of comedies for the Boulting Brothers including "Private's Progress," "Brothers in Law," "Lucky Jim" and "I'm All Right Jack." Later in his career he played the upper-class twit Bertie Wooster, and Dorothy L. Sayers suave detective Lord Peter Wimsey, in television series.
(AP, 2/8/10)
2010 Feb 5, Canada and the US said they have reached a tentative deal with to end a dispute over "Buy American" provisions in US legislation that had strained bilateral ties.
(AP, 2/5/10)
2010 Feb 5, China said it will slap heavy anti-dumping duties on US chicken parts, a move likely to aggravate trade ties between two of the world's most important economies at a time of strained political relations.
(Reuters, 2/5/10)
2010 Feb 5, Danish special forces disrupted the takeover by Somali pirates of the cargo ship Ariella in the Gulf of Aden. A frogmen unit scaled the sides of the ship using grappling hooks, secured the bridge, released the crew and then launched an hours-long search for a pirate the crew had seen.
(AP, 2/5/10)
2010 Feb 5, In East Timor 20 members of dissident political group CPD-RDTL and underground political organization Bua-Malus were arrested on suspicion of involvement in "ninja" activities.
(AFP, 4/6/10)
2010 Feb 5, Guatemalan police say they have destroyed about 1,200 acres (500 hectares) of opium poppies along the border with Mexico. The plants were valued at $950 million.
(AP, 2/5/10)
2010 Feb 5, In Iraq twin car bombs tore through a crowd of Shiite pilgrims packing a highway as they walked to Karbala south of Baghdad for a major religious observance, killing at least 40 people and wounding 154 others. A roadside bomb struck a bus carrying pilgrims through Baghdad, killing one and wounding 13.
(AP, 2/5/10)
2010 Feb 5, In Indian Kashmir paramilitary soldiers charged at a group gathered in a playground in Srinagar, and began firing as they fled, killing Zahid Farooq Shah (17). The incident threatened to enflame protests that have rocked the city following the death of another boy on Jan 31.
(AP, 2/5/10)
2010 Feb 5, Latvia sold a deserted town built around a Soviet-era radar station to a Russian investor who bid $3.1 million at an unusual auction. The town, formerly known as Skrunda-1, housed about 5,000 people during the Cold War but was abandoned over a decade ago.
(AP, 2/5/10)
2010 Feb 5, Mexican authorities said they have found the decapitated bodies of six men in the western state of Michoacan. In central Mexico a landslide killed at least 11 people, adding to 18 deaths this week from severe and unseasonable winter storms that closed schools and freeways and flooded thousands of homes.
(AP, 2/5/10)(AP, 2/6/10)
2010 Feb 5, A breakthrough deal to save Northern Ireland's Catholic-Protestant government gave a new lease of life to an awkward partnership of former foes that still must overcome many obstacles to survive. The deal commits the Northern Ireland Assembly to elect a justice minister March 9 and Britain to transfer control of more than 20 criminal justice and law-enforcement agencies to Belfast on April 12.
(AP, 2/5/10)
2010 Feb 5, In Pakistan women and children were among the 12 people killed when a suicide attacker rammed a motorbike bomb into a bus carrying Shiites on one of Karachi's busiest roads. A 2nd bomber then killed 13 people, damaging ambulances and the entrance to the casualty department at Jinnah Hospital, where the victims of the first attack were being treated. Police defused a third bomb rigged inside a television and left in the hospital car park. By the next day 8 more people had died bringing the total death toll to 33.
(AFP, 2/5/10)(AP, 2/6/10)
2010 Feb 5, Portuguese police seized a large amount of explosives at a home being used by Basque separatist group ETA as a base to prepare attacks in neighboring Spain.
(AP, 2/5/10)
2010 Feb 5, Russian PM Vladimir Putin criticized his party following an unusually large opposition protest, saying it has fed the country with empty promises.
(AP, 2/5/10)
2010 Feb 5, A Vietnamese court convicted Tran Khai Thanh Thuy (49), a journalist and democracy activist, of assault and sentenced her to three-and-a-half years in prison in a one-day trial that rights groups said was meant to silence government critics.
(AP, 2/5/10)
2010 Feb 5, Zimbabwe's civil servants launched an open-ended strike, demanding that their wages be increased to at least 630 US dollars, from 150 dollars a month, piling pressure on the strained unity government struggling to fix the economy. Most of Zimbabwe's 230,000 civil servants appeared to have heeded the strike call.
(AFP, 2/5/10)(AFP, 2/9/10)
2011 Feb 5, The United States and Russia formally inaugurated their new START nuclear arms treaty, capping two years of work to "reset" the sometimes strained ties between the former Cold War enemies.
(Reuters, 2/5/11)
2011 Feb 5, In Kentucky police found the body of a girl (9) near Trenton, several hours after she was reported missing.
(SSFC, 2/6/11, p.A8)
2011 Feb 5, J. Paul Getty III (b.1956), grandson of oil magnate J. Paul Getty, died in England following a long illness. He had lost an ear to kidnappers in Rome in 1973 and suffered a devastating stroke in his twenties that left him severely impaired and in a wheelchair for the rest of his life.
(SFC, 2/9/11, p.A4)
2011 Feb 5, In southern Afghanistan two NATO service members were killed in separate bomb attacks. NATO troops captured 48 Iranian-made warheads, 49 fuses, and 49 rocket mortars. They were being transported in a three-truck convoy, in southern Nimruz, near the Iranian and Pakistani borders.
(AP, 2/5/11)(AP, 3/9/11)
2011 Feb 5, In Australia torrential rains and flash floods trapped scores of people in homes and cars following a massive cyclone, piling on more misery after weeks of record inundations.
(AFP, 2/5/11)
2011 Feb 5, British PM David Cameron, in a speech to the Munich Security Conference, condemned Britain's long-standing policy of multiculturalism as a failure, calling for better integration of young Muslims to combat home-grown extremism. He also said Europe must stamp out intolerance of Western values within its own Muslim communities and far-right groups if it is to defeat the roots of terrorism.
(AFP, 2/5/11)
2011 Feb 5, Renewed fighting between Cambodian and Thai troops along the countries' disputed border killed a Thai soldier and sent thousands of people fleeing before military commanders agreed on the second cease-fire in two days.
(AP, 2/5/11)
2011 Feb 5, Rudolf Slavik (34) was found shot to death in a tram in Prague. In November Gilbert Ferguson McCrae (53), a US and British citizen, was found guilty for killing Slavik by shooting him in the head with a handgun. The prosecution said McCrae shot Slavik after Czech had insulted him in a bar. The conviction was upheld in 2012 and McCrae was sentenced to 16 years in prison.
(AP, 2/8/12)(http://tinyurl.com/6oeph7f)
2011 Feb 5, Leaders of Egypt's unprecedented wave of anti-government protests held talks with the prime minister over ways to ease President Mubarak out of office, but the government appeared to be digging in its heels. The top executive committee of Egypt's ruling National Democratic Party (NDP), which includes Mubarak's son Gamal, resigned en masse. Secretary-general of the ruling party, Safwat el-Sharif, resigned in a gesture to protesters carrying out a 12-day-old wave of anti-government demonstrations. It was decided to name Hossam Badrawi secretary general of the party.
(AP, 2/5/11)(AFP, 2/5/11)
2011 Feb 5, Unknown saboteurs attacked an Egyptian pipeline supplying gas to Jordan, forcing authorities to switch off gas supply from a twin pipeline to Israel. Egypt supplies about 40 percent of Israel's natural gas. The attack came after Israel expressed concern that its natural gas supplies from Egypt could be threatened if a new regime takes power in Cairo.
(AFP, 2/5/11)
2011 Feb 5, In India doctors in Gujarat reported two more cases of Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever, a tick-borne virus endemic to parts of Africa. 4 people in Gujarat had already died of the disease this year.
(Econ, 2/12/11, p.68)
2011 Feb 5, In Iran A state-owned news website said Iran's broadcasting authority has banned Iranian TV channels from showing cooking programs that present recipes for foreign cuisine. The deputy head of Iran's state broadcasting company, Ali Darabi, announced the ban during a visit to one of the country's 30 state-run TV channels.
(AP, 2/6/11)
2011 Feb 5, Israeli police arrested four men in the theft of religious items valued at more than $1 million from a synagogue in Italy. The 4 suspects, Israelis in their 20s, were accused of stealing the items from Milan's central synagogue last week and smuggling them to Israel.
(AP, 2/7/11)
2011 Feb 5, In Italy thousands of people attended a rally to demand Premier Silvio Berlusconi's resignation following allegations he paid for sex with a 17-year-old girl and used his office to cover it up.
(AP, 2/5/11)
2011 Feb 5, In Mexico gunmen opened fire and killed 3 teenage boys at a used car dealership in Ciudad Juarez. Two of the boys were US citizens. A teenager, a woman and a 40-year-old man died in a second attack by unidentified gunmen elsewhere in Juarez. Another three people were killed in separate shooting incidents. Authorities recovered the dismembered body of Francisco Martinez Ramirez, the chief of guards at a Monterrey prison, who was dragged out of his house by armed men a day earlier. Federal agents arrested Adan Salazar Zamorano, an alleged lieutenant of the powerful Sinaloa drug cartel. He was also wanted in Texas on charges of conspiracy to possess cocaine with intent to distribute.
(AFP, 2/7/11)(AP, 2/7/11)(AP, 2/10/11)
2011 Feb 5, In northern Mexico Serengeti Zoo owner Alberto Hernandez said 14 parrots, 13 serpents, five iguanas, two crocodiles and a capuchin monkey died after power failures cut off electrical heating at the zoo in the town of Aldama, Chihuahua state.
(AP, 2/6/11)
2011 Feb 5, In Pakistan militants killed four men accused of spying in the northwest. A car bomb exploded in a village in the Khyber tribal region. 3 people were killed and 2 pedestrians were wounded.
(AP, 2/5/11)(AFP, 2/5/11)
2011 Feb 5, In the Philippines guerrillas leaders said Ameril Umbra Kato, a rogue Muslim rebel commander, has formed a separate faction of several hundred fighters and rejected peace talks to end the decades-long secessionist rebellion.
(AP, 2/5/11)
2011 Feb 5, The body of Monika Markiewicz (32), a Polish national and musician on the cruise ship Allure of the Sea, was recovered from the sea off Cozumel, Mexico. An autopsy determined she drowned but also had suffered a blow to the head. Nelson Perez Torres (24) later confessed to hitting Markiewicz in the head with a rock and then throwing her into the ocean in Quintana Roo state, where Cozumel is located.
(AP, 2/9/11)(AP, 2/10/11)
2011 Feb 5, In Qatar an anti-corruption tribunal of the International Cricket Council banned former Pakistan captain Salman Butt for ten years, Mohammad Asif for seven years and Mohammad Aamer for five years for their role in a spot-fixing betting scam.
(AFP, 2/5/11)
2011 Feb 5, In Romania five miners died in an explosion at a coal mine in the Jiu Valley mining region.
(AP, 2/5/11)
2011 Feb 5, In Serbia tens of thousands of nationalist supporters rallied against the pro-Western government, demanding early elections amid a deepening economic crisis.
(AP, 2/5/11)
2011 Feb 5, In South Sudan a rebellion by former pro-Khartoum militiamen against giving up their heavy weapons sparked clashes in oil-producing Upper Nile state. Fighting in Malakal close to the border with the north, has killed 20 people and wounded at least 24. Soldiers in north Sudan's army fought each other, killing at least 30 in a dispute over who gets to keep the artillery they are holding in Southern Sudan. The fighting took place in two towns in Upper Nile state. 11 soldiers were killed in Paloich and 19 in Melut.
(AP, 2/5/11)(AP, 2/6/11)
2011 Feb 5, In Spain several hundred Basque separatists held small street rallies, hung posters and painted political graffiti on walls throughout the troubled northern region to support a new political party to be launched next week.
(AP, 2/5/11)
2011 Feb 5, Zimbabwe's main rival political parties condemned a spate of violent clashes among their supporters. PM Morgan Tsvangirai blamed Pres. Mugabe's youth brigades.
(Reuters, 2/5/11)
2012 Feb 5, Josh Powell, under investigation for the 2009 disappearance in Utah of his wife, Susan Powell, was killed with his two sons, Charles (7) and Braden (5), in a fire at his home in Graham, Washington. Police said he set the fire intentionally just after receiving his sons for what was to be a supervised visit.
(SFC, 2/6/12, p.A6)
2012 Feb 5, In Afghanistan 9 people, including 7 policemen, were killed in a suicide car bomb attack on police headquarters in Kandahar, a bastion of Taliban militancy.
(AFP, 2/5/12)
2012 Feb 5, Bosnia used helicopters to evacuate people and deliver food to those stranded by heavy snowfall. The cold snap across Eastern Europe has left at least 280 people dead including 131 in Ukraine.
(SFC, 2/6/12, p.A2)
2012 Feb 5, Brazilian media report 78 people have been murdered in and around the northeastern city of Salvador since the start of a state police strike there five days ago.
(AP, 2/5/12)
2012 Feb 5, Britain’s Heathrow Airport cut around half of the 1,300 flights scheduled for today after snow and freezing temperatures hit much of England a day earlier.
(Reuters, 2/5/12)
2012 Feb 5, Mark Thompson, director-general of the BBC, said Iranian authorities are increasingly arresting and threatening the families of BBC journalists to force them to quit its Persian news service.
(Reuters, 2/5/12)
2012 Feb 5, Egyptian investigating judges referred 44 NGO workers, including 19 Americans, to trial before a criminal court for allegedly being involved in banned activities and illegally receiving foreign funds. The decision also slapped a travel ban on all those referred to trial. The military rulers faced mounting pressure on two fronts, with a fourth day of violent street protests spearheading calls to speed up the transfer of power to a civilian administration and the US threatening to cut more than a billion dollars in badly needed aid. Since Feb 2 twelve people have been killed in Cairo and Suez.
(AP, 2/5/12)(AFP, 2/5/12)
2012 Feb 5, Finland voters chose a leader in a runoff between a veteran conservative and the first openly gay candidate from the small Greens party. Former Finance Minister Sauli Niinisto (63) won the runoff election with 63 percent of the votes against Greens candidate Pekka Haavisto (53) with 37 percent. This restored the National Coalition Party to the presidency after 56 years and giving it the nation's two top posts for the first time.
(AP, 2/5/12)(AP, 2/10/12)
2012 Feb 5, The Iranian navy rushed to a site in the Gulf of Aden after it received a distress signal from an oil tanker, which was under attack from some 35 pirate boats. The navy opened fire on the pirates to foil an attack on an Iranian oil tanker.
(AP, 2/6/12)
2012 Feb 5, In Iraq gunmen killed an Interior Ministry official in a drive-by shooting in central Baghdad.
(AP, 2/5/12)
2012 Feb 5, Kuwait News said the Gulf nation's emir accepted the resignation of Sheik Jaber Al Hamad Al Sabah, a former defense chief who was appointed caretaker prime minister in November amid intense political turmoil that forced elections.
(AP, 2/5/12)
2012 Feb 5, Libya put 41 loyalists of dead dictator Moamer Kadhafi on trial, in the first legal proceedings launched against members of the former regime. The trial was later adjourned to February 15, with the military prosecutor saying the accused will have fair trials.
(AFP, 2/5/12)
2012 Feb 5, Aid officials in Mali said more than 15,000 people including military personnel have fled into neighboring countries since members of the nomadic Tuareg ethnic group launched a new rebellion against the Malian government last month. The ICRC said 10,000 people have crossed into Niger and 5,000 into Mauritania.
(AP, 2/5/12)
2012 Feb 5, In Mexico Josefina Vazquez Mota (51) easily won the National Action Party's primary. She vowed to unite the party and help it defeat the Institutional Revolutionary Party, which ruled Mexico for 71 years before being ousted by National Action in 2000.
(AP, 2/6/12)
2012 Feb 5, Nepal officials said health workers are to cull some 4,000 chickens following the discovery of the H5N1 strain of bird flu in the southeastern part of the Himalayan country.
(AFP, 2/5/12)
2012 Feb 5, In Nigeria gunmen reportedly shot dead a secret police officer in front of his house in the northeastern city of Damaturu. Soldiers guarding Jos, at the heart of ethnic and religious clashes, detained and later threw out journalists working for a French television station trying to cover the ongoing unrest there.
(AFP, 2/5/12)(AP, 2/7/12)
2012 Feb 5, Panama police fired tear gas to clear blockades of the Pan-American highway by indigenous groups protesting changes to the mining law. One person was killed and 39 injured in the resulting clashes.
(AP, 2/6/12)
2012 Feb 5, Syria's opposition appealed for international backing, a day after Russia and China vetoed a UN Security Council resolution aimed at pressuring President Bashar Assad to end his bloody crackdown. The Observatory also said that one person was shot dead by a sniper in the central city of Homs. Another activist group, the Local Coordination Committees said nine people were killed in different parts of the country.
(AP, 2/5/12)
2013 Feb 5, Dell and Menlo Park’s Silver Lake Management, the nation’s largest technology-focused private-equity firm, announced that they had agreed to pay $13.65 a share to take Dell private.
(SFC, 2/6/13, p.D1)
2013 Feb 5, California charged Standard & Poor’s with fraudulent practices that resulted in close to $1 billion in losses state institutional investors. 15 other states and the US Justice Dept. were also suing S&P for approving mortgage backed securities that turned out to be bad risks.
(SFC, 2/6/13, p.A1)
2013 Feb 5, In California 3 men were found dead on a wooded property in rural west Sonoma County.
(SFC, 2/6/13, p.A6)
2013 Feb 5, A Bangladeshi tribunal prosecuting cases stemming from the 1971 independence war sentenced Abdul Quader Mollah, a leader of an Islamic opposition party, to life in prison, sparking street clashes with police that killed two people and injured dozens more.
(AP, 2/5/13)
2013 Feb 5, Bulgaria linked Lebanon's militant group Hezbollah to the bomb attack on a bus last July that killed five Israeli tourists. Two of the suspects linked to the bombing had entered the country with an Australian and a Canadian passport.
(AP, 2/5/13)
2013 Feb 5, In China a court in Beijing sentenced 10 people to prison terms for running a black jail. “Custody and repatriation" centers, which held petitioners along with beggars and vagrants, were scrapped in 2003.
(Econ, 3/2/13, p.45)
2013 Feb 5, Chinese phone maker Huawei and Microsoft launched a new smartphone in Africa, which they say is the world's fastest growing mobile phone market. The Huawei 4Afrika phone runs Windows Phone 8 and comes pre-loaded with applications designed for the African market.
(AP, 2/5/13)
2013 Feb 5, European Union regulators gave approval for Britain's 600 million pounds of public support for the "Green Deal" energy-efficiency scheme. Britain's Green Deal permits loans to homeowners to help them pay for efficiency measures such as loft insulation, modern boilers, draught proofing and other materials.
(AP, 2/5/13)
2013 Feb 5, Germany's education minister Annette Schavan (57) was stripped of her doctorate after a committee of academics concluded that she plagiarized substantial parts of her 1980 thesis, which dealt with the formation of conscience. Schavan resigned on Feb 9.
(AP, 2/5/13)(AP, 2/9/13)
2013 Feb 5, Iran’s Pres. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad began a three-day visit to Egypt, centered around an Islamic summit. He said his country is ready to provide a "big credit line" to help revive the distressed economy of Egypt.
(AP, 2/6/13)
2013 Feb 5, Iran's official news agency reported that authorities have arrested another group of local journalists accused of links with the BBC.
(AP, 2/5/13)
2013 Feb 5, In Iraq a suicide bomber rammed his explosives-laden car into an army checkpoint in Taji, killing at least four people — two soldiers and two civilians.
(AP, 2/5/13)
2013 Feb 5, In Ireland an official report, that ran to almost 1,000 pages, said that more than a quarter of the women and girls subjected to harsh discipline and unpaid work at 10 laundries, run by Catholic nuns, were sent there by the Irish state.
(AP, 2/6/13)
2013 Feb 5, Kuwait said three former opposition lawmakers have been charged with insulting the country's ruler in the latest crackdown on perceived political dissent in the Gulf nation.
(AP, 2/5/13)
2013 Feb 5, In Mali troops from France and Chad moved into Kidal in an effort to secure the strategic northern city.
(AP, 2/5/13)
2013 Feb 5, In Nigeria two soldiers were killed in a shootout in the oil-rich southern delta involving a vessel operated by an Indian company.
(AP, 2/5/13)
2013 Feb 5, Serbian ultranationalists held a rally to accuse their country's president of treason for agreeing to hold talks with the president of Kosovo.
(AP, 2/5/13)
2013 Feb 5, In Somalia a Mogadishu court handed down one-year prison sentences to a woman who said she was raped by security forces and a reporter who interviewed her. The judges decided the woman falsely claimed she was raped and had insulted the government. On March 3 an appeals court dropped charges against the woman. A journalist who interviewed the rape victim and was tried alongside her had his sentence reduced from one year to six months.
(AP, 2/5/13)(AP, 3/3/13)
2013 Feb 5, South African police arrested 19 suspected members of a Congolese rebel group, accusing them of plotting to overthrow their nation's government after it recently came under attack by militants said to be backed by neighboring Rwanda.
(AP, 2/5/13)
2013 Feb 5, Syrian rebels and Jordanian security officials said intense fighting has broken out near Syrian government installations and border posts near Jordan, leaving 17 civilians wounded.
(AP, 2/5/13)
2014 Feb 5, Texas executed Suzanne Basso (59) for the 1998 slaying of Louis Musso (59), a mentally disabled man, to rob him of his cash and collect insurance.
(SFC, 2/6/14, p.A6)
2014 Feb 5, In Argentina 9 first-responders were killed and seven others injured battling a fire of unknown origin that destroyed an archive of bank documents at the iron Mountain warehouse in Buenos Aires.
(AP, 2/5/14)(SFC, 2/6/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 5, Brazil police said the bodies of 3 men whose disappearance led to a clash between an Amazon tribe and settlers have been found in Amazonas state. Last week police arrested five Tenharim men on suspicion of kidnapping and killing the outsiders in December.
(AP, 2/5/14)
2014 Feb 5, In the Central African Republic soldiers and recruits killed a suspected rebel with knives and concrete blocks just moments after the president and other VIPs left the area.
(AP, 2/5/14)
2014 Feb 5, It was reported that a new strain of avian influenza, H10N8, has been confirmed in two people in China. Cases of H7N9 were reported to be surging with some 300 cases and more appearing every day.
(SFC, 2/5/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 5, In southwest England more than 8,000 homes were without power after fresh storms battered the region, sending huge waves crashing onto the coastline and damaging sea defenses.
(AFP, 2/5/14)
2014 Feb 5, Millions of commuters in London faced delays and disruption after Tube staff went on strike over plans to close London Underground ticket offices.
(AFP, 2/5/14)
2014 Feb 5, The European Union's antitrust watchdog accepted "far-reaching" concessions offered by Google to settle allegations it is abusing its dominant position in Internet searches, bringing the three-year-old case close to an end.
(AP, 2/5/14)
2014 Feb 5, The Luno, mostly empty Spanish cargo ship, broke in two after hitting a sea wall off the southwestern coast of France in high winds and was leaking some fuel into the water.
(Reuters, 2/5/14)
2014 Feb 5, A German newspaper reported that the US National Security Agency (NSA) bugged the phone of former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder from at least 2002, compounding the most serious row between the allies in a decade.
(Reuters, 2/5/14)
2014 Feb 5, Germany's government approved increasing the number of soldiers sent to Mali from 180 to 250 as part of an EU-led mission to train the national army for its fight against Islamic extremists.
(AFP, 2/5/14)
2014 Feb 5, In Germany a fire at an asylum home in Hamburg killed a woman from Pakistan and her two children. On Feb 7 a boy (13), a member of the city's youth fire department, admitted to setting the fire.
(AP, 2/8/14)
2014 Feb 5, In Iraq multiple bombings rocked central Baghdad, striking mainly near the heavily fortified Green Zone where key government offices are located, killed at least 34 people.
(AFP, 2/5/14)(SFC, 2/6/14, p.A4)
2014 Feb 5, Israel's finance minister said he will stop funding for ultra-Orthodox seminaries whose students do not enlist into the military. Yair Lapid's announcement was in response to an order from the Israeli Supreme Court.
(AP, 2/5/14)
2014 Feb 5, Israel's Jerusalem municipality approved building plans for 558 new homes in the occupied West Bank, land that the Palestinians want for a future state.
(Reuters, 2/5/14)
2014 Feb 5, Japanese composer Mamoru Samurogochi (50) confessed that he had employed a ghostwriter since the 1990s to compose most of his music. The ghostwriter then came forward and accused Samurogochi of faking his deafness.
(SFC, 2/7/14, p.A7)
2014 Feb 5, Uke Rugova, a Kosovo lawmaker who is also a son of late President Ibrahim Rugova, was arrested by European Union police and justice workers for alleged involvement in organized crime and fraud.
(AP, 2/5/14)
2014 Feb 5, In Libya a bomb rocked the playground of a primary school in Benghazi during recess, wounding 12 children, hours after gunmen had rampaged through the streets.
(AFP, 2/5/14)
2014 Feb 5, Pakistani anti-drone activist Kareem Khan was taken from his home by around a dozen men in police uniforms who bundled him into a police vehicle in front of his wife, children and neighbors. He was tortured and interrogated before being dumped blindfolded on the outskirts of the capital early on Feb 14.
(Reuters, 2/14/14)
2014 Feb 5, A planned extension of the Panama Canal, one of the world's most important shipping routes, was thrown into doubt after a group of companies, led by Spanish builder Sacyr, said its talks with Panama's government over how to expand the canal had fallen apart. Panama Canal Authority head Jorge Quijano said the expansion project will be completed in 2015 with or without a Spanish-led consortium.
(Reuters, 2/5/14)
2014 Feb 5, Puerto Rico's governor said he is renegotiating the payment of short-term debt and has ordered all government agencies to reduce their current budgets by 2 percent after the island's credit rating was downgraded to junk status.
(AP, 2/5/14)
2014 Feb 5, A Romanian court charged and arrested Rudel Obreja, a former chairman of Romania's Boxing Federation (2004-2012), with influence peddling for allegedly offering to try to influence a sentencing hearing in return for money.
(AP, 2/5/14)
2014 Feb 5, Russian security forces surrounded a group of militants who had holed up in the Dagestani town of Izberbash. Dzhamaldin Mirzayev (30), who was suspected of having been involved in training the bombers and sending them to Volgograd, was killed in an exchange of gunfire.
(AP, 2/5/14)
2014 Feb 5, In South Africa demonstrators set several buildings, including a clinic, on fire in the Bronkhorstspruit district, east of Pretoria, to protest what they say are high utility bills.
(AP, 2/5/14)
2014 Feb 5, In South Sudan government forces and allied militia attacked rebel defensive positions in the northern part of Jonglei state, close to the border with Upper Nile. Government soldiers mutinied in Lakes state while they were being sent to fight the rebels in Panyijar county in neighboring Unity state.
(AFP, 2/6/14)
2014 Feb 5, Syria missed a deadline to hand over all the toxic materials it declared to the world's chemical weapons watchdog, putting the program several weeks behind schedule and jeopardizing a final June 30 deadline.
(Reuters, 2/5/14)
2014 Feb 5, Turkey's parliament approved internet controls enabling web pages to be blocked within hours in what the opposition decried as part of a government bid to stifle a corruption scandal.
(Reuters, 2/6/14)
2014 Feb 5, A UN human rights committee urged the Holy See to open its files on pedophiles and bishops who concealed their crimes saying the Vatican "systematically" adopted policies that allowed priests to rape and molest tens of thousands of children over decades.
(AP, 2/5/14)
2015 Feb 5, President Barack Obama hailed the Dalai Lama as a "good friend" during a symbolic first public encounter between the two men at a high-profile Washington prayer breakfast.
(AFP, 2/5/15)
2015 Feb 5, First Lady Michell Obama announced a $500 million donation from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to fund the fight against childhood obesity.
(SFC, 2/6/15, p.A8)
2015 Feb 5, In Ohio three people were killed and three others wounded at the Chalk Linez barbershop shooting in Warrensville Heights, a suburb of Cleveland. In 2016 Douglas Shrine Jr. (21) was convicted of the shootings and his role in killing an eyewitness.
(SSFC, 11/20/16, p.A10)
2015 Feb 5, At the Univ. of South Carolina Sunghee Kwon (46) shot and killed her ex-husband Raja Fayad (45), an anatomy professor, and then committed suicide with a gunshot to her stomach.
(SFC, 2/7/15, p.A6)
2015 Feb 5, Texas-based Radio Shack, founded in Boston in 1921, said it was filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The NYSE stopped trading its shares on Feb 2.
(SFC, 2/6/15, p.C2)
2015 Feb 5, Police in Brazil issued 62 arrest, search and other legal orders in the investigation into a massive kickback scheme at the state-run oil company Petrobras. This included a warrant compelling the treasurer of Brazil's ruling Workers' Party to testify.
(AP, 2/5/15)
2015 Feb 5, British glam rocker Gary Glitter (70), aka Paul Gadd, was convicted of one count of attempted rape, four counts of indecent assault and one count of sexual intercourse with a girl under the age of 13.
(AFP, 2/5/15)
2015 Feb 5, In Cameroon Boko Haram fighters continued their attack on Fotokol, leaving nearly 100 people dead and some 500 wounded. Cameroonian soldiers assisted by Chadian forces chased hundreds of Boko Haram fighters out of Fotokol.
(AP, 2/6/15)
2015 Feb 5, In China authorities in Shanghai said police have seized 2.4 tons of methamphetamine and arrested 28 people in one of the country's largest drug busts.
(AP, 2/5/15)
2015 Feb 5, In China a fire at a wholesale market killed at least 17 people and injured nine others on the fourth floor of the market in southern Guangdong province.
(AP, 2/6/15)
2015 Feb 5, It was reported that protection rackets in Colombia have ballooned into an estimated $1 billion-a-year industry.
(SFC, 2/5/15, p.A4)
2015 Feb 5, Denmark's central bank cut a key interest rate for the 4th time in a month as it tried to keep the krone currency stable against the euro.
(AP, 2/5/15)
2015 Feb 5, The leaders of Germany and France announced a new peace plan for Ukraine, planning to fly together to Kiev and Moscow with a proposal to resolve the conflict.
(Reuters, 2/5/15)
2015 Feb 5, An India official said police over the last ten days have rescued hundreds of children working in hazardous industries in in Hyderabad despite laws that ban child labor.
(AP, 2/5/15)
2015 Feb 5, Iraq's PM Haider al-Abadi lifted a decade-old, midnight-to-5 a.m. curfew in Baghdad, ordered that long-blocked streets in the capital be opened up and declared some neighborhoods of the city weapons-free zones effective Feb 7.
(AP, 2/5/15)
2015 Feb 5, Jordanian fighter jets pounded Islamic State hideouts in Syria and then roared over the hometown of a pilot killed by the militants while King Abdullah consoled the victim's family below.
(Reuters, 2/5/15)
2015 Feb 5, Libya's only commercial flight link to mainland Europe was severed when the state carrier said its foreign partner had pulled out of the country after a deadly attack last week on a Tripoli hotel. Georgia-based Afriqiyah had only just restarted the route to Duesseldorf last month.
(Reuters, 2/5/15)
2015 Feb 5, In Libya pro-Haftar forces reportedly expelled Islamist militias from Benghazi port.
(AP, 2/6/15)
2015 Feb 5, In Mexico 61 rotting bodies were found at the crematorium of an abandoned funeral home near Acapulco after neighbors complained to authorities about a foul smell coming from the building. The facility had been shuttered for about one year.
(AP, 2/6/15)
2015 Feb 5, Myanmar's government accused students who are protesting against state educational policies of being manipulated by groups seeking to destabilize the country.
(AP, 2/5/15)
2015 Feb 5, The Russian film "Leviathan," a harrowing portrayal of small-town corruption, opened in about 450 theaters across Moscow and other cities. The Oscar-nominated film was directed by Andrei Zvyagintsev.
(AP, 2/5/15)
2015 Feb 5, Syrian government forces and rebel forces traded salvos of rockets and mortar shells around Damascus, killing at least 21 people. Syrian army helicopters dropped two barrel bombs on a crowded square in a rebel-held neighborhood in the northern city of Aleppo.
(AP, 2/5/15)(AP, 2/6/15)
2015 Feb 5, Tunisia's parliament approved a coalition government led by the secular Nidaa Tounes party and including moderate Islamist rivals Ennahda, following landmark elections in the birthplace of the Arab Spring.
(AFP, 2/5/15)
2015 Feb 5, Ukraine raised a key interest rate by a whopping 5.5 percentage points following a massive drop in its currency that has stoked concerns of runaway inflation.
(AP, 2/5/15)
2016 Feb 5, The Pentagon released nearly 200 photographs of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan, taken mostly between 2004 and 2006, involving 56 cases of alleged abuse by US forces.
(AP, 2/6/16)
2016 Feb 5, The Justice Department announced that Banking giant HSBC has reached a $470 million settlement with the federal government and nearly all states over mortgage lending and foreclosure abuses that officials say helped intensify the country's economic meltdown.
(AP, 2/5/16)
2016 Feb 5, The Albanian Environment Ministry said Parliament has passed a 10-year moratorium on chopping down trees for industry or export purposes.
(AP, 2/5/16)
2016 Feb 5, Bahrain said it is ready to commit ground troops to Syria as part of a US-led coalition against Islamic State, a day after its larger neighbour and close ally Saudi Arabia announced a similar pledge.
(Reuters, 2/6/16)
2016 Feb 5, Bhutan’s King Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck and Queen Jetsun Pema announced the birth of their first child.
(http://mashable.com/2016/03/14/bhutan-prince-trees/#kFMb.our1SqO)
2016 Feb 5, Ottawa announced the lifting of economic sanctions against Tehran, which will allow Canadian firms access to Iran after a deal on its nuclear program recently came into force.
(AFP, 2/5/16)
2016 Feb 5, It was reported that Sichuan Gov. Wei Hong has been accused of disloyalty to the ruling Communist Party and removed from his post, amid a growing consolidation of power by President Xi Jinping that some have likened to a personality cult.
(AP, 2/5/16)
2016 Feb 5, A controversial Danish law allowing police to seize valuables from refugees came into force.
(AFP, 2/5/16)
2016 Feb 5, President Rafael Correa said he has fired Ecuador's military high command for refusing to pay back to the state $41 million from an overvalued land deal.
(AP, 2/5/16)
2016 Feb 5, The head of Germany's domestic intelligence agency (BfV) said Islamic State militants have slipped into Europe disguised as refugees.
(Reuters, 2/5/16)
2016 Feb 5, In Guinea journalist El Hadj Mohamed Diallo (33) died after receiving a bullet to the chest in clashes outside the Conakry offices of an opposition party.
(AFP, 2/6/16)
2016 Feb 5, A band of former Haitian soldiers clashed with a far larger gathering of anti-government demonstrators in Port-au-Prince, resulting in the killing of an ex-member of the abolished military amid an ongoing political crisis.
(AP, 2/5/16)
2016 Feb 5, Iranian mdia said a high-ranking member of the elite Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and 6 Iranian Basij militia volunteers have been killed in fighting in Syria’s northern Aleppo province.
(Reuters, 2/5/16)
2016 Feb 5, In Ireland gunmen disguised as police opened fire on boxing fans at a Dublin hotel, killing one man and wounding two others. A henchman from a rival gang led by the Spain-based Christy Kinahan was targeted and killed. On Feb 8 Irish republican militant group the Continuity IRA, linked to organized crime, claimed responsibility, but then soon retracted.
(AP, 2/5/16)(AFP, 2/8/16)(AP, 2/9/16)
2016 Feb 5, Japan deported Ric O'Barry, the star of an Oscar-winning documentary that shows how dolphins are hunted in a Japanese village, after Tokyo airport officials barred his entry and he was held in detention for more than two weeks.
(AP, 2/5/16)
2016 Feb 5, Honda Motor Co. said that it would recall 5.7 million cars worldwide in the latest round of recalls involving Takata Corp. air bag inflators that can explode and hurl shrapnel into the vehicle.
(AP, 2/5/16)
2016 Feb 5, A fire at a hotel in Arbil, the capital of Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region, killed 19 people and injured dozens more.
(AFP, 2/5/16)
2016 Feb 5, Six asylum-seekers arrived in Latvia, the first of 531 the nation has agreed to accept as part of the European Union's relocation scheme.
(AP, 2/6/16)
2016 Feb 5, In Mali at least four suspected jihadists and a Malian soldier were killed following an attack on a UN military camp in Timbuktu.
(AFP, 2/5/16)
2016 Feb 5, In Nepal vehicles passed through Birgunj, the main border town between Nepal and India, after frustrated local residents forcefully removed barriers set up by ethnic protesters who blockaded the border to demand changes in the new constitution.
(AP, 2/5/16)
2016 Feb 5, Somalia's Shebab insurgents retook their stronghold of Merka from African Union troops who had held the key port since 2012. Three people were killed in a car bomb targeting an airport official in Mogadishu, as investigators probed an airplane blast experts fear was also a bomb.
(AFP, 2/5/16)
2016 Feb 5, In northeastern South Africa 87 miners were rescued after a cave-in at a Vantage Goldfields mine in Barbeton town, Mpumalanga province. 3 men remained missing in a mobile office buried in a sinkhole.
(Reuters, 2/5/16)(AP, 2/10/16)
2016 Feb 5, In Syria pro-government troops retook another northern community as part of a weeklong offensive aimed at encircling the country's largest city, Aleppo. The capture was backed by shelling and airstrikes, including by Russian warplanes. Tens of thousands were apparently streaming towards Turkey as regime troops pressed a major Russian-backed offensive around Aleppo.
(AP, 2/5/16)(AFP, 2/5/16)
2016 Feb 5, Thailand police released photos of Artur Segarra Princep (37), a Spanish man, suspected of involvement in the killing of fellow Spaniard David Bernat, whose dismembered body was recovered piece by piece from Bangkok's Chao Phraya River. Princep was arrested in Cambodia on Feb 7 and returned to Thailand.
(AP, 2/5/16)(AP, 2/8/16)
2016 Feb 5, The South Pacific kingdom of Tonga said it has a Zika epidemic after five people tested positive for the virus and another 265 are suspected of having it.
(AP, 2/5/16)
2016 Feb 5, A UN panel said it had adopted an opinion "in which it considered that Mr Julian Assange was arbitrarily detained by the governments of Sweden and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland." It added: "The working group also considered that the detention should be brought to an end and that Mr Assange should be afforded the right to compensation."
(AFP, 2/5/16)
2016 Feb 5, A UN report said thirty-four militant groups from around the world had reportedly pledged allegiance to the Islamic State extremist group as of mid-December — and that number will only grow in 2016.
(AP, 2/5/16)
2016 Feb 5, In southern Yemen al-Qaida leader Jalal Baliedy was killed along with 3 others in a US drone strike.
(AP, 2/8/16)
2017 Feb 5, President Donald Trump drew fire from Republicans and Democrats alike, after he defended a softer stance on Russia, playing down political assassinations and Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.
(AFP, 2/5/17)
2017 Feb 5, The 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco denied the Justice Department's request for an immediate reinstatement of President Donald Trump's ban on accepting certain travelers and all refugees.
(AP, 2/5/17)
2017 Feb 5, In Texas Tom Brady led the New England Patriots on five straight scoring drives that equaled 31 straight points. The last touchdown wrapped up a 34-28 victory over the Atlanta Falcons in the first-ever overtime in the Super Bowl's 51-year history.
(AP, 2/6/17)
2017 Feb 5, Afghan officials said more than a 100 people have been killed in a series of avalanches triggered by days of heavy snowfall around the country, including 50 in one village, warning the death toll could rise still further.
(AFP, 2/5/17)
2017 Feb 5, The website of Austria's parliament was brought down for 20 minutes. A Turkish hackers' group, Aslan Neferler Tim (ANT), or Lion Soldiers Team, whose website says it defends the homeland, Islam, the nation and flag, without any party political links, claimed the attack.
(Reuters, 2/7/17)
2017 Feb 5, China’s state news agency Xinhua cited mayor Cai Qi as saying Beijing will intensify its battle against choking air pollution this year and aims to cut coal use by 30 percent.
(Reuters, 2/5/17)
2017 Feb 5, In eastern China a fire at the Zuxintang foot massage parlor killed 18 people and injured two others in Tiantai county, Zhejiang province.
(AP, 2/5/17)
2017 Feb 5, Egypt's top Islamic authority rejected the president's suggestion for legislation that would invalidate the practice of men verbally divorcing their wives.
(AP, 2/5/17)
2017 Feb 5, Iran lifted a ban on US wrestlers, allowing them to take part in the Freestyle World Cup later this month in the Iranian city of Kermanshah. Media said the ban was lifted after the "discriminative restrictions" on Iranian nationals traveling to the US was suspended by a US federal judge.
(AP, 2/5/17)
2017 Feb 5, Israel's Supreme Court gave a small group of settlers in the occupied West Bank a brief respite from a demolition order, giving them until March 5 to leave.
(AFP, 2/5/17)
2017 Feb 5, Italy's premier emphasized the significance of NATO and outlined a new agreement between Italy and Libya to fight human trafficking during a phone call with U.S. President Donald Trump.
(AP, 2/5/17)
2017 Feb 5, In Japan about 200 protesters marched through the streets of Tokyo's Shinjuku district carrying banners to protest a hotel chain under fire for books its president wrote denying the Nanjing Massacre in wartime China ever happened. APA group founder and president, Toshio Motoya, has placed books of his revisionist views on history in every room of the company's 400-plus APA Hotels.
(Reuters, 2/5/17)
2017 Feb 5, A 50-meter concrete wall in the northern Kosovo city of Mitrovica was pulled down following an agreement between the government and the country's ethnic Serb minority. The Serbs, who do not recognize Kosovo as a state, started constructing the wall in December, saying it was to protect against a landslip.
(AP, 2/5/17)(Reuters, 2/5/17)
2017 Feb 5, Morocco’s Deputy Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita said his country will "never recognize" Western Sahara's independence despite rejoining the African Union after a decades-long dispute over the territory.
(AFP, 2/5/17)
2017 Feb 5, Myanmar police arrested a Buddhist monk in northern Rakhine state after finding 400,000 pills of methamphetamine in his car. A search of his monastery turned up 4.2 million pills along with a grenade and ammunition.
(SFC, 2/8/17, p.A2)
2017 Feb 5, The Philippine government derided Catholic bishops as "out of touch" after they used weekend sermons to attack a war on drugs they said had created a "reign of terror" for the poor.
(Reuters, 2/5/17)
2017 Feb 5, Romania's government repealed an emergency decree that decriminalizes some official misconduct following massive demonstrations and condemnation from abroad. Protests still raged on for a sixth straight day.
(AP, 2/5/17)(AFP, 2/5/17)
2017 Feb 5, Somalia's al-Shabab extremist group killed four men accused of spying for the CIA and the Kenya and Somali governments. The killings were carried out in a public square in Jamame, Lower Jubba region.
(AP, 2/6/17)
2017 Feb 5, Turkish police detained 448 suspected Islamic State group members in nationwide raids just over a month after an attack on an Istanbul nightclub claimed by the jihadists.
(AFP, 2/5/17)
2017 Feb 5, Ukraine's military says two soldiers were wounded in fighting with rebels in the separatist east, but that artillery attacks were significantly lower after a week in which fighting surged.
(AP, 2/5/17)
2018 Feb 5, US Pres. Donald Trump attacked Britain's National Health Service. The tweet came after thousands of people marched through central London on Feb. 3 in support of the NHS, which is straining under the weight of winter demand. British officials reacted angrily to President Donald Trump's stark criticism of the NHS.
(AFP, 2/5/18)(AP, 2/5/18)
2018 Feb 5, In California Kern County Superior Court Judge David Lampe ruled that the owner of a Bakersfield bakery had a free-speech right to turn away a lesbian couple who wanted a cake to celebrate their marriage.
(SFC, 2/8/18, p.D2)
2018 Feb 5, In Michigan former sports Dr. Larry Nassar was sentenced to a third prison term of 40 to 125 years for molesting young athletes at an elite Michigan training center.
(SFC, 2/6/18, p.A7)
2018 Feb 5, Software maker NVIDIA and German auto parts supplier Continental said they are teaming to build a self-driving vehicle system that will hit the market in 2021.
(AP, 2/5/18)
2018 Feb 5, It was reported that British convenience store operator EG Group is buying Cincinnati -based Kroger's convenience store unit for $2.15 billion as it expands into the US. The acquisition includes 66 locations in 18 states employing 11,000 workers.
(AP, 2/5/18)
2018 Feb 5, Alleged British computer hacker Lauri Love (32) won his appeal against extradition to the United States. US officials had requested Love's extradition on cyber-hacking charges for allegedly compromising government networks between October 2012 and October 2013 and stealing data. Love has Asperger's syndrome and a depressive illness. His lawyers said it would be "unjust and oppressive" to send him to the US to face trial.
(AP, 2/5/18)
2018 Feb 5, China released a further list of goods banned for export to North Korea, saying the items could be used to build weapons of mass destruction.
(Reuters, 2/5/18)
2018 Feb 5, In southern China gas leaking from a pipeline at a steel mill in Guangdong province killed eight people and injured ten others.
(SFC, 2/6/18, p.A2)
2018 Feb 5, In Congo DRC militia Chief Kalamba Dilondo, accused of waging a weeks-long terror campaign in the Kasai region, surrendered to authorities.
(AFP, 2/6/18)
2018 Feb 5, An Ethiopian court sentenced Bekele Gerba, secretary general of the opposition group Oromo Federalist Congress, to six months in jail for contempt of court because he raised his hand when addressed by the judge rather than standing.
(Reuters, 2/5/18)
2018 Feb 5, In southwestern Germany a family of four was found dead in Esslingen. Police said their house had elevated carbon monoxide levels.
(AP, 2/5/18)
2018 Feb 5, In Guinea a young man died in confrontations with security forces in the city of Kindia.
(Reuters, 2/7/18)
2018 Feb 5, In India survivors of female genital mutilation (FGM) called on the government to ban female genital mutilation, an age-old ritual practiced by the small Dawoodi Bohra Muslim sect in the country.
(AFP, 2/5/18)
2018 Feb 5, In Iran a man (35) wielding a machete was shot and arrested after trying to break into the presidential office building in Tehran.
(AP, 2/5/18)
2018 Feb 5, An Iraqi government spokesman said US forces have begun reducing their numbers in Iraq after Iraqi authorities declared "victory" over Islamic State.
(Reuters, 2/5/18)
2018 Feb 5, A Japanese military helicopter crashed in southwestern Japan, killing one of its two crewmembers and ripping the top floor off a house and setting it on fire.
(AP, 2/5/18)
2018 Feb 5, Two Kenyan television channels shut down by the government over their coverage of the political opposition resumed partial broadcasting, although a third channel remained off the air. Police teargassed demonstrators demanding the stations reopen as they tried to march on government offices.
(Reuters, 2/5/18)
2018 Feb 5, In Lebanon hundreds of Kurds protested against Turkey's military offensive in Syria's Kurdish enclave of Afrin.
(AFP, 2/5/18)
2018 Feb 5, Libya's UN-backed government in Tripoli condemned attacks against hundreds of displaced black Libyans known as Tawergha, who were still stranded in a camp after militiamen prevented them from returning home a day earlier.
(AP, 2/5/18)
2018 Feb 5, Maldives declared a state of emergency for 15 days after the government defied a Supreme Court ruling to release nine jailed opposition leaders.
(Reuters, 2/5/18)
2018 Feb 5, In Mexico two prosecution agents were kidnapped and forced to appear on a video by a drug gang. Their bodies were later found in in a car in Xalisco, a town in the Pacific coast state of Nayarit, which known for trafficking heroin to the USA.
(AP, 2/19/18)
2018 Feb 5, In Nepal a visiting UN rights official said Nepal's restrictions on woman migrating for work are discriminatory and inconsistent with international law. Nepal last year introduced a ban on women working as domestic helpers in the Gulf.
(AFP, 2/5/18)
2018 Feb 5, A 23-member advance team of North Koreans arrived in South Korea to prepare for the North's participation in the Pyeongchang Olympics.
(AP, 2/5/18)
2018 Feb 5, In Norway environmental groups launched an appeal after an Oslo court rejected their arguments that Norway's oil and gas exploration in the Arctic violates citizens' right to a clean environment.
(Reuters, 2/5/18)
2018 Feb 5, In southwestern Pakistan a bomb was planted near a garbage bin at a crowded intersection in the town of Panjgur and detonated remotely. Eight passers-by were wounded and one soon died.
(AP, 2/5/18)
2018 Feb 5, In Pakistan a Chinese man, Chen Zhu (45), working with a shipping company was shot dead in what police described as a targeted attack in Karachi.
(Reuters, 2/5/18)
2018 Feb 5, A Palestinian stabbed an Israeli man to death at a bus stop near a West Bank settlement before fleeing the scene.
(AP, 2/5/18)
2018 Feb 5, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte ordered an end to all foreign scientific research missions in a vast expanse of waters off the country's northeast and called on the military to "chase out" unauthorized vessels.
(AP, 2/6/18)
2018 Feb 5, Vladimir Shamanov, head of the Russian lower house of parliament's defense committee, said that Russia has deployed advanced nuclear-capable Iskander missiles to its Kaliningrad exclave on the Baltic Sea.
(Reuters, 2/5/18)
2018 Feb 5, The Agora rights group presented a report in Moscow on "the creeping criminalization of the internet," in which it registered 115,706 cases of restrictions on internet freedom last year. Agora warned that the country is slowly criminalizing internet use as the security service tightens its grip.
(AP, 2/5/18)
2018 Feb 5, In South Africa Cape Town city officials pushed back "Day Zero" – the day taps could run dry – by a month to May 11 from April 16, as farmers in the water intensive agriculture sector cut back consumption amid tight restrictions.
(Reuters, 2/6/18)
2018 Feb 5, In South Korea Samsung heir Lee Jae-yong was freed after an appeals court gave him a 2 ½-year suspended jail sentence for corruption in connection with a scandal that toppled the country's president.
(AP, 2/5/18)
2018 Feb 5, In Syria rebels under siege on the outskirts of Damascus pounded Damascus with rockets and mortar shells, a barrage that state media said has killed one person and wounded 13. Regime air strikes killed 30 civilians in the rebel-held Eastern Ghouta suburb near Damascus.
(AP, 2/5/18)(AFP, 2/5/18)(Reuters, 2/6/18)
2018 Feb 5, In northwestern Syria a Turkish soldier was killed in a rocket and mortar attack as Turkish forces were setting up a military post in Idlib province, the largest remaining stronghold of opposition to Pres. Bashar al-Assad.
(Reuters, 2/6/18)
2018 Feb 5, Thailand's former national police Commissioner Somyot Pumpanmuang acknowledged he borrowed $9.5 million from brothel owner Kampol Wirathepsuporn, who is wanted on human trafficking charges.
(AP, 2/6/18)
2018 Feb 5, Turkey's government said 573 people have been detained so far for social media posts and protests criticizing its military offensive in Syria.
(Reuters, 2/5/18)
2018 Feb 5, Turkey's army said it has set up a military post southwest of the Syrian city of Aleppo, the deepest position they have established so far inside northwest Syria under a deal with Russia and Iran aimed at reducing violence there.
(Reuters, 2/5/18)
2018 Feb 5, Ukrainian opposition leader Mikheil Saakashvili said an appeals court has rejected his appeal for protection against possible extradition in a decision he said was politically motivated.
(Reuters, 2/5/18)
2018 Feb 5, At the Vatican Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan met with Pope Francis to discuss the status of Jerusalem, human rights and refugees while Kurdish and Italian protesters clashed with police a short distance from Vatican City.
(AP, 2/5/18)
2018 Feb 5, A court in Vietnam gave a second life prison sentence to Trinh Xuan Thanh, a former executive at Vietnam's state oil giant, accused of corruption and who Germany said was kidnapped from there by Vietnamese agents last year.
(AP, 2/5/18)
2019 Feb 5, President Donald Trump announced during his State of the Union address that he intends to meet hold his second summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Feb. 27-28 in Vietnam.
(AP, 2/6/19)
2019 Feb 5, The US Coast Guard off-loaded nearly 35,000 pounds of cocaine it had seized from 21 separate vessels over the last three months in Pacific waters off Mexico and Central America.
(SFC, 2/6/19, p.A5)
2019 Feb 5, The US FBI said 169 people have been arrested as a result of an 11-day effort targeting human trafficking in the lead-up to the Super Bowl in Atlanta. The agency said nine juvenile victims were recovered.
(SFC, 2/6/19, p.A5)
2019 Feb 5, Apple said it has reached an agreement with French authorities over 10 years of back taxes, confirming information published by the French magazine L'Express. The magazine reported that the firm paid nearly 500 million euros ($570 million) to resolve the case in a confidential settlement reached in December.
(AFP, 2/5/19)
2019 Feb 5, Exxon Mobil and Qatar Petroleum announced that they will go ahead with a $10 billion project to export liquified natural gas from a plant on Texas Gulf Coast.
(SFC, 2/6/19, p.D3)
2019 Feb 5, In northern Afghanistan the Taliban launched a pre-dawn attack on an army base in Kunduz province, killing 26 members of the security forces.
(AP, 2/5/19)
2019 Feb 5, Asia welcomed the lunar Year of the Pig with visits to temples, family banquets and the world's biggest travel spree. Celebrations took place throughout the region, from Beijing and Seoul to Hanoi and Singapore.
(AP, 2/5/19)
2019 Feb 5, In Australia floodwater receded in Townsville, but overnight monsoonal rain created flash-flooding in communities to the north where authorities have warned residents to move to higher ground. Two bodies were reportedly found near a drain in the flood-stricken city of Townsville.
(AP, 2/5/19)
2019 Feb 5, Baku renewed its contract to host the Azerbaijan Grand Prix through 2023, prolonging the stay of a circuit which initially struggled for acceptance in Formula One but has since become a fan favorite.
(AP, 2/5/19)
2019 Feb 5, In Bangladesh Hollywood star Angelina Jolie visited sprawling camps that are home to 1 million Rohingya refugees. She urged Myanmar to show a genuine commitment to ending violence and displacement in its Rakhine state.
(AP, 2/5/19)
2019 Feb 5, Administrators KPMG announced that Canadian company Sunrise Records has agreed to buy ailing British music retailer HMV, safeguarding hundreds of jobs. HMV, launched by English composer Edward Elgar in 1921, collapsed close to bankruptcy just before the new year after weak Christmas sales and amid a declining market for CDs and DVDs.
(AFP, 2/5/19)
2019 Feb 5, Central African Republic's government initialed a peace deal with 14 armed groups following unprecedented talks aimed at ending more than five years of conflict.
(AP, 2/5/19)
2019 Feb 5, In southern China five people were killed after an explosion at an illegal fireworks stand. The operator of the stand in the southern region of Guangxi was soon arrested on for causing an accident through the use of dangerous articles.
(AP, 2/10/19)
2019 Feb 5, The IMF said it has approved a $2 billion loan payment to Egypt, the latest in the country's three-year aid program.
(AP, 2/6/19)
2019 Feb 5, In France a suspected arson attack on a Paris residential building that left at least 10 people dead. A suspect was detained after she allegedly tried to torch a car nearby.
(AP, 2/5/19)
2019 Feb 5, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras visited Turkey where he will meet Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for talks to ease tensions over bilateral disputes and the long-running Cyprus problem.
(AFP, 2/5/19)
2019 Feb 5, Indonesian police found 193 Bangladeshis locked up in a shop house in Medan on the island of Sumatra, after human traffickers had lured them with the promise of getting them to Malaysia. Some of the group had been held by the traffickers for three months.
(Reuters, 2/7/19)
2019 Feb 5, Iran ruled out linkage between a new EU mechanism to trade with Tehran bypassing US sanctions and an anti-money laundering bill.
(AFP, 2/5/19)
2019 Feb 5, The Jerusalem District Prosecutor's Office said that Ilan Levy-Neumand, a dual French-Israeli citizen and resident of a West Bank settlement, was arrested and that prosecutors petitioned the court for his extradition. In 2010, Levy-Neumand was convicted in absentia by a French court for sexual offenses against eight girls and sentenced to 15 years in prison. He fled France for Israel after his arrest in 2002.
(AP, 2/5/19)
2019 Feb 5, Pakistan's PM Imran Khan and President Arif Alvi offered support for rebels in the Indian part of the disputed Himalayan territory of Kashmir as the country staged rallies marking the annual Day of Solidarity with Kashmir.
(AP, 2/5/19)
2019 Feb 5, It was reported that activists in Russia are expressing alarm about more than 100 whales that are being kept in small, crowded pools in what environmentalists are calling a "whale prison," off the coast of the Russian Far East.
(AP, 2/5/19)
2019 Feb 5, In the Solomon Islands the MV Solomon Trader ran aground on a reef off Rennell Island, near the largest raised coral atoll in the world, a UNESCO World Heritage site, and soon began leaking oil. Experts later estimated that over 8 tons of oil had leaked into the sea and that more than 660 tons of oil remained onboard. The ship was refloated on May 11 after leaking a huge amount of oil into the sea.
(SFC, 3/2/19, p.A2)(AFP, 5/11/19)
2019 Feb 5, In Sri Lanka food importers and wholesalers shut their shops in Colombo to demand the government resolve a "work to rule" action by custom officials at the island nation's main seaport.
(AP, 2/5/19)
2019 Feb 5, Turkey put up bounties for the capture of eight Turkish servicemen who fled to Greece following a failed coup in 2016.
(AP, 2/5/19)
2019 Feb 5, Pope Francis concluded his historic visit to the Arabian Peninsula with the first-ever papal Mass in the birthplace of Islam. Authorities in the United Arab Emirates said some 180,000 people attended the Mass.
(AP, 2/5/19)
2019 Feb 5, Pope Francis said Catholic priests and bishops had been sexually abusing nuns, and that his predecessor Benedict XVI had dissolved a religious order of women because of "sexual slavery on the part of priests and the founder".
(AFP, 2/6/19)
2019 Feb 5, Some Zimbabwean teachers stayed at home while others went slow on the job as an indefinite strike at state schools got off to a patchy start amid fears of further intimidation by security forces who cracked down hard on protests last month.
(Reuters, 2/5/19)
2019 Feb 5, Officials in Key West, Florida, voted to ban sunscreens containing two ingredients (oxybenzone and octinoxate) that scientists have said are harmful to the coral reef ecosystem. The ban on would begin Jan 1, 2021.
(SFC, 2/7/19, p.A7)
2020 Feb 5, Senate Republicans voted to acquit Trump of abuse of power for pressing Ukraine to investigate political rival Joe Biden, a contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, and of obstructing a congressional investigation of the matter. The acquittal was Trump's biggest victory yet over his Democratic foes in Congress.
(Reuters, 2/6/20)
2020 Feb 5, A US federal judge prohibited US immigration authorities from relying on databases deemed faulty to ask law enforcement agencies to hold people in custody, a setback for the Trump administration that threatens to hamper how it carries out arrests. The ruling applies only to the Central District of California, where state law already sharply limits the extent to which state and local law enforcement agencies can honor requests from ICE. But the district encompasses ICE's Pacific Enforcement Response Center in Laguna Niguel, which makes requests around-the-clock to law enforcement agencies in 42 states and two US territories.
(AP, 2/7/20)
2020 Feb 5, The US Department of Homeland Security said hat it would no longer let New York residents enroll in its “trusted traveler" programs because of a new state law that blocked federal immigration officials from accessing motor vehicle records.
(AP, 2/6/20)
2020 Feb 5, FBI Director Chris Wray said that Russia is engaged in “information warfare" heading into the 2020 presidential election. He said law enforcement has not seen ongoing efforts by Russia to target America's election infrastructure. Wray also told the House Judiciary Committee that the threat of far-right domestic violent extremism has risen to a "national threat priority" for 2020, posing a "steady threat of violence and economic harm" to the US.
(AP, 2/5/20)(The Independent, 2/7/20)
2020 Feb 5, Human Rights Watch reported that at least 138 people deported from the US to El Salvador in recent years were subsequently killed.
(SFC, 2/6/20, p.A2)
2020 Feb 5, Merck & Co Inc said it will spin off its women's health, biosimilar drugs and older products into a separate publicly traded company as it tightens its focus on growth drivers like cancer drug Keytruda and vaccines.
(Reuters, 2/5/20)
2020 Feb 5, American film star Kirk Douglas (b.1916) died. His films included "The Strange Loves of Martha Ivers" (1946), "Champion) (1949), "The Bad and the Beautiful" (1952), "Lust for Life" (1956), "Spartacus" (1960) and "Lonely Are the Brave" (1962). His autobiography was titled "The Ragman's Son" (1988).
(SFC, 2/6/20, p.C3)
2020 Feb 5, Cyprus said it is preparing new legislation to curb the large number of sham marriages that are being conducted to help individuals obtain residency permits and potentially easier access to the European Union.
(AP, 2/5/20)
2020 Feb 5, At least two people died in Slovakia and the Czech Republic as strong winds, heavy rain and snow battered central and eastern Europe.
(AP, 2/5/20)
2020 Feb 5, In Germany Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party lined up with the far right Alternative for Germany (AfD) for the first time ever to elect a state leader in Thuringia, throwing the country’s political establishment into disarray.
(AP, 2/5/20)
2020 Feb 5, German Chancellor Angela Merkel arrived in South Africa to discuss trade, investment and energy issues with Berlin's largest trading partner in Africa.
(AP, 2/5/20)
2020 Feb 5, German sportswear company Adidas said it was temporarily shutting a "considerable" number of its stores in China due to the coronavirus outbreak.
(Reuters, 2/5/20)
2020 Feb 5, Senior Iraqi military officials said its government has told the military not to seek assistance from the US-led coalition in operations against the Islamic State group.
(AP, 2/5/20)
2020 Feb 5, In southern Iraq at least eight anti-government protesters were shot dead and 52 were wounded in clashes in Najaf with followers of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
(AP, 2/6/20)(AP, 2/10/20)
2020 Feb 5, Israeli forces shot and killed a Palestinian (17) during clashes with demonstrators in the West Bank, the first death since tensions rose following the release of President Donald Trump's Mideast plan.
(AP, 2/5/20)
2020 Feb 5, Organizers said Italian fashion house Prada is helping to fund a United Nations program that will enlist high school students from 10 cities to spread awareness about how humans impact the world's oceans.
(AP, 2/5/20)
2020 Feb 5, It was reported that at least 10 people aboard a cruise ship moored in Japan have tested positive for the novel coronavirus. The Diamond Princess will remain under quarantine in Yokohama with everyone on board for at least 14 days. Three more cruise ship passengers were soon diagnosed with the virus in Japan for a total of 64 on board the ship.
(Good Morning America, 2/5/20)(AP, 2/7/20)
2020 Feb 5, In the Netherlands the University of Maastricht disclosed that it had paid hackers a ransom of 30 bitcoin -- at the time worth 200,000 euros ($220,000) -- to unblock its computer systems, including email and computers, after an attack that unfolded on Dec. 24.
(Reuters, 2/5/20)
2020 Feb 5, Aid groups in Syria said cold weather, disease and a lack of shelter and medicine threatened hundreds of thousands of civilians as they fled fighting in Idlib province, in one of the biggest upheavals of the country's nine-year civil war.
(Reuters, 2/5/20)
2020 Feb 5, Turkey's Pres. Recep Tayyip Erdogan threatened to use force against Syrian government forces if they don't pull back to an earlier cease-fire line in northern Syria by the end of the month.
(AP, 2/5/20)
2020 Feb 5, In eastern Turkey successive avalanches over the last 24 hours killed at least 38 people and trapped dozens more. The death toll soon climbed to 41. The double avalanche left 84 people injured.
(AP, 2/5/20)(AP, 2/6/20)
2020 Feb 5, In Turkey a Pegasus Boeing 737 skidded off a runway in Istanbul and broke apart while landing in bad weather. Three people were killed and 179 injured.
(SFC, 2/6/20, p.A2)(SSFC, 2/9/20, p.A3)
2020 Feb 5, It was reported that Pope Francis has defrocked the Argentine priest, Roberto Juan Yannuzzi, after a four-year investigation determined he had sex with adults under his authority, absolved them of the sin during confession and otherwise abused his power. The pope’s decision was made public this week in a statement by the archbishop of La Plata, Argentina.
(AP, 2/5/20)
2020 Feb 5, In Zimbabwe some 20 miners were trapped underground after a mine shaft collapsed. At least two bodies were recovered.
(AP, 2/6/20)
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For Asia History: https://www.asiaobserver.org/category/news/on-this-day-in-asian-history
1428 Feb 5, King Alfonso V ordered Sicily's Jews to convert to Catholicism.
(MC, 2/5/02)
1495 Feb 5, The 1st Lithuanian Russian war ended with the signing of a peace treaty in Moscow.
(LHC, 2/5/03)
1556 Feb 5, Henry II of France and Philip of Spain signed the truce of Vaucelles.
(HN, 2/5/99)
1562 Feb 5, Michael Radvila the Black accepted homage of G. Ketler, Duke of Couronia, to Sigismund August.
(LHC, 2/5/03)
1576 Feb 5, Henry of Navarre renounced Catholicism at Tours.
(MC, 2/5/02)
1631 Feb 5, A ship from Bristol, the Lyon, arrived with provisions for the Massachusetts Bay Colony (Massachusetts Bay Company). Puritan Roger Williams, proponent of religious freedom and later founder of Rhode Island, arrived with his wife in Boston from England and joined the Separatist colony at Plymouth.
(http://tinyurl.com/m6czns)(AP, 2/5/97)(WSJ, 6/21/05, p.D10)(AH, 4/07, p.25)
1644 Feb 5, The 1st US livestock branding law was passed by Connecticut.
(MC, 2/5/02)
1649 Feb 5, The Prince of Wales became king Charles II. Charles II (18), while living in exile at the Hague, was recently informed that his father was beheaded at Whitehall on Jan 30.
(WSJ, 2/28/00, p.A36)(MC, 2/5/02)
1661 Feb 5, Kangxi ascended the throne of China as a child. He was the 1st of three Qing emperors who reigned for 133 years until 1795. Kangxi ruled over China until 1722. The film “Forbidden City: The Great Within," depicts the period. Kangxi was followed by Yongzheng and Qianlong.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kangxi_Emperor)(WSJ, 11/2/95, p.A-12)(Econ, 11/5/05, p.90)
1723 Feb 5, John Witherspoon, Declaration of Independence signer, was born.
(HN, 2/5/99)
1748 Feb 5, Christian Gottlob Neefe, German composer, conductor, tutor of Beethoven, was born.
(MC, 2/5/02)
1762 Feb 5, Martinique, a major French base in the Lesser Antilles of the West Indies, surrendered to the British.
(HN, 2/5/99)
1783 Feb 5, Sweden recognized the independence of the United States.
(AP, 2/5/97)(HN, 2/5/99)
1788 Feb 5, Sir Robert Peel (d.1850), British prime minister through the early 1800s, was born. He founded the Conservative Party and the London Police Force whose officers were called "bobbies."
(HN, 2/5/99)(Econ, 6/30/07, p.93)
1807 Feb 5, Pasquale Paoli (80), Corsican freedom fighter, died.
(MC, 2/5/02)
1811 Feb 5, George, Prince of Wales, was named the Prince Regent due to the insanity of his father, Britain's King George III. George Augustus Frederick became prince regent after his father, George III, slipped permanently into dementia. In 1999 Saul David published "The Prince of Pleasure: The Prince of Wales and the Making of the Regency."
(WSJ, 3/26/99, p.W10)(AP, 2/5/08)
1812 Feb 5, Franz Schneider (74), composer, died.
(MC, 2/5/02)
1816 Feb 5, Gioachino Rossini's Opera "Barber of Seville" premiered in Rome.
(MC, 2/5/02)
1837 Feb 5, Dwight Lyman Moody (d.1899), evangelist, was born. He founded the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. “No man can resolve himself into Heaven."
(AP, 7/26/00)(HN, 2/5/01)
1840 Feb 5, Hiram Stevens Maxim (d.1916), inventor of the automatic single-barrel rifle, was born in Sangerville, Maine. He invented the hair-curling iron, and patented such items as a mousetrap, a locomotive headlight, a method of manufacturing carbon filaments for lamps, and an automatic sprinkling system.
(V.D.-H.K.p.267)(MC, 2/5/02)
1840 Feb 5, In Damascus, Syria, Father Thomas, originally from Sardinia, and the superior of a Franciscan convent at Damascus, disappeared with his servant. 13 prominent Jews were falsely accused of the ritual murder of the Franciscan monk and his servant. The “Damascus Affair" inspired international protests. In 2004 Ronald Florence authored “Blood Libel: The Damascus Affair of 1840."
(SSFC, 6/28/09, p.A8)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damascus_affair)
1846 Feb 5, The first Pacific Coast newspaper, Oregon Spectator, was published.
(HN, 2/5/99)
1848 Feb 5, Belle Starr, Western outlaw, was born.
(HN, 2/5/99)
1861 Feb 5, The kinematoscope was patented by Coleman Sellers in Philadelphia.
(MC, 2/5/02)
1864 Feb 5, Federal forces occupied Jackson, Miss.
(HN, 2/5/99)
1865 Feb 5, Three-day Battle of Hatcher's Run, Va., began.
(HN, 2/5/99)
1870 Feb 5, The 1st motion picture was shown to a theater audience in Philadelphia.
(MC, 2/5/02)
1872 Feb 5, Lafayette Benedict Mendel, biochemist, was born.
(HN, 2/5/01)
1879 Feb 5, Joseph Swan demonstrated a light bulb using carbon glow.
(MC, 2/5/02)
1881 Feb 5, Phoenix, Ariz., was incorporated.
(AP, 2/5/97)
1881 Feb 5, Thomas Carlyle (b.1795), Scottish essayist and historian, died in London.
(www.kirjasto.sci.fi/carlyle.htm)
1887 Feb 5, Verdi's opera "Otello" premiered at La Scala.
(AP, 2/5/97)
1887 Feb 5, Peder Balke (b.1804), Norwegian painter, died. He was known for portraying the nature of Norway in a positive manner and influenced a dramatic and romantic view of Norwegian landscape.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peder_Balke)
1897 Feb 5, The Indiana House of Representatives unanimously passed a measure redefining the area of a circle and the value of pi. The bill died in the state Senate.
(AP, 2/5/97)
1898 Feb 5, Ralph McGill, editor and publisher of the Atlanta Constitution, was born.
(HN, 2/5/01)
1900 Feb 5, Adlai E. Stevenson II, Illinois governor and American diplomat, was born. He twice lost to Dwight Eisenhower for presidency of the United States (1952 and 1956). "All progress has resulted from people who took unpopular positions."
(HN, 2/5/99)(AP, 7/4/9)
1900 Feb 5, The United States and Great Britain signed the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty, giving the United States the right to build a canal in Nicaragua but not to fortify it.
(HN, 2/5/99)
1901 Feb 5, Loop-the-loop centrifugal RR (roller coaster) was patented by Ed Prescot.
(MC, 2/5/02)
1901 Feb 5, J. Pierpont Morgan formed US Steel Corp. [see Feb 25]
(MC, 2/5/02)
1904 Feb 5, The American occupation of Cuba ended.
(MC, 2/5/02)
1906 Feb 5, Actor John Carradine was born in New York City.
(AP, 2/5/06)
1909 Feb 5, Hendrik Baekeland, Belgian-born inventor, presented a paper to the NY chapter of the American Chemical Society entitled: “The Synthesis, Constitution, and Uses of Bakelite."
(ON, 9/05, p.12)
1907 Feb 5, Norton Simon, publishing executive (Simon & Schuster), was born.
(MC, 2/5/02)
1914 Feb 5, Sir Alan Hodgin, English physiologist and biophysicist, was born.
(HN, 2/5/01)
1915 Feb 5, Robert Hofstadter, US atomic physicist, was born.
(MC, 2/5/02)
1916 Feb 5, Enrico Caruso recorded "O Solo Mio" for the Victor Talking Machine Co.
(MC, 2/5/02)
1917 Feb 5, Congress nullified President Woodrow Wilson's veto of the Immigration Act, a law severely curtailing the immigration of Asians. Literacy tests were required.
(AP, 2/5/97)(HN, 2/5/99)
1917 Feb 5, Mexico's constitution was adopted.
(HFA, '96, p.22)(AP, 2/5/97)
1918 Feb 5, The US steamship Tuscania was torpedoed by German submarine U-77 and sank off the coast of Ireland.
(GenIV, Winter 04/05)(www.worldwar1.com/dbc/tuscania.htm)
1918 Feb 5, The Soviets proclaimed the separation of church and state.
(HN, 2/5/99)
1921 Feb 5, John M. Pritchard, conductor, was born in London, England.
(MC, 2/5/02)
1921 Feb 5, The New York Yankee owners released plans for a new Yankee Stadium. Huston and Ruppert had purchased a lumberyard site in the Bronx from William Waldorf Astor for $600,000.
(http://scores.espn.go.com/mlb/recap?gameId=290522110)(http://tinyurl.com/cbg6oh)
1922 Feb 5, The Reader's Digest began publication in Pleasantville, New York. In 1939 it moved to Chappaqua, NY. In 2005 it published its 1,000th issue.
(HN, 2/5/01)(SFC, 7/19/05, p.D6)
1922 Feb 5, William Larned's steel-framed tennis racquet got its first test.
(HN, 2/5/99)
1923 Feb 5, Stephen J. Cannell, TV producer, writer (Rockford Files), was born.
(MC, 2/5/02)
1926 Feb 5, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, longtime New York Times publisher, was born.
(HN, 2/5/01)
1928 Feb 5, William Elliot Griffis, American orientalist, Congregational minister, lecturer, and prolific author, died in Florida.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Elliot_Griffis)
1934 Feb 5, Hank Aaron, American hall of fame baseball player, homerun hitter, was born weighing 12.25 pounds. He broke Babe Ruth’s record in 1974. In 2010 Howard Bryant authored “The Last Hero: A Life of Henry Aaron."
(SSFC, 5/23/10, p.F6)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hank_Aaron)
1937 Feb 5, President Roosevelt proposed increasing the number of Supreme Court justices. Critics charged that he was attempting to "pack" the court.
(AP, 2/5/97)
1938 Feb 5, John Guare, playwright, was born. His work included “The House of Blue Leaves."
(HN, 2/5/01)
1940 Feb 5, Glenn Miller and his orchestra recorded "Tuxedo Junction" for RCA Victor's "Bluebird" label.
(AP, 2/5/99)
1941 Feb 5, The SS Politician wrecked off the coast of the Isle of Eriskay in the Hebrides. It carried some 20,000 cases of whisky, which the natives hid from customs agents. The story was told in the 1947 book “Whisky Galore" by Compton Mackenzie. The book was made into a film in 1949.
(http://heritage.scotsman.com/timelines.cfm?cid=1&id=40422005)
1941 Feb 5, Andrew Barton "Banjo" Paterson (b.1864), Australian poet and journalist, died. He is best known for his song “Waltzing Matilda."
(www.whatsthenumber.com/oz/voice/writers/paterson0.htm)(NG, 8/04, p.29)
1945 Feb 5, American and French troops destroyed German forces in the Colmar Pocket in France.
(HN, 2/5/99)
1945 Feb 5, US troops under General Douglas MacArthur entered Manila ("I have returned!").
(MC, 2/5/02)
1947 Feb 5, The Soviet Union and Great Britain rejected terms for an American trusteeship over Japanese Pacific Isles.
(HN, 2/5/99)
1952 Feb 5, New York adopted the three-colored traffic lights.
(HN, 2/5/99)
1953 Feb 5, "Peter Pan" by Walt Disney opened at Roxy Theater, NYC. [see Feb 11]
(MC, 2/5/02)
1954 Feb 5, A US Air Force C-47 enroute from Fairbanks to Anchorage crashed on Kesugi Ridge near Byers Lake in Alaska. 10 people were killed and 6 survived.
(www.ak-prepared.com/vetaffairs/byerslake.htm)
1954 Feb 5, Carl Eric Wickman, a Swedish immigrant and founder of Greyhound Corp., died in Daytona Beach, Fla.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Wickman)
1957 Feb 5, Joseph Benson Hardaway (b.1895), animation director and voice actor, died. Nicknamed "Bugs," he was instrumental in naming the character "Bugs Bunny" when, while working on the film short "Hare-um, Scare-um," an animator handed him a model sheet of the rabbit character.
(www.findagrave.com/php/famous.php?page=pr&FSctf=170)
1958 Feb 5, Gamel Abdel Nasser was formally nominated to become the first president of the new United Arab Republic. The UAR was formed by the union of Egypt and Syria. Syria withdrew in 1961. Egypt used the UAR name from 1961-1971.
(AP, 2/5/97)(WUD, 1994, p.1555)
1961 Feb 5, The Soviets launched Sputnik V, the heaviest satellite at 7.1 tons.
(HN, 2/5/99)
1961 Feb 5, Anthony G. de Rothschild (73), British philanthropist, died.
(MC, 2/5/02)
1962 Feb 5, French President Charles De Gaulle called for Algeria's independence.
(AP, 2/5/97)
1962 Feb 5, Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn aligned within a 16 degree arc.
(MC, 2/5/02)
1962 Feb 5, Jacques Ibert (71), French composer (Escales), died.
(MC, 2/5/02)
1967 Feb 5, “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour" premiered on CBS TV.
(AP, 2/5/07)
1968 Feb 5, US troops divided Viet Cong at Hue while the Saigon government claimed they would arm loyal citizens. The main assaults at Khe Sanh started.
(HN, 2/5/99)(http://www.knowledgerush.com/kr/encyclopedia/Siege_of_Khe_Sanh/)
1971 Feb 5, Apollo 14 lander Antares landed on Moon. Astronauts Shepard & Mitchell walked on the moon.
(http://www.astronautix.com/flights/apollo14.htm)(HN, 2/5/99)
1972 Feb 5, It was reported that the United States had agreed to sell 42 F-4 Phantom jets to Israel.
(www.historynet.com/tdih0205.htm)
1972 Feb 5, Marianne Moore (b.1887), American poet, died in NYC. Her longest work was the 1923 poem "Marriage." In 1998 her the book: "The Selected letters of Marianne Moore" was edited by Bonnie Costello, Celeste Goodridge and Cristanne Miller. In 2013 Linda Leavell authored “Holding On Upside Down: The Life and Work of Marianne Moore."
(www.csustan.edu/english/reuben/pal/chap7/moore.html)(WSJ, 1/8/98, p.A7)(Econ, 11/23/13, p.83)
1973 Feb 5, Juan Corona was sentenced in Fairfield, Ca., to 25 consecutive life terms for the 25 murders of migrant workers.
(www.trivia-library.com/a/longest-prison-sentences-in-history.htm)
1973 Feb 5, Services were held at Arlington National Cemetery for Army Lt. Col. William B. Nolde, the last American soldier killed before the Vietnam cease-fire.
(AP, 2/5/04)
1974 Feb 5, John Murtha (1932-2010), became Pennsylvania’s Democratic representative following a special House election. He became the first Vietnam veteran to serve in Congress.
(SFC, 2/9/10, p.A6)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Murtha)
1977 Feb 5, Julius Nyerere and Aboud Jumbe set up the Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) party following the merger of the Tanganyika African National Union (TANU) and the Afro-Shirazi Party (ASP), which were the sole operating parties in mainland Tanzania and the semi-autonomous islands of Zanzibar respectively.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chama_Cha_Mapinduzi)(Econ, 10/24/15, p.44)
1981 Feb 5, A military jury in North Carolina convicted Marine Pvt. 1st Class Robert Garwood of collaborating with the enemy while a prisoner of war in Vietnam. Garwood was dishonorably discharged.
(AP, 2/5/06)
1982 Feb 5, Laker Airways, founded in 1966 by Sir Freddie Laker, collapsed owing $351M.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laker_Airways)
1983 Feb 5, Former Nazi Gestapo official Klaus Barbie (1913-1991), expelled from Bolivia, was brought to trial in Lyon, France. He was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.
(AP, 2/5/03)(www.izieu.com/new_page_7.htm)
1985 Feb 5, The US halted a loan to Chile in protest over human rights abuses.
(HN, 2/5/99)
1988 Feb 5, The Arizona House impeached Gov. Evan Mecham, setting the stage for his conviction in the state Senate.
(AP, 2/5/97)(http://politicalgraveyard.com/special/trouble-disgrace.html)
1988 Feb 5, A pair of indictments were unsealed in Florida, accusing Panama's military leader, Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega, of bribery and drug trafficking. Noriega had used Panama to ship cocaine to the US from Colombia taking some $200-$300 million for himself.
(AP, 2/5/97)(Econ 6/3/17, p.82)
1989 Feb 5, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (b.1947) became the 1st NBA player to score 38,000 points.
(www.brainyhistory.com/years/1989.html)
1989 Feb 5, The Soviet Union announced that all but a small rear-guard contingent of its troops had left Afghanistan.
(AP, 2/5/99)
1990 Feb 5, The Nepali Congress passed a resolution officially launching the "country-wide peaceful mass movement." Shortly thereafter, as many as 475 opposition party members, human rights advocates, students, lawyers and journalists were arrested. In a number of incidents, police opened fire indiscriminately into crowds of unarmed demonstrators. Estimates of the number killed range from 50 to several hundred. While the lower figure probably is more accurate, the precise figure may never be known because the police disposed of many of the bodies in secret without conducting inquests.
(www.hrw.org/reports/1990/WR90/ASIA.BOU-07.htm)
1990 Feb 5, Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev told the Communist Party it had to earn the right to rule, instead of treating it as an unchallenged right.
(AP, 2/5/00)
1991 Feb 5, President Bush announced he was sending Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and General Colin L. Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to the Gulf war zone to assess how the US-led offensive was progressing.
(AP, 2/5/01)
1991 Feb 5, A Michigan court barred Dr. Jack Kevorkian from assisting in suicides.
(http://tinyurl.com/e3ynu)
1991 Feb 5, Pedro Arrupe (83), Basque priest and head of the Jesuit order, died.
(www.bc.edu/offices/ministry/justice/arrupe/pedro/)
1992 Feb 5, The US House of Representatives authorized an investigation into whether the 1980 Reagan-Bush campaign conspired with Iran to delay release of the American hostages. The task force investigating the "October Surprise" allegations later said it found no credible evidence of such a conspiracy.
(AP, 2/5/02)
1992 Feb 5, In Northern Ireland Protestant guerrillas shot and killed 5 Catholic men in the Sean Graham betting shop on the Lower Ormeau Road.
(www.nuzhound.com/articles/Irelandclick/arts2002/bookies2-1-02.htm)
1993 Feb 5, Federal judge Kimba Wood, President Clinton's expected choice for attorney general, withdrew from consideration, saying her baby sitter had been an illegal alien for seven years.
(AP, 2/5/97)
1994 Feb 5, White separatist Byron De La Beckwith was convicted in Jackson, Miss., of murdering civil rights leader Medgar Evers in 1963, and was immediately sentenced to life in prison. Beckwith died Jan 21, 2001 at age 80.
(AP, 2/5/01)
1994 Feb 5, Sixty-eight people were killed when a mortar shell exploded in a marketplace in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina.
(WSJ, 6/11/96, p.A14)(SFC,10/16/97, p.A12)(AP, 2/5/99)
1994 Feb 5, Ben Enwonwu (b.1917), Nigeria's most celebrated 20th Century visual artist, died in Lagos.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Enwonwu)(AP, 10/9/20)
1995 Feb 5, The White House and congressional Republicans drew battle lines over President Clinton's $1.61 trillion budget, with Republicans accusing Clinton of "taking a walk" and the administration saying Clinton was cutting the deficit more than any president in history.
(AP, 2/5/00)
1996 Feb 5, John C. Salvi the Third went on trial in Dedham, Massachusetts, in the shooting deaths of two receptionists at abortion clinics. Salvi was later convicted and sentenced to two life terms; he was found dead in his cell in November 1996, an apparent suicide.
(AP, 2/5/01)
1996 Feb 5, Actress Elizabeth Taylor filed for divorce from Larry Fortensky, her seventh husband.
(AP, 2/5/01)
1996 Feb 5, Gianandrea Gavazzeni (86), conductor, died.
(http://tinyurl.com/9jr6h)
1997 Feb 5, U.S. Ambassador to France, Pamela Harriman, died in Paris at age 76.
(SFC, 2/6/97, p.A1)(AP, 2/5/97)
1997 Feb 5, In Algeria rebels killed a family of 9 by hacking off their heads in Benchikao. The government in Algiers began banning parked cars in the city to thwart car bomb attacks.
(SFC, 2/6/97, p.C2)
1997 Feb 5, In Ecuador hundreds of thousands began a 48-hour general strike against Pres. Abdala Bucaram to protests economic austerity, nepotism and corruption.
(SFC, 2/6/97, p.C2)
1997 Feb 5, Three Swiss banks announced that they had put about $70-71 million into an account with the Swiss National Bank to establish a “Humanitarian Fund" for the victims of the Holocaust.
(SFC, 2/6/97, p.C2)(AP, 2/5/97)
1997 Feb 5-1997 Feb 6, In China the Uighers rioted in the province of Xinjiang and reports of deaths varied from 4-300. The fighting was said to have begun after the public execution of 30 young Muslims. Residents said Muslims attacked and killed ethnic Chinese before police quashed the revolt. Authorities said 10 people died and 140 were injured. 12 people were later executed for the uprising.
(USAT, 2/11/97, p.5A)(USAT, 2/12/97, p.8A) (WSJ, 2/11/97, p.A1)(SFC, 7/29/97, p.A10)
1998 Feb 5, Pres. Clinton ordered 2,000 Marines to the Persian Gulf and met with PM Tony Blair of Britain to discuss the possible use of force against Iraq.
(SFC, 2/6/98, p.E2)
1998 Feb 5, Democratic fundraiser Yah Lin "Charlie" Trie pleaded innocent in Washington to charges he'd raised illegal donations to buy influence in high places. Trie pleaded guilty in May 1999 to a felony count and a misdemeanor and was sentenced later that year to four months' home detention and three years' probation.
(AP, 2/5/03)
1998 Feb 5, A federal judge in Los Angeles threw out Charles Keating's state securities fraud conviction for a second time, saying the trial judge had given jurors flawed instructions. In 1999, on the eve of the retrial of the federal case, Keating entered a plea agreement: he admitted to having committed bankruptcy fraud by extracting $1 million from American Financial Corp. while already anticipating the collapse that happened weeks later; in return, the federal prosecutors dropped all other charges against him and his son, Charles Keating III. He was sentenced to the four years he had already served.
(AP, 2/5/99)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Keating)
1998 Feb 5, Susan Brouk (36) and her two children, aged 12 and 9, were found dead in a farm pond in Vichy, Missouri. Two teenagers, Mark Anthony Christenson (Christeson) (18) and Jesse Carter (17), charged in the slaying were arrested in Blythe, California, on Feb 9. Mark Christeson was executed on Jan 31, 2017.
(SFC, 2/11/98, p.A3)(SFC, 2/1/17, p.A6)
1998 Feb 5, In Germany thousands protested the high unemployment rate. It had reached 12.6%, or 4.8 million people.
(SFC, 2/6/98, p.E3)
1998 Feb 5, In India a tractor pulling a trolley full of children crashed into a truck and plunged into a river and killed at least 34 in Madhya Pradesh state.
(SFC, 2/7/98, p.11)
1998 Feb 5, In the Ivory Coast Kevin Leveille (26), a Peace Corp worker from Ventura, Ca., was attacked and killed in Tanda. He had 2 months left in his assigned task of working on water and sanitation problems.
(SFC, 2/7/98, p.11)
1998 Feb 5, In Kenya Pres. Moi imposed a curfew on towns in the Rift Valley where over 100 people have died in ethnic and political violence. Jomo Kenyatta Univ. in Nairobi was closed following a protest against the violence.
(WSJ, 2/6/98, p.A1)
1998 Feb 5, In Sierra Leone fighting began as Nigerian led intervention forces moved to oust the military junta.
(SFC, 2/12/98, p.A12)(SFC, 2/13/98, p.D5)
1999 Feb 5, The Bureau of ATF planned to allow California winemakers to attach new labels promoting the health benefits of wine.
(SFC, 2/5/99, p.A1)
1999 Feb 5, Former heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson was sentenced in Maryland to a year in jail for assaulting two motorists following a traffic accident. He ended up serving 3 1/2 months.
(AP, 2/6/00)
1999 Feb 5, The Dupont Co., based in Wilmington, Del., agreed to a $90 million settlement with environmentalists to abandon plans to mine titanium along the edge of the Okefenokee Swamp in Georgia.
(SFC, 2/6/99, p.A9)
1999 Feb 5, It was reported that Bill and Melinda Gates (Microsoft Corp.) gave $3.3 billion to their foundations, 2.2 billion to the William H. Gates Foundation and 1.1 billion to the Gates Learning Foundation.
(SFC, 2/6/99, p.A2)
1999 Feb 5, In Jordan King Hussein was pronounced clinically dead but his heart continued and his family kept him on life support systems.
(SFC, 2/6/99, p.A1)
1999 Feb 5, Serbian authorities refused to grant re-entry travel documents to Albanian guerrilla members for the peace conference in Paris. The 13 Serbian negotiators appointed by Milosevic said they would not sit down with members of the KLA.
(SFC, 2/6/99, p.A10)
2000 Feb 5, In Angola a military helicopter crashed and 30 people were killed at Lubango. 12 people survived and 3 Catholic nuns were among the dead.
(SFC, 2/8/00, p.A14)
2000 Feb 5, Right-wing leader Joerg Haider told a deeply divided Austria not to worry about international sanctions, saying the new governing coalition that included his Freedom Party would soon prove its democratic credentials to the world.
(AP, 2/5/01)
2000 Feb 5, In Chechnya the Human Rights Watch group said it had documented 22 cases in which Grozny residents were killed by Russian soldiers. Another 14 cases were under investigation. Later reports indicated 82 civilians were killed by Russian mercenaries (kontraktniki).
(SFEC, 2/6/00, p.A25)(SFC, 2/22/00, p.A9)
2000 Feb 5, The Chinese new year 4698.
(SFC, 1/1/00, p.A18)
2000 Feb 5, In Germany a train derailed and ploughed into a house outside of Cologne and 6 people were killed with 20 injured.
(SFEC, 2/6/00, p.A4)
2000 Feb 5, In Iran a mortar attack struck the Golbang publishing house in Tehran near government offices. One person was killed and at least 4 injured. The attack was presumed to be the work of the Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK).
(SFEC, 2/6/00, p.A27)
2000 Feb 5, In Kosovo 41 people, including 11 French soldiers, were injured in during a 2nd day of clashes between peacekeepers and Albanians.
(SFEC, 2/6/00, p.A26)
2001 Feb 5, Flanked by a jumbo refund-check stage prop, President George W. Bush asked Americans to get behind his proposed tax cuts.
(AP, 2/5/02)
2001 Feb 5, Pres. Bush met with Canadian PM Jean Chretien at the White House for a get-acquainted session.
(SFC, 2/6/01, p.A8)
2001 Feb 5, Four disciples of Osama bin Laden went on trial in New York in the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa. The four were convicted and sentenced to life in prison without parole.
(AP, 2/5/02)
2001 Feb 5, California clinched deals for long term power contracts at $60-65 per megawatt hour as federal assistance ended.
(SFC, 2/6/01, p.A1)
2001 Feb 5, Engineering students from the Univ. of British Columbia dangled the body of an old VW from a railing of the Golden Gate Bridge. It hung for 4 hours before officials cut and let it fall into the water.
(SFC, 2/6/01, p.A1)
2001 Feb 5, In Illinois William D. Baker (66), shot and killed 4 employees at the Navistar factory in Melrose Park and then shot and killed himself. He was about to begin serving a 5-month sentence for conspiring to steal engines and parts.
(SFC, 2/6/01, p.A3)
2001 Feb 5, In Ecuador soldiers battled Indians opposed to fuel and public transportation increases. The Red Cross said 4 Indians died.
(WSJ, 2/6/01, p.A1)
2001 Feb 5, In Indonesia supporters of Pres. Wahid demonstrated in East Java, home of the Nahdlatul Ulama, Indonesia’s largest Muslim organization. Some 10,000 set fires to branch offices of the Golkar Party in Situbondo and another 10,000 marched in Surabaya.
(SFC, 2/6/01, p.A9)
2001 Feb 5, It was reported that severe cold and snowstorms in Mongolia threatened to wipe out a 5th of the nation’s livestock and threatened tens of thousands of herders with starvation.
(SFC, 2/5/01, p.A10)
2001 Feb 5, In Russia Pres. Putin dismissed Alexander Gavrin, the energy minister, and ousted Yevgeny Nazdratenko, governor of the Primorye region due to an energy crises that has left thousands without heat.
(SFC, 2/6/01, p.A9)
2001 Feb 5, In Russia a bomb went off in a Moscow subway station and at least 9 people were injured.
(SFC, 2/6/01, p.A10)
2002 Feb 5, Pres. Bush promoted his call for $5.9 billion to be dedicated to bioterrorism preparedness as part of a $38 billion homeland defense.
(SFC, 2/6/02, p.A13)
2002 Feb 5, US officials announced plans to train and arm Colombian troops to protect the key Cano Limon oil pipeline.
(SFC, 2/7/02, p.A12)
2002 Feb 5, A federal grand jury in Alexandria, Va., indicted John Walker Lindh on 10 charges, alleging he was trained by Osama bin Laden's network and then conspired with the Taliban to kill Americans. Lindh later pleaded guilty to lesser offenses and was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison.
(SFC, 2/6/02, p.A1)(AP, 2/5/07)
2002 Feb 5, Committees in both the House and Senate decided to subpoena former Enron Chairman Kenneth Lay to appear to tell what he knew of Enron's complex financial dealings. (Lay did appear, but refused to testify, citing his Fifth Amendment rights.) At a Senate hearing, Deborah Perrotta, a laid-off Enron employee, wept as she described how her retirement savings all but disappeared when the company failed.
(AP, 2/5/07)
2002 Feb 5, In Canada a police raid on the farmstead of Robert and David Pickton in Port Coquitlan, BC, turned up evidence of 2 missing women. Since 1984 at least 50 prostitutes had vanished from the streets of Vancouver. Robert Pickton was arrested Feb 22. In 2003 the murder charges against Pickton rose to 22. Pickton’s trial began Jan 22, 2007, with prosecutors saying the he had confessed to killing 49 women.
(SFC, 2/9/02, p.A9)(SFC, 12/16/03, p.A14)(WSJ, 1/23/06, p.A1)
2002 Feb 5, In Italy the health ministry confirmed the country’s 1st case of mad cow disease.
(SFC, 2/6/02, p.A9)
2002 Feb 5, In Pakistan 2 men associated with the kidnapping of journalist Daniel Pearl were arrested in a Karachi suburb. Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh (28), Islamic militant, turned himself in to Ejah Shah, the home secretary in Punjab province.
(SFC, 2/6/02, p.A14)(SFC, 2/15/02, p.A20)
2002 Feb 5, In Jenin, 3 Palestinians members of the Kameel clan were killed by a mob after a court sentenced them to 15 year jail terms for the murder of another clan member.
(SFC, 2/6/02, p.A9)
2002 Feb 5, In Nigeria troops cracked down on ethnic fighting in Lagos following 3 days of clashes that left over 100 dead.
(WSJ, 2/6/02, p.A1)
2002 Feb 5, In Durban, South Africa, a commuter train collided with a freight train and 18 people were killed.
(SFC, 2/6/02, p.A9)
2003 Feb 5, Secretary of State Colin Powell, made his case that Iraq had defied all demands that it disarm, presented tape recordings, satellite photos and statements from informants that he said was "irrefutable and undeniable" evidence that Saddam Hussein is concealing weapons of mass destruction.
(AP, 2/5/03)(SFC, 2/6/03, p.A1)
2003 Feb 5, Circuit city dismissed some 3,900 highly paid commissioned salespeople to reduce company expenses.
(WSJ, 6/11/03, p.A1)
2003 Feb 5, It was reported that genealogical research in Utah identified a gene that causes depression.
(WSJ, 2/5/03, p.A1)
2003 Feb 5, The World Court ruled that the United States must temporarily stay the execution of three Mexican citizens on U.S. death rows.
(AP, 2/5/03)
2003 Feb 5, Larry LeSueur (93), longtime CBS News radio reporter died in Washington.
(AP, 2/5/04)
2003 Feb 5, The Israeli military demolished the home of a Palestinian militant in the Gaza Strip, killing an elderly woman inside. Israeli troops killed a total of 5 Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
(AP, 2/5/03)(WSJ, 2/7/03, p.A1)
2003 Feb 5, North Korea said that it had reactivated its nuclear facilities and is going ahead with their operation "on a normal footing."
(AP, 2/5/03)
2003 Feb 5, Heavy rains in northern Mozambique caused flooding that left about 100,000 families homeless, swept away thousands of acres of crops and severely damaged roads and bridges.
(AP, 2/6/03)
2004 Feb 5, CIA Director George Tenet acknowledged that US spy agencies may have over-estimated Iraq's illicit weapons capabilities.
(SFC, 2/6/04, p.A1)
2004 Feb 5, A US federal judge ruled that high school football players may skip college and go straight to the pros.
(SFC, 2/6/04, p.A1)
2004 Feb 5, NASA restored communications with the Mars Spirit rover.
(SFC, 2/7/04, p.A3)
2004 Feb 5, In northeastern Afghanistan rival armed factions clashed and a state television report said 20 people were killed.
(AP, 2/7/04)
2004 Feb 5, A lantern festival marking the end of China's Lunar New Year celebrations erupted into a stampede, killing at least 37 people and injuring 15.
(AP, 2/5/04)
2004 Feb 5, At least 21 shellfish hunters, all apparently Chinese nationals, died when they were trapped by fast-rising tides in treacherous Morecambe Bay in northern England. In 2006 Lin Liang Ren (29) was found guilty in the deaths of the shellfish pickers at Warton Sands. Lin's girlfriend, Zhao Xiao Qing (21) and cousin Lin Mu Yong (31) were also convicted of facilitating the deaths. Liangren was sentenced to 14 years in prison. Xiaoqing was sentenced to 2 years and 9 months. Muyong was sentenced to 4 years and 9 months.
(AP, 2/6/04)(AP, 3/24/06)(AFP, 3/28/06)
2004 Feb 5, In Haiti an armed opposition group, led by Butteur Metayer, seized control of Gonaives, Haiti's fourth-largest city, burning a police station, freeing prisoners and leaving at least four people reported dead and 20 wounded in clashes with police.
(AP, 2/5/04)(ST, 3/2/04, p.A3)
2004 Feb 5, U.S. and Iraqi forces captured more than 100 suspected guerrillas in raids across the country, arresting one of Saddam Hussein's intelligence chiefs and another Iraqi believed involved in a suicide bombing last month, a U.S.
(AP, 2/5/04)
2004 Feb 5, Indian soldiers shot and killed 10 suspected Muslim militants in the forests of northern Kashmir.
(AP, 2/5/04)
2004 Feb 5, Latvian Prime Minister Einars Repse announced Thursday that his 14-month-old government was stepping down, saying his Cabinet can't continue working without a majority in parliament.
(AP, 2/5/04)
2004 Feb 5, Pakistan's Pres. Musharraf pardoned Abdul Qadeer Khan after Kahn absolved Islamabad of selling nuclear secrets to Iran.
(WSJ, 2/6/04, p.A1)
2004 Feb 5, Seven Russian servicemen were killed and at least 11 wounded over the last 24 hours in the latest rebel attacks in the breakaway region of Chechnya.
(AP, 2/5/04)
2004 Feb 5, Ugandan rebels attacked a refugee camp in northern Uganda early, killing 54 civilians and two soldiers.
(AP, 2/6/04)
2004 Feb 5, Journalists at Zimbabwe's only independent daily newspaper left their offices after the Supreme Court upheld that it was a crime to work without a government license.
(AP, 2/5/04)(WSJ, 2/5/04, p.A1)
2005 Feb 5, In LA the Actors Guild awarded Jamie Foxx the best actor award for his role as Ray Charles in “Ray." Hilary Swank won the best actress award for her role as a boxer in “Million Dollar Baby." Cate Blanchett and Morgan Freeman won supporting awards.
(SSFC, 2/6/05, p.A2)
2005 Feb 5, Steve Young and Dan Marino were elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
(AP, 2/5/06)
2005 Feb 5, In London Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown said that finance ministers from the Group of Seven (G7) rich nations had for the first time expressed firm willingness to provide as much as 100 percent debt relief for the world's poorest countries. The Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative (HIPC) is a joint initiative of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund that offers debt relief to the world's most impoverished nations which agree to undertake economic reform.
(AP, 2/5/05)
2005 Feb 5, In the Republic of Congo leaders of seven Central African countries signed a landmark treaty to work together to help save the world's second-largest rain forest.
(AP, 2/6/05)
2005 Feb 5, Central bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan said China is committed to revamping its foreign exchange regime and further relaxing its capital account controls.
(Reuters, 2/5/05)
2005 Feb 5, Egyptian police killed two suspected militants wanted in last year's Sinai bombings following clashes in Egypt's Sinai peninsula desert.
(AP, 2/5/05)
2005 Feb 5, Sunni rebels killed three U.S. troops and at least 33 Iraqis in a string of attacks.
(AP, 2/5/05)
2005 Feb 5, In central Japan police found 9 bodies were found in two cars in what appeared to be the country's latest group suicides.
(AP, 2/5/05)
2005 Feb 5, Kuwaiti police and troops in armored personnel carriers used explosives to blast their way into a concrete block home in Sulaibiyah capturing 5 suspected terrorists.
(AP, 2/5/05)
2005 Feb 5, In Mexico assailants staged 3 nearly simultaneous guerrilla-style attacks in Acapulco, killing 3 police officers and a teenage boy a day before a tense gubernatorial election.
(AP, 2/6/05)
2005 Feb 5, The crown prince of Saudi Arabia called for the creation of an international anti-terrorism center to trade information in an effort to prevent attacks.
(AP, 2/5/05)
2005 Feb 5, Togo’s Pres. Gnassingbe Eyadema (69) died of a heart attack. The military quickly announced that his son would replaced him as head of state. The constitution called for the speaker of parliament to succeed the president in the event of his death.
(SSFC, 2/6/05, p.A16)
2005 Feb 5, A Yemeni court overruled earlier rulings and imposed harsher sentences, including a death sentence, on three militants convicted of attacking a French oil tanker and a helicopter carrying U.S. employees of an oil company.
(AP, 2/5/05)
2006 Feb 5, In Detroit, Mich., the Pittsburgh Steelers won the Super Bowl over the Seattle Seahawks 21-10.
(AP, 2/6/06)
2006 Feb 5, Alan Shalleck, writer and director, was beaten and stabbed to death at his Boynton Beach home in West Palm Beach, Fla. He had collaborated with the co-creator of "Curious George" to bring the mischievous monkey to TV and a series of book sequels. In 2007 Rex Ditto (31) pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life in prison for killing. His co-defendant and former lover, Vincent Puglisi (56) was scheduled for trial in early 2008.
(AP, 10/19/07)
2006 Feb 5, Jacob Robida, suspected of an attack at a Massachusetts gay bar, the killing of an Arkansas officer and the slaying of a mother of three, was mortally wounded in a shootout with authorities.
(AP, 2/5/07)
2006 Feb 5, Actor Franklin Cover (“The Jeffersons") died in Englewood, N.J., at age 77.
(AP, 2/5/07)
2006 Feb 5, In Afghanistan 172 Taliban and other Islamist fighters surrendered as part of a government amnesty scheme, vowing to lay down arms and work to rebuild the country.
(AFP, 2/5/06)
2006 Feb 5, In Bangladesh at least 40,000 opposition supporters converged on Dhaka to demand the ouster of the government after a three-day protest march marked by heavy security and the arrest of key activists.
(AP, 2/5/06)
2006 Feb 5, Cambodia's king pardoned exiled opposition leader Sam Rainsy who was sentenced to jail for defamation, in a move officials said was at the request of PM Hun Sen.
(AP, 2/5/06)
2006 Feb 5, Costa Rica held elections and former pres. Oscar Arias was expected to win.
(SSFC, 2/5/06, p.A19)
2006 Feb 5, Iran ended all voluntary cooperation with the UN nuclear watchdog but said it was open to a proposal to enrich Iranian uranium in Russia, softening its earlier response to being reported to the Security Council over fears it wants to produce nuclear arms.
(AP, 2/5/06)
2006 Feb 5, The head of a government watchdog agency said Iraqi authorities issued arrest warrants for Meshaan al-Jiburi, a Sunni Arab member of parliament and his son, Yazin, accusing them of embezzling millions of dollars meant to protect vulnerable oil pipelines.
(AP, 2/5/06)
2006 Feb 5, In Iraq the bullet-riddled bodies of two Shiites were found in the latest round of killings between rival Sunni and Shiite groups.
(AP, 2/5/06)
2006 Feb 5, Israeli aircraft fired three missiles at a building used by militants in Gaza City, killing three people and wounding five.
(AP, 2/5/06)
2006 Feb 5, Israel agreed to make a crucial payment of $54 million in tax and customs revenues to the Palestinians, but officials said future transfers will be halted once Hamas militants form the next Palestinian government.
(AP, 2/5/06)
2006 Feb 5, Thousands of Muslims rampaged in Beirut, setting fire to the Danish Embassy, burning Danish flags and lobbing stones at a Maronite Catholic church as violent protests spread over caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad.
(AP, 2/5/06)
2006 Feb 5, A general strike called by communist rebels to disrupt elections in Nepal forced schools and markets to close, and highways and city streets remained deserted in much of this Himalayan nation.
(AP, 2/5/06)
2006 Feb 5, In southwestern Pakistan a bomb ripped through a passenger bus, killing at least 13 people and wounding 20 others.
(AP, 2/5/06)
2006 Feb 5, Andrea Santoro (60), an Italian Roman Catholic priest, was shot dead in his Santa Maria church by a 16-year-old boy in the Turkish Black Sea city of Trabzon. In 2007 the teen was sentenced to more than 18 years in prison, but was expected to serve only 10.
(AP, 2/5/06)(AP, 10/4/07)
2007 Feb 5, President Bush sent a $2.9 trillion spending plan to a Democratic-controlled Congress, proposing to spend billions more to fight the war in Iraq while squeezing the rest of government to meet his goal of eliminating the deficit in five years.
(AP, 2/5/07)
2007 Feb 5, The US insisted that Nicaragua destroy hundreds of Soviet-made surface-to-air missiles after President Daniel Ortega said the weapons were needed for the country's defense.
(AP, 2/5/07)
2007 Feb 5, NASA astronaut Lisa Nowak was arrested in Orlando, Fla., accused of trying to kidnap a perceived rival for the affections of a space shuttle pilot.
(AP, 2/5/08)
2007 Feb 5, Britain pressed ahead with a cull of 160,000 turkeys after the nation's first outbreak of a deadly strain of bird flu in farmed poultry as Russia and Japan banned British poultry imports.
(Reuters, 2/5/07)
2007 Feb 5, A Cold War-era Soviet submarine that was being towed to Thailand sank off northwestern Denmark. The Soviet Union built more than 200 Whiskey-class submarines during the Cold War, many of which are now being offered for sale by private companies.
(AP, 2/6/07)
2007 Feb 5, In northern Germany 3 men and 3 women were found shot dead in a Chinese restaurant in the early hours in Sittensen. A 7th person died a day later. German police soon arrested two Vietnamese men in connection with the killings.
(AFP, 2/5/07)(AP, 2/6/07)(AP, 2/7/07)
2007 Feb 5, In India a fire gutted a garment factory in eastern India, killing seven workers in Howrah, a suburb of Calcutta.
(AP, 2/5/07)
2007 Feb 5, Violence raked Baghdad as an Iraqi general took charge of the security operation in the capital and Iraqi police and soldiers manned new roadblocks, initial steps indicating the start of the long-anticipated joint operation with American forces to curb sectarian bloodshed. At least 29 people died in bomb and mortar attacks across the city, 15 of them as they waited to refill propane cooking tanks when two car bombs blew up in quick succession in south Baghdad. A soldier killed in a roadside bombing in Basra was the 100th British death attributed to hostile action since the US-led invasion in 2003. A US Marine was killed in fighting in the volatile Anbar province. US forces shot and killed Donald Tolfree of Owosso, Mich., a civilian contract truck driver at Camp Anaconda, the huge air base north of Baghdad.
(AP, 2/5/07)(AP, 2/6/07)(AP, 2/10/07)
2007 Feb 5, China’s president Hu Jintao brought his eight-nation African tour to Namibia, a sparsely populated, mineral-rich desert country that hopes to benefit from an influx of Chinese investment and tourists.
(AP, 2/5/07)
2007 Feb 5, A home-made bomb ripped through a train station in Spain's Basque region. Police said it appeared to have been the work of Basque independence street gangs, rather than armed separatists ETA.
(AP, 2/5/07)
2007 Feb 5, Syria’s President Bashar Assad said cooperation, and negotiations, between Syria and the US could be the "last chance" to avoid full-scale civil war in Iraq.
(AP, 2/5/07)
2007 Feb 5, In Hanoi, Vietnam, international aid experts from the World Bank, UN and other development agencies and 40 nations met for the Third International Roundtable on Managing For Development Results, a four-day conference aimed at making global development efforts more effective.
(AFP, 2/5/07)
2007 Feb 5, Teachers across Zimbabwe began an indefinite industrial action to press for better salaries and better working conditions.
(AFP, 2/5/07)
2008 Feb 5, The US Treasury Dept. said it is imposing financial sanctions against family members of the military-run government of Myanmar and individuals it identified as key members of the financial empire of Tay Za.
(SFC, 2/6/08, p.A7)
2008 Feb 5, Obama won 13 Super Tuesday states; Clinton, eight plus American Samoa. Clinton won California and scored the advantage in delegates, bring her total to 845 to Obama's 765, by the latest accounting. McCain won 9 states. Romney won 7 states. Huckabee said he would press on with his White House candidacy, emboldened by 5 wins in the South.
(AP, 2/6/08)
2008 Feb 5, A US Court of Appeals rejected a decision giving Georgia a quarter of Lake Lanier’s capacity over the coming decades. It said such changes require congressional approval. Alabama and Florida had challenged the initial 2003 agreement.
(WSJ, 2/6/08, p.A10)
2008 Feb 5, Storms swept across southeast US as Super Tuesday primaries were ending. At least 31 people were killed in Tennessee, 13 in Arkansas, 7 in Kentucky and four in Alabama. It was one of the 15 worst tornado death tolls since 1950, and the nation's deadliest barrage of tornadoes since 76 people were killed in Pennsylvania and Ohio on May 31, 1985. The death toll rose to 59.
(AP, 2/6/08)(AP, 2/7/08)(WSJ, 2/8/08, p.A1)
2008 Feb 5, Renewed recession fears followed the release of US service sector data from the Institute of Supply Management. It showed activity moved rapidly into contraction in January.
(FT, 2/5/08)
2008 Feb 5, In southern Afghanistan a roadside bomb hit a US-led coalition vehicle in Helmand province, killing one soldier and wounding two others.
(AP, 2/6/08)
2008 Feb 5, A Bangladesh official said Abdul Kader Mollah, an employee of Titas Gas Distribution Company, the country’s biggest state-owned gas company, allegedly used his position to pocket a colossal 145 million dollars in bribes over 12 years. Mollah at the time earned a mere 100 dollars a month.
(AFP, 2/5/08)
2008 Feb 5, Senior researchers at Britain's International Institute for Strategic Studies warned that "neo-Taliban" groups operating in Pakistan's tribal areas may soon become a global menace.
(AP, 2/5/08)
2008 Feb 5, British scientists said they have created human embryos containing DNA from two women and a man in a procedure that researchers hope might be used one day to produce embryos free of inherited diseases.
(AP, 2/5/08)
2008 Feb 5, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said "final victory" was in sight with transportation returning to normal after the worst winter in decades, but power outages remained a problem for millions. the former communist party boss of Olympic host city Qingdao was sentenced to life in prison for accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes. Du Shicheng was found guilty of taking $870,000 worth of bribes from 2000 to January 2006 while serving as the port city's most powerful official.
(AP, 2/5/08)(AP, 2/6/08)
2008 Feb 5, In Guatemala 5 bus drivers were shot dead, each while driving passengers on different main roads into Guatemala City. 7 more were killed the following day, prompting their colleagues to go on strike for several days.
(Econ, 3/22/08, p.40)
2008 Feb 5, Ching Cheong (58), a Hong Kong journalist charged with spying for Taiwan, was released from prison in mainland China after being detained for nearly three years.
(AP, 2/5/08)
2008 Feb 5, A new Iraqi flag, stripped of the three green stars of Saddam Hussein's toppled Baath party, was hoisted over the Iraqi Cabinet building in a symbolic break with the past nearly five years after the US-led invasion. In Taji, north of Baghdad, a suicide bomber detonated his explosives near the convoy of a sheik working with US forces, killing two of his followers. Those killed were members of the Taji Awakening Council.
(AP, 2/5/08)
2008 Feb 5, An Israeli airstrike in response to Qassam rockets killed 7 Hamas police officers near Khan Yunis. A barrage of rockets followed and battered Sderot less than a half mile from the Gaza fence, seriously wounding a woman just before the arrival of President Shimon Peres.
(AP, 2/5/08)(SFC, 2/6/08, p.A7)(SFC, 2/7/08, p.A4)
2008 Feb 5, In Mozambique one person was killed and 63 were wounded in Maputo when police opened fire in a bid to break up violent protests against increases in bus fares. The local council of Tete said an outbreak of diarrhea in the flood-hit city has claimed the lives of 64 people since early January.
(AP, 2/5/08)(AFP, 2/5/08)
2008 Feb 5, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, a guru to the Beatles who introduced the West to transcendental meditation, died at his home in the Dutch town of Vlodrop.
(AP, 2/6/08)(Econ, 2/16/08, p.95)
2008 Feb 5, In Rwanda Theoneste Niyitegeka, a doctor and one-time possible presidential candidate, was sentenced to 15 years in jail for his role in the country's 1994 genocide.
(AFP, 2/6/08)
2008 Feb 5, Serbia's coalition government was on the verge of collapse over the European Union's plans to send a mission to Kosovo province.
(AP, 2/5/08)
2008 Feb 5, In northeastern Somalia grenade attack killed 21 people and wounded 100 in Bossaso, Puntland.
(AP, 2/6/08)
2008 Feb 5, A South African court sentenced Daniel Geiges (69), a Swiss engineer, for his part in an international nuclear smuggling ring. Geiges was given a 13-year suspended sentence on charges relating to a network run by disgraced Pakistan nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan. Geiges' former boss and co-accused, German engineer Gerhard Wisser was given an 18-year suspended sentenced last year in a plea agreement for his role in the network.
(AP, 2/5/08)
2008 Feb 5, In South Africa 12 patients, including two children, were killed when their minibus overturned en route to a hospital in South Africa's Northern Cape province.
(AP, 2/5/08)
2008 Feb 5, Simba Makoni, a senior member of Zimbabwe's ruling ZANU-PF party, said he would run for president at the March 29 election in the first major internal challenge to Robert Mugabe in 20 years.
(Reuters, 2/5/08)
2008 Feb 5, UN officials said Ethiopia and Bangladesh have offered to jump-start the UN peacekeeping mission in Darfur by loaning it helicopters to fly troops and supplies around the vast region in western Sudan.
(AP, 2/5/08)
2009 Feb 5, New US government data said the number of US workers filing new claims for unemployment benefits jumped to a 26-year high last week pointing to a rapid deterioration in the economy.
(AP, 2/5/09)
2009 Feb 5, In eastern Afghanistan a suicide car bomb struck a convoy of foreign troops.
(AP, 2/5/09)
2009 Feb 5, The Bank of England cut interest rates by a half-point to a record low 1 percent as it fought a deepening recession brought on by the world financial crisis.
(AP, 2/5/09)
2009 Feb 5, British workers voted to end a week-long unofficial strike over the use of foreign labor at a French-owned oil refinery that sparked sympathy protests across Britain.
(AP, 2/5/09)
2009 Feb 5, The British Council said that it has suspended work in Iran because of what it calls intimidation by the authorities there. The British Council reopened its Tehran office in 2001 after a 22-year break following the 1979 Islamic revolution. It said 13,000 Iranians took part in English lessons and other programs it ran in Tehran last year.
(AP, 2/5/09)
2009 Feb 5, A nongovernment organization said the corrupt elite of Cambodia, one of the world's most impoverished nations, has laid the groundwork for siphoning off vast profits from a coming boom in mining and oil exploitation.
(AP, 2/5/09)
2009 Feb 5, China declared an emergency in eight provinces suffering a serious drought that has left nearly 4 million people without proper drinking water and is threatening millions of acres of crops. The government published a plan for the relocation and urbanization of farmers living near the Three Gorges Reservoir. Some 1.4 million farmers would have to move again.
(AP, 2/5/09)(WSJ, 2/7/09, p.A6)
2009 Feb 5, Germany's biggest lender, Deutsche Bank, posted its first annual loss since World War II after a terrible fourth quarter but said it would survive the global meltdown without state aid. Deutsche Bank reported a 2008 loss of $5 billion, including $1.8 billion attributed a group run by Wall Street trader Boaz Weinstein.
(AP, 2/5/09)(WSJ, 2/6/09, p.A1)
2009 Feb 5, The Iraqi election commission said that PM Nouri al-Maliki's party won 38 percent of the votes in Baghdad in the Jan 31 election, followed by allies of anti-US cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and a Sunni party with nine percent each. A suicide bomber blew himself up inside a crowded restaurant in a Kurdish city near the Iranian border, killing at least 12 people.
(AP, 2/5/09)
2009 Feb 5, The Israeli navy intercepted a ship delivering 60 tons of supplies to the Gaza Strip from Lebanon in the latest bid to defy Israel's blockade of the militant-held territory.
(AP, 2/5/09)
2009 Feb 5, In Nigeria a private security official said unidentified gunmen have attacked an oil-industry vessel off the coast of Nigeria and killed its captain.
(AP, 2/5/09)
2009 Feb 5, In central Pakistan a suicide bomber blew himself up near a Shiite mosque in the town of Dera Ghazi Khan, killing 24 people.
(AFP, 2/5/09)(SFC, 2/6/09, p.A3)
2009 Feb 5, Somali pirates said that they were freeing, a Ukrainian ship carrying tanks and other heavy weapons after receiving a $3.2 million ransom. The MV Faina was seized last September 25. The Kenyan government claimed to the cargo, which included 33 Soviet-designed battle tanks.
(AP, 2/5/09)
2009 Feb 5, The South Africa Reserve Bank slashed its benchmark interest rate by a full point to 10.5 percent, following a half-point cut in December, saying inflation is headed downward.
(AFP, 2/5/09)
2009 Feb 5, Sri Lanka's prime minister rejected calls for a cease-fire from donor countries concerned by reports of growing civilian casualties in the South Asian nation's civil war and instead demanded the Tamil Tiger rebels' unconditional surrender.
(AP, 2/5/09)
2009 Feb 5, The Swedish government agreed to scrap a three-decade ban on building new nuclear reactors, saying it needs to avoid producing more greenhouse gases.
(AP, 2/5/09)
2009 Feb 5, Jennifer Figge (56) arrived in Trinidad, exhilarated and exhausted as she touched land this week for the first time in almost a month, becoming the first woman on record to allegedly swim across the Atlantic Ocean. Figge actually swam only a fraction of the 2,100-mile journey. The rest of the time, she rested on her crew's westward-sailing catamaran.
(AP, 2/8/09)(AP, 2/10/09)
2009 Feb 5, Turkey's parliament approved the Kyoto Protocol on cutting greenhouse gas emissions. The parliament voted 243-3 after the Cabinet signed the protocol.
(AP, 2/5/09)
2009 Feb 5, Zimbabwe's parliament passed a constitutional bill to allow a coalition government of President Robert Mugabe and opposition rivals, being set up under a deal to end political and economic crisis.
(Reuters, 2/5/09)
2010 Feb 5, The US White House increased its criticism of Republican Senators following reports that Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama had placed a blanket hold on more than 70 administration nominees in order to secure funding for home-state projects. On Feb 9 Shelby’s office said he will stop blocking Senate confirmation of some 70 nominees.
(SFC, 2/6/10, p.A6)(AP, 2/9/10)
2010 Feb 5, In Alabama a boy (14) was shot by another student inside a middle school in Madison. The victim died at a hospital.
(SFC, 2/6/10, p.A6)
2010 Feb 5, In Pennsylvania about 18,000 people turned out before dawn for the 18th Wing Bowl, an eating competition dubbed the world's biggest, and an annual celebration of Philadelphia's raucous sports-crazed culture.
(Reuters, 2/5/10)
2010 Feb 5, In Afghanistan a bomb planted on a motorcycle ripped through a crowd gathered to watch a dog fight in southern Helmand province, killing three people and wounding more than 30. Afghan border police mistook a group of villagers gathering wood near the Pakistan border as insurgents and opened fire, killing seven civilians. US forces detained Atahullah Wahaab, deputy police chief in Kapisa province, for alleged corruption and links to insurgents.
(AFP, 2/5/10)(AP, 2/6/10)(AFP, 2/7/10)
2010 Feb 5, New Zealand explorers said 5 crates of whisky and brandy belonging to polar explorer Ernest Shackleton have been recovered after being buried for more than 100 years under the Antarctic ice. The excavation of the whisky followed the discovery last month of two blocks of butter in an Antarctic hut used by British explorer Robert Falcon Scott on his doomed 1910-12 expedition.
(AP, 2/5/10)
2010 Feb 5, Defense giant BAE Systems said it had agreed to pay fines of nearly 288 million pounds settle charges brought by Britain's Serious Fraud Office and the US Department of Justice. The fines, 258 million pounds to the DoJ and 30 million pounds to the SFO, related to investigations into BAE deals with countries including Tanzania, the Czech Republic, Romania and South Africa.
(AFP, 2/5/10)
2010 Feb 5, Britain’s chief prosecutor said 4 British lawmakers will face criminal charges and the prospect of jail for alleged shady accounting practices during Britain's 2009 expense claims scandal. A report issued a day earlier into the expense scandal ordered 392 current and former British legislators to repay a total of 1.12 million pounds ($1.7 million).
(AP, 2/5/10)
2010 Feb 5, British actor Ian Carmichael (89) died at his home in northern England. He appeared in a series of comedies for the Boulting Brothers including "Private's Progress," "Brothers in Law," "Lucky Jim" and "I'm All Right Jack." Later in his career he played the upper-class twit Bertie Wooster, and Dorothy L. Sayers suave detective Lord Peter Wimsey, in television series.
(AP, 2/8/10)
2010 Feb 5, Canada and the US said they have reached a tentative deal with to end a dispute over "Buy American" provisions in US legislation that had strained bilateral ties.
(AP, 2/5/10)
2010 Feb 5, China said it will slap heavy anti-dumping duties on US chicken parts, a move likely to aggravate trade ties between two of the world's most important economies at a time of strained political relations.
(Reuters, 2/5/10)
2010 Feb 5, Danish special forces disrupted the takeover by Somali pirates of the cargo ship Ariella in the Gulf of Aden. A frogmen unit scaled the sides of the ship using grappling hooks, secured the bridge, released the crew and then launched an hours-long search for a pirate the crew had seen.
(AP, 2/5/10)
2010 Feb 5, In East Timor 20 members of dissident political group CPD-RDTL and underground political organization Bua-Malus were arrested on suspicion of involvement in "ninja" activities.
(AFP, 4/6/10)
2010 Feb 5, Guatemalan police say they have destroyed about 1,200 acres (500 hectares) of opium poppies along the border with Mexico. The plants were valued at $950 million.
(AP, 2/5/10)
2010 Feb 5, In Iraq twin car bombs tore through a crowd of Shiite pilgrims packing a highway as they walked to Karbala south of Baghdad for a major religious observance, killing at least 40 people and wounding 154 others. A roadside bomb struck a bus carrying pilgrims through Baghdad, killing one and wounding 13.
(AP, 2/5/10)
2010 Feb 5, In Indian Kashmir paramilitary soldiers charged at a group gathered in a playground in Srinagar, and began firing as they fled, killing Zahid Farooq Shah (17). The incident threatened to enflame protests that have rocked the city following the death of another boy on Jan 31.
(AP, 2/5/10)
2010 Feb 5, Latvia sold a deserted town built around a Soviet-era radar station to a Russian investor who bid $3.1 million at an unusual auction. The town, formerly known as Skrunda-1, housed about 5,000 people during the Cold War but was abandoned over a decade ago.
(AP, 2/5/10)
2010 Feb 5, Mexican authorities said they have found the decapitated bodies of six men in the western state of Michoacan. In central Mexico a landslide killed at least 11 people, adding to 18 deaths this week from severe and unseasonable winter storms that closed schools and freeways and flooded thousands of homes.
(AP, 2/5/10)(AP, 2/6/10)
2010 Feb 5, A breakthrough deal to save Northern Ireland's Catholic-Protestant government gave a new lease of life to an awkward partnership of former foes that still must overcome many obstacles to survive. The deal commits the Northern Ireland Assembly to elect a justice minister March 9 and Britain to transfer control of more than 20 criminal justice and law-enforcement agencies to Belfast on April 12.
(AP, 2/5/10)
2010 Feb 5, In Pakistan women and children were among the 12 people killed when a suicide attacker rammed a motorbike bomb into a bus carrying Shiites on one of Karachi's busiest roads. A 2nd bomber then killed 13 people, damaging ambulances and the entrance to the casualty department at Jinnah Hospital, where the victims of the first attack were being treated. Police defused a third bomb rigged inside a television and left in the hospital car park. By the next day 8 more people had died bringing the total death toll to 33.
(AFP, 2/5/10)(AP, 2/6/10)
2010 Feb 5, Portuguese police seized a large amount of explosives at a home being used by Basque separatist group ETA as a base to prepare attacks in neighboring Spain.
(AP, 2/5/10)
2010 Feb 5, Russian PM Vladimir Putin criticized his party following an unusually large opposition protest, saying it has fed the country with empty promises.
(AP, 2/5/10)
2010 Feb 5, A Vietnamese court convicted Tran Khai Thanh Thuy (49), a journalist and democracy activist, of assault and sentenced her to three-and-a-half years in prison in a one-day trial that rights groups said was meant to silence government critics.
(AP, 2/5/10)
2010 Feb 5, Zimbabwe's civil servants launched an open-ended strike, demanding that their wages be increased to at least 630 US dollars, from 150 dollars a month, piling pressure on the strained unity government struggling to fix the economy. Most of Zimbabwe's 230,000 civil servants appeared to have heeded the strike call.
(AFP, 2/5/10)(AFP, 2/9/10)
2011 Feb 5, The United States and Russia formally inaugurated their new START nuclear arms treaty, capping two years of work to "reset" the sometimes strained ties between the former Cold War enemies.
(Reuters, 2/5/11)
2011 Feb 5, In Kentucky police found the body of a girl (9) near Trenton, several hours after she was reported missing.
(SSFC, 2/6/11, p.A8)
2011 Feb 5, J. Paul Getty III (b.1956), grandson of oil magnate J. Paul Getty, died in England following a long illness. He had lost an ear to kidnappers in Rome in 1973 and suffered a devastating stroke in his twenties that left him severely impaired and in a wheelchair for the rest of his life.
(SFC, 2/9/11, p.A4)
2011 Feb 5, In southern Afghanistan two NATO service members were killed in separate bomb attacks. NATO troops captured 48 Iranian-made warheads, 49 fuses, and 49 rocket mortars. They were being transported in a three-truck convoy, in southern Nimruz, near the Iranian and Pakistani borders.
(AP, 2/5/11)(AP, 3/9/11)
2011 Feb 5, In Australia torrential rains and flash floods trapped scores of people in homes and cars following a massive cyclone, piling on more misery after weeks of record inundations.
(AFP, 2/5/11)
2011 Feb 5, British PM David Cameron, in a speech to the Munich Security Conference, condemned Britain's long-standing policy of multiculturalism as a failure, calling for better integration of young Muslims to combat home-grown extremism. He also said Europe must stamp out intolerance of Western values within its own Muslim communities and far-right groups if it is to defeat the roots of terrorism.
(AFP, 2/5/11)
2011 Feb 5, Renewed fighting between Cambodian and Thai troops along the countries' disputed border killed a Thai soldier and sent thousands of people fleeing before military commanders agreed on the second cease-fire in two days.
(AP, 2/5/11)
2011 Feb 5, Rudolf Slavik (34) was found shot to death in a tram in Prague. In November Gilbert Ferguson McCrae (53), a US and British citizen, was found guilty for killing Slavik by shooting him in the head with a handgun. The prosecution said McCrae shot Slavik after Czech had insulted him in a bar. The conviction was upheld in 2012 and McCrae was sentenced to 16 years in prison.
(AP, 2/8/12)(http://tinyurl.com/6oeph7f)
2011 Feb 5, Leaders of Egypt's unprecedented wave of anti-government protests held talks with the prime minister over ways to ease President Mubarak out of office, but the government appeared to be digging in its heels. The top executive committee of Egypt's ruling National Democratic Party (NDP), which includes Mubarak's son Gamal, resigned en masse. Secretary-general of the ruling party, Safwat el-Sharif, resigned in a gesture to protesters carrying out a 12-day-old wave of anti-government demonstrations. It was decided to name Hossam Badrawi secretary general of the party.
(AP, 2/5/11)(AFP, 2/5/11)
2011 Feb 5, Unknown saboteurs attacked an Egyptian pipeline supplying gas to Jordan, forcing authorities to switch off gas supply from a twin pipeline to Israel. Egypt supplies about 40 percent of Israel's natural gas. The attack came after Israel expressed concern that its natural gas supplies from Egypt could be threatened if a new regime takes power in Cairo.
(AFP, 2/5/11)
2011 Feb 5, In India doctors in Gujarat reported two more cases of Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever, a tick-borne virus endemic to parts of Africa. 4 people in Gujarat had already died of the disease this year.
(Econ, 2/12/11, p.68)
2011 Feb 5, In Iran A state-owned news website said Iran's broadcasting authority has banned Iranian TV channels from showing cooking programs that present recipes for foreign cuisine. The deputy head of Iran's state broadcasting company, Ali Darabi, announced the ban during a visit to one of the country's 30 state-run TV channels.
(AP, 2/6/11)
2011 Feb 5, Israeli police arrested four men in the theft of religious items valued at more than $1 million from a synagogue in Italy. The 4 suspects, Israelis in their 20s, were accused of stealing the items from Milan's central synagogue last week and smuggling them to Israel.
(AP, 2/7/11)
2011 Feb 5, In Italy thousands of people attended a rally to demand Premier Silvio Berlusconi's resignation following allegations he paid for sex with a 17-year-old girl and used his office to cover it up.
(AP, 2/5/11)
2011 Feb 5, In Mexico gunmen opened fire and killed 3 teenage boys at a used car dealership in Ciudad Juarez. Two of the boys were US citizens. A teenager, a woman and a 40-year-old man died in a second attack by unidentified gunmen elsewhere in Juarez. Another three people were killed in separate shooting incidents. Authorities recovered the dismembered body of Francisco Martinez Ramirez, the chief of guards at a Monterrey prison, who was dragged out of his house by armed men a day earlier. Federal agents arrested Adan Salazar Zamorano, an alleged lieutenant of the powerful Sinaloa drug cartel. He was also wanted in Texas on charges of conspiracy to possess cocaine with intent to distribute.
(AFP, 2/7/11)(AP, 2/7/11)(AP, 2/10/11)
2011 Feb 5, In northern Mexico Serengeti Zoo owner Alberto Hernandez said 14 parrots, 13 serpents, five iguanas, two crocodiles and a capuchin monkey died after power failures cut off electrical heating at the zoo in the town of Aldama, Chihuahua state.
(AP, 2/6/11)
2011 Feb 5, In Pakistan militants killed four men accused of spying in the northwest. A car bomb exploded in a village in the Khyber tribal region. 3 people were killed and 2 pedestrians were wounded.
(AP, 2/5/11)(AFP, 2/5/11)
2011 Feb 5, In the Philippines guerrillas leaders said Ameril Umbra Kato, a rogue Muslim rebel commander, has formed a separate faction of several hundred fighters and rejected peace talks to end the decades-long secessionist rebellion.
(AP, 2/5/11)
2011 Feb 5, The body of Monika Markiewicz (32), a Polish national and musician on the cruise ship Allure of the Sea, was recovered from the sea off Cozumel, Mexico. An autopsy determined she drowned but also had suffered a blow to the head. Nelson Perez Torres (24) later confessed to hitting Markiewicz in the head with a rock and then throwing her into the ocean in Quintana Roo state, where Cozumel is located.
(AP, 2/9/11)(AP, 2/10/11)
2011 Feb 5, In Qatar an anti-corruption tribunal of the International Cricket Council banned former Pakistan captain Salman Butt for ten years, Mohammad Asif for seven years and Mohammad Aamer for five years for their role in a spot-fixing betting scam.
(AFP, 2/5/11)
2011 Feb 5, In Romania five miners died in an explosion at a coal mine in the Jiu Valley mining region.
(AP, 2/5/11)
2011 Feb 5, In Serbia tens of thousands of nationalist supporters rallied against the pro-Western government, demanding early elections amid a deepening economic crisis.
(AP, 2/5/11)
2011 Feb 5, In South Sudan a rebellion by former pro-Khartoum militiamen against giving up their heavy weapons sparked clashes in oil-producing Upper Nile state. Fighting in Malakal close to the border with the north, has killed 20 people and wounded at least 24. Soldiers in north Sudan's army fought each other, killing at least 30 in a dispute over who gets to keep the artillery they are holding in Southern Sudan. The fighting took place in two towns in Upper Nile state. 11 soldiers were killed in Paloich and 19 in Melut.
(AP, 2/5/11)(AP, 2/6/11)
2011 Feb 5, In Spain several hundred Basque separatists held small street rallies, hung posters and painted political graffiti on walls throughout the troubled northern region to support a new political party to be launched next week.
(AP, 2/5/11)
2011 Feb 5, Zimbabwe's main rival political parties condemned a spate of violent clashes among their supporters. PM Morgan Tsvangirai blamed Pres. Mugabe's youth brigades.
(Reuters, 2/5/11)
2012 Feb 5, Josh Powell, under investigation for the 2009 disappearance in Utah of his wife, Susan Powell, was killed with his two sons, Charles (7) and Braden (5), in a fire at his home in Graham, Washington. Police said he set the fire intentionally just after receiving his sons for what was to be a supervised visit.
(SFC, 2/6/12, p.A6)
2012 Feb 5, In Afghanistan 9 people, including 7 policemen, were killed in a suicide car bomb attack on police headquarters in Kandahar, a bastion of Taliban militancy.
(AFP, 2/5/12)
2012 Feb 5, Bosnia used helicopters to evacuate people and deliver food to those stranded by heavy snowfall. The cold snap across Eastern Europe has left at least 280 people dead including 131 in Ukraine.
(SFC, 2/6/12, p.A2)
2012 Feb 5, Brazilian media report 78 people have been murdered in and around the northeastern city of Salvador since the start of a state police strike there five days ago.
(AP, 2/5/12)
2012 Feb 5, Britain’s Heathrow Airport cut around half of the 1,300 flights scheduled for today after snow and freezing temperatures hit much of England a day earlier.
(Reuters, 2/5/12)
2012 Feb 5, Mark Thompson, director-general of the BBC, said Iranian authorities are increasingly arresting and threatening the families of BBC journalists to force them to quit its Persian news service.
(Reuters, 2/5/12)
2012 Feb 5, Egyptian investigating judges referred 44 NGO workers, including 19 Americans, to trial before a criminal court for allegedly being involved in banned activities and illegally receiving foreign funds. The decision also slapped a travel ban on all those referred to trial. The military rulers faced mounting pressure on two fronts, with a fourth day of violent street protests spearheading calls to speed up the transfer of power to a civilian administration and the US threatening to cut more than a billion dollars in badly needed aid. Since Feb 2 twelve people have been killed in Cairo and Suez.
(AP, 2/5/12)(AFP, 2/5/12)
2012 Feb 5, Finland voters chose a leader in a runoff between a veteran conservative and the first openly gay candidate from the small Greens party. Former Finance Minister Sauli Niinisto (63) won the runoff election with 63 percent of the votes against Greens candidate Pekka Haavisto (53) with 37 percent. This restored the National Coalition Party to the presidency after 56 years and giving it the nation's two top posts for the first time.
(AP, 2/5/12)(AP, 2/10/12)
2012 Feb 5, The Iranian navy rushed to a site in the Gulf of Aden after it received a distress signal from an oil tanker, which was under attack from some 35 pirate boats. The navy opened fire on the pirates to foil an attack on an Iranian oil tanker.
(AP, 2/6/12)
2012 Feb 5, In Iraq gunmen killed an Interior Ministry official in a drive-by shooting in central Baghdad.
(AP, 2/5/12)
2012 Feb 5, Kuwait News said the Gulf nation's emir accepted the resignation of Sheik Jaber Al Hamad Al Sabah, a former defense chief who was appointed caretaker prime minister in November amid intense political turmoil that forced elections.
(AP, 2/5/12)
2012 Feb 5, Libya put 41 loyalists of dead dictator Moamer Kadhafi on trial, in the first legal proceedings launched against members of the former regime. The trial was later adjourned to February 15, with the military prosecutor saying the accused will have fair trials.
(AFP, 2/5/12)
2012 Feb 5, Aid officials in Mali said more than 15,000 people including military personnel have fled into neighboring countries since members of the nomadic Tuareg ethnic group launched a new rebellion against the Malian government last month. The ICRC said 10,000 people have crossed into Niger and 5,000 into Mauritania.
(AP, 2/5/12)
2012 Feb 5, In Mexico Josefina Vazquez Mota (51) easily won the National Action Party's primary. She vowed to unite the party and help it defeat the Institutional Revolutionary Party, which ruled Mexico for 71 years before being ousted by National Action in 2000.
(AP, 2/6/12)
2012 Feb 5, Nepal officials said health workers are to cull some 4,000 chickens following the discovery of the H5N1 strain of bird flu in the southeastern part of the Himalayan country.
(AFP, 2/5/12)
2012 Feb 5, In Nigeria gunmen reportedly shot dead a secret police officer in front of his house in the northeastern city of Damaturu. Soldiers guarding Jos, at the heart of ethnic and religious clashes, detained and later threw out journalists working for a French television station trying to cover the ongoing unrest there.
(AFP, 2/5/12)(AP, 2/7/12)
2012 Feb 5, Panama police fired tear gas to clear blockades of the Pan-American highway by indigenous groups protesting changes to the mining law. One person was killed and 39 injured in the resulting clashes.
(AP, 2/6/12)
2012 Feb 5, Syria's opposition appealed for international backing, a day after Russia and China vetoed a UN Security Council resolution aimed at pressuring President Bashar Assad to end his bloody crackdown. The Observatory also said that one person was shot dead by a sniper in the central city of Homs. Another activist group, the Local Coordination Committees said nine people were killed in different parts of the country.
(AP, 2/5/12)
2013 Feb 5, Dell and Menlo Park’s Silver Lake Management, the nation’s largest technology-focused private-equity firm, announced that they had agreed to pay $13.65 a share to take Dell private.
(SFC, 2/6/13, p.D1)
2013 Feb 5, California charged Standard & Poor’s with fraudulent practices that resulted in close to $1 billion in losses state institutional investors. 15 other states and the US Justice Dept. were also suing S&P for approving mortgage backed securities that turned out to be bad risks.
(SFC, 2/6/13, p.A1)
2013 Feb 5, In California 3 men were found dead on a wooded property in rural west Sonoma County.
(SFC, 2/6/13, p.A6)
2013 Feb 5, A Bangladeshi tribunal prosecuting cases stemming from the 1971 independence war sentenced Abdul Quader Mollah, a leader of an Islamic opposition party, to life in prison, sparking street clashes with police that killed two people and injured dozens more.
(AP, 2/5/13)
2013 Feb 5, Bulgaria linked Lebanon's militant group Hezbollah to the bomb attack on a bus last July that killed five Israeli tourists. Two of the suspects linked to the bombing had entered the country with an Australian and a Canadian passport.
(AP, 2/5/13)
2013 Feb 5, In China a court in Beijing sentenced 10 people to prison terms for running a black jail. “Custody and repatriation" centers, which held petitioners along with beggars and vagrants, were scrapped in 2003.
(Econ, 3/2/13, p.45)
2013 Feb 5, Chinese phone maker Huawei and Microsoft launched a new smartphone in Africa, which they say is the world's fastest growing mobile phone market. The Huawei 4Afrika phone runs Windows Phone 8 and comes pre-loaded with applications designed for the African market.
(AP, 2/5/13)
2013 Feb 5, European Union regulators gave approval for Britain's 600 million pounds of public support for the "Green Deal" energy-efficiency scheme. Britain's Green Deal permits loans to homeowners to help them pay for efficiency measures such as loft insulation, modern boilers, draught proofing and other materials.
(AP, 2/5/13)
2013 Feb 5, Germany's education minister Annette Schavan (57) was stripped of her doctorate after a committee of academics concluded that she plagiarized substantial parts of her 1980 thesis, which dealt with the formation of conscience. Schavan resigned on Feb 9.
(AP, 2/5/13)(AP, 2/9/13)
2013 Feb 5, Iran’s Pres. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad began a three-day visit to Egypt, centered around an Islamic summit. He said his country is ready to provide a "big credit line" to help revive the distressed economy of Egypt.
(AP, 2/6/13)
2013 Feb 5, Iran's official news agency reported that authorities have arrested another group of local journalists accused of links with the BBC.
(AP, 2/5/13)
2013 Feb 5, In Iraq a suicide bomber rammed his explosives-laden car into an army checkpoint in Taji, killing at least four people — two soldiers and two civilians.
(AP, 2/5/13)
2013 Feb 5, In Ireland an official report, that ran to almost 1,000 pages, said that more than a quarter of the women and girls subjected to harsh discipline and unpaid work at 10 laundries, run by Catholic nuns, were sent there by the Irish state.
(AP, 2/6/13)
2013 Feb 5, Kuwait said three former opposition lawmakers have been charged with insulting the country's ruler in the latest crackdown on perceived political dissent in the Gulf nation.
(AP, 2/5/13)
2013 Feb 5, In Mali troops from France and Chad moved into Kidal in an effort to secure the strategic northern city.
(AP, 2/5/13)
2013 Feb 5, In Nigeria two soldiers were killed in a shootout in the oil-rich southern delta involving a vessel operated by an Indian company.
(AP, 2/5/13)
2013 Feb 5, Serbian ultranationalists held a rally to accuse their country's president of treason for agreeing to hold talks with the president of Kosovo.
(AP, 2/5/13)
2013 Feb 5, In Somalia a Mogadishu court handed down one-year prison sentences to a woman who said she was raped by security forces and a reporter who interviewed her. The judges decided the woman falsely claimed she was raped and had insulted the government. On March 3 an appeals court dropped charges against the woman. A journalist who interviewed the rape victim and was tried alongside her had his sentence reduced from one year to six months.
(AP, 2/5/13)(AP, 3/3/13)
2013 Feb 5, South African police arrested 19 suspected members of a Congolese rebel group, accusing them of plotting to overthrow their nation's government after it recently came under attack by militants said to be backed by neighboring Rwanda.
(AP, 2/5/13)
2013 Feb 5, Syrian rebels and Jordanian security officials said intense fighting has broken out near Syrian government installations and border posts near Jordan, leaving 17 civilians wounded.
(AP, 2/5/13)
2014 Feb 5, Texas executed Suzanne Basso (59) for the 1998 slaying of Louis Musso (59), a mentally disabled man, to rob him of his cash and collect insurance.
(SFC, 2/6/14, p.A6)
2014 Feb 5, In Argentina 9 first-responders were killed and seven others injured battling a fire of unknown origin that destroyed an archive of bank documents at the iron Mountain warehouse in Buenos Aires.
(AP, 2/5/14)(SFC, 2/6/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 5, Brazil police said the bodies of 3 men whose disappearance led to a clash between an Amazon tribe and settlers have been found in Amazonas state. Last week police arrested five Tenharim men on suspicion of kidnapping and killing the outsiders in December.
(AP, 2/5/14)
2014 Feb 5, In the Central African Republic soldiers and recruits killed a suspected rebel with knives and concrete blocks just moments after the president and other VIPs left the area.
(AP, 2/5/14)
2014 Feb 5, It was reported that a new strain of avian influenza, H10N8, has been confirmed in two people in China. Cases of H7N9 were reported to be surging with some 300 cases and more appearing every day.
(SFC, 2/5/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 5, In southwest England more than 8,000 homes were without power after fresh storms battered the region, sending huge waves crashing onto the coastline and damaging sea defenses.
(AFP, 2/5/14)
2014 Feb 5, Millions of commuters in London faced delays and disruption after Tube staff went on strike over plans to close London Underground ticket offices.
(AFP, 2/5/14)
2014 Feb 5, The European Union's antitrust watchdog accepted "far-reaching" concessions offered by Google to settle allegations it is abusing its dominant position in Internet searches, bringing the three-year-old case close to an end.
(AP, 2/5/14)
2014 Feb 5, The Luno, mostly empty Spanish cargo ship, broke in two after hitting a sea wall off the southwestern coast of France in high winds and was leaking some fuel into the water.
(Reuters, 2/5/14)
2014 Feb 5, A German newspaper reported that the US National Security Agency (NSA) bugged the phone of former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder from at least 2002, compounding the most serious row between the allies in a decade.
(Reuters, 2/5/14)
2014 Feb 5, Germany's government approved increasing the number of soldiers sent to Mali from 180 to 250 as part of an EU-led mission to train the national army for its fight against Islamic extremists.
(AFP, 2/5/14)
2014 Feb 5, In Germany a fire at an asylum home in Hamburg killed a woman from Pakistan and her two children. On Feb 7 a boy (13), a member of the city's youth fire department, admitted to setting the fire.
(AP, 2/8/14)
2014 Feb 5, In Iraq multiple bombings rocked central Baghdad, striking mainly near the heavily fortified Green Zone where key government offices are located, killed at least 34 people.
(AFP, 2/5/14)(SFC, 2/6/14, p.A4)
2014 Feb 5, Israel's finance minister said he will stop funding for ultra-Orthodox seminaries whose students do not enlist into the military. Yair Lapid's announcement was in response to an order from the Israeli Supreme Court.
(AP, 2/5/14)
2014 Feb 5, Israel's Jerusalem municipality approved building plans for 558 new homes in the occupied West Bank, land that the Palestinians want for a future state.
(Reuters, 2/5/14)
2014 Feb 5, Japanese composer Mamoru Samurogochi (50) confessed that he had employed a ghostwriter since the 1990s to compose most of his music. The ghostwriter then came forward and accused Samurogochi of faking his deafness.
(SFC, 2/7/14, p.A7)
2014 Feb 5, Uke Rugova, a Kosovo lawmaker who is also a son of late President Ibrahim Rugova, was arrested by European Union police and justice workers for alleged involvement in organized crime and fraud.
(AP, 2/5/14)
2014 Feb 5, In Libya a bomb rocked the playground of a primary school in Benghazi during recess, wounding 12 children, hours after gunmen had rampaged through the streets.
(AFP, 2/5/14)
2014 Feb 5, Pakistani anti-drone activist Kareem Khan was taken from his home by around a dozen men in police uniforms who bundled him into a police vehicle in front of his wife, children and neighbors. He was tortured and interrogated before being dumped blindfolded on the outskirts of the capital early on Feb 14.
(Reuters, 2/14/14)
2014 Feb 5, A planned extension of the Panama Canal, one of the world's most important shipping routes, was thrown into doubt after a group of companies, led by Spanish builder Sacyr, said its talks with Panama's government over how to expand the canal had fallen apart. Panama Canal Authority head Jorge Quijano said the expansion project will be completed in 2015 with or without a Spanish-led consortium.
(Reuters, 2/5/14)
2014 Feb 5, Puerto Rico's governor said he is renegotiating the payment of short-term debt and has ordered all government agencies to reduce their current budgets by 2 percent after the island's credit rating was downgraded to junk status.
(AP, 2/5/14)
2014 Feb 5, A Romanian court charged and arrested Rudel Obreja, a former chairman of Romania's Boxing Federation (2004-2012), with influence peddling for allegedly offering to try to influence a sentencing hearing in return for money.
(AP, 2/5/14)
2014 Feb 5, Russian security forces surrounded a group of militants who had holed up in the Dagestani town of Izberbash. Dzhamaldin Mirzayev (30), who was suspected of having been involved in training the bombers and sending them to Volgograd, was killed in an exchange of gunfire.
(AP, 2/5/14)
2014 Feb 5, In South Africa demonstrators set several buildings, including a clinic, on fire in the Bronkhorstspruit district, east of Pretoria, to protest what they say are high utility bills.
(AP, 2/5/14)
2014 Feb 5, In South Sudan government forces and allied militia attacked rebel defensive positions in the northern part of Jonglei state, close to the border with Upper Nile. Government soldiers mutinied in Lakes state while they were being sent to fight the rebels in Panyijar county in neighboring Unity state.
(AFP, 2/6/14)
2014 Feb 5, Syria missed a deadline to hand over all the toxic materials it declared to the world's chemical weapons watchdog, putting the program several weeks behind schedule and jeopardizing a final June 30 deadline.
(Reuters, 2/5/14)
2014 Feb 5, Turkey's parliament approved internet controls enabling web pages to be blocked within hours in what the opposition decried as part of a government bid to stifle a corruption scandal.
(Reuters, 2/6/14)
2014 Feb 5, A UN human rights committee urged the Holy See to open its files on pedophiles and bishops who concealed their crimes saying the Vatican "systematically" adopted policies that allowed priests to rape and molest tens of thousands of children over decades.
(AP, 2/5/14)
2015 Feb 5, President Barack Obama hailed the Dalai Lama as a "good friend" during a symbolic first public encounter between the two men at a high-profile Washington prayer breakfast.
(AFP, 2/5/15)
2015 Feb 5, First Lady Michell Obama announced a $500 million donation from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to fund the fight against childhood obesity.
(SFC, 2/6/15, p.A8)
2015 Feb 5, In Ohio three people were killed and three others wounded at the Chalk Linez barbershop shooting in Warrensville Heights, a suburb of Cleveland. In 2016 Douglas Shrine Jr. (21) was convicted of the shootings and his role in killing an eyewitness.
(SSFC, 11/20/16, p.A10)
2015 Feb 5, At the Univ. of South Carolina Sunghee Kwon (46) shot and killed her ex-husband Raja Fayad (45), an anatomy professor, and then committed suicide with a gunshot to her stomach.
(SFC, 2/7/15, p.A6)
2015 Feb 5, Texas-based Radio Shack, founded in Boston in 1921, said it was filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The NYSE stopped trading its shares on Feb 2.
(SFC, 2/6/15, p.C2)
2015 Feb 5, Police in Brazil issued 62 arrest, search and other legal orders in the investigation into a massive kickback scheme at the state-run oil company Petrobras. This included a warrant compelling the treasurer of Brazil's ruling Workers' Party to testify.
(AP, 2/5/15)
2015 Feb 5, British glam rocker Gary Glitter (70), aka Paul Gadd, was convicted of one count of attempted rape, four counts of indecent assault and one count of sexual intercourse with a girl under the age of 13.
(AFP, 2/5/15)
2015 Feb 5, In Cameroon Boko Haram fighters continued their attack on Fotokol, leaving nearly 100 people dead and some 500 wounded. Cameroonian soldiers assisted by Chadian forces chased hundreds of Boko Haram fighters out of Fotokol.
(AP, 2/6/15)
2015 Feb 5, In China authorities in Shanghai said police have seized 2.4 tons of methamphetamine and arrested 28 people in one of the country's largest drug busts.
(AP, 2/5/15)
2015 Feb 5, In China a fire at a wholesale market killed at least 17 people and injured nine others on the fourth floor of the market in southern Guangdong province.
(AP, 2/6/15)
2015 Feb 5, It was reported that protection rackets in Colombia have ballooned into an estimated $1 billion-a-year industry.
(SFC, 2/5/15, p.A4)
2015 Feb 5, Denmark's central bank cut a key interest rate for the 4th time in a month as it tried to keep the krone currency stable against the euro.
(AP, 2/5/15)
2015 Feb 5, The leaders of Germany and France announced a new peace plan for Ukraine, planning to fly together to Kiev and Moscow with a proposal to resolve the conflict.
(Reuters, 2/5/15)
2015 Feb 5, An India official said police over the last ten days have rescued hundreds of children working in hazardous industries in in Hyderabad despite laws that ban child labor.
(AP, 2/5/15)
2015 Feb 5, Iraq's PM Haider al-Abadi lifted a decade-old, midnight-to-5 a.m. curfew in Baghdad, ordered that long-blocked streets in the capital be opened up and declared some neighborhoods of the city weapons-free zones effective Feb 7.
(AP, 2/5/15)
2015 Feb 5, Jordanian fighter jets pounded Islamic State hideouts in Syria and then roared over the hometown of a pilot killed by the militants while King Abdullah consoled the victim's family below.
(Reuters, 2/5/15)
2015 Feb 5, Libya's only commercial flight link to mainland Europe was severed when the state carrier said its foreign partner had pulled out of the country after a deadly attack last week on a Tripoli hotel. Georgia-based Afriqiyah had only just restarted the route to Duesseldorf last month.
(Reuters, 2/5/15)
2015 Feb 5, In Libya pro-Haftar forces reportedly expelled Islamist militias from Benghazi port.
(AP, 2/6/15)
2015 Feb 5, In Mexico 61 rotting bodies were found at the crematorium of an abandoned funeral home near Acapulco after neighbors complained to authorities about a foul smell coming from the building. The facility had been shuttered for about one year.
(AP, 2/6/15)
2015 Feb 5, Myanmar's government accused students who are protesting against state educational policies of being manipulated by groups seeking to destabilize the country.
(AP, 2/5/15)
2015 Feb 5, The Russian film "Leviathan," a harrowing portrayal of small-town corruption, opened in about 450 theaters across Moscow and other cities. The Oscar-nominated film was directed by Andrei Zvyagintsev.
(AP, 2/5/15)
2015 Feb 5, Syrian government forces and rebel forces traded salvos of rockets and mortar shells around Damascus, killing at least 21 people. Syrian army helicopters dropped two barrel bombs on a crowded square in a rebel-held neighborhood in the northern city of Aleppo.
(AP, 2/5/15)(AP, 2/6/15)
2015 Feb 5, Tunisia's parliament approved a coalition government led by the secular Nidaa Tounes party and including moderate Islamist rivals Ennahda, following landmark elections in the birthplace of the Arab Spring.
(AFP, 2/5/15)
2015 Feb 5, Ukraine raised a key interest rate by a whopping 5.5 percentage points following a massive drop in its currency that has stoked concerns of runaway inflation.
(AP, 2/5/15)
2016 Feb 5, The Pentagon released nearly 200 photographs of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan, taken mostly between 2004 and 2006, involving 56 cases of alleged abuse by US forces.
(AP, 2/6/16)
2016 Feb 5, The Justice Department announced that Banking giant HSBC has reached a $470 million settlement with the federal government and nearly all states over mortgage lending and foreclosure abuses that officials say helped intensify the country's economic meltdown.
(AP, 2/5/16)
2016 Feb 5, The Albanian Environment Ministry said Parliament has passed a 10-year moratorium on chopping down trees for industry or export purposes.
(AP, 2/5/16)
2016 Feb 5, Bahrain said it is ready to commit ground troops to Syria as part of a US-led coalition against Islamic State, a day after its larger neighbour and close ally Saudi Arabia announced a similar pledge.
(Reuters, 2/6/16)
2016 Feb 5, Bhutan’s King Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck and Queen Jetsun Pema announced the birth of their first child.
(http://mashable.com/2016/03/14/bhutan-prince-trees/#kFMb.our1SqO)
2016 Feb 5, Ottawa announced the lifting of economic sanctions against Tehran, which will allow Canadian firms access to Iran after a deal on its nuclear program recently came into force.
(AFP, 2/5/16)
2016 Feb 5, It was reported that Sichuan Gov. Wei Hong has been accused of disloyalty to the ruling Communist Party and removed from his post, amid a growing consolidation of power by President Xi Jinping that some have likened to a personality cult.
(AP, 2/5/16)
2016 Feb 5, A controversial Danish law allowing police to seize valuables from refugees came into force.
(AFP, 2/5/16)
2016 Feb 5, President Rafael Correa said he has fired Ecuador's military high command for refusing to pay back to the state $41 million from an overvalued land deal.
(AP, 2/5/16)
2016 Feb 5, The head of Germany's domestic intelligence agency (BfV) said Islamic State militants have slipped into Europe disguised as refugees.
(Reuters, 2/5/16)
2016 Feb 5, In Guinea journalist El Hadj Mohamed Diallo (33) died after receiving a bullet to the chest in clashes outside the Conakry offices of an opposition party.
(AFP, 2/6/16)
2016 Feb 5, A band of former Haitian soldiers clashed with a far larger gathering of anti-government demonstrators in Port-au-Prince, resulting in the killing of an ex-member of the abolished military amid an ongoing political crisis.
(AP, 2/5/16)
2016 Feb 5, Iranian mdia said a high-ranking member of the elite Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and 6 Iranian Basij militia volunteers have been killed in fighting in Syria’s northern Aleppo province.
(Reuters, 2/5/16)
2016 Feb 5, In Ireland gunmen disguised as police opened fire on boxing fans at a Dublin hotel, killing one man and wounding two others. A henchman from a rival gang led by the Spain-based Christy Kinahan was targeted and killed. On Feb 8 Irish republican militant group the Continuity IRA, linked to organized crime, claimed responsibility, but then soon retracted.
(AP, 2/5/16)(AFP, 2/8/16)(AP, 2/9/16)
2016 Feb 5, Japan deported Ric O'Barry, the star of an Oscar-winning documentary that shows how dolphins are hunted in a Japanese village, after Tokyo airport officials barred his entry and he was held in detention for more than two weeks.
(AP, 2/5/16)
2016 Feb 5, Honda Motor Co. said that it would recall 5.7 million cars worldwide in the latest round of recalls involving Takata Corp. air bag inflators that can explode and hurl shrapnel into the vehicle.
(AP, 2/5/16)
2016 Feb 5, A fire at a hotel in Arbil, the capital of Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region, killed 19 people and injured dozens more.
(AFP, 2/5/16)
2016 Feb 5, Six asylum-seekers arrived in Latvia, the first of 531 the nation has agreed to accept as part of the European Union's relocation scheme.
(AP, 2/6/16)
2016 Feb 5, In Mali at least four suspected jihadists and a Malian soldier were killed following an attack on a UN military camp in Timbuktu.
(AFP, 2/5/16)
2016 Feb 5, In Nepal vehicles passed through Birgunj, the main border town between Nepal and India, after frustrated local residents forcefully removed barriers set up by ethnic protesters who blockaded the border to demand changes in the new constitution.
(AP, 2/5/16)
2016 Feb 5, Somalia's Shebab insurgents retook their stronghold of Merka from African Union troops who had held the key port since 2012. Three people were killed in a car bomb targeting an airport official in Mogadishu, as investigators probed an airplane blast experts fear was also a bomb.
(AFP, 2/5/16)
2016 Feb 5, In northeastern South Africa 87 miners were rescued after a cave-in at a Vantage Goldfields mine in Barbeton town, Mpumalanga province. 3 men remained missing in a mobile office buried in a sinkhole.
(Reuters, 2/5/16)(AP, 2/10/16)
2016 Feb 5, In Syria pro-government troops retook another northern community as part of a weeklong offensive aimed at encircling the country's largest city, Aleppo. The capture was backed by shelling and airstrikes, including by Russian warplanes. Tens of thousands were apparently streaming towards Turkey as regime troops pressed a major Russian-backed offensive around Aleppo.
(AP, 2/5/16)(AFP, 2/5/16)
2016 Feb 5, Thailand police released photos of Artur Segarra Princep (37), a Spanish man, suspected of involvement in the killing of fellow Spaniard David Bernat, whose dismembered body was recovered piece by piece from Bangkok's Chao Phraya River. Princep was arrested in Cambodia on Feb 7 and returned to Thailand.
(AP, 2/5/16)(AP, 2/8/16)
2016 Feb 5, The South Pacific kingdom of Tonga said it has a Zika epidemic after five people tested positive for the virus and another 265 are suspected of having it.
(AP, 2/5/16)
2016 Feb 5, A UN panel said it had adopted an opinion "in which it considered that Mr Julian Assange was arbitrarily detained by the governments of Sweden and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland." It added: "The working group also considered that the detention should be brought to an end and that Mr Assange should be afforded the right to compensation."
(AFP, 2/5/16)
2016 Feb 5, A UN report said thirty-four militant groups from around the world had reportedly pledged allegiance to the Islamic State extremist group as of mid-December — and that number will only grow in 2016.
(AP, 2/5/16)
2016 Feb 5, In southern Yemen al-Qaida leader Jalal Baliedy was killed along with 3 others in a US drone strike.
(AP, 2/8/16)
2017 Feb 5, President Donald Trump drew fire from Republicans and Democrats alike, after he defended a softer stance on Russia, playing down political assassinations and Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.
(AFP, 2/5/17)
2017 Feb 5, The 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco denied the Justice Department's request for an immediate reinstatement of President Donald Trump's ban on accepting certain travelers and all refugees.
(AP, 2/5/17)
2017 Feb 5, In Texas Tom Brady led the New England Patriots on five straight scoring drives that equaled 31 straight points. The last touchdown wrapped up a 34-28 victory over the Atlanta Falcons in the first-ever overtime in the Super Bowl's 51-year history.
(AP, 2/6/17)
2017 Feb 5, Afghan officials said more than a 100 people have been killed in a series of avalanches triggered by days of heavy snowfall around the country, including 50 in one village, warning the death toll could rise still further.
(AFP, 2/5/17)
2017 Feb 5, The website of Austria's parliament was brought down for 20 minutes. A Turkish hackers' group, Aslan Neferler Tim (ANT), or Lion Soldiers Team, whose website says it defends the homeland, Islam, the nation and flag, without any party political links, claimed the attack.
(Reuters, 2/7/17)
2017 Feb 5, China’s state news agency Xinhua cited mayor Cai Qi as saying Beijing will intensify its battle against choking air pollution this year and aims to cut coal use by 30 percent.
(Reuters, 2/5/17)
2017 Feb 5, In eastern China a fire at the Zuxintang foot massage parlor killed 18 people and injured two others in Tiantai county, Zhejiang province.
(AP, 2/5/17)
2017 Feb 5, Egypt's top Islamic authority rejected the president's suggestion for legislation that would invalidate the practice of men verbally divorcing their wives.
(AP, 2/5/17)
2017 Feb 5, Iran lifted a ban on US wrestlers, allowing them to take part in the Freestyle World Cup later this month in the Iranian city of Kermanshah. Media said the ban was lifted after the "discriminative restrictions" on Iranian nationals traveling to the US was suspended by a US federal judge.
(AP, 2/5/17)
2017 Feb 5, Israel's Supreme Court gave a small group of settlers in the occupied West Bank a brief respite from a demolition order, giving them until March 5 to leave.
(AFP, 2/5/17)
2017 Feb 5, Italy's premier emphasized the significance of NATO and outlined a new agreement between Italy and Libya to fight human trafficking during a phone call with U.S. President Donald Trump.
(AP, 2/5/17)
2017 Feb 5, In Japan about 200 protesters marched through the streets of Tokyo's Shinjuku district carrying banners to protest a hotel chain under fire for books its president wrote denying the Nanjing Massacre in wartime China ever happened. APA group founder and president, Toshio Motoya, has placed books of his revisionist views on history in every room of the company's 400-plus APA Hotels.
(Reuters, 2/5/17)
2017 Feb 5, A 50-meter concrete wall in the northern Kosovo city of Mitrovica was pulled down following an agreement between the government and the country's ethnic Serb minority. The Serbs, who do not recognize Kosovo as a state, started constructing the wall in December, saying it was to protect against a landslip.
(AP, 2/5/17)(Reuters, 2/5/17)
2017 Feb 5, Morocco’s Deputy Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita said his country will "never recognize" Western Sahara's independence despite rejoining the African Union after a decades-long dispute over the territory.
(AFP, 2/5/17)
2017 Feb 5, Myanmar police arrested a Buddhist monk in northern Rakhine state after finding 400,000 pills of methamphetamine in his car. A search of his monastery turned up 4.2 million pills along with a grenade and ammunition.
(SFC, 2/8/17, p.A2)
2017 Feb 5, The Philippine government derided Catholic bishops as "out of touch" after they used weekend sermons to attack a war on drugs they said had created a "reign of terror" for the poor.
(Reuters, 2/5/17)
2017 Feb 5, Romania's government repealed an emergency decree that decriminalizes some official misconduct following massive demonstrations and condemnation from abroad. Protests still raged on for a sixth straight day.
(AP, 2/5/17)(AFP, 2/5/17)
2017 Feb 5, Somalia's al-Shabab extremist group killed four men accused of spying for the CIA and the Kenya and Somali governments. The killings were carried out in a public square in Jamame, Lower Jubba region.
(AP, 2/6/17)
2017 Feb 5, Turkish police detained 448 suspected Islamic State group members in nationwide raids just over a month after an attack on an Istanbul nightclub claimed by the jihadists.
(AFP, 2/5/17)
2017 Feb 5, Ukraine's military says two soldiers were wounded in fighting with rebels in the separatist east, but that artillery attacks were significantly lower after a week in which fighting surged.
(AP, 2/5/17)
2018 Feb 5, US Pres. Donald Trump attacked Britain's National Health Service. The tweet came after thousands of people marched through central London on Feb. 3 in support of the NHS, which is straining under the weight of winter demand. British officials reacted angrily to President Donald Trump's stark criticism of the NHS.
(AFP, 2/5/18)(AP, 2/5/18)
2018 Feb 5, In California Kern County Superior Court Judge David Lampe ruled that the owner of a Bakersfield bakery had a free-speech right to turn away a lesbian couple who wanted a cake to celebrate their marriage.
(SFC, 2/8/18, p.D2)
2018 Feb 5, In Michigan former sports Dr. Larry Nassar was sentenced to a third prison term of 40 to 125 years for molesting young athletes at an elite Michigan training center.
(SFC, 2/6/18, p.A7)
2018 Feb 5, Software maker NVIDIA and German auto parts supplier Continental said they are teaming to build a self-driving vehicle system that will hit the market in 2021.
(AP, 2/5/18)
2018 Feb 5, It was reported that British convenience store operator EG Group is buying Cincinnati -based Kroger's convenience store unit for $2.15 billion as it expands into the US. The acquisition includes 66 locations in 18 states employing 11,000 workers.
(AP, 2/5/18)
2018 Feb 5, Alleged British computer hacker Lauri Love (32) won his appeal against extradition to the United States. US officials had requested Love's extradition on cyber-hacking charges for allegedly compromising government networks between October 2012 and October 2013 and stealing data. Love has Asperger's syndrome and a depressive illness. His lawyers said it would be "unjust and oppressive" to send him to the US to face trial.
(AP, 2/5/18)
2018 Feb 5, China released a further list of goods banned for export to North Korea, saying the items could be used to build weapons of mass destruction.
(Reuters, 2/5/18)
2018 Feb 5, In southern China gas leaking from a pipeline at a steel mill in Guangdong province killed eight people and injured ten others.
(SFC, 2/6/18, p.A2)
2018 Feb 5, In Congo DRC militia Chief Kalamba Dilondo, accused of waging a weeks-long terror campaign in the Kasai region, surrendered to authorities.
(AFP, 2/6/18)
2018 Feb 5, An Ethiopian court sentenced Bekele Gerba, secretary general of the opposition group Oromo Federalist Congress, to six months in jail for contempt of court because he raised his hand when addressed by the judge rather than standing.
(Reuters, 2/5/18)
2018 Feb 5, In southwestern Germany a family of four was found dead in Esslingen. Police said their house had elevated carbon monoxide levels.
(AP, 2/5/18)
2018 Feb 5, In Guinea a young man died in confrontations with security forces in the city of Kindia.
(Reuters, 2/7/18)
2018 Feb 5, In India survivors of female genital mutilation (FGM) called on the government to ban female genital mutilation, an age-old ritual practiced by the small Dawoodi Bohra Muslim sect in the country.
(AFP, 2/5/18)
2018 Feb 5, In Iran a man (35) wielding a machete was shot and arrested after trying to break into the presidential office building in Tehran.
(AP, 2/5/18)
2018 Feb 5, An Iraqi government spokesman said US forces have begun reducing their numbers in Iraq after Iraqi authorities declared "victory" over Islamic State.
(Reuters, 2/5/18)
2018 Feb 5, A Japanese military helicopter crashed in southwestern Japan, killing one of its two crewmembers and ripping the top floor off a house and setting it on fire.
(AP, 2/5/18)
2018 Feb 5, Two Kenyan television channels shut down by the government over their coverage of the political opposition resumed partial broadcasting, although a third channel remained off the air. Police teargassed demonstrators demanding the stations reopen as they tried to march on government offices.
(Reuters, 2/5/18)
2018 Feb 5, In Lebanon hundreds of Kurds protested against Turkey's military offensive in Syria's Kurdish enclave of Afrin.
(AFP, 2/5/18)
2018 Feb 5, Libya's UN-backed government in Tripoli condemned attacks against hundreds of displaced black Libyans known as Tawergha, who were still stranded in a camp after militiamen prevented them from returning home a day earlier.
(AP, 2/5/18)
2018 Feb 5, Maldives declared a state of emergency for 15 days after the government defied a Supreme Court ruling to release nine jailed opposition leaders.
(Reuters, 2/5/18)
2018 Feb 5, In Mexico two prosecution agents were kidnapped and forced to appear on a video by a drug gang. Their bodies were later found in in a car in Xalisco, a town in the Pacific coast state of Nayarit, which known for trafficking heroin to the USA.
(AP, 2/19/18)
2018 Feb 5, In Nepal a visiting UN rights official said Nepal's restrictions on woman migrating for work are discriminatory and inconsistent with international law. Nepal last year introduced a ban on women working as domestic helpers in the Gulf.
(AFP, 2/5/18)
2018 Feb 5, A 23-member advance team of North Koreans arrived in South Korea to prepare for the North's participation in the Pyeongchang Olympics.
(AP, 2/5/18)
2018 Feb 5, In Norway environmental groups launched an appeal after an Oslo court rejected their arguments that Norway's oil and gas exploration in the Arctic violates citizens' right to a clean environment.
(Reuters, 2/5/18)
2018 Feb 5, In southwestern Pakistan a bomb was planted near a garbage bin at a crowded intersection in the town of Panjgur and detonated remotely. Eight passers-by were wounded and one soon died.
(AP, 2/5/18)
2018 Feb 5, In Pakistan a Chinese man, Chen Zhu (45), working with a shipping company was shot dead in what police described as a targeted attack in Karachi.
(Reuters, 2/5/18)
2018 Feb 5, A Palestinian stabbed an Israeli man to death at a bus stop near a West Bank settlement before fleeing the scene.
(AP, 2/5/18)
2018 Feb 5, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte ordered an end to all foreign scientific research missions in a vast expanse of waters off the country's northeast and called on the military to "chase out" unauthorized vessels.
(AP, 2/6/18)
2018 Feb 5, Vladimir Shamanov, head of the Russian lower house of parliament's defense committee, said that Russia has deployed advanced nuclear-capable Iskander missiles to its Kaliningrad exclave on the Baltic Sea.
(Reuters, 2/5/18)
2018 Feb 5, The Agora rights group presented a report in Moscow on "the creeping criminalization of the internet," in which it registered 115,706 cases of restrictions on internet freedom last year. Agora warned that the country is slowly criminalizing internet use as the security service tightens its grip.
(AP, 2/5/18)
2018 Feb 5, In South Africa Cape Town city officials pushed back "Day Zero" – the day taps could run dry – by a month to May 11 from April 16, as farmers in the water intensive agriculture sector cut back consumption amid tight restrictions.
(Reuters, 2/6/18)
2018 Feb 5, In South Korea Samsung heir Lee Jae-yong was freed after an appeals court gave him a 2 ½-year suspended jail sentence for corruption in connection with a scandal that toppled the country's president.
(AP, 2/5/18)
2018 Feb 5, In Syria rebels under siege on the outskirts of Damascus pounded Damascus with rockets and mortar shells, a barrage that state media said has killed one person and wounded 13. Regime air strikes killed 30 civilians in the rebel-held Eastern Ghouta suburb near Damascus.
(AP, 2/5/18)(AFP, 2/5/18)(Reuters, 2/6/18)
2018 Feb 5, In northwestern Syria a Turkish soldier was killed in a rocket and mortar attack as Turkish forces were setting up a military post in Idlib province, the largest remaining stronghold of opposition to Pres. Bashar al-Assad.
(Reuters, 2/6/18)
2018 Feb 5, Thailand's former national police Commissioner Somyot Pumpanmuang acknowledged he borrowed $9.5 million from brothel owner Kampol Wirathepsuporn, who is wanted on human trafficking charges.
(AP, 2/6/18)
2018 Feb 5, Turkey's government said 573 people have been detained so far for social media posts and protests criticizing its military offensive in Syria.
(Reuters, 2/5/18)
2018 Feb 5, Turkey's army said it has set up a military post southwest of the Syrian city of Aleppo, the deepest position they have established so far inside northwest Syria under a deal with Russia and Iran aimed at reducing violence there.
(Reuters, 2/5/18)
2018 Feb 5, Ukrainian opposition leader Mikheil Saakashvili said an appeals court has rejected his appeal for protection against possible extradition in a decision he said was politically motivated.
(Reuters, 2/5/18)
2018 Feb 5, At the Vatican Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan met with Pope Francis to discuss the status of Jerusalem, human rights and refugees while Kurdish and Italian protesters clashed with police a short distance from Vatican City.
(AP, 2/5/18)
2018 Feb 5, A court in Vietnam gave a second life prison sentence to Trinh Xuan Thanh, a former executive at Vietnam's state oil giant, accused of corruption and who Germany said was kidnapped from there by Vietnamese agents last year.
(AP, 2/5/18)
2019 Feb 5, President Donald Trump announced during his State of the Union address that he intends to meet hold his second summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Feb. 27-28 in Vietnam.
(AP, 2/6/19)
2019 Feb 5, The US Coast Guard off-loaded nearly 35,000 pounds of cocaine it had seized from 21 separate vessels over the last three months in Pacific waters off Mexico and Central America.
(SFC, 2/6/19, p.A5)
2019 Feb 5, The US FBI said 169 people have been arrested as a result of an 11-day effort targeting human trafficking in the lead-up to the Super Bowl in Atlanta. The agency said nine juvenile victims were recovered.
(SFC, 2/6/19, p.A5)
2019 Feb 5, Apple said it has reached an agreement with French authorities over 10 years of back taxes, confirming information published by the French magazine L'Express. The magazine reported that the firm paid nearly 500 million euros ($570 million) to resolve the case in a confidential settlement reached in December.
(AFP, 2/5/19)
2019 Feb 5, Exxon Mobil and Qatar Petroleum announced that they will go ahead with a $10 billion project to export liquified natural gas from a plant on Texas Gulf Coast.
(SFC, 2/6/19, p.D3)
2019 Feb 5, In northern Afghanistan the Taliban launched a pre-dawn attack on an army base in Kunduz province, killing 26 members of the security forces.
(AP, 2/5/19)
2019 Feb 5, Asia welcomed the lunar Year of the Pig with visits to temples, family banquets and the world's biggest travel spree. Celebrations took place throughout the region, from Beijing and Seoul to Hanoi and Singapore.
(AP, 2/5/19)
2019 Feb 5, In Australia floodwater receded in Townsville, but overnight monsoonal rain created flash-flooding in communities to the north where authorities have warned residents to move to higher ground. Two bodies were reportedly found near a drain in the flood-stricken city of Townsville.
(AP, 2/5/19)
2019 Feb 5, Baku renewed its contract to host the Azerbaijan Grand Prix through 2023, prolonging the stay of a circuit which initially struggled for acceptance in Formula One but has since become a fan favorite.
(AP, 2/5/19)
2019 Feb 5, In Bangladesh Hollywood star Angelina Jolie visited sprawling camps that are home to 1 million Rohingya refugees. She urged Myanmar to show a genuine commitment to ending violence and displacement in its Rakhine state.
(AP, 2/5/19)
2019 Feb 5, Administrators KPMG announced that Canadian company Sunrise Records has agreed to buy ailing British music retailer HMV, safeguarding hundreds of jobs. HMV, launched by English composer Edward Elgar in 1921, collapsed close to bankruptcy just before the new year after weak Christmas sales and amid a declining market for CDs and DVDs.
(AFP, 2/5/19)
2019 Feb 5, Central African Republic's government initialed a peace deal with 14 armed groups following unprecedented talks aimed at ending more than five years of conflict.
(AP, 2/5/19)
2019 Feb 5, In southern China five people were killed after an explosion at an illegal fireworks stand. The operator of the stand in the southern region of Guangxi was soon arrested on for causing an accident through the use of dangerous articles.
(AP, 2/10/19)
2019 Feb 5, The IMF said it has approved a $2 billion loan payment to Egypt, the latest in the country's three-year aid program.
(AP, 2/6/19)
2019 Feb 5, In France a suspected arson attack on a Paris residential building that left at least 10 people dead. A suspect was detained after she allegedly tried to torch a car nearby.
(AP, 2/5/19)
2019 Feb 5, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras visited Turkey where he will meet Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for talks to ease tensions over bilateral disputes and the long-running Cyprus problem.
(AFP, 2/5/19)
2019 Feb 5, Indonesian police found 193 Bangladeshis locked up in a shop house in Medan on the island of Sumatra, after human traffickers had lured them with the promise of getting them to Malaysia. Some of the group had been held by the traffickers for three months.
(Reuters, 2/7/19)
2019 Feb 5, Iran ruled out linkage between a new EU mechanism to trade with Tehran bypassing US sanctions and an anti-money laundering bill.
(AFP, 2/5/19)
2019 Feb 5, The Jerusalem District Prosecutor's Office said that Ilan Levy-Neumand, a dual French-Israeli citizen and resident of a West Bank settlement, was arrested and that prosecutors petitioned the court for his extradition. In 2010, Levy-Neumand was convicted in absentia by a French court for sexual offenses against eight girls and sentenced to 15 years in prison. He fled France for Israel after his arrest in 2002.
(AP, 2/5/19)
2019 Feb 5, Pakistan's PM Imran Khan and President Arif Alvi offered support for rebels in the Indian part of the disputed Himalayan territory of Kashmir as the country staged rallies marking the annual Day of Solidarity with Kashmir.
(AP, 2/5/19)
2019 Feb 5, It was reported that activists in Russia are expressing alarm about more than 100 whales that are being kept in small, crowded pools in what environmentalists are calling a "whale prison," off the coast of the Russian Far East.
(AP, 2/5/19)
2019 Feb 5, In the Solomon Islands the MV Solomon Trader ran aground on a reef off Rennell Island, near the largest raised coral atoll in the world, a UNESCO World Heritage site, and soon began leaking oil. Experts later estimated that over 8 tons of oil had leaked into the sea and that more than 660 tons of oil remained onboard. The ship was refloated on May 11 after leaking a huge amount of oil into the sea.
(SFC, 3/2/19, p.A2)(AFP, 5/11/19)
2019 Feb 5, In Sri Lanka food importers and wholesalers shut their shops in Colombo to demand the government resolve a "work to rule" action by custom officials at the island nation's main seaport.
(AP, 2/5/19)
2019 Feb 5, Turkey put up bounties for the capture of eight Turkish servicemen who fled to Greece following a failed coup in 2016.
(AP, 2/5/19)
2019 Feb 5, Pope Francis concluded his historic visit to the Arabian Peninsula with the first-ever papal Mass in the birthplace of Islam. Authorities in the United Arab Emirates said some 180,000 people attended the Mass.
(AP, 2/5/19)
2019 Feb 5, Pope Francis said Catholic priests and bishops had been sexually abusing nuns, and that his predecessor Benedict XVI had dissolved a religious order of women because of "sexual slavery on the part of priests and the founder".
(AFP, 2/6/19)
2019 Feb 5, Some Zimbabwean teachers stayed at home while others went slow on the job as an indefinite strike at state schools got off to a patchy start amid fears of further intimidation by security forces who cracked down hard on protests last month.
(Reuters, 2/5/19)
2019 Feb 5, Officials in Key West, Florida, voted to ban sunscreens containing two ingredients (oxybenzone and octinoxate) that scientists have said are harmful to the coral reef ecosystem. The ban on would begin Jan 1, 2021.
(SFC, 2/7/19, p.A7)
2020 Feb 5, Senate Republicans voted to acquit Trump of abuse of power for pressing Ukraine to investigate political rival Joe Biden, a contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, and of obstructing a congressional investigation of the matter. The acquittal was Trump's biggest victory yet over his Democratic foes in Congress.
(Reuters, 2/6/20)
2020 Feb 5, A US federal judge prohibited US immigration authorities from relying on databases deemed faulty to ask law enforcement agencies to hold people in custody, a setback for the Trump administration that threatens to hamper how it carries out arrests. The ruling applies only to the Central District of California, where state law already sharply limits the extent to which state and local law enforcement agencies can honor requests from ICE. But the district encompasses ICE's Pacific Enforcement Response Center in Laguna Niguel, which makes requests around-the-clock to law enforcement agencies in 42 states and two US territories.
(AP, 2/7/20)
2020 Feb 5, The US Department of Homeland Security said hat it would no longer let New York residents enroll in its “trusted traveler" programs because of a new state law that blocked federal immigration officials from accessing motor vehicle records.
(AP, 2/6/20)
2020 Feb 5, FBI Director Chris Wray said that Russia is engaged in “information warfare" heading into the 2020 presidential election. He said law enforcement has not seen ongoing efforts by Russia to target America's election infrastructure. Wray also told the House Judiciary Committee that the threat of far-right domestic violent extremism has risen to a "national threat priority" for 2020, posing a "steady threat of violence and economic harm" to the US.
(AP, 2/5/20)(The Independent, 2/7/20)
2020 Feb 5, Human Rights Watch reported that at least 138 people deported from the US to El Salvador in recent years were subsequently killed.
(SFC, 2/6/20, p.A2)
2020 Feb 5, Merck & Co Inc said it will spin off its women's health, biosimilar drugs and older products into a separate publicly traded company as it tightens its focus on growth drivers like cancer drug Keytruda and vaccines.
(Reuters, 2/5/20)
2020 Feb 5, American film star Kirk Douglas (b.1916) died. His films included "The Strange Loves of Martha Ivers" (1946), "Champion) (1949), "The Bad and the Beautiful" (1952), "Lust for Life" (1956), "Spartacus" (1960) and "Lonely Are the Brave" (1962). His autobiography was titled "The Ragman's Son" (1988).
(SFC, 2/6/20, p.C3)
2020 Feb 5, Cyprus said it is preparing new legislation to curb the large number of sham marriages that are being conducted to help individuals obtain residency permits and potentially easier access to the European Union.
(AP, 2/5/20)
2020 Feb 5, At least two people died in Slovakia and the Czech Republic as strong winds, heavy rain and snow battered central and eastern Europe.
(AP, 2/5/20)
2020 Feb 5, In Germany Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party lined up with the far right Alternative for Germany (AfD) for the first time ever to elect a state leader in Thuringia, throwing the country’s political establishment into disarray.
(AP, 2/5/20)
2020 Feb 5, German Chancellor Angela Merkel arrived in South Africa to discuss trade, investment and energy issues with Berlin's largest trading partner in Africa.
(AP, 2/5/20)
2020 Feb 5, German sportswear company Adidas said it was temporarily shutting a "considerable" number of its stores in China due to the coronavirus outbreak.
(Reuters, 2/5/20)
2020 Feb 5, Senior Iraqi military officials said its government has told the military not to seek assistance from the US-led coalition in operations against the Islamic State group.
(AP, 2/5/20)
2020 Feb 5, In southern Iraq at least eight anti-government protesters were shot dead and 52 were wounded in clashes in Najaf with followers of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
(AP, 2/6/20)(AP, 2/10/20)
2020 Feb 5, Israeli forces shot and killed a Palestinian (17) during clashes with demonstrators in the West Bank, the first death since tensions rose following the release of President Donald Trump's Mideast plan.
(AP, 2/5/20)
2020 Feb 5, Organizers said Italian fashion house Prada is helping to fund a United Nations program that will enlist high school students from 10 cities to spread awareness about how humans impact the world's oceans.
(AP, 2/5/20)
2020 Feb 5, It was reported that at least 10 people aboard a cruise ship moored in Japan have tested positive for the novel coronavirus. The Diamond Princess will remain under quarantine in Yokohama with everyone on board for at least 14 days. Three more cruise ship passengers were soon diagnosed with the virus in Japan for a total of 64 on board the ship.
(Good Morning America, 2/5/20)(AP, 2/7/20)
2020 Feb 5, In the Netherlands the University of Maastricht disclosed that it had paid hackers a ransom of 30 bitcoin -- at the time worth 200,000 euros ($220,000) -- to unblock its computer systems, including email and computers, after an attack that unfolded on Dec. 24.
(Reuters, 2/5/20)
2020 Feb 5, Aid groups in Syria said cold weather, disease and a lack of shelter and medicine threatened hundreds of thousands of civilians as they fled fighting in Idlib province, in one of the biggest upheavals of the country's nine-year civil war.
(Reuters, 2/5/20)
2020 Feb 5, Turkey's Pres. Recep Tayyip Erdogan threatened to use force against Syrian government forces if they don't pull back to an earlier cease-fire line in northern Syria by the end of the month.
(AP, 2/5/20)
2020 Feb 5, In eastern Turkey successive avalanches over the last 24 hours killed at least 38 people and trapped dozens more. The death toll soon climbed to 41. The double avalanche left 84 people injured.
(AP, 2/5/20)(AP, 2/6/20)
2020 Feb 5, In Turkey a Pegasus Boeing 737 skidded off a runway in Istanbul and broke apart while landing in bad weather. Three people were killed and 179 injured.
(SFC, 2/6/20, p.A2)(SSFC, 2/9/20, p.A3)
2020 Feb 5, It was reported that Pope Francis has defrocked the Argentine priest, Roberto Juan Yannuzzi, after a four-year investigation determined he had sex with adults under his authority, absolved them of the sin during confession and otherwise abused his power. The pope’s decision was made public this week in a statement by the archbishop of La Plata, Argentina.
(AP, 2/5/20)
2020 Feb 5, In Zimbabwe some 20 miners were trapped underground after a mine shaft collapsed. At least two bodies were recovered.
(AP, 2/6/20)
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