Today in History - February 8
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For Asia History: https://www.asiaobserver.org/category/news/on-this-day-in-asian-history
412 Feb 8, St. Proclus, Patriarch of Constantinople, was born. [see 411]
(HN, 2/8/98)
421 Feb 8, Flavius Constantine became emperor Constantine III of Roman Empire West.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1250 Feb 8-1250 Feb 11, The Battle of Al Mansurah was fought between crusaders led by Louis IX, King of France, and Ayyubid forces led by Emir Fakhr-ad-Din Yussuf, Faris ad-Din Aktai and Baibars al-Bunduqdari.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Al_Mansurah)
1400 Feb 8, The Knights of the Cross with the assistance of Vytautas and the hercog of Lotaringia defeated Samogitia for the 1st time.
(LHC, 2/8/03)
1577 Feb 8, Robert Burton (d.1640), writer, Anglican clergyman (Anatomy of Melancholy), was born. "A mere madness, to live like a wretch and die rich."
(AP, 8/19/98)(MC, 2/8/02)
1586 Feb 8, Jacob Praetorius, composer, was born.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1587 Feb 8, Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots (1560-67), was beheaded at age 44 in Fotheringhay Castle for her alleged part in the conspiracy to usurp Elizabeth I. In 2004 Jane Dunn authored "Elizabeth and Mary: Cousins, Rivals, Queens." In 2006 studies identified an oil painting of Mary as the only one made of Mary as queen.
(HN, 2/8/99)(PCh, 1992, p.203)(USAT, 2/5/04, p.5D)(SFC, 8/18/06, p.E2)
1600 Feb 8, Vatican sentenced scholar Giordano Bruno to death.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1601 Feb 8, The armies of Earl Robert Devereux of Essex drew into London.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1612 Feb 8, Samuel Butler (d.1680), England, poet, satirist (Hudibras) was baptized.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1622 Feb 8, King James I disbanded the English parliament.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1672 Feb 8, Isaac Newton read his 1st optics paper before Royal Society in London.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1690 Feb 8, Some 200 French and Indian troops burned Schenectady, NY, and massacred about 60 people to avenge Iraquois raids on Canada.
(AH, 2/05, p.17)
1691 Feb 8, Carlo di Girolamo Rainaldi (79), Italian architect, composer, died.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1693 Feb 8, A charter was granted for the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Va.
(AP, 2/8/99)
1709 Feb 8, Giuseppi Torelli (50), Italian composer, died.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1712 Feb 8, L. Joseph de Montcalm de Saint-Veran, French general in America, was born. [see Feb 29]
(MC, 2/8/02)
1725 Feb 8, Peter I (52) "the Great" Romanov, czar of Russia (1682-1725), died. [see Jan 28]
(MC, 2/8/02)
1740 Feb 8, Clement XII (87), [Lorenzo Corsini], blind Pope (1730-40), died.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1741 Feb 8, Andre-Ernest-Modeste Gretry, composer, was born.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1749 Feb 8, Jan van Huysum (66), Dutch still life painter, died.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1776 Feb 8, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's "Stella" premiered in Hamburg.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1789 Feb 8, Ludwig Wilhelm Maurer, composer, was born.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1796 Feb 8, China’s Emperor Qianlong (1711-1799) abdicated in favor of his son. Despite his voluntary abdication, from 1796 to 1799 Qianlong continued to hold on to power and the Jiaqing Emperor (d.1820) ruled only in name.
(Econ, 2/5/11, p.95)(Econ, 2/5/11, p.95)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qianlong_Emperor)
1802 Feb 8, Simon Willard patented a banjo clock.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1807 Feb 8, At Eylau, Poland, Napoleon’s Marshal Pierre Agureau attacked Russian forces in a heavy snowstorm. Like Napoleon, to whom he is most often compared, Alexsandr Suvorov believed that opportunities in battle are created by fortune but exploited by intelligence, experience and an intuitive eye. To him, mastery of the art and science of war was not, therefore, purely instinctive. Napoleon’s forces ran low on supplies at Eylau and ate their horses.
(HN, 2/7/97)(WSJ, 9/21/05, p.A8)
1817 Feb 8, Richard Stoddert Ewell (d.1872(), Lt Gen (Confederate Army), was born.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1819 Feb 8, John Ruskin (d.1900), writer, critic, artist, Gothic Revivalist (Pre-Raphaelite), was born. His work included "Modern Painter" and "The Stones of Venice."
(WSJ, 3/6/00, p.A28)(MC, 2/8/02)
1820 Feb 8, General William T. Sherman (d.1891), Union general in America's Civil War, was born. His famous "March to the Sea" changed the face of modern warfare.
(HN, 2/8/99)(AP, 4/7/99)(MC, 2/8/02)
1828 Feb 8, French author Jules Verne (d.1905) was born. He is considered the father of science fiction. Many of his 19th-century works forecast amazing scientific feats--feats that were actually carried out in the 20th century--with uncanny accuracy. Verne's 1865 book From the Earth to the Moon told the story of a space ship that is launched from Florida to the moon and that returns to Earth by landing in the ocean. Something of a scientist and traveler himself, Verne's 1870 work about a submarine, "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea," and "Around the World in Eighty Days" also foretold technological advances that seemed fantastic at the time.
(HNPD, 2/8/99)
1834 Feb 8, Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleyev (d.1907), Russian chemist, was born. He formulated the periodic table of elements.
(V.D.-H.K.p.324)(HN, 2/8/01)
1837 Feb 8, The Senate selected Richard Mentor Johnson as the vice president of the United States. Johnson was nominated for vice president on the Democratic ticket with Martin Van Buren in 1836. When Johnson failed to receive a majority of the popular vote, the election was thrown into the Senate for the first and only time. Johnson won the election in the Senate by a vote of 33 to 16.
(AP, 2/8/99)(HNQ, 3/8/99)
1851 Feb 8, Kate (Katherine O'Flaherty ) Chopin (d.1904), American novelist, short story writer, was born. Her work included "The Awakening." She wrote tales of love and passion that presented women testing the boundaries of social convention. "There are some people who leave impressions not so lasting as the imprint of an oar upon the water."
(AP, 3/11/99)(SFEC, 11/14/99, BR p.5)(HN, 2/8/01)
1861 Feb 8, Delegates from seceded states adopted a provisional Confederate Constitution in Montgomery, Ala.
(HN, 2/7/97)(MC, 2/8/02)
1862 Feb 8, Union troops under Gen. Ambrose Burnside defeated a Confederate defense force at the Battle of Roanoke Island, N.C.
(HN, 2/8/99)
1865 Feb 8, Confederate raider William Quantrill and men attacked a group of Federal wagons at New Market, Kentucky.
(HN, 2/8/00)
1865 Feb 8, Martin Robinson Delany became the 1st black major in US army.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1871 Feb 8, Elections were held in France, unknown to most of the nation's population.
(www.marxists.org/history/france/paris-commune/timeline.htm)
1876 Feb 8, A trial began for Pres. Ulysses S. Grant's private secretary, Gen. Orville E. Babcock. He was acquitted after 18 days of involvement in the Whiskey Ring, a conspiracy among distillers, revenue collectors, and high federal officials to avoid taxation through fraudulent reports on whiskey production. 230 indictments were secured, but no convictions were made. Grant helped Babcock secure an acquittal for his part in the ring. This affair contributed to the reputation for corruption that Grant's administrations acquired.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orville_E._Babcock)
1878 Feb 8, Martin Buber, German-Israeli philosopher, theologist (Ich und Du), was born.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1883 Feb 8, Louis Waterman began experiments to invent fountain pen.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1886 Feb 8, Two rival leftist organizations, the London United Workmen's Committee and H.F. Hyndman's revolutionary Social Democratic Federation, gave notice of their intention to hold meetings simultaneously in Trafalgar Square. A brief riot occurred and sometimes became referred to as Black Monday.
(www.sparknotes.com/drama/majorbarbara/section10.rhtml)
1887 Feb 8, US Senator Henry Dawes sponsored the Dawes Severalty Act that authorized the survey of Indian territories in the West, in order that the commonly held tribal lands might be broken up into property allotments of 40 to 160 acres. The Dawes Act gave citizenship to Indians living apart from their tribe. Section Six stated that upon completion of a Land Patent process, the allotment holder will become a United States citizen and "be entitled to all the rights, privileges, and immunities of such citizens." Native Americans in general did not become citizens until the Snyder Act of 1924.
(NG, 5/95, p.91)(HN, 2/7/97)(AP, 6/2/97)
1887 Feb 8, The Allotment Act (Dawes Act) tried to break up tribal land ownership and awarded individual allotments. Trust accounts were established for both Indian tribes and individual American Indians. The lands were then held in trust, managed by the government and leased out to gas, oil and timber companies. The status of the accounts brought to question in 1996 when the Bureau of Indian Affairs could not account for about 15% of an estimated $450 million held for some 300,000 Indians. In 1999 a federal judge cited Sec. Bruce Babbitt and Robert Rubin in contempt for official deceit in accounting for the trusts that involved some 500,000 Indians.
(SFC, 6/11/96, p.A12)(SFC, 2/23/99, p.A1)(WSJ, 5/3/99, p.A24)
1887 Feb 8, Luke Short, owner of the classy Fort Worth White Elephant saloon, engaged in a gunfight with Longhair Jim Courtright, gunfighter extraordinaire. Short won.
(HT, 4/97, p.51)
1887 Feb 8, Aurora Ski Club of Red Wing, Minn., became the 1st US ski club.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1892 Feb 8, Fritz Todt, German Reichs minister (Organization Todt) succeeded by Albert Speer, was born.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1894 Feb 8, The US Enforcement Act was repealed making it easier to disenfranchise blacks.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1895 Feb 8, Tchaikovsky's "Swan Lake," premiered in Petersburg.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1896 Feb 8, Georges Feydeau's "Le Dindon," premiered in Paris.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1898 Feb 8, John Ames Sherman patented the 1st envelope folding & gumming machine in Mass.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1900 Feb 8, British General Buller was beaten at Ladysmith, South Africa as the British fled over the Tugela River.
(HN, 2/8/99)
1904 Feb 8, The Russo-Japanese War began. In a surprise attack at Port Arthur, Korea, the Japanese disabled seven Russian warships. During the war, Russia suffered a series of stunning defeats to Japan; the fighting ended with an agreement mediated by President Theodore Roosevelt, who went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts.
(HN, 2/7/97)(AP, 2/8/04)
1905 Feb 8, A cyclone hit Tahiti and adjacent islands killing some 10,000 people.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1906 Feb 8, Chester F. Carlson, physicist, was born. He invented xerography, the electrostatic dry-copy process.
(HN, 2/8/01)
1906 Feb 8, Henry Roth, writer, was born. His work included "Call it Sleep."
(HN, 2/8/01)
1907 Feb 8, Revolution broke out in Argentina.
(HN, 2/7/97)
1910 Feb 8, The Boy Scouts of America was incorporated in Washington, D.C. by William D. Boyce, a wealthy Chicago publisher who learned of the "scouts" on a trip to England the previous year.
(NPR, 7/26/95)(HN, 2/8/98)(AP, 2/8/99)
1910 Feb 8, James W. Coffroth (1872-1943), SF boxing promoter, arrived in SF from London winning a bet that he could make the trip in ten days.
(www.sandiegohistory.org/journal/v55-4/v55-4levanetz.pdf)
1911 Feb 8, Elizabeth Bishop, poet, was born.
(HN, 2/8/01)
1911 Feb 8, Victor Herbert's opera "Natoma," premiered in NYC.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1911 Feb 8, US helped overthrow President Miguel Devila of Honduras.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1915 Feb 8, D.W. Griffith's silent movie epic about the Civil War, "The Birth of a Nation," premiered at Clune's Auditorium in Los Angeles. It was based Thomas Dixon’s novel “The Clansman."
(AP, 2/8/99)(SSFC, 10/25/15, DB p.50)
1916 Feb 8, Demonstrators protested against food shortages in Berlin.
(HN, 2/7/97)
1917 Feb 8, The British steamship Mantola was torpedoed by a German submarine off the coast of Ireland. All but seven crew members, who drowned when their lifeboat overturned, were rescued by the HMS Laburnum. The ship sank the next day. The British Ministry of War Transport paid a War Risk Insurance Claim for Ł110,000 (in 1917 value) for silver that was on board when the ship sank. In 2011 Odyssey Marine Exploration discovered the ship.
(SFC, 10/11/11, p.A6)(www.shipwreck.net/ssmantola.php)
1918 Feb 8, The World War I first edition of The Stars and Stripes, the weekly newspaper of the American Expeditionary Forces, was published in Paris, France. It was produced weekly by an all-military staff to serve the doughboys under General of the Armies John J. "Black Jack" Pershing. Some of its staff went on to journalistic fame, including Pvt. Harold Ross, who later became the founder and editor of The New Yorker magazine, and sports writer Lt. Grantland Rice. The first paper called The Stars and Stripes was a product of the Civil War, put out by four Union soldiers in 1861. Using the facilities of a captured newspaper plant in Bloomfield, Missouri, they ran off a one-page paper that made just one appearance.
(http://ww2.pstripes.osd.mil/aboutnew.html)
1920 Feb 8, Swiss men voted against women's suffrage.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1921 Feb 8, Pjotr A. Kropotkin (78), Russian anarchist and son of Prince Alexei Petrovich Kropotkin, died. Books by Peter Kropotkin included “Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution" (1902)
(www.en.wikipedia.org)
1921 Feb 8, The Turkish Parliament gave the city of Antep the title Gazi ("victorious warrior" – “warrior of the faith"), a day before the city surrendered to the French, in recognition of the valor of its inhabitants during the Turkish War of Independence. Gaziantep, amongst the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world, had withstood a 10-month siege by French forces.
(Econ, 10/23/10, SR p.14)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaziantep)
1922 Feb 8, President Harding had a radio installed in the White House.
(AP, 2/8/99)
1923 Feb 8, German NSDAP (Nazi Party) Volkischer Beobachter newspaper became a daily.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1924 Feb 8, The gas chamber was used for the first time to execute a murderer. Major D.A. Turner of the US Medical Corps used hydrocyanic gas on an alleged Chinese Tong member named Gee Jon at the Nevada State Prison in Carson City, Nev.
(HN, 2/8/98)(SFC, 6/27/98, p.E4)(AP, 2/8/99)
1925 Feb 8, Jack Lemmon, actor (Days of Wine & Roses, Missing), was born in Boston, Mass.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1925 Feb 8, Kaufman's & Berlin's "Cocoanuts," premiered in NYC.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1925 Feb 8, Marcus Garvey entered federal prison in Atlanta.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1926 Feb 8, Neal Cassaday, writer, counterculture proponent, was born.
(HN, 2/8/01)
1926 Feb 8, Sean O'Casey's "Plough & Stars" opened at Abbey Theater Dublin.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1926 Feb 8, German Reichstag decided to apply for League of Nations membership.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1927 Feb 8, Stanley Baker, actor (Concrete Jungle, Zorro, Zulu), was born in Ferndale, Wales.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1928 Feb 8, 1st transatlantic TV image was received at Hartsdale, NY.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1928 Feb 8, Scottish inventor J. Blaird demonstrated color TV.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1931 Feb 8, James Dean, stage and film actor who personified "cool" for young people in the 1950s, was born in Marion, In. His films were Rebel Without a Cause, East of Eden and Giant.
(HN, 2/8/99)(MC, 2/8/02)
1932 Feb 8, Vincent "Mad Dog" Coll, mobster, was killed by Dutch Schultz gang.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1933 Feb 8, Elly Ameling, soprano (Ilya-Idomeneo), was born in Rotterdam, Holland.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1933 Feb 8, The 1st flight of all-metal Boeing 247.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1935 Feb 8, Max Liebermann (b.1847), German impressionist painter, graphic artist, died in Berlin. He was associated with several artists’ organizations including the Berlin Secession.
(www.xs4all.nl/~androom/index.htm?biography/p011740.htm)
1936 Feb 8, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru followed Gandhi as chairman of India Congress Party.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1940 Feb 8, Ted Koppel, American television journalist, was born in Lancashire, England, as Edward James Koppel. His family came to the United States in 1953, and he was naturalized as a US citizen in 1963.
(http://www.biography.com/articles/Ted-Koppel-9368366)
1941 Feb 8, Japanese armored barges crossed the Strait of Johore to attack Singapore.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1942 Feb 8, Terry Melcher, Rip Chords, Doris Day's son, was born.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1942 Feb 8, Congress advised FDR that Americans of Japanese descent should be locked up en masse so they wouldn't oppose the US war effort.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1942 Feb 8, The Japanese landed on Singapore. By 1941, Gen. Yamashita was the commanding general of Japan’s Twenty-Fifth Army. His plans for taking Singapore were already underway.
(HN, 2/7/97)
1943 Feb 8, British General Wingate led a guerrilla force of "Chindits" behind the Japanese lines in Burma. Detachment 101’s support of Maj. Gen. Orde Wingate’s Chindits and Maj. Gen. Frank Merrill’s Marauders was crucial to the Allied success in Burma and to the eventual victory in Southeast Asia.
(HN, 2/8/98)(www.chindits.info/)
1943 Feb 8, Red Army recaptured Kursk.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1945 Feb 8, Allied air attack on Goch, Kleef, Kalkar, Reichswald.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1946 Feb 8, Premier Salazar of Portugal forbade opposition parties.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1949 Feb 8, In Hungary Cardinal Mindszenty was sentenced to life imprisonment for high treason.
(TOH, 1982, p.1949)(EWH, 1968, p.1188)
1952 Feb 8, Elizabeth was formally proclaimed Queen of England following the Feb 6 death of her father, King George VI. Elizabeth was crowned Jun 2, 1953.
(HN, 2/8/98)(WSJ, 2/13/02, p.A21)
1953 Feb 8, Mary Steenburgen, actress (Parenthood, Time After Time), was born in Newport, Ark.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1954 Feb 8, Caryl Whittier Chessman (34), on death row at San Quentin for kidnapping and attempted rape, had his 1st book accepted for publication: "Cell 2455, Death Row." He was executed May 2, 1960.
(SFC, 2/6/04, p.E12)
1955 Feb 8, John Grisham, writer (Client, Firm, Pelican Brief), was born.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1955 Feb 8, Malenkov resigned as USSR premier. Bulganin replaced him.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1956 Feb 8, U.S. banned the launching of weather balloons because of Soviet complaints.
(HN, 2/7/97)
1959 Feb 8, William J. "Wild Bill" Donovan (76), Office Strategic Services, died.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1960 Feb 8, Congress opened hearings into payola.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1962 Feb 8, The U.S. Defense Department reported the creation of the Military Assistance Command in South Vietnam.
(HN, 2/7/97)
1963 Feb 8, In Iraq the Baath Party first took power. Right-wing Baathists succeeded in mounting a coup and executed PM Gen. Abdel Karim Qassim. Abdul Salam Arif came to power. This was followed by a massacre of thousands of peasants, communists and trade unionists. The Arab Baath Socialist Party pulled off the coup and ruled Iraq for 9 months.
(HNQ, 6/20/99)(SFC, 8/6/99, p.D4)(AP, 5/26/03)(AP, 7/13/03)(NW, 9/8/03, p.32)
1964 Feb 8, Peter Shaffer's "Royal Hunt of the Sun," premiered in London.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1965 Feb 8, Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson called for the development and protection of a balanced system of trails to help protect and enhance the quality of the outdoor experience.
(PCTA, 4/08)
1965 Feb 8, Eastern DC-7B crashed into the Atlantic off Jones Beach, NJ, and 84 people were killed.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1965 Feb 8, South Vietnamese bombed the North Vietnamese communications center at Vinh Linh.
(HN, 2/7/97)
1966 Feb 8, In Malaysia the Tugu Negara (national monument) was completed and officially opened by the Sultan Ismail Nasiruddin Shah, the head of state. The sculpture was designed by Austria-born American sculptor Felix de Weldon (1907-2003). It was proclaimed a memorial park dedicated to the 11,000 people who died during the 12-year Malayan Emergency (1948-1960). Thereafter, a wreath-laying ceremony takes place at the monument every July 31 on Warriors Day.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tugu_Negara)
1968 Feb 8, George Wallace, the pro-segregation governor of Alabama, entered the US presidential race. Wallace ran as a third-party candidate. He was mainly popular in the deep south, but he was able to attract 14% of the popular vote in the November election.
(HN, 2/7/97)(www.answers.com/topic/george-wallace)
1968 Feb 8, Robert F. Kennedy said that the US cannot win the Vietnam War.
(HN, 2/8/98)
1968 Feb 8, At South Carolina State 3 black students were killed in a confrontation with highway patrolmen in Orangeburg, during a civil rights protest against a whites-only bowling alley. Nearly 50 were injured in the Orangeburg Massacre during confrontations with the National Guard. In 2001 Gov. Jim Hodges voiced his regret over the massacre. In 1970 Jack Nelson (1929-2009), LA Times reporter, authored “The Orangeburg Massacre."
(SFEC, 2/22/98, BR p.8)(AP, 2/8/99)(SFC, 2/9/01, p.A3)(SFC, 10/22/09, p.D6)
1968 Feb 8, In South Carolina Lee Roy Martin, called the editor of a local newspaper, and told him where to find the bodies of two women he'd dumped in the woods. He threatened to kill even more women until he was "shot down like the dog I am." Clues in the area led to Martin's arrest. Martin, dubbed the “Gaffney Strangler," was convicted of four murders and sentenced to four life terms. In 1972, he was stabbed to death in his cell.
(AP, 7/4/09)
1969 Feb 8, The last edition of Saturday Evening Post was published. It had begun publishing in 1869.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Saturday_Evening_Post)
1969 Feb 8, A meteor shower hit Mexico creating a luminance in the night sky as bright as day. A meteorite weighing over 1 ton fell in Chihuahua, Mexico.
(http://wapi.isu.edu/geo_pgt/Mod05_Meteorites_Ast/mod5.htm)(TMP, KCTS-Video, 1987)
1969 Feb 8, Mexican graphic artist Leopoldo Mendez (b.1902) died. His work mostly focused on engraving for illustrations and other print work generally connected to his political and social activism.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopoldo_M%C3%A9ndez)
1971 Feb 8, NASDAQ, an automated unit of the National Association of Securities Dealers, went live under the leadership of Gordon Macklin (1928-2007).
(WSJ, 2/3/07, p.A8)(Econ., 12/19/20, p.98)
1971 Feb 8, South Vietnamese ground forces, backed by American air power, began Operation Lam Son 719, a 17,000 man incursion into Laos that ended three weeks later in a disaster.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Lam_Son_719)
1973 Feb 8, Pres. Nixon appointed Daniel Patrick Moynihan (1927-2003) ambassador to India.
(SFC, 11/7/98, p.A2)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Ambassador_to_India)
1973 Feb 8, Senate leaders named seven members of a select committee to investigate the Watergate scandal, including the chairman, Sam J. Ervin Jr., D-N.C.
(AP, 2/8/99)
1973 Feb 8, Max Yasgur (53), owner Woodstock festival farmland, died of a heart attack. In 1969 his dairy farm was the site of the Woodstock Music and Arts Festival. He had offered his land for the festival over the objection of local officials.
(http://www.deadoraliveinfo.com/dead.nsf/ynames-nf/Yasgur+Max)
1974 Feb 8, The three-man crew of "Skylab" space station returned to Earth after spending 84 days in space.
(AP, 2/8/99)
1974 Feb 8, Fritz Zwicky (b.1898), Swiss-US astronomer, died. In 1934 he and Walter Baade coined the term "supernova" and hypothesized that they were the transition of normal stars into neutron stars, as well as the origin of cosmic rays.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_Zwicky)
1975 Feb 8, 1800 Unification church couples were wed in Korea.
(www.signaturebooks.com/excerpts/unification.htm)
1975 Feb 8, Martyn Green (b.1899), English actor (Gilbert & Sullivan, Mikado), died.
(http://math.boisestate.edu/GaS/whowaswho/G/GreenMartyn.htm)
1978 Feb 8, The deliberations of the Senate were broadcast on radio for the first time as members opened debate on the Panama Canal treaties.
(AP, 2/8/99)
1978 Feb 8, The BBC TV show Grange Hill, a children’s drama created by Phil Redmond, made its debut.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grange_Hill)
1979 Feb 8, In the Republic of the Congo Denis Sassou Nguesso (b.1943), a member of the Mbochi minority, began 13 years of rule as a Marxist dictator.
(WSJ, 12/31/98, p.A10)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denis_Sassou-Nguesso)
1980 Feb 8, President Jimmy Carter unveiled a plan to re-introduce draft registration.
(AP, 2/8/00)
1981 Feb 8, Scott Hamilton won the US male Figure Skating championship.
(http://espn.go.com/abcsports/wwos/highlights/skating.html)
1982 Feb 8, John Hay Whitney (b.1904), US ambassador and newspaper magnate, died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Hay_Whitney)
1983 Feb 8, Baseball ordered Mickey Mantle (1931-1995) to sever ties with Claridge Casino.
(www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/February_8)
1983 Feb 8, Champion thoroughbred Shergar was kidnapped in Ireland and never found. Lloyds of London paid $10.6 million insurance.
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/february/9/newsid_2538000/2538595.stm)
1984 Feb 8, Winter Olympics opened in Sarajevo.
(HN, 2/7/97)
1984 Feb 8, Philippe Aries (b.1914), French medievalist and historian of the family and childhood, died. His books included Essais sur l'histoire de la mort en Occident: du Moyen Âge ŕ nos jours, Seuil (1975). English translation: Western Attitudes Toward Death from the Middle Ages to the Present. Patricia M. Ranum (translation). Johns Hopkins University Press. 1974.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippe_Ari%C3%A8s)
1986 Feb 8, Brian Boitano won the US male Figure Skating championship.
(http://tinyurl.com/nuoe4)
1988 Feb 8, Jimmy Lee Dill fatally shot and killed Leon Shaw in Birmingham, Alabama, and robbed him of cocaine and about $200. Dill (49) was executed in 2009.
(SFC, 4/17/09, p.A6)(www.wsfa.com/Global/story.asp?S=10197524&nav=0rde)
1989 Feb 8, Jockey Chris Antley (1966-2000) began a record of 64 consecutive winning days.
(www.standardbredcanada.ca/news/iss0506/sears0512.html)
1989 Feb 8, In the Azores 144 people were killed when an American-chartered Boeing 707 filled with Italian tourists slammed into fog-covered Santa Maria mountain.
(AP, 2/8/99)
1990 Feb 8, CBS television temporarily suspended Andy Rooney for his anti-gay and anti-black remarks in a gay magazine interview.
(HN, 2/8/99)
1990 Feb 8, In California Christy Pina (14) was found dead in an artichoke field just off Highway 1 in Castroville. She had been strangled, raped and stabbed repeatedly. In 1996 advanced DNA technology identified Arsenio Pacheco Leyva as the killer, but he had gone into hiding. Leyva was later arrested in Mexico and spent over three years in jail before he was extradited to the US to face charges. On May 3, 2018, Leyva (56) was booked at the Monterey County Jail.
(SFC, 5/8/18, p.C4)
1990 Feb 8, In NYC a gunman botched an attempt to rob a diamond courier. He then shot and killed Rabbi Chaskel Werzberger in his vehicle and rode off in the vehicle. David Ranta, an unemployed drug addict, was arrested on circumstantial evidence and “uncertain" witness testimony. In 2013 Ranta was freed from his 37.5 year prison sentence.
(SFC, 2/22/13, p.A7)
1991 Feb 8, Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and Joint Chiefs Chairman Colin L. Powell met with American pilots in Saudi Arabia. Powell drew cheers as he described how allied troops would deal with the Iraqi force in Kuwait: "We’ll cut it off and kill it."
(AP, 2/8/01)
1991 Feb 8, In Ohio Kenneth Biros (33) raped and killed Tami Engstrom (22) after offering her a ride home from a bar in Trumbull county. He then scattered her body parts in Ohio and Pennsylvania. Biros was executed in 2009.
(www.forgottenoh.com/Counties/Trumbull/biroshouse.html) (SFC, 12/9/09, p.A10)
1992 Feb 8, The 16th Olympic Winter Games opened in Albertville, France.
(AP, 2/8/02)
1993 Feb 8, General Motors sued NBC, alleging that the "Dateline NBC" program had rigged two car-truck crashes to show that 1973-1987 GM pickups were prone to fires in side impact crashes. NBC settled the lawsuit the following day.
(AP, 2/8/03)
1994 Feb 8, President Clinton's health-care proposal suffered a blow as the Congressional Budget Office released an analysis saying that the plan would not shrink federal deficits, but instead drive them higher.
(AP, 2/8/99)
1995 Feb 8, US Surgeon General nominee Henry Foster said in an ABC interview he'd performed 39 abortions, more than three times as many as previously stated.
(AP, 2/8/00)
1995 Feb 8, The U.N. Security Council approved sending 7,000 peacekeepers to Angola to cement an accord ending 19 years of civil war.
(AP, 2/8/00)
1995 Feb 8, A 6.4 earthquake at Trujillo, Colombia, killed over 46 people.
(http://neic.usgs.gov/neis/eqlists/sig_1995.html)
1996 Feb 8, NFL and Cleveland allowed Art Modell to move his NFL franchise to Baltimore but he had to leave the Browns' name behind.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1996 Feb 8, In a ceremony at the Library of Congress, President Clinton signed the Communications Decency Act (CDA), legislation revamping the telecommunications industry, saying it would "bring the future to our doorstep." Section 230 of the act protected online intermediaries that host or republish speech against a range of laws that might otherwise be used to hold them legally responsible for what others say and do.
(https://tinyurl.com/y8m8yhc6)(https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230)
1996 Feb 8, Rivers overflowed in northern Oregon in the worst flooding in 30 years.
(WSJ, 2/9/96, p.A1)
1996 Feb 8, John Peter Barlow, Internet activist, issued the “Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace" from Davos, Switzerland.
(Econ, 12/8/07, p.14)(http://homes.eff.org/~barlow/Declaration-Final.html)
1997 Feb 8, President Clinton announced in his weekly radio address that he was releasing the first of a $200 million program of grants to provide schools with computers and Internet training.
(AP, 2/8/02)
1997 Feb 8, In Serbia it was reported that a new book by former journalist Slavoljub Djukic: "He, She and Us," was flying off the shelves. The book is about Slobodan Milosevic and his wife Mirjana Markovic.
(SFC, 2/8/97)
1998 Feb 8, Olga Danilova of Russia won the first gold medal of the Nagano Winter Games in 15-kilometer classical cross-country skiing.
(AP, 2/8/99)
1998 Feb 8, In Afghanistan new tremors killed up to 250 more people as relief workers struggled to reach the disaster scene.
(SFC, 2/9/98, p.B2)
1998 Feb 8, Greek Cypriots voted in elections with neither main candidate receiving a necessary majority. Pres. Glafcos Cleridas (78) will face former foreign minister George Lacovou on Feb 15.
(SFC, 2/9/98, p.A12)
1998 Feb 8, In Iceland Halldor Laxness (b.1902), novelist and Nobel Prize winner, died at age 95. His books included "Independent People" (1946), "the Great Weaver of Cashmere," "Salka Valka," "The Atom Station," and "Paradise Reclaimed."
(SFC, 2/11/98, p.A24)
1998 Feb 8, In Sierra Leone a jet belonging to West African peacekeepers fired on a tank with a mounted anti-aircraft gun in Freetown and killed 6 people. Nigerian led peacekeepers were moving toward Freetown in an effort to drive the military junta from power.
(SFC, 2/9/98, p.A12)
1999 Feb 8, The Senate heard closing arguments at President Clinton's impeachment trial, with House prosecutors challenging senators to "cleanse the office" and the president's attorney dismissing the case as one of partisan retribution.
(AP, 2/8/00)
1999 Feb 8, American Airlines cancelled 400 flights as pilots called in sick. There was pilot concern over pay rates and new pilots coming from the recently merged Reno Air. In April a federal judge fined the pilots' union $46 million.
(SFC, 2/9/99, p.A3)(SFC, 4/16/99, p.A3)
1999 Feb 8, Nevada lawmakers voted to oppose federal plans for a nuclear storage dump northwest of Las Vegas.
(SFC, 2/9/99, p.A3)
1999 Feb 8, Iris Murdoch (b.1919), Dublin-born novelist, died. Her husband, John Bayley, published "Iris: A Memoir of Iris Murdoch" in 1998. It was published in the US as "Elegy for Iris."
(SFC, 2/9/99, p.A20)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iris_Murdoch)
1999 Feb 8, A French helicopter crashed in Antarctica and 3 people were killed.
(SFC, 2/9/99, p.A7)
1999 Feb 8, Jordan's King Hussein was laid to rest during a five-hour funeral in Amman attended by dignitaries from all over the world, including President Clinton and former presidents Bush, Carter and Ford.
(AP, 2/8/00)
1999 Feb 8, In Sudan an independent scientist hired by the owner of the pharmaceutical plant bombed by the US in August found no traces of chemical weapons.
(SFC, 2/9/99, p.A8)
2000 Feb 8, George W. Bush won the Delaware Republican primary with 51% of the vote.
(SFC, 2/9/00, p.A3)
2000 Feb 8, Net hackers shut down at least 4 popular Web sites including Amazon.com, eBay, CNN.com and buy.com with "denial of service attacks."
(SFC, 2/9/00, p.A1)(AP, 2/8/01)
2000 Feb 8, In Zion, Ill., 2 small planes collided and 3 people were killed including Bob Collins, a popular Chicago radio host for WGN-AM. One of the planes crashed into the roof of the Midwestern Regional Medical Center.
(SFC, 2/9/00, p.A3)
2000 Feb 8, In Chechnya rebels attacked 2 Russian military trains and set off a large battle.
(WSJ, 2/11/00, p.A1)
2000 Feb 8, At Stansted, England, 4 men escaped from the Afghan hijacked airline as negotiations continued.
(SFC, 2/9/00, p.A10)
2000 Feb 8, In Lebanon Hezbollah guerrillas killed another Israeli soldier and Israeli warplanes retaliated with attacks on Tyre and Iqlim al-Tuffah.
(SFC, 2/9/00, p.A10)
2000 Feb 8, In Sri Lanka bombs exploded in 2 buses around Colombo and 2 people were killed and 31 injured.
(SFC, 2/9/00, p.C3)
2000 Feb 8, In Sudan a government plane bombed the rebel town of Kaouda in the Nuba Mountains and 13 students under age 14 were reported killed.
(SFC, 2/9/00, p.C3)
2001 Feb 8, President Bush sent his proposed $1.6 trillion, 10-year tax cut plan to Congress.
(SFC, 2/9/01, p.A1)(AP, 2/8/02)
2001 Feb 8, A House committee opened hearings into former President Clinton's last-minute pardon of fugitive financier Marc Rich, with former prosecutors complaining that they hadn't been consulted before the pardon was granted.
(AP, 2/8/02)
2001 Feb 8, The new Disney theme park "Disney’s California Adventure" opened in Anaheim.
(WSJ, 1/22/01, p.B1)(SFC, 2/8/01, p.A1)
2001 Feb 8, In China the cabinet approved a 700-mile rail line to link Lhasa, Tibet, and Qinghai province.
(WSJ, 2/9/01, p.A1)
2001 Feb 8, In Colombia Pres. Pastrana met with FARC leader Manuel Marulanda at Los Pozos.
(SFC, 2/9/01, p.A16)
2001 Feb 8, In Germany ex-Chancellor Kohl agreed to pay a fine to close a slush fund investigation.
(WSJ, 2/9/01, p.A1)
2001 Feb 8, In Israel 2 blasts from an explosives rigged car injured one woman in Jerusalem. Ehud Barak announced that he would take over Labor Party negotiations to join the Sharon government.
(SFC, 2/9/01, p.A16)
2001 Feb 8, In Russia the lower house voted to reduce advertising interruptions for TV movies.
(SSFC, 2/11/01, p.C1)
2002 Feb 8, Pres. Bush opened the 19th Winter Olympic Games as part of a 3-hour ceremony at Rice-Eccles Stadium at the Univ. of Utah campus, which included an emotional tribute to America's heroes, from the pioneers of the West to past Olympic champions to the thousands who perished on Sept. 11, 2001.
(SFC, 2/9/02, p.A1)(AP, 2/8/03)
2002 Feb 8, In Texas a $60 million casino run by the Tigua Indians was shut down following lobbying efforts by religious activist Ralph Reed and Washington lobbyists Jack Abramoff and Michael Scanlon. Abramoff and Scanlon then persuaded the tribe to pay $4.2 million to lobby Congress to reopen it. Senate hearings on the process opened in 2004.
(SSFC, 9/26/04, p.A10)
2002 Feb 8, A bankruptcy judge rejected a reorganization plan proposed by Pacific Gas and Electric.
(SFC, 2/9/02, p.A1)
2002 Feb 8, William T. Dillard (b.1914), founder of Dillard’s department store chain, died in Little Rock, Ark.
(SFC, 2/11/02, p.B5)(AP, 2/8/03)
2002 Feb 8, Marine Sgt. Todd Sommer (23) died in his home in San Diego. His death was at first ruled a heart attack but later tests found high arsenic levels in his liver. In 2005 his wife, Cynthia Sommers, was charged with 1st degree murder. In 2007 his wife, Cynthia Sommer (33) was convicted of murdering him with arsenic so she could cash in on his $250,000 life insurance policy, some of which she used to have her breasts enlarged.
(SFC, 12/16/05, p.A2)(AP, 1/30/07)
2002 Feb 8, In Afghanistan Mullah Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil, Taliban foreign minister, surrendered in Kandahar and was turned over to US military.
(SFC, 2/9/02, p.A14)
2002 Feb 8, Interim Afghan leader Hamid Karzai met with Pakistan Pres. Musharraf in Islamabad and they agreed to bury past misunderstandings.
(SFC, 2/9/02, p.A14)
2002 Feb 8, In Israel at least 2 Palestinians were killed when a bomb exploded prematurely. In Jerusalem an Israeli woman was stabbed to death while strolling in the Peace Forest. Police caught 4 Palestinians and one died following his arrest.
(SFC, 2/9/02, p.A7)
2003 Feb 8, In a jab at major US allies, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told a security conference in Munich that countries such as France and Germany that favored giving Iraq another chance to disarm were undermining what slim chance existed to avoid war.
(AP, 2/8/08)
2003 Feb 8, The US Navy conducted its last scheduled round of weapons tests on Vieques Island, Puerto Rico. A 2013 report said that the US Navy had fired more than 300,000 munitions in Vieques from the mid-1940s to 2003, taking control of 77 percent of the land.
(SFC, 2/10/03, p.A9)(AP, 5/1/13)
2003 Feb 8, In Australia 750 nude women formed a heart around the words 'No War' near the town of Byron Bay to protest possible war with Iraq.
(AP, 2/8/03)
2003 Feb 8, Augusto Monterosso (81), Honduras-born Guatemalan writer, died in Mexico City. His work included "Perpetual Movement" (1972); "The Letter E: Fragments of a Diary" (1987); and "The Magic Word" (1983).
(SFC, 2/10/03, p.B5)
2003 Feb 8, The chief UN arms inspectors arrived in Baghdad for a new round of crucial talks with Iraqi officials.
(AP, 2/8/04)
2003 Feb 8, In Iraq gunmen posing as defectors from an Islamic extremist group killed Gen. Shawkat Haji Mushir, a political leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and two other Kurdish officials.
(AP, 2/9/03)
2003 Feb 8, Philippine troops killed at least eight Abu Sayyaf rebels during a clash with the guerrillas in the southern town of Patikul.
(AP, 2/9/03)
2003 Feb 8, Nearly 2 million Muslims converged on Mecca for the annual pilgrimage. Some of the faithful offered prayers to avert a U.S.-led war on Iraq.
(AP, 2/8/03)
2003 Feb 8, Tens of thousands of Venezuelans marched in support of 9,000 oil workers fired for leading a two-month strike against President Hugo Chavez that battered the economy of this oil-dependent nation.
(AP, 2/8/03)
2004 Feb 8, At the Grammy Awards, rap funksters OutKast won album of the year for "Speakerboxxx-The Love Below" and Beyonce took home a record-tying five trophies.
(AP, 2/8/05)
2004 Feb 8, President Bush denied marching America into war under false pretenses and said in an interview on NBC's "Meet the Press" the U.S.-led invasion was necessary because Saddam Hussein could have developed a nuclear weapon.
(AP, 2/8/05)
2004 Feb 8, John Kerry won the Maine caucuses.
(SFC, 2/9/04, p.A1)
2004 Feb 8, In northeastern Afghanistan 4 days of fighting between rival warlords over control of the drug trade left 7 dead and 8 wounded.
(SFC, 2/9/04, p.A3)
2004 Feb 8, In Brazil 49 inmates slipped through a bathroom wall of a Rio de Janeiro jail cell in an escape caught on a surveillance camera. Authorities suspended six prison guards.
(AP, 2/9/04)
2004 Feb 8, US Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld visited Croatia and thanked Pres. Stipe Mesic for Croatia's small military police contingent (50) in Iraq.
(AP, 2/8/04)
2004 Feb 8, Socialist voters across Greece cast symbolic ballots to hand the party's leadership to Foreign Minister George Papandreou.
(AP, 2/8/04)
2004 Feb 8, In Suwayrah, Iraq, a bomb inside a police station exploded soon after the morning roll call, killing 3 police officer and injuring 11 others.
(AP, 2/8/04)
2004 Feb 8, A UN team met with Iraqi leaders to discuss the feasibility of early legislative elections, and its leader pledged to do "everything possible" to help the country regain its sovereignty.
(AP, 2/8/04)
2004 Feb 8, In New Zealand some 3,400-gallons of fuel spilled in a fjord listed as a World Heritage site. Officials the next day said the spill in Milford Sound fjord was "eco-terrorism and economic sabotage" against the country's lucrative tourism industry.
(AP, 2/8/04)
2004 Feb 8, Swiss voters approved a measure to put into effect some of Europe's harshest laws on violent criminals and pedophiles.
(SFC, 2/9/04, p.A3)
2005 Feb 8, An earlier-than-usual Mardi Gras festival opened in New Orleans with sparse crowds.
(AP, 2/8/06)
2005 Feb 8, It was reported that a 1991 memo from Merck showed that senior executives were concerned that the vaccines of an expanded immunization program contained an elevated dose of mercury by as much as 87 times the maximum guidelines for daily consumption of mercury from fish. Thimersol, an anti-bacterial compound in the vaccine, was nearly 50% ethyl mercury, a neurotoxin. The vaccine program was later tied to elevated cases of autism.
(SFC, 2/8/05, p.A5)
2005 Feb 8, Ian Wilmut, the scientist who created Dolly the sheep, the world's first cloned mammal, was given a license to clone human embryos for medical research. Therapeutic cloning research has been legal in Great Britain since 2001.
(AP, 2/8/05)
2005 Feb 8, George Herman (85), longtime CBS newsman, died in Washington.
(AP, 2/8/06)
2005 Feb 8, Keith Knudsen (56), Doobie Brothers drummer who was part of the band during a string of hits that included "Taking it to the Streets" and "Black Water," died of pneumonia.
(AP, 2/9/05)
2005 Feb 8, Jimmy Smith (b.1928), reigning “Emperor of the Hammond Organ," died in Scottsdale, Az. Smith established the Hammond B-3 organ as a legitimate jazz instrument.
(SFC, 2/10/04, p.B7)
2005 Feb 8, In northwest Colombia Marxist rebels killed at least 17 soldiers during clashes, the military's heaviest battle toll in two years. At least 11 guerrillas also died in the fighting.
(AP, 2/9/05)(Econ, 2/26/05, p.36)
2005 Feb 8, UNICEF said that it was providing urgently needed aid for 50,000 people caught up in an upsurge in fighting in Congo.
(AP, 2/8/05)
2005 Feb 8, Danes voted in parliamentary elections dominated by competing strategies for strengthening the country's cradle-to-grave welfare state and tightening immigration. Danes re-elected center-right PM Rasmussen for a 2nd term.
(AP, 2/8/05)(WSJ, 2/9/05, p.A1)
2005 Feb 8, In Sharm El-Sheik, Egypt, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas declared that their people would stop all military and violent attacks against each other, pledging to get peace talks back on track. The Palestinian militant group Hamas said it would not be bound by the cease-fire declarations.
(AP, 2/8/05)
2005 Feb 8, Cairo’s 2-week book fair ended. During the two-week fair, police confiscated leftist books and arrested three people protesting any renewal of Hosni Mubarak's presidency.
(AP, 2/9/05)
2005 Feb 8, Herve Gaymard, France's finance minister, announced new measures designed to boost confidence, stimulate growth and tackle the "scandalously high" 9.9% jobless rate.
(AP, 2/8/05)
2005 Feb 8, A suicide bomber blew himself up in a crowd of Iraqis outside an army recruitment center, killing 21 other people and injuring 27 more.
(AP, 2/8/05)
2005 Feb 8, A Web posting in the name of a militant group in Iraq claimed to have executed Italian female journalist Giuliana Sgrena.
(AP, 2/8/05)
2005 Feb 8, In Kuwait Amer Khlaif al-Enezi, the alleged ringleader of a terror group accused of plotting to attack Americans and Kuwaiti security forces, died of heart failure while in prison.
(AP, 2/9/05)
2005 Feb 8, Officials said Italian real estate services company Norman 95 has won a 300-million-euro (384-million-dollar) contract to develop a luxury holiday resort on the Libyan coast.
(AFP, 2/8/05)
2005 Feb 8, A confrontation between rival gangs in an overcrowded Peruvian prison left five inmates dead and at least 18 others wounded.
(AP, 2/8/05)
2005 Feb 8, In Lome, Togo, a strike called by opposition parties shut down the capital’s main market and other businesses.
(AP, 2/8/05)
2006 Feb 8, President Bush condemned deadly rioting sparked by cartoons of the prophet Muhammad as he urged foreign leaders to halt the spreading violence.
(AP, 2/8/07)
2006 Feb 8, In the 48th annual Grammy Awards U2 captured five Grammy awards for their album "How to Dismantle An Atomic Bomb," including album of the year.
(SFC, 2/9/06, p.A2)(AP, 2/8/07)
2006 Feb 8, The NY Times reported that Representative Heather Wilson of New Mexico, who chairs the House Subcommittee on Technical and Tactical Intelligence, said in an interview that she had "serious concerns" about the Bush administration's domestic spying program.
(AFP, 2/8/06)
2006 Feb 8, Steve Fossett (61) soared out over the Atlantic from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on a quest to break the 25,000-mile record for the world's longest aircraft flight. The 80-hour voyage would break the airplane distance record of 24,987 miles set in 1986 by the lightweight Voyager aircraft piloted by Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager, as well as the balloon record of 25,361 miles set by the Breitling Orbiter 3 in 1999.
(AP, 2/9/06)
2006 Feb 8, Afghanistan lauded a decision by the United States, Russia and Germany to cancel its debts to the three countries, totaling more than $10 billion.
(AP, 2/8/06)
2006 Feb 8, In Afghan police shot four protesters to death to stop hundreds from marching on a southern US military base, as Islamic organizations called for an end to deadly rioting across the Muslim world over drawings of the Prophet Muhammad.
(AP, 2/8/06)
2006 Feb 8, Australia and New Zealand vowed to work to build a single economic market on the back of strengthening trade ties, but stopped short of endorsing a single currency.
(AP, 2/8/06)
2006 Feb 8, China's Ministry of Health announced one more human case of bird flu, bringing the number of the country's confirmed cases in humans to eleven.
(AP, 2/8/06)
2006 Feb 8, A deputy minister said Ecuador is not likely to extend a deal that allows the United States to use an anti-narcotics air base on its territory due to a surge in sentiment against the American military presence.
(AP, 2/8/06)
2006 Feb 8, Egypt's antiquities chief announced that American archaeologists from the Univ. of Memphis have uncovered an 18th Dynasty tomb in Egypt's Valley of the Kings, the first uncovered there since King Tutankhamen’s in 1922. The 18th Dynasty ruled from around 1560 B.C. to 1085 B.C.
(AP, 2/9/06)
2006 Feb 8, A dispute over the fate of an ancient Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem threatened to ignite tensions as workers removed skeletons from the site despite Muslim pleas for the work to end. Israeli developers and archaeologists were removing the tombs to make room for the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center to build a multi-million-dollar Museum of Tolerance, dedicated in part to promoting understanding among different religions.
(AP, 2/8/06)
2006 Feb 8, The Italian Senate approved a bill that would dramatically increase the number of women elected to parliament in a country with one of the lowest number of female lawmakers in Europe.
(AP, 2/9/06)
2006 Feb 8, Japan and North Korea ended five days of high-level talks aimed at establishing diplomatic relations without any agreements, citing major differences on the North's abduction of Japanese nationals and its nuclear program.
(AP, 2/8/06)
2006 Feb 8, Kenya’s government and the UN said Kenya needs $221.5 million in aid to help feed 3.5 million people threatened by starvation due to drought and avoid a "massive humanitarian catastrophe."
(AP, 2/8/06)
2006 Feb 8, In Libya the leaders of Sudan and Chad signed a peace agreement to end increasing tension over Sudan's Darfur region, pledging to normalize diplomatic relations and deny refuge to each other's rebel groups. A communique issued by Sudan, Chad and Libya, as well as Burkino Faso, Congo and the Central African Republic, whose leaders attended the talks, said a committee of African countries overseen by Libya would monitor the implementation of the deal.
(AP, 2/9/06)
2006 Feb 8, A rebel attack and an army shooting of protesters marred Nepal's first elections in seven years, as few voters turned out at schools, shrines and temples for municipal balloting seen as a referendum on the king. At least six people were killed.
(AP, 2/8/06)
2006 Feb 8, The World Organization for Animal Health said the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus has been detected on a large commercial chicken farm in Nigeria, the first reported outbreak in Africa. Researchers later reported that 3 different strains of bird flu had entered Nigeria and most closely resembled those identified in Egypt, Mongolia and Russia.
(AP, 2/8/06)(SFC, 7/6/06, p.A6)
2006 Feb 8, Hundreds of Palestinians attacked an international observer mission in Hebron, throwing stones and smashing windows as dozens of foreigners were trapped inside.
(AP, 2/8/06)
2006 Feb 8, Khaled Batch, a leader of the militant Islamic Jihad group, said the group rejects the idea of a long-term truce with Israel and will not join a Hamas-led government. Islamic Jihad, which is believed to be funded, in part, by Iran, boycotted last month's Palestinian parliament election.
(AP, 2/8/06)
2006 Feb 8, In Thailand skydivers from 31 countries set a new world record of 400 people holding hands in a midair free-fall formation.
(AP, 2/8/06)
2007 Feb 8, A federal judge in Fargo, N.D., sentenced Alfonso Rodriguez Jr. to death for the slaying of college student Dru Sjodin.
(AP, 2/8/08)
2007 Feb 8, The Museum for African Art unveiled plans for a new home in Manhattan, becoming the first major addition to New York's Museum Mile in 50 years.
(Reuters, 2/8/07)
2007 Feb 8, Anna Nicole Smith (b.1967), former Playboy centerfold (Miss May 1992) and wife of former oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall II (1905-1995), died in Florida. Authorities later said Smith died of an accidental drug overdose of nine prescription medications, but an extensive six-week investigation found no signs of foul play. In 2010 her psychiatrist and boyfriend were convicted of conspiracy for filling her demands for prescription drugs.
(AP, 2/8/07)(SFC, 2/9/07, p.A1)(AP, 3/26/07)(SFC, 10/29/10, p.A6)
2007 Feb 8, Joe Edwards (85), comics artist, died at his home in NY. He worked on the 1942 debut issue of Archie comics and later created the character Li'l Jinx.
(AP, 2/14/07)
2007 Feb 8, Benin, Nigeria, and Togo formed a new regional body aimed at fast-tracking the integration of their economies. The body, known as the Co-Prosperity Alliance Zone (COPAZ), was formally inaugurated following a mini-summit of Nigeria’s President Olusegun Obasanjo, Benin’s President Boni Yayi and Togo’s President Faure Gnassingbe.
(AFP, 2/8/07)
2007 Feb 8, In Cape Verde 3 Italian women, aged 17-33, were brutally attacked while vacationing, dragged into the woods, pelted with stones and left for dead at the bottom of a hole. One woman survived. 3 local men were arrested.
(AP, 2/10/07)
2007 Feb 8, State media said officials in eastern China plan to name and shame rich families who ignore the country's strict one-child policy and simply pay the fine for having a second or third baby. China executed Ismail Semed, an ethnic Muslim and member of the Uighur minority group in Xinjiang, for alleged separatist activities. Human rights groups condemned because they said the prosecution's case against him lacked evidence and his confession may have been coerced.
(AP, 2/8/07)(AP, 2/9/07)
2007 Feb 8, Cuba deported reputed drug kingpin Luis Hernando Gomez Bustamante to Colombia, which plans to extradite him to the United States to face trafficking and money laundering charges.
(AP, 2/9/07)
2007 Feb 8, In France teachers, tax collectors, railway workers and other public servants went on strike to protest job losses and demand higher pay.
(AP, 2/8/07)
2007 Feb 8, India’s air force chief S.P. Tyagi told reporters at the Bangalore air show that the government expects to sign a contract to buy 40 Russian Sukhoi-30 aircraft by the end of the fiscal year March 31.
(AFP, 2/8/07)
2007 Feb 8, An object fell from the sky and killed 3 nomads in northern India’s Rajasthan state. The impact left a crater and the object was believed to have been a meteor.
(SFC, 2/17/07, p.B6)
2007 Feb 8, In Indonesia fresh rains triggered more flooding, compounding the misery for hundreds of thousands forced from their homes. Irwandi Yusuf, a former rebel leader, was inaugurated as governor of Aceh province, cementing a peace deal to end 29 years of fighting that killed more than 15,000 people.
(AP, 2/8/07)
2007 Feb 8, Iraqi forces detained a senior Health Ministry official accused of corruption and helping to funnel millions of dollars to Shiite militiamen blamed for much of the recent sectarian violence in the capital. A parked car bomb exploded at a meat market in the predominantly Shiite town of Aziziyah killing 20 people and wounding 45. Car bombs struck Shiite targets in Baghdad and south of the capital. Gunmen burst into two houses belonging to Sunni Muslims northeast of Baghdad and killed at least 10 males after pushing the women and children aside. In northern Iraq a late night US airstrike hit a Kurdish position in Mosul, killing at least eight Kurdish troops and wounding six. The US military said it was looking into the report. A separate US airstrike killed eight suspected terrorists and destroyed a building south of Baghdad. A US airstrike killed 13 insurgents in a volatile area west of Baghdad. Local officials said 45 civilians, including women and children, died in the attack.
(AP, 2/8/07)(AP, 2/9/07)
2007 Feb 8, China’s President Hu Jintao arrived in Mozambique on the penultimate stop in his 8-nation African tour.
(AFP, 2/8/07)
2007 Feb 8, Nepal's government decided to replace the image of embattled King Gyanendra with an image of Everest, the world's highest mountain, on 10 rupee (13 cent) bills.
(AFP, 2/9/07)
2007 Feb 8, North Korea agreed in principle to take initial steps toward dismantling its nuclear programs at the start of international talks seeking the first concrete progress on disarming Pyongyang.
(AP, 2/8/07)
2007 Feb 8, Welding equipment touched off an explosion at a West Bank gas station, killing at least eight people and wounded 17.
(AP, 2/9/07)
2007 Feb 8, A Fatah official in Saudi Arabia said that rival Palestinian factions had reached an agreement on how to divide up Cabinet posts in a power-sharing government.
(AP, 2/8/07)
2007 Feb 8, South Africa, burdened with one of the world's major HIV/AIDS epidemics, unveiled plans for its biggest AIDS vaccine trial.
(Reuters, 2/8/07)
2007 Feb 8, President Chen Shui-bian said the name 'Taiwan' would soon replace 'China' on the island's stamps, a move likely to anger Beijing.
(AP, 2/8/07)
2007 Feb 8, President Hugo Chavez's government moved to nationalize Venezuela's largest private electric company, signing an agreement to buy a controlling stake in Electricidad de Caracas from its US-based owner, AES Corp.
(AP, 2/8/07)
2008 Feb 8, Pres. Bush reached his lowest approval rating in an Associated Press-Ipsos poll as only 30% said they like the job he is doing, including an all-time low in his support by Republicans. Congress' approval fell to just 22%, equaling its poorest grade in the survey.
(AP, 2/8/08)
2008 Feb 8, It was reported that Exxon Mobil Corp. has obtained a court order freezing over $12 billion in bank accounts and assets in Europe, the Caribbean and New York belonging to Venezuela’s state oil company in a dispute over compensation for expropriated assets.
(WSJ, 2/8/08, p.A3)
2008 Feb 8, The Nebraska Supreme Court ruled 6-1 that the electric chair is cruel and unusual punishment. The state planned to seek a new method of execution.
(SFC, 2/9/08, p.A2)
2008 Feb 8, In Louisiana Latina Williams (23) shot and killed 2 fellow students, Karsheika Graves (21) and Taneshia Butler (26), at Louisiana Technical College.
(SFC, 2/9/08, p.A4)
2008 Feb 8, The Nebraska Supreme Court declared the electric chair unconstitutional.
(Econ, 2/16/08, p.39)
2008 Feb 8, A suicide car bomber blew himself up near a convoy of Afghan troops, killing one soldier and a child who was nearby. Another four soldiers and a child were also wounded in the attack in central Ghazni province.
(AP, 2/8/08)
2008 Feb 8, Australia's widely criticized "Pacific Solution" policy of holding asylum seekers on remote islands ended when the last detainees flew out of Nauru to live in Australia.
(AFP, 2/8/08)
2008 Feb 8, In western Austria a fire engulfed a home for the elderly, killing at least 11 people.
(AP, 2/9/08)
2008 Feb 8, Canada said it planned to keep its 2,500-strong military mission in Afghanistan until some time in 2011, two years longer than initially scheduled.
(AP, 2/8/08)
2008 Feb 8, The UN said it is being forced to prepare an imminent pullout from Eritrea and plans to relocate all its peacekeeping troops there across the border in Ethiopia.
(AP, 2/9/08)
2008 Feb 8, Former UN chief Kofi Annan, who is mediating talks between Kenya's political rivals, said they were close to a deal aimed at ending weeks of postelection bloodshed but no power-sharing agreement had been reached yet.
(AP, 2/8/08)
2008 Feb 8, France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy pledged to send thousands of extra police and more than $700 million in aid to neglected, heavily immigrant neighborhoods that exploded in riots in 2005 and 2006.
(AP, 2/8/08)
2008 Feb 8, In the Indian-controlled part of Kashmir avalanches killed at least eight people and forced hundreds more to leave their snowbound villages.
(AP, 2/8/08)
2008 Feb 8, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani welcomed an expected Russian decision to write off 91 percent of Iraq's estimated $13 billion debt, calling it a "historic turning point" in relations between the two countries. 5 American soldiers were killed in two roadside bombings, 4 in Baghdad and one in Tamim province.
(AP, 2/8/08)(AP, 2/9/08)
2008 Feb 8, In New Zealand a knife-wielding woman (33), originally from Somalia, tried to hijack a regional domestic flight, stabbing both pilots and threatening to blow up the twin-propeller plane before she was subdued.
(AP, 2/8/08)
2008 Feb 8, A presidential statement said Nigeria has approved a new policy requiring gas producers to direct a part of their output to the domestic market, rather than exporting it.
(AP, 2/8/08)
2008 Feb 8, Scotland Yard released a report saying that Pakistan's opposition leader Benazir Bhutto died as a result of a suicide bomb blast, not a gunshot. The findings supported the Pakistani government's version of the events.
(AP, 2/8/08)
2008 Feb 8, Palestinian militants launched nearly 20 rockets at Israel hours after Israel began cutting electricity to the Gaza Strip in an attempt to halt the barrages.
(AP, 2/8/08)
2008 Feb 8, In Rwanda members of the Chamber of Deputies (Lower House) of Parliament voted in favor of a controversial new law aimed at stopping "genocide ideology," a term for the outlook that perpetrators of genocide foster to fan divisive hate campaigns between different groups of Rwandans. Parliament adopted the law in June.
(www.loc.gov/lawweb/servlet/lloc_news?disp1_375_Rwanda)(http://tinyurl.com/dnxogn)
2008 Feb 8, In Sri Lanka gunbattles along the front lines in the northern districts of Jaffna, Mannar and Vavuniya killed 41 Tamil Tiger rebels and three soldiers.
(AP, 2/9/08)
2008 Feb 8, The Sudanese military said it bombed 3 towns in West Darfur while striking at rebel forces. Rebels said Sudanese government aircraft, army and militia attacked towns in West Darfur state, causing heavy civilian casualties. A rebel chief said Sudanese troops backed by Janjaweed militia left at least 150 dead and wounded in the assault. A Sudanese employee of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) was killed in Darfur. On March 20 the UN accused the Sudanese army of looting towns and raping girls and women during the attacks on Sirba, Sileia and Abu Suruj. The attacks killed at least 115 people and caused some 30,000 to flee their homes.
(AP, 2/8/08)(AFP, 2/8/08)(AFP, 2/12/08)(SFC, 3/21/08, p.A11)
2008 Feb 8, Officials said that the WTO has ruled against the EU's import tariffs for bananas, possibly opening the door to millions of dollars in US commercial sanctions.
(AP, 2/8/08)
2009 Feb 8, Coldplay’s “Viva la Vida" won the Grammy for song of the year. Robert Plant and Alison Krauss' unorthodox partnership yielded rich rewards on Grammy night, as the pair nabbed five awards for their haunting "Raising Sand," including record and album of the year honors.
(WSJ, 2/9/09, p.A1)(AP, 2/9/09)
2009 Feb 8, In Fort Bragg, Ca., Aaron Vargas (31) shot and killed Darrell McNeill (63), a former neighbor. McNeill, a former boy Scout leader and Big Brother, had begun molesting Vargas at age of 11 and continued as Vargas grew into his 20s. 12 other men soon came forward with stories of molestation by McNeill. On April 6, 2010, Vargas pleaded no contest to voluntary manslaughter charges. On June 15 Vargas was sentenced to 9 years in prison.
(SSFC, 2/21/10, p.A1)(SFC, 4/7/10, p.A1)(SFC, 6/16/10, p.A1)
2009 Feb 8, In Illinois a broken holding tank at a Caterpillar plant near Joliet spilled some 65,000 gallons of oil sludge and contaminated a 30-mile section of the Des Plaines River.
(SFC, 2/9/09, p.A6)
2009 Feb 8, A single-engine plane carrying six US citizens crashed into the Atlantic Ocean off the north coast of Puerto Rico.
(AP, 2/9/09)
2009 Feb 8, In Afghanistan two American soldiers died when a roadside bomb they were trying to defuse exploded. An Afghan interpreter and a policeman also died in the blast. a roadside bomb ripped through a police vehicle in Khogyani district, near the border with Pakistan, killing two police and wounding three civilians. A suicide bomber attacked a group of Afghan soldiers in southwestern Nimroz province, killing one soldier and two civilians.
(AP, 2/8/09)(AP, 2/9/09)
2009 Feb 8, In eastern Bangladesh a ferry boat sank after colliding with a larger ferry on the Titas River, killing 10 women and children.
(AP, 2/8/09)
2009 Feb 8, In London the film "Slumdog Millionaire", the rags-to-riches tale of a Mumbai tea boy who wins big, swept the board at the British Academy Film Awards (BAFTAs) with seven prizes including best film.
(AP, 2/8/09)
2009 Feb 8, China’s government said that there was no end in sight for its worst drought in five decades. Some 4.4 million people lacked adequate drinking water in the north as winter wheat withered.
(SFC, 2/9/09, p.A2)
2009 Feb 8, Sigurdur Helgason (b.1921), former Icelandic airline CEO (1974-1984), died on the Caribbean private island of Mustique. He pioneered cheap flights that carried legions of backpackers between Europe and the United States in the 1960s and '70s.
(AP, 2/21/09)
2009 Feb 8, In Iraq Spc. James M. Dorsey (23) of Beardstown, Ill., was found unresponsive by fellow troops in Baghdad and attempts to resuscitate him were unsuccessful.
(AP, 2/12/09)
2009 Feb 8, Kuwait's Central Bank governor unveiled a $5.15 billion economic stimulus package aimed at helping struggling investment companies and offering bank loan guarantees.
(AP, 2/8/09)
2009 Feb 8, Pakistani Taliban militants released a graphic video showing the beheading of a Polish engineer whom they said was killed because Islamabad refused to free detained insurgents. Piotr Stanczak had been seized in the volatile northwest on September 28.
(AFP, 2/8/09)
2009 Feb 8, Two rockets fired by Palestinian militants struck southern Israel, violating an informal truce even as Israel and Gaza's Hamas rulers appeared to hurry closer to a long-term cease-fire deal two days before Israeli elections.
(AP, 2/8/09)
2009 Feb 8, In Somalia at least three civilians were killed when insurgents attacked African Union forces and government troops in the strife-torn capital Mogadishu.
(AFP, 2/8/09)
2009 Feb 8, In Sri Lanka an official said more than 15,000 civilians have fled the northern war zone over the last three days, as government forces appeared poised to crush the separatist Tamil Tigers.
(AP, 2/8/09)
2009 Feb 8, Voters in Switzerland approved an expanded labor deal with the European Union that allows Romanians and Bulgarians to work in the Alpine republic.
(AP, 2/8/09)
2010 Feb 8, The US federal government was shuttered while the Mid-Atlantic region dug out from as much as three feet of snow that left tens of thousands without power and blocked trains, planes and cars, with another storm looming.
(AP, 2/8/10)
2010 Feb 8, The Obama administration said it will spend $78.5 million on efforts to contain the Asian carp, which threatened to endanger the Great Lakes’ $7 billion fishing industry.
(SFC, 2/9/10, p.A4)
2010 Feb 8, In California a federal judge sentenced Dongfan Chung (74), a Chinese-born engineer, to over 15 years in prison for economic espionage. During his career at Boeing Co. and Rockwell Intl. He had hoarded sensitive information about the space shuttle and a booster rocket and was arrested on Feb 11, 2008, for allegedly passing classified documents to China.
(SFC, 2/9/10, p.A4)
2010 Feb 8, At Cape Canaveral, Florida, Endeavour and six astronauts rocketed into orbit on what's likely the last nighttime launch for the shuttle program, hauling a new room and observation deck for the International Space Station.
(AP, 2/8/10)
2010 Feb 8, Boeing Co.’s 250-foot 747-8 freighter, the biggest plane it has ever built, successfully completed its first flight from Paine Field, in Everett, Wash.
(SFC, 2/9/10, p.A4)
2010 Feb 8, John Murtha (b.1932), Pennsylvania’s Democratic representative, died in Arlington, Va., following complications from gall bladder surgery. He had won a special House election in 1974 to become the first Vietnam veteran to serve in Congress.
(SFC, 2/9/10, p.A6)
2010 Feb 8, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula number two Said al-Shihri called for attacks against US interests "everywhere," in an audio message released on the Internet.
(AFP, 2/8/10)
2010 Feb 8, Australia tightened its migration rules in favor of English speakers and professionals, saying the country has been attracting too many hairdressers and cooks and too few doctors and engineers.
(AP, 2/8/10)
2010 Feb 8, In Australia ITV Studios, producer of "I'm a Celebrity ... Get Me Out of Here," was fined 3,000 Australian dollars ($2,615) after pleading guilty of animal cruelty after two reality show contestants skinned, cooked and ate a rat during filming in Australia.
(AP, 2/9/10)
2010 Feb 8, Byzantium Novum was founded as a micronation dedicated to the revival of Byzantine civilization and culture.
(www.byzantiumnovum.org)
2010 Feb 8, The China Daily newspaper reported officials have recalled more than 170 tons of milk powder tainted by the industrial chemical melamine and closed two dairy companies in the northern region of Ningxia. The current 10–day emergency crackdown has made it increasingly clear that many products discovered in the country's 2008 milk scandal were repackaged for sale instead of destroyed.
(AP, 2/8/10)
2010 Feb 8, China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued new guidelines to local authorities and lifted a ban imposed in December on individuals acquiring .cn domain names. Individuals wanting to set up a website will have to submit identity cards and photos of themselves, as well as meet regulators, before their domain name can be registered.
(AFP, 2/23/10)
2010 Feb 8, In southern China a bus collided with a sport utility vehicle and plunged down a mountain ravine, killing seven people and injuring 50.
(AP, 2/8/10)
2010 Feb 8, In Egypt Mahmoud Ezzat, the new deputy leader of the opposition Muslim Brotherhood, and two other top figures were among 16 people arrested by police in a dawn sweep across the country targeting members of the nation's most powerful opposition group. They were accused of trying to set up training camps for staging attacks.
(AP, 2/8/10)(AP, 2/10/10)
2010 Feb 8, French engineering giant Areva said that it will buy Ausra, a Mountain View, Ca., startup specializing in large-scale solar power.
(SFC, 2/9/10, p.D1)
2010 Feb 8, In Haiti the UN warned that it will cut off shipments of free medicine beginning immediately to any Haitian hospitals that it finds are charging patients. Evans Monsigrace (28), a rice vendor, survived 27 days trapped under the rubble of a flea market following the devastating Jan 12 earthquake.
(AP, 2/8/10)(AP, 2/10/10)
2010 Feb 8, Iran moved closer to being able to produce nuclear warheads with formal notification that it will enrich uranium to higher levels, even while insisting that the move was meant only to provide fuel for its research reactor. The semiofficial ISNA agency said that former deputy foreign minister Mohsen Aminzadeh was sentenced to six years in prison by a Revolutionary court. The defense minister announced that Iran has launched two production lines to build unmanned aircraft with surveillance and attack capabilities.
(AP, 2/8/10)
2010 Feb 8, Iran said it will cut ties with the British Museum because of the museum's failure to lend Tehran the Cyrus Cylinder, an ancient Babylonian artifact described as the world's earliest bill of rights.
(AP, 2/8/10)
2010 Feb 8, Israeli security forces raided a Palestinian refugee camp in annexed east Jerusalem, arresting 11 people in an operation police said was aimed at putting "some order" in the area. Israel's Supreme Court ordered authorities to release two foreign activists seized in a Palestinian-controlled part of the West Bank. Ariadna Jove Marti of Spain and Bridgette Chappell of Australia, had been in a pre-dawn raid on their apartment in the heart of Ramallah.
(AFP, 2/8/10)
2010 Feb 8, In Kashmir 17 Indian soldiers were killed in an avalanche that slammed into a group of 70 combat troops at a high-altitude warfare training camp.
(AP, 2/8/10)
2010 Feb 8, Mexican federal police arrested Raydel Lopez Uriarte and Manuel Garcia Simental, suspected leaders of the cartel headed by Teodoro Garcia Simental, who was captured in La Paz on Jan. 12. The drug cartel had terrorized Tijuana for several years. The military announced that soldiers had seized more than 12 tons of marijuana found beneath a false floor of a tractor trailer. The drugs were found during a routine search at a checkpoint near San Felipe, a town in the central part of the Baja California peninsula. Federal police arrested five Tijuana police officers along with six cartel members who were holding two rival gangsters captive. The arrests were based on information obtained following the capture of Uriarte and Manuel Garcia Simental. Two of the officers, Francisco Ortega and Juan Carlos Espinoza, had been recently lauded as part of a new breed of honest cop. 3 marines died in a shootout that also killed three suspected gang members in the border town of Reynosa.
(AP, 2/8/10)(AP, 2/10/10)(AP, 2/24/10)
2010 Feb 8, The Irish National Liberation Army (INLA), a paramilitary group responsible for dozens of murders during Northern Ireland's three decades of sectarian violence, said that it had disarmed.
(AFP, 2/8/10)
2010 Feb 8, Pakistani authorities arrested 6 suspected Taliban militants with a suicide vest and hand grenades allegedly on their way to kill Americans at the five-star Pearl Continental hotel in Lahore. Police seized 26 hand grenades and five detonators from the militants, who were traveling by car and motorcycle.
(AP, 2/8/10)
2010 Feb 8, In Sri Lanka opposition politician Rauff Hakeem said former army chief and defeated presidential candidate Sarath Fonseka has been detained on sedition charges.
(AP, 2/8/10)
2010 Feb 8, Sweden's unemployment agency was found guilty of discrimination for expelling a Muslim man from a job training program because he refused to shake hands with a woman.
(AP, 2/8/10)
2010 Feb 8, International monitors hailed Ukraine's presidential election as "professional, transparent and honest," increasing pressure on PM Yulia Tymoshenko to concede to opposition leader Viktor Yanukovych, who held a 2.7% point lead with all but 1.7% of the ballots cast counted.
(AP, 2/8/10)
2010 Feb 8, Venezuela’s Pres. Chavez declared a national emergency in the electricity sector as the worst drought in 50 years dried up water supplies in hydroelectric dams.
(SFC, 2/10/10, p.A3)
2010 Feb 8, A Yemen military official said 10 soldiers have been killed, most of them by snipers, and 18 wounded in a fresh outbreak of fighting with Shiite rebels in north Yemen.
(AFP, 2/8/10)
2011 Feb 8, First lady Michelle Obama said her husband hasn't had a cigarette in almost a year.
(AP, 2/9/11)
2011 Feb 8, In Mississippi a tractor-trailer sideswiped a school bus and collided head on with another school bus south of Oxford. 3 people were killed and at least 10 students were injured.
(SFC, 2/9/11, p.A5)
2011 Feb 8, Claudia Aderotimi (20), a London woman, died at a Philadelphia hospital at 1:32 a.m., some 12 hours after a botched buttocks enhancement at a Hampton Inn near the Philadelphia Int’l Airport. Authorities sought to question Padge Victoria Windslowe, a self-described Goth hip hop singer know as "Black Madam" from Ardmore, Pa., in the death.
(Reuters, 2/12/11)
2011 Feb 8, Afghan Pres. Karzai seconded a request by the High Peace Council calling for the release of Mullah Khairullah Khairkhwa, to join in reconciliation talks. Khairkhwa, who has been held at Guantanamo since 2002, was a Taliban interior minister and governor of Herat province during the Taliban government.
(SFC, 2/9/11, p.A3)
2011 Feb 8, Australian firefighters brought a raging wildfire that destroyed 68 houses and damaged 32 others near the city of Perth under control.
(AP, 2/8/11)
2011 Feb 8, In Brazil over half a million people, most of them Brazilians, called via petition on newly elected President Dilma to halt plans to construct the Belo Monte Dam. Outside the Presidential Palace, several hundred people gathered in protest including indigenous chiefs in full tribal regalia and community leaders from the Xingu River Basin, and delivered the petition signatures to the Dilma Government.
(PRNewswire, 2/8/11)
2011 Feb 8, In northeastern Brazil a prison riot, begun a day earlier, ended. 5 prisoners were killed including Jose Agostinho Pereira, who was decapitated by fellow inmates in his cell in the city of Pinheiro. Pereira had been jailed in 2010 for raping and keeping his daughter imprisoned for 12 years in a remote fishing village. He had seven children with her.
(AP, 6/9/10)(AP, 2/9/11)
2011 Feb 8, Guy Savage (42), owner of Nashville-based Sabre Defense Industries LLC, was detained in London after armed officers shot out the tires of his Mercedes. He was wanted by US authorities investigating illegal weapons trading between 2003 and 2009.
(AP, 2/15/11)(http://tinyurl.com/5v44er3)
2011 Feb 8, China raised interest rates for the second time in just over six weeks, intensifying a battle in the fast-expanding economy against stubbornly high inflation that threatens to unsettle global markets.
(Reuters, 2/8/11)
2011 Feb 8, Cuban officials celebrated the arrival of a 1,600km fiber optic cable from Venezuela, whose government put up the $70 million cost. It was expected to become operational this summer.
(SFC, 2/10/11, p.A2)(Econ, 3/5/11, p.42)(http://tinyurl.com/4zgampd)
2011 Feb 8, In Egypt a massive crowd of anti-government protesters poured into Cairo's Tahrir Square again, joined for the first time by Wael Ghonim, a young leader of the campaign the day after he was released from detention. Egypt's military was not allowing foreign journalists without credentials to enter Cairo's Tahrir Square, part of what an international press watchdog called new obstacles in covering the ongoing crisis. Foreign journalists already with credentials were allowed into the square.
(AP, 2/8/11)
2011 Feb 8, In Germany state prosecutors in Wuerzburg said a retired German priest (77) has been charged with 50 counts of fraud over the theft of 1 million euros' ($1.4 million) worth of church donations. The former Roman Catholic priest was detained in May on suspicion of taking donations and collection money from his church in Bavaria.
(AP, 2/9/11)
2011 Feb 8, In India 2 supporters of a Gorkha separatist party were killed and 4 were injured after attacking a group of officers during a protest march in the northeast state of West Bengal.
(AP, 2/8/11)
2011 Feb 8, In Indonesia more than 1,500 Muslims went on the rampage in Central Java, setting two churches alight and ransacking a school, after a Christian man was sentenced to five years' jail for blaspheming Islam. The group wanted him punished with death.
(AP, 2/8/11)
2011 Feb 8, Iran's main opposition leaders charged that the Islamic republic is being run by "anti-religion... hooligans," in a statement on the eve of its 32nd anniversary.
(AFP, 2/8/11)
2011 Feb 8, Iran's oil ministry's reported that daily oil output rose by around 100,000 barrels with the opening of the second phase of Darkhovin field in the southeast of the country.
(AFP, 2/8/11)
2011 Feb 8, Hussein Abdullahi, Iran's ambassador to Nigeria, said that he had spoken to senior officials of the Nigerian government as soon as an arms shipment was seized last Oct 26 and told them that the intercepted cargo was the third of four Gambia-bound shipments originating from Iran.
(AP, 2/10/11)
2011 Feb 8, In the Ivory Coast a fire broke out at the economic ministry building in the capital destroying untold numbers of financial records as international sanctions on incumbent leader Laurent Gbagbo, who refuses to give up power, are beginning to take hold.
(AP, 2/8/11)
2011 Feb 8, Lithuania sent an 8-member team to train Afghan army helicopter pilots. Defense Minister Rasa Jukneviciene said the Lithuanian military could hand over the central Afghan province of Ghor to local forces by the end of 2012. A Lithuanian force of some 150 has been at the helm since 2005 of what is known in NATO jargon as a Provincial Reconstruction Team in Ghor. Lithuania first sent troops to Afghanistan in 2002 after the US-led overthrow of the Taliban regime.
(AFP, 2/8/11)
2011 Feb 8, Mexican authorities recovered the bodies of five men who were dumped on the side of road in Zacatecas state after their execution-style slaying. The deaths raised to 41 the number of people killed over the weekend in drug-related violence. In Baja California, 10 soldiers were detained for alleged ties to drug traffickers and turned over to federal prosecutors. Alvaro Sandoval Diaz (50) and his wife, Griselda Pedroza Rocha (35), were killed in Puerto Palomas. The couple's 6-year-old daughter witnessed her parents' killings. Last month Sandoval Diaz opened fire on four armed men who arrived to extort money from him, killing three.
(AFP, 2/8/11)(AP, 2/11/11)
2011 Feb 8, Mexican soldiers rescued 44 Guatemalan migrants who had been locked up by kidnappers in a house in the northern city of Reynosa. 3 Mexican migrants were also rescued.
(AP, 2/8/11)
2011 Feb 8, Military officers from North and South Korea held talks inside the heavily guarded Demilitarized Zone in the rivals' first official dialogue since the North's deadly artillery barrage of a South Korean island in November.
(AP, 2/8/11)
2011 Feb 8, In Pakistan strike action forced ailing state carrier Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) to cancel flights to Britain and Turkey, affecting some 1,500 passengers.
(AFP, 2/8/11)
2011 Feb 8, The Palestinian Authority set long-overdue local council elections for July 9 in both the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the government spokesman said. The rival Hamas government that rules Gaza promptly rejected the move.
(AP, 2/8/11)
2011 Feb 8, In the Philippines retired Gen. Angelo Reyes (65) apparently committed suicide at his mother's grave. Reyes, who headed the military from 2001 to 2003, was at the center of a congressional probe into one of the biggest corruption scandals to have hit the Philippine armed forces.
(AP, 2/8/11)
2011 Feb 8, Somali pirates firing guns and rocket propelled grenades hijacked the Savina Caylyn, an Italian oil tanker, and diverted the medium-sized vessel towards Somalia. The tanker was reported freed on Dec 21 along with 22 crew members.
(AP, 2/8/11)(AP, 12/21/11)
2011 Feb 8, In South Africa a private plane carrying nine people, including the chief executive of tile company Italtile Ltd., crashed in a nature reserve 320 miles east of Cape Town. There were no survivors. The Johannesburg-based retailer of ceramic tiles and bathroom accessories has been publicly traded on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange since 1988.
(AP, 2/9/11)
2011 Feb 8, In Yemen a suspected US spy drone crashed near the southern town of Loder. Al-Qaeda gunmen in cars intercepted the police and hijacked the wreckage.
(AP, 2/8/11)
2012 Feb 8, In Texas Antonio Pena-Arguelles, an alleged cartel money-launderer, was arrested in San Antonio. A 13-page DEA affidavit accused him of using US bank accounts to funnel millions to Tomas Yarrington, who served as governor of Tamaulipas state in 1999-2004, from leaders of the Gulf and the Zetas. In 2004-2005 alone, it says, Pena-Arguelles and his brother received $4.5 million from the No. 2 leader of the Zetas, Miguel-Angel Trevino Morales.
(AP, 2/10/12)
2012 Feb 8, John Fairfax (74), a self-proclaimed "professional adventurer," died near Las Vegas. He became famous in 1969 as the first person to row solo across the Atlantic Ocean. He also rowed across the Pacific with his then-girlfriend Sylvia Cook, an ocean crossing that took him a full year to complete, from April 1971 to April 1972. His exploits inspired two memoirs: "Britannia: Rowing Alone Across the Atlantic" and "Oars Across the Pacific," both published in the early 1970s.
(AFP, 2/19/12)
2012 Feb 8, In Afghanistan a NATO airstrike reportedly killed 8 children in Kapisa province. On Feb 13 NATO conceded that several children died during the bombing raid.
(AFP, 2/9/12)(AFP, 2/13/12)
2012 Feb 8, Bolivian authorities seized 17 properties from a provincial clan ostensibly in the gravel business that it suspects of laundering drug money through real estate. Cochabamba police were unable to capture any of the seven wanted brothers of the Cossio Rojas family when they raided the properties.
(AP, 2/10/12)
2012 Feb 8, The Trident Gang Crime Command, a new specialist Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) unit tackling London gangs, carried out hundreds of raids exactly six months on from the riots that hit the capital, arresting nearly 160 people.
(AFP, 2/8/12)
2012 Feb 8, Statistics Canada said the Canadian population grew by 5.9 percent over five years to 33.5 million people in 2011, the fastest growth rate in the Group of Eight leading industrialized nations, according to the country's five-year census.
(Reuters, 2/8/12)
2012 Feb 8, China and Canada signed a series of deals to boost modest levels of bilateral trade and finished negotiations on a foreign investment protection pact after 18 years of talks.
(Reuters, 2/8/12)
2012 Feb 8, In China reports circulated that Wang Lijun, the deputy mayor overseeing security in Chongqing, may have tried to defect to the US. He was reportedly arrested in Chengdu and flown to Beijing for questioning.
(SFC, 2/9/12, p.A5)
2012 Feb 8, In China a Tibetan (19) set himself on fire in Sichuan province's Aba prefecture. He was a former monk from the local Kirti monastery, which has been the scene of protests over recent months. The monk was taken to hospital. Radio Free Asia said Tibetan protests erupted in two counties in Qinghai province, with about 1,000 people marching in each.
(AP, 2/9/12)
2012 Feb 8, An Egyptian production company said "the student members of the Muslim Brotherhood at Ain Shams University had prevented the film crew from the 'Dhat' TV series from shooting the scenes set at the university." The series, adapted from the novel "Dhat" by Egyptian author Sonallah Ibrahim, takes place in the 1970s, "when women wore short clothing."
(AFP, 2/9/12)
2012 Feb 8, A senior European Union official said the EU will impose harsher sanctions on Syria, as Russia tried to broker talks between the vice president and the opposition to calm violence. Activists reported at least 50 killed in military assaults targeting government opponents in Homs.
(AP, 2/8/12)
2012 Feb 8, Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous state, went to the polls in a contest pitting Rahul Gandhi (41), the scion of the Gandhi political dynasty, against the ruling party of local low-caste leader Mayawati.
(AFP, 2/8/12)
2012 Feb 8, In India officials said at least 30 people have died and more are sick after drinking toxic bootleg liquor made from cough medicine in Orissa state.
(AP, 2/8/12)(AFP, 2/9/12)
2012 Feb 8, Half a million Israeli public and private sector workers went on general strike, shutting down government offices, banks and airport traffic over the rights of contract workers.
(AFP, 2/8/12)
2012 Feb 8, Japan and the United States agreed to proceed with plans to transfer thousands of US troops out of the southern Japanese island of Okinawa, leaving behind the stalled discussion about closing a major US Marine base there.
(AP, 2/8/12)
2012 Feb 8, Supporters of the Maldives former president rioted through the streets and seized some police stations to demand his reinstatement as the country's new leader appealed for an end to the political turmoil roiling this Indian Ocean nation. Former leader Mohamed Nasheed and other top party officials were beaten by police in the street chaos.
(AP, 2/8/12)
2012 Feb 8, In Mali Tuareg rebels said they had seized control of Tinzawaten, a northeastern region, as UN chief Ban Ki-moon urged an end to the fighting amid growing global concern over the unrest.
(AFP, 2/8/12)
2012 Feb 8, The Mexican army said troops have made an historic seizure of 15 tons of pure methamphetamine in the western state of Jalisco. The find outside Guadalajara is more than four times the size of a major seizure last summer of 3.4 tons (3.1 metric tons) and more than twice the total amount of meth seized in Mexico in 2009, according to a UN report.
(AP, 2/9/12)
2012 Feb 8, NATO said it has decided to extend until 2018 an operation to protect the airspace of Baltic members Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania with fighter jets.
(AP, 2/8/12)
2012 Feb 8, In the Netherlands organizers of the legendary Eleven Cities Tour skating marathon ruled the ice is to thin for it to go ahead.
(AP, 2/9/12)
2012 Feb 8, The Pakistani army held talks with NATO and Afghan forces in an effort to improve coordination along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, a sign of thawing relations after American airstrikes accidentally killed 24 Pakistani soldiers last year. US drone-fired missiles hit a house in North Waziristan's Spalga village, killing nine people, including some domestic Taliban militants.
(AP, 2/8/12)
2012 Feb 8, The Palestinian Hamas parliamentary bloc in the Gaza Strip came out against the latest reconciliation deal with rival Fatah, headed by Pres. Abbas. The 31 Gaza lawmakers said the deal is illegal. Hamas risked losing jobs and influence in Gaza under the deal, which was signed in Qatar this week by Abbas and the exiled Hamas leader, Khaled Mashaal.
(AP, 2/8/12)
2012 Feb 8, In Somalia a suicide car bomber slammed his vehicle into a cafe outside the Muna Hotel, where lawmakers gather in Mogadishu, killing at least 15 people.
(http://tinyurl.com/89an85t)(AFP, 2/17/12)
2012 Feb 8, Eleven Somalis drowned and another 34 were missing after a smugglers' boat headed for Yemen capsized in the Gulf of Aden. Survivors told how the three smugglers crewmen forced 22 people overboard when the boat's engine failed soon after departure.
(AFP, 2/10/12)
2012 Feb 8, Switzerland reported seeing a large-scale hike in cigarette-smuggling from Africa where prices are 10 times cheaper.
(AFP, 2/8/12)
2012 Feb 8, Tunisia's new President Moncef Marzouki arrived in Morocco to push for a revival of a dormant project to unify the Maghreb region on his first foreign tour since taking office.
(AFP, 2/8/12)
2013 Feb 8, The big storm heading for the Northeast US disrupted air travel, with over 2,100 flights cancelled.
(AP, 2/8/13)
2013 Feb 8, A federal judge overturned an Arizona law that sought to block funding through the state for Planned Parenthood's healthcare clinics because the group also performs abortions.
(Reuters, 2/12/13)
2013 Feb 8, in Ohio Samuel Mullet Sr. (67), the ringleader of hair- and beard-cutting attacks on fellow members of his faith, was sentenced to 15 years in prison. Family members convicted of carrying out his orders got sentences ranging from one to seven years.
(AP, 2/7/13)
2013 Feb 8, In central Bangladesh at least two people died and dozens were rescued after the ML Sarash passenger ferry collided with another ship and capsized on the River Meghna, dumping as many as 100 people into the water.
(AP, 2/8/13)
2013 Feb 8, In Britain two drug-addicted hit men who went to the wrong address and stabbed a teenager to death in 2010 were sentenced to a minimum of 40 years in jail. Prosecutors said Ben Hope (39) and Jason Richards (38) were paid 1,000 pounds ($1,600) each to kill a man who owed money to a businessman. But the pair killed Aamir Siddiqi (17) on his doorstep instead.
(AP, 2/8/13)
2013 Feb 8, Canadian police arrested Conservative Senator Patrick Brazeau (38) for alleged domestic violence. PM Stephen Harper, who appointed Brazeau to the Senate in 2008, kicked Brazeau out of the Conservative caucus after he heard about the incident.
(AP, 2/10/13)
2013 Feb 8, In Halifax, Canada, naval officer Sub-Lt. Jeffrey Delisle (41), who handed over secrets to Russia for more than four years, damaging Canada's relations with the United States and other key allies, was jailed for 20 years.
(Reuters, 2/8/13)
2013 Feb 8, A Chinese court sentenced a Tibetan man to 13 years in prison for goading a monk to self-immolate. The sentence by a court in Qinghai province followed a news report that the government has detained 70 people in the province's ethnic Tibetan areas.
(AP, 2/8/13)
2013 Feb 8, Thousands of Egyptians staged rallies in cities across the country to denounce the rule of Islamist President Mohammed Morsi and his fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood.
(AP, 2/8/13)
2013 Feb 8, EU leaders agreed to a significantly reduced 7-year budget worth €960 billion ($1.28 trillion) — the first cut in spending in the 27-country group's history.
(AP, 2/8/13)
2013 Feb 8, Finnish customs officers confiscated a container on a Finnish freighter, en route to Syria from Russia, because it did not have a transit license and found 9.6 tons of tank spare parts.
(AP, 2/15/13)
2013 Feb 8, In Iraq car bombs struck two outdoor markets and a group of taxi vans in Shiite areas across the country, killing at least 36 people and wounding nearly 100. Tens of thousands of Sunni protesters rallied in five major cities against PM Nouri al-Maliki.
(AP, 2/8/13)
2013 Feb 8, In Israel the offices of the Beitar Jerusalem soccer team, long-linked to PM Netanyahu’s Likud Party, were set on fire. In January the team had recruited, for the first time in its 75-year history, two Muslim players.
(SFC, 2/9/13, p.A4)(Econ, 4/13/13, p.52)
2013 Feb 8, In northern Mali French forces wrested Tessalit from control of Islamic insurgents. In Gao the conflict's first suicide bombing increased fears of terror attacks.
(AP, 2/8/13)
2013 Feb 8, In northern Nigeria gunmen suspected of belonging to a radical Islamic sect shot and killed at least nine women who were taking part in a polio vaccination drive in Kano. Kano state police commissioner Ibrahim Idris immediately ordered the arrest of three radio journalists for allegedly being responsible for the killings. Police claimed on-air comments about a vaccination campaign in the area sparked the attacks.
(AP, 2/8/13)(AP, 2/12/13)
2013 Feb 8, In northwestern Pakistan a bomb planted near a market killed 16 people and wounded 17 others in Kalaya, the main town in the Orakzai tribal area.
(AP, 2/8/13)
2013 Feb 8, In Pakistan 6 militants were killed and 3 wounded in a US drone strike on a militant compound. The 3 wounded died overnight. Two were members of al-Qaida and the others belonged to the Pakistani Taliban movement in the Bobar Ghar area of South Waziristan.
(AP, 2/9/13)
2013 Feb 8, A Moscow city court sentenced Vladimir Kvachkov (64), a retired military intelligence colonel, to 13 years in prison for attempting to organize an armed uprising. Retired police captain, Alexey Kiselev (62), was sentenced to 11 years as a co-conspirator. Prosecutors said they had organized a group who planned to seize power by training crossbow-wielding men to seize military depots and then descend upon Moscow with tanks.
(AP, 2/8/13)
2013 Feb 8, Senegal officially launched its tribunal investigating former Chadian dictator Hissene Habre for alleged crimes against humanity, a move rights groups called a decisive turning point in the campaign to bring him to justice.
(AP, 2/8/13)
2013 Feb 8, In Slovenia thousands of people rallied for and against the center-right government, adding to the tensions in the small European Union country where authorities have turned to austerity measures to revive the economy.
(AP, 2/8/13)
2013 Feb 8, Police in South Africa arrested the "ringleader" of a group of 19 Congolese rebels who now face charges of allegedly plotting a war to unseat Congolese President Joseph Kabila. Prosecutors last week identified Etienne Kabila as being in charge of the group.
(AP, 2/10/13)
2013 Feb 8, In South Sudan 103 people were killed in Akobo County when one tribe attacked members of the Lou Nuer ethnic group while cattle were being moved across land. The attackers were believed to be members of the rebel group led by David Yau Yau of the Murle ethnic group.
(AP, 2/10/13)
2013 Feb 8, From Syria the Observatory reported clashes and regime shelling in the southern and eastern sectors of Damascus, including in the restive suburb of Moadamiyeh, where six people were killed by government shelling overnight.
(AP, 2/8/13)
2013 Feb 8, Tens of thousands of Tunisians chanting anti-government slogans converged on a cemetery for the funeral of an assassinated leftist opposition politician, as military helicopters hovered overhead and tensions threatened to boil over into further violence.
(AP, 2/8/13)
2013 Feb 8, The UN refugee agency said there has been a huge increase in the number of people fleeing Syria, with 5,000 refugees crossing the borders daily into neighboring countries.
(AP, 2/8/13)
2013 Feb 8, Venezuela's government announced that it will devalue the country's currency, a long-anticipated change expected to push up prices in the heavily import-reliant economy.
(AP, 2/8/13)
2014 Feb 8, In Albania a speeding minivan carrying eleven people lost control and hurtled 100 meters down a cliff, killing 6 people and seriously injuring the five others.
(AP, 2/8/14)
2014 Feb 8, A huge falling rock derailed a train in the French Alps, killing two people and partly pushing one of its carriages over the edge of a mountain slope.
(Reuters, 2/8/14)
2014 Feb 8, In Guatemala 20 men stormed a house in a village in Peten killing 9 people including a girl (5) and baby (3 months). The area was know to be contested by drug traffickers.
(SFC, 2/10/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 8, In India an angry crowd gathered outside a Delhi police station to protest poor policing and racist treatment of people in the northeast after a 14-year-old girl from that part of India filed charges of rape in the capital.
(Reuters, 2/8/14)
2014 Feb 8, Moroccan authorities banned a sit-in by hundreds of judges who want greater independence for the judiciary, deploying dozens of riot police to central Rabat and closing off streets around the Justice Ministry.
(Reuters, 2/8/14)
2014 Feb 8, In Russia some 40 people gathered in downtown Moscow to protest the decision of leading Russian cable and satellite companies to drop the channel, Dozhd (TV Rain). Except for women with children, most were immediately detained.
(AP, 2/8/14)
2014 Feb 8, In Saudi Arabia a hotel fire in Medina killed 13 people including 9 Egyptian pilgrims.
(AP, 2/9/14)
2014 Feb 8, A Russian animal rights activist was detained in Moscow after he and two others protested the country's policy of killing stray dogs in Sochi.
(AP, 2/8/14)
2014 Feb 8, In Spain thousands of women marched in the streets of Madrid to protest against the Spanish government's plan to restrict access to abortion.
(AFP, 2/8/14)
2014 Feb 8, In Syria new aerial bombardment from explosives-packed barrel bombs in Aleppo killed at least 20 people. Renewed fighting broke a cease-fire in Homs and halted a plan to evacuate civilians and bring supplies into rebel-held areas under siege.
(AFP, 2/8/14)(AP, 2/8/14)
2014 Feb 8, In Ukraine Thousands of people angered by months of anti-government protests in Kiev converged on one of the protesters' barricades, but retreated after meeting sizeable resistance.
(AP, 2/8/14)
2015 Feb 8, The United States delivered more than $25 million worth of military aid including heavy artillery to the Lebanese army to help it fight jihadist groups which have repeatedly battled with security forces near the Syrian border.
(Reuters, 2/8/15)
2015 Feb 8, In the Comoros Islands Mohamed Said Abdallah Mchangama, a former finance minister, was arrested on charges of inciting hatred. Mchangama had called for a general strike in protest at the government's energy plans.
(AP, 2/10/15)
2015 Feb 8, In Egypt 22 soccer fans died of suffocation from tear gas and a stampede outside a Cairo stadium in a melee with security forces. Authorities said it was sparked when hard-core Zamalek fans known as Ultras White Knights tried to force their way into the stadium without tickets. The violence prompted the Cabinet to suspend the national football league indefinitely. Police arrested 21 soccer fans in the wake of the stampede.
(AP, 2/9/15)(AP, 2/10/15)
2015 Feb 8, French police detained six people suspected of recruiting potential jihadists, just days after another operation saw five charged on similar grounds.
(AFP, 2/8/15)
2015 Feb 8, In India a Japanese student (20) was raped while touring Jaipur. Three men (20-24), who offered to be her tour guides, took her to a farming village outside the city, raped her on a roadside and fled. Villagers heard the woman crying and helped her contact police. On Sep 4 a court sentenced the three men to 20 years in prison. Three other defendants were sentenced to two years in prison for helping the three main accused commit the crime.
(AP, 9/4/15)
2015 Feb 8, Israel's Supreme Court ordered the government to demolish nine homes in the West Bank Jewish settlement of Ofra, which were built on private Palestinian land. Authorities have until 2017 to carry out the demolitions.
(AFP, 2/9/15)
2015 Feb 8, Two Italian patrol boats picked up 105 migrants late today from the boat drifting in extreme sea conditions. At least 29 migrants died of hypothermia aboard Italian coast guard vessels. Survivors later confirmed the existence of a fourth rubber boat that left Libya with as many as 300 people unaccounted-for.
(Reuters, 2/9/15)(SFC, 2/10/15, p.A2)(AP, 2/11/15)
2015 Feb 8, Jordan said it has launched 56 airstrikes against Islamic State group weapons depots, training centers and military barracks since militants released a video on Feb 3 of them burning a Jordanian pilot to death.
(AP, 2/8/15)
2015 Feb 8, In Libya heavy fighting flared up in Benghazi as forces loyal to the internationally recognized elected government tried to retake areas controlled by extremist militias.
(AP, 2/8/15)
2015 Feb 8, Nigeria's Boko Haram Islamic extremists abducted about 30 people including eight Cameroonian girls and killed 7 hostages in two bus hijackings in Cameroon and Nigeria.
(AP, 2/10/15)
2015 Feb 8, In Niger Boko Haram fighters waged a new attack on Diffa, a southeastern border town, where a blast killed at least 5 people and injured at least 10. Aid workers said the assailants had come from Nigeria.
(AFP, 2/8/15)(Reuters, 2/8/15)
2015 Feb 8, Nigerian authorities came in for heavy criticism over the decision to postpone national elections in the face of relentless Boko Haram violence.
(AFP, 2/8/15)
2015 Feb 8, In Sudan 3 staff of the Sudanese Red Crescent were killed in an attack in Blue Nile state, where Khartoum is battling rebels.
(AFP, 2/9/15)
2015 Feb 8, A Turkish court ordered the arrest of 21 police officers as part of an investigation into the illegal wiretapping of politicians, civil servants and businessmen.
(Reuters, 2/8/15)
2015 Feb 8, In eastern Ukraine intense fighting continued around the rail junction town of Debaltseve, with rebel fighters making repeated attempts to storm lines defended by government troops. The leaders of Russia, Ukraine, Germany and France agreed to meet in Belarus on Feb 11 to try to broker a peace deal.
(Reuters, 2/8/15)
2016 Feb 8, The zodiac calendar entered the Year of the Monkey — the ninth of 12 animal signs.
(AP, 2/6/16)
2016 Feb 8, President Barack Obama and Italian President Sergio Mattarella met to discuss efforts to fight the spread of the Islamic State in Libya.
(AP, 2/9/16)
2016 Feb 8, The Justice Department said the wife of senior Islamic State leader Abu Sayyaf, who was killed in a US raid last year, has been charged in federal court with holding American Kayla Mueller hostage and with contributing to the aid worker's death. Nisreen Assad Ibrahim Bahar, aka Umm Sayyaf, admitted after her capture last May that she and her husband had kept Mueller captive along with several other young female hostages.
(AP, 2/8/16)
2016 Feb 8, In eastern Afghanistan suicide bomber struck in a crowded market, killing 5 civilians and wounding nine others in Paktika province. In northern Balkh province a suicide bomber targeting an Afghan army minibus near a base killed at least 3 soldiers and wounded another 18 military personnel. In the eastern Nangarhar province a presidential palace guard was shot dead inside his home in an attack that also wounded his mother.
(AP, 2/8/16)
2016 Feb 8, Bosnian Serb Gen. Zdravko Tolimir, jailed for life for committing genocide during the Balkans wars, died of natural cases in a UN detention center at The Hague.
(AFP, 2/12/16)
2016 Feb 8, Canada announced it will end air strikes targeting the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria and bring home its six fighter jets on February 22.
(AFP, 2/8/16)
2016 Feb 8, In Chad Zouhoura (16) was assaulted in a brutal attack that shocked many, triggering weeks of demonstrations by thousands of young people in the streets. Five alleged rapists, who include the sons of three generals, were taken into custody together with four suspected accomplices. Zouhoura soon returned to France, where she already lived with relatives from 2009 to 2015, and decided to speak out publicly in Paris to fight impunity for sex criminals in her central African nation homeland.
(AFP, 3/22/16)
2016 Feb 8, Star Cuban infielder Yulieski Gourriel and his younger brother slipped away from their hotel in the Dominican Republic early today in an apparent effort to launch careers in Major League Baseball.
(AP, 2/8/16)
2016 Feb 8, The Montreal-based UN aviation agency said global aviation experts agreed to the first emissions-reduction standards for aircraft in a deal that will take effect with new models in four years, but environmental groups said the carbon dioxide cuts did not go far enough.
(Reuters, 2/8/16)
2016 Feb 8, In Colombia an attack early today on a military brigade was blamed on the leftist National Liberation Army (ELN). President Juan Manuel Santos vowed to step up the fight against the second-biggest rebel group, despite claims it was ready to join in a peace drive to end decades of conflict.
(AFP, 2/8/16)
2016 Feb 8, In the Czech Rep. hundreds of taxi drivers blocked a major road in downtown Prague to demand higher pay and protest alternative services such as Uber.
(AP, 2/8/16)
2016 Feb 8, At a conference in Dubai world leaders called on governments to be responsive to and inclusive of their citizens.
(AP, 2/8/16)
2016 Feb 8, France's former budget minister Jerome Cahuzac (63), who stashed millions abroad while cracking down on tax cheats at home, went on trial for tax fraud and money laundering.
(AFP, 2/9/16)
2016 Feb 8, In Germany hundreds of thousands of people packed the streets of Cologne for its annual Rose Monday parade, the culmination of five days of Carnival festivities.
(AP, 2/8/16)
2016 Feb 8, Hong Kong riot police fired warning shots during clashes that erupted in the Chinese-ruled city when authorities tried to remove illegal street stalls set up for Lunar New Year celebrations. 124 people were injured, including 90 police officers, in the worst violence since pro-democracy protests in 2014.
(Reuters, 2/9/16)(Econ, 2/13/16, p.10)
2016 Feb 8, In Ireland at least four gunmen broke into the Dublin home of Eddied Hutch, the brother of Dubin crime kingpin Gerry "The Monk" Hutch and fatally shot the 59-year-old several times in the hallway.
(AP, 2/9/16)
2016 Feb 8, In Mexico crime-beat reporter Anabel Flores Salazar was kidnapped from her home near Orizaba in the Gulf coast state of Veracruz at about 2 am. Her body was found a day later on a highway in Puebla. On Feb 13 Josele Marquez (alias) El Chichi, the presumed mastermind behind her murder, was arrested.
(AP, 2/8/16)(Reuters, 2/9/16)(Reuters, 2/13/16)
2016 Feb 8, In Mexico a gas explosion ripped through a house where dozens of abducted migrants were being held captive in Reynosa on the Texas border, injuring five people. The Guatemalan migrants told police they were abducted a week ago.
(AP, 2/9/16)
2016 Feb 8, In Nepal the United Democratic Madhesi Front said in a statement it would continue its protests but would no longer block the border points where crucial supplies come on cargo trucks from India.
(AP, 2/8/16)
2016 Feb 8, Palestinian and Israeli sources said Israel plans to increase the number of entry permits it grants to Palestinian workers, in a drive to ease economic hardship that has contributed to a wave of Palestinian attacks.
(Reuters, 2/8/16)
2016 Feb 8, Russia's FSB security service said it had arrested seven Islamic State militants in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg who it said had been planning bomb attacks in Moscow.
(Reuters, 2/8/16)
2016 Feb 8, Russia's Central Bank effectively closed down two of the country's smaller banks after it revoked their operating licenses, its latest effort to consolidate the sprawling banking sector.
(AP, 2/8/16)
2016 Feb 8, In Russia demolition crews arrived near a metro station in central Moscow to destroy nearly 100 buildings that allegedly posed a danger to the public.
(Econ, 2/20/16, p.45)
2016 Feb 8, At least 4 Russian servicemen were killed when a military helicopter crashed in the west of the country.
(AFP, 2/8/16)
2016 Feb 8, In Saudi Arabia an explosion damaged a car in Riyadh, an incident the Islamic State militant group said was caused by a bomb one of its members had affixed to the vehicle.
(Reuters, 2/8/16)
2016 Feb 8, In southern Somalia Mahad Karate, also known as Abdirahim Mohamed Warsame, was reportedly killed along with 10 middle-level al-Shabab members by a Kenyan airstrike on Nadris camp. Kenya’s army announced the attack on Feb 18, but the Shehab dismissed the report.
(AFP, 2/18/16)
2016 Feb 8, Swedish police arrested 14 men for allegedly planning to attack an asylum center after finding axes, knives and iron pipes in their cars.
(AFP, 2/9/16)
2016 Feb 8, Syrian army troops recaptured a new village north of Aleppo, bringing troops and allied militiamen to within a few kilometers of the Turkish border as part of a major Russian-backed offensive in the area.
(AP, 2/8/16)
2016 Feb 8, Twenty-four migrants, including 11 children, drowned in the Aegean Sea as they tried to cross from Turkey to Greece.
(AFP, 2/8/16)
2016 Feb 8, The UN said at least 40,000 people are being starved to death in South Sudan war zones on the brink of famine.
(AFP, 2/8/16)
2017 Feb 8, Rep. Sen. Jeff Sessions was confirmed as Pres. Donald Trump’s attorney general.
(SFC, 2/9/17, p.A4)
2017 Feb 8, Former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman (70) was released from a federal prison where he was serving a six-year sentence for bribery and obstruction of justice. He will serve the remainder of his sentence on house arrest.
(SFC, 2/9/17, p.A4)
2017 Feb 8, In Louisiana some 31 people were reported injured after six tornadoes tore through New Orleans and other parts of the state, pounding across highways and streets and leaving trees, power lines and homes leveled.
(Reuters, 2/8/17)
2017 Feb 8, Maine indicted Ronald Paquin (74), a former Roman Catholic priest, on 29 counts of sexual misconduct dating to the 1980s. Paquin had spent more than a decade in a Massachusetts prison for raping an altar boy.
(SFC, 2/9/17, p.A4)
2017 Feb 8, In North Carolina a 3-judge panel temporarily blocked a new law requiring state Senate confirmation for Gov. Roy Cooper’s Cabinet members. The law was passed in the waning days of Rep. Gov. Pat McCrory.
(SFC, 2/9/17, p.A6)
2017 Feb 8, In Ohio Reagan Tokes (21), an Ohio State Univ. student, was last seen leaving work at a Columbus restaurant. Her nude body was found the next day near a park entrance in Grove City. On February 11 DNA evidence led police to arrest convicted sex offender Brian Golsby (29).
(SSFC, 2/12/17, p.A8)
2017 Feb 8, In Afghanistan at least six Afghan employees of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) were killed as they carried supplies to areas in Jowzjan province hit by deadly snow storms. Islamic State gunmen were suspected. Two Red Cross staff members were kidnapped. On Sep 5, 2017, the Red Cross said the two kidnapped staff members have been released.
(Reuters, 2/8/17)(Reuters, 9/5/17)
2017 Feb 8, A Brazilian zoologist said an outbreak of yellow fever has claimed the lives of more than 600 monkeys and dozens of humans in the Atlantic rainforest region, threatening the survival of rare South American primates.
(Reuters, 2/8/17)
2017 Feb 8, Colombia's chief prosecutor said that suspicions of illegal campaign contributions to President Juan Manuel Santos are based on testimony of a rancher Otto Bula, connected to the leader's opponents, who has been jailed for allegedly channeling bribes on behalf of the Brazilian Odebrecht construction firm.
(AP, 2/8/17)
2017 Feb 8, The head of Estonia's foreign intelligence service said that Russia was "the greatest source of a threat" to Estonia in cyberspace because Estonia is a member of both the EU and NATO. He also said Estonia has teamed up with the US Secret Service ahead of its first EU presidency to train local officials to handle cyber threats.
(AP, 2/8/17)
2017 Feb 8, In Austria interior and defense ministers from 15 European countries agreed to come up with new measures to ensure that the overland route from Greece remains shut for migrants seeking new lives in other EU nations and those trying to bring them in illegally.
(AP, 2/8/17)
2017 Feb 8, The Czech government said it has decided to double its quota for Ukrainian workers, due to an acute labor shortage as the economy continues to grow strongly.
(Reuters, 2/8/17)
2017 Feb 8, In Greece hundreds of firefighters in uniform took to the streets of Athens, saying roughly one third of their jobs are at risk due to hiring restrictions placed on the public sector by Greece's international bailout conditions.
(AP, 2/8/17)
2017 Feb 8, In Iraq hundreds of supporters of Iraqi cleric Moqtada al-Sadr demonstrated in Baghdad to demand electoral reform ahead of a planned provincial vote in September.
(AFP, 2/8/17)
2017 Feb 8, Israeli and Palestinian rights groups petitioned the Supreme Court asking it to strike down a new law allowing expropriation of private Palestinian land for Jewish settlers.
(AFP, 2/8/17)
2017 Feb 8, Mexican electoral authorities annulled the results of town council elections in San Juan Achiutla, Oaxaca, because married women had been prevented from voting. Achiutla officials had argued that married women don't perform community work and thus can't vote.
(AP, 2/9/17)
2017 Feb 8, In the Philippines as many as 15,000 people were left homeless after a huge fire engulfed an overcrowded slum in Manila, destroying thousands of homes and sending residents fleeing with their few possessions.
(AFP, 2/8/17)
2017 Feb 8, Romania's defiant PM Sorin Grindeanu easily survived a no-confidence vote even as his government continued to face nationwide protests over its efforts to weaken anti-corruption laws.
(AFP, 2/8/17)
2017 Feb 8, Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny accused the Kremlin of trying to block him from running in next year's presidential election after a court found him guilty of embezzlement. A court in Kirov found Navalny guilty of embezzlement in relation to a timber firm called Kirovles, and gave him a five-year suspended prison sentence.
(Reuters, 2/8/17)
2017 Feb 8, The Russian embassy in Nigeria said seven Russian sailors and a Ukrainian have been kidnapped in Nigerian waters from the BBC Caribbean, a cargo vessel flagged in Antigua and Barbuda.
(AP, 2/8/17)
2017 Feb 8, In Somalia members of the upper and lower houses of parliament elected former PM Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo as president.
(SFC, 2/9/17, p.A2)
2017 Feb 8, Syrian government jets bombed a rebel-held district of Homs city in the west of the country, killing at least nine people.
(Reuters, 2/8/17)(AP, 2/8/17)
2017 Feb 8, Turkey said Syrian rebels backed by the Turkish military have captured the outskirts of the Islamic State-held city of al-Bab in northern Syria.
(Reuters, 2/8/17)
2017 Feb 8, Turkish presidency sources said President Tayyip Erdogan and US President Donald Trump agreed in an overnight phone call on joint action against Islamic State in the Syrian towns of Raqqa and al-Bab, both held by the militants.
(Reuters, 2/8/17)
2017 Feb 8, In eastern Ukraine Mikhail Tolstykh (36), the military chief of a self-proclaimed Russian-backed Donetsk republic, was blown up with a grenade launcher. Rebels blamed Ukrainian security services.
(AFP, 2/8/17)(Econ, 2/11/17, p.38)
2017 Feb 8, Senior UN officials said more than 1,000 Rohingya Muslims may have been killed in a Myanmar army crackdown, suggesting the death toll has been a far greater than previously reported.
(Reuters, 2/8/17)
2017 Feb 8, The UN appealed for $2.1 billion to provide desperately needed aid to millions of people in war-ravaged Yemen this year, warning the country could soon face famine.
(AFP, 2/8/17)
2017 Feb 8, Pope Francis issued a stinging criticism of atrocities against Myanmar's Rohingya minority, saying they had been tortured and killed simply because they wanted to live their culture and Muslim faith.
(Reuters, 2/8/17)
2017 Feb 8, Zimbabwe's Constitutional Court dismissed a case against President Robert Mugabe (92) lodged by an activist who accused the aging leader of violating the southern African country's supreme law during protests last year.
(Reuters, 2/8/17)
2017 Feb 8, Zimbabwean protest leader Evan Mawarire was released on bail by a court in Harare after police arrested him on charges of subverting the government and inciting public violence.
(AFP, 2/8/17)
2018 Feb 8, US stocks plunged for the 2nd time in four days and the Dow Jones industrial average sank more than 1,000 points.
(SFC, 2/9/18, p.C1)
2018 Feb 8, The SF-based Helen Diller Foundation announced a $500 million donation for a new hospital at the USCF campus in Parnassus Heights.
(SFC, 2/8/18, p.A1)
2018 Feb 8, In Boston Cleber Rene Rizerio Rocha (28) of Brazil was sentenced after pleading guilty in October to money laundering charges. $20 million was found in Westborough in January 2017 during an investigation into TelexFree Inc., a defunct internet telecom company that prosecutors say was actually a billion-dollar pyramid scheme. Authorities say Rocha was a courier for a fugitive TelexFree executive who came to retrieve the money move it out of the US.
(AP, 2/9/18)
2018 Feb 8, In Ohio Arnold Perry (34) was sentenced to 27 years in prison on rape and sexual battery charges. Authorities said he had impregnated 14-year-old twins and their sister (12) while living in their home in 2015-2016.
(SFC, 2/10/18, p.A5)
2018 Feb 8, In Texas one man died after he and three others were stabbed during a church service at a private home in Corpus Christi. Suspect Marco Antonio Moreno immediately surrendered.
(SFC, 2/9/18, p.A6)
2018 Feb 8, A US-led coalition statement said joint US and Afghan air raids targeted the Islamic State group in Afghanistan's northern Jowzjan province. In northeastern Badakshan province US fighter jets pounded Taliban camps that were providing support to militant Turkic Muslim Uighurs who seek independence from China. A Chinese and three Uzbek militants were reported killed in the joint air strikes in Jowzjan province. Missiles fired from US drone slammed into a vehicle in eastern Paktia province, killing four militants.
(AP, 2/8/18)(AP, 2/9/18)
2018 Feb 8, In Afghanistan Khalid Mehsood, deputy leader of the umbrella Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), died after a pre-dawn US drone strike in North Waziristan. Group leaders soon nominated Mufti Noor Wali Mehsud to take his place.
(AFP, 2/12/18)
2018 Feb 8, Bangladesh opposition leader and former prime minister Khaleda Zia (72) was jailed for corruption but plans to appeal her five-year term. Khaleda, her son and aides were convicted of stealing 21 million taka ($253,000) in foreign donations received by an orphanage trust set up when she was last prime minister, from 2001 to 2006.
(Reuters, 2/8/18)
2018 Feb 8, Brazil's federal police arrested Congressman Joao Rodrigues on corruption charges at Sao Paulo's international airport, saying they feared he could try to escape to Paraguay.
(AP, 2/8/18)
2018 Feb 8, Freemasons published advertisements in British newspapers to say their members are being unfairly stigmatized, after reports of secret lodges for lawmakers and journalists.
(AP, 2/8/18)
2018 Feb 8, China dismissed accusations from the former leader of the Maldives that it is attempting to effectively buy up the Indian Ocean island state. China is already the Maldives' primary source of tourists and is investing hundreds of millions of dollars in an airport expansion, housing development and other projects.
(AP, 2/8/18)
2018 Feb 8, Cyprus' energy minister said that exploratory drilling off the southern shore has shown indications of a potentially sizeable gas deposit that raises hopes for more discoveries.
(AP, 2/8/18)
2018 Feb 8, Egyptian prosecutors ordered the detention for 15 days of Mohamed el-Kassas, a prominent opposition activist pending investigations into charges that include joining a terrorist group and disseminating fake news.
(AP, 2/12/18)
2018 Feb 8, Ethiopia's attorney general's office said 746 more prisoners will be released, including a journalist and a senior opposition official who were jailed for conspiracy to commit terrorist acts. The names have been forwarded to President Mulatu Teshome, who has the power to grant their freedom.
(Reuters, 2/8/18)
2018 Feb 8, The French defense minister presented a bill foreseeing 295 billion euros ($364 billion) in overall defense spending from 2019 to 2025. That includes 1.7 billion euros in additional spending each year through 2022, particularly to modernize equipment and improve intelligence.
(AP, 2/8/18)
2018 Feb 8, French custom's officers seized nearly 500 weapons, more than 100 kg (220 pounds) of ammunition and myriad grenades in the northern region of Picardy. Officials found "an arsenal of long guns" in a car nearby including "weapons of war" and machine guns that were arranged on racks.
(AP, 2/14/18)
2018 Feb 8, The Gambia was readmitted to the Commonwealth, welcomed back following the democratic election of President Adama Barrow, who reversed the shock pullout of 2013.
(AFP, 2/8/18)
2018 Feb 8, The Christian Social Union (CSU), the smallest partner in Germany's prospective new government, signed off on the coalition deal giving Chancellor Angela Merkel a stable government for her fourth term.
(AP, 2/8/18)
2018 Feb 8, Greece launched a seven-year bond auction with a starting rate of 3.75 percent, in the first major step this year toward a return to financing itself on international markets.
(AP, 2/8/18)
2018 Feb 8, In Kenya Citizen TV, the last of three television stations shut down by the government last week, resumed transmission.
(Reuters, 2/8/18)
2018 Feb 8, In eastern Libya Commander Mahmoud al-Werfalli, wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) over a series of summary executions, was released, a day after handing himself in to military authorities.
(Reuters, 2/8/18)
2018 Feb 8, Moldova's parliament adopted a declaration condemning alleged Russian attacks on cybersecurity and accusing the Russian secret services of financing Moldovan political parties.
(AP, 2/9/18)
2018 Feb 8, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un presided over an extravagant military parade in Pyongyang's Kim Il Sung Square to mark the 70th anniversary of the founding of its military.
(AP, 2/8/18)
2018 Feb 8, It was reported that Pakistan's media regulatory authority, acting on a court order, has instructed all news channels, radio stations and print media to refrain from promoting Valentine's Day.
(AP, 2/8/18)
2018 Feb 8, In Pakistan a US drone strike killed seven militants in the border village of Gorwak, North Waziristan.
(AP, 2/9/18)
2018 Feb 8, It was reported that International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutors have opened a preliminary examination into Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte's "war on drugs", which has led to the death of thousands since it began in July 2016.
(Reuters, 2/8/18)
2018 Feb 8, In Poland protesting doctors and health authorities signed a deal that will significantly increase spending on health care, including doctors' pay.
(AP, 2/8/18)
2018 Feb 8, A Romanian court sentenced Darius Valcov, a former finance minister and one of the architects of the ruling Social Democrats' governing program, to eight-years in prison for corruption and money-laundering. He denied wrongdoing and can appeal.
(AP, 2/12/18)
2018 Feb 8, Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny published an investigation alleging that a Russian Cabinet member received lavish hospitality from billionaire Oleg Deripaska, a tycoon who has been linked to US President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort.
(AP, 2/8/18)
2018 Feb 8, A spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry said North Korean workers can stay in Russia until Dec. 2019, in line with a United Nations' resolution.
(Reuters, 2/8/18)
2018 Feb 8, Saudi state media reported that a criminal court has sentenced a columnist to five years in prison for insulting the royal court. Saleh al-Shehi was detained after his Dec. 8 appearance on the privately owned Rotana Channel after saying that any Saudi citizen who has a contact within the royal court automatically has an advantage in buying strategically located land unavailable to the public.
(AP, 2/8/18)
2018 Feb 8, Syrian rescue workers and activists said the death toll from ongoing government strikes on the opposition-held region near the capital Damascus has risen to at least 35. At least 169 civilians have been killed since Feb. 5.
(AP, 2/8/18)
2018 Feb 8, In Syria the US-led coalition and its local allies struck pro-government forces with deadly air and artillery fire overnight to repel "an unprovoked attack" near the Euphrates. The US-led coalition said it killed at least 100 pro-regime fighters to fend off an attack on its allies. It was later reported that at least four Russian private military contractors were killed in the strike.
(Reuters, 2/8/18)(AFP, 2/8/18)(SFC, 2/14/18, p.A2)
2018 Feb 8, Tajikistan's interior minister said amnesty has been granted to 111 of its nationals following their return home from Syria and Iraq, where they had joined radical Islamist groups. He also said some 250 citizens of Tajikistan, a majority-Muslim country, had died fighting for radical groups in Iraq and Syria, mostly the Islamic State group.
(AFP, 2/8/18)
2018 Feb 8, Thailand's Pollution Control Department said that concentrations in Bangkok of tiny particles known as PM 2.5, a benchmark measure of air quality, were almost double the levels considered safe.
(AP, 2/8/18)
2018 Feb 8, Nearly three dozen Thai democracy activists turned themselves in to police after being summoned in connection with a protest calling for the ruling military government to step down and relinquish power through elections. All were released the same day.
(AP, 2/8/18)
2018 Feb 8, The UN said a military offensive launched last month by Congolese troops against Ugandan militants in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo is likely to force nearly 370,000 people from their homes.
(Reuters, 2/8/18)
2018 Feb 8, In Yemen people in the last of four boats carrying migrants were forced to swim to shore as they approached Shabwa province from Somalia. About 600 Ethiopian migrants, men and women, were aboard the boats and 25 were missing.
(AP, 2/9/18)
2019 Feb 8, Acting US Attorney General Matthew Whitaker said that he has "not interfered in any way" in the special counsel's Russia investigation as he faced a contentious and partisan congressional hearing in his waning days on the job.
(AP, 2/8/19)
2019 Feb 8, In southern California Reuben Franco (24) was found shot dead at a home in Yucaipa. Two girls, ages 14 and 15, were later arrested in Arizona in connection with Franco's death after they crashed his car.
(SFC, 2/12/19, p.A4)
2019 Feb 8, In Connecticut supporters of Sujitno Sajuti (70), a former Fulbright scholar who took sanctuary at a Hartford church to avoid deportation, rallied to call on federal immigration officials to allow him to stay in the US.
(AP, 2/8/19)
2019 Feb 8, New Hampshire's Supreme Court upheld the conviction of three women who were arrested for going topless on a beach.
(SFC, 2/9/19, p.A5)
2019 Feb 8, US media reported that a second woman has accused Virginia's Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax of sexual misconduct, further adding to the political turmoil in the state.
(AFP, 2/9/19)
2019 Feb 8, Virginia's Gov. Ralph Northam said that he is not going to resign over a racist photo that appeared in his medical school yearbook.
(SFC, 2/9/19, p.A7)
2019 Feb 8, In Afghanistan airstrikes were carried out late today in the Sangin district, where heavy fighting was underway between NATO-backed Afghan forces and the Taliban. A lawmaker later said the airstrikes killed 21 civilians, including women and children. The Taliban attacked an army checkpoint in Sari Pul province late today, killing three soldiers and wounding four.
(AP, 2/10/19)
2019 Feb 8, Australian police said they have arrested six people over the last 24 hours after what authorities said was the largest single seizure of methamphetamine in the United States and the biggest drug haul bound for Australia. US Customs and Border Protection said 1,728 kg (3,800 pounds) of the drug were seized mid-January at the Los Angeles-Long Beach port complex along with smaller amounts of cocaine and heroin.
(AP, 2/8/19)(SFC, 2/9/19, p.A5)
2019 Feb 8, In Australia a cyberattack on Parliament's computing network also affected the network used by major political parties. PM Scott Morrison later said a "sophisticated state actor" was behind the attack.
(AP, 2/18/19)
2019 Feb 8, In Brazil a fire tore through the sleeping quarters of the Flamengo soccer club in Rio de Janeiro's western region, killing 10 people and injuring three. The victims were all between 14 and 17 years old.
(AP, 2/8/19)(AFP, 2/9/19)
2019 Feb 8, China's Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs reported that swine disease had been detected on a farm in Yongzhou in the central province of Hunan, where 4,600 pigs were being raised. First detected in August, the disease has killed more than 1 million pigs in China.
(AP, 2/9/19)
2019 Feb 8, Colombia's migration office said it has canceled over 300 daily entrance passes for Venezuelan politicians and their families who support Pres. Nicolas Maduro.
(Reuters, 2/8/19)
2019 Feb 8, European Union member states adopted a Franco-German compromise allowing Berlin to remain the lead negotiator with Russia on the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline to Europe.
(AFP, 2/8/19)
2019 Feb 8, The Social Insurance Institution of Finland (Kela) said a nationwide experiment with basic income in Finland has not increased employment among those participating in the two-year trial, but their general well-being seems to have increased.
(AP, 2/8/19)
2019 Feb 8, In Finland an independent 248-page investigative report in English, commissioned by the Finnish government, was released. It said 1,408 Finnish volunteers served within the SS Panzer Division Wiking during 1941-43, most of them aged between 17 and 20 years old. The report concluded that the country's volunteer battalion, which served with Nazi Germany's Waffen-SS, took part in atrocities during World War II, including participating in the mass murder of Jews.
(AP, 2/10/19)
2019 Feb 8, Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel inaugurated the new, fortress-like Berlin headquarters of the scandal-plagued BND foreign intelligence service.
(AFP, 2/8/19)
2019 Feb 8, Iceland's government said Britain and the so-called EEA EFTA countries, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway, have reached an agreement on citizens' rights should Britain leave the EU without a withdrawal agreement.
(Reuters, 2/8/19)
2019 Feb 8, An Indian court sentenced seven Muslim men to life in prison for the murder of two Hindu men on Aug. 27, 2013, in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh. The incident had sparked religious riots killing about 65 people and displacing thousands.
(Reuters, 2/8/19)
2019 Feb 8, In Italy engineers started the delicate task of taking apart Genoa's Morandi motorway bridge almost six months after its partial collapse during a storm killed 43 people and injured dozens.
(AFP, 2/8/19)
2019 Feb 8, Kashmir officials said heavy snow caused avalanches and landslides have killed 11 people and trapped another.
(AP, 2/8/19)
2019 Feb 8, Kurdish officials said there was no progress on repatriating dozens of French nationals, including accused Islamic State fighters, women, and children, from prison camps in northern Syria.
(AFP, 2/8/19)
2019 Feb 8, A Libyan official said authorities in Misrata have arrested Abdel Qader Azuz, a suspected al Qaeda leader who had fled from the eastern city of Derna, once a jihadist bastion.
(Reuters, 2/8/19)
2019 Feb 8, In northern Mozambique local sources said suspected jihadists have killed seven men and abducted four women in the latest violence to hit the Cabo Delgado region. The bodies were cut into pieces and left in Piqueue village.
(AFP, 2/8/19)
2019 Feb 8, Two Palestinian teenagers were killed by Israeli fire during clashes along the Gaza border. Another 17 Palestinians were shot and wounded at different protest sites along the border.
(AFP, 2/8/19)
2019 Feb 8, President Klaus Iohannis said that Romania had decided to join other EU countries and allies in recognizing Venezuela's opposition leader Juan Guaido as president partly because Bucharest currently holds the EU's rotating presidency.
(AP, 2/8/19)
2019 Feb 8, In Russia a truck carrying miners to the Raspadskaya coal mine in the Kemerovo region in central Siberia veered off the road and fell 8 meters (26 feet) down a slope. Six workers were killed and 16 others were injured and hospitalized. In the nearby Belovo region of Kemerovo, a section of a coal mine collapsed, trapping four workers. One of them died of injuries while three others have been rescued.
(AP, 2/8/19)
2019 Feb 8, Sergei Yursky (83), a renowned Russian film and stage actor, died in Moscow. He has been widely recognized as one of the most talented actors of his generation.
(AP, 2/8/19)
2019 Feb 8, In Spain two passenger trains rammed head-on into each other on a track near Barcelona, killing one person and injuring about 100 others, most of them slightly.
(AP, 2/9/19)
2019 Feb 8, Sudanese protesters rallied after prayers in an eastern town against the death in custody of a teacher arrested in connection with anti-government demonstrations sweeping the country. The doctors' union in Sudan said that a government crackdown on weeks of protests has left at least 57 people dead, including three who allegedly died of torture in police custody.
(AFP, 2/8/19)(AP, 2/8/19)
2019 Feb 8, In Syria a mine exploded in agricultural land in the central province of Hama killing seven civilians and wounding another.
(AP, 2/8/19)
2019 Feb 8, Pilots from Taiwan's China Airlines went on strike in the middle of the Lunar New Year travel rush, forcing the cancellation of at least 18 flights over coming days and stranding thousands of passengers.
(AP, 2/8/19)
2019 Feb 8, Thailand Princess Ubolratana Rajakanya Sirivadhana Barnavadi (67) shocked the nation when she announced she would be the sole prime ministerial candidate for the party, which is loyal to ousted ex-premier Thaksin Shinawatra. King Maha Vajiralongkorn called her announcement inappropriate" and unconstitutional. She lost her special royal titles more than four decades ago when she married a commoner, an American, but is still called and widely regarded as a princess.
(Reuters, 2/8/19)(AP, 2/8/19)
2019 Feb 8, Ugandan police released three journalists who were working for the British Broadcasting Corporation, after detaining them overnight on suspicion of illegally possessing government prescription drugs.
(Reuters, 2/8/19)
2020 Feb 8, In Washington DC police escorted more than 100 members of the Patriot Front, a white nationalist group, on a march through the National Mall. Metropolitan Police said the march occurred without incident or arrests.
(Reuters, 2/8/20)
2020 Feb 8, In San Francisco a shooting Haight-Ashbury neighborhood involved an off-duty FBI agent and an adult male, who was hospitalized. The agent was not hurt.
(AP, 2/9/20)
2020 Feb 8, Robert Conrad (b.1935), American film and TV star, died in Malibu, Ca. His TV work included the series "The Wild Wild West" (1965-1970), "Baa Baa Black Sheep" (1976) and "The Black Sheep Squadron" (1977). His films included "Young Dillinger" (1966) and "Jungle All the Way" (1996).
(SFC, 2/12/20, p.C5)
2020 Feb 8, In eastern Afghanistan two US soldiers were killed and six wounded in a so-called insider attack in Nangarhar province late today. One Afghan National Army member was also killed.
(AP, 2/8/20)
2020 Feb 8, Australian authorities declared the Currowan Fire south of Sydney was finally out after destroying more than 300 homes and razing 500,000 hectares (1.2 million acres) over two-and-a-half months. A deluge in eastern parts of the country drenched deadly fires and helped ease a crippling drought.
(AP, 2/10/20)
2020 Feb 8, China's city of Wuhan, at the center of the coronavirus outbreak, opened another makeshift hospital, providing 1,500 beds.
(Reuters, 2/8/20)
2020 Feb 8, The World Health Organization (WHO) said the death toll in mainland China has risen to 723, looking likely to pass the 774 deaths recorded globally during the 2002-2003 outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). A total of 34,546 cases were reported on the mainland. The virus has spread to 27 countries and regions, based on official reports, infecting more than 330 people.
(Reuters, 2/8/20)(AP, 2/8/20)
2020 Feb 8, France said it is closing two schools and tried to reassure vacationers in the Alps after five British citizens, including a 9-year-old child, contracted the new virus from China at a French ski resort.
(AP, 2/8/20)
2020 Feb 8, Germany's ruling coalition called for fresh elections in the eastern state of Thuringia, whose pro-business premier stepped down only two days after being helped into the job with votes from the far right.
(Reuters, 2/8/20)
2020 Feb 8, Voters in New Delhi began voting in a state election seen as a test of Indian PM Narendra Modi's popularity following months of deadly anti-government protests over a new citizenship law.
(Reuters, 2/8/20)
2020 Feb 8, Iran said it has repelled a cyberattack that disrupted the country's internet services for an hour.
(AFP, 2/8/20)
2020 Feb 8, Irish voters cast their ballots with PM Leo Varadkar hoping to secure a new term on the back of his Brexit strategy. Polls put his Fine Gael party behind rivals Sinn Fein and Fianna Fail. Irish Republican Army-linked party Fianna Fail received 22.2% of the votes. Fine Gael, the party of incumbent Prime Minister Leo Varadkar, got 20.9%.
(AFP, 2/8/20)(Bloomberg, 2/9/20)(AP, 2/10/20)
2020 Feb 8, Libya’s warring sides ended several days of UN-brokered talks in Cairo without reaching a deal to consolidate a provisional cease-fire in and around the capital.
(AP, 2/9/20)
2020 Feb 8, North Korea failed to stage a parade in central Pyongyang, the 72nd anniversary of the founding of the country’s armed forces. This appeared to be a sign of the regime's fear of the coronavirus spreading from China.
(AP, 2/10/20)
2020 Feb 8, In Poland thousands of people rallied in Warsaw to show support for the country's right-wing leadership as it overhauls the justice system to put it under government control.
(SSFC, 2/9/20, p.A3)
2020 Feb 8, Syrian government forces captured new areas from insurgents in their efforts to control a key highway in the northwest, as Turkey sent more reinforcements into the war-torn country.
(AP, 2/8/20)
2020 Feb 8, In northeastern Thailand a soldier shot multiple people and was holed up in a shopping mall in Nakhon Ratchasima. The suspect was identified as Sgt. Jakrapanth Thomma. It took Thai police sharpshooters 16 hours to Thomma and end the crisis that left 29 dead.
(https://tinyurl.com/yacu34x5)(AP, 2/8/20)(AP, 2/9/20)(Econ., 5/9/20, p.29)
2020 Feb 8, Turkmen President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov (62) named his son Serdar (38) as minister of industry and construction. Serdar is likely to oversee the ambitious project of building a new capital from scratch for the central Ahal province, which he used to head.
(Reuters, 2/8/20)
2020 Feb 8, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy asked Pope Francis for help to win the release of prisoners of war held by Russia and Russian-backed separatists.
(Reuters, 2/8/20)
2021 Feb 8, President Joe Biden spoke with Indian PM Narendra Modi, with the leaders of the world's two biggest democracies agreeing to strengthen their nations' partnership at a moment when both countries face strained relations with China. Biden and Modi did not discuss the massive farmer protests in India.
(AP, 2/8/21)
2021 Feb 8, Bitcoin took another large stride toward mainstream acceptance after billionaire Elon Musk's electric vehicle company Tesla Inc revealed it had purchased $1.5 billion of the cryptocurrency and would soon accept it as a form of payment.
(Reuters, 2/8/21)
2021 Feb 8, California to date had 3,400,070 cases of coronavirus and 44,232 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 387,919 cases and 4,575 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 27,083,278 with the death toll at 464,831.
(sfist.com, 2/8/21)
2021 Feb 8, In Ohio Anthony Sowell (61), sentenced to death for killing 11 women and hiding their remains in and around his home, died in prison of an illness.
(AP, 2/9/21)
2021 Feb 8, Mary Wilson (76), a founding member of the Supremes, died at her home in Henderson, Nev. The trailblazing group from the 1960s, formed in Detroit as the Primettes in 1959, was known for hits like “Where Did Our Love Go?" and “Baby Love." Members included Florence Ballard and Diana Ross and helped develop Motown’s legendary sound.
(NY Times, 2/9/21)
2021 Feb 8, Argentina said it has detected the first cases of two Brazilian variants of the coronavirus in travelers from the neighboring nation.
(Reuters, 2/8/21)
2021 Feb 8, Austria issued a warning against travel to its Tyrol province amid concerns over cases of a coronavirus variant first discovered in South Africa, even as the country eased its third lockdown by reopening schools, shops, hairdressing salons, museums and zoos.
(AP, 2/8/21)
2021 Feb 8, It was reported that nearly five million EU citizens, more than all the people who live in Croatia, have applied for settled status in Britain after Brexit.
(The Telegraph, 2/9/21)
2021 Feb 8, The British government said migrants living in Britain will be eligible to receive COVID-19 vaccines regardless of whether they have the legal right to live and work in the country, adding that getting the shot would not trigger immigration checks.
(Reuters, 2/8/21)
2021 Feb 8, Royal Dutch Shell and renewables firm Eneco, owned by Japan's Mitsubishi Corp, said they will provide Amazon.com Inc's European facilities with electricity from an offshore wind farm off the Dutch coast.
(Reuters, 2/8/21)
2021 Feb 8, Chinese users lost access to Clubhouse, adding it to thousands of websites and social media apps the ruling party blocks the public from seeing using the world's most extensive system of internet filters.
(AP, 2/8/21)
2021 Feb 8, It was reported that Chinese government officials have met representatives from US electric carmaker Tesla Inc over reports from consumers about battery fires, unexpected acceleration and failures in over-the-air software updates.
(Reuters, 2/8/21)
2021 Feb 8, President Ivan Duque said Colombia will provide temporary protective status to undocumented Venezuelan migrants.
(AP, 2/8/21)
2021 Feb 8, The Czech Health Ministry said it will recommend the use of COVID-19 therapies that contain casirivimab/imdevimab and bamlavinimab antibodies ahead of standard approval.
(Reuters, 2/8/21)
2021 Feb 8, French Health Minister Olivier Veran said that he continued to support the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, arguing it provided sufficient protection against "nearly all the variants" of the virus.
(Reuters, 2/8/21)
2021 Feb 8, Germany, Poland and Sweden each declared a Russian diplomat in their country “persona non grata," retaliating in kind to last week’s decision by Moscow to expel diplomats from the three European Union countries over the case of opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
(AP, 2/8/21)
2021 Feb 8, Greece’s PM Kyriakos Mitsotakis said that it’s unlikely “substantial" talks to reunify ethnically split Cyprus could resume if Turkey and Turkish Cypriots insist on pursuing a two-state accord that defies a UN and EU-endorsed framework for federation.
(AP, 2/8/21)
2021 Feb 8, Indonesia started vaccinating its elderly medical workers against the coronavirus for the first time.
(Reuters, 2/8/21)
2021 Feb 8, Iran unveiled its second homegrown coronavirus vaccine project, the day before the launch of a vaccination campaign to combat the Middle East's deadliest Covid-19 outbreak.
(AFP, 2/8/21)
2021 Feb 8, The IAEA confirmed that Iran has begun production of uranium metal, a further violation of Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.
(AP, 2/11/21)
2021 Feb 8, Laos received 300,000 doses of a COVID-19 vaccine produced by Chinese pharmaceutical giant Sinopharm.
(Reuters, 2/8/21)
2021 Feb 8, It was reported that Mexican drug cartels are using TikTok to entice young people into organized crime.
(USA Today, 2/8/21)
2021 Feb 8, In Morocco at least 28 people died after heavy rain flooded an illegal underground textile factory in Tangier.
(SFC, 2/9/21, p.A3)
2021 Feb 8, Myanmar's military leader said his junta would hold a new election and hand power to the winner as tens of thousands of people took to the streets for a third day to protest against the coup that overthrew Aung San Suu Kyi's civilian government. Senior General Min Aung Hlaing repeated claims that last November's poll, won by Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy, had been fraudulent. The military outlawed rallies and gatherings of more than five people, along with motorized processions. An 8 p.m. to 4 a.m. curfew was imposed for areas of Yangon and Mandalay, where thousands of people have been demonstrating since Feb. 6.
(Reuters, 2/8/21)(AP, 2/9/21)
2021 Feb 8, The Dutch government suspended adoptions from foreign countries after an investigative committee report criticized past ruling coalitions for being “too passive" in the face of years of reported abuses including impoverished mothers being coerced into putting up their children for adoption.
(AP, 2/8/21)
2021 Feb 8, Pakistan's health minister said CanSino Biologics Inc's (CanSinoBIO) COVID-19 vaccine showed 65.7% efficacy in preventing symptomatic cases and a 90.98% success rate in stopping severe disease in an interim analysis of global trials.
(Reuters, 2/8/21)
2021 Feb 8, Portugal's health ministry said the AstraZeneca vaccine should preferably be used on under-65s, the latest European country to express reservations about its efficacy on older people.
(Reuters, 2/8/21)
2021 Feb 8, Russia issued updated statistics on coronavirus-linked deaths showing that 162,429 people died last year with COVID-19.
(SFC, 2/9/21, p.A4)
2021 Feb 8, South Africa said it will roll out the AstraZeneca vaccine in a "stepped manner" to assess its efficacy in preventing severe illness.
(AP, 2/8/21)
2021 Feb 8, South Korea's Hyundai Motor Co said it is not now in talks with Apple Inc on autonomous electric cars, just a month after it confirmed early-stage talks with the tech giant, sending the automaker's shares skidding.
(Reuters, 2/8/21)
2021 Feb 8, Sudan’s PM Abdalla Hamdok announced a Cabinet reshuffle to add rebel ministers as part of a peace deal that transitional authorities struck with a rebel alliance last year. The new Cabinet includes ministers from the Sudan Revolutionary Front, an alliance of armed groups.
(AP, 2/8/21)
2021 Feb 8, The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) reported that an Iraqi man (27) and a Syrian man 20 were killed in the Al-Hol displacement camp. In January Syria 20 Iraqis and Syrians were reportedly killed in the camp including a guard from the SDF that maintains the detention facility. Guards suspected Islamic State sleeper cells of the executions. The Rojava Information Center estimated 35 people were killed in the camp in all of 2020.
(AP, 2/8/21)
2021 Feb 8, United Nations data showed food prices hit six-year highs in January after rising for eight consecutive months.
(Reuters, 2/8/21)
2021 Feb 8, UN agencies received approval from Ethiopia’s government to send 25 more staff members to embattled Tigray, a region where the United Nations says hunger is growing and much of the area has been inaccessible to humanitarian workers.
(AP, 2/8/21)
2021 Feb 8, A United Nations panel reported that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has relied on government hackers to upgrade his country's nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
(AP, 2/9/21)
2021 Feb 8, Vietnam said it has culled more 100,000 poultry so far this year in a bid to contain the spread of bird flu in the Southeast Asian country. The country has reported outbreaks of the highly pathogenic H5N1 and H5N6 bird flu strains in 14 provinces.
(Reuters, 2/8/21)
2021 Feb 8, Vietnam's first domestic car manufacturer, Vinfast, said it had obtained a permit to test autonomous vehicles on public streets in California. Vinfast said two models would be sold in the US, Canadian and European markets from 2022.
(Reuters, 2/8/21)
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412 Feb 8, St. Proclus, Patriarch of Constantinople, was born. [see 411]
(HN, 2/8/98)
421 Feb 8, Flavius Constantine became emperor Constantine III of Roman Empire West.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1250 Feb 8-1250 Feb 11, The Battle of Al Mansurah was fought between crusaders led by Louis IX, King of France, and Ayyubid forces led by Emir Fakhr-ad-Din Yussuf, Faris ad-Din Aktai and Baibars al-Bunduqdari.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Al_Mansurah)
1400 Feb 8, The Knights of the Cross with the assistance of Vytautas and the hercog of Lotaringia defeated Samogitia for the 1st time.
(LHC, 2/8/03)
1577 Feb 8, Robert Burton (d.1640), writer, Anglican clergyman (Anatomy of Melancholy), was born. "A mere madness, to live like a wretch and die rich."
(AP, 8/19/98)(MC, 2/8/02)
1586 Feb 8, Jacob Praetorius, composer, was born.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1587 Feb 8, Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots (1560-67), was beheaded at age 44 in Fotheringhay Castle for her alleged part in the conspiracy to usurp Elizabeth I. In 2004 Jane Dunn authored "Elizabeth and Mary: Cousins, Rivals, Queens." In 2006 studies identified an oil painting of Mary as the only one made of Mary as queen.
(HN, 2/8/99)(PCh, 1992, p.203)(USAT, 2/5/04, p.5D)(SFC, 8/18/06, p.E2)
1600 Feb 8, Vatican sentenced scholar Giordano Bruno to death.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1601 Feb 8, The armies of Earl Robert Devereux of Essex drew into London.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1612 Feb 8, Samuel Butler (d.1680), England, poet, satirist (Hudibras) was baptized.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1622 Feb 8, King James I disbanded the English parliament.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1672 Feb 8, Isaac Newton read his 1st optics paper before Royal Society in London.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1690 Feb 8, Some 200 French and Indian troops burned Schenectady, NY, and massacred about 60 people to avenge Iraquois raids on Canada.
(AH, 2/05, p.17)
1691 Feb 8, Carlo di Girolamo Rainaldi (79), Italian architect, composer, died.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1693 Feb 8, A charter was granted for the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Va.
(AP, 2/8/99)
1709 Feb 8, Giuseppi Torelli (50), Italian composer, died.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1712 Feb 8, L. Joseph de Montcalm de Saint-Veran, French general in America, was born. [see Feb 29]
(MC, 2/8/02)
1725 Feb 8, Peter I (52) "the Great" Romanov, czar of Russia (1682-1725), died. [see Jan 28]
(MC, 2/8/02)
1740 Feb 8, Clement XII (87), [Lorenzo Corsini], blind Pope (1730-40), died.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1741 Feb 8, Andre-Ernest-Modeste Gretry, composer, was born.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1749 Feb 8, Jan van Huysum (66), Dutch still life painter, died.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1776 Feb 8, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's "Stella" premiered in Hamburg.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1789 Feb 8, Ludwig Wilhelm Maurer, composer, was born.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1796 Feb 8, China’s Emperor Qianlong (1711-1799) abdicated in favor of his son. Despite his voluntary abdication, from 1796 to 1799 Qianlong continued to hold on to power and the Jiaqing Emperor (d.1820) ruled only in name.
(Econ, 2/5/11, p.95)(Econ, 2/5/11, p.95)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qianlong_Emperor)
1802 Feb 8, Simon Willard patented a banjo clock.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1807 Feb 8, At Eylau, Poland, Napoleon’s Marshal Pierre Agureau attacked Russian forces in a heavy snowstorm. Like Napoleon, to whom he is most often compared, Alexsandr Suvorov believed that opportunities in battle are created by fortune but exploited by intelligence, experience and an intuitive eye. To him, mastery of the art and science of war was not, therefore, purely instinctive. Napoleon’s forces ran low on supplies at Eylau and ate their horses.
(HN, 2/7/97)(WSJ, 9/21/05, p.A8)
1817 Feb 8, Richard Stoddert Ewell (d.1872(), Lt Gen (Confederate Army), was born.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1819 Feb 8, John Ruskin (d.1900), writer, critic, artist, Gothic Revivalist (Pre-Raphaelite), was born. His work included "Modern Painter" and "The Stones of Venice."
(WSJ, 3/6/00, p.A28)(MC, 2/8/02)
1820 Feb 8, General William T. Sherman (d.1891), Union general in America's Civil War, was born. His famous "March to the Sea" changed the face of modern warfare.
(HN, 2/8/99)(AP, 4/7/99)(MC, 2/8/02)
1828 Feb 8, French author Jules Verne (d.1905) was born. He is considered the father of science fiction. Many of his 19th-century works forecast amazing scientific feats--feats that were actually carried out in the 20th century--with uncanny accuracy. Verne's 1865 book From the Earth to the Moon told the story of a space ship that is launched from Florida to the moon and that returns to Earth by landing in the ocean. Something of a scientist and traveler himself, Verne's 1870 work about a submarine, "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea," and "Around the World in Eighty Days" also foretold technological advances that seemed fantastic at the time.
(HNPD, 2/8/99)
1834 Feb 8, Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleyev (d.1907), Russian chemist, was born. He formulated the periodic table of elements.
(V.D.-H.K.p.324)(HN, 2/8/01)
1837 Feb 8, The Senate selected Richard Mentor Johnson as the vice president of the United States. Johnson was nominated for vice president on the Democratic ticket with Martin Van Buren in 1836. When Johnson failed to receive a majority of the popular vote, the election was thrown into the Senate for the first and only time. Johnson won the election in the Senate by a vote of 33 to 16.
(AP, 2/8/99)(HNQ, 3/8/99)
1851 Feb 8, Kate (Katherine O'Flaherty ) Chopin (d.1904), American novelist, short story writer, was born. Her work included "The Awakening." She wrote tales of love and passion that presented women testing the boundaries of social convention. "There are some people who leave impressions not so lasting as the imprint of an oar upon the water."
(AP, 3/11/99)(SFEC, 11/14/99, BR p.5)(HN, 2/8/01)
1861 Feb 8, Delegates from seceded states adopted a provisional Confederate Constitution in Montgomery, Ala.
(HN, 2/7/97)(MC, 2/8/02)
1862 Feb 8, Union troops under Gen. Ambrose Burnside defeated a Confederate defense force at the Battle of Roanoke Island, N.C.
(HN, 2/8/99)
1865 Feb 8, Confederate raider William Quantrill and men attacked a group of Federal wagons at New Market, Kentucky.
(HN, 2/8/00)
1865 Feb 8, Martin Robinson Delany became the 1st black major in US army.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1871 Feb 8, Elections were held in France, unknown to most of the nation's population.
(www.marxists.org/history/france/paris-commune/timeline.htm)
1876 Feb 8, A trial began for Pres. Ulysses S. Grant's private secretary, Gen. Orville E. Babcock. He was acquitted after 18 days of involvement in the Whiskey Ring, a conspiracy among distillers, revenue collectors, and high federal officials to avoid taxation through fraudulent reports on whiskey production. 230 indictments were secured, but no convictions were made. Grant helped Babcock secure an acquittal for his part in the ring. This affair contributed to the reputation for corruption that Grant's administrations acquired.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orville_E._Babcock)
1878 Feb 8, Martin Buber, German-Israeli philosopher, theologist (Ich und Du), was born.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1883 Feb 8, Louis Waterman began experiments to invent fountain pen.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1886 Feb 8, Two rival leftist organizations, the London United Workmen's Committee and H.F. Hyndman's revolutionary Social Democratic Federation, gave notice of their intention to hold meetings simultaneously in Trafalgar Square. A brief riot occurred and sometimes became referred to as Black Monday.
(www.sparknotes.com/drama/majorbarbara/section10.rhtml)
1887 Feb 8, US Senator Henry Dawes sponsored the Dawes Severalty Act that authorized the survey of Indian territories in the West, in order that the commonly held tribal lands might be broken up into property allotments of 40 to 160 acres. The Dawes Act gave citizenship to Indians living apart from their tribe. Section Six stated that upon completion of a Land Patent process, the allotment holder will become a United States citizen and "be entitled to all the rights, privileges, and immunities of such citizens." Native Americans in general did not become citizens until the Snyder Act of 1924.
(NG, 5/95, p.91)(HN, 2/7/97)(AP, 6/2/97)
1887 Feb 8, The Allotment Act (Dawes Act) tried to break up tribal land ownership and awarded individual allotments. Trust accounts were established for both Indian tribes and individual American Indians. The lands were then held in trust, managed by the government and leased out to gas, oil and timber companies. The status of the accounts brought to question in 1996 when the Bureau of Indian Affairs could not account for about 15% of an estimated $450 million held for some 300,000 Indians. In 1999 a federal judge cited Sec. Bruce Babbitt and Robert Rubin in contempt for official deceit in accounting for the trusts that involved some 500,000 Indians.
(SFC, 6/11/96, p.A12)(SFC, 2/23/99, p.A1)(WSJ, 5/3/99, p.A24)
1887 Feb 8, Luke Short, owner of the classy Fort Worth White Elephant saloon, engaged in a gunfight with Longhair Jim Courtright, gunfighter extraordinaire. Short won.
(HT, 4/97, p.51)
1887 Feb 8, Aurora Ski Club of Red Wing, Minn., became the 1st US ski club.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1892 Feb 8, Fritz Todt, German Reichs minister (Organization Todt) succeeded by Albert Speer, was born.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1894 Feb 8, The US Enforcement Act was repealed making it easier to disenfranchise blacks.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1895 Feb 8, Tchaikovsky's "Swan Lake," premiered in Petersburg.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1896 Feb 8, Georges Feydeau's "Le Dindon," premiered in Paris.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1898 Feb 8, John Ames Sherman patented the 1st envelope folding & gumming machine in Mass.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1900 Feb 8, British General Buller was beaten at Ladysmith, South Africa as the British fled over the Tugela River.
(HN, 2/8/99)
1904 Feb 8, The Russo-Japanese War began. In a surprise attack at Port Arthur, Korea, the Japanese disabled seven Russian warships. During the war, Russia suffered a series of stunning defeats to Japan; the fighting ended with an agreement mediated by President Theodore Roosevelt, who went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts.
(HN, 2/7/97)(AP, 2/8/04)
1905 Feb 8, A cyclone hit Tahiti and adjacent islands killing some 10,000 people.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1906 Feb 8, Chester F. Carlson, physicist, was born. He invented xerography, the electrostatic dry-copy process.
(HN, 2/8/01)
1906 Feb 8, Henry Roth, writer, was born. His work included "Call it Sleep."
(HN, 2/8/01)
1907 Feb 8, Revolution broke out in Argentina.
(HN, 2/7/97)
1910 Feb 8, The Boy Scouts of America was incorporated in Washington, D.C. by William D. Boyce, a wealthy Chicago publisher who learned of the "scouts" on a trip to England the previous year.
(NPR, 7/26/95)(HN, 2/8/98)(AP, 2/8/99)
1910 Feb 8, James W. Coffroth (1872-1943), SF boxing promoter, arrived in SF from London winning a bet that he could make the trip in ten days.
(www.sandiegohistory.org/journal/v55-4/v55-4levanetz.pdf)
1911 Feb 8, Elizabeth Bishop, poet, was born.
(HN, 2/8/01)
1911 Feb 8, Victor Herbert's opera "Natoma," premiered in NYC.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1911 Feb 8, US helped overthrow President Miguel Devila of Honduras.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1915 Feb 8, D.W. Griffith's silent movie epic about the Civil War, "The Birth of a Nation," premiered at Clune's Auditorium in Los Angeles. It was based Thomas Dixon’s novel “The Clansman."
(AP, 2/8/99)(SSFC, 10/25/15, DB p.50)
1916 Feb 8, Demonstrators protested against food shortages in Berlin.
(HN, 2/7/97)
1917 Feb 8, The British steamship Mantola was torpedoed by a German submarine off the coast of Ireland. All but seven crew members, who drowned when their lifeboat overturned, were rescued by the HMS Laburnum. The ship sank the next day. The British Ministry of War Transport paid a War Risk Insurance Claim for Ł110,000 (in 1917 value) for silver that was on board when the ship sank. In 2011 Odyssey Marine Exploration discovered the ship.
(SFC, 10/11/11, p.A6)(www.shipwreck.net/ssmantola.php)
1918 Feb 8, The World War I first edition of The Stars and Stripes, the weekly newspaper of the American Expeditionary Forces, was published in Paris, France. It was produced weekly by an all-military staff to serve the doughboys under General of the Armies John J. "Black Jack" Pershing. Some of its staff went on to journalistic fame, including Pvt. Harold Ross, who later became the founder and editor of The New Yorker magazine, and sports writer Lt. Grantland Rice. The first paper called The Stars and Stripes was a product of the Civil War, put out by four Union soldiers in 1861. Using the facilities of a captured newspaper plant in Bloomfield, Missouri, they ran off a one-page paper that made just one appearance.
(http://ww2.pstripes.osd.mil/aboutnew.html)
1920 Feb 8, Swiss men voted against women's suffrage.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1921 Feb 8, Pjotr A. Kropotkin (78), Russian anarchist and son of Prince Alexei Petrovich Kropotkin, died. Books by Peter Kropotkin included “Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution" (1902)
(www.en.wikipedia.org)
1921 Feb 8, The Turkish Parliament gave the city of Antep the title Gazi ("victorious warrior" – “warrior of the faith"), a day before the city surrendered to the French, in recognition of the valor of its inhabitants during the Turkish War of Independence. Gaziantep, amongst the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world, had withstood a 10-month siege by French forces.
(Econ, 10/23/10, SR p.14)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaziantep)
1922 Feb 8, President Harding had a radio installed in the White House.
(AP, 2/8/99)
1923 Feb 8, German NSDAP (Nazi Party) Volkischer Beobachter newspaper became a daily.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1924 Feb 8, The gas chamber was used for the first time to execute a murderer. Major D.A. Turner of the US Medical Corps used hydrocyanic gas on an alleged Chinese Tong member named Gee Jon at the Nevada State Prison in Carson City, Nev.
(HN, 2/8/98)(SFC, 6/27/98, p.E4)(AP, 2/8/99)
1925 Feb 8, Jack Lemmon, actor (Days of Wine & Roses, Missing), was born in Boston, Mass.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1925 Feb 8, Kaufman's & Berlin's "Cocoanuts," premiered in NYC.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1925 Feb 8, Marcus Garvey entered federal prison in Atlanta.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1926 Feb 8, Neal Cassaday, writer, counterculture proponent, was born.
(HN, 2/8/01)
1926 Feb 8, Sean O'Casey's "Plough & Stars" opened at Abbey Theater Dublin.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1926 Feb 8, German Reichstag decided to apply for League of Nations membership.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1927 Feb 8, Stanley Baker, actor (Concrete Jungle, Zorro, Zulu), was born in Ferndale, Wales.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1928 Feb 8, 1st transatlantic TV image was received at Hartsdale, NY.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1928 Feb 8, Scottish inventor J. Blaird demonstrated color TV.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1931 Feb 8, James Dean, stage and film actor who personified "cool" for young people in the 1950s, was born in Marion, In. His films were Rebel Without a Cause, East of Eden and Giant.
(HN, 2/8/99)(MC, 2/8/02)
1932 Feb 8, Vincent "Mad Dog" Coll, mobster, was killed by Dutch Schultz gang.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1933 Feb 8, Elly Ameling, soprano (Ilya-Idomeneo), was born in Rotterdam, Holland.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1933 Feb 8, The 1st flight of all-metal Boeing 247.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1935 Feb 8, Max Liebermann (b.1847), German impressionist painter, graphic artist, died in Berlin. He was associated with several artists’ organizations including the Berlin Secession.
(www.xs4all.nl/~androom/index.htm?biography/p011740.htm)
1936 Feb 8, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru followed Gandhi as chairman of India Congress Party.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1940 Feb 8, Ted Koppel, American television journalist, was born in Lancashire, England, as Edward James Koppel. His family came to the United States in 1953, and he was naturalized as a US citizen in 1963.
(http://www.biography.com/articles/Ted-Koppel-9368366)
1941 Feb 8, Japanese armored barges crossed the Strait of Johore to attack Singapore.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1942 Feb 8, Terry Melcher, Rip Chords, Doris Day's son, was born.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1942 Feb 8, Congress advised FDR that Americans of Japanese descent should be locked up en masse so they wouldn't oppose the US war effort.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1942 Feb 8, The Japanese landed on Singapore. By 1941, Gen. Yamashita was the commanding general of Japan’s Twenty-Fifth Army. His plans for taking Singapore were already underway.
(HN, 2/7/97)
1943 Feb 8, British General Wingate led a guerrilla force of "Chindits" behind the Japanese lines in Burma. Detachment 101’s support of Maj. Gen. Orde Wingate’s Chindits and Maj. Gen. Frank Merrill’s Marauders was crucial to the Allied success in Burma and to the eventual victory in Southeast Asia.
(HN, 2/8/98)(www.chindits.info/)
1943 Feb 8, Red Army recaptured Kursk.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1945 Feb 8, Allied air attack on Goch, Kleef, Kalkar, Reichswald.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1946 Feb 8, Premier Salazar of Portugal forbade opposition parties.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1949 Feb 8, In Hungary Cardinal Mindszenty was sentenced to life imprisonment for high treason.
(TOH, 1982, p.1949)(EWH, 1968, p.1188)
1952 Feb 8, Elizabeth was formally proclaimed Queen of England following the Feb 6 death of her father, King George VI. Elizabeth was crowned Jun 2, 1953.
(HN, 2/8/98)(WSJ, 2/13/02, p.A21)
1953 Feb 8, Mary Steenburgen, actress (Parenthood, Time After Time), was born in Newport, Ark.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1954 Feb 8, Caryl Whittier Chessman (34), on death row at San Quentin for kidnapping and attempted rape, had his 1st book accepted for publication: "Cell 2455, Death Row." He was executed May 2, 1960.
(SFC, 2/6/04, p.E12)
1955 Feb 8, John Grisham, writer (Client, Firm, Pelican Brief), was born.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1955 Feb 8, Malenkov resigned as USSR premier. Bulganin replaced him.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1956 Feb 8, U.S. banned the launching of weather balloons because of Soviet complaints.
(HN, 2/7/97)
1959 Feb 8, William J. "Wild Bill" Donovan (76), Office Strategic Services, died.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1960 Feb 8, Congress opened hearings into payola.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1962 Feb 8, The U.S. Defense Department reported the creation of the Military Assistance Command in South Vietnam.
(HN, 2/7/97)
1963 Feb 8, In Iraq the Baath Party first took power. Right-wing Baathists succeeded in mounting a coup and executed PM Gen. Abdel Karim Qassim. Abdul Salam Arif came to power. This was followed by a massacre of thousands of peasants, communists and trade unionists. The Arab Baath Socialist Party pulled off the coup and ruled Iraq for 9 months.
(HNQ, 6/20/99)(SFC, 8/6/99, p.D4)(AP, 5/26/03)(AP, 7/13/03)(NW, 9/8/03, p.32)
1964 Feb 8, Peter Shaffer's "Royal Hunt of the Sun," premiered in London.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1965 Feb 8, Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson called for the development and protection of a balanced system of trails to help protect and enhance the quality of the outdoor experience.
(PCTA, 4/08)
1965 Feb 8, Eastern DC-7B crashed into the Atlantic off Jones Beach, NJ, and 84 people were killed.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1965 Feb 8, South Vietnamese bombed the North Vietnamese communications center at Vinh Linh.
(HN, 2/7/97)
1966 Feb 8, In Malaysia the Tugu Negara (national monument) was completed and officially opened by the Sultan Ismail Nasiruddin Shah, the head of state. The sculpture was designed by Austria-born American sculptor Felix de Weldon (1907-2003). It was proclaimed a memorial park dedicated to the 11,000 people who died during the 12-year Malayan Emergency (1948-1960). Thereafter, a wreath-laying ceremony takes place at the monument every July 31 on Warriors Day.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tugu_Negara)
1968 Feb 8, George Wallace, the pro-segregation governor of Alabama, entered the US presidential race. Wallace ran as a third-party candidate. He was mainly popular in the deep south, but he was able to attract 14% of the popular vote in the November election.
(HN, 2/7/97)(www.answers.com/topic/george-wallace)
1968 Feb 8, Robert F. Kennedy said that the US cannot win the Vietnam War.
(HN, 2/8/98)
1968 Feb 8, At South Carolina State 3 black students were killed in a confrontation with highway patrolmen in Orangeburg, during a civil rights protest against a whites-only bowling alley. Nearly 50 were injured in the Orangeburg Massacre during confrontations with the National Guard. In 2001 Gov. Jim Hodges voiced his regret over the massacre. In 1970 Jack Nelson (1929-2009), LA Times reporter, authored “The Orangeburg Massacre."
(SFEC, 2/22/98, BR p.8)(AP, 2/8/99)(SFC, 2/9/01, p.A3)(SFC, 10/22/09, p.D6)
1968 Feb 8, In South Carolina Lee Roy Martin, called the editor of a local newspaper, and told him where to find the bodies of two women he'd dumped in the woods. He threatened to kill even more women until he was "shot down like the dog I am." Clues in the area led to Martin's arrest. Martin, dubbed the “Gaffney Strangler," was convicted of four murders and sentenced to four life terms. In 1972, he was stabbed to death in his cell.
(AP, 7/4/09)
1969 Feb 8, The last edition of Saturday Evening Post was published. It had begun publishing in 1869.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Saturday_Evening_Post)
1969 Feb 8, A meteor shower hit Mexico creating a luminance in the night sky as bright as day. A meteorite weighing over 1 ton fell in Chihuahua, Mexico.
(http://wapi.isu.edu/geo_pgt/Mod05_Meteorites_Ast/mod5.htm)(TMP, KCTS-Video, 1987)
1969 Feb 8, Mexican graphic artist Leopoldo Mendez (b.1902) died. His work mostly focused on engraving for illustrations and other print work generally connected to his political and social activism.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopoldo_M%C3%A9ndez)
1971 Feb 8, NASDAQ, an automated unit of the National Association of Securities Dealers, went live under the leadership of Gordon Macklin (1928-2007).
(WSJ, 2/3/07, p.A8)(Econ., 12/19/20, p.98)
1971 Feb 8, South Vietnamese ground forces, backed by American air power, began Operation Lam Son 719, a 17,000 man incursion into Laos that ended three weeks later in a disaster.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Lam_Son_719)
1973 Feb 8, Pres. Nixon appointed Daniel Patrick Moynihan (1927-2003) ambassador to India.
(SFC, 11/7/98, p.A2)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Ambassador_to_India)
1973 Feb 8, Senate leaders named seven members of a select committee to investigate the Watergate scandal, including the chairman, Sam J. Ervin Jr., D-N.C.
(AP, 2/8/99)
1973 Feb 8, Max Yasgur (53), owner Woodstock festival farmland, died of a heart attack. In 1969 his dairy farm was the site of the Woodstock Music and Arts Festival. He had offered his land for the festival over the objection of local officials.
(http://www.deadoraliveinfo.com/dead.nsf/ynames-nf/Yasgur+Max)
1974 Feb 8, The three-man crew of "Skylab" space station returned to Earth after spending 84 days in space.
(AP, 2/8/99)
1974 Feb 8, Fritz Zwicky (b.1898), Swiss-US astronomer, died. In 1934 he and Walter Baade coined the term "supernova" and hypothesized that they were the transition of normal stars into neutron stars, as well as the origin of cosmic rays.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_Zwicky)
1975 Feb 8, 1800 Unification church couples were wed in Korea.
(www.signaturebooks.com/excerpts/unification.htm)
1975 Feb 8, Martyn Green (b.1899), English actor (Gilbert & Sullivan, Mikado), died.
(http://math.boisestate.edu/GaS/whowaswho/G/GreenMartyn.htm)
1978 Feb 8, The deliberations of the Senate were broadcast on radio for the first time as members opened debate on the Panama Canal treaties.
(AP, 2/8/99)
1978 Feb 8, The BBC TV show Grange Hill, a children’s drama created by Phil Redmond, made its debut.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grange_Hill)
1979 Feb 8, In the Republic of the Congo Denis Sassou Nguesso (b.1943), a member of the Mbochi minority, began 13 years of rule as a Marxist dictator.
(WSJ, 12/31/98, p.A10)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denis_Sassou-Nguesso)
1980 Feb 8, President Jimmy Carter unveiled a plan to re-introduce draft registration.
(AP, 2/8/00)
1981 Feb 8, Scott Hamilton won the US male Figure Skating championship.
(http://espn.go.com/abcsports/wwos/highlights/skating.html)
1982 Feb 8, John Hay Whitney (b.1904), US ambassador and newspaper magnate, died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Hay_Whitney)
1983 Feb 8, Baseball ordered Mickey Mantle (1931-1995) to sever ties with Claridge Casino.
(www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/February_8)
1983 Feb 8, Champion thoroughbred Shergar was kidnapped in Ireland and never found. Lloyds of London paid $10.6 million insurance.
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/february/9/newsid_2538000/2538595.stm)
1984 Feb 8, Winter Olympics opened in Sarajevo.
(HN, 2/7/97)
1984 Feb 8, Philippe Aries (b.1914), French medievalist and historian of the family and childhood, died. His books included Essais sur l'histoire de la mort en Occident: du Moyen Âge ŕ nos jours, Seuil (1975). English translation: Western Attitudes Toward Death from the Middle Ages to the Present. Patricia M. Ranum (translation). Johns Hopkins University Press. 1974.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippe_Ari%C3%A8s)
1986 Feb 8, Brian Boitano won the US male Figure Skating championship.
(http://tinyurl.com/nuoe4)
1988 Feb 8, Jimmy Lee Dill fatally shot and killed Leon Shaw in Birmingham, Alabama, and robbed him of cocaine and about $200. Dill (49) was executed in 2009.
(SFC, 4/17/09, p.A6)(www.wsfa.com/Global/story.asp?S=10197524&nav=0rde)
1989 Feb 8, Jockey Chris Antley (1966-2000) began a record of 64 consecutive winning days.
(www.standardbredcanada.ca/news/iss0506/sears0512.html)
1989 Feb 8, In the Azores 144 people were killed when an American-chartered Boeing 707 filled with Italian tourists slammed into fog-covered Santa Maria mountain.
(AP, 2/8/99)
1990 Feb 8, CBS television temporarily suspended Andy Rooney for his anti-gay and anti-black remarks in a gay magazine interview.
(HN, 2/8/99)
1990 Feb 8, In California Christy Pina (14) was found dead in an artichoke field just off Highway 1 in Castroville. She had been strangled, raped and stabbed repeatedly. In 1996 advanced DNA technology identified Arsenio Pacheco Leyva as the killer, but he had gone into hiding. Leyva was later arrested in Mexico and spent over three years in jail before he was extradited to the US to face charges. On May 3, 2018, Leyva (56) was booked at the Monterey County Jail.
(SFC, 5/8/18, p.C4)
1990 Feb 8, In NYC a gunman botched an attempt to rob a diamond courier. He then shot and killed Rabbi Chaskel Werzberger in his vehicle and rode off in the vehicle. David Ranta, an unemployed drug addict, was arrested on circumstantial evidence and “uncertain" witness testimony. In 2013 Ranta was freed from his 37.5 year prison sentence.
(SFC, 2/22/13, p.A7)
1991 Feb 8, Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and Joint Chiefs Chairman Colin L. Powell met with American pilots in Saudi Arabia. Powell drew cheers as he described how allied troops would deal with the Iraqi force in Kuwait: "We’ll cut it off and kill it."
(AP, 2/8/01)
1991 Feb 8, In Ohio Kenneth Biros (33) raped and killed Tami Engstrom (22) after offering her a ride home from a bar in Trumbull county. He then scattered her body parts in Ohio and Pennsylvania. Biros was executed in 2009.
(www.forgottenoh.com/Counties/Trumbull/biroshouse.html) (SFC, 12/9/09, p.A10)
1992 Feb 8, The 16th Olympic Winter Games opened in Albertville, France.
(AP, 2/8/02)
1993 Feb 8, General Motors sued NBC, alleging that the "Dateline NBC" program had rigged two car-truck crashes to show that 1973-1987 GM pickups were prone to fires in side impact crashes. NBC settled the lawsuit the following day.
(AP, 2/8/03)
1994 Feb 8, President Clinton's health-care proposal suffered a blow as the Congressional Budget Office released an analysis saying that the plan would not shrink federal deficits, but instead drive them higher.
(AP, 2/8/99)
1995 Feb 8, US Surgeon General nominee Henry Foster said in an ABC interview he'd performed 39 abortions, more than three times as many as previously stated.
(AP, 2/8/00)
1995 Feb 8, The U.N. Security Council approved sending 7,000 peacekeepers to Angola to cement an accord ending 19 years of civil war.
(AP, 2/8/00)
1995 Feb 8, A 6.4 earthquake at Trujillo, Colombia, killed over 46 people.
(http://neic.usgs.gov/neis/eqlists/sig_1995.html)
1996 Feb 8, NFL and Cleveland allowed Art Modell to move his NFL franchise to Baltimore but he had to leave the Browns' name behind.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1996 Feb 8, In a ceremony at the Library of Congress, President Clinton signed the Communications Decency Act (CDA), legislation revamping the telecommunications industry, saying it would "bring the future to our doorstep." Section 230 of the act protected online intermediaries that host or republish speech against a range of laws that might otherwise be used to hold them legally responsible for what others say and do.
(https://tinyurl.com/y8m8yhc6)(https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230)
1996 Feb 8, Rivers overflowed in northern Oregon in the worst flooding in 30 years.
(WSJ, 2/9/96, p.A1)
1996 Feb 8, John Peter Barlow, Internet activist, issued the “Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace" from Davos, Switzerland.
(Econ, 12/8/07, p.14)(http://homes.eff.org/~barlow/Declaration-Final.html)
1997 Feb 8, President Clinton announced in his weekly radio address that he was releasing the first of a $200 million program of grants to provide schools with computers and Internet training.
(AP, 2/8/02)
1997 Feb 8, In Serbia it was reported that a new book by former journalist Slavoljub Djukic: "He, She and Us," was flying off the shelves. The book is about Slobodan Milosevic and his wife Mirjana Markovic.
(SFC, 2/8/97)
1998 Feb 8, Olga Danilova of Russia won the first gold medal of the Nagano Winter Games in 15-kilometer classical cross-country skiing.
(AP, 2/8/99)
1998 Feb 8, In Afghanistan new tremors killed up to 250 more people as relief workers struggled to reach the disaster scene.
(SFC, 2/9/98, p.B2)
1998 Feb 8, Greek Cypriots voted in elections with neither main candidate receiving a necessary majority. Pres. Glafcos Cleridas (78) will face former foreign minister George Lacovou on Feb 15.
(SFC, 2/9/98, p.A12)
1998 Feb 8, In Iceland Halldor Laxness (b.1902), novelist and Nobel Prize winner, died at age 95. His books included "Independent People" (1946), "the Great Weaver of Cashmere," "Salka Valka," "The Atom Station," and "Paradise Reclaimed."
(SFC, 2/11/98, p.A24)
1998 Feb 8, In Sierra Leone a jet belonging to West African peacekeepers fired on a tank with a mounted anti-aircraft gun in Freetown and killed 6 people. Nigerian led peacekeepers were moving toward Freetown in an effort to drive the military junta from power.
(SFC, 2/9/98, p.A12)
1999 Feb 8, The Senate heard closing arguments at President Clinton's impeachment trial, with House prosecutors challenging senators to "cleanse the office" and the president's attorney dismissing the case as one of partisan retribution.
(AP, 2/8/00)
1999 Feb 8, American Airlines cancelled 400 flights as pilots called in sick. There was pilot concern over pay rates and new pilots coming from the recently merged Reno Air. In April a federal judge fined the pilots' union $46 million.
(SFC, 2/9/99, p.A3)(SFC, 4/16/99, p.A3)
1999 Feb 8, Nevada lawmakers voted to oppose federal plans for a nuclear storage dump northwest of Las Vegas.
(SFC, 2/9/99, p.A3)
1999 Feb 8, Iris Murdoch (b.1919), Dublin-born novelist, died. Her husband, John Bayley, published "Iris: A Memoir of Iris Murdoch" in 1998. It was published in the US as "Elegy for Iris."
(SFC, 2/9/99, p.A20)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iris_Murdoch)
1999 Feb 8, A French helicopter crashed in Antarctica and 3 people were killed.
(SFC, 2/9/99, p.A7)
1999 Feb 8, Jordan's King Hussein was laid to rest during a five-hour funeral in Amman attended by dignitaries from all over the world, including President Clinton and former presidents Bush, Carter and Ford.
(AP, 2/8/00)
1999 Feb 8, In Sudan an independent scientist hired by the owner of the pharmaceutical plant bombed by the US in August found no traces of chemical weapons.
(SFC, 2/9/99, p.A8)
2000 Feb 8, George W. Bush won the Delaware Republican primary with 51% of the vote.
(SFC, 2/9/00, p.A3)
2000 Feb 8, Net hackers shut down at least 4 popular Web sites including Amazon.com, eBay, CNN.com and buy.com with "denial of service attacks."
(SFC, 2/9/00, p.A1)(AP, 2/8/01)
2000 Feb 8, In Zion, Ill., 2 small planes collided and 3 people were killed including Bob Collins, a popular Chicago radio host for WGN-AM. One of the planes crashed into the roof of the Midwestern Regional Medical Center.
(SFC, 2/9/00, p.A3)
2000 Feb 8, In Chechnya rebels attacked 2 Russian military trains and set off a large battle.
(WSJ, 2/11/00, p.A1)
2000 Feb 8, At Stansted, England, 4 men escaped from the Afghan hijacked airline as negotiations continued.
(SFC, 2/9/00, p.A10)
2000 Feb 8, In Lebanon Hezbollah guerrillas killed another Israeli soldier and Israeli warplanes retaliated with attacks on Tyre and Iqlim al-Tuffah.
(SFC, 2/9/00, p.A10)
2000 Feb 8, In Sri Lanka bombs exploded in 2 buses around Colombo and 2 people were killed and 31 injured.
(SFC, 2/9/00, p.C3)
2000 Feb 8, In Sudan a government plane bombed the rebel town of Kaouda in the Nuba Mountains and 13 students under age 14 were reported killed.
(SFC, 2/9/00, p.C3)
2001 Feb 8, President Bush sent his proposed $1.6 trillion, 10-year tax cut plan to Congress.
(SFC, 2/9/01, p.A1)(AP, 2/8/02)
2001 Feb 8, A House committee opened hearings into former President Clinton's last-minute pardon of fugitive financier Marc Rich, with former prosecutors complaining that they hadn't been consulted before the pardon was granted.
(AP, 2/8/02)
2001 Feb 8, The new Disney theme park "Disney’s California Adventure" opened in Anaheim.
(WSJ, 1/22/01, p.B1)(SFC, 2/8/01, p.A1)
2001 Feb 8, In China the cabinet approved a 700-mile rail line to link Lhasa, Tibet, and Qinghai province.
(WSJ, 2/9/01, p.A1)
2001 Feb 8, In Colombia Pres. Pastrana met with FARC leader Manuel Marulanda at Los Pozos.
(SFC, 2/9/01, p.A16)
2001 Feb 8, In Germany ex-Chancellor Kohl agreed to pay a fine to close a slush fund investigation.
(WSJ, 2/9/01, p.A1)
2001 Feb 8, In Israel 2 blasts from an explosives rigged car injured one woman in Jerusalem. Ehud Barak announced that he would take over Labor Party negotiations to join the Sharon government.
(SFC, 2/9/01, p.A16)
2001 Feb 8, In Russia the lower house voted to reduce advertising interruptions for TV movies.
(SSFC, 2/11/01, p.C1)
2002 Feb 8, Pres. Bush opened the 19th Winter Olympic Games as part of a 3-hour ceremony at Rice-Eccles Stadium at the Univ. of Utah campus, which included an emotional tribute to America's heroes, from the pioneers of the West to past Olympic champions to the thousands who perished on Sept. 11, 2001.
(SFC, 2/9/02, p.A1)(AP, 2/8/03)
2002 Feb 8, In Texas a $60 million casino run by the Tigua Indians was shut down following lobbying efforts by religious activist Ralph Reed and Washington lobbyists Jack Abramoff and Michael Scanlon. Abramoff and Scanlon then persuaded the tribe to pay $4.2 million to lobby Congress to reopen it. Senate hearings on the process opened in 2004.
(SSFC, 9/26/04, p.A10)
2002 Feb 8, A bankruptcy judge rejected a reorganization plan proposed by Pacific Gas and Electric.
(SFC, 2/9/02, p.A1)
2002 Feb 8, William T. Dillard (b.1914), founder of Dillard’s department store chain, died in Little Rock, Ark.
(SFC, 2/11/02, p.B5)(AP, 2/8/03)
2002 Feb 8, Marine Sgt. Todd Sommer (23) died in his home in San Diego. His death was at first ruled a heart attack but later tests found high arsenic levels in his liver. In 2005 his wife, Cynthia Sommers, was charged with 1st degree murder. In 2007 his wife, Cynthia Sommer (33) was convicted of murdering him with arsenic so she could cash in on his $250,000 life insurance policy, some of which she used to have her breasts enlarged.
(SFC, 12/16/05, p.A2)(AP, 1/30/07)
2002 Feb 8, In Afghanistan Mullah Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil, Taliban foreign minister, surrendered in Kandahar and was turned over to US military.
(SFC, 2/9/02, p.A14)
2002 Feb 8, Interim Afghan leader Hamid Karzai met with Pakistan Pres. Musharraf in Islamabad and they agreed to bury past misunderstandings.
(SFC, 2/9/02, p.A14)
2002 Feb 8, In Israel at least 2 Palestinians were killed when a bomb exploded prematurely. In Jerusalem an Israeli woman was stabbed to death while strolling in the Peace Forest. Police caught 4 Palestinians and one died following his arrest.
(SFC, 2/9/02, p.A7)
2003 Feb 8, In a jab at major US allies, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told a security conference in Munich that countries such as France and Germany that favored giving Iraq another chance to disarm were undermining what slim chance existed to avoid war.
(AP, 2/8/08)
2003 Feb 8, The US Navy conducted its last scheduled round of weapons tests on Vieques Island, Puerto Rico. A 2013 report said that the US Navy had fired more than 300,000 munitions in Vieques from the mid-1940s to 2003, taking control of 77 percent of the land.
(SFC, 2/10/03, p.A9)(AP, 5/1/13)
2003 Feb 8, In Australia 750 nude women formed a heart around the words 'No War' near the town of Byron Bay to protest possible war with Iraq.
(AP, 2/8/03)
2003 Feb 8, Augusto Monterosso (81), Honduras-born Guatemalan writer, died in Mexico City. His work included "Perpetual Movement" (1972); "The Letter E: Fragments of a Diary" (1987); and "The Magic Word" (1983).
(SFC, 2/10/03, p.B5)
2003 Feb 8, The chief UN arms inspectors arrived in Baghdad for a new round of crucial talks with Iraqi officials.
(AP, 2/8/04)
2003 Feb 8, In Iraq gunmen posing as defectors from an Islamic extremist group killed Gen. Shawkat Haji Mushir, a political leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and two other Kurdish officials.
(AP, 2/9/03)
2003 Feb 8, Philippine troops killed at least eight Abu Sayyaf rebels during a clash with the guerrillas in the southern town of Patikul.
(AP, 2/9/03)
2003 Feb 8, Nearly 2 million Muslims converged on Mecca for the annual pilgrimage. Some of the faithful offered prayers to avert a U.S.-led war on Iraq.
(AP, 2/8/03)
2003 Feb 8, Tens of thousands of Venezuelans marched in support of 9,000 oil workers fired for leading a two-month strike against President Hugo Chavez that battered the economy of this oil-dependent nation.
(AP, 2/8/03)
2004 Feb 8, At the Grammy Awards, rap funksters OutKast won album of the year for "Speakerboxxx-The Love Below" and Beyonce took home a record-tying five trophies.
(AP, 2/8/05)
2004 Feb 8, President Bush denied marching America into war under false pretenses and said in an interview on NBC's "Meet the Press" the U.S.-led invasion was necessary because Saddam Hussein could have developed a nuclear weapon.
(AP, 2/8/05)
2004 Feb 8, John Kerry won the Maine caucuses.
(SFC, 2/9/04, p.A1)
2004 Feb 8, In northeastern Afghanistan 4 days of fighting between rival warlords over control of the drug trade left 7 dead and 8 wounded.
(SFC, 2/9/04, p.A3)
2004 Feb 8, In Brazil 49 inmates slipped through a bathroom wall of a Rio de Janeiro jail cell in an escape caught on a surveillance camera. Authorities suspended six prison guards.
(AP, 2/9/04)
2004 Feb 8, US Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld visited Croatia and thanked Pres. Stipe Mesic for Croatia's small military police contingent (50) in Iraq.
(AP, 2/8/04)
2004 Feb 8, Socialist voters across Greece cast symbolic ballots to hand the party's leadership to Foreign Minister George Papandreou.
(AP, 2/8/04)
2004 Feb 8, In Suwayrah, Iraq, a bomb inside a police station exploded soon after the morning roll call, killing 3 police officer and injuring 11 others.
(AP, 2/8/04)
2004 Feb 8, A UN team met with Iraqi leaders to discuss the feasibility of early legislative elections, and its leader pledged to do "everything possible" to help the country regain its sovereignty.
(AP, 2/8/04)
2004 Feb 8, In New Zealand some 3,400-gallons of fuel spilled in a fjord listed as a World Heritage site. Officials the next day said the spill in Milford Sound fjord was "eco-terrorism and economic sabotage" against the country's lucrative tourism industry.
(AP, 2/8/04)
2004 Feb 8, Swiss voters approved a measure to put into effect some of Europe's harshest laws on violent criminals and pedophiles.
(SFC, 2/9/04, p.A3)
2005 Feb 8, An earlier-than-usual Mardi Gras festival opened in New Orleans with sparse crowds.
(AP, 2/8/06)
2005 Feb 8, It was reported that a 1991 memo from Merck showed that senior executives were concerned that the vaccines of an expanded immunization program contained an elevated dose of mercury by as much as 87 times the maximum guidelines for daily consumption of mercury from fish. Thimersol, an anti-bacterial compound in the vaccine, was nearly 50% ethyl mercury, a neurotoxin. The vaccine program was later tied to elevated cases of autism.
(SFC, 2/8/05, p.A5)
2005 Feb 8, Ian Wilmut, the scientist who created Dolly the sheep, the world's first cloned mammal, was given a license to clone human embryos for medical research. Therapeutic cloning research has been legal in Great Britain since 2001.
(AP, 2/8/05)
2005 Feb 8, George Herman (85), longtime CBS newsman, died in Washington.
(AP, 2/8/06)
2005 Feb 8, Keith Knudsen (56), Doobie Brothers drummer who was part of the band during a string of hits that included "Taking it to the Streets" and "Black Water," died of pneumonia.
(AP, 2/9/05)
2005 Feb 8, Jimmy Smith (b.1928), reigning “Emperor of the Hammond Organ," died in Scottsdale, Az. Smith established the Hammond B-3 organ as a legitimate jazz instrument.
(SFC, 2/10/04, p.B7)
2005 Feb 8, In northwest Colombia Marxist rebels killed at least 17 soldiers during clashes, the military's heaviest battle toll in two years. At least 11 guerrillas also died in the fighting.
(AP, 2/9/05)(Econ, 2/26/05, p.36)
2005 Feb 8, UNICEF said that it was providing urgently needed aid for 50,000 people caught up in an upsurge in fighting in Congo.
(AP, 2/8/05)
2005 Feb 8, Danes voted in parliamentary elections dominated by competing strategies for strengthening the country's cradle-to-grave welfare state and tightening immigration. Danes re-elected center-right PM Rasmussen for a 2nd term.
(AP, 2/8/05)(WSJ, 2/9/05, p.A1)
2005 Feb 8, In Sharm El-Sheik, Egypt, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas declared that their people would stop all military and violent attacks against each other, pledging to get peace talks back on track. The Palestinian militant group Hamas said it would not be bound by the cease-fire declarations.
(AP, 2/8/05)
2005 Feb 8, Cairo’s 2-week book fair ended. During the two-week fair, police confiscated leftist books and arrested three people protesting any renewal of Hosni Mubarak's presidency.
(AP, 2/9/05)
2005 Feb 8, Herve Gaymard, France's finance minister, announced new measures designed to boost confidence, stimulate growth and tackle the "scandalously high" 9.9% jobless rate.
(AP, 2/8/05)
2005 Feb 8, A suicide bomber blew himself up in a crowd of Iraqis outside an army recruitment center, killing 21 other people and injuring 27 more.
(AP, 2/8/05)
2005 Feb 8, A Web posting in the name of a militant group in Iraq claimed to have executed Italian female journalist Giuliana Sgrena.
(AP, 2/8/05)
2005 Feb 8, In Kuwait Amer Khlaif al-Enezi, the alleged ringleader of a terror group accused of plotting to attack Americans and Kuwaiti security forces, died of heart failure while in prison.
(AP, 2/9/05)
2005 Feb 8, Officials said Italian real estate services company Norman 95 has won a 300-million-euro (384-million-dollar) contract to develop a luxury holiday resort on the Libyan coast.
(AFP, 2/8/05)
2005 Feb 8, A confrontation between rival gangs in an overcrowded Peruvian prison left five inmates dead and at least 18 others wounded.
(AP, 2/8/05)
2005 Feb 8, In Lome, Togo, a strike called by opposition parties shut down the capital’s main market and other businesses.
(AP, 2/8/05)
2006 Feb 8, President Bush condemned deadly rioting sparked by cartoons of the prophet Muhammad as he urged foreign leaders to halt the spreading violence.
(AP, 2/8/07)
2006 Feb 8, In the 48th annual Grammy Awards U2 captured five Grammy awards for their album "How to Dismantle An Atomic Bomb," including album of the year.
(SFC, 2/9/06, p.A2)(AP, 2/8/07)
2006 Feb 8, The NY Times reported that Representative Heather Wilson of New Mexico, who chairs the House Subcommittee on Technical and Tactical Intelligence, said in an interview that she had "serious concerns" about the Bush administration's domestic spying program.
(AFP, 2/8/06)
2006 Feb 8, Steve Fossett (61) soared out over the Atlantic from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on a quest to break the 25,000-mile record for the world's longest aircraft flight. The 80-hour voyage would break the airplane distance record of 24,987 miles set in 1986 by the lightweight Voyager aircraft piloted by Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager, as well as the balloon record of 25,361 miles set by the Breitling Orbiter 3 in 1999.
(AP, 2/9/06)
2006 Feb 8, Afghanistan lauded a decision by the United States, Russia and Germany to cancel its debts to the three countries, totaling more than $10 billion.
(AP, 2/8/06)
2006 Feb 8, In Afghan police shot four protesters to death to stop hundreds from marching on a southern US military base, as Islamic organizations called for an end to deadly rioting across the Muslim world over drawings of the Prophet Muhammad.
(AP, 2/8/06)
2006 Feb 8, Australia and New Zealand vowed to work to build a single economic market on the back of strengthening trade ties, but stopped short of endorsing a single currency.
(AP, 2/8/06)
2006 Feb 8, China's Ministry of Health announced one more human case of bird flu, bringing the number of the country's confirmed cases in humans to eleven.
(AP, 2/8/06)
2006 Feb 8, A deputy minister said Ecuador is not likely to extend a deal that allows the United States to use an anti-narcotics air base on its territory due to a surge in sentiment against the American military presence.
(AP, 2/8/06)
2006 Feb 8, Egypt's antiquities chief announced that American archaeologists from the Univ. of Memphis have uncovered an 18th Dynasty tomb in Egypt's Valley of the Kings, the first uncovered there since King Tutankhamen’s in 1922. The 18th Dynasty ruled from around 1560 B.C. to 1085 B.C.
(AP, 2/9/06)
2006 Feb 8, A dispute over the fate of an ancient Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem threatened to ignite tensions as workers removed skeletons from the site despite Muslim pleas for the work to end. Israeli developers and archaeologists were removing the tombs to make room for the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center to build a multi-million-dollar Museum of Tolerance, dedicated in part to promoting understanding among different religions.
(AP, 2/8/06)
2006 Feb 8, The Italian Senate approved a bill that would dramatically increase the number of women elected to parliament in a country with one of the lowest number of female lawmakers in Europe.
(AP, 2/9/06)
2006 Feb 8, Japan and North Korea ended five days of high-level talks aimed at establishing diplomatic relations without any agreements, citing major differences on the North's abduction of Japanese nationals and its nuclear program.
(AP, 2/8/06)
2006 Feb 8, Kenya’s government and the UN said Kenya needs $221.5 million in aid to help feed 3.5 million people threatened by starvation due to drought and avoid a "massive humanitarian catastrophe."
(AP, 2/8/06)
2006 Feb 8, In Libya the leaders of Sudan and Chad signed a peace agreement to end increasing tension over Sudan's Darfur region, pledging to normalize diplomatic relations and deny refuge to each other's rebel groups. A communique issued by Sudan, Chad and Libya, as well as Burkino Faso, Congo and the Central African Republic, whose leaders attended the talks, said a committee of African countries overseen by Libya would monitor the implementation of the deal.
(AP, 2/9/06)
2006 Feb 8, A rebel attack and an army shooting of protesters marred Nepal's first elections in seven years, as few voters turned out at schools, shrines and temples for municipal balloting seen as a referendum on the king. At least six people were killed.
(AP, 2/8/06)
2006 Feb 8, The World Organization for Animal Health said the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus has been detected on a large commercial chicken farm in Nigeria, the first reported outbreak in Africa. Researchers later reported that 3 different strains of bird flu had entered Nigeria and most closely resembled those identified in Egypt, Mongolia and Russia.
(AP, 2/8/06)(SFC, 7/6/06, p.A6)
2006 Feb 8, Hundreds of Palestinians attacked an international observer mission in Hebron, throwing stones and smashing windows as dozens of foreigners were trapped inside.
(AP, 2/8/06)
2006 Feb 8, Khaled Batch, a leader of the militant Islamic Jihad group, said the group rejects the idea of a long-term truce with Israel and will not join a Hamas-led government. Islamic Jihad, which is believed to be funded, in part, by Iran, boycotted last month's Palestinian parliament election.
(AP, 2/8/06)
2006 Feb 8, In Thailand skydivers from 31 countries set a new world record of 400 people holding hands in a midair free-fall formation.
(AP, 2/8/06)
2007 Feb 8, A federal judge in Fargo, N.D., sentenced Alfonso Rodriguez Jr. to death for the slaying of college student Dru Sjodin.
(AP, 2/8/08)
2007 Feb 8, The Museum for African Art unveiled plans for a new home in Manhattan, becoming the first major addition to New York's Museum Mile in 50 years.
(Reuters, 2/8/07)
2007 Feb 8, Anna Nicole Smith (b.1967), former Playboy centerfold (Miss May 1992) and wife of former oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall II (1905-1995), died in Florida. Authorities later said Smith died of an accidental drug overdose of nine prescription medications, but an extensive six-week investigation found no signs of foul play. In 2010 her psychiatrist and boyfriend were convicted of conspiracy for filling her demands for prescription drugs.
(AP, 2/8/07)(SFC, 2/9/07, p.A1)(AP, 3/26/07)(SFC, 10/29/10, p.A6)
2007 Feb 8, Joe Edwards (85), comics artist, died at his home in NY. He worked on the 1942 debut issue of Archie comics and later created the character Li'l Jinx.
(AP, 2/14/07)
2007 Feb 8, Benin, Nigeria, and Togo formed a new regional body aimed at fast-tracking the integration of their economies. The body, known as the Co-Prosperity Alliance Zone (COPAZ), was formally inaugurated following a mini-summit of Nigeria’s President Olusegun Obasanjo, Benin’s President Boni Yayi and Togo’s President Faure Gnassingbe.
(AFP, 2/8/07)
2007 Feb 8, In Cape Verde 3 Italian women, aged 17-33, were brutally attacked while vacationing, dragged into the woods, pelted with stones and left for dead at the bottom of a hole. One woman survived. 3 local men were arrested.
(AP, 2/10/07)
2007 Feb 8, State media said officials in eastern China plan to name and shame rich families who ignore the country's strict one-child policy and simply pay the fine for having a second or third baby. China executed Ismail Semed, an ethnic Muslim and member of the Uighur minority group in Xinjiang, for alleged separatist activities. Human rights groups condemned because they said the prosecution's case against him lacked evidence and his confession may have been coerced.
(AP, 2/8/07)(AP, 2/9/07)
2007 Feb 8, Cuba deported reputed drug kingpin Luis Hernando Gomez Bustamante to Colombia, which plans to extradite him to the United States to face trafficking and money laundering charges.
(AP, 2/9/07)
2007 Feb 8, In France teachers, tax collectors, railway workers and other public servants went on strike to protest job losses and demand higher pay.
(AP, 2/8/07)
2007 Feb 8, India’s air force chief S.P. Tyagi told reporters at the Bangalore air show that the government expects to sign a contract to buy 40 Russian Sukhoi-30 aircraft by the end of the fiscal year March 31.
(AFP, 2/8/07)
2007 Feb 8, An object fell from the sky and killed 3 nomads in northern India’s Rajasthan state. The impact left a crater and the object was believed to have been a meteor.
(SFC, 2/17/07, p.B6)
2007 Feb 8, In Indonesia fresh rains triggered more flooding, compounding the misery for hundreds of thousands forced from their homes. Irwandi Yusuf, a former rebel leader, was inaugurated as governor of Aceh province, cementing a peace deal to end 29 years of fighting that killed more than 15,000 people.
(AP, 2/8/07)
2007 Feb 8, Iraqi forces detained a senior Health Ministry official accused of corruption and helping to funnel millions of dollars to Shiite militiamen blamed for much of the recent sectarian violence in the capital. A parked car bomb exploded at a meat market in the predominantly Shiite town of Aziziyah killing 20 people and wounding 45. Car bombs struck Shiite targets in Baghdad and south of the capital. Gunmen burst into two houses belonging to Sunni Muslims northeast of Baghdad and killed at least 10 males after pushing the women and children aside. In northern Iraq a late night US airstrike hit a Kurdish position in Mosul, killing at least eight Kurdish troops and wounding six. The US military said it was looking into the report. A separate US airstrike killed eight suspected terrorists and destroyed a building south of Baghdad. A US airstrike killed 13 insurgents in a volatile area west of Baghdad. Local officials said 45 civilians, including women and children, died in the attack.
(AP, 2/8/07)(AP, 2/9/07)
2007 Feb 8, China’s President Hu Jintao arrived in Mozambique on the penultimate stop in his 8-nation African tour.
(AFP, 2/8/07)
2007 Feb 8, Nepal's government decided to replace the image of embattled King Gyanendra with an image of Everest, the world's highest mountain, on 10 rupee (13 cent) bills.
(AFP, 2/9/07)
2007 Feb 8, North Korea agreed in principle to take initial steps toward dismantling its nuclear programs at the start of international talks seeking the first concrete progress on disarming Pyongyang.
(AP, 2/8/07)
2007 Feb 8, Welding equipment touched off an explosion at a West Bank gas station, killing at least eight people and wounded 17.
(AP, 2/9/07)
2007 Feb 8, A Fatah official in Saudi Arabia said that rival Palestinian factions had reached an agreement on how to divide up Cabinet posts in a power-sharing government.
(AP, 2/8/07)
2007 Feb 8, South Africa, burdened with one of the world's major HIV/AIDS epidemics, unveiled plans for its biggest AIDS vaccine trial.
(Reuters, 2/8/07)
2007 Feb 8, President Chen Shui-bian said the name 'Taiwan' would soon replace 'China' on the island's stamps, a move likely to anger Beijing.
(AP, 2/8/07)
2007 Feb 8, President Hugo Chavez's government moved to nationalize Venezuela's largest private electric company, signing an agreement to buy a controlling stake in Electricidad de Caracas from its US-based owner, AES Corp.
(AP, 2/8/07)
2008 Feb 8, Pres. Bush reached his lowest approval rating in an Associated Press-Ipsos poll as only 30% said they like the job he is doing, including an all-time low in his support by Republicans. Congress' approval fell to just 22%, equaling its poorest grade in the survey.
(AP, 2/8/08)
2008 Feb 8, It was reported that Exxon Mobil Corp. has obtained a court order freezing over $12 billion in bank accounts and assets in Europe, the Caribbean and New York belonging to Venezuela’s state oil company in a dispute over compensation for expropriated assets.
(WSJ, 2/8/08, p.A3)
2008 Feb 8, The Nebraska Supreme Court ruled 6-1 that the electric chair is cruel and unusual punishment. The state planned to seek a new method of execution.
(SFC, 2/9/08, p.A2)
2008 Feb 8, In Louisiana Latina Williams (23) shot and killed 2 fellow students, Karsheika Graves (21) and Taneshia Butler (26), at Louisiana Technical College.
(SFC, 2/9/08, p.A4)
2008 Feb 8, The Nebraska Supreme Court declared the electric chair unconstitutional.
(Econ, 2/16/08, p.39)
2008 Feb 8, A suicide car bomber blew himself up near a convoy of Afghan troops, killing one soldier and a child who was nearby. Another four soldiers and a child were also wounded in the attack in central Ghazni province.
(AP, 2/8/08)
2008 Feb 8, Australia's widely criticized "Pacific Solution" policy of holding asylum seekers on remote islands ended when the last detainees flew out of Nauru to live in Australia.
(AFP, 2/8/08)
2008 Feb 8, In western Austria a fire engulfed a home for the elderly, killing at least 11 people.
(AP, 2/9/08)
2008 Feb 8, Canada said it planned to keep its 2,500-strong military mission in Afghanistan until some time in 2011, two years longer than initially scheduled.
(AP, 2/8/08)
2008 Feb 8, The UN said it is being forced to prepare an imminent pullout from Eritrea and plans to relocate all its peacekeeping troops there across the border in Ethiopia.
(AP, 2/9/08)
2008 Feb 8, Former UN chief Kofi Annan, who is mediating talks between Kenya's political rivals, said they were close to a deal aimed at ending weeks of postelection bloodshed but no power-sharing agreement had been reached yet.
(AP, 2/8/08)
2008 Feb 8, France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy pledged to send thousands of extra police and more than $700 million in aid to neglected, heavily immigrant neighborhoods that exploded in riots in 2005 and 2006.
(AP, 2/8/08)
2008 Feb 8, In the Indian-controlled part of Kashmir avalanches killed at least eight people and forced hundreds more to leave their snowbound villages.
(AP, 2/8/08)
2008 Feb 8, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani welcomed an expected Russian decision to write off 91 percent of Iraq's estimated $13 billion debt, calling it a "historic turning point" in relations between the two countries. 5 American soldiers were killed in two roadside bombings, 4 in Baghdad and one in Tamim province.
(AP, 2/8/08)(AP, 2/9/08)
2008 Feb 8, In New Zealand a knife-wielding woman (33), originally from Somalia, tried to hijack a regional domestic flight, stabbing both pilots and threatening to blow up the twin-propeller plane before she was subdued.
(AP, 2/8/08)
2008 Feb 8, A presidential statement said Nigeria has approved a new policy requiring gas producers to direct a part of their output to the domestic market, rather than exporting it.
(AP, 2/8/08)
2008 Feb 8, Scotland Yard released a report saying that Pakistan's opposition leader Benazir Bhutto died as a result of a suicide bomb blast, not a gunshot. The findings supported the Pakistani government's version of the events.
(AP, 2/8/08)
2008 Feb 8, Palestinian militants launched nearly 20 rockets at Israel hours after Israel began cutting electricity to the Gaza Strip in an attempt to halt the barrages.
(AP, 2/8/08)
2008 Feb 8, In Rwanda members of the Chamber of Deputies (Lower House) of Parliament voted in favor of a controversial new law aimed at stopping "genocide ideology," a term for the outlook that perpetrators of genocide foster to fan divisive hate campaigns between different groups of Rwandans. Parliament adopted the law in June.
(www.loc.gov/lawweb/servlet/lloc_news?disp1_375_Rwanda)(http://tinyurl.com/dnxogn)
2008 Feb 8, In Sri Lanka gunbattles along the front lines in the northern districts of Jaffna, Mannar and Vavuniya killed 41 Tamil Tiger rebels and three soldiers.
(AP, 2/9/08)
2008 Feb 8, The Sudanese military said it bombed 3 towns in West Darfur while striking at rebel forces. Rebels said Sudanese government aircraft, army and militia attacked towns in West Darfur state, causing heavy civilian casualties. A rebel chief said Sudanese troops backed by Janjaweed militia left at least 150 dead and wounded in the assault. A Sudanese employee of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) was killed in Darfur. On March 20 the UN accused the Sudanese army of looting towns and raping girls and women during the attacks on Sirba, Sileia and Abu Suruj. The attacks killed at least 115 people and caused some 30,000 to flee their homes.
(AP, 2/8/08)(AFP, 2/8/08)(AFP, 2/12/08)(SFC, 3/21/08, p.A11)
2008 Feb 8, Officials said that the WTO has ruled against the EU's import tariffs for bananas, possibly opening the door to millions of dollars in US commercial sanctions.
(AP, 2/8/08)
2009 Feb 8, Coldplay’s “Viva la Vida" won the Grammy for song of the year. Robert Plant and Alison Krauss' unorthodox partnership yielded rich rewards on Grammy night, as the pair nabbed five awards for their haunting "Raising Sand," including record and album of the year honors.
(WSJ, 2/9/09, p.A1)(AP, 2/9/09)
2009 Feb 8, In Fort Bragg, Ca., Aaron Vargas (31) shot and killed Darrell McNeill (63), a former neighbor. McNeill, a former boy Scout leader and Big Brother, had begun molesting Vargas at age of 11 and continued as Vargas grew into his 20s. 12 other men soon came forward with stories of molestation by McNeill. On April 6, 2010, Vargas pleaded no contest to voluntary manslaughter charges. On June 15 Vargas was sentenced to 9 years in prison.
(SSFC, 2/21/10, p.A1)(SFC, 4/7/10, p.A1)(SFC, 6/16/10, p.A1)
2009 Feb 8, In Illinois a broken holding tank at a Caterpillar plant near Joliet spilled some 65,000 gallons of oil sludge and contaminated a 30-mile section of the Des Plaines River.
(SFC, 2/9/09, p.A6)
2009 Feb 8, A single-engine plane carrying six US citizens crashed into the Atlantic Ocean off the north coast of Puerto Rico.
(AP, 2/9/09)
2009 Feb 8, In Afghanistan two American soldiers died when a roadside bomb they were trying to defuse exploded. An Afghan interpreter and a policeman also died in the blast. a roadside bomb ripped through a police vehicle in Khogyani district, near the border with Pakistan, killing two police and wounding three civilians. A suicide bomber attacked a group of Afghan soldiers in southwestern Nimroz province, killing one soldier and two civilians.
(AP, 2/8/09)(AP, 2/9/09)
2009 Feb 8, In eastern Bangladesh a ferry boat sank after colliding with a larger ferry on the Titas River, killing 10 women and children.
(AP, 2/8/09)
2009 Feb 8, In London the film "Slumdog Millionaire", the rags-to-riches tale of a Mumbai tea boy who wins big, swept the board at the British Academy Film Awards (BAFTAs) with seven prizes including best film.
(AP, 2/8/09)
2009 Feb 8, China’s government said that there was no end in sight for its worst drought in five decades. Some 4.4 million people lacked adequate drinking water in the north as winter wheat withered.
(SFC, 2/9/09, p.A2)
2009 Feb 8, Sigurdur Helgason (b.1921), former Icelandic airline CEO (1974-1984), died on the Caribbean private island of Mustique. He pioneered cheap flights that carried legions of backpackers between Europe and the United States in the 1960s and '70s.
(AP, 2/21/09)
2009 Feb 8, In Iraq Spc. James M. Dorsey (23) of Beardstown, Ill., was found unresponsive by fellow troops in Baghdad and attempts to resuscitate him were unsuccessful.
(AP, 2/12/09)
2009 Feb 8, Kuwait's Central Bank governor unveiled a $5.15 billion economic stimulus package aimed at helping struggling investment companies and offering bank loan guarantees.
(AP, 2/8/09)
2009 Feb 8, Pakistani Taliban militants released a graphic video showing the beheading of a Polish engineer whom they said was killed because Islamabad refused to free detained insurgents. Piotr Stanczak had been seized in the volatile northwest on September 28.
(AFP, 2/8/09)
2009 Feb 8, Two rockets fired by Palestinian militants struck southern Israel, violating an informal truce even as Israel and Gaza's Hamas rulers appeared to hurry closer to a long-term cease-fire deal two days before Israeli elections.
(AP, 2/8/09)
2009 Feb 8, In Somalia at least three civilians were killed when insurgents attacked African Union forces and government troops in the strife-torn capital Mogadishu.
(AFP, 2/8/09)
2009 Feb 8, In Sri Lanka an official said more than 15,000 civilians have fled the northern war zone over the last three days, as government forces appeared poised to crush the separatist Tamil Tigers.
(AP, 2/8/09)
2009 Feb 8, Voters in Switzerland approved an expanded labor deal with the European Union that allows Romanians and Bulgarians to work in the Alpine republic.
(AP, 2/8/09)
2010 Feb 8, The US federal government was shuttered while the Mid-Atlantic region dug out from as much as three feet of snow that left tens of thousands without power and blocked trains, planes and cars, with another storm looming.
(AP, 2/8/10)
2010 Feb 8, The Obama administration said it will spend $78.5 million on efforts to contain the Asian carp, which threatened to endanger the Great Lakes’ $7 billion fishing industry.
(SFC, 2/9/10, p.A4)
2010 Feb 8, In California a federal judge sentenced Dongfan Chung (74), a Chinese-born engineer, to over 15 years in prison for economic espionage. During his career at Boeing Co. and Rockwell Intl. He had hoarded sensitive information about the space shuttle and a booster rocket and was arrested on Feb 11, 2008, for allegedly passing classified documents to China.
(SFC, 2/9/10, p.A4)
2010 Feb 8, At Cape Canaveral, Florida, Endeavour and six astronauts rocketed into orbit on what's likely the last nighttime launch for the shuttle program, hauling a new room and observation deck for the International Space Station.
(AP, 2/8/10)
2010 Feb 8, Boeing Co.’s 250-foot 747-8 freighter, the biggest plane it has ever built, successfully completed its first flight from Paine Field, in Everett, Wash.
(SFC, 2/9/10, p.A4)
2010 Feb 8, John Murtha (b.1932), Pennsylvania’s Democratic representative, died in Arlington, Va., following complications from gall bladder surgery. He had won a special House election in 1974 to become the first Vietnam veteran to serve in Congress.
(SFC, 2/9/10, p.A6)
2010 Feb 8, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula number two Said al-Shihri called for attacks against US interests "everywhere," in an audio message released on the Internet.
(AFP, 2/8/10)
2010 Feb 8, Australia tightened its migration rules in favor of English speakers and professionals, saying the country has been attracting too many hairdressers and cooks and too few doctors and engineers.
(AP, 2/8/10)
2010 Feb 8, In Australia ITV Studios, producer of "I'm a Celebrity ... Get Me Out of Here," was fined 3,000 Australian dollars ($2,615) after pleading guilty of animal cruelty after two reality show contestants skinned, cooked and ate a rat during filming in Australia.
(AP, 2/9/10)
2010 Feb 8, Byzantium Novum was founded as a micronation dedicated to the revival of Byzantine civilization and culture.
(www.byzantiumnovum.org)
2010 Feb 8, The China Daily newspaper reported officials have recalled more than 170 tons of milk powder tainted by the industrial chemical melamine and closed two dairy companies in the northern region of Ningxia. The current 10–day emergency crackdown has made it increasingly clear that many products discovered in the country's 2008 milk scandal were repackaged for sale instead of destroyed.
(AP, 2/8/10)
2010 Feb 8, China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued new guidelines to local authorities and lifted a ban imposed in December on individuals acquiring .cn domain names. Individuals wanting to set up a website will have to submit identity cards and photos of themselves, as well as meet regulators, before their domain name can be registered.
(AFP, 2/23/10)
2010 Feb 8, In southern China a bus collided with a sport utility vehicle and plunged down a mountain ravine, killing seven people and injuring 50.
(AP, 2/8/10)
2010 Feb 8, In Egypt Mahmoud Ezzat, the new deputy leader of the opposition Muslim Brotherhood, and two other top figures were among 16 people arrested by police in a dawn sweep across the country targeting members of the nation's most powerful opposition group. They were accused of trying to set up training camps for staging attacks.
(AP, 2/8/10)(AP, 2/10/10)
2010 Feb 8, French engineering giant Areva said that it will buy Ausra, a Mountain View, Ca., startup specializing in large-scale solar power.
(SFC, 2/9/10, p.D1)
2010 Feb 8, In Haiti the UN warned that it will cut off shipments of free medicine beginning immediately to any Haitian hospitals that it finds are charging patients. Evans Monsigrace (28), a rice vendor, survived 27 days trapped under the rubble of a flea market following the devastating Jan 12 earthquake.
(AP, 2/8/10)(AP, 2/10/10)
2010 Feb 8, Iran moved closer to being able to produce nuclear warheads with formal notification that it will enrich uranium to higher levels, even while insisting that the move was meant only to provide fuel for its research reactor. The semiofficial ISNA agency said that former deputy foreign minister Mohsen Aminzadeh was sentenced to six years in prison by a Revolutionary court. The defense minister announced that Iran has launched two production lines to build unmanned aircraft with surveillance and attack capabilities.
(AP, 2/8/10)
2010 Feb 8, Iran said it will cut ties with the British Museum because of the museum's failure to lend Tehran the Cyrus Cylinder, an ancient Babylonian artifact described as the world's earliest bill of rights.
(AP, 2/8/10)
2010 Feb 8, Israeli security forces raided a Palestinian refugee camp in annexed east Jerusalem, arresting 11 people in an operation police said was aimed at putting "some order" in the area. Israel's Supreme Court ordered authorities to release two foreign activists seized in a Palestinian-controlled part of the West Bank. Ariadna Jove Marti of Spain and Bridgette Chappell of Australia, had been in a pre-dawn raid on their apartment in the heart of Ramallah.
(AFP, 2/8/10)
2010 Feb 8, In Kashmir 17 Indian soldiers were killed in an avalanche that slammed into a group of 70 combat troops at a high-altitude warfare training camp.
(AP, 2/8/10)
2010 Feb 8, Mexican federal police arrested Raydel Lopez Uriarte and Manuel Garcia Simental, suspected leaders of the cartel headed by Teodoro Garcia Simental, who was captured in La Paz on Jan. 12. The drug cartel had terrorized Tijuana for several years. The military announced that soldiers had seized more than 12 tons of marijuana found beneath a false floor of a tractor trailer. The drugs were found during a routine search at a checkpoint near San Felipe, a town in the central part of the Baja California peninsula. Federal police arrested five Tijuana police officers along with six cartel members who were holding two rival gangsters captive. The arrests were based on information obtained following the capture of Uriarte and Manuel Garcia Simental. Two of the officers, Francisco Ortega and Juan Carlos Espinoza, had been recently lauded as part of a new breed of honest cop. 3 marines died in a shootout that also killed three suspected gang members in the border town of Reynosa.
(AP, 2/8/10)(AP, 2/10/10)(AP, 2/24/10)
2010 Feb 8, The Irish National Liberation Army (INLA), a paramilitary group responsible for dozens of murders during Northern Ireland's three decades of sectarian violence, said that it had disarmed.
(AFP, 2/8/10)
2010 Feb 8, Pakistani authorities arrested 6 suspected Taliban militants with a suicide vest and hand grenades allegedly on their way to kill Americans at the five-star Pearl Continental hotel in Lahore. Police seized 26 hand grenades and five detonators from the militants, who were traveling by car and motorcycle.
(AP, 2/8/10)
2010 Feb 8, In Sri Lanka opposition politician Rauff Hakeem said former army chief and defeated presidential candidate Sarath Fonseka has been detained on sedition charges.
(AP, 2/8/10)
2010 Feb 8, Sweden's unemployment agency was found guilty of discrimination for expelling a Muslim man from a job training program because he refused to shake hands with a woman.
(AP, 2/8/10)
2010 Feb 8, International monitors hailed Ukraine's presidential election as "professional, transparent and honest," increasing pressure on PM Yulia Tymoshenko to concede to opposition leader Viktor Yanukovych, who held a 2.7% point lead with all but 1.7% of the ballots cast counted.
(AP, 2/8/10)
2010 Feb 8, Venezuela’s Pres. Chavez declared a national emergency in the electricity sector as the worst drought in 50 years dried up water supplies in hydroelectric dams.
(SFC, 2/10/10, p.A3)
2010 Feb 8, A Yemen military official said 10 soldiers have been killed, most of them by snipers, and 18 wounded in a fresh outbreak of fighting with Shiite rebels in north Yemen.
(AFP, 2/8/10)
2011 Feb 8, First lady Michelle Obama said her husband hasn't had a cigarette in almost a year.
(AP, 2/9/11)
2011 Feb 8, In Mississippi a tractor-trailer sideswiped a school bus and collided head on with another school bus south of Oxford. 3 people were killed and at least 10 students were injured.
(SFC, 2/9/11, p.A5)
2011 Feb 8, Claudia Aderotimi (20), a London woman, died at a Philadelphia hospital at 1:32 a.m., some 12 hours after a botched buttocks enhancement at a Hampton Inn near the Philadelphia Int’l Airport. Authorities sought to question Padge Victoria Windslowe, a self-described Goth hip hop singer know as "Black Madam" from Ardmore, Pa., in the death.
(Reuters, 2/12/11)
2011 Feb 8, Afghan Pres. Karzai seconded a request by the High Peace Council calling for the release of Mullah Khairullah Khairkhwa, to join in reconciliation talks. Khairkhwa, who has been held at Guantanamo since 2002, was a Taliban interior minister and governor of Herat province during the Taliban government.
(SFC, 2/9/11, p.A3)
2011 Feb 8, Australian firefighters brought a raging wildfire that destroyed 68 houses and damaged 32 others near the city of Perth under control.
(AP, 2/8/11)
2011 Feb 8, In Brazil over half a million people, most of them Brazilians, called via petition on newly elected President Dilma to halt plans to construct the Belo Monte Dam. Outside the Presidential Palace, several hundred people gathered in protest including indigenous chiefs in full tribal regalia and community leaders from the Xingu River Basin, and delivered the petition signatures to the Dilma Government.
(PRNewswire, 2/8/11)
2011 Feb 8, In northeastern Brazil a prison riot, begun a day earlier, ended. 5 prisoners were killed including Jose Agostinho Pereira, who was decapitated by fellow inmates in his cell in the city of Pinheiro. Pereira had been jailed in 2010 for raping and keeping his daughter imprisoned for 12 years in a remote fishing village. He had seven children with her.
(AP, 6/9/10)(AP, 2/9/11)
2011 Feb 8, Guy Savage (42), owner of Nashville-based Sabre Defense Industries LLC, was detained in London after armed officers shot out the tires of his Mercedes. He was wanted by US authorities investigating illegal weapons trading between 2003 and 2009.
(AP, 2/15/11)(http://tinyurl.com/5v44er3)
2011 Feb 8, China raised interest rates for the second time in just over six weeks, intensifying a battle in the fast-expanding economy against stubbornly high inflation that threatens to unsettle global markets.
(Reuters, 2/8/11)
2011 Feb 8, Cuban officials celebrated the arrival of a 1,600km fiber optic cable from Venezuela, whose government put up the $70 million cost. It was expected to become operational this summer.
(SFC, 2/10/11, p.A2)(Econ, 3/5/11, p.42)(http://tinyurl.com/4zgampd)
2011 Feb 8, In Egypt a massive crowd of anti-government protesters poured into Cairo's Tahrir Square again, joined for the first time by Wael Ghonim, a young leader of the campaign the day after he was released from detention. Egypt's military was not allowing foreign journalists without credentials to enter Cairo's Tahrir Square, part of what an international press watchdog called new obstacles in covering the ongoing crisis. Foreign journalists already with credentials were allowed into the square.
(AP, 2/8/11)
2011 Feb 8, In Germany state prosecutors in Wuerzburg said a retired German priest (77) has been charged with 50 counts of fraud over the theft of 1 million euros' ($1.4 million) worth of church donations. The former Roman Catholic priest was detained in May on suspicion of taking donations and collection money from his church in Bavaria.
(AP, 2/9/11)
2011 Feb 8, In India 2 supporters of a Gorkha separatist party were killed and 4 were injured after attacking a group of officers during a protest march in the northeast state of West Bengal.
(AP, 2/8/11)
2011 Feb 8, In Indonesia more than 1,500 Muslims went on the rampage in Central Java, setting two churches alight and ransacking a school, after a Christian man was sentenced to five years' jail for blaspheming Islam. The group wanted him punished with death.
(AP, 2/8/11)
2011 Feb 8, Iran's main opposition leaders charged that the Islamic republic is being run by "anti-religion... hooligans," in a statement on the eve of its 32nd anniversary.
(AFP, 2/8/11)
2011 Feb 8, Iran's oil ministry's reported that daily oil output rose by around 100,000 barrels with the opening of the second phase of Darkhovin field in the southeast of the country.
(AFP, 2/8/11)
2011 Feb 8, Hussein Abdullahi, Iran's ambassador to Nigeria, said that he had spoken to senior officials of the Nigerian government as soon as an arms shipment was seized last Oct 26 and told them that the intercepted cargo was the third of four Gambia-bound shipments originating from Iran.
(AP, 2/10/11)
2011 Feb 8, In the Ivory Coast a fire broke out at the economic ministry building in the capital destroying untold numbers of financial records as international sanctions on incumbent leader Laurent Gbagbo, who refuses to give up power, are beginning to take hold.
(AP, 2/8/11)
2011 Feb 8, Lithuania sent an 8-member team to train Afghan army helicopter pilots. Defense Minister Rasa Jukneviciene said the Lithuanian military could hand over the central Afghan province of Ghor to local forces by the end of 2012. A Lithuanian force of some 150 has been at the helm since 2005 of what is known in NATO jargon as a Provincial Reconstruction Team in Ghor. Lithuania first sent troops to Afghanistan in 2002 after the US-led overthrow of the Taliban regime.
(AFP, 2/8/11)
2011 Feb 8, Mexican authorities recovered the bodies of five men who were dumped on the side of road in Zacatecas state after their execution-style slaying. The deaths raised to 41 the number of people killed over the weekend in drug-related violence. In Baja California, 10 soldiers were detained for alleged ties to drug traffickers and turned over to federal prosecutors. Alvaro Sandoval Diaz (50) and his wife, Griselda Pedroza Rocha (35), were killed in Puerto Palomas. The couple's 6-year-old daughter witnessed her parents' killings. Last month Sandoval Diaz opened fire on four armed men who arrived to extort money from him, killing three.
(AFP, 2/8/11)(AP, 2/11/11)
2011 Feb 8, Mexican soldiers rescued 44 Guatemalan migrants who had been locked up by kidnappers in a house in the northern city of Reynosa. 3 Mexican migrants were also rescued.
(AP, 2/8/11)
2011 Feb 8, Military officers from North and South Korea held talks inside the heavily guarded Demilitarized Zone in the rivals' first official dialogue since the North's deadly artillery barrage of a South Korean island in November.
(AP, 2/8/11)
2011 Feb 8, In Pakistan strike action forced ailing state carrier Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) to cancel flights to Britain and Turkey, affecting some 1,500 passengers.
(AFP, 2/8/11)
2011 Feb 8, The Palestinian Authority set long-overdue local council elections for July 9 in both the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the government spokesman said. The rival Hamas government that rules Gaza promptly rejected the move.
(AP, 2/8/11)
2011 Feb 8, In the Philippines retired Gen. Angelo Reyes (65) apparently committed suicide at his mother's grave. Reyes, who headed the military from 2001 to 2003, was at the center of a congressional probe into one of the biggest corruption scandals to have hit the Philippine armed forces.
(AP, 2/8/11)
2011 Feb 8, Somali pirates firing guns and rocket propelled grenades hijacked the Savina Caylyn, an Italian oil tanker, and diverted the medium-sized vessel towards Somalia. The tanker was reported freed on Dec 21 along with 22 crew members.
(AP, 2/8/11)(AP, 12/21/11)
2011 Feb 8, In South Africa a private plane carrying nine people, including the chief executive of tile company Italtile Ltd., crashed in a nature reserve 320 miles east of Cape Town. There were no survivors. The Johannesburg-based retailer of ceramic tiles and bathroom accessories has been publicly traded on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange since 1988.
(AP, 2/9/11)
2011 Feb 8, In Yemen a suspected US spy drone crashed near the southern town of Loder. Al-Qaeda gunmen in cars intercepted the police and hijacked the wreckage.
(AP, 2/8/11)
2012 Feb 8, In Texas Antonio Pena-Arguelles, an alleged cartel money-launderer, was arrested in San Antonio. A 13-page DEA affidavit accused him of using US bank accounts to funnel millions to Tomas Yarrington, who served as governor of Tamaulipas state in 1999-2004, from leaders of the Gulf and the Zetas. In 2004-2005 alone, it says, Pena-Arguelles and his brother received $4.5 million from the No. 2 leader of the Zetas, Miguel-Angel Trevino Morales.
(AP, 2/10/12)
2012 Feb 8, John Fairfax (74), a self-proclaimed "professional adventurer," died near Las Vegas. He became famous in 1969 as the first person to row solo across the Atlantic Ocean. He also rowed across the Pacific with his then-girlfriend Sylvia Cook, an ocean crossing that took him a full year to complete, from April 1971 to April 1972. His exploits inspired two memoirs: "Britannia: Rowing Alone Across the Atlantic" and "Oars Across the Pacific," both published in the early 1970s.
(AFP, 2/19/12)
2012 Feb 8, In Afghanistan a NATO airstrike reportedly killed 8 children in Kapisa province. On Feb 13 NATO conceded that several children died during the bombing raid.
(AFP, 2/9/12)(AFP, 2/13/12)
2012 Feb 8, Bolivian authorities seized 17 properties from a provincial clan ostensibly in the gravel business that it suspects of laundering drug money through real estate. Cochabamba police were unable to capture any of the seven wanted brothers of the Cossio Rojas family when they raided the properties.
(AP, 2/10/12)
2012 Feb 8, The Trident Gang Crime Command, a new specialist Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) unit tackling London gangs, carried out hundreds of raids exactly six months on from the riots that hit the capital, arresting nearly 160 people.
(AFP, 2/8/12)
2012 Feb 8, Statistics Canada said the Canadian population grew by 5.9 percent over five years to 33.5 million people in 2011, the fastest growth rate in the Group of Eight leading industrialized nations, according to the country's five-year census.
(Reuters, 2/8/12)
2012 Feb 8, China and Canada signed a series of deals to boost modest levels of bilateral trade and finished negotiations on a foreign investment protection pact after 18 years of talks.
(Reuters, 2/8/12)
2012 Feb 8, In China reports circulated that Wang Lijun, the deputy mayor overseeing security in Chongqing, may have tried to defect to the US. He was reportedly arrested in Chengdu and flown to Beijing for questioning.
(SFC, 2/9/12, p.A5)
2012 Feb 8, In China a Tibetan (19) set himself on fire in Sichuan province's Aba prefecture. He was a former monk from the local Kirti monastery, which has been the scene of protests over recent months. The monk was taken to hospital. Radio Free Asia said Tibetan protests erupted in two counties in Qinghai province, with about 1,000 people marching in each.
(AP, 2/9/12)
2012 Feb 8, An Egyptian production company said "the student members of the Muslim Brotherhood at Ain Shams University had prevented the film crew from the 'Dhat' TV series from shooting the scenes set at the university." The series, adapted from the novel "Dhat" by Egyptian author Sonallah Ibrahim, takes place in the 1970s, "when women wore short clothing."
(AFP, 2/9/12)
2012 Feb 8, A senior European Union official said the EU will impose harsher sanctions on Syria, as Russia tried to broker talks between the vice president and the opposition to calm violence. Activists reported at least 50 killed in military assaults targeting government opponents in Homs.
(AP, 2/8/12)
2012 Feb 8, Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous state, went to the polls in a contest pitting Rahul Gandhi (41), the scion of the Gandhi political dynasty, against the ruling party of local low-caste leader Mayawati.
(AFP, 2/8/12)
2012 Feb 8, In India officials said at least 30 people have died and more are sick after drinking toxic bootleg liquor made from cough medicine in Orissa state.
(AP, 2/8/12)(AFP, 2/9/12)
2012 Feb 8, Half a million Israeli public and private sector workers went on general strike, shutting down government offices, banks and airport traffic over the rights of contract workers.
(AFP, 2/8/12)
2012 Feb 8, Japan and the United States agreed to proceed with plans to transfer thousands of US troops out of the southern Japanese island of Okinawa, leaving behind the stalled discussion about closing a major US Marine base there.
(AP, 2/8/12)
2012 Feb 8, Supporters of the Maldives former president rioted through the streets and seized some police stations to demand his reinstatement as the country's new leader appealed for an end to the political turmoil roiling this Indian Ocean nation. Former leader Mohamed Nasheed and other top party officials were beaten by police in the street chaos.
(AP, 2/8/12)
2012 Feb 8, In Mali Tuareg rebels said they had seized control of Tinzawaten, a northeastern region, as UN chief Ban Ki-moon urged an end to the fighting amid growing global concern over the unrest.
(AFP, 2/8/12)
2012 Feb 8, The Mexican army said troops have made an historic seizure of 15 tons of pure methamphetamine in the western state of Jalisco. The find outside Guadalajara is more than four times the size of a major seizure last summer of 3.4 tons (3.1 metric tons) and more than twice the total amount of meth seized in Mexico in 2009, according to a UN report.
(AP, 2/9/12)
2012 Feb 8, NATO said it has decided to extend until 2018 an operation to protect the airspace of Baltic members Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania with fighter jets.
(AP, 2/8/12)
2012 Feb 8, In the Netherlands organizers of the legendary Eleven Cities Tour skating marathon ruled the ice is to thin for it to go ahead.
(AP, 2/9/12)
2012 Feb 8, The Pakistani army held talks with NATO and Afghan forces in an effort to improve coordination along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, a sign of thawing relations after American airstrikes accidentally killed 24 Pakistani soldiers last year. US drone-fired missiles hit a house in North Waziristan's Spalga village, killing nine people, including some domestic Taliban militants.
(AP, 2/8/12)
2012 Feb 8, The Palestinian Hamas parliamentary bloc in the Gaza Strip came out against the latest reconciliation deal with rival Fatah, headed by Pres. Abbas. The 31 Gaza lawmakers said the deal is illegal. Hamas risked losing jobs and influence in Gaza under the deal, which was signed in Qatar this week by Abbas and the exiled Hamas leader, Khaled Mashaal.
(AP, 2/8/12)
2012 Feb 8, In Somalia a suicide car bomber slammed his vehicle into a cafe outside the Muna Hotel, where lawmakers gather in Mogadishu, killing at least 15 people.
(http://tinyurl.com/89an85t)(AFP, 2/17/12)
2012 Feb 8, Eleven Somalis drowned and another 34 were missing after a smugglers' boat headed for Yemen capsized in the Gulf of Aden. Survivors told how the three smugglers crewmen forced 22 people overboard when the boat's engine failed soon after departure.
(AFP, 2/10/12)
2012 Feb 8, Switzerland reported seeing a large-scale hike in cigarette-smuggling from Africa where prices are 10 times cheaper.
(AFP, 2/8/12)
2012 Feb 8, Tunisia's new President Moncef Marzouki arrived in Morocco to push for a revival of a dormant project to unify the Maghreb region on his first foreign tour since taking office.
(AFP, 2/8/12)
2013 Feb 8, The big storm heading for the Northeast US disrupted air travel, with over 2,100 flights cancelled.
(AP, 2/8/13)
2013 Feb 8, A federal judge overturned an Arizona law that sought to block funding through the state for Planned Parenthood's healthcare clinics because the group also performs abortions.
(Reuters, 2/12/13)
2013 Feb 8, in Ohio Samuel Mullet Sr. (67), the ringleader of hair- and beard-cutting attacks on fellow members of his faith, was sentenced to 15 years in prison. Family members convicted of carrying out his orders got sentences ranging from one to seven years.
(AP, 2/7/13)
2013 Feb 8, In central Bangladesh at least two people died and dozens were rescued after the ML Sarash passenger ferry collided with another ship and capsized on the River Meghna, dumping as many as 100 people into the water.
(AP, 2/8/13)
2013 Feb 8, In Britain two drug-addicted hit men who went to the wrong address and stabbed a teenager to death in 2010 were sentenced to a minimum of 40 years in jail. Prosecutors said Ben Hope (39) and Jason Richards (38) were paid 1,000 pounds ($1,600) each to kill a man who owed money to a businessman. But the pair killed Aamir Siddiqi (17) on his doorstep instead.
(AP, 2/8/13)
2013 Feb 8, Canadian police arrested Conservative Senator Patrick Brazeau (38) for alleged domestic violence. PM Stephen Harper, who appointed Brazeau to the Senate in 2008, kicked Brazeau out of the Conservative caucus after he heard about the incident.
(AP, 2/10/13)
2013 Feb 8, In Halifax, Canada, naval officer Sub-Lt. Jeffrey Delisle (41), who handed over secrets to Russia for more than four years, damaging Canada's relations with the United States and other key allies, was jailed for 20 years.
(Reuters, 2/8/13)
2013 Feb 8, A Chinese court sentenced a Tibetan man to 13 years in prison for goading a monk to self-immolate. The sentence by a court in Qinghai province followed a news report that the government has detained 70 people in the province's ethnic Tibetan areas.
(AP, 2/8/13)
2013 Feb 8, Thousands of Egyptians staged rallies in cities across the country to denounce the rule of Islamist President Mohammed Morsi and his fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood.
(AP, 2/8/13)
2013 Feb 8, EU leaders agreed to a significantly reduced 7-year budget worth €960 billion ($1.28 trillion) — the first cut in spending in the 27-country group's history.
(AP, 2/8/13)
2013 Feb 8, Finnish customs officers confiscated a container on a Finnish freighter, en route to Syria from Russia, because it did not have a transit license and found 9.6 tons of tank spare parts.
(AP, 2/15/13)
2013 Feb 8, In Iraq car bombs struck two outdoor markets and a group of taxi vans in Shiite areas across the country, killing at least 36 people and wounding nearly 100. Tens of thousands of Sunni protesters rallied in five major cities against PM Nouri al-Maliki.
(AP, 2/8/13)
2013 Feb 8, In Israel the offices of the Beitar Jerusalem soccer team, long-linked to PM Netanyahu’s Likud Party, were set on fire. In January the team had recruited, for the first time in its 75-year history, two Muslim players.
(SFC, 2/9/13, p.A4)(Econ, 4/13/13, p.52)
2013 Feb 8, In northern Mali French forces wrested Tessalit from control of Islamic insurgents. In Gao the conflict's first suicide bombing increased fears of terror attacks.
(AP, 2/8/13)
2013 Feb 8, In northern Nigeria gunmen suspected of belonging to a radical Islamic sect shot and killed at least nine women who were taking part in a polio vaccination drive in Kano. Kano state police commissioner Ibrahim Idris immediately ordered the arrest of three radio journalists for allegedly being responsible for the killings. Police claimed on-air comments about a vaccination campaign in the area sparked the attacks.
(AP, 2/8/13)(AP, 2/12/13)
2013 Feb 8, In northwestern Pakistan a bomb planted near a market killed 16 people and wounded 17 others in Kalaya, the main town in the Orakzai tribal area.
(AP, 2/8/13)
2013 Feb 8, In Pakistan 6 militants were killed and 3 wounded in a US drone strike on a militant compound. The 3 wounded died overnight. Two were members of al-Qaida and the others belonged to the Pakistani Taliban movement in the Bobar Ghar area of South Waziristan.
(AP, 2/9/13)
2013 Feb 8, A Moscow city court sentenced Vladimir Kvachkov (64), a retired military intelligence colonel, to 13 years in prison for attempting to organize an armed uprising. Retired police captain, Alexey Kiselev (62), was sentenced to 11 years as a co-conspirator. Prosecutors said they had organized a group who planned to seize power by training crossbow-wielding men to seize military depots and then descend upon Moscow with tanks.
(AP, 2/8/13)
2013 Feb 8, Senegal officially launched its tribunal investigating former Chadian dictator Hissene Habre for alleged crimes against humanity, a move rights groups called a decisive turning point in the campaign to bring him to justice.
(AP, 2/8/13)
2013 Feb 8, In Slovenia thousands of people rallied for and against the center-right government, adding to the tensions in the small European Union country where authorities have turned to austerity measures to revive the economy.
(AP, 2/8/13)
2013 Feb 8, Police in South Africa arrested the "ringleader" of a group of 19 Congolese rebels who now face charges of allegedly plotting a war to unseat Congolese President Joseph Kabila. Prosecutors last week identified Etienne Kabila as being in charge of the group.
(AP, 2/10/13)
2013 Feb 8, In South Sudan 103 people were killed in Akobo County when one tribe attacked members of the Lou Nuer ethnic group while cattle were being moved across land. The attackers were believed to be members of the rebel group led by David Yau Yau of the Murle ethnic group.
(AP, 2/10/13)
2013 Feb 8, From Syria the Observatory reported clashes and regime shelling in the southern and eastern sectors of Damascus, including in the restive suburb of Moadamiyeh, where six people were killed by government shelling overnight.
(AP, 2/8/13)
2013 Feb 8, Tens of thousands of Tunisians chanting anti-government slogans converged on a cemetery for the funeral of an assassinated leftist opposition politician, as military helicopters hovered overhead and tensions threatened to boil over into further violence.
(AP, 2/8/13)
2013 Feb 8, The UN refugee agency said there has been a huge increase in the number of people fleeing Syria, with 5,000 refugees crossing the borders daily into neighboring countries.
(AP, 2/8/13)
2013 Feb 8, Venezuela's government announced that it will devalue the country's currency, a long-anticipated change expected to push up prices in the heavily import-reliant economy.
(AP, 2/8/13)
2014 Feb 8, In Albania a speeding minivan carrying eleven people lost control and hurtled 100 meters down a cliff, killing 6 people and seriously injuring the five others.
(AP, 2/8/14)
2014 Feb 8, A huge falling rock derailed a train in the French Alps, killing two people and partly pushing one of its carriages over the edge of a mountain slope.
(Reuters, 2/8/14)
2014 Feb 8, In Guatemala 20 men stormed a house in a village in Peten killing 9 people including a girl (5) and baby (3 months). The area was know to be contested by drug traffickers.
(SFC, 2/10/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 8, In India an angry crowd gathered outside a Delhi police station to protest poor policing and racist treatment of people in the northeast after a 14-year-old girl from that part of India filed charges of rape in the capital.
(Reuters, 2/8/14)
2014 Feb 8, Moroccan authorities banned a sit-in by hundreds of judges who want greater independence for the judiciary, deploying dozens of riot police to central Rabat and closing off streets around the Justice Ministry.
(Reuters, 2/8/14)
2014 Feb 8, In Russia some 40 people gathered in downtown Moscow to protest the decision of leading Russian cable and satellite companies to drop the channel, Dozhd (TV Rain). Except for women with children, most were immediately detained.
(AP, 2/8/14)
2014 Feb 8, In Saudi Arabia a hotel fire in Medina killed 13 people including 9 Egyptian pilgrims.
(AP, 2/9/14)
2014 Feb 8, A Russian animal rights activist was detained in Moscow after he and two others protested the country's policy of killing stray dogs in Sochi.
(AP, 2/8/14)
2014 Feb 8, In Spain thousands of women marched in the streets of Madrid to protest against the Spanish government's plan to restrict access to abortion.
(AFP, 2/8/14)
2014 Feb 8, In Syria new aerial bombardment from explosives-packed barrel bombs in Aleppo killed at least 20 people. Renewed fighting broke a cease-fire in Homs and halted a plan to evacuate civilians and bring supplies into rebel-held areas under siege.
(AFP, 2/8/14)(AP, 2/8/14)
2014 Feb 8, In Ukraine Thousands of people angered by months of anti-government protests in Kiev converged on one of the protesters' barricades, but retreated after meeting sizeable resistance.
(AP, 2/8/14)
2015 Feb 8, The United States delivered more than $25 million worth of military aid including heavy artillery to the Lebanese army to help it fight jihadist groups which have repeatedly battled with security forces near the Syrian border.
(Reuters, 2/8/15)
2015 Feb 8, In the Comoros Islands Mohamed Said Abdallah Mchangama, a former finance minister, was arrested on charges of inciting hatred. Mchangama had called for a general strike in protest at the government's energy plans.
(AP, 2/10/15)
2015 Feb 8, In Egypt 22 soccer fans died of suffocation from tear gas and a stampede outside a Cairo stadium in a melee with security forces. Authorities said it was sparked when hard-core Zamalek fans known as Ultras White Knights tried to force their way into the stadium without tickets. The violence prompted the Cabinet to suspend the national football league indefinitely. Police arrested 21 soccer fans in the wake of the stampede.
(AP, 2/9/15)(AP, 2/10/15)
2015 Feb 8, French police detained six people suspected of recruiting potential jihadists, just days after another operation saw five charged on similar grounds.
(AFP, 2/8/15)
2015 Feb 8, In India a Japanese student (20) was raped while touring Jaipur. Three men (20-24), who offered to be her tour guides, took her to a farming village outside the city, raped her on a roadside and fled. Villagers heard the woman crying and helped her contact police. On Sep 4 a court sentenced the three men to 20 years in prison. Three other defendants were sentenced to two years in prison for helping the three main accused commit the crime.
(AP, 9/4/15)
2015 Feb 8, Israel's Supreme Court ordered the government to demolish nine homes in the West Bank Jewish settlement of Ofra, which were built on private Palestinian land. Authorities have until 2017 to carry out the demolitions.
(AFP, 2/9/15)
2015 Feb 8, Two Italian patrol boats picked up 105 migrants late today from the boat drifting in extreme sea conditions. At least 29 migrants died of hypothermia aboard Italian coast guard vessels. Survivors later confirmed the existence of a fourth rubber boat that left Libya with as many as 300 people unaccounted-for.
(Reuters, 2/9/15)(SFC, 2/10/15, p.A2)(AP, 2/11/15)
2015 Feb 8, Jordan said it has launched 56 airstrikes against Islamic State group weapons depots, training centers and military barracks since militants released a video on Feb 3 of them burning a Jordanian pilot to death.
(AP, 2/8/15)
2015 Feb 8, In Libya heavy fighting flared up in Benghazi as forces loyal to the internationally recognized elected government tried to retake areas controlled by extremist militias.
(AP, 2/8/15)
2015 Feb 8, Nigeria's Boko Haram Islamic extremists abducted about 30 people including eight Cameroonian girls and killed 7 hostages in two bus hijackings in Cameroon and Nigeria.
(AP, 2/10/15)
2015 Feb 8, In Niger Boko Haram fighters waged a new attack on Diffa, a southeastern border town, where a blast killed at least 5 people and injured at least 10. Aid workers said the assailants had come from Nigeria.
(AFP, 2/8/15)(Reuters, 2/8/15)
2015 Feb 8, Nigerian authorities came in for heavy criticism over the decision to postpone national elections in the face of relentless Boko Haram violence.
(AFP, 2/8/15)
2015 Feb 8, In Sudan 3 staff of the Sudanese Red Crescent were killed in an attack in Blue Nile state, where Khartoum is battling rebels.
(AFP, 2/9/15)
2015 Feb 8, A Turkish court ordered the arrest of 21 police officers as part of an investigation into the illegal wiretapping of politicians, civil servants and businessmen.
(Reuters, 2/8/15)
2015 Feb 8, In eastern Ukraine intense fighting continued around the rail junction town of Debaltseve, with rebel fighters making repeated attempts to storm lines defended by government troops. The leaders of Russia, Ukraine, Germany and France agreed to meet in Belarus on Feb 11 to try to broker a peace deal.
(Reuters, 2/8/15)
2016 Feb 8, The zodiac calendar entered the Year of the Monkey — the ninth of 12 animal signs.
(AP, 2/6/16)
2016 Feb 8, President Barack Obama and Italian President Sergio Mattarella met to discuss efforts to fight the spread of the Islamic State in Libya.
(AP, 2/9/16)
2016 Feb 8, The Justice Department said the wife of senior Islamic State leader Abu Sayyaf, who was killed in a US raid last year, has been charged in federal court with holding American Kayla Mueller hostage and with contributing to the aid worker's death. Nisreen Assad Ibrahim Bahar, aka Umm Sayyaf, admitted after her capture last May that she and her husband had kept Mueller captive along with several other young female hostages.
(AP, 2/8/16)
2016 Feb 8, In eastern Afghanistan suicide bomber struck in a crowded market, killing 5 civilians and wounding nine others in Paktika province. In northern Balkh province a suicide bomber targeting an Afghan army minibus near a base killed at least 3 soldiers and wounded another 18 military personnel. In the eastern Nangarhar province a presidential palace guard was shot dead inside his home in an attack that also wounded his mother.
(AP, 2/8/16)
2016 Feb 8, Bosnian Serb Gen. Zdravko Tolimir, jailed for life for committing genocide during the Balkans wars, died of natural cases in a UN detention center at The Hague.
(AFP, 2/12/16)
2016 Feb 8, Canada announced it will end air strikes targeting the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria and bring home its six fighter jets on February 22.
(AFP, 2/8/16)
2016 Feb 8, In Chad Zouhoura (16) was assaulted in a brutal attack that shocked many, triggering weeks of demonstrations by thousands of young people in the streets. Five alleged rapists, who include the sons of three generals, were taken into custody together with four suspected accomplices. Zouhoura soon returned to France, where she already lived with relatives from 2009 to 2015, and decided to speak out publicly in Paris to fight impunity for sex criminals in her central African nation homeland.
(AFP, 3/22/16)
2016 Feb 8, Star Cuban infielder Yulieski Gourriel and his younger brother slipped away from their hotel in the Dominican Republic early today in an apparent effort to launch careers in Major League Baseball.
(AP, 2/8/16)
2016 Feb 8, The Montreal-based UN aviation agency said global aviation experts agreed to the first emissions-reduction standards for aircraft in a deal that will take effect with new models in four years, but environmental groups said the carbon dioxide cuts did not go far enough.
(Reuters, 2/8/16)
2016 Feb 8, In Colombia an attack early today on a military brigade was blamed on the leftist National Liberation Army (ELN). President Juan Manuel Santos vowed to step up the fight against the second-biggest rebel group, despite claims it was ready to join in a peace drive to end decades of conflict.
(AFP, 2/8/16)
2016 Feb 8, In the Czech Rep. hundreds of taxi drivers blocked a major road in downtown Prague to demand higher pay and protest alternative services such as Uber.
(AP, 2/8/16)
2016 Feb 8, At a conference in Dubai world leaders called on governments to be responsive to and inclusive of their citizens.
(AP, 2/8/16)
2016 Feb 8, France's former budget minister Jerome Cahuzac (63), who stashed millions abroad while cracking down on tax cheats at home, went on trial for tax fraud and money laundering.
(AFP, 2/9/16)
2016 Feb 8, In Germany hundreds of thousands of people packed the streets of Cologne for its annual Rose Monday parade, the culmination of five days of Carnival festivities.
(AP, 2/8/16)
2016 Feb 8, Hong Kong riot police fired warning shots during clashes that erupted in the Chinese-ruled city when authorities tried to remove illegal street stalls set up for Lunar New Year celebrations. 124 people were injured, including 90 police officers, in the worst violence since pro-democracy protests in 2014.
(Reuters, 2/9/16)(Econ, 2/13/16, p.10)
2016 Feb 8, In Ireland at least four gunmen broke into the Dublin home of Eddied Hutch, the brother of Dubin crime kingpin Gerry "The Monk" Hutch and fatally shot the 59-year-old several times in the hallway.
(AP, 2/9/16)
2016 Feb 8, In Mexico crime-beat reporter Anabel Flores Salazar was kidnapped from her home near Orizaba in the Gulf coast state of Veracruz at about 2 am. Her body was found a day later on a highway in Puebla. On Feb 13 Josele Marquez (alias) El Chichi, the presumed mastermind behind her murder, was arrested.
(AP, 2/8/16)(Reuters, 2/9/16)(Reuters, 2/13/16)
2016 Feb 8, In Mexico a gas explosion ripped through a house where dozens of abducted migrants were being held captive in Reynosa on the Texas border, injuring five people. The Guatemalan migrants told police they were abducted a week ago.
(AP, 2/9/16)
2016 Feb 8, In Nepal the United Democratic Madhesi Front said in a statement it would continue its protests but would no longer block the border points where crucial supplies come on cargo trucks from India.
(AP, 2/8/16)
2016 Feb 8, Palestinian and Israeli sources said Israel plans to increase the number of entry permits it grants to Palestinian workers, in a drive to ease economic hardship that has contributed to a wave of Palestinian attacks.
(Reuters, 2/8/16)
2016 Feb 8, Russia's FSB security service said it had arrested seven Islamic State militants in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg who it said had been planning bomb attacks in Moscow.
(Reuters, 2/8/16)
2016 Feb 8, Russia's Central Bank effectively closed down two of the country's smaller banks after it revoked their operating licenses, its latest effort to consolidate the sprawling banking sector.
(AP, 2/8/16)
2016 Feb 8, In Russia demolition crews arrived near a metro station in central Moscow to destroy nearly 100 buildings that allegedly posed a danger to the public.
(Econ, 2/20/16, p.45)
2016 Feb 8, At least 4 Russian servicemen were killed when a military helicopter crashed in the west of the country.
(AFP, 2/8/16)
2016 Feb 8, In Saudi Arabia an explosion damaged a car in Riyadh, an incident the Islamic State militant group said was caused by a bomb one of its members had affixed to the vehicle.
(Reuters, 2/8/16)
2016 Feb 8, In southern Somalia Mahad Karate, also known as Abdirahim Mohamed Warsame, was reportedly killed along with 10 middle-level al-Shabab members by a Kenyan airstrike on Nadris camp. Kenya’s army announced the attack on Feb 18, but the Shehab dismissed the report.
(AFP, 2/18/16)
2016 Feb 8, Swedish police arrested 14 men for allegedly planning to attack an asylum center after finding axes, knives and iron pipes in their cars.
(AFP, 2/9/16)
2016 Feb 8, Syrian army troops recaptured a new village north of Aleppo, bringing troops and allied militiamen to within a few kilometers of the Turkish border as part of a major Russian-backed offensive in the area.
(AP, 2/8/16)
2016 Feb 8, Twenty-four migrants, including 11 children, drowned in the Aegean Sea as they tried to cross from Turkey to Greece.
(AFP, 2/8/16)
2016 Feb 8, The UN said at least 40,000 people are being starved to death in South Sudan war zones on the brink of famine.
(AFP, 2/8/16)
2017 Feb 8, Rep. Sen. Jeff Sessions was confirmed as Pres. Donald Trump’s attorney general.
(SFC, 2/9/17, p.A4)
2017 Feb 8, Former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman (70) was released from a federal prison where he was serving a six-year sentence for bribery and obstruction of justice. He will serve the remainder of his sentence on house arrest.
(SFC, 2/9/17, p.A4)
2017 Feb 8, In Louisiana some 31 people were reported injured after six tornadoes tore through New Orleans and other parts of the state, pounding across highways and streets and leaving trees, power lines and homes leveled.
(Reuters, 2/8/17)
2017 Feb 8, Maine indicted Ronald Paquin (74), a former Roman Catholic priest, on 29 counts of sexual misconduct dating to the 1980s. Paquin had spent more than a decade in a Massachusetts prison for raping an altar boy.
(SFC, 2/9/17, p.A4)
2017 Feb 8, In North Carolina a 3-judge panel temporarily blocked a new law requiring state Senate confirmation for Gov. Roy Cooper’s Cabinet members. The law was passed in the waning days of Rep. Gov. Pat McCrory.
(SFC, 2/9/17, p.A6)
2017 Feb 8, In Ohio Reagan Tokes (21), an Ohio State Univ. student, was last seen leaving work at a Columbus restaurant. Her nude body was found the next day near a park entrance in Grove City. On February 11 DNA evidence led police to arrest convicted sex offender Brian Golsby (29).
(SSFC, 2/12/17, p.A8)
2017 Feb 8, In Afghanistan at least six Afghan employees of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) were killed as they carried supplies to areas in Jowzjan province hit by deadly snow storms. Islamic State gunmen were suspected. Two Red Cross staff members were kidnapped. On Sep 5, 2017, the Red Cross said the two kidnapped staff members have been released.
(Reuters, 2/8/17)(Reuters, 9/5/17)
2017 Feb 8, A Brazilian zoologist said an outbreak of yellow fever has claimed the lives of more than 600 monkeys and dozens of humans in the Atlantic rainforest region, threatening the survival of rare South American primates.
(Reuters, 2/8/17)
2017 Feb 8, Colombia's chief prosecutor said that suspicions of illegal campaign contributions to President Juan Manuel Santos are based on testimony of a rancher Otto Bula, connected to the leader's opponents, who has been jailed for allegedly channeling bribes on behalf of the Brazilian Odebrecht construction firm.
(AP, 2/8/17)
2017 Feb 8, The head of Estonia's foreign intelligence service said that Russia was "the greatest source of a threat" to Estonia in cyberspace because Estonia is a member of both the EU and NATO. He also said Estonia has teamed up with the US Secret Service ahead of its first EU presidency to train local officials to handle cyber threats.
(AP, 2/8/17)
2017 Feb 8, In Austria interior and defense ministers from 15 European countries agreed to come up with new measures to ensure that the overland route from Greece remains shut for migrants seeking new lives in other EU nations and those trying to bring them in illegally.
(AP, 2/8/17)
2017 Feb 8, The Czech government said it has decided to double its quota for Ukrainian workers, due to an acute labor shortage as the economy continues to grow strongly.
(Reuters, 2/8/17)
2017 Feb 8, In Greece hundreds of firefighters in uniform took to the streets of Athens, saying roughly one third of their jobs are at risk due to hiring restrictions placed on the public sector by Greece's international bailout conditions.
(AP, 2/8/17)
2017 Feb 8, In Iraq hundreds of supporters of Iraqi cleric Moqtada al-Sadr demonstrated in Baghdad to demand electoral reform ahead of a planned provincial vote in September.
(AFP, 2/8/17)
2017 Feb 8, Israeli and Palestinian rights groups petitioned the Supreme Court asking it to strike down a new law allowing expropriation of private Palestinian land for Jewish settlers.
(AFP, 2/8/17)
2017 Feb 8, Mexican electoral authorities annulled the results of town council elections in San Juan Achiutla, Oaxaca, because married women had been prevented from voting. Achiutla officials had argued that married women don't perform community work and thus can't vote.
(AP, 2/9/17)
2017 Feb 8, In the Philippines as many as 15,000 people were left homeless after a huge fire engulfed an overcrowded slum in Manila, destroying thousands of homes and sending residents fleeing with their few possessions.
(AFP, 2/8/17)
2017 Feb 8, Romania's defiant PM Sorin Grindeanu easily survived a no-confidence vote even as his government continued to face nationwide protests over its efforts to weaken anti-corruption laws.
(AFP, 2/8/17)
2017 Feb 8, Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny accused the Kremlin of trying to block him from running in next year's presidential election after a court found him guilty of embezzlement. A court in Kirov found Navalny guilty of embezzlement in relation to a timber firm called Kirovles, and gave him a five-year suspended prison sentence.
(Reuters, 2/8/17)
2017 Feb 8, The Russian embassy in Nigeria said seven Russian sailors and a Ukrainian have been kidnapped in Nigerian waters from the BBC Caribbean, a cargo vessel flagged in Antigua and Barbuda.
(AP, 2/8/17)
2017 Feb 8, In Somalia members of the upper and lower houses of parliament elected former PM Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo as president.
(SFC, 2/9/17, p.A2)
2017 Feb 8, Syrian government jets bombed a rebel-held district of Homs city in the west of the country, killing at least nine people.
(Reuters, 2/8/17)(AP, 2/8/17)
2017 Feb 8, Turkey said Syrian rebels backed by the Turkish military have captured the outskirts of the Islamic State-held city of al-Bab in northern Syria.
(Reuters, 2/8/17)
2017 Feb 8, Turkish presidency sources said President Tayyip Erdogan and US President Donald Trump agreed in an overnight phone call on joint action against Islamic State in the Syrian towns of Raqqa and al-Bab, both held by the militants.
(Reuters, 2/8/17)
2017 Feb 8, In eastern Ukraine Mikhail Tolstykh (36), the military chief of a self-proclaimed Russian-backed Donetsk republic, was blown up with a grenade launcher. Rebels blamed Ukrainian security services.
(AFP, 2/8/17)(Econ, 2/11/17, p.38)
2017 Feb 8, Senior UN officials said more than 1,000 Rohingya Muslims may have been killed in a Myanmar army crackdown, suggesting the death toll has been a far greater than previously reported.
(Reuters, 2/8/17)
2017 Feb 8, The UN appealed for $2.1 billion to provide desperately needed aid to millions of people in war-ravaged Yemen this year, warning the country could soon face famine.
(AFP, 2/8/17)
2017 Feb 8, Pope Francis issued a stinging criticism of atrocities against Myanmar's Rohingya minority, saying they had been tortured and killed simply because they wanted to live their culture and Muslim faith.
(Reuters, 2/8/17)
2017 Feb 8, Zimbabwe's Constitutional Court dismissed a case against President Robert Mugabe (92) lodged by an activist who accused the aging leader of violating the southern African country's supreme law during protests last year.
(Reuters, 2/8/17)
2017 Feb 8, Zimbabwean protest leader Evan Mawarire was released on bail by a court in Harare after police arrested him on charges of subverting the government and inciting public violence.
(AFP, 2/8/17)
2018 Feb 8, US stocks plunged for the 2nd time in four days and the Dow Jones industrial average sank more than 1,000 points.
(SFC, 2/9/18, p.C1)
2018 Feb 8, The SF-based Helen Diller Foundation announced a $500 million donation for a new hospital at the USCF campus in Parnassus Heights.
(SFC, 2/8/18, p.A1)
2018 Feb 8, In Boston Cleber Rene Rizerio Rocha (28) of Brazil was sentenced after pleading guilty in October to money laundering charges. $20 million was found in Westborough in January 2017 during an investigation into TelexFree Inc., a defunct internet telecom company that prosecutors say was actually a billion-dollar pyramid scheme. Authorities say Rocha was a courier for a fugitive TelexFree executive who came to retrieve the money move it out of the US.
(AP, 2/9/18)
2018 Feb 8, In Ohio Arnold Perry (34) was sentenced to 27 years in prison on rape and sexual battery charges. Authorities said he had impregnated 14-year-old twins and their sister (12) while living in their home in 2015-2016.
(SFC, 2/10/18, p.A5)
2018 Feb 8, In Texas one man died after he and three others were stabbed during a church service at a private home in Corpus Christi. Suspect Marco Antonio Moreno immediately surrendered.
(SFC, 2/9/18, p.A6)
2018 Feb 8, A US-led coalition statement said joint US and Afghan air raids targeted the Islamic State group in Afghanistan's northern Jowzjan province. In northeastern Badakshan province US fighter jets pounded Taliban camps that were providing support to militant Turkic Muslim Uighurs who seek independence from China. A Chinese and three Uzbek militants were reported killed in the joint air strikes in Jowzjan province. Missiles fired from US drone slammed into a vehicle in eastern Paktia province, killing four militants.
(AP, 2/8/18)(AP, 2/9/18)
2018 Feb 8, In Afghanistan Khalid Mehsood, deputy leader of the umbrella Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), died after a pre-dawn US drone strike in North Waziristan. Group leaders soon nominated Mufti Noor Wali Mehsud to take his place.
(AFP, 2/12/18)
2018 Feb 8, Bangladesh opposition leader and former prime minister Khaleda Zia (72) was jailed for corruption but plans to appeal her five-year term. Khaleda, her son and aides were convicted of stealing 21 million taka ($253,000) in foreign donations received by an orphanage trust set up when she was last prime minister, from 2001 to 2006.
(Reuters, 2/8/18)
2018 Feb 8, Brazil's federal police arrested Congressman Joao Rodrigues on corruption charges at Sao Paulo's international airport, saying they feared he could try to escape to Paraguay.
(AP, 2/8/18)
2018 Feb 8, Freemasons published advertisements in British newspapers to say their members are being unfairly stigmatized, after reports of secret lodges for lawmakers and journalists.
(AP, 2/8/18)
2018 Feb 8, China dismissed accusations from the former leader of the Maldives that it is attempting to effectively buy up the Indian Ocean island state. China is already the Maldives' primary source of tourists and is investing hundreds of millions of dollars in an airport expansion, housing development and other projects.
(AP, 2/8/18)
2018 Feb 8, Cyprus' energy minister said that exploratory drilling off the southern shore has shown indications of a potentially sizeable gas deposit that raises hopes for more discoveries.
(AP, 2/8/18)
2018 Feb 8, Egyptian prosecutors ordered the detention for 15 days of Mohamed el-Kassas, a prominent opposition activist pending investigations into charges that include joining a terrorist group and disseminating fake news.
(AP, 2/12/18)
2018 Feb 8, Ethiopia's attorney general's office said 746 more prisoners will be released, including a journalist and a senior opposition official who were jailed for conspiracy to commit terrorist acts. The names have been forwarded to President Mulatu Teshome, who has the power to grant their freedom.
(Reuters, 2/8/18)
2018 Feb 8, The French defense minister presented a bill foreseeing 295 billion euros ($364 billion) in overall defense spending from 2019 to 2025. That includes 1.7 billion euros in additional spending each year through 2022, particularly to modernize equipment and improve intelligence.
(AP, 2/8/18)
2018 Feb 8, French custom's officers seized nearly 500 weapons, more than 100 kg (220 pounds) of ammunition and myriad grenades in the northern region of Picardy. Officials found "an arsenal of long guns" in a car nearby including "weapons of war" and machine guns that were arranged on racks.
(AP, 2/14/18)
2018 Feb 8, The Gambia was readmitted to the Commonwealth, welcomed back following the democratic election of President Adama Barrow, who reversed the shock pullout of 2013.
(AFP, 2/8/18)
2018 Feb 8, The Christian Social Union (CSU), the smallest partner in Germany's prospective new government, signed off on the coalition deal giving Chancellor Angela Merkel a stable government for her fourth term.
(AP, 2/8/18)
2018 Feb 8, Greece launched a seven-year bond auction with a starting rate of 3.75 percent, in the first major step this year toward a return to financing itself on international markets.
(AP, 2/8/18)
2018 Feb 8, In Kenya Citizen TV, the last of three television stations shut down by the government last week, resumed transmission.
(Reuters, 2/8/18)
2018 Feb 8, In eastern Libya Commander Mahmoud al-Werfalli, wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) over a series of summary executions, was released, a day after handing himself in to military authorities.
(Reuters, 2/8/18)
2018 Feb 8, Moldova's parliament adopted a declaration condemning alleged Russian attacks on cybersecurity and accusing the Russian secret services of financing Moldovan political parties.
(AP, 2/9/18)
2018 Feb 8, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un presided over an extravagant military parade in Pyongyang's Kim Il Sung Square to mark the 70th anniversary of the founding of its military.
(AP, 2/8/18)
2018 Feb 8, It was reported that Pakistan's media regulatory authority, acting on a court order, has instructed all news channels, radio stations and print media to refrain from promoting Valentine's Day.
(AP, 2/8/18)
2018 Feb 8, In Pakistan a US drone strike killed seven militants in the border village of Gorwak, North Waziristan.
(AP, 2/9/18)
2018 Feb 8, It was reported that International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutors have opened a preliminary examination into Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte's "war on drugs", which has led to the death of thousands since it began in July 2016.
(Reuters, 2/8/18)
2018 Feb 8, In Poland protesting doctors and health authorities signed a deal that will significantly increase spending on health care, including doctors' pay.
(AP, 2/8/18)
2018 Feb 8, A Romanian court sentenced Darius Valcov, a former finance minister and one of the architects of the ruling Social Democrats' governing program, to eight-years in prison for corruption and money-laundering. He denied wrongdoing and can appeal.
(AP, 2/12/18)
2018 Feb 8, Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny published an investigation alleging that a Russian Cabinet member received lavish hospitality from billionaire Oleg Deripaska, a tycoon who has been linked to US President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort.
(AP, 2/8/18)
2018 Feb 8, A spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry said North Korean workers can stay in Russia until Dec. 2019, in line with a United Nations' resolution.
(Reuters, 2/8/18)
2018 Feb 8, Saudi state media reported that a criminal court has sentenced a columnist to five years in prison for insulting the royal court. Saleh al-Shehi was detained after his Dec. 8 appearance on the privately owned Rotana Channel after saying that any Saudi citizen who has a contact within the royal court automatically has an advantage in buying strategically located land unavailable to the public.
(AP, 2/8/18)
2018 Feb 8, Syrian rescue workers and activists said the death toll from ongoing government strikes on the opposition-held region near the capital Damascus has risen to at least 35. At least 169 civilians have been killed since Feb. 5.
(AP, 2/8/18)
2018 Feb 8, In Syria the US-led coalition and its local allies struck pro-government forces with deadly air and artillery fire overnight to repel "an unprovoked attack" near the Euphrates. The US-led coalition said it killed at least 100 pro-regime fighters to fend off an attack on its allies. It was later reported that at least four Russian private military contractors were killed in the strike.
(Reuters, 2/8/18)(AFP, 2/8/18)(SFC, 2/14/18, p.A2)
2018 Feb 8, Tajikistan's interior minister said amnesty has been granted to 111 of its nationals following their return home from Syria and Iraq, where they had joined radical Islamist groups. He also said some 250 citizens of Tajikistan, a majority-Muslim country, had died fighting for radical groups in Iraq and Syria, mostly the Islamic State group.
(AFP, 2/8/18)
2018 Feb 8, Thailand's Pollution Control Department said that concentrations in Bangkok of tiny particles known as PM 2.5, a benchmark measure of air quality, were almost double the levels considered safe.
(AP, 2/8/18)
2018 Feb 8, Nearly three dozen Thai democracy activists turned themselves in to police after being summoned in connection with a protest calling for the ruling military government to step down and relinquish power through elections. All were released the same day.
(AP, 2/8/18)
2018 Feb 8, The UN said a military offensive launched last month by Congolese troops against Ugandan militants in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo is likely to force nearly 370,000 people from their homes.
(Reuters, 2/8/18)
2018 Feb 8, In Yemen people in the last of four boats carrying migrants were forced to swim to shore as they approached Shabwa province from Somalia. About 600 Ethiopian migrants, men and women, were aboard the boats and 25 were missing.
(AP, 2/9/18)
2019 Feb 8, Acting US Attorney General Matthew Whitaker said that he has "not interfered in any way" in the special counsel's Russia investigation as he faced a contentious and partisan congressional hearing in his waning days on the job.
(AP, 2/8/19)
2019 Feb 8, In southern California Reuben Franco (24) was found shot dead at a home in Yucaipa. Two girls, ages 14 and 15, were later arrested in Arizona in connection with Franco's death after they crashed his car.
(SFC, 2/12/19, p.A4)
2019 Feb 8, In Connecticut supporters of Sujitno Sajuti (70), a former Fulbright scholar who took sanctuary at a Hartford church to avoid deportation, rallied to call on federal immigration officials to allow him to stay in the US.
(AP, 2/8/19)
2019 Feb 8, New Hampshire's Supreme Court upheld the conviction of three women who were arrested for going topless on a beach.
(SFC, 2/9/19, p.A5)
2019 Feb 8, US media reported that a second woman has accused Virginia's Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax of sexual misconduct, further adding to the political turmoil in the state.
(AFP, 2/9/19)
2019 Feb 8, Virginia's Gov. Ralph Northam said that he is not going to resign over a racist photo that appeared in his medical school yearbook.
(SFC, 2/9/19, p.A7)
2019 Feb 8, In Afghanistan airstrikes were carried out late today in the Sangin district, where heavy fighting was underway between NATO-backed Afghan forces and the Taliban. A lawmaker later said the airstrikes killed 21 civilians, including women and children. The Taliban attacked an army checkpoint in Sari Pul province late today, killing three soldiers and wounding four.
(AP, 2/10/19)
2019 Feb 8, Australian police said they have arrested six people over the last 24 hours after what authorities said was the largest single seizure of methamphetamine in the United States and the biggest drug haul bound for Australia. US Customs and Border Protection said 1,728 kg (3,800 pounds) of the drug were seized mid-January at the Los Angeles-Long Beach port complex along with smaller amounts of cocaine and heroin.
(AP, 2/8/19)(SFC, 2/9/19, p.A5)
2019 Feb 8, In Australia a cyberattack on Parliament's computing network also affected the network used by major political parties. PM Scott Morrison later said a "sophisticated state actor" was behind the attack.
(AP, 2/18/19)
2019 Feb 8, In Brazil a fire tore through the sleeping quarters of the Flamengo soccer club in Rio de Janeiro's western region, killing 10 people and injuring three. The victims were all between 14 and 17 years old.
(AP, 2/8/19)(AFP, 2/9/19)
2019 Feb 8, China's Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs reported that swine disease had been detected on a farm in Yongzhou in the central province of Hunan, where 4,600 pigs were being raised. First detected in August, the disease has killed more than 1 million pigs in China.
(AP, 2/9/19)
2019 Feb 8, Colombia's migration office said it has canceled over 300 daily entrance passes for Venezuelan politicians and their families who support Pres. Nicolas Maduro.
(Reuters, 2/8/19)
2019 Feb 8, European Union member states adopted a Franco-German compromise allowing Berlin to remain the lead negotiator with Russia on the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline to Europe.
(AFP, 2/8/19)
2019 Feb 8, The Social Insurance Institution of Finland (Kela) said a nationwide experiment with basic income in Finland has not increased employment among those participating in the two-year trial, but their general well-being seems to have increased.
(AP, 2/8/19)
2019 Feb 8, In Finland an independent 248-page investigative report in English, commissioned by the Finnish government, was released. It said 1,408 Finnish volunteers served within the SS Panzer Division Wiking during 1941-43, most of them aged between 17 and 20 years old. The report concluded that the country's volunteer battalion, which served with Nazi Germany's Waffen-SS, took part in atrocities during World War II, including participating in the mass murder of Jews.
(AP, 2/10/19)
2019 Feb 8, Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel inaugurated the new, fortress-like Berlin headquarters of the scandal-plagued BND foreign intelligence service.
(AFP, 2/8/19)
2019 Feb 8, Iceland's government said Britain and the so-called EEA EFTA countries, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway, have reached an agreement on citizens' rights should Britain leave the EU without a withdrawal agreement.
(Reuters, 2/8/19)
2019 Feb 8, An Indian court sentenced seven Muslim men to life in prison for the murder of two Hindu men on Aug. 27, 2013, in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh. The incident had sparked religious riots killing about 65 people and displacing thousands.
(Reuters, 2/8/19)
2019 Feb 8, In Italy engineers started the delicate task of taking apart Genoa's Morandi motorway bridge almost six months after its partial collapse during a storm killed 43 people and injured dozens.
(AFP, 2/8/19)
2019 Feb 8, Kashmir officials said heavy snow caused avalanches and landslides have killed 11 people and trapped another.
(AP, 2/8/19)
2019 Feb 8, Kurdish officials said there was no progress on repatriating dozens of French nationals, including accused Islamic State fighters, women, and children, from prison camps in northern Syria.
(AFP, 2/8/19)
2019 Feb 8, A Libyan official said authorities in Misrata have arrested Abdel Qader Azuz, a suspected al Qaeda leader who had fled from the eastern city of Derna, once a jihadist bastion.
(Reuters, 2/8/19)
2019 Feb 8, In northern Mozambique local sources said suspected jihadists have killed seven men and abducted four women in the latest violence to hit the Cabo Delgado region. The bodies were cut into pieces and left in Piqueue village.
(AFP, 2/8/19)
2019 Feb 8, Two Palestinian teenagers were killed by Israeli fire during clashes along the Gaza border. Another 17 Palestinians were shot and wounded at different protest sites along the border.
(AFP, 2/8/19)
2019 Feb 8, President Klaus Iohannis said that Romania had decided to join other EU countries and allies in recognizing Venezuela's opposition leader Juan Guaido as president partly because Bucharest currently holds the EU's rotating presidency.
(AP, 2/8/19)
2019 Feb 8, In Russia a truck carrying miners to the Raspadskaya coal mine in the Kemerovo region in central Siberia veered off the road and fell 8 meters (26 feet) down a slope. Six workers were killed and 16 others were injured and hospitalized. In the nearby Belovo region of Kemerovo, a section of a coal mine collapsed, trapping four workers. One of them died of injuries while three others have been rescued.
(AP, 2/8/19)
2019 Feb 8, Sergei Yursky (83), a renowned Russian film and stage actor, died in Moscow. He has been widely recognized as one of the most talented actors of his generation.
(AP, 2/8/19)
2019 Feb 8, In Spain two passenger trains rammed head-on into each other on a track near Barcelona, killing one person and injuring about 100 others, most of them slightly.
(AP, 2/9/19)
2019 Feb 8, Sudanese protesters rallied after prayers in an eastern town against the death in custody of a teacher arrested in connection with anti-government demonstrations sweeping the country. The doctors' union in Sudan said that a government crackdown on weeks of protests has left at least 57 people dead, including three who allegedly died of torture in police custody.
(AFP, 2/8/19)(AP, 2/8/19)
2019 Feb 8, In Syria a mine exploded in agricultural land in the central province of Hama killing seven civilians and wounding another.
(AP, 2/8/19)
2019 Feb 8, Pilots from Taiwan's China Airlines went on strike in the middle of the Lunar New Year travel rush, forcing the cancellation of at least 18 flights over coming days and stranding thousands of passengers.
(AP, 2/8/19)
2019 Feb 8, Thailand Princess Ubolratana Rajakanya Sirivadhana Barnavadi (67) shocked the nation when she announced she would be the sole prime ministerial candidate for the party, which is loyal to ousted ex-premier Thaksin Shinawatra. King Maha Vajiralongkorn called her announcement inappropriate" and unconstitutional. She lost her special royal titles more than four decades ago when she married a commoner, an American, but is still called and widely regarded as a princess.
(Reuters, 2/8/19)(AP, 2/8/19)
2019 Feb 8, Ugandan police released three journalists who were working for the British Broadcasting Corporation, after detaining them overnight on suspicion of illegally possessing government prescription drugs.
(Reuters, 2/8/19)
2020 Feb 8, In Washington DC police escorted more than 100 members of the Patriot Front, a white nationalist group, on a march through the National Mall. Metropolitan Police said the march occurred without incident or arrests.
(Reuters, 2/8/20)
2020 Feb 8, In San Francisco a shooting Haight-Ashbury neighborhood involved an off-duty FBI agent and an adult male, who was hospitalized. The agent was not hurt.
(AP, 2/9/20)
2020 Feb 8, Robert Conrad (b.1935), American film and TV star, died in Malibu, Ca. His TV work included the series "The Wild Wild West" (1965-1970), "Baa Baa Black Sheep" (1976) and "The Black Sheep Squadron" (1977). His films included "Young Dillinger" (1966) and "Jungle All the Way" (1996).
(SFC, 2/12/20, p.C5)
2020 Feb 8, In eastern Afghanistan two US soldiers were killed and six wounded in a so-called insider attack in Nangarhar province late today. One Afghan National Army member was also killed.
(AP, 2/8/20)
2020 Feb 8, Australian authorities declared the Currowan Fire south of Sydney was finally out after destroying more than 300 homes and razing 500,000 hectares (1.2 million acres) over two-and-a-half months. A deluge in eastern parts of the country drenched deadly fires and helped ease a crippling drought.
(AP, 2/10/20)
2020 Feb 8, China's city of Wuhan, at the center of the coronavirus outbreak, opened another makeshift hospital, providing 1,500 beds.
(Reuters, 2/8/20)
2020 Feb 8, The World Health Organization (WHO) said the death toll in mainland China has risen to 723, looking likely to pass the 774 deaths recorded globally during the 2002-2003 outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). A total of 34,546 cases were reported on the mainland. The virus has spread to 27 countries and regions, based on official reports, infecting more than 330 people.
(Reuters, 2/8/20)(AP, 2/8/20)
2020 Feb 8, France said it is closing two schools and tried to reassure vacationers in the Alps after five British citizens, including a 9-year-old child, contracted the new virus from China at a French ski resort.
(AP, 2/8/20)
2020 Feb 8, Germany's ruling coalition called for fresh elections in the eastern state of Thuringia, whose pro-business premier stepped down only two days after being helped into the job with votes from the far right.
(Reuters, 2/8/20)
2020 Feb 8, Voters in New Delhi began voting in a state election seen as a test of Indian PM Narendra Modi's popularity following months of deadly anti-government protests over a new citizenship law.
(Reuters, 2/8/20)
2020 Feb 8, Iran said it has repelled a cyberattack that disrupted the country's internet services for an hour.
(AFP, 2/8/20)
2020 Feb 8, Irish voters cast their ballots with PM Leo Varadkar hoping to secure a new term on the back of his Brexit strategy. Polls put his Fine Gael party behind rivals Sinn Fein and Fianna Fail. Irish Republican Army-linked party Fianna Fail received 22.2% of the votes. Fine Gael, the party of incumbent Prime Minister Leo Varadkar, got 20.9%.
(AFP, 2/8/20)(Bloomberg, 2/9/20)(AP, 2/10/20)
2020 Feb 8, Libya’s warring sides ended several days of UN-brokered talks in Cairo without reaching a deal to consolidate a provisional cease-fire in and around the capital.
(AP, 2/9/20)
2020 Feb 8, North Korea failed to stage a parade in central Pyongyang, the 72nd anniversary of the founding of the country’s armed forces. This appeared to be a sign of the regime's fear of the coronavirus spreading from China.
(AP, 2/10/20)
2020 Feb 8, In Poland thousands of people rallied in Warsaw to show support for the country's right-wing leadership as it overhauls the justice system to put it under government control.
(SSFC, 2/9/20, p.A3)
2020 Feb 8, Syrian government forces captured new areas from insurgents in their efforts to control a key highway in the northwest, as Turkey sent more reinforcements into the war-torn country.
(AP, 2/8/20)
2020 Feb 8, In northeastern Thailand a soldier shot multiple people and was holed up in a shopping mall in Nakhon Ratchasima. The suspect was identified as Sgt. Jakrapanth Thomma. It took Thai police sharpshooters 16 hours to Thomma and end the crisis that left 29 dead.
(https://tinyurl.com/yacu34x5)(AP, 2/8/20)(AP, 2/9/20)(Econ., 5/9/20, p.29)
2020 Feb 8, Turkmen President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov (62) named his son Serdar (38) as minister of industry and construction. Serdar is likely to oversee the ambitious project of building a new capital from scratch for the central Ahal province, which he used to head.
(Reuters, 2/8/20)
2020 Feb 8, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy asked Pope Francis for help to win the release of prisoners of war held by Russia and Russian-backed separatists.
(Reuters, 2/8/20)
2021 Feb 8, President Joe Biden spoke with Indian PM Narendra Modi, with the leaders of the world's two biggest democracies agreeing to strengthen their nations' partnership at a moment when both countries face strained relations with China. Biden and Modi did not discuss the massive farmer protests in India.
(AP, 2/8/21)
2021 Feb 8, Bitcoin took another large stride toward mainstream acceptance after billionaire Elon Musk's electric vehicle company Tesla Inc revealed it had purchased $1.5 billion of the cryptocurrency and would soon accept it as a form of payment.
(Reuters, 2/8/21)
2021 Feb 8, California to date had 3,400,070 cases of coronavirus and 44,232 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 387,919 cases and 4,575 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 27,083,278 with the death toll at 464,831.
(sfist.com, 2/8/21)
2021 Feb 8, In Ohio Anthony Sowell (61), sentenced to death for killing 11 women and hiding their remains in and around his home, died in prison of an illness.
(AP, 2/9/21)
2021 Feb 8, Mary Wilson (76), a founding member of the Supremes, died at her home in Henderson, Nev. The trailblazing group from the 1960s, formed in Detroit as the Primettes in 1959, was known for hits like “Where Did Our Love Go?" and “Baby Love." Members included Florence Ballard and Diana Ross and helped develop Motown’s legendary sound.
(NY Times, 2/9/21)
2021 Feb 8, Argentina said it has detected the first cases of two Brazilian variants of the coronavirus in travelers from the neighboring nation.
(Reuters, 2/8/21)
2021 Feb 8, Austria issued a warning against travel to its Tyrol province amid concerns over cases of a coronavirus variant first discovered in South Africa, even as the country eased its third lockdown by reopening schools, shops, hairdressing salons, museums and zoos.
(AP, 2/8/21)
2021 Feb 8, It was reported that nearly five million EU citizens, more than all the people who live in Croatia, have applied for settled status in Britain after Brexit.
(The Telegraph, 2/9/21)
2021 Feb 8, The British government said migrants living in Britain will be eligible to receive COVID-19 vaccines regardless of whether they have the legal right to live and work in the country, adding that getting the shot would not trigger immigration checks.
(Reuters, 2/8/21)
2021 Feb 8, Royal Dutch Shell and renewables firm Eneco, owned by Japan's Mitsubishi Corp, said they will provide Amazon.com Inc's European facilities with electricity from an offshore wind farm off the Dutch coast.
(Reuters, 2/8/21)
2021 Feb 8, Chinese users lost access to Clubhouse, adding it to thousands of websites and social media apps the ruling party blocks the public from seeing using the world's most extensive system of internet filters.
(AP, 2/8/21)
2021 Feb 8, It was reported that Chinese government officials have met representatives from US electric carmaker Tesla Inc over reports from consumers about battery fires, unexpected acceleration and failures in over-the-air software updates.
(Reuters, 2/8/21)
2021 Feb 8, President Ivan Duque said Colombia will provide temporary protective status to undocumented Venezuelan migrants.
(AP, 2/8/21)
2021 Feb 8, The Czech Health Ministry said it will recommend the use of COVID-19 therapies that contain casirivimab/imdevimab and bamlavinimab antibodies ahead of standard approval.
(Reuters, 2/8/21)
2021 Feb 8, French Health Minister Olivier Veran said that he continued to support the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, arguing it provided sufficient protection against "nearly all the variants" of the virus.
(Reuters, 2/8/21)
2021 Feb 8, Germany, Poland and Sweden each declared a Russian diplomat in their country “persona non grata," retaliating in kind to last week’s decision by Moscow to expel diplomats from the three European Union countries over the case of opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
(AP, 2/8/21)
2021 Feb 8, Greece’s PM Kyriakos Mitsotakis said that it’s unlikely “substantial" talks to reunify ethnically split Cyprus could resume if Turkey and Turkish Cypriots insist on pursuing a two-state accord that defies a UN and EU-endorsed framework for federation.
(AP, 2/8/21)
2021 Feb 8, Indonesia started vaccinating its elderly medical workers against the coronavirus for the first time.
(Reuters, 2/8/21)
2021 Feb 8, Iran unveiled its second homegrown coronavirus vaccine project, the day before the launch of a vaccination campaign to combat the Middle East's deadliest Covid-19 outbreak.
(AFP, 2/8/21)
2021 Feb 8, The IAEA confirmed that Iran has begun production of uranium metal, a further violation of Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.
(AP, 2/11/21)
2021 Feb 8, Laos received 300,000 doses of a COVID-19 vaccine produced by Chinese pharmaceutical giant Sinopharm.
(Reuters, 2/8/21)
2021 Feb 8, It was reported that Mexican drug cartels are using TikTok to entice young people into organized crime.
(USA Today, 2/8/21)
2021 Feb 8, In Morocco at least 28 people died after heavy rain flooded an illegal underground textile factory in Tangier.
(SFC, 2/9/21, p.A3)
2021 Feb 8, Myanmar's military leader said his junta would hold a new election and hand power to the winner as tens of thousands of people took to the streets for a third day to protest against the coup that overthrew Aung San Suu Kyi's civilian government. Senior General Min Aung Hlaing repeated claims that last November's poll, won by Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy, had been fraudulent. The military outlawed rallies and gatherings of more than five people, along with motorized processions. An 8 p.m. to 4 a.m. curfew was imposed for areas of Yangon and Mandalay, where thousands of people have been demonstrating since Feb. 6.
(Reuters, 2/8/21)(AP, 2/9/21)
2021 Feb 8, The Dutch government suspended adoptions from foreign countries after an investigative committee report criticized past ruling coalitions for being “too passive" in the face of years of reported abuses including impoverished mothers being coerced into putting up their children for adoption.
(AP, 2/8/21)
2021 Feb 8, Pakistan's health minister said CanSino Biologics Inc's (CanSinoBIO) COVID-19 vaccine showed 65.7% efficacy in preventing symptomatic cases and a 90.98% success rate in stopping severe disease in an interim analysis of global trials.
(Reuters, 2/8/21)
2021 Feb 8, Portugal's health ministry said the AstraZeneca vaccine should preferably be used on under-65s, the latest European country to express reservations about its efficacy on older people.
(Reuters, 2/8/21)
2021 Feb 8, Russia issued updated statistics on coronavirus-linked deaths showing that 162,429 people died last year with COVID-19.
(SFC, 2/9/21, p.A4)
2021 Feb 8, South Africa said it will roll out the AstraZeneca vaccine in a "stepped manner" to assess its efficacy in preventing severe illness.
(AP, 2/8/21)
2021 Feb 8, South Korea's Hyundai Motor Co said it is not now in talks with Apple Inc on autonomous electric cars, just a month after it confirmed early-stage talks with the tech giant, sending the automaker's shares skidding.
(Reuters, 2/8/21)
2021 Feb 8, Sudan’s PM Abdalla Hamdok announced a Cabinet reshuffle to add rebel ministers as part of a peace deal that transitional authorities struck with a rebel alliance last year. The new Cabinet includes ministers from the Sudan Revolutionary Front, an alliance of armed groups.
(AP, 2/8/21)
2021 Feb 8, The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) reported that an Iraqi man (27) and a Syrian man 20 were killed in the Al-Hol displacement camp. In January Syria 20 Iraqis and Syrians were reportedly killed in the camp including a guard from the SDF that maintains the detention facility. Guards suspected Islamic State sleeper cells of the executions. The Rojava Information Center estimated 35 people were killed in the camp in all of 2020.
(AP, 2/8/21)
2021 Feb 8, United Nations data showed food prices hit six-year highs in January after rising for eight consecutive months.
(Reuters, 2/8/21)
2021 Feb 8, UN agencies received approval from Ethiopia’s government to send 25 more staff members to embattled Tigray, a region where the United Nations says hunger is growing and much of the area has been inaccessible to humanitarian workers.
(AP, 2/8/21)
2021 Feb 8, A United Nations panel reported that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has relied on government hackers to upgrade his country's nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
(AP, 2/9/21)
2021 Feb 8, Vietnam said it has culled more 100,000 poultry so far this year in a bid to contain the spread of bird flu in the Southeast Asian country. The country has reported outbreaks of the highly pathogenic H5N1 and H5N6 bird flu strains in 14 provinces.
(Reuters, 2/8/21)
2021 Feb 8, Vietnam's first domestic car manufacturer, Vinfast, said it had obtained a permit to test autonomous vehicles on public streets in California. Vinfast said two models would be sold in the US, Canadian and European markets from 2022.
(Reuters, 2/8/21)
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