Today in History - March 27
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1194 Mar 27, The Archbishop of Canterbury, on behalf of King Richard I, talked with the rebels inside the castle at Nottingham, who soon surrendered.
(ON, 8/07, p.10)
1350 Mar 27, While besieging Gibraltar, Alfonso XI of Castille died of the black death.
(HN, 3/27/99)
1378 Mar 27, Gregory XI, [Pierre R the Beaufort], last French Pope (1370-78), died.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1513 Mar 27, Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de Leon sighted Florida.
(AP, 3/27/97)(HN, 3/27/98)
1519 Mar 27, A truce was arranged with Cortes when Mayan caciques brought food and gold as well as 20 female slaves. Among these was a young woman from Jalisco named Marina, who had been stolen from a noble family when small and sold into slavery, where she learned the language of Yucatán. As a bilingual translator from Aztec to Mayan, Marina played a major role in the eventual conquest of Tenochtitlán.
(http://www.athenapub.com/cortes1.htm)
1599 Mar 27, Robert Devereux became Lt-general of Ireland.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1625 Mar 27, James I (VI), Stuart king of Scotland (1567), England (1603-25), died. He was described as the “wisest fool in Christendom."
(www.jesus-is-lord.com/kingbio.htm)(Econ, 12/18/04, p.130)
1625 Mar 27, Charles I (d.1649) became the English king. He was King of England, Ireland and Scotland until he was beheaded.
(AP, 3/27/97)(WSJ, 6/13/96, p.A12)
1668 Mar 27, English king Charles II gave Bombay to the East India Company.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1710 Mar 27, Joseph Marie Clement dall' Abaco, composer, was born.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1746 Mar 27, Carlo Bonaparte, Corsican attorney, father of emperor Napoleon, was born.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1757 Mar 27, Johann Wenzel Anton Stamitz (39), composer, died.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1761 Mar 27, Johann Ludwig Steiner (72), composer, died.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1769 Mar 27, Josef Antonin Gurecky (60), composer, died.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1770 Mar 27, Giovanni B. Tiepolo (73), Italian painter (Banquet of Cleopatra), died.
(https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Giovanni_Battista_Tiepolo)
1776 Mar 27, Mexican Captain Juan Bautista de Anza and his party of Spanish explorers spent their first night in the future city of San Francisco at what came to be called Mountain Lake in the Presidio.
(SFC, 9/14/13, p.C4)(SFC, 11/2/19, p.C4)
1780 Mar 27, August L. Crelle, German inventor, mathematician (1st Prussian Railway), was born.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1785 Mar 27, Louis XVII, Pretender to the throne (1793-1795) during the French Revolution, was born. His father may have been Marie Antoinette’s Swedish lover, Count Axel von Fersen.
(HN, 3/27/98)(SFC, 4/20/00, p.A18)(MC, 3/27/02)
1790 Mar 27, The shoelace was invented.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1794 Mar 27, The US Congress approved "An Act to provide a Naval Armament" of six armed ships. [see Oct 13, 1775]
(AP, 3/27/07)
1802 Mar 27, The Treaty of Amiens was signed ending the French Revolutionary War.
(HN, 3/27/98)
1808 Mar 27, Joseph Haydn’s oratorio "The Seasons," premiered in Vienna.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1809 Mar 27, Georges-Eugene Haussmann (d.1891), French town planner, was born. He designed modern-day Paris.
(HN, 3/27/01)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baron_Haussmann)
1813 Mar 27, Nathaniel Currier, lithographer for Currier and Ives, was born.
(HN, 3/27/98)
1814 Mar 27, General Jackson led U.S. soldiers who killed 700 Creek Indians at Horseshoe Bend, La. [in Northern Alabama] Jackson lost 49 men.
(SFEC, 2/16/97, BR p.4)(HN, 3/27/99)
1836 Mar 27, The first Mormon temple was dedicated, in Kirtland, Ohio.
(AP, 3/27/97)(HN, 3/27/98)
1836 Mar 27, Mexican Colonel Jose Nicolas de la Portilla executed his Texan prisoners at Goliad. Colonel Portilla had the 342 Texians marched out of Fort Defiance into three columns. The Texians were then fired on at point-blank range. The wounded and dying were then clubbed and stabbed. Those who survived the initial volley were run down by the Mexican cavalry.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goliad_Campaign)
1841 Mar 27, The first U.S. steam fire engine was tested in New York City.
(HN, 3/27/98)
1845 Mar 27, Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen (d.1923), German scientist, was born. He discovered X-rays (Nobel-1901).
(HN, 3/27/99)(MC, 3/27/02)
1849 Mar 27, Joseph Couch patented a steam-powered percussion rock drill.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1850 Mar 27, The party of Dr. Thadeus Hildreth found a 22-pound gold nugget in Tuolemne County, Ca. The place was initially named Hildreth’s Diggings, then changed to New Camp, then American Camp and finally Columbia. The population soon swelled to 15,000.
(SFEC, 1/5/97, p.T5)(SFEC, 3/19/00, p.T6)(CVG, Vol 16, p.1)
1851 Mar 27, Paul-Marie-Theodore-Vincent d'Indy, composer (Symphonie Cevenole), was born in Paris.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1855 Mar 27, Abraham Gesner patented kerosene.
(HN, 3/27/98)
1860 Mar 27, M.L. Byrn patented a "covered gimlet screw with a 'T' handle" (corkscrew).
(MC, 3/27/02)
1861 Mar 27, Black demonstrators in Charleston staged ride-ins on street cars.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1863 Mar 27, Sir Henry Royce, Rolls Royce founder, was born. [see Mar 26]
(HN, 3/27/98)
1863 Mar 27, Confederate Pres. Jefferson Davis called for this to be a day of fasting and prayer.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1865 Mar 27, Siege of Spanish Fort, AL. It was captured by Federals.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1866 Mar 27, President Andrew Johnson vetoed the civil rights bill, which later became the 14th amendment.
(HN, 3/27/98)
1866 Mar 27, Andrew Rankin patented the urinal.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1868 Mar 27, John Muir (30) arrived by steamer in San Francisco and almost immediately set off on a 300-mile journey to Yosemite Valley along with Englishman Joseph Chilwell.
(SSFC, 4/2/06, p.B1)(SSFC, 5/14/06, p.B3)
1871 Mar 27, Heinrich Mann, Germany, novelist, essayist (Blue Angel); brother of Thomas Mann, was born.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1879 Mar 27, Edward Steichen, pioneer of American photography, was born.
(HN, 3/27/98)
1884 Mar 27, The first long-distance telephone call was made, between Boston and New York City. [see Mar 24, 1883]
(AP, 3/27/97)(HN, 3/27/98)
1886 Mar 27, Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe, German-US architect (Bauhaus), was born.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1889 Mar 27, John Bright (b.1811), Quaker and British Radical and Liberal statesman, died. He was associated with Richard Cobden in the formation of the Anti-Corn Law League. In 2011 Bill Cash authored “John Bright: Statesman, Orator, Agitator."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bright)(Econ, 12/31/11, p.68)
1892 Mar 27, Ferde (Ferdinand Rudolf von) Grof, composer, was born in NY.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1892 Mar 27, Thorne Smith, author (Topper, Rain in the Doorway, Stray Lamb), was born.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1893 Mar 27, The American Bell telephone Company made its first long distance telephone call to its branch office in New York.
(HN, 3/27/99)
1899 Mar 27, The first international radio transmission between England and France was achieved by the Italian inventor G. Marconi.
(HN, 3/27/99)
1900 Mar 27, The London Parliament passed the War Loan Act which gave 35 million pounds to the Boer War cause.
(HN, 3/27/98)
1906 Mar 27, Pee Wee Russell, jazz clarinetist, was born.
(HN, 3/27/01)
1910 Mar 27, John Robinson Pierce, the father of communications satellites, was born.
(HN, 3/27/01)
1910 Mar 27, Alexander E. Agassiz (74), US businessman, biologist, geologist, died.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1912 Mar 27, James Callaghan (d.2005), British prime minister (1976-1979), was born in Portsmouth, England.
(SSFC, 3/27/05, p.A21)
1912 Mar 27, The first cherry blossom trees, a gift from Japan, were planted in Washington, D.C. First Lady Helen Herron Taft and the Viscountess Chinda, wife of the Japanese ambassador, planted two Yoshina cherry trees on the northern bank of the Potomac Tidal Basin, near the Jefferson Memorial. The event was held in celebration of a gift, by the Japanese government, of 3,020 trees to the US government for planting along Washington's Potomac River.
(HN, 3/27/98)
1914 Mar 27, Budd Schulberg, journalist, novelist and screenwriter (What Makes Sammy Run, On the Waterfront), was born in NYC.
(HN, 3/27/01)(MC, 3/27/02)
1914 Mar 27, 1st successful blood transfusion took place in Brussels.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1917 Mar 27, Cyrus Vance (d.2002) was born in Clarksburg. In 1980 President Carter accepted the resignation of Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, who had opposed the failed rescue mission aimed at freeing American hostages in Iran.
(AP, 4/28/97)(SSFC, 1/13/02, p.A27)
1917 Mar 27, The Seattle Metropolitans became the first U.S. team to win the Stanley Cup as they defeated the Montreal Canadiens.
(AP, 3/27/97)
1920 Mar 27, Richard Hayman, bandleader, conductor, pianist (Theme of 3 Penny Opera), was born.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1923 Mar 27, Louis Simpson, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, was born.
(HN, 3/27/01)
1924 Mar 27, Sarah Vaughan, 'the Divine One,' jazz singer, was born. She was famous for singing "What a Difference a Day Makes."
(HN, 3/27/99)
1927 Mar 27, Mstislav Leopold Rostropovich, cellist, conductor, was born in Baku, Azerbaijan, USSR.
(MC, 3/27/02)(Internet)
1928 Mar 27, The U.S. accepted the new oil-land laws enacted by Mexico, ending a long-standing dispute between Mexico and the United States.
(HN, 3/27/98)
1930 Mar 27, David Janssen, [Meyer], actor (Fugitive, Harry O) and son of Clark Gable, was born in Naponee, Nebraska.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1930 Mar 27, 1st US radio broadcast from a ship at sea.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1931 Mar 27, David Janssen (d.1980), later TV star ("Fugitive," "Harry O"), was born as (David Harold Meyer) in Naponee, Nebraska.
(Internet)
1931 Mar 27, Charlie Chaplin received France's distinguished Legion of Honor.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1933 Mar 27, Some 55,000 people staged a protest against Hitler in New York.
(HN, 3/27/98)
1933 Mar 27, Polythene was discovered by Reginald Gibson and Eric William Fawcett.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1933 Mar 27, Japan left the League of Nations.
(www.indiana.edu/~league/1933.htm)
1938 Mar 27, The U.S. stopped buying Mexican silver in reprisal for the Mexican seizure of American oil companies.
(HN, 3/27/98)
1938 Mar 27, San Francisco SPCA officer Al Girolo broke up a cockfight at the back of 1363 Underwood Street in Hunters Point. 7 men were arrested and 6 roosters seized.
(SSFC, 3/24/13, DB p.42)
1939 Mar 27, The Borley Rectory, reputedly the most haunted house in England, was severely damaged by a fire. It was demolished in 1944.
(Econ, 11/20/10, p.97)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borley_Rectory)
1940 Mar 27, Himmler ordered the building of Auschwitz concentration camp. [see Feb 21]
(MC, 3/27/02)
1941 Mar 27, Britain leased defense bases in Trinidad to the U.S. for a period of 99 years.
(HN, 3/27/98)
1941 Mar 27, Tokeo Yoshikawa arrived in Oahu, Hawaii, to begin spying for Japan on the U.S. Fleet at Pearl Harbor.
(HN, 3/27/99)
1941 Mar 27, Hitler signed Directive 27 for an assault on Yugoslavia.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1942 Mar 27, Michael York, actor (Cabaret, Logan's Run, 3 Musketeers), was born in England.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1942 Mar 27-28, Allies raided the Nazi submarine base at St. Nazaire, France.
(HN, 3/27/98)(MC, 3/27/02)
1943 Mar 27, US began an assault on Fondouk-pass, Tunisia.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1944 Mar 27, In San Francisco a fire at the New Amsterdam Hotel on Fourth St. killed 22 people.
(SSFC, 3/24/19, p.39)
1944 Mar 27, One-thousand Jews left Drancy, France for the Auschwitz concentration camp.
(HN, 3/27/98)
1944 Mar 27, Forty Jewish policemen were shot in the Riga Latvia ghetto by the Gestapo.
(HN, 3/27/98)
1944 Mar 27, Some 2,000 Jews were murdered in Kaunas, Lithuania.
(HN, 3/27/98)(MC, 3/27/02)
1945 Mar 27, Ella Fitzgerald and the Delta Rhythm Boys recorded "It's Only a Paper Moon."
(MC, 3/27/02)
1945 Mar 27, General Dwight D. Eisenhower told reporters in Paris that German defenses on the Western Front had been broken.
(AP, 3/27/97)(HN, 3/27/98)
1945 Mar 27, Iwo Jima was occupied, after 22,000 Japanese and 6,000 US killed.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1945 Mar 27, US 20th Army corps captured Wiesbaden.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1950 Mar 27, Maria Ewing, opera singer, was born in Detroit, Mich.
(http://classicalmanac.blogspot.com/2006/03/march-27.html)
1952 Mar 27, Elements of the U.S. Eighth Army reached the 38th parallel in Korea, the original dividing line between the two Koreas.
(HN, 3/27/99)
1952 Mar 27, There was a failed assassination attempt of German Chancellor Adenauer.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1953 Mar 27, Charles Bohlen was named the U.S. ambassador to the USSR
(HN, 3/27/98)
1955 Mar 27, Steve McQueen made his network TV debut on the Goodyear Playhouse.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1956 Mar 27, US seized the US communist newspaper "Daily Worker."
(MC, 3/27/02)
1956 Mar 27, French commandos landed in Algeria.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1957 Mar 27, In the 29th Academy Awards "Around the World in 80 Days" won the Academy Award for best picture; Yul Brynner won best actor for "The King and I," Ingrid Bergman was awarded best actress for "Anastasia" and George Stevens received best director for "Giant."
(AP, 3/27/07)
1958 Mar 27, The U.S. announced a plan to explore space near the moon.
(HN, 3/27/98)
1958 Mar 27, CBS Labs announced new stereophonic records.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1958 Mar 27, The Havana Hilton opened.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1958 Mar 27, Nikita Khrushchev became Soviet premier in addition to First Secretary of the Communist Party.
(AP, 3/27/97)(HN, 3/27/98)
1961 Mar 27, In San Francisco the hiring of the city’s first Negro milk route driver precipitated name calling an argument between Mayor George Christopher and Terry Francois, head of the local NAACP. The mayor said Teamsters Local 226 would not let Negroes into the union. Christopher, owner of Christopher Dairy Farms, had hired William Garrick (24) to run a route in South San Francisco serving schools and restaurants.
(SSFC, 3/27/11, DB p.42)
1961 Mar 27, In Mississippi nine students of Tougaloo College participated in a peaceful "read-in" at Jackson's white-only publicly funded library. Police were called and the "Tougaloo Nine" were charged with breach of the peace. This was later considered the first student protest of segregation at a public institution in Mississippi.
(SFC, 1/14/21, p.A4)
1963 Mar 27, John F. Kennedy met with King Hassan II of Morocco.
(HN, 3/27/98)
1964 Mar 27, On Good Friday, Valdez, Alaska, in Prince William Sound was rocked by an 8.6 earthquake, the largest ever recorded in North America. In 1977 seismologists pegged the quake at 9.2. It lasted 4 minutes and was followed by tsunamis and fires and 131 people were killed. Survivors moved 4 miles west to solid bedrock and rebuilt the town.
(AP, 3/27/97)(SFEC, 2/8/98, p.T5)(SFEC, 4/5/98, Z1 p.8)(SFEC, 10/17/99, p.A3)(SFC, 11/26/99, p.C21)(WSJ, 9/13/01, p.B11)(SFC, 2/15/02, p.G8)(AP, 3/11/11)
1964 Mar 27, Great Train Robbers were sentenced to a total of 307 years behind bars.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1966 Mar 27, Anti-Vietnam war demonstrations took place in US, Europe and Australia.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1967 Mar 27, A North Vietnamese spokesman unequivocally rejected a new peace plan proposed by UN Sec. General U Thant (1907-1974) on March 14.
(http://www.nybooks.com/articles/12091)
1968 Mar 27, Suharto succeeded Sukarno as president of Indonesia. Gen'l. Suharto thwarted a Communist coup and gradually assumed power. Thousands of alleged communists were executed amid widespread violence.
(WSJ, 5/22/98, p.A15)(SFC, 9/8/99, p.A17)(MC, 3/27/02)
1968 Mar 27, Yuri Gagarin (b.1934), Soviet cosmonaut (Vostok I) and the first man to orbit the Earth, died while on a routine training flight out of Chkalovsky Air Base.
(AP, 3/27/97)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri_Gagarin)
1971 Mar 27, PM of India, Indira Gandhi, expressed full support of her government to the Bangladeshi struggle for independence. The Bangladesh-India border was opened to allow the Bangladeshi Refugees safe shelter in India.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Pakistani_War_of_1971)
1972 Mar 27, The Addis Ababa accords ended fighting between north and south Sudan. It made the south a self-governing region. Pres. Gaafar Muhammed Nimeiri ended the 17 year civil war in the Sudan between the north and south.
(www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/war/sudan-civil-war1.htm)(WSJ, 10/22/03, p.A4)
1973 Mar 27, Ruth Lewis Farkas (1907-1996), was appointed ambassador to Luxembourg by Pres. Nixon after she and her husband, founder of Alexander’s department stores, contributed $300,000 to Nixon’s re-election campaign.
(SFC, 10/22/96, p.A18)(www.state.gov/r/pa/ho/po/com/10910.htm)
1973 Mar 27, The 45th Academy Awards were held in Los Angeles at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. "The Godfather" won the Academy Award for best picture of 1972, but its star, Marlon Brando, refused to accept his Oscar for best actor. Liza Minnelli won best actress for "Cabaret."
(AP, 3/27/98)(SFC, 3/19/02, p.D1)
1975 Mar 27, The 1st pipe of the Alaska oil pipeline was laid at Tonsina River.
(www.alyeska-pipe.com/Pipelinefacts/Chronology.html)
1975 Mar 27, Arthur Bliss (b.1891), English composer, conductor (Checkmate), died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Bliss)
1975 Mar 27, In Laos Communist Pathet Lao launched an attack against Hmong defenders.
(http://countrystudies.us/laos/39.htm)
1976 Mar 27, In Washington DC the first 4.6 miles of track for the Washington Metro was completed. The Gallery Place metro station opened. Harry Weese (d.1998) Associates of Chicago did the design work. By 2012 Metrorail had 106.3 miles of track.
(SFC, 11/4/98, p.C7)(WSJ, 12/16/98, p.B12)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Metro)
1977 Mar 27, A KLM Boeing 747, attempting to take off, crashed into a Pan Am 747 on the Canary Island of Tenerife. 583 people were killed with 54 survivors.
(SSFC, 10/17/04, p.B7)(AP, 3/27/07)
1978 Mar 27, Bob Fosse's "Dancin'" opened at Broadhurst Theater in NYC for 1,774 performances.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancin')
1979 Mar 27, The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 8-1 that police could not stop motorists at random to check licenses and registrations unless there was reason to believe a law had been broken.
(AP, 3/27/97)
1980 Mar 27, Mount St. Helens, dormant for 123 years, erupted with ash and steam. A crater formed at the summit and the north flank began to bulge.
(SFEC, 8/16/98, p.A15)(http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2000/fs036-00/)
1980 Mar 27, The Alexander L. Kielland, a North Sea Norwegian floating oil field platform, capsized during a storm killing 123 workers. It was owned by the Stavanger Drilling Company of Norway and was on hire to the US company Phillips Petroleum at the time of the disaster.
(AP, 3/27/02)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_L._Kielland_%28platform%29)
1982 Mar 27, The musical "Best Little Whorehouse in Texas" closed at 46th St in NYC after 1577 performances.
(www.imagi-nation.com/moonstruck/albm94.html)
1983 Mar 27, Neil Simon's "Brighton Beach Memoirs," premiered in NYC.
(www.ibdb.com/production.asp?ID=4212)
1984 Mar 27, "Starlight Express," a techno musical, roller-skating venture by Andrew Lloyd Weber and Richard Stilgoe, premiered at the Apollo Victoria Theatre, London.
(SFC, 12/31/99, p.C6)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlight_Express)
1987 Mar 27, The Marine Corps charged that Sgt. Clayton J. Lonetree, a Marine guard, had escorted Soviet agents through the U.S. Embassy in Moscow -- an accusation that was later dropped, although Lonetree was convicted of espionage.
(AP, 3/27/97)
1988 Mar 27, Jesse Jackson, rejoicing from an upset victory in Michigan's primary-style caucuses the day before, vowed that his Democratic presidential campaign would continue to "win and grow."
(AP, 3/27/98)
1989 Mar 27, Boris N. Yeltsin and other anti-establishment candidates claimed victory in parliamentary elections for the new Congress of People's Deputies.
(AP, 3/27/99)
1990 Mar 27, The U.S. began test broadcasts of TV Marti to Cuba, which promptly jammed the signal.
(AP, 3/27/00)
1990 Mar 27, Soviet soldiers began rounding up Lithuanians who had fled the Red Army after the republic's declaration of independence.
(AP, 3/27/00)
1991 Mar 27, In a surprising flap, President Bush publicly disagreed with General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, who claimed he had urged further fighting in the Persian Gulf War at the time Bush ordered a cease-fire. Schwarzkopf later apologized to Bush.
(AP, 3/27/01)
1992 Mar 27, Democratic presidential front-runner Bill Clinton, campaigning in New York, apologized for recently golfing at an all-white club.
(AP, 3/27/97)
1992 Mar 27, German Chancellor Helmut Kohl met with Austrian President Kurt Waldheim in Munich, a meeting denounced by Jewish groups because of Waldheim's alleged involvement with Nazi persecution during World War II.
(AP, 3/27/97)
1992 Mar 27, Lang Hancock (b.1909), pioneer Pilbara tycoon, died. He was famous for discovering the world's largest iron ore deposit in 1952 and becoming one of the richest men in Australia,
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lang_Hancock)(Econ, 4/19/08, p.53)
1993 Mar 27, A top U.N. relief official accused Bosnian Serbs of breaking their promises by blocking an aid convoy for trapped Muslims in eastern Bosnia, a day after a cease-fire agreement.
(AP, 3/27/98)
1994 Mar 27, More than 40 people were killed as violent thunderstorms tore across the Southeast. A church in Piedmont, Alabama, collapsed in a tornado and 19 were killed.
(AP, 3/27/99)
1994 Mar 27, Italians went to the polls in general elections that resulted in big gains for a right-wing coalition.
(AP, 3/27/99)
1994 Mar 27, Ukraine held its first parliamentary elections since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
(AP, 3/27/99)
1995 Mar 27, The 67th Academy Awards, held at the Shrine Auditorium in LA, was hosted by David Letterman. "Forrest Gump" won six Academy Awards, including best picture and a second consecutive Best Actor Oscar for Tom Hanks; Jessica Lange won Best Actress for "Blue Sky."
(AP, 3/27/00)(SFC, 3/22/02, p.D1)
1995 Mar 27, Former President Jimmy Carter announced he had brokered a two-month cease-fire between Sudan's Islamic government and rebels.
(AP, 3/27/00)
1995 Mar 27, Joanne Marie Mascha, an Ursuline Sister, was murdered while walking near her motherhouse just outside Cleveland.
(MT, 3/96, p.10)
1995 Mar 27, In Italy Maurizio Gucci (46), businessman, was shot to death in Milan. He was the last family member to have held shares in the Gucci fashion company, now part of the Bahrain-based Investcorp. In 1997 police arrested his former wife, a psychic, a doorman, and two hitmen for their roles in the murder. In 1998 Patrizia Reggiani Martinelli (50) was convicted and sentenced to 29 years in prison. The psychic got 25, the doorman got 26, the driver got 29 and the gunman got life. Reggiani was furious that after 13 years of marriage he had abandoned her for another woman, leaving her to bring up their two young daughters. Reggiani's sentence was cut short for good behavior and she was released in 2017.
(SFC, 2/1/97, p.A12)(SFC, 11/4/98, p.A13)(The Telegraph, 1/11/21)
1996 Mar 27, The Gay’s Hill Baptist Church in Millen, Ga., burned down. Arson was suspected and investigations by the FBI and ATF were later begun.
(SFC, 6/11/96, p.A16)
1996 Mar 27, In Algeria seven French Trappist monks were kidnapped overnight from the Notre Dame del’Atlas monastery near Medea. The monks were abducted from the Priory of Our Lady of Atlas in Tibehirine, about 80 km (50 miles) south of Algiers, by members of the insurgent Armed Islamic Group of Algeria (GIA). Their heads were discovered two months later and their death was announced by the GIA. On Jan. 26, 2018, Pope Francis declared the monks to be martyrs.
(SFC, 5/24/96, p.A14)(AFP, 1/27/18)
1996 Mar 27, Bangladesh passed a constitutional amendment setting up a process for calling new elections. Prime Minister Zia may resign soon.
(WSJ, 3/27/96, p.A-1)
1996 Mar 27, The European Union imposed a global ban on British beef and beef products due to concerns over mad cow disease.
(SFC, 6/14/96, p. A17)
1996 Mar 27, An Israeli court convicted Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's confessed assassin of murder, then sentenced former law student Yigal Amir to life in prison.
(AP, 3/27/97)
1996 Mar 27, The UN Security Council (Resolution 1051) established an export-import monitoring system for Iraq and demanded full cooperation.
(SFC, 9/24/02, p.A12)
1997 Mar 27, Dexter King, son of Martin Luther King Jr., met with James Earl Ray, the man in prison for the assassination of the civil rights leader. Ray denied having anything to do with the shooting, to which King replied, "I believe you."
(AP, 3/27/98)
1997 Mar 27, In Afghanistan an avalanche buried at least 100 people near the Salang tunnel north of Kabul.
(WSJ, 3/28/97, p.A1)
1997 Mar 27, In Argentina it was reported that former economy minister Domingo Cavallo claimed that Alfredo Yabran, the country’s most successful businessman, led an all-powerful mafia of businessmen, politicians and judges.
(SFC, 3/27/97, p.A14)
1997 Mar 27, In Nigeria villagers occupied a 7th oil installation on the Niger Delta in protests over local government elections. Tribesmen last week seized 6 Shell sites. This shut down 10% of Nigeria’s oil production.
(WSJ, 3/28/97, p.A12)
1997 Mar 27, Russian workers staged a nationwide strike to demand overdue wages.
(AP, 3/27/98)
1997 Mar 27, Ella Maillart (b.1903), Swiss sportswoman and travel writer, died. She chronicled the savage collectivisation of Karakalpak agriculture in Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan in the 1930s.
(Econ, 5/16/09, p.91)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ella_Maillart)
1998 Mar 27, The US Food and Drug Administration approved the drug Viagra, made by Pfizer, saying it helped about two-thirds of impotent men improve their sexual function. Viagra’s effects were shown to last 8-12 hours. Pfizer had originally tested the compound UK 92,480 as a drug for angina and found that male volunteers were getting frequent erections. They renamed it Viagra and sought sales approval.
(AP, 3/27/99)(SFC, 5/28/02, p.A4)(Econ, 7/16/05, p.76)
1998 Mar 27, It was reported that toxic waste was sold to 454 fertilizer companies by 600 steel mills, foundries and chemical plants between 1990-1995.
(WSJ, 3/27/98, p.A1,B8)
1998 Mar 27, In California federal documents were released that charged Dr. Aramais Paronyan with heading a $13 million Medi-Cal fraud ring from LA to SF.
(SFEC, 3/29/98, p.E1)
1998 Mar 27, Robbers in Commerce, east of LA, escaped with $2.94 million in cash from a Dunbar Security armored car after shooting the driver.
(SFC, 3/28/98, p.A14)
1998 Mar 27, Two Afghans convicted of murder had their throats cut in front of 30,000 spectators in Kabul’s sports stadium.
(SFC, 3/28/98, p.A9)
1998 Mar 27, Ferdinand Porsche Jr., creator of the Porsche sports car, died at age 88 in Zell am See, Austria. He was born in Wiener-Neustadt and moved to Germany with his family after WW I where his father became chief engineer of Daimler-Benz, the manufacturer of the Mercedes Benz cars. He wrote an autobiography titled “Cars Are My Life."
(SFC, 3/28/98, p.B12)(AP, 3/27/99)
1998 Mar 27, Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay signed a pact to heighten security on their triple frontier.
(SFC, 3/28/98, p.A9)
1998 Mar 27, In Columbia rebels under Comandante Romana freed 9 Columbian hostages but held 4 American birdwatchers and an Italian businessman for ransom.
(SFC, 3/28/98, p.A10)
1998 Mar 27, In Cuba two oil tankers collided and spilled heavy crude into Matanzas Bay, 60 miles east of Havana.
(SFC, 3/28/98, p.A9)
1998 Mar 27, In Mexico Adrian Carrera Fuentes, former director of the Federal Judicial Police, was arrested on charges of being on the payroll of the Arellano Felix drug gang.
(SFC, 3/28/98, p.A9)
1998 Mar 27, In Northern Ireland a former policeman was shot and killed by masked gunmen in Armagh.
(SFC, 3/28/98, p.A8)
1998 Mar 27, In Paraguay the Supreme Court ratified Lino Oviedo as the ruling Colorado Party’s candidate, despite his jail sentence.
(SFC, 3/28/98, p.A9)
1998 Mar 27, Pres. Yeltsin nominated acting Prime Minister Sergei Kiriyenko (35) to head the government.
(SFC, 3/28/98, p.A8)
1999 Mar 27, This was the 1st day of the Muslim feastday Id al-Lahma, feast of meat, or Id al-Adha, feast of sacrifice.
(SFC, 3/29/99, p.A7)
1999 Mar 27, Maria Butyrskaya of Russia won the World Figure Skating Championships in Helsinki, Finland; defending champion Michelle Kwan of the United States finished second.
(AP, 3/27/00)
1999 Mar 27, Chinese Pres. Jiang Zemin in a speech to Swiss business leaders criticized NATO airstrikes in Yugoslavia.
(SFEC, 3/28/99, p.A16)
1999 Mar 27, NATO expanded its air assault on Yugoslavia in the 4th straight day of attacks. A $42 million US F-117A stealth fighter was downed over Yugoslavia during continued NATO airstrikes. The American pilot was rescued by US forces. The wreckage was later believed to have been sold. In 2005 it was reported that Col. Zoltan Dani of Serbia was behind the shooting down of the stealth fighter. Dani said the F-117 was detected and shot down during a moonless night, just three days into the war, by a Soviet-made SA-3 Goa surface-to-air missile.
(SFEC, 3/28/99, p.A1,16)(SFC, 9/17/99, p.A10)(AP, 3/27/00)(AP, 10/26/05)
1999 Mar 27, In Paraguay at least 5 people were killed and some 100 injured in Asuncion as protestors called for the resignation of Pres. Cubas.
(SFEC, 3/28/99, p.A21)
1999 Mar 27, Serbian troops ordered villagers of Mamusa, Kosovo, to drive refugees to the border. 3 Turks and 4 ethnic Albanians were killed and 30 houses were burned.
(SFC, 3/12/02, p.A10)
1999 Mar 27, In Turkey a young woman set off grenades strapped to her body in a suicide that wounded 10 others in Istanbul.
(SFEC, 3/28/99, p.A25)
2000 Mar 27, The Supreme Court decided the federal government could deny food stamps and other welfare benefits to people who live permanently in the United States but who are not citizens.
(AP, 3/27/01)
2000 Mar 27, A San Francisco jury ordered Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds to pay $20 million in punitive damages to Leslie Whiteley (40).
(SFC, 3/28/00, p.A1)
2000 Mar 27, Cisco Systems passed Microsoft as the most valuable company in the world.
(SFC, 3/28/00, p.A1)
2000 Mar 27, DaimlerChrysler AG announced it would buy 34 percent of Japan’s Mitsubishi Motors Corporation.
(AP, 3/27/01)
2000 Mar 27, In Texas an explosion at a Phillips Petroleum at Pasadena plant killed one worker and injured at least 71 others.
(SFC, 3/28/00, p.A2)
2000 Mar 27, In Uganda laborers unearched 73 bodies at Rugazi associated with the Movement for the Restoration of Ten Commandments of God. [see Mar 28]
(SFC, 3/28/00, p.A10)
2001 Mar 27, A US federal judge ruled that the Univ. of Michigan racial criteria for accepting minority students with lower test scores than whites was invalid.
(SFC, 3/28/01, p.A3)
2001 Mar 27, California regulators approved electricity rate hikes of up to 46 percent.
(AP, 3/27/02)
2001 Mar 27, An empty train riding on the wrong side of the tracks crashed into a crowded commuter train at Pecrot, Belgium, killing eight people.
(SFC, 3/28/01, p.D4)(AP, 3/27/02)
2001 Mar 27, The Brazilian Electricity Regulatory Agency, Aneel, ordered federal agencies and state companies to reduce consumption by 10% due to power shortages caused by poor rains.
(WSJ, 3/28/01, p.A16)
2001 Mar 27, In its first specific accusation against a detained U.S.-based scholar, China said Gao Zhan had confessed to spying for foreign intelligence agencies. The US denied employing her as a spy. Gao, who had been detained on Feb. 11, was released the following July. In 2003 Gao Zhan admitted to illegal profits of over $539,000 from selling 80 microprocessors to the Chinese government. [see Feb 11]
(WSJ, 3/28/01, p.A1)(AP, 3/27/02)(SFC, 11/27/03, p.A3)
2001 Mar 27, China reported that its population stood at 1.26 billion, an 11.7% increase over the last decade.
(SFC, 3/28/01, p.D4)
2001 Mar 27, In Germany some 20,000 police blocked protesters who sought to block a train delivering radioactive waste from France. The German nuclear waste was reprocessed in France and returned.
(SFC, 3/28/01, p.A12)
2001 Mar 27, Two bombings in Jerusalem wounded some 35 people.
(SFC, 3/28/01, p.A10)
2001 Mar 27, Militiamen attacked a relief convoy and 14 Somalis were killed. 5 kidnapped aid workers were freed the next day, but 4 remained hostage. 2 Britons were released April 4.
(SFC, 3/28/01, p.A10)(WSJ, 3/29/01, p.A1)(SFC, 4/5/01, p.A11)
2001 Mar 27, In Uganda rebels ambushed students on a field trip to Murchison Falls and killed 11 people.
(SFC, 3/28/01, p.D4)
2002 Mar 27, The US Supreme Court ruled that illegal immigrants do not have the same rights as Americans when they are wrongly fired from US jobs.
(WSJ, 3/28/02, p.A1)
2002 Mar 27, Milton Berle (93), known as Uncle Miltie and Mr. Television, died. He rose to TV stardom as the host of Texaco Star Theater in 1948. He was said to be freakishly well-endowed. Haskel Frankel co-wrote: "Milton Berle, an Autobiography" in 1974.
(SFC, 3/28/02, p.A1)(SSFC, 4/16/06, p.M6)
2002 Mar 27, Dudley Moore (66), British actor and musician, died. His films included “10" and “Arthur."
(SFC, 3/28/02, p.A1)
2002 Mar 27, Billy Wilder (95), Austrian-born Hollywood film writer and director, died. He wrote and directed numerous films and won 6 Oscars. In 1999 Cameron Crowe authored “Conversations with Billy Wilder."
(AP, 3/27/03)(SFC, 3/29/02, p.A1,14)
2002 Mar 27, A gunman killed eight members of the Nanterre city council outside Paris; a suspect killed himself the next day while in police custody.
(AP, 3/27/07)
2002 Mar 27, In Beirut the Arab League opened a summit of its 22 member states. Egypt’s Pres. Mubarek did not attend. It dissolved into chaos when Palestinian delegates stalked out when Arafat was not given a prominent place for a live broadcast. Arafat endorsed the peace initiative of Prince Abdullah.
(SFC, 3/26/02, p.A10)(WSJ, 3/27/02, p.A1)
2002 Mar 27, A Palestinian Hamas suicide bomber killed 29 Israelis gathered at the Park Hotel in Netanya for the Passover Seder.
(SFC, 3/28/02, p.A1)(SFC, 3/29/02, p.A11)(SFC, 4/15/02, p.A12)(AP, 3/27/03)
2003 Mar 27, Pres. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair met to assess the progress of the war in Iraq.
(AP, 3/27/03)
2003 Mar 27, The Bush administration seized $1.62 billion in Iraqi assets already frozen in the US. The money would be used to help rebuild Iraq once Saddam Hussein is ousted.
(AP, 3/28/03)
2003 Mar 27, Richard Perle quit as head of the Pentagon advisory board amid allegations of conflicts of interests with his business deals.
(WSJ, 3/28/03, p.A1)
2003 Mar 27, It was reported that the SARS disease had killed 50 people and infected some 1,300 in 13 countries.
(WSJ, 3/27/03, p.A1)
2003 Mar 27, Paul Zindel (66), Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, died in New York.
(AP, 3/27/04)
2003 Mar 27, In Afghanistan Ricardo Munguia (39), a Red Cross water engineer from El Salvador, was killed by Taliban gunmen.
(SFC, 4/8/03, p.A5)(Reuters 3/28/03)
2003 Mar 27, In Colombia FARC land mines killed 11 soldiers near Aracataca, the birthplace of Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
(AP, 3/27/03)
2003 Mar 27, EU governments agreed to ban single-hulled oil tankers carrying heavy fuel in an attempt to reduce the risk of slicks.
(AP, 3/27/03)
2003 Mar 27, France introduced a new terrorism alert system, with 4 color-coded levels to make the national warning plan more flexible and understandable.
(AP, 3/27/03)
2003 Mar 27, In the 9th day of Operation Iraqi Freedom a British armored unit destroyed 14 Iraqi tanks trying to break out of the besieged city of Basra. A sea-borne relief operation was postponed after discovering Iraqi mines in the shipping channel leading to the recently captured Iraqi port of Umm Qasr. Heavy bombing on Baghdad destroyed a main telephone exchange.
(AP, 3/27/03)(SFC, 3/28/03, p.W1)
2003 Mar 27, In Israel Israeli forces killed 3 Palestinian police officers in Beit Hanoun, Gaza.
(SFC, 3/27/03, p.A10)
2003 Mar 27, in Kyrgyzstan a fire engulfed a crowded passenger bus, killing 21 victims, believed to have been Chinese vendors of Uighur ethnicity. Robbery was suspected.
(AP, 3/27/03)(AP, 3/28/03)
2003 Mar 27, Mexican federal agents killed 2 suspected drug runners in a shootout near the Texas border.
(AP, 3/27/03)
2003 Mar 27, In Yangon, Myanmar, a bomb went off in front of a state telecommunications office, killing at least one person and wounding three as the country marked Armed Forces Day.
(AP, 3/27/03)
2003 Mar 27, Russia's Evgeni Plushenko won his 2nd World Figure Skating Championships title, edging American Tim Goebel.
(AP, 3/27/04)
2003 Mar 27, In Serbia Milan Lukovic and Dusan Spasojevic, Zemun Clan leaders and suspects in the Zoran Djindjic assassination, were killed as they resisted arrest.
(SFC, 3/28/03, p.A12)
2003 Mar 27, In Zimbabwe opposition leaders urged the nation's soldiers and police to disobey orders to crush any show of dissent against the government.
(AP, 3/27/03)
2004 Mar 27, Adan Sanchez (19), Mexican-American singer, died in a car crash in Sinaloa, Mexico. He was the son of narco-ballad singer Chalino Sanchez, murdered in 1992.
(WSJ, 4/9/04, p.B1)
2004 Mar 27, Robert Merle (95), French author, died. His books included "The Day of the Dolphin," which was made into a 1973 film.
(SFC, 4/1/04, p.B7)
2004 Mar 27, Edward J. Piszek (87), founder of Mrs. Paul's Kitchens, died in Fort Washington, Pa.
(SFC, 4/1/04, p.B7)
2004 Mar 27, The 15-nation Caribbean Community withheld recognition from Haiti's U.S.-backed interim government as leaders closed a summit renewing calls for a U.N. investigation into the ouster of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
(AP, 3/27/04)
2004 Mar 27, Tens of thousands of security forces guarded voting stations as Nigerians cast ballots in tense municipal elections.
(AP, 3/27/04)
2004 Mar 27, A 7-year-old Palestinian boy was killed by what the Israeli military said was haphazard Palestinian gunfire toward an army jeep in a West Bank refugee camp.
(AP, 3/27/04)
2004 Mar 27, Rwanda reported plans to release at least 30,000 suspects who have confessed to participating in the 1994 genocide, letting them be tried in community courts rather than by the country's overburdened judicial system.
(AP, 3/27/04)
2004 Mar 27, A half million people swarmed into Taiwan's capital to protest the disputed presidential election.
(AP, 3/27/04)
2005 Mar 27, In a live Internet interview with the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Michael Jackson declared himself "completely innocent" of child molestation charges, and said he was the victim of a conspiracy.
(AP, 3/27/06)
2005 Mar 27, In Brazil Vitalmiro Moura, the rancher accused of ordering the killing of American nun Dorothy Stang in the Amazon rainforest six weeks ago, surrendered to police and declared his innocence.
(AP, 3/27/05)
2005 Mar 27, A Cairo court sentenced an Egyptian to 35 years in prison after finding him guilty of spying for the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and planning to assassinate Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. The court gave Mahmoud Eid Mohamed Dabbous 10 years in prison for spying for a foreign state and another 25 years for plotting to kill Mubarak.
(Reuters, 3/27/05)
2005 Mar 27, Egyptian police detained about 200 members and supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood, before and during an attempt to protest outside parliament in favor of reform.
(AP, 3/28/05)
2005 Mar 27, Ahmed Zaki (55), one of Egypt's most acclaimed actors, died. He portrayed former Egyptian presidents Gamal Abdel Nasser and Anwar Sadat.
(AP, 3/27/05)
2005 Mar 27, Iraqi security officials opened fire on a crowd of protesters outside a government building, killing one. Al-Qaida's arm in Iraq posted a video purportedly showing an Iraqi Interior Ministry official being killed.
(AP, 3/27/05)
2005 Mar 27, Kashmir police said suspected militants shot dead a grandmother, mother and her infant daughter after the child's father, a former Kashmiri separatist rebel, surrendered to Indian security forces.
(AP, 3/27/05)
2005 Mar 27, In Kyrgyzstan 2 rival parliaments competed for power, raising political uncertainty in the former Soviet nation. Both groups, the parliament newly elected in a disputed vote that sparked massive discontent, and the one that lost the election, met in separate chambers over the weekend, each claiming to represent the people.
(AP, 3/27/05)
2005 Mar 27, Macedonians cast ballots in municipal elections, but the voting was marred by irregularities that could potentially harm the country's ambitions to join NATO and the EU.
(AP, 3/27/05)
2005 Mar 27, Morocco’s per capita income was reported to be about $1,200 per year. One of 5 urban Moroccans was unemployed.
(SFCM, 3/27/05, p.11)
2005 Mar 27, The head of Myanmar's ruling junta said the country was moving toward democracy but gave no indication of when the military would relinquish its 43-year grip on power.
(AP, 3/27/05)
2005 Mar 27, Communist North Korea for the first time confirmed an outbreak of deadly bird flu at its poultry farms and said hundreds of thousands of chickens had been culled to contain it.
(AP, 3/27/05)
2005 Mar 27, Pope John Paul II delivered an Easter Sunday blessing to tens of thousands of people in St. Peter's Square, but the ailing pontiff was unable to speak and managed only to greet the saddened crowd with a sign of the cross.
(AP, 3/27/06)
2006 Mar 27, The US Senate Judiciary Committee approved a proposal to legalize undocumented migrants and provide temporary work visas. Mexicans cheered the approval and credited huge marches of migrants across the US as the decisive factor behind the vote.
(AP, 3/28/06)
2006 Mar 27, Al-Qaida conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui testified at his federal trial that he was supposed to hijack a fifth airplane on Sept. 11, 2001, and fly it into the White House.
(AP, 3/27/07)
(AP, 3/27/07)
2006 Mar 27, In SF several thousand protesters marched down Market Street in a peaceful call for legal status for an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the US.
(SFC, 3/28/06, p.A1)
2006 Mar 27, It was reported that European researchers have developed "neuro-chips" in which living brain cells and silicon circuits are coupled together.
(www.livescience.com/humanbiology/060327_neuro_chips.html)
2006 Mar 27, Lyn Nofziger (81), President Reagan's political adviser, died in Falls Church, Va.
(AP, 3/27/07)
2006 Mar 27, TV producer-director Dan Curtis (78) died in Los Angeles.
(AP, 3/27/07)
2006 Mar 27, Abdul Rahman, an Afghan man who had faced the death penalty for converting from Islam to Christianity, quickly vanished after he was released from prison, apparently out of fear for his life with Muslim clerics still demanding his death.
(AP, 3/28/06)
2006 Mar 27, Officials said a roadside bombing killed three villagers and wounded two when it blew up their car in southern Afghanistan.
(AP, 3/27/06)
2006 Mar 27, Finance Minister Antonio Palocci, the architect of Brazil's economic recovery and market-friendly fiscal policy, resigned after becoming caught up in a political scandal. His office was party to the illegal disclosure of payments to a bank account belonging to a witness against him in a corruption case.
(AP, 3/27/06)(Econ, 4/1/06, p.32)
2006 Mar 27, Ian Hamilton Finlay, British artist and poet, died.
(FT, 3/29/06, p.10)
2006 Mar 27, In Ethiopia a series of blasts killed one person and injured several others in Addis Ababa, the first fatality in a string of mysterious explosions in the capital.
(AP, 3/27/06)
2006 Mar 27, In Haiti scavengers found 10 human skulls in a trash heap, the second such grisly find in as many days in Port-au-Prince, where authorities speculated that the bones may have come from a Voodoo ritual.
(AP, 3/27/06)
2006 Mar 27, Shiite leaders cut off political talks and denounced the US over a weekend raid that they said killed worshippers in a mosque. In northern Iraq a suicide bombing killed at least 40 people at an army recruitment center in Kasak.
(AP, 3/27/06)(SFC, 3/28/06, p.A3)
2006 Mar 27, Gunmen kidnapped 16 employees of an Iraqi trading company in an upscale Baghdad neighborhood.
(AP, 3/27/06)
2006 Mar 27, In an audiotape broadcast Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, Saddam Hussein's chief deputy, purportedly called for Arab leaders to back Iraq's Sunni-backed insurgency.
(AP, 3/27/06)
2006 Mar 27, Abu Umar, a major Al-Qaeda figure in Iraq, was killed near Baquba.
(AFP, 4/13/06)
2006 Mar 27, PM Silvio Berlusconi said on radio that he does not want Italy to become a multiethnic, multicultural country, drawing plaudits from a right-wing ally and criticism from center-left opponents.
(AP, 3/28/06)
2006 Mar 27, Japan's parliament passed the nation's most austere budget in 8 years, marking another achievement for PM Junichiro Koizumi and his efforts to cut the huge public debt.
(AP, 3/27/06)
2006 Mar 27, Malaysia’s government said it will end subsidies to flag carrier Malaysia Airlines and let it operate only 19 domestic routes, in competition with budget carrier AirAsia, under a major restructuring that will shed thousands of jobs.
(AP, 3/27/06)
2006 Mar 27, Nepalese army helicopters launched an attack on a gathering of communist rebels in the mountains of north-central Nepal, killing at least four people.
(AP, 3/27/06)
2006 Mar 27, The Dutch Equal Treatment Commission ruled that a Muslim woman who refuses to shake men's hands for religious reasons cannot be barred from a Dutch teacher-training program.
(AP, 3/28/06)
2006 Mar 27, In Nigeria a weeklong census ended as workers scrambled to tally everyone across Africa's most-populous nation, but many remained uncounted in the exercise, marred by violence and the lack of forms, census takers and money.
(AP, 3/27/06)
2006 Mar 27, Militants demanding control of revenues from Nigeria's oil-rich southern delta released their last remaining foreign hostages, two Americans and a Briton, but the group threatened to continue attacks on oil installations.
(AP, 3/27/06)
2006 Mar 27, Gunmen loyal to rival pro-Taliban clerics fought street battles in Pakistan's tribal belt bordering Afghanistan, leaving at least 25 people dead.
(AFP, 3/28/06)
2006 Mar 27, In the Philippines a bomb exploded in a grocery store on southern Jolo island, killing 9 people and wounding 20. Police said an extortion attempt by suspected militants was likely behind the bombing.
(AP, 3/27/06)
2006 Mar 27, “Shooting Dogs," a new film on Rwanda's genocide, reduced many survivors to tears at its premiere in Kigali. The film's title refers to the way UN troops shot dogs eating the corpses that littered the streets of the Rwandan capital. The next day President Paul Kagame said the movie would help to ensure memories of the mass murder were kept alive.
(Reuters, 3/28/06)
2006 Mar 27, Stanislaw Lem (b.1921), Polish science fiction writer, died in Poland. His work included “His Master’s Voice" (1968). His best-known work, "Solaris," was adapted into films by director Andrei Tarkovsky (1972) and by Steven Soderbergh (2002). That version starred George Clooney and Natascha McElhone.
(AP, 3/27/06)(WSJ, 4/8/06, p.P14)
2006 Mar 27, In Ukraine early election results showed pro-Russia party led by Viktor Yanukovych taking the largest number of votes, followed by the president's former ally, Yulia Tymoshenko. President Viktor Yushchenko's party was a distant third, a stinging rebuke to his West-leaning administration. Yanukovych's party, which has pledged to make Russian a second state language, drop plans to join NATO and restore frayed ties with Moscow, was dominating in the Russian-speaking east and south.
(AP, 3/27/06)
2007 Mar 27, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Israeli and Palestinian leaders have agreed to meet every two weeks to discuss day-to-day issues, in a quickening diplomatic pace that eventually could spur talks on a final peace settlement.
(AP, 3/27/07)
2007 Mar 27, The US offered a $5 million reward for information leading to the capture of a US-trained Malaysian engineer accused of involvement in a series of deadly bombings in the Philippines.
(AP, 3/27/07)
2007 Mar 27, Walter Anderson, the telecommunications entrepreneur who admitted hiding hundreds of millions of dollars from the IRS and District of Columbia tax collectors, was sentenced to nine years in prison and ordered to repay about $23 million to the city. But US District Judge Paul Friedman said he couldn't order Anderson to repay the federal government $100 million to $175 million because the Justice Department's binding plea agreement with Anderson listed the wrong statute.
(AP, 3/27/07)
2007 Mar 27, US Attorney John Brownlee announced that ITT Corp. has agreed to pay a $100 million penalty for illegally sending classified night-vision technology to China and other countries.
(SFC, 3/28/07, p.A7)
2007 Mar 27, US National Football League (NFL) owners voted 30-2 to make the video replay system a permanent officiating tool.
(AP, 3/27/08)
2007 Mar 27, SF city leaders approved a ban on plastic grocery bags after weeks of lobbying on both sides from environmentalists and a supermarket trade group. San Francisco would be the first US city to adopt such a rule if Mayor Gavin Newsom signs the ban as expected.
(AP, 3/28/07)(SFC, 3/28/07, p.A1)
2007 Mar 27, United Commercial Bank of San Francisco said it had concluded negotiations to become the sole owner of the Business Development Bank of Shanghai. In 1992 the Business Development Bank of Shanghai was established as China’s first foreign-owned bank.
(Econ, 4/7/07, p.73)
2007 Mar 27, Texas Governor Rick Perry's office said that he had signed a new law that expands Texans' existing right to use deadly force to defend themselves "without retreat" in their homes, cars and workplaces. The new law takes affect on September 1.
(Reuters, 3/27/07)
2007 Mar 27, The New York Stock Exchange won control of pan-European market operator Euronext, creating an entity worth 29 billion dollars linking trading platforms in six cities.
(AP, 3/27/07)
2007 Mar 27, Paul Lauterbur (77), the father of Magnetic Resonance Imagery (MRI), died. He shared the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 2003.
(Econ, 4/7/07, p.84)
2007 Mar 27, In southern Afghanistan a suicide attacker dressed in army uniform blew himself up outside a provincial police headquarters, killing four policemen.
(AP, 3/27/07)
2007 Mar 27, Roxana Arias Becerra (32), a former Miss Bolivia (1993), was arrested on charges of carrying 1.8 pounds of cocaine while boarding a flight to the Brazilian border.
(AP, 3/29/07)
2007 Mar 27, British lawmakers unanimously passed an emergency bill to preserve the Northern Ireland Assembly and permit its Protestant and Catholic leaders to forge a historic administration by a new May 8 deadline.
(AP, 3/27/07)
2007 Mar 27, State media said China will pour billions of dollars into an airport, power plants, roads and education to help raise the standard of living of Tibetans over the next three years.
(AP, 3/27/07)
2007 Mar 27, In Cuba Faustino Oramas (95), a popular traditional singer and among the last original members of the Buena Vista Social Club, died of cancer.
(AP, 3/28/07)
2007 Mar 27, Egypt’s government said voters had overwhelmingly approved a set of controversial amendments to Egypt's constitution, a day after opposition groups massively boycotted the referendum. Egyptian blogs soon showed cell video clips of ballot stuffing.
(AP, 3/27/07)(WSJ, 3/30/07, p.A1)
2007 Mar 27, French riot police firing tear gas and brandishing batons clashed with bands of youths who shattered windows and looted shops at a major Paris train station. Nine people were arrested.
(AP, 3/28/07)
2007 Mar 27, In Germany a board member of Siemens AG, Europe's biggest electronics and engineering company, was arrested in connection with an investigation of alleged payments to the head of a tiny labor union. A trail against 2 managers had begun on March 13, for use of funds to smooth contracts with Italy’s utility, Enel.
(AP, 3/27/07)(Econ, 3/17/07, p.71)
2007 Mar 27, Guatemala named Adela Camacho de Torrebiarte (57), an anti-crime crusader, as its first female interior minister.
(AP, 3/27/07)
2007 Mar 27, In Iraq 2 nearly simultaneous truck bombs, including one detonated by remote control, ripped through markets in Tal Afar, killing at least 48 people and wounding dozens as violence surged outside the Iraqi capital. It was later reported that the main blast killed 152 people. A suicide car bomber killed at least 10 in a market near Ramadi and a mortar attack on a Shiite district area in southern Baghdad killed at least four people. Clashes broke in Iskandariyah after suspected Shiite militants broke into a Sunni mosque, leaving four Sunni militants dead and one Shiite militant wounded. A roadside bomb struck Iraqi police on a foot patrol in southeastern Baghdad, killing a policeman and wounding two others. Another police officer was killed in a drive-by shooting in eastern Baghdad. Harith Dhaher al-Dhari, a military leader of the 1920 Revolution Brigades, a major Sunni Arab insurgent group, was killed along with 2 associates west of Baghdad. Two Americans, a contractor and a soldier, were killed in a rocket attack on the heavy guarded Green Zone.
(AP, 3/27/07)(Reuters, 3/31/07)
2007 Mar 27, Ivory Coast rebels and mediators said Guillaume Soro, the main rebel leader, will become prime minister in a new government called for in the country's latest peace plan.
(AP, 3/27/07)
2007 Mar 27, In Japan a Cabinet official said an electrical glitch has knocked out a satellite in a spy network Japan hoped to use to gather intelligence on North Korea and other trouble spots around the world.
(AP, 3/27/07)
2007 Mar 27, Police in Mexico City kicked off a campaign to exchange guns for computers and other gifts in an attempt to reduce firearm deaths. Two bodies were found wrapped in plastic bags and sheets behind a television station in Mexico's port city of Veracruz, apparent victims of drug-related violence.
(AP, 3/27/07)(AP, 3/28/07)
2007 Mar 27, In Nigeria Anglo-Dutch oil giant Shell confirmed that the federal government had charged it with the alleged loss of some "radioactive tools" belonging to one of its contractors. Shell denied reports that it had been involved in any dumping of toxic waste in Nigeria.
(AFP, 3/27/07)
2007 Mar 27, Residents and officials said Pakistanis living along the Afghan border have signed a third peace deal with the government promising not to shelter foreign militants. In Islamabad female and male Islamic students on an anti-vice drive abducted Aunty Shamin, an alleged brothel owner, and locked her up at their fundamentalist seminary. A grenade attack in Bajaur killed 5 ISI officers.
(AP, 3/27/07)(SFC, 3/29/07, p.A9)(Econ, 4/14/07, p.43)
2007 Mar 27, In Palestine’s northern Gaza Strip an earth embankment around a cesspool collapsed, spewing a river of sewage and mud that killed four people.
(AP, 3/27/07)
2007 Mar 27, A Tamil Tiger rebel drove an explosive-laden tractor to a military camp in eastern Sri Lanka, drawing fire from guards and triggering a blast at the entrance. At least seven people, including the bomber, were killed.
(AP, 3/27/07)
2007 Mar 27, Swedish artist Hans Hedberg (89), known for his outsized fruit and egg ceramic sculptures and, died.
(AP, 3/29/07)
2007 Mar 27, In Kiev, Ukraine, a Russian businessman allied with Ukraine's president was killed by a sniper as he was escorted from a courthouse during a break in his extortion trial.
(AP, 3/28/07)
2008 Mar 27, A US appeals Court in Philadelphia overturned the death sentence of Mumia Abu Jamal, who had been convicted of killing Officer Daniel Faulkner on Dec 9, 1981.
(SFC, 3/28/08, p.A4)
2008 Mar 27, In Kansas City, Mo., a judge convicted Terry Blair (46) of killing 6 women in 2004. Blair faced life in prison.
(SFC, 3/28/08, p.A4)
2008 Mar 27, Adobe systems, the maker of the popular photo-editing software Photoshop, launched a basic version available for free online.
(AP, 3/27/08)
2008 Mar 27, In Columbus, Georgia, Charles Johnston (63) stormed a hospital and killed 3 people including a nurse he blamed for his mother’s death in 2004. Johnston was wounded and taken into custody.
(SFC, 3/29/08, p.A2)
2008 Mar 27, Comorans staged angry anti-French protests as France decided whether to give ousted rebel leader Mohamed Bacar asylum after he fled to its Indian Ocean territory of Mayotte.
(AP, 3/27/08)
2008 Mar 27, Iraq’s PM Nouri al-Maliki promised to pursue his fight against Shiite militias in Basra to "the end." Al-Sadr called for a political solution to the burgeoning crisis and an end to the "shedding of Iraqi blood." Tens of thousands of Shiites took to Baghdad's streets to protest the government crackdown on militias in Basra as heavy fighting between Iraqi security forces and gunmen erupted for a third day in the southern oil port and the capital. The death toll in the Shiite city of Hillah, about 60 miles south of Baghdad, rose to at least 60. Tahseen Sheikhly, the Sunni civilian spokesman for the Baghdad security operation, was kidnapped and three bodyguards killed. A booby-trapped car exploded near the Iraqi Red Crescent Society's offices in Baghdad, killing two civilians and wounding five.
(AP, 3/27/08)(AP, 3/28/08)
2008 Mar 27, The Mexican government said it has sent more than 2,500 soldiers and federal police to curb soaring violence in a border state across from Texas and New Mexico.
(AP, 3/28/08)
2008 Mar 27, Myanmar's junta chief insisted that he is not power-hungry and intends to hand control of the government to the winners of elections in 2010.
(AP, 3/27/08)
2008 Mar 27, Geert Wilders, a Dutch lawmaker, released his 15-minute film “Fitna," which linked verses of the Koran to violent images from terrorist attacks.
(SFC, 3/28/08, p.A4)
2008 Mar 27, North Korea expelled all 11 South Korean officials from a joint industrial estate just north of the border in retaliation for Seoul's new tougher line towards the communist state.
(AP, 3/27/08)
2008 Mar 27, Suspected militants attacked an ambulance in a Pakistani tribal region on the Afghan border killing at least six people, including two paramilitary soldiers. A gunman on a motorcycle has fatally shot two anti-terrorism officials in the southern city of Karachi.
(AP, 3/27/08)(AP, 3/28/08)
2008 Mar 27, The editor-in-chief of the local edition said the Philippines will get its own edition of Playboy magazine, only without the nudity that made the US version famous. The Philippine edition will be launched on April 2 as a "mature lifestyle magazine."
(AFP, 3/27/08)
2008 Mar 27, Puerto Rico’s Gov. Anibal Acevedo Vila was charged with 19 counts in a campaign finance probe, including conspiracy to violate US federal campaign laws and giving false testimony to the FBI. 12 others were also charged in the corruption probe.
(AP, 3/27/08)(WSJ, 3/28/08, p.A1)
2008 Mar 27, In northern Sri Lanka a series of battles along the front lines killed 17 ethnic Tamil rebels and two government soldiers.
(AP, 3/28/08)
2008 Mar 27, A group of monks shouting there was no religious freedom disrupted a carefully orchestrated visit for foreign reporters to Tibet's capital, an embarrassment for China as it tried to show Lhasa was calm following deadly anti-government riots.
(AP, 3/27/08)
2008 Mar 27, Turkey's armed forces killed 15 members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in northern Iraq using long-range land weapons.
(Reuters, 3/29/08)
2008 Mar 27, A helicopter belonging to Ukraine's border guards crashed off an island in the Black Sea. One officer was rescued and 12 were missing.
(Reuters, 3/27/08)
2009 Mar 27, President Barack Obama ordered 4,000 more military troops into Afghanistan, vowing to "disrupt, dismantle and defeat" the Taliban and al-Qaida.
(AP, 3/27/09)
2009 Mar 27, The Texas Board of Education approved a science curriculum opening the door for teachers and texts to raise doubts about evolution.
(WSJ, 3/28/09, p.A1)
2009 Mar 27, In North Dakota the Red River rose to a daunting 112-year high and breached one of the dikes fortifying Fargo, but the mayor pledged to "go down swinging" as he called for more evacuations and additional National Guard troops to prevent a devastating flood.
(AP, 3/27/09)
2009 Mar 27, In Tracy, Ca., Sandra Cantu (8) went missing from her mobile park home. On April 6 her body was found in a suitcase dumped in an irrigation pond a few miles away. On April 10 Melissa Huckaby (28), a Sunday school teacher, was arrested on suspicion of kidnapping and killing Cantu.
(AP, 4/7/09)(AP, 4/11/09)
2009 Mar 27, Jack Dreyfus (95), founder of the Dreyfus Fund (1951), died in NYC. His fund helped found the retail mutual-fund business.
(WSJ, 3/28/09, p.A5)
2009 Mar 27, New research suggested that crabs not only suffer pain but also retain a memory of it. In 2021 a British government study said crabs and lobsters have the capacity to feel pain and suffer distress when harmed.
(http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/03/27/crabs.memorypain/)(SSFC, 11/28/21, p.B10)
2009 Mar 27, Southern African countries (Angola, Botswana, Mozambique, Namibia, Zambia) have been hit by the worst floods in years, killing more than 100 people and displacing thousands, as a tropical storm threatened to bring more pain.
(AFP, 3/28/09)
2009 Mar 27, Bolivia's Interior Minister Alfredo Rada said police have uncovered one of the country's biggest known cocaine processing factories. Two Colombians and a Bolivian were arrested at the nearly 1,000-acre (400 hectare) site in the dense, southeastern jungles.
(AP, 3/27/09)
2009 Mar 27, In Chile the Progressive Governance Summit, a 2-day gathering of leaders from Latin America and Europe, opened at the resort city of Vina del Mar. All agreed for an export-credit fund to get trade flowing again.
(AP, 3/27/09)(Econ, 4/4/09, p.43)
2009 Mar 27, Chinese health officials said that hand, foot and mouth disease has sickened 41,000 people across the country and killed 18 children so far this year.
(AP, 3/27/09)
2009 Mar 27, In China a minibus collided with two trucks and a bus tumbled into a mountain gorge in two unrelated crashes, killing a total of 37 people.
(AP, 3/27/09)
2009 Mar 27, In Honda, Colombia, Arcebio Alvarez (59), a farmer and widower, was arrested on charges of incest and sexual abuse. He was accused of incest for allegedly fathering eight children with his daughter. He denied being the woman's biological father.
(AP, 3/29/09)
2009 Mar 27, In Indonesia torrential rain caused a dam to burst outside Jakarta, sending a wall of muddy water crashing into a densely packed neighborhood and killing at least 96 people with some 130 still missing. The earthen dam, built in 1933 when Indonesia was still under Dutch rule, surrounded a man-made lake in Cirendeu on the southwestern edge of Jakarta.
(AP, 3/27/09)(AP, 3/29/09)
2009 Mar 27, French President Nicolas Sarkozy wrapped up his mini-tour of three African countries, after meeting with Niger leader Mamadou Tandja. This followed visits to Kinshasa and Brazzaville.
(AFP, 3/27/09)
2009 Mar 27, An overcrowded boat packed with migrants capsized in stormy seas off the coast of Libya. Only 20 survived when the wooden vessel with 257 people on board, mostly African migrants, including 70 women and two children, both of whom died, sunk only three hours off Libya.
(AP, 3/31/09)(AP, 4/1/09)
2009 Mar 27, Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari called for a US change of policy and voiced opposition to missile strikes. A suicide bomber demolished a mosque packed with hundreds of worshippers attending prayers near Jamrud in the Khyber Pass, killing at least 50 people and injuring over 100 more.
(AFP, 3/27/09)(AP, 3/27/09)(SFC, 3/28/09, p.A2)
2009 Mar 27, Russian media reported that the presidential Security Council has released a document outlining government policy for the Arctic that includes creating a special group of military forces.
(AP, 3/27/09)
2009 Mar 27, Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah (84) appointed his half-brother, Prince Nayef (75), as his 2nd deputy prime minister.
(Econ, 4/4/09, p.51)
2009 Mar 27, Sri Lanka’s military said it had killed 29 rebels. 13 were reported killed in a battle near Puthkkudiyirippu, while army snipers killed another 16.
(AP, 3/27/09)
2009 Mar 27, Thai PM Abhisit Vejjavija's rejected calls for his resignation by thousands of anti-government protesters who ringed his office for a second day in a boisterous rally.
(AP, 3/27/09)
2009 Mar 27, Zimbabwe PM Morgan Tsvangirai decried a fresh wave of farm invasions across the country and warned that those responsible for the farm disruptions risk arrest.
(AFP, 3/27/09)
2010 Mar 27, Robert Krentz (58), a prominent Arizona rancher near the Mexican border, was shot while working at his remote cattle ranch on the Arizona-Mexico border. His family's ranch sprawled over 35,000 acres. Investigators tracked the footprints of the suspected gunman about 20 miles south to the border with Mexico, prompting some authorities to blame smugglers or illegal immigrants for the killing.
(Reuters, 4/1/10)
2010 Mar 27, Federal agents in southern Michigan raided the home of David Stone, the suspected leader of the Hutaree militia, a group of self-proclaimed Christian warriors. Authorities recovered hand grenade instructions and schematics, a container of potassium chlorate, and other items.
(SFC, 4/13/10, p.A5)
2010 Mar 27, In southern Afghanistan an international service member was killed by a roadside bomb. 6 civilians were killed in two separate roadside bomb explosions, one in Sangin district and one in Nawa district.
(AP, 3/27/10)(AP, 3/28/10)
2010 Mar 27, In Australia Sydney's iconic Opera House and Harbor Bridge went dark along with millions of homes at the start of Earth Hour, a global switch-off aimed at revitalizing efforts against climate change.
(AFP, 3/27/10)
2010 Mar 27, British Airways cabin crew launched a four-day strike, the second wave of action in a week as part of a bitter, long-running dispute over pay and conditions.
(AFP, 3/27/10)
2010 Mar 27, Pirates off the coast of Cameroon’s Bakassi peninsula seized the MV Gull, a Ghanaian ship, and kidnapped two sailors for ransom. Pirates took control of the ship and kidnapped its captain and an officer on board once they found nothing worth stealing. Pirates freed the two West African sailors on March 31.
(AP, 3/30/10)(AFP, 3/31/10)
2010 Mar 27, In China a recycling pool at a sewage treatment plant collapsed in northern Shaanxi province and some 1,000 tons of oil sludge contaminated farmland and the Luohe River, a tributary of the Yellow River.
(AFP, 4/3/10)
2010 Mar 27, Iran used an ancient new year celebration to reach out to Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Iraq, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and Turkey at a summit meeting that projected Iranian leadership in the strategic region straddling the Middle East and Central Asia.
(AP, 3/27/10)
2010 Mar 27, In Turin, Italy, Mao Asada (19) of Japan toppled Olympic champion Yu-Na Kim in a triumphant season finale which saw her claim her second world title at the world figure skating championships.
(AFP, 3/27/10)
2010 Mar 27, A two-day Arab League summit opened in Sirte, Libya. Amr Moussa, the head of the Arab League, urged the 22-nation bloc to engage Iran directly over concerns about its growing influence in the region and its disputed nuclear program.
(AP, 3/27/10)
2010 Mar 27, Libya lifted a visa ban on citizens of 25 European countries after EU president Spain said a Swiss-instigated visa blacklist against 188 Libyans in those countries had been scrapped.
(Reuters, 3/28/10)
2010 Mar 27, In western Mexico two police officers and two other men have been found shot to death at a gas station in Michoacan state. In Guerrero state a man was found tied up and fatally shot in a car in the resort of Acapulco. The bodies of four men and a woman were found on a rural road in a town not far from the violent border city of Ciudad Juarez. More than 7,000 people gathered in the northern city of Monterrey to protest a wave of violence that has affected the country's third largest city in recent weeks.
(AP, 3/27/10)
2010 Mar 27, Pakistani air strikes killed at least 11 militants in a new offensive against foreign fighters in the restive northwest tribal belt bordering Afghanistan. Suspected US missiles killed 4 people in the northwest.
(AFP, 3/27/10)(SSFC, 3/28/10, p.A6)
2010 Mar 27, Peruvian police said five people have been killed by a mudslide set off by heavy rains in a remote community of wildcat miners in the southeastern Andes.
(AP, 3/27/10)
2010 Mar 27, In Russia an apartment block west of Moscow partially collapsed following a suspected gas explosion, killing three people and possibly trapping others under the rubble.
(AP, 3/27/10)
2010 Mar 27, In Russia former Soviet world chess champion Vasily Smyslov (89) died of heart failure. Smyslov beat Mikhail Botvinnik in 1957 to become the seventh world champion, before losing in a re-match the following year. His career in the top flight of world chess spanned some four decades. He was beaten by Garry Kasparov in 1984 in the Candidates Final match for the right to challenge Anatoly Karpov for the world title, which Kasparov went on to capture.
(Reuters, 3/27/10)
2010 Mar 27, In Somalia 3 people were killed and four injured in clashes between government soldiers and armed protesters opposing the demolition of their houses near Mogadishu's main airport.
(AP, 3/27/10)
2010 Mar 27, Korea Life became the first big South Korean life insurer to go public. Others were expected to soon follow.
(Econ, 3/27/10, p.81)
2010 Mar 27, In Sudan Darfur rebels allegedly shot down 2 Sudanese army helicopters in the latest reports of fighting that have marred faltering peace talks between Khartoum and other insurgents. Sudan's army said two of its helicopters crashed after developing technical problems.
(Reuters, 3/29/10)
2010 Mar 27, Thai troops retreated from security posts in the capital, bowing to demands from 80,000 jubilant red-shirted protesters who mounted a rally to demand fresh elections.
(AFP, 3/27/10)
2010 Mar 27, In Yemen policemen opened fire in Daleh on the funeral procession for a Southern Movement member killed by police gunfire a week earlier, wounding 28 mourners.
(AFP, 4/1/10)
2010 Mar 27, Zimbabwe police shut down an art exhibit exploring violence blamed on President Robert Mugabe. Artist Owen Maseko had collected family photos of missing people, images of mine shafts where bodies were believed dumped and reports on an armed uprising after independence in 1980 in the western Matabeleland district that was crushed by troops loyal to Mugabe. Thousands of civilians were massacred in the fighting.
(AP, 3/29/10)
2011 Mar 27, DJ Megatron (32), an urban radio and TV personality, was shot and killed in NYC. The occasional BET TV host was killed while going to a store.
(SFC, 3/28/11, p.A4)
2011 Mar 27, Farley Granger (b.1925), screen and theater actor, died. His films included “Strangers on a Train" (1951), a Hitchcock film based on a novel by Patricia Highsmith. His 2007 memoir was titled “Include Me Out."
(SFC, 3/30/11, p.C4)
2011 Mar 27, In southern Afghanistan a NATO service member was killed in a roadside bombing. A team of suicide bombers shot their way into the compound of a road construction company in eastern Afghanistan and detonated a truck loaded with explosives, killing at least 24 people and wounding 56 others in Paktika province.
(AP, 3/27/11)(AP, 3/28/11)(SFC, 3/29/11, p.A2)
2011 Mar 27, Bahrain's largest Shi'ite opposition group Wefaq accepted Kuwait as a mediator with Bahrain's government to end a political crisis gripping the tiny kingdom.
(Reuters, 3/27/11)
2011 Mar 27, In Brazil renowned Belgium-born theologian Jose Comblin (88) died of natural causes. Comblin was a leading exponent of liberation theology, which advocates activism on behalf of the poor. The movement swept Latin America in the 1960s following the Second Vatican Council.
(AP, 3/29/11)
2011 Mar 27, The Central African Republic voted in the second round of parliamentary elections expected to hand President Francois Bozize's party a large majority because of an opposition boycott. The party of CAR's president won an overall majority in the run-off legislative elections, garnering 61 of the 105 seats in parliament, according to provisional results showed on April 7.
(AFP, 3/27/11)(AFP, 4/7/11)
2011 Mar 27, Yang Hengjun (46), a Sydney-based spy novelist, phoned an assistant from Guangzhou airport in southeastern China to say three men were following him. Yang was later able to briefly phone a sister in Guangzhou to say "he's having a long chat with his old friends." This was a prearranged signal that Yang had been taken by the secret police. Yang was an official in the Chinese Foreign Ministry before moving to Australia. His novel, "Fatal Weakness," deals with espionage between China and the United States and has been published on the Internet in China.
(AP, 3/29/11)
2011 Mar 27, India's navy and coast guard captured 16 Somali pirates after a three-hour-long battle in the Arabian Sea. The pirates were trying to seize a merchant ship, MV Maersk Kensington, using a hijacked trawler. 16 crew members who had been taken hostage by the pirates were rescued from the hijacked Iranian trawler off India's western Lakshadweep islands.
(AP, 3/28/11)
2011 Mar 27, Israel deployed a cutting-edge rocket defense system on the outskirts of Beersheba. “Iron Dome" is expected to be fully operational in a matter of months. Israeli aircraft struck a Palestinian rocket squad in the Gaza Strip, killing two militants as the military activated a new defense system to shoot down incoming rockets.
(AP, 3/27/11)(SFC, 3/28/11, p.A2)
2011 Mar 27, Ivory Coast's embattled strongman Laurent Gbagbo accepted the African Union's choice to mediate a bloody post-election crisis. But former Cape Verde's foreign minister Jose Brito was rejected by presidential rival Alassane Ouattara.
(AFP, 3/27/11)
2011 Mar 27, In Japan emergency workers struggling to pump contaminated water from the stricken Fukushima nuclear complex fled from one of the troubled reactors after reporting a huge increase in radioactivity, a spike that officials later apologetically said was inaccurate. Police said the death toll from earthquake and tsunami stood at 10,668, with more than 16,574 people missing. Hundreds of thousands of people remained homeless.
(AP, 3/27/11)
2011 Mar 27, Libyan rebels pushed further west to retake more territory abandoned by Muammar Gaddafi's retreating forces, which have been weakened by Western air strikes. Their gains put the rebels back in control of all the main oil terminals in the eastern half of Libya: Es Sider, Ras Lanuf, Brega, Zueitina and Tobruk. Misrata remained under siege by Gaddafi forces.
(Reuters, 3/27/11)
2011 Mar 27, South Africa's newly appointed government spokesman Jimmy Manyi said the government is launching a newspaper to rectify media censorship of government information. Its bimonthly magazine will launch next month as a 20-page, free, monthly newspaper called Vuk'uzenzele, which means "Wake up and do it for yourself" in Zulu.
(AP, 3/27/11)
2011 Mar 27, The Red Cross said South Korea has repatriated 27 of 31 North Koreans whose status was uncertain for more than a month because 4 others on their drifting fishing boat defected.
(AP, 3/27/11)
2011 Mar 27, The Somali government voted to extend its term for another year, despite int’l. calls for it to leave office when its mandate expires in August.
(SFC, 3/28/11, p.A2)
2011 Mar 27, South Sudan rebels were reported to have united in a new armed movement, the Southern Sudan Democratic Movement, against the young southern government. It brought together 5 different armed militias spanning 4 of South Sudan’s 10 states.
(SSFC, 3/27/11, p.A2)
2011 Mar 27, Syria's government said that unknown gunmen firing from rooftops and prowling the streets of Latakia are to blame for two days of violence that killed 12 people. A human rights activist said authorities have released 17 political detainees in another apparent attempt to appease the protesters.
(AP, 3/27/11)
2011 Mar 27, United Nations police returned full control of East Timor to the national force, more than four years after bloody clashes threatened to push the country into civil war.
(AFP, 3/27/11)
2011 Mar 27, Venezuela’s President Chavez urged citizens to cut their calories to avoid obesity, the latest lifestyle recommendation by the self-proclaimed socialist crusader. Chavez has lobbied in recent weeks against what he calls the evils of capitalism, including alcoholism, breast implants and violent television programs.
(AP, 3/27/11)
2011 Mar 27, In Yemen Islamic militants seized control of a weapons factory, a strategic mountain and a nearby town in the southern province of Abyan, as a political stalemate in the capital causes security to unravel around the country.
(AP, 3/27/11)
2011 Mar 27, Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe vowed his party would not back down from its controversial drive to force foreign-owned companies to sell majority shareholdings to local blacks. Police barred PM Morgan Tsvangirai's party from holding a rally, saying it coincided with the funeral of a close ally of President Mugabe.
(Reuters, 3/27/11)(AFP, 3/27/11)
2012 Mar 27, US Pres. Barack Obama and Pakistan's PM Yousuf Raza Gilani vowed to rescue a troubled anti-terror alliance on the sidelines of a nuclear security summit in Seoul.
(AFP, 3/27/12)
2012 Mar 27, The Obama administration set the first-ever limits on heat-trapping pollution from new power plants.
(SFC, 3/28/12, p.A6)
2012 Mar 27, The California Judicial Council voted to kill a $2 billion computer system linking the state’s 58 county courts. Over $500 million was already spent in a launch effort.
(SSFC, 4/1/12, p.C1)
2012 Mar 27, Adrienne Rich (b.1929), American feminist poet, died in her Santa Cruz, Ca., home after a long struggle with rheumatoid arthritis.
(SFC, 3/29/12, p.A1)
2012 Mar 27, Arab officials gathered in Baghdad this week for a series of meetings. Their agenda of tourism, tackling water security and organizing regional responses to natural disasters was overshadowed by the crisis in Syria.
(AFP, 3/27/12)
2012 Mar 27, Brazil’s Tourism Ministry said it is asking more than 2,000 websites to remove sexual content that promotes Latin America's biggest country as a sex tourism destination.
(AP, 3/27/12)
2012 Mar 27, Britain’s Health and Socal Care Act 2012 received Royal Assent. It increased competition, gave the NHS greater autonomy, and put more decisions about care in the hands of local doctors.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_and_Social_Care_Act_2012)(Econ, 3/29/14, p.60)
2012 Mar 27, British Royal Mail announced that stamp prices will shoot up to record highs of 60p for first class and 50p for second class effective April 30.
(AFP, 3/27/12)
2012 Mar 27, In Chile Daniel Zamudio, a young gay man, died following a March 3 attack in Santiago. Attackers had brutally beaten him and carved swastikas into his body. The suspects included Raul Alfonso Lopez (25); Alejandro Axel Angulo Tapia (26); Patricio Ahumada Garay (25); and Fabian Mora Mora (19). On Oct 28, 2013, Garay was sentenced to life in prison.
(AP, 3/29/12)(SFC, 10/29/13, p.A2)
2012 Mar 27, In Egypt liberal and leftist parties announced that they have pulled out of a panel drafting Egypt's new constitution, accusing Islamists of monopolizing the process that will deliver the country's post-revolution charter. Cairo's Administrative Court began looking into the legitimacy of the constitutional panel after lawsuits were filed by several legal experts who argue that the constitution cannot be drafted by those whose role it will define.
(AFP, 3/27/12)
2012 Mar 27, In India Maoists insurgents killed 12 paramilitary officers and injured 28 others in a landmine blast in Maharashtra state, marking the rebels' third high-profile strike this month.
(AFP, 3/27/12)(SFC, 3/28/12, p.A2)(Econ, 3/31/12, p.50)
2012 Mar 27, In Indonesia thousands protested nationwide to reject the government's plan to hike the subsidized fuel price, with sporadic violence breaking out and injuring several people.
(AFP, 3/27/12)
2012 Mar 27, A cloud of explosive natural gas boiling out of the North Sea from a leak at Total's abandoned Elgin platform forced wider evacuations off the Scottish coast as the French firm warned it may take six months to halt the flow.
(Reuters, 3/27/12)
2012 Mar 27, In Israel Shaul Mofaz, a former military chief and defense minister, captured 62% of the votes the race for Kadima Party chief, trouncing Tzipi Livni, who took 37%.
(AP, 3/28/12)
2012 Mar 27, An Israeli army game caused a melee at a home in the West Bank village of Rammun. 3 brothers including Rashad Shawakha, stood to defend their home. Rashad was wounded by two intruders posing as Arabs ands died of his wounds on April 2.
(AFP, 6/24/12)
2012 Mar 27, In Jamaica some 60 protesters who gathered outside the security ministry in a rare street demonstration to demand an end to police shootings. A March 16 raid in the poor Cassava Piece neighborhood Diane Gordon, a mother of two, was fatally shot in the head on the street as she returned from a child's wake. Police said Gordon was killed during a shootout between officers and gunmen, but residents deny there were gunmen in the area. There have been roughly 50 police killings in Jamaica so far this year, nearly 30 of them in March.
(AP, 3/27/12)
2012 Mar 27, In Mali the military junta lifted a curfew imposed after its coup 5 days earlier. Coup leaders presented a new constitution consisting of 69 articles. The first part appeared to be lifted from the country's current constitution, including the guarantees of free speech, liberty of movement and freedom of thought. The middle and final sections set out the role of the military committee now controlling the country, which calls itself the National Committee for the Reestablishment of Democracy and the Restoration of the State. ECOWAS in an emergency meeting again demanded the immediate restoration of constitutional order in Bamako.
(AFP, 3/27/12)(AFP, 3/28/12)
2012 Mar 27, Pakistan was reported to have banned India's James Bond, outlawing a high-octane Bollywood action flick in which an Indian secret agent thwarts Pakistani spies from detonating a nuclear bomb in Delhi. Agent Vinod grossed $9.7 million on its opening weekend. It showed an Indian agent jetting around the world, dodging assassins to save his country from nuclear armageddon plotted by rogue Pakistani spies and terrorists.
(AFP, 3/27/12)
2012 Mar 27, In Pakistan gunmen and arsonists went on the rampage in Karachi, killing at least eight people and setting dozens of vehicles alight. The unrest was sparked by the murder of a party worker and his brother the previous evening.
(AFP, 3/27/12)
2012 Mar 27, In Pakistan Sobia Bibi (25), a mother of one child, was doused with petrol and burned alive in a dispute with her husband's family. Her 90-year-old mother-in-law was among those later named as suspects in Narowal district, northeast Lahore.
(AFP, 4/11/12)
2012 Mar 27, In South Korea world leaders including US President Barack Obama called for strong steps to combat nuclear terrorism, wrapping up a 53-nation summit overshadowed by North Korea's planned rocket launch.
(AFP, 3/27/12)
2012 Mar 27, South Sudan said Sudan's military bombed oil fields in the town of Bentiu.
(AP, 3/27/12)
2012 Mar 27, Spanish police arrested a suspected member of al-Qaida, identified as M.H.A. M.H.A. – born in Jordan with Saudi citizenship, who was key to the terror group's Internet propaganda and recruiting operations.
(AP, 3/27/12)
2012 Mar 27, In Sudan 3 people were killed, including one apparently shot dead by government troops, in a dispute over a market in the Darfur region.
(AFP, 3/28/12)
2012 Mar 27, Swiss authorities said five out of every 1,000 deaths in Switzerland now involve assisted suicide, with women more likely to die this way than men.
(AP, 3/27/12)
2012 Mar 27, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad toured the flashpoint Baba Amr neighborhood of Homs. A spokesman for UN envoy Kofi Annan said Syria has accepted his 6-point plan to end the bloodshed in the country. Syrian security forces reportedly killed 10 people as the regime pushed to retake areas still under rebel control.
(AFP, 3/27/12)(AP, 3/27/12)
2013 Mar 27, Eric Harroun of Phoenix, Az., was arrested at Dulles Int’l. Airport upon returning to the US from Turkey, where he had described to FBI agents his journey to the front lines of Syria's civil war with fighters from the al-Nusra Front, a designated terrorist organization also referred to as al Qaeda in Iraq. Harroun served in the US Army from 2000 to 2003.
(AP, 3/29/13)
2013 Mar 27, The California Dept. of Toxic Substances Control said a toxic waste dump site near Kettleman city has agreed to pay $311,000 in fines for failing to report 72 hazardous materials spills over the last 4 years.
(SFC, 3/29/13, p.D7)
2013 Mar 27, Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam said he would not expand Medicaid in his state joining 18 other Republican governors who have rejected expansion for now.
(SFC, 3/28/13, p.A9)
2013 Mar 27, A team of int’l. scientists reported the discovery of dozens of signposts in DNA that can help reveal a person’s risk for breast, ovarian or prostate cancer.
(SFC, 3/28/13, p.A10)
2013 Mar 27, An Afghan teenager killed US soldier Sgt. Michael Cable (26) in Nangarhar province by stabbing him in the neck while he played with a group of local children. The young man escaped to nearby Pakistan.
(AP, 4/1/13)
2013 Mar 27, The Bank of England said that its recommendations for Britain's banks to plug a 25 billion-pound capital shortfall by December won't call on further taxpayer funds.
(AP, 3/27/13)
2013 Mar 27, Abu Qatada, a radical Muslim cleric, thwarted another effort by Britain to have him deported to Jordan after a court accepted arguments that he would face testimony obtained by torture.
(AP, 3/27/13)
2013 Mar 27, It was reported the Ecuador planned to auction off 7.4 million acres of Amazon rain forest to Chinese oil companies. 7 indigenous groups said they had not consented to the projects.
(SSFC, 3/31/13, p.A4)
2013 Mar 27, Egypt's naval forces captured three scuba divers who were trying to cut an undersea Internet cable in the Mediterranean. Telecom executives meanwhile blamed a weeklong Internet slowdown on damage caused to another cable by a ship.
(AP, 3/27/13)
2013 Mar 27, An Egyptian appeals court annulled a November presidential decree dismissing the country's top prosecutor and ordered him reinstated.
(AP, 3/27/13)
2013 Mar 27, In Germany work crews backed by about 250 police removed parts of the Berlin Wall known as the East Side Gallery before dawn to make way for an upscale building project, despite demands by protesters that the site be preserved.
(AP, 3/27/13)
2013 Mar 27, In Iraq a parked car bomb ripped through a residential area in the town of Musayyib, killing three civilians and wounding 14. Another bomb targeted a restaurant in the town of Madain, killing two people and wounding 11.
(AP, 3/27/13)
2013 Mar 27, In Japan Takafumi Horie, the former chief executive of Internet portal Livedoor, was released from prison. He was jailed in 2011 for fraud. While in prison he gathered almost one million Twitter followers.
(Econ, 4/6/13, p.74)
2013 Mar 27, In northern Mali the National Movement for the Liberation of the Azawad, or NMLA, announced that Mohamed Aly Ag Al Bessati would serve as the civil administrator for Kidal.
(AP, 3/28/13)
2013 Mar 27, In Mexico hundreds of armed vigilantes took control of Tierra Colorado, a town on a major highway in the Pacific coast state of Guerrero, arresting local police officers and searching homes in response to the March 25 killing of vigilante leader Guadalupe Quinones Carbajal (28). Several opened fire on a car of Mexican tourists headed to the beach for Easter week.
(AP, 3/27/13)
2013 Mar 27, In central Nigeria an assault on a village in the Riyom local government area killed 28 people.
(AP, 3/30/13)
2013 Mar 27, North Korea cut its last military hotline with Seoul, a link that has been essential in operating the last major symbol of inter-Korean cooperation: an industrial complex in the North that employs hundreds of workers from the South.
(AP, 3/27/13)
2013 Mar 27, In South Africa leaders of the five BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) agreed to create a development bank to help fund their $4.5 trillion infrastructure programs — a direct challenge to the World Bank that they accuse of Western bias.
(AP, 3/27/13)
2013 Mar 27, A Sri Lanka judge announced that more than 150 human skulls and bones recovered from a mass grave Lanka were buried there about 25 years ago, strengthening suspicion that they belonged to suspected Marxist rebels killed at the time. The skeletal remains were found inside the premises of a government hospital dated to between 1987 and 1990.
(AP, 3/27/13)
2013 Mar 27, Syria's Pres. Assad appealed o the leaders of a five-nation economic forum meeting in South Africa to help end his country's two-year conflict. Assad sent a letter urging the leaders of the five nation BRICS forum — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — to "work for an immediate cessation of violence. The Observatory said rebels overran three army posts near Bir Ajam.
(AP, 3/27/13)
2013 Mar 27, A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck central Taiwan, killing at one person and injuring 19 as it damaged buildings on the island.
(AP, 3/27/13)
2013 Mar 27, The Yugoslav war crimes tribunal in The Hague convicted two senior Bosnian Serbs of war crimes in the 1992-1995 Bosnian war. Mico Stanisic and Stojan Zupljanin were each sentenced to 22 years in prison. In 2016 appeals were rejected.
(SFC, 3/28/13, p.A3)(SFC, 7/1/16, p.A2)
2013 Mar 27, Zimbabwe's High Court freed on bail four senior officials from PM Morgan Tsvangirai's party accused of illegally collecting information on high level corruption.
(AP, 3/27/13)
2014 Mar 27, A visibly energized President Barack Obama held a nearly hour-long audience with Pope Francis at the Vatican, expressing his great admiration for the pontiff and inviting him to visit the White House.
(AP, 3/27/14)
2014 Mar 27, The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a report saying one in 68 US children has been diagnosed with autism. The CDC report was based on data from 2010.
(SFC, 3/28/14, p.D1)
2014 Mar 27, The US Mint put new collector gold and silver coins on sale to commemorate the Baseball Hall of Fame which celebrates its 75th anniversary this year. The design by Cassie McFarland's featured a curved baseball glove.
(AOL.com, 3/13/14)
2014 Mar 27, The US Air Force fired nine midlevel nuclear commanders and said it will discipline dozens of junior officers at a nuclear base in Great Falls, Montana, in response to an exam cheating scandal.
(SFC, 3/28/14, p.A6)
2014 Mar 27, Police in southern California served over two dozen search warrants and made six arrested in an investigation targeting the theft of baggage at Los Angeles Int’l. Airport. Those arrested did not directly work for the airport.
(SFC, 3/28/14, p.A6)
2014 Mar 27, Dr. James Schlesinger (1929), former US defense secretary under Presidents Nixon and Ford, died in NYC. He also served as the first secretary of the new Energy Dept. under Pres. Carter. In 1960 he authored “The Political Economy of National Security: A study of the economic aspects of the contemporary power struggle."
(SFC, 3/28/14, p.D2)
2014 Mar 27, Mark Stock (62), a realist figure painter, died in Oakland, Ca. He was known for a series of butlers in tuxedos including “"The Butler’s in Love" (1989).
(SFC, 3/28/14, p.D3)
2014 Mar 27, In his first visit to Afghanistan as Iran's president, Hassan Rouhani called for regional unity as regional leaders celebrated the Persian New Year in Kabul.
(AP, 3/27/14)
2014 Mar 27, Cambodia's opposition party said it will defy a government ban on meeting in one of the capital's public parks, setting up a possible clash with authorities.
(AP, 3/27/14)
2014 Mar 27, In the Central African Republic at least 9 people were killed when extremists threw hand grenades at a crowd of mourners during a funeral service in Bangui. A recent uptick in violence had seen around 20 people killed in Bangui since March 22.
(AFP, 3/28/14)(AP, 3/29/14)
2014 Mar 27, China’s Defense Ministry said it will beef up its internet security after recent reports that the US government spied on a major telecommunications firm.
(Reuters, 3/27/14)
2014 Mar 27, China’s Xinhua state news said a Wuhu city court has sentenced to death a rapist who posed as a female on social networks to lure 16 girls to meet him. Wang Yong (40) was sentenced earlier this month for raping the girls aged 12 to 16 starting in 2009.
(AP, 3/27/14)
2014 Mar 27, In China a man (34) involved in a property dispute stabbed six people to death in a Beijing district and injured others.
(AP, 3/27/14)
2014 Mar 27, Colombia’s Pres. Juan Manuel Santos said Venezuela’s government has accepted the political opposition’s conditions for dialogue.
(SFC, 3/28/14, p.A2)
2014 Mar 27, Egypt’s Field Marshal Abdel Fattah al-Sisi ditched his military fatigues and resigned as Egypt's defense minister, a day after announcing he would run for president.
(AFP, 3/27/14)
2014 Mar 27, A French court ordered Closer magazine to pay 15,000 euros for publishing photos of what it said was a helmeted President Francois Hollande visiting an actress for a secret tryst. Julie Gayet had sued the magazine for violation of privacy.
(AP, 3/27/14)
2014 Mar 27, Germany's main airports were hit by a strike as public sector workers raised pressure on the government in pay talks.
(Reuters, 3/27/14)
2014 Mar 27, Iraqi army forces began shelling the region of Zoba, just south of Fallujah, sparking clashes with militants. At least 3 people were killed and 53 wounded in the shelling and firefights. A series of attacks targeting commercial areas killed 26 people. In Ramadi 4 soldiers were killed and 10 wounded in a booby-trapped building.
(AFP, 3/28/14)(AP, 3/28/14)(AP, 4/1/14)
2014 Mar 27, Israel said it will allow into the Gaza Strip construction materials and electric equipment to help build a Turkish-sponsored hospital, in a possible sign of improving ties with Ankara.
(Reuters, 3/27/14)
2014 Mar 27, Japan’s Shizuoka District Court suspended the death sentence and ordered a retrial for Iwao Hakamada (78). The world's longest-serving death row inmate had been convicted in the 1966 murder of a family and was sentenced to death in 1968. The judge who freed him found that police and prosecutors had fabricated evidence in the original trial.
(AP, 3/27/14)(Econ, 12/5/15, p.39)
2014 Mar 27, Lebanon’s government ordered the army and security forces to control the security situation in Tripoli and to seize arms caches in the city. A soldier was killed by two masked men on motorbikes in Tripoli. A day earlier a municipal worker was murdered in the same fashion.
(AFP, 3/28/14)
2014 Mar 27, In Libya slain dictator Moamer Kadhafi's son Saadi asked Libyans for forgiveness in a taped interview released by prison authorities three weeks after his extradition from neighboring Niger.
(AFP, 3/28/14)
2014 Mar 27, In Macau "The Grandmaster" won best picture, best director for Wong Kar Wai and five other honors at the Asian Film Awards.
(AP, 3/28/14)
2014 Mar 27, Mexican soldiers and police killed 10 Zetas drug cartel suspects in a gunfight in the eastern state of Veracruz.
(AFP, 3/28/14)
2014 Mar 27, In Myanmar Buddhist-led mobs tore through streets hurling stones at the offices and residences of international aid workers in western Rakhine state, prompting the evacuation of almost all non-essential staff. One girl (11) was killed when police fired into the air to disperse crowds.
(AP, 3/27/14)(SFC, 3/29/14, p.A5)
2014 Mar 27, In Qatar Matthew and Grace Huang, an American couple charged with starving their adopted daughter (8) to death, were sentenced to three years in prison. Their daughter was pronounced dead when the Huangs took her to the hospital in January 2013.
(AP, 3/27/14)
2014 Mar 27, The Philippine government signed a peace accord with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, the country's largest Muslim rebel group. The deal grants largely Muslim areas of the southern Mindanao region greater political autonomy in exchange for an end to armed rebellion.
(AP, 3/27/14)
2014 Mar 27, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin said that Russia would develop its own credit card system to reduce reliance on Western-based companies and soften the potential blow from US and EU sanctions.
(Reuters, 3/27/14)
2014 Mar 27, Saudi Arabia’s reigning King Abdullah (~89) appointed by royal decree his youngest surviving brother, Muqrin (b.1945), as 2nd in line to the throne after ailing crown prince Salman (78).
(Econ, 4/5/14, p.40)
2014 Mar 27, South Korea's military seized a North Korean fishing boat that it said had crossed a disputed maritime border after ignoring warnings to retreat amid growing tension between the two sides.
(Reuters, 3/27/14)
2014 Mar 27, South Korea formally approved a request from women rights activists, including one "comfort woman", to meet North Korean counterparts at a conference on Japan's wartime use of sex slaves.
(AFP, 3/27/14)
2014 Mar 27, Syrian forces bombarded rebel positions with artillery and warplanes in the Mediterranean coastal province of Latakia.
(AP, 3/27/14)
2014 Mar 27, In Turkey KanalTurk television station, linked to opponents of PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said authorities have withdrawn its license to broadcast nationally just days before crucial local elections.
(AP, 3/27/14)
2014 Mar 27, A scandal in Uganda over alleged sex abuse of female runners deepened after it emerged that Moses Kipsiro, the athlete who exposed the issue, was dropped from the national half-marathon team.
(AFP, 3/27/14)
2014 Mar 27, Ukraine PM Arseniy Yatsenyuk warned that everyone is going to feel some pain from necessary financial reforms ahead as the International Monetary Fund pledged up to $18 billion in loans to prop up the teetering economy. Former PM Yulia Tymoshenko announced that she will run for president in the vote set for May 25.
(AP, 3/27/14)
2014 Mar 27, The UN passed a non-binding resolution declaring invalid Crimea's Moscow-backed referendum on seceding from Ukraine with 100 votes in favor, 11 against and 58 abstentions in the 193-nation General Assembly. Russia threatened several Eastern European and Central Asian states with retaliation if they voted in favor of a United Nations General Assembly resolution.
(Reuters, 3/28/14)(Reuters, 3/29/14)
2014 Mar 27, The UN's top human rights body agreed to launch an international criminal investigation into alleged abuses from Sri Lanka's ended civil war, approving a US-led resolution over the strong protests of Sri Lanka's government.
(AP, 3/27/14)
2015 Mar 27, The White House announced a five-year plan to fight the threat of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
(SFC, 3/28/15, p.A5)
2015 Mar 27, Former Sec. of State Hillary Clinton said she had permanently deleted all e-mails from the private server she used to conduct officials business.
(SFC, 3/28/15, p.A6)
2015 Mar 27, In Boston police Officer John Moynihan (34) was shot in the face by suspect Angelo West (41) following a traffic stop. West was killed as he tried to run away. Moynihan was hospitalized and put into an induced coma.
(SSFC, 3/29/15, p.A10)
2015 Mar 27, In NYC Moises Lucon (26) and Nicholas Figueroa (23) were killed after an explosion brought down three buildings and damaged a fourth property in the East Village, injuring 22 people.
(AP, 3/27/15)(SSFC, 3/29/15, p.A12)(SFC, 3/30/15, p.A5)
2015 Mar 27, In Bangladesh at least 10 people were killed and dozens more injured in a stampede during a Hindu religious gathering in Langalbandh.
(AP, 3/27/15)
2015 Mar 27, In Dominica a police sergeant and four officers were charged with murder. They were accused in last year's death of a prisoner found unresponsive in his cell. Police have said that Joshua Etienne had fractured ribs and a punctured lung.
(AP, 3/28/15)
2015 Mar 27, Egyptian and Saudi Arabian warships deployed to the Bab al-Mandab strait off Yemen to secure the strategic sea passage.
(SFC, 3/28/15, p.A3)
2015 Mar 27, In eastern Indonesia an estimated 4,000 foreign fishermen were reported stranded on a number of remote islands, including men reported to have been enslaved. Some migrant workers from Myanmar said they had been brought to Indonesia from Thailand and forced to work on trawlers with Thai captains.
(AP, 3/27/15)
2015 Mar 27, Iraqi troops pressed their push in Tikrit as fighter planes pounded IS targets from above. Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani called for unity among the country's forces battling the IS group.
(AP, 3/27/15)
2015 Mar 27, Israel said it will transfer Palestinian tax revenues that were being withheld as punishment for a Palestinian application to join the Int’l. Criminal Court.
(SFC, 3/28/15, p.A2)
2015 Mar 27, Italy’s highest criminal court acquitted Ms. Knox, an American, and her Italian ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito of murdering British student Meredith Kercher in 2007.
(AP, 3/28/15)
2015 Mar 27, Kyrgyzstan’s secret police, the GKNB, raided the office and home of lawyer Khusanbay Saliev, who represented arrested Uzbek Imam Rashot Kamalov.
(Econ., 5/2/15, p.35)
2015 Mar 27, In Liberia woman, who last week became the country's first Ebola patient in more than a month, died. Two new suspected cases were also reported identified.
(AFP, 3/28/15)
2015 Mar 27, In The Netherlands trains, trams and planes ground to a temporary halt in and around Amsterdam as a huge power outage hit the Dutch capital and surrounding towns. Power was soon restored.
(AFP, 3/27/15)
2015 Mar 27, Nigeria's military announced that troops had retaken the town of Gwoza from Boko Haram, from which the group declared their caliphate last year. Suspected Boko Haram gunmen beheaded 23 people and set fire to homes in Buratai, on the eve of general elections. Elsewhere in the restive northeast, suspected Islamist militants killed at least 7 people in separate attacks in the Gombe state.
(AFP, 3/27/15)(AFP, 3/29/15)
2015 Mar 27, In Pakistan a roadside bomb on a motorcycle hit a police bus in Karachi and left 10 people wounded. The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility.
(AP, 3/27/15)
2015 Mar 27, Sierra Leone's 6 million people were told to stay home for three days, except for religious services, beginning today as the West African nation attempted a final push to rid itself of Ebola.
(AP, 3/27/15)
2015 Mar 27, In Somalia suspected Islamist fighters stormed the popular Maka Al-Mukarramah Hotel in Mogadishu, trapping government officials inside. The attack killed at least 24 people, including six attackers.
(Reuters, 3/27/15)(AP, 3/28/15)
2015 Mar 27, South Africa's state power company Eskom said more than 1,000 workers building a much-needed new power plant had been sacked for staging an illegal strike two days earlier, as the country grapples with rolling electricity cuts.
(AFP, 3/27/15)
2015 Mar 27, In Syria Islamist rebels made fresh advances on the edges of Idlib city, after fierce clashes that have left dozens of dead.
(AFP, 3/27/15)
2015 Mar 27, The Turkish parliament passed a stripped down version of its controversial homeland security bill that has enraged the opposition, after a 16-hour debate that lasted all night.
(AFP, 3/27/15)
2015 Mar 27, In Yemen at least 21 Shiite rebels were killed when residents in a tribal southern region opened fire at their vehicles. Warplanes targeted Houthi forces controlling Sanaa and their northern heartland and, in a boost for Riyadh, fellow monarchy Morocco said it would join the rapidly-assembled Sunni Muslim coalition against the Shi'ite Muslim group.
(AFP, 3/27/15)(Reuters, 3/27/15)
2015 Mar 27, Separatists in eastern Ukraine handed over the bodies of 22 government soldiers killed during the fierce, months-long battle over the airport near the rebel stronghold of Donetsk.
(AP, 3/27/15)
2015 Mar 27, The UN High Commissioner for Refugees said that LRA fighters kidnapped 16 people last weekend who had been working in their fields in Congo, just over the border from Central African Republic. The rebels released 13 of them but were still holding three refugee boys.
(AP, 3/27/15)
2016 Mar 27, In southwestern Alaska the Pavlof Volcano erupted sending ash 20,000 feet into the air.
(SFC, 3/29/16, p.A14)
2016 Mar 27, In Algeria at least 12 soldiers were killed when a military helicopter crashed in the south of the country.
(Reuters, 3/27/16)
2016 Mar 27, Basque separatist group ETA called for peace talks with the Spanish and French governments and the return of ETA prisoners to the northern Basque region.
(AFP, 3/27/16)
2016 Mar 27, Belgian investigators launched 13 anti-terror raids in the capital and two other cities and taking four more people in custody. Riot police fired water cannon to disperse far-right football hooligans who disrupted mourners at a shrine for victims of the Brussels attacks.
(AP, 3/27/16)(AFP, 3/27/16)
2016 Mar 27, In Greece hundreds of migrants, egged on by activists, protested near the fence separating Macedonia from Greece, demanding that the border be opened to allow them to continue their journey into central Europe.
(AP, 3/27/16)
2016 Mar 27, Guyana's government said it plans to establish several new jungle capitals on the border regions with its South American neighbors as it moves to develop its mineral-rich interior.
(AP, 3/27/16)
2016 Mar 27, Iraqi security forces stepped aside to allow influential Iraqi Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to start his sit-in in Baghdad's highly fortified Green Zone after weeks of protests in the capital. Sadr met with PM Haider al-Abadi as he began the sit-in.
(AP, 3/27/16)(SFC, 3/28/16, p.A2)
2016 Mar 27, Italian authorities announced the arrest of Djamal Eddine Ouali (40), an Algerian man who was part of a counterfeiting ring that provided forged documents to people involved in the Paris and Brussels terrorist attacks.
(SFC, 3/28/16, p.A2)
2016 Mar 27, In Japan girl (15) escaped from suspect Kabu Terauchi's apartment in downtown Tokyo while he was shopping in Akihabara. She had been held captive for nearly two years. Investigators captured Terauchi in the early hours of March 28 near a forest west of Tokyo.
(AP, 3/28/16)
2016 Mar 27, World Bank Pres. Jim Yong Kim said Jordan will get a cheap $100 million loan to help create 100,000 jobs for Syrian refugees and its own citizens.
(AP, 3/27/16)(SFC, 3/28/16, p.A2)
2016 Mar 27, Mexico’s federal police reported that authorities in Oaxaca have captured Juan Manuel Alvarez Inzunza, identified as the chief financial operator behind drug kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman's empire, who they say laundered some $4 billion in the past decade.
(AFP, 3/27/16)
2016 Mar 27, Thousands of Moldovans marched through their capital calling for reunification with Romania, restoring a union which lasted from 1918 to 1940.
(AP, 3/27/16)
2016 Mar 27, Dutch police found ammunition in the house of a French national arrested in Rotterdam on suspicion of plotting an attack. The man (32), thought to be called Anis B., was detained on suspicion of receiving orders from the Islamic State group to attack targets in France along with Reda Kriket, who was detained near Paris last week.
(AFP, 3/28/16)
2016 Mar 27, In Nigeria 3 people were killed and several wounded when an oil pipeline belonging to Italy's ENI exploded during repair works in the southern Delta region. Workers had been repairing the pipeline when it caught fire.
(Reuters, 3/29/16)
2016 Mar 27, In eastern Pakistan a bomb blast in Gulshan-e-Iqbal park in Lahore killed 74 people and wounded some 340. The suicide bombing was claimed by the Pakistani Taliban's Jamaat-ur-Ahrar faction.
(Reuters, 3/28/16)(Econ, 4/2/16, p.39)
2016 Mar 27, Qatar's state-funded broadcaster Al-Jazeera announced a fresh round of job cuts with around 500 positions being lost, most of them at the network's Doha headquarters.
(AFP, 3/27/16)
2016 Mar 27, In Serbia thousands marched against NATO and the West, carrying banners praising Russian President Vladimir Putin. The march marked the 17th anniversary of NATO's 78-day intervention in Serbia against its bloody crackdown against Kosovo Albanian separatists in 1999.
(AP, 3/27/16)
2016 Mar 27, Syrian troops recaptured the ancient city of Palmyra from the Islamic State group and pledged to build on the win with an advance against other jihadist strongholds.
(AFP, 3/27/16)
2016 Mar 27, Thailand seized 87 ivory tusks, worth an estimated $800,000, found in a dozen barrels sent from Mozambique on a Kenya Airways flight. A routine X-ray at Suvarnabhumi International Airport detected the contraband.
(AP, 4/5/16)
2016 Mar 27, The top security court in the United Arab Emirates sentenced 38 people to prison in connection to a cell accused of plotting terrorist attacks and seeking to overthrow the government to create an Islamic state.
(AP, 3/27/16)
2016 Mar 27, In Yemen a military coalition led by Saudi Arabia that is fighting a war with Yemen's Shiite rebels traded 109 Yemeni prisoners taken during the fighting in the neighboring country for nine Saudis who were held captive.
(AP, 3/28/16)
2016 Mar 27, In southern Yemen US air raids killed 14 men suspected of belonging to al Qaeda.
(Reuters, 3/28/16)
2017 Mar 27, The White House confirmed that Jared Kushner, president Donald Trump's son-in-law has, volunteered to answer questions before the Senate Intelligence Committee about arranging meetings with the Russian ambassador and other officials.
(AP, 3/27/17)
2017 Mar 27, The United States, Britain and France were among almost 40 countries that did not join talks on a nuclear weapons ban treaty starting at the UN.
(Reuters, 3/27/17)
2017 Mar 27, In Oakland, Ca. an early morning fire killed three people at a large transitional housing building at 2551 San Pablo Ave. One person remained missing.
(SFC, 3/28/17, p.A1)
2017 Mar 27, National Football League (NFL) owners voted 37-1 to approve the Oakland Raiders’ move to Las Vegas.
(SFC, 3/28/17, p.A1)
2017 Mar 27, Michigan and the city of Flint agreed to replace thousands of home water lines to settle a lawsuit by residents over lead-contaminated water.
(SFC, 3/28/17, p.A7)
2017 Mar 27, In Bangladesh a special anti-terrorism unit managed to kill the last four Islamic militants in Sylhet. Police had cordoned off the area on March 24.
(Econ, 4/1/17, p.32)
2017 Mar 27, French energy company Total announced the launching a multi-billion-dollar petrochemical joint venture in Texas as it tries to profit from the "business-friendly environment" under the current US administration.
(AP, 3/27/17)
2017 Mar 27, French Guiana faced a nationwide strike over crime and economic difficulties, amid protests that have paralyzed the French territory in South America, halted flights and a rocket launch and prompted a US travel warning.
(AP, 3/27/17)
2017 Mar 27, In Germany thieves broke into Berlin’s Bode Museum before dawn and made off with a massive 100-kilogram (221-pound) gold coin worth millions of dollars. In 2018 prosecutors indicted four young men for the theft of the "Big Maple Leaf" coin.
(AP, 3/27/17)(SFC, 10/18/18, p.A2)
2017 Mar 27, Fraport Greece said the European Union is clearing a 280 million euro loan from the European Investment Bank to the company, which won the tender to upgrade and operate 14 regional Greek airports.
(AP, 3/28/17)
2017 Mar 27, Lufthansa announced a code-sharing deal with Hong Kong-based Cathay Pacific under which the German airline and its Swiss and Austrian Airlines units will offer new connections to Australia and New Zealand.
(AP, 3/27/17)
2017 Mar 27, Hong Kong police launched a fresh round of arrests of student leaders and other prominent figures involved with the huge 2014 "Umbrella Movement" pro-democracy protests.
(AP, 3/27/17)
2017 Mar 27, Israeli police arrested more than 20 Jewish ultra-Orthodox suspected sex offenders whose alleged crimes were known to their insular communities but concealed from the authorities.
(AFP, 3/27/17)
2017 Mar 27, In central Japan an avalanche killed seven high school students and a teacher who were among a group of almost 50 on mountain climbing training.
(Reuters, 3/27/17)
2017 Mar 27, In Mali former rebels and opposition parties boycotted a national summit enshrined in the country's 2015 peace deal, laying bare divisions with the government and armed groups it relies on for security.
(AFP, 3/27/17)
2017 Mar 27, In Mexico a priest was shot to death in the Pacific coast state of Nayarit.
(AP, 3/30/17)
2017 Mar 27, In the northern Netherlands two people were killed when a train hit a car at a rail crossing near Harlingen.
(AP, 3/27/17)
2017 Mar 27, The foreign minister of Nigeria visited Poland an effort to develop economic, military and security ties with the fast-growing economy in central Europe.
(AP, 3/27/17)
2017 Mar 27, In Pakistan a special 3-day anti-polio drive was launched in Islamabad after traces of the virus were found in the city's sewage system.
(AP, 3/28/17)
2017 Mar 27, Hamas authorities partially reopened the crossing between the Gaza Strip and Israel, after a one-day closure following the assassination of one of the group's leaders.
(AFP, 3/27/17)
2017 Mar 27, Qatar PM Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa al-Thani said his country will invest £5 billion in Britain within five years in a boost for the post-Brexit economy.
(AFP, 3/27/17)
2017 Mar 27, Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was sentenced to 15 days behind bars and fined after staging the biggest anti-corruption protests in years, an act branded a "provocation" by the Kremlin.
(AFP, 3/27/17)
2017 Mar 27, Saudi Arabia cut taxes on oil companies in a major move that could attract investments in its energy giant Aramco, expected to be offered to investors in 2018.
(AFP, 3/27/17)
2017 Mar 27, In Syria hundreds of rebels left their last bastion in Homs city, resuming an evacuation expected to be among the largest of its kind under a Russian-backed deal with the government.
(Reuters, 3/27/17)
2017 Mar 27, Thailand's broadcast regulator ordered television channel Voice TV to suspend its over-the-air broadcasting for a week for what it called biased reports affecting national security. The station is controlled by the family of former PM Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted by a 2006 army coup and is in exile to avoid a prison term for corruption.
(AP, 3/27/17)
2018 Mar 27, It was reported that the 2020 US Census will include a question about citizenship status, a move that brought swift condemnation from Democrats, who said it would intimidate immigrants and discourage them from participating.
(AP, 3/27/18)
2018 Mar 27, In Pennsylvania Taiwanese exchange student An Tso Sun (18) was arrested for threatening to shoot up the Monsignor Bonner and Archbishop Prendergast High School, which he attended in Upper Darby.
(AP, 3/30/18)
2018 Mar 27, Texas executed Rosendo Rodriguez III (29) for the slaying of a Lubbock woman, whose body was stuffed into a new piece of luggage and tossed in the trash. he had also confessed to killing a girl (16) and similarly disposing her body.
(SFC, 3/28/18, p.A5)
2018 Mar 27, Waymo, formerly known as Google's self-driving car project, announced a partnership with Jaguar Land Rover to build self-driving Jaguar luxury SUVs for the company's autonomous Silicon Valley taxi fleet.
(SFC, 3/28/18, p.C1)
2018 Mar 27, Algerian doctors expanded a pay strike and teachers resumed one, putting pressure on President Abdelaziz Bouteflika and his prime minister at a time when resources are limited.
(Reuters, 3/27/18)
2018 Mar 27, Australia and Ireland joined more than 20 other nations in expelling Russian diplomats in response to the nerve agent attack on a former Russian military intelligence officer and his daughter in Britain.
(AP, 3/27/18)
2018 Mar 27, In Belgium hundreds of taxis brought traffic to a standstill in Brussels to protest proposed government reforms said to favor ride-hailing competitors like Uber.
(AFP, 3/27/18)
2018 Mar 27, In Brazil some 3,400 soldiers and 500 police entered the Lins Complex in Rio de Janeiro in a show of force following recent violence.
(SFC, 3/28/18, p.A2)
2018 Mar 27, Bulgaria, which holds the rotating EU presidency, said it has recalled its ambassador from Russia to discuss the nerve agent attack in Britain which London blames on Moscow.
(Reuters, 3/27/18)
2018 Mar 27, Bulgarian prosecutors said they have launched an investigation into the owner of a herd of around 100 horses after they were found starving to death or already dead on snow-bound Mount Osogovo.
(Reuters, 3/27/18)
2018 Mar 27, In China Mindong Bishop Vincenzo Guo Xijin was released after spending a night in detention.
(AP, 3/28/18)
2018 Mar 27, Congo DRC authorities said they are investigating exiled opposition leader Moise Katumbi, who has vowed to stand in December's presidential elections.
(AFP, 3/28/18)
2018 Mar 27, In Congo DRC rebels from a Ugandan Islamist group called the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) killed at least 11 civilians during a raid on the city of Beni late today. The next day FIFA opened an investigation less than three months before Russia hosts the World Cup.
(Reuters, 3/28/18)
2018 Mar 27, Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades hailed as "unprecedented" the EU's condemnation of Turkey for blocking his government's search for offshore oil and gas.
(AFP, 3/27/18)
2018 Mar 27, In Egypt turnout appeared low citizens voted on the second day of an election that President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi is virtually certain to win. All serious rivals had been either arrested or intimidated into dropping out.
(AP, 3/27/18)
2018 Mar 27, Ethiopia's ruling coalition named a new chairman late today. A vote to install Abiy Ahmed (42), a leader from the Oromo ethnic group, as prime minster was expected in the coming days in parliament.
(AP, 3/28/18)(AFP, 3/28/18)
2018 Mar 27, Europe's bailout fund approved a 6.7 billion euro ($8.32 billion) loan installment to Greece as part of its third international rescue program, with payment of the first 5.7 billion euros expected this week.
(AP, 3/27/18)
2018 Mar 27, France's top appeals court upheld a 30,000-euro fine against former far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen for dismissing the Nazi gas chambers as a "detail" of history.
(AFP, 3/27/18)
2018 Mar 27, Kidnappers in waters off Ghana hijacked a fishing boat and steered it toward the waters of Nigeria before using a speed boat to move three South Koreans working on the boat elsewhere.
(AP, 3/31/18)
2018 Mar 27, An Indonesian court ordered Australian Baker Joshua James to undergo rehabilitation after finding him guilty of possessing a small amount of drugs on the tourist island of Bali.
(AP, 3/27/18)
2018 Mar 27, Iraqi PM Haider al-Abadi said government armed forces will prevent Kurdish militants based in northern Iraq from staging cross-border attacks against Turkey.
(AP, 3/27/18)
2018 Mar 27, Police in southern Italy detained Mohy Eldin Mostafa Omer Abdel Rahman (59), an Egyptian imam, who ran a cultural center where he allegedly preached extremist and violent interpretations of Islam to children.
(AP, 3/27/18)
2018 Mar 27, In Kenya columnists from the country's top media group resigned en masse a day after police punched and kicked journalists covering the attempted deportation of an opposition politician at Nairobi airport.
(Reuters, 3/27/18)
2018 Mar 27, Kosovo Serbs set up a roadblock in northern Kosovo and their representatives walked out of Kosovo's government a day after the arrest and expulsion of a senior Serbian government official that has refueled tensions between the Balkan foes.
(AP, 3/27/18)
2018 Mar 27, Moldova's foreign ministry ordered three Russian diplomats to leave the former Soviet republic within seven days.
(AP, 3/27/18)
2018 Mar 27, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said NATO has expelled seven diplomats from Russia's mission to the alliance and blocked the appointment of three others over the nerve agent attack in Britain this month.
(Reuters, 3/27/18)
2018 Mar 27, It was reported that Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the former head of NATO and a current deputy chairman of Latvian bank Norvik, has asked the prime minister of Latvia to create an international task force to guide the country in cleaning up its banking sector, which has been rocked by accusations of money laundering and bribery.
(AP, 3/27/18)
2018 Mar 27, In the Netherlands an appeals court ruled that Dutch police were liable for the April 9, 2011, mall shooting in which six people were killed as the gunman should never have been granted an gun license.
(AFP, 3/27/18)
2018 Mar 27, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's secretive talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing was confirmed after his return home.
(AP, 3/28/18)
2018 Mar 27, In Pakistan gunmen opened fire on a rickshaw carrying a transgender woman who went by the name Pinky and her male companion. Both later died of their gunshot wounds.
(AP, 3/28/18)
2018 Mar 27, In Russia thousands of angry residents rallied in Kemerovo to demand a full probe following a fire in a shopping mall that killed at least 64 people, many of them children. Russian President Vladimir Putin flew to the city to look at the investigation into the blaze and declared March 28 a day of national mourning.
(AP, 3/27/18)
2018 Mar 27, In Russia monkey chants could be heard from the crowd in St. Petersburg when black French players touched the ball in a friendly against Russia. The abuse was also audible on a TV broadcast after Paul Pogba scored France's second goal in a 3-1 win.
(AP, 3/28/18)
2018 Mar 27, In Spain demonstrators angered by the detention of former leader Carles Puigdemont blocked highways across Catalonia and roads in central Barcelona, as the separatist politician remained in a German jail pending a decision on Spain's extradition request.
(AP, 3/27/18)
2018 Mar 27, In Syria thousands of people departed eastern Ghouta for rebel territory near the Turkish border, the third group to leave under a deal brokered by Russia to surrender the enclave near Damascus to the government.
(Reuters, 3/27/18)
2018 Mar 27, Tanzania charged six opposition leaders with sedition and incitement to violence, a move branded by critics of the government as an effort to silence dissent.
(Reuters, 3/28/18)
2018 Mar 27, The UN Security Council unanimously backed a resolution that tasks the peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo with helping to prepare elections and avoid deadly violence.
(AFP, 3/27/18)
2019 Mar 27, The head of the US Customs and Border Protection held a press conference in El Paso to say the breaking point had arrived. Arrests all along the southern border have skyrocketed in recent months. Border agents were on track to make 100,000 arrests and denials of entry at the southern border this month.
(AP, 3/29/19)
2019 Mar 27, In Arkansas Andre Jackson (34) pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 25 years in prison for the murder of an Italian tourist during an attempted robbery. Carlo Marigliano was found shot to death in a crashed jeep outside a Little Rock apartment complex in July 2017.
(AP, 3/28/19)
2019 Mar 27, In California PG&E received approval from a bankruptcy court to fully access $5.5 billion in financing it lined up from major banks, despite objections from wildfire victims.
(SFC, 3/28/19, p.D1)
2019 Mar 27, Speaking in Hawaii Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen said her government has asked to purchase advanced new fighter jets and tanks from the US, a request that if approved, could set off new tensions between the US and China. Tsai said requests have been submitted for F-16V fighters and M1 Abrams tanks.
(AP, 3/28/19)
2019 Mar 27, In NYC Anna Sorokin (28), the one-time darling of the Big Apple social scene, stood trial on grand larceny and theft of services charges alleging she swindled $275,000 in a 10-month odyssey that saw her jetting to Omaha and Marrakesh before landing in a cell at Rikers Island.
(AP, 3/27/19)
2019 Mar 27, In Texas a helicopter crashed during a controlled burn at the Sam Houston National Forest killing Daniel Laird, a firefighter from northern California.
(SFC, 3/30/19, p.A6)
2019 Mar 27, In Virginia James Alex Fields Jr. pleaded guilty to 29 of 30 federal charges stemming from the 2017 "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville. Anti-racist activist Heather Heyer was killed when Fields plowed his car into a crowd of protesters.
(SFC, 3/28/19, p.A6)
2019 Mar 27, In Wisconsin the 3rd District Court of Appeals reinstated laws passed during the 2018 lame-duck legislative session that weaken powers of the Democratic governor and attorney general.
(SFC, 3/28/19, p.A6)
2019 Mar 27, The $1 million Turing Award went to artificial intelligence pioneers Yoshua Bengio, Yann LeCun and Geoffrey Hinton.
(SFC, 3/28/19, p.D2)
2019 Mar 27, Ford said it will close three factories in Russia, causing heavy job losses, as it pulls out of passenger vehicle manufacturing in the country.
(AP, 3/27/19)
2019 Mar 27, Algeria's biggest union and an influential party backed an army call for President Abdelaziz Bouteflika to quit in a managed exit plan that was quickly rejected by protesters demanding the overthrow of the entire political elite.
(Reuters, 3/27/19)
2019 Mar 27, Australia's top cyberwarrior revealed that his country actively participated in the electronic war against the Islamic State group in Syria, degrading their communications during military operations and actively stopping people seeking to join the extremist group.
(AP, 3/27/19)
2019 Mar 27, Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz confirmed that Martin Sellner, head of the far-right Identitarian Movement, received 1,500 euros in 2018 from the man charged with killing 50 people in mass shootings at mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. Sellner said he would give the money to a charitable foundation.
(Reuters, 3/27/19)
2019 Mar 27, British lawmakers debated multiple options for leaving the European Union as they sought to bring some clarity to the tortured Brexit process and stop the country tumbling out of the bloc within weeks with no exit plan in place. PM Theresa May offered to give up her job in exchange for her Brexit deal.
(AP, 3/27/19)(SFC, 3/28/19, p.A5)
2019 Mar 27, Amnesty International slammed plans by Brunei to implement what the rights group called "vicious" Islamic criminal laws such as stoning to death for gay sex and amputation for theft. The new sections under Brunei's Sharia Penal Code and will come into effect April 3.
(AP, 3/27/19)
2019 Mar 27, China said that it has expelled former Interpol President Meng Hongwei from public office and the ruling Communist Party as he awaits trial on corruption charges.
(AP, 3/27/19)
2019 Mar 27, A $436 million superyacht belonging to Russian billionaire Farkhad Akhmedov, at the center of one of the world's costliest divorce battles, was released by a Dubai court after being impounded last year. Forbes has estimated Akhmedov's net worth is $1.4 billion. The US Treasury Department has put him on a list of sanctioned Russian state-owned companies.
(Reuters, 3/28/19)
2019 Mar 27, A coalition of opposition parties urged Egyptians to vote against constitutional amendments that would potentially allow President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi to remain in power until 2034.
(AP, 3/27/19)
2019 Mar 27, The EU said it will suspend ship patrols that have rescued tens of thousands of migrants in the Mediterranean and brought them to Italy, amid deep resistance by populist-led Rome. The rescues were part of the EU's Operation Sophia which diplomats have decided to extend by six months beyond its March 31 expiry date, but without new ship deployments.
(AFP, 3/27/19)
2019 Mar 27, A report by the investigative group Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project said Gambia's ex-President Yahya Jammeh looted the tiny West African nation of $1 billion through fear and privilege during his 22 years in power, an amount more than 10 times higher than originally estimated by the new government, leaving the country in lingering debt. The $1 billion was used to finance his lavish lifestyle and is believed to still support him in his exile in Equatorial Guinea.
(AP, 3/28/19)
2019 Mar 27, India shot down one of its satellites in space with an anti-satellite missile. The government said the test was aimed at protecting India's assets in space against foreign attacks. The United States ran the first anti-satellite test in 1959, when satellites themselves were rare and new.
(Reuters, 3/27/19)
2019 Mar 27, Indonesia's Supreme Court rejected the appeal of Meliana, an ethnic Chinese woman, whose complaint about the volume of mosque loudspeakers led to an 18-month prison sentence for blasphemy.
(AP, 4/8/19)
2019 Mar 27, Iran's Pres. Hassan Rouhani travelled to flood-hit zones for the first time after nine days of heavy rains inundated most of the country and killed 43 people.
(AFP, 3/27/19)
2019 Mar 27, Iraqi court officials said a warrant has been issued for the arrest of the former governor of Nineveh on corruption charges after at least 90 people were killed in a ferry accident in the provincial capital Mosul. The warrant also included the arrest of some local officials after a court investigation concluded they colluded with the former governor in misusing their powers and committed financial violations. Nawfal Hammadi al-Sultan has fled to the Kurdish regional capital Erbil.
(Reuters, 3/27/19)
2019 Mar 27, In Japan a Nissan committee set up to strengthen corporate governance after the arrest of former Chairman Carlos Ghosn said an investigation found he had wielded too much power and recommended the scandal-hit automaker add more independent outside directors to its board and better oversee compensation and auditing.
(AP, 3/27/19)
2019 Mar 27, A Kazakh military helicopter with 13 people on board crashed on during exercises. There were casualties, but that it was not yet clear how many.
(Reuters, 3/27/19)
2019 Mar 27, The cargo ship El Hiblu 1 picked up 108 migrants stranded at sea. Some of them then hijacked the vessel when it became clear that it planned to take them back to Libya. The small tanker docked in Malta's port of Valletta the next day after Maltese special forces took control of the vessel. Three migrant teenagers were soon charged in a Maltese court with hijacking the small tanker. They pleaded not guilty.
(Reuters, 3/28/19)(Reuters, 3/30/19)
2019 Mar 27, A Lithuanian court found former Soviet defense minister Dmitry Yazov (94) guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity for his role in a 1991 crackdown against the Baltic state's pro-independence movement. 67 former military officials and army officers were being sentenced after a three-year trial.
(Reuters, 3/27/19)
2019 Mar 27, A report released today found gaps in the investigation and possible obstruction of justice in Malaysia's 2015 discovery of mass graves believed to be of Rohingya Muslims and Bangladeshis held in trafficking camps in a hilly jungle area on its border with Thailand. The report said Malaysian authorities were aware of the human trafficking camps more than four months before they were announced publicly.
(AP, 3/27/19)
2019 Mar 27, A Mozambique government official said five cases of cholera have been confirmed following Cyclone Idai that ravaged the country, killing at least 468 people.
(AFP, 3/27/19)
2019 Mar 27, In New Zealand Artemiy Dubovskiy (54) killed himself during a standoff with police. Police searched three of Dubovskiy's properties and found guns, ammunition and violent extremist content.
(http://tinyurl.com/y5vsnklh)(AP, 4/3/19)
2019 Mar 27, Pakistani police arrested a man for beating his wife in public after the incident triggered wide condemnation and uproar on social media. Faisal's wife had complained that her husband had stripped her naked, beat her and shaved her head for refusing to dance for his friends at their home.
(AP, 3/27/19)
2019 Mar 27, About 150 Palestinian students threw firebombs and rocks at Israeli soldiers who responded with tear gas and rubber-coated metal bullets in the occupied West Bank after an Israeli raid on their university. Palestinian volunteer medic Sajid Muzher (17) was killed by Israeli forces during the clashes. He was shot while trying to treat one of those wounded.
(Reuters, 3/27/19)(AFP, 3/27/19)
2019 Mar 27, In Thailand the leader of the Pheu Thai party, which headed the last elected government, and the leaders of five other parties held a news conference to say they believed they had won more than 250 seats in the 500-seat lower house.
(AP, 3/27/19)
2019 Mar 27, UN officials said at least 707 people had been reported killed by Cyclone Idai, the flooding it caused and heavy rains before it hit. This included 468 in Mozambique, 259 in Zimbabwe and 60 in Malawi.
(Reuters, 3/27/19)
2019 Mar 27, In Venezuela new disruption to the power grid had left 91 percent of the country offline, reversing a "partial recovery" since the latest blackouts started March 25.
(AP, 3/27/19)
2020 Mar 27, US Pres. Donald Trump invoked emergency powers to require General Motors Co to build much-needed ventilators for coronavirus patients after he accused the largest US automaker of "wasting time" during negotiations.
(Reuters, 3/28/20)
2020 Mar 27, The US suspended at least $73 million out of a total of $85 million in aid delivered via nongovernmental groups in Yemen's Houthi-controlled north.
(https://tinyurl.com/yc8p2sot)(Econ., 7/6/20, p.35)
2020 Mar 27, The US House of Representatives passed the $2 trillion coronavirus economic stimulus bill. President Donald Trump was expected to sign it quickly. The US now had almost 86,000 known infections.
(NBC News, 3/27/20)(AFP, 3/27/20)
2020 Mar 27, The US Navy, the military service hit hardest by the coronavirus, scrambled to contain its first at-sea outbreak, with at least two dozen infected aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt in Guam, one of 11 active aircraft carriers whose mission is central to the Pentagon's strategy for deterring war with China and Iran.
(AP, 3/27/20)
2020 Mar 27, A US federal appeals court ruled that undocumented immigrants who present a credible case or asylum in the US are entitled to a prompt hearing for release on bond while their cases are pending.
(SFC, 3/30/20, p.A1)
2020 Mar 27, California's Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered a two-month halt on evictions for state residents who cannot pay their rent vecause of the coronavirus.
(SFC, 3/28/20, p.A6)
2020 Mar 27, In Florida 29 deaths have been reported due to the coronavirus. Deaths were on track to double every four days.
(SFC, 3/28/20, p.A5)
2020 Mar 27, Civil rights leader and MLK aide Rev. Joseph E. Lowery (98) died in Atlanta. In 2009, Pres. Barack Obama awarded Lowery the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.
(AP, 3/27/20)(Economist, 4/4/20, p.74)
2020 Mar 27, The US federal Bureau of Indian Affairs informed that Mashpee Wampanoag tribe of Massachusetts that it will be rescinding its reservation designation for more than 300 acres removing the land from federal trust.
(SFC, 3/31/20, p.A4)
2020 Mar 27, Mississippi’s health department reported 579 COVID-19 cases and eight deaths.
(The Daily Beast, 3/28/20)
2020 Mar 27, New York state reported 100 more deaths in one day. NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio said cases of the new coronavirus are going to become “astronomical," putting unprecedented strain on the hospital system. New York state has more than 44,000 cases of coronavirus and 519 deaths from the virus, by far the most in the country.
(AP, 3/27/20)(Bloomberg, 3/27/20)(AP, 3/28/20)(SFC, 3/28/20, p.A5)
2020 Mar 27, The New York City Department of Corrections said that 80 staff and 103 men in custody have tested positive for coronavirus at Rikers Island and city jails alone — quadruple what was reported just a week ago.
(AP, 3/28/20)
2020 Mar 27, In NYC a subway train operator was killed after a fired, believed to have been intentionally set, erupted inside a train car at a station along the northern edge of Central Park.
(SFC, 3/28/20, p.A3)
2020 Mar 27, Rhode Island State Police began pulling over drivers with New York plates so that National Guard officials can collect contact information and inform them of a mandatory, 14-day quarantine.
(AP, 3/28/20)
2020 Mar 27, Washington, D.C., confirmed 36 new coronavirus cases, raising its total to 267.
(AP, 3/27/20)
2020 Mar 27, Microsoft said it is pulling its investments from a facial-recognition startup that scans faces at Israeli military checkpoints, even though the tech giant couldn't substantiate claims that the startup's technology is used unethically.
(AP, 3/27/20)
2020 Mar 27, Astronomers discovered Comet C2020 F3 NEOWISE, using NASA's Near-Earth Object Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer. The comet's closest approach to Earth was to be on July 22. It would not return for another 6,766 years.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C/2020_F3_(NEOWISE))(SFC, 7/13/20, p.B3)
2020 Mar 27, It was reported that scientists have discovered a strain of bacteria, the first of its kind, that can degrade the harmful compounds in polyurethane products -- a positive step toward reducing the amount of plastic pollution in the environment.
(https://doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2020.00404)
2020 Mar 27, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani announced his 21-member team to negotiate peace with the Taliban, only to have his political opponent Abdullah Abdullah reject it as not inclusive enough. The Afghan government ordered a three-week lock-down for Kabul to stem the spread of the new coronavirus. Afghanistan has so far recorded just 91 cases and four deaths but the tens of thousands returnees from Iran have dispersed throughout the country without being tested.
(AP, 3/27/20)
2020 Mar 27, It was reported that the supply of soybeans to Argentine crushing plants is down by half and falling, as municipalities citing health concerns defied a government order that they allow cargo trucks to get to the plants. Mayors of dozens of towns near the Rosario grains export hub have blocked ground transport as the country locks down against the coronavirus pandemic.
(Reuters, 3/27/20)
2020 Mar 27, It was reported that millions of Bangladesh factory workers have been sent home without wages or severence pay they are owed in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.
(SFC, 3/28/20, p.A4)
2020 Mar 27, British PM Boris Johnson (55) said he has tested positive for the coronavirus. Health Secretary Matt Hancock was also confirmed to have the virus. British fatalities due to the coronavirus jumped by 260, to 1,019. Some 14,579 people in the UK have tested positive, an increase of about 25%, above the five-day average of 20%.
(Bloomberg, 3/27/20)(AP, 3/27/20)(Bloomberg, 3/28/20)
2020 Mar 27, Bank of Canada cut key benchmark rate by 50 basis points to 0.25%, its lowest in a decade. The central bank also said it would begin purchases of C$5 billion per week of Government of Canada securities in the secondary market.
(Reuters, 3/27/20)
2020 Mar 27, China's National Health Commission reported 55 new cases, 54 of them imported infections. China reported 81,394 confirmed cases, with 649 of those imported. The death toll rose by three to 3,295, with all new deaths reported in Hubei province. Chinese leader Xi Jinping in a phone call told Pres. Donald Trump that China understands the United States' current predicament over the COVID-19 outbreak and stands ready to provide support within its capacity.
(AP, 3/27/20)(Bloomberg, 3/28/20)(Reuters, 3/28/20)
2020 Mar 27, China, the European Union and 14 other World Trade Organization members (Australia, Brazil, Chile, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Hong Kong, Mexico, New Zealand, Singapore, Switzerland and Uruguay) agreed on a temporary mechanism to resolve trade disputes after US action rendered the WTO incapable of acting as the arbiter of global trade.
(Reuters, 3/27/20)
2020 Mar 27, In the Baltic states Estonia reported 575 coronavirus infections and one death, Latvia reported 280 cases, Lithuania reported 344 cases and four deaths.
(Baltic News Network, 3/27/20)
2020 Mar 27, In Germany cases of coronavirus rose to 43,039 from 37,179, while the death toll jumped to 262 deaths from 203.
(Bloomberg, 3/27/20)
2020 Mar 27, The Hong Kong government announced new measures to contain the coronavirus outbreak, including limiting crowd size to four people except weddings and funerals. The measures will last for 14 days. The city has found a record 65 new cases, taking its total to 518.
(Bloomberg, 3/27/20)
2020 Mar 27, PM Viktor Orban said Hungary’s government will partially restrict movement for a two-week period ending April 11 to slow the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.
(AP, 3/27/20)
2020 Mar 27, It was reported that India's coronavirus lockdown is disrupting e-commerce companies including Amazon and Flipkart, despite government assurances it would not.
(Reuters, 3/27/20)
2020 Mar 27, Indonesia reported the biggest daily jump in new coronavirus infections with the total number of confirmed cases topping 1,000. Tests confirmed the disease in 153 more people. The country also reported nine new deaths, taking the total to 87, the highest in Southeast Asia.
(AP, 3/27/20)
2020 Mar 27, Iran reported 2,926 new coronavirus cases and 144 more deaths over the past day, bringing the total figures in the country to 32,332 cases and 2,378 deaths. The government enforced social distancing measures banning inter-city travel and all gatherings, and the central bank approved loans for businesses affected by the outbreak. Iranian media report nearly 300 people have been killed and more than 1,000 sickened so far by ingesting methanol in the mistaken belief it protects against the coronavirus.
(AP, 3/27/20)
2020 Mar 27, Israel has recorded 12 deaths from COVID-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus, and over 3,000 infections.
(AP, 3/28/20)
2020 Mar 27, In Italy the death toll from an outbreak of coronavirus in the northern region of Lombardy rose by around 541 in a day to some 5,402. Italy registered the most coronavirus deaths since the country's outbreak had exploded five weeks earlier, adding 969 more victims to raise the world’s highest COVID-19 toll to 9,134.
(Reuters, 3/27/20)(AP, 3/28/20)
2020 Mar 27, The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in the Netherlands rose by 1,172, or 16%, to 8,603, with 112 new deaths. The country's death total is now 546.
(Reuters, 3/27/20)
2020 Mar 27, In northwestern Niger an army operation began that left 102 civilians missing by the time it left the region on 2 April. In September at least 71 bodies were found in six mass graves in Tillaberi, an area affected by jihadist violence. The civilians had been killed with bladed weapons and small arms.
(BBC, 9/5/20)
2020 Mar 27, The Palestinian Authority, which governs parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, has reported 84 coronavirus cases. Authorities in the Gaza Strip have reported nine cases.
(AP, 3/27/20)
2020 Mar 27, The Seattle-based Holland American cruise line, owneed by Carnival Corp., said four passengers have died aboard the Zaandam now anchored off the coast of Panama. Two people have tested positive for the coronavirus and more than 130 have reported flu-like symptoms. The ship carried 1,243 guests and 586 crew.
(SFC, 3/28/20, p.A2)
2020 Mar 27, In Russia the total number of coronavirus cases rose by 196 to 1,036.
(Bloomberg, 3/27/20)
2020 Mar 27, Russian low-cost airline Pobeda, a subsidiary of flagship carrier Aeroflot, said it will suspend all its domestic flights and stop flying altogether from April 1 until the end of May.
(Reuters, 3/27/20)
2020 Mar 27, In Serbia residents of Belgrade isolated themselves not only from coronavirus but also from acrid smoke, which defied strong winds to transform the Serbian capital into the city with the world's most polluted air. So far, the coronavirus infection in Serbia has sickened 528 and killed eight people.
(Reuters, 3/27/20)
2020 Mar 27, Slovakia said it is closing border crossings with Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Austria for the transit of trucks over 7.5 tons delivering non-essential goods to prevent accidents near the border crossings where long jams are formed because of lengthy handling by Hungarian authorities.
(Reuters, 3/27/20)
2020 Mar 27, South Africa began a three-week lockdown aimed at curbing the spread of the coronavirus as the disease claimed its first two victims in the country and the number of infections passed 1,000.
(Bloomberg, 3/27/20)
2020 Mar 27, South Korea reported 146 new coronavirus cases. That brought total infections in South Korea to 9,478, with a death toll of 151, up from 139.
(Reuters, 3/27/20)
2020 Mar 27, Spain reported its deadliest day so far after 769 people died, for a total of 4,858 fatalities. Cases rose to 64,059 from 56,188.
(Bloomberg, 3/27/20)
2020 Mar 27, Swiss drugmaker Novartis won a key European recommendation for its gene therapy Zolgensma against spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), clearing a hurdle for $2.1 million per patient treatment for approval in Europe within months.
(Reuters, 3/27/20)
2020 Mar 27, Turkish authorities evacuated hundreds of migrants waiting at the border with Greece amid the coronavirus pandemic. They were transferred to state guesthouses for quarantine .
(SFC, 3/28/20, p.A2)
2020 Mar 27, It was reported that Venezuela's only telecom satellite has veered off its orbit and stopped working. The Chinese-built satellite was launched in 2008 and has become useless three years before its planned expiration date.
(SFC, 3/28/20, p.A2)
2021 Mar 27, It was reported that the US has for the first time extradited North Korean national Mun Chol Myong (55) to face a criminal trial in America. An indictment unsealed this week alleged that Myong defrauded banks and laundered money in an attempt to skirt US and UN sanctions on North Korea. He was detained by local authorities in Malaysia in May 2019.
(Business Insider, 3/27/21)
2021 Mar 27, California to date had 3,633,771 cases of coronavirus and 58,178 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 420,413 cases and 5,871 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 30,162,813 with the death toll at 548,336.
(sfist.com, 3/27/21)
2021 Mar 27, Howard Schnellenberger (87), football coach, died in Boca Raton, Florida. He built the offense for the Super Bowl champion Miami Dolphins in 1972, then revived football programs at the Universities of Miami and Louisville.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Schnellenberger)(NY Times, 3/27/21)
2021 Mar 27, New York lawmakers reached a deal to allow sales of marijuana for recreational use. It has been estimated that legalization could bring the state $350 million annually.
(SFC, 3/29/21, p.A3)
2021 Mar 27, It was reported that Volkswagen has issued a recall for more than 150,000 Audi vehicles in the United States on concerns that their passenger air bags might not activate.
(AP, 3/27/21)
2021 Mar 27, Facebook said it has frozen Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro's page for violating policies against spreading misinformation about COVID-19 by promoting a remedy he claims, without evidence, can cure the disease.
(Reuters, 3/27/21)
2021 Mar 27, Belarus police arrested more than 100 people who assembled for a protest march in Minsk to call for the resignation of the country's authoritarian president.
(AP, 3/27/21)
2021 Mar 27, Thousands of Bhutanese travelled to schools and public buildings for vaccination as the Himalayan kingdom launched its biggest inoculation drive against COVID-19 with the AstraZeneca shots provided by neighboring India.
(Reuters, 3/27/21)
2021 Mar 27, It was reported that organizers of this year's Eurovision Song Contest have disqualified Belarus, ruling that its entry song - by a band whose lyrics have been deemed in the past to mock anti-government protests - is in breach of competition guidelines.
(Reuters, 3/27/21)
2021 Mar 27, China and Iran signed a 25-year strategic cooperation agreement addressing economic issues amid crippling US sanctions on Iran.
(AP, 3/27/21)
2021 Mar 27, In Egypt a nine-story apartment building collapsed in Cairo early today, killing at least five people and injuring about two dozen others. The death toll was soon raised to 18.
(AP, 3/27/21)
2021 Mar 27, Voters in India's Assam and West Bengal cast their ballots in elections that will indicate how PM Narendra Modi's support is holding up after a year of the coronavirus pandemic and months of protests against his farm reforms.
(Reuters, 3/27/21)
2021 Mar 27, India gave 1.2 million free doses of the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine to Bangladesh. PM Narendra Modi made the offering at the end of a two-day tour of Bangladesh.
(Reuters, 3/27/21)
2021 Mar 27, Japan-based Honda said it has agreed to sell its only British car plant at Swindon in southern England to logistics giant Panattoni, as the new owner reportedly plans to make a large investment at the sprawling site.
(Reuters, 3/27/21)
2021 Mar 27, Mexico's government acknowledged that the country's true deatrh toll from the coronavirus pandemic now likely stands above 321,000.
(AP, 3/28/21, p.A4)
2021 Mar 27, In Mexico Victoria Esperanza Salazar, a Salvadoran woman, died after a female police officer was seen kneeling on her on a street in the resort of Tulum. An autopsy found that the woman’s neck was broken.
(AP, 3/30/21)
2021 Mar 27, In Mozambique an attack by hundreds of militants trapped nearly 200 people, including foreign workers, in a hotel in Palma, site of a major gas project. A three-day siege has left at least several people dead and hundreds of other civilians unaccounted for. Throughout the three-day siege, insurgents set government buildings ablaze and detonated explosives at three banks and the health clinic in town.
(NY Times, 3/27/21)
2021 Mar 27, Myanmar's security forces shot and killed at least 64 people across the country during protests today as the military celebrated Armed Forces Day. The online news site Myanmar Now reported that the death toll had reached 114.
(Reuters, 3/27/21)(AP, 3/27/21)
2021 Mar 27, The defense chiefs of 12 countries, including the US, issued a joint statement condemning Myanmar's military and security forces for its crackdown on anti-coup demonstrators.
(Axios, 3/28/21)
2021 Mar 27, North Korea announced it will continue to expand its nuclear weapons program after President Biden criticized Pyongyang's most recent missile test this week.
(AP, 3/27/21)
2021 Mar 27, Panama's government said it would from next week temporarily suspend the entry of people to the country who have been in South America in the previous 15 days after local health authorities detected a case of the Brazilian strain of COVID-19.
(Reuters, 3/27/21)
2021 Mar 27, Philippine officials said Manila and nearby provinces will return to stricter quarantine measures on March 29, as the country battles to contain a surge in COVID-19 cases that has strained hospitals.
(Reuters, 3/27/21)
2021 Mar 27, In Poland a new set of pandemic related restrictions took effect to slow the spread of the coronavirus, which has taken more than 51,700 lives in the country.
(SSFC, 3/28/21, p.A13)
2021 Mar 27, Syria said it has begun rationalizing the distribution of fuel amid concerns of delays of shipments arrivals resulting from a giant cargo ship wedged in Egypt’s Suez Canal.
(AP, 3/27/21)
2021 Mar 27, In Turkey hundreds of demonstrators gathered in Istanbul for anti-government protests, demanding amid a heavy police presence the reversal of recent decisions by Pres. Recep Tayyip Erdogan that affect students, women and the LGBT community.
(AP, 3/28/21)
Go to http://www.timelinesdb.com
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For Asian History: https://www.asiaobserver.org/category/news/on-this-day-in-asian-history
1194 Mar 27, The Archbishop of Canterbury, on behalf of King Richard I, talked with the rebels inside the castle at Nottingham, who soon surrendered.
(ON, 8/07, p.10)
1350 Mar 27, While besieging Gibraltar, Alfonso XI of Castille died of the black death.
(HN, 3/27/99)
1378 Mar 27, Gregory XI, [Pierre R the Beaufort], last French Pope (1370-78), died.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1513 Mar 27, Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de Leon sighted Florida.
(AP, 3/27/97)(HN, 3/27/98)
1519 Mar 27, A truce was arranged with Cortes when Mayan caciques brought food and gold as well as 20 female slaves. Among these was a young woman from Jalisco named Marina, who had been stolen from a noble family when small and sold into slavery, where she learned the language of Yucatán. As a bilingual translator from Aztec to Mayan, Marina played a major role in the eventual conquest of Tenochtitlán.
(http://www.athenapub.com/cortes1.htm)
1599 Mar 27, Robert Devereux became Lt-general of Ireland.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1625 Mar 27, James I (VI), Stuart king of Scotland (1567), England (1603-25), died. He was described as the “wisest fool in Christendom."
(www.jesus-is-lord.com/kingbio.htm)(Econ, 12/18/04, p.130)
1625 Mar 27, Charles I (d.1649) became the English king. He was King of England, Ireland and Scotland until he was beheaded.
(AP, 3/27/97)(WSJ, 6/13/96, p.A12)
1668 Mar 27, English king Charles II gave Bombay to the East India Company.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1710 Mar 27, Joseph Marie Clement dall' Abaco, composer, was born.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1746 Mar 27, Carlo Bonaparte, Corsican attorney, father of emperor Napoleon, was born.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1757 Mar 27, Johann Wenzel Anton Stamitz (39), composer, died.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1761 Mar 27, Johann Ludwig Steiner (72), composer, died.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1769 Mar 27, Josef Antonin Gurecky (60), composer, died.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1770 Mar 27, Giovanni B. Tiepolo (73), Italian painter (Banquet of Cleopatra), died.
(https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Giovanni_Battista_Tiepolo)
1776 Mar 27, Mexican Captain Juan Bautista de Anza and his party of Spanish explorers spent their first night in the future city of San Francisco at what came to be called Mountain Lake in the Presidio.
(SFC, 9/14/13, p.C4)(SFC, 11/2/19, p.C4)
1780 Mar 27, August L. Crelle, German inventor, mathematician (1st Prussian Railway), was born.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1785 Mar 27, Louis XVII, Pretender to the throne (1793-1795) during the French Revolution, was born. His father may have been Marie Antoinette’s Swedish lover, Count Axel von Fersen.
(HN, 3/27/98)(SFC, 4/20/00, p.A18)(MC, 3/27/02)
1790 Mar 27, The shoelace was invented.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1794 Mar 27, The US Congress approved "An Act to provide a Naval Armament" of six armed ships. [see Oct 13, 1775]
(AP, 3/27/07)
1802 Mar 27, The Treaty of Amiens was signed ending the French Revolutionary War.
(HN, 3/27/98)
1808 Mar 27, Joseph Haydn’s oratorio "The Seasons," premiered in Vienna.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1809 Mar 27, Georges-Eugene Haussmann (d.1891), French town planner, was born. He designed modern-day Paris.
(HN, 3/27/01)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baron_Haussmann)
1813 Mar 27, Nathaniel Currier, lithographer for Currier and Ives, was born.
(HN, 3/27/98)
1814 Mar 27, General Jackson led U.S. soldiers who killed 700 Creek Indians at Horseshoe Bend, La. [in Northern Alabama] Jackson lost 49 men.
(SFEC, 2/16/97, BR p.4)(HN, 3/27/99)
1836 Mar 27, The first Mormon temple was dedicated, in Kirtland, Ohio.
(AP, 3/27/97)(HN, 3/27/98)
1836 Mar 27, Mexican Colonel Jose Nicolas de la Portilla executed his Texan prisoners at Goliad. Colonel Portilla had the 342 Texians marched out of Fort Defiance into three columns. The Texians were then fired on at point-blank range. The wounded and dying were then clubbed and stabbed. Those who survived the initial volley were run down by the Mexican cavalry.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goliad_Campaign)
1841 Mar 27, The first U.S. steam fire engine was tested in New York City.
(HN, 3/27/98)
1845 Mar 27, Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen (d.1923), German scientist, was born. He discovered X-rays (Nobel-1901).
(HN, 3/27/99)(MC, 3/27/02)
1849 Mar 27, Joseph Couch patented a steam-powered percussion rock drill.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1850 Mar 27, The party of Dr. Thadeus Hildreth found a 22-pound gold nugget in Tuolemne County, Ca. The place was initially named Hildreth’s Diggings, then changed to New Camp, then American Camp and finally Columbia. The population soon swelled to 15,000.
(SFEC, 1/5/97, p.T5)(SFEC, 3/19/00, p.T6)(CVG, Vol 16, p.1)
1851 Mar 27, Paul-Marie-Theodore-Vincent d'Indy, composer (Symphonie Cevenole), was born in Paris.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1855 Mar 27, Abraham Gesner patented kerosene.
(HN, 3/27/98)
1860 Mar 27, M.L. Byrn patented a "covered gimlet screw with a 'T' handle" (corkscrew).
(MC, 3/27/02)
1861 Mar 27, Black demonstrators in Charleston staged ride-ins on street cars.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1863 Mar 27, Sir Henry Royce, Rolls Royce founder, was born. [see Mar 26]
(HN, 3/27/98)
1863 Mar 27, Confederate Pres. Jefferson Davis called for this to be a day of fasting and prayer.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1865 Mar 27, Siege of Spanish Fort, AL. It was captured by Federals.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1866 Mar 27, President Andrew Johnson vetoed the civil rights bill, which later became the 14th amendment.
(HN, 3/27/98)
1866 Mar 27, Andrew Rankin patented the urinal.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1868 Mar 27, John Muir (30) arrived by steamer in San Francisco and almost immediately set off on a 300-mile journey to Yosemite Valley along with Englishman Joseph Chilwell.
(SSFC, 4/2/06, p.B1)(SSFC, 5/14/06, p.B3)
1871 Mar 27, Heinrich Mann, Germany, novelist, essayist (Blue Angel); brother of Thomas Mann, was born.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1879 Mar 27, Edward Steichen, pioneer of American photography, was born.
(HN, 3/27/98)
1884 Mar 27, The first long-distance telephone call was made, between Boston and New York City. [see Mar 24, 1883]
(AP, 3/27/97)(HN, 3/27/98)
1886 Mar 27, Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe, German-US architect (Bauhaus), was born.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1889 Mar 27, John Bright (b.1811), Quaker and British Radical and Liberal statesman, died. He was associated with Richard Cobden in the formation of the Anti-Corn Law League. In 2011 Bill Cash authored “John Bright: Statesman, Orator, Agitator."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bright)(Econ, 12/31/11, p.68)
1892 Mar 27, Ferde (Ferdinand Rudolf von) Grof, composer, was born in NY.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1892 Mar 27, Thorne Smith, author (Topper, Rain in the Doorway, Stray Lamb), was born.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1893 Mar 27, The American Bell telephone Company made its first long distance telephone call to its branch office in New York.
(HN, 3/27/99)
1899 Mar 27, The first international radio transmission between England and France was achieved by the Italian inventor G. Marconi.
(HN, 3/27/99)
1900 Mar 27, The London Parliament passed the War Loan Act which gave 35 million pounds to the Boer War cause.
(HN, 3/27/98)
1906 Mar 27, Pee Wee Russell, jazz clarinetist, was born.
(HN, 3/27/01)
1910 Mar 27, John Robinson Pierce, the father of communications satellites, was born.
(HN, 3/27/01)
1910 Mar 27, Alexander E. Agassiz (74), US businessman, biologist, geologist, died.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1912 Mar 27, James Callaghan (d.2005), British prime minister (1976-1979), was born in Portsmouth, England.
(SSFC, 3/27/05, p.A21)
1912 Mar 27, The first cherry blossom trees, a gift from Japan, were planted in Washington, D.C. First Lady Helen Herron Taft and the Viscountess Chinda, wife of the Japanese ambassador, planted two Yoshina cherry trees on the northern bank of the Potomac Tidal Basin, near the Jefferson Memorial. The event was held in celebration of a gift, by the Japanese government, of 3,020 trees to the US government for planting along Washington's Potomac River.
(HN, 3/27/98)
1914 Mar 27, Budd Schulberg, journalist, novelist and screenwriter (What Makes Sammy Run, On the Waterfront), was born in NYC.
(HN, 3/27/01)(MC, 3/27/02)
1914 Mar 27, 1st successful blood transfusion took place in Brussels.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1917 Mar 27, Cyrus Vance (d.2002) was born in Clarksburg. In 1980 President Carter accepted the resignation of Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, who had opposed the failed rescue mission aimed at freeing American hostages in Iran.
(AP, 4/28/97)(SSFC, 1/13/02, p.A27)
1917 Mar 27, The Seattle Metropolitans became the first U.S. team to win the Stanley Cup as they defeated the Montreal Canadiens.
(AP, 3/27/97)
1920 Mar 27, Richard Hayman, bandleader, conductor, pianist (Theme of 3 Penny Opera), was born.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1923 Mar 27, Louis Simpson, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, was born.
(HN, 3/27/01)
1924 Mar 27, Sarah Vaughan, 'the Divine One,' jazz singer, was born. She was famous for singing "What a Difference a Day Makes."
(HN, 3/27/99)
1927 Mar 27, Mstislav Leopold Rostropovich, cellist, conductor, was born in Baku, Azerbaijan, USSR.
(MC, 3/27/02)(Internet)
1928 Mar 27, The U.S. accepted the new oil-land laws enacted by Mexico, ending a long-standing dispute between Mexico and the United States.
(HN, 3/27/98)
1930 Mar 27, David Janssen, [Meyer], actor (Fugitive, Harry O) and son of Clark Gable, was born in Naponee, Nebraska.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1930 Mar 27, 1st US radio broadcast from a ship at sea.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1931 Mar 27, David Janssen (d.1980), later TV star ("Fugitive," "Harry O"), was born as (David Harold Meyer) in Naponee, Nebraska.
(Internet)
1931 Mar 27, Charlie Chaplin received France's distinguished Legion of Honor.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1933 Mar 27, Some 55,000 people staged a protest against Hitler in New York.
(HN, 3/27/98)
1933 Mar 27, Polythene was discovered by Reginald Gibson and Eric William Fawcett.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1933 Mar 27, Japan left the League of Nations.
(www.indiana.edu/~league/1933.htm)
1938 Mar 27, The U.S. stopped buying Mexican silver in reprisal for the Mexican seizure of American oil companies.
(HN, 3/27/98)
1938 Mar 27, San Francisco SPCA officer Al Girolo broke up a cockfight at the back of 1363 Underwood Street in Hunters Point. 7 men were arrested and 6 roosters seized.
(SSFC, 3/24/13, DB p.42)
1939 Mar 27, The Borley Rectory, reputedly the most haunted house in England, was severely damaged by a fire. It was demolished in 1944.
(Econ, 11/20/10, p.97)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borley_Rectory)
1940 Mar 27, Himmler ordered the building of Auschwitz concentration camp. [see Feb 21]
(MC, 3/27/02)
1941 Mar 27, Britain leased defense bases in Trinidad to the U.S. for a period of 99 years.
(HN, 3/27/98)
1941 Mar 27, Tokeo Yoshikawa arrived in Oahu, Hawaii, to begin spying for Japan on the U.S. Fleet at Pearl Harbor.
(HN, 3/27/99)
1941 Mar 27, Hitler signed Directive 27 for an assault on Yugoslavia.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1942 Mar 27, Michael York, actor (Cabaret, Logan's Run, 3 Musketeers), was born in England.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1942 Mar 27-28, Allies raided the Nazi submarine base at St. Nazaire, France.
(HN, 3/27/98)(MC, 3/27/02)
1943 Mar 27, US began an assault on Fondouk-pass, Tunisia.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1944 Mar 27, In San Francisco a fire at the New Amsterdam Hotel on Fourth St. killed 22 people.
(SSFC, 3/24/19, p.39)
1944 Mar 27, One-thousand Jews left Drancy, France for the Auschwitz concentration camp.
(HN, 3/27/98)
1944 Mar 27, Forty Jewish policemen were shot in the Riga Latvia ghetto by the Gestapo.
(HN, 3/27/98)
1944 Mar 27, Some 2,000 Jews were murdered in Kaunas, Lithuania.
(HN, 3/27/98)(MC, 3/27/02)
1945 Mar 27, Ella Fitzgerald and the Delta Rhythm Boys recorded "It's Only a Paper Moon."
(MC, 3/27/02)
1945 Mar 27, General Dwight D. Eisenhower told reporters in Paris that German defenses on the Western Front had been broken.
(AP, 3/27/97)(HN, 3/27/98)
1945 Mar 27, Iwo Jima was occupied, after 22,000 Japanese and 6,000 US killed.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1945 Mar 27, US 20th Army corps captured Wiesbaden.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1950 Mar 27, Maria Ewing, opera singer, was born in Detroit, Mich.
(http://classicalmanac.blogspot.com/2006/03/march-27.html)
1952 Mar 27, Elements of the U.S. Eighth Army reached the 38th parallel in Korea, the original dividing line between the two Koreas.
(HN, 3/27/99)
1952 Mar 27, There was a failed assassination attempt of German Chancellor Adenauer.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1953 Mar 27, Charles Bohlen was named the U.S. ambassador to the USSR
(HN, 3/27/98)
1955 Mar 27, Steve McQueen made his network TV debut on the Goodyear Playhouse.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1956 Mar 27, US seized the US communist newspaper "Daily Worker."
(MC, 3/27/02)
1956 Mar 27, French commandos landed in Algeria.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1957 Mar 27, In the 29th Academy Awards "Around the World in 80 Days" won the Academy Award for best picture; Yul Brynner won best actor for "The King and I," Ingrid Bergman was awarded best actress for "Anastasia" and George Stevens received best director for "Giant."
(AP, 3/27/07)
1958 Mar 27, The U.S. announced a plan to explore space near the moon.
(HN, 3/27/98)
1958 Mar 27, CBS Labs announced new stereophonic records.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1958 Mar 27, The Havana Hilton opened.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1958 Mar 27, Nikita Khrushchev became Soviet premier in addition to First Secretary of the Communist Party.
(AP, 3/27/97)(HN, 3/27/98)
1961 Mar 27, In San Francisco the hiring of the city’s first Negro milk route driver precipitated name calling an argument between Mayor George Christopher and Terry Francois, head of the local NAACP. The mayor said Teamsters Local 226 would not let Negroes into the union. Christopher, owner of Christopher Dairy Farms, had hired William Garrick (24) to run a route in South San Francisco serving schools and restaurants.
(SSFC, 3/27/11, DB p.42)
1961 Mar 27, In Mississippi nine students of Tougaloo College participated in a peaceful "read-in" at Jackson's white-only publicly funded library. Police were called and the "Tougaloo Nine" were charged with breach of the peace. This was later considered the first student protest of segregation at a public institution in Mississippi.
(SFC, 1/14/21, p.A4)
1963 Mar 27, John F. Kennedy met with King Hassan II of Morocco.
(HN, 3/27/98)
1964 Mar 27, On Good Friday, Valdez, Alaska, in Prince William Sound was rocked by an 8.6 earthquake, the largest ever recorded in North America. In 1977 seismologists pegged the quake at 9.2. It lasted 4 minutes and was followed by tsunamis and fires and 131 people were killed. Survivors moved 4 miles west to solid bedrock and rebuilt the town.
(AP, 3/27/97)(SFEC, 2/8/98, p.T5)(SFEC, 4/5/98, Z1 p.8)(SFEC, 10/17/99, p.A3)(SFC, 11/26/99, p.C21)(WSJ, 9/13/01, p.B11)(SFC, 2/15/02, p.G8)(AP, 3/11/11)
1964 Mar 27, Great Train Robbers were sentenced to a total of 307 years behind bars.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1966 Mar 27, Anti-Vietnam war demonstrations took place in US, Europe and Australia.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1967 Mar 27, A North Vietnamese spokesman unequivocally rejected a new peace plan proposed by UN Sec. General U Thant (1907-1974) on March 14.
(http://www.nybooks.com/articles/12091)
1968 Mar 27, Suharto succeeded Sukarno as president of Indonesia. Gen'l. Suharto thwarted a Communist coup and gradually assumed power. Thousands of alleged communists were executed amid widespread violence.
(WSJ, 5/22/98, p.A15)(SFC, 9/8/99, p.A17)(MC, 3/27/02)
1968 Mar 27, Yuri Gagarin (b.1934), Soviet cosmonaut (Vostok I) and the first man to orbit the Earth, died while on a routine training flight out of Chkalovsky Air Base.
(AP, 3/27/97)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri_Gagarin)
1971 Mar 27, PM of India, Indira Gandhi, expressed full support of her government to the Bangladeshi struggle for independence. The Bangladesh-India border was opened to allow the Bangladeshi Refugees safe shelter in India.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Pakistani_War_of_1971)
1972 Mar 27, The Addis Ababa accords ended fighting between north and south Sudan. It made the south a self-governing region. Pres. Gaafar Muhammed Nimeiri ended the 17 year civil war in the Sudan between the north and south.
(www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/war/sudan-civil-war1.htm)(WSJ, 10/22/03, p.A4)
1973 Mar 27, Ruth Lewis Farkas (1907-1996), was appointed ambassador to Luxembourg by Pres. Nixon after she and her husband, founder of Alexander’s department stores, contributed $300,000 to Nixon’s re-election campaign.
(SFC, 10/22/96, p.A18)(www.state.gov/r/pa/ho/po/com/10910.htm)
1973 Mar 27, The 45th Academy Awards were held in Los Angeles at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. "The Godfather" won the Academy Award for best picture of 1972, but its star, Marlon Brando, refused to accept his Oscar for best actor. Liza Minnelli won best actress for "Cabaret."
(AP, 3/27/98)(SFC, 3/19/02, p.D1)
1975 Mar 27, The 1st pipe of the Alaska oil pipeline was laid at Tonsina River.
(www.alyeska-pipe.com/Pipelinefacts/Chronology.html)
1975 Mar 27, Arthur Bliss (b.1891), English composer, conductor (Checkmate), died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Bliss)
1975 Mar 27, In Laos Communist Pathet Lao launched an attack against Hmong defenders.
(http://countrystudies.us/laos/39.htm)
1976 Mar 27, In Washington DC the first 4.6 miles of track for the Washington Metro was completed. The Gallery Place metro station opened. Harry Weese (d.1998) Associates of Chicago did the design work. By 2012 Metrorail had 106.3 miles of track.
(SFC, 11/4/98, p.C7)(WSJ, 12/16/98, p.B12)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Metro)
1977 Mar 27, A KLM Boeing 747, attempting to take off, crashed into a Pan Am 747 on the Canary Island of Tenerife. 583 people were killed with 54 survivors.
(SSFC, 10/17/04, p.B7)(AP, 3/27/07)
1978 Mar 27, Bob Fosse's "Dancin'" opened at Broadhurst Theater in NYC for 1,774 performances.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancin')
1979 Mar 27, The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 8-1 that police could not stop motorists at random to check licenses and registrations unless there was reason to believe a law had been broken.
(AP, 3/27/97)
1980 Mar 27, Mount St. Helens, dormant for 123 years, erupted with ash and steam. A crater formed at the summit and the north flank began to bulge.
(SFEC, 8/16/98, p.A15)(http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2000/fs036-00/)
1980 Mar 27, The Alexander L. Kielland, a North Sea Norwegian floating oil field platform, capsized during a storm killing 123 workers. It was owned by the Stavanger Drilling Company of Norway and was on hire to the US company Phillips Petroleum at the time of the disaster.
(AP, 3/27/02)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_L._Kielland_%28platform%29)
1982 Mar 27, The musical "Best Little Whorehouse in Texas" closed at 46th St in NYC after 1577 performances.
(www.imagi-nation.com/moonstruck/albm94.html)
1983 Mar 27, Neil Simon's "Brighton Beach Memoirs," premiered in NYC.
(www.ibdb.com/production.asp?ID=4212)
1984 Mar 27, "Starlight Express," a techno musical, roller-skating venture by Andrew Lloyd Weber and Richard Stilgoe, premiered at the Apollo Victoria Theatre, London.
(SFC, 12/31/99, p.C6)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlight_Express)
1987 Mar 27, The Marine Corps charged that Sgt. Clayton J. Lonetree, a Marine guard, had escorted Soviet agents through the U.S. Embassy in Moscow -- an accusation that was later dropped, although Lonetree was convicted of espionage.
(AP, 3/27/97)
1988 Mar 27, Jesse Jackson, rejoicing from an upset victory in Michigan's primary-style caucuses the day before, vowed that his Democratic presidential campaign would continue to "win and grow."
(AP, 3/27/98)
1989 Mar 27, Boris N. Yeltsin and other anti-establishment candidates claimed victory in parliamentary elections for the new Congress of People's Deputies.
(AP, 3/27/99)
1990 Mar 27, The U.S. began test broadcasts of TV Marti to Cuba, which promptly jammed the signal.
(AP, 3/27/00)
1990 Mar 27, Soviet soldiers began rounding up Lithuanians who had fled the Red Army after the republic's declaration of independence.
(AP, 3/27/00)
1991 Mar 27, In a surprising flap, President Bush publicly disagreed with General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, who claimed he had urged further fighting in the Persian Gulf War at the time Bush ordered a cease-fire. Schwarzkopf later apologized to Bush.
(AP, 3/27/01)
1992 Mar 27, Democratic presidential front-runner Bill Clinton, campaigning in New York, apologized for recently golfing at an all-white club.
(AP, 3/27/97)
1992 Mar 27, German Chancellor Helmut Kohl met with Austrian President Kurt Waldheim in Munich, a meeting denounced by Jewish groups because of Waldheim's alleged involvement with Nazi persecution during World War II.
(AP, 3/27/97)
1992 Mar 27, Lang Hancock (b.1909), pioneer Pilbara tycoon, died. He was famous for discovering the world's largest iron ore deposit in 1952 and becoming one of the richest men in Australia,
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lang_Hancock)(Econ, 4/19/08, p.53)
1993 Mar 27, A top U.N. relief official accused Bosnian Serbs of breaking their promises by blocking an aid convoy for trapped Muslims in eastern Bosnia, a day after a cease-fire agreement.
(AP, 3/27/98)
1994 Mar 27, More than 40 people were killed as violent thunderstorms tore across the Southeast. A church in Piedmont, Alabama, collapsed in a tornado and 19 were killed.
(AP, 3/27/99)
1994 Mar 27, Italians went to the polls in general elections that resulted in big gains for a right-wing coalition.
(AP, 3/27/99)
1994 Mar 27, Ukraine held its first parliamentary elections since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
(AP, 3/27/99)
1995 Mar 27, The 67th Academy Awards, held at the Shrine Auditorium in LA, was hosted by David Letterman. "Forrest Gump" won six Academy Awards, including best picture and a second consecutive Best Actor Oscar for Tom Hanks; Jessica Lange won Best Actress for "Blue Sky."
(AP, 3/27/00)(SFC, 3/22/02, p.D1)
1995 Mar 27, Former President Jimmy Carter announced he had brokered a two-month cease-fire between Sudan's Islamic government and rebels.
(AP, 3/27/00)
1995 Mar 27, Joanne Marie Mascha, an Ursuline Sister, was murdered while walking near her motherhouse just outside Cleveland.
(MT, 3/96, p.10)
1995 Mar 27, In Italy Maurizio Gucci (46), businessman, was shot to death in Milan. He was the last family member to have held shares in the Gucci fashion company, now part of the Bahrain-based Investcorp. In 1997 police arrested his former wife, a psychic, a doorman, and two hitmen for their roles in the murder. In 1998 Patrizia Reggiani Martinelli (50) was convicted and sentenced to 29 years in prison. The psychic got 25, the doorman got 26, the driver got 29 and the gunman got life. Reggiani was furious that after 13 years of marriage he had abandoned her for another woman, leaving her to bring up their two young daughters. Reggiani's sentence was cut short for good behavior and she was released in 2017.
(SFC, 2/1/97, p.A12)(SFC, 11/4/98, p.A13)(The Telegraph, 1/11/21)
1996 Mar 27, The Gay’s Hill Baptist Church in Millen, Ga., burned down. Arson was suspected and investigations by the FBI and ATF were later begun.
(SFC, 6/11/96, p.A16)
1996 Mar 27, In Algeria seven French Trappist monks were kidnapped overnight from the Notre Dame del’Atlas monastery near Medea. The monks were abducted from the Priory of Our Lady of Atlas in Tibehirine, about 80 km (50 miles) south of Algiers, by members of the insurgent Armed Islamic Group of Algeria (GIA). Their heads were discovered two months later and their death was announced by the GIA. On Jan. 26, 2018, Pope Francis declared the monks to be martyrs.
(SFC, 5/24/96, p.A14)(AFP, 1/27/18)
1996 Mar 27, Bangladesh passed a constitutional amendment setting up a process for calling new elections. Prime Minister Zia may resign soon.
(WSJ, 3/27/96, p.A-1)
1996 Mar 27, The European Union imposed a global ban on British beef and beef products due to concerns over mad cow disease.
(SFC, 6/14/96, p. A17)
1996 Mar 27, An Israeli court convicted Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's confessed assassin of murder, then sentenced former law student Yigal Amir to life in prison.
(AP, 3/27/97)
1996 Mar 27, The UN Security Council (Resolution 1051) established an export-import monitoring system for Iraq and demanded full cooperation.
(SFC, 9/24/02, p.A12)
1997 Mar 27, Dexter King, son of Martin Luther King Jr., met with James Earl Ray, the man in prison for the assassination of the civil rights leader. Ray denied having anything to do with the shooting, to which King replied, "I believe you."
(AP, 3/27/98)
1997 Mar 27, In Afghanistan an avalanche buried at least 100 people near the Salang tunnel north of Kabul.
(WSJ, 3/28/97, p.A1)
1997 Mar 27, In Argentina it was reported that former economy minister Domingo Cavallo claimed that Alfredo Yabran, the country’s most successful businessman, led an all-powerful mafia of businessmen, politicians and judges.
(SFC, 3/27/97, p.A14)
1997 Mar 27, In Nigeria villagers occupied a 7th oil installation on the Niger Delta in protests over local government elections. Tribesmen last week seized 6 Shell sites. This shut down 10% of Nigeria’s oil production.
(WSJ, 3/28/97, p.A12)
1997 Mar 27, Russian workers staged a nationwide strike to demand overdue wages.
(AP, 3/27/98)
1997 Mar 27, Ella Maillart (b.1903), Swiss sportswoman and travel writer, died. She chronicled the savage collectivisation of Karakalpak agriculture in Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan in the 1930s.
(Econ, 5/16/09, p.91)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ella_Maillart)
1998 Mar 27, The US Food and Drug Administration approved the drug Viagra, made by Pfizer, saying it helped about two-thirds of impotent men improve their sexual function. Viagra’s effects were shown to last 8-12 hours. Pfizer had originally tested the compound UK 92,480 as a drug for angina and found that male volunteers were getting frequent erections. They renamed it Viagra and sought sales approval.
(AP, 3/27/99)(SFC, 5/28/02, p.A4)(Econ, 7/16/05, p.76)
1998 Mar 27, It was reported that toxic waste was sold to 454 fertilizer companies by 600 steel mills, foundries and chemical plants between 1990-1995.
(WSJ, 3/27/98, p.A1,B8)
1998 Mar 27, In California federal documents were released that charged Dr. Aramais Paronyan with heading a $13 million Medi-Cal fraud ring from LA to SF.
(SFEC, 3/29/98, p.E1)
1998 Mar 27, Robbers in Commerce, east of LA, escaped with $2.94 million in cash from a Dunbar Security armored car after shooting the driver.
(SFC, 3/28/98, p.A14)
1998 Mar 27, Two Afghans convicted of murder had their throats cut in front of 30,000 spectators in Kabul’s sports stadium.
(SFC, 3/28/98, p.A9)
1998 Mar 27, Ferdinand Porsche Jr., creator of the Porsche sports car, died at age 88 in Zell am See, Austria. He was born in Wiener-Neustadt and moved to Germany with his family after WW I where his father became chief engineer of Daimler-Benz, the manufacturer of the Mercedes Benz cars. He wrote an autobiography titled “Cars Are My Life."
(SFC, 3/28/98, p.B12)(AP, 3/27/99)
1998 Mar 27, Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay signed a pact to heighten security on their triple frontier.
(SFC, 3/28/98, p.A9)
1998 Mar 27, In Columbia rebels under Comandante Romana freed 9 Columbian hostages but held 4 American birdwatchers and an Italian businessman for ransom.
(SFC, 3/28/98, p.A10)
1998 Mar 27, In Cuba two oil tankers collided and spilled heavy crude into Matanzas Bay, 60 miles east of Havana.
(SFC, 3/28/98, p.A9)
1998 Mar 27, In Mexico Adrian Carrera Fuentes, former director of the Federal Judicial Police, was arrested on charges of being on the payroll of the Arellano Felix drug gang.
(SFC, 3/28/98, p.A9)
1998 Mar 27, In Northern Ireland a former policeman was shot and killed by masked gunmen in Armagh.
(SFC, 3/28/98, p.A8)
1998 Mar 27, In Paraguay the Supreme Court ratified Lino Oviedo as the ruling Colorado Party’s candidate, despite his jail sentence.
(SFC, 3/28/98, p.A9)
1998 Mar 27, Pres. Yeltsin nominated acting Prime Minister Sergei Kiriyenko (35) to head the government.
(SFC, 3/28/98, p.A8)
1999 Mar 27, This was the 1st day of the Muslim feastday Id al-Lahma, feast of meat, or Id al-Adha, feast of sacrifice.
(SFC, 3/29/99, p.A7)
1999 Mar 27, Maria Butyrskaya of Russia won the World Figure Skating Championships in Helsinki, Finland; defending champion Michelle Kwan of the United States finished second.
(AP, 3/27/00)
1999 Mar 27, Chinese Pres. Jiang Zemin in a speech to Swiss business leaders criticized NATO airstrikes in Yugoslavia.
(SFEC, 3/28/99, p.A16)
1999 Mar 27, NATO expanded its air assault on Yugoslavia in the 4th straight day of attacks. A $42 million US F-117A stealth fighter was downed over Yugoslavia during continued NATO airstrikes. The American pilot was rescued by US forces. The wreckage was later believed to have been sold. In 2005 it was reported that Col. Zoltan Dani of Serbia was behind the shooting down of the stealth fighter. Dani said the F-117 was detected and shot down during a moonless night, just three days into the war, by a Soviet-made SA-3 Goa surface-to-air missile.
(SFEC, 3/28/99, p.A1,16)(SFC, 9/17/99, p.A10)(AP, 3/27/00)(AP, 10/26/05)
1999 Mar 27, In Paraguay at least 5 people were killed and some 100 injured in Asuncion as protestors called for the resignation of Pres. Cubas.
(SFEC, 3/28/99, p.A21)
1999 Mar 27, Serbian troops ordered villagers of Mamusa, Kosovo, to drive refugees to the border. 3 Turks and 4 ethnic Albanians were killed and 30 houses were burned.
(SFC, 3/12/02, p.A10)
1999 Mar 27, In Turkey a young woman set off grenades strapped to her body in a suicide that wounded 10 others in Istanbul.
(SFEC, 3/28/99, p.A25)
2000 Mar 27, The Supreme Court decided the federal government could deny food stamps and other welfare benefits to people who live permanently in the United States but who are not citizens.
(AP, 3/27/01)
2000 Mar 27, A San Francisco jury ordered Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds to pay $20 million in punitive damages to Leslie Whiteley (40).
(SFC, 3/28/00, p.A1)
2000 Mar 27, Cisco Systems passed Microsoft as the most valuable company in the world.
(SFC, 3/28/00, p.A1)
2000 Mar 27, DaimlerChrysler AG announced it would buy 34 percent of Japan’s Mitsubishi Motors Corporation.
(AP, 3/27/01)
2000 Mar 27, In Texas an explosion at a Phillips Petroleum at Pasadena plant killed one worker and injured at least 71 others.
(SFC, 3/28/00, p.A2)
2000 Mar 27, In Uganda laborers unearched 73 bodies at Rugazi associated with the Movement for the Restoration of Ten Commandments of God. [see Mar 28]
(SFC, 3/28/00, p.A10)
2001 Mar 27, A US federal judge ruled that the Univ. of Michigan racial criteria for accepting minority students with lower test scores than whites was invalid.
(SFC, 3/28/01, p.A3)
2001 Mar 27, California regulators approved electricity rate hikes of up to 46 percent.
(AP, 3/27/02)
2001 Mar 27, An empty train riding on the wrong side of the tracks crashed into a crowded commuter train at Pecrot, Belgium, killing eight people.
(SFC, 3/28/01, p.D4)(AP, 3/27/02)
2001 Mar 27, The Brazilian Electricity Regulatory Agency, Aneel, ordered federal agencies and state companies to reduce consumption by 10% due to power shortages caused by poor rains.
(WSJ, 3/28/01, p.A16)
2001 Mar 27, In its first specific accusation against a detained U.S.-based scholar, China said Gao Zhan had confessed to spying for foreign intelligence agencies. The US denied employing her as a spy. Gao, who had been detained on Feb. 11, was released the following July. In 2003 Gao Zhan admitted to illegal profits of over $539,000 from selling 80 microprocessors to the Chinese government. [see Feb 11]
(WSJ, 3/28/01, p.A1)(AP, 3/27/02)(SFC, 11/27/03, p.A3)
2001 Mar 27, China reported that its population stood at 1.26 billion, an 11.7% increase over the last decade.
(SFC, 3/28/01, p.D4)
2001 Mar 27, In Germany some 20,000 police blocked protesters who sought to block a train delivering radioactive waste from France. The German nuclear waste was reprocessed in France and returned.
(SFC, 3/28/01, p.A12)
2001 Mar 27, Two bombings in Jerusalem wounded some 35 people.
(SFC, 3/28/01, p.A10)
2001 Mar 27, Militiamen attacked a relief convoy and 14 Somalis were killed. 5 kidnapped aid workers were freed the next day, but 4 remained hostage. 2 Britons were released April 4.
(SFC, 3/28/01, p.A10)(WSJ, 3/29/01, p.A1)(SFC, 4/5/01, p.A11)
2001 Mar 27, In Uganda rebels ambushed students on a field trip to Murchison Falls and killed 11 people.
(SFC, 3/28/01, p.D4)
2002 Mar 27, The US Supreme Court ruled that illegal immigrants do not have the same rights as Americans when they are wrongly fired from US jobs.
(WSJ, 3/28/02, p.A1)
2002 Mar 27, Milton Berle (93), known as Uncle Miltie and Mr. Television, died. He rose to TV stardom as the host of Texaco Star Theater in 1948. He was said to be freakishly well-endowed. Haskel Frankel co-wrote: "Milton Berle, an Autobiography" in 1974.
(SFC, 3/28/02, p.A1)(SSFC, 4/16/06, p.M6)
2002 Mar 27, Dudley Moore (66), British actor and musician, died. His films included “10" and “Arthur."
(SFC, 3/28/02, p.A1)
2002 Mar 27, Billy Wilder (95), Austrian-born Hollywood film writer and director, died. He wrote and directed numerous films and won 6 Oscars. In 1999 Cameron Crowe authored “Conversations with Billy Wilder."
(AP, 3/27/03)(SFC, 3/29/02, p.A1,14)
2002 Mar 27, A gunman killed eight members of the Nanterre city council outside Paris; a suspect killed himself the next day while in police custody.
(AP, 3/27/07)
2002 Mar 27, In Beirut the Arab League opened a summit of its 22 member states. Egypt’s Pres. Mubarek did not attend. It dissolved into chaos when Palestinian delegates stalked out when Arafat was not given a prominent place for a live broadcast. Arafat endorsed the peace initiative of Prince Abdullah.
(SFC, 3/26/02, p.A10)(WSJ, 3/27/02, p.A1)
2002 Mar 27, A Palestinian Hamas suicide bomber killed 29 Israelis gathered at the Park Hotel in Netanya for the Passover Seder.
(SFC, 3/28/02, p.A1)(SFC, 3/29/02, p.A11)(SFC, 4/15/02, p.A12)(AP, 3/27/03)
2003 Mar 27, Pres. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair met to assess the progress of the war in Iraq.
(AP, 3/27/03)
2003 Mar 27, The Bush administration seized $1.62 billion in Iraqi assets already frozen in the US. The money would be used to help rebuild Iraq once Saddam Hussein is ousted.
(AP, 3/28/03)
2003 Mar 27, Richard Perle quit as head of the Pentagon advisory board amid allegations of conflicts of interests with his business deals.
(WSJ, 3/28/03, p.A1)
2003 Mar 27, It was reported that the SARS disease had killed 50 people and infected some 1,300 in 13 countries.
(WSJ, 3/27/03, p.A1)
2003 Mar 27, Paul Zindel (66), Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, died in New York.
(AP, 3/27/04)
2003 Mar 27, In Afghanistan Ricardo Munguia (39), a Red Cross water engineer from El Salvador, was killed by Taliban gunmen.
(SFC, 4/8/03, p.A5)(Reuters 3/28/03)
2003 Mar 27, In Colombia FARC land mines killed 11 soldiers near Aracataca, the birthplace of Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
(AP, 3/27/03)
2003 Mar 27, EU governments agreed to ban single-hulled oil tankers carrying heavy fuel in an attempt to reduce the risk of slicks.
(AP, 3/27/03)
2003 Mar 27, France introduced a new terrorism alert system, with 4 color-coded levels to make the national warning plan more flexible and understandable.
(AP, 3/27/03)
2003 Mar 27, In the 9th day of Operation Iraqi Freedom a British armored unit destroyed 14 Iraqi tanks trying to break out of the besieged city of Basra. A sea-borne relief operation was postponed after discovering Iraqi mines in the shipping channel leading to the recently captured Iraqi port of Umm Qasr. Heavy bombing on Baghdad destroyed a main telephone exchange.
(AP, 3/27/03)(SFC, 3/28/03, p.W1)
2003 Mar 27, In Israel Israeli forces killed 3 Palestinian police officers in Beit Hanoun, Gaza.
(SFC, 3/27/03, p.A10)
2003 Mar 27, in Kyrgyzstan a fire engulfed a crowded passenger bus, killing 21 victims, believed to have been Chinese vendors of Uighur ethnicity. Robbery was suspected.
(AP, 3/27/03)(AP, 3/28/03)
2003 Mar 27, Mexican federal agents killed 2 suspected drug runners in a shootout near the Texas border.
(AP, 3/27/03)
2003 Mar 27, In Yangon, Myanmar, a bomb went off in front of a state telecommunications office, killing at least one person and wounding three as the country marked Armed Forces Day.
(AP, 3/27/03)
2003 Mar 27, Russia's Evgeni Plushenko won his 2nd World Figure Skating Championships title, edging American Tim Goebel.
(AP, 3/27/04)
2003 Mar 27, In Serbia Milan Lukovic and Dusan Spasojevic, Zemun Clan leaders and suspects in the Zoran Djindjic assassination, were killed as they resisted arrest.
(SFC, 3/28/03, p.A12)
2003 Mar 27, In Zimbabwe opposition leaders urged the nation's soldiers and police to disobey orders to crush any show of dissent against the government.
(AP, 3/27/03)
2004 Mar 27, Adan Sanchez (19), Mexican-American singer, died in a car crash in Sinaloa, Mexico. He was the son of narco-ballad singer Chalino Sanchez, murdered in 1992.
(WSJ, 4/9/04, p.B1)
2004 Mar 27, Robert Merle (95), French author, died. His books included "The Day of the Dolphin," which was made into a 1973 film.
(SFC, 4/1/04, p.B7)
2004 Mar 27, Edward J. Piszek (87), founder of Mrs. Paul's Kitchens, died in Fort Washington, Pa.
(SFC, 4/1/04, p.B7)
2004 Mar 27, The 15-nation Caribbean Community withheld recognition from Haiti's U.S.-backed interim government as leaders closed a summit renewing calls for a U.N. investigation into the ouster of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
(AP, 3/27/04)
2004 Mar 27, Tens of thousands of security forces guarded voting stations as Nigerians cast ballots in tense municipal elections.
(AP, 3/27/04)
2004 Mar 27, A 7-year-old Palestinian boy was killed by what the Israeli military said was haphazard Palestinian gunfire toward an army jeep in a West Bank refugee camp.
(AP, 3/27/04)
2004 Mar 27, Rwanda reported plans to release at least 30,000 suspects who have confessed to participating in the 1994 genocide, letting them be tried in community courts rather than by the country's overburdened judicial system.
(AP, 3/27/04)
2004 Mar 27, A half million people swarmed into Taiwan's capital to protest the disputed presidential election.
(AP, 3/27/04)
2005 Mar 27, In a live Internet interview with the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Michael Jackson declared himself "completely innocent" of child molestation charges, and said he was the victim of a conspiracy.
(AP, 3/27/06)
2005 Mar 27, In Brazil Vitalmiro Moura, the rancher accused of ordering the killing of American nun Dorothy Stang in the Amazon rainforest six weeks ago, surrendered to police and declared his innocence.
(AP, 3/27/05)
2005 Mar 27, A Cairo court sentenced an Egyptian to 35 years in prison after finding him guilty of spying for the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and planning to assassinate Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. The court gave Mahmoud Eid Mohamed Dabbous 10 years in prison for spying for a foreign state and another 25 years for plotting to kill Mubarak.
(Reuters, 3/27/05)
2005 Mar 27, Egyptian police detained about 200 members and supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood, before and during an attempt to protest outside parliament in favor of reform.
(AP, 3/28/05)
2005 Mar 27, Ahmed Zaki (55), one of Egypt's most acclaimed actors, died. He portrayed former Egyptian presidents Gamal Abdel Nasser and Anwar Sadat.
(AP, 3/27/05)
2005 Mar 27, Iraqi security officials opened fire on a crowd of protesters outside a government building, killing one. Al-Qaida's arm in Iraq posted a video purportedly showing an Iraqi Interior Ministry official being killed.
(AP, 3/27/05)
2005 Mar 27, Kashmir police said suspected militants shot dead a grandmother, mother and her infant daughter after the child's father, a former Kashmiri separatist rebel, surrendered to Indian security forces.
(AP, 3/27/05)
2005 Mar 27, In Kyrgyzstan 2 rival parliaments competed for power, raising political uncertainty in the former Soviet nation. Both groups, the parliament newly elected in a disputed vote that sparked massive discontent, and the one that lost the election, met in separate chambers over the weekend, each claiming to represent the people.
(AP, 3/27/05)
2005 Mar 27, Macedonians cast ballots in municipal elections, but the voting was marred by irregularities that could potentially harm the country's ambitions to join NATO and the EU.
(AP, 3/27/05)
2005 Mar 27, Morocco’s per capita income was reported to be about $1,200 per year. One of 5 urban Moroccans was unemployed.
(SFCM, 3/27/05, p.11)
2005 Mar 27, The head of Myanmar's ruling junta said the country was moving toward democracy but gave no indication of when the military would relinquish its 43-year grip on power.
(AP, 3/27/05)
2005 Mar 27, Communist North Korea for the first time confirmed an outbreak of deadly bird flu at its poultry farms and said hundreds of thousands of chickens had been culled to contain it.
(AP, 3/27/05)
2005 Mar 27, Pope John Paul II delivered an Easter Sunday blessing to tens of thousands of people in St. Peter's Square, but the ailing pontiff was unable to speak and managed only to greet the saddened crowd with a sign of the cross.
(AP, 3/27/06)
2006 Mar 27, The US Senate Judiciary Committee approved a proposal to legalize undocumented migrants and provide temporary work visas. Mexicans cheered the approval and credited huge marches of migrants across the US as the decisive factor behind the vote.
(AP, 3/28/06)
2006 Mar 27, Al-Qaida conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui testified at his federal trial that he was supposed to hijack a fifth airplane on Sept. 11, 2001, and fly it into the White House.
(AP, 3/27/07)
(AP, 3/27/07)
2006 Mar 27, In SF several thousand protesters marched down Market Street in a peaceful call for legal status for an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the US.
(SFC, 3/28/06, p.A1)
2006 Mar 27, It was reported that European researchers have developed "neuro-chips" in which living brain cells and silicon circuits are coupled together.
(www.livescience.com/humanbiology/060327_neuro_chips.html)
2006 Mar 27, Lyn Nofziger (81), President Reagan's political adviser, died in Falls Church, Va.
(AP, 3/27/07)
2006 Mar 27, TV producer-director Dan Curtis (78) died in Los Angeles.
(AP, 3/27/07)
2006 Mar 27, Abdul Rahman, an Afghan man who had faced the death penalty for converting from Islam to Christianity, quickly vanished after he was released from prison, apparently out of fear for his life with Muslim clerics still demanding his death.
(AP, 3/28/06)
2006 Mar 27, Officials said a roadside bombing killed three villagers and wounded two when it blew up their car in southern Afghanistan.
(AP, 3/27/06)
2006 Mar 27, Finance Minister Antonio Palocci, the architect of Brazil's economic recovery and market-friendly fiscal policy, resigned after becoming caught up in a political scandal. His office was party to the illegal disclosure of payments to a bank account belonging to a witness against him in a corruption case.
(AP, 3/27/06)(Econ, 4/1/06, p.32)
2006 Mar 27, Ian Hamilton Finlay, British artist and poet, died.
(FT, 3/29/06, p.10)
2006 Mar 27, In Ethiopia a series of blasts killed one person and injured several others in Addis Ababa, the first fatality in a string of mysterious explosions in the capital.
(AP, 3/27/06)
2006 Mar 27, In Haiti scavengers found 10 human skulls in a trash heap, the second such grisly find in as many days in Port-au-Prince, where authorities speculated that the bones may have come from a Voodoo ritual.
(AP, 3/27/06)
2006 Mar 27, Shiite leaders cut off political talks and denounced the US over a weekend raid that they said killed worshippers in a mosque. In northern Iraq a suicide bombing killed at least 40 people at an army recruitment center in Kasak.
(AP, 3/27/06)(SFC, 3/28/06, p.A3)
2006 Mar 27, Gunmen kidnapped 16 employees of an Iraqi trading company in an upscale Baghdad neighborhood.
(AP, 3/27/06)
2006 Mar 27, In an audiotape broadcast Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, Saddam Hussein's chief deputy, purportedly called for Arab leaders to back Iraq's Sunni-backed insurgency.
(AP, 3/27/06)
2006 Mar 27, Abu Umar, a major Al-Qaeda figure in Iraq, was killed near Baquba.
(AFP, 4/13/06)
2006 Mar 27, PM Silvio Berlusconi said on radio that he does not want Italy to become a multiethnic, multicultural country, drawing plaudits from a right-wing ally and criticism from center-left opponents.
(AP, 3/28/06)
2006 Mar 27, Japan's parliament passed the nation's most austere budget in 8 years, marking another achievement for PM Junichiro Koizumi and his efforts to cut the huge public debt.
(AP, 3/27/06)
2006 Mar 27, Malaysia’s government said it will end subsidies to flag carrier Malaysia Airlines and let it operate only 19 domestic routes, in competition with budget carrier AirAsia, under a major restructuring that will shed thousands of jobs.
(AP, 3/27/06)
2006 Mar 27, Nepalese army helicopters launched an attack on a gathering of communist rebels in the mountains of north-central Nepal, killing at least four people.
(AP, 3/27/06)
2006 Mar 27, The Dutch Equal Treatment Commission ruled that a Muslim woman who refuses to shake men's hands for religious reasons cannot be barred from a Dutch teacher-training program.
(AP, 3/28/06)
2006 Mar 27, In Nigeria a weeklong census ended as workers scrambled to tally everyone across Africa's most-populous nation, but many remained uncounted in the exercise, marred by violence and the lack of forms, census takers and money.
(AP, 3/27/06)
2006 Mar 27, Militants demanding control of revenues from Nigeria's oil-rich southern delta released their last remaining foreign hostages, two Americans and a Briton, but the group threatened to continue attacks on oil installations.
(AP, 3/27/06)
2006 Mar 27, Gunmen loyal to rival pro-Taliban clerics fought street battles in Pakistan's tribal belt bordering Afghanistan, leaving at least 25 people dead.
(AFP, 3/28/06)
2006 Mar 27, In the Philippines a bomb exploded in a grocery store on southern Jolo island, killing 9 people and wounding 20. Police said an extortion attempt by suspected militants was likely behind the bombing.
(AP, 3/27/06)
2006 Mar 27, “Shooting Dogs," a new film on Rwanda's genocide, reduced many survivors to tears at its premiere in Kigali. The film's title refers to the way UN troops shot dogs eating the corpses that littered the streets of the Rwandan capital. The next day President Paul Kagame said the movie would help to ensure memories of the mass murder were kept alive.
(Reuters, 3/28/06)
2006 Mar 27, Stanislaw Lem (b.1921), Polish science fiction writer, died in Poland. His work included “His Master’s Voice" (1968). His best-known work, "Solaris," was adapted into films by director Andrei Tarkovsky (1972) and by Steven Soderbergh (2002). That version starred George Clooney and Natascha McElhone.
(AP, 3/27/06)(WSJ, 4/8/06, p.P14)
2006 Mar 27, In Ukraine early election results showed pro-Russia party led by Viktor Yanukovych taking the largest number of votes, followed by the president's former ally, Yulia Tymoshenko. President Viktor Yushchenko's party was a distant third, a stinging rebuke to his West-leaning administration. Yanukovych's party, which has pledged to make Russian a second state language, drop plans to join NATO and restore frayed ties with Moscow, was dominating in the Russian-speaking east and south.
(AP, 3/27/06)
2007 Mar 27, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Israeli and Palestinian leaders have agreed to meet every two weeks to discuss day-to-day issues, in a quickening diplomatic pace that eventually could spur talks on a final peace settlement.
(AP, 3/27/07)
2007 Mar 27, The US offered a $5 million reward for information leading to the capture of a US-trained Malaysian engineer accused of involvement in a series of deadly bombings in the Philippines.
(AP, 3/27/07)
2007 Mar 27, Walter Anderson, the telecommunications entrepreneur who admitted hiding hundreds of millions of dollars from the IRS and District of Columbia tax collectors, was sentenced to nine years in prison and ordered to repay about $23 million to the city. But US District Judge Paul Friedman said he couldn't order Anderson to repay the federal government $100 million to $175 million because the Justice Department's binding plea agreement with Anderson listed the wrong statute.
(AP, 3/27/07)
2007 Mar 27, US Attorney John Brownlee announced that ITT Corp. has agreed to pay a $100 million penalty for illegally sending classified night-vision technology to China and other countries.
(SFC, 3/28/07, p.A7)
2007 Mar 27, US National Football League (NFL) owners voted 30-2 to make the video replay system a permanent officiating tool.
(AP, 3/27/08)
2007 Mar 27, SF city leaders approved a ban on plastic grocery bags after weeks of lobbying on both sides from environmentalists and a supermarket trade group. San Francisco would be the first US city to adopt such a rule if Mayor Gavin Newsom signs the ban as expected.
(AP, 3/28/07)(SFC, 3/28/07, p.A1)
2007 Mar 27, United Commercial Bank of San Francisco said it had concluded negotiations to become the sole owner of the Business Development Bank of Shanghai. In 1992 the Business Development Bank of Shanghai was established as China’s first foreign-owned bank.
(Econ, 4/7/07, p.73)
2007 Mar 27, Texas Governor Rick Perry's office said that he had signed a new law that expands Texans' existing right to use deadly force to defend themselves "without retreat" in their homes, cars and workplaces. The new law takes affect on September 1.
(Reuters, 3/27/07)
2007 Mar 27, The New York Stock Exchange won control of pan-European market operator Euronext, creating an entity worth 29 billion dollars linking trading platforms in six cities.
(AP, 3/27/07)
2007 Mar 27, Paul Lauterbur (77), the father of Magnetic Resonance Imagery (MRI), died. He shared the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 2003.
(Econ, 4/7/07, p.84)
2007 Mar 27, In southern Afghanistan a suicide attacker dressed in army uniform blew himself up outside a provincial police headquarters, killing four policemen.
(AP, 3/27/07)
2007 Mar 27, Roxana Arias Becerra (32), a former Miss Bolivia (1993), was arrested on charges of carrying 1.8 pounds of cocaine while boarding a flight to the Brazilian border.
(AP, 3/29/07)
2007 Mar 27, British lawmakers unanimously passed an emergency bill to preserve the Northern Ireland Assembly and permit its Protestant and Catholic leaders to forge a historic administration by a new May 8 deadline.
(AP, 3/27/07)
2007 Mar 27, State media said China will pour billions of dollars into an airport, power plants, roads and education to help raise the standard of living of Tibetans over the next three years.
(AP, 3/27/07)
2007 Mar 27, In Cuba Faustino Oramas (95), a popular traditional singer and among the last original members of the Buena Vista Social Club, died of cancer.
(AP, 3/28/07)
2007 Mar 27, Egypt’s government said voters had overwhelmingly approved a set of controversial amendments to Egypt's constitution, a day after opposition groups massively boycotted the referendum. Egyptian blogs soon showed cell video clips of ballot stuffing.
(AP, 3/27/07)(WSJ, 3/30/07, p.A1)
2007 Mar 27, French riot police firing tear gas and brandishing batons clashed with bands of youths who shattered windows and looted shops at a major Paris train station. Nine people were arrested.
(AP, 3/28/07)
2007 Mar 27, In Germany a board member of Siemens AG, Europe's biggest electronics and engineering company, was arrested in connection with an investigation of alleged payments to the head of a tiny labor union. A trail against 2 managers had begun on March 13, for use of funds to smooth contracts with Italy’s utility, Enel.
(AP, 3/27/07)(Econ, 3/17/07, p.71)
2007 Mar 27, Guatemala named Adela Camacho de Torrebiarte (57), an anti-crime crusader, as its first female interior minister.
(AP, 3/27/07)
2007 Mar 27, In Iraq 2 nearly simultaneous truck bombs, including one detonated by remote control, ripped through markets in Tal Afar, killing at least 48 people and wounding dozens as violence surged outside the Iraqi capital. It was later reported that the main blast killed 152 people. A suicide car bomber killed at least 10 in a market near Ramadi and a mortar attack on a Shiite district area in southern Baghdad killed at least four people. Clashes broke in Iskandariyah after suspected Shiite militants broke into a Sunni mosque, leaving four Sunni militants dead and one Shiite militant wounded. A roadside bomb struck Iraqi police on a foot patrol in southeastern Baghdad, killing a policeman and wounding two others. Another police officer was killed in a drive-by shooting in eastern Baghdad. Harith Dhaher al-Dhari, a military leader of the 1920 Revolution Brigades, a major Sunni Arab insurgent group, was killed along with 2 associates west of Baghdad. Two Americans, a contractor and a soldier, were killed in a rocket attack on the heavy guarded Green Zone.
(AP, 3/27/07)(Reuters, 3/31/07)
2007 Mar 27, Ivory Coast rebels and mediators said Guillaume Soro, the main rebel leader, will become prime minister in a new government called for in the country's latest peace plan.
(AP, 3/27/07)
2007 Mar 27, In Japan a Cabinet official said an electrical glitch has knocked out a satellite in a spy network Japan hoped to use to gather intelligence on North Korea and other trouble spots around the world.
(AP, 3/27/07)
2007 Mar 27, Police in Mexico City kicked off a campaign to exchange guns for computers and other gifts in an attempt to reduce firearm deaths. Two bodies were found wrapped in plastic bags and sheets behind a television station in Mexico's port city of Veracruz, apparent victims of drug-related violence.
(AP, 3/27/07)(AP, 3/28/07)
2007 Mar 27, In Nigeria Anglo-Dutch oil giant Shell confirmed that the federal government had charged it with the alleged loss of some "radioactive tools" belonging to one of its contractors. Shell denied reports that it had been involved in any dumping of toxic waste in Nigeria.
(AFP, 3/27/07)
2007 Mar 27, Residents and officials said Pakistanis living along the Afghan border have signed a third peace deal with the government promising not to shelter foreign militants. In Islamabad female and male Islamic students on an anti-vice drive abducted Aunty Shamin, an alleged brothel owner, and locked her up at their fundamentalist seminary. A grenade attack in Bajaur killed 5 ISI officers.
(AP, 3/27/07)(SFC, 3/29/07, p.A9)(Econ, 4/14/07, p.43)
2007 Mar 27, In Palestine’s northern Gaza Strip an earth embankment around a cesspool collapsed, spewing a river of sewage and mud that killed four people.
(AP, 3/27/07)
2007 Mar 27, A Tamil Tiger rebel drove an explosive-laden tractor to a military camp in eastern Sri Lanka, drawing fire from guards and triggering a blast at the entrance. At least seven people, including the bomber, were killed.
(AP, 3/27/07)
2007 Mar 27, Swedish artist Hans Hedberg (89), known for his outsized fruit and egg ceramic sculptures and, died.
(AP, 3/29/07)
2007 Mar 27, In Kiev, Ukraine, a Russian businessman allied with Ukraine's president was killed by a sniper as he was escorted from a courthouse during a break in his extortion trial.
(AP, 3/28/07)
2008 Mar 27, A US appeals Court in Philadelphia overturned the death sentence of Mumia Abu Jamal, who had been convicted of killing Officer Daniel Faulkner on Dec 9, 1981.
(SFC, 3/28/08, p.A4)
2008 Mar 27, In Kansas City, Mo., a judge convicted Terry Blair (46) of killing 6 women in 2004. Blair faced life in prison.
(SFC, 3/28/08, p.A4)
2008 Mar 27, Adobe systems, the maker of the popular photo-editing software Photoshop, launched a basic version available for free online.
(AP, 3/27/08)
2008 Mar 27, In Columbus, Georgia, Charles Johnston (63) stormed a hospital and killed 3 people including a nurse he blamed for his mother’s death in 2004. Johnston was wounded and taken into custody.
(SFC, 3/29/08, p.A2)
2008 Mar 27, Comorans staged angry anti-French protests as France decided whether to give ousted rebel leader Mohamed Bacar asylum after he fled to its Indian Ocean territory of Mayotte.
(AP, 3/27/08)
2008 Mar 27, Iraq’s PM Nouri al-Maliki promised to pursue his fight against Shiite militias in Basra to "the end." Al-Sadr called for a political solution to the burgeoning crisis and an end to the "shedding of Iraqi blood." Tens of thousands of Shiites took to Baghdad's streets to protest the government crackdown on militias in Basra as heavy fighting between Iraqi security forces and gunmen erupted for a third day in the southern oil port and the capital. The death toll in the Shiite city of Hillah, about 60 miles south of Baghdad, rose to at least 60. Tahseen Sheikhly, the Sunni civilian spokesman for the Baghdad security operation, was kidnapped and three bodyguards killed. A booby-trapped car exploded near the Iraqi Red Crescent Society's offices in Baghdad, killing two civilians and wounding five.
(AP, 3/27/08)(AP, 3/28/08)
2008 Mar 27, The Mexican government said it has sent more than 2,500 soldiers and federal police to curb soaring violence in a border state across from Texas and New Mexico.
(AP, 3/28/08)
2008 Mar 27, Myanmar's junta chief insisted that he is not power-hungry and intends to hand control of the government to the winners of elections in 2010.
(AP, 3/27/08)
2008 Mar 27, Geert Wilders, a Dutch lawmaker, released his 15-minute film “Fitna," which linked verses of the Koran to violent images from terrorist attacks.
(SFC, 3/28/08, p.A4)
2008 Mar 27, North Korea expelled all 11 South Korean officials from a joint industrial estate just north of the border in retaliation for Seoul's new tougher line towards the communist state.
(AP, 3/27/08)
2008 Mar 27, Suspected militants attacked an ambulance in a Pakistani tribal region on the Afghan border killing at least six people, including two paramilitary soldiers. A gunman on a motorcycle has fatally shot two anti-terrorism officials in the southern city of Karachi.
(AP, 3/27/08)(AP, 3/28/08)
2008 Mar 27, The editor-in-chief of the local edition said the Philippines will get its own edition of Playboy magazine, only without the nudity that made the US version famous. The Philippine edition will be launched on April 2 as a "mature lifestyle magazine."
(AFP, 3/27/08)
2008 Mar 27, Puerto Rico’s Gov. Anibal Acevedo Vila was charged with 19 counts in a campaign finance probe, including conspiracy to violate US federal campaign laws and giving false testimony to the FBI. 12 others were also charged in the corruption probe.
(AP, 3/27/08)(WSJ, 3/28/08, p.A1)
2008 Mar 27, In northern Sri Lanka a series of battles along the front lines killed 17 ethnic Tamil rebels and two government soldiers.
(AP, 3/28/08)
2008 Mar 27, A group of monks shouting there was no religious freedom disrupted a carefully orchestrated visit for foreign reporters to Tibet's capital, an embarrassment for China as it tried to show Lhasa was calm following deadly anti-government riots.
(AP, 3/27/08)
2008 Mar 27, Turkey's armed forces killed 15 members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in northern Iraq using long-range land weapons.
(Reuters, 3/29/08)
2008 Mar 27, A helicopter belonging to Ukraine's border guards crashed off an island in the Black Sea. One officer was rescued and 12 were missing.
(Reuters, 3/27/08)
2009 Mar 27, President Barack Obama ordered 4,000 more military troops into Afghanistan, vowing to "disrupt, dismantle and defeat" the Taliban and al-Qaida.
(AP, 3/27/09)
2009 Mar 27, The Texas Board of Education approved a science curriculum opening the door for teachers and texts to raise doubts about evolution.
(WSJ, 3/28/09, p.A1)
2009 Mar 27, In North Dakota the Red River rose to a daunting 112-year high and breached one of the dikes fortifying Fargo, but the mayor pledged to "go down swinging" as he called for more evacuations and additional National Guard troops to prevent a devastating flood.
(AP, 3/27/09)
2009 Mar 27, In Tracy, Ca., Sandra Cantu (8) went missing from her mobile park home. On April 6 her body was found in a suitcase dumped in an irrigation pond a few miles away. On April 10 Melissa Huckaby (28), a Sunday school teacher, was arrested on suspicion of kidnapping and killing Cantu.
(AP, 4/7/09)(AP, 4/11/09)
2009 Mar 27, Jack Dreyfus (95), founder of the Dreyfus Fund (1951), died in NYC. His fund helped found the retail mutual-fund business.
(WSJ, 3/28/09, p.A5)
2009 Mar 27, New research suggested that crabs not only suffer pain but also retain a memory of it. In 2021 a British government study said crabs and lobsters have the capacity to feel pain and suffer distress when harmed.
(http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/03/27/crabs.memorypain/)(SSFC, 11/28/21, p.B10)
2009 Mar 27, Southern African countries (Angola, Botswana, Mozambique, Namibia, Zambia) have been hit by the worst floods in years, killing more than 100 people and displacing thousands, as a tropical storm threatened to bring more pain.
(AFP, 3/28/09)
2009 Mar 27, Bolivia's Interior Minister Alfredo Rada said police have uncovered one of the country's biggest known cocaine processing factories. Two Colombians and a Bolivian were arrested at the nearly 1,000-acre (400 hectare) site in the dense, southeastern jungles.
(AP, 3/27/09)
2009 Mar 27, In Chile the Progressive Governance Summit, a 2-day gathering of leaders from Latin America and Europe, opened at the resort city of Vina del Mar. All agreed for an export-credit fund to get trade flowing again.
(AP, 3/27/09)(Econ, 4/4/09, p.43)
2009 Mar 27, Chinese health officials said that hand, foot and mouth disease has sickened 41,000 people across the country and killed 18 children so far this year.
(AP, 3/27/09)
2009 Mar 27, In China a minibus collided with two trucks and a bus tumbled into a mountain gorge in two unrelated crashes, killing a total of 37 people.
(AP, 3/27/09)
2009 Mar 27, In Honda, Colombia, Arcebio Alvarez (59), a farmer and widower, was arrested on charges of incest and sexual abuse. He was accused of incest for allegedly fathering eight children with his daughter. He denied being the woman's biological father.
(AP, 3/29/09)
2009 Mar 27, In Indonesia torrential rain caused a dam to burst outside Jakarta, sending a wall of muddy water crashing into a densely packed neighborhood and killing at least 96 people with some 130 still missing. The earthen dam, built in 1933 when Indonesia was still under Dutch rule, surrounded a man-made lake in Cirendeu on the southwestern edge of Jakarta.
(AP, 3/27/09)(AP, 3/29/09)
2009 Mar 27, French President Nicolas Sarkozy wrapped up his mini-tour of three African countries, after meeting with Niger leader Mamadou Tandja. This followed visits to Kinshasa and Brazzaville.
(AFP, 3/27/09)
2009 Mar 27, An overcrowded boat packed with migrants capsized in stormy seas off the coast of Libya. Only 20 survived when the wooden vessel with 257 people on board, mostly African migrants, including 70 women and two children, both of whom died, sunk only three hours off Libya.
(AP, 3/31/09)(AP, 4/1/09)
2009 Mar 27, Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari called for a US change of policy and voiced opposition to missile strikes. A suicide bomber demolished a mosque packed with hundreds of worshippers attending prayers near Jamrud in the Khyber Pass, killing at least 50 people and injuring over 100 more.
(AFP, 3/27/09)(AP, 3/27/09)(SFC, 3/28/09, p.A2)
2009 Mar 27, Russian media reported that the presidential Security Council has released a document outlining government policy for the Arctic that includes creating a special group of military forces.
(AP, 3/27/09)
2009 Mar 27, Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah (84) appointed his half-brother, Prince Nayef (75), as his 2nd deputy prime minister.
(Econ, 4/4/09, p.51)
2009 Mar 27, Sri Lanka’s military said it had killed 29 rebels. 13 were reported killed in a battle near Puthkkudiyirippu, while army snipers killed another 16.
(AP, 3/27/09)
2009 Mar 27, Thai PM Abhisit Vejjavija's rejected calls for his resignation by thousands of anti-government protesters who ringed his office for a second day in a boisterous rally.
(AP, 3/27/09)
2009 Mar 27, Zimbabwe PM Morgan Tsvangirai decried a fresh wave of farm invasions across the country and warned that those responsible for the farm disruptions risk arrest.
(AFP, 3/27/09)
2010 Mar 27, Robert Krentz (58), a prominent Arizona rancher near the Mexican border, was shot while working at his remote cattle ranch on the Arizona-Mexico border. His family's ranch sprawled over 35,000 acres. Investigators tracked the footprints of the suspected gunman about 20 miles south to the border with Mexico, prompting some authorities to blame smugglers or illegal immigrants for the killing.
(Reuters, 4/1/10)
2010 Mar 27, Federal agents in southern Michigan raided the home of David Stone, the suspected leader of the Hutaree militia, a group of self-proclaimed Christian warriors. Authorities recovered hand grenade instructions and schematics, a container of potassium chlorate, and other items.
(SFC, 4/13/10, p.A5)
2010 Mar 27, In southern Afghanistan an international service member was killed by a roadside bomb. 6 civilians were killed in two separate roadside bomb explosions, one in Sangin district and one in Nawa district.
(AP, 3/27/10)(AP, 3/28/10)
2010 Mar 27, In Australia Sydney's iconic Opera House and Harbor Bridge went dark along with millions of homes at the start of Earth Hour, a global switch-off aimed at revitalizing efforts against climate change.
(AFP, 3/27/10)
2010 Mar 27, British Airways cabin crew launched a four-day strike, the second wave of action in a week as part of a bitter, long-running dispute over pay and conditions.
(AFP, 3/27/10)
2010 Mar 27, Pirates off the coast of Cameroon’s Bakassi peninsula seized the MV Gull, a Ghanaian ship, and kidnapped two sailors for ransom. Pirates took control of the ship and kidnapped its captain and an officer on board once they found nothing worth stealing. Pirates freed the two West African sailors on March 31.
(AP, 3/30/10)(AFP, 3/31/10)
2010 Mar 27, In China a recycling pool at a sewage treatment plant collapsed in northern Shaanxi province and some 1,000 tons of oil sludge contaminated farmland and the Luohe River, a tributary of the Yellow River.
(AFP, 4/3/10)
2010 Mar 27, Iran used an ancient new year celebration to reach out to Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Iraq, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and Turkey at a summit meeting that projected Iranian leadership in the strategic region straddling the Middle East and Central Asia.
(AP, 3/27/10)
2010 Mar 27, In Turin, Italy, Mao Asada (19) of Japan toppled Olympic champion Yu-Na Kim in a triumphant season finale which saw her claim her second world title at the world figure skating championships.
(AFP, 3/27/10)
2010 Mar 27, A two-day Arab League summit opened in Sirte, Libya. Amr Moussa, the head of the Arab League, urged the 22-nation bloc to engage Iran directly over concerns about its growing influence in the region and its disputed nuclear program.
(AP, 3/27/10)
2010 Mar 27, Libya lifted a visa ban on citizens of 25 European countries after EU president Spain said a Swiss-instigated visa blacklist against 188 Libyans in those countries had been scrapped.
(Reuters, 3/28/10)
2010 Mar 27, In western Mexico two police officers and two other men have been found shot to death at a gas station in Michoacan state. In Guerrero state a man was found tied up and fatally shot in a car in the resort of Acapulco. The bodies of four men and a woman were found on a rural road in a town not far from the violent border city of Ciudad Juarez. More than 7,000 people gathered in the northern city of Monterrey to protest a wave of violence that has affected the country's third largest city in recent weeks.
(AP, 3/27/10)
2010 Mar 27, Pakistani air strikes killed at least 11 militants in a new offensive against foreign fighters in the restive northwest tribal belt bordering Afghanistan. Suspected US missiles killed 4 people in the northwest.
(AFP, 3/27/10)(SSFC, 3/28/10, p.A6)
2010 Mar 27, Peruvian police said five people have been killed by a mudslide set off by heavy rains in a remote community of wildcat miners in the southeastern Andes.
(AP, 3/27/10)
2010 Mar 27, In Russia an apartment block west of Moscow partially collapsed following a suspected gas explosion, killing three people and possibly trapping others under the rubble.
(AP, 3/27/10)
2010 Mar 27, In Russia former Soviet world chess champion Vasily Smyslov (89) died of heart failure. Smyslov beat Mikhail Botvinnik in 1957 to become the seventh world champion, before losing in a re-match the following year. His career in the top flight of world chess spanned some four decades. He was beaten by Garry Kasparov in 1984 in the Candidates Final match for the right to challenge Anatoly Karpov for the world title, which Kasparov went on to capture.
(Reuters, 3/27/10)
2010 Mar 27, In Somalia 3 people were killed and four injured in clashes between government soldiers and armed protesters opposing the demolition of their houses near Mogadishu's main airport.
(AP, 3/27/10)
2010 Mar 27, Korea Life became the first big South Korean life insurer to go public. Others were expected to soon follow.
(Econ, 3/27/10, p.81)
2010 Mar 27, In Sudan Darfur rebels allegedly shot down 2 Sudanese army helicopters in the latest reports of fighting that have marred faltering peace talks between Khartoum and other insurgents. Sudan's army said two of its helicopters crashed after developing technical problems.
(Reuters, 3/29/10)
2010 Mar 27, Thai troops retreated from security posts in the capital, bowing to demands from 80,000 jubilant red-shirted protesters who mounted a rally to demand fresh elections.
(AFP, 3/27/10)
2010 Mar 27, In Yemen policemen opened fire in Daleh on the funeral procession for a Southern Movement member killed by police gunfire a week earlier, wounding 28 mourners.
(AFP, 4/1/10)
2010 Mar 27, Zimbabwe police shut down an art exhibit exploring violence blamed on President Robert Mugabe. Artist Owen Maseko had collected family photos of missing people, images of mine shafts where bodies were believed dumped and reports on an armed uprising after independence in 1980 in the western Matabeleland district that was crushed by troops loyal to Mugabe. Thousands of civilians were massacred in the fighting.
(AP, 3/29/10)
2011 Mar 27, DJ Megatron (32), an urban radio and TV personality, was shot and killed in NYC. The occasional BET TV host was killed while going to a store.
(SFC, 3/28/11, p.A4)
2011 Mar 27, Farley Granger (b.1925), screen and theater actor, died. His films included “Strangers on a Train" (1951), a Hitchcock film based on a novel by Patricia Highsmith. His 2007 memoir was titled “Include Me Out."
(SFC, 3/30/11, p.C4)
2011 Mar 27, In southern Afghanistan a NATO service member was killed in a roadside bombing. A team of suicide bombers shot their way into the compound of a road construction company in eastern Afghanistan and detonated a truck loaded with explosives, killing at least 24 people and wounding 56 others in Paktika province.
(AP, 3/27/11)(AP, 3/28/11)(SFC, 3/29/11, p.A2)
2011 Mar 27, Bahrain's largest Shi'ite opposition group Wefaq accepted Kuwait as a mediator with Bahrain's government to end a political crisis gripping the tiny kingdom.
(Reuters, 3/27/11)
2011 Mar 27, In Brazil renowned Belgium-born theologian Jose Comblin (88) died of natural causes. Comblin was a leading exponent of liberation theology, which advocates activism on behalf of the poor. The movement swept Latin America in the 1960s following the Second Vatican Council.
(AP, 3/29/11)
2011 Mar 27, The Central African Republic voted in the second round of parliamentary elections expected to hand President Francois Bozize's party a large majority because of an opposition boycott. The party of CAR's president won an overall majority in the run-off legislative elections, garnering 61 of the 105 seats in parliament, according to provisional results showed on April 7.
(AFP, 3/27/11)(AFP, 4/7/11)
2011 Mar 27, Yang Hengjun (46), a Sydney-based spy novelist, phoned an assistant from Guangzhou airport in southeastern China to say three men were following him. Yang was later able to briefly phone a sister in Guangzhou to say "he's having a long chat with his old friends." This was a prearranged signal that Yang had been taken by the secret police. Yang was an official in the Chinese Foreign Ministry before moving to Australia. His novel, "Fatal Weakness," deals with espionage between China and the United States and has been published on the Internet in China.
(AP, 3/29/11)
2011 Mar 27, India's navy and coast guard captured 16 Somali pirates after a three-hour-long battle in the Arabian Sea. The pirates were trying to seize a merchant ship, MV Maersk Kensington, using a hijacked trawler. 16 crew members who had been taken hostage by the pirates were rescued from the hijacked Iranian trawler off India's western Lakshadweep islands.
(AP, 3/28/11)
2011 Mar 27, Israel deployed a cutting-edge rocket defense system on the outskirts of Beersheba. “Iron Dome" is expected to be fully operational in a matter of months. Israeli aircraft struck a Palestinian rocket squad in the Gaza Strip, killing two militants as the military activated a new defense system to shoot down incoming rockets.
(AP, 3/27/11)(SFC, 3/28/11, p.A2)
2011 Mar 27, Ivory Coast's embattled strongman Laurent Gbagbo accepted the African Union's choice to mediate a bloody post-election crisis. But former Cape Verde's foreign minister Jose Brito was rejected by presidential rival Alassane Ouattara.
(AFP, 3/27/11)
2011 Mar 27, In Japan emergency workers struggling to pump contaminated water from the stricken Fukushima nuclear complex fled from one of the troubled reactors after reporting a huge increase in radioactivity, a spike that officials later apologetically said was inaccurate. Police said the death toll from earthquake and tsunami stood at 10,668, with more than 16,574 people missing. Hundreds of thousands of people remained homeless.
(AP, 3/27/11)
2011 Mar 27, Libyan rebels pushed further west to retake more territory abandoned by Muammar Gaddafi's retreating forces, which have been weakened by Western air strikes. Their gains put the rebels back in control of all the main oil terminals in the eastern half of Libya: Es Sider, Ras Lanuf, Brega, Zueitina and Tobruk. Misrata remained under siege by Gaddafi forces.
(Reuters, 3/27/11)
2011 Mar 27, South Africa's newly appointed government spokesman Jimmy Manyi said the government is launching a newspaper to rectify media censorship of government information. Its bimonthly magazine will launch next month as a 20-page, free, monthly newspaper called Vuk'uzenzele, which means "Wake up and do it for yourself" in Zulu.
(AP, 3/27/11)
2011 Mar 27, The Red Cross said South Korea has repatriated 27 of 31 North Koreans whose status was uncertain for more than a month because 4 others on their drifting fishing boat defected.
(AP, 3/27/11)
2011 Mar 27, The Somali government voted to extend its term for another year, despite int’l. calls for it to leave office when its mandate expires in August.
(SFC, 3/28/11, p.A2)
2011 Mar 27, South Sudan rebels were reported to have united in a new armed movement, the Southern Sudan Democratic Movement, against the young southern government. It brought together 5 different armed militias spanning 4 of South Sudan’s 10 states.
(SSFC, 3/27/11, p.A2)
2011 Mar 27, Syria's government said that unknown gunmen firing from rooftops and prowling the streets of Latakia are to blame for two days of violence that killed 12 people. A human rights activist said authorities have released 17 political detainees in another apparent attempt to appease the protesters.
(AP, 3/27/11)
2011 Mar 27, United Nations police returned full control of East Timor to the national force, more than four years after bloody clashes threatened to push the country into civil war.
(AFP, 3/27/11)
2011 Mar 27, Venezuela’s President Chavez urged citizens to cut their calories to avoid obesity, the latest lifestyle recommendation by the self-proclaimed socialist crusader. Chavez has lobbied in recent weeks against what he calls the evils of capitalism, including alcoholism, breast implants and violent television programs.
(AP, 3/27/11)
2011 Mar 27, In Yemen Islamic militants seized control of a weapons factory, a strategic mountain and a nearby town in the southern province of Abyan, as a political stalemate in the capital causes security to unravel around the country.
(AP, 3/27/11)
2011 Mar 27, Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe vowed his party would not back down from its controversial drive to force foreign-owned companies to sell majority shareholdings to local blacks. Police barred PM Morgan Tsvangirai's party from holding a rally, saying it coincided with the funeral of a close ally of President Mugabe.
(Reuters, 3/27/11)(AFP, 3/27/11)
2012 Mar 27, US Pres. Barack Obama and Pakistan's PM Yousuf Raza Gilani vowed to rescue a troubled anti-terror alliance on the sidelines of a nuclear security summit in Seoul.
(AFP, 3/27/12)
2012 Mar 27, The Obama administration set the first-ever limits on heat-trapping pollution from new power plants.
(SFC, 3/28/12, p.A6)
2012 Mar 27, The California Judicial Council voted to kill a $2 billion computer system linking the state’s 58 county courts. Over $500 million was already spent in a launch effort.
(SSFC, 4/1/12, p.C1)
2012 Mar 27, Adrienne Rich (b.1929), American feminist poet, died in her Santa Cruz, Ca., home after a long struggle with rheumatoid arthritis.
(SFC, 3/29/12, p.A1)
2012 Mar 27, Arab officials gathered in Baghdad this week for a series of meetings. Their agenda of tourism, tackling water security and organizing regional responses to natural disasters was overshadowed by the crisis in Syria.
(AFP, 3/27/12)
2012 Mar 27, Brazil’s Tourism Ministry said it is asking more than 2,000 websites to remove sexual content that promotes Latin America's biggest country as a sex tourism destination.
(AP, 3/27/12)
2012 Mar 27, Britain’s Health and Socal Care Act 2012 received Royal Assent. It increased competition, gave the NHS greater autonomy, and put more decisions about care in the hands of local doctors.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_and_Social_Care_Act_2012)(Econ, 3/29/14, p.60)
2012 Mar 27, British Royal Mail announced that stamp prices will shoot up to record highs of 60p for first class and 50p for second class effective April 30.
(AFP, 3/27/12)
2012 Mar 27, In Chile Daniel Zamudio, a young gay man, died following a March 3 attack in Santiago. Attackers had brutally beaten him and carved swastikas into his body. The suspects included Raul Alfonso Lopez (25); Alejandro Axel Angulo Tapia (26); Patricio Ahumada Garay (25); and Fabian Mora Mora (19). On Oct 28, 2013, Garay was sentenced to life in prison.
(AP, 3/29/12)(SFC, 10/29/13, p.A2)
2012 Mar 27, In Egypt liberal and leftist parties announced that they have pulled out of a panel drafting Egypt's new constitution, accusing Islamists of monopolizing the process that will deliver the country's post-revolution charter. Cairo's Administrative Court began looking into the legitimacy of the constitutional panel after lawsuits were filed by several legal experts who argue that the constitution cannot be drafted by those whose role it will define.
(AFP, 3/27/12)
2012 Mar 27, In India Maoists insurgents killed 12 paramilitary officers and injured 28 others in a landmine blast in Maharashtra state, marking the rebels' third high-profile strike this month.
(AFP, 3/27/12)(SFC, 3/28/12, p.A2)(Econ, 3/31/12, p.50)
2012 Mar 27, In Indonesia thousands protested nationwide to reject the government's plan to hike the subsidized fuel price, with sporadic violence breaking out and injuring several people.
(AFP, 3/27/12)
2012 Mar 27, A cloud of explosive natural gas boiling out of the North Sea from a leak at Total's abandoned Elgin platform forced wider evacuations off the Scottish coast as the French firm warned it may take six months to halt the flow.
(Reuters, 3/27/12)
2012 Mar 27, In Israel Shaul Mofaz, a former military chief and defense minister, captured 62% of the votes the race for Kadima Party chief, trouncing Tzipi Livni, who took 37%.
(AP, 3/28/12)
2012 Mar 27, An Israeli army game caused a melee at a home in the West Bank village of Rammun. 3 brothers including Rashad Shawakha, stood to defend their home. Rashad was wounded by two intruders posing as Arabs ands died of his wounds on April 2.
(AFP, 6/24/12)
2012 Mar 27, In Jamaica some 60 protesters who gathered outside the security ministry in a rare street demonstration to demand an end to police shootings. A March 16 raid in the poor Cassava Piece neighborhood Diane Gordon, a mother of two, was fatally shot in the head on the street as she returned from a child's wake. Police said Gordon was killed during a shootout between officers and gunmen, but residents deny there were gunmen in the area. There have been roughly 50 police killings in Jamaica so far this year, nearly 30 of them in March.
(AP, 3/27/12)
2012 Mar 27, In Mali the military junta lifted a curfew imposed after its coup 5 days earlier. Coup leaders presented a new constitution consisting of 69 articles. The first part appeared to be lifted from the country's current constitution, including the guarantees of free speech, liberty of movement and freedom of thought. The middle and final sections set out the role of the military committee now controlling the country, which calls itself the National Committee for the Reestablishment of Democracy and the Restoration of the State. ECOWAS in an emergency meeting again demanded the immediate restoration of constitutional order in Bamako.
(AFP, 3/27/12)(AFP, 3/28/12)
2012 Mar 27, Pakistan was reported to have banned India's James Bond, outlawing a high-octane Bollywood action flick in which an Indian secret agent thwarts Pakistani spies from detonating a nuclear bomb in Delhi. Agent Vinod grossed $9.7 million on its opening weekend. It showed an Indian agent jetting around the world, dodging assassins to save his country from nuclear armageddon plotted by rogue Pakistani spies and terrorists.
(AFP, 3/27/12)
2012 Mar 27, In Pakistan gunmen and arsonists went on the rampage in Karachi, killing at least eight people and setting dozens of vehicles alight. The unrest was sparked by the murder of a party worker and his brother the previous evening.
(AFP, 3/27/12)
2012 Mar 27, In Pakistan Sobia Bibi (25), a mother of one child, was doused with petrol and burned alive in a dispute with her husband's family. Her 90-year-old mother-in-law was among those later named as suspects in Narowal district, northeast Lahore.
(AFP, 4/11/12)
2012 Mar 27, In South Korea world leaders including US President Barack Obama called for strong steps to combat nuclear terrorism, wrapping up a 53-nation summit overshadowed by North Korea's planned rocket launch.
(AFP, 3/27/12)
2012 Mar 27, South Sudan said Sudan's military bombed oil fields in the town of Bentiu.
(AP, 3/27/12)
2012 Mar 27, Spanish police arrested a suspected member of al-Qaida, identified as M.H.A. M.H.A. – born in Jordan with Saudi citizenship, who was key to the terror group's Internet propaganda and recruiting operations.
(AP, 3/27/12)
2012 Mar 27, In Sudan 3 people were killed, including one apparently shot dead by government troops, in a dispute over a market in the Darfur region.
(AFP, 3/28/12)
2012 Mar 27, Swiss authorities said five out of every 1,000 deaths in Switzerland now involve assisted suicide, with women more likely to die this way than men.
(AP, 3/27/12)
2012 Mar 27, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad toured the flashpoint Baba Amr neighborhood of Homs. A spokesman for UN envoy Kofi Annan said Syria has accepted his 6-point plan to end the bloodshed in the country. Syrian security forces reportedly killed 10 people as the regime pushed to retake areas still under rebel control.
(AFP, 3/27/12)(AP, 3/27/12)
2013 Mar 27, Eric Harroun of Phoenix, Az., was arrested at Dulles Int’l. Airport upon returning to the US from Turkey, where he had described to FBI agents his journey to the front lines of Syria's civil war with fighters from the al-Nusra Front, a designated terrorist organization also referred to as al Qaeda in Iraq. Harroun served in the US Army from 2000 to 2003.
(AP, 3/29/13)
2013 Mar 27, The California Dept. of Toxic Substances Control said a toxic waste dump site near Kettleman city has agreed to pay $311,000 in fines for failing to report 72 hazardous materials spills over the last 4 years.
(SFC, 3/29/13, p.D7)
2013 Mar 27, Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam said he would not expand Medicaid in his state joining 18 other Republican governors who have rejected expansion for now.
(SFC, 3/28/13, p.A9)
2013 Mar 27, A team of int’l. scientists reported the discovery of dozens of signposts in DNA that can help reveal a person’s risk for breast, ovarian or prostate cancer.
(SFC, 3/28/13, p.A10)
2013 Mar 27, An Afghan teenager killed US soldier Sgt. Michael Cable (26) in Nangarhar province by stabbing him in the neck while he played with a group of local children. The young man escaped to nearby Pakistan.
(AP, 4/1/13)
2013 Mar 27, The Bank of England said that its recommendations for Britain's banks to plug a 25 billion-pound capital shortfall by December won't call on further taxpayer funds.
(AP, 3/27/13)
2013 Mar 27, Abu Qatada, a radical Muslim cleric, thwarted another effort by Britain to have him deported to Jordan after a court accepted arguments that he would face testimony obtained by torture.
(AP, 3/27/13)
2013 Mar 27, It was reported the Ecuador planned to auction off 7.4 million acres of Amazon rain forest to Chinese oil companies. 7 indigenous groups said they had not consented to the projects.
(SSFC, 3/31/13, p.A4)
2013 Mar 27, Egypt's naval forces captured three scuba divers who were trying to cut an undersea Internet cable in the Mediterranean. Telecom executives meanwhile blamed a weeklong Internet slowdown on damage caused to another cable by a ship.
(AP, 3/27/13)
2013 Mar 27, An Egyptian appeals court annulled a November presidential decree dismissing the country's top prosecutor and ordered him reinstated.
(AP, 3/27/13)
2013 Mar 27, In Germany work crews backed by about 250 police removed parts of the Berlin Wall known as the East Side Gallery before dawn to make way for an upscale building project, despite demands by protesters that the site be preserved.
(AP, 3/27/13)
2013 Mar 27, In Iraq a parked car bomb ripped through a residential area in the town of Musayyib, killing three civilians and wounding 14. Another bomb targeted a restaurant in the town of Madain, killing two people and wounding 11.
(AP, 3/27/13)
2013 Mar 27, In Japan Takafumi Horie, the former chief executive of Internet portal Livedoor, was released from prison. He was jailed in 2011 for fraud. While in prison he gathered almost one million Twitter followers.
(Econ, 4/6/13, p.74)
2013 Mar 27, In northern Mali the National Movement for the Liberation of the Azawad, or NMLA, announced that Mohamed Aly Ag Al Bessati would serve as the civil administrator for Kidal.
(AP, 3/28/13)
2013 Mar 27, In Mexico hundreds of armed vigilantes took control of Tierra Colorado, a town on a major highway in the Pacific coast state of Guerrero, arresting local police officers and searching homes in response to the March 25 killing of vigilante leader Guadalupe Quinones Carbajal (28). Several opened fire on a car of Mexican tourists headed to the beach for Easter week.
(AP, 3/27/13)
2013 Mar 27, In central Nigeria an assault on a village in the Riyom local government area killed 28 people.
(AP, 3/30/13)
2013 Mar 27, North Korea cut its last military hotline with Seoul, a link that has been essential in operating the last major symbol of inter-Korean cooperation: an industrial complex in the North that employs hundreds of workers from the South.
(AP, 3/27/13)
2013 Mar 27, In South Africa leaders of the five BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) agreed to create a development bank to help fund their $4.5 trillion infrastructure programs — a direct challenge to the World Bank that they accuse of Western bias.
(AP, 3/27/13)
2013 Mar 27, A Sri Lanka judge announced that more than 150 human skulls and bones recovered from a mass grave Lanka were buried there about 25 years ago, strengthening suspicion that they belonged to suspected Marxist rebels killed at the time. The skeletal remains were found inside the premises of a government hospital dated to between 1987 and 1990.
(AP, 3/27/13)
2013 Mar 27, Syria's Pres. Assad appealed o the leaders of a five-nation economic forum meeting in South Africa to help end his country's two-year conflict. Assad sent a letter urging the leaders of the five nation BRICS forum — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — to "work for an immediate cessation of violence. The Observatory said rebels overran three army posts near Bir Ajam.
(AP, 3/27/13)
2013 Mar 27, A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck central Taiwan, killing at one person and injuring 19 as it damaged buildings on the island.
(AP, 3/27/13)
2013 Mar 27, The Yugoslav war crimes tribunal in The Hague convicted two senior Bosnian Serbs of war crimes in the 1992-1995 Bosnian war. Mico Stanisic and Stojan Zupljanin were each sentenced to 22 years in prison. In 2016 appeals were rejected.
(SFC, 3/28/13, p.A3)(SFC, 7/1/16, p.A2)
2013 Mar 27, Zimbabwe's High Court freed on bail four senior officials from PM Morgan Tsvangirai's party accused of illegally collecting information on high level corruption.
(AP, 3/27/13)
2014 Mar 27, A visibly energized President Barack Obama held a nearly hour-long audience with Pope Francis at the Vatican, expressing his great admiration for the pontiff and inviting him to visit the White House.
(AP, 3/27/14)
2014 Mar 27, The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a report saying one in 68 US children has been diagnosed with autism. The CDC report was based on data from 2010.
(SFC, 3/28/14, p.D1)
2014 Mar 27, The US Mint put new collector gold and silver coins on sale to commemorate the Baseball Hall of Fame which celebrates its 75th anniversary this year. The design by Cassie McFarland's featured a curved baseball glove.
(AOL.com, 3/13/14)
2014 Mar 27, The US Air Force fired nine midlevel nuclear commanders and said it will discipline dozens of junior officers at a nuclear base in Great Falls, Montana, in response to an exam cheating scandal.
(SFC, 3/28/14, p.A6)
2014 Mar 27, Police in southern California served over two dozen search warrants and made six arrested in an investigation targeting the theft of baggage at Los Angeles Int’l. Airport. Those arrested did not directly work for the airport.
(SFC, 3/28/14, p.A6)
2014 Mar 27, Dr. James Schlesinger (1929), former US defense secretary under Presidents Nixon and Ford, died in NYC. He also served as the first secretary of the new Energy Dept. under Pres. Carter. In 1960 he authored “The Political Economy of National Security: A study of the economic aspects of the contemporary power struggle."
(SFC, 3/28/14, p.D2)
2014 Mar 27, Mark Stock (62), a realist figure painter, died in Oakland, Ca. He was known for a series of butlers in tuxedos including “"The Butler’s in Love" (1989).
(SFC, 3/28/14, p.D3)
2014 Mar 27, In his first visit to Afghanistan as Iran's president, Hassan Rouhani called for regional unity as regional leaders celebrated the Persian New Year in Kabul.
(AP, 3/27/14)
2014 Mar 27, Cambodia's opposition party said it will defy a government ban on meeting in one of the capital's public parks, setting up a possible clash with authorities.
(AP, 3/27/14)
2014 Mar 27, In the Central African Republic at least 9 people were killed when extremists threw hand grenades at a crowd of mourners during a funeral service in Bangui. A recent uptick in violence had seen around 20 people killed in Bangui since March 22.
(AFP, 3/28/14)(AP, 3/29/14)
2014 Mar 27, China’s Defense Ministry said it will beef up its internet security after recent reports that the US government spied on a major telecommunications firm.
(Reuters, 3/27/14)
2014 Mar 27, China’s Xinhua state news said a Wuhu city court has sentenced to death a rapist who posed as a female on social networks to lure 16 girls to meet him. Wang Yong (40) was sentenced earlier this month for raping the girls aged 12 to 16 starting in 2009.
(AP, 3/27/14)
2014 Mar 27, In China a man (34) involved in a property dispute stabbed six people to death in a Beijing district and injured others.
(AP, 3/27/14)
2014 Mar 27, Colombia’s Pres. Juan Manuel Santos said Venezuela’s government has accepted the political opposition’s conditions for dialogue.
(SFC, 3/28/14, p.A2)
2014 Mar 27, Egypt’s Field Marshal Abdel Fattah al-Sisi ditched his military fatigues and resigned as Egypt's defense minister, a day after announcing he would run for president.
(AFP, 3/27/14)
2014 Mar 27, A French court ordered Closer magazine to pay 15,000 euros for publishing photos of what it said was a helmeted President Francois Hollande visiting an actress for a secret tryst. Julie Gayet had sued the magazine for violation of privacy.
(AP, 3/27/14)
2014 Mar 27, Germany's main airports were hit by a strike as public sector workers raised pressure on the government in pay talks.
(Reuters, 3/27/14)
2014 Mar 27, Iraqi army forces began shelling the region of Zoba, just south of Fallujah, sparking clashes with militants. At least 3 people were killed and 53 wounded in the shelling and firefights. A series of attacks targeting commercial areas killed 26 people. In Ramadi 4 soldiers were killed and 10 wounded in a booby-trapped building.
(AFP, 3/28/14)(AP, 3/28/14)(AP, 4/1/14)
2014 Mar 27, Israel said it will allow into the Gaza Strip construction materials and electric equipment to help build a Turkish-sponsored hospital, in a possible sign of improving ties with Ankara.
(Reuters, 3/27/14)
2014 Mar 27, Japan’s Shizuoka District Court suspended the death sentence and ordered a retrial for Iwao Hakamada (78). The world's longest-serving death row inmate had been convicted in the 1966 murder of a family and was sentenced to death in 1968. The judge who freed him found that police and prosecutors had fabricated evidence in the original trial.
(AP, 3/27/14)(Econ, 12/5/15, p.39)
2014 Mar 27, Lebanon’s government ordered the army and security forces to control the security situation in Tripoli and to seize arms caches in the city. A soldier was killed by two masked men on motorbikes in Tripoli. A day earlier a municipal worker was murdered in the same fashion.
(AFP, 3/28/14)
2014 Mar 27, In Libya slain dictator Moamer Kadhafi's son Saadi asked Libyans for forgiveness in a taped interview released by prison authorities three weeks after his extradition from neighboring Niger.
(AFP, 3/28/14)
2014 Mar 27, In Macau "The Grandmaster" won best picture, best director for Wong Kar Wai and five other honors at the Asian Film Awards.
(AP, 3/28/14)
2014 Mar 27, Mexican soldiers and police killed 10 Zetas drug cartel suspects in a gunfight in the eastern state of Veracruz.
(AFP, 3/28/14)
2014 Mar 27, In Myanmar Buddhist-led mobs tore through streets hurling stones at the offices and residences of international aid workers in western Rakhine state, prompting the evacuation of almost all non-essential staff. One girl (11) was killed when police fired into the air to disperse crowds.
(AP, 3/27/14)(SFC, 3/29/14, p.A5)
2014 Mar 27, In Qatar Matthew and Grace Huang, an American couple charged with starving their adopted daughter (8) to death, were sentenced to three years in prison. Their daughter was pronounced dead when the Huangs took her to the hospital in January 2013.
(AP, 3/27/14)
2014 Mar 27, The Philippine government signed a peace accord with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, the country's largest Muslim rebel group. The deal grants largely Muslim areas of the southern Mindanao region greater political autonomy in exchange for an end to armed rebellion.
(AP, 3/27/14)
2014 Mar 27, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin said that Russia would develop its own credit card system to reduce reliance on Western-based companies and soften the potential blow from US and EU sanctions.
(Reuters, 3/27/14)
2014 Mar 27, Saudi Arabia’s reigning King Abdullah (~89) appointed by royal decree his youngest surviving brother, Muqrin (b.1945), as 2nd in line to the throne after ailing crown prince Salman (78).
(Econ, 4/5/14, p.40)
2014 Mar 27, South Korea's military seized a North Korean fishing boat that it said had crossed a disputed maritime border after ignoring warnings to retreat amid growing tension between the two sides.
(Reuters, 3/27/14)
2014 Mar 27, South Korea formally approved a request from women rights activists, including one "comfort woman", to meet North Korean counterparts at a conference on Japan's wartime use of sex slaves.
(AFP, 3/27/14)
2014 Mar 27, Syrian forces bombarded rebel positions with artillery and warplanes in the Mediterranean coastal province of Latakia.
(AP, 3/27/14)
2014 Mar 27, In Turkey KanalTurk television station, linked to opponents of PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said authorities have withdrawn its license to broadcast nationally just days before crucial local elections.
(AP, 3/27/14)
2014 Mar 27, A scandal in Uganda over alleged sex abuse of female runners deepened after it emerged that Moses Kipsiro, the athlete who exposed the issue, was dropped from the national half-marathon team.
(AFP, 3/27/14)
2014 Mar 27, Ukraine PM Arseniy Yatsenyuk warned that everyone is going to feel some pain from necessary financial reforms ahead as the International Monetary Fund pledged up to $18 billion in loans to prop up the teetering economy. Former PM Yulia Tymoshenko announced that she will run for president in the vote set for May 25.
(AP, 3/27/14)
2014 Mar 27, The UN passed a non-binding resolution declaring invalid Crimea's Moscow-backed referendum on seceding from Ukraine with 100 votes in favor, 11 against and 58 abstentions in the 193-nation General Assembly. Russia threatened several Eastern European and Central Asian states with retaliation if they voted in favor of a United Nations General Assembly resolution.
(Reuters, 3/28/14)(Reuters, 3/29/14)
2014 Mar 27, The UN's top human rights body agreed to launch an international criminal investigation into alleged abuses from Sri Lanka's ended civil war, approving a US-led resolution over the strong protests of Sri Lanka's government.
(AP, 3/27/14)
2015 Mar 27, The White House announced a five-year plan to fight the threat of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
(SFC, 3/28/15, p.A5)
2015 Mar 27, Former Sec. of State Hillary Clinton said she had permanently deleted all e-mails from the private server she used to conduct officials business.
(SFC, 3/28/15, p.A6)
2015 Mar 27, In Boston police Officer John Moynihan (34) was shot in the face by suspect Angelo West (41) following a traffic stop. West was killed as he tried to run away. Moynihan was hospitalized and put into an induced coma.
(SSFC, 3/29/15, p.A10)
2015 Mar 27, In NYC Moises Lucon (26) and Nicholas Figueroa (23) were killed after an explosion brought down three buildings and damaged a fourth property in the East Village, injuring 22 people.
(AP, 3/27/15)(SSFC, 3/29/15, p.A12)(SFC, 3/30/15, p.A5)
2015 Mar 27, In Bangladesh at least 10 people were killed and dozens more injured in a stampede during a Hindu religious gathering in Langalbandh.
(AP, 3/27/15)
2015 Mar 27, In Dominica a police sergeant and four officers were charged with murder. They were accused in last year's death of a prisoner found unresponsive in his cell. Police have said that Joshua Etienne had fractured ribs and a punctured lung.
(AP, 3/28/15)
2015 Mar 27, Egyptian and Saudi Arabian warships deployed to the Bab al-Mandab strait off Yemen to secure the strategic sea passage.
(SFC, 3/28/15, p.A3)
2015 Mar 27, In eastern Indonesia an estimated 4,000 foreign fishermen were reported stranded on a number of remote islands, including men reported to have been enslaved. Some migrant workers from Myanmar said they had been brought to Indonesia from Thailand and forced to work on trawlers with Thai captains.
(AP, 3/27/15)
2015 Mar 27, Iraqi troops pressed their push in Tikrit as fighter planes pounded IS targets from above. Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani called for unity among the country's forces battling the IS group.
(AP, 3/27/15)
2015 Mar 27, Israel said it will transfer Palestinian tax revenues that were being withheld as punishment for a Palestinian application to join the Int’l. Criminal Court.
(SFC, 3/28/15, p.A2)
2015 Mar 27, Italy’s highest criminal court acquitted Ms. Knox, an American, and her Italian ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito of murdering British student Meredith Kercher in 2007.
(AP, 3/28/15)
2015 Mar 27, Kyrgyzstan’s secret police, the GKNB, raided the office and home of lawyer Khusanbay Saliev, who represented arrested Uzbek Imam Rashot Kamalov.
(Econ., 5/2/15, p.35)
2015 Mar 27, In Liberia woman, who last week became the country's first Ebola patient in more than a month, died. Two new suspected cases were also reported identified.
(AFP, 3/28/15)
2015 Mar 27, In The Netherlands trains, trams and planes ground to a temporary halt in and around Amsterdam as a huge power outage hit the Dutch capital and surrounding towns. Power was soon restored.
(AFP, 3/27/15)
2015 Mar 27, Nigeria's military announced that troops had retaken the town of Gwoza from Boko Haram, from which the group declared their caliphate last year. Suspected Boko Haram gunmen beheaded 23 people and set fire to homes in Buratai, on the eve of general elections. Elsewhere in the restive northeast, suspected Islamist militants killed at least 7 people in separate attacks in the Gombe state.
(AFP, 3/27/15)(AFP, 3/29/15)
2015 Mar 27, In Pakistan a roadside bomb on a motorcycle hit a police bus in Karachi and left 10 people wounded. The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility.
(AP, 3/27/15)
2015 Mar 27, Sierra Leone's 6 million people were told to stay home for three days, except for religious services, beginning today as the West African nation attempted a final push to rid itself of Ebola.
(AP, 3/27/15)
2015 Mar 27, In Somalia suspected Islamist fighters stormed the popular Maka Al-Mukarramah Hotel in Mogadishu, trapping government officials inside. The attack killed at least 24 people, including six attackers.
(Reuters, 3/27/15)(AP, 3/28/15)
2015 Mar 27, South Africa's state power company Eskom said more than 1,000 workers building a much-needed new power plant had been sacked for staging an illegal strike two days earlier, as the country grapples with rolling electricity cuts.
(AFP, 3/27/15)
2015 Mar 27, In Syria Islamist rebels made fresh advances on the edges of Idlib city, after fierce clashes that have left dozens of dead.
(AFP, 3/27/15)
2015 Mar 27, The Turkish parliament passed a stripped down version of its controversial homeland security bill that has enraged the opposition, after a 16-hour debate that lasted all night.
(AFP, 3/27/15)
2015 Mar 27, In Yemen at least 21 Shiite rebels were killed when residents in a tribal southern region opened fire at their vehicles. Warplanes targeted Houthi forces controlling Sanaa and their northern heartland and, in a boost for Riyadh, fellow monarchy Morocco said it would join the rapidly-assembled Sunni Muslim coalition against the Shi'ite Muslim group.
(AFP, 3/27/15)(Reuters, 3/27/15)
2015 Mar 27, Separatists in eastern Ukraine handed over the bodies of 22 government soldiers killed during the fierce, months-long battle over the airport near the rebel stronghold of Donetsk.
(AP, 3/27/15)
2015 Mar 27, The UN High Commissioner for Refugees said that LRA fighters kidnapped 16 people last weekend who had been working in their fields in Congo, just over the border from Central African Republic. The rebels released 13 of them but were still holding three refugee boys.
(AP, 3/27/15)
2016 Mar 27, In southwestern Alaska the Pavlof Volcano erupted sending ash 20,000 feet into the air.
(SFC, 3/29/16, p.A14)
2016 Mar 27, In Algeria at least 12 soldiers were killed when a military helicopter crashed in the south of the country.
(Reuters, 3/27/16)
2016 Mar 27, Basque separatist group ETA called for peace talks with the Spanish and French governments and the return of ETA prisoners to the northern Basque region.
(AFP, 3/27/16)
2016 Mar 27, Belgian investigators launched 13 anti-terror raids in the capital and two other cities and taking four more people in custody. Riot police fired water cannon to disperse far-right football hooligans who disrupted mourners at a shrine for victims of the Brussels attacks.
(AP, 3/27/16)(AFP, 3/27/16)
2016 Mar 27, In Greece hundreds of migrants, egged on by activists, protested near the fence separating Macedonia from Greece, demanding that the border be opened to allow them to continue their journey into central Europe.
(AP, 3/27/16)
2016 Mar 27, Guyana's government said it plans to establish several new jungle capitals on the border regions with its South American neighbors as it moves to develop its mineral-rich interior.
(AP, 3/27/16)
2016 Mar 27, Iraqi security forces stepped aside to allow influential Iraqi Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to start his sit-in in Baghdad's highly fortified Green Zone after weeks of protests in the capital. Sadr met with PM Haider al-Abadi as he began the sit-in.
(AP, 3/27/16)(SFC, 3/28/16, p.A2)
2016 Mar 27, Italian authorities announced the arrest of Djamal Eddine Ouali (40), an Algerian man who was part of a counterfeiting ring that provided forged documents to people involved in the Paris and Brussels terrorist attacks.
(SFC, 3/28/16, p.A2)
2016 Mar 27, In Japan girl (15) escaped from suspect Kabu Terauchi's apartment in downtown Tokyo while he was shopping in Akihabara. She had been held captive for nearly two years. Investigators captured Terauchi in the early hours of March 28 near a forest west of Tokyo.
(AP, 3/28/16)
2016 Mar 27, World Bank Pres. Jim Yong Kim said Jordan will get a cheap $100 million loan to help create 100,000 jobs for Syrian refugees and its own citizens.
(AP, 3/27/16)(SFC, 3/28/16, p.A2)
2016 Mar 27, Mexico’s federal police reported that authorities in Oaxaca have captured Juan Manuel Alvarez Inzunza, identified as the chief financial operator behind drug kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman's empire, who they say laundered some $4 billion in the past decade.
(AFP, 3/27/16)
2016 Mar 27, Thousands of Moldovans marched through their capital calling for reunification with Romania, restoring a union which lasted from 1918 to 1940.
(AP, 3/27/16)
2016 Mar 27, Dutch police found ammunition in the house of a French national arrested in Rotterdam on suspicion of plotting an attack. The man (32), thought to be called Anis B., was detained on suspicion of receiving orders from the Islamic State group to attack targets in France along with Reda Kriket, who was detained near Paris last week.
(AFP, 3/28/16)
2016 Mar 27, In Nigeria 3 people were killed and several wounded when an oil pipeline belonging to Italy's ENI exploded during repair works in the southern Delta region. Workers had been repairing the pipeline when it caught fire.
(Reuters, 3/29/16)
2016 Mar 27, In eastern Pakistan a bomb blast in Gulshan-e-Iqbal park in Lahore killed 74 people and wounded some 340. The suicide bombing was claimed by the Pakistani Taliban's Jamaat-ur-Ahrar faction.
(Reuters, 3/28/16)(Econ, 4/2/16, p.39)
2016 Mar 27, Qatar's state-funded broadcaster Al-Jazeera announced a fresh round of job cuts with around 500 positions being lost, most of them at the network's Doha headquarters.
(AFP, 3/27/16)
2016 Mar 27, In Serbia thousands marched against NATO and the West, carrying banners praising Russian President Vladimir Putin. The march marked the 17th anniversary of NATO's 78-day intervention in Serbia against its bloody crackdown against Kosovo Albanian separatists in 1999.
(AP, 3/27/16)
2016 Mar 27, Syrian troops recaptured the ancient city of Palmyra from the Islamic State group and pledged to build on the win with an advance against other jihadist strongholds.
(AFP, 3/27/16)
2016 Mar 27, Thailand seized 87 ivory tusks, worth an estimated $800,000, found in a dozen barrels sent from Mozambique on a Kenya Airways flight. A routine X-ray at Suvarnabhumi International Airport detected the contraband.
(AP, 4/5/16)
2016 Mar 27, The top security court in the United Arab Emirates sentenced 38 people to prison in connection to a cell accused of plotting terrorist attacks and seeking to overthrow the government to create an Islamic state.
(AP, 3/27/16)
2016 Mar 27, In Yemen a military coalition led by Saudi Arabia that is fighting a war with Yemen's Shiite rebels traded 109 Yemeni prisoners taken during the fighting in the neighboring country for nine Saudis who were held captive.
(AP, 3/28/16)
2016 Mar 27, In southern Yemen US air raids killed 14 men suspected of belonging to al Qaeda.
(Reuters, 3/28/16)
2017 Mar 27, The White House confirmed that Jared Kushner, president Donald Trump's son-in-law has, volunteered to answer questions before the Senate Intelligence Committee about arranging meetings with the Russian ambassador and other officials.
(AP, 3/27/17)
2017 Mar 27, The United States, Britain and France were among almost 40 countries that did not join talks on a nuclear weapons ban treaty starting at the UN.
(Reuters, 3/27/17)
2017 Mar 27, In Oakland, Ca. an early morning fire killed three people at a large transitional housing building at 2551 San Pablo Ave. One person remained missing.
(SFC, 3/28/17, p.A1)
2017 Mar 27, National Football League (NFL) owners voted 37-1 to approve the Oakland Raiders’ move to Las Vegas.
(SFC, 3/28/17, p.A1)
2017 Mar 27, Michigan and the city of Flint agreed to replace thousands of home water lines to settle a lawsuit by residents over lead-contaminated water.
(SFC, 3/28/17, p.A7)
2017 Mar 27, In Bangladesh a special anti-terrorism unit managed to kill the last four Islamic militants in Sylhet. Police had cordoned off the area on March 24.
(Econ, 4/1/17, p.32)
2017 Mar 27, French energy company Total announced the launching a multi-billion-dollar petrochemical joint venture in Texas as it tries to profit from the "business-friendly environment" under the current US administration.
(AP, 3/27/17)
2017 Mar 27, French Guiana faced a nationwide strike over crime and economic difficulties, amid protests that have paralyzed the French territory in South America, halted flights and a rocket launch and prompted a US travel warning.
(AP, 3/27/17)
2017 Mar 27, In Germany thieves broke into Berlin’s Bode Museum before dawn and made off with a massive 100-kilogram (221-pound) gold coin worth millions of dollars. In 2018 prosecutors indicted four young men for the theft of the "Big Maple Leaf" coin.
(AP, 3/27/17)(SFC, 10/18/18, p.A2)
2017 Mar 27, Fraport Greece said the European Union is clearing a 280 million euro loan from the European Investment Bank to the company, which won the tender to upgrade and operate 14 regional Greek airports.
(AP, 3/28/17)
2017 Mar 27, Lufthansa announced a code-sharing deal with Hong Kong-based Cathay Pacific under which the German airline and its Swiss and Austrian Airlines units will offer new connections to Australia and New Zealand.
(AP, 3/27/17)
2017 Mar 27, Hong Kong police launched a fresh round of arrests of student leaders and other prominent figures involved with the huge 2014 "Umbrella Movement" pro-democracy protests.
(AP, 3/27/17)
2017 Mar 27, Israeli police arrested more than 20 Jewish ultra-Orthodox suspected sex offenders whose alleged crimes were known to their insular communities but concealed from the authorities.
(AFP, 3/27/17)
2017 Mar 27, In central Japan an avalanche killed seven high school students and a teacher who were among a group of almost 50 on mountain climbing training.
(Reuters, 3/27/17)
2017 Mar 27, In Mali former rebels and opposition parties boycotted a national summit enshrined in the country's 2015 peace deal, laying bare divisions with the government and armed groups it relies on for security.
(AFP, 3/27/17)
2017 Mar 27, In Mexico a priest was shot to death in the Pacific coast state of Nayarit.
(AP, 3/30/17)
2017 Mar 27, In the northern Netherlands two people were killed when a train hit a car at a rail crossing near Harlingen.
(AP, 3/27/17)
2017 Mar 27, The foreign minister of Nigeria visited Poland an effort to develop economic, military and security ties with the fast-growing economy in central Europe.
(AP, 3/27/17)
2017 Mar 27, In Pakistan a special 3-day anti-polio drive was launched in Islamabad after traces of the virus were found in the city's sewage system.
(AP, 3/28/17)
2017 Mar 27, Hamas authorities partially reopened the crossing between the Gaza Strip and Israel, after a one-day closure following the assassination of one of the group's leaders.
(AFP, 3/27/17)
2017 Mar 27, Qatar PM Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa al-Thani said his country will invest £5 billion in Britain within five years in a boost for the post-Brexit economy.
(AFP, 3/27/17)
2017 Mar 27, Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was sentenced to 15 days behind bars and fined after staging the biggest anti-corruption protests in years, an act branded a "provocation" by the Kremlin.
(AFP, 3/27/17)
2017 Mar 27, Saudi Arabia cut taxes on oil companies in a major move that could attract investments in its energy giant Aramco, expected to be offered to investors in 2018.
(AFP, 3/27/17)
2017 Mar 27, In Syria hundreds of rebels left their last bastion in Homs city, resuming an evacuation expected to be among the largest of its kind under a Russian-backed deal with the government.
(Reuters, 3/27/17)
2017 Mar 27, Thailand's broadcast regulator ordered television channel Voice TV to suspend its over-the-air broadcasting for a week for what it called biased reports affecting national security. The station is controlled by the family of former PM Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted by a 2006 army coup and is in exile to avoid a prison term for corruption.
(AP, 3/27/17)
2018 Mar 27, It was reported that the 2020 US Census will include a question about citizenship status, a move that brought swift condemnation from Democrats, who said it would intimidate immigrants and discourage them from participating.
(AP, 3/27/18)
2018 Mar 27, In Pennsylvania Taiwanese exchange student An Tso Sun (18) was arrested for threatening to shoot up the Monsignor Bonner and Archbishop Prendergast High School, which he attended in Upper Darby.
(AP, 3/30/18)
2018 Mar 27, Texas executed Rosendo Rodriguez III (29) for the slaying of a Lubbock woman, whose body was stuffed into a new piece of luggage and tossed in the trash. he had also confessed to killing a girl (16) and similarly disposing her body.
(SFC, 3/28/18, p.A5)
2018 Mar 27, Waymo, formerly known as Google's self-driving car project, announced a partnership with Jaguar Land Rover to build self-driving Jaguar luxury SUVs for the company's autonomous Silicon Valley taxi fleet.
(SFC, 3/28/18, p.C1)
2018 Mar 27, Algerian doctors expanded a pay strike and teachers resumed one, putting pressure on President Abdelaziz Bouteflika and his prime minister at a time when resources are limited.
(Reuters, 3/27/18)
2018 Mar 27, Australia and Ireland joined more than 20 other nations in expelling Russian diplomats in response to the nerve agent attack on a former Russian military intelligence officer and his daughter in Britain.
(AP, 3/27/18)
2018 Mar 27, In Belgium hundreds of taxis brought traffic to a standstill in Brussels to protest proposed government reforms said to favor ride-hailing competitors like Uber.
(AFP, 3/27/18)
2018 Mar 27, In Brazil some 3,400 soldiers and 500 police entered the Lins Complex in Rio de Janeiro in a show of force following recent violence.
(SFC, 3/28/18, p.A2)
2018 Mar 27, Bulgaria, which holds the rotating EU presidency, said it has recalled its ambassador from Russia to discuss the nerve agent attack in Britain which London blames on Moscow.
(Reuters, 3/27/18)
2018 Mar 27, Bulgarian prosecutors said they have launched an investigation into the owner of a herd of around 100 horses after they were found starving to death or already dead on snow-bound Mount Osogovo.
(Reuters, 3/27/18)
2018 Mar 27, In China Mindong Bishop Vincenzo Guo Xijin was released after spending a night in detention.
(AP, 3/28/18)
2018 Mar 27, Congo DRC authorities said they are investigating exiled opposition leader Moise Katumbi, who has vowed to stand in December's presidential elections.
(AFP, 3/28/18)
2018 Mar 27, In Congo DRC rebels from a Ugandan Islamist group called the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) killed at least 11 civilians during a raid on the city of Beni late today. The next day FIFA opened an investigation less than three months before Russia hosts the World Cup.
(Reuters, 3/28/18)
2018 Mar 27, Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades hailed as "unprecedented" the EU's condemnation of Turkey for blocking his government's search for offshore oil and gas.
(AFP, 3/27/18)
2018 Mar 27, In Egypt turnout appeared low citizens voted on the second day of an election that President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi is virtually certain to win. All serious rivals had been either arrested or intimidated into dropping out.
(AP, 3/27/18)
2018 Mar 27, Ethiopia's ruling coalition named a new chairman late today. A vote to install Abiy Ahmed (42), a leader from the Oromo ethnic group, as prime minster was expected in the coming days in parliament.
(AP, 3/28/18)(AFP, 3/28/18)
2018 Mar 27, Europe's bailout fund approved a 6.7 billion euro ($8.32 billion) loan installment to Greece as part of its third international rescue program, with payment of the first 5.7 billion euros expected this week.
(AP, 3/27/18)
2018 Mar 27, France's top appeals court upheld a 30,000-euro fine against former far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen for dismissing the Nazi gas chambers as a "detail" of history.
(AFP, 3/27/18)
2018 Mar 27, Kidnappers in waters off Ghana hijacked a fishing boat and steered it toward the waters of Nigeria before using a speed boat to move three South Koreans working on the boat elsewhere.
(AP, 3/31/18)
2018 Mar 27, An Indonesian court ordered Australian Baker Joshua James to undergo rehabilitation after finding him guilty of possessing a small amount of drugs on the tourist island of Bali.
(AP, 3/27/18)
2018 Mar 27, Iraqi PM Haider al-Abadi said government armed forces will prevent Kurdish militants based in northern Iraq from staging cross-border attacks against Turkey.
(AP, 3/27/18)
2018 Mar 27, Police in southern Italy detained Mohy Eldin Mostafa Omer Abdel Rahman (59), an Egyptian imam, who ran a cultural center where he allegedly preached extremist and violent interpretations of Islam to children.
(AP, 3/27/18)
2018 Mar 27, In Kenya columnists from the country's top media group resigned en masse a day after police punched and kicked journalists covering the attempted deportation of an opposition politician at Nairobi airport.
(Reuters, 3/27/18)
2018 Mar 27, Kosovo Serbs set up a roadblock in northern Kosovo and their representatives walked out of Kosovo's government a day after the arrest and expulsion of a senior Serbian government official that has refueled tensions between the Balkan foes.
(AP, 3/27/18)
2018 Mar 27, Moldova's foreign ministry ordered three Russian diplomats to leave the former Soviet republic within seven days.
(AP, 3/27/18)
2018 Mar 27, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said NATO has expelled seven diplomats from Russia's mission to the alliance and blocked the appointment of three others over the nerve agent attack in Britain this month.
(Reuters, 3/27/18)
2018 Mar 27, It was reported that Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the former head of NATO and a current deputy chairman of Latvian bank Norvik, has asked the prime minister of Latvia to create an international task force to guide the country in cleaning up its banking sector, which has been rocked by accusations of money laundering and bribery.
(AP, 3/27/18)
2018 Mar 27, In the Netherlands an appeals court ruled that Dutch police were liable for the April 9, 2011, mall shooting in which six people were killed as the gunman should never have been granted an gun license.
(AFP, 3/27/18)
2018 Mar 27, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's secretive talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing was confirmed after his return home.
(AP, 3/28/18)
2018 Mar 27, In Pakistan gunmen opened fire on a rickshaw carrying a transgender woman who went by the name Pinky and her male companion. Both later died of their gunshot wounds.
(AP, 3/28/18)
2018 Mar 27, In Russia thousands of angry residents rallied in Kemerovo to demand a full probe following a fire in a shopping mall that killed at least 64 people, many of them children. Russian President Vladimir Putin flew to the city to look at the investigation into the blaze and declared March 28 a day of national mourning.
(AP, 3/27/18)
2018 Mar 27, In Russia monkey chants could be heard from the crowd in St. Petersburg when black French players touched the ball in a friendly against Russia. The abuse was also audible on a TV broadcast after Paul Pogba scored France's second goal in a 3-1 win.
(AP, 3/28/18)
2018 Mar 27, In Spain demonstrators angered by the detention of former leader Carles Puigdemont blocked highways across Catalonia and roads in central Barcelona, as the separatist politician remained in a German jail pending a decision on Spain's extradition request.
(AP, 3/27/18)
2018 Mar 27, In Syria thousands of people departed eastern Ghouta for rebel territory near the Turkish border, the third group to leave under a deal brokered by Russia to surrender the enclave near Damascus to the government.
(Reuters, 3/27/18)
2018 Mar 27, Tanzania charged six opposition leaders with sedition and incitement to violence, a move branded by critics of the government as an effort to silence dissent.
(Reuters, 3/28/18)
2018 Mar 27, The UN Security Council unanimously backed a resolution that tasks the peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo with helping to prepare elections and avoid deadly violence.
(AFP, 3/27/18)
2019 Mar 27, The head of the US Customs and Border Protection held a press conference in El Paso to say the breaking point had arrived. Arrests all along the southern border have skyrocketed in recent months. Border agents were on track to make 100,000 arrests and denials of entry at the southern border this month.
(AP, 3/29/19)
2019 Mar 27, In Arkansas Andre Jackson (34) pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 25 years in prison for the murder of an Italian tourist during an attempted robbery. Carlo Marigliano was found shot to death in a crashed jeep outside a Little Rock apartment complex in July 2017.
(AP, 3/28/19)
2019 Mar 27, In California PG&E received approval from a bankruptcy court to fully access $5.5 billion in financing it lined up from major banks, despite objections from wildfire victims.
(SFC, 3/28/19, p.D1)
2019 Mar 27, Speaking in Hawaii Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen said her government has asked to purchase advanced new fighter jets and tanks from the US, a request that if approved, could set off new tensions between the US and China. Tsai said requests have been submitted for F-16V fighters and M1 Abrams tanks.
(AP, 3/28/19)
2019 Mar 27, In NYC Anna Sorokin (28), the one-time darling of the Big Apple social scene, stood trial on grand larceny and theft of services charges alleging she swindled $275,000 in a 10-month odyssey that saw her jetting to Omaha and Marrakesh before landing in a cell at Rikers Island.
(AP, 3/27/19)
2019 Mar 27, In Texas a helicopter crashed during a controlled burn at the Sam Houston National Forest killing Daniel Laird, a firefighter from northern California.
(SFC, 3/30/19, p.A6)
2019 Mar 27, In Virginia James Alex Fields Jr. pleaded guilty to 29 of 30 federal charges stemming from the 2017 "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville. Anti-racist activist Heather Heyer was killed when Fields plowed his car into a crowd of protesters.
(SFC, 3/28/19, p.A6)
2019 Mar 27, In Wisconsin the 3rd District Court of Appeals reinstated laws passed during the 2018 lame-duck legislative session that weaken powers of the Democratic governor and attorney general.
(SFC, 3/28/19, p.A6)
2019 Mar 27, The $1 million Turing Award went to artificial intelligence pioneers Yoshua Bengio, Yann LeCun and Geoffrey Hinton.
(SFC, 3/28/19, p.D2)
2019 Mar 27, Ford said it will close three factories in Russia, causing heavy job losses, as it pulls out of passenger vehicle manufacturing in the country.
(AP, 3/27/19)
2019 Mar 27, Algeria's biggest union and an influential party backed an army call for President Abdelaziz Bouteflika to quit in a managed exit plan that was quickly rejected by protesters demanding the overthrow of the entire political elite.
(Reuters, 3/27/19)
2019 Mar 27, Australia's top cyberwarrior revealed that his country actively participated in the electronic war against the Islamic State group in Syria, degrading their communications during military operations and actively stopping people seeking to join the extremist group.
(AP, 3/27/19)
2019 Mar 27, Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz confirmed that Martin Sellner, head of the far-right Identitarian Movement, received 1,500 euros in 2018 from the man charged with killing 50 people in mass shootings at mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. Sellner said he would give the money to a charitable foundation.
(Reuters, 3/27/19)
2019 Mar 27, British lawmakers debated multiple options for leaving the European Union as they sought to bring some clarity to the tortured Brexit process and stop the country tumbling out of the bloc within weeks with no exit plan in place. PM Theresa May offered to give up her job in exchange for her Brexit deal.
(AP, 3/27/19)(SFC, 3/28/19, p.A5)
2019 Mar 27, Amnesty International slammed plans by Brunei to implement what the rights group called "vicious" Islamic criminal laws such as stoning to death for gay sex and amputation for theft. The new sections under Brunei's Sharia Penal Code and will come into effect April 3.
(AP, 3/27/19)
2019 Mar 27, China said that it has expelled former Interpol President Meng Hongwei from public office and the ruling Communist Party as he awaits trial on corruption charges.
(AP, 3/27/19)
2019 Mar 27, A $436 million superyacht belonging to Russian billionaire Farkhad Akhmedov, at the center of one of the world's costliest divorce battles, was released by a Dubai court after being impounded last year. Forbes has estimated Akhmedov's net worth is $1.4 billion. The US Treasury Department has put him on a list of sanctioned Russian state-owned companies.
(Reuters, 3/28/19)
2019 Mar 27, A coalition of opposition parties urged Egyptians to vote against constitutional amendments that would potentially allow President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi to remain in power until 2034.
(AP, 3/27/19)
2019 Mar 27, The EU said it will suspend ship patrols that have rescued tens of thousands of migrants in the Mediterranean and brought them to Italy, amid deep resistance by populist-led Rome. The rescues were part of the EU's Operation Sophia which diplomats have decided to extend by six months beyond its March 31 expiry date, but without new ship deployments.
(AFP, 3/27/19)
2019 Mar 27, A report by the investigative group Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project said Gambia's ex-President Yahya Jammeh looted the tiny West African nation of $1 billion through fear and privilege during his 22 years in power, an amount more than 10 times higher than originally estimated by the new government, leaving the country in lingering debt. The $1 billion was used to finance his lavish lifestyle and is believed to still support him in his exile in Equatorial Guinea.
(AP, 3/28/19)
2019 Mar 27, India shot down one of its satellites in space with an anti-satellite missile. The government said the test was aimed at protecting India's assets in space against foreign attacks. The United States ran the first anti-satellite test in 1959, when satellites themselves were rare and new.
(Reuters, 3/27/19)
2019 Mar 27, Indonesia's Supreme Court rejected the appeal of Meliana, an ethnic Chinese woman, whose complaint about the volume of mosque loudspeakers led to an 18-month prison sentence for blasphemy.
(AP, 4/8/19)
2019 Mar 27, Iran's Pres. Hassan Rouhani travelled to flood-hit zones for the first time after nine days of heavy rains inundated most of the country and killed 43 people.
(AFP, 3/27/19)
2019 Mar 27, Iraqi court officials said a warrant has been issued for the arrest of the former governor of Nineveh on corruption charges after at least 90 people were killed in a ferry accident in the provincial capital Mosul. The warrant also included the arrest of some local officials after a court investigation concluded they colluded with the former governor in misusing their powers and committed financial violations. Nawfal Hammadi al-Sultan has fled to the Kurdish regional capital Erbil.
(Reuters, 3/27/19)
2019 Mar 27, In Japan a Nissan committee set up to strengthen corporate governance after the arrest of former Chairman Carlos Ghosn said an investigation found he had wielded too much power and recommended the scandal-hit automaker add more independent outside directors to its board and better oversee compensation and auditing.
(AP, 3/27/19)
2019 Mar 27, A Kazakh military helicopter with 13 people on board crashed on during exercises. There were casualties, but that it was not yet clear how many.
(Reuters, 3/27/19)
2019 Mar 27, The cargo ship El Hiblu 1 picked up 108 migrants stranded at sea. Some of them then hijacked the vessel when it became clear that it planned to take them back to Libya. The small tanker docked in Malta's port of Valletta the next day after Maltese special forces took control of the vessel. Three migrant teenagers were soon charged in a Maltese court with hijacking the small tanker. They pleaded not guilty.
(Reuters, 3/28/19)(Reuters, 3/30/19)
2019 Mar 27, A Lithuanian court found former Soviet defense minister Dmitry Yazov (94) guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity for his role in a 1991 crackdown against the Baltic state's pro-independence movement. 67 former military officials and army officers were being sentenced after a three-year trial.
(Reuters, 3/27/19)
2019 Mar 27, A report released today found gaps in the investigation and possible obstruction of justice in Malaysia's 2015 discovery of mass graves believed to be of Rohingya Muslims and Bangladeshis held in trafficking camps in a hilly jungle area on its border with Thailand. The report said Malaysian authorities were aware of the human trafficking camps more than four months before they were announced publicly.
(AP, 3/27/19)
2019 Mar 27, A Mozambique government official said five cases of cholera have been confirmed following Cyclone Idai that ravaged the country, killing at least 468 people.
(AFP, 3/27/19)
2019 Mar 27, In New Zealand Artemiy Dubovskiy (54) killed himself during a standoff with police. Police searched three of Dubovskiy's properties and found guns, ammunition and violent extremist content.
(http://tinyurl.com/y5vsnklh)(AP, 4/3/19)
2019 Mar 27, Pakistani police arrested a man for beating his wife in public after the incident triggered wide condemnation and uproar on social media. Faisal's wife had complained that her husband had stripped her naked, beat her and shaved her head for refusing to dance for his friends at their home.
(AP, 3/27/19)
2019 Mar 27, About 150 Palestinian students threw firebombs and rocks at Israeli soldiers who responded with tear gas and rubber-coated metal bullets in the occupied West Bank after an Israeli raid on their university. Palestinian volunteer medic Sajid Muzher (17) was killed by Israeli forces during the clashes. He was shot while trying to treat one of those wounded.
(Reuters, 3/27/19)(AFP, 3/27/19)
2019 Mar 27, In Thailand the leader of the Pheu Thai party, which headed the last elected government, and the leaders of five other parties held a news conference to say they believed they had won more than 250 seats in the 500-seat lower house.
(AP, 3/27/19)
2019 Mar 27, UN officials said at least 707 people had been reported killed by Cyclone Idai, the flooding it caused and heavy rains before it hit. This included 468 in Mozambique, 259 in Zimbabwe and 60 in Malawi.
(Reuters, 3/27/19)
2019 Mar 27, In Venezuela new disruption to the power grid had left 91 percent of the country offline, reversing a "partial recovery" since the latest blackouts started March 25.
(AP, 3/27/19)
2020 Mar 27, US Pres. Donald Trump invoked emergency powers to require General Motors Co to build much-needed ventilators for coronavirus patients after he accused the largest US automaker of "wasting time" during negotiations.
(Reuters, 3/28/20)
2020 Mar 27, The US suspended at least $73 million out of a total of $85 million in aid delivered via nongovernmental groups in Yemen's Houthi-controlled north.
(https://tinyurl.com/yc8p2sot)(Econ., 7/6/20, p.35)
2020 Mar 27, The US House of Representatives passed the $2 trillion coronavirus economic stimulus bill. President Donald Trump was expected to sign it quickly. The US now had almost 86,000 known infections.
(NBC News, 3/27/20)(AFP, 3/27/20)
2020 Mar 27, The US Navy, the military service hit hardest by the coronavirus, scrambled to contain its first at-sea outbreak, with at least two dozen infected aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt in Guam, one of 11 active aircraft carriers whose mission is central to the Pentagon's strategy for deterring war with China and Iran.
(AP, 3/27/20)
2020 Mar 27, A US federal appeals court ruled that undocumented immigrants who present a credible case or asylum in the US are entitled to a prompt hearing for release on bond while their cases are pending.
(SFC, 3/30/20, p.A1)
2020 Mar 27, California's Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered a two-month halt on evictions for state residents who cannot pay their rent vecause of the coronavirus.
(SFC, 3/28/20, p.A6)
2020 Mar 27, In Florida 29 deaths have been reported due to the coronavirus. Deaths were on track to double every four days.
(SFC, 3/28/20, p.A5)
2020 Mar 27, Civil rights leader and MLK aide Rev. Joseph E. Lowery (98) died in Atlanta. In 2009, Pres. Barack Obama awarded Lowery the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.
(AP, 3/27/20)(Economist, 4/4/20, p.74)
2020 Mar 27, The US federal Bureau of Indian Affairs informed that Mashpee Wampanoag tribe of Massachusetts that it will be rescinding its reservation designation for more than 300 acres removing the land from federal trust.
(SFC, 3/31/20, p.A4)
2020 Mar 27, Mississippi’s health department reported 579 COVID-19 cases and eight deaths.
(The Daily Beast, 3/28/20)
2020 Mar 27, New York state reported 100 more deaths in one day. NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio said cases of the new coronavirus are going to become “astronomical," putting unprecedented strain on the hospital system. New York state has more than 44,000 cases of coronavirus and 519 deaths from the virus, by far the most in the country.
(AP, 3/27/20)(Bloomberg, 3/27/20)(AP, 3/28/20)(SFC, 3/28/20, p.A5)
2020 Mar 27, The New York City Department of Corrections said that 80 staff and 103 men in custody have tested positive for coronavirus at Rikers Island and city jails alone — quadruple what was reported just a week ago.
(AP, 3/28/20)
2020 Mar 27, In NYC a subway train operator was killed after a fired, believed to have been intentionally set, erupted inside a train car at a station along the northern edge of Central Park.
(SFC, 3/28/20, p.A3)
2020 Mar 27, Rhode Island State Police began pulling over drivers with New York plates so that National Guard officials can collect contact information and inform them of a mandatory, 14-day quarantine.
(AP, 3/28/20)
2020 Mar 27, Washington, D.C., confirmed 36 new coronavirus cases, raising its total to 267.
(AP, 3/27/20)
2020 Mar 27, Microsoft said it is pulling its investments from a facial-recognition startup that scans faces at Israeli military checkpoints, even though the tech giant couldn't substantiate claims that the startup's technology is used unethically.
(AP, 3/27/20)
2020 Mar 27, Astronomers discovered Comet C2020 F3 NEOWISE, using NASA's Near-Earth Object Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer. The comet's closest approach to Earth was to be on July 22. It would not return for another 6,766 years.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C/2020_F3_(NEOWISE))(SFC, 7/13/20, p.B3)
2020 Mar 27, It was reported that scientists have discovered a strain of bacteria, the first of its kind, that can degrade the harmful compounds in polyurethane products -- a positive step toward reducing the amount of plastic pollution in the environment.
(https://doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2020.00404)
2020 Mar 27, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani announced his 21-member team to negotiate peace with the Taliban, only to have his political opponent Abdullah Abdullah reject it as not inclusive enough. The Afghan government ordered a three-week lock-down for Kabul to stem the spread of the new coronavirus. Afghanistan has so far recorded just 91 cases and four deaths but the tens of thousands returnees from Iran have dispersed throughout the country without being tested.
(AP, 3/27/20)
2020 Mar 27, It was reported that the supply of soybeans to Argentine crushing plants is down by half and falling, as municipalities citing health concerns defied a government order that they allow cargo trucks to get to the plants. Mayors of dozens of towns near the Rosario grains export hub have blocked ground transport as the country locks down against the coronavirus pandemic.
(Reuters, 3/27/20)
2020 Mar 27, It was reported that millions of Bangladesh factory workers have been sent home without wages or severence pay they are owed in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.
(SFC, 3/28/20, p.A4)
2020 Mar 27, British PM Boris Johnson (55) said he has tested positive for the coronavirus. Health Secretary Matt Hancock was also confirmed to have the virus. British fatalities due to the coronavirus jumped by 260, to 1,019. Some 14,579 people in the UK have tested positive, an increase of about 25%, above the five-day average of 20%.
(Bloomberg, 3/27/20)(AP, 3/27/20)(Bloomberg, 3/28/20)
2020 Mar 27, Bank of Canada cut key benchmark rate by 50 basis points to 0.25%, its lowest in a decade. The central bank also said it would begin purchases of C$5 billion per week of Government of Canada securities in the secondary market.
(Reuters, 3/27/20)
2020 Mar 27, China's National Health Commission reported 55 new cases, 54 of them imported infections. China reported 81,394 confirmed cases, with 649 of those imported. The death toll rose by three to 3,295, with all new deaths reported in Hubei province. Chinese leader Xi Jinping in a phone call told Pres. Donald Trump that China understands the United States' current predicament over the COVID-19 outbreak and stands ready to provide support within its capacity.
(AP, 3/27/20)(Bloomberg, 3/28/20)(Reuters, 3/28/20)
2020 Mar 27, China, the European Union and 14 other World Trade Organization members (Australia, Brazil, Chile, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Hong Kong, Mexico, New Zealand, Singapore, Switzerland and Uruguay) agreed on a temporary mechanism to resolve trade disputes after US action rendered the WTO incapable of acting as the arbiter of global trade.
(Reuters, 3/27/20)
2020 Mar 27, In the Baltic states Estonia reported 575 coronavirus infections and one death, Latvia reported 280 cases, Lithuania reported 344 cases and four deaths.
(Baltic News Network, 3/27/20)
2020 Mar 27, In Germany cases of coronavirus rose to 43,039 from 37,179, while the death toll jumped to 262 deaths from 203.
(Bloomberg, 3/27/20)
2020 Mar 27, The Hong Kong government announced new measures to contain the coronavirus outbreak, including limiting crowd size to four people except weddings and funerals. The measures will last for 14 days. The city has found a record 65 new cases, taking its total to 518.
(Bloomberg, 3/27/20)
2020 Mar 27, PM Viktor Orban said Hungary’s government will partially restrict movement for a two-week period ending April 11 to slow the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.
(AP, 3/27/20)
2020 Mar 27, It was reported that India's coronavirus lockdown is disrupting e-commerce companies including Amazon and Flipkart, despite government assurances it would not.
(Reuters, 3/27/20)
2020 Mar 27, Indonesia reported the biggest daily jump in new coronavirus infections with the total number of confirmed cases topping 1,000. Tests confirmed the disease in 153 more people. The country also reported nine new deaths, taking the total to 87, the highest in Southeast Asia.
(AP, 3/27/20)
2020 Mar 27, Iran reported 2,926 new coronavirus cases and 144 more deaths over the past day, bringing the total figures in the country to 32,332 cases and 2,378 deaths. The government enforced social distancing measures banning inter-city travel and all gatherings, and the central bank approved loans for businesses affected by the outbreak. Iranian media report nearly 300 people have been killed and more than 1,000 sickened so far by ingesting methanol in the mistaken belief it protects against the coronavirus.
(AP, 3/27/20)
2020 Mar 27, Israel has recorded 12 deaths from COVID-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus, and over 3,000 infections.
(AP, 3/28/20)
2020 Mar 27, In Italy the death toll from an outbreak of coronavirus in the northern region of Lombardy rose by around 541 in a day to some 5,402. Italy registered the most coronavirus deaths since the country's outbreak had exploded five weeks earlier, adding 969 more victims to raise the world’s highest COVID-19 toll to 9,134.
(Reuters, 3/27/20)(AP, 3/28/20)
2020 Mar 27, The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in the Netherlands rose by 1,172, or 16%, to 8,603, with 112 new deaths. The country's death total is now 546.
(Reuters, 3/27/20)
2020 Mar 27, In northwestern Niger an army operation began that left 102 civilians missing by the time it left the region on 2 April. In September at least 71 bodies were found in six mass graves in Tillaberi, an area affected by jihadist violence. The civilians had been killed with bladed weapons and small arms.
(BBC, 9/5/20)
2020 Mar 27, The Palestinian Authority, which governs parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, has reported 84 coronavirus cases. Authorities in the Gaza Strip have reported nine cases.
(AP, 3/27/20)
2020 Mar 27, The Seattle-based Holland American cruise line, owneed by Carnival Corp., said four passengers have died aboard the Zaandam now anchored off the coast of Panama. Two people have tested positive for the coronavirus and more than 130 have reported flu-like symptoms. The ship carried 1,243 guests and 586 crew.
(SFC, 3/28/20, p.A2)
2020 Mar 27, In Russia the total number of coronavirus cases rose by 196 to 1,036.
(Bloomberg, 3/27/20)
2020 Mar 27, Russian low-cost airline Pobeda, a subsidiary of flagship carrier Aeroflot, said it will suspend all its domestic flights and stop flying altogether from April 1 until the end of May.
(Reuters, 3/27/20)
2020 Mar 27, In Serbia residents of Belgrade isolated themselves not only from coronavirus but also from acrid smoke, which defied strong winds to transform the Serbian capital into the city with the world's most polluted air. So far, the coronavirus infection in Serbia has sickened 528 and killed eight people.
(Reuters, 3/27/20)
2020 Mar 27, Slovakia said it is closing border crossings with Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Austria for the transit of trucks over 7.5 tons delivering non-essential goods to prevent accidents near the border crossings where long jams are formed because of lengthy handling by Hungarian authorities.
(Reuters, 3/27/20)
2020 Mar 27, South Africa began a three-week lockdown aimed at curbing the spread of the coronavirus as the disease claimed its first two victims in the country and the number of infections passed 1,000.
(Bloomberg, 3/27/20)
2020 Mar 27, South Korea reported 146 new coronavirus cases. That brought total infections in South Korea to 9,478, with a death toll of 151, up from 139.
(Reuters, 3/27/20)
2020 Mar 27, Spain reported its deadliest day so far after 769 people died, for a total of 4,858 fatalities. Cases rose to 64,059 from 56,188.
(Bloomberg, 3/27/20)
2020 Mar 27, Swiss drugmaker Novartis won a key European recommendation for its gene therapy Zolgensma against spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), clearing a hurdle for $2.1 million per patient treatment for approval in Europe within months.
(Reuters, 3/27/20)
2020 Mar 27, Turkish authorities evacuated hundreds of migrants waiting at the border with Greece amid the coronavirus pandemic. They were transferred to state guesthouses for quarantine .
(SFC, 3/28/20, p.A2)
2020 Mar 27, It was reported that Venezuela's only telecom satellite has veered off its orbit and stopped working. The Chinese-built satellite was launched in 2008 and has become useless three years before its planned expiration date.
(SFC, 3/28/20, p.A2)
2021 Mar 27, It was reported that the US has for the first time extradited North Korean national Mun Chol Myong (55) to face a criminal trial in America. An indictment unsealed this week alleged that Myong defrauded banks and laundered money in an attempt to skirt US and UN sanctions on North Korea. He was detained by local authorities in Malaysia in May 2019.
(Business Insider, 3/27/21)
2021 Mar 27, California to date had 3,633,771 cases of coronavirus and 58,178 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 420,413 cases and 5,871 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 30,162,813 with the death toll at 548,336.
(sfist.com, 3/27/21)
2021 Mar 27, Howard Schnellenberger (87), football coach, died in Boca Raton, Florida. He built the offense for the Super Bowl champion Miami Dolphins in 1972, then revived football programs at the Universities of Miami and Louisville.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Schnellenberger)(NY Times, 3/27/21)
2021 Mar 27, New York lawmakers reached a deal to allow sales of marijuana for recreational use. It has been estimated that legalization could bring the state $350 million annually.
(SFC, 3/29/21, p.A3)
2021 Mar 27, It was reported that Volkswagen has issued a recall for more than 150,000 Audi vehicles in the United States on concerns that their passenger air bags might not activate.
(AP, 3/27/21)
2021 Mar 27, Facebook said it has frozen Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro's page for violating policies against spreading misinformation about COVID-19 by promoting a remedy he claims, without evidence, can cure the disease.
(Reuters, 3/27/21)
2021 Mar 27, Belarus police arrested more than 100 people who assembled for a protest march in Minsk to call for the resignation of the country's authoritarian president.
(AP, 3/27/21)
2021 Mar 27, Thousands of Bhutanese travelled to schools and public buildings for vaccination as the Himalayan kingdom launched its biggest inoculation drive against COVID-19 with the AstraZeneca shots provided by neighboring India.
(Reuters, 3/27/21)
2021 Mar 27, It was reported that organizers of this year's Eurovision Song Contest have disqualified Belarus, ruling that its entry song - by a band whose lyrics have been deemed in the past to mock anti-government protests - is in breach of competition guidelines.
(Reuters, 3/27/21)
2021 Mar 27, China and Iran signed a 25-year strategic cooperation agreement addressing economic issues amid crippling US sanctions on Iran.
(AP, 3/27/21)
2021 Mar 27, In Egypt a nine-story apartment building collapsed in Cairo early today, killing at least five people and injuring about two dozen others. The death toll was soon raised to 18.
(AP, 3/27/21)
2021 Mar 27, Voters in India's Assam and West Bengal cast their ballots in elections that will indicate how PM Narendra Modi's support is holding up after a year of the coronavirus pandemic and months of protests against his farm reforms.
(Reuters, 3/27/21)
2021 Mar 27, India gave 1.2 million free doses of the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine to Bangladesh. PM Narendra Modi made the offering at the end of a two-day tour of Bangladesh.
(Reuters, 3/27/21)
2021 Mar 27, Japan-based Honda said it has agreed to sell its only British car plant at Swindon in southern England to logistics giant Panattoni, as the new owner reportedly plans to make a large investment at the sprawling site.
(Reuters, 3/27/21)
2021 Mar 27, Mexico's government acknowledged that the country's true deatrh toll from the coronavirus pandemic now likely stands above 321,000.
(AP, 3/28/21, p.A4)
2021 Mar 27, In Mexico Victoria Esperanza Salazar, a Salvadoran woman, died after a female police officer was seen kneeling on her on a street in the resort of Tulum. An autopsy found that the woman’s neck was broken.
(AP, 3/30/21)
2021 Mar 27, In Mozambique an attack by hundreds of militants trapped nearly 200 people, including foreign workers, in a hotel in Palma, site of a major gas project. A three-day siege has left at least several people dead and hundreds of other civilians unaccounted for. Throughout the three-day siege, insurgents set government buildings ablaze and detonated explosives at three banks and the health clinic in town.
(NY Times, 3/27/21)
2021 Mar 27, Myanmar's security forces shot and killed at least 64 people across the country during protests today as the military celebrated Armed Forces Day. The online news site Myanmar Now reported that the death toll had reached 114.
(Reuters, 3/27/21)(AP, 3/27/21)
2021 Mar 27, The defense chiefs of 12 countries, including the US, issued a joint statement condemning Myanmar's military and security forces for its crackdown on anti-coup demonstrators.
(Axios, 3/28/21)
2021 Mar 27, North Korea announced it will continue to expand its nuclear weapons program after President Biden criticized Pyongyang's most recent missile test this week.
(AP, 3/27/21)
2021 Mar 27, Panama's government said it would from next week temporarily suspend the entry of people to the country who have been in South America in the previous 15 days after local health authorities detected a case of the Brazilian strain of COVID-19.
(Reuters, 3/27/21)
2021 Mar 27, Philippine officials said Manila and nearby provinces will return to stricter quarantine measures on March 29, as the country battles to contain a surge in COVID-19 cases that has strained hospitals.
(Reuters, 3/27/21)
2021 Mar 27, In Poland a new set of pandemic related restrictions took effect to slow the spread of the coronavirus, which has taken more than 51,700 lives in the country.
(SSFC, 3/28/21, p.A13)
2021 Mar 27, Syria said it has begun rationalizing the distribution of fuel amid concerns of delays of shipments arrivals resulting from a giant cargo ship wedged in Egypt’s Suez Canal.
(AP, 3/27/21)
2021 Mar 27, In Turkey hundreds of demonstrators gathered in Istanbul for anti-government protests, demanding amid a heavy police presence the reversal of recent decisions by Pres. Recep Tayyip Erdogan that affect students, women and the LGBT community.
(AP, 3/28/21)
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