Today in History - August 8
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70CE Aug 8, Tower of Antonia was destroyed by the Romans.
(MC, 8/8/02)
117 Aug 8, Marcus Ulpius Trajanus (Trajan), emperor of Rome (98-117), died.
(www.roman-emperors.org/hadrian.htm)
869 Aug 8, Lotharius II, King of Middle-France (Lotharingen) (855-869), died.
(MC, 8/8/02)
870 Aug 8, The Treaty of Mersen (Meerssen) partitioned the realm of Lothair II by his uncles Louis the German of East Francia and Charles the Bald of West Francia, the two surviving sons of Emperor Louis I the Pious.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Meerssen)
1306 Aug 8, King Wenceslas of Poland was murdered.
(HN, 8/8/98)
1562 Aug 8, Diego Te, a Maya man in the Yucatec town of Sotuta, testified that a year earlier he had witnessed a village leader and another man cut the hearts from 2 boys and hand them to a shaman, who rubbed the hearts onto the mouths of two Maya idols. The account was preserved in the Archivo General de Indias in Seville, Spain.
(AM, 7/05, p.43)
1567 Aug 8, Duke of Alba's army entered Brussels, Belgium.
(MC, 8/8/02)
1570 Aug 8, Charles IX of France signed the Treaty of St. Germain (Peace of St. Germain-en-Laye), ending the third war of religion and giving religious freedom to the Huguenots.
(TL-MB, 1988, p.22)(HN, 8/8/98)
1571 Aug 8, John Ward, English composer, was born in Canterbury.
(MC, 8/8/02)(Internet)
1588 Aug 8, The English Navy destroyed the Spanish Armada. 600 Spaniards were killed in the day’s fighting and 800 badly injured. The Duke of Medina Sidonia led the "invincible" Spanish Armada from Lisbon against England. It was shattered around the coasts of the English Isles by an English fleet under the command of Lord Howard of Effingham with the help of Sir Francis Drake, Sir John Hawkins, and a violent storm (see Aug 18). The victory opened the world for English trade and colonization. In 1959 Garrett Mattingly authored “The Armada." In 1998 Geoffrey Parker published "The Grand Strategy of Phillip II." In 2005 Neil Janson authored “The Confident Hope of a Miracle: The True Story of the Spanish Armada," and James McDermott authored “England & the Spanish Armada: The necessary Quarrel."
(ON, 3/02, p.5)(SSFC, 2/20/05, p.B2)(Econ, 5/28/05, p.85)
1636 Aug 8, The invading armies of Spain, Austria and Bavaria were stopped at the village of St.-Jean-de-Losne, only 50 miles from France.
(HN, 8/8/98)
1648 Aug 8, Ibrahim, the sultan of Istanbul, was thrown into prison, then assassinated.
(HN, 8/8/98)
1655 Aug 8, Eastern Lithuania was occupied by Russian and Cossack forces. Western Lithuania was occupied by Swedish forces. Following three days of pillaging Vilnius was burned in a fire the lasted 17 days.
(http://tinyurl.com/pm9nvcc)
1736 Aug 8, Mahomet Weyonomon, a Mohegan sachem or leader, died of smallpox while waiting to see King George II to complain directly about British settlers encroaching on tribal lands in the Connecticut colony. The tribal chief was buried in an unmarked grave in a south London churchyard.
(AP, 11/22/06)(http://tinyurl.com/ymbn3c)
1763 Aug 8, Charles Bulfinch, 1st US professional architect (Mass State House), was born in Boston, Mass.
(MC, 8/8/02)
1776 Aug 8, John Paul Jones was commissioned as a captain and appointed to command the Alfred. His orders were to harass enemy merchant ships and defend the American coast.
(ON, 2/04, p.6)(Internet)
1786 Aug 8, The US Congress adopted the silver dollar and decimal system of money.
(MC, 8/8/02)
1786 Aug 8, Jacques Balmat and Dr. Michel-Gabriel Paccard became the first men to climb Mont Blanc in France.
(HN, 8/8/98)(ON, 4/04, p.1)
1788 Aug 8, King Louis XVI called the French States and Generals together.
(MC, 8/8/02)
1788 Aug 8, Louis FAD Duke de Richelieu (92), French marshal, died.
(MC, 8/8/02)
1815 Aug 8, Napoleon Bonaparte set sail for St. Helena, in the South Atlantic, to spend the remainder of his days in exile.
(AP, 8/8/97)
1844 Aug 8, Brigham Young was chosen to head the Mormon church following the killing of Joseph Smith in Illinois.
(AP, 8/8/97)(HN, 8/8/98)
1854 Aug 8, Smith and Wesson patented metal bullet cartridges.
(MC, 8/8/02)
1860 Aug 8, Queen of Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) arrived in NYC.
(MC, 8/8/02)
1862 Aug 8, Minnesota’s 5th Infantry fought the Sioux Indians in Redwood, Minn., and 24 soldiers were killed.
(SFC, 2/7/03, p.A23)
1863 Aug 8, Confederate President Jefferson Davis refused General Robert E. Lee's resignation.
(HN, 8/8/98)
1864 Aug 8, Union troops and fleet occupied Fort Gaines, Alabama.
(MC, 8/8/02)
1864 Aug 8, The 1st Geneva Convention was issued on protecting the war wounded.
(www.redcross.org)
1866 Aug 8, African-American Matthew Alexander Henson was born in Maryland. He and four Inuits accompanied U.S. Naval Commander Robert E. Peary when he planted the U.S. flag at the North Pole on April 6, 1909. Henson became an Arctic expert during Peary's first two failed expeditions. By the third attempt, which began in July 1908, Henson's strength, knowledge of the Eskimo language and dog driving skills made him an essential member of the team. Whether Peary's party actually reached the North Pole or missed it by as much as 60 miles due to a navigational miscalculation remains controversial to this day.
(HNPD, 8//99)(Internet)
1876 Aug 8, Thomas A. Edison received a patent for his mimeograph.
(AP, 8/8/97)
1879 Aug 8, Emiliano Zapata, Mexican revolutionary who occupied Mexico City three times, was born in Anenecuilco, Morelos state, Mexico.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emiliano_Zapata)
1881 Aug 8, Paul L.E. von Kleist, German general-fieldmarshal (Eastern Front), was born.
(MC, 8/8/02)
1890 Aug 8, Daughters of American Revolution (DAR) organized. [see Oct 11]
(MC, 8/8/02)
1896 Aug 8, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (d.1953), author of "The Yearling," was born.
(HN, 8/8/00)
1897 Aug 8, Anarchist Miguel Angiolillo assassinated Spanish PM Antonio Canovas del Castillo at Santa Agueda, Spain. Práxides Mateo Sagasta became prime minister of Spain.
(NG, 11/04, p.76)(www.loc.gov/rr/hispanic/1898/chronpr.html)
1898 Aug 8, Adolph Sutro (b.1830), former mayor of SF, died. He had acquired a 100,000 volume private library, most of which was destroyed in the 1906 earthquake. He served as the 24th mayor of SF (1895-1897).
(G, Winter 98/99, p.2)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolph_Sutro)
1899 Aug 8, The first household refrigerating machine was patented.
(SFEC, 8/8/99, Z1 p.8)(HN, 8/8/00)
1899 Aug 8, Hurricane San Ciriaco made landfall in Puerto Rico. The number of fatalities ranged from 3,100 to 3,400, with the official estimate being 3,369. Approximately 250,000 people were left without food and shelter.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1899_San_Ciriaco_hurricane)
1901 Aug 8, Ernest Orlando Lawrence (d.1958), winner of the 1939 Nobel Prize for physics, was born.
(HN, 8/8/98)
1901 Aug 8, Santos-Dumont flew his powered dirigible around the Eiffel Tower a 2nd time but sprang a leak and caught suspension wires in his propeller blades.
(ON, 3/03, p.11)
1902 Aug 8, Jean Y.Y. Tissot, French painter, illustrator, died.
(MC, 8/8/02)
1907 Aug 8, Benny Carter, jazz musician, composer and bandleader, was born in New York.
(AP, 8/8/07)
1908 Aug 8, Arthur J. Goldberg (d.1990), labor lawyer, UN ambassador, Supreme Court justice (1962-65), was born in, Chicago, Illinois. He was instrumental in the merger of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations.
(HN, 8/8/98)(AP, 8/8/08)
1909 Aug 8, In Australia Sister Mary MacKillop (b.1842) died. She had founded the Sisters of St Joseph at age 24 and spent her life educating the poor and taking learning to the harsh Outback. In 2009 Pope Benedict XVI recognized a miracle in which she apparently cured a woman of cancer, paving the way to making her Australia’s first saint.
(AFP, 12/20/09)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_MacKillop)
1918 Aug 8, Opening salvos by the combined air and ground assault by soldiers from Britain, Australia, Canada, the United States and France began the Battle of Amiens. They quickly began to push back German troops to turn the tide on the Western Front.
(AP, 8/8/18)
1919 Aug 8, Afghanistan established independence from the UK with the signing of the Treaty of Rawalpindi.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Afghan_Treaty_of_1919)
1919 Aug 8, Dino De Laurentiis, producer (King Kong), was born in Torre Annunziata, Italy.
(MC, 8/8/02)
1922 Aug 8, Rudi Gernreich, designer (1st women's topless swimsuit, miniskirt), was born in Vienna, Austria.
(MC, 8/8/02)(Internet)
1922 Aug 8, An Italian general strike was broken by fascist terror.
(MC, 8/8/02)
1925 Aug 8, The Ku Klux Klan held its first national march, in Washington, D.C. Between 25,000 and 40,000 marchers took to the streets.
(http://mallhistory.org/items/show/175)
1925 Aug 8, Alija Izetbegovic (d.2003) was born in Bosanski Samac. He later led Bosnia's Muslims during the 1992-95 war for independence and became one of the republic's first postwar presidents.
(AP, 10/19/03)(SFC, 10/20/03, p.A18)
1929 Aug 8, Josef Suk, violinist (Artist of Merit-1977), was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia.
(MC, 8/8/02)
1937 Aug 8, Dustin Hoffman, American actor, was born.
(HN, 8//00)
1937 Aug 8, The Japanese Army occupied Beijing, China.
(HN, 8/8/98)
1940 Aug 8, The German Luftwaffe attacked Great Britain for the first time, beginning the Battle of Britain.
(HN, 8/8/98)
1942 Aug 8, U.S. Marines captured the Japanese airstrip on Guadalcanal.
(HN, 8/8/98)
1942 Aug 8, Six convicted Nazi saboteurs who had landed in the United States were executed in Washington, D.C. Two others received life imprisonment.
(AP, 8/8/97)
1944 Aug 8, U.S. forces completed the capture of the Marianas Islands.
(HN, 8/8/98)
1944 Aug 8, Erwin von Witzleben (62), German fieldmarshal, was hanged.
(MC, 8/8/02)
1944 Aug 8, On the island of Guam US Marine Corps patrols from the 21st Regiment discovered 45 bodies of young Chamorro men in Chagui'an, beheaded and with their hands tied behind their backs. The site of the massacre was later disputed as the Guam Preservation Trust moved to put the Chagui'an Massacre site in Yigo into the National Register of Historic Places.
(AP, 4/4/15)
1945 Aug 8, President Truman signed the United Nations Charter.
(AP, 8/8/97)
1945 Aug 8, The Soviet Union declared war against Japan. 1.5 million Soviet troops launched a massive surprise attack (August Storm) against Japanese occupation forces in northern China and Korea. Within days, Tokyo's million-man army in the region had collapsed in one of the greatest military defeats in history.
(SFC, 9/9/96, p.A19)(AP, 8/8/97)(AP, 8/6/05)
1949 Aug 8, Joaquin Torres-Garcia (b.1874), Uruguayan artist, died. As a theoretician he published "more than one hundred and fifty books, essays and articles written in Catalan, Spanish, French, English.
(http://tinyurl.com/ju4k6kk)(Econ, 10/22/16, p.30)
1950 Aug 8, U.S. troops repelled the first North Korean attempt to overrun them at the battle of Naktong Bulge, which continued for 10 days.
(HN, 8/8/98)
1950 Aug 8, Florence Chadwick (1918-1995) swam the English Channel from France to Dover in 13 hours and 23 minutes. A year later she swam the reverse in 16:22.
(http://www.ishof.org/70fchadwick.html)
1950 Aug 8, Nicolai Yakovlevich Miaskovsky (b.1891), Russian composer, died.
(http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0583975/)
1953 Aug 8, The song “Vaya con Dios" recorded by Les Paul and his wife Mary Ford reached number one on the Billboard magazine Best Seller Chart and stayed there for 9 weeks.
(SFC, 8/14/09, p.D6)
1953 Aug 8, The United States and South Korea initialed a mutual security pact.
(AP, 8/8/99)
1953 Aug 8, In Russia Georgi Malenkov reported the possession of hydrogen bomb.
(MC, 8/8/02)
1955 Aug 8, Fidel Castro formed his "July 26th Movement."
(MC, 8/8/02)
1959 Aug 8, In San Francisco beatniks hung an effigy of police officer William Bigarani from a telephone pole outside the Co-Existence Bagel Shop in North Beach. He and officer John Cuneo had been intimidating local beats for months and had recently crushed a toe of poet Bob Kaufman.
(SFC, 3/14/15, p.C2)
1960 Aug 8, The pop song "Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polkadot Bikini", sung by Brian Hyland (16), hit #1. The song was written by Paul Vance and Lee Pockriss.
(www.popculturemadness.com/Music/Pop-Modern/1960.html)(SFC, 9/28/06, p.A2)
1962 Aug 8, The Chilean TV variety show "Sabados Gigantes" (Gigantic Saturdays) debuted with Mario Luis Kreutzberger Blumenfeld (b.1940) as Don Francisco. In April, 1986, the show got shortened to the singular version (Sabado Gigante) went it went on air in Miami, Fla. Kreutzberger was the son of German Jews who fled Nazi persecution.
(www.imdb.com/title/tt0250920/)(SSFC, 11/9/03, Par p.16)(SFC, 4/14/04, p.E1)
1963 Aug 8, Britain's "Great Train Robbery" took place as thieves made off with 120 mailbags with 2.62 million pounds in banknotes. 15 men under Bruce Reynolds (d.2013) held up the Glasgow to London Royal Mail (Glasgow-Euston train) and took off with $7.2 mil in sterling. They badly beat up train driver Jack Mills. He never returned to work and died seven years later without making a full recovery. Ronald Biggs claimed to be one of the 15 men and later lived freely in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. His share of the robbery was $2.8 mil but he was arrested just four weeks after the robbery. He escaped from Wandsworth Prison in 1965 and was still wanted in Britain. Only 1/8 of the money stolen was ever recovered. Dinner at home with Mr. Biggs could be purchased for $50. In 1994 Biggs published an autobiography. In 1999 a video game was developed based on the event. Biggs (71) returned to Britain in 2001 and in 2009 he was up for parole. Reynolds spent five years as a fugitive. On his return to Britain he was caught by police and sentenced 25 years in prison for the train heist, of which he served just 10. Reynolds published a memoir titled "Autobiography of a Thief" and became a consultant on a crime film.
(SFE, 10/1/95, p.T-8)(AP, 8/8/97)(WSJ, 11/4/99, p.A28)(WSJ, 5/7/01, p.A1)(AFP, 7/1/09)(AP, 2/28/13)
1965 Aug 8, In San Francisco race car driver Bart Martin (26) was killed at the Candlestick Park Sports Car Races. A two-mile track had been laid out around Candlestick Park’s huge parking area.
(SSFC, 8/2/15, DB p.50)
1965 Aug 8, Shirley Jackson, writer and author of horror fiction, died in Vermont. Her work included "The Haunting of Hill House" (1959) and "The Lottery" (1948). In 1997 a collection of short fiction was published titled "Just an Ordinary Day." In 2016 Ruth Franklin authored “Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life."
(SFEM, 1/12/97, BR p.3)(Econ, 9/24/16, p.80)
1966 Aug 8, South African Broadcasting banned the Beatles for Lennon's anti-Jesus remark.
(MC, 8/8/02)
1967 Aug 8, The Association of Southeast Asian Nations or ASEAN was established in Bangkok by the five original Member Countries, namely, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand. Brunei Darussalam joined on 8 January 1984, Vietnam on 28 July 1995, Laos and Myanmar on 23 July 1997, and Cambodia on 30 April 1999.
(www.aseansec.org/64.htm)
1968 Aug 8, Richard M. Nixon was nominated for president at the Republican National Convention in Miami Beach. Later that day, Nixon chose Maryland Gov. Spiro T. Agnew to be his running mate.
(AP, 8/8/97)
1968 Aug 8, In Florida a riot broke out last night in several neighborhoods of Miami, including one community just 10 miles from the Republican Convention. 3 negroes were killed by gunfire.
(www.project1968.com/august-4-10-1968.html)
1969 Aug 8, Actress Sharon Tate (26) and four other people were brutally murdered in her Beverly Hills home; cult leader Charles Manson and a group of his disciples were later convicted of the crime. The best writing on the Manson murders was by Joan Didion in "The White Album."
(SFEC, 3/16/97, z1 p.4)(AP, 8/9/97)(HN, 8/9/98)(SFEC, 9/19/99, BR p.6)
1972 Aug 8, A special meeting of the Democratic National Committee chose R. Sargent Shriver, the former director of the Peace Corps, as McGovern‘s running mate. The Democrat ticket was swamped in the general election by incumbent President Richard Nixon in the November 7 election.
(HNQ, 4/25/00)
1973 Aug 8, Vice President Spiro T. Agnew branded as "damned lies" reports he had taken kickbacks from government contracts in Maryland and vowed not to resign. He eventually did resign.
(AP, 8/8/97)
1973 Aug 8, In Texas Elmer Wayne Henley (17) called police in the Houston suburb of Pasadena to report a shooting. The high school dropout said he had killed Dean Corll after the 33-year-old electric company employee threatened to rape and kill Henley and two other teenagers who had gone to party at Corll's modest bungalow. By night's end 8 corpses were recovered from makeshift graves inside the corrugated metal shed in southwest Houston. The next day 9 more were discovered. Another 10 bodies were found on remote High Island beach, 80 miles east of Houston, and in a wooded area near Lake Sam Rayburn in East Texas. 27 dead Some as young as 13, none older than 21, were all victims of one killer, Dean Corll, and his two teenage accomplices, Elmer Wayne Henley and David Owen Brooks. The boys had seemed to vanish over the previous three years. In July, 1974, Henley was convicted in six of the murders and sentenced to six life terms in prison.
(AP, 6/8/08)
1973 Aug 8, Secret agents of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency kidnapped Kim Dae-jung from a Tokyo hotel, just days before he was to launch a coalition of Japan-based South Korean organizations to work for their country's democratization. Conservative politician Kim Jong Pil (b.1926), the father of the secret police agency, led the kidnapping and near assassination of politician Kim Dae Jung (b.1925). In 2007 a fact-finding panel of the National Intelligence Service said it cannot rule out the possibility that former President Park Chung-hee may have directly ordered the kidnapping of Kim, then his main political rival.
(AP, 10/24/07)(SFC,12/15/97, p.B1)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Jong-pil)
1974 Aug 8, President Nixon announced he would resign his office 12PM Aug 9, following damaging revelations in the Watergate scandal.
(AP, 8/8/97)(www.watergate.info/nixon/resignation-speech.shtml)
1974 Aug 8, Baldur von Schirach (b.1907), Nazi youth leader, died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baldur_von_Schirach)
1975 Aug 8, Julian "Cannonball" Adderley (b.1928), sax player, died of a stroke.
(SFC, 1/5/00, p.C3)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannonball_Adderley)
1978 Aug 8, The United States launched Pioneer Venus II, which carried scientific probes to study the atmosphere of Venus.
(HFA, '96, p.36)(AP, 8/8/99)
1978 Aug 8, James Ramp (52), Philadelphia police officer, was killed during a standoff with MOVE. 9 members of MOVE, a Black group that espoused equality with animals and preached against technology, were convicted. Members of the group adopted the surname Africa.
(SFC, 3/16/98, p.A20)(www.odmp.org/officer/10987-police-officer-james-j.-ramp)
1979 Aug 8, In Iran the revolutionary prosecutor banned the leading left-wing newspaper, Ayandegan. 5 days later hezbollahis broke up a Tehran rally called by the National Democratic Front, a newly organized left-of-center political movement, to protest the Ayandegan closing.
(http://tinyurl.com/3cssq4)
1979 Aug 8, Iraqi president Saddam Hussein executed 21 political opponents.
(www.foreignaffairs.org/1979/2.html)
1980 Aug 8, In Rantoul, Illinois, Brianna Stickle (3) was found raped and killed. In 2012 Andre Davis (50) was released after spending 32 years in jail. DNA evidence taken at the scene was found to not be his.
(SSFC, 7/8/12, p.A7)
1983 Aug 8, In Guatemala Gen’l. Efrain Rios Montt (b.1926) was overthrown and the military government of Gen. Humberto Mejia Victores took power.
(SFC, 7/5/96, p.A13)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efra%C3%ADn_R%C3%ADos_Montt)
1985 Aug 8, Mary Louise Brooks (b.1906), American silent film star, died. In 1982 she authored her memoir “Lulu in Hollywood."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louise_Brooks)
1987 Aug 8, In the Persian Gulf, a Navy F-14 "Tomcat" fighter fired two missiles at an Iranian jet approaching an unarmed U.S. scout plane. Both missiles missed their target and the Iranian plane flew off.
(AP, 8/8/97)
1988 Aug 8, A renovated NYC Central Park Zoo reopened after 4 years.
(http://nyzoosandaquarium.com/czabout)
1988 Aug 8, Sec. of State Shultz narrowly escaped an assassination attempt in Bolivia.
(www.tkb.org/MorePatterns.jsp?countryCd=BL&year=1988)
1988 Aug 8, U.N. Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar announced a cease-fire between Iran and Iraq. This became an Iraqi national holiday until it was abolished in 2003.
(SFC, 2/24/9, p.A9)(AP, 8/8/98)(AP, 7/13/03)
1988 Aug 8, In Burma an uprising began after more than a quarter of a century of military rule and international isolation that had condemned once-prosperous country to poverty. The flag of the uprising featured a fighting peacock.
(AP, 8/8/18)
1988 Aug 8-1988 Aug 13, Police in Burma (Myanmar) killed nearly 3,000 protesters in the streets of Rangoon.
(SFEC, 1/19/96, Par. p.5)(SFEC, 10/22/00, p.T8)
1989 Aug 8, The space shuttle Columbia blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on a secret, five-day military mission to deploy a new Pentagon spy satellite.
(AP, 8/8/99)(SSFC, 2/2/03, p.A6)
1990 Aug 8, Pete Rose began a 5-month prison term at Marion (IL) Federal prison camp.
(www.baseballlibrary.com/baseballlibrary/ballplayers/R/Rose_Pete.stm)
1990 Aug 8, As the Persian Gulf crisis deepened, American forces began taking up positions in Saudi Arabia; Iraq announced it had annexed Kuwait as its 19th province; President Bush warned Iraqi President Saddam Hussein that "a line has been drawn in the sand."
(AP, 8/8/00)
1991 Aug 8, James B. Irwin (b.1930), Col USAF, astronaut (Apollo 15), died. He was the 8th person to walk on the moon.
(www.astronautix.com/astros/irwin.htm)
1991 Aug 8, Lebanese kidnappers freed British TV producer John McCarthy, held hostage for more than five years; however, a rival group abducted Frenchman Jerome Leyraud, threatening to kill him if any more hostages were released Leyraud was freed three days later.
(AP, 8/8/01)
1991 Aug 8, The 2,120-foot 8-inch Radio One tower in Poland fell down.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_radio_mast)
1992 Aug 8, The U.S. basketball "Dream Team" clinched the gold at the Barcelona Summer Olympics, defeating Croatia 117-85.
(AP, 8/8/97)
1992 Aug 8, The space shuttle Atlantis returned from a problem-plagued mission.
(AP, 8/8/97)
1992 Aug 8, AIDS activist Alison Gertz died in New York at age 26.
(AP, 8/8/97)
1993 Aug 8, Six people were killed when their balloon hit a power line near Aspen, Colorado, tearing off the basket and sending it plunging 30 meters to the ground.
(AP, 2/26/13)
1993 Aug 8, Freddie Woodruff (b.1947), CIA agent chief in Tbilisi, Georgia, was shot and killed during an outing with friends. Georgian authorities charged Anzor Sharmaidze (20), a volunteer soldier, with the murder. Sharmaidze confessed under torture and later said he was framed for the murder. In 2008 Sharmaidze was granted parole from prison.
(WSJ, 10/18/08, p.A1)(http://public.cq.com/docs/hs/hsnews110-000002604568.html)(WSJ, 10/27/08, p.a12)
1993 Aug 8, In Somalia, four U.S. soldiers were killed when a land mine was detonated underneath their vehicle. This prompted President Clinton to order Army Rangers to try to capture Somali warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid.
(AP, 8/8/98)
1994 Aug 8, Israel and Jordan opened the first road link between the two once warring countries.
(AP, 8/8/99)
1995 Aug 8, President Clinton, during a visit to Baltimore, ordered all companies doing business with the federal government to report the pollution they cause.
(AP, 8/8/00)
1995 Aug 8, Hussein Kamel al-Majid, formerly Iraq's industry minister, defected to Jordan with his brother and their wives, both of whom were daughters of Saddam Hussein. He vowed to topple Saddam and said that Sadam Hussein had planned to invade Kuwait and Saudi Arabia this month and that Iraq had been three months away from testing an atomic bomb before the Gulf War began.
(WSJ, 8/21/95, p.A-1)(SFC, 9/4/96, p.A8)
1996 Aug 8, President Clinton belittled Bob Dole's tax plan, vowing to oppose tax cuts that he said the country couldn't afford. Republican sources, meanwhile, said Dole was seriously considering Jack Kemp to be his running mate.
(AP, 8/8/97)
1996 Aug 8, Sir Neville Mott (1906-1996), who shared the 1977 Nobel Prize in physics with Philip Anderson and John van Vleck for research on the behavior of electricity in non-crystalline or so-called "disordered" materials, died in London.
(SFC, 8/11/96, p.D5)
1996 Aug 8, Medical researchers successfully cured patients with sickle-cell anemia by using a risky bone-marrow transplant technique.
(WSJ, 7/8/96,p.A1)
1996 Aug 8, In Cambodia the government announced an internal power struggle and split in the Khmer Rouge. Leng Sary, a Pol Pot chum and the Khmer Rouge foreign minister, opposed Son Sen, the minister of defense and led defections that grew to 10,000.
(SFC, 8/12/96, p.A13)(SFC, 6/14/97, p.A15)(WSJ, 4/17/98, p.A13)
1996 Aug 8, Food poisoning due to E. coli bacteria in the city of Sakai, Japan, was attributed to radish sprouts.
(WSJ, 7/8/96,p.A1)
1997 Aug 8, US Sec. of State Madeleine Albright announced that the bulk of US aid to Cambodia would be suspended.
(SFC, 8/9/97, p.A9)
1997 Aug 8, The Teamsters and United Parcel Service completed a second day of federally mediated talks, with neither side reporting progress toward ending a strike.
(AP, 8/8/98)
1997 Aug 8, It was reported that researchers have discovered how the defective gene in Huntington’s disease causes the disorder. A genetic "stutter" inserts from 30 to 150 copies of the amino acid glutamine into key proteins and alters their properties.
(SFC, 8/8/97, p.A3)
1997 Aug 8, In Ddjelfa, Algeria, a bomb in a baby bassinet killed 9 people. In the village of Zeboudja insurgents slit the throats of 21 people and 20 others were shot and wounded.
(SFC, 8/11/97, p.A8)
1997 Aug 8, Gen’l. Eric Shinseki, the American in charge of NATO forces in Bosnia, announced a plan to force all paramilitary troops to disband or face arrest.
(SFC, 8/9/97, p.A9)
1997 Aug 8, In Columbia Senator Jorge Cristo and a bodyguard were killed in Cucuta. Police said leftist guerrillas were responsible.
(SFC, 8/9/97, p.C1)
1997 Aug 8, The resumption of limited oil sales by Iraq was cleared by the UN Security Council. The UN plan allows the sale of $2 billion in crude oil every 6 months.
(SFC, 8/9/97, p.C1)
1997 Aug 8, Fighting broke out on the Israel-Lebanon border when guerrillas fired rockets into northern Israel and Israeli warplanes struck back. 13 people have died since Aug 4 when Israeli commandos set off bombs behind the front line killing 3 guerrilla field commanders and 2 fighters.
(SFC, 8/9/97, p.A8)
1997 Aug 8, In Kenya a nationwide strike was called and declared illegal by the government. In Nairobi a crowd of some 2,000 gathered and killed Gilbert Simiyu, a plainclothes police officer. The strike turned into a riot with looting.
(SFC, 8/9/97, p.C1)
1997 Aug 8, The largest int’l. military exercise in Latvia’s history took place over 5 days at the Adazi training center organized by the Northwest Europe Command. Troops from 15 countries were to participate.
(BN, 6/97)
1997 Aug 8, In Peru at least 20 bus passengers were killed in a crash in the province of Cuzco. Some 80 people have died in 4 bus crashes in the last week.
(SFC, 8/9/97, p.C1)
1997 Aug 8, On St. Vincent James and Penny Fletcher were acquitted of the murder of Jerome Joseph after 9 months of incarceration.
(SFC, 8/9/97, p.A8)
1998 Aug 8, Pres. Clinton in weekly radio address vowed the bombers of 2 US embassies in Africa would be brought to justice, "no matter how long it takes or where it takes us.''
(AP, 8/8/99)
1998 Aug 8, A riot broke out in Reno, Nv., during the annual "Hot Autumn Nights" festival. There was some property damage and a few minor injuries. 130 people were arrested.
(SFC, 8/10/98, p.A2)
1998 Aug 8, In Afghanistan the Taliban overran Mazar-i-Sharif and killed 9 of 11 diplomats from Iran. 8 of the dead were diplomats, the 9th was a journalist. Later reports indicated that the Taliban killed as many as 4,000 civilians, mostly Hazaras, in a campaign partly designed to wipe out the Shiite Muslim minority. Hazara residents were given 3 choices: convert to Sunni Islam, leave for Shiite Iran, or die.
(SFC, 9/11/98, p.D4)(SFC, 9/18/98, p.D8)(SFC, 2/19/01, p.A9)(SFC, 2/12/02, p.A16)
1998 Aug 8, A group called the Liberation Arm of the Islamic Sanctuaries claimed responsibility for the bombing of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and threatened more attacks. Israeli troops began to arrive to assist in rescue efforts.
(SFC, 8/8/98, p.A1)(SFEC, 8/9/98, p.A1)(SFC, 8/10/98, p.A13)
1998 Aug 8, In Iran the first daily newspaper dedicated to women’s issues, the daily Zan, was launched by Faezeh Hashemi. She was the daughter of former Pres. Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.
(SFEC, 8/9/98, p.A16)
1998 Aug 8, In Northern Ireland some 15,000 Apprentice Boys marched through Londonderry with a few minor scuffles.
(SFEC, 8/9/98, p.A17)
1998 Aug 8, In Serbia Slobodan Milijkovic, a Serb wanted by the Int’l. War Crimes Tribunal, was shot and killed by a policeman along with 2 others following insults at an outdoor cafe in Belgrade. Milijkovic, a suspected member of the Chetnicks ultra-nationalist paramilitary unit, had rejected responsibility and said politicians were to blame for the war.
(SFEC, 8/9/98, p.A17)
1998 Aug 8, From Sri Lanka it was reported that recent fighting has left some 1,800 guerrillas and 1,600 government troops dead.
(SFC, 8/8/98, p.B1)
1999 Aug 8, Opening a new attack on the Republican tax-cut measure, President Clinton warned the nation’s governors at their meeting in St. Louis that the $792 billion package would trigger "huge cuts" in Medicare, farm programs and other spending critical to their voters.
(AP, 8/8/00)
1999 Aug 8, In Guyana Pres. Janet Jagan (78) announced that she was resigning due to ill health and that Bharat Jagdeo (35), her finance minister, would succeed her.
(SFC, 8/9/99, p.A9)
1999 Aug 8, In Honduras the government began investigating the El Aguacate air base where human remains had been discovered 4 days earlier. The site was a former training base for Nicaraguan Contras.
(SFC, 8/9/99, p.A8)
1999 Aug 8, In Jerusalem Yasser Arafat accepted Ehud Barak's proposal to delay land transfers and troop withdrawals until October.
(SFC, 8/9/99, p.A8)
1999 Aug 8, In southern Lebanon Israeli warplanes bombed suspected rebel positions after Hezbollah guerrillas struck an Israeli outpost at Blatt.
(SFC, 8/9/99, p.A10)
1999 Aug 8, In southern Russia federal forces opened fire from the ground and air on Islamic militants in Dagestan. Prime minister Stepashin was in the capital Makhachkala. The state is home to some 33 ethnic groups including Wahhabi militants backed by Chechen commanders. Shamil Basayev, a Chechen militant, declared Dagestan an independent Islamic state within days of seizing several villages.
(SFC, 8/9/99, p.A11)(SFC, 8/14/99, p.A10)
1999 Aug 8, In Sierra Leone rebels freed at least 19 of 35 captives taken on Aug 5.
(SFC, 8/9/99, p.A10)
1999 Aug 8, In Sweden AB Volvo reached a deal to acquire Scania AB for $7.3 billion.
(WSJ, 8/9/99, p.A13)
2000 Aug 8, Vice President Al Gore formally introduced and celebrated his Jewish running mate, Senator Joseph Lieberman, during an appearance in Gore’s home state of Tennessee.
(AP, 8/8/01)
2000 Aug 8, Audiotapes recorded Enron traders deliberately congesting Western power lines: “If you can congest it, that’s a moneymaker no matter what."
(SFC, 6/15/04, p.A1)
2000 Aug 8, Some 109 nuclear waste sites in 27 states, Puerto Rico and territorial islands of the Pacific would remain dangerous for centuries according to a new report by the US National Research Council.
(WSJ, 8/8/00, p.A24)
2000 Aug 8, The Civil War submarine Hunley was raised and returned to Charleston, SC. State Sen. Glenn McConnell raised funds for the Hunley project, which by 2006 reached $13.8 million, with another $15.5 million committed.
(SFC, 8/9/00, p.A3)(Econ, 4/10/04, p.25)
2000 Aug 8, In Bhutan flash floods and mudslides left at least 50 people dead.
(SFC, 8/9/00, p.A14)
2000 Aug 8, Chile’s Supreme Court stripped General Augusto Pinochet’s immunity, clearing the way for the former dictator to be tried on human rights charges. However, an appeals court later ruled Pinochet unfit to stand trial because of his deteriorating health and mental condition.
(SFC, 8/9/00, p.A10)(AP, 8/8/01)
2000 Aug 8, In northeast India flash floods and mudslides left at least 80 people dead and 2 million homeless.
(SFC, 8/9/00, p.A14)
2000 Aug 8, In Iran the daily Bahar newspaper was closed by the hard-line judiciary for "disturbing public opinion."
(SFC, 8/9/00, p.A14)
2000 Aug 8, In Kashmir the militant Hizbul Mujahedeen called off its cease-fire.
(SFC, 8/9/00, p.A11)
2000 Aug 8, In Russia a bomb exploded through an underground walkway in Moscow’s Pushkin Square and at least 13 people were killed. Another bomb was found and defused.
(SFC, 8/9/00, p.A1)(AP, 8/8/01)
2000 Aug 8, In Spain a car bomb exploded in Madrid, where 11 people were injured and in Zumaia where 1 man was killed. The ETA was blamed.
(SFC, 8/9/00, p.A14)
2001 Aug 8, Four American Senators met with Pres. Jiang Zemin in China and warned him that the continued sales of sensitive missile technology would trigger an arms race and boost internal US support for a missile defense system.
(SFC, 8/9/01, p.A10)
2001 Aug 8, US Federal authorities announced the arrests of 100 people nationwide in an Internet child pornography operation, Landslide Productions Inc., based in Fort Worth, Tx.
(SFC, 8/9/01, p.A3)
2001 Aug 8, Maureen Reagan (b.1941), daughter of former Pres. Ronald Reagan, died of malignant melanoma. She authored the 1989 autobiography "First Father, First Daughter."
(SFC, 8/9/01, p.A20)(NW, 12/31/01, p.106)
2001 Aug 8, In Argentina thousands of state workers, students and jobless marched on Buenos Aires for a 2nd day to protest government plans to cut wages and pensions.
(SFC, 8/9/01, p.A9)
2001 Aug 8, In Bangladesh a stampede of textile workers was caused by a false fire alarm and 23 people were crushed to death.
(WSJ, 8/9/01, p.A1)
2001 Aug 8, Jacques Kerchache (b.1942), French explorer and collector of primitive art, died in Cancun, Mexico.
(Econ, 4/16/11, p.91)(http://tinyurl.com/3pyax8r)
2001 Aug 8, In Iran Mohammad Khatami was sworn in as president for a second term. Political in-fighting with conservatives delayed the ceremony by 3 days.
(SFC, 8/9/01, p.A9)(AP, 8/8/02)
2001 Aug 8, In Italy police chief Gianni de Gennaro acknowledged that excessive force had been used against protesters of the Group 8 summit.
(SFC, 8/9/01, p.A8)
2001 Aug 8, In Lebanon up to 250 people were arrested in protests that demanded Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon.
(SFC, 8/9/01, p.A9)
2001 Aug 8, In Macedonia political leaders initialed a peace agreement as rebels ambushed an army convoy and killed 10 soldiers.
(SFC, 8/9/01, p.A8)
2002 Aug 8, The FCC ordered TV manufacturers to install tuners for digital signals in new TV sets by 2007.
(SFC, 8/9/02, p.A1)
2002 Aug 8, Bankrupt telecommunications firm WorldCom said it had uncovered another $3.3 billion in bogus accounting, adding to the $3.85 billion fraud it revealed in June.
(AP, 8/8/03)
2002 Aug 8, In Oregon the Florence and Sour Biscuit fires merged and formed the largest active fire in the nation. The fire soon covered 308,000 acres.
(SFC, 8/9/02, p.A9)(SFC, 8/10/02, p.A5)
2002 Aug 8, Australia's highest court ruled that Aborigines do not have rights to oil or minerals found under tribal land now being used by mining companies.
(AP, 8/8/02)
2002 Aug 8, The Chinese government awarded an Australian consortium a 25-year natural gas supply contract in Australia's biggest-ever foreign trade deal.
(AP, 8/8/02)
2002 Aug 8, In Colombia President Alvaro Uribe pressed ahead with Plan Meteor to equip 1 million citizens with radios to report on rebel activity.
(AP, 8/9/02)(SFC, 8/9/02, p.A20)
2002 Aug 8, In Indonesia Lorenzo Taddei (34), an Italian tourist, was shot dead in Central Sulawesi when gunmen fired on the bus he was traveling in.
(Reuters, 8/9/02)
2002 Aug 8, In Northern Ireland gunmen shot the son of Protestant extremist Johnny "Mad Dog" Adair in both legs, an act known as kneecapping.
(WSJ, 8/9/02, p.A1)
2002 Aug 8, Saddam Hussein organized a big military parade and then warned "the forces of evil" not to attack Iraq as he sought once more to shift the debate away from world demands that he live up to agreements that ended the Gulf War.
(AP, 8/8/03)
2002 Aug 8, Israeli troops and tanks briefly swept into a town in the northern Gaza Strip for the second time in two days, killing a youth and wounding three others in a clash with Palestinian stone throwers. Negotiators failed to reach agreement, but scheduled more talks on a gradual Israeli troop pullback from some Palestinian areas.
(AP, 8/8/02)
2002 Aug 8, In Nigeria police freed 46 captives many of them chained and badly beaten in raids on five "torture centers" run by a feared vigilante group.
(AP, 8/9/02)
2002 Aug 8, South Korea said 10 people were dead after four days of torrential rains that North Korea reported had also caused scores of casualties and destroyed crops in the hungry communist state.
(Reuters, 8/8/02)
2002 Aug 8, Taiwan said it may forge ahead with legislation for a referendum on formal independence from China, but sought to soften the blow with an assurance it would not hold a vote unless forced into a corner.
(AP, 8/8/02)
2002 Aug 8, The bodies of two Uzbek prisoners, Muzafar Avazov and Khusnuddin Olimov, who died in custody while jailed for alleged religious extremism were returned to their families for burial. Both men were jailed for membership in the banned Islamic group Hizb-ut-Tahrir.
(AP, 8/8/02)
2003 Aug 8, George Soros pledged $10 million to a political action committee called America Coming Together to defeat George Bush in 2004.
(AP, 8/8/03)
2003 Aug 8, A US federal judge ruled that some 264,000 square miles of submerged lands in the Northern Mariana Islands, a US commonwealth, belong to the United States.
(AP, 8/8/03)
2003 Aug 8, The Boston Roman Catholic archdiocese offered $55 million to settle lawsuits stemming from sex abuse by priests. The archdiocese later settled for $85 million.
(AP, 8/8/04)
2003 Aug 8, In eastern Colombia suspected rebels set off a car bomb near the Saravena airport, killing five civilians, including two children.
(AP, 8/8/03)
2003 Aug 8, In India workers camped out at a mountain tunnel were hit by a fierce overnight thunderstorm near a Himalayan resort in Himachal Pradesh state, leaving at least 26 dead.
(AP, 8/8/03)
2003 Aug 8, Mahmud Dhiyab Al-Ahmad, Saddam Hussein's former interior minister, (No. 29 on the list of 55 most-wanted Iraqis) surrendered to coalition forces.
(AP, 8/10/03)
2003 Aug 8, A West Bank raid on a bomb lab by Israeli troops killed 2 members of the Islamic militant group Hamas. An Israeli soldier also was killed.
(AP, 8/9/03)
2003 Aug 8, Hezbollah guerrillas shelled Israeli positions in a disputed Lebanese border region for the first time in eight months, drawing Israeli airstrikes and artillery fire.
(AP, 8/8/03)
2004 Aug 8, The US military said 2 American soldiers and their Afghan interpreter died when a bomb hit their Humvee.
(AP, 8/8/04)
2004 Aug 8, Alan Keyes, the Republican two-time presidential hopeful, threw his hat into Illinois' Senate race (he ended up losing to Democrat Barack Obama).
(AP, 8/8/05)
2004 Aug 8, Fay Wray (b.1907), film actress, died. She was best known for her 1933 performance in “King Kong."
(SFC, 8/10/04, p.B7)
2004 Aug 8, Traces of the anti-depressant Prozac have been found in Britain's drinking water supply, setting off alarm bells with environmentalists concerned about potentially toxic effects. In the decade up to 2001, overall prescriptions of antidepressants in Britain rose from 9 million to 24 million a year.
(AP, 8/8/04)
2004 Aug 8, Iraq reinstated capital punishment for people guilty of murder, endangering national security and distributing drugs.
(AP, 8/8/04)
2004 Aug 8, Iraq's chief investigating judge said Ahmad Chalabi, a former Governing Council member with strong U.S. ties, was wanted in Iraq on counterfeiting charges, while Salem Chalabi, head of the special tribunal in charge of trying Saddam, faced an arrest warrant for murder.
(AP, 8/9/04)
2004 Aug 8, Militants in Iraq said they had taken a top Iranian diplomat hostage. Faridoun Jihani was identified as the "consul for the Islamic Republic of Iran in Karbala."
(AP, 8/8/04)
2004 Aug 8, In San Juan Chamula, Mexico, hundreds of enraged residents of this impoverished Indian community locked the mayor and three other municipal officials in jail, claiming they embezzled funds from public works projects.
(AP, 8/8/04)
2004 Aug 8, In Pakistan 2 bombs ripped through an Islamic school, killing 8 and injuring 42.
(AP, 8/9/04)
2004 Aug 8, Pakistan confirmed that Qari Saifullah Akhtar, a senior bin Laden operative, had been captured in the UAR and transferred to Lahore.
(SFC, 8/9/04, p.A1)
2004 Aug 8, The death toll from monsoons in South Asia reached 1,972. At least 1,152 have died in India, 691 in Bangladesh, 124 in Nepal and 5 in Pakistan.
(AP, 8/8/04)(SSFC, 8/8/04, p.A3)
2004 Aug 8, President Leonid Kuchma, joined by other top officials, attended the startup of nuclear reactor No. 2 at the Khmelnitskyi plant in western Ukraine.
(AP, 8/8/04)
2005 Aug 8, Pres. Bush signed the Energy Policy Act. The bill gave billions in tax breaks to encourage homegrown energy production. Under the new law, effective March 2007, Daylight Saving Time would begin three weeks earlier than previously, on the second Sunday in March. DST would be extended by one week to the first Sunday in November.
(www.energy.ca.gov/daylightsaving.html)(AP, 8/8/06)
2005 Aug 8, After orbiting the Earth for nearly two weeks, astronauts aboard space shuttle Discovery were told to circle the planet for another day as bad weather in Florida forced NASA to delay Monday's scheduled landing.
(AP, 8/8/05)
2005 Aug 8, In California 42 inmates were injured when a simmering dispute between two ethnic groups erupted into the largest riot at San Quentin State Prison in 23 years.
(AP, 8/9/05)
2005 Aug 8, Crude-oil prices rallied to a new high above $63 a barrel.
(AP, 8/8/05)
2005 Aug 8, Barbara Bel Geddes (82), stage and screen actress, died in Maine. She was best known for her role as the matriarch on the TV series “Dallas."
(SFC, 8/10/05, p.B7)
2005 Aug 8, John H. Johnson (b.1919) founding publisher of Ebony (1945), Jet (1951), and Ebony Man (1985), died in Chicago.
(HN, 11/1/98)(SFC, 8/8/05, p.B4)(AP, 8/8/06)
2005 Aug 8, In southern Afghanistan one US service member and at least 16 suspected Taliban rebels were killed in fighting.
(AP, 8/9/05)
2005 Aug 8-2005 Aug 9, In Afghanistan US airstrikes during operations against militants killed civilians and wounded others, including an infant according to local villagers.
(AP, 8/11/05)
2005 Aug 8, Milan Lukic, a former Bosnia Serb paramilitary leader, was captured in Argentina. He was wanted by a U.N. tribunal on charges of crimes against humanity.
(AP, 8/8/05)
2005 Aug 8, The EU head office gave its clearance for the import of a genetically modified corn product made by American biotechnology company Monsanto Co. for use in animal feed.
(AP, 8/8/05)
2005 Aug 8, India and Pakistan agreed to extend a two-year-old cease-fire in disputed Kashmir, but did not discuss the question of reducing their military presence there.
(AP, 8/8/05)
2005 Aug 8, In eastern India suspected rebels launched renewed attacks overnight on pipelines, leaving oil operations in the remote region in critical shape.
(AP, 8/8/05)
2005 Aug 8, Health officials in Indonesia reported 205 children with polio.
(WSJ, 8/9/05, p.A1)
2005 Aug 8, Iran resumed uranium conversion activities at its Isfahan nuclear facility, a step that Europeans and the US warned would prompt them to seek UN sanctions against Tehran.
(AP, 8/8/05)
2005 Aug 8, In Iraq armed men deposed Baghdad’s Mayor Alaa al-Tamini. They installed Hussein al-Tahaan, a member of the Badr organization, and governor of Baghdad province.
(SFC, 8/10/05, p.A3)
2005 Aug 8, Japanese lawmakers rejected legislation to split up and sell the nation's postal service, leading PM Junichiro Koizumi to call snap elections next month. He promised to make the vote a referendum on his reform plan and pledged to resign if it fails.
(AP, 8/8/05)
2005 Aug 8, In Saudi Arabia King Abdullah pardoned 4 prominent activists who were jailed after criticizing the strict religious environment and the slow pace of democratic reform.
(AP, 8/8/05)
2006 Aug 8, The US Federal Reserve halted interest rate hikes at 5.25%. the DJIA fell 45.79 to 11,173. Nasdaq fell 11.65 to 2,060. Jeffrey Lacker, head of the Richmond Fed, voted against the decision halt rate hikes.
(SFC, 8/9/06, p.C1)(Econ, 8/12/06, p.59)
2006 Aug 8, Medicare said it plans to cut doctor payment rates by 5.1% and force hospitals to disclose financial data.
(WSJ, 8/9/06, p.A1)
2006 Aug 8, Voters in Connecticut rejected three-term Sen. Joe Lieberman for Ned Lamont, a political newcomer, in the nation's first major test of the depth of anger over the Iraq war. Lieberman ended up winning re-election to the Senate by running as an independent
(AP, 8/9/06)(AP, 8/8/07)
2006 Aug 8, Roger Goodell was chosen as the NFL's next commissioner.
(AP, 8/8/07)
2006 Aug 8, In Indianapolis, Indiana, a fatal stabbing boosted the homicides to 13 in just one week in the midst of an upsurge of violence that has police working longer shifts and saturating high-crime areas.
(AP, 8/8/06)
2006 Aug 8, In eastern Afghanistan US military killed 15 insurgents who attacked a US base in Nuristan province. 12 militants and 8 policemen were killed in fighting in Kandahar.
(AP, 8/9/06)(AP, 8/10/06)
2006 Aug 8, Clive Goodman, royal editor at Britain’s News of the World, and Glenn Mulcaire, a private investigator, were arrested for hacking phones between November 2005 and August 2006. Both men were jailed in January, 2007.
(Econ, 7/16/11, p.26)
2006 Aug 8, Chad and Sudan agreed to reopen their borders and resume diplomatic relations that they severed in a dispute four months ago.
(AP, 8/9/06)
2006 Aug 8, In Chile police used tear gas and water cannons to disperse about 2,000 rock-throwing students seeking better equipment for 21 schools in the Santiago area.
(AP, 8/8/06)
2006 Aug 8, Gustavo Arcos Bergnes (79), who fought alongside Fidel Castro in the Cuban revolution but was later imprisoned as a dissident, died in Havana.
(AP, 8/8/06)
2006 Aug 8, A car bomb killed a prosecutor in Dagestan, Russia, and two police were shot dead as they arrived on the scene.
(AP, 8/8/06)
2006 Aug 8, Eritrea announced that Brigadier General Kemal Gelchu, a dissident Ethiopian general, had defected to Eritrea, said that he would be joining the OLF to fight for his Oromo people's rights.
(Econ, 8/19/06, p.44)
2006 Aug 8, Gunmen with automatic weapons stormed Kaieteur News, Guyana's largest newspaper, killing at least six people and wounding three in an attack that may have been connected to a simultaneous protest at the nation's main prison.
(AP, 8/9/06)
2006 Aug 8, Indian officials said flooding caused by monsoon rains have killed 69 people in western India in the past three days, and caused tens of thousands to flee their homes.
(AP, 8/8/06)
2006 Aug 8, Indonesian health officials said 2 teenagers have died of bird flu. This would bring Indonesia's death toll to 44 and make it the world's hardest-hit country.
(AP, 8/8/06)
2006 Aug 8, A series of bombings and shootings killed at least 31 people in Baghdad and other parts of Iraq as more US troops were seen in the capital as part of Operation Together Forward, a campaign to reduce Sunni-Shiite violence that threatened civil war. A US Army helicopter crashed in Iraq's western Anbar province, leaving two crew members missing and four injured. A policeman was killed and another wounded when they were trying to defuse a roadside bomb in Samarra. An explosion at a mosque in Baqouba left four people dead.
(AP, 8/8/06)(AP, 8/9/06)(Econ, 9/2/06, p.44)
2006 Aug 8, Israeli forces battled Hezbollah guerrillas across southern Lebanon as diplomats at the United Nations struggled to keep a peace plan from collapsing over Arab demands for an immediate Israeli withdrawal. At least 19 Lebanese civilians were killed in Israeli airstrikes. Israel reported five soldiers killed.
(AP, 8/8/06)(AP, 8/9/06)
2006 Aug 8, The Philippine Congress began hearing new impeachment complaints against President Gloria Arroyo, linking her to corruption and human rights abuses and alleging she cheated in the 2004 election.
(AFP, 8/8/06)
2006 Aug 8, Russian officials said drawings by the late architect Yakov Chernikhov (d.1951), worth millions of dollars, had disappeared from the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art. Chernikhov was widely admired for his avant-garde and constructivist designs. Rosokhrankultura said it became aware of the Chernikhov thefts after nine missing drawings were sold at auction by auction house Christie's on June 22.
(AP, 8/8/06)
2006 Aug 8, In Sri Lanka Tamil rebels released water from a disputed reservoir, ending a 19-day blockade that sparked some of the worst fighting between government troops and guerrillas in four years. In Colombo a car bomb killed two people, including a 3-year-old girl.
(AP, 8/8/06)
2006 Aug 8, Turkey battled the largest recorded outbreak of Crimean-Congo Hemorrhagic Fever, which has killed at least 20 people this year, and experts said more cases of the Ebola-like disease are inevitable in coming months.
(AP, 8/8/06)
2006 Aug 8, Five Yemeni army officers were killed when their military helicopter crashed during a heavy rainstorm.
(AP, 8/9/06)
2007 Aug 8, The US space shuttle Endeavour and a crew of 7 took off from Cape Canaveral, Fl., on a special mission. Teacher-astronaut Barbara Morgan was part of the crew.
(SFC, 8/9/07, p.A7)
2007 Aug 8, Researchers from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill reported that coral coverage in the Indo-Pacific, an area stretching from Indonesia's Sumatra island to French Polynesia, had dropped 20 percent in the past two decades. They said the decline was driven by climate change, disease and coastal development.
(AP, 8/8/07)
2007 Aug 8, In SF Donald Fisher (78) and his wife Doris, founders of Gap (a chain of clothing stores), announced plans to build the Contemporary Art Museum of the Presidio.
(SFC, 8/8/07, p.A3)
2007 Aug 8, Virgin America, part of Richard Branson’s Virgin Group, made its inaugural flight from JFK to San Francisco. For the first nine months of 2008 Virgin announced a $174.5 million loss on $259 million in revenue.
(SFC, 1/3/11, p.D2)
2007 Aug 8, A tornado struck Brooklyn, NY. This was the first ever tornado in recorded history to touch down in Brooklyn. It was the first tornado to hit New York City since 2003, when a weak tornado touched down in Staten Island, and only the sixth tornado recorded in the city since 1950.
(http://nymag.com/restaurants/features/37273/)(http://tinyurl.com/3a2npv)
2007 Aug 8, Melville Shavelson (90), comedy writer, producer and director, died in Studio City, Ca. His films included “Cast a Giant Shadow" (1966). His books included “How to Make a Jewish Movie."
(SFC, 8/10/07, p.B9)
2007 Aug 8, Argentine authorities said they were investigating why Venezuelan businessman Antonini Wilson was carrying $800,000 in undeclared cash aboard an executive jet charted by Argentina's state energy company. In December US prosecutors said that the suitcase full of Venezuelan cash was intended to finance the presidential campaign of Cristina Kirchner.
(AP, 8/8/07)(AP, 12/13/07)
2007 Aug 8, Australia's central bank hiked interest rates 0.25 points to a decade-high 6.5 percent in an unprecedented pre-election move that the government admitted creates a political headache.
(AFP, 8/8/07)
2007 Aug 8, An Austrian federal court rejected Kazakhstan's request to have its ex-ambassador to Austria, a former son-in-law of the Central Asian nation's autocratic president, extradited to face kidnapping charges in his homeland.
(AP, 8/8/07)
2007 Aug 8, Researchers from Belgium and China said a simple blood test can detect early stage liver cancer and more accurately diagnose the disease that is a major killer in Asia and Africa.
(Reuters, 8/9/07)
2007 Aug 8, A British air force helicopter crashed near an army base in northern England, killing two military personnel and injuring 10.
(AP, 8/9/07)
2007 Aug 8, Beijing began the one-year countdown to the 2008 Olympics. Jacques Rogge, president of the International Olympic Committee, acknowledged that Beijing's air pollution could force the postponement of outdoor events during next year's Olympics.
(AP, 8/7/07)(AP, 8/8/07)
2007 Aug 8, An international team of researchers said the long-threatened Yangtze River dolphin in China is probably extinct. They also said this would mark the first whale or dolphin to be wiped out due to human activity.
(Reuters, 8/8/07)
2007 Aug 8, In southwest Colombia families confirmed that two military officers kidnapped four months ago by leftist rebels have died in captivity. Army Sgts. Alexander Cardona and Jesus Sol were taken hostage by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), while on patrol near their homes.
(AP, 8/9/07)
2007 Aug 8, A report by the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights detailed 567 cases of police torture in the last 14 years, of which 167 led to the victim’s death.
(Econ, 9/1/07, p.38)(www.eohr.org/)
2007 Aug 8, Ethiopia said it had killed more than 500 rebels and captured 170 in the past two months during an offensive in the volatile but energy-rich Ogaden region bordering Somalia.
(AP, 8/8/07)
2007 Aug 8, Ma Lik (55), the leader of Hong Kong's leading pro-Beijing political party, DAB, died of complications from colon cancer.
(AP, 8/8/07)
2007 Aug 8, In northeastern India's Assam state suspected separatist rebels fatally shot 12 people in two separate attacks. Police suspect the attack was carried out jointly by the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) and another local insurgent group, the Karbi Longri National Liberation Front, which is fighting for autonomy for people of the Karbi tribe.
(AP, 8/9/07)
2007 Aug 8, Millions of people in Jakarta, the Indonesian capital, voted for governor for the first time, the latest in a wave of local elections hailed as key to strengthening democracy in the world's most populous Muslim nation.
(AP, 8/8/07)
2007 Aug 8, Iraqi PM Nouri al-Maliki arrived in Iran for talks expected to focus on bilateral relations and overcoming "terrorism challenges." Iraqis told they will not get automatic asylum in Britain despite braving death threats to work alongside British troops will now have their cases reviewed. US-led forces swooped into the Shiite militia stronghold of Sadr City, killing 32 suspected militants and detaining 12 others in fighting and an airstrike targeting alleged smuggling networks from Iran. Police and witnesses said 9 civilians were killed in the attack.
(AP, 8/8/07)
2007 Aug 8, Israeli soldiers shot and killed three Palestinian militants near Israel's border with the Gaza Strip in two separate incidents.
(AP, 8/8/07)
2007 Aug 8, Mauritania passed a law promising prison time for people who keep slaves, a monumental step in the northwest African nation's push to eliminate the long-standing practice. The government officially abolished slavery in 1981, but no one has ever been prosecuted for it and no law created a punishment.
(AP, 8/9/07)
2007 Aug 8, In Nigeria kidnappers released a British and a Bulgarian hostage in the southern oil region, while the young son of a local legislator was seized in a separate incident and gunbattles raged for a third day.
(AP, 8/8/07)
2007 Aug 8, Pakistani security forces killed three separatist militants after they were fired on while surveying a flood-hit area in southwestern Baluchistan province.
(Reuters, 8/8/07)
2007 Aug 8, In South Africa Pres. Mbeki dismissed deputy health minister Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge following reports that she had gone to Spain to attend an AIDS conference without his permission. AIDS activists have been highly critical of her boss, Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, who promoted garlic and lemons as a remedy for AIDS and mistrusted antiretroviral medicines.
(AP, 8/10/07)
2007 Aug 8, Venezuela's socialist President Hugo Chavez took a campaign of petrodollar diplomacy to Uruguay, seeking stronger political ties while offering energy aid from one of the world's largest oil producers.
(AP, 8/8/07)
2007 Aug 8, In Vietnam officials said at least 34 people have died and 17 more were missing and feared dead after Tropical Storm Pabuk lashed the country.
(AP, 8/8/07)
2008 Aug 8, John Edwards, former North Carolina senator and Democratic presidential candidate, admitted that he had an extramarital affair with Rielle Hunter, a film producer, in 2006 but denied fathering a daughter with her.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rielle_Hunter)(AP, 8/9/08)(Econ, 8/16/08, p.34)
2008 Aug 8, Struggling home finance giant Fannie Mae reported a massive second quarter loss of 2.3 billion dollars, more than three times analysts' estimates.
(AFP, 8/8/08)
2008 Aug 8, UBS AG agreed to buy back $19 billion in auction rate securities improperly sold as higher-rate equivalents for super-safe money market funds.
(WSJ, 8/9/08, p.A1)
2008 Aug 8, Joseph Bennett (43) of Canada tried to drive 58 bags containing 275,000 Ecstasy pills, estimated at $6.5 million in street value, into Port Huron, Michigan. In 2009 a federal judge in Detroit sentenced him to 7½ years in prison.
(SFC, 6/25/09, p.A5)(http://tinyurl.com/koa934)
2008 Aug 8, Nebraska Beef, an Omaha meat packer, recalled 1.2 million pounds of beef after products were linked to illnesses in 12 states. In July the company had recalled over 5 million pounds of beef due to an outbreak of E. coli in 7 states.
(SSFC, 8/10/08, p.A4)
2008 Aug 8, In Texas a charter bus carrying Vietnamese worshippers on a pilgrimage ran off a highway overpass north of Dallas and plunged onto a roadway below. 15 people were killed and 40 injured. In 2014 Angel de la Torre, the owner of the Houston bus company charged after the crash that killed 17 passengers, avoided prison after a federal judge sentenced him to three years of probation in a plea agreement.
(AP, 8/8/08)(AP, 10/29/14)
2008 Aug 8, In western Afghanistan a coalition service member died in a roadside blast. About 20 Taliban fighters were killed in a battle with Afghan and US-led forces near a key military supply route in the western Bala Buluk district. An Afghan child was killed and two injured by militants who attacked alliance troops in northeastern Kunar province.
(AP, 8/8/08)(AP, 8/9/08)
2008 Aug 8, In Algeria 12 armed Islamists, including a number of individuals considered among the leaders of Al-Qaeda in the Maghreb, were killed overnight by the army in an ambush near Beni Douala, near Tizi Ouzou.
(AFP, 8/10/08)
2008 Aug 8, Australian Customs and police said they had seized 4.4 tons of ecstasy tablets worth nearly 400 million dollars, describing it as the biggest haul of the illicit drug anywhere in the world. Police said the seizure of the drugs, which were concealed in tins of tomato shipped to Australia from Italy, had resulted in the arrests of 21 people across the country beginning in pre-dawn raids.
(AFP, 8/8/08)
2008 Aug 8, Bolivia said it has reached an agreement in principle to purchase the local operations of energy company Royal Dutch Shell PLC as part of President Evo Morales' nationalization push.
(AP, 8/8/08)
2008 Aug 8, President Bush blended carefully calibrated political messages for China and Russia with enthusiasm for his nation's athletes as he became the first US president to attend an Olympics abroad.
(AP, 8/8/08)
2008 Aug 8, In Beijing, China, the 29th Olympic Games, costing an estimated 40 billion dollars and shrouded by political controversies, burst into life with a spectacular opening ceremony. The official slogan for the games this year was “One world, one dream." Actress activist Mia Farrow began Web-casting her own "Darfur Olympics" from a refugee camp on the barren Sudan-Chad border, aiming to shame China into using its influence with Khartoum to end the Darfur conflict. Construction before the games forced more than 1m people from their homes.
(AP, 8/8/08)(AP, 8/7/08)(Econ, 8/2/08, p.28)(Econ, 7/30/16, p.68)
2008 Aug 8, In the Czech Republic an international express train crashed into a collapsed bridge, killing at least six people and injuring dozens.
(Reuters, 8/8/08)
2008 Aug 8, The EU tightened trade sanctions against Iran to punish Tehran for not committing to a long-standing demand of the international community that it freeze its nuclear enrichment program.
(AP, 8/8/08)
2008 Aug 8, Georgian troops launched a major military offensive to regain control of South Ossetia, prompting a furious response from Russia, which sent tanks into the region. The convoy was expected to reach the provincial capital by evening. Georgia said it shot down two Russian combat planes. Separatist officials in South Ossetia said 15 civilians had been killed in fighting overnight. Georgia later acknowledged that it used M85 cluster munition near the Roki tunnel that connects South Ossetia with Russia, while Russia denied use of cluster bombs.
(AP, 8/8/08)(AP, 9/1/08)
2008 Aug 8, Guinea Bissau's army announced it had arrested rear admiral Jose Americo Bubo Na Tchute, the head of the navy, over an attempted coup.
(AFP, 8/9/08)
2008 Aug 8, Anti-US cleric Muqtada al-Sadr ordered most of his followers to disarm but said he will maintain an elite fighting unit to resist the Americans in Iraq. Ashraf al-Yas (19) talked his way through a police checkpoint, drove his vehicle into a crowded farmers market and detonated his explosives. He killed 28 people and injured 72 in Tal Afar. A roadside bombing in Baghdad killed an American soldier and wounded 2 others.
(AP, 8/8/08)(AP, 8/9/08)(SSFC, 8/10/08, p.A19)(AP, 8/30/08)
2008 Aug 8, In Nigeria police arrested the head of a federal agency charged with developing Nigeria's impoverished southern oil region after allegations the man spent millions of dollars on a witch doctor in hopes vanquishing a rival.
(AP, 8/8/08)
2008 Aug 8, In Pakistan at least seven Pakistani troops and 30 militants were reported killed in two days of clashes at Loisam and its surrounding areas in the Bajaur tribal district. Insurgents stormed a police post in Buner and killed 8 police officers.
(AFP, 8/8/08)(SSFC, 8/10/08, p.A11)
2008 Aug 8, In Sri Lanka artillery shells fired by the army hit a hospital overnight killing an 18-month-old baby and wounding 16 people. Infantry clashes in the north killed 31 rebels and four soldiers.
(AP, 8/8/08)(AP, 8/9/08)
2008 Aug 8, The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) near Geneva, began initial tests.
(Econ, 8/2/08, p.78)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Hadron_Collider)
2008 Aug 8, In Turkey Mehmet Dursun Uygurturkoglu (35) doused himself with gasoline and set himself alight during a protest by ethnic Uighurs outside the Chinese Embassy. Other demonstrators jumped on the man and quickly extinguished the flames with a blanket.
(AP, 8/8/08)
2008 Aug 8, Researchers said at least 38 Warao Indians have died in remote villages in Venezuela since June 2007. Medical experts suspected an outbreak of rabies spread by bites from vampire bats.
(AP, 8/8/08)
2009 Aug 8, Sonia Sotomayor was sworn-in as the first Hispanic on the US Supreme Court.
(AP, 8/8/09)
2009 Aug 8, In Dinuba, Ca., a car fleeing from police ran a stop sign and slammed into a pickup, killing three people in the car and four young children in the truck.
(AP, 8/9/09)
2009 Aug 8, In Chino, Ca., a 2-day prison riot began. It housed almost twice as many prisoners as it was designed for and was typical of California’s 33 state prisons. At this time California spent about $49,000 a year on each prisoner, almost twice the national average.
(Econ, 8/15/09, p.28)
2009 Aug 8, Continental Express Flight 2816, en route with 47 passengers to Minneapolis from Houston, was stranded overnight at Rochester, Minn., after being forced to land due to storms. On Nov 24 the Dept. of Transportation levied $175,000 in fines against Continental, ExpressJet and Mesaba Airlines for keeping the plane on the tarmac.
(SFC, 11/25/09, p.A6)
2009 Aug 8, Near Hoboken, New Jersey, 9 people died in an air collision over the Hudson River, including 3 members of a Pennsylvania family in the private plane and five Italian tourists and a pilot from New Jersey in a Liberty Tours helicopter.
(AP, 8/9/09)(SSFC, 8/9/09, p.A9)
2009 Aug 8, NATO helicopters wounded five Afghan police by mistake during a battle with insurgents in Ghazni province. A British soldier, serving with NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), was killed by an improvised explosive device (IED). A US soldier was killed in the south in a hostile fire incident.
(Reuters, 8/8/09)(AFP, 8/9/09)(AP, 8/11/09)
2009 Aug 8, In China hundreds of villagers rioted after news broke about the lead poisoning at the Wugang Manganese Smelting Plant in Wenping township, central Hunan province. A crowd of 600 to 700 people overturned four police cars and smashed a local government sign. China later detained two factory officials after 1,354 children were reported poisoned by lead pollution from the manganese processing plant.
(AP, 8/20/09)
2009 Aug 8, India’s army said its troops killed three Islamic militants along the de facto Kashmir border, thwarting the seventh attempt by rebels to infiltrate from Pakistan in a week.
(AFP, 8/8/09)
2009 Aug 8, In northern India landslides triggered by heavy rains killed at least 43 people in three remote villages in Pithoragarh district of Uttarakhand state.
(AP, 8/9/09)
2009 Aug 8, Indonesian police reportedly killed Noordin Mohammad Top, the self-proclaimed Southeast Asian commander of al-Qaida, in a 16-hour siege of a village hide-out in Central Java. Authorities said they could not confirm that a recovered body was that of the militant leader without DNA tests. DNA tests failed to confirm Top’s death. Police raided a house on the outskirts of Jakarta where they killed two suspected militants and seized bombs and a car rigged to carry them. The house was just 3 miles (5 kilometers) from the president's residence.
(AP, 8/8/09)(AP, 8/9/09)(AP, 8/12/09)
2009 Aug 8, In northern Italy rules for officially condoned vigilante groups took effect.
(Econ, 8/15/09, p.46)
2009 Aug 8, In Mauritania a suicide bomber killed himself outside the French Embassy, wounding two embassy guards and a woman in the street. An African branch of Al-Qaida later said the attack was a response to the aggression of "crusaders" including former colonial ruler France, and to Mauritanian leaders against Islam and Muslims.
(AP, 8/8/09)(AP, 8/18/09)
2009 Aug 8, In Mexico assailants in the state of Guerrero opened fire on a car carrying a couple and their 3-year-old son, killing all three. In Chihuahua gunmen killed four people in an attack in a bar.
(AP, 8/10/09)
2009 Aug 8, In Moldova the four pro-Western parties that upset the Communists in recent elections agreed on a coalition deal to form a new government.
(AP, 8/8/09)
2009 Aug 8, Myanmar government troops seized a weapons factory near the Chinese border after being informed about it during a ministerial meeting with China on combating transnational crime. This triggered several days of clashes with an ethnic militia that sent more than 30,000 refugees fleeing across the border into China.
(AP, 9/9/09)
2009 Aug 8, In Pakistan a gunfight between militants and supporters of a pro-government tribal elder killed 6 militants and 2 tribesmen in the Mohmand tribal region near the Afghan border.
(AFP, 8/9/09)
2009 Aug 8, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was named head of his Fatah movements at his party's first conference in two decades, strengthening the hand of the Western-backed leader in his bid to revive peace talks with Israel.
(AP, 8/8/09)
2009 Aug 8, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev hailed the Russian victory in a war with Georgia a year ago, saying the war had redrawn the map of the Caucasus for good.
(Reuters, 8/8/09)
2009 Aug 8, In Somalia’s pirate stronghold of Harardhere, fighting over the last 24 hours killed at least 12 people. A dispute over a car escalated as clan militias got involved. Mortar shells slammed into a busy market in the capital, Mogadishu, killing six people and wounding 18.
(AP, 8/8/09)
2009 Aug 8, In South Africa US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and South African President Jacob Zuma pledged to cement closer ties between their new administrations.
(AFP, 8/8/09)
2009 Aug 8, Sri Lanka held local elections near an area once dominated by the Tamil Tiger rebels, but voters largely stayed away from the polls in the violence-scarred region. Voter turnout was 22% in Jaffna and 52% in Vavuniya, according to election monitors. The pro-Tiger Tamil National Alliance (TNA) scored unexpected success with 8 of 23 seats in Jaffna and 5 of 11 seats in Vavuniya.
(AP, 8/8/09)(Econ, 8/15/09, p.35)
2009 Aug 8, Typhoon Morakot lashed Taiwan with powerful winds and downpours leaving at least one person killed and five missing.
(AFP, 8/8/09)
2009 Aug 8, Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez said he's returning his ambassador to Colombia, moving to resolve rising diplomatic tensions after weapons sold to Venezuela were found in a rebel cache.
(AP, 8/8/09)
2010 Aug 8, In San Francisco German tourist Mechthild Schroer was killed by a stray bullet outside a comedy club at 414 Mason. On May 4, 2011, police arrested 7 of 8 young men accused of taking part in a gang gunbattle that left her dead. In 2014 four men indicted in the shooting pleaded guilty to lesser charges and were expected to serve five to nine years in state prison.
(SFC, 5/5/11, p.A1)(SFC, 10/1/11, p.C2)(SFC, 8/16/14, p.C1)
2010 Aug 8, Patricia Neal (84), American actress, died at her home in Massachusetts. Her films included “The Fountainhead" (1949), “The Day the Earth Stood Still" (1951), “Hud" (1963) and “A Face in the Crowd" (1957). Her 1988 autobiography was titled "As I Am."
(SFC, 8/9/10, p.A6)
2010 Aug 8, Matthew Simmons (67), who rattled the energy industry by arguing the world was rapidly approaching peak oil production capacity, died at his home in North Haven, Maine. In his 2005 book "Twilight in the Desert," Simmons argued Saudi Arabia's oil reserves were nearing the highest levels of production they were capable of achieving, after which point the world's yearly oil supply would begin to decline.
(Reuters, 8/9/10)
2010 Aug 8, In Afghanistan Pres. Karzai said foreign security companies should all be replaced by Afghan police, the same day that the bodies of 10 members of a medical team, killed on Aug 5, were returned to Kabul. 52 companies employed about 30,000 people, most of them former military officers.
(SSFC, 8/15/10, p.E7)(http://tinyurl.com/34uqwfs)
2010 Aug 8, Arab League chief Amr Moussa signed a letter asking for backing of a resolution urging Washington and other powers to end support of Israel's nuclear secrecy and to push the Jewish state to allow international inspections of its program. Arab nations planned submit the request to the September assembly of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
(AP, 8/15/10)
2010 Aug 8, In China landslides in the northwestern province of Gansu left at least 337 people dead in the deadliest incident so far in the country's worst flooding in a decade. More than 1,148 were missing.
(AP, 8/10/10)
2010 Aug 8, In Iraq a suicide car bomber struck a police patrol west of Baghdad and killed 8 people, mostly civilians. Gunmen armed with AK-47 rifles boarded 4 commercial ships in a two-hour time span in the vicinity of an oil terminal in the northern Persian Gulf. The assailants took computers, cell phones and money from crew members before fleeing. The interrogation of two Iraqis arrested after the incident indicated it was a robbery attempt without a larger agenda.
(SFC, 8/9/10, p.A2)(AP, 8/16/10)
2010 Aug 8, Libya's government announced it will pay compensation to some people it had wrongfully imprisoned, the latest step in an effort to draw a line under a history of human rights abuses.
(Reuters, 8/8/10)
2010 Aug 8, Former Mexican Pres. Vincente Fox, who was a key US ally in the war on drugs, backed the legalization of drugs, saying prohibition has failed to curb Mexico's spiraling violence and corruption.
(Reuters 8/910)
2010 Aug 8, North Korean authorities seized a South Korean fishing boat and its 7-man crew. North Korea freed the crew on Sep 7.
(SFC, 8/9/10, p.A2)(AP, 9/7/10)
2010 Aug 8, South African journalists launched a campaign to fight what they say is an attempt to curtail media freedoms in a nation known for one of Africa's freest and most open constitutions.
(AP, 8/8/10)
2010 Aug 8, In Spain people began complaining of jellyfish attacks. Over the next three days some 700 people were stung at three beaches on the Costa Blanca near Elche, where normally just a handful get stung daily.
(AP, 8/11/10)
2010 Aug 8, Gunmen in south Sudan killed 23 people, including police officers, in an ambush on a truck in the key oil producing state of Unity, Koch county.
(AFP, 8/11/10)
2010 Aug 8, Venezuela’s Pres. Chavez rejected Larry Palmer as the US ambassador to Caracas citing comments by Palmer regarding low morale in Venezuela’s military.
(SFC, 8/9/10, p.A1)
2011 Aug 8, US House leaders announced that they are terminating the long-running congressional page program for high school students, both out of cost considerations, and in recognition of the diminished demand for page services in the digital age.
(http://tinyurl.com/4yp84kn)
2011 Aug 8, The US Justice department and 4 the attorney generals of California, Illinois, Florida, and Indiana accused Pittsburgh-based Education Management Corp. of paying recruiters to enroll students in an $11 billion fraud case.
(SFC, 8/8/11, p.A5)
2011 Aug 8, Global stock markets sank again as worries over the downgrade of US debt outweighed relief at a European Central Bank pledge to buy up Italian and Spanish bonds to help the two countries avoid devastating defaults. The DJIA fell 634.76 points.
(AP, 8/8/11)(SFC, 8/9/11, p.A7)
2011 Aug 8, San Francisco’s Mayor Ed Lee (59) said he will run for a full 4-year term.
(SFC, 8/8/11, p.A1)
2011 Aug 8, In Oakland, Ca., Carlos Nava (30) was killed by accident during a driveby shooting at 64th Ave. and Int’l. Boulevard. On Aug 11 Lawrence Curtis Denard (26) was charged with the boy’s murder. On Aug 12 Willie Torrence, the driver of the car, was arrested in Las Vegas. On July 23, 2014, Denard and Torrence (25) were sentenced to life in prison.
(SFC, 8/12/11, p.C1)(SFC, 8/16/11, p.C1)(SFC, 7/24/14, p.D5)
2011 Aug 8, In Afghanistan coalition forces in a midnight bombing raid killed the Taliban insurgents responsible for the Aug 5 attack on a US helicopter. The F-16 strike killed the "shooter" as well as a Taliban militant, Mullah Mohibullah.
(AFP, 8/10/11)
2011 Aug 8, Bangladesh police said the main opposition leader, ex-prime minister Khaleda Zia, has been accused of abuse of power and graft in a new case filed by the country's main anti-corruption body. In a separate case, a court Dhaka issued an arrest warrant against Tareque Rahman, Zia's elder son and heir apparent, accusing him of laundering over 204 million taka ($2.73 million) in Singapore between 2003 and 2007.
(AFP, 8/8/11)(Econ, 8/13/11, p.42)
2011 Aug 8, London police said they had arrested 100 people in a second night of rioting, condemning it as "copycat" disorder following weekend unrest sparked by the death of a man in a police shooting.
(AFP, 8/8/11)
2011 Aug 8, Chad’s Idriss Deby Itno vowed he would battle corruption as he was sworn in as president for a new five-year term.
(AFP, 8/8/11)
2011 Aug 8, In Colombia Muhammad Nazarruddin (32), the ex-treasurer of Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's party, was reported arrested in Cartagena after weeks on the run over corruption allegations. Nazarruddin has been on the run since May when anti-graft investigators linked him to a bribery scandal involving contracts on a 23-million-dollar athletes' village for the Southeast Asian Games scheduled in November.
(AFP, 8/9/11)(Econ, 2/25/12, p.51)
2011 Aug 8, Cuban state media reported that Cuba and Angola, long-standing allies, have boosted military cooperation during a visit to the communist-run Caribbean island by Angolan defense officials.
(AFP, 8/8/11)
2011 Aug 8, In El Salvador 9 former soldiers and officials turned themselves over to a court after being indicted in Spain in the 1989 killings of six Jesuit priests and two other people during the Central American country's civil war. A tenth suspect in the Spanish case has since died, and 10 other suspects have not been located.
(AP, 8/9/11)
2011 Aug 8, In Guatemala former first lady Sandra Torres’ bid to succeed her ex-husband came to an end when the constitutional court ruled her ineligible to run because of her relationship to the president.
(AP, 8/9/11)
2011 Aug 8, In India Lobsang Sangay, a Harvard-trained legal scholar, was sworn in as new head of the Tibetan government-in-exile, taking over from the Dalai Lama as the official leader of his people's fight for freedom.
(AP, 8/8/11)
2011 Aug 8, In Libya a rebel spokesman in Misrata said forces loyal to Moamer Kadhafi had launched an assault on rebel positions in Zliten's Souk Telat area, killing 3 and wounding 15. A rebel source at Al-Qusbat, around 90 km (55 miles) east of Tripoli, said that town was living through its fourth day under siege. Libya's rebels sacked their executive committee. Mahmoud Jibril, who was the head of the outgoing committee, was asked to form a new board.
(AFP, 8/8/11)(AP, 8/9/11)
2011 Aug 8, Mexico's government said it is suspending about $102 million in federal law enforcement grants to 80 percent of the country's most violent municipalities because they haven't shown progress in using the money. Two university professors were injured by the explosion of a package bomb on a campus near the national capital at a campus of Monterrey Technological Institute. The anti-technology group Individuals Tending to Savagery was later said to be responsible. The bullet-riddled bodies of four police officers and a civilian were found dumped in Michoacan state. The officers from Colima had just gone off duty when they vanished on Aug 6. A naval academy cadet went missing after he failed to turn up at the Veracruz state academy.
(AP, 8/9/11)(SFC, 8/10/11, p.A2)(AP, 8/15/11)
2011 Aug 8, In Nigeria gunmen killed five people and wounded four others in a nighttime attack on in Bisichi village, Plateau state, leaving the dead mutilated with machete wounds. Boko Haram attackers killed a senior prison official and a school teacher in Maiduguri.
(AP, 8/9/11)(AP, 8/10/11)
2011 Aug 8, Residents of Somalia's war-torn capital fled fighting after remnants of extremist Shebab rebel forces, who pulled out of Mogadishu at the weekend, battled with government troops overnight.
(AFP, 8/8/11)
2011 Aug 8, In South Africa drivers operating feeder buses to high-speed train service went on a one-day strike, only six days after a new link between Johannesburg and the capital Pretoria opened. Drivers were demanding a wage increase from 4,600 rand ($660, 467 euros) to 5,000 rand a month. Train drivers earned about 21,000 rand per month.
(AFP, 8/8/11)
2011 Aug 8, Sudan said it has granted a petroleum exploration license to China after visiting Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi and President Omar al-Bashir held talks in Khartoum.
(AFP, 8/8/11)
2011 Aug 8, Swaziland's cash-strapped university failed to re-open for the new academic year. It expected to remain closed indefinitely.
(AFP, 8/8/11)
2011 Aug 8, Syria’s eastern city of Deir el-Zour came under fresh artillery fire as a deadly military assault left President Bashar Assad's regime increasingly isolated, with Arab nations forcefully joining the international chorus of condemnation for the first time.
(AP, 8/8/11)
2011 Aug 8, In Tunisia hundreds of people demonstrated in central Tunis to demand that members of the toppled Ben Ali regime be stopped from re-entering the political scene or escaping justice for alleged crimes.
(AFP, 8/8/11)
2012 Aug 8, In eastern Afghanistan two suicide attackers hit a NATO patrol, killing 3 American coalition service members and USAID foreign service officer Ragaei Abdelfattah. Afghan officials added that a civilian was also killed in the bombing in Kunar province. On Nov 12, 2015, Army Captain Florent Groberg (32) was awarded the US Medal of Honor for tackling a suicide bomber and saving members of his patrol.
(AP, 8/8/12)(AP, 8/10/12)(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florent_Groberg)
2012 Aug 8, Belarus ordered Sweden to close its embassy in Minsk by the end of the month, a move that comes only days after Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko's regime forced the Swedish ambassador out of the country.
(AP, 8/8/12)
2012 Aug 8, Britain arrested Spaniard Kemen Uranga Artola (43) in London suspected of being a member of the Basque separatist group ETA. Media reports said Uranga is suspected of the murder of a judge, Jose Maria Lidon, who was killed by an ETA group in 2001.
(Reuters, 8/8/12)
2012 Aug 8, A spokeswoman for London’s Olympics organizers (LOCOG) confirmed that 7 competitors from Cameroon have gone missing at the London Olympics and British police have been informed.
(AFP, 8/8/12)
2012 Aug 8, Chilean police used water cannons and tear gas to break up a demonstration in Santiago by thousands of students demanding free education.
(SFC, 8/9/12, p.A2)
2012 Aug 8, In eastern China Typhoon Haikui slammed into in Zhejiang province south of Shanghai, the country's third in a week, killing at least two people and causing more than $1 billion in damage.
(AFP, 8/8/12)
2012 Aug 8, In CongoDRC 3 elite troops were killed at an airport at Lubumbashi in a night attack blamed on regional separatists. A national intelligence agency source said the attackers were from the same Katangan separatist group that carried out the earlier assault.
(AFP, 8/8/12)
2012 Aug 8, Egypt's state television reported the military killed 20 militants in unprecedented air strikes. Egypt said the attackers who killed 16 Egyptian soldiers had help from Gaza. In response Egypt closed its border crossing and shut down hundreds of smuggling tunnels. Gazans said the sealing of their territory following a weekend attack by Islamic militants has sent prices soaring and is leaving hundreds of medical patients stranded. President Mohammed Morsi fired his intelligence chief for failing to act on an Israeli warning of an imminent attack days before militants stormed a border post in the Sinai Peninsula.
(AFP, 8/8/12)(AP, 8/8/12)
2012 Aug 8, In Honduras a new police extortion unit was reported to have received 506 complaints of extortion involving homes, taxis and businesses in Tegucigalpa in the first half of this year.
(AP, 8/9/12)
2012 Aug 8, India's struggling Kingfisher Airlines was forced to cancel more than 30 flights after pilots and engineers refused to show up for work because of unpaid salaries.
(AFP, 8/8/12)
2012 Aug 8, In Iraq a car bomb targeting Shiite Muslims in Al-Tanmiyah village and the shooting of a lawyer and his family in Baiji left 21 people dead, after Al-Qaeda warned it would target lawyers and retake territory in a new campaign.
(AFP, 8/8/12)
2012 Aug 8, Israeli security forces said Hezbollah militants have smuggled explosives into northern Israel using a network of drug dealers on either side of the Lebanese-Israeli border.
(AP, 8/8/12)
2012 Aug 8, A probe ordered by Ivorian President Alassane Ouattara on the 2010-2011 post-election crisis found that his forces killed over 700 people and those of ex-leader Laurent Gbagbo about twice as many.
(AFP, 8/8/12)
2012 Aug 8, Libya's first elected assembly took over power from the transitional council that has ruled the country since last year's uprising against longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi. A timetable called for the new assembly to name a president within a day and then form a government within 30 days of its first session.
(AP, 8/8/12)
2012 Aug 8, In northern Mali a man's hand was chopped off as punishment for the theft of a motorbike in the village of Ansongo.
(AP, 8/9/12)
2012 Aug 8, Myanmar authorities warned that it was facing a deepening drug crisis after seizing narcotics including more than 1.4 million amphetamine pills and 116 kilos of heroin in July.
(AFP, 8/8/12)
2012 Aug 8, Pakistan's Supreme Court ordered PM Raja Pervaiz Ashraf to appear before the panel to explain why he has not followed instructions from its judges to reopen an old corruption case against the president.
(AP, 8/8/12)
2012 Aug 8, In the Philippines more than one million people in and around Manila battled deadly floods amid relentless monsoon rains, with neck-deep waters trapping slum dwellers and the wealthy on roofs.
(AFP, 8/8/12)
2012 Aug 8, Russian prosecutors said a reclusive sect in Kazan, Tatarstan, that literally went underground to stop contact with the outside world, kept 27 children in dark and unheated cells, many of them for more than a decade. The children have been freed and the parents charged with child abuse. Child abuse charges were brought against members of the sect and leader Faizrakhman Satarov (83), who declared himself a Muslim prophet in contradiction with the principles of Islam, has also been charged with negligence.
(AP, 8/8/12)
2012 Aug 8, In South Africa Mziwamadoda Qwabe (27), one of the men accused of killing Swedish honeymooner Anni Dewani, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 25 years in prison in a plea deal. South Africa was still awaiting the extradition of the victim's British husband Shrien Dewani, who is accused of masterminding the November 2010 killing in a murder set up to look like a botched carjacking. On Aug 15 Xolile Mngeni, named by Qwabe as the gunman, denied charges of murder, kidnapping, robbery and illegal possession of a firearm and ammunition. On Nov 19 Mngeni was convicted of premeditated murder. In October, 2014, Mngeni died in a hospital unit of a Cape Town prison. He had been diagnosed in 2011 with brain cancer.
(AFP, 8/8/12)(AFP, 8/15/12)(AP, 11/19/12)(AP, 10/19/14)
2012 Aug 8, In South Africa at least two people died and two went missing as heavy snow and rain battered the southeast.
(AFP, 8/8/12)
2012 Aug 8, Syrian troops launched a broad ground assault on rebel-held areas of Aleppo and activists reported clashes as opposition forces fought back. Turkey's state-run news agency reported that some 2,400 people crossed into Turkey overnight to escape the escalating violence. Residents said Syrian fighter jets launched airstrikes on Tel Rifat, hitting a home and a high school and killing six people from one family. The Observatory said violence across Syria cost the lives of at least 167 people -- 95 civilians, 54 soldiers and 18 rebels.
(AP, 8/8/12)(AFP, 8/9/12)(AP, 8/9/12)
2012 Aug 8, In Uganda regional leaders ended a meeting on a proposed neutral force for eastern CongoDRC, with no concrete progress but a pledge to meet in a month.
(AFP, 8/8/12)
2013 Aug 8, California’s Central Valley agricultural interests sued the federal government in an attempt to stop releases into the Klamath River to protect spawning salmon. On Aug 23 the federal government began releasing Trinity River water into the lower Klamath to protect spawning salmon following a 9-day delay.
(SFC, 8/9/13, p.D1)(SFC, 8/24/13, p.C4)
2013 Aug 8, In San Francisco an inaugural gun buyback by SF Bay Area-based Gunbuyback.org collected 157 firearms in exchange for $15,500.
(SFC, 8/9/13, p.A6)
2013 Aug 8, In southern California a wildfire in Riverside County, estimated at 15.5 square miles, damaged buildings, threatened about 600 homes and forced some 1,500 people to flee.
(SFC, 8/9/13, p.A5)
2013 Aug 8, In southern California Judith Oakes, the accountant at Rialto Unified school district, was arrested on suspicion of grand theft, embezzlement and burglary. Video surveillance showed her stuffing cash from student lunch money into her bra.
(SSFC, 9/1/13, p.A8)
2013 Aug 8, Paul White (45) of Minnesota claimed his third of a $448 million Powerball jackpot. 16 workers from a county garage in New Jersey shared a 2nd ticket. A 3rd winner, also from New Jersey, had not yet come forward.
(SFC, 8/9/13, p.A5)(SFC, 8/10/13, p.A4)
2013 Aug 8, Afghan President Karzai urged the Taliban to lay down their arms. In the east a bomb planted in a graveyard killed 7 women and 7 children of a single family in Nangarhar province's Ghany Khel district.
(AP, 8/8/13)
2013 Aug 8, In Afghanistan 3 Chinese citizens, 2 men and a woman, were murdered in an apartment in Kabul. One Afghan man was also found dead. One Chinese citizen remained missing.
(Reuters, 8/10/13)(AP, 8/11/13)
2013 Aug 8, In Egypt thousands of demonstrators converged on the Brotherhood protest camp in northeastern Cairo in a festive atmosphere to attend prayers and a rally on the first day of the Eid al-Fitr holiday, which marks the end of the fasting month of Ramadan.
(Reuters, 8/8/13)
2013 Aug 8, Italy's parliament approved measures to ease some of the worst prison overcrowding in Europe by cutting pre-trial detentions and using alternative punishments for minor offences.
(Reuters, 8/8/13)
2013 Aug 8, Human Rights Watch said a picked-up wave of political assassinations in Libya has killed 51 people as the country lacks any effective law enforcement.
(AP, 8/8/13)
2013 Aug 8, In Malaysia Mr. K. Veerappan, a convicted drug dealer, was shot and killed whiled stopped at a traffic light in the Georgetown section of Penang. He was said to have been a member of “Gang 36."
(Econ, 8/17/13, p.37)
2013 Aug 8, In southwestern Pakistan a suicide bomber attacked a police officer's funeral in Quetta, killing 21 police officers and 9 civilians gathered to mourn a police officer shot dead earlier that day in front of his children.
(AP, 8/8/13)
2013 Aug 8, Nicolae Gheorghe (b.1946), Romanian Gypsy campaigner for rights of the Roma, died of cancer.
(Econ, 8/17/13, p.78)(http://tinyurl.com/pudxsh7)
2013 Aug 8, In South Sudan cattle rustlers killed 8 people in Jonglei state. One of the raiders was also killed.
(AP, 8/9/13)
2013 Aug 8, Syrian rebels targeted President Bashar al-Assad's motorcade heading to a Damascus mosque to mark the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr, but state television showed him unharmed and the government denied he had been attacked.
(Reuters, 8/8/13)
2013 Aug 8, In Yemen three suspected US drones 12 alleged al-Qaida militants, 6 in Marib province and 6 in Hadramawt province.
(AP, 8/8/13)
2014 Aug 8, A US federal court ruled that the NCAA has violated antitrust law in a 2009 case involving Ed O’Bannon, a former college basketball star. EA Sports, a video game company, had paid a fat fee to the NCAA but nothing to Mr. O’Bannon.
(Econ, 8/16/14, p.21)
2014 Aug 8, Oracle Corp. sued the state of Oregon in a breach of contract suit against Cover Oregon, the state’s health insurance exchange. The state’s health insurance website was never launched and disputed bills totaled $23 million. Gov. John Kitzhaber has called for the state to sue Oracle and recover some of the $134 million already paid.
(SFC, 8/9/14, p.A8)
2014 Aug 8, Afghanistan's feuding presidential candidates signed a deal to form a national unity government, opening an apparent way forward in a dispute over the fraud-tainted election that threatens to revive ethnic conflict.
(AFP, 8/8/14)
2014 Aug 8, Cambodian opposition lawmakers ended a 10-month boycott of Parliament, joining the assembly for the first time after reaching a breakthrough political deal with the country's ruling party.
(AP, 8/8/14)
2014 Aug 8, In Canada a patient back from Nigeria who showed symptoms of fever and flu -- possible signs of Ebola -- was put in isolation in a Toronto-area hospital.
(AFP, 8/8/14)
2014 Aug 8, A Chinese court sentenced Peter Humphrey, a private British investigator, to 2½ years in prison and his business-partner wife, Yu Yingzeng, to two years after they pleaded guilty to illegally obtaining private records of Chinese citizens as they researched corporate fraud. In early 2013 Glaxo Pharma had asked their Hong Kong-based company, China Whys, to investigate whether a former employee was passing information of suspected fraud to Chinese authorities.
(SFC, 8/9/14, p.D4)
2014 Aug 8, An Iraqi official said hundreds of women from the Yazidi religious minority have been taken captive by Sunni militants. US jets pounded jihadist positions to pave the way for Iraq's federal and Kurdish forces and also dropped aid to stranded Yazidi civilians on Mount Sinjar.
(AP, 8/8/14)(AFP, 8/9/14)
2014 Aug 8, Israeli warplanes struck targets in retaliation for dozens of Palestinian cross-border rocket attacks. A 10-year-old boy was killed and 11 people wounded in the airstrikes. The Israeli delegation in Cairo returned to Israel.
(AFP, 8/8/14)
2014 Aug 8, Menahem Golan (b.1929), Israeli action filmmaker, died in Tel Aviv. He produce over 200 movies and directed a fourth of them. They included “Cobra" (1986), the “Death Wish" sequels 2-5 (1982-1994), “Entebbe: Operation Thunderbolt" (1977), “Delta Force" (1986), “Bloodsport" (1987) and “Over the Top" (1987).
(SFC, 8/11/14, p.C3)
2014 Aug 8, Japan’s Yomiuri Shimbun reported that Japan and the United States will jointly develop a fuel-cell powered submarine that can run for a month under the sea on a single charge an unmanned. The 10-meter (33-feet) long sub would be able to chart a pre-programmed course before returning to base.
(AFP, 8/8/14)
2014 Aug 8, In Jordan tens of thousands celebrated the "Gaza victory" in the war against Israel, at a rally organized by the Islamist opposition.
(AFP, 8/9/14)
2014 Aug 8, In Libya a UN delegation held talks in Tripoli to try to broker a ceasefire between armed factions that have turned the capital into a battleground after the worst fighting since the fall of Muammar Gaddafi.
(Reuters, 8/8/14)
2014 Aug 8, Malaysia Airlines will be taken over by the country's state investment fund and de-listed, as part of plans announced today for a "complete overhaul" to rescue the company from oblivion after two crippling air disasters.
(AFP, 8/8/14)
2014 Aug 8, In Myanmar the ASEAN regional summit opened for talks among ministers from 10 Southeast Asian countries. It will expand over the weekend to comprise 27 countries who are members of the so-called ASEAN Regional Forum.
(AP, 8/8/14)
2014 Aug 8, Nigeria's president declared the containment of the Ebola virus a national emergency as officials confirmed two new cases of Ebola, bringing the total number of infections in Africa's most populous country to nine, including 2 deaths.
(AP, 8/8/14)
2014 Aug 8, In Syria Islamic State jihadists captured the key Brigade 93 Syrian army base in Raqa province overnight. 36 soldiers were killed, some of whom were beheaded, while others died in the fighting or in the initial triple suicide bombing that launched the attack.
(AFP, 8/8/14)
2014 Aug 8, Thailand's new military-stacked National Legislative Assembly convened for the first time, electing a president in a key step towards crafting a new constitution likely to embed the army's political influence.
(AFP, 8/8/14)
2014 Aug 8, Ukrainian army units, which had been trapped by separatists on the border with Russia, broke out of the blockade and rejoined government forces, but 15 soldiers and border guards were killed in the operation. At least 3 civilians were killed and another 10 wounded in overnight shelling of Donetsk, the main rebel stronghold besieged by government forces. The shelling came a few days after rebels had positioned a Grad multiple rocket launcher near the apartment building and fired at Ukrainian positions.
(Reuters, 8/8/14)(AP, 8/8/14)
2014 Aug 8, Etihad, the flag carrier of the United Arab Emirates, agreed to inject a further $750 million into Alitalia in return for a 49% stake.
(Econ, 8/16/14, p.55)
2014 Aug 8, The World Health Organization declared the Ebola outbreak in West Africa to be an international public health emergency that requires an extraordinary response to stop its spread.
(AP, 8/8/14)
2014 Aug 8, In eastern Yemen militants killed 14 soldiers near the city of Shibam in Hadramawt province.
(AP, 8/9/14)
2015 Aug 8, The US Justice Department said Julito Francis, a former US Virgin Islands government official, faces 11 counts including conspiracy, bribery and perjury. He was charged in a $17 million bribery scheme. A construction company owner and the co-principal of an architectural company were also charged.
(AP, 8/8/15)
2015 Aug 8, San Francisco resident Kim Chambers (38) completed a 30-mile swim from the Farallon Islands to the Golden Gate Bridge in 17 hours and 12 minutes, becoming the first woman to do so.
(SSFC, 8/9/15, p.A12)
2015 Aug 8, Texas police found the bodies of 6 children and 2 parents in a Houston-area home after a standoff that ended with a man's surrender. David Conley (48) was arrested and charged with the murders. Conley had an earlier relationship with the mother Valerie Jackson, and was believed to be the father of one of the children.
(AFP, 8/9/15)(SFC, 8/10/15, p.A6)
2015 Aug 8, In Afghanistan a suicide bomber in northern Kunduz province killed 29 people, mainly members of illegal armed groups that have clashed with security forces and the insurgents in the past. Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid claimed responsibility for the attack.
(AP, 8/9/15)
2015 Aug 8, In Brazil at least 30 boats of all sizes paraded across Rio de Janeiro's Guanabara Bay to protest contamination in the waters where sailing events will be held next year during the Olympic Games.
(AP, 8/8/15)
2015 Aug 8, In Cambodia Chhouk Bandith, former governor of Bavet town in the eastern province of Svay Rieng, turned himself in for arrest in Phnom Penh. He had been convicted of shooting and wounding 3 female garment workers during a 2012 protest.
(AP, 8/8/15)
2015 Aug 8, In China Typhoon Soudelor hit the city of Putian in Fujian province late today. Strong winds caused power outages to more than 1.41 million household in the province.
(AP, 8/8/15)
2015 Aug 8, In Egypt gunmen killed a policeman southwest of Cairo.
(AFP, 8/8/15)
2015 Aug 8, Finland detained a Russian citizen, Maxim Senakh, at the request of US federal authorities on computer fraud charges. Senakh was accused in the state of Minnesota of infecting computer servers with malware, resulting in criminal gains worth millions of dollars. Russia later called the move illegal.
(Reuters, 8/27/15)
2015 Aug 8, Hong Kong recorded its hottest day since authorities began taking temperature readings 130 years ago, due to the influence of a nearby typhoon. The daily maximum temperature hit 36.3 degrees Celsius.
(AFP, 8/8/15)
2015 Aug 8, In eastern India dozens of villagers beat to death 5 women, accusing them of practicing witchcraft and blaming them for a series of misfortunes in Kinjia village, Jharkhand state. Police arrested around 50 people involved in the attack.
(AP, 8/8/15)
2015 Aug 8, Iran issued an advisory warning its citizens to avoid land travel to neighboring Turkey after an Iranian bus was attacked by gunmen.
(AFP, 8/8/15)
2015 Aug 8, Today marked the anniversary of the US beginning airstrikes against the extremists in Iraq. US-led forces conducted 16 air strikes in Iraq and seven in Syria against Islamic State targets.
(AP, 8/8/15)(AP, 8/9/15)
2015 Aug 8, In the Central African Republic a Rwandan soldier serving with the UN peacekeeping mission shot dead 4 Rwandan troops and wounded eight others before committing suicide.
(Reuters, 8/8/15)
2015 Aug 8, Mali's special forces rescued four people who hid in a hotel in Sevare for nearly 24 hours after Islamic extremists stormed the building and launched a rare attack far from their northern strongholds that killed 12 people.
(AP, 8/8/15)(AFP, 8/9/15)
2015 Aug 8, In Mexico the body of Miguel Angel Jimenez, leader of a group searching for 43 missing students, was found behind the wheel of his taxi near Acapulco. 2 men were killed by gunfire outside a home in La Paz where a party had been held. Two other people were found dead at a home in Cabo San Lucas, earlier in the day. Both victims, a man and a woman, had been shot in the head.
(AFP, 8/10/15)(AP, 8/10/15)
2015 Aug 8, Six Russian opposition activists ended their hunger strike in Novosibirsk after one of them was hospitalized following 12 days of going without food to protest being barred from elections.
(AP, 8/8/15)
2015 Aug 8, In Russia a privately owned Cessna seaplane and a Robinson R44 helicopter collided over the Istrinskoye reservoir outside Moscow late today and fell into the water. All 9 people aboard the two crafts were killed.
(AFP, 8/9/15)(AP, 8/10/15)
2015 Aug 8, Spain's Guardia Civil police force said they have arrested 34 suspected members of a gang based in Colombia that smuggled drugs between the two countries.
(AFP, 8/8/15)
2015 Aug 8, Syrian activists said hundreds of Christian families have fled the central town of Sadad toward the government-held central city of Homs and Damascus, as Islamic State fighters advanced toward it. A shell hit a street in central Damascus, killing 5 people and wounding 36.
(AP, 8/8/15)
2015 Aug 8, Typhoon Soudelor battered Taiwan with strong wind and torrential rain, cutting power to 3.62 million households as the death toll rose to 6 with four missing. The eye of the typhoon passed Taiwan and headed toward mainland China.
(Reuters, 8/8/15)
2015 Aug 8, In southern Turkey Kurdish PKK rebels fired at a police vehicle, killing a policeman and wounding another.
(AP, 8/9/15)
2015 Aug 8, UAE state news agency WAM said 3 soldiers from the United Arab Emirates have been killed while taking part in a Saudi-led military campaign against Yemen's dominant Houthi group.
(Reuters, 8/8/15)
2015 Aug 8, In Yemen pro-government forces, strengthened by tanks newly supplied by a Saudi-led coalition, launched an offensive to retake Zinjibar, the rebel-held capital of Abyan province. A Saudi-led coalition airstrike hit allied fighters in a friendly fire incident, killing at least 20 fighters on a coastal road as they headed toward Zinjibar.
(AFP, 8/8/15) (AP, 8/9/15)
2015 Aug 8, Zimbabwe police blocked the country's main workers union from protesting against a recent wave of job losses and briefly held union leaders.
(AFP, 8/8/15)
2016 Aug 8, Delta canceled more than 700 flights and had 2,600 others delayed, some for hours, after a power outage at its Atlanta headquarters caused many computer systems to crash. The company later blamed a malfunctioning power-control system at its data center.
(AP, 8/9/16)(Econ, 8/13/16, p.46)
2016 Aug 8, Walmart announced that it would acquire Jet.com, a shopping website, for $3.3 billion.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jet.com)(Econ, 8/13/16, p.47)
2016 Aug 8, In London and southern England rail staff began a five-day strike in a safety row over who opens and closes the doors impacting hundreds of thousands of train commuters.
(Reuters, 8/8/16)
2016 Aug 8, In eastern China residents of in Lianyungang protested for a third day against possible plans to build a nuclear fuel reprocessing center, as police banned public gatherings in hopes of preventing more demonstrations.
(AP, 8/9/16)
2016 Aug 8, In Congo DRC armed groups killed 14 people in a string of overnight attacks in the strife-torn North Kivu province, an area long shaken by ethnic violence.
(AFP, 8/8/16)
2016 Aug 8, Amnesty Int’l. said Ethiopian security forces shot dead at least 67 people in the Oromia region over the weekend. An opposition politician said more than 70 people were killed across Oromia with hundreds detained during protests.
(SFC, 8/9/16, p.A3)
2016 Aug 8, In Indian-controlled Kashmir police said government forces have arrested more than a thousand protesters over the past two weeks in an attempt to stem deadly anti-India demonstrations in the Himalayan region.
(AP, 8/8/16)
2016 Aug 8, Iran detained Xiyue Wang, a Chinese-American history researcher. In 2017 he sentenced to 10 years in prison after being convicted of "infiltrating" and sending confidential material abroad.
(AP, 7/17/17)(AP, 8/8/19)
2016 Aug 8, Japan's emperor expressed concern about fulfilling his duties as he ages, in a public address that was remarkable for its rarity and its suggestion that he would like to abdicate.
(AP, 8/8/16)
2016 Aug 8, In Nepal a helicopter crashed in a mountainous region, killing all seven people on board.
(AP, 8/8/16)
2016 Aug 8, In Nigeria gunmen dressed as priests killed three soldiers in the oil-producing Niger Delta.
(Reuters, 8/8/16)
2016 Aug 8, In Pakistan a suicide bombing that targeted lawyers killed at least 74 people in the city of Quetta.
(AP, 8/9/16)(Reuters, 8/11/16)
2016 Aug 8, Portugal’s National Civil Protection Authority said that 3,000 firefighters, 1,060 vehicles and 16 water-dumping aircraft are deployed at 515 wildfires, some of which have been burning for days.
(AP, 8/8/16)
2016 Aug 8, Taiwan lodged a complaint with Kenya over the deportation of five of its nationals to China after a court acquitted them of charges of running illegal telecoms operations. A Kenyan magistrate's court acquitted the five Taiwanese nationals and 35 Chinese citizens on Aug 5 after the prosecution failed to prove its case against them.
(Reuters, 8/8/16)
2016 Aug 8, Uganda's government said it "will continue to suppress" the public activities of homosexuals and that a rehabilitation program had been developed to allow them to "lead normal lives again."
(AP, 8/8/16)
2017 Aug 8, Pres. Donald Trump issued his strongest warning yet for North Korea in comments to reporters in New Jersey, saying that "North Korea best not make any more threats to the US. They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen".
(AP, 8/9/17)
2017 Aug 8, The NY Times published a draft report of the fourth National Climate Assessment. It predicted that US temperatures will rise at least 2.5 degrees over the next few decades.
(SFC, 8/9/17, p.A1)
2017 Aug 8, The US Centers for Disease Control said an increasing number of people have been sickened by eating salmonella infected papaya traced to a farm in southern Mexico. 109 people in 16 states were now sickened. One death in NYC was reported.
(SFC, 8/9/17, p.A6)
2017 Aug 8, US Border Patrol agents in San Diego arrested Jorge Edwin Rivera (25) as he used a drone to smuggle methamphetamine from Mexico. Rivera said he had used drones five or six times since march to smuggle drugs.
(SSFC, 8/20/17, p.A14)
2017 Aug 8, In Chicago several gunmen opened fire on a group of people on a sidewalk killing one man and wounding six other people in the Bronzeville neighborhood.
(SFC, 8/10/17, p.A5)
2017 Aug 8, Glen Campbell (81), American country music legend, died in Nashville. His songs included “Rhinestone Cowboy" (1975) and “Wichita Lineman" (1968). The TV show “Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour" ran from 1969 to 1972 on CBS.
(SFC, 8/9/17, p.A6)
2017 Aug 8, McDonald's said it will nearly double the number of restaurants in China in the next five years, eventually surpassing Japan as the hamburger chain's second-biggest market outside the US. The announcement came a week after it completed a previously announced deal to sell most of its operations in China.
(AP, 8/8/17)
2017 Aug 8, Former British police Officer Adrian Pogmore (51) was jailed for a year for using a police helicopter to film a couple having sex and other people sunbathing nude.
(AFP, 8/8/17)
2017 Aug 8, In China a 7.0-magnitude earthquake late today struck a remote, mountainous part of southwestern province of Sichuan, killing at least 19 people, including eight tourists, and injuring 247. The death toll rose to 23 as more bodies were recovered.
(Reuters, 8/9/17)(AFP, 8/11/17)
2017 Aug 8, In Congo DRC opposition campaigners launched a two-day general strike to pressure President Joseph Kabila to set an election date -- a day after 12 people were shot dead in an anti-government rampage in the capital.
(AFP, 8/8/17)
2017 Aug 8, Two Egyptian policemen were killed and one wounded when a group of wanted criminals opened fire on security forces in a village north of Cairo.
(Reuters, 8/8/17)
2017 Aug 8, In France a BMW rammed into a group of soldiers in the Paris suburb of Levallois-Perret. Six soldiers were injured in the attack. Police the next day arrested the chief suspect in the attack. The man was wounded in a gunfight during his capture.
(AP, 8/9/17)(SFC, 8/10/17, p.A4)
2017 Aug 8, Germany’s wind power group Siemens Gamesa said it has installed Asia's tallest wind turbines, with a total height of 210 meters (230 yards), in Thailand.
(Reuters, 8/8/17)
2017 Aug 8, Iranian authorities detained 64 “half naked" youths at a pool party in central Isfahan province. A report said the youngsters were dancing and drinking alcoholic beverages.
(AP, 8/9/17)
2017 Aug 8, In Ivory Coast twenty people escaped custody after assaulting police officers at the courthouse in Abidjan.
(Reuters, 8/9/17)
2017 Aug 8, Kenya held elections. The presidential vote pitted President Uhuru Kenyatta (55), the businessman son of Kenya's founding president, against Raila Odinga (72), a former political prisoner and son of Kenya's first vice-president.
(Reuters, 8/8/17)
2017 Aug 8, In Nepal a parliamentary report released today said immigration officials at its international airport are colluding with traffickers to illegally send Nepali women to the Gulf where they are often exploited and abused.
(AFP, 8/8/17)
2017 Aug 8, Russian President Vladimir Putin visited the breakaway Georgian region of Abkhazia and assured it of Moscow's military support, an act of defiance to Western governments that have condemned Russia's backing for the separatists.
(Reuters, 8/8/17)
2017 Aug 8, Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny launched a new YouTube attack against President Vladimir Putin's close associates. The video described the assets of billionaire brothers Arkady and Boris Rotenberg and their sons. Navalny's video charged that they won lucrative government orders unfairly and included footage of their palatial mansions.
(AP, 8/9/17)
2017 Aug 8, Lawmakers in South Africa's ruling African National Congress (ANC) pledged to back President Jacob Zuma in a no-confidence motion in parliament, aiming to thwart opposition efforts to force him out. Zuma survived the no-confidence vote.
(Reuters, 8/8/17)(SFC, 8/9/17, p.A2)
2017 Aug 8, In South Africa thieves broke into the offices of the Competition Commission, making off with laptop computers. The Competition Commission is responsible for investigating issues including cartel conduct and mergers and acquisitions, before bringing them to the Competition Tribunal for adjudication.
(Reuters, 8/12/17)
2017 Aug 8, The head of South Sudan's UN mission announced the long-awaited arrival of troops from a regional force meant to patrol roads and quell violence in the war-ravaged country. About 150 troops from Rwanda arrived at the weekend for the regional protection force (RPF).
(AFP, 8/8/17)
2017 Aug 8, In Syria pro-government forces intensified their assault on the rebel-held suburbs of Damascus, a day after the Faylaq al-Rahman rebel faction beat back an attempted government advance, killing several soldiers.
(AP, 8/8/17)
2017 Aug 8, In Syria airstrikes on parts of the northern city of Raqqa that are controlled by the Islamic State group killed 29 civilians, including nine women and 12 children.
(AP, 8/9/17)
2017 Aug 8, In Thailand journalist Pravit Rojanaphruk was charged with sedition and violation of the country’s computer law for online postings concerning politics.
(SFC, 8/9/17, p.A2)
2017 Aug 8, A Turkish media report said Turkey has begun construction of a wall along the country's frontier with Iran, mimicking the Turkish barrier along the Syrian border.
(AP, 8/8/17)
2017 Aug 8, Venezuela's Supreme Court sentenced Caracas district mayor Ramon Muchacho to 15 months in jail for defying orders to keep transit moving in an area routinely blocked and barricaded by anti-government demonstrations.
(Reuters, 8/8/17)
2017 Aug 8, Venezuela’s new constitutional assembly assumed even more power by declaring itself as the superior body to all other governmental institutions, including the opposition-controlled congress.
(AP, 8/9/17)
2017 Aug 8, In southern Yemen four soldiers and six suspected al Qaeda attackers were killed and 10 soldiers wounded when a suicide bomber and gunmen tried to storm an army camp.
(Reuters, 8/8/17)
2018 Aug 8, The US announced it would impose new sanctions on Russia for illegally using a chemical weapon in an attempt to kill former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Britain earlier this year.
(SFC, 8/9/18, p.A6)
2018 Aug 8, US customs officials arrested an American woman (81) and seized 92 pounds of heroin found in the rocker panel of a car driven by the woman at the Tecate border crossing in San Diego County.
(SFC, 8/11/18, p.A6)
2018 Aug 8, A large US federal law enforcement operation targeted businesses in Minnesota and Nebraska that knowingly hired and mistreated illegal immigrants. 17 business owners and managers were indicted for fraud, wire fraud and money laundering.
(SFC, 8/9/18, p.A6)
2018 Aug 8, New York state Republican Rep. Christopher Collins (68) was arrested on charges of insider trading. He allegedly used information acquired as a board member of Inate Immunotherapeutics Ltd. to sell shares before a public announcement of a failed clinical trial.
(SFC, 8/9/18, p.A6)
2018 Aug 8, Robert Danzig (85), a former chief of the Hearst Newspapers, died in a Cape Cod hospital. He became publisher of Albany's Times Union and two other Hearst papers in 1969. He served as president of the Hearst Newspapers for two decades.
(SFC, 8/10/18, p.A7)
2018 Aug 8, It was reported that Wells Fargo filed a disclosure last week revealing that bank errors caused more than 600 people in foreclosure to be incorrectly denied mortgage modification to make loans more affordable and that some 400 of that group ultimately lost their homes.
(SFC, 8/8/18, p.C1)
2018 Aug 8, A Bangladesh court acquitted a British man detained without charge for two years on suspicion of involvement in the July 1, 2016, attack on a cafe in Dhaka that killed 22 people. Hasnat Karim was in the cafe at the time of the attack for his daughter's 13th birthday party.
(Reuters, 8/8/18)
2018 Aug 8, A spokesman said Congo's President Joseph Kabila will not stand in the election scheduled for December, finally agreeing to obey a two-term limit but picking a hard-core loyalist under European Union sanctions to stand instead.
(Reuters, 8/8/18)
2018 Aug 8, CongoDRC began Ebola vaccinations in the country's latest outbreak of the deadly virus that has already claimed at least nine lives in North Kivu province.
(AP, 8/8/18)
2018 Aug 8, Costa Rica's supreme court voted to make same-sex marriage legal and gave the country's legislature 18 months to change the law or it would automatically become legal.
(SFC, 8/10/18, p.A2)
2018 Aug 8, Germany said it has reached an agreement with Spain for that country to take back previously registered migrants who show up at the German border, a first step toward implementing a deal to defuse a domestic political dispute over migration.
(AP, 8/8/18)
2018 Aug 8, In India a stampede among thousands of mourners at the funeral of a powerful southern Indian politician killed two people and injured 47.
(Reuters, 8/8/18)
2018 Aug 8, Iran’s Minister of Cooperatives, Labour and Social Welfare, Ali Rabiei, was sacked by parliament, the latest shuffle in top economic posts as the Islamic Republic struggles to stabilize its economy.
(Reuters, 8/8/18)
2018 Aug 8, Italian police said gangsters dropped 25-kilo (55-pound) weights on the limbs of drug addicts, alcoholics and other indigents in an insurance fraud racket that faked car accidents to obtain hundreds of thousands of euros in claim payments. Police said 11 persons, including a nurse suspected of procuring anesthetics, were arrested in the crackdown on two Palermo-based criminal organizations.
(AP, 8/8/18)
2018 Aug 8, In southern Italy hundreds of crop pickers and labor union activists marched from a shanty town to protest what they say is the exploitation of migrant farmworkers. 16 farmworkers were killed on Aug 4 and Aug 6 while riding in vans that collided with trucks.
(AP, 8/8/18)
2018 Aug 8, Ivory Coast's former first lady Simone Gbagbo was released from detention after being granted an amnesty for her part in a short civil war in 2011.
(Reuters, 8/8/18)
2018 Aug 8, In Japan rain lashed Tokyo and dozens of flights were canceled as Typhoon Shanshan headed toward the capital.
(AP, 8/8/18)
2018 Aug 8, In Japan Okinawa Gov. Takeshi Onaga (67) died of pancreatic cancer. He had led an anti-US military base movement on the southern Japanese island.
(AP, 8/8/18)
2018 Aug 8, Kenya's national wildlife service said authorities have arrested a suspected poacher linked to the killing of a 12-year-old black rhino last month in Lake Nakuru national park.
(Reuters, 8/8/18)
2018 Aug 8, Kenyan runner Nicholas Bett (28), who won the 2015 world championship title in the 400-meter hurdles, was killed in an early-morning car crash in the country's famed high-altitude training region.
(AP, 8/8/18)
2018 Aug 8, Malaysia's former PM Najib Razak (65) pleaded not guilty to money laundering charges slapped on him, as the country's new government looked for answers to how billions of dollars went missing from a state fund 1MDB during his term.
(Reuters, 8/8/18)
2018 Aug 8, Malaysia's minister of Islamic affairs said he had ordered the removal of portraits of two lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) activists from a public photography exhibition, as they promoted LGBT activities.
(Reuters, 8/8/18)
2018 Aug 8, Workers seized partial control of the headquarters of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees in Hamas-run Gaza, accusing their union of "mutiny" over job cuts.
(AFP, 8/8/18)
2018 Aug 8, Philippine leader Rodrigo Duterte said there would be no new casinos set up during his presidency, a day after abruptly shelving Landing International's $1.5 billion integrated casino project in Manila.
(Reuters, 8/8/18)
2018 Aug 8, Saudi Arabia said there is no room for mediation in the kingdom's deepening diplomatic dispute with Canada, and that Ottawa knew what it needed to do to "fix its big mistake".
(Reuters, 8/8/18)
2018 Aug 8, Oil giant Saudi Aramco said it will buy out the other 50-percent stake in a joint chemical venture in the Netherlands in a deal valued at 1.5 billion euros, or $1.7 billion.
(AP, 8/8/18)
2018 Aug 8, Saudi Arabia said it executed and crucified a man from Myanmar convicted of killing a woman and carrying out other crimes. In Saudi crucifixions the condemned is usually beheaded and the body then put on display.
(AP, 8/8/18)
2018 Aug 8, South Korea-based Samsung Electronics said it plans to spend a whopping $22 billion over the next three years on artificial intelligence, auto components and other future businesses as the company maps out its strategy under the restored leadership of Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong.
(AP, 8/8/18)
2018 Aug 8, A Sri Lankan court sentenced hard-line Buddhist monk Galagoda Atte Gnanasara to six years in prison for contempt of court. Gnanasara was found guilty of interrupting a court hearing in 2016 for military personnel accused of involvement in the disappearance of journalist Prageeth Ekneligoda. In June, the monk was sentenced in a separate case to six months in prison for harassing and intimidating the journalist's wife.
(AP, 8/8/18)
2018 Aug 8, Thailand granted citizenship to three young soccer players who were trapped with other team members for almost three weeks in a cave in northern Thailand along with their 25-year-old coach. All four had been stateless, and their lack of citizenship deprived them of some basic benefits and rights, including the ability to travel outside of Chiang Rai, the northern province where they live.
(AP, 8/8/18)
2018 Aug 8, Venezuela's Supreme Court ordered the arrest of opposition leader Julio Borges and called for the prosecution of opposition lawmaker Juan Requesens (29), who police detained a day earlier, in connection with the recent alleged assassination attempt against Pres. Maduro.
(SFC, 8/9/18, p.A2)
2019 Aug 8, President Donald Trump said that Joseph Maguire, the current chief of the National Counterterrorism Center, will become the acting director of national intelligence.
(The Telegraph, 8/8/19)
2019 Aug 8, The US Republican Party, the Trump campaign and other GOP organizations said that they are freezing their spending on Twitter to protest the platform's treatment of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
(SFC, 8/9/19, p.A6)
2019 Aug 8, Neil Kimball, a Los Angeles County sheriff's detective, was sentenced to three years in prison for having sex with girl (15) that he met while investigating her report of being sexually assaulted in 2017.
(SFC, 8/9/19, p.A5)
2019 Aug 8, Khabir Daniel, a Georgia state ice cream man and convicted child molester, was sentenced to 25 years in prison and life on probation for raping a 14-year-old girl inside his work truck.
(AP, 8/9/19)
2019 Aug 8, A judge in Montana ordered Andrew Anglin, the publisher of a neo-Nazi website. to pay Tanya Gersh, a Jewish real estate agent, $14 million for inciting his readers to harass her family with hundreds of threatening and anti-Semitic messages and calls.
(SFC, 8/9/19, p.A6)
2019 Aug 8, CBS Corp and AT&T Inc signed a new multi-year content carriage agreement, ending a 20 day-long blackout that began when the previous, seven-year deal expired at 2:00 a.m. EST on July 19.
(Reuters, 8/8/19)
2019 Aug 8, Simon Cheng (28), a trade and investment officer at the Hong Kong consulate’s Scottish Development International section, disappeared on the way back from a business event in the Chinese city of Shenzhen. On Aug. 22 China’s state-backed Global Times newspaper said he was detained for involvement in prostitution.
(The Telegraph, 8/22/19)
2019 Aug 8, Egyptian officials said security forces have killed at least 17 suspected militants in raids in Cairo and in another province. Their statement did not say when the raids took place, or whether police forces were wounded in the clashes with the militants.
(AP, 8/8/19)
2019 Aug 8, France's interior and foreign ministries said 31 Yazidi families arrived today in the southern city of Toulouse from Irbil, Iraq. Previous groups of 16 and 28 families had arrived in December and May.
(AP, 8/8/19)
2019 Aug 8, It was reported that as many as 500 people have been rounded up in the latest crackdown in Indian Kashmir, which has been on the edge since the right-wing government revoked its autonomy.
(The Telegraph, 8/8/19)
2019 Aug 8, Israeli troops raided a Palestinian village on and the military said it was sending reinforcements to the West Bank, hours after the body of Dvir Sorek, a 19-year-old soldier, was found with stab wounds between the Jewish settlements of Migdal Oz and Efrat.
(AP, 8/8/19)(SFC, 8/9/19, p.A4)
2019 Aug 8, Kyrgyz security forces launched a second raid on the house of former president Almazbek Atambayev, after a failed attempt to arrest him the previous day led to violent clashes with his followers. Atambayev surrendered when police raided his home and detained him for questioning over a corruption case, laying bare a power struggle with his successor Sooronbai Jeenbekov that is pushing the Central Asian nation to the brink of political crisis. In 2020 Atambayev was sentenced to 11 years in prison on corruption charges.
(Reuters, 8/8/19)(AP, 8/13/19)(Econ., 6/27/20, p.27)
2019 Aug 8, The Daily Star, Lebanon's only English-language daily, protested the country's deteriorating economic and political conditions by publishing a blank edition, calling it an "alarm bell." The back page had a photo of a cedar tree, a national symbol, with a caption reading: Wake up before it's too late!
(AP, 8/8/19)
2019 Aug 8, Mexican authorities found a total of 19 bodies scattered across the city of Uruapan in Michoacan state this morning. Many of the bodies had been dismembered and all 19 victims had been shot to death. Three of the victims were women. Experts said the fight could be over the production and distribution of avocados, dubbed "green gold" in Mexico.
(Insider, 8/9/19)(SFC, 8/9/19, p.A2)
2019 Aug 8, In Mexico City a policeman reportedly raped 16-year-old girl said in a museum in the city center. A policeman was soon arrested.
(AP, 8/13/19)
2019 Aug 8, Pakistan halted its main train service to India and banned Indian films as it kept up the diplomatic pressure on New Delhi for revoking the special status of Kashmir, the region at the heart of 70 years of hostility between them.
(Reuters, 8/8/19)
2019 Aug 8, Pakistan's anti-corruption bureau arrested opposition leader Maryam Nawaz, the latest high-profile detention of a member of the Sharif political dynasty. The daughter of former PM Nawaz Sharif was arrested with her cousin, Yousaf Abbas, while attempting to visit her father at a jail in the city of Lahore.
(Reuters, 8/8/19)
2019 Aug 8, Russian authorities froze a slew of bank accounts linked to jailed opposition politician Alexei Navalny as part of a money laundering investigation that his allies say is a trumped-up attempt to cripple his political movement.
(Reuters, 8/8/19)
2019 Aug 8, In Russia two people died and four others were wounded when a rocket engine exploded during a test at a military shooting range in Nyonoksa in the northwestern Arkhangelsk region. On August 9 US-based nuclear experts said they suspected the accidental blast and radiation release occurred during the testing of a nuclear-powered cruise missile vaunted by President Vladimir Putin last year. Russia's state nuclear agency Rosatom later said that five of its staff members died in the accident. Pres. Vladimir Putin later hailed the five nuclear engineers as heroes and patriots.
(AP, 8/8/19)(Reuters, 8/10/19)(AP, 11/22/19)
2019 Aug 8, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa won a court case against the anti-corruption watchdog over a matter concerning ally Pravin Gordhan, ahead of a fresh battle over findings against the president himself.
(Reuters, 8/8/19)
2019 Aug 8, Syria accused Turkey of "expansionist ambitions," saying Ankara's agreement with Washington to set up a so-called safe zone in the northeast only helps such plans and is a violation of Syria's sovereignty.
(AP, 8/8/19)
2019 Aug 8, Syrian government forces seized territory from insurgents in northwestern Syria, building on advances since the military declared an end to a brief ceasefire earlier this week.
(Reuters, 8/8/19)
2019 Aug 8, Turkish state news said an operation last week by the Turkish military and its intelligence agency killed two more suspects and alleged planners in the July 17 assassination of Turkish diplomat Osman Kose in Irbil, Iraq.
(AP, 8/8/19)
2019 Aug 8, The United Arab Emirates released Osama al-Najjar, Badr al-Bahri and Othman al-Shehhi after appearing in a nearly two-minute video shared on social media sites by the state-aligned UAE Forsan in which they denounced the Muslim Brotherhood and its ideas. The three had been detained on national security charges for their ties to al-Islah, an Islamist group that is outlawed in the UAE.
(AP, 8/9/19)
2019 Aug 8, A UN climate panel said in a report that divesting from fossil fuels alone won't be enough to limit warming from climate change, adding that issues including deforestation and agriculture must be addressed to drive down greenhouse gas emissions.
(ABC News, 8/8/19)
2019 Aug 8, The UN called on forces loyal to Libya's internationally recognized government and a rival administration to commit to a humanitarian truce by midnight on August 9.
(AFP, 8/9/19)
2020 Aug 8, President Trump signed four executive orders on economic aid as stimulus talks stalled. Their impact may be limited, and legal challenges are expected. Trump extended supplemental unemployment benefits, but at a reduced rate of $400 per week from the previous $600. He also claimed authority to defer payroll taxes from august 1 to the end of the year.
(NY Times, 8/9/20)(SSFC, 8/9/20, p.A8)
2020 Aug 8, California to date had 555,544 cases of coronavirus and 10,329 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 60,834 cases and 909 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 5,003,600 with the death toll at 162,422.
(sfist.com, 8/8/20)
2020 Aug 8, In Portland, Oregon, a fire inside a police union building late today led authorities to declare a riot and force protesters away from the offices as violent demonstrations continued in the city.
(AP, 8/8/20)
2020 Aug 8, In Texas a pair of Fort Hood soldiers were among those arrested at the conclusion of a two-day child prostitution sting. Nine men arrested also included a third US service member.
(Miami Herald, 8/11/20)
2020 Aug 8, Brazil surpassed a grim milestone of 100,000 deaths from COVID-19. The Health Ministry said there had been a total of 3,012,412 confirmed infections with the new coronavirus.
(AP, 8/8/20)
2020 Aug 8, Britain’s military said it has been asked by the government to help prevent people from reaching the UK from France in small boats, after a surge in the number of vessels making the dangerous journey.
(AP, 8/8/20)
2020 Aug 8, Health care workers rallied in British cities demanding hefty pay raises for their hard work during the pandemic.
(SSFC, 8/9/20, p.A11)
2020 Aug 8, China reported 31 new coronavirus cases, mainly in the western Xinjiang region, where an outbreak has infected 750 people.
(SSFC, 8/9/20, p.A11)
2020 Aug 8, In northeastern Czech Republic at least 11 people were killed and 10 others injured in an apartment building fire in the town of Bohumin.
(AP, 8/8/20)
2020 Aug 8, Konrad Steffen (69), a renowned researcher who helped warn the world that climate change was melting Greenland’s massive ice sheet, died there in an ice crevasse accident.
(NY Times, 8/14/20)
2020 Aug 8, Iran's semiofficial Mehr news agency reported that an unknown gunman has killed two Lebanese nationals on the streets of Tehran. The assailant, riding a motorcycle, shot dead Maryam Dawood (27) and her father Habib Dawood, a history professor.
(AP, 8/8/20)
2020 Aug 8, In Israel thousands of demonstrators thronged the streets near the official residence of PM Benjamin Netanyahu in central Jerusalem, in a renewed show of strength as weeks of protests against the Israeli leader showed no signs of slowing.
(AP, 8/8/20)
2020 Aug 8, Italy’s health minister announced that women in Italy can now use the abortion pill on an outpatient basis rather than be hospitalized to terminate a pregnancy.
(AP, 8/8/20)
2020 Aug 8, In Lebanon security forces fired tear gas and clashed with stone-throwing demonstrators n Beirut amid mounting fury over the massive explosion that devastated much of the city and killed nearly 160 people.
(AP, 8/8/20)
2020 Aug 8, In Mexico officials in Guanajuato state confirmed that the bodies of seven men wee found with multiple gunshot wounds on the side of a road outside Jerecuaro. The state has seen more than 9,000 killings since a turf war began in 2017 between the Santa Rosa de Lima gang and the rival Jalisco cartel.
(SFC, 8/10/20, p.A2)
2020 Aug 8, Police in North Macedonia found 94 migrants packed into a truck in the country’s southeast. The truck driver fled from the scene.
(AP, 8/9/20)
2020 Aug 8, Tens of thousands of people took to the streets in Russia's Far East for a fifth consecutive weekend as anti-Kremlin rallies showed little sign of dying down. Protesters demanded that regional governor Sergei Furgal be either released or tried in Khabarovsk.
(AP, 8/8/20)
2020 Aug 8, In Poland demonstrators turned out in Warsaw and other Polish cities to protest anti-LGBT attitudes promoted by the government as well as the detention of pro-LGBT protesters.
(AP, 8/8/20)
2020 Aug 8, A suicide car bomber attacked a military base in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, killing at least eight people and injuring 14 others.
(AP, 8/8/20)
2021 Aug 8, The head of the nation's second-largest teachers' union said COVID-19 vaccinations should be required for US teachers to protect students who are too young to be inoculated.
(AP, 8/8/21)
2021 Aug 8, Total US COVID-19 cases reached over 35,744,920 with the death toll at 616,742.
(sfist.com, 8/9/21)
2021 Aug 8, Northern California's Dixie Fire, now the second-largest recorded in state history, expanded to nearly 500,000 acres late today and left three firefighters injured.
(Reuters, 8/9/21)
2021 Aug 8, American actress Jane Withers (95) died in Burbank, Ca. She played tough, tomboyish children in more than two dozen films in the 1930s and ’40s and achieved a second burst of fame as Josephine the Plumber in Comet cleanser commercials. Her films included “Bright Eyes" (1934), “The Holy Terror" (1937), “Wild and Woolly" (1937), “Rascals" (1938), “Always in Trouble" (1938) and “The Arizona Wildcat" (1939).
(NY Times, 8/8/21)
2021 Aug 8, A US federal judge granted Norwegian Cruise Line’s request for a preliminary injunction, temporarily allowing the company to require proof of vaccination from passengers despite a Florida law that bans businesses from doing so.
(NY Times, 8/9/21)
2021 Aug 8, In South Dakota motorcycle riders began gathering in Sturgis for a 10-day biker rally amid a rise in COVID-19 cases in the state.
(SFC, 8/9/21, p.A4)
2021 Aug 8, In Afghanistan Taliban fighters overran three provincial capitals including the strategic northeastern city of Kunduz, as the insurgents intensified pressure on the north and threatened further cities.
(Reuters, 8/8/21)
2021 Aug 8, Australia's three most populous states of New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland reported a total of 282 COVID-19 new locally acquired infections, with authorities struggling to quell outbreaks of the Delta variant.
(Reuters, 8/8/21)
2021 Aug 8, Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd said it has suspended several staff following an employee's allegations on the company's intranet that she was sexually assaulted by her boss and a client.
(Reuters, 8/8/21)
2021 Aug 8, In China the 14 Asian elephants of various sizes and ages were guided across the Yuanjiang river in Yunnan late today and a path was being opened for them to return to the nature reserve where they lived in the Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture.
(AP, 8/8/21)
2021 Aug 8, It was reported that a midsummer heat wave across the northern Atlantic caused enough of Greenland's ice cap to melt in a single day to submerge Florida beneath two inches of water.
(SSFC, 8/8/21, p.B10)
2021 Aug 8, Iran reported more new infections and deaths across the country than any other single day since the pandemic began. Health authorities logged over 39,600 new cases and 542 deaths from the virus.
(AP, 8/8/21)
2021 Aug 8, Italy reported 11 coronavirus-related deaths compared with 22 the day before. The daily tally of new infections fell to 5,735 from 6,902. Italy has registered 128,220 deaths linked to COVID-19 since its first outbreak emerged in February last year.
(AP, 8/8/21)
2021 Aug 8, In Japan Eliud Kipchoge, 36, of Kenya won his second consecutive Olympic marathon in 2 hours 8 minutes 38 seconds, reaffirming his status as the greatest runner in history over the distance of 26.2 miles.
(NY Times, 8/8/21)
2021 Aug 8, In Japan the Olympic cauldron was extinguished, ending a Summer Games like no other. The US won 113 medals, more than any other country. China finished second with 88.
(NY Times, 8/8/21)(NY Times, 8/9/21)
2021 Aug 8, PM Muhyiddin Yassin said Malaysia will relax some COVID-19 restrictions for fully vaccinated people in eight states that have met criteria such as reduced case numbers and higher vaccination rates. Authorities reported 18,688 new infections, and a record death tally of 360.
(AP, 8/8/21)
2021 Aug 8, In northern Mali gunmen attacked the communities of Ouatagouna and Karou, killing at least 40 people in apparent retribution for the recent arrest of several jihadi leaders.
(AP, 8/9/21)
2021 Aug 8, The Rwanda Defence Force tweeted that the port city of Mocímboa da Praia , a major stronghold of the insurgency for more than two years has been captured by Rwandan and Mozambican security forces.
(BBC, 8/8/21)
2021 Aug 8, It was reported that one of the Nigerian schoolgirls seized by Islamist militants Boko Haram from the town of Chibok in 2014 has been freed and reunited with her family. Ruth Ngladar Pogu and a man she is said to have married in captivity recently surrendered to the Nigerian military. Pogu and her 2 children were received by the Borno state governor.
(BBC, 8/8/21)
2021 Aug 8, North Korean state media said leader Kim Jong Un has mobilized the military to carry out relief work in areas recently hit by heavy rains, amid concerns over an economic crisis and food shortage.
(AP, 8/8/21)
2021 Aug 8, Saudi Arabian state oil producer Aramco reported a near four-fold rise in second-quarter net profit, beating expectations and boosted by higher oil prices and a recovery in oil demand.
(Reuters, 8/8/21)
2021 Aug 8, In South Sudan clashes erupted between rival factions within the military wing of Vice Pres. Rick Machar's party. Dozens were believed killed.
(SFC, 8/10/21, p.A5)
2021 Aug 8, Sudan said it ordered its envoy to Ethiopia home for consultations after a government spokeswoman in Addis Ababa rejected a Sudanese initiative to mediate a cease-fire in the Tigray war and accused it of occupying Ethiopian territory.
(AP, 8/8/21)
2021 Aug 8, More than half a million Tunisians received vaccinations as part of a campaign to control the outbreak of COVID-19 after the country received more than 6 million vaccine doses from Western and Arab countries.
(Reuters, 8/9/21)
2021 Aug 8, Vietnam's health ministry reported 9,690 coronavirus infections, a record daily increase and up from 7,334 cases a day earlier.
(Reuters, 8/8/21)
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For Asia History: https://www.asiaobserver.org/category/news/on-this-day-in-asian-history
70CE Aug 8, Tower of Antonia was destroyed by the Romans.
(MC, 8/8/02)
117 Aug 8, Marcus Ulpius Trajanus (Trajan), emperor of Rome (98-117), died.
(www.roman-emperors.org/hadrian.htm)
869 Aug 8, Lotharius II, King of Middle-France (Lotharingen) (855-869), died.
(MC, 8/8/02)
870 Aug 8, The Treaty of Mersen (Meerssen) partitioned the realm of Lothair II by his uncles Louis the German of East Francia and Charles the Bald of West Francia, the two surviving sons of Emperor Louis I the Pious.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Meerssen)
1306 Aug 8, King Wenceslas of Poland was murdered.
(HN, 8/8/98)
1562 Aug 8, Diego Te, a Maya man in the Yucatec town of Sotuta, testified that a year earlier he had witnessed a village leader and another man cut the hearts from 2 boys and hand them to a shaman, who rubbed the hearts onto the mouths of two Maya idols. The account was preserved in the Archivo General de Indias in Seville, Spain.
(AM, 7/05, p.43)
1567 Aug 8, Duke of Alba's army entered Brussels, Belgium.
(MC, 8/8/02)
1570 Aug 8, Charles IX of France signed the Treaty of St. Germain (Peace of St. Germain-en-Laye), ending the third war of religion and giving religious freedom to the Huguenots.
(TL-MB, 1988, p.22)(HN, 8/8/98)
1571 Aug 8, John Ward, English composer, was born in Canterbury.
(MC, 8/8/02)(Internet)
1588 Aug 8, The English Navy destroyed the Spanish Armada. 600 Spaniards were killed in the day’s fighting and 800 badly injured. The Duke of Medina Sidonia led the "invincible" Spanish Armada from Lisbon against England. It was shattered around the coasts of the English Isles by an English fleet under the command of Lord Howard of Effingham with the help of Sir Francis Drake, Sir John Hawkins, and a violent storm (see Aug 18). The victory opened the world for English trade and colonization. In 1959 Garrett Mattingly authored “The Armada." In 1998 Geoffrey Parker published "The Grand Strategy of Phillip II." In 2005 Neil Janson authored “The Confident Hope of a Miracle: The True Story of the Spanish Armada," and James McDermott authored “England & the Spanish Armada: The necessary Quarrel."
(ON, 3/02, p.5)(SSFC, 2/20/05, p.B2)(Econ, 5/28/05, p.85)
1636 Aug 8, The invading armies of Spain, Austria and Bavaria were stopped at the village of St.-Jean-de-Losne, only 50 miles from France.
(HN, 8/8/98)
1648 Aug 8, Ibrahim, the sultan of Istanbul, was thrown into prison, then assassinated.
(HN, 8/8/98)
1655 Aug 8, Eastern Lithuania was occupied by Russian and Cossack forces. Western Lithuania was occupied by Swedish forces. Following three days of pillaging Vilnius was burned in a fire the lasted 17 days.
(http://tinyurl.com/pm9nvcc)
1736 Aug 8, Mahomet Weyonomon, a Mohegan sachem or leader, died of smallpox while waiting to see King George II to complain directly about British settlers encroaching on tribal lands in the Connecticut colony. The tribal chief was buried in an unmarked grave in a south London churchyard.
(AP, 11/22/06)(http://tinyurl.com/ymbn3c)
1763 Aug 8, Charles Bulfinch, 1st US professional architect (Mass State House), was born in Boston, Mass.
(MC, 8/8/02)
1776 Aug 8, John Paul Jones was commissioned as a captain and appointed to command the Alfred. His orders were to harass enemy merchant ships and defend the American coast.
(ON, 2/04, p.6)(Internet)
1786 Aug 8, The US Congress adopted the silver dollar and decimal system of money.
(MC, 8/8/02)
1786 Aug 8, Jacques Balmat and Dr. Michel-Gabriel Paccard became the first men to climb Mont Blanc in France.
(HN, 8/8/98)(ON, 4/04, p.1)
1788 Aug 8, King Louis XVI called the French States and Generals together.
(MC, 8/8/02)
1788 Aug 8, Louis FAD Duke de Richelieu (92), French marshal, died.
(MC, 8/8/02)
1815 Aug 8, Napoleon Bonaparte set sail for St. Helena, in the South Atlantic, to spend the remainder of his days in exile.
(AP, 8/8/97)
1844 Aug 8, Brigham Young was chosen to head the Mormon church following the killing of Joseph Smith in Illinois.
(AP, 8/8/97)(HN, 8/8/98)
1854 Aug 8, Smith and Wesson patented metal bullet cartridges.
(MC, 8/8/02)
1860 Aug 8, Queen of Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) arrived in NYC.
(MC, 8/8/02)
1862 Aug 8, Minnesota’s 5th Infantry fought the Sioux Indians in Redwood, Minn., and 24 soldiers were killed.
(SFC, 2/7/03, p.A23)
1863 Aug 8, Confederate President Jefferson Davis refused General Robert E. Lee's resignation.
(HN, 8/8/98)
1864 Aug 8, Union troops and fleet occupied Fort Gaines, Alabama.
(MC, 8/8/02)
1864 Aug 8, The 1st Geneva Convention was issued on protecting the war wounded.
(www.redcross.org)
1866 Aug 8, African-American Matthew Alexander Henson was born in Maryland. He and four Inuits accompanied U.S. Naval Commander Robert E. Peary when he planted the U.S. flag at the North Pole on April 6, 1909. Henson became an Arctic expert during Peary's first two failed expeditions. By the third attempt, which began in July 1908, Henson's strength, knowledge of the Eskimo language and dog driving skills made him an essential member of the team. Whether Peary's party actually reached the North Pole or missed it by as much as 60 miles due to a navigational miscalculation remains controversial to this day.
(HNPD, 8//99)(Internet)
1876 Aug 8, Thomas A. Edison received a patent for his mimeograph.
(AP, 8/8/97)
1879 Aug 8, Emiliano Zapata, Mexican revolutionary who occupied Mexico City three times, was born in Anenecuilco, Morelos state, Mexico.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emiliano_Zapata)
1881 Aug 8, Paul L.E. von Kleist, German general-fieldmarshal (Eastern Front), was born.
(MC, 8/8/02)
1890 Aug 8, Daughters of American Revolution (DAR) organized. [see Oct 11]
(MC, 8/8/02)
1896 Aug 8, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (d.1953), author of "The Yearling," was born.
(HN, 8/8/00)
1897 Aug 8, Anarchist Miguel Angiolillo assassinated Spanish PM Antonio Canovas del Castillo at Santa Agueda, Spain. Práxides Mateo Sagasta became prime minister of Spain.
(NG, 11/04, p.76)(www.loc.gov/rr/hispanic/1898/chronpr.html)
1898 Aug 8, Adolph Sutro (b.1830), former mayor of SF, died. He had acquired a 100,000 volume private library, most of which was destroyed in the 1906 earthquake. He served as the 24th mayor of SF (1895-1897).
(G, Winter 98/99, p.2)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolph_Sutro)
1899 Aug 8, The first household refrigerating machine was patented.
(SFEC, 8/8/99, Z1 p.8)(HN, 8/8/00)
1899 Aug 8, Hurricane San Ciriaco made landfall in Puerto Rico. The number of fatalities ranged from 3,100 to 3,400, with the official estimate being 3,369. Approximately 250,000 people were left without food and shelter.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1899_San_Ciriaco_hurricane)
1901 Aug 8, Ernest Orlando Lawrence (d.1958), winner of the 1939 Nobel Prize for physics, was born.
(HN, 8/8/98)
1901 Aug 8, Santos-Dumont flew his powered dirigible around the Eiffel Tower a 2nd time but sprang a leak and caught suspension wires in his propeller blades.
(ON, 3/03, p.11)
1902 Aug 8, Jean Y.Y. Tissot, French painter, illustrator, died.
(MC, 8/8/02)
1907 Aug 8, Benny Carter, jazz musician, composer and bandleader, was born in New York.
(AP, 8/8/07)
1908 Aug 8, Arthur J. Goldberg (d.1990), labor lawyer, UN ambassador, Supreme Court justice (1962-65), was born in, Chicago, Illinois. He was instrumental in the merger of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations.
(HN, 8/8/98)(AP, 8/8/08)
1909 Aug 8, In Australia Sister Mary MacKillop (b.1842) died. She had founded the Sisters of St Joseph at age 24 and spent her life educating the poor and taking learning to the harsh Outback. In 2009 Pope Benedict XVI recognized a miracle in which she apparently cured a woman of cancer, paving the way to making her Australia’s first saint.
(AFP, 12/20/09)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_MacKillop)
1918 Aug 8, Opening salvos by the combined air and ground assault by soldiers from Britain, Australia, Canada, the United States and France began the Battle of Amiens. They quickly began to push back German troops to turn the tide on the Western Front.
(AP, 8/8/18)
1919 Aug 8, Afghanistan established independence from the UK with the signing of the Treaty of Rawalpindi.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Afghan_Treaty_of_1919)
1919 Aug 8, Dino De Laurentiis, producer (King Kong), was born in Torre Annunziata, Italy.
(MC, 8/8/02)
1922 Aug 8, Rudi Gernreich, designer (1st women's topless swimsuit, miniskirt), was born in Vienna, Austria.
(MC, 8/8/02)(Internet)
1922 Aug 8, An Italian general strike was broken by fascist terror.
(MC, 8/8/02)
1925 Aug 8, The Ku Klux Klan held its first national march, in Washington, D.C. Between 25,000 and 40,000 marchers took to the streets.
(http://mallhistory.org/items/show/175)
1925 Aug 8, Alija Izetbegovic (d.2003) was born in Bosanski Samac. He later led Bosnia's Muslims during the 1992-95 war for independence and became one of the republic's first postwar presidents.
(AP, 10/19/03)(SFC, 10/20/03, p.A18)
1929 Aug 8, Josef Suk, violinist (Artist of Merit-1977), was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia.
(MC, 8/8/02)
1937 Aug 8, Dustin Hoffman, American actor, was born.
(HN, 8//00)
1937 Aug 8, The Japanese Army occupied Beijing, China.
(HN, 8/8/98)
1940 Aug 8, The German Luftwaffe attacked Great Britain for the first time, beginning the Battle of Britain.
(HN, 8/8/98)
1942 Aug 8, U.S. Marines captured the Japanese airstrip on Guadalcanal.
(HN, 8/8/98)
1942 Aug 8, Six convicted Nazi saboteurs who had landed in the United States were executed in Washington, D.C. Two others received life imprisonment.
(AP, 8/8/97)
1944 Aug 8, U.S. forces completed the capture of the Marianas Islands.
(HN, 8/8/98)
1944 Aug 8, Erwin von Witzleben (62), German fieldmarshal, was hanged.
(MC, 8/8/02)
1944 Aug 8, On the island of Guam US Marine Corps patrols from the 21st Regiment discovered 45 bodies of young Chamorro men in Chagui'an, beheaded and with their hands tied behind their backs. The site of the massacre was later disputed as the Guam Preservation Trust moved to put the Chagui'an Massacre site in Yigo into the National Register of Historic Places.
(AP, 4/4/15)
1945 Aug 8, President Truman signed the United Nations Charter.
(AP, 8/8/97)
1945 Aug 8, The Soviet Union declared war against Japan. 1.5 million Soviet troops launched a massive surprise attack (August Storm) against Japanese occupation forces in northern China and Korea. Within days, Tokyo's million-man army in the region had collapsed in one of the greatest military defeats in history.
(SFC, 9/9/96, p.A19)(AP, 8/8/97)(AP, 8/6/05)
1949 Aug 8, Joaquin Torres-Garcia (b.1874), Uruguayan artist, died. As a theoretician he published "more than one hundred and fifty books, essays and articles written in Catalan, Spanish, French, English.
(http://tinyurl.com/ju4k6kk)(Econ, 10/22/16, p.30)
1950 Aug 8, U.S. troops repelled the first North Korean attempt to overrun them at the battle of Naktong Bulge, which continued for 10 days.
(HN, 8/8/98)
1950 Aug 8, Florence Chadwick (1918-1995) swam the English Channel from France to Dover in 13 hours and 23 minutes. A year later she swam the reverse in 16:22.
(http://www.ishof.org/70fchadwick.html)
1950 Aug 8, Nicolai Yakovlevich Miaskovsky (b.1891), Russian composer, died.
(http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0583975/)
1953 Aug 8, The song “Vaya con Dios" recorded by Les Paul and his wife Mary Ford reached number one on the Billboard magazine Best Seller Chart and stayed there for 9 weeks.
(SFC, 8/14/09, p.D6)
1953 Aug 8, The United States and South Korea initialed a mutual security pact.
(AP, 8/8/99)
1953 Aug 8, In Russia Georgi Malenkov reported the possession of hydrogen bomb.
(MC, 8/8/02)
1955 Aug 8, Fidel Castro formed his "July 26th Movement."
(MC, 8/8/02)
1959 Aug 8, In San Francisco beatniks hung an effigy of police officer William Bigarani from a telephone pole outside the Co-Existence Bagel Shop in North Beach. He and officer John Cuneo had been intimidating local beats for months and had recently crushed a toe of poet Bob Kaufman.
(SFC, 3/14/15, p.C2)
1960 Aug 8, The pop song "Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polkadot Bikini", sung by Brian Hyland (16), hit #1. The song was written by Paul Vance and Lee Pockriss.
(www.popculturemadness.com/Music/Pop-Modern/1960.html)(SFC, 9/28/06, p.A2)
1962 Aug 8, The Chilean TV variety show "Sabados Gigantes" (Gigantic Saturdays) debuted with Mario Luis Kreutzberger Blumenfeld (b.1940) as Don Francisco. In April, 1986, the show got shortened to the singular version (Sabado Gigante) went it went on air in Miami, Fla. Kreutzberger was the son of German Jews who fled Nazi persecution.
(www.imdb.com/title/tt0250920/)(SSFC, 11/9/03, Par p.16)(SFC, 4/14/04, p.E1)
1963 Aug 8, Britain's "Great Train Robbery" took place as thieves made off with 120 mailbags with 2.62 million pounds in banknotes. 15 men under Bruce Reynolds (d.2013) held up the Glasgow to London Royal Mail (Glasgow-Euston train) and took off with $7.2 mil in sterling. They badly beat up train driver Jack Mills. He never returned to work and died seven years later without making a full recovery. Ronald Biggs claimed to be one of the 15 men and later lived freely in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. His share of the robbery was $2.8 mil but he was arrested just four weeks after the robbery. He escaped from Wandsworth Prison in 1965 and was still wanted in Britain. Only 1/8 of the money stolen was ever recovered. Dinner at home with Mr. Biggs could be purchased for $50. In 1994 Biggs published an autobiography. In 1999 a video game was developed based on the event. Biggs (71) returned to Britain in 2001 and in 2009 he was up for parole. Reynolds spent five years as a fugitive. On his return to Britain he was caught by police and sentenced 25 years in prison for the train heist, of which he served just 10. Reynolds published a memoir titled "Autobiography of a Thief" and became a consultant on a crime film.
(SFE, 10/1/95, p.T-8)(AP, 8/8/97)(WSJ, 11/4/99, p.A28)(WSJ, 5/7/01, p.A1)(AFP, 7/1/09)(AP, 2/28/13)
1965 Aug 8, In San Francisco race car driver Bart Martin (26) was killed at the Candlestick Park Sports Car Races. A two-mile track had been laid out around Candlestick Park’s huge parking area.
(SSFC, 8/2/15, DB p.50)
1965 Aug 8, Shirley Jackson, writer and author of horror fiction, died in Vermont. Her work included "The Haunting of Hill House" (1959) and "The Lottery" (1948). In 1997 a collection of short fiction was published titled "Just an Ordinary Day." In 2016 Ruth Franklin authored “Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life."
(SFEM, 1/12/97, BR p.3)(Econ, 9/24/16, p.80)
1966 Aug 8, South African Broadcasting banned the Beatles for Lennon's anti-Jesus remark.
(MC, 8/8/02)
1967 Aug 8, The Association of Southeast Asian Nations or ASEAN was established in Bangkok by the five original Member Countries, namely, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand. Brunei Darussalam joined on 8 January 1984, Vietnam on 28 July 1995, Laos and Myanmar on 23 July 1997, and Cambodia on 30 April 1999.
(www.aseansec.org/64.htm)
1968 Aug 8, Richard M. Nixon was nominated for president at the Republican National Convention in Miami Beach. Later that day, Nixon chose Maryland Gov. Spiro T. Agnew to be his running mate.
(AP, 8/8/97)
1968 Aug 8, In Florida a riot broke out last night in several neighborhoods of Miami, including one community just 10 miles from the Republican Convention. 3 negroes were killed by gunfire.
(www.project1968.com/august-4-10-1968.html)
1969 Aug 8, Actress Sharon Tate (26) and four other people were brutally murdered in her Beverly Hills home; cult leader Charles Manson and a group of his disciples were later convicted of the crime. The best writing on the Manson murders was by Joan Didion in "The White Album."
(SFEC, 3/16/97, z1 p.4)(AP, 8/9/97)(HN, 8/9/98)(SFEC, 9/19/99, BR p.6)
1972 Aug 8, A special meeting of the Democratic National Committee chose R. Sargent Shriver, the former director of the Peace Corps, as McGovern‘s running mate. The Democrat ticket was swamped in the general election by incumbent President Richard Nixon in the November 7 election.
(HNQ, 4/25/00)
1973 Aug 8, Vice President Spiro T. Agnew branded as "damned lies" reports he had taken kickbacks from government contracts in Maryland and vowed not to resign. He eventually did resign.
(AP, 8/8/97)
1973 Aug 8, In Texas Elmer Wayne Henley (17) called police in the Houston suburb of Pasadena to report a shooting. The high school dropout said he had killed Dean Corll after the 33-year-old electric company employee threatened to rape and kill Henley and two other teenagers who had gone to party at Corll's modest bungalow. By night's end 8 corpses were recovered from makeshift graves inside the corrugated metal shed in southwest Houston. The next day 9 more were discovered. Another 10 bodies were found on remote High Island beach, 80 miles east of Houston, and in a wooded area near Lake Sam Rayburn in East Texas. 27 dead Some as young as 13, none older than 21, were all victims of one killer, Dean Corll, and his two teenage accomplices, Elmer Wayne Henley and David Owen Brooks. The boys had seemed to vanish over the previous three years. In July, 1974, Henley was convicted in six of the murders and sentenced to six life terms in prison.
(AP, 6/8/08)
1973 Aug 8, Secret agents of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency kidnapped Kim Dae-jung from a Tokyo hotel, just days before he was to launch a coalition of Japan-based South Korean organizations to work for their country's democratization. Conservative politician Kim Jong Pil (b.1926), the father of the secret police agency, led the kidnapping and near assassination of politician Kim Dae Jung (b.1925). In 2007 a fact-finding panel of the National Intelligence Service said it cannot rule out the possibility that former President Park Chung-hee may have directly ordered the kidnapping of Kim, then his main political rival.
(AP, 10/24/07)(SFC,12/15/97, p.B1)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Jong-pil)
1974 Aug 8, President Nixon announced he would resign his office 12PM Aug 9, following damaging revelations in the Watergate scandal.
(AP, 8/8/97)(www.watergate.info/nixon/resignation-speech.shtml)
1974 Aug 8, Baldur von Schirach (b.1907), Nazi youth leader, died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baldur_von_Schirach)
1975 Aug 8, Julian "Cannonball" Adderley (b.1928), sax player, died of a stroke.
(SFC, 1/5/00, p.C3)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannonball_Adderley)
1978 Aug 8, The United States launched Pioneer Venus II, which carried scientific probes to study the atmosphere of Venus.
(HFA, '96, p.36)(AP, 8/8/99)
1978 Aug 8, James Ramp (52), Philadelphia police officer, was killed during a standoff with MOVE. 9 members of MOVE, a Black group that espoused equality with animals and preached against technology, were convicted. Members of the group adopted the surname Africa.
(SFC, 3/16/98, p.A20)(www.odmp.org/officer/10987-police-officer-james-j.-ramp)
1979 Aug 8, In Iran the revolutionary prosecutor banned the leading left-wing newspaper, Ayandegan. 5 days later hezbollahis broke up a Tehran rally called by the National Democratic Front, a newly organized left-of-center political movement, to protest the Ayandegan closing.
(http://tinyurl.com/3cssq4)
1979 Aug 8, Iraqi president Saddam Hussein executed 21 political opponents.
(www.foreignaffairs.org/1979/2.html)
1980 Aug 8, In Rantoul, Illinois, Brianna Stickle (3) was found raped and killed. In 2012 Andre Davis (50) was released after spending 32 years in jail. DNA evidence taken at the scene was found to not be his.
(SSFC, 7/8/12, p.A7)
1983 Aug 8, In Guatemala Gen’l. Efrain Rios Montt (b.1926) was overthrown and the military government of Gen. Humberto Mejia Victores took power.
(SFC, 7/5/96, p.A13)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efra%C3%ADn_R%C3%ADos_Montt)
1985 Aug 8, Mary Louise Brooks (b.1906), American silent film star, died. In 1982 she authored her memoir “Lulu in Hollywood."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louise_Brooks)
1987 Aug 8, In the Persian Gulf, a Navy F-14 "Tomcat" fighter fired two missiles at an Iranian jet approaching an unarmed U.S. scout plane. Both missiles missed their target and the Iranian plane flew off.
(AP, 8/8/97)
1988 Aug 8, A renovated NYC Central Park Zoo reopened after 4 years.
(http://nyzoosandaquarium.com/czabout)
1988 Aug 8, Sec. of State Shultz narrowly escaped an assassination attempt in Bolivia.
(www.tkb.org/MorePatterns.jsp?countryCd=BL&year=1988)
1988 Aug 8, U.N. Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar announced a cease-fire between Iran and Iraq. This became an Iraqi national holiday until it was abolished in 2003.
(SFC, 2/24/9, p.A9)(AP, 8/8/98)(AP, 7/13/03)
1988 Aug 8, In Burma an uprising began after more than a quarter of a century of military rule and international isolation that had condemned once-prosperous country to poverty. The flag of the uprising featured a fighting peacock.
(AP, 8/8/18)
1988 Aug 8-1988 Aug 13, Police in Burma (Myanmar) killed nearly 3,000 protesters in the streets of Rangoon.
(SFEC, 1/19/96, Par. p.5)(SFEC, 10/22/00, p.T8)
1989 Aug 8, The space shuttle Columbia blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on a secret, five-day military mission to deploy a new Pentagon spy satellite.
(AP, 8/8/99)(SSFC, 2/2/03, p.A6)
1990 Aug 8, Pete Rose began a 5-month prison term at Marion (IL) Federal prison camp.
(www.baseballlibrary.com/baseballlibrary/ballplayers/R/Rose_Pete.stm)
1990 Aug 8, As the Persian Gulf crisis deepened, American forces began taking up positions in Saudi Arabia; Iraq announced it had annexed Kuwait as its 19th province; President Bush warned Iraqi President Saddam Hussein that "a line has been drawn in the sand."
(AP, 8/8/00)
1991 Aug 8, James B. Irwin (b.1930), Col USAF, astronaut (Apollo 15), died. He was the 8th person to walk on the moon.
(www.astronautix.com/astros/irwin.htm)
1991 Aug 8, Lebanese kidnappers freed British TV producer John McCarthy, held hostage for more than five years; however, a rival group abducted Frenchman Jerome Leyraud, threatening to kill him if any more hostages were released Leyraud was freed three days later.
(AP, 8/8/01)
1991 Aug 8, The 2,120-foot 8-inch Radio One tower in Poland fell down.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_radio_mast)
1992 Aug 8, The U.S. basketball "Dream Team" clinched the gold at the Barcelona Summer Olympics, defeating Croatia 117-85.
(AP, 8/8/97)
1992 Aug 8, The space shuttle Atlantis returned from a problem-plagued mission.
(AP, 8/8/97)
1992 Aug 8, AIDS activist Alison Gertz died in New York at age 26.
(AP, 8/8/97)
1993 Aug 8, Six people were killed when their balloon hit a power line near Aspen, Colorado, tearing off the basket and sending it plunging 30 meters to the ground.
(AP, 2/26/13)
1993 Aug 8, Freddie Woodruff (b.1947), CIA agent chief in Tbilisi, Georgia, was shot and killed during an outing with friends. Georgian authorities charged Anzor Sharmaidze (20), a volunteer soldier, with the murder. Sharmaidze confessed under torture and later said he was framed for the murder. In 2008 Sharmaidze was granted parole from prison.
(WSJ, 10/18/08, p.A1)(http://public.cq.com/docs/hs/hsnews110-000002604568.html)(WSJ, 10/27/08, p.a12)
1993 Aug 8, In Somalia, four U.S. soldiers were killed when a land mine was detonated underneath their vehicle. This prompted President Clinton to order Army Rangers to try to capture Somali warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid.
(AP, 8/8/98)
1994 Aug 8, Israel and Jordan opened the first road link between the two once warring countries.
(AP, 8/8/99)
1995 Aug 8, President Clinton, during a visit to Baltimore, ordered all companies doing business with the federal government to report the pollution they cause.
(AP, 8/8/00)
1995 Aug 8, Hussein Kamel al-Majid, formerly Iraq's industry minister, defected to Jordan with his brother and their wives, both of whom were daughters of Saddam Hussein. He vowed to topple Saddam and said that Sadam Hussein had planned to invade Kuwait and Saudi Arabia this month and that Iraq had been three months away from testing an atomic bomb before the Gulf War began.
(WSJ, 8/21/95, p.A-1)(SFC, 9/4/96, p.A8)
1996 Aug 8, President Clinton belittled Bob Dole's tax plan, vowing to oppose tax cuts that he said the country couldn't afford. Republican sources, meanwhile, said Dole was seriously considering Jack Kemp to be his running mate.
(AP, 8/8/97)
1996 Aug 8, Sir Neville Mott (1906-1996), who shared the 1977 Nobel Prize in physics with Philip Anderson and John van Vleck for research on the behavior of electricity in non-crystalline or so-called "disordered" materials, died in London.
(SFC, 8/11/96, p.D5)
1996 Aug 8, Medical researchers successfully cured patients with sickle-cell anemia by using a risky bone-marrow transplant technique.
(WSJ, 7/8/96,p.A1)
1996 Aug 8, In Cambodia the government announced an internal power struggle and split in the Khmer Rouge. Leng Sary, a Pol Pot chum and the Khmer Rouge foreign minister, opposed Son Sen, the minister of defense and led defections that grew to 10,000.
(SFC, 8/12/96, p.A13)(SFC, 6/14/97, p.A15)(WSJ, 4/17/98, p.A13)
1996 Aug 8, Food poisoning due to E. coli bacteria in the city of Sakai, Japan, was attributed to radish sprouts.
(WSJ, 7/8/96,p.A1)
1997 Aug 8, US Sec. of State Madeleine Albright announced that the bulk of US aid to Cambodia would be suspended.
(SFC, 8/9/97, p.A9)
1997 Aug 8, The Teamsters and United Parcel Service completed a second day of federally mediated talks, with neither side reporting progress toward ending a strike.
(AP, 8/8/98)
1997 Aug 8, It was reported that researchers have discovered how the defective gene in Huntington’s disease causes the disorder. A genetic "stutter" inserts from 30 to 150 copies of the amino acid glutamine into key proteins and alters their properties.
(SFC, 8/8/97, p.A3)
1997 Aug 8, In Ddjelfa, Algeria, a bomb in a baby bassinet killed 9 people. In the village of Zeboudja insurgents slit the throats of 21 people and 20 others were shot and wounded.
(SFC, 8/11/97, p.A8)
1997 Aug 8, Gen’l. Eric Shinseki, the American in charge of NATO forces in Bosnia, announced a plan to force all paramilitary troops to disband or face arrest.
(SFC, 8/9/97, p.A9)
1997 Aug 8, In Columbia Senator Jorge Cristo and a bodyguard were killed in Cucuta. Police said leftist guerrillas were responsible.
(SFC, 8/9/97, p.C1)
1997 Aug 8, The resumption of limited oil sales by Iraq was cleared by the UN Security Council. The UN plan allows the sale of $2 billion in crude oil every 6 months.
(SFC, 8/9/97, p.C1)
1997 Aug 8, Fighting broke out on the Israel-Lebanon border when guerrillas fired rockets into northern Israel and Israeli warplanes struck back. 13 people have died since Aug 4 when Israeli commandos set off bombs behind the front line killing 3 guerrilla field commanders and 2 fighters.
(SFC, 8/9/97, p.A8)
1997 Aug 8, In Kenya a nationwide strike was called and declared illegal by the government. In Nairobi a crowd of some 2,000 gathered and killed Gilbert Simiyu, a plainclothes police officer. The strike turned into a riot with looting.
(SFC, 8/9/97, p.C1)
1997 Aug 8, The largest int’l. military exercise in Latvia’s history took place over 5 days at the Adazi training center organized by the Northwest Europe Command. Troops from 15 countries were to participate.
(BN, 6/97)
1997 Aug 8, In Peru at least 20 bus passengers were killed in a crash in the province of Cuzco. Some 80 people have died in 4 bus crashes in the last week.
(SFC, 8/9/97, p.C1)
1997 Aug 8, On St. Vincent James and Penny Fletcher were acquitted of the murder of Jerome Joseph after 9 months of incarceration.
(SFC, 8/9/97, p.A8)
1998 Aug 8, Pres. Clinton in weekly radio address vowed the bombers of 2 US embassies in Africa would be brought to justice, "no matter how long it takes or where it takes us.''
(AP, 8/8/99)
1998 Aug 8, A riot broke out in Reno, Nv., during the annual "Hot Autumn Nights" festival. There was some property damage and a few minor injuries. 130 people were arrested.
(SFC, 8/10/98, p.A2)
1998 Aug 8, In Afghanistan the Taliban overran Mazar-i-Sharif and killed 9 of 11 diplomats from Iran. 8 of the dead were diplomats, the 9th was a journalist. Later reports indicated that the Taliban killed as many as 4,000 civilians, mostly Hazaras, in a campaign partly designed to wipe out the Shiite Muslim minority. Hazara residents were given 3 choices: convert to Sunni Islam, leave for Shiite Iran, or die.
(SFC, 9/11/98, p.D4)(SFC, 9/18/98, p.D8)(SFC, 2/19/01, p.A9)(SFC, 2/12/02, p.A16)
1998 Aug 8, A group called the Liberation Arm of the Islamic Sanctuaries claimed responsibility for the bombing of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and threatened more attacks. Israeli troops began to arrive to assist in rescue efforts.
(SFC, 8/8/98, p.A1)(SFEC, 8/9/98, p.A1)(SFC, 8/10/98, p.A13)
1998 Aug 8, In Iran the first daily newspaper dedicated to women’s issues, the daily Zan, was launched by Faezeh Hashemi. She was the daughter of former Pres. Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.
(SFEC, 8/9/98, p.A16)
1998 Aug 8, In Northern Ireland some 15,000 Apprentice Boys marched through Londonderry with a few minor scuffles.
(SFEC, 8/9/98, p.A17)
1998 Aug 8, In Serbia Slobodan Milijkovic, a Serb wanted by the Int’l. War Crimes Tribunal, was shot and killed by a policeman along with 2 others following insults at an outdoor cafe in Belgrade. Milijkovic, a suspected member of the Chetnicks ultra-nationalist paramilitary unit, had rejected responsibility and said politicians were to blame for the war.
(SFEC, 8/9/98, p.A17)
1998 Aug 8, From Sri Lanka it was reported that recent fighting has left some 1,800 guerrillas and 1,600 government troops dead.
(SFC, 8/8/98, p.B1)
1999 Aug 8, Opening a new attack on the Republican tax-cut measure, President Clinton warned the nation’s governors at their meeting in St. Louis that the $792 billion package would trigger "huge cuts" in Medicare, farm programs and other spending critical to their voters.
(AP, 8/8/00)
1999 Aug 8, In Guyana Pres. Janet Jagan (78) announced that she was resigning due to ill health and that Bharat Jagdeo (35), her finance minister, would succeed her.
(SFC, 8/9/99, p.A9)
1999 Aug 8, In Honduras the government began investigating the El Aguacate air base where human remains had been discovered 4 days earlier. The site was a former training base for Nicaraguan Contras.
(SFC, 8/9/99, p.A8)
1999 Aug 8, In Jerusalem Yasser Arafat accepted Ehud Barak's proposal to delay land transfers and troop withdrawals until October.
(SFC, 8/9/99, p.A8)
1999 Aug 8, In southern Lebanon Israeli warplanes bombed suspected rebel positions after Hezbollah guerrillas struck an Israeli outpost at Blatt.
(SFC, 8/9/99, p.A10)
1999 Aug 8, In southern Russia federal forces opened fire from the ground and air on Islamic militants in Dagestan. Prime minister Stepashin was in the capital Makhachkala. The state is home to some 33 ethnic groups including Wahhabi militants backed by Chechen commanders. Shamil Basayev, a Chechen militant, declared Dagestan an independent Islamic state within days of seizing several villages.
(SFC, 8/9/99, p.A11)(SFC, 8/14/99, p.A10)
1999 Aug 8, In Sierra Leone rebels freed at least 19 of 35 captives taken on Aug 5.
(SFC, 8/9/99, p.A10)
1999 Aug 8, In Sweden AB Volvo reached a deal to acquire Scania AB for $7.3 billion.
(WSJ, 8/9/99, p.A13)
2000 Aug 8, Vice President Al Gore formally introduced and celebrated his Jewish running mate, Senator Joseph Lieberman, during an appearance in Gore’s home state of Tennessee.
(AP, 8/8/01)
2000 Aug 8, Audiotapes recorded Enron traders deliberately congesting Western power lines: “If you can congest it, that’s a moneymaker no matter what."
(SFC, 6/15/04, p.A1)
2000 Aug 8, Some 109 nuclear waste sites in 27 states, Puerto Rico and territorial islands of the Pacific would remain dangerous for centuries according to a new report by the US National Research Council.
(WSJ, 8/8/00, p.A24)
2000 Aug 8, The Civil War submarine Hunley was raised and returned to Charleston, SC. State Sen. Glenn McConnell raised funds for the Hunley project, which by 2006 reached $13.8 million, with another $15.5 million committed.
(SFC, 8/9/00, p.A3)(Econ, 4/10/04, p.25)
2000 Aug 8, In Bhutan flash floods and mudslides left at least 50 people dead.
(SFC, 8/9/00, p.A14)
2000 Aug 8, Chile’s Supreme Court stripped General Augusto Pinochet’s immunity, clearing the way for the former dictator to be tried on human rights charges. However, an appeals court later ruled Pinochet unfit to stand trial because of his deteriorating health and mental condition.
(SFC, 8/9/00, p.A10)(AP, 8/8/01)
2000 Aug 8, In northeast India flash floods and mudslides left at least 80 people dead and 2 million homeless.
(SFC, 8/9/00, p.A14)
2000 Aug 8, In Iran the daily Bahar newspaper was closed by the hard-line judiciary for "disturbing public opinion."
(SFC, 8/9/00, p.A14)
2000 Aug 8, In Kashmir the militant Hizbul Mujahedeen called off its cease-fire.
(SFC, 8/9/00, p.A11)
2000 Aug 8, In Russia a bomb exploded through an underground walkway in Moscow’s Pushkin Square and at least 13 people were killed. Another bomb was found and defused.
(SFC, 8/9/00, p.A1)(AP, 8/8/01)
2000 Aug 8, In Spain a car bomb exploded in Madrid, where 11 people were injured and in Zumaia where 1 man was killed. The ETA was blamed.
(SFC, 8/9/00, p.A14)
2001 Aug 8, Four American Senators met with Pres. Jiang Zemin in China and warned him that the continued sales of sensitive missile technology would trigger an arms race and boost internal US support for a missile defense system.
(SFC, 8/9/01, p.A10)
2001 Aug 8, US Federal authorities announced the arrests of 100 people nationwide in an Internet child pornography operation, Landslide Productions Inc., based in Fort Worth, Tx.
(SFC, 8/9/01, p.A3)
2001 Aug 8, Maureen Reagan (b.1941), daughter of former Pres. Ronald Reagan, died of malignant melanoma. She authored the 1989 autobiography "First Father, First Daughter."
(SFC, 8/9/01, p.A20)(NW, 12/31/01, p.106)
2001 Aug 8, In Argentina thousands of state workers, students and jobless marched on Buenos Aires for a 2nd day to protest government plans to cut wages and pensions.
(SFC, 8/9/01, p.A9)
2001 Aug 8, In Bangladesh a stampede of textile workers was caused by a false fire alarm and 23 people were crushed to death.
(WSJ, 8/9/01, p.A1)
2001 Aug 8, Jacques Kerchache (b.1942), French explorer and collector of primitive art, died in Cancun, Mexico.
(Econ, 4/16/11, p.91)(http://tinyurl.com/3pyax8r)
2001 Aug 8, In Iran Mohammad Khatami was sworn in as president for a second term. Political in-fighting with conservatives delayed the ceremony by 3 days.
(SFC, 8/9/01, p.A9)(AP, 8/8/02)
2001 Aug 8, In Italy police chief Gianni de Gennaro acknowledged that excessive force had been used against protesters of the Group 8 summit.
(SFC, 8/9/01, p.A8)
2001 Aug 8, In Lebanon up to 250 people were arrested in protests that demanded Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon.
(SFC, 8/9/01, p.A9)
2001 Aug 8, In Macedonia political leaders initialed a peace agreement as rebels ambushed an army convoy and killed 10 soldiers.
(SFC, 8/9/01, p.A8)
2002 Aug 8, The FCC ordered TV manufacturers to install tuners for digital signals in new TV sets by 2007.
(SFC, 8/9/02, p.A1)
2002 Aug 8, Bankrupt telecommunications firm WorldCom said it had uncovered another $3.3 billion in bogus accounting, adding to the $3.85 billion fraud it revealed in June.
(AP, 8/8/03)
2002 Aug 8, In Oregon the Florence and Sour Biscuit fires merged and formed the largest active fire in the nation. The fire soon covered 308,000 acres.
(SFC, 8/9/02, p.A9)(SFC, 8/10/02, p.A5)
2002 Aug 8, Australia's highest court ruled that Aborigines do not have rights to oil or minerals found under tribal land now being used by mining companies.
(AP, 8/8/02)
2002 Aug 8, The Chinese government awarded an Australian consortium a 25-year natural gas supply contract in Australia's biggest-ever foreign trade deal.
(AP, 8/8/02)
2002 Aug 8, In Colombia President Alvaro Uribe pressed ahead with Plan Meteor to equip 1 million citizens with radios to report on rebel activity.
(AP, 8/9/02)(SFC, 8/9/02, p.A20)
2002 Aug 8, In Indonesia Lorenzo Taddei (34), an Italian tourist, was shot dead in Central Sulawesi when gunmen fired on the bus he was traveling in.
(Reuters, 8/9/02)
2002 Aug 8, In Northern Ireland gunmen shot the son of Protestant extremist Johnny "Mad Dog" Adair in both legs, an act known as kneecapping.
(WSJ, 8/9/02, p.A1)
2002 Aug 8, Saddam Hussein organized a big military parade and then warned "the forces of evil" not to attack Iraq as he sought once more to shift the debate away from world demands that he live up to agreements that ended the Gulf War.
(AP, 8/8/03)
2002 Aug 8, Israeli troops and tanks briefly swept into a town in the northern Gaza Strip for the second time in two days, killing a youth and wounding three others in a clash with Palestinian stone throwers. Negotiators failed to reach agreement, but scheduled more talks on a gradual Israeli troop pullback from some Palestinian areas.
(AP, 8/8/02)
2002 Aug 8, In Nigeria police freed 46 captives many of them chained and badly beaten in raids on five "torture centers" run by a feared vigilante group.
(AP, 8/9/02)
2002 Aug 8, South Korea said 10 people were dead after four days of torrential rains that North Korea reported had also caused scores of casualties and destroyed crops in the hungry communist state.
(Reuters, 8/8/02)
2002 Aug 8, Taiwan said it may forge ahead with legislation for a referendum on formal independence from China, but sought to soften the blow with an assurance it would not hold a vote unless forced into a corner.
(AP, 8/8/02)
2002 Aug 8, The bodies of two Uzbek prisoners, Muzafar Avazov and Khusnuddin Olimov, who died in custody while jailed for alleged religious extremism were returned to their families for burial. Both men were jailed for membership in the banned Islamic group Hizb-ut-Tahrir.
(AP, 8/8/02)
2003 Aug 8, George Soros pledged $10 million to a political action committee called America Coming Together to defeat George Bush in 2004.
(AP, 8/8/03)
2003 Aug 8, A US federal judge ruled that some 264,000 square miles of submerged lands in the Northern Mariana Islands, a US commonwealth, belong to the United States.
(AP, 8/8/03)
2003 Aug 8, The Boston Roman Catholic archdiocese offered $55 million to settle lawsuits stemming from sex abuse by priests. The archdiocese later settled for $85 million.
(AP, 8/8/04)
2003 Aug 8, In eastern Colombia suspected rebels set off a car bomb near the Saravena airport, killing five civilians, including two children.
(AP, 8/8/03)
2003 Aug 8, In India workers camped out at a mountain tunnel were hit by a fierce overnight thunderstorm near a Himalayan resort in Himachal Pradesh state, leaving at least 26 dead.
(AP, 8/8/03)
2003 Aug 8, Mahmud Dhiyab Al-Ahmad, Saddam Hussein's former interior minister, (No. 29 on the list of 55 most-wanted Iraqis) surrendered to coalition forces.
(AP, 8/10/03)
2003 Aug 8, A West Bank raid on a bomb lab by Israeli troops killed 2 members of the Islamic militant group Hamas. An Israeli soldier also was killed.
(AP, 8/9/03)
2003 Aug 8, Hezbollah guerrillas shelled Israeli positions in a disputed Lebanese border region for the first time in eight months, drawing Israeli airstrikes and artillery fire.
(AP, 8/8/03)
2004 Aug 8, The US military said 2 American soldiers and their Afghan interpreter died when a bomb hit their Humvee.
(AP, 8/8/04)
2004 Aug 8, Alan Keyes, the Republican two-time presidential hopeful, threw his hat into Illinois' Senate race (he ended up losing to Democrat Barack Obama).
(AP, 8/8/05)
2004 Aug 8, Fay Wray (b.1907), film actress, died. She was best known for her 1933 performance in “King Kong."
(SFC, 8/10/04, p.B7)
2004 Aug 8, Traces of the anti-depressant Prozac have been found in Britain's drinking water supply, setting off alarm bells with environmentalists concerned about potentially toxic effects. In the decade up to 2001, overall prescriptions of antidepressants in Britain rose from 9 million to 24 million a year.
(AP, 8/8/04)
2004 Aug 8, Iraq reinstated capital punishment for people guilty of murder, endangering national security and distributing drugs.
(AP, 8/8/04)
2004 Aug 8, Iraq's chief investigating judge said Ahmad Chalabi, a former Governing Council member with strong U.S. ties, was wanted in Iraq on counterfeiting charges, while Salem Chalabi, head of the special tribunal in charge of trying Saddam, faced an arrest warrant for murder.
(AP, 8/9/04)
2004 Aug 8, Militants in Iraq said they had taken a top Iranian diplomat hostage. Faridoun Jihani was identified as the "consul for the Islamic Republic of Iran in Karbala."
(AP, 8/8/04)
2004 Aug 8, In San Juan Chamula, Mexico, hundreds of enraged residents of this impoverished Indian community locked the mayor and three other municipal officials in jail, claiming they embezzled funds from public works projects.
(AP, 8/8/04)
2004 Aug 8, In Pakistan 2 bombs ripped through an Islamic school, killing 8 and injuring 42.
(AP, 8/9/04)
2004 Aug 8, Pakistan confirmed that Qari Saifullah Akhtar, a senior bin Laden operative, had been captured in the UAR and transferred to Lahore.
(SFC, 8/9/04, p.A1)
2004 Aug 8, The death toll from monsoons in South Asia reached 1,972. At least 1,152 have died in India, 691 in Bangladesh, 124 in Nepal and 5 in Pakistan.
(AP, 8/8/04)(SSFC, 8/8/04, p.A3)
2004 Aug 8, President Leonid Kuchma, joined by other top officials, attended the startup of nuclear reactor No. 2 at the Khmelnitskyi plant in western Ukraine.
(AP, 8/8/04)
2005 Aug 8, Pres. Bush signed the Energy Policy Act. The bill gave billions in tax breaks to encourage homegrown energy production. Under the new law, effective March 2007, Daylight Saving Time would begin three weeks earlier than previously, on the second Sunday in March. DST would be extended by one week to the first Sunday in November.
(www.energy.ca.gov/daylightsaving.html)(AP, 8/8/06)
2005 Aug 8, After orbiting the Earth for nearly two weeks, astronauts aboard space shuttle Discovery were told to circle the planet for another day as bad weather in Florida forced NASA to delay Monday's scheduled landing.
(AP, 8/8/05)
2005 Aug 8, In California 42 inmates were injured when a simmering dispute between two ethnic groups erupted into the largest riot at San Quentin State Prison in 23 years.
(AP, 8/9/05)
2005 Aug 8, Crude-oil prices rallied to a new high above $63 a barrel.
(AP, 8/8/05)
2005 Aug 8, Barbara Bel Geddes (82), stage and screen actress, died in Maine. She was best known for her role as the matriarch on the TV series “Dallas."
(SFC, 8/10/05, p.B7)
2005 Aug 8, John H. Johnson (b.1919) founding publisher of Ebony (1945), Jet (1951), and Ebony Man (1985), died in Chicago.
(HN, 11/1/98)(SFC, 8/8/05, p.B4)(AP, 8/8/06)
2005 Aug 8, In southern Afghanistan one US service member and at least 16 suspected Taliban rebels were killed in fighting.
(AP, 8/9/05)
2005 Aug 8-2005 Aug 9, In Afghanistan US airstrikes during operations against militants killed civilians and wounded others, including an infant according to local villagers.
(AP, 8/11/05)
2005 Aug 8, Milan Lukic, a former Bosnia Serb paramilitary leader, was captured in Argentina. He was wanted by a U.N. tribunal on charges of crimes against humanity.
(AP, 8/8/05)
2005 Aug 8, The EU head office gave its clearance for the import of a genetically modified corn product made by American biotechnology company Monsanto Co. for use in animal feed.
(AP, 8/8/05)
2005 Aug 8, India and Pakistan agreed to extend a two-year-old cease-fire in disputed Kashmir, but did not discuss the question of reducing their military presence there.
(AP, 8/8/05)
2005 Aug 8, In eastern India suspected rebels launched renewed attacks overnight on pipelines, leaving oil operations in the remote region in critical shape.
(AP, 8/8/05)
2005 Aug 8, Health officials in Indonesia reported 205 children with polio.
(WSJ, 8/9/05, p.A1)
2005 Aug 8, Iran resumed uranium conversion activities at its Isfahan nuclear facility, a step that Europeans and the US warned would prompt them to seek UN sanctions against Tehran.
(AP, 8/8/05)
2005 Aug 8, In Iraq armed men deposed Baghdad’s Mayor Alaa al-Tamini. They installed Hussein al-Tahaan, a member of the Badr organization, and governor of Baghdad province.
(SFC, 8/10/05, p.A3)
2005 Aug 8, Japanese lawmakers rejected legislation to split up and sell the nation's postal service, leading PM Junichiro Koizumi to call snap elections next month. He promised to make the vote a referendum on his reform plan and pledged to resign if it fails.
(AP, 8/8/05)
2005 Aug 8, In Saudi Arabia King Abdullah pardoned 4 prominent activists who were jailed after criticizing the strict religious environment and the slow pace of democratic reform.
(AP, 8/8/05)
2006 Aug 8, The US Federal Reserve halted interest rate hikes at 5.25%. the DJIA fell 45.79 to 11,173. Nasdaq fell 11.65 to 2,060. Jeffrey Lacker, head of the Richmond Fed, voted against the decision halt rate hikes.
(SFC, 8/9/06, p.C1)(Econ, 8/12/06, p.59)
2006 Aug 8, Medicare said it plans to cut doctor payment rates by 5.1% and force hospitals to disclose financial data.
(WSJ, 8/9/06, p.A1)
2006 Aug 8, Voters in Connecticut rejected three-term Sen. Joe Lieberman for Ned Lamont, a political newcomer, in the nation's first major test of the depth of anger over the Iraq war. Lieberman ended up winning re-election to the Senate by running as an independent
(AP, 8/9/06)(AP, 8/8/07)
2006 Aug 8, Roger Goodell was chosen as the NFL's next commissioner.
(AP, 8/8/07)
2006 Aug 8, In Indianapolis, Indiana, a fatal stabbing boosted the homicides to 13 in just one week in the midst of an upsurge of violence that has police working longer shifts and saturating high-crime areas.
(AP, 8/8/06)
2006 Aug 8, In eastern Afghanistan US military killed 15 insurgents who attacked a US base in Nuristan province. 12 militants and 8 policemen were killed in fighting in Kandahar.
(AP, 8/9/06)(AP, 8/10/06)
2006 Aug 8, Clive Goodman, royal editor at Britain’s News of the World, and Glenn Mulcaire, a private investigator, were arrested for hacking phones between November 2005 and August 2006. Both men were jailed in January, 2007.
(Econ, 7/16/11, p.26)
2006 Aug 8, Chad and Sudan agreed to reopen their borders and resume diplomatic relations that they severed in a dispute four months ago.
(AP, 8/9/06)
2006 Aug 8, In Chile police used tear gas and water cannons to disperse about 2,000 rock-throwing students seeking better equipment for 21 schools in the Santiago area.
(AP, 8/8/06)
2006 Aug 8, Gustavo Arcos Bergnes (79), who fought alongside Fidel Castro in the Cuban revolution but was later imprisoned as a dissident, died in Havana.
(AP, 8/8/06)
2006 Aug 8, A car bomb killed a prosecutor in Dagestan, Russia, and two police were shot dead as they arrived on the scene.
(AP, 8/8/06)
2006 Aug 8, Eritrea announced that Brigadier General Kemal Gelchu, a dissident Ethiopian general, had defected to Eritrea, said that he would be joining the OLF to fight for his Oromo people's rights.
(Econ, 8/19/06, p.44)
2006 Aug 8, Gunmen with automatic weapons stormed Kaieteur News, Guyana's largest newspaper, killing at least six people and wounding three in an attack that may have been connected to a simultaneous protest at the nation's main prison.
(AP, 8/9/06)
2006 Aug 8, Indian officials said flooding caused by monsoon rains have killed 69 people in western India in the past three days, and caused tens of thousands to flee their homes.
(AP, 8/8/06)
2006 Aug 8, Indonesian health officials said 2 teenagers have died of bird flu. This would bring Indonesia's death toll to 44 and make it the world's hardest-hit country.
(AP, 8/8/06)
2006 Aug 8, A series of bombings and shootings killed at least 31 people in Baghdad and other parts of Iraq as more US troops were seen in the capital as part of Operation Together Forward, a campaign to reduce Sunni-Shiite violence that threatened civil war. A US Army helicopter crashed in Iraq's western Anbar province, leaving two crew members missing and four injured. A policeman was killed and another wounded when they were trying to defuse a roadside bomb in Samarra. An explosion at a mosque in Baqouba left four people dead.
(AP, 8/8/06)(AP, 8/9/06)(Econ, 9/2/06, p.44)
2006 Aug 8, Israeli forces battled Hezbollah guerrillas across southern Lebanon as diplomats at the United Nations struggled to keep a peace plan from collapsing over Arab demands for an immediate Israeli withdrawal. At least 19 Lebanese civilians were killed in Israeli airstrikes. Israel reported five soldiers killed.
(AP, 8/8/06)(AP, 8/9/06)
2006 Aug 8, The Philippine Congress began hearing new impeachment complaints against President Gloria Arroyo, linking her to corruption and human rights abuses and alleging she cheated in the 2004 election.
(AFP, 8/8/06)
2006 Aug 8, Russian officials said drawings by the late architect Yakov Chernikhov (d.1951), worth millions of dollars, had disappeared from the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art. Chernikhov was widely admired for his avant-garde and constructivist designs. Rosokhrankultura said it became aware of the Chernikhov thefts after nine missing drawings were sold at auction by auction house Christie's on June 22.
(AP, 8/8/06)
2006 Aug 8, In Sri Lanka Tamil rebels released water from a disputed reservoir, ending a 19-day blockade that sparked some of the worst fighting between government troops and guerrillas in four years. In Colombo a car bomb killed two people, including a 3-year-old girl.
(AP, 8/8/06)
2006 Aug 8, Turkey battled the largest recorded outbreak of Crimean-Congo Hemorrhagic Fever, which has killed at least 20 people this year, and experts said more cases of the Ebola-like disease are inevitable in coming months.
(AP, 8/8/06)
2006 Aug 8, Five Yemeni army officers were killed when their military helicopter crashed during a heavy rainstorm.
(AP, 8/9/06)
2007 Aug 8, The US space shuttle Endeavour and a crew of 7 took off from Cape Canaveral, Fl., on a special mission. Teacher-astronaut Barbara Morgan was part of the crew.
(SFC, 8/9/07, p.A7)
2007 Aug 8, Researchers from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill reported that coral coverage in the Indo-Pacific, an area stretching from Indonesia's Sumatra island to French Polynesia, had dropped 20 percent in the past two decades. They said the decline was driven by climate change, disease and coastal development.
(AP, 8/8/07)
2007 Aug 8, In SF Donald Fisher (78) and his wife Doris, founders of Gap (a chain of clothing stores), announced plans to build the Contemporary Art Museum of the Presidio.
(SFC, 8/8/07, p.A3)
2007 Aug 8, Virgin America, part of Richard Branson’s Virgin Group, made its inaugural flight from JFK to San Francisco. For the first nine months of 2008 Virgin announced a $174.5 million loss on $259 million in revenue.
(SFC, 1/3/11, p.D2)
2007 Aug 8, A tornado struck Brooklyn, NY. This was the first ever tornado in recorded history to touch down in Brooklyn. It was the first tornado to hit New York City since 2003, when a weak tornado touched down in Staten Island, and only the sixth tornado recorded in the city since 1950.
(http://nymag.com/restaurants/features/37273/)(http://tinyurl.com/3a2npv)
2007 Aug 8, Melville Shavelson (90), comedy writer, producer and director, died in Studio City, Ca. His films included “Cast a Giant Shadow" (1966). His books included “How to Make a Jewish Movie."
(SFC, 8/10/07, p.B9)
2007 Aug 8, Argentine authorities said they were investigating why Venezuelan businessman Antonini Wilson was carrying $800,000 in undeclared cash aboard an executive jet charted by Argentina's state energy company. In December US prosecutors said that the suitcase full of Venezuelan cash was intended to finance the presidential campaign of Cristina Kirchner.
(AP, 8/8/07)(AP, 12/13/07)
2007 Aug 8, Australia's central bank hiked interest rates 0.25 points to a decade-high 6.5 percent in an unprecedented pre-election move that the government admitted creates a political headache.
(AFP, 8/8/07)
2007 Aug 8, An Austrian federal court rejected Kazakhstan's request to have its ex-ambassador to Austria, a former son-in-law of the Central Asian nation's autocratic president, extradited to face kidnapping charges in his homeland.
(AP, 8/8/07)
2007 Aug 8, Researchers from Belgium and China said a simple blood test can detect early stage liver cancer and more accurately diagnose the disease that is a major killer in Asia and Africa.
(Reuters, 8/9/07)
2007 Aug 8, A British air force helicopter crashed near an army base in northern England, killing two military personnel and injuring 10.
(AP, 8/9/07)
2007 Aug 8, Beijing began the one-year countdown to the 2008 Olympics. Jacques Rogge, president of the International Olympic Committee, acknowledged that Beijing's air pollution could force the postponement of outdoor events during next year's Olympics.
(AP, 8/7/07)(AP, 8/8/07)
2007 Aug 8, An international team of researchers said the long-threatened Yangtze River dolphin in China is probably extinct. They also said this would mark the first whale or dolphin to be wiped out due to human activity.
(Reuters, 8/8/07)
2007 Aug 8, In southwest Colombia families confirmed that two military officers kidnapped four months ago by leftist rebels have died in captivity. Army Sgts. Alexander Cardona and Jesus Sol were taken hostage by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), while on patrol near their homes.
(AP, 8/9/07)
2007 Aug 8, A report by the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights detailed 567 cases of police torture in the last 14 years, of which 167 led to the victim’s death.
(Econ, 9/1/07, p.38)(www.eohr.org/)
2007 Aug 8, Ethiopia said it had killed more than 500 rebels and captured 170 in the past two months during an offensive in the volatile but energy-rich Ogaden region bordering Somalia.
(AP, 8/8/07)
2007 Aug 8, Ma Lik (55), the leader of Hong Kong's leading pro-Beijing political party, DAB, died of complications from colon cancer.
(AP, 8/8/07)
2007 Aug 8, In northeastern India's Assam state suspected separatist rebels fatally shot 12 people in two separate attacks. Police suspect the attack was carried out jointly by the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) and another local insurgent group, the Karbi Longri National Liberation Front, which is fighting for autonomy for people of the Karbi tribe.
(AP, 8/9/07)
2007 Aug 8, Millions of people in Jakarta, the Indonesian capital, voted for governor for the first time, the latest in a wave of local elections hailed as key to strengthening democracy in the world's most populous Muslim nation.
(AP, 8/8/07)
2007 Aug 8, Iraqi PM Nouri al-Maliki arrived in Iran for talks expected to focus on bilateral relations and overcoming "terrorism challenges." Iraqis told they will not get automatic asylum in Britain despite braving death threats to work alongside British troops will now have their cases reviewed. US-led forces swooped into the Shiite militia stronghold of Sadr City, killing 32 suspected militants and detaining 12 others in fighting and an airstrike targeting alleged smuggling networks from Iran. Police and witnesses said 9 civilians were killed in the attack.
(AP, 8/8/07)
2007 Aug 8, Israeli soldiers shot and killed three Palestinian militants near Israel's border with the Gaza Strip in two separate incidents.
(AP, 8/8/07)
2007 Aug 8, Mauritania passed a law promising prison time for people who keep slaves, a monumental step in the northwest African nation's push to eliminate the long-standing practice. The government officially abolished slavery in 1981, but no one has ever been prosecuted for it and no law created a punishment.
(AP, 8/9/07)
2007 Aug 8, In Nigeria kidnappers released a British and a Bulgarian hostage in the southern oil region, while the young son of a local legislator was seized in a separate incident and gunbattles raged for a third day.
(AP, 8/8/07)
2007 Aug 8, Pakistani security forces killed three separatist militants after they were fired on while surveying a flood-hit area in southwestern Baluchistan province.
(Reuters, 8/8/07)
2007 Aug 8, In South Africa Pres. Mbeki dismissed deputy health minister Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge following reports that she had gone to Spain to attend an AIDS conference without his permission. AIDS activists have been highly critical of her boss, Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, who promoted garlic and lemons as a remedy for AIDS and mistrusted antiretroviral medicines.
(AP, 8/10/07)
2007 Aug 8, Venezuela's socialist President Hugo Chavez took a campaign of petrodollar diplomacy to Uruguay, seeking stronger political ties while offering energy aid from one of the world's largest oil producers.
(AP, 8/8/07)
2007 Aug 8, In Vietnam officials said at least 34 people have died and 17 more were missing and feared dead after Tropical Storm Pabuk lashed the country.
(AP, 8/8/07)
2008 Aug 8, John Edwards, former North Carolina senator and Democratic presidential candidate, admitted that he had an extramarital affair with Rielle Hunter, a film producer, in 2006 but denied fathering a daughter with her.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rielle_Hunter)(AP, 8/9/08)(Econ, 8/16/08, p.34)
2008 Aug 8, Struggling home finance giant Fannie Mae reported a massive second quarter loss of 2.3 billion dollars, more than three times analysts' estimates.
(AFP, 8/8/08)
2008 Aug 8, UBS AG agreed to buy back $19 billion in auction rate securities improperly sold as higher-rate equivalents for super-safe money market funds.
(WSJ, 8/9/08, p.A1)
2008 Aug 8, Joseph Bennett (43) of Canada tried to drive 58 bags containing 275,000 Ecstasy pills, estimated at $6.5 million in street value, into Port Huron, Michigan. In 2009 a federal judge in Detroit sentenced him to 7½ years in prison.
(SFC, 6/25/09, p.A5)(http://tinyurl.com/koa934)
2008 Aug 8, Nebraska Beef, an Omaha meat packer, recalled 1.2 million pounds of beef after products were linked to illnesses in 12 states. In July the company had recalled over 5 million pounds of beef due to an outbreak of E. coli in 7 states.
(SSFC, 8/10/08, p.A4)
2008 Aug 8, In Texas a charter bus carrying Vietnamese worshippers on a pilgrimage ran off a highway overpass north of Dallas and plunged onto a roadway below. 15 people were killed and 40 injured. In 2014 Angel de la Torre, the owner of the Houston bus company charged after the crash that killed 17 passengers, avoided prison after a federal judge sentenced him to three years of probation in a plea agreement.
(AP, 8/8/08)(AP, 10/29/14)
2008 Aug 8, In western Afghanistan a coalition service member died in a roadside blast. About 20 Taliban fighters were killed in a battle with Afghan and US-led forces near a key military supply route in the western Bala Buluk district. An Afghan child was killed and two injured by militants who attacked alliance troops in northeastern Kunar province.
(AP, 8/8/08)(AP, 8/9/08)
2008 Aug 8, In Algeria 12 armed Islamists, including a number of individuals considered among the leaders of Al-Qaeda in the Maghreb, were killed overnight by the army in an ambush near Beni Douala, near Tizi Ouzou.
(AFP, 8/10/08)
2008 Aug 8, Australian Customs and police said they had seized 4.4 tons of ecstasy tablets worth nearly 400 million dollars, describing it as the biggest haul of the illicit drug anywhere in the world. Police said the seizure of the drugs, which were concealed in tins of tomato shipped to Australia from Italy, had resulted in the arrests of 21 people across the country beginning in pre-dawn raids.
(AFP, 8/8/08)
2008 Aug 8, Bolivia said it has reached an agreement in principle to purchase the local operations of energy company Royal Dutch Shell PLC as part of President Evo Morales' nationalization push.
(AP, 8/8/08)
2008 Aug 8, President Bush blended carefully calibrated political messages for China and Russia with enthusiasm for his nation's athletes as he became the first US president to attend an Olympics abroad.
(AP, 8/8/08)
2008 Aug 8, In Beijing, China, the 29th Olympic Games, costing an estimated 40 billion dollars and shrouded by political controversies, burst into life with a spectacular opening ceremony. The official slogan for the games this year was “One world, one dream." Actress activist Mia Farrow began Web-casting her own "Darfur Olympics" from a refugee camp on the barren Sudan-Chad border, aiming to shame China into using its influence with Khartoum to end the Darfur conflict. Construction before the games forced more than 1m people from their homes.
(AP, 8/8/08)(AP, 8/7/08)(Econ, 8/2/08, p.28)(Econ, 7/30/16, p.68)
2008 Aug 8, In the Czech Republic an international express train crashed into a collapsed bridge, killing at least six people and injuring dozens.
(Reuters, 8/8/08)
2008 Aug 8, The EU tightened trade sanctions against Iran to punish Tehran for not committing to a long-standing demand of the international community that it freeze its nuclear enrichment program.
(AP, 8/8/08)
2008 Aug 8, Georgian troops launched a major military offensive to regain control of South Ossetia, prompting a furious response from Russia, which sent tanks into the region. The convoy was expected to reach the provincial capital by evening. Georgia said it shot down two Russian combat planes. Separatist officials in South Ossetia said 15 civilians had been killed in fighting overnight. Georgia later acknowledged that it used M85 cluster munition near the Roki tunnel that connects South Ossetia with Russia, while Russia denied use of cluster bombs.
(AP, 8/8/08)(AP, 9/1/08)
2008 Aug 8, Guinea Bissau's army announced it had arrested rear admiral Jose Americo Bubo Na Tchute, the head of the navy, over an attempted coup.
(AFP, 8/9/08)
2008 Aug 8, Anti-US cleric Muqtada al-Sadr ordered most of his followers to disarm but said he will maintain an elite fighting unit to resist the Americans in Iraq. Ashraf al-Yas (19) talked his way through a police checkpoint, drove his vehicle into a crowded farmers market and detonated his explosives. He killed 28 people and injured 72 in Tal Afar. A roadside bombing in Baghdad killed an American soldier and wounded 2 others.
(AP, 8/8/08)(AP, 8/9/08)(SSFC, 8/10/08, p.A19)(AP, 8/30/08)
2008 Aug 8, In Nigeria police arrested the head of a federal agency charged with developing Nigeria's impoverished southern oil region after allegations the man spent millions of dollars on a witch doctor in hopes vanquishing a rival.
(AP, 8/8/08)
2008 Aug 8, In Pakistan at least seven Pakistani troops and 30 militants were reported killed in two days of clashes at Loisam and its surrounding areas in the Bajaur tribal district. Insurgents stormed a police post in Buner and killed 8 police officers.
(AFP, 8/8/08)(SSFC, 8/10/08, p.A11)
2008 Aug 8, In Sri Lanka artillery shells fired by the army hit a hospital overnight killing an 18-month-old baby and wounding 16 people. Infantry clashes in the north killed 31 rebels and four soldiers.
(AP, 8/8/08)(AP, 8/9/08)
2008 Aug 8, The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) near Geneva, began initial tests.
(Econ, 8/2/08, p.78)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Hadron_Collider)
2008 Aug 8, In Turkey Mehmet Dursun Uygurturkoglu (35) doused himself with gasoline and set himself alight during a protest by ethnic Uighurs outside the Chinese Embassy. Other demonstrators jumped on the man and quickly extinguished the flames with a blanket.
(AP, 8/8/08)
2008 Aug 8, Researchers said at least 38 Warao Indians have died in remote villages in Venezuela since June 2007. Medical experts suspected an outbreak of rabies spread by bites from vampire bats.
(AP, 8/8/08)
2009 Aug 8, Sonia Sotomayor was sworn-in as the first Hispanic on the US Supreme Court.
(AP, 8/8/09)
2009 Aug 8, In Dinuba, Ca., a car fleeing from police ran a stop sign and slammed into a pickup, killing three people in the car and four young children in the truck.
(AP, 8/9/09)
2009 Aug 8, In Chino, Ca., a 2-day prison riot began. It housed almost twice as many prisoners as it was designed for and was typical of California’s 33 state prisons. At this time California spent about $49,000 a year on each prisoner, almost twice the national average.
(Econ, 8/15/09, p.28)
2009 Aug 8, Continental Express Flight 2816, en route with 47 passengers to Minneapolis from Houston, was stranded overnight at Rochester, Minn., after being forced to land due to storms. On Nov 24 the Dept. of Transportation levied $175,000 in fines against Continental, ExpressJet and Mesaba Airlines for keeping the plane on the tarmac.
(SFC, 11/25/09, p.A6)
2009 Aug 8, Near Hoboken, New Jersey, 9 people died in an air collision over the Hudson River, including 3 members of a Pennsylvania family in the private plane and five Italian tourists and a pilot from New Jersey in a Liberty Tours helicopter.
(AP, 8/9/09)(SSFC, 8/9/09, p.A9)
2009 Aug 8, NATO helicopters wounded five Afghan police by mistake during a battle with insurgents in Ghazni province. A British soldier, serving with NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), was killed by an improvised explosive device (IED). A US soldier was killed in the south in a hostile fire incident.
(Reuters, 8/8/09)(AFP, 8/9/09)(AP, 8/11/09)
2009 Aug 8, In China hundreds of villagers rioted after news broke about the lead poisoning at the Wugang Manganese Smelting Plant in Wenping township, central Hunan province. A crowd of 600 to 700 people overturned four police cars and smashed a local government sign. China later detained two factory officials after 1,354 children were reported poisoned by lead pollution from the manganese processing plant.
(AP, 8/20/09)
2009 Aug 8, India’s army said its troops killed three Islamic militants along the de facto Kashmir border, thwarting the seventh attempt by rebels to infiltrate from Pakistan in a week.
(AFP, 8/8/09)
2009 Aug 8, In northern India landslides triggered by heavy rains killed at least 43 people in three remote villages in Pithoragarh district of Uttarakhand state.
(AP, 8/9/09)
2009 Aug 8, Indonesian police reportedly killed Noordin Mohammad Top, the self-proclaimed Southeast Asian commander of al-Qaida, in a 16-hour siege of a village hide-out in Central Java. Authorities said they could not confirm that a recovered body was that of the militant leader without DNA tests. DNA tests failed to confirm Top’s death. Police raided a house on the outskirts of Jakarta where they killed two suspected militants and seized bombs and a car rigged to carry them. The house was just 3 miles (5 kilometers) from the president's residence.
(AP, 8/8/09)(AP, 8/9/09)(AP, 8/12/09)
2009 Aug 8, In northern Italy rules for officially condoned vigilante groups took effect.
(Econ, 8/15/09, p.46)
2009 Aug 8, In Mauritania a suicide bomber killed himself outside the French Embassy, wounding two embassy guards and a woman in the street. An African branch of Al-Qaida later said the attack was a response to the aggression of "crusaders" including former colonial ruler France, and to Mauritanian leaders against Islam and Muslims.
(AP, 8/8/09)(AP, 8/18/09)
2009 Aug 8, In Mexico assailants in the state of Guerrero opened fire on a car carrying a couple and their 3-year-old son, killing all three. In Chihuahua gunmen killed four people in an attack in a bar.
(AP, 8/10/09)
2009 Aug 8, In Moldova the four pro-Western parties that upset the Communists in recent elections agreed on a coalition deal to form a new government.
(AP, 8/8/09)
2009 Aug 8, Myanmar government troops seized a weapons factory near the Chinese border after being informed about it during a ministerial meeting with China on combating transnational crime. This triggered several days of clashes with an ethnic militia that sent more than 30,000 refugees fleeing across the border into China.
(AP, 9/9/09)
2009 Aug 8, In Pakistan a gunfight between militants and supporters of a pro-government tribal elder killed 6 militants and 2 tribesmen in the Mohmand tribal region near the Afghan border.
(AFP, 8/9/09)
2009 Aug 8, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was named head of his Fatah movements at his party's first conference in two decades, strengthening the hand of the Western-backed leader in his bid to revive peace talks with Israel.
(AP, 8/8/09)
2009 Aug 8, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev hailed the Russian victory in a war with Georgia a year ago, saying the war had redrawn the map of the Caucasus for good.
(Reuters, 8/8/09)
2009 Aug 8, In Somalia’s pirate stronghold of Harardhere, fighting over the last 24 hours killed at least 12 people. A dispute over a car escalated as clan militias got involved. Mortar shells slammed into a busy market in the capital, Mogadishu, killing six people and wounding 18.
(AP, 8/8/09)
2009 Aug 8, In South Africa US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and South African President Jacob Zuma pledged to cement closer ties between their new administrations.
(AFP, 8/8/09)
2009 Aug 8, Sri Lanka held local elections near an area once dominated by the Tamil Tiger rebels, but voters largely stayed away from the polls in the violence-scarred region. Voter turnout was 22% in Jaffna and 52% in Vavuniya, according to election monitors. The pro-Tiger Tamil National Alliance (TNA) scored unexpected success with 8 of 23 seats in Jaffna and 5 of 11 seats in Vavuniya.
(AP, 8/8/09)(Econ, 8/15/09, p.35)
2009 Aug 8, Typhoon Morakot lashed Taiwan with powerful winds and downpours leaving at least one person killed and five missing.
(AFP, 8/8/09)
2009 Aug 8, Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez said he's returning his ambassador to Colombia, moving to resolve rising diplomatic tensions after weapons sold to Venezuela were found in a rebel cache.
(AP, 8/8/09)
2010 Aug 8, In San Francisco German tourist Mechthild Schroer was killed by a stray bullet outside a comedy club at 414 Mason. On May 4, 2011, police arrested 7 of 8 young men accused of taking part in a gang gunbattle that left her dead. In 2014 four men indicted in the shooting pleaded guilty to lesser charges and were expected to serve five to nine years in state prison.
(SFC, 5/5/11, p.A1)(SFC, 10/1/11, p.C2)(SFC, 8/16/14, p.C1)
2010 Aug 8, Patricia Neal (84), American actress, died at her home in Massachusetts. Her films included “The Fountainhead" (1949), “The Day the Earth Stood Still" (1951), “Hud" (1963) and “A Face in the Crowd" (1957). Her 1988 autobiography was titled "As I Am."
(SFC, 8/9/10, p.A6)
2010 Aug 8, Matthew Simmons (67), who rattled the energy industry by arguing the world was rapidly approaching peak oil production capacity, died at his home in North Haven, Maine. In his 2005 book "Twilight in the Desert," Simmons argued Saudi Arabia's oil reserves were nearing the highest levels of production they were capable of achieving, after which point the world's yearly oil supply would begin to decline.
(Reuters, 8/9/10)
2010 Aug 8, In Afghanistan Pres. Karzai said foreign security companies should all be replaced by Afghan police, the same day that the bodies of 10 members of a medical team, killed on Aug 5, were returned to Kabul. 52 companies employed about 30,000 people, most of them former military officers.
(SSFC, 8/15/10, p.E7)(http://tinyurl.com/34uqwfs)
2010 Aug 8, Arab League chief Amr Moussa signed a letter asking for backing of a resolution urging Washington and other powers to end support of Israel's nuclear secrecy and to push the Jewish state to allow international inspections of its program. Arab nations planned submit the request to the September assembly of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
(AP, 8/15/10)
2010 Aug 8, In China landslides in the northwestern province of Gansu left at least 337 people dead in the deadliest incident so far in the country's worst flooding in a decade. More than 1,148 were missing.
(AP, 8/10/10)
2010 Aug 8, In Iraq a suicide car bomber struck a police patrol west of Baghdad and killed 8 people, mostly civilians. Gunmen armed with AK-47 rifles boarded 4 commercial ships in a two-hour time span in the vicinity of an oil terminal in the northern Persian Gulf. The assailants took computers, cell phones and money from crew members before fleeing. The interrogation of two Iraqis arrested after the incident indicated it was a robbery attempt without a larger agenda.
(SFC, 8/9/10, p.A2)(AP, 8/16/10)
2010 Aug 8, Libya's government announced it will pay compensation to some people it had wrongfully imprisoned, the latest step in an effort to draw a line under a history of human rights abuses.
(Reuters, 8/8/10)
2010 Aug 8, Former Mexican Pres. Vincente Fox, who was a key US ally in the war on drugs, backed the legalization of drugs, saying prohibition has failed to curb Mexico's spiraling violence and corruption.
(Reuters 8/910)
2010 Aug 8, North Korean authorities seized a South Korean fishing boat and its 7-man crew. North Korea freed the crew on Sep 7.
(SFC, 8/9/10, p.A2)(AP, 9/7/10)
2010 Aug 8, South African journalists launched a campaign to fight what they say is an attempt to curtail media freedoms in a nation known for one of Africa's freest and most open constitutions.
(AP, 8/8/10)
2010 Aug 8, In Spain people began complaining of jellyfish attacks. Over the next three days some 700 people were stung at three beaches on the Costa Blanca near Elche, where normally just a handful get stung daily.
(AP, 8/11/10)
2010 Aug 8, Gunmen in south Sudan killed 23 people, including police officers, in an ambush on a truck in the key oil producing state of Unity, Koch county.
(AFP, 8/11/10)
2010 Aug 8, Venezuela’s Pres. Chavez rejected Larry Palmer as the US ambassador to Caracas citing comments by Palmer regarding low morale in Venezuela’s military.
(SFC, 8/9/10, p.A1)
2011 Aug 8, US House leaders announced that they are terminating the long-running congressional page program for high school students, both out of cost considerations, and in recognition of the diminished demand for page services in the digital age.
(http://tinyurl.com/4yp84kn)
2011 Aug 8, The US Justice department and 4 the attorney generals of California, Illinois, Florida, and Indiana accused Pittsburgh-based Education Management Corp. of paying recruiters to enroll students in an $11 billion fraud case.
(SFC, 8/8/11, p.A5)
2011 Aug 8, Global stock markets sank again as worries over the downgrade of US debt outweighed relief at a European Central Bank pledge to buy up Italian and Spanish bonds to help the two countries avoid devastating defaults. The DJIA fell 634.76 points.
(AP, 8/8/11)(SFC, 8/9/11, p.A7)
2011 Aug 8, San Francisco’s Mayor Ed Lee (59) said he will run for a full 4-year term.
(SFC, 8/8/11, p.A1)
2011 Aug 8, In Oakland, Ca., Carlos Nava (30) was killed by accident during a driveby shooting at 64th Ave. and Int’l. Boulevard. On Aug 11 Lawrence Curtis Denard (26) was charged with the boy’s murder. On Aug 12 Willie Torrence, the driver of the car, was arrested in Las Vegas. On July 23, 2014, Denard and Torrence (25) were sentenced to life in prison.
(SFC, 8/12/11, p.C1)(SFC, 8/16/11, p.C1)(SFC, 7/24/14, p.D5)
2011 Aug 8, In Afghanistan coalition forces in a midnight bombing raid killed the Taliban insurgents responsible for the Aug 5 attack on a US helicopter. The F-16 strike killed the "shooter" as well as a Taliban militant, Mullah Mohibullah.
(AFP, 8/10/11)
2011 Aug 8, Bangladesh police said the main opposition leader, ex-prime minister Khaleda Zia, has been accused of abuse of power and graft in a new case filed by the country's main anti-corruption body. In a separate case, a court Dhaka issued an arrest warrant against Tareque Rahman, Zia's elder son and heir apparent, accusing him of laundering over 204 million taka ($2.73 million) in Singapore between 2003 and 2007.
(AFP, 8/8/11)(Econ, 8/13/11, p.42)
2011 Aug 8, London police said they had arrested 100 people in a second night of rioting, condemning it as "copycat" disorder following weekend unrest sparked by the death of a man in a police shooting.
(AFP, 8/8/11)
2011 Aug 8, Chad’s Idriss Deby Itno vowed he would battle corruption as he was sworn in as president for a new five-year term.
(AFP, 8/8/11)
2011 Aug 8, In Colombia Muhammad Nazarruddin (32), the ex-treasurer of Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's party, was reported arrested in Cartagena after weeks on the run over corruption allegations. Nazarruddin has been on the run since May when anti-graft investigators linked him to a bribery scandal involving contracts on a 23-million-dollar athletes' village for the Southeast Asian Games scheduled in November.
(AFP, 8/9/11)(Econ, 2/25/12, p.51)
2011 Aug 8, Cuban state media reported that Cuba and Angola, long-standing allies, have boosted military cooperation during a visit to the communist-run Caribbean island by Angolan defense officials.
(AFP, 8/8/11)
2011 Aug 8, In El Salvador 9 former soldiers and officials turned themselves over to a court after being indicted in Spain in the 1989 killings of six Jesuit priests and two other people during the Central American country's civil war. A tenth suspect in the Spanish case has since died, and 10 other suspects have not been located.
(AP, 8/9/11)
2011 Aug 8, In Guatemala former first lady Sandra Torres’ bid to succeed her ex-husband came to an end when the constitutional court ruled her ineligible to run because of her relationship to the president.
(AP, 8/9/11)
2011 Aug 8, In India Lobsang Sangay, a Harvard-trained legal scholar, was sworn in as new head of the Tibetan government-in-exile, taking over from the Dalai Lama as the official leader of his people's fight for freedom.
(AP, 8/8/11)
2011 Aug 8, In Libya a rebel spokesman in Misrata said forces loyal to Moamer Kadhafi had launched an assault on rebel positions in Zliten's Souk Telat area, killing 3 and wounding 15. A rebel source at Al-Qusbat, around 90 km (55 miles) east of Tripoli, said that town was living through its fourth day under siege. Libya's rebels sacked their executive committee. Mahmoud Jibril, who was the head of the outgoing committee, was asked to form a new board.
(AFP, 8/8/11)(AP, 8/9/11)
2011 Aug 8, Mexico's government said it is suspending about $102 million in federal law enforcement grants to 80 percent of the country's most violent municipalities because they haven't shown progress in using the money. Two university professors were injured by the explosion of a package bomb on a campus near the national capital at a campus of Monterrey Technological Institute. The anti-technology group Individuals Tending to Savagery was later said to be responsible. The bullet-riddled bodies of four police officers and a civilian were found dumped in Michoacan state. The officers from Colima had just gone off duty when they vanished on Aug 6. A naval academy cadet went missing after he failed to turn up at the Veracruz state academy.
(AP, 8/9/11)(SFC, 8/10/11, p.A2)(AP, 8/15/11)
2011 Aug 8, In Nigeria gunmen killed five people and wounded four others in a nighttime attack on in Bisichi village, Plateau state, leaving the dead mutilated with machete wounds. Boko Haram attackers killed a senior prison official and a school teacher in Maiduguri.
(AP, 8/9/11)(AP, 8/10/11)
2011 Aug 8, Residents of Somalia's war-torn capital fled fighting after remnants of extremist Shebab rebel forces, who pulled out of Mogadishu at the weekend, battled with government troops overnight.
(AFP, 8/8/11)
2011 Aug 8, In South Africa drivers operating feeder buses to high-speed train service went on a one-day strike, only six days after a new link between Johannesburg and the capital Pretoria opened. Drivers were demanding a wage increase from 4,600 rand ($660, 467 euros) to 5,000 rand a month. Train drivers earned about 21,000 rand per month.
(AFP, 8/8/11)
2011 Aug 8, Sudan said it has granted a petroleum exploration license to China after visiting Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi and President Omar al-Bashir held talks in Khartoum.
(AFP, 8/8/11)
2011 Aug 8, Swaziland's cash-strapped university failed to re-open for the new academic year. It expected to remain closed indefinitely.
(AFP, 8/8/11)
2011 Aug 8, Syria’s eastern city of Deir el-Zour came under fresh artillery fire as a deadly military assault left President Bashar Assad's regime increasingly isolated, with Arab nations forcefully joining the international chorus of condemnation for the first time.
(AP, 8/8/11)
2011 Aug 8, In Tunisia hundreds of people demonstrated in central Tunis to demand that members of the toppled Ben Ali regime be stopped from re-entering the political scene or escaping justice for alleged crimes.
(AFP, 8/8/11)
2012 Aug 8, In eastern Afghanistan two suicide attackers hit a NATO patrol, killing 3 American coalition service members and USAID foreign service officer Ragaei Abdelfattah. Afghan officials added that a civilian was also killed in the bombing in Kunar province. On Nov 12, 2015, Army Captain Florent Groberg (32) was awarded the US Medal of Honor for tackling a suicide bomber and saving members of his patrol.
(AP, 8/8/12)(AP, 8/10/12)(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florent_Groberg)
2012 Aug 8, Belarus ordered Sweden to close its embassy in Minsk by the end of the month, a move that comes only days after Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko's regime forced the Swedish ambassador out of the country.
(AP, 8/8/12)
2012 Aug 8, Britain arrested Spaniard Kemen Uranga Artola (43) in London suspected of being a member of the Basque separatist group ETA. Media reports said Uranga is suspected of the murder of a judge, Jose Maria Lidon, who was killed by an ETA group in 2001.
(Reuters, 8/8/12)
2012 Aug 8, A spokeswoman for London’s Olympics organizers (LOCOG) confirmed that 7 competitors from Cameroon have gone missing at the London Olympics and British police have been informed.
(AFP, 8/8/12)
2012 Aug 8, Chilean police used water cannons and tear gas to break up a demonstration in Santiago by thousands of students demanding free education.
(SFC, 8/9/12, p.A2)
2012 Aug 8, In eastern China Typhoon Haikui slammed into in Zhejiang province south of Shanghai, the country's third in a week, killing at least two people and causing more than $1 billion in damage.
(AFP, 8/8/12)
2012 Aug 8, In CongoDRC 3 elite troops were killed at an airport at Lubumbashi in a night attack blamed on regional separatists. A national intelligence agency source said the attackers were from the same Katangan separatist group that carried out the earlier assault.
(AFP, 8/8/12)
2012 Aug 8, Egypt's state television reported the military killed 20 militants in unprecedented air strikes. Egypt said the attackers who killed 16 Egyptian soldiers had help from Gaza. In response Egypt closed its border crossing and shut down hundreds of smuggling tunnels. Gazans said the sealing of their territory following a weekend attack by Islamic militants has sent prices soaring and is leaving hundreds of medical patients stranded. President Mohammed Morsi fired his intelligence chief for failing to act on an Israeli warning of an imminent attack days before militants stormed a border post in the Sinai Peninsula.
(AFP, 8/8/12)(AP, 8/8/12)
2012 Aug 8, In Honduras a new police extortion unit was reported to have received 506 complaints of extortion involving homes, taxis and businesses in Tegucigalpa in the first half of this year.
(AP, 8/9/12)
2012 Aug 8, India's struggling Kingfisher Airlines was forced to cancel more than 30 flights after pilots and engineers refused to show up for work because of unpaid salaries.
(AFP, 8/8/12)
2012 Aug 8, In Iraq a car bomb targeting Shiite Muslims in Al-Tanmiyah village and the shooting of a lawyer and his family in Baiji left 21 people dead, after Al-Qaeda warned it would target lawyers and retake territory in a new campaign.
(AFP, 8/8/12)
2012 Aug 8, Israeli security forces said Hezbollah militants have smuggled explosives into northern Israel using a network of drug dealers on either side of the Lebanese-Israeli border.
(AP, 8/8/12)
2012 Aug 8, A probe ordered by Ivorian President Alassane Ouattara on the 2010-2011 post-election crisis found that his forces killed over 700 people and those of ex-leader Laurent Gbagbo about twice as many.
(AFP, 8/8/12)
2012 Aug 8, Libya's first elected assembly took over power from the transitional council that has ruled the country since last year's uprising against longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi. A timetable called for the new assembly to name a president within a day and then form a government within 30 days of its first session.
(AP, 8/8/12)
2012 Aug 8, In northern Mali a man's hand was chopped off as punishment for the theft of a motorbike in the village of Ansongo.
(AP, 8/9/12)
2012 Aug 8, Myanmar authorities warned that it was facing a deepening drug crisis after seizing narcotics including more than 1.4 million amphetamine pills and 116 kilos of heroin in July.
(AFP, 8/8/12)
2012 Aug 8, Pakistan's Supreme Court ordered PM Raja Pervaiz Ashraf to appear before the panel to explain why he has not followed instructions from its judges to reopen an old corruption case against the president.
(AP, 8/8/12)
2012 Aug 8, In the Philippines more than one million people in and around Manila battled deadly floods amid relentless monsoon rains, with neck-deep waters trapping slum dwellers and the wealthy on roofs.
(AFP, 8/8/12)
2012 Aug 8, Russian prosecutors said a reclusive sect in Kazan, Tatarstan, that literally went underground to stop contact with the outside world, kept 27 children in dark and unheated cells, many of them for more than a decade. The children have been freed and the parents charged with child abuse. Child abuse charges were brought against members of the sect and leader Faizrakhman Satarov (83), who declared himself a Muslim prophet in contradiction with the principles of Islam, has also been charged with negligence.
(AP, 8/8/12)
2012 Aug 8, In South Africa Mziwamadoda Qwabe (27), one of the men accused of killing Swedish honeymooner Anni Dewani, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 25 years in prison in a plea deal. South Africa was still awaiting the extradition of the victim's British husband Shrien Dewani, who is accused of masterminding the November 2010 killing in a murder set up to look like a botched carjacking. On Aug 15 Xolile Mngeni, named by Qwabe as the gunman, denied charges of murder, kidnapping, robbery and illegal possession of a firearm and ammunition. On Nov 19 Mngeni was convicted of premeditated murder. In October, 2014, Mngeni died in a hospital unit of a Cape Town prison. He had been diagnosed in 2011 with brain cancer.
(AFP, 8/8/12)(AFP, 8/15/12)(AP, 11/19/12)(AP, 10/19/14)
2012 Aug 8, In South Africa at least two people died and two went missing as heavy snow and rain battered the southeast.
(AFP, 8/8/12)
2012 Aug 8, Syrian troops launched a broad ground assault on rebel-held areas of Aleppo and activists reported clashes as opposition forces fought back. Turkey's state-run news agency reported that some 2,400 people crossed into Turkey overnight to escape the escalating violence. Residents said Syrian fighter jets launched airstrikes on Tel Rifat, hitting a home and a high school and killing six people from one family. The Observatory said violence across Syria cost the lives of at least 167 people -- 95 civilians, 54 soldiers and 18 rebels.
(AP, 8/8/12)(AFP, 8/9/12)(AP, 8/9/12)
2012 Aug 8, In Uganda regional leaders ended a meeting on a proposed neutral force for eastern CongoDRC, with no concrete progress but a pledge to meet in a month.
(AFP, 8/8/12)
2013 Aug 8, California’s Central Valley agricultural interests sued the federal government in an attempt to stop releases into the Klamath River to protect spawning salmon. On Aug 23 the federal government began releasing Trinity River water into the lower Klamath to protect spawning salmon following a 9-day delay.
(SFC, 8/9/13, p.D1)(SFC, 8/24/13, p.C4)
2013 Aug 8, In San Francisco an inaugural gun buyback by SF Bay Area-based Gunbuyback.org collected 157 firearms in exchange for $15,500.
(SFC, 8/9/13, p.A6)
2013 Aug 8, In southern California a wildfire in Riverside County, estimated at 15.5 square miles, damaged buildings, threatened about 600 homes and forced some 1,500 people to flee.
(SFC, 8/9/13, p.A5)
2013 Aug 8, In southern California Judith Oakes, the accountant at Rialto Unified school district, was arrested on suspicion of grand theft, embezzlement and burglary. Video surveillance showed her stuffing cash from student lunch money into her bra.
(SSFC, 9/1/13, p.A8)
2013 Aug 8, Paul White (45) of Minnesota claimed his third of a $448 million Powerball jackpot. 16 workers from a county garage in New Jersey shared a 2nd ticket. A 3rd winner, also from New Jersey, had not yet come forward.
(SFC, 8/9/13, p.A5)(SFC, 8/10/13, p.A4)
2013 Aug 8, Afghan President Karzai urged the Taliban to lay down their arms. In the east a bomb planted in a graveyard killed 7 women and 7 children of a single family in Nangarhar province's Ghany Khel district.
(AP, 8/8/13)
2013 Aug 8, In Afghanistan 3 Chinese citizens, 2 men and a woman, were murdered in an apartment in Kabul. One Afghan man was also found dead. One Chinese citizen remained missing.
(Reuters, 8/10/13)(AP, 8/11/13)
2013 Aug 8, In Egypt thousands of demonstrators converged on the Brotherhood protest camp in northeastern Cairo in a festive atmosphere to attend prayers and a rally on the first day of the Eid al-Fitr holiday, which marks the end of the fasting month of Ramadan.
(Reuters, 8/8/13)
2013 Aug 8, Italy's parliament approved measures to ease some of the worst prison overcrowding in Europe by cutting pre-trial detentions and using alternative punishments for minor offences.
(Reuters, 8/8/13)
2013 Aug 8, Human Rights Watch said a picked-up wave of political assassinations in Libya has killed 51 people as the country lacks any effective law enforcement.
(AP, 8/8/13)
2013 Aug 8, In Malaysia Mr. K. Veerappan, a convicted drug dealer, was shot and killed whiled stopped at a traffic light in the Georgetown section of Penang. He was said to have been a member of “Gang 36."
(Econ, 8/17/13, p.37)
2013 Aug 8, In southwestern Pakistan a suicide bomber attacked a police officer's funeral in Quetta, killing 21 police officers and 9 civilians gathered to mourn a police officer shot dead earlier that day in front of his children.
(AP, 8/8/13)
2013 Aug 8, Nicolae Gheorghe (b.1946), Romanian Gypsy campaigner for rights of the Roma, died of cancer.
(Econ, 8/17/13, p.78)(http://tinyurl.com/pudxsh7)
2013 Aug 8, In South Sudan cattle rustlers killed 8 people in Jonglei state. One of the raiders was also killed.
(AP, 8/9/13)
2013 Aug 8, Syrian rebels targeted President Bashar al-Assad's motorcade heading to a Damascus mosque to mark the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr, but state television showed him unharmed and the government denied he had been attacked.
(Reuters, 8/8/13)
2013 Aug 8, In Yemen three suspected US drones 12 alleged al-Qaida militants, 6 in Marib province and 6 in Hadramawt province.
(AP, 8/8/13)
2014 Aug 8, A US federal court ruled that the NCAA has violated antitrust law in a 2009 case involving Ed O’Bannon, a former college basketball star. EA Sports, a video game company, had paid a fat fee to the NCAA but nothing to Mr. O’Bannon.
(Econ, 8/16/14, p.21)
2014 Aug 8, Oracle Corp. sued the state of Oregon in a breach of contract suit against Cover Oregon, the state’s health insurance exchange. The state’s health insurance website was never launched and disputed bills totaled $23 million. Gov. John Kitzhaber has called for the state to sue Oracle and recover some of the $134 million already paid.
(SFC, 8/9/14, p.A8)
2014 Aug 8, Afghanistan's feuding presidential candidates signed a deal to form a national unity government, opening an apparent way forward in a dispute over the fraud-tainted election that threatens to revive ethnic conflict.
(AFP, 8/8/14)
2014 Aug 8, Cambodian opposition lawmakers ended a 10-month boycott of Parliament, joining the assembly for the first time after reaching a breakthrough political deal with the country's ruling party.
(AP, 8/8/14)
2014 Aug 8, In Canada a patient back from Nigeria who showed symptoms of fever and flu -- possible signs of Ebola -- was put in isolation in a Toronto-area hospital.
(AFP, 8/8/14)
2014 Aug 8, A Chinese court sentenced Peter Humphrey, a private British investigator, to 2½ years in prison and his business-partner wife, Yu Yingzeng, to two years after they pleaded guilty to illegally obtaining private records of Chinese citizens as they researched corporate fraud. In early 2013 Glaxo Pharma had asked their Hong Kong-based company, China Whys, to investigate whether a former employee was passing information of suspected fraud to Chinese authorities.
(SFC, 8/9/14, p.D4)
2014 Aug 8, An Iraqi official said hundreds of women from the Yazidi religious minority have been taken captive by Sunni militants. US jets pounded jihadist positions to pave the way for Iraq's federal and Kurdish forces and also dropped aid to stranded Yazidi civilians on Mount Sinjar.
(AP, 8/8/14)(AFP, 8/9/14)
2014 Aug 8, Israeli warplanes struck targets in retaliation for dozens of Palestinian cross-border rocket attacks. A 10-year-old boy was killed and 11 people wounded in the airstrikes. The Israeli delegation in Cairo returned to Israel.
(AFP, 8/8/14)
2014 Aug 8, Menahem Golan (b.1929), Israeli action filmmaker, died in Tel Aviv. He produce over 200 movies and directed a fourth of them. They included “Cobra" (1986), the “Death Wish" sequels 2-5 (1982-1994), “Entebbe: Operation Thunderbolt" (1977), “Delta Force" (1986), “Bloodsport" (1987) and “Over the Top" (1987).
(SFC, 8/11/14, p.C3)
2014 Aug 8, Japan’s Yomiuri Shimbun reported that Japan and the United States will jointly develop a fuel-cell powered submarine that can run for a month under the sea on a single charge an unmanned. The 10-meter (33-feet) long sub would be able to chart a pre-programmed course before returning to base.
(AFP, 8/8/14)
2014 Aug 8, In Jordan tens of thousands celebrated the "Gaza victory" in the war against Israel, at a rally organized by the Islamist opposition.
(AFP, 8/9/14)
2014 Aug 8, In Libya a UN delegation held talks in Tripoli to try to broker a ceasefire between armed factions that have turned the capital into a battleground after the worst fighting since the fall of Muammar Gaddafi.
(Reuters, 8/8/14)
2014 Aug 8, Malaysia Airlines will be taken over by the country's state investment fund and de-listed, as part of plans announced today for a "complete overhaul" to rescue the company from oblivion after two crippling air disasters.
(AFP, 8/8/14)
2014 Aug 8, In Myanmar the ASEAN regional summit opened for talks among ministers from 10 Southeast Asian countries. It will expand over the weekend to comprise 27 countries who are members of the so-called ASEAN Regional Forum.
(AP, 8/8/14)
2014 Aug 8, Nigeria's president declared the containment of the Ebola virus a national emergency as officials confirmed two new cases of Ebola, bringing the total number of infections in Africa's most populous country to nine, including 2 deaths.
(AP, 8/8/14)
2014 Aug 8, In Syria Islamic State jihadists captured the key Brigade 93 Syrian army base in Raqa province overnight. 36 soldiers were killed, some of whom were beheaded, while others died in the fighting or in the initial triple suicide bombing that launched the attack.
(AFP, 8/8/14)
2014 Aug 8, Thailand's new military-stacked National Legislative Assembly convened for the first time, electing a president in a key step towards crafting a new constitution likely to embed the army's political influence.
(AFP, 8/8/14)
2014 Aug 8, Ukrainian army units, which had been trapped by separatists on the border with Russia, broke out of the blockade and rejoined government forces, but 15 soldiers and border guards were killed in the operation. At least 3 civilians were killed and another 10 wounded in overnight shelling of Donetsk, the main rebel stronghold besieged by government forces. The shelling came a few days after rebels had positioned a Grad multiple rocket launcher near the apartment building and fired at Ukrainian positions.
(Reuters, 8/8/14)(AP, 8/8/14)
2014 Aug 8, Etihad, the flag carrier of the United Arab Emirates, agreed to inject a further $750 million into Alitalia in return for a 49% stake.
(Econ, 8/16/14, p.55)
2014 Aug 8, The World Health Organization declared the Ebola outbreak in West Africa to be an international public health emergency that requires an extraordinary response to stop its spread.
(AP, 8/8/14)
2014 Aug 8, In eastern Yemen militants killed 14 soldiers near the city of Shibam in Hadramawt province.
(AP, 8/9/14)
2015 Aug 8, The US Justice Department said Julito Francis, a former US Virgin Islands government official, faces 11 counts including conspiracy, bribery and perjury. He was charged in a $17 million bribery scheme. A construction company owner and the co-principal of an architectural company were also charged.
(AP, 8/8/15)
2015 Aug 8, San Francisco resident Kim Chambers (38) completed a 30-mile swim from the Farallon Islands to the Golden Gate Bridge in 17 hours and 12 minutes, becoming the first woman to do so.
(SSFC, 8/9/15, p.A12)
2015 Aug 8, Texas police found the bodies of 6 children and 2 parents in a Houston-area home after a standoff that ended with a man's surrender. David Conley (48) was arrested and charged with the murders. Conley had an earlier relationship with the mother Valerie Jackson, and was believed to be the father of one of the children.
(AFP, 8/9/15)(SFC, 8/10/15, p.A6)
2015 Aug 8, In Afghanistan a suicide bomber in northern Kunduz province killed 29 people, mainly members of illegal armed groups that have clashed with security forces and the insurgents in the past. Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid claimed responsibility for the attack.
(AP, 8/9/15)
2015 Aug 8, In Brazil at least 30 boats of all sizes paraded across Rio de Janeiro's Guanabara Bay to protest contamination in the waters where sailing events will be held next year during the Olympic Games.
(AP, 8/8/15)
2015 Aug 8, In Cambodia Chhouk Bandith, former governor of Bavet town in the eastern province of Svay Rieng, turned himself in for arrest in Phnom Penh. He had been convicted of shooting and wounding 3 female garment workers during a 2012 protest.
(AP, 8/8/15)
2015 Aug 8, In China Typhoon Soudelor hit the city of Putian in Fujian province late today. Strong winds caused power outages to more than 1.41 million household in the province.
(AP, 8/8/15)
2015 Aug 8, In Egypt gunmen killed a policeman southwest of Cairo.
(AFP, 8/8/15)
2015 Aug 8, Finland detained a Russian citizen, Maxim Senakh, at the request of US federal authorities on computer fraud charges. Senakh was accused in the state of Minnesota of infecting computer servers with malware, resulting in criminal gains worth millions of dollars. Russia later called the move illegal.
(Reuters, 8/27/15)
2015 Aug 8, Hong Kong recorded its hottest day since authorities began taking temperature readings 130 years ago, due to the influence of a nearby typhoon. The daily maximum temperature hit 36.3 degrees Celsius.
(AFP, 8/8/15)
2015 Aug 8, In eastern India dozens of villagers beat to death 5 women, accusing them of practicing witchcraft and blaming them for a series of misfortunes in Kinjia village, Jharkhand state. Police arrested around 50 people involved in the attack.
(AP, 8/8/15)
2015 Aug 8, Iran issued an advisory warning its citizens to avoid land travel to neighboring Turkey after an Iranian bus was attacked by gunmen.
(AFP, 8/8/15)
2015 Aug 8, Today marked the anniversary of the US beginning airstrikes against the extremists in Iraq. US-led forces conducted 16 air strikes in Iraq and seven in Syria against Islamic State targets.
(AP, 8/8/15)(AP, 8/9/15)
2015 Aug 8, In the Central African Republic a Rwandan soldier serving with the UN peacekeeping mission shot dead 4 Rwandan troops and wounded eight others before committing suicide.
(Reuters, 8/8/15)
2015 Aug 8, Mali's special forces rescued four people who hid in a hotel in Sevare for nearly 24 hours after Islamic extremists stormed the building and launched a rare attack far from their northern strongholds that killed 12 people.
(AP, 8/8/15)(AFP, 8/9/15)
2015 Aug 8, In Mexico the body of Miguel Angel Jimenez, leader of a group searching for 43 missing students, was found behind the wheel of his taxi near Acapulco. 2 men were killed by gunfire outside a home in La Paz where a party had been held. Two other people were found dead at a home in Cabo San Lucas, earlier in the day. Both victims, a man and a woman, had been shot in the head.
(AFP, 8/10/15)(AP, 8/10/15)
2015 Aug 8, Six Russian opposition activists ended their hunger strike in Novosibirsk after one of them was hospitalized following 12 days of going without food to protest being barred from elections.
(AP, 8/8/15)
2015 Aug 8, In Russia a privately owned Cessna seaplane and a Robinson R44 helicopter collided over the Istrinskoye reservoir outside Moscow late today and fell into the water. All 9 people aboard the two crafts were killed.
(AFP, 8/9/15)(AP, 8/10/15)
2015 Aug 8, Spain's Guardia Civil police force said they have arrested 34 suspected members of a gang based in Colombia that smuggled drugs between the two countries.
(AFP, 8/8/15)
2015 Aug 8, Syrian activists said hundreds of Christian families have fled the central town of Sadad toward the government-held central city of Homs and Damascus, as Islamic State fighters advanced toward it. A shell hit a street in central Damascus, killing 5 people and wounding 36.
(AP, 8/8/15)
2015 Aug 8, Typhoon Soudelor battered Taiwan with strong wind and torrential rain, cutting power to 3.62 million households as the death toll rose to 6 with four missing. The eye of the typhoon passed Taiwan and headed toward mainland China.
(Reuters, 8/8/15)
2015 Aug 8, In southern Turkey Kurdish PKK rebels fired at a police vehicle, killing a policeman and wounding another.
(AP, 8/9/15)
2015 Aug 8, UAE state news agency WAM said 3 soldiers from the United Arab Emirates have been killed while taking part in a Saudi-led military campaign against Yemen's dominant Houthi group.
(Reuters, 8/8/15)
2015 Aug 8, In Yemen pro-government forces, strengthened by tanks newly supplied by a Saudi-led coalition, launched an offensive to retake Zinjibar, the rebel-held capital of Abyan province. A Saudi-led coalition airstrike hit allied fighters in a friendly fire incident, killing at least 20 fighters on a coastal road as they headed toward Zinjibar.
(AFP, 8/8/15) (AP, 8/9/15)
2015 Aug 8, Zimbabwe police blocked the country's main workers union from protesting against a recent wave of job losses and briefly held union leaders.
(AFP, 8/8/15)
2016 Aug 8, Delta canceled more than 700 flights and had 2,600 others delayed, some for hours, after a power outage at its Atlanta headquarters caused many computer systems to crash. The company later blamed a malfunctioning power-control system at its data center.
(AP, 8/9/16)(Econ, 8/13/16, p.46)
2016 Aug 8, Walmart announced that it would acquire Jet.com, a shopping website, for $3.3 billion.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jet.com)(Econ, 8/13/16, p.47)
2016 Aug 8, In London and southern England rail staff began a five-day strike in a safety row over who opens and closes the doors impacting hundreds of thousands of train commuters.
(Reuters, 8/8/16)
2016 Aug 8, In eastern China residents of in Lianyungang protested for a third day against possible plans to build a nuclear fuel reprocessing center, as police banned public gatherings in hopes of preventing more demonstrations.
(AP, 8/9/16)
2016 Aug 8, In Congo DRC armed groups killed 14 people in a string of overnight attacks in the strife-torn North Kivu province, an area long shaken by ethnic violence.
(AFP, 8/8/16)
2016 Aug 8, Amnesty Int’l. said Ethiopian security forces shot dead at least 67 people in the Oromia region over the weekend. An opposition politician said more than 70 people were killed across Oromia with hundreds detained during protests.
(SFC, 8/9/16, p.A3)
2016 Aug 8, In Indian-controlled Kashmir police said government forces have arrested more than a thousand protesters over the past two weeks in an attempt to stem deadly anti-India demonstrations in the Himalayan region.
(AP, 8/8/16)
2016 Aug 8, Iran detained Xiyue Wang, a Chinese-American history researcher. In 2017 he sentenced to 10 years in prison after being convicted of "infiltrating" and sending confidential material abroad.
(AP, 7/17/17)(AP, 8/8/19)
2016 Aug 8, Japan's emperor expressed concern about fulfilling his duties as he ages, in a public address that was remarkable for its rarity and its suggestion that he would like to abdicate.
(AP, 8/8/16)
2016 Aug 8, In Nepal a helicopter crashed in a mountainous region, killing all seven people on board.
(AP, 8/8/16)
2016 Aug 8, In Nigeria gunmen dressed as priests killed three soldiers in the oil-producing Niger Delta.
(Reuters, 8/8/16)
2016 Aug 8, In Pakistan a suicide bombing that targeted lawyers killed at least 74 people in the city of Quetta.
(AP, 8/9/16)(Reuters, 8/11/16)
2016 Aug 8, Portugal’s National Civil Protection Authority said that 3,000 firefighters, 1,060 vehicles and 16 water-dumping aircraft are deployed at 515 wildfires, some of which have been burning for days.
(AP, 8/8/16)
2016 Aug 8, Taiwan lodged a complaint with Kenya over the deportation of five of its nationals to China after a court acquitted them of charges of running illegal telecoms operations. A Kenyan magistrate's court acquitted the five Taiwanese nationals and 35 Chinese citizens on Aug 5 after the prosecution failed to prove its case against them.
(Reuters, 8/8/16)
2016 Aug 8, Uganda's government said it "will continue to suppress" the public activities of homosexuals and that a rehabilitation program had been developed to allow them to "lead normal lives again."
(AP, 8/8/16)
2017 Aug 8, Pres. Donald Trump issued his strongest warning yet for North Korea in comments to reporters in New Jersey, saying that "North Korea best not make any more threats to the US. They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen".
(AP, 8/9/17)
2017 Aug 8, The NY Times published a draft report of the fourth National Climate Assessment. It predicted that US temperatures will rise at least 2.5 degrees over the next few decades.
(SFC, 8/9/17, p.A1)
2017 Aug 8, The US Centers for Disease Control said an increasing number of people have been sickened by eating salmonella infected papaya traced to a farm in southern Mexico. 109 people in 16 states were now sickened. One death in NYC was reported.
(SFC, 8/9/17, p.A6)
2017 Aug 8, US Border Patrol agents in San Diego arrested Jorge Edwin Rivera (25) as he used a drone to smuggle methamphetamine from Mexico. Rivera said he had used drones five or six times since march to smuggle drugs.
(SSFC, 8/20/17, p.A14)
2017 Aug 8, In Chicago several gunmen opened fire on a group of people on a sidewalk killing one man and wounding six other people in the Bronzeville neighborhood.
(SFC, 8/10/17, p.A5)
2017 Aug 8, Glen Campbell (81), American country music legend, died in Nashville. His songs included “Rhinestone Cowboy" (1975) and “Wichita Lineman" (1968). The TV show “Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour" ran from 1969 to 1972 on CBS.
(SFC, 8/9/17, p.A6)
2017 Aug 8, McDonald's said it will nearly double the number of restaurants in China in the next five years, eventually surpassing Japan as the hamburger chain's second-biggest market outside the US. The announcement came a week after it completed a previously announced deal to sell most of its operations in China.
(AP, 8/8/17)
2017 Aug 8, Former British police Officer Adrian Pogmore (51) was jailed for a year for using a police helicopter to film a couple having sex and other people sunbathing nude.
(AFP, 8/8/17)
2017 Aug 8, In China a 7.0-magnitude earthquake late today struck a remote, mountainous part of southwestern province of Sichuan, killing at least 19 people, including eight tourists, and injuring 247. The death toll rose to 23 as more bodies were recovered.
(Reuters, 8/9/17)(AFP, 8/11/17)
2017 Aug 8, In Congo DRC opposition campaigners launched a two-day general strike to pressure President Joseph Kabila to set an election date -- a day after 12 people were shot dead in an anti-government rampage in the capital.
(AFP, 8/8/17)
2017 Aug 8, Two Egyptian policemen were killed and one wounded when a group of wanted criminals opened fire on security forces in a village north of Cairo.
(Reuters, 8/8/17)
2017 Aug 8, In France a BMW rammed into a group of soldiers in the Paris suburb of Levallois-Perret. Six soldiers were injured in the attack. Police the next day arrested the chief suspect in the attack. The man was wounded in a gunfight during his capture.
(AP, 8/9/17)(SFC, 8/10/17, p.A4)
2017 Aug 8, Germany’s wind power group Siemens Gamesa said it has installed Asia's tallest wind turbines, with a total height of 210 meters (230 yards), in Thailand.
(Reuters, 8/8/17)
2017 Aug 8, Iranian authorities detained 64 “half naked" youths at a pool party in central Isfahan province. A report said the youngsters were dancing and drinking alcoholic beverages.
(AP, 8/9/17)
2017 Aug 8, In Ivory Coast twenty people escaped custody after assaulting police officers at the courthouse in Abidjan.
(Reuters, 8/9/17)
2017 Aug 8, Kenya held elections. The presidential vote pitted President Uhuru Kenyatta (55), the businessman son of Kenya's founding president, against Raila Odinga (72), a former political prisoner and son of Kenya's first vice-president.
(Reuters, 8/8/17)
2017 Aug 8, In Nepal a parliamentary report released today said immigration officials at its international airport are colluding with traffickers to illegally send Nepali women to the Gulf where they are often exploited and abused.
(AFP, 8/8/17)
2017 Aug 8, Russian President Vladimir Putin visited the breakaway Georgian region of Abkhazia and assured it of Moscow's military support, an act of defiance to Western governments that have condemned Russia's backing for the separatists.
(Reuters, 8/8/17)
2017 Aug 8, Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny launched a new YouTube attack against President Vladimir Putin's close associates. The video described the assets of billionaire brothers Arkady and Boris Rotenberg and their sons. Navalny's video charged that they won lucrative government orders unfairly and included footage of their palatial mansions.
(AP, 8/9/17)
2017 Aug 8, Lawmakers in South Africa's ruling African National Congress (ANC) pledged to back President Jacob Zuma in a no-confidence motion in parliament, aiming to thwart opposition efforts to force him out. Zuma survived the no-confidence vote.
(Reuters, 8/8/17)(SFC, 8/9/17, p.A2)
2017 Aug 8, In South Africa thieves broke into the offices of the Competition Commission, making off with laptop computers. The Competition Commission is responsible for investigating issues including cartel conduct and mergers and acquisitions, before bringing them to the Competition Tribunal for adjudication.
(Reuters, 8/12/17)
2017 Aug 8, The head of South Sudan's UN mission announced the long-awaited arrival of troops from a regional force meant to patrol roads and quell violence in the war-ravaged country. About 150 troops from Rwanda arrived at the weekend for the regional protection force (RPF).
(AFP, 8/8/17)
2017 Aug 8, In Syria pro-government forces intensified their assault on the rebel-held suburbs of Damascus, a day after the Faylaq al-Rahman rebel faction beat back an attempted government advance, killing several soldiers.
(AP, 8/8/17)
2017 Aug 8, In Syria airstrikes on parts of the northern city of Raqqa that are controlled by the Islamic State group killed 29 civilians, including nine women and 12 children.
(AP, 8/9/17)
2017 Aug 8, In Thailand journalist Pravit Rojanaphruk was charged with sedition and violation of the country’s computer law for online postings concerning politics.
(SFC, 8/9/17, p.A2)
2017 Aug 8, A Turkish media report said Turkey has begun construction of a wall along the country's frontier with Iran, mimicking the Turkish barrier along the Syrian border.
(AP, 8/8/17)
2017 Aug 8, Venezuela's Supreme Court sentenced Caracas district mayor Ramon Muchacho to 15 months in jail for defying orders to keep transit moving in an area routinely blocked and barricaded by anti-government demonstrations.
(Reuters, 8/8/17)
2017 Aug 8, Venezuela’s new constitutional assembly assumed even more power by declaring itself as the superior body to all other governmental institutions, including the opposition-controlled congress.
(AP, 8/9/17)
2017 Aug 8, In southern Yemen four soldiers and six suspected al Qaeda attackers were killed and 10 soldiers wounded when a suicide bomber and gunmen tried to storm an army camp.
(Reuters, 8/8/17)
2018 Aug 8, The US announced it would impose new sanctions on Russia for illegally using a chemical weapon in an attempt to kill former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Britain earlier this year.
(SFC, 8/9/18, p.A6)
2018 Aug 8, US customs officials arrested an American woman (81) and seized 92 pounds of heroin found in the rocker panel of a car driven by the woman at the Tecate border crossing in San Diego County.
(SFC, 8/11/18, p.A6)
2018 Aug 8, A large US federal law enforcement operation targeted businesses in Minnesota and Nebraska that knowingly hired and mistreated illegal immigrants. 17 business owners and managers were indicted for fraud, wire fraud and money laundering.
(SFC, 8/9/18, p.A6)
2018 Aug 8, New York state Republican Rep. Christopher Collins (68) was arrested on charges of insider trading. He allegedly used information acquired as a board member of Inate Immunotherapeutics Ltd. to sell shares before a public announcement of a failed clinical trial.
(SFC, 8/9/18, p.A6)
2018 Aug 8, Robert Danzig (85), a former chief of the Hearst Newspapers, died in a Cape Cod hospital. He became publisher of Albany's Times Union and two other Hearst papers in 1969. He served as president of the Hearst Newspapers for two decades.
(SFC, 8/10/18, p.A7)
2018 Aug 8, It was reported that Wells Fargo filed a disclosure last week revealing that bank errors caused more than 600 people in foreclosure to be incorrectly denied mortgage modification to make loans more affordable and that some 400 of that group ultimately lost their homes.
(SFC, 8/8/18, p.C1)
2018 Aug 8, A Bangladesh court acquitted a British man detained without charge for two years on suspicion of involvement in the July 1, 2016, attack on a cafe in Dhaka that killed 22 people. Hasnat Karim was in the cafe at the time of the attack for his daughter's 13th birthday party.
(Reuters, 8/8/18)
2018 Aug 8, A spokesman said Congo's President Joseph Kabila will not stand in the election scheduled for December, finally agreeing to obey a two-term limit but picking a hard-core loyalist under European Union sanctions to stand instead.
(Reuters, 8/8/18)
2018 Aug 8, CongoDRC began Ebola vaccinations in the country's latest outbreak of the deadly virus that has already claimed at least nine lives in North Kivu province.
(AP, 8/8/18)
2018 Aug 8, Costa Rica's supreme court voted to make same-sex marriage legal and gave the country's legislature 18 months to change the law or it would automatically become legal.
(SFC, 8/10/18, p.A2)
2018 Aug 8, Germany said it has reached an agreement with Spain for that country to take back previously registered migrants who show up at the German border, a first step toward implementing a deal to defuse a domestic political dispute over migration.
(AP, 8/8/18)
2018 Aug 8, In India a stampede among thousands of mourners at the funeral of a powerful southern Indian politician killed two people and injured 47.
(Reuters, 8/8/18)
2018 Aug 8, Iran’s Minister of Cooperatives, Labour and Social Welfare, Ali Rabiei, was sacked by parliament, the latest shuffle in top economic posts as the Islamic Republic struggles to stabilize its economy.
(Reuters, 8/8/18)
2018 Aug 8, Italian police said gangsters dropped 25-kilo (55-pound) weights on the limbs of drug addicts, alcoholics and other indigents in an insurance fraud racket that faked car accidents to obtain hundreds of thousands of euros in claim payments. Police said 11 persons, including a nurse suspected of procuring anesthetics, were arrested in the crackdown on two Palermo-based criminal organizations.
(AP, 8/8/18)
2018 Aug 8, In southern Italy hundreds of crop pickers and labor union activists marched from a shanty town to protest what they say is the exploitation of migrant farmworkers. 16 farmworkers were killed on Aug 4 and Aug 6 while riding in vans that collided with trucks.
(AP, 8/8/18)
2018 Aug 8, Ivory Coast's former first lady Simone Gbagbo was released from detention after being granted an amnesty for her part in a short civil war in 2011.
(Reuters, 8/8/18)
2018 Aug 8, In Japan rain lashed Tokyo and dozens of flights were canceled as Typhoon Shanshan headed toward the capital.
(AP, 8/8/18)
2018 Aug 8, In Japan Okinawa Gov. Takeshi Onaga (67) died of pancreatic cancer. He had led an anti-US military base movement on the southern Japanese island.
(AP, 8/8/18)
2018 Aug 8, Kenya's national wildlife service said authorities have arrested a suspected poacher linked to the killing of a 12-year-old black rhino last month in Lake Nakuru national park.
(Reuters, 8/8/18)
2018 Aug 8, Kenyan runner Nicholas Bett (28), who won the 2015 world championship title in the 400-meter hurdles, was killed in an early-morning car crash in the country's famed high-altitude training region.
(AP, 8/8/18)
2018 Aug 8, Malaysia's former PM Najib Razak (65) pleaded not guilty to money laundering charges slapped on him, as the country's new government looked for answers to how billions of dollars went missing from a state fund 1MDB during his term.
(Reuters, 8/8/18)
2018 Aug 8, Malaysia's minister of Islamic affairs said he had ordered the removal of portraits of two lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) activists from a public photography exhibition, as they promoted LGBT activities.
(Reuters, 8/8/18)
2018 Aug 8, Workers seized partial control of the headquarters of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees in Hamas-run Gaza, accusing their union of "mutiny" over job cuts.
(AFP, 8/8/18)
2018 Aug 8, Philippine leader Rodrigo Duterte said there would be no new casinos set up during his presidency, a day after abruptly shelving Landing International's $1.5 billion integrated casino project in Manila.
(Reuters, 8/8/18)
2018 Aug 8, Saudi Arabia said there is no room for mediation in the kingdom's deepening diplomatic dispute with Canada, and that Ottawa knew what it needed to do to "fix its big mistake".
(Reuters, 8/8/18)
2018 Aug 8, Oil giant Saudi Aramco said it will buy out the other 50-percent stake in a joint chemical venture in the Netherlands in a deal valued at 1.5 billion euros, or $1.7 billion.
(AP, 8/8/18)
2018 Aug 8, Saudi Arabia said it executed and crucified a man from Myanmar convicted of killing a woman and carrying out other crimes. In Saudi crucifixions the condemned is usually beheaded and the body then put on display.
(AP, 8/8/18)
2018 Aug 8, South Korea-based Samsung Electronics said it plans to spend a whopping $22 billion over the next three years on artificial intelligence, auto components and other future businesses as the company maps out its strategy under the restored leadership of Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong.
(AP, 8/8/18)
2018 Aug 8, A Sri Lankan court sentenced hard-line Buddhist monk Galagoda Atte Gnanasara to six years in prison for contempt of court. Gnanasara was found guilty of interrupting a court hearing in 2016 for military personnel accused of involvement in the disappearance of journalist Prageeth Ekneligoda. In June, the monk was sentenced in a separate case to six months in prison for harassing and intimidating the journalist's wife.
(AP, 8/8/18)
2018 Aug 8, Thailand granted citizenship to three young soccer players who were trapped with other team members for almost three weeks in a cave in northern Thailand along with their 25-year-old coach. All four had been stateless, and their lack of citizenship deprived them of some basic benefits and rights, including the ability to travel outside of Chiang Rai, the northern province where they live.
(AP, 8/8/18)
2018 Aug 8, Venezuela's Supreme Court ordered the arrest of opposition leader Julio Borges and called for the prosecution of opposition lawmaker Juan Requesens (29), who police detained a day earlier, in connection with the recent alleged assassination attempt against Pres. Maduro.
(SFC, 8/9/18, p.A2)
2019 Aug 8, President Donald Trump said that Joseph Maguire, the current chief of the National Counterterrorism Center, will become the acting director of national intelligence.
(The Telegraph, 8/8/19)
2019 Aug 8, The US Republican Party, the Trump campaign and other GOP organizations said that they are freezing their spending on Twitter to protest the platform's treatment of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
(SFC, 8/9/19, p.A6)
2019 Aug 8, Neil Kimball, a Los Angeles County sheriff's detective, was sentenced to three years in prison for having sex with girl (15) that he met while investigating her report of being sexually assaulted in 2017.
(SFC, 8/9/19, p.A5)
2019 Aug 8, Khabir Daniel, a Georgia state ice cream man and convicted child molester, was sentenced to 25 years in prison and life on probation for raping a 14-year-old girl inside his work truck.
(AP, 8/9/19)
2019 Aug 8, A judge in Montana ordered Andrew Anglin, the publisher of a neo-Nazi website. to pay Tanya Gersh, a Jewish real estate agent, $14 million for inciting his readers to harass her family with hundreds of threatening and anti-Semitic messages and calls.
(SFC, 8/9/19, p.A6)
2019 Aug 8, CBS Corp and AT&T Inc signed a new multi-year content carriage agreement, ending a 20 day-long blackout that began when the previous, seven-year deal expired at 2:00 a.m. EST on July 19.
(Reuters, 8/8/19)
2019 Aug 8, Simon Cheng (28), a trade and investment officer at the Hong Kong consulate’s Scottish Development International section, disappeared on the way back from a business event in the Chinese city of Shenzhen. On Aug. 22 China’s state-backed Global Times newspaper said he was detained for involvement in prostitution.
(The Telegraph, 8/22/19)
2019 Aug 8, Egyptian officials said security forces have killed at least 17 suspected militants in raids in Cairo and in another province. Their statement did not say when the raids took place, or whether police forces were wounded in the clashes with the militants.
(AP, 8/8/19)
2019 Aug 8, France's interior and foreign ministries said 31 Yazidi families arrived today in the southern city of Toulouse from Irbil, Iraq. Previous groups of 16 and 28 families had arrived in December and May.
(AP, 8/8/19)
2019 Aug 8, It was reported that as many as 500 people have been rounded up in the latest crackdown in Indian Kashmir, which has been on the edge since the right-wing government revoked its autonomy.
(The Telegraph, 8/8/19)
2019 Aug 8, Israeli troops raided a Palestinian village on and the military said it was sending reinforcements to the West Bank, hours after the body of Dvir Sorek, a 19-year-old soldier, was found with stab wounds between the Jewish settlements of Migdal Oz and Efrat.
(AP, 8/8/19)(SFC, 8/9/19, p.A4)
2019 Aug 8, Kyrgyz security forces launched a second raid on the house of former president Almazbek Atambayev, after a failed attempt to arrest him the previous day led to violent clashes with his followers. Atambayev surrendered when police raided his home and detained him for questioning over a corruption case, laying bare a power struggle with his successor Sooronbai Jeenbekov that is pushing the Central Asian nation to the brink of political crisis. In 2020 Atambayev was sentenced to 11 years in prison on corruption charges.
(Reuters, 8/8/19)(AP, 8/13/19)(Econ., 6/27/20, p.27)
2019 Aug 8, The Daily Star, Lebanon's only English-language daily, protested the country's deteriorating economic and political conditions by publishing a blank edition, calling it an "alarm bell." The back page had a photo of a cedar tree, a national symbol, with a caption reading: Wake up before it's too late!
(AP, 8/8/19)
2019 Aug 8, Mexican authorities found a total of 19 bodies scattered across the city of Uruapan in Michoacan state this morning. Many of the bodies had been dismembered and all 19 victims had been shot to death. Three of the victims were women. Experts said the fight could be over the production and distribution of avocados, dubbed "green gold" in Mexico.
(Insider, 8/9/19)(SFC, 8/9/19, p.A2)
2019 Aug 8, In Mexico City a policeman reportedly raped 16-year-old girl said in a museum in the city center. A policeman was soon arrested.
(AP, 8/13/19)
2019 Aug 8, Pakistan halted its main train service to India and banned Indian films as it kept up the diplomatic pressure on New Delhi for revoking the special status of Kashmir, the region at the heart of 70 years of hostility between them.
(Reuters, 8/8/19)
2019 Aug 8, Pakistan's anti-corruption bureau arrested opposition leader Maryam Nawaz, the latest high-profile detention of a member of the Sharif political dynasty. The daughter of former PM Nawaz Sharif was arrested with her cousin, Yousaf Abbas, while attempting to visit her father at a jail in the city of Lahore.
(Reuters, 8/8/19)
2019 Aug 8, Russian authorities froze a slew of bank accounts linked to jailed opposition politician Alexei Navalny as part of a money laundering investigation that his allies say is a trumped-up attempt to cripple his political movement.
(Reuters, 8/8/19)
2019 Aug 8, In Russia two people died and four others were wounded when a rocket engine exploded during a test at a military shooting range in Nyonoksa in the northwestern Arkhangelsk region. On August 9 US-based nuclear experts said they suspected the accidental blast and radiation release occurred during the testing of a nuclear-powered cruise missile vaunted by President Vladimir Putin last year. Russia's state nuclear agency Rosatom later said that five of its staff members died in the accident. Pres. Vladimir Putin later hailed the five nuclear engineers as heroes and patriots.
(AP, 8/8/19)(Reuters, 8/10/19)(AP, 11/22/19)
2019 Aug 8, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa won a court case against the anti-corruption watchdog over a matter concerning ally Pravin Gordhan, ahead of a fresh battle over findings against the president himself.
(Reuters, 8/8/19)
2019 Aug 8, Syria accused Turkey of "expansionist ambitions," saying Ankara's agreement with Washington to set up a so-called safe zone in the northeast only helps such plans and is a violation of Syria's sovereignty.
(AP, 8/8/19)
2019 Aug 8, Syrian government forces seized territory from insurgents in northwestern Syria, building on advances since the military declared an end to a brief ceasefire earlier this week.
(Reuters, 8/8/19)
2019 Aug 8, Turkish state news said an operation last week by the Turkish military and its intelligence agency killed two more suspects and alleged planners in the July 17 assassination of Turkish diplomat Osman Kose in Irbil, Iraq.
(AP, 8/8/19)
2019 Aug 8, The United Arab Emirates released Osama al-Najjar, Badr al-Bahri and Othman al-Shehhi after appearing in a nearly two-minute video shared on social media sites by the state-aligned UAE Forsan in which they denounced the Muslim Brotherhood and its ideas. The three had been detained on national security charges for their ties to al-Islah, an Islamist group that is outlawed in the UAE.
(AP, 8/9/19)
2019 Aug 8, A UN climate panel said in a report that divesting from fossil fuels alone won't be enough to limit warming from climate change, adding that issues including deforestation and agriculture must be addressed to drive down greenhouse gas emissions.
(ABC News, 8/8/19)
2019 Aug 8, The UN called on forces loyal to Libya's internationally recognized government and a rival administration to commit to a humanitarian truce by midnight on August 9.
(AFP, 8/9/19)
2020 Aug 8, President Trump signed four executive orders on economic aid as stimulus talks stalled. Their impact may be limited, and legal challenges are expected. Trump extended supplemental unemployment benefits, but at a reduced rate of $400 per week from the previous $600. He also claimed authority to defer payroll taxes from august 1 to the end of the year.
(NY Times, 8/9/20)(SSFC, 8/9/20, p.A8)
2020 Aug 8, California to date had 555,544 cases of coronavirus and 10,329 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 60,834 cases and 909 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 5,003,600 with the death toll at 162,422.
(sfist.com, 8/8/20)
2020 Aug 8, In Portland, Oregon, a fire inside a police union building late today led authorities to declare a riot and force protesters away from the offices as violent demonstrations continued in the city.
(AP, 8/8/20)
2020 Aug 8, In Texas a pair of Fort Hood soldiers were among those arrested at the conclusion of a two-day child prostitution sting. Nine men arrested also included a third US service member.
(Miami Herald, 8/11/20)
2020 Aug 8, Brazil surpassed a grim milestone of 100,000 deaths from COVID-19. The Health Ministry said there had been a total of 3,012,412 confirmed infections with the new coronavirus.
(AP, 8/8/20)
2020 Aug 8, Britain’s military said it has been asked by the government to help prevent people from reaching the UK from France in small boats, after a surge in the number of vessels making the dangerous journey.
(AP, 8/8/20)
2020 Aug 8, Health care workers rallied in British cities demanding hefty pay raises for their hard work during the pandemic.
(SSFC, 8/9/20, p.A11)
2020 Aug 8, China reported 31 new coronavirus cases, mainly in the western Xinjiang region, where an outbreak has infected 750 people.
(SSFC, 8/9/20, p.A11)
2020 Aug 8, In northeastern Czech Republic at least 11 people were killed and 10 others injured in an apartment building fire in the town of Bohumin.
(AP, 8/8/20)
2020 Aug 8, Konrad Steffen (69), a renowned researcher who helped warn the world that climate change was melting Greenland’s massive ice sheet, died there in an ice crevasse accident.
(NY Times, 8/14/20)
2020 Aug 8, Iran's semiofficial Mehr news agency reported that an unknown gunman has killed two Lebanese nationals on the streets of Tehran. The assailant, riding a motorcycle, shot dead Maryam Dawood (27) and her father Habib Dawood, a history professor.
(AP, 8/8/20)
2020 Aug 8, In Israel thousands of demonstrators thronged the streets near the official residence of PM Benjamin Netanyahu in central Jerusalem, in a renewed show of strength as weeks of protests against the Israeli leader showed no signs of slowing.
(AP, 8/8/20)
2020 Aug 8, Italy’s health minister announced that women in Italy can now use the abortion pill on an outpatient basis rather than be hospitalized to terminate a pregnancy.
(AP, 8/8/20)
2020 Aug 8, In Lebanon security forces fired tear gas and clashed with stone-throwing demonstrators n Beirut amid mounting fury over the massive explosion that devastated much of the city and killed nearly 160 people.
(AP, 8/8/20)
2020 Aug 8, In Mexico officials in Guanajuato state confirmed that the bodies of seven men wee found with multiple gunshot wounds on the side of a road outside Jerecuaro. The state has seen more than 9,000 killings since a turf war began in 2017 between the Santa Rosa de Lima gang and the rival Jalisco cartel.
(SFC, 8/10/20, p.A2)
2020 Aug 8, Police in North Macedonia found 94 migrants packed into a truck in the country’s southeast. The truck driver fled from the scene.
(AP, 8/9/20)
2020 Aug 8, Tens of thousands of people took to the streets in Russia's Far East for a fifth consecutive weekend as anti-Kremlin rallies showed little sign of dying down. Protesters demanded that regional governor Sergei Furgal be either released or tried in Khabarovsk.
(AP, 8/8/20)
2020 Aug 8, In Poland demonstrators turned out in Warsaw and other Polish cities to protest anti-LGBT attitudes promoted by the government as well as the detention of pro-LGBT protesters.
(AP, 8/8/20)
2020 Aug 8, A suicide car bomber attacked a military base in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, killing at least eight people and injuring 14 others.
(AP, 8/8/20)
2021 Aug 8, The head of the nation's second-largest teachers' union said COVID-19 vaccinations should be required for US teachers to protect students who are too young to be inoculated.
(AP, 8/8/21)
2021 Aug 8, Total US COVID-19 cases reached over 35,744,920 with the death toll at 616,742.
(sfist.com, 8/9/21)
2021 Aug 8, Northern California's Dixie Fire, now the second-largest recorded in state history, expanded to nearly 500,000 acres late today and left three firefighters injured.
(Reuters, 8/9/21)
2021 Aug 8, American actress Jane Withers (95) died in Burbank, Ca. She played tough, tomboyish children in more than two dozen films in the 1930s and ’40s and achieved a second burst of fame as Josephine the Plumber in Comet cleanser commercials. Her films included “Bright Eyes" (1934), “The Holy Terror" (1937), “Wild and Woolly" (1937), “Rascals" (1938), “Always in Trouble" (1938) and “The Arizona Wildcat" (1939).
(NY Times, 8/8/21)
2021 Aug 8, A US federal judge granted Norwegian Cruise Line’s request for a preliminary injunction, temporarily allowing the company to require proof of vaccination from passengers despite a Florida law that bans businesses from doing so.
(NY Times, 8/9/21)
2021 Aug 8, In South Dakota motorcycle riders began gathering in Sturgis for a 10-day biker rally amid a rise in COVID-19 cases in the state.
(SFC, 8/9/21, p.A4)
2021 Aug 8, In Afghanistan Taliban fighters overran three provincial capitals including the strategic northeastern city of Kunduz, as the insurgents intensified pressure on the north and threatened further cities.
(Reuters, 8/8/21)
2021 Aug 8, Australia's three most populous states of New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland reported a total of 282 COVID-19 new locally acquired infections, with authorities struggling to quell outbreaks of the Delta variant.
(Reuters, 8/8/21)
2021 Aug 8, Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd said it has suspended several staff following an employee's allegations on the company's intranet that she was sexually assaulted by her boss and a client.
(Reuters, 8/8/21)
2021 Aug 8, In China the 14 Asian elephants of various sizes and ages were guided across the Yuanjiang river in Yunnan late today and a path was being opened for them to return to the nature reserve where they lived in the Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture.
(AP, 8/8/21)
2021 Aug 8, It was reported that a midsummer heat wave across the northern Atlantic caused enough of Greenland's ice cap to melt in a single day to submerge Florida beneath two inches of water.
(SSFC, 8/8/21, p.B10)
2021 Aug 8, Iran reported more new infections and deaths across the country than any other single day since the pandemic began. Health authorities logged over 39,600 new cases and 542 deaths from the virus.
(AP, 8/8/21)
2021 Aug 8, Italy reported 11 coronavirus-related deaths compared with 22 the day before. The daily tally of new infections fell to 5,735 from 6,902. Italy has registered 128,220 deaths linked to COVID-19 since its first outbreak emerged in February last year.
(AP, 8/8/21)
2021 Aug 8, In Japan Eliud Kipchoge, 36, of Kenya won his second consecutive Olympic marathon in 2 hours 8 minutes 38 seconds, reaffirming his status as the greatest runner in history over the distance of 26.2 miles.
(NY Times, 8/8/21)
2021 Aug 8, In Japan the Olympic cauldron was extinguished, ending a Summer Games like no other. The US won 113 medals, more than any other country. China finished second with 88.
(NY Times, 8/8/21)(NY Times, 8/9/21)
2021 Aug 8, PM Muhyiddin Yassin said Malaysia will relax some COVID-19 restrictions for fully vaccinated people in eight states that have met criteria such as reduced case numbers and higher vaccination rates. Authorities reported 18,688 new infections, and a record death tally of 360.
(AP, 8/8/21)
2021 Aug 8, In northern Mali gunmen attacked the communities of Ouatagouna and Karou, killing at least 40 people in apparent retribution for the recent arrest of several jihadi leaders.
(AP, 8/9/21)
2021 Aug 8, The Rwanda Defence Force tweeted that the port city of Mocímboa da Praia , a major stronghold of the insurgency for more than two years has been captured by Rwandan and Mozambican security forces.
(BBC, 8/8/21)
2021 Aug 8, It was reported that one of the Nigerian schoolgirls seized by Islamist militants Boko Haram from the town of Chibok in 2014 has been freed and reunited with her family. Ruth Ngladar Pogu and a man she is said to have married in captivity recently surrendered to the Nigerian military. Pogu and her 2 children were received by the Borno state governor.
(BBC, 8/8/21)
2021 Aug 8, North Korean state media said leader Kim Jong Un has mobilized the military to carry out relief work in areas recently hit by heavy rains, amid concerns over an economic crisis and food shortage.
(AP, 8/8/21)
2021 Aug 8, Saudi Arabian state oil producer Aramco reported a near four-fold rise in second-quarter net profit, beating expectations and boosted by higher oil prices and a recovery in oil demand.
(Reuters, 8/8/21)
2021 Aug 8, In South Sudan clashes erupted between rival factions within the military wing of Vice Pres. Rick Machar's party. Dozens were believed killed.
(SFC, 8/10/21, p.A5)
2021 Aug 8, Sudan said it ordered its envoy to Ethiopia home for consultations after a government spokeswoman in Addis Ababa rejected a Sudanese initiative to mediate a cease-fire in the Tigray war and accused it of occupying Ethiopian territory.
(AP, 8/8/21)
2021 Aug 8, More than half a million Tunisians received vaccinations as part of a campaign to control the outbreak of COVID-19 after the country received more than 6 million vaccine doses from Western and Arab countries.
(Reuters, 8/9/21)
2021 Aug 8, Vietnam's health ministry reported 9,690 coronavirus infections, a record daily increase and up from 7,334 cases a day earlier.
(Reuters, 8/8/21)
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