Today in History - October 21
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335 Oct 21, Constantinople emperor (Constantine the Great) enacted rules against Jews.
(MC, 10/21/01)
1096 Oct 21, Seljuk Turks under Sultan Kilidj Arslan of Nicea slaughtered thousands of German crusaders at Chivitot.
(HN, 10/21/99)(MC, 10/21/01)
1422 Oct 21, Charles VI, King of France (1380-1422), died at 54.
(MC, 10/21/01)
1439 Oct 21, Traversari Ambrosius (53), Italian humanist and leader, died.
(MC, 10/21/01)
1492 Oct 21, Columbus landed on San Salvador Island (Bahamas-Watling Island).
(http://tinyurl.com/774v3)
1520 Oct 21, Ferdinand Magellan arrived at Tierra Del Fuego (Argentina-Chile).
(MC, 10/21/01)
1529 Oct 21, Henry VIII of England was named Defender of the Faith by the Pope after defending the seven sacraments against Luther.
(HN, 10/21/98)
1553 Oct 21, Volumes of the Talmud were burned.
(MC, 10/21/01)
1555 Oct 21, English parliament refused to recognize Philip of Spain as king.
(MC, 10/21/01)
1574 Oct 21, Nicolo Rubini, composer, was born.
(MC, 10/21/01)
1600 Oct 21, Tokugawa leyasu defeated his enemies in the battle of Sekigahara and affirmed his position as Japan's most powerful warlord. The win enabled Ieyasu to found a 265-year ruling dynasty.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Sekigahara)(Econ, 10/31/09, p.54)
1641 Oct 21, A Catholic uprising took place in Ulster. Thousands of English and Scots were killed. [see Oct 23]
(MC, 10/21/01)
1650 Oct 21, Jean Bart, French captain and sea hero, was born. He escaped from Plymouth.
(MC, 10/21/01)
1652 Oct 21, King Louis XIV returned to Paris.
(MC, 10/21/01)
1760 Oct 21, Katsushika Hokusai (d.1849), Japanese printmaker, was born. Hokusai was a master designer of color woodblock prints. His paintings included 36 views of Mt. Fuji done when he was 70.
(SFC, 9/24/98, p.E3)(WSJ, 11/3/98, p.A20)(Econ, 6/4/11, p.54)
1765 Oct 21, Giovanni Paolo Pannini (Panini), Italian painter and architect, died at 73.
(MC, 10/21/01)
1772 Oct 21, Samuel Taylor Coleridge (d.1834), English poet and author, was born. His work included "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" and "Kubla Khan".
(AP, 9/12/97)(HN, 10/21/00)
1790 Oct 21, Alphonse-Marie Louis de Lamartine, writer (Rene), was born in Macon, France.
(MC, 10/21/01)
1790 Oct 21, The Tricolor was chosen as the official flag of France.
(HN, 10/21/98)
1797 Oct 21, The 44-gun 204-foot U.S. Navy frigate USS Constitution, also known as Old Ironsides, was launched in Boston's harbor. It was never defeated in 42 battles. 216 crew members set sail again in 1997 for its 200th birthday. [see Sep 20]
(AP, 10/21/97)(SFC, 7/22/97, p.A1)(SFC, 10/22/97, p.A6)
1805 Oct 21, A British fleet commanded by Vice Adm. Horatio Nelson defeated a French-Spanish fleet in the Battle of Trafalgar fought off Cape Trafalgar, Spain. Admiral Nelson won his greatest victory and though fatally wounded in the battle aboard his flagship, he lived long enough to see victory: "England expects every man to do his duty." The crew fittingly preserved his body in rum. Over 8,500 Englishmen, Frenchmen and Spaniards were lost in the battle or the hurricane that swept over the ships the next day. In 1807 Nelson’s surgeon William Beatty authored “authentic narrative of the Death of Lord Nelson." In 1999 Barry Unsworth authored the novel "Losing Nelson." In 2001 Joseph F. Callo edited "Nelson Speaks: Admiral Lord Nelson in His Own Words." In 2005 Adam Nicolson authored “Men of Honour: Trafalgar and the Making of the English Hero;" Roy Adkins authored “Nelson’s Trafalgar," and Adam Nicolson authored “Seize the Fire."
(WSJ, 5/24/01, p.A20)(Econ, 6/25/05, p.82)(WSJ, 8/19/05, p.W6)(ON, 3/06, p.2)(Reuters, 7/13/10)
1824 Oct 21, Joseph Aspdin patented Portland cement in Yorkshire, England.
(MC, 10/21/01)
1928 Oct 21, AT&T was removed from the DJIA.
(WSJ, 4/2/04, p.C1)
1833 Oct 21, 1833, Alfred Bernhard Nobel was born. The Swedish-born chemist, engineer and industrialist who invented dynamite, later established the prestigious Nobel prizes to honor the world’s greatest scientists, writers and peacemakers. In 1859, after four years in the United States, Nobel returned to Sweden and built a factory to manufacture the explosive nitroglycerin. In 1864 the factory accidentally blew up, killing Nobel’s youngest brother and four others. Two years later, Nobel invented dynamite, a safe and manageable form of nitroglycerin. A pacifist by nature, Nobel hoped that the destructive power of his invention would bring an end to wars. By the time of his death on December 10, 1897, Nobel had acquired a massive fortune. In his will, he left instructions that the bulk of his estate should endow the annual Nobel prizes for those who had most contributed to the areas of physics, chemistry, medicine, literature and peace. In 1968, a sixth award for economics was established.
(WUD, 1994, p.969)(SFEC, 12/797, Par p.28)(HNPD, 10/21/99)
1837 Oct 21, During the Second Seminole War (1835-1842), under a flag of truce during peace talks, U.S. troops under Gen. Thomas S. Jesup (1788-1860) sieged the Indian Seminole Chief Osceola in Florida and sent to a jail in North Carolina, where he later died. Jesup's trickery outraged the American public.
(HN, 10/21/98)(DoW, 1999, p.435)
1839 Oct 21, Georg von Siemens, founder of Deutsche Bank, was born.
(MC, 10/21/01)
1847 Oct 21, Giuseppe Giacosa (d.1906), Italian songwriter (libretti opera Puccini), was born.
(MC, 10/21/01)
1858 Oct 21, Jacques Offenbach's opera "Orphee aux Enfers," premiered in Paris. The Can-Can music was part of the opera. Dancers in Paris displayed their tail feathers in a high kick routine called the “cancan." The word was a diminutive form of “canard," the word for duck, whose evenly displayed feathers were likened to those of the dancers.
(SFEC, 3/23/97, z1 p.7)(MC, 10/21/01)
1861 Oct 21, Battle of Ball's Bluff, Va., was a disastrous Union defeat which sparked Congressional investigations.
(HN, 10/21/98)
1865 Oct 21, Another earthquake hit San Francisco. It lasted for 42 seconds and caused major damage throughout the city.
(SFC, 4/14/96, p.Z1, p.3)(GenIV, Winter 04/05)
1867 Oct 21, Many leaders of the Kiowa, Comanche and Kiowa-Apache signed a peace treaty at Medicine Lodge, Kan. Comanche Chief Quanah Parker refused to accept the treaty terms.
(HN, 10/21/98)
1868 Oct 21, A major earthquake, later estimated at magnitude 7, took place on the Hayward Fault in northern California. It destroyed the top of the San Mateo County Courthouse. At this time only 265,000 people lived in the Bay Area. The Marine Hospital at Rincon Point was badly damaged and forced to close.
(SMMB)(SFC, 6/13/96, p.C3)(SFC, 10/18/07, p.A15)(SFC, 10/9/10, p.A10)
1868 Oct 21, The Hayward Earthquake in northern California created a sunken area in San Francisco that came to be called Pioche’s Lake." The area was filled in and rooming houses were built, all of which collapsed in the 1906 earthquake.
(SFC, 6/8/13, p.C4)
1869 Oct 21, The 1st shipment of fresh oysters came West overland from Baltimore.
(MC, 10/21/01)
1872 Oct 21, The U.S. Naval Academy admitted John H. Conyers, the first African American to be accepted.
(HN, 10/21/98)
1878 Oct 21, German republic chancellor Bismarck delegated the end of "Socialism."
(MC, 10/21/01)
1879 Oct 21, Thomas Edison perfected his carbonized cotton filament light bulb after 14 months of testing at his laboratory in Menlo Park, N.J. It was the first incandescent electric lamp. The bulb burned for about 13 ½ hours.
(AP, 10/21/97)(HN, 10/21/02)(AH, 10/04, p.15)
1904 Oct 21, Panamanians clashed with U.S. Marines in Panama in a brief uprising.
(HN, 10/21/98)
1907 Oct 21, The Panic of 1907 began with a run on the Knickerbocker Trust Co. of New York. News soon emerged that it was caught up in a scam by bankers Augustus Heinze and Charles Morse, who had borrowed and embezzled vast sums to corner the market in shares of United Copper.
(AP, 10/21/07)(Econ, 4/12/14, p.53)
1912 Oct 21, Georg Solti, conductor (Fidelio), was born in Budapest, Hungary.
(MC, 10/21/01)
1914 Oct 21, Battle of Warsaw ended with a German defeat.
(MC, 10/21/01)
1915 Oct 21, The 1st transatlantic radio-telephone message was transmitted from Arlington, Va., to Paris.
(MC, 10/21/01)
1916 Oct 21, US Army formed Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC).
(MC, 10/21/01)
1917 Oct 21, Dizzy Gillespie, [John B], jazz trumpeter, famous for Night in Tunisia and Blue ‘n’ Boogie, was born.
(HN, 10/21/98)
1917 Oct 21, Members of the First Division of the U.S. Army training in Luneville, France, became the first Americans to see action on the front lines of World War I. The first U.S. troops entered the front lines at Sommervillier under French command.
(AP, 10/21/98)(HN, 10/21/98)
1917 Oct 21, Petrograd's garrison accepted a Revolutionary Military Committee.
(MC, 10/21/01)
1921 Oct 21, Malcolm Arnold, composer (Bridge over River Kwai), was born in Northampton, England.
(MC, 10/21/01)
1929 Oct 21, Ursula Kroeber Le Guin, science fiction writer, was born. Her work included “The Left Hand of Darkness."
(HN, 10/21/00)(MC, 10/21/01)
1937 Oct 21, Dmitri Shostakovitch's 5th Symphony premiered.
(MC, 10/21/01)
1938 Oct 21, Japanese troops occupied Canton.
(WUD, 1994, p.1682)(MC, 10/21/01)
1939 Oct 21, As war heated up with Germany, the British war cabinet held its first meeting in the underground war room in London.
(HN, 10/21/99)
1940 Oct 21, Ernest Hemingway's novel “For Whom the Bell Tolls" was published.
(HN, 10/21/00)
1941 Oct 21, The 19-day Battle of Bryansk ended. The city was subjected to heavy artillery and air bombardment and large parts of it was destroyed. After some fierce fighting the Soviet Third Army at Vyazma surrendered to German forces on Oct 14 and the Thirty-Second at Bryansk surrendered on Oct 20.
(www.warhistory.ie/world-war-2/battle-of-vyazma-bryansk.htm)
1942 Oct 21, Eight American and British officers landed from a submarine on an Algerian beach to take measure of Vichy French to the Operation Torch landings.
(HN, 10/21/00)
1944 Oct 21, During World War II, U.S. troops captured the German city of Aachen.
(AP, 10/21/97)
1944 Oct 21, Col. Henry Mucci (d. 1997 at 88) led a small Ranger assault force on the Philippines just 3 days before MacArthur made his celebrated return.
(SFC, 4/25/97, p.A26)
1944 Oct 21, The 1st Japanese kamikaze attack took place near Leyte Island; gunners from both the flagship of the Royal Australian Navy, HMAS Australia, and HMAS Shropshire fired at, and reportedly hit, an unidentified Japanese aircraft. The plane then flew away from the ships, before turning and flying into Australia, striking the ship's superstructure above the bridge, and spewing burning fuel and debris over a large area. A 200 kg (440 pound) bomb carried by the plane failed to explode. In 2002 Albert Axell and Hideaki Kase authored "Kamikaze: Japan's Suicide Gods." In 2006 Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney authored “Kamikaze Diaries: Reflections of Japanese Student Soldiers."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamikaze)(Econ, 7/8/06, p.79)
1945 Oct 21, Women in France were allowed to vote for the first time.
(AP, 10/21/99)
1948 Oct 21, The Israeli offensive, Operation 10 Plagues, liberated Beersheba (Be’er Sheva) from Egyptian control.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beersheba)
1949 Oct 21, Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli prime minister, was born.
(WP, 6/29/96, p.A20)(MC, 10/21/01)
1950 Oct 21, Chinese forces occupied Tibet.
(MC, 10/21/01)
1950 Oct 21, North Korean Premier Kim Il-sung established a new capital at Sinuiju on the Yalu River opposite the Chinese City of Antung.
(HN, 10/21/98)
1954 Oct 21, Dorothy Parker's Arnaud d'Usseau's "Ladies of the Corridor," premiered.
(MC, 10/21/01)
1957 Oct 21, The film “Jailhouse Rock" starring Elvis Presley opened.
(MC, 10/21/01)
1959 Oct 21, The Guggenheim Museum, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright (1869-1959), opened in NYC. In 2009 the museum published “The Guggenheim: Frank Lloyd Wright and the Making of the Modern Museum."
(AP, 10/21/97)(AH, 10/04, p.15)(SSFC, 7/26/09, p.F5)
1959 Oct 21, Dr. Werner Von Braun started work at NASA. By the late 1960s his rockets were taking men to the moon. The Dr at age 25 had masterminded the V-2 rocket for Nazi Germany.
(MC, 10/21/01)
1959 Oct 21, Contra revolutionaries bombed Havana.
(MC, 10/21/01)
1960 Oct 21, Democrat John F. Kennedy and Republican Richard M. Nixon clashed in their fourth and final presidential debate.
(AP, 10/21/97)
1960 Oct 21, The 1st British nuclear submarine, Dreadnought, was launched at Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria. Dreadnought was the first British submarine to surface at the North Pole in 1971. In the 1970s she was fitted to fire Tigerfish torpedoes. She developed reactor problems in late 1980 and was decommissioned in 1982. She is laid up at Rosyth awaiting disposal.
(http://web.ukonline.co.uk/aj.cashmore/britain/submarines/dreadnought/index.html)
1961 Oct 21, Bob Dylan recorded his first album in a single day at a cost of $400.
(HN, 10/21/00)
1964 Oct 21, The movie musical "My Fair Lady," starring Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison, had its world premiere at the Criterion Theater in NYC.
(AP, 10/21/04)
1965 Oct 21, Robert B. Woodward was awarded the Nobel prize for chemistry, "for his outstanding achievements in the art of organic synthesis."
(http://nobelprize.org/chemistry/laureates/1965/index.html)
1966 Oct 21, More than 140 people, mostly children, were killed when a coal waste landslide engulfed a school and several houses in Aberfan, Wales.
(AP, 10/21/08)
1967 Oct 21, Tens of thousands of Vietnam War protesters marched in Washington, D.C. 35,000 people assembled outside the Pentagon to protest the war in Vietnam. The “March on the Pentagon," protesting American involvement in Vietnam, drew 50,000 protesters.
(TMC, 1994, p.1967)(AP, 10/21/97)(HN, 10/21/98)
1967 Oct 21, The Israeli destroyer INS Eilat was sunk by Egyptian missile boats near Port Said; 47 Israeli crew members were lost.
(AP, 10/21/07)
1969 Oct 21, Picasso painted “Painter and Infant," an allegory of artistic transmission from one generation to the next.
(SFC, 7/17/01, p.A16)
1969 Oct 21, The play "Butterflies are Free," premiered in NYC at the Booth Theater. It was written by Leonard Gershe (d.2002). It closed in 1972 after 1128 performances. Director Milton Katselas (1933-2008) then directed a film version.
(SFC, 3/23/02, p.A27)(www.ibdb.com/production.php?id=3299)(SFC, 11/4/08, p.B5)
1969 Oct 21, Jack Kerouac (47), Beat Generation chronicler, died of alcoholism in St. Petersburg, Fla. He wrote "On the Road" (1957), "Desolation Angels," "Vanity of Duluoz," and "Dharma Bums." Japhy Ryder the Zen hobo-poet in the book was modeled after poet Gary Snyder. In 1979 Dennis McNally authored the biography "Desolate Angel." In 1998 Ellis Amburn published "Subterranean Kerouac: The Hidden Life of Jack Kerouac." In 1999 Barry Miles published "Jack Kerouac, King of the Beats: A Portrait." In 2004 Douglas Brinkley edited “Windblown World: The Journals of Jack Kerouac."
(SFC, 6/7/96, p.A22)(SFC, 9/1/96, DB p.30)(SFEC, 5/31/98, p.A17)(SFEC, 8/9/98, BR 9 p.3)(SFEC, 1/17/99, BR p.3)(SSFC, 8/11/02, p.M1)(SSFC, 10/17/04, p.M1)
1970 Oct 21, John T. Scopes (b.1900), US teacher in the 1925 Scopes "monkey trial," died.
(www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=3526)
1970 Oct 21, In South Korea 777 Unification church couples were wed.
(www.ultralingua.com/eureka/index.php/Category:Unification_Church)
1971 Oct 21, The Nobel Prize for literature was awarded to Chilean poet Pablo Neruda (1904-1973).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pablo_Neruda)(SSFC, 8/31/03, p.M3)
1971 Oct 21, President Nixon nominated Lewis F. Powell and William H. Rehnquist to the US Supreme Court following resignations of Justices Hugo Black and John Harlan.
(AP, 10/21/97)
1971 Oct 21, Half Moon Bay, Ca., held its 1st Art and Pumpkin Festival. The 1-day event was thought up by Dolores Mullin to raise money for the Main Street Beautification Committee to buy trees. John Minaidis of Half Moon Bay won with a 132-pound pumpkin. Terry Pimsleur (d.2008 at 77), public relations executive, helped develop the fair.
(Ind, 9/29/01, 5A)(SFC, 10/10/06, p.B3)(SFC, 9/26/08, p.B9)
1971 Oct 21, The Nobel Prize for literature was awarded to Chilean poet Pablo Neruda (1904-1973).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pablo_Neruda)(SSFC, 8/31/03, p.M3)
1972 Oct 21, US Sec. of State Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho of North Vietnam reached a cease-fire agreement. It was signed Jan 27, 1973.
(SFEC, 4/23/00, p.A19)
1972 Oct 21, The US Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) was enacted. Prof. Kenneth Norris (d.1998 at 74) helped write the legislation.
(PacDis, Fall/’96, p.3)(SFC, 8/31/98, p.A22)(www.nmfs.noaa.gov/pr/laws/mmpa/)
1975 Oct 21, "Treemonisha," a 1911 opera by Scott Joplin (1868-1917), opened at Uris Theater NYC for 64 performances. The 1st full professional staging was done in 1975 by the Houston Grand Opera.
(www.nodanw.com/shows_t/treemonisha.htm)(SFC, 6/21/03, p.D1)
1976 Oct 21, Saul Bellow won the Nobel Prize for literature, the first American honored since John Steinbeck in 1962.
(AP, 10/21/01)
1979 Oct 21, In SF the body of Mary Frances Bennett was found at Lands End. She had been stabbed at least 25 times. In 2010 DNA evidence tied her murder to David Joseph Carpenter, who was on death row at San Quentin for 7 other murders.
(SFC, 2/24/10, p.A7)
1979 Oct 21, Moshe Dayan, Israeli minister of foreign affairs, submitted his resignation.
(http://tinyurl.com/33p82s)
1980 Oct 21, Hans Asperger (b.1906), Austrian pediatrician, died in Vienna. He pioneered research into autism and Asperger's syndrome, a mild form of autism where those affected are relatively high-functioning, was later named after him. In 2018 an article by medical historian Herwig Czech published in the journal Molecular Autism said that Asperger referred severely disabled children to Vienna's notorious Am Spiegelgrund clinic where almost 800 children died under the Nazi program -- many of them by lethal injection or being gassed.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Asperger)(Reuters, 4/19/18)
1980 Oct 21, Chile’s Gen'l. Pinochet issued a new constitution that allowed him to stay in power for another 8 years. It was approved by plebiscite.
(SFC, 3/25/99, p.A3)(Econ, 10/23/04, p.36)
1983 Oct 21, US Pres. Ronald Reagan sent a ten-ship task force to Grenada.
(HN, 10/21/98)
1984 Oct 21, Francois Truffaut (b.1932), French film director (Fahrenheit 451), died of brain cancer. In 1999 Antoine de Baecque and Serge Toubiana published "Truffaut: A Biography."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ois_Truffaut)(SFEC, 5/9/99, DB p.53)(SFEC, 6/27/99, BR p.4)
1985 Oct 21, Former San Francisco Supervisor Dan White committed suicide by carbon monoxide in his wife’s car in the Excelsior. He killed Mayor Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk in 1978, for which he served barely 5 years after a diminished capacity defense called the "Twinkie defense."
(SFEC, 3/1/98, p.W23)(SFC, 11/26/98, p.A19)
1986 Oct 21, The US, Micronesia and the Marshall Islands formed a Compact of Free Association (CFA). Tens of millions in economic benefits along with security and defense of the islands was exchanged for the right to deny access to third countries. The US paid $270 million in compensation to nuclear victims under the 1st phase of the CFA (1986-2001), insisting that was a full and final arrangement.
(SFC, 3/8/99, p.A16)(SFC, 1/4/00, p.A12)(Econ, 1/12/08, p.38)
1986 Oct 21, The Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) was enacted by the United States Congress to extend government restrictions on wire taps from telephone calls to include transmissions of electronic data by computer.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Communications_Privacy_Act)(Econ, 7/21/12, p.23)
1986 Oct 21, Pro-Iranian kidnappers in Lebanon claimed to have abducted American Edward Tracy. He was released in August 1991.
(AP, 10/21/97)
1987 Oct 21, Sometimes-acrimonious debate began in the Senate on the nomination of Judge Robert H. Bork to the U.S. Supreme Court. (Two days later, the Senate voted 58-42 to reject the nomination.)
(AP, 10/21/97)
1988 Oct 21, A federal grand jury in New York indicted former Philippine President Ferdinand E. Marcos and his wife, Imelda, on charges of fraud and racketeering. Marcos died before he could be brought to trial; his widow, Imelda, was acquitted in 1990.
(AP, 10/21/98)
1989 Oct 21, Rescue workers in Oakland, Calif., pulled longshoreman Buck Helm alive from the wreckage of the Nimitz Freeway, part of which had collapsed during the Oct. 17 earthquake. Helm died less than a month later.
(AP, 10/21/99)
1990 Oct 21, Walther Sommerlath (b.1901), the father of Sweden’s Queen Silvia, died in Heidelberg. During WWII he swapped a coffee farm in Brazil for a German-based business owned by Efim Wechsler, a Jewish businessman. This allowed Wechsler to emigrate from Nazi Germany.
(SFC, 12/21/12, p.A8)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walther_Sommerlath)
1990 Oct 21, A Palestinian stabbed three Israelis to death during a rampage in a Jerusalem neighborhood in retaliation for the police killings of 17 Arabs on the Temple Mount.
(AP, 10/21/00)
1991 Oct 21, American hostage Jesse Turner was freed by his kidnappers in Lebanon after nearly five years in captivity.
(AP, 10/21/97)
1991 Oct 21, Former California Governor Jerry Brown announced his presidential candidacy.
(AP, 10/21/01)
1991 Oct 21, Steamboat Geyser erupted in Wyoming’s Yellowstone National Park. The next eruption did not occur until 2000.
(SFC, 5/6/00, p.B8)
1991 Oct 21-1991 Oct 22, The European Community and the European Free Trade Association concluded a landmark accord to create a free trade zone of 19 nations by 1993.
(AP, 10/22/01)(http://europa.eu.int/abc/history/1991/index_en.htm)
1992 Oct 21, Singer Madonna's book "Sex" was released.
(AP, 10/21/97)
1992 Oct 21, The Toronto Blue Jays won game four of the World Series, defeating the Atlanta Braves 2-1.
(AP, 10/21/97)
1992 Oct 21, A report prepared for the Los Angeles police commission found that the city was unprepared to handle the rioting that broke out the previous spring, and had responded inadequately.
(AP, 10/21/97)
1992 Oct 21, Shirley Booth, actress (Hazel), died at 94.
(http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0095804/)
1992 Oct 21, Jim Garrison, Louisiana DA who investigated the JFK assassination, died at 70.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Garrison)
1992 Oct 21, In Egypt a British nurse died in a bus attack by Islamic extremists in Dairu.
(SFC, 11/19/97, p.C2)
1993 Oct 21, Gary Kasparov defeated Nigel Short for chess championship.
(http://quizbowl.stanford.edu/archive/carleton/minn93_carl_maize.txt)
1993 Oct 21, The Philadelphia Phillies beat the Toronto Blue Jays 2-0 in game five of the World Series; Toronto still led the Series 3-2.
(AP, 10/21/98)
1993 Oct 21, The Senate rejected curbs on President Clinton's right as commander in chief to send troops to Haiti.
(AP, 10/21/98)
1993 Oct 21, NATO ministers endorsed a U.S. plan to form limited partnerships with Russia and other former East bloc foes, but stopped short of offering full membership.
(AP, 10/21/98)
1993 Oct 21, Burundi’s first Hutu president, Melchior Ndadaye, was assassinated by Tutsi soldiers. 5 soldiers were sentenced to death for the murder in 1999. The military coup caused 525,000 Hutu's to flee. Civil war followed and over the next dozen years some 300,000 people, mostly civilians, were killed.
(SFC, 8/22/96, p.E5)(WSJ, 11/15/96, p.A16)(SFEC, 1/12/97, p.A12)(SFC, 5/15/99, p.A14)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burundi_presidential_election,_1993)(Econ, 4/16/11, p.65)
1994 Oct 21, President Clinton conceded in a news conference that Democrats would lose seats in the upcoming election.
(AP, 10/21/04)
1994 Oct 21, The wife of CIA turncoat Aldrich Ames, Rosario Ames, was sentenced to five years in prison for her role in her husband's espionage.
(AP, 10/21/04)
1994 Oct 21, United States and North Korea signed an agreement requiring the communist nation to halt its nuclear program and agree to inspections. Fuel rods from North Korea’s nuclear reactor were to be shipped out of the country, but that did not happen. The deal unraveled eight years later. Kang Sok Ju (1939-2016) was Pyongyang's chief negotiator.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kang_Sok-ju)(AP, 10/21/99)(Econ, 7/21/07, p.41)(Econ, 7/25/15, p.23)
1994 Oct 21, Thirty-two people were killed when a section of bridge collapsed in Seoul, South Korea.
(AP, 10/21/99)
1995 Oct 21, The Atlanta Braves won game one of the World Series, defeating the visiting Cleveland Indians 3-to-2.
(AP, 10/21/00)
1995 Oct 21, Rioting inmates surrendered control of a prison dormitory in Greenville, Illinois, ending a one-day uprising that began after the government ordered federal prisons locked down nationwide.
(AP, 10/21/00)
1995 Oct 21, Maxene Andrews of the Andrews Sisters died in Hyannis, Massachusetts, at age 79.
(AP, 10/21/00)
1996 Oct 21, The Atlanta Braves took a two-games-to-none lead in the World Series, defeating the New York Yankees 4-0.
(AP, 10/21/97)
1996 Oct 21, President Clinton's "don't ask, don't tell" policy on gays in the military survived its first Supreme Court test.
(AP, 10/21/97)
1996 Oct 21, UN Security Council elections for the 5 non-permanent seats were won by Japan, Kenya, Sweden, Costa Rica and Portugal for a 2-year period. Ten of the seats are temporary and five are chosen annually.
(SFC, 10/22/96, p.B1)
1996 Oct 21, In Albania the ruling Democratic Party claimed a landslide victory in local elections.
(SFC, 10/22/96, p.B1)
1996 Oct 21, In Algeria the Mayor of Algiers, Ali Boucetta, was killed by a stray bullet in fighting between security forces and rebels in Algiers.
(SFC, 10/22/96, p.B1)
1996 Oct 21, An American crop duster flew over Cuba on its way to Bogota, Columbia. In 1997 Cuba claimed before the UN that the plane dusted Cuban fields with a biological pest, thrips palmi.
(SFC, 8/26/97, p.A4)
1996 Oct 21, In Murambi village, Burundi, some 300 (258-435) Hutu refugees returned from Zaire and were killed as they sought refuge in a village church.
(SFC, 11/23/96, p.A8)(SFC, 12/12/96, p.C2)
1996 Oct 21, Arnoldo Aleman claimed victory over Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua's presidential election.
(AP, 10/21/97)
1996 Oct 21, About 225,000 Hutu refugees fled camps in eastern Zaire. The governor of the area has given the 300,000 Banyamulenge Tutsis as week to leave. Zaire has camps holding about 1.5 million Hutu refugees, most of them from Rwanda.
(SFC, 10/22/96, p.B1)
1996 Oct 21, In Zimbabwe some 11,000 nurses went on strike for higher wages, allowances and better working conditions.
(SFC, 11/1/96, p.A16)
1996 Oct 21-22, Firestorms covered 35,000 acres in Malibu and San Diego County and destroyed more than 60 homes. Another fire in the Los Padres National Forest was reported 60% contained.
(SFC, 10/23/96, p.A1)
1997 Oct 21, The Florida Marlins beat the Cleveland Indians 14-11 in game three of the World Series.
(AP, 10/21/98)
1997 Oct 21, Reversing months of strong opposition, the Clinton administration endorsed a revised Republican bill to restructure the Internal Revenue Service and shift the burden of proof from the taxpayer to the government in contested court cases.
(AP, 10/21/98)
1997 Oct 21, It was reported that the US Energy Dept. and the Arthur D. Little company had developed a new fuel system for cars that uses fuel cell technology first developed by NASA. Electricity would be produced by extracting hydrogen from gasoline and combining it with oxygen.
(SFC, 10/21/97, p.A2)
1997 Oct 21, Pictures of the Antennae galaxies, two intermeshed colliding galaxies, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in 1996, were revealed to the public for the first time.
(SFC, 10/22/97, p.A1)
1998 Oct 21, The New York Yankees swept the World Series in the 4th game over the San Diego Padres 3 to 0.
(SFC, 10/22/98, p.D1)
1998 Oct 21, Pres. Clinton signed a $520 billion spending bill that provided $17.9 billion for the IMF and $1.1 billion as a down payment for new teachers. It was shipped to him just before the 105th Congress recessed. The CIA received a supplemental $1.8 billion.
(SFC, 10/22/98, p.A3)(SFC, 10/22/98, p.A9)(AP, 10/21/99)
1998 Oct 21, Dr. Jane Henney was confirmed as FDA commissioner.
(AP, 10/21/99)
1998 Oct 21, A report outlined why Pierre Sane, head of Amnesty Int’l., targeted the US this year for human rights abuses.
(SFC, 10/21/98, p.A10)
1998 Oct 21, A radical environmental group, the Earth Liberation Front, claimed responsibility for fires that caused $12 million in damage at the nation's busiest ski resort in Vail, Colo.
(AP, 10/21/99)
1998 Oct 21, In France the government announced emergency plans to improve conditions in the high schools.
(SFC, 10/22/98, p.C3)
1998 Oct 21, In Guinea-Bissau heavy artillery fire rocked the capital and rebels claimed to have captured Bafata, the 2nd largest town.
(SFC, 10/22/98, p.C5)
1998 Oct 21, Typhoon Babs killed 4 people in the central Philippines. Another 11 were killed on the southern tip of Luzon. A total of 156 people were killed including 71 from landslides on Catanduanes Island.
(SFC, 10/22/98, p.C5)(WSJ, 10/23/98, p.A1)(SFC, 10/24/98, p.A12)(SFEC, 10/25/98, p.A20)(SFC, 10/26/98, p.A7)
1998 Oct 21, The European Commission approved a $180 million aid package for Turkey.
(SFC, 10/22/98, p.C5)
1998 Oct 21, In French Guiana the 3rd European Ariana 5 test rocket was launched at Kourou. It successfully simulated the launch of a mockup satellite.
(WSJ, 10/22/98, p.B2)
1998 Oct 21, Turkey and Syria signed an accord whereby Syria agreed to brand the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) as a terrorist group.
(SFC, 10/22/98, p.C5)
1999 Oct 21, Organizers called for a "Jam Echelon Day," an effort to overload US National Security Agency (NSA) supercomputers with e-mail containing words such as "bomb." Echelon was a worldwide surveillance network run by the NSA and partners in Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand.
(SFEC, 11/14/99, p.A7)
1999 Oct 21, The US Justice Dept. sued the city of Columbus, Ohio, for a pattern of civil rights violations by the police.
(WSJ, 10/22/99, p.A1)
1999 Oct 21, In Chechnya Russian rockets hit and market and 2 other sites in Grozny and as many as 140 people were killed.
(SFC, 10/22/99, p.A1)(SFC, 10/23/99, p.A10)
1999 Oct 21, In East Timor Jose Alexandre "Xanana" Gusmao, the exiled guerrilla leader, returned to Dili.
(SFC, 10/22/99, p.B2)
1999 Oct 21, France’s highest court upheld the conviction of Maurice Papon, the former Vichy official who had fled France rather than face prison for his role in sending Jews to Nazi death camps; Papon was captured in Switzerland and deported the following day to begin a 10-year sentence.
(AP, 10/21/00)(AP, 9/18/02)
1999 Oct 21, It was reported that a French-led expedition chopped clear the fully preserved carcass of a 20 thousand-year-old woolly mammoth, the "Jarkov Mammoth," from the permafrost of Siberia at Khatanga, Russia.
(SFC, 10/21/99, p.A1)
1999 Oct 21, In Indonesia the People's Consultative Assembly voted 396 to 284 for Megawati Sukarnoputri as vice president over Hamzah Haz. The vote came after Gen. Wiranto dropped his candidacy.
(SFC, 10/22/99, p.A16)
1999 Oct 21, In Palestine a West Bank fire killed 16 women making cigarette lighters in an unlicensed Hebron facility.
(WSJ, 10/22/99, p.A1)
1999 Oct 21, In Taiwan a 6.4 earthquake was centered near Chiayi.
(SFC, 10/22/99, p.B4)(SFC, 10/23/99, p.A11)
1999 Oct 21, In Turkey Ahmet Taner Kislali (60), a columnist for the pro-secular newspaper Cumhuriyet, died from a bomb placed on his car windshield.
(SFC, 10/22/99, p.B6)
1999 Oct 21, In Venezuela corruption cases against 2 former presidents, Carlos Andres Perez and Jaime Lusinchi, were reopened.
(SFC, 10/22/99, p.B4)
2000 Oct 21, The former passenger ship S.S. Belofin-1, sank near Cape Town while on tow for demolition. The ship was originally built in 1931 as the Matson luxury liner "Monterey" and served as a troop transport during WW II. She was renamed a number of times and was also known as the Matsonia, Lurline (after the 1932 original demolished in 1987), and Britanis.
(Ind, 11/4/00,5A)
2000 Oct 21, Tens of thousands of Palestinians took to the streets in marches and funerals in Gaza and the West Bank. 4 Palestinians were killed and over 100 injured.
(SFEC, 10/22/00, p.A1)
2000 Oct 21, Fifteen Arab leaders met in Cairo for a 2-day summit, their first summit in four years. They condemned Israel for violence and made proposals to deal with Israel. The Libyan delegation walked out, angry over signs the summit would stop short of calling for breaking ties with Israel.
(SFEC, 10/22/00, p.A1,21)(AP, 10/21/01)
2001 Oct 21, The Arizona Diamondbacks won the National League championship, defeating the Atlanta Braves 3-2 in game five.
(AP, 10/21/02)
2001 Oct 21, US warplanes hit Taliban frontline troops north of Kabul in the fiercest hits to date. A 1000-pound bomb hit near a senior citizens home in Heart. US air strikes at Thorai killed 21 civilians.
(SFC, 10/22/01, p.A1)(SFC, 10/24/01, p.A12)(SSFC, 7/21/02, p.A14)
2001 Oct 21, Thomas L. Morris Jr. (55), a DC postal worker diagnosed with the deadly inhalation form of anthrax, died. Officials began testing thousands of postal employees.
(SFC, 10/23/01, p.A1)(WSJ, 10/24/01, p.A1)(AP, 10/22/06)
2001 Oct 21, A moratorium against state collection of Internet taxes expired.
(SFC, 8/21/01, p.C2)
2001 Oct 21, A Taliban official reported that 5 of their men had been executed as spies.
(SFC, 10/22/01, p.A5)
2001 Oct 21, In Berlin, Germany, the Social Democrats held on to power in municipal elections, but would have to form a coalition to govern.
(SFC, 10/22/01, p.B1)
2001 Oct 21, Israeli forces continued to occupy West Bank territory and 3 Palestinians were killed including Johnny Thaljieh, a 16-year-old Christian.
(SFC, 10/22/01, p.B1)
2001 Oct 21, In Kazakstan a 3-person Russian-French crew blasted off for the Int’l. Space Station in a Russian Soyuz spacecraft. The crew included Claudie Haignere, who in 1996 became the 1st Frenchwoman in space.
(SFC, 10/22/01, p.B2)
2001 Oct 21, In Macedonia Pres. Boris Trajkovski approved a plan to deploy ethnically mixed police units in areas that had been seized by ethnic Albanian revels.
(SFC, 10/22/01, p.B2)
2001 Oct 21, In Northern Ireland Catholic and Protestant groups pelted each other with homemade grenades in the Limestone Road area of north Belfast.
(SFC, 10/22/01, p.B2)
2001 Oct 21, Pacific Rim leaders ended a 2-day economic summit and condemned the Sep 11 attacks against the US and denounced terrorism in all its forms.
(SFC, 10/22/01, p.A3)
2002 Oct 21, Pres. Bush said he would try diplomacy "one more time," but did not think Saddam Hussein would disarm, even if doing so would allow him to remain in power.
(AP, 10/21/03)
2002 Oct 21, Scientists reported a new immunoassay for mad cow disease that takes about a year for results.
(SFC, 10/21/02, p.A1)
2002 Oct 21, It was reported that Prof. Vijay Pende of Stanford successfully led a program to use shared computing power to decipher protein folding in BBA5, a man-made chain of 23 amino acids.
(SFC, 10/21/02, p.A4)
2002 Oct 21, Hackers launched coordinated attacks on the 13 organizations principally responsible for managing the Internet’s domain naming system.
(SSFC, 1/22/12, p.H1)
2002 Oct 21, APEC delegates, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, from Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Philippines, Russia, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, the United States and Vietnam began meetings at Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, to discuss terrorism and the world economy.
(AP, 10/22/02)
2002 Oct 21, In Australia Xiang Huan Yun (36) opened fire at Monash University in Melbourne in, killing two people and seriously wounding 5 others. Yun was soon charged with two counts of murder and five counts of attempted murder.
(AP, 10/21/02)(AP, 10/22/02)
2002 Oct 21, In Colombia Air Force planes bombed guerrillas on their way to attack a western town, killing 70 of them.
(AP, 10/21/02)
2002 Oct 21, Millions of Cubans went to the polls to choose new municipal officials, the men and women charged with solving all manner of neighborhood problems, from lack of water to deteriorating buildings.
(AP, 10/21/02)
2002 Oct 21, A bus bombing near Hadera killed 14 Israelis, along with two attackers. Israel held off on immediate retaliation, but troops next day destroyed the homes of a suicide bomber and a suspected militant.
(AP, 10/22/02)(SFC, 10/22/02, p.A1)
2002 Oct 21, In Malawi police arrested Gwanda Chakuamba, the main opposition leader, accusing him of impersonating President Bakili Muluzi by signing the president's name to a controversial letter on statehouse stationery. The arrest came amid a government crackdown on opponents of a constitutional amendment that would allow Muluzi to run for a third term when his second five-year term expires in 2004. Chakuamba was released the same day.
(AP, 10/21/02)(AP, 10/22/02)
2002 Oct 21, In Mexico officials said 25 people were arrested who had infiltrated the army, police and attorney general's office on behalf of drug kingpins.
(SFC, 10/22/02, p.A11)
2002 Oct 21, In Venezuela thousands of stores closed and workers stayed home to demand that Hugo Chavez call early elections.
(AP, 10/21/02)(SFC, 10/22/02, p.A11)
2002 Oct 21, A UN panel accused criminal groups linked to the armies of Rwanda, Uganda, Zimbabwe and Congo of plundering Congo's riches, and called on the United Nations to impose financial restrictions on 29 companies and 54 individuals.
(AP, 10/21/02)
2003 Oct 21, The US Senate voted to ban the practice that critics call partial-birth abortion.
(AP, 10/21/04)
2003 Oct 21, In Florida tube-feeding was resumed for Terri Schiavo (39), brain-damaged since 1990, on orders from Gov. Jeb Bush, who overrode a court decision for its removal.
(SFC, 10/22/03, p.A2)(WSJ, 10/22/03, p.A1)
2003 Oct 21, Louise Day Hicks (87), Boston anti-busing activist, died
(AP, 10/21/04)
2003 Oct 21, Actor Fred Berry (52) died in Los Angeles.
(AP, 10/21/04)
2003 Oct 21, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders ended their two-day annual summit in Thailand with a statement seeking to boost trade and intensify the fight on terror.
(AP, 10/21/03)
2003 Oct 21, In Colombia police and soldiers rounded up at least 29 politicians, ahead of local elections, with suspected ties to leftist guerrillas in pre-dawn raids across Arauca state.
(AP, 10/21/03)(WSJ, 10/22/03, p.A1)
2003 Oct 21, In Ecuador, a decade after Texaco pulled out of the Amazon jungle, the US petroleum giant went on trial in a lawsuit filed on behalf of 30,000 poor Ecuadorians.
(AP, 10/21/03)
2003 Oct 21, A top European Union official defended the bloc's $233 million contribution for Iraqi reconstruction and said that more could be forthcoming next year.
(AP, 10/21/03)
2003 Oct 21, Iran agreed to snap UN inspections of its nuclear sites and to freeze uranium enrichment.
(AP, 10/21/03)(SFC, 10/22/03, p.A3)
2003 Oct 21, In Ivory Coast Jean Helene, a French radio reporter, was shot and killed by a police officer at police headquarters in Abidjan. On Jan 22, 2004, police sergeant Dago Sery was sentenced to 17 years in prison for the murder.
(AP, 10/21/03)(WPR, 3/04, p.29)
2003 Oct 21, North Korea rebuffed Pres. Bush's proposal to give it multi-nation security assurances if it agrees to scrap its nuclear weapons program.
(AP, 10/22/03)
2003 Oct 21, In South Korea a tourist bus plummeted into a gorge, killing at least 17 people and injuring 15 others.
(AP, 10/21/03)
2003 Oct 21, Luis A. Ferre (99), a philanthropist and former governor of Puerto Rico who became the patriarch of the territory's US statehood movement, died.
(AP, 10/21/03)
2003 Oct 21, Romanians overwhelmingly approved a new constitution designed to prepare the formerly communist country for membership in the EU.
(AP, 10/21/03)
2003 Oct 21, Two British teachers working for an aid agency in Somaliland were found dead after being shot at their apartment at the school.
(AP, 10/21/03)
2003 Oct 21, Pope John Paul II added 30 names to the list of his possible successors, installing a diverse collection of cardinals.
(AP, 10/21/03)
2003 Oct 21, The U.N. General Assembly overwhelmingly approved a resolution demanding that Israel tear down a barrier jutting into the West Bank.
(AP, 10/21/04)
2004 Oct 21, The St. Louis Cardinals won the National League pennant with a 7th game win over the Houston Astros.
(SFC, 10/22/04, p.D1)
2004 Oct 21, An Associated Press poll found President Bush and Sen. John Kerry locked in a tie for the popular vote.
(AP, 10/21/05)
2004 Oct 21, It was reported that the US government had begun identifying prisoners held at the Guantanamo Bay interrogation Center.
(WSJ, 10/21/04, p.A6)
2004 Oct 21, Staff Sgt. Ivan Frederick, the highest-ranking U.S. soldier charged in the Abu Ghraib prison case, was sentenced to eight years in prison.
(AP, 10/21/04)
2004 Oct 21, American International Group (AIG) reported that it was the target of a grand jury investigation.
(WSJ, 10/22/04, p.C1)
2004 Oct 21, WWF Int’l. said humanity is consuming 20% more natural resources each year than the Earth produces.
(WSJ, 10/22/04, p.A1)
2004 Oct 21, Anthony Hecht (81), American poet, died in Washington DC.
(WSJ, 10/26/04, p.D8)
2004 Oct 21, Australian police arrested 3 Chinese men in Sydney after they uncovered $74 million worth of crystal methamphetamine hidden in hollowed-out candles from China.
(AP, 10/22/04)
2004 Oct 21, China and Japan planned emergency talks over energy rights in the disputed waters between them.
(WSJ, 10/21/04, p.A17)
2004 Oct 21, Fu Hegong sneaked into a Beijing kindergarten to rob it. When he was discovered, he smothered a teacher with a quilt and killed a 5-year-old boy by hitting him with a fire extinguisher. In 2005 Hegong (31) was sentenced to death.
(AP, 9/10/05)
2004 Oct 21, Former Costa Rica Pres. Rafael Angel Calderon was detained in connection with a corruption investigation. He was charged with distributing and taking a share of a commission of some $9 million connected to the supply of medical equipment. He was under investigation for allegedly receiving nearly $500,000 from a Finnish government loan to Costa Rica for the purchase of medicines.
(AP, 10/21/04)(Econ, 11/27/04, p.38)(AP, 2/5/06)
2004 Oct 21, An Ethiopian court sentenced three former rebels to death for killing dozens of people while rebel factions jockeyed for power in 1992. Iman Kelil Oumar was convicted for participating in the killings of 207 people; Beyan Ahmed Ousman was convicted of involvement in the murder of 205 people and Asli Ahmed, was found guilty of killing 89 people.
(AP, 10/22/04)
2004 Oct 21, French health officials announced that a donor whose blood was used to transfuse 10 people and to manufacture medicines has been identified as France's eighth known victim of the human equivalent of mad cow disease.
(AP, 10/21/04)
2004 Oct 21, An Israeli aircraft fired two missiles at a car traveling in the Gaza Strip killing Adnan al-Ghoul, a senior Hamas commander.
(AP, 10/21/04)
2004 Oct 21, Japan's deadliest typhoon in more than two decades left at least 66 people dead as rescuers searched frantically for 22 still missing in floods and landslides.
(AP, 10/21/04)
2004 Oct 21, Lebanon's Pres. Emil Lahoud appointed staunchly pro-Syrian politician Omar Karami as prime minister, asking him to form the next government.
(AP, 10/21/04)
2004 Oct 21, Four gunmen abducted three U.S. citizens on a rural highway in southern Mexico, shot and killed two of them and left the third, a pregnant woman, bound and gagged. Her testimony led to arrests the next day of Isidro Diaz Pineda, Reynaldo Hernandez Ramirez, Francisco Velazquez Paredes and David Gaona Mondragon, all of Tierra Caliente.
(AP, 10/23/04)
2004 Oct 21, Negotiations between the Sudanese government and the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), an umbrella organization for opposition groups from around Sudan, opened in Cairo under the auspices of Egypt.
(AP, 10/23/04)
2005 Oct 21, US and Colombian authorities shut down a drug trafficking and money laundering operation that exported about $1 million worth of cocaine every week to the United States, Europe and Asia.
(AP, 10/22/05)
2005 Oct 21, Oscar Wyatt (81), former chairman of Coastal Corp., was arrested at his home in Houston for paying millions in kickbacks to the government of Saddam Hussein in exchange for rights to buy discounted Iraqi oil under the UN’s oil-for-food program. 2 Swiss associates were also indicted. In 2007 Wyatt was sentenced to over a year in jail after admitting that he agreed to a surcharge of about $200,000 to be paid to bank account in Jordan controlled by officials of Iraq’s State Oil Marketing Organization in Dec 2001.
(SFC, 10/22/05, p.A3)(WSJ, 11/28/07, p.B10)
2005 Oct 21, The Kansas Supreme Court unanimously struck down a state law that punished underage sex more severely if it involved homosexual acts.
(AP, 10/22/06)
2005 Oct 21, A Taliban ambush touched off fierce fighting in southern Afghan mountains that left eight police and four rebels dead. A cultural reporter 922) with a local radio station, was killed in a bomb blast in the eastern province of Khost.
(AP, 10/22/05)(AFP, 10/22/05)
2005 Oct 21, Authorities in Azerbaijan said a 2nd former government minister was arrested on charges of involvement in a coup plot against President Ilham Aliev, deepening political tensions ahead of next month's key parliamentary elections.
(AP, 10/21/05)
2005 Oct 21, Britain and Croatia confirmed cases of bird flu as countries around the world scrambled to put in place measures to prevent the spread of the virus. British officials said a parrot that had been imported from South America died of bird flu in quarantine.
(AP, 10/22/05)
2005 Oct 21, In Alexandria, Egypt, thousands of Muslims rioted outside a Coptic Christian church to denounce a play deemed offensive to Islam, prompting police to beat protesters and fire tear gas into the crowd. 3 people died and more than 90 were injured. The play, "I Was Blind But Now I Can See," tells the story of a young Christian who converts to Islam and becomes disillusioned. The riot was sparked by the distribution of a DVD of a play that was performed at the church two years ago.
(Reuters, 10/21/05)
2005 Oct 21, The European Commission agreed to open talks with Bosnia on a cooperation agreement that could lead to full EU membership for the Balkan nation.
(AP, 10/21/05)
2005 Oct 21, Hungary’s health minister told a local news agency that the country has developed a bird-flu vaccine from humans.
(WSJ, 10/22/05, p.A1)
2005 Oct 21, Indonesian police said they had arrested four people allegedly involved in smuggling hundreds of pounds of explosive materials from Malaysia into Indonesia.
(AP, 10/21/05)
2005 Oct 21, Iran's supreme leader, long a critic of the United States, praised the U.S.-backed constitutional referendum in Iraq as "blessed" and urged Iraqis to participate December's parliamentary elections.
(AP, 10/21/05)
2005 Oct 21, Hurricane Wilma slammed into the island of Cozumel, starting a long, grinding march across Mexico's resort-studded coastline. Wilma flooded streets, knocked out power and stranded thousands of tourists in sweltering shelters. Hurricane Wilma tore into Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula, after killing 13 people in Haiti and Jamaica.
(AP, 10/21/05)(AP, 10/22/06)
2005 Oct 21, Lawmakers of Serbia and Montenegro elected Zoran Stankovic (51), a reported ally of notorious war crimes fugitive Ratko Mladic, as the new defense minister.
(AP, 10/21/05)
2006 Oct 21, Al-Jazeera television aired an interview with US State Department official Alberto Fernandez, who offered an unusually blunt assessment of the Iraq war, saying the US had shown "arrogance" and "stupidity" in Iraq. Fernandez issued an apology the next day.
(AP, 10/21/07)
2006 Oct 21, In SF Joseph James Melcher (25), a traveling wine salesman, opened fire on 3 people in Japantown and 2 died. He was arrested the same evening. On Nov 21 Melcher was also charged with killing Robert Stanford (21) on Aug 27. On May 13, 2009, Melcher was convicted on 3 counts of murder. On June 11 Melcher was sentenced to 200 years to life in prison.
(SFC, 10/24/06, p.B1)(SFC, 11/23/06, p.B1)(SFC, 5/14/09, p.B2)(SFC, 6/12/09, p.B3)
2006 Oct 21, In Bangladesh donations of clothing set off stampedes that left at least eight people dead. All were women except for one child.
(AP, 10/21/06)
2006 Oct 21, In central Bolivia a bus plunged off a mountain road, killing 29 people and injuring 25.
(AP, 10/22/06)
2006 Oct 21, In Najaf, Iraq, Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani met with Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr in an attempt to rein marauding militias. 5 bicycle bombs and a hail of mortar shells killed 32 people with scores more wounded in a market in Mahmoudiyah. Rival Shiite militiamen battled near the ancient city of Babylon until American forces and helicopters rushed to separate the combatants. At least two people were killed in Hamza al-Gharbi and 25 in Amarah, a city of 750,000 people at the head of Iraq's famous marshlands. At least 21 more people were killed in violence around the country, including 7 who died in a suicide bombing on a Baghdad bus. A US Marine was killed in fighting in Anbar province west of Baghdad and another soldier died in fighting in Salahuddin province.
(AP, 10/21/06)(AP, 10/22/06)(SSFC, 10/22/06, p.A14)(AP, 10/23/06)
2006 Oct 21, In Mexico’s Michoacan state, the home state of President-elect Felipe Calderon, 420 homicides were reported for this year, including 19 police chiefs and commanders. Juan Antonio Magana, the state's attorney general, said well over half the killings were drug-related.
(AP, 10/21/06)
2006 Oct 21, In Nigeria police said all seven foreign oil workers who were being held hostage in the southern Niger Delta have been released and are in good health.
(AP, 10/21/06)
2006 Oct 21, Members of the Palestinian security forces fired in the air in Gaza City's main shopping district and burned tires near President Mahmoud Abbas' home to press demands for payment of salaries.
(AP, 10/21/06)
2006 Oct 21, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that Russia was ready to discuss ways to pressure Iran into accepting a broader international oversight of its nuclear program, but added that "any measures of influence should encourage creating conditions for talks." He said Russia will not allow the UN Security Council to be used to punish Iran over its nuclear program. Russia indicated it would strictly enforce sanctions on North Korea as US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met top leaders in Moscow at the end of a tour to push for full implementation of the UN penalties in response to Pyongyang’s nuclear test. Rice delivered a symbolic rebuke to Russia over shrinking press freedoms, even as she courted President Vladimir Putin for help punishing Iran over its nuclear program.
(AFP, 10/21/06)(AP, 10/21/07)
2006 Oct 21, Sri Lanka's government said it will provide safe passage for rebels traveling to Geneva for peace talks, as the navy destroyed two insurgent boats approaching a naval base. The Tamil Tigers threatened to extend their battle against government troops across the island if Colombo "wants a war", as the navy said they killed 20 rebels in sea clashes.
(AP, 10/21/06)(AFP, 10/21/06)
2006 Oct 21, The death toll from severe flooding in Thailand and neighboring Myanmar has jumped to 143 after Thai authorities confirmed another 16 victims. The severe flooding began in late August in Thailand's central and northern provinces
(AFP, 10/21/06)
2006 Oct 21, Uganda's president traveled to southern Sudan to bolster faltering talks between his government and rebels aimed at ending a brutal 19-year conflict in northern Uganda.
(AP, 10/21/06)
2007 Oct 21, Vice President Dick Cheney said in a speech the United States and other nations would not allow Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon.
(AP, 10/21/08)
2007 Oct 21, The Boston Red Sox won the American League championship in Game 7 of their series with the Cleveland Indians, 11-2.
(AP, 10/21/08)
2007 Oct 21, Paul Byrd, pitcher for the Cleveland Indians, acknowledged that he had used human growth hormone from August 2002 to January 2005 due to a pituitary gland issue. An investigation was pending as Major League Baseball and the Indians said they had not been aware of Byrd’s use of the muscle building substance.
(SFC, 10/22/07, p.A1)
2007 Oct 21, More than a half-dozen wildfires driven by powerful Santa Ana winds spread across Southern California, killing one person near San Diego and destroying several homes and a church in celebrity-laden Malibu. The Buckweed fire started rampaging across 38,000 acres in the Santa Clarita area, 30 miles north of downtown Los Angeles. An unidentified youngster, believed to be a preteen, later admitted to playing with matches and starting the fire.
(AP, 10/21/07)(Reuters, 10/31/07)
2007 Oct 21, Ronald Brooks Kitaj, Ohio-born artist, died in Los Angeles. He had spent much of his career working in London. His work included “Desk Murder," a 14-year effort.
(Econ, 11/3/07, p.102)(http://tinyurl.com/2myah5)(Econ, 3/2/13, p.81)
2007 Oct 21, Australia's opposition Labor Party chief Kevin Rudd beat PM Howard in an election debate marred by controversy when a national television network's coverage was deliberately cut. Rudd had once worked as a business consultant in China and spoke fluent Mandarin.
(AFP, 10/22/07)(Econ, 12/1/07, p.52)
2007 Oct 21, In Brazil activists trying to invade a 304-acre biotech seed farm, owned by the Swiss firm Syngenta AG, clashed with guards and at least two people were shot dead.
(AP, 10/22/07)
2007 Oct 21, In Brazil a girl (15) was arrested on accusations of breaking and entering a house and jailed with male inmates in Abaetetuba, Para state. She was locked up for weeks with 21 men who she said would only let her eat in return for sex. By her account, officials did nothing, until the story erupted in the national media and outraged Brazilians demanded her transfer.
(AP, 11/24/07)
2007 Oct 21, Thousands of British Muslims gathered for a charity peace concert dubbed "Muslim Live 8" to raise money for victims of Sudan's long-running Darfur conflict.
(AP, 10/21/07)
2007 Oct 21, Chinese President Hu Jintao engineered the retirement of a powerful Communist Party rival in a move that enhanced his political standing yet may have opened up a divisive battle to succeed him. A fire at a shoe factory in southeastern China killed 37 people and injured at least 20. The factory in Fujian province was operating without a license and the owners were arrested.
(AP, 10/21/07)(AP, 10/22/07)(AP, 10/25/07)
2007 Oct 21, Cubans opened an election cycle that will lead to a decision next year on whether ailing leader Fidel Castro will remain atop the communist-run island's supreme governing body.
(AP, 10/21/07)
2007 Oct 21, Ethiopia's Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) rebels said they killed 140 government soldiers in a weekend assault targeting a visiting senior official, a statement Ethiopia immediately denounced as false.
(Reuters, 10/21/07)
2007 Oct 21, New Delhi Deputy Mayor S.S. Bajwa was rushed to a hospital after the attack by a gang of Rhesus macaques, but succumbed to head injuries sustained in his fall.
(AP, 10/21/07)
2007 Oct 21, The US military said its forces killed an estimated 49 militants during a dawn raid to capture an Iranian-linked militia chief in Baghdad's Sadr City enclave. Iraqi police and hospital officials reported only 15 deaths including three children. Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said all the dead were civilians.
(AP, 10/21/07)
2007 Oct 21, Kyrgyzstan held a national referendum on changing the constitution to elect the Parliament by party list. On Oct 23 the main trans-Atlantic security and rights group and the US Embassy said the referendum on constitutional change was marred by numerous violations.
(AP, 10/23/07)
2007 Oct 21, Shell officials said gunmen in speedboats attacked an offshore oil field in the volatile Niger Delta, kidnapping three foreign workers and four Nigerians.
(AP, 10/21/07)
2007 Oct 21, A pro-business opposition party that wants to bring Poland's troops home from Iraq was headed to an overwhelming victory in parliamentary elections, exit polls showed, setting it up to oust the prime minister's staunchly pro-U.S. government. The opposition Civic Platform party ousted PM Jaroslaw Kaczynski's government in the parliamentary elections.
(AP, 10/21/07)(AP, 10/21/08)
2007 Oct 21, A technical glitch sent a Soyuz spacecraft on a wild ride home, forcing Malaysia's first space traveler and two Russian cosmonauts to endure eight times the force of gravity before their capsule landed safely.
(AP, 10/21/07)
2007 Oct 21, Lojze Peterle, a conservative former prime minister, won the most votes in Slovenia's tight presidential elections, but fell far short of the majority needed to avoid a runoff.
(AP, 10/21/07)
2007 Oct 21, Springboks, the South African rugby team, beat England (15-6) in the Rugby World Cup Final at the Stade France in Paris.
(AFP, 10/23/07)(Econ, 10/27/07, p.57)
2007 Oct 21, Sudanese government officials said around 50 people have been killed in three days of tribal clashes in the central region of Kordofan.
(AP, 10/21/07)
2007 Oct 21, A Swiss nationalist party rode an anti-immigrant wave to the best showing of any party in parliamentary elections since 1919, while the Greens made gains by appealing to environmental concerns. The Swiss People's Party (SVP), led by justice minister Christoph Blocher, won 62 seats and received 29% of the vote, after a bitter campaign blaming foreigners for much of the country's crime.
(AP, 10/21/07)(AP, 10/22/07)(Econ, 10/27/07, p.62)
2007 Oct 21, Ernst Ludwig Ehrlich (86), a Jewish religious philosopher, died at his home in Basel, Switz. He had escaped the Nazis and became a European bridge-builder between Christians and Jews.
(AP, 10/24/07)
2007 Oct 21, In Syria a high-level North Korean official held talks with PM Naji Otari on ways to improve cooperation between the two countries.
(AP, 10/21/07)
2007 Oct 21, A Hong Kong newspaper reported that police in the capital of Tibet clashed for four days with Buddhist monks trying to celebrate the awarding of a congressional honor for the Dalai Lama.
(AP, 10/21/07)
2007 Oct 21, Kurdish rebels ambushed a Turkish military convoy less than three miles from the Iraqi border, killing 12 soldiers with 8 missing. The rebels said they are holding them hostage. Turkey shelled the border region in response to the attack, and Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, himself a Kurd, ordered the rebels to lay down their arms or leave Iraq.
(AP, 10/21/07)(WSJ, 10/22/07, p.A1)(AP, 10/25/07)
2008 Oct 21, Top US and Russian military officers held an unannounced meeting in Helsinki in an effort to maintain dialogue after Moscow's crushing defeat of American ally Georgia.
(Reuters, 10/21/08)
2008 Oct 21, The US Federal Reserve announced that it will start buying commercial paper, a crucial short-term funding mechanism many companies rely on for day-to-day operations, from money market mutual funds.
(AP, 10/21/08)
2008 Oct 21, US federal agents arrested dozens of members of the Mongol motorcycle club in six states, following an undercover investigation in which they infiltrated the notorious motorcycle gang. Prosecutors said it could herald the end of what they call a criminal group.
(AP, 10/22/08)(SFC, 10/22/08, p.B2)
2008 Oct 21, National City Corp, an Ohio-based regional bank hard hit by the credit crisis, announced plans to slash 4,000 jobs and said rising reserves for soured mortgage and real estate construction loans led to its fifth straight quarterly loss.
(Reuters, 10/21/08)
2008 Oct 21, The Pentagon said it has dropped war-crimes charges against five Guantanamo Bay detainees after the former prosecutor in their cases complained that the military was withholding evidence helpful to the defense. Lawyers for Ethiopian refugee Binyam Mohamed, a British resident held at Guantanamo, said the US has dropped all charges against him, but he is still being held at the US prison camp. Binyam Mohamed, an Ethiopian citizen, had lived in Britain for 7 years, and was arrested in Pakistan in 2002.
(AP, 10/21/08)(Econ, 2/7/09, p.49)
2008 Oct 21, Argentina proposed to nationalize the private pensions in order to meet debt payments. The nationalization of the private pension funds took place in December.
(WSJ, 10/22/08, p.A1)(Econ, 2/27/10, p.28)
2008 Oct 21, Bolivia’s Congress ratified Pres. Morales’ draft constitution, designed to empower the indigenous population.
(WSJ, 10/22/08, p.A1)
2008 Oct 21, The Bank of Canada cut its key interest rate by a quarter point, less than expected, to 2.25 percent but said it would likely have to ease further to combat the effects of the global financial crisis.
(Reuters, 10/21/08)
2008 Oct 21, In Denmark Hammad Khuershid, a Danish citizen of Pakistani origin, and Abdoulghani Tokhi, an Afghan, were convicted of preparing a terrorist attack. They were secretly filmed mixing the type of explosive used in the 2005 London transit bombing. They were arrested in the Copenhagen area in September 2007. Khuershid and Tokhi were sentenced to 12 and seven years in prison, respectively.
(AP, 10/21/08)
2008 Oct 21, EU lawmakers joined US civil liberty campaigners in criticizing a new scanner that allows airport security to see through passengers' clothes, calling it a virtual strip search that should only be used as a last resort.
(AP, 10/21/08)
2008 Oct 21, French President Nicolas Sarkozy backed the creation of sovereign wealth funds in Europe that, when coordinated, could provide an "industrial response" to the financial crisis.
(AFP, 10/21/08)
2008 Oct 21, In Greece riot police fired tear gas to disperse a group of rock-throwing youths during a demonstration in support of a nationwide general strike that brought air, rail and ferry traffic to a halt.
(AP, 10/21/08)
2008 Oct 21, In India 25,000 members of the United Forum of Reserve Bank Officers and Employees went on strike in a dispute over pensions. The Reserve Bank of India denounced the strike as illegal.
(Econ, 10/25/08, p.87)
2008 Oct 21, A bomb exploded outside a training center for police commandos in northeast India, killing at least 17 people and wounding 23 more.
(AP, 10/22/08)
2008 Oct 21, Indonesia's parliament ratified the Southeast Asian charter committing ASEAN member nations to promote democracy and human rights, clearing the way for its formal adoption before year's end. Anti-terrorism police seized bomb-making materials and a large cache of weapons and ammunition during a raid on a house in Jakarta. Anti-terrorism squads arrested five suspected Islamic radicals believed to have been plotting to blow up Indonesia's largest fuel depot.
(AP, 10/21/08)(AP, 10/22/08)
2008 Oct 21, Iran, Russia and Qatar discussed the formation of an OPEC-style cartel among some of the largest natural gas producing nations, a prospect that has unnerved energy-importing nations in Europe and the United States.
(AP, 10/21/08)
2008 Oct 21, Iraq's Cabinet decided to ask the Americans for unspecified changes in the draft security pact. A bomb targeting a police patrol exploded in eastern Baghdad, wounding two civilians.
(AP, 10/21/08)
2008 Oct 21, Italy's Court of Cassation ordered Berlin to pay a total of euro1 million (US$1.3 million) to nine family members of victims of a June 1944 massacre. The next day Germany rejected the ruling by Italy's top criminal court.
(AP, 10/22/08)
2008 Oct 21, Jordanian police arrested a local writer for incorporating verses of the Quran, the Muslim holy book, into his love poetry. Islam Samhan, published his collection of poems, "Grace like a Shadow," without the approval of the Jordanian government, and authorities said it insults the holy book.
(AP, 10/21/08)
2008 Oct 21, In Kashmir trucks laden with fruit, honey, garments and spices crossed the heavily armed frontier as India and Pakistan opened a trade route between the two sides of the divided region for the first time in six decades.
(AP, 10/21/08)
2008 Oct 21, Police in northern Mexico reported receiving an ice chest packed with four human heads. The chest arrived at the Ascencion police station in Chihuahua state was marked "vaccines," but wasn't claimed for a week. Jesus Zambada was among 16 members of the Sinaloa drug cartel arrested after a shootout in Mexico City. Zambada is the brother of Ismael Zambada, who allegedly heads the Sinaloa cartel along with one of Mexico's most wanted men, Joaquin Guzman.
(AP, 10/22/08)
2008 Oct 21, Amnesty International criticized major failings in Nigeria's criminal justice system and called on the government to immediately put in place a moratorium on capital punishment.
(AP, 10/21/08)
2008 Oct 21, Taliban militants ambushed a convoy of security forces in Pakistan's northwestern Swat valley, sparking clashes that left at least five personnel and six rebels dead.
(AFP, 10/22/08)
2008 Oct 21, Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal confirmed for the first time that the kingdom has been sponsoring talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban militia.
(AP, 10/21/08)
2008 Oct 21, Saudi Arabia’s interior minister said authorities have indicted 991 suspected militants on charges that they participated in terrorist attacks carried out in the kingdom over the last five years.
(AP, 10/21/08)
2008 Oct 21, A Somali official said Somali gunmen acting as freelance coast guards freed a hijacked Indian dhow and its 13 crew members after a battle with pirates off the country's northern coast. The cargo-laden vessel was en route to Somalia from Asia when it was seized over the weekend.
(AP, 10/21/08)
2008 Oct 21, A Thai court found former PM Thaksin Shinawatra (59) guilty of corruption and sentenced him to two years in prison. His wife, Pojaman (51), was acquitted.
(AP, 10/21/08)
2008 Oct 21, Turkish soldiers killed two Kurdish guerrillas during a clash near the village of Dallitepe in the country's southeast.
(AP, 10/22/08)
2008 Oct 21, Zimbabwe's main opposition party warned that unless its leader Morgan Tsvangirai is issued a passport he will not attend a meeting next week aimed at breaking a deadlock in power-sharing talks. The party also said that only fresh elections would resolve a dispute over who controls key cabinet posts, a make-or-break issue under a power-sharing pact signed with President Robert Mugabe.
(AP, 10/21/08)(Reuters, 10/21/08)
2009 Oct 21, Federal court documents linked Alaska Rep. Don Young to a wide-ranging investigation of corruption in Alaska. It was alleged that the 19-term Republican had received gifts totaling nearly $200,000 over 13 years from Veco Corp., a defunct oil field services company run by former Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens.
(SFC, 10/24/09, p.A10)
2009 Oct 21, US federal prosecutors in Massachusetts arrested Tarek Mehanna (27) of Sudbury, a suburb of Boston. Prosecutors said he had conspired to kill two prominent US politicians and carry out a holy war by attacking shoppers in US malls and American troops in Iraq. Mehanna, a US citizen, had been arrested in November and charged with lying to the FBI in December 2006 when asked about the whereabouts of Daniel Maldonado, who is now serving a 10-year prison sentence for training alongside al-Qaida members to overthrow the Somali government. On Dec 20, 2011, Mehanna was convicted of conspiring to support al-Qaida and other terrorism charges.
(AP, 10/21/09)(SFC, 10/22/09, p.A4)(SFC, 12/21/11, p.A8)
2009 Oct 21, In Toledo, Ohio, Mohammad Zaki Amawi (29) was sentenced to 20 years in jail for plotting to recruit and train terrorists to kill US soldiers in Iraq. Marwan Othman El-Hindi (46) was sentenced to 12 years. The two men and a third defendant had been found guilty in 2008. The third man has yet to be sentenced.
(SFC, 10/22/09, p.A4)(http://tinyurl.com/ygnbfpt)
2009 Oct 21, Northwest Airlines Flight 188 overflew its Minneapolis destination by 150 miles. Air traffic controllers and pilots tried for more than an hour night to contact pilot Richard Cole (54) of Salem, Oregon, and the flight's captain, Timothy B. Cheney (53), of Gig Harbor, Wash., using radio, cell phone and data messages. The pilots said they had been having a heated discussion about airline policy. On Oct 27 the FAA revoked the licenses of the two pilots saying they had been out of radio contact for 91 minutes.
(AP, 10/24/09)(SFC, 10/28/09, p.A6)
2009 Oct 21, Alyssa Bustamante (15) of St. Martins, Mo., strangled, stabbed and cut the throat of Elizabeth Olten (9). She told authorities she did it because she wanted to know what it was like to kill someone. On Feb 8, 2012, Bustamante was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole.
(http://news.aol.com/article/alyssa-bustamante-15-charged-as-adult-in/772912)(AP, 2/8/12)
2009 Oct 21, In Afghanistan ex-Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah, President Hamid Karzai's chief political rival, agreed to take part in the Nov. 7 runoff election, setting the stage for a high-stakes showdown in the face of Taliban threats and approaching winter snows. One US soldier died of wounds sustained in a bomb attack in the south.
(AP, 10/21/09)(AP, 10/22/09)
2009 Oct 21, In the Bahamas the trial of two people accused of trying to extort John Travolta following the death of his son there ended in a mistrial after a lawmaker suggested the still-deliberating jury had acquitted one of the defendants.
(AP, 10/22/09)
2009 Oct 21, A Briton who cost the insurance industry some 1.6 million pounds by staging almost 100 car crashes as part of a scam to win fraudulent payouts, was jailed for 4-1/2 years. Mohammed Patel (24) charged 500 pounds a time to stage accidents which enabled fraudsters to claim an average of 17,000 pounds from their insurers.
(Reuters, 10/21/09)
2009 Oct 21, Spanish-owned airports operator BAA announced the sale of the second busiest hub Gatwick to a US investment fund for 1.51 billion pounds following an antitrust ruling.
(AFP, 10/21/09)
2009 Oct 21, China and India put aside a diplomatic spat to sign a five-year agreement in New Delhi to cooperate on climate change leading up to crucial talks in Copenhagen.
(AFP, 10/21/09)
2009 Oct 21, A court in southwest China sentenced six men to death for gang-related crimes including blackmail and murder, the first convictions in a months long crackdown that has exposed a major city mired in violent organized crime. More than 1,544 suspects have been detained in Chongqing, China's largest municipality, since the gang sweep started in June, with more than a dozen criminal gangs busted.
(AP, 10/21/09)
2009 Oct 21, Security guards thwarted an attempted hijacking on an EgyptAir flight from Istanbul to Cairo by overpowering a Sudanese man who threatened crew members with a plastic knife. The man told flight attendants he wanted to "liberate Jerusalem."
(AP, 10/21/09)
2009 Oct 21, In northern India a passenger train crashed into another train's rear carriage reserved for women and disabled passengers, killing 22 people and injuring 16 who remained trapped for hours near Agra, the home of the Taj Mahal.
(AP, 10/21/09)
2009 Oct 21, Indonesia’s customs chief said a group of 10 alleged Iranian drug smugglers, including eight veiled women, were caught with $12.5 million worth of methamphetamines at the main airport. The group had arrived on flights from Malaysia, Syria and Qatar on Oct 19-20.
(AP, 10/21/09)
2009 Oct 21, Diplomats in Vienna said Iranian negotiators expressed support for a deal that, if accepted by their leaders, would delay Tehran's ability to make nuclear weapons by sending most of its existing enriched uranium to Russia for processing.
(AP, 10/21/09)
2009 Oct 21, In Iraq a blast in Kirkuk killed cameraman Orhan Hijran, who worked for Baghdad-based television station Al-Rasheed, and wounded correspondent Mohammed Shahid of Cairo-based Al-Baghdadiyah.
(AP, 10/21/09)
2009 Oct 21, Lithuanian lawmakers demanded an investigation into allegations that the CIA had established a prison there for al-Qaida suspects. Leaders have denied that Lithuania had hosted clandestine detention centers.
(SFC, 10/22/09, p.A2)
2009 Oct 21, ECOWAS suspended Niger following its failure to comply with the 17th October 2009 Decision of Heads of State and Government to postpone the legislative elections of Tuesday, 20th October 2009. ECOWAS suspended Niger on account of bad behavior by President Mamadou Tandja (71).
(http://news.ecowas.int/presseshow.php?nb=113&lang=en&annee=2009)(Econ, 2/27/10, p.56)
2009 Oct 21, Pakistani soldiers fought for control of Kotkai, the Taliban chief's hometown, pressing forward with a major offensive targeting an insurgent stronghold along the Afghan border. Suspected US missiles killed two militants in a neighboring region, a potentially troubling strike because it hit territory controlled by another militant faction the army has coaxed into neutrality during its offensive. The army's death toll so far rose to 16, while 15 more militants were slain, bringing their overall death toll to 105.
(AP, 10/21/09)
2009 Oct 21, In Somalia a powerful Islamist group linked to al-Qaida ordered two radio stations in southwestern Somalia to stop broadcasts indefinitely.
(AP, 10/21/09)
2009 Oct 21, South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma said Zimbabwe must not return to instability, after holding talks with PM Morgan Tsvangirai who has cut ties within his unity government. Tsvangirai flew to South Africa after meeting Mozambican President Armando Guebuza a day earlier and then headed to the Democratic Republic of Congo and Angola to brief leaders on Zimbabwe's worst impasse in eight months.
(AFP, 10/22/09)
2009 Oct 21, A Sudanese cargo plane crashed shortly after takeoff from Sharjah International Airport north of Dubai, killing the 6-member crew but causing no other casualties on the ground.
(AP, 10/21/09)
2010 Oct 21, US federal authorities charged Miami-based American Therapeutic Corp. with Medicare fraud. Prosecutors said the company preyed on patients with severe dementia and billed some $200 million for services it never rendered.
(SFC, 10/22/10, p.A13)
2010 Oct 21, In Northern California an entire arm of the Roseville Galleria, a high-end regional mall, was destroyed after Alexander Corney Pigee (Piggee, 23), barricaded himself inside a video game store and started a fire.
(AP, 10/22/10)
2010 Oct 21, In Oregon a former Bend police captain and his wife, who have been under investigation by the FBI and IRS over their real estate dealings in Oregon and Indiana, were indicted on fraud charges. Kevin (56) and Tamara (47) "Tami" Sawyer were charged with 21 counts of various crimes that include conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, bank fraud and money laundering. Prosecutors claim the fraud cost investors more than $4.4 million.
(AP, 10/23/10)
2010 Oct 21, The Guinness World Records confirmed that a pumpkin grown in Wisconsin is officially the world’s heaviest. Chris Stevens of New Richmond grew the 1,810.5 pound gourd. It was 85 pounds heavier than the record set in Ohio in 2009.
(SFC, 10/22/10, p.A10)
2010 Oct 21, A partnership backed by Amazon.com, Comcast, Facebook and other technology firms established the “S Fund," a $250 million fund led by venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, to capitalize on the growing reach of social networking.
(SFC, 10/22/10, p.C1)
2010 Oct 21, Afghanistan's new peace council said it would be willing to make concessions to bring insurgents to the negotiating table, and called for Saudi Arabia's help in mediating peace talks.
(Reuters, 10/21/10)
2010 Oct 21, In Austria Christian Kandlbauer (22), man who was able to drive because of an innovative high-tech artificial arm, died. He had been in intensive care since Oct 19 after his vehicle veered off the road and into a tree. It was unclear whether the crash was caused by problems with Kandlbauer's artificial arms.
(AP, 10/22/10)
2010 Oct 21, In Britain the Privileges and Conduct Committee of the House of Lords suspended Pola Uddin, Swraj Paul and Amirali Bhatia after declaring they did not act in good faith in filing their expense claims. They were ordered to repay amounts ranging from 27,000 pounds ($45,000) to just over 125,000 pounds ($197,000).
(AP, 10/21/10)
2010 Oct 21, China rejected a UN report that says Chinese bullets were used in attacks on peacekeepers in Sudan's troubled Darfur region, calling the charge groundless.
(AFP, 10/21/10)
2010 Oct 21, At least 160,000 people were evacuated from southern China as Typhoon Megi, one of the most powerful storms to hit the region in years, bore down, bringing with it the threat of devastation.
(AFP, 10/21/10)
2010 Oct 21, In CongoDRC a small plane was owned by a local airliner Starec Congo crashed into a gorilla park in eastern Congo killing its pilot and co-pilot. It was carrying some 3,300 pounds (1,500 kg) of commercial goods.
(AP, 10/21/10)
2010 Oct 21, In Cuba the office of Havana Roman Catholic Cardinal Jaime Ortega announced the names of five more Cuban inmates who have accepted exile in Spain in return for freedom, though none are among a group of 52 political prisoners jailed in a 2003 roundup of dissidents.
(AP, 10/22/10)
2010 Oct 21, In the Dominican Rep. 126 students were sickened after eating free school breakfasts despite the government's efforts to resolve past problems with tainted school food.
(AP, 10/21/10)
2010 Oct 21, In El Salvador Benitez Canales, one of the owners of the Deportivo Vista Hermosa football club, was among a group making a deal over 2 kg (4.4 pounds) of cocaine when they were arrested.
(AP, 10/22/10)
2010 Oct 21, The European Parliament awarded its annual human rights prize to Guillermo Farinas (48), the Cuban dissident whose 134-day hunger strike helped draw attention to the plight of political dissidents jailed in a 2003 crackdown on dissent.
(AP, 10/21/10)
2010 Oct 21, Finland’s Nokia, the world's top mobile phone maker, announced 1,800 jobs cuts right on the heels of stellar third-quarter results and just one month after a new chief executive took the helm.
(AFP, 10/21/10)
2010 Oct 21, In France protesters blockaded Marseille's airport, Lady Gaga canceled concerts in Paris and rioting youths attacked police in Lyon ahead of a tense Senate vote on raising the retirement age to 62.
(AP, 10/21/10)
2010 Oct 21, In Israel the Elders, a group of retired world figures, visited a flashpoint east Jerusalem neighborhood, vowing to help Palestinian residents whose homes are facing demolition.
(AFP, 10/21/10)
2010 Oct 21, In Italy demonstrators in Naples set vehicles ablaze and hurled stones and firecrackers at police over plans to build a garbage dump in the Vesuvio National Park. 20 officers were left injured.
(AP, 10/21/10)
2010 Oct 21, Toyota said it is recalling 1.53 million Lexus, Avalon and other models, mostly in the US and Japan, for brake fluid and fuel pump problems, the latest in a string of quality lapses for the world's No. 1 automaker.
(AP, 10/21/10)
2010 Oct 21, Mexican police found the bullet-ridden bodies of seven people in different parts of southern Guerrero state. Among them was Antonio Valdez, leader of the Institutional Revolutionary Party in the resort city of Acapulco. Valdez and three other men were found dead on the outskirts of the city with a message accusing them of being allied with Edgar Valdez Villarreal, alias "The Barbie."
(AP, 10/22/10)
2010 Oct 21, In central Mexico Canadian industrial giant Bombardier and Mexican President Felipe Calderon opened a new 250-million-dollar plant where it will produce components for the Learjet 85 business aircraft.
(AFP, 10/21/10)
2010 Oct 21, Military-ruled Myanmar unveiled a new national flag. The new flag has horizontal stripes of yellow, green and red with a big white star in the middle. (The three horizontal colors, minus the white star, are identical to the Lithuanian national flag.)
(AP, 10/21/10)
2010 Oct 21, In Niger a statement read on national radio and television said the removal of the junta's second-in-command, intelligence minister, head of the national guard and minister of equipment were related to a coup plot within the national armed forces.
(AP, 10/22/10)
2010 Oct 21, In northwestern Pakistan a roadside bomb killed six Taliban militants, including a prominent local commander, an attack that could have been motivated by tensions between different insurgent groups.
(AP, 10/21/10)
2010 Oct 21, In the southern Philippines a bomb ripped through a passenger bus, killing at least 10 people and wounding nine in an attack authorities say may have been carried out by an extortion gang with links to Muslim militants.
(AP, 10/21/10)
2010 Oct 21, In Russia the Moscow legislature voted to approve Sergei Sobyanin, PM Putin’s chief of staff, as mayor of the city replacing Yuri Luzhkov, who was fired by Pres. Medvedev last month after 18 years in office. Luzhkov has said he believes the true reason behind his ouster was the Kremlin's desire to have a more pliant mayor before parliamentary elections next year and the 2012 presidential vote.
(AP, 10/21/10)
2010 Oct 21, In Somalia a failed offensive by al-Shabab left at least 20 people dead as the Islamist group attempted to recapture a district in the southwest from government forces.
(AP, 10/22/10)
2010 Oct 21, In Syria Venezuelan Pres. Chavez met with his Pres. Bashar Assad on the Mideast leg of an international tour partly intended to counter what he calls US "imperialism."
(AP, 10/21/10)
2010 Oct 21, Thailand said floods in the northeast have left 17 people dead over the last 2 weeks with damages estimated at $650 million. 28 of the country’s 77 provinces were affected.
(SFC, 10/22/10, p.A9)
2010 Oct 21, UNESCO, the UN's cultural and education agency, suspended plans to grant a prize named after Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, Equatorial Guinea's longtime dictator, after human rights groups slammed the award by citing the leader's poor human rights record.
(AP, 10/21/10)
2011 Oct 21, Pres. Obama signed free trade agreements with Colombia, Panama and South Korea.
(Econ, 11/12/11, p.49)(http://tinyurl.com/78rfnuz)
2011 Oct 21, US political operative John Haggerty (42) was convicted of cheating NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg out of some $750,000 of dollars. On Dec 19 Haggerty was sentenced to 1.3 to 4 years in prison.
(SFC, 10/22/11, p.A6)(SFC, 12/19/11, p.A8)
2011 Oct 21, Leo Earl Sharp (87) of Indiana was arrested on drug charges near Ann Arbor after police found 228 pounds of cocaine worth an estimated $2.9 million in his pickup following a routine traffic stop. On Oct 24 a US Magistrate in Detroit released Sharp on $10,000 bond and scheduled a next hearing in the case for November.
(Reuters, 10/24/11)
2011 Oct 21, Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon signed legislation that repealed a law, enacted earlier this year, that had limited online discussions between teachers and students 18 or younger.
(SFC, 10/22/11, p.A6)
2011 Oct 21, In western Oregon Christopher Ochoa (20), a California member of the US Marine Corps Reserves, was shot and killed after a hunter mistook him for a bear.
(AP, 10/22/11)
2011 Oct 21, Hertz said it is firing 25 Somali Muslim drivers at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport who have refused to agree to clock out for daily breaks during which they normally pray. 9 of 34 drivers have signed the agreement and returned to their jobs.
(AP, 10/21/11)
2011 Oct 21, Bolivia’s Pres. Evo Morales said he is abandoning plans to build a highway through a lowlands indigenous reserve after clamor of opposition.
(SFC, 10/22/11, p.A2)
2011 Oct 21, George Daniels (85), English master watchmaker, died.
(Econ, 11/19/11, p.106)
2011 Oct 21, In Chile dozens of protesting students voluntarily left the Senate headquarters they had seized to demand a popular referendum on how to resolve Chile's social problems, especially education.
(AP, 10/21/11)
2011 Oct 21, In China Wang Yue, a 2-year-old girl who was twice run over by vans and then ignored by passers-by on a busy market street on Oct 13, died today, one week after the accident and after days of bitter soul-searching over declining morality in the country. Police soon arrested two drivers suspected of running over a toddler. Hu Jun (24) was charged with causing the wrongful death of the girl.
(AP, 10/21/11)(AP, 10/23/11)(AFP, 10/24/11)
2011 Oct 21, In southwest Colombia 10 soldiers were reported killed and six wounded in an overnight attack, the deadliest guerrilla attack on security forces in more than a year.
(AP, 10/21/11)
2011 Oct 21, Finance ministers from 17 Eurozone countries agreed to pay Greece $11 billion in its next batch of bailout loans, avoiding a potentially disastrous default.
(SFC, 10/22/11, p.A5)
2011 Oct 21, Haitian authorities closed the Son of God orphanage where the director was accused by US missionaries of not feeding children and selling donated goods.
(AP, 10/21/11)
2011 Oct 21, In India the latest in a series of strikes at top car maker Maruti Suzuki came to an end, at a cost of $400 million in lost production and major damage to the group's reputation.
(AFP, 10/21/11)
2011 Oct 21, In Indonesia gunmen shot dead three people at a strike-hit gold and copper mine in the eastern Papua region, raising the number of killings this month to eight at the troubled Grasberg mine, operated by Freeport McMoRan. The strikers, mostly indigenous Melanesians, say they are the lowest paid Freeport workers in the world, earning between $1.50 and $3.50 an hour.
(AFP, 10/21/11)
2011 Oct 21, In Italy renowned international law expert Antonio Cassese (b.1937), died after a long battle with cancer. He had served as first president of the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal and later as president of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon.
(AP, 10/22/11)
2011 Oct 21, A Lithuanian judge found Michael Campbell (39), an Irish man, guilty of trying to buy weapons and explosives in a six-year sting orchestrated by Britain's domestic spy agency MI5, a case that drew attention to a hardcore Irish Republican Army splinter group's plans to spread terror to London. He was sentenced to 12 years in prison for weapons offenses and supporting a terrorist group.
(AP, 10/21/11)
2011 Oct 21, In Mexico a helicopter carrying Mexico state Metropolitan Development Secretary Fernando Garcia and his assistant crashed against a wall and on top of some cars in the Coyoacan borough. A secretary and co-pilot were killed.
(AP, 10/21/11)
2011 Oct 21, A Mexican tractor-trailer crossed into the US for the first time under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), signed in 1994.
(SFC, 10/22/11, p.A6)
2011 Oct 21, NATO announced plans to end its 7-month mission in Libya on October 31 but will issue a formal decision next week after consulting the UN and Libya's interim authorities.
(AFP, 10/22/11)
2011 Oct 21, Niger said the end of the Libyan conflict would allow it to lift restrictions on senior Kadhafi loyalists who sought refuge there, except for deceased leader Moamer Kadhafi's son Saadi.
(AFP, 10/21/11)
2011 Oct 21, Nigerian ex-militant leader, Mujahid Dokubo-Asari, head of the Niger Delta Peoples Volunteer Force, called Moamer Kadhafi a "martyr" and vowed that his killing would be avenged. Asari claims to have lived in Libya and to have had links with Kadhafi.
(AFP, 10/21/11)
2011 Oct 21, In the southern Philippines 3 South Korean businessmen went missing. Officials later said they were abducted by unidentified men who lured them with a fake mining investment project. Police launched a search for Wu Seok-bung, Kim Nam-du, Choi In-soo and at least one Filipino guide after they failed to return to their hotel in Cagayan de Oro city. Choi In-soo escaped on Nov 25. Wu Seok-bung and Kim Nam-du were abandoned on Nov 26 as troops moved in. The guide was killed during captivity.
(AP, 11/7/11)(AP, 11/27/11)
2011 Oct 21, Russia's parliament adopted a law limiting abortions but rejected even tougher restrictions backed by the country's conservative Orthodox Church. The country's birth rate has become a serious concern for Russia as it fights to stem a steep population decline.
(AP, 10/21/11)
2011 Oct 21, South Africa's ruling party's young wing saluted Libya's slain former leader Moamer Kadhafi calling him an "anti-imperialist martyr" and a fighter against the recolonization of the African continent.
(AFP, 10/21/11)
2011 Oct 21, Syrian protesters poured into the streets and shouted that President Bashar Assad's regime will be the next to unravel now that ousted Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi is dead. Syrian forces fired on protesters Friday, killing up to 14 people.
(AP, 10/21/11)
2011 Oct 21, In Thailand millions of nervous Bangkok residents were warned to move their belongings to safety as the kingdom's worst floods in decades poured into the outskirts of the sprawling city.
(AFP, 10/21/11)
2011 Oct 21, A 7.6 earthquake struck off the coast of Tonga, but there were no immediate reports of damage or injuries.
(SFC, 10/22/11, p.A2)
2011 Oct 21, Turkish jets kept up bombing raids on Kurdish rebel bases in northern Iraq overnight, as the rebels confirmed that some Turkish troops crossed into Iraq. Turkey and Iran vowed to collaborate against the PKK and its Iranian wing, the Party of Free Life of Kurdistan, or PJAK, during a visit by Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi.
(AFP, 10/21/11)(AP, 10/22/11)
2011 Oct 21, The UN Security council unanimously passed a resolution that "strongly" condemns the deadly Yemen government attacks on demonstrators and backs a Gulf plan for Pres. Saleh to end his 33 years in power.
(AP, 10/22/11)
2012 Oct 21, George McGovern (90), former US Senator and presidential candidate, died at a hospice in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
(AP, 10/21/12)
2012 Oct 21, A shooting at a spa near a Brookfield, Wis., mall left 3 women dead and four others wounded in a scene of domestic violence. The suspected gunman, Radcliffe Haughton (45), of Brown Deer, Wis., was found dead inside the spa.
(AP, 10/21/12)(SFC, 10/22/12, p.A5)
2012 Oct 21, In Afghanistan a NATO raid in Logar province reportedly killed four children.
(AP, 10/23/12)
2012 Oct 21, In Benin the doctor of Pres. Boni Yayi, Former Minister of Trade Moudjaidou Soumanou and one of the president's nieces Zouberatou Kora were arrested. The next day they were charged with conspiracy and attempted murder in a failed plot to poison the president by changing his medicine with something toxic.
(AP, 10/23/12)
2012 Oct 21, In northwest China Tibetan Lhamo Kyeb (27) called for the Dalai Lama’s return and died after setting himself on fire near the Bhora monastery in Gansu province.
(SFC, 10/22/12, p.A2)
2012 Oct 21, In Guinea-Bissau mutineers were defeated by military loyal to the Chief of General Staff of the Armed Forces, Antonio Indjai. 6 people were killed when a group of soldiers attempted to seize control of a military airbase near the capital. On Oct 27 Coup leader Pansau Ntchama was arrested outside the capital, Bissau. Ntchama had sought exile in Portugal after allegedly carrying out the 2009 assassination of Guinea-Bissau's former president.
(AP, 10/21/12)(AP, 10/28/12)
2012 Oct 21, Israel's PM Netanyahu vowed on to continue building in east Jerusalem, despite objections from Palestinians who claim the territory as capital of their hoped-for state.
(AP, 10/21/12)
2012 Oct 21, Jordanian officials said 11 men with suspected links to al-Qaida have been charged with terrorism conspiracy for allegedly planning attacks on shopping malls and Western diplomatic missions.
(AP, 10/21/12)
2012 Oct 21, In Libya clashes in Bani Walid entered their fifth day. The state news agency said 22 pro-government militiamen were killed in an assault on late dictator Moammar Gadhafi's last stronghold.
(AP, 10/21/12)
2012 Oct 21, Mali's government troops killed about 10 men near the town of Diabaly and soldiers reportedly recovered two shotguns along with ammunition. A relative later said the men were Tuareg animal herders — not criminals. He believed the deaths stemmed from a decade-long rivalry between two families in the area, one of which had ties to a soldier in the Malian army.
(AP, 10/31/12)
2012 Oct 21, Myanmar's reformist Pres. Thein Sein held his first press conference for local press, a milestone after years of secrecy and censorship by the former military regime. In western Myanmar fresh clashes between Muslims and Buddhists broke out, leaving at least three people dead and hundreds of homes burned to the ground in Rakhine state’s Min Bya township.
(AP, 10/21/12)(AP, 10/23/12)(SFC, 10/24/12, p.A2)
2012 Oct 21, In Syria a taxi rigged with explosives blew up near a police station in Damascus, killing at least 13 people even as the UN envoy to the nation's crisis was visiting to push his call for a cease-fire in talks with President Bashar Assad.
(AP, 10/21/12)
2012 Oct 21, Pope Benedict XVI added seven more saints onto the roster of Catholic role models in a bid to reinvigorate the faith in parts of the world where it's lagging. They included Kateri Tekakwitha, the first Native American saint from the US; Mother Marianne Cope, a 19th century Franciscan nun who cared for leprosy patients in Hawaii; Pedro Calungsod, a 17th century Filipino teenage martyr; Jacques Berthieu, a 19th century French Jesuit who was killed by rebels in Madagascar; Giovanni Battista Piamarta, an Italian who founded a religious order in 1900 and established a Catholic printing and publishing house in his native Brescia; Carmen Salles y Barangueras, a Spanish nun who founded a religious order to educate children in 1892; and Anna Schaeffer, a 19th century German lay woman who became a model for the sick and suffering after she fell into a boiler and badly burned her legs.
(AP, 10/21/12)
2013 Oct 21, Pres. Obama urged American to buy health insurance by phone, mail and in person because the website for Obamacare was not working.
(Econ, 10/26/13, p.33)
2013 Oct 21, US authorites said nearly two dozen current and former members of Arizona’s Air National Guard have been indicted on charges including theft and money laundering in a $1.4 million scam to defraud the federal government. The 8 officers and 13 enlisted men and women had been resposible for remotely operating drones to support troops in Afghanistan and Iraq.
(SFC, 10/22/13, p.A6)
2013 Oct 21, San Francisco Bay Area BART workers ended their strike with a tentative agreement between the transit agency and its two largest unions. Trains began running Oct 22. Workers scored a 15.4% pay raises over four years as well as other benefits.
(SFC, 10/22/13, p.A1)(SFC, 10/22/13, p.A9)
2013 Oct 21, In Nevada a boy (12) opened fire with a 9mm semiautomatic Ruger handgun at Sparks Middle School killing math teacher Michael Landsberry (45) and critically wounding two students before killing himself.
(AFP, 10/21/13)(SFC, 10/22/12, p.A6)(SFC, 10/22/12, p.A6)
2013 Oct 21, New Jersey became the 14th US state to allow same-sex marriages.
(SFC, 10/22/13, p.A6)
2013 Oct 21, In Afghanistan a bomb stuck onto a car killed a civilian in downtown Kabul. Authorities are unclear as to the motives for the attack.
(AP, 10/21/13)
2013 Oct 21, Brazil said a consortium including Shell, Total, two Chinese firms and Brazil's state-run petroleum company Petrobras won the right to develop an offshore field that could hold up to 12 billion barrels of oil.
(AP, 10/21/13)
2013 Oct 21, A disciplinary body of China’s Communist Party said anti-graft authorities have punished 8 people at a state-owned rail construction firm for spending more than $100 million on hospitality last year.
(Reuters, 10/21/13)
2013 Oct 21, In China visibility shrank to less than half a football field and small-particle pollution soared to a record 40 times higher than an international safety standard in the northern city of Harbin as the region entered its high-smog season.
(AP, 10/21/13)
2013 Oct 21, In Egypt thousands of students from the al-Azhar University staged a third day of protests, in one of the boldest challenges to the army since it toppled Islamist President Mohamed Mursi in July.
(Reuters, 10/21/13)
2013 Oct 21, Europe's top human rights court ordered Spain to release a Basque separatist militant, saying her extended detention was illegal, a ruling victims groups warned would let dozens of prisoners walk free. Ines del Rio was jailed in 1989 for her role in 23 assassinations and car bombings carried out by the Basque independence movement ETA.
(Reuters, 10/21/13)
2013 Oct 21, A Le Monde newspaper report said the US National Security Agency swept up 70.3 million French telephone records in a 30-day period and offered new details of the massive scope of a surveillance operation that has angered some of the country's closest allies.
(AP, 10/21/13)
2013 Oct 21, In India heavy rains began falling in Andhra Pradesh and Orissa states. 39 people were reported dead from flooding by Oct 26.
(SSFC, 10/27/13, p.A4)
2013 Oct 21, In Iraq militants attacked police and electricity headquarters in Fallujah, killing 7 police officers.
(AP, 10/21/13)
2013 Oct 21, Israel recognized NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg as the first ever recipient of the $1 million Genesis Prize, an award popularly dubbed the "Jewish Nobel Prize."
(AP, 10/21/13)
2013 Oct 21, Mozambique ex-rebel group Renamo declared the end of a peace deal signed 21 years ago after the army seized its military base.
(AFP, 10/21/13)
2013 Oct 21, Nigerian troops killed 37 Boko Haram Islamist militants in combined air and ground strikes on one of their northeast bases.
(Reuters, 10/22/13)
2013 Oct 21, Nigerian officials said cholera has killed 50 people in the northwest in the past week.
(AFP, 10/21/13)
2013 Oct 21, In southwest Pakistan at least 5 passengers were killed and 16 wounded when a train was bombed and derailed.
(Reuters, 10/21/13)
2013 Oct 21, In Russia female suicide bomber Naida Asiyalova (30) struck a passenger bus in the southern city of Volgograd, killing 6 people and injuring 32 others. The suspected bomber was from Dagestan.
(AP, 10/21/13)(AP, 10/22/13)(SFC, 10/22/13, p.A2)
2013 Oct 21, South African prosecutors said a man arrested on suspicion of raping and murdering two toddlers in a Johannesburg slum has confessed, after the case sparked violent riots last week.
(AFP, 10/21/13)
2013 Oct 21, Spain's oil company Repsol announced a high quality light oil find in Libya's Sahara Desert.
(AP, 10/21/13)
2013 Oct 21, In Syria government warplanes launched strikes on areas southeast of Damascus after rebels seized key regime positions there. Residents of Moadamiyeh issued an urgent plea for the int’l. community to save them from starvation and constant bombardment after efforts to evacuate civilians from the area collapsed. Yasser al-Abboud, a prominent army defector who became a rebel leader, was killed during fighting in the town of Tafas.
(AFP, 10/21/13)(AP, 10/21/13)(SFC, 10/22/13, p.A4)
2013 Oct 21, The party of Ukraine's jailed opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko (52) rejected President Viktor Yanukovich's terms for her release and European envoys said time was running out to solve a row threatening agreements with the EU.
(Reuters, 10/21/13)
2013 Oct 21, The Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force said more than 300 elephants and other animals died in July of cyanide poisoning by poachers in Hwange, Zimbabwe's largest game park. Three elephants attacked a park ranger and trampled him to death during an anti-poaching patrol in the Hwange nature reserve.
(AFP, 10/21/13)(AP, 10/23/13)
2014 Oct 21, Ben Bradlee (93), the hard-driving editor who reigned over the Washington Post, died. His work included guiding young reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein as they traced a 1972 burglary at Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate office and apartment complex back to the Nixon White House.
(AP, 10/22/14)
2014 Oct 21, Jeffrey Fowle (56), arrested in May for leaving a Bible at a sailor's club in the North Korean city of Chongjin, was freed and flown home on a US government plane to Dayton, Ohio.
(Reuters, 10/22/14)
2014 Oct 21, In Pennsylvania 84 former students who were sexually molested by Franciscan Brother Stephen Baker at a Catholic high school in Altoona settled their legal claims for $8 million. Baker worked at the school as an athletic trainer from 1992 to 2001.
(SFC, 10/22/14, p.A7)
2014 Oct 21, In Abu Dhabi Robert Alan Black (70), an American man who came to the United Arab Emirates to speak at a conference on creative thinking, was arrested for taking a photograph of a subject deemed off-limits by authorities.
(AP, 11/3/14)
2014 Oct 21, In Afghanistan at least four were been killed in a roadside bomb attack on a bus in Kabul.
(AP, 10/21/14)
2014 Oct 21, Former Australian PM Gough Whitlam (98) died at a nursing home in Sydney. His government (1972-1975) was credited with instituting lasting social reforms during a short tenure that ended in a bitter constitutional crisis.
(AP, 10/21/14)(Econ, 11/1/14, p.86)
2014 Oct 21, The tail end of Hurricane Gonzalo brought high winds and travel chaos to Britain. One woman was found dead under a fallen tree in west London.
(AFP, 10/21/14)
2014 Oct 21, Hong Kong student leaders and government officials talked but agreed on as the city's Beijing-backed leader reaffirmed his unwillingness to compromise on the key demand of activists camped in the streets now for a fourth week.
(AP, 10/21/14)
2014 Oct 21, In Indonesia Robert Ellis (60), a British man, was found dead with his throat slashed and dumped in a ditch on the resort island of Bali. His Indonesian wife admitted to the killing day later.
(AFP, 10/22/14)
2014 Oct 21, In Iraq a series of bombs targeting restaurants across Baghdad killed at least 21 people.
(Reuters, 10/21/14)
2014 Oct 21, In Mexico 19 suspected drug gang members died in three nearly simultaneous confrontations between the towns of Reynosa and Matamoros, Tamaulipas state.
(SFC, 10/23/14, p.A2)
2014 Oct 21, Pakistan Air Force jets hit terrorist hideouts in North Waziristan killing 30 militants including Taliban commander Daud Wazir.
(SSFC, 10/26/14, p.A4)
2014 Oct 21, The Portuguese government's plan to privatize debt-heavy public transport companies met tough opposition from trade unions as Lisbon subway workers walked off the job for the 12th time this year.
(AP, 10/21/14)
2014 Oct 21, A Saudi court sentenced 13 people to prison for planning a series of attacks against US forces in Qatar and Kuwait. 11 Saudis, a Qatari and an Afghan national were given varying sentences of between 18 months to 30 years in prison.
(AP, 10/22/14)
2014 Oct 21, In Sierra Leone a machete-wielding mob clashed with security personnel in the eastern town of Koidu and then went on a rampage, after preventing a medical team from taking the blood from the 90-year-old mother of a youth leader. Two people were killed.
(AP, 10/22/14)
2014 Oct 21, In South Africa Olympic and Paralympic sprinter Oscar Pistorius was sentenced to five years in prison for killing his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp on Feb 13, 2013.
(Reuters, 10/21/14)
2014 Oct 21, Sri Lankan trade unions, opposition politicians and activists protested, demanding the government include substantial pay increases in the annual budget presented this week.
(AP, 10/21/14)
2014 Oct 21, In Syria Islamic State won territory from government forces in the eastern city of Deir al-Zor, its first gain there in about two months. A monitoring group reported that a man and a woman have been stoned to death for adultery in separate executions in jihadist-controlled areas. Government airstrikes hit the rebel-held town of Nasib, along the country's southern border with Jordan, killing at least 8 people.
(Reuters, 10/21/14)(AP, 10/21/14)(SFC, 10/22/14, p.A4)
2014 Oct 21, In central Yemen Sunni Al Qaeda militants and Shi'ite Muslim rebels fought a bloody battle. 30 Shi'ite rebels and 18 Sunni fighters and their tribal allies were reported killed in the clashes in Radda, al-Bayda province.
(Reuters, 10/22/14)
2014 Oct 21, Nguyen Van Hai, one of Vietnam's most prominent bloggers, arrived in the US after being freed from prison in Vietnam. Hai, alias Dieu Cay, was sentenced to 12 years in September 2012 by a court in southern Vietnam on charges of anti-state propaganda.
(AFP, 10/22/14)
2015 Oct 21, VP Joe Biden said he would not seek the Democratic nomination in the 2016 presidential campaign.
(SFC, 10/22/15, p.A7)
2015 Oct 21, The US-led coalition fighting Islamic State targeted the militant group with 22 air strikes in Syria and Iraq.
(Reuters, 10/22/15)
2015 Oct 21, It was reported that Ohio is delaying executions until at least 2017 while prison officials try to secure supplies of hard-to-obtain lethal injection drugs.
(SFC, 10/21/15, p.A9)
2015 Oct 21, US Marine Corps pilot Maj. Taj Sareen was killed when his F/A-18 Hornet crashed on farmland after taking off from a US Air Force (USAF) base in eastern England.
(Reuters, 10/21/15)(SFC, 10/22/15, p.A4)
2015 Oct 21, Ferrari, an Italy-based car company owned by Fiat Chrysler, went public with a 10% stake on the NYSE and closed up almost 6% at $55.
(SFC, 10/22/15, p.C5)(Econ, 10/17/15, p.69)
2015 Oct 21, Western Digital, a maker of hard drives, said it is buying SanDisk, a flash-memory chip maker, in a cash and stock deal valued at about $19 billion.
(SFC, 10/22/15, p.C3)
2015 Oct 21, YouTube announced a monthly subscription service, starting at $10, for YouTube Red, allowing users to play videos without ads, offline and in the background while using other apps.
(SFC, 10/22/15, p.C1)
2015 Oct 21, The Bahraini Court of Appeals confirmed the conviction of political activist Zainab al-Khawaja (32) and reduced her sentence from three to one year in prison for ripping up a photo of the king in court in 2014. Her family told Amnesty Int’l. that she intended to keep her infant son with her in prison if forced to serve her sentence.
(Reuters, 10/21/15)
2015 Oct 21, Brazil's opposition filed a new impeachment petition against President Dilma Rousseff, accusing her of illegal accounting practices.
(AFP, 10/21/15)
2015 Oct 21, China’s Communist Party Central Committee officially banned golf for its 88 million Communist Party members. Also banned was excessive eating and drinking and having improper sexual relations.
(SFC, 10/23/15, p.A3)(Econ, 10/31/15, p.44)
2015 Oct 21, PM David Cameron said Britain and China have signed deals worth around 40 billion pounds ($62 billion), during a state visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping. Britain sanctioned a $9.3 billion investment by a Chinese state power company in a nuclear power plant being built at Hinkley Point by EDF, a French company.
(Reuters, 10/21/15)(Econ, 10/24/15, p.53)
2015 Oct 21, British police arrested Shao Jiang (47), a survivor of the Tiananmen Square crackdown and raided his home, after he stepped out in front of Chinese President Xi Jinping's motorcade.
(AFP, 10/23/15)
2015 Oct 21, In Cameroon 8 villagers in the village of Doulo were killed and nine injured in a raid by Nigerian Islamist group Boko Haram that was followed by a gun battle between militants and security forces.
(Reuters, 10/22/15)
2015 Oct 21, More than 100 migrants crowded into two boats landed at a British airbase on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus, bringing the crisis that has rocked much of Europe to British sovereign soil.
(AFP, 10/21/15)
2015 Oct 21, In eastern China an explosion at a chemical factory killed 9 people and injured two others.
(AP, 10/21/15)
2015 Oct 21, The European Union demanded that Starbucks and Fiat repay up to 30 million euros ($34 million) each in back taxes.
(AP, 10/21/15)
2015 Oct 21, Refugees from Asian wars crossed into Slovenia from Croatia as border closures elsewhere forced them to find new routes to rich European countries and concern grew over the plight of those stranded in wet, freezing weather.
(Reuters, 10/21/15)
2015 Oct 21, Guam authorities arrested Lourdes Fernandez Blas (44), a Department of Revenue and Taxation employee, suspected of taking bribes while on the job. Two other suspects in the case, Kupwo Kelep Kerwin (30) and Ringko Sammurai (39), were also arrested and all three were released.
(AP, 10/22/15)
2015 Oct 21, Police in northern India arrested four men over allegations that they burnt alive two low-caste children. An officials said the incident was a family feud and not related to caste violence.
(Reuters, 10/21/15)
2015 Oct 21, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei approved the country’s nuclear deal with world powers but said Tehran should not give up core elements of its atomic program until allegations of past military dimensions had been settled.
(Reuters, 10/21/15)
2015 Oct 21, An Israeli female soldier (19) was wounded in a stabbing near a West Bank settlement while the attacker was shot dead. Hours later five Israeli soldiers were run over by a Palestinian driver in the West Bank. A Jewish Israeli man (28) was shot and killed in a scuffle with Israeli soldiers who suspected he was a Palestinian attacker. Two alleged Palestinian attackers attempted to board a bus carrying children west of Jerusalem, and stabbed an Israeli before being shot.
(AFP, 10/21/15)(AP, 10/22/15)(AFP, 10/22/15)(SSFC, 10/25/15, p.A8)
2015 Oct 21, Japanese Buddhist monk Kogen Kamahori (41) finished a grueling nine-day ritual without eating, drinking, or sleeping as he chanted sutras 100,000 times at Mount Hieizan.
(AFP, 10/21/15)
2015 Oct 21, Japan-based Toyota Motor Corp. said it is recalling 6.5 million vehicles worldwide for a defective power window switch that can overheat, melt and lead to fires.
(AP, 10/21/15)
2015 Oct 21, Mexican police announced the capture of six people believed responsible for the July 11 prison break by Joaquin Guzman.
(SFC, 10/22/15, p.A2)
2015 Oct 21, Mexican authorities discovered an elaborate, rail equipped drug tunnel that ran from Tijuana to well into San Diego. They seized about ten tons of marijuana.
(SFC, 10/23/15, p.D4)
2015 Oct 21, In northern Syria a new administration was formed for a majority Sunni-Arab town controlled by Syrian Kurds, expanding the ethnic group's semi-autonomous administration. A local leadership council including representatives of Tel Abyad's Arab, Kurdish, Turkmen and Armenian communities declared it part of the system of autonomous self-government established by the Kurds.
(AP, 10/21/15)(Reuters, 10/21/15)
2015 Oct 21, Two Niger soldiers were killed in a suicide attack by a group of suspected Boko Haram militants in the southeastern region of Diffa.
(Reuters, 10/21/15)
2015 Oct 21, In the Philippines 2 Chinese diplomats were killed and the consul-general was wounded by a Chinese attacker armed with a pistol during a birthday celebration at a restaurant.
(AP, 10/21/15)
2015 Oct 21, Russia said its jets have hit 83 targets in Syria over the past 24 hours.
(AFP, 10/21/15)
2015 Oct 21, In Singapore Pastor Kong Hee of the City Harvest Church was convicted along with five other church officials on charges related to the misuse of $36 million to promote the career of Kong’s wife, Ho Yeow, a singer also known as Sun Ho.
(SFC, 10/22/15, p.A6)
2015 Oct 21, South African riot police fired stun grenades at hundreds of protesting students who stormed the parliament precinct in Cape Town to try to disrupt the reading of Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene's interim budget.
(Reuters, 10/21/15)
2015 Oct 21, Swiss-based Credit Suisse said it plans to cut at least 3,400 jobs over three years in Britain and Switzerland and raise billions in a new share offering after its net profit fell 24 percent in the third quarter.
(AP, 10/21/15)
2015 Oct 21, in Tanzania attackers overnight tried to hack the genitals off a man with albinism. Presidential and parliamentary polls due Oct 25 have been marked by fears of a spike in albino murders, with rights groups warning that some politicians may also be seeking lucky charms or "witchcraft" potions.
(AFP, 10/23/15)
2015 Oct 21, The UN's cultural body approved a resolution from a group of Arab states criticizing Israel for failing to protect heritage sites and rebuild regions destroyed by war.
(AFP, 10/21/15)
2015 Oct 21, In Yemen at least 22 civilians were killed and several others wounded as rockets allegedly fired by rebels crashed into the city of Taez.
(AFP, 10/21/15)
2016 Oct 21, Former California state Sen. Ron Calderon was sentenced to 3½ years in prison in a corruption scandal in which he acknowledged taking bribes in exchange for his influence in Sacramento.
(SFC, 10/21/16, p.A7)
2016 Oct 21, Reports of online disruption cropped up across the East Coast of the United States after a key internet firm was hit by a cyberattack. Manchester, New Hampshire-based Dyn, Inc. said its server infrastructure was hit by a distributed denial-of-service attack, which works by overwhelming targeted machines with junk traffic.
(AP, 10/21/16)
2016 Oct 21, CIA operatives Brian Ray Hoke (b.1974) and Nathaniel Patrick Delemarre died in Afghanistan after a firefight with Islamic State militants in Jalalabad.
(http://tinyurl.com/ybnawbdb)(SFC, 9/7/17 p.A12)
2016 Oct 21, Prosecutors from Belgium, France, Morocco and Spain called for the ability to unlock phones and computers and to gain access to encrypted communications to aid in the fight against terrorism following a 2-day meeting in Paris.
(AP, 10/21/16)
2016 Oct 21, British American Tobacco offered to buy Reynolds American Inc. in a $47 billion deal that would create the world's largest publicly traded tobacco company and attempt to make up for a decline in smoking in the US and Europe.
(AP, 10/21/16)
2016 Oct 21, In Cameroon an overloaded train derailed killing at least 79 people. More than 600 were injured.
(AP, 10/22/16)(AFP, 10/24/16)
2016 Oct 21, Police in China's central city of Wuhan detained a person, surnamed Rong, for spreading rumors in what a state-run newspaper said was a video purportedly showing a demonstration involving workers at Wuhan Iron and Steel (Wugang).
(Reuters, 10/23/16)
2016 Oct 21, Typhoon Haima barreled into southern China after hammering the northern Philippines with ferocious wind and rain, triggering flooding, landslides and power outages and killing at least 13 people.
(AP, 10/21/16)
2016 Oct 21, Indian banks scrambled to contain the damage after finding that more than 3.2 million debit cards may have been hacked.
(AP, 10/21/16)
2016 Oct 21, In India a smartphone application was launched that allows residents to report the presence of construction dust or the burning of leaves and garbage in New Delhi's public parks to authorities. The phone app was launched by the Environmental Pollution (Prevention and Control) Authority, a monitoring group set up on the order of India's Supreme Court in April.
(AP, 10/22/16)
2016 Oct 21, Islamic State militants armed with assault rifles and explosives attacked targets in and around the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk, in an assault that appeared aimed at diverting Iraqi security forces from a massive offensive against the IS-held city of Mosul. At least 13 workers, including four Iranians, were killed. IS militants stormed a power plant north of Kirkuk and then blew themselves up. A local TV reporter was killed by a sniper while covering the clashes.
(AP, 10/21/16)
2016 Oct 21, The UN said Islamic State militants have taken 550 families from villages around Mosul and are holding them close to Islamic State locations in the city, probably as human shields.
(Reuters, 10/21/16)
2016 Oct 21, In Russia 3 crew members and 16 passengers died when the Russian-made Mi-8 helicopter came down late today in adverse weather conditions in northwest Siberia.
(Reuters, 10/22/16)
2016 Oct 21, Singapore posted new public speaking rules, clarifying that foreign companies and individuals need a permit to sponsor or take part in certain events, in an amendment that will restrict foreign support for an annual gay-rights gathering.
(Reuters, 10/21/16)
2016 Oct 21, South Africa announced that it would withdraw from the International Criminal Court (ICC), dealing a major blow to a troubled institution set up to try the world's worst crimes.
(AFP, 10/21/16)
2017 Oct 21, US President Donald Trump said he will allow long blocked secret files on the 1963 assassination of John F Kennedy to be opened to the public for the first time. The files were due to be opened in their entirety on Oct. 26.
(AFP, 10/21/17)
2017 Oct 21, US Customs and Border Protection agency refused entry to Indonesia’s military chief General Gatot Nurmantyo. He was due to attend a conference in Washington at the request of General Joseph F. Dunford, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff. Earlier this year Nurmantyo abruptly suspended all military cooperation with Australia in a row over teaching materials, and has been rebuked by members of Widodo's cabinet for making misleading public remarks.
(AFP, 10/22/17)
2017 Oct 21, Derrick Johnson (49) of Jackson, Miss., was hired as the 19th president and CEO of the NAACP after having served as interim leader since July.
{Mississippi, USA, Black History}
(SSFC, 10/22/17, p.A8)
2017 Oct 21, In Chandler, Oklahoma, a crossbow arrow, fired by a 13-year-old, entered the left side of Austin Almanza (10) in the area of his lower torso, kept traveling and stuck in the arm of Austin's brother, Ayden(8). Austin was pronounced dead at the scene. In 2018 prosecutors charged the 13-year-old with first-degree murder.
(http://tinyurl.com/y79xszmj)(SFC, 1/20/18, p.A6)
2017 Oct 21, In Texas all five of America's living former presidents took the stage at a benefit concert at Texas A&M to raise money for victims of the hurricane-ravaged southern United States and Caribbean.
(AFP, 10/22/17)
2017 Oct 21, American author Donald Bain (b.1935) died in White Plains, NY. His 125 books included the supposed memoir of two stewardesses “Coffee, Tea or Me" (1967) and 46 “Murder, She Wrote" mysteries, inspired by the TV series of the same name.
(SFC, 10/27/17, p.D5)
2017 Oct 21, In Afghanistan a suicide attacker detonated a car full of explosives on outside the country’s top military training center in Kabul, killing at 14 cadets.
(Reuters, 10/21/17)(SSFC, 10/22/17, p.A4)
2017 Oct 21, In Australia thousands of people rallied around the country urging the legalization of same-sex marriage, one week before final ballots can be submitted in a contentious postal survey on the issue that has divided the country.
(Reuters, 10/21/17)
2017 Oct 21, In Belarus some 200 people rallied in Minsk, calling for the resignation of President Alexander Lukashenko, who has ruled the former Soviet republic since 1994.
(AP, 10/21/17)
2017 Oct 21, In the Czech Rep. the populist ANO (YES) party scored a landslide victory in parliamentary elections. The party of billionaire businessman Andrej Babis almost doubled its number of seats, winning 78 in the 200-seat lower house of Parliament.
(AP, 10/23/17)
2017 Oct 21, India's central bank dismissed media reports that it was not necessary to link national identity card numbers, known as Aadhar numbers, to bank accounts. It said the requirement remained in force under anti-money laundering rules.
(Reuters, 10/21/17)
2017 Oct 21, In eastern Indonesia gunmen launched attacks near a US-owned gold and copper mine, wounding two policemen and a civilian. Freeport Indonesia is a unit of Phoenix, Arizona-based Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc. The gunmen were said to be from the Free Papua Movement.
(AP, 10/21/17)
2017 Oct 21, The Israeli army attacked Syrian government artillery after fire across the armistice line hit the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and warned it would step up such retaliation in the future. Five projectiles from Syria set off air raid sirens in Israeli towns.
(AFP, 10/21/17)(Reuters, 10/21/17)
2017 Oct 21, In northwestern Malaysia eleven foreign workers were killed in a landslide at a construction site in George Town, Penang Island.
(Reuters, 10/22/17)
2017 Oct 21, Malta's government offered a 1-million ($1.18 million) reward and full protection for anyone with information on the Oct. 16 car bomb killing of investigative reporter Daphne Caruana Galizia.
(AP, 10/21/17)
2017 Oct 21, In Niger 13 paramilitary police were killed in a fresh attack in the restive southwest, just weeks after a deadly ambush on a joint US-Niger patrol.
(AP, 10/21/17)(Reuters, 10/21/17)(SSFC, 10/22/17, p.A4)
2017 Oct 21, Pirates In Nigerian waters attacked the Liberia-flagged container ship MV Demeter. Six crew members were kidnapped. Those kidnapped comprise four Filipinos, one Ukrainian and one Hungarian. On Nov. 12 a German shipping company said pirates have released the six crewmembers who were taken hostage from the vessel.
(Reuters, 10/24/17)(AP, 11/12/17)
2017 Oct 21, In Pakistan rescue workers recovered the bodies of seven of nine mine workers who were buried under a landslide in the country's southwest.
(AP, 10/21/17)
2017 Oct 21, In Romania several hundred people rallied in Bucharest to urge that civil partnerships be legally recognized so that unmarried cohabitants can enjoy expanded rights.
(AP, 10/21/17)
2017 Oct 21, Somalia's president urged troops to prepare for a "state of war" against the al-Shabab extremist group blamed for the country's deadliest attack, as the toll reached 358 with dozens still said to be missing a week after the truck bombing in Mogadishu.
(AP, 10/21/17)
2017 Oct 21, Spain’s PM Mariano Rajoy stripped Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont and his regional executive of their jobs and took over their ministries for holding a banned independence referendum on October 1.
(AFP, 10/22/17)
2017 Oct 21, Syrian government forces and their allies regained control of Qaryatay, a predominantly Christian central town that sleeper cells of the Islamic State group captured late last month.
(AP, 10/21/17)
2017 Oct 21, The Tanzanian government said it had suspended the Community Health Education Services and Advocacy center (CHESA). The NGO stands accused of organizing a workshop on Oct 17 for gay couples in a hotel in Dar es Salaam.
(AFP, 10/21/17)
2018 Oct 21, Charles Wang (74), the founder Computer Associates (1976), now called CA Technologies, and former owner of the New York Islanders hockey team, died in Oyster Bay, New York.
(AP, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 21, Afghans unable to vote in yesterday's parliamentary election after hundreds of polling stations failed to open were given another chance to cast their ballot after voting times were extended despite security threats and warnings of fraud. A roadside bomb brought the death toll over the past two days to over 50, including several children.
(Reuters, 10/21/18)(AP, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 21, The Green Climate Fund said it has approved more than $1 billion in new investments after a four-day meeting in Bahrain. The UN-backed fund approved 19 new projects, including a program to protect freshwater resources in Bahrain.
(AP, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 21, Officials from Chad and South Africa said two of six critically endangered black rhinos have died of unknown causes five months after being flown from South Africa to Chad in a pioneering project to re-introduce the animals. The carcasses of the cow and bull were discovered on October 15.
(AFP, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 21, In northern China three individuals died after they were attacked in public early today in Wenan County, Hebei province.
(Reuters, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 21, Residents on the Comoros island of Anjouan slowly returned to their daily lives after a six-day siege in the old quarter of Mutsamudu city. The island's governor Abdou Salami Abdou, a member of the opposition Juwa party, surrendered to the police, but denied any links to the armed rebels.
(AFP, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 21, Egypt's parliament voted to extend a state of emergency in the country for three months, prolonging the authorities' ability to use special powers into 2019.
(Reuters, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 21, Egypt arrested economist Abdel-Khaleq Farouq and his publisher, Ibrahim el-Khateib, over a book that challenged Pres. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi's economic policies. The book — entitled "Is Egypt Really a Poor Country?" — has not been published, but was posted online by activists. On Oct. 29 an Egyptian court released Abdul Khalik Farouk and the owner of the print shop that published his book.
(AP, 10/23/18)(Reuters, 10/30/18)
2018 Oct 21, Multinational giants Siemens and General Electric say they have signed memorandums of understanding with Iraq to rebuild the country's electricity infrastructure.
(AP, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 21, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu said he has decided to postpone the planned demolition of a West Bank hamlet to allow time for a negotiated solution with its residents, in a move that appeared aimed at staving off the fierce international condemnation such a demolition would likely entail.
(AP, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 21, Jordan's King Abdullah II said he has decided not to renew parts of his country's landmark peace treaty with Israel. Abdullah released a statement that he intends to pull out of two annexes from the 1994 peace agreement that allowed Israel to lease two small areas, Baqura and Ghamr, from the Jordanians for 25 years.
(AP, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 21, In disputed Kashmir three local rebels were killed in a gunbattle with Indian government forces, and six civilians were killed in an explosion at the site after the fighting was over. 3 Indian army soldiers and two suspected militants were killed in a gunbattle along the militarized line of control dividing Kashmir between India and Pakistan. The death toll of civilians climbed to seven as another injured young man died at a hospital the next day.
(AP, 10/21/18)(AP, 10/22/18)
2018 Oct 21, The Maldives' top court dismissed the outgoing president's petition seeking an annulment of last month's presidential election result. The five-member Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the election was conducted within the law.
(AP, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 21, Despite Mexican efforts to stop them at the border, a growing throng of Central American migrants resumed their advance toward the US border early today in southern Mexico. Their numbers swelled to about 5,000 overnight and at first light they set out walking toward the Mexican town of Tapachula.
(AP, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 21, In northern Morocco a migrant died and 19 others were hurt after around 200 people scaled a fence to enter Spain's Melilla enclave.
(AFP, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 21, Nigerian police said communal violence in the northern state of Kaduna over the last few days has killed 55 people.
(Reuters, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 21, A Norwegian citizen of Iranian background was arrested in Sweden in connection with a plot to assassinate an Iranian Arab opposition figure in Denmark. He was extradited to Denmark. The attack was meant to target the leader of the Danish branch of the Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahvaz (ASMLA).
(AP, 10/30/18)
2018 Oct 21, Polish voters cast ballots in local elections that were the first nationwide test of support for the conservative ruling party. A pro-European Union opposition party defeated the ruling conservatives in local elections in Warsaw. The ruling populist party, Law and Justice, won 254 of the 552 seats in regional assemblies in local elections, with 194 going to the key opposition coalition.
(AP, 10/21/18)(AP, 10/24/18)(AP, 10/25/18)
2018 Oct 21, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said that a unilateral withdrawal by the United States from a landmark 1987 Cold War-era treaty that eliminated nuclear missiles from Europe would be "very dangerous" and lead to a "military-technical" retaliation.
(Reuters, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 21, Exchange data showed that foreigners sold a net 4.01 billion riyals ($1.07 billion) in Saudi stocks in the week ending October 18, - one of the biggest selloffs since the market opened to direct foreign buying in mid-2015.
(Reuters, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 21, It was reported that the Sagrada Familia basilica in Barcelona, Spain, has agreed to pay about $41 million over ten years to settle a dispute over the legality of ongoing work and help pay for transportation improvements around the structure designed by Antoni Gaudi (1852-1926).
(SSFC, 10/21/18, p.A12)
2018 Oct 21, A Spanish firefighter died overnight while emergency services responded to flash floods caused by heavy rain in southern Spain.
(AP, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 21, In Syria an explosion in the rebel-held northwestern city of Idlib killed at least three people and wounded others.
(AP, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 21, One of Taiwan's fastest passenger trains derailed on a curve along a popular weekend route, killing 18 people and injuring 187 others.
(AP, 10/21/18)(AP, 10/22/18)
Go to http://www.timelinesdb.com
Go to October 22
Return to home
335 Oct 21, Constantinople emperor (Constantine the Great) enacted rules against Jews.
(MC, 10/21/01)
1096 Oct 21, Seljuk Turks under Sultan Kilidj Arslan of Nicea slaughtered thousands of German crusaders at Chivitot.
(HN, 10/21/99)(MC, 10/21/01)
1422 Oct 21, Charles VI, King of France (1380-1422), died at 54.
(MC, 10/21/01)
1439 Oct 21, Traversari Ambrosius (53), Italian humanist and leader, died.
(MC, 10/21/01)
1492 Oct 21, Columbus landed on San Salvador Island (Bahamas-Watling Island).
(http://tinyurl.com/774v3)
1520 Oct 21, Ferdinand Magellan arrived at Tierra Del Fuego (Argentina-Chile).
(MC, 10/21/01)
1529 Oct 21, Henry VIII of England was named Defender of the Faith by the Pope after defending the seven sacraments against Luther.
(HN, 10/21/98)
1553 Oct 21, Volumes of the Talmud were burned.
(MC, 10/21/01)
1555 Oct 21, English parliament refused to recognize Philip of Spain as king.
(MC, 10/21/01)
1574 Oct 21, Nicolo Rubini, composer, was born.
(MC, 10/21/01)
1600 Oct 21, Tokugawa leyasu defeated his enemies in the battle of Sekigahara and affirmed his position as Japan's most powerful warlord. The win enabled Ieyasu to found a 265-year ruling dynasty.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Sekigahara)(Econ, 10/31/09, p.54)
1641 Oct 21, A Catholic uprising took place in Ulster. Thousands of English and Scots were killed. [see Oct 23]
(MC, 10/21/01)
1650 Oct 21, Jean Bart, French captain and sea hero, was born. He escaped from Plymouth.
(MC, 10/21/01)
1652 Oct 21, King Louis XIV returned to Paris.
(MC, 10/21/01)
1760 Oct 21, Katsushika Hokusai (d.1849), Japanese printmaker, was born. Hokusai was a master designer of color woodblock prints. His paintings included 36 views of Mt. Fuji done when he was 70.
(SFC, 9/24/98, p.E3)(WSJ, 11/3/98, p.A20)(Econ, 6/4/11, p.54)
1765 Oct 21, Giovanni Paolo Pannini (Panini), Italian painter and architect, died at 73.
(MC, 10/21/01)
1772 Oct 21, Samuel Taylor Coleridge (d.1834), English poet and author, was born. His work included "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" and "Kubla Khan".
(AP, 9/12/97)(HN, 10/21/00)
1790 Oct 21, Alphonse-Marie Louis de Lamartine, writer (Rene), was born in Macon, France.
(MC, 10/21/01)
1790 Oct 21, The Tricolor was chosen as the official flag of France.
(HN, 10/21/98)
1797 Oct 21, The 44-gun 204-foot U.S. Navy frigate USS Constitution, also known as Old Ironsides, was launched in Boston's harbor. It was never defeated in 42 battles. 216 crew members set sail again in 1997 for its 200th birthday. [see Sep 20]
(AP, 10/21/97)(SFC, 7/22/97, p.A1)(SFC, 10/22/97, p.A6)
1805 Oct 21, A British fleet commanded by Vice Adm. Horatio Nelson defeated a French-Spanish fleet in the Battle of Trafalgar fought off Cape Trafalgar, Spain. Admiral Nelson won his greatest victory and though fatally wounded in the battle aboard his flagship, he lived long enough to see victory: "England expects every man to do his duty." The crew fittingly preserved his body in rum. Over 8,500 Englishmen, Frenchmen and Spaniards were lost in the battle or the hurricane that swept over the ships the next day. In 1807 Nelson’s surgeon William Beatty authored “authentic narrative of the Death of Lord Nelson." In 1999 Barry Unsworth authored the novel "Losing Nelson." In 2001 Joseph F. Callo edited "Nelson Speaks: Admiral Lord Nelson in His Own Words." In 2005 Adam Nicolson authored “Men of Honour: Trafalgar and the Making of the English Hero;" Roy Adkins authored “Nelson’s Trafalgar," and Adam Nicolson authored “Seize the Fire."
(WSJ, 5/24/01, p.A20)(Econ, 6/25/05, p.82)(WSJ, 8/19/05, p.W6)(ON, 3/06, p.2)(Reuters, 7/13/10)
1824 Oct 21, Joseph Aspdin patented Portland cement in Yorkshire, England.
(MC, 10/21/01)
1928 Oct 21, AT&T was removed from the DJIA.
(WSJ, 4/2/04, p.C1)
1833 Oct 21, 1833, Alfred Bernhard Nobel was born. The Swedish-born chemist, engineer and industrialist who invented dynamite, later established the prestigious Nobel prizes to honor the world’s greatest scientists, writers and peacemakers. In 1859, after four years in the United States, Nobel returned to Sweden and built a factory to manufacture the explosive nitroglycerin. In 1864 the factory accidentally blew up, killing Nobel’s youngest brother and four others. Two years later, Nobel invented dynamite, a safe and manageable form of nitroglycerin. A pacifist by nature, Nobel hoped that the destructive power of his invention would bring an end to wars. By the time of his death on December 10, 1897, Nobel had acquired a massive fortune. In his will, he left instructions that the bulk of his estate should endow the annual Nobel prizes for those who had most contributed to the areas of physics, chemistry, medicine, literature and peace. In 1968, a sixth award for economics was established.
(WUD, 1994, p.969)(SFEC, 12/797, Par p.28)(HNPD, 10/21/99)
1837 Oct 21, During the Second Seminole War (1835-1842), under a flag of truce during peace talks, U.S. troops under Gen. Thomas S. Jesup (1788-1860) sieged the Indian Seminole Chief Osceola in Florida and sent to a jail in North Carolina, where he later died. Jesup's trickery outraged the American public.
(HN, 10/21/98)(DoW, 1999, p.435)
1839 Oct 21, Georg von Siemens, founder of Deutsche Bank, was born.
(MC, 10/21/01)
1847 Oct 21, Giuseppe Giacosa (d.1906), Italian songwriter (libretti opera Puccini), was born.
(MC, 10/21/01)
1858 Oct 21, Jacques Offenbach's opera "Orphee aux Enfers," premiered in Paris. The Can-Can music was part of the opera. Dancers in Paris displayed their tail feathers in a high kick routine called the “cancan." The word was a diminutive form of “canard," the word for duck, whose evenly displayed feathers were likened to those of the dancers.
(SFEC, 3/23/97, z1 p.7)(MC, 10/21/01)
1861 Oct 21, Battle of Ball's Bluff, Va., was a disastrous Union defeat which sparked Congressional investigations.
(HN, 10/21/98)
1865 Oct 21, Another earthquake hit San Francisco. It lasted for 42 seconds and caused major damage throughout the city.
(SFC, 4/14/96, p.Z1, p.3)(GenIV, Winter 04/05)
1867 Oct 21, Many leaders of the Kiowa, Comanche and Kiowa-Apache signed a peace treaty at Medicine Lodge, Kan. Comanche Chief Quanah Parker refused to accept the treaty terms.
(HN, 10/21/98)
1868 Oct 21, A major earthquake, later estimated at magnitude 7, took place on the Hayward Fault in northern California. It destroyed the top of the San Mateo County Courthouse. At this time only 265,000 people lived in the Bay Area. The Marine Hospital at Rincon Point was badly damaged and forced to close.
(SMMB)(SFC, 6/13/96, p.C3)(SFC, 10/18/07, p.A15)(SFC, 10/9/10, p.A10)
1868 Oct 21, The Hayward Earthquake in northern California created a sunken area in San Francisco that came to be called Pioche’s Lake." The area was filled in and rooming houses were built, all of which collapsed in the 1906 earthquake.
(SFC, 6/8/13, p.C4)
1869 Oct 21, The 1st shipment of fresh oysters came West overland from Baltimore.
(MC, 10/21/01)
1872 Oct 21, The U.S. Naval Academy admitted John H. Conyers, the first African American to be accepted.
(HN, 10/21/98)
1878 Oct 21, German republic chancellor Bismarck delegated the end of "Socialism."
(MC, 10/21/01)
1879 Oct 21, Thomas Edison perfected his carbonized cotton filament light bulb after 14 months of testing at his laboratory in Menlo Park, N.J. It was the first incandescent electric lamp. The bulb burned for about 13 ½ hours.
(AP, 10/21/97)(HN, 10/21/02)(AH, 10/04, p.15)
1904 Oct 21, Panamanians clashed with U.S. Marines in Panama in a brief uprising.
(HN, 10/21/98)
1907 Oct 21, The Panic of 1907 began with a run on the Knickerbocker Trust Co. of New York. News soon emerged that it was caught up in a scam by bankers Augustus Heinze and Charles Morse, who had borrowed and embezzled vast sums to corner the market in shares of United Copper.
(AP, 10/21/07)(Econ, 4/12/14, p.53)
1912 Oct 21, Georg Solti, conductor (Fidelio), was born in Budapest, Hungary.
(MC, 10/21/01)
1914 Oct 21, Battle of Warsaw ended with a German defeat.
(MC, 10/21/01)
1915 Oct 21, The 1st transatlantic radio-telephone message was transmitted from Arlington, Va., to Paris.
(MC, 10/21/01)
1916 Oct 21, US Army formed Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC).
(MC, 10/21/01)
1917 Oct 21, Dizzy Gillespie, [John B], jazz trumpeter, famous for Night in Tunisia and Blue ‘n’ Boogie, was born.
(HN, 10/21/98)
1917 Oct 21, Members of the First Division of the U.S. Army training in Luneville, France, became the first Americans to see action on the front lines of World War I. The first U.S. troops entered the front lines at Sommervillier under French command.
(AP, 10/21/98)(HN, 10/21/98)
1917 Oct 21, Petrograd's garrison accepted a Revolutionary Military Committee.
(MC, 10/21/01)
1921 Oct 21, Malcolm Arnold, composer (Bridge over River Kwai), was born in Northampton, England.
(MC, 10/21/01)
1929 Oct 21, Ursula Kroeber Le Guin, science fiction writer, was born. Her work included “The Left Hand of Darkness."
(HN, 10/21/00)(MC, 10/21/01)
1937 Oct 21, Dmitri Shostakovitch's 5th Symphony premiered.
(MC, 10/21/01)
1938 Oct 21, Japanese troops occupied Canton.
(WUD, 1994, p.1682)(MC, 10/21/01)
1939 Oct 21, As war heated up with Germany, the British war cabinet held its first meeting in the underground war room in London.
(HN, 10/21/99)
1940 Oct 21, Ernest Hemingway's novel “For Whom the Bell Tolls" was published.
(HN, 10/21/00)
1941 Oct 21, The 19-day Battle of Bryansk ended. The city was subjected to heavy artillery and air bombardment and large parts of it was destroyed. After some fierce fighting the Soviet Third Army at Vyazma surrendered to German forces on Oct 14 and the Thirty-Second at Bryansk surrendered on Oct 20.
(www.warhistory.ie/world-war-2/battle-of-vyazma-bryansk.htm)
1942 Oct 21, Eight American and British officers landed from a submarine on an Algerian beach to take measure of Vichy French to the Operation Torch landings.
(HN, 10/21/00)
1944 Oct 21, During World War II, U.S. troops captured the German city of Aachen.
(AP, 10/21/97)
1944 Oct 21, Col. Henry Mucci (d. 1997 at 88) led a small Ranger assault force on the Philippines just 3 days before MacArthur made his celebrated return.
(SFC, 4/25/97, p.A26)
1944 Oct 21, The 1st Japanese kamikaze attack took place near Leyte Island; gunners from both the flagship of the Royal Australian Navy, HMAS Australia, and HMAS Shropshire fired at, and reportedly hit, an unidentified Japanese aircraft. The plane then flew away from the ships, before turning and flying into Australia, striking the ship's superstructure above the bridge, and spewing burning fuel and debris over a large area. A 200 kg (440 pound) bomb carried by the plane failed to explode. In 2002 Albert Axell and Hideaki Kase authored "Kamikaze: Japan's Suicide Gods." In 2006 Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney authored “Kamikaze Diaries: Reflections of Japanese Student Soldiers."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamikaze)(Econ, 7/8/06, p.79)
1945 Oct 21, Women in France were allowed to vote for the first time.
(AP, 10/21/99)
1948 Oct 21, The Israeli offensive, Operation 10 Plagues, liberated Beersheba (Be’er Sheva) from Egyptian control.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beersheba)
1949 Oct 21, Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli prime minister, was born.
(WP, 6/29/96, p.A20)(MC, 10/21/01)
1950 Oct 21, Chinese forces occupied Tibet.
(MC, 10/21/01)
1950 Oct 21, North Korean Premier Kim Il-sung established a new capital at Sinuiju on the Yalu River opposite the Chinese City of Antung.
(HN, 10/21/98)
1954 Oct 21, Dorothy Parker's Arnaud d'Usseau's "Ladies of the Corridor," premiered.
(MC, 10/21/01)
1957 Oct 21, The film “Jailhouse Rock" starring Elvis Presley opened.
(MC, 10/21/01)
1959 Oct 21, The Guggenheim Museum, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright (1869-1959), opened in NYC. In 2009 the museum published “The Guggenheim: Frank Lloyd Wright and the Making of the Modern Museum."
(AP, 10/21/97)(AH, 10/04, p.15)(SSFC, 7/26/09, p.F5)
1959 Oct 21, Dr. Werner Von Braun started work at NASA. By the late 1960s his rockets were taking men to the moon. The Dr at age 25 had masterminded the V-2 rocket for Nazi Germany.
(MC, 10/21/01)
1959 Oct 21, Contra revolutionaries bombed Havana.
(MC, 10/21/01)
1960 Oct 21, Democrat John F. Kennedy and Republican Richard M. Nixon clashed in their fourth and final presidential debate.
(AP, 10/21/97)
1960 Oct 21, The 1st British nuclear submarine, Dreadnought, was launched at Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria. Dreadnought was the first British submarine to surface at the North Pole in 1971. In the 1970s she was fitted to fire Tigerfish torpedoes. She developed reactor problems in late 1980 and was decommissioned in 1982. She is laid up at Rosyth awaiting disposal.
(http://web.ukonline.co.uk/aj.cashmore/britain/submarines/dreadnought/index.html)
1961 Oct 21, Bob Dylan recorded his first album in a single day at a cost of $400.
(HN, 10/21/00)
1964 Oct 21, The movie musical "My Fair Lady," starring Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison, had its world premiere at the Criterion Theater in NYC.
(AP, 10/21/04)
1965 Oct 21, Robert B. Woodward was awarded the Nobel prize for chemistry, "for his outstanding achievements in the art of organic synthesis."
(http://nobelprize.org/chemistry/laureates/1965/index.html)
1966 Oct 21, More than 140 people, mostly children, were killed when a coal waste landslide engulfed a school and several houses in Aberfan, Wales.
(AP, 10/21/08)
1967 Oct 21, Tens of thousands of Vietnam War protesters marched in Washington, D.C. 35,000 people assembled outside the Pentagon to protest the war in Vietnam. The “March on the Pentagon," protesting American involvement in Vietnam, drew 50,000 protesters.
(TMC, 1994, p.1967)(AP, 10/21/97)(HN, 10/21/98)
1967 Oct 21, The Israeli destroyer INS Eilat was sunk by Egyptian missile boats near Port Said; 47 Israeli crew members were lost.
(AP, 10/21/07)
1969 Oct 21, Picasso painted “Painter and Infant," an allegory of artistic transmission from one generation to the next.
(SFC, 7/17/01, p.A16)
1969 Oct 21, The play "Butterflies are Free," premiered in NYC at the Booth Theater. It was written by Leonard Gershe (d.2002). It closed in 1972 after 1128 performances. Director Milton Katselas (1933-2008) then directed a film version.
(SFC, 3/23/02, p.A27)(www.ibdb.com/production.php?id=3299)(SFC, 11/4/08, p.B5)
1969 Oct 21, Jack Kerouac (47), Beat Generation chronicler, died of alcoholism in St. Petersburg, Fla. He wrote "On the Road" (1957), "Desolation Angels," "Vanity of Duluoz," and "Dharma Bums." Japhy Ryder the Zen hobo-poet in the book was modeled after poet Gary Snyder. In 1979 Dennis McNally authored the biography "Desolate Angel." In 1998 Ellis Amburn published "Subterranean Kerouac: The Hidden Life of Jack Kerouac." In 1999 Barry Miles published "Jack Kerouac, King of the Beats: A Portrait." In 2004 Douglas Brinkley edited “Windblown World: The Journals of Jack Kerouac."
(SFC, 6/7/96, p.A22)(SFC, 9/1/96, DB p.30)(SFEC, 5/31/98, p.A17)(SFEC, 8/9/98, BR 9 p.3)(SFEC, 1/17/99, BR p.3)(SSFC, 8/11/02, p.M1)(SSFC, 10/17/04, p.M1)
1970 Oct 21, John T. Scopes (b.1900), US teacher in the 1925 Scopes "monkey trial," died.
(www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=3526)
1970 Oct 21, In South Korea 777 Unification church couples were wed.
(www.ultralingua.com/eureka/index.php/Category:Unification_Church)
1971 Oct 21, The Nobel Prize for literature was awarded to Chilean poet Pablo Neruda (1904-1973).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pablo_Neruda)(SSFC, 8/31/03, p.M3)
1971 Oct 21, President Nixon nominated Lewis F. Powell and William H. Rehnquist to the US Supreme Court following resignations of Justices Hugo Black and John Harlan.
(AP, 10/21/97)
1971 Oct 21, Half Moon Bay, Ca., held its 1st Art and Pumpkin Festival. The 1-day event was thought up by Dolores Mullin to raise money for the Main Street Beautification Committee to buy trees. John Minaidis of Half Moon Bay won with a 132-pound pumpkin. Terry Pimsleur (d.2008 at 77), public relations executive, helped develop the fair.
(Ind, 9/29/01, 5A)(SFC, 10/10/06, p.B3)(SFC, 9/26/08, p.B9)
1971 Oct 21, The Nobel Prize for literature was awarded to Chilean poet Pablo Neruda (1904-1973).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pablo_Neruda)(SSFC, 8/31/03, p.M3)
1972 Oct 21, US Sec. of State Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho of North Vietnam reached a cease-fire agreement. It was signed Jan 27, 1973.
(SFEC, 4/23/00, p.A19)
1972 Oct 21, The US Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) was enacted. Prof. Kenneth Norris (d.1998 at 74) helped write the legislation.
(PacDis, Fall/’96, p.3)(SFC, 8/31/98, p.A22)(www.nmfs.noaa.gov/pr/laws/mmpa/)
1975 Oct 21, "Treemonisha," a 1911 opera by Scott Joplin (1868-1917), opened at Uris Theater NYC for 64 performances. The 1st full professional staging was done in 1975 by the Houston Grand Opera.
(www.nodanw.com/shows_t/treemonisha.htm)(SFC, 6/21/03, p.D1)
1976 Oct 21, Saul Bellow won the Nobel Prize for literature, the first American honored since John Steinbeck in 1962.
(AP, 10/21/01)
1979 Oct 21, In SF the body of Mary Frances Bennett was found at Lands End. She had been stabbed at least 25 times. In 2010 DNA evidence tied her murder to David Joseph Carpenter, who was on death row at San Quentin for 7 other murders.
(SFC, 2/24/10, p.A7)
1979 Oct 21, Moshe Dayan, Israeli minister of foreign affairs, submitted his resignation.
(http://tinyurl.com/33p82s)
1980 Oct 21, Hans Asperger (b.1906), Austrian pediatrician, died in Vienna. He pioneered research into autism and Asperger's syndrome, a mild form of autism where those affected are relatively high-functioning, was later named after him. In 2018 an article by medical historian Herwig Czech published in the journal Molecular Autism said that Asperger referred severely disabled children to Vienna's notorious Am Spiegelgrund clinic where almost 800 children died under the Nazi program -- many of them by lethal injection or being gassed.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Asperger)(Reuters, 4/19/18)
1980 Oct 21, Chile’s Gen'l. Pinochet issued a new constitution that allowed him to stay in power for another 8 years. It was approved by plebiscite.
(SFC, 3/25/99, p.A3)(Econ, 10/23/04, p.36)
1983 Oct 21, US Pres. Ronald Reagan sent a ten-ship task force to Grenada.
(HN, 10/21/98)
1984 Oct 21, Francois Truffaut (b.1932), French film director (Fahrenheit 451), died of brain cancer. In 1999 Antoine de Baecque and Serge Toubiana published "Truffaut: A Biography."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ois_Truffaut)(SFEC, 5/9/99, DB p.53)(SFEC, 6/27/99, BR p.4)
1985 Oct 21, Former San Francisco Supervisor Dan White committed suicide by carbon monoxide in his wife’s car in the Excelsior. He killed Mayor Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk in 1978, for which he served barely 5 years after a diminished capacity defense called the "Twinkie defense."
(SFEC, 3/1/98, p.W23)(SFC, 11/26/98, p.A19)
1986 Oct 21, The US, Micronesia and the Marshall Islands formed a Compact of Free Association (CFA). Tens of millions in economic benefits along with security and defense of the islands was exchanged for the right to deny access to third countries. The US paid $270 million in compensation to nuclear victims under the 1st phase of the CFA (1986-2001), insisting that was a full and final arrangement.
(SFC, 3/8/99, p.A16)(SFC, 1/4/00, p.A12)(Econ, 1/12/08, p.38)
1986 Oct 21, The Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) was enacted by the United States Congress to extend government restrictions on wire taps from telephone calls to include transmissions of electronic data by computer.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Communications_Privacy_Act)(Econ, 7/21/12, p.23)
1986 Oct 21, Pro-Iranian kidnappers in Lebanon claimed to have abducted American Edward Tracy. He was released in August 1991.
(AP, 10/21/97)
1987 Oct 21, Sometimes-acrimonious debate began in the Senate on the nomination of Judge Robert H. Bork to the U.S. Supreme Court. (Two days later, the Senate voted 58-42 to reject the nomination.)
(AP, 10/21/97)
1988 Oct 21, A federal grand jury in New York indicted former Philippine President Ferdinand E. Marcos and his wife, Imelda, on charges of fraud and racketeering. Marcos died before he could be brought to trial; his widow, Imelda, was acquitted in 1990.
(AP, 10/21/98)
1989 Oct 21, Rescue workers in Oakland, Calif., pulled longshoreman Buck Helm alive from the wreckage of the Nimitz Freeway, part of which had collapsed during the Oct. 17 earthquake. Helm died less than a month later.
(AP, 10/21/99)
1990 Oct 21, Walther Sommerlath (b.1901), the father of Sweden’s Queen Silvia, died in Heidelberg. During WWII he swapped a coffee farm in Brazil for a German-based business owned by Efim Wechsler, a Jewish businessman. This allowed Wechsler to emigrate from Nazi Germany.
(SFC, 12/21/12, p.A8)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walther_Sommerlath)
1990 Oct 21, A Palestinian stabbed three Israelis to death during a rampage in a Jerusalem neighborhood in retaliation for the police killings of 17 Arabs on the Temple Mount.
(AP, 10/21/00)
1991 Oct 21, American hostage Jesse Turner was freed by his kidnappers in Lebanon after nearly five years in captivity.
(AP, 10/21/97)
1991 Oct 21, Former California Governor Jerry Brown announced his presidential candidacy.
(AP, 10/21/01)
1991 Oct 21, Steamboat Geyser erupted in Wyoming’s Yellowstone National Park. The next eruption did not occur until 2000.
(SFC, 5/6/00, p.B8)
1991 Oct 21-1991 Oct 22, The European Community and the European Free Trade Association concluded a landmark accord to create a free trade zone of 19 nations by 1993.
(AP, 10/22/01)(http://europa.eu.int/abc/history/1991/index_en.htm)
1992 Oct 21, Singer Madonna's book "Sex" was released.
(AP, 10/21/97)
1992 Oct 21, The Toronto Blue Jays won game four of the World Series, defeating the Atlanta Braves 2-1.
(AP, 10/21/97)
1992 Oct 21, A report prepared for the Los Angeles police commission found that the city was unprepared to handle the rioting that broke out the previous spring, and had responded inadequately.
(AP, 10/21/97)
1992 Oct 21, Shirley Booth, actress (Hazel), died at 94.
(http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0095804/)
1992 Oct 21, Jim Garrison, Louisiana DA who investigated the JFK assassination, died at 70.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Garrison)
1992 Oct 21, In Egypt a British nurse died in a bus attack by Islamic extremists in Dairu.
(SFC, 11/19/97, p.C2)
1993 Oct 21, Gary Kasparov defeated Nigel Short for chess championship.
(http://quizbowl.stanford.edu/archive/carleton/minn93_carl_maize.txt)
1993 Oct 21, The Philadelphia Phillies beat the Toronto Blue Jays 2-0 in game five of the World Series; Toronto still led the Series 3-2.
(AP, 10/21/98)
1993 Oct 21, The Senate rejected curbs on President Clinton's right as commander in chief to send troops to Haiti.
(AP, 10/21/98)
1993 Oct 21, NATO ministers endorsed a U.S. plan to form limited partnerships with Russia and other former East bloc foes, but stopped short of offering full membership.
(AP, 10/21/98)
1993 Oct 21, Burundi’s first Hutu president, Melchior Ndadaye, was assassinated by Tutsi soldiers. 5 soldiers were sentenced to death for the murder in 1999. The military coup caused 525,000 Hutu's to flee. Civil war followed and over the next dozen years some 300,000 people, mostly civilians, were killed.
(SFC, 8/22/96, p.E5)(WSJ, 11/15/96, p.A16)(SFEC, 1/12/97, p.A12)(SFC, 5/15/99, p.A14)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burundi_presidential_election,_1993)(Econ, 4/16/11, p.65)
1994 Oct 21, President Clinton conceded in a news conference that Democrats would lose seats in the upcoming election.
(AP, 10/21/04)
1994 Oct 21, The wife of CIA turncoat Aldrich Ames, Rosario Ames, was sentenced to five years in prison for her role in her husband's espionage.
(AP, 10/21/04)
1994 Oct 21, United States and North Korea signed an agreement requiring the communist nation to halt its nuclear program and agree to inspections. Fuel rods from North Korea’s nuclear reactor were to be shipped out of the country, but that did not happen. The deal unraveled eight years later. Kang Sok Ju (1939-2016) was Pyongyang's chief negotiator.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kang_Sok-ju)(AP, 10/21/99)(Econ, 7/21/07, p.41)(Econ, 7/25/15, p.23)
1994 Oct 21, Thirty-two people were killed when a section of bridge collapsed in Seoul, South Korea.
(AP, 10/21/99)
1995 Oct 21, The Atlanta Braves won game one of the World Series, defeating the visiting Cleveland Indians 3-to-2.
(AP, 10/21/00)
1995 Oct 21, Rioting inmates surrendered control of a prison dormitory in Greenville, Illinois, ending a one-day uprising that began after the government ordered federal prisons locked down nationwide.
(AP, 10/21/00)
1995 Oct 21, Maxene Andrews of the Andrews Sisters died in Hyannis, Massachusetts, at age 79.
(AP, 10/21/00)
1996 Oct 21, The Atlanta Braves took a two-games-to-none lead in the World Series, defeating the New York Yankees 4-0.
(AP, 10/21/97)
1996 Oct 21, President Clinton's "don't ask, don't tell" policy on gays in the military survived its first Supreme Court test.
(AP, 10/21/97)
1996 Oct 21, UN Security Council elections for the 5 non-permanent seats were won by Japan, Kenya, Sweden, Costa Rica and Portugal for a 2-year period. Ten of the seats are temporary and five are chosen annually.
(SFC, 10/22/96, p.B1)
1996 Oct 21, In Albania the ruling Democratic Party claimed a landslide victory in local elections.
(SFC, 10/22/96, p.B1)
1996 Oct 21, In Algeria the Mayor of Algiers, Ali Boucetta, was killed by a stray bullet in fighting between security forces and rebels in Algiers.
(SFC, 10/22/96, p.B1)
1996 Oct 21, An American crop duster flew over Cuba on its way to Bogota, Columbia. In 1997 Cuba claimed before the UN that the plane dusted Cuban fields with a biological pest, thrips palmi.
(SFC, 8/26/97, p.A4)
1996 Oct 21, In Murambi village, Burundi, some 300 (258-435) Hutu refugees returned from Zaire and were killed as they sought refuge in a village church.
(SFC, 11/23/96, p.A8)(SFC, 12/12/96, p.C2)
1996 Oct 21, Arnoldo Aleman claimed victory over Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua's presidential election.
(AP, 10/21/97)
1996 Oct 21, About 225,000 Hutu refugees fled camps in eastern Zaire. The governor of the area has given the 300,000 Banyamulenge Tutsis as week to leave. Zaire has camps holding about 1.5 million Hutu refugees, most of them from Rwanda.
(SFC, 10/22/96, p.B1)
1996 Oct 21, In Zimbabwe some 11,000 nurses went on strike for higher wages, allowances and better working conditions.
(SFC, 11/1/96, p.A16)
1996 Oct 21-22, Firestorms covered 35,000 acres in Malibu and San Diego County and destroyed more than 60 homes. Another fire in the Los Padres National Forest was reported 60% contained.
(SFC, 10/23/96, p.A1)
1997 Oct 21, The Florida Marlins beat the Cleveland Indians 14-11 in game three of the World Series.
(AP, 10/21/98)
1997 Oct 21, Reversing months of strong opposition, the Clinton administration endorsed a revised Republican bill to restructure the Internal Revenue Service and shift the burden of proof from the taxpayer to the government in contested court cases.
(AP, 10/21/98)
1997 Oct 21, It was reported that the US Energy Dept. and the Arthur D. Little company had developed a new fuel system for cars that uses fuel cell technology first developed by NASA. Electricity would be produced by extracting hydrogen from gasoline and combining it with oxygen.
(SFC, 10/21/97, p.A2)
1997 Oct 21, Pictures of the Antennae galaxies, two intermeshed colliding galaxies, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in 1996, were revealed to the public for the first time.
(SFC, 10/22/97, p.A1)
1998 Oct 21, The New York Yankees swept the World Series in the 4th game over the San Diego Padres 3 to 0.
(SFC, 10/22/98, p.D1)
1998 Oct 21, Pres. Clinton signed a $520 billion spending bill that provided $17.9 billion for the IMF and $1.1 billion as a down payment for new teachers. It was shipped to him just before the 105th Congress recessed. The CIA received a supplemental $1.8 billion.
(SFC, 10/22/98, p.A3)(SFC, 10/22/98, p.A9)(AP, 10/21/99)
1998 Oct 21, Dr. Jane Henney was confirmed as FDA commissioner.
(AP, 10/21/99)
1998 Oct 21, A report outlined why Pierre Sane, head of Amnesty Int’l., targeted the US this year for human rights abuses.
(SFC, 10/21/98, p.A10)
1998 Oct 21, A radical environmental group, the Earth Liberation Front, claimed responsibility for fires that caused $12 million in damage at the nation's busiest ski resort in Vail, Colo.
(AP, 10/21/99)
1998 Oct 21, In France the government announced emergency plans to improve conditions in the high schools.
(SFC, 10/22/98, p.C3)
1998 Oct 21, In Guinea-Bissau heavy artillery fire rocked the capital and rebels claimed to have captured Bafata, the 2nd largest town.
(SFC, 10/22/98, p.C5)
1998 Oct 21, Typhoon Babs killed 4 people in the central Philippines. Another 11 were killed on the southern tip of Luzon. A total of 156 people were killed including 71 from landslides on Catanduanes Island.
(SFC, 10/22/98, p.C5)(WSJ, 10/23/98, p.A1)(SFC, 10/24/98, p.A12)(SFEC, 10/25/98, p.A20)(SFC, 10/26/98, p.A7)
1998 Oct 21, The European Commission approved a $180 million aid package for Turkey.
(SFC, 10/22/98, p.C5)
1998 Oct 21, In French Guiana the 3rd European Ariana 5 test rocket was launched at Kourou. It successfully simulated the launch of a mockup satellite.
(WSJ, 10/22/98, p.B2)
1998 Oct 21, Turkey and Syria signed an accord whereby Syria agreed to brand the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) as a terrorist group.
(SFC, 10/22/98, p.C5)
1999 Oct 21, Organizers called for a "Jam Echelon Day," an effort to overload US National Security Agency (NSA) supercomputers with e-mail containing words such as "bomb." Echelon was a worldwide surveillance network run by the NSA and partners in Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand.
(SFEC, 11/14/99, p.A7)
1999 Oct 21, The US Justice Dept. sued the city of Columbus, Ohio, for a pattern of civil rights violations by the police.
(WSJ, 10/22/99, p.A1)
1999 Oct 21, In Chechnya Russian rockets hit and market and 2 other sites in Grozny and as many as 140 people were killed.
(SFC, 10/22/99, p.A1)(SFC, 10/23/99, p.A10)
1999 Oct 21, In East Timor Jose Alexandre "Xanana" Gusmao, the exiled guerrilla leader, returned to Dili.
(SFC, 10/22/99, p.B2)
1999 Oct 21, France’s highest court upheld the conviction of Maurice Papon, the former Vichy official who had fled France rather than face prison for his role in sending Jews to Nazi death camps; Papon was captured in Switzerland and deported the following day to begin a 10-year sentence.
(AP, 10/21/00)(AP, 9/18/02)
1999 Oct 21, It was reported that a French-led expedition chopped clear the fully preserved carcass of a 20 thousand-year-old woolly mammoth, the "Jarkov Mammoth," from the permafrost of Siberia at Khatanga, Russia.
(SFC, 10/21/99, p.A1)
1999 Oct 21, In Indonesia the People's Consultative Assembly voted 396 to 284 for Megawati Sukarnoputri as vice president over Hamzah Haz. The vote came after Gen. Wiranto dropped his candidacy.
(SFC, 10/22/99, p.A16)
1999 Oct 21, In Palestine a West Bank fire killed 16 women making cigarette lighters in an unlicensed Hebron facility.
(WSJ, 10/22/99, p.A1)
1999 Oct 21, In Taiwan a 6.4 earthquake was centered near Chiayi.
(SFC, 10/22/99, p.B4)(SFC, 10/23/99, p.A11)
1999 Oct 21, In Turkey Ahmet Taner Kislali (60), a columnist for the pro-secular newspaper Cumhuriyet, died from a bomb placed on his car windshield.
(SFC, 10/22/99, p.B6)
1999 Oct 21, In Venezuela corruption cases against 2 former presidents, Carlos Andres Perez and Jaime Lusinchi, were reopened.
(SFC, 10/22/99, p.B4)
2000 Oct 21, The former passenger ship S.S. Belofin-1, sank near Cape Town while on tow for demolition. The ship was originally built in 1931 as the Matson luxury liner "Monterey" and served as a troop transport during WW II. She was renamed a number of times and was also known as the Matsonia, Lurline (after the 1932 original demolished in 1987), and Britanis.
(Ind, 11/4/00,5A)
2000 Oct 21, Tens of thousands of Palestinians took to the streets in marches and funerals in Gaza and the West Bank. 4 Palestinians were killed and over 100 injured.
(SFEC, 10/22/00, p.A1)
2000 Oct 21, Fifteen Arab leaders met in Cairo for a 2-day summit, their first summit in four years. They condemned Israel for violence and made proposals to deal with Israel. The Libyan delegation walked out, angry over signs the summit would stop short of calling for breaking ties with Israel.
(SFEC, 10/22/00, p.A1,21)(AP, 10/21/01)
2001 Oct 21, The Arizona Diamondbacks won the National League championship, defeating the Atlanta Braves 3-2 in game five.
(AP, 10/21/02)
2001 Oct 21, US warplanes hit Taliban frontline troops north of Kabul in the fiercest hits to date. A 1000-pound bomb hit near a senior citizens home in Heart. US air strikes at Thorai killed 21 civilians.
(SFC, 10/22/01, p.A1)(SFC, 10/24/01, p.A12)(SSFC, 7/21/02, p.A14)
2001 Oct 21, Thomas L. Morris Jr. (55), a DC postal worker diagnosed with the deadly inhalation form of anthrax, died. Officials began testing thousands of postal employees.
(SFC, 10/23/01, p.A1)(WSJ, 10/24/01, p.A1)(AP, 10/22/06)
2001 Oct 21, A moratorium against state collection of Internet taxes expired.
(SFC, 8/21/01, p.C2)
2001 Oct 21, A Taliban official reported that 5 of their men had been executed as spies.
(SFC, 10/22/01, p.A5)
2001 Oct 21, In Berlin, Germany, the Social Democrats held on to power in municipal elections, but would have to form a coalition to govern.
(SFC, 10/22/01, p.B1)
2001 Oct 21, Israeli forces continued to occupy West Bank territory and 3 Palestinians were killed including Johnny Thaljieh, a 16-year-old Christian.
(SFC, 10/22/01, p.B1)
2001 Oct 21, In Kazakstan a 3-person Russian-French crew blasted off for the Int’l. Space Station in a Russian Soyuz spacecraft. The crew included Claudie Haignere, who in 1996 became the 1st Frenchwoman in space.
(SFC, 10/22/01, p.B2)
2001 Oct 21, In Macedonia Pres. Boris Trajkovski approved a plan to deploy ethnically mixed police units in areas that had been seized by ethnic Albanian revels.
(SFC, 10/22/01, p.B2)
2001 Oct 21, In Northern Ireland Catholic and Protestant groups pelted each other with homemade grenades in the Limestone Road area of north Belfast.
(SFC, 10/22/01, p.B2)
2001 Oct 21, Pacific Rim leaders ended a 2-day economic summit and condemned the Sep 11 attacks against the US and denounced terrorism in all its forms.
(SFC, 10/22/01, p.A3)
2002 Oct 21, Pres. Bush said he would try diplomacy "one more time," but did not think Saddam Hussein would disarm, even if doing so would allow him to remain in power.
(AP, 10/21/03)
2002 Oct 21, Scientists reported a new immunoassay for mad cow disease that takes about a year for results.
(SFC, 10/21/02, p.A1)
2002 Oct 21, It was reported that Prof. Vijay Pende of Stanford successfully led a program to use shared computing power to decipher protein folding in BBA5, a man-made chain of 23 amino acids.
(SFC, 10/21/02, p.A4)
2002 Oct 21, Hackers launched coordinated attacks on the 13 organizations principally responsible for managing the Internet’s domain naming system.
(SSFC, 1/22/12, p.H1)
2002 Oct 21, APEC delegates, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, from Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Philippines, Russia, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, the United States and Vietnam began meetings at Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, to discuss terrorism and the world economy.
(AP, 10/22/02)
2002 Oct 21, In Australia Xiang Huan Yun (36) opened fire at Monash University in Melbourne in, killing two people and seriously wounding 5 others. Yun was soon charged with two counts of murder and five counts of attempted murder.
(AP, 10/21/02)(AP, 10/22/02)
2002 Oct 21, In Colombia Air Force planes bombed guerrillas on their way to attack a western town, killing 70 of them.
(AP, 10/21/02)
2002 Oct 21, Millions of Cubans went to the polls to choose new municipal officials, the men and women charged with solving all manner of neighborhood problems, from lack of water to deteriorating buildings.
(AP, 10/21/02)
2002 Oct 21, A bus bombing near Hadera killed 14 Israelis, along with two attackers. Israel held off on immediate retaliation, but troops next day destroyed the homes of a suicide bomber and a suspected militant.
(AP, 10/22/02)(SFC, 10/22/02, p.A1)
2002 Oct 21, In Malawi police arrested Gwanda Chakuamba, the main opposition leader, accusing him of impersonating President Bakili Muluzi by signing the president's name to a controversial letter on statehouse stationery. The arrest came amid a government crackdown on opponents of a constitutional amendment that would allow Muluzi to run for a third term when his second five-year term expires in 2004. Chakuamba was released the same day.
(AP, 10/21/02)(AP, 10/22/02)
2002 Oct 21, In Mexico officials said 25 people were arrested who had infiltrated the army, police and attorney general's office on behalf of drug kingpins.
(SFC, 10/22/02, p.A11)
2002 Oct 21, In Venezuela thousands of stores closed and workers stayed home to demand that Hugo Chavez call early elections.
(AP, 10/21/02)(SFC, 10/22/02, p.A11)
2002 Oct 21, A UN panel accused criminal groups linked to the armies of Rwanda, Uganda, Zimbabwe and Congo of plundering Congo's riches, and called on the United Nations to impose financial restrictions on 29 companies and 54 individuals.
(AP, 10/21/02)
2003 Oct 21, The US Senate voted to ban the practice that critics call partial-birth abortion.
(AP, 10/21/04)
2003 Oct 21, In Florida tube-feeding was resumed for Terri Schiavo (39), brain-damaged since 1990, on orders from Gov. Jeb Bush, who overrode a court decision for its removal.
(SFC, 10/22/03, p.A2)(WSJ, 10/22/03, p.A1)
2003 Oct 21, Louise Day Hicks (87), Boston anti-busing activist, died
(AP, 10/21/04)
2003 Oct 21, Actor Fred Berry (52) died in Los Angeles.
(AP, 10/21/04)
2003 Oct 21, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders ended their two-day annual summit in Thailand with a statement seeking to boost trade and intensify the fight on terror.
(AP, 10/21/03)
2003 Oct 21, In Colombia police and soldiers rounded up at least 29 politicians, ahead of local elections, with suspected ties to leftist guerrillas in pre-dawn raids across Arauca state.
(AP, 10/21/03)(WSJ, 10/22/03, p.A1)
2003 Oct 21, In Ecuador, a decade after Texaco pulled out of the Amazon jungle, the US petroleum giant went on trial in a lawsuit filed on behalf of 30,000 poor Ecuadorians.
(AP, 10/21/03)
2003 Oct 21, A top European Union official defended the bloc's $233 million contribution for Iraqi reconstruction and said that more could be forthcoming next year.
(AP, 10/21/03)
2003 Oct 21, Iran agreed to snap UN inspections of its nuclear sites and to freeze uranium enrichment.
(AP, 10/21/03)(SFC, 10/22/03, p.A3)
2003 Oct 21, In Ivory Coast Jean Helene, a French radio reporter, was shot and killed by a police officer at police headquarters in Abidjan. On Jan 22, 2004, police sergeant Dago Sery was sentenced to 17 years in prison for the murder.
(AP, 10/21/03)(WPR, 3/04, p.29)
2003 Oct 21, North Korea rebuffed Pres. Bush's proposal to give it multi-nation security assurances if it agrees to scrap its nuclear weapons program.
(AP, 10/22/03)
2003 Oct 21, In South Korea a tourist bus plummeted into a gorge, killing at least 17 people and injuring 15 others.
(AP, 10/21/03)
2003 Oct 21, Luis A. Ferre (99), a philanthropist and former governor of Puerto Rico who became the patriarch of the territory's US statehood movement, died.
(AP, 10/21/03)
2003 Oct 21, Romanians overwhelmingly approved a new constitution designed to prepare the formerly communist country for membership in the EU.
(AP, 10/21/03)
2003 Oct 21, Two British teachers working for an aid agency in Somaliland were found dead after being shot at their apartment at the school.
(AP, 10/21/03)
2003 Oct 21, Pope John Paul II added 30 names to the list of his possible successors, installing a diverse collection of cardinals.
(AP, 10/21/03)
2003 Oct 21, The U.N. General Assembly overwhelmingly approved a resolution demanding that Israel tear down a barrier jutting into the West Bank.
(AP, 10/21/04)
2004 Oct 21, The St. Louis Cardinals won the National League pennant with a 7th game win over the Houston Astros.
(SFC, 10/22/04, p.D1)
2004 Oct 21, An Associated Press poll found President Bush and Sen. John Kerry locked in a tie for the popular vote.
(AP, 10/21/05)
2004 Oct 21, It was reported that the US government had begun identifying prisoners held at the Guantanamo Bay interrogation Center.
(WSJ, 10/21/04, p.A6)
2004 Oct 21, Staff Sgt. Ivan Frederick, the highest-ranking U.S. soldier charged in the Abu Ghraib prison case, was sentenced to eight years in prison.
(AP, 10/21/04)
2004 Oct 21, American International Group (AIG) reported that it was the target of a grand jury investigation.
(WSJ, 10/22/04, p.C1)
2004 Oct 21, WWF Int’l. said humanity is consuming 20% more natural resources each year than the Earth produces.
(WSJ, 10/22/04, p.A1)
2004 Oct 21, Anthony Hecht (81), American poet, died in Washington DC.
(WSJ, 10/26/04, p.D8)
2004 Oct 21, Australian police arrested 3 Chinese men in Sydney after they uncovered $74 million worth of crystal methamphetamine hidden in hollowed-out candles from China.
(AP, 10/22/04)
2004 Oct 21, China and Japan planned emergency talks over energy rights in the disputed waters between them.
(WSJ, 10/21/04, p.A17)
2004 Oct 21, Fu Hegong sneaked into a Beijing kindergarten to rob it. When he was discovered, he smothered a teacher with a quilt and killed a 5-year-old boy by hitting him with a fire extinguisher. In 2005 Hegong (31) was sentenced to death.
(AP, 9/10/05)
2004 Oct 21, Former Costa Rica Pres. Rafael Angel Calderon was detained in connection with a corruption investigation. He was charged with distributing and taking a share of a commission of some $9 million connected to the supply of medical equipment. He was under investigation for allegedly receiving nearly $500,000 from a Finnish government loan to Costa Rica for the purchase of medicines.
(AP, 10/21/04)(Econ, 11/27/04, p.38)(AP, 2/5/06)
2004 Oct 21, An Ethiopian court sentenced three former rebels to death for killing dozens of people while rebel factions jockeyed for power in 1992. Iman Kelil Oumar was convicted for participating in the killings of 207 people; Beyan Ahmed Ousman was convicted of involvement in the murder of 205 people and Asli Ahmed, was found guilty of killing 89 people.
(AP, 10/22/04)
2004 Oct 21, French health officials announced that a donor whose blood was used to transfuse 10 people and to manufacture medicines has been identified as France's eighth known victim of the human equivalent of mad cow disease.
(AP, 10/21/04)
2004 Oct 21, An Israeli aircraft fired two missiles at a car traveling in the Gaza Strip killing Adnan al-Ghoul, a senior Hamas commander.
(AP, 10/21/04)
2004 Oct 21, Japan's deadliest typhoon in more than two decades left at least 66 people dead as rescuers searched frantically for 22 still missing in floods and landslides.
(AP, 10/21/04)
2004 Oct 21, Lebanon's Pres. Emil Lahoud appointed staunchly pro-Syrian politician Omar Karami as prime minister, asking him to form the next government.
(AP, 10/21/04)
2004 Oct 21, Four gunmen abducted three U.S. citizens on a rural highway in southern Mexico, shot and killed two of them and left the third, a pregnant woman, bound and gagged. Her testimony led to arrests the next day of Isidro Diaz Pineda, Reynaldo Hernandez Ramirez, Francisco Velazquez Paredes and David Gaona Mondragon, all of Tierra Caliente.
(AP, 10/23/04)
2004 Oct 21, Negotiations between the Sudanese government and the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), an umbrella organization for opposition groups from around Sudan, opened in Cairo under the auspices of Egypt.
(AP, 10/23/04)
2005 Oct 21, US and Colombian authorities shut down a drug trafficking and money laundering operation that exported about $1 million worth of cocaine every week to the United States, Europe and Asia.
(AP, 10/22/05)
2005 Oct 21, Oscar Wyatt (81), former chairman of Coastal Corp., was arrested at his home in Houston for paying millions in kickbacks to the government of Saddam Hussein in exchange for rights to buy discounted Iraqi oil under the UN’s oil-for-food program. 2 Swiss associates were also indicted. In 2007 Wyatt was sentenced to over a year in jail after admitting that he agreed to a surcharge of about $200,000 to be paid to bank account in Jordan controlled by officials of Iraq’s State Oil Marketing Organization in Dec 2001.
(SFC, 10/22/05, p.A3)(WSJ, 11/28/07, p.B10)
2005 Oct 21, The Kansas Supreme Court unanimously struck down a state law that punished underage sex more severely if it involved homosexual acts.
(AP, 10/22/06)
2005 Oct 21, A Taliban ambush touched off fierce fighting in southern Afghan mountains that left eight police and four rebels dead. A cultural reporter 922) with a local radio station, was killed in a bomb blast in the eastern province of Khost.
(AP, 10/22/05)(AFP, 10/22/05)
2005 Oct 21, Authorities in Azerbaijan said a 2nd former government minister was arrested on charges of involvement in a coup plot against President Ilham Aliev, deepening political tensions ahead of next month's key parliamentary elections.
(AP, 10/21/05)
2005 Oct 21, Britain and Croatia confirmed cases of bird flu as countries around the world scrambled to put in place measures to prevent the spread of the virus. British officials said a parrot that had been imported from South America died of bird flu in quarantine.
(AP, 10/22/05)
2005 Oct 21, In Alexandria, Egypt, thousands of Muslims rioted outside a Coptic Christian church to denounce a play deemed offensive to Islam, prompting police to beat protesters and fire tear gas into the crowd. 3 people died and more than 90 were injured. The play, "I Was Blind But Now I Can See," tells the story of a young Christian who converts to Islam and becomes disillusioned. The riot was sparked by the distribution of a DVD of a play that was performed at the church two years ago.
(Reuters, 10/21/05)
2005 Oct 21, The European Commission agreed to open talks with Bosnia on a cooperation agreement that could lead to full EU membership for the Balkan nation.
(AP, 10/21/05)
2005 Oct 21, Hungary’s health minister told a local news agency that the country has developed a bird-flu vaccine from humans.
(WSJ, 10/22/05, p.A1)
2005 Oct 21, Indonesian police said they had arrested four people allegedly involved in smuggling hundreds of pounds of explosive materials from Malaysia into Indonesia.
(AP, 10/21/05)
2005 Oct 21, Iran's supreme leader, long a critic of the United States, praised the U.S.-backed constitutional referendum in Iraq as "blessed" and urged Iraqis to participate December's parliamentary elections.
(AP, 10/21/05)
2005 Oct 21, Hurricane Wilma slammed into the island of Cozumel, starting a long, grinding march across Mexico's resort-studded coastline. Wilma flooded streets, knocked out power and stranded thousands of tourists in sweltering shelters. Hurricane Wilma tore into Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula, after killing 13 people in Haiti and Jamaica.
(AP, 10/21/05)(AP, 10/22/06)
2005 Oct 21, Lawmakers of Serbia and Montenegro elected Zoran Stankovic (51), a reported ally of notorious war crimes fugitive Ratko Mladic, as the new defense minister.
(AP, 10/21/05)
2006 Oct 21, Al-Jazeera television aired an interview with US State Department official Alberto Fernandez, who offered an unusually blunt assessment of the Iraq war, saying the US had shown "arrogance" and "stupidity" in Iraq. Fernandez issued an apology the next day.
(AP, 10/21/07)
2006 Oct 21, In SF Joseph James Melcher (25), a traveling wine salesman, opened fire on 3 people in Japantown and 2 died. He was arrested the same evening. On Nov 21 Melcher was also charged with killing Robert Stanford (21) on Aug 27. On May 13, 2009, Melcher was convicted on 3 counts of murder. On June 11 Melcher was sentenced to 200 years to life in prison.
(SFC, 10/24/06, p.B1)(SFC, 11/23/06, p.B1)(SFC, 5/14/09, p.B2)(SFC, 6/12/09, p.B3)
2006 Oct 21, In Bangladesh donations of clothing set off stampedes that left at least eight people dead. All were women except for one child.
(AP, 10/21/06)
2006 Oct 21, In central Bolivia a bus plunged off a mountain road, killing 29 people and injuring 25.
(AP, 10/22/06)
2006 Oct 21, In Najaf, Iraq, Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani met with Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr in an attempt to rein marauding militias. 5 bicycle bombs and a hail of mortar shells killed 32 people with scores more wounded in a market in Mahmoudiyah. Rival Shiite militiamen battled near the ancient city of Babylon until American forces and helicopters rushed to separate the combatants. At least two people were killed in Hamza al-Gharbi and 25 in Amarah, a city of 750,000 people at the head of Iraq's famous marshlands. At least 21 more people were killed in violence around the country, including 7 who died in a suicide bombing on a Baghdad bus. A US Marine was killed in fighting in Anbar province west of Baghdad and another soldier died in fighting in Salahuddin province.
(AP, 10/21/06)(AP, 10/22/06)(SSFC, 10/22/06, p.A14)(AP, 10/23/06)
2006 Oct 21, In Mexico’s Michoacan state, the home state of President-elect Felipe Calderon, 420 homicides were reported for this year, including 19 police chiefs and commanders. Juan Antonio Magana, the state's attorney general, said well over half the killings were drug-related.
(AP, 10/21/06)
2006 Oct 21, In Nigeria police said all seven foreign oil workers who were being held hostage in the southern Niger Delta have been released and are in good health.
(AP, 10/21/06)
2006 Oct 21, Members of the Palestinian security forces fired in the air in Gaza City's main shopping district and burned tires near President Mahmoud Abbas' home to press demands for payment of salaries.
(AP, 10/21/06)
2006 Oct 21, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that Russia was ready to discuss ways to pressure Iran into accepting a broader international oversight of its nuclear program, but added that "any measures of influence should encourage creating conditions for talks." He said Russia will not allow the UN Security Council to be used to punish Iran over its nuclear program. Russia indicated it would strictly enforce sanctions on North Korea as US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met top leaders in Moscow at the end of a tour to push for full implementation of the UN penalties in response to Pyongyang’s nuclear test. Rice delivered a symbolic rebuke to Russia over shrinking press freedoms, even as she courted President Vladimir Putin for help punishing Iran over its nuclear program.
(AFP, 10/21/06)(AP, 10/21/07)
2006 Oct 21, Sri Lanka's government said it will provide safe passage for rebels traveling to Geneva for peace talks, as the navy destroyed two insurgent boats approaching a naval base. The Tamil Tigers threatened to extend their battle against government troops across the island if Colombo "wants a war", as the navy said they killed 20 rebels in sea clashes.
(AP, 10/21/06)(AFP, 10/21/06)
2006 Oct 21, The death toll from severe flooding in Thailand and neighboring Myanmar has jumped to 143 after Thai authorities confirmed another 16 victims. The severe flooding began in late August in Thailand's central and northern provinces
(AFP, 10/21/06)
2006 Oct 21, Uganda's president traveled to southern Sudan to bolster faltering talks between his government and rebels aimed at ending a brutal 19-year conflict in northern Uganda.
(AP, 10/21/06)
2007 Oct 21, Vice President Dick Cheney said in a speech the United States and other nations would not allow Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon.
(AP, 10/21/08)
2007 Oct 21, The Boston Red Sox won the American League championship in Game 7 of their series with the Cleveland Indians, 11-2.
(AP, 10/21/08)
2007 Oct 21, Paul Byrd, pitcher for the Cleveland Indians, acknowledged that he had used human growth hormone from August 2002 to January 2005 due to a pituitary gland issue. An investigation was pending as Major League Baseball and the Indians said they had not been aware of Byrd’s use of the muscle building substance.
(SFC, 10/22/07, p.A1)
2007 Oct 21, More than a half-dozen wildfires driven by powerful Santa Ana winds spread across Southern California, killing one person near San Diego and destroying several homes and a church in celebrity-laden Malibu. The Buckweed fire started rampaging across 38,000 acres in the Santa Clarita area, 30 miles north of downtown Los Angeles. An unidentified youngster, believed to be a preteen, later admitted to playing with matches and starting the fire.
(AP, 10/21/07)(Reuters, 10/31/07)
2007 Oct 21, Ronald Brooks Kitaj, Ohio-born artist, died in Los Angeles. He had spent much of his career working in London. His work included “Desk Murder," a 14-year effort.
(Econ, 11/3/07, p.102)(http://tinyurl.com/2myah5)(Econ, 3/2/13, p.81)
2007 Oct 21, Australia's opposition Labor Party chief Kevin Rudd beat PM Howard in an election debate marred by controversy when a national television network's coverage was deliberately cut. Rudd had once worked as a business consultant in China and spoke fluent Mandarin.
(AFP, 10/22/07)(Econ, 12/1/07, p.52)
2007 Oct 21, In Brazil activists trying to invade a 304-acre biotech seed farm, owned by the Swiss firm Syngenta AG, clashed with guards and at least two people were shot dead.
(AP, 10/22/07)
2007 Oct 21, In Brazil a girl (15) was arrested on accusations of breaking and entering a house and jailed with male inmates in Abaetetuba, Para state. She was locked up for weeks with 21 men who she said would only let her eat in return for sex. By her account, officials did nothing, until the story erupted in the national media and outraged Brazilians demanded her transfer.
(AP, 11/24/07)
2007 Oct 21, Thousands of British Muslims gathered for a charity peace concert dubbed "Muslim Live 8" to raise money for victims of Sudan's long-running Darfur conflict.
(AP, 10/21/07)
2007 Oct 21, Chinese President Hu Jintao engineered the retirement of a powerful Communist Party rival in a move that enhanced his political standing yet may have opened up a divisive battle to succeed him. A fire at a shoe factory in southeastern China killed 37 people and injured at least 20. The factory in Fujian province was operating without a license and the owners were arrested.
(AP, 10/21/07)(AP, 10/22/07)(AP, 10/25/07)
2007 Oct 21, Cubans opened an election cycle that will lead to a decision next year on whether ailing leader Fidel Castro will remain atop the communist-run island's supreme governing body.
(AP, 10/21/07)
2007 Oct 21, Ethiopia's Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) rebels said they killed 140 government soldiers in a weekend assault targeting a visiting senior official, a statement Ethiopia immediately denounced as false.
(Reuters, 10/21/07)
2007 Oct 21, New Delhi Deputy Mayor S.S. Bajwa was rushed to a hospital after the attack by a gang of Rhesus macaques, but succumbed to head injuries sustained in his fall.
(AP, 10/21/07)
2007 Oct 21, The US military said its forces killed an estimated 49 militants during a dawn raid to capture an Iranian-linked militia chief in Baghdad's Sadr City enclave. Iraqi police and hospital officials reported only 15 deaths including three children. Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said all the dead were civilians.
(AP, 10/21/07)
2007 Oct 21, Kyrgyzstan held a national referendum on changing the constitution to elect the Parliament by party list. On Oct 23 the main trans-Atlantic security and rights group and the US Embassy said the referendum on constitutional change was marred by numerous violations.
(AP, 10/23/07)
2007 Oct 21, Shell officials said gunmen in speedboats attacked an offshore oil field in the volatile Niger Delta, kidnapping three foreign workers and four Nigerians.
(AP, 10/21/07)
2007 Oct 21, A pro-business opposition party that wants to bring Poland's troops home from Iraq was headed to an overwhelming victory in parliamentary elections, exit polls showed, setting it up to oust the prime minister's staunchly pro-U.S. government. The opposition Civic Platform party ousted PM Jaroslaw Kaczynski's government in the parliamentary elections.
(AP, 10/21/07)(AP, 10/21/08)
2007 Oct 21, A technical glitch sent a Soyuz spacecraft on a wild ride home, forcing Malaysia's first space traveler and two Russian cosmonauts to endure eight times the force of gravity before their capsule landed safely.
(AP, 10/21/07)
2007 Oct 21, Lojze Peterle, a conservative former prime minister, won the most votes in Slovenia's tight presidential elections, but fell far short of the majority needed to avoid a runoff.
(AP, 10/21/07)
2007 Oct 21, Springboks, the South African rugby team, beat England (15-6) in the Rugby World Cup Final at the Stade France in Paris.
(AFP, 10/23/07)(Econ, 10/27/07, p.57)
2007 Oct 21, Sudanese government officials said around 50 people have been killed in three days of tribal clashes in the central region of Kordofan.
(AP, 10/21/07)
2007 Oct 21, A Swiss nationalist party rode an anti-immigrant wave to the best showing of any party in parliamentary elections since 1919, while the Greens made gains by appealing to environmental concerns. The Swiss People's Party (SVP), led by justice minister Christoph Blocher, won 62 seats and received 29% of the vote, after a bitter campaign blaming foreigners for much of the country's crime.
(AP, 10/21/07)(AP, 10/22/07)(Econ, 10/27/07, p.62)
2007 Oct 21, Ernst Ludwig Ehrlich (86), a Jewish religious philosopher, died at his home in Basel, Switz. He had escaped the Nazis and became a European bridge-builder between Christians and Jews.
(AP, 10/24/07)
2007 Oct 21, In Syria a high-level North Korean official held talks with PM Naji Otari on ways to improve cooperation between the two countries.
(AP, 10/21/07)
2007 Oct 21, A Hong Kong newspaper reported that police in the capital of Tibet clashed for four days with Buddhist monks trying to celebrate the awarding of a congressional honor for the Dalai Lama.
(AP, 10/21/07)
2007 Oct 21, Kurdish rebels ambushed a Turkish military convoy less than three miles from the Iraqi border, killing 12 soldiers with 8 missing. The rebels said they are holding them hostage. Turkey shelled the border region in response to the attack, and Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, himself a Kurd, ordered the rebels to lay down their arms or leave Iraq.
(AP, 10/21/07)(WSJ, 10/22/07, p.A1)(AP, 10/25/07)
2008 Oct 21, Top US and Russian military officers held an unannounced meeting in Helsinki in an effort to maintain dialogue after Moscow's crushing defeat of American ally Georgia.
(Reuters, 10/21/08)
2008 Oct 21, The US Federal Reserve announced that it will start buying commercial paper, a crucial short-term funding mechanism many companies rely on for day-to-day operations, from money market mutual funds.
(AP, 10/21/08)
2008 Oct 21, US federal agents arrested dozens of members of the Mongol motorcycle club in six states, following an undercover investigation in which they infiltrated the notorious motorcycle gang. Prosecutors said it could herald the end of what they call a criminal group.
(AP, 10/22/08)(SFC, 10/22/08, p.B2)
2008 Oct 21, National City Corp, an Ohio-based regional bank hard hit by the credit crisis, announced plans to slash 4,000 jobs and said rising reserves for soured mortgage and real estate construction loans led to its fifth straight quarterly loss.
(Reuters, 10/21/08)
2008 Oct 21, The Pentagon said it has dropped war-crimes charges against five Guantanamo Bay detainees after the former prosecutor in their cases complained that the military was withholding evidence helpful to the defense. Lawyers for Ethiopian refugee Binyam Mohamed, a British resident held at Guantanamo, said the US has dropped all charges against him, but he is still being held at the US prison camp. Binyam Mohamed, an Ethiopian citizen, had lived in Britain for 7 years, and was arrested in Pakistan in 2002.
(AP, 10/21/08)(Econ, 2/7/09, p.49)
2008 Oct 21, Argentina proposed to nationalize the private pensions in order to meet debt payments. The nationalization of the private pension funds took place in December.
(WSJ, 10/22/08, p.A1)(Econ, 2/27/10, p.28)
2008 Oct 21, Bolivia’s Congress ratified Pres. Morales’ draft constitution, designed to empower the indigenous population.
(WSJ, 10/22/08, p.A1)
2008 Oct 21, The Bank of Canada cut its key interest rate by a quarter point, less than expected, to 2.25 percent but said it would likely have to ease further to combat the effects of the global financial crisis.
(Reuters, 10/21/08)
2008 Oct 21, In Denmark Hammad Khuershid, a Danish citizen of Pakistani origin, and Abdoulghani Tokhi, an Afghan, were convicted of preparing a terrorist attack. They were secretly filmed mixing the type of explosive used in the 2005 London transit bombing. They were arrested in the Copenhagen area in September 2007. Khuershid and Tokhi were sentenced to 12 and seven years in prison, respectively.
(AP, 10/21/08)
2008 Oct 21, EU lawmakers joined US civil liberty campaigners in criticizing a new scanner that allows airport security to see through passengers' clothes, calling it a virtual strip search that should only be used as a last resort.
(AP, 10/21/08)
2008 Oct 21, French President Nicolas Sarkozy backed the creation of sovereign wealth funds in Europe that, when coordinated, could provide an "industrial response" to the financial crisis.
(AFP, 10/21/08)
2008 Oct 21, In Greece riot police fired tear gas to disperse a group of rock-throwing youths during a demonstration in support of a nationwide general strike that brought air, rail and ferry traffic to a halt.
(AP, 10/21/08)
2008 Oct 21, In India 25,000 members of the United Forum of Reserve Bank Officers and Employees went on strike in a dispute over pensions. The Reserve Bank of India denounced the strike as illegal.
(Econ, 10/25/08, p.87)
2008 Oct 21, A bomb exploded outside a training center for police commandos in northeast India, killing at least 17 people and wounding 23 more.
(AP, 10/22/08)
2008 Oct 21, Indonesia's parliament ratified the Southeast Asian charter committing ASEAN member nations to promote democracy and human rights, clearing the way for its formal adoption before year's end. Anti-terrorism police seized bomb-making materials and a large cache of weapons and ammunition during a raid on a house in Jakarta. Anti-terrorism squads arrested five suspected Islamic radicals believed to have been plotting to blow up Indonesia's largest fuel depot.
(AP, 10/21/08)(AP, 10/22/08)
2008 Oct 21, Iran, Russia and Qatar discussed the formation of an OPEC-style cartel among some of the largest natural gas producing nations, a prospect that has unnerved energy-importing nations in Europe and the United States.
(AP, 10/21/08)
2008 Oct 21, Iraq's Cabinet decided to ask the Americans for unspecified changes in the draft security pact. A bomb targeting a police patrol exploded in eastern Baghdad, wounding two civilians.
(AP, 10/21/08)
2008 Oct 21, Italy's Court of Cassation ordered Berlin to pay a total of euro1 million (US$1.3 million) to nine family members of victims of a June 1944 massacre. The next day Germany rejected the ruling by Italy's top criminal court.
(AP, 10/22/08)
2008 Oct 21, Jordanian police arrested a local writer for incorporating verses of the Quran, the Muslim holy book, into his love poetry. Islam Samhan, published his collection of poems, "Grace like a Shadow," without the approval of the Jordanian government, and authorities said it insults the holy book.
(AP, 10/21/08)
2008 Oct 21, In Kashmir trucks laden with fruit, honey, garments and spices crossed the heavily armed frontier as India and Pakistan opened a trade route between the two sides of the divided region for the first time in six decades.
(AP, 10/21/08)
2008 Oct 21, Police in northern Mexico reported receiving an ice chest packed with four human heads. The chest arrived at the Ascencion police station in Chihuahua state was marked "vaccines," but wasn't claimed for a week. Jesus Zambada was among 16 members of the Sinaloa drug cartel arrested after a shootout in Mexico City. Zambada is the brother of Ismael Zambada, who allegedly heads the Sinaloa cartel along with one of Mexico's most wanted men, Joaquin Guzman.
(AP, 10/22/08)
2008 Oct 21, Amnesty International criticized major failings in Nigeria's criminal justice system and called on the government to immediately put in place a moratorium on capital punishment.
(AP, 10/21/08)
2008 Oct 21, Taliban militants ambushed a convoy of security forces in Pakistan's northwestern Swat valley, sparking clashes that left at least five personnel and six rebels dead.
(AFP, 10/22/08)
2008 Oct 21, Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal confirmed for the first time that the kingdom has been sponsoring talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban militia.
(AP, 10/21/08)
2008 Oct 21, Saudi Arabia’s interior minister said authorities have indicted 991 suspected militants on charges that they participated in terrorist attacks carried out in the kingdom over the last five years.
(AP, 10/21/08)
2008 Oct 21, A Somali official said Somali gunmen acting as freelance coast guards freed a hijacked Indian dhow and its 13 crew members after a battle with pirates off the country's northern coast. The cargo-laden vessel was en route to Somalia from Asia when it was seized over the weekend.
(AP, 10/21/08)
2008 Oct 21, A Thai court found former PM Thaksin Shinawatra (59) guilty of corruption and sentenced him to two years in prison. His wife, Pojaman (51), was acquitted.
(AP, 10/21/08)
2008 Oct 21, Turkish soldiers killed two Kurdish guerrillas during a clash near the village of Dallitepe in the country's southeast.
(AP, 10/22/08)
2008 Oct 21, Zimbabwe's main opposition party warned that unless its leader Morgan Tsvangirai is issued a passport he will not attend a meeting next week aimed at breaking a deadlock in power-sharing talks. The party also said that only fresh elections would resolve a dispute over who controls key cabinet posts, a make-or-break issue under a power-sharing pact signed with President Robert Mugabe.
(AP, 10/21/08)(Reuters, 10/21/08)
2009 Oct 21, Federal court documents linked Alaska Rep. Don Young to a wide-ranging investigation of corruption in Alaska. It was alleged that the 19-term Republican had received gifts totaling nearly $200,000 over 13 years from Veco Corp., a defunct oil field services company run by former Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens.
(SFC, 10/24/09, p.A10)
2009 Oct 21, US federal prosecutors in Massachusetts arrested Tarek Mehanna (27) of Sudbury, a suburb of Boston. Prosecutors said he had conspired to kill two prominent US politicians and carry out a holy war by attacking shoppers in US malls and American troops in Iraq. Mehanna, a US citizen, had been arrested in November and charged with lying to the FBI in December 2006 when asked about the whereabouts of Daniel Maldonado, who is now serving a 10-year prison sentence for training alongside al-Qaida members to overthrow the Somali government. On Dec 20, 2011, Mehanna was convicted of conspiring to support al-Qaida and other terrorism charges.
(AP, 10/21/09)(SFC, 10/22/09, p.A4)(SFC, 12/21/11, p.A8)
2009 Oct 21, In Toledo, Ohio, Mohammad Zaki Amawi (29) was sentenced to 20 years in jail for plotting to recruit and train terrorists to kill US soldiers in Iraq. Marwan Othman El-Hindi (46) was sentenced to 12 years. The two men and a third defendant had been found guilty in 2008. The third man has yet to be sentenced.
(SFC, 10/22/09, p.A4)(http://tinyurl.com/ygnbfpt)
2009 Oct 21, Northwest Airlines Flight 188 overflew its Minneapolis destination by 150 miles. Air traffic controllers and pilots tried for more than an hour night to contact pilot Richard Cole (54) of Salem, Oregon, and the flight's captain, Timothy B. Cheney (53), of Gig Harbor, Wash., using radio, cell phone and data messages. The pilots said they had been having a heated discussion about airline policy. On Oct 27 the FAA revoked the licenses of the two pilots saying they had been out of radio contact for 91 minutes.
(AP, 10/24/09)(SFC, 10/28/09, p.A6)
2009 Oct 21, Alyssa Bustamante (15) of St. Martins, Mo., strangled, stabbed and cut the throat of Elizabeth Olten (9). She told authorities she did it because she wanted to know what it was like to kill someone. On Feb 8, 2012, Bustamante was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole.
(http://news.aol.com/article/alyssa-bustamante-15-charged-as-adult-in/772912)(AP, 2/8/12)
2009 Oct 21, In Afghanistan ex-Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah, President Hamid Karzai's chief political rival, agreed to take part in the Nov. 7 runoff election, setting the stage for a high-stakes showdown in the face of Taliban threats and approaching winter snows. One US soldier died of wounds sustained in a bomb attack in the south.
(AP, 10/21/09)(AP, 10/22/09)
2009 Oct 21, In the Bahamas the trial of two people accused of trying to extort John Travolta following the death of his son there ended in a mistrial after a lawmaker suggested the still-deliberating jury had acquitted one of the defendants.
(AP, 10/22/09)
2009 Oct 21, A Briton who cost the insurance industry some 1.6 million pounds by staging almost 100 car crashes as part of a scam to win fraudulent payouts, was jailed for 4-1/2 years. Mohammed Patel (24) charged 500 pounds a time to stage accidents which enabled fraudsters to claim an average of 17,000 pounds from their insurers.
(Reuters, 10/21/09)
2009 Oct 21, Spanish-owned airports operator BAA announced the sale of the second busiest hub Gatwick to a US investment fund for 1.51 billion pounds following an antitrust ruling.
(AFP, 10/21/09)
2009 Oct 21, China and India put aside a diplomatic spat to sign a five-year agreement in New Delhi to cooperate on climate change leading up to crucial talks in Copenhagen.
(AFP, 10/21/09)
2009 Oct 21, A court in southwest China sentenced six men to death for gang-related crimes including blackmail and murder, the first convictions in a months long crackdown that has exposed a major city mired in violent organized crime. More than 1,544 suspects have been detained in Chongqing, China's largest municipality, since the gang sweep started in June, with more than a dozen criminal gangs busted.
(AP, 10/21/09)
2009 Oct 21, Security guards thwarted an attempted hijacking on an EgyptAir flight from Istanbul to Cairo by overpowering a Sudanese man who threatened crew members with a plastic knife. The man told flight attendants he wanted to "liberate Jerusalem."
(AP, 10/21/09)
2009 Oct 21, In northern India a passenger train crashed into another train's rear carriage reserved for women and disabled passengers, killing 22 people and injuring 16 who remained trapped for hours near Agra, the home of the Taj Mahal.
(AP, 10/21/09)
2009 Oct 21, Indonesia’s customs chief said a group of 10 alleged Iranian drug smugglers, including eight veiled women, were caught with $12.5 million worth of methamphetamines at the main airport. The group had arrived on flights from Malaysia, Syria and Qatar on Oct 19-20.
(AP, 10/21/09)
2009 Oct 21, Diplomats in Vienna said Iranian negotiators expressed support for a deal that, if accepted by their leaders, would delay Tehran's ability to make nuclear weapons by sending most of its existing enriched uranium to Russia for processing.
(AP, 10/21/09)
2009 Oct 21, In Iraq a blast in Kirkuk killed cameraman Orhan Hijran, who worked for Baghdad-based television station Al-Rasheed, and wounded correspondent Mohammed Shahid of Cairo-based Al-Baghdadiyah.
(AP, 10/21/09)
2009 Oct 21, Lithuanian lawmakers demanded an investigation into allegations that the CIA had established a prison there for al-Qaida suspects. Leaders have denied that Lithuania had hosted clandestine detention centers.
(SFC, 10/22/09, p.A2)
2009 Oct 21, ECOWAS suspended Niger following its failure to comply with the 17th October 2009 Decision of Heads of State and Government to postpone the legislative elections of Tuesday, 20th October 2009. ECOWAS suspended Niger on account of bad behavior by President Mamadou Tandja (71).
(http://news.ecowas.int/presseshow.php?nb=113&lang=en&annee=2009)(Econ, 2/27/10, p.56)
2009 Oct 21, Pakistani soldiers fought for control of Kotkai, the Taliban chief's hometown, pressing forward with a major offensive targeting an insurgent stronghold along the Afghan border. Suspected US missiles killed two militants in a neighboring region, a potentially troubling strike because it hit territory controlled by another militant faction the army has coaxed into neutrality during its offensive. The army's death toll so far rose to 16, while 15 more militants were slain, bringing their overall death toll to 105.
(AP, 10/21/09)
2009 Oct 21, In Somalia a powerful Islamist group linked to al-Qaida ordered two radio stations in southwestern Somalia to stop broadcasts indefinitely.
(AP, 10/21/09)
2009 Oct 21, South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma said Zimbabwe must not return to instability, after holding talks with PM Morgan Tsvangirai who has cut ties within his unity government. Tsvangirai flew to South Africa after meeting Mozambican President Armando Guebuza a day earlier and then headed to the Democratic Republic of Congo and Angola to brief leaders on Zimbabwe's worst impasse in eight months.
(AFP, 10/22/09)
2009 Oct 21, A Sudanese cargo plane crashed shortly after takeoff from Sharjah International Airport north of Dubai, killing the 6-member crew but causing no other casualties on the ground.
(AP, 10/21/09)
2010 Oct 21, US federal authorities charged Miami-based American Therapeutic Corp. with Medicare fraud. Prosecutors said the company preyed on patients with severe dementia and billed some $200 million for services it never rendered.
(SFC, 10/22/10, p.A13)
2010 Oct 21, In Northern California an entire arm of the Roseville Galleria, a high-end regional mall, was destroyed after Alexander Corney Pigee (Piggee, 23), barricaded himself inside a video game store and started a fire.
(AP, 10/22/10)
2010 Oct 21, In Oregon a former Bend police captain and his wife, who have been under investigation by the FBI and IRS over their real estate dealings in Oregon and Indiana, were indicted on fraud charges. Kevin (56) and Tamara (47) "Tami" Sawyer were charged with 21 counts of various crimes that include conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, bank fraud and money laundering. Prosecutors claim the fraud cost investors more than $4.4 million.
(AP, 10/23/10)
2010 Oct 21, The Guinness World Records confirmed that a pumpkin grown in Wisconsin is officially the world’s heaviest. Chris Stevens of New Richmond grew the 1,810.5 pound gourd. It was 85 pounds heavier than the record set in Ohio in 2009.
(SFC, 10/22/10, p.A10)
2010 Oct 21, A partnership backed by Amazon.com, Comcast, Facebook and other technology firms established the “S Fund," a $250 million fund led by venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, to capitalize on the growing reach of social networking.
(SFC, 10/22/10, p.C1)
2010 Oct 21, Afghanistan's new peace council said it would be willing to make concessions to bring insurgents to the negotiating table, and called for Saudi Arabia's help in mediating peace talks.
(Reuters, 10/21/10)
2010 Oct 21, In Austria Christian Kandlbauer (22), man who was able to drive because of an innovative high-tech artificial arm, died. He had been in intensive care since Oct 19 after his vehicle veered off the road and into a tree. It was unclear whether the crash was caused by problems with Kandlbauer's artificial arms.
(AP, 10/22/10)
2010 Oct 21, In Britain the Privileges and Conduct Committee of the House of Lords suspended Pola Uddin, Swraj Paul and Amirali Bhatia after declaring they did not act in good faith in filing their expense claims. They were ordered to repay amounts ranging from 27,000 pounds ($45,000) to just over 125,000 pounds ($197,000).
(AP, 10/21/10)
2010 Oct 21, China rejected a UN report that says Chinese bullets were used in attacks on peacekeepers in Sudan's troubled Darfur region, calling the charge groundless.
(AFP, 10/21/10)
2010 Oct 21, At least 160,000 people were evacuated from southern China as Typhoon Megi, one of the most powerful storms to hit the region in years, bore down, bringing with it the threat of devastation.
(AFP, 10/21/10)
2010 Oct 21, In CongoDRC a small plane was owned by a local airliner Starec Congo crashed into a gorilla park in eastern Congo killing its pilot and co-pilot. It was carrying some 3,300 pounds (1,500 kg) of commercial goods.
(AP, 10/21/10)
2010 Oct 21, In Cuba the office of Havana Roman Catholic Cardinal Jaime Ortega announced the names of five more Cuban inmates who have accepted exile in Spain in return for freedom, though none are among a group of 52 political prisoners jailed in a 2003 roundup of dissidents.
(AP, 10/22/10)
2010 Oct 21, In the Dominican Rep. 126 students were sickened after eating free school breakfasts despite the government's efforts to resolve past problems with tainted school food.
(AP, 10/21/10)
2010 Oct 21, In El Salvador Benitez Canales, one of the owners of the Deportivo Vista Hermosa football club, was among a group making a deal over 2 kg (4.4 pounds) of cocaine when they were arrested.
(AP, 10/22/10)
2010 Oct 21, The European Parliament awarded its annual human rights prize to Guillermo Farinas (48), the Cuban dissident whose 134-day hunger strike helped draw attention to the plight of political dissidents jailed in a 2003 crackdown on dissent.
(AP, 10/21/10)
2010 Oct 21, Finland’s Nokia, the world's top mobile phone maker, announced 1,800 jobs cuts right on the heels of stellar third-quarter results and just one month after a new chief executive took the helm.
(AFP, 10/21/10)
2010 Oct 21, In France protesters blockaded Marseille's airport, Lady Gaga canceled concerts in Paris and rioting youths attacked police in Lyon ahead of a tense Senate vote on raising the retirement age to 62.
(AP, 10/21/10)
2010 Oct 21, In Israel the Elders, a group of retired world figures, visited a flashpoint east Jerusalem neighborhood, vowing to help Palestinian residents whose homes are facing demolition.
(AFP, 10/21/10)
2010 Oct 21, In Italy demonstrators in Naples set vehicles ablaze and hurled stones and firecrackers at police over plans to build a garbage dump in the Vesuvio National Park. 20 officers were left injured.
(AP, 10/21/10)
2010 Oct 21, Toyota said it is recalling 1.53 million Lexus, Avalon and other models, mostly in the US and Japan, for brake fluid and fuel pump problems, the latest in a string of quality lapses for the world's No. 1 automaker.
(AP, 10/21/10)
2010 Oct 21, Mexican police found the bullet-ridden bodies of seven people in different parts of southern Guerrero state. Among them was Antonio Valdez, leader of the Institutional Revolutionary Party in the resort city of Acapulco. Valdez and three other men were found dead on the outskirts of the city with a message accusing them of being allied with Edgar Valdez Villarreal, alias "The Barbie."
(AP, 10/22/10)
2010 Oct 21, In central Mexico Canadian industrial giant Bombardier and Mexican President Felipe Calderon opened a new 250-million-dollar plant where it will produce components for the Learjet 85 business aircraft.
(AFP, 10/21/10)
2010 Oct 21, Military-ruled Myanmar unveiled a new national flag. The new flag has horizontal stripes of yellow, green and red with a big white star in the middle. (The three horizontal colors, minus the white star, are identical to the Lithuanian national flag.)
(AP, 10/21/10)
2010 Oct 21, In Niger a statement read on national radio and television said the removal of the junta's second-in-command, intelligence minister, head of the national guard and minister of equipment were related to a coup plot within the national armed forces.
(AP, 10/22/10)
2010 Oct 21, In northwestern Pakistan a roadside bomb killed six Taliban militants, including a prominent local commander, an attack that could have been motivated by tensions between different insurgent groups.
(AP, 10/21/10)
2010 Oct 21, In the southern Philippines a bomb ripped through a passenger bus, killing at least 10 people and wounding nine in an attack authorities say may have been carried out by an extortion gang with links to Muslim militants.
(AP, 10/21/10)
2010 Oct 21, In Russia the Moscow legislature voted to approve Sergei Sobyanin, PM Putin’s chief of staff, as mayor of the city replacing Yuri Luzhkov, who was fired by Pres. Medvedev last month after 18 years in office. Luzhkov has said he believes the true reason behind his ouster was the Kremlin's desire to have a more pliant mayor before parliamentary elections next year and the 2012 presidential vote.
(AP, 10/21/10)
2010 Oct 21, In Somalia a failed offensive by al-Shabab left at least 20 people dead as the Islamist group attempted to recapture a district in the southwest from government forces.
(AP, 10/22/10)
2010 Oct 21, In Syria Venezuelan Pres. Chavez met with his Pres. Bashar Assad on the Mideast leg of an international tour partly intended to counter what he calls US "imperialism."
(AP, 10/21/10)
2010 Oct 21, Thailand said floods in the northeast have left 17 people dead over the last 2 weeks with damages estimated at $650 million. 28 of the country’s 77 provinces were affected.
(SFC, 10/22/10, p.A9)
2010 Oct 21, UNESCO, the UN's cultural and education agency, suspended plans to grant a prize named after Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, Equatorial Guinea's longtime dictator, after human rights groups slammed the award by citing the leader's poor human rights record.
(AP, 10/21/10)
2011 Oct 21, Pres. Obama signed free trade agreements with Colombia, Panama and South Korea.
(Econ, 11/12/11, p.49)(http://tinyurl.com/78rfnuz)
2011 Oct 21, US political operative John Haggerty (42) was convicted of cheating NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg out of some $750,000 of dollars. On Dec 19 Haggerty was sentenced to 1.3 to 4 years in prison.
(SFC, 10/22/11, p.A6)(SFC, 12/19/11, p.A8)
2011 Oct 21, Leo Earl Sharp (87) of Indiana was arrested on drug charges near Ann Arbor after police found 228 pounds of cocaine worth an estimated $2.9 million in his pickup following a routine traffic stop. On Oct 24 a US Magistrate in Detroit released Sharp on $10,000 bond and scheduled a next hearing in the case for November.
(Reuters, 10/24/11)
2011 Oct 21, Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon signed legislation that repealed a law, enacted earlier this year, that had limited online discussions between teachers and students 18 or younger.
(SFC, 10/22/11, p.A6)
2011 Oct 21, In western Oregon Christopher Ochoa (20), a California member of the US Marine Corps Reserves, was shot and killed after a hunter mistook him for a bear.
(AP, 10/22/11)
2011 Oct 21, Hertz said it is firing 25 Somali Muslim drivers at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport who have refused to agree to clock out for daily breaks during which they normally pray. 9 of 34 drivers have signed the agreement and returned to their jobs.
(AP, 10/21/11)
2011 Oct 21, Bolivia’s Pres. Evo Morales said he is abandoning plans to build a highway through a lowlands indigenous reserve after clamor of opposition.
(SFC, 10/22/11, p.A2)
2011 Oct 21, George Daniels (85), English master watchmaker, died.
(Econ, 11/19/11, p.106)
2011 Oct 21, In Chile dozens of protesting students voluntarily left the Senate headquarters they had seized to demand a popular referendum on how to resolve Chile's social problems, especially education.
(AP, 10/21/11)
2011 Oct 21, In China Wang Yue, a 2-year-old girl who was twice run over by vans and then ignored by passers-by on a busy market street on Oct 13, died today, one week after the accident and after days of bitter soul-searching over declining morality in the country. Police soon arrested two drivers suspected of running over a toddler. Hu Jun (24) was charged with causing the wrongful death of the girl.
(AP, 10/21/11)(AP, 10/23/11)(AFP, 10/24/11)
2011 Oct 21, In southwest Colombia 10 soldiers were reported killed and six wounded in an overnight attack, the deadliest guerrilla attack on security forces in more than a year.
(AP, 10/21/11)
2011 Oct 21, Finance ministers from 17 Eurozone countries agreed to pay Greece $11 billion in its next batch of bailout loans, avoiding a potentially disastrous default.
(SFC, 10/22/11, p.A5)
2011 Oct 21, Haitian authorities closed the Son of God orphanage where the director was accused by US missionaries of not feeding children and selling donated goods.
(AP, 10/21/11)
2011 Oct 21, In India the latest in a series of strikes at top car maker Maruti Suzuki came to an end, at a cost of $400 million in lost production and major damage to the group's reputation.
(AFP, 10/21/11)
2011 Oct 21, In Indonesia gunmen shot dead three people at a strike-hit gold and copper mine in the eastern Papua region, raising the number of killings this month to eight at the troubled Grasberg mine, operated by Freeport McMoRan. The strikers, mostly indigenous Melanesians, say they are the lowest paid Freeport workers in the world, earning between $1.50 and $3.50 an hour.
(AFP, 10/21/11)
2011 Oct 21, In Italy renowned international law expert Antonio Cassese (b.1937), died after a long battle with cancer. He had served as first president of the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal and later as president of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon.
(AP, 10/22/11)
2011 Oct 21, A Lithuanian judge found Michael Campbell (39), an Irish man, guilty of trying to buy weapons and explosives in a six-year sting orchestrated by Britain's domestic spy agency MI5, a case that drew attention to a hardcore Irish Republican Army splinter group's plans to spread terror to London. He was sentenced to 12 years in prison for weapons offenses and supporting a terrorist group.
(AP, 10/21/11)
2011 Oct 21, In Mexico a helicopter carrying Mexico state Metropolitan Development Secretary Fernando Garcia and his assistant crashed against a wall and on top of some cars in the Coyoacan borough. A secretary and co-pilot were killed.
(AP, 10/21/11)
2011 Oct 21, A Mexican tractor-trailer crossed into the US for the first time under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), signed in 1994.
(SFC, 10/22/11, p.A6)
2011 Oct 21, NATO announced plans to end its 7-month mission in Libya on October 31 but will issue a formal decision next week after consulting the UN and Libya's interim authorities.
(AFP, 10/22/11)
2011 Oct 21, Niger said the end of the Libyan conflict would allow it to lift restrictions on senior Kadhafi loyalists who sought refuge there, except for deceased leader Moamer Kadhafi's son Saadi.
(AFP, 10/21/11)
2011 Oct 21, Nigerian ex-militant leader, Mujahid Dokubo-Asari, head of the Niger Delta Peoples Volunteer Force, called Moamer Kadhafi a "martyr" and vowed that his killing would be avenged. Asari claims to have lived in Libya and to have had links with Kadhafi.
(AFP, 10/21/11)
2011 Oct 21, In the southern Philippines 3 South Korean businessmen went missing. Officials later said they were abducted by unidentified men who lured them with a fake mining investment project. Police launched a search for Wu Seok-bung, Kim Nam-du, Choi In-soo and at least one Filipino guide after they failed to return to their hotel in Cagayan de Oro city. Choi In-soo escaped on Nov 25. Wu Seok-bung and Kim Nam-du were abandoned on Nov 26 as troops moved in. The guide was killed during captivity.
(AP, 11/7/11)(AP, 11/27/11)
2011 Oct 21, Russia's parliament adopted a law limiting abortions but rejected even tougher restrictions backed by the country's conservative Orthodox Church. The country's birth rate has become a serious concern for Russia as it fights to stem a steep population decline.
(AP, 10/21/11)
2011 Oct 21, South Africa's ruling party's young wing saluted Libya's slain former leader Moamer Kadhafi calling him an "anti-imperialist martyr" and a fighter against the recolonization of the African continent.
(AFP, 10/21/11)
2011 Oct 21, Syrian protesters poured into the streets and shouted that President Bashar Assad's regime will be the next to unravel now that ousted Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi is dead. Syrian forces fired on protesters Friday, killing up to 14 people.
(AP, 10/21/11)
2011 Oct 21, In Thailand millions of nervous Bangkok residents were warned to move their belongings to safety as the kingdom's worst floods in decades poured into the outskirts of the sprawling city.
(AFP, 10/21/11)
2011 Oct 21, A 7.6 earthquake struck off the coast of Tonga, but there were no immediate reports of damage or injuries.
(SFC, 10/22/11, p.A2)
2011 Oct 21, Turkish jets kept up bombing raids on Kurdish rebel bases in northern Iraq overnight, as the rebels confirmed that some Turkish troops crossed into Iraq. Turkey and Iran vowed to collaborate against the PKK and its Iranian wing, the Party of Free Life of Kurdistan, or PJAK, during a visit by Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi.
(AFP, 10/21/11)(AP, 10/22/11)
2011 Oct 21, The UN Security council unanimously passed a resolution that "strongly" condemns the deadly Yemen government attacks on demonstrators and backs a Gulf plan for Pres. Saleh to end his 33 years in power.
(AP, 10/22/11)
2012 Oct 21, George McGovern (90), former US Senator and presidential candidate, died at a hospice in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
(AP, 10/21/12)
2012 Oct 21, A shooting at a spa near a Brookfield, Wis., mall left 3 women dead and four others wounded in a scene of domestic violence. The suspected gunman, Radcliffe Haughton (45), of Brown Deer, Wis., was found dead inside the spa.
(AP, 10/21/12)(SFC, 10/22/12, p.A5)
2012 Oct 21, In Afghanistan a NATO raid in Logar province reportedly killed four children.
(AP, 10/23/12)
2012 Oct 21, In Benin the doctor of Pres. Boni Yayi, Former Minister of Trade Moudjaidou Soumanou and one of the president's nieces Zouberatou Kora were arrested. The next day they were charged with conspiracy and attempted murder in a failed plot to poison the president by changing his medicine with something toxic.
(AP, 10/23/12)
2012 Oct 21, In northwest China Tibetan Lhamo Kyeb (27) called for the Dalai Lama’s return and died after setting himself on fire near the Bhora monastery in Gansu province.
(SFC, 10/22/12, p.A2)
2012 Oct 21, In Guinea-Bissau mutineers were defeated by military loyal to the Chief of General Staff of the Armed Forces, Antonio Indjai. 6 people were killed when a group of soldiers attempted to seize control of a military airbase near the capital. On Oct 27 Coup leader Pansau Ntchama was arrested outside the capital, Bissau. Ntchama had sought exile in Portugal after allegedly carrying out the 2009 assassination of Guinea-Bissau's former president.
(AP, 10/21/12)(AP, 10/28/12)
2012 Oct 21, Israel's PM Netanyahu vowed on to continue building in east Jerusalem, despite objections from Palestinians who claim the territory as capital of their hoped-for state.
(AP, 10/21/12)
2012 Oct 21, Jordanian officials said 11 men with suspected links to al-Qaida have been charged with terrorism conspiracy for allegedly planning attacks on shopping malls and Western diplomatic missions.
(AP, 10/21/12)
2012 Oct 21, In Libya clashes in Bani Walid entered their fifth day. The state news agency said 22 pro-government militiamen were killed in an assault on late dictator Moammar Gadhafi's last stronghold.
(AP, 10/21/12)
2012 Oct 21, Mali's government troops killed about 10 men near the town of Diabaly and soldiers reportedly recovered two shotguns along with ammunition. A relative later said the men were Tuareg animal herders — not criminals. He believed the deaths stemmed from a decade-long rivalry between two families in the area, one of which had ties to a soldier in the Malian army.
(AP, 10/31/12)
2012 Oct 21, Myanmar's reformist Pres. Thein Sein held his first press conference for local press, a milestone after years of secrecy and censorship by the former military regime. In western Myanmar fresh clashes between Muslims and Buddhists broke out, leaving at least three people dead and hundreds of homes burned to the ground in Rakhine state’s Min Bya township.
(AP, 10/21/12)(AP, 10/23/12)(SFC, 10/24/12, p.A2)
2012 Oct 21, In Syria a taxi rigged with explosives blew up near a police station in Damascus, killing at least 13 people even as the UN envoy to the nation's crisis was visiting to push his call for a cease-fire in talks with President Bashar Assad.
(AP, 10/21/12)
2012 Oct 21, Pope Benedict XVI added seven more saints onto the roster of Catholic role models in a bid to reinvigorate the faith in parts of the world where it's lagging. They included Kateri Tekakwitha, the first Native American saint from the US; Mother Marianne Cope, a 19th century Franciscan nun who cared for leprosy patients in Hawaii; Pedro Calungsod, a 17th century Filipino teenage martyr; Jacques Berthieu, a 19th century French Jesuit who was killed by rebels in Madagascar; Giovanni Battista Piamarta, an Italian who founded a religious order in 1900 and established a Catholic printing and publishing house in his native Brescia; Carmen Salles y Barangueras, a Spanish nun who founded a religious order to educate children in 1892; and Anna Schaeffer, a 19th century German lay woman who became a model for the sick and suffering after she fell into a boiler and badly burned her legs.
(AP, 10/21/12)
2013 Oct 21, Pres. Obama urged American to buy health insurance by phone, mail and in person because the website for Obamacare was not working.
(Econ, 10/26/13, p.33)
2013 Oct 21, US authorites said nearly two dozen current and former members of Arizona’s Air National Guard have been indicted on charges including theft and money laundering in a $1.4 million scam to defraud the federal government. The 8 officers and 13 enlisted men and women had been resposible for remotely operating drones to support troops in Afghanistan and Iraq.
(SFC, 10/22/13, p.A6)
2013 Oct 21, San Francisco Bay Area BART workers ended their strike with a tentative agreement between the transit agency and its two largest unions. Trains began running Oct 22. Workers scored a 15.4% pay raises over four years as well as other benefits.
(SFC, 10/22/13, p.A1)(SFC, 10/22/13, p.A9)
2013 Oct 21, In Nevada a boy (12) opened fire with a 9mm semiautomatic Ruger handgun at Sparks Middle School killing math teacher Michael Landsberry (45) and critically wounding two students before killing himself.
(AFP, 10/21/13)(SFC, 10/22/12, p.A6)(SFC, 10/22/12, p.A6)
2013 Oct 21, New Jersey became the 14th US state to allow same-sex marriages.
(SFC, 10/22/13, p.A6)
2013 Oct 21, In Afghanistan a bomb stuck onto a car killed a civilian in downtown Kabul. Authorities are unclear as to the motives for the attack.
(AP, 10/21/13)
2013 Oct 21, Brazil said a consortium including Shell, Total, two Chinese firms and Brazil's state-run petroleum company Petrobras won the right to develop an offshore field that could hold up to 12 billion barrels of oil.
(AP, 10/21/13)
2013 Oct 21, A disciplinary body of China’s Communist Party said anti-graft authorities have punished 8 people at a state-owned rail construction firm for spending more than $100 million on hospitality last year.
(Reuters, 10/21/13)
2013 Oct 21, In China visibility shrank to less than half a football field and small-particle pollution soared to a record 40 times higher than an international safety standard in the northern city of Harbin as the region entered its high-smog season.
(AP, 10/21/13)
2013 Oct 21, In Egypt thousands of students from the al-Azhar University staged a third day of protests, in one of the boldest challenges to the army since it toppled Islamist President Mohamed Mursi in July.
(Reuters, 10/21/13)
2013 Oct 21, Europe's top human rights court ordered Spain to release a Basque separatist militant, saying her extended detention was illegal, a ruling victims groups warned would let dozens of prisoners walk free. Ines del Rio was jailed in 1989 for her role in 23 assassinations and car bombings carried out by the Basque independence movement ETA.
(Reuters, 10/21/13)
2013 Oct 21, A Le Monde newspaper report said the US National Security Agency swept up 70.3 million French telephone records in a 30-day period and offered new details of the massive scope of a surveillance operation that has angered some of the country's closest allies.
(AP, 10/21/13)
2013 Oct 21, In India heavy rains began falling in Andhra Pradesh and Orissa states. 39 people were reported dead from flooding by Oct 26.
(SSFC, 10/27/13, p.A4)
2013 Oct 21, In Iraq militants attacked police and electricity headquarters in Fallujah, killing 7 police officers.
(AP, 10/21/13)
2013 Oct 21, Israel recognized NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg as the first ever recipient of the $1 million Genesis Prize, an award popularly dubbed the "Jewish Nobel Prize."
(AP, 10/21/13)
2013 Oct 21, Mozambique ex-rebel group Renamo declared the end of a peace deal signed 21 years ago after the army seized its military base.
(AFP, 10/21/13)
2013 Oct 21, Nigerian troops killed 37 Boko Haram Islamist militants in combined air and ground strikes on one of their northeast bases.
(Reuters, 10/22/13)
2013 Oct 21, Nigerian officials said cholera has killed 50 people in the northwest in the past week.
(AFP, 10/21/13)
2013 Oct 21, In southwest Pakistan at least 5 passengers were killed and 16 wounded when a train was bombed and derailed.
(Reuters, 10/21/13)
2013 Oct 21, In Russia female suicide bomber Naida Asiyalova (30) struck a passenger bus in the southern city of Volgograd, killing 6 people and injuring 32 others. The suspected bomber was from Dagestan.
(AP, 10/21/13)(AP, 10/22/13)(SFC, 10/22/13, p.A2)
2013 Oct 21, South African prosecutors said a man arrested on suspicion of raping and murdering two toddlers in a Johannesburg slum has confessed, after the case sparked violent riots last week.
(AFP, 10/21/13)
2013 Oct 21, Spain's oil company Repsol announced a high quality light oil find in Libya's Sahara Desert.
(AP, 10/21/13)
2013 Oct 21, In Syria government warplanes launched strikes on areas southeast of Damascus after rebels seized key regime positions there. Residents of Moadamiyeh issued an urgent plea for the int’l. community to save them from starvation and constant bombardment after efforts to evacuate civilians from the area collapsed. Yasser al-Abboud, a prominent army defector who became a rebel leader, was killed during fighting in the town of Tafas.
(AFP, 10/21/13)(AP, 10/21/13)(SFC, 10/22/13, p.A4)
2013 Oct 21, The party of Ukraine's jailed opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko (52) rejected President Viktor Yanukovich's terms for her release and European envoys said time was running out to solve a row threatening agreements with the EU.
(Reuters, 10/21/13)
2013 Oct 21, The Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force said more than 300 elephants and other animals died in July of cyanide poisoning by poachers in Hwange, Zimbabwe's largest game park. Three elephants attacked a park ranger and trampled him to death during an anti-poaching patrol in the Hwange nature reserve.
(AFP, 10/21/13)(AP, 10/23/13)
2014 Oct 21, Ben Bradlee (93), the hard-driving editor who reigned over the Washington Post, died. His work included guiding young reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein as they traced a 1972 burglary at Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate office and apartment complex back to the Nixon White House.
(AP, 10/22/14)
2014 Oct 21, Jeffrey Fowle (56), arrested in May for leaving a Bible at a sailor's club in the North Korean city of Chongjin, was freed and flown home on a US government plane to Dayton, Ohio.
(Reuters, 10/22/14)
2014 Oct 21, In Pennsylvania 84 former students who were sexually molested by Franciscan Brother Stephen Baker at a Catholic high school in Altoona settled their legal claims for $8 million. Baker worked at the school as an athletic trainer from 1992 to 2001.
(SFC, 10/22/14, p.A7)
2014 Oct 21, In Abu Dhabi Robert Alan Black (70), an American man who came to the United Arab Emirates to speak at a conference on creative thinking, was arrested for taking a photograph of a subject deemed off-limits by authorities.
(AP, 11/3/14)
2014 Oct 21, In Afghanistan at least four were been killed in a roadside bomb attack on a bus in Kabul.
(AP, 10/21/14)
2014 Oct 21, Former Australian PM Gough Whitlam (98) died at a nursing home in Sydney. His government (1972-1975) was credited with instituting lasting social reforms during a short tenure that ended in a bitter constitutional crisis.
(AP, 10/21/14)(Econ, 11/1/14, p.86)
2014 Oct 21, The tail end of Hurricane Gonzalo brought high winds and travel chaos to Britain. One woman was found dead under a fallen tree in west London.
(AFP, 10/21/14)
2014 Oct 21, Hong Kong student leaders and government officials talked but agreed on as the city's Beijing-backed leader reaffirmed his unwillingness to compromise on the key demand of activists camped in the streets now for a fourth week.
(AP, 10/21/14)
2014 Oct 21, In Indonesia Robert Ellis (60), a British man, was found dead with his throat slashed and dumped in a ditch on the resort island of Bali. His Indonesian wife admitted to the killing day later.
(AFP, 10/22/14)
2014 Oct 21, In Iraq a series of bombs targeting restaurants across Baghdad killed at least 21 people.
(Reuters, 10/21/14)
2014 Oct 21, In Mexico 19 suspected drug gang members died in three nearly simultaneous confrontations between the towns of Reynosa and Matamoros, Tamaulipas state.
(SFC, 10/23/14, p.A2)
2014 Oct 21, Pakistan Air Force jets hit terrorist hideouts in North Waziristan killing 30 militants including Taliban commander Daud Wazir.
(SSFC, 10/26/14, p.A4)
2014 Oct 21, The Portuguese government's plan to privatize debt-heavy public transport companies met tough opposition from trade unions as Lisbon subway workers walked off the job for the 12th time this year.
(AP, 10/21/14)
2014 Oct 21, A Saudi court sentenced 13 people to prison for planning a series of attacks against US forces in Qatar and Kuwait. 11 Saudis, a Qatari and an Afghan national were given varying sentences of between 18 months to 30 years in prison.
(AP, 10/22/14)
2014 Oct 21, In Sierra Leone a machete-wielding mob clashed with security personnel in the eastern town of Koidu and then went on a rampage, after preventing a medical team from taking the blood from the 90-year-old mother of a youth leader. Two people were killed.
(AP, 10/22/14)
2014 Oct 21, In South Africa Olympic and Paralympic sprinter Oscar Pistorius was sentenced to five years in prison for killing his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp on Feb 13, 2013.
(Reuters, 10/21/14)
2014 Oct 21, Sri Lankan trade unions, opposition politicians and activists protested, demanding the government include substantial pay increases in the annual budget presented this week.
(AP, 10/21/14)
2014 Oct 21, In Syria Islamic State won territory from government forces in the eastern city of Deir al-Zor, its first gain there in about two months. A monitoring group reported that a man and a woman have been stoned to death for adultery in separate executions in jihadist-controlled areas. Government airstrikes hit the rebel-held town of Nasib, along the country's southern border with Jordan, killing at least 8 people.
(Reuters, 10/21/14)(AP, 10/21/14)(SFC, 10/22/14, p.A4)
2014 Oct 21, In central Yemen Sunni Al Qaeda militants and Shi'ite Muslim rebels fought a bloody battle. 30 Shi'ite rebels and 18 Sunni fighters and their tribal allies were reported killed in the clashes in Radda, al-Bayda province.
(Reuters, 10/22/14)
2014 Oct 21, Nguyen Van Hai, one of Vietnam's most prominent bloggers, arrived in the US after being freed from prison in Vietnam. Hai, alias Dieu Cay, was sentenced to 12 years in September 2012 by a court in southern Vietnam on charges of anti-state propaganda.
(AFP, 10/22/14)
2015 Oct 21, VP Joe Biden said he would not seek the Democratic nomination in the 2016 presidential campaign.
(SFC, 10/22/15, p.A7)
2015 Oct 21, The US-led coalition fighting Islamic State targeted the militant group with 22 air strikes in Syria and Iraq.
(Reuters, 10/22/15)
2015 Oct 21, It was reported that Ohio is delaying executions until at least 2017 while prison officials try to secure supplies of hard-to-obtain lethal injection drugs.
(SFC, 10/21/15, p.A9)
2015 Oct 21, US Marine Corps pilot Maj. Taj Sareen was killed when his F/A-18 Hornet crashed on farmland after taking off from a US Air Force (USAF) base in eastern England.
(Reuters, 10/21/15)(SFC, 10/22/15, p.A4)
2015 Oct 21, Ferrari, an Italy-based car company owned by Fiat Chrysler, went public with a 10% stake on the NYSE and closed up almost 6% at $55.
(SFC, 10/22/15, p.C5)(Econ, 10/17/15, p.69)
2015 Oct 21, Western Digital, a maker of hard drives, said it is buying SanDisk, a flash-memory chip maker, in a cash and stock deal valued at about $19 billion.
(SFC, 10/22/15, p.C3)
2015 Oct 21, YouTube announced a monthly subscription service, starting at $10, for YouTube Red, allowing users to play videos without ads, offline and in the background while using other apps.
(SFC, 10/22/15, p.C1)
2015 Oct 21, The Bahraini Court of Appeals confirmed the conviction of political activist Zainab al-Khawaja (32) and reduced her sentence from three to one year in prison for ripping up a photo of the king in court in 2014. Her family told Amnesty Int’l. that she intended to keep her infant son with her in prison if forced to serve her sentence.
(Reuters, 10/21/15)
2015 Oct 21, Brazil's opposition filed a new impeachment petition against President Dilma Rousseff, accusing her of illegal accounting practices.
(AFP, 10/21/15)
2015 Oct 21, China’s Communist Party Central Committee officially banned golf for its 88 million Communist Party members. Also banned was excessive eating and drinking and having improper sexual relations.
(SFC, 10/23/15, p.A3)(Econ, 10/31/15, p.44)
2015 Oct 21, PM David Cameron said Britain and China have signed deals worth around 40 billion pounds ($62 billion), during a state visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping. Britain sanctioned a $9.3 billion investment by a Chinese state power company in a nuclear power plant being built at Hinkley Point by EDF, a French company.
(Reuters, 10/21/15)(Econ, 10/24/15, p.53)
2015 Oct 21, British police arrested Shao Jiang (47), a survivor of the Tiananmen Square crackdown and raided his home, after he stepped out in front of Chinese President Xi Jinping's motorcade.
(AFP, 10/23/15)
2015 Oct 21, In Cameroon 8 villagers in the village of Doulo were killed and nine injured in a raid by Nigerian Islamist group Boko Haram that was followed by a gun battle between militants and security forces.
(Reuters, 10/22/15)
2015 Oct 21, More than 100 migrants crowded into two boats landed at a British airbase on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus, bringing the crisis that has rocked much of Europe to British sovereign soil.
(AFP, 10/21/15)
2015 Oct 21, In eastern China an explosion at a chemical factory killed 9 people and injured two others.
(AP, 10/21/15)
2015 Oct 21, The European Union demanded that Starbucks and Fiat repay up to 30 million euros ($34 million) each in back taxes.
(AP, 10/21/15)
2015 Oct 21, Refugees from Asian wars crossed into Slovenia from Croatia as border closures elsewhere forced them to find new routes to rich European countries and concern grew over the plight of those stranded in wet, freezing weather.
(Reuters, 10/21/15)
2015 Oct 21, Guam authorities arrested Lourdes Fernandez Blas (44), a Department of Revenue and Taxation employee, suspected of taking bribes while on the job. Two other suspects in the case, Kupwo Kelep Kerwin (30) and Ringko Sammurai (39), were also arrested and all three were released.
(AP, 10/22/15)
2015 Oct 21, Police in northern India arrested four men over allegations that they burnt alive two low-caste children. An officials said the incident was a family feud and not related to caste violence.
(Reuters, 10/21/15)
2015 Oct 21, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei approved the country’s nuclear deal with world powers but said Tehran should not give up core elements of its atomic program until allegations of past military dimensions had been settled.
(Reuters, 10/21/15)
2015 Oct 21, An Israeli female soldier (19) was wounded in a stabbing near a West Bank settlement while the attacker was shot dead. Hours later five Israeli soldiers were run over by a Palestinian driver in the West Bank. A Jewish Israeli man (28) was shot and killed in a scuffle with Israeli soldiers who suspected he was a Palestinian attacker. Two alleged Palestinian attackers attempted to board a bus carrying children west of Jerusalem, and stabbed an Israeli before being shot.
(AFP, 10/21/15)(AP, 10/22/15)(AFP, 10/22/15)(SSFC, 10/25/15, p.A8)
2015 Oct 21, Japanese Buddhist monk Kogen Kamahori (41) finished a grueling nine-day ritual without eating, drinking, or sleeping as he chanted sutras 100,000 times at Mount Hieizan.
(AFP, 10/21/15)
2015 Oct 21, Japan-based Toyota Motor Corp. said it is recalling 6.5 million vehicles worldwide for a defective power window switch that can overheat, melt and lead to fires.
(AP, 10/21/15)
2015 Oct 21, Mexican police announced the capture of six people believed responsible for the July 11 prison break by Joaquin Guzman.
(SFC, 10/22/15, p.A2)
2015 Oct 21, Mexican authorities discovered an elaborate, rail equipped drug tunnel that ran from Tijuana to well into San Diego. They seized about ten tons of marijuana.
(SFC, 10/23/15, p.D4)
2015 Oct 21, In northern Syria a new administration was formed for a majority Sunni-Arab town controlled by Syrian Kurds, expanding the ethnic group's semi-autonomous administration. A local leadership council including representatives of Tel Abyad's Arab, Kurdish, Turkmen and Armenian communities declared it part of the system of autonomous self-government established by the Kurds.
(AP, 10/21/15)(Reuters, 10/21/15)
2015 Oct 21, Two Niger soldiers were killed in a suicide attack by a group of suspected Boko Haram militants in the southeastern region of Diffa.
(Reuters, 10/21/15)
2015 Oct 21, In the Philippines 2 Chinese diplomats were killed and the consul-general was wounded by a Chinese attacker armed with a pistol during a birthday celebration at a restaurant.
(AP, 10/21/15)
2015 Oct 21, Russia said its jets have hit 83 targets in Syria over the past 24 hours.
(AFP, 10/21/15)
2015 Oct 21, In Singapore Pastor Kong Hee of the City Harvest Church was convicted along with five other church officials on charges related to the misuse of $36 million to promote the career of Kong’s wife, Ho Yeow, a singer also known as Sun Ho.
(SFC, 10/22/15, p.A6)
2015 Oct 21, South African riot police fired stun grenades at hundreds of protesting students who stormed the parliament precinct in Cape Town to try to disrupt the reading of Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene's interim budget.
(Reuters, 10/21/15)
2015 Oct 21, Swiss-based Credit Suisse said it plans to cut at least 3,400 jobs over three years in Britain and Switzerland and raise billions in a new share offering after its net profit fell 24 percent in the third quarter.
(AP, 10/21/15)
2015 Oct 21, in Tanzania attackers overnight tried to hack the genitals off a man with albinism. Presidential and parliamentary polls due Oct 25 have been marked by fears of a spike in albino murders, with rights groups warning that some politicians may also be seeking lucky charms or "witchcraft" potions.
(AFP, 10/23/15)
2015 Oct 21, The UN's cultural body approved a resolution from a group of Arab states criticizing Israel for failing to protect heritage sites and rebuild regions destroyed by war.
(AFP, 10/21/15)
2015 Oct 21, In Yemen at least 22 civilians were killed and several others wounded as rockets allegedly fired by rebels crashed into the city of Taez.
(AFP, 10/21/15)
2016 Oct 21, Former California state Sen. Ron Calderon was sentenced to 3½ years in prison in a corruption scandal in which he acknowledged taking bribes in exchange for his influence in Sacramento.
(SFC, 10/21/16, p.A7)
2016 Oct 21, Reports of online disruption cropped up across the East Coast of the United States after a key internet firm was hit by a cyberattack. Manchester, New Hampshire-based Dyn, Inc. said its server infrastructure was hit by a distributed denial-of-service attack, which works by overwhelming targeted machines with junk traffic.
(AP, 10/21/16)
2016 Oct 21, CIA operatives Brian Ray Hoke (b.1974) and Nathaniel Patrick Delemarre died in Afghanistan after a firefight with Islamic State militants in Jalalabad.
(http://tinyurl.com/ybnawbdb)(SFC, 9/7/17 p.A12)
2016 Oct 21, Prosecutors from Belgium, France, Morocco and Spain called for the ability to unlock phones and computers and to gain access to encrypted communications to aid in the fight against terrorism following a 2-day meeting in Paris.
(AP, 10/21/16)
2016 Oct 21, British American Tobacco offered to buy Reynolds American Inc. in a $47 billion deal that would create the world's largest publicly traded tobacco company and attempt to make up for a decline in smoking in the US and Europe.
(AP, 10/21/16)
2016 Oct 21, In Cameroon an overloaded train derailed killing at least 79 people. More than 600 were injured.
(AP, 10/22/16)(AFP, 10/24/16)
2016 Oct 21, Police in China's central city of Wuhan detained a person, surnamed Rong, for spreading rumors in what a state-run newspaper said was a video purportedly showing a demonstration involving workers at Wuhan Iron and Steel (Wugang).
(Reuters, 10/23/16)
2016 Oct 21, Typhoon Haima barreled into southern China after hammering the northern Philippines with ferocious wind and rain, triggering flooding, landslides and power outages and killing at least 13 people.
(AP, 10/21/16)
2016 Oct 21, Indian banks scrambled to contain the damage after finding that more than 3.2 million debit cards may have been hacked.
(AP, 10/21/16)
2016 Oct 21, In India a smartphone application was launched that allows residents to report the presence of construction dust or the burning of leaves and garbage in New Delhi's public parks to authorities. The phone app was launched by the Environmental Pollution (Prevention and Control) Authority, a monitoring group set up on the order of India's Supreme Court in April.
(AP, 10/22/16)
2016 Oct 21, Islamic State militants armed with assault rifles and explosives attacked targets in and around the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk, in an assault that appeared aimed at diverting Iraqi security forces from a massive offensive against the IS-held city of Mosul. At least 13 workers, including four Iranians, were killed. IS militants stormed a power plant north of Kirkuk and then blew themselves up. A local TV reporter was killed by a sniper while covering the clashes.
(AP, 10/21/16)
2016 Oct 21, The UN said Islamic State militants have taken 550 families from villages around Mosul and are holding them close to Islamic State locations in the city, probably as human shields.
(Reuters, 10/21/16)
2016 Oct 21, In Russia 3 crew members and 16 passengers died when the Russian-made Mi-8 helicopter came down late today in adverse weather conditions in northwest Siberia.
(Reuters, 10/22/16)
2016 Oct 21, Singapore posted new public speaking rules, clarifying that foreign companies and individuals need a permit to sponsor or take part in certain events, in an amendment that will restrict foreign support for an annual gay-rights gathering.
(Reuters, 10/21/16)
2016 Oct 21, South Africa announced that it would withdraw from the International Criminal Court (ICC), dealing a major blow to a troubled institution set up to try the world's worst crimes.
(AFP, 10/21/16)
2017 Oct 21, US President Donald Trump said he will allow long blocked secret files on the 1963 assassination of John F Kennedy to be opened to the public for the first time. The files were due to be opened in their entirety on Oct. 26.
(AFP, 10/21/17)
2017 Oct 21, US Customs and Border Protection agency refused entry to Indonesia’s military chief General Gatot Nurmantyo. He was due to attend a conference in Washington at the request of General Joseph F. Dunford, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff. Earlier this year Nurmantyo abruptly suspended all military cooperation with Australia in a row over teaching materials, and has been rebuked by members of Widodo's cabinet for making misleading public remarks.
(AFP, 10/22/17)
2017 Oct 21, Derrick Johnson (49) of Jackson, Miss., was hired as the 19th president and CEO of the NAACP after having served as interim leader since July.
{Mississippi, USA, Black History}
(SSFC, 10/22/17, p.A8)
2017 Oct 21, In Chandler, Oklahoma, a crossbow arrow, fired by a 13-year-old, entered the left side of Austin Almanza (10) in the area of his lower torso, kept traveling and stuck in the arm of Austin's brother, Ayden(8). Austin was pronounced dead at the scene. In 2018 prosecutors charged the 13-year-old with first-degree murder.
(http://tinyurl.com/y79xszmj)(SFC, 1/20/18, p.A6)
2017 Oct 21, In Texas all five of America's living former presidents took the stage at a benefit concert at Texas A&M to raise money for victims of the hurricane-ravaged southern United States and Caribbean.
(AFP, 10/22/17)
2017 Oct 21, American author Donald Bain (b.1935) died in White Plains, NY. His 125 books included the supposed memoir of two stewardesses “Coffee, Tea or Me" (1967) and 46 “Murder, She Wrote" mysteries, inspired by the TV series of the same name.
(SFC, 10/27/17, p.D5)
2017 Oct 21, In Afghanistan a suicide attacker detonated a car full of explosives on outside the country’s top military training center in Kabul, killing at 14 cadets.
(Reuters, 10/21/17)(SSFC, 10/22/17, p.A4)
2017 Oct 21, In Australia thousands of people rallied around the country urging the legalization of same-sex marriage, one week before final ballots can be submitted in a contentious postal survey on the issue that has divided the country.
(Reuters, 10/21/17)
2017 Oct 21, In Belarus some 200 people rallied in Minsk, calling for the resignation of President Alexander Lukashenko, who has ruled the former Soviet republic since 1994.
(AP, 10/21/17)
2017 Oct 21, In the Czech Rep. the populist ANO (YES) party scored a landslide victory in parliamentary elections. The party of billionaire businessman Andrej Babis almost doubled its number of seats, winning 78 in the 200-seat lower house of Parliament.
(AP, 10/23/17)
2017 Oct 21, India's central bank dismissed media reports that it was not necessary to link national identity card numbers, known as Aadhar numbers, to bank accounts. It said the requirement remained in force under anti-money laundering rules.
(Reuters, 10/21/17)
2017 Oct 21, In eastern Indonesia gunmen launched attacks near a US-owned gold and copper mine, wounding two policemen and a civilian. Freeport Indonesia is a unit of Phoenix, Arizona-based Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc. The gunmen were said to be from the Free Papua Movement.
(AP, 10/21/17)
2017 Oct 21, The Israeli army attacked Syrian government artillery after fire across the armistice line hit the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and warned it would step up such retaliation in the future. Five projectiles from Syria set off air raid sirens in Israeli towns.
(AFP, 10/21/17)(Reuters, 10/21/17)
2017 Oct 21, In northwestern Malaysia eleven foreign workers were killed in a landslide at a construction site in George Town, Penang Island.
(Reuters, 10/22/17)
2017 Oct 21, Malta's government offered a 1-million ($1.18 million) reward and full protection for anyone with information on the Oct. 16 car bomb killing of investigative reporter Daphne Caruana Galizia.
(AP, 10/21/17)
2017 Oct 21, In Niger 13 paramilitary police were killed in a fresh attack in the restive southwest, just weeks after a deadly ambush on a joint US-Niger patrol.
(AP, 10/21/17)(Reuters, 10/21/17)(SSFC, 10/22/17, p.A4)
2017 Oct 21, Pirates In Nigerian waters attacked the Liberia-flagged container ship MV Demeter. Six crew members were kidnapped. Those kidnapped comprise four Filipinos, one Ukrainian and one Hungarian. On Nov. 12 a German shipping company said pirates have released the six crewmembers who were taken hostage from the vessel.
(Reuters, 10/24/17)(AP, 11/12/17)
2017 Oct 21, In Pakistan rescue workers recovered the bodies of seven of nine mine workers who were buried under a landslide in the country's southwest.
(AP, 10/21/17)
2017 Oct 21, In Romania several hundred people rallied in Bucharest to urge that civil partnerships be legally recognized so that unmarried cohabitants can enjoy expanded rights.
(AP, 10/21/17)
2017 Oct 21, Somalia's president urged troops to prepare for a "state of war" against the al-Shabab extremist group blamed for the country's deadliest attack, as the toll reached 358 with dozens still said to be missing a week after the truck bombing in Mogadishu.
(AP, 10/21/17)
2017 Oct 21, Spain’s PM Mariano Rajoy stripped Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont and his regional executive of their jobs and took over their ministries for holding a banned independence referendum on October 1.
(AFP, 10/22/17)
2017 Oct 21, Syrian government forces and their allies regained control of Qaryatay, a predominantly Christian central town that sleeper cells of the Islamic State group captured late last month.
(AP, 10/21/17)
2017 Oct 21, The Tanzanian government said it had suspended the Community Health Education Services and Advocacy center (CHESA). The NGO stands accused of organizing a workshop on Oct 17 for gay couples in a hotel in Dar es Salaam.
(AFP, 10/21/17)
2018 Oct 21, Charles Wang (74), the founder Computer Associates (1976), now called CA Technologies, and former owner of the New York Islanders hockey team, died in Oyster Bay, New York.
(AP, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 21, Afghans unable to vote in yesterday's parliamentary election after hundreds of polling stations failed to open were given another chance to cast their ballot after voting times were extended despite security threats and warnings of fraud. A roadside bomb brought the death toll over the past two days to over 50, including several children.
(Reuters, 10/21/18)(AP, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 21, The Green Climate Fund said it has approved more than $1 billion in new investments after a four-day meeting in Bahrain. The UN-backed fund approved 19 new projects, including a program to protect freshwater resources in Bahrain.
(AP, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 21, Officials from Chad and South Africa said two of six critically endangered black rhinos have died of unknown causes five months after being flown from South Africa to Chad in a pioneering project to re-introduce the animals. The carcasses of the cow and bull were discovered on October 15.
(AFP, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 21, In northern China three individuals died after they were attacked in public early today in Wenan County, Hebei province.
(Reuters, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 21, Residents on the Comoros island of Anjouan slowly returned to their daily lives after a six-day siege in the old quarter of Mutsamudu city. The island's governor Abdou Salami Abdou, a member of the opposition Juwa party, surrendered to the police, but denied any links to the armed rebels.
(AFP, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 21, Egypt's parliament voted to extend a state of emergency in the country for three months, prolonging the authorities' ability to use special powers into 2019.
(Reuters, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 21, Egypt arrested economist Abdel-Khaleq Farouq and his publisher, Ibrahim el-Khateib, over a book that challenged Pres. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi's economic policies. The book — entitled "Is Egypt Really a Poor Country?" — has not been published, but was posted online by activists. On Oct. 29 an Egyptian court released Abdul Khalik Farouk and the owner of the print shop that published his book.
(AP, 10/23/18)(Reuters, 10/30/18)
2018 Oct 21, Multinational giants Siemens and General Electric say they have signed memorandums of understanding with Iraq to rebuild the country's electricity infrastructure.
(AP, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 21, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu said he has decided to postpone the planned demolition of a West Bank hamlet to allow time for a negotiated solution with its residents, in a move that appeared aimed at staving off the fierce international condemnation such a demolition would likely entail.
(AP, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 21, Jordan's King Abdullah II said he has decided not to renew parts of his country's landmark peace treaty with Israel. Abdullah released a statement that he intends to pull out of two annexes from the 1994 peace agreement that allowed Israel to lease two small areas, Baqura and Ghamr, from the Jordanians for 25 years.
(AP, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 21, In disputed Kashmir three local rebels were killed in a gunbattle with Indian government forces, and six civilians were killed in an explosion at the site after the fighting was over. 3 Indian army soldiers and two suspected militants were killed in a gunbattle along the militarized line of control dividing Kashmir between India and Pakistan. The death toll of civilians climbed to seven as another injured young man died at a hospital the next day.
(AP, 10/21/18)(AP, 10/22/18)
2018 Oct 21, The Maldives' top court dismissed the outgoing president's petition seeking an annulment of last month's presidential election result. The five-member Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the election was conducted within the law.
(AP, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 21, Despite Mexican efforts to stop them at the border, a growing throng of Central American migrants resumed their advance toward the US border early today in southern Mexico. Their numbers swelled to about 5,000 overnight and at first light they set out walking toward the Mexican town of Tapachula.
(AP, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 21, In northern Morocco a migrant died and 19 others were hurt after around 200 people scaled a fence to enter Spain's Melilla enclave.
(AFP, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 21, Nigerian police said communal violence in the northern state of Kaduna over the last few days has killed 55 people.
(Reuters, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 21, A Norwegian citizen of Iranian background was arrested in Sweden in connection with a plot to assassinate an Iranian Arab opposition figure in Denmark. He was extradited to Denmark. The attack was meant to target the leader of the Danish branch of the Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahvaz (ASMLA).
(AP, 10/30/18)
2018 Oct 21, Polish voters cast ballots in local elections that were the first nationwide test of support for the conservative ruling party. A pro-European Union opposition party defeated the ruling conservatives in local elections in Warsaw. The ruling populist party, Law and Justice, won 254 of the 552 seats in regional assemblies in local elections, with 194 going to the key opposition coalition.
(AP, 10/21/18)(AP, 10/24/18)(AP, 10/25/18)
2018 Oct 21, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said that a unilateral withdrawal by the United States from a landmark 1987 Cold War-era treaty that eliminated nuclear missiles from Europe would be "very dangerous" and lead to a "military-technical" retaliation.
(Reuters, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 21, Exchange data showed that foreigners sold a net 4.01 billion riyals ($1.07 billion) in Saudi stocks in the week ending October 18, - one of the biggest selloffs since the market opened to direct foreign buying in mid-2015.
(Reuters, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 21, It was reported that the Sagrada Familia basilica in Barcelona, Spain, has agreed to pay about $41 million over ten years to settle a dispute over the legality of ongoing work and help pay for transportation improvements around the structure designed by Antoni Gaudi (1852-1926).
(SSFC, 10/21/18, p.A12)
2018 Oct 21, A Spanish firefighter died overnight while emergency services responded to flash floods caused by heavy rain in southern Spain.
(AP, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 21, In Syria an explosion in the rebel-held northwestern city of Idlib killed at least three people and wounded others.
(AP, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 21, One of Taiwan's fastest passenger trains derailed on a curve along a popular weekend route, killing 18 people and injuring 187 others.
(AP, 10/21/18)(AP, 10/22/18)
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