Today in History - December 9
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Int’l. Anti-Corruption Day. On 31 October 2003, the General Assembly adopted the United Nations Convention against Corruption and requested that the Secretary-General designate the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) as secretariat for the Convention’s Conference of States Parties (resolution 58/4).
(Econ, 12/15/12, p.61)(www.un.org/en/events/anticorruptionday/)
For Asia History: https://www.asiaobserver.org/category/news/on-this-day-in-asian-history
536 Dec 9, Having captured Naples earlier in the year, Belisarius took Rome.
(HN, 12/9/98)
1165 Dec 9, Malcom IV (24), king of Scotland (1153-65), died.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1292 Dec 9, Sa'di, great Persian poet (Orchard, Rose Garden), died.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1437 Dec 9, Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor, died. Major Czech factions had accepted Sigismund as king of Bohemia prior to his death.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigismund%2C_Holy_Roman_Emperor)
1561 Dec 9, Edwin Sandys, a founder of the Virginia colony, was born.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1565 Dec 9, Pius IV (66), [Gianangelo de' Medici], Italian Pope (1559-65), died.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1569 Dec 9, Martinus de Porres, saint (patron of social justice), was born in Peru.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1594 Dec 9, Gustavus II Adolphus (d.1632), king who made Sweden a major power (1611-32), was born.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1608 Dec 9, English blind poet and polemical pamphleteer John Milton (1608-1674) was born in London. His work included “Paradise Lost," Paradise Regained," and “Samson Agonistes." Milton lost one eye at 36 and the other when he was 44. In 1996 Paul West wrote a novel: “Sporting with Amaryllis," that begins in 1626 and gives a fictional account of his life. In 1997 Peter Levy wrote a biography of Milton titled: “Eden Renewed."
(WUD, '94, p.911)(WSJ, 5/6/97, p.A20)(AP, 12/9/97)
1640 Dec 9, Settler Hugh Bewitt was banished from the Mass colony when he declared himself to be free of original sin.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1641 Dec 9, Anthonie "Antoon" van Dyck (42), Flemish painter, died.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1688 Dec 9, King James II's wife and son fled England for France.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1717 Dec 9, Johann J. Winckelmann, German archaeologist (History of Ancient Art), was born.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1724 Dec 9, Colley Cibber's "Caesar in Aegypt," premiered in London.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1738 Dec 9, Jews were expelled from Breslau, Silesia.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1742 Dec 9, Carl W. Scheele, Swedish pharmacist and chemist (lemon acid), was born.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1747 Dec 9, England and Netherlands signed a military treaty.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1767 Dec 9, Benedetto Alfieri, Italian architect (San Giovanni Battista), died.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1770 Dec 9, Gottlieb Theophil Muffat (80), composer, died.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1775 Dec 9, Lord Dunmore (1730-1809), governor of Virginia, lost decisively at the American Revolution Battle of Great Bridge. Following that defeat, Dunmore loaded his troops, and many Virginia Loyalists, onto British ships. Smallpox spread in the confined quarters, and some 500 of the 800 members of his Ethiopian Regiment died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Murray,_4th_Earl_of_Dunmore)(Econ, 8/10/13, p.26)
1783 Dec 9, The 1st execution at English Newgate-jail took place.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1793 Dec 9, Noah Webster established NY's 1st daily newspaper, American Minerva.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1809 Dec 9, William Barret Travis, Commander of the Texas troops at the battle of the Alamo, was born.
(HN, 12/9/98)
1824 Dec 9, In the Battle of Ayacucho (Candorcangui) Peru defeated Spain.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1837 Dec 9, Charles Emile Waldteufel, waltz composer (Skaters), was born in Strasbourg, France.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1842 Dec 9, Mikail Glinka's his epic opera "Russlan & Ludmilla," premiered in Petersburg. It was based on Pushkin's Russianized version of Ariosto's “Orlando Furioso."
(WSJ, 9/21/95, p.A-20)(MC, 12/9/01)
1848 Dec 9, Joel Chandler Harris, writer, was born. He created the Uncle Remus tales.
(HN, 12/9/00)
1854 Dec 9, Alfred, Lord Tennyson's poem, "The Charge of the Light Brigade," was published in England.
(AP, 12/9/97)
1861 Dec 9, U.S. Senate approved the establishment of a committee that would become the Joint Committee on the Conduct of War.
(HN, 12/9/98)
1863 Dec 9, Major General John G. Foster replaced Major General Ambrose E. Burnside as Commander of the Department of Ohio.
(HN, 12/9/98)
1867 Dec 9, The capital of Colorado Territory was moved from Golden to Denver.
(HN, 12/9/98)
1872 Dec 9, Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback (1837-1921) became acting governor of Louisiana following impeachment charges against the incumbent Republican governor, Henry Clay Warmoth. Pinchback continued as the state's 24th governor to Jan. 13, 1873. He was one of the most prominent African-American officeholders during the Reconstruction Era.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P._B._S._Pinchback)
1878 Dec 9, Joseph Pulitzer bought the St Louis Dispatch for $2,500.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1882 Dec 9, Joaquin Turina, composer (Rima), was born in Seville, Spain.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1886 Dec 9, Clarence Birdseye, inventor of flash freezing foods, was born.
(HNPD, 12/9/98)
1887 Dec 9, Isaac Kalloch (b.1832), former mayor of San Francisco (1879-1881), died in Bellingham, Wa. In 1880 he had shot and killed Charles de Young in SF Chronicle offices.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Smith_Kalloch)
1892 Dec 9, "Widowers' Houses," George Bernard Shaw's first play, opened at the Royalty Theater in London.
(AP, 12/9/06)
1894 Dec 9, Jules Regnault (b.1834), French economist, died. He first suggested a modern theory of stock price changes in Calcul des Chances et Philosophie de la Bourse (1863).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jules_Regnault)
1898 Dec 9, Emmett Kelly, circus clown (Weary Willie), was born in Sedan, Kansas.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1899 Dec 9, Jean de Brunhoff (d.1937), illustrator and author, creator of the Babar series of books, was born.
(HN, 12/9/00)(SFC, 4/15/03, p.A16)
1900 Dec 9, The Russian Czar rejected Paul Kruger’s pleas for aid to the Boers in South Africa against the British.
(HN, 12/9/01)
1902 Dec 9, Margaret Hamilton, character actress, was born in Cleveland, Oh. She became best known as the Wicked Witch in the Wizard of Oz (1939).
(www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=3146)
1903 Dec 9, The Norwegian parliament voted unanimously for female suffrage.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1905 Dec 9, Richard Strauss' opera "Salome," premiered in Dresden. Soprano Marie Wittich delegated the dance of the seven veils to a member of the corps de ballet.
(http://operetta.stanford.edu/Strauss/Salome/main.html)(WSJ, 10/16/03, p.D8)
1905 Dec 9, The French Assembly National voted for separation of church and state. Laicite was enshrined in law to keep religion out of public bodies while protecting freedom of private worship.
(http://tinyurl.com/yyvx2d)(WSJ, 4/25/03, W13)(Econ, 9/5/15, p.57)
1906 Dec 9, Grace Hopper, mathematician and computer pioneer, was born.
(HN, 12/9/00)
1907 Dec 9, US Christmas seals went on sale for the first time, at the Wilmington, Del., post office. Proceeds went to fight tuberculosis. The fists US Christmas seals were issued by the Red Cross in a program founded by a Delaware woman to support a TB sanitarium [see Dec 7].
(AP, 12/9/97)(SFC, 12/23/98, Z1 p.3)
1908 Dec 9, A child labor bill passed German Reichstag forbidding work for children under age 13.
(HN, 12/9/98)
1909 Dec 9, Douglas Fairbanks Jr, actor (Ghost Story), was born in NYC.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1909 Dec 9, The 1st US monoplane was flown by Henry W. Walden at Long Island, NY.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1912 Dec 9, Thomas P. "Tip" O’Neill, Speaker of the House of Representatives, was born.
(HN, 12/9/98)
1915 Dec 9, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, soprano (Der Rosenkavalier), was born in Jarotschin, Germany.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1916 Dec 9, Kirk Douglas, film star, was born as Issur Demsky in Amsterdam, NY.
(SSFC, 10/8/06, Par p.2)(www.imdb.com/name/nm0000018/)
1917 Dec 9, British forces under General Allenby captured Jerusalem. He liberated the city from Turkish control.
(WSJ, 4/4/96, A-12)(SFC, 10/18/96, C8)(MC, 12/9/01)
1917 Dec 9, New Finnish Republic demanded the withdrawal of Russian troops.
(HN, 12/9/98)
1918 Dec 9, Kirk Douglas, American actor best known for his role in “Spartacus," was born as Issur Danielovitch Demsky.
(HN, 12/9/98)(SFEC, 7/16/00, DB p.48)
1918 Dec 9, French troops occupied Mainz.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1930 Dec 9, Buck Henry, screenwriter and comedian (SNL, Get Smart), was born in NYC.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1931 Dec 9, Japanese army attacked the Chinese province of Jehol.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1931 Dec 9, Spain became a republic.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1934 Dec 9, Judi Dench, actress (Henry V, Wetherby), was born in York, England.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1939 Dec 9, A Russian air raid was made on Helsinki.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1940 Dec 9, British troops opened their first major offensive in North Africa during World War II and seized 1,000 Italians in a sudden thrust in Egypt.
(AP, 12/9/97)(HN, 12/9/98)
1940 Dec 9, Illegal Jewish immigrants to Haifa were deported to Mauritius.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1941 Dec 9, Franklin D. Roosevelt told Americans to plan for a long war.
(HN, 12/9/98)
1941 Dec 9, 1st US WW II bombing mission in Far East took place over Luzon, Philippines.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1941 Dec 9, China declared war on Japan, Germany and Italy.
(AP, 12/9/97)
1941 Dec 9, Hitler ordered US ships torpedoed.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1942 Dec 9, Dick Butkus, NFL hall of fame linebacker (Bears) and sportscaster, was born in Chicago, Ill.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1942 Dec 9, The Aram Khachaturian ballet "Gayane," featuring the surging "Saber Dance," was first performed by the Kirov Ballet.
(AP, 12/9/97)
1943 Dec 9, In the SF Bay Area gale-strong winds and resulting fires caused damages running into millions of dollars. In San Francisco 50-74 mph winds invoked a rare 10-1 emergency call ordering all firemen to stand by.
(SSFC, 12/9/18, DB p.50)
1947 Dec 9, In western Java up to 430 men were rounded up and shot by Dutch troops in the village of Rawagedeh. The Dutch called the incident a "police action" to quell an uprising. The Dutch government conceded in 1995 that summary executions had taken place in Rawagedeh, now known as Balongsari, but said prosecutions were no longer possible. In September, 2011, a Dutch court ordered the government to compensate the widows of Indonesian villagers, to apologize for the killings and to give each of the 10 plaintiffs $27,000. Old friends and neighbors cajoled, bullied and intimidated the plaintiffs and their families until local officials jumped in, forcing them to part with half their cash.
(AP, 9/14/11)(http://tinyurl.com/5sp5psn)(AP, 11/23/11)(AP, 1/16/12)
1948 Dec 9, U.S. abandoned a plan to de-concentrate industry in Japan.
(HN, 12/9/98)
1948 Dec 9, The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was approved by the UN General Assembly. It entered into force on Jan 12, 1951.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide_Convention)(SFC, 9/3/98, p.A14)(Econ., 4/18/15, p.54)
1949 Dec 9, UN took trusteeship over Jerusalem.
(HN, 12/9/98)
1950 Dec 9, President Truman banned U.S. exports to Communist China.
(HN, 12/9/98)
1950 Dec 9, Harry Gold got 30 years imprisonment for passing atomic bomb secrets to the Soviet Union during World War II.
(HN, 12/9/98)
1953 Dec 9, John Malkovich, actor and director (Killing Fields), was born in Christopher, Ill.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1953 Dec 9, General Electric announced all Communist employees would be fired.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1955 Dec 9, Sugar Ray Robinson won the middle-weight boxing crown for the third time when he knocked out Carl "Bobo" Olson in Chicago.
(SFC, 6/29/96, p.E4)(HN, 12/9/98)(SFC, 12/9/05, p.F6)
1957 Dec 9, Japan [announced?] its 1st ambassador to Israel.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1958 Dec 9, Robert H.W. Welch Jr. and 11 other men met in Indianapolis to form the anti-Communist John Birch Society.
(AP, 12/9/97)
1959 Dec 9, A Memorandum of Understanding was signed in New York that established IRRI (Int’l. Rice Research Institute) “as an organization to do basic research on the rice plant and applied research on all phases of rice production, management, distribution and utilization."
(http://irri.org/about-us/our-history)
1960 Dec 9, The Laos government fled to Cambodia as the capital city of Vientiane was engulfed in war.
(HN, 12/9/98)
1961 Dec 9, SS Col. Adolf Eichmann was found guilty of war crimes in Israel.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1961 Dec 9, The British Trust Territory of Tanganyika became independent. The first president was socialist Julius Nyerere (1922-1999). He resigned in 1985. Tanganyika became the mainland part of Tanzania in 1964.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanganyika)(SFC, 8/8/98, p.A12)(SFC, 10/15/99, p.D7)
1962 Dec 9, "I Can Get It For You Wholesale" closed on Broadway.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1963 Dec 9, Frank Sinatra Jr. was kidnapped. Frank Sinatra Sr. ransomed his kidnapped son, Frank Sinatra Jr., for $240,000. Barry Keenan, who set up the kidnapping, was a classmate of Nancy Sinatra. He served 4 1/2 years in prison and went on to become a successful real estate developer.
(SFC, 9/7/98, p.B6)(MC, 12/9/01)
1964 Dec 9, Dame Edith Sitwell (d.1964), English poet, died. "Good taste is the worst vice ever invented." A book of her collected poems was published in 2006. In 2011 Richard Greene authored “Edith Sitwell: Avant Garde Poet, English Genius."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edith_Sitwell)(WSJ, 7/22/06, p.P10)(Econ, 2/19/11, p.94)
1965 Dec 9, The animated TV special "A Charlie Brown Christmas," premiered on CBS. Producer Lee Mendelson (1933-2019) won 12 Emmys for his work on the show.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Charlie_Brown_Christmas)(SSFC, 12/29/19, p.B3)
1965 Dec 9, Nikolai V. Podgorny replaced Anastas I. Mikoyan as president of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet.
(AP, 12/9/97)
1967 Dec 9, Nicolae Ceausescu became president (dictator) of Romania.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1968 Dec 9, Doug Engelbart and researchers at Stanford Research Institute (SRI) first demonstrated in SF the computer mouse along with a graphical user interface (gui), display editing, integrated text and graphics, hyper documents and 2-way video-conferencing with shared work spaces. In 2001 Thierry Bardini authored "Bootstrapping: Douglas Engelbart, Coevolution, and the Origins of Personal Computing." William English (1929-2020) helped build the mouse and orchestrated its elaborate demonstration.
(SFC, 12/4/98, p.B2)(SSFC, 1/21/01, BR p.6)(SFC, 12/8/08, p.A1)(SSFC, 8/2/20, p.C10)
1971 Dec 9, Ralph J. Bunche (b.1903), Detroit-born 1st black US diplomat and UN delegate, died In NYC. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1950.
(www.gale.cengage.com/free_resources/bhm/bio/bunche_r.htm)
1974 Dec 9, Japan’s PM Kekuei Tanaka resigned following accusations of dodgy property deals.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kakuei_Tanaka)(Econ, 6/11/16, p.41)
1975 Dec 9, President Ford signed a $2.3 billion seasonal loan-authorization that officials of New York City and State said would prevent a city default.
(AP, 12/9/00)
1975 Dec 9, William Wellman (b.1896), American filmmaker, died. His film “Wings" received the 1st Academy Award for Best Picture.
(SFC, 7/20/96, p.E1)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_A._Wellman)
1977 Dec 9, Clarice Lispector (b.1920), Ukraine-born Brazilian-Jewish writer, died in Brazil. From 1952-1959 she lived in the US. Her books included “The Passion According to G.H" (1964). In 2009 Benjamin Moser authored “Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarice_Lispector)
1979 Dec 9, Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, the religious broadcaster, died in New York City at age 84.
(AP, 12/9/97)
1981 Dec 9, In Philadelphia Mumia Abu Jamal shot and killed Officer Daniel Faulkner shortly after the officer stopped William Cook, Jamal’s brother (see July 3, 1981).
(SFC, 3/28/08, p.A4)
1982 Dec 9, The Washington, D.C., police shot and killed Norman Mayer (b.1916), an American anti-nuclear weapons activist, 10 hours after he threatened to blow up the Washington Monument. Police found he had no explosives.
(HN, 12/8/98)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Mayer)
1982 Dec 9, Leon Jaworski (b.1905), special prosecutor (Watergate), died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Jaworski)
1983 Dec 8, US Att. Gen. Edwin Meese said people go to soup kitchens "...because food is free and that's easier than paying for it."
(http://ignatz.blogspot.com/2004_06_01_archive.html)
1984 Dec 9, In Iran a five-day hijack drama ended when Iranian commandos captured the Kuwaiti plane. 4 armed men had seized a Kuwaiti airliner en route to Pakistan and forced it to land in Tehran, where the hijackers killed American passenger Charles Hegna.
(AP, 12/4/04)
1987 Dec 9, On the second day of their White House summit, President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev grappled with differences over Afghanistan and cutbacks in long-range nuclear arms.
(AP, 12/9/97)
1987 Dec 8-1987 Dec 9, The first Palestinian intefadeh (Arabic for uprising) began as riots broke out in Gaza and spread to the West Bank, triggering a strong Israeli counter-response.
(AP 12/8/97)(SFC, 4/24/98, p.A17)(AP, 12/9/07)
1988 Dec 9, In the wake of the Armenian earthquake that claimed tens of thousands of lives, countries around the world began sending emergency supplies and offering pledges of relief funds.
(AP, 12/9/98)
1989 Dec 9, President Bush's national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft, and Deputy Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger began a surprise visit to Beijing, six months after China's crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators.
(AP, 12/9/99)
1990 Dec 9, The first American hostages to be released by Iraq began arriving in the United States.
(AP, 12/9/00)
1990 Dec 8, In Albania Tirana University students demonstrated in the streets and called for the dictatorship to end. Ramiz Alia met with the students 4 days later; a multiparty system was introduced; the Democratic Party, the first opposition party was established; the regime authorized political pluralism.
(www, Albania, 1998)(SFC, 12/18/00, p.E2)
1990 Dec 9, Lech Walesa, founder of Solidarity, was elected president of Poland in a runoff by a landslide.
(WSJ, 6/11/96, p.A12)(HN, 12/999)(AP, 12/9/00)
1991 Dec 9, European Community leaders meeting in the Dutch city of Maastricht tentatively agreed to begin using a single currency by 1999.
(AP, 12/9/01)
1991 Dec 9, Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev challenged Boris Yeltsin's declaration that the Soviet Union was dead, branding a new Slavic commonwealth "illegal and dangerous."
(AP, 12/9/01)
1992 Dec 9, Former CIA spy chief Clair George was convicted of lying to Congress about the Iran-Contra affair. President Bush pardoned him.
(AP, 12/9/97)
1992 Dec 9, U.S. Marines landed in Somalia to ensure that food and medicine reach the deprived areas of that country. The US Operations Restore Hope, Continue Hope and others began in Somalia and ended Mar 3, 1995. They cost $1.7 billion and left 43 US casualties with 153 wounded.
(WSJ, 9/22/99, p.A8)(HN, 12/999)
1992 Dec 9, In North Carolina Kevin Dean Hodgin (35), a Domino's Pizza delivery driver, was beaten and killed during an armed robbery outside the Domino's store in Guilford County. In 2021 Shantu Jenkins, one of five young men charged in the slaying, was released on parole.
(AP, 2/20/21)
1992 Dec 9, Britain's Prince Charles and Princess Diana announced their separation. Their divorce became final Aug. 28, 1996.
(AP, 12/9/97)
1993 Dec 9, The US Air Force destroyed the first of 500 Minuteman II missile silos marked for elimination under an arms control treaty.
(AP, 12/9/98)
1993 Dec 9, Astronauts aboard the space shuttle Endeavour completed repairs to the Hubble Space Telescope.
(AP, 12/9/98)
1994 Dec 9, President Clinton fired Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders after learning she'd told a conference that masturbation should be discussed in school as a part of human sexuality.
(AP, 12/9/99)
1994 Dec 9, It was recommended to buy global resource stocks such as Dutch Royal Petroleum, British Petroleum or South African Mining shares.
(WSJ, 12/9/94, p.R-14)
1994 Dec 9, Representatives of the Irish Republican Army and the British government opened peace talks in Northern Ireland.
(AP, 12/9/99)
1995 Dec 9, Rep. Kweisi Mfume (the Swahili name means conquering son of kings), D-Md., was chosen to head the NAACP.
(WSJ, 12/11/95, p.A-1)(AP, 12/9/97)
1995 Dec 9, Douglas "Wrong Way" Corrigan (b.1927), legendary American aviator, died.
(http://tinyurl.com/2e7bn)
1996 Dec 9, More than four months after the Olympic Games bombing, the FBI posted a $500,000 reward. Richard Jewell, the security guard who was wrongfully accused of planting a bomb during the Olympics, and his lawyers negotiated a $500,000 settlement from NBC. NBC settled to avert a defamation suit.
(WSJ, 1/3/97, p.A1)(AP, 12/9/97)
1996 Dec 9, Archaeologist and anthropologist Mary Leakey died in Nairobi, Kenya at age 83.
(SFC, 12/10/96, p.A6)(AP, 12/9/97)
1996 Dec 9, UN chief Boutros-Ghali gave Iraq the go-ahead to resume oil exports for the first time since 1990 to buy food and medicine. Two billion of oil sales will be allowed every 6 months to buy food, medicine and other necessities.
(WSJ, 12/9/96, p.A1)(AP, 12/9/97)
1997 Dec 9, Confronting her critics, Attorney General Janet Reno traded testy remarks with House Republicans on the House committee investigating campaign fund-raising; she defended her decision not to seek an independent counsel for fund-raising calls made by President Clinton and Vice President Gore.
(AP, 12/9/98)
1997 Dec 9, It was reported that the US had agreed to provide over $500 million towards the construction of a new atom smasher in Geneva under the direction of CERN. The large Hadron Collider was expected to be completed for $6 billion by 2005.
(SFC, 12/9/97, p.A9)
1997 Dec 9, In Texas Michael Lee Lockhart was put to death by lethal injection for the 1988 murder of a Beaumont police officer. He was also wanted by Florida and Indiana where in 1987 he killed a 14-year old girl and 16 year-old girl. He was the 37th to be executed by Texas this year.
(SFC, 12/10/97, p.A3)
1997 Dec 9, In Virginia Michael Charles Satche (29) was put to death for the rape and murder of a woman. It was the state’s 8th execution this year.
(SFC, 12/10/97, p.A3)
1997 Dec 9, A former Algerian diplomat in London said that the government was involved in the recent massacres of civilians to garner support against the Islamic opposition.
(SFC, 12/10/97, p.A14)
1997 Dec 9, Israeli officials scrambled to stop a Yasser Arafat’s government from conducting a census of Palestinians in East Jerusalem.
(SFC, 12/10/97, p.A13)
1997 Dec 9, North Korean officials agreed to a 4-nation meeting in Geneva for a permanent peace treaty to the 1950-1953 Korean War. The talks inaugurated formal discussion for a permanent peace agreement and a new session was scheduled for Mar 16.
(SFC, 11/22/97, p.C1)(SFC, 12/11/97, p.A18)
1997 Dec 9, In Russia 3 armed hijackers seized an Ilyushin-62 passenger plane from far east city of Magadan with at least 140 people onboard. They demanded $10 million and a flight to Switzerland.
(SFC, 12/10/97, p.A13)
1997 Dec 9, In Zimbabwe thousands of protestors, angry over taxes, fought with the police for 4 hours in Harare during one of the biggest local labor strikes. The strike was called by the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions amid discontent over unemployment, taxes and inflation along with corruption and lavish spending by politicians.
(SFC, 12/10/97, p.A13)
1998 Dec 9, The Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee drafted 4 articles of impeachment for Pres. Clinton, all stemming from his sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky and long campaign to cover it up. The Democrats countered with a censure plan.
(SFC, 12/10/98, p.A1)(AP, 12/9/99)
1998 Dec 9, An appeals court in Oregon ruled that the state constitution gives gay and lesbian government employees the right to health and life insurance benefits for their domestic partners.
(SFC, 12/10/98, p.C11)
1998 Dec 9, It was reported that scientists in Japan had cloned several calves from an adult cow. It was the 3rd mammal duplicated after mice and sheep.
(SFC, 12/9/98, p.A8)
1998 Dec 9, The David and Lucille Packard Foundation announced an additional $200 million for environmental causes to be spent over the next 5 years.
(SFC, 12/10/98, p.A1)
1998 Dec 9, Archie Moore, former light heavy-weight boxing champion, died at age 84.
(SFC, 12/10/98, p.A1)
1998 Dec 9, In Angola Unita rebels advanced on Cuito after saying they had routed an attack by government forces on their southern stronghold.
(WSJ, 12/10/98, p.A1)
1998 Dec 9, In Armenia Vagram Khorkhoruni, deputy defense minister, was shot dead outside his home in Yerevan.
(SFC, 12/10/98, p.C7)
1998 Dec 9, Britain’s Home Secretary, Jack Straw, turned down Gen’l. Augusto Pinochet’s plea to be set free. The decision for extradition moved to the courts.
(SFC, 12/10/98, p.A1)(WSJ, 12/10/98, p.A1)
1998 Dec 9, In Hyde, England, authorities exhumed a 12th body killed by Dr. Harold Shipman (52). The family doctor was accused of killing female patients for their money from 1994 to Jun 1998.
(SFC, 12/10/98, p.C7)
1998 Dec 9, In Cambodia Khmer Rouge guerrillas kidnapped 48 people, including 3 aid workers, and demanded ransom.
(WSJ, 12/10/98, p.A1)
1998 Dec 9, In France the National Assembly instituted the Civil Solidarity Pact, a bill to improve the lot of cohabiting gay and unmarried couples.
(SFC, 12/10/98, p.C7)
1998 Dec 9, In Iran the body of Mohammed Mokhtari, a prominent writer missing for a week, was found. It appeared that he was murdered by strangulation. Shortly later Mohammad Jafar Pouyandeh (45), another dissident writer, was reported missing. Pouyandeh was later found murdered.
(SFC, 12/10/98, p.C2)(SFC, 12/11/98, p.A22)(SFC, 12/15/98, p.A14)
1998 Dec 9, Iraq refused UN inspectors access to an office of the ruling Baath Party.
(SFC, 12/11/98, p.D2)
1998 Dec 9, In Israel the Supreme Court ruled that the exemption for rigorously Orthodox Jewish yeshiva students from army service was illegal.
(SFC, 12/10/98, p.C6)
1998 Dec 9, In Malaysia Azizan Abu Bakar, the ex-driver of Anwar Ibrahim, repeated in court his allegation that he was sodomized by Ibrahim in 1992.
(SFC, 12/10/98, p.C7)
1998 Dec 9, A Palestinian teenager was killed as Israeli forces and Palestinian protestors clashed.
(SFC, 12/10/98, p.A12)
1999 Dec 9, The federal CDC issued guidelines that called for states and local public health departments to report all HIV cases either by name or code.
(SFC, 12/10/99, p.A1)
1999 Dec 9, In San Francisco Kameron Sengthavy, a former Univ. of Nevada swimmer, was found stabbed to death in his residential hotel at 447 Bush St. In 2018 police served an arrest warrant for the murder on Roy Donovan Lacy (38), a former SF Bay Area resident serving time for bank robbery in a Florida prison.
(SSFC, 5/20/18, p.C3)
1999 Dec 9, Seven Marines were killed after a CH-46 Sea Knight helicopter crashed while ferrying troops between ships 14 miles off Point Loma, Ca.
(SFC, 12/10/99, p.A3)(SFC, 12/11/99, p.A3)
1999 Dec 9, In Worcester, Massachusetts, six firefighters who had died in a warehouse blaze were honored as fallen heroes by thousands of their brethren from around the world.
(AP, 12/9/00)
1999 Dec 9, In Missouri a twin-engine Cessna crashed near Branson and all 6 people aboard were killed.
(SFC, 12/10/99, p.A17)
1999 Dec 9, Xiana La-Shay (7), Xiana Fairchild, was last seen at a school bus stop in Vallejo, Ca. Her skull was found Jan. 19, 2001, in the Los Gatos hills and police focused on Curtis Dean Anderson as the primary suspect. Anderson (1961-2007), while serving a 251-year sentence for another kidnapping, was arrested in 2004 for Xiana’s murder. In 2005 Anderson pleaded guilty to kidnapping, molesting and murdering Xiana.
(SFEC, 12/12/99, p.C1)(SSFC, 2/4/01, p.A1)(SFC, 5/12/04, p.A6)(SFC, 12/15/05, p.B1)
1999 Dec 9, Scientists reported that nearly complete human cornea cells were grown in a laboratory petri dish.
(SFC, 12/10/99, p.A6)
1999 Dec 9, European leaders gathered in Helsinki for an EU summit. On the agenda was the creation of a defense force, expansion to 28 members and clearing the path for Turkey to join.
(SFC, 12/10/99, p.D4)
1999 Dec 9, The first day of Ramadan. In Saudi Arabia a young man was scheduled to be beheaded by this day unless the family of a man he killed, while performing the mizmar dance, was paid some $1.3 million in blood money.
(SFC, 12/6/99, p.A13)
2000 Dec 9, Florida State quarterback Chris Weinke won the Heisman Trophy.
(AP, 12/9/01)
2000 Dec 9, The US Supreme ruled 5-4 to stop the recount in Florida until arguments are heard Dec 11.
(SSFC, 12/10/00, p.A1)(AP, 12/9/01)
2000 Dec 9, In Algeria 5 soldiers and an assailant were killed in an ambush near Tissemsilt. Another 3 local guards were killed in Boghar and the attacks continued the next day.
(SFC, 12/12/00, p.B2)
2000 Dec 9, In Chechnya 2 rebel car bombs killed at least 19 people in Alkhan-Yurt.
(SSFC, 12/10/00, p.C5)
2000 Dec 9, In Israel Prime Minister Barak announced that he would submit his resignation and call for new elections.
(SSFC, 12/10/00, p.A1)(AP, 12/9/01)
2000 Dec 9, In Nigeria 62 people were killed when a bus collided with a truck a 3rd vehicle hit the 1st two and burst into flames.
(SFC, 12/13/00, p.B4)
2000 Dec 9, In Pakistan former prime minister Nawaz Sharif was released from prison and sent into exile in Saudi Arabia. He agreed to stay out of politics and forfeited property valued at $8.3 million.
(SSFC, 12/10/00, p.A28)(WSJ, 12/11/00, p.A1)
2000 Dec 9, It was reported that Tropical Storm Rumbia had killed at least 29 people in the Philippines.
(SFC, 12/9/00, p.D8)
2000 Dec 9, Pres. Putin said he would follow the recommendation of the pardons commission and free Edmond Pope. It was later reported that Pope’s efforts to buy technology ran parallel to Canadian efforts to buy advanced Shkval torpedoes from a defense plan in Kyrgyzstan.
(SSFC, 12/10/00, p.A27)(SFC, 1/3/01, p.A10)
2001 Dec 9, The United States disclosed the existence of a videotape in which Osama bin Laden said he was pleasantly surprised by the extent of damage from the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
(AP, 12/9/02)
2001 Dec 9, US B-52s continued strikes over Tora Bora. A Northern Alliance helicopter crashed and 18 people were killed including 2 Pashtun commanders. The last province under Taliban control, Zabul, was handed over to tribal leaders.
(SFC, 12/10/01, p.A12)
2001 Dec 9, An Amtrak Acela train killed 3 people on tracks northeast of Philadelphia.
(WSJ, 12/10/01, p.A1)
2001 Dec 9, The Friendship Bridge linking Afghanistan and Uzbekistan was opened for aid transport.
(SFC, 12/10/01, p.A12)
2001 Dec 9, In Argentina Domingo Cavallo announced that he would annul $4 million in business tax cuts and push for the release of $1.3 billion IMF loans.
(SFC, 12/11/01, p.A6)
2001 Dec 9, An outbreak of the Ebola virus was confirmed in the Ogoouer Ivindo province of Gabon. 7 deaths were reported.
(SFC, 12/10/01, p.A3)(WSJ, 12/10/01, p.A1)
2001 Dec 9, A suicide bomber injured 9 Israelis in Haifa. Israeli troops killed 4 Palestinian police officers in their cars. Israeli soldiers also killed a Palestinian taxi driver trying to enter Jenin, which was sealed off. 30 suspected militants were arrested in Israeli raids.
(SFC, 12/10/01, p.A3)(WSJ, 12/10/01, p.A1)
2001 Dec 9, In Uganda a gasoline truck crash killed 58 people near Iganga. Many of the victims had tried to gather up fuel when it ignited.
(WSJ, 12/10/01, p.A1)
2002 Dec 9, Pres. Bush chose John Snow, chairman of CSX Corp., to replace Paul O'Neill as secretary of the Treasury. Bush fired Paul O'Neill 3 days earlier.
(SFC, 12/9/02, p.A1)
2002 Dec 9, Senate Republican leader Trent Lott apologized for remarks he'd made praising the 1948 presidential run of then-segregationist Strom Thurmond, saying, "A poor choice of words conveyed to some the impression that I embraced the discarded policies of the past."
(AP, 12/9/03)
2002 Dec 9, The United States received a copy Monday of Saddam Hussein's massive arms declaration as inspectors began combing the dossier for clues about whether Iraq is free of weapons of mass destruction.
(AP, 12/9/02)
2002 Dec 9, US and Spanish forces seized an unflagged ship from North Korea that was carrying Scud missiles to Yemen.
(SFC, 12/11/02, p.A1)
2002 Dec 9, United Airlines filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and reported losses of $20 million a day.
(SFC, 12/9/02, p.A1)(SFC, 12/10/02, p.A1)
2002 Dec 9, The UN Security Council lifted 9-year-old sanctions against Angola's UNITA movement, welcoming efforts by the government and the former rebel group to end the country's civil war.
(AP, 12/9/02)
2002 Dec 9, In Angra dos Reis, Brazil, mudslides triggered by torrential rains slashed through this southeastern city, burying houses and killing at least 34 people.
(AP, 12/10/02)
2002 Dec 9, In Bogota, Colombia, a car bomb exploded near a police command post, during lunch hour, injuring at least 58 passersby.
(AP, 12/9/02)
2002 Dec 9, Indonesia and rebels in Aceh signed an accord to end one of the world's longest-running insurgencies.
(Reuters, 12/9/02)
2002 Dec 9, Israeli soldiers killed Basem Kou (28), a mentally handicapped Palestinian near Beit Lid. At Nablus Israeli soldiers fired on a taxi and killed Rehaneh Hesham Kilani (25) and injured 2 other passengers.
(SFC, 12/10/02, p.A8)
2002 Dec 9, Serbia headed for a major political crisis after it failed a second time to elect a president, with supporters of the top vote-getter vowing to challenge the outcome.
(AP, 12/9/02)
2002 Dec 9, In Venezuela a general strike aimed at ousting leftist President Hugo Chavez sparked panic buying at supermarkets and gasoline stations and forced the national guard to commandeer delivery trucks and ensure that service stations opened.
(AP, 12/9/02)
2003 Dec 9, Jeffrey and Michael Derderian, owners of a Rhode Island nightclub, and Dan Biechele, the tour manager for the rock band Great White, were indicted on charges related to the February 20 fire that killed 100 people. In 2006 a judge gave the owners 4 years and probation.
(AP, 12/9/04)(SFC, 5/10/06, p.A7)(WSJ, 9/30/06, p.A1)
2003 Dec 9, The Dutch cargo ship Stellamare capsized at the Port of Albany, NY.
(SFC, 12/19/03, p.D10)
2003 Dec 9, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao visited with Pres. Bush for talks on trade, Taiwan and other issues.
(WSJ, 12/9/03, p.A1)
2003 Dec 9, Former Vice President Al Gore endorsed Howard Dean for the Democratic presidential nomination.
(AP, 12/9/03)
2003 Dec 9, Paul Simon (75), former Illinois Senator (1984-1997), died in Springfield. His work included 13 published books.
(SFC, 12/10/03, p.A2)
2003 Dec 9, Shanghai reported plans to ban bicycles from its major roads next year, banishing China's most popular form of transportation to make more room for cars.
(AP, 12/9/03)
2003 Dec 9, French police arrested Gorka Palacios Alday, the alleged military leader of the banned Basque separatist group ETA, along with three accomplices.
(AP, 12/9/03)
2003 Dec 9, In Talafar, Iraq, a suicide bomber blew up a car packed with explosives at the gates of a military barracks, injuring 41 American troops and six Iraqi civilians. Hours earlier, 3 soldiers died in a road accident in central Iraq, and 3 civilians died when a Baghdad mosque was rocketed.
(AP, 12/9/03)
2003 Dec 9, In Japan PM Junichiro Koizumi's Cabinet approved the dispatch of about 1,000 soldiers to help in the reconstruction of Iraq.
(AP, 12/9/03)
2003 Dec 9, North Korea offered an apparent counterproposal to a U.S.-backed plan to resolve the standoff over its nuclear program, saying it would freeze the project in return for energy aid and being removed from Washington's list of countries that sponsor terrorism.
(AP, 12/9/03)
2003 Dec 9, In southern Mexico Salvatrucha gang members attacked illegal immigrants from Central America on a train, killing three people and wounding four in the latest in a series of violent incidents in the region. The Mara Salvatrucha spanned Central America. It was named for its Salvadoran founders, who claimed to be as wise as trout.
(AP, 12/10/03)(Econ, 5/22/04, p.31)
2003 Dec 9, In Russia a female suicide bomber blew herself up outside the National Hotel across from Moscow's Red Square. At least 6 bystanders were killed and at least 14 wounded.
(AP, 12/9/03)(SFC, 12/10/03, p.A3)
2003 Dec 9, Former Pres. Frederick Chiluba, Zambia's first democratically elected president, went on trial before a packed courtroom, accused of stealing millions of dollars from state coffers during his decade in power.
(AP, 12/9/03)
2004 Dec 9, President Bush ruled out raising taxes to finance a Social Security overhaul. Bush also announced he was keeping the heads of the Transportation, Interior, Housing and Labor departments.
(AP, 12/09/05)
2004 Dec 9, Scientists tracked an algae bloom covering 400 square miles in the Gulf Coast that has caused a mass fish kill and dolphin deaths near Florida.
(WSJ, 12/9/04, p.A1)
2004 Dec 9, Canada's highest court said the government can redefine marriage to include same-sex couples, but it added that religious officials cannot be forced to perform unions against their beliefs.
(AP, 12/9/04)
2004 Dec 9, China reported that its monthly trade surplus widened in November for the fourth straight month, hitting $9.9 billion as exports surged at an annual rate of nearly 46 percent.
(AP, 12/9/04)
2004 Dec 9, An aid agency reported that some 1,000 Congolese civilians a day are dying from disease and malnutrition, due to a festering conflict that has killed 3.8 million people.
(AP, 12/9/04)
2004 Dec 9, General Motors Europe reaffirmed it will chop 12,000 jobs over two years, around a fifth of its workforce, to lop 500 million euros ($673 million) from costs to cut losses.
(AP, 12/9/04)
2004 Dec 9, The French government sold an 18.4 percent stake in Air France-KLM, the world's largest airline, to help reduce the state debt.
(AP, 12/9/04)
2004 Dec 9, Indian officials cautioned Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that a proposed US sale of military hardware worth $1.2 billion to Pakistan could damage a fragile peace process between the nuclear-armed neighbors and harm India-US relations.
(AP, 12/9/04)
2004 Dec 9, In Iraq insurgent mortar fire in Baghdad left 3 people dead.
(SFC, 12/10/04, p.A20)
2004 Dec 9, The Irish Republican Army declared for the first time that it's willing to get rid of its entire weapons stockpile within weeks.
(AP, 12/9/04)
2004 Dec 9, Interfax reported that Russian authorities have assessed a new tax claim for $114 million on one of Yukos' smaller subsidiaries.
(AP, 12/9/04)
2004 Dec 9, In Kiev, Ukraine, opposition protestors lifted their 2-week siege.
(SFC, 12/10/04, p.A3)
2004 Dec 9, In Venezuela a law that gives the government control over the content of radio and television programs took effect.
(AP, 12/9/04)
2004 Dec 9, United Airlines was scheduled to begin service to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
(SFC, 7/23/04, p.C1)
2004 Dec 9, Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's ruling party passed a controversial new law that aims to bar foreign rights groups from the country, as well as foreign funding for local groups doing similar work.
(AP, 12/9/04)
2005 Dec 9, President Bush, addressing a political fundraiser in Minnesota, said the United States would wage an unrelenting battle in Iraq to protect Americans at home.
(AP, 12/9/06)
2005 Dec 9, A US congressional report said the federal government's medical response to Hurricane Katrina was bungled by a lack of supplies and poor communication.
(AP, 12/9/06)
2005 Dec 9, Former US Pres. Clinton called Bush’s global warming stance “flat wrong" while speaking at the climate conference in Montreal.
(WSJ, 12/10/05, p.A1)
2005 Dec 9, The US film “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe," produced by Philip Anschutz, was released. It was adapted from a book by C.S. Lewis that was an allegory of Christ’s crucifixion. Anschutz made his 1st fortune drilling for oil and later built the Qwest telecom company.
(Econ, 11/26/05, p.82)
2005 Dec 9, Viacom closed a deal to pay $1.6 billion to acquire DreamWorksSKG, a Hollywood studio founded by Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen.
(SFC, 12/10/05, p.C1)
2005 Dec 9, Afghanistan welcomed NATO's decision to expand its peacekeeping mission, saying it would boost security, while the Taliban said more alliance troops would only increase opportunities for guerrillas to attack them.
(AP, 12/09/05)
2005 Dec 9-2005 Dec 10, In southern Afghanistan Taliban fighters attacked two police posts, with eight policemen and six attackers killed in the ensuing battles.
(AFP, 12/10/05)
2005 Dec 9, Police in Bangladesh hunting for Islamist suicide bombers seized explosives and detained 30 militants.
(Reuters, 12/10/05)
2005 Dec 9-2005 Dec 11, Fidel Ramos, former president of the Philippines, and Michael Camdessus, former managing IMF director, chaired the 1st annual meeting of the Emerging Markets Forum at Templeton College, Oxford, England.
(Econ, 12/17/05, p.76)
2005 Dec 9, In Beijing, China, the US ambassador for fighting international slavery said that many North Korean refugees who flee to China every year end up as sex slaves and China often sends them back for punishment.
(AP, 12/09/05)
2005 Dec 9, Haiti's interim government said it has removed five of the 10 judges from the Supreme Court, another move in a tense power struggle ahead of next month's national elections.
(AP, 12/9/05)
2005 Dec 9, In Iraq the American military arrested Amir Khalaf Fanus, also known in the Ramadi area as "the Butcher." Fanus, a high-ranking member of al-Qaida in Iraq, was wanted for criminal activities including murder and kidnapping. A US soldier was killed and 11 others wounded in a suicide bombing in western Baghdad.
(AP, 12/9/05)(SSFC, 12/11/05, p.A6)
2005 Dec 9, In Ireland more than 10,000 labor union members protested in Dublin and other cities over shipping company Irish Ferries' plan to replace its workers with Latvians making $4.25 an hour, half the local minimum wage. It was the country's most bitter industrial showdown in decades.
(AP, 12/09/05)(WSJ, 12/10/05, p.A1)
2005 Dec 9, Israel rounded up 19 Islamic militants in the West Bank and pounded the Gaza Strip with artillery fire, pressing forward with a crackdown in the wake of a suicide bombing at a shopping mall this week.
(AP, 12/09/05)
2005 Dec 9, Kenya swore in a new Cabinet whose difficult formation reflected increasing questions about the president's political strength.
(AP, 12/09/05)
2005 Dec 9, In Nigeria Diepreye Alamieyeseigha, the governor of the oil-rich state of Bayelsa who skipped bail in Britain to escape trial there for money-laundering, was arrested by 200 armed policemen, after lawmakers removed his immunity from prosecution.
(AFP, 12/09/05)
2005 Dec 9, In Nigeria police broke down the gate of a huge housing complex to oust thousands of civil servants and their families in the third mass eviction by the government this week in the commercial capital of Lagos. The move followed a decision by the government to sell off several publicly owned housing blocks for civil servants in a privatization scheme. Authorities have not provided the estimated 8,000 residents with other accommodation.
(AP, 12/09/05)
2005 Dec 9, Marc Garlasco, a Human Rights Watch investigator, said Poland served as the CIA's main center to detain terrorist suspects in Europe at clandestine prisons.
(AP, 12/09/05)
2005 Dec 9, President Vladimir Putin signaled he would scrap some of the harshest provisions of a much-criticized bill that would severely restrict the work of foreign-funded non-governmental organizations in Russia.
(AP, 12/09/05)
2005 Dec 9, Russia's parliament gave final approval to legislation allowing direct foreign ownership of shares in Gazprom, the world's largest natural gas producer.
(AP, 12/09/05)
2005 Dec 9, Spanish police arrested at least 7 people over the last 24 hours suspected of financing and giving logistical support to an Islamic extremist group with links to al-Qaida.
(AP, 12/09/05)
2006 Dec 9, The US Congress gave its final approval to landmark legislation allowing export of civilian nuclear fuel and technology to India for the first time in 30 years. Congress also gave final approval to open 8.3 million acres of federal waters west of Florida to oil and gas drilling.
(AFP, 12/9/06)(SFC, 12/9/06, p.A1)
2006 Dec 9, The US Space Shuttle Discovery was launched from the Kennedy Space Center, Florida, with 7 international crew members aboard on a mission to the International Space Station.
(AFP, 12/10/06)
2006 Dec 9, Ohio State quarterback Troy Smith won the Heisman Trophy.
(AP, 12/9/07)
2006 Dec 9, Singer Georgia Gibbs (87), who had reached the top of the charts in the 1950s, died in New York City.
(AP, 12/9/07)
2006 Dec 9, Martin Nodell (91), the creator of Green Lantern, the comic book superhero who uses his magical ring to help him fight crime, died in Wisconsin. The first Green Lantern appearance came in July 1940, an eight-page story in a comic book also featuring other characters. The character then got his own series, and Nodell drew it until 1947 under the name Mart Dellon. After its cancellation in 1949, the series was reborn in 1959 with a revised story line, and it has been revived several times.
(AP, 12/12/06)
2006 Dec 9, In Afghanistan Taliban militants, following up on a death threat, broke into a house overnight in the Narang district of eastern Kunar province, and fatally shot two teachers and 3 other family members, bringing to 20 the number of educators slain in attacks this year. The top US anti-drug official said that Afghan poppies would be sprayed with herbicide to combat an opium trade that produced a record heroin haul this year, a measure likely to anger farmers and scare Afghans unfamiliar with weed killers. Afghan opium production this year increased 49% over 2005 and was providing 92% of the world supply.
(AP, 12/9/06)(AP, 12/10/06)(Econ, 12/2/06, p.47)
2006 Dec 9, In Bolivia South American leaders called for greater continental unity as they opened a two-day summit that drew the region's new wave of leftist leaders. They agreed to create a high-level commission to study the idea of forming a continent-wide community similar to the European Union.
(AP, 12/9/06)
2006 Dec 9, Freddy Munoz (36), a Colombian journalist, was charged with rebellion and terrorism for a series of bombings in 2002, a move his news channel said was in response to his reporting on human rights violations. Munoz worked for the news channel Telesur, which is majority owned by the Venezuelan government of President Hugo Chavez.
(AP, 12/9/06)
2006 Dec 9, German police found traces of radiation in two buildings linked to a Russian businessman who met the murdered ex-spy Alexander Litvinenko in London on the day he fell ill. Radiation traces were found overnight in an apartment belonging to Dmitry Kovtun's ex-wife in the northern city of Hamburg. Kovtun is now in hospital.
(AP, 12/9/06)
2006 Dec 9, Iraq's influential Association of Muslim Scholars and the country's largest Sunni Arab political party condemned a deadly US military attack they say killed civilians in the predominantly Sunni village of al-Ishaqi in Salahuddin province. A suicide car bomb struck near a Shiite shrine, killing at least five people. A suicide car bomb exploded outside of the Al-Abbas shrine in Karbala killing five Iraqis with 44 wounded. Outgoing Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld paid a surprise visit to Iraq and said American forces should not quit the war until the enemy is defeated. Gunmen attacked two Shiite homes in western Baghdad, killing 10 people. A nephew of Saddam Hussein serving a life sentence for making bombs for Iraq's insurgency escaped from prison in northern Iraq.
(AP, 12/9/06)(AP, 12/10/06)
2006 Dec 9, Nigeria’s governing party suspended gubernatorial primaries in at least two of 36 states following candidate protests and violent clashes.
(AP, 12/10/06)
2006 Dec 9, Typhoon Utor, the 2nd to hit the Philippines in two weeks, made landfall forcing the evacuation of thousands in Eastern Samar province where hundreds died in the last storm. Typhoon Utor killed at least 5 people.
(AP, 12/9/06)(Reuters, 12/10/06)
2006 Dec 9, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said he would dismiss the parliament and call early elections to end a political impasse with Hamas, but left open the possibility of a compromise with the Islamic militant group, PLO.
(AP, 12/9/06)
2006 Dec 9, A suspicious fire combined with a blocked exit turned the women's ward of a Moscow drug treatment hospital into a deathtrap as flames and smoke overcame patients while they struggled to get out. At least 45 women were killed.
(AP, 12/9/06)
2006 Dec 9, Tiger rebels said artillery duels in northeast Sri Lanka had killed at least 45 people, including 15 civilians and 30 government soldiers, after a Norwegian peace bid failed.
(AFP, 12/9/06)
2006 Dec 9, UN Special Envoy Stephen Lewis said South Africa had made "a breakthrough" on AIDS after sidelining its controversial health minister and unveiling a new program for helping people with HIV. Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang contended that eating a mixture of garlic and vegetables can fight HIV.
(AFP, 12/9/06)
2006 Dec 9, In Sudan militiamen on horseback ambushed a refugee convoy in Sirba in western Darfur, killing 22 civilians. The governor of West Darfur said the attack was carried out by rebel groups who refused to sign the May peace agreement.
(AFP, 12/10/06)
2006 Dec 9, Taiwan's ruling party narrowly won a crucial mayoral election in one southern city, while the opposition candidate won comfortably in the capital of Taipei in a pair of votes seen by many as a referendum for President Chen Shui-bian.
(AP, 12/9/06)
2006 Dec 9, In Thailand a police informant who survived two attacks by suspected Muslim insurgents was killed in a drive-by shooting in the restive south.
(AP, 12/9/06)
2006 Dec 9, In Turkey the state-run Anatolia news agency reported that police had detained 10 suspected al-Qaida militants, including a lawyer who identified himself as the group's leader.
(AP, 12/9/06)
2006 Dec 9, It was reported that Lake Victoria, the greatest of Africa's Great Lakes and the biggest freshwater body after Lake Superior, has dropped fast, at least six feet in the past three years. The Uganda government cited the outflow through two hydroelectric dams at Jinja as part of the problem along with drought and rising temperatures. At 27,000 square miles the lake matched size of Ireland.
(AP, 12/9/06)
2007 Dec 9, In Arvada, Colorado, a suburb of Denver, a gunman walked into a training center dormitory for young Christian missionaries and opened fire, killing two of the center's staff members and wounding two others. 2 more people, including the gunman, were killed at the New Life megachurch in Colorado Springs. Matthew Murray, killed himself.
(AP, 12/9/07)(AP, 12/10/07)(AP, 12/9/08)
2007 Dec 9, In southern Afghanistan Afghan, British and US troops closed in on Musa Qala, a Taliban-held town. A second NATO soldier was killed in the operation. This was the first mission in which British forces have participated with the Afghan army as the main fighting force. Afghan and NATO forces killed 30 Taliban fighters in Kandahar's Panjwayi district.
(AP, 12/9/07)(AFP, 12/9/07)
2007 Dec 9, Bolivia’s constitutional assembly approved a new charter that would empower Pres. Evo Morales to run for re-election indefinitely. The new constitution required approval by Bolivians in a national referendum expected in 2008.
(SFC, 12/10/07, p.A16)
2007 Dec 9, Voters in Bosnia's Serb entity went to polls to choose a new president, as the country was taking initial steps towards European integration.
(AFP, 12/9/07)
2007 Dec 9, Anne Darwin, whose husband is accused of faking his own death in an insurance scam, was arrested upon her return to Britain from Panama on suspicion of fraud. Police said Darwin masterminded an elaborate fraud to pay off family debts.
(AP, 12/9/07)
2007 Dec 9, A Canadian jury in British Columbia convicted Robert 'Willie' Pickton (58), a pig farmer, of murdering six women, handing him an automatic life sentence but finding that the killings were not planned. Pickton still faced 20 more murder charges for the deaths of women, most of them prostitutes and drug addicts from a seedy Vancouver neighborhood. On Dec 11 Pickton was sentenced to life in prison with no hope of parole for 25 years. Canadian authorities spent more than C$100 million ($98 million) to catch and convict Pickton.
(AP, 12/9/07)(Reuters, 12/12/07)(Reuters, 11/17/10)
2007 Dec 9, Beijing's foreign exchange regulator said the ceiling on foreign investment in Chinese securities will be raised to $30 billion from $10 billion.
(AP, 12/9/07)
2007 Dec 9, Iran signed a contract with China's Sinopec for the development of Iran's huge Yadavaran oil field, the kind of energy deal the United States has been trying to prevent. Hundreds of Iranian students angry over a crackdown on activists protested at Tehran University, the second such demonstration in less than a week.
(Reuters, 12/9/07)(AP, 12/9/07)
2007 Dec 9, Maj. Gen. Jalil Khalaf, the police chief of Basra, said religious vigilantes have killed at least 40 women this year there because of how they dressed. A roadside bomb struck a convoy carrying Brig. Gen. Qais al-Maamouri, the police chief of Babil, the provincial capital of Hillah, a predominantly Shiite province south of Baghdad, killing him and two of his bodyguards. British PM Gordon Brown flew into southern Iraq to rally troops and confirm that Iraqi forces will take command of the last region under British control in mid-December.
(AP, 12/9/07)(AP, 12/10/07)
2007 Dec 9, In Pakistan former PM Nawaz Sharif's opposition party decided to run in next month's parliamentary elections, a move could clear the way for other members of Pakistan's largest opposition coalition to participate. A suicide bomber rammed an explosives-laden car into a police outpost near Imam Dheri, the headquarters of pro-Taliban cleric Maulana Fazlullah, killing 8 people. The military there has been battling Islamic militants loyal to the fugitive cleric.
(AP, 12/9/07)
2007 Dec 9, A blast on a bus in Russia’s Stavropol region killed two people. An exploding gas canister was suspected.
(Reuters, 12/9/07)
2007 Dec 9, In Lisbon, Spain, Senegal's Pres. Abdoulaye Wade said most African leaders have rejected EU proposals for a free-trade deal that would replace colonial-era trading systems at a summit marred by disputes over Zimbabwe and Darfur. Africa and Europe's first summit in seven years ended without agreement on the key issue of trade.
(AP, 12/9/07)(Reuters, 12/9/07)
2007 Dec 9, A charter aircraft flying from the Czech Republic crashed near Kiev airport in Ukraine killing at least 5 people.
(AFP, 12/9/07)
2008 Dec 9, Federal authorities arrested Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich (51) on charges that he brazenly conspired to sell or trade the US Senate seat left vacant by President-elect Barack Obama to the highest bidder. Upon his arrest Blagojevich and his wife were awash in over $200,000 in credit card debt. Blagojevich was released after paying a $4,500 bond.
(AP, 12/9/08)(SFC, 12/10/08, p.A4)(SFC, 7/2/10, p.A6)
2008 Dec 9, The US Treasury said it had sold $30 billion in four-week bills at an interest rate of zero percent, for the first time since the notes began issuing in 2001.
(SFC, 12/10/08, p.C4)
2008 Dec 9, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said it will pay up to $54.25 million to settle a class-action lawsuit that alleged the discount giant cut workers' break time and didn't prevent employees from working off the clock in Minnesota.
(AP, 12/10/08)
2008 Dec 9, SF Mayor Gavin Newsom announced $71 million in cuts that included the loss of jobs for nearly 400 city employees.
(SFC, 12/10/08, p.A1)
2008 Dec 9, Nevada state and federal authorities said they arrested nearly two dozen people, many with ties to Eastern Europe, in a credit card fraud and identity theft scheme that cost Las Vegas businesses and consumers about $1.5 million.
(AP, 12/9/08)
2008 Dec 9, In Afghanistan Mohammad Bobi, a Taliban commander, was killed during a targeted overnight operation just south of Kabul.
(AP, 12/9/08)
2008 Dec 9, In Argentina officials announced that 10,000 bone fragments had been unearthed between February and September, inside the once-secret Arana detention center in La Plata. Political dissidents were tortured and killed there during the 1976-1983 “Dirty War."
(AP, 12/10/08)
2008 Dec 9, The Bank of Canada unexpectedly cut its key interest rate by three-quarters of a percentage point to a 50-year low of 1.50 percent and declared the Canadian economy to be in a recession.
(AP, 12/9/08)
2008 Dec 9, In Beijing delegates from six nations focused on a Chinese proposal on how to verify North Korea's claims about its atomic program in talks aimed at ending the secretive regime's nuclear activities.
(AFP, 12/9/08)
2008 Dec 9, In China activists issued a new public call for greater freedoms ahead of the 60th anniversary of the UN convention on human rights, but police detained two of the signatories before it was even issued. The petition known as Charter 08 was issued online and initially signed by 303 intellectuals. Within a week 5,000 people added their signature.
(AP, 12/9/08)(Econ, 1/17/09, p.42)(Econ, 2/14/09, SR p.17)
2008 Dec 9, Ethiopian troops were reported to be pouring into neighboring Somalia to fight radical Islamists who have taken over much of the country, raising fears of more violence in a country fighting a deadly insurgency and piracy.
(AP, 12/9/08)
2008 Dec 9, In Paris, France, entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson, Jordan's Queen Noor and other dignitaries launched an ambitious project aimed at eliminating the world's nuclear weapons over the next 25 years.
(AP, 12/9/08)
2008 Dec 9, The European Union and Canada reached a deal to open their aviation markets to each other by removing restrictions on direct flights and foreign ownership in airlines.
(AP, 12/9/08)
2008 Dec 9, Hong Kong health authorities said more than 80,000 chickens will be slaughtered after bird flu was found on a poultry farm, the first outbreak at a farm here in nearly six years.
(AFP, 12/9/08)
2008 Dec 9, India police released the names of nine suspected Islamic militants killed during their attack on Mumbai, bolstering India's charges that all of them came from Pakistan. A speeding bus caught fire in northern Uttar Pradesh state, killing at least 63 Hindu pilgrims.
(AP, 12/9/08)(AP, 12/10/08)
2008 Dec 9, Ireland's farm minister said Irish cattle have tested positive for chemicals which have triggered a cancer scare previously confined to pork.
(AFP, 12/9/08)
2008 Dec 9, Israel reopened its crossings with Gaza to shipments of humanitarian aid and fuel. International journalists were also being allowed in.
(AP, 12/9/08)
2008 Dec 9, Sony said it is slashing 8,000 jobs, or 4 percent of its global work force, aiming to cut costs by $1.1 billion a year as an economic downturn and a stronger yen batter profits at the Japanese electronics maker.
(AP, 12/9/08)
2008 Dec 9, Andrius Kubilius (b.1956) began serving as the Prime Minister of Lithuania. He already served as the PM 1999. He led the conservative political party Homeland Union – Lithuanian Christian Democrats.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrius_Kubilius)
2008 Dec 9, Mexico's Congress voted to broaden police powers, allowing law enforcement agencies to use undercover agents and taped conversations as evidence in a bid to help them fight increasingly bloody drug cartels. In the Gulf coast state of Tabasco, soldiers detained 11 police officers from four towns for questioning on suspicion of aiding the Gulf drug cartel. In the northern city of Tijuana four bodies were found.
(AP, 12/9/08)
2008 Dec 9, Pakistan arrested some 40 people in raids that targeted Lashkar-e-Taiba in the Northwest Frontier Province and Punjab.
(WSJ, 12/10/08, p.A9)
2008 Dec 9, A South African man accused of attempting to smuggle hundreds of rare chameleons, snakes, lizards and frogs out of Madagascar inside his jacket and luggage was convicted and sentenced to a year in jail.
(AP, 12/9/08)
2008 Dec 9, President Robert Mugabe rejected mounting Western pressure for him to resign, even as his health minister called for more international aid to battle a deadly cholera epidemic. US President George W. Bush joined calls for Robert Mugabe to step down, but the African Union rejected tougher action against Mugabe and said only dialogue could solve its crisis.
(AFP, 12/9/08)(Reuters, 12/9/08)
2009 Dec 9, US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told Congress that the administration will extend the government's financial bailout program until next fall, saying it's needed to protect against fresh economic shocks.
(AP, 12/9/09)
2009 Dec 9, Time Warner, which acquired America Online (AOL) in 2001, span off AOL and its 7,000 employees as a separate company under CEO Tim Armstrong (38).
(SFC, 5/29/09, p.C2)(Econ, 12/12/09, p.73)
2009 Dec 9, A blizzard dumped over a foot of snow across much of the Midwest and New England. Nearly 19 inches fell in Madison, Wis., 16 inches was reported in Des Moines, Iowa. At least 16 deaths were blamed on the storm.
(SFC, 12/10/09, p.A17)
2009 Dec 9, In Chula Vista, Ca., Maribel Arteaga (28), a pregnant woman, was fatally stabbed in front of her two children by a man authorities believe is her estranged husband. On Jan 28, 2011, Arteaga Garcia was detained by Mexican police.
(SSFC, 1/30/11, p.A10)(http://tinyurl.com/47x9hte)
2009 Dec 9, Gene Barry (1919), American film and TV actor, died. He played Bat Masterson in the NBC TV series from 1958-1961. From 1963-1966 he starred in “Captain Amos Burke," later renamed “Amos Burke: Secret Agent." From 1968-1971 he played a publishing tycoon in “the name of the Game." From 1972-1973 he starred as a government agent in the British series “The Adventurer."
(SFC, 12/15/09, p.C5)
2009 Dec 9, Australia’s government said 5 North Korean artists have been banned from entering Australia for an exhibition of their work, drawing accusations of censorship from the arts community. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said the artists and a translator have been refused visas because it is contrary to foreign policy interests and because they are from a studio linked to North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il.
(AFP, 12/9/09)
2009 Dec 9, Bolivia seized a 12,500-hectare (48-square-mile) ranch in the eastern lowlands from a soybean magnate who is among the chief political rivals of just re-elected President Evo Morales. The next day deputy land minister said the Yasminka ranch taken from Branko Marinkovic will be given to the Guarayo Indians. The Marinkovic family, which immigrated from Croatia in the 1950s, is fighting in court to keep a slightly bigger ranch, Laguna Corazon, from the same fate.
(AP, 12/10/09)
2009 Dec 9, The British government fired a broadside at banks, slapping a 50% tax rate on bonuses over 25,000 pounds to recoup cash spent saving the sector.
(AFP, 12/9/09)
2009 Dec 9, In Costa Rica former President Rodrigo Carazo Odio (82) died of complications from open-heart surgery. Odio governed Costa Rica from 1978 to 1982.
(AP, 12/9/09)
2009 Dec 9, Germany’s Volkswagen announced that it has agreed to pay $2.5 billion for a 19.9% stake in Suzuki, a family-owned Japanese maker of small cars and motorcycles.
(Econ, 12/12/09, p.72)
2009 Dec 9, In Guatemala former Pres. Kjell Eugenio Laugerud (79) died from complications related to cancer. He is credited with helping rebuild Guatemala after the devastating 1976 earthquake.
(AP, 12/12/09)
2009 Dec 9, The Honduras government granted authorization for ousted Pres. Zelaya to leave the country and go to Mexico.
(AP, 12/9/09)
2009 Dec 9, India’s federal government agreed to give in to a high-profile hunger strike and create the new state of Telangana out of the vast state of Andhra Pradesh.
(AP, 12/11/09)
2009 Dec 9, Iran claimed that a newly built UN station to detect nuclear explosions was built in Turkmenistan near its border to give the West a post to spy on the country. The Vienna-based Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization, or CTBTO, said the station has now been fully constructed and is currently undergoing testing.
(AP, 12/9/09)
2009 Dec 9, In Iraq a bomb attached to a minibus exploded in northern Baghdad, killing two and injuring 11. A bomb hidden in a garbage heap killed two street sweepers and injured three passers-by in northern Baghdad. An hour later in the same neighborhood a gunman killed a police officer at a checkpoint.
(AP, 12/9/09)
2009 Dec 9, Some 10,000 West Bank settlers turned out to support resistance to a government ban on most new housing.
(SFC, 12/10/09, p.A2)
2009 Dec 9, In Mexico the bound, bullet-riddled bodies of seven men were found along a highway in Chihuahua state. 2 federal agents were killed in separate attacks in the cities of Uruapan and Lazaro Cardenas, Michoacan state. Police found four mutilated bodies near a middle school in Chilpancingo, state capital of drug-plagued Guerrero state.
(AP, 12/10/09)(AP, 12/11/09)
2009 Dec 9, Amnesty International said that police in Nigeria carry out hundreds of extra-judicial killings every year and only those who can afford to pay bribes can guarantee their safety from execution or torture.
(AFP, 12/9/09)
2009 Dec 9, In Pakistan 5 American men (18-24) were arrested at a house in Sargodha linked to Jaish-e-Mohammed. They had met with representatives of an al-Qaida linked group and asked for training but were turned down because they lacked references from trusted militants. One, Ramy Zamzam, was a dental student at Howard University. The others were identified as Waqar Hussain Khan, Ramy Zamzam, Ahmal Abdul Minni, Aman Hassan Yamer and Umer Farooq. Khalid Farooq, Umer’s father, was also detained. On June 24, 2010, the 5 American Muslims were convicted of plotting terrorist attacks and sentenced to 10 years in jail.
(AP, 12/10/09)(SFC, 12/12/09, p.A2)(AP, 6/24/10)
2009 Dec 9, Philippine police named 161 suspects in the Nov 23 massacre of 57 people in the country's worst election violence, including government militiamen led by members of a powerful clan facing murder and rebellion charges.
(AP, 12/9/09)
2009 Dec 9, Russia's error-prone Bulava intercontinental ballistic missile suffered its eighth failure in 12 tests.
(AP, 12/10/09)
2009 Dec 9, In Switzerland the world's largest atom smasher recorded its first high energy collision of protons.
(SFC, 12/10/09, p.A2)
2009 Dec 9, The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said it needs $32 million to feed 220,000 Zimbabweans who cannot access hard currency in the collapsed economy.
(AP, 12/9/09)
2010 Dec 9, Bank of America agreed to pay $137 million to settle federal and California state bid-rigging and kickback charges related to municipal bond contracts dating back to 1998.
(SFC, 12/10/10, p.D1)
2010 Dec 9, In West Virginia an explosion at AL Solutions Inc., a small chemical plant in New Cumberland, killed 2 workers and injured 2 people.
(SFC, 12/10/10, p.A17)
2010 Dec 9, James Moody (b.1925), jazz musician, died in San Diego. His work included over 50 solo albums.
(SSFC, 12/12/10, p.C10)
2010 Dec 9, In southern Afghanistan insurgents killed a NATO service member.
(AP, 12/9/10)
2010 Dec 9, Heavy British police presence held off angry student protesters marching to London's Parliament Square as lawmakers debated a controversial plan to triple university tuition fees in England. Protesters attacked a Rolls Royce carrying Prince Charles and wife Camilla Parker-Bowles, as they drove through London’s West End. The couple were not hurt.
(AP, 12/9/10)(SFC, 12/10/10, p.A6)
2010 Dec 9, England’s Glastonbury Holy Thorn Tree, venerated for centuries by Christians, was chopped down overnight after a sprig from the tree was cut off in a ceremony so it could be given to Queen Elizabeth II to decorate her Christmas table. Religious tradition holds that the original tree was planted by St. Joseph of Arimathea, the wealthy merchant who volunteered his tomb to Jesus, after he first made landfall in England some 2,000 years ago.
(AP, 12/10/10)
2010 Dec 9, A report in the medical journal Lancet criticized Canada for exporting chrysotile, or white asbestos, while it virtually bans the product at home, who fibers can lead to respiratory diseases and cancers.
(SFC, 12/9/10, p.A2)
2010 Dec 9, In China the inaugural Confucius Peace Prize was awarded to former Taiwan vice-president Lien Chan at a chaotic press conference held by a handful of Chinese university professors. Lien's office in Taiwan declined comment, saying they had no knowledge of the award. Chinese poet Qiao Damo, one of the "candidates", told reporters the lack of any word from Lien represented "silent acceptance" of the prize, prompting laughter from assembled journalists.
(AFP, 12/9/10)
2010 Dec 9, Former Croatian PM Ivo Sanader, under investigation in a corruption case, left the country crossing into Slovenia, hours before parliament voted on lifting his immunity from prosecution so that he could be detained.
(AP, 12/9/10)
2010 Dec 9, Human Rights Watch said India's security forces routinely gun down cattle smugglers and other civilians crossing the border with Bangladesh despite scant evidence of any crime.
(AP, 12/9/10)
2010 Dec 9, In Iran Ali Shakouri-rad, one of the prisoners of the post-election events, was jailed for "propagating against the regime and spreading lies." He was released on Jan 24, 2011. He was previously freed on bail on October 28, two weeks after being arrested for what Tehran prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi called "security reasons."
(AFP, 1/24/11)
2010 Dec 9, In Iraq attacks on a police patrol in northern Baghdad and a checkpoint north of the city killed two policemen.
(AP, 12/9/10)
2010 Dec 9, The Israeli air force bombed four sites in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, causing no casualties. The air raids came after Palestinian militants fired several mortars into southern Israel from Gaza the previous day.
(AFP, 12/9/10)
2010 Dec 9, In Ivory Coast pressure increased on Laurent Gbagbo as continental heavyweights South Africa and Kenya joined UN calls for him to abandon his bid to cling to power after disputed polls. The African Union suspended Ivory Coast until Gbagbo hands over power to Alassane Ouattara, whom the AU and UN consider the winner of last month's election.
(AFP, 12/9/10)(Reuters, 12/9/10)
2010 Dec 9, Jamaican police discovered a body buried in a shallow grave at a construction site outside the capital. The remains were identified as those of Esmond Morris (32), who had not been seen since Dec 6. He had a gunshot wound in the back of the head. 2 more bodies were found the next day and police said they expected to find more.
(AP, 12/11/10)
2010 Dec 9, In Japan the 3rd International Pole Dancing Championships concluded. The competition was held in a large arena near the Tokyo Dome, the Japanese capital's main sports stadium, with competitors from countries ranging from Malaysia to Moldova. Japan's Mai Sato defended her title as the women's champion, and Duncan West of Australia won in men's. This year also had a disabled division, which was won by hearing-impaired Eri Kamimoto of Japan.
(AP, 12/10/10)
2010 Dec 9, Jordan appointed a woman, Ihsan Barakat (46), as chief district attorney of the country's capital, marking the first time a woman has held a top prosecutor's post in the pro-American Arab kingdom.
(AP, 12/9/10)
2010 Dec 9, In Mexico federal police hunted for top leaders of the La Familia drug cartel in Michoacan state, unleashing narco-blockades and shootouts that left 2 more people dead. La Familia cartel leader Nazario Moreno Gonzalez (40), known as "The Craziest One," was killed in a clash between police and cartel gunmen. Police recovered the bodies of three other suspected La Familia members and detained three others. In northern Chihuahua state six people were gunned down by the side of a highway leading south of the capital. In the resort city of Acapulco, a traffic cop was found shot to death on a road, his hands bound.
(AP, 12/10/10)(SFC, 12/10/10, p.A12)(AP, 12/11/10)
2010 Dec 9, Netherlands arrested a young hacker who confessed to participating in attacks by WikiLeaks sympathizers on websites, including MasterCard, PayPal and Visa.
(AP, 12/10/10)
2010 Dec 9, In Nigeria an election officials said thieves had infiltrated Murtala Muhammed International Airport and stole just-arrived equipment needed to register voters ahead of next year's hotly contested presidential election. Police arrested four men while four others had fled, after a 30-minute shootout with members of Boko Haram, a radical Muslim sect, who ambushed security officers at a checkpoint in Maiduguri.
(AP, 12/9/10)
2010 Dec 9, Communist allies North Korea and China proclaimed their unity as the North's leader Kim Jong-Il held his first meeting with a senior Chinese envoy since the region's worst crisis in years erupted.
(AFP, 12/9/10)
2010 Dec 9, South Africa unveiled its national space agency, aiming to become a leader in earth observation technology across the continent in 10 years.
(AFP, 12/9/10)
2010 Dec 9, The Provea human rights group said 13,985 people were murdered in Venezuela last year and the figure could be significantly higher, alluding to the rampant crime that has become a central concern of Venezuelans.
(AP, 12/9/10)
2011 Dec 9, The US Justice Dept. and the SEC announced a $148 million settlement with Wachovia Bank, now owned by Walls Fargo, for engaging in bid-rigging and kickback schemes relating to municipal bond contracts.
(SSFC, 12/11/11, p.D1)
2011 Dec 9, In California Tyler Brehm (26) was shot and killed in Los Angeles after he walked down the middle of Sunset Boulevard firing on motorists. Music executive John Atterberry (40) died on Dec 12 from wounds suffered in Brehm’s shooting.
(SSFC, 12/11/11, p.A11)(SFC, 12/13/11, p.A11)
2011 Dec 9, Payroll figures and names released for the first time by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey show 66 police officers have made more than $200,000 so far in 2011, thanks to overtime that in many cases has doubled their salaries.
(AP, 12/9/11)
2011 Dec 9, In Maryland former Prince George’s County councilwoman Leslie Johnson was sentenced to a year in prison for obstructing an investigation into her husband’s corruption. Former County Executive Jack Johnson got over 7 years in prison this week for extorting hundreds of thousands in bribes from developers.
(SFC, 12/10/11, p.A6)
2011 Dec 9, In eastern Afghanistan a suicide bomber attacked a mosque, assassinating a district police chief and killing at least five other people in Kunar province.
(AFP, 12/9/11)
2011 Dec 9, Australia's highest court dismissed rival Apple's appeal in its global patent battle against South Korea’s Samsung Electronics. Samsung is now free to sell its Galaxy tablet computers in Australia.
(AP, 12/9/11)
2011 Dec 9, In Australia a senior Queensland Health executive, Hohepa Morehu-Barlow (36), also known as Joel Barlow, was being hunted after Aus$16 million (US$16 million) went missing from the government department. He was arrested at his own apartment Dec 12 after three days on the run from police following the discovery of his alleged theft.
(AFP, 12/9/11)(AP, 12/13/11)
2011 Dec 9, Bahraini security forces fired tear gas, rubber bullets and stun grenades to disperse hundreds of demonstrators in a Shiite neighborhood of the capital Manama.
(AFP, 12/9/11)
2011 Dec 9, In China two exchange students accepted the Confucius Peace Prize on behalf of Russian PM Vladimir Putin, who was honored for enhancing Russia's status and crushing anti-government forces in Chechnya.
(AP, 12/9/11)
2011 Dec 9, In northeastern China two tourists from Hong Kong were killed and 36 others were hurt when their bus overturned after colliding with a farm vehicle in Jilin province.
(AP, 12/10/11)
2011 Dec 9, In CongoDRC provisional results published by the election commission handed victory to Pres. Joseph Kabila who won another term with 49% of the 18.14 million votes cast. Etienne Tshisekedi (78) took to the airwaves to say he rejected the results and proclaimed himself president, saying the election had been manipulated.
(AP, 12/9/11)(AP, 12/10/11)
2011 Dec 9, Croatia signed a treaty to join the EU in 2013, a bittersweet milestone as the bloc prepares to take on board a sluggish economy it will have to drag along at the time of its worst crisis ever.
(AP, 12/9/11)
2011 Dec 9, The EU said that 26 of its 27 member countries are open to joining a new treaty tying their finances together to solve the euro crisis. Only Britain remained opposed, creating a deep rift in the union. Britain's leaders argued that the revised treaty would threaten their national sovereignty and damage London's financial services industry.
(AP, 12/9/11)
2011 Dec 9, EU president Herman Van Rompuy said Serbia's bid to be granted the status of candidate for membership in the bloc will be postponed until March.
(AP, 12/9/11)
2011 Dec 9, Germany, the United States and nine other nations signed an agreement that expands access to the International Tracing Service (ITS), a unique Holocaust-era archive.
(AP, 12/9/11)
2011 Dec 9, In India at least 89 people were killed when a fire engulfed patients at the AMRI Hospital in the city of Kolkata. Police arrested 6 hospital officials on charges of culpable homicide.
(AFP, 12/9/11)(AP, 12/9/11)(SFC, 12/10/11, p.A5)
2011 Dec 9, An Israeli airstrike against a Hamas target in Gaza killed a Palestinian civilian and his son (12). Palestinian Mustafa Abelrazek al-Tamimi (28) was critically wounded when he was hit in the face by a tear gas canister fired by Israeli troops at a rally in the West Bank. Tamimi had been throwing stones and died of his injuries the next day. Gaza militants fired twelve rockets at Israel.
(AP, 12/9/11)(AFP, 12/9/11)(AP, 12/10/11)(AFP, 12/10/11)
2011 Dec 9, In Italy a letter bomb exploded at an office of the tax collection agency, Equitalia, slightly wounding the organization's director. The Italian group, known as the "Informal Anarchist Federation" claimed responsibility for package bombs sent to three Rome embassies around Christmas last year. A week later another bomb was intercepted at Equitalia.
(AP, 12/9/11)(Econ, 1/7/12, p.45)
2011 Dec 9, Jamaican authorities said 217 of 362 police officers, who took voluntary lie-detector tests this year, failed. Officials denied re-enlistment to 62 officers this year. An additional 34 have been charged with corruption and seven dismissed for failing the test.
(AP, 12/9/11)
2011 Dec 9, In Japan Defense Minister Yasuo Ichikawa and Kenji Yamaoka, the minister for consumer affairs were censured. Ichikawa was slapped down for a series of gaffes that riled the people of Okinawa, reluctant hosts to a large US military presence. Yamaoka was admonished for alleged ties with shady business groups. The main opposition Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has threatened to boycott parliament from January if the pair stay in place.
(AFP, 12/9/11)
2011 Dec 9, Japanese workers discovered a nuclear plant leak. 1.8 ton of radioactive water leaked from the cooling system at the idled reactor at the Genkai nuclear plant in Saga prefecture in the southern Kyushu region. The leak was contained within the system.
(AFP, 12/10/11)
2011 Dec 9, In Lebanon a roadside bomb struck a vehicle carrying UN peacekeepers in the south, wounding five French soldiers and a Lebanese bystander.
(AP, 12/9/11)
2011 Dec 9, Mexico's navy said the first woman has joined the ranks of its special forces.
(AP, 12/9/11)
2011 Dec 9, The Mexican army found a 50-yard (meter) long tunnel starting under a building in the northern city of Nogales, which is across the border from Nogales, Arizona.
(AP, 12/11/11)
2011 Dec 9, Puerto Rico’s most wanted criminal, Miguel Diaz Rivera (39), was arrested in the Dominican capital of Santo Domingo. He is accused of running a drug trafficking network in at least five Puerto Rican cities.
(AP, 12/10/11)
2011 Dec 9, In Sri Lanka political activists Lalith Kumar Weeraraj and Kugan Murugananthan went missing after they were intercepted by men on motorcycles in Jaffna.
(Econ, 1/14/12, p.41)
2011 Dec 9, Syrian forces killed 41 people, including 7 children, as they fired on anti-government demonstrations across the country. The opposition warned the regime was planning a "massacre" in Homs which has been ringed by troops for more than two months.
(AP, 12/9/11)(AFP, 12/10/11)
2011 Dec 9, In Thailand some 100 supporters of a grandfather jailed for 20 years in Thailand for insulting the king held a rare public protest against the kingdom's strict lese majeste laws in the capital Bangkok. Ampon Tangnoppakul (61) was last month found guilty of four counts of offending the royals in text messages last year. Article 112 of the criminal code contains the rules protecting the royals.
(AFP, 12/9/11)
2011 Dec 9, UN chief Ban Ki-moon urged Somalia's Al Qaeda-linked insurgents to end violence during a surprise visit to war-torn Mogadishu.
(AFP, 12/9/11)
2011 Dec 9, In Venezuela officials said floods and mudslides unleashed by torrential rains have caused at least eight deaths. Neighboring Colombia has also been coping with floods and President Juan Manuel Santos, touring flooded areas south of Bogota, promised assistance to those whose houses have been damaged.
(AP, 12/9/11)
2011 Dec 9, In Yemen tens of thousands of people took to the streets across the country demanding that outgoing President Ali Abdullah Saleh be put on trial. A prison riot in Sanaa left two inmates dead and three guards injured.
(AP, 12/9/11)
2012 Dec 9, Campaigners celebrated Int’l. Anti-Corruption Day.
(Econ, 12/15/12, p.61)
2012 Dec 9, Norman Joseph Woodland (b.1921), co-inventor of the bar code, died in New Jersey. He and Bernard Silver (d.1963) submitted their patent in 1949. The patent was granted in 1952.
(SFC, 12/14/12, p.A16)
2012 Dec 9, In eastern Afghanistan Dr. Dilip Joseph, an American doctor abducted by the Taliban five days ago in Kabul province, was rescued in a US-led operation. Petty Officer 1st Class Nicolas Checque (28), a Navy SEAL, died of injuries sustained in the successful rescue of Dr. Joseph.
(AP, 12/9/12)(AP, 12/10/12)
2012 Dec 9, Argentina’s President Cristina Fernandez gave Susana Trimarco a human rights award before hundreds of thousands of people in the Plaza de Mayo for her efforts in rescuing sex slaves and helping them start new lives. Argentina's efforts to combat sex trafficking began largely as a result of Susana Trimarco's one-woman, decade-long quest to find her missing daughter, Maria de los Angeles "Marita" Veron.
(AP, 12/11/12)(AP, 12/13/12)
2012 Dec 9, British astronomer Patrick Moore (89) died. He helped map the moon and inspired generations of star gazers with decades of television broadcasts.
(Reuters, 12/9/12)
2012 Dec 9, Chinese state media said police have detained a monk and his nephew in Sichuan province and accused them of instigating the self-immolations of eight ethnic Tibetans on the instructions of the Dalai Lama and his followers.
(AP, 12/9/12)
2012 Dec 9, Officials said 4 people have died in Croatia and 2 in Serbia as a result of blizzards in southwestern Europe over the weekend. The death toll in the region reached at least 9 people, with deaths in Bulgaria amd Kosovo, as the cold snap continued through the week.
(AP, 12/9/12)(SFC, 12/15/12, p.A2)
2012 Dec 9, Egypt's liberal opposition called for more protests, seeking to keep up the momentum of its street campaign. Morsi overnight annulled his Nov. 22 decrees that gave him near unrestricted powers, but refused to rescind a draft constitution going to a referendum on Dec 15.
(AP, 12/9/12)
2012 Dec 9, Ghana’s President John Dramani Mahama was declared the winner of Ghana's presidential election, despite widespread technical glitches and protests by the country's opposition, which claimed the vote was rigged. Mahama won by a margin of only 325,000 votes out of 11 million. It took the Supreme Court until August, 2013, to uphold the result.
(AP, 12/9/12)(Econ, 12/21/13, p.77)
2012 Dec 9, Iran said it has launched a video-sharing website in the latest move to create government-sanctioned alternatives to Internet powerhouses such as YouTube. The new site — Mehr, or affection in Farsi — seeks to promote Iranian and Islamic culture and artists.
(AP, 12/9/12)
2012 Dec 9, In Iraq a bomb exploded near the house of an anti-al-Qaida militiaman south of Baghdad, killing him, his 8-year-old son and another family member in Iskandariyah.
(AP, 12/9/12)
2012 Dec 9, In Lebanon four people were killed in fighting in the city of Tripoli between gunmen loyal to opposite sides in Syria's civil war.
(AP, 12/9/12)
2012 Dec 9, Mexican-American singer Jenni Rivera and 4 others died in a plane crash near Nuevo Leon that left no survivors.
(SFC, 12/10/12, p.A2)
2012 Dec 9, In northeastern Nigeria a shootout began between security forces and members of a radical Islamist sect after suspected sect members bombed a local police station and attacked a bank branch. By the next day at least 15 people were killed in Potiskum.
(AP, 12/11/12)
2012 Dec 9, In Nigeria Kamene Okonjo (83), the mother of Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, was kidnapped from her home in the southern delta. She was released on Dec 14.
(AP, 12/10/12)(AP, 12/14/12)
2012 Dec 9, In Pakistan four missiles struck a residential compound near Miran Shah, North Waziristan. 3 suspected militants were killed.
(AP, 12/9/12)
2012 Dec 9, In the southern Philippines the number of people missing following Typhoon Bopha jumped to nearly 900 after families and fishing companies reported losing contact with more than 300 fishermen at sea.
(AP, 12/9/12)
2012 Dec 9, Romanians voted in a parliamentary election. PM Victor Ponta's coalition won nearly three-fifths of the seats in the legislature. His battle with President Traian Basescu threatened to throw the country into a political standoff no matter the outcome.
(AP, 12/9/12)(AP, 12/10/12)
2012 Dec 9, Russian and US diplomats met with UN peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi for more talks on the civil war in Syria.
(AP, 12/9/12)
2012 Dec 9, In Senegal Roman Catholic peacemakers mediated the release of eight Senegalese soldiers held by rebels in the southern Casamance district.
(AP, 12/9/12)
2012 Dec 9, In Somalia African Union and Somali troops took Jowhar, a rebel al-Shabab stronghold north of Mogadishu.
(AP, 12/9/12)
2012 Dec 9, In Syria 9 judges in Idlib defected from the regime of Pres. Assad. They identified themselves by name and read a joint statement urging others to break ranks with Assad. Rebels captured parts of another large army base in the country's north, just west of the city of Aleppo, tightening the opposition's grip on areas close to the Turkish border.
(AP, 12/9/12)(AP, 12/10/12)
2012 Dec 9, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez named his vice president as his chosen successor and prepared to head back to Cuba for more surgery for cancer after announcing that the illness returned despite two previous operations, chemotherapy and radiation treatment.
(AP, 12/9/12)
2013 Dec 9, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel ordered the US military to transport troops from Burundi into the Central African Republic to help quell the latest upsurge in violence there.
(AP, 12/10/13)
2013 Dec 9, The US remained in the grip of Arctic air. 1,650 flights were cancelled and tens of thousands of people were without power.
(SFC, 12/10/13, p.A8)
2013 Dec 9, Major technology companies, stung by poor publicity for having helped the US government access personal data, issued an open letter to Pres. Barack Obama asking for tighter controls on surveillance.
(AP, 12/9/13)
2013 Dec 9, In southern California charges were announced after 16 of 18 LA County current and former sheriff’s deputies were arrested for corruption and civil rights abuses.
(SFC, 12/9/13, p.A10)
2013 Dec 9, Los Angeles MTA officials began a crackdown on homeless people sleeping at Union Station under a program that limits seats in the hub to ticketed passengers.
(SFC, 12/23/13, p.A7)
2013 Dec 9, In southern California Angela Spaccia, the former assistant city manager of Bell, was convicted of corruption. She had given herself huge raises as most city residents lived in poverty.
(SFC, 12/10/13, p.A6)
2013 Dec 9, In southern California Bob Filner, the former mayor of San Diego, was sentenced to three months of home confinement and three years of probation for harassing women while serving as mayor.
(SFC, 12/10/13, p.A6)
2013 Dec 9, California pledged to restore 80,000 acres of the depleted Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta as part of a massive project to send fresh water from mountain streams in the north to farmers and residents in the parched south.
(Reuters, 12/9/13)
2013 Dec 9, In Oakland, Ca., Jahi McMath (13) suffered a cardiac arrest during a tonsil operation at Children’s Hospital. On Dec 12 doctors pronounced her brain dead. Her family contended she was still alive and kept her connected to breathing and feeding tubes.
(SFC, 12/26/13, p.A10)(SFC, 12/28/13, p.C4)
2013 Dec 9, American film actress Eleanor Parker (b.1922) died in Palm Springs. He Oscar nominations included “Caged" (1950), “Detective Story" (1951) and “Interrupted Melody" (1955).
(SFC, 12/11/13, p.A9)
2013 Dec 9, In Florida one suspected Cuban migrant was found dead, and two others were missing and feared drowned, after a homemade raft with a sole survivor on board was found floating in Biscayne Bay.
(Reuters, 12/9/13)
2013 Dec 9, Two Damien Hirst (48) signed prints, "Pyronin Y" and "Oleoylsarcosin," were taken from the Exhibitionist Gallery in west London in the early hours by a thief who forced the gallery doors.
(AP, 12/11/13)
2013 Dec 9, Canada signalled intentions to claim the North Pole and surrounding Arctic waters while announcing the filing of a UN application seeking to vastly expand its Atlantic sea boundary.
(AFP, 12/9/13)
2013 Dec 9, In Colombia Gustavo Petro (53), the leftist mayor of Bogota, was removed from his post for the mismanagement of garbage collection and banned from holding office for 15 years, a blow to the nation's left as peace talks continue with Marxist FARC rebels.
(Reuters, 12/9/13)
2013 Dec 9, An Egyptian court sentenced three supporters of ousted Islamist President Mohamed Morsi to life imprisonment, in the latest tough ruling against opponents of the army-backed interim government.
(Reuters, 12/9/13)
2013 Dec 9, Water ministers from Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan held talks on an Ethiopian dam project, after Egypt's objections delayed formation of a committee to implement expert advice.
(AFP, 12/9/13)
2013 Dec 9, A Paris auction of sacred objects from the Hopi and San Carlos Apache Native American tribes kicked off despite objections from the US and activists. The auction fetched more than 550,000 euros. On Dec 11 a US charitable foundation said that it was the anonymous bidder that paid $530,000 for 24 Native American masks in the auction and will return them to the Hopi Nation in Arizona and the San Carlos Apache tribe
(AFP, 12/9/13)(AFP, 12/10/13)(AP, 12/11/13)
2013 Dec 9, Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative party backed a deal to form a new German government with its center-left rivals, putting aside concerns over concessions that include a national minimum wage and a move to make it easier for some people to retire early.
(AP, 12/9/13)
2013 Dec 9, In Indonesia a crowded commuter train crashed into a fuel tanker on the outskirts of Jakarta, killing at least 10 people in a huge explosion and injuring scores.
(Reuters, 12/9/13)
2013 Dec 9, In Iraq a car bomb near a cafe in Buhruz, Diyala province, killed 11 people. A roadside bomb also exploded near a market in the Besmaya area southeast of Baghdad, killing at least 2 people and wounding at least eight. In the Suwaib area of south Baghdad, a roadside bomb killed 2 Sahwa anti-Al-Qaeda fighters and wounded at least two others. A blast in Madain killed at least one soldier and wounded at least two. At least 21 people were killed across the country.
(AFP, 12/9/13)(AP, 12/9/13)
2013 Dec 9, Israel's parliament moved to ensure African migrants who enter the country illegally can be held without charge, despite a Supreme Court ruling that had struck down a previous detention law.
(Reuters, 12/10/13)
2013 Dec 9, Representatives of Israel, Jordan and the Palestinians signed a "historic" agreement to link the Red Sea with the shrinking Dead Sea.
(AFP, 12/9/13)
2013 Dec 9, Kurdish rebels freed four Turkish soldiers abducted in the southeast of the country in the worst flareup of violence since a fragile ceasefire nine months ago.
(AFP, 12/9/13)
2013 Dec 9, A Kuwait court acquitted 70 people, including nine former lawmakers, of storming the parliament in 2011 in an unprecedented protest against the then prime minister, a senior member of the ruling family.
(Reuters, 12/9/13)
2013 Dec 9, In Libya gunmen killed senior police officer Col. Ramadan al-Turouk in Sirte, the hometown of former dictator Moammar Gadhafi.
(AP, 12/9/13)
2013 Dec 9, President Vladimir Putin tightened his control over Russia's media by dissolving the main state news agency and replacing it with an organization that is to promote Moscow's image abroad. Putin appointed Dmitry Kiselyov to head the resources of the former RIA Novosti, which was renamed Rossiya Segodnya (Russia Today).
(Reuters, 12/9/13)(SFC, 12/10/13, p.A3)
2013 Dec 9, A Somali court sentenced to jail a woman (19) who said she was raped and two journalists who broadcast her story, saying they were guilty of defamation and insulting state institutions. The woman, who is also a journalist, was handed a suspended six-month jail sentence for defamation and lying, during which time she will be confined to her home.
(AFP, 12/9/13)
2013 Dec 9, Syrian troops captured a western town near the country's main north-south highway as the government forged ahead with a punishing offensive in a mountainous region near the border with Lebanon.
(AP, 12/9/13)
2013 Dec 9, In Syria Razan Zaitouneh (36), a well-known rights activists, her husband and two colleagues were abducted by gunmen from her office in Douma, a rebel-held town on the outskirts of Damascus. Five years later her fate remained unknown.
(AP, 8/13/18)
2013 Dec 9, Thailand's PM Yingluck Shinawatra dissolved the lower house of Parliament and called for early elections.
(AP, 12/9/13)
2013 Dec 9, In Ukraine hundreds of police in full riot gear flooded into the center of Kiev as mass anti-government protests gripped the capital for yet another week. Heavily armed riot troops broke into the offices of a top opposition party in Kiev and seized its servers.
(AP, 12/9/13)
2013 Dec 9, The World Health Organisation and UNICEF announced the launch of a polio vaccination campaign for 23 million children in the Middle East after 17 cases were discovered in Syria.
(AFP, 12/9/13)
2014 Dec 9, The US Senate Intelligence Committee released its report on the CIA's harsh interrogation techniques at secret overseas facilities after the 9/11 terror attacks. President Barack Obama said the interrogation techniques "did significant damage to America's standing in the world and made it harder to pursue our interests with allies."
(AP, 12/10/14)
2014 Dec 9, Protesters in Berkeley, Ca., marched for a 4th straight day to denounce racial injustice and briefly shut down Highway 24 .
(SFC, 12/10/14, p.A1)
2014 Dec 9, In Nevada a woman and two men from China pleaded guilty in federal court in Las Vegas to reduced charges in what prosecutors say amounted to a $13 million illegal Internet gambling operation broken up by an FBI raid at high-roller suites at Caesars Palace.
(AP, 12/10/14)
2014 Dec 9, In NYC Calvin Peters (49) stabbed an Israeli student in the head inside a synagogue at the Brooklyn headquarters of an international Jewish organization before being fatally shot by police after refusing to drop the knife. Peters was emotionally disturbed and had a documented history of mental illness.
(AP, 12/9/14)
2014 Dec 9, Philadelphia firefighter Joyce Craig Lewis died after becoming trapped in the basement of a burning home. She was the first female member of the city’s fire department to die in the line of duty.
(SFC, 12/10/14, p.A8)
2014 Dec 9, In Bahrain an explosion killed a citizen and wounded an expatriate man in the second fatal attack in the Gulf Arab state in two days.
(Reuters, 12/9/14)
2014 Dec 9, The six-member Gulf Cooperation Council (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE) agreed to create a joint naval force based out of Bahrain and announced a police force based in Abu Dhabi.
(SSFC, 12/14/14, p.A22)
2014 Dec 9, In Bangladesh an oil tanker carrying more than 350,000 liters (92,500 gallons) of bunker oil sank on a major river flowing through the Sundarbans after being hit by a cargo vessel.
(AP, 12/12/14)
2014 Dec 9, London's New Scotland Yard, the world's most famous police headquarters, was reported sold to the Abu Dhabi Financial Group for 370 million pounds ($580 million), 120 million pounds over the asking price. The Gulf investors plan to develop luxury apartments. The Metropolitan Police was moving to a smaller headquarters as it tries to cut more than 500 million pounds ($800 million) in spending.
(AP, 12/9/14)
2014 Dec 9, In China Liu Tienan was jailed for life for receiving some $6 million in bribes. Mr. Liu was sacked in August 2013 as deputy head of the National Development and Reform Commission after a disgruntled mistress blew the whistle on him.
(AP, 12/10/14)(Econ, 12/13/14, p.46)
2014 Dec 9, In China a rights lawyer said seven students of Uighur scholar Ilham Tohti have been jailed for 3-8 years for inciting seperatism.
(SFC, 12/10/14, p.A2)
2014 Dec 9, The Save the Elephants group reported that street prices for illegal ivory are soaring in China, where newly wealthy middle and upper class citizens are buying carved ivory and whole tusks as a status symbol of their riches.
(AP, 12/9/14)
2014 Dec 9, Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro was awarded China's Confucius Peace Prize, portrayed by organizers as an alternative to the Nobel Prize. The prize was handed to a Cuban foreign student representative at a ceremony at a Beijing hotel.
(AP, 12/11/14)
2014 Dec 9, Dominica PM Roosevelt Skerrit said he is humbled by the re-election after his Labor Party won 15 of 21 parliamentary seats. Dominica's ruling party won a 4th consecutive term following parliamentary elections.
(AP, 12/9/14)
2014 Dec 9, Egyptian pro-democracy activist Ahmed Douma was sentenced to three years in jail after he accused the judge of bias and denounced his trial on charges of violence against the state as political.
(Reuters, 12/9/14)
2014 Dec 9, President Francois Hollande said that Serge Lazarevic (50), the last French citizen held hostage since 2011 by Al Qaeda's north African arm, has now been freed. Five prisoners in Mali were reported exchanged for the Frenchman.
(Reuters, 12/9/14)
2014 Dec 9, The Hungarian government said it has signed three contracts with a Russian company which will allow construction in 2018 of new reactors at the country's only nuclear power plant.
(AP, 12/9/14)
2014 Dec 9, India ordered state governments to halt the operations of all unregistered, web-based taxi companies after a female passenger reported she was raped in New Delhi by a driver contracted to US cab company Uber.
(Reuters, 12/9/14)
2014 Dec 9, In Iraq a bomb blast and mortar fire targeting Shiites killed 7 people in Baghdad as US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel visited the capital for a first-hand report on the battle against IS militants.
(AP, 12/9/14)
2014 Dec 9, Moldova police said seven people have been detained on suspicion they smuggled uranium and mercury in a metal container from Russia to be used in a dirty bomb.
(AP, 12/9/14)
2014 Dec 9, New Zealand lawmakers passed anti-terrorism measures that increase domestic surveillance powers and attempt to stop nationals from traveling abroad to fight for groups like Islamic State.
(AP, 12/10/14)
2014 Dec 9, The MN Wayward Wind, a lobster boat with 50 people onboard, capsized in the Caribbean off the coast of Nicaragua. At least 18 remained missing.
(AP, 12/13/14)
2014 Dec 9, In Pakistan a couple and their four children were killed as retribution for a perceived "honor crime" in the town of Athara Hazari. Police south four men in the killings which stemmed from the mother's first marriage nearly 30 years ago to another man.
(AP, 12/10/14)
2014 Dec 9, In the southern Philippines a suspected bomb explosion in a bus in front of Central Mindanao University killed at least 10 people and wounded 34 others in Bukidnon province.
(AP, 12/9/14)(AP, 12/10/14)
2014 Dec 9, Russia resumed shipments of natural gas to Ukraine.
(Reuters, 12/9/14)
2014 Dec 9, Sierra Leone's junior doctors struck for a 2nd day to demand better care for medical workers after a spate of recent Ebola deaths.
(AP, 12/9/14)
2014 Dec 9, The Solomon Islands parliament made Manasseh Sogavare (b.1955) prime minister.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manasseh_Sogavare)(Econ, 12/13/14, p.43)
2014 Dec 9, Swedish police raided a server room in Stockholm in an action targeting the file-sharing website The Pirate Bay.
(AP, 12/10/14)
2014 Dec 9, Ukrainian government troops and separatists said their forces were complying with an agreed "Day of Silence" in Ukraine's war-torn east, marking an attempt to forge an effective ceasefire which may lead to a new round of peace talks.
(Reuters, 12/9/14)
2014 Dec 9, The UN World Food Program said it has reinstated a food aid program to help feed over 1.7 million Syrian refugees following a significant cash infusion.
(SFC, 12/10/14, p.A3)
2014 Dec 9, In eastern Yemen at least 5 government soldiers were killed when two al Qaeda suicide bombers tried to drive cars laden with explosives into a military compound in Seyoun. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) claimed responsibility.
(Reuters, 12/9/14)
2015 Dec 9, US President Barack Obama welcomed Israel's Pres. Reuven Rivlin to the White House, with both sides eager to prevent a deeper crisis between Israel and the Palestinians.
(AFP, 12/9/15)
2015 Dec 9, The United States announced plans to double grant funding it provides to help developing countries adapt to climate change to around $860 million a year.
(Reuters, 12/9/15)
2015 Dec 9, The United States and its allies conducted 23 strikes against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
(Reuters, 12/10/15)
2015 Dec 9, Torrential rains pummeled parts of the Pacific Northwest leaving 2 women dead in Oregon.
(SFC, 12/10/15, p.A8)
2015 Dec 9, In Afghanistan 38 civilians and 12 members of Afghan security forces were killed in fighting at the airport in Kandahar as operations ended. 11 Taliban were also reported killed. Officials said the district of Khanishin in Helmand province has fallen to the insurgents. 14 policemen were killed and 11 others wounded.
(Reuters, 12/9/15)(AP, 12/10/15)
2015 Dec 9, Armenia said it has arrested Garik Marutyan (38), a former senior army officer, on suspicion of spying for Azerbaijan and selling state secrets.
(AFP, 12/9/15)
2015 Dec 9, Former Australian PM Tony Abbott defended his comments suggesting that Western culture is superior to that of Islam, and called for US-led assistance in defeating the Islamic State group.
(AP, 12/9/15)
2015 Dec 9, Azerbaijani tanks shelled positions in the breakaway Nagorny Karabakh region for the first time in more than 20 years killing one rebel soldier.
(AFP, 12/9/15)
2015 Dec 9, Azerbaijan released Leyla Yunus, head of the Baku-based Institute for Peace and Democracy. She had been held in detention since July 2014.
(Reuters, 12/9/15)
2015 Dec 9, Brazil's Supreme Court suspended impeachment proceedings against President Dilma Rousseff until it can rule on the constitutional validity of the opposition bid to impeach her.
(Reuters, 12/9/15)
2015 Dec 9, Bulgaria's Justice Minister Hristo Ivanov resigned after parliament watered down changes to the constitution in a vote which he said would prevent genuine reforms to the country's graft-prone and inefficient judiciary.
(Reuters, 12/9/15)
2015 Dec 9, In Burundi at least 7 people were killed in Bujumbura during a night of violence in flashpoint districts where months of protests took place against President Pierre Nkurunziza.
(Reuters, 12/9/15)
2015 Dec 9, China’s government said it will pay bonuses from Jan. 1 to companies meeting coal efficiency standards. Beijing residents stayed indoors, schools were closed and limits on cars, factories and construction sites kept pollution from spiking even higher.
(Reuters, 12/9/15)(AP, 12/9/15)
2015 Dec 9, Luzolo Bambi, a counselor to President Joseph Kabila on graft and money laundering, said Congo DRC loses up to $15 billion a year due to fraud, an amount close to twice the central African country's budget.
(Reuters, 12/9/15)
2015 Dec 9, Anger peaked in Kinshasa's slums as DR Congo's poor grappled with little more than bare hands against torrential rains and flooding that have left 31 people dead and 20,000 families homeless in less than three weeks.
(AFP, 12/9/15)
2015 Dec 9, French hosts of 195-nation climate rescue talks released a crucial new blueprint, reporting important progress but some sticking points two days ahead of the deadline for a UN deal.
(AFP, 12/9/15)
2015 Dec 9, A wooden smuggling boat carrying about 50 people sank in the eastern Aegean Sea. Greek authorities said at least 12 people drowned, including six children, and 12 others were missing.
(AP, 12/9/15)
2015 Dec 9, India and Pakistan announced that they were resuming the dialogue on outstanding issues, ending a two-year-long stalemate. A regional conference held in Pakistan ended with calls for the resumption of Afghan peace negotiations and an agreement by Islamabad and New Delhi to relaunch bilateral talks that broke down in August over tensions in Kashmir.
(AP, 12/9/15)(SSFC, 12/13/15, p.A25)
2015 Dec 9, Millions of Indonesians voted in nationwide elections for regional leaders in the sprawling archipelago.
(AP, 12/9/15)
2015 Dec 9, Iran’s Fars news reported that a booby trap exploded in Nikshahr, near the border with Pakistan, killing 3 policemen and wounded an unspecified number of others.
(AP, 12/9/15)
2015 Dec 9, It was reported that Jamaican activist Maurice Tomlinson has filed a claim in the country;s Supreme Court challenging the constitutionality of 1864 laws that ban sex between men.
(SFC, 12/10/15, p.A6)
2015 Dec 9, Japan's space agency said its "Akatsuki" probe had successfully entered into orbit around Venus after an initial attempt at reaching the second planet from the sun failed five years ago.
(AFP, 12/9/15)
2015 Dec 9, Kenya and Britain signed a deal to allow British troops to continue military training in the East African nation for five more years, ending half a decade of protracted negotiations which tested their relations.
(Reuters, 12/9/15)
2015 Dec 9, Myanmar inaugurated a new stock exchange with plans for six companies to start trading in March.
(AP, 12/9/15)
2015 Dec 9, A Palestinian was shot dead by security forces after wounding an Israeli soldier and a civilian when he stabbed them in the occupied West Bank town of Hebron.
(Reuters, 12/9/15)
2015 Dec 9, Russia said its air force flew 82 sorties against 204 targets in Syria in the last 24 hours.
(Reuters, 12/9/15)
2015 Dec 9, South Africa’s Pres. Jacob Zuma fired respected finance minister Nhlanhla Nene. He was replaced by David van Rooyen.
(Econ, 12/12/15, p.49)
2015 Dec 9, Switzerland's main anti-immigration party secured a second seat in the federal government in a boost for isolationist forces as the country seeks to redraft treaties with the European Union to include curbs on immigration.
(Reuters, 12/9/15)
2015 Dec 9, Syrian rebels began evacuating the last opposition-held district in Homs, paving the way for President Bashar al-Assad's regime to take full control of the country's third-largest city.
(AFP, 12/9/15)
2015 Dec 9, Representatives from Syria's fragmented opposition began an unprecedented meeting hosted by Saudi Arabia, seeking a united front for potential talks with President Bashar al-Assad's regime.
(AFP, 12/9/15)
2015 Dec 9, Tajikistan's lower house of parliament approved a bill that strengthens President Imomali Rakhmon's grip on power by awarding him the title of "Leader of the Nation" with lifetime immunity from prosecution.
(Reuters, 12/9/15)
2015 Dec 9, Turkey said its fighter jets carried out a new barrage of air strikes against Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq overnight.
(AFP, 12/9/15)
2015 Dec 9, The UN said more than 170,000 people have fled war-torn Yemen for the Horn of Africa and the Gulf, as they appealed for $94 million in aid.
(AFP, 12/9/15)
2016 Dec 9, A senior US official said the CIA has concluded that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help President-elect Donald Trump win the White House, and not just to undermine confidence in the US electoral system. The next day Trump challenged the veracity of the CIA assessment.
(Reuters, 12/10/16)(SSFC, 12/11/16, p.A10)
2016 Dec 9, The Cherokee Nation’s attorney general legalized same-sex marriage for the tribe saying parts of a 2004 tribal law violated the Cherokee Constitution.
(SFC, 12/13/16, p.A5)
2016 Dec 9, Human Rights Watch reported that over 1,400 migrants have been forcibly deported from Algeria this month. HRW also said Algerian authorities have deported hundreds of West African migrants to Niger this week, trucking them thousands of miles across the desert in one of the biggest roundups seen this year.
(Reuters, 12/9/16)
2016 Dec 9, Police overseeing the sex abuse scandal in British soccer said 83 potential suspects have been identified and linked to 98 clubs. The age range of potential victims was 7 to 20 years old.
(AP, 12/9/16)
2016 Dec 9, Canada’s PM Justin Trudeau and 11 of 13 provincial and territorial leaders announced an agreement on a national climate framework.
(Econ, 12/17/16, p.31)
2016 Dec 9, In Egypt a bomb attack in Cairo killed six policemen and wounded another three. The recently emerged militant group called the Hasm Movement claimed responsibility. A bomb targeting a police vehicle in Kafr al-Sheikh killed a civilian and injured 3 policemen.
(Reuters, 12/9/16)(SFC, 12/10/16, p.A4)(Econ, 12/17/16, p.43)
2016 Dec 9, In France Kazakh opposition figure Mukhtar Ablyazov was released from prison after France's highest administrative authority blocked his extradition to Russia, where he is accused of embezzling billions of dollars.
(AFP, 12/10/16)
2016 Dec 9, Gambian President Yahya Jammeh declared he no longer accepted the results of the December 1 vote. Jammeh cited "unacceptable errors" by election authorities and called for new polls.
(AFP, 12/10/16)
2016 Dec 9, Ghana’s election committee said the New Patriotic Party candidate, Nana Akufo-Addo, had taken 53.8 percent of the Dec 7 vote, against 44.4 percent for President John Mahama.
(SFC, 12/10/16, p.A2)
2016 Dec 9, Hong Kong’s Beijing-backed leader Leung Chun-ying said he would step aside after his five-year term ends next June.
(AP, 12/9/16)
2016 Dec 9, In India retired Air Marshal S.P. Tyagi, his cousin Sanjiv Tyagi and attorney Gautam Khaitan were arrested for allegedly influencing a $750 million deal with AgustaWestland for the purchase of 12 luxury helicopters to ferry Indian VIPs.
(AP, 12/9/16)
2016 Dec 9, In Iraq separate bombings in Baghdad killed 10 people and wounded another 22.
(AP, 12/9/16)
2016 Dec 9, A Japanese capsule blasted off from the Tanegashima Space Center with much-needed supplies for the International Space Station, a week after a Russian shipment was destroyed shortly after liftoff.
(AP, 12/9/16)
2016 Dec 9, Kenya deployed army doctors to the country's main teaching and referral hospital where the last remaining doctors joined a five-day strike that has crippled healthcare services around the country.
(AFP, 12/9/16)
2016 Dec 9, In Mexico the charred remains of three federal detectives were found in the bed of a burning pickup truck in the southern resort of Zihuatanejo. The remains of a 4th person were found nearby.
(SFC, 12/10/16, p.A2)
2016 Dec 9, In Morocco 438 African migrants stormed across a border fence to enter Spain's North African enclave of Ceuta in one of the biggest crossing attempts of recent years. Some 800 had tried to make the crossing.
(AP, 12/9/16)
2016 Dec 9, In the Netherlands police acting on a tip-off from the Dutch intelligence agency arrested a 30-year-old "terrorist" suspect and seized an arsenal of weapons in the port city of Rotterdam.
(Reuters, 12/9/16)
2016 Dec 9, Dutch populist anti-Islam Dutch MP Geert Wilders was found guilty on of discrimination against Moroccans, but acquitted of hate speech in a closely-watched trial ahead of next year's key elections. Judges decided not to impose any sentence or fine, and Wilders immediately vowed to appeal against what he said was a bid to "neutralize" him ahead of the March polls.
(AFP, 12/9/16)
2016 Dec 9, In Nigeria two female suicide bombers blew themselves up in the northeastern town of Madagali, killing 57 people and wounding 177.
(Reuters, 12/9/16)(AP, 12/10/16)
2016 Dec 9, The Norwegian Refugee Council said South Sudan has expelled Victor Moses, its country director there.
(AP, 12/9/16)
2016 Dec 9, In Peru an indigenous federation opposed to a recently approved plan for oil drilling in the Peruvian Amazon said that native communities will physically block any attempt by oil companies to operate on their lands.
(Reuters, 12/9/16)
2016 Dec 9, Saudi Arabia told its US and European customers it would reduce oil deliveries from January, signaling it had already started implementing cuts.
(Reuters, 12/10/16)
2016 Dec 9, A 7.8 magnitude earthquake hit the Solomon Islands. A 6.9 magnitude aftershock followed a day later.
(Reuters, 12/10/16)
2016 Dec 9, South Korean lawmakers impeached Pres. Park Geun-hye, a stunning and swift fall for the country's first female leader amid protests that drew millions into the streets in united fury. This allowed PM Hwang Kyo-ahn to assume leadership until the Constitutional Court rules on whether Park must permanently step down.
(AP, 12/9/16)
2016 Dec 9, Spanish police arrested 71 people for allegedly selling counterfeit goods, in the country's biggest crackdown to date against intellectual property theft and money laundering.
(Reuters, 12/9/16)
2016 Dec 9, Syrian warplanes launched fresh raids on the last rebel-held districts in Aleppo, as key regime ally Russia vowed the assault would continue until opposition fighters left the battleground city. The UN human rights office said hundreds of men from eastern Aleppo have gone missing after leaving rebel-held areas.
(AFP, 12/9/16)(Reuters, 12/9/16)
2016 Dec 9, The Islamic State seized more territory from Syrian government forces near the ancient city of Palmyra in fierce clashes that raged for a second day. 49 Syrian soldiers were reported killed in the IS advance near Palmyra.
(Reuters, 12/9/16)(AP, 12/9/16)
2016 Dec 9, Turkish jets carried out air strikes against Kurdish militants in the Gara region of northern Iraq and killed 19 militants.
(Reuters, 12/9/16)
2016 Dec 9, Venezuela’s fair pricing authority seized almost 4 million toys from toy distributor Kreisel and said it plans to hand them out to poor children this holiday season. Two company executives were detained on suspicion of promoting price speculation.
(SSFC, 12/11/16, p.A4)
2017 Dec 9, Some 8,700 firefighters in southern California fought to contain six raging wildfires, which have destroyed hundreds of buildings and forced tens of thousands of people to flee.
(AP, 12/9/17)
2017 Dec 9, In southern California a small plane skidded into a home while trying to land in a field in San Diego killing at least two passengers. The pilot and another passenger were treated for burns.
(SFC, 12/11/17, p.A6)
2017 Dec 9, Mississippi’s new Civil Rights Museum opened in Jackson. A visit by Pres. Donald Trump generated boycotts from some civil rights leaders.
(SSFC, 12/10/17, p.A10)
2017 Dec 9, In Afghanistan Taliban insurgents killed three Afghan soldiers in an attack on a checkpoint early today. In Kabul unknown gunmen shot dead 10 members of the same family in what appeared to be a private dispute.
(AP, 12/9/17)
2017 Dec 9, It was reported that Algerian fighters and French, some arriving from Syria, have joined the ranks of the Islamic State group in northern Afghanistan where the militants have established new bases.
(AFP, 12/10/17)
2017 Dec 9, Finnish Border Guards said two people have been found dead inside a pilot boat that capsized and sank off southern Finland.
(AP, 12/9/17)
2017 Dec 9, In Germany the Swedish comedy "The Square" swept this year's European Film Awards in Berlin, winning six prizes, including for best film, director and screenwriter. This year's best actress award went to Alexandra Borbely of Slovakia for her role in "On Body and Soul."
(AP, 12/10/17)
2017 Dec 9, Indian PM Narendra Modi's home state of Gujarat went to the polls, in a key electoral test of his popularity after a series of controversial economic reforms.
(AFP, 12/9/17)
2017 Dec 9, Iran said Mahmoud Reza Khavari, the former head of Iran's largest state-owned bank, has been given a 20-year prison sentence and $6 million fine in absentia over a record-breaking $2.6 billion embezzlement scandal. Khavari fled to Canada after the scandal broke in 2011. Canada does not have an extradition agreement with Iran.
(AFP, 12/9/17)
2017 Dec 9, Iraqi PM Haider al-Abadi said that Iraqi forces had driven the last remnants of Islamic State from the country, three years after the militant group captured about a third of Iraq's territory.
(Reuters, 12/9/17)
2017 Dec 9, Israeli air strikes in Gaza killed two Palestinian gunmen after rockets were fired from the enclave, in violence that erupted over President Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital.
(Reuters, 12/9/17)
2017 Dec 9, Italy's governing Democrats led a rally in Como to warn about fascism making a comeback in the nation that once suffered under fascist dictator Benito Mussolini and which is now seeing a rash of right-wing protests against migrants.
(AP, 12/9/17)
2017 Dec 9, Japanese police arrested three crew of a North Korean boat for stealing a generator from a hut on an uninhabited island.
(AP, 12/9/17)
2017 Dec 9, Lecturers in Kenya's public universities ended a strike after reaching agreement with the government over pay and other issues, according to a statement from their union.
(Reuters, 12/9/17)
2017 Dec 9, Lebanon's PM Saad Hariri criticized a visit six days earlier by Iraqi Shiite militia leader Qais al-Khazali, the founder and leader of the Asaib Ahl al-Haq militia, to Lebanon's ceasefire line with Israel, saying it violated local law.
(AFP, 12/9/17)
2017 Dec 9, Libya said it will set up a joint commission with Italy in a bid to fight back against people traffickers and tackle the problem of illegal migration following talks in Tripoli between Italian Interior Minister Marco Minniti and Libya's PM Fayez al-Sarraj.
(AFP, 12/9/17)
2017 Dec 9, Meeting in Oslo, Norway, representatives of the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), called on the US and North Korea to reduce tensions and end the "urgent threat" posed by weapons of mass destruction.
(AP, 12/9/17)
2017 Dec 9, In Pakistan some 313 militants from three separatist movements handed over weapons in Quetta to Nawab Sanaullah Zehri, the Chief Minister of Baluchistan province. Government officials say about 2,000 militants have surrendered over the past 18 months.
(Reuters, 12/10/17)
2017 Dec 9, Russia said it was fully committed to a Cold War-era pact with the United States banning intermediate-range cruise missiles, a day after Washington accused Moscow of violating the treaty.
(Reuters, 12/9/17)
2017 Dec 9, Vietnam’s government website said two more former officials at the scandal-hit state energy firm PetroVietnam, Phung Dinh Thuc and Do Van Hau, will be prosecuted over financial losses incurred while they were in office.
(Reuters, 12/9/17)
2018 Dec 9, Nick Ayers, the chief of staff to US VP Mike Pence, confirmed that he will not step in to replace John Kelly, the chief of staff for Pres. Donald Trump, who planned to leave by year's end.
(SFC, 12/10/18, p.A6)
2018 Dec 9, In Indiana Breanna Rouhselang (17) and her fetus died after being stabbed by Aaron Trejo (16) in Mishawaka following an argument over her pregnancy. Trejo said she had waited too long to tell him she was pregnant ad it was too late to get an abortion.
(SFC, 12/11/18, p.A5)
2018 Dec 9, Afghan authorities announced the suspension of the head of the soccer federation and five other senior officials amid allegations of sexual and physical abuse of female athletes.
(AP, 12/9/18)
2018 Dec 9, In Algeria the Roman Catholic Church beatified 19 Christians killed in a civil war in the 1990s including seven Trappist monks who were beheaded at their monastery by Islamist militants.
(Reuters, 12/9/18)
2018 Dec 9, Armenians cast ballots in an early parliamentary election that is expected to further consolidate the power of PM Nikol Pashinian (43). Allies of PM Pashinian won an overwhelming majority of seats in the country's early parliamentary election.
(AP, 12/9/18)(AP, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 9, The Australian government called for Hakeem al-Araibi, an Australian-based refugee soccer player, to be immediately released from detention in Thailand.
(AP, 12/9/18)
2018 Dec 9, China summoned the US ambassador to Beijing to protest the detention of Meng Wanzhou, an executive of Chinese electronics giant Huawei, in Canada at Washington's behest and demanded Washington cancel an order for her arrest.
(AP, 12/9/18)
2018 Dec 9, In China at least 80 churchgoers and seminary students from the Early Rain Covenant Church were taken away late today in the southwestern city of Chengdu. The church was operating outside the government's official Protestant organization. The government requires that Protestants worship only in churches recognized and regulated by the Three-Self Patriotic Movement.
(AP, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 9, In India dozens of Hindu monks and tens of thousands of followers, gathered under the banner of groups linked to PM Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalist party, urged the Indian government to help build a temple on the ruins of a 16th-century mosque, torn down in 1992, in the northern town of Ayodhya.
(Reuters, 12/9/18)
2018 Dec 9, Gerald Cotton (30), the CEO of Canadian cryptocurrency exchange QuadrigaCX, died of complications from Crohn's disease while traveling to an orphanage in India. He was the only person who knew the security keys and passwords needed to access at least $250 million in client accounts.
(SFC, 2/7/19, p.D2)
2018 Dec 9, In Iran's judiciary said fast-track courts set up in Iran to fight economic crime have jailed 30 men for up to 20 years each, as the country faces renewed US sanctions and a public outcry against profiteering and corruption.
(Reuters, 12/9/18)
2018 Dec 9, Iran state media said Australian-based academic has been detained on charges of trying to "infiltrate" Iranian institutions. Hosseini-Chavoshi, a population expert, is affiliated with the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health.
(Reuters, 12/9/18)
2018 Dec 9, The Israeli military said it has opened an investigation into the death of a 22-year-old Palestinian man in the West Bank after a video surfaced appearing to show him being shot in the back. A Dec. 4 video showed Mohammed Habali walking in an alleyway holding a stick when he is shot from behind and falls down on his face.
(AP, 12/9/18)
2018 Dec 9, In Kashmir Indian troops killed three rebels on the outskirts of Srinagar, ending a nearly 18-hour-long gunbattle. Mudasir Rashid Parray (14) and Saqib Bilal Sheikh (17) were killed in the gunbattle.
(AP, 12/9/18)(AP, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 9, In southwestern Libya an armed group seized the Sharara oilfield, one of the country's largest oilfields. The National Oil Corporation (NOC) declared a state of force majeure at the Akakus-operated field.
(AFP, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 9, New Zealand police said they found a body they believe to be that of missing British tourist Grace Millane (22), who went missing on Dec 1. The body was in a forested area about 10 meters (33 feet) from the side of the road in the Waitakere Ranges near Auckland.
(AP, 12/9/18)
2018 Dec 9, A Palestinian opened fire at a group of Israelis standing at a bus stop next to a Jewish settlement near Ramallah, wounding six people, one - a pregnant woman - critically, in a drive-by shooting.
(Reuters, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 9, Peruvians began voting in a referendum on a raft of political and judicial reforms introduced by the new government of Pres. Martin Vizcarra aimed at stamping out corruption and cronyism in one of Latin America's most promising economies. Peruvians overwhelmingly approved a government overhaul that among other things sends all members of Congress packing by 2021. Three of the four constitutional reforms proposed by Pres. Vizcarra were approved by nearly 80 percent of voters.
(Reuters, 12/9/18)(AFP, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 9, At least two Rwandan soldiers were killed in an attack by rebels who had crossed the border from the Democratic Republic of Congo.
(AFP, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 9, In Somalia the head of the parliament's administration said he had filed a motion with the speaker of parliament to impeach the country's president, Mohamed Abdullahi, but the grounds for the move were unclear.
(Reuters, 12/9/18)
2018 Dec 9, In Saudi Arabia a summit of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) opened. Kuwait's Emir, Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber al-Sabah, called for an end to media campaigns in the region which threatened the unity of the Gulf. Qatar's Sheikh Tamim sent Sultan bin Saad al-Muraikhi, minister of state for foreign affairs, to represent the country.
(AP, 12/9/18)(Reuters, 12/9/18)
2018 Dec 9, In Sudan at least seven local government officials were killed in a helicopter crash in eastern al-Qadarif state.
(AP, 12/9/18)
2018 Dec 9, The UN's humanitarian office said that 369 trucks will carry one month's worth of supplies to Syria. It's the first cross-border aid shipment since the Syrian government recaptured a trade crossing with Jordan from Syrian rebels and reopened it in October.
(AP, 12/9/18)
2019 Dec 9, The US Justice Department's internal watchdog declared that the FBI was justified in opening its investigation into ties between the Trump presidential campaign and Russia and did not act with political bias. The report rejected theories and criticism spread by Pres. Trump and his supporters, though it also found “serious performance failures" up the bureau’s chain of command.
(AP, 12/10/19)
2019 Dec 9, US lawmakers announced an agreement on a $738-billion bill setting policy for the Department of Defense, including new measures for competing with Russia and China, family leave for federal workers and the creation of Pres. Donald Trump's long-desired Space Force.
(Reuters, 12/9/19)
2019 Dec 9, The US Supreme Court left in place a Kentucky law requiring doctors to perform ultrasounds and show fetal images to patients before abortions.
(AP, 12/9/19)
2019 Dec 9, US federal agents in Dallas arrested Genaro Garcia Luna (51), the former secretary of public security in Mexico (2006-2012), on drug charges for bribes he accepted from the Sinaloa cartel. Prosecutors said they will seek his removal to New York to face federal charges.
(SFC, 12/11/19, p.A5)
2019 Dec 9, The Washington Post released thousands of documents detailing the war in Afghanistan painting a stark picture of missteps and failures. The reports were from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), formed in 2008.
(SFC, 12/10/19, p.A3)
2019 Dec 9, The US CDC said a multistate E. coli outbreak, linked to packaged salad from the Salinas Valley of California, has sickened 8 people in the upper-Midwest and 16 in Canada.
(SFC, 12/10/19, p.A5)
2019 Dec 9, Intel Corp announced a chip called "Horse Ridge" that is designed to take all the work being done by the wires in a quantum computer and shrink it down to a chip and electronics about the size of a tea cup saucer. The chip is named for one of the coldest spots in the state of Oregon, where many of its factories are located.
(Reuters, 12/9/19)
2019 Dec 9, The fate of the World Trade Organization's top court was effectively sealed after the US said it would not back a proposal to allow it to continue. The Trump administration has been blocking appointments to the WTO's seven-member Appellate Body that rules on trade disputes for over two years, with US officials saying the court had gone beyond its remit.
(Reuters, 12/9/19)
2019 Dec 9, In Afghanistan a suicide car bomb attack killed at lest five Afghan soldiers and wounded four others in the southern Helmand province.
(AP, 12/10/19)
2019 Dec 9, Austria's caretaker Chancellor Brigitte Bierlein made clear she would not sign into law the European Union's first national ban on the weedkiller glyphosate due to a technicality, infuriating environmentalists while delighting farmers' groups.
(Reuters, 12/9/19)
2019 Dec 9, Bosnian police removed residents who have been blocking access to Mostar's only landfill over concerns that it poses serious health and environmental risks.
(SFC, 12/10/19, p.A2)
2019 Dec 9, In London convicted burglar Joseph McCann (34), who assaulted and raped women and children during a two-week rampage across Britain while wrongly free from jail, was given 33 life sentences, with the judge saying he would never cease to be a danger to society.
(Reuters, 12/9/19)
2019 Dec 9, Canada and the Netherlands put out a joint statement in support of Gambia, the tiny, mainly Muslim West African country that filed the suit in which the Buddhist-majority Myanmar is accused of genocide against its Rohingya Muslim minority a day before genocide hearings begin at the International Court of Justice in The Hague.
(Reuters, 12/9/19)
2019 Dec 9, A Chilean Air Force transport plane carrying 38 people vanished en route to a base on Antarctica. The plane crashed over the Drake Sea, a vast untouched ocean wilderness off the southernmost edge of Antarctica. There were no survivors.
(AP, 12/10/19)(Reuters, 12/12/19)
2019 Dec 9, Walmart in Chile pulled requests it filed earlier with Chilean courts demanding police protection for its supermarkets, but said looting of its stores continued and that the situation following weeks of unrest remained "complex".
(Reuters, 12/9/19)
2019 Dec 9, Chinese officials said a “de-radicalization" training in its western Xinjiang region has been completed, as the government sought to defend the widespread detention of ethnic minorities. Uighurs and other predominantly Muslim ethnic minorities from the region say their family members continue to be arbitrarily detained in camps and prisons. Xinjiang's government said all trainees in the camps had "graduated." Some of the former detainees have been obliged to go work in other provinces.
(AP, 12/8/19)(Econ., 3/7/20, p.38)
2019 Dec 9, Egyptian human rights activist Ahmed Abdel-Fattah (40) went missing in Cairo. On Dec. 20 his wife said that he is scheduled to appear before a local prosecutor.
(AP, 12/20/19)
2019 Dec 9, A consortium of 19 hydropower companies and organizations said it will receive European Union funding of 18 million euros ($20 million) to research the green energy form's role, as the 28-member bloc seeks to become carbon neutral by 2050.
(Reuters, 12/9/19)
2019 Dec 9, In France the leaders of Russia, Ukraine, Germany and France met in Paris to discuss a peace settlement for Ukraine’s war-ravaged east for the first time in more than three years. Ukraine's Pres. Volodymyr Zelenskiy made clear at the talks that Ukraine must regain control of its eastern border before elections can take place in the disputed region as part of a peace accord. Russia's Pres. Putin said the elections must come first. Participating leaders agreed to implement a comprehensive ceasefire and hold a major prisoner exchange between the Ukrainian government and the separatists.
(The Telegraph, 12/9/19)(Bloomberg, 12/10/19)(The Telegraph, 12/10/19)
2019 Dec 9, Hong Kong police arrested 12 people suspected of preparing gasoline bombs.
(SFC, 12/10/19, p.A2)
2019 Dec 9, In India day laborers in one of New Delhi's most congested neighborhoods demonstrated against unsafe working conditions, a day after at least 43 people were killed in a devastating fire at an illegal factory there.
(AP, 12/9/19)
2019 Dec 9, In Iraq four Katyusha rockets hit a military base near Baghdad International Airport early today, wounding at least six soldiers.
(AP, 12/9/19)
2019 Dec 9, Israeli police said vandals overnight slashed the tires of over 160 vehicles and sprayed slogans such as “Arabs=enemies" in a Palestinian neighborhood of Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem.
(AP, 12/9/19)
2019 Dec 9, In Kenya Mike Gideon Mbuvi, governor of Nairobi, was charged with ten counts of graft related charges including embexxlement and money laundering.
(SFC, 12/10/19, p.A2)
2019 Dec 9, A rainstorm paralyzed parts of Lebanon's capital Beirut, turning streets to small rivers, stranding motorists inside their vehicles and damaging homes in some areas.
(AP, 12/9/19)
2019 Dec 9, In New Zealand a volcano erupted on the White Island tourist spot. Six deaths were later confirmed after the eruption. Another eight people were believed to have died, with their bodies remaining on the ash-covered island for now. The death toll later rose to 19.
(AP, 12/9/19)(AP, 12/10/19)(AP, 12/22/19)
2019 Dec 9, Russia's interior minister said passports have been issued to 125,000 residents of rebel-held eastern Ukraine, deepening Moscow's ties with the separatist region even as it begins talks with Kiev aimed at ending the conflict.
(Reuters, 12/9/19)
2019 Dec 9, The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) banned Russian athletes from competing in the Olympics and other major sporting events under the country’s flag after it found Russia tampering with key doping test data. WADA banned Russia from hosting or participating in any major sporting events for a four-year period.
(Benzinga, 12/10/19)
2019 Dec 9, In Spain teenage activist Greta Thunberg and a group of young climate campaigners from across the world addressed a UN summit on climate change in Madrid.
(AP, 12/9/19)
2019 Dec 9, Turkey said it would join Albania and Kosovo in boycotting the Nobel awards ceremony in protest against 2019 literature prize laureate Peter Handke, who has been criticized for backing late Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic.
(Reuters, 12/9/19)
2019 Dec 9, The UN's general assembly passed a resolution condemning Russia's occupation of Crimea and the city of Sebastopol and urging the withdrawal of its military forces "without delay".
(The Telegraph, 12/9/19)
2019 Dec 9, The UN released $2.6 million in emergency aid to combat the measles epidemic in Samoa as the death toll reached 70.
(AP, 12/10/19)
2019 Dec 9, Save the Children said in a report that over 110 Yemeni children were killed between January and October in the key port city of Hodeida and in the southwestern province of Taiz.
(AP, 12/9/19)
2020 Dec 9, US President Donald Trump issued a formal threat to veto congressional efforts to block his plans for $23 billion in military sales to the United Arab Emirates. US law requires congressional review of major arms deals, and lets senators force votes on resolutions of disapproval.
(AP, 12/9/20)
2020 Dec 9, President Donald Trump vowed to intervene in a long-shot lawsuit by the state of Texas filed at the US Supreme Court trying to throw out the voting results in four states he lost to President-elect Joe Biden as he seeks to undo the outcome of the election.
(Reuters, 12/9/20)
2020 Dec 9, The Trump administration said that it will allow migrants from six countries to extend their legal US residency under a temporary status for nine months while courts consider its effort to end the program.
(AP, 12/9/20)
2020 Dec 9, The US Senate fell short in trying to halt the Trump administration's proposed $23 billion arms sales to the United Arab Emirates, despite bipartisan objections to the package of F-35 fighter jets and drones stemming from a broader Middle East peace agreement.
(AP, 12/9/20)
2020 Dec 9, Federal regulators and 46 states accused Facebook of illegally stifling competition by buying up rivals like Instagram and WhatsApp. Prosecutors called for Facebook to sell those services — and for restrictions on future deals.
(NY Times, 12/10/20)
2020 Dec 9, The United States' daily death toll from COVID-19 has surpassed 3,000 for the first time, prompting pleas for Americans to scale back Christmas plans even with vaccines on the cusp of winning regulatory approval.
(Reuters, 12/10/20)
2020 Dec 9, California to date had 1,421,089 cases of coronavirus and 20,273 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 177,593 cases and 2,058 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 15,371,953 with the death toll at 288,889.
(sfist.com, 12/9/20)
2020 Dec 9, A federal judge in Maryland denied the Trump administration's request to reinstate a rule that would require women to visit a hospital, clinic or medical office to obtain an abortion pill during the COVID-19 pandemic, noting that public health risks for patients only have grown worse.
(AP, 12/10/20)
2020 Dec 9, The speaker of the New Hampshire House of Representatives, Richard Hinch (71), died suddenly of Covid-19. Hinch recently attended an indoor meeting with his Republican colleagues where several members contracted the virus.
(AP, 12/10/20)
2020 Dec 9, The New York state pension fund committed to help curb climate change by transitioning its investments to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2040, making it the first pension fund to set the goal by that date.
(Reuters, 12/9/20)
2020 Dec 9, SpaceX launched its shiny, bullet-shaped, straight-out-of-science fiction Starship several miles into the air from a remote corner of Texas, but the 6 1/2-minute test flight ended in an explosive fireball at touchdown.
(AP, 12/9/20)
2020 Dec 9, The S&P 500 and the Dow scaled record highs as hopes of a working COVID-19 vaccine and fresh economic stimulus before the end of the year lifted demand for economically sensitive energy and financial shares.
(Reuters, 12/9/20)
2020 Dec 9, Researchers said a poorly understood Triassic Period reptile group called lagerpetids, known from a few partial skeletons from the United States, Argentina, Brazil and Madagascar, appears to have been the evolutionary precursor to pterosaurs. Lagerpetids, first appearing about 237 million years ago, were generally small and may have been bipedal insect-eaters. They could not fly. Pterosaurs became Earth's first flying vertebrates, with birds and then bats appearing much later.
(Reuters, 12/9/20)
2020 Dec 9, In Armenia thousands of protesters converged on the parliament building in Yerevan to push for the resignation of the ex-Soviet nation's PM Nikol Pashinyan over his handling of the fighting with Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh.
(AP, 12/9/20)
2020 Dec 9, In Brussels Vivendi's pay-TV arm Canal+ won its court fight against a deal between EU competition regulators and Paramount Pictures in which the US studio agreed to scrap movie-licensing deals with British pay-TV group Sky UK.
(Reuters, 12/9/20)
2020 Dec 9, Brazil reported 53,453 more confirmed cases in the past 24 hours, the highest daily rate since mid-August, and 836 deaths.
(Reuters, 12/9/20)
2020 Dec 9, Brazil’s Gol Airlines became the first in the world to return the Boeing 737 Max jetliners to its active fleet, using a 737 MAX 8 on a flight from Sao Paulo to Porto Alegre.
(AP, 12/9/20)
2020 Dec 9, Britain's medicine regulator has advised that people with a history of significant allergic reactions do not get Pfizer-BioNTech's vaccine after two people reported adverse effects.
(Reuters, 12/9/20)
2020 Dec 9, Canada approved its first COVID-19 vaccine, clearing the way for doses of the Pfizer Inc and BioNTech SE shots to be delivered and administered across the country.
(Reuters, 12/9/20)
2020 Dec 9, It was reported that the restored flagship of former Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito is being converted in Croatia into a hotel and a museum devoted to its turbulent history, from banana boat to meeting place for world statesmen.
(Reuters, 12/9/20)
2020 Dec 9, Ethiopia's PM Abiy Ahmed shifted his focus away from war, opening a cross-border highway to Kenya at the opposite end of his country, while the United Nations voiced alarm over ongoing fighting in the northern Tigray region.
(Reuters, 12/9/20)
2020 Dec 9, France reported that the H5N8 bird flu has been detected at a second farm in the Landes region, as the disease continues to spread across Europe.
(Reuters, 12/10/20)
2020 Dec 9, Franco-Italian chipmaker STMicroelectronics said the US-China trade war and a near-embargo on Huawei, one of its biggest clients, would slow growth and affect profitability even if demand rebounds after a COVID-afflicted year.
(Reuters, 12/9/20)
2020 Dec 9, Chancellor Angela Merkel demanded tougher curbs to halt coronavirus infections, as the German death toll reached a daily record of nearly 600 people.
(AFP, 12/9/20)
2020 Dec 9, Indonesia reported 171 more deaths from the coronavirus, marking the Southeast Asian country's highest daily rise in fatalities and taking the total number of deaths to 18,171. Total number of infections rose to 592,900 with 6,058 new cases.
(Reuters, 12/9/20)
2020 Dec 9, Iran's President Hassan Rouhani said that US sanctions are making it difficult for Iran to purchase medicine and health supplies from abroad, including COVID-19 vaccines needed to contain the worst outbreak in the Middle East. Iran has reported more than 50,000 deaths from the coronavirus out of more than a million confirmed cases.
(AP, 12/9/20)
2020 Dec 9, Iran said a number of people have been detained for involvement in the Nov. 27 assassination of nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh.
(SFC, 12/10/20, p.A2)
2020 Dec 9, The prime minister of Iraq's northern Kurdish-run region blamed the federal government in Baghdad for delaying crucial budget transfers as violent protests over salary payments left eight dead in the past week.
(AP, 12/9/20)
2020 Dec 9, The International Criminal Court's chief prosecutor said she is closing a preliminary probe into allegations of killings and torture of Iraqi prisoners by British troops from 2003-2008 and will not open a full-scale investigation because UK authorities have investigated the allegations.
(AP, 12/9/20)
2020 Dec 9, Israel received its first shipment of coronavirus vaccines and a distributor predicted the country would have enough for about a quarter of the population by the end of the year.
(Reuters, 12/9/20)
2020 Dec 9, Italy reported 499 coronavirus-related deaths against 634 the day before, while the daily tally of new infections fell to 12,756 from 14,842.
(Reuters, 12/9/20)
2020 Dec 9, Mexican photojournalist Jaime Castaño Zacarías happened upon dead bodies with their hands bound in northern Zacatecas state, following a clash between drug cartels in the city of Jerez. When Castaño left the scene on a motorcycle, he was pursued by gunmen, who shot him dead.
(The Guardian, 12/11/20)
2020 Dec 9, Nearly 1,700 passengers on a Royal Caribbean 'cruise-to-nowhere' from Singapore remained confined in their cabins for more than 14 hours after a COVID-19 case was detected on board, forcing the ship back to port.
(Reuters, 12/9/20)
2020 Dec 9, South Africa recorded 6,700 new cases of the coronavirus. The country has reported a total of 828,598 cases, including 22,574 deaths.
(SFC, 12/11/20, p.A5)
2020 Dec 9, South Korea reported 590 deaths related to COVID-19 over the last 24 hours as well as 20,815 new daily infections.
(SFC, 12/10/20, p.A7)
2020 Dec 9, In northeastern Spain a fire engulfed the abandoned industrial complex where he and over 100 African migrants lived in precarious conditions. At least three people were killed. Workers clearing the rubble soon found a 4th body.
(AP, 12/10/20)(AP, 12/14/20)
2020 Dec 9, Swiss drugmaker Roche said it is partnering with Moderna to include a COVID-19 antibody test in the mRNA specialist's ongoing vaccine trials, potentially demonstrating if the vaccine is working.
(Reuters, 12/9/20)
2020 Dec 9, Turkey ruled out buying the Russian coronavirus vaccine since its development lacked "good practice," as Ankara steps up efforts to inoculate 50 million citizens by spring.
(AP, 12/9/20)
2020 Dec 9, The United Arab Emirates approved a Chinese coronavirus vaccine, citing preliminary data showing that it was 86 percent effective.
(NY Times, 12/9/20)
2020 Dec 9, The UN hit out at violence that erupted in DR Congo's parliament, pitting backers of President Felix Tshisekedi against supporters of his predecessor Joseph Kabila.
(AFP, 12/9/20)
2020 Dec 9, A UN report showed that greenhouse gas emissions reached a new high last year, putting the world on track for an average temperature rise of 3 degrees Celsius.
(Reuters, 12/9/20)
2021 Dec 9, Pres. Joe Biden opened the first White House Summit for Democracy. He spoke to representatives of more than 100 countries in a video gathering and sounded an alarm about a global slide for democratic institutions.
(SFC, 12/10/21, p.A8)
2021 Dec 9, It was reported that the United States will put Chinese artificial intelligence company SenseTime on an investment blacklist on Dec. 10. The Financial Times cited people familiar with the decision, as the company is finalizing its Hong Kong IPO.
(Reuters, 12/9/21)
2021 Dec 9, The US Senate passed and sent to President Joe Biden the first of two bills needed to raise the federal government's $28.9 trillion debt limit and avert an unprecedented default.
(Reuters, 12/9/21)
2021 Dec 9, The US Treasury Department targeted government officials and companies it accused of corruption, including officials in El Salvador and Guatemala involved in their countries COVID-19 responses.
(Reuters, 12/9/21)
2021 Dec 9, The US Food and Drug Administration authorized booster shots of the COVID-19 vaccine from Pfizer Inc and BioNTech SE for those aged 16 and 17.
(Reuters, 12/9/21)
2021 Dec 9, Total US COVID-19 cases reached over 49,570,424 with the death toll at 793,597.
(sfist.com, 12/10/21)
2021 Dec 9, In Florida former US narcotics agent Jose Irizarry (47) was sentenced to more than 12 years in federal prison for conspiring to launder money with a Colombian cartel. Prosecutors said he and his co-conspirators had used diverted $9 million from undercover money laundering investigations.
(SFC, 12/11/21, p.A7)
2021 Dec 9, It was reported that Georgia Republicans have purge Black Democrats from county election boards.
(Reuters, 12/9/21)
2021 Dec 9, A jury in Chicago found the actor Jussie Smollett guilty of falsely reporting to the police that he had been the victim of a racist and homophobic assault in 2019, an attack that investigators concluded was a hoax directed by the actor himself.
(NY Times, 12/9/21)
2021 Dec 9, Al Unser (82), 4-time winner of the Indianapolis 500, died at his home in New Mexico. He won the Indy 500 in 1970, 1971, 1978 and 1987.
(SFC, 12/11/21, p.B8)
2021 Dec 9, The New York City Council approved a measure that would let noncitizens who are legal residents vote in local elections. Mayor Bill de Blasio has said he would not veto it.
(NY Times, 12/9/21)(SFC, 12/10/21, p.A4)
2021 Dec 9, In Buffalo, NY, Starbucks workers voted to unionize, a first for the 50-year-old coffee retailer in the US.
(SFC, 12/10/21, p.C2)
2021 Dec 9, Oklahoma executed Bigler Stouffer II (79) for the 1985 shooting death of Linda Reaves, an Oklahoma City-area school teacher.
(SFC, 12/10/21, p.A7)
2021 Dec 9, A judge in Texas ruled that a law prohibiting abortions after about six weeks violated the state's constitution because it allows private citizens to sue abortion providers.
(NY Times, 12/9/21)
2021 Dec 9, US railroad operators Union Pacific Corp and BNSF Railway said they were suspending their COVID-19 vaccine mandate for their employees, two days after a judge blocked the Biden administration's inoculation rule for federal contractors.
(Reuters, 12/9/21)
2021 Dec 9, Crypto startup Palm NFT Studio said it had raised $27 million in an early-stage funding round led by Microsoft Corp's venture fund M12 with participation from venture firm Griffin Gaming Partners.
(Reuters, 12/9/21)
2021 Dec 9, SpaceX launched NASA's newest X-ray observatory from Kennedy Space Center. The Imaging X-ray Polarization Explorer (IXPE) rocketed into orbit and was expected to unveil dramatic and extreme parts of the universe as never before.
(SFC, 12/10/21, p.A4)
2021 Dec 9, Brazil's Senate approved the extension of a payroll tax exemption for 17 economic sectors until December 2023, a measure seen as necessary to save jobs during a period of stagnant growth caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
(Reuters, 12/9/21)
2021 Dec 9, Britain said it had agreed a digital trade deal with Singapore, the first digitally-focused trade pact signed by a European nation.
(Reuters, 12/9/21)
2021 Dec 9, Britain said it will send 140 military engineers to Poland this month to provide support at its border with Belarus, in response to what it termed pressures from "irregular migration".
(Reuters, 12/9/21)
2021 Dec 9, Britain's farming and environment minister George Eustice said the UK is experiencing it worst ever outbreak of bird flu. Around 500,000 birds had been culled as a result of 36 confirmed outbreaks.
(Reuters, 12/9/21)
2021 Dec 9, The British-based Uyghur Tribunal, an unofficial tribunal of lawyers and campaigners, said Chinese President Xi Jinping bore primary responsibility for what it said was genocide, crimes against humanity and torture of Uyghurs and members of other minorities in the Xinjiang region.
(Reuters, 12/10/21)
2021 Dec 9, In Cameroon a regional government official said a resurgence of tit-for-tat violence between herders and farmers has killed at least 22 people and injured more than 30 others this week in the Far North region.
(Reuters, 12/9/21)
2021 Dec 9, Judges at the International Criminal Court confirmed war crimes and crimes against humanity charges levied by prosecutors against Mahamat Said Abdel Kain, a former commander of the "Seleka" faction in Central African Republic.
(Reuters, 12/9/21)
2021 Dec 9, Chile's center-right President Sebastián Piñera signed into law a bill legalizing same-sex marriage, days after it was approved by Congress in a historic vote.
(Reuters, 12/9/21)
2021 Dec 9, It was reported that China has told multinationals to sever ties with Lithuania or face being shut out of the Chinese market, dragging companies into a dispute between the Baltic state and Beijing.
(Reuters, 12/9/21)
2021 Dec 9, China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said it has removed 106 apps from Chinese app stores including movie review app Douban, karaoke app Changba, and phone reseller Aihuishou, citing violations of privacy law.
(Reuters, 12/9/21)
2021 Dec 9, Equatorial Guinea oil minister Gabriel Mbaga Obiang Lima said Chevron and his government have signed a production-sharing agreement for an offshore block in the in the country's Douala Basin.
(Reuters, 12/9/21)
2021 Dec 9, The World Food Program (WFP) said it has suspended distribution of food aid in two northern Ethiopian towns after gunmen looted its warehouses.
(BBC, 12/9/21)
2021 Dec 9, Germany's independent vaccination advisory panel said it was recommending COVID-19 shots for children aged 5 to 11 with pre-existing conditions or who are in close contact to vulnerable people.
(AP, 12/9/21)
2021 Dec 9, In Hong Kong tycoon and prominent pro-democracy activist Jimmy Lai and two others were convicted for their roles in last year's banned Tiananmen candlelight vigil, amid a crackdown on dissent in the city and Beijing's tightening political control.
(SFC, 12/10/21, p.A4)
2021 Dec 9, Indian farmers called off a year-long protest after the government conceded a clutch of demands, including assurances to consider guaranteed prices for all produce, instead of just rice and wheat.
(Reuters, 12/9/21)
2021 Dec 9, Iraq and the US-led coalition said they have concluded a final round of technical talks to formally transition from a combat mission tasked with rooting out the extremist Islamic State group to an advisory mission to assist Iraqi forces.
(AP, 12/9/21)
2021 Dec 9, Italy's antitrust authority fined Amazon $1.3 billion, accusing the company of exploiting its dominant position against independent sellers on its website in violation of EU competition rules.
(SFC, 12/10/21, p.C2)
2021 Dec 9, In Italy film director Lina Wertmüller (93) died overnight at her home in Rome. She combined sexual warfare and leftist politics in the provocative, genre-defying films “The Seduction of Mimi," “Swept Away" and “Seven Beauties," which established her as one of the most original directors of the 1970s.
(NY Times, 12/9/21)
2021 Dec 9, The Jordanian health ministry announced that it had identified its first two cases of the omicron variant of coronavirus.
(AP, 12/10/21)
2021 Dec 9, In Mexico at least 55 people died after a truck carrying more than 100 migrants crashed in southern Chiapas State. Most of the victims were Guatemalan migrants.
(Reuters, 12/9/21)(Reuters, 12/11/21)
2021 Dec 9, New Zealand unveiled a plan to eventually ban all sales of cigarettes in the country, a decades-long effort unique in the world to prevent young people from taking up smoking. The proposed legislation would leave current smokers free to continue buying cigarettes. But it would gradually raise the smoking age, year by year, until it covers the entire population.
(NY Times, 12/9/21)
2021 Dec 9, The International Monetary Fund said it has approved a three-year loan deal for Niger worth around $276 million, warning that security risks threatened the West African nation's economic outlook.
(Reuters, 12/9/21)
2021 Dec 9, Singapore said it has detected its first locally transmitted case of the COVID-19 variant Omicron in a member of staff at the city state's airport, warning that more Omicron cases are likely to be detected.
(Reuters, 12/10/21)
2021 Dec 9, Slovakia's parliament approved a plan to give people 60 and older up to $339 if they are vaccinated against COVID-19.
(SFC, 12/10/21, p.A5)
2021 Dec 9, In South Korea several parents associations held protests against a vaccine pass mandate for children aimed at containing the spread of COVID-19 among teenagers. From February, those aged 12 or older will have to show a vaccine pass to enter public spaces, including private tuition centers, libraries and study cafes.
(Reuters, 12/9/21)
2021 Dec 9, Switzerland's supreme court overturned the conviction of a Geneva doctor who helped a healthy 86-year-old woman commit suicide so she would not have to outlive her dying husband. It sent the case back to see if he should be retried under the Narcotics Act.
(AP, 12/9/21)
2021 Dec 9, The Tunisian presidency said the political problem in Tunisia today stemmed from the current 2014 constitution which was no longer valid.
(Reuters, 12/9/21)
2021 Dec 9, Turkey said three of its soldiers were killed in an attack by Kurdish militants during cross-border operations in northern Iraq. The Turkish Defence Ministry added that six of the militants were "neutralized".
(Reuters, 12/9/21)
Go to http://www.timelinesdb.com
Go to December 10
Return to home
Int’l. Anti-Corruption Day. On 31 October 2003, the General Assembly adopted the United Nations Convention against Corruption and requested that the Secretary-General designate the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) as secretariat for the Convention’s Conference of States Parties (resolution 58/4).
(Econ, 12/15/12, p.61)(www.un.org/en/events/anticorruptionday/)
For Asia History: https://www.asiaobserver.org/category/news/on-this-day-in-asian-history
536 Dec 9, Having captured Naples earlier in the year, Belisarius took Rome.
(HN, 12/9/98)
1165 Dec 9, Malcom IV (24), king of Scotland (1153-65), died.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1292 Dec 9, Sa'di, great Persian poet (Orchard, Rose Garden), died.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1437 Dec 9, Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor, died. Major Czech factions had accepted Sigismund as king of Bohemia prior to his death.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigismund%2C_Holy_Roman_Emperor)
1561 Dec 9, Edwin Sandys, a founder of the Virginia colony, was born.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1565 Dec 9, Pius IV (66), [Gianangelo de' Medici], Italian Pope (1559-65), died.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1569 Dec 9, Martinus de Porres, saint (patron of social justice), was born in Peru.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1594 Dec 9, Gustavus II Adolphus (d.1632), king who made Sweden a major power (1611-32), was born.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1608 Dec 9, English blind poet and polemical pamphleteer John Milton (1608-1674) was born in London. His work included “Paradise Lost," Paradise Regained," and “Samson Agonistes." Milton lost one eye at 36 and the other when he was 44. In 1996 Paul West wrote a novel: “Sporting with Amaryllis," that begins in 1626 and gives a fictional account of his life. In 1997 Peter Levy wrote a biography of Milton titled: “Eden Renewed."
(WUD, '94, p.911)(WSJ, 5/6/97, p.A20)(AP, 12/9/97)
1640 Dec 9, Settler Hugh Bewitt was banished from the Mass colony when he declared himself to be free of original sin.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1641 Dec 9, Anthonie "Antoon" van Dyck (42), Flemish painter, died.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1688 Dec 9, King James II's wife and son fled England for France.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1717 Dec 9, Johann J. Winckelmann, German archaeologist (History of Ancient Art), was born.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1724 Dec 9, Colley Cibber's "Caesar in Aegypt," premiered in London.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1738 Dec 9, Jews were expelled from Breslau, Silesia.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1742 Dec 9, Carl W. Scheele, Swedish pharmacist and chemist (lemon acid), was born.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1747 Dec 9, England and Netherlands signed a military treaty.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1767 Dec 9, Benedetto Alfieri, Italian architect (San Giovanni Battista), died.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1770 Dec 9, Gottlieb Theophil Muffat (80), composer, died.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1775 Dec 9, Lord Dunmore (1730-1809), governor of Virginia, lost decisively at the American Revolution Battle of Great Bridge. Following that defeat, Dunmore loaded his troops, and many Virginia Loyalists, onto British ships. Smallpox spread in the confined quarters, and some 500 of the 800 members of his Ethiopian Regiment died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Murray,_4th_Earl_of_Dunmore)(Econ, 8/10/13, p.26)
1783 Dec 9, The 1st execution at English Newgate-jail took place.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1793 Dec 9, Noah Webster established NY's 1st daily newspaper, American Minerva.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1809 Dec 9, William Barret Travis, Commander of the Texas troops at the battle of the Alamo, was born.
(HN, 12/9/98)
1824 Dec 9, In the Battle of Ayacucho (Candorcangui) Peru defeated Spain.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1837 Dec 9, Charles Emile Waldteufel, waltz composer (Skaters), was born in Strasbourg, France.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1842 Dec 9, Mikail Glinka's his epic opera "Russlan & Ludmilla," premiered in Petersburg. It was based on Pushkin's Russianized version of Ariosto's “Orlando Furioso."
(WSJ, 9/21/95, p.A-20)(MC, 12/9/01)
1848 Dec 9, Joel Chandler Harris, writer, was born. He created the Uncle Remus tales.
(HN, 12/9/00)
1854 Dec 9, Alfred, Lord Tennyson's poem, "The Charge of the Light Brigade," was published in England.
(AP, 12/9/97)
1861 Dec 9, U.S. Senate approved the establishment of a committee that would become the Joint Committee on the Conduct of War.
(HN, 12/9/98)
1863 Dec 9, Major General John G. Foster replaced Major General Ambrose E. Burnside as Commander of the Department of Ohio.
(HN, 12/9/98)
1867 Dec 9, The capital of Colorado Territory was moved from Golden to Denver.
(HN, 12/9/98)
1872 Dec 9, Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback (1837-1921) became acting governor of Louisiana following impeachment charges against the incumbent Republican governor, Henry Clay Warmoth. Pinchback continued as the state's 24th governor to Jan. 13, 1873. He was one of the most prominent African-American officeholders during the Reconstruction Era.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P._B._S._Pinchback)
1878 Dec 9, Joseph Pulitzer bought the St Louis Dispatch for $2,500.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1882 Dec 9, Joaquin Turina, composer (Rima), was born in Seville, Spain.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1886 Dec 9, Clarence Birdseye, inventor of flash freezing foods, was born.
(HNPD, 12/9/98)
1887 Dec 9, Isaac Kalloch (b.1832), former mayor of San Francisco (1879-1881), died in Bellingham, Wa. In 1880 he had shot and killed Charles de Young in SF Chronicle offices.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Smith_Kalloch)
1892 Dec 9, "Widowers' Houses," George Bernard Shaw's first play, opened at the Royalty Theater in London.
(AP, 12/9/06)
1894 Dec 9, Jules Regnault (b.1834), French economist, died. He first suggested a modern theory of stock price changes in Calcul des Chances et Philosophie de la Bourse (1863).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jules_Regnault)
1898 Dec 9, Emmett Kelly, circus clown (Weary Willie), was born in Sedan, Kansas.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1899 Dec 9, Jean de Brunhoff (d.1937), illustrator and author, creator of the Babar series of books, was born.
(HN, 12/9/00)(SFC, 4/15/03, p.A16)
1900 Dec 9, The Russian Czar rejected Paul Kruger’s pleas for aid to the Boers in South Africa against the British.
(HN, 12/9/01)
1902 Dec 9, Margaret Hamilton, character actress, was born in Cleveland, Oh. She became best known as the Wicked Witch in the Wizard of Oz (1939).
(www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=3146)
1903 Dec 9, The Norwegian parliament voted unanimously for female suffrage.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1905 Dec 9, Richard Strauss' opera "Salome," premiered in Dresden. Soprano Marie Wittich delegated the dance of the seven veils to a member of the corps de ballet.
(http://operetta.stanford.edu/Strauss/Salome/main.html)(WSJ, 10/16/03, p.D8)
1905 Dec 9, The French Assembly National voted for separation of church and state. Laicite was enshrined in law to keep religion out of public bodies while protecting freedom of private worship.
(http://tinyurl.com/yyvx2d)(WSJ, 4/25/03, W13)(Econ, 9/5/15, p.57)
1906 Dec 9, Grace Hopper, mathematician and computer pioneer, was born.
(HN, 12/9/00)
1907 Dec 9, US Christmas seals went on sale for the first time, at the Wilmington, Del., post office. Proceeds went to fight tuberculosis. The fists US Christmas seals were issued by the Red Cross in a program founded by a Delaware woman to support a TB sanitarium [see Dec 7].
(AP, 12/9/97)(SFC, 12/23/98, Z1 p.3)
1908 Dec 9, A child labor bill passed German Reichstag forbidding work for children under age 13.
(HN, 12/9/98)
1909 Dec 9, Douglas Fairbanks Jr, actor (Ghost Story), was born in NYC.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1909 Dec 9, The 1st US monoplane was flown by Henry W. Walden at Long Island, NY.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1912 Dec 9, Thomas P. "Tip" O’Neill, Speaker of the House of Representatives, was born.
(HN, 12/9/98)
1915 Dec 9, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, soprano (Der Rosenkavalier), was born in Jarotschin, Germany.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1916 Dec 9, Kirk Douglas, film star, was born as Issur Demsky in Amsterdam, NY.
(SSFC, 10/8/06, Par p.2)(www.imdb.com/name/nm0000018/)
1917 Dec 9, British forces under General Allenby captured Jerusalem. He liberated the city from Turkish control.
(WSJ, 4/4/96, A-12)(SFC, 10/18/96, C8)(MC, 12/9/01)
1917 Dec 9, New Finnish Republic demanded the withdrawal of Russian troops.
(HN, 12/9/98)
1918 Dec 9, Kirk Douglas, American actor best known for his role in “Spartacus," was born as Issur Danielovitch Demsky.
(HN, 12/9/98)(SFEC, 7/16/00, DB p.48)
1918 Dec 9, French troops occupied Mainz.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1930 Dec 9, Buck Henry, screenwriter and comedian (SNL, Get Smart), was born in NYC.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1931 Dec 9, Japanese army attacked the Chinese province of Jehol.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1931 Dec 9, Spain became a republic.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1934 Dec 9, Judi Dench, actress (Henry V, Wetherby), was born in York, England.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1939 Dec 9, A Russian air raid was made on Helsinki.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1940 Dec 9, British troops opened their first major offensive in North Africa during World War II and seized 1,000 Italians in a sudden thrust in Egypt.
(AP, 12/9/97)(HN, 12/9/98)
1940 Dec 9, Illegal Jewish immigrants to Haifa were deported to Mauritius.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1941 Dec 9, Franklin D. Roosevelt told Americans to plan for a long war.
(HN, 12/9/98)
1941 Dec 9, 1st US WW II bombing mission in Far East took place over Luzon, Philippines.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1941 Dec 9, China declared war on Japan, Germany and Italy.
(AP, 12/9/97)
1941 Dec 9, Hitler ordered US ships torpedoed.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1942 Dec 9, Dick Butkus, NFL hall of fame linebacker (Bears) and sportscaster, was born in Chicago, Ill.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1942 Dec 9, The Aram Khachaturian ballet "Gayane," featuring the surging "Saber Dance," was first performed by the Kirov Ballet.
(AP, 12/9/97)
1943 Dec 9, In the SF Bay Area gale-strong winds and resulting fires caused damages running into millions of dollars. In San Francisco 50-74 mph winds invoked a rare 10-1 emergency call ordering all firemen to stand by.
(SSFC, 12/9/18, DB p.50)
1947 Dec 9, In western Java up to 430 men were rounded up and shot by Dutch troops in the village of Rawagedeh. The Dutch called the incident a "police action" to quell an uprising. The Dutch government conceded in 1995 that summary executions had taken place in Rawagedeh, now known as Balongsari, but said prosecutions were no longer possible. In September, 2011, a Dutch court ordered the government to compensate the widows of Indonesian villagers, to apologize for the killings and to give each of the 10 plaintiffs $27,000. Old friends and neighbors cajoled, bullied and intimidated the plaintiffs and their families until local officials jumped in, forcing them to part with half their cash.
(AP, 9/14/11)(http://tinyurl.com/5sp5psn)(AP, 11/23/11)(AP, 1/16/12)
1948 Dec 9, U.S. abandoned a plan to de-concentrate industry in Japan.
(HN, 12/9/98)
1948 Dec 9, The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was approved by the UN General Assembly. It entered into force on Jan 12, 1951.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide_Convention)(SFC, 9/3/98, p.A14)(Econ., 4/18/15, p.54)
1949 Dec 9, UN took trusteeship over Jerusalem.
(HN, 12/9/98)
1950 Dec 9, President Truman banned U.S. exports to Communist China.
(HN, 12/9/98)
1950 Dec 9, Harry Gold got 30 years imprisonment for passing atomic bomb secrets to the Soviet Union during World War II.
(HN, 12/9/98)
1953 Dec 9, John Malkovich, actor and director (Killing Fields), was born in Christopher, Ill.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1953 Dec 9, General Electric announced all Communist employees would be fired.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1955 Dec 9, Sugar Ray Robinson won the middle-weight boxing crown for the third time when he knocked out Carl "Bobo" Olson in Chicago.
(SFC, 6/29/96, p.E4)(HN, 12/9/98)(SFC, 12/9/05, p.F6)
1957 Dec 9, Japan [announced?] its 1st ambassador to Israel.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1958 Dec 9, Robert H.W. Welch Jr. and 11 other men met in Indianapolis to form the anti-Communist John Birch Society.
(AP, 12/9/97)
1959 Dec 9, A Memorandum of Understanding was signed in New York that established IRRI (Int’l. Rice Research Institute) “as an organization to do basic research on the rice plant and applied research on all phases of rice production, management, distribution and utilization."
(http://irri.org/about-us/our-history)
1960 Dec 9, The Laos government fled to Cambodia as the capital city of Vientiane was engulfed in war.
(HN, 12/9/98)
1961 Dec 9, SS Col. Adolf Eichmann was found guilty of war crimes in Israel.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1961 Dec 9, The British Trust Territory of Tanganyika became independent. The first president was socialist Julius Nyerere (1922-1999). He resigned in 1985. Tanganyika became the mainland part of Tanzania in 1964.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanganyika)(SFC, 8/8/98, p.A12)(SFC, 10/15/99, p.D7)
1962 Dec 9, "I Can Get It For You Wholesale" closed on Broadway.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1963 Dec 9, Frank Sinatra Jr. was kidnapped. Frank Sinatra Sr. ransomed his kidnapped son, Frank Sinatra Jr., for $240,000. Barry Keenan, who set up the kidnapping, was a classmate of Nancy Sinatra. He served 4 1/2 years in prison and went on to become a successful real estate developer.
(SFC, 9/7/98, p.B6)(MC, 12/9/01)
1964 Dec 9, Dame Edith Sitwell (d.1964), English poet, died. "Good taste is the worst vice ever invented." A book of her collected poems was published in 2006. In 2011 Richard Greene authored “Edith Sitwell: Avant Garde Poet, English Genius."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edith_Sitwell)(WSJ, 7/22/06, p.P10)(Econ, 2/19/11, p.94)
1965 Dec 9, The animated TV special "A Charlie Brown Christmas," premiered on CBS. Producer Lee Mendelson (1933-2019) won 12 Emmys for his work on the show.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Charlie_Brown_Christmas)(SSFC, 12/29/19, p.B3)
1965 Dec 9, Nikolai V. Podgorny replaced Anastas I. Mikoyan as president of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet.
(AP, 12/9/97)
1967 Dec 9, Nicolae Ceausescu became president (dictator) of Romania.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1968 Dec 9, Doug Engelbart and researchers at Stanford Research Institute (SRI) first demonstrated in SF the computer mouse along with a graphical user interface (gui), display editing, integrated text and graphics, hyper documents and 2-way video-conferencing with shared work spaces. In 2001 Thierry Bardini authored "Bootstrapping: Douglas Engelbart, Coevolution, and the Origins of Personal Computing." William English (1929-2020) helped build the mouse and orchestrated its elaborate demonstration.
(SFC, 12/4/98, p.B2)(SSFC, 1/21/01, BR p.6)(SFC, 12/8/08, p.A1)(SSFC, 8/2/20, p.C10)
1971 Dec 9, Ralph J. Bunche (b.1903), Detroit-born 1st black US diplomat and UN delegate, died In NYC. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1950.
(www.gale.cengage.com/free_resources/bhm/bio/bunche_r.htm)
1974 Dec 9, Japan’s PM Kekuei Tanaka resigned following accusations of dodgy property deals.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kakuei_Tanaka)(Econ, 6/11/16, p.41)
1975 Dec 9, President Ford signed a $2.3 billion seasonal loan-authorization that officials of New York City and State said would prevent a city default.
(AP, 12/9/00)
1975 Dec 9, William Wellman (b.1896), American filmmaker, died. His film “Wings" received the 1st Academy Award for Best Picture.
(SFC, 7/20/96, p.E1)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_A._Wellman)
1977 Dec 9, Clarice Lispector (b.1920), Ukraine-born Brazilian-Jewish writer, died in Brazil. From 1952-1959 she lived in the US. Her books included “The Passion According to G.H" (1964). In 2009 Benjamin Moser authored “Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarice_Lispector)
1979 Dec 9, Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, the religious broadcaster, died in New York City at age 84.
(AP, 12/9/97)
1981 Dec 9, In Philadelphia Mumia Abu Jamal shot and killed Officer Daniel Faulkner shortly after the officer stopped William Cook, Jamal’s brother (see July 3, 1981).
(SFC, 3/28/08, p.A4)
1982 Dec 9, The Washington, D.C., police shot and killed Norman Mayer (b.1916), an American anti-nuclear weapons activist, 10 hours after he threatened to blow up the Washington Monument. Police found he had no explosives.
(HN, 12/8/98)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Mayer)
1982 Dec 9, Leon Jaworski (b.1905), special prosecutor (Watergate), died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Jaworski)
1983 Dec 8, US Att. Gen. Edwin Meese said people go to soup kitchens "...because food is free and that's easier than paying for it."
(http://ignatz.blogspot.com/2004_06_01_archive.html)
1984 Dec 9, In Iran a five-day hijack drama ended when Iranian commandos captured the Kuwaiti plane. 4 armed men had seized a Kuwaiti airliner en route to Pakistan and forced it to land in Tehran, where the hijackers killed American passenger Charles Hegna.
(AP, 12/4/04)
1987 Dec 9, On the second day of their White House summit, President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev grappled with differences over Afghanistan and cutbacks in long-range nuclear arms.
(AP, 12/9/97)
1987 Dec 8-1987 Dec 9, The first Palestinian intefadeh (Arabic for uprising) began as riots broke out in Gaza and spread to the West Bank, triggering a strong Israeli counter-response.
(AP 12/8/97)(SFC, 4/24/98, p.A17)(AP, 12/9/07)
1988 Dec 9, In the wake of the Armenian earthquake that claimed tens of thousands of lives, countries around the world began sending emergency supplies and offering pledges of relief funds.
(AP, 12/9/98)
1989 Dec 9, President Bush's national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft, and Deputy Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger began a surprise visit to Beijing, six months after China's crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators.
(AP, 12/9/99)
1990 Dec 9, The first American hostages to be released by Iraq began arriving in the United States.
(AP, 12/9/00)
1990 Dec 8, In Albania Tirana University students demonstrated in the streets and called for the dictatorship to end. Ramiz Alia met with the students 4 days later; a multiparty system was introduced; the Democratic Party, the first opposition party was established; the regime authorized political pluralism.
(www, Albania, 1998)(SFC, 12/18/00, p.E2)
1990 Dec 9, Lech Walesa, founder of Solidarity, was elected president of Poland in a runoff by a landslide.
(WSJ, 6/11/96, p.A12)(HN, 12/999)(AP, 12/9/00)
1991 Dec 9, European Community leaders meeting in the Dutch city of Maastricht tentatively agreed to begin using a single currency by 1999.
(AP, 12/9/01)
1991 Dec 9, Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev challenged Boris Yeltsin's declaration that the Soviet Union was dead, branding a new Slavic commonwealth "illegal and dangerous."
(AP, 12/9/01)
1992 Dec 9, Former CIA spy chief Clair George was convicted of lying to Congress about the Iran-Contra affair. President Bush pardoned him.
(AP, 12/9/97)
1992 Dec 9, U.S. Marines landed in Somalia to ensure that food and medicine reach the deprived areas of that country. The US Operations Restore Hope, Continue Hope and others began in Somalia and ended Mar 3, 1995. They cost $1.7 billion and left 43 US casualties with 153 wounded.
(WSJ, 9/22/99, p.A8)(HN, 12/999)
1992 Dec 9, In North Carolina Kevin Dean Hodgin (35), a Domino's Pizza delivery driver, was beaten and killed during an armed robbery outside the Domino's store in Guilford County. In 2021 Shantu Jenkins, one of five young men charged in the slaying, was released on parole.
(AP, 2/20/21)
1992 Dec 9, Britain's Prince Charles and Princess Diana announced their separation. Their divorce became final Aug. 28, 1996.
(AP, 12/9/97)
1993 Dec 9, The US Air Force destroyed the first of 500 Minuteman II missile silos marked for elimination under an arms control treaty.
(AP, 12/9/98)
1993 Dec 9, Astronauts aboard the space shuttle Endeavour completed repairs to the Hubble Space Telescope.
(AP, 12/9/98)
1994 Dec 9, President Clinton fired Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders after learning she'd told a conference that masturbation should be discussed in school as a part of human sexuality.
(AP, 12/9/99)
1994 Dec 9, It was recommended to buy global resource stocks such as Dutch Royal Petroleum, British Petroleum or South African Mining shares.
(WSJ, 12/9/94, p.R-14)
1994 Dec 9, Representatives of the Irish Republican Army and the British government opened peace talks in Northern Ireland.
(AP, 12/9/99)
1995 Dec 9, Rep. Kweisi Mfume (the Swahili name means conquering son of kings), D-Md., was chosen to head the NAACP.
(WSJ, 12/11/95, p.A-1)(AP, 12/9/97)
1995 Dec 9, Douglas "Wrong Way" Corrigan (b.1927), legendary American aviator, died.
(http://tinyurl.com/2e7bn)
1996 Dec 9, More than four months after the Olympic Games bombing, the FBI posted a $500,000 reward. Richard Jewell, the security guard who was wrongfully accused of planting a bomb during the Olympics, and his lawyers negotiated a $500,000 settlement from NBC. NBC settled to avert a defamation suit.
(WSJ, 1/3/97, p.A1)(AP, 12/9/97)
1996 Dec 9, Archaeologist and anthropologist Mary Leakey died in Nairobi, Kenya at age 83.
(SFC, 12/10/96, p.A6)(AP, 12/9/97)
1996 Dec 9, UN chief Boutros-Ghali gave Iraq the go-ahead to resume oil exports for the first time since 1990 to buy food and medicine. Two billion of oil sales will be allowed every 6 months to buy food, medicine and other necessities.
(WSJ, 12/9/96, p.A1)(AP, 12/9/97)
1997 Dec 9, Confronting her critics, Attorney General Janet Reno traded testy remarks with House Republicans on the House committee investigating campaign fund-raising; she defended her decision not to seek an independent counsel for fund-raising calls made by President Clinton and Vice President Gore.
(AP, 12/9/98)
1997 Dec 9, It was reported that the US had agreed to provide over $500 million towards the construction of a new atom smasher in Geneva under the direction of CERN. The large Hadron Collider was expected to be completed for $6 billion by 2005.
(SFC, 12/9/97, p.A9)
1997 Dec 9, In Texas Michael Lee Lockhart was put to death by lethal injection for the 1988 murder of a Beaumont police officer. He was also wanted by Florida and Indiana where in 1987 he killed a 14-year old girl and 16 year-old girl. He was the 37th to be executed by Texas this year.
(SFC, 12/10/97, p.A3)
1997 Dec 9, In Virginia Michael Charles Satche (29) was put to death for the rape and murder of a woman. It was the state’s 8th execution this year.
(SFC, 12/10/97, p.A3)
1997 Dec 9, A former Algerian diplomat in London said that the government was involved in the recent massacres of civilians to garner support against the Islamic opposition.
(SFC, 12/10/97, p.A14)
1997 Dec 9, Israeli officials scrambled to stop a Yasser Arafat’s government from conducting a census of Palestinians in East Jerusalem.
(SFC, 12/10/97, p.A13)
1997 Dec 9, North Korean officials agreed to a 4-nation meeting in Geneva for a permanent peace treaty to the 1950-1953 Korean War. The talks inaugurated formal discussion for a permanent peace agreement and a new session was scheduled for Mar 16.
(SFC, 11/22/97, p.C1)(SFC, 12/11/97, p.A18)
1997 Dec 9, In Russia 3 armed hijackers seized an Ilyushin-62 passenger plane from far east city of Magadan with at least 140 people onboard. They demanded $10 million and a flight to Switzerland.
(SFC, 12/10/97, p.A13)
1997 Dec 9, In Zimbabwe thousands of protestors, angry over taxes, fought with the police for 4 hours in Harare during one of the biggest local labor strikes. The strike was called by the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions amid discontent over unemployment, taxes and inflation along with corruption and lavish spending by politicians.
(SFC, 12/10/97, p.A13)
1998 Dec 9, The Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee drafted 4 articles of impeachment for Pres. Clinton, all stemming from his sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky and long campaign to cover it up. The Democrats countered with a censure plan.
(SFC, 12/10/98, p.A1)(AP, 12/9/99)
1998 Dec 9, An appeals court in Oregon ruled that the state constitution gives gay and lesbian government employees the right to health and life insurance benefits for their domestic partners.
(SFC, 12/10/98, p.C11)
1998 Dec 9, It was reported that scientists in Japan had cloned several calves from an adult cow. It was the 3rd mammal duplicated after mice and sheep.
(SFC, 12/9/98, p.A8)
1998 Dec 9, The David and Lucille Packard Foundation announced an additional $200 million for environmental causes to be spent over the next 5 years.
(SFC, 12/10/98, p.A1)
1998 Dec 9, Archie Moore, former light heavy-weight boxing champion, died at age 84.
(SFC, 12/10/98, p.A1)
1998 Dec 9, In Angola Unita rebels advanced on Cuito after saying they had routed an attack by government forces on their southern stronghold.
(WSJ, 12/10/98, p.A1)
1998 Dec 9, In Armenia Vagram Khorkhoruni, deputy defense minister, was shot dead outside his home in Yerevan.
(SFC, 12/10/98, p.C7)
1998 Dec 9, Britain’s Home Secretary, Jack Straw, turned down Gen’l. Augusto Pinochet’s plea to be set free. The decision for extradition moved to the courts.
(SFC, 12/10/98, p.A1)(WSJ, 12/10/98, p.A1)
1998 Dec 9, In Hyde, England, authorities exhumed a 12th body killed by Dr. Harold Shipman (52). The family doctor was accused of killing female patients for their money from 1994 to Jun 1998.
(SFC, 12/10/98, p.C7)
1998 Dec 9, In Cambodia Khmer Rouge guerrillas kidnapped 48 people, including 3 aid workers, and demanded ransom.
(WSJ, 12/10/98, p.A1)
1998 Dec 9, In France the National Assembly instituted the Civil Solidarity Pact, a bill to improve the lot of cohabiting gay and unmarried couples.
(SFC, 12/10/98, p.C7)
1998 Dec 9, In Iran the body of Mohammed Mokhtari, a prominent writer missing for a week, was found. It appeared that he was murdered by strangulation. Shortly later Mohammad Jafar Pouyandeh (45), another dissident writer, was reported missing. Pouyandeh was later found murdered.
(SFC, 12/10/98, p.C2)(SFC, 12/11/98, p.A22)(SFC, 12/15/98, p.A14)
1998 Dec 9, Iraq refused UN inspectors access to an office of the ruling Baath Party.
(SFC, 12/11/98, p.D2)
1998 Dec 9, In Israel the Supreme Court ruled that the exemption for rigorously Orthodox Jewish yeshiva students from army service was illegal.
(SFC, 12/10/98, p.C6)
1998 Dec 9, In Malaysia Azizan Abu Bakar, the ex-driver of Anwar Ibrahim, repeated in court his allegation that he was sodomized by Ibrahim in 1992.
(SFC, 12/10/98, p.C7)
1998 Dec 9, A Palestinian teenager was killed as Israeli forces and Palestinian protestors clashed.
(SFC, 12/10/98, p.A12)
1999 Dec 9, The federal CDC issued guidelines that called for states and local public health departments to report all HIV cases either by name or code.
(SFC, 12/10/99, p.A1)
1999 Dec 9, In San Francisco Kameron Sengthavy, a former Univ. of Nevada swimmer, was found stabbed to death in his residential hotel at 447 Bush St. In 2018 police served an arrest warrant for the murder on Roy Donovan Lacy (38), a former SF Bay Area resident serving time for bank robbery in a Florida prison.
(SSFC, 5/20/18, p.C3)
1999 Dec 9, Seven Marines were killed after a CH-46 Sea Knight helicopter crashed while ferrying troops between ships 14 miles off Point Loma, Ca.
(SFC, 12/10/99, p.A3)(SFC, 12/11/99, p.A3)
1999 Dec 9, In Worcester, Massachusetts, six firefighters who had died in a warehouse blaze were honored as fallen heroes by thousands of their brethren from around the world.
(AP, 12/9/00)
1999 Dec 9, In Missouri a twin-engine Cessna crashed near Branson and all 6 people aboard were killed.
(SFC, 12/10/99, p.A17)
1999 Dec 9, Xiana La-Shay (7), Xiana Fairchild, was last seen at a school bus stop in Vallejo, Ca. Her skull was found Jan. 19, 2001, in the Los Gatos hills and police focused on Curtis Dean Anderson as the primary suspect. Anderson (1961-2007), while serving a 251-year sentence for another kidnapping, was arrested in 2004 for Xiana’s murder. In 2005 Anderson pleaded guilty to kidnapping, molesting and murdering Xiana.
(SFEC, 12/12/99, p.C1)(SSFC, 2/4/01, p.A1)(SFC, 5/12/04, p.A6)(SFC, 12/15/05, p.B1)
1999 Dec 9, Scientists reported that nearly complete human cornea cells were grown in a laboratory petri dish.
(SFC, 12/10/99, p.A6)
1999 Dec 9, European leaders gathered in Helsinki for an EU summit. On the agenda was the creation of a defense force, expansion to 28 members and clearing the path for Turkey to join.
(SFC, 12/10/99, p.D4)
1999 Dec 9, The first day of Ramadan. In Saudi Arabia a young man was scheduled to be beheaded by this day unless the family of a man he killed, while performing the mizmar dance, was paid some $1.3 million in blood money.
(SFC, 12/6/99, p.A13)
2000 Dec 9, Florida State quarterback Chris Weinke won the Heisman Trophy.
(AP, 12/9/01)
2000 Dec 9, The US Supreme ruled 5-4 to stop the recount in Florida until arguments are heard Dec 11.
(SSFC, 12/10/00, p.A1)(AP, 12/9/01)
2000 Dec 9, In Algeria 5 soldiers and an assailant were killed in an ambush near Tissemsilt. Another 3 local guards were killed in Boghar and the attacks continued the next day.
(SFC, 12/12/00, p.B2)
2000 Dec 9, In Chechnya 2 rebel car bombs killed at least 19 people in Alkhan-Yurt.
(SSFC, 12/10/00, p.C5)
2000 Dec 9, In Israel Prime Minister Barak announced that he would submit his resignation and call for new elections.
(SSFC, 12/10/00, p.A1)(AP, 12/9/01)
2000 Dec 9, In Nigeria 62 people were killed when a bus collided with a truck a 3rd vehicle hit the 1st two and burst into flames.
(SFC, 12/13/00, p.B4)
2000 Dec 9, In Pakistan former prime minister Nawaz Sharif was released from prison and sent into exile in Saudi Arabia. He agreed to stay out of politics and forfeited property valued at $8.3 million.
(SSFC, 12/10/00, p.A28)(WSJ, 12/11/00, p.A1)
2000 Dec 9, It was reported that Tropical Storm Rumbia had killed at least 29 people in the Philippines.
(SFC, 12/9/00, p.D8)
2000 Dec 9, Pres. Putin said he would follow the recommendation of the pardons commission and free Edmond Pope. It was later reported that Pope’s efforts to buy technology ran parallel to Canadian efforts to buy advanced Shkval torpedoes from a defense plan in Kyrgyzstan.
(SSFC, 12/10/00, p.A27)(SFC, 1/3/01, p.A10)
2001 Dec 9, The United States disclosed the existence of a videotape in which Osama bin Laden said he was pleasantly surprised by the extent of damage from the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
(AP, 12/9/02)
2001 Dec 9, US B-52s continued strikes over Tora Bora. A Northern Alliance helicopter crashed and 18 people were killed including 2 Pashtun commanders. The last province under Taliban control, Zabul, was handed over to tribal leaders.
(SFC, 12/10/01, p.A12)
2001 Dec 9, An Amtrak Acela train killed 3 people on tracks northeast of Philadelphia.
(WSJ, 12/10/01, p.A1)
2001 Dec 9, The Friendship Bridge linking Afghanistan and Uzbekistan was opened for aid transport.
(SFC, 12/10/01, p.A12)
2001 Dec 9, In Argentina Domingo Cavallo announced that he would annul $4 million in business tax cuts and push for the release of $1.3 billion IMF loans.
(SFC, 12/11/01, p.A6)
2001 Dec 9, An outbreak of the Ebola virus was confirmed in the Ogoouer Ivindo province of Gabon. 7 deaths were reported.
(SFC, 12/10/01, p.A3)(WSJ, 12/10/01, p.A1)
2001 Dec 9, A suicide bomber injured 9 Israelis in Haifa. Israeli troops killed 4 Palestinian police officers in their cars. Israeli soldiers also killed a Palestinian taxi driver trying to enter Jenin, which was sealed off. 30 suspected militants were arrested in Israeli raids.
(SFC, 12/10/01, p.A3)(WSJ, 12/10/01, p.A1)
2001 Dec 9, In Uganda a gasoline truck crash killed 58 people near Iganga. Many of the victims had tried to gather up fuel when it ignited.
(WSJ, 12/10/01, p.A1)
2002 Dec 9, Pres. Bush chose John Snow, chairman of CSX Corp., to replace Paul O'Neill as secretary of the Treasury. Bush fired Paul O'Neill 3 days earlier.
(SFC, 12/9/02, p.A1)
2002 Dec 9, Senate Republican leader Trent Lott apologized for remarks he'd made praising the 1948 presidential run of then-segregationist Strom Thurmond, saying, "A poor choice of words conveyed to some the impression that I embraced the discarded policies of the past."
(AP, 12/9/03)
2002 Dec 9, The United States received a copy Monday of Saddam Hussein's massive arms declaration as inspectors began combing the dossier for clues about whether Iraq is free of weapons of mass destruction.
(AP, 12/9/02)
2002 Dec 9, US and Spanish forces seized an unflagged ship from North Korea that was carrying Scud missiles to Yemen.
(SFC, 12/11/02, p.A1)
2002 Dec 9, United Airlines filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and reported losses of $20 million a day.
(SFC, 12/9/02, p.A1)(SFC, 12/10/02, p.A1)
2002 Dec 9, The UN Security Council lifted 9-year-old sanctions against Angola's UNITA movement, welcoming efforts by the government and the former rebel group to end the country's civil war.
(AP, 12/9/02)
2002 Dec 9, In Angra dos Reis, Brazil, mudslides triggered by torrential rains slashed through this southeastern city, burying houses and killing at least 34 people.
(AP, 12/10/02)
2002 Dec 9, In Bogota, Colombia, a car bomb exploded near a police command post, during lunch hour, injuring at least 58 passersby.
(AP, 12/9/02)
2002 Dec 9, Indonesia and rebels in Aceh signed an accord to end one of the world's longest-running insurgencies.
(Reuters, 12/9/02)
2002 Dec 9, Israeli soldiers killed Basem Kou (28), a mentally handicapped Palestinian near Beit Lid. At Nablus Israeli soldiers fired on a taxi and killed Rehaneh Hesham Kilani (25) and injured 2 other passengers.
(SFC, 12/10/02, p.A8)
2002 Dec 9, Serbia headed for a major political crisis after it failed a second time to elect a president, with supporters of the top vote-getter vowing to challenge the outcome.
(AP, 12/9/02)
2002 Dec 9, In Venezuela a general strike aimed at ousting leftist President Hugo Chavez sparked panic buying at supermarkets and gasoline stations and forced the national guard to commandeer delivery trucks and ensure that service stations opened.
(AP, 12/9/02)
2003 Dec 9, Jeffrey and Michael Derderian, owners of a Rhode Island nightclub, and Dan Biechele, the tour manager for the rock band Great White, were indicted on charges related to the February 20 fire that killed 100 people. In 2006 a judge gave the owners 4 years and probation.
(AP, 12/9/04)(SFC, 5/10/06, p.A7)(WSJ, 9/30/06, p.A1)
2003 Dec 9, The Dutch cargo ship Stellamare capsized at the Port of Albany, NY.
(SFC, 12/19/03, p.D10)
2003 Dec 9, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao visited with Pres. Bush for talks on trade, Taiwan and other issues.
(WSJ, 12/9/03, p.A1)
2003 Dec 9, Former Vice President Al Gore endorsed Howard Dean for the Democratic presidential nomination.
(AP, 12/9/03)
2003 Dec 9, Paul Simon (75), former Illinois Senator (1984-1997), died in Springfield. His work included 13 published books.
(SFC, 12/10/03, p.A2)
2003 Dec 9, Shanghai reported plans to ban bicycles from its major roads next year, banishing China's most popular form of transportation to make more room for cars.
(AP, 12/9/03)
2003 Dec 9, French police arrested Gorka Palacios Alday, the alleged military leader of the banned Basque separatist group ETA, along with three accomplices.
(AP, 12/9/03)
2003 Dec 9, In Talafar, Iraq, a suicide bomber blew up a car packed with explosives at the gates of a military barracks, injuring 41 American troops and six Iraqi civilians. Hours earlier, 3 soldiers died in a road accident in central Iraq, and 3 civilians died when a Baghdad mosque was rocketed.
(AP, 12/9/03)
2003 Dec 9, In Japan PM Junichiro Koizumi's Cabinet approved the dispatch of about 1,000 soldiers to help in the reconstruction of Iraq.
(AP, 12/9/03)
2003 Dec 9, North Korea offered an apparent counterproposal to a U.S.-backed plan to resolve the standoff over its nuclear program, saying it would freeze the project in return for energy aid and being removed from Washington's list of countries that sponsor terrorism.
(AP, 12/9/03)
2003 Dec 9, In southern Mexico Salvatrucha gang members attacked illegal immigrants from Central America on a train, killing three people and wounding four in the latest in a series of violent incidents in the region. The Mara Salvatrucha spanned Central America. It was named for its Salvadoran founders, who claimed to be as wise as trout.
(AP, 12/10/03)(Econ, 5/22/04, p.31)
2003 Dec 9, In Russia a female suicide bomber blew herself up outside the National Hotel across from Moscow's Red Square. At least 6 bystanders were killed and at least 14 wounded.
(AP, 12/9/03)(SFC, 12/10/03, p.A3)
2003 Dec 9, Former Pres. Frederick Chiluba, Zambia's first democratically elected president, went on trial before a packed courtroom, accused of stealing millions of dollars from state coffers during his decade in power.
(AP, 12/9/03)
2004 Dec 9, President Bush ruled out raising taxes to finance a Social Security overhaul. Bush also announced he was keeping the heads of the Transportation, Interior, Housing and Labor departments.
(AP, 12/09/05)
2004 Dec 9, Scientists tracked an algae bloom covering 400 square miles in the Gulf Coast that has caused a mass fish kill and dolphin deaths near Florida.
(WSJ, 12/9/04, p.A1)
2004 Dec 9, Canada's highest court said the government can redefine marriage to include same-sex couples, but it added that religious officials cannot be forced to perform unions against their beliefs.
(AP, 12/9/04)
2004 Dec 9, China reported that its monthly trade surplus widened in November for the fourth straight month, hitting $9.9 billion as exports surged at an annual rate of nearly 46 percent.
(AP, 12/9/04)
2004 Dec 9, An aid agency reported that some 1,000 Congolese civilians a day are dying from disease and malnutrition, due to a festering conflict that has killed 3.8 million people.
(AP, 12/9/04)
2004 Dec 9, General Motors Europe reaffirmed it will chop 12,000 jobs over two years, around a fifth of its workforce, to lop 500 million euros ($673 million) from costs to cut losses.
(AP, 12/9/04)
2004 Dec 9, The French government sold an 18.4 percent stake in Air France-KLM, the world's largest airline, to help reduce the state debt.
(AP, 12/9/04)
2004 Dec 9, Indian officials cautioned Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that a proposed US sale of military hardware worth $1.2 billion to Pakistan could damage a fragile peace process between the nuclear-armed neighbors and harm India-US relations.
(AP, 12/9/04)
2004 Dec 9, In Iraq insurgent mortar fire in Baghdad left 3 people dead.
(SFC, 12/10/04, p.A20)
2004 Dec 9, The Irish Republican Army declared for the first time that it's willing to get rid of its entire weapons stockpile within weeks.
(AP, 12/9/04)
2004 Dec 9, Interfax reported that Russian authorities have assessed a new tax claim for $114 million on one of Yukos' smaller subsidiaries.
(AP, 12/9/04)
2004 Dec 9, In Kiev, Ukraine, opposition protestors lifted their 2-week siege.
(SFC, 12/10/04, p.A3)
2004 Dec 9, In Venezuela a law that gives the government control over the content of radio and television programs took effect.
(AP, 12/9/04)
2004 Dec 9, United Airlines was scheduled to begin service to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
(SFC, 7/23/04, p.C1)
2004 Dec 9, Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's ruling party passed a controversial new law that aims to bar foreign rights groups from the country, as well as foreign funding for local groups doing similar work.
(AP, 12/9/04)
2005 Dec 9, President Bush, addressing a political fundraiser in Minnesota, said the United States would wage an unrelenting battle in Iraq to protect Americans at home.
(AP, 12/9/06)
2005 Dec 9, A US congressional report said the federal government's medical response to Hurricane Katrina was bungled by a lack of supplies and poor communication.
(AP, 12/9/06)
2005 Dec 9, Former US Pres. Clinton called Bush’s global warming stance “flat wrong" while speaking at the climate conference in Montreal.
(WSJ, 12/10/05, p.A1)
2005 Dec 9, The US film “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe," produced by Philip Anschutz, was released. It was adapted from a book by C.S. Lewis that was an allegory of Christ’s crucifixion. Anschutz made his 1st fortune drilling for oil and later built the Qwest telecom company.
(Econ, 11/26/05, p.82)
2005 Dec 9, Viacom closed a deal to pay $1.6 billion to acquire DreamWorksSKG, a Hollywood studio founded by Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen.
(SFC, 12/10/05, p.C1)
2005 Dec 9, Afghanistan welcomed NATO's decision to expand its peacekeeping mission, saying it would boost security, while the Taliban said more alliance troops would only increase opportunities for guerrillas to attack them.
(AP, 12/09/05)
2005 Dec 9-2005 Dec 10, In southern Afghanistan Taliban fighters attacked two police posts, with eight policemen and six attackers killed in the ensuing battles.
(AFP, 12/10/05)
2005 Dec 9, Police in Bangladesh hunting for Islamist suicide bombers seized explosives and detained 30 militants.
(Reuters, 12/10/05)
2005 Dec 9-2005 Dec 11, Fidel Ramos, former president of the Philippines, and Michael Camdessus, former managing IMF director, chaired the 1st annual meeting of the Emerging Markets Forum at Templeton College, Oxford, England.
(Econ, 12/17/05, p.76)
2005 Dec 9, In Beijing, China, the US ambassador for fighting international slavery said that many North Korean refugees who flee to China every year end up as sex slaves and China often sends them back for punishment.
(AP, 12/09/05)
2005 Dec 9, Haiti's interim government said it has removed five of the 10 judges from the Supreme Court, another move in a tense power struggle ahead of next month's national elections.
(AP, 12/9/05)
2005 Dec 9, In Iraq the American military arrested Amir Khalaf Fanus, also known in the Ramadi area as "the Butcher." Fanus, a high-ranking member of al-Qaida in Iraq, was wanted for criminal activities including murder and kidnapping. A US soldier was killed and 11 others wounded in a suicide bombing in western Baghdad.
(AP, 12/9/05)(SSFC, 12/11/05, p.A6)
2005 Dec 9, In Ireland more than 10,000 labor union members protested in Dublin and other cities over shipping company Irish Ferries' plan to replace its workers with Latvians making $4.25 an hour, half the local minimum wage. It was the country's most bitter industrial showdown in decades.
(AP, 12/09/05)(WSJ, 12/10/05, p.A1)
2005 Dec 9, Israel rounded up 19 Islamic militants in the West Bank and pounded the Gaza Strip with artillery fire, pressing forward with a crackdown in the wake of a suicide bombing at a shopping mall this week.
(AP, 12/09/05)
2005 Dec 9, Kenya swore in a new Cabinet whose difficult formation reflected increasing questions about the president's political strength.
(AP, 12/09/05)
2005 Dec 9, In Nigeria Diepreye Alamieyeseigha, the governor of the oil-rich state of Bayelsa who skipped bail in Britain to escape trial there for money-laundering, was arrested by 200 armed policemen, after lawmakers removed his immunity from prosecution.
(AFP, 12/09/05)
2005 Dec 9, In Nigeria police broke down the gate of a huge housing complex to oust thousands of civil servants and their families in the third mass eviction by the government this week in the commercial capital of Lagos. The move followed a decision by the government to sell off several publicly owned housing blocks for civil servants in a privatization scheme. Authorities have not provided the estimated 8,000 residents with other accommodation.
(AP, 12/09/05)
2005 Dec 9, Marc Garlasco, a Human Rights Watch investigator, said Poland served as the CIA's main center to detain terrorist suspects in Europe at clandestine prisons.
(AP, 12/09/05)
2005 Dec 9, President Vladimir Putin signaled he would scrap some of the harshest provisions of a much-criticized bill that would severely restrict the work of foreign-funded non-governmental organizations in Russia.
(AP, 12/09/05)
2005 Dec 9, Russia's parliament gave final approval to legislation allowing direct foreign ownership of shares in Gazprom, the world's largest natural gas producer.
(AP, 12/09/05)
2005 Dec 9, Spanish police arrested at least 7 people over the last 24 hours suspected of financing and giving logistical support to an Islamic extremist group with links to al-Qaida.
(AP, 12/09/05)
2006 Dec 9, The US Congress gave its final approval to landmark legislation allowing export of civilian nuclear fuel and technology to India for the first time in 30 years. Congress also gave final approval to open 8.3 million acres of federal waters west of Florida to oil and gas drilling.
(AFP, 12/9/06)(SFC, 12/9/06, p.A1)
2006 Dec 9, The US Space Shuttle Discovery was launched from the Kennedy Space Center, Florida, with 7 international crew members aboard on a mission to the International Space Station.
(AFP, 12/10/06)
2006 Dec 9, Ohio State quarterback Troy Smith won the Heisman Trophy.
(AP, 12/9/07)
2006 Dec 9, Singer Georgia Gibbs (87), who had reached the top of the charts in the 1950s, died in New York City.
(AP, 12/9/07)
2006 Dec 9, Martin Nodell (91), the creator of Green Lantern, the comic book superhero who uses his magical ring to help him fight crime, died in Wisconsin. The first Green Lantern appearance came in July 1940, an eight-page story in a comic book also featuring other characters. The character then got his own series, and Nodell drew it until 1947 under the name Mart Dellon. After its cancellation in 1949, the series was reborn in 1959 with a revised story line, and it has been revived several times.
(AP, 12/12/06)
2006 Dec 9, In Afghanistan Taliban militants, following up on a death threat, broke into a house overnight in the Narang district of eastern Kunar province, and fatally shot two teachers and 3 other family members, bringing to 20 the number of educators slain in attacks this year. The top US anti-drug official said that Afghan poppies would be sprayed with herbicide to combat an opium trade that produced a record heroin haul this year, a measure likely to anger farmers and scare Afghans unfamiliar with weed killers. Afghan opium production this year increased 49% over 2005 and was providing 92% of the world supply.
(AP, 12/9/06)(AP, 12/10/06)(Econ, 12/2/06, p.47)
2006 Dec 9, In Bolivia South American leaders called for greater continental unity as they opened a two-day summit that drew the region's new wave of leftist leaders. They agreed to create a high-level commission to study the idea of forming a continent-wide community similar to the European Union.
(AP, 12/9/06)
2006 Dec 9, Freddy Munoz (36), a Colombian journalist, was charged with rebellion and terrorism for a series of bombings in 2002, a move his news channel said was in response to his reporting on human rights violations. Munoz worked for the news channel Telesur, which is majority owned by the Venezuelan government of President Hugo Chavez.
(AP, 12/9/06)
2006 Dec 9, German police found traces of radiation in two buildings linked to a Russian businessman who met the murdered ex-spy Alexander Litvinenko in London on the day he fell ill. Radiation traces were found overnight in an apartment belonging to Dmitry Kovtun's ex-wife in the northern city of Hamburg. Kovtun is now in hospital.
(AP, 12/9/06)
2006 Dec 9, Iraq's influential Association of Muslim Scholars and the country's largest Sunni Arab political party condemned a deadly US military attack they say killed civilians in the predominantly Sunni village of al-Ishaqi in Salahuddin province. A suicide car bomb struck near a Shiite shrine, killing at least five people. A suicide car bomb exploded outside of the Al-Abbas shrine in Karbala killing five Iraqis with 44 wounded. Outgoing Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld paid a surprise visit to Iraq and said American forces should not quit the war until the enemy is defeated. Gunmen attacked two Shiite homes in western Baghdad, killing 10 people. A nephew of Saddam Hussein serving a life sentence for making bombs for Iraq's insurgency escaped from prison in northern Iraq.
(AP, 12/9/06)(AP, 12/10/06)
2006 Dec 9, Nigeria’s governing party suspended gubernatorial primaries in at least two of 36 states following candidate protests and violent clashes.
(AP, 12/10/06)
2006 Dec 9, Typhoon Utor, the 2nd to hit the Philippines in two weeks, made landfall forcing the evacuation of thousands in Eastern Samar province where hundreds died in the last storm. Typhoon Utor killed at least 5 people.
(AP, 12/9/06)(Reuters, 12/10/06)
2006 Dec 9, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said he would dismiss the parliament and call early elections to end a political impasse with Hamas, but left open the possibility of a compromise with the Islamic militant group, PLO.
(AP, 12/9/06)
2006 Dec 9, A suspicious fire combined with a blocked exit turned the women's ward of a Moscow drug treatment hospital into a deathtrap as flames and smoke overcame patients while they struggled to get out. At least 45 women were killed.
(AP, 12/9/06)
2006 Dec 9, Tiger rebels said artillery duels in northeast Sri Lanka had killed at least 45 people, including 15 civilians and 30 government soldiers, after a Norwegian peace bid failed.
(AFP, 12/9/06)
2006 Dec 9, UN Special Envoy Stephen Lewis said South Africa had made "a breakthrough" on AIDS after sidelining its controversial health minister and unveiling a new program for helping people with HIV. Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang contended that eating a mixture of garlic and vegetables can fight HIV.
(AFP, 12/9/06)
2006 Dec 9, In Sudan militiamen on horseback ambushed a refugee convoy in Sirba in western Darfur, killing 22 civilians. The governor of West Darfur said the attack was carried out by rebel groups who refused to sign the May peace agreement.
(AFP, 12/10/06)
2006 Dec 9, Taiwan's ruling party narrowly won a crucial mayoral election in one southern city, while the opposition candidate won comfortably in the capital of Taipei in a pair of votes seen by many as a referendum for President Chen Shui-bian.
(AP, 12/9/06)
2006 Dec 9, In Thailand a police informant who survived two attacks by suspected Muslim insurgents was killed in a drive-by shooting in the restive south.
(AP, 12/9/06)
2006 Dec 9, In Turkey the state-run Anatolia news agency reported that police had detained 10 suspected al-Qaida militants, including a lawyer who identified himself as the group's leader.
(AP, 12/9/06)
2006 Dec 9, It was reported that Lake Victoria, the greatest of Africa's Great Lakes and the biggest freshwater body after Lake Superior, has dropped fast, at least six feet in the past three years. The Uganda government cited the outflow through two hydroelectric dams at Jinja as part of the problem along with drought and rising temperatures. At 27,000 square miles the lake matched size of Ireland.
(AP, 12/9/06)
2007 Dec 9, In Arvada, Colorado, a suburb of Denver, a gunman walked into a training center dormitory for young Christian missionaries and opened fire, killing two of the center's staff members and wounding two others. 2 more people, including the gunman, were killed at the New Life megachurch in Colorado Springs. Matthew Murray, killed himself.
(AP, 12/9/07)(AP, 12/10/07)(AP, 12/9/08)
2007 Dec 9, In southern Afghanistan Afghan, British and US troops closed in on Musa Qala, a Taliban-held town. A second NATO soldier was killed in the operation. This was the first mission in which British forces have participated with the Afghan army as the main fighting force. Afghan and NATO forces killed 30 Taliban fighters in Kandahar's Panjwayi district.
(AP, 12/9/07)(AFP, 12/9/07)
2007 Dec 9, Bolivia’s constitutional assembly approved a new charter that would empower Pres. Evo Morales to run for re-election indefinitely. The new constitution required approval by Bolivians in a national referendum expected in 2008.
(SFC, 12/10/07, p.A16)
2007 Dec 9, Voters in Bosnia's Serb entity went to polls to choose a new president, as the country was taking initial steps towards European integration.
(AFP, 12/9/07)
2007 Dec 9, Anne Darwin, whose husband is accused of faking his own death in an insurance scam, was arrested upon her return to Britain from Panama on suspicion of fraud. Police said Darwin masterminded an elaborate fraud to pay off family debts.
(AP, 12/9/07)
2007 Dec 9, A Canadian jury in British Columbia convicted Robert 'Willie' Pickton (58), a pig farmer, of murdering six women, handing him an automatic life sentence but finding that the killings were not planned. Pickton still faced 20 more murder charges for the deaths of women, most of them prostitutes and drug addicts from a seedy Vancouver neighborhood. On Dec 11 Pickton was sentenced to life in prison with no hope of parole for 25 years. Canadian authorities spent more than C$100 million ($98 million) to catch and convict Pickton.
(AP, 12/9/07)(Reuters, 12/12/07)(Reuters, 11/17/10)
2007 Dec 9, Beijing's foreign exchange regulator said the ceiling on foreign investment in Chinese securities will be raised to $30 billion from $10 billion.
(AP, 12/9/07)
2007 Dec 9, Iran signed a contract with China's Sinopec for the development of Iran's huge Yadavaran oil field, the kind of energy deal the United States has been trying to prevent. Hundreds of Iranian students angry over a crackdown on activists protested at Tehran University, the second such demonstration in less than a week.
(Reuters, 12/9/07)(AP, 12/9/07)
2007 Dec 9, Maj. Gen. Jalil Khalaf, the police chief of Basra, said religious vigilantes have killed at least 40 women this year there because of how they dressed. A roadside bomb struck a convoy carrying Brig. Gen. Qais al-Maamouri, the police chief of Babil, the provincial capital of Hillah, a predominantly Shiite province south of Baghdad, killing him and two of his bodyguards. British PM Gordon Brown flew into southern Iraq to rally troops and confirm that Iraqi forces will take command of the last region under British control in mid-December.
(AP, 12/9/07)(AP, 12/10/07)
2007 Dec 9, In Pakistan former PM Nawaz Sharif's opposition party decided to run in next month's parliamentary elections, a move could clear the way for other members of Pakistan's largest opposition coalition to participate. A suicide bomber rammed an explosives-laden car into a police outpost near Imam Dheri, the headquarters of pro-Taliban cleric Maulana Fazlullah, killing 8 people. The military there has been battling Islamic militants loyal to the fugitive cleric.
(AP, 12/9/07)
2007 Dec 9, A blast on a bus in Russia’s Stavropol region killed two people. An exploding gas canister was suspected.
(Reuters, 12/9/07)
2007 Dec 9, In Lisbon, Spain, Senegal's Pres. Abdoulaye Wade said most African leaders have rejected EU proposals for a free-trade deal that would replace colonial-era trading systems at a summit marred by disputes over Zimbabwe and Darfur. Africa and Europe's first summit in seven years ended without agreement on the key issue of trade.
(AP, 12/9/07)(Reuters, 12/9/07)
2007 Dec 9, A charter aircraft flying from the Czech Republic crashed near Kiev airport in Ukraine killing at least 5 people.
(AFP, 12/9/07)
2008 Dec 9, Federal authorities arrested Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich (51) on charges that he brazenly conspired to sell or trade the US Senate seat left vacant by President-elect Barack Obama to the highest bidder. Upon his arrest Blagojevich and his wife were awash in over $200,000 in credit card debt. Blagojevich was released after paying a $4,500 bond.
(AP, 12/9/08)(SFC, 12/10/08, p.A4)(SFC, 7/2/10, p.A6)
2008 Dec 9, The US Treasury said it had sold $30 billion in four-week bills at an interest rate of zero percent, for the first time since the notes began issuing in 2001.
(SFC, 12/10/08, p.C4)
2008 Dec 9, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said it will pay up to $54.25 million to settle a class-action lawsuit that alleged the discount giant cut workers' break time and didn't prevent employees from working off the clock in Minnesota.
(AP, 12/10/08)
2008 Dec 9, SF Mayor Gavin Newsom announced $71 million in cuts that included the loss of jobs for nearly 400 city employees.
(SFC, 12/10/08, p.A1)
2008 Dec 9, Nevada state and federal authorities said they arrested nearly two dozen people, many with ties to Eastern Europe, in a credit card fraud and identity theft scheme that cost Las Vegas businesses and consumers about $1.5 million.
(AP, 12/9/08)
2008 Dec 9, In Afghanistan Mohammad Bobi, a Taliban commander, was killed during a targeted overnight operation just south of Kabul.
(AP, 12/9/08)
2008 Dec 9, In Argentina officials announced that 10,000 bone fragments had been unearthed between February and September, inside the once-secret Arana detention center in La Plata. Political dissidents were tortured and killed there during the 1976-1983 “Dirty War."
(AP, 12/10/08)
2008 Dec 9, The Bank of Canada unexpectedly cut its key interest rate by three-quarters of a percentage point to a 50-year low of 1.50 percent and declared the Canadian economy to be in a recession.
(AP, 12/9/08)
2008 Dec 9, In Beijing delegates from six nations focused on a Chinese proposal on how to verify North Korea's claims about its atomic program in talks aimed at ending the secretive regime's nuclear activities.
(AFP, 12/9/08)
2008 Dec 9, In China activists issued a new public call for greater freedoms ahead of the 60th anniversary of the UN convention on human rights, but police detained two of the signatories before it was even issued. The petition known as Charter 08 was issued online and initially signed by 303 intellectuals. Within a week 5,000 people added their signature.
(AP, 12/9/08)(Econ, 1/17/09, p.42)(Econ, 2/14/09, SR p.17)
2008 Dec 9, Ethiopian troops were reported to be pouring into neighboring Somalia to fight radical Islamists who have taken over much of the country, raising fears of more violence in a country fighting a deadly insurgency and piracy.
(AP, 12/9/08)
2008 Dec 9, In Paris, France, entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson, Jordan's Queen Noor and other dignitaries launched an ambitious project aimed at eliminating the world's nuclear weapons over the next 25 years.
(AP, 12/9/08)
2008 Dec 9, The European Union and Canada reached a deal to open their aviation markets to each other by removing restrictions on direct flights and foreign ownership in airlines.
(AP, 12/9/08)
2008 Dec 9, Hong Kong health authorities said more than 80,000 chickens will be slaughtered after bird flu was found on a poultry farm, the first outbreak at a farm here in nearly six years.
(AFP, 12/9/08)
2008 Dec 9, India police released the names of nine suspected Islamic militants killed during their attack on Mumbai, bolstering India's charges that all of them came from Pakistan. A speeding bus caught fire in northern Uttar Pradesh state, killing at least 63 Hindu pilgrims.
(AP, 12/9/08)(AP, 12/10/08)
2008 Dec 9, Ireland's farm minister said Irish cattle have tested positive for chemicals which have triggered a cancer scare previously confined to pork.
(AFP, 12/9/08)
2008 Dec 9, Israel reopened its crossings with Gaza to shipments of humanitarian aid and fuel. International journalists were also being allowed in.
(AP, 12/9/08)
2008 Dec 9, Sony said it is slashing 8,000 jobs, or 4 percent of its global work force, aiming to cut costs by $1.1 billion a year as an economic downturn and a stronger yen batter profits at the Japanese electronics maker.
(AP, 12/9/08)
2008 Dec 9, Andrius Kubilius (b.1956) began serving as the Prime Minister of Lithuania. He already served as the PM 1999. He led the conservative political party Homeland Union – Lithuanian Christian Democrats.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrius_Kubilius)
2008 Dec 9, Mexico's Congress voted to broaden police powers, allowing law enforcement agencies to use undercover agents and taped conversations as evidence in a bid to help them fight increasingly bloody drug cartels. In the Gulf coast state of Tabasco, soldiers detained 11 police officers from four towns for questioning on suspicion of aiding the Gulf drug cartel. In the northern city of Tijuana four bodies were found.
(AP, 12/9/08)
2008 Dec 9, Pakistan arrested some 40 people in raids that targeted Lashkar-e-Taiba in the Northwest Frontier Province and Punjab.
(WSJ, 12/10/08, p.A9)
2008 Dec 9, A South African man accused of attempting to smuggle hundreds of rare chameleons, snakes, lizards and frogs out of Madagascar inside his jacket and luggage was convicted and sentenced to a year in jail.
(AP, 12/9/08)
2008 Dec 9, President Robert Mugabe rejected mounting Western pressure for him to resign, even as his health minister called for more international aid to battle a deadly cholera epidemic. US President George W. Bush joined calls for Robert Mugabe to step down, but the African Union rejected tougher action against Mugabe and said only dialogue could solve its crisis.
(AFP, 12/9/08)(Reuters, 12/9/08)
2009 Dec 9, US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told Congress that the administration will extend the government's financial bailout program until next fall, saying it's needed to protect against fresh economic shocks.
(AP, 12/9/09)
2009 Dec 9, Time Warner, which acquired America Online (AOL) in 2001, span off AOL and its 7,000 employees as a separate company under CEO Tim Armstrong (38).
(SFC, 5/29/09, p.C2)(Econ, 12/12/09, p.73)
2009 Dec 9, A blizzard dumped over a foot of snow across much of the Midwest and New England. Nearly 19 inches fell in Madison, Wis., 16 inches was reported in Des Moines, Iowa. At least 16 deaths were blamed on the storm.
(SFC, 12/10/09, p.A17)
2009 Dec 9, In Chula Vista, Ca., Maribel Arteaga (28), a pregnant woman, was fatally stabbed in front of her two children by a man authorities believe is her estranged husband. On Jan 28, 2011, Arteaga Garcia was detained by Mexican police.
(SSFC, 1/30/11, p.A10)(http://tinyurl.com/47x9hte)
2009 Dec 9, Gene Barry (1919), American film and TV actor, died. He played Bat Masterson in the NBC TV series from 1958-1961. From 1963-1966 he starred in “Captain Amos Burke," later renamed “Amos Burke: Secret Agent." From 1968-1971 he played a publishing tycoon in “the name of the Game." From 1972-1973 he starred as a government agent in the British series “The Adventurer."
(SFC, 12/15/09, p.C5)
2009 Dec 9, Australia’s government said 5 North Korean artists have been banned from entering Australia for an exhibition of their work, drawing accusations of censorship from the arts community. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said the artists and a translator have been refused visas because it is contrary to foreign policy interests and because they are from a studio linked to North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il.
(AFP, 12/9/09)
2009 Dec 9, Bolivia seized a 12,500-hectare (48-square-mile) ranch in the eastern lowlands from a soybean magnate who is among the chief political rivals of just re-elected President Evo Morales. The next day deputy land minister said the Yasminka ranch taken from Branko Marinkovic will be given to the Guarayo Indians. The Marinkovic family, which immigrated from Croatia in the 1950s, is fighting in court to keep a slightly bigger ranch, Laguna Corazon, from the same fate.
(AP, 12/10/09)
2009 Dec 9, The British government fired a broadside at banks, slapping a 50% tax rate on bonuses over 25,000 pounds to recoup cash spent saving the sector.
(AFP, 12/9/09)
2009 Dec 9, In Costa Rica former President Rodrigo Carazo Odio (82) died of complications from open-heart surgery. Odio governed Costa Rica from 1978 to 1982.
(AP, 12/9/09)
2009 Dec 9, Germany’s Volkswagen announced that it has agreed to pay $2.5 billion for a 19.9% stake in Suzuki, a family-owned Japanese maker of small cars and motorcycles.
(Econ, 12/12/09, p.72)
2009 Dec 9, In Guatemala former Pres. Kjell Eugenio Laugerud (79) died from complications related to cancer. He is credited with helping rebuild Guatemala after the devastating 1976 earthquake.
(AP, 12/12/09)
2009 Dec 9, The Honduras government granted authorization for ousted Pres. Zelaya to leave the country and go to Mexico.
(AP, 12/9/09)
2009 Dec 9, India’s federal government agreed to give in to a high-profile hunger strike and create the new state of Telangana out of the vast state of Andhra Pradesh.
(AP, 12/11/09)
2009 Dec 9, Iran claimed that a newly built UN station to detect nuclear explosions was built in Turkmenistan near its border to give the West a post to spy on the country. The Vienna-based Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization, or CTBTO, said the station has now been fully constructed and is currently undergoing testing.
(AP, 12/9/09)
2009 Dec 9, In Iraq a bomb attached to a minibus exploded in northern Baghdad, killing two and injuring 11. A bomb hidden in a garbage heap killed two street sweepers and injured three passers-by in northern Baghdad. An hour later in the same neighborhood a gunman killed a police officer at a checkpoint.
(AP, 12/9/09)
2009 Dec 9, Some 10,000 West Bank settlers turned out to support resistance to a government ban on most new housing.
(SFC, 12/10/09, p.A2)
2009 Dec 9, In Mexico the bound, bullet-riddled bodies of seven men were found along a highway in Chihuahua state. 2 federal agents were killed in separate attacks in the cities of Uruapan and Lazaro Cardenas, Michoacan state. Police found four mutilated bodies near a middle school in Chilpancingo, state capital of drug-plagued Guerrero state.
(AP, 12/10/09)(AP, 12/11/09)
2009 Dec 9, Amnesty International said that police in Nigeria carry out hundreds of extra-judicial killings every year and only those who can afford to pay bribes can guarantee their safety from execution or torture.
(AFP, 12/9/09)
2009 Dec 9, In Pakistan 5 American men (18-24) were arrested at a house in Sargodha linked to Jaish-e-Mohammed. They had met with representatives of an al-Qaida linked group and asked for training but were turned down because they lacked references from trusted militants. One, Ramy Zamzam, was a dental student at Howard University. The others were identified as Waqar Hussain Khan, Ramy Zamzam, Ahmal Abdul Minni, Aman Hassan Yamer and Umer Farooq. Khalid Farooq, Umer’s father, was also detained. On June 24, 2010, the 5 American Muslims were convicted of plotting terrorist attacks and sentenced to 10 years in jail.
(AP, 12/10/09)(SFC, 12/12/09, p.A2)(AP, 6/24/10)
2009 Dec 9, Philippine police named 161 suspects in the Nov 23 massacre of 57 people in the country's worst election violence, including government militiamen led by members of a powerful clan facing murder and rebellion charges.
(AP, 12/9/09)
2009 Dec 9, Russia's error-prone Bulava intercontinental ballistic missile suffered its eighth failure in 12 tests.
(AP, 12/10/09)
2009 Dec 9, In Switzerland the world's largest atom smasher recorded its first high energy collision of protons.
(SFC, 12/10/09, p.A2)
2009 Dec 9, The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said it needs $32 million to feed 220,000 Zimbabweans who cannot access hard currency in the collapsed economy.
(AP, 12/9/09)
2010 Dec 9, Bank of America agreed to pay $137 million to settle federal and California state bid-rigging and kickback charges related to municipal bond contracts dating back to 1998.
(SFC, 12/10/10, p.D1)
2010 Dec 9, In West Virginia an explosion at AL Solutions Inc., a small chemical plant in New Cumberland, killed 2 workers and injured 2 people.
(SFC, 12/10/10, p.A17)
2010 Dec 9, James Moody (b.1925), jazz musician, died in San Diego. His work included over 50 solo albums.
(SSFC, 12/12/10, p.C10)
2010 Dec 9, In southern Afghanistan insurgents killed a NATO service member.
(AP, 12/9/10)
2010 Dec 9, Heavy British police presence held off angry student protesters marching to London's Parliament Square as lawmakers debated a controversial plan to triple university tuition fees in England. Protesters attacked a Rolls Royce carrying Prince Charles and wife Camilla Parker-Bowles, as they drove through London’s West End. The couple were not hurt.
(AP, 12/9/10)(SFC, 12/10/10, p.A6)
2010 Dec 9, England’s Glastonbury Holy Thorn Tree, venerated for centuries by Christians, was chopped down overnight after a sprig from the tree was cut off in a ceremony so it could be given to Queen Elizabeth II to decorate her Christmas table. Religious tradition holds that the original tree was planted by St. Joseph of Arimathea, the wealthy merchant who volunteered his tomb to Jesus, after he first made landfall in England some 2,000 years ago.
(AP, 12/10/10)
2010 Dec 9, A report in the medical journal Lancet criticized Canada for exporting chrysotile, or white asbestos, while it virtually bans the product at home, who fibers can lead to respiratory diseases and cancers.
(SFC, 12/9/10, p.A2)
2010 Dec 9, In China the inaugural Confucius Peace Prize was awarded to former Taiwan vice-president Lien Chan at a chaotic press conference held by a handful of Chinese university professors. Lien's office in Taiwan declined comment, saying they had no knowledge of the award. Chinese poet Qiao Damo, one of the "candidates", told reporters the lack of any word from Lien represented "silent acceptance" of the prize, prompting laughter from assembled journalists.
(AFP, 12/9/10)
2010 Dec 9, Former Croatian PM Ivo Sanader, under investigation in a corruption case, left the country crossing into Slovenia, hours before parliament voted on lifting his immunity from prosecution so that he could be detained.
(AP, 12/9/10)
2010 Dec 9, Human Rights Watch said India's security forces routinely gun down cattle smugglers and other civilians crossing the border with Bangladesh despite scant evidence of any crime.
(AP, 12/9/10)
2010 Dec 9, In Iran Ali Shakouri-rad, one of the prisoners of the post-election events, was jailed for "propagating against the regime and spreading lies." He was released on Jan 24, 2011. He was previously freed on bail on October 28, two weeks after being arrested for what Tehran prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi called "security reasons."
(AFP, 1/24/11)
2010 Dec 9, In Iraq attacks on a police patrol in northern Baghdad and a checkpoint north of the city killed two policemen.
(AP, 12/9/10)
2010 Dec 9, The Israeli air force bombed four sites in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, causing no casualties. The air raids came after Palestinian militants fired several mortars into southern Israel from Gaza the previous day.
(AFP, 12/9/10)
2010 Dec 9, In Ivory Coast pressure increased on Laurent Gbagbo as continental heavyweights South Africa and Kenya joined UN calls for him to abandon his bid to cling to power after disputed polls. The African Union suspended Ivory Coast until Gbagbo hands over power to Alassane Ouattara, whom the AU and UN consider the winner of last month's election.
(AFP, 12/9/10)(Reuters, 12/9/10)
2010 Dec 9, Jamaican police discovered a body buried in a shallow grave at a construction site outside the capital. The remains were identified as those of Esmond Morris (32), who had not been seen since Dec 6. He had a gunshot wound in the back of the head. 2 more bodies were found the next day and police said they expected to find more.
(AP, 12/11/10)
2010 Dec 9, In Japan the 3rd International Pole Dancing Championships concluded. The competition was held in a large arena near the Tokyo Dome, the Japanese capital's main sports stadium, with competitors from countries ranging from Malaysia to Moldova. Japan's Mai Sato defended her title as the women's champion, and Duncan West of Australia won in men's. This year also had a disabled division, which was won by hearing-impaired Eri Kamimoto of Japan.
(AP, 12/10/10)
2010 Dec 9, Jordan appointed a woman, Ihsan Barakat (46), as chief district attorney of the country's capital, marking the first time a woman has held a top prosecutor's post in the pro-American Arab kingdom.
(AP, 12/9/10)
2010 Dec 9, In Mexico federal police hunted for top leaders of the La Familia drug cartel in Michoacan state, unleashing narco-blockades and shootouts that left 2 more people dead. La Familia cartel leader Nazario Moreno Gonzalez (40), known as "The Craziest One," was killed in a clash between police and cartel gunmen. Police recovered the bodies of three other suspected La Familia members and detained three others. In northern Chihuahua state six people were gunned down by the side of a highway leading south of the capital. In the resort city of Acapulco, a traffic cop was found shot to death on a road, his hands bound.
(AP, 12/10/10)(SFC, 12/10/10, p.A12)(AP, 12/11/10)
2010 Dec 9, Netherlands arrested a young hacker who confessed to participating in attacks by WikiLeaks sympathizers on websites, including MasterCard, PayPal and Visa.
(AP, 12/10/10)
2010 Dec 9, In Nigeria an election officials said thieves had infiltrated Murtala Muhammed International Airport and stole just-arrived equipment needed to register voters ahead of next year's hotly contested presidential election. Police arrested four men while four others had fled, after a 30-minute shootout with members of Boko Haram, a radical Muslim sect, who ambushed security officers at a checkpoint in Maiduguri.
(AP, 12/9/10)
2010 Dec 9, Communist allies North Korea and China proclaimed their unity as the North's leader Kim Jong-Il held his first meeting with a senior Chinese envoy since the region's worst crisis in years erupted.
(AFP, 12/9/10)
2010 Dec 9, South Africa unveiled its national space agency, aiming to become a leader in earth observation technology across the continent in 10 years.
(AFP, 12/9/10)
2010 Dec 9, The Provea human rights group said 13,985 people were murdered in Venezuela last year and the figure could be significantly higher, alluding to the rampant crime that has become a central concern of Venezuelans.
(AP, 12/9/10)
2011 Dec 9, The US Justice Dept. and the SEC announced a $148 million settlement with Wachovia Bank, now owned by Walls Fargo, for engaging in bid-rigging and kickback schemes relating to municipal bond contracts.
(SSFC, 12/11/11, p.D1)
2011 Dec 9, In California Tyler Brehm (26) was shot and killed in Los Angeles after he walked down the middle of Sunset Boulevard firing on motorists. Music executive John Atterberry (40) died on Dec 12 from wounds suffered in Brehm’s shooting.
(SSFC, 12/11/11, p.A11)(SFC, 12/13/11, p.A11)
2011 Dec 9, Payroll figures and names released for the first time by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey show 66 police officers have made more than $200,000 so far in 2011, thanks to overtime that in many cases has doubled their salaries.
(AP, 12/9/11)
2011 Dec 9, In Maryland former Prince George’s County councilwoman Leslie Johnson was sentenced to a year in prison for obstructing an investigation into her husband’s corruption. Former County Executive Jack Johnson got over 7 years in prison this week for extorting hundreds of thousands in bribes from developers.
(SFC, 12/10/11, p.A6)
2011 Dec 9, In eastern Afghanistan a suicide bomber attacked a mosque, assassinating a district police chief and killing at least five other people in Kunar province.
(AFP, 12/9/11)
2011 Dec 9, Australia's highest court dismissed rival Apple's appeal in its global patent battle against South Korea’s Samsung Electronics. Samsung is now free to sell its Galaxy tablet computers in Australia.
(AP, 12/9/11)
2011 Dec 9, In Australia a senior Queensland Health executive, Hohepa Morehu-Barlow (36), also known as Joel Barlow, was being hunted after Aus$16 million (US$16 million) went missing from the government department. He was arrested at his own apartment Dec 12 after three days on the run from police following the discovery of his alleged theft.
(AFP, 12/9/11)(AP, 12/13/11)
2011 Dec 9, Bahraini security forces fired tear gas, rubber bullets and stun grenades to disperse hundreds of demonstrators in a Shiite neighborhood of the capital Manama.
(AFP, 12/9/11)
2011 Dec 9, In China two exchange students accepted the Confucius Peace Prize on behalf of Russian PM Vladimir Putin, who was honored for enhancing Russia's status and crushing anti-government forces in Chechnya.
(AP, 12/9/11)
2011 Dec 9, In northeastern China two tourists from Hong Kong were killed and 36 others were hurt when their bus overturned after colliding with a farm vehicle in Jilin province.
(AP, 12/10/11)
2011 Dec 9, In CongoDRC provisional results published by the election commission handed victory to Pres. Joseph Kabila who won another term with 49% of the 18.14 million votes cast. Etienne Tshisekedi (78) took to the airwaves to say he rejected the results and proclaimed himself president, saying the election had been manipulated.
(AP, 12/9/11)(AP, 12/10/11)
2011 Dec 9, Croatia signed a treaty to join the EU in 2013, a bittersweet milestone as the bloc prepares to take on board a sluggish economy it will have to drag along at the time of its worst crisis ever.
(AP, 12/9/11)
2011 Dec 9, The EU said that 26 of its 27 member countries are open to joining a new treaty tying their finances together to solve the euro crisis. Only Britain remained opposed, creating a deep rift in the union. Britain's leaders argued that the revised treaty would threaten their national sovereignty and damage London's financial services industry.
(AP, 12/9/11)
2011 Dec 9, EU president Herman Van Rompuy said Serbia's bid to be granted the status of candidate for membership in the bloc will be postponed until March.
(AP, 12/9/11)
2011 Dec 9, Germany, the United States and nine other nations signed an agreement that expands access to the International Tracing Service (ITS), a unique Holocaust-era archive.
(AP, 12/9/11)
2011 Dec 9, In India at least 89 people were killed when a fire engulfed patients at the AMRI Hospital in the city of Kolkata. Police arrested 6 hospital officials on charges of culpable homicide.
(AFP, 12/9/11)(AP, 12/9/11)(SFC, 12/10/11, p.A5)
2011 Dec 9, An Israeli airstrike against a Hamas target in Gaza killed a Palestinian civilian and his son (12). Palestinian Mustafa Abelrazek al-Tamimi (28) was critically wounded when he was hit in the face by a tear gas canister fired by Israeli troops at a rally in the West Bank. Tamimi had been throwing stones and died of his injuries the next day. Gaza militants fired twelve rockets at Israel.
(AP, 12/9/11)(AFP, 12/9/11)(AP, 12/10/11)(AFP, 12/10/11)
2011 Dec 9, In Italy a letter bomb exploded at an office of the tax collection agency, Equitalia, slightly wounding the organization's director. The Italian group, known as the "Informal Anarchist Federation" claimed responsibility for package bombs sent to three Rome embassies around Christmas last year. A week later another bomb was intercepted at Equitalia.
(AP, 12/9/11)(Econ, 1/7/12, p.45)
2011 Dec 9, Jamaican authorities said 217 of 362 police officers, who took voluntary lie-detector tests this year, failed. Officials denied re-enlistment to 62 officers this year. An additional 34 have been charged with corruption and seven dismissed for failing the test.
(AP, 12/9/11)
2011 Dec 9, In Japan Defense Minister Yasuo Ichikawa and Kenji Yamaoka, the minister for consumer affairs were censured. Ichikawa was slapped down for a series of gaffes that riled the people of Okinawa, reluctant hosts to a large US military presence. Yamaoka was admonished for alleged ties with shady business groups. The main opposition Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has threatened to boycott parliament from January if the pair stay in place.
(AFP, 12/9/11)
2011 Dec 9, Japanese workers discovered a nuclear plant leak. 1.8 ton of radioactive water leaked from the cooling system at the idled reactor at the Genkai nuclear plant in Saga prefecture in the southern Kyushu region. The leak was contained within the system.
(AFP, 12/10/11)
2011 Dec 9, In Lebanon a roadside bomb struck a vehicle carrying UN peacekeepers in the south, wounding five French soldiers and a Lebanese bystander.
(AP, 12/9/11)
2011 Dec 9, Mexico's navy said the first woman has joined the ranks of its special forces.
(AP, 12/9/11)
2011 Dec 9, The Mexican army found a 50-yard (meter) long tunnel starting under a building in the northern city of Nogales, which is across the border from Nogales, Arizona.
(AP, 12/11/11)
2011 Dec 9, Puerto Rico’s most wanted criminal, Miguel Diaz Rivera (39), was arrested in the Dominican capital of Santo Domingo. He is accused of running a drug trafficking network in at least five Puerto Rican cities.
(AP, 12/10/11)
2011 Dec 9, In Sri Lanka political activists Lalith Kumar Weeraraj and Kugan Murugananthan went missing after they were intercepted by men on motorcycles in Jaffna.
(Econ, 1/14/12, p.41)
2011 Dec 9, Syrian forces killed 41 people, including 7 children, as they fired on anti-government demonstrations across the country. The opposition warned the regime was planning a "massacre" in Homs which has been ringed by troops for more than two months.
(AP, 12/9/11)(AFP, 12/10/11)
2011 Dec 9, In Thailand some 100 supporters of a grandfather jailed for 20 years in Thailand for insulting the king held a rare public protest against the kingdom's strict lese majeste laws in the capital Bangkok. Ampon Tangnoppakul (61) was last month found guilty of four counts of offending the royals in text messages last year. Article 112 of the criminal code contains the rules protecting the royals.
(AFP, 12/9/11)
2011 Dec 9, UN chief Ban Ki-moon urged Somalia's Al Qaeda-linked insurgents to end violence during a surprise visit to war-torn Mogadishu.
(AFP, 12/9/11)
2011 Dec 9, In Venezuela officials said floods and mudslides unleashed by torrential rains have caused at least eight deaths. Neighboring Colombia has also been coping with floods and President Juan Manuel Santos, touring flooded areas south of Bogota, promised assistance to those whose houses have been damaged.
(AP, 12/9/11)
2011 Dec 9, In Yemen tens of thousands of people took to the streets across the country demanding that outgoing President Ali Abdullah Saleh be put on trial. A prison riot in Sanaa left two inmates dead and three guards injured.
(AP, 12/9/11)
2012 Dec 9, Campaigners celebrated Int’l. Anti-Corruption Day.
(Econ, 12/15/12, p.61)
2012 Dec 9, Norman Joseph Woodland (b.1921), co-inventor of the bar code, died in New Jersey. He and Bernard Silver (d.1963) submitted their patent in 1949. The patent was granted in 1952.
(SFC, 12/14/12, p.A16)
2012 Dec 9, In eastern Afghanistan Dr. Dilip Joseph, an American doctor abducted by the Taliban five days ago in Kabul province, was rescued in a US-led operation. Petty Officer 1st Class Nicolas Checque (28), a Navy SEAL, died of injuries sustained in the successful rescue of Dr. Joseph.
(AP, 12/9/12)(AP, 12/10/12)
2012 Dec 9, Argentina’s President Cristina Fernandez gave Susana Trimarco a human rights award before hundreds of thousands of people in the Plaza de Mayo for her efforts in rescuing sex slaves and helping them start new lives. Argentina's efforts to combat sex trafficking began largely as a result of Susana Trimarco's one-woman, decade-long quest to find her missing daughter, Maria de los Angeles "Marita" Veron.
(AP, 12/11/12)(AP, 12/13/12)
2012 Dec 9, British astronomer Patrick Moore (89) died. He helped map the moon and inspired generations of star gazers with decades of television broadcasts.
(Reuters, 12/9/12)
2012 Dec 9, Chinese state media said police have detained a monk and his nephew in Sichuan province and accused them of instigating the self-immolations of eight ethnic Tibetans on the instructions of the Dalai Lama and his followers.
(AP, 12/9/12)
2012 Dec 9, Officials said 4 people have died in Croatia and 2 in Serbia as a result of blizzards in southwestern Europe over the weekend. The death toll in the region reached at least 9 people, with deaths in Bulgaria amd Kosovo, as the cold snap continued through the week.
(AP, 12/9/12)(SFC, 12/15/12, p.A2)
2012 Dec 9, Egypt's liberal opposition called for more protests, seeking to keep up the momentum of its street campaign. Morsi overnight annulled his Nov. 22 decrees that gave him near unrestricted powers, but refused to rescind a draft constitution going to a referendum on Dec 15.
(AP, 12/9/12)
2012 Dec 9, Ghana’s President John Dramani Mahama was declared the winner of Ghana's presidential election, despite widespread technical glitches and protests by the country's opposition, which claimed the vote was rigged. Mahama won by a margin of only 325,000 votes out of 11 million. It took the Supreme Court until August, 2013, to uphold the result.
(AP, 12/9/12)(Econ, 12/21/13, p.77)
2012 Dec 9, Iran said it has launched a video-sharing website in the latest move to create government-sanctioned alternatives to Internet powerhouses such as YouTube. The new site — Mehr, or affection in Farsi — seeks to promote Iranian and Islamic culture and artists.
(AP, 12/9/12)
2012 Dec 9, In Iraq a bomb exploded near the house of an anti-al-Qaida militiaman south of Baghdad, killing him, his 8-year-old son and another family member in Iskandariyah.
(AP, 12/9/12)
2012 Dec 9, In Lebanon four people were killed in fighting in the city of Tripoli between gunmen loyal to opposite sides in Syria's civil war.
(AP, 12/9/12)
2012 Dec 9, Mexican-American singer Jenni Rivera and 4 others died in a plane crash near Nuevo Leon that left no survivors.
(SFC, 12/10/12, p.A2)
2012 Dec 9, In northeastern Nigeria a shootout began between security forces and members of a radical Islamist sect after suspected sect members bombed a local police station and attacked a bank branch. By the next day at least 15 people were killed in Potiskum.
(AP, 12/11/12)
2012 Dec 9, In Nigeria Kamene Okonjo (83), the mother of Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, was kidnapped from her home in the southern delta. She was released on Dec 14.
(AP, 12/10/12)(AP, 12/14/12)
2012 Dec 9, In Pakistan four missiles struck a residential compound near Miran Shah, North Waziristan. 3 suspected militants were killed.
(AP, 12/9/12)
2012 Dec 9, In the southern Philippines the number of people missing following Typhoon Bopha jumped to nearly 900 after families and fishing companies reported losing contact with more than 300 fishermen at sea.
(AP, 12/9/12)
2012 Dec 9, Romanians voted in a parliamentary election. PM Victor Ponta's coalition won nearly three-fifths of the seats in the legislature. His battle with President Traian Basescu threatened to throw the country into a political standoff no matter the outcome.
(AP, 12/9/12)(AP, 12/10/12)
2012 Dec 9, Russian and US diplomats met with UN peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi for more talks on the civil war in Syria.
(AP, 12/9/12)
2012 Dec 9, In Senegal Roman Catholic peacemakers mediated the release of eight Senegalese soldiers held by rebels in the southern Casamance district.
(AP, 12/9/12)
2012 Dec 9, In Somalia African Union and Somali troops took Jowhar, a rebel al-Shabab stronghold north of Mogadishu.
(AP, 12/9/12)
2012 Dec 9, In Syria 9 judges in Idlib defected from the regime of Pres. Assad. They identified themselves by name and read a joint statement urging others to break ranks with Assad. Rebels captured parts of another large army base in the country's north, just west of the city of Aleppo, tightening the opposition's grip on areas close to the Turkish border.
(AP, 12/9/12)(AP, 12/10/12)
2012 Dec 9, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez named his vice president as his chosen successor and prepared to head back to Cuba for more surgery for cancer after announcing that the illness returned despite two previous operations, chemotherapy and radiation treatment.
(AP, 12/9/12)
2013 Dec 9, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel ordered the US military to transport troops from Burundi into the Central African Republic to help quell the latest upsurge in violence there.
(AP, 12/10/13)
2013 Dec 9, The US remained in the grip of Arctic air. 1,650 flights were cancelled and tens of thousands of people were without power.
(SFC, 12/10/13, p.A8)
2013 Dec 9, Major technology companies, stung by poor publicity for having helped the US government access personal data, issued an open letter to Pres. Barack Obama asking for tighter controls on surveillance.
(AP, 12/9/13)
2013 Dec 9, In southern California charges were announced after 16 of 18 LA County current and former sheriff’s deputies were arrested for corruption and civil rights abuses.
(SFC, 12/9/13, p.A10)
2013 Dec 9, Los Angeles MTA officials began a crackdown on homeless people sleeping at Union Station under a program that limits seats in the hub to ticketed passengers.
(SFC, 12/23/13, p.A7)
2013 Dec 9, In southern California Angela Spaccia, the former assistant city manager of Bell, was convicted of corruption. She had given herself huge raises as most city residents lived in poverty.
(SFC, 12/10/13, p.A6)
2013 Dec 9, In southern California Bob Filner, the former mayor of San Diego, was sentenced to three months of home confinement and three years of probation for harassing women while serving as mayor.
(SFC, 12/10/13, p.A6)
2013 Dec 9, California pledged to restore 80,000 acres of the depleted Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta as part of a massive project to send fresh water from mountain streams in the north to farmers and residents in the parched south.
(Reuters, 12/9/13)
2013 Dec 9, In Oakland, Ca., Jahi McMath (13) suffered a cardiac arrest during a tonsil operation at Children’s Hospital. On Dec 12 doctors pronounced her brain dead. Her family contended she was still alive and kept her connected to breathing and feeding tubes.
(SFC, 12/26/13, p.A10)(SFC, 12/28/13, p.C4)
2013 Dec 9, American film actress Eleanor Parker (b.1922) died in Palm Springs. He Oscar nominations included “Caged" (1950), “Detective Story" (1951) and “Interrupted Melody" (1955).
(SFC, 12/11/13, p.A9)
2013 Dec 9, In Florida one suspected Cuban migrant was found dead, and two others were missing and feared drowned, after a homemade raft with a sole survivor on board was found floating in Biscayne Bay.
(Reuters, 12/9/13)
2013 Dec 9, Two Damien Hirst (48) signed prints, "Pyronin Y" and "Oleoylsarcosin," were taken from the Exhibitionist Gallery in west London in the early hours by a thief who forced the gallery doors.
(AP, 12/11/13)
2013 Dec 9, Canada signalled intentions to claim the North Pole and surrounding Arctic waters while announcing the filing of a UN application seeking to vastly expand its Atlantic sea boundary.
(AFP, 12/9/13)
2013 Dec 9, In Colombia Gustavo Petro (53), the leftist mayor of Bogota, was removed from his post for the mismanagement of garbage collection and banned from holding office for 15 years, a blow to the nation's left as peace talks continue with Marxist FARC rebels.
(Reuters, 12/9/13)
2013 Dec 9, An Egyptian court sentenced three supporters of ousted Islamist President Mohamed Morsi to life imprisonment, in the latest tough ruling against opponents of the army-backed interim government.
(Reuters, 12/9/13)
2013 Dec 9, Water ministers from Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan held talks on an Ethiopian dam project, after Egypt's objections delayed formation of a committee to implement expert advice.
(AFP, 12/9/13)
2013 Dec 9, A Paris auction of sacred objects from the Hopi and San Carlos Apache Native American tribes kicked off despite objections from the US and activists. The auction fetched more than 550,000 euros. On Dec 11 a US charitable foundation said that it was the anonymous bidder that paid $530,000 for 24 Native American masks in the auction and will return them to the Hopi Nation in Arizona and the San Carlos Apache tribe
(AFP, 12/9/13)(AFP, 12/10/13)(AP, 12/11/13)
2013 Dec 9, Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative party backed a deal to form a new German government with its center-left rivals, putting aside concerns over concessions that include a national minimum wage and a move to make it easier for some people to retire early.
(AP, 12/9/13)
2013 Dec 9, In Indonesia a crowded commuter train crashed into a fuel tanker on the outskirts of Jakarta, killing at least 10 people in a huge explosion and injuring scores.
(Reuters, 12/9/13)
2013 Dec 9, In Iraq a car bomb near a cafe in Buhruz, Diyala province, killed 11 people. A roadside bomb also exploded near a market in the Besmaya area southeast of Baghdad, killing at least 2 people and wounding at least eight. In the Suwaib area of south Baghdad, a roadside bomb killed 2 Sahwa anti-Al-Qaeda fighters and wounded at least two others. A blast in Madain killed at least one soldier and wounded at least two. At least 21 people were killed across the country.
(AFP, 12/9/13)(AP, 12/9/13)
2013 Dec 9, Israel's parliament moved to ensure African migrants who enter the country illegally can be held without charge, despite a Supreme Court ruling that had struck down a previous detention law.
(Reuters, 12/10/13)
2013 Dec 9, Representatives of Israel, Jordan and the Palestinians signed a "historic" agreement to link the Red Sea with the shrinking Dead Sea.
(AFP, 12/9/13)
2013 Dec 9, Kurdish rebels freed four Turkish soldiers abducted in the southeast of the country in the worst flareup of violence since a fragile ceasefire nine months ago.
(AFP, 12/9/13)
2013 Dec 9, A Kuwait court acquitted 70 people, including nine former lawmakers, of storming the parliament in 2011 in an unprecedented protest against the then prime minister, a senior member of the ruling family.
(Reuters, 12/9/13)
2013 Dec 9, In Libya gunmen killed senior police officer Col. Ramadan al-Turouk in Sirte, the hometown of former dictator Moammar Gadhafi.
(AP, 12/9/13)
2013 Dec 9, President Vladimir Putin tightened his control over Russia's media by dissolving the main state news agency and replacing it with an organization that is to promote Moscow's image abroad. Putin appointed Dmitry Kiselyov to head the resources of the former RIA Novosti, which was renamed Rossiya Segodnya (Russia Today).
(Reuters, 12/9/13)(SFC, 12/10/13, p.A3)
2013 Dec 9, A Somali court sentenced to jail a woman (19) who said she was raped and two journalists who broadcast her story, saying they were guilty of defamation and insulting state institutions. The woman, who is also a journalist, was handed a suspended six-month jail sentence for defamation and lying, during which time she will be confined to her home.
(AFP, 12/9/13)
2013 Dec 9, Syrian troops captured a western town near the country's main north-south highway as the government forged ahead with a punishing offensive in a mountainous region near the border with Lebanon.
(AP, 12/9/13)
2013 Dec 9, In Syria Razan Zaitouneh (36), a well-known rights activists, her husband and two colleagues were abducted by gunmen from her office in Douma, a rebel-held town on the outskirts of Damascus. Five years later her fate remained unknown.
(AP, 8/13/18)
2013 Dec 9, Thailand's PM Yingluck Shinawatra dissolved the lower house of Parliament and called for early elections.
(AP, 12/9/13)
2013 Dec 9, In Ukraine hundreds of police in full riot gear flooded into the center of Kiev as mass anti-government protests gripped the capital for yet another week. Heavily armed riot troops broke into the offices of a top opposition party in Kiev and seized its servers.
(AP, 12/9/13)
2013 Dec 9, The World Health Organisation and UNICEF announced the launch of a polio vaccination campaign for 23 million children in the Middle East after 17 cases were discovered in Syria.
(AFP, 12/9/13)
2014 Dec 9, The US Senate Intelligence Committee released its report on the CIA's harsh interrogation techniques at secret overseas facilities after the 9/11 terror attacks. President Barack Obama said the interrogation techniques "did significant damage to America's standing in the world and made it harder to pursue our interests with allies."
(AP, 12/10/14)
2014 Dec 9, Protesters in Berkeley, Ca., marched for a 4th straight day to denounce racial injustice and briefly shut down Highway 24 .
(SFC, 12/10/14, p.A1)
2014 Dec 9, In Nevada a woman and two men from China pleaded guilty in federal court in Las Vegas to reduced charges in what prosecutors say amounted to a $13 million illegal Internet gambling operation broken up by an FBI raid at high-roller suites at Caesars Palace.
(AP, 12/10/14)
2014 Dec 9, In NYC Calvin Peters (49) stabbed an Israeli student in the head inside a synagogue at the Brooklyn headquarters of an international Jewish organization before being fatally shot by police after refusing to drop the knife. Peters was emotionally disturbed and had a documented history of mental illness.
(AP, 12/9/14)
2014 Dec 9, Philadelphia firefighter Joyce Craig Lewis died after becoming trapped in the basement of a burning home. She was the first female member of the city’s fire department to die in the line of duty.
(SFC, 12/10/14, p.A8)
2014 Dec 9, In Bahrain an explosion killed a citizen and wounded an expatriate man in the second fatal attack in the Gulf Arab state in two days.
(Reuters, 12/9/14)
2014 Dec 9, The six-member Gulf Cooperation Council (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE) agreed to create a joint naval force based out of Bahrain and announced a police force based in Abu Dhabi.
(SSFC, 12/14/14, p.A22)
2014 Dec 9, In Bangladesh an oil tanker carrying more than 350,000 liters (92,500 gallons) of bunker oil sank on a major river flowing through the Sundarbans after being hit by a cargo vessel.
(AP, 12/12/14)
2014 Dec 9, London's New Scotland Yard, the world's most famous police headquarters, was reported sold to the Abu Dhabi Financial Group for 370 million pounds ($580 million), 120 million pounds over the asking price. The Gulf investors plan to develop luxury apartments. The Metropolitan Police was moving to a smaller headquarters as it tries to cut more than 500 million pounds ($800 million) in spending.
(AP, 12/9/14)
2014 Dec 9, In China Liu Tienan was jailed for life for receiving some $6 million in bribes. Mr. Liu was sacked in August 2013 as deputy head of the National Development and Reform Commission after a disgruntled mistress blew the whistle on him.
(AP, 12/10/14)(Econ, 12/13/14, p.46)
2014 Dec 9, In China a rights lawyer said seven students of Uighur scholar Ilham Tohti have been jailed for 3-8 years for inciting seperatism.
(SFC, 12/10/14, p.A2)
2014 Dec 9, The Save the Elephants group reported that street prices for illegal ivory are soaring in China, where newly wealthy middle and upper class citizens are buying carved ivory and whole tusks as a status symbol of their riches.
(AP, 12/9/14)
2014 Dec 9, Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro was awarded China's Confucius Peace Prize, portrayed by organizers as an alternative to the Nobel Prize. The prize was handed to a Cuban foreign student representative at a ceremony at a Beijing hotel.
(AP, 12/11/14)
2014 Dec 9, Dominica PM Roosevelt Skerrit said he is humbled by the re-election after his Labor Party won 15 of 21 parliamentary seats. Dominica's ruling party won a 4th consecutive term following parliamentary elections.
(AP, 12/9/14)
2014 Dec 9, Egyptian pro-democracy activist Ahmed Douma was sentenced to three years in jail after he accused the judge of bias and denounced his trial on charges of violence against the state as political.
(Reuters, 12/9/14)
2014 Dec 9, President Francois Hollande said that Serge Lazarevic (50), the last French citizen held hostage since 2011 by Al Qaeda's north African arm, has now been freed. Five prisoners in Mali were reported exchanged for the Frenchman.
(Reuters, 12/9/14)
2014 Dec 9, The Hungarian government said it has signed three contracts with a Russian company which will allow construction in 2018 of new reactors at the country's only nuclear power plant.
(AP, 12/9/14)
2014 Dec 9, India ordered state governments to halt the operations of all unregistered, web-based taxi companies after a female passenger reported she was raped in New Delhi by a driver contracted to US cab company Uber.
(Reuters, 12/9/14)
2014 Dec 9, In Iraq a bomb blast and mortar fire targeting Shiites killed 7 people in Baghdad as US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel visited the capital for a first-hand report on the battle against IS militants.
(AP, 12/9/14)
2014 Dec 9, Moldova police said seven people have been detained on suspicion they smuggled uranium and mercury in a metal container from Russia to be used in a dirty bomb.
(AP, 12/9/14)
2014 Dec 9, New Zealand lawmakers passed anti-terrorism measures that increase domestic surveillance powers and attempt to stop nationals from traveling abroad to fight for groups like Islamic State.
(AP, 12/10/14)
2014 Dec 9, The MN Wayward Wind, a lobster boat with 50 people onboard, capsized in the Caribbean off the coast of Nicaragua. At least 18 remained missing.
(AP, 12/13/14)
2014 Dec 9, In Pakistan a couple and their four children were killed as retribution for a perceived "honor crime" in the town of Athara Hazari. Police south four men in the killings which stemmed from the mother's first marriage nearly 30 years ago to another man.
(AP, 12/10/14)
2014 Dec 9, In the southern Philippines a suspected bomb explosion in a bus in front of Central Mindanao University killed at least 10 people and wounded 34 others in Bukidnon province.
(AP, 12/9/14)(AP, 12/10/14)
2014 Dec 9, Russia resumed shipments of natural gas to Ukraine.
(Reuters, 12/9/14)
2014 Dec 9, Sierra Leone's junior doctors struck for a 2nd day to demand better care for medical workers after a spate of recent Ebola deaths.
(AP, 12/9/14)
2014 Dec 9, The Solomon Islands parliament made Manasseh Sogavare (b.1955) prime minister.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manasseh_Sogavare)(Econ, 12/13/14, p.43)
2014 Dec 9, Swedish police raided a server room in Stockholm in an action targeting the file-sharing website The Pirate Bay.
(AP, 12/10/14)
2014 Dec 9, Ukrainian government troops and separatists said their forces were complying with an agreed "Day of Silence" in Ukraine's war-torn east, marking an attempt to forge an effective ceasefire which may lead to a new round of peace talks.
(Reuters, 12/9/14)
2014 Dec 9, The UN World Food Program said it has reinstated a food aid program to help feed over 1.7 million Syrian refugees following a significant cash infusion.
(SFC, 12/10/14, p.A3)
2014 Dec 9, In eastern Yemen at least 5 government soldiers were killed when two al Qaeda suicide bombers tried to drive cars laden with explosives into a military compound in Seyoun. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) claimed responsibility.
(Reuters, 12/9/14)
2015 Dec 9, US President Barack Obama welcomed Israel's Pres. Reuven Rivlin to the White House, with both sides eager to prevent a deeper crisis between Israel and the Palestinians.
(AFP, 12/9/15)
2015 Dec 9, The United States announced plans to double grant funding it provides to help developing countries adapt to climate change to around $860 million a year.
(Reuters, 12/9/15)
2015 Dec 9, The United States and its allies conducted 23 strikes against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
(Reuters, 12/10/15)
2015 Dec 9, Torrential rains pummeled parts of the Pacific Northwest leaving 2 women dead in Oregon.
(SFC, 12/10/15, p.A8)
2015 Dec 9, In Afghanistan 38 civilians and 12 members of Afghan security forces were killed in fighting at the airport in Kandahar as operations ended. 11 Taliban were also reported killed. Officials said the district of Khanishin in Helmand province has fallen to the insurgents. 14 policemen were killed and 11 others wounded.
(Reuters, 12/9/15)(AP, 12/10/15)
2015 Dec 9, Armenia said it has arrested Garik Marutyan (38), a former senior army officer, on suspicion of spying for Azerbaijan and selling state secrets.
(AFP, 12/9/15)
2015 Dec 9, Former Australian PM Tony Abbott defended his comments suggesting that Western culture is superior to that of Islam, and called for US-led assistance in defeating the Islamic State group.
(AP, 12/9/15)
2015 Dec 9, Azerbaijani tanks shelled positions in the breakaway Nagorny Karabakh region for the first time in more than 20 years killing one rebel soldier.
(AFP, 12/9/15)
2015 Dec 9, Azerbaijan released Leyla Yunus, head of the Baku-based Institute for Peace and Democracy. She had been held in detention since July 2014.
(Reuters, 12/9/15)
2015 Dec 9, Brazil's Supreme Court suspended impeachment proceedings against President Dilma Rousseff until it can rule on the constitutional validity of the opposition bid to impeach her.
(Reuters, 12/9/15)
2015 Dec 9, Bulgaria's Justice Minister Hristo Ivanov resigned after parliament watered down changes to the constitution in a vote which he said would prevent genuine reforms to the country's graft-prone and inefficient judiciary.
(Reuters, 12/9/15)
2015 Dec 9, In Burundi at least 7 people were killed in Bujumbura during a night of violence in flashpoint districts where months of protests took place against President Pierre Nkurunziza.
(Reuters, 12/9/15)
2015 Dec 9, China’s government said it will pay bonuses from Jan. 1 to companies meeting coal efficiency standards. Beijing residents stayed indoors, schools were closed and limits on cars, factories and construction sites kept pollution from spiking even higher.
(Reuters, 12/9/15)(AP, 12/9/15)
2015 Dec 9, Luzolo Bambi, a counselor to President Joseph Kabila on graft and money laundering, said Congo DRC loses up to $15 billion a year due to fraud, an amount close to twice the central African country's budget.
(Reuters, 12/9/15)
2015 Dec 9, Anger peaked in Kinshasa's slums as DR Congo's poor grappled with little more than bare hands against torrential rains and flooding that have left 31 people dead and 20,000 families homeless in less than three weeks.
(AFP, 12/9/15)
2015 Dec 9, French hosts of 195-nation climate rescue talks released a crucial new blueprint, reporting important progress but some sticking points two days ahead of the deadline for a UN deal.
(AFP, 12/9/15)
2015 Dec 9, A wooden smuggling boat carrying about 50 people sank in the eastern Aegean Sea. Greek authorities said at least 12 people drowned, including six children, and 12 others were missing.
(AP, 12/9/15)
2015 Dec 9, India and Pakistan announced that they were resuming the dialogue on outstanding issues, ending a two-year-long stalemate. A regional conference held in Pakistan ended with calls for the resumption of Afghan peace negotiations and an agreement by Islamabad and New Delhi to relaunch bilateral talks that broke down in August over tensions in Kashmir.
(AP, 12/9/15)(SSFC, 12/13/15, p.A25)
2015 Dec 9, Millions of Indonesians voted in nationwide elections for regional leaders in the sprawling archipelago.
(AP, 12/9/15)
2015 Dec 9, Iran’s Fars news reported that a booby trap exploded in Nikshahr, near the border with Pakistan, killing 3 policemen and wounded an unspecified number of others.
(AP, 12/9/15)
2015 Dec 9, It was reported that Jamaican activist Maurice Tomlinson has filed a claim in the country;s Supreme Court challenging the constitutionality of 1864 laws that ban sex between men.
(SFC, 12/10/15, p.A6)
2015 Dec 9, Japan's space agency said its "Akatsuki" probe had successfully entered into orbit around Venus after an initial attempt at reaching the second planet from the sun failed five years ago.
(AFP, 12/9/15)
2015 Dec 9, Kenya and Britain signed a deal to allow British troops to continue military training in the East African nation for five more years, ending half a decade of protracted negotiations which tested their relations.
(Reuters, 12/9/15)
2015 Dec 9, Myanmar inaugurated a new stock exchange with plans for six companies to start trading in March.
(AP, 12/9/15)
2015 Dec 9, A Palestinian was shot dead by security forces after wounding an Israeli soldier and a civilian when he stabbed them in the occupied West Bank town of Hebron.
(Reuters, 12/9/15)
2015 Dec 9, Russia said its air force flew 82 sorties against 204 targets in Syria in the last 24 hours.
(Reuters, 12/9/15)
2015 Dec 9, South Africa’s Pres. Jacob Zuma fired respected finance minister Nhlanhla Nene. He was replaced by David van Rooyen.
(Econ, 12/12/15, p.49)
2015 Dec 9, Switzerland's main anti-immigration party secured a second seat in the federal government in a boost for isolationist forces as the country seeks to redraft treaties with the European Union to include curbs on immigration.
(Reuters, 12/9/15)
2015 Dec 9, Syrian rebels began evacuating the last opposition-held district in Homs, paving the way for President Bashar al-Assad's regime to take full control of the country's third-largest city.
(AFP, 12/9/15)
2015 Dec 9, Representatives from Syria's fragmented opposition began an unprecedented meeting hosted by Saudi Arabia, seeking a united front for potential talks with President Bashar al-Assad's regime.
(AFP, 12/9/15)
2015 Dec 9, Tajikistan's lower house of parliament approved a bill that strengthens President Imomali Rakhmon's grip on power by awarding him the title of "Leader of the Nation" with lifetime immunity from prosecution.
(Reuters, 12/9/15)
2015 Dec 9, Turkey said its fighter jets carried out a new barrage of air strikes against Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq overnight.
(AFP, 12/9/15)
2015 Dec 9, The UN said more than 170,000 people have fled war-torn Yemen for the Horn of Africa and the Gulf, as they appealed for $94 million in aid.
(AFP, 12/9/15)
2016 Dec 9, A senior US official said the CIA has concluded that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help President-elect Donald Trump win the White House, and not just to undermine confidence in the US electoral system. The next day Trump challenged the veracity of the CIA assessment.
(Reuters, 12/10/16)(SSFC, 12/11/16, p.A10)
2016 Dec 9, The Cherokee Nation’s attorney general legalized same-sex marriage for the tribe saying parts of a 2004 tribal law violated the Cherokee Constitution.
(SFC, 12/13/16, p.A5)
2016 Dec 9, Human Rights Watch reported that over 1,400 migrants have been forcibly deported from Algeria this month. HRW also said Algerian authorities have deported hundreds of West African migrants to Niger this week, trucking them thousands of miles across the desert in one of the biggest roundups seen this year.
(Reuters, 12/9/16)
2016 Dec 9, Police overseeing the sex abuse scandal in British soccer said 83 potential suspects have been identified and linked to 98 clubs. The age range of potential victims was 7 to 20 years old.
(AP, 12/9/16)
2016 Dec 9, Canada’s PM Justin Trudeau and 11 of 13 provincial and territorial leaders announced an agreement on a national climate framework.
(Econ, 12/17/16, p.31)
2016 Dec 9, In Egypt a bomb attack in Cairo killed six policemen and wounded another three. The recently emerged militant group called the Hasm Movement claimed responsibility. A bomb targeting a police vehicle in Kafr al-Sheikh killed a civilian and injured 3 policemen.
(Reuters, 12/9/16)(SFC, 12/10/16, p.A4)(Econ, 12/17/16, p.43)
2016 Dec 9, In France Kazakh opposition figure Mukhtar Ablyazov was released from prison after France's highest administrative authority blocked his extradition to Russia, where he is accused of embezzling billions of dollars.
(AFP, 12/10/16)
2016 Dec 9, Gambian President Yahya Jammeh declared he no longer accepted the results of the December 1 vote. Jammeh cited "unacceptable errors" by election authorities and called for new polls.
(AFP, 12/10/16)
2016 Dec 9, Ghana’s election committee said the New Patriotic Party candidate, Nana Akufo-Addo, had taken 53.8 percent of the Dec 7 vote, against 44.4 percent for President John Mahama.
(SFC, 12/10/16, p.A2)
2016 Dec 9, Hong Kong’s Beijing-backed leader Leung Chun-ying said he would step aside after his five-year term ends next June.
(AP, 12/9/16)
2016 Dec 9, In India retired Air Marshal S.P. Tyagi, his cousin Sanjiv Tyagi and attorney Gautam Khaitan were arrested for allegedly influencing a $750 million deal with AgustaWestland for the purchase of 12 luxury helicopters to ferry Indian VIPs.
(AP, 12/9/16)
2016 Dec 9, In Iraq separate bombings in Baghdad killed 10 people and wounded another 22.
(AP, 12/9/16)
2016 Dec 9, A Japanese capsule blasted off from the Tanegashima Space Center with much-needed supplies for the International Space Station, a week after a Russian shipment was destroyed shortly after liftoff.
(AP, 12/9/16)
2016 Dec 9, Kenya deployed army doctors to the country's main teaching and referral hospital where the last remaining doctors joined a five-day strike that has crippled healthcare services around the country.
(AFP, 12/9/16)
2016 Dec 9, In Mexico the charred remains of three federal detectives were found in the bed of a burning pickup truck in the southern resort of Zihuatanejo. The remains of a 4th person were found nearby.
(SFC, 12/10/16, p.A2)
2016 Dec 9, In Morocco 438 African migrants stormed across a border fence to enter Spain's North African enclave of Ceuta in one of the biggest crossing attempts of recent years. Some 800 had tried to make the crossing.
(AP, 12/9/16)
2016 Dec 9, In the Netherlands police acting on a tip-off from the Dutch intelligence agency arrested a 30-year-old "terrorist" suspect and seized an arsenal of weapons in the port city of Rotterdam.
(Reuters, 12/9/16)
2016 Dec 9, Dutch populist anti-Islam Dutch MP Geert Wilders was found guilty on of discrimination against Moroccans, but acquitted of hate speech in a closely-watched trial ahead of next year's key elections. Judges decided not to impose any sentence or fine, and Wilders immediately vowed to appeal against what he said was a bid to "neutralize" him ahead of the March polls.
(AFP, 12/9/16)
2016 Dec 9, In Nigeria two female suicide bombers blew themselves up in the northeastern town of Madagali, killing 57 people and wounding 177.
(Reuters, 12/9/16)(AP, 12/10/16)
2016 Dec 9, The Norwegian Refugee Council said South Sudan has expelled Victor Moses, its country director there.
(AP, 12/9/16)
2016 Dec 9, In Peru an indigenous federation opposed to a recently approved plan for oil drilling in the Peruvian Amazon said that native communities will physically block any attempt by oil companies to operate on their lands.
(Reuters, 12/9/16)
2016 Dec 9, Saudi Arabia told its US and European customers it would reduce oil deliveries from January, signaling it had already started implementing cuts.
(Reuters, 12/10/16)
2016 Dec 9, A 7.8 magnitude earthquake hit the Solomon Islands. A 6.9 magnitude aftershock followed a day later.
(Reuters, 12/10/16)
2016 Dec 9, South Korean lawmakers impeached Pres. Park Geun-hye, a stunning and swift fall for the country's first female leader amid protests that drew millions into the streets in united fury. This allowed PM Hwang Kyo-ahn to assume leadership until the Constitutional Court rules on whether Park must permanently step down.
(AP, 12/9/16)
2016 Dec 9, Spanish police arrested 71 people for allegedly selling counterfeit goods, in the country's biggest crackdown to date against intellectual property theft and money laundering.
(Reuters, 12/9/16)
2016 Dec 9, Syrian warplanes launched fresh raids on the last rebel-held districts in Aleppo, as key regime ally Russia vowed the assault would continue until opposition fighters left the battleground city. The UN human rights office said hundreds of men from eastern Aleppo have gone missing after leaving rebel-held areas.
(AFP, 12/9/16)(Reuters, 12/9/16)
2016 Dec 9, The Islamic State seized more territory from Syrian government forces near the ancient city of Palmyra in fierce clashes that raged for a second day. 49 Syrian soldiers were reported killed in the IS advance near Palmyra.
(Reuters, 12/9/16)(AP, 12/9/16)
2016 Dec 9, Turkish jets carried out air strikes against Kurdish militants in the Gara region of northern Iraq and killed 19 militants.
(Reuters, 12/9/16)
2016 Dec 9, Venezuela’s fair pricing authority seized almost 4 million toys from toy distributor Kreisel and said it plans to hand them out to poor children this holiday season. Two company executives were detained on suspicion of promoting price speculation.
(SSFC, 12/11/16, p.A4)
2017 Dec 9, Some 8,700 firefighters in southern California fought to contain six raging wildfires, which have destroyed hundreds of buildings and forced tens of thousands of people to flee.
(AP, 12/9/17)
2017 Dec 9, In southern California a small plane skidded into a home while trying to land in a field in San Diego killing at least two passengers. The pilot and another passenger were treated for burns.
(SFC, 12/11/17, p.A6)
2017 Dec 9, Mississippi’s new Civil Rights Museum opened in Jackson. A visit by Pres. Donald Trump generated boycotts from some civil rights leaders.
(SSFC, 12/10/17, p.A10)
2017 Dec 9, In Afghanistan Taliban insurgents killed three Afghan soldiers in an attack on a checkpoint early today. In Kabul unknown gunmen shot dead 10 members of the same family in what appeared to be a private dispute.
(AP, 12/9/17)
2017 Dec 9, It was reported that Algerian fighters and French, some arriving from Syria, have joined the ranks of the Islamic State group in northern Afghanistan where the militants have established new bases.
(AFP, 12/10/17)
2017 Dec 9, Finnish Border Guards said two people have been found dead inside a pilot boat that capsized and sank off southern Finland.
(AP, 12/9/17)
2017 Dec 9, In Germany the Swedish comedy "The Square" swept this year's European Film Awards in Berlin, winning six prizes, including for best film, director and screenwriter. This year's best actress award went to Alexandra Borbely of Slovakia for her role in "On Body and Soul."
(AP, 12/10/17)
2017 Dec 9, Indian PM Narendra Modi's home state of Gujarat went to the polls, in a key electoral test of his popularity after a series of controversial economic reforms.
(AFP, 12/9/17)
2017 Dec 9, Iran said Mahmoud Reza Khavari, the former head of Iran's largest state-owned bank, has been given a 20-year prison sentence and $6 million fine in absentia over a record-breaking $2.6 billion embezzlement scandal. Khavari fled to Canada after the scandal broke in 2011. Canada does not have an extradition agreement with Iran.
(AFP, 12/9/17)
2017 Dec 9, Iraqi PM Haider al-Abadi said that Iraqi forces had driven the last remnants of Islamic State from the country, three years after the militant group captured about a third of Iraq's territory.
(Reuters, 12/9/17)
2017 Dec 9, Israeli air strikes in Gaza killed two Palestinian gunmen after rockets were fired from the enclave, in violence that erupted over President Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital.
(Reuters, 12/9/17)
2017 Dec 9, Italy's governing Democrats led a rally in Como to warn about fascism making a comeback in the nation that once suffered under fascist dictator Benito Mussolini and which is now seeing a rash of right-wing protests against migrants.
(AP, 12/9/17)
2017 Dec 9, Japanese police arrested three crew of a North Korean boat for stealing a generator from a hut on an uninhabited island.
(AP, 12/9/17)
2017 Dec 9, Lecturers in Kenya's public universities ended a strike after reaching agreement with the government over pay and other issues, according to a statement from their union.
(Reuters, 12/9/17)
2017 Dec 9, Lebanon's PM Saad Hariri criticized a visit six days earlier by Iraqi Shiite militia leader Qais al-Khazali, the founder and leader of the Asaib Ahl al-Haq militia, to Lebanon's ceasefire line with Israel, saying it violated local law.
(AFP, 12/9/17)
2017 Dec 9, Libya said it will set up a joint commission with Italy in a bid to fight back against people traffickers and tackle the problem of illegal migration following talks in Tripoli between Italian Interior Minister Marco Minniti and Libya's PM Fayez al-Sarraj.
(AFP, 12/9/17)
2017 Dec 9, Meeting in Oslo, Norway, representatives of the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), called on the US and North Korea to reduce tensions and end the "urgent threat" posed by weapons of mass destruction.
(AP, 12/9/17)
2017 Dec 9, In Pakistan some 313 militants from three separatist movements handed over weapons in Quetta to Nawab Sanaullah Zehri, the Chief Minister of Baluchistan province. Government officials say about 2,000 militants have surrendered over the past 18 months.
(Reuters, 12/10/17)
2017 Dec 9, Russia said it was fully committed to a Cold War-era pact with the United States banning intermediate-range cruise missiles, a day after Washington accused Moscow of violating the treaty.
(Reuters, 12/9/17)
2017 Dec 9, Vietnam’s government website said two more former officials at the scandal-hit state energy firm PetroVietnam, Phung Dinh Thuc and Do Van Hau, will be prosecuted over financial losses incurred while they were in office.
(Reuters, 12/9/17)
2018 Dec 9, Nick Ayers, the chief of staff to US VP Mike Pence, confirmed that he will not step in to replace John Kelly, the chief of staff for Pres. Donald Trump, who planned to leave by year's end.
(SFC, 12/10/18, p.A6)
2018 Dec 9, In Indiana Breanna Rouhselang (17) and her fetus died after being stabbed by Aaron Trejo (16) in Mishawaka following an argument over her pregnancy. Trejo said she had waited too long to tell him she was pregnant ad it was too late to get an abortion.
(SFC, 12/11/18, p.A5)
2018 Dec 9, Afghan authorities announced the suspension of the head of the soccer federation and five other senior officials amid allegations of sexual and physical abuse of female athletes.
(AP, 12/9/18)
2018 Dec 9, In Algeria the Roman Catholic Church beatified 19 Christians killed in a civil war in the 1990s including seven Trappist monks who were beheaded at their monastery by Islamist militants.
(Reuters, 12/9/18)
2018 Dec 9, Armenians cast ballots in an early parliamentary election that is expected to further consolidate the power of PM Nikol Pashinian (43). Allies of PM Pashinian won an overwhelming majority of seats in the country's early parliamentary election.
(AP, 12/9/18)(AP, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 9, The Australian government called for Hakeem al-Araibi, an Australian-based refugee soccer player, to be immediately released from detention in Thailand.
(AP, 12/9/18)
2018 Dec 9, China summoned the US ambassador to Beijing to protest the detention of Meng Wanzhou, an executive of Chinese electronics giant Huawei, in Canada at Washington's behest and demanded Washington cancel an order for her arrest.
(AP, 12/9/18)
2018 Dec 9, In China at least 80 churchgoers and seminary students from the Early Rain Covenant Church were taken away late today in the southwestern city of Chengdu. The church was operating outside the government's official Protestant organization. The government requires that Protestants worship only in churches recognized and regulated by the Three-Self Patriotic Movement.
(AP, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 9, In India dozens of Hindu monks and tens of thousands of followers, gathered under the banner of groups linked to PM Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalist party, urged the Indian government to help build a temple on the ruins of a 16th-century mosque, torn down in 1992, in the northern town of Ayodhya.
(Reuters, 12/9/18)
2018 Dec 9, Gerald Cotton (30), the CEO of Canadian cryptocurrency exchange QuadrigaCX, died of complications from Crohn's disease while traveling to an orphanage in India. He was the only person who knew the security keys and passwords needed to access at least $250 million in client accounts.
(SFC, 2/7/19, p.D2)
2018 Dec 9, In Iran's judiciary said fast-track courts set up in Iran to fight economic crime have jailed 30 men for up to 20 years each, as the country faces renewed US sanctions and a public outcry against profiteering and corruption.
(Reuters, 12/9/18)
2018 Dec 9, Iran state media said Australian-based academic has been detained on charges of trying to "infiltrate" Iranian institutions. Hosseini-Chavoshi, a population expert, is affiliated with the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health.
(Reuters, 12/9/18)
2018 Dec 9, The Israeli military said it has opened an investigation into the death of a 22-year-old Palestinian man in the West Bank after a video surfaced appearing to show him being shot in the back. A Dec. 4 video showed Mohammed Habali walking in an alleyway holding a stick when he is shot from behind and falls down on his face.
(AP, 12/9/18)
2018 Dec 9, In Kashmir Indian troops killed three rebels on the outskirts of Srinagar, ending a nearly 18-hour-long gunbattle. Mudasir Rashid Parray (14) and Saqib Bilal Sheikh (17) were killed in the gunbattle.
(AP, 12/9/18)(AP, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 9, In southwestern Libya an armed group seized the Sharara oilfield, one of the country's largest oilfields. The National Oil Corporation (NOC) declared a state of force majeure at the Akakus-operated field.
(AFP, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 9, New Zealand police said they found a body they believe to be that of missing British tourist Grace Millane (22), who went missing on Dec 1. The body was in a forested area about 10 meters (33 feet) from the side of the road in the Waitakere Ranges near Auckland.
(AP, 12/9/18)
2018 Dec 9, A Palestinian opened fire at a group of Israelis standing at a bus stop next to a Jewish settlement near Ramallah, wounding six people, one - a pregnant woman - critically, in a drive-by shooting.
(Reuters, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 9, Peruvians began voting in a referendum on a raft of political and judicial reforms introduced by the new government of Pres. Martin Vizcarra aimed at stamping out corruption and cronyism in one of Latin America's most promising economies. Peruvians overwhelmingly approved a government overhaul that among other things sends all members of Congress packing by 2021. Three of the four constitutional reforms proposed by Pres. Vizcarra were approved by nearly 80 percent of voters.
(Reuters, 12/9/18)(AFP, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 9, At least two Rwandan soldiers were killed in an attack by rebels who had crossed the border from the Democratic Republic of Congo.
(AFP, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 9, In Somalia the head of the parliament's administration said he had filed a motion with the speaker of parliament to impeach the country's president, Mohamed Abdullahi, but the grounds for the move were unclear.
(Reuters, 12/9/18)
2018 Dec 9, In Saudi Arabia a summit of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) opened. Kuwait's Emir, Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber al-Sabah, called for an end to media campaigns in the region which threatened the unity of the Gulf. Qatar's Sheikh Tamim sent Sultan bin Saad al-Muraikhi, minister of state for foreign affairs, to represent the country.
(AP, 12/9/18)(Reuters, 12/9/18)
2018 Dec 9, In Sudan at least seven local government officials were killed in a helicopter crash in eastern al-Qadarif state.
(AP, 12/9/18)
2018 Dec 9, The UN's humanitarian office said that 369 trucks will carry one month's worth of supplies to Syria. It's the first cross-border aid shipment since the Syrian government recaptured a trade crossing with Jordan from Syrian rebels and reopened it in October.
(AP, 12/9/18)
2019 Dec 9, The US Justice Department's internal watchdog declared that the FBI was justified in opening its investigation into ties between the Trump presidential campaign and Russia and did not act with political bias. The report rejected theories and criticism spread by Pres. Trump and his supporters, though it also found “serious performance failures" up the bureau’s chain of command.
(AP, 12/10/19)
2019 Dec 9, US lawmakers announced an agreement on a $738-billion bill setting policy for the Department of Defense, including new measures for competing with Russia and China, family leave for federal workers and the creation of Pres. Donald Trump's long-desired Space Force.
(Reuters, 12/9/19)
2019 Dec 9, The US Supreme Court left in place a Kentucky law requiring doctors to perform ultrasounds and show fetal images to patients before abortions.
(AP, 12/9/19)
2019 Dec 9, US federal agents in Dallas arrested Genaro Garcia Luna (51), the former secretary of public security in Mexico (2006-2012), on drug charges for bribes he accepted from the Sinaloa cartel. Prosecutors said they will seek his removal to New York to face federal charges.
(SFC, 12/11/19, p.A5)
2019 Dec 9, The Washington Post released thousands of documents detailing the war in Afghanistan painting a stark picture of missteps and failures. The reports were from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), formed in 2008.
(SFC, 12/10/19, p.A3)
2019 Dec 9, The US CDC said a multistate E. coli outbreak, linked to packaged salad from the Salinas Valley of California, has sickened 8 people in the upper-Midwest and 16 in Canada.
(SFC, 12/10/19, p.A5)
2019 Dec 9, Intel Corp announced a chip called "Horse Ridge" that is designed to take all the work being done by the wires in a quantum computer and shrink it down to a chip and electronics about the size of a tea cup saucer. The chip is named for one of the coldest spots in the state of Oregon, where many of its factories are located.
(Reuters, 12/9/19)
2019 Dec 9, The fate of the World Trade Organization's top court was effectively sealed after the US said it would not back a proposal to allow it to continue. The Trump administration has been blocking appointments to the WTO's seven-member Appellate Body that rules on trade disputes for over two years, with US officials saying the court had gone beyond its remit.
(Reuters, 12/9/19)
2019 Dec 9, In Afghanistan a suicide car bomb attack killed at lest five Afghan soldiers and wounded four others in the southern Helmand province.
(AP, 12/10/19)
2019 Dec 9, Austria's caretaker Chancellor Brigitte Bierlein made clear she would not sign into law the European Union's first national ban on the weedkiller glyphosate due to a technicality, infuriating environmentalists while delighting farmers' groups.
(Reuters, 12/9/19)
2019 Dec 9, Bosnian police removed residents who have been blocking access to Mostar's only landfill over concerns that it poses serious health and environmental risks.
(SFC, 12/10/19, p.A2)
2019 Dec 9, In London convicted burglar Joseph McCann (34), who assaulted and raped women and children during a two-week rampage across Britain while wrongly free from jail, was given 33 life sentences, with the judge saying he would never cease to be a danger to society.
(Reuters, 12/9/19)
2019 Dec 9, Canada and the Netherlands put out a joint statement in support of Gambia, the tiny, mainly Muslim West African country that filed the suit in which the Buddhist-majority Myanmar is accused of genocide against its Rohingya Muslim minority a day before genocide hearings begin at the International Court of Justice in The Hague.
(Reuters, 12/9/19)
2019 Dec 9, A Chilean Air Force transport plane carrying 38 people vanished en route to a base on Antarctica. The plane crashed over the Drake Sea, a vast untouched ocean wilderness off the southernmost edge of Antarctica. There were no survivors.
(AP, 12/10/19)(Reuters, 12/12/19)
2019 Dec 9, Walmart in Chile pulled requests it filed earlier with Chilean courts demanding police protection for its supermarkets, but said looting of its stores continued and that the situation following weeks of unrest remained "complex".
(Reuters, 12/9/19)
2019 Dec 9, Chinese officials said a “de-radicalization" training in its western Xinjiang region has been completed, as the government sought to defend the widespread detention of ethnic minorities. Uighurs and other predominantly Muslim ethnic minorities from the region say their family members continue to be arbitrarily detained in camps and prisons. Xinjiang's government said all trainees in the camps had "graduated." Some of the former detainees have been obliged to go work in other provinces.
(AP, 12/8/19)(Econ., 3/7/20, p.38)
2019 Dec 9, Egyptian human rights activist Ahmed Abdel-Fattah (40) went missing in Cairo. On Dec. 20 his wife said that he is scheduled to appear before a local prosecutor.
(AP, 12/20/19)
2019 Dec 9, A consortium of 19 hydropower companies and organizations said it will receive European Union funding of 18 million euros ($20 million) to research the green energy form's role, as the 28-member bloc seeks to become carbon neutral by 2050.
(Reuters, 12/9/19)
2019 Dec 9, In France the leaders of Russia, Ukraine, Germany and France met in Paris to discuss a peace settlement for Ukraine’s war-ravaged east for the first time in more than three years. Ukraine's Pres. Volodymyr Zelenskiy made clear at the talks that Ukraine must regain control of its eastern border before elections can take place in the disputed region as part of a peace accord. Russia's Pres. Putin said the elections must come first. Participating leaders agreed to implement a comprehensive ceasefire and hold a major prisoner exchange between the Ukrainian government and the separatists.
(The Telegraph, 12/9/19)(Bloomberg, 12/10/19)(The Telegraph, 12/10/19)
2019 Dec 9, Hong Kong police arrested 12 people suspected of preparing gasoline bombs.
(SFC, 12/10/19, p.A2)
2019 Dec 9, In India day laborers in one of New Delhi's most congested neighborhoods demonstrated against unsafe working conditions, a day after at least 43 people were killed in a devastating fire at an illegal factory there.
(AP, 12/9/19)
2019 Dec 9, In Iraq four Katyusha rockets hit a military base near Baghdad International Airport early today, wounding at least six soldiers.
(AP, 12/9/19)
2019 Dec 9, Israeli police said vandals overnight slashed the tires of over 160 vehicles and sprayed slogans such as “Arabs=enemies" in a Palestinian neighborhood of Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem.
(AP, 12/9/19)
2019 Dec 9, In Kenya Mike Gideon Mbuvi, governor of Nairobi, was charged with ten counts of graft related charges including embexxlement and money laundering.
(SFC, 12/10/19, p.A2)
2019 Dec 9, A rainstorm paralyzed parts of Lebanon's capital Beirut, turning streets to small rivers, stranding motorists inside their vehicles and damaging homes in some areas.
(AP, 12/9/19)
2019 Dec 9, In New Zealand a volcano erupted on the White Island tourist spot. Six deaths were later confirmed after the eruption. Another eight people were believed to have died, with their bodies remaining on the ash-covered island for now. The death toll later rose to 19.
(AP, 12/9/19)(AP, 12/10/19)(AP, 12/22/19)
2019 Dec 9, Russia's interior minister said passports have been issued to 125,000 residents of rebel-held eastern Ukraine, deepening Moscow's ties with the separatist region even as it begins talks with Kiev aimed at ending the conflict.
(Reuters, 12/9/19)
2019 Dec 9, The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) banned Russian athletes from competing in the Olympics and other major sporting events under the country’s flag after it found Russia tampering with key doping test data. WADA banned Russia from hosting or participating in any major sporting events for a four-year period.
(Benzinga, 12/10/19)
2019 Dec 9, In Spain teenage activist Greta Thunberg and a group of young climate campaigners from across the world addressed a UN summit on climate change in Madrid.
(AP, 12/9/19)
2019 Dec 9, Turkey said it would join Albania and Kosovo in boycotting the Nobel awards ceremony in protest against 2019 literature prize laureate Peter Handke, who has been criticized for backing late Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic.
(Reuters, 12/9/19)
2019 Dec 9, The UN's general assembly passed a resolution condemning Russia's occupation of Crimea and the city of Sebastopol and urging the withdrawal of its military forces "without delay".
(The Telegraph, 12/9/19)
2019 Dec 9, The UN released $2.6 million in emergency aid to combat the measles epidemic in Samoa as the death toll reached 70.
(AP, 12/10/19)
2019 Dec 9, Save the Children said in a report that over 110 Yemeni children were killed between January and October in the key port city of Hodeida and in the southwestern province of Taiz.
(AP, 12/9/19)
2020 Dec 9, US President Donald Trump issued a formal threat to veto congressional efforts to block his plans for $23 billion in military sales to the United Arab Emirates. US law requires congressional review of major arms deals, and lets senators force votes on resolutions of disapproval.
(AP, 12/9/20)
2020 Dec 9, President Donald Trump vowed to intervene in a long-shot lawsuit by the state of Texas filed at the US Supreme Court trying to throw out the voting results in four states he lost to President-elect Joe Biden as he seeks to undo the outcome of the election.
(Reuters, 12/9/20)
2020 Dec 9, The Trump administration said that it will allow migrants from six countries to extend their legal US residency under a temporary status for nine months while courts consider its effort to end the program.
(AP, 12/9/20)
2020 Dec 9, The US Senate fell short in trying to halt the Trump administration's proposed $23 billion arms sales to the United Arab Emirates, despite bipartisan objections to the package of F-35 fighter jets and drones stemming from a broader Middle East peace agreement.
(AP, 12/9/20)
2020 Dec 9, Federal regulators and 46 states accused Facebook of illegally stifling competition by buying up rivals like Instagram and WhatsApp. Prosecutors called for Facebook to sell those services — and for restrictions on future deals.
(NY Times, 12/10/20)
2020 Dec 9, The United States' daily death toll from COVID-19 has surpassed 3,000 for the first time, prompting pleas for Americans to scale back Christmas plans even with vaccines on the cusp of winning regulatory approval.
(Reuters, 12/10/20)
2020 Dec 9, California to date had 1,421,089 cases of coronavirus and 20,273 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 177,593 cases and 2,058 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 15,371,953 with the death toll at 288,889.
(sfist.com, 12/9/20)
2020 Dec 9, A federal judge in Maryland denied the Trump administration's request to reinstate a rule that would require women to visit a hospital, clinic or medical office to obtain an abortion pill during the COVID-19 pandemic, noting that public health risks for patients only have grown worse.
(AP, 12/10/20)
2020 Dec 9, The speaker of the New Hampshire House of Representatives, Richard Hinch (71), died suddenly of Covid-19. Hinch recently attended an indoor meeting with his Republican colleagues where several members contracted the virus.
(AP, 12/10/20)
2020 Dec 9, The New York state pension fund committed to help curb climate change by transitioning its investments to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2040, making it the first pension fund to set the goal by that date.
(Reuters, 12/9/20)
2020 Dec 9, SpaceX launched its shiny, bullet-shaped, straight-out-of-science fiction Starship several miles into the air from a remote corner of Texas, but the 6 1/2-minute test flight ended in an explosive fireball at touchdown.
(AP, 12/9/20)
2020 Dec 9, The S&P 500 and the Dow scaled record highs as hopes of a working COVID-19 vaccine and fresh economic stimulus before the end of the year lifted demand for economically sensitive energy and financial shares.
(Reuters, 12/9/20)
2020 Dec 9, Researchers said a poorly understood Triassic Period reptile group called lagerpetids, known from a few partial skeletons from the United States, Argentina, Brazil and Madagascar, appears to have been the evolutionary precursor to pterosaurs. Lagerpetids, first appearing about 237 million years ago, were generally small and may have been bipedal insect-eaters. They could not fly. Pterosaurs became Earth's first flying vertebrates, with birds and then bats appearing much later.
(Reuters, 12/9/20)
2020 Dec 9, In Armenia thousands of protesters converged on the parliament building in Yerevan to push for the resignation of the ex-Soviet nation's PM Nikol Pashinyan over his handling of the fighting with Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh.
(AP, 12/9/20)
2020 Dec 9, In Brussels Vivendi's pay-TV arm Canal+ won its court fight against a deal between EU competition regulators and Paramount Pictures in which the US studio agreed to scrap movie-licensing deals with British pay-TV group Sky UK.
(Reuters, 12/9/20)
2020 Dec 9, Brazil reported 53,453 more confirmed cases in the past 24 hours, the highest daily rate since mid-August, and 836 deaths.
(Reuters, 12/9/20)
2020 Dec 9, Brazil’s Gol Airlines became the first in the world to return the Boeing 737 Max jetliners to its active fleet, using a 737 MAX 8 on a flight from Sao Paulo to Porto Alegre.
(AP, 12/9/20)
2020 Dec 9, Britain's medicine regulator has advised that people with a history of significant allergic reactions do not get Pfizer-BioNTech's vaccine after two people reported adverse effects.
(Reuters, 12/9/20)
2020 Dec 9, Canada approved its first COVID-19 vaccine, clearing the way for doses of the Pfizer Inc and BioNTech SE shots to be delivered and administered across the country.
(Reuters, 12/9/20)
2020 Dec 9, It was reported that the restored flagship of former Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito is being converted in Croatia into a hotel and a museum devoted to its turbulent history, from banana boat to meeting place for world statesmen.
(Reuters, 12/9/20)
2020 Dec 9, Ethiopia's PM Abiy Ahmed shifted his focus away from war, opening a cross-border highway to Kenya at the opposite end of his country, while the United Nations voiced alarm over ongoing fighting in the northern Tigray region.
(Reuters, 12/9/20)
2020 Dec 9, France reported that the H5N8 bird flu has been detected at a second farm in the Landes region, as the disease continues to spread across Europe.
(Reuters, 12/10/20)
2020 Dec 9, Franco-Italian chipmaker STMicroelectronics said the US-China trade war and a near-embargo on Huawei, one of its biggest clients, would slow growth and affect profitability even if demand rebounds after a COVID-afflicted year.
(Reuters, 12/9/20)
2020 Dec 9, Chancellor Angela Merkel demanded tougher curbs to halt coronavirus infections, as the German death toll reached a daily record of nearly 600 people.
(AFP, 12/9/20)
2020 Dec 9, Indonesia reported 171 more deaths from the coronavirus, marking the Southeast Asian country's highest daily rise in fatalities and taking the total number of deaths to 18,171. Total number of infections rose to 592,900 with 6,058 new cases.
(Reuters, 12/9/20)
2020 Dec 9, Iran's President Hassan Rouhani said that US sanctions are making it difficult for Iran to purchase medicine and health supplies from abroad, including COVID-19 vaccines needed to contain the worst outbreak in the Middle East. Iran has reported more than 50,000 deaths from the coronavirus out of more than a million confirmed cases.
(AP, 12/9/20)
2020 Dec 9, Iran said a number of people have been detained for involvement in the Nov. 27 assassination of nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh.
(SFC, 12/10/20, p.A2)
2020 Dec 9, The prime minister of Iraq's northern Kurdish-run region blamed the federal government in Baghdad for delaying crucial budget transfers as violent protests over salary payments left eight dead in the past week.
(AP, 12/9/20)
2020 Dec 9, The International Criminal Court's chief prosecutor said she is closing a preliminary probe into allegations of killings and torture of Iraqi prisoners by British troops from 2003-2008 and will not open a full-scale investigation because UK authorities have investigated the allegations.
(AP, 12/9/20)
2020 Dec 9, Israel received its first shipment of coronavirus vaccines and a distributor predicted the country would have enough for about a quarter of the population by the end of the year.
(Reuters, 12/9/20)
2020 Dec 9, Italy reported 499 coronavirus-related deaths against 634 the day before, while the daily tally of new infections fell to 12,756 from 14,842.
(Reuters, 12/9/20)
2020 Dec 9, Mexican photojournalist Jaime Castaño Zacarías happened upon dead bodies with their hands bound in northern Zacatecas state, following a clash between drug cartels in the city of Jerez. When Castaño left the scene on a motorcycle, he was pursued by gunmen, who shot him dead.
(The Guardian, 12/11/20)
2020 Dec 9, Nearly 1,700 passengers on a Royal Caribbean 'cruise-to-nowhere' from Singapore remained confined in their cabins for more than 14 hours after a COVID-19 case was detected on board, forcing the ship back to port.
(Reuters, 12/9/20)
2020 Dec 9, South Africa recorded 6,700 new cases of the coronavirus. The country has reported a total of 828,598 cases, including 22,574 deaths.
(SFC, 12/11/20, p.A5)
2020 Dec 9, South Korea reported 590 deaths related to COVID-19 over the last 24 hours as well as 20,815 new daily infections.
(SFC, 12/10/20, p.A7)
2020 Dec 9, In northeastern Spain a fire engulfed the abandoned industrial complex where he and over 100 African migrants lived in precarious conditions. At least three people were killed. Workers clearing the rubble soon found a 4th body.
(AP, 12/10/20)(AP, 12/14/20)
2020 Dec 9, Swiss drugmaker Roche said it is partnering with Moderna to include a COVID-19 antibody test in the mRNA specialist's ongoing vaccine trials, potentially demonstrating if the vaccine is working.
(Reuters, 12/9/20)
2020 Dec 9, Turkey ruled out buying the Russian coronavirus vaccine since its development lacked "good practice," as Ankara steps up efforts to inoculate 50 million citizens by spring.
(AP, 12/9/20)
2020 Dec 9, The United Arab Emirates approved a Chinese coronavirus vaccine, citing preliminary data showing that it was 86 percent effective.
(NY Times, 12/9/20)
2020 Dec 9, The UN hit out at violence that erupted in DR Congo's parliament, pitting backers of President Felix Tshisekedi against supporters of his predecessor Joseph Kabila.
(AFP, 12/9/20)
2020 Dec 9, A UN report showed that greenhouse gas emissions reached a new high last year, putting the world on track for an average temperature rise of 3 degrees Celsius.
(Reuters, 12/9/20)
2021 Dec 9, Pres. Joe Biden opened the first White House Summit for Democracy. He spoke to representatives of more than 100 countries in a video gathering and sounded an alarm about a global slide for democratic institutions.
(SFC, 12/10/21, p.A8)
2021 Dec 9, It was reported that the United States will put Chinese artificial intelligence company SenseTime on an investment blacklist on Dec. 10. The Financial Times cited people familiar with the decision, as the company is finalizing its Hong Kong IPO.
(Reuters, 12/9/21)
2021 Dec 9, The US Senate passed and sent to President Joe Biden the first of two bills needed to raise the federal government's $28.9 trillion debt limit and avert an unprecedented default.
(Reuters, 12/9/21)
2021 Dec 9, The US Treasury Department targeted government officials and companies it accused of corruption, including officials in El Salvador and Guatemala involved in their countries COVID-19 responses.
(Reuters, 12/9/21)
2021 Dec 9, The US Food and Drug Administration authorized booster shots of the COVID-19 vaccine from Pfizer Inc and BioNTech SE for those aged 16 and 17.
(Reuters, 12/9/21)
2021 Dec 9, Total US COVID-19 cases reached over 49,570,424 with the death toll at 793,597.
(sfist.com, 12/10/21)
2021 Dec 9, In Florida former US narcotics agent Jose Irizarry (47) was sentenced to more than 12 years in federal prison for conspiring to launder money with a Colombian cartel. Prosecutors said he and his co-conspirators had used diverted $9 million from undercover money laundering investigations.
(SFC, 12/11/21, p.A7)
2021 Dec 9, It was reported that Georgia Republicans have purge Black Democrats from county election boards.
(Reuters, 12/9/21)
2021 Dec 9, A jury in Chicago found the actor Jussie Smollett guilty of falsely reporting to the police that he had been the victim of a racist and homophobic assault in 2019, an attack that investigators concluded was a hoax directed by the actor himself.
(NY Times, 12/9/21)
2021 Dec 9, Al Unser (82), 4-time winner of the Indianapolis 500, died at his home in New Mexico. He won the Indy 500 in 1970, 1971, 1978 and 1987.
(SFC, 12/11/21, p.B8)
2021 Dec 9, The New York City Council approved a measure that would let noncitizens who are legal residents vote in local elections. Mayor Bill de Blasio has said he would not veto it.
(NY Times, 12/9/21)(SFC, 12/10/21, p.A4)
2021 Dec 9, In Buffalo, NY, Starbucks workers voted to unionize, a first for the 50-year-old coffee retailer in the US.
(SFC, 12/10/21, p.C2)
2021 Dec 9, Oklahoma executed Bigler Stouffer II (79) for the 1985 shooting death of Linda Reaves, an Oklahoma City-area school teacher.
(SFC, 12/10/21, p.A7)
2021 Dec 9, A judge in Texas ruled that a law prohibiting abortions after about six weeks violated the state's constitution because it allows private citizens to sue abortion providers.
(NY Times, 12/9/21)
2021 Dec 9, US railroad operators Union Pacific Corp and BNSF Railway said they were suspending their COVID-19 vaccine mandate for their employees, two days after a judge blocked the Biden administration's inoculation rule for federal contractors.
(Reuters, 12/9/21)
2021 Dec 9, Crypto startup Palm NFT Studio said it had raised $27 million in an early-stage funding round led by Microsoft Corp's venture fund M12 with participation from venture firm Griffin Gaming Partners.
(Reuters, 12/9/21)
2021 Dec 9, SpaceX launched NASA's newest X-ray observatory from Kennedy Space Center. The Imaging X-ray Polarization Explorer (IXPE) rocketed into orbit and was expected to unveil dramatic and extreme parts of the universe as never before.
(SFC, 12/10/21, p.A4)
2021 Dec 9, Brazil's Senate approved the extension of a payroll tax exemption for 17 economic sectors until December 2023, a measure seen as necessary to save jobs during a period of stagnant growth caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
(Reuters, 12/9/21)
2021 Dec 9, Britain said it had agreed a digital trade deal with Singapore, the first digitally-focused trade pact signed by a European nation.
(Reuters, 12/9/21)
2021 Dec 9, Britain said it will send 140 military engineers to Poland this month to provide support at its border with Belarus, in response to what it termed pressures from "irregular migration".
(Reuters, 12/9/21)
2021 Dec 9, Britain's farming and environment minister George Eustice said the UK is experiencing it worst ever outbreak of bird flu. Around 500,000 birds had been culled as a result of 36 confirmed outbreaks.
(Reuters, 12/9/21)
2021 Dec 9, The British-based Uyghur Tribunal, an unofficial tribunal of lawyers and campaigners, said Chinese President Xi Jinping bore primary responsibility for what it said was genocide, crimes against humanity and torture of Uyghurs and members of other minorities in the Xinjiang region.
(Reuters, 12/10/21)
2021 Dec 9, In Cameroon a regional government official said a resurgence of tit-for-tat violence between herders and farmers has killed at least 22 people and injured more than 30 others this week in the Far North region.
(Reuters, 12/9/21)
2021 Dec 9, Judges at the International Criminal Court confirmed war crimes and crimes against humanity charges levied by prosecutors against Mahamat Said Abdel Kain, a former commander of the "Seleka" faction in Central African Republic.
(Reuters, 12/9/21)
2021 Dec 9, Chile's center-right President Sebastián Piñera signed into law a bill legalizing same-sex marriage, days after it was approved by Congress in a historic vote.
(Reuters, 12/9/21)
2021 Dec 9, It was reported that China has told multinationals to sever ties with Lithuania or face being shut out of the Chinese market, dragging companies into a dispute between the Baltic state and Beijing.
(Reuters, 12/9/21)
2021 Dec 9, China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said it has removed 106 apps from Chinese app stores including movie review app Douban, karaoke app Changba, and phone reseller Aihuishou, citing violations of privacy law.
(Reuters, 12/9/21)
2021 Dec 9, Equatorial Guinea oil minister Gabriel Mbaga Obiang Lima said Chevron and his government have signed a production-sharing agreement for an offshore block in the in the country's Douala Basin.
(Reuters, 12/9/21)
2021 Dec 9, The World Food Program (WFP) said it has suspended distribution of food aid in two northern Ethiopian towns after gunmen looted its warehouses.
(BBC, 12/9/21)
2021 Dec 9, Germany's independent vaccination advisory panel said it was recommending COVID-19 shots for children aged 5 to 11 with pre-existing conditions or who are in close contact to vulnerable people.
(AP, 12/9/21)
2021 Dec 9, In Hong Kong tycoon and prominent pro-democracy activist Jimmy Lai and two others were convicted for their roles in last year's banned Tiananmen candlelight vigil, amid a crackdown on dissent in the city and Beijing's tightening political control.
(SFC, 12/10/21, p.A4)
2021 Dec 9, Indian farmers called off a year-long protest after the government conceded a clutch of demands, including assurances to consider guaranteed prices for all produce, instead of just rice and wheat.
(Reuters, 12/9/21)
2021 Dec 9, Iraq and the US-led coalition said they have concluded a final round of technical talks to formally transition from a combat mission tasked with rooting out the extremist Islamic State group to an advisory mission to assist Iraqi forces.
(AP, 12/9/21)
2021 Dec 9, Italy's antitrust authority fined Amazon $1.3 billion, accusing the company of exploiting its dominant position against independent sellers on its website in violation of EU competition rules.
(SFC, 12/10/21, p.C2)
2021 Dec 9, In Italy film director Lina Wertmüller (93) died overnight at her home in Rome. She combined sexual warfare and leftist politics in the provocative, genre-defying films “The Seduction of Mimi," “Swept Away" and “Seven Beauties," which established her as one of the most original directors of the 1970s.
(NY Times, 12/9/21)
2021 Dec 9, The Jordanian health ministry announced that it had identified its first two cases of the omicron variant of coronavirus.
(AP, 12/10/21)
2021 Dec 9, In Mexico at least 55 people died after a truck carrying more than 100 migrants crashed in southern Chiapas State. Most of the victims were Guatemalan migrants.
(Reuters, 12/9/21)(Reuters, 12/11/21)
2021 Dec 9, New Zealand unveiled a plan to eventually ban all sales of cigarettes in the country, a decades-long effort unique in the world to prevent young people from taking up smoking. The proposed legislation would leave current smokers free to continue buying cigarettes. But it would gradually raise the smoking age, year by year, until it covers the entire population.
(NY Times, 12/9/21)
2021 Dec 9, The International Monetary Fund said it has approved a three-year loan deal for Niger worth around $276 million, warning that security risks threatened the West African nation's economic outlook.
(Reuters, 12/9/21)
2021 Dec 9, Singapore said it has detected its first locally transmitted case of the COVID-19 variant Omicron in a member of staff at the city state's airport, warning that more Omicron cases are likely to be detected.
(Reuters, 12/10/21)
2021 Dec 9, Slovakia's parliament approved a plan to give people 60 and older up to $339 if they are vaccinated against COVID-19.
(SFC, 12/10/21, p.A5)
2021 Dec 9, In South Korea several parents associations held protests against a vaccine pass mandate for children aimed at containing the spread of COVID-19 among teenagers. From February, those aged 12 or older will have to show a vaccine pass to enter public spaces, including private tuition centers, libraries and study cafes.
(Reuters, 12/9/21)
2021 Dec 9, Switzerland's supreme court overturned the conviction of a Geneva doctor who helped a healthy 86-year-old woman commit suicide so she would not have to outlive her dying husband. It sent the case back to see if he should be retried under the Narcotics Act.
(AP, 12/9/21)
2021 Dec 9, The Tunisian presidency said the political problem in Tunisia today stemmed from the current 2014 constitution which was no longer valid.
(Reuters, 12/9/21)
2021 Dec 9, Turkey said three of its soldiers were killed in an attack by Kurdish militants during cross-border operations in northern Iraq. The Turkish Defence Ministry added that six of the militants were "neutralized".
(Reuters, 12/9/21)
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