Today in History - December 11
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International Mountain Day. In 2002 the UN General Assembly adopted resolution 57/245 designating 11 December as International Mountain Day.
(Econ, 11/24/12, p.68)
For Asian History: https://www.asiaobserver.org/category/news/on-this-day-in-asian-history
711 Dec 11, Justitianus II (~42), emperor of Byzantium, died.
(MC, 12/11/01)
1282 Dec 11, Llywelyn ap Gruffydd (b.~1223), the last prince of an independent Wales, died after he was lured into a trap and killed at the Battle of Orewin Bridge by forces under Edward I.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Llywelyn_the_Last)(Econ, 11/24/12, p.63)
1419 Dec 11, Heretic Nicolaas Serrurier was exiled from Florence.
(MC, 12/11/01)
1524 Dec 11, Henry Van Zutphen, Dutch Protestant martyr, was burned at stake.
(MC, 12/11/01)
1620 Dec 11, 103 Mayflower pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock.
(MC, 12/11/01)
1688 Dec 11, King James II attempted to flee London as the "Glorious Revolution" replaced him with King William (of Orange) and Queen Mary. James attempted to flee to France, first throwing the Great Seal of the Realm into the River Thames. He was, however, caught in Kent. Having no desire to make James a martyr, the Prince of Orange let him escape on December 23, 1688. James was received by Louis XIV, who offered him a palace and a generous pension. In 2007 Michael Barone authored “Our First Revolution: The Remarkable British Upheaval That Inspired America’s Founding Fathers."
(HN, 12/11/98)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_II_of_England)
1718 Dec 11, Charles XII, King of Sweden (1697-1718), was shot dead.
(MC, 12/11/01)
1719 Dec 11, The first recorded sighting of the Aurora Borealis in the US took place in New England.
(AP, 12/11/99)
1725 Dec 11, George Mason (d.1792), American Revolutionary statesman, was born at Gunston Hall Plantation, situated on the Potomac River some 20 miles south of Washington D.C. Mason framed the Bill of Rights for the Virginia Convention in June 1776. This was the model for the first part of fellow Virginian Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence and the basis of the first 10 Amendments to the federal Constitution. Mason died at Gunston Hall on October 7, 1792.
(HNQ, 2/18/99)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Mason)
1781 Dec 11, David Brewster, physicist and inventor (kaleidoscope), was born in Scotland.
(MC, 12/11/01)
1792 Dec 11, France's King Louis XVI went before the Convention to face charges of treason. Louis was convicted and executed the following month.
(AP, 12/11/97)
1803 Dec 11, Hector Berlioz (d.1869), French composer and conductor, was born. He introduced arresting and gaudy instrumental colors in combinations that had not been dreamed of before him. He composed “Romeo and Juliet" in 1939 and conducted its first performance. He also composed the “Death of Cleopatra." He composed "Symphonie Fantastique" and "La Damnation de Faust." [see Dec 1]
(T&L, 10/80, p. 58)(SFC, 10/5/96, p.E1)(HN, 12/11/99)
1816 Dec 11, Indiana was admitted to the Union as the 19th state.
(AP, 12/11/97)(HN, 12/11/98)
1843 Dec 11, Robert Koch (d.1910), German physician, bacteriologist, and medical researcher, was born. He won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1905.
(http://nobelprize.org/medicine/laureates/1905/koch-bio.html)
1844 Dec 11, The 1st dental use of nitrous oxide was at Hartford, Ct.
(MC, 12/11/01)
1851 Dec 11, In Philadelphia 37 men, on trial in federal court for defying the Fugitive Slave Law, were deemed not guilty by a jury with 15 minutes of deliberation.
(AH, 10/02, p.54)
1861 Dec 11, A raging fire swept the business district of Charleston, South Carolina, adding to an already depressed economic state.
(HN, 12/11/98)
1862 Dec 11, Union General Burnside occupied Fredricksburg and prepared to attack the Confederates under Robert E. Lee.
(HN, 12/11/98)
1863 Dec 11, Union gunboats Restless, Bloomer and Caroline entered St. Andrew’s Bay, Fla., and began bombardment of both Confederate Quarters and Saltworks.
(HN, 12/11/98)
1880 Dec 11, Louis Pasteur (57), French scientist, began an experiment to identify the microbe that causes rabies.
(ON, 6/08, p.4)
1882 Dec 11, Fiorella H. La Guardia (d.1947), mayor of New York City, 1934-1945, was born.
(AP, 1/8/98)(WSJ, 12/9/98, p.A20)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiorello_La_Guardia)
1882 Dec 11, Boston's Bijou Theatre, the first American playhouse to be lighted exclusively by electricity, gave its first performance: Gilbert and Sullivan's "Iolanthe, Or The Peer and the Peri."
(AP, 12/11/08)
1901 Dec 11, Marconi sent his 1st transatlantic radio signal from Cornwall, England to Newfoundland, Canada. The first transmission failed, but another the next day succeeded.
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/low/science/nature/1701461.stm)
1902 Dec 11, Matthias Hohner (b.1833), German clockmaker and harmonica manufacturer, died. He began making harmonicas in 1857. Exports to America began in 1862.
(www.eharmonica.net/history.htm)
1911 Dec 11, Naguib Mahfouz (d.2006), Nobel Prize-winning Egyptian novelist, was born.
(HN, 12/11/00)(SFC, 8/31/06, p.A13)
1918 Dec 11, Alexander Solzhenitsyn (d.2008), Russian writer, was born. He won the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize and is famous for “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" (1962) and "The Gulag Archipelago" (1973). Daniel J. Mahoney later authored "Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: The Ascent From Ideology."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Solzhenitsyn)(WSJ, 10/11/01, p.A20)
1922 Dec 11, Grace Paley, short story writer, was born.
(HN, 12/11/00)
1922 Dec 11, Gabriel Narutowicz (b.1865), a Lithuanian-born, Swiss banking engineer, served as Poland’s first post WWI president. Five days later he was assassinated.
(Econ, 6/18/11, p.89)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriel_Narutowicz)
1926 Dec 11, Willie “Big Mama" Thorton, blues singer, was born.
(HN, 12/11/98)
1927 Dec 11, Nearly 400 world leaders signed a letter to President Calvin Coolidge asking the U.S. to join the World Court.
(HN, 12/11/98)
1928 Dec 11, Police in Buenos Aires thwarted an attempt on the life of President-elect Herbert Hoover.
(AP, 12/11/97)
1929 Dec 11, John Jacob Raskob (1879-1950), former General Motors executive, announced a 102-story design for his Empire State Building.
(http://outside.in/Manhattan_NY/tags/empire%20state%20building)(ON, 12/08, p.10)
1930 Dec 11, As the economic crises grew, the Bank of the U.S. closed its doors.
(HN, 12/11/98)
1931 Dec 11, The Statute of Westminster recast the British Empire as a Commonwealth of Nations.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Westminster_1931)(Econ, 8/2/14, p.45)
1933 Dec 11, Reports said Paraguay had captured 11,000 Bolivians in the war over Chaco.
(HN, 12/11/98)
1936 Dec 11, Brian Richard Boylan, author, adventurer and director, was born.
(MC, 12/11/01)
1936 Dec 11, Hannibal Harris, man of letters, epic poet, was born.
(MC, 12/11/01)
1936 Dec 11, An eerie glow over Chicago took place that some believe was a rare display of the Aurora Borealis.
(MC, 12/11/01)
1936 Dec 11, Britain's King Edward VIII abdicated the throne in order to marry American divorcee Wallis Warfield Simpson. Edward VIII had been king of Great Britain and Ireland for less than a year when he abdicated the throne to marry "the woman I love,"--the twice-divorced American Wallis Warfield Spencer Simpson. The eldest child of King George V and Queen Mary, Edward met the Baltimore-born Mrs. Simpson in 1931 while she was still married to her second husband. Their relationship caused much consternation among British traditionalists since the Church of England forbade divorced persons to remarry and would not recognize a marriage between Edward and Mrs. Simpson. After his ascension to the throne on January 20, 1936, Edward VIII expressed his desire to marry Mrs. Simpson and, if he could not do so and remain king, he said he was "prepared to go." After his abdication, Edward was awarded the title Duke of Windsor by his brother, King George VI. Edward and Mrs. Simpson married on June 3, 1937.
(AP, 12/11/97)(HNPD, 12/11/98)
1937 Dec 11, Jim Harrison, novelist and poet (Legends of the Fall), was born.
(HN, 12/11/00)
1937 Dec 11, Italy withdrew from the League of Nations.
(AP, 12/11/97)
1939 Dec 11, Tom McGuane, novelist and screenwriter, was born. His work includes “The Sporting Club" and “Bushwacked Piano."
(HN, 12/11/00)
1939 Dec 11, New anti Jewish measurements in Poland were proclaimed.
(MC, 12/11/01)
1941 Dec 11, Germany and Italy declared war on the United States; the U.S. responded in kind.
(AP, 12/11/97)(HN, 12/11/98)
1941 Dec 11, A Japanese invasion fleet attacked Wake Island, which was defended by 439 US marines, 75 sailors and 6 soldiers. The defenders sank 4 Japanese ships, damaged 8 and destroyed a submarine.
(SFC, 12/12/01, p.A2)
1941 Dec 11, Guam was occupied by Japanese troops.
(WUD, 1944, p.1683)
1943 Dec 11, John Kerry, Massachusetts Senator and 2004 Democrat presidential candidate, was born in Denver, Colorado.
(SSFC, 2/29/04, p.D2)
1943 Dec 11, Donna Mills, actress (Knots Landing, Incident), was born in Chicago, Illinois.
(MC, 12/11/01)
1943 Dec 11, U.S. Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, demanded that Hungary, Rumania, and Bulgaria withdraw from the war.
(HN, 12/11/98)
1945 Dec 11, B-29 Superfortress shattered all records by crossing the U.S. in five hours and 27 minutes.
(HN, 12/11/98)
1946 Dec 11, The United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) was established. The organization received a Nobel Prize in 1965.
(AP, 12/11/97)(MC, 12/11/01)
1946 Dec 11, Spain was suspended from the UN.
(MC, 12/11/01)
1948 Dec 11, United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194 was passed near the end of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. The resolution expresses appreciation for the efforts of UN Envoy Folke Bernadotte after his assassination by members of the Stern Gang. It was later often quoted in support of the Palestinian right of return.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_General_Assembly_Resolution_194)(Econ, 9/6/08, p.68)
1951 Dec 11, Joe DiMaggio announced his retirement from baseball.
(www.thebaseballpage.com/past/pp/dimaggiojoe/)
1952 Dec 11, Stanford scientist demonstrated the new $1,750,000 linear electron accelerator. Its 200-foot barrel fired electrons at 99.99% the speed of light.
(SFC, 12/6/02, p.E16)
1952 Dec 11, The outbound Norwegian ship Fernstream was sliced open by the inbound SS Hawaiian Rancher under heavy fog inside the Golden Gate. The Fernstream sank in 30 minutes but all passengers escaped.
(SFC, 12/6/02, p.E16)
1955 Dec 11, Archer Milton Huntingon (b.1970) died in NYC. He had inherited a fortune from his father, who had built ships and railroads. In 1904 he founded the Hispanic Society of America in New York City and used his fortune to carry out his goal of building a museum of Hispanic culture, which opened to the public in Manhattan in 1908.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archer_Milton_Huntington)(AP, 4/1/17)
1955 Dec 11, Israel launched an attack on Syrian positions along the Sea of Galilee.
(EWH, 1968, p.1241)(HN, 12/11/98)
1957 Dec 11, The movie "Peyton Place," based on the novel by Grace Metalious, starred Lana Turner and had its world premiere in Camden, Maine, where most of it had been filmed.
(AP, 12/11/07)(SFC, 8/13/14, p.E8)
1961 Dec 11, "Please, Mr. Postman" by Marvelettes was released.
(MC, 12/11/01)
1961 Dec 11, A U.S. aircraft carrier carrying Army helicopters arrived in Saigon. This was the first direct American military support for South Vietnam's battle against Communist guerrillas. JFK provided 425 US military helicopter crewmen to South Vietnam to provide training and support for South Vietnamese forces.
(AP, 12/11/97)(MC, 12/11/01)
1961 Dec 11, Adolf Eichmann was found guilty of war crimes in Israel.
(MC, 12/11/01)
1962 Dec 11, In San Francisco the L’Italia building at Stockton and Green fell under the wrecker’s ball. The 45-year-old building had housed the largest Italian-language newspaper this side of New York. The newspaper, founded in 1886 had merged with the La Voce Popolo in 1939. It now moved to new quarters at 70 Otis Street.
(SSFC, 12/9/12, DB p.46)
1964 Dec 11, Frank Sinatra Jr. was returned to his parent’s home after being kidnapped for the ransom amount of $240,000.
(HN, 12/11/98)
1965 Dec 11, Sam Cooke (b.1931), pop singer, was shot to death by a motel manager in Los Angeles after a prostitute stole his clothes and money. His hits included “You Send Me," “Cupid," and “Chain Gang." In 2005 Peter Guralnick authored “Dream Boogie: The Triumph of Sam Cooke."
(SSFC, 10/16/05, p.M3)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Cooke)
1967 Dec 11, The Concorde, a joint British-French venture and the world’s first supersonic airliner, was unveiled in Toulouse, France.
(HN, 12/11/98)
1970 Dec 11, Walt Disney's "Aristocats" was released.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Aristocats)
1972 Dec 11, Challenger, the Lunar Lander for Apollo 17, touched down on the Moon's surface. It was the last time that men visited the Moon. The last two men to walk on the surface of the moon were Harrison Schmitt and Eugene Cernan. Cernan and Schmitt conducted the longest lunar exploration of the Apollo program (75 hours), driving the lunar rover about 36 kilometers (22 miles) in all, ranging as far as 7.37 kilometers (4.5 miles) from the lunar module Challenger and collecting some 243 pounds of soil and rock samples.
(HNQ, 7/21/99)(HN, 12/11/99)
1972 Dec 11, In Paris peace negotiations between Kissinger and Le Duc Tho collapsed after Kissinger presented a list of 69 changes demanded by South Vietnamese President Thieu. President Nixon now issues an ultimatum to North Vietnam that serious negotiations must resume within 72 hours. Hanoi does not respond. As a result Nixon ordered Operation Linebacker II (see Dec 18), eleven days and nights of maximum force bombing against military targets in Hanoi by B-52 bombers.
(www.historyplace.com/unitedstates/vietnam/index-1969.html)
1974 Dec 11, In Chile General Augusto Pinochet took the title of president of the republic.
(SFC, 12/11/06, p.A4)
1976 Dec 11, Hungarian art forger Elmyr de Hory (b.1906) died of a lethal overdose of barbiturates in Ibiza, Spain. The 1969 book "Fake" by Clifford Irving was about De Hory and both Irving and de Hory were featured in the 1975 Orson Welles film "F" for Fake.
(SFC, 7/29/99, p.E6)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elmyr_de_Hory)
1978 Dec 11, Six masked men bound 10 employees at Lufthansa cargo area at NY Kennedy Airport & made off with $5.8 M in cash & jewelry. Nicholas Pileggi wrote "Wise Guys," which described his participation in the heist. The robbery inspired the movie "Goodfellas." On Jan 23, 2014, Vincent Asaro (78) was arrested at his home in NYC and charged with helping direct the heist as well as a 1969 murder.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lufthansa_heist)(SFC, 5/10/97, p.A3)(SFC, 1/24/14, p.A22)
1978 Dec 11, Massive demonstrations took place in Tehran against the Shah. In Isfahan, Iran, 40 people were killed and 60 wounded during riots against the Shah.
(WUD, 1994, p.1691)(HN, 12/11/98)
1979 Dec 11, Charles J. Haughey (1925-2006) was elected in Ireland as Taoiseach and leader of Fianna Fail. He led 3 administrations 1979-1981, 1982, and 1987-1992. In 2000 he agreed to pay $1.23 million in back taxes for gifts received while in office.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Haughey)(SFC, 4/4/00, p.A12)
1980 Dec 11, "Magnum P.I.," starring Tom Selleck, premiered on CBS television.
(AP, 12/11/05)
1980 Dec 11, President Carter signed into a law legislation creating a $1.6 billion environmental "superfund" to pay for cleaning up chemical spills and toxic waste dumps. The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980 (CERCLA or Superfund) was established by the US Congress to clean up America's worst hazardous waste sites. Fifteen years later more than $20 billion had been spent with 1300 waste sites identified but only a small fraction cleaned. The fund was established in response to toxic chemicals seeping into a housing development at Love Canal in New York. The aim was to require private parties to clean up past pollution when they could be found. The Fed would pay where the responsible parties could not be determined. It took 21 years and the removal of 1,200 cubic meters of soil to clean up Love Canal.
(www.epa.gov/superfund/20years/ch2pg3.htm)(WSJ, 10/25/95, p.A-18)(SFC, 6/8/96, p.A13)(Econ 6/10/17, p.24)
1980 Dec 11, Pres.-elect Ronald Reagan nominated Caspar Weinberger as Sec. of Defense.
(SFC, 12/9/05, p.F2)
1980 Dec 11, Massachusetts Sec. of State Michael Connolly banned the sale of Apple Computer stock arguing that the $22 price per share was too high.
(SFC, 12/9/05, p.F6)
1981 Dec 11, Concerned about the safety of Americans in Libya, the Reagan administration asked them to leave. It also invalidated the use of US passports for travel to Libya.
(AP, 12/19/03)
1981 Dec 11, The UN Security Council chose Javier Perez de Cuellar of Peru to be the fifth secretary-general of the world body. He served to 1992.
(SFC, 12/14/96, p.A1)(AP, 12/11/97)
1981 Dec 11, In El Salvador hundreds of people were killed over 3 days in the village of El Mozote by an elite US-trained army battalion led by Commander Domingo Monterrosa. In 1991 the office of Maria Julia Hernandez (1939-2007) published the first investigation into El Mozote. In 1992, under a UN sponsored Truth Commission, the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team found 143 skeletons, 131 of which belonged to children under 12. The bullet cartridges showed manufacture in Lake City, Mo. In Dec, 2012, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruled that El Salvador should reopen its investigation into the army’s killing of some 1000 civilians.
(SFC, 5/12/96, Z1p.4)(Econ, 4/14/07, p.97)(SFC, 12/12/12, p.A2)(Econ, 6/8/19, p.33)
1983 Dec 11, Pope John Paul II visited a Lutheran church in Rome, the first visit by a Roman Catholic pontiff to a Protestant church in his own diocese.
(www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/speeches/1983/december/index.htm)
1984 Dec 11, Kimberly Billy (19) of Stockton, Ca., went missing. Her remains were found in 2012 in a compacted well in Linden, Ca., and attributed to Speed Freak Killers Wesley Shermantine and Loren Herzog.
(SFC, 3/31/12, p.C1)
1987 Dec 11, NATO allies urged the U.S. Senate to ratify the intermediate-range missile treaty quickly and underscored their support by pledging to let the Soviet Union inspect missile bases in five European countries.
(AP, 12/11/97)
1988 Dec 11, SES Astra SA, a subsidiary of SES Global, launched a communications satellite, made by GE Astrospace. Sky Television, later BSkyB (1990), became its 1st customer when it bought 4 transponders in 1989.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SES_Astra)
1988 Dec 11, Sixty-two people were killed when tons of illegal fireworks exploded in a Mexico City marketplace.
(AP, 12/11/98)
1988 Dec 11, A Soviet military transport plane crashed, killing nearly 80 people involved in Armenian earthquake relief efforts.
(AP, 12/11/98)
1989 Dec 11, President Bush, facing criticism at home for sending two U.S. officials to China, defended the diplomatic overture despite the Beijing government's crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators the previous June.
(AP, 12/11/99)
1990 Dec 11, Ivana Trump was divorced from real estate mogul Donald Trump after 12 years of marriage.
(AP, 12/11/00)
1990 Dec 11, Four people died near downtown Columbus, Ohio, after their hot air balloon hit a television tower and deflated.
(AP, 2/26/13)
1990 Dec 11, In Chattanooga, Ten., 12 died in a 99 vehicle accident on I-75 due to fog.
(www.southeastroads.com/i-075c_tn.html)
1990 Dec 11, Hundreds of foreigners flew out of Iraq and Iraqi-occupied Kuwait, ending four months of captivity following Iraq’s invasion of its oil-rich neighbor.
(AP, 12/11/00)
1991 Dec 11, A jury in West Palm Beach, Fla., acquitted William Kennedy Smith of sexual assault and battery, rejecting the allegations of Patricia Bowman.
(AP, 12/11/97)
1991 Dec 11, European Community leaders meeting in the Dutch city of Maastricht hammered out a compromise for a loose federation of their countries. The Maastricht treaty was signed on February 7, 1992, and entered into force on November 1, 1993. It set entry terms for joining a European monetary union.
(WSJ, 11/18/96, p.A10)(WSJ, 3/3/97, p.A1)(AP, 12/11/01)
1992 Dec 11, President-elect Clinton tapped Robert Reich to be labor secretary and Donna Shalala to be secretary of Health and Human Services.
(AP, 12/11/97)
1992 Dec 11, A severe storm pounded the upper Atlantic coast with snow, rain and high winds.
(AP, 12/11/97)
1993 Dec 11, President Clinton, in his weekly radio address, said the nation must fight "violence with values" and praised radio stations that refused to play songs advocating violent crime or showing contempt for women.
(AP, 12/11/98)
1993 Dec 11, Eduardo Frei (b.1942) was elected president of Chile.
(www.hrw.org/reports/1995/WR95/AMERICAS-02.htm)
1994 Dec 11, Leaders of 34 Western Hemisphere nations signed a free-trade declaration in Miami.
(AP, 12/11/99)
1994 Dec 11, A Philippine Airlines flight from Manila to Tokyo was bombed. A Japanese passenger was killed and 10 people were injured. Later US prosecutors accused Ramzi Ahmed Yousef of placing the bomb and of masterminding the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. Yousef denied placing the airline bomb because he was imprisoned at the time.
(SFC, 5/31/96, A4)
1994 Dec 11, Thousands of Russian troops backed by armored columns and jets rolled into breakaway republic of Chechnya in a bid to restore Moscow's control over the region. Russia under Yeltsin sent in troops to put down the Chechnya rebellion but met strong resistance and suffered heavy casualties. There was no attempt by Pres. Yeltsin to legitimize the military action in parliament.
(SFC, 9/5/96, p.A10)(SFC, 12/26/96, p.B1)(SFC, 5/13/97, p.A12)(SFC, 9/9/98, p.A10) (AP, 12/11/99)
1995 Dec 11, Utah Congresswoman Enid Greene Waldholtz held an emotional news conference in which she publicly addressed the scandal surrounding her personal and campaign finances and blamed the mess on her estranged husband, Joe.
(AP, 12/11/00)
1995 Dec 11, The Malden Mills textile manufacturing plant in Lawrence, Mass., burned down. Owner Aaron Feuerstein retained all his employees on full pay until the plant was rebuilt. The plants manufactured Polartec and Polarfleece synthetic fabrics.
(SFEC, 9/8/96, Par p.4)
1996 Dec 11, William McNeill, American historian, won the Erasmus Prize and $172,000. The prize is awarded to people or institutions that have made an exceptionally important contribution to European culture, society or social science.
(SFC, 12/13/96, p.C10)
1996 Dec 11, In Hong Kong a China-organized panel of 400 business leaders approved shipping tycoon Tung Chee-hwa as the chief executive of the semi-autonomous government when China recovers sovereignty on Jul 1, 1997.
(SFC, 12/11/96, p.C3)(AP, 12/11/97)
1996 Dec 11, A mother and son were killed and 5 others wounded when Palestinian militants raked a settler’s car with gunfire in the West Bank. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a Damascus based faction that opposed the PLO’s peace with Israel was blamed. It was the 28th anniversary of the PFLP.
(SFC, 12/12/96, p.C2)
1996 Dec 11, In Russia union leaders decided to end the coal miners’ strike. Up to 400,000 miners had taken part.
(WSJ, 12/12/96, p.A13)
1996 Dec 11, In Rwanda the government published a list of 1,946 suspects ineligible for any punishment less than the firing squad for the 1994 genocide.
(SFC, 12/11/96, p.C2)
1997 Dec 11, Henry Cisneros, President Clinton's first housing secretary, was indicted for conspiracy, obstructing justice and making false statements about payments to former mistress. Cisneros, who later pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor, was eventually pardoned by President Clinton.
(AP, 12/11/02)
1997 Dec 11, A US federal judge ordered Microsoft not to bundle IE4 in Windows.
(http://news.com.com/2100-1001-206287.html?legacy=cnet)
1997 Dec 11, From Austria scientists reported in Nature that they had demonstrated a form of tele-transportation. They teleported the physical condition of a photon using a phenomenon called entanglement.
(SFC, 12/11/97, p.A4)
1997 Dec 11, The 55-member Organization of the Islamic conference ended their meeting in Iran with the declaration that “the killing of innocents is strictly forbidden in Islam." The group also called for full respect for the dignity and rights of Muslim women and criticized Israel for “state terrorism."
(SFC, 12/12/97, p.B2)
1997 Dec 11, Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams became the first political ally of the IRA to meet a British leader in 76 years as he conferred with Prime Minister Tony Blair in London.
(AP, 12/11/98)
1997 Dec 11, In Kyoto, Japan, negotiators at the conference on global warming reached a compromise with a commitment by some 38 industrialized nations to cut greenhouse gas emissions by an average of 5% from 1990 levels over the next 10-15 years. Over 160 nations endorsed the treaty that binds industrialized nations to cut greenhouse gases. It was signed by 171 nations. Int’l. aviation was excluded from the protocol on condition that by 2007 countries and airlines of the Int’l. Civil Aviation Organization (ICOA) come up with a way of reducing emissions through a trading scheme.
(SFC, 12/11/97, p.A1)(WSJ, 12/11/97, p.A1)(SFC, 5/29/98, p.A2)(Econ, 6/10/06, p.67)
1997 Dec 11, Russia announced that it would terminate a recently negotiated 10-year contract with the US on uranium sales, and planned to sell its uranium on the open market. The decision could bring Russia an extra $500 million.
(SFC, 12/12/97, p.B6)
1997 Dec 11, In Spain Jose Luis Caso, a former town councilor in Renteria, was killed by two suspected Basque separatists in Irun.
(SFC, 12/12/97, p.B6)
1997 Dec 11, From Vietnam it was reported that 56 people have died of dengue fever in southern Kien Giang province following Typhoon Linda.
(SFC, 12/11/97, p.C7)
1998 Dec 11, Pres. Clinton appealed for forgiveness but majority Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee voted 21 to 16 to approve 3 articles of impeachment.
(SFC, 12/12/98, p.A1)(AP, 12/11/99)
1998 Dec 11, The Mars Climate Orbiter blasted off on a 9 ½ month journey to the Red Planet. The probe disappeared in September 1999, apparently destroyed because scientists had failed to convert English measures to metric values.
(SFC, 12/11/98, p.D6)(SFC, 12/12/98, p.A10)(AP, 12/11/99)
1998 Dec 11, Hutomo “Tommy" Mandala Putra, Suharto’s youngest son, was charged as a suspect in a corruption case. Also charged was Beddu Amang, a former chief of the state-run food distribution agency known as Bulog.
(SFC, 12/12/98, p.B2)
1998 Dec 11, Israeli troops fired on hundreds of protesting Palestinians killing 2 and wounding dozens.
(SFC, 12/12/98, p.A14)
1998 Dec 11, A Thai Airways Airbus A310-200 jet crashed near the airport at Surat Thani. 45 people survived and 101 died.
(SFC, 12/12/98, p.A15)(WSJ, 12/14/98, p.A1)
1999 Dec 11, Ron Dayne, Wisconsin’s record-setting tailback, was a landslide winner in the Heisman Trophy balloting.
(AP, 12/11/00)
1999 Dec 11, Agreeing with his wife, President Clinton told CBS Radio his 1993 “don’t ask, don’t tell" policy on gays in the military wasn’t working, and he pledged to work with the Pentagon to find a way to fix it.
(AP, 12/11/00)
1999 Dec 11, In Algeria 15 people were massacred outside Blida. Many of the victims were burned alive in a van.
(SFC, 12/15/99, p.B3)
1999 Dec 11, In the Azores a SATA airline ATP turboprop crashed on Sao Jorge island and all 35 people aboard were killed.
(SFEC, 12/12/99, p.D1)
1999 Dec 11, In Chechnya Russian forces halted attacks on Grozny to give an estimated 10-40,000 civilians a chance to leave. An estimated 4,000 rebel fighters were holed up there.
(SFEC, 12/12/99, p.A26)
1999 Dec 11, In Chile presidential elections were held. Ricardo Lagos, a leftist moderate, was the candidate for the governing Concertacion. Joaquin Lagos, a right-wing populist, was a member of Opus Dei, a conservative Catholic organization.
(SFC, 12/11/99, p.A16)
1999 Dec 11, In Sri Lanka rebels led by Villupillai Prabhakaran pushed toward Jaffna with an attack at Elephant Pass. The Defense Ministry claimed that 261 rebels were killed as opposed to 12 soldiers and 4 civilians. Rebels put their losses at 38.
(SFC, 12/15/99, p.A17)
1999 Dec 11, In Uganda anti-government rebels killed at least 21 people in 2 attacks. In one the Congo-based Allied Democratic Forces raided police headquarters in Bundibugyo and killed 9 people.
(SFC, 12/14/99, p.B2)
2000 Dec 11, Shortstop Alex Rodriguez agreed to a $252 million deal with the Texas Rangers, by far the most lucrative contract with any sports team.
(AP, 12/11/01)
2000 Dec 11, Pres. Clinton signed the bipartisan $7.8 billion Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan. CERP included 68 projects planned over 30 years and was the largest environmental restoration effort in history. In 2015 the cost of restoration was placed at about $16 billion.
(Econ, 10/8/05, p.32)(SFC, 12/4/19, p.A7)
2000 Dec 11, The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments from lawyers representing George W. Bush and Al Gore concerning the Florida presidential vote recount.
(AP, 12/11/01)
2000 Dec 11, A federal appeals court declared the Cleveland school voucher program unconstitutional.
(SFC, 12/12/00, p.A3)
2000 Dec 11, The space shuttle Endeavour landed in Florida following its mission to install solar panels on the int’l. space station.
(WSJ, 12/12/00, p.A1)
2000 Dec 11, A US Marine Osprey aircraft crashed in North Carolina and all 4 people aboard were killed. The fleet was grounded the next day.
(SFC, 12/13/00, p.A3)
2000 Dec 11, The EU in Nice reached a compromise in the early hours on a treaty that gave the 4 most populous countries a stronger voice in decision making and paved the way for as many as 13 new members over the next decade.
(SFC, 12/11/00, p.A12)(Econ, 3/17/07, SR p.9)
2000 Dec 11, The UN indicted 11 people in East Timor for last year’s terrorism following independence.
(SFC, 12/12/00, p.B2)
2000 Dec 11, In Iraq Saddam Hussein sent troops into the northern Kurdish zone. Kurds and other non-Arab Iraqis were being displaced further north.
(WSJ, 12/12/00, p.A1)(SFC, 12/13/00, p.B6)
2000 Dec 11, Syria freed some 50 Lebanese political prisoners to placate an anti-Syria movement in Lebanon.
(SFC, 12/12/00, p.B2)
2000 Dec 11, In Trinidad Prime Minister Basdeo Panday, head of the United National Congress, announced victory for 19 parliamentary seats vs. 16 for the black-dominated People’s National Movement.
(SFC, 12/12/00, p.B3)
2001 Dec 11, The US Federal Reserve cut short-term interest rates by .25% to 1.75% in the 11th cut this year. The Dow rose 33 to 9888. the Nasdaq 9 to 2001.
(WSJ, 12/12/01, p.A1)
2001 Dec 11, In the first criminal indictment stemming from Sept. 11, a US grand jury in Virginia charged Zacarias Moussaoui, a French citizen of Moroccan descent, with conspiring to murder thousands in the suicide hijackings. Moussaoui pleaded guilty to conspiracy in 2005 and was sentenced to life in prison.
(WSJ, 12/12/01, p.A1)(SFC, 12/12/01, p.A1)(AP, 12/11/06)
2001 Dec 11, US Federal agents carried out dozens of raids and seized computers in some 27 cities and 21 states suspected of pirating software over the Internet. The “Warez" network of software pirates was targeted.
(SFC, 12/12/01, p.A3)
2001 Dec 11, US bombers continued to hit sites at Tora Bora, Afghanistan, as a deadline for al Qaeda surrender passed.
(SFC, 12/12/01, p.A1)
2001 Dec 11, A federal appeals court struck a Louisiana law that allowed vocal classroom prayer. The state had passed a 1976 law that required schools to allow a brief time in “silent meditation." In 1992 the wording was changed to “silent prayer or meditation." In 1999 the word “silent" was deleted.
(SFC, 12/12/01, p.A7)
2001 Dec 11, The chairman of the militant Jewish Defense League, Irv Rubin, and an associate, Earl Krugel, were arrested on suspicion of plotting to blow up a Los Angeles mosque and the office of an Arab-American congressman. Rubin died November 14th, 2002, 10 days after what federal officials described as a suicide attempt in jail.
(AP, 12/11/02)
2001 Dec 11, The US government approved Swiss food giant Nestle SA's $10.3 billion purchase of Ralston Purina.
(AP, 12/11/02)
2001 Dec 11, Nasa agreed in principle to let Russia’s space agency send Mark Shuttleworth, a South Africa Internet tycoon, to the space station in April for some $20 million.
(WSJ, 12/12/01, p.A1)
2001 Dec 11, Australia reported that an Australian citizen, David Hicks (26), who had trained with the al Qaeda, had been captured in Afghanistan.
(SFC, 12/12/01, p.A19)(SFC, 12/15/01, p.A16)
2001 Dec 11, China’s official entry to the World Trade Organization (WTO), approved in Qatar on Nov 10, became effective.
(Econ, 12/10/11, p.45)(www.china-un.ch/eng/qtzz/wto/t85612.htm)
2001 Dec 11, Israeli helicopter attacks in the Gaza Khan Younis refugee camp killed 3 people and wounded 20.
(WSJ, 12/12/01, p.A1)(SFC, 12/12/01, p.A3)
2001 Dec 11, Pakistani officials said 2 nuclear scientists, Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood and Abdul Majid, talked with Osama bin Laden last August in Kabul about nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.
(SFC, 12/12/01, p.A19)
2002 Dec 11, It was reported that the US had filed allegations that tens of millions of dollars paid by American oil companies to Kazakstan during the 1990s wound up in Swiss bank accounts of top Kazakstani officials.
(SFC, 12/11/02, p.A15)
2002 Dec 11, The United States let an intercepted shipment of North Korean missiles proceed to the Persian Gulf country of Yemen a day after the vessel was detained.
(AP, 12/11/03)
2002 Dec 11, A congressional report found that intelligence agencies that were supposed to protect Americans from the Sept. 11 hijackers failed to do so because they were poorly organized, poorly equipped and slow to pursue clues that might have prevented the attacks.
(AP, 12/11/03)
2002 Dec 11, It was reported that the Chicago-based Pritzker family planned to break up its $15 billion empire over the next decade.
(WSJ, 12/12/02, p.B1)
2002 Dec 11, Bank of America agreed to pay $1.6 billion for a 25% stake in Grupo Financiero Santander Serfin, one of Mexico's largest banks.
(WSJ, 12/12/02, p.A1)
2002 Dec 11, A US Black Hawk helicopter on routine training crashed and killed five American soldiers in the hills of central Honduras.
(AP, 12/14/02)(SFC, 12/13/02, p.A14)
2002 Dec 11, Chile's Pres. Ricardo Lagos announced it had reached an agreement for a free trade accord with the United States.
(AP, 12/11/02)(SFC, 12/12/02, p.A20)
2002 Dec 11, In Indonesia a mudslide above a resort in East Java killed at least 60 people. Tree-cutting above the resort was blamed and a suit against a state-owned forestry company was planned.
(SFC, 12/14/02, p.A7)
2002 Dec 11, Israeli troops killed a suspected Palestinian militant in a West Bank refugee camp as he tried to escape.
(AP, 12/11/02)
2002 Dec 11, Israeli troops in Gaza shot and killed 5 unarmed Palestinians trying to penetrate a security fence.
(SFC, 12/13/02, p.A22)
2002 Dec 11, A Nicaraguan judge ordered three U.S. companies to pay $490 million to 583 banana workers allegedly affected by the use of the pesticide Nemagon.
(AP, 12/14/02)
2002 Dec 11, A Pakistan human rights group said 461 women had been killed this year by family members in so-called honor killings in Punjab and Sindh, up from 372 last year.
(SFC, 12/12/02, p.A14)
2002 Dec 11, Yemen said Scud missiles found hidden aboard a North Korean ship seized by Spain and the United States were destined for its army and demanded them back. Pres. Bush ordered them released. Bush later created a coalition of members to block arms shipments "of proliferation concern."
(Reuters, 12/11/02)(SFC, 12/12/02, p.A19)(WSJ, 10/21/03, p.A1)
2003 Dec 11, US officials delayed a conference for companies seeking $18.6 billion in reconstruction contracts in Iraq by eight days until Dec. 19.
(AP, 12/11/03)
2003 Dec 11, Pentagon officials said efforts to create a new Iraqi army to help take over the country's security have suffered a setback with the resignations of a third of the soldiers trained.
(AP, 12/11/03)
2003 Dec 11, A new 2nd home for the National Air and Space Museum opened in Chantilly, Va., some 28 miles west of the original's home in Washington D.C.
(AP, 12/11/04)
2003 Dec 11, US health officials reported an early flu outbreak had hit all 50 states and was widespread in 24.
(AP, 12/11/04)
2003 Dec 11, Striking Kroger workers in West Virginia, Kentucky and Ohio ratified a new contract. The strike began Oct 13.
(SFC, 12/12/03, p.B4)
2003 Dec 11, The DJIA closed over 10,000 (10,008) for the 1st time in over 18 months.
(WSJ, 1/2/04, p.R12)
2003 Dec 11, ASEAN members met for a 2-day summit in Tokyo. Japan joined the 10 Southeast Asian nations in a pledge to expand trade and join forces on regional security.
(AP, 12/11/03)
2003 Dec 11, In Quebec, Canada, labor protests left hundreds of buses idle at the beginning of a day of province wide protests against Premier Jean Charest's government.
(AP, 12/11/03)
2003 Dec 11, In China's far northwest a coal mine fire in Urumqi killed nine miners, and rescue efforts were hampered by repeated gas explosions.
(AP, 12/13/03)
2003 Dec 11, In Ecuador teachers striking for raises and parents demanding better schools clashed with police in protests that sought symbolically to take over the capital's downtown.
(AP, 12/11/03)
2003 Dec 11, A French panel recommended a national ban on Islamic head scarves, Jewish skullcaps and large crucifixes at public schools.
(WSJ, 12/12/03, p.A1)
2003 Dec 11, A German court freed a Moroccan accused of supporting the Sept. 11 al-Qaida terror cell in Hamburg, saying there was new evidence he did not know about the plot.
(AP, 12/11/04)
2003 Dec 11, In Haiti police fired tear gas and warning shots at thousands of students calling for President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's ouster, as four private radio stations shut down because government supporters called in death threats.
(AP, 12/11/03)(SFC, 12/12/03, p.A3)
2003 Dec 11, In Iraq a suicide bomber killed 1 US soldier and wounded 14 others at a military base in Ramadi.
(SFC, 12/12/03, p.A22)
2003 Dec 11, In Israel explosives at a currency exchange in Tel Aviv killed 3 people and wounded 12 in what was labeled a criminal matter.
(SFC, 12/12/03, p.A16)
2003 Dec 11, The Italian Parliament imposed controls on medically assisted reproduction.
(SFC, 12/12/03, p.A17)
2003 Dec 11, Ahmadou Kourouma, Ivorian writer, died. His 5th novel, incomplete, was published in French in 2004.
(Econ, 8/28/04, p.76)
2003 Dec 11, The UN children's fund said some 65 million girls worldwide are kept out of school, increasing the risks that they will suffer from extreme poverty, die in childbirth or from AIDS and pass those dangers on to future generations.
(AP, 12/11/03)
2003 Dec 11, Uzbekistan said it will let the US station troops to help fight terrorism, but would not permit permanent deployment.
(WSJ, 12/12/03, p.A1)
2004 Dec 11, Vitali Klitschko stopped Danny Williams in the eighth round to retain his WBC heavyweight title.
(AP, 12/11/05)
2004 Dec 11, Southern California quarterback Matt Leinart won the 70th Heisman Trophy.
(AP, 12/11/05)
2004 Dec 11, Said Barkat, Algeria’s Agriculture Minister, said almost 170 million euros (225 million dollars) have been spent since 2003 dealing with locust infestation of farmland.
(AP, 12/12/04)
2004 Dec 11, In Bangladesh millions of opposition activists formed a 900-km "human chain" to demonstrate no confidence in the government. Up to 100 people were injured in clashes.
(Reuters, 12/11/04)
2004 Dec 11, Ramiro Velez, regional leader of the National Liberation Army, or ELN, the smaller of Colombia's two rebel groups, was arrested during an operation in Chachaui. He is suspected of masterminding the May 30, 1999, kidnapping of an entire church congregation from a Roman Catholic church in Cali.
(AP, 12/12/04)(SFC, 12/13/04, p.A3)
2004 Dec 11, China ended restrictions limiting foreign retailers to joint ventures.
(WSJ, 12/14/04, p.A13)
2004 Dec 11, Rival factions of Congo's army battled in the eastern region of the vast country, killing several people.
(AP, 12/12/04)
2004 Dec 11, In Iraq insurgents killed 5 Iraqi police officers in Baghdad. A US Marine was killed in Anbar province.
(SSFC, 12/12/04, p.A10)
2004 Dec 11, Marcello Dell'Utri, a close political ally of Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi, was convicted of ties with the Sicilian Mafia and sentenced to nine years in prison.
(AP, 12/11/04)
2004 Dec 11, Myanmar's state media announced the military junta would release a further 5,070 prisoners.
(AP, 12/11/04)
2004 Dec 11, Somalia's parliament passed a motion of no-confidence against the country's new prime minister and his Cabinet, effectively sacking the government. Some 153 members of the 275-member transitional parliament voted against Prime Minister Ali Mohammed Gedi, accusing him of failing to respect power-sharing arrangements agreed to by warlords and the country's main clans.
(AP, 12/11/04)
2004 Dec 11, Taiwan's pro-independence parties were defeated in legislative elections.
(AP, 12/11/04)
2004 Dec 11, Doctors in Austria determined that Ukrainian presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko had been poisoned with dioxin, which caused the severe disfigurement and partial paralysis of his face.
(AP, 12/11/05)
2005 Dec 11, Paramount Pictures announced it was buying independent film studio DreamWorks SKG Inc.
(AP, 12/11/06)
2005 Dec 11, In Afghanistan a suicide bomber set off explosives near a US and Afghan military convoy in the southern city of Kandahar, killing himself and wounding three civilians.
(AP, 12/11/05)
2005 Dec 11, In Australia racial tension erupted into violence on a Sydney beach when around 5,000 people, some yelling racist chants, attacked youths of a Middle Eastern background. White youths were angered by reports that youths of Lebanese descent had assaulted two lifeguards. Young men of Arab descent retaliated in several Sydney suburbs, fighting with police and smashing cars.
(AP, 12/11/05)(AP, 12/11/06)
2005 Dec 11, Bangladesh President Iazuddin Ahmed approved an ordinance that allows law enforcers to tap telephones, a measure set to aid the fight against Islamic militants.
(AFP, 12/12/05)
2005 Dec 11, In Britain a huge inferno followed explosions at the Buncefield oil depot. 43 people were injured. In 2009 a court said French oil giant Total must pay bills valued at more than 750 million pounds for people whose homes and businesses were damaged in the fire. In 2010 five companies were ordered to pay fines and costs of more than £9 million (13.8 million dollars, 10.6 million euros).
(http://tinyurl.com/chwzwb)(AFP, 3/20/09)(AFP, 7/16/10)
2005 Dec 11, In Chile Michelle Bachelet easily defeated two feuding right-wing candidates with 46 percent of the vote, but fell shy of the 50 percent needed for victory.
(AP, 12/12/05)
2005 Dec 11, China’s government said the commander of forces that shot and killed people protesting land seizures in a southern village has been detained, as police in riot gear patrolled the community and appealed for order.
(AP, 12/11/05)
2005 Dec 11, About 4,000 anti-globalization activists some carrying a giant spider and others wheeling statues of emaciated people marched in the first mass protest against the World Trade Organization's summit in Hong Kong.
(AP, 12/11/05)
2005 Dec 11, Iran's parliament approved Kazem Vaziri Mahaneh, who has been acting minister for the past three months, the 4th nominee for the key post of oil minister.
(AP, 12/11/05)
2005 Dec 11, Iran offered the United States a share in building a new nuclear power plant in an apparent effort to curb U.S. opposition to its atomic program.
(AP, 12/11/05)
2005 Dec 11, Japanese peace envoy Yasushi Akashi invited Sri Lanka and Tamil Tiger rebels to meet in Japan for talks to save their ceasefire, which is threatened with collapse after 34 people were killed in fresh violence.
(AP, 12/11/05)
2005 Dec 11, In eastern Pakistan a firecracker thrown by a celebrant at a wedding set fire to a bus filled with guests, killing at least 40 people.
(AP, 12/11/05)
2005 Dec 11, In South Korea the government ordered striking pilots at Korean Air back to work on the 4th day of a walkout.
(WSJ, 12/12/05, p.A17)
2006 Dec 11, US Military experts gave Pres. Bush a dire assessment of the war in Iraq, but shared a skeptical view of the recent Iraq Study Group report.
(SFC, 12/12/06, p.A1)
2006 Dec 11, Scientists from IBM, Macronix and Qimonda said they developed a material that made "phase-change" memory 500 to 1,000 times faster than the commonly-used "flash" memory, while using half as much power. Intel said it would introduce products in 2007. Samsung said it expected to introduce products in 2008.
(AFP, 12/11/06)(SFC, 12/12/06, p.B3)
2006 Dec 11, Siemens, a German conglomerate, filed papers with the SEC to account for some $265 million siphoned out of secret bank accounts in Liechtenstein, Austria and Switzerland.
(Econ, 12/16/06, p.65)
2006 Dec 11, The Hague-based Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) said it has granted the US and Russia a five-year extension to the 2007 deadline for destroying their chemical weapon stockpiles. The Chemicals Weapons Convention which went into effect in April 1997. Extensions were also granted to India and Libya as well as one country that requested anonymity.
(AP, 12/11/06)
2006 Dec 11, After a two-day journey, space shuttle Discovery reached the international space station for a weeklong stay.
(AP, 12/11/07)
2006 Dec 11, In Azerbaijan authorities said they would allow a top independent TV station back on the air, but warned that it would have to bid for a broadcasting license next year.
(AP, 12/11/06)
2006 Dec 11, Four advisers to Bangladesh's interim government resigned as soldiers patrolled towns and cities to try to end weeks of often-violent protests.
(AP, 12/11/06)
2006 Dec 11, In Britain fears mounted that a serial killer could be at large after the naked corpse of a third prostitute was found within weeks near Ipswich, and a fourth sex worker went missing. The first two murdered women went missing in the red light district of Ipswich, near the eastern coast of England, on November 15 and October 30 respectively.
(AFP, 12/11/06)
2006 Dec 11, Four British soldiers admitted charges relating to an alleged plot to smuggle guns out of Iraq to sell them for cash in Germany, as they appeared at a court martial.
(AP, 12/11/06)
2006 Dec 11, China's banking industry officially opened to full foreign competition, a landmark for the country's financial sector and a day of reckoning for the country's mostly state-owned banks.
(AP, 12/9/06)
2006 Dec 11, European Union foreign ministers decided to suspend 8 out of 35 parts of entry talks with Turkey over Ankara's refusal to open its ports to trade with EU member Cyprus.
(AP, 12/11/06)(Econ, 12/16/06, p.53)
2006 Dec 11, Fiji's military regime banished ousted Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase from the capital and warned that open opposition to the takeover would be met with force.
(AP, 12/11/06)
2006 Dec 11, German investigators confirmed that a car used by Russian businessman Dmitry Kovtun, a contact of fatally poisoned ex-spy Alexander Litvinenko before the two men met, was contaminated with the rare radioactive substance polonium-210.
(AP, 12/11/06)
2006 Dec 11, In Indonesia Irwandi Yusuf, a former GAM rebel leader, headed to easy victory in the first elections in Aceh province since the government and the separatists signed a peace deal in the tsunami-ravaged region last year.
(AP, 12/11/06)(Econ, 12/16/06, p.40)
2006 Dec 11, Iran opened a Holocaust conference that it said would examine whether the genocide took place.
(AP, 12/11/06)
2006 Dec 11, Iran promised $250 million to Palestine’s Hamas-led government.
(WSJ, 12/12/06, p.A1)
2006 Dec 11, Iraqi soldiers rushed to Ghazaliyah, a primarily Sunni area of west Baghdad, to free 23 Iraqis right after they were taken hostage at a checkpoint set up by suspected Shiite militiamen. One terrorist was killed and 4 others arrested. Three explosions struck Baghdad within a span of two hours, after a roadside bomb in the capital killed 3 US soldiers and wounded two on a late-night patrol. A parked car bomb detonated near al-Maamoun college in western Baghdad, killing one student and wounding two others and two policemen. A suicide car bomb hit an abandoned house being used by policemen as an outpost in Dora killing one policeman and wounding five. In Baghdad 3 mortar rounds killed four people and wounded 15, and gunmen stole $1 million from a bank truck and kidnapped its four guards. 3 policemen and four civilians were gunned down in a village near Kirkuk. A huge fire broke out at an oil storage facility after explosions in a volatile area south of Baghdad. At least 66 people were killed or found dead across Iraq. They included 46 men who were bound, blindfolded and shot to death in Baghdad.
(AP, 12/11/06)(AP, 12/12/06)
2006 Dec 11, The Netherlands ended transmission of "free to air" analog television, becoming the first nation to switch completely to digital signals.
(AP, 12/11/06)
2006 Dec 11, Palestinian gunmen killed three young sons of a senior Palestinian intelligence officer, pumping dozens of bullets into their car as it passed through a street crowded with schoolchildren in an apparent botched assassination attempt that could ignite widespread factional fighting.
(AP, 12/11/06)
2006 Dec 11, Two Rwandan ex-soldiers told a panel probing alleged French complicity in the 1994 massacres that France armed and trained members of the Interahamwe militia, a radical militia blamed for most of the killings in Rwanda's 1994 genocide.
(AFP, 12/11/06)
2006 Dec 11, More than 30 prominent Islamic clerics from Saudi Arabia called on Sunni Muslims around the Middle East to support their brethren in Iraq against Shiites and praised the insurgency.
(AP, 12/12/06)
2006 Dec 11, Official sources said the Sudanese government has approved a budget of 11.7 billion dollars for 2007 and is targeting a growth rate of 10%. Rebels in Sudan's western region of Darfur said a government warplane killed eight civilians, mostly children, in a northern village.
(AP, 12/11/06)(Reuters, 12/12/06)
2006 Dec 11, In Turkey a boiler explosion knocked down part of a five-story building housing military families in Diyarbakir, killing at least four people and trapping about four others.
(AP, 12/11/06)
2006 Dec 11, In his farewell address, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan criticized the Bush administration's leadership on the global stage, warning that America must not sacrifice its democratic ideals while waging war against terrorism.
(AP, 12/11/07)
2006 Dec 11, UN officials said Israel has blocked a UN fact-finding mission to the Gaza Strip that was to be led by Nobel Laureate Desmond Tutu. Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said that no final decision has been made.
(AP, 12/11/06)
2006 Dec 11, Zimbabwe said its inflation spiral had risen to 1,098.8 percent last month, a 28.6% hike, as experts cast doubts on state efforts to slash it to the three-digit level. The inflation rate peaked at 1,204.6% in August. Zimbabwe clinched a deal to export 5,000 tons of beef to Hong Kong from next year, the first such long-distance order in five years.
(AFP, 12/11/06)
2007 Dec 11, Pres. Bush granted pardons to 29 people.
(WSJ, 12/12/07, p.A1)
2007 Dec 11, The US Senate Intelligence Committee took closed-door testimony from CIA Director Michael Hayden on how videotapes of terror suspect interrogations were made, then destroyed.
(AP, 12/11/08)
2007 Dec 11, The United States and China signed two deals to safeguard the quality of food and drugs ranging from pet food to certain types of antibiotics imported into the US from China.
(AP, 12/11/07)
2007 Dec 11, US officials in Florida arrested 4 people, 3 from Venezuelan and one from Uruguay, and accused them of being agents of the Venezuelan government. Prosecutors later said the 4 were seeking to silence Guido Alehandro Antonini Wilson, a citizen of both the USA and Venezuela. In August Wilson was detained in Argentina for carrying $800,000 in a suitcase, which prosecutors said was intended to aid the campaign of Cristina Kirchner. Franklin Duran, multimillionaire owner of Industrias Venoco CA, was one of the arrested Venezuelans. In 2008 a federal jury convicted Duran on charges that he was a foreign agent involved in a conspiracy.
(WSJ, 12/13/07, p.A16)(WSJ, 3/10/08, p.A5)(SFC, 11/4/08, p.A4)
2007 Dec 11, In eastern Afghanistan US-led coalition and Afghan forces killed Mullah Sangeen, a senior militant commander responsible for roadside bombings and other attacks. Sangeen was second-in-command to Siraj Haqqani, a militant leader in eastern Afghanistan.
(AP, 12/14/07)
2007 Dec 11, In Algeria car bombs exploded minutes apart in central Algiers, heavily damaging UN buildings and ripping the facade off the wing of a government office. 37 people were killed, including 17 UN employees. Two convicted terrorists who had been freed in an amnesty carried out the suicide bombings at UN and government buildings. The interior ministry later said the blasts were the work of the El Farouk Brigade, which was responsible for a number of other attacks in the last two years. Al-Qaida's self-styled North African branch claimed responsibility.
(Reuters, 12/11/07)(AP, 12/12/07)(AP, 12/13/07)(AFP, 2/6/08)(AP, 12/11/08)
2007 Dec 11, Australia's Deputy PM Julia Gillard (46) took charge of government in the absence of the prime minister, becoming the first woman to run the country in its 106 years as an independent nation. Gillard will lead the government for just 60 hours while PM Kevin Rudd is in Bali for the United Nations climate conference.
(Reuters, 12/11/07)
2007 Dec 11, Australian officials conceded that the welfare system failed a girl who was removed from a remote Aboriginal community after being sexually abused at age 7, then gang raped in 2006 at age 10 when she was returned to live in the town.
(AP, 12/12/07)
2007 Dec 11, Guatemalan legislators approved a new law that tightens adoptions, while allowing pending cases, mostly involving US couples, to go through without meeting stricter requirements.
(AP, 12/11/07)
2007 Dec 11, It was reported that policewomen in Iraq have been told to hand in their guns. Female recruits had dropped to zero since Iraqi authorities took over police recruitment and training in 2006. The US had begun training women in 2004 and graduated 1000 from the police academy. A suicide car bomber detonated his explosives at a checkpoint protecting the compounds of Iraq's former prime minister and a Sunni lawmaker, killing two guards in a neighborhood bordering the fortified Green Zone.
(WSJ, 12/12/07, p.B12)(AP, 12/11/07)
2007 Dec 11, Israeli tanks and bulldozers backed by attack aircraft moved into the southern Gaza Strip, killing four militants in the widest operation in the territory since Islamic Hamas forces wrested control in June.
(AP, 12/11/07)
2007 Dec 11, Trucking unions cut short a meeting with the Italian transport ministry, ending hope that the chaos-causing strike disrupting traffic and petrol deliveries would end soon.
(AP, 12/11/07)
2007 Dec 11, In southeast Nigeria 20 people were killed and several injured when the driver of a truck lost control and rammed into a crowd by the roadside in Awka, Anambra state.
(AFP, 12/12/07)
2007 Dec 11, North and South Korea began regular freight train service across their heavily armed border for the first time in more than a half century, in another symbolic step in their reconciliation.
(AP, 12/11/07)
2007 Dec 11, Pakistan's military vowed a strong response to any international attempt to seize its atomic arsenal as the army successfully test-fired a nuclear-capable cruise missile.
(AP, 12/11/07)
2007 Dec 11, In Peru former President Alberto Fujimori was convicted of abuse of authority and sentenced to six years in prison at the end of the first in a series of trials on charges that include murder, kidnapping and corruption.
(AP, 12/12/07)
2007 Dec 11, A judge from the top court in southern Russia's violence-plagued Dagestan region was fatally shot by an unidentified attacker. Dagestan Supreme Court Justice Kurban Pashayev was shot more than 10 times with a pistol in the entranceway of his apartment building in the provincial capital, Makhachkala. In Ingushetia an 18-year-old rookie in an elite police unit was fatally shot by attackers who fired at him at close range from a passing car as he was walking home after work.
(AP, 12/11/07)
2007 Dec 11, Environmentalists warned that a scenic coastal region could take years to recover from South Korea's worst oil spill, as over 19,000 people worked to contain or clean up the slick.
(AP, 12/11/07)
2007 Dec 11, Darfur rebel group the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) said it had attacked and taken over a Chinese-run oilfield in central Sudan.
(AP, 12/11/07)
2007 Dec 11, Ukraine's parliament narrowly rejected the candidacy of Orange Revolution leader Yulia Tymoshenko for prime minister, but was expected to hold a further vote.
(AFP, 12/11/07)
2008 Dec 11, The $14 billion package to aid General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler LLC collapsed amid disputes over union wage cuts. A band of mostly Republican Southern senators, including states that subsidized foreign auto makers, formed the heart of the opposition.
(AP, 12/12/08)(WSJ, 12/12/08, p.A3)
2008 Dec 11, US Interior Sec. Dirk Kemphorne announced major changes to the Endangered Species Act causing environmental groups to charge that the ‘midnight rules" set to go into effect before Pres. Obama takes offices were intended to eviscerate the wildlife protection law.
(SFC, 12/12/08, p.A1)
2008 Dec 11, Bernard Madoff (70), a quiet force on Wall Street for decades, was arrested and charged with allegedly running a $50 billion "Ponzi scheme" in what may rank among the biggest fraud cases ever.
(AP, 12/12/08)
2008 Dec 11, California’s air quality board approved the nation’s most sweeping plan to reduce global warming by curbing emissions.
(SFC, 12/12/08, p.A1)
2008 Dec 11, California conservation officials said a $9.9 million deal to buy the Sonoma Ranch, also known as the Walsh Property, would be completed by the end of the year.
(SFC, 12/12/08, p.B1)
2008 Dec 11, In Los Angeles the husband and daughter of Karine Hakobyan were killed. On March 26, 2010, Karine Hakobyan was shot to death in Hollywood.
(AP, 3/30/10)
2008 Dec 11, Ron Carey (72), former Teamsters president (1992-1997), died in NYC.
(SFC, 12/13/08, p.B5)
2008 Dec 11, Bettie Page (85), the 1950s secretary-turned-model, died. Her controversial photographs in skimpy attire or none at all helped set the stage for the 1960s sexual revolution.
(AP, 12/11/08)
2008 Dec 11, Australian police said detectives have charged 22 men including a policeman, a senior lawyer and a child care worker in connection with a child pornography-sharing network spanning 70 countries. Brazilian information, which was shared via the international policing network Interpol, identified more than 200 suspects in 70 countries.
(AP, 12/11/08)
2008 Dec 11, Police in Brussels and eastern Belgium detained 14 suspected al-Qaida-linked extremists in raids, including one militant who allegedly was plotting a suicide attack.
(AP, 12/11/08)
2008 Dec 11, As Greece suffered through its sixth day of violence, there were troubling signs of unrest spreading across Europe. Angry youths smashed shop windows, attacked banks and hurled bottles at police in small but violent protests in Spain and Denmark, while cars were set alight outside a consulate in France.
(AP, 12/11/08)
2008 Dec 11, Hong Kong's government confirmed that the deadly H5N1 virus was found at a poultry farm, the first outbreak on a farm here in nearly six years.
(AP, 12/11/08)
2008 Dec 11, Indian authorities reported an outbreak of bird flu in Assam state. Some 245,000 birds had been culled and the outbreak was localized.
(WSJ, 12/12/08, p.A12)
2008 Dec 11, Indonesia and Malaysia agreed to heighten intelligence cooperation to anticipate rising cross-border crime due to the impact of the global economic crisis.
(AP, 12/11/08)
2008 Dec 11, In northern Iraq a suicide bomber struck a crowded restaurant where Kurdish officials were meeting with Arab tribal leaders to discuss long-standing ethnic tensions, killing at least 48 people and wounding nearly 100.
(AP, 12/11/08)(SFC, 12/12/08, p.A4)
2008 Dec 11, Malaysia's government drew flak after admitting it spent 1.68 million dollars a year on PM Badawi’s sprawling residence in the administrative capital Putrajaya.
(AFP, 12/11/08)
2008 Dec 11, Esther Chavez, a women's rights activist, was named the winner of Mexico's National Human Rights Award. She first drew attention to the slayings of young women in the northern border city of Ciudad Juarez in the early 1990s.
(AP, 12/12/08)
2008 Dec 11, Mexican soldiers shot to death Silvia Arzate (35), a pregnant woman, after she reportedly failed to stop at a highway checkpoint in the northern state of Chihuahua.
(AP, 12/12/08)
2008 Dec 11, In southern Nepal a crowded school bus skidded off a bridge on a highway, killing at least 20 students and two teachers. At least 57 others were injured.
(AP, 12/11/08)
2008 Dec 11, Multilateral talks with North Korea failed to break an impasse on checking Pyongyang’s nuclear declarations. This led the US to halt fuel oil shipments until specific steps are taken to verify nuclear activities.
(WSJ, 12/13/08, p.A10)
2008 Dec 11, Pakistan ordered the closure Jemaat-u-Dawa, a charity linked to Lashkar-e-Taiba, the militant group suspected in the Mumbai attacks, a day after the outfit was declared a front for terrorists by the United Nations. A suspected US strike killed six people on the Pakistan side of the Afghan border, a lawless region believed to be a stronghold of al-Qaida.
(AP, 12/11/08)
2008 Dec 11, In northern Russia an explosion and fire ripped through a mine, killing 12 workers.
(AP, 12/12/08)
2008 Dec 11, The South African Reserve Bank cut a key interest rate by a half percentage point to 11.5 percent in a bid to stimulate the flagging economy.
(AP, 12/11/08)
2008 Dec 11, South Korea’s central bank cut its main interest rate by a percentage point to 3%, its 4th and largest cut in two months.
(WSJ, 12/11/08, p.A12)
2008 Dec 11, Venezuelan prosecutors formally charged Manuel Rosales, a leading opposition figure, with corruption, as President Hugo Chavez pushed forward with plans for a referendum to end term limits. Rosales denied any wrongdoing, saying the accusations are politically motivated.
(AP, 12/11/08)
2008 Dec 11, President Robert Mugabe declared that Zimbabwe's cholera crisis was over, even as the UN raised the death toll from the epidemic to 783.
(AP, 12/11/08)
2009 Dec 11, A US counterterrorism official said Saleh al-Somali, a senior al-Qaida operations planner, was killed in an American missile strike this week in western Pakistan. Officials believed that he helped organize plots in New York, Manchester and Norway.
(AP, 12/12/09)(AP, 1/30/12)
2009 Dec 11, US immigration agents arrested 280 people in California as they fanned out across the state for a 3-day search for illegal immigrants.
(SFC, 12/12/09, p.A5)
2009 Dec 11, SF Mayor Newsom called on owners of commercial buildings to conduct an energy audit within 5 years to secure their business license renewal. The results would be provided to the city which would make the information available in a public database.
(SFC, 12/12/09, p.A1)
2009 Dec 11, Spc. Marc A. Hall was jailed, two days before his brigade with the Army's 3rd Infantry Division out of Ft. Stewart, Georgia, was scheduled to leave for Iraq. He was charged with the military offense of communicating a threat after telling his battalion commander that he might shoot or otherwise attack a fellow US soldier. Hall was dismissed in April, 2010, and lost all military benefits earned over at least four years of service, including an earlier tour in Iraq.
(AP, 4/17/10)
2009 Dec 11, Jenny Sanford, South Carolina's first lady, filed for divorce more than five months after his tearful public confession of an affair with an Argentine woman. The former Wall Street vice president helped launch her husband's political career and has been a quiet presence since her husband took office in 2003.
(AP, 12/11/09)
2009 Dec 11, US golfer Tiger Woods announced that he will take a break from his PGA Tour career as he scrambles to salvage his marriage.
(SFC, 12/12/09, p.A1)
2009 Dec 11, Australia's PM Kevin Rudd threatened legal action against Japan if it does not stop its research whaling program that kills up to 1,000 whales a year.
(AP, 12/11/09)
2009 Dec 11, In Brazil a new presidential decree suspended up to an estimated $5.7 billion in fines and gave landowners two more years to comply with environmental regulations meant to stop the razing of the Brazilian rain forest.
(AP, 12/11/09)
2009 Dec 11, The Canadian government said that it has approved a request from Egyptian-backed telecom Globalive Wireless Management Corp. to launch its mobile phone service in Canada.
(AP, 12/11/09)
2009 Dec 11, Cyprus police said grave robbers over night had stolen the corpse of former Cyprus President Tassos Papadopoulos after digging up his coffin on the eve of the first anniversary of the statesmen's death. Police discovered the missing body of former President Papadopoulos in another grave on March 8.
(AP, 12/11/09)(AP, 3/9/10)
2009 Dec 11, EU leaders agreed to commit euro2.4 billion ($3.6 billion) a year until 2012 to help poorer countries combat global warming, as they sought to rescue their image as climate change innovators and bolster the talks in Copenhagen. A new draft agreement at the climate talks pulled together the main elements of a global pact but left gaping holes on financing and cutting greenhouse gas emissions for world leaders to fill in next week.
(AP, 12/11/09)
2009 Dec 11, German officials said Berlin's new airport will be named after Willy Brandt (1913-1992), the former West German leader who championed East-West relations and won the Nobel Peace Prize (1971).
(AP, 12/11/09)
2009 Dec 11, Ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya said he will leave the Brazilian Embassy in Honduras by Jan. 27, when his presidential term ends.
(AP, 12/11/09)
2009 Dec 11, In India protesters took to the streets of Hyderabad, setting public buses on fire and clashing with police, in anger over the government’s decision to carve a new state out of the southern region of Andhra Pradesh. Leaders of the Gorkhas, a group of ethnic Nepalis living in West Bengal, called for an indefinite strike to push their decades-old demand for the creation of Gorkhaland.
(AP, 12/11/09)
2009 Dec 11, Thousands of Iranian government supporters staged rallies denouncing opposition students who burned photos of the supreme leader in protests this week.
(AP, 12/11/09)
2009 Dec 11, In Iraq at least six people were killed after a two-pronged bomb attack south of Baghdad that was apparently designed to ambush bystanders. A US soldier in northern Iraq died of injuries unrelated to combat.
(AP, 12/11/09)(AP, 12/12/09)
2009 Dec 11, Iraq struck deals with consortiums led by Anglo-Dutch and Chinese giants Shell and CNPC over massive southern oil fields, as part of a two-day auction that seeks to dramatically boost the country's crude output.
(AP, 12/11/09)
2009 Dec 11, Mexico's foreign minister met with Cuban President Raul Castro for three hours, the latest sign her country and the island have repaired recently chilly relations.
(AP, 12/11/09)
2009 Dec 11, In Mexico police found the bodies of three women and two men inside a home in the town of Almoloya de Juarez. A third man died on the way to a hospital. Soldiers raided a drug cartel's Christmas party south of Mexico City, outside the mountain town of Tepoztlan. They found 16 automatic rifles, $280,000 in cash, and Latin Grammy winner Ramon Ayala and his norteno band, Los Bravos del Norte. 3 gunmen were killed and 11 others suspected of working for the Beltran Leyva drug cartel were detained.
(AP, 12/11/09)(AP, 12/15/09)
2009 Dec 11, Assailants in the West Bank vandalized a Palestinian mosque, burning prayer carpets and holy books, and leaving behind Hebrew graffiti indicating the rampage was the work of settlers angry over Israel's plans to curb settlement construction.
(AP, 12/11/09)
2009 Dec 11, In the Philippines government-armed former militiamen freed 10 more hostages seized in the remote south, and their leader demanded that murder charges against them be dropped before they release 47 others.
(AP, 12/11/09)
2009 Dec 11, Romania's Constitutional Court ordered a re-examination of ballots declared void in the Dec 6 presidential election amid allegations of widespread fraud.
(AP, 12/11/09)
2009 Dec 11, In Spain the A400M military transport plane, that has been causing Airbus and European defense ministers budgetary and logistical headaches, finally took to the skies for its maiden flight.
(AP, 12/11/09)
2009 Dec 11, At the Vatican Vietnam’s President Nguyen Minh Triet met with Pope Benedict XVI for 40 minutes, twice as long as was scheduled and the first time that the head of state of Vietnam has met with the pope since the communists took power in 1954. Vietnam's 6 million Roman Catholics is one of the largest Catholic communities in Asia.
(AP, 12/11/09)
2010 Dec 11, Nissan North American delivered its first all-electric Leaf to Olivier Chalouhi (31) of Redwood City at a dealership in Petaluma, Ca. His cost was $33,500, but rebates were expected to drop the price to about $20,000.
(SSFC, 12/12/10, p.C2)
2010 Dec 11, Mark Madoff (46), one of Bernard Madoff's sons, was found dead of an apparent suicide in his Manhattan apartment on the second anniversary of his father's arrest.
(AP, 12/11/10)
2010 Dec 11, In Afghanistan a car bomb blast near the police headquarters in Kandahar City wounded four Afghan police and two civilians. The suicide attacker in Kunduz province drove a police vehicle and targeted an Afghan National Army convoy, wounding five soldiers and four civilians. An air strike by the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) killed seven road construction company employees overnight. ISAF said Afghan and foreign troops were approached and then fired on by armed men while hunting an insurgent and shot back, killing seven. The disputed incident sent hundreds pouring onto the streets of Gardez city in a protest that turned violent.
(Reuters, 12/11/10)
2010 Dec 11, Egypt’s minister of electricity said his country plans to build its first nuclear power plant and have it operational by 2019.
(SSFC, 12/12/10, p.A10)
2010 Dec 11, In Cancun, Mexico, almost 200 countries agreed to modest steps to combat climate change, including a Green Climate Fund to help poor nations, but they put off tough decisions on cutting greenhouse gas emissions until next year.
(Reuters, 12/11/10)
2010 Dec 11, In northwest Pakistan gunmen on motorcycles shot dead two police officers in Hayatabad, while security forces killed four militants in fighting elsewhere in the region.
(AP, 12/11/10)(SSFC, 12/12/10, p.A10)
2010 Dec 11, Somali pirates captured the MV Renuar, a Panama-flagged, Liberian-owned cargo vessel, about 1,000 miles (1,610 km) east of Somalia.
(AP, 12/12/10)
2010 Dec 11, The Sudanese army attacked a village in South Darfur for a second consecutive day in violence that has left one person dead and driven at least 250 civilians from their homes.
(AP, 12/11/10)
2010 Dec 11, South Sudan’s ruling party formally confirmed for the first time that it will support secession in a January independence referendum that could lead to the break-up of Africa's largest nation.
(AFP, 12/11/10)
2010 Dec 11, In Sweden two blasts rocked central Stockholm, killing the suspected bomber, later identified as Taymour Abdulwahab al-Abdaly (b.1981). Two people were wounded. Police had good leads into what they said were "terror crimes." On March 8, 2011, police in Scotland arrested Ezedden Khalid Ahmed Al Khaledi (30) on suspicion of aiding the suicide bomber who had targeted Christmas shoppers in Stockholm.
(Reuters, 12/12/10)(Reuters, 12/13/10)(SFC, 12/14/10, p.A3)(AP, 3/8/11)(AP, 3/14/11)
2010 Dec 11, Turkmenistan signed broad agreements with Afghanistan, India and Pakistan at a summit in its capital Ashgabat on the 1,700-km (1,050-mile) TAPI pipeline. Afghanistan the next day said it will deploy up to 7,000 troops to secure the major transnational gas pipeline, slated to run through some of the most dangerous parts of the war-torn country.
(AFP, 12/12/10)
2011 Dec 11, San Francisco police cleared the city’s last remaining Occupy protest camp arrested 55 people in front of the Federal Reserve Bank at 101 Market St.
(SFC, 12/12/11, p.C2)
2011 Dec 11, Christopher Artes (25) and Medeana Hendershot (22), were found dead under a mound of coal at a Florida power plant. The young couple shared a passion for illegally hopping freight trains and traveling the country without a set plan.
(AP, 12/16/11)
2011 Dec 11, Afghan President Hamid Karzai said foreigners are fueling the problem of corruption by, for example, awarding contracts to high ranking government officials.
(AFP, 12/11/11)
2011 Dec 11, Police in Brazil's southeastern Sao Paulo state said they are investigating the theft of 50 metric tons (55 US tons) of corn from a moving train.
(AP, 12/11/11)
2011 Dec 11, In China Xue Jinbo (42) died after two days in police custody. He had led protests in the fishing village of Wukan in opposition to government land confiscations and was arrested on Dec 9.
(SFC, 12/16/11, p.A13)
2011 Dec 11, Former French PM Dominique de Villepin, who gained international renown as France's spokesman against the war in Iraq, announced he'll run as an independent.
(AP, 12/12/11)
2011 Dec 11, In India Anna Hazare held a seven-hour fast to demand sweeping legislation to end India's culture of corruption, in which bribes are paid for everything from health care to marriage certificates.
(AP, 12/11/11)
2011 Dec 11, In Iran a blast caused by leftover ammunition killed at least seven workers including foreign nationals at a steel mill in the central city of Yazd.
(AP, 12/12/11)
2011 Dec 11, The Israeli Cabinet voted unanimously to finance a $160 million program to stanch the flow of illegal African migrants by stepping up construction of a border fence and expanding a detention center. Several thousand Bedouin demonstrated outside Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu's office, protesting over a plan they say will displace tens of thousands of people from their land.
(AP, 12/11/11)(AFP, 12/11/11)
2011 Dec 11, Ivory Coast held parliamentary elections. The 2nd national poll in 11 years drew little voter interest. The opposition party of former strongman Laurent Gbagbo, which had called for a boycott of the poll, estimated that as few as 10 percent of voters participated. Official results published by the Independent Electoral Commission on March 8, 2012, said Ouattara's Rally of Republicans (RDR) party won 138 of the parliament's 253 seats on 54.54% of the vote.
(AP, 12/11/11)(AFP, 3/8/12)
2011 Dec 11, In Indian Kashmir a policeman was killed and a civilian injured when suspected Muslim militants opened fire. The region's senior minister escaped unhurt in the attack.
(AFP, 12/11/11)
2011 Dec 11, In northern Kenya twin blasts killed one police officer and wounded nine soldiers, in the latest in a string of attacks since Kenyan troops crossed the border into Somalia two months ago.
(AP, 12/11/11)
2011 Dec 11, In Mexico unidentified assailants tossed a bomb into a building in Veracruz where a cockfight was being held. One man was killed and nine others slightly wounded.
(AP, 12/13/11)
2011 Dec 11, Pakistan’s PM Yousuf Raza Gilani said President Asif Ali Zardari will likely need two weeks to rest in Dubai following medical treatment there before he returns home. Zardari flew to Dubai last week for treatment related to a heart condition.
(AP, 12/12/11)
2011 Dec 11, A Pakistani Taliban spokesman denied an earlier announcement by the militant group's deputy chief that it was holding peace talks with the government. Prominent al-Qaida and Afghan Taliban fighters asked Pakistani militants to set aside their differences and step up support for the battle against US-led forces in Afghanistan: "For God's sake, forget all your differences and give us fighters to boost the battle against America in Afghanistan," senior al-Qaida commander Abu Yahya al-Libi told Pakistani fighters in South Waziristan. An earlier meeting was held on November 27 in North Waziristan.
(AP, 12/11/11)(AP, 1/2/12)
2011 Dec 11, In Pakistan the US vacated Shamsi airbase following a deadline given by Islamabad in the wake of anger over NATO air strikes last month that killed 24 soldiers. US officials and intelligence analysts have said the covert drone war would not be affected by the closure of the base as Washington could fly Predator and Reaper drones out of air fields in neighboring Afghanistan.
(AFP, 12/11/11)
2011 Dec 11, A Palestinian father and his daughter were wounded in an Israeli air strike on Gaza City.
(AFP, 12/11/11)
2011 Dec 11, Ex-Panama dictator Noriega was flown home for new punishment after 22 years in US, French jails.
(AP, 12/11/11)
2011 Dec 11, Peruvian President Ollanta Humala replaced more than half his Cabinet, a day after accepting its chief minister's resignation in a move widely interpreted as signaling less tolerance for social protests.
(AP, 12/11/11)
2011 Dec 11, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev posted a comment on his Facebook page saying he has ordered a probe into the allegations of electoral fraud during the Dec. 4 parliamentary vote.
(AP, 12/11/11)
2011 Dec 11, In South Africa a UN climate conference reached a hard-fought agreement on a far-reaching program meant to set a new course for the global fight against climate change. The 194-party conference agreed to start negotiations on a new accord that would ensure that countries will be legally bound to carry out any pledges they make. It would take effect by 2020 at the latest. The conference also agreed on a Green Climate Fund, which would funnel some of the $110 billion, promised by rich countries to poor ones, to help them cut emissions and adopt to climate change.
(AP, 12/11/11)(Econ, 12/17/11, p.140)
2011 Dec 11, In South Sudan suspected rebels under the command of renegade general George Athor attacked Atar town, in Pigi county, killing 9 people, while another raid cost the lives of two people in Kapat, near the state capital Bor.
(AFP, 12/12/11)
2011 Dec 11, Syrian troops battled army defectors in clashes that set several military vehicles ablaze. Opposition activists called for a general strike starting today in a bid to squeeze the government and push it to stop its bloody crackdown. About a dozen Syrians attacked their embassy in Jordan’s capital, Amman, injuring at least two diplomats and four other consulate employees. As many as 23 people were killed as government forces clashed with armed insurgents and protesters.
(AP, 12/11/11)(SFC, 12/12/11, p.A2)
2011 Dec 11, Hundreds of thousands of Yemenis demonstrated to demand President Ali Abdullah Saleh face trial for his regime's deadly crackdown on months of protests.
(AP, 12/11/11)
2011 Dec 11, In Taiwan almost a thousand protesters took to the streets of Taipei demanding that the government make a weekly day off a legal right for Taiwan's 200,000 foreign live-in caregivers.
(AP, 12/11/11)
2012 Dec 11, The US Air Force launched an unmanned X-37B, a secret military version of the space shuttle, atop an Atlas V rocket at Cape Canaveral.
(SFC, 12/12/12, p.A5)
2012 Dec 11, In Georgia Mohammad Abdul Rahman Abukhdair (28) and Randy Lamar Wilson (25) were charged with conspiring to kill persons or damage property outside the US. FBI agents arrested Wilson at the Atlanta airport as he boarded a flight to Mauritania. Abukhdair was arrested at a bus station in Augusta. On April 19 Wilson pleaded guilty in Mobile, Ala., to one charge of conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists. On Dec 20, 2013, both men were sentenced to 15 years in prison.
(SFC, 12/12/12, p.A5)(SFC, 4/19/13, p.A4)(SFC, 12/20/13, p.A6)
2012 Dec 11, A federal appeals court struck down a ban on carrying concealed weapons in Illinois, the only remaining state where carrying concealed weapons is entirely illegal. It gave lawmakers 180 days to write a law that legalizes it.
(AP, 12/11/12)
2012 Dec 11, Michigan enacted a ban on mandatory union membership, dealing a stunning blow to organized labor in the state that is home to US automakers and the symbol of industrial labor in the United States.
(AP, 12/11/12)
2012 Dec 11, In Oregon a masked gunman opened fire at Clackamas Town Center, a mall in suburban Portland. Jacob Tyler Roberts (22), armed himself with an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle he stole from someone he knew, went on a rampage that left two people dead and one injured before he killed himself.
(SFC, 12/12/12, p.A5)(AP, 12/13/12)
2012 Dec 11, Delta Airlines agreed to buy a 49% stake in Virgin Atlantic Airways Ltd. For $360 million.
(SFC, 12/12/12, p.D3)
2012 Dec 11, Ravi Shankar (b.1920), India-born sitar virtuoso, died in San Diego.
(SFC, 12/12/12, p.A6)
2012 Dec 11, A US watchdog agency said that Afghan officials were resisting US efforts to help track billions of dollars being flown out of Kabul airport every year, some likely linked to crime and drugs.
(AP, 12/11/12)
2012 Dec 11, Britain's Serious Fraud Office (SFO) and London police made the first arrests as part of a global investigation into the manipulation of interbank lending rates, a scandal that has rocked the banking industry.
(Reuters, 12/11/12)
2012 Dec 11, British bank HSBC agreed to pay a fine of $1.9 billion over money-laundering allegations by American regulators.
(Econ, 12/15/12, p.73)
2012 Dec 11, Canadian aboriginal Chief Theresa Spence, from the remote northern Ontario community of Attawapiskat, began a hunger strike urging PM Stephen Harper to "open his heart" and meet with native leaders angered by his policies.
(Reuters, 12/28/12)
2012 Dec 11, Premier McKeeva Bush (57), the leader of the Cayman Islands' government, was arrested on suspicion of theft, abuse of office and breach of trust in the famed Caribbean tax haven.
(AP, 12/11/12)
2012 Dec 11, Cuba formally authorized the creation of the first non-agricultural cooperatives, a measure expected to permit the growth of midsize businesses as part of President Raul Castro's plan to open the economy to some liberalization.
(AP, 12/11/12)
2012 Dec 11, Doctors in Cuba operated on Venezuelan President Hugo for cancer, after the illness reappeared despite a year and a half of surgeries and treatments.
(AP, 12/12/12)
2012 Dec 11, In Egypt masked gunmen attacked anti-Morsi protesters in Cairo's central Tahrir Square before dawn, firing birdshot at them and wounding nine. Thousands of opponents and supporters of Egypt's Islamist president staged rival rallies in the nation's Cairo.
(AP, 12/11/12)
2012 Dec 11, Ghana's opposition party said that they plan to contest the results of the recent presidential election. Police and soldiers raided an office where the opposition party was re-tabulating votes in their preparation to contest the results of last week's presidential poll, which handed a slim victory to the incumbent.
(AP, 12/11/12)(AP, 12/12/12)
2012 Dec 11, In Guinea three people were killed, dozens wounded and at least three women raped in an army crackdown on protesters in the town of Gueckedou, 700 km (430 miles) southeast of Conakry.
(AP, 12/13/12)
2012 Dec 11, Iran's official news agency reported that the country has closed its consular section in the western Afghan city of Herat, after anti-Iranian protests at the site on Dec 9. Afghan demonstrators were protesting the alleged killing of Afghan emigrants at nearby border crossings in recent months.
(AP, 12/11/12)
2012 Dec 11, Tehran's chief prosecutor said authorities have arrested 28 Iranians for alleged links to foreign-based TV networks advocating the Baha'i religion, which is banned in the Islamic Republic.
(AP, 12/11/12)
2012 Dec 11, A Kazakhstan court convicted border guard Vladislav Chelakh (19) of killing 14 of his comrades along with a park ranger and sentenced to life in prison.
(AP, 12/12/12)
2012 Dec 11, South Sudan soldiers were being blamed for the deaths of up to 23 civilians in two separate regions. The first incident took place in Jonglei state last week. An official said soldiers rounded up civilians and fired on the group, killing 13. The UN mission confirmed that nine people were killed during the two days of violence over the weekend in Western Equatoria state.
(AP, 12/11/12)
2012 Dec 11, Syrian rebels, backed by Islamic extremist fighters of Jabhat al-Nusra, took full control of the Sheik Suleiman military base near Aleppo after a two-day battle that killed at least 35 government troops. In Aleppo four mortar rounds hit the predominantly Kurdish neighborhood of Sheik Maksoud, killing 11, including 3 children and 2 women, and wounding a dozen other people.
(AP, 12/11/12)
2012 Dec 11, In southern Thailand armed men with assault rifles burst into the canteen of Ban Ba Ngo school in Pattani province and shot dead two teachers. In Narathiwat's Rangae district gunmen on a pickup truck fired AK-47 and M16 assault rifles into a tea shop, killing three people instantly including a toddler, and wounding six others at the scene. One of the wounded died later in hospital.
(Econ, 1/19/13, p.44)( http://tinyurl.com/b2v8zne)
2012 Dec 11, In Yemen Brig. Gen. Ahmed Ba Ramada, deputy head of intelligence for Hadramawt, was killed by two unknown assailants on a motorbike.
(AP, 12/11/12)
2013 Dec 11, The United States and Britain suspended all non-lethal aid to the opposition in northern Syria after Islamist rebels seized key bases and warehouses belonging to the Western-backed Free Syrian Army.
(Reuters, 12/11/13)
2013 Dec 11, The US FDA said it will begin curbing the use of some medically important antibiotics commonly fed to animals to fatten them up for market. A 3-year plan to implement this was called the Veterinary Feed Directive.
(SFC, 12/12/13, p.A1)
2013 Dec 11, Time magazine selected Pope Francis as its Person of the Year, saying the Catholic Church's new leader has changed the perception of the 2,000-year-old institution in an extraordinary way in a short time.
(AP, 12/11/13)
2013 Dec 11, A small plain crashed off of Molokai, Hawaii, killing Loretta Fuddy, the director of the state health dept. Eight other people survived.
(SFC, 12/13/13, p.A13)
2013 Dec 11, In Illinois inmate Stanley Wrice (59) was freed from prison after spending 30 years behind bars for confessing under torture to a rape that he did not commit. He had confessed to the 1982 sexual assault after two officers under former Lt. Jon Burge beat him in the groin and face.
(SFC, 12/12/13, p.A10)
2013 Dec 11, A $122 million Powerball lottery draw went to two winners, a couple in Nebraska and a couple in Massachusetts.
(SFC, 1/3/14, p.A6)
2013 Dec 11, In Afghanistan a suicide bomber attacked a convoy of German troops near the international airport in Kabul. The attacker was killed and there were no ISAF casualties to report.
(Reuters, 12/11/13)
2013 Dec 11, A Bahraini court sentenced 12 Shiite Muslims to 15-year jail terms for attacking a car warehouse during unrest in the Sunni-ruled kingdom in February 2012.
(AFP, 12/11/13)
2013 Dec 11, In Bangladesh deposed military dictator Hussein Mohammad Ershad was detained by Rab (Rapid Action Battalion). The hybrid crime-fighting force picked the Jatiya Party chief up from his residence in Dhaka.
(www.youtube.com/watch?v=53FlO_0EuR8)
2013 Dec 11, British regulators announced a record £28 million fines against state-rescued Lloyds Banking Group after finding staff were at risk of selling unsuitable products amid the lure of bonuses.
(AFP, 12/11/13)
2013 Dec 11, G8 health ministers met in London to tackle what experts warn is a dementia time-bomb, with cases set to soar as the world's population ages.
(AFP, 12/11/13)
2013 Dec 11, Canada's postal service said it will phase out door-to-door mail delivery in response to falling mail volumes and big financial losses. Canadians will instead have to collect their mail from corner community mailboxes that are to be set up in cities nationwide.
(AFP, 12/11/13)
2013 Dec 11, Air Canada announced it had placed a firm $6.5 billion order for 61 Boeing 737 MAX narrow-body aircraft, with options on 18 more planes and purchase rights for 30 others.
(AFP, 12/11/13)
2013 Dec 11, Chinese sources said authorities have put Zhou Yongkang, one of the most powerful politicians of the last decade, under virtual house arrest while the ruling Communist Party investigates accusations of corruption against him.
(Reuters, 12/11/13)
2013 Dec 11, The trial of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood chief and his deputies on charges related to protest deaths came to an abrupt end when the judges quit in protest at chaos in the dock.
(AFP, 12/11/13)
2013 Dec 11, Germany police said a sapling cloned from the tree that lifted Anne Frank's spirits while she hid from the Nazis in Amsterdam was felled and stolen over the weekend from outside a school in Frankfurt bearing the name of the Jewish teenage diarist.
(AP, 12/11/13)
2013 Dec 11, In western Germany a building crane collapsed onto a supermarket, killing one person and injuring at least five others in Bad Homburg.
(AP, 12/11/13)
2013 Dec 11, India's Supreme Court struck down a 2009 lower court decision to decriminalize homosexuality, dealing a blow to gay activists who have fought for years for the chance to live openly in India's deeply conservative society. The court said only lawmakers can change a colonial era law that bans same-sex relations. Gay sex was reinstated as a criminal offense, punishable up to 10 years in prison.
(AP, 12/11/13)(SSFC, 12/15/13, p.A20)(Reuters, 9/6/18)
2013 Dec 11, Iran released the last two of eight Slovak paragliders arrested for allegedly spying after PM Robert Fico and Foreign Minister Miroslav Lajcak flew in to secure their release.
(AFP, 12/12/13)
2013 Dec 11, Italian PM Enrico Letta won a parliamentary confidence vote triggered by the fall of Silvio Berlusconi, promising to push through a pro-European reform agenda and fight populism.
(AFP, 12/11/13)
2013 Dec 11, Myanmar freed 41 political detainees, bringing the country close to fulfilling a pledge by President Thein Sein to release all prisoners of conscience by the end of the year.
(Reuters, 12/11/13)
2013 Dec 11, Saudi Arabia and its Gulf Arab neighbors wrapped up a summit meeting in Kuwait by agreeing to establish a joint military command, paving the way for tighter security coordination.
(AP, 12/11/13)
2013 Dec 11, In Syria 32 people were killed in the town of Adra northeast of Damascus after an al-Qaida-linked rebel faction attack. The dead were primarily members the Alawite sect, as well as a few Druse and Shiite Muslims.
(Reuters, 12/15/13)
2013 Dec 11, Ukrainian police pulled back as protesters claimed victory after an overnight face-off in which authorities removed barricades and tents and scuffled with demonstrators occupying Kiev's main square.
(AP, 12/11/13)
2014 Dec 11, The US House of Representatives narrowly passed a $1.1 trillion federal spending bill, sending it to the Senate after it was ushered through barely two hours before a midnight deadline.
(AFP, 12/12/14)
2014 Dec 11, San Francisco-based Lending Club, a peer-to-peer online lending service founded by Renaud LaPlanche, went public. In May 2016 LaPlanche resigned.
(Econ, 5/14/16, p.64)
2014 Dec 11, The California State Dept. of Finance estimated the current state population to be 38.5 million.
(SFC, 12/12/14, p.D1)
2014 Dec 11, Rain and high winds lashed Northern California overnight, leaving thousands without power, as a major winter storm that marched across the Pacific Ocean was set to pound the state.
(Reuters, 12/11/14)
2014 Dec 11, Delaware police arrested Seth Ramsey (17) of Harrington after his father was found dead with a single arrow wound to the abdomen. Ramsey admitted to killing his father with a crossbow.
(SSFC, 12/14/14, p.A8)
2014 Dec 11, Google announced it will close Google News in Spain and block reports from Spanish publishers from more than 70 Google News international editions due to a new Spanish law requiring aggregators to pay to link content.
(AP, 12/11/14)
2014 Dec 11, The Int’l. Weightlifting Federation said eight weightlifters, including two gold medalists, have been provisionally suspended after failing doping tests at last month's world championship in Almaty, Kazakhstan.
(AP, 12/11/14)
2014 Dec 11, In Afghanistan a suicide bomber targeted a bus carrying Afghan army personnel, killing 6 soldiers and wounding 11. Hours later a teenaged suicide bomber targeted a packed auditorium at a French-run high school in Kabul, killing a German citizen.
(Reuters, 12/11/14)(AP, 12/11/14)
2014 Dec 11, Algeria's justice minister said a second member of the group that kidnapped and beheaded French hiker Herve Gourdel last September has been identified and killed by the army.
(AP, 12/11/14)
2014 Dec 11, In Vienna, Austria, several states (Britain, Norway, Netherlands and the US) pledged to back a UN nuclear agency (IAEA) request for 4.6 million euros ($5.7 million) as soon as possible to pay for its monitoring of an extended, interim nuclear deal between Iran and world powers.
(AP, 12/11/14)
2014 Dec 11, Brazil’s National Truth Commission report named 377 people allegedly responsible for 434 deaths and disappearances, and thousands of acts of torture during the military regime of 1964-1985. The truth commission said more than 8,000 members of indigenous tribes could have been killed at the hands of authoritarian regimes between 1946 and 1988, the vast majority during the 1964-1985 dictatorship.
(SSFC, 12/14/14, p.A22)(AP, 3/8/19)
2014 Dec 11, Britain's Scout Association was warned that sexual abuse claims that have led to payouts of £500,000 were only the "tip of the iceberg."
(AFP, 12/11/14)
2014 Dec 11, In London Aravindan Balakrishnan (74), the leader of an obscure Maoist collective, was charged with false imprisonment, rape, cruelty to a person under 16 years old and indecent assault. He allegedly held three women, freed last year, against their will in a London house for 30 years.
(AP, 12/11/14)
2014 Dec 11, In Bulgaria some 6,000 people protested in Sofia against government plans to raise the retirement age by four months to 63 years and 8 months for men and to 60 years and 8 months for women.
(AP, 12/11/14)
2014 Dec 11, In the southeast CongoDRC at least 129 people drowned when the passenger ship M/V Mutambala capsized on Lake Tanganyika.
(AFP, 12/14/14)
2014 Dec 11, The EU banned Libya's seven airlines from operating in European skies, citing safety concerns linked to the ongoing fighting there.
(AP, 12/11/14)
2014 Dec 11, Greece's former finance minister, George Papaconstantinou, was indicted before a special court on criminal charges over his handling of data on Greeks holding Swiss bank accounts.
(AP, 12/11/14)
2014 Dec 11, Hong Kong police arrested some 209 pro-democracy activists and cleared most of the main protest site, marking an end to more than two months of street demonstrations in the Chinese-controlled city.
(Reuters, 12/11/14)(AP, 12/11/14)
2014 Dec 11, The head of Hungary's tax authority sued a senior American diplomat in Budapest for libel after the envoy said the US had knowledge of corruption at the tax office.
(AP, 12/11/14)
2014 Dec 11, Indian PM Narendra Modi told President Vladimir Putin that Russia will remain India's top defense supplier. Modi spoke after a one-day summit in which the two sides signed billions of dollars of deals in nuclear power, oil and defense. The Russian Direct Investment Fund and India's IDFC agreed to invest up to $1 billion in Indian infrastructure projects including in ports, toll roads and hydropower, to deepen economic ties between the two countries.
(Reuters, 12/11/14)
2014 Dec 11, Iran media reported that authorities have arrested 12 people for syphoning off more than $4.5 billion (3.6 billion euros) from one of the country's main banks over several years. The suspects embezzled from the Kerman branch of Tejarat Bank from 2009 until their arrest in 2013.
(AFP, 12/11/14)
2014 Dec 11, Iraq's powerful Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr put his militia on alert to battle Islamic State militants for the city of Samarra. An Islamic State suicide bomber blew up a Humvee west of the Anbar provincial capital Ramadi, destroying a bridge and killing two soldiers.
(Reuters, 12/11/14)
2014 Dec 11, The International Criminal Court ordered a close ally of former Ivorian president Laurent Gbagbo, Charles Ble Goude, to stand trial for crimes against humanity linked to a 2010-11 post-election crisis.
(AFP, 12/11/14)
2014 Dec 11, In Kenya more than 20 machete-wielding men, said to be members of the outlawed Mombasa Republican Council (MRC), attacked a police camp. The outlawed group wants independence for Kenya's Indian Ocean coastal regions, citing decades of neglect by the government.
(Reuters, 12/22/14)
2014 Dec 11, Malaysia police said they have arrested 20 people in a widening investigation into the murder of at least 18 Myanmar nationals in the state of Penang since January. Police said twelve Myanmar migrants have confessed to their role in nine of the murders.
(Reuters, 12/11/14)
2014 Dec 11, In central Nigeria twin explosions killed about 120 people in downtown Jos. Extremists attacked Gajigana, a border town between Niger and Nigeria, and 11 people were killed. Major buildings were burned down but Boko Haram did not succeed in capturing the town.
(SFC, 12/12/14, p.A9)(AP, 12/13/14)
2014 Dec 11, In the Philippines Rep. Vicente Belmonte was slightly wounded in an attack by gunmen who killed at least 2 of his bodyguards and a driver in Misamis Oriental province.
(SFC, 12/12/14, p.A2)
2014 Dec 11, Saudi Arabia-based Islamic Development Bank said the Saudi king has pledged $35 million to help fight Ebola in hard-hit West African countries.
(AP, 12/11/14)
2014 Dec 11, South Africa said its loss-making national airline will be placed under the control of the Treasury, as the carrier battles to turn around its fortunes.
(AFP, 12/11/14)
2014 Dec 11, South African police expressed shock at the gruesome and mysterious murder of six men, aged 18-30, found with their hands bound and their heads apparently crushed by rocks.
(AFP, 12/11/14)
2014 Dec 11, South African doctors performed the world's first successful penis transplant in a nine-hour operation at the Tygerberg Hospital in Cape Town. This followed a botched circumcision at a traditional initiation ceremony. On March 13, 2015, doctors announced that the man (21) had made a full recovery.
(AP, 3/14/15)
2014 Dec 11, Swiss authorities charged Herve Falciani, a fugitive banking analyst, with data theft in what is considered to be one of the biggest security breaches in the country's often-secretive banking sector. He has been accused of stealing stole information between 2006 and 2007 relating to 24,000 customers of the Swiss division of HSBC.
(AP, 12/11/14)
2014 Dec 11, In Uganda Ryan Gustafson, an American man, was arrested for forging currency in his Ugandan home. Police alleged that Gustafson has forged more than $2 million that is in circulation around the world. On Dec 3, 2015, a local court ordered Gustafson to be extradited to the US.
(AP, 12/23/14)(AP, 12/3/15)
2014 Dec 11, Ukraine's parliament approved the new government's economic program of tough reforms aimed at securing billions of dollars in financial aid from the International Monetary Fund and other backers. a military spokesman said 3 Ukrainian soldiers were killed and eight wounded in attacks by pro-Russian separatists in the past 24 hours.
(Reuters, 12/11/14)
2015 Dec 11, The US and Cuba announced they have struck a deal to re-established direct mail service, which was cut in 1963.
(SFC, 12/12/15, p.A2)
2015 Dec 11, The United States and its allies targeted Islamic State with 12 strikes in Iraq and five in Syria.
(Reuters, 12/12/15)
2015 Dec 11, In California a Sky Life air ambulance crashed near McFarland, Kern County, killing all 4 people aboard.
(SFC, 12/12/15, p.A6)
2015 Dec 11, Several big-name Silicon Valley figures said they have pledged $1 billion to support a non-profit firm that would focus on the "positive human impact" of artificial intelligence. Backers of the OpenAI research group include Tesla and SpaceX entrepreneur Elon Musk, Y Combinator's Sam Altman, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, and PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel.
(AFP, 12/12/15)
2015 Dec 11, Elon Musk helped found OpenAI, an artificial intelligence laboratory based in San Francisco. The other founders included Sam Altman, Ilya Sutskever, Greg Brockman, Wojciech Zaremba, John Schulman. In May 2020 the lab described Generative Pretrained Transformer 3, commonly known by its abbreviated form GPT-3, an unsupervised Transformer language model and the successor to GPT-2. The software was built on a "language model" aiming to represent a language statistically.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenAI)(Econ., 8/8/20, p.63)
2015 Dec 11, DuPont and Dow Chemical said they have agreed to merge. On Dec 29 DuPont CEO Ed Breen sent a letter to employees saying that some 1,700 Delaware jobs would be eliminated at the beginning of the new year.
(SFC, 12/12/15, p.D1)(SFC, 12/30/15, p.C1)
2015 Dec 11, It was reported that Pep Boys agreed to be acquired by Bridgestone for $863 million in cash after the tires and auto service company sweetened its offer following a bid from Carl Icahn's investment firm.
(AP, 12/11/15)
2015 Dec 11, In Afghanistan three Taliban insurgents staged a car bomb attack on a guest house near the Spanish embassy in Kabul. 7 people were killed in addition to the 3 attackers.
(Reuters, 12/11/15)(SFC, 12/12/15, p.A2)(AFP, 12/13/15)(SSFC, 12/13/15, p.A7)
2015 Dec 11, Jaguar Land Rover signed a deal with the Slovak government to build a new plant for the luxury car maker in Slovakia.
(AP, 12/11/15)
2015 Dec 11, In Burundi gunmen stormed three military installations before dawn. At least 15 people were killed as gunfire and explosions rocked the capital. 87 people were reported killed in the violence.
(AP, 12/11/15)(AP, 12/12/15)
2015 Dec 11, Cameroon said a suicide bomber has killed 7 people and wounded 27 in its Far North region.
(Reuters, 12/11/15)
2015 Dec 11, Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba said it's buying Hong Kong's leading English-language newspaper, the South China Morning Post, as part of a plan to create a global platform for news about China.
(AP, 12/11/15)
2015 Dec 11, China’s business magazine Caixin reported that police have arrested a former chief of one of the country’s top investment banks. Xue Rongnian, who headed Ping An Securities from 2008 to 2011, was arrested on suspicion of insider trading in connection to two cement businesses.
(AGFP, 12/11/15)
2015 Dec 11, China’s Fosun Group said Chairman Guo Guangchang (48), one of the country’s richest men, was assisting relevent judicial organs with an investigation. His disappearance a day earlier had forced suspension of trading in company shares.
(SFC, 12/12/15, p.A4)
2015 Dec 11, In Ethiopia at least 17 people were injured when a grenade was thrown into the main Anwar Mosque in Addis Ababa after Friday prayers.
(AFP, 12/12/15)
2015 Dec 11, In France an armed man robbed the famed Parisian jeweler Chopard, making off with gems worth around 1 million euros ($1.1 million). The robbery took place across the street from the Elysee palace.
(AP, 12/11/15)
2015 Dec 11, France detected a case of the highly pathogenic H5N9 bird flu in the Pyrenees-Atlantiques region, taking to five the number of regions affected by the outbreak in the country's southwest.
(Reuters, 12/11/15)
2015 Dec 11, Gambia's President Yahya Jammeh declared the formerly secular country an Islamic republic in a move he said was designed to distance the West African state further from its colonial past.
(Reuters, 12/12/15)
2015 Dec 11, Indian officials investigating the death of a 30-year-old pregnant woman working at a brick kiln in Telangana state said they had uncovered an organized racket where hundreds of people were being trafficked and forced to work in inhumane conditions.
(Reuters, 12/11/15)
2015 Dec 11, The Israeli army killed Issa Hroug (55), a Palestinian who it said tried to ram his car into soldiers near Hebron. Palestinian Oday Ersheid (22) was shot dead by Israeli forces during a violent demonstration in the flashpoint West Bank city. Army gunfire in the Gaza Strip killed a Palestinian (38) and wounded five as Palestinians massed at the fenced-off border with Israel.
(Reuters, 12/11/15)(SFC, 12/12/15, p.A2)
2015 Dec 11, A three-person crew from the International Space Station landed safely in the snowy steppes of Kazakhstan.
(AP, 12/11/15)
2015 Dec 11, In Kazakhstan former PM Serik Akhmetov (2012-2014) was sentenced to 10 years in prison, the first time a former official of such stature will serve jail time in the country. Akhmetov (57) was found guilty on four corruption-related charges including embezzlement and abuse of power, in a huge case involving more than 20 defendants.
(AFP, 12/12/15)
2015 Dec 11, The Mexican government granted the first permits allowing the cultivation and possession of marijuana for personal use.
(AP, 12/11/15)
2015 Dec 11, Romanian prosecutors detained Prince Paul in a case of alleged real estate fraud involving a top aide to a former prime minister and a newspaper editor. Prosecutors also ordered businessman Remus Truica, the former head of Cabinet of ex-Premier Adrian Nastase, be put under house arrest.
(AP, 12/11/15)
2015 Dec 11, President Vladimir Putin said that Russia has provided air cover, weapons and supplies to a leading Western-backed opposition group in Syria and called for closer coordination with the US-allied coalition.
(AP, 12/11/15)
2015 Dec 11, Russian investigators charged ex-oil tycoon and Kremlin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky with organizing the 1998 murder of a mayor in Siberia. Khodorkovsky, who now lives in London, has claimed that the new probe into the mayor's murder was ordered personally by President Vladimir Putin.
(AFP, 12/11/15)
2015 Dec 11, Russia officially launched its own rating agency as it seeks to counterbalance the influence of Western agencies which have taken a pessimistic line on the country's crisis-hit economy.
(AFP, 12/11/15)
2015 Dec 11, South Africa expelled a North Korean diplomat. He was arrested in neighboring Mozambique in May on charges related to rhino horn smuggling.
(AP, 12/23/15)
2015 Dec 11, Spanish police said they have seized 40 pallets made out of 1.4 tons of compressed cocaine that was made to look like wood that arrived on a shipping container from Colombia. Authorities arrested 12 people in Spain, Dubai and Britain as part of the operation, including two Colombian experts in using chemicals to process cocaine into different formats.
(AFP, 12/11/15)
2015 Dec 11, Swiss authorities arrested two people of Syrian origin on suspicion of transporting "explosives and toxic gases" as part of a probe into a terror threat.
(AFP, 12/12/15)
2015 Dec 11, President Tayyip Erdogan declared he would not bow to Iraqi demands he withdraw Turkish troops from a camp close to the Islamic State-held city of Mosul. Baghdad said it would ask the UN Security Council to order them to leave.
(Reuters, 12/11/15)
2015 Dec 11, Turkey issued arrest warrants for US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen and 66 others, pressing President Tayyip Erdogan's campaign to root out the influence of the former ally he accuses of trying to topple him.
(Reuters, 12/11/15)
2015 Dec 11, Turkey's state-run news agency said the country's communications authority has imposed a 150,000 Turkish Lira (US$51,000) fine on Twitter for failing to remove content it said praised terror and incited violence.
(AP, 12/11/15)
2016 Dec 11, US President-elect Donald Trump said the United States did not necessarily have to stick to its long-standing position that Taiwan is part of "one China," questioning nearly four decades of policy in a move likely to antagonize Beijing.
(Reuters, 12/12/16)
2016 Dec 11, In Brazil Yuri Lourenco da Silva (19), the son of singer Tati Quebra Barraco, was killed along with and another man in a police operation early today in the City of God slum.
(AP, 12/11/16)
2016 Dec 11, In Egypt a suicide bombing at the Saint Peter and Saint Paul Church next to St Mark's Cathedral, Cairo's largest Coptic cathedral, killed 25 people and wounded 49, many of them women and children attending Sunday mass. Islamic State supporters celebrated the attack on social media. The suicide bomber was identified as Mahmoud Shafik Mohamed Mostafa (22). Four people suspected of involvement were soon arrested. The death toll soon rose to 27.
(Reuters, 12/11/16)(AFP, 12/12/16)(SFC, 12/13/16, p.A3)(AP, 12/20/16)
2016 Dec 11, In India police arrested moviegoer S. Viji in Chennai for failing to stand during the playing of the national anthem.
(SFC, 12/13/16, p.A2)
2016 Dec 11, In India a helicopter crashed and caught fire in Mumbai, killing the pilot and injuring three passengers. The Robinson R-44 helicopter belonged to Aman Aviation, a company that offers aerial viewing of the city.
(AP, 12/11/16)
2016 Dec 11, Iran's flag carrier finalized a major deal with US plane maker Boeing Co. to buy $16.6 billion worth of passenger planes in one of the most tangible benefits yet for the Islamic Republic from last year's landmark nuclear agreement.
(AP, 12/11/16)
2016 Dec 11, Italian Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni was tapped to form a new, Democrat-led government and end a political crisis so the country can quickly tackle pressing problems.
(AP, 12/11/16)
2016 Dec 11, Tokyo held a groundbreaking ceremony for a $1.5 billion National Stadium to host the 2020 Olympic Games.
(AP, 12/11/16)
2016 Dec 11, Kuwait's emir told a new parliament that cutting public spending has become inevitable because of the sharp drop in oil prices. Candidates who opposed planned public sector wage restraint and other price hikes won nearly half of the seats in the 50-member National Assembly last month.
(Reuters, 12/11/16)
2016 Dec 11, Kyrgyzstan voters cast ballots in a constitutional referendum that includes amendments that boost the power of prime minister — something opposition groups have criticized in the ex-Soviet Central Asian nation.
(AP, 12/11/16)
2016 Dec 11, Macedonians voted in a general election called two years early as part of a Western-brokered agreement to end a paralyzing political crisis. Former conservative PM Nikola Gruevski, who had headed the government since 2006, sought a new mandate. His VMRO-DPMNE party led a 25-party coalition called "For a Better Macedonia." Main opponent Zoran Zaev headed a left-leaning coalition called "For Life in Macedonia." Neither party won enough seats to form a government. Gruevski, his former transport minister and twelve others have been charged over violence during a 2013 demonstration.
(AP, 12/11/16)(AP, 12/12/16)(SFC, 12/17/16, p.A2)
2016 Dec 11, In Nigeria two girl suicide bombers died when they exploded in a crowded area near a market in the northeastern city of Maiduguri, injuring 17 people.
(AP, 12/11/16)
2016 Dec 11, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said that he has decided to accept an arms deal being offered by China under concessional terms, in the latest sign of cozying relations between the once-hostile neighbors.
(AP, 12/11/16)
2016 Dec 11, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte rejected a demand by Maoist-led rebels to free more prisoners as part of a ceasefire deal, saying he had made enough concessions and was willing to let peace talks collapse if necessary. Three Filipino soldiers were killed and 17 others wounded in nearly two hours of fighting with about 150 Abu Sayyaf Muslim militants in the south.
(Reuters, 12/11/16)(AP, 12/11/16)
2016 Dec 11, Romanians voted in parliamentary elections that are forecast to see the corruption-tainted left stage a remarkable comeback, a year after a deadly nightclub fire forced them from office. Romania's leftist Social Democrat Party (PSD) won 46% of the vote and the most seats in both houses of parliament for a combined 221 deputies and senators.
(AFP, 12/11/16)(AP, 12/12/16)(Reuters, 12/15/16)(Econ, 12/17/16, p.46)
2016 Dec 11, In Serbia several hundred members of the police and army staged a protest complaining of low wages and poor living standards. The gathering was the second in two weeks.
(AP, 12/11/16)
2016 Dec 11, In Somalia more than 20 people were killed in a suicide truck bombing in Mogadishu, in a fresh strike claimed by the Al-Qaeda-linked Shabaab group.
(AFP, 12/11/16)
2016 Dec 11, In Switzerland the 35-mile Gotthard base tunnel, the world’s longest tunnel, opened for daily service.
(CSM, 12/12/16)
2016 Dec 11, The Syrian army and its allies made new gains in Aleppo, forcing rebels back into an ever shrinking pocket crammed with civilians, but lost control of the desert city of Palmyra to a swift Islamic State attack. Syria's state news agency said at least 4,000 people fled Aleppo today. The state TV channel said more than 70,000 of eastern Aleppo's estimated 275,000 residents have fled in recent days.
(Reuters, 12/11/16)(AP, 12/11/16)
2016 Dec 11, Venezuela’s Pres. Maduro announced that the government would pull from circulation its 100-bolivar bill, the country’s largest-denominated. It was only worth 3 US cents at the black market rate. They will eventually be replaced with new ones in denominations as high as 20,000 bolivars.
(SFC, 12/13/16, p.A2)(Econ, 12/17/16, p.69)
2017 Dec 11, Three women who have previously accused Pres. Trump of sexual harassment shared their stories on NBC’s “Megan Kelly Today" and later called for a congressional investigation into Trump’s alleged behavior.
(SFC, 12/12/17, p.A4)
2017 Dec 11, The Fairy tale romance "The Shape of Water" led the Golden Globe nominations with seven as Hollywood launched an awards season expected to be overshadowed by the sexual misconduct scandal engulfing the movie industry.
(AFP, 12/11/17)
2017 Dec 11, In California the 4,100-acre (1,660 hectare) Lilac Fire north of San Diego was 90 percent contained after destroying 151 structures.
(Reuters, 12/12/17)
2017 Dec 11, Louisiana investigator Jordan Hamlett (32) pleaded guilty to misusing Donald Trump’s Social Security number in repeated attempts to access the president’s federal tax information.
(SFC, 12/12/17, p.A4)
2017 Dec 11, In NYC there was an explosion in an underground passageway connecting two of Manhattan's busiest stations. Akayed Ullah (27) of Bangladesh had strapped on a crude pipe bomb with Velcro and plastic ties, slipped unnoticed into the nation's busiest subway system and set off the device. He was the only person seriously wounded and was hospitalized with burns to his hands and stomach and held on state terrorism charges. On Nov. 6, 2018, Ullah was convicted of terrorism.
(AP, 12/12/17)(SFC, 11/7/18, p.A4)
2017 Dec 11, A futures Bitcoin contract that expires in January surged $2,730 to $18,190 on the Chicago Board Options Exchange. Trading began a day earlier, and the price rose as high as $18,850, according to data from the CBOE.
(AP, 12/11/17)
2017 Dec 11, Bulgaria said it has asked Russian Aircraft Corporation MiG to overhaul and maintain its 15 aged MiG-29 fighter jets in a four-year deal worth up to 81.3 million levs ($49 million).
(Reuters, 12/11/17)
2017 Dec 11, China failed to stop the fourth annual UN Security Council meeting on human rights abuses in North Korea, saying it was not the right forum to discuss the issue and warning that it could further escalate tensions in the region.
(Reuters, 12/11/17)
2017 Dec 11, Cuba told senior US officials during talks on migration in Havana that the US decision to suspend visa processing at its embassy on the island was "seriously hampering" family relations and other people exchanges.
(Reuters, 12/12/17)
2017 Dec 11, Egypt and Russia signed a final contract for the building of Egypt's first nuclear power plant, during a visit to Cairo by President Vladimir Putin.
(AFP, 12/11/17)
2017 Dec 11, The European Union said it will resume political contact "at all levels" with Thailand, after putting relations on hold following a 2014 coup by the Thai military.
(Reuters, 12/11/17)
2017 Dec 11, High winds and heavy snow in Europe stranded thousands of travelers, kept schoolchildren at home and even played havoc with international diplomacy. A second day of snowfall closed schools and disrupted travel across parts of Britain and the Netherlands.
(AFP, 12/11/17)(Reuters, 12/11/17)
2017 Dec 11, French Pres. Emmanuel Macron awarded 18 scientists from the US and elsewhere million of euros to relocate to France for climate research for the rest of Donald Trump’s presidential term.
(SFC, 12/12/17, p.A3)
2017 Dec 11, French baby milk maker Lactalis and French authorities ordered a global recall of millions of products over fears of salmonella bacteria contamination. The company said it was warned by health authorities in France that 26 infants have become sick since December 1.
(AP, 12/11/17)
2017 Dec 11, India's main opposition Congress party named Rahul Gandhi, the scion of the country's Nehru-Gandhi political dynasty, as party president.
(AP, 12/11/17)
2017 Dec 11, Two Indonesian assembly members said The speaker of parliament, who is being investigated for his suspected involvement in a $170 million graft scandal, has tendered his resignation. Setya Novanto was arrested last month over his suspected role in the scandal linked to a national electronic identity card scheme.
(Reuters, 12/11/17)
2017 Dec 11, Indonesian activists burned US and Israeli flags in front of the American embassy in Jakarta in a fourth day of protests in Indonesia against President Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital.
(AP, 12/11/17)
2017 Dec 11, Indonesian police searched for American citizen Chrishan Beasley (32), who escaped from an overcrowded and understaffed prison on the resort island of Bali. He was arrested in August at a post office in the Kuta tourist area of Bali with a package containing 5.7 grams of hashish.
(AP, 12/11/17)
2017 Dec 11, It was reported that Indonesia is immunizing millions of children and teenagers against diphtheria after the disease killed 38 people, mostly children, since January.
(AP, 12/11/17)
2017 Dec 11, In Israel the Nazareth District Court sentenced Yinon Reuveni (22) over his involvement in the 2015 attack on the Church of the Multiplication of the Loaves and Fish. Reuveni was also ordered to pay $14,000 to the church in compensation.
(AP, 12/12/17)
2017 Dec 11, Ivory Coast documents showed that the country will pay thousands of soldiers 15 million CFA francs ($25,782) each as part of buy-outs aimed at reducing the size of its unruly and mutiny-prone military.
(Reuters, 12/11/17)
2017 Dec 11, The International Criminal Court (ICC) said it would refer Jordan to the UN Security Council for failing to arrest Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir when he visited Amman in March.
(Reuters, 12/11/17)
2017 Dec 11, Kuwait replaced its oil, finance and defense ministers in a cabinet reshuffle.
(Reuters, 12/11/17)
2017 Dec 11, In Lebanon tens of thousands of supporters of Lebanon's Hezbollah demonstrated in Beirut, chanting "Death to America!" and "Death to Israel!" in protest over the US decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital.
(AFP, 12/11/17)
2017 Dec 11, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin flew into Syria and ordered "a significant part" of Moscow's military contingent there to start withdrawing, declaring their work largely done. Putin added that Russia would keep the Hmeymim air base in Syria's Latakia Province and its naval facility in the port of Tartous.
(Reuters, 12/11/17)(Reuters, 12/12/17)
2017 Dec 11, Saudi Arabia lifted a 35-year-old ban on cinemas, prompting celebrations from film fans, directors and movie chains eyeing the last untapped mass market in the Middle East. In a nod to conservatives, the government said the films would be censored.
(Reuters, 12/11/17)
2017 Dec 11, South Korea added 20 North Korean groups, several banks and 12 individuals to its sanctions list in a largely symbolic move that is part of efforts to cut off funding for the North's weapons programs.
(AP, 12/11/17)
2017 Dec 11, Spanish police escorted two trucks loaded with pieces of medieval religious art from a museum in the city of Lleida amid protests after a court ordered Catalan authorities to hand them over to the neighboring regional government of Aragon. The 44 pieces were originally housed in Aragon's Sijena monastery, but were bought by Catalonia from nuns in 1983. In 2015 a court ruled the sale illegal and ordered the works returned.
(AP, 12/11/17)
2017 Dec 11, Turkey's armed forces said its warplanes hit Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) targets in northern Iraq and killed 17 of the group's militants.
(Reuters, 12/11/17)
2017 Dec 11, The United Nations appealed to countries worldwide to take in 1,300 mainly African refugees stranded in Libya, many of them mistreated while kept in appalling conditions in detention.
(Reuters, 12/11/17)
2017 Dec 11, Yemen's official news agency said the Shiite rebels have killed at least 20 people and detained dozens across the country's north since killing their top ally, former President Ali Abdullah Saleh. The agency also reported that the Houthis have arrested 49 people in Mahwet, a northern province.
(AP, 12/11/17)
2018 Dec 11, US Pres. Donald Trump clashed angrily with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi on funding for a border wall in an Oval Office meeting carried live on television.
(AFP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 11, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo added mainly Muslim Pakistan to the US list of "countries of particular concern", which have violated religious freedoms or tolerated abuses against religious groups.
(Reuters, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 11, The US returned three bells to the Philippines that were seized in 1901 from the town of Balangiga following a rebel attack on an American garrison. US troops were ordered to kill every male citizen ten or older and capable of bearing arms to avenge the death of 48 US soldiers.
(SFC, 12/12/18, p.A2)
2018 Dec 11, Time magazine named a group of journalists, including a slain Saudi Arabian writer Jamal Khashoggi, as its "Person of the Year," in a cover story headlined "The Guardians and the War on Truth." Also named were Philippine journalist Maria Ressa, Reuters reporters Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo -- currently imprisoned in Myanmar -- and the staff of the Capital Gazette in the US city of Annapolis, including five members killed in a June shooting.
(Reuters, 12/11/18)(AFP, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 11, In Los Angeles a federal judge ordered porn star Stormy Daniels to pay Pres. Trump nearly $293,000 for his attorney's fees and another $1000 in sanctions after her defamation suit against the president was dismissed.
(SFC, 12/12/18, p.A5)
2018 Dec 11, North Carolina reported three deaths after melting snow from a winter storm in several southern states transformed to ice.
(SFC, 12/12/18, p.A7)
2018 Dec 11, Texas executed Alvin Braziel Jr. for the 1993 robbery and slaying of Douglas White (27), who was attacked as he and his wife walked on a jogging trail.
(SFC, 12/12/18, p.A5)
2018 Dec 11, Thousands of Albanian university students took to Tirana's streets for their biggest show of strength yet in a protest movement demanding lower tuition fees and more investment in public education.
(AFP, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 11, In Argentina a court sentenced former Ford Motor Co. executives Pedro Muller and Hector Francisco Sibilla to prison for crimes against humanity committed during the country's 1976-1983 military dictatorship.
(SFC, 12/12/18, p.A2)
2018 Dec 11, An Australian court sentenced a Sydney teenager (18) to at least 12 years in prison for planning an attack inspired by the Islamic State group in 2016.
(AP, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 11, An Australian court found Cardinal George Pell (77), one of the highest ranking Vatican officials and a former top adviser to Pope Francis, guilty on five charges of child sexual offences committed more than two decades ago against 13-year-old boys. The verdict was only made public on Feb. 26, 2019.
(Reuters, 2/26/19)
2018 Dec 11, In southern Brazil a man opened fire at the Metropolitan Cathedral in Campinas killing four people and wounding four more before taking a bullet in the ribs and then shooting himself in the head.
(SFC, 12/12/18, p.A2)
2018 Dec 11, Six Cambodian union leaders each received suspended 2 1/2-year prison terms in connection with labor protests in January, 2014, in which four garment workers were killed and around 20 others hurt.
(AP, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 11, In Canada Meng Wanzhou (46) a top executive of Chinese telecoms giant Huawei Technologies Co Ltd was granted bail by court, 10 days after her arrest in Vancouver at the request of US authorities sparked a diplomatic dispute. US President Donald Trump said he would intervene in the US Justice Department's case against Meng if it would serve national security interests or help close a trade deal with China.
(Reuters, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 11, China's economy czar and US trade envoys discussed plans for talks on a tariff battle, indicating negotiations are going ahead despite tension over the arrest of a Chinese tech executive.
(AP, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 11, In CongoDRC two supporters of opposition candidate Martin Fayulu were killed and 43 hurt as he went for a rally in Lubumbashi.
(AFP, 12/13/18)
2018 Dec 11, Traders in Cairo said Egyptian authorities have unofficially restricted the sale of "yellow vests," signaling fears of possible protests inspired by those in France.
(AFP, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 11, In France a man killed three people in a gun attack on a Christmas market in Strasbourg and escaped the scene. 12 other people were wounded. He was soon identified as Strasbourg-born Cherif Chekatt (29), was known to have been religiously radicalized while in jail, and was on an intelligence services watch list as a potential security risk.
(Reuters, 12/12/18)(SFC, 12/12/18, p.A4)
2018 Dec 11, India's ruling party lost power in three key states, dealing PM Narendra Modi his biggest defeat since he took office in 2014 and boosting the opposition ahead of national polls next year. The opposition Congress party was a clear winner in Chhattisgarh state, and fell one seat short of a majority in both Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh.
(Reuters, 12/11/18)(AP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 11, Iran's Arman daily reported that human rights lawyers Ghasem Sholeh-Saadi and Arash Keikhosravi have been sentenced to six years in prison for taking part in an "illegal gathering" and one year for "propaganda" against the ruling system. Lawyer Mohammad Najafi was sentenced to 10 years for "conveying information to a hostile country" through interviews with foreign media, two years for insulting the supreme leader and one year for publicity in support of opposition groups.
(AP, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 11, Israel said it had uncovered another Hezbollah "attack tunnel" infiltrating its territory from Lebanon -- the third since it started a search and destroy operation along the border last week.
(AP, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 11, Israeli forces shot and killed a Palestinian man in the West Bank city of Hebron after he attempted to ram his car into them. In the northern West Bank another Palestinian drove his car toward Israeli forces, who opened fire and arrested the driver.
(AP, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 11, Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, arrived in Israel for a two-day visit that has prompted criticism over his far-right policies and anti-migration views.
(AP, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 11, Rome's longstanding garbage problems turned into an emergency after a huge fire at the Salaria waste disposal plant blanketed the Eternal City in smoke and forced authorities to scramble to find alternative facilities to treat the capital's trash.
(AP, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 11, A Tokyo court ruled that Nissan Motor Co.'s former chairman, Carlos Ghosn, and another executive will remain in custody through Dec. 20, more than a month after their arrest. Their detention could continue for months more under the Japanese legal system.
(AP, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 11, In Kashmir rebels fighting against Indian rule attacked a police post, killing four officers in the southern Shopian area.
(AP, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 11, In central Mexico seven people were killed in a fireworks accident in the community of Fuentezuelas, Queretaro state. Improperly stored fireworks were accidentally ignited as a procession celebrating the Virgin of Guadalupe neared a chapel.
(AP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 11, New Zealand's government passed a law that will make medical marijuana widely available for thousands of patients over time.
(AP, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 11, Pakistan's anti-graft body said it has arrested a senior politician from former PM Nawaz Sharif's party over links to a multimillion-dollar housing scam. Khawaja Saad Rafique and his brother, who is also accused in the case, were arrested in Lahore after a court refused to extend their bail.
(AP, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 11, President Vladimir Putin said it was unclear to him why a Russian woman, Maria Butina, had been detained in the United States and accused of being a Russian agent because his intelligence chiefs had told him they knew nothing about her.
(Reuters, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 11, The Russian military said that nearly 114,000 Syrian refugees have been repatriated this year, a fraction of the estimated 6 million who have fled since the start of the conflict.
(AP, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 11, Thailand's military government lifted a ban on political activities it imposed when it seized power in a coup more than four years ago, an action taken in preparation for elections promised for early next year.
(AP, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 11, A Thai court ruled that soccer player Hakeem al-Araibi, who holds refugee status in Australia, can be held for 60 days pending the completion of an extradition request by Bahrain. In 2014 Bahrain sentenced him in absentia to 10 years in prison for vandalizing a police station, a charge he denies.
(AP, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 11, In northern Turkey a police officer angered that his request for a transfer was rejected fired shots at his superiors inside a police station in Rize, killing the local police chief and wounding two other officers.
(AP, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 11, Yemen's Houthi movement and the Saudi-backed government exchanged lists of some 15,000 prisoners for a swap agreed as a confidence-building measure at the start of UN-sponsored peace talks in Sweden.
(Reuters, 12/11/18)
2019 Dec 11, President Donald Trump signed an executive order targeting what his administration describes as a growing problem with anti-Semitic harassment on college campuses. Under the order, the Department of Education will consider the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's definition of anti-Semitism — which can include criticism of Israel — when evaluating discrimination complaints under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. The department could withhold funding from schools that it finds in violation of Title VI.
(AP, 12/11/19)
2019 Dec 11, The United States imposed new sanctions on Iran's biggest airline and its shipping industry, accusing them of transporting lethal aid from Iran to Yemen and weapons of mass destruction proliferation.
(AP, 12/11/19)
2019 Dec 11, The Los Angeles Times reported that Lachlan Murdoch, son of Rupert Murdoch and the co-chairman of News Corp., has purchased the 25,000 square-foot Chartwell estate in the the city's Bel Air neighborhood for about $150 million. This was the highest home price ever in California. The 1930s mansion is seen in the credits for the "Beverly Hillbillies" TV show.
(SFC, 12/13/19, p.A8)
2019 Dec 11, The New York Times reported that Harvey Weinstein and his former film studio's board have reached a tentative $25 million settlement that would end nearly every sexual misconduct lawsuit brought against him and his company.
(AP, 12/11/19)
2019 Dec 11, Tessa Majors (18), of Charlottesville, Virginia, was walking in Manhattan’s Morningside Park just before 7 p.m. when she was accosted and stabbed during a struggle in an armed robbery. Three teenagers were involved. Two juvenile suspects, aged 13 and 14, were soon arrested in the fatal stabbing. On Dec 26 the New York City Police Department said it has located a teen they were seeking in connection with the stabbing death of Barnard College student Tessa Majors.
(AP, 12/13/19)(NY Times, 12/14/19)(CBS News, 12/26/19)
2019 Dec 11, A Dallas man who prosecutors said tried to recruit fighters for the Islamic State group through social media, encouraged others to carry out terrorist attacks and lied to federal agents was sentenced to 30 years in prison. Said Azzam Mohamad Rahim was arrested at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport in March 2017 while trying to board a flight to Jordan.
(NY Times, 12/12/19)
2019 Dec 11, It was reported that Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old Swede who inspired millions of young people to take action against climate change, has been named Time Magazine's Person of the Year for 2019.
(Reuters, 12/11/19)
2019 Dec 11, It was reported that Walt Disney Co's Disney+ has been downloaded 22 million times on mobile devices since the launch of the streaming service in November, according to a report by research firm Apptopia.
(Reuters, 12/11/19)
2019 Dec 11, In Afghanistan a suicide bomber struck an under construction medical facility at Bagram, the largest US military base in northern Afghanistan. At least two people were killed and 73 wounded. The Taliban claiming responsibility for the attack.
(SFC, 12/12/19, p.A2)
2019 Dec 11, Angolan authorities opened a criminal case against a former fishing minister for alleged involvement in a bribery scandal with Iceland's biggest fishing company that has seen six arrests in neighboring Namibia. State-owned Jornal de Angola said authorities had frozen the assets of ex-minister of fisheries Victoria de Barros Neto and opened a case against her, her husband and four children.
(Reuters, 12/11/19)
2019 Dec 11, The Bosnian capital Sarajevo declared Nobel Prize-winning Austrian author Peter Handke "persona non grata" over his support for late Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic and denial of the 1995 genocide in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica.
(Reuters, 12/11/19)
2019 Dec 11, Research showed that China's bitcoin miners now control two-thirds of the crypto network's processing power, a growing share that is likely to benefit the country's miners.
(Reuters, 12/11/19)
2019 Dec 11, Danish police made several raids throughout the country and arrested a number of people in connection with suspected preparations for an Islamist militant attack.
(Reuters, 12/11/19)
2019 Dec 11, Europe sought to bolster the world's faltering battle against climate change with its "Green Deal" to slash fossil fuel dependence, while teen activist Greta Thunberg rebuked global leaders for dragging their feet.
(Reuters, 12/11/19)
2019 Dec 11, France's PM Edouard Philippe outlined an overhaul of France's byzantine pension system that he said would be fairer and plug a gaping deficit in the pension budget. People born after 1974 would have to work until the age of 64 to get a full pension, instead of 62 previously, drawing a hostile response from trade unions who said they would step up strike action to force an about-turn.
(Reuters, 12/11/19)(SFC, 12/12/19, p.A2)
2019 Dec 11, The German government said it was unaware that Russia had made an extradition request for a Georgian man murdered in Berlin in August after Russian President Vladimir Putin said requests from Moscow had not been heeded.
(Reuters, 12/11/19)
2019 Dec 11, India's ruling Hindu nationalist government won parliamentary approval for a far-reaching citizenship law that critics say undermines the country's secular constitution, as protests against the legislation intensified. India's Citizenship Amendment Act of 2019 inserted religion as a criterion for citizenship.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizenship_(Amendment)_Act,_2019)(AP, 12/11/19)
2019 Dec 11, The Israeli parliament began voting to dissolve itself and pave the path to an unprecedented third election within a year. The preliminary vote passed without objections. Barring a nearly unfathomable about-face, three more measures are expected to pass and call a new election for March 2, 2020.
(AP, 12/11/19)
2019 Dec 11, At The Hague Nobel Peace Prize winner and former political prisoner Aung San Suu Kyi denied that Myanmar's armed forces committed genocide, telling the United Nation's top court that the mass exodus of Rohingya people from the country she leads was the unfortunate result of a battle with insurgents.
(AP, 12/11/19)
2019 Dec 11, The International Criminal Court said it has confirmed the charges brought by prosecutors against two men suspected of war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Central African Republic. The court said Alfred Yekatom and alleged co-conspirator and Patrice-Edouard Ngaissona, who have said they are innocent, will face trial.
(Reuters, 12/11/19)
2019 Dec 11, It was reported that North Korean state-backed hackers appear to be cooperating with Eastern European cybercriminals, a finding that suggests digital gangsters and state-backed spies are finding common ground online.
(AP, 12/11/19)(http://tinyurl.com/s6yc83s)
2019 Dec 11, In Papua New Guinea results from two weeks of voting on a referendum on the island of Bougainville, population about 200,000, showed 98% of the voters favored independence. The referendum was nonbinding and independence would need to be negotiated.
(SFC, 12/12/19, p.A4)
2019 Dec 11, Saudi Aramco shares surged the maximum permitted 10% above their IPO price to $9.39 per share on their Riyadh stock market debut, in a move hailed by the government as a vindication of its towering $2 trillion valuation of the state oil company.
(Reuters, 12/11/19)(SFC, 12/12/19, p.D3)
2019 Dec 11, Spain’s King Felipe VI invited acting PM Pedro Sanchez to attempt to form a government and end the country’s prolonged political gridlock.
(Bloomberg, 12/11/19)
2019 Dec 11, In Spain dozens of young campaigners and indigenous rights activists were thrown out of United Nations climate talks after staging a protest demanding that nations commit to act now to avert catastrophic climate change.
(AFP, 12/11/19)
2020 Dec 11, President Donald Trump, facing a midnight deadline, signed a one-week extension of expiring federal funding to avoid a government shutdown and to provide more time for separate talks on COVID-19 relief and an overarching spending bill.
(Reuters, 12/11/20)
2020 Dec 11, The US Senate approved a wide-ranging defense bill, despite Pres. Trump's threat to veto the measure because it does not clamp down on big tech companies he claims were biased during the election. The House and Senate have enough votes to override a veto. U.S. Trump has until Dec. 23 to decide whether to veto the $740 billion National Defense Authorization Act or allow the annual measure setting policy for the Department of Defense to become law.
(SFC, 12/12/20, p.A4)(Reuters, 12/14/20)
2020 Dec 11, The US Supreme Court threw out a complaint filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton that directly attacked four other states that President-elect Joe Biden won.
(AP, 12/11/20)
2020 Dec 11, The Trump administration continued its unprecedented series of post-election federal executions by putting to death in Indiana Alfred Bourgeois (56), a Louisiana truck driver who severely abused his 2-year-old daughter for weeks in 2002, then killed her by slamming her head repeatedly against a truck’s windows and dashboard.
(AP, 12/11/20)
2020 Dec 11, President Donald Trump's administration moved forward with $1 billion in sales of drones and precision-guided weapons to Morocco, sending a notice to Congress about the potential deals.
(Reuters, 12/11/20)
2020 Dec 11, The FDA granted emergency use for the vaccine produced by Pfizer Inc. and its German partner BioNTech. Hours before the FDA authorization, a high-ranking White House official told the agency’s chief he could face firing if the vaccine was not cleared by day’s end.
(AP, 12/12/20)
2020 Dec 11, It was reported that a team of codebreakers has deciphered an encrypted 340 character message sent 51-years ago by the so-called Zodiac killer, who was responsible for at least five murders in northern California: "I hope you are having lots of fun in trying to catch me. I am not afraid of the gas chamber because it will send me to paradice (sic) all the sooner because I now have enough slaves to work for me where everyone else has nothing when they reach paradice so they are afraid of death. I am not afraid because I know that my new life will be an easy one in paradice death."
(SFC, 12/12/20, p.A1)
2020 Dec 11, California to date had 1,497,623 cases of coronavirus and 20,700 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 184,154 cases and 2,098 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 15,817,169 with the death toll at 294,690.
(sfist.com, 12/11/20)
2020 Dec 11, Rapper Lil Wayne pleaded guilty to a federal charge that he possessed a weapon despite being a convicted felon following a 2019 search of a private plane in the Miami area.
(AP, 12/11/20)
2020 Dec 11, In North Carolina Tyler Avery (25), a Mount Holly Police officer, died following an exchange of gunfire early today during a break-in at a car wash in the Belmont area of Gaston County. Joshua Tyler Funk (24) was soon arrested and charged with murder.
(AP, 12/11/20)
2020 Dec 11, In Ohio hundreds of people peacefully demonstrated in Columbus late today to protest the December 4 death of Casey Goodson Jr.
(Insider, 12/12/20)
2020 Dec 11, It was reported that Global fund managers are reducing their holdings in US-listed Chinese companies such as Alibaba, Netease and JD.com as risks grow they will be forced off American exchanges, switching instead into shares of the companies listed in Hong Kong.
(Reuters, 12/11/20)
2020 Dec 11, Scientists said five key genes are linked with the most severe form of COVID-19 in research that also pointed to several existing drugs that could be repurposed to treat people who risk getting critically ill with the pandemic disease.
(Reuters, 12/11/20)
2020 Dec 11, Australian researchers announced they had abandoned development of a potential vaccine because the false positive results to HIV tests undermined public confidence.
(AP, 12/11/20)
2020 Dec 11, The Azerbaijani military reportedly launched an attack late today that left three local ethnic Armenian servicemen wounded in Nagorno-Karabakh.
(AP, 12/12/20)
2020 Dec 11, Brazil's Health Ministry said it is studying 58 suspected cases of COVID-19 re-infection after confirming the first case of a person getting re-infected with the illness caused by the coronavirus. The pathogen of the sample collected in June belonged to the B.1.1.33 strain and the October sample was from the B.1.1.28 strain.
(Reuters, 12/11/20)
2020 Dec 11, Britain and Vietnam finalized a free trade agreement, the second deal London has reached in Southeast Asia in as many days while deadlock continues over post-Brexit European Union arrangements.
(AFP, 12/11/20)
2020 Dec 11, Canadian federal health authorities said longer-range forecasts project the second wave of the coronavirus spreading rapidly through Canada, and all the major provinces need to impose more restrictions.
(Reuters, 12/11/20)
2020 Dec 11, Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said US claims about risks to national security were completely false, following a US decision to halt China Telecom US operations.
(Reuters, 12/11/20)
2020 Dec 11, Ethiopia said it is returning thousands of refugees who ran from camps in its Tigray region, putting them on buses back to the border area with Eritrea, the country the refugees originally fled. Ethiopia's government denied that the war in its northern Tigray region was preventing aid reaching civilians, as two foreign aid agencies confirmed some staff had been killed there and urged all sides to do more to protect non-combatants. The Danish Refugee Council (DRC) reported the deaths of three security guards in Ethiopia's Tigray region over the last month.
(AP, 12/11/20)(Reuters, 12/11/20)(BBC, 12/11/20)
2020 Dec 11, French Culture Minister Roselyne Bachelot pledged an extra 35 million euros ($42 million) to bail out museums, cinemas and theatres left "stunned" by an extension of COVID-19 restrictions.
(Reuters, 12/11/20)
2020 Dec 11, France reported 13,406 new coronavirus infections, while intensive care cases dropped again and are now well below a government target. The number of deaths rose by 627 to 57,567.
(AP, 12/11/20)
2020 Dec 11, France-based Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline said clinical trials of their COVID-19 vaccine showed an insufficient immune response in older people, delaying its launch to late next year and marking a setback in the global fight against the pandemic.
(Reuters, 12/11/20)
2020 Dec 11, Construction of Nord Stream 2, a German-Russian pipeline that the United States has vehemently opposed, resumed after nearly a year.
(AP, 12/11/20)
2020 Dec 11, City leader Carrie Lam said Hong Kong has ordered 15 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine, split between China's Sinovac Biotech Ltd. and Pfizer/BioNTech, twice the number of its residents.
(Reuters, 12/11/20)
2020 Dec 11, In India around a million doctors went on a day-long strike amid the coronavirus pandemic to protest against a new federal government rule that allows practitioners of the traditional science of Ayurveda to perform minor surgeries.
(Reuters, 12/11/20)
2020 Dec 11, Mexico became the fourth country to approve emergency use of Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine, following authorization from health regulator Cofepris.
(Reuters, 12/11/20)
2020 Dec 11, In north-western Nigeria hundreds of students were feared missing after gunmen raided a secondary school in Katsina state. On Dec. 15 the Islamist militant group Boko Haram said it was behind the kidnapping.
(BBC, 12/12/20)(AP, 12/15/20)
2020 Dec 11, Eight mainly Western nations accused North Korea of using the pandemic “to crack down further on the human rights of its own people," pointing to reports of an uptick in executions related to the coronavirus and strict controls on movements in and around the capital.
(AP, 12/11/20)
2020 Dec 11, Pakistan's foreign minister called for the UN and the EU to investigate a recent report exposing a 15-year disinformation campaign that Islamabad alleges was designed to serve India's interests and discredit Pakistan. New Delhi denied the claims.
(AP, 12/11/20)
2020 Dec 11, Philippines-based Asian Development Bank said it has launched a $9 billion facility to help nations access and deliver COVID-19 vaccines. The Asia Pacific Vaccine Access Facility (APVAX) will provide support for procurement and transporting of vaccines from place of purchase to ADB's developing members.
(Reuters, 12/11/20)
2020 Dec 11, Portugal reported 95 deaths linked to COVID-19, its worst daily toll since the pandemic started, as countries across Europe struggled to contain a second wave of infections.
(Reuters, 12/11/20)
2020 Dec 11, Russia reported its highest COVID-19 daily death tally, a day after official data revealed a surge in excess deaths in October that made it the most deadly month in a decade.
(Reuters, 12/11/20)
2020 Dec 11, Russia's sovereign wealth fund said AstraZeneca is to start clinical trials to test a combination of its experimental COVID-19 vaccine with Russia's Sputnik V shot to see if this can boost the efficacy of the British drugmaker's vaccine.
(Reuters, 12/11/20)
2020 Dec 11, It was reported that South Korea-based Hyundai Motor Group and its chairman have agreed to buy a controlling stake in Boston Dynamics from SoftBank Group Corp in a deal that values the US-based robot maker at $1.1 billion. The deal would give the company and its chief a combined 80% stake in Boston Dynamics, while Softbank will retain 20%.
(AP, 12/11/20)
2020 Dec 11, A new report by international food security experts said South Sudan's western Pibor county is feared to have reached famine level, the result of massive flooding and deadly violence that has prevented access to aid.
(AP, 12/11/20)
2020 Dec 11, Swiss-based Novartis said it has received approval from the European Commission for Leqvio, also known as inclisiran, a drug to lower cholesterol that the drugmaker bought last year in a deal worth nearly $10 billion and expects to be a top seller.
(Reuters, 12/11/20)
2020 Dec 11, The global chemical weapons watchdog (OPCW) criticized Syria for failing to declare a chemical weapons production facility and respond to 18 other issues. Russia accused the watchdog of conducting a “political crusade" against its close ally, the Syrian government.
(AP, 12/11/20)
2020 Dec 11, Taiwan commissioned the first of a new fleet of coastguard ships, an advanced catamaran that can be armed with missiles during war, as the island bolsters its defenses in the face of what it sees as a growing threat from Beijing.
(Reuters, 12/11/20)
2020 Dec 11, Ukraine reported 13,514 new coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours, bringing the total number to 872,228 cases with 14,755 deaths.
(AP, 12/11/20)
2020 Dec 11, A UN-backed tribunal sentenced fugitive Hezbollah member, Salim Ayyash, to five concurrent terms of life imprisonment in absentia over his involvement in the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese PM Rafik Hariri.
(AP, 12/11/20)
Go to http://www.timelinesdb.com
Go to December 12
Return to home
International Mountain Day. In 2002 the UN General Assembly adopted resolution 57/245 designating 11 December as International Mountain Day.
(Econ, 11/24/12, p.68)
For Asian History: https://www.asiaobserver.org/category/news/on-this-day-in-asian-history
711 Dec 11, Justitianus II (~42), emperor of Byzantium, died.
(MC, 12/11/01)
1282 Dec 11, Llywelyn ap Gruffydd (b.~1223), the last prince of an independent Wales, died after he was lured into a trap and killed at the Battle of Orewin Bridge by forces under Edward I.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Llywelyn_the_Last)(Econ, 11/24/12, p.63)
1419 Dec 11, Heretic Nicolaas Serrurier was exiled from Florence.
(MC, 12/11/01)
1524 Dec 11, Henry Van Zutphen, Dutch Protestant martyr, was burned at stake.
(MC, 12/11/01)
1620 Dec 11, 103 Mayflower pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock.
(MC, 12/11/01)
1688 Dec 11, King James II attempted to flee London as the "Glorious Revolution" replaced him with King William (of Orange) and Queen Mary. James attempted to flee to France, first throwing the Great Seal of the Realm into the River Thames. He was, however, caught in Kent. Having no desire to make James a martyr, the Prince of Orange let him escape on December 23, 1688. James was received by Louis XIV, who offered him a palace and a generous pension. In 2007 Michael Barone authored “Our First Revolution: The Remarkable British Upheaval That Inspired America’s Founding Fathers."
(HN, 12/11/98)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_II_of_England)
1718 Dec 11, Charles XII, King of Sweden (1697-1718), was shot dead.
(MC, 12/11/01)
1719 Dec 11, The first recorded sighting of the Aurora Borealis in the US took place in New England.
(AP, 12/11/99)
1725 Dec 11, George Mason (d.1792), American Revolutionary statesman, was born at Gunston Hall Plantation, situated on the Potomac River some 20 miles south of Washington D.C. Mason framed the Bill of Rights for the Virginia Convention in June 1776. This was the model for the first part of fellow Virginian Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence and the basis of the first 10 Amendments to the federal Constitution. Mason died at Gunston Hall on October 7, 1792.
(HNQ, 2/18/99)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Mason)
1781 Dec 11, David Brewster, physicist and inventor (kaleidoscope), was born in Scotland.
(MC, 12/11/01)
1792 Dec 11, France's King Louis XVI went before the Convention to face charges of treason. Louis was convicted and executed the following month.
(AP, 12/11/97)
1803 Dec 11, Hector Berlioz (d.1869), French composer and conductor, was born. He introduced arresting and gaudy instrumental colors in combinations that had not been dreamed of before him. He composed “Romeo and Juliet" in 1939 and conducted its first performance. He also composed the “Death of Cleopatra." He composed "Symphonie Fantastique" and "La Damnation de Faust." [see Dec 1]
(T&L, 10/80, p. 58)(SFC, 10/5/96, p.E1)(HN, 12/11/99)
1816 Dec 11, Indiana was admitted to the Union as the 19th state.
(AP, 12/11/97)(HN, 12/11/98)
1843 Dec 11, Robert Koch (d.1910), German physician, bacteriologist, and medical researcher, was born. He won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1905.
(http://nobelprize.org/medicine/laureates/1905/koch-bio.html)
1844 Dec 11, The 1st dental use of nitrous oxide was at Hartford, Ct.
(MC, 12/11/01)
1851 Dec 11, In Philadelphia 37 men, on trial in federal court for defying the Fugitive Slave Law, were deemed not guilty by a jury with 15 minutes of deliberation.
(AH, 10/02, p.54)
1861 Dec 11, A raging fire swept the business district of Charleston, South Carolina, adding to an already depressed economic state.
(HN, 12/11/98)
1862 Dec 11, Union General Burnside occupied Fredricksburg and prepared to attack the Confederates under Robert E. Lee.
(HN, 12/11/98)
1863 Dec 11, Union gunboats Restless, Bloomer and Caroline entered St. Andrew’s Bay, Fla., and began bombardment of both Confederate Quarters and Saltworks.
(HN, 12/11/98)
1880 Dec 11, Louis Pasteur (57), French scientist, began an experiment to identify the microbe that causes rabies.
(ON, 6/08, p.4)
1882 Dec 11, Fiorella H. La Guardia (d.1947), mayor of New York City, 1934-1945, was born.
(AP, 1/8/98)(WSJ, 12/9/98, p.A20)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiorello_La_Guardia)
1882 Dec 11, Boston's Bijou Theatre, the first American playhouse to be lighted exclusively by electricity, gave its first performance: Gilbert and Sullivan's "Iolanthe, Or The Peer and the Peri."
(AP, 12/11/08)
1901 Dec 11, Marconi sent his 1st transatlantic radio signal from Cornwall, England to Newfoundland, Canada. The first transmission failed, but another the next day succeeded.
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/low/science/nature/1701461.stm)
1902 Dec 11, Matthias Hohner (b.1833), German clockmaker and harmonica manufacturer, died. He began making harmonicas in 1857. Exports to America began in 1862.
(www.eharmonica.net/history.htm)
1911 Dec 11, Naguib Mahfouz (d.2006), Nobel Prize-winning Egyptian novelist, was born.
(HN, 12/11/00)(SFC, 8/31/06, p.A13)
1918 Dec 11, Alexander Solzhenitsyn (d.2008), Russian writer, was born. He won the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize and is famous for “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" (1962) and "The Gulag Archipelago" (1973). Daniel J. Mahoney later authored "Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: The Ascent From Ideology."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Solzhenitsyn)(WSJ, 10/11/01, p.A20)
1922 Dec 11, Grace Paley, short story writer, was born.
(HN, 12/11/00)
1922 Dec 11, Gabriel Narutowicz (b.1865), a Lithuanian-born, Swiss banking engineer, served as Poland’s first post WWI president. Five days later he was assassinated.
(Econ, 6/18/11, p.89)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriel_Narutowicz)
1926 Dec 11, Willie “Big Mama" Thorton, blues singer, was born.
(HN, 12/11/98)
1927 Dec 11, Nearly 400 world leaders signed a letter to President Calvin Coolidge asking the U.S. to join the World Court.
(HN, 12/11/98)
1928 Dec 11, Police in Buenos Aires thwarted an attempt on the life of President-elect Herbert Hoover.
(AP, 12/11/97)
1929 Dec 11, John Jacob Raskob (1879-1950), former General Motors executive, announced a 102-story design for his Empire State Building.
(http://outside.in/Manhattan_NY/tags/empire%20state%20building)(ON, 12/08, p.10)
1930 Dec 11, As the economic crises grew, the Bank of the U.S. closed its doors.
(HN, 12/11/98)
1931 Dec 11, The Statute of Westminster recast the British Empire as a Commonwealth of Nations.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Westminster_1931)(Econ, 8/2/14, p.45)
1933 Dec 11, Reports said Paraguay had captured 11,000 Bolivians in the war over Chaco.
(HN, 12/11/98)
1936 Dec 11, Brian Richard Boylan, author, adventurer and director, was born.
(MC, 12/11/01)
1936 Dec 11, Hannibal Harris, man of letters, epic poet, was born.
(MC, 12/11/01)
1936 Dec 11, An eerie glow over Chicago took place that some believe was a rare display of the Aurora Borealis.
(MC, 12/11/01)
1936 Dec 11, Britain's King Edward VIII abdicated the throne in order to marry American divorcee Wallis Warfield Simpson. Edward VIII had been king of Great Britain and Ireland for less than a year when he abdicated the throne to marry "the woman I love,"--the twice-divorced American Wallis Warfield Spencer Simpson. The eldest child of King George V and Queen Mary, Edward met the Baltimore-born Mrs. Simpson in 1931 while she was still married to her second husband. Their relationship caused much consternation among British traditionalists since the Church of England forbade divorced persons to remarry and would not recognize a marriage between Edward and Mrs. Simpson. After his ascension to the throne on January 20, 1936, Edward VIII expressed his desire to marry Mrs. Simpson and, if he could not do so and remain king, he said he was "prepared to go." After his abdication, Edward was awarded the title Duke of Windsor by his brother, King George VI. Edward and Mrs. Simpson married on June 3, 1937.
(AP, 12/11/97)(HNPD, 12/11/98)
1937 Dec 11, Jim Harrison, novelist and poet (Legends of the Fall), was born.
(HN, 12/11/00)
1937 Dec 11, Italy withdrew from the League of Nations.
(AP, 12/11/97)
1939 Dec 11, Tom McGuane, novelist and screenwriter, was born. His work includes “The Sporting Club" and “Bushwacked Piano."
(HN, 12/11/00)
1939 Dec 11, New anti Jewish measurements in Poland were proclaimed.
(MC, 12/11/01)
1941 Dec 11, Germany and Italy declared war on the United States; the U.S. responded in kind.
(AP, 12/11/97)(HN, 12/11/98)
1941 Dec 11, A Japanese invasion fleet attacked Wake Island, which was defended by 439 US marines, 75 sailors and 6 soldiers. The defenders sank 4 Japanese ships, damaged 8 and destroyed a submarine.
(SFC, 12/12/01, p.A2)
1941 Dec 11, Guam was occupied by Japanese troops.
(WUD, 1944, p.1683)
1943 Dec 11, John Kerry, Massachusetts Senator and 2004 Democrat presidential candidate, was born in Denver, Colorado.
(SSFC, 2/29/04, p.D2)
1943 Dec 11, Donna Mills, actress (Knots Landing, Incident), was born in Chicago, Illinois.
(MC, 12/11/01)
1943 Dec 11, U.S. Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, demanded that Hungary, Rumania, and Bulgaria withdraw from the war.
(HN, 12/11/98)
1945 Dec 11, B-29 Superfortress shattered all records by crossing the U.S. in five hours and 27 minutes.
(HN, 12/11/98)
1946 Dec 11, The United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) was established. The organization received a Nobel Prize in 1965.
(AP, 12/11/97)(MC, 12/11/01)
1946 Dec 11, Spain was suspended from the UN.
(MC, 12/11/01)
1948 Dec 11, United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194 was passed near the end of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. The resolution expresses appreciation for the efforts of UN Envoy Folke Bernadotte after his assassination by members of the Stern Gang. It was later often quoted in support of the Palestinian right of return.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_General_Assembly_Resolution_194)(Econ, 9/6/08, p.68)
1951 Dec 11, Joe DiMaggio announced his retirement from baseball.
(www.thebaseballpage.com/past/pp/dimaggiojoe/)
1952 Dec 11, Stanford scientist demonstrated the new $1,750,000 linear electron accelerator. Its 200-foot barrel fired electrons at 99.99% the speed of light.
(SFC, 12/6/02, p.E16)
1952 Dec 11, The outbound Norwegian ship Fernstream was sliced open by the inbound SS Hawaiian Rancher under heavy fog inside the Golden Gate. The Fernstream sank in 30 minutes but all passengers escaped.
(SFC, 12/6/02, p.E16)
1955 Dec 11, Archer Milton Huntingon (b.1970) died in NYC. He had inherited a fortune from his father, who had built ships and railroads. In 1904 he founded the Hispanic Society of America in New York City and used his fortune to carry out his goal of building a museum of Hispanic culture, which opened to the public in Manhattan in 1908.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archer_Milton_Huntington)(AP, 4/1/17)
1955 Dec 11, Israel launched an attack on Syrian positions along the Sea of Galilee.
(EWH, 1968, p.1241)(HN, 12/11/98)
1957 Dec 11, The movie "Peyton Place," based on the novel by Grace Metalious, starred Lana Turner and had its world premiere in Camden, Maine, where most of it had been filmed.
(AP, 12/11/07)(SFC, 8/13/14, p.E8)
1961 Dec 11, "Please, Mr. Postman" by Marvelettes was released.
(MC, 12/11/01)
1961 Dec 11, A U.S. aircraft carrier carrying Army helicopters arrived in Saigon. This was the first direct American military support for South Vietnam's battle against Communist guerrillas. JFK provided 425 US military helicopter crewmen to South Vietnam to provide training and support for South Vietnamese forces.
(AP, 12/11/97)(MC, 12/11/01)
1961 Dec 11, Adolf Eichmann was found guilty of war crimes in Israel.
(MC, 12/11/01)
1962 Dec 11, In San Francisco the L’Italia building at Stockton and Green fell under the wrecker’s ball. The 45-year-old building had housed the largest Italian-language newspaper this side of New York. The newspaper, founded in 1886 had merged with the La Voce Popolo in 1939. It now moved to new quarters at 70 Otis Street.
(SSFC, 12/9/12, DB p.46)
1964 Dec 11, Frank Sinatra Jr. was returned to his parent’s home after being kidnapped for the ransom amount of $240,000.
(HN, 12/11/98)
1965 Dec 11, Sam Cooke (b.1931), pop singer, was shot to death by a motel manager in Los Angeles after a prostitute stole his clothes and money. His hits included “You Send Me," “Cupid," and “Chain Gang." In 2005 Peter Guralnick authored “Dream Boogie: The Triumph of Sam Cooke."
(SSFC, 10/16/05, p.M3)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Cooke)
1967 Dec 11, The Concorde, a joint British-French venture and the world’s first supersonic airliner, was unveiled in Toulouse, France.
(HN, 12/11/98)
1970 Dec 11, Walt Disney's "Aristocats" was released.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Aristocats)
1972 Dec 11, Challenger, the Lunar Lander for Apollo 17, touched down on the Moon's surface. It was the last time that men visited the Moon. The last two men to walk on the surface of the moon were Harrison Schmitt and Eugene Cernan. Cernan and Schmitt conducted the longest lunar exploration of the Apollo program (75 hours), driving the lunar rover about 36 kilometers (22 miles) in all, ranging as far as 7.37 kilometers (4.5 miles) from the lunar module Challenger and collecting some 243 pounds of soil and rock samples.
(HNQ, 7/21/99)(HN, 12/11/99)
1972 Dec 11, In Paris peace negotiations between Kissinger and Le Duc Tho collapsed after Kissinger presented a list of 69 changes demanded by South Vietnamese President Thieu. President Nixon now issues an ultimatum to North Vietnam that serious negotiations must resume within 72 hours. Hanoi does not respond. As a result Nixon ordered Operation Linebacker II (see Dec 18), eleven days and nights of maximum force bombing against military targets in Hanoi by B-52 bombers.
(www.historyplace.com/unitedstates/vietnam/index-1969.html)
1974 Dec 11, In Chile General Augusto Pinochet took the title of president of the republic.
(SFC, 12/11/06, p.A4)
1976 Dec 11, Hungarian art forger Elmyr de Hory (b.1906) died of a lethal overdose of barbiturates in Ibiza, Spain. The 1969 book "Fake" by Clifford Irving was about De Hory and both Irving and de Hory were featured in the 1975 Orson Welles film "F" for Fake.
(SFC, 7/29/99, p.E6)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elmyr_de_Hory)
1978 Dec 11, Six masked men bound 10 employees at Lufthansa cargo area at NY Kennedy Airport & made off with $5.8 M in cash & jewelry. Nicholas Pileggi wrote "Wise Guys," which described his participation in the heist. The robbery inspired the movie "Goodfellas." On Jan 23, 2014, Vincent Asaro (78) was arrested at his home in NYC and charged with helping direct the heist as well as a 1969 murder.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lufthansa_heist)(SFC, 5/10/97, p.A3)(SFC, 1/24/14, p.A22)
1978 Dec 11, Massive demonstrations took place in Tehran against the Shah. In Isfahan, Iran, 40 people were killed and 60 wounded during riots against the Shah.
(WUD, 1994, p.1691)(HN, 12/11/98)
1979 Dec 11, Charles J. Haughey (1925-2006) was elected in Ireland as Taoiseach and leader of Fianna Fail. He led 3 administrations 1979-1981, 1982, and 1987-1992. In 2000 he agreed to pay $1.23 million in back taxes for gifts received while in office.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Haughey)(SFC, 4/4/00, p.A12)
1980 Dec 11, "Magnum P.I.," starring Tom Selleck, premiered on CBS television.
(AP, 12/11/05)
1980 Dec 11, President Carter signed into a law legislation creating a $1.6 billion environmental "superfund" to pay for cleaning up chemical spills and toxic waste dumps. The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980 (CERCLA or Superfund) was established by the US Congress to clean up America's worst hazardous waste sites. Fifteen years later more than $20 billion had been spent with 1300 waste sites identified but only a small fraction cleaned. The fund was established in response to toxic chemicals seeping into a housing development at Love Canal in New York. The aim was to require private parties to clean up past pollution when they could be found. The Fed would pay where the responsible parties could not be determined. It took 21 years and the removal of 1,200 cubic meters of soil to clean up Love Canal.
(www.epa.gov/superfund/20years/ch2pg3.htm)(WSJ, 10/25/95, p.A-18)(SFC, 6/8/96, p.A13)(Econ 6/10/17, p.24)
1980 Dec 11, Pres.-elect Ronald Reagan nominated Caspar Weinberger as Sec. of Defense.
(SFC, 12/9/05, p.F2)
1980 Dec 11, Massachusetts Sec. of State Michael Connolly banned the sale of Apple Computer stock arguing that the $22 price per share was too high.
(SFC, 12/9/05, p.F6)
1981 Dec 11, Concerned about the safety of Americans in Libya, the Reagan administration asked them to leave. It also invalidated the use of US passports for travel to Libya.
(AP, 12/19/03)
1981 Dec 11, The UN Security Council chose Javier Perez de Cuellar of Peru to be the fifth secretary-general of the world body. He served to 1992.
(SFC, 12/14/96, p.A1)(AP, 12/11/97)
1981 Dec 11, In El Salvador hundreds of people were killed over 3 days in the village of El Mozote by an elite US-trained army battalion led by Commander Domingo Monterrosa. In 1991 the office of Maria Julia Hernandez (1939-2007) published the first investigation into El Mozote. In 1992, under a UN sponsored Truth Commission, the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team found 143 skeletons, 131 of which belonged to children under 12. The bullet cartridges showed manufacture in Lake City, Mo. In Dec, 2012, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruled that El Salvador should reopen its investigation into the army’s killing of some 1000 civilians.
(SFC, 5/12/96, Z1p.4)(Econ, 4/14/07, p.97)(SFC, 12/12/12, p.A2)(Econ, 6/8/19, p.33)
1983 Dec 11, Pope John Paul II visited a Lutheran church in Rome, the first visit by a Roman Catholic pontiff to a Protestant church in his own diocese.
(www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/speeches/1983/december/index.htm)
1984 Dec 11, Kimberly Billy (19) of Stockton, Ca., went missing. Her remains were found in 2012 in a compacted well in Linden, Ca., and attributed to Speed Freak Killers Wesley Shermantine and Loren Herzog.
(SFC, 3/31/12, p.C1)
1987 Dec 11, NATO allies urged the U.S. Senate to ratify the intermediate-range missile treaty quickly and underscored their support by pledging to let the Soviet Union inspect missile bases in five European countries.
(AP, 12/11/97)
1988 Dec 11, SES Astra SA, a subsidiary of SES Global, launched a communications satellite, made by GE Astrospace. Sky Television, later BSkyB (1990), became its 1st customer when it bought 4 transponders in 1989.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SES_Astra)
1988 Dec 11, Sixty-two people were killed when tons of illegal fireworks exploded in a Mexico City marketplace.
(AP, 12/11/98)
1988 Dec 11, A Soviet military transport plane crashed, killing nearly 80 people involved in Armenian earthquake relief efforts.
(AP, 12/11/98)
1989 Dec 11, President Bush, facing criticism at home for sending two U.S. officials to China, defended the diplomatic overture despite the Beijing government's crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators the previous June.
(AP, 12/11/99)
1990 Dec 11, Ivana Trump was divorced from real estate mogul Donald Trump after 12 years of marriage.
(AP, 12/11/00)
1990 Dec 11, Four people died near downtown Columbus, Ohio, after their hot air balloon hit a television tower and deflated.
(AP, 2/26/13)
1990 Dec 11, In Chattanooga, Ten., 12 died in a 99 vehicle accident on I-75 due to fog.
(www.southeastroads.com/i-075c_tn.html)
1990 Dec 11, Hundreds of foreigners flew out of Iraq and Iraqi-occupied Kuwait, ending four months of captivity following Iraq’s invasion of its oil-rich neighbor.
(AP, 12/11/00)
1991 Dec 11, A jury in West Palm Beach, Fla., acquitted William Kennedy Smith of sexual assault and battery, rejecting the allegations of Patricia Bowman.
(AP, 12/11/97)
1991 Dec 11, European Community leaders meeting in the Dutch city of Maastricht hammered out a compromise for a loose federation of their countries. The Maastricht treaty was signed on February 7, 1992, and entered into force on November 1, 1993. It set entry terms for joining a European monetary union.
(WSJ, 11/18/96, p.A10)(WSJ, 3/3/97, p.A1)(AP, 12/11/01)
1992 Dec 11, President-elect Clinton tapped Robert Reich to be labor secretary and Donna Shalala to be secretary of Health and Human Services.
(AP, 12/11/97)
1992 Dec 11, A severe storm pounded the upper Atlantic coast with snow, rain and high winds.
(AP, 12/11/97)
1993 Dec 11, President Clinton, in his weekly radio address, said the nation must fight "violence with values" and praised radio stations that refused to play songs advocating violent crime or showing contempt for women.
(AP, 12/11/98)
1993 Dec 11, Eduardo Frei (b.1942) was elected president of Chile.
(www.hrw.org/reports/1995/WR95/AMERICAS-02.htm)
1994 Dec 11, Leaders of 34 Western Hemisphere nations signed a free-trade declaration in Miami.
(AP, 12/11/99)
1994 Dec 11, A Philippine Airlines flight from Manila to Tokyo was bombed. A Japanese passenger was killed and 10 people were injured. Later US prosecutors accused Ramzi Ahmed Yousef of placing the bomb and of masterminding the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. Yousef denied placing the airline bomb because he was imprisoned at the time.
(SFC, 5/31/96, A4)
1994 Dec 11, Thousands of Russian troops backed by armored columns and jets rolled into breakaway republic of Chechnya in a bid to restore Moscow's control over the region. Russia under Yeltsin sent in troops to put down the Chechnya rebellion but met strong resistance and suffered heavy casualties. There was no attempt by Pres. Yeltsin to legitimize the military action in parliament.
(SFC, 9/5/96, p.A10)(SFC, 12/26/96, p.B1)(SFC, 5/13/97, p.A12)(SFC, 9/9/98, p.A10) (AP, 12/11/99)
1995 Dec 11, Utah Congresswoman Enid Greene Waldholtz held an emotional news conference in which she publicly addressed the scandal surrounding her personal and campaign finances and blamed the mess on her estranged husband, Joe.
(AP, 12/11/00)
1995 Dec 11, The Malden Mills textile manufacturing plant in Lawrence, Mass., burned down. Owner Aaron Feuerstein retained all his employees on full pay until the plant was rebuilt. The plants manufactured Polartec and Polarfleece synthetic fabrics.
(SFEC, 9/8/96, Par p.4)
1996 Dec 11, William McNeill, American historian, won the Erasmus Prize and $172,000. The prize is awarded to people or institutions that have made an exceptionally important contribution to European culture, society or social science.
(SFC, 12/13/96, p.C10)
1996 Dec 11, In Hong Kong a China-organized panel of 400 business leaders approved shipping tycoon Tung Chee-hwa as the chief executive of the semi-autonomous government when China recovers sovereignty on Jul 1, 1997.
(SFC, 12/11/96, p.C3)(AP, 12/11/97)
1996 Dec 11, A mother and son were killed and 5 others wounded when Palestinian militants raked a settler’s car with gunfire in the West Bank. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a Damascus based faction that opposed the PLO’s peace with Israel was blamed. It was the 28th anniversary of the PFLP.
(SFC, 12/12/96, p.C2)
1996 Dec 11, In Russia union leaders decided to end the coal miners’ strike. Up to 400,000 miners had taken part.
(WSJ, 12/12/96, p.A13)
1996 Dec 11, In Rwanda the government published a list of 1,946 suspects ineligible for any punishment less than the firing squad for the 1994 genocide.
(SFC, 12/11/96, p.C2)
1997 Dec 11, Henry Cisneros, President Clinton's first housing secretary, was indicted for conspiracy, obstructing justice and making false statements about payments to former mistress. Cisneros, who later pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor, was eventually pardoned by President Clinton.
(AP, 12/11/02)
1997 Dec 11, A US federal judge ordered Microsoft not to bundle IE4 in Windows.
(http://news.com.com/2100-1001-206287.html?legacy=cnet)
1997 Dec 11, From Austria scientists reported in Nature that they had demonstrated a form of tele-transportation. They teleported the physical condition of a photon using a phenomenon called entanglement.
(SFC, 12/11/97, p.A4)
1997 Dec 11, The 55-member Organization of the Islamic conference ended their meeting in Iran with the declaration that “the killing of innocents is strictly forbidden in Islam." The group also called for full respect for the dignity and rights of Muslim women and criticized Israel for “state terrorism."
(SFC, 12/12/97, p.B2)
1997 Dec 11, Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams became the first political ally of the IRA to meet a British leader in 76 years as he conferred with Prime Minister Tony Blair in London.
(AP, 12/11/98)
1997 Dec 11, In Kyoto, Japan, negotiators at the conference on global warming reached a compromise with a commitment by some 38 industrialized nations to cut greenhouse gas emissions by an average of 5% from 1990 levels over the next 10-15 years. Over 160 nations endorsed the treaty that binds industrialized nations to cut greenhouse gases. It was signed by 171 nations. Int’l. aviation was excluded from the protocol on condition that by 2007 countries and airlines of the Int’l. Civil Aviation Organization (ICOA) come up with a way of reducing emissions through a trading scheme.
(SFC, 12/11/97, p.A1)(WSJ, 12/11/97, p.A1)(SFC, 5/29/98, p.A2)(Econ, 6/10/06, p.67)
1997 Dec 11, Russia announced that it would terminate a recently negotiated 10-year contract with the US on uranium sales, and planned to sell its uranium on the open market. The decision could bring Russia an extra $500 million.
(SFC, 12/12/97, p.B6)
1997 Dec 11, In Spain Jose Luis Caso, a former town councilor in Renteria, was killed by two suspected Basque separatists in Irun.
(SFC, 12/12/97, p.B6)
1997 Dec 11, From Vietnam it was reported that 56 people have died of dengue fever in southern Kien Giang province following Typhoon Linda.
(SFC, 12/11/97, p.C7)
1998 Dec 11, Pres. Clinton appealed for forgiveness but majority Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee voted 21 to 16 to approve 3 articles of impeachment.
(SFC, 12/12/98, p.A1)(AP, 12/11/99)
1998 Dec 11, The Mars Climate Orbiter blasted off on a 9 ½ month journey to the Red Planet. The probe disappeared in September 1999, apparently destroyed because scientists had failed to convert English measures to metric values.
(SFC, 12/11/98, p.D6)(SFC, 12/12/98, p.A10)(AP, 12/11/99)
1998 Dec 11, Hutomo “Tommy" Mandala Putra, Suharto’s youngest son, was charged as a suspect in a corruption case. Also charged was Beddu Amang, a former chief of the state-run food distribution agency known as Bulog.
(SFC, 12/12/98, p.B2)
1998 Dec 11, Israeli troops fired on hundreds of protesting Palestinians killing 2 and wounding dozens.
(SFC, 12/12/98, p.A14)
1998 Dec 11, A Thai Airways Airbus A310-200 jet crashed near the airport at Surat Thani. 45 people survived and 101 died.
(SFC, 12/12/98, p.A15)(WSJ, 12/14/98, p.A1)
1999 Dec 11, Ron Dayne, Wisconsin’s record-setting tailback, was a landslide winner in the Heisman Trophy balloting.
(AP, 12/11/00)
1999 Dec 11, Agreeing with his wife, President Clinton told CBS Radio his 1993 “don’t ask, don’t tell" policy on gays in the military wasn’t working, and he pledged to work with the Pentagon to find a way to fix it.
(AP, 12/11/00)
1999 Dec 11, In Algeria 15 people were massacred outside Blida. Many of the victims were burned alive in a van.
(SFC, 12/15/99, p.B3)
1999 Dec 11, In the Azores a SATA airline ATP turboprop crashed on Sao Jorge island and all 35 people aboard were killed.
(SFEC, 12/12/99, p.D1)
1999 Dec 11, In Chechnya Russian forces halted attacks on Grozny to give an estimated 10-40,000 civilians a chance to leave. An estimated 4,000 rebel fighters were holed up there.
(SFEC, 12/12/99, p.A26)
1999 Dec 11, In Chile presidential elections were held. Ricardo Lagos, a leftist moderate, was the candidate for the governing Concertacion. Joaquin Lagos, a right-wing populist, was a member of Opus Dei, a conservative Catholic organization.
(SFC, 12/11/99, p.A16)
1999 Dec 11, In Sri Lanka rebels led by Villupillai Prabhakaran pushed toward Jaffna with an attack at Elephant Pass. The Defense Ministry claimed that 261 rebels were killed as opposed to 12 soldiers and 4 civilians. Rebels put their losses at 38.
(SFC, 12/15/99, p.A17)
1999 Dec 11, In Uganda anti-government rebels killed at least 21 people in 2 attacks. In one the Congo-based Allied Democratic Forces raided police headquarters in Bundibugyo and killed 9 people.
(SFC, 12/14/99, p.B2)
2000 Dec 11, Shortstop Alex Rodriguez agreed to a $252 million deal with the Texas Rangers, by far the most lucrative contract with any sports team.
(AP, 12/11/01)
2000 Dec 11, Pres. Clinton signed the bipartisan $7.8 billion Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan. CERP included 68 projects planned over 30 years and was the largest environmental restoration effort in history. In 2015 the cost of restoration was placed at about $16 billion.
(Econ, 10/8/05, p.32)(SFC, 12/4/19, p.A7)
2000 Dec 11, The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments from lawyers representing George W. Bush and Al Gore concerning the Florida presidential vote recount.
(AP, 12/11/01)
2000 Dec 11, A federal appeals court declared the Cleveland school voucher program unconstitutional.
(SFC, 12/12/00, p.A3)
2000 Dec 11, The space shuttle Endeavour landed in Florida following its mission to install solar panels on the int’l. space station.
(WSJ, 12/12/00, p.A1)
2000 Dec 11, A US Marine Osprey aircraft crashed in North Carolina and all 4 people aboard were killed. The fleet was grounded the next day.
(SFC, 12/13/00, p.A3)
2000 Dec 11, The EU in Nice reached a compromise in the early hours on a treaty that gave the 4 most populous countries a stronger voice in decision making and paved the way for as many as 13 new members over the next decade.
(SFC, 12/11/00, p.A12)(Econ, 3/17/07, SR p.9)
2000 Dec 11, The UN indicted 11 people in East Timor for last year’s terrorism following independence.
(SFC, 12/12/00, p.B2)
2000 Dec 11, In Iraq Saddam Hussein sent troops into the northern Kurdish zone. Kurds and other non-Arab Iraqis were being displaced further north.
(WSJ, 12/12/00, p.A1)(SFC, 12/13/00, p.B6)
2000 Dec 11, Syria freed some 50 Lebanese political prisoners to placate an anti-Syria movement in Lebanon.
(SFC, 12/12/00, p.B2)
2000 Dec 11, In Trinidad Prime Minister Basdeo Panday, head of the United National Congress, announced victory for 19 parliamentary seats vs. 16 for the black-dominated People’s National Movement.
(SFC, 12/12/00, p.B3)
2001 Dec 11, The US Federal Reserve cut short-term interest rates by .25% to 1.75% in the 11th cut this year. The Dow rose 33 to 9888. the Nasdaq 9 to 2001.
(WSJ, 12/12/01, p.A1)
2001 Dec 11, In the first criminal indictment stemming from Sept. 11, a US grand jury in Virginia charged Zacarias Moussaoui, a French citizen of Moroccan descent, with conspiring to murder thousands in the suicide hijackings. Moussaoui pleaded guilty to conspiracy in 2005 and was sentenced to life in prison.
(WSJ, 12/12/01, p.A1)(SFC, 12/12/01, p.A1)(AP, 12/11/06)
2001 Dec 11, US Federal agents carried out dozens of raids and seized computers in some 27 cities and 21 states suspected of pirating software over the Internet. The “Warez" network of software pirates was targeted.
(SFC, 12/12/01, p.A3)
2001 Dec 11, US bombers continued to hit sites at Tora Bora, Afghanistan, as a deadline for al Qaeda surrender passed.
(SFC, 12/12/01, p.A1)
2001 Dec 11, A federal appeals court struck a Louisiana law that allowed vocal classroom prayer. The state had passed a 1976 law that required schools to allow a brief time in “silent meditation." In 1992 the wording was changed to “silent prayer or meditation." In 1999 the word “silent" was deleted.
(SFC, 12/12/01, p.A7)
2001 Dec 11, The chairman of the militant Jewish Defense League, Irv Rubin, and an associate, Earl Krugel, were arrested on suspicion of plotting to blow up a Los Angeles mosque and the office of an Arab-American congressman. Rubin died November 14th, 2002, 10 days after what federal officials described as a suicide attempt in jail.
(AP, 12/11/02)
2001 Dec 11, The US government approved Swiss food giant Nestle SA's $10.3 billion purchase of Ralston Purina.
(AP, 12/11/02)
2001 Dec 11, Nasa agreed in principle to let Russia’s space agency send Mark Shuttleworth, a South Africa Internet tycoon, to the space station in April for some $20 million.
(WSJ, 12/12/01, p.A1)
2001 Dec 11, Australia reported that an Australian citizen, David Hicks (26), who had trained with the al Qaeda, had been captured in Afghanistan.
(SFC, 12/12/01, p.A19)(SFC, 12/15/01, p.A16)
2001 Dec 11, China’s official entry to the World Trade Organization (WTO), approved in Qatar on Nov 10, became effective.
(Econ, 12/10/11, p.45)(www.china-un.ch/eng/qtzz/wto/t85612.htm)
2001 Dec 11, Israeli helicopter attacks in the Gaza Khan Younis refugee camp killed 3 people and wounded 20.
(WSJ, 12/12/01, p.A1)(SFC, 12/12/01, p.A3)
2001 Dec 11, Pakistani officials said 2 nuclear scientists, Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood and Abdul Majid, talked with Osama bin Laden last August in Kabul about nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.
(SFC, 12/12/01, p.A19)
2002 Dec 11, It was reported that the US had filed allegations that tens of millions of dollars paid by American oil companies to Kazakstan during the 1990s wound up in Swiss bank accounts of top Kazakstani officials.
(SFC, 12/11/02, p.A15)
2002 Dec 11, The United States let an intercepted shipment of North Korean missiles proceed to the Persian Gulf country of Yemen a day after the vessel was detained.
(AP, 12/11/03)
2002 Dec 11, A congressional report found that intelligence agencies that were supposed to protect Americans from the Sept. 11 hijackers failed to do so because they were poorly organized, poorly equipped and slow to pursue clues that might have prevented the attacks.
(AP, 12/11/03)
2002 Dec 11, It was reported that the Chicago-based Pritzker family planned to break up its $15 billion empire over the next decade.
(WSJ, 12/12/02, p.B1)
2002 Dec 11, Bank of America agreed to pay $1.6 billion for a 25% stake in Grupo Financiero Santander Serfin, one of Mexico's largest banks.
(WSJ, 12/12/02, p.A1)
2002 Dec 11, A US Black Hawk helicopter on routine training crashed and killed five American soldiers in the hills of central Honduras.
(AP, 12/14/02)(SFC, 12/13/02, p.A14)
2002 Dec 11, Chile's Pres. Ricardo Lagos announced it had reached an agreement for a free trade accord with the United States.
(AP, 12/11/02)(SFC, 12/12/02, p.A20)
2002 Dec 11, In Indonesia a mudslide above a resort in East Java killed at least 60 people. Tree-cutting above the resort was blamed and a suit against a state-owned forestry company was planned.
(SFC, 12/14/02, p.A7)
2002 Dec 11, Israeli troops killed a suspected Palestinian militant in a West Bank refugee camp as he tried to escape.
(AP, 12/11/02)
2002 Dec 11, Israeli troops in Gaza shot and killed 5 unarmed Palestinians trying to penetrate a security fence.
(SFC, 12/13/02, p.A22)
2002 Dec 11, A Nicaraguan judge ordered three U.S. companies to pay $490 million to 583 banana workers allegedly affected by the use of the pesticide Nemagon.
(AP, 12/14/02)
2002 Dec 11, A Pakistan human rights group said 461 women had been killed this year by family members in so-called honor killings in Punjab and Sindh, up from 372 last year.
(SFC, 12/12/02, p.A14)
2002 Dec 11, Yemen said Scud missiles found hidden aboard a North Korean ship seized by Spain and the United States were destined for its army and demanded them back. Pres. Bush ordered them released. Bush later created a coalition of members to block arms shipments "of proliferation concern."
(Reuters, 12/11/02)(SFC, 12/12/02, p.A19)(WSJ, 10/21/03, p.A1)
2003 Dec 11, US officials delayed a conference for companies seeking $18.6 billion in reconstruction contracts in Iraq by eight days until Dec. 19.
(AP, 12/11/03)
2003 Dec 11, Pentagon officials said efforts to create a new Iraqi army to help take over the country's security have suffered a setback with the resignations of a third of the soldiers trained.
(AP, 12/11/03)
2003 Dec 11, A new 2nd home for the National Air and Space Museum opened in Chantilly, Va., some 28 miles west of the original's home in Washington D.C.
(AP, 12/11/04)
2003 Dec 11, US health officials reported an early flu outbreak had hit all 50 states and was widespread in 24.
(AP, 12/11/04)
2003 Dec 11, Striking Kroger workers in West Virginia, Kentucky and Ohio ratified a new contract. The strike began Oct 13.
(SFC, 12/12/03, p.B4)
2003 Dec 11, The DJIA closed over 10,000 (10,008) for the 1st time in over 18 months.
(WSJ, 1/2/04, p.R12)
2003 Dec 11, ASEAN members met for a 2-day summit in Tokyo. Japan joined the 10 Southeast Asian nations in a pledge to expand trade and join forces on regional security.
(AP, 12/11/03)
2003 Dec 11, In Quebec, Canada, labor protests left hundreds of buses idle at the beginning of a day of province wide protests against Premier Jean Charest's government.
(AP, 12/11/03)
2003 Dec 11, In China's far northwest a coal mine fire in Urumqi killed nine miners, and rescue efforts were hampered by repeated gas explosions.
(AP, 12/13/03)
2003 Dec 11, In Ecuador teachers striking for raises and parents demanding better schools clashed with police in protests that sought symbolically to take over the capital's downtown.
(AP, 12/11/03)
2003 Dec 11, A French panel recommended a national ban on Islamic head scarves, Jewish skullcaps and large crucifixes at public schools.
(WSJ, 12/12/03, p.A1)
2003 Dec 11, A German court freed a Moroccan accused of supporting the Sept. 11 al-Qaida terror cell in Hamburg, saying there was new evidence he did not know about the plot.
(AP, 12/11/04)
2003 Dec 11, In Haiti police fired tear gas and warning shots at thousands of students calling for President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's ouster, as four private radio stations shut down because government supporters called in death threats.
(AP, 12/11/03)(SFC, 12/12/03, p.A3)
2003 Dec 11, In Iraq a suicide bomber killed 1 US soldier and wounded 14 others at a military base in Ramadi.
(SFC, 12/12/03, p.A22)
2003 Dec 11, In Israel explosives at a currency exchange in Tel Aviv killed 3 people and wounded 12 in what was labeled a criminal matter.
(SFC, 12/12/03, p.A16)
2003 Dec 11, The Italian Parliament imposed controls on medically assisted reproduction.
(SFC, 12/12/03, p.A17)
2003 Dec 11, Ahmadou Kourouma, Ivorian writer, died. His 5th novel, incomplete, was published in French in 2004.
(Econ, 8/28/04, p.76)
2003 Dec 11, The UN children's fund said some 65 million girls worldwide are kept out of school, increasing the risks that they will suffer from extreme poverty, die in childbirth or from AIDS and pass those dangers on to future generations.
(AP, 12/11/03)
2003 Dec 11, Uzbekistan said it will let the US station troops to help fight terrorism, but would not permit permanent deployment.
(WSJ, 12/12/03, p.A1)
2004 Dec 11, Vitali Klitschko stopped Danny Williams in the eighth round to retain his WBC heavyweight title.
(AP, 12/11/05)
2004 Dec 11, Southern California quarterback Matt Leinart won the 70th Heisman Trophy.
(AP, 12/11/05)
2004 Dec 11, Said Barkat, Algeria’s Agriculture Minister, said almost 170 million euros (225 million dollars) have been spent since 2003 dealing with locust infestation of farmland.
(AP, 12/12/04)
2004 Dec 11, In Bangladesh millions of opposition activists formed a 900-km "human chain" to demonstrate no confidence in the government. Up to 100 people were injured in clashes.
(Reuters, 12/11/04)
2004 Dec 11, Ramiro Velez, regional leader of the National Liberation Army, or ELN, the smaller of Colombia's two rebel groups, was arrested during an operation in Chachaui. He is suspected of masterminding the May 30, 1999, kidnapping of an entire church congregation from a Roman Catholic church in Cali.
(AP, 12/12/04)(SFC, 12/13/04, p.A3)
2004 Dec 11, China ended restrictions limiting foreign retailers to joint ventures.
(WSJ, 12/14/04, p.A13)
2004 Dec 11, Rival factions of Congo's army battled in the eastern region of the vast country, killing several people.
(AP, 12/12/04)
2004 Dec 11, In Iraq insurgents killed 5 Iraqi police officers in Baghdad. A US Marine was killed in Anbar province.
(SSFC, 12/12/04, p.A10)
2004 Dec 11, Marcello Dell'Utri, a close political ally of Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi, was convicted of ties with the Sicilian Mafia and sentenced to nine years in prison.
(AP, 12/11/04)
2004 Dec 11, Myanmar's state media announced the military junta would release a further 5,070 prisoners.
(AP, 12/11/04)
2004 Dec 11, Somalia's parliament passed a motion of no-confidence against the country's new prime minister and his Cabinet, effectively sacking the government. Some 153 members of the 275-member transitional parliament voted against Prime Minister Ali Mohammed Gedi, accusing him of failing to respect power-sharing arrangements agreed to by warlords and the country's main clans.
(AP, 12/11/04)
2004 Dec 11, Taiwan's pro-independence parties were defeated in legislative elections.
(AP, 12/11/04)
2004 Dec 11, Doctors in Austria determined that Ukrainian presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko had been poisoned with dioxin, which caused the severe disfigurement and partial paralysis of his face.
(AP, 12/11/05)
2005 Dec 11, Paramount Pictures announced it was buying independent film studio DreamWorks SKG Inc.
(AP, 12/11/06)
2005 Dec 11, In Afghanistan a suicide bomber set off explosives near a US and Afghan military convoy in the southern city of Kandahar, killing himself and wounding three civilians.
(AP, 12/11/05)
2005 Dec 11, In Australia racial tension erupted into violence on a Sydney beach when around 5,000 people, some yelling racist chants, attacked youths of a Middle Eastern background. White youths were angered by reports that youths of Lebanese descent had assaulted two lifeguards. Young men of Arab descent retaliated in several Sydney suburbs, fighting with police and smashing cars.
(AP, 12/11/05)(AP, 12/11/06)
2005 Dec 11, Bangladesh President Iazuddin Ahmed approved an ordinance that allows law enforcers to tap telephones, a measure set to aid the fight against Islamic militants.
(AFP, 12/12/05)
2005 Dec 11, In Britain a huge inferno followed explosions at the Buncefield oil depot. 43 people were injured. In 2009 a court said French oil giant Total must pay bills valued at more than 750 million pounds for people whose homes and businesses were damaged in the fire. In 2010 five companies were ordered to pay fines and costs of more than £9 million (13.8 million dollars, 10.6 million euros).
(http://tinyurl.com/chwzwb)(AFP, 3/20/09)(AFP, 7/16/10)
2005 Dec 11, In Chile Michelle Bachelet easily defeated two feuding right-wing candidates with 46 percent of the vote, but fell shy of the 50 percent needed for victory.
(AP, 12/12/05)
2005 Dec 11, China’s government said the commander of forces that shot and killed people protesting land seizures in a southern village has been detained, as police in riot gear patrolled the community and appealed for order.
(AP, 12/11/05)
2005 Dec 11, About 4,000 anti-globalization activists some carrying a giant spider and others wheeling statues of emaciated people marched in the first mass protest against the World Trade Organization's summit in Hong Kong.
(AP, 12/11/05)
2005 Dec 11, Iran's parliament approved Kazem Vaziri Mahaneh, who has been acting minister for the past three months, the 4th nominee for the key post of oil minister.
(AP, 12/11/05)
2005 Dec 11, Iran offered the United States a share in building a new nuclear power plant in an apparent effort to curb U.S. opposition to its atomic program.
(AP, 12/11/05)
2005 Dec 11, Japanese peace envoy Yasushi Akashi invited Sri Lanka and Tamil Tiger rebels to meet in Japan for talks to save their ceasefire, which is threatened with collapse after 34 people were killed in fresh violence.
(AP, 12/11/05)
2005 Dec 11, In eastern Pakistan a firecracker thrown by a celebrant at a wedding set fire to a bus filled with guests, killing at least 40 people.
(AP, 12/11/05)
2005 Dec 11, In South Korea the government ordered striking pilots at Korean Air back to work on the 4th day of a walkout.
(WSJ, 12/12/05, p.A17)
2006 Dec 11, US Military experts gave Pres. Bush a dire assessment of the war in Iraq, but shared a skeptical view of the recent Iraq Study Group report.
(SFC, 12/12/06, p.A1)
2006 Dec 11, Scientists from IBM, Macronix and Qimonda said they developed a material that made "phase-change" memory 500 to 1,000 times faster than the commonly-used "flash" memory, while using half as much power. Intel said it would introduce products in 2007. Samsung said it expected to introduce products in 2008.
(AFP, 12/11/06)(SFC, 12/12/06, p.B3)
2006 Dec 11, Siemens, a German conglomerate, filed papers with the SEC to account for some $265 million siphoned out of secret bank accounts in Liechtenstein, Austria and Switzerland.
(Econ, 12/16/06, p.65)
2006 Dec 11, The Hague-based Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) said it has granted the US and Russia a five-year extension to the 2007 deadline for destroying their chemical weapon stockpiles. The Chemicals Weapons Convention which went into effect in April 1997. Extensions were also granted to India and Libya as well as one country that requested anonymity.
(AP, 12/11/06)
2006 Dec 11, After a two-day journey, space shuttle Discovery reached the international space station for a weeklong stay.
(AP, 12/11/07)
2006 Dec 11, In Azerbaijan authorities said they would allow a top independent TV station back on the air, but warned that it would have to bid for a broadcasting license next year.
(AP, 12/11/06)
2006 Dec 11, Four advisers to Bangladesh's interim government resigned as soldiers patrolled towns and cities to try to end weeks of often-violent protests.
(AP, 12/11/06)
2006 Dec 11, In Britain fears mounted that a serial killer could be at large after the naked corpse of a third prostitute was found within weeks near Ipswich, and a fourth sex worker went missing. The first two murdered women went missing in the red light district of Ipswich, near the eastern coast of England, on November 15 and October 30 respectively.
(AFP, 12/11/06)
2006 Dec 11, Four British soldiers admitted charges relating to an alleged plot to smuggle guns out of Iraq to sell them for cash in Germany, as they appeared at a court martial.
(AP, 12/11/06)
2006 Dec 11, China's banking industry officially opened to full foreign competition, a landmark for the country's financial sector and a day of reckoning for the country's mostly state-owned banks.
(AP, 12/9/06)
2006 Dec 11, European Union foreign ministers decided to suspend 8 out of 35 parts of entry talks with Turkey over Ankara's refusal to open its ports to trade with EU member Cyprus.
(AP, 12/11/06)(Econ, 12/16/06, p.53)
2006 Dec 11, Fiji's military regime banished ousted Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase from the capital and warned that open opposition to the takeover would be met with force.
(AP, 12/11/06)
2006 Dec 11, German investigators confirmed that a car used by Russian businessman Dmitry Kovtun, a contact of fatally poisoned ex-spy Alexander Litvinenko before the two men met, was contaminated with the rare radioactive substance polonium-210.
(AP, 12/11/06)
2006 Dec 11, In Indonesia Irwandi Yusuf, a former GAM rebel leader, headed to easy victory in the first elections in Aceh province since the government and the separatists signed a peace deal in the tsunami-ravaged region last year.
(AP, 12/11/06)(Econ, 12/16/06, p.40)
2006 Dec 11, Iran opened a Holocaust conference that it said would examine whether the genocide took place.
(AP, 12/11/06)
2006 Dec 11, Iran promised $250 million to Palestine’s Hamas-led government.
(WSJ, 12/12/06, p.A1)
2006 Dec 11, Iraqi soldiers rushed to Ghazaliyah, a primarily Sunni area of west Baghdad, to free 23 Iraqis right after they were taken hostage at a checkpoint set up by suspected Shiite militiamen. One terrorist was killed and 4 others arrested. Three explosions struck Baghdad within a span of two hours, after a roadside bomb in the capital killed 3 US soldiers and wounded two on a late-night patrol. A parked car bomb detonated near al-Maamoun college in western Baghdad, killing one student and wounding two others and two policemen. A suicide car bomb hit an abandoned house being used by policemen as an outpost in Dora killing one policeman and wounding five. In Baghdad 3 mortar rounds killed four people and wounded 15, and gunmen stole $1 million from a bank truck and kidnapped its four guards. 3 policemen and four civilians were gunned down in a village near Kirkuk. A huge fire broke out at an oil storage facility after explosions in a volatile area south of Baghdad. At least 66 people were killed or found dead across Iraq. They included 46 men who were bound, blindfolded and shot to death in Baghdad.
(AP, 12/11/06)(AP, 12/12/06)
2006 Dec 11, The Netherlands ended transmission of "free to air" analog television, becoming the first nation to switch completely to digital signals.
(AP, 12/11/06)
2006 Dec 11, Palestinian gunmen killed three young sons of a senior Palestinian intelligence officer, pumping dozens of bullets into their car as it passed through a street crowded with schoolchildren in an apparent botched assassination attempt that could ignite widespread factional fighting.
(AP, 12/11/06)
2006 Dec 11, Two Rwandan ex-soldiers told a panel probing alleged French complicity in the 1994 massacres that France armed and trained members of the Interahamwe militia, a radical militia blamed for most of the killings in Rwanda's 1994 genocide.
(AFP, 12/11/06)
2006 Dec 11, More than 30 prominent Islamic clerics from Saudi Arabia called on Sunni Muslims around the Middle East to support their brethren in Iraq against Shiites and praised the insurgency.
(AP, 12/12/06)
2006 Dec 11, Official sources said the Sudanese government has approved a budget of 11.7 billion dollars for 2007 and is targeting a growth rate of 10%. Rebels in Sudan's western region of Darfur said a government warplane killed eight civilians, mostly children, in a northern village.
(AP, 12/11/06)(Reuters, 12/12/06)
2006 Dec 11, In Turkey a boiler explosion knocked down part of a five-story building housing military families in Diyarbakir, killing at least four people and trapping about four others.
(AP, 12/11/06)
2006 Dec 11, In his farewell address, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan criticized the Bush administration's leadership on the global stage, warning that America must not sacrifice its democratic ideals while waging war against terrorism.
(AP, 12/11/07)
2006 Dec 11, UN officials said Israel has blocked a UN fact-finding mission to the Gaza Strip that was to be led by Nobel Laureate Desmond Tutu. Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said that no final decision has been made.
(AP, 12/11/06)
2006 Dec 11, Zimbabwe said its inflation spiral had risen to 1,098.8 percent last month, a 28.6% hike, as experts cast doubts on state efforts to slash it to the three-digit level. The inflation rate peaked at 1,204.6% in August. Zimbabwe clinched a deal to export 5,000 tons of beef to Hong Kong from next year, the first such long-distance order in five years.
(AFP, 12/11/06)
2007 Dec 11, Pres. Bush granted pardons to 29 people.
(WSJ, 12/12/07, p.A1)
2007 Dec 11, The US Senate Intelligence Committee took closed-door testimony from CIA Director Michael Hayden on how videotapes of terror suspect interrogations were made, then destroyed.
(AP, 12/11/08)
2007 Dec 11, The United States and China signed two deals to safeguard the quality of food and drugs ranging from pet food to certain types of antibiotics imported into the US from China.
(AP, 12/11/07)
2007 Dec 11, US officials in Florida arrested 4 people, 3 from Venezuelan and one from Uruguay, and accused them of being agents of the Venezuelan government. Prosecutors later said the 4 were seeking to silence Guido Alehandro Antonini Wilson, a citizen of both the USA and Venezuela. In August Wilson was detained in Argentina for carrying $800,000 in a suitcase, which prosecutors said was intended to aid the campaign of Cristina Kirchner. Franklin Duran, multimillionaire owner of Industrias Venoco CA, was one of the arrested Venezuelans. In 2008 a federal jury convicted Duran on charges that he was a foreign agent involved in a conspiracy.
(WSJ, 12/13/07, p.A16)(WSJ, 3/10/08, p.A5)(SFC, 11/4/08, p.A4)
2007 Dec 11, In eastern Afghanistan US-led coalition and Afghan forces killed Mullah Sangeen, a senior militant commander responsible for roadside bombings and other attacks. Sangeen was second-in-command to Siraj Haqqani, a militant leader in eastern Afghanistan.
(AP, 12/14/07)
2007 Dec 11, In Algeria car bombs exploded minutes apart in central Algiers, heavily damaging UN buildings and ripping the facade off the wing of a government office. 37 people were killed, including 17 UN employees. Two convicted terrorists who had been freed in an amnesty carried out the suicide bombings at UN and government buildings. The interior ministry later said the blasts were the work of the El Farouk Brigade, which was responsible for a number of other attacks in the last two years. Al-Qaida's self-styled North African branch claimed responsibility.
(Reuters, 12/11/07)(AP, 12/12/07)(AP, 12/13/07)(AFP, 2/6/08)(AP, 12/11/08)
2007 Dec 11, Australia's Deputy PM Julia Gillard (46) took charge of government in the absence of the prime minister, becoming the first woman to run the country in its 106 years as an independent nation. Gillard will lead the government for just 60 hours while PM Kevin Rudd is in Bali for the United Nations climate conference.
(Reuters, 12/11/07)
2007 Dec 11, Australian officials conceded that the welfare system failed a girl who was removed from a remote Aboriginal community after being sexually abused at age 7, then gang raped in 2006 at age 10 when she was returned to live in the town.
(AP, 12/12/07)
2007 Dec 11, Guatemalan legislators approved a new law that tightens adoptions, while allowing pending cases, mostly involving US couples, to go through without meeting stricter requirements.
(AP, 12/11/07)
2007 Dec 11, It was reported that policewomen in Iraq have been told to hand in their guns. Female recruits had dropped to zero since Iraqi authorities took over police recruitment and training in 2006. The US had begun training women in 2004 and graduated 1000 from the police academy. A suicide car bomber detonated his explosives at a checkpoint protecting the compounds of Iraq's former prime minister and a Sunni lawmaker, killing two guards in a neighborhood bordering the fortified Green Zone.
(WSJ, 12/12/07, p.B12)(AP, 12/11/07)
2007 Dec 11, Israeli tanks and bulldozers backed by attack aircraft moved into the southern Gaza Strip, killing four militants in the widest operation in the territory since Islamic Hamas forces wrested control in June.
(AP, 12/11/07)
2007 Dec 11, Trucking unions cut short a meeting with the Italian transport ministry, ending hope that the chaos-causing strike disrupting traffic and petrol deliveries would end soon.
(AP, 12/11/07)
2007 Dec 11, In southeast Nigeria 20 people were killed and several injured when the driver of a truck lost control and rammed into a crowd by the roadside in Awka, Anambra state.
(AFP, 12/12/07)
2007 Dec 11, North and South Korea began regular freight train service across their heavily armed border for the first time in more than a half century, in another symbolic step in their reconciliation.
(AP, 12/11/07)
2007 Dec 11, Pakistan's military vowed a strong response to any international attempt to seize its atomic arsenal as the army successfully test-fired a nuclear-capable cruise missile.
(AP, 12/11/07)
2007 Dec 11, In Peru former President Alberto Fujimori was convicted of abuse of authority and sentenced to six years in prison at the end of the first in a series of trials on charges that include murder, kidnapping and corruption.
(AP, 12/12/07)
2007 Dec 11, A judge from the top court in southern Russia's violence-plagued Dagestan region was fatally shot by an unidentified attacker. Dagestan Supreme Court Justice Kurban Pashayev was shot more than 10 times with a pistol in the entranceway of his apartment building in the provincial capital, Makhachkala. In Ingushetia an 18-year-old rookie in an elite police unit was fatally shot by attackers who fired at him at close range from a passing car as he was walking home after work.
(AP, 12/11/07)
2007 Dec 11, Environmentalists warned that a scenic coastal region could take years to recover from South Korea's worst oil spill, as over 19,000 people worked to contain or clean up the slick.
(AP, 12/11/07)
2007 Dec 11, Darfur rebel group the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) said it had attacked and taken over a Chinese-run oilfield in central Sudan.
(AP, 12/11/07)
2007 Dec 11, Ukraine's parliament narrowly rejected the candidacy of Orange Revolution leader Yulia Tymoshenko for prime minister, but was expected to hold a further vote.
(AFP, 12/11/07)
2008 Dec 11, The $14 billion package to aid General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler LLC collapsed amid disputes over union wage cuts. A band of mostly Republican Southern senators, including states that subsidized foreign auto makers, formed the heart of the opposition.
(AP, 12/12/08)(WSJ, 12/12/08, p.A3)
2008 Dec 11, US Interior Sec. Dirk Kemphorne announced major changes to the Endangered Species Act causing environmental groups to charge that the ‘midnight rules" set to go into effect before Pres. Obama takes offices were intended to eviscerate the wildlife protection law.
(SFC, 12/12/08, p.A1)
2008 Dec 11, Bernard Madoff (70), a quiet force on Wall Street for decades, was arrested and charged with allegedly running a $50 billion "Ponzi scheme" in what may rank among the biggest fraud cases ever.
(AP, 12/12/08)
2008 Dec 11, California’s air quality board approved the nation’s most sweeping plan to reduce global warming by curbing emissions.
(SFC, 12/12/08, p.A1)
2008 Dec 11, California conservation officials said a $9.9 million deal to buy the Sonoma Ranch, also known as the Walsh Property, would be completed by the end of the year.
(SFC, 12/12/08, p.B1)
2008 Dec 11, In Los Angeles the husband and daughter of Karine Hakobyan were killed. On March 26, 2010, Karine Hakobyan was shot to death in Hollywood.
(AP, 3/30/10)
2008 Dec 11, Ron Carey (72), former Teamsters president (1992-1997), died in NYC.
(SFC, 12/13/08, p.B5)
2008 Dec 11, Bettie Page (85), the 1950s secretary-turned-model, died. Her controversial photographs in skimpy attire or none at all helped set the stage for the 1960s sexual revolution.
(AP, 12/11/08)
2008 Dec 11, Australian police said detectives have charged 22 men including a policeman, a senior lawyer and a child care worker in connection with a child pornography-sharing network spanning 70 countries. Brazilian information, which was shared via the international policing network Interpol, identified more than 200 suspects in 70 countries.
(AP, 12/11/08)
2008 Dec 11, Police in Brussels and eastern Belgium detained 14 suspected al-Qaida-linked extremists in raids, including one militant who allegedly was plotting a suicide attack.
(AP, 12/11/08)
2008 Dec 11, As Greece suffered through its sixth day of violence, there were troubling signs of unrest spreading across Europe. Angry youths smashed shop windows, attacked banks and hurled bottles at police in small but violent protests in Spain and Denmark, while cars were set alight outside a consulate in France.
(AP, 12/11/08)
2008 Dec 11, Hong Kong's government confirmed that the deadly H5N1 virus was found at a poultry farm, the first outbreak on a farm here in nearly six years.
(AP, 12/11/08)
2008 Dec 11, Indian authorities reported an outbreak of bird flu in Assam state. Some 245,000 birds had been culled and the outbreak was localized.
(WSJ, 12/12/08, p.A12)
2008 Dec 11, Indonesia and Malaysia agreed to heighten intelligence cooperation to anticipate rising cross-border crime due to the impact of the global economic crisis.
(AP, 12/11/08)
2008 Dec 11, In northern Iraq a suicide bomber struck a crowded restaurant where Kurdish officials were meeting with Arab tribal leaders to discuss long-standing ethnic tensions, killing at least 48 people and wounding nearly 100.
(AP, 12/11/08)(SFC, 12/12/08, p.A4)
2008 Dec 11, Malaysia's government drew flak after admitting it spent 1.68 million dollars a year on PM Badawi’s sprawling residence in the administrative capital Putrajaya.
(AFP, 12/11/08)
2008 Dec 11, Esther Chavez, a women's rights activist, was named the winner of Mexico's National Human Rights Award. She first drew attention to the slayings of young women in the northern border city of Ciudad Juarez in the early 1990s.
(AP, 12/12/08)
2008 Dec 11, Mexican soldiers shot to death Silvia Arzate (35), a pregnant woman, after she reportedly failed to stop at a highway checkpoint in the northern state of Chihuahua.
(AP, 12/12/08)
2008 Dec 11, In southern Nepal a crowded school bus skidded off a bridge on a highway, killing at least 20 students and two teachers. At least 57 others were injured.
(AP, 12/11/08)
2008 Dec 11, Multilateral talks with North Korea failed to break an impasse on checking Pyongyang’s nuclear declarations. This led the US to halt fuel oil shipments until specific steps are taken to verify nuclear activities.
(WSJ, 12/13/08, p.A10)
2008 Dec 11, Pakistan ordered the closure Jemaat-u-Dawa, a charity linked to Lashkar-e-Taiba, the militant group suspected in the Mumbai attacks, a day after the outfit was declared a front for terrorists by the United Nations. A suspected US strike killed six people on the Pakistan side of the Afghan border, a lawless region believed to be a stronghold of al-Qaida.
(AP, 12/11/08)
2008 Dec 11, In northern Russia an explosion and fire ripped through a mine, killing 12 workers.
(AP, 12/12/08)
2008 Dec 11, The South African Reserve Bank cut a key interest rate by a half percentage point to 11.5 percent in a bid to stimulate the flagging economy.
(AP, 12/11/08)
2008 Dec 11, South Korea’s central bank cut its main interest rate by a percentage point to 3%, its 4th and largest cut in two months.
(WSJ, 12/11/08, p.A12)
2008 Dec 11, Venezuelan prosecutors formally charged Manuel Rosales, a leading opposition figure, with corruption, as President Hugo Chavez pushed forward with plans for a referendum to end term limits. Rosales denied any wrongdoing, saying the accusations are politically motivated.
(AP, 12/11/08)
2008 Dec 11, President Robert Mugabe declared that Zimbabwe's cholera crisis was over, even as the UN raised the death toll from the epidemic to 783.
(AP, 12/11/08)
2009 Dec 11, A US counterterrorism official said Saleh al-Somali, a senior al-Qaida operations planner, was killed in an American missile strike this week in western Pakistan. Officials believed that he helped organize plots in New York, Manchester and Norway.
(AP, 12/12/09)(AP, 1/30/12)
2009 Dec 11, US immigration agents arrested 280 people in California as they fanned out across the state for a 3-day search for illegal immigrants.
(SFC, 12/12/09, p.A5)
2009 Dec 11, SF Mayor Newsom called on owners of commercial buildings to conduct an energy audit within 5 years to secure their business license renewal. The results would be provided to the city which would make the information available in a public database.
(SFC, 12/12/09, p.A1)
2009 Dec 11, Spc. Marc A. Hall was jailed, two days before his brigade with the Army's 3rd Infantry Division out of Ft. Stewart, Georgia, was scheduled to leave for Iraq. He was charged with the military offense of communicating a threat after telling his battalion commander that he might shoot or otherwise attack a fellow US soldier. Hall was dismissed in April, 2010, and lost all military benefits earned over at least four years of service, including an earlier tour in Iraq.
(AP, 4/17/10)
2009 Dec 11, Jenny Sanford, South Carolina's first lady, filed for divorce more than five months after his tearful public confession of an affair with an Argentine woman. The former Wall Street vice president helped launch her husband's political career and has been a quiet presence since her husband took office in 2003.
(AP, 12/11/09)
2009 Dec 11, US golfer Tiger Woods announced that he will take a break from his PGA Tour career as he scrambles to salvage his marriage.
(SFC, 12/12/09, p.A1)
2009 Dec 11, Australia's PM Kevin Rudd threatened legal action against Japan if it does not stop its research whaling program that kills up to 1,000 whales a year.
(AP, 12/11/09)
2009 Dec 11, In Brazil a new presidential decree suspended up to an estimated $5.7 billion in fines and gave landowners two more years to comply with environmental regulations meant to stop the razing of the Brazilian rain forest.
(AP, 12/11/09)
2009 Dec 11, The Canadian government said that it has approved a request from Egyptian-backed telecom Globalive Wireless Management Corp. to launch its mobile phone service in Canada.
(AP, 12/11/09)
2009 Dec 11, Cyprus police said grave robbers over night had stolen the corpse of former Cyprus President Tassos Papadopoulos after digging up his coffin on the eve of the first anniversary of the statesmen's death. Police discovered the missing body of former President Papadopoulos in another grave on March 8.
(AP, 12/11/09)(AP, 3/9/10)
2009 Dec 11, EU leaders agreed to commit euro2.4 billion ($3.6 billion) a year until 2012 to help poorer countries combat global warming, as they sought to rescue their image as climate change innovators and bolster the talks in Copenhagen. A new draft agreement at the climate talks pulled together the main elements of a global pact but left gaping holes on financing and cutting greenhouse gas emissions for world leaders to fill in next week.
(AP, 12/11/09)
2009 Dec 11, German officials said Berlin's new airport will be named after Willy Brandt (1913-1992), the former West German leader who championed East-West relations and won the Nobel Peace Prize (1971).
(AP, 12/11/09)
2009 Dec 11, Ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya said he will leave the Brazilian Embassy in Honduras by Jan. 27, when his presidential term ends.
(AP, 12/11/09)
2009 Dec 11, In India protesters took to the streets of Hyderabad, setting public buses on fire and clashing with police, in anger over the government’s decision to carve a new state out of the southern region of Andhra Pradesh. Leaders of the Gorkhas, a group of ethnic Nepalis living in West Bengal, called for an indefinite strike to push their decades-old demand for the creation of Gorkhaland.
(AP, 12/11/09)
2009 Dec 11, Thousands of Iranian government supporters staged rallies denouncing opposition students who burned photos of the supreme leader in protests this week.
(AP, 12/11/09)
2009 Dec 11, In Iraq at least six people were killed after a two-pronged bomb attack south of Baghdad that was apparently designed to ambush bystanders. A US soldier in northern Iraq died of injuries unrelated to combat.
(AP, 12/11/09)(AP, 12/12/09)
2009 Dec 11, Iraq struck deals with consortiums led by Anglo-Dutch and Chinese giants Shell and CNPC over massive southern oil fields, as part of a two-day auction that seeks to dramatically boost the country's crude output.
(AP, 12/11/09)
2009 Dec 11, Mexico's foreign minister met with Cuban President Raul Castro for three hours, the latest sign her country and the island have repaired recently chilly relations.
(AP, 12/11/09)
2009 Dec 11, In Mexico police found the bodies of three women and two men inside a home in the town of Almoloya de Juarez. A third man died on the way to a hospital. Soldiers raided a drug cartel's Christmas party south of Mexico City, outside the mountain town of Tepoztlan. They found 16 automatic rifles, $280,000 in cash, and Latin Grammy winner Ramon Ayala and his norteno band, Los Bravos del Norte. 3 gunmen were killed and 11 others suspected of working for the Beltran Leyva drug cartel were detained.
(AP, 12/11/09)(AP, 12/15/09)
2009 Dec 11, Assailants in the West Bank vandalized a Palestinian mosque, burning prayer carpets and holy books, and leaving behind Hebrew graffiti indicating the rampage was the work of settlers angry over Israel's plans to curb settlement construction.
(AP, 12/11/09)
2009 Dec 11, In the Philippines government-armed former militiamen freed 10 more hostages seized in the remote south, and their leader demanded that murder charges against them be dropped before they release 47 others.
(AP, 12/11/09)
2009 Dec 11, Romania's Constitutional Court ordered a re-examination of ballots declared void in the Dec 6 presidential election amid allegations of widespread fraud.
(AP, 12/11/09)
2009 Dec 11, In Spain the A400M military transport plane, that has been causing Airbus and European defense ministers budgetary and logistical headaches, finally took to the skies for its maiden flight.
(AP, 12/11/09)
2009 Dec 11, At the Vatican Vietnam’s President Nguyen Minh Triet met with Pope Benedict XVI for 40 minutes, twice as long as was scheduled and the first time that the head of state of Vietnam has met with the pope since the communists took power in 1954. Vietnam's 6 million Roman Catholics is one of the largest Catholic communities in Asia.
(AP, 12/11/09)
2010 Dec 11, Nissan North American delivered its first all-electric Leaf to Olivier Chalouhi (31) of Redwood City at a dealership in Petaluma, Ca. His cost was $33,500, but rebates were expected to drop the price to about $20,000.
(SSFC, 12/12/10, p.C2)
2010 Dec 11, Mark Madoff (46), one of Bernard Madoff's sons, was found dead of an apparent suicide in his Manhattan apartment on the second anniversary of his father's arrest.
(AP, 12/11/10)
2010 Dec 11, In Afghanistan a car bomb blast near the police headquarters in Kandahar City wounded four Afghan police and two civilians. The suicide attacker in Kunduz province drove a police vehicle and targeted an Afghan National Army convoy, wounding five soldiers and four civilians. An air strike by the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) killed seven road construction company employees overnight. ISAF said Afghan and foreign troops were approached and then fired on by armed men while hunting an insurgent and shot back, killing seven. The disputed incident sent hundreds pouring onto the streets of Gardez city in a protest that turned violent.
(Reuters, 12/11/10)
2010 Dec 11, Egypt’s minister of electricity said his country plans to build its first nuclear power plant and have it operational by 2019.
(SSFC, 12/12/10, p.A10)
2010 Dec 11, In Cancun, Mexico, almost 200 countries agreed to modest steps to combat climate change, including a Green Climate Fund to help poor nations, but they put off tough decisions on cutting greenhouse gas emissions until next year.
(Reuters, 12/11/10)
2010 Dec 11, In northwest Pakistan gunmen on motorcycles shot dead two police officers in Hayatabad, while security forces killed four militants in fighting elsewhere in the region.
(AP, 12/11/10)(SSFC, 12/12/10, p.A10)
2010 Dec 11, Somali pirates captured the MV Renuar, a Panama-flagged, Liberian-owned cargo vessel, about 1,000 miles (1,610 km) east of Somalia.
(AP, 12/12/10)
2010 Dec 11, The Sudanese army attacked a village in South Darfur for a second consecutive day in violence that has left one person dead and driven at least 250 civilians from their homes.
(AP, 12/11/10)
2010 Dec 11, South Sudan’s ruling party formally confirmed for the first time that it will support secession in a January independence referendum that could lead to the break-up of Africa's largest nation.
(AFP, 12/11/10)
2010 Dec 11, In Sweden two blasts rocked central Stockholm, killing the suspected bomber, later identified as Taymour Abdulwahab al-Abdaly (b.1981). Two people were wounded. Police had good leads into what they said were "terror crimes." On March 8, 2011, police in Scotland arrested Ezedden Khalid Ahmed Al Khaledi (30) on suspicion of aiding the suicide bomber who had targeted Christmas shoppers in Stockholm.
(Reuters, 12/12/10)(Reuters, 12/13/10)(SFC, 12/14/10, p.A3)(AP, 3/8/11)(AP, 3/14/11)
2010 Dec 11, Turkmenistan signed broad agreements with Afghanistan, India and Pakistan at a summit in its capital Ashgabat on the 1,700-km (1,050-mile) TAPI pipeline. Afghanistan the next day said it will deploy up to 7,000 troops to secure the major transnational gas pipeline, slated to run through some of the most dangerous parts of the war-torn country.
(AFP, 12/12/10)
2011 Dec 11, San Francisco police cleared the city’s last remaining Occupy protest camp arrested 55 people in front of the Federal Reserve Bank at 101 Market St.
(SFC, 12/12/11, p.C2)
2011 Dec 11, Christopher Artes (25) and Medeana Hendershot (22), were found dead under a mound of coal at a Florida power plant. The young couple shared a passion for illegally hopping freight trains and traveling the country without a set plan.
(AP, 12/16/11)
2011 Dec 11, Afghan President Hamid Karzai said foreigners are fueling the problem of corruption by, for example, awarding contracts to high ranking government officials.
(AFP, 12/11/11)
2011 Dec 11, Police in Brazil's southeastern Sao Paulo state said they are investigating the theft of 50 metric tons (55 US tons) of corn from a moving train.
(AP, 12/11/11)
2011 Dec 11, In China Xue Jinbo (42) died after two days in police custody. He had led protests in the fishing village of Wukan in opposition to government land confiscations and was arrested on Dec 9.
(SFC, 12/16/11, p.A13)
2011 Dec 11, Former French PM Dominique de Villepin, who gained international renown as France's spokesman against the war in Iraq, announced he'll run as an independent.
(AP, 12/12/11)
2011 Dec 11, In India Anna Hazare held a seven-hour fast to demand sweeping legislation to end India's culture of corruption, in which bribes are paid for everything from health care to marriage certificates.
(AP, 12/11/11)
2011 Dec 11, In Iran a blast caused by leftover ammunition killed at least seven workers including foreign nationals at a steel mill in the central city of Yazd.
(AP, 12/12/11)
2011 Dec 11, The Israeli Cabinet voted unanimously to finance a $160 million program to stanch the flow of illegal African migrants by stepping up construction of a border fence and expanding a detention center. Several thousand Bedouin demonstrated outside Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu's office, protesting over a plan they say will displace tens of thousands of people from their land.
(AP, 12/11/11)(AFP, 12/11/11)
2011 Dec 11, Ivory Coast held parliamentary elections. The 2nd national poll in 11 years drew little voter interest. The opposition party of former strongman Laurent Gbagbo, which had called for a boycott of the poll, estimated that as few as 10 percent of voters participated. Official results published by the Independent Electoral Commission on March 8, 2012, said Ouattara's Rally of Republicans (RDR) party won 138 of the parliament's 253 seats on 54.54% of the vote.
(AP, 12/11/11)(AFP, 3/8/12)
2011 Dec 11, In Indian Kashmir a policeman was killed and a civilian injured when suspected Muslim militants opened fire. The region's senior minister escaped unhurt in the attack.
(AFP, 12/11/11)
2011 Dec 11, In northern Kenya twin blasts killed one police officer and wounded nine soldiers, in the latest in a string of attacks since Kenyan troops crossed the border into Somalia two months ago.
(AP, 12/11/11)
2011 Dec 11, In Mexico unidentified assailants tossed a bomb into a building in Veracruz where a cockfight was being held. One man was killed and nine others slightly wounded.
(AP, 12/13/11)
2011 Dec 11, Pakistan’s PM Yousuf Raza Gilani said President Asif Ali Zardari will likely need two weeks to rest in Dubai following medical treatment there before he returns home. Zardari flew to Dubai last week for treatment related to a heart condition.
(AP, 12/12/11)
2011 Dec 11, A Pakistani Taliban spokesman denied an earlier announcement by the militant group's deputy chief that it was holding peace talks with the government. Prominent al-Qaida and Afghan Taliban fighters asked Pakistani militants to set aside their differences and step up support for the battle against US-led forces in Afghanistan: "For God's sake, forget all your differences and give us fighters to boost the battle against America in Afghanistan," senior al-Qaida commander Abu Yahya al-Libi told Pakistani fighters in South Waziristan. An earlier meeting was held on November 27 in North Waziristan.
(AP, 12/11/11)(AP, 1/2/12)
2011 Dec 11, In Pakistan the US vacated Shamsi airbase following a deadline given by Islamabad in the wake of anger over NATO air strikes last month that killed 24 soldiers. US officials and intelligence analysts have said the covert drone war would not be affected by the closure of the base as Washington could fly Predator and Reaper drones out of air fields in neighboring Afghanistan.
(AFP, 12/11/11)
2011 Dec 11, A Palestinian father and his daughter were wounded in an Israeli air strike on Gaza City.
(AFP, 12/11/11)
2011 Dec 11, Ex-Panama dictator Noriega was flown home for new punishment after 22 years in US, French jails.
(AP, 12/11/11)
2011 Dec 11, Peruvian President Ollanta Humala replaced more than half his Cabinet, a day after accepting its chief minister's resignation in a move widely interpreted as signaling less tolerance for social protests.
(AP, 12/11/11)
2011 Dec 11, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev posted a comment on his Facebook page saying he has ordered a probe into the allegations of electoral fraud during the Dec. 4 parliamentary vote.
(AP, 12/11/11)
2011 Dec 11, In South Africa a UN climate conference reached a hard-fought agreement on a far-reaching program meant to set a new course for the global fight against climate change. The 194-party conference agreed to start negotiations on a new accord that would ensure that countries will be legally bound to carry out any pledges they make. It would take effect by 2020 at the latest. The conference also agreed on a Green Climate Fund, which would funnel some of the $110 billion, promised by rich countries to poor ones, to help them cut emissions and adopt to climate change.
(AP, 12/11/11)(Econ, 12/17/11, p.140)
2011 Dec 11, In South Sudan suspected rebels under the command of renegade general George Athor attacked Atar town, in Pigi county, killing 9 people, while another raid cost the lives of two people in Kapat, near the state capital Bor.
(AFP, 12/12/11)
2011 Dec 11, Syrian troops battled army defectors in clashes that set several military vehicles ablaze. Opposition activists called for a general strike starting today in a bid to squeeze the government and push it to stop its bloody crackdown. About a dozen Syrians attacked their embassy in Jordan’s capital, Amman, injuring at least two diplomats and four other consulate employees. As many as 23 people were killed as government forces clashed with armed insurgents and protesters.
(AP, 12/11/11)(SFC, 12/12/11, p.A2)
2011 Dec 11, Hundreds of thousands of Yemenis demonstrated to demand President Ali Abdullah Saleh face trial for his regime's deadly crackdown on months of protests.
(AP, 12/11/11)
2011 Dec 11, In Taiwan almost a thousand protesters took to the streets of Taipei demanding that the government make a weekly day off a legal right for Taiwan's 200,000 foreign live-in caregivers.
(AP, 12/11/11)
2012 Dec 11, The US Air Force launched an unmanned X-37B, a secret military version of the space shuttle, atop an Atlas V rocket at Cape Canaveral.
(SFC, 12/12/12, p.A5)
2012 Dec 11, In Georgia Mohammad Abdul Rahman Abukhdair (28) and Randy Lamar Wilson (25) were charged with conspiring to kill persons or damage property outside the US. FBI agents arrested Wilson at the Atlanta airport as he boarded a flight to Mauritania. Abukhdair was arrested at a bus station in Augusta. On April 19 Wilson pleaded guilty in Mobile, Ala., to one charge of conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists. On Dec 20, 2013, both men were sentenced to 15 years in prison.
(SFC, 12/12/12, p.A5)(SFC, 4/19/13, p.A4)(SFC, 12/20/13, p.A6)
2012 Dec 11, A federal appeals court struck down a ban on carrying concealed weapons in Illinois, the only remaining state where carrying concealed weapons is entirely illegal. It gave lawmakers 180 days to write a law that legalizes it.
(AP, 12/11/12)
2012 Dec 11, Michigan enacted a ban on mandatory union membership, dealing a stunning blow to organized labor in the state that is home to US automakers and the symbol of industrial labor in the United States.
(AP, 12/11/12)
2012 Dec 11, In Oregon a masked gunman opened fire at Clackamas Town Center, a mall in suburban Portland. Jacob Tyler Roberts (22), armed himself with an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle he stole from someone he knew, went on a rampage that left two people dead and one injured before he killed himself.
(SFC, 12/12/12, p.A5)(AP, 12/13/12)
2012 Dec 11, Delta Airlines agreed to buy a 49% stake in Virgin Atlantic Airways Ltd. For $360 million.
(SFC, 12/12/12, p.D3)
2012 Dec 11, Ravi Shankar (b.1920), India-born sitar virtuoso, died in San Diego.
(SFC, 12/12/12, p.A6)
2012 Dec 11, A US watchdog agency said that Afghan officials were resisting US efforts to help track billions of dollars being flown out of Kabul airport every year, some likely linked to crime and drugs.
(AP, 12/11/12)
2012 Dec 11, Britain's Serious Fraud Office (SFO) and London police made the first arrests as part of a global investigation into the manipulation of interbank lending rates, a scandal that has rocked the banking industry.
(Reuters, 12/11/12)
2012 Dec 11, British bank HSBC agreed to pay a fine of $1.9 billion over money-laundering allegations by American regulators.
(Econ, 12/15/12, p.73)
2012 Dec 11, Canadian aboriginal Chief Theresa Spence, from the remote northern Ontario community of Attawapiskat, began a hunger strike urging PM Stephen Harper to "open his heart" and meet with native leaders angered by his policies.
(Reuters, 12/28/12)
2012 Dec 11, Premier McKeeva Bush (57), the leader of the Cayman Islands' government, was arrested on suspicion of theft, abuse of office and breach of trust in the famed Caribbean tax haven.
(AP, 12/11/12)
2012 Dec 11, Cuba formally authorized the creation of the first non-agricultural cooperatives, a measure expected to permit the growth of midsize businesses as part of President Raul Castro's plan to open the economy to some liberalization.
(AP, 12/11/12)
2012 Dec 11, Doctors in Cuba operated on Venezuelan President Hugo for cancer, after the illness reappeared despite a year and a half of surgeries and treatments.
(AP, 12/12/12)
2012 Dec 11, In Egypt masked gunmen attacked anti-Morsi protesters in Cairo's central Tahrir Square before dawn, firing birdshot at them and wounding nine. Thousands of opponents and supporters of Egypt's Islamist president staged rival rallies in the nation's Cairo.
(AP, 12/11/12)
2012 Dec 11, Ghana's opposition party said that they plan to contest the results of the recent presidential election. Police and soldiers raided an office where the opposition party was re-tabulating votes in their preparation to contest the results of last week's presidential poll, which handed a slim victory to the incumbent.
(AP, 12/11/12)(AP, 12/12/12)
2012 Dec 11, In Guinea three people were killed, dozens wounded and at least three women raped in an army crackdown on protesters in the town of Gueckedou, 700 km (430 miles) southeast of Conakry.
(AP, 12/13/12)
2012 Dec 11, Iran's official news agency reported that the country has closed its consular section in the western Afghan city of Herat, after anti-Iranian protests at the site on Dec 9. Afghan demonstrators were protesting the alleged killing of Afghan emigrants at nearby border crossings in recent months.
(AP, 12/11/12)
2012 Dec 11, Tehran's chief prosecutor said authorities have arrested 28 Iranians for alleged links to foreign-based TV networks advocating the Baha'i religion, which is banned in the Islamic Republic.
(AP, 12/11/12)
2012 Dec 11, A Kazakhstan court convicted border guard Vladislav Chelakh (19) of killing 14 of his comrades along with a park ranger and sentenced to life in prison.
(AP, 12/12/12)
2012 Dec 11, South Sudan soldiers were being blamed for the deaths of up to 23 civilians in two separate regions. The first incident took place in Jonglei state last week. An official said soldiers rounded up civilians and fired on the group, killing 13. The UN mission confirmed that nine people were killed during the two days of violence over the weekend in Western Equatoria state.
(AP, 12/11/12)
2012 Dec 11, Syrian rebels, backed by Islamic extremist fighters of Jabhat al-Nusra, took full control of the Sheik Suleiman military base near Aleppo after a two-day battle that killed at least 35 government troops. In Aleppo four mortar rounds hit the predominantly Kurdish neighborhood of Sheik Maksoud, killing 11, including 3 children and 2 women, and wounding a dozen other people.
(AP, 12/11/12)
2012 Dec 11, In southern Thailand armed men with assault rifles burst into the canteen of Ban Ba Ngo school in Pattani province and shot dead two teachers. In Narathiwat's Rangae district gunmen on a pickup truck fired AK-47 and M16 assault rifles into a tea shop, killing three people instantly including a toddler, and wounding six others at the scene. One of the wounded died later in hospital.
(Econ, 1/19/13, p.44)( http://tinyurl.com/b2v8zne)
2012 Dec 11, In Yemen Brig. Gen. Ahmed Ba Ramada, deputy head of intelligence for Hadramawt, was killed by two unknown assailants on a motorbike.
(AP, 12/11/12)
2013 Dec 11, The United States and Britain suspended all non-lethal aid to the opposition in northern Syria after Islamist rebels seized key bases and warehouses belonging to the Western-backed Free Syrian Army.
(Reuters, 12/11/13)
2013 Dec 11, The US FDA said it will begin curbing the use of some medically important antibiotics commonly fed to animals to fatten them up for market. A 3-year plan to implement this was called the Veterinary Feed Directive.
(SFC, 12/12/13, p.A1)
2013 Dec 11, Time magazine selected Pope Francis as its Person of the Year, saying the Catholic Church's new leader has changed the perception of the 2,000-year-old institution in an extraordinary way in a short time.
(AP, 12/11/13)
2013 Dec 11, A small plain crashed off of Molokai, Hawaii, killing Loretta Fuddy, the director of the state health dept. Eight other people survived.
(SFC, 12/13/13, p.A13)
2013 Dec 11, In Illinois inmate Stanley Wrice (59) was freed from prison after spending 30 years behind bars for confessing under torture to a rape that he did not commit. He had confessed to the 1982 sexual assault after two officers under former Lt. Jon Burge beat him in the groin and face.
(SFC, 12/12/13, p.A10)
2013 Dec 11, A $122 million Powerball lottery draw went to two winners, a couple in Nebraska and a couple in Massachusetts.
(SFC, 1/3/14, p.A6)
2013 Dec 11, In Afghanistan a suicide bomber attacked a convoy of German troops near the international airport in Kabul. The attacker was killed and there were no ISAF casualties to report.
(Reuters, 12/11/13)
2013 Dec 11, A Bahraini court sentenced 12 Shiite Muslims to 15-year jail terms for attacking a car warehouse during unrest in the Sunni-ruled kingdom in February 2012.
(AFP, 12/11/13)
2013 Dec 11, In Bangladesh deposed military dictator Hussein Mohammad Ershad was detained by Rab (Rapid Action Battalion). The hybrid crime-fighting force picked the Jatiya Party chief up from his residence in Dhaka.
(www.youtube.com/watch?v=53FlO_0EuR8)
2013 Dec 11, British regulators announced a record £28 million fines against state-rescued Lloyds Banking Group after finding staff were at risk of selling unsuitable products amid the lure of bonuses.
(AFP, 12/11/13)
2013 Dec 11, G8 health ministers met in London to tackle what experts warn is a dementia time-bomb, with cases set to soar as the world's population ages.
(AFP, 12/11/13)
2013 Dec 11, Canada's postal service said it will phase out door-to-door mail delivery in response to falling mail volumes and big financial losses. Canadians will instead have to collect their mail from corner community mailboxes that are to be set up in cities nationwide.
(AFP, 12/11/13)
2013 Dec 11, Air Canada announced it had placed a firm $6.5 billion order for 61 Boeing 737 MAX narrow-body aircraft, with options on 18 more planes and purchase rights for 30 others.
(AFP, 12/11/13)
2013 Dec 11, Chinese sources said authorities have put Zhou Yongkang, one of the most powerful politicians of the last decade, under virtual house arrest while the ruling Communist Party investigates accusations of corruption against him.
(Reuters, 12/11/13)
2013 Dec 11, The trial of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood chief and his deputies on charges related to protest deaths came to an abrupt end when the judges quit in protest at chaos in the dock.
(AFP, 12/11/13)
2013 Dec 11, Germany police said a sapling cloned from the tree that lifted Anne Frank's spirits while she hid from the Nazis in Amsterdam was felled and stolen over the weekend from outside a school in Frankfurt bearing the name of the Jewish teenage diarist.
(AP, 12/11/13)
2013 Dec 11, In western Germany a building crane collapsed onto a supermarket, killing one person and injuring at least five others in Bad Homburg.
(AP, 12/11/13)
2013 Dec 11, India's Supreme Court struck down a 2009 lower court decision to decriminalize homosexuality, dealing a blow to gay activists who have fought for years for the chance to live openly in India's deeply conservative society. The court said only lawmakers can change a colonial era law that bans same-sex relations. Gay sex was reinstated as a criminal offense, punishable up to 10 years in prison.
(AP, 12/11/13)(SSFC, 12/15/13, p.A20)(Reuters, 9/6/18)
2013 Dec 11, Iran released the last two of eight Slovak paragliders arrested for allegedly spying after PM Robert Fico and Foreign Minister Miroslav Lajcak flew in to secure their release.
(AFP, 12/12/13)
2013 Dec 11, Italian PM Enrico Letta won a parliamentary confidence vote triggered by the fall of Silvio Berlusconi, promising to push through a pro-European reform agenda and fight populism.
(AFP, 12/11/13)
2013 Dec 11, Myanmar freed 41 political detainees, bringing the country close to fulfilling a pledge by President Thein Sein to release all prisoners of conscience by the end of the year.
(Reuters, 12/11/13)
2013 Dec 11, Saudi Arabia and its Gulf Arab neighbors wrapped up a summit meeting in Kuwait by agreeing to establish a joint military command, paving the way for tighter security coordination.
(AP, 12/11/13)
2013 Dec 11, In Syria 32 people were killed in the town of Adra northeast of Damascus after an al-Qaida-linked rebel faction attack. The dead were primarily members the Alawite sect, as well as a few Druse and Shiite Muslims.
(Reuters, 12/15/13)
2013 Dec 11, Ukrainian police pulled back as protesters claimed victory after an overnight face-off in which authorities removed barricades and tents and scuffled with demonstrators occupying Kiev's main square.
(AP, 12/11/13)
2014 Dec 11, The US House of Representatives narrowly passed a $1.1 trillion federal spending bill, sending it to the Senate after it was ushered through barely two hours before a midnight deadline.
(AFP, 12/12/14)
2014 Dec 11, San Francisco-based Lending Club, a peer-to-peer online lending service founded by Renaud LaPlanche, went public. In May 2016 LaPlanche resigned.
(Econ, 5/14/16, p.64)
2014 Dec 11, The California State Dept. of Finance estimated the current state population to be 38.5 million.
(SFC, 12/12/14, p.D1)
2014 Dec 11, Rain and high winds lashed Northern California overnight, leaving thousands without power, as a major winter storm that marched across the Pacific Ocean was set to pound the state.
(Reuters, 12/11/14)
2014 Dec 11, Delaware police arrested Seth Ramsey (17) of Harrington after his father was found dead with a single arrow wound to the abdomen. Ramsey admitted to killing his father with a crossbow.
(SSFC, 12/14/14, p.A8)
2014 Dec 11, Google announced it will close Google News in Spain and block reports from Spanish publishers from more than 70 Google News international editions due to a new Spanish law requiring aggregators to pay to link content.
(AP, 12/11/14)
2014 Dec 11, The Int’l. Weightlifting Federation said eight weightlifters, including two gold medalists, have been provisionally suspended after failing doping tests at last month's world championship in Almaty, Kazakhstan.
(AP, 12/11/14)
2014 Dec 11, In Afghanistan a suicide bomber targeted a bus carrying Afghan army personnel, killing 6 soldiers and wounding 11. Hours later a teenaged suicide bomber targeted a packed auditorium at a French-run high school in Kabul, killing a German citizen.
(Reuters, 12/11/14)(AP, 12/11/14)
2014 Dec 11, Algeria's justice minister said a second member of the group that kidnapped and beheaded French hiker Herve Gourdel last September has been identified and killed by the army.
(AP, 12/11/14)
2014 Dec 11, In Vienna, Austria, several states (Britain, Norway, Netherlands and the US) pledged to back a UN nuclear agency (IAEA) request for 4.6 million euros ($5.7 million) as soon as possible to pay for its monitoring of an extended, interim nuclear deal between Iran and world powers.
(AP, 12/11/14)
2014 Dec 11, Brazil’s National Truth Commission report named 377 people allegedly responsible for 434 deaths and disappearances, and thousands of acts of torture during the military regime of 1964-1985. The truth commission said more than 8,000 members of indigenous tribes could have been killed at the hands of authoritarian regimes between 1946 and 1988, the vast majority during the 1964-1985 dictatorship.
(SSFC, 12/14/14, p.A22)(AP, 3/8/19)
2014 Dec 11, Britain's Scout Association was warned that sexual abuse claims that have led to payouts of £500,000 were only the "tip of the iceberg."
(AFP, 12/11/14)
2014 Dec 11, In London Aravindan Balakrishnan (74), the leader of an obscure Maoist collective, was charged with false imprisonment, rape, cruelty to a person under 16 years old and indecent assault. He allegedly held three women, freed last year, against their will in a London house for 30 years.
(AP, 12/11/14)
2014 Dec 11, In Bulgaria some 6,000 people protested in Sofia against government plans to raise the retirement age by four months to 63 years and 8 months for men and to 60 years and 8 months for women.
(AP, 12/11/14)
2014 Dec 11, In the southeast CongoDRC at least 129 people drowned when the passenger ship M/V Mutambala capsized on Lake Tanganyika.
(AFP, 12/14/14)
2014 Dec 11, The EU banned Libya's seven airlines from operating in European skies, citing safety concerns linked to the ongoing fighting there.
(AP, 12/11/14)
2014 Dec 11, Greece's former finance minister, George Papaconstantinou, was indicted before a special court on criminal charges over his handling of data on Greeks holding Swiss bank accounts.
(AP, 12/11/14)
2014 Dec 11, Hong Kong police arrested some 209 pro-democracy activists and cleared most of the main protest site, marking an end to more than two months of street demonstrations in the Chinese-controlled city.
(Reuters, 12/11/14)(AP, 12/11/14)
2014 Dec 11, The head of Hungary's tax authority sued a senior American diplomat in Budapest for libel after the envoy said the US had knowledge of corruption at the tax office.
(AP, 12/11/14)
2014 Dec 11, Indian PM Narendra Modi told President Vladimir Putin that Russia will remain India's top defense supplier. Modi spoke after a one-day summit in which the two sides signed billions of dollars of deals in nuclear power, oil and defense. The Russian Direct Investment Fund and India's IDFC agreed to invest up to $1 billion in Indian infrastructure projects including in ports, toll roads and hydropower, to deepen economic ties between the two countries.
(Reuters, 12/11/14)
2014 Dec 11, Iran media reported that authorities have arrested 12 people for syphoning off more than $4.5 billion (3.6 billion euros) from one of the country's main banks over several years. The suspects embezzled from the Kerman branch of Tejarat Bank from 2009 until their arrest in 2013.
(AFP, 12/11/14)
2014 Dec 11, Iraq's powerful Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr put his militia on alert to battle Islamic State militants for the city of Samarra. An Islamic State suicide bomber blew up a Humvee west of the Anbar provincial capital Ramadi, destroying a bridge and killing two soldiers.
(Reuters, 12/11/14)
2014 Dec 11, The International Criminal Court ordered a close ally of former Ivorian president Laurent Gbagbo, Charles Ble Goude, to stand trial for crimes against humanity linked to a 2010-11 post-election crisis.
(AFP, 12/11/14)
2014 Dec 11, In Kenya more than 20 machete-wielding men, said to be members of the outlawed Mombasa Republican Council (MRC), attacked a police camp. The outlawed group wants independence for Kenya's Indian Ocean coastal regions, citing decades of neglect by the government.
(Reuters, 12/22/14)
2014 Dec 11, Malaysia police said they have arrested 20 people in a widening investigation into the murder of at least 18 Myanmar nationals in the state of Penang since January. Police said twelve Myanmar migrants have confessed to their role in nine of the murders.
(Reuters, 12/11/14)
2014 Dec 11, In central Nigeria twin explosions killed about 120 people in downtown Jos. Extremists attacked Gajigana, a border town between Niger and Nigeria, and 11 people were killed. Major buildings were burned down but Boko Haram did not succeed in capturing the town.
(SFC, 12/12/14, p.A9)(AP, 12/13/14)
2014 Dec 11, In the Philippines Rep. Vicente Belmonte was slightly wounded in an attack by gunmen who killed at least 2 of his bodyguards and a driver in Misamis Oriental province.
(SFC, 12/12/14, p.A2)
2014 Dec 11, Saudi Arabia-based Islamic Development Bank said the Saudi king has pledged $35 million to help fight Ebola in hard-hit West African countries.
(AP, 12/11/14)
2014 Dec 11, South Africa said its loss-making national airline will be placed under the control of the Treasury, as the carrier battles to turn around its fortunes.
(AFP, 12/11/14)
2014 Dec 11, South African police expressed shock at the gruesome and mysterious murder of six men, aged 18-30, found with their hands bound and their heads apparently crushed by rocks.
(AFP, 12/11/14)
2014 Dec 11, South African doctors performed the world's first successful penis transplant in a nine-hour operation at the Tygerberg Hospital in Cape Town. This followed a botched circumcision at a traditional initiation ceremony. On March 13, 2015, doctors announced that the man (21) had made a full recovery.
(AP, 3/14/15)
2014 Dec 11, Swiss authorities charged Herve Falciani, a fugitive banking analyst, with data theft in what is considered to be one of the biggest security breaches in the country's often-secretive banking sector. He has been accused of stealing stole information between 2006 and 2007 relating to 24,000 customers of the Swiss division of HSBC.
(AP, 12/11/14)
2014 Dec 11, In Uganda Ryan Gustafson, an American man, was arrested for forging currency in his Ugandan home. Police alleged that Gustafson has forged more than $2 million that is in circulation around the world. On Dec 3, 2015, a local court ordered Gustafson to be extradited to the US.
(AP, 12/23/14)(AP, 12/3/15)
2014 Dec 11, Ukraine's parliament approved the new government's economic program of tough reforms aimed at securing billions of dollars in financial aid from the International Monetary Fund and other backers. a military spokesman said 3 Ukrainian soldiers were killed and eight wounded in attacks by pro-Russian separatists in the past 24 hours.
(Reuters, 12/11/14)
2015 Dec 11, The US and Cuba announced they have struck a deal to re-established direct mail service, which was cut in 1963.
(SFC, 12/12/15, p.A2)
2015 Dec 11, The United States and its allies targeted Islamic State with 12 strikes in Iraq and five in Syria.
(Reuters, 12/12/15)
2015 Dec 11, In California a Sky Life air ambulance crashed near McFarland, Kern County, killing all 4 people aboard.
(SFC, 12/12/15, p.A6)
2015 Dec 11, Several big-name Silicon Valley figures said they have pledged $1 billion to support a non-profit firm that would focus on the "positive human impact" of artificial intelligence. Backers of the OpenAI research group include Tesla and SpaceX entrepreneur Elon Musk, Y Combinator's Sam Altman, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, and PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel.
(AFP, 12/12/15)
2015 Dec 11, Elon Musk helped found OpenAI, an artificial intelligence laboratory based in San Francisco. The other founders included Sam Altman, Ilya Sutskever, Greg Brockman, Wojciech Zaremba, John Schulman. In May 2020 the lab described Generative Pretrained Transformer 3, commonly known by its abbreviated form GPT-3, an unsupervised Transformer language model and the successor to GPT-2. The software was built on a "language model" aiming to represent a language statistically.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenAI)(Econ., 8/8/20, p.63)
2015 Dec 11, DuPont and Dow Chemical said they have agreed to merge. On Dec 29 DuPont CEO Ed Breen sent a letter to employees saying that some 1,700 Delaware jobs would be eliminated at the beginning of the new year.
(SFC, 12/12/15, p.D1)(SFC, 12/30/15, p.C1)
2015 Dec 11, It was reported that Pep Boys agreed to be acquired by Bridgestone for $863 million in cash after the tires and auto service company sweetened its offer following a bid from Carl Icahn's investment firm.
(AP, 12/11/15)
2015 Dec 11, In Afghanistan three Taliban insurgents staged a car bomb attack on a guest house near the Spanish embassy in Kabul. 7 people were killed in addition to the 3 attackers.
(Reuters, 12/11/15)(SFC, 12/12/15, p.A2)(AFP, 12/13/15)(SSFC, 12/13/15, p.A7)
2015 Dec 11, Jaguar Land Rover signed a deal with the Slovak government to build a new plant for the luxury car maker in Slovakia.
(AP, 12/11/15)
2015 Dec 11, In Burundi gunmen stormed three military installations before dawn. At least 15 people were killed as gunfire and explosions rocked the capital. 87 people were reported killed in the violence.
(AP, 12/11/15)(AP, 12/12/15)
2015 Dec 11, Cameroon said a suicide bomber has killed 7 people and wounded 27 in its Far North region.
(Reuters, 12/11/15)
2015 Dec 11, Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba said it's buying Hong Kong's leading English-language newspaper, the South China Morning Post, as part of a plan to create a global platform for news about China.
(AP, 12/11/15)
2015 Dec 11, China’s business magazine Caixin reported that police have arrested a former chief of one of the country’s top investment banks. Xue Rongnian, who headed Ping An Securities from 2008 to 2011, was arrested on suspicion of insider trading in connection to two cement businesses.
(AGFP, 12/11/15)
2015 Dec 11, China’s Fosun Group said Chairman Guo Guangchang (48), one of the country’s richest men, was assisting relevent judicial organs with an investigation. His disappearance a day earlier had forced suspension of trading in company shares.
(SFC, 12/12/15, p.A4)
2015 Dec 11, In Ethiopia at least 17 people were injured when a grenade was thrown into the main Anwar Mosque in Addis Ababa after Friday prayers.
(AFP, 12/12/15)
2015 Dec 11, In France an armed man robbed the famed Parisian jeweler Chopard, making off with gems worth around 1 million euros ($1.1 million). The robbery took place across the street from the Elysee palace.
(AP, 12/11/15)
2015 Dec 11, France detected a case of the highly pathogenic H5N9 bird flu in the Pyrenees-Atlantiques region, taking to five the number of regions affected by the outbreak in the country's southwest.
(Reuters, 12/11/15)
2015 Dec 11, Gambia's President Yahya Jammeh declared the formerly secular country an Islamic republic in a move he said was designed to distance the West African state further from its colonial past.
(Reuters, 12/12/15)
2015 Dec 11, Indian officials investigating the death of a 30-year-old pregnant woman working at a brick kiln in Telangana state said they had uncovered an organized racket where hundreds of people were being trafficked and forced to work in inhumane conditions.
(Reuters, 12/11/15)
2015 Dec 11, The Israeli army killed Issa Hroug (55), a Palestinian who it said tried to ram his car into soldiers near Hebron. Palestinian Oday Ersheid (22) was shot dead by Israeli forces during a violent demonstration in the flashpoint West Bank city. Army gunfire in the Gaza Strip killed a Palestinian (38) and wounded five as Palestinians massed at the fenced-off border with Israel.
(Reuters, 12/11/15)(SFC, 12/12/15, p.A2)
2015 Dec 11, A three-person crew from the International Space Station landed safely in the snowy steppes of Kazakhstan.
(AP, 12/11/15)
2015 Dec 11, In Kazakhstan former PM Serik Akhmetov (2012-2014) was sentenced to 10 years in prison, the first time a former official of such stature will serve jail time in the country. Akhmetov (57) was found guilty on four corruption-related charges including embezzlement and abuse of power, in a huge case involving more than 20 defendants.
(AFP, 12/12/15)
2015 Dec 11, The Mexican government granted the first permits allowing the cultivation and possession of marijuana for personal use.
(AP, 12/11/15)
2015 Dec 11, Romanian prosecutors detained Prince Paul in a case of alleged real estate fraud involving a top aide to a former prime minister and a newspaper editor. Prosecutors also ordered businessman Remus Truica, the former head of Cabinet of ex-Premier Adrian Nastase, be put under house arrest.
(AP, 12/11/15)
2015 Dec 11, President Vladimir Putin said that Russia has provided air cover, weapons and supplies to a leading Western-backed opposition group in Syria and called for closer coordination with the US-allied coalition.
(AP, 12/11/15)
2015 Dec 11, Russian investigators charged ex-oil tycoon and Kremlin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky with organizing the 1998 murder of a mayor in Siberia. Khodorkovsky, who now lives in London, has claimed that the new probe into the mayor's murder was ordered personally by President Vladimir Putin.
(AFP, 12/11/15)
2015 Dec 11, Russia officially launched its own rating agency as it seeks to counterbalance the influence of Western agencies which have taken a pessimistic line on the country's crisis-hit economy.
(AFP, 12/11/15)
2015 Dec 11, South Africa expelled a North Korean diplomat. He was arrested in neighboring Mozambique in May on charges related to rhino horn smuggling.
(AP, 12/23/15)
2015 Dec 11, Spanish police said they have seized 40 pallets made out of 1.4 tons of compressed cocaine that was made to look like wood that arrived on a shipping container from Colombia. Authorities arrested 12 people in Spain, Dubai and Britain as part of the operation, including two Colombian experts in using chemicals to process cocaine into different formats.
(AFP, 12/11/15)
2015 Dec 11, Swiss authorities arrested two people of Syrian origin on suspicion of transporting "explosives and toxic gases" as part of a probe into a terror threat.
(AFP, 12/12/15)
2015 Dec 11, President Tayyip Erdogan declared he would not bow to Iraqi demands he withdraw Turkish troops from a camp close to the Islamic State-held city of Mosul. Baghdad said it would ask the UN Security Council to order them to leave.
(Reuters, 12/11/15)
2015 Dec 11, Turkey issued arrest warrants for US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen and 66 others, pressing President Tayyip Erdogan's campaign to root out the influence of the former ally he accuses of trying to topple him.
(Reuters, 12/11/15)
2015 Dec 11, Turkey's state-run news agency said the country's communications authority has imposed a 150,000 Turkish Lira (US$51,000) fine on Twitter for failing to remove content it said praised terror and incited violence.
(AP, 12/11/15)
2016 Dec 11, US President-elect Donald Trump said the United States did not necessarily have to stick to its long-standing position that Taiwan is part of "one China," questioning nearly four decades of policy in a move likely to antagonize Beijing.
(Reuters, 12/12/16)
2016 Dec 11, In Brazil Yuri Lourenco da Silva (19), the son of singer Tati Quebra Barraco, was killed along with and another man in a police operation early today in the City of God slum.
(AP, 12/11/16)
2016 Dec 11, In Egypt a suicide bombing at the Saint Peter and Saint Paul Church next to St Mark's Cathedral, Cairo's largest Coptic cathedral, killed 25 people and wounded 49, many of them women and children attending Sunday mass. Islamic State supporters celebrated the attack on social media. The suicide bomber was identified as Mahmoud Shafik Mohamed Mostafa (22). Four people suspected of involvement were soon arrested. The death toll soon rose to 27.
(Reuters, 12/11/16)(AFP, 12/12/16)(SFC, 12/13/16, p.A3)(AP, 12/20/16)
2016 Dec 11, In India police arrested moviegoer S. Viji in Chennai for failing to stand during the playing of the national anthem.
(SFC, 12/13/16, p.A2)
2016 Dec 11, In India a helicopter crashed and caught fire in Mumbai, killing the pilot and injuring three passengers. The Robinson R-44 helicopter belonged to Aman Aviation, a company that offers aerial viewing of the city.
(AP, 12/11/16)
2016 Dec 11, Iran's flag carrier finalized a major deal with US plane maker Boeing Co. to buy $16.6 billion worth of passenger planes in one of the most tangible benefits yet for the Islamic Republic from last year's landmark nuclear agreement.
(AP, 12/11/16)
2016 Dec 11, Italian Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni was tapped to form a new, Democrat-led government and end a political crisis so the country can quickly tackle pressing problems.
(AP, 12/11/16)
2016 Dec 11, Tokyo held a groundbreaking ceremony for a $1.5 billion National Stadium to host the 2020 Olympic Games.
(AP, 12/11/16)
2016 Dec 11, Kuwait's emir told a new parliament that cutting public spending has become inevitable because of the sharp drop in oil prices. Candidates who opposed planned public sector wage restraint and other price hikes won nearly half of the seats in the 50-member National Assembly last month.
(Reuters, 12/11/16)
2016 Dec 11, Kyrgyzstan voters cast ballots in a constitutional referendum that includes amendments that boost the power of prime minister — something opposition groups have criticized in the ex-Soviet Central Asian nation.
(AP, 12/11/16)
2016 Dec 11, Macedonians voted in a general election called two years early as part of a Western-brokered agreement to end a paralyzing political crisis. Former conservative PM Nikola Gruevski, who had headed the government since 2006, sought a new mandate. His VMRO-DPMNE party led a 25-party coalition called "For a Better Macedonia." Main opponent Zoran Zaev headed a left-leaning coalition called "For Life in Macedonia." Neither party won enough seats to form a government. Gruevski, his former transport minister and twelve others have been charged over violence during a 2013 demonstration.
(AP, 12/11/16)(AP, 12/12/16)(SFC, 12/17/16, p.A2)
2016 Dec 11, In Nigeria two girl suicide bombers died when they exploded in a crowded area near a market in the northeastern city of Maiduguri, injuring 17 people.
(AP, 12/11/16)
2016 Dec 11, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said that he has decided to accept an arms deal being offered by China under concessional terms, in the latest sign of cozying relations between the once-hostile neighbors.
(AP, 12/11/16)
2016 Dec 11, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte rejected a demand by Maoist-led rebels to free more prisoners as part of a ceasefire deal, saying he had made enough concessions and was willing to let peace talks collapse if necessary. Three Filipino soldiers were killed and 17 others wounded in nearly two hours of fighting with about 150 Abu Sayyaf Muslim militants in the south.
(Reuters, 12/11/16)(AP, 12/11/16)
2016 Dec 11, Romanians voted in parliamentary elections that are forecast to see the corruption-tainted left stage a remarkable comeback, a year after a deadly nightclub fire forced them from office. Romania's leftist Social Democrat Party (PSD) won 46% of the vote and the most seats in both houses of parliament for a combined 221 deputies and senators.
(AFP, 12/11/16)(AP, 12/12/16)(Reuters, 12/15/16)(Econ, 12/17/16, p.46)
2016 Dec 11, In Serbia several hundred members of the police and army staged a protest complaining of low wages and poor living standards. The gathering was the second in two weeks.
(AP, 12/11/16)
2016 Dec 11, In Somalia more than 20 people were killed in a suicide truck bombing in Mogadishu, in a fresh strike claimed by the Al-Qaeda-linked Shabaab group.
(AFP, 12/11/16)
2016 Dec 11, In Switzerland the 35-mile Gotthard base tunnel, the world’s longest tunnel, opened for daily service.
(CSM, 12/12/16)
2016 Dec 11, The Syrian army and its allies made new gains in Aleppo, forcing rebels back into an ever shrinking pocket crammed with civilians, but lost control of the desert city of Palmyra to a swift Islamic State attack. Syria's state news agency said at least 4,000 people fled Aleppo today. The state TV channel said more than 70,000 of eastern Aleppo's estimated 275,000 residents have fled in recent days.
(Reuters, 12/11/16)(AP, 12/11/16)
2016 Dec 11, Venezuela’s Pres. Maduro announced that the government would pull from circulation its 100-bolivar bill, the country’s largest-denominated. It was only worth 3 US cents at the black market rate. They will eventually be replaced with new ones in denominations as high as 20,000 bolivars.
(SFC, 12/13/16, p.A2)(Econ, 12/17/16, p.69)
2017 Dec 11, Three women who have previously accused Pres. Trump of sexual harassment shared their stories on NBC’s “Megan Kelly Today" and later called for a congressional investigation into Trump’s alleged behavior.
(SFC, 12/12/17, p.A4)
2017 Dec 11, The Fairy tale romance "The Shape of Water" led the Golden Globe nominations with seven as Hollywood launched an awards season expected to be overshadowed by the sexual misconduct scandal engulfing the movie industry.
(AFP, 12/11/17)
2017 Dec 11, In California the 4,100-acre (1,660 hectare) Lilac Fire north of San Diego was 90 percent contained after destroying 151 structures.
(Reuters, 12/12/17)
2017 Dec 11, Louisiana investigator Jordan Hamlett (32) pleaded guilty to misusing Donald Trump’s Social Security number in repeated attempts to access the president’s federal tax information.
(SFC, 12/12/17, p.A4)
2017 Dec 11, In NYC there was an explosion in an underground passageway connecting two of Manhattan's busiest stations. Akayed Ullah (27) of Bangladesh had strapped on a crude pipe bomb with Velcro and plastic ties, slipped unnoticed into the nation's busiest subway system and set off the device. He was the only person seriously wounded and was hospitalized with burns to his hands and stomach and held on state terrorism charges. On Nov. 6, 2018, Ullah was convicted of terrorism.
(AP, 12/12/17)(SFC, 11/7/18, p.A4)
2017 Dec 11, A futures Bitcoin contract that expires in January surged $2,730 to $18,190 on the Chicago Board Options Exchange. Trading began a day earlier, and the price rose as high as $18,850, according to data from the CBOE.
(AP, 12/11/17)
2017 Dec 11, Bulgaria said it has asked Russian Aircraft Corporation MiG to overhaul and maintain its 15 aged MiG-29 fighter jets in a four-year deal worth up to 81.3 million levs ($49 million).
(Reuters, 12/11/17)
2017 Dec 11, China failed to stop the fourth annual UN Security Council meeting on human rights abuses in North Korea, saying it was not the right forum to discuss the issue and warning that it could further escalate tensions in the region.
(Reuters, 12/11/17)
2017 Dec 11, Cuba told senior US officials during talks on migration in Havana that the US decision to suspend visa processing at its embassy on the island was "seriously hampering" family relations and other people exchanges.
(Reuters, 12/12/17)
2017 Dec 11, Egypt and Russia signed a final contract for the building of Egypt's first nuclear power plant, during a visit to Cairo by President Vladimir Putin.
(AFP, 12/11/17)
2017 Dec 11, The European Union said it will resume political contact "at all levels" with Thailand, after putting relations on hold following a 2014 coup by the Thai military.
(Reuters, 12/11/17)
2017 Dec 11, High winds and heavy snow in Europe stranded thousands of travelers, kept schoolchildren at home and even played havoc with international diplomacy. A second day of snowfall closed schools and disrupted travel across parts of Britain and the Netherlands.
(AFP, 12/11/17)(Reuters, 12/11/17)
2017 Dec 11, French Pres. Emmanuel Macron awarded 18 scientists from the US and elsewhere million of euros to relocate to France for climate research for the rest of Donald Trump’s presidential term.
(SFC, 12/12/17, p.A3)
2017 Dec 11, French baby milk maker Lactalis and French authorities ordered a global recall of millions of products over fears of salmonella bacteria contamination. The company said it was warned by health authorities in France that 26 infants have become sick since December 1.
(AP, 12/11/17)
2017 Dec 11, India's main opposition Congress party named Rahul Gandhi, the scion of the country's Nehru-Gandhi political dynasty, as party president.
(AP, 12/11/17)
2017 Dec 11, Two Indonesian assembly members said The speaker of parliament, who is being investigated for his suspected involvement in a $170 million graft scandal, has tendered his resignation. Setya Novanto was arrested last month over his suspected role in the scandal linked to a national electronic identity card scheme.
(Reuters, 12/11/17)
2017 Dec 11, Indonesian activists burned US and Israeli flags in front of the American embassy in Jakarta in a fourth day of protests in Indonesia against President Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital.
(AP, 12/11/17)
2017 Dec 11, Indonesian police searched for American citizen Chrishan Beasley (32), who escaped from an overcrowded and understaffed prison on the resort island of Bali. He was arrested in August at a post office in the Kuta tourist area of Bali with a package containing 5.7 grams of hashish.
(AP, 12/11/17)
2017 Dec 11, It was reported that Indonesia is immunizing millions of children and teenagers against diphtheria after the disease killed 38 people, mostly children, since January.
(AP, 12/11/17)
2017 Dec 11, In Israel the Nazareth District Court sentenced Yinon Reuveni (22) over his involvement in the 2015 attack on the Church of the Multiplication of the Loaves and Fish. Reuveni was also ordered to pay $14,000 to the church in compensation.
(AP, 12/12/17)
2017 Dec 11, Ivory Coast documents showed that the country will pay thousands of soldiers 15 million CFA francs ($25,782) each as part of buy-outs aimed at reducing the size of its unruly and mutiny-prone military.
(Reuters, 12/11/17)
2017 Dec 11, The International Criminal Court (ICC) said it would refer Jordan to the UN Security Council for failing to arrest Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir when he visited Amman in March.
(Reuters, 12/11/17)
2017 Dec 11, Kuwait replaced its oil, finance and defense ministers in a cabinet reshuffle.
(Reuters, 12/11/17)
2017 Dec 11, In Lebanon tens of thousands of supporters of Lebanon's Hezbollah demonstrated in Beirut, chanting "Death to America!" and "Death to Israel!" in protest over the US decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital.
(AFP, 12/11/17)
2017 Dec 11, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin flew into Syria and ordered "a significant part" of Moscow's military contingent there to start withdrawing, declaring their work largely done. Putin added that Russia would keep the Hmeymim air base in Syria's Latakia Province and its naval facility in the port of Tartous.
(Reuters, 12/11/17)(Reuters, 12/12/17)
2017 Dec 11, Saudi Arabia lifted a 35-year-old ban on cinemas, prompting celebrations from film fans, directors and movie chains eyeing the last untapped mass market in the Middle East. In a nod to conservatives, the government said the films would be censored.
(Reuters, 12/11/17)
2017 Dec 11, South Korea added 20 North Korean groups, several banks and 12 individuals to its sanctions list in a largely symbolic move that is part of efforts to cut off funding for the North's weapons programs.
(AP, 12/11/17)
2017 Dec 11, Spanish police escorted two trucks loaded with pieces of medieval religious art from a museum in the city of Lleida amid protests after a court ordered Catalan authorities to hand them over to the neighboring regional government of Aragon. The 44 pieces were originally housed in Aragon's Sijena monastery, but were bought by Catalonia from nuns in 1983. In 2015 a court ruled the sale illegal and ordered the works returned.
(AP, 12/11/17)
2017 Dec 11, Turkey's armed forces said its warplanes hit Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) targets in northern Iraq and killed 17 of the group's militants.
(Reuters, 12/11/17)
2017 Dec 11, The United Nations appealed to countries worldwide to take in 1,300 mainly African refugees stranded in Libya, many of them mistreated while kept in appalling conditions in detention.
(Reuters, 12/11/17)
2017 Dec 11, Yemen's official news agency said the Shiite rebels have killed at least 20 people and detained dozens across the country's north since killing their top ally, former President Ali Abdullah Saleh. The agency also reported that the Houthis have arrested 49 people in Mahwet, a northern province.
(AP, 12/11/17)
2018 Dec 11, US Pres. Donald Trump clashed angrily with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi on funding for a border wall in an Oval Office meeting carried live on television.
(AFP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 11, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo added mainly Muslim Pakistan to the US list of "countries of particular concern", which have violated religious freedoms or tolerated abuses against religious groups.
(Reuters, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 11, The US returned three bells to the Philippines that were seized in 1901 from the town of Balangiga following a rebel attack on an American garrison. US troops were ordered to kill every male citizen ten or older and capable of bearing arms to avenge the death of 48 US soldiers.
(SFC, 12/12/18, p.A2)
2018 Dec 11, Time magazine named a group of journalists, including a slain Saudi Arabian writer Jamal Khashoggi, as its "Person of the Year," in a cover story headlined "The Guardians and the War on Truth." Also named were Philippine journalist Maria Ressa, Reuters reporters Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo -- currently imprisoned in Myanmar -- and the staff of the Capital Gazette in the US city of Annapolis, including five members killed in a June shooting.
(Reuters, 12/11/18)(AFP, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 11, In Los Angeles a federal judge ordered porn star Stormy Daniels to pay Pres. Trump nearly $293,000 for his attorney's fees and another $1000 in sanctions after her defamation suit against the president was dismissed.
(SFC, 12/12/18, p.A5)
2018 Dec 11, North Carolina reported three deaths after melting snow from a winter storm in several southern states transformed to ice.
(SFC, 12/12/18, p.A7)
2018 Dec 11, Texas executed Alvin Braziel Jr. for the 1993 robbery and slaying of Douglas White (27), who was attacked as he and his wife walked on a jogging trail.
(SFC, 12/12/18, p.A5)
2018 Dec 11, Thousands of Albanian university students took to Tirana's streets for their biggest show of strength yet in a protest movement demanding lower tuition fees and more investment in public education.
(AFP, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 11, In Argentina a court sentenced former Ford Motor Co. executives Pedro Muller and Hector Francisco Sibilla to prison for crimes against humanity committed during the country's 1976-1983 military dictatorship.
(SFC, 12/12/18, p.A2)
2018 Dec 11, An Australian court sentenced a Sydney teenager (18) to at least 12 years in prison for planning an attack inspired by the Islamic State group in 2016.
(AP, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 11, An Australian court found Cardinal George Pell (77), one of the highest ranking Vatican officials and a former top adviser to Pope Francis, guilty on five charges of child sexual offences committed more than two decades ago against 13-year-old boys. The verdict was only made public on Feb. 26, 2019.
(Reuters, 2/26/19)
2018 Dec 11, In southern Brazil a man opened fire at the Metropolitan Cathedral in Campinas killing four people and wounding four more before taking a bullet in the ribs and then shooting himself in the head.
(SFC, 12/12/18, p.A2)
2018 Dec 11, Six Cambodian union leaders each received suspended 2 1/2-year prison terms in connection with labor protests in January, 2014, in which four garment workers were killed and around 20 others hurt.
(AP, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 11, In Canada Meng Wanzhou (46) a top executive of Chinese telecoms giant Huawei Technologies Co Ltd was granted bail by court, 10 days after her arrest in Vancouver at the request of US authorities sparked a diplomatic dispute. US President Donald Trump said he would intervene in the US Justice Department's case against Meng if it would serve national security interests or help close a trade deal with China.
(Reuters, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 11, China's economy czar and US trade envoys discussed plans for talks on a tariff battle, indicating negotiations are going ahead despite tension over the arrest of a Chinese tech executive.
(AP, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 11, In CongoDRC two supporters of opposition candidate Martin Fayulu were killed and 43 hurt as he went for a rally in Lubumbashi.
(AFP, 12/13/18)
2018 Dec 11, Traders in Cairo said Egyptian authorities have unofficially restricted the sale of "yellow vests," signaling fears of possible protests inspired by those in France.
(AFP, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 11, In France a man killed three people in a gun attack on a Christmas market in Strasbourg and escaped the scene. 12 other people were wounded. He was soon identified as Strasbourg-born Cherif Chekatt (29), was known to have been religiously radicalized while in jail, and was on an intelligence services watch list as a potential security risk.
(Reuters, 12/12/18)(SFC, 12/12/18, p.A4)
2018 Dec 11, India's ruling party lost power in three key states, dealing PM Narendra Modi his biggest defeat since he took office in 2014 and boosting the opposition ahead of national polls next year. The opposition Congress party was a clear winner in Chhattisgarh state, and fell one seat short of a majority in both Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh.
(Reuters, 12/11/18)(AP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 11, Iran's Arman daily reported that human rights lawyers Ghasem Sholeh-Saadi and Arash Keikhosravi have been sentenced to six years in prison for taking part in an "illegal gathering" and one year for "propaganda" against the ruling system. Lawyer Mohammad Najafi was sentenced to 10 years for "conveying information to a hostile country" through interviews with foreign media, two years for insulting the supreme leader and one year for publicity in support of opposition groups.
(AP, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 11, Israel said it had uncovered another Hezbollah "attack tunnel" infiltrating its territory from Lebanon -- the third since it started a search and destroy operation along the border last week.
(AP, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 11, Israeli forces shot and killed a Palestinian man in the West Bank city of Hebron after he attempted to ram his car into them. In the northern West Bank another Palestinian drove his car toward Israeli forces, who opened fire and arrested the driver.
(AP, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 11, Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, arrived in Israel for a two-day visit that has prompted criticism over his far-right policies and anti-migration views.
(AP, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 11, Rome's longstanding garbage problems turned into an emergency after a huge fire at the Salaria waste disposal plant blanketed the Eternal City in smoke and forced authorities to scramble to find alternative facilities to treat the capital's trash.
(AP, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 11, A Tokyo court ruled that Nissan Motor Co.'s former chairman, Carlos Ghosn, and another executive will remain in custody through Dec. 20, more than a month after their arrest. Their detention could continue for months more under the Japanese legal system.
(AP, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 11, In Kashmir rebels fighting against Indian rule attacked a police post, killing four officers in the southern Shopian area.
(AP, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 11, In central Mexico seven people were killed in a fireworks accident in the community of Fuentezuelas, Queretaro state. Improperly stored fireworks were accidentally ignited as a procession celebrating the Virgin of Guadalupe neared a chapel.
(AP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 11, New Zealand's government passed a law that will make medical marijuana widely available for thousands of patients over time.
(AP, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 11, Pakistan's anti-graft body said it has arrested a senior politician from former PM Nawaz Sharif's party over links to a multimillion-dollar housing scam. Khawaja Saad Rafique and his brother, who is also accused in the case, were arrested in Lahore after a court refused to extend their bail.
(AP, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 11, President Vladimir Putin said it was unclear to him why a Russian woman, Maria Butina, had been detained in the United States and accused of being a Russian agent because his intelligence chiefs had told him they knew nothing about her.
(Reuters, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 11, The Russian military said that nearly 114,000 Syrian refugees have been repatriated this year, a fraction of the estimated 6 million who have fled since the start of the conflict.
(AP, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 11, Thailand's military government lifted a ban on political activities it imposed when it seized power in a coup more than four years ago, an action taken in preparation for elections promised for early next year.
(AP, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 11, A Thai court ruled that soccer player Hakeem al-Araibi, who holds refugee status in Australia, can be held for 60 days pending the completion of an extradition request by Bahrain. In 2014 Bahrain sentenced him in absentia to 10 years in prison for vandalizing a police station, a charge he denies.
(AP, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 11, In northern Turkey a police officer angered that his request for a transfer was rejected fired shots at his superiors inside a police station in Rize, killing the local police chief and wounding two other officers.
(AP, 12/11/18)
2018 Dec 11, Yemen's Houthi movement and the Saudi-backed government exchanged lists of some 15,000 prisoners for a swap agreed as a confidence-building measure at the start of UN-sponsored peace talks in Sweden.
(Reuters, 12/11/18)
2019 Dec 11, President Donald Trump signed an executive order targeting what his administration describes as a growing problem with anti-Semitic harassment on college campuses. Under the order, the Department of Education will consider the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's definition of anti-Semitism — which can include criticism of Israel — when evaluating discrimination complaints under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. The department could withhold funding from schools that it finds in violation of Title VI.
(AP, 12/11/19)
2019 Dec 11, The United States imposed new sanctions on Iran's biggest airline and its shipping industry, accusing them of transporting lethal aid from Iran to Yemen and weapons of mass destruction proliferation.
(AP, 12/11/19)
2019 Dec 11, The Los Angeles Times reported that Lachlan Murdoch, son of Rupert Murdoch and the co-chairman of News Corp., has purchased the 25,000 square-foot Chartwell estate in the the city's Bel Air neighborhood for about $150 million. This was the highest home price ever in California. The 1930s mansion is seen in the credits for the "Beverly Hillbillies" TV show.
(SFC, 12/13/19, p.A8)
2019 Dec 11, The New York Times reported that Harvey Weinstein and his former film studio's board have reached a tentative $25 million settlement that would end nearly every sexual misconduct lawsuit brought against him and his company.
(AP, 12/11/19)
2019 Dec 11, Tessa Majors (18), of Charlottesville, Virginia, was walking in Manhattan’s Morningside Park just before 7 p.m. when she was accosted and stabbed during a struggle in an armed robbery. Three teenagers were involved. Two juvenile suspects, aged 13 and 14, were soon arrested in the fatal stabbing. On Dec 26 the New York City Police Department said it has located a teen they were seeking in connection with the stabbing death of Barnard College student Tessa Majors.
(AP, 12/13/19)(NY Times, 12/14/19)(CBS News, 12/26/19)
2019 Dec 11, A Dallas man who prosecutors said tried to recruit fighters for the Islamic State group through social media, encouraged others to carry out terrorist attacks and lied to federal agents was sentenced to 30 years in prison. Said Azzam Mohamad Rahim was arrested at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport in March 2017 while trying to board a flight to Jordan.
(NY Times, 12/12/19)
2019 Dec 11, It was reported that Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old Swede who inspired millions of young people to take action against climate change, has been named Time Magazine's Person of the Year for 2019.
(Reuters, 12/11/19)
2019 Dec 11, It was reported that Walt Disney Co's Disney+ has been downloaded 22 million times on mobile devices since the launch of the streaming service in November, according to a report by research firm Apptopia.
(Reuters, 12/11/19)
2019 Dec 11, In Afghanistan a suicide bomber struck an under construction medical facility at Bagram, the largest US military base in northern Afghanistan. At least two people were killed and 73 wounded. The Taliban claiming responsibility for the attack.
(SFC, 12/12/19, p.A2)
2019 Dec 11, Angolan authorities opened a criminal case against a former fishing minister for alleged involvement in a bribery scandal with Iceland's biggest fishing company that has seen six arrests in neighboring Namibia. State-owned Jornal de Angola said authorities had frozen the assets of ex-minister of fisheries Victoria de Barros Neto and opened a case against her, her husband and four children.
(Reuters, 12/11/19)
2019 Dec 11, The Bosnian capital Sarajevo declared Nobel Prize-winning Austrian author Peter Handke "persona non grata" over his support for late Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic and denial of the 1995 genocide in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica.
(Reuters, 12/11/19)
2019 Dec 11, Research showed that China's bitcoin miners now control two-thirds of the crypto network's processing power, a growing share that is likely to benefit the country's miners.
(Reuters, 12/11/19)
2019 Dec 11, Danish police made several raids throughout the country and arrested a number of people in connection with suspected preparations for an Islamist militant attack.
(Reuters, 12/11/19)
2019 Dec 11, Europe sought to bolster the world's faltering battle against climate change with its "Green Deal" to slash fossil fuel dependence, while teen activist Greta Thunberg rebuked global leaders for dragging their feet.
(Reuters, 12/11/19)
2019 Dec 11, France's PM Edouard Philippe outlined an overhaul of France's byzantine pension system that he said would be fairer and plug a gaping deficit in the pension budget. People born after 1974 would have to work until the age of 64 to get a full pension, instead of 62 previously, drawing a hostile response from trade unions who said they would step up strike action to force an about-turn.
(Reuters, 12/11/19)(SFC, 12/12/19, p.A2)
2019 Dec 11, The German government said it was unaware that Russia had made an extradition request for a Georgian man murdered in Berlin in August after Russian President Vladimir Putin said requests from Moscow had not been heeded.
(Reuters, 12/11/19)
2019 Dec 11, India's ruling Hindu nationalist government won parliamentary approval for a far-reaching citizenship law that critics say undermines the country's secular constitution, as protests against the legislation intensified. India's Citizenship Amendment Act of 2019 inserted religion as a criterion for citizenship.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizenship_(Amendment)_Act,_2019)(AP, 12/11/19)
2019 Dec 11, The Israeli parliament began voting to dissolve itself and pave the path to an unprecedented third election within a year. The preliminary vote passed without objections. Barring a nearly unfathomable about-face, three more measures are expected to pass and call a new election for March 2, 2020.
(AP, 12/11/19)
2019 Dec 11, At The Hague Nobel Peace Prize winner and former political prisoner Aung San Suu Kyi denied that Myanmar's armed forces committed genocide, telling the United Nation's top court that the mass exodus of Rohingya people from the country she leads was the unfortunate result of a battle with insurgents.
(AP, 12/11/19)
2019 Dec 11, The International Criminal Court said it has confirmed the charges brought by prosecutors against two men suspected of war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Central African Republic. The court said Alfred Yekatom and alleged co-conspirator and Patrice-Edouard Ngaissona, who have said they are innocent, will face trial.
(Reuters, 12/11/19)
2019 Dec 11, It was reported that North Korean state-backed hackers appear to be cooperating with Eastern European cybercriminals, a finding that suggests digital gangsters and state-backed spies are finding common ground online.
(AP, 12/11/19)(http://tinyurl.com/s6yc83s)
2019 Dec 11, In Papua New Guinea results from two weeks of voting on a referendum on the island of Bougainville, population about 200,000, showed 98% of the voters favored independence. The referendum was nonbinding and independence would need to be negotiated.
(SFC, 12/12/19, p.A4)
2019 Dec 11, Saudi Aramco shares surged the maximum permitted 10% above their IPO price to $9.39 per share on their Riyadh stock market debut, in a move hailed by the government as a vindication of its towering $2 trillion valuation of the state oil company.
(Reuters, 12/11/19)(SFC, 12/12/19, p.D3)
2019 Dec 11, Spain’s King Felipe VI invited acting PM Pedro Sanchez to attempt to form a government and end the country’s prolonged political gridlock.
(Bloomberg, 12/11/19)
2019 Dec 11, In Spain dozens of young campaigners and indigenous rights activists were thrown out of United Nations climate talks after staging a protest demanding that nations commit to act now to avert catastrophic climate change.
(AFP, 12/11/19)
2020 Dec 11, President Donald Trump, facing a midnight deadline, signed a one-week extension of expiring federal funding to avoid a government shutdown and to provide more time for separate talks on COVID-19 relief and an overarching spending bill.
(Reuters, 12/11/20)
2020 Dec 11, The US Senate approved a wide-ranging defense bill, despite Pres. Trump's threat to veto the measure because it does not clamp down on big tech companies he claims were biased during the election. The House and Senate have enough votes to override a veto. U.S. Trump has until Dec. 23 to decide whether to veto the $740 billion National Defense Authorization Act or allow the annual measure setting policy for the Department of Defense to become law.
(SFC, 12/12/20, p.A4)(Reuters, 12/14/20)
2020 Dec 11, The US Supreme Court threw out a complaint filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton that directly attacked four other states that President-elect Joe Biden won.
(AP, 12/11/20)
2020 Dec 11, The Trump administration continued its unprecedented series of post-election federal executions by putting to death in Indiana Alfred Bourgeois (56), a Louisiana truck driver who severely abused his 2-year-old daughter for weeks in 2002, then killed her by slamming her head repeatedly against a truck’s windows and dashboard.
(AP, 12/11/20)
2020 Dec 11, President Donald Trump's administration moved forward with $1 billion in sales of drones and precision-guided weapons to Morocco, sending a notice to Congress about the potential deals.
(Reuters, 12/11/20)
2020 Dec 11, The FDA granted emergency use for the vaccine produced by Pfizer Inc. and its German partner BioNTech. Hours before the FDA authorization, a high-ranking White House official told the agency’s chief he could face firing if the vaccine was not cleared by day’s end.
(AP, 12/12/20)
2020 Dec 11, It was reported that a team of codebreakers has deciphered an encrypted 340 character message sent 51-years ago by the so-called Zodiac killer, who was responsible for at least five murders in northern California: "I hope you are having lots of fun in trying to catch me. I am not afraid of the gas chamber because it will send me to paradice (sic) all the sooner because I now have enough slaves to work for me where everyone else has nothing when they reach paradice so they are afraid of death. I am not afraid because I know that my new life will be an easy one in paradice death."
(SFC, 12/12/20, p.A1)
2020 Dec 11, California to date had 1,497,623 cases of coronavirus and 20,700 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 184,154 cases and 2,098 deaths. Total cases nationwide reached over 15,817,169 with the death toll at 294,690.
(sfist.com, 12/11/20)
2020 Dec 11, Rapper Lil Wayne pleaded guilty to a federal charge that he possessed a weapon despite being a convicted felon following a 2019 search of a private plane in the Miami area.
(AP, 12/11/20)
2020 Dec 11, In North Carolina Tyler Avery (25), a Mount Holly Police officer, died following an exchange of gunfire early today during a break-in at a car wash in the Belmont area of Gaston County. Joshua Tyler Funk (24) was soon arrested and charged with murder.
(AP, 12/11/20)
2020 Dec 11, In Ohio hundreds of people peacefully demonstrated in Columbus late today to protest the December 4 death of Casey Goodson Jr.
(Insider, 12/12/20)
2020 Dec 11, It was reported that Global fund managers are reducing their holdings in US-listed Chinese companies such as Alibaba, Netease and JD.com as risks grow they will be forced off American exchanges, switching instead into shares of the companies listed in Hong Kong.
(Reuters, 12/11/20)
2020 Dec 11, Scientists said five key genes are linked with the most severe form of COVID-19 in research that also pointed to several existing drugs that could be repurposed to treat people who risk getting critically ill with the pandemic disease.
(Reuters, 12/11/20)
2020 Dec 11, Australian researchers announced they had abandoned development of a potential vaccine because the false positive results to HIV tests undermined public confidence.
(AP, 12/11/20)
2020 Dec 11, The Azerbaijani military reportedly launched an attack late today that left three local ethnic Armenian servicemen wounded in Nagorno-Karabakh.
(AP, 12/12/20)
2020 Dec 11, Brazil's Health Ministry said it is studying 58 suspected cases of COVID-19 re-infection after confirming the first case of a person getting re-infected with the illness caused by the coronavirus. The pathogen of the sample collected in June belonged to the B.1.1.33 strain and the October sample was from the B.1.1.28 strain.
(Reuters, 12/11/20)
2020 Dec 11, Britain and Vietnam finalized a free trade agreement, the second deal London has reached in Southeast Asia in as many days while deadlock continues over post-Brexit European Union arrangements.
(AFP, 12/11/20)
2020 Dec 11, Canadian federal health authorities said longer-range forecasts project the second wave of the coronavirus spreading rapidly through Canada, and all the major provinces need to impose more restrictions.
(Reuters, 12/11/20)
2020 Dec 11, Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said US claims about risks to national security were completely false, following a US decision to halt China Telecom US operations.
(Reuters, 12/11/20)
2020 Dec 11, Ethiopia said it is returning thousands of refugees who ran from camps in its Tigray region, putting them on buses back to the border area with Eritrea, the country the refugees originally fled. Ethiopia's government denied that the war in its northern Tigray region was preventing aid reaching civilians, as two foreign aid agencies confirmed some staff had been killed there and urged all sides to do more to protect non-combatants. The Danish Refugee Council (DRC) reported the deaths of three security guards in Ethiopia's Tigray region over the last month.
(AP, 12/11/20)(Reuters, 12/11/20)(BBC, 12/11/20)
2020 Dec 11, French Culture Minister Roselyne Bachelot pledged an extra 35 million euros ($42 million) to bail out museums, cinemas and theatres left "stunned" by an extension of COVID-19 restrictions.
(Reuters, 12/11/20)
2020 Dec 11, France reported 13,406 new coronavirus infections, while intensive care cases dropped again and are now well below a government target. The number of deaths rose by 627 to 57,567.
(AP, 12/11/20)
2020 Dec 11, France-based Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline said clinical trials of their COVID-19 vaccine showed an insufficient immune response in older people, delaying its launch to late next year and marking a setback in the global fight against the pandemic.
(Reuters, 12/11/20)
2020 Dec 11, Construction of Nord Stream 2, a German-Russian pipeline that the United States has vehemently opposed, resumed after nearly a year.
(AP, 12/11/20)
2020 Dec 11, City leader Carrie Lam said Hong Kong has ordered 15 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine, split between China's Sinovac Biotech Ltd. and Pfizer/BioNTech, twice the number of its residents.
(Reuters, 12/11/20)
2020 Dec 11, In India around a million doctors went on a day-long strike amid the coronavirus pandemic to protest against a new federal government rule that allows practitioners of the traditional science of Ayurveda to perform minor surgeries.
(Reuters, 12/11/20)
2020 Dec 11, Mexico became the fourth country to approve emergency use of Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine, following authorization from health regulator Cofepris.
(Reuters, 12/11/20)
2020 Dec 11, In north-western Nigeria hundreds of students were feared missing after gunmen raided a secondary school in Katsina state. On Dec. 15 the Islamist militant group Boko Haram said it was behind the kidnapping.
(BBC, 12/12/20)(AP, 12/15/20)
2020 Dec 11, Eight mainly Western nations accused North Korea of using the pandemic “to crack down further on the human rights of its own people," pointing to reports of an uptick in executions related to the coronavirus and strict controls on movements in and around the capital.
(AP, 12/11/20)
2020 Dec 11, Pakistan's foreign minister called for the UN and the EU to investigate a recent report exposing a 15-year disinformation campaign that Islamabad alleges was designed to serve India's interests and discredit Pakistan. New Delhi denied the claims.
(AP, 12/11/20)
2020 Dec 11, Philippines-based Asian Development Bank said it has launched a $9 billion facility to help nations access and deliver COVID-19 vaccines. The Asia Pacific Vaccine Access Facility (APVAX) will provide support for procurement and transporting of vaccines from place of purchase to ADB's developing members.
(Reuters, 12/11/20)
2020 Dec 11, Portugal reported 95 deaths linked to COVID-19, its worst daily toll since the pandemic started, as countries across Europe struggled to contain a second wave of infections.
(Reuters, 12/11/20)
2020 Dec 11, Russia reported its highest COVID-19 daily death tally, a day after official data revealed a surge in excess deaths in October that made it the most deadly month in a decade.
(Reuters, 12/11/20)
2020 Dec 11, Russia's sovereign wealth fund said AstraZeneca is to start clinical trials to test a combination of its experimental COVID-19 vaccine with Russia's Sputnik V shot to see if this can boost the efficacy of the British drugmaker's vaccine.
(Reuters, 12/11/20)
2020 Dec 11, It was reported that South Korea-based Hyundai Motor Group and its chairman have agreed to buy a controlling stake in Boston Dynamics from SoftBank Group Corp in a deal that values the US-based robot maker at $1.1 billion. The deal would give the company and its chief a combined 80% stake in Boston Dynamics, while Softbank will retain 20%.
(AP, 12/11/20)
2020 Dec 11, A new report by international food security experts said South Sudan's western Pibor county is feared to have reached famine level, the result of massive flooding and deadly violence that has prevented access to aid.
(AP, 12/11/20)
2020 Dec 11, Swiss-based Novartis said it has received approval from the European Commission for Leqvio, also known as inclisiran, a drug to lower cholesterol that the drugmaker bought last year in a deal worth nearly $10 billion and expects to be a top seller.
(Reuters, 12/11/20)
2020 Dec 11, The global chemical weapons watchdog (OPCW) criticized Syria for failing to declare a chemical weapons production facility and respond to 18 other issues. Russia accused the watchdog of conducting a “political crusade" against its close ally, the Syrian government.
(AP, 12/11/20)
2020 Dec 11, Taiwan commissioned the first of a new fleet of coastguard ships, an advanced catamaran that can be armed with missiles during war, as the island bolsters its defenses in the face of what it sees as a growing threat from Beijing.
(Reuters, 12/11/20)
2020 Dec 11, Ukraine reported 13,514 new coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours, bringing the total number to 872,228 cases with 14,755 deaths.
(AP, 12/11/20)
2020 Dec 11, A UN-backed tribunal sentenced fugitive Hezbollah member, Salim Ayyash, to five concurrent terms of life imprisonment in absentia over his involvement in the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese PM Rafik Hariri.
(AP, 12/11/20)
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